A/N: @snowwythegloww you see that word count? I had more time to write. And so, I give you all this gift. Buckle the fuck up.
Her bare feet meet the cold floor.
Saliva is thick in her mouth; she'd been too anxious to remember to drink water.
Her eyes are locked on the basement door. It stares back as if it would spontaneously open to reveal a blinding light or spill a river of blood.
She could see it already; red bursting through and filling the room like a Stephen King book until she drowned in it. The thought is so vivid it startles her.
She's gotta leave before she loses the rest of her marbles.
The first steps are small, tentative. Her breathing goes shallow, anticipation building up as she reaches for the handle and slowly twists it open. The light of her room pours out to reveal concrete walls and metal stairs, straight and steep.
At the top, a steel door.
It throws her off. It doesn't look like something the average house would construct and, by the length, she was far deeper in the ground than she imagined.
She climbs the steps quietly, not wanting to test her luck. The steel door is, thankfully, also unlocked. It opens into a long hallway with rust-stained walls.
The contrast between the room she'd been in and the rest of the place was... jarring.
Her room had always been clean and comfortable, Dex made sure of that. Even if she had a hard time admitting it.
But this is the opposite.
Faint caged lights buzz overhead, a few flickering occasionally. Exposed pipes line the walls, cables and extension cords run through the corners of the hallway, narrowing the passageway. Somewhere in the distance, a generator rumbles steadily.
Stenciled onto the wall, in faded paint:
SUBLEVEL 8
She can feel her heart beat in her throat. She thought she was locked in the basement of a house.
Instead, she's deep inside a bunker.
It looks like it was abandoned before being reclaimed. The air is stale, lacking the filtered cleaniless of her room. The floors have a thick layer of dust, only broken by prominent bootprints.
She swallows her fear, a foot going forward and landing on the bootprint right in front of her. She shivers at the mental image of Dex walking down this path, bringing her unconscious body down to the bowels of the earth.
She moves cautiously down the hallway. The corridor stretches farther than expected, steel doors lined on either side identical to the one that led to her room. She struggles not to flinch whenever a light above suddenly flickers.
Then, she spots it.
A door on the left is labeled:
STAIRWELL D - EMERGENCY EXIT
She grabs the handle and slips inside without a second thought.
SUBLEVEL 7
The stairwell rises in sharp square turns. The fluorescent lights are fainter here.
SUBLEVEL 6
She climbs quicker than she should, taking two steps at a time.
SUBLEVEL 5
A sound from above reaches her ears, making her halt to a stop. It's warped from the distance, traveling through concrete.
She pauses to focus and...
Screaming.
It's screaming.
She stares upwards before continuing, slower now.
SUBLEVEL 4
The screams come in waves. The sound gets closer the more she climbs.
SUBLEVEL 3
Someone is being tortured.
SUBLEVEL 2
She rounds a corner and stops dead in her tracks, her stomach dropping.
The rest of the stairwell is sealed off, blocked by dozens and dozens of stacked chairs, forming a dense barricade she can't possibly pass through.
No. No, please, not this.
She has to find another exit.
Once she leaves the stairwell and steps out onto Sublevel 2, the screaming doesn't sound all that distant anymore. The agonizing shrieks come from the end of the hallway, stopping only to plead desperately.
Amidst it all, Dex's voice.
"I'm getting tired, you know?" She can hear his casual tone. "All this begging. But if you don't actually say anything, my client has no use for you."
She freezes, pressure building sharply in her head from the mental effort it takes to stay in control and not make any noise or breathe too loud.
There has to be another exit.
Something. Anything.
She keeps an eye on the end of the hall, where the voices are coming from, as she moves from door to door, testing handles as silently as possible.
Locked
Locked
Locked
Then, one gives.
Hope bloms in her chest for a second, before it draines just as quick.
A kitchen. With no exit whatsoever.
It's unnervingly pristine. Everything is organized and symmetrical. Stainless steel counters shine, no smear or stain in sight. The lights in here don't flicker, the floor is impeccable. The air smells of cleaning products; not just bleach but industrial grade cleaners that Dex probably used to get rid of any hint of rust or mold.
It also smells like her favorite food, which he makes for her quite often. She doesn't let herself imagine him cooking in here.
"Give me what I need and it'll be over." She hears before more screaming erupts
She scans the kitchen before finding a large cooking knife sitting on a drying rack.
The handle is cold, a sharp contrast to how hot her adrenaline-fueled body is. The weight is distantly familiar, and it feels perfect after all these months.
She squeezes the handle like it could melt and merge with her skin, leaving her defenseless never again.
She slips back into the grimy hallway, trying a few more doors but with no success, all of them locked. The last room on the right is open, light and ragged cries spilling out of it.
With no other choice, she approaches.
"You're gonna break, just like everyone else does." Dex sounds like he's getting tired of playing with a toy.
She peeks from the corner.
There's a blue tactical suit; Dex is standing with his back turned, looking down at a man tied to a chair. Whoever the captive is, he's a mess of blood and swollen flesh.
Beyond the two, on the other side of the room, a labeled door:
STAIRWELL A - EMERGENCY EXIT
There's no fucking way anyone is keeping her from reaching that exit.
She adjusts her grip on the knife, entering the room with feline caution.
His back is an easy target.
The distance between them shrinks with each step.
He doesn't turn, hasn't noticed yet.
"Tell me what I need to know." Dex is closer than ever.
The knife raises in the air.
The captive's eyes shift away from Dex, looking over his shoulder in sudden alarm.
Before the knife can fall, Dex catches her forearm.
His eyes narrow behind the mask before shoving her. She stumbles back but stays on her feet, knife still in hand.
She lets out a shuddering breath; silence doesn't matter anymore.
For a second, he says nothing.
His chest rises once. Twice. His breathing gets heavier with each inhale, rage settling in. When he finally speaks, ever word sounds restrained by force.
"... you have impeccable timing." He rips his mask off, his expression incredulous. "You were being good. You're always so good. What happened? What THE FUCK HAPPENED!?!"
She flinches but holds her ground, refusing to cower. She gives no answer, simply stares him down.
His breathing gets uneven, hands coming up to his face like he's trying to steady himself.
"It wasn't supposed to happen like this." He clutches his head for a bit, as if getting hit with an onslaught of thoughts.
Her eyes flicker to the bound man, then the exit. She calculates, tracks the distance; There's no easy way to get out of this.
"Dex... you can let me leave." She tries. "Just let me go."
He stills so suddenly it's unnatural. Then, slowly, his back straightens. His eyes find hers again.
He's rarely been anything other than soft towards her. All that familiar warmth disappears. The anger too.
"Are you going to fight for it?" His voice is strangelt calm, monotone, making her tense. It's like he decided to stop dressing in human masks.
But she's done playing his game.
"I'm not going back down there." She growls, jaw clenching.
"We both know you're outmatched." He taunts. "But I wonder if you'll fight back for once."
"You gonna kill me if I do?" Her head tilts slightly to the side, voice turning cold, summoning something she's suppressed for years.
His response is to reach for his tactical belt, taking one of his throwing blades into hand. Light shines against the metal.
Before, fighting him would've been irrational.
Now, he's leaves her no other choice.
And to her horror, the ultimatum excites her.
"Good." She smiles faintly, though it doesn't reach her eyes. "I've been waiting."
"I know. Thank you for being honest." He lunges before the last word fully leaves his mouth.
His speed is almost inhuman.
He tackles her to the ground and it feels like getting hit by a bus. Her head smacks back onto the concrete floor as they fall to the ground, dark stars filling her vision, knife flying out of her hand. Blind, she tries reaching for the knife, but his weight keeps her in place.
Her vision clears just in time to block a blade before it sinks into her face.
Her other hand reaches for his tactical belt, pulling one of his own weapons out and stabbing him in the side.
One
Two
Three times before he peels away.
As soon as there's distance between them, she rushes towards the kitchen knife, grabbing it from the floor, and getting back on her feet.
Dex stands slowly, looking at her with a grin. His hand touches his side, pulling out the blade to look at the fresh blood.
He chuckles breathlessly.
They stare at each other in silence.
She bares teeth. And initiates the next attack.
The knife slashes towards him. He slips out of the way.
Again
And again
Before he catches her arm and twists it backwards, the position forcing her grip to open and the knife to clatter on the floor.
Despite losing the knife again, she manages to kick his foot out, bringing him to his knees. She yanks her arm free and reaches for his belt yet again.
The blade she pulls sinks into his shoulder.
Then his bicep.
His pained moans sound wrong. Too satisfied.
He surges off of his knees, grabs her by the neck, and slams her into the nearest wall.
She stabs his side again.
He squeezes tight.
A quiet shhh leaves him instead of a scream.
When she tries another stab, his free hand gets control of her wrist.
"That's enough." He whispers, the tone too gentle for how loud her survival instincts are. "It's ok-"
She puts extra strength into it, the tip of the blade pressing against his stomach.
Then...
He loosens the grip on her wrist, letting sharp metal sink into flesh. His forehead leans onto hers, eyes rolling shut at the pain. A pleased gasp leaves him. Her eyes widen at the sight, everything coming to a halt as she realizes...
He's letting her win. And he's enjoying it.
His eyes flutter back open, smile spreading across his face. The hand on her neck loosens and moves up to rest on her cheek, like this moment is precious to him.
"You're so beautiful." He whispers, tone intimate. "I knew you had it in you."
Her immediate reaction is to yank the blade back and drive it towards his head.
He doesn't let her. In the blink of an eye, he disarms her and twists her body around, pressing her against the wall.
"I said that's enough."
He grabs her hair, directing her gaze to the bound man in the middle of the room
"You see that guy? Kill him and I'll let you go." She can hear the smile in his voice.
"What- what the fu-" She spits, struggling but unable to move.
"You heard me." His tone hardens.
"WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING THI-"
"You wanna go back to that room?" He pressures, voice raising. "You think I want to keep you there? You think I'm not... tired of you looking at me like some kind of monster?"
"You're fucking crazy, JUST LET ME G-" The grip on her hair tightens painfully as he shushes her again.
"No, that's not how things work." He says against her ear before he's dragging her in front of the bound man. "This is how it works; his life for your freedom."
For the first time since this all began, she breaks, eyes filling with tears.
"Why? Why are you doing this to me?" She seethes.
"You'll understand."
"Dex, please-"
"Don't beg, you never beg. You're above that." he scolds before putting on the familiar gentle tone he always used with her. "It's ok. You can do it, I know you can."
He pushes her to the ground. She falls to her knees, landing right in front of the kitchen knife she'd lost before.
"It's simple. Him for you." His words drill into her skull. "It's just an equation."
She looks up at the bound man, still a mess of cuts and bruises and half-dried blood.
The poor guy starts begging, babbling about mercy, about her being better than this.
She can barely hear anything.
The damage Dex did will probably kill him soon, so it wouldn't make that much of a difference if-
She's quick. Shamefully quick.
The knife is lifted from the floor in a flash.
She holds him in place by the hair, aims for the neck.
And slices.
Time slows.
Flesh opens to reveal blood. The captive's neck bends back at an unnaturally angle from the depth of the cut.
Her stomach turns to ice. The knife falls, clattering to the ground.
The man's mouth opens, but no noise follows; the vocal chords were severed.
She takes few steps back but Dex is right behind her, using his chest as a wall. He holds her by the shoulders, keeping her in place.
She's too stunned to consider resisting. All she can do is watch the man twitch in agony.
She's aware enough to feel the state of shock closing in. She wants to welcome it, let her mind turn to static. But she can't dissociate fully after Dex's next words.
"You see?" Strong arms hug her from behind. His chin rests on her shoulder before he whispers. "You're just like me."
Her muscles lock. Dex keeps talking in the sweetest tone she's ever heard.
You see it now, don't you?
We're the same.
Knew you had it in you.
You're just like me.
Always have been.
Just had to show you.
You're just like me
Just like me
Just like me
"Stay?" The request ignites an instinctual reaction. She breaks out of his hug, pushing herself away on shaky legs.
Dex frowns, confused at the distance. But he repeats calmly. "Stay with me?"
It's all too much.
She can't speak. She could spend the rest of her life mute if it meant avoiding that question.
Her head shakes.
A clear no.
Dex looks like he got shot. His expression bounces between stages of grief; mainly denial and anger. His eyes dart around the room with no specific focus point, hand close into fists.
"No..." he mutters, like that could change reality. Then he gets frantic, panic flooding in all at once. "No no no no, you- you're supposed to choose this. Choose me. You're supposed to realize that-"
His voice cracks on the last word.
She's too spent to stay and hear him spiral.
So she turns for the exit.
"Y/N!!!" He shrieks, like he's the one being tortured now.
She's not sure why she stops walking.
Her head turns to the side slightly.
Dex's mouth opens and closes, trying to find something convincing to say. But all he can manage is a plea.
"... don't leave me." He breathes with raw desperation.
She finds her voice.
"I'm done."
She hears the blade whistle in the air before she feels it.
Pain sears across her face.
The slash on her cheek snaps her head to the side, makes her stumble down to one knee. She clutches the gash, blood flowing between her fingers, hot and slick, some of it running over her lips before dripping onto the floor.
She turns to look back at him fully, eyes wide.
I won't hurt you, Y/N.
He's pointing a gun to her head, expression pure betrayal, set and rigid. Tears run freely anyways.
I'll never hurt you.
Slowly, she gets back on two feet. She can feel the blood trail down her neck, staining her shirt.
She takes a single step backward.
His finger tightens on the trigger.
But he doesn’t fire.
Instead.
He redirects the gun to his own head, chin quivering as he tries to stop crying.
She flinches at the action, stomach aching with so many adrenaline spikes.
I don't care about him. I don't.
You do.
But she doesn't move or protest.
He breaks.
The magazine is ripped free. Heejects the chambered round, then lets the unloaded gun drop to the floor.
His eyes are dead, like he's reached an understanding and lost all hope.
He doesn't follow when she turns for the stairwell.
SUBLEVEL 2
The door is ripped open.
SUBLEVEL 1
She runs her way up the stairs, steps loud in their search for freedom.
She's the one crying now.
GROUND LEVEL
She exits into an empty warehouse. The industrial garage door is closed but she finds the control panel in her haze and. It rolls open.
The fresh, salty air feels is a breath of life. The first thing she sees in the night is sand and brackish water.
She stumbles outside, walking in circles, trying to figure out where she is.
She's at the edge of town, in the mostly-abandoned industrial district bordering the Upper New York Bay. Most of the buildings and warehouses surrounding her are dark.
The city lights glow in the distance, through dense fog.
She doesn't sprint for civilization.
She stops to catch her breath
Her focus shifts to the water, body pulled towards it against her will like she's a yearning siren.
What the fuck are you doing?
Stepping on sand, bare-footed, is a sensory high that crawls up from her legs to her back in a satisfying shiver.
Walking to the edge of the water, she falls to her knees.
The cut on her cheek throbs. She can't help but think that it mirrors Dex's scar.
Y/N, what the fuck are you doing?
She looks down at her hands, blood appearing black on the moonlight.
Her muscles tense with the urge to wash it off in the water, but she doesn't move.
She doesn't really dissociate, just lets the sound of the water lull her mind into a semblance of peace.
She's not sure how long she stays there.
But she's snapped out of it when she hears quick footsteps in the distance behind, getting closer before coming to a halt.
There's silence.
They always knew how to share silence with each other.
She doesn't turn.
She can hear Dex exit the warehouse and step onto the sand, boots crunching as he approaches.
He kneels beside her.
"You know, I've been working a lot and- and I got us a house. A real one." He mutters, tentative. "It's so much better than this. This was supposed to be temporary, just until I got us our own place..."
He waits for an answer.
For something. Anything.
When he gets none, he continues.
"I thought that once you got used to me... we could move there."
She's still looking down at her bloodied hands.
"We can go together." He whispers. She's so fucking tired of the way he uses softness against her. "I won't force you, I- I don't want to force you, I want you to choose."
Fury builds in her chest.
"You wouldn't be crazy." He assures in a tone that sounds like begging. "If you said yes. If you wanted to come. You wouldn't be crazy for-"
She pounces.
Her hands fly to his throat, making him fall back on the rough sand.
He grabs her wrists like an anchor.
A feral grunt leaves her as she chokes him.
His eyes roll like it's the best thing she could've done.
Fuck, no.
She puts in more force, fingers tightening as if that could make him like it any less, but he smiles in pure bliss.
"WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?" She screeches.
The world turns.
He flips their position so she's on her back and he's on top.
Desperate, her hands stay clamped on his neck.
He uses his weight to lean more into it and choke himself out further.
"Harder." He can barely gasp.
That single word makes her hands disappear from his neck.
She tries to crawl back out from under him but he grabs her ankle and pulls her back.
She's expecting another fight, so she rightfully freezes when he settles between her legs and buries his face in her stomach.
She blinks once, twice, and stays still.
She looks down to find him hugging her midsection.
Her eyes shoot up to the starry sky, unsure what to do, like it could help her.
"Leave and I'll kill anyone you ever talk to. I won't fucking stop until you put me down." He chuckles before common sense washes over him. "No no no, I wasn't supposed to say that. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-" he babbles before crawing his way up her body.
He cups her face, thumb accidentally digging into the gash on her cheek.
"Go wherever you want, ok? Anywhere in the world." He swallows, eyes dripping with desperation. "Just let me follow."
One of his tears fall onto the wound, the salt of it burning.
"Let me follow." He whispers one more time.
"... please?"
A/N: I hope reading this felt like getting shot because that's how I felt writing it. This is what happens when an adrenaline junkie gets high off writing confrontation LOL.
On a serious note, I missed writing like this. I can't believe this character managed to reignite my will to spit out words, very happy about it.
summary: You wake up one night to a familiar knocking on your window.
word count: 4.4k+
pairing: dex poindexter x fem!reader
notes: everyone say "thank you karen page" for giving us this absolute treasure of a scene, because damn i think about it every. single. day. i even thought about it during my biology midterm... and when i'm driving... and when i go to sleep at night... is it too much to ask for dex to look at me like this??? i need this absolute bottom of a man
warnings/tags: no use of y/n, gun (is that a sufficient warning?), implied that you and dex used to date, dex is an absolute simp, this man gets on his knees for you yes yes yes, kissing, pet name (use of baby), implied that this takes place after dex gets out of prison
The first sound is so small you almost convince yourself it’s part of a dream, something your brain made up to justify the way you’ve been sleeping with one ear open. You don’t get the luxury of pretending for long, because it comes again—soft, deliberate, and it’s definitely not a branch scraping glass or a neighbor’s door slamming downstairs. It’s a tap that knows exactly where your window is, exactly how much pressure to use, and exactly how to wake you without waking the whole building.
You sit up without thinking and the sheet slides off your shoulder. The room is dark enough that you can’t make out much beyond the vague shape of your dresser and the line of the curtain, but you don’t need a clear view to find what your hand is looking for. Your fingers go into the bedside table drawer, curl around the grip, and pull the gun free with the quiet familiarity of practice. You stand, bare feet on cold floorboards, and the chill climbs up your legs like the apartment is trying to warn you.
The hallway is narrow and familiar, and you’ve walked it a thousand times, but tonight it feels like a corridor in someone else’s life. You keep the gun up, not waving it around, not shaking, just steady, and you listen with everything you’ve got. There’s no heavy breathing, no footsteps scuffing. That’s what makes your stomach tighten, because a drunk would stumble, a thief would rush, and a normal person would knock at your door.
The living room opens up around you, a patchwork of darker shadows where your furniture sits. The window by the fire escape is cracked open by a few inches, the curtain pushed aside like a hand slid it back and held it there. The air coming in is colder than the air in your apartment, and it carries the faint scent of city grime and rain. You take one more step in, muzzle tracking toward the window, and then you see him in the corner where the light from the street doesn’t quite reach.
He’s standing with his back close to the wall, like he chose a spot that gives him the whole room and keeps him out of the line of sight from anyone walking past outside. He’s dressed dark, of course, and he’s not moving like he’s trying to spook you. He’s still in that unsettling way that makes it feel like the apartment belongs to him now, like he’s been there longer than you have and he’s just waiting for you to catch up.
“Step into the light,” you say, and your voice comes out flat, the way it does when you’re forcing yourself not to feel something first.
He exhales, slow, and the sound is quiet but familiar enough to pull at something inside your chest. Then he shifts, and you get a glimpse of his face as he moves just enough that the streetlight catches the curve of his cheek and the pale line of his mouth. The light shows the tension in his jaw before it fades again as he settles back into shadow.
A pause, and then a voice from the darkest part of your living room, low and steady like he’s been standing there listening to you breathe. “You still sleep with it that close.”
Your grip tightens before you can help it. Your aim doesn’t wobble, but everything in you goes hot and cold at the same time, because you know that voice, you know the cadence, you know the way he makes the simplest sentence sound like he’s filing it into place. You take another step forward without meaning to, then stop yourself before you get too close. “What are you doing in my apartment, Dex?”
He says your name, and he says it like he’s allowed to, like he hasn’t earned the right to have it in his mouth. It hits you anyway, because your body is stupid and memory is worse, and there’s something about hearing him say it that makes your grip tighten on the gun until your knuckles ache. “I needed to see you,” he says.
“That’s not an answer.”
His shoulders lift a fraction, not quite a shrug. “It’s the only one I have.”
You keep the muzzle steady, aimed center mass, the way you were taught, the way you taught yourself when no one else was around to correct your stance. “How did you get in?”
He glances at the window. “You already know.”
“I want to hear you say it,” you tell him.
He shifts again, and this time he steps out far enough that you can actually see him. The light catches more of him now: the shape of his shoulders under the jacket, the tired set to his eyes, the faint shadow of bruising that’s either healing or never fully fades when a body’s been through too much. He looks leaner than you remember, like prison carved away whatever softness he had left, and he looks too controlled for someone who just climbed up to your window in the middle of the night.
“I came up the fire escape,” he says, and then his eyes flick down for a second, to the gun, and back to your face. “You didn’t change the latch.”
Your pulse jumps, not because he’s wrong, but because you hate that he knows. You hate that he’s cataloging details like he’s always done, like he can’t help it, like your life is a pattern and he’s already traced the lines. “You could’ve knocked,” you say.
He gives you a look that’s almost dry, almost amused, and it doesn’t belong on his face after everything. “Would you have opened the door?”
You don’t answer that, because the truth is complicated and ugly and it doesn’t deserve to be spoken out loud with a gun between you. “What happened?” you ask instead, because something had to have pushed him here. “Did someone follow you? Is this some kind of—” You cut yourself off before you say trap, because saying it gives it more shape than you want to hold in your head.
He shakes his head. “No one followed me.”
“Then why are you here?” you repeat, and you keep your voice sharp enough to cut. “Why now?”
His mouth opens like he’s going to say something, then closes again. For a second he looks almost… careful, like he’s choosing words in the same way someone chooses where to step on thin ice.
“I got out,” he says finally, and his voice stays quiet, but there’s a roughness under it that wasn’t there before. “And the first night I was out, I didn’t come here. I didn’t come anywhere near you. I went somewhere else and I sat there until morning, because I told myself if I made it through one night, I could make it through the next.”
You don’t let yourself soften at the sound of him trying. You keep the gun up, because you remember the things he’s done and you remember how quickly trying can turn into something else when it’s Dex Poindexter doing it.
“How many nights did you make it through?” you ask.
His gaze holds yours, steady as the muzzle pointed at him. “Not enough.”
Your breath comes out harsh. “So you decided to break into my apartment.”
He doesn’t flinch. “I decided to see you.”
“You don’t get to decide things for me anymore.”
His expression shifts at that, something tightening behind his eyes like he’s swallowing down a reaction. “I’m not asking for permission,” he says, and then he adds, almost softer, “I’m here. That’s all.”
“That’s not all,” you snap, and the gun wavers a fraction before you force it steady again. “You don’t show up like this and pretend it’s nothing. You don’t get to stand in my living room like you didn’t—”
The words knot in your throat and refuse to come out, and Dex watches you with that awful focus that makes you feel seen in a way you never asked for.
He takes one step closer.
“Stop,” you say immediately.
He stops, but the fact that he moved at all sends heat crawling under your skin. He’s closer now, close enough that you can see the faint scar on his cheek you don’t remember from before, close enough that you can see how his pupils look too wide in the low light. His hands hang at his sides, relaxed but not casual, and he keeps them visible like he knows you’ll put a bullet in him if you have to.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
“I’m not,” you lie, and it’s stupid because he’s right. The tremor is small, but it’s there.
His mouth twitches. “You used to shake when you were angry.”
“Don’t,” you warn him.
He doesn’t stop, because Dex has never been good at stopping once he’s latched onto a thread. “And you used to hate it when I noticed,” he continues, and his voice is almost gentle now, like he’s trying to smooth something over with tone alone. “But you always let me.”
“I don’t let you do anything,” you say, and you lift the gun a fraction higher, aiming for his head this time because you want him to understand you mean it. “Take one more step and I’ll put you down.”
He looks at the gun, then back at you, and then he does the most infuriating thing he could do: he steps forward anyway, slow and deliberate, like he’s approaching an altar instead of a weapon. You don’t move, because you refuse to give ground in your own home, and the next second the barrel meets his forehead with a soft, undeniable bump.
He doesn’t jerk away, he doesn’t blink fast, he just leans in until the pressure is firm, and you feel it through the gun, through your arm,, straight into your chest. “There,” he says, voice low. “That’s better.”
Your stomach flips, half disgust and half something you don’t want to name. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
He breathes out through his nose, and you can feel it in the space between you. “A lot.”
“Back up,” you order, but he doesn’t move an inch. Your grip tightens again. “Dex.”
His eyes stay on yours, and there’s something in them that’s so naked it makes your throat go tight. It’s not a plea, not exactly, and it’s not a threat. It’s need in its purest form, stripped of all the lies he usually wraps around it.
You hold the gun steady even though your arm is starting to ache, and you hate that he can stand there with the barrel pressed into his skin like it’s a point of contact instead of a warning. He stays close enough that you can see the faint sheen of sweat at his hairline, close enough that you can feel his breath when he exhales, and he doesn’t do the decent thing and back away.
“On your knees,” you say, and you make your voice mean it.
For a beat he doesn’t move, not because he’s refusing, but because he’s watching you like he’s memorizing the exact set of your mouth, the angle of your wrist, the way you’re not stepping back. Then he nods once, slow, and he lowers himself like he’s trying not to startle a wild animal. His knees touch the floor with a quiet sound that makes your stomach twist, because the sight of him down there is wrong in a way that feels too right, and his hands lift up beside his head with his palms open.
“Like this?” he asks, and the question comes out calm, almost polite.
“Don’t talk to me like you’re doing me a favor,” you say, and you keep the muzzle angled down at him, not because you’re easing up, but because the geometry changes when he kneels. “You don’t get to play nice now.”
His eyes flicker, and something tight pulls at the corner of his mouth like he wants to smile and doesn’t trust himself to. “I’m not playing,” he says. “I’m doing what you said.”
“Good,” you tell him, because you need something solid to hang onto. “Stay there.”
He stays there, hands still up, shoulders squared even on his knees like posture is another kind of armor. The streetlight catches his face better now, carving shadows under his cheekbones and making his eyes look even darker, and you hate how familiar he still is. He looks at the gun, then at you, and he doesn’t look away from either like he’s proving he can take it.
“You shouldn’t be here,” you say. “You shouldn’t even know where I live anymore.”
“I didn’t forget,” he answers, and he says it like it’s a simple fact instead of a confession. “I missed you.”
You swallow and your throat aches, because you can hear the old softness threaded through the words and you don’t want it. You don’t want the version of him that sounded like that when he was in your bed, when he’d tuck himself behind you and pretend the world couldn’t touch him if he had you in his arms.
“Don’t,” you say again, and this time it comes out quieter than you meant it to.
His gaze lifts to your face and he holds it like he’s holding onto a ledge. “I missed you, baby,” he repeats, and he doesn’t push the nickname like a knife. He says it the way he used to say it when you’d fall asleep mid-sentence, the way he’d say it when he was trying to be gentle.
Your breathing shifts, shallow for a second before you force it back into something steadier, and the gun stays in your hand even though your fingers tighten around it like you’re afraid it will disappear if you loosen your grip. “You don’t get to just show up,” you tell him. “Not after everything.”
He doesn’t argue, and the lack of fight is almost worse than if he’d tried. His shoulders rise and fall with one slow breath, and his hands stay up where you can see them. “I know.”
“You don’t get to stand in my living room and look at me like that,” you add, because anger is easier than the other thing pressing up behind your ribs. “You don’t get to say you missed me like it means something.”
His throat works like he’s swallowing down something sharp. “It means something to me,” he says, and he says it like he hates himself for it. “I’m not asking you to forgive me.”
“You should be,” you say. “If you had any sense left, you’d be begging.”
His mouth opens, then closes, and for a second he looks almost like he wants to laugh and can’t find the sound. “Do you want me to beg?” he asks, and his voice stays even, but there’s a tremor under it that makes your teeth clench. “If you tell me to beg, I will.”
Your hand trembles just enough that you feel it in your wrist, and you hate that he notices because he always notices. His eyes flick to your hand, then back to your face, and the intensity in his stare doesn’t change, but his posture does. It’s small, careful, and it makes your skin prickle, because his hands lower a little from beside his head to hover closer to his shoulders like he’s testing whether you’ll stop him.
“Hands up,” you order immediately.
He freezes with his hands halfway down, and he lifts them again without complaint. “Okay,” he says, soft.
You take a breath that scrapes, and you try to keep your voice sharp enough to protect you. “You think you can come back and act like this,” you say. “You think you can walk right into my life and—what? Remind me of how it felt? That’s your plan?”
“I don’t have a plan,” he says, and his eyes flicker with something that looks like frustration, not at you, but at himself. “If I had a plan, I wouldn’t be here.”
“That’s the first smart thing you’ve said all night,” you mutter.
He shifts his weight slightly on his knees, the motion controlled, and the gun tracks him on instinct. He notices that too, of course, and his gaze drops to the muzzle for half a second like he’s checking where it is, like he’s measuring distance in his head the way he measures everything. When his eyes lift again, they’re too steady, too direct. “You’re still holding it like you mean it,” he says.
“I do mean it.”
“I know,” he replies, and he sounds almost relieved by that. “That’s why I came.”
Your jaw tightens. “What do you mean?”
He doesn’t move his hands, but his fingers flex once like he’s fighting the urge to reach. “You don’t lie to yourself,” he says. “You never did.”
“That’s not a compliment,” you tell him.
“I wasn’t trying to compliment you,” he says, and then he adds, quieter, like it costs him to say it out loud, “I needed something real.”
You stare at him, and the room feels too small for the two of you, because he’s taking up all the air with that gaze and you’re letting him. The gun is still there between you, still a line you can draw any time you want, but your arm is tired and your hand is shaking just a little, and you’re furious that he can make you feel anything other than disgust.
“Get up,” you say, and your voice is steady again because you force it to be. “Slow.”
He watches your face like he’s waiting for you to change your mind, and then he rises in the same careful way he knelt, one measured movement at a time. His hands stay up for a moment even when he’s standing, palms open beside his head, and the sight is almost absurdly intimate, like you’re the one holding him in place with nothing but a word.
When he’s upright, you lower the gun just enough that it’s not pressed against him anymore, but you don’t put it down. It stays in your hand, pointed between you, not quite aimed at his heart now but still close enough that he understands what it means. He steps closer anyway, not quickly, not like he’s trying to take it from you, but like he’s following a gravity he can’t resist.
“Stop right there,” you say, even though you don’t move back.
He stops, so close that your breath hits him you exhale. His hands are still raised, and you notice the tension in his forearms, the way he’s holding himself back on purpose. His eyes flick to your mouth and back up, and the movement is so fast you almost miss it, but you don’t. You never used to miss it.
“This doesn’t fix anything,” you say, and it comes out harsh, like you can say it hard enough to make it true.
“I know,” he answers immediately, and the speed of it makes your throat tighten because he isn’t pretending. “I’m not here because I think it fixes it.”
“Then why are you here,” you demand, “if you’re not here to fix it?”
His voice drops, and it’s barely above a breath. “Because I couldn’t stand not knowing if you’d look at me.”
Your fingers curl tighter around the grip. “You’re looking at me right now.”
He shakes his head once, tiny. “You’re looking back,” he says.
You hate the way your body reacts to that, the way heat crawls under your skin like an old reflex waking up. You hate that you want to slap him and kiss him in the same breath, and you hate most of all that he’s watching you like he can see every ugly thought as it passes through you.
“Don’t,” you whisper, and you don’t even know what you mean by it, because it’s too late for a dozen different kinds of don’t.
He holds still like you’ve pinned him there with your voice, and then he leans forward just enough that his forehead almost brushes the gun again. He doesn’t touch it this time, like he’s learned the boundary you’re actually holding, and he stays in the thin space you allow. “Tell me no,” he says, and his voice is steady even when his eyes aren’t. “Tell me no and I’ll go.”
You stare at him, and the word sits in your mouth like a coin you can’t swallow. You could say it—you should say it, but you don’t.
Dex’s breath stutters once, like he felt your silence land. His hands are still above his head, still open, and for a moment the two of you just stand there with the gun between you and the air too thick to breathe. Then you step in, because you’re tired of being the only one pretending you aren’t about to do something you’ll regret.
You kiss him.
It isn’t gentle, and it isn’t sweet, and it isn’t anything like an apology. It’s hot and angry and familiar in the worst way, like your mouth already knows his and your body already remembers the shape of him. His hands stay up for one strangled second like he doesn’t believe he’s allowed, like he’s waiting for you to shove him away, and that pause makes your pulse kick hard.
“Don’t—” you start, pulling back just enough for the words to hit his mouth, but you can’t finish because he swallows the rest of it when you kiss him again.
“I’m not,” he murmurs against you, and it’s breath and sound, barely a sentence. “I’m not.”
His restraint breaks in slow motion. One hand lowers first, hovering near your waist without touching, and he waits like he’s asking permission without using words. When you don’t flinch, his palm settles against you, warm and firm, and the contact sends a sharp shiver through you that makes you hate yourself.
Your other hand is still holding the gun, angled down now, forgotten and not forgotten at the same time, because you can feel its weight even as you drag your free hand up his chest. Your fingers catch on his jacket, then slide up to his collar, and when you fist the fabric there his breath turns rough.
Dex makes a sound that he tries to swallow, and his other hand comes down to your side, then your back, pressing you closer. He doesn’t force you, he just follows the contact like he’s starving for it, like he’s been holding himself together with rules and silence and the idea of you, and now you’re here and his hands don’t know how to be anything except reverent and desperate at the same time.
You break the kiss long enough to glare at him, your mouth still close to his. “This isn’t—”
“I know,” he says again, and his eyes flick to your lips like he can’t stop himself. “I know.”
“Say it like you mean it,” you challenge, because you need something that hurts more than this does.
He nods once, and his voice comes out rougher. “It doesn’t fix anything,” he repeats, and there’s no argument in him, no illusion. “It just… makes it quiet.”
Your chest tightens at that, and you should step back, you should put the gun away, you should make him leave, you should do a hundred sensible things. Instead you kiss him again, slower this time, and he sinks into it like he’s been waiting for permission to breathe.
His hand slides up to your jaw, thumb brushing your cheek with the kind of careful touch that makes your stomach flip because it’s so gentle it feels wrong coming from him. Your fingers tighten in his collar, and you feel the tremor in him when you do, like he’s trying to hold himself to a line he’s drawn and you’re daring him to cross it.
“Look at me,” you say, because you want to see if he’s still there in his own eyes.
He does, immediately, and he doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what he is. “I’m looking,” he says, and his voice is low, steady, too intimate for the middle of your living room with your gun still in your hand.
You don’t answer with words. You answer by pulling him back into your mouth, and his hand tightens at your waist like he’s anchoring himself, like you’re the only thing keeping him from floating apart.
When the kiss deepens again, it’s messy in the way you remember, not because it’s out of control but because it’s full of everything you haven’t said. His hands roam—your side, your back, up to the base of your neck where his fingers curl like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he lets go—and he keeps checking you with tiny pauses, tiny hesitations, like he’s still waiting for you to push him away and he’s bracing for it even as he kisses you like he can’t live without it.
You don’t push him away; you keep him close, gun still hanging loose in your hand and angled toward the floor, because you haven’t decided what any of this means and you’re not going to lie and pretend you have.
Dex stays pressed to you like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he blinks, and when he kisses you again it’s slower, heavier, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of your mouth. He pulls back just enough to breathe, his forehead hovering near yours, and his eyes search your face like he’s bracing for the part where you tell him to leave. “Tell me to go,” he murmurs, voice rough, like it hurts to offer you the out.
You swallow, your grip on his collar tightening, and the words come out low and sharp like you’re daring him to believe you. “Don’t go.”
For a second he looks stunned in a way you almost never see on him, and then something in him gives with a quiet, relieved exhale. His hands tighten at your waist like he’s anchoring himself, and he kisses you again like he’s starving, like he’s been holding back for days and you just cut the last thread.
“Thank you, baby,” he breathes against your mouth, the nickname soft enough to make your chest ache. “I missed you.”
extra notes: one, i'm thinking of making a dex taglist, so if you want to be added, let me know! (here or on my taglist post). secondly, writing that last line made me realize that dex is the kind of guy that would ask to go down on you and say thank you when you let him... yeah
i mentioned on bad idea that i had a thought - dex would be the kinda guy to ask if he could go down on you and say thank you when you let him... so yeah...
warnings/tags: 18+, smut, oral (f!recieving), no use of y/n, fem!reader, dex is a bit of a sub, <900 words
He asks you with his eyes lowered.
That’s what gets you first, more than the words themselves; the way Dex kneels in front of you like he’s approaching something sacred, his broad shoulders tense beneath your hands, his fingers resting carefully against your thighs without taking anything he hasn’t been given. He isn’t shy, not really. There’s too much hunger in him for that, too much focus, too much of that unnerving stillness he gets when he wants something badly enough to make the whole room disappear around it. But he’s careful, holding himself back until you decide whether he’s allowed.
You say yes.
The change in him is immediate and almost painful to watch. His breath catches first, then his hands tighten just slightly where they’re spread over your thighs, not enough to hurt, only enough to betray him. His gaze lifts to yours, dark and intent, and for a second he looks undone by the permission alone. “Thank you,” he says, quiet and rough.
You guide him closer with your fingers in his hair, and Dex goes easily, almost eagerly, though he still moves slow once he’s there. He presses his mouth to the inside of your thigh first, reverent and warm, dragging out the moment until your grip tightens at his scalp. His eyes flick up at that, watching your face like he’s trying to memorize every little reaction, every twitch of your mouth, every uneven breath.
He doesn’t rush, of course he doesn’t. Dex has always been precise, almost unsettlingly so, and now all of that focus is turned on you. His mouth is soft at first, testing, patient, like he wants to learn you properly instead of taking what he wants too quickly. His hands slide under your knees, keeping you open for him, but there’s nothing demanding in it. He holds you like he’s been trusted with something precious.
When you tug at his hair, he makes a sound against you that goes straight through your body. “Dex,” you breathe, and he shivers.
That’s the thing about him: he likes being told. He likes knowing when he’s doing well, likes your hand in his hair guiding him, likes the quiet praise that slips out of you when his mouth finds the right rhythm. Every time your thighs tense around him, his eyes flutter like he’s the one being touched, like pleasing you is enough to wreck him. He groans softly, not trying to hide it, and the vibration makes your hips lift.
He follows instantly.
He follows because you asked without words, because your body told him what it wanted and Dex is listening with everything he has. His tongue moves slower than you expect, deliberate and devoted, savoring you until your head falls back and your fingers tighten hard enough to make him moan. He doesn’t pull away, he leans into it, lashes lowered, breathing unevenly through his nose while his grip on your thighs turns almost desperate.
You look down at him and find him already watching you.
There’s something ruined in his expression, something hungry and grateful beneath all that lethal control. Like he could destroy anyone else without blinking, but here, with you, all he wants is permission to stay exactly where he is.
“Slow,” you murmur, though he already is.
Dex nods against you, eyes half-lidded, and obeys.
He takes his time like he promised himself he would. Like he’s not trying to get anywhere fast, not chasing the end so much as the privilege of being allowed to bring you there. He kisses your cunt between each slow pass of his tongue, murmuring something too soft to catch, maybe your name, maybe another thank you, maybe both. His face is flushed when you pull his hair again, his mouth wet, his expression almost dazed with want.
You guide him exactly where you need him, and he lets you.
He lets you angle his head, lets you set the pace, lets you hold him there when your thighs start to tremble. The more you lose control, the steadier he becomes, like your pleasure gives him purpose. Like every sound you make pins him in place better than any command could.
When you praise him, he nearly breaks. “Good,” you whisper, breathless. “Just like that.”
Dex makes a low, helpless sound and presses closer, his hands tightening again as if he needs to ground himself. He doesn’t stop; he wouldn’t, not unless you told him to. His whole world has narrowed to your voice, your hands, the rhythm of your hips, the heat of you against his mouth. He looks almost drunk on it, devoted past the point of dignity, and when your body finally starts to shake, he stays right there, slow and steady and desperate to be good through every second of it.
Afterward, he rests his cheek against your thigh, breathing hard.
For a while, neither of you says anything. Your fingers are still tangled in his hair, gentler now, stroking through the strands while he leans into your touch with his eyes closed. He looks calm in a way he almost never does, softened by obedience, by being allowed to want something without having to fight for it.
Then he turns his head and presses one last kiss to your skin.
Summary : Benjamin Poindexter confesses that he has been obsessively fantasizing about a domestic future with you.
Pairing : DDBA! Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : Fluff!!!! (Maybe flangst?) Domestic but still unhinged Dex, obsessive love, possessive relationship, reader is mentioned to be a PhD student in forensic psychology (no age is mentioned), codependency, romanticized violence, injury care, talks of marriage, future children talk, brief mention of breeding kink and sex is implied (but it’s for set up I swear), established relationship, hurt/comfort, Dex's version of a nuclear family is a bit unhealthy but he means well!! (Let me know if I miss anything!) set right after the ending of DDBA Season 2.
Word Count : 9.8k
Requested by : multiple people asking for Dex fluff!
Notes : this is my attempt to write a domestic (yet still obsessive) Dex while not being too ooc, inspired by the song Bloom by the Paper Kites. Also, should I start a Dex taglist? Anyways, Enjoy!
You had not meant to start talking about employment while you were wiping blood off Benjamin Poindexter on your bed.
It just slipped out of you, somewhere between the towel going pink under your fingers and the smell of peroxide rising through the warm, lived-in air of your studio apartment.
You and Dex shared that space in New York, which sounded more pathetic than it felt. It wasn’t luxurious. It wasn’t really the kind of place people imagined when they said they wanted to build a life with their love of their life. There was no separate bedroom, no separate dining room, no hallway to put your coats in. The kitchen was barely its own room, more of a stubborn little strip of counter and cabinets pretending to be separate from the rest of the apartment, and the bed sat close enough to a cabinet that you had once knocked a stack of your research books onto the mattress by accident and Dex had caught two before they hit your knees.
But it was yours, and that made a difference.
Dex didn’t really need much. That was one of the first things you had learned about him, and one of the saddest.
He owned what he could carry, what he could hide, what he could use: clothes, weapons, toothbrush, a plain black jacket that had seen through more death than most people. He hadn’t moved into your life so much as folded himself carefully into the empty spaces of it, as if he was still waiting to be told he had taken up too much room.
You had filled the rest. Your desk sat in the corner under the window, always drowning in highlighters, case studies, printed articles, and half-dead pens. Your forensic psychology textbooks were stacked wherever they would fit. There was a mug full of rulers and pencils beside your laptop, a corkboard with notes and deadlines and a photobooth strip of the two of you in Coney Island that Dex pretended not to care about but always noticed when it tilted crooked.
Of course he cared. It was your first date.
And though he didn’t tell you, he had made a copy of it and put it under his suit when he went out, right over his heart. It was a reminder that you wanted him home.
But this space was enough. It was more than enough, somehow.
There was still room to dance in the kitchen if you were careful. Last Saturday, barefoot and half-asleep, with the radio turned on, you had twirled yourself into his arms to Tina’s Proud Mary. Dex had just stood there like he had no idea what to do until you took his hands and put them on your waist. There was still room for him to lift you onto the counter when you kissed him too sweetly for too long. There was still room for dinner eaten on a small table with two folding chairs, there was still room for your laundry tangled together in one basket, for his shoes beside yours by the door.
There was still room, somehow, for Dex to crowd you back against the wall, hands firm on your hips, mouth hot against your throat while you laughed under your breath and told him the neighbors were going get tired of hearing how well he fucked you.
Room for him to murmur filthy and wrecked things, that he should “throw your pills away,” that he was going to “knock you up, huh? Want me to put a baby in you?”
You’d pull back with a wicked smile, nails hooked in his shirt, and you’d whisper, “That is not the threat you think it is, baby.”
You chalked it up to your boyfriend being a kinky little shit. You should have paid more attention to the way his eyes went black, the way his grip tightened on your skin. When he kissed you again, it was with the devoted certainty of a man who had just realized his most unhinged fantasy was not his alone.
Still, even in this small fantasy, there was still room to pretend, on the good nights, that you were normal.
Tonight was not one of the good nights.
Dex had come home after a day across the Supreme Court building with blood dried dark along his cheekbone, though you suspected none of it was his.
Even if it was, you knew he wasn’t hurt at all, because Dex didn’t stagger or slump. He didn’t come through the door gasping or cursing or asking for help. He entered the apartment with rigid control in his body, like every step had been measured in advance. He came in like arriving home had been a decision, not an escape. Like whatever had happened in this room, with you, was sacred compared to the rest of the world.
He came home like he had not been part of the makeshift siege at court.
Like he had not shot the Mayor’s aide.
Like the whole city had not been tearing itself apart on the news for hours while you sat on the bed with your phone in your hand, refreshing headlines you didn’t want to read and listening for footsteps in the hallway.
When he looked at you, his pupils tracked your face. Before he let you touch him, before he let you ask questions, before he decided whether his own body was allowed to matter, his eyes went over you like a security sweep to make sure you were safe.
Then they landed on your arm and saw a bruise.
It was nothing, really. You had caught yourself badly against the fire escape earlier when you’d climbed out for air because the apartment had felt too small with sirens in the distance and Dex not answering his phone. It was a mean little scar, blue and purple, but shallow enough not to hurt you permanently. It was annoying, more than anything. You had almost forgotten about it.
But Dex looked at it like it was evidence.
So now you were sitting beside him on the bed with a towel, a bottle of peroxide, cotton pads, and the sad frozen bag of peas you had pulled from the freezer because neither of you owned a real ice pack. You were trying to clean blood from his face. He was trying to ice your bruise.
It would have been funny if it did not make you want to cry.
“Give me your arm,” he said.
“There’s literally blood on you,” you sighed.
“Not mine,” he said dismissively, confirming your suspicions, “give me your arm.”
“Benjamin.”
His hazel eyes flicked up, mostly because you only called him that when you were annoyed at him.
You stared at each other for one stubborn second, but he didn’t seem like he was going to let up.
Then you sighed and gave him your arm.
He took it carefully, his fingers gentle around your wrist despite the split skin across his knuckles. He pressed the frozen peas to the bruise like he was handling precious and breakable gemstones, his mouth set in a hard line, his focus absolute.
That was the thing about loving Dex: it wasn’t sensible. It had never been sensible.
You’d always had a practical head on your shoulders. You were getting your third degree in forensic psychology because you liked patterns, motive, broken systems, and the strange little hinges inside people that made them choose one door instead of another. You were both a student and a research assistant at the university, which sounded better on paper than it felt in your bank account. You were technically employed, technically building experience, technically lucky to have the position at all. In reality, you were paid in a way that felt insulting once, tuition costs, books, and subway fare had finished carving you hollow.
Still, you were smart. Academically, you understood obsession. You had annotated articles on attachment trauma, violent conditioning, hypervigilance, and maladaptive devotion. You had spent whole nights highlighting phrases that described people like Dex in clinical and sterile language.
You knew the warning signs and studied the red flags. You knew the vocabulary you were supposed to use. You knew what you were supposed to do when someone like Bullseye looked at you like you were the last fixed point in the universe: run.
But when Dex saved your life during an Anti-Vigilante Task Force raid on the lab you were visiting, all that practical knowledge had become extremely inconvenient.
It had been chaos: glass breaking, alarm screaming. Your supervisor shouted for everyone to get down. The AVTF had come in hard, looking for records, samples, names, anything connected to vigilante research and enhanced activity. You had hidden beneath a workstation with one hand clamped over your mouth and your heartbeat so loud you thought it might give you away.
Then Dex had arrived.
He had been hunting that day. You later found out because he told you.
He had moved through your lab with a purpose, turning the room itself into a weapon. A glass beaker found its way into a man’s throat. He had thrown a ruler with such perfect force, it split skin and cartilage. A metal clipboard managed to dislocate a man’s jaw, even through the helmet. Pens, scalpels, broken glass, a heavy ceramic mug from your professor’s desk were all used. Ordinary things became fatal in his hands, as if the universe had been waiting for him to point at something and decide what it was for.
He killed twelve men with office supplies and lab equipment, and then he crouched in front of you, breathing hard, blood on his cheek, and asked you if you were okay.
You should have been horrified. You were horrified.
Part of you had been shaking with terror. Another part, the part you did like to examine too closely, had understood with awful clarity that some monsters were safer when they were loved than when they were not.
You should have run from him.
Instead, you had fallen in love.
Worse, he had fallen, too.
The love that grew between the two of you wasn't sweet, nor safe. Not in the way people with normal jobs and normal apartments and normal dinner plans fell in love. Dex loved wholly. He loved like if he took his eyes off you, the world would immediately try to take you from him. He loved like affection and violence had gotten tangled in him so early that he no longer knew how to separate protection from possession.
And you, for whatever reason, loved him right back.
You loved him in the studio apartment with the too-small kitchen and the desk in the corner. You loved him when he stood behind you while you brushed your teeth, chin resting against your shoulder, silent and half-asleep and watchful even then. You loved him when he checked the locks twice before bed. You loved him when he pretended not to care about your old Greek and Roman mythology books and then remembered every story you had ever told him. You loved him when he came home with blood under his nails, but looked at your scraped arm like the city owed him an explanation.
“Hold still,” he said, pressing the frozen peas more carefully against your skin.
You stared at him, at the slight bruise under his jaw and the split knuckles he was ignoring because your shallow scrape had somehow hurt him more.
“I should get a job,” you said, almost offhandedly.
His hand stopped.
You hadn’t meant for it to come out like that: flat and sudden. Not while he was sitting on your shared bed after a long day. But there it was anyway sitting between you and the ruined silence of the apartment.
Dex looked up slowly. “You have a job.”
“I have half a job.” You laughed without much humor. “I have a professor who thinks payment is optional because experience is apparently a currency. Because PhD students clearly don’t need to eat, right?”
He huffed. A few months ago, he did offer to dispose of your professor and you just waved him off, saying the person who would take his job would be worse. He offered to dispose of him, too, but stopped offering half-measured solutions when you kissed his forehead and said the department would probably just shut down because they can’t afford two murders. “But you’re in school,” he said.
“So?” You shrugged, “Lots of people are in school and have extra jobs.”
“You babysit Mrs. Smithers’ cat,” he frowned.
You snorted before you could stop yourself. “She pays us in lasagnas.”
“She makes good lasagna,” he insisted.
“That is not an income stream, Dex.”
“No,” he shook his head, knowing how hard you actually worked for your spot in the institution. “But you’re always busy anyway. I can take care of you”
“You’re wanted, baby,” you reminded him.
That hurt.
Dex’s eyes barely changed, but you knew him too well now. You saw the tiny shift in his eyes. His fingers adjusted around your wrist. He looked down at your arm again, focusing too intently on the ice pack, as if his obsession to keep you safe could be used to cover a wound in the conversation.
“I can provide,” he said.
You sighed immediately, because of course he would say it like that. Like a vow, like a reflex, like a wound of his own.
“I know.”
“I pay rent,” he reminded you, though he said it like it was a responsibility. He didn’t use it against you; it was just a fact.
“I know.”
“I pay groceries,” he said.
“Yes, Dex,” you huffed, “I know.”
His teeth clenched, more disappointed in himself than at you. “Then what?”
You looked around the apartment because it was easier than looking at him.
Yes, Dex paid rent. Dex bought groceries. Dex came home with cash sometimes, folded tight and tucked away in envelopes. He made sure there was good coffee in the cabinet because you hated your mornings without it. He bought the brand of cereal you liked and pretended it was because it had been on sale. He fixed the loose leg on your desk chair. He remembered bills before you did.
He provided, but it was not stable.
Dex didn’t clock into shifts. Dex didn’t have a payroll department, a predictable deposit, a pension, or a neat little tax form with an employer’s name printed at the top. His work came in fragments and dangerous calls from powerful people who knew what he could do.
Odd jobs, if you wanted to be generous. Assassination, if you wanted to be honest.
He did it because he was good at it.
But mostly, lately, he did it because of you.
Because rent was due. Because the fridge needed filling. Because your textbooks cost you too much. Because he liked watching you eat takeout on the bed with your legs folded beneath you, he liked seeing you safe and warm and full in his room. Because every dollar he brought home became proof that he could keep you satisfied, that he could build a life, that he could be more than the worst thing he knew how to do.
And that terrified you almost as much as it touched you, because there was no stability in that kind of work.
Sometimes, Dex wished he had known you when he was still with the FBI.
Before prison. Before Fisk. Before his face was plastered on the news. Before every job application in the world became a joke. He imagined it sometimes in a way that felt masochistic.
He imagined coming home to you in a suit and taking you to dinner with a paycheck that had his name on it. He imagined you flowers, buying you pretty things and whatever else you asked for.
He could have been a man for you. As outdated as he knew that sounded, he still wished he could be that man again.
“It’s not about whether you do,” you said carefully. “It’s just that… it’s not steady.”
His teeth tightened further.
“I’m not insulting you,” you reassured.
“You think I can’t take care of you.”
“No.” You leaned closer, your voice softening the impact. “I think you take care of me so much that you forget I should be allowed to take care of you, too.”
He didn’t answer.
Outside, a siren wailed below, then faded into traffic and distance. The studio felt very small around you, too warm and intimate.
Dex looked down at your arm again and pressed the melting bag of peas more gently against your skin.
“I’ll find something steady,” he said.
Your heart clenched. “Dex.”
“I will,” he promised.
“Where?”
His eyes lifted to yours. You tried to smile, but it came out tired and fond and sad all the same. “You shot Buck Cashman in front of half the city. I’m not saying that like I’m mad. I’m saying maybe LinkedIn is not going to work out this month.”
“I’ll find something,” he said.
It came out too quickly, too flatly, like he was sealing a wound before you could see how deep it went.
You looked at him where he sat on the edge of the bed, one knee pressed against yours, the frozen bag of peas melting slowly in his hand. You saw the bruise smudged high beneath his cheekbone, the split in his lower lip that he kept worrying with his tongue like he had forgotten it was there. He looked awful. Beautiful, too. The world had tried, again and again, to make him unlovable, and your stupid heart had taken one look at him and said, mine.
“What, a desk job?” you asked.
Dex gave you a look.
He wasn’t offended exactly. More like you had asked him to picture himself, in his Bullseye suit that you loved so much, sitting under fluorescent lights, wearing a lanyard, filling out forms, and smiling politely at coworkers named Brad from HR.
The idea was so absurd that, despite everything, your mouth twitched upward.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” you said, leaning in a little. “Did I insult your very promising administrative career?”
He frowned unwillingly, and for a second you hated yourself for accidentally being a little too mean.
Still, you couldn’t help yourself. You leaned closer and kissed the scar near his cheekbone so gently it was barely anything at all. Dex closed his eyes for half a second. When you pulled back, he still kept his eyes closed for one breath longer.
“Baby,” you whispered, voice gentler now, nearly breaking with fondness, “you cannot put ‘excellent with projectiles’ on a résumé.”
His eyes opened and found you immediately. “I could.”
You shook your head, “You really, really shouldn’t.”
“I have skills.” He pouted. It was cute.
“You have criminal charges.”
“Transferable skills,” he said, with such dry seriousness that you chuckled before you could stop yourself.
His posture changed, like he always did when you laughed. Not dramatically, though. He didn’t transform all at once. He softened by millimeters, as if your happiness had reached into some fortified part of him and loosened one bolt at a time. The hard line of his shoulders eased. His teeth unclenched. His thumb, which had been pressing the peas too carefully to your bruise, shifted a little.
For a moment, he looked less like a weapon that was left loaded in your apartment and more like a man who had come home to you because there was nowhere else in the world he could bear to be, because he was yours. Because he wanted so badly to be good for you that it almost broke your heart.
He adjusted the ice pack again. “You shouldn’t have to worry about money.”
“We live in New York, Dex.” You tried to sound light but it just came out tired. “Worrying about money is basically a civic duty.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” he said again.
He didn’t say it like a boyfriend trying to be useful. He said it like a soldier stating a mission objective. Like he had identified the enemy— rent, groceries, tuition, your professor underpaying you, the whole grinding machine of the city— and had decided that he would kill it if he could. “Not you,” he added, quieter.
And Dex didn’t feel this way for you because he had learned to be a sympathetic person. He wasn’t.
He didn’t suddenly feel tender toward the whole world because he learned how to love. He didn’t look at strangers and imagine their mothers. He didn’t hesitate before hurting people who had put themselves on the wrong side of his line. He could kill a room full of people and sleep like a baby afterward. He didn’t ask himself if the Anti-Vigilante Task Force agents had families who were waiting for them. Their blood did not weigh on his conscience in any meaningful way.
He hasn’t learned to be secretly good and noble under all the damage in some easy, redeemable way. He was only tender with you, and even that was not because you were an exception to his nature.
It was because somewhere along the way, Dex had thought of you and him as the same person.
You weren’t some separate innocent woman he loved from afar. You were not a moral compass he worshipped because you made him better. You were his life. His home.
Your body was his body outside his body. Your exhaustion was his exhaustion. Your money was his money, and his money was yours, not because he felt entitled to it, but because the two of you had stopped existing as separate organisms somewhere around the first month he slept in your bed and woke up with your hand on his chest. You were one system now. One thing. One fused unit pretending to be two people for legal convenience.
So watching you work long hours in a lecture hall that barely paid felt like self-harm. That was the clearest way his mind could understand it. Like the two of you shared one nervous system, and every hour you worked yourself past exhaustion was pain traveling down the same wire until it reached him, too.
“Come on, Dex,” you frowned. “You think I want you running yourself into the ground because you decided you have to pay every bill?”
His eyes lifted to yours, and all you saw was terrible sincerity. It was desperate enough to frighten you because it didn’t know how to ask for love without offering blood in return.
“I should take care of you,” he said.
Not I want to. Not I’d like to. Not even let me.
I should.
You swallowed. “Dex…”
“I should.” His voice roughened, and it was absolute, like he had said this to himself before. Like maybe he had been saying it for months, in his head, every time he bought groceries, every time he counted cash, every time he watched you fall asleep over your notes with your cheek pressed to an open textbook. “You shouldn’t have to think about it. Rent, food, school, any of it. You should just—” He stopped, eyes darting away. “You should just sit there and be pretty.”
That ruined you a little.
There were things you could have said: Things about partnership, equality, how love was not supposed to turn into duty, how his need to provide came from some wounded place in him that still believed usefulness was the same as worth. You knew those things. You believed them, mostly.
But then he looked at you like taking care of you wasn’t a burden but a privilege. Like the idea of failing at it scared him more than the city hunting him. Like every terrible thing he had ever been made into could be balanced, somehow, if he could use it to keep you warm, fed, safe, untouched by the worst parts of the world.
He sat there, bruised and exhausted, dried blood at his temple, your scraped arm cradled in one hand as if it mattered more than every wound on his own body.
So you kissed him.
You didn’t mean to make it deep. You meant it to be reassurance, just a little press of your mouth to his, a way of telling him you were not leaving, not angry, not disappointed in how his love manifested even when it frightened you.
But Dex never received you halfway.
He leaned in, immediate and helpless, his free hamd coming to your waist with that familiar, possessive spread of his fingers. It was not rough, because he was never rough with you unless you asked him to be. But it was intense, as if the second your lips touched his, his body decided the only thing that made sense was pulling you closer.
You kissed him until the frozen peas slipped slightly against your arm and neither of you cared. Until his muscles relaxed under yours. Until he made a small sound in the back of his throat that made you hum, pleased with yourself.
When you pulled away, his eyes stayed on your lips, looking at your mouth like it had betrayed him by leaving.
You brushed your thumb over his chin. “You cannot just decide to provide by sheer force of will.”
Dex blinked, still dazed enough from the kiss that it took him half a second to find the conversation again.
Then his eyes sharpened in that almost boyish, almost hopeful way. “What if I got work?”
You exhaled through your nose. “Again. Where?”
His thumb moved once against your waist in small strokes that were barely there.
“I heard that the CIA director is looking for someone to take over a contract,” he said.
You blinked.
It sounded clean on the surface and filthy underneath.
He said them carefully, like he was testing whether they could pass as normal if he used the right tone.
“You mean black ops,” you said blankly.
“I mean work.”
“Benjamin,” you tilted your head.
“It’s steady enough.” His eyes did not leave yours.
“That is not the same as safe.”
His eyes looked like guilt passing quickly through the devotion. “I can handle that.”
“I know you can.” You touched his cheek again, achingly gentle. “That’s what scares me.”
He looked at your face, taking inventory of every emotion there. His hand tightened at your waist.
“I’d come home,” he said.
Your heart ached. “You can’t promise that.”
“I’d make it true.”
“That’s not how promises work.”
“It is for me.”
And there he was. Your Dex. Your impossible, obsessive man, sitting in your too-small studio with blood on his face, telling you with complete sincerity that he could bend fate into obedience if the reward was coming home to you.
You wanted to argue, but he cut you off before you could even finish forming thoughts.
“If I got a job,” he said carefully, “I could buy you a ring.”
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
For a second, you forgot how to breathe.
He had said it so quietly, so carefully, like the word itself was fragile. Like if he had manifested it into the room too hard, it might shatter before you could touch it.
A ring.
Dex watched you like he was waiting to see if he had ruined everything.
He didn’t look casual. He was never casual about you. He didn’t toss out precious things like the future just to see if they landed. He offered them like they had been a piece of his flesh cut out of him.
And you realized, in that second, that this had not been a stray thought.
Dex hadn’t just imagined it. Dex had been living with it.
You could see it now, in the way he held himself in the way his fingers had tightened just slightly at your waist, in the way his eyes kept flicking down to your mouth like he wanted to kiss the answer out of you and was forcing himself not to.
He had carried this around. Maybe for weeks. Maybe for months.
Maybe he had been thinking about marrying you while listening to your rant about your professor. He had been thinking about it while fixing the wobbly leg on your desk chair. He had been thinking about it while watching you laugh at Mrs. Smithers’ cat through the cracked door.
Maybe he had been thinking about it while buying groceries. Maybe he even stood in the pasta aisle with blood still under his sleeves, picking the brand you liked better because you once said the cheaper one tasted “dusty.”
“Mm,” you managed.
It was barely a sound. Your throat had gone tight. You were trying very hard not to break apart, trying not to let the whole sweetness of it take you down completely, but your hand was already lifting to his face. Your thumb brushed the corner of his mouth, careful of the split in his lip.
“You sure you wanna marry me?” you asked.
Dex looked genuinely offended. “Yes.”
It came so fast you almost laughed. You did, a little, but it cracked around the edges. “Really?”
His brow furrowed, as if the question itself made no sense. “Yes.”
“You’ve thought about it?”
Dex stared at you, and the answer was so obvious then.
He had probably thought about it too much. Dex didn’t daydream. He planned. He mapped. He calculated. Even his fantasies came with exit routes and contingency plans.
“Okay,” you whispered. “What would that life even look like?”
You saw this glint in his eyes, the way they widened by a fraction. You had asked the one question he had been dying to answer.
His hand stayed at your waist. His thumb moved once, almost unconsciously, a small stroking motion through the fabric of your shirt.
“I’d get us a house,” he said.
Your heart gave a helpless little kick.
His gaze drifted past you, not away in dismissal, but as if the apartment disappeared from his eyes.
“Not in the city,” he said. “Close enough if you still wanted it, for work or whatever you wanted, not right in it. Not sirens under the window all night, not this building where you can hear every footstep in the hall and know which ones don’t belong.”
His thumb moved once against your waist, like even with his head in the clouds he needed one hand on you to make sure the dream had a center.
“We’d look at the suburbs,” he continued. “I’d want roads I could learn. I want neighbors so you can bake them pie, but I don’t want them too close. We need a neighborhood with space between houses. We need streetlights that work. A sidewalk, maybe, where you could walk in the morning if you wanted and I wouldn’t spend the whole time looking over your shoulder.”
You stayed quiet.
You didn’t want to interrupt him. There was something too precious about the way he was speaking, like he had cracked open a safe inside himself and all these impossibly domestic things were spilling out.
“It would have a yard,” he said, smaller now. “Not huge. We don’t need huge, but we need enough. We would need a fence. A good one. Tall, but not ugly. I’d make sure it looked nice. You’d care about that.”
Your throat tightened.
“I’d make sure I have good sightlines in there,” he continued, “no blind spots.”
There he is.
“And I’d plant flowers,” he added.
You blinked. Dex glanced at you, then looked down again as if the admission embarrassed him more than the blood on his face.
“You like flowers. The wild-looking ones. The ones outside delis in buckets, or growing through fences. You slow down when you see them.” His mouth twitched faintly, affectionate. “You pretend you don’t, but you do.”
He… noticed?
“I’d plant those,” he said. “I don’t know anything about gardening, but I could learn.”
He kept going before you could answer
“There’d be a porch, or a back deck. I’d put a chair there for you.” A little warmth moved through his eyes, as if imagining it. “You’d probably bring a blanket out even if it wasn’t cold.”
You smiled, and it seemed to give him more courage.
“And you’d have an office,” he said. “A real one, not a desk shoved into a corner with your papers stacked on the floor.”
Your eyes stung.
“Built-in shelves if we could, for your research books,” he continued. “Your fiction books, all of them. You wouldn’t have to pile them on the windowsill or keep the heavy ones under the desk. Your desk would face a window, but no one should be able to see into it from the street.”
You let out the smallest laugh, but he kept drifting deeper now.
“There’d be a couch in there,” he said. “So I could sit with you while you worked. I’d be quiet.”
The confession was so completely him that something inside you melted. He said it without shame, without trying to make it sound less obsessive than it was. Of course he would watch you. Of course he had already imagined sitting in a room built for your mind, staring at you while you read and wrote and thought, content just to be near the machinery of you.
“I like when you’re focused,” he murmured. “You make that face.”
You did not ask what face. You wanted him to keep talking.
“The kitchen would be big,” he said next, and there was certainty in that, like he had stood in it a thousand times. “Big enough for that island you like.”
Your mouth parted.
“We’d have one with those ugly pendant lights,” he added, with the resigned tone of a man making a grave sacrifice.
You smiled fully now. “They’re not ugly,” was all you could manage under your breath.
He heard it and very quickly added, “They are. But you like them, so we’d have it.”
That nearly did you in.
“There’d be storage,” he said. “Pans would be in the cabinets, not in the oven. I’d build you a spice drawer and I’ll organise them.”
You pressed your lips together, smiling harder.
“I’d make coffee before you woke up,” he continued. “Yours first. I’d make breakfast and I’d make more than eggs. Pancakes, maybe. You like pancakes when you’re sad.”
Your smile trembled.
“I’d make dinners, too,” he said. “You could sit at the counter and read to me while I cooked.” He looked almost shy at that. “Or talk. I don’t care. I just like your voice.”
The room felt too small for him then. Too small for the size of what he wanted.
“And a dining table,” he said, his thumb stilled against you. “With more than two chairs.”
He swallowed once and kept going.
“The bathroom would have that shower,” he said. “Like the hotel you wouldn’t stop talking about.”
You almost laughed. “A rain shower?” You asked
“Yes,” he said seriously. “With a glass door, a bench, and heated floors, because you hate cold tile.”
His eyes flicked to your face.
“I’d spoil you,” he said, like a vow. His eyesight lowered to your hand, then back to your face.
You couldn’t speak, but he went on anyway, because now that he had started, the dream seemed to pull him forward by the heart.
“There’d be security,” he said. Of course there would be. But from Dex, even that sounded like love.
“I’ll get good locks with reinforced doors. I’d install cameras.” he said immediately, almost gently. “I’ll get motion lights and window sensors.”
He breathed out slowly.
“You wouldn’t have to check anything,” he said. “I’d do it.”
What he was saying was wouldn’t have to listen at night, or wonder, or brace, or be scared just because the world was dangerous. Dex would take the ritual of fear and make it his. He would check the doors, the windows, the shadows, so you could go upstairs and sleep.
“I’d check the locks before bed,” he said. “You could just go up and get in bed. Read or sleep with the light on if you want. I’d turn it off.”
He said it with such certainty that tears gathered before you could stop them.
He didn’t notice yet. He had gone too far into the house.
“There’d be a gun cabinet,” he continued, practical now. “Locked, of course, and separate from ammunition. I’ll get biometric locks and a backup key hidden somewhere only we knew.”
His focus sharpened slightly as he pictured it.
“And a weapons cabinet too, with knives, anything tactical, anything I wouldn’t want left out. It would be hidden or built into the wall somewhere no one would look. Not near the kitchen. Not near the bedrooms.” He said it like he had already rejected three possible locations. “Everything would be secured,” he continued. “No exceptions. Nothing lying around.”
Then, still looking into that future house, still seeing the walls and the locks and the rooms and all the dangerous love he wanted to put inside them, he added, almost absently, “at least until the kids are old enough.”
Oh.
“The kids?” you asked.
Dex blinked. For a second, he looked almost confused that you had stopped him there, like the kids had been so naturally integrated into the architecture of his fantasy that he had forgotten you were only just now seeing the floor plan. In his head, apparently, they already existed.
“Yes,” he said, as if it were obvious. “Kids.”
He said it as if this were already settled. As if the universe had filed the paperwork. As if somewhere, in some future suburb with a fenced yard, your children were already waiting for him to come home.
“You just assumed?” you asked, your voice dazed.
Dex’s brows pulled together like he was only now realizing assumption was supposed to be a problem.
Then his eyes searched yours, suddenly cautious.
“I—” He paused, his fingers tightening slightly at your waist. “I assumed you’d want them,” he finished. “I assumed I’d give you anything you wanted. And I assumed…” His eyes dropped, then lifted again. “I assumed if there was any way the world let me have you like that, I’d take it.”
There it was.
Dex didn’t want a family because he had always dreamed of domestic happiness. He wanted it like conquest. He wanted children because they would be yours, because they would be his, because they would be the physical evidence of a future he had no right to expect. Benjamin Poindexter didn’t want in half measures. He consumed possibility whole. If he loved you, he loved the future of you and the shape of you extended forward. The house that held you. The children that might come from you.
That was deranged. That wasn’t normal. But to you, that was also, for reasons you could not explain without sounding like you needed professional intervention, romantic.
Dex watched your mouth part. “I’d love them,” he said. “I would. I know I would. Because they’d be yours.”
There it was, not the socially acceptable version. Not I love children or I always wanted a family. Dex didn’t know how to make love sound normal when it came from him.
He would love them because they would carry your eyes, maybe, or your mouth, or your stubbornness. Because he would look at them and see you continued into another body.
“They’d be mine too,” he added, like that part was harder for him to trust. “And maybe that part could be good because it came through you.”
Dex looked down at his hands that had done terrible things and could still hold you like it was made of light.
So you only sat there letting him talk, letting him show you the things he had apparently been thinking around for months.
“Have you thought about names?” you asked.
Dex nodded slightly.
Your lips parted.
“You have,” you whispered.
He looked almost offended again, but not at you this time. At the idea that he could have built this whole imaginary house, this whole impossible future, and not named the children already running through it. “Of course I have.”
“Tell me,” you said.
Dex watched you carefully. You could tell that there was still that small, frightened part of him, the part waiting for the insult, the laugh, the moment where your wonder hardened into common sense. But you just looked… patient.
“For a boy,” he said, “Jason.”
Jason.
Dex’s voice lowered. “Because you loved Jason and the Argonauts when you were little. The way everyone went after something impossible.”
You remembered telling him that, barely. It had been one of those late-night conversations with your cheek on his chest. His fingers moved through your hair as you rambled about mythology books you used to check out of the library, about heroes who were never as perfect as people wanted them to be.
Dex had listened.
“And for a girl?” you asked, already knowing he had one.
“Callie,” he said then immediately added, “Short for Calliope. Callie at school. Calliope if she liked it. Whatever you liked.”
Your eyes stung. “Callie,” you whispered.
Dex nodded. “You said she was the muse of epic poetry. You liked that she belonged to stories.”
You pressed your fingers to your mouth. He remembered that too.
“Jason and Callie,” you said with a sigh.
You realized then, that Dex had not chosen names because he liked them. He had chosen names because he thought you would.
Because even in his most private fantasies, the children were not abstract. They were not trophies. They were not little versions of him he could shape into whatever he wanted. They were pieces of you carried forward into the world, proof that some part of you could exist outside your own body and still belong to him, too.
“You like them,” he realised.
“I love them.”
His hand tightened around yours. Then, as if the names had opened a door he could no longer close, he kept going.
“Jason would have your eyes,” he said, voice distant again, head fully in the clouds now. “He’d be quiet, I think, the kind of kid who watches first. He’d notice everything.”
Your throat tightened.
“And Callie,” he said, and a faint helplessness moved through his face. “She’d be trouble.”
You laughed a little.
“She’d climb things,” he continued. “She’d argue. She’d look right at me while doing exactly what I told her not to do.”
You could see it.
Worse, you could see how much he loved it.
This imaginary little girl, stubborn and wild, already had him wrapped around her tiny, nonexistent finger.
“She’d have your mouth,” he said, almost to himself. “Your attitude.”
“My attitude?”
His eyes flicked to yours, and there was something wickedly fond in them. “Your attitude.”
He looked down at your joined hands again, thumb moving over your knuckles, and his voice changed.
“They’d need to be ready.”
For what?
But you knew what for. This part that should’ve made you want to retreat, but it only made you want to lean in more, because this was Dex’s love too. The same root, grown through darker soil.
“Ready?” you asked.
“For the world,” he clarified.
Dex’s eyes were calm now, focused and devoted. There was nothing theatrical in him, nothing performative. He was not fantasizing about violence for the sake of it. He was imagining two children made from you and him, and his first instinct was to make sure nothing could ever make them helpless.
He wasn’t in the kitchen anymore. He was in the woods with Jason and Callie when they were older and taller.
“I know what I am,” he said with finality. “I know what I’m good for.”
Your heart pinched. “Dex…”
“No,” he said, because he knew you. Because he could hear the protest forming before you even opened your mouth. “Don’t do that.”
You tilted your head.
“I know what I’m good for,” he repeated, gentler this time, but no less certain. “And if I’m good for anything, I will make sure they have every tool in their disposal to survive.”
There was no self-pity in it. He didn’t sound like a man condemning himself. He sounded like a man who had finally found a use for the worst parts of him and decided that they would serve you.
“They won’t be helpless,” he said. “Not our kids.”
Our kids.
“Jason and Callie won’t be fragile and easy to hurt. I won’t do that to them.”
His jaw tightened, and pride flickered through his face.
“They’ll be smart. They’ll be aware. They’ll know when a room feels wrong. They’ll know what a threat looks like before it reaches them.”
You listened, heart thudding.
“And they’ll be skilled,” he said.
It mattered to him. You could hear it.
Skilled.
Not broken. Not molded. Not made into little copies of him. He wanted them skilled, accurate, and alive.
“I’d start small,” he continued. “I’ll teach them hand-to-hand, teach them how to use their reflexes. I’ll teach them how to move without panicking, how to get up when they fall, how to breathe when they’re scared. Jason would overthink it at first. He’ll want every movement perfect before he tries. Callie would rush in and get mad when I made her slow down.” His mouth curved up faintly. “She’ll hate slowing down.”
You almost smiled through the ache in your chest.
“But she’ll learn,” he said. “They both will.”
His eyes darkened around the imagination.
“When they’re older, I'll teach them how to aim.”
Aim was not violence to him, not really. It was discipline. It was proof that the body could obey the mind.
“They better have their old man’s aim,” he murmured.
It should have sounded awful.
And it did, a little.
But it also sounded like him imagining a son and daughter with pieces of himself; His focus, his loyalty, his ability to lock onto a target and not shake.
“They’ll know how to throw,” he said. “How to hit what they mean to hit. I’ll get them knives, when they’re old enough. Take them to the range to shoot guns when they're older. No one fucking picks on my kids and lives to see another day.” He looked at you then, and the obsession in his face had turned holy. “I’ll make sure they understand that.”
You swallowed.
“If they find themselves in a bad situation, I’ll make sure they’re better than lucky. Lucky runs out. Lucky gets them killed. I want them trained. I want them calm. I want them to be able to look at danger and know they’re more dangerous.”
His hand tightened around yours.
“I want Jason to know how to get Callie out if something happens. I want Callie to know how to get Jason out. I want both of them to know how to get back to their mother.”
Your breath caught.
Their mother.
Dex said it as if it were the center of the whole plan.
“I’ll make sure they come home in one piece,” he said, voice rough now. “Ready for dinner. That’s the point.”
Your throat tightened.
“I’ll make damn sure they can leave this house and come back to it. I’ll make sure you’re not sitting at that kitchen table wondering if they’re safe.” His eyes dropped to your mouth, then back up. “I don’t want you afraid.”
Fuck.
The whole deranged, violent, tender fantasy had always curved back to that. Dex teaching your future children to fight, to aim, to survive, not because he wanted war in the home, but because he wanted peace for you. Because his idea of fatherhood was Jason and Callie walking through the front door with backpacks tossed on the floor, cheeks flushed, while you stood at the stove or sat at the island with your coffee and didn’t have to imagine every terrible thing that might have happened to them.
“I’d kill for them, you know this,” he said, rubbing a slow circle on your skin, “I’d burn the whole world down for them.” Dex did not look away. “But if I know they can take care of themselves, then my eyes can stay where they belong.”
His hand cupped your face fully now.
“On you.”
He said it like it was obvious. Like the whole future had a single center of gravity and he had been circling it the entire time, pretending he was talking about houses and kitchens and gun cabinets and kids, when really he had only ever been talking about you.
“Because all of this,” Dex whispered, “would happen because of you.”
His thumb moved beneath your eye, catching the tear before it could fall properly. He looked at you like the city and the sirens and the blood on his knuckles were temporary, like the whole world outside the window was an environment he could outlast if it meant getting you somewhere safe.
“You understand that, right?” he asked, but his voice made it sound less like a question and more like a confession he needed you to survive hearing.
Dex leaned closer, his hand cupping your cheek now, holding you with that possession that never felt casual.
“I’d make sure the kids knew that,” he said. “I’d make sure they knew anything good in me came from you.”
Your lips parted, but nothing came out.
“The warmth in the house, the fairytales they would hear before bed, the flowers they pick from the garden.” His thumb brushed slowly along your cheekbone. “They’d know that was you. That all of it was you.”
Your eyes burned.
“They’d love you,” Dex whispered. “because you’re perfect.”
“Dex…”
“And they’d love me because I’d earn it.” he said.
Oh, Benjamin.
Your heart broke a little at that.
He said it simply, like love was not something he had ever expected to be given for free if it was him.
His hand slid a little lower, thumb brushing the corner of your mouth, parting your lips.
“You wouldn’t have to learn how to shoot,” he reassured. “Because you’d have me.”
His voice dropped lower, intimate and possessive all the same.
“I’d take care of you,” he continued, “because that’s the only thing I was made wrong enough to do right.”
It should have sounded suffocating. Maybe from anyone else, it would have. But from Dex, it felt less like a cage and more like a shelter.
A small, broken laugh caught in your throat.
His mouth curved faintly, almost shy and almost wicked. “You can just sit there and be pretty, huh, baby?”
Your heart gave in completely.
He said it like a promise, like he would happily make a fortress of his own body if it meant you never had to lift a finger.
Your tears started falling quicker before you could stop them.
They started coming too quickly, gathering along your lashes and breaking loose before you could blink them back. One rolled down the side of your nose. Another slipped along your cheek toward his thumb. Suddenly you were crying in front of him over a house that didn’t exist, children who hadn’t been born, a ring he hadn’t even given you yet, and the sincerity of Benjamin fuckin’ Poindexter imagining a life precious enough for you to be loved.
Dex noticed and his whole face changed. His hand, still cupping your cheek, squeezed slightly. His eyes moved over your face, searching for the wound, the mistake, the exact word that had hurt you.
“What?” he asked, his voice wound tight. “What did I say?”
You shook your head, but that only made another tear fall.
He frowned. “I upset you.”
“No.” Your voice cracked. You hated how small it sounded. “No, Dex.”
“I did.”
“You didn’t.”
There was a panick-y edge beneath the flatness of his voice. Dex could handle blood and anger Dex could handle fear if it had a direction, if it could be aimed back at something. But your tears did something awful to him. They made him look helpless in the one way he could never tolerate: like he had caused pain he couldn’t kill.
You caught his wrist before he could pull his hand away from your face.
“Baby,” you whispered, “no.”
You pressed your cheek harder into his palm, making him understand that you were not resisting his grand plan. “These are not bad tears.”
Still, you could tell he didn’t believe you yet.
“They’re not,” you promised, laughing weakly even though your throat hurt. “You just… fuck, Dex. You just said all of that like it was real.”
His mouth parted slightly.
“You really want all of that?” You asked, though it sounded more squeaky than you’d like
Dex stared at you, looking almost offended again, as if he was wounded by the possibility that you could still doubt the size of what he wanted when he had just laid it open in front of you.
“Yes,” he said.
You breathed in shakily. “The house?”
“Yes.”
“The kitchen?”
“Yes.”
“The flowers?”
His thumb moved under your eye, wiping away another tear. “Yes.”
“Jason and Callie?”
His eyebrows relaxed immediately at the mention of the names. “Yes.”
You shut your eyes.
And for one second, because he had given you permission by wanting it so badly, you let yourself imagine it.
Dex driving with one hand on the wheel, the other reaching back at a red light because Calliope had dropped her stuffed animal and immediately made it everyone’s emergency. You could see it his eyes flicking from the mirror to the road to her little outstretched hand, his mouth set in that serious line like recovering a plush rabbit from the floorboard was a tactical operation. Callie would kick her feet in the car seat, impatient and bossy, already certain her father would retrieve anything she dropped because Dex had never once been normal about anyone he cared for needing something.
Dex in a school parking lot, terrifying every other father by accident. He’d stand there in a dark jacket and smart-ish trousers, trying to look approachable and while still planning thirteen ways to neutralize a PTA committee just in case someone tried to speak wrongly about his kids. Jason walking beside him with a too-big backpack and the solemn concentration of his father. Callie skipping ahead, fearless because her father was behind her and therefore the world hadn’t yet invented anything that could touch her.
Dex teaching Jason how to throw a ball in the backyard. His son would squinting with concentration, little shoulders tense, trying too hard because he had inherited that from you. Dex crouched in front of him, adjusting his grip, telling him to breathe. Then he’d step back, watching Jason throw too hard and too wide, and smiling anyway. He’d be proud anyway, because it was a start. He’d make his way to the knives eventually.
Dex standing behind you in the kitchen, arms around your waist, chin tucked against your shoulder while your children ran through the yard beyond the window.
He’d kiss your temple and ask for another one, and you’d say, “We’ll think about it,” because you two were a unit. You were two parts of the same whole.
You opened your eyes, and he just looked terrified of how much he wanted it.
Your hand tightened around his wrist.
“When you eventually ask me,” you said, voice shaking, “know that I’ll say yes.”
For a moment, Dex didn’t move.
He didn’t even seem to breathe.
His eyes searched yours once, twice, desperately, like he had to make sure he hadn’t imagined it.
“You will?” he asked.
You smiled through the tears. “Of course.”
Joy did not sit easily on Dex, but you knew this was what it looked like.
You let out a watery little laugh, because if you did not laugh you were going to sob properly.
That seemed to bring him back to himself.
Dex leaned in and kissed your neck once, then your cheeks, then the damp place beneath your eye where a tear had slipped down.
Each kiss was careful and possessive in the best way. He wasn’t trying to stop you from crying. Instead, he wanted to claim every tear.
Dex kissed your jaw again, then tucked his face into your neck, and for a long time he just held you.
What you did not know was that the ring was already more than a fantasy to him.
What you did not know was that earlier that evening, before the Supreme Court had gone to hell, he shot Buck Cashman, before he came home, Dex had received confirmation of an advance from Mr. Charles.
He had a government contract. He had a stable job.
Dex had read the confirmation once.
Then twice.
Then, because he was Dex, he had memorized the number. The second he saw the advance, his mind had gone to you.
Rent. Groceries. Your tuition. The overdue utility bill you had tried to hide under a stack of journal articles like paper could make debt disappear. The textbooks you kept putting off buying because you said you could “probably survive with library copies,” even though he had seen the way you frowned when you said it.
And then the ring.
He’d already planned the ring.
And no, he hadn’t told you any of this yet.
Maybe he will after the first payment cleared. Maybe after the first job was done and he knew the money was steady. Maybe after he had washed the blood off well enough to convince himself he was allowed to touch something as clean as your hand.
He’d find the right jeweler, though he already had one in mind: a shop in the Upper East Side that did custom pieces. He’d get one commissioned specifically for you. Nothing too delicate, because he wanted people to notice it. Nothing too flashy, because you would wrinkle your nose and tell him he had lost his mind.
He’d get something that looked right on your hand when you reached for your coffee in the morning. A gem that would catch the kitchen light when you turned pages in your office. Something Jason might touch curiously as a child, asking if Dad gave you that, and Dex would hear you say yes from the doorway. Something Callie would one day ask to try on, and you would laugh and tell her when she could when was older. Something that said you belonged to him.
And more importantly, that he belonged to you.
For now, he said none of that.
For now, he only held you tighter on the bed, making sure you were okay.
“You’re going to be so spoiled,” he whispered against your skin.
You smiled, eyes closing, tears still drying on your face. “Am I?”
“Yes.”
“By a wanted man with frozen peas?”
That got the smallest laugh out of him.
“By your future husband,” he said.
Your heart did a helpless little flip.
Little did you know, with this contract, the future wasn’t just a fantasy to him anymore.
He just needed to ask.
—end.
-
Extra note: at this point I think everyone’s seen that clip of Wilson saying Dex should get an equally unhinged girlfriend, and I just can’t help but think of this reader getting as obsessed with his plans for the future as he is and she would not let anything stand in her way! Like she’d kill her way into it if she had to, and her being a forensic psychologist would make for interesting storytelling. (This is just a thought, I make no promises!)
18+ Smut!!! older bf Dex is implied but it’s not a focal point, he’s such a tease really it’s bad, y’all r so in love it’s crazy!!! raw sex, talking you through it basically cause he’s a gentleman hello? horny blabbering, reader is described as female presenting and inexperienced! Lots of ogling sorry this is soooo self indulgent, newer relationship w Dex, he is soooo adoring cause he doesn’t want you to be scared and also sooooo nasty (not proofread yet)
Dex knows you’re nervous. He can read nervousness like an open face book - can smell it on people like a hound dog who just got deployed. But your nervousness, eyes shyly but surely devouring him, scared to say a word about your own desire, unable to really meet his big green eyes.
It’s different.
He’s not used to it.
He doesn’t have anyone in his life who he gets that ache in his chest for, the tender kind that makes him think, fleetingly, weakness isn’t so bad after all, cause he might fall off the earths axis completely if something happened to you.
He doesn’t like doing that, the being honest with himself part. And right now, he thinks it’s kind of sick that he thinks it’s fucking endearing.
You’re in your room, in your apartment, laying on your belly in your bed staring at his body like you’ve never seen a half naked man before. He’s freshly showered, blue towel tied around his thick waist and fuck, you don’t know what to do with all that.
It’s strange for Dex. He’s become more confident after prison, this is true. He’s gotten attention, but nothing permanent, nothing that made him feel like it was anything more than transactional.
And he’s not lost on the fact that you ogle and it makes him feel appreciated, so he thought nothing of walking out like this when you told him he needed to get all the blood and grime off of his skin before even touching your pink sheets.
Which, he was going to do anyways and you knew that, but he lets you act bossy sometimes cause you think it’s fun. And he finds it funny.
First time spending the night together, and you’re not letting him off easy.
You’ve already told him to use your body wash so he’d smell sweet and how amusing you found the idea of Bullseye lathering himself in vanilla scented soap.
Your relationship is new enough that this is not a regular occurrence as much as he quietly yearns for it to be, but not so new that he doesn’t know where you keep your shoes when you take them off as soon as you walk into the door, or where you keep the gun he insisted on buying you since you’re a woman living alone and have that one sketchy neighbor, or what clothes are in each drawer of your nightstand.
Or what the inside of your apartment looks like, the square footage of each room and what year you bought the place. The width of the kitchen cabinets and the previous owners current address just in case he came across a hidden camera or something of the sort. You know, normal stuff.
The connection you have with Dex has been rooted so deep, that the more overtly physical stuff hasn’t even really mattered. Has he touched himself, spit in in his palm and stroked his cock thinking about how you’d say his name when he’s so deep in you he’s touching your cervix?
Well, yeah.
Or how your panties might smell even though he felt genuinely guilty at the idea of stealing a pair? Cause sure he stalks but he’s not a creep.
But he knew you didn’t have a lot of experience in that department, couldn’t fucking believe it at first, but felt undeniably relieved that almost no one had you like that.
Selfishly, sickly, possessively.
But it makes sense that you didn’t let people in easily, your spirit is like sunshine spilling into a dark room, coloring your surroundings with a kindness he didn’t know existed as legitimately as it does with you. Course no one deserved you, of course you chose people wisely. Of course no one had been worthy of getting you so fully and completely like that in so long.
And how you chose him, how you’ve chosen him everyday for the past six months? He doesn’t know how to realistically wrap his head around it. Doesn’t know what he did in another life that was so goddamn good he got to spend even a fraction of his miserable fucked up life with you.
So yeah, it makes him feel things when you go a little slack jawed while looking at every ripple of muscle like it’s something to be devoured, got your gaze switching from his big arms to his abdomen and lower lower lower.
You really wish you could help it. But he’s got a body that’s put in work, and though you’d love to not make a man feel like he’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen - you can’t help it with Dex. Not when he’s this gorgeous, so adoring, so loving and spends almost every moment he has with you reminding you how he can never live without you.
And especially not when he’s two feet away and the towel is dangerously low, and the thick bulge underneath that towel is ever present, reminding you of what you haven’t seen or touched yet.
He shakes the water out of blonde his hair and onto your body, and it does exactly as intended. You squeal, shouting “Dex!” With exasperation that isn’t really genuine. Just enough of a juvenile thing to do that it breaks you out of your shell a little.
He chuckles to himself, finds it cute that you act as if he’s sprayed you with the shower head instead of flinging a few cold droplets. You wipe your forehead, and he steps closer until he’s at the foot of the bed. You sit up on your haunches so you can look at him face to face and not face to dick. You want to keep your composure at least a little.
“Rude, don’t do it again.” You frown, crossing your arms across your chest and his eyebrows lift and a stupid shit eating grin paints his handsome face.
“Oh yeah? Y’feelin brave then?” His voice is low and playful, he reaches out and wipes your cheek off. His hand is rough and warm and you keen into the touch like a kitten. His stomach fills with a familiar heat at such a small, innocent thing. God.
“Clearly not, you walked out half naked and now my knees are all wobbly.”
You say it out loud and so obviously because you don’t know what else to do about it. Truthfully, he really fucking likes that you said it that way. He admires your need to be honest even when it scares you a little. He’s jealous of it.
You also don’t realize how tantalizing, how maddening it truly is.
Don’t even know the power you have over him already.
He shakes the bashfulness off, though he can’t hide the heat staining his cheeks and neck.
“I got you, baby,” he says. And god that makes it so worse, cause now you feel that twinge of tension traveling from your chest to between your thighs. “nothin’ you gotta be scared of with me, you know that.”
You lock your eyes with his now, because it’s genuine and so full of trust you can’t look away even if you wanted to. It’s passing through you both like a power surge. A suddenly playful moment turning real, and candid within seconds even if that’s not what he inherently intended.
That’s just how it is with you and Dex
The intensity never really ceases.
He sees you stew this over in your mind, feels contentment in his bone marrow when you scooch a little closer on your knees and place your soft hands on his bare shoulders. Your touch makes him feel like a live wire, and sort of like he can finally breathe again.
“You’re just like…” you start, chewing on the inside of your bottom lip. He’s got this little smirk that he’s holding back, cocking head head but gentle in the eyes as if you tell you go on, say what you feel. “really beautiful and it’s distracting me.”
Yeah, he’s done for. He can’t even smile properly because those words are so foreign, and so completely you.
He casually cups your face and rubs two thumbs over your soft cheeks. It really does make him feel things - things he hasn’t felt in a long time. Things that didn’t mean what they mean now to him, what you mean to him. It’s the best fucking compliment in the world when it’s coming from your lips.
And would mean absolutely nothing coming from anyone else.
“Distracting you from what, sweetheart? Just you an me right now, there’s no one else to think about.”
You want to kiss him. You want to drag your hands along his trim body, feel him twitch and pant against you. The thought is burning your head, leaving a searing image in its wake - and it’s so real, so close. Because he’s right here in front of you, staring like he knows every thought that’s passing through your head. Like maybe he knows you better than you know yourself.
“C’mere.”
He grumbles, reaching around to cup the nape of your neck. He does it gently, pulling you into his mouth so slow and so careful. He’s exercising an unreal amount of self control, training himself to be gentle with hands that have done so much damage in their time.
The peck is soft, gentle. He doesn’t hold you there even though he’d like to. He lets you decide what you want to take from him. A soft sound leaves your mouth when you depart, going back in for more series of squelchy pecks. It’s his turn to hum low in his throat, you feel it vibrate through you.
And he can feel it in your movements, that you’ve tasted him and now you want more and he hopes you can feel it coming off of him too. He doesn’t want it to be scary, or nerve wracking. His thundering heart betrays his need to come off casual.
“Dex?” You murmur, starting the get cloudy in the head. He can hear it in your voice, in that sleepy way you peer up at him like you’re not fully controlled by conscious thoughts.
You’ve got this pseudo bravery that’s only here with you right now because he is, because he obliged when you told him it would be better for him to stay the night at your place since he’s in town. Because he’s made you feel so safe, so unbelievably understood.
If you knew the patience Dex exhibited with you, out of fear of scaring you off, or freaking you the fuck out, you’d probably have even more of a reverence. And not about sex, no, that’s not important to him.
But he’s never done this before. Never truly put another other person before his own wants and needs, and it feels foreign. But he’d do anything, anything for you. To keep you, to touch you, to protect you.
“Yeah, baby?” He asks, toying with your bottom lip with his thumb. The tips of his ears are going pink, and you feel his body heat radiating off of him like a furnace. You’re only separated by a few inches, not even.
He tilts your chin up when your head drops while you ask him the question, catching your eye. He can’t bear for you to be insecure, to feel even an ounce of trepidation with him.
“Would you…well, can I, touch you?”
God.
It goes straight to his dick, he feels the towel getting tighter around his waist. And he’s sure his pupils are blown out to hell. He can’t believe you feel the need to ask, but that’s just who you are.
“Course’ you can, sweet thing. Course’ you can.” His voice is so rough and so low now, emphasizing his permission. You get this pit in your gut, suddenly astonishingly aware of the fact that you can feel him completely and will and how you’ve been scared of intimacy with a person who wants nothing more than to have your hands on his body.
Your touch move from those big shoulders, and the first thing they instinctively drag over is his broad chest - his skin is hot, light body hair tickling your palms. His nerves are so reactive to your touch and he can’t help but watch you, every expression you have going on even while he feels raw and wired.
You’re concentrated, swallowing hard. They slide lower, past his sternum and over his rigid abdomen and the planes of muscle and tendon there. How they protrude, as if to say grab me, touch me.
You’ve got an awestruck look about you, and your hands feel so soft and gentle and good against him, he clenches his jaw so hard his teeth might shatter. He’s starting to feel lightheaded.
You stay here for a moment, rubbing up and down the valleys and dips. You grip his sides, till your thumbs are tracing the divots that point towards his manhood. You’re moving back up again with both palms against his sides, over his collarbones and then you’re squeezing his biceps with such a giddy look on your pretty face.
Like you’ve just realized for the first time that Dex truly is yours.
“Y’havin fun? Look at that smile.”
You snort, suddenly shy that you were making it that obvious, leaning into him completely and shoving your face in the crook of his neck - he feels all your softness against his body, your shirt a thin barrier between your pretty chest that’s smooshed against him. He smells fresh, clean, gourmand. You feel scruff against your ear, that same body heat intensifying. And since you’re pressed against him now, he instinctually wraps his arms around your frame. Holding you there firmly.
You think you hear a sigh of relief that perhaps he himself didn’t know he was holding onto.
You don’t know if it’s your heartbeat or his, thundering so loudly in your ear. He rubs slow circles over your back, wide palm a reassuring anchor.
You don’t do it on purpose, pressing your lips to that soft tender area underneath his ear. You can’t see it, but it makes his eyes roll back and flutter shut a little - your mouth is so soft, so warm. You do hear the hum that comes from his throat, though. And since your bodies are pressed together, yeah - you feel his dick twitch against your thigh where you previously somehow forgot it was there all together.
You don’t stop there, not after you’ve tasted him and heard and felt the reaction it gave him. Now you’ve got that deep seated need, and so you open your mouth a little wider, give him a genuine kiss over his carotid artery - and yeah, he tilts his head to the side for you, rolls it back when you start kissing and kissing, all the way to his Adam’s Apple.
Those big hands grip your hips a little bit harder, and the pressure of it makes you wonder what it would feel like to for him to grab you other places. How strong he really is, what his body can really do.
“Baby.” His voice is gruff.
He’s panting like a dog now, cause you’re starting to get a little feverish with your movements, got your tongue on his sharp jaw and then he’s grasping your face in his hands cause he can’t take it. He needs to kiss you.
He doesn’t mean to be rough, for the kiss to be bruising. You let out a soft, shocked whimper and he murmurs a “sorry, baby.” In a voice you’ve never, ever heard come from Benjamin Poindexter, just a register higher than it should be.
He slows down a bit when your tongues connect, warm and wet in each others mouths, his nose rubbing against yours. He takes your bottom lip and sucks on it, and your fingertips dig into his arms like you could be swept away at any second.
Now your hands are all in his damp hair, tugging and pulling and he loves it, bad. He lets out this terribly erotic groan, and a soft “yeah.” and you give him one right back. He departs only so you can breathe.
God, his lips are so kiss bitten. Pink and pretty and wet, and his big green eyes are low and pupils obsidian, like he’s on the prowl, starving. He wipes your mouth, holds your face firmly so he can look at you.
“Talk to me, tell me what you want.” He huffs, and you hate that he needs you to say it out loud. Can’t he feel you pushing yourself against his dick? Can’t he see how heavy you’re breathing and the pure desperation for him lit aflame in your gaze?
But you know he needs it.
“I…I want you, want you really bad Dexie. Why’d you stop kissing meeee?”
Oh, you’re getting whiny. Petulant. He takes his bottom lip between his teeth for just a second, tasting you again. He keeps one hand on the back of your neck and one just above your ass when he reclines you on the mattress.
You still can’t believe his towel has managed to stay on.
He’s got this fear, when he hovers on top of you, arms on either side of your head, your knees knocking his stomach before you spread them so you can rub your heels into the dimples of his back.
He’s worried it’ll be too much, that he’ll be too much.
See, he wants you just as bad. And of course he’ll take his time, of course he’ll be as gentle as you need him to be. Not even a question. But you’re already dialed up to 10, got this expression like you’re this hurt, innocent thing, all while squirming like the pressure between your legs is unbearable.
He kisses your face. Your cheeks, your forehead, letting you writhe like you’re tortured underneath him. It’s driving you mad, he knows that, but his cock is so hard it’s starting to hurt against the rough material of the towel and he can’t let himself feel you till he knows what you really want.
“S’not what I asked.”
You push at his big chest, pull at his shoulders. He doesn’t move from it, of course, but your fingernails are leaving streaks against his flesh and you finally just lock your legs around him and press him right between your legs.
“I want you to fuck me, if that’s okay with you.”
If that’s okay with you. He almost laughs, cause god you’re funny even when you’re not trying to be.
“Dirty mouth, tsk.” He says it to tease, kisses the tip of your nose when he says it. But you’ve still got that hazy lust clouding your eyes. He kisses you again, swallowing your whine.
“Yeah? You achey right here, baby?” He emphasizes by moving his hips side to side, abdominals flexing at his core, pressing his cloth covered cock harder against your flimsy pajama bottoms - and you gasp.
He would find it absurdly cute if he weren’t so fucking hard. So instead it just makes him throb.
You keep your hands on his waist of moving muscle, rutting yourself against his center, feeling the outline of his erection hot and heavy between your legs.
“Right there.” You pant back with an open mouth and bleary eyes. Everything about the moment is doing it for you. And not just the obvious, which is a 95% naked Ben with his big puppy dog eyes and a smirk that accentuates all the years he’s ever smirked, and his unfairly strong body. Just the dynamic that’s going on is making you sticky, leaking from your sex.
It’s doing it for him too. Cause now he’s kissing you with a desperation you didn’t know he had, making mmm, mmmm, noises into your throat while he does it.
“Want me inside? That what you want, pretty girl?”
Now it’s his turn to mouth at your neck, and you’re so so soft, and perfumed and the little bit of perspiration that’s gathered because of being worked up tastes so good on his tongue. He licks the divot of your collarbone, covers any expanse of skin he can see in open mouthed kisses.
“Yessss, please.” You beg. He pecks your chin, hating to pull away from you like this cause of course you sound pitiful when he does. He hooks his thumb underneath the towel and it falls off like it wasn’t somehow glued to him for 10 minutes straight.
You should’ve known, and maybe you did know. But Dex is big, it’s enough to be incredibly intimidated because not only is he a couple inches longer than average, but he’s thick. Heavy. Looks like it holds weight to it that your body can already picture feeling.
It’s pretty too. The tip is the same shade of his lips, a little smaller in width than the robust shaft and you’re honestly not surprised he manscapes, he’s always been particular- it’s neat, lightly colored, and framed where you want him most.
“I’m not the only one with starin’ problems.” He says, not predicting that you’d cover your face with your hands and try to suffocate yourself in the sheets. He grips your right ankle, shakes it before he crawls on top of you.
“Hey hey hey, just joking baby, don’t do that.”
You think you might burst at how sincerely sorry he sounds, grabbing your wrists with calloused fingers and prying them away from your eyes. When he turns you over and sees that you’ve got a big, goofy, ridiculous smile on your face - his heart settles back into his chest instead of the pit of his stomach.
You’re giggling.
“Scared me half to death, fuck, Thought I really hurt your feelings.”
You rub your palms against his scruffy face, touch his open mouth with your thumb.
“You did, asshole,”
He’s smiling goofy too, now. Kissing your wrist.
“just staring cause it’s so big.”
He knows this. He’s got eyes and he’s been told once or twice. Still, Dex doesn’t know what to do with being seen like that by you. Didn’t think about it until now.
Hearing you say it out loud, hearing the lilt of your voice and seeing your eyes rake down his body to stare at his manhood with big eyes - it strokes his ego like nothing else ever has. He sees the way you nibble on the inside of your lip again, though. Sees you calculating.
“I’ll take it slow’as you need, yeah?” He reassures, rubbing the sides of your thighs with heavy, comforting strokes. He wants to bite the flesh there, take it into his mouth, savor it.
“You know I trust you.” You pant back, and he knows you do. He can feel it in your body language, the way you’re opening your legs for him wider, like a lotus flower.
And you’re not so tense anymore, body not so rigid. You’re melting into him when he kisses you again - one big hand gripping your jaw gently. You’ve never been kissed like this before by anyone else. It’s intoxicating.
He pries your lips open, licks the inside of your mouth before beckoning your tongue with his own. He sucks it before pecking you again, languishing you with slow and sloppy pops and suckles.
“Fuck.” You whine, sexually frustrated in a way that you’re not sure has been experienced by anyone else ever because that’s how singular it feels, how maddening.
He departs to take a look at you, a good, long look. Hawk eyes trail over your body like it’s something reverent.
He tongues the inside of his cheek, takes in the way you’re panting and unable to keep still and swallowing hard. You’re so worked up from nothing, it’s making him feel dizzy and drunk with excitement.
“Can I take these off, sweetheart?”
You nod, followed by a verbal response cause he’s not gonna do it unless you say it.
“Yes.”
Two thumbs hook into the waistband of the silky shorts, and he’s taking your underwear with them when he starts shimmying them off of your soft hips. He even takes the time to graze your thighs and calves with his knuckles as he draws them down your legs.
He wants this to be good for you, the best. He’s proficient in all aspects, hits the target every single time.
Cool air breezes against your center, where arousal has made you slick. Dex is at your feet still, holding your ankles and trailing his calloused palm back up those same calves. He doesn’t even realize he’s licked his lips and has groaned deep in his chest. His senses are taking over, his desire, the thick heady mix of testosterone and adrenaline pumping through him.
He stares for a beat longer than the average man would. Because once again, he can’t believe he’s here. That the images in his mind could never do you absolute justice, how unbelievably beautiful you are in the most real and human way.
You’ve got pressure starting to become unbearable. Even just watching him, seeing how lost he is in the sight of your body - you can’t think straight.
He’s pulled out of his reverie when you grip the bottom of your shirt and pull it off your head, tossing the garment to the floor. It lands on the corner of the nightstand, but who’s checking.
“M’sorry baby, got distracted.” He says it honestly, a genuine apologetic lilt to his voice.
“It’s okay, makes two of us now.”
You smile at him in the gentle, playful way you do, and he’s leaning between your legs by the waist, cock so close you can feel the heat coming from it along with the rest of his body.
Now he’s looking at your naked chest, finds himself kissing your mouth in a heavy press of his lips before he’s moving across your jaw and neck and - he almost dips down and takes your nipple into his mouth. He’s almost forgotten his manners.
“Can I?” He asks through thick lashes and a strain in his throat, hovering over your tits with a slack jaw.
“Of course.”
Eager hands grip the softness of your waist, pressing upwards till he’s cupping the fat of your breasts and closing his eyes like he’s about to savor something sweet - and then he sucks on the hard bud, and you’re lit aflame.
You didn’t think it could feel this good. But he’s sucking harshly to get them sensitive, dribbling a little spit onto them before rubbing his bottom lip across the surface. Then he pops it back into his mouth, swirls his tongue.
Your fingers find his damp hair again, and you’re sure he’d suffocate if he stayed here for too long with the way you’re arching into him. He’s moving from one to the other like he can’t choose.
“Pretty fuckin tits, fuck.” He mumbles it like he’s talking to himself. Dirty words sound so good coming from his mouth, and his general disposition is usually so quiet most of the time that it feels like you’re being gifted with something rare.
It’s somewhere during his sucks and nips and bites to the fat, that you feel his hips get closer. And with the size of Dex, anything closer than what you were before has his shaft pressed right against your center - up against the sticky folds and now swollen clit.
He winces like it hurts with furrowed eyebrows, completely taken aback by how much is dripping out of you - he feels hot, wet slickness against his cock, and a gasp pulls from your lips
Your hips talk before you do. You thrust them upwards, catch his manhood between your legs and rub yourself against it from the bottom where his heavy balls are sat, to the aching tip.
“Please, I can’t wait.” It sounds like you could cry.
He almost chokes, eyes getting fluttery and his arms shaky, but not from holding up his own weight. He reels it in, looks you in your eyes, corners of his pretty mouth twitching upwards
“Yeah? You want it, pretty girl?”
You pull him by his neck to your mouth again, too worked up to care about your attitude or your neediness because Dex knows what he’s doing. It’s driving you crazy.
“Dex you’re twitching against me, I know you want it too.”
His thick eyebrows raise on his forehead, mouth cocking into a genuine smirk now.
“When’d you get such a dirty mouth, huh?”
He’s both more turned on than he thought possible, and so goddamn amused. Elated. You’re opening up for him, and it’s too good. He kisses you again and again and again.
“Always want you to tell me what’s goin on in that beautiful head, yeah? Tell me everything. Don’t hold back again.”
He’s lost it. He’s desperate now, and he doesn’t visit desperation very often anymore. Told himself he never would, so It’s reserved for very few things, and here you are - unraveling him with a string of words. With your tongue playing with his.
And you’re developing this pained expression, this crease between the valley of your eyebrows and your breathing has picked up considerably because you’re trying to catch gasps of air between the relentlessness of his mouth.
You’re bucking yourself against his dick now, shy girl gone and tucked away deep behind your navel where you need him most. It’s heavy in the pit of your stomach, that desire, the smoke.
“Want me to put it in? Huh?” He grunts, cause now he can’t compose himself properly. He’s being transformed, reduced to someone who was just made to please you. To give you exactly what you want.
“Yes please please please.” He doesn’t think he’s ever been harder. Your genuine desire is so sweet and honest, and he kisses you hard again. Departs to peer between your bodies at the mess between your legs.
He grips the base of his shaft.
“Don’t have to beg honey, let me just - okay lift your hips a little, fuck, that’s it, thaaaaats - oh fuck.”
He’s afraid he’s not going to last because you’re stretching around his tip perfectly, and your mouth drops open and this incoherent, fucked out sound leaves your parted lips while your insides already start pulsating around him.
Giving him a nice, welcome hug once he’s fully seated.
He can’t believe it, that he’s actually inside of you. And he can’t think about anything else other than the sensations, than the swelling in his chest and the way the tip of his dick is slowly pressing forward through your spongy walls - how the wetness is coating him, how now he’s fully sheathed inside of you.
“Tell me when to move, god you feel good.” He pants it out, staring down at you with a searching gaze, trying to figure out what’s going on in your head.
“You can move Dex - ohhhh, oh fuck.” He drags himself out slowly before pushing back in, giving you a chance to feel the entirety of him. He watches it go in out, ears twitching with the sound of your slickness and the squelchy glide of you taking it all.
He’s shuddering already, hips rocking steadily at first - just trying to let you adjust, to let himself adjust, soaking up the sensations of the warmth and the softness and wondering how in the hell he ever lived without feeling you like this.
His imagination can not, will never again compare. Not even a little.
It quickly becomes frantic, because your fingernails start leaving these little scratches down his biceps and the sting is too good, and his hips start bucking at a pace that begins shaking the bed frame.
You’re stuck with an open mouth, eyes already threatening to close and he’s envious of the ceiling and the way you’re staring at it so he grips your chin - pulls your face back down so he can look at you.
He’s so fucked out. Blotchy pink skin, the crinkles by his eyes doing overtime and the lines in his forehead deepening with each furrow and twitch of his eyebrow.
His breaths are ragged, vocal, and when you make eye contact and you feel the intensity of everything all at once, like a massive wave of emotion, and surrealism crashing down on you.
Because he’s so heavy on top of you, deliciously heavy and he’s in between your legs and inside your body and you have the want to reach out and wrap your arms around him but he’s too big and this position makes it hard.
Plap plap plap.
The sounds are loud now, his hips connecting with the back of your thighs and his heavy balls smacking against the crest of your ass - you cry out to him, pleads that are just sounds but somehow he knows exactly what you need. He always does.
“Shh, I got you, right there’s good hmm? F-f-fuck, ahhh.” He’s groaning in your ear, nuzzled himself in the crook of your neck and shoulder and now you can wrap your arms around his neck. He smells sweet from the shampoo, salty from the quickening perspiration and his skin is hot and rough against the side of your face.
“Righ-right there, r-right there, I- ohhhh, mmm.”
It’s downright humiliating, the sounds leaving you, the reaction your body is having. It’s nothing short of angelic to him, and he’s so giving - only putting himself in a position where he can’t watch what’s happening because you want to hug him while he fucks into you like this.
You can’t see much over the hulking mass of his back, just flashes of his ass from the way his hips are pistoning in and out.
It’s really a small, unconscious thing. Your fingertips glide over the raised, smooth pink scar protruding from his spine. It’s a gentle graze, just the pads pressing into it enough for your nails to kiss it.
Dex loses his mind.
The sound that rips through him is animalistic, primal and hungry and distraught. His whole body lurches, and then he’s coming back up for air and looping two big arms around each thigh while he puts your knees to your chest.
You grip the bedsheets and he’s quick to take your hands and place them on his big chest, to encourage your touches, the scratching the wanting, the all consuming desire plaguing you both like an incurable sickness.
“You just - you’re p-perfect baby, oh god you’re perfect.” He says it like it’s painful, sweat dripping down the side of his face, cocooning in the cusp of his scar and curving around his jaw.
“I can’t - dee-eep, you’re so deep Dex.” Each word is hiccuped by a thrust, and between your legs is surely a mess. Warm, hot even, soaked and sticky. His face contorts, head cocking to the side like he’s listening with real and true empathy.
His voice is even more saccharine, not mocking but understanding, because he’s the one so deep he feels the outline of your cervix against the mushroom tip of his dick.
“I know, I know honey.” He gets as close as he possibly can, lips barely ghosting yours and you’re craning your neck to meet him. To press a plush, hard kiss to his mouth and his tongue is quick to find yours. To tell it hello, to taste it.
“You can do it, ohhhhmygod, already taking me all the way. That’s it, that’s it.” He encourages, presses his forehead to yours and you make the mistake of peering down, of seeing just how good he’s fucking you with your own eyes.
He’s disappearing over and over again with strings of his precum and your arousal connecting the two of you in a sticky haze.
He feels your insides pushing, your belly is tensed and your eyes are having trouble focusing on him again. So he curves his hips, ruts into you deep and his pubic mound grinds against your clit in the process which makes you pulse even harder around him.
He knows you’re close, can feel it and see it and the way your jaw drops a little further spurs him more.
“Like this? Gonna cum for me?”
It’s a series of questions pulled out with great effort despite their simple nature, because he’s barely hanging onto his own sanity.
You nod ardently, pulling his hips closer each time he leaves your body and returns. He’s too fucked out to do anything other than keep going, exactly as he is because he needs you to finish around him.
It’s the same precision he has with targets, the accuracy unwavering and absolute in the end goal.
It flutters from between your thighs and then throughout your body, centered inside of you with a crushing intensity, the blossom of your ending.
You’re crying out his name with breaks in your voice that he’ll remember forever, thighs trembling fiercely around his waist with the urge to close from the pleasure while your walls quiver and contract.
It’s a string of “cumming cumming you’re making me cum.” And he praises you all the while at the same time - “yeah, yeah let go for me. That’s it, fuck, all for me.” And it’s hearing those whimpers, those soft sobs in his ear and your hot puffs of breath that sends him right over the devastating edge.
The thrust is final, sealing. He will never be the same, and he understands that as he releases into you, balls aching and tensing and then ropes of his spend being pumped into you with short staccato thrusts.
“I love you I love you, god, fuck I love you.” It sounds painful, like he’s never said something so honest. He grunts viciously, grips at the sheets cause he doesn’t want to hurt you with his hold.
You cling onto him while your orgasms ripple through your bodies, and he’s all tensed muscle and beads of sweat and a mirage of a normally composed man. You’re reduced him to crimson skin and tears in the corners of his eyes and ragged breaths.
You’re both shaking when he decides to pull out of you, he shutters from the way you squeeze around him as if you don’t want him to go. And truthfully he wants to sit there for as long as you’ll allow, but he’s heard it’s not good for you and he wants to get you cleaned up as soon as possible.
But he has to press his mouth to yours first, inspect your face for any signs of discomfort, a quick gaze over your body for any possible bruising - but you’re the perfect picture of bliss. A smile of content on your pretty lips, your limbs loose.
“Dex,” you’re broken from the post sex haze, eyes suddenly serious, expression more concerned that he’d like considering what you two have just done - you pull his mouth to you again, kissing over and over and over like it might be the last time ever.
His heart starts skipping beats, like maybe he missed something. Yeah, of course he kisses you back because he’d rather lose a limb than deny you of that, but his mind starts reeling until you provide an explanation.
“What is it? Are you okay? I didn’t hurt you did I?” He’s taken aback, content nonetheless because your lips are forgiving and warm and pleading. He sees now that you’re searching his eyes, till they’re locked in on his irises like you’ve found what you were looking for.
You break away and hold his face, nuzzle your nose against his searing cheek. He swallows hard when you take a deep breath to speak.
summary: You wake up one night to a familiar knocking on your window.
word count: 4.4k+
pairing: dex poindexter x fem!reader
notes: everyone say "thank you karen page" for giving us this absolute treasure of a scene, because damn i think about it every. single. day. i even thought about it during my biology midterm... and when i'm driving... and when i go to sleep at night... is it too much to ask for dex to look at me like this??? i need this absolute bottom of a man
warnings/tags: no use of y/n, gun (is that a sufficient warning?), implied that you and dex used to date, dex is an absolute simp, this man gets on his knees for you yes yes yes, kissing, pet name (use of baby), implied that this takes place after dex gets out of prison
The first sound is so small you almost convince yourself it’s part of a dream, something your brain made up to justify the way you’ve been sleeping with one ear open. You don’t get the luxury of pretending for long, because it comes again—soft, deliberate, and it’s definitely not a branch scraping glass or a neighbor’s door slamming downstairs. It’s a tap that knows exactly where your window is, exactly how much pressure to use, and exactly how to wake you without waking the whole building.
You sit up without thinking and the sheet slides off your shoulder. The room is dark enough that you can’t make out much beyond the vague shape of your dresser and the line of the curtain, but you don’t need a clear view to find what your hand is looking for. Your fingers go into the bedside table drawer, curl around the grip, and pull the gun free with the quiet familiarity of practice. You stand, bare feet on cold floorboards, and the chill climbs up your legs like the apartment is trying to warn you.
The hallway is narrow and familiar, and you’ve walked it a thousand times, but tonight it feels like a corridor in someone else’s life. You keep the gun up, not waving it around, not shaking, just steady, and you listen with everything you’ve got. There’s no heavy breathing, no footsteps scuffing. That’s what makes your stomach tighten, because a drunk would stumble, a thief would rush, and a normal person would knock at your door.
The living room opens up around you, a patchwork of darker shadows where your furniture sits. The window by the fire escape is cracked open by a few inches, the curtain pushed aside like a hand slid it back and held it there. The air coming in is colder than the air in your apartment, and it carries the faint scent of city grime and rain. You take one more step in, muzzle tracking toward the window, and then you see him in the corner where the light from the street doesn’t quite reach.
He’s standing with his back close to the wall, like he chose a spot that gives him the whole room and keeps him out of the line of sight from anyone walking past outside. He’s dressed dark, of course, and he’s not moving like he’s trying to spook you. He’s still in that unsettling way that makes it feel like the apartment belongs to him now, like he’s been there longer than you have and he’s just waiting for you to catch up.
“Step into the light,” you say, and your voice comes out flat, the way it does when you’re forcing yourself not to feel something first.
He exhales, slow, and the sound is quiet but familiar enough to pull at something inside your chest. Then he shifts, and you get a glimpse of his face as he moves just enough that the streetlight catches the curve of his cheek and the pale line of his mouth. The light shows the tension in his jaw before it fades again as he settles back into shadow.
A pause, and then a voice from the darkest part of your living room, low and steady like he’s been standing there listening to you breathe. “You still sleep with it that close.”
Your grip tightens before you can help it. Your aim doesn’t wobble, but everything in you goes hot and cold at the same time, because you know that voice, you know the cadence, you know the way he makes the simplest sentence sound like he’s filing it into place. You take another step forward without meaning to, then stop yourself before you get too close. “What are you doing in my apartment, Dex?”
He says your name, and he says it like he’s allowed to, like he hasn’t earned the right to have it in his mouth. It hits you anyway, because your body is stupid and memory is worse, and there’s something about hearing him say it that makes your grip tighten on the gun until your knuckles ache. “I needed to see you,” he says.
“That’s not an answer.”
His shoulders lift a fraction, not quite a shrug. “It’s the only one I have.”
You keep the muzzle steady, aimed center mass, the way you were taught, the way you taught yourself when no one else was around to correct your stance. “How did you get in?”
He glances at the window. “You already know.”
“I want to hear you say it,” you tell him.
He shifts again, and this time he steps out far enough that you can actually see him. The light catches more of him now: the shape of his shoulders under the jacket, the tired set to his eyes, the faint shadow of bruising that’s either healing or never fully fades when a body’s been through too much. He looks leaner than you remember, like prison carved away whatever softness he had left, and he looks too controlled for someone who just climbed up to your window in the middle of the night.
“I came up the fire escape,” he says, and then his eyes flick down for a second, to the gun, and back to your face. “You didn’t change the latch.”
Your pulse jumps, not because he’s wrong, but because you hate that he knows. You hate that he’s cataloging details like he’s always done, like he can’t help it, like your life is a pattern and he’s already traced the lines. “You could’ve knocked,” you say.
He gives you a look that’s almost dry, almost amused, and it doesn’t belong on his face after everything. “Would you have opened the door?”
You don’t answer that, because the truth is complicated and ugly and it doesn’t deserve to be spoken out loud with a gun between you. “What happened?” you ask instead, because something had to have pushed him here. “Did someone follow you? Is this some kind of—” You cut yourself off before you say trap, because saying it gives it more shape than you want to hold in your head.
He shakes his head. “No one followed me.”
“Then why are you here?” you repeat, and you keep your voice sharp enough to cut. “Why now?”
His mouth opens like he’s going to say something, then closes again. For a second he looks almost… careful, like he’s choosing words in the same way someone chooses where to step on thin ice.
“I got out,” he says finally, and his voice stays quiet, but there’s a roughness under it that wasn’t there before. “And the first night I was out, I didn’t come here. I didn’t come anywhere near you. I went somewhere else and I sat there until morning, because I told myself if I made it through one night, I could make it through the next.”
You don’t let yourself soften at the sound of him trying. You keep the gun up, because you remember the things he’s done and you remember how quickly trying can turn into something else when it’s Dex Poindexter doing it.
“How many nights did you make it through?” you ask.
His gaze holds yours, steady as the muzzle pointed at him. “Not enough.”
Your breath comes out harsh. “So you decided to break into my apartment.”
He doesn’t flinch. “I decided to see you.”
“You don’t get to decide things for me anymore.”
His expression shifts at that, something tightening behind his eyes like he’s swallowing down a reaction. “I’m not asking for permission,” he says, and then he adds, almost softer, “I’m here. That’s all.”
“That’s not all,” you snap, and the gun wavers a fraction before you force it steady again. “You don’t show up like this and pretend it’s nothing. You don’t get to stand in my living room like you didn’t—”
The words knot in your throat and refuse to come out, and Dex watches you with that awful focus that makes you feel seen in a way you never asked for.
He takes one step closer.
“Stop,” you say immediately.
He stops, but the fact that he moved at all sends heat crawling under your skin. He’s closer now, close enough that you can see the faint scar on his cheek you don’t remember from before, close enough that you can see how his pupils look too wide in the low light. His hands hang at his sides, relaxed but not casual, and he keeps them visible like he knows you’ll put a bullet in him if you have to.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
“I’m not,” you lie, and it’s stupid because he’s right. The tremor is small, but it’s there.
His mouth twitches. “You used to shake when you were angry.”
“Don’t,” you warn him.
He doesn’t stop, because Dex has never been good at stopping once he’s latched onto a thread. “And you used to hate it when I noticed,” he continues, and his voice is almost gentle now, like he’s trying to smooth something over with tone alone. “But you always let me.”
“I don’t let you do anything,” you say, and you lift the gun a fraction higher, aiming for his head this time because you want him to understand you mean it. “Take one more step and I’ll put you down.”
He looks at the gun, then back at you, and then he does the most infuriating thing he could do: he steps forward anyway, slow and deliberate, like he’s approaching an altar instead of a weapon. You don’t move, because you refuse to give ground in your own home, and the next second the barrel meets his forehead with a soft, undeniable bump.
He doesn’t jerk away, he doesn’t blink fast, he just leans in until the pressure is firm, and you feel it through the gun, through your arm,, straight into your chest. “There,” he says, voice low. “That’s better.”
Your stomach flips, half disgust and half something you don’t want to name. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
He breathes out through his nose, and you can feel it in the space between you. “A lot.”
“Back up,” you order, but he doesn’t move an inch. Your grip tightens again. “Dex.”
His eyes stay on yours, and there’s something in them that’s so naked it makes your throat go tight. It’s not a plea, not exactly, and it’s not a threat. It’s need in its purest form, stripped of all the lies he usually wraps around it.
You hold the gun steady even though your arm is starting to ache, and you hate that he can stand there with the barrel pressed into his skin like it’s a point of contact instead of a warning. He stays close enough that you can see the faint sheen of sweat at his hairline, close enough that you can feel his breath when he exhales, and he doesn’t do the decent thing and back away.
“On your knees,” you say, and you make your voice mean it.
For a beat he doesn’t move, not because he’s refusing, but because he’s watching you like he’s memorizing the exact set of your mouth, the angle of your wrist, the way you’re not stepping back. Then he nods once, slow, and he lowers himself like he’s trying not to startle a wild animal. His knees touch the floor with a quiet sound that makes your stomach twist, because the sight of him down there is wrong in a way that feels too right, and his hands lift up beside his head with his palms open.
“Like this?” he asks, and the question comes out calm, almost polite.
“Don’t talk to me like you’re doing me a favor,” you say, and you keep the muzzle angled down at him, not because you’re easing up, but because the geometry changes when he kneels. “You don’t get to play nice now.”
His eyes flicker, and something tight pulls at the corner of his mouth like he wants to smile and doesn’t trust himself to. “I’m not playing,” he says. “I’m doing what you said.”
“Good,” you tell him, because you need something solid to hang onto. “Stay there.”
He stays there, hands still up, shoulders squared even on his knees like posture is another kind of armor. The streetlight catches his face better now, carving shadows under his cheekbones and making his eyes look even darker, and you hate how familiar he still is. He looks at the gun, then at you, and he doesn’t look away from either like he’s proving he can take it.
“You shouldn’t be here,” you say. “You shouldn’t even know where I live anymore.”
“I didn’t forget,” he answers, and he says it like it’s a simple fact instead of a confession. “I missed you.”
You swallow and your throat aches, because you can hear the old softness threaded through the words and you don’t want it. You don’t want the version of him that sounded like that when he was in your bed, when he’d tuck himself behind you and pretend the world couldn’t touch him if he had you in his arms.
“Don’t,” you say again, and this time it comes out quieter than you meant it to.
His gaze lifts to your face and he holds it like he’s holding onto a ledge. “I missed you, baby,” he repeats, and he doesn’t push the nickname like a knife. He says it the way he used to say it when you’d fall asleep mid-sentence, the way he’d say it when he was trying to be gentle.
Your breathing shifts, shallow for a second before you force it back into something steadier, and the gun stays in your hand even though your fingers tighten around it like you’re afraid it will disappear if you loosen your grip. “You don’t get to just show up,” you tell him. “Not after everything.”
He doesn’t argue, and the lack of fight is almost worse than if he’d tried. His shoulders rise and fall with one slow breath, and his hands stay up where you can see them. “I know.”
“You don’t get to stand in my living room and look at me like that,” you add, because anger is easier than the other thing pressing up behind your ribs. “You don’t get to say you missed me like it means something.”
His throat works like he’s swallowing down something sharp. “It means something to me,” he says, and he says it like he hates himself for it. “I’m not asking you to forgive me.”
“You should be,” you say. “If you had any sense left, you’d be begging.”
His mouth opens, then closes, and for a second he looks almost like he wants to laugh and can’t find the sound. “Do you want me to beg?” he asks, and his voice stays even, but there’s a tremor under it that makes your teeth clench. “If you tell me to beg, I will.”
Your hand trembles just enough that you feel it in your wrist, and you hate that he notices because he always notices. His eyes flick to your hand, then back to your face, and the intensity in his stare doesn’t change, but his posture does. It’s small, careful, and it makes your skin prickle, because his hands lower a little from beside his head to hover closer to his shoulders like he’s testing whether you’ll stop him.
“Hands up,” you order immediately.
He freezes with his hands halfway down, and he lifts them again without complaint. “Okay,” he says, soft.
You take a breath that scrapes, and you try to keep your voice sharp enough to protect you. “You think you can come back and act like this,” you say. “You think you can walk right into my life and—what? Remind me of how it felt? That’s your plan?”
“I don’t have a plan,” he says, and his eyes flicker with something that looks like frustration, not at you, but at himself. “If I had a plan, I wouldn’t be here.”
“That’s the first smart thing you’ve said all night,” you mutter.
He shifts his weight slightly on his knees, the motion controlled, and the gun tracks him on instinct. He notices that too, of course, and his gaze drops to the muzzle for half a second like he’s checking where it is, like he’s measuring distance in his head the way he measures everything. When his eyes lift again, they’re too steady, too direct. “You’re still holding it like you mean it,” he says.
“I do mean it.”
“I know,” he replies, and he sounds almost relieved by that. “That’s why I came.”
Your jaw tightens. “What do you mean?”
He doesn’t move his hands, but his fingers flex once like he’s fighting the urge to reach. “You don’t lie to yourself,” he says. “You never did.”
“That’s not a compliment,” you tell him.
“I wasn’t trying to compliment you,” he says, and then he adds, quieter, like it costs him to say it out loud, “I needed something real.”
You stare at him, and the room feels too small for the two of you, because he’s taking up all the air with that gaze and you’re letting him. The gun is still there between you, still a line you can draw any time you want, but your arm is tired and your hand is shaking just a little, and you’re furious that he can make you feel anything other than disgust.
“Get up,” you say, and your voice is steady again because you force it to be. “Slow.”
He watches your face like he’s waiting for you to change your mind, and then he rises in the same careful way he knelt, one measured movement at a time. His hands stay up for a moment even when he’s standing, palms open beside his head, and the sight is almost absurdly intimate, like you’re the one holding him in place with nothing but a word.
When he’s upright, you lower the gun just enough that it’s not pressed against him anymore, but you don’t put it down. It stays in your hand, pointed between you, not quite aimed at his heart now but still close enough that he understands what it means. He steps closer anyway, not quickly, not like he’s trying to take it from you, but like he’s following a gravity he can’t resist.
“Stop right there,” you say, even though you don’t move back.
He stops, so close that your breath hits him you exhale. His hands are still raised, and you notice the tension in his forearms, the way he’s holding himself back on purpose. His eyes flick to your mouth and back up, and the movement is so fast you almost miss it, but you don’t. You never used to miss it.
“This doesn’t fix anything,” you say, and it comes out harsh, like you can say it hard enough to make it true.
“I know,” he answers immediately, and the speed of it makes your throat tighten because he isn’t pretending. “I’m not here because I think it fixes it.”
“Then why are you here,” you demand, “if you’re not here to fix it?”
His voice drops, and it’s barely above a breath. “Because I couldn’t stand not knowing if you’d look at me.”
Your fingers curl tighter around the grip. “You’re looking at me right now.”
He shakes his head once, tiny. “You’re looking back,” he says.
You hate the way your body reacts to that, the way heat crawls under your skin like an old reflex waking up. You hate that you want to slap him and kiss him in the same breath, and you hate most of all that he’s watching you like he can see every ugly thought as it passes through you.
“Don’t,” you whisper, and you don’t even know what you mean by it, because it’s too late for a dozen different kinds of don’t.
He holds still like you’ve pinned him there with your voice, and then he leans forward just enough that his forehead almost brushes the gun again. He doesn’t touch it this time, like he’s learned the boundary you’re actually holding, and he stays in the thin space you allow. “Tell me no,” he says, and his voice is steady even when his eyes aren’t. “Tell me no and I’ll go.”
You stare at him, and the word sits in your mouth like a coin you can’t swallow. You could say it—you should say it, but you don’t.
Dex’s breath stutters once, like he felt your silence land. His hands are still above his head, still open, and for a moment the two of you just stand there with the gun between you and the air too thick to breathe. Then you step in, because you’re tired of being the only one pretending you aren’t about to do something you’ll regret.
You kiss him.
It isn’t gentle, and it isn’t sweet, and it isn’t anything like an apology. It’s hot and angry and familiar in the worst way, like your mouth already knows his and your body already remembers the shape of him. His hands stay up for one strangled second like he doesn’t believe he’s allowed, like he’s waiting for you to shove him away, and that pause makes your pulse kick hard.
“Don’t—” you start, pulling back just enough for the words to hit his mouth, but you can’t finish because he swallows the rest of it when you kiss him again.
“I’m not,” he murmurs against you, and it’s breath and sound, barely a sentence. “I’m not.”
His restraint breaks in slow motion. One hand lowers first, hovering near your waist without touching, and he waits like he’s asking permission without using words. When you don’t flinch, his palm settles against you, warm and firm, and the contact sends a sharp shiver through you that makes you hate yourself.
Your other hand is still holding the gun, angled down now, forgotten and not forgotten at the same time, because you can feel its weight even as you drag your free hand up his chest. Your fingers catch on his jacket, then slide up to his collar, and when you fist the fabric there his breath turns rough.
Dex makes a sound that he tries to swallow, and his other hand comes down to your side, then your back, pressing you closer. He doesn’t force you, he just follows the contact like he’s starving for it, like he’s been holding himself together with rules and silence and the idea of you, and now you’re here and his hands don’t know how to be anything except reverent and desperate at the same time.
You break the kiss long enough to glare at him, your mouth still close to his. “This isn’t—”
“I know,” he says again, and his eyes flick to your lips like he can’t stop himself. “I know.”
“Say it like you mean it,” you challenge, because you need something that hurts more than this does.
He nods once, and his voice comes out rougher. “It doesn’t fix anything,” he repeats, and there’s no argument in him, no illusion. “It just… makes it quiet.”
Your chest tightens at that, and you should step back, you should put the gun away, you should make him leave, you should do a hundred sensible things. Instead you kiss him again, slower this time, and he sinks into it like he’s been waiting for permission to breathe.
His hand slides up to your jaw, thumb brushing your cheek with the kind of careful touch that makes your stomach flip because it’s so gentle it feels wrong coming from him. Your fingers tighten in his collar, and you feel the tremor in him when you do, like he’s trying to hold himself to a line he’s drawn and you’re daring him to cross it.
“Look at me,” you say, because you want to see if he’s still there in his own eyes.
He does, immediately, and he doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what he is. “I’m looking,” he says, and his voice is low, steady, too intimate for the middle of your living room with your gun still in your hand.
You don’t answer with words. You answer by pulling him back into your mouth, and his hand tightens at your waist like he’s anchoring himself, like you’re the only thing keeping him from floating apart.
When the kiss deepens again, it’s messy in the way you remember, not because it’s out of control but because it’s full of everything you haven’t said. His hands roam—your side, your back, up to the base of your neck where his fingers curl like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he lets go—and he keeps checking you with tiny pauses, tiny hesitations, like he’s still waiting for you to push him away and he’s bracing for it even as he kisses you like he can’t live without it.
You don’t push him away; you keep him close, gun still hanging loose in your hand and angled toward the floor, because you haven’t decided what any of this means and you’re not going to lie and pretend you have.
Dex stays pressed to you like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he blinks, and when he kisses you again it’s slower, heavier, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of your mouth. He pulls back just enough to breathe, his forehead hovering near yours, and his eyes search your face like he’s bracing for the part where you tell him to leave. “Tell me to go,” he murmurs, voice rough, like it hurts to offer you the out.
You swallow, your grip on his collar tightening, and the words come out low and sharp like you’re daring him to believe you. “Don’t go.”
For a second he looks stunned in a way you almost never see on him, and then something in him gives with a quiet, relieved exhale. His hands tighten at your waist like he’s anchoring himself, and he kisses you again like he’s starving, like he’s been holding back for days and you just cut the last thread.
“Thank you, baby,” he breathes against your mouth, the nickname soft enough to make your chest ache. “I missed you.”
extra notes: one, i'm thinking of making a dex taglist, so if you want to be added, let me know! (here or on my taglist post). secondly, writing that last line made me realize that dex is the kind of guy that would ask to go down on you and say thank you when you let him... yeah
pairings: benjamin poindexter x fem!reader.
word count: 12.2k.
summary: everyday feels the same for you, making coffee, going back to your lonely apartment, existing between one moment and the next. but some love arrives like a single bullet, you don’t hear the shot until you’re already on the ground, and it leaves you wondering how you didn’t see the gun.
warning tags: nsfw. heavy dark themes. non-con. ddba!dex. tony as dex. barista!reader. semi character study of pairing. older dex (40s), younger reader (20s). stalking. manipulation and gaslighting. implied kidnapping. obsessive and pathetic, needy dex. power imbalance. male masturbation, dex jerks off because he’s a loser like that. coercion cunnilingus, he eats you out as an apology what more do you want!! graphic violence. murder and mild gore. creepy dex alert. hint of fluff if you squint hard enough. every explicit scene is dex in his bullseye costume, sue me.
requested: this shit came to me in a dream, so no. but reqs are open!
mads says: i hadn’t intended for this fic to be this long, but i need benjamin poindexter in my life and i’m gnawing at the bars of my enclosure. rewatching all daredevil series made me the person i was when i wrote this one shot (in heat). anyway, enjoy! let me know what you think.
Dex thinks humankind are just insects, they live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things, there’s not even a great beyond. There’s nothing—his hatred for all was so intense that it should extinguish the very love from which it was conceived. And thus, Dex ceased to feel. There was nothing further in which to believe that made the prospect of feeling worthwhile.
He discovered this about himself at sixteen, in one summer, when the headmaster of the Lyndhurst Home for Boys had stopped breathing mid-sentence at the supper table, collapsing. The other teenagers had wept—great, heaving, theatrical displays of grief that had struck Dex as almost pornographic in their excess. He watched them, and felt nothing. Not sadness nor relief, not even the mild satisfaction of witnessing an inconvenience remove itself from his path.
Nothing. The word had felt like a gift, unwrapped and held up to the light. An absence so complete it became its own presence.
He drinks his coffee sweet and creamy and hasn’t touched another person’s body by choice in years. Still, it isn’t loneliness because loneliness implies lack, and Benjamin Poindexter lacks nothing he wants.
What he wants is the problem.
Or rather—what he wants has never arrived, never been existing, never known to man. He’s had chances to watch desire from the outside, the way one might study a fugitive through a binoculars; flushed cheeks of couples when they argue on the sidewalk, the trembling hands of teenagers when they confess their petty infatuations, the way his elderly neighbour’s voice goes soft and stupid when she talks about her late husband.
For all its grandiose, Dex had never once envied them. All a dim illusion, was it? Surely it was foolish of him to think any of this had meaning. He would then spend hours staring at the night sky, wondering how best to pass the time if everything, even the sky itself, were for naught.
Until you, Dex supposes.
Tuesdays are meaningless to him, they’re depressing. Why are Tuesdays so depressing?
Dex once read an article on the internet that suggested the most productive day of the work week is Tuesday, which only proves that productivity is a disease and humans are its willing hosts. He has nothing against Tuesdays specifically, only against the assumption that any day should matter more than another when all of them end the same way; in silence, and the mechanical act of loading his sniper just to feel the magazine seat properly against his palm.
Dex had been counting his days into laying low. The AVTF has his face on file, his fingerprints, his particular brand of violence listed and cross referenced. He wants Wilson Fisk dead, so Dex waits. He takes the apartment with low rent, because it has windows facing the street so he could see, also because the landlord asked no questions when Dex paid him cash and a knife to his throat, the walls are thin enough to hear the couple next door fuckin, and the nice old woman below watching the same game shows on repeat. White noise. The soundtrack of people living their insignificant, dying lives.
But he also needs his coffee, that’s the whole of it. Need is a strong word—want is more accurate, but want means appetite, and Dex has never had much of that either. He simply knows that caffeine sharpens certain neural pathways, and he’d been sitting in the dark for three hours, rolling a catholic token across his knuckles, for his hands have begun to feel like they belong to someone else.
The coffee shop’s name was as basic as it looked like. Dex has been a frequent customer here and it wasn’t because the coffee was exceptional, no—it was entirely something else. Shop’s almost empty, too. A man in a beanie taps at a laptop in the corner. A woman with grey hair reads a paperback so worn its spine has split into three distinct sections. Dex’s gaze sweeps over the vastness of the area, looking for someone until it lands to who he was looking for.
There you are, Dex thinks. He’s smiling. Between his plans, the surveillance, and the hunt to eliminate Kingpin’s circus, AVTF—there are gaps. Hours that belong to no one but himself.
Dex spends them watching you.
You were behind the counter, wiping down the steam wand with a rag that’s seen better days. Your hair is pulled back, a few strands escaping to frame your face. You weren’t looking at him—you haven’t even noticed him yet, and you were humming under your breath, some song Dex couldn’t name if his life depended on it, the sound travels through the ambient noise of the café.
Dex approaches the counter and his posture shifts; shoulders dropping, spine relaxing, it was a deliberate imitation of ease.
“Good morning,” he greeted along with your name, Dex’s eyes drifted to the name tag on your chest, just long enough to prove he looked, and then his gaze returned to your face again.
“Oh—hi, Tony,” you say almost delightfully, and there’s a flicker of recognition in your eyes. “The usual?”
Months ago, you didn’t know his face. Then weeks later, you have come to learn his order and fake given name. Today, you have christened it the usual, as though his presence here has weight, that his absence would have left a hole for you. Dex feels a smile try to happen, but he swallows it down.
“Yes,” he replies. “Please.” Because Dex is good like that. He wants to be that—for you. He wants to be anything you want him to be. If only you would allow him.
You nodded and turned to the espresso machine, your back half turned to him as you reached for the portafilter. Dex stood at the counter watching the movements of your hands—your efficiency to tamp the grounds, and the slight tremor in your left wrist that suggested either fatigue or a healed injury, he watched you tuck a strand of hair behind your ear and revealed the soft hollow just below it.
You’ve been working here for six months, and Dex knows this because he’s learned the schedule changes taped to the back office door, visible through the crack when the manager leaves it ajar. Tuesday through Saturday, opening shift. You take your break at ten, give or take four minutes, spending it in the alley behind the dumpster with a paperback book and a lit cigarette placed between your lips, taking long drags.
Dex also has learned the titles of these books you’ve been bringing to work. He’d read all of them, sometimes after he comes home from killing some of the AVTF agents, his laptop open on his kitchen table while the camera feeds from your apartment, appearing on a secondary monitor.
He installed those three weeks ago.
It had been remarkably simple, your building’s security was a god damn joke—a buzzer system that could be bypassed with a paperclip and a landlords’ indifference that bordered on criminal negligence. Your apartment was a studio type on the third floor; one doorman, and a few old cameras in the hallway. Dex let himself in on a random day, when he knew from two weeks of observation you would be out meeting your friends, and your downstairs neighbour, Mr. Hargrove, would be watching his late-night Westerns loud enough to cover any incidental noise.
The cameras were small. Disposable. It was the kind Dex could buy with cash at four different electronics stores across the city, assembling the components piecemeal so no single transaction would register. He placed one in the smoke detector above your bed, one in the charging block you kept plugged in by the microwave, and then in the spine of a cookbook on your shelf that you had never opened.
Careless, he thinks, and the word carries no judgment, only perception. You are careless. You leave your curtains half open at night, offering anyone with eyes a view of your living room. You check your phone while walking home, earbuds in, oblivious to the world around you. You never look over your shoulder nor do you ever cross the street to avoid a stranger.
You are, in every measurable way, a target waiting to be acquired.
What if somebody follows you? Dex wanted to confront. What if somebody learns your routine, memorizes your schedule, watches you through the gaps in your defenses? What if somebody is already watching—and you have no idea? You should be more careful, he thinks as he stands inside your living room while on the other side of the room you sleep peacefully. You don’t know who’s watching.
If he were a different kind of man—if he were the kind of man he is warning you against, Dex could do anything to you, and you wouldn’t even wake until it was too late.
“How’s your day going?” you suddenly ask, snapping him back to reality, you slide the finished cup across the counter. Your fingers brush his, brief—electric. His cock twitched at the contact.
What should he tell you? His day has consisted of three hours of surveillance on a AVTF supply route, forty five minutes of strength training, a cold shower in which he imagined your hands running wet on his back, and the slow torture of cleaning his sidearm while listening to the couple next door argue about whose turn it was to buy groceries.
Dex didn’t think you wanted to hear any of this, did you? He wondered what your reaction would be if he said what he was thinking.
“It was eventful,” he says instead. “But almost quiet.”
You nodded like you understand. “Those are the best kind,” your lips turn up slowly, soft expression. “The quiet days.”
Dex wants to say something back. Wants to explain his version of quiet days are the dangerous ones, where his thoughts get loud, the buzzing in his head threatens to turn into worse—rage, grief, or the type of wanting that has no object and therefore no end.
But you were looking at him with those eyes—those innocent eyes that have somehow become the only fixed point in his drifting, Dex finds that he cannot contradict you.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” a hopeful tone in your voice, he noticed.
Dex nodded, smiling. Showing his teeth. “I wouldn't dream of being anywhere else.”
His hands are shaking and he’s inside your apartment—where you undress, where you sit in your chair with your back to the window and your face turned away from the world. The air smells faintly of you despite your lack of presence, and it makes his chest tighten. Everything about him hurts.
Dex almost died today.
Although he knows he wasn’t ever going to, not like that, at least. He couldn’t, especially now that he’s found his north star. But the AVTF has gotten faster, smarter. Someone has been feeding them information, and he has a short list of suspects, in which all of them will be dead by the end of the month, Dex guarantees. And yet, that’s not what matters right now—what matters was the shit that happened in the second between hearing the shot and dodging it.
He thought of you.
Your name fallen on his busted lips, your face blooming in his peripheral vision like a dark flower. His brain is tricky sometimes, it offered him a vision of the future—your expression, three days from now, glancing at the door of the coffee shop, waiting for a man who would never walk through it again. You wouldn’t understand why you felt the absence so acutely ( you don’t even know his real name ) but you would feel it. Emptiness. And eventually, you would stop waiting, and you would take someone else’s order, remember them instead of his, then you would have forgotten him entirely. Dex can’t allow that.
You have no one if he dies. He’s already checked. No partner, no roommate, no family that calls more than once a month, plus, you only have three friends you see on rotations. You are alone in this city, and the city is a mouth full of teeth with Dex’s only hand reaching into it.
The idea of dying would mean leaving you unprotected, the thought of someone else’s hands on you, someone else’s eyes gawking, makes the shaking in his hands feel like rage.
You’ve made him yours, even if you don’t know it. You’ve given Dex a reason to wake up in the morning that wasn’t spite nor the grind of survival. He will not let that go—he will not let you go. Even if it meant he has to crawl back from the grave to watch over you, Dex will.
He’ll appear in full gear, the armor of ugly indefinite livability, the real body, alive or decay—he’ll appear like a thundering, and he’ll save you.
So he’d decided to put a tracker into the lining of your coat for safety purposes, the one you wear every day to work, hangs on the hook by the door. Dex contemplates putting one inside your body, too. Perhaps if it ever comes to that point. He’ll watch you swallow your carbonated drink, and it would have been there, swirling inside you. Unremovable.
Then he sits on your bed and only for a moment. He wanted to know what it feels like, his long fingers running along your sheets and they are soft—cheap cotton, washed so many times they’ve lost their stiffness. Your pillow still holds the dent of your head, he puts his face there, buried within and inhaled deeply. Dex would offer it all, any trade, any sacrifice, anything to become yours. Maybe he’d cut his soul into a million different pieces just to form a constellation to light your way home.
Dex’s still in his gear, masked face, and his breathing is uneven. The suit feels tighter, somehow, or perhaps it’s the aftermath of the bullet that almost split his skull, his kevlar weave felt warm against his chest, holding the heat of his body from the chase. His knuckles bruised beneath the gloves, there’s blood on his cuff he knew wasn’t his own.
He doesn’t care about any of that, and instead goes to press his face deeper into your pillow, the scent of you floods his senses. Dex’s breathing changes, heavier. The adrenaline from the fight hasn’t left him and now was being redirected—pooling low in his belly, curling through his thighs, making him ache in a way that has nothing to do with the mild injuries he’s ignoring.
His cock was painfully hard.
And without thinking, Dex reaches down; his calloused hands fumbling with the armored waistband of his tactical pants until his cock sprang loose; thick and pulsing, already weeping with a bead of pre cum. His fingers wrapped around the length of him and it felt nearly unbearable as it demanded this sweet sweet release that mirrored the buzzing in his ears from the fight.
He then would lay back, his broad shoulders spreading across your pillows, and gripped himself. His hand was large enough to nearly swallow the girth of his cock, then he’d began to stroke a slow, heavy slide of leathered palm against skin, his thumb tracing the ridge of his tip with pressure.
“Mm. Fuck,” Dex groaned your name, tasting the blood in his mouth, his gaze drifted towards the empty pillow beside him, imagining your head resting there, innocent eyes staring right back at him. He could come in the mere thought of that, he thinks.
He shut his eyes closed, and tries to visualize your face. All you—you and your kindness, the way you would smile at him every time he comes to the coffee shop, how you never seemed to be bothered that Dex would sit there for hours even if his cup was already finished long ago, and why you never seemed to look at his way. Why don’t you look at him?
His pace quickened, his breathing turning into shallow hitches that reverberated across your bedroom. Dex didn’t know how to be gentle when his blood was this hot. He grasped himself with a white knuckled intensity, his hand sliding up and down in punishing strokes. Dex’s grunts became more frequent as he jerked himself harder and faster, using his pre cum as lube for the time being.
He wanted to feel the friction—the sheer overwhelming sensation of his own body responding to the memory of you. Dex imagined your hands; those delicate hands replacing his own, your fingers tracing the scar on his cheek before sliding down to claim his cock, or your lips wrapped around his entirety, gagging with tears prickling in the corner of your eyes, motioning him to stop but he’d go on, tell you it’s gonna be okay, that he wouldn’t hurt you like that, then—he’d thrust his hips forward, his cock would reach the back of your throat so deep he’d feel you choke on it.
“I need you,” he whines feverishly, your name falling on his lips repeatedly, and the pressure built behind his eyes, a mounting tension that reflects the ache in his groin. Dex needed you, even if you weren’t here to witness his desperation. “Fuck—please, I need you—please.”
Dex could feel it then, the familiar yet terrifying surge of a climax approaching, and there was nothing more he wanted than to spill himself into your space, to leave a part of his existence on your sheets. With a sharp, strangled cry that he muffled against the fabric of your pillow, Dex buckled. His body jolted, muscles snapping taut as he came into the thought of you.
Yours, he thinks over, and the word is a prayer. Yours, yours, yours.
He shuddered violently, his vision blurring as he emptied himself all over, and the hot thick reality of his cum coating the fabric in a humiliating sprawl. Letting out a shuddering exhale, his forehead remained pressed hard against the pillow as the aftershocks of the orgasm rippled through his heavy limbs. He felt drained, utterly revolting.
Dex stayed there for a while, slumped over your bed like a fallen soldier, with his skin slick in a mixture of sweat and the cooling remnants of his release.
He’ll clean them later, Dex thinks. First, he wants to cherish this moment.
Everything you do, you do it alone.
Years ago, you have decided that love was not for meant for someone like you. You had watched your peers catch it like a fever, trading their dignity for the shallow comfort of a hand held in the dark. It’s awful, your watching; the refusal to participate, the ogling and smug superiority, and the approximation of a true desire. It’s fake, you assumed. But it isn’t. Sometimes you can feel them pretending to know love more than you, they’re pretending yes, but it doesn't matter because they’re actually doing it.
There’s no ounce of motivation to form genuine connection so you’d choose to sit in the sidelines instead. You hadn’t remembered a time where you’ve longed for people. Was it when you were a child, full of naivety, purest of heart—never knowing the reality outside the door? You feel like a spectator of your own life.
You keep trying to slip away from everyone around you, it was written all over your face, and you should have been used to the feeling by then, you reasoned. But the feeling of unbelonging had started much earlier. Since childhood, there had been a glass wall between you and the rest of the world; you saw things in fractures, had noted the way the light died in the corners of the room, or how people used words like ambition to mask their fear of being mediocre.
This job as a barista was eating you alive, but you had no other choice anyway.
You had friends back home, of course. People you’ve grown up with, people you’ve met during high school—but you have never allowed yourself to let them see the entirety of you. Were you afraid? You supposed, till now, that you are. And you thought that maybe moving to an entirely different city would change that feeling; that you’ll become an entirely different person—you would never feel it anymore.
You had never felt more alone in your life. The truth was, no matter where you go, you will always be caged within yourself. There’s no escaping you.
There’s this stranger though. Tony. He comes to the café almost every day at the same time, it’s kind of endearing how he has his own routine even if you don’t know the whole of it. You also think he was attractive, probably a lot older than you, too. He’s nice. Talks to you sometimes when you ask him about his day, nothing of substance but at least he wasn’t creepy. He was just kinda there.
You were on your way home. It’s late, you’re a little tipsy from the bar you and your friends went to, and the vodka is still warm in your chest, loosening the usual tightness behind your ribs. You could have called a cab or booked a ride, but you decide to walk it off instead. Makes you feel grounded.
Long walks are something you’ve come to enjoy. Back home, it's all you ever did—walking, occupied by the surroundings, letting the city breathe around you while you held your own. The air was chilling, bites at your cheeks, and the sliver of skin between your scarf and your jacket. Then your building comes into view, stairs are endless but you take them one at a time, hand sliding along the banister, your reflection ghosting across the hallway windows.
Your hands struggle to find the keys, dropped them once on the stoop, and pick them up with clumsy fingers. The lock gives, and finally the door sighs shut behind you.
Inside your apartment, it was dark exactly as you left it. You don’t turn on the light—the streetlamp through your curtains is enough, casting everything in shades of blue and grey. You kick off your heels, then drop your keys in the bowl. Shrugging off your jacket and hanging it on the hook by the door, right where it always goes along with your untouched coat for work.
You were too intoxicated to notice the wrongness of your place, and too alone in your head to feel the weight of someone watching from the corner of your bedroom, pressed against the wall where the shadows are thickest, his breathing slow, deliberately silent.
You shuffle to your bed, and don’t notice the sheets were slightly rumpled more than you left them, but you were too exhausted to register the difference. Your whole body plops down onto the mattress face first, still in your clothes from the bar, and the world spins once behind your closed eyelids before settling into something manageable.
You just… sleep, surrendering to the pull of unconsciousness like stone sinking into deep water, your body heavy and warm and devastatingly unaware.
Dex knows he should leave. The tracker is in place, and he’s already pushed his luck further than any man would dare, but rationality left him the moment he heard you coming. He stares at you, sprawled across the bed you don’t know he stained with his cum from hours ago.
Then he moves, his boots make no sound on your floor, crosses the room in a few steps, then lowers himself to his knees beside your bed. His face levels with yours—close enough to feel the warmth radiating from your skin, you smell of liquor and nicotine, something underneath that is just you. Dex can already tell the headache you’ll have come morning, he wonders if you’ll work later or call it off with your boss.
He could take you right now. That’s the thought that circles his mind like a vulture. Take, take, take. Dex wants to touch you. God, he wants to touch you badly. You’re right there, pliant and warm and so fucking trusting, and the proximity is challenging. Dex has never been good at denying himself anything he truly wanted, but this—you, are different.
Not yet. Not tonight.
And if you saw him—if you opened your eyes and found a masked man kneeling beside your bed, still wearing the remnants of violence on his suit, you would scream and be terrified of him. You would look at him the way everyone eventually looks at him; a monster.
Dex doesn’t think he could survive that from you. He doesn’t touch, but he leans in anyway, his lips ghosting above your head.
“Good night,” he muttered under his breath, pressing his lips against your disheveled hair before turning around. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The next morning, he arrives at the coffee shop before you do.
This is new for him, a deviation from routine, and Dex doesn’t deviate lightly. He woke at four in the morning because he heard muffled noises from his monitor. He had fallen asleep while watching you, then he realized you had a nightmare, that’s why.
Dex watched you thrash for three minutes before falling back to sleep; your limbs tangling in sheets, and small broken sounds escaping your lips. His hand hovering over the keyboard, fingers twitching with the urge to do something. To wake you, to hold you? He wants to promise you that whatever monster chased you through your dreams, he would kill it.
He couldn’t go back to sleep. So instead, he dressed, walked around for a bit, and then stood near the alleyway outside where you work, waiting. He checks his phone, and the live recording shows you were still asleep, turned onto your side, with one hand tucked under your pillow, he could see your breathing even. No more nightmares. Good. Dex would have hated to see you suffer twice in one night.
Your male coworker with the septum piercing opens the shop at seven. Lane with a last name he’d already forgotten. Twenty four years old, no girlfriend, and lives alone. He’s done his research, of course. He had to know the people who surrounded you.
Dex exhales slowly, and the cloud of his breath dissipates into the dark. The boy thinks he’s being subtle with his lingering glances and his casual touches, but Dex sees everything. He sees the way Lane’s gaze drops to your mouth when you’re not looking, sees the way the boy positions himself near you during slow hours, always finding excuses to be in your personal space. Harmless, he tells himself. It’s harmless, though it doesn’t stop the way his jaw tightens every time you indulge yourself in your coworker’s antics.
Was it luck? Timing? Did Lane simply exist in the right place at the right moment, and you decided he was worth your attention? Dex has been coming to this shop for months. He’s been polite and patient. He made himself appear warm and approachable for you, and yet you still look at him like he’s a stranger.
He needs to do something. Kill Lane or finally talk to you properly, Dex doesn’t know—but he needs to make his move.
“You’re early,” you greeted him as he approached the counter, half yawning and your eyes looked exhausted. But you did try to look presentable in front of a customer.
“Hey,” he says with your name, his mouth twitches. “Couldn’t sleep, I thought I’d get an early start.”
“Me neither,” you admitted, and your voice seemed quieter now, more private. “Hangover and bad dreams.”
“Tell me about it.”
You shake your head. “I don’t remember anymore. Just the feeling… you know the type that sticks around after you wake up? Yeah, that’s—I mean, yeah. Sorry. Uh, the usual?”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” there’s something almost boyish in the way Dex fumbles over the words, desperately attempting to sound genuine like a person who understands what you’re feeling, but the effort shows he’s trying. “It must have been hard, really hard.”
“It’s okay,” You shrug, a small and worn down gesture. “Comes with the territory.”
Dex inhaled a breath. “What territory?”
“Being human, I think.”
You look at him, your gaze traced the soft creases of his eyes, lined by pretty lashes, the way you did the first time, when you smiled and asked if he’d had a long night.
It feels like an affliction when you say it like that, as if it was something you suffer through rather than what you are. Dex has spent his whole life watching everyone from the outside, studying their emotions, their desperate need to matter. He understood them and yet, he had never once felt like one of them.
Dex wants to tell you that he knows what that feels like, he’s been carrying the same weight, this alienation. Because most mornings, he opens his eyes and waits for the emptiness to fill him, and sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it does, and either way, he gets out of bed and loads his weapon and pretends to be a person. You’re pretending too. He can see it—the effort behind your smile, the emptiness behind your eyes. You’re pretending you’re not falling apart, and Dex is pretending to be human, neither of you is fooling anyone.
Except maybe each other.
He stands there with his hands at his sides and his heart beating too fast, mind racing through all the things Dex wants to say but can’t. He wonders if you know how much you sound like him.
I don’t know how to be human, he wants to say. But I do want to know how to be yours.
“He asked you out? This Tony guy?” Lane says, eyeing Dex from where he’s sitting—hunched over, holding a book you seemed to recognize, in the corner, his coffee cup half empty, pretending not to watch, then Lane gazes back to you. “And you said yes—are you fucking insane?”
“What’s wrong with him? He’s actually nice,” you argue, shaking your head.
Lane’s eyebrows shoot up toward his hairline. “Nice? The guy doesn’t talk to anybody. He sits in the corner for hours and stares at practically nothing. I’ve literally never seen him blink.”
“Well—I mean, he talks to me, you know.”
“Yeah, because he wants to get in your pants.” Lane lowers his voice, leaning across the counter. “Come on, you’ve seen the way he looks at you. It’s not normal.”
You glance over at Dex, he was reading yet you didn't notice the way his eyes weren’t moving across the page. You’ve seen that book before. Crime and Punishment. You read it once in college, struggled through the dense paragraphs and Raskolnikov’s spiraling guilt. Then some part of you wondered if he had nightmares too. Does he also wake up in the middle of the night with his heart pounding and no one to hold onto, all alone? Perhaps he was lonely as you are—you could understand that.
“He’s just shy,” you say, turning back to Lane. “Don’t be an asshole.”
“He’s not shy. He’s fuckin weird.”
“You’re weird.”
“I’m charmingly eccentric. There’s a difference.” Lane crosses his arms, the septum catching light as he tilts his head. “Seriously. You don’t know anything about him. Where does he live? What does he do? Does he have, like, a criminal record?”
You roll your eyes. “Not everyone has a criminal record, Lane.”
“That you know of.”
“You’re being paranoid.”
“And you’re being reckless.” his voice softens along with your name, losing some of its teasing edge. “I just don’t want you to get hurt, okay? You’ve been through enough.”
Your expression contorts into something akin to annoyance, Lane has no right to stand there, acting like he’s protecting you from yourself. You told him things because you were lonely—because he was there. Sometimes you say too much when you’re not paying attention, though you wouldn’t consider him as a friend. You’re not even close. Lane is someone familiar, a familiar face in a city where every face is a stranger, and the notion of him acting like he’s more than that feels rather intruding.
“Thanks for the concern,” you flatly replied. “But I’ve got it handled, Lane. Trust me on this.”
Dex will not show his teeth too quickly, he decided. The date is three days away. Saturday. A dinner at a restaurant you were familiar with—neutral ground, you had said, because you’re cautious without realizing it, some part of you knows that strangers are dangerous even when they seem nice, and Dex appreciated that about you; the instinct, your own self-preservation. He agreed to your terms, of course.
The book in his hands was a prop, he hadn’t read a single word since Lane started running his mouth. Dex didn’t need to, he heard every single word of your conversation. He wants to get in your pants, he could almost snort at that because Lane had no god damn idea. No idea that Dex had already been in your apartment, laid in the intimate spaces of your life while you were completely unaware. Getting to fuck you was a formality at this point, a pleasant inevitability, sure, but not his main objective.
The goal was you, anyway. You wanted to believe Dex was safe, that he was worth the risk, and he was going to give you every reason to keep believing, despite not even knowing his real name.
You would, though. Eventually. When the time was right. When the mask wears off and Dex shows you who he really was—not all at once, never in a way that would terrify you, but piece by piece, until you were too invested to run, too attached to look away, fully his to even think about leaving. He knew you better than anyone ever had, he won’t fuck this up now.
Lane could stand behind the counter with his misplaced protectiveness and his complete ignorance of what Dex was capable of—and still, it wouldn’t have changed anything.
He came early.
The restaurant was small and kind of intimate, you described it as cozy when you suggested it, your voice casual but your eyes watchful, testing to see if he’d push for somewhere else. Dex didn’t, tells you it sounded perfect, and meant it. His clothes were new and he had worn them tonight, too. He’d stood in the mirror in his place for twenty minutes, staring at his own reflection, trying to remember the last time he bought clothes that weren’t for work.
Dex looks normal, he thinks. Almost human.
He’s spent the extra time studying the exits, assessing the other patrons, and positioning his chair so his back is to the wall and his eyes have a clear sightline to the door. Dex orders water—does not drink it, ice melting as he watches the condensation crawl down the glass like beads of sweat.
The menu is in his hands but he wasn’t reading it. Instead, Dex’s running through contingency plans. What if you’re late, or worse, you don’t show up at all? His hands clenches at the thought, then relaxes because you wouldn’t do that to him, would you? You already agreed, and you come home alone every night—you were his.
His doubts had been cleared when he saw you walk in.
For a moment, Dex forgets to breathe, his gaze sweeping over to trail down your body because you’re wearing a dress. Nothing fancy, it’s a simple one. But the dress had been black and it fell just above your knees, your legs are bare where he could run his fingers along your thigh and find the heat between your legs, and oh, your hair is down too.
He also noticed that you’ve done something to your eyes—darker than usual, smokier. You look like you're trying not to look like you tried, and the effort makes Dex’s mouth go dry, a growing bulge in his pants but he kept those thoughts locked away.
You spot him and smile shyly, Dex rises from his seat.
His tenderness toward you had the polished quality of a practiced performance. Dex pulled out your chair, waited until you’d taken your first bite before he touched his own. He asked if you were warm enough, or if you wanted another drink, asked simple questions if the commute here had been okay.
Each small courtesy landed, and you found yourself relaxing despite your better judgment.
The wine you were drinking helped, though every so often, you’d catch him looking at you with an expression that didn’t match the gentleness of his voice—intense hunger lingered in his eyes. Made your stomach flip. It would vanish as soon as you noticed, replaced by that boyish smile Dex has. You told yourself you imagined it, you were pretty sure you didn’t.
Still, talking to Dex had been easy, you braced yourself for awkward pauses, for the strange tension of sitting across from a stranger whom you knew his coffee order but not his life. The inevitable moment when conversations would curdle into silence and you’d both stare at your plates like they held the answers to questions neither of you knew how to ask.
None of that happened.
Instead, Dex asked questions that made you feel seen without feeling exposed, and you answered without meaning to, the words falling out of your lips, tumbling into the space between you. And he simply listened, with his eyes never leaving your face. It should have felt invasive, and yet it felt like being wrapped around in warmth.
“I feel stuck,” swirling your wine glass, elbow on the surface of the table, yet your gaze drifted away on to the strangers around you. “My life feels muffled... static? Somehow, I’m continually surprised when faced with this proof that the world is indeed moving—that it’s barreling forward… possibly without me.”
Dex set down his fork, the metal clicking softly against the plate. “Hm. Maybe you’re not stuck,” he finally offered, uttering your name. “Maybe you’re just waiting. For somethi—someone.” His eyes held yours. “The world doesn’t get to decide if you’re in it or not. You do.”
He doesn’t feel stuck when he’s with you, that’s for certain. Dex has to remind himself to keep his hands flat on the table because what he wants is to hover his hand above yours, and simply caress your softest skin, thumb rubbing in a circular motion, almost soothing.
He wants to build you a cage, a beautiful one.
A place where nothing could ever reach you, not the crushing weight of a world that doesn’t see you the way he sees you. Dex would line it with every book you’ve ever loved, make the cage to your liking. Then, he would sit outside it just to watch you.
Would you like that? Where he’d take your uncertainties, your doubts, everything that makes you feel less—Dex would carry them with him to his grave. You don’t have to worry about anything, because you only need him.
You laughed softly, but there was no humor in it. “I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone to show up. No one ever does,” you leaned back in your chair. A strand of hair fell across your cheek, and you didn’t bother tucking it back. “Maybe I’m just not the kind of person people show up for.”
“You have me now, I’ll take care of you.”
There was a beat of silence after Dex spoke, and in that silence, you felt the strangest urge to apologize. For what, you didn’t know. Perhaps, for making him say it? You had always thought you wanted someone to say something like that to you. To look at you with that kind of certainty and promise you that you weren’t alone, although now that it was happening—you realized you hadn’t prepared yourself for how it would feel. Heavy on the chest.
His words terrified you in a way. This man was practically still a stranger to you.
You shook the thought away almost as soon as it came, scolding yourself for being dramatic. Tony was just being nice, saying what people said, and yet you could feel the coldness of your hands, wine glass slippery against your palm. When you glanced up at him through your lashes, he was still watching you, as though you were the only one worth waiting for.
So why did it feel like standing on the edge of a cliff you couldn’t see the bottom of? You tucked your hair behind your ear and looked away anxiously, you didn’t say anything after that.
Dex must have sensed your discomfort, because when he spoke again, it was to change the topic to somewhat more lighthearted. You felt grateful for that.
“Can I drive you home?”
The question hangs in the air between you, soft as smoke. Dex’s voice seemed careful but there’s something underneath it, a current he can’t quite hide. His keys are already in his hand, held loose between his fingers, and he watches your face trying to decipher every micro-expression, your flicker of hesitation.
Say yes, Dex craves in his mind. Say yes, please.
Your gaze finds him, your head a little tipsy from the bottles of wine you’ve managed to consume in one night. Your eyes were glassy, cheeks flushed, and demeanor almost careless. The streetlight catches your face, painting you in a beautiful light, and you’re smiling—a real one, soft and warm and slightly lopsided from the wine.
And Dex thinks he would kill someone for you right now if you asked. Anyone. Anywhere.
“I’d like that, thank you.”
Good, Dex thinks as he opens the passenger door for you. This is good. You’re doing everything right.
He walks around to the driver’s side, his heart beating frantically. Dex steals a glance at you—buckling your seatbelt, fitting into his space like you’d always been there, he allows himself a small grin. A surge of pride blooms in his chest, it was the pride of a man who has devoted months to learning you, watching you, edging into your periphery until you forgot he was ever an outsider.
The city slides past the windows in streaks of neon and darker hues. Dex keeps his eyes on the road, but his attention never leaves you; the sound of your breathing, your head resting toward the window, soft sighs you make when he takes a corner too slowly and you sway slightly in your seat.
Dex’s right hand comes to rest on your thigh, a bold move, yet you don’t pull away from him. A smile crosses his face.
When you reach your building, Dex parks the car and kills the engine. The street is quiet this late, the only sounds a distant siren and the click of his turn signal as he switches it off. You step out onto the curb, and he gets out right after, leaving the silence between you to expand on its own.
You stop at the front door. Your keys are already in your hand, fidgeting with them—twisting the metal between your fingers, the nervous energy rolling off you in unconscious movements. You keep glancing at him and then away, like you’re trying to gather courage for something. It was adorable, Dex thinks as he watches you.
“This was nice,” you finally break the silence, and the softness of your voice doesn’t go unnoticed. “I had a nice time with you.”
“I did too. You are beautiful.”
He doesn’t trust himself to say more, not when you’re standing this close, and the wine has loosened something in you that Dex wants to keep loose, with his instinct screaming at him to close the distance between you and never let it open again.
Your gaze lifts to meet his, and then realize the proximity. How the darkness and the quiet and the wine have conspired to draw you together like magnets, pulling. Your face is close now—closer than Dex allowed himself to imagine during those long nights in his apartment, watching you through his screen, with his right hand wrapped around his cock, memorizing every inch and curve of your body.
He can also see everything from here; fine lines at the corners of your eyes, your pupils have dilated, swallowing the color of your irises. The way your lips are slightly parted, contemplating whether you’re going to speak—or you’re waiting for something.
“Tony,” you whispered, and he almost corrected you. Almost tells you his real name because he’ll do anything to hear the name Dex fall on your lips.
“Yeah?” his voice comes out rough.
You don’t answer with words. Instead, you lift yourself onto your tiptoes and lean in, reaching for his mouth.
Your lips press against his, and Dex goes very still, his hands frozen at his sides because he doesn’t know what to do with them. He hasn’t been kissed in years. Hasn’t let anyone close enough to try but your mouth felt warm and sticky from the wine, your scent filling his nose.
He doesn’t want to scare you, so his hand rises slowly, carefully and settles on your waist instead, fingers curling against the fabric of your dress. You make a small sound against his mouth, surprised and pleased, and Dex takes it as an opportunity to finally move his lips along with yours.
It’s gentle. Dex makes it gentle. But beneath the gentleness is something hungry, desperate, an urge that wants to pull you closer and press you against his firm chest, taste every inch of your mouth until he’s satisfied from it. He doesn’t do any of that. Dex keeps his hand on your waist, his lips soft and his breathing steady, he lets you set the pace.
His tongue swept past your lips, tasting the faint salt on your skin. One of his large hands came up to cup your jaw, thumb brushing along your cheekbone with a reverence that made your thighs squeezed together. The other hand pressed flat against the small of your back, pulling you just a fraction closer.
The kiss deepened in waves. Every time you thought you’d caught your rhythm, Dex shifted—tilting his head the other way, angling deeper, his tongue finding new ways to explore the inside of your mouth. His tongue moved against yours in slow strokes, coaxing rather than claiming. You could feel the slight tremble in his fingers where they held your face, his breathing had gone shallow and ragged.
This was the part Dex couldn’t have planned for; the actual taste of you, the way you whimpered into his mouth, the small sound you made when his teeth grazed your lower lip, nibbling them.
When you finally broke apart, his forehead rested against yours. Dex’s eyes were still closed. Your lips were parted, glossy and swollen. And for a long moment, neither of you knew what to say, it seemed, but he was holding you close to him that you felt utterly comfortable in his muscular arms. You could feel the heat radiating off from his body alone.
“Goodnight, Tony,” you breathe, gaze averted away to try to hide your already apparent blush.
Nothing feels like always right now. Living on the honey of hope.
Your back hits the door as it swings shut, and you stand there for a moment, pressed against the door, your fingers tracing your lower lip, reminiscing; the ghost of his mouth. It keeps replaying inside your head.
You slide down the door until you’re sitting on the floor, black dress pooling around your thighs, and a laugh escapes your lips. You press the heels of your palms against your eyes and smile so hard your cheeks ache. You feel like a fucking teenager. Sort of like every movie you have ever watched and rolled your eyes at, the cliché you’ve dismissed as overwrought or simply not meant for someone like you.
Finally pushing yourself off the floor after a few moments, yet still smiling, floating somewhere above your own body. You kick off your heels and leave them by the door, then wander to the bathroom. You saw a glimpse of your reflection in the mirror, you look ridiculous, but you’ve never looked blissful in years.
Happy. When was the last time you applied it to yourself without irony? You can’t recall. So much of you has been surviving for so long that you forgot people did more than that. They went on dates, held hands, and kissed while the city slept around them. They felt giddy, hopeful.
You deserve it, don’t you? Yes. This is somewhere to be, for this is all you have, but it’s something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You’re still alive, still capable of loving. You’re still human, after all. Tony made you feel one tonight.
You can forget that the world will turn away from you someday, and leave you behind. For now, you’ll settle with this small dream filled exuberance. You cannot wait to prove Lane wrong, you thought as you washed your face, then brushed your teeth, pulled on an oversized shirt that used to belong to someone you don’t talk to anymore.
Your limbs feel heavy and light at the same time, weighted down by wine and lifted by something sweeter. You fall into bed, pulling the blankets up to your chin. Has this always been so cold? It didn’t matter, you couldn’t stop smiling.
Your phone buzzes on the nightstand.
You ignore it at first. It’s late, you’re still reeling, and you don’t want to come back down. But it buzzes again. And again. Three messages in quick succession, then a fourth. A sigh elicits from your lips, hands reaching for the phone, the screen lighting up your face in the dark.
Aa Lane (12:01 AM): hey i know it’s late but i was scrolling through some old news articles and i swear i’ve seen your coffee guy before
Aa Lane (12:01 AM): like not in person but somewhere.
Aa Lane (12:02 AM): tony right?? that’s what the fucker told you??
Aa Lane (12:02 AM): look at this and tell me i’m the one being paranoid
Something in your guts tells you to not click the link Lane sent you. It’s the same feeling you used to get as a child walking past a dark room—the instinct that something was waiting for you in the shadows, something that would change you if you looked at it too long. Don’t, don’t, don’t.
But you do. You click the link.
The article loads slowly, cluttered with ads and pop-ups and slow spinning wheels. Yet the headline loads first, bold and black, and your eyes catch on the words before your brain can catch up.
BENJAMIN POINDEXTER SENTENCED TO LIFE FOR MURDER OF PROMINENT ATTORNEY FOGGY NELSON
Oh, fuck.
You scroll down before you can stop yourself, and there it is—a photo. It was a mugshot. His face—Tony’s face. Same sharp jaw, same piercing eyes, same mouth that had been pressed against yours not too long ago. But different, too. Colder. Much emptier. The eyes in the photo don’t look like they’ve ever held anyone gently. You read the words again, former FBI agent, sentenced to life, murder, escaped custody, and they don’t feel real. None of this feels real at all.
Do not approach. Do not engage. If seen, contact authorities immediately.
You could feel the way your hands started shaking, then comes your whole body; rigid and blood runs cold. You’re frozen and on fire simultaneously. Your hands drop the phone, and it lands on your chest, the screen still glowing, his face still staring up at you with those eyes. Then, a notification popped up once more on your screen.
Aa Lane (12:10 AM): fuck, i hope you’re safe and home. call me pls
You stare at Lane’s message, the words blur and sharpen as if your eyes can’t decide what to focus on. And yet, the numbness spreads. Starts in your fingers, those tingling extremities that had been warm against his skin just an hour ago. Then, it travels up your arms, settles in your shoulders, crawls across your chest, your heart is still beating—you can feel it, distant.
You think the panic has receded, that the fear has gone quiet. Suddenly, your stomach lurches.
It comes out of nowhere; a violent, involuntary spasm that doubles you over on the bed. You press your hand hard over your mouth, and for a terrible moment you think you’re going to throw up. Swallowing hard, once, twice, as your throat works against the rising tide, and eventually, the nausea subsides, residing somewhere low in your belly.
But the sickness doesn’t go away, simply moves. Finding its way into your veins, your bones, you feel poisoned, like an insect has crawled inside you and died. Truly rotten.
Another message.
Aa Lane (12:21 AM): please answer me i’m getting really fucking worried
Your vision becomes blurry—tears, you realize, when did you start crying? Forcing yourself to type back, one word, because it’s all you can manage.
You (12:22 AM): Here.
The response comes almost instantly.
Aa Lane (12:22 AM): i’m coming over, wait for me
Tony isn’t real, it was a mantra that repeats inside your head as you wait for Lane. There is no Tony. There’s only ever Benjamin Poindexter—convicted murderer, a man who has killed and will kill again. And somehow, absurdly, you find yourself on the verge of laughter. Because this is your life, isn’t it? This is what you get for daring to hope.
Tonight, you let yourself believe that perhaps, the universe had something good in store for you, and instead, what you were getting was the universe reminding you, yet again, that you don’t get to have nice things—you never did and you never will. The world has a sick sense of humor, you’d almost admire it, if only you weren’t busy falling apart.
Little serpentine slithers its way into your thoughts, mind boggling, what you had never realized earlier, you do now. Fully sobered up.
You never told Tony where you lived.
He drove you home tonight but he’d known where to go. Never asked for directions, nor plugged anything into his phone either. Not a moment of uncertainty, he’d just driven. Like he had done it before—as if he’d been here before.
Stupid girl, where is your mind now?
Dex watched it happen in real time.
He saw the way your smile falters, then fades. Watched your hand over your mouth, repulsed by him, swallowed something rotten and now was crawling back up your throat. He knew that look. He had put that look on a hundred faces before yours. But never yours—never yours.
Dex was so careful, so patient with you. He had done everything right, he thinks. He had to have known, on some level, that you couldn’t stay ignorant forever, and still, he let himself believe otherwise. A mere fantasy, was it ever was. Dex wanted it so badly that he convinced himself it could be real.
That somehow your parallel paths converge, and found himself in the arms of your warmth. This emptiness, this nothing inside him consumes the entirety of you, and the promise of normalcy. He wanted to think he would be sated for a lifetime with you, and in all the deaths that exist after. Dex could only blame himself for thinking he could ever be anything else.
And now you know.
His skin starts to burn, an itch to his soul. Dex stands over the body, his chest rising and falling in measured breaths. The alley is darker than the place where Lane’s car still idles, engine humming, door hanging open like a wound.
There’s this satisfied curl of Dex’s lips beneath the mask, seeing Lane on his knees.
The boy didn’t beg, Dex will give him that much. Didn’t plead for a life he clearly valued, despite all evidence to the contrary. He just looked up at Dex with those wide, stupid eyes.
“I fucking knew it, you piece of shit!”
The first impact doesn’t satisfy Dex, so he does it again—pulls Lane’s head back and slams it forward, a second crack, this one weaker than the first. Lane’s eyes seemed unfocused now, with his body limp in Dex’s grip. But he doesn’t stop, can’t help himself. He holds Lane against the wall, feeling the boy’s pulse flutter beneath his fingers, and leans in close.
“You had to run your god damn mouth, didn’t you?” his voice barely a whisper, seething. Meant only for Lane, to be the last thing he hears before life fades from his eyes. “You had to take her away from me, make her afraid. You just couldn’t help yourself to be the savior, hm?” Dex pauses. “She’s not gonna fuck you, Lane—she wants me. And I’m going to take something from you, too.”
“She should be terrified of you,” Lane had spat back, words almost slurred, blood already dripping from his split lip. “You’re a fucking killer.”
“Yes,” Dex’s toothy grin shows. “I am. I’ll show you.”
He had half a mind to leave Lane bleeding out here.
The boy was done for anyway; cracked skull, blood seeping from his hairline, eyes struggling to focus on a world that was already slipping away. He wouldn’t last an hour, maybe not even the half. He can walk away now, because all he ever wanted to do, what burned in his chest was to come over to your apartment and apologize.
Never mind the bloodied mess he made on his suit, he’d fall to his knees and make you understand. He’ll tell you everything, the truth, the ugly, this impossible truth of what you’d become to him. You had reached something inside him he thought had died years ago, scraped out, buried, and mourned by no one.
You have me, Dex would say. You have all of me. The good parts, the bad parts, the parts that have done terrible things. They’re yours. They’ve been yours since the first time you met me. Dex needed to believe he could make you understand, because the alternative was unbearable. It would crack him open, spill whatever was left of his humanity onto the floor, and there would be no putting it back together.
Deciding he’s running out of time before you could be out of his reach, Dex turned away from Lane’s crumpled body, already calculating the fastest route to your building, and then this fucker just had to speak once more.
“She’ll know.”
He halted in his steps. Listening.
“She’ll know,” Lane repeated, stronger now, forced through lips that were swelling. “She’ll hate you for the rest of her fucking life, for what you did to me—for what you are. That’s the best damn thing I’ll ever do,” Lane laughed. It was a terrible sound, wet and gurgling, half-choked on his own blood. “Make sure she knows exactly what you are. A monster. A fucking monster in a mask who thought he could pretend to be normal. Creepy fuckin asshole.”
The rage that flooded through Dex was cold, then his hand moved before he consciously decided. With the knife in his palm, flying through the air, spinning end over end, simply knowing where it would land—his blade buried itself in Lane’s throat.
Lane’s eyes went wide, his hands flew to his throat, grasping at the hilt, to the blood that was already pouring between his fingers. He let out an inhumane sound, gasping for air, clawing his way to escape death. That’s what Dex loves about this, when severe pain has caused men to lose their air of arrogance, and only then, realizing that life was already out of their grasp.
Dex walked toward him slowly, then crouched down in front of Lane, bringing his masked face level with the boy’s. Real fear painted across irises, and Dex reveled in this moment of clarity between them.
“Shh, it’s easier if you don’t fight it.” Dex mocks him, pressing a gloved finger to his own lips, though Lane couldn’t see beneath the mask. Lane’s eyes were wet with tears or blood—Dex couldn’t tell, didn’t care. He then gripped his chin, forcing Lane to look up. “I’ll make sure she won’t ever think about you again. You hear me? I’ll make sure of it. You’re nothing, Lane.”
Dex watched until the boy’s eyes went still, his hands fell away from his throat, body slumped sideways, collapsing onto the wet pavement, the knife still buried in his throat. Then Dex stood up, wiping his gloves on his thighs like he had touched something dirty, removed the mask to give himself a moment to breathe.
“Good bye, white knight.”
He had to come find you now. Dex would make sure you didn’t wait long.
You had a knife in your hand, it seemed.
It’s not a good knife, not like his. This is a kitchen knife, the kind that comes in a set, and the blade is short, its handle plastic, and your grip is wrong—too tight, your thumb wrapped over the top instead of resting along the side. You could hurt yourself, Dex worries. You’re going to cut your palm open if you decide to finally swing at him.
Dex stands in the shadows of your living room, watching you through the archway that separates your kitchen from the rest of your life. You haven’t seen him yet, because your back is half turned, shoulders hunched, your breath coming in short, uneven gasps that he can hear from here. You were shaking, he could see it from his standpoint.
You turn suddenly, and you see him.
The knife comes up—not toward him, not exactly, just up between you, a semblance of barrier made of cheap steel and trembling fingers. His suit is still on, never bothered to change, didn’t see the point of it if you know who he is now. But Dex had taken off the mask, as he wants you to see his face.
“Don’t,” your voice cracks on the word, the knife wobbles in your grip. “Don’t come any fucking closer.”
Dex slowly raises his both hands, making himself appear harmless. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
An incredulous laugh escapes your throat. “Won’t hurt me? Right, because you’re not a killer—fucking right. Just how stupid do you think I am to believe you?”
It pains him to see you this way, so broken yet admirably brave. Your expression is the most beautiful thing Dex has ever seen, and he would let you use that knife. He would stand still and let you sink it into his chest, if that’s what you needed—if that would make you feel safe. He’ll let you.
Look at him, if you would be so kind, and find whatever it is you’re looking for, even if it’s not what you wanted to find.
“You matter to me,” it’s the way Dex says your name with such raw, convoluted emotion. “I said I would take care of you, and I meant it. I’m not going to hurt you—I know it won’t ever be enough to believe but I won’t.”
“You’re a liar, you fucking lied to me.”
“I’m not lying—please, if you could just—”
“Everything about you is a lie,” there were tears sliding down your cheeks as you cut him off, and Dex wanted to reach out to wipe them away. “Your name. Your whole life. I don’t even know you. Tony? What the fuck? Who even are you?”
“I was a lot of things.” Dex takes a single step forward, and you stumble backward, your hip catching the kitchen counter, and your knife clatters against the marble, you snatch it up again quickly. “I'm still a lot of things. But I need you to know that I would die before I let anyone hurt you. I would kill anyone who tried—and I know that doesn’t sound like comfort. I know it sounds like the opposite of comfort, but fuck, it’s the truth.”
“Stop,” you shook your head, gaze averted away from him. “Stop talking. You’re sick in the head. You’re—”
“I’m yours,” Another step. Your back meets the refrigerator, and there’s nowhere left to go. “I have been since the first time you said my name.”
“Your fake name.”
“Dex,” he finally says, a thorn being pulled out from his chest. “You already know my name, but everyone calls me Dex.” He reaches up, slowly, giving you time to scream or stab him, yet you do none of those things. Ever so softly, his fingers brush your cheek, wiping away a tear, he felt you shiver beneath his touch. “You can call me whatever you want. Anything. I don’t care—just… don’t turn away from me, please. I need—I need you.”
“I can’t do this,” you whispered, something stirred inside your chest. “I’m not built for this, Dex. Whatever it is you’ve pictured in your head.”
“I know, sweetheart.” he coos amorously, his large hand cupping your jaw fully, thumb resting at the corner of your mouth, your breath hitches but you don’t pull away, he gently takes the knife from your hand. “I’ll make you. Going to make you understand, hm? I’m right here.”
“My legs won’t—” a sob catches in your throat. “Why can’t I run?”
Dex inhaled a sharp breath, and carefully, so tenderly, he leaned in closer to your face, your eyes fluttering closed when his forehead had rested against yours, your breath mingling with his, hot and shaking.
“I’m going to take care of you,” he murmurs against your lips. “You don’t believe me yet, I know you’re terrified. But you will. You’ll see.”
“Please,” you whisper again, though you’re not saying it to the knife anymore. You’re not quite certain who you’re saying it to. If your entire life came crashing down and the whole world descended on you, Dex would hurl himself in death’s way to save you, you’re sure of this, but why?
Why you? Though your uneasiness had been swept away when you felt Dex’s lips pressing against yours, not like the first time, no. This time it had felt desperate, almost painful, his hand sliding into your hair and tilting your head back while his mouth claimed yours. You make a sound against his lips, something needier, your hands coming up to fist in the bloodstained fabric of his suit.
You’re not pushing him away, Dex realizes. You were holding onto him. His heart is hammering so hard he’s certain you can feel it through all the layers between you.
“I’m sorry,” he says in between kisses. “I’m really sorry.”
As he pulled away, Dex shifted his weight, his massive frame looming over you, effectively pinning you between the cold metal of the refrigerator and the heat of his body. He was a wall of muscle, a shadow that had finally swallowed you whole. His other hand came up, settling heavily on your waist, his fingers splaying wide over the curve of your hip, claiming the space you occupied as if it were his birthright.
He didn’t wait for you to find your voice. Dex couldn’t. If he gave you the chance to speak, you might find the strength to push him away once again—re-establishing the boundary of your own soul, and Dex was far too desperate to let that happen.
What he did was to crash his mouth against yours again, although the dread was long gone, replaced by this starving need. It was a messy, uncoordinated collision of lips and teeth, a silent plea for you to accept the madness he offered. Dex tasted the salt of your tears and the heat of your desperation, it drove him into a fever.
“Please just let me in—let me be the only thing you feel.”
Dropping to his knees with a heavy thud, his eyes never leaving yours until the very last second when he moved to settle between your legs. He worked with such ferocity, his large hands fumbling with the hem of your clothes, his breath warm and hitching against your skin as he bared you to the dim light of the kitchen, naked from the bottom down in front of him.
How beautiful you looked, only for him. And when Dex finally pressed his face into the damp, sweet heat of your cunt, a broken sound escaped him, a pathetic whine that sounded more like a wounded animal than a man.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled against you, his voice muffled by your skin, thick with a desperate, weeping sort of devotion. “I’m so sorry for scaring you… mm, so sorry.”
The only thing you could discern was the silhouette of Dex’s broad shoulders as his head dips between your thighs. Dex begins gently, filling his lungs with the scent of your arousal, dragging his tongue against your slick folds, making your chest heave with every whimper.
And the sweet taste of your wetness coats his tongue, pulling a low groan from his chest. Dex needed this as much as you do, he had been longing to devour your pussy, to hear your breathy cries and soft moans while his tongue delved into your pulsing heat, your shivering body held steady under his selfish touch.
“Dex, please…” you whine and beg but don’t know what for, attempting to squeeze your thighs together but his hands had been a lot stronger gripping them, certain he’d leave bruises along. “Fuck…”
When Dex hears your voice break like that, it unlocks something feral within him—to eat you in his earnestness. He switches between flicking your swollen clit with his tongue, then dragging the broad flat of his tongue through your folds. His grip is unyielding, keeping you exactly where he wants you as he fastens his mouth to your pussy and begins to suck the inner lips. Your desperate, high pitched moans bounce off the kitchen walls, and to Dex, they’re pure music.
There’s something holy in the softness of his mouth, driving you into an immaculate euphoria with each unhurried stroke of his tongue. Dex drinks you in, pushing his tongue inside you as his arms lock around your thighs, tugging you nearer so he can taste deeper—consuming you from the inside.
“That’s it, my sweet girl,” he rasped, pulling out his tongue with your name woven into his breath. “Let me make you feel good. So perfect for me.”
Dex’s nose nudges your clit, and you roll your hips against his face, smearing your wetness across his lips. He hums in approval, the vibration running straight through your core.
A sudden flare of heat surges through you, your legs wobbling as your pussy clenches around his tongue and releases, pleasure like white fire racing through your veins. Knees nearly give out. Dex’s tongue gathers the aftermath of your climax, lapping it up to savor the essence of you. It tasted sweet. When your body finally drifts into that state of trance post orgasm, Dex doesn’t move his mouth away—he just keeps going, gliding from your entrance up to circle your clit, over and over in a soothing, endless rhythm.
You couldn’t remember how long he had been down there, simply tasting your cunt. It must have gone on for hours, yet it didn’t matter. Poor you, so overwhelmed with the sensation Dex had been giving to you, you must have forgotten all the worse things he’d done, and what he will continue to do with the way you kept chanting his name like a prayer.
Shame bubbles up inside you, suffocating, and unable to contain the amount of pleasure overstimulating you. The things you let Dex do to you—what you won’t admit. What does it say about you, that the fear and the pleasure have somehow entwined together into something you can’t unravel? Maybe you’d scrub your cunt raw afterwards, tremble at what you couldn’t prevent, wondering how you became someone who could be complicit in one’s own destruction.
But Dex has his purpose now. You.
With him, he made you his salvation, cleansing him from all his unrighteousness. Dex was your man, the worst man to ever exist. He’ll apologize if he finds paradise in indulging himself within you, a selfish consumption of the one thing Dex holds dear. His hands are scarred from killing, and yet you would trust him completely because you will only ever need him.
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.
WORD COUNT. 8.4K
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
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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.
EXTRAS. you can tell i almost gave up in the end. also… my man is so puppy dog. prove me wrong…
VICTIM #1 : jason peter todd. you saw him, you wanted him. quiet boy in the back of the library, too built for a guy with his nose shoved in a battered copy of jane eyre. he thought he knew girls like you, the same shaking tactic worked every time. not this time, you weren’t the girls who tried to win him over with batted lashes. you just had a stronger will than them.
WATCH OUT .ᐟ smut, MANEATER!READER, glasses!jason todd, booksmart!jason todd, he thinks he’s capable of resisting maneater!reader but noooo, riding, marking, thighsman!jason, he also low-key is a tits man, reader chews bubble gum, rich!reader, munch!jason, shy!jason, yes, reader is a player but she really wants jay, body rolls because we all have them and this is size-inclusive, we’re not all skinny bitches, phone sex??? kinda, dirty talk, switch!jay, canonically bi!reader, genius!literate!reader, she's smart, y'all, chance encounters, jason really wants that cookie, glasses kink (reader’s side), panties kink!jason, m.masturbation, seduction, shameless!reader, he quickly becomes obsessed with reader in a sexy way, dw, whimperer!jason, we love a reader who’s a bad person
ADDITIONALS : bad girls (m.i.a)
The librarian took an eyeful of your ass when you walked in. She was on the phone with her loving boyfriend.
You didn't mind one bit. You'd come in for a copy of Sense and Sensibility so you could scoff at the characters, but it wasn't like you'd dress for the occasion. Even if you stuck out like a sore thumb in tiny denim shorts.
The library was pretty much a hunting ground. More often than not you found the best fuck from the boys and girls with their heads in a book. Bars had been filled with men who think they're more well endowed than they are, but the three inch dicks spoke for themselves.
A nerd you had sex with last week sidled up to you, rubbing the back of his neck. The vomit green sweater he had on almost made you retch. Some guys had such terrible fashion choices. "Hey." He murmured, side-glancing you, your nose almost wrinkled. "Remember me? You said you'd call me."
You almost laughed. "I did, didn't I? I guess the bad sex just put me off."
"You said it was amazing." He mumbled, his face flushing. You didn't miss his glance to your tits.
You actually laughed this time, snapping your fingers in his face. "Eyes up here." You smirked, looking him over. Your hand ran down the coarse fibres of his sweater. "Practice how to fuck a girl, then I'll call you." A six foot two hunk of something walked through the shelves behind the guy you were currently talking to.
This guy had your attention. He'd settled himself at a table with Jane Eyre, pushing his glasses up his nose as he opened the book, perusing the front page. Huh. Graphic tee, leather jacket, worn jeans and this guy was musing over a classic.
Your eyes swept him, the lip bite was involuntary but he just triggered that. His jaw was begging for some purple marks, you could lick up that popping vein in his neck. Leather creaked and strained against his biceps— mm, what you wouldn't give to ride those. The pretty flush on his cheeks, they'd bloom a deep scarlet when you get him under you. Not if, when.
Who's this? And did he know he was making your panties wet?
"Bitch." The guy beside you — Mark, or something boring like that — grunted as he walked off.
"This bitch made you call her mommy." You clapped back, eyes still on the fine man across the room. His lips were rosy, you just knew this man ate pussy.
Your heels thunked on the carpet as you strutted over. "Have we met before?" You asked, drawing his attention away from the book. "Could've sworn I've seen you from somewhere." Yeah, the line was overused. That was the point.
"Uh, no, we haven't." Jason replied awkwardly, even more so as your palms rested on the table. He got a full view of you. Your skin had the glow of body oil, your gloss put a magnifying glass to your lips, crisp eyeliner, sunglasses perched on your head — who the fuck wore those to be indoors — chain dangling from your neck. Following the metal led to a clear view of your chest hidden by the lace of a bra peeking over a leopard print cami. You looked like you'd walked out of a Y2K magazine, like all the girls who’d shoved their tits in his face. He wasn’t dealing with that again. "Can I... help you with something?" He had pretty eyes. Where does a man get off, having those eyes?
You pointed to the book about American history beside him. “Can you pass me that?” Of all the god-awful flirting tactics that usually worked, it didn’t this time. He just muttered “sure” and passed you the book, going back to Jane Eyre.
What the fuck? How thick was his skull?
You walked out with frustration bubbling under heated skin. That was the first time a man didn’t stutter at the sight of you. He’d just acted like a book was more interesting than your lips. Fuck him for being that sexy and playing hard to get.
You’d missed his flush when his eyes fixed on your thighs as you exited.
Your stupid Carerra Cabriolet had broken down on the side of the road, when it was fucking boiling out. At least you’d chosen another tank today, it made things a little easier for you when you had your tools out, bent under the bonnet of the car, trying to figure out the problem.
The roar of a bike almost deafened you, until it stopped right beside you. Your eyes locked on faded Levis, biker boots, but those arms were unmistakeable. The tip of your tongue traced the outline of your canine, lips stretching the longer you recognised that build, those god-gifted hands that were tracing the pages of a book just a few days ago.
Would you look at that. The library hottie.
He lifted his helmet off, ruffling his flattened hair so it’d stick up. The black fell in front of mossy green eyes, which took you in. You were the same girl from the library, the one who he accidentally checked out when you walked away. The sun kissed your thighs from its perch in the sky, his gaze trailed up, up, tracing, memorising the black lace of panties peeking above the waistband of your shorts like they did again with your tank top. You seemed to be a fan of that. Your chest rose and fell with every laboured breath. He caught the tongue tracing your canine. Maybe he shouldn’t have stopped.
“Car trouble?” He asked, hooking his helmet on the handlebars of his bike. “That’s some great luck, in this heat.” His eyes followed a bead of sweat trailing down your neck. His tongue ached— fuck, why was it doing that?
“I sure am lucky.” You replied, velvet voice making something in his fingers twitch. And somewhere else that he wouldn’t mention right now. “D’you know your way around cars? I could use some help here.”
He should say no. He should say he didn’t know shit then drive off in his bike, but he wasn’t a liar and he wasn’t gonna strand you out here in high heats. So, yeah, he took his swelteringly hot jacket off — fashion over comfort if he wasn’t Red Hood — slinging it over your car’s trunk. “Yeah. Yeah, I can help.” He was so going to regret this.
Your eyes were still on him. The black highlighting your eyes only making warmth creep up his spine and making its way to his ears, but you didn’t budge. You just stared. His hands hovered by either sides of your waist, eyes tracing the curves, the rolls of your stomach as you bent a little towards him. A soft “fuck” was at the tip of his tongue.
His hands gripped your waist, moving you gently— shit, the callouses on his hands. They were rough on your skin; you weren’t afraid to somehow into that. Maybe all the men who overuse hand cream sensitised you to the guys who actually used their hands. “Sorry, can I just…”
He was keeping talking to a minimum. It made you smile, especially as his black tank brushed your back and his fingers pressed into the skin where your tank rode up. “Sorry.” He mumbled again, looking under the bonnet. His eyes caught the spark plug. “Here.” He gestured to your spark plug. “You’ve got a worn spark plug. Got a spare?”
“Yeah, I do.” You bent down, you felt his eyes slide over your ass, greedy, and down your legs, stopping at your high-heeled boots. Ripping his eyes away from you as you stood up, crisp wing striking again. He didn’t miss the glint in your irises when he took the plug from you, manicured nails scraping his fingers. His soft muttered “thanks” punctuated the replacement of the spark plug, and without another word, he backed off to his bike. Hoping to get away before his brain betrayed him.
“Can I get your number?” Your voice stopped him in his tracks. He tried not to look at your lips, your moving jaw as you chewed on spearmint gum that burned the back of his throat. “In case this kinda thing happens again. I could use a guy who’s good with his hands.” You really would use him.
“I, um, ok.” He swallowed, putting out his hand for your phone. You gave it to him, the freakishly soft pads of your fingers caressing his knuckles this time. He was fucked. But he keyed in his phone number, pressing the ‘save contact’ button and giving it back to you. You read the contact name.
“Jason.” His name slid over your tongue, through his veins, straight to his dick. What was it about you? He swore he was better than this. “Can finally put a name to the face.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t.” He regretted that as soon as it left his mouth. Now he couldn’t avoid making a connection, treating you like you actually meant something in his life. If he let you mean something, you’d distract him, he knew your type.
Oh, he didn’t know shit about you.
Your laugh shot up his spine, your name rang a million times in his brain when you gave it. It rang in the daydream of you on top of him, clothed pussy moving slow, languid, over his cock. It rang every time he moaned your name in that fucked up image. He— he had to stop that. Now. “See you.” He almost tripped over his words, swinging a leg to mount his bike. Your smile was fresh in his head. Your tongue, your teeth that and caught your bottom lip as you watched him drive away.
You’d have him. One way or another.
Your name lit up his phone one random Friday afternoon. A text, a simple one. Your shower stopped working suddenly and you needed his help.
“M’not a fucking plumber,” He muttered, but it was pathetic how quickly he stood up and got his jacket on. Pathetic was how fast his index hooked his keys like he was, line and sinker. Maybe he was your plumber. And mechanic. He could be anything you wanted him to be.
This was either the start of a really bad joke, or highly erotic pornography.
He hesitated before knocking on your door. Ignoring how he’d spent the last five minutes driving above the speed limit. Denial was one of five stages of grief, or its distant cousin: horniness.
He waited. One minute second, two minutes seconds, three— the door swung open.
A silk robe was wrapped around your body. Tied in a knot. Damp hair plastered to your cheeks, valley of your tits covered with cascading droplets that disappeared down the V of the fabric. Very… flimsy fabric that was covering you. Barely. Your no-gloss smile still stole his gaze. How were your lashes curled with no mascara? Your leg peeked out from beneath the silk. His breath hitched. His face flushed. “You came.” You purred.
“You called.” He replied stiffly, stepping in. Kicking off his shoes by the door. Your apartment was… luxurious, but he wasn’t expecting less. He was almost expecting a brothel. But that was stereotyping, he wasn’t a big fan of that. “So, your shower just stopped working?”
“Out of the blue.”
“What makes you think I know how to fix it?”
“A hunch.” The grin you had on made him feel like he ate shit. The defeatist sigh was his white flag.
“Your hunch would be right.” You notched the win on your robe’s belt. You watched his ass as he disappeared into your bathroom. Bingo.
It wasn’t like you were lying about the shower, it had stopped right before you were about to put on a hair mask. It just gave you a very good excuse to call your pet project over.
“Looks like it’s a pipe issue, I got it.” He called over his shoulder. This bathtub was bigger than his single bed. But then again it attested to the difference between la bourgeoisie and la pété thune. Draped over a radiator was your loungewear. Tiny things— rib-knit cami, sleep shorts that probably stopped just short of your ass, matching white panties. In a row, right there.
The panties caught his eye. They were soft, lace at the trim, satin otherwise, fuckin’ gorgeous. You wore those. Just to sleep, you wore those. What the fuck. Why the fuck. Why the fuck was his mouth watering? His tongue heavy? Aching? Begging to circle your clit over the fabric with his tongue just so he could watch the fabric dampen, drench, cling to your cunt? He had to get out of here. Drive off. Start a new life, maybe crash at Dick’s place in Blüdhaven. He’d be safer there.
He found the pipe problem. He fixed it, it was backed up. The panties called his name; since when was he susceptible to that?
“Those were a gift from Victoria’s Secret.” He hadn’t noticed his gaze was fixed on the white fabric draped on the radiator. It snapped back to you. You were leaning against the doorframe, tongue back on your canine. Now that he looked again, he realised it was pointy, like a vampire.
Now that he looked again, he wanted it to drag up his neck.
He looked back at the panties, back to you, tripping over his tongue. “I—I didn’t mean to—” He still stood up, ready to plead guilty and for forgiveness, but your hum stopped his train of thoughts.
You pointed at the panties, tilting your head. “You can keep those.” His brain almost short-circuited. Huh? “I don’t mind.” This was… if you were sane, you’d kick him out. Scream. Maybe get a restraining order.
“I—” Words caught in his throat, “you—”
“Keep them.” You insisted softly, picking up the panties, finger hooking into his belt loops. A sharp tug brought him close, too close for his dick to be comfortable in his jeans. Your fingers slipped into his front pocket of his Levis, tucking the satin panties into them. Never breaking eye contact. Your spearmint breath fanning across his lips. “Never gave you a proper thank you. For saving me twice.”
“You don’t need to do that.” He almost leaned in himself. To get a taste of whatever was on your tongue, to satiate himself while he didn’t have access to your pussy.
Your lips tugged. Into a smile that burned his insides. “Sure?”
“No.” He breathed, and his whole body melted before your lips even captured his. More like devoured. That was a better word for the nasty smack of lips on lips and how your nails carded into his hair. How you pushed your saliva into his mouth with your tongue, forcing his lips apart with a sharp tug to the hair at his nape.
He couldn’t stop the moan. The whine. His hands helplessly grabbed at your thighs, silk bunching up, itching to undo the robe, lips attaching to your jugular, sloppy, open-mouthed, greedy kisses stamped onto your skin.
You got him.
You’d got him, but you pulled him off your neck by the collar of his shirt. “Another time, sweetie.” His head followed the drag of your finger down his jaw, pressing into your finger as it trailed down his chest. “Gotta finish my shower.”
“When?” He rasped, pupils blown. Dick hard. Breath laboured after you pulled all the oxygen he had from his lungs.
You paused, pouting as you mused. “I’ll call you.”
Fuck.
He wished it was you riding him. He had to settle for your panties instead.
The fabric was soft against his palms, even more so against his dick as he fisted it. This wasn't even a measured affair, his sweats were haphazardly pulled down so the waistband collected around his upper thigh. Same went for his boxers, sheets only covering him from the knees down. Everything was silent, too still, save for his frantic breaths, whimpers and faint thwaps of his hand moving up and down his cock.
He needed your cunt to drag up his dick and make it wet, he needed your pussy to suck in his dick, to use it, use him, he needed your mouth by his ear telling him how good he made you feel. He was incomplete without it.
"Fuck, ma, please," He didn't know why he was begging, when you couldn't hear him. You were in your apartment, you couldn't hear him calling out your name to God knows who. Maybe worshipping at your altar was enough to grant him permission to, y'know, come.
Some sick part of him wanted to call you up. Ask you whether he could finally have an orgasm he'd been chasing for the last thirty minutes, it was a twisted thought, but his hand scrambled for his phone on his bedside table. Almost knocking it over amidst his moans.
He’d put you on speed dial at some point. He’d blacked out when he did, apparently, he couldn’t remember when. Sometime between fantasising you on top of him and picturing eating your pussy. The two weren’t mutually exclusive.
His thumb frantically tapped on the green button, knowing it was an ungodly hour of the morning. Knowing you said you’d call him when you wanted to fuck. He just wasn’t pressed to wait.
But you knew it’d happen. You’d been ticking off the hours in your head, laying on your king-size, for when this six-two hunk of a man would crack and call you, desperate for your permission. You’d played the waiting game before.
So you waited again.
Let the phone ring for ten seconds, really dragging it out, letting him delay himself that tiny bit more for an ego trip. He stared at your caller ID the longer his moans grew louder. His hand slowed down because he hadn’t heard your voice yet, he hadn’t asked you—
“Hello?” Your voice, sickly sweet, rang out from the phone. He put you off speaker, slamming the phone to his ear, so close, so ready, whining into the microphone. Your lips curled on the other end.
You could only hear his breathing. His paced up puffs of breath punctuated by needy whines which had your panties soaking through. Gosh, this really was something. “Speak up, Jason.” You sing-songed, prompting a low groan from him.
“Need t’come, ma.” He couldn’t recognise his own voice. Raspy, hoarse, from all the broken sounds he’d been letting out for god knows how long. “Can I—? Please — shiiiit — please lemme, m’so close.”
Your laugh was taunting. It only shot a shiver up his spine. “Oh, Jay,” He could practically hear your smirk through the phone, “you really need my pussy, huh?”
“Fuck, yeah, I do.” He nodded frantically, hand picking up the pace around his cock. Satin dragging against his skin. “Wanna — haah— feel that fuckin’ pussy around my cock, wanna— wanna taste it, m’gonna eat you so good, ma—”
Huh. You’d managed to break this guy in a matter of a week, an incredible feat, even for your standards. Here he was, babbling about going down on you. Your index crept down to circle your clit over your shorts. Your long sigh soothed his ear. “Mhm, Jay, I know, baby— come f’me?” The sugar talking earned you a deep moan from the other end, the shallow breaths and whimper of your name telling you he’d definitely come. His head thudded back against the pillows, covering his dick with your panties so they caught every thick rope of come. He felt so dirty. “Sounded so good, sweetie." That made it feel better. Less pervy.
There was a pause as he caught his breath and composure. “Fuck, ma, when m’I gonna see you?”
You'd never felt like this before.
Jason's tongue dragged over your cunt, almost folding you in half in the effort to make your thighs clamp around his head. His face was buried in your pussy, slurping whatever you had to give him, so much so that saliva mixed with your dripping arousal. He was moaning, moaning, against your clit, bumping it with his nose.
He was too fucked out to be methodical. Too fucked out from fucking his fist with your satin panties for a week when "I'll call you" was a long time coming. You'd finally told him to come over, after seven tortuous days.
He'd narrowly avoided getting a speeding ticket.
He rolled his hips, humping the bed so his dick would get some friction, pads of his fingers sure-fire bruising your skin, they'd be visible for days. You'd be walking around with his fingerprints blooming just under the hem of your shorts. That was hot.
Obscene slurping sounds had you gripping his hair harder as his thumb flicked and teased your clit, two fingers filling you up. "Oh, shiit, Jay," Your eyes rolled back at the intrusion. You were keeping him, for sure.
His fingers were long. Thick. Crooked from being broken one too many times. They instantly brushed your g-spot, he curled them just right, you couldn't help the moan that came when his lips wrapped around your clit and sucked. Stacking one thing on top of another so he could make you feel as good as he did over the phone.
"Look at this—" He stopped to whine against your pussy, vibrations sending your head knocking back against your headboard, "this pretty fuckin' pussy, huh?" He was just babbling at this point, trailing off into incoherence the longer he licked you clean. "Kept me waiting so long, ma, jus' wanna make you feel good."
He'd never felt this bliss before.
Your clit dragged on the base of his cock every time you lifted yourself up and dropped back down. Hard slaps of skin on skin was the soundtrack to Jason grabbing your thighs in a frenzy, pupils blown, unable to look away while letting out the most lascivious moans you'd ever heard in your life as his glasses tilted with every bounce of you on his cock.
This was either the start of a really bad joke or highly erotic pornography.
That question got answered real quick.
He propped himself up, to be able to fuck up into you but also kiss the tits that had been taunting him for ages, sucking your nipple into his mouth like it owed him rent. You couldn't help the grab onto the strands of his hair that desperately needed a trim as he sucked insistently, one hand sliding between your thighs so he could rub his name onto your clit with two fingers. You'd spelled out your name in hickeys that spanned his neck and chest. Lipstick prints spanned his jaw and scarlet smeared over his lips.
His green eyes were desperate, looking up at you. "Fuuuck, ma, s'good," He mumbled incoherently, releasing your tits with a slick pop to run aimless kisses over your neck, "s'warm, feels fuckin'—" The smacks of his hips against yours, the smacks of his lips on your skin, they sent you barrelling to a new high.
Your hand messed up his hair, other leaving red trails across his back. Scarlet that any girl would look at and realise that this man belonged to someone. If they didn't get the hint from the smudged lipstick and hickeys. "Yeah, Jay, you're so good, huh?" You praised, his hips picked up the pace. Your head tilted back, clamping down on him, he swore into the crook of your neck. "I'm— m'coming, baby, come with me, yeah?"
"Uh-huh — shit, I — haah —" It was a wave submerging him that reached you too. A cry of each other's names that would end up with a noise complaint at your door the next morning, considering the headboard had been knocking the wall for the past two hours. He'd come inside you, warmth filling you till you felt it in your throat, hand stroking his hair as his breath shuddered against your neck. You were keeping him, for sure.
He lifted his head from your neck, you reached out to wipe the sweat from his flushed temple. His head followed your hand like it held his will to live.
𐔌՞. .՞𐦯 — whereas, Jason originally didn’t want to become a boxer at first, but a flyer of a tournament offers money that he finds interest in taking home. Now, he’s getting his ass handed to him by his coach’s daughter that’s his assistant, becoming a rising star while he’s finding hard to resist you while your father laughs at the bruised cheek given by his daughter.
cw: reader is a badass, strangers to lovers, fluff, smut, jason is highkey obsessed with reader, no y/n mentioned (you’ll never catch me using y/n), flirting, eventual romance, jealousy, Jason sucks at feelings, slight grinding, blow job, blood and injury mentioned obviously, slight vaginal fingering, rough sex, p n v, orgasm control/slight denial, slight degradation, idfk, he gets down and dirty.
wc: ~18k
Jason had been coming to this gym for a while now.
It was one of those well known chains scattered across the states, but this location sat close enough to his run down apartment to make it convenient. Close enough that he could funnel his frustration somewhere productive, into weights and sweat, into something that bruised his body instead of his pride.
He worked an average nine to five waiting tables at a restaurant, then picked up nights as a bouncer at a club.
Long hours, sore feet, and barely any sleep in between.
It was enough to get him by, enough to keep the lights on and the rent paid, even if it stung knowing how far he was from where he wanted to be.
An education felt like a distant luxury, something meant for other people, not for someone like Jason.
University is a scam, but he chases after it.
FAFSA couldn’t help him as much as he wished when it came to securing an acceptance letter to the prestigious Gotham University. The tuition alone was impossible, an expense he could never cover out of pocket, even with a scholarship on top of it.
Rejecting that offer had felt like swallowing glass, a future dangled just close enough for him to see before it was ripped away.
FAFSA had been kind enough to cover the cost of community college, at least. He was stuck with an associate’s degree in Criminal Justice, scraping together whatever money he could in the hopes of pushing his education further someday. Even if that someday felt unreachable, more fantasy than plan.
Jason drove his fist into the heavy boxing bag.
The impact sent it swinging, chains rattling softly as it absorbed the force of his frustration.
Jason ripped the headphones from his ears, the music cutting off abruptly as he let them hang loose around his neck while the world of machinery, grunts, and thumps were heard.
His chest heaved with each breath, lungs burning, sweat slicking his skin and sliding down his temples to drip from his brow. His hands ached, knuckles throbbing beneath worn wraps, but he welcomed the pain.
It was grounding for him, tangible, and easier to deal with than the mess of thoughts pounding through his head.
“You have one hell of a build, boy.”
Jason quickly flicked his head toward the source of the voice, eyes locking onto a man standing a few feet away. He had dark hair threaded with silver strands, the kind that spoke of years rather than neglect, and warm brown eyes that carried a quiet wisdom. Fine lines crinkled at the corners when he moved, evidence of age and experience, yet his body told a different story.
His build was solid and strong, with toned muscles that were clearly defined without being bulky.
A slight softness around his stomach showed the passage of time but still held undeniable strength. It was the kind of body that carried experience, what some might call a dad bod, balanced between resilience and the natural wear of age, giving him an air of quiet confidence.
“Thank you—”
“Your technique sucks.”
The man snorted, a sharp, amused sound that made Jason raise an eyebrow in surprise.
“I’m August. Yeah, like the month. You ever done actual boxing before?”
Jason thinned his lips and shook his head.
“Only picked up bits from my… dad, watched videos, and gained some tips from the other guys around here, but it was never anything permanent.” He shrugged, feeling a tad-bit weird out of this guy that came up to him randomly on a Tuesday.
August picked up on the pause immediately, his expression easing as his voice dropped into something more measured.
“Hn. Well, if you’re interested, my partner’s been looking for people around this time. He’s recruiting boxers.” He tilted his head slightly, studying Jason with a knowing look. “He’s got his own gym, proper equipment, the whole deal. And if he sees potential in you,” a faint, confident smile tugged at his mouth, “you could go further than you think. Big leagues, even.”
Big leagues.
“Not interested.”
Jason replied immediately.
He could already see how this was shaping up, the way August pitched it like a door to door sale, all confidence and promises, as if a few words were enough to change the course of someone’s life, selling your soul type, controlling over someone and putting them in debt.
It reeked of a scam.
The man sighed, clearly catching the defensive edge in Jason’s tone.
“You don’t have to own a membership or anything like that,” he points out, adding sugar to his words. “Unless you want to, of course. Just give it a try.” August reached into his pocket and pulled out a card, holding it between two fingers.
The business card was sleek, clearly well kept.
Out of courtesy, Jason took it, deciding to put it into his wallet without bothering to glance at the name or details printed on it to satisfy the weirdo.
August watched him for a moment, then gave a small nod, as if that was all he needed. “No pressure,” he puts his hands up, giving a simple shrug before stepping away from Jason, moving on to probably find another poor person to recruit.
“You know where to find me if you change your mind.”
He highly doubts he’ll change his mind.
Jason gave a noncommittal hum, erasing the interaction within a second once he had left his vicinity, slipping his headphones back over his ears and flexing his fingers.
Then his fist slams into the bag.
Unfortunately, Jason would have never expected to be swallowed by the life of boxing, to have his motivation and desperation quietly reshape themselves into a career he had never once imagined for himself.
Jason wasn’t one to quickly change his mind either.
It took him an entire month and a half.
Why?
First of all, scammers.
Second of all, he genuinely forgot about it.
And third, because it was absolutely, undeniably, one hundred percent screaming scammer alert.
Some random weird lookin’ old guy at the gym finding boxers, offering to train and an opportunity that felt like the opening line to a debt that can’t be repaid Mafia style, or trafficking him in the worst way possible.
And Jason was not in the financial position to fuck around and find out.
But how the hell did he end up—
There was a bulletin board at the club where he worked, cluttered with old flyers curling at the edges, corners yellowed and wrinkled from time and neglect. He had passed it countless times on his way to the bathroom without a second glance.
This time was different.
Mid stride, his eyes snagged on it, the bulletin board. A new flyer pinned among the decaying ones, edges still crisp, ink still dark. He read it, feeling a sense of curiosity and remembering the card August had given him, one that he hesitates to contact, but deeply sighed.
This time, he felt the need to fuck around and find out.
CARNAGE KNOCKOUT !
Boxing Rookie Tournament— step into the ring and prove you’ve got what it takes!
Win up to $7,000!
The flyer displayed information on the date, six months from now and the location of the fight. The registration displays there, but Jason didn’t go on it.
He wasn’t even sure if he was serious about it, but the annoying old man had given Jason a card to call, or the location of the gym.
But— Jason really needed a new used car.
He's maintained his car for quite some time since junior year of high school, but it’s been wearing down easily and needs new repairs every few months.
7,000 dollars is enough to land him a nice used car on Facebook marketplace if he’s willing to scout.
That night, when Jason got home, he found himself digging through his wallet. His fingers brushed against the smooth card that’s still intact, pulling it out and turning it over in his hands.
He was surprised to find that August’s name wasn’t on the business card. Instead, it bore someone else’s name and a location of the gymnasium.
Curious, Jason quickly looked up the name online, wondering if there’s public information about the man.
His jaw only dropped in disbelief.
The card belonged to a retired boxer— a legend who had not only dominated the MMA championship multiple times but had also held countless titles. There were articles of rumors and stories painted him as a notorious lady killer, a man who commanded attention both inside and outside the ring and one of the biggest competitors against Bruce Wayne.
But that was twenty five years ago.
Everything was buried in old Reddit threads, faded articles, and grainy videos dissecting the rise and fall of the fighter and his retirement.
And then, Jason fell into the rabbit hole.
One link led to another.
Fight highlights stitched together with dramatic music, slowed down punches, commentators shouting over roaring crowds. Old forum posts arguing about whether each boxer’s technique was ahead of its time or reckless, possible disqualification. Interviews clipped short, the boxer younger, sharper, cockier, and a different man entirely.
He started digging through the rules, tactics, and techniques. He quite literally fell deep into breakdowns of footwork, positions, and strategy. He watched specific workout routines, rewound clips to catch subtle movements, and even found himself following a few fighters and trainers on social media that caught his interest.
Before he knew it, Jason lost track of time.
Suddenly, he’s standing inside of the gym.
It was definitely interesting, it wasn’t a chain like Planet Fitness, VASA, LA, or Anytime Fitness that’s located in a plaza.
Don’t get him wrong, Jason had been aware that gyms that were a small business were sometimes located in basements, junkyards, or units.
But this was Jason’s first time being at a sketchy fucking location, even if it was broad daylight.
There wasn’t a logo, signage, or an indicator that this was a gym unless you’re searching it up on google maps.
It was quite literally a small storage warehouse that crackheads would probably roam around, or a gang would trade weapons.
At first, Jason thought he had the wrong location.
The place looked deserted, quiet enough to make his skin prickle, yet the parking lot was dotted with cars that didn’t match the emptiness of the building. His unease grew the more he stood around, his thoughts spiraling into darker possibilities, the kind that made his stomach twist and clutching the strap of his duffle bag.
Yeah, hell no.
He was going to leave.
He did not want to fuck around and find out.
But that's when August spotted him around the corner of the warehouse.
Recognition lit up his face as he let out a full bellied laugh, running up and clapping a heavy hand against Jason’s back like they were old friends.
“Well, well! Didn’t expect you to come!”
Before Jason could question any of this, August glimpsed at the garage door, reached up and hauled the garage open.
The metal screeched as it lifted, and the space beyond was revealed to him.
“Ya could’ve used the door on the other side of the building,” August pointed with a grin, gesturing behind him, “but welcome to our boxing gym.”
Jason barely heard the last part.
His attention had already been stolen by the space beyond the warehouse(?) garage. Equipment all over the place, worn but well loved, steel frames and hanging bags stretching farther than he expected. The air hummed with the steady rhythm of machines, the scrape of weights, the sharp thud of gloves colliding with canvas and padded shields.
Grunts and exhaled breaths echoed off the walls, raw and relentless with instructive yells were heard.
It was expensive.
Way different than the equipment at the gym, although it is nice— it seemed like it didn’t compare to this.
“Don’t get too excited, you gotta meet the big man.”
August nudged Jason’s shoulder and started walking, clearly expecting him to follow. They moved deeper into the warehouse, rounding a corner that revealed the building’s L shape and a whole another level that the gym couldn’t offer, specializing in its usage.
The ring.
His heart practically jumped at the sight of the ring in all its glory. His palms turned clammy, a rush of excitement crawling under his skin, tangled tightly with nerves.
The man he recognized from the internet stood nearby, arms folded, eyes sharp as he watched a few fighters move around the ring. He barked out commands with authority, voice cutting clean through the noise of the gym. Titles, championships, and decades of reputation carried under his belt in the way he stood alone were no longer just headlines or grainy videos on a screen.
The ex boxer glanced toward August, having caught the sound of approaching footsteps. His gaze then settled on Jason, sweeping over him slowly from head to toe as he let out a low, thoughtful hum.
“Ah,” August said, glancing toward the ring, “your daughter at it again?”
He bumped his elbow lightly against him, earning a groan from the former boxer as his eyes stayed fixed on the fighters in the ring.
Jason’s eyes flickered on the ring, noticing a woman up there, panting heavily before you countered a man’s punch easily.
You were absolutely…
something.
You hauled the man over your shoulder with ease before dropping down on him, driving a rapid series of jabs into his core.
He grunted beneath you, scrambling to recover, managing a desperate jab aimed at your face.
You blocked it without effort, muscle memory taking over.
Your father’s voice cut through the noise of the gym as he shouted your name. At that, you withdrew immediately, pulling off your glove with ease before stepping back and offering the fighter a hand up as if nothing had happened.
“That’s his daughter,” August muttered to Jason, pointing out the obvious. “She’s his assistant when it comes to training. And trust me, she’ll whoop your ass, a lil’ dirty spitfire, that kid.” August chuckled, shaking his head as you took a long swig from your water bottle, chest rising and falling with heavy breaths.
Sweat clung to your skin as you wiped your mouth, then your gaze lifted, sharp and curious, landing on the two of them next to your father.
“Aye! August, did you drag in another newbie?” You called out, grinning wide, straight perfect teeth flashing as you leaned against the ropes. You grabbed the towel draped there, wiping sweat from your forehead and down your neck like it was nothing.
You were really unfairly attractive.
“I did! What’d you think?” August points to him, having a conversation as if he wasn’t standing right here.
Jason felt his spine straighten the moment your eyes landed on him. Your gaze dragged over him slowly, openly, leaving a trail of heat crawling up the back of his neck as he suddenly became painfully aware of every inch of himself.
“Hm,” you hummed, licking your top lip.
“I could definitely take him.”
A sexual innuendo coming from you definitely provokes an image to his head.
But he’s quick to wipe it away.
You grinned like you knew exactly what you’d just done, like you were fully aware of the provocative thought you’d planted.
“Well, get on up there, boy,” your father grunted, giving Jason a firm slap on the back that nudged him forward toward the ring.
“Wait—”
August barks out a laugh.
“No point in waiting! She said she could take ya’!”
Jason furrows his brow, flickering his gaze up at you.
Your grin doesn’t disappear, but there’s a mischievous glint in your eyes. “We can do it with or without boxing gloves,” you said with a casual shrug. “Though gloves might be better. Gives me an idea of where you’re at,” your brow lifted slightly, deliberately, “especially since you look pretty new to all of this.”
Your father crossed his arms, eyes sharp as he studied Jason from where he stood.
“Gloves on,” he decided. “We’re not breaking him on day one, August wrap him up and prepare him.”
You rolled your shoulders, still watching Jason like a cat sizing up something interesting. “Hear that? Lucky you.” You stepped back, gesturing toward the corner of the ring.
“You’ll stand there when you’re done.”
Jason bit the inside of his cheek, heat still lingering at the back of his neck.
“Don’t you think we should talk about this—”
You laughed, sharp and effortless, cutting him off as you waved your wrapped hand dismissively.
“That’s for later.”
You turned away from him, already moving toward the center of the ring, confidence rolling off you like it was second nature. The canvas dipped slightly under your steps, familiar territory, owned.
You tugged at your gloves, tightening the straps with practiced ease.
“Clock’s running,” your father called out from the side, voice firm.
“No fancy shit.”
Jason exhaled slowly and followed, stepping into the ring proper and August followed with a smirk, wrapping his fists and helping Jason. The ropes framed his vision, the noise of the gym dulling into a low hum as his focus narrowed to you. Up close, it was worse.
The intensity.
The way you stood relaxed but ready, weight balanced, and your eyes sharp as if you were an animal catching prey.
You tilted your head, studying him. “Relax,” you spoke lightly. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
Then your smile curved.
“Unless you give me a reason.”
Then, your father’s voice rings the gym.
“Start!”
You closed the distance the moment your father’s voice sounded, footwork smooth and deliberate.
Your hands stayed high, chin tucked, eyes locked on Jason like you were reading him line by line. Jason barely had time to register the sound. Instinct kicked in and he brought his guard up, shoulders tight, and his stance stiff that you immediately note.
You feinted left.
His gloves snapped up in response, exactly where you wanted them. You stepped in and tapped his guard with a quick jab, not hard, almost considerate. It was a test of his experience that brings a tad bit of frustration that he wasn’t really trained for this, bringing out the fact he wasn’t as experienced as the people you’ve fought earlier.
You’re—
“You’re in your head,” you mentioned, snapping his focus back into the ring. “Get out of it, this is a practice match.”
amazing.
He swallowed, nodding at your advice and tried to adjust, in fact, he threw a jab of his own.
There was raw power there, but it sailed past your cheek by inches.
You slipped it easily, close enough that he could feel the rush of air, then answered with two quick short shots to his ribs.
Jason sucked in a breath, a sharp grunt leaving him as he stumbled back a half step. His eyes widened, not from pain, but realization.
August whistled from the sidelines. “Yeah,” he muttered. “That’s about right.”
You circled around him, light on your feet, hopping back and forth to keep your feet moving with your gloves still raised but posture loose.
Jason analyzes your form, matching it to which you grinned with pride.
“Well, that’s definitely a start.”
Heat flushed up his neck, but something stubborn sparked behind his eyes.
Then, you crushed it.
His weight shifted forward just a second too slow, just a fraction too heavy on his front foot, and you were already gone from where he thought you’d be. A quick pivot, light and effortless, your feet barely making a sound against the canvas. He swung anyway, a wide hook fueled by frustration more than strategy.
You slipped it clean.
The glove cut through empty air as you stepped inside his range, close enough that he could see the focus in your eyes.
You planted your feet just long enough to land a sharp jab to his cheek, followed immediately by another to his shoulder, then a short shot to his ribs.
Jason hissed through his teeth and staggered back, guard scrambling to catch up. His breathing was already off, chest rising too fast, thoughts lagging behind his body. He tried to reset, but you were already circling him, cutting off angles, forcing him to turn instead of advance.
“Feet,” you reminded him calmly. “They matter.”
He lunged again, stubbornness flaring, throwing another punch that carried real power but no patience.
You ducked under it smoothly, shoulder brushing past his torso, then tapped the back of his head lightly with your glove as you passed. By the time he turned, you were already facing him again, gloves up, balanced, and waiting for him when you could’ve punched again.
“I just realized you’re not much of a talker.”
August laughed under his breath somewhere off to the side. Jason growled and came in harder this time, swinging fast, messy, trying to overwhelm you.
His predictable approach created an opening.
You stepped in and snapped a clean jab into his mouth, not enough to split skin, but enough to sting. Before he could react, you followed with a quick combination to his body, then one final tap to his jaw that sent his head snapping to the side.
Jason stumbled, boots skidding against the canvas as he caught himself on the ropes.
He stayed, breathing heavily.
You stopped, lowering your gloves.
“Alright,” you announced. “I’ve seen enough.”
Jason pushed himself off the ropes, swallowing hard, humiliation from your words and awe mixing in his expression, respect in his gaze.
He nodded once, unable to argue your words— knowing you were trained for this, he wasn’t.
You studied him for a moment, then cracked a small grin.
“Let’s talk now.”
“Ah, that’s why you’ve come. ‘Carnage Knockout’? The rookie tournament.”
August folds his arm, understanding dawns on him before glancing at Jason, who sat on the bench catching his breath, shoulders still tense as he explained his reasons for wanting to box.
Across from him, you and your father listened in.
“Well, we can definitely get you ready for the rookie tournament happening in…” You paused, unlocking your phone and scrolling through the Instagram page for Carnage Knockout. Your eyes scanned the dates until you found the next event. “…six months.”
You looked up, meeting Jason’s gaze with a small, confident smile.
“If you’re serious, willing to put in the work, and ready to commit to boxing, then I’ll train you,” you firmly stated, folding your arms as your foot taps against the floor. “But if you start treating this like child’s play, I’m kicking you out.”
Your father grunted in agreement, his few words carrying heavy weight, making it clear he didn’t tolerate anything less than dedication.
“Would your father also train me?” Jason asked, genuine curiosity, wondering why you were training him, but not in a disrespectful way. He didn’t mind, but he simply questioned why your father wasn’t going to—
“He’s old.” You bluntly told him with a laugh escaping from your lips, your father slaps your back in retaliation, hearing an audible ‘ow!’ That still causes you to laugh, pushing your father’s bicep to quit it.
August barked out a laugh, shaking his head.
Your father shot you a look, unimpressed but fond. “I’m not old,” he muttered. “I’m experienced.”
You smirked. “That’s what old people say.”
Another swat came your way, lighter this time, and you leaned away, still grinning. Then your expression shifted, focus snapping back to Jason.
“I’ll be the one in the ring with you,” you confidently say, tone more serious now. “I’ll push you, correct you, and knock bad habits out of you before they stick. He—” you jerked your chin toward your father, “watches, steps in when needed, and makes sure I don’t go easy on you and relax if I’m going overboard.”
Your father nodded once more.
“Listen to her, all of your opponents in the ring will most likely be my daughter.”
Jason huffed out a quiet laugh, nerves easing just a little. He straightened on the bench, settling the nerves into his posture before looking at you. “I’m serious,” determination leaning through. “I won’t waste your time.”
You hummed softly, a gentle smile curling at your lips as the usual mischievous spark in your eyes softened.
“I believe it.”
The words landed heavier than he expected.
Something in his chest shifted, unfamiliar and unguarded, catching him off balance.
And you weren’t the kind of person who lied.
The certainty on your face, a grin on your face displayed with confidence lingered with Jason in the days that followed.
When the nightclub cut his hours and sales failed to meet quota, his schedule suddenly cracked open, leaving him with more time than he’d had in months. Training slid neatly into those empty spaces, even if it came at a cost. To stay afloat, he picked up more shifts at his serving job.
Thankfully, that part wasn’t so bad.
The restaurant was quite popular, the tips were enough, and it was one of the few places that didn’t leave him completely drained by the end of the night.
And on the first few days, training him—
You grilled him.
“You can’t just be stiff,” you snapped, circling him. “You gotta move, put more energy into your footwork. Loosen up!”
You tapped his shoulder with your glove, then his hip, forcing him to adjust, to think on his feet instead of locking himself in place. Every mistake was called out, every hesitation corrected, until sweat soaked through his shirt and his legs burned from keeping up.
“Again.”
Hit.
“Again.”
You hit.
“Jason, again.”
Another hit lands.
“You’re making the same mistake again!” You grumbled, annoyance filled onto your face with a frown.
Jason tried to follow, feet dragging just a second too late as you shifted directions. You cut to his blind side, light and quick, hitting his ribs with your glove to make the point that has him groaning in pain while you snickered.
“I told you, don’t do it again! Roll your shoulders and relax, dammit! You’re not moving those feet!”
He exhaled sharply, nodded, and tried again.
This time he stayed lighter, bouncing just enough to keep momentum and focusing on defense.
After another round of drills, sparring, fixing, and instructing his form— you finally called a pause. Jason bent forward, hands on his knees, breathing hard against the ring’s ground.
You crouched down to his level, tilting your head as you studied him. Throughout the entire session, you hadn’t even broken a sweat.
“You’ve clearly been relying on strength training,” you point out calmly. “Not cardio. That’s the first thing we’re fixing.” You tapped the canvas lightly with your knuckles. “And your reflexes are decent. You dodge well when I’m on the offensive, but the second I start moving and changing pace, your defense falls apart.”
You straightened slightly, eyes sharp but not unkind. “You don’t anticipate my moves and you’re too much in your head—”
Jason grit his teeth, a scoff slipping past his lips.
“Then what do you suggest I do?”
You ignored the sharp edge in his tone, the frustration bleeding through his words. You’d dealt with this kind of pushback before, and you never took it personally.
Anger was easier than admitting weakness.
And you knew, deep down, that he wasn’t lashing out because he didn’t care.
He was lashing out because he wanted to get better.
“I’ve got a workout plan in mind, if you’re up for it,” you offered, shrugging lightly. “We need to build your cardio first, that’s non-negotiable. And I want to do sparring with footwork involved.”
You glanced at him, gauging his reaction. “It’s illegal in the ring, yeah, but this isn’t about rules. It’ll force your legs to stay active, keep you moving instead of freezing up. And without the gloves, I’ll get a much clearer read on where you’re really at.”
Your gaze drifted for a moment, distant, like you were turning over an old memory.
“You won’t be the first in this situation.”
He was grateful to you, more than he ever said out loud.
For the last three months— you provided him with a full workout regimen, including calorie targets, and protein as well. There were even meals you’ve recommended including the restaurant if he ever wanted to go out, or a list of ingredients of the meal to make.
You introduced him to other rookie boxers, going up against them.
They weren’t you.
Sometimes, he stayed late at the gym with you.
Long after the others filtered out, when the lights hummed softly and the place felt almost calm.
You would often find him staying behind, driving jab after jab into the punching bag. The echoes rang through the gym, sharp and brutal, each impact cracking through the space with a violence that could rival a gunshot.
He was majorly improving.
Jason would shadowbox while you watched from the side, eyes sharp, offering the occasional hum of approval or a quick note of criticism. Sometimes you would join him, adjusting him immediately, muscle memory starting to take shape and hits landing sharper and stronger than before.
Your relationship stayed purely professional.
Jason undeniably found you attractive, but it never tipped into anything reckless or distracting. If anything, it settled into something steadier, teetering on the edge of friendship rather than anything complicated.
Even if you’ve teased him way too many times.
There’s one night, after the gym had mostly emptied out, Jason sat on the bench with a towel draped over his shoulders, chest still rising and falling as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. The air smelled like rubber and metal, the low hum of the lights filling the silence between rounds.
He hesitated for a moment, then glanced up at you.
“What made you become your father’s assistant?” He asked, voice casual but curious, like it had been sitting with him for a while.
You folded your arms, one brow lifting as you studied him, surprise written in your expression.
“I was wondering how long it’d take you to ask,” you chuckled, a small smile tugging at your lips. “Believe it or not, I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, I’ve been trained for years.”
You shifted your weight, arms still folded as you continued, your voice smooth with honesty. “I went to college for an athletic training degree. I wanted to be here, working alongside my dad, learning how to train people the right way and treating injuries.”
A hint of fondness crept into your expression. “And I wasn’t lying about him getting old,” you added lightly, nudging your elbow against his side. “Someone has to keep him from running himself into the ground, it’s not a secret how he retired.”
Your gaze drifted downward then, something quieter settling over your features.
“The old man never learned how to quit,” you laughed, your eyes speaking in a way of a fond memory. “He loves boxing too much to do that. Even now— he’s retired from the scene, but never from life. It’s the reason why he created this ‘sketchy ass’ gym for people that wanted to become greater.” You shrugged.
“And besides,” you added, glancing back up at him with that familiar spark returning, “turns out I’m good at it, I love it actually. I love teaching, breaking things down, pushing people without snapping them in half.” Your mouth curved upwards. “At least most of the time.”
The gym hummed around you, the distant sound of the air conditioner and your quiet breathing beside him. Jason nodded, something settling in his chest.
“What about you?” You asked, a teasing edge in your voice. “You’re obviously about the same age as me, and I know you want the money to buy a new car,” you cross your legs, shaking your head. “But is there anything else? Any real aspirations? Something you’re trying to gain in life?”
You leaned in slightly, tilting your head as you watched his brows furrow in thought and his lips press together briefly before easing into a more relaxed line.
“I wanted to be a lawyer,” Jason simply stated, seeing your eyes widen with surprise. “I had a rough childhood, figured if I could help others in tough spots, maybe it’d mean something— university is expensive, so the money could help a bit.”
You nodded slowly, letting his words hang in the air without pressing for more. After a beat, you offered a small smile.
“Well, don’t stress yourself out too much over it. I somehow have a feeling that you’ll win and be… something greater.”
Those nights at the gym became something more.
In fact, he learned a lot of things that surprised Jason about you.
First, you were obviously a fighter.
Your strength or your experience as one was not something to be underestimated, honed through years of discipline across taekwondo, Muay Thai, boxing, and judo. It showed in everything you did. The way you moved with purpose, the way your body seemed to know what to do before your mind ever had to think about it.
You were always busy whenever Jason found you in the gym, rotating between drills, sparring partners, and corrections without ever looking winded. Especially that first day he’d walked in, when he watched you take a man twice your size and put him on the mat with effortless precision, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
That image had stuck with him.
Second, you weren’t cruel about it.
You corrected without belittling, pushed without breaking. Even when you were sharp with your words, there was intent behind them, not ego.
Every command, every adjustment, was meant to make him better, not smaller.
And then there was the way you watched him.
Not like he was weak, or wasting your time, but like he was a problem you were determined to solve. As if his rough edges and bad habits weren’t annoyances, but potential waiting to be shaped under your hands.
Third, you were sharp around the edges, all bite and precision when it mattered, yet after hours your words softened especially when you found a cut on his cheek.
You chuckled softly. “Did Alejandro rough you up again?” You asked as you carefully cleaned the wound and slid a bandage on the cut.
Jason rubbed the back of his neck, grumbling under his breath.
“He’s good.”
“Not better than me I would assume?”
Jason scoffed, rolling his eyes.
“He could never be better than you.”
For a moment, you fell silent, and Jason caught the way you inhaled just a little sharper at his words and the pause.
Jason didn’t know when he had fallen so, so hard for you.
Maybe it was the nights you both spent closer than before, sharing takeout at the park, sitting side by side under the whisper of rustling trees and the soft chorus of crickets. The quiet hum of the night wrapped around you, and the close proximity between you
Maybe it was the time you were too tired to make it home yourself, and Jason offered you a ride in his beat-up car, nothing flashy, far from your own, but it didn’t matter. You didn’t judge him, not once of his background, the state of his car, or his current job of being a waitress/server at a restaurant.
Maybe it was the time you found yourself scolding him for pushing too hard— when he’d ended up with a fever from overtraining. You showed up at his run-down apartment with medicine in hand, but somehow, you ended up gently pressing a damp, thin towel to his forehead, trying to cool the heat.
You made him eat the soup you’d cooked as a remedy, sitting by his side quietly, the usual sharp edge in your voice softened by concern.
You would plant your arm against his bed, leaning against your arm and nearly falling asleep.
Jason didn’t know how long you’d been there, but when the towel on his forehead warmed from the cold, he shifted to replace it.
Before he could move, you stirred awake, a soft protest slipping from your lips. “Hey, lay back down,” you murmured, “I’ll go change it—” You pushed yourself up too fast, failing to notice your legs falling asleep from sitting so long.
Before you could steady yourself, a sudden weakness made you lose your balance, and you tumbled forward, landing right on top of Jason.
He caught you instinctively, steadying your weight as you both froze for a moment, the unexpected closeness filling the quiet room with a new, electric tension.
For someone usually so bold, you were completely flustered in that compromising position— your eyes snapping wide, suddenly fully awake. Your faces hovered mere inches apart, each breath shared in the stillness between you.
Jason swore you could feel and hear his heart racing in his chest.
“Ah— um, uh, my legs are numb,” you stammered, quickly pulling yourself off him.
You quickly grabbed the small towel and moved away awkwardly, wincing as the sharp tingles from your still-asleep legs shot through you while Jason watched you, feeling his heart beat with craze and his cheeks heat up with such overwhelming warmth.
He knew it wasn’t the fever.
Maybe it was after that first time he lost a spar against you, the sting of each hit still fresh, or the way you’d effortlessly pinned him to the ground more times than he could count.
It was one of those moments.
Jason would circle cautiously, eyes locked on yours, trying to read your movements. You mirrored him, light on your feet, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Without warning, Jason lunged, aiming a quick jab toward your face. You ducked low, sliding to the side and catching his arm mid-swing. With a swift twist, you swept his leg out from under him. He hit the mat with a grunt but rolled immediately, pulling himself up to his knees.
Jason came at you again, this time feinting a punch before shooting a low kick. You caught his ankle, yanking him off balance. He stumbled, but you didn’t give him a moment to recover— you closed the distance fast, driving your shoulder into his ribs, pushing him back.
He gasped but countered with a knee strike to your side. The wind knocked out of you for a second, but you twisted away, grabbing his wrist and locking it behind his back in a quick armbar.
Jason gritted his teeth, struggling but finally tapping out.
You released him, both of you panting, sweat dripping down your faces.
You extended a hand to help him up, and he took it, pulling himself to his feet with a tired smile.
This time, Jason looked at you.
Fully.
He thought about all the times you’d pushed him harder than he thought possible, how you moved with a strength and precision that seemed almost effortless.
Then there was the way you looked— tired sweat glistening on your skin, your hair pulled back but still escaping in wild strands around your face, eyes fierce and focused.
Oh fucking god, he admittingly couldn’t look at you for a few days one time, having you in his spank bank for how much you’re on his mind, for how much you tease him, and the way your eyes would stay glued on him.
He wants your eyes to stay on him.
You are magnetic to Jason— irresistibly compelling in the way you carry yourself with effortless strength, quiet beauty, and unshakable resilience.
There’s something about you that pulls at him, drawing him closer even when he tries to keep his distance. His heart aches in ways he can’t ignore, bleeding quietly for you, tethered to every glance, every moment you share with him.
It's so utterly painful when his thoughts are kept to himself.
He admired how you never backed down from a challenge, how you held yourself with a quiet confidence that could fill a room without needing to say a word. You had this fire— this fierce, unbreakable spirit, that inspired him to keep going, even on days when he wanted to give up and leave the gym in frustration.
Yet, he’s standing here.
It had been exactly six months since the day he first stepped into your gym. Six months of bruises, sweat, and relentless training under your watch and alongside the others. Six months of you pushing him past limits he never knew he had.
He felt different now.
Stronger, sharper, and more relaxed. His body had changed, yes, but so had something deeper. The way he moved, the way he thought, and the way he carried himself.
“You ready, champ?”
You asked, leaning lazily into the ropes, eyes dragging over him in a slow, deliberate sweep. There was a glint in your gaze, playful and knowing, the corner of your mouth curling as if you already liked the answer.
By all means, your eyes on Jason made him feel goosebumps linger on his arms.
He wore lightweight red boxing shorts matching his gloves, satin catching the light every time he moved. They were a gift from you, a quiet reward for surviving everything you’d put him through, hell and back included.
You hadn’t realized how different it would feel seeing him like this. All those months of training, he’d always been in undershirts clinging to broad shoulders, fabric stretched over bulging biceps, or worn graphic tees that did nothing to hide the veins running along his forearms.
Now, stripped down to just the essentials, there was nothing to soften the reality of how much he’d changed.
And your eyes lingered, unashamed and instinctive, tracing the hard lines of his chest down to the cut definition of his abs, then back to the strength packed into his arms. Sweat glinted on his skin from the warm-up, catching the light in a way that made your breath hitch before you could stop it.
It was almost predatory, the way your gaze followed him, slow and deliberate, like a hunter appreciating the power of what stood in front of them.
For someone usually so composed, you felt it then, the heat crawling up your spine, the sudden awareness of how close you were standing, how much he’d filled out under your hands over months of training and how the heat in your eyes slowly travels down to your panties.
“Yeah, I’m ready,” Jason mumbled, his voice husky, betraying more than nerves. His gaze dipped, just briefly, catching on your lips before he dragged it back to your eyes like he’d been caught doing something dangerous.
You notice, biting onto your bottom lip to stop yourself from grinning but you fail to cover it, looking away briefly as if to compose yourself.
Jason couldn’t help but smirk at that, erasing it quickly so you don’t catch it.
You cleared your throat, running a hand through your hair as if to steady yourself. “There’s going to be people here,” you stated, voice settling back into something calm and assured. “Recruiters, patrons, and watchers. They might try to get in your head.”
Your eyes softened as you looked at him, more sincere now. “If anyone bothers you, find my dad. Or find me.” A pause, then a grin curved across your lips, confident and fox-like.
“I know you’ll win this tournament.”
And you weren’t wrong.
When you’re watching from one of the cracked metal seats in the small junk warehouse hosting the tournament, the lights dim and the low hum of the crowd swells. About a hundred people pack the space shoulder to shoulder, voices overlapping, anticipation thick in the air.
The place smells like sweat, metal, and adrenaline.
Your eyes never leave the ring, watching him put on the mouth guard before August helps him wrap his hands, and putting on his boxing gloves, tightening them.
The match begins.
You’re on your feet before you even realize it, hands cupped around your mouth as you call his name, your voice cutting through the noise. You cheer without restraint, sharp and fierce, every movement of his answered with a nod, a shout, a grin he doesn’t see but somehow feels.
You track him instinctively, reading his footwork, his breathing, the way his shoulders settle when he finds his rhythm. When he lands a clean hit, you punch the air. When he stumbles, your heart lurches, your voice rising louder, steadier.
Jason rolled his shoulders, breath steady, eyes locked on the man across from him. The crowd blurred into a low roar, lights glaring overhead, heat clinging to his skin. All he could hear was his own breathing and, faintly, your voice somewhere out there.
His opponent came out aggressive, swinging heavy and wide, trying to overwhelm him early. Jason slipped the first punch, just barely, feeling the rush of air graze his cheek.
He pivoted, light on his toes, letting the next punch sail past him before snapping back with a quick jab to the ribs. The man grunted, surprise flashing across his face.
He remembered you barking at him to loosen up, to stop muscling everything, to let his body do the work. His arms felt lighter now, his movements cleaner. When the other fighter tried to corner him, Jason ducked low, slipping out along the ropes instead of backing straight up.
The crowd erupted when he landed a clean hook to the jaw.
His opponent staggered, recovered fast, and came back swinging harder, frustration bleeding into every punch. One caught Jason on the shoulder, another clipped his cheekbone, sending a sharp jolt through his head.
He tasted metal for a second and welcomed it.
The opponent growled and came back harder, swinging wild. Jason ducked under a looping hook, countering with a sharp cross that snapped the man’s head back. The crowd surged, sound crashing over him in a wave. He caught a glimpse of movement beyond the ropes and imagined your grin.
He cut Jason off, backing him toward the ropes.
Jason slipped along the ropes, narrowly avoiding being trapped, and came out the other side with a quick combination.
Each punch flowed into the next, his body loose, his strikes efficient.
The man stumbled.
He heard your voice in his head, sharp and calm.
Don’t get greedy, let it come to you.
His opponent tried to recover, swinging in desperation now, to balance off.
Jason waited for the mistake.
It came.
Jason stepped in, driving a clean jab straight down the center, followed immediately by a heavy cross. The impact echoed through his arm. The man staggered backward, crashing into the corner.
The referee edged closer.
Jason closed the distance, cutting off escape, forcing the man to stay put. Another combination, it’s controlled, ruthless and lethal. One final punch landed square, and the man dropped to a knee, glove pressed against the canvas as the referee rushed in.
The count rang out over the roar of the crowd.
Jason backed away, chest heaving, fists still raised as sweat dripped down his spine. His legs shook, not from weakness, but from adrenaline. When the count hit ten, the bell rang again, loud and final.
Jason stood there for a moment, stunned, heart pounding, hands trembling as the realization settled deep into his bones.
The noise of the crowd washed over him, distant and unreal, but inside, everything felt achingly clear.
He didn’t think he could quit boxing.
And when he found you in the crowd, screaming his name, pride and fire written all over your face as you celebrated his first win like it was your own.
Something in his chest broke open.
Jason realized that he didn’t think he could quit you either.
Seven thousand dollars was a lot to Jason.
At least, it was when he was twenty years old, having a criminal justice degree, dreaming about becoming a lawyer at Gotham’s University, imagining a future where he stands for Justice that felt distant but possible.
He hadn’t planned on ending up in the boxing gym of a legend. Hadn’t planned on being trained and rebuilt by the man’s daughter, his coach’s assistant, the woman he had slowly and hopelessly fallen in love with.
Now, he is twenty-four.
Jason Todd is an MMA fighter now.
He’s earned more trophies, more belts, more gold, silver, and bronze than he ever did in high school or any life he imagined for himself back then. Each one is proof of how far he’s come, victories carved from sweat, blood, and stubborn refusal to quit.
He’s stronger than he has ever been, carved by discipline and hunger. His name is rising fast, climbing the ranks with every fight and every win. Word spreads quickly, faster than he ever expected. Clips of his matches flood social media, his face, his name, donations he’s poured into shelters, charities, and hospitals and his story plastered across screens he once scrolled through in silence.
Meanwhile, you were always in the crowd.
Always.
You cheered louder than anyone in the room, louder than August, louder even than your father, the former champion whose name had once ruled the scene.
Your voice cut through the noise without hesitation, raw and full of pride. Your name had always existed on the edges of the boxing, MMA, and JLC (Justice League Championship) world, familiar because of your father, because of the legacy he left behind. But now, it was different.
Your name was inseparable from Jason’s now, listed beside him in headlines and fight cards as his assistant, his coach. There were clips, photos, and everything between the both of you.
It was purely professional.
That’s what he likes to say himself.
Oh, who is he really kidding?
A clip blew up when you straddled his thigh without a second thought, fingers careful and steady as you cleaned the swelling beneath his eye and tended to the cuts on his face like it was second nature.
Your brows were furrowed, a small frown set in concentration as your foreheads touched, close enough to blur the rest of the world out. The cameras never caught your words, the audio lost beneath the roar of the crowd, but Jason knew exactly what you’d said.
He heard it anyway, clear as day, etched into him just as deeply as the bruises, cuts, and scratches you were so careful to mend.
You had your hands on his cheeks, thumbs pressing in just enough to ground him, to make sure he was looking at you and no one else. Your grip was steady, intimate, almost reverent, yet there was nothing gentle in your eyes. You searched his face like you were carving the moment into memory, breath close enough that he could feel it. Jason’s heart stuttered in his chest, lungs pulling in a deep, shaky breath as the world narrowed to just the two of you.
“Jay,” you murmured, voice low and lethal, “knock him the fuck out.”
Those clips went viral, edits, screenshots frozen and replayed a thousand times over.
And safe to say, the image lives rent-free in Jason’s mind.
It stayed there, uninvited and permanent, replaying in the spaces between fights, between breaths, reminding him just how impossible it was to separate the ring from you.
Yet, he was still a wimp to actually be more than… whatever you guys are.
Is this a situationship? He doesn’t know.
And people still have the nerve to ask to be his coach.
“Don’t you think it’s time to switch—”
“How do you feel about your assistant!?”
“Jason, have you thought of Hal Jordan’s offer!?!”
“What’s your thoughts on Lady Shiva AKA Sandra Wu-San’s offer?!”
“Are you dating—!?”
“Is your assistant planning to recruit—!?”
Jason snorted, the barrage of questions more amusing than tempting as he pushed through the flashing cameras and microphones shoved in his face as he walked through the red carpet, his hands tucked into his dress pants. The noise blurred together, names thrown at him like bait, legacies dangled as if loyalty were something to be traded.
“Excuse me! I’m Lois Lane from the Daily Planet,” a voice cut through the chaos. “Could you share your thoughts on declining the offer from the former MMA champion, holder of the most titles in history, Bruce Wayne?”
Jason’s head snapped toward the name.
Not Wayne’s— hers, Lois Lane.
“Lois Lane,” he repeated, already moving in her direction. “Congratulations on your tenth anniversary with Clark Kent. How’s retirement looking for him?” Lois laughed into the microphone, genuine and warm, clearly at ease. “Doing well. He’s on dad duty right now, taking care of our son. Now,” she added, lifting the mic again, “back to the question? The offer rejected by Bruce Wayne?”
The cameras went wild at that, shutters popping faster as he stopped just short of the barrier separating them. He didn’t blink at the lights, didn’t flinch at the microphones crowding his face, anticipating his answer.
“Why would I downgrade?”
A crooked, unapologetic smirk pulled at his lips as the lights bore down on him, blinding and relentless. A beat of silence followed before scandalized gasps rippled through the crowd, sharp and hungry.
He could already picture the headlines forming in real time, the outrage, the dirt people would swear he’d just thrown at Bruce Wayne.
You’re going to kill him.
Lois only smirked, a soft chuckle slipping out as she adjusted her grip on the microphone.
“I don’t think Bruce is going to like hearing that,” she dragged a note, amused, before smoothly shifting gears. “But you are competing in the JLC! For the new viewers, it’s short for Justice League Championship, and you’ve been absolutely crushing it! Your next match is against Roy Harper. What do you expect after that match?”
Jason rolled his eyes, a slow, amused scoff leaving him as if the answer were obvious.
“After that match?” Jason planted his hands on his hips, tilting his head like he actually had to think about it.
He didn’t.
Roy Harper wasn’t worth the mental effort.
“Hm,” he hummed, lips tipping into a slow, dangerous grin. “Dick Grayson should start getting real comfortable with second place.” The shrug that followed was careless, almost bored, like the result had been written long before anyone stepped into the cage.
The roar of the crowd only fed it, the screams bouncing off him like fuel on a fire.
“Because I’m bringing the title home,” he went on, voice smooth but edged with promise, ego worn without apology, “and I already cleared a space for it.”
Lois shook her head, laughing softly into the microphone, the kind of laugh that came when confidence crossed into something sharper, something inevitable.
Lois lifted the microphone again, eyes sharp with curiosity, clearly enjoying herself now.
“Confidence aside,” she pitched her tone higher, a teasing edge slipping into her voice, “a lot of people credit your rapid rise to the team behind you, specifically your coach. How much of tonight’s performance belongs to you, and how much belongs to her?”
The crowd stirred at that, cameras immediately angling for his reaction.
“And speaking of her,” Lois continued smoothly, “what are your thoughts on the relationship between your coach assistant and Dick Grayson? Bruce’s protégé, currently having the most belts in—“
Huh???
“Wowowow—“ he stops Lois Lane, a clear furrow of his brow. “What do you mean relationship with MY assistant? I am not aware of my assistant’s dating history, but I assure you that Dickhead hasn’t been with—”
Lois burst out laughing before he could finish, the sound bright and uncontrollable as she lowered the microphone for a second.
“Whoa, easy, tiger,” she grins, still chuckling. “Not that kind of relationship.”
Cameras snapped faster the second Jason’s expression changed, shutters clicking in rapid fire as photographers caught the way his jaw set and his eyes darkened.
A few of the paparazzi leaned toward one another, voices hushed but urgent.
Jason froze, scowl faltering into open confusion. “…Then what the hell are you talking about?”
Lois wiped at the corner of her eye, composing herself before lifting the mic again to herself. “Then you must be unaware,” she explained smoothly, slipping back into reporter mode, “that Dick Grayson was trained by your coach assistant long before Bruce Wayne recruited him. It was early in his career, formative years.”
A murmur rippled through the crowd.
Lois continued. “By most accounts, she helped build the foundation of his fighting style. Footwork, defense, and adaptability when he was nineteen and she was seventeen. The very things that earned him those belts.”
Jason’s jaw tightened, slow and deliberate.
“Oh,” he flatly replied.
Lois watched his reaction with interest, smirking as if she could read his thoughts. “So,” she pressed, “knowing that your possible opponent was once trained by the same coach who trains you now… does that change how you see the match?”
Jason’s lips curled, sharp and dangerous.
“If anything,” he began, voice dipping lower, edged with something dark and certain, “it just means she knows exactly how to take him apart.”
The TV flickered, then cut to black.
Jason sat back against the worn couch cushions, the room suddenly too quiet without the crowd, the cameras, and the noise.
The glow from the screen faded, leaving only his reflection staring back at him for a split second before it disappeared completely. He let out a slow breath through his nose, jaw tight, replaying his own words in his head instead.
The interview looped in his mind anyway.
As expected, he’d won his match against Roy Harper. It’s been two weeks, Roy Harper, respectfully was a name checked off the list, another highlight reel already circulating online.
His knuckles still ached faintly, a dull reminder of the fight, but it barely registered.
What lingered was you.
The thought of you standing cage-side, sharp-eyed and unflinching. The way your voice cut through the noise when it mattered. The certainty in your hands, the confidence in your touch.
Dear god, the way he— Jason groans, tilting his head back until he looks at the high-rise ceiling of his penthouse.
The way his head rewinds two weeks ago.
Two weeks.
After winning his match.
“Now, in what world was it a good idea to provoke Roy Harper?”
Jason frowned, irritation flashing across his swollen lip.
“Provoke? Please. I was speaking the truth.”
You rolled your eyes, unimpressed, and pressed deliberately into a darkening bruise along his ribs. He hissed sharply, fingers snapping around your wrist on instinct.
“Hey—”
“Don’t grab,” you warned lightly, though your mouth curved into a smirk when his expression pulled into a small, offended pout. “That’s what happens when you let your ego do the talking.”
Jason released your wrist, muttering under his breath, but there was no real bite to it. Not when you were this close. Not when your hands were already back on him, methodical and careful, tending to him like it was routine.
“Still won,” he simply whispered with a bit of attitude. You huffed, shaking your head as you reached for another wipe.
“Which I’m really happy you did, but you kiddin’? That was a close call.”
A brief pause followed, Jason's shoulder slumping, furrowing his brows together at the way you’ve been frustratingly been so…
So damn annoying.
A pain in the ass, and yet somehow he had still found a way to like you. No, that wasn’t even accurate. There were too many things about you to like, too many moments that had piled up quietly over time. Enough that it startled him when he realized the truth.
He’d been pining over you for three years.
He dragged his hands through his face, closing his eyes in disappointment of the lack of courage to ask, to just ask you officially instead of interfering the way you’ve found yourself on a date, or talking to someone.
Ughhhh.
I mean, it was obvious, wasn’t it?
He brought you flowers on Valentine’s Day and brushed it off like it was nothing. He paid every time you went out to eat without even asking. Tuesdays somehow turned into movie nights at his place, him cooking while you hovered nearby, stealing bites and commentary. He drove you everywhere in his new car, never once complaining, and when your car broke down, he fixed it himself, wrapped your car in a color you’ve liked as if they were your pretty nails that HE HAS PAID FOR.
And if there’s one thing that he will never ever admit?
Whenever he’s injured, he looks forward to your hands.
He really likes your hands all over him in any sort of way.
He’d loved your hands since the first time you’d slipped on your boxing gloves and proved him wrong, ever since the sharp crack of leather against skin and the bruise blooming on his cheek from your own hand, your unapologetic smile while your father pointed and laughed from the ringside at his cocky assumption that he’d had the upper hand.
August had gotten a good chuckle out of the fifth fight of the week with you, losing once more with a hope that he’s able to turn the tables against you, having you pinned underneath Jason.
The imagery of your wrists pinned beneath his palms, the mat cold against your back, his control effortless and precise. It was something he wished to happen once.
Yet, the thought crept in uninvited and unwelcome, settling like a bruise he could not ignore.
The way your hand kisses any bruises he has, healing them under your touch.
The thought of those hands ever belonging to anyone else, or pinned underneath anyone else.
He hates it.
“You trained with Dick Grayson.”
The question— no, the statement slipped out sharper than he intended.
Your hands stilled for half a second.
You glanced up at him, expression unreadable, then went back to cleaning the cut along his cheek like nothing had changed.
“What about it?”
Jason lets out a short, disbelieving scoff, his jaw tightening as heat crawls up his neck.
“What about it?” he echoes, incredulous. “You trained one of the biggest names in the MMA world. One of the biggest names in the JLC. And it just… never came up? You didn’t think that was relevant?”
This time, you really look at him.
Your brows lift slightly, eyes searching his face with quiet precision, like you’re peeling back layers he hasn’t even admitted are there. The room feels smaller under your gaze, heavier, and Jason suddenly wishes he’d chosen his words more carefully.
“Is that what this is about, relevancy?”
He hesitated.
The locker room felt smaller all of a sudden, the hum of fluorescent lights louder, the sting on his cheek forgotten.
He opened his mouth, then shut it again, fingers curling against the bench.
“I just—” he exhaled through his nose, voice low and raw. “Feels like something I should’ve known.”
Your hands, the same ones that had been there to put him back together more times than he could count, found their way to his jaw, gently tilting his face upward.
Your touch was steady, unwavering, like a silent question lingering between you.
“Why?” You asked softly.
Jason swallowed hard, caught in the weight of that simple word and the way your eyes held him so completely.
From this angle, looking up into your calm, steady gaze, something deep inside him tightened— a mix of longing and vulnerability he couldn’t fully voice.
He wanted to pour everything out, to lay bare the ache and the hope and the quiet desperation in his chest, but the words caught, tangled in his throat.
Because the idea of someone else standing where he stood made his chest burn.
Because hearing Dick Grayson’s name attached to you made something ugly and possessive twist in his gut.
Because he didn’t like how much it bothered him.
Because he didn’t want to imagine your hands belonging to someone else.
Jason stayed quiet.
“I didn’t tell you,” you begin after a moment, voice low and even, “because it wasn’t about you, or him. It was about work— training, boxing, and MMA. We’re friends, acquaintances, but it wasn’t anything more.” He nodded, but the motion was shallow, unconvincing.
His eyes stayed on yours, searching, like he was bracing for a hit he wasn’t sure was coming.
“I know,” he murmured. “Doesn’t make it better that I had to find out through them… well, Lois.”
The complaint slipped out in a low grumble, all the fight finally draining from his voice. His shoulders loosened, tension easing as he let himself lean into you, his face turning pliant in your hands like he trusted you not to drop him.
For someone who fought for a living, Jason went oddly still when you touched him like this.
Your fingers remained steady against his jaw, thumbs warm, and grounding. He exhaled slowly, eyes fluttering shut for half a second before opening again to look at you.
You were smiling.
Quiet amusement at the familiar name.
“Why am I not surprised you found out through Lois?” You chuckled softly. “Working with Dick wasn’t exactly a secret, but it also wasn’t something people cared to dig into.” Your smile turned a little wry. “Guess that’s changed now.”
Your thumbs brushed his skin again, absent but intimate, as if you were smoothing the moment itself.
“Fans love a narrative,” you continued. “They connect dots that don’t exist, twist history into drama. It makes for good headlines.” You shrugged easily, as if it doesn’t bother you of what people say on Twitter, Tiktok, or any social media platform.
“You should get some rest, Jason,” you commented, the edge of authority slipping back into your tone like armor. “I’ll see you later. You’ll have a month to recover before your final match.”
Your hands finally fell away, the sudden absence making the air feel colder.
“Oh, I forgot one thing—”
Then, before his brain could catch up to his body, you leaned in.
A brief kiss pressed to his cheek, warm and unguarded, lingering just long enough to leave him stunned.
You turned away immediately after, already heading for the door like you hadn’t just rearranged his entire nervous system.
But just before you stepped out, you paused.
You glanced back over your shoulder, a slow, knowing smirk curling at your lips, eyes glinting with something dangerously unreadable.
“Congratulations, Jay.”
Then you were gone.
Jason sat there, frozen on the bench, like the world had stalled mid-breath. His pulse thundered in his ears, cheek still warm where you’d kissed him, your voice replaying on a loop in his head.
Congratulations, Jay.
Jason sat there, frozen on the couch of his living room. His pulse thundered in his ears, cheek still warm where you’d kissed him, your voice replaying on a loop in his head only differently.
The kiss on his cheek still felt like an imprint, one you’d left behind even two weeks later, he wondered how it would feel if your kisses were possessive.
If your lips lingered instead of retreating, if they traced the line of his neck with intention, leaving behind nothing visible but everything felt. The kind of closeness that didn’t need marks to claim him, only the quiet certainty that he was yours in a way that mattered.
The kind that leaves him panting for more, his hands tightening on your naked hips, watching your tits bounce from every lift that comes down onto his pelvis, and your hands trailing from his shoulders to his chest, running through his pecs before they settle on his abs, flexing under your hands while your pussy clenches around him.
He had always felt guilty of these dirty thoughts, avoiding your gaze at one point two years ago, where you licked your lips, flipped him onto his back, caging him while you stared down on him while he tried to control his dick from twitching.
He really couldn’t face you, tried to wipe those thoughts, but he’s given up too many times, looking on pornhub, Twitter, and had one or two hookups that had him accidentally imagining what you’d be like.
The pure imagery of your voice, pitched pornographic moans echoing in his mind, his hands stroking his cock as he calls out your name under his muffled breath, his arm thrown across his eyes, his head tilted to the ceiling from his couch, biting onto the hem of his shirt that he bunched up from the wet dream that has been on his mind for days, uncontrollably moaning, feeling his cock twitch and the sound of his slick echoing his living room.
How he would love to see your lips around his cock, pressing a kiss onto his tip before spitting onto it, running your tongue all over the base to the tip that leaks pre-cum.
Filthy.
Jason isn’t usually dramatic.
He isn’t big on theatrics, doesn’t care much for putting on a show. Though, if he were being honest, he’s always had a soft spot for musicals. The way actors exaggerate emotion, how they lean fully into feeling without shame, how everything is bigger and louder, trying to fight for the spotlight.
He pretends to scoff at it, calling it ridiculous.
Yet, here he is.
Jason feels like he’s been hurled through a glass window, the impact sudden and merciless. The world fractures on contact, splintering into a thousand sharp reflections as he falls, helpless, watching everything he thought was solid shatter around him.
It’s slow motion and absolutely disgusting to see.
Richard Grayson has no business having his hands on your wrists, staring down onto you with a fucking grin on his face.
That’s not only the worst part: he’s pinning you down into the floor mats, something Jason has never been able to achieve, breathing harshly as you glared up at him, pinned underneath him.
At 6 in the damn morning.
It was the night before the match, facing Dick Grayson.
Jason’s hands curl at his sides, nails biting into his palms as something ugly and heated coils in his chest. Jealousy, yes, but tangled with something worse.
Your father stands off to the side like this is just another Tuesday, arms crossed over his chest. Meanwhile, Bruce fucking Wayne is in the gym. In your father’s gym. As if it’s not absolutely insane to have a former world champion, global icon, philanthropist with a reputation built on charity fights and clean victories, just casually observing sparring sessions on scuffed mats.
The contrast is jarring.
“I fold,” you whispered into the quiet.
Dick laughed immediately, bright and easy, like he’d won something harmless. He released your wrists and stood, offering you a hand to pull you up, that same grin still firmly in place. You took it without ceremony, brushing yourself off as if you hadn’t just been pinned in front of an audience that mattered far too much.
And then Dick looked past you.
Straight at Jason.
The grin shifted. “Well,” Dick realized a new figure in the gym, clapping his hands together once, “been a while since I’ve seen ya’! You did great in your match against Harper last month!”
Jason didn’t return the smile. His jaw tightened, eyes flicking briefly to where Dick’s hands had been on you before settling back on his face.
The air between them went taut, stretched thin with something unspoken and ugly.
“Didn’t know you were comin’ here.” Jason grunted, pulling his headphones out of his equipment bag before throwing his equipment bag to the side, passing Dick to your side.
You turned to him as he wrapped the headphones around his neck.
“He’s here to briefly visit,” you explained. “It's been a while since we’ve seen each other, especially since the championship is going to be in New Jersey, the home of the well-respected boxers: Jason Todd and Dick Grayson!” You flung your arms out as if you were an announcer, hearing the roar of a nonexistent crowd.
Bruce chuckled at that, landing his gaze onto Jason.
“You sure you don’t wanna take up on my offer?”
Jason scoffed, “disrespecting my coach in front of me? In your dreams, you’ve heard my answer in the interview.” You glanced at him, your lips curving upwards, knowing exactly what he’s referring to.
“Well, all due respects to your coach.” Dick winks at you playfully, coming up to your other side. “You could learn some tricks from Bruce and maybe I can catch up with—”
“Not a fat chance in hell.”
Jason rolls his eyes.
You raised a pointed brow at him, wondering what’s with the attitude against your former teammate, or whatever the fuck.
“Oi’! Be nice, Todd.” Your father sways a finger at him, knowing he’s half-joking, but Bruce could only laugh at Jason’s intimidation.
Yuck.
Dick, of course, looked delighted. He walks over to a towel hanging off a bench, slinging it over his shoulder, entirely too relaxed for someone standing in the middle of a territorial standoff. “Didn’t realize I’d walked into your gym with your name on it,” he pokes at his response, his voice filled with sarcasm. “You always this friendly, Todd?”
Jason stepped closer, tension rolling off his shoulders.
“Only when necessary.”
You insert yourself between them before it could escalate further, noting down Jason’s hostile attitude.
“Both of you,” you dryly cut their conversation. “Save it in the cage, tomorrow.”
Dick lifted his hands in surrender, a grin still lingering on his face, showing off the pearly whites.
“Relax, coach. We’re just talking.”
Jason’s jaw ticked.
“Sure.”
Bruce observed the exchange like it was a chess match unfolding. Your father, meanwhile, looked one smirk away from enjoying this far too much.
“Unless yall wanna fight it out now.” Your father suggests, hearing Dick laugh, waving his hand around.
“Nah, let’s save that for the match tomorrow!” Dick shot back easily, clapping Jason once on the shoulder.
Then his gaze slowly trails off to you, dragging the towel through his hair, grin still shamelessly intact. “Hey, do you mind if we get dinner—”
Jason clicks his tongue.
“She’s busy tonight.”
Dick slowly side-eyed him. “Oookay…” he drawled, clearly amused. “Do you mind if we grab some friendly coffee?”
He emphasized on friendly.
Your brow twitched, glaring at Jason behind Dick’s shoulder when his mouth opens before it shuts. Your gaze clearly tells him that you can answer yourself.
Jason internally grumbled, jaw flexing.
You crossed your arms, looking at Dick with a polite smile. “Yeah, I’m down.”
And that was that.
And Jason— Jason’s fist tightens, his teeth clenching before he walks away from the conversation to start his warm-up, annoyed with Dick Grayson and his punchable face.
“Do you want me to get you anything—” you called after him, noticing the tension radiating off his back.
“I’m good,” he replied, loud enough to cut the air between you.
He didn’t look at you.
He just pulled the headphones from around his neck up over his ears, sealing himself off. The music wasn’t even playing yet, but he needed the barrier. Jason could already hear and see the furrow between your brows, your snark of his behavior, and the sigh filled with frustration that makes Jason wanna bite down on his tongue and die from being the reason for your frustration.
There was just something aggravating about Dick Grayson.
And he knew it was going to bite him in the ass later.
It always happens.
And today was no different, except the fact when you came back to the gym with Jason’s regular order— he had left already.
You expected to see him at the heavy bag, or in the corner stretching, or arguing with someone about footwork.
Instead, his space was empty.
“Hey, where’s Todd?” you asked casually.
Your father glanced up from his conversation with Bruce.
“Left.”
You blinked. “Left?”
“An hour in,” he added, mildly confused himself. “Didn’t say much when he left except talked with August about tomorrow.”
That didn’t make sense.
Jason never left early.
Left immediately after the first hour which was highly unusual of him— Jason had never left the boxing gym, he would at least stay for four hours, yet he had left.
You were left with confusion.
And Dick simply sips his coffee.
While Jason is in a turmoil of feelings.
After multiple messages left on read by him, your name flashing with a vibration of his phone that automatically went through voicemail while he begrudgingly ignored the flash of a picture of him and you together, ridiculous face masks on, fluffy headbands with bows, a night of self-care of one of the movie nights you’ve had, leaning into him for a selfie that he had pretended to hate.
It had quieted down after 2:00 PM.
“I think you should really tell her how ya’ feel.”
And like every other time, he has to consult with Artemis on FaceTime, her fiery red hair is down, brushing through it with a pointed gaze, piercing through the device into Jason’s soul.
Jason choked.
“Did you even listen to what I said for last four hours!?”
Artemis groaned, dragging a hand down her face like she was the one exhausted. “Oh my god, I’ve been listening since day one of this whole situation,” she snapped. “And I can’t help but say you’re blind as a damn bat!”
“I am not blind,” Jason shot back.
“You are catastrophically blind and we truly didn’t need this debrief and your internal crisis,” she corrected. “You think she memorizes your coffee order, patches you up like you’re something fragile, and looks at you the way she does because you’re just another fighter? The fact she motivates you every single time? Or the kiss on your cheek? Or have that viral clip go everywhere and not say a word of what yall are?”
Jason opened his mouth, then he closed it.
Artemis pointed at him. “Exactly.”
He stood abruptly, pacing now, agitation crawling under his skin.
“You didn’t see her with him!”
“With Grayson?” Artemis scoffed. “Please. I’ve seen that man flirt with a mirror. That literally means nothing.”
“It didn’t look like anything?!”
“And what did it look like?” she challenged, folding her arms.
Jason hesitated, jaw tight.
“She looked comfortable with him.”
Artemis’ expression shifted from exasperated to something almost pitying. “Jason. She’s comfortable with him because they’ve trained together. History doesn’t equal romance and I thought she cleared that up from the last conversation we had when y'all were in the locker room.”
And Artemis once again— had a point.
“She’s not choosing between you and him,” Artemis sighs quietly. “She doesn’t even know there’s a competition, because you’re the only one fighting it, dumbass.” Jason shouts a ‘hey!’ Before he frowns.
“You gotta stop being a wimp and just— I don’t know, take her out on a date for once!”
“I am not doing that!”
“Holy fuckin’ shit! Man UP, dude. Do you want to see her with Dick Grayson, then!?”
The fuck!?
“I thought you were on my side!”
Jason stares at her in disbelief.
“I am literally on your side!” Artemis annoyingly says. “Don’t drag this out any longer.”
“I—”
Jason’s door starts banging.
Artemis swears she saw Jason become ten-times paler.
“I know you’re in there, Jason! You better explain yourself!”
Fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck.
“What the fuck do I do—!?”
He hisses into his phone.
The call disconnects.
The last thing he sees is Artemis smirking at him before she hangs up.
Oh, what the absolute fuck, bruh.
The banging continues.
“Jason!”
He drags both hands down his face.
“Okay,” he mutters to himself. “Okay. You can absolutely tell her— you fight grown men for a living. You can open a door and confess.”
Another bang.
He flinches.
“JASON TODD.”
“Alright! Give me a second, woman!” He shouts back automatically, then winces from the annoyance in his tone.
He takes a deep breath, praying mentally to himself, and opens the door.
He leans against the doorframe like that might steady him.
“Hi,” he says weakly.
And like every other time that he had pissed you off—
You do not look amused.
You’re standing there in a plain graphic t-shirt wearing comfortable sleep shorts, arms crossed, eyes blazing with anger, hurt, and worry.
“You left,” you state.
“Yes.”
“You ignored my calls.”
“…Also yes.”
Your eyes narrow. “Are you five?”
He scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. “In my defense, I was having a crisis.”
“A crisis,” you repeat flatly.
“An internal one.”
You stare at him for a long second.
“Jason,” you say slowly, dangerously calm, “did you really leave training early, ignore me for hours, and spiral because Dick asked me to get coffee?”
He freezes.
You blink.
His silence answers him.
“Oh my god,” you breathe.
He winces. “It sounds worse when you say it out loud.”
“It is worse out loud!”
He steps aside automatically when you push past him into the apartment, pacing once like you’re trying to process the level of stupidity before he closes the door.
“You’re unbelievable,” you mutter.
“I know,” he says immediately.
You turn on him.
“Why?”
“Tell me, Jason,” you step closer until his back hits the door with a dull thud. “What exactly happened? Why were you so pissed at Dick? I’ve told you before we’re just friends! We’re old acquaintances!”
Something in him snaps.
“I know that!” He fires back, louder than he means to.
“You think I don’t know that?” he continues, running a hand through his hair. “You think I’m stupid?”
“I think you’re being absolutely ridiculous,” you shoot back.
“Yeah?” he laughs, sharp and bitter. “You wanna know why I’m being ridiculous?”
You stare at him, jaw set.
“Enlighten me.”
“Because I absolutely hate how I feel.”
And he seethes, watching the way your eyes widen, your face written in confusion while he continues. “I hate that he pinned you when I couldn’t and that I haven’t. I hate that he’s got history with you, I hate that you light up when you talk about old training stories with him—”
His chest heaves. “I hate the fact that the media has this narrative between the two of you the last few weeks as if I am not there, I hate the fact we aren’t anything more than friends, and I hate that I don’t get to say anything about it because technically I have no right!”
He steps closer now, frustration radiating off him.
“I hate being friends. I hate the fact you don’t realize how much— how much I feel for you and I hate that we label the times we go out together ‘hangouts’ when I want it to be a date, or whenever you’re with someone else!”
The anger fractures, bleeding into something raw.
“I buy you flowers. I fix your damn car. I let you come over every Tuesday. I let you yell at me. I let you patch me up every round because it’s the only time you touch me without thinking and when you drop off medicine when I’m sick.” His voice breaks slightly at the edges. “And I don’t say anything because I don’t want to fuck this up!”
You stand there, taking it all in.
You watch the way his chest rises and falls like he’s just gone twelve rounds. The way his fists are still clenched at his sides, knuckles pale, like he’s bracing for impact that never comes. The anger is still there, but it’s fraying at the edges now, splitting open to reveal something far more vulnerable underneath.
Then, as if a switch flipped, the air changed.
And then he caught the subtle way you wet your lips, almost unconsciously, like you were thinking too hard about something you hadn’t decided yet.
His gaze dipped before he could stop it.
To your mouth, then back to your eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he muttered under his breath, voice lower now, rougher.
“Like what?” You asked, though your voice had lost its earlier edge.
“Like you wanna fuck me.”
You didn’t flinch.
Instead, you hummed lightly, fingers tightening in the fabric of his shirt, feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath your knuckles and all the blood rushes to his dick.
“You’re really funny, you know that?” You murmured.
And then you leaned in, not to kiss him, but enough that your lips hovered near his ear, your breath warm against his skin.
“You’re not the only one that has feelings, Jay.”
And suddenly, your mouth crashes against his, teeth grazing, breath stolen. Jason makes a startled sound against your lips before he’s kissing you back just as hard, hands gripping your waist like he needs something solid to hold onto.
There’s nothing tentative about it.
Your fingers slide from to the hem of his shirt in one decisive motion.
He barely pulls back long enough to breathe.
“You’re—”
“Shut up,” you murmured against his mouth.
Fuckin’ crazy hot.
You drag his shirt up and over his head in one swift pull, tossing it somewhere behind you without looking.
His hands automatically find your hips again, tightening them as a low sound rumbling from his chest as your palms press flat against the bare skin of his chest— warm, solid, and real.
He’s basically grinding against your core, the imprint of his dick on his sweatpants rubs against your shorts that hugs your thighs, and every time he lifts you every few seconds, he catches your clit through the thin piece of a poor excuse of shorts, hearing you moan from the slight pleasure.
It doesn’t take long for your shirt to also be thrown somewhere in the living room, which unsurprisingly, you’re not wearing a bra that leaves him in a daze, staring at your tits that makes his head spin from how perfect they are.
Your hands slide up his chest, over his shoulders, and then you’re pulling him down again, mouth finding his skin with the same confidence you dragged him into that first kiss. He exhales sharply when your lips press to his jaw, then lower and slower.
He’s imagined this, too many times.
Jason doesn’t know what to do with you, especially with the way you’re not afraid to be the one directing the pace, being the bold one to pull the first move, to have your lips marking him up everywhere.
Your teeth graze lightly over his skin.
He sucks in a breath.
“Mm,” you hum against him, clearly pleased with the reaction. “You’ve thought about this before?”
Shit, did he say that out loud?
You nip gently at the side of his neck, it wasn’t hard, but it was enough to make him let out a small, involuntary sound that vibrates through his chest.
“Don’t—” he starts, but it dissolves into a breath when you press another slow kiss just below it, knowing full well the faint flush of red will linger.
You pull back slightly to admire your work, fingers brushing over the spot you’ve claimed and the other red spots that linger all over his collarbone.
Jason’s eyes are dark, blown wide, chest rising a little faster now.
“Answer me,” you murmur, lips ghosting over his pulse point. “How many times?”
His hands tighten at your waist, fingers digging in just enough to steady himself.
“You don’t wanna know,” he says hoarsely.
“Oh,” you whisper, pressing another deliberate kiss to his throat, “I think I do.”
Your hand moves slowly, unhurried, sliding from his shoulder down over the firm plane of his chest. Your pretty manicured hand drags lightly over warm skin, fingers splaying as if you’re mapping him out from memory.
“Once?” you press.
A huff of breath leaves him— half laugh, half disbelief.
His dick twitching.
“You’re enjoying this way too much.”
You drag your nails lightly down his chest in response, watching the way his stomach tightens under your touch.
“It’s okay if you don’t wanna answer.”
Then, your hand drags down till you’ve grasped onto his cock, feeling it slightly twitch beneath your palms even through the cloth.
“Oh f—“
You softly chuckled.
“I’ve thought of sucking your dick before, ya’ know?”
With that, you squeeze him a tad-bit, fueling the fire in his stomach when you watch his facial expression twisting into pure pleasure, closing his eyes in bliss, releasing a sharp moan from your words, his cheeks flushing in a pretty red color before he slowly opens them to face your devilish smile.
Without a single thought behind Jason’s eyes, he watches you stick out your tongue, placing it on his chest—
And dragged it down.
His mind focused on the pink muscle, everything thrown out the window, gliding your tongue lower, tracing the defined line of his abs, feeling it clench when you run the ridges between them, tasting the salt on his skin as you go.
His breath hitches, a ragged sound that vibrates through his chest and into your mouth. You pause just above the waistband of his sweatpants, looking up at him through your lashes.
His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide with lust, fixed on you as if you’re the only thing that exists in the world, mouthing the imprint.
And it feels heavenly, the intensity of the heat, the wet mouth of yours sucking him through the cloth for a second.
With a slow, deliberate movement, you hook your fingers into the elastic of his sweatpants and boxers, pulling them down together. The fabric catches for a moment on his erection before you free it, and his cock springs out, hard and flushed.
The sight makes your own arousal spike, a wet heat pooling between your thighs and your fingers dragging to your core providing relief when you rub yourself.
You don’t waste any time on Jason.
You lean in, pressing a soft, open-mouthed kiss to the head, tasting the bead of pre-cum that’s gathered there. Jason’s hips jerk, a choked gasp escaping his lips. You smile against him, then part your lips wider, taking just the tip into your mouth.
Your tongue swirls around the sensitive ridge, teasing him, savoring the way he trembles under your touch and when you follow a particular vein that nearly makes him lose it all.
“Fuck,” he breathes, his hands resting on top of your head. “Don’t fuckin’ stop.”
You take him deeper, inch by inch, until he’s hitting the back of your throat. You relax your muscles, letting him slide even further, your nose brushing against the coarse hair at his base. The guttural moan he lets out is raw, unrestrained, and it sends a thrill straight through you. You start to move, bobbing your head in a steady rhythm, your other hand stroking what your mouth can’t take.
His hands tangle in your hair, his grip tight but not painful. He’s trying to hold back, you can feel it in the tension of his thighs, the way his breaths come in short, sharp bursts.
But you don’t want him to hold back.
You want to break him, to make him lose all control. You pick up the pace, sucking harder, your tongue flicking against the underside of his shaft with every pass.
His hips start to move, thrusting forward to meet your mouth, moving your head slowly to follow and you let him, taking him deeper each time.
And the way your eye rolls to the back of your head.
“That’s—fucking hell,” To hear the broken thoughts of the man stuffed in your mouth only encourages you to repeat the entire process of pulling yourself to the tip of his cock before taking him all-over again to the back of your throat.
“Fuck, take all of it.”
Jason finds himself encased in a wet heat that holds him hostage, shutting his eyelids from the pure bliss you’ve given him from your lethal tongue of yours.
The room fills with the wet, obscene sounds of your mouth on him, his ragged moans as he starts to lose himself. His groans were becoming a higher pitch now, bordering on whimpers as he grew more daring with moving his hips against your face. His excitement was only spurring you on, a desperate little moan rumbling in your throat as you watched his face contort.
You greedily licked as he fucked your throat, your fingers repeatedly circle your clit as his cock twitched against your palate.
“God, I’m gonna—” he chokes out, his grip tightening in your hair.
The head pushes against the back of your throat when you try to fit as much of him as you can. You struggle to breathe, airways blocked by the thickness of his cock. But it’s fucking worth it when he quivers under you, knowing he’s so close, the back of your skull reveling in the pressure of his palm.
You hum around him, the vibration pushing him closer to the edge and with a final, broken cry, he comes, his release hot and bitter on your tongue.
You swallow it all, milking him for every last drop before slowly pulling back.
You look up at him, his chest heaving, his face flushed and glistening with sweat.
He looks completely wrecked, and it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.
You don’t know how long you’ve been having sex with Jason last night.
You can’t remember when you’ve found yourself in his bed, having multiple rounds with one another but you know you’ve come onto Jason’s tongue multiple times, and Jason has only come a few times, still wanting to continue, even though there was the final match the next day.
You goddamn nearly blacked out from how good he was eating you off the damn bone.
And he still is— except all you feel and remember is the divine stretch, a full, aching pressure that steals the air from your lungs. You can feel every thick inch of him pulsing inside you, a hot, heavy presence that makes your head spin. Your arms snake around his shoulders, nails digging into the sweat-slick skin of his back as you pull him down, crushing his chest to yours.
“Knew you could take it,” he rumbles, his voice a low, smug vibration against your ear.
You clench around him deliberately, a tight, wet squeeze that makes his breath hitch. A smug little smirk plays on your lips. "Yeah? Well, you gonna just sit there and admire the view, or are you actually gonna fuck me?"
He lets out a low groan, a sound of pure annoyance that only makes you wetter. He pulls out, a slow, agonizing drag that leaves you feeling empty, before sinking back in just as slowly that feels tortuous.
A slight pull out, and then back in.
"Is that all you've got? I'm bored." You let your forearm fall over your eyes, a dramatic gesture you know will piss him off. "Wake me up when you're done."
You hear the sharp grind of his teeth. "You've got a smart mouth on you suddenly," he mentions, his voice dangerously low. "Keep talking and I'll make you choke on my dick from earlier."
You peek out from under your arm, a defiant glare in your eyes. "Then, move faster—”
A sharp, forceful thrust punches the air from your lungs, choking off your next smart-ass remark. Your eyes fly wide, a gasp tearing from your throat as he hits a spot so deep you see stars.
"What was that?" he snarls, doing it again, harder this time, hooking one of your legs around his waist to change the angle. "Fuck you," you spit, but there's no heat in it, only desperate, needy pleasure.
"Oh, I am," he snorts, a wicked, cocky laugh escapes that makes your stomach flip. "I'm fucking a goddamn slut that can’t keep her legs shut." He sets a brutal pace, the sound of skin slapping against skin echoing in the room.
Each thrust is deep, powerful, designed to punish, to overwhelm, grasping onto your hips to pull you into him further, reaching deeper that has blubbering moans uncontrollably while your hands, your pretty nails drags his back, knowing there’s going to be marks tomorrow imprinted on his skin.
"Still bored?" He grunts, his hand wrapping around your throat, not squeezing, just holding you in place, a possessive brand that makes you dizzy.
"Look at me when I'm fucking you."
Your vision snaps to his gaze, it’s blurry with unshed tears of pleasure coming from the corner of your eyes. His eyes are dark, burning with a fire that matches the one building in your core.
"You're such an asshole," you moan loudly, your voice breaking as he drives into you relentlessly.
"And you love it," he counters, his thumb brushing over your lower lip. "Take what I'm giving you."
The coil in your stomach tightens, your muscles tensing as the pleasure builds to an impossible peak.
“Jason… I'm gonna—"
"No," he cuts you off, his voice firm. "Don’t cum yet. Not until I say so." He slows his pace, rolling his hips in a way that drags his cock against your clit every second with every stroke, keeping you right on the edge without letting you fall.
“Please—”
“No.”
Then, without listening to a damn word Jason had told you, the coil in your stomach snaps, his thumb rolling just once against your clit and your orgasm crashes over you with the force of a tidal wave.
“Jay!”
A strangled cry tears from your lips as your walls clamp down on him, a series of violent, rhythmic spasms that milk his cock. Your vision whites out, your body arching off the bed as wave after wave of intense pleasure wracks you.
“Not really a good listener, are you?”
Jason groans, a deep, guttural sound of pure satisfaction as he feels you come apart around him.
He doesn't stop, his thrusts becoming erratic, chasing his own release as you ride out the last tremors of yours. "Ts’ okay, you feel so good when you come on me anyway," he pants, his forehead pressed against yours, his thumb still rolling on your overstimulated clit. "So fucking tight around me."
There’s a certain slight burn to it that feels so fucking good, allowing him to continue to chase his orgasm while your own continues to crash like a continuous tidal wave.
Jason grunts melt into desperate mewls and whines with each rut of his hips.
He sounds so needy.
And there's a raging urge within you to hold him as he reaches his climax. To wrap your arms around his head and cradle him when he makes noises like that. And without a second thought, you did that— pulling him into you before he stills, cumming within you while your name leaves his lips.
There’s nothing in the room except the smell of sex, heat in the room and two bodies.
Your body becomes limp, exhausted and completely spent. You barely register the moment Jason slips out of bed.
But he’s back within seconds.
The mattress dips beside you, and there’s a soft touch against your thigh— gentle and careful. You blink lazily and see him with a small towel in hand, damp and warm.
“Hey,” he murmurs quietly, brushing your hair back from your face. “Stay with me a second.”
You hum in response, too tired to form words.
He cleans you up slowly, respectfully, checking in without making it clinical. His thumb strokes along your hip in between, grounding, reassuring.
“You okay?” he asks, voice softer than you’ve ever heard it.
You nod faintly. “Yeah.”
A small, proud smile tugs at his swollen lip.
“You were incredible,” he murmurs, pressing a lingering kiss to your shoulder. “Did so good for me.”
When he’s done, he tosses the towel aside and slides back under the covers immediately. You instinctively roll toward him, pressing into his chest like it’s the only place that makes sense.
Your skin sticks slightly from the heat of the room, but neither of you cares. Jason wraps his arms around you automatically, pulling you flush against him. One hand settles at the small of your back, the other cradles the back of your head, fingers threading lazily through your hair.
He exhales like something in him finally unclenched.
“Got you,” he murmurs, almost to himself.
You tangle your leg with his, forehead resting against his collarbone, his heartbeat steady. Every so often, his thumb traces absent patterns against your spine.
His lips brush your temple.
“You need water?” he asks quietly. “Pain anywhere?”You shake your head again, sleep already pulling at you.
“Good,” he whispers.
He presses one last soft kiss into your hair before his body fully relaxes, holding you close like he has no intention of letting go anytime soon.
“And welcome back, ladies, gentlemen, and nonbinary folks— if you’re just tuning in, you chose one hell of a night to do it!”
The arena is shaking.
The noise of the arena vibrates through bone and steel, rattling camera rigs and makes the commentators lean closer to their headsets just to hear themselves think. Spotlights sweep across a sold-out crowd, catching handmade signs, painted faces, phones already recording before the first punch has even been thrown.
“Tonight’s main event is one we’ve been anticipating since Roy’s match!” The announcer says, voice rising over the roar of the crowd. “Isn’t that right, Clark?”
The arena responds instantly— loud, sharp, and multiple voicing his name when they recognize who’s seated at the commentary table.
Clark Kent adjusts his headset, offering that modest, almost sheepish smile to the camera as the crowd continues to cheer.
“For once,” Clark replies smoothly, “I’m glad I’m on the ringside and not in the middle of it. These two?” He laughs, shaking his head. “This has been building for such little time!”
The other commentator lets out a low chuckle. “That’s putting it lightly.” He gestures toward the massive screens overhead as highlight reels flash— Dick’s acrobatic knockouts and Jason’s brutal finishes.
“On one side, the golden prodigy of Bruce Wayne— Richard Grayson.” The crowd cheers at the mention of his name. “And on the other— the so-called underdog who refused to stay one. Jason Todd!” Clark whistles low, the commentators letting the crowd’s cheer bypass, but he can’t help but swear he’s never heard a crowd this loud since his own match against Bruce Wayne, ages ago.
“He’s the man who fights like he’s got something to prove every single time he steps into a ring!”
The camera cuts briefly to Bruce Wayne seated close to the ring, waiting for the show to go on.
“And here’s the kicker!” The commentator continues, leaning into it. “They’re both molded under the same coach!” The camera pans to the person next to Bruce Wayne, your father before it flickers to you.
“To be specific, the assistant coach of the former boxing champion! They’re two fighters forged in the same fire— who took very different paths once they stepped out on their own!”
“And tonight,” the announcer finishes, as the bell official steps forward, “we find out which path leads to gold.”
“Give it up… for DICK GRAYSON!”
His music slams through the speakers again, louder this time, bass thundering through the floor. The crowd leaps to its feet in a wave of sound that feels almost physical.
Dick Grayson bursts through the tunnel like he owns it. All easy confidence and loose limbs, he jogs down the ramp with that signature grin— playful, effortless, like this is just another rookie fight.
He shadowboxes toward the ring, light on his feet, tossing sharp combinations into the air for the cameras. A wink to the front row. A quick spin just to hear the crowd react louder. He slaps hands with fans leaning over the barricade, soaking in the cheers like sunlight on bare skin.
The arena is still buzzing from Dick’s entrance when the lights suddenly cut to black.
A low, distorted bass hum rolls through the speakers— slow, heavy, and almost predatory. It vibrates through the floor, through the barricades, through the ribs of everyone in attendance.
“And now…” the announcer’s voice drops, stretching the anticipation tight. “His opponent.”
A single spotlight snaps on at the mouth of the tunnel.
“Fighting out of Gotham City… weighing in at—”
The music hits.
“Give it up for… JASON TODD!”
A mix of roaring support, sharp boos, and that electric kind of chaos that only follows someone unpredictable.
Jason steps into the light.
He wears a simple black robe, the hood up with his fingerless gloves already on. His shoulders are broader than they look on screen, posture heavy with controlled tension.
Jason rolls one shoulder as he walks, loosening it. Cracks his neck once, sharp and audible even through the music.
He steps into the center of the ring and finally reaches for the tie at his waist.
The arena feels like it collectively leans forward.
He unties it slowly.
He lets the robe fall open just slightly— revealing his ribs, defined muscle, the faint outline of old scars earned the hard way.
Then he shrugs it off completely.
And the reaction shifts instantly. What begins as admiration fractures into something else entirely—gasps ripple outward in a visible wave, followed by scattered, disbelieving laughter and sharp, scandalized shouts from the lower rows close enough to catch the screen in full detail.
The production team, bold or messy, lets the camera linger half a second too long as it pans across Jason’s back. Under the harsh white arena lights, the marks are unmistakable.
Darkened impressions bloom against his skin, scattered along the broad plane of his shoulders, trailing down between his shoulder blades and curling up toward the side of his neck.
Some are half-hidden beneath athletic tape, peeking out like secrets that were never meant to stay private. Others are fully visible— deep plum and fading crimson against flushed, fight-warmed skin.
The crowd noise swells into something chaotic— half shock and the other half in delight. Someone wolf-whistles from the upper rows, he nearly hears a chant almost start before dissolving into laughter.
The camera zooms instinctively, catching the curve of muscle and the unmistakable shape of one darker mark near his shoulder, before snapping back to a wide shot as if remembering this is, technically, a sanctioned sporting event.
“Well,” the other commentator manages, clearing his throat as he tries— and fails— to suppress the grin bleeding into his voice, “it appears Mr. Todd had a very… thorough preparation phase.”
Clark exhales softly beside him, professional but clearly aware of the moment. “That is certainly one way to make a statement before the opening bell.”
Jason rolls his shoulders once, slow and deliberate, like the noise is nothing more than background static. The referee steps between them. Dick bounces lightly on his toes across the ring, grin sharpened now into something competitive.
The bell rings.
“And here we go!”
Dick comes out fast, testing range with quick jabs, light on his feet. He circles left, then right, throwing a clean combination that snaps against Jason’s guard.
JLC matches tend to take forever.
They average at least an hour or two, so it was no different that two experienced fighters would drag on the match with split knuckles, bruises, a spit of blood escaping someone’s lips, or wiping away the corner of their mouth.
“This is dead even,” the commentator says, voice tight, sweating profusely from the last few matches exchanged between the two men. “You could make a case either way.”
Dick moves first, snapping a jab that splits Jason’s guard, followed with a quick cross that forces Jason back half a step. The crowd surges at the shift.
“Grayson finding rhythm!”
Jason pivots.
“Look at the way he moves!”
“Dear god, is Jason simply going to take that brutality!?”
“And oh my god, here comes Dick Grayson!”
“And Jason strikes again him!”
“Holy crap! Look at him!”
Then, it was silent.
A left hook comes from tight and brutal, compact and devastating.
It lands clean against Dick’s jaw.
The arena goes silent for half a heartbeat.
Dick’s body stutters mid-motion, balance unraveling in slow, terrible clarity. His knees give. He hits the canvas hard, the impact echoing through the ring.
The crowd explodes.
Jason steps back immediately, chest heaving, eyes still locked on his opponent as the referee dives in.
The count begins.
Dick rolls to his side, blinking, trying to orient himself. He pushes to one knee at six.
The crowd counts with the ref.
The referee looks into his eyes.
Hesitates.
And waves it off.
“That’s it! It’s over!”
The arena detonates into chaos.
Jason exhales slowly, tension draining from his shoulders all at once, blood streaked down his temple. Chest rising and falling like he just outran a storm.
The referee grabs his wrist and raises it high.
“And your winner— by knockout— JASON TODD!”
Dick steadies himself against the ropes, one glove hooked over the top strand as he regains his balance. His jaw is tight, chest rising and falling hard, but when he looks across the ring at Jason, he gives a single nod.
In the center of the ring, Jason stands still as the official approaches with the JLC belt. Blood continues to slip from the cut above his brow, trailing down the side of his face and along his jaw before dripping onto his shoulder.
The belt is fastened around his waist briefly before he shrugs it off and slings it over his shoulder instead. It rests there heavy and earned, gold catching the lights as flashbulbs explode around him.
He grins.
“Oh— hold on,” the commentator says, voice rising. “He’s heading somewhere.”
Jason doesn’t wait for the post-fight interview.
He doesn’t pause for the cameras.
He hops down from the ring apron in one fluid movement, belt still hooked over his shoulder, ignoring a handler trying to steer him back toward center ring.
“He’s not going to the panel— he’s not—”
The camera scrambles to follow as he pushes through some individuals that try to interrupt his path.
Straight to you.
The crowd begins to realize what’s happening before the commentators do.
His hands find your waist first, firm and grounding, pulling you flush against him as the belt nearly slips from his shoulder.
And then he kisses you.
A full, claiming kiss right there under the arena lights. The crowd gasps, audible and scandalized, before the sound erupts into cheers so loud it nearly drowns out commentary.
“Oh my—!” the announcer laughs in disbelief. “He just sealed the victory with that!”
Clark exhales a quiet, almost amused breath. “Well… that will be replayed for a while.”
“Doesn’t it remind you of that time with Lois, winning that match against Lex Luthor?”
“Huh, it quite does.”
Jason pulls back just enough to rest his forehead against yours, breath still heavy, grin spreading wider: feral, victorious, and entirely unapologetic. The belt hangs loose against his shoulder, gold catching the lights while a thin line of blood slips from the cut above his brow and tracks down his cheek.
They’re close enough now that the overhead screen fills with the two of you— your hands fisted in the front of his wraps, his fingers still firm at your waist. The arena noise swells again, cheers rolling like thunder.
But in that small pocket of space between your foreheads, it feels quieter.
His lips brush near your ear as he says something— too low for the microphones, too close for anyone else to catch. From the outside, it looks like nothing more than a breathless murmur, a champion whispering something triumphant after a win.
“Hey, kiss it better?” He murmurs softly, almost shy beneath the swagger.
And he feels your breath hitch into a quiet laughter, nodding your head before he drags you away.
Behind close doors with not a single eye of media, you kiss the split knuckles dedicated for you.
a/n: HELLO EVERYONE!! it’s been a while!!! this quite literally took a month and a half to write? I was on hiatus for a bit! Don’t expect me to stick long haha, I’m doing slow updates, so any work from now on will take a fat minute to write out. But I’m glad I was able able to push this fic out!! Let me know your thoughts on boxer!jason winkwink b/c holy cow. Never in my life have I ever wanted to suck the living soul out of jason todd… PLUS be sure to reblog, comment, and like!!! It means the world if you interact, especially if you comment or reblog your thoughts!!
short | smut | size difference | big ol’ beefy boy
jason todd bulks so easily.
he doesn’t even have to be super strict about it, like his body listens to him without much restriction. his muscles fill out and his stomach gets just a little pudgier.
you can tell when it makes him insecure, when his shirts that were already straining against his huge muscles start to barely fit over the extra pounds he gains. you try and convince him that it’s nothing to be ashamed of, that you know he’s just maintaining his physique. he tries to shrug it off, tell you that you’re being nice. still you kiss him extra, wrap your arms around him when you can and work around his diet with him so you can both eat together. he loved you for it.
but when he’s doing his meal prep on saturday morning, shirt nowhere to be found and his back muscles working in tandem with his huge biceps, you fight the urge to tackle him to the floor. you can smell the coffee he’s brewing you and normally that would wake you up entirely. though right now, all you want is to drag him back to bed. you stand there in the doorway, watching him move, admiring the layer of sexy pudge he put on for the winter months.
the way his thighs were bigger than ever and you gawked at them, imagining him over you. you knew he’d been hitting legs harder, training his glutes with hip thrusts and kickbacks that he upped the weights weekly. you were practically drooling at how his pants fit his perfect ass and tilting your head at it like something you wanted a bite out of.
without even turning, the heat of your intense gaze was enough to burn his back, he calls your name.
“you gonna stand there and stare all day babe?”
like a magnet, you pad over to him, drawn by his enormous stature. smaller arms wrapping around his huge frame like a ribbon around a gift. god, he was so hot.
warmer, bigger, and softer.
so when he fucked, it was way more intense.
as if every part of him had grown, he laid his weight just over you, not crushing but enough that you could feel the difference. his heavy palms pushing your legs over your shoulders, pressing down like he belonged there. his lips trailing over the shell of your ear, praising you for taking him like this. for letting him in so deep. grabbing at your thighs and just pushing them higher and higher. he always loved a mean mating press when he was bulking. and fuck, so did you, mewling when he buried himself to the hilt. scratching at his back when he folded you just right. crying out his name with every movement he made because it was just so damn good.
the first time, he looked at you wide eyed, pulled back a little just to make sure he wasn’t hurting you. repeatedly asking, “is that painful?” and “i’m so sorry sweets, we can stop.”
to which you immediately wrapped your legs around his waist, his stomach slightly poking out and hugging your chest. looking up at him with tears in your eyes, but definitely not because you wanted him to stop, “no! it’s good, it’s really…really good,” biting your bottom lip.
he still looked at you sideways and decided to let you on top, thinking giving you a little more control might be nice. then you straddled him, holding onto his big beefy shoulders, and struggling to take him all inside without his help. you let out sharp involuntary whines. bouncing and squeezing him tightly within your slick walls. he cups your ass and keeps you still.
“baby, are you sure you’re okay?” he asks again, ever the sweet man he was.
you nod again, leaning down in exhaustion and slight humiliation for being unable to handle him on your own.
breathing his name out softly, “it’s perfect, you’re perfect. i just need your help.”
he knows it too, nodding and helping you back onto the mattress. taking his time at first, slowly easing you into it. then when he finally gets you under him again and he realizes that you really couldn’t fit him all on your own, he smiles. he doesn’t just give you that same charming and cheeky smile, but he gives you one reminiscent of the devil that finally gets you to give in to temptation. when he finally sees how much you like him like this, he’s entirely feral.
“fucking love this don’t you?” he groans out, heavy and tender in his thrusts, “you’re so sexy, fuck, i’ll bulk all the time if you like it this much,”
lips attaching to your jaw, kissing and sucking harder than he usually does. one hand kneading your breasts like damn stress balls and you can’t help it, moaning out like a pornstar.
he laughs at your neediness, “feel good sweetheart? feels good when i’m riiight,” dragging his palm up your stomach and touching the spot he repeatedly hits over and over, “here.”
then he’ll manhandle you onto your stomach, pulling you up by your hips and have you arch just right for him. he used the opportunity to slip back inside with ease and drive himself back home. his groans are even more animalistic, panting harder and gripping tight in a way that you knew would leave bruises. but you didn’t care. you couldn’t care less if anything and all he wanted was to make you feel good, repeating what he notices you like.
when he pulls you up so your back is to his chest, you mewl his name and wrap his arm around your neck. he understands it immediately, keeping you in a headlock and fucking into you deeper. watching your face contort into blissful pleasure and moaning with you because all it did was drive him wilder.
it’s too much and not enough at the same time. you have nothing to say, no words to express how he was making you feel. all you could do was claw at his forearms and push back into him, chanting his name like prayer, over and over.
he hisses dirty words just by your ear, leaving open mouthed kisses along the side of your face, “gonna fuck you so dumb, you know that? imma ruin you pretty baby.”
your morning's are quiet; neither of you say much, if anything at all, until you've had breakfast. sometimes jason showers first in the morning, other times you do. you'll find him halfway through making coffee, he'll find you simultaneously popping toast into the toaster and drying your hair.
you do the grocery shopping of the week hand in hand–always holding his at that awkward angle he complains about, just so you can feel his pulse in case. you argue about popsicle flavors too loud and buy two tubs of ice cream because one of you can't stand vanilla and the other strictly eats vanilla. jason gets a bad case of baby fever when you take a side quest through the park on the way home.
lunch blinks by the two of you, mainly consisting of you nagging jason about how he always stains his shirts and surfaces. it's with sauce in the context of lunch, but with blood typically.
you sit in the balcony together. you work on the small chair he moved outside for you while he smokes at a distance, trying not to trigger another monologue. or another of your attempts at getting him to quit smoking through sheer annoyance. replacing his cigarettes with lipglosses hadn't worked, yet he feared what you would try next.
jason gets a sock to the face while he reads at the table. he places the photobooth strip of the two of you–four monochrome pictures of you two undeniably in love, each photo mushier than the last–into his book to mark the page. he laughs when you go off about the socks he leaves lying around and the shirts he randomly throws around and never picks up.
he listens to your playlists while he's out for patrol to bring him a semblance of peace. a reminder of the sanctuary and warm arms he gets to return to after a long day of crime fighting and beating ass. you stay up to make sure he gets home safely, even on the days when you're fighting. sometimes he'll find you've fallen asleep on the couch while waiting. he joins you wordlessly.
most nights, jason gets home with shoulders slumped lower than usual. on those days, you work your fingers against the mechanics of his helmet in that way he finds weirdly intimate; the way you know all the intricate buttons and every little piece to undo his mask. the literal and figurative one. you ask about his hobbies because patrol is always the last thing he wants to talk about. he tells you about the hidden meanings and foreshadowings in his most recent read. you debate him on characters and analysis just because it gives him something else to focus on. his answers shift from passionate to slow, half-hearted. you know by the lull of his head against your chest when he's fallen asleep. you tuck the both of you in under a single blanket, despite knowing he'll end up hogging it all. you kiss his forehead with the same small smile you wake up to and all the tenderness the world has robbed him of. "goodnight, jason."
