#bullseye

[castledevil]

BENJAMIN POINDEXTER / BULLSEYE

Daredevil: Born Again (2025) 02x04 "Gloves Off"

[fru1t4fr0gs]

Folie a Deux

Pairing: Benjamin Poindexter/Bullseye x Reader

Summary: Folie a deux: "the madness of two"

If you were to ask most sane people, a relationship between a hacker with a penchant for breaking the law and an FBI agent shouldn’t work. And yet, you and Benjamin Poindexter just seem to…well, work. You get each other. You love each other. In fact, it doesn’t take much to see that your boyfriend is completely and utterly obsessed with you.

Unfortunately, Wilson Fisk sees this too, and it isn’t long before it becomes clear just how far Dex is willing to go to keep you with him. And, after tragedy strikes, how far he’ll go to get you back.

Warnings: 18+ Minors DNI: Obsession, Stalking, Violence, Murder (I mean, it's Bullseye), Blood, Dex is down so bad guys, Smut!!, Unprotected PinV (wrap it before you tap it), Slight knife play, Slight gun play, Reader matches Dex’s freak, Vague mentions of mental illness (it's Dex), Angst, Canon-compliant character death, Please please let me know if I forgot anything!

Author's Note: And here we have the longest fic I've ever written! I loved writing these two so much that I'm almost sad to post it because I don't get to work on it anymore. Be warned that this fic is going to follow the events of Daredevil season 3 through Born Again season 2, so there will definitely be spoilers! As always, let me know what you guys think!! Your feeback brings me joy and keeps me writing!!

Word Count: 22k

-

It’s almost painfully cliche, how he meets you.

You slam into him, head banging against his shoulder so hard that it might bruise. So hard that your phone clatters to the ground in a chaotic little cacophony of plastic on pavement.

“Shit!” Your voice is a sharp cry in the crowded street, but no one really turns around for this kind of thing in New York. No one offers much more than a backwards glance and a raised eyebrow. He just wanted a damn coffee, and now his shoulder is aching and he’s about to whip around to snap at you for-

Your palm is pressed against your forehead, and your eyes are squeezed shut. You’re in a sweatshirt and jeans. There are subtle bags under your eyes from what he can only assume is a lack of sleep. Your sneakers are worn. There is almost nothing about you that should be in any way memorable.

One eye peeks open, and his heart…stutters.

“I’m sorry. Shit. You okay?”

His heart stops.

He isn’t sure why. He can’t exactly place it, but it’s just…there you are. Running right into him like that. Asking if he’s okay when you look like his shoulder bone might have fucking concussed you.

He reaches down, picks up your phone, and offers it to you.

“I’m fine.” He says, softer than he means to, and you open your other eye.

“Are you made of concrete or something?” You huff a laugh, accept your phone, and slide it into your pocket. He’s staring too hard. He needs to break the gaze but it feels impossible and wrong to even try.

“Not that I know of.”

A feeling like desperate need claws its way up his throat when you smile again. When you laugh at his words like you really hear them. He doesn’t know exactly what it is he needs, but it’s overwhelming to the point of near-pain.

“I’m sorry about that.” You say again, and you mean it. “If I left a bruise, don’t sue me.” You glance down, notice the badge clipped to his belt. “Or…arrest me.”

He can’t remember how to speak. How to breathe right. But he needs to act…normal. He can’t just yank you to him in the middle of the street, bury his nose in your neck and inhale your perfume. Not like he wants to.

The world is narrowed down to a pinpoint. The crowded, chaotic streets of the city are gone. The honking of taxis, the bustle of people trying to get to their destinations, the towering buildings, it’s all gone. It’s just you, and your smile, and your eyes looking up at him.

His smile twitches a little before it finally forms on his lips, lopsided and genuine. You relax at the sight of it.

“Don’t have my cuffs on me, so I guess you’re safe.” And you smile at the joke, and it’s perfect.

He’ll buy you coffee. He’ll talk to you. He’ll make you smile more.

Your phone dings, and you curse as you glance down at it. “Shit. I gotta go.” You murmur, shooting one more apologetic glance up at him. “Sorry again. Really.”

“It’s…okay.” But it’s not. You can’t leave. You can’t walk away from him he just found you he’s not done-

But you’re gone, and your sudden absence shudders his breath and makes his chest feel too tight. No. No, you need to be here. With him. He just found you. You can’t leave.

He doesn’t move for a good few seconds, frozen in place as the noise and chaos crashes back in, crippling and horrible.

The bell to the coffee shop dings. There. That’s where you are. Where you’re going. Not gone. Not too far for him to find again.

He waits sixty seconds, counts his breaths, and follows.

-

“Yikes, what happened to you?”

You’re rubbing your forehead. You’re hurt. His shoulder hurt you. The dull ache in the spot where you slammed against him feels like a connection. A tether holding you to him.

“Too embarrassing.” You grumble, but he can hear a hint of humor and familiarity in your voice. “Don’t make me say it.”

“Well now I have to know.” You smile at the blond man. Nelson. The lawyer. Dex knows about him. Are you with him, somehow? Is Nelson trying to take you away from him?

You huff a laugh, and plop down unceremoniously into the opposite chair, still rubbing your forehead. “I was trying to respond to your millionth text, and I just absolutely slammed into this smoking hot FBI guy.”

“FBI?” Nelson repeats, but you said hot. You called him hot. He’s so distracted by that that he barely hears your next words, dripping with sarcasm as you pull one foot up onto the chair and wrap your arms around your knee.

“Yeah, and then I told him all about my extra curricular activities, and my home address.”

“Your jokes aren’t as funny as you think they are, you know.”

“Neither are yours, and we’re still friends.” You accept the cup of coffee Nelson slides your way, and Dex’s heart stutters again as you smile over the rim of the mug.

“So, speaking of which…”

“I knew it. I knew it. You never just wanna hang out and get coffee.”

“We hang out and get coffee all the time.”

“The ratio is off, lately. You ask for favors more since you went into that corporate law job. Now your pro-bono work always goes through me and all my incredible skills like some dirty little secret.”

Pro-bono work. Secrets. What do you do? You’re kind. You’re good. He can feel it. Sense it like second nature. But the questions and lack of answers are making him grip his own mug a little tighter, making it difficult for him to lean back in the shadows and hide like he’s supposed to.

Nelson looks sheepish, but you give a good natured wave of your hand. A silent ‘go on’ gesture that Dex can’t help but find painfully charming.

“I have a case. This guy…” Nelson slides a file towards you, “didn’t do it. Works for a big company, going down for financial crimes that he didn’t commit. They’re trying to cover their tracks, and a little bit of proof might keep him from missing his kids’ elementary school graduation.” You raise an eyebrow, and Nelson smiles a little. “And middle school. And high school. And…college. The point is they’re gonna try to put him away for a long time, and he didn’t do it.”

You squint, and slide the file closer to yourself. “Financial crimes?”

“Just saying, a little bit of…evidence towards his innocence will really help.”

“Hm.”

“And it shouldn’t be a problem for the best hacker in New York.”

You raise an eyebrow again.

“Okay, the east coast.”

Your eyebrow climbs higher.

“America?”

You grin, and Dex twitches with the need to be closer to you. To see that grin directed at him.

“You’re gonna have to start paying me soon.”

“And if I do, it becomes illegal.”

You tilt your head back again, puff out a dramatic sigh, and curl your fingers around the file.

“I want one of your mom’s sandwiches, at two am. The one with the provolone that I like.”

Nelson grins, wide. “Done and done.”

And then, you tilt your head back towards Nelson. “Does this have anything to do with Fisk?”

Fisk. Fisk? That asshole? That annoying detail he’s about to be stuck on?

“Wilson Fisk?”

“No, the other one. The other crime boss who just got out of prison and has a bone to pick with you.”

Nelson rolls his eyes. “Still not funny.”

“Foggy.”

He hesitates, and frowns. “No. But don’t…just stay away from that, okay? We’ll figure it out. You getting involved, especially with your tendency to…piss people like that off…”

“I haven’t been caught.”

“You will be, if you keep up that little Robin Hood act you have going on. There’s only so much legal counsel I can give you. This is extra legal council. I should be charging you for this.”

“Those companies don’t notice any money missing. You know who does? Mr. Stevenson next door, who can pay off his damn bills and not have to work an extra six hours a day to afford medication for his bad leg.” Your tone is sharp. Defensive.

So you’re a criminal. A good one. Because stealing from the rich and giving to people who need it… that’s good. His own moral compass might be a little off-kilter, but he knows that much.

Then again, you could be a serial killer and he would probably still feel this way, but oh well.

Foggy frowns, like this is a conversation you’ve had many times before, and gives you a familiar little nod, like he knows arguing won’t get him too far. “Just…don’t get involved, okay? Stay away from it. This is more dangerous than you think.”

“Vague.” You grumble, but you’re sliding the file into your bag. “Sandwich with the provolone, three am.”

“You said two.”

You stand, finish your coffee, and smile. “This one’s gonna take a while.”

-

Watching you work is…fascinating.

It’s a slow process, Dex realizes quickly. You don’t click at your keyboard and bust through firewalls like in movies. You lay on your couch, bite your nails, and seem to work through problems one by one. It takes a while. It frustrates you. It makes you smile to yourself when you solve one of those problems.

You get your sandwich. You talk to Nelson for a while. Update him. Get back to work.

The sun is going to rise, soon. You’re still working. His eyes are starting to hurt from watching you through this telescope, but he can’t make himself look away.

When you move to the kitchen, you slide on the hardwood in your socks. You play music. You tap your fingers on your keyboard to the beat.

He watches every second. Every single twitch of your eye. Every frown when you can’t figure something out. Every bright little spark when you do figure it out.

Perfect. You’re perfect. And when you finally do fall asleep, computer resting on your stomach and eyes dropping closed like they’re weighed down by anvils, he wants more than anything to make his way into that dingy little apartment and carry you to your bed in the adjacent room. To slide his fingers through your hair, feel you smile, and listen to your heartbeat until he’s positive that nothing will ever be able to take you away from him.

But for now, he watches. He stays, long after you’ve fallen asleep, and he watches.

-

It takes planning. It takes hours of working himself up to it. Of watching you from afar, plotting every scenario out bit by bit and talking himself out of it a thousand times.

You consume his thoughts like a poison. He follows you to your work. Back to your apartment. Watches every interaction you have with everyone else and wishes it was him you were looking at until he stops fucking sleeping with the need to have you near him.

So, when the torture becomes too much, he follows you to a bar, and he sits in the corner, and he watches you laugh with your friends. Watches and watches and craves to be closer to the light that seems to emanate from your very being.

And he gets up at just the right time, and allows you to bump into him as you start walking back towards the group you came with.

Not a single drop of his drink spills on him - he’s still a little too organized to allow that to happen if he can help it - but he makes it look like it does. He catches your waist as you stumble with an ‘oomph’, and just like that you’re close to him. You’re touching him. He’s touching you. You’re here. With him.

“Oh, fuck. Sorry. Sorry.” You’re not drunk, barely even buzzed, but he knows you well enough now to know that you’re just a little clumsy, and this place is just loud enough for this to work.

Your eyes turn up to his, and you nearly stumble back.

Practiced smile. Fingers curling against your back a little because he just can’t help it. “We’ve gotta stop bumping into each other like this.” He’s practiced that line in the mirror, and it works. You laugh.

You laugh. At his joke. At his line that he’s practiced for this specific scenario. It worked.

“I know you.” You grin, wide, and then flinch a little, but you’re still laughing. “Have I said I’m sorry yet?”

“You did.” He has to let you go. He would rather die, but he can’t be holding you like this. You don’t know him yet. Not yet. “Never got your name, though.”

“I never got yours. Figured you hated me for dislocating your shoulder.”

“Dex.”

“Dex.” You repeat, and his blood hums in his veins at the sound. “Nice to meet you, Dex.”

“Nice to meet you…public hazard.” Lame joke. Bad joke. He just can’t string a fucking thought together when you’re near him and-

You snort. His heart bursts into flames.

“Do you want to get out of here?” Fuck. It’s too soon. Way too soon. You’re gonna say no, and leave, and he’s-

“Yeah.” You set your drink down. “Yeah, I do.”

-

“So…hobbies?” You take a bite of your pizza, heels clicking against the pavement, and he can’t stop looking at you.

“Not really.”

“Hm.” You don’t seem bothered by it. By his lack of interesting traits. He’s not lying to you. He doesn’t have to. You’re meant to be together, after all. He doesn’t have to lie about himself. Right? “Okay. Any special skills then, Special Agent?”

Actually, yeah. “I have one.”

You perk up, raise an eyebrow. “Really?”

He grins, real and genuine, and pulls a quarter out of his back pocket. “Think you’re ready for it?”

“More than.” You’re excited. Really, truly excited. It’s fucking adorable.

“Nah.” He flips the coin over his fingers, feigns pocketing it again. “Don’t think you are.”

“Aw, come on. Please?”

Butterflies swarm in his chest. A smile curls on his lips. He nods towards the darkened street before you. “Pick somethin’.”

You frown, cock your head to the side, and purse your lips when he doesn’t budge to give you any more information. “Okay….street sign. That one right there.”

“Letter.”

“What?”

“Pick a letter.”

Your brow furrows a little more, and your lips twitch in a smile. “T.”

The throws the quarter out, and the sound of metal on metal sings through the air.

There’s a dent in the T. It’s so small, so subtle, that you have to move over to the sign to inspect it.

“Holy shit.”

Do you like it? Are you impressed? He has to stop himself from grabbing your shoulder and demanding to know.

“Can you do it again?”

Yes. Yes of course he can. He’ll do anything. Anything to make you look at him with those wide eyes and that big grin.

You name five more things, he hits them all perfectly, and he doesn’t want to stop. He wants to keep impressing you. Keep hearing your startled noises of approval.

But you make it back to your apartment, and he has to force himself to let you leave. To not follow you upstairs and learn every inch of your skin until it’s locked into his memory forever.

Instead, he asks you to dinner, and you agree. You smile, and you agree.

-

He kisses you for the first time on your second date. Dinner and ice cream.

He’s walked you to your door, like he did the last time, and you’re standing there in your dress with that smile of yours and your eyes looking expectantly into his and he doesn’t know how to do this right. Sure, there have been women in the past. He’s kissed girls. Slept with them when the time was right, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and never really…felt anything. Never wanted anything like this. Fuck, he feels more excitement just looking at you than he did with every hookup he’s ever had.

He has to do it. Make it romantic. Make it perfect. He’s looked up the right way to do this. Studied romantic movies like it was some kind of assignment with life-or-death consequences.

Reach up, brush your hair behind your ear, drink in your shy smile, lean closer so his breath ghosts over your lips-

“You have ice cream on your nose.”

He freezes, fingers still cupping your jaw, and pulls back.

“What?”

You giggle, oblivious to how much his mind is spinning, and reach up to swipe it off with your thumb.

“Shit.” He mumbles, shaking his head and stepping back. “Shit. I’m sorry. I-“

You tilt your head to the side, curious and confused and beautiful as you seem to realize that he’s actually freaking out a little. Because it’s not perfect. It was supposed to be perfect because that’s the only way he gets to keep good things. Order. Focus. But he fucked it up and now you’re-

“Woah, hey. Hey.” You reach up, and turn his face towards yours. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m sorry, it was cute. Just…try again.”

Try again. Yeah, he…he can try again. It can still be good. Still be perfect.

So he does. He leans down, and when his lips brush yours his breath comes out as a shaky exhale.

And then your mouth is on his, warm and soft and everything he’s ever wanted. Electricity shoots down his spine, through his blood, and some tether of control within him snaps. He presses closer, the hand on your cheek moving to the back of your head to keep you in place, and kisses you like he’s trying to devour you with a passion he didn’t know he possessed.

You gasp against his lips, arms coming up to wrap around his neck as you meet him with just as much enthusiasm. Just as much hunger. And this…this is perfect. This is rough and desperate and perfect. This didn’t need to go according to plan. This is so much better than the plan.

When you finally break apart, he’s out of breath and more than a little pleased to see that you are, too.

“Wow.” You whisper, and he grins as his nose ducks back down to brush against yours.

“Yeah.” He breathes, unable to think of another response. Any other word to describe this feeling. “Wow.”

-

When you see the caller id, you can’t help but smile at the screen.

“Geez, you look so weird with the cartoon heart eyes.” Foggy’s voice breaks you out of your little trance, and you snort as you answer the phone, confirming that Dex is off work and headed back to his apartment. You feel a twinge of excitement, cheesy as it is, at the idea of seeing him soon. You try not to flag down the bartender too quickly, lest the mockery get any worse.

“FBI guy?” Foggy raises an eyebrow, and you smile again.

“His name is Dex.” Foggy’s eyebrows rise even higher. You flush. “I dunno, I like him. A lot, actually.”

“He’s in the FBI. You’re a pretty notorious hacker.”

“So we don’t talk about work.” You take a sip of your drink. “Plus, he’s not gonna turn me in. I’m too good in bed.”

“But he knows?”

“Of course he knows.” You raise your eyebrows, leaning forward like you’re explaining something imperative. “One you start having sex with someone, it’s important that you confess all of your crimes to each other.”

Foggy laughs, and shakes his head. “You’re insane.” And then, curious and caring as ever, “so what’s he like, if he’s got you risking federal prison?”

Your smile returns, cheeks heating a little, and you shrug. “Cute. Nice. A little weird. Well, actually a lot weird, but…I like it.” You think about the precise way Dex loads the dishwasher. How he carefully makes the bed every morning. How he makes an odd joke every now and then, and then looks absolutely panicked until you laugh, and that panic will always melt into an expression of relief and adoration.

Sometimes his emotions are a little…intense. He can get frustrated, and sometimes he doesn’t seem like he knows how to handle it. But you help. You always do. You tell him to breathe and help him work through whatever’s bothering him, and it works. He always listens. Always tries, even if it takes a moment.

You just…work. Something about you, and something about him, and all the weirdness in between…it works.

When you get back to his place tonight, he’s holding a bouquet of flowers and looking genuinely nervous.

“I don’t get this.” He admits before you even drop your keys onto the counter, frowning down at the colorful petals. “They’re just gonna die in a couple of days.”

“Then why did you get them?”

He cocks his head to the side, but you can see a tinge of pink on his cheeks. “They did it in the movie we watched last night. You smiled.”

You smile now. Wide. “You know, you’re kinda cute, Poindexter.”

Something like vulnerability sparks in his eyes. “Do you not like the flowers?”

You snort, and move forward to slide your hands up over his shoulders, feeling the crisp fabric of his white button-down against your palms. “I like them. You did good. Really good.”

He smiles at that, like those words are the best thing he’s ever heard, and you pull him down to kiss you.

Your conversation with Foggy flashes through your mind. You forgot to tell him that one thing. That one major reason why you like Dex. Why you’re with him.

You get him. And he gets you.

You just…work.

-

The newspaper sits on the counter, Dex’s picture stamped right on the front page. FBI investigates one of their own.

You try not to talk about work with him. After all, you’re technically a criminal and he’s in law enforcement. But you knew about the investigation. It’s unjust, Dex says, and you believe him because…well, of course you do. It’s Dex. He saved lives that night, and the few coworkers of his that you’ve met since you’ve been dating have confirmed it.

And then the suspension came.

“It’s bullshit. It’s fucking bullshit.” In what feels like only a few words, his voice morphs from a frustrated growl into something as sharp and loud as the crack of a whip. His hand moves faster than you can even register, and in a split second there’s a kitchen knife sticking out of a photo on the wall. Right in the forehead of the person you recognize as his boss.

“Shit, I keep forgetting how spooky that is.” You breathe, and Dex’s eyes whip back to yours.

“Breathe, Poindexter.” You raise your hands in surrender, and step ever-so-carefully forward, like one wrong move might frighten him off.

“Don’t.” He snaps, fingers curling on the counter, but his eyes don’t leave you. He’s breathing too heavily. Too raggedly.

You reach up, and turn his face down to yours. Gentle, but firm. “You gotta breathe. Tell me three things you can see.”

He freezes, eyes scanning your face like he’s trying to tell if you’re kidding or not, before he speaks. “Your eyes.” He finally says, voice softening a little with each word. “Your nose…your mouth.”

Okay, it’s usually supposed to be things around the room, but this works too.

“Three things you can feel?”

He blinks, eyes still fixed on you, and raises one hand to your cheek. “Your skin.” He leans closer, helplessly. His hand moves up to your hair, curling a lock of it around his finger. “Your hair…” his free hand drops to your waist, bunching in the fabric of your borrowed t-shirt. “Your shirt.”

“Your shirt, technically.”

He grunts, and buries his nose in your temple.

“Three things you can hear.”

“Your voice.” You hum in response, and he presses closer. “Your heartbeat. Your breathing.”

You nod, and reach up to wrap your arms around his broad shoulders. He holds you a little more tightly. “Your breathing is better, see?”

He nods, and pulls back to kiss you. It’s slow, hard and desperate, like he’s trying to memorize the feeling. You pull him closer, and he makes a soft noise against your lips before he lifts you up and carries you over to the counter.

“Do you feel better?” You ask against his lips, feeling his fingers push the hem of your shirt up so he can trace them over your skin.

“I’m still being framed.” He murmurs, pulling back to trail his lips over the line of your jaw. “It’s still bullshit.”

“I know.”

“You make it better.” His hands move up, higher, warming the bare skin of your back. “You make everything better.”

“Hell of a compliment.”

“I mean it.”

“Me too.”

You kiss him again, feel him press his body closer to yours until your fingers are moving up to fumble with the buttons of his dress shirt and his are sliding your t-shirt up over your head. Moving down to skate over the hem of your underwear.

“Bedroom?” You breathe, and he shakes his head, lips never leaving your body for a second as he lowers himself to his knees right there before the counter.

“Here.” He rasps, teeth scraping against the sensitive skin of your inner thigh, and pulls you to the edge of the counter in one sharp movement that has you locking your fingers in his cropped hair. “Please.”

“That’s my line, I think.” You’re breathless, his lips are trailing higher.

“No, it’s not.” His blue eyes are on yours, filled with something so much like worship that it halts your breath in your lungs. “It’s mine.”

-

“One more.”

The word is warm and sweet in your ear, a low hum paired with wandering hands and a soft, languid kiss to your jaw.

You snort, and you can feel him grin against your ear.

“I think one more will kill me.” You murmur, feigning misery, and his hand slides down over your hip, teasing. “Seriously, how do you have so much stamina?”

“Mm, it’s just you.” He murmurs, and trails his fingers over your stomach. “I can go all night.”

“We have gone all night.”

It’s been hours since he snapped in the kitchen, and your brain has become too mushy to even remember when the two of you migrated into his room. The problem with Dex’s…ability, is that he really never misses. He can take you apart almost embarrassingly quickly, immediately finding every spot and movement that has you seeing stars. And, with his obsessive personality, he has a tendency to try to one up himself. A lot. To see how many times he can make you fall apart until your legs are shaking and you’re spending the next day aching in all the best ways.

Which is why you’re pretty sure, even as his fingers find the apex of your thighs once more and he swallows your gasp with a smile against your lips, that he’s going to kill you. Death by too-many-orgasms has to be a thing, right?

“Dex…” you breathe, arching beneath him as your hands fly up to grasp at his muscled biceps.

“One more.” He repeats, the words a quiet rasp. “You can do it. Just give me one more. Please.”

How the fuck are you ever supposed to say no to him?

You kiss him, and he groans as he presses his body closer to yours.

One more turns into three more.

-

You can’t get a hold of Foggy. Or Karen.

Their names aren’t on the list of people who died at the Bulletin, so that’s something. Still, the chances of either of them being in the building during the attack are pretty damn high. And you don’t blame them for not answering. If they really were there, they must be fucking traumatized.

You would absolutely love it if one of them could pick up the damn phone, though.

Dex shows up around midnight, and you’ve already pulled on your jeans. Already grabbed your keys in preparation to run out the door and start banging on apartment doors. Hell, you might even go to the church Matt’s been hiding out in since he got back. Self-appointed recluse or not, you want answers. Before the news makes the information public, this time. There’s only so much information that hacking can give you, and if the cops and news outlets are currently scanning through the cameras for information of their own, it’s going to take a lot longer for you to find anything out than it will if your friends would just fucking talk to you.

“Hey, where are you going? What’s wrong?” Hands are on your shoulders, moving up to your cheeks, and you wonder if you look fucking insane with worry and confusion right now.

What the hell are you supposed to tell him? Oh yeah, Daredevil is my friend Matt. You know the one who died and kinda sorta came back? Have I mentioned him? Well apparently he’s gone fucking berserk and tried to kill Karen, but I’m absolutely fucking positive that it wasn’t him, which means that someone is out there murdering people in his old suit-

“I’ve…gotta go.” You say weakly, lamely, and start to pull back.

His hands tighten on you. Fast.

“Where? Where do you have to go?” He’s holding you surprisingly firmly, large arms locked around your body and making a frown curl your lips.

“Dex, let me go.” You can’t tell him. Of course you can’t. You have to figure this out on your own.

He doesn’t. In fact, he holds you even more tightly. “You can’t leave. You can’t leave me.”

“I’m-huh?” You turn to him, now, and blink in surprise at what you find. His eyes are dark. He looks like he’s sweating. Shit, he might be shaking. “Dex, what’s going on?”

“I need you here, okay?” He’s breathing a little strangely, hand smoothing up over your back with something like desperation. “I…you need to be here.”

You frown, and reach up to brush your fingers over his cheek. He closes his eyes, and leans into your touch.

“Okay. Hey, it’s okay.” He wasn’t able to help tonight. That’s it. He’s just been suspended. All of the order and structure he relies so heavily on is gone. You didn’t realize just how much it must be affecting him, and you feel like a shitty girlfriend for not immediately seeing just how off he is. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

He ducks down, fingers curling against your cheek and lips hovering over your own. “Tell me you need me.”

“Dex-“ you start, but his fingers slide into your hair and he backs you against the wall. It’s not aggressive, not quite, but it’s firm. Determined. Almost overwhelming in its desperation.

“Say it. Please.”

You frown, but reach up to wrap your arms around his neck. “I need you.”

He groans, and kisses you so hard your knees give out. He catches you, all-but scooping you into his arms as he traces his tongue over your lip and slides his arms around your waist.

You have to go find Foggy and Karen and Matt. You have to make sure they’re okay, and the four of you need to come up with some kind of game plan. Or, they do, and they’ll probably need your help because you just had to learn Matt’s secret. Just had to get mugged that night and recognize his voice. Just had to check security cameras and figure everything out and confront him about it.

So, with your particular skill set, and the information you have, they’ll probably need you, as outside of all this as you like to keep yourself. But Dex needs you more right now, and that matters more. You’ll get to the bottom of this mystery another time, when your boyfriend’s trembling hands aren’t pulling at your clothes and his lips aren’t trailing over your throat as he whispers your name like a prayer over and over again.

“What’s wrong?” You ask again, breathless and worried as he lifts you against the wall, as he wraps your thighs around his waist and curls his fingers against your skin hard enough that you worry it might bruise. You hope it does.

“You make it quiet.” He murmurs between kisses, tugging at your clothes until your shirt slides up over your head, discarded on the floor in a second. Messy. Disordered in a way that isn’t like him. “You make it all quiet. I need it to be quiet. Please.” His voice is shaking. Desperate.

You’re not quite sure what he means, but you nod anyway.

The moment you do, his body is pressing impossibly closer to yours. His lips are moving down your neck, kisses so rough and starved that you can feel his teeth scraping over your skin. His hands are tight on your body, hips rocking forward and making you gasp, and you can still hear the shakiness in his quickened breaths as he moves back up to kiss you so hard your head knocks lightly against the wall.

Your fingers move to the buttons of his shirt. His breaths are getting quicker. His grip is getting tighter.

“D-Dex.” You’re so breathless yourself that you can barely get his name out, but he doesn’t stop kissing you. Doesn’t slow his desperate movements until you finally reach up to pull his face away from yours.

His pupils are blown. His gaze is starved. He’s still shaking.

“Hey, stay with me.” You card your fingers through his hair, and kiss him slowly. Warmly. He doesn’t need rough and desperate right now. He needs reassurance. Grounding. Love.

He releases a shuddering breath, kisses you back, and nods as he rests his forehead against yours. “I’m here. I’m good.”

You nod, and as he carries you into the bedroom and lies you back on the mattress, you can see in his eyes that he’s telling the truth. He’s here. He’s with you.

He peels the rest of your clothing off slowly, trailing his mouth over newly exposed skin, and you do the same for him, barely able to keep your lips and hands off of him for a second.

It’s slow, and loving, and painfully intimate. He murmurs your name against your ear as he moves with you, and you drag your nails over his muscled back as you tell him how good it feels until he falls apart with a groan that almost sounds like a sob.

He holds you after, presses his lips to your forehead and trails his fingers over your body like he’s trying to memorize the feeling of you.

“Do you think I’m a good man?” His voice is low, quiet and vulnerable as he slides calloused fingers through your hair.

You look up, surprised by the question, and he holds you a little more tightly like he’s worried you’ll bolt.

“Of course.” You frown, reaching up to brush your own fingers over his cheek. He turns his face into your palm, kissing it once, and you turn his eyes back to yours. “You’re a good man, Benjamin Poindexter.”

He makes a soft noise in the back of his throat, something raw and pained and full of hope, and tucks you closer to him like you’re the most precious thing in the world. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” You kiss his shoulder, and let your eyes fall closed. “You’re gonna be okay.”

And for a moment, as he breathes something like a sigh of relief into your hair, you think he believes you.

-

“I need you to listen to me, and listen carefully.”

“Oh, now the zombie hiding in the basement is making demands. It’s good to see you too, Matt. I’ve been great, how about-“

“The man in the daredevil suit is Special Agent Benjamin Poindexter.”

That shuts you up, right the fuck away. “Very funny.”

“I’m not joking. He’s working for Fisk. He’s killing for him, and framing me.”

You feel cold. “No, he’s not. He wouldn’t do that.”

Matt’s expression is intense, his words are low and pointed. Urgent. This is his stupid fucking Daredevil voice. “He would. And he is. Fisk has him convinced that doing this will keep you with him. You have the means and the skill to prove me right. I need you to do that, as soon as possible. You need to get as far away from him as you-“

“Stop.” You snap, holding up a hand you know he won’t see. He’ll feel it though, or whatever. “Stop, Matt. You have the wrong guy.”

“You know that’s not true, and we don’t have time for you to come to terms with it. You are in danger, and you need to-“

“It’s not him.” Your ears are ringing. Your voice sounds desperate. Angry, even. “He’s…he’s a little intense. He’s a little weird, sure. But he wouldn’t…he wouldn’t do that.”

Matt’s jaw tightens. He shakes his head.

“You look into it the way you know how. You know. You’ll see it.” Matt reaches to grab your shoulder, and you flinch back. He looks pained, like he’s genuinely worried and didn’t call you here after all this time to falsely accuse the man you love of mass fucking murder. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been here for you enough. For Foggy and Karen. But I’m here now. I can protect you now. And you need to stay away from him.”

You pull back, and shake your head again. “I…no. You have the wrong guy, Matt. He’s…you’re wrong. We’ll find who’s doing this, but it’s not Dex.”

“We can keep you safe. You can hide-“

“No.”

“Please. He’s unpredictable. He’s dangerous. He could kill you if he knows you know.”

“I don’t know. I know you’re…you’re wrong.” He is wrong. He has to be wrong. “I’ll find out who it is, okay? But it’s not Dex. Just…it’s not Dex.”

And yet…

No. No. It’s not possible. There’s no way.

Matt spends the next ten minutes trying to convince you, and you block all of it out. You refuse to listen. You tell him you’ll go home, and you’ll avoid Dex until you can find the proper evidence.

You lie. And as you walk out of the church into the suddenly too-bright, too-loud city, you wonder if… if he could…

Fuck. You need to get to your computer. You need to prove him wrong.

-

He killed Ray tonight.

It doesn’t bother him. That kind of thing never has. What bothered him was Nadeem talking about you.

“He’s lying. He’s using you. He’s using her.” Dex’s hands had tightened reflexively on his gun. “You think he’s gonna keep her safe? You think this is how she stays in your life? Whatever he told you, he’ll hurt her the second it’s convenient for him, and he’ll take you out too.”

“You need to stop talking about her, Ray.” Dex’s voice is low. Quiet.

“When she finds out, you think she’s gonna stay with you? You think Fisk is gonna make her stay with you? How does this plan of yours work, exactly?”

Yes. Of course. Whether Fisk needs to make it happen or not, you’ll stay with him. And it will be okay, because you love him. Sure, you’ll be upset, but he can make that better. He will make it better. All of it. Everything he does is to keep you happy. Keep you by his side. But for now, you don’t have to know anything. You can just be with him, and love him.

If you learn a little too much, learn about the darkness that lives inside of him, about the things he’s done, Fisk will do what he needs to do, what he promised, and make sure you stay. Simple as that.

And you’ll still love him, right? Right. You’re meant to be together.

The shot lands perfectly between his former friend’s eyes. And, once it’s all said and done, he goes home to you.

-

You’re on the couch when he walks through the door. You’re chewing on your nails. You’re staring at your computer screen.

So perfect. So beautiful. All his. Just like he’s all yours.

Like he has a hundred times before, he moves over to gently move the laptop out of your hands, leaning you back against the cushions with a smile that surely holds all of the affection that feels like it’s about to overwhelm him.

“What’re you doing?” He presses his lips to your nose, your cheek, your jaw.

You’re tense. Something’s bothering you. He can fix that.

“Looking something up.” You murmur, soft and hesitant. “Or…I should be. I can’t…make myself do it.”

He can see in his peripheral that your screen is blank. You’re still tense, and when he kisses you he can taste the faintest tinge of iron from where you were biting your lip.

You’re wearing his t-shirt. He moves to slide his hands under it, reveling in the softness of your skin, and presses another kiss to the shell of your ear. You relax, like you just can’t help yourself, and he smiles as he settles a little more comfortably atop you.

“Hm, you know you’re not supposed to tell me about any of your hacking stuff.” He jokes, but you don’t smile like you usually would. Don’t tease him back. “Might incriminate yourself a little too much. And you know there’s only one way I wanna see you in cuffs.”

You do smile now, though there’s something in your eyes that he can’t place. He wants to ask, but you kiss him and he forgets everything that isn’t you.

“Or, you know. Put me in cuffs.” And you hum, and smile a little more.

He peels your clothing off nice and slow, trailing his lips down to follow every movement. It’s warm, and safe, and soft and gentle in all the ways the rest of the world is not. You gasp his name, look into his eyes even as yours threaten to flutter closed, and he loves you so much it hurts. So intensely that he worries it might swallow him whole. He wants it to.

When it’s over, and he’s pressing his lips over your cheeks and nose again, heavy breaths matching your own, he tastes the saltiness of tears on your skin and pauses.

His brow furrows, and he pulls back.

You reach up, and smooth your thumb over his cheek. “You’re a good man.” You whisper, and you sound like you’re talking to yourself, but he melts anyway.

“I love you.” He breathes, and drags you closer so he can kiss you again. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” You murmur, and there’s never been so much of this strange emotion in your voice before. He can’t quite place it.

But you’re overwhelmed by your love for him, too. That’s all.

That’s all.

-

The worst part of it all is that you know you’re going to find it before you even bring yourself to open your computer.

And yet, it still feels like a punch to the fucking gut.

“Hello, Karen. It’s nice to see you again.”

You would recognize that voice anywhere.

It took you five minutes to get into the security cameras. Of the Bulletin. Of the church.

It took five more minutes for you to find all of the other evidence. The therapy sessions. The people he’s killed. The people he’s manipulated. Threatened. His lack of empathy. His obsessive behavior. His enjoyment of killing. Fuck, you even figure out that he was stalking you before you ever ran into him at that bar. You like to say, in your cockiest moments, that everything can be found online. Everything is documented even when people think it isn’t. You just have to look.

You didn’t look. In ten minutes, you found it all. In an hour, you’ve found too much for any excuse to ever work. For anything other than the truth to make sense.

And then, with perfect timing like the universe is making some sort of sick joke, Foggy Nelson tells you to come down to the old gym. He shows you Nadeem’s video, and you have to drag a trash can over so you can puke your guts up as the world drops from beneath your feet.

You cry silently. Curl in on yourself against the boxing ring while Foggy and Karen watch you, expressions filled with sympathy and guilt. Because they weren’t here. They didn’t check in on you. They let this get this far and it blindsided you because you were too wrapped up in stupid domestic bliss to even hang out with your friends like you should have.

Foggy’s hand comes down on your shoulder, comforting and kind. “Can you do it?”

You don’t look up from the phone screen even as you take it from his hand.

You nod.

-

“What are you-“

You aren’t supposed to be here. You aren’t supposed to be here. You aren’t-

Matt is gonna kill you, if Dex doesn’t do it first. And yet, you know without a shadow of a doubt that he won’t hurt you. Everyone else, maybe, but not you.

That doesn’t make him any less dangerous.

You grab his arm, and pull him outside with you, into the alley. It will be on camera. It will be obvious that you know, when Fisk sees it. But it doesn’t matter. None of that will matter soon, anyway.

His brow is furrowed, that look of frustration when he doesn’t have control of the situation tightening his features. After all, you did just show up to his work unannounced and drag him outside.

He reaches for you, and you step back.

“What the hell are you doing?” He asks, something in his face cracking a little. “Come here. Please.”

“Tell me it’s not true. Please, tell me it’s not true.”

Panic. Immediate, sharp panic. He knows. He knows you know. “Come here.”

“Dex.”

“It’s not true.” He says immediately, lies immediately, and reaches for you again. You back up again. “It’s not true. None of it’s true. Just-“

You pull out your phone, and play the video. Ray Nadeem’s confession. His eyes widen, and you already knew but the confirmation from him is fucking shattering.

“In three hours, it’s going out to every phone in the immediate area. To the cops. To the public. Everywhere. And if you kill me, it still goes out.” Your voice is tight, shaking. “You’re not gonna stop it.”

Dex tries to grab you now, not the phone, you, desperate. You jump back into the street. Into the public. Away from the dark alley and into the light of day.

“Don’t touch me. Do not fucking touch me.”

“Don’t do this.” He sounds dangerous now. You should probably be afraid of him. You’re going to fucking cry again and it hurts so bad you can’t think. You’ve never felt more stupid in your life. “Don’t you dare do this. Don’t leave me. You can’t leave me. You promised.” His hand catches your sleeve, and you rip it back.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Don’t leave me. Baby, don’t do this. You love me. I love you. We can-“

“What is this, fucking Barney?!” You snap, horror and shock making your voice shaky and shrill. “You’ve been murdering people.”

You’re fully in the street, now. You’re still shaking. He’s still approaching.

“If you come any closer, I’ll scream.” You mean it. He looks like he’s about to risk it. Like he’s moments away from covering your mouth and dragging you back into the alley. Into the shadows with him.

You turn, and walk away.

You hear him scream from a block away. It’s loud. Primal, even. It turns heads.

You keep walking.

-

He goes to prison that night. Matt defeats Fisk. You see it all on the news, from where you’re curled on the couch with tears drying on your cheeks.

He tried to kill Fisk at his wedding. Broke into the party in Matt’s Daredevil costume. It’s on the news. It’s on film.

He says your name before he starts killing people. Tells Fisk and Vanessa that the two of you wish them a world of happiness. You watch the clip. Newspapers call. You watch the clip again. You shut out the world.

It takes some time for you to leave your couch. Even longer to leave your apartment.

But time heals all wounds, even if they have to scab over and reopen a few too many times.

You meet Matt, Foggy and Karen at Josie’s on a Tuesday. They don’t mention it. You do. You apologize, and Foggy hugs you so tightly that your ribs creak.

And you heal. Slowly, surely, you heal.

Or at least, that’s what you tell yourself.

-

It’s a nice, normal Friday night.

Cherry’s retirement party is fun. You’re having fun. You’re laughing with Matt and Karen, listening to the laughter and jokes around you, teasing each other about Foggy’s attempts at hitting on Keirsten, and not thinking about Dex. Because you never think about Dex.

You don’t think about the way he made breakfast in the morning. Always so careful and precise. Always plating it perfectly like the act was a science, watching you when you ate it like he was either trying to figure out just how much you liked it or just…watching you. So much of him looking at you felt like he was basking in your mere presence.

Or the way he would leave on his way to work. Always the same pattern. The same habits. Wake you up with a kiss, get dressed, make breakfast, kiss you again on the way out the door.

The way he would smile at you like you hung the moon in the sky. The way he would hold you when you watched a movie on the couch. The way…

Warm lips against your temple. Your forehead. Your cheeks.

You hum, and feel Dex smile as his arm slides more tightly around you. “Morning.”

“S’the middle of the night.” You complain weakly, turning in his arms to hide your face in the warm skin of his chest.

“Five forty-five.” He murmurs, hand already coming up to slide through your hair. “Gotta get ready for work.”

“Play hooky.” You mumble, nuzzling closer, dreading the moment his warmth leaves the bed.

“Would if I could.” He means it, and you can tell, so you keep trying.

“You’re reinstated and promoted now…” you press a kiss to his collarbone, warm and slow and as tempting as you can make it. “Their apology should come in the form of as many days off as you want. Or going into work after dawn.”

His body relaxes a little. His hold on you tightens, like he’s thinking about it.

And then he sighs, and pulls back to press his lips against your forehead.

“I can’t.” He sounds so genuinely remorseful that you just might be falling in love with him all over again. Still, you plaster an exaggerated little pout on your face as you sit up.

“Goody two shoes.” You accuse, and if you were more awake you might think his laugh sounds a little…different. But he sits up with you, and kisses your neck, and wraps his arms around you again and any doubt or confusion flutters out of your mind as you melt into-

“Hey, you okay?”

Your eyes whip up, reflected in Matt’s glasses. You swallow. Smile. “Hm?”

“Your…” he lowers his voice, leans a little closer, “your heart is racing.”

Karen is looking at you, too closely, too kindly. You smile wider.

“I’m fine.” And you are. You’re fine. You’re absolutely, totally fine.

Ten minutes later, everything goes to shit.

Foggy goes outside. Matt hears something wrong. Karen follows You stay in the bar.

A gunshot outside. The bang of a flash grenade. The screams of panicked patrons.

You’re frozen for a moment, smoke and shock filling your lungs and fogging your mind. Gunshots. Screaming. The heavy sound of footsteps and-

“Hey, baby.”

A low, familiar growl of a voice, barely raised enough to be heard over the commotion but cutting through it all like a knife and zeroing your attention on the approaching figure.

Speaking of knives, you hear one whir through the air just before your wrist is slammed back against the wall, a blade attaching your sleeve to the surface with perfect precision. You reach up in a panic to remove it, only for another knife to slam your other arm back against the same wall. Neither blade comes close enough to even nick your skin, but you’re still completely trapped against the old wooden surface, eyes wide as Benjamin Poindexter stalks over to you like he has all the time in the world.

He’s wearing a mask, but you’d recognize his eyes anywhere. You’ve never seen them so fucking crazed.

“I missed you.” His hand is on your waist, large and gloved and firm even as you try to kick him away from you. He grunts, and halts your movements with a knee pressed between yours.

And then he rips off his mask, and kisses you. Hard. Rough. Tongue forcing its way past your lips and arm locking tight around your hip as his body presses against yours like it’s drawn there by a gravitational pull. It’s been so long, and you are most certainly in shock, but you can’t help the soft noise that pulls its way from your throat at the feeling. The way your toes curl a little at the rough sound he makes in response.

He reaches up, and pulls one of the knives out of your sleeve before throwing it towards Daredevil so quickly you almost miss it. He doesn’t even look. He keeps his gaze right on you.

The knife is deflected. Of course it is, because it’s fucking Matt, but Dex looks down at you, grins, and presses his lips to your cheek before pulling his mask back down just in time to be knocked to the ground.

The battle happens all around you, too quick for you to keep track of, and it takes you a good fifteen seconds to register that you need to get the fuck out of here.

The knife attaching your sleeve to the wall is in the wood so deep that you can’t get it out. You grunt in frustration, and finally rip your sleeve to free yourself. You think, vaguely, that you liked this jacket, before the sound of glass shattering makes you flinch and stumble back towards the door.

Your ears are ringing. You can’t think. You make it out into the street just in time to fall to your knees beside the body of your friend, nearly get trampled by people screaming and running and Karen is crying and you can’t think.

And Foggy Nelson dies on the sidewalk.

And, a few horrible moments of silence later, you hear a thud behind you.

And you don’t scream. You don’t cry. You still don’t even speak. Your clothes are stained with blood, and you can still taste the mint of Dex’s toothpaste on your tongue. Foggy dies, and Dex’s body just hit the pavement behind you.

You crawl to him in a haze of screams and the ringing of a thousand bells in your ears, and you can hear Karen sobbing behind you.

You think you might throw up. Or pass out. Or die right here next to Foggy Nelson and Benjamin Poindexter.

Dead. He’s dead. Oh God, Foggy isn’t breathing and now…and now Dex…he’s-

Blue eyes shoot open, wide and pained and crazed, and a gloved hand grabs your wrist. You didn’t even realize that you were touching him, hands shaking as they move over his body like you can fix it. Like you should even want to. Your palms sting. Knees, too. You think you scraped them on the pavement when you crawled over here.

“What did you do?” You ask, numb and confused and horrified, and Dex groans and presses his injured face into the pavement like the sound of your voice is the sweetest relief. His hand tightens on your wrist, relaxes, doesn’t let you go. “Dex, what did you do?”

-

ONE YEAR LATER

There is a deep, prominent scar on his cheek. He’s even larger than you remember. His eyes are different, like he’s allowed the illusion of control and sanity to shatter.

You’re here for Foggy. You haven’t seen Matt or Karen in almost a year. You are not here for Benjamin Poindexter.

But you’re here. Maybe you shouldn’t be, but you owe it to Foggy. To the other people this man has killed.

So many people. So many deaths. So many, because of you. And now Foggy, for reasons you still can’t understand.

The sentencing comes. The gavel is banged. You can’t hide your flinch at the sound. Dex’s eyes move right over to you, and lock in.

He smiles, eyes filled with a sick sort of love, and your fingers dig into your palms until your nails bite into the skin hard enough to draw blood.

They take him away, and he doesn’t stop smiling at you.

-

“He refuses to speak unless you’re in the room.”

Your fingers curl painfully tightly against your coffee cup. Your eyes fly up to Matt’s face.

“No.”

“I need information. We need information. He’ll be cuffed the entire time. He won’t touch you.”

“I’m not worried about that. I don’t want to speak to him.”

“They moved him to gen pop.”

You try to hide the way your heart pounds at the implication. You fail. And it’s Matt, so there’s no use pretending.

“Is…did they…” Gen pop. They’ll fucking kill him in there. Good, right? Someone like that shouldn’t be walking the Earth. He killed Foggy. He killed so many people.

“They will. He won’t last a week. Which means Fisk wants him dead.” Matt’s hand rests on the table before you, and he leans closer, adamant. “We need to know why. And then he can rot in prison until-“

“I want him out of gen pop.” You hate yourself so, so much for saying it that you feel like you’re going to be sick. “I want you to get him back in protective custody.”

Matt looks like you just slapped him across the face. You don’t blame him.

But he agrees. So you go. God help you, you go.

-

“Hi, baby.” His grin is fucking manic. His eyes are starved as they rake over you like he’s filing away every inch.

You glare, and sit down across from him. He leans forward, almost jerking in your direction, like he momentarily forgot about the cuffs in his desperation to touch you. Well, he’s not going to get to. Never again.

“You killed Foggy Nelson.”

“Your hair is longer.”

“You killed Foggy.”

“Do you think about it? The way it felt when I touched you again?”

“Shut up.”

“I’ve thought about it every minute. You tasted just like I remember.” His tongue darts out, smile lopsided as he traces it over his lip, eyes raking over you again so intensely that ice trickles down your spine in a way you really wish was unpleasant. “I wonder what else tastes just like I remember.”

You slap him, the sound cracking through the room, and his head whips to the side. His smile doesn’t fall.

“Do it again.”

“Fuck you.”

“Get me out of these cuffs, baby, and I will.”

“If you think I’ll ever, ever let you touch me again, you’re more fucked in the head than I thought.”

His smile cracks. Falls a little. His eyes darken. “Don’t talk like that.”

“Why did you kill Foggy Nelson?”

“You still love me.”

“No. I don’t.”

“You’re lying.” He’s still looking at you, intensely enough that you have to fight the urge to squirm. “Say it.”

“Fuck. You.”

His head rolls back, like those two words were a confession on their own. “Fuck, I missed your voice.”

“You said you’d speak if I came here. Answer me.”

“Do you remember our three month anniversary?” He asks, unbothered, and you want to throw something at him. Cuffs or not, the asshole would probably catch it. “Chinese food on the couch. The first time I told you I loved you.” Pain twists in your chest at the memory, and Dex leans forward when he sees it, another horrible smile curling on his lips. “I took my time with you that night. I had you making these noises, do you remember? These high pitched, sweet little begging sounds.” His fingers tap absentmindedly against the arms of his metal chair, and your face bursts into flames. “Think about them every night, but you know it doesn’t compare to the real thing.”

“You’re trying to get in my head.”

“I’m already in your head. Just like you’re in mine. We’re connected, forever.”

“Did you kill Foggy to punish me?”

He frowns, eye twitching a little when you refuse to give in. “No. But you shouldn’t have left me.”

“So what? Are you gonna kill me if you get out? Are you gonna kill me now?”

He looks genuinely pissed that you would even suggest something like that, jaw clenched and fingers flexing on the metal table again. “When I get out of here, I’m not going to hurt you.” The intensity of his gaze makes your blood feel cold. “But you’re not leaving me again. Ever.”

“You don’t get to decide that.”

“I do. I already have.”

“Fuck this.” You push yourself to your feet, the metal chair scraping against the floor like a gunshot. Like the shot that killed Foggy. Fired by the man in front of you. “Fuck you.”

That gets to him. “You’re not leaving. We’re not done.”

“We’re done.” You lean over the table, eyes hard as they look into his. His hands are already struggling against the cuffs locking him to the chair. “We’re done, Dex.”

“I haven’t seen you in a year. You can’t walk out like this.”

“And you’re not gonna see me for another eleven life sentences.”

His voice is a low, violent growl. “Don’t say that.”

And, because you’re a fucking idiot, you do exactly what you told yourself you wouldn’t do.

They confiscated your phone when you came in here. They didn’t confiscate your watch.

One button. One stupid thing you set up in anticipation for this meeting. That you promised you wouldn’t use. And yet, reckless fool that you are, you knew you would.

The security camera light flickers off.

Dex notices immediately, and the hunger that burns in his eyes and curls on his lips lights something aflame in your stomach that you don’t want to think about. Not right now.

You lean both arms on either armrest of his chair. His hands jerk against the cuffs, still trying to reach for you.

You lean closer. You don’t break eye contact. His mouth moves up to chase yours, and you pull back just enough to pull a frustrated grunt from his throat.

“If you ever, come anywhere even close to the people I love again…” you whisper, leaning in so your lips are close enough to his ear that he moans and tilts his head to the side, like he’s silently begging you to rip his throat out with your teeth. “I will kill you myself. Do you understand me, baby?”

For a moment, the thrill of it all makes you forget just how stupid you were for this. Just how dangerous this man is.

And then, as if to remind you himself, you hear a pop. A sharp, pained intake of breath.

Your eyes drop down to Dex’s right hand, just in time to see him slide it out of the cuff.

The crazy motherfucker dislocated his own thumb.

You jerk back, but Dex is faster. Of course he’s fucking faster. His arm locks around your middle, yanking you down onto his lap hard enough to pull an ‘oomph’ from your chest, and his breath is hot on your neck as you squirm against him.

“Shhh, shh.” His rough voice is too soft. You turned off the cameras. You’re a fucking idiot. Something hotter and more intense than panic shoots through your veins, and your breath catches in your throat. “I’ve got you.”

“That’s the problem.” You gasp, but his hand comes up to the back of your head, fisting in your hair and pulling you back so he can look at you.

“I did it for you.” He whispers, reverent. “I bought my freedom with it. For you.”

And then he kisses you, rough and hard, and your attempts to shove him off are met with nothing but a low and hungry growl.

There’s a moment, brief but painfully there, where the feeling of sparks lighting down through your blood is too overwhelming. Where his lips moving against yours is too familiar. Where you kiss him back, and his groan is nothing short of victorious as he wraps his arm more tightly around you.

And then the door opens, and he doesn’t let go. You sink your teeth into his lip, and bite down hard enough to draw blood. He moans shamelessly, but holds you tighter.

It takes two guards to get you out of his vice-like grip. His lip is bleeding. You can taste the iron of his blood. He’s smiling. Wide.

It’s only when the guards start pulling you toward the door that his smile falls, like he hadn’t expected that. Like he hadn’t even considered that you would be leaving again.

“No. Don’t take her. Stop it.” He snaps, as two more guards force his hand back into the cuff. “Don’t take her from me again. Stop it!”

They close the door behind you, and you wipe his blood from your lip with the back of your shaking hand as his scream echoes through the prison.

-

“You didn’t do it. You didn’t help him.”

Matt turns to you, and you can feel the surprise emanating from his very being at the sound of your voice. Here. At this fancy gala to celebrate the esteemed mayor.

“What are you doing here?” He asks. Deflection. And then, concern. “Have you slept?”

No. No, you haven’t. But you’re not going to tell him that. That ever since you went to that prison your thoughts have been more consumed by him than ever. That every beat of your heart has been chanting Dex, Dex, Dex and it’s getting more and more difficult to tell yourself that it’s because you want answers.

And you have them, now. Because you couldn’t help it. You couldn’t ignore it anymore.

“I did it for you.”

“It’s not exactly an invitation you can refuse.” Your dress is uncomfortable. Your heels hurt your feet. You can feel eyes on you from all around the fucking room and you’re going to crawl out of your skin. “And yes. I’ve slept.” You don’t care that he knows that you’re lying.

“I-“ he’s going to come up with an excuse, an apology, but Dex is probably already dead. You’ll probably be dead soon, too. So what’s the fucking point? What’s the point of being subtle? Of trying to be careful, anymore? You weren’t careful when you looked into all of this. You didn’t cover your tracks, and you know. You know it all. And they know you know. You’ll be in the ground in a week at best.

“It was Vanessa. She was in charge of his businesses. She did it.” You don’t even lower your voice. You’re exhausted, and you’re hurting, and you’re angry, and who fucking cares anymore?

Matt grabs for your arm, already beginning to steer you away from watching eyes and listening ears. You pull back, whirl to face him. “Stop. They know I know. They know what I do. That’s why I’m here. They’re probably gonna kill me too, tonight.”

For a moment, you think Matt Murdock might actually be speechless. You just keep talking.

“It’s fine. It’s a long time coming, right?” You run a hand through your hair, and your smile is a pained and humorless thing. “Do you know how many people have been killed, just from me loving him? Because he loved me too, and they used it to manipulate him?”

And Matt is still looking worried, still bothered that people might hear you. But who fucking cares?

“But it’s fine, right? At least the ‘weapon of mass destruction’ who did it is rotting in a prison morgue now. He didn’t deserve help. I didn’t deserve to ask for it. Not for him.”

Matt’s hand is on your arm. You want to cry, but you’ve cried all night and the tears won’t come anymore. You’ve cried so many tears for him. Maybe that makes you a monster, too.

“Keep it down.” Matt says, hand tightening on your arm, but you ignore him.

“I know everything, too. Do you know how many pills he was on in that prison, when she got to him? The inside of his body was a fucking pharmacy. I saw the signature. He couldn’t even hold the pen right.”

Matt Murdock’s jaw twitches. He looks right at you, through his glasses, and you can feel his unseeing gaze on your face. “He still did it.”

He’s right. He did. But-

“You don’t know him. He…he doesn’t think like other people. They got to him. They did this.” Matt opens his mouth, and you raise a hand. “I’m not an idiot. He did it too, okay? He did it. But…” and your exhausted eyes rise to the dance floor, and it all makes sense.

Fisk took everything from you. From so many people. Foggy is dead. Dex is dead. And they’re dancing and smiling like this is the happiest day of their fucking lives. They don’t care. Sure, you don’t care. You’re numb. You’re hurting and confused enough that you don’t care what happens to you, but them… these people did all of this, and they’re happy about it.

“They did this.” You murmur, just to yourself, and start to move forward.

Matt catches you, hard. Fast. In one smooth move, he twirls you onto the dance floor, deflecting your momentum and still trying to fucking cover for you.

“You’re delirious.” He says, voice low and grip tight. “You’re acting irrationally. Don’t-“

But you’ve made it close enough. Just close enough to hear what Buck says to Fisk, quiet and serious but very much audible over the din.

“Benjamin Poindexter killed three guards and escaped prison.”

The world narrows. The floor tilts beneath your feet. Matt holds you upright, and you barely register what he’s saying over the rapid beat of your heart.

Dex. Dex. DexDexDex-

“We have to get you out of here.” Matt’s voice by your ear, his feet already beginning to move you away. You blink, too shocked and…relieved to even force your own feet to move. “He’ll be coming for you.”

Alive. Alive. DexDexDexDex-

You may not have Matt’s senses, but you swear you hear the click of the gun at the same time his head whips up to face the balcony.

“Not me.” You whisper, eyes on the dark shape above you. The dark, achingly familiar shape of a man who should be dead.

And the gunshot launches the party into chaos.

Matt. Matt just jumped in front of the fucking bullet and you’re trying to get to him but you’re being dragged away by the crowd, nearly carried off in the commotion and panic as people rush to the door. You almost fall at one point, stumbling in your heels and nearly getting trampled before you’re saved by the arm of some kind civilian, and by the time you make it back into the ballroom to where the paramedics are crowding around your friend you can’t see the shape on the balcony anymore.

You reach towards Matt, and something on your wrist catches your eye. A small etching of marker on your skin that definitely wasn’t there before.

A bullseye.

-

Hours later, you climb the stairs to your apartment, aching and tired and knowing damn well what you’re going to find.

You spent every free minute tracing the bullseye on your skin with the tip of your finger, sitting in the hospital waiting room and listening to the beat of your own heart.

Alive. Alive. Dex. Alive. Dex. Dex. Dex.

The power is still out. You’re exhausted. There’s still blood on your dress.

Matt begged you not to go home, but he would find you anyway. Anywhere.

There’s a bullseye painted on the door of your apartment. Small, but noticeable. Right above the handle.

You drop your keys on the counter. Loud. No use in trying to hide.

“You moved.”

“Yeah.” You say, voice steadier than it should be. “My boyfriend ended up being a serial killer.”

“I don’t really fall under that definition.”

You hum, casual, and move to the dingy fridge in the open kitchen. Pull out a bottle of wine.

“You look tired.”

“You’re missing a tooth.” You pop the cork with your teeth. Take a swig right from the bottle. “You gonna kill me now?”

“Stop saying that.” It’s still dark, you still can’t see much more than his silhouette, but the words sound like they’re gritted out through his teeth. “I love you.”

“I trusted you.” You grit your own words out, fingers tightening on the bottle.

“You still can.”

You take another swig, and lean against the counter. “Now that’s funny. Didn’t know they taught comedy classes in prison.”

“I thought about you every day. Every minute.” His boots thud against the hardwood, and you turn before he can reach you.

“Funny. I thought about Foggy.”

“That sounds hard. Really-“

“Shut the fuck up.” And now, you have to stall. You have to find your phone, and dial Matt’s number. Or reach one of the panic buttons you installed that will call him. With the power out, there’s a pretty good chance neither of those things will work anyway. “Get out.”

“You don’t really want me to.” It sounds like a plea, beneath the roughness of his words. “You still love me.”

You pull out your phone. It flies out of your hand in a second. Shatters against the wall. You jump back.

“Was that a fucking knife?”

“Bottle cap. I don’t wanna cut you.”

“But you’ll shoot at me.” Well, not at you, but you know mentioning it will bother him.

“I would never in a million fucking years-“

“You. Killed. Foggy.”

“And we’ll work past it, baby. We can work past it.” And there he is, turning you in his arms and walking you back until your lower back hits the counter. His breath is warm, ghosting over your lips, and you hate how your body responds to it.

“You’re delusional.”

“You want me. Say it. Please.” Too close. Too close. His hand is wrapping around the wine bottle, pulling it from your grasp and raising it to his own lips. The moonlight spilling in through the window illuminates the lines of his face, so agonizingly familiar. So beautiful.

You reach up like a woman possessed, and brush your fingers over the scar on his cheek. He groans, and leans into your touch.

In a blink, your other hand whips up, and you press the blade of a kitchen knife to his throat.

He smiles, and you wonder if he’s always been this crazy. He leans forward, letting the blade dig into his skin to brush his lips over yours again, and now you genuinely wonder if he would let you do it.

“I should kill you.”

“I’d let you.” He murmurs, a truly sick confirmation, and your hand is trembling and you hate yourself for it. “But you won’t.”

“I don’t have Daredevil’s moral code.”

“No.” His mouth closes over yours, just enough to feel his teeth scrape against your bottom lip. “You love me.”

“I don’t.” But your voice catches on the word, and your hand shakes more, and he’s bleeding and he doesn’t seem to care.

You pull the knife away, and his fingers curl around yours on the handle, guiding your hand to lower it onto the counter beside you.

“You asked Murdock to get me out of gen pop.” He hums, still so close that you can feel his heartbeat against your own. “Didn’t work, but I appreciate the thought.” The confirmation. “Helped me get back to you.”

“I didn’t want you to get back to me.”

“Liar, liar.” He murmurs, teasing and soft, and kisses you again. These kisses are nothing like the last couple of times, so rough and nearly violent with their desperation. No, these kisses are brief and soft, gentle presses of his lips against yours between words like he can’t help himself.

“I thought you were dead.” You don’t mean to say it. You don’t mean to acknowledge it. “Matt left you to die.”

“And you mourned me.” Another kiss. Slower this time. More lingering. You need to pull away from him. You need to shove him the fuck off of you. This is so wrong. So fucked up. He has killed so many people. Lied so many times. He’s fucking batshit insane. “I saw you. You were about to confront Fisk. For me.”

“I don’t know what I was gonna do.” You breathe, and your eyes are already falling closed. Your body is giving in to him like it doesn’t belong to you. Your heart is still beating heavy in your throat.

Dex. Dex. Dex. Dex.

This time, you lean up and press your lips to his. Wrap your arms around his neck. Tangle your fingers in his hair and devour him. He makes a noise that’s almost akin to a whimper against your mouth, his own hands flying up to your face to angle your head so he can kiss you fucking breathless.

You bite at his lip. Pull at his hair like you’re trying to punish him for how much you want this. How much you missed him. How fucking good this feels.

He moans, lifts you onto the counter and presses his body up against yours like he can’t get close enough. Cradles the back of your head and all but sobs into your mouth when you whimper and kiss him hard enough that his teeth click against yours.

You hear a soft, metallic noise, and feel cool metal on your thigh as Dex slices through the fabric of your bloodstained dress to allow himself more room to press his large body between your legs, the prison guard uniform digging into your burning skin and making you arch against him.

You slide your hand over his neck, thumb digging into the thin cut beneath his chin. His moan vibrates through your entire body, and you smear the blood over his throat as you angle his head to pull him closer to you.

His hand slams into the cupboard by your head like he’s trying to brace himself, the fingers of his free hand gripping your hair so tightly you see stars, blunt teeth digging into your lip like a silent and desperate plea for more.

“Say my name.” He whispers, rough, and you don’t. You fucking moan his name, a sound you’ve never heard from yourself before ripping its way from your chest and making him shake as he releases you to rip his gloves off like separation between your skin is physically burning him.

He doesn’t leave you for long, warm fingers sliding up your thigh and trailing sparks in their wake until you’re trembling against him. Until you’re gripping the back of his head and yanking him down to kiss you again. His fingers slide higher. Higher. Until they’re curling in the waistband of your underwear and every kiss comes on a swallowed and ragged breath.

You nod your consent, fingers curling even more tightly against his scalp, and he kisses you again. You hear the click of the knife, feel the flat end of the blade slide up your thigh again, and can’t find the words to complain as he slices your underwear from your body.

When his long, skilled fingers reach the apex of your thighs, and he feels just how desperate you are for him, the noise that rips from his throat sounds like the most fucked up prayer that’s ever been uttered.

“Fuck.” He pulls back, presses his nose against your temple, and when his fingers immediately find the spot that has you fucking whining you hear a breathless chuckle against your ear.

“Never miss.” He whispers, cocky and infuriating and agonizingly intimate in the dark apartment, and you’re going to fucking kill him.

Kill. Kill.

All those people. Father Lantom. Nadeem. Foggy.

Clarity rips back into you like a fucking car crash. Like a bolt of lightning. It freezes your burning blood, rises to your throat, and makes you shove him so hard his back hits the wall across from you with a dull thud.

You’re just as breathless as him, and his eyes are on fire as they look into yours. As they rake over you, slow and hungry, and he doesn’t even try to catch his breath even as he realizes why you pushed him away.

“Why?” He asks, but he knows. He knows and he’s goading you and you need to make yourself-

“I hate you.” It is the least convincing sentence you have ever uttered. You’re still breathless, still flushed with need, still spread out on your kitchen counter with his name lingering on your kiss-swollen lips.

Slowly, without looking away from you, he raises his fingers to his mouth, and your next breath catches on a whimper at the sight.

He moves forward at the sound, and your foot flies up to stop him, heel digging into his chest.

Something flashes in his eyes. Something you can’t place. You don’t know what’s in your own expression, but you see him scan it. Watch the breath shudder out of his chest as his hand rises up to trail lovingly over your calf.

And then, scarred and beautiful and illuminated by moonlight, he drops to his knees.

Benjamin Poindexter looks up at you like he’s worshipping at your fucking altar, and refuses to look away from you as his lips press against the skin below your knee.

“Stop it.” You try. You really do.

He shakes his head, and blunt nails drag down over your thigh as he moves closer. Kisses higher. Keeps his eyes locked on yours as he guides your heel over his shoulder.

“Dex.” It’s supposed to be a warning. It comes out as a plea.

And then he’s right where you need him, on his knees before you with your hands gripping at his hair and his fingers digging into your thighs to keep you in place, and it feels so good that your eyes are watering with something between pleasure and emotion so intense it’s going to drown you.

Your hand leaves his hair, flying up to scramble for purchase on the creaky old cupboard behind your head as Dex doubles his efforts like he’s desperate to pull more noises from you. He moans into you, gripping you more tightly as your heel digs into his back, and your hand leaves the cupboard to slap over your mouth as a near-wail of pleasure echoes off the walls. It doesn’t do much. Doesn’t muffle your helpless noises nearly enough, and before long Dex is sliding his large hand up your body to pull your palm away from your mouth, fingers tangling with yours as his too-skilled tongue turns your blood to lava in your veins.

You fall apart in minutes, shattering with a sharp gasp of his name as your thighs tremble and your nails dig into his scalp. He pulls back like it’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, resting his head against your thigh and staring up at you with a breathless smile on his lips and you want to hate him so badly it hurts.

But you pull yourself off of the counter, slide onto his lap and kiss him hard as you fumble blindly with the belt of his stupid fucking prison guard uniform, and before you know it he’s rolled you onto your back and you’re ripping his shirt open as he hikes your ruined dress up over your hips and-

“Tell me you want this.” He rasps, low against your ear, and when you nod emphatically he grabs your chin and turns your face towards his. “Tell me.”

“I want this.” It’s a sick, horrible confession, but it’s true. “I want you.”

He groans, like it’s the most wonderful thing he’s ever heard, and his first thrust hits home and your moan is loud enough to wake the neighbors.

“I love you.” He breathes against your lips, as you scramble at him like a wild fucking animal, desperate for more. “I love you.”

You won’t say it back. You can’t say it back. This is already fucked up beyond belief.

He holds you like he’s trying to touch every inch of you at once, lips trailing down your jaw until every near-whimper is vibrating against your ear. You can’t stop touching him, either. You yank at his open button-up shirt so hard you hear it rip, until he moves to help you pull it the rest of the way off of him, bracing himself against the floor beside your head and rolling his hips into yours until you’re sobbing his name on every breath.

When you break for a second time, your nails are dragging thin red marks down the skin of his back. He doesn’t stop. He keeps going, keeps relentlessly hitting that spot inside you until the pleasure builds up all over again and it is fucking unbearable.

“Dex.” You manage to gasp, mindless, head rolling back against the floor as he bites at your shoulder and speeds up his movements until you’re practically sobbing.

“One more.” He growls, low and rough and just as wrecked as you are. “Give me one more.”

The third time, he’s right there with you, pressing his nose into the hollow of your throat with a groan of your name that burrows its way into your very bloodstream. Locks itself in your soul and becomes just as much a part of you as the color of your eyes and the bones beneath your skin.

It takes a long time for you to come back to earth. Longer for Dex to pull himself away from you, just enough to roll onto his back and tug you into his side.

“I love you.” You whisper, like a shameful confession, and he shudders like the sound of it is a drug and he’s more than happy to relapse.

He pulls you closer. You rest your cheek against the sweat-damp skin of his chest. Try to even out your breathing as he cards his fingers through your hair.

You have to go. You have to get out of here. Fisk is gonna be coming for you soon.

He grunts, and you make a soft noise as he sits up and gathers you into his arms, drags himself to his feet and carries you into your bedroom.

Everything is so different, now. Dex is a killer. A monster. Your life has been flipped upside down and shaken like a damn snowglobe. You’re probably going to be assassinated soon.

And yet, as Dex helps you out of your ruined dress, skating his fingers and lips over the newly exposed skin, and reaches into your dresser drawer, it’s all so familiar that you ache.

He digs to the bottom, and his grin is triumphant as he pulls an old FBI t-shirt out. His T-shirt. The one you couldn’t bring yourself to throw away.

He slides it over your head, presses a kiss to your cheek, and smiles a little wider when you relax.

And then, when he’s cleaned you up and pulled you into the rest of your pajamas, he smooths out the sheets behind you like a ritual before he lays you down atop them, sliding his body over yours and kissing you until you melt into your cheap comforter.

You make love again. You don’t think either of you even mean to. It isn’t as desperate as the first time, not nearly as mindless and rough, but his kisses deepen and he slides his scarred hand down your back until he’s shifting you beneath him, murmuring a quiet plea against your throat as his fingers tug at the waistband of your shorts that you respond to with another emphatic nod. And then he’s sliding them off, and you’re unbuttoning his pants again, and his tongue is tracing silent sonnets over your skin until you’re writhing against him.

He doesn’t tease, but he still seems to savor every second. He nudges your knees apart with his own, and pushes into you with a groan of your name. He moves with you like the tide, builds you until the wave crests and whispers praises against your ear as it crashes through you. You kiss him, tell him how good it all feels, and he tells you he loves you until he’s hoarse with it.

When it’s over, and you’re lying together in the rumpled sheets and he’s breathing shakily against your forehead and holding you like you might vanish at any moment, you finally speak again.

“We’re not back together.” You mumble, and he hums like you just told him the sky is purple but he couldn’t care less. Like it’s such a ridiculous lie that he may as well indulge it for now.

You frown, but you don’t double down. There’s no point, really. You know him. You know he’s not letting you go anywhere.

“How do I fix it?” He finally asks, and your brow furrows as you sit up a little to look at him.

“What?”

“How do I make you forgive me? For Fog-“

Your hand flies up to cover his mouth as if of its own accord. The movement surprises even you.

“Don’t say his name.” You snap, pain curling in your stomach. Guilt, too. But not enough. You’re lying naked in bed with the man who killed one of your best friends, and you don’t feel guilty enough, and you hate yourself for it. “You still don’t get to say his name.”

He looks at you. Nods. You pull your hand back, and he chases your lips with his own.

He kisses you. You kiss him back. You keep trying to hate yourself for it.

“What do I do?” He asks again, and he looks so earnest that you want to die.

You don’t know what crosses your face. What expression is in your eyes, but his own melt into a look of pure desperation.

It takes you a while to speak, and even when you do, the words spill unpracticed and quiet from your lips.

“He was good.” You whisper, and grief tugs at your stomach with enough force to nearly cripple you. “Foggy was so…good.”

“You said I was good, once.” Dex murmurs, brow twitching a little in that way it does when he’s trying to understand something.

“I did.” You reach up, hesitate, and give in. Your fingers trace over the scar on his cheek. “I think…I think you can be. You can be good.”

He melts. He turns his cheek into your palm, looks at you like you are both heaven and earth and everything in between. “I’ll be anything you want. I’ll do anything for you.”

Your heart crumples, and you see it. You shouldn’t, and you’re fucked up for it, but you see it. You see how he thinks. How he is. How he’s been manipulated and hurt and how he’s hurt others and you still fucking love him.

“I want to kill Fisk.” You whisper, like it hurts, and he reaches up to curl a lock of your hair around his finger like you just admitted nothing more intense than liking sugar in your coffee. “I want them both dead. And I don’t want it…I don’t want it for the right reasons, I think.”

“Why do you want it?”

“Revenge.” You whisper. “The greater good, yeah, but revenge. They killed Foggy. They hurt you. I want them to die for it.”

“Hm.” He slides his hand up your back, palm flat and warm, and turns his nose into your cheek. “If I help you kill them…it balances the scales.”

You frown. “It-“

“A good deed, to make up for the bad. Right?” He presses a kiss to your ear, and your eyes fall closed. “It balances out. You’ll forgive me.”

“I can’t forgive you.” You can’t. You shouldn’t. You won’t.

Even if you understand how his mind works. How he was tricked and manipulated and taken advantage of. Even if you understand him.

You pull back, look into his eyes, and the look on his face breaks something inside of you. The desperate hope. The need.

“We’re probably gonna have to move tomorrow. Fisk definitely wants me dead.” You murmur, and brush your lips over his.

He smiles. “We’ll move.” We. You and him.

“If we do this, you don’t do it for me. I’m not making you do anything.”

“I do everything for you.” He says, matter-of-fact, and closes the distance enough to peck you on the lips. “But okay. Let’s kill ‘em all.”

-

“Such a sweet boy.” The old woman across the hall is absolutely enamored with Dex, or should you say ‘Tony’. Sometimes you think he’s enjoying it a little too much. Especially now, as he crouches down to slide a fried egg into her cat’s bowl. “And what are you two up to?”

“Takin’ the missus to lunch.” He answers smoothly, sliding his arm around your waist and pressing a kiss to the side of your head. You smile brightly, and endure a few more minutes of cooing and fawning before making your way down the hall. He keeps his arm around you the whole time, humming absentmindedly as you make your way out into the street.

“You have got to stop telling her we’re married.” You chastise, and he doesn’t let you go even as he flips a coin behind him into a homeless man’s cup.

“I didn’t.”

“You just called me ‘the missus’.”

He’s smiling, a little too proud of himself. “Could mean anything.”

You still insist that you’re not back together. He still allows you to, but he seems to find it more amusing than bothersome. Which, you suppose, is understandable. After all, you woke up in his arms just this morning, like you do every morning. And, like you do most nights, you spent the majority of the evening moaning his name.

But fuck, he’s like a drug to you. You tried so, so hard to hate him. To pretend like he was a monster. Maybe he is, but maybe you are too.

Because whatever Benjamin Poindexter is made of, it calls out to something intrinsic within you. He knows it, and he’s just waiting for you to admit it.

You don’t know if the spring in his step and the smile on his face is from your activities last night or anticipation of what’s about to happen, but you would say it’s safe to blame both as he holds the door of the diner open for you with an exaggerated chivalry. And, because it’s him and he’s an asshole, he makes you yelp as you walk ahead of him with a playful swat to your ass.

You glare. He smiles, and leads you to the counter.

“You two ready to order?”

The woman behind the counter looks tired. Dex smiles like he’s been practicing how to, sweet and with his eyes crinkled in the corners. Sometimes, when you look at him, scarred and huge and absolutely fucking bonkers, you wonder how much he’s changed since you bumped into him on the street all that time ago. How much you’ve changed.

“My wife and I will have a…banana milkshake, then.” He grins at you, and it is so annoyingly hard not to smile back. “Does that sound good, sweetheart?”

You snort. “Sounds perfect, darling.”

His fingers come up, catching your chin and turning your head to him so he can press a soft, smiling kiss to your lips.

“Cute. I’ll be right back with that.” The woman says blandly, disappearing behind the counter as Dex pulls back.

“Menace.” You accuse, and he pats your cheek before he pulls out his phone.

He makes the worst, least convincing phone call you’ve ever heard. So unconvincing, in fact, that you almost giggle as he says “oh shit, he’s got a gun” in the most monotone voice you’ve ever heard. His eyes don’t leave you for a second. They rarely do. Like when you’re near, he’s locked in on a target.

Then again, hasn’t it always been that way?

You did the research. You did the tracking. All you have to do now is wait.

Dex unwraps two straws, carefully places them both in the milkshake, and leans down to take a sip.

You smile at him, roll your eyes, and lean down to the other straw.

You swear, in moments like this, that his eyes could be little cartoon hearts. He doesn’t stop smiling. Doesn’t look away. And shit, if you don’t feel like baby bluebirds could be tweeting around your own head. Like you’re the only two people in the whole world. Cue the cheesy, romantic music. Cue the world vanishing around you until it’s just you and him in this diner, smiling like idiots and sharing a milkshake.

You glance down at your phone. Watch him finish the milkshake. “Forty five seconds.”

He grunts, calm and relaxed, and starts pulling on his gloves. Pulls a toothpick out of the cup beside you.

“Aren’t you gonna tell me to take cover?” You hum, and the corner of his mouth rises even higher.

“No one’s gonna touch you.” You believe him, and you like that he acknowledges that you know what you’re doing.

“Everybody get on the ground!”

You throw your hands in the air, view blocked by Dex’s large frame, and shriek like a dramatic damsel in a movie.

His shoulders shake once. A silent laugh.

“Too much?” You ask, just as they shout again and come closer.

A toothpick finds its home in the ATVF officer’s eye, and all hell breaks loose.

You climb onto your chair, just in time for Dex to push you over the counter. You land with a roll, and in a second he’s on top of you, hands over your head and body covering yours.

“That was a really great milkshake.” He mumbles almost conversationally as the bullets slow, and you reach up to pull his mask the rest of the way down for him before he climbs off of you and snatches up a handful of silverware.

You manage to get to your feet just in time to watch three officers fall with forks sticking out of their eyes. Unfortunately, it’s also just in time for another man to grab you and press the barrel of a gun to your temple.

“Stand down!” He shouts, right by your ear, and digs the barrel in harder. Deeper.

Dex turns, and tilts his head.

“Ow.” You pat the arm wrapped around your throat. “Wrong move, dude.”

He screams as a fork impales the back of his hand, and you feel two more whir past you before they find their homes in his face. Not kill shots. Not yet. When you turn, he’s moaning on the ground with cutlery sticking out of his cheek and eye.

You tuck yourself into a booth as the rest of the men go down, bullets and weapons finally coming to a stop. Heavy bootsteps land beside you, and Dex pulls his mask off as the man in front of you trembles and clings to a tiny dog in his lap.

“Dogs in restaurants are unsanitary.” He says, genuinely perplexed but not quite annoyed.

“P-Please don’t kill me.” The man whimpers. Dex smiles in that unnerving way he has, and you smile too as you grab a bottle of ketchup off of the table.

“Don’t worry.” He takes your hand, stands you up with him, and throws a final pair of forks behind him to slam home into the retreating form of the man who just held the gun to your head. “We’re the good guys.”

You draw a bullseye on the door. He kisses the side of your head as you make your way out of the diner, stepping carefully over shattered glass with the sound of sirens wailing down the street.

-

ONE YEAR EARLIER

“This is no way to live, Benjamin.”

Vanessa Fisk sits across from him. He tries to focus on her. On anything. His mind has been scrambled since he was checked into this place. The cocktail of pills they have him taking every day makes it hard to think.

But you’re still there. You. You. You.

He lies in his bed at night, stares at the ceiling and blinks like his eyes are weighed down by anvils, and if he focuses hard enough he can almost feel your head on his chest. Almost feel your soft hair against his nose. Maybe your fingers tracing over his skin, soothing and warm.

Your voice, lips barely brushing his own. “You’re a good man, Dex…”

And he’ll reach up, searching for you, wanting to pull you to him and feel your body against his. Wanting you so badly that the pain is overwhelming.

And there’s nothing there. And the room is cold.

“I miss you.” He’ll murmur to the darkness, tongue heavier than his eyelids. And he won’t hear anything back.

Now, Vanessa Fisk pushes something towards him. A picture.

Of you.

His near-useless hand paws at the table, something like desperation surging through him as he grasps for it. They won’t let him have any pictures of you here. They call you one of his ‘victims’. He hasn’t seen your face in so long.

“She misses you.” And a part of him knows Vanessa is manipulating him. Even through the drugs, and the longing, he knows it.

And yet, she pushes the picture toward him a little more, and there you are.

You. You. You.

You, at that bar he found you at. The second time you met. You’re with Foggy Nelson, Matt Murdock, and Karen Page. You’re smiling, but not with your eyes. He knows what it looks like when you smile with your eyes.

You look sad. His eye twitches with the urge to fix it. The urge to touch you.

His fingers curl against the picture.

“I know what it is to love someone so much that being separated feels like…” Vanessa’s voice is gentle. Kind. Vulnerable, even. Dex can’t stop looking at the picture of you. That vulnerability in her voice is reaching him, matching with his own. “Like a hollowness in your soul.”

He makes a soft noise. It sounds desperate, even to his own ears.

His fingers curl a little more against the picture. Brushing over your cheek. Missing the feeling of your skin against his.

“They talk to her about you.”

His eyes, still slowed by the pills, move up to her face.

“They tell her that you were evil. Horrible. She is trying to convince herself that it’s true.” Vanessa leans forward, earnest. “If you want her, you cannot let that happen.”

His eyes fall helplessly back to the picture of you.

Vanessa slides a contract his way. He doesn’t look at it. His trembling fingers trace the printed line of your cheek.

“You can have her again. I only need one…favor. But you will have your freedom, and she will have hers.”

You. You. You.

Vanessa’s manicured finger taps the picture. Taps the face of Foggy Nelson. “I need you to kill him, and one of his clients.”

Dex looks up, a muddled question in his eyes. Foggy is your friend. You like Foggy. Foggy-

“They are poisoning her mind.” Vanessa repeats. “I do not want to see you lose the woman you love, Benjamin. I am offering you a mutually beneficial opportunity.”

You are so beautiful it hurts to look at you. His shaking hand holds the pen. Hesitates. He tries to form a clear and straightforward thought.

“With your freedom, you can get back to her.”

Back to you.

He signs the contract.

-

One good deed, and it’s all better. And you forgive him.

Not like you haven’t already. Even if you won’t admit it, he knows you have. He can see it on your face. Feel it in your quickened breaths at night when he’s got you laid out on the sheets, or on the couch, or against the wall…

And when you eat breakfast together, and he’s staring at you and you’re grinning right back at him, and the sounds of the chaos and the city and the world around him fade and everything is just you. You. You. You.

You’re out at the bodega down the street, grabbing more bandages and water. You’ll be back in ten minutes, tops.

You’re gonna be mad at him. He hates that.

But Matt Murdock showed up four minutes ago, and now the apartment is an absolute fucking wreck, and the lady down the hall is screaming and terrified because Dex had to use her as a human shield for a minute there, and you’re gonna come home to that wreck and worry but…

One good deed. He can do it now. Earn your forgiveness. Earn his redemption. If he doesn’t move now, he might lose his chance. And then what? What’s the point of living if it’s in a world absent of your love? Despite everything, he can’t help but fear a day when you decide that you can’t forgive him. That his sins were simply too much. Where you deprive him of the love you offer now because you just can’t seem to help it, where you stop smiling at him and letting him touch you completely.

No, he has to go now. Killing Fisk solidifies your forgiveness. Allows him to keep you. Keeps the world balanced right.

So he leaves. He leaves the apartment for the last time, and prays to whatever God might exist that you’ll forgive him.

- 

He throws the snowglobe. Plans the trajectory against Wilson Fisks’s swing. Watches the shard pierce Vanessa Fisk’s temple.

It was easy. Almost too easy.

But the bullet. That’s the problem. That landed home, and it hit all the wrong places.

He’s going to bleed out. You’re going to be upset.

But he did it. One good deed. He didn’t kill Fisk, but he killed Vanessa. At least, at the very least, he took that pain away. She ordered the hit on Foggy. Your friend. She made you hurt. She just made him the weapon. And now, she’s going to die.

-

“Mrs. Smithers, please shut up.”

She’s screaming, and crying, and you should probably be comforting her. ‘Tony’ just held a gun to her head, after all. And yet, you have bigger things to worry about.

Two minutes, and they’ll be here. Cops have been called. AVTF is on the way, guns blazing and you have seconds to find him and your heart is hammering in your chest in that familiar staccato beat.

Dex. Dex. DexDexDex.

There. The church. The fucking church, of all places.

Vanessa Fisk, mortally wounded. Daredevil and Bullseye at the boxing match. Dex Dex DexDexDex.

You smash your computer against the counter, cracking it in half, and bolt.

You take the fire escape, and begin scrambling down just as you hear them bursting into the hall.

And you pray, with every last shred of your desperate heart, that you’re not too late.

-

He’s bleeding out. He knows it. Seen it enough times to know he doesn’t have long, and Murdock isn’t gonna stick around to help him.

He misses you. He wishes you were here.

The dizziness of blood loss is a little frustrating, but Murdock is busy calling him a piece of shit. Fair. He shot his best friend, after all. If you’re still mad about that, it makes sense that he would be too.

“One last good deed.” He hums, propped up against the wall as blood leaks between his fingers, pooling onto the floor beneath him. “N’then she forgives me.”

“Asshole.” A whole conversation in the pews a minute ago, Dex’s whole speech about how he’s making it better and earning forgiveness and getting his mind back, and that’s all the guy can say. He thought lawyers were supposed to be more eloquent.

“Take care of her when I’m gone.” You. You. You. He sees Daredevil tense. He’s pissed at you, sure, but he cares about you. So Dex smiles, tired, and tilts his head back against the wall, confident in his next words. “Yeah, you will.” And if he ever touches you, Dex will return as a ghost and put a pencil through his eye. But hey, just something to worry about in the afterlife.

Murdock stutters some sort of apology. Has a whole little crisis about whether or not he can save him. He’s so stressed it’s almost funny, but he’s not gonna save Dex. He did it. He earned forgiveness. It’s time for judgement day.

The room pulses. The sounds of ATVF bootsteps echo above. His eyes close, and you’ll be okay. You forgave him. You didn’t admit it aloud, but he doesn’t need that. Never did.

Judgement day ticks ever-closer.

“Dex!”

His eyes open, and it’s too bright in the dark room. He’s too tired, but…

There you are. In the church and illuminated by low light like an angel. He smiles, bloody and exhausted and more than a little out of it. “Hey, baby.”

“Wake up. Dex, wake up.” You sound so panicked. So scared. For him. You love him. You. You. You….

“Dex! Fuck, please wake up. C’mon.” You’re pulling at him, trying to drag him across the floor and failing miserably, and he wishes you would just stay. Just admit that this is hopeless and let him hold you close. Admit that you love him, and that you need him, and let him feel your breath and smell your hair in his last few minutes on this earth.

“Fuck. Why are you so heavy?! Where’s Matt?” You’re trying to get your hands under his shoulders. It’s a little funny, but it hurts like a bitch when you jostle his bullet wound, so he grabs you and spins you down in front of him.

“In the wind.” He reaches up, fingers sliding over your cheek and smearing it with red. Fucking beautiful. They write poems about this shit. About women so lovely they steal souls and start wars. “You gotta go, too.”

“Fat fucking chance.” You press your forehead to his, unbothered by the blood, and cradle his own face in your hands. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving you. I love you. Do you hear me? I love you.”

Oh, that’s the best thing he’s ever heard. It’s the first time you’ve said it since that night on your kitchen floor, when you were still lying beneath him and still catching your breath and still all his after so much time. Back then, you whispered it like some horrible confession. Sweet music to his ears.

“My girl.” He’s fading. He’s fading fast. You hold him more tightly, smearing his own blood on his face as he does the same to you, the matching stains like a tether. Like a claim. “North Star….”

“Dex. Dex. Stop. Wake up. Don’t leave me don't you dare leave me-“

The sound of your voice is swallowed by the tide, and he doesn’t close his eyes, refuses to look away from you, but his vision begins to blur.

And then, from deep under the water, he hears it.

The door creaking open. Your panicked voice as your head whips to the side, dislodging his bloody hand from your cheek.

“Matt?! Matt! Help him! Please-“

…

-

You’re by his bedside. You have been for hours.

Karen is not happy with you. Neither is Matt. Soledad is stitching up Dex’s wound, pulling the bullet out, and he keeps waking up.

Not only does he keep waking up, he keeps jolting awake from the pain. Keeps squeezing your hand so tightly you wonder if he’ll break bone. Keeps finding your face in the haze of sleep and agony, and grinning like a lunatic when your eyes meet.

And then he’s healed. Somewhat. For now. And you’re fighting exhaustion of your own in the chair you’ve pulled up to the cot he’s asleep in.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Karen sounds pissed. You get it. But Dex is pale and his breathing is ragged and slow and you can’t let go of his hand.

“Hey, Karen.” The casual tone of your voice is insulting. You know it. You think you’ve been spending too much time with Dex.

“Him?” Matt isn’t here. Not now. You see sweat on Dex’s brow. Look down to make sure that his bandages are still in place. Every time his breathing slows even a little, your ears ring and your vision narrows.

“Yeah.” You don’t look away from him. You’re still covered in his blood. “Cute, right?” A lame joke, like he’s some boy you just met at the bar, rather than…well, fucking Bullseye.

“We’ve been trying to find you. We thought he kidnapped you.”

Your thumb trails its way over bruised knuckles again. “Well…I mean, he kinda did.” However things ended up that night after the party, you’re pretty confident that he wasn’t going to let you leave. Not without him.

“Are you sleeping with him?” You’re getting a little tired of the twenty questions.

“I’m in love with him.” You answer simply, and hear her suck in a horrified breath.

“He killed Foggy.”

“I know.” Dex stirs, just barely, like he might be reacting to your admission even in sleep. You squeeze his hand, and when you reach up to brush your thumb over his cheek he turns his face into your palm. “And I still love him. Isn’t that fucked up?”

-

He wakes cuffed to the cot. They’re worried about what he might do. Honestly, you’re surprised they didn’t cuff you too.

He winces as his eyes open, and smiles when they land on you. His low rasp of a voice is even more gravelly, hoarse with sleep and pain.

“Hey, baby.”

He always says that in the most fucked up situations. It always makes your heart beat a little faster.

He sits up, slowly, and pulls at the cuffs on the bed.

“Do your staples hurt?” You ask, eyes falling down to the bandages. 

He grunts in acknowledgment. “C’mere.”

You do, slowly, and it’s only then that he seems to notice the gun.

“You gonna shoot me?” He asks, smile widening a little as he tilts his head to the side.

“I might.” You reach down, slip a paper clip into the cuff on his right wrist, and hear it pop free. He makes a soft noise, rolling his wrist once before sliding his hand up your back as you sink down to straddle his lap.

He leans in to kiss you. You press the barrel against his forehead and push him back. He smiles even wider.

“You disappeared.” You hum, and he pushes his forehead a little more into the gun. “You tried to get yourself killed.”

“Balancing the scales.”

“You got shot. You almost died. I watched you die.”

“You love me.” He breathes it like the memory is a fucking treasure - a shot of heroin straight to the system. His hand tightens on your back, pulling you more firmly onto his lap.

“I still hate you. For Foggy.” It’s a lie, but it should be true. He hums, and you slide the gun around to his temple.

“You love me.” He repeats, and brushes his nose against yours.

“I do.” You admit, soft, and he kisses you. Hard. Slow. His fingers slide up into your hair, curling into a fist behind your head as he completely ignores the firearm digging into his skull.

You pull back, and push it in harder.

“Listen to me, Poindexter.” You murmur, low and dark as your own hand slides up to his hair, pulling his head back and making him groan as he looks at you with a blissed-out grin on his scarred face. “Never do that shit again. You don’t get to leave me. Not now, not ever.”

Words he’s said to you before, albeit in different forms, back when you told yourself you hated him.

“Never.” He agrees, and his eyes fall closed like he would die happy if you pulled the trigger right now. He opens them after a moment, and leans up to bump his nose against yours again. “Wanna put that down?”

“I could shoot you.” You don’t know why you’re saying it. You’re smiling too.

“No bullets.” He hums, pleased. “And it’s not loaded.”

You laugh, and wonder just how crazy you’ve become. “The FBI trained you too well.”

He uses his free arm to tug you a little closer, until there’s no more space between your bodies, and you drop the unloaded gun in favor of wrapping your arms around him again.

“Not the FBI. I know you.” He kisses you again, in that slow and determined way, and slides the palm of his hand up beneath your shirt. “Uncuff me.”

You smile, and shake your head. Push him back down and chase his lips with your own.

He hums, nips playfully at your lip, and tugs on the other handcuff until it rattles.

“You’re injured.” You murmur, muffled by his kiss, and he tangles his fingers in your hair again.

“Feels better.”

“Liar.”

He grunts, and rocks his hips against yours. “This feels better. Let me touch you.”

“You are touching me.”

“Let me touch you more.”

You reach down between you, as wrong and stupid as it is, and unbuckle his belt.

He makes a very pleased noise, and moves his free hand down to unbutton your jeans.

“Uncuff me.” He growls again, demanding, as you shuffle out of your pants and move to pull his down.

“No.”

He pulls you back down to him by the back of your neck, traces his tongue over your ear. “Don’t wanna do this with one hand.”

“I could cuff your other hand.”

He grunts, and the next roll of his hips is harder. More punishing. You gasp, control slipping a little more than you want to admit, and he pulls at the hem of your blood-stained shirt.

“Off.”

You comply, and he leans back to look you over like you’re the most incredible thing he’s ever seen. You love how he looks at you like that. You love him so much it hurts.

“Your staples.” You murmur, as he drags himself back up to a sitting position, pulling you more firmly onto his lap until you can feel the very prominent evidence of his desire against you.

“Doesn’t hurt.”

It’s getting harder to breathe. Harder to focus as he moves his hand down to slide your underwear over your legs. You maneuver to help him, and his own breath catches in his throat.

“Liar, liar.” It comes out as a whisper, soft and teasing as you press a soft kiss to his lips, and his own lips curl into a smile.

“I want it to hurt.” He noses at your jaw. Down to the hollow of your throat. “Reminds me I’m alive.”

You kiss him, hard, because he is alive and he’s here with you and you suddenly need him so badly it hurts. When you finally sink down onto his lap, bodies joining and breath shaking with the feeling of becoming one, he buries a groan into your hair, hips stuttering as you begin to rock against him. Your thighs burn already at the angle, and he meets your movements with his own as he crushes you to him. It must hurt, and you want to tell him so, but when you open your mouth he groans low against your neck and finds that spot that has your toes curling and hands flying up to find purchase on his shoulders.

You slide your hands over his cheeks, pull his face back so you can kiss him breathless, and pleasure begins to build almost alarmingly fast in your core. You almost lost him. You love him. He’s kissing you like you’re the only oxygen he’s ever wanted to breathe and dragging his rough palm up over your bare back as he meets your movements with his own. The cuff rattles against the chair, but despite his restricted movement and injuries he’s still using his one arm to move you in his lap, angling your body to hit that spot in your core that has you gasping desperately against his lips.

One particularly rough thrust has him hissing in pain, and the reminder of exactly why he’s hurting like this possesses you in the strangest way as you slide your hand down to grip his throat, forcing his gaze to your own.

And there’s so much power in it. In watching this large, scarred, deadly man stare at you like he’s in awe of your existence. The sight of it alone has you falling apart, moaning his name as your body spasms against his. He clings to you, and your hand squeezes around his throat as he pushes his forehead against yours like he’s drinking in the sight of you, too.

“Mine.” You whisper, and he falls over the edge so violently you wonder if he might pass out, hand dropping down to grip your thigh tight enough to bruise.

You sit there for a while, tracing your fingers down the scar on his back as he catches his breath with his forehead pressed against your shoulder.

“I have to re-cuff you.” You murmur eventually, pressing a kiss to the side of his head. He uses his free arm to grip you tighter.

“No. Don’t move.”

“If they walk in here and see you uncuffed and inside me, they’ll probably cuff me too.” You hum, and feel him smile as his teeth dig playfully into your collarbone. You turn your head, lips brushing his ear in a conspiratorial whisper. “They think I’m crazy.”

He laughs, broad shoulders shaking as he pulls back to kiss you.

“Love you.” His fingers trace up your body, trailing slowly over your heated skin.

“Love you too, psycho.” You kiss his cheek. “No more suicide missions, or it’s both cuffs.”

Something sparks in his eyes. “Promise?”

“Both cuffs, and no touching.”

He frowns, and kisses you again like he’s trying to prove that he’s allowed to touch you now. “No more suicide missions.”

-

When Matt comes an hour or so later, you’re fully dressed and back in your chair at Dex’s bedside, one eye closed in concentration as you aim a knife at a bullseye you drew on the wall.

You throw it, and it bounces off the wooden surface and clatters to the ground.

“Flick your wrist.” Dex says, but his eyes are on you, hungry and dark. He’s tried to teach you how to aim weapons a few times before, and the lessons have more often than not been cut short by whatever seems to ignite in him like a bonfire at the sight of you holding a knife. It helps now that he’s in cuffs, but despite your activities earlier he looks damn close to trying to break out of them.

You pick up the knife, and try again. It sticks a little outside of the center, but it sticks. You turn to grin at Dex. He grins back, and the expression is downright feral.

“Uncuff me.”

“Bad boy. You’re gonna get me in trouble.”

Any response he may have, inappropriate or demanding or whatever it may be, is interrupted as the door swings open and Matt walks in. Angry. Silent.

He uncuffs Dex roughly. Sits across from him and doesn’t even acknowledge you. Rude, but fair. You can still understand why he and Karen are so pissed at you, even if you find it a little difficult to care.

“Let’s get one thing straight. I hate you for Foggy. And Father Lantom. And Agent Nadeem.” Dex’s eyes are right on you as he rolls his wrists, stretching the no-doubt stiff muscles and seemingly oblivious to how off-putting it must be that he won’t even spare a glance toward the man telling him how much he hates him. “And I even hate you for what you did to her. Whatever you did that broke her mind.”

“Woah, hey. I’m of completely sound mind.” You snap, defensive. Matt doesn’t turn around.

“Your shirt is on inside out.”

You look down, flush, and look back up in time to see Dex smirk.

“Dick.” You grumble, because he definitely knew, and he definitely didn’t tell you on purpose. You frown at Matt again. “I didn’t uncuff him.”

“Not all the way.” Dex supplies, and you glare so hard his smirk turns into a manic grin.

“Shut up.”

“Stop. Both of you stop.” Matt snaps, annoyingly serious Daredevil voice and all, and it takes a significant amount of effort to swallow your response and sit back in your chair.

He talks about forgiveness. About how he needs it for his own sake, and not for Dex’s or even yours.

But you saw Matt’s face, when you found him at the gala. When he tried to pull you out of there before you got yourself hurt in your anger and grief. And in the church, when he pulled you and Dex to safety as you begged the near-unconscious man to stay with you. To live because despite it all you couldn’t fucking lose him.

He’s angry. He’s hurting. But he cares about you. And you care about him, too. Your love for Dex doesn’t make those years of friendship just go away.

And then, the ultimate question. Aimed directly at Dex. “So, do you wanna do one good thing in a life full of shit?”

Benjamin Poindexter turns to you. You smile at him, an entire conversation passing between the two of you in the span of a second before he rolls his shoulders and turns to Matt.

“What do you need me to do?”

-

The whistle echoes through the vast expanse of the room. Three floors up. Directly and strategically across from the courthouse.

Four ATVF officers whirl, guns raised, and…

And then lowered out of pure confusion.

A woman stands in the doorway, in casual clothes, with her eyes wide and her hands raised in shocked and horrified surrender.

“I-I was just looking for the bathroom.”

Shit. A civilian. They’re gonna have to figure out what to do with her, now. There’s no way she didn’t see the fake Bullseye across the room, and if she tells anyone-

“Wait, please don’t shoot! I know what you do, right? You’re the good guys? You find vigilantes and…you know…” she curls her fingers into the shape of a pistol, aiming at the closest officer’s head, and pretends to fire in demonstration.

Exactly where the woman ‘shot’ him, a knife appears, jutting out right between a pair of wide eyes.

He goes down.

She jumps, surprised, and inspects her hand with alarm like smoke might start coming out of her fingers.

And then, she aims again, almost experimentally, at the second officer. The moment she ‘fires’, another knife flies through the air and hits home.

Just as the shock begins to wear off, spurring the startled men into action, she lowers her other hand into the same shape, and ‘shoots’ the final two men in rapid succession before they can even think to lift their guns.

And then, when all that’s left is the ‘fake Bullseye’, who is still standing there frozen and confused, she laughs.

The sound of heavy bootsteps echoes through the room.

“That was even more fun the third time.” She says, tone bright and amused as she tilts her head back towards the source of the sound.

Bullseye, the real one, appears behind her, and his low chuckle is the most frightening sound the other man has ever fucking heard.

The new Bullseye fires his gun, and screams as his hand is impaled by a knife. He goes down, crumpling to his knees and cradling the bleeding appendage, and his counterpart walks casually forward with the mysterious woman behind him.

He’s only in pain for a few seconds, just long enough to be pushed to the ground, and just long enough to see the glimpse of another knife before it finds its home in his eye.

-

“Holy shit.”

“Hm?” The click of the rifle. The subtle shift of his shoulders as he adjusts his shot. So careful and calculated, and yet you can feel him locked in on every word. Every blink. Every movement.

Even with another target in sight, he is always focused on you.

“Matt just told everyone he’s Daredevil.”

Dex hums, cocking his head to the side. “And?”

“And he’s probably gonna go to prison for it.”

Dex loads the sniper, the shell of the bullet clattering onto the floor. “Prison’s not so bad.”

“Says the guy who broke out of it.”

“For you.” He turns, and you can see his eyes crinkle in the corners even if you can’t see him smile behind the mask. “For romance.”

You hum, and pop your headphone back into your ear, eyes moving back to the monitor as you sit cross-legged atop the table beside the gun. “You’re a fucking psychooo~” you sing, under your breath, and feel him catch your chin between his gloved fingers before you have time to look back up. He tilts your chin towards him, and you feel the warmth of his lips beneath the rough fabric of his mask as he pulls you into a kiss.

He moves back to the gun with the grace of a cat, satisfied, and you do your best not to worry too much about Matt Murdock. Your friend. Daredevil, who has just outed himself to the entire world and sealed his own fate.

The shot is fired and thus your location is given up. It’s time to go.

You hesitate. You sit by the computer, and you watch the screen after it goes blank.

A gloved hand comes up, a warm chest against your back as that same familiar hand guides yours away from your lips.

“What’re you up to?”

Dex’s couch, so long ago. Your eyes locked on a screen. Warm fingers curling around your own. You must have been biting your nails again. It must be late. You barely even heard him come in.

“Tech company. Innocent employee. Spreadsheets.” You tilt your head back, sleepy, and catch his lips with your own. “Not supposed to talk about it though, remember?”

“Criminal.” He kisses you again, but he’s smiling.

“Not technically.” You kiss him back, pulling him closer, catching his hand to guide him around the couch and over to you. “You gonna tattle, Special Agent Poindexter?”

“Never.”

“Time to go.” That same voice is lower now. Raspier. Still just as achingly familiar. So much has changed, and everything is so different, and he’s still so incredibly yours.

“Matt…” the word is released on a breath, and that breath feels too heavy. Too weighed down by memories. Matt. Foggy. Karen. So many memories. So much loss.

“Can’t do anything for him now, baby.” His nose against your temple, his arm around your waist. He took his mask off, at some point. “But if they catch us up here, it’s gonna be a lot worse for him.”

You turn, still frowning, still worried, and reach up to brush your fingers over the deep scar on his cheek. He tilts his head into the touch, like he always does, and smiles.

That smile, sweet and scarred and as familiar as the palm of your own hand, will always feel more like home than any place in the world.

And that’s how it was always gonna go, wasn’t it? Since the day you ran into him in front of that coffee shop, the night he kissed you for the first time, the moment you saw the bullseye etched on the door of your apartment…

It was always him. It was always going to be him. The trajectory of your life changed before you even knew it was happening, jolting in a different direction like a ricocheted bullet, and always still pointed home.

Home, to him.

You smile back, and meet his eyes.

“Where are we going?”

-

Benjamin Poindexter rolls a coin over his knuckles, glances out the window of the airplane towards the earth thousands of feet below, and smiles.

The flight attendant speaks to the man in the seat beside yours, welcomes him into the ‘Million Milers Club’ or whatever, and he does his best not to glare at the noise. The man is beaming - annoying -  but you would tell him that it’s rude to glare if you were awake.

Speaking of which, your head is snuggled up to his shoulder, breath soft and even and both arms wrapped around his bicep like he’s some kind of teddy bear, rather than a dangerous assassin.

Then again, you’re almost just as unhinged as he is these days.

He hums, content, and turns his nose into your hair, inhaling deeply and feeling you sigh and shift a little closer.

“You two seem happy.” The too-friendly guy in the seat beside you is smiling, and Dex resists the urge to wrap his arms around you and pull you onto his lap, hiding you from the world because you’re his only his no one else-

He’s gotta reel that under control a little more. That possessiveness. But, well, you’re his. And he’s yours. Two sides of the same coin. Soulmates in every way.

And he knows that you do seem happy. You always do, because you are. You walked onto this plane together in an almost sickening display of blissful love. He lifted your bag into the overhead bin for you, pulled you into the seat after, wrapped his arms around you and basked in your laughter as he shamelessly pressed kisses to your neck and shoulder. You’d leaned back, grinned at him like you were the only two people on the plane, in the world, and slid your hand into his own.

No one suspected that you’d helped him kill people only a few hours before. That you washed the blood off of each other before you came to the airport.

He raises his eyebrows. Too-friendly Guy keeps going. “You headed to your honeymoon?”

The corner of his mouth quirks up. He rests his chin on top of your head. He has a ring in his pocket, and when you land in the next country, and he gets the very first opportunity that comes his way, he already plans to drop to his knee and beg you to marry him.

But for now, he nods, and fixes the stranger with a practiced smile.

“Yeah.” He hums, feeling you shift comfortably against him, sighing contentedly against his shoulder. Perfect. His. “It’s long overdue.”

The man looks the two of you over, and seems to be about to say something else, but you shift again and Dex’s attention suddenly couldn’t be any less focused on him.

Honeymoon. Yeah, you’ll have a thousand honeymoons. A thousand lifetimes of happiness and togetherness and love so intense it’s taken lives, saved lives, shattered governments, and so much more.

May as well start now.

~

Epilogue

[usergambit]

BULLSEYE DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN S02E02 - 'Shoot the Moon'

[serializedcomics]

Daredevil: Born Again The Southern Cross | 2.08

[metal-armed-muse]

SAFEST PLACE TO BLEED

BENJAMIN POINDEXTER X DOCTOR! F!READER › 8.4K

⌗ SUMMARY. Bullseye shows up bleeding in Matt Murdock’s arms. You have a clinic, a locked door, and a terrible habit of letting wounded things crawl into your hands.

WARNINGS ⊱ canon adjacent, wounded dex, mentions of blood, minor injury details and treatment, doctor/patient setup, emotional dependency, jealousy (dex is a jealous bitch), possessiveness, morally messy dynamics, matt murdock cameo, platonic matt, set after the events of episode 5 of DDBA S2, references to foggy’s and vanessa’s death, suicidal ideation/passive death wish from dex (canon😭), MDNI, explicit sexual content, praise, possessive language, riding, groping, tit play, unprotected pnv, creampie, soft aftercare, needy!dex, dex being a feral wounded dog of a man, no use of y/n. KIE’S NOTES ⊱ I’ve been writing this on and off since episode 5 aired, and this is by far one of the hardest things I’ve ever written. Dex is such a complex character to write for holy fuck 😭 there are so many analogies to stray dog, like he just wants to be a good boy, you’ll see 🫩

⟡ READ ON AO3 ♰ DAREDEVIL MASTERLIST

A wounded dog will decide who counts as safe long before anyone else understands why it bites. 

You learned that before medical school, before emergency rotations and back-alley sutures that made men in masks limp to you and bleed all over your tile at 3 AM. You learned it at eleven, crouched near an alley behind your old apartment, palm full of deli turkey your mother told you was for lunch, watching a stray with a torn ear bare his teeth at every adult who tried to corner him. Animal control had come with poles. A neighbor had come with a towel. Your mother came with her worried mouth pressed thin and her hands hovering near your shoulders, ready to snatch you back if the dog lunged. The dog had lunged at everyone except you. He had stared at you with yellow-brown eyes, ribs moving under filthy fur, every part of him made of pain and suspicion, and he had taken the turkey from your hand so gently that you cried on the spot. Full ugly tears, snot and all, as if tenderness from a ruined thing was the saddest miracle in the world.

Benjamin Poindexter reminds you of that dog every time he appears at your door.

Which is insane, clinically. Dex is a man. Dex is a killer. Dex is precise, lethal, too calm in ways that make the hairs on the back of your neck lift even when he is sitting on your exam stool with his shirt off and three cracked ribs under your palm. Dex looked at you with blood in his teeth and asked if you keep the good suture scissors in the second drawer or if you hide them from your 'less charming clients,' and he smiled when you stared at him too long. He is six feet of bad decisions and worse coping mechanisms, and yet the first thing your mind gives you when you think of Dex is that stray dog taking turkey from your fingers.

That knock at this time is unexpected. Matt.

Matt knocks like a man who hates needing help. Two firm taps, a pause, one more. Spiderman kncoks like he's not allowed to come in. Jessica once kicked the door and yelled your name until you opened. Dex, on his own, never knocks at all. He appears. He waits. Sometimes he bleeds on the mat. Sometimes he makes a small, polite comment about your hallway light going out.

You are across the room before the kettle finishes screaming. Your clinic is technically a closed flower shop with a fake lease and a drain installed under the center table, which makes you look deranged. Until someone comes in with a knife wound and then everyone suddenly appreciates plumbing. The place smells like antiseptic, old brick damp from rain, black tea, and the faint copper ghost that never fully leaves, because blood is part of everything. You unlock the deadbolt, undo the chain, tug the door open, and Matt Murdock nearly falls into you with Bullseye hanging off him like a corpse.

For one bright, stupid second, all your thoughts empty out into his name.

Dex.

His face is a mess. Blood has dried under one nostril and smeared across his mouth in a dark shine. His lower lip is split. One eye is swollen enough that it changes his whole expression, turning him younger in the ugliest way, all that sharpness buried under bruising and exhaustion. His suit is torn at the side, tactical fabric shredded into strips. When Matt adjusts his grip, Dex makes a sound so small you feel it under your bones.

Matt's mouth tightens. Blood mats his dark hair near his temple. Only consolation is that he looks a little better than Dex. "He needs help."

You stare at Dex. Dex stares back, or tries to. His good eye drags over your face with the slow, stunned relief of a man who expected darkness and got a porch light. The part of you with a medical license starts counting injuries in a list that stacks too fast. Facial trauma. Rib involvement. Possible abdominal injury. Scalp laceration. Possible pneumothorax. The part of you that has made the mistake of caring about him too much, looks at his lashes stuck together with rain and blood and wants to put his head in your lap.

With a gentleness reserved for skittish animals, you reach for his jaw, two fingers under his chin to angle his face toward the light. "Dex, can you hear me?"

Blood shines over his teeth, as his mouth twitches. "Hey, Doc."

Matt shifts him higher with a grunt, muscles in his forearms cording from the effort. Dex makes another small sound, angrier this time, as if the pain is just now surfacing. "He took the worst of it. I did what I could, but he kept telling me to leave him."

"Balanced the scales," Dex mumbles, head tipping back against Matt's shoulder. Rainwater slides from his hair down the side of his neck. "You had a city to save."

"Ma — you should come in." You catch yourself at the last second. It rises right up, soft from habit, and catches at the back of your teeth as Dex's good eye opens again.

He smiles at you through the blood. Barely. A broken curve of recognition, jealous even while half-dead, which is so Dex that something in you aches. "I know who he is, doc. You can call him Matt."

You close your eyes, breathe through your nose once, a fond sigh, which also is deeply annoying. "Of course you do."

Dex's smile widens enough to make the split in his lip bleed again. "Smart boy."

No. Nope.

"Table. Keep his neck aligned." You tell Matt, stepping back and sweeping one arm toward the center of the room. "If either of you tracked glass in here, I'm making you both sweep before sunrise." You add, not wanting to sound too soft.

Matt obeys with a silence that says he has learned, through years of being injured in your presence, that arguing only rises blood pressure. Dex tries to help. That is the horrible part. His fingers grip the edge of the exam table once Matt lowers him, knuckles white, body shaking with the effort of being useful. His legs drag a fraction of a second behind the rest of him. Your mind sees it, circles it, hates it. You pull trauma shears from the tray and cut through what remains of the suit before any panic can bloom large enough to slow your hands.

"Eyes on me," you tell Dex, softer than you mean to. "You do exactly what I say for the next hour. That's the deal."

His lashes flutter, and his ruined mouth quirks. "I'm always good for you."

Matt turns his head slightly, lips tugging on a frown half formed. 

You feel it. Dex feels it too. They are both bleeding and somehow still measuring each other. Matt's face gives almost nothing away, but you have known him long enough to read the pauses, even the slight angle of his chin. He hears Dex's pulse change around you. He hears your answer. He hears the rotten little truth of it, warm and embarrassing under all the antiseptic.

You press two fingers to Dex's carotid and pretend the pulse under your skin is purely clinical. "That depends on your definition of good."

"Flexible," Dex breathes.

"Try alive."

"That's less flexible."

When you shoot him a look, he settles. It happens so fast Matt's brow pulls in, and despite the blood running down the side of his own face, despite the exhaustion in every line of him, you see him file it away. Dex does that for you. Dex, who would rather spit teeth than accept help from almost anyone, quiets under your hand like you found a switch under his skin.

You hate how much that means to you.

The shears bite up the side of Dex's suit. Rain-wet fabric peels away from him, exposing bruises already darkening over his ribs, long shallow cuts crossing his abdomen, a deeper gash near his left flank with slow, steady bleeding. You talk while you work, partly for him, partly for Matt, mostly for your own sanity. "Breath sounds normal. No deep lacerations. Two tiny blessings. Dex, if you lie about pain severity, I will find out and I will be extremely annoying about it."

His good eye trails over your face. "You already are."

"Funny. You get one joke per liter of blood loss."

Matt huffs through his nose, almost a laugh, then winces. You point at the chair by the wall without looking up. "Sit."

"I can take care of myself."

The room goes quiet enough for the kettle to click off in the corner.

You turn your head slowly, gloved fingers still pressed to Dex's side. Matt is standing near the exam table, one shoulder lower than the other, blood sliding past his ear, jaw set in that martyr shape you have wanted to smack off his face for years. "Sit down, Matthew."

Dex makes a low sound, a grunt, or an attemp at it. "Matthew."

Matt's eyes go over Dex, jaw clenching and unclenching. "This is a bad time."

"For you, maybe," Dex says, and then coughs hard enough that the joke breaks.

You lean over him fast, one hand at his shoulder, the other bracing his ribs. "Small breaths. Look at me." His eye finds yours again, frantic for a second. He would kill anyone else for witnessing this, but not now. Your voice drops even further. "That's it. You can hate me after."

He breathes the way you tell him to. Obedient.

When Matt sits, some ridiculous, childish part of you wants to clap. Another part wants to cry. You do neither, since your hands are full of a man who has decided your voice is a leash he can tolerate.

The first twenty minutes disappear into work. Blood pressure readings, pupils, pulses, lung sounds again, neuro checks, wound depth, rib stability. You listen to Dex's chest and feel him try to keep still under the stethoscope, sweat shining at his hairline while his fingers curl over the table edge. When you clean his lip, he keeps his eyes on you as if the room might vanish if he looks away. When you probe near the gash at his side, his breathing goes jagged, but he bites down on the inside of his cheek instead of jerking away.

"Hey." You catch his face in your hand before he can sink his teeth deeper. "Open."

He opens his mouth, shaking while he does it. 

You can feel Matt's head turn again. You ignore it, cheeks heating as you slide gauze between Dex's teeth to keep him from chewing himself bloody. "Better. Bite this if you need to. No hero teeth."

Dex's gaze moves over you, half-lidded, feverish, words coming out mumbled over the piece of gauze. "Do you treat all your patients like dogs?"

You secure a dressing against his side and let the pressure hold under your palm. "Only my favourite strays."

His eye softens like he cannot control himself. It is small. A tiny failure of the mask. A starved thing hearing a bowl set down.

Matt hears that too. You can tell from his silence, from the careful stillness in his chair. When you finish with Dex, you cross the room with a suture kit for the cut at his temple. Matt turns his face towards you before your knees touch the edge of the chair. He smells like rain, blood, city smoke, and that faint soap he uses which you have always found unfairly comforting. You have stitched Matt under worse circumstances. You have dug glass out of his shoulder while he spit blood into your sink. You have fed him soup with one hand while keeping pressure on his dressing with another. That comfort is old. It sits between you now.

Dex watches it like it is a blade aimed at him.

You dab antiseptic at Matt's temple. "This is shallow. You are lucky."

Matt's mouth curves in that tired, self-punishing way. "People keep telling me that."

"Maybe try believing them once in a while."

Ignoring that, he dips his chin towards Dex. "How bad is he?"

You glance back at Dex. He has his head turned toward the ceiling now, but his eye is still angled in your direction. Watching. Always listening. "Bad enough that moving him tonight would be stupid. He's stable enough. But I need imaging he will never agree to. Possible rib fractures, soft tissue trauma, no obvious neuro deficit from what I can assess here, but I want repeat checks every hour. He needs observation."

"He wanted me to leave him," Matt says quietly, like his voice won't carry in the small room. 

Dex speaks from the table, voice rough around the gauze and dried blood. "You should've. Still think you should."

You thread the needle through Matt's skin with more force than strictly needed, anger showing up in a different place. Matt says nothing, but his mouth pinches.

"No one dies in my clinic unless I say so," you call over your shoulder.

Dex exhales, a soft sigh followed by a start of a complaint. "You really —"

"Please lie down and stop talking."

Matt's hand closes around your wrist after you finish the last stitch. He does it carefully, fingers warm, thumb pressing once against your radius as if he is asking permission through touch. Comfort. Familiar, heavy with years of people trying to survive horrible nights. "Fisk is still moving," he says. "Karen..." His voice thins for half a breath. "Karen may kill him if I bring him anywhere near her."

Dex smiles at the ceiling. "Smart woman."

You look from Matt to Dex, then down at the blood-speckled gauze piled near your knee. "You want to leave him here."

"I think he is safer here than anywhere else tonight." Matt's mouth tightens, next words dragging through his teeth. "I think everyone else is safer too."

Your laugh comes out dry and humorless. "So I get custody of the homicidal puppy while you go deal with the rest of the apocalypse."

Dex turns his head toward you. Even wrecked, even pale, even with gauze stuffed in his mouth and bruises swallowing half his face, the look he gives you has teeth in it. Offended by the word puppy. Pleased by the word custody. Matt catches every ugly shade of it.

"He listens to you," Matt says.

"He has limited hobbies."

Dex murmurs, "You."

The word drops into the room with a wet little thud. One syllable dragged over broken lips, and still it finds some secret place under your ribs and presses. You hate him a little for that. You hate Matt a little for hearing it. You hate yourself most of all for wanting to go back to the table and touch Dex's hair until his eyes close.

Matt rises slowly. You stand with him, suddenly aware of how small the clinic is with three people and so many things no one should say. He reaches for the cowl, then stops. "Call me if he gets worse. If he loses consciousness, if he starts vomiting, if he says anything about numbness or weakness."

"I went to med school, Matt."

His mouth tilts, a small smile, the first real one from him tonight. 

You can feel Dex watching you, clear enough to hurt. Pain pulls his face tight, yet jealousy sits in him like a second pulse, stubborn and alive. He has killed for balance tonight. He has decided dying would be neat, fair. Still, your hand on Matt's wrist bothers him. Your voice saying Matt's name bothers him. The fact that you can tease the Devil of Hell's Kitchen into sitting down while Dex lies cut open on your table bothers him so much that he has dragged himself back from the edge purely to be petty about it.

Trying to ignore him, you walk Matt to the door and keep your voice low. "You owe me."

"I do."

"No, you really do. This is beyond the usual owe me. This is pay my fake flower shop's electric bill for six months owe me."

His hand finds the doorframe. "Send the amount."

You blink at him, at his audacity. "I was making a point."

"I heard the point." His face softens toward yours, bruised and tired, but warmth nonetheless. "Thank you."

You almost touch his arm. You stop yourself, which is silly, since Matt would sense the hesitation anyway and Dex would read the shape of it from across the room. "Go. Try to keep your skull intact."

Before the door closes, Matt turns his head toward Dex. "If you hurt her, I will hear it."

Dex laughs once, and the sound turns into a wince. "If I hurt her, you can have what's left."

The clinic holds the echo of Matt's footsteps after he leaves. Rain ticks against the front window. Dex's breath is slow but uneven, the gauze in his mouth damp with blood and spit. You stand with your hand on the lock and try to make sense of this situation. A murderer on your table. A city outside eating itself alive. A man who wants to die looking at you like he would crawl back through hell if you asked him to stay.

You lock the door.

Dex watches the motion, tracking you. "You're awfully close."

You cross to the sink and strip off your gloves. The snap of latex feels too loud. "You were actively bleeding out fifteen minutes ago. Pick a smarter topic."

"Answer."

Water runs pink down the drain. Your hands shake only after the gloves are off. "Matt and I have history."

Dex's jaw works around the gauze. "So do we."

"You show up here, bleed on my furniture, say alarming things, refuse hospital transfer, and once asked if I had a membership program after your fifth visit." You shut the water off and look at him. His face makes you angry. But only a little. That hungry stare from a man who has no right to demand any part of you after deciding twenty minutes ago that death sounded fine. Yet under it is the dog with the torn ear. The animal watching every hand, every doorway, every flick of attention, trying to figure out who belongs to him, who might leave, who might choose some other dog with a clean fur.

You walk back to the table and take the gauze gently from his mouth. "You are exhausting."

Dex's throat move with effort, swallowing, saliva wetting his mouth. "Do you look at him like this?"

The question is quieter than the others. Worse. It has no blade in it. Only a man lying open under fluorescent light, too hurt to hide the wound he actually cares about.

Your fingers hover near his cheek. You let them settle at his jaw, light enough that he can turn away if he wants. He does no such thing. He leans into the touch so fast it ruins you.

"Dex."

His lashes lower, tickling your palm when he seeks the warmth. 

"I am going to clean you up, give you fluids, keep you awake for neuro checks, and cuff you to the bed in the back room so you avoid doing some noble-suicidal assassin bullshit the second I blink." Your thumb moves once along the unmarred edge of his jaw. His skin is cold. "After that, you can interrogate me about Matt Murdock until I regret saving your life."

A sad smile curves his lips. "You already regret it."

"No." The word comes out so soft. "I really, really do not."

The clinic's back room used to serve as a supply closet, then you stopped having supplies. Now it holds a narrow bed bolted to the wall, clean sheets, a cabinet of emergency meds, and a chain you bought after a masked idiot with a concussion tried to wander into traffic with three fresh staples in his scalp. 

Dex sees the cuff and laughs until pain takes the laugh away from him. You roll your eyes while helping him shift down onto the mattress, every inch a negotiation with his battered ribs.

"You chain all your favourite patients?" He asks once his uninjured ankle is secured with a padded restraint and the chain runs through the bedframe.

You tug the blanket over his waist. "Only the flight risks."

"Matt ever get the chain?"

Your hands pause, which already gives him a lot without meaning to. 

Dex smiles without opening his eyes. "Interesting."

You secure the IV line, check the dressing at his side, and sit on the small chair beside the bed with your back against the cabinet. "Go to sleep, Dex."

"Can't."

"Then lie still and pretend. You're talented."

His fingers slide over the edge of the mattress until they find your sleeve. He grips the soft cotton near your wrist, clumsy but careful. He has enough strength left to hurt you if he wanted. He holds the fabric instead.

You let him.

Near dawn, after the third neuro check, after he has told you the year, the president, your clinic address, and the exact number of tiles in the ceiling section above him like an asshole, his voice comes out thin and drugged by exhaustion rather than meds. "I did it."

You sit up straighter. Hearing him talk through pain is something you don't want to go through, but have to. "Did what?"

"Balanced it. Vanessa for Foggy."

A chill moves through you so slowly it feels like a hand closing around your heart. Foggy. Matt's grief. Karen's rage. Dex's worst crime. The city's endless appetite for payment. You look at him and see, for one horrible second, a man lying at the bottom of a ledger with a red line drawn under his own name. "And now?" 

Dex's fingers tighten in your sleeve, holding you closer. "Now I'm tired."

You reach up and press your hand over his. He looks at the place where your skin covers his knuckles. His expression is too human for the man the papers called Bullseye, and you hate every person who helped turn him into a weapon, including Dex himself. He leans toward the comfort like he never learned how to ask.

"Then be tired here," you whisper. "I can handle tired."

He studies you for a long moment. "Can you handle me?"

You should say something clinical. Something careful. Something with the kind of boundaries you teach medical students when they come through your legitimate daytime job, wide-eyed and terrified of liability. But, you tell the truth. "I keep opening the door, don't I?"

Dex's eye closes. His fingers stay wrapped in your sleeve until sleep finally drags him under.

By late morning, the rain has stopped. The city has that scrubbed-clean look it gets after a night of lying through its teeth. Pale sunlight presses through the frosted glass in the back room, turning the sheets gold where Dex's hand rests on top of them. You wake in the chair with your neck bent at an angle that will punish you for days, hair coming loose from its clip. For one muzzy second, you forget the night. Then the chain gives a soft metallic scrape, and you remember every part of it at once.

Dex is awake.

He is lying still, which is encouraging. Too still, which is irritating. His good eye follows you as you straighten. He looks better, at least in the way people look better when they are still severely injured but no longer actively trying to bleed into the afterlife. Less gray. More focused. The swelling around his eye has deepened purple. His mouth is still split and tender. Stubble darkens his jaw. His bare chest is bandaged in three places, bruises blooming under the tape like ugly weather.

"You stayed," he says.

Your back cracks when you shift, a grunt escaping you. "I live here during disasters now, apparently."

His gaze drops to your wrinkled shirt, the blanket you must have pulled over yourself at some point. "You slept in a chair."

"I have made worse choices." Liking him was one. 

His mouth moves like he wants to smile, but the split in his lip stops him. "Name one."

"You, repeatedly." Apparently early morning you has no filter. 

That pleases him far more than it should. He watches you stand, and when you come over to check his pupils, he tilts his face up before you ask. Trying to be good again. It is awful to your chest, that easy offering. Dex, who fights everyone, lets you put your fingers under his jaw and angle him towards the light, eyes tracking your face more than the penlight. 

"Headache?" you ask.

"Not really."

"Nausea?"

"No."

"Vision changes?"

"Ugly curtains."

"Those are original to the building, and they have seen too much to be insulted by you."

Ignoring that, he looks toward the ankle cuff. "Am I still a flight risk?"

"You murdered someone last night, tried to die at least twice by my count, and keep making jealous comments about a blind lawyer. So, Id say yes."

Dex's eye comes back to you. Slower now. "You're bringing him up."

The audacity if this stupid, beautiful, injured man. "You were going to."

"I was waiting."

"That must have been hard for you."

His fingers flex against the sheet, head dipping once towards his ankle. "Take it off."

You fold your arms, and his gaze moves briefly over your chest before he makes himself look back at your face. The tiny effort, the discipline of it, should not be as intimate as it is. "Tell me why."

"So I can leave if I want."

"Wrong answer."

The old Dex sits up under the wounded one for a second, teeth showing in spirit, even if his mouth is too sore for the full shape. He exhales, irritated. "So I can stop feeling like you expect me to run."

That one is a better answer. He sees that getting to you, which is annoying. Your mouth softening by degrees, fingers loosening against your arms, he sees all of it. You crouch near the bed and unlock the cuff with the key on your necklace. His eyes follow it, the little brass thing sliding from between your breasts, then the lock, then your hand closing around his ankle to ease the padding away from skin.

The chain falls with a dull clink.

Half of you, the pessimistic half, expects him to lunge. But he just lies there and looks at you with wonder in his eyes, as if you have handed him a weapon and he has chosen, for this one morning, to set it down.

"If you run, I will find you and sedate you in public," you say.

"You promise?"

"Dex."

With effort, his hand lifts. The tremor is subtle, visible only because you have spent too many nights learning his tells. He reaches for your wrist and stops halfway, waiting.

You wouldn't have thought more about this if he'd just reached. The waiting is what burrows under your ribs. 

When you give him your wrist, his fingers close around it with almost no pressure, thumb restinh over your pulse like he wants to feel proof you are still here, flesh and warmth, no trick. "Does he get this?" 

He should feel your pulse jump under his thumb, as you sigh and look at him. "Matt gets stitches. Lectures. Soup if he looks starved."

Dex studies your face, eyes tracking every one of your features, scanning. "And me?"

"You get the chain."

He huffs out something close to a laugh, with whatever energy that's left in him.

"You get me missing sleep, changing your dressings while you say upsetting things. You get me pretending I don't worry when you vanish for weeks and then show up with half your side open like a wounded dog dragging itself under a porch."

His hand tightens around the hold, eyes darkening. They are fixed on you with concentration, feeling more like a touch than his actual hands. 

Dex has always looked at targets with focus. You have seen him do it through security footage Matt once brought you, body still, gaze calm, all the world narrowed into distance and outcome. This is different. Messier. He looks at you like he wants to crawl into the space behind your ribs and sleep there where no one can reach him.

"Do you want him?" The question comes out blunt. Too wounded. Subtlety has been stripped from him. What remains is one battered man, waiting to hear if he has already lost something he never properly held.

You sit on the edge of the mattress, careful near his ribs. The warmth of his body seeps into yours. "Matt is my friend."

"He touches you like he has rights."

"He touches me like he trusts me."

Dex's eyes looks pained, his jaw tightening. When you lean closer, his gaze drops to your mouth. Your eyes cleanly capture that small betrayal. His thumb strokes once over your pulse, helplessly possessive. You could still walk away. Probably change his dressing, make tea, text Matt an update, maybe contact someone with imaging access who asks fewer questions than the hospital would. Your brain produces tasks in a neat row. Your body knocks the row over like dominoes.

"He doesn't get this look," you sigh. Hazel eye lifts to yours, stripped clean. You almost laugh at yourself for what you're about to say, too honest for this setting. "No one else gets this look."

His breathing changes. Shallow for a second, then controlled since his ribs hurt. He has to choose restraint with every inhale. It makes the want on his face worse. A man who can hit a target precisely even in motion, is trying to keep still under your hand. The effort has sweat gathering at his temples. His hand closed around your wrist tugs you towards him, wordless, but you don't think words are needed. 

"You have bruised ribs, multiple lacerations, and an ego wound the size of Manhattan," you say, but lean towards him anyway. 

"Your bedside manner was better last night."

"Last night you were closer to death."

His mouth curves faintly, the split lip threatening to open with themotion. "I'm improving. Reward me."

The nerve of him. The absurd, devastating nerve of him, lying in your bed bandaged to hell, asking for you like he has any right, like he has every right. He has learned the existence of a spot in you where affection, fear and desire knot together, and has decided to press his thumb there. This is medically stupid, ethically worse, emotionally catastrophic. 

But his hand on your wrist makes you feel chosen by a creature who has bitten everyone else, torn ear flashing before your eyes once more. 

You bend down and kiss him. You mean to make it careful. A little thing. A test. Dex makes a sound into your mouth, and the kiss opens wider before you can organize your thoughts. His lips are split, so you keep the pressure light, but he chases you anyway, hungry in a ruined, restrained way that sends a wave of heat through your skin. His hand rises to the back of your neck. You expect him to pull your closer, but he just holds you there, that being somehow worse. His palm is warm, fingers trembling slightly against your hairline, whole body focusing on the point where your mouth meets his.

You pull back first, breathing hard, sharing oxygen. "Pain?" 

His eyes open slowly, hazel swallowed by black. "Yes."

"From the kiss?"

"No." 

"Dex."

"Everything hurts," he says, voice rough, like he's holding on by a thread. "That felt better."

The thread is thin. Your forehead lowers to his temple for one second. Just one. But it's enough to smell antiseptic on his skin, blood in his mouth, rain still caught somewhere in his hair. Enough to feel him exhale like the thread has finally snapped.

"This stays slow," you whisper against his mouth. "You tell me if I need to stop."

His thumb moves along your jaw, soft, so soft. "I'll behave."

That word is so gentle, that he has no practice giving, and you kiss him again before you can lose your nerve. Dex kisses like survival has always been a contact sport. Even injured, even careful, his mouth has a desperate steadiness to it, as if he is memorizing the limits of what he can take from you without breaking the spell. His hand slides from your neck to your waist, then stops. Waiting again.

You place his hand over your hip.

A sound leaves him, too soft to be a groan, too hungry to be a sigh, and his fingers dig into the flesh of your hips. Your thighs press together, his eye tracking the movement with a precision that makes your skin prickle. "Doc," he murmurs against your mouth.

"Mm?"

"You're shaking."

"So are you."

"I have an excuse."

A laugh from your mouth, but it comes out breathy and uneven, not nearly as cool as you need it to be. "Shut up."

You don't have a comeback, no sharp thing to say. You're letting Ben Poindexter slide his hand up under your shirt. There's an awful tenderness in being wanted by someone who rarely wants anything without destroying it. So, no. No sharp comeback. 

His palm spreads over your waist, careful of his taped fingers, of the bruises on his own knuckles, careful with you in a way that feels learned from watching rather than experience. His thumb brushes the lower curve of your breast through your bra, and your breath goes thin.

His gaze locks on that reaction. "Can I?" 

When you nod, his hand moves higher, cupping you with an aching slowness that makes your hips shift on the mattress. Dex's eyelid lowers, mouth parting slightly as if the feel of you under his palm is enough to daze him more than his injuries. He squeezes once, gentle at first, then firmer when your fingers curl into the sheet.

"Tell me," he says.

"Half-dead, but still you demand."

He ignores your words. "Tell me what you like."

The command, irritating from any other mouth, only drags heat through every inch of you now. You cover his hand with yours and guide him, showing him the pressure, the spot, how your nipple tightens when his thumb rubs over it through cotton. His attention is unbearable. "Like that," you breathe. "A little harder. Yeah, like that."

"He ever hear you sound like that?"

You kiss him harder, stealing those words from his mouth. He absorbs it with a shudder, hand tightening around your breast while his other reaches for your thigh. 

The position is so awkward, you help him a little to sit up. Two bodies learning each other in the small space of a spare room cot.

Jealousy is still there, you can feel it threaded through every question, but now it has heat behind it, a wounded need that makes him cling and challenge at once. You swing one leg over his hips before he can try to move too much, settling carefully over his thighs, your palms braced on either side of his shoulders so none of your weight hits his ribs.

For once, Bullseye looks struck.

You look down at him, at the swelling, the bruises, the blood cleaned from his mouth, the bandages you placed over skin you are now aching to touch. 

A man who tried to die last night is now staring at you like your thighs around him might be a reason to reconsider.

"This okay?" you ask, voice soft, not to startle him.

Dex swallows as he nuzzles closer, as if it was even possible. "Better than okay."

"Hands stay where they won't pull stitches."

A faint smile, soft enough to pull your heartstrings, looks up at you as if you have given him an order he would follow through fire. "Yes, doctor."

Your fingers tighten in the sheet beside his hip at his words. His thumb keeps moving on the bare strip of your stomach like he has found a place warm enough to keep him, palm heavy with feverish want and restraint that looks painful on him. 

When you reach for your shirt, his hand tightens at your thigh. "Slow… let me see."

You almost laugh at the nerve of him. When the shirt drags up your ribs, his eyes follow every inch as if the fabric itself has offended him by hiding you this long. You pull it over your head and toss it to your back. Your bra is plain, worn from too many overnight shifts, and the fact that he looks at it like lace from some altar makes heat crawl over your cheeks. "Say something," you murmur, fingers hovering near the clasp.

Dex's mouth parts, then closes again. The split along the lower one shines where he has worried it open with every kiss. "I'm trying to think like a man with blood left in his head."

"That bad?"

His thumb brushes under the curve of your breast, barely grazing the band of your bra. "Worse."

You unhook it before the embarrassment can make you hesitate. The straps slip down your arms, and Dex goes still. Your breasts fall free, nipples already tight from his earlier touch, and the look on his face makes you feel naked in a deeper place than skin. He reaches up with both hands, then winces at the pull across his ribs. His frustration flashes sharp in his jaw.

"Let me come to you," you offer.

He gives a tiny shake of his head, annoyed at himself. "I hate this."

"You hate being cared for."

"I hate having hands and not able to use them."

That almost makes you smile. You shift closer, one hand cupping the back of his head, other hand cupping your breast and guiding him towards it. "Then use your mouth."

Dex groans like that instruction broke him. His lips close around your nipple, careful for all of two seconds before the pull turns needy. His tongue works over you, slow at first, then firmer when your hips shift against his. He makes a sound into your skin, less like hunger, more comfort, like he has found some impossible warmth in you and intends to live there now. 

One of his hands finds your waist. The other slides around to your ass, fingers digging into the soft flesh he can reach. He cannot pull you hard without hurting himself, so he holds you in place and sucks like he needs the taste of you to steady him.

"Dex," you breathe, your hand tightening in his hair. His eye lifts without his mouth leaving you. "That's... yeah. Keep doing that."

He answers by drawing you deeper into his mouth, cheeks hollowing with a careful pull that sends a wet, aching spark down between your legs. The sound you make embarrasses you, and he hears it. Feels it. His hand slides lower, greedy over the curve of your ass. When you rock against him, his cock presses thick and hard under the loose pants you put on him hours earlier.

He releases your nipple with a soft sound, mouth shining. "Take these off me."

"Demanding, are we?"

His gaze drags up to meet yours. "Please. I need you closer, and these are in my way."

That is worse than anything filthy he could have said. Your fingers go to his waistband, tugging carefully, your focus split between wanting him and watching the tight pinch around his mouth whenever his ribs object. He helps as much as he can, lifting his hips an inch, hissing through his teeth. His cock slips free against his stomach, hard, already wet at the tip.

You stare for half a second too long. Even when he's injured, Dex notices everything. "Still want to scold me?"

"Constantly," you say, hating the softness in it, and wrap your hand around him.

His laugh turns into a groan, head dropping back against the wall while your thumb spreads the wetness at his tip down his shaft. He is warm in your hand, heavy, alive. The thought makes your throat ache, so you lean in and kiss him instead, messy and careful at once, your bare chest pressed near his bandages, your fingers stroking him until his hips twitch. "Stop moving," you whisper against his mouth.

"I barely moved."

"You moved enough." Your fingers don't stop their graze on his cock. 

"I missed you." His voice comes apart on the last word. "Grant me a little mercy."

You rise onto your knees instead of answering the smarter way, tugging at your pants with one impatient hand while the other stays braced near his shoulder. The fabric catches at your knees, and for one stupid second you almost laugh. This is so ungraceful, far from the kind of fantasy you would have let yourself have about him. Dex does not laugh. His gaze follows the slow drag of your pants down your thighs like he is watching something holy and obscene at once. By the time you kick them off near the foot of the cot, your underwear is damp enough to cling, and his fingers flex against your hips like he is fighting the urge to help. "Those too."

"You're very annoying for a man who can barely sit upright, you know?"

"Please." There's just desperation. 

You push your underwear down just enough at first, suddenly shy under his gaze, then give up and pull them off completely. Your slick coats your fingers when you touch yourself, and Dex's mouth parts like the sight has taken the last good thought from his head.

He watches entranced while you drag that wetness over his cock, making the slide easier, making a filthy shine of both of you. His hands flex against your hips, then still when you lower yourself over him.

The first stretch steals the words from both of you. You sink slowly, one hand braced on the wall over his shoulder, the other gripping his upper arm where the muscle tenses under your palm. Dex looks wrecked before you are even halfway down. His mouth hangs open, eyes fixed on your face, then dropping to where his cock disappears into you, then come back up as if he needs to see you take him more than he needs air. "Too much?" he asks.

Lowering anothet inch, you shake your head, thighs already trembling from the angle. "Just — just let me take my time."

"I'm yours," he says. "Take all of it."

The words do terrible things to you. You sink the rest of the way, cunt closing around him in hot, slick pulses. 

Dex's hands clamp down on your ass with a force that almost breaks through his weakness. His forehead falls against your sternum. He breathes there, mouth brushing your skin, then he turns his face and sucks one breast back between his lips while you start to ride him.

The cot creaks under. Your thighs burn almost immediately, cramped from sleep in the chair and the span of his hips beneath yours. Still, you lift and sink, taking him deeper each time. 

Dex tries to stay still. You feel the fight in him. His palms keep sliding under your ass, helping you rise, helping you drop, giving you just enough strength to keep moving without letting his ribs tear at him.

Then he thrusts up like he can't stop himself. A sharp little cry leaves you, pleasure striking so deep your knees almost give. Dex makes a pained sound in the same second, and your hand flies to his shoulder "Do that again and I swear I'll chain you back to the bed."

His face is tight, sweat shining at his temple. "I can take this."

"You are actively proving the opposite."

"Please." He says it into your breast, lips brushing the skin as he speaks, hands still cupping your ass. "Let me help. Sitting still while you do everything hurts worse."

Your scolding dies half-formed. If there's a tease, you could've gone through with it. But there's only need. Nodding your head against him, you let his hands guide you again. 

He lifts as much as he can with his arms, careful of his side, and you ride the motion, cunt sliding down his cock with a wet sound that makes both of you shudder. His mouth finds your nipple again, sucking harder, and you feel him everywhere, under your skin, in your thighs, between your ribs. "I'm close," you tell him.

His hand leaves your ass, searching between your bodies. But when he twists wrong, pain catches him. You grab his wrist and press it back to your hip. "No. I'll do it."

"I want to make you cum."

"You are." You touch your clit with slick fingers and circle it the way you need, riding him in short, deep rolls. "Just stay with me. That's what I need."

His head drops back against the wall, watching your hand move, watching his cock fill you, then watches your face break open around pleasure. "Look at me. P-please. Let me see you."

When your eyes find his, your orgasm hits you you hard enough to turn your thighs useless, cunt clenching around him in tight, wet pulls. 

Dex curses softly, hands locking on your ass as he spills inside you, hot and endless, body going rigid beneath yours while he tries to keep from thrusting. You keep your mouth against his, breathing into him until the shaking eases.

He says something too low for you to catch.

"What?"

His eye opens, glassy and spent. "Mine."

Your fingers slide along his jaw, careful around the bruising. "You don't get to say that unless you stay alive."

"I'll stay alive." The answer comes fast, hoarse, almost angry with how badly he means it.

Before you can respond, he catches the wrist of the hand you used on your clit and brings your fingers to his mouth. His lips close around them, sucking you off your own skin with a slow hunger that makes you clench again around his softening cock. 

Like he cannot bear another second apart, he pulls you down and kisses you, your taste on his tongue, his hand weak but certain at the back of your neck. His pulse slams under your palm where it's holding onto his neck. Alive. Alive. Alive.

Getting off him is slow and messy. His cum slides down your thigh while you stand naked beside the cot. 

Dex watches with a dazed, almost helpless look that follows you even when you grab a warm cloth. You sit beside him and clean his cock first, gentle around oversensitive skin, and he inhales like this care is harder to take than the sex. "I can do that," he mutters.

"You are injured. Shut up." You continue your path down his thighs. 

"You like telling me what to do."

"I like keeping you alive." You check the bandage at his side next, still naked, still dripping, fingers clinical even while his gaze keeps dropping to the mess he left between your thighs. "Looks okay. Nothing opened."

When you clean yourself, he watches your hand move between your thighs with a frown that is almost offended. "That should be me."

"You can do that when you aren't fighting for your life."

His eye lifts to yours, begging, exhausted. "Next time?"

"Next time." Next time means he's planning on staying. 

Your phone buzzes, the sound cutting through the moment. One small vibration against the metal cabinet, and Dex already knows. His eye shifts before yours does, tired and sharp at the same time, like the rest of him is sinking under but that sharp little blade in him still knows how to lift its head. "Matt," he says.

Offering him a bottle of water, you pick up your phone. Sure enough it is Matt.

"Tell him I didn't vanish." The bottle is unopened at his hands.

Sighing, you grab it from him, uncap and press it to his lips. Dex looks at you stunned, almost offended that you're holding a bottle to his mouth. "Drink."

Whatever response that was about to spill from his lips is interrupted by another buzz of your phone, currently on the cot beside him.

Dex's eyes drop to the screen. Bruised, naked under the too-thin blanket, barely keeping himself awake, and still he finds the one thing in the room pulling your attention away from him. "Persistent," he rasps.

"You're one to talk." The bottle stays at his mouth until he takes one grudging swallow, then another. His throat works, lashes lowering for a second.

The phone buzzes again.

Dex's mouth leaves the bottle. "Just — just reply him."

You pick up the phone with a sigh, and type back a response. 

Still here. Stable. 

Dex's eye tracks every letter. "That's all?"

"You want a performance review?"

His almost-smile tugs at the torn corner of his mouth. "Five stars. Charming. Didn't vanish."

You set the phone facedown beside his hip and lift the bottle again. "One more sip."

He groans, but drinks. This time he doesn't look offended. When a drop slips from the corner of his mouth, you wipe it with your thumb before thinking better of it. Dex catches your wrist before you can pull back. His grip has almost no strength left, but he holds you like letting go is the worst thing that could happen. "I behaved." 

Just two words, like that wounded dog setting its head down because it has run out of places, but has finally found home. Your eyes sting so fast it's embarrassing. You settle your palm against his cheek. "Yes, you did."

Matt's reply comes through, unseen and ignored.

Dex's eyes close as he nuzzles deeper into your palm, your wrist still trapped in his loose hold. And all you can think is, stay.

MY MASTERLIST

EXTRAS. you can tell i almost gave up in the end. also… my man is so puppy dog. prove me wrong…

[pluvial-lake]

﹙ 𝐃𝐃 𝐌𝐄𝐍 ﹚ 𝗍𝖾𝗑𝗍𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗒𝗈𝗎 ─── 𝗉𝗍. 𝟤

[yoursinfulurges]

Touch Me

Introduction:

Dex was unfamiliar with the concept of physical touch and romance until he begins dating a seamstress that has rendered him desperately hungry for more, and he begins to understand why most people found dating enjoyable.

CW: SMUT, Fluff, implied that he's older, readers features are never stated, no use of Y/N, inexperienced Dex but it's not stated, he's a freak. HE'S FILTHYYYY!!!!

Word Count: 7k

AN: I don't have a dad so that probably explains why I like Dex so much... Dex having no play is cannon here.

To Dex, the physical topography of another human being had always been a calculus of vulnerability. His mind was a machine, capable of mapping the dimensions of an enclosed space within milliseconds and identifying the precise trajectory required to sever an artery. He understood the mechanics of the anatomy; he knew exactly how much pressure it took to snap a collarbone or drop a grown man to his knees. But touch and affection? Affection was a foreign, deeply distressing dialect. It was a sensory input that rendered his internal programming entirely mute. He knew every ligament in the body, where to assault to cause torment but God forbid he uses his hands for softness.

There was a profound, quiet irony in a man of his age and lethal competence being so utterly paralyzed by the simple proximity of soft skin. Hell, he almost pitied himself for it. For decades, the concept of a romantic relationship hadn’t been relegated in his mind. It had been buried beneath layers of institutional survival, psychological trauma, and the crushing weight of an existence spent entirely on the defensive. Dex was not a lover and he had never been, affection and care was unnatural to him.

He could still recall the sharp, sterile scent of the office belonging to his first therapist, the singular human anchor he had at the fragile age of sixteen. He had cared for her, though his developing mind lacked the emotional framework to define what care actually meant. To Dex, care was synonymous with structure. It was the methodical way she re-aligned his straying thoughts, the unnatural patience she extended far beyond the boundaries of her hourly compensation. That was the closest Dex ever got to care. And when death claimed her, his internal architecture had shattered into something feral and defensive. Standing beside her hospital bed, looking down at her failing form, he had chosen to weaponize his grief, hissing that he hated her. He didn’t hate her for who she was, but for the betrayal of leaving him entirely alone in a world without parameters. After that care became just another word without meaning to him.

Then came Julie.

Julie had been an exercise in aesthetic symmetry. She was safe, correct, and perfectly aligned with the script he desperately tried to perform. Dex had cared for her in the same detached, appreciative manner you might have for a beautiful painting in a museum. Admired from a calculated, safe distance, entirely devoid of genuine visceral heat or want. He never wanted Julie, despite how it might have looked, Dex wanted to be her. How easily life came to her was just so fascinating to a man like him. He remembered the exact moment she had offered him a farewell hug at the Suicide Hotline Center, just before he transitioned into the stark world of the Bureau.

The physical contact had been an absolute shock to his nervous system. And he remembers it even now years later. First came the ice, a sudden, freezing sensation that trickled down his spine the precise millisecond her palms pressed against his biceps, his body mistaking the gesture for an ambush. His muscles had coiled instantly like overwound springs, his vertebrae stiffening in a violent protest against the proximity. But then, right before he could pull away, the ice had thawed into an invasive, confusing warmth. Before his mind could categorize or fixate on the sensation, she had already retreated, leaving him standing in the corridor, thoroughly deregulated by a three-second interaction.

That brief, fleeting embrace had been the absolute zenith of his experience with physical intimacy. Dex didn't do hugs, or anything else for that matter… His subsequent, half-hearted attempts at dating in his early twenties had been a disastrous blur, locked away like radioactive material in the darker corridors of his subconscious. The entire experience had felt extremely uncomfortable, unfulfilling, and complicated in ways that insulted his intelligence.

The sheer volume of unwritten variables was maddening. He had to speak enough to demonstrate engagement, but not so much to appear self-absorbed. Connection required vulnerability, but a fraction too much was classified as forward or desperate. He couldn't request another date too quickly or too frequently without crossing into the territory of predatory. Touch was a minefield; it was deemed acceptable only if initiated by the woman, yet society dictated that a man should assert dominance and assume leadership. Hold her hand, the script said, but don't apply too much pressure to suggest control. Open the door for her, but don't infantilize her or imply incompetence.

By his third official date, Dex had quietly withdrawn from the field entirely. The sheer unpredictability of the social ritual was entirely too volatile for his psychology to parse. He vividly recalled sitting across a woman in a dimly lit restaurant, completely incapable of processing a single syllable falling from her lips because his entire focus had been hijacked by a fork. Her elbow had accidentally nudged the cutlery, leaving it misaligned by less than half an inch from the knife. The asymmetry had screamed in his mind like a siren, drowning out her voice, preventing him from formulating the carefully curated, charming responses necessary to foster romantic banter. He had stared at the silver, suffocated by the lack of order, and realized he was entirely unfit for the performance.

So, he surrendered the idea. He locked his focus onto the FBI, dedicating his life to a rigid, bureaucratic institution that allowed him to believe he was doing good for society while keeping his demons safely behind bars. Years had dissolved into the background of that singular pursuit, and the concept of dating became an obsolete idea of a past life.

Even more now that his world had been violently upended; he had broken out of the prisons meant to contain him, shed the skin of a government puppet, and stripped away the illusions of the system. He was older now, his features hardened by violence, but he was entirely free from the invisible snares that had once dictated his value. Standing in his late thirties, Dex felt a strange sense of selfhood that had completely eluded him in his twenties.

His daily routine remained his mandatory sanctuary, waking up exactly the same hour, executing a flawless military tuck on his bedsheets, consuming a balanced breakfast before physical regimen, and then work. But the internal shift was tectonic. He no longer walked through the streets of New York like a fraudulent actor trying to mimic human behavior and integrate himself into civilization. He knew the truth now: there was no grand order to life. There was only the winding, bloody path he had been carved out to walk. He no longer craved the external validation of a badge or a supervisor’s praise to consider himself a whole entity. He was fucking Bullseye.

And the concept of a "North Star", the desperate need for a perfect, external moral anchor to keep him sane, had been forcibly buried deep within a vault next to his most violent, unpacked trauma. Though sometimes, in the quiet hours of the night, a phantom tension would ripple through his chest, an instinctual tug toward the comfort of connection, but he would quickly dismiss it as mere human biology. He didn't need a North Star. His life was already perfectly illuminated by his own design. Or so he continuously told himself.

Until he walked into your boutique.

The shop was situated a short distance down the asphalt stretch of Hell’s Kitchen, a stark, hyper-feminine building in an otherwise gritty neighborhood. The interior was an absolute assault of pastel pinks, a visual sensory overload that normally would have triggered his defense mechanisms, but the hand-painted sign outside promised custom tailoring services. And Dex needed his belongings fixed the moment he noticed imperfections.

He carried two specific items across the threshold that afternoon. His utilitarian jacket that had suffered a tear against a rusty fire escape during the previous night's "hero work," and a pair of heavy tactical gloves that needed the seams to be adjusted for a better grip.

You'd been seated behind the polished wooden counter, a needle held between your hand, your hair slightly disheveled as you worked. When you looked up and saw the tall, broad-shouldered man standing in your doorway, your face had broken into a smile so massive, so genuinely warm, that Dex had felt an involuntary, almost evolutionary impulse to mimic the expression. He stood perfectly rigid as your small, incredibly nimble hands took the damaged fabric from his grip, your fingers tracing the torn nylon of the jacket with a professional, practiced ease.

When you looked up and informed him that the repairs would only take sixty minutes, his sharp brows had risen in mild intrigue at your efficiency.

"I work fast," you had offered, your voice bright and entirely unbothered by his silent, imposing intensity.

Dex returned to the shop precisely the sixty-minute mark, not a second early, not a second late. You were already waiting for him at the counter, the jacket neatly pressed and the jagged tear now entirely imperceptible, executed with a level of craftsmanship that deeply satisfied his need for perfection. Then he slid his large hands into the resized tactical gloves, flexing his fingers to test the tension of the thread.

Whether you had recognized the subtle Bullseye emblem stamped into the leather, you made no verbal indication. Instead, you merely bit your lower lip, your gaze tracking the movement of his hands before you boldly, without an ounce of hesitation, reached out and gripped his gloved hand. Your fingers guide his, pointing down to the specific cross-stitch where you had loosened the seams to accommodate his knuckles.

The ice returned instantly. It danced down the length of his spine, a freezing jolt that made his chest tighten. But as your warm skin remained pressed against the heavy material of his glove, the sensation mutated into something remarkably pleasant. Dex let out an involuntary exhale from your touch as your index finger trailed a slow, deliberate line down the length of his hand. Was this flirting? No, this was her job….

"If you need it bigger I can make that possible," you offered softly, your eyes lifting to lock onto his with a quiet, grounded confidence. And Dex paused, taking in the intimacy of your closeness. Okay…. Yeah, this was flirting. He deduced at its baseline before he found himself engaging.

Dex couldn't understand the sequence of events that followed, birthed from that moment alone. His memory, usually so linear and mathematical, became a blur of transitions. And normally the haze would eat away at him till he lost his mind, if it weren't for the fact that the stages that followed were extremely enjoyable. All he knew was that the rigid wall of his isolation had suddenly breached, and he was taking you on a first date. Then a second. A third. A fourth. The unwritten variables that had paralyzed him in his youth seemed to dissolve in your presence; you didn't demand a script, and your effortless need to keep talking filled the awkward silences he usually created. Dex was thankful for it. He was thankful for all of you.

By the time the fifth date happened, you were both standing inside the threshold of your private home. And Dex was fucking ecstatic. The realizations hit him in waves during his nightly routines: life was simply greater, sharper, and infinitely better with your existence woven into it. Within the calculated grid of his mind, he had rapidly come to view you as an essential, non-negotiable component of his daily structure. A connection he needed desperately to maintain that he was fully prepared to execute any measure necessary to ensure you stayed. You were kind, sweet, and giving in a way that defied his understanding of human nature. How were you so willing to offer the world everything you had without demanding anything in return?

Because he couldn't comprehend it, he studied you. He watched you with a hyper-attentive, microscopic focus that would have terrified a normal civilian, tracking the micro-expressions of your face, the cadence of your breaths, and the specific pitch of your laughter. And you let him. To you, that intense, unblinking gaze didn't feel like surveillance; it made you feel entirely seen and warm.

Dex had learned you. He played every single card in his hand with absolute precision to ensure he kept your favor, but you made the act remarkably easy. He found himself wanting to give the world to you, a new directive that lingered constantly. While on missions, he's doing this to make the city better for you. He had to come home safe because you'd be so devastated if anything happened to him. You needed him in your life so he had to make sure no wounds took over his body. These thoughts progressed over time, though they were already brewing the minute he stepped out of your boutique. Dex brought you a perfectly curated bouquet of flowers on your very first date, quickly logging the fact that you flourished when things were done for you. From that moment on, his chivalry became non-negotiable. He opened doors before your hand could even approach the handle; he pulled out chairs to the exact angle required for your comfort; he even leaned across the console of his vehicle to buckle your seatbelt for you, his large frame momentarily shielding you from the world. A thought that appears constantly in his mind at night.

And now, those correctly executed actions had granted him entry into your sanctuary.

Walking through the door of your brownstone, his analytical eyes immediately deduced that you and your work were a singular entity. The space was less a traditional home and more an active studio. A heavy, vintage treadle sewing machine sat prominently in the center of the room, positioned directly in front of the television, while two antique, velvet-upholstered couches framed it on either side. Dex made a silent, permanent mental note of that specific layout: the tool of your labor received absolute priority over comfort.

As he looked around Dex noticed your affinity for older things immediately, your eyes lingering on aged, well-maintained pieces of history. A part of him wondered if that was why you liked him so much and despite himself, the thought amused him. His gaze drifted to the expansive dining room, noting how every single high-backed chair had been pushed flush against the perimeter of the walls, completely away from the central table to maximize workspace. A deep, quiet part of his psychology deeply admired the dedication. He understood the obsession with craft, the way you spoke about fabrics and patterns with radiant love. He was identical to you in that regard, though he remained hyper-vigilant about never revealing the bloodier details of his own craft to you.

Dex paced silently behind you, his broad shoulders squared as his eyes continuously darted around the rooms, absorbing the atmosphere of your home while you led him toward the kitchen by the hand. His frame was tense, his muscles vibrating with a low-grade current of electricity. He still wasn't accustomed to the physical touching. He liked it, he liked it with a terrifying intensity that scared him, but his brain lacked the programming required to properly receive it.

And bless your heart, you were so unbelievably touchy.

You were a creature of constant physical contact. There was always a soft arm looping around his rigid bicep, a gentle palm resting against his. A constant, natural inclination to latch onto his massive frame and cling to him as if he were the only solid object in a moving world. He reciprocated in the only ways he knew how, squeezing your hand back with a carefully measured amount of pressure, standing perfectly still to accept your weight. But Dex still hadn't learned how to articulate or manifest his own physical desires. He didn't know how to be the one to close the distance. He didn't know how to reach out his large, scarred hands, wrap them around your waist, and pull you against his chest without an explicit invitation. The script hadn't given him those lines yet.

So instead, he simply allowed himself to be a passive monument of muscle and bone, letting you pull him toward the kitchen island for wine and cheese after your date. The night got more enjoyable, but then again, every moment was enjoyable with you. But this is even more so. You trusted him enough to let him into your space, liked him so much that you paid attention whenever his glass was empty.

"I have a secret," you admitted suddenly, your face flushing a deep, radiant pink after you drained the remainder of your second glass.

Dex raised a single, sharp brow, holding his own glass perfectly steady as he waited for the disclosure. He ignored the sudden, rhythmic thumping of his own blood pumping violently in his ears. He couldn't quite determine if the sudden spike in his heart rate was the result of the alcohol or a sudden surge of anxiety. Given his high tolerance, it was likely the latter.

"I hate wine," you hiccuped, a small, breathless sound. You didn't feel that inebriated but Dex had a skill for making you feel drunk.

Dex’s cold eyes widened slightly in genuine surprise. Without a word, his large hand reached out and gently but firmly took the crystal glass directly from your fingers, a low, rumbling chuckle vibrating in his chest as the absurdity of the situation caused a bright laugh to break from your lips.

"Why didn't you say anything," he asked, his gravelly voice dropping an octave as he placed the glass down on the exact center of a stone coaster.

"Because it was a nice gift and also because I wanted to be with you longer," you reasoned smoothly.

You stepped away from the counter, your short frame moving into his immediate personal space. Slipping effortlessly between his extended legs as he sat perched on the high barstool, your body completely filling the void between his knees. Before he could process the proximity, your arms looped entirely around his broad shoulders, your hands resting against the nape of his neck.

Dex sat up just a fraction straighter, his entire spine locking into a protective line. A hesitant, unpracticed hand rose from his side, his large palm resting against the fabric of your dress to support your lower back, his fingers trembling slightly against your skin.

"I like having you around..." you admitted softly, your voice heavily laced with an intoxicated, sleepy haze as you looked up at him.

"I like being around," Dex nodded, his gaze boring into yours with an unblinking, absolute intensity.

It was the most fundamental truth his mouth had ever uttered. He liked being around you so much that the mere concept of physical separation had become an agonizing friction in his daily life. There were moments during his long, solitary hours on a rooftop or following a lethal assignment where the craving to see you grew so violent, so overwhelming, that he had seriously contemplated abandoning his operation just to stand outside your window. But the rational, highly defensive side of his mind, the piece of him that vividly remembered the trembling panic in Julie's face, always managed to reassert control. He wouldn't risk breaking what you two had.

"Will you be around forever?" you asked, your voice dropping into a soft, vulnerable register that sounded almost like a plea.

Dex felt a sudden, blinding flash behind his eyes, a sensation so sharp and radiant it felt as though stars had detonated within his skull. A terrifying wave of duty and existential purpose crashed through his mind, rewriting his internal directives in an instant. This was his calling. This was his permanent assignment.

"I'll be here forever," he nodded, his voice carrying the heavy, unyielding finality of a death warrant.

He barely had a single microsecond to process the violent rush of devotion flooding his veins before you leaned in, and your soft lips met his.

Dex froze.

He froze in a way he had never experienced in the heat of lethal gunfire. He hesitated with a sudden, paralyzing vulnerability that his mind was completely unequipped to handle. Bullseye did not hesitate; Bullseye was a creature of pure, instantaneous reaction. But Dex, Dex was entirely lost here in the quiet of your kitchen, his lips pressed flat against yours, his breath catching in the back of his throat as the delicate warmth of your mouth completely shattered his being.

His mind scrambled for data, for a past memory or a set of instructions to tell him what to do with his hands, how to move with you, how to breathe. The sheer sensation of your mouth against his was too vast, too unaligned with any grid he had ever mapped. He wanted to deepen the pressure, wanted to sink his fingers into your hips and drag you so close that the space between you ceased to exist, but the terrifying lack of instructions kept his body entirely locked in stone. He was a starving man paralyzed by the sudden appearance of a feast, terrified that a single incorrect movement would cause the illusion to vanish.

It was only a brief, agonizing second of contact. It was over far too quickly for his liking before you were gently pulling back, your eyelashes fluttering against your cheeks.

"You never got much love huh?" you hummed out, your voice dipping into a sad, incredibly tender melody.

Your small hands didn't retreat; instead, they began to preen over his tense shoulders, your fingers sliding upward until your nails began to slowly, methodically comb through the short hairs at the base of his scalp.

An involuntary, deeply guttural groan tore itself from the very bottom of Dex’s throat, the sound surprising even himself. His eyes rolled back, his lids fluttering shut as a wave of intense pleasure rippled through his nervous system. He liked that. He liked that with a feral, addictive desperation. Whatever you were doing with your hands, it was dismantling the static in his brain.

"No," he admitted, his voice a broken, raspy whisper in the quiet room, his head naturally sinking into the guiding pressure of your palms as you continued to adore him.

Your lips moved forward again, finding the hard, unyielding line of his cheekbone. You pressed a soft, lingering kiss directly over the jagged scar near his cheek, the exact spot you always claimed when you were saying goodbye, and Dex felt his entire body shudder under the impact. Then, your kisses migrated downward, tracing the sharp angle of his jaw before your mouth found the sensitive, hot skin of his neck.

Dex’s hands lost their hesitation, his fingers curling tightly into the fabric of your dress as he decided, with absolute certainty, that he liked this even more.

"Don't worry. I'll fix it," you murmured against his skin, your breath hot and reassuring even in your heavily tipsy state.

“Pretty girl like you gonna fix a man like me,” Dex mused out, exhaling in amusement as he welcomed your kisses by granting you more of his neck. You hummed in delight and he noted that was the correct response.

“I'd do everything for you, Dex,” you admitted into his neck and that seemed to do it. Every rigid order he told himself to act like a gentleman broke as he pulled you into his chest, turning his face as if begging for you to grant him another kiss.

And you do.

This time he reciprocated the contact eagerly, fuck it, thoughts can be damned, Dex let his body lead now. His kisses were harsh and demanding, desperate in its undercurrent but you enjoyed it. You tasted faintly like wine and something minty and he finds himself deepening the kiss. His large calloused hand found the thin straps of your bias-cut dress, hastily pushing it down the slope of your shoulder before he froze. He was being too forward, too much, too–

Before he could spiral, you whined into his mouth at the lack of movement. A harmonious plea that he's never had the privilege of hearing before. And Dex's eyes fluttered, that sound went straight to his straining cock evoking a groan against your skin. Emboldened hands pushing the dress down only to pull back momentarily, breaking the kiss despite not wanting to. He'd rather shoot himself than stop kissing you, but he needed to know that what he was doing was okay. And by the blissful state of your eyes, you were more than okay with this, with him. And so he allowed his gaze to wander, darting down to the exposed skin of your soft breast.

His gaze locked onto your hardened nipple before his hand slowly moved, not giving himself time to overthink. His thumb grazed the sensitive peak in experimentation, irises watching as your chest stuttered, his gaze darting up to meet yours in calculation on how to proceed. You were waiting for him, letting him take the lead and explore, and God did he want to map out every shape of you. He wanted to know what made you arch and squirm, what made you sing his name in praise. But Dex was a man rendered stupid in the unfamiliar vastness of your body, so hands stayed motionless as they had done nothing but take and punish all his life. He'd do it slow, he decided, after all, his hands were not meant for this. For worship and caress.

But his mouth would be.

Not breaking eye contact with you, his lips found home on your skin, latching onto your nipple. Humming as you arched your back, your pliant body gravitating into him. You liked that, he learned, so he did it harder. Teeth grazing the sensitive peak before sucking it into his mouth hard.

His free hand wanders to your other breast, thumb circling the clothed nipple there while he devotes himself to the first with his tongue. It’s messy, uncoordinated, Dex isn’t a gentle lover, he learned as the need progresses. His brave hand slips under your dress, pushing fabric up further to expose more of your body as his kisses migrated down your sternum.

“D-Dex.”

The breathy sound made him freeze and he recoiled immediately as if burned. He waits for the storm only for you to eagerly pat him on his shoulder, signaling you wanted him up.

“Room, please…. I-i don't want it here…” you say almost shy and he obeys immediately, standing up and holding you dear.

“Yeah? Sweet girl,” the term endearment escaping his lips catches him by surprise just as much as him kissing your forehead does. But he doesn't dwell on it long as he grabs hold of your hand and leads you upstairs where he already knows where your room is.

The silence of the space was only intensified once you both entered your bedroom. Dex pauses, taking a moment to appreciate the image of you standing there, waiting with earnest eyes and swollen lips. You looked so vulnerable, your dress wrinkled and breathing heavy as you let him assess. He welcomes your softness and realizes that he owes it to you to be vulnerable as well.

With a firm, certain, grip, he turns your body around, your stomach flutters in expectation as lust filled eyes land on the made bed. Only the inevitable force never came, you weren't shoved face down into the mattress in pure heat, instead Dex is moving your hair aside to fall on one shoulder. And that impacted your core more than any barge ever could. So you remained standing there, ignoring the heat in your stomach as the brooding man you'd come to know gently unzipped the back of your dress. Pushing the fabric down your hips, a hum escapes the claimant as he turns you back around with even kinder hands and you melted.

Sure in your intentions, you begin to unbutton his shirt and he watches you in the moment. Sometimes you often wonder what goes on in Dex's mind, but here you're certain that whatever thoughts that hammered in his head were anything but pure. When the fabric of his shirt meets your dress on the floor, a barely suppressed smile threatens to take over your face and his features silently requested for context, amused in your glow.

“You're so big,” appreciation dripped from your words, reinforced by your hands steady on his chest. Pride and something smug consumes Dex’s internal framework as he reaches for your bare waist, pulling you into him. Fuck. He liked how that felt, loved the feeling of you two skin to skin.

“That why you're always so touchy,” he huffed. It was a poor attempt to regulate himself from these overwhelming emotions. Still riding the dopamine high from your appraisal.

“Yes,” you nodded shamelessly.

At that a raw exhale breaks free from his mouth, falling in ardor before he's guiding you down to the bed. Dex’s gaze is locked on yours, at your body barely covered in cotton underwear as he prowls towards you on the duvet. Your presence was the single grounding planet in the uncharted stars of his nebula, an innate need to keep his focus on you and solely you to avoid getting lost in the orbit of his thoughts. Waiting patiently as exploratory hands trailed over your body, thumbs brushed over your nipples just once, before migrating down to your torso, eventually finding home on your hips.

Lips parted but nothing fell from them as words failed him. Instead his gaze darted up to meet yours as his fingers deliberately tugged your underwear, not fully, not even an inch down, just enough to get your attention and silently ask for permission.

Your body moved on its own, hastily squirming under his broad stature and pushing the thin fabric down your legs. The man over you had been the only thing plaguing the recesses of your brain for the past few weeks, consuming you with such unbidden thoughts. Anything would be done for him at this point. You barely got to kick the drenched cotton off before Dex's palm landed flat on one thigh, pushing it down hard against the bed and spreading you open for him. With a fluttering stomach so intense, your body fell back as you took in his state. Half dressed and tightly coiled, muscles pulling in restrain as he remained pinning your thigh down. His attention was locked onto you, or more so, your dripping cunt and an involuntary need to shut your legs was met with even more resistance from him.

He didn't appreciate you trying to hide from him, evident in his warning gaze. Without a word, his palm trailed up, the desire and craving to touch you won out in him. And suddenly hands that had only known violence was caressing you so softly and attentively, figuring out the definition of what it meant to be a lover.

God you were so wet and warm and soft and all the good things in the world…

Dex noticed your breathing growing more labored beneath him and instinctively he leaned back to watch you more, away from the disadvantage of being tucked into your neck. Your pupils were blown out, starry eyed as your brows creased and a pout settled on your lips. His fingers moved on their own as he watched, a new desire to pull more of those darling expressions from you forming. And as he sunk two cruel digits into your slopping wet heat, satisfaction invaded his senses as he took in your reaction. Your mouth parts in ecstasy, a sound Dex immediately knew he loved fell from your lips as your body arched up into him. And then that begging pout graced your features again, looking down at where his fingers fucked you.

So perhaps intimacy was everything people made it out to be, and so much more when it's with you. Dex was beginning to understand it now, the insatiable need to constantly be touching your person. Fuck, he doesn’t think he could ever go back to the way he was before. So fucking hesitant, unsure with anxiety that dibilitated him. He refused to be so rigid again, not when the sounds of your desire and need were music to his ears. He loved this, loved it in a way that was beginning to align with his new idea of normal. He could get used to this, to touching you, to fucking you.

Whining in protest as his fingers pulled away, your hands gripped at his chest in agony. Complains at the tip of your tongue before halting completely as you hear him begin to take his jeans off. Humming in delight as he strips. And fucking hell…. You were well aware of Dex’s large frame, it was one of the first things you noticed about him, second to the attractive scar on his cheek. But seeing him like this was something different entirely and you couldn't help yourself as you preened over his naked form again. Palms gliding the expansive plains of his back, brushing down his abs and strong chest as you sucked on his neck. Though judging by the expression on Dex's face, he didn't mind you playing. He let you have your fun until eventually pulling your lips off of him with a gentle hand at the back of your neck. A protest happened beneath him as you tried to chase after his body before stopping, noticing his hand on his member. And that shut you up real good.

Dex gently guides his hardened cock onto your dripping core. Rubbing his swollen head up and down your drenched skin before slowly sinking into you. A gasp falls from your lips followed by a desperate cry of want. His breath comes in rough bursts through his nose, focused entirely on you beneath him. How you take it, how you sound, how tight you feel with every drag out and push back in. The plains of his anatomy strained with tension as he exhaled in contentment. Dex thought he had come to know comfort, in the way you'd lean onto him during walks, how you raked your nails through his hair earlier. But this exceeded that in every capacity, comfort was a juvenile word to express how this felt like home. He's barely halfway through and already has to stop and compose himself. He let out a hiss, halting all movements as you clenched around him.

The sudden, full stretch makes you mewl out a sharp, startled sound And Dex freezes instantly, his entire body locking up. Has he hurt you? Was something wrong? He’s buried to the hilt now. It’s a lot. Too much all at once. A wave of something almost like guilt hits him, he hadn’t meant to scare you, but the sensation is… God.

"Shhh," he soothes automatically, instinctively brushing your cheek with his thumb despite how wrecked he feels right now.

You leaned into his touch, seeking for more and he's relieved. Needy palms finding a place on his biceps as you squirmed, looking down at where you both meet. Dex follows your gaze, watching his hardened cock buried deep in you. Yeah… that’s a lot.

"Tell me what you need," he murmurs, thumb brushing away another stray tear. "We can stop. Or go stupid slow.”

You let out a laugh that bled dangerously too close to a moan and Dex makes the decision of the latter for you. The first thrust is deliberate, deep and controlled, testing your reaction. The second follows, then a third, each one creating a filthy rhythm that fills the quiet room. He slowly fucks into you in a sedate, gentle manner. But gentleness is short-lived. His movements quickly grow faster till he was fucking you in a steady eager pace. Skin slaps against skin, joining the song of moans that you sing. The bed creaks under the weight, every movement is amplified in the hushed space. Rapture floods through you as any other thoughts that weren't Dex quickly subsides, giving way for your focal. Everything felt right in the world as he molded your body to his.

It was almost too much, his body caging yours in as his hips moved relentlessly. You knew you wouldn't last much longer if he kept going like this. But Dex was a man of intention, he took you like it was the only thing worth doing in his life.

The press of your hand against his pelvis, pushing, cunt trying to get him closer yet you were pulling away at the same time, sends conflicting signals straight to his dick. Your thighs around him squirmed, a telltale sign you're overwhelmed. Dex groans but doesn’t let up; if anything, he presses down harder on you with his hips, pinning yours in place.

"Take it," he rasps no room for argument. His skilled thumb lands on your clit, relentless despite the overstimulation threatening both of your bodies. The sound that left you was obscene and filthy as your head lulls back and Dex is quick to grab hold of your thigh and pull you closer towards him.

The new angle hits perfectly, your entire body jerks, a broken moan escaping as you tense around Dex’s hips. He learned you almost immediately from the very first second his fingers were inside you, he found where to target instantly. And now he abused that information.

He feels it, the way you clenched around him, and his own control wavers. But he holds on, focused solely on your pleasure, chasing every twitch and whimper with relentless precision. His lips find yours again in a messy, open-mouthed kiss as he pounded into you with controlled hits. A sound so similar to bullets in the air echoed at the impact, the wet sound, obscene, unfiltered, hitting him like a lightning bolt. Every thrust is accompanied by that slick, squelching noise: your arousal mixing with his movements. Dex learns that he loved that sound, it satisfied a part of his brain in a notion he couldn't understand but he knew that it fueled him even more. Dex's hips stutter for half a second at the realization of just how drenched you are for him.

A groan rumbles from his chest as he picks up speed, fucking you till you saw stars. A melody of moans and gasps filled the room with a symphony of skin heard with it. The walls welcome the sound with open arms as the atmosphere feels too hot and too heavy. You try to grab at the bed sheets despite Dex's tight grip on one of your wrists, you need something to ground you as you neared. Too much. It was all too much. Seamlessly, he laced his fingers with yours, still holding you down onto the bed but his grip softened.

You reciprocate the touch, tightly squeezing his hand as you feel the pressure capsize and your thighs shake in hot waves. You cry his name out, your back arching off the bed from the pleasure. His cock still sliding in and out of your dripping cunt, desperate to join you in your release, ignoring the coil of his muscles. He loves the way you say his name, so breathy and blinded by ecstasy. Dex breathes into your neck, the sensations becoming too much before a loud groan breaks his focus and he spills ropes of his cum into you. Immediately you primp under him, satiated and spoiled but your accord for touch remains ever present as you gently brush your nails up and down his back. And that sends him collapsing down onto you. Not that you seemed to mind as he heard a loud gleeful laugh beneath his large frame.

Dex exhales, long and slow, moving to stare at you. He’s not used to aftercare. Not with anyone. But here he is gently moving off you and tucking a throw blanket around your shoulders like you're something fragile. A calloused finger brushes a stray hair from your forehead, an absurdly tender gesture for someone who just fucked you into oblivion but you welcomed it.

He learned an entirely new vocabulary that night, and the education continued to expand exponentially in the weeks that followed.

He discovered, through application and obsessive cataloging, that he liked touch. He liked it an immeasurable, terrifying amount. He grew to absolutely love the specific jolt that occurred when you wake him up in the morning by lazily raking your nails across the broad, scarred expanse of his bare back. He loved the domestic weight of you playing with his hair while he sat on the living room floor, or the frantic, heavy way you would cling onto him when the city noise rattled the brownstone windows.

Methodically, his analytical mind began to solve the puzzle of how to return the same favor. He'd mapped your body with the same precision he applied to his targets, but with an entirely different objective.

He learned how to execute a kiss without needing an explicit verbal invitation, his large hands learning the exact amount of pressure required to tilt your chin upward to meet his mouth. He figured out how to use the immense, terrifying strength in his palms to gently massage the deep knots out of your shoulders after you spent a twelve-hour day hunched over the antique sewing machine. He studied the micro-movements of your muscles, tracking the specific shivers that rippled through your frame when his thumbs traced your collarbones, logging every sigh and hitch in your breath as data.

He figured out, with a profound, quiet sense of internal victory, that you loved every single form of physical touch imaginable, so long as it came entirely from him.

And he decided then, he loved intimacy.

AN: He's so fucking hot like i just can't!!! ! I haven't written smut in like 3 years so I didn't know what I was doing lol. Let me know what you guys think! Also you being a seamstress was entirely self indulgence because I go to fashion school lol.