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Jul 12

003 . PROJECT── BETHELVERSE / DON'T BRING A GUN TO A KNIFE FIGHT.

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NOTES : the sky opens again, this time outside her building, and what comes through is not confused or charming or asking to be pointed home. what comes through is trained, armed, and has wade kinsella against the stairwell wall with a gun under his jaw before she has finished processing that it is happening.

WARNINGS : alternate universe, no power, reverse isekai, reader-insert (no y/n,) character study, angst, stress, anxiety, multifandom, wilson bethel characters, 'soulmates,' age gaps, reverse-harem, everyone is a little ooc, morally grey characters, angst with humour, domestic bliss, identity crisis, emotional damage, forced proximity (technically,) slow burn, jealousy issues, everyone is bad at feelings, set in london, guns, threats of violence, knives, threatening to stab an individual.

CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL ── 18+ ONLY.

rarely was there anyone in the hallway, it was poorly lit with carpets the colour of a wet digestive that smelt like other peoples cooking, boxed in by walls painted that shade of magnolia that landlords chose because it photographed as neutral and aged an odd piss yellow. a single bulb swung slowly back and forth above the three of them, throwing shadows that moved like something restless across the walls and the carpets. a banister ran along the left side, wood painted over so many times it had lost whatever shape it started with, worn smooth in the places hands had gripped it over years of people coming home tired. the fire door at the bottom sat slightly open, letting a cold that embedded itself into the old brick walls.

she had walked this stairwell every night for four years, one hand on the banister, her body doing it without her brain, and she had never once thought about how narrow it was, how close the walls sat, how the single bulb overhead left the corners in a darkness that moved every time it swung, because now it highlighted the identical men’s faces, and the gun that was now held by the stranger.

the gun had caught it, the metal gleaming in short warm flashes every time his hand shifted even slightly, the barrel picking up the light and throwing it back in a way that made it look almost decorative and pretty. it was shinier than she expected, the metal caught the single bulb with a clean bright gleam that had nothing cinematic about it, and it was heavier looking too based on the way the tendons in his forearm ran slightly taut, but not straining, showing his comfort. in the films, the guns looked light as people waved them around like extensions of themselves, casual and effortless, and this gun looked like it would hit the floor hard if he dropped it, like it would leave a mark, like it was made of something real rather than something made up of resin or rubber.

there was a scuffle, the word clone thrown back and forth, accusations of trafficking and government experiments, the other man saying something flat and certain about the government being good for nothing and how he always knew they were out to get him, delivered with the conviction of someone who had some very extreme thoughts on institutional trust, and neither of them listening to the other, or her.

the man was now holding the gun to wade’s throat.

wade didnt dare move with a firearm pressed up beneath his jaw.

she had never seen wade not moving; in the three days since he’d fallen out of the sky he had been in constant low-level motion, fixing things, following her, making eggs, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet at the top of the bus stairs, some restless current running through him at all times, and right now it had gone completely quiet with a muzzle of a gun pressed up under his jaw, the soft skin giving way to the hard metal.

the man held his gun the way wade held a wrench, completely unconscious but utterly competent.

he was towering over wade in the thin light, and the two inches between them should not have felt like as much as they did, but something in the way he carried himself added to it, his shoulders set forward and slightly down with the posture of a man who had never once attempted to make himself smaller for another person's comfort.

she had never seen wade look small before.

he was two inches taller than wade, the shoulders on him were broader, broad in the way that came from just the accumulated physical result of years of work that had required it, and his thighs where he stood planted on the carpet were thick and solid and he was not moving, or shifting his weight nor adjusting, comfortable to stand where he was.

his hair had grey in it, at the temples and through the scruff on his jaw, heavier growth than she might have expected, and the lines at the corners of his eyes were deep, but it only seemed to add to this odd dangerous and rugged appeal that he had. the blood on his lip had dried to a thin dark line along the lower edge of it, caught in the scruff on his chin and jaw, and he had not touched it in the entire time she had been watching him, which was almost as uncomfortable to if he had smeared it into his teeth; the fact he was so use to blood and whatever else on his face that he no longer bothered with it seemed like a quiet testament to the kind of life he lived.

there was dirt on his jacket which she could see from where she was standing, dark smears across the left shoulder and down the front of it. he smelled of cold wind and stale beer, the cold wind smell carrying from outside, from whatever he had come through to get here, and the beer smell seemed to come from his skin, like he had beer thrown onto him rather than drinking it, and he had a scent of something earthy like pine maybe, or soil, something that wasn’t coming from the south london.

she watched it happen, watched him twist and turn the muzzle into the soft skin beneath wade's jaw, demanding answers that neither of them had, his voice low and flat and entirely without the register of a man who expected to be refused, and wade answering in the careful measured drawl of someone buying time.

she had to do something.

so she turned around, creeping backwards and ignoring the wide eyed, confused look wade casted her and pressed her back into her apartment door, feeling it give under her weight and turning straight to the kitchen, the soft glint of the kitchen knife block catching her eye. her hand found the largest knife in the block without looking, the handle cold and heavy in her sweaty palms, and then she walked back into the hallway and came up behind him, pressing the tip of the blade into the small of his back, hard enough that he could feel it and wouldn't be able to arch away from it.

he went still, almost like wild animal reassessing its situation, and she kept the blade where it was, her voice coming out low and even, considerably steadier than the hand producing it had any right to be.

"let him go and i'll take this out of your back. don't, and i'll drive it straight through you and you'll buckle like a little bitch."

a beat of silence.

then he smiled; she could see the edge of it in his profile, the slow satisfied curl of it as the fat of his cheeks adjusted slightly. he dipped his head towards her, turned slightly away from wade, and when he spoke his voice was different to wade's in a way she registered immediately and viscerally. it was a similar american root but stripped of everything wade's voice did with it, all the warmth and the drawl and the long soft vowels that leaned into themselves, replaced by something clipped and flat and dry.

"i can feel your hand shakin', sweetheart."

a ‘sweetheart’ from wade would have been warm and slightly insufferable and she would have told him to stop. ‘sweetheart’ from this man was a flat stone dropped into still water, the same word doing something entirely different in a different mouth, and she pressed the blade harder against his back until the jacket fabric gave way slightly under the pointed tip and still pressed harder.

there was a long and deliberate pause, him dragging out the moment to make them both uncomfortable like it was a special skill of his.

"alright." a single flat syllable said with a dry drawl, almost sounding amused, "i'll let the clone go."

the gun came up as both hands went up, palms opened with the gun loose between two fingers, and wade moved the second there was space, his hand coming out and closing around the gun at the man’s fingers, who surprisingly let it go with no resistance.

"turn around." she said with firm persistence.

he turned around and he was grinning; the slow satisfied grin of a man who was finding the situation considerably more entertaining than anyone else in the hallway. his back was against the wall now, and she stepped forward and pressed the tip of the knife to his stomach and glared at him, her thighs shaking against each other and her hands shaking around the handle with her jaw set in a way she hoped communicated more certainty than the rest of her was currently producing.

he looked down at the knife slowly, with an amused chuff before he looked back up at her with a single raised eyebrow.

“name?” she didn’t ask, just demanded his name as she started to pierce through the t-shirt, a faint grunt escaping his lips as he frowned. apparently he liked this shirt.

“shane maguire. whats it to you little miss?” he glared at her as she continued to press the knife into him, one hand dropping to hold her wrist before the knife was embedded into his abdomen, “careful, don’t damage the merchandise.”

"hey." wade's voice, from somewhere behind her left shoulder, soft and careful, the drawl coming in slower than usual the way it did when he was managing something. "hey, darlin', i need you to listen to me for a second."

she did not look away from shane’s face.

"i'm listenin'," she said, to him, still looking at shane.

"i need you to put the knife down." a pause, wade choosing his words with more care than usual. "i've got his gun. he ain't gonna do anythin', i promise you that. i just need you to back up and let me talk to him."

"he had a gun to your jaw, wade."

"i know he did," wade said. "i was there for that part. i'd just like to find out why before we do somethin' we can't take back. also, we are in the middle of the hallway."

shane’s grin shifted, the amusement in it acquiring something that might, in another face, have been respect, and he looked at her with his whole body, relaxed and loose, not at all threatened by herself or wade.

"smart," he said, flat and dry, the word directed somewhere between her and wade. "you might want to listen to your man."

"nobody asked you." she snapped, with considerably more venom than she knew was possible.

his grin widened, showing sharp canine teeth that almost glinted in the thin light, the bigger predator showing off his own soft belly in something that looked too comfortable to be submission, and it made something greedy curl low in her gut before wade's hand closed gently over hers and eased the knife away so they could have ‘a civil conversation’ in her flat.

and that led them to where they were now.

shane is manspreading on your sofa like he has sat on it every day of his life, taking up considerably more than his fair share of it. his hands together, wrists encased by two fuzzy pink handcuffs that clearly dug into his skin, ankle crossed over his knee, the gun on the coffee table between you where wade put it after a brief and pointed negotiation about where it was going to live for the duration of this conversation. you sat in the chair opposite with your laptop open on your knees and your legs crossed with your eyes moving between the screen and his face, prepared to point a very real and very heavy weapon between his eyes.

wade is talking and he has been for several minutes, the soft unhurried drawl of him filling the flat the way it has filled it for three days, and he is explaining, as clearly and as patiently as he can manage, what happened to him before he fell through the sky and landed on your corridor carpet and did not, as it turns out, have amnesia. you watch shane's face while wade talks. the grin that has been sitting on it since you pressed the knife into his stomach is doing something, slowly, incrementally, in response to wade's account of events, the satisfaction draining out of it degree by degree, replaced by something that looks almost like recognition, and the losing of the grin is making you happier than you feel you can reasonably justify.

you look back at your laptop before either of them catch you grinning like a school girl.

you go straight to chrome and start to look through wilson bethel’s movies and shows and then there he is.

SHANE MAGUIRE. UNTAMED, 2025

behind the laptop screen wade is saying something about bluebell, the sky, the rammer jammer on a thursday night, the drawl of him unhurried and careful, laying it out for shane the way he laid it out for you three days ago except without the amnesia theory complicating the middle of it. of which you’ll have to apologise for later.

you go back to the search results.

‘shane maguire is a key character in the netflix limited series untamed, portrayed by actor wilson bethel. he is introduced as a rugged, solitary park wildlife management officer with a background as an army ranger: he becomes a primary suspect in the death of "jane doe" due to his interactions with her before her death. his tense, underlying history with federal park agent kyle turner ultimately boils over into a brutal shootout between the two. it is ultimately revealed that shane was hired by turner's wife, jill, to secretly murder a man named sean sanderson.’

you read it twice, and then again, and once more. because there is no dead man on her couch, no bullet wounds or anything fatal on him at all (what a shame,) no shift from side to side, no groans or grunts from pain to be heard.

the sky might have saved his life.

you look up at shane over the top of the laptop screen, and then you look back down at the screen, and then back up at him and find you've been caught as the smugness on his face shifts slightly.

"something wrong there sweetheart?" he says, flat and dry.

"stop calling me that." you say as you go back to his google page and carry on your research.

wade and shane are both looking at you. wade with the expression of someone trying very hard not to ask, and shane with the flat assessment that he appears to apply to everything, his ankle still crossed over his knee, and the smugness sitting on his face at a slightly elevated level from its usual resting state, as though he has drawn a conclusion that he finds privately satisfying.

you ignore them both.

you open up a google document, and start a table with two columns of good vs evil. which is probably too black and white for space and time ripping apart but you found that you didn’t care because space and time had ripped apart.

you start typing.

behind the screen wade says something low and careful in that soft drawl of his and you hear shane respond, clipped and flat, the two of them still doing the careful wary thing, and you look up briefly because the quality of wade's voice has changed slightly, less careful now, something underneath it that sounds like the beginning of genuine irritation rather than managed patience, and wade is looking at shane with an expression you have not seen on him before, something that has run out of the diplomatic version of itself and is getting ready to say so.

"you hired yourself out," wade says, the drawl slower than usual, each word placed with deliberate weight. "to kill a man."

"i did what i was paid to do," shane says, like its completely understandable.

"that's not somethin' a person says like it's a reasonable answer."

"i'm not asking for your opinion on it."

"well you're sittin' on her sofa in her flat with your gun on her coffee table so i think you're gonna get it where you like it or not."

shane looks at him with the flat unhurried assessment that appears to be his only setting, then at you, then back at wade, and then he slaps both hands on his knees with the decisive energy of a man who has reached a conclusion and is done deliberating.

"right," he says, standing, the full height of him reasserting itself in the room. "so that crazy bitch just tried to stab me—"

"i did stab you," you say. "a little."

"—and now you want me to stand here and believe i've been teleported out of the continent." he looks at wade with the flat assessment, waiting for something that resembles a reasonable explanation.

"technically you were already out of the continent," wade says, "yosemite's in—"

"i know where yosemite is," shane snaps. "i live there. i live there, which is the point, which is where i should currently be, not in–" he gestures at the window, at the orange-lit london skyline, at the whole situation. "whatever this is. with you." he points at wade. "who has my face." his gaze snaps to yours, "and you, who pulled a knife on me!"

"you pulled a gun first!" you say, ignoring what a childish argument it was.

"that's different."

"how is that different?"

"because," shane says, with the flat patience of a man explaining something he considers self evident, "i didn't know what you were."

"we're people," wade says, cocky and bright, arms crossing with the ease of a sassy man, "that's generally the first assumption."

"not where i'm from."

"yosemite," wade says, tilting his head, the drawl stretching the word out slightly, "it's a national park. there are families there. with children."

"and bears," shane says, without inflection, like this is a point he considers equally relevant, "and people who don't belong in places they've ended up in." he looks at wade with the meaning of that sitting very clearly in the sentence. "i saw your face and i made a call."

"you made a call…" wade repeats, slowly, his arms dropping, something flattening in his voice at the ridiculousness of the argument.

"yeah."

"to put a gun under my jaw?"

"it worked out." shane shrugs with the complete unbothered delivery of a man who genuinely believes this.

"it did not work out!" wade says, and he looks at you with the expression of a man inviting corroboration, before pointing in your direction, voice all high and accusatory, "she stabbed you."

"a little." you repeat from behind the laptop, without looking up.

"she stabbed you a little!" wade confirms, gesturing at you with open hands, presenting the evidence before he crossed his arms.

"you live alone." you repeat as you read off of his wiki.

he looks at you, the assessment shifting slightly.

"in yosemite," you say, looking at the screen. "no neighbours. no city. just the wilderness and whatever comes through it."

something moves in his face, barely, just a degree of recalibration around the fact that you know something about him he has not told you.

"yeah," he says, and the carefulness in it is new, eyes flickering from the laptop to your face and then his face drops into an annoyed expression as he realises you are very clearly reading all of this information on him.

"so now you're in a city," you say, bringing your fingers up to count off on them, "eight million people, buses, sirens, different accents, different gun laws." you pause, looking at him over the top of the laptop screen. "sounds like the old dog needs to learn new tricks."

something works behind the flat of his eyes for a long moment, and then the corner of his mouth moves, slow and deliberate, the amusement finding its way into the grin like it has decided to allow itself.

"be careful with me sweetheart, unlike your boyfriend here i dont find your attitude so amusing.”

"he's not my boyfriend," you say, without looking up from the laptop.

"sure." shane says with dry amusement, eyes rolling back so far you wished they stayed like that.

"and i'll be as careful as i like," you say, closing the laptop slightly so you can look at him properly, "given that you are currently in my flat, in my city, with no passport, no documentation, no money, no contacts, and genuinely no idea how a bus pass works." you tilt your head. "you're a very capable man in a forest, shane. this isn't a forest."

something tightens in his jaw.

"i'll figure it out," his gaze drops from you and wade, finding the right corner of your flat fascinating.

"with what?" you say. "you going to track your way to the nearest tesco? read the weather patterns to find the tube?" you gesture at the window, at the orange-lit london skyline doing its indifferent thing.

wade makes a sound from the chair that is very carefully not a laugh and does not fool anyone.

shane’s head snaps at the noise, glaring venom through his eyes at wade.

wade pointedly doesnt meet his eyes.

"you need us," you say, simply, looking back at the laptop, "which i appreciate is deeply unpleasant information for a man who has spent however long living alone in a national park by choice, but there it is." you open the laptop again. "so you can either be difficult about it, which you are clearly very talented at, or you can accept that for the foreseeable future the two people you are most likely to need are two bartenders."

the room is quiet.

"the handcuffs are a bit much," shane says, eventually, huffing as he glares at the fluffy, pink handcuffs that bite into his wrist, giving you and wade a pointed look.

"i’m sure you’ve used a pair before.” you huff.

he looks back at the handcuffs, flexing his wrists against the material of them with the disgust of someone who has worn actual restraints before and doesn’t like the fluff against his skin, or the bright pink.

he almost looks insulted.

"take them off," he says.

"no." you say, to the laptop.

"they're cutting into my wrists."

"they're fluffy."

"they're pink," he says, like this is a separate and more serious charge entirely.

"i'm aware of the colour."

"take them off."

"i've said no twice already."

"take them off." he says again, the same flat insistence with the complete absence of any acknowledgement that you have already answered it twice, the stubbornness of a man who thinks annoying you into complaisance will work.

wade plops himself back down on the sofa and swings an arm over his eyes.

"they're genuinely not that tight."

"they're pink," he says again.

"would you prefer purple?"

"i would prefer none."

"i know."

"then take them off."

"you’re a brat."

"take. them. off."

"oh my god.." wade says quietly, to no one.

"take them—"

"FINE!" you shout, huffing as you slam the laptop with more force than strictly necessary. you cross the room and stand between his thighs as you work the handcuffs free, giving him a pointedly look the second they are off of him. he rolls his wrists once when they come loose, a single clinical rotation, just assessing. you straighten up and step back from him, just about to sit back down on your chair when his hand moves.

not to his jacket, but to his boots.

the glint of silver catches the fairy lights for half a second and your body kicks into flight or fight. you take three steps across the living room, your hand closing around the gun on the coffee table, and you bring both hands up, pointing at him the way you had seen it done, ignoring the weight pulling immediately at your wrists and your biceps.

but shane was quicker.

of course he was quicker, the gun from his boot already levelled at your chest with the same complete unconscious competence as the hallway, and the two of you stood in the amber light of the fairy lights with a gun pointed in each direction and wade somewhere behind you had gone very still and very quiet.

shane looked down at his own gun now pointed back at him, and something moved across his face, his expression becoming one of a man trying very hard not to find something funny.

"you gonna shoot me, sweetheart?" he said, the gun in his hand tilting slightly toward the one trembling in yours.

you say nothing and instead reach down with your thumb and click the safety off, the small hard sound of it cutting through the quiet of the room, and you take three steps forward until the muzzle is pressed flat against his sternum, his own pressed flat against yours.

you’re close enough now to feel the heat coming off him and smell the pine, and the stale beer, you wrinkle your nose at him and his eye twitches in annoyance.

"you're not going to shoot me." his voice comes out flat and low, almost intimate as his head dips forward slightly.

"say that again," you say, pressing the gun harder into his chest, "and find out."

something shifts in his jaw and his gun presses back into yours, putting more pressure on your skin, and starting to twirl the muzzle; a grin lifting his lips when you wince.

"you're a bartender." the amount of judgment that he’s managed to put into one sentence is enough for you to kick at his knees, but all you manage to get out of him is a grunt.

"and you're in my flat with your gun pointed at you, so i'd think very carefully about finishing that sentence."

"you've never fired a gun in your life." he huffs, finishing his sentence anyway against your warnings.

"i stabbed you earlier." you say.

"a little," his town is mocking as he squints his eyes before he huffs and rolls his eyes, seemingly annoyed that he’s now included himself in yours and wade’s humour. "lower the gun, sweetness."

"you lower yours."

"i will put you on the floor," he says, quiet and very certain, the voice of a man who has done exactly that to people considerably more equipped for it than you and is not making an empty threat.

"you won't." you say, equally quiet, equally certain.

the gun is so heavy your wrists are burning but you do not move them an inch.

"you're insane." he sounds almost breathless as he shakes his head.

"you broke into my building?”

"i didn't break in," he says, the gun pressing harder, "i was trying to find somewhere that wasn't—"

"i don't care," you say, pressing back just as hard, "you pulled a gun on my– wade! you have multiple guns on your person, you called me sweetheart four times, and you are currently pressing a loaded weapon into my chest in my own living room, so whatever you were about to say about your reasons, i genuinely, deeply, do not care."

his nostrils flare.

your hands are shaking and you will not let him see it.

"wade." he says, not looking away from you.

"yeah?" wade says, from somewhere behind you, very carefully, not daring to move an inch incase one of you pulls a gun on him, again.

"is she always like this?"

a pause.

"not with me." wade sounds almost wistful as he speaks, a small smile echoed in his speech.

something crosses shane's face, fast and complicated, and then his jaw sets again and the gun stays exactly where it is and so does yours.

"lower. the. gun." you say again, each word separate and deliberate.

"together?"

"together."

neither of you moves.

"i'm serious." you push the gun further into his breast bone to emphasise your point.

"so am i," his voice is rough but flat as he glares into your eyes, annoyed that he has to restrain a grunt.

you stare at shane and shane stares back at you, both of you too stubborn to lower the guns so they stay exactly where they are with the fairy lights catching off of the barrels and throwing small warm flashes across both your faces.

"three."

"two," you say.

"one," you say together, and you both lower them at the same time, and you both step back and away from each other.

"still got two." shane says, and sits back down on the sofa like nothing happened.

"take the guns." you say, turning away from shane and holding yours out to wade without looking at either of them, "or else i might shoot him in his sleep."

wade takes it from you with the careful hands of someone handling something he would very much like to not go off, and then looks at shane, and after a beat that is precisely long enough to make clear this isnt a choice. shane holds his out too, and wade takes that one as well, and stands there with a gun in each hand looking between the two of you with a very uncomfortable expression.

you turn and walk into the kitchen.

the bags from earlier are where wade had dropped them just inside the door, the shopping from what felt like a different day entirely, and you start unpacking them, fast and without deliberation, each item finding its place, bread in the bin, eggs in the fridge, butter next to them, the soup in the cupboard with the rest of the tins.

the kitchen is quiet.

from the living room wade says something low and shane says something back, clipped and flat, and then it goes quiet again.

you decide the americans need a cup of tea and stick the kettle on, pulling three mugs from the cupboard, and you put your own sugars in yours and wade's without thinking about it, the muscle memory of three days of making wade tea sitting in your hands before your brain has caught up with the fact that you are doing it, and then you look at the third mug for a moment.

black, you decide. the wilderness man drank black tea, or he was about to, because that was what he was getting and he could take it up with someone who had the energy to care about it, which was not you.

you put the teabags in and waited for the kettle.

from the living room there was another low exchange, wade's drawl and shane's flat clip, and then the specific quality of silence that had started to mean the two of them had reached a temporary ceasefire and were sitting in it without knowing what to do next.

you poured the water.

you are stirring the last mug when wade appears in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the frame with the wood eating into his shoulder, his hip cocked and a small smile on his face.

"me and him'll take the living room tonight," he says, nodding towards shane where he sat in the living room.

"if that's what you want," you don’t look up as you speak, watching as the spoon catches the teabags and twirls it in the water.

"it's what makes sense," he sighs as he crosses the kitchen, using the doorway to push himself off of it as he reaches past you to pick up his mug from the counter and moves it by the sink.

then he steps back into you, the solid warmth of his chest presses against your back and both his arms come down to rest on the counter either side of you, caging you gently against the cabinets. he dips his head down until his nose brushes the outside of your ear, the warmth of his breath hitting the side of your neck.

goosebumps move up your arms immediately, breaking out across your skin fast enough that you are grateful he cannot see your face.

you stare at the twp mugs on the counter in front of you and you are acutely, overwhelmingly aware of every point of contact between you; his forearms bracketing yours on the counter, the broad solid warmth of his chest flush against your back, the heat of him coming through your clothes in slow steady waves, the specific proximity of his mouth to your ear, close enough that you can feel every warm exhale against your skin.

"i'll watch him the whole night," his voice at this distance is something different from the version of it you have been listening to for three days, the drawl stripped of all the grin and the performance, just the low quiet core of it settling at the side of your neck, "he's not going anywhere near your room and he's not leaving this flat. you've got my word on that."

you swallow.

"okay," you say, and your voice comes out steady, which under the current circumstances is the single greatest achievement of your entire week.

his chest stays right against your back with his breath warm against your neck as his fingers start to dance across the back of your hands, tracing the veins and bones and making shivers erupt from your hands and racing up the back of your neck and across your shoulders and down your spine.

then he moves.

his head drops, just slightly, and his mouth finds the top of your cheekbone, his nose tracing your temple, his skin warm and his touches deliberate and unhurried, softly pressing his lips into the skin of your cheek and every nerve ending you have goes completely insane about it. your eyes close for one traitorous second, relaxing into his chest because wade has been here for three days; hes helpful, kind, warm, charming, funny and competent, and he’s the best thing you have in this shitty apartment.

then all of a sudden you have a wave of ‘oh fuck,’ rush over you and spin around to slap him, tell him off, do something–

but he’s already danced off with a grin over his lips, winking when he catches your eye and the cold air of the kitchen rushes in to replace it and you feel the absence of him the way you felt the arrival of him, immediately and all at once, and he picks up his mug and shane's from the counter and he walks back into the living room without looking back.

you stand at the kitchen counter, both hands gripping onto the edge with goosebumps still moving across your skin. the ghost of his mouth still sitting warm on your cheek and you breathe in and you you breathe out.

you pick up your tea and you turn around to go to your room and you stop.

shane is watching you from the sofa.

one eyebrow raised, mug held loosely in both hands. the expression of a man who saw every second and finds it fascinating and will probably say something about it at the earliest possible opportunity and there is absolutely nothing you can do to prevent that.

you meet his eyes and glare at him.

he raises the eyebrow higher, slow and deliberate, the corner of his mouth pulling into the beginning of something insufferable.

you take a breath.

"right," you say, pulling yourself back into the room, back into the situation, back into the version of yourself that is managing things rather than standing in a kitchen being undone by a man's mouth on her cheek. "kitchen. both of you."

wade looks at you with the grin already starting. "both of us?"

"both of you," you say, with a flat authority and then point to the kitchen, "make dinner. everything’s been put away, wade knows where everything is." you look at shane. "you can chop things."

"i'm not chopping things.” shane says, shaking his head with an amused huff.

"you absolutely are," you say. "you need something to do with your hands that isn't a firearm and i need you on the other side of that wall, so." you gesture at the kitchen doorway with the flat authority of a woman who has made a decision and is not revisiting it. "in you go."

shane looks at you for a long moment with the flat assessment.

"i don't cook, honey." tutting like it was beneath him not to eat out of a damn can over a fire in the woods.

"wade does," you say with a tight little smile. "you can supervise!"

"i don't supervise either."

"then stand there and be quiet, i genuinely don't care, i just need you in a different room." you pick up the laptop. "you are like a dog that hasn't been socialised and wade is going to socialise you whether he wants to or not, and i am going to sit here and do something useful, so please," you look at him with the exhausted weight of the evening behind it, "go and be someone else's problem for twenty minutes."

something moves across shane's face, the assessment recalibrating, and then he stands, unhurried, with the energy of a man complying entirely on his own terms, and he looks at wade.

wade looks back at him with a flat expression of annoyance, huffing at the responsibility of babysitting a man who is older, bigger, stronger and annoying as fuck.

"c'mon then," wade says, with the resigned good humour of someone who has accepted the situation and is going to make the best of it, and he heads for the kitchen, and after a beat that is precisely long enough to make clear he is doing it because he wants to and not because anyone told him to, shane follows.

you hear the cupboard open. you hear wade say something low and practical about what is in the fridge. you hear shane make a sound of profound annoyance in response.

you sit on the sofa, pull the laptop open, and go back to the filmography.

DOC HOLLIDAY. WYATT EARP'S REVENGE, 2012

you pull up his wiki and comb through it, looking more any evil deeds that you might be saddled with if he shows up at your front door. doc holliday is a dentist, and he is dying of tuberculosis, late stage, the kind of dying that in 1878 was simply what happened to you and could not be helped, and underneath both of those things he is a gunslinger who has killed people, several people, with the same hands that pulled teeth. he is from 1878 which is not a learning curve it is a completely different civilisation. because how do you teach a man that women have rights and no one lives in the wild west anymore?

you put him in the good column, considering the time and his profession, because he wasnt a hired gun like shane maguire. you leave him there with a little add on that says: buy antibiotics

and then moving onto the next.

RILEY DETAMORE. MATCH ME IF YOU CAN, 2023

a tech founder of a dating app in a romantic comedy. he is younger than both of the men sat in your living room, and based off the photos that come up, hes young and charming, the kind of person who built something from nothing and is now watching it come apart because of something he could not control. there is no murder, no guns, no psychological profile requiring its own subsection, just a man whose business is threatened and is trying to fix it.

you put him in good.

and you leave him there, because the worst thing the wiki has to say about riley detamore is that he made a dating app and someone wrote a bad blog about it, which is, relative to everything else on this list, practically saintly.

BENJAMIN ‘DEX’ POINDEXTER. DAREDEVIL, 2015

the first thing that comes up is bullseye.

bullseye, the wiki explains, with the cheerful thoroughness of a page that does not know it is being read by someone with a vested interest in the answer, is the name associated with benjamin poindexter, psychopathic fbi agent turned assassin, a man with a neurological condition that gives him perfect aim, who can turn any object into a lethal weapon, who is recruited and psychologically manipulated by wilson fisk, who kills multiple people, who wears the daredevil suit, who ends the series in surgery having his spine reinforced with a metal alloy to restore his mobility after being nearly killed.

spine reinforced with metal alloy.

you find a image of him and you look at it for longer than is strictly necessary.

he is, the first thing you notice, not what you expected a psychopath to look like. you had a picture in your head, someone rougher, maybe a bruise here and there, scars, teeth missing without a tongue. but the face that arrives is not that. he is blond, going slightly grey at the edges in a way that has not yet committed to itself, and broad across the shoulders in the way that has become familiar to you over the course of this evening, and his jaw is set with a tension that looks like it has been there for a long time, the kind of tension that stops being something you notice you are carrying and starts being simply the way your face sits.

but he is pretty like wade, still soft and handsome. you look at wade for a moment, and try to imagine him more hardened by the world, a bit rougher, less empathetic, more desperate, and feel a gut wrenching grief before you look away and back down to the wiki.

veteran, fbi, remarkable accuracy, mentally ill, needing structure and rules to maintain his sanity, who had built a functional life around the scaffolding of institution and routine and one woman's counselling sessions, and then the woman died. eileen mercer died and he stalked a coworker and then wilson fisk found him.

you read the rest of it, the convoy, the manipulation, the suit, the killing; a man manipulated into becoming someone's weapon and then discarded by the person who made him one, left on a hotel floor at a wedding, and you sit there for a moment with the weight of the whole arc of it, from structure and rules to maintain his sanity to having his spine reinforced with metal alloy.

you find a reddit thread without meaning to, by following one link too many, and the comments are clearly what happens when a character had gotten under enough people's skin that they could not stop talking about him.

the comments call him fbi dex, a nickname given from the fact he kept his job until the end of the show, a way to differentiate 2015 daredevil and 2025, born again daredevil.

you look at his face in the photograph again, at the jaw and the eyes and the pretty of him, still soft in the bone structure the way wade was soft, the same face worn into something tighter, more controlled, the damage sitting in him differently to the way it sat in shane, shane's damage being something he had metabolised and moved on from, and this being something that had not been metabolised, that was still very much present, still being managed, still requiring the structure and the rules and the careful calibration of a man who knew what happened when the scaffolding came down.

you type his name above the columns and then move on to daredevil: born again.

BENJAMIN ‘DEX’ POINDEXTER. DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN, 2025

you open the born again wiki.

he is bigger than the fbi version, that is the first thing, broader through the chest and the shoulders in a way that five years and an experimental spinal surgery involving a cogmium framework apparently produced, and the face is the same face but worn differently again, a scar across his cheek that the fbi version does not have, and he is in all dark blues and blacks, combat trousers, gun straps across his chest, the presentation of a man who has stopped pretending to be anything other than what he is, and there is something almost restful about that, the absence of the fbi suit, the institutional costume gone, just the thing underneath it dressed accordingly.

you read the wiki.

you read it slowly, the whole thing, the surgery, the cogmium spine, the institution, bullseye, acquitted, foggy nelson, rikers, fisk becoming mayor, the escape, the ball, hiding, the cia, and underneath all of it the thread of someone trying, in the specific way of a person who has very few options left, to balance the scales, to find something that looks like redemption even if it does not feel like it.

then you think about what episode he might come from. because the thing about the sky is that it just opens, and whatever it pulls through it pulls through from wherever it happens to be in the story at that moment. shane arrived with blood on his lip and a gun at his back and wade arrived mid-conversation in someone else's kitchen, and neither of them had any say in the timing of it.

what if it pulls this version through mid-surgery?

the cogmium framework, the broken spine, the surgery that the wiki describes as experimental, and you think about what mid-surgery looked like, about what arrived on your corridor carpet in that scenario, back ripped open, parts of his spine missing, under anaesthesia, probably very hurt and vulnerable, broken in ways you cant put back together with nail glue. you cant have a man with his spinal cavity open; because then you’d have to take him to the hopsital, you’d have to answer questions, his face would be all over the news and wilson bethel would have to answer some very difficult questions.

then your chest does something that is not quite a panic attack but is heading in that direction, and you look around the flat, the living room, the kitchen doorway, and your eyes go to the knife block, which seems to be a repeated theme tonight, except this time they do not stop there.

any object.

the wiki said any object, both wikis, fbi and born again, any object becomes a lethal weapon with hi perfect aim. and you start to look around your flat with new eyes because the problem isnt just the knife block, the problem is everything; like the pen on the coffee table and the television remote and the coasters and the mug on the counter and the keys on the hook by the door and the fork that wade left on the draining board this morning and the straws in the glass on the windowsill and the actual physical contents of your flat which is, you are realising, essentially an arsenal if the person using it has perfect aim and no regard for the conventional definition of a weapon.

you close the laptop.

you open it again.

you close it again.

you put the laptop down on the cushion beside you and you look at the ceiling for a moment. wade had came through mid-conversation in a kitchen, shane had come through mid-crisis with blood already on his face. neither of them had any say in the timing and neither, by extension, will anyone else.

which means the version of benjamin poindexter who turns up at your address could be post-surgery, post-rikers, post-any number of things on that wiki, or he could be mid-surgery, which is a significantly more complicated situation than a man in a flannel shirt asking for bluebell or the rammer jammer.

you look around the flat.

you get up and then pick up the pen and put it in your bedroom underneath the wardrobe.

you move the keys into your bedroom.

you put the straws under the sink in your bathroom.

then you get up and you walk to the kitchen doorway.

wade is at the hob, actually cooking while shane is leaning against the counter with his arms crossed watching wade with the expression of a man who has been told to supervise and is doing it with the bare minimum of engagement. they both look up when you appear in the doorway.

"Shane?” you lean against the doorway, raising an eyebrow at him.

he raises his own at her, a grunt escaping him.

"hypothetically," you say, "if a man turned up here who was roughly your size, possibly broader, with a metal reinforced spine and perfect aim with any object in a room, could you get him into a dark room and keep him there?"

shane looks at you for a moment.

"yeah," he says, like this is a completely normal question.

"good," you say, turning to leave when wade’s voice stops you.

"what–" wade questions, from the hob, turning around with the spatula still in his hand. "what does that mean?! why does she need someone put in a dark room– who are we putting in a dark room?"

"nobody yet." you say, shrugging.

"yet?" wade repeats.

"potentially nobody ever," you say, "i'm just doing risk management."

"risk management.." wade says, in the tone of a man who has learned over the last three days that when you say things like risk management in that specific voice it means something significantly more alarming than the words suggest. "risk management for who exactly?"

"someone who might show up." you say.

“sweetheart.."

you look at shane. shane looks back at you with the flat assessment and something in it that is almost, almost, the beginning of professional interest.

"someone with perfect aim," you say. "with any object."

wade puts the spatula down on the counter. "any object?"

"any object."

wade looks at you, the spatula in his hand, the pan on the stove, the cutlery cupboard, the knife block and then looks back at you.

"hide the straws.." he says, voice solemn and serious.

"already done!" you nod, and you go back to the sofa and flick open the laptop.

EVAN STAFFORD. GENERATION KILL, 2008.

corporal, bravo company, first recon marines, iraq, 2003. you read through it all, pulling out the relevant details, and find that evan stafford is closer to your age than anyone else, hes young in the way that it sits badly next to the things that the wiki is describing; a marine in the invasion. you read about the war the way the wiki describes it, through the lens of men who were inside it, who had trained for something and been handed something different, who watched the decisions being made above them and had to keep moving anyway.

he killed people, he was a man who killed people because a government sent him somewhere and told him to but, there is a difference between a man who took money to put a bullet in someone specific, and a soldier. you decide that the difference matters, not because one is clean and the other is not, but because it tells you something about the architecture of a person, about what they are capable of choosing versus what they were put in the position of doing.

you stare at the wiki for a moment.

then you scroll back up to the top and notice a pattern in all of the characters that wilson bethel plays; the number of men on this list who have at some point been in the military or law enforcement or some combination of the two is significant, and you sit with that for a second.

"WADE!" you call towards the kitchen.

"YEAH?" he calls back, over the sound of something sizzling, far too loud for both yours and shane’s ears based on his little: “shut the fuck up!”

"were you in the military at any point, in any capacity?"

a pause.

"no, never got to" he calls back, something changing in his voice, "why?"

"wilson bethel plays a lot of soldiers," you say, to the living room, to nobody, to the general concept of your own life. "and assassins, and marines.” you look at the list.

there was no response from the kitchen.

"i'm just saying," you say, "that for a man with one face he has an extraordinary relationship with state sanctioned violence and i find that personally exhausting."

"she does this," wade says, pretending to talk quietly to shane from the kitchen,"she just says things to the room."

"i can hear you.”

"sorry sweetheart!” he calls back, a grin clearly on his face and all you can do is sigh and ignore him.

you look back at the laptop and you look at evan stafford's wiki and decide he’s good enough.

you put him there and you move on, because you are against the war, have always been against the war, every war, and evan stafford did not choose iraq any more than wade chose your corridor carpet, and the flat moral clarity of the good and evil columns has never been less useful than it is right now.

onto the next.

MARK CALLAN. ALL RISE, 2019.

deputy district attorney in los angeles. you skim the wiki with the weary efficiency of someone who has been doing this for long enough that the categories have become automatic, and mark callan is, by the standards of this list, almost aggressively uncomplicated.

earnest about the law, genuinely invested in whether the system works rather than just whether he wins, no weapons, no murders, no spine surgery, no hired killings, no psychological profiles, no perfect aim with household objects.

you look at the good column and you feel something in your chest unclench by approximately one degree.

you put him there immediately.

you look at the full document, the good column and the evil column and the names above the columns. you look around your one bedroom flat with the shitty sofa, the kitchen where two grown ass men barely squeeze in and imagine five more, ten more and on, and on, and on.

you’re going to need a bigger flat.

for now you’ll wait for tea and hope to god no more come in.

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