Your Neighbor (part one) 🍪
Bullseye x female reader
Part 2
Summary: After your new neighbor saves you from AVTF, you bake him cookies to thank him. Dex isn’t used to getting gifts and it’s not long before you become important to him.
Tags: Bullseye’s identity is hidden/No one knows he is Dex (slight AU), Reader doesn’t understand social cues, Reader is empathic, Blood/Violence/Murder, Age gap (mid/late 20s reader), Stalking/Obsessive Dex, Jealous Dex, No use of y/n
Notes: I think is my first time writing an x reader fic (or maybe first time in a very long time??). I think this will only be a few chapters, but idk yet.
You made it back to your apartment building with grocery bags in both your hands, already wondering if this would be your last trip for a while. Hell’s Kitchen had been getting worse lately, especially with mayor Fisk’s anti vigilante task force roaming the streets.
You almost didn’t notice the man walking down the hallway leading to your apartment. The noise canceling headphones you wore felt necessary with the city noises, but maybe not the safest choice anymore.
You remembered what your roommate had mentioned a few nights ago while through scrolling on her phone.
“By the way, there’s a new guy down the hall. I think. I saw him talking to the landlord. He’s kinda.. weird.”
You had nodded, even though you weren’t sure what she meant by it.
You hadn’t even saw the new neighbor until now as you fumbled your key out of your pocket while balancing most bags in your other hand.
The man was moving swiftly down the hall faster than most people you see go in and out, like he was locked onto wherever he was going.
You glanced up curiously, not sure what to expect, but his size caught you off guard. Not just tall, but muscular too. Around here, people usually only looked like that if they worked in something rough enough to require it.
As he neared you down the hallway, you realized maybe you should be polite and greet him.. Or maybe it was safer to keep to yourself… but people usually introduce themselves.. or at least say hi.
You paused then glanced at him once more before stiffly turning and lifting your hand to a small wave.
As he brushed past you, his eyes shifted down at you for maybe half a second before looking forward again, not slowing even slightly. No response.
You lowered your hand. “..okay” you murmured under your breath.
You then entered your apartment and for a second, you stood there in the entryway while thinking it over.
Maybe you should’ve said something out loud.. or smiled with the wave… or not even bothered at all.
It’s not a big deal, probably. He looked busy anyways.
-
Your work routine is just fine. At least, that’s the easiest way to put it. You have a semi-manageable job schedule and it pays your bills, sometimes just barely, but at least it is only a 20 minute walk from where you live.
The office you work in is pretty basic and usually doesn’t become too overwhelming.
At your desk you sort through paperwork and organize them properly, sometimes running errands for your boss.
During lunch break a couple of the co-workers that hang closer to you invite you. You agree because, although you wanted the time alone today, they would make an excuse for you to join them anyways.
By the time the day is finished and you are walking back down the hallway to your apartment door, you feel exhaustion and can’t wait to lie down.
You walk toward your door while reaching for the key out of your bag, but your movements slow when you look across to the new neighbor’s door.
The man is there again, standing outside the door as if he is just about to go in, but he is lingering.
You haven’t seen him in about a week since your first sight of him. You wondered if maybe he had already moved out, but there he was again.
He didn’t notice you at first. He leaned against his doorframe oddly, as if he was propping himself up while searching for the key.
You notice red dripping down from his eyebrow. A cut maybe? Did he get into a fight? You wonder.
You try not to stare, but you probably only make it more obvious by the way you turned your head to glance over, then look back at your door, then glance over again in a repeated motion.
Maybe you should say something, you think, like ask him if he’s okay? You could offer a bandaid or-
Your thoughts went quiet the moment he looked over at you. He only stared for a few seconds, but something about the intensity of it sent a chill down your spine. You try to turn your attention back to your door through slowed movements.
Down the hall, you heard the click of a lock turning. Glancing back over your shoulder, you caught him looking at you one last time before he disappeared inside his apartment.
You sighed and stepped into your apartment. You really sucked at socializing in the right ways.
An hour later, after finishing your bedtime routine, you stood in your bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. You look at your bandaids, but the only ones remaining were a couple of snoopy themed bandaids.
How stupid. You sighed. But it was better than nothing, wasn’t it?
Before settling into bed, you very hesitantly walked back into the hall with a bandaid in your hand. When you stopped at your new neighbor’s door you lifted your arm and contemplated knocking, but you stopped.
This is ridiculous. You thought to yourself.
You almost turned and left, but at the last second you quickly bent down and slid the bandaid underneath the crack of the door before rushing back to your own.
-
A week passes without you seeing him again and work fills most of your time, yet the blood and the look he gave you still occasionally lingers in the back of your mind. What was that about?
At some point, you overhear a front desk worker mention to another resident that he used to be FBI. That makes more sense now. Does it?
People in those kinds of jobs probably get hurt often and it’s probably for the best that you haven’t crossed paths with him. Especially after leaving that bandaid under his door.
-
You get home late after work one night.
The lobby lights are on, but you notice something is immediately wrong. There are people gathered near the front desk, their hands either slightly raised or covering their faces.
Then you see an officer holding up a gun in their direction. AVTF.
Your steps slow to a stop as you observe the officer appears agitated in a way that feels unpredictable. Everything in you tenses like your body is bracing for something you don’t know how to respond to.
“Are you hiding him?” the man snaps, “don’t play stupid with me. I know he’s been here.”
The workers behind the desk look panicked.
“We- we don’t know who you’re talking about-”
“Bullseye,” he interrupts, “you expect me to believe no one’s seen him?” The officer then slams a knife into the desk, carved with some type of symbol. “This is his. I found it outside the building after tracking him the other night.”
To you, the name sounds almost familiar. Like you’ve heard it before on the news, possibly. Something about a vigilante, but you’re not entirely sure.
…But if a vigilante was living here, it would be hard not to notice. There must be some type of mistake.
No one is answering him the way he wants and he seems to be getting impatient, so you try to be reasonable with him.
“Officer,” you say, your voice quieter than you expected, “I- I’ve never seen him, so it’s unlikely he lives here. There must be a misunderstanding-”
The man turns toward you like you’ve done something wrong. “I didn’t ask if he lived here. I asked if he was being hidden.”
You blink, thrown off by whatever accusation he was trying to throw.
“Are you trying to trick me with your words?” His voice rising. “Why don’t you come here.”
He motions to floor beside him with the gun, but your body doesn’t move.
Your mind catches on the phrasing trick me? Trying to understand what part of what you said could be taken that way.
Ridiculous.
The officer steps forward, closing the distance quickly by grabbing your arm. Your breath catches sharply as you instinctively pull back, your body reacting before you can think through it.
“I-I’m not!” Your voice trembles.
“Maybe it takes someone dying to get some answers around here.”
The gun lifts and you can feel the presence of it near your head.
Everything inside you goes still, but somehow your mind races at the same time. You were probably about to die and you couldn’t even process what you should do in this last moment.
Someone behind the desk starts pleading, telling him to stop, but you can’t really make anything out from the fear you feel.
Your eyes squeeze shut and your hands curl in on themselves as your whole body locks up. You don’t know what you’re supposed to say.. or do…
You whisper a prayer underneath your breath, but before you finish a gunshot rings out, but it didn’t echo from where you expect.
Something warm flecked faintly against your check, followed by the feeling of pressure disappearing near your head. There’s a shift behind you and then a heavy thud. The officer isn’t holding you anymore. You don’t move at first and your eyes stay closed for a second longer before you slowly open them.
You turn and the officer is on the ground, gurgling in a pool of his own blood. The sight of it makes you look away immediately, snapping your head back forward to the ground.
Your breathing is still uneven as your eyes flick upward instead, searching for where the shot came from.
Across the lobby, your new neighbor stands near the entrance, like he had just walked in. A gun hangs loosely in his hand, lowered now. Strangely, his grip is relaxed and doesn’t match with what happened. Almost like it required no effort at all.
His expression is also nothing.. maybe slightly irritated, like something inconvenient just occurred, but not enough to matter.
Behind the desk, the tension breaks and the voices rise in relief and gratitude, but your ears are still ringing and you’re still too shaken up to focus on anything anyone is saying.
You’re still standing where the officer left you, but now blood is pooling at your shoes. It causes your stomach to lurch. A faint tremor still ran through your hands as you tried to block out the warm feeling of blood specks on your face.
-
The next few days, the whole apartment was still in a paranoid frenzy after the events of that night. There were so many witnesses to what had happened that your neighbor wasn’t arrested or charged. In fact, the news stirred up citizens of Hell’s Kitchen and raised even more suspicions against the AVTF. The whole incident was passed off as an unstable officer who must have been working against the major’s orders, though many people didn’t believe it.
You called out of work that week, keeping yourself confined in your bed where it was safe. Your phone buzzed occasionally somewhere across the room, but you ignored it. You avoided all news or social media, not that you normally looked at those things often anyways.
Even your roommate knocked on your door a few times to check on you, but you never answered it.
Your hands hadn’t stopped trembling from that night and although you had scrubbed every inch of your body, you could still feel the slight warmth of the blood that hit your cheek.
You couldn’t properly sleep for days because of the memory. The officer’s hand grabbing you, the gun pressed to your head, the gunshot and then seeing him choking on his on blood. It all stayed with you. Hell’s Kitchen had plenty of crime, but you had never experienced, nor seen something horrific like that. It’s something you will never really forget.
Your mind lingers to your neighbor. You think about him more than you mean to. About the way he stood there with cold eyes.. just empty.
The memory sends a shiver crawling down your spine.
Maybe he’d killed people before.. maybe that was normal for someone who used to be in the FBI. Maybe whatever assignments he worked made him used to things like that.
You don’t know, but you try not to think too hard about it. Either way, he saved your life. The realization keeps circling back no matter how uncomfortable it makes you.
If he hadn’t been there, it would’ve been you on the floor instead of the officer. He saved you and you don’t even know his name. You never thanked him.
Eventually you push yourself upright for the first time all day and stare at the wall for a long moment.
The apartment is quiet when you step into the kitchen. Your roommate is at work, which helps because you don’t have to hear questions or get strange looks.
Baking always helped you take your mind off things and this way you would be putting it to good use.
Soon the counter is cluttered with ingredients, measuring cups, bowls and other baking tools. You put your headphones on and start mixing the ingredients together.
By the time you pull the cookies out of the oven, you feel a little more eased. You arrange them carefully inside one of the nicer plastic containers you keep for special occasions.
Chocolate chip should be fine, you think. Everyone likes chocolate chip cookies.. at least you think everyone should.
You stand there holding the container for a while after that. Your eyes drift toward the apartment door and your stomach tightens again.
It’s okay now, you remind yourself.. the officer is dead. The thought brings relief so quickly that the feeling is replaced with guilt. Relief shouldn’t feel good when someone died. …Even if he almost killed you, right? Even if you still wake up with the feeling of a gun pressed to your head..
Before you can overthink it too much, you leave your apartment.
You stop outside your neighbor’s door and stare at it before shifting the container nervously in your grip. You raise your hand and knock lightly against the door then wait for a minute, but no one answers.
Maybe he isn’t home.. or maybe he’s sleeping... Or maybe people don’t usually knock on his door and this is strange and you should’ve thought about that before coming here. But you knock again anyways, a little harder this time.
Still no one answers. You considered leaving the container outside the door instead when the lock finally clicks and the door opens.
Up close, he somehow seems taller than he did before.. broader too. He’s also much handsome then you remember, though you never got a clear look at him until now. You notice the deep healed scar on his right cheek, yet it only seems to enhance his appearance.. you snap out of the thought.
Admiring your, much older, neighbor right in front of his face was definitely an interesting way to start off.
His expression is unreadable as he looks down at you.
You suddenly realize you didn’t think about what you were actually going to say and there’s a long pause while he waits. You just stand there holding the container awkwardly while your mind struggles to fill the silence.
“Oh.” You quickly hold the container out toward him. “I made these for you- I mean to thank you,” you correct yourself. “I know it doesn’t compare to you saving my life or anything, I just.. I was going to thank you sooner, I’ve just been.. uh..”
You don’t really want to explain the last week, but your hands were shaking enough to give it away.
There’s another pause before you speak again abruptly, pushing the container slightly closer toward him like that somehow fixes the conversation.
“It’s chocolate chip.”
Dex glanced down at the container. No expression crosses his face at first, but when his eyes lift back to yours he looks more attentive like he’s studying you.
You keep talking before the silence can settle again. “What you did was..” You swallowed. “Well, if you hadn’t been there.. I would be dead, so… thank you for saving me.”
Saving me.
Dex watches you carefully. The way your gaze keeps slipping away from his before cautiously returning.
Then he thinks about the word saving.
That hadn’t really been the intention. The officer was a problem. The AVTF had been getting too close already and if they tracked him to the building, that couldn’t continue. The man needed to die.
You surviving had simply been convenient and lucky for you.. and yet hearing you say it like that makes something pause in the back of his mind.
Saving you.
He finally reaches out and takes the container from your hands. “Well,” he says smoothly, almost dry, “you can’t really go wrong bringing cookies to someone’s door.”
You blinked once as another thought hits you. “Oh- I should’ve introduced myself.”
You tell him your name then you look up at him expectantly and Dex notices immediately. The long pause and stare he gives doesn’t bother you the way it should. You just stand there patiently, eyes resting on him with silent curiosity, waiting for him to tell you his bame.
He also noticed how close you’re standing and he almost takes a step back out of habit, but he doesn’t. Instead, he tilts his head slightly and forces something close to a smile or a smirk onto his face. It’s not unfriendly, but practiced, it’s not like you notice that though.
“I’m Dex.”
You nodded. “I haven’t seen you around much,” you say honestly. “I was going to say hi last week, but you seemed kind of busy.”
The second the words leave your mouth, you regret it.
What were you even saying?
You sound ridiculous.
You’re trying to have normal conversation with the man who literally saved your life and somehow you’re talking about hallway timing.
Dex’s expression shifts subtly. He knew exactly which moment you’re talking about.
“Yeah,” he says after a second. “I’m usually busy with work.”
You nod, relieved he didn’t mention the bandaid left under his door. There was no proof it was from you, but you were probably the only one to see him.
There’s another awkward pause.
“But thanks for this,” he adds, lifting the container.
You stare at him for a few seconds and Dex waits staring back. You don’t move until you blink as realization catches up.
Right. That was probably the end of the conversation.
A small smile finally spreads across your face. “I hope you like them.”
You lift your hand in a small wave before turning and heading back down the hallway toward your apartment. Dex watches you the entire way until the door shuts quietly behind you.
Maybe that could have went better, you thought to yourself while you begin to clean up the kitchen.
Dex remains standing there for a moment longer with the container still in his hands and he looks down at it once more before stepping back into his apartment.
Idk how I feel about this fic but thanks for reading :D
