Requests are always open, do note that it may take me a while to complete them. The characters I write for are listed below, excluding Kpop groups. Requests can range from smut, fluff, or angst and can be as specific or vague as you want it.
My private messages are closed so if you wish to contact me please do it in my inbox only.
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𖢘 Welcome 𖢘
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MCU
╰➛Peter Parker
Venom Within pt 1
Antihero pt 2
Currently unfinished...
Toxin and Venom
╰➛Benjamin Poindexter
LoveShot Killer
Blindly Oblivious
╰➛Bucky Barnes
Nothing so far...
╰➛Steve Rogers
Nothing so far...
DCU
╰➛Clark Kent
Miss Universe
Miss Kansas
The Witcher
╰➛Geralt of Rivia
Nothing so far...
Star Wars
╰➛Anakin Skywalker
Nothing so far...
Marauders
╰➛Regulus Black
Nothing so far...
House of Dragon
╰➛Aemond Targaryen
Martell!Reader series ( completed )
Serpentine
My Sapphire Heart
House of Metals
Cheater!Aemond
Enchantress
Kpop
(discontinued)
╰➛Jaehyun
We'll be alright
Literally I'm embarrassed of all my kpop stories aside from this one. Please never ask my about my kpop days I don't want to relive that again lol...
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That's all for now! I hope to expand more to this within the coming months.
Dex was unfamiliar with the concept of physical touch and romance until he begins dating a seamstress that has rendered him desperately hungry for more, and he begins to understand why most people found dating enjoyable.
CW: SMUT, Fluff, implied that he's older, readers features are never stated, no use of Y/N, inexperienced Dex but it's not stated, he's a freak. HE'S FILTHYYYY!!!!
Word Count: 7k
AN: I don't have a dad so that probably explains why I like Dex so much... Dex having no play is cannon here.
To Dex, the physical topography of another human being had always been a calculus of vulnerability. His mind was a machine, capable of mapping the dimensions of an enclosed space within milliseconds and identifying the precise trajectory required to sever an artery. He understood the mechanics of the anatomy; he knew exactly how much pressure it took to snap a collarbone or drop a grown man to his knees. But touch and affection? Affection was a foreign, deeply distressing dialect. It was a sensory input that rendered his internal programming entirely mute. He knew every ligament in the body, where to assault to cause torment but God forbid he uses his hands for softness.
There was a profound, quiet irony in a man of his age and lethal competence being so utterly paralyzed by the simple proximity of soft skin. Hell, he almost pitied himself for it. For decades, the concept of a romantic relationship hadn’t been relegated in his mind. It had been buried beneath layers of institutional survival, psychological trauma, and the crushing weight of an existence spent entirely on the defensive. Dex was not a lover and he had never been, affection and care was unnatural to him.
He could still recall the sharp, sterile scent of the office belonging to his first therapist, the singular human anchor he had at the fragile age of sixteen. He had cared for her, though his developing mind lacked the emotional framework to define what care actually meant. To Dex, care was synonymous with structure. It was the methodical way she re-aligned his straying thoughts, the unnatural patience she extended far beyond the boundaries of her hourly compensation. That was the closest Dex ever got to care. And when death claimed her, his internal architecture had shattered into something feral and defensive. Standing beside her hospital bed, looking down at her failing form, he had chosen to weaponize his grief, hissing that he hated her. He didn’t hate her for who she was, but for the betrayal of leaving him entirely alone in a world without parameters. After that care became just another word without meaning to him.
Then came Julie.
Julie had been an exercise in aesthetic symmetry. She was safe, correct, and perfectly aligned with the script he desperately tried to perform. Dex had cared for her in the same detached, appreciative manner you might have for a beautiful painting in a museum. Admired from a calculated, safe distance, entirely devoid of genuine visceral heat or want. He never wanted Julie, despite how it might have looked, Dex wanted to be her. How easily life came to her was just so fascinating to a man like him. He remembered the exact moment she had offered him a farewell hug at the Suicide Hotline Center, just before he transitioned into the stark world of the Bureau.
The physical contact had been an absolute shock to his nervous system. And he remembers it even now years later. First came the ice, a sudden, freezing sensation that trickled down his spine the precise millisecond her palms pressed against his biceps, his body mistaking the gesture for an ambush. His muscles had coiled instantly like overwound springs, his vertebrae stiffening in a violent protest against the proximity. But then, right before he could pull away, the ice had thawed into an invasive, confusing warmth. Before his mind could categorize or fixate on the sensation, she had already retreated, leaving him standing in the corridor, thoroughly deregulated by a three-second interaction.
That brief, fleeting embrace had been the absolute zenith of his experience with physical intimacy. Dex didn't do hugs, or anything else for that matter… His subsequent, half-hearted attempts at dating in his early twenties had been a disastrous blur, locked away like radioactive material in the darker corridors of his subconscious. The entire experience had felt extremely uncomfortable, unfulfilling, and complicated in ways that insulted his intelligence.
The sheer volume of unwritten variables was maddening. He had to speak enough to demonstrate engagement, but not so much to appear self-absorbed. Connection required vulnerability, but a fraction too much was classified as forward or desperate. He couldn't request another date too quickly or too frequently without crossing into the territory of predatory. Touch was a minefield; it was deemed acceptable only if initiated by the woman, yet society dictated that a man should assert dominance and assume leadership. Hold her hand, the script said, but don't apply too much pressure to suggest control. Open the door for her, but don't infantilize her or imply incompetence.
By his third official date, Dex had quietly withdrawn from the field entirely. The sheer unpredictability of the social ritual was entirely too volatile for his psychology to parse. He vividly recalled sitting across a woman in a dimly lit restaurant, completely incapable of processing a single syllable falling from her lips because his entire focus had been hijacked by a fork. Her elbow had accidentally nudged the cutlery, leaving it misaligned by less than half an inch from the knife. The asymmetry had screamed in his mind like a siren, drowning out her voice, preventing him from formulating the carefully curated, charming responses necessary to foster romantic banter. He had stared at the silver, suffocated by the lack of order, and realized he was entirely unfit for the performance.
So, he surrendered the idea. He locked his focus onto the FBI, dedicating his life to a rigid, bureaucratic institution that allowed him to believe he was doing good for society while keeping his demons safely behind bars. Years had dissolved into the background of that singular pursuit, and the concept of dating became an obsolete idea of a past life.
Even more now that his world had been violently upended; he had broken out of the prisons meant to contain him, shed the skin of a government puppet, and stripped away the illusions of the system. He was older now, his features hardened by violence, but he was entirely free from the invisible snares that had once dictated his value. Standing in his late thirties, Dex felt a strange sense of selfhood that had completely eluded him in his twenties.
His daily routine remained his mandatory sanctuary, waking up exactly the same hour, executing a flawless military tuck on his bedsheets, consuming a balanced breakfast before physical regimen, and then work. But the internal shift was tectonic. He no longer walked through the streets of New York like a fraudulent actor trying to mimic human behavior and integrate himself into civilization. He knew the truth now: there was no grand order to life. There was only the winding, bloody path he had been carved out to walk. He no longer craved the external validation of a badge or a supervisor’s praise to consider himself a whole entity. He was fucking Bullseye.
And the concept of a "North Star", the desperate need for a perfect, external moral anchor to keep him sane, had been forcibly buried deep within a vault next to his most violent, unpacked trauma. Though sometimes, in the quiet hours of the night, a phantom tension would ripple through his chest, an instinctual tug toward the comfort of connection, but he would quickly dismiss it as mere human biology. He didn't need a North Star. His life was already perfectly illuminated by his own design. Or so he continuously told himself.
Until he walked into your boutique.
The shop was situated a short distance down the asphalt stretch of Hell’s Kitchen, a stark, hyper-feminine building in an otherwise gritty neighborhood. The interior was an absolute assault of pastel pinks, a visual sensory overload that normally would have triggered his defense mechanisms, but the hand-painted sign outside promised custom tailoring services. And Dex needed his belongings fixed the moment he noticed imperfections.
He carried two specific items across the threshold that afternoon. His utilitarian jacket that had suffered a tear against a rusty fire escape during the previous night's "hero work," and a pair of heavy tactical gloves that needed the seams to be adjusted for a better grip.
You'd been seated behind the polished wooden counter, a needle held between your hand, your hair slightly disheveled as you worked. When you looked up and saw the tall, broad-shouldered man standing in your doorway, your face had broken into a smile so massive, so genuinely warm, that Dex had felt an involuntary, almost evolutionary impulse to mimic the expression. He stood perfectly rigid as your small, incredibly nimble hands took the damaged fabric from his grip, your fingers tracing the torn nylon of the jacket with a professional, practiced ease.
When you looked up and informed him that the repairs would only take sixty minutes, his sharp brows had risen in mild intrigue at your efficiency.
"I work fast," you had offered, your voice bright and entirely unbothered by his silent, imposing intensity.
Dex returned to the shop precisely the sixty-minute mark, not a second early, not a second late. You were already waiting for him at the counter, the jacket neatly pressed and the jagged tear now entirely imperceptible, executed with a level of craftsmanship that deeply satisfied his need for perfection. Then he slid his large hands into the resized tactical gloves, flexing his fingers to test the tension of the thread.
Whether you had recognized the subtle Bullseye emblem stamped into the leather, you made no verbal indication. Instead, you merely bit your lower lip, your gaze tracking the movement of his hands before you boldly, without an ounce of hesitation, reached out and gripped his gloved hand. Your fingers guide his, pointing down to the specific cross-stitch where you had loosened the seams to accommodate his knuckles.
The ice returned instantly. It danced down the length of his spine, a freezing jolt that made his chest tighten. But as your warm skin remained pressed against the heavy material of his glove, the sensation mutated into something remarkably pleasant. Dex let out an involuntary exhale from your touch as your index finger trailed a slow, deliberate line down the length of his hand. Was this flirting? No, this was her job….
"If you need it bigger I can make that possible," you offered softly, your eyes lifting to lock onto his with a quiet, grounded confidence. And Dex paused, taking in the intimacy of your closeness. Okay…. Yeah, this was flirting. He deduced at its baseline before he found himself engaging.
Dex couldn't understand the sequence of events that followed, birthed from that moment alone. His memory, usually so linear and mathematical, became a blur of transitions. And normally the haze would eat away at him till he lost his mind, if it weren't for the fact that the stages that followed were extremely enjoyable. All he knew was that the rigid wall of his isolation had suddenly breached, and he was taking you on a first date. Then a second. A third. A fourth. The unwritten variables that had paralyzed him in his youth seemed to dissolve in your presence; you didn't demand a script, and your effortless need to keep talking filled the awkward silences he usually created. Dex was thankful for it. He was thankful for all of you.
By the time the fifth date happened, you were both standing inside the threshold of your private home. And Dex was fucking ecstatic. The realizations hit him in waves during his nightly routines: life was simply greater, sharper, and infinitely better with your existence woven into it. Within the calculated grid of his mind, he had rapidly come to view you as an essential, non-negotiable component of his daily structure. A connection he needed desperately to maintain that he was fully prepared to execute any measure necessary to ensure you stayed. You were kind, sweet, and giving in a way that defied his understanding of human nature. How were you so willing to offer the world everything you had without demanding anything in return?
Because he couldn't comprehend it, he studied you. He watched you with a hyper-attentive, microscopic focus that would have terrified a normal civilian, tracking the micro-expressions of your face, the cadence of your breaths, and the specific pitch of your laughter. And you let him. To you, that intense, unblinking gaze didn't feel like surveillance; it made you feel entirely seen and warm.
Dex had learned you. He played every single card in his hand with absolute precision to ensure he kept your favor, but you made the act remarkably easy. He found himself wanting to give the world to you, a new directive that lingered constantly. While on missions, he's doing this to make the city better for you. He had to come home safe because you'd be so devastated if anything happened to him. You needed him in your life so he had to make sure no wounds took over his body. These thoughts progressed over time, though they were already brewing the minute he stepped out of your boutique. Dex brought you a perfectly curated bouquet of flowers on your very first date, quickly logging the fact that you flourished when things were done for you. From that moment on, his chivalry became non-negotiable. He opened doors before your hand could even approach the handle; he pulled out chairs to the exact angle required for your comfort; he even leaned across the console of his vehicle to buckle your seatbelt for you, his large frame momentarily shielding you from the world. A thought that appears constantly in his mind at night.
And now, those correctly executed actions had granted him entry into your sanctuary.
Walking through the door of your brownstone, his analytical eyes immediately deduced that you and your work were a singular entity. The space was less a traditional home and more an active studio. A heavy, vintage treadle sewing machine sat prominently in the center of the room, positioned directly in front of the television, while two antique, velvet-upholstered couches framed it on either side. Dex made a silent, permanent mental note of that specific layout: the tool of your labor received absolute priority over comfort.
As he looked around Dex noticed your affinity for older things immediately, your eyes lingering on aged, well-maintained pieces of history. A part of him wondered if that was why you liked him so much and despite himself, the thought amused him. His gaze drifted to the expansive dining room, noting how every single high-backed chair had been pushed flush against the perimeter of the walls, completely away from the central table to maximize workspace. A deep, quiet part of his psychology deeply admired the dedication. He understood the obsession with craft, the way you spoke about fabrics and patterns with radiant love. He was identical to you in that regard, though he remained hyper-vigilant about never revealing the bloodier details of his own craft to you.
Dex paced silently behind you, his broad shoulders squared as his eyes continuously darted around the rooms, absorbing the atmosphere of your home while you led him toward the kitchen by the hand. His frame was tense, his muscles vibrating with a low-grade current of electricity. He still wasn't accustomed to the physical touching. He liked it, he liked it with a terrifying intensity that scared him, but his brain lacked the programming required to properly receive it.
And bless your heart, you were so unbelievably touchy.
You were a creature of constant physical contact. There was always a soft arm looping around his rigid bicep, a gentle palm resting against his. A constant, natural inclination to latch onto his massive frame and cling to him as if he were the only solid object in a moving world. He reciprocated in the only ways he knew how, squeezing your hand back with a carefully measured amount of pressure, standing perfectly still to accept your weight. But Dex still hadn't learned how to articulate or manifest his own physical desires. He didn't know how to be the one to close the distance. He didn't know how to reach out his large, scarred hands, wrap them around your waist, and pull you against his chest without an explicit invitation. The script hadn't given him those lines yet.
So instead, he simply allowed himself to be a passive monument of muscle and bone, letting you pull him toward the kitchen island for wine and cheese after your date. The night got more enjoyable, but then again, every moment was enjoyable with you. But this is even more so. You trusted him enough to let him into your space, liked him so much that you paid attention whenever his glass was empty.
"I have a secret," you admitted suddenly, your face flushing a deep, radiant pink after you drained the remainder of your second glass.
Dex raised a single, sharp brow, holding his own glass perfectly steady as he waited for the disclosure. He ignored the sudden, rhythmic thumping of his own blood pumping violently in his ears. He couldn't quite determine if the sudden spike in his heart rate was the result of the alcohol or a sudden surge of anxiety. Given his high tolerance, it was likely the latter.
"I hate wine," you hiccuped, a small, breathless sound. You didn't feel that inebriated but Dex had a skill for making you feel drunk.
Dex’s cold blue eyes widened slightly in genuine surprise. Without a word, his large hand reached out and gently but firmly took the crystal glass directly from your fingers, a low, rumbling chuckle vibrating in his chest as the absurdity of the situation caused a bright laugh to break from your lips.
"Why didn't you say anything," he asked, his gravelly voice dropping an octave as he placed the glass down on the exact center of a stone coaster.
"Because it was a nice gift and also because I wanted to be with you longer," you reasoned smoothly.
You stepped away from the counter, your short frame moving into his immediate personal space. Slipping effortlessly between his extended legs as he sat perched on the high barstool, your body completely filling the void between his knees. Before he could process the proximity, your arms looped entirely around his broad shoulders, your hands resting against the nape of his neck.
Dex sat up just a fraction straighter, his entire spine locking into a protective line. A hesitant, unpracticed hand rose from his side, his large palm resting against the fabric of your dress to support your lower back, his fingers trembling slightly against your skin.
"I like having you around..." you admitted softly, your voice heavily laced with an intoxicated, sleepy haze as you looked up at him.
"I like being around," Dex nodded, his gaze boring into yours with an unblinking, absolute intensity.
It was the most fundamental truth his mouth had ever uttered. He liked being around you so much that the mere concept of physical separation had become an agonizing friction in his daily life. There were moments during his long, solitary hours on a rooftop or following a lethal assignment where the craving to see you grew so violent, so overwhelming, that he had seriously contemplated abandoning his operation just to stand outside your window. But the rational, highly defensive side of his mind, the piece of him that vividly remembered the trembling panic in Julie's face, always managed to reassert control. He wouldn't risk breaking what you two had.
"Will you be around forever?" you asked, your voice dropping into a soft, vulnerable register that sounded almost like a plea.
Dex felt a sudden, blinding flash behind his eyes, a sensation so sharp and radiant it felt as though stars had detonated within his skull. A terrifying wave of duty and existential purpose crashed through his mind, rewriting his internal directives in an instant. This was his calling. This was his permanent assignment.
"I'll be here forever," he nodded, his voice carrying the heavy, unyielding finality of a death warrant.
He barely had a single microsecond to process the violent rush of devotion flooding his veins before you leaned in, and your soft lips met his.
Dex froze.
He froze in a way he had never experienced in the heat of lethal gunfire. He hesitated with a sudden, paralyzing vulnerability that his mind was completely unequipped to handle. Bullseye did not hesitate; Bullseye was a creature of pure, instantaneous reaction. But Dex, Dex was entirely lost here in the quiet of your kitchen, his lips pressed flat against yours, his breath catching in the back of his throat as the delicate warmth of your mouth completely shattered his being.
His mind scrambled for data, for a past memory or a set of instructions to tell him what to do with his hands, how to move with you, how to breathe. The sheer sensation of your mouth against his was too vast, too unaligned with any grid he had ever mapped. He wanted to deepen the pressure, wanted to sink his fingers into your hips and drag you so close that the space between you ceased to exist, but the terrifying lack of instructions kept his body entirely locked in stone. He was a starving man paralyzed by the sudden appearance of a feast, terrified that a single incorrect movement would cause the illusion to vanish.
It was only a brief, agonizing second of contact. It was over far too quickly for his liking before you were gently pulling back, your eyelashes fluttering against your cheeks.
"You never got much love huh?" you hummed out, your voice dipping into a sad, incredibly tender melody.
Your small hands didn't retreat; instead, they began to preen over his tense shoulders, your fingers sliding upward until your nails began to slowly, methodically comb through the short hairs at the base of his scalp.
An involuntary, deeply guttural groan tore itself from the very bottom of Dex’s throat, the sound surprising even himself. His eyes rolled back, his lids fluttering shut as a wave of intense pleasure rippled through his nervous system. He liked that. He liked that with a feral, addictive desperation. Whatever you were doing with your hands, it was dismantling the static in his brain.
"No," he admitted, his voice a broken, raspy whisper in the quiet room, his head naturally sinking into the guiding pressure of your palms as you continued to adore him.
Your lips moved forward again, finding the hard, unyielding line of his cheekbone. You pressed a soft, lingering kiss directly over the jagged scar near his cheek, the exact spot you always claimed when you were saying goodbye, and Dex felt his entire body shudder under the impact. Then, your kisses migrated downward, tracing the sharp angle of his jaw before your mouth found the sensitive, hot skin of his neck.
Dex’s hands lost their hesitation, his fingers curling tightly into the fabric of your dress as he decided, with absolute certainty, that he liked this even more.
"Don't worry. I'll fix it," you murmured against his skin, your breath hot and reassuring even in your heavily tipsy state.
“Pretty girl like you gonna fix a man like me,” Dex mused out, exhaling in amusement as he welcomed your kisses by granting you more of his neck. You hummed in delight and he noted that was the correct response.
“I'd do everything for you, Dex,” you admitted into his neck and that seemed to do it. Every rigid order he told himself to act like a gentleman broke as he pulled you into his chest, turning his face as if begging for you to grant him another kiss.
And you do.
This time he reciprocated the contact eagerly, fuck it, thoughts can be damned, Dex let his body lead now. His kisses were harsh and demanding, desperate in its undercurrent but you enjoyed it. You tasted faintly like wine and something minty and he finds himself deepening the kiss. His large calloused hand found the thin straps of your bias-cut dress, hastily pushing it down the slope of your shoulder before he froze. He was being too forward, too much, too–
Before he could spiral, you whined into his mouth at the lack of movement. A harmonious plea that he's never had the privilege of hearing before. And Dex's eyes fluttered, that sound went straight to his straining cock evoking a groan against your skin. Emboldened hands pushing the dress down only to pull back momentarily, breaking the kiss despite not wanting to. He'd rather shoot himself than stop kissing you, but he needed to know that what he was doing was okay. And by the blissful state of your eyes, you were more than okay with this, with him. And so he allowed his gaze to wander, darting down to the exposed skin of your soft breast.
His gaze locked onto your hardened nipple before his hand slowly moved, not giving himself time to overthink. His thumb grazed the sensitive peak in experimentation, irises watching as your chest stuttered, his gaze darting up to meet yours in calculation on how to proceed. You were waiting for him, letting him take the lead and explore, and God did he want to map out every shape of you. He wanted to know what made you arch and squirm, what made you sing his name in praise. But Dex was a man rendered stupid in the unfamiliar vastness of your body, so hands stayed motionless as they had done nothing but take and punish all his life. He'd do it slow, he decided, after all, his hands were not meant for this. For worship and caress.
But his mouth would be.
Not breaking eye contact with you, his lips found home on your skin, latching onto your nipple. Humming as you arched your back, your pliant body gravitating into him. You liked that, he learned, so he did it harder. Teeth grazing the sensitive peak before sucking it into his mouth hard.
His free hand wanders to your other breast, thumb circling the clothed nipple there while he devotes himself to the first with his tongue. It’s messy, uncoordinated, Dex isn’t a gentle lover, he learned as the need progresses. His brave hand slips under your dress, pushing fabric up further to expose more of your body as his kisses migrated down your sternum.
“D-Dex.”
The breathy sound made him freeze and he recoiled immediately as if burned. He waits for the storm only for you to eagerly pat him on his shoulder, signaling you wanted him up.
“Room, please…. I-i don't want it here…” you say almost shy and he obeys immediately, standing up and holding you dear.
“Yeah? Sweet girl,” the term endearment escaping his lips catches him by surprise just as much as him kissing your forehead does. But he doesn't dwell on it long as he grabs hold of your hand and leads you upstairs where he already knows where your room is.
The silence of the space was only intensified once you both entered your bedroom. Dex pauses, taking a moment to appreciate the image of you standing there, waiting with earnest eyes and swollen lips. You looked so vulnerable, your dress wrinkled and breathing heavy as you let him assess. He welcomes your softness and realizes that he owes it to you to be vulnerable as well.
With a firm, certain, grip, he turns your body around, your stomach flutters in expectation as lust filled eyes land on the made bed. Only the inevitable force never came, you weren't shoved face down into the mattress in pure heat, instead Dex is moving your hair aside to fall on one shoulder. And that impacted your core more than any barge ever could. So you remained standing there, ignoring the heat in your stomach as the brooding man you'd come to know gently unzipped the back of your dress. Pushing the fabric down your hips, a hum escapes the claimant as he turns you back around with even kinder hands and you melted.
Sure in your intentions, you begin to unbutton his shirt and he watches you in the moment. Sometimes you often wonder what goes on in Dex's mind, but here you're certain that whatever thoughts that hammered in his head were anything but pure. When the fabric of his shirt meets your dress on the floor, a barely suppressed smile threatens to take over your face and his features silently requested for context, amused in your glow.
“You're so big,” appreciation dripped from your words, reinforced by your hands steady on his chest. Pride and something smug consumes Dex’s internal framework as he reaches for your bare waist, pulling you into him. Fuck. He liked how that felt, loved the feeling of you two skin to skin.
“That why you're always so touchy,” he huffed. It was a poor attempt to regulate himself from these overwhelming emotions. Still riding the dopamine high from your appraisal.
“Yes,” you nodded shamelessly.
At that a raw exhale breaks free from his mouth, falling in ardor before he's guiding you down to the bed. Dex’s gaze is locked on yours, at your body barely covered in cotton underwear as he prowls towards you on the duvet. Your presence was the single grounding planet in the uncharted stars of his nebula, an innate need to keep his focus on you and solely you to avoid getting lost in the orbit of his thoughts. Waiting patiently as exploratory hands trailed over your body, thumbs brushed over your nipples just once, before migrating down to your torso, eventually finding home on your hips.
Lips parted but nothing fell from them as words failed him. Instead his gaze darted up to meet yours as his fingers deliberately tugged your underwear, not fully, not even an inch down, just enough to get your attention and silently ask for permission.
Your body moved on its own, hastily squirming under his broad stature and pushing the thin fabric down your legs. The man over you had been the only thing plaguing the recesses of your brain for the past few weeks, consuming you with such unbidden thoughts. Anything would be done for him at this point. You barely got to kick the drenched cotton off before Dex's palm landed flat on one thigh, pushing it down hard against the bed and spreading you open for him. With a fluttering stomach so intense, your body fell back as you took in his state. Half dressed and tightly coiled, muscles pulling in restrain as he remained pinning your thigh down. His attention was locked onto you, or more so, your dripping cunt and an involuntary need to shut your legs was met with even more resistance from him.
He didn't appreciate you trying to hide from him, evident in his warning gaze. Without a word, his palm trailed up, the desire and craving to touch you won out in him. And suddenly hands that had only known violence was caressing you so softly and attentively, figuring out the definition of what it meant to be a lover.
God you were so wet and warm and soft and all the good things in the world…
Dex noticed your breathing growing more labored beneath him and instinctively he leaned back to watch you more, away from the disadvantage of being tucked into your neck. Your pupils were blown out, starry eyed as your brows creased and a pout settled on your lips. His fingers moved on their own as he watched, a new desire to pull more of those darling expressions from you forming. And as he sunk two cruel digits into your slopping wet heat, satisfaction invaded his senses as he took in your reaction. Your mouth parts in ecstasy, a sound Dex immediately knew he loved fell from your lips as your body arched up into him. And then that begging pout graced your features again, looking down at where his fingers fucked you.
So perhaps intimacy was everything people made it out to be, and so much more when it's with you. Dex was beginning to understand it now, the insatiable need to constantly be touching your person. Fuck, he doesn’t think he could ever go back to the way he was before. So fucking hesitant, unsure with anxiety that dibilitated him. He refused to be so rigid again, not when the sounds of your desire and need were music to his ears. He loved this, loved it in a way that was beginning to align with his new idea of normal. He could get used to this, to touching you, to fucking you.
Whining in protest as his fingers pulled away, your hands gripped at his chest in agony. Complains at the tip of your tongue before halting completely as you hear him begin to take his jeans off. Humming in delight as he strips. And fucking hell…. You were well aware of Dex’s large frame, it was one of the first things you noticed about him, second to the attractive scar on his cheek. But seeing him like this was something different entirely and you couldn't help yourself as you preened over his naked form again. Palms gliding the expansive plains of his back, brushing down his abs and strong chest as you sucked on his neck. Though judging by the expression on Dex's face, he didn't mind you playing. He let you have your fun until eventually pulling your lips off of him with a gentle hand at the back of your neck. A protest happened beneath him as you tried to chase after his body before stopping, noticing his hand on his member. And that shut you up real good.
Dex gently guides his hardened cock onto your dripping core. Rubbing his swollen head up and down your drenched skin before slowly sinking into you. A gasp falls from your lips followed by a desperate cry of want. His breath comes in rough bursts through his nose, focused entirely on you beneath him. How you take it, how you sound, how tight you feel with every drag out and push back in. The plains of his anatomy strained with tension as he exhaled in contentment. Dex thought he had come to know comfort, in the way you'd lean onto him during walks, how you raked your nails through his hair earlier. But this exceeded that in every capacity, comfort was a juvenile word to express how this felt like home. He's barely halfway through and already has to stop and compose himself. He let out a hiss, halting all movements as you clenched around him.
The sudden, full stretch makes you mewl out a sharp, startled sound And Dex freezes instantly, his entire body locking up. Has he hurt you? Was something wrong? He’s buried to the hilt now. It’s a lot. Too much all at once. A wave of something almost like guilt hits him, he hadn’t meant to scare you, but the sensation is… God.
"Shhh," he soothes automatically, instinctively brushing your cheek with his thumb despite how wrecked he feels right now.
You leaned into his touch, seeking for more and he's relieved. Needy palms finding a place on his biceps as you squirmed, looking down at where you both meet. Dex follows your gaze, watching his hardened cock buried deep in you. Yeah… that’s a lot.
"Tell me what you need," he murmurs, thumb brushing away another stray tear. "We can stop. Or go stupid slow.”
You let out a laugh that bled dangerously too close to a moan and Dex makes the decision of the latter for you. The first thrust is deliberate, deep and controlled, testing your reaction. The second follows, then a third, each one creating a filthy rhythm that fills the quiet room. He slowly fucks into you in a sedate, gentle manner. But gentleness is short-lived. His movements quickly grow faster till he was fucking you in a steady eager pace. Skin slaps against skin, joining the song of moans that you sing. The bed creaks under the weight, every movement is amplified in the hushed space. Rapture floods through you as any other thoughts that weren't Dex quickly subsides, giving way for your focal. Everything felt right in the world as he molded your body to his.
It was almost too much, his body caging yours in as his hips moved relentlessly. You knew you wouldn't last much longer if he kept going like this. But Dex was a man of intention, he took you like it was the only thing worth doing in his life.
The press of your hand against his pelvis, pushing, cunt trying to get him closer yet you were pulling away at the same time, sends conflicting signals straight to his dick. Your thighs around him squirmed, a telltale sign you're overwhelmed. Dex groans but doesn’t let up; if anything, he presses down harder on you with his hips, pinning yours in place.
"Take it," he rasps no room for argument. His skilled thumb lands on your clit, relentless despite the overstimulation threatening both of your bodies. The sound that left you was obscene and filthy as your head lulls back and Dex is quick to grab hold of your thigh and pull you closer towards him.
The new angle hits perfectly, your entire body jerks, a broken moan escaping as you tense around Dex’s hips. He learned you almost immediately from the very first second his fingers were inside you, he found where to target instantly. And now he abused that information.
He feels it, the way you clenched around him, and his own control wavers. But he holds on, focused solely on your pleasure, chasing every twitch and whimper with relentless precision. His lips find yours again in a messy, open-mouthed kiss as he pounded into you with controlled hits. A sound so similar to bullets in the air echoed at the impact, the wet sound, obscene, unfiltered, hitting him like a lightning bolt. Every thrust is accompanied by that slick, squelching noise: your arousal mixing with his movements. Dex learns that he loved that sound, it satisfied a part of his brain in a notion he couldn't understand but he knew that it fueled him even more. Dex's hips stutter for half a second at the realization of just how drenched you are for him.
A groan rumbles from his chest as he picks up speed, fucking you till you saw stars. A melody of moans and gasps filled the room with a symphony of skin heard with it. The walls welcome the sound with open arms as the atmosphere feels too hot and too heavy. You try to grab at the bed sheets despite Dex's tight grip on one of your wrists, you need something to ground you as you neared. Too much. It was all too much. Seamlessly, he laced his fingers with yours, still holding you down onto the bed but his grip softened.
You reciprocate the touch, tightly squeezing his hand as you feel the pressure capsize and your thighs shake in hot waves. You cry his name out, your back arching off the bed from the pleasure. His cock still sliding in and out of your dripping cunt, desperate to join you in your release, ignoring the coil of his muscles. He loves the way you say his name, so breathy and blinded by ecstasy. Dex breathes into your neck, the sensations becoming too much before a loud groan breaks his focus and he spills ropes of his cum into you. Immediately you primp under him, satiated and spoiled but your accord for touch remains ever present as you gently brush your nails up and down his back. And that sends him collapsing down onto you. Not that you seemed to mind as he heard a loud gleeful laugh beneath his large frame.
Dex exhales, long and slow, moving to stare at you. He’s not used to aftercare. Not with anyone. But here he is gently moving off you and tucking a throw blanket around your shoulders like you're something fragile. A calloused finger brushes a stray hair from your forehead, an absurdly tender gesture for someone who just fucked you into oblivion but you welcomed it.
He learned an entirely new vocabulary that night, and the education continued to expand exponentially in the weeks that followed.
He discovered, through application and obsessive cataloging, that he liked touch. He liked it an immeasurable, terrifying amount. He grew to absolutely love the specific jolt that occurred when you wake him up in the morning by lazily raking your nails across the broad, scarred expanse of his bare back. He loved the domestic weight of you playing with his hair while he sat on the living room floor, or the frantic, heavy way you would cling onto him when the city noise rattled the brownstone windows.
Methodically, his analytical mind began to solve the puzzle of how to return the same favor. He'd mapped your body with the same precision he applied to his targets, but with an entirely different objective.
He learned how to execute a kiss without needing an explicit verbal invitation, his large hands learning the exact amount of pressure required to tilt your chin upward to meet his mouth. He figured out how to use the immense, terrifying strength in his palms to gently massage the deep knots out of your shoulders after you spent a twelve-hour day hunched over the antique sewing machine. He studied the micro-movements of your muscles, tracking the specific shivers that rippled through your frame when his thumbs traced your collarbones, logging every sigh and hitch in your breath as data.
He figured out, with a profound, quiet sense of internal victory, that you loved every single form of physical touch imaginable, so long as it came entirely from him.
And he decided then, he loved intimacy.
AN: He's so fucking hot like i just can't!!! ! I haven't written smut in like 3 years so I didn't know what I was doing lol. Let me know what you guys think! Also you being a seamstress was entirely self indulgence because I go to fashion school lol.
just dropping by to say that i love the way you write your prose ^_^ it’s so lovely the way you weave words and how descriptive they are without feeling excessive!!!
Thank you so much! I really appreciate it!!! I'm trying really hard to get back into writing this year so I hope to post more!
Dex doesn't fully understand your affinity for useless objects such as blind boxes. To him, they were valueless scams packaged in something pretty to trick the masses into spending money. But he knows that it makes you happy, and that was the important part. So Bullseye begins to gift you very special ones straight from his heart.
CW: Dex being his obsessive creepy self, smut implied, no use of y/n, no reader descriptions aside from AFAB
WC: 3.5k
A/N: This might actually be the stupidest prompt I've ever written but I just kept thinking about it lmao. Unfortunately I've started an addiction for maymei blind boxes after pulling the one I wanted AND the rare option on my first time ever getting a blind box. So now you get this incredibly dumb story lmao.
Your shared apartment was always the quietest during the late afternoon, the sharp horizon of the Hell’s Kitchen skyline throwing long, stark shadows across the hardwood floor. For Dex, silence was usually a dangerous variable. It was the space where the static in his head grew too loud, where the meticulous, rigid architecture of his internal programming began to fray at the edges.
But lately, the silence had a different rhythm. It was punctuated by the soft, rhythmic click of your platform heels, the crinkle of cellophane, and the bright, unbothered melody of your voice.
Dex sat rigidly at the kitchen island, his long legs extended, his large, calloused hands resting flat on the clean counter space. His cold blue eyes were fixed entirely on you. Specifically, they were fixed on the bright pastel shopping bag you had dumped unceremoniously onto the table.
He didn't really understand your apparent attachment to inanimate objects. He himself never really got this overwhelming need to like something so much that you needed multiple versions of it. To Dex, an object possessed utility, or it was clutter. The closest comparable thing he had to such notions were his weapons. His pristine, balanced throwing knives and his standard-issue sidearm. But his constant need to replace or maintain them was born entirely out of lethal necessity, a calculation of survival and structural order. It wasn't born out of consumerism. It wasn't born out of... fun.
You had always known there was something a little off with your boyfriend beyond just his severe diagnosed obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Dex didn't just struggle to understand human emotions; he viewed them like a foreign dialect that required constant, exhausting translation. When feelings did pierce through his armor, they didn't come naturally or easily. They came like a flash flood. It was a hard, beautifully dangerous lesson you had learned early on in your relationship: when Dex loved, he loved hard, with his entire fractured being. You were the center of his world, his absolute everything, the singular gravity well keeping his violent impulses from spinning into total chaos.
So, whatever you liked, Dex tried to accept. He tried really, really hard to get it.
Even your insatiable hunger to keep collecting these stupid, overpriced little things.
"It's a collection, Dex," you had corrected him a few days prior, your lips pulling into a frown because he had worded your hobby far too seriously during a debrief of the apartment’s organization.
Dex reached out, his large fingers gingerly picking up one of the pastel boxes you had on the table. His sharp brows furrowed into a tight knot of absolute concentration, his gaze drilling into the cardboard as if the colorful text on the side held the answer to the universe's deepest, most classified secret. His eyes scanned the bright, cartoonish characters. He didn't understand the appeal of the molded plastic or the soft fabric, but he knew the sheer sight of the packaging made your eyes crinkle at the corners.
It's stupid, the first, rigid voice in his head screamed, a remnant of the sterile Bureau evaluations that dictated what a grown, lethal operative should care about. But he didn't voice it outright. Instead, he kept his jaw set, his large palm sinking back into the bag to pull out the remaining boxes. Four more, exactly. He lined them up in a flawless, perfectly symmetrical sequence, exactly one inch apart from one another.
"But you don't know what you're getting," he said, his gravelly voice carrying a trace of genuine, slight astonishment. The concept of a "blind box" genuinely offended his sense of structural logic. He did the math in his head instantly, the probabilities, the margins of error, the high likelihood of wasted capital. To willingly take your chances on losing was gambling. This was gambling. You were gambling.
"That's the fun part!" you gleamed, your face lighting up as you snatched the first box. "You cross your fingers and hope for the best!"
Dex blinked, his gaze tracing the soft curve of your cheek. Bless your heart. You were always so effortlessly optimistic about everything, moving through the grime of Hell’s Kitchen with a radiant, unbothered lightness that felt entirely unaligned with the dark realities he dealt in. Your light was one of the things he admired most about you; it was the exact gravity that had pulled him away from his old, suffocating scripts and to you.
But as his eyes dropped back down to the five boxes sitting on the kitchen table, his mind had already weighed out the bleak chances of getting one or two duplicates. Immediately, a heavy dread dropped in his chest and his heart tightened. You would be so disappointed. That brilliant, blinding smile he loved seeing on your face would falter, and he knew you would force it back on just to keep him from worrying. Dex took an involuntary step forward, his hand twitching slightly as your manicured fingers tore into the first cardboard flap. Part of him wanted to physically stop you, to intervene before the statistics failed you. Words of clumsy reassurance were already at the tip of his tongue.
But as you kept opening them, the expected disappointment never materialized. Instead, your excitement only got louder and louder, a bright, melodic laugh breaking free from your throat as your smile grew exponentially bigger.
And your eyes... oh, your beautiful eyes that he loved looking into when you were flushed and breathless beneath him in the dark, they just sparkled. They were brilliant, shining so bright under the kitchen lights as you held each tiny figurine up to his face in rapid succession. To his utter surprise, the math had defied itself. You hadn't gotten a single repeat. Not one duplicate of the plush and plastic crap you were currently cradling against your chest as if they were your own flesh and blood.
As you stood there in the middle of the dining room, fawning over your new things in your cutest, softest mini dress, something inside Dex’s brain clicked into place with a definitive snap.
He liked seeing you like that. He liked it with a fierce, possessive intensity that thrummed right beneath his skin. You looked so good-hearted, so completely light and positive, as if the outside world had never once touched you, or as if your own complicated past had never possessed the power to harden your edges. For the fleeting moment you spent opening up those useless boxes, the immense stress and the heavy burdens he knew you carried, the constant fear of the world taking him away from you, were entirely gone.
Dex’s posture straightened, his broad shoulders squaring as his eyes remained trained on you, tracking the way you carefully assessed each plush keychain. He decided then and there, with the absolute finality of a new directive, that he would do everything in his power to give you that gift again. That one small, unvarnished moment where you weren't worried about the government finding him, or the cops kicking down the door, or the bloody ledger he was constantly balancing. A moment where all you did was show him your new keychains.
Throughout the following week, Dex found your new companions absolutely everywhere.
His hyper-fixated eyes mapped them into the spatial layout of your shared life. One was hung carefully on your car keys, rattling against the ignition switch. Two were clipped to the straps of your favorite handbags. One was positioned on the nightstand by your shared bed, its glassy, unblinking stare oriented toward the pillows, while the fifth hung out in the living room, perched symmetrically on the edge of the bookshelf.
Every single time your eyes landed on them, Dex would catch the subtle, beautiful transformation of your features. The way your day got just a little bit brighter, your shoulders relaxing because you felt like you had a tiny, familiar companion with you everywhere you went.
And that was precisely where the thoughts started.
It happened late one Thursday evening. The city outside was a muted blur of rain and distant sirens, but inside the bedroom, the atmosphere was thick, warm, and entirely spent from lust. You were fast asleep, your soft bare frame curled tightly against the broad, heavily muscled expanse of Dex’s chest. Your breathing deep and even as you slumbered in content. Dex remained wide awake, his large arm anchored around your waist, holding you with a protective, unyielding grip. He was exhausted, his body thoroughly satiated, but his mind refused to slip into the quiet.
Instead, his eyes were locked onto the small plush keychain sitting on the nightstand.
He stared at it through the deep shadows of the room, his unblinking gaze drilling into the toy for minutes on end. It was a tiny, ridiculous creature with dead, empty eyes decorated with cheap glitter. In the silence of the night, the ideas began to organize themselves within his brain, assembling with the clean flawless precision of a blueprint.
And low, decisive, albeit highly amused scoff escaped his lips, vibrating faintly against your hair.
"Open it," he said the following evening, his voice a cool, steady register as he precisely slid a brand-new, sealed pastel box across the dinner table, presenting it to you like a trophy.
You immediately pushed aside your half-eaten plate of pasta, your eyes locking onto the packaging with a gasp. You instantly launched into a frantic, excited explanation about how this was a completely new series you hadn't even seen online yet, turning the cardboard over in your hands and excitedly pointing to the specific, rare character you wanted.
Dex watched you, a pleased, thoroughly satisfied smirk gracing his sharp features. He knew exactly which one you would pick, of course. He was profoundly satisfied with his own knowledge of your desires. What you didn't know was that he had spent over an hour at the specialty store that afternoon as he used his awareness and knowledge of manufacturing data to subtly weigh and measure the boxes, calculating the serial codes to fish out the exact plush you wanted.
Your face lit up as the wrapping tore away, and you began to preen over the stuffed keychain, gushing about how it was a "winter moth" and holding it up right next to your cheek to compare the size. Dex’s smile remained fixed, his blue eyes locking onto the toy's face as a sick, intoxicating sense of delight flooded through his chest.
He had spent hours meticulously replacing the plush's cheap glitter eyes with a high-definition pinhole camera.
You loved your little companions so much that you took them everywhere. They sat on your bags, they went to the market, they sat on the dashboard of your car. If you were going to carry them into the world, Dex reasoned, he might as well utilize them in his permanent, singular mission to keep you safe. If he couldn't be by your side every second of the day to neutralize any threat that dared look at you, his eyes would be there instead.
You stood up from your seat, completely oblivious to the surveillance matrix in your hands, and rushed over to his side of the table. You plopped down happily onto his lap, wrapping your arms around his large frame as a torrent of sweet, breathless thank-yous spilled from your lips.
"You're welcome. Anything for my girl," he muttered into your skin, his deep voice vibrating against your neck as he breathed in the scent of your perfume. His large hand moved to stroke your hair, though his cold, calculating gaze remained locked entirely on the plush in your hands, watching the tiny lens catch the light.
Over the next few weeks, the project became a quiet, methodical obsession. Dex worked tirelessly in the late hours while you slept, using his surgical precision to dismantle, modify, and re-stitch every single plush keychain you brought home. Some were significantly harder than others; certain characters had asymmetric eyes or mobile fabric features, but his hyper-focused mind always engineered a solution.
Every new box you brought home was no longer just clutter to him. It was a new soldier in his private, invisible army.
You had come to understand his sudden, intense interest in your collection in your own sweet way. You hadn't picked up on a single shred of the darker, deeply possessive intent behind his involvement, simply assuming it was just Dex being his supportive, loving self, learning to participate in the things that made you happy.
"I want this one because it looks like you in your suit," you murmured day, your finger tracing a tiny, brooding character on the back of a new box.
Dex froze for a fraction of a second, his jaw tightening as he stared at the little drawing. He had to physically force his hands to remain flat on the counter, actively restraining himself from reaching across the space, pulling you against his chest, and smothering you with the sheer, unadulterated weight of his affection.
That was by far the sweetest, most devastating thing you had ever said to him. You wanted to carry a miniature version of him around in your pocket.
Little did you know, you had already been carrying him everywhere you went.
Dex knew according to the scripts of normal society, that he should probably feel a semblance of guilt or shame for what he had done. He was monitoring your every movement, cataloging every street corner you turned, mapping every face that came within five feet of you through the dead eyes of your keychains. But truthfully, as he looked at you, all he felt was an absolute, pure sense of satisfaction.
You loved your messed-up killer boyfriend, that he had no doubt. But Dex had a very distinct feeling that you didn't truly know the terrifying extent of how far he would go to protect you. You didn't know how truly, beautifully ruined he actually was. He had been very, very careful to keep certain aspects of his obsessive nature hidden from you, having learned the hard way from Julie and the bloody disasters of his past.
So he held his breath, his blue eyes tracking your fingers as you eagerly tore the cardboard open in anticipation.
But as the plastic wrap came away, your face fell. The familiar, bright excitement dropped from your features. You hadn't gotten the one you wanted. You hadn't gotten him.
"Oh... that's okay," you said softly, your voice carrying a brave but disappointed little lilt as you lifted the plush up by its metal ring. "This one kinda looks like me! So it's okay."
Dex’s eyes hardened instantly, the blue in his irises turning to chips of ice as a brand-new, unyielding directive programmed itself into his brain. No other options. Not when you wanted him. And only him.
It took him exactly two days to correct the mistake.
The bedroom was bathed in the lazy, amber glow of the late afternoon sun, the heat thick and comforting. You were leaning back against the headboard, a blissful thoroughly fucked out smile on your face as you ran your fingers through Dex's short hair. He was resting heavily between your legs, his broad shoulder blades pressing against your thighs, his head pillowed softly on your bare stomach. His large, calloused hand was moving in a slow, lazy rhythm up and down the soft skin of your thigh, his touch possessing a quiet, grounded familiarity. Dex tilted his head up, his sharp jawline tracing against your skin as his eyes locked onto yours.
"Got a gift for you," he nodded, his gravelly voice dropping into a low, quiet register.
"You have a gift for me?" you asked, instantly sitting up. Your body was thoroughly sore and beautifully spent but your eyes were wide and eager.
Dex offered a single, precise nod. Reaching down with one long arm, his hand slid beneath the edge of the bedframe, where he had kept the thing hidden in the shadows for the past twelve hours. When his large palms unfurled, revealing the object within, your heart completely melted.
It was the exact plush you had wanted from the box. The one that looked like his suit.
Except, it wasn't standard factory issue anymore. Dex had spent hours straight meticulously altering the fabric with tools. A miniature, flawlessly stitched dark blue mask now covered the doll's entire face, the infamous Bullseye emblem embroidered perfectly over the forehead. Branding the little creature entirely as his. He had even crafted a ridiculously adorable, functional leather gun holster and a microscopic tactical knife belt, fastening them securely around the plush's waist.
You had to physically clamp a hand over your mouth to stop yourself from letting out a loud, embarrassing scream of pure adoration. Your six-foot, deadly, globally wanted assassin lover had just spent his free time customizing a tiny, soft doll to look exactly like his alter-ego, just to make you smile.
You were barely keeping your composure together, your eyes misting with affection, before Dex’s expression shifted, taking on a rigid, deeply serious alignment.
"There's more," he nodded, his voice entirely deadpan.
With a smooth, deliberate twist of his large fingers, Dex gripped the plush's head and popped it cleanly off the torso, exposing a gleaming, three-inch black metal dagger hidden inside the stuffed body.
Your jaw dropped half an inch, completely speechless as the tiny, lethal blade caught the sunlight.
"I need to know that you always have something to protect yourself with when I'm not with you," Dex nodded firmly, his tone carrying the absolute unyielding weight of a universal law.
He held the decapitated head of the plush, which now served as the textured handle for the hidden dagger, waiting for your reaction.
For a fraction of a second, the silence in the room stretched. Dex’s fingers tensed against the grip, an instinctual, raw anxiety flaring in his chest. Was it too much? Had he crossed a line? Did his unrefined, violent nature finally freak you out? His hand began to instinctively lower, preparing to hide the weapon away in the shadows again, his internal self scrambling to find a script to fix the mistake.
But before he could retreat, a loud, unbridled laugh broke free from your lips.
"This is the absolute cutest thing you have ever done!" you exclaimed, leaning forward to snatch the modified plush from his hands, cradling it as if it were a priceless, irreplaceable artifact.
Dex froze, his sharp brows furrowing slightly as he processed the reaction. "So... you like it?..." he asked, his voice cautious, parsing the data.
"I love it! It's so adorable, oh my god—" You covered your mouth to shield a genuine gasp, your fingers already tracing the tiny leather straps of the knife belt, completely enchanted by the detail.
Dex let out a slow, quiet breath, the tension leaving his broad shoulders as he leaned back against your legs. A dark, thoroughly proud and satisfied smile spread across his scarred face, his blue eyes crinkling with a deep, unsettling fondness as he watched you toy with the miniature version of his executioner suit.
You leaned down, pressing a sweet, lingering kiss against his lips, murmuring about how lucky you were to have such a supportive, protective boyfriend. Dex leaned into the touch, his large hand wrapping around your waist to pull you closer, his thumb stroking your skin in perfect, rhythmic intervals.
He didn't say a word about the micro-camera embedded into the center of the stitched target on the doll's forehead. He didn't mention the encrypted feed currently streaming directly to his private monitor, or the fact that the tiny soldiers on your other bags were currently capturing every angle of the room. You were completely blissful, entirely safe within the bright, happy parameters of your collection. You didn't know the terrifying depth of his sickness, and as Dex laid his head on you, listening to your soft laughter fill the quiet apartment, he knew he was never going to let you find out.
A/N:
Our man is so supportive. Anyways I hope you liked this silly little story. Requests are open for Dex only right now, so if you want more feel free to shoot me a message in my inbox!
His eyes crinkled at the corners as he stared down at you, his obsessive internal self completing a massive, definitive calculation. He was keeping you. How could he not? You were a beautiful, bulletproof thing that had literally shot its way through his worst nightmares just to drag him back to the light.
In which you're hired to kill Bullseye, you steal his mask and his heart instead.
CW: Sugar spice and everything nice, minor charater deaths, no use of y/n, implied age difference, size difference, reader is very hyper sexual, inspired by "Dex needs a crazy psycho girlfriend" and "when are they gonna put Dex in the Thunderbolts", basically my rewrite of the movie.
WC: 17.k (Full Story!)
The silence around you was an intrusive, grating entity. A presence with the kind of suffocating quietude that did not soothe, but rather amplified the discordant chorus of voices whispering within the recesses of your mind. Your brain, frantic as it is, tried desperately to hold onto anything it could. The hum of electricity in the air, the faint ringing in your ear that was always there, sometimes drowned out but never truly gone. But nothing anchored you, not in the way motion did. The present threatened to bore you to the point of violent madness. Until you actively resisted the urge to shatter your own skull against the unforgiving concrete. Muscles in your body ached to move now.
You had never possessed an affinity for the calm.
To you, tranquility was not sanctuary; it was a profound, treacherous lie whispered by the world before the inevitable storm tore it apart. Calm was the agonizing static prelude that rendered you restless. Inciting a bloodlust that could only be quieted by the frantic tempo of survival.
You understood the concept of fear, yet not through the visceral, heart-hammering literal sense. The torrent of adrenaline coursing through your veins was always far too potent, far too intoxicatingly absolute, for your consciousness to register anything as mundane as hesitation or terror. You had inhabited this bloody existence for far too long to be swayed by the moral gravity of what you do. Instead, you conceptualized fear intellectually, recognizing it in the way a freezing silent atmosphere sharpens the human instrument. Heightening the somatic senses until the air itself feels heavy with malice. Fear was that creeping phantom sensation that you were not entirely alone when you should be.
Yet, within your internal landscape, fear had been reduced to a voice that rarely spoke. A subtle, fleeting inkling that your hyper-vigilant brain acknowledged with cold clinical precision, but refused to welcome. And you weren't about to step aside and invite it in now.
The desert vault loomed before you, a brutalist monument of uncompromising concrete. Impenetrable and cold-rolled steel in its hulking form. Though that didn’t deter your body away, but rather flicked a match as your posture squared and your heart felt heavier, faster, excited. You knew a thing or two about being impenetrable.
Your gait was deliberate, almost lazy. Chunky platformed heels striking the floor with a rhythmic, resonant echo that refused to hurry as you traversed the narrow corridor. Downward you stared, your gaze flickering to the digital tracking device cradled in palm framed by impeccably manicured pink nails. On the small screen, a solitary, blood-red dot pulsed with patterned malice, mapping a trajectory deeper into the belly of the facility.
With effortless practiced grace, you adjusted the weight of your customized, high-caliber submachine gun, letting the cold metal rest familiarly against your bare shoulder. Stepping into the waiting elevator, you slid the tracker into your black leather utility belt that dangled loosely across your hips. A belt that served absolutely no structural or modest purpose, existing solely as a morbid, high-fashion harness for a dozen gleaming daggers and three heavily modified handguns. All custom-made with sterling metal and pink marble enamel, decorated with a bit of lace, just because. Though the black, razor-pleated mini skirt that swirled about your thighs was far more dangerous than your arsenal.
You sighed, a soft, melodious sound of utter exasperation. Heel taping impatiently as you waited. Jesus, how many floors did this place have?
Taking advantage of the elevator’s sluggish descent, you reached up to adjust the straps of your baby-pink bikini top. It was a preposterous thing a for a black-ops infiltration, but that was the entire, intoxicating point: another day, another kill, and another absolute refusal to hide behind the heavy, suffocating cowardice of Kevlar.
You told yourself, not for the first time, that this was your last pro-bono contract. You desperately needed to stop giving charity to the intelligence community. Executing high-risk liquidations with little to no recompense. Yet, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine had been extraordinarily, almost hysterically eager to scrub this particular name from the ledger.
Benjamin Poindexter. Or "Dex," as his dossier indicated he preferred to be called.
Now, you had always favored a more intimate, psychological approach to your hunts. Finding no joy in the sterile, detached efficiency of one-and-done bounties. So before arriving, you had briefly, almost cursorily, familiarized yourself with the legend of the man known as Bullseye. You didn't study him with the meticulous rigor you usually reserved for your targets, but you had gathered enough fragments to paint a deeply disturbing, yet strangely inviting, portrait.
The man was unequivocally sick in the head. But hey, weren’t we all? He, as you categorized, was a fractured soul bound by an agonizing obsessive need for perfection and external validation. And, according to every rumor whispered from Hell's Kitchen to Madripoor, he never missed a shot.
You smiled, plotting as the elevator neared the bottom, your glossed lips curling into a sharp, beautiful sneer. It was a pity for him then, that you never get hit.
As the elevator doors groaned open to reveal the freezing expanse of the subterranean vault, your kinetic awareness bloomed. The bootleg Super Serum in your blood didn't grant you the roaring, tank-flipping strength of a super-soldier. But it did elevated your central nervous system to a state of terrifyingly efficient. You could feel the microscopic shifts in the air density; you could hear the subtle, metallic click of a firing pin before the hammer even dropped. And right now, your ears heard the song of gunfire like a gavel brought down by a judge demanding order. A ceremonial hum left your lips in anticipation.
You stepped out into the dark, your pink platforms clicking softly against the concrete, ready to find out what happened when an unstoppable trajectory collided with a mystery.
The heavy vacuum of the Vault didn't contain the violence. It incubated it, transforming the chamber into a claustrophobic amphitheater of slaughter. Inside the cavernous expanse, the air was thick with the ozone stench of discharge and the bitter, metallic tang of panic. Somewhere in the room, John Walker and Yelena Belova were already locked in a grueling, graceless battle of mutual survival. Their movements are a frantic testament to tactical desperation. Yet, your entry into this brutal performance was characterized by an almost sacrilegious levity. Your heightened cortex parsed the symphony of chaos with clinical detachment, filtering out the desperate grunts of exertion until your focus narrowed entirely upon him.
Benjamin Poindexter.
He was a monument to terrifying, rigid efficiency, his silhouette cutting through the dimness as he hurled a barrage of lethal projectiles towards Taskmaster, whose vibranium shield was preoccupied with deflecting Walker’s unhinged, heavy-handed strikes.
Your ears twitched, catching the faint, bewildered cadence of Yelena’s voice as she muttered a fractured question to the empty air: “What is happening?”
You didn’t know, nor did you possess the luxury of a singular damn to give.
“More extra credit,” you hummed to yourself, a soft, melodic purr of pure delight vibrating in your throat as your hands instinctively adjusted the weight of your submachine gun. Your eyes locked onto the broad plains of Poindexter’s back, your finger tightening against the cold trigger with the intent to paint the concrete in a single, devastating burst.
The trajectory was immaculate. The execution would have been flawless.
But the universe, in its infinite, irritating wisdom, chose that exact second to intervene.
A heavy, tactical boot collided with your flank. A jarring disruption that failed to compromise the dense, serum-enhanced architecture of your musculature. But the kick succeeded enough in rattling your pristine stance.
The sudden shift was enough to draw Bullseye’s hyper-fixated attention. His gaze snapped toward the source of the anomaly, his calculating eyes widening imperceptibly as they mapped the sheer, theatrical absurdity of your presence.
“Who invited the hooker?” Walker bellowed, his voice a crude, grating rasp that immediately sealed his fate.
Before the final syllable could fully leave his lips, your arm snapped forward with whiplash velocity. A pink-coated dagger, gleaming with deceptive cosmetic brilliance, whistled through the air. Aimed squarely and mercilessly for the center of his forehead. Walker flinched, the blade grazing the air close enough to leave a phantom sting.
Dex, however, remained momentarily paralyzed by the sheer, unadulterated picture of you. Enough for his brows to pull and head to tilt. His mind, traditionally bound to the rigid structures of military pragmatism, worked to process the data. The meticulously styled hair that defied the humidity of a warzone; the absurdly skimpy, pastel bikini top that offered an arrogant, naked invitation to death; the ridiculously chunky platform heels that should have rendered motion impossible; and the low-slung leather belt cradling a dozen lethal instruments like a macabre harness.
You were a vision meant for a beauty pageant, packaged in a lethal, hyper-feminine veneer. Yet, Bullseye’s obsessive mind could only linger on the aesthetic incongruity for a millisecond. Before the deep-seated compulsion of his programming yanked his eyes back to his designated target.
Your brows pulled together in a profound, agitated scowl as you turned toward your instigator. It was the phasing woman, The Ghost, as the intelligence dossiers labeled her. Flickering in and out of the physical plane like a dying television set. Your customized firearms swung toward the disappearing specter, but before you could waste the ammunition, Yelena materialized through the smoke, discharging a crackling, blue-white ĺelectrical pulse that temporarily anchored Ava to the floor in a state of paralysis.
With the nuisance sidelined, you were back on him. And he, inevitably, was back on you. The over-six-foot assassin found his pristine, orderly universe utterly upended by a barely five-foot-two asteroid. The man was forced into an immediate, breathless defense. His large, calloused hands coming up to block a succession of blindingly fast, fluid punches that carried the deceptive, bone-snapping density of you. It was a grotesque, beautiful dance; Dex was urgently trying to parry your incoming strikes while simultaneously attempting to calculate the trajectory of a knife intended for a shield-wielding target across the room.
For LoveShot, the lack of exclusivity in his attention was a profound insult. You grew rapidly, violently tired of vying for a man’s focus while his eyes remained stubbornly fixed on another. Worse still, there was the irritating, persistent peck of the phasing woman biting at your back, threatening to disrupt the polished rhythm of your game.
Without tearing your gaze away from the unsettling blue of Dex’s eyes, your perfectly painted pink nails dipped toward your belt. Your arm extended outward, not toward the man standing mere inches from you, but blind across the room, mapping the space entirely through the exquisite, hyper-acoustic map in your brain.
Bang.
The single, deafening report echoed through the vault. For a fraction of a second, Dex caught himself mid-dodge, his body tensing as his instinct prepared for the bullet to rip through his own flesh.
Instead, the slug traveled a perfectly calculated, cross-facility arc. It bypassed the chaos entirely, tearing with absolute, clinical precision straight into the skull of Antonia.
The Taskmaster’s body dropped to the concrete like a sack of unceremonious meat. The room stilled. The energy of the battle evaporated in an instant, replaced by a suffocating, bewildered paralysis. Everyone froze in their tracks. Yelena remained pinned beneath Walker; Ava hunched mid stand on the floor; and Dex blinked
Once, twice, an imperceptible glitch of his eyelids. His mind, a perfect organic computer, literally could not calculate the variable that had just rewritten the rules of the room. He hadn't missed. She hadn't missed. But she had stolen his kill with an indifferent, blind throwaway shot.
“Pay attention to me!” you yelled at him, the melodious quality of your voice twisting into a sharp, petulant demand as you stomped your chunky pink platform against the blood-flecked concrete.
Before he could articulate a response, your heightened ears picked up an entirely different unglamorous sound: a wet, violent gagging. Your brows pulled together in deep disgust as your eyes drifted to an unfamiliar, disheveled man stumbling into the periphery, his stomach violently rejecting the reality of the room. Your gun began to rise instinctively to silence the noise, but Yelena’s hand abruptly intervened. Pushing your forearm down with a firm warning pressure as she raised her own gun. Yelena knew you were messy, and the worst part of it all was that you liked it.
“Uh, okay, eww,” you muttered, your blush powdered nose wrinkling in revulsion as you eyed the puking intruder.
The distraction lasted for a single, fleeting second before your gaze snapped back to Dex. He was already staring at you, his pupils dilated with a dangerous curiosity, still high off of adrenaline as his built chest rose and fell. That prolonged eye contact was all the invitation you needed. Your painted fingers slipped to your belt, drawing a fresh, gleaming blade to finally finish the job you were here for.
“Is she actually dead—”
A voice broke the tension, and you bristled instantly. You felt the sudden, hot flash of a genuine tantrum fury, thrown completely off your game like a child whose favorite toy had been snatched away. The orchestrated, seductive atmosphere of your game was entirely spoiled now by this bumbling idiot, who immediately turned and ran straight for the primary exit. Only for the heavy security doors to slam shut with a definitive, hydraulic groan, sealing you all inside the tomb.
Your perfect brows raised at the minor inconvenience of the lockdown, but the logistical nightmare of escape was irrelevant to you. Your world has narrowed to a singular path. With a slow deliberate stomp, you began to stalk toward Ex-Special Agent Poindexter.
Dex slipped a knife of his own into his palm, his entire posture dropping into a coiled, predatory stance as he assessed the hyper-feminine nightmare advancing upon him. He didn’t know your name. He didn’t know what artificial poison touched your bloodstream to grant you that terrifying, supernatural latency. But as he watched you step closer, his mind fixated on a single, impossible detail that defied every law of order he worshiped: he had seen the stray bullets from the crossfire strike your exposed, bare skin. And instead of ripping through flesh, they flattened, dropping to the floor like harmless, discarded coins.
The sudden, jarring hiss of the vault’s primary seals locking into place did little to disrupt the highly venomous orbit established between yourself and Poindexter. But the rest of the room devolved into a predictable, tactical flurry as the disheveled man, Bob, stumbled backward. His presence is an unrefined blemish against your playground.
"Will you stand down," Yelena muttered, her tone lacking the sharp, militaristic edge she usually reserved for combatants. Instead, it possessed a weary, heavy cadence that suggested an undeniable familiarity.
More importantly, she said your name.
The syllable hung in the freezing, stagnant air of the vault like a tangible, glittering thing. To Dex, it was a sudden, seismic revelation; the nameless killer that had just systematically dismantled his carefully crafted inner workings finally had a designation. A name to pair with the feminine blood-splattered face. His eyes, cold and hazardous analytical, narrowed as he watched the subtle shift in your posture.
Everyone’s attention had inevitably drifted toward the trembling, figure of Bob, whose very existence screamed of some bureaucratic absurdity. Yet, yours remained entirely anchored to Dex. You were swaying, a slow, hypnotic rocking of your weight across the square platforms of your pink heels. An explicit, non-verbal manifestation of how desperately you were itching for the violence to resume. You were a coiled spring decorated in lace and pink marble enamel.
Yet, you didn’t advance. You didn't move to complete the contract Valentina had so eagerly requested. No; you listened to Yelena. You allowed her brief intervention to stay your hand.
To a mind as violently compulsive as Poindexter’s, that single, uncharacteristic display of restraint was a puzzle piece that refused to fit into the established picture. It suggested deference. It suggested respect. But why? his internal monologue parsed, the gears of his hyper-vigilant mind grinding with a sudden, localized agitation. Yelena Belova was a broken, disgraced operative. Systemic loss and currently amounted to no real, formidable title within the intelligence community. She possessed no leverage over a lethal creature like you. But you listened. And Dex had decided that you didn't seem like the type to listen.
So the deduction arrived with certainty: you knew each other personally. You shared a history that existed entirely in the peripheral shadows, away from the sterile text of official governments. And then there was John Walker. The disgraced Captain America was currently nursing his bruised ego and a near-miss from your dagger, his jaw tight as he glared across the room. He hadn't merely thrown a generic insult when you breached the perimeter; he hadn't called you a hooker. He had explicitly called you the hooker.
The definite article was damning. It implied a recurring character in a sordid, violent history. A known variable in a world Dex had thought he fully planned out. A subtle, subcutaneous itch of possessive annoyance began to dig beneath Bullseye's skin. An irritating, foreign friction born from the realization that this beautiful, bullet-flattening psycho already belonged to a narrative he wasn't a part of. Not yet.
"The doors are dead," Ava's voice cut through the tension, her form flickering violently as she leaned against a console, her breathing shallow as the heat in the room rises.
"The main terminal is completely unresponsive. This isn't a containment protocol. We're locked in an incinerator!" She declared as red floodlights filled the room, painting the walls in danger and peril. The ominous warning partnered by a loud urging siren that made you cringe at the volume.
"She's right," Yelena said, her eyes shifting from you to the reinforced steel barrier, her expression darkening with a cold, retrospective clarity. “Two minutes and Valentina’s slate is wiped clean."
Walker let out a harsh, mocking laugh, though his hand remained close to his sidearms, his eyes darting warily toward your pink-belted arsenal. "You're telling me Val put us in a box? Why? We secured the asset." He gestured aggressively toward the dead body he raided on the floor.
Ummm no, you, secured the asset. They did nothing.
"Because we're fuck ups," you chimed, your voice a sweet hum that completely contrasted the grim reality of the realization. You stopped swaying on your heels, your painted fingernails tracing the delicate lace wrapping the grip of your submachine gun. "We're on clean up duty. She didn't send us here to retrieve anything. She sent us here to be deleted. Why'd you think we were all trying to kill each other?"
"A sterilization protocol," Dex summarized, his voice flat, devoid of fear, but entirely focused on you as he balanced his own blade in his palm. His mind skipped over the betrayal of his handler entirely, far more captured by the way your lips curved at the prospect of a trap.
"Well," you sneered, a beautifully wicked expression taking hold as your eyes locked back into his, completely ignoring the frantic tactical chatter of the others as the ceiling vents began to hiss with a heavy, pressurized gas. "It would be a terrible shame to disappoint her. Don't you think, Dex?"
Yelena’s voice sliced through the ambient dread once more, explicitly uttering your name in a sharp chastise. You whirled on her, your pink platform heel stomping against the concrete with the indignity of a slighted princess.
"What!? I shot the bullet, I got the kill!" you yelled, your voice a beautiful, discordant screech of entitlement that utterly refused to acknowledge the impending lethality of the scarlet room.
Ava, her form flickering with an erratic, painful instability against the backdrop, let out a harsh, breathless rasp. "You can't win anything if we're all fucking dead."
"What a perfect world that would be," you countered, blinking with a serene lack of self-preservation.
Across the space, Dex slowly crossed his arms. His analytical gaze was entirely rapt, his mind meticulously cataloging every erratic variable of your demeanor. He wasn't looking at the locking mechanisms or the gas vents, or listening to the warning sounds and the panic in the room; he was studying the strange woman who treated an execution chamber like another day at work. You caught his look and leaned into it.
Your chest rose proudly beneath the baby-pink bikini top as you declared. "And I can't die," the statement dripped with an absolute, delusional certainty. Your eyes locked onto Ava, a wicked, knowing smirk pulling at your glossed lips. "You were given a suicide mission the moment you got my name."
"We need to get out of here!" Yelena bellowed, her pragmatic instincts overriding the absurdity of your tantrum. She snapped her gaze toward the phasing operative. "Ava, can you walk through the door and open it from the outside?"
You let out a loud sigh, rolling your eyes so hard it practically hurt as you bypassed the frantic huddle entirely. With an air of boredom, you sauntered over to a nearby crate and sat down, crossing one bare, unarmored leg over the other, utterly indifferent to the collective weight of the eyes tracking your movement. It was a stupid idea, you decided within the confines of your mind Ghost was an unstable element; given the opportunity to slip the noose, she would simply leave them all to rot.
You watched the digital countdown on the security console bleed away. Death was a profound, terrifying conceptualization for the rest of them, a looming existential finality that made their hearts hammer and their movements frantic. But in your beautifully deranged mind, the concept simply did not apply. You were a creature meticulously designed to survive. The universe had provided ample, physical proof of your permanence with every flattened bullet that had ever dared to touch your skin.
And, as if to prove the accuracy of your intuition, the universe intervened again. Ava appeared back through the opening barrier, her expression frantic as she signaled the breach.
Before you could offer a sarcastic commentary on her return, Yelena’s calloused hand gripped your bare shoulder, violently hoisting you up from your perch and dragging your dense, heavy-laden frame toward the exit corridor just as the secondary demolition system triggered.
The ensuing explosion was a catastrophic, blinding wall of fire. The force was massive, a roaring wave of heat and displaced air that completely defied your augmented center of gravity, sending your body flying through the smoke-choked air like a mannequin.
You hit the ground with a heavy, unceremonious thud, landing squarely on top of a broad torso. A sharp, breathless groan escaped your lips as your vision cleared through the haze. You blinked down, realizing your dense weight was currently pinning Dex directly to the debris-strewn floor. He was staring up at you from behind his tactical mask, his breathing labored but his pupils still violently fixed on your face.
"Dammit, you're still alive," you huffed, your face mere inches from his as you frowned in profound disappointment.
"Unfortunately," he groaned back, the single word a rough, scraping cadence of dry amusement and physical strain.
With a look of exasperation, you pushed yourself off his chest, your perfectly manicured pink nails digging briefly into his tactical gear for leverage as you rose back onto your chunky platforms, dusting off your black pleated mini skirt as if the demolition was nothing more than an inconvenient gust of wind.
The vertical chasm of the elevator shaft stretched upward into a daunting infinity, a hollow concrete throat that seemed to swallow their collective, muttered fucks.
"So none of us fly?" Yelena questioned, her voice dripping with flat exhaustion as she stared into the dark expanse above. "What, we all just punch and shoot...?"
You pursed your lips to the side, your acute mind evaluating the sheer impossibility of the obstacle before you. "Okay, John, today's your lucky day," you announced with a flourish of condescending benevolence, nodding decisively. "I'm letting you throw me."
The knock-off Captain America let out a harsh, incredulous scoff, but the survival instinct overrode his ego. He unfastened his heavy shield, positioning the vibranium surface as a crude, metallic launch pad.
Taking a head start, or as much as the claustrophobic perimeter would allow, your platform heels struck the cold metal surface with a resonant clang. John braced and shoved, sending your body hurtling upward into the gloom.
The ascent lasted for a single, fleeting breath before gravity reasserted its absolute authority. Your trajectory stalled, and you plummeted straight down, collapsing back onto John Walker’s chest with an unceremonious, bone-jarring impact. You immediately let out a whine, a vocalization far too theatrical, far too perfectly curated to indicate actual physical pain, as your head shook no against his tactical vest, your styled hair spilling across his shoulders.
Across the narrow shaft, Poindexter’s jaw tightened. A sudden, uncalculated spike of visceral distaste rippled through his chest, a foreign friction that rubbed beneath his skin like coarse sand. He didn't like the sight of you draped across Walker's frame, and his fixated mind, usually so immaculate with its internal algorithms, failed to deduce why.
"Okay... new idea..." you wobbled up, smoothing down the edges of your razor-pleated mini skirt with a huff.
What followed was, by every metric of black-ops pragmatism, the single most ridiculous logistical solution ever conceived.
"I can't believe you all actually listened to me!" you gleamed in pure, unadulterated disbelief, your melodious voice echoing off the concrete as the six of you engaged in a grueling, synchronized army stomp up the narrow walls of the elevator shaft.
It was a claustrophobic, friction-locked nightmare. Backs pressed against one another, boots wedged against the wall, the group moved in a stuttering climb born of sheer desperation.
"Somebody has a hard butt," Dex groaned out, his low, gravelly cadence vibrating with irritation as he struggled to maintain his own gravity-defying weight.
He didn't do this. He didn't participate in collaborative, touchy-feely teamwork. It would have been infinitely preferable if the facility had simply collapsed, or if they had each discovered an independent method of escape. Rather than enduring this ridiculous, feet-up, back-to-back transit toward liberation. Yet, by some cruel twist of fate, he found himself intimately sandwiched between John Walker and the trembling, unrefined bulk of Bob.
"That's not my butt, it's my suit!" you argued petulantly from your position around the chain, nestled tightly between the defensive boundaries of Yelena and Ava.
"What suit? You're half naked!" Walker scoffed from the left, his voice strained under the immense physical exertion of the climb.
"Ummm, you weren't complaining when you saw an eyeful up my skirt!" you snapped back, attempting to twist your neck to glare at the disgraced soldier.
Then a sudden, erratic disruption broke the fragile, rhythm of the collective. The entire human chain staggered, slipping violently down the concrete shaft for twelve agonizing inches before everyone’s boots bit back into the wall, catching the descent with a unison gasp of panic.
"Sorry. Slipped," Dex huffed out. His cold, blue eyes remained locked onto the concrete wall directly in front of him, staring at the structure as if it had personally offended him. Though as he said it, there was no actual apology in his words.
Eventually, against every probability, the group breached the surface, dragging their bruised and thoroughly degraded frames out into the blinding, oppressive glare of the entrance room. But there was no sanctuary awaiting them. A heavily armed greeting of Valentina’s clean-up crew stood entrenched across the dunes, weapons drawn to finish the sterilization protocol that the vault’s demolition had failed to achieve.
Your augmented nervous system immediately mapped the exit trajectories. You knew you should run now. You should ignore everyone’s frantic attempts at a coordinated escape, shut down their stupid, collaborative plan, and save your own skin. It was what you always did. Yet, for some entirely foreign, almost lonely reason, you hesitated. It was... kinda nice being around people, you thought with a strange, fleeting twinge of sentimentality. So, you stayed, and you played your part.
With a burst of velocity and vigor, the five of you ambushed the perimeter, hijacking one of the heavy tactical vehicles in a flurry of synchronized violence. You scrambled into the back of the transport, completely elated that you had all actually made it out alive.
Well, most of you.
Before a single tire could kick up dust, the mundane reality of the fight was shattered. Bob, the shivering asset they had dragged from the depths, suddenly ignited awake. A decisive, terrifying stillness bled from his skin, and then he was flying. He was fucking flying.
The five of you sat frozen in the cramped cabin of the hijacked vehicle, your faces pressed against the reinforced glass, watching in absolute, deadpan silence as he launched himself into the stratosphere. He vanished into the horizon like a runaway god, leaving the entire battlefield in a state of stunned silence.
"You all fucking saw that right!?" you asked into the quiet cabin, your finger still hovering over the trigger of your pink gun.
Nobody answered. The sheer absurdity of the spectacle was still processing when the shockwave of Bob’s sonic boom hit the vehicle. The concussive blast rolled across the dunes, catching the side of the transport and violently tipping it over. With a metallic crunch, the car flipped, rolling once before landing heavily on its side, leaving the wheels spinning uselessly against the empty air.
By the time you managed to kick the shattered doors open and crawl out of the wreckage, the blistering sun had completely dipped below the horizon, plunging the desert into a freezing, deceptive night.
The remaining five of you turned your backs on the smoking overturned vehicle. With no functioning transport, no definitive plan, no backup, and absolutely no remaining allegiances, the long, silent march began.
The endless expanse of the desert night was vast and unfeeling. It was a bizarre, slow-moving parade of tactical pragmatism: Walker nursing his bruised pride, Yelena trudging forward with a low, muttered string of Russian curses, Ava treading sporadically to save her energy, and Dex walking with a rigid, calculated stride.
Yet, the entire bleak landscape remained anchored by a single, defiant flash of baby-pink lace moving through the dark, your chunky platform heels sinking into the cold sand with every lazy, deliberate step. The temperature in the desert dropped rapidly, the freezing night air cutting through the vast emptiness as the five of you trudged onward. The silence was broken only by the rustle of the paper Yelena had managed to salvage from the wreckage.
"She did that to him. To test on someone like that, it's inhuman," Yelena declared, her eyes fixated on the stark black ink on the document in her hand.
"Project Sentry," you nodded, your voice taking on a slightly higher pitch in confirmation.
"You know what that thing was?" Dex asked. The question cut through the dark, perhaps a bit harsher and more immediate than he had originally intended.
"Well, yeah. I know that many doctors have been trying to recreate whatever happened with me, but I didn't know they'd go to that extent," you mused, thinking back to the staggering, impenetrable density Bob had displayed before ascending. Your lips pouted slightly as a brand-new, thoroughly superficial grievance crossed your mind. "Why does he get to fly and I don't!?"
Dex completely ignored your slight jealousy, his mind already jumping to the next piece of the puzzle. "That woman back there. Did you know her?" he asked suddenly.
You blinked, pausing for a moment before it registered exactly who he was talking about, the masked woman, Taskmaster, whom you had carelessly executed across the room.
"No," you shrugged indifferently, eyeing whatever fruit Walker had managed to scavenge and deciding you wanted some of it, so you took it. The man could only grimace in exhaustion.
"I knew her," Yelena nodded, her voice heavy with the grim reality of their shared past. "She had a tough life. She killed a lot of people and got killed. Same as us someday."
“That's a shit life.” Ava commented.
Dex remained half a step behind, his devoid eyes studying the absolute vacancy of guilt or remorse in your demeanor. Your long, dark lashes merely blinked, your face remaining entirely neutral. You had shown far more genuine, visceral emotion when you grew tired of vying for his attention and shot Antonia out of pure pettiness. By all accounts of his rigid, obsessive-compulsive programming, he should have been violently irritated that you had stolen his kill. The contracts Valentina had given them were entirely irrelevant now, yet the theft remained.
But instead of anger, Dex found himself experiencing a strange, foreign sensation: amusement.
His fingers clutched his tactical mask a bit tighter against his palm as he actively forced down a smirk in the dark. Was he flattered? Excited? Drastically drawn to the sheer chaos of your presence? He couldn't entirely formulate the answer, but he knew he liked whatever the feeling was.
It wasn't the same predictable gravity he felt when he used to search for a north star, a moral anchor like Julie or Fisk to dictate his actions. His compass didn't feel guided toward the concept of 'good' when he looked at you; it felt perplexed and challenged. It was challenged in a unique, exhilarating way that made a small voice in his fucked up head whisper, "This isn't right," at whatever bullshit you pulled. Dex had spent a long time reigning in his desperate need to seek out external validation to show him what was acceptable. He had finally made peace with the stark reality that there was no pure good or absolute evil in their bloody line of work. There were only actions, and the positive or negative outcomes they generated.
And this LoveShot Killer balanced directly on the precipice just right. You were human enough to exhibit raw emotion, yet completely desensitized to the gravity of a body dropping. And you possessed an accurate terrifying shot that rivaled his own.
He watched your gait through the shadows of the dunes. He cataloged the hypnotic sway of your hips as you walked, moving through the sand as though you were following a melody playing exclusively inside your head. There was a distinct, unbothered pep to your step, a radiant, terrifying air of genuine happiness in your isolated world, despite the utterly miserable situation you all found yourselves in.
A situation that somehow managed to get more miserable. The confines of Alexei Shostakov’s dilapidated limousine were, without a doubt, the true zenith of psychological torture. The air inside the cabin was a stagnant cocktail of cheap upholstery, stale sweat, and the distinct, alarming odor of whatever concoction resided within the questionable cup.
"Do not drink out of the Big Gulp," Alexei warned with a boisterous, entirely unbothered wave of his hand.
Your face pulled into an immediate, violent grimace of disgust. You pointedly tuned out the ensuing emotional debris as Yelena and her father launched into a thoroughly depressing, sentimentally hijacked conversation regarding her childhood pee-wee soccer team. The sheer absurdity of the moment was only exacerbated by John, who offered a half-hearted cheer of, "Go Thunderbolts!"
This was a disaster. Dex sat rigidly in his seat, his internal monologue cataloging the sheer, unrefined ridiculousness of the environment with a dangerous venom. They were not a team. They were a collection of weaponized criminals who simply needed to escape the perimeter of this hellscape. So that they could disappear and never lay eyes on each other ever again. Dex didn't do teams. His historical record with structural alliances was a pristine ledger of catastrophe. His tenure within the bureau had been an entirely different situation, he possessed a script then, a rigid hierarchy, and explicit directives dictating precisely who to neutralize and when. But in this lawless team, Alexei was currently dangling the treacherous, highly volatile promise of redemption and camaraderie. Dex knew better. He was a fractured soul; he would never fit into the equation.
"Ah! Bullseye, the man that never miss!" Alexei’s thick, aggressively boozy Russian accent suddenly boomed across the cabin, slicing through the assessment. Dex didn't even bother to verify if the genetic relic was entirely sober.
The heavy, bearded man then turned his attention toward your corner of the leather seating. "And LoveShot Killer! I heard you never get hit, eh?"
For all your hyper-sexual, bullet-flattening bravado, you merely offered a brief, uncharacteristically awkward nod. You possessed an absolute deficiency when it came to navigating parental figures, so your eyes instinctively darted across the cabin, searching for a familiar target. They found Dex.
He was already side-eyeing you from the shadows of the vehicle, his mask cradled loosely in his large hand.
Under the intrusive, blinding shafts of sunlight cutting through the limousine’s grimy windows, the intricate network of creases around his eyes became starkly prominent. A large, jaggedly healed scar traced an uneven trajectory across his cheekbone, mirroring another violent marker just above his eyebrow. Like someone had driven a knife across his face in an attempt to dishonor. Yet, the physical disfigurement did not render him grotesque; it didn't project the unrefined aura of a convict that might make a person feel unsafe. It suited the sharp symphony of his features. He looked beautifully wild, dangerous, thoroughly rough around the edges, with a faint, predatory gleam vibrating in the blue of his irises.
"You're older than I thought you'd be," your mouth moved, the observation slipping past your glossed lips before your filter could actively suppress it.
Dex’s head tilted slightly, his voice dropping into a low, testing register. "Is that a problem?"
"No," you answered instantly, the syllable clipping short as your trained vision caught a sudden flash of polished metal in the rear-view.
The heavy, armored silhouettes of approaching pursuit vehicles were rapidly closing the distance through the dust.
"Someone do something about that!" you alerted the cabin, your arms crossing defensively over the scant, baby-pink lace of your bikini top.
Dex’s gaze dipped, his pupils tracing the sudden movement of your arms before snapping forward toward the windshield. The limousine barely reached an acceleration, the engine groaning in deep agony. And Bullseye let out a harsh, impatient exhale that vibrated through his chest like a low growl.
"Activating defensive measures!" Alexei yelled with a triumphant madman’s grin.
Instead of a localized smoke screen or an oil slick, the vehicle’s sound system violently detonated to life, blaring aggressive, bass-heavy stripper music through the cracked speakers. The sheer, unadulterated absurdity of the countermeasure struck your core so perfectly that a massive, unbridled laugh broke free from your throat. Dex watched the transformation of your features, his obsessive mind immediately deciding that he liked the addictive sound of your amusement.
Then, the rear window violently disintegrated into a shower of lethal glass shards. The bubble was popped. Dex was on his feet in an instant, his heavy frame shifting as he helped Walker anchor his massive vibranium shield against the incoming rain of high-caliber military fire.
"What happened to bulletproof!?" Dex yelled over the deafening music and gunfire.
"Bulletproof-ish! Everyone is a critic today!" Alexei bellowed from the driver's seat, spinning the wheel with manic indifference.
Ava attempted to intercept the threat, her form flickering wildly as she phased through the trunk of the limousine. But the pursuing vehicles were equipped with high-frequency sonic countermeasures; the moment the soundwaves blared across the sand, her kinetic matrix crumbled, and she collapsed onto the metal chassis in a state of agony. Dex and Walker immediately reached out, their combined physical leverage yanking her back into the relative safety of the cabin.
You decided you had endured enough of this. Squeezing your dense, serum-enhanced frame through the crack of the window, you hoisted yourself onto the exterior of the speeding vehicle. A fraction of a second later, Yelena materialized opposite behind you in the passenger side, her movements mirroring yours with practiced efficiency. The two of you raised your respective weapons, your acrylic pink fingers tightening against the trigger of your submachine gun as you prepared to paint the dunes red.
But before either of you could discharge a single round, the lead pursuing truck violently detonated.
The chassis flipped into the air in a spectacular arc of fire and displaced metal. You and Yelena paused mid-aim, your eyes locking onto one another for a single, bewildered millisecond through the smoke before the two of you slithered back down into the cramped interior of the limousine.
"It's Bucky!" Walker yelled, his voice carrying a sudden, triumphant inflection as he watched the dark, unmistakable silhouette of the Winter Soldier systematically clearing the remaining threats with clinical, heavy-handed precision from his own bike.
You let out a loud, elated cheer at the sight of the metallic arm cutting through the chaos.
But the celebration was violently short-lived. Through the smoke, Bucky’s focus remained utterly fixed on the rogue assets inside the limousine. With a fluid, unblinking aim, he deployed a magnetic explosive. The projectile whistled through the air, latching onto the undercarriage of the limousine with a definitive, metallic clack. Detonation was immediate. The under-blast tore through the axle, lifting the massive, rusted luxury vehicle entirely off the desert floor and sending it flipping violently through the air.
Fuck.
The constraints of the cold iron links wrapping around your torso were a suffocating, uninvited weight, yet your posture remained entirely fluid, entirely unbothered by the sudden, aggressive containment.
"You always did like it tight," you purred into the stagnant, dusty air of the abandoned gas station, your voice a wicked drop that cut straight through the tense atmosphere.
The so-called team immediately bristled. John Walker let out a sharp, uncomfortable cough, and Yelena simply closed her eyes as if praying for a sudden aneurysm to take her from the room. Across the concrete floor, Poindexter’s brows furrowed into a tight, menacing knot where he sat bound in his own heavy restraints. His calculating eyes flicked between your unbothered smirk and the broad, stoic shoulders of the man who had just neutralized them. A violent, possessive irritation flared beneath Dex’s skin, a friction he could neither calculate nor suppress. He didn’t like that comment. He didn’t like the inherent, unvarnished history bleeding out of your mouth.
"You look disappointed, James," you pouted, your lower lip jutting out in a display of mock grievance.
James?
The name echoed within the dark chambers of Dex’s mind like a jarring, misaligned gear. He questioned the syllable with a silent, hyper-vigilant intensity, trying desperately to work the answers of the situation as the six of you sat marooned inside the rotting carcass of the gas station. You didn't use titles. You didn't call him the Winter Soldier, nor did you use the sterile, bureaucratic designations of global intelligence. You called him James. It was an intimacy that suggested a deep history, a shared landscape of shadows that Dex was entirely excluded from.
"And you're still dressing like that," Bucky muttered, his deep, gravelly cadence devoid of amusement as his gaze flicked momentarily over the bikini top before settling back onto the collective group. "Look, save it. You're all evidence in the impeachment trial against Valentina."
"We don't even work for Valentina," Ava rolled her eyes, her form hunched with fatigue.
"I get it— she has some threat named Bob, and you're all heroes ready to save the day. Am I supposed to believe that?" Bucky said, his posture unyielding, entirely unswayed by the sheer absurdity of your group’s narrative.
"Yes!" you yelled petulantly, stomping a heel against the floor.
"We weren't going after her together," Walker gruffed out, his jaw tight.
"We're not a team," Dex stated at the exact same moment, his voice flat, mechanical, and entirely focused on separating his identity from the collective meat on display for the butcher.
"We were just trying to get home alive, actually," Yelena clarified, her tone heavy with the exhausting realism of their failure.
"That's even more pathetic," Bucky countered, his voice rising with a hard, uncompromising edge as he stepped away to answer a vibrating phone.
Your perfect brows raised as Bucky spoke into the receiver, his hushed, low-register tones seemingly deciding the ultimate fate of your company. To be truthfully honest, you had tuned out the vast majority of the reality surrounding you, the geopolitical nuances of impeachment trials and intelligence ledgers entirely failing to capture your interest. It wasn't until the heavy, clanking weight of the chains around your body suddenly dropped to the floor that you snapped back into the sharp, immediate present.
"Bucky. You have the wrong people," Yelena said, her voice sounding entirely defeated as she rubbed her wrists.
Bucky stood before the group, his cybernetic arm gleaming faintly under the dying fluorescent tubes, his eyes carrying the heavy, ancient weight of a man who had survived his own trail. "Look, I've been where you are," he began, the words slow, deliberate, and thick with a grim, universal truth. "You can run, but it doesn't go away. You can either do something about it now, or live with it forever."
The words hung in the freezing air, and for a rare, terrifying moment, the frantic tempo of your internal landscape ground to a sudden, agonizing halt.
Live with it forever.
The phrase dug deep into your chest, forcing your mind to retreat into the one place you spent every waking second trying to escape: the quiet. It was the exact reason you possessed such a violent, subcutaneous evasion to calmness. The silence was an intrusive entity that amplified the voices, the memories of the labs, the phantom scent of ozone and blood, the realization that you were an anomaly designed solely for the execution of others. You felt the sudden, terrifying weight of why you constantly had to keep killing, why you actively sought out the choice of survival. The bloodlust wasn't just a preference; it was a shield. If the guns stopped barking, if the bodies stopped dropping, the noise of your own fractured existence would finally catch up to you. You had to keep moving, keep fighting, because the alternative was drowning in the static of a normal, quiet world that had no place for a creature like you.
Beside you, Dex sat entirely motionless, Bucky’s heavy words striking a resonant chord within his own psychology. He stared down at his large, calloused hands, his mind turning inward in a rare, sentimental display of self-examination.
Redemption.
It was a beautiful, entirely treacherous concept that he had spent years convincing himself he didn't need. He had made peace with the stark reality that he was a monster, an instrument of pure murder who had caused an infinity of unvarnished pain from Hell's Kitchen to the dark corners of the globe. He had told himself that there was no pure good or absolute evil, only actions and outcomes. But as he looked at the others, broken side characters standing in the ruins of this gas station, a small, stubborn voice in his head began to reshape itself. He wanted to mean something. He wanted to prove, if only to the architecture of his own brain, that his life wasn't entirely fixed on destruction. He didn't want to be a weapon discarded in a sterilization protocol; he wanted to dictate his own outcome. He wanted validation that didn't come from a script or a handler like Fisk or Valentina.
And then his eyes drifted back to you. You were standing there, a defiant flash of baby-pink lace amidst the grimy concrete, looking just as beautifully damaged as he felt. He didn't want to live with the darkness forever. He wanted to challenge it. He wanted to see what happened when two broken stars decided to rewrite their own orbit.
"Stop Val and save Bob," Yelena sighed, the concession heavy but definitive as she looked around the room.
"Fine. Yeah," Walker agreed, stepping forward with a reluctant nod.
"Alright," Dex found himself nodding, his voice low, his gaze locked entirely onto your face as he committed.
"Sure," you shrugged indifferently, a beautiful, wicked little smile returning to your features as you smoothed down your pleated skirt, the weight of the silence instantly evaporating the moment a new target was established.
"Go on then," Ava nodded out as Alexei’s loud, boisterous, yelling suddenly filled the air, shattering the lingering sentimentality of the room as he heralded the official birth of their ridiculous, lawless crusade.
It was a wonderful morning in New York, clear skies and busy streets awaiting for some action. The vibrating cargo of the unmarked delivery truck hummed with a strange, domestic sort of friction. Bucky was somewhere up front, steering them directly into the jaws of a corporate hellscape with a tactical plan that amounted to “crash the doors and improvise,” while Alexei occupied the passenger seat, likely muttering to himself. But back here, isolated from the political gravity of the situation, the atmosphere had devolved into something bordering on a high-stakes pajama party.
Your laugh was a bright sound as Yelena and Ava offered deadpan nods to whatever military theory John was currently spinning. This show-and-tell was your group’s third attempt at artificial entertainment during the seemingly endless transit back into the city. It had been a necessary pivot, following a highly volatile round of "Put a finger down: Never have I ever" and a deeply questionable game of "Take a shot if," fueled by the single bottle of Smirnoff Ice you successfully smuggled away in your utility belt from Alexei’s limousine.
"What about you, huh?" Ava asked, her chin jerking toward Bullseye, who sat with one long leg extended completely across the metal floor, the other casually crossed over the other.
"Yeah. Why is your gun holster brown? Wouldn't it have made more sense if it was black or blue?" Yelena questioned through the haze of severe sleep deprivation, her Russian accent thick and sluggish.
Dex’s expression rendered itself thoroughly, genuinely amused at the sheer absurdity of the interrogation. His sharp brows raised, and he forced down an instinctual eye-roll with a slight, unconscious tick of his head.
"Forget the color, why do you only carry one gun?" you chimed in, your own perfect brows furrowing as you gestured toward his sparse, rigid arsenal.
"I didn't know color coordination was such a big deal," Dex replied, his gravelly voice cool and thoroughly unserious. It wasn't the sterile, calculated performance of feigning human emotion he had so meticulously rehearsed during his days observing Julie; this was entirely unrehearsed, unburdened, and light.
You watched, entirely rapt, as his large hand slipped inward, pulling the solitary firearm from the tactical strap secured across his broad chest.
"And I only carry one because I only need one shot," he stated flatly with absolute certainty, his gaze locking onto yours as he turned the weapon slightly. "Also, because I have favorites."
He held the gun up, a subtle, deliberate alignment aimed loosely in your direction, and for some entirely wrong reason, the gesture caused a strange, intoxicating sensation to dance directly in the pit of your stomach.
"Okay, my turn. I have my baby here—" you announced proudly, hoisting your customized submachine gun into the dim light, the white lace wrapped around the grip looking considerably more grimy and blood-flecked now than when you had initiated the contract. "Oh, and we have my honey— and sweetie— oh, oh—and I can't forget my girls!" You pointed in rapid succession to the two secondary handguns nestled against your hips and the dozen gleaming, pink-enameled knives tracing your waistline.
"That's cute," Ava nodded, though the flat cadence of her voice made it abundantly clear that she didn’t mean it.
Yelena seamlessly took the floor next, launching into a granular breakdown of her own specialized gear, while Walker nodded along with an air of grim, nostalgic recognition, loudly voicing that he vividly remembered the devastating efficacy of Yelena’s high-voltage electrical shockers.
At some point during the chatter, your roaming gaze found the discarded, dark blue pile of fabric tucked away in the shadows of the corner. Without a second thought, your grip snatched the material, pulling it over your head in a single, fluid motion before peeking out through the cut-outs.
Dex’s head turned, his internal algorithms instantly grinding to a halt as he caught you mid-motion.
You were sitting there on the vibrating metal floor, peering out from beneath the iconic, stark label of the Bullseye mask. It smelled entirely of him, a heavy intoxicating mix of expensive cologne and dried violent copper.
Fucking hell.
Dex stared, his jaw freezing as a sudden heat surged beneath his skin. He liked that sight. He liked it with a terrifying intensity that threatened to rewrite every piece of discipline he possessed. The very mask he had worn to commit an infinity of horrific, calculated atrocities, the symbol of his deepest damnation, was currently being worn by this tiny half-naked creature. Your massive, doe-like eyes stared up at him from behind the target emblem, and the image struck his brain with the force of a grenade. Sitting there in your pink lace and his dark hood, you looked, for all intents and purposes, entirely branded as his.
His mind raced, a hundred different dark, possessive thoughts colliding within his skull, only to be made violently worse when you playfully raised your own customized gun at him, closing one eye and pretending to shoot him dead center. His jaw clenched so hard the muscle twitched beneath his scarred cheek, his large fists tightening into white-knuckled blocks against his knees as he actively, desperately restrained himself from reaching across the short distance and pulling you into his lap.
"Are we there yet!?"
The roaring torrent of his internal monologue was violently severed by Yelena’s sudden, exhausted screech toward the front cabin. A fraction of a second later, you joined in, your voice echoing her petulant cadence as you yelled the exact same thing, completely unbothered by the fact that you were still wearing his identity over your face.
The terrifying portrait of a god completely dismantling your capacity without blinking was a deeply irritating check to your ego. The sheer absurdity of the violence left a bitter spike of pure envy in your chest. Why did the shivering, untrained asset get the cosmic, reality-warping powers while you were left with the pedestrian reality of invincibility and pretty guns?
You had watched from the debris-strewn floor as John’s vibranium shield was folded like a cheap piece of tin, Ava and Yelena dropped like discarded marionettes, and Dex was forced into a dance of parrying his own bounced-back projectiles. But Bucky had sustained the most visceral, uncompromising trauma. The heavy, metallic thud of his severed cybernetic arm hitting the concrete was the ultimate, unvarnished signal that the script was entirely dead.
Your little group weren't the Avengers. You possessed no grand, selfless illusions of martyrdom or moral nobility; you were weaponized threats, and you knew exactly when the situation demanded retreat.
Clutching Bucky’s severed limb to your bare chest like a trophy, you scrambled into the relative, groaning sanctuary of the elevator with the others. Once outside the building and into the stinging New York air, the seven of you attempted to process the absolute, reality-shattering failure that mission was. You handed the heavy, metallic arm back to its owner. Taking an uninvited familiar liberty in aggressively locking the cybernetic joint back into its socket for him.
Dex’s calloused fingers brushed lightly over the fresh, blooming cut on his bottom lip, his dark blue eyes fixated entirely on the display. His jaw tensed as he watched you tend to another man’s anatomy, all while his own iconic Bullseye mask remained perched casually on the crown of your head like a ridiculous beanie.
"Okay, we need a new plan," Alexei tried to nod, his massive, boozy body thoroughly beaten and leaking blood into the dirt.
"Nah—no new plans. That thing's too powerful," Walker sighed, his large hands clutching the pathetic ruin of his tactical shield.
"We just need to regroup and think—" Alexei tried again, his stubborn, Soviet-era optimism entirely unaligned with the reality of the crater behind them.
"This isn't regrouping. We're not even a team," Dex cut in sharply. His voice was a flat rasp as he slid his solitary firearm back into its chest harness, his aching, bruised musculature dropping into a rigid, defensive stance. All hope he was foolish enough to have in the gas station was gone.
"Of course we're a team! We're the Thunderbolts!" Alexei yelled, the delusion so thick it forced a loud, unbridled scoff from your throat.
"I don't know what that means," Bucky exclaimed, his expression darkening with a deep, historical exhaustion.
"It's her pee-wee soccer team-thing," Ava tried to explain, her voice flickering with a fatigued, erratic latency.
The argument that followed instantly degenerated into a frantic, overlapping chorus of panic. Everyone was yelling over the other with no apology until the sheer volume of the yelling finally snapped your remaining patience.
"There's no regrouping! He turned John's shield into a taco! And look at my gun!" you shrieked, hoisting your disfigured, custom submachine gun into the light. The sterling metal permanently warped with the deep, violent imprints of Bob's physical superiority.
"Oh my god, stop! There is no us, there is no we!" Yelena suddenly exploded, her voice carrying the absolute, suffocating weight of a defeat that reached back into her very childhood. "Bob changed into that thing, and there's nothing any of you can do about it!"
"And what did you do, exactly!?" you countered instantly, your painted pink fingernail pointing directly at her face. "Because I seem to remember you getting your ass beat way worse than mine!"
"Yeah! I suck! I'm terrible! We're all shit!" Yelena screamed back, her face flushing with a raw, unvarnished venom bathed in exhaustion. "You're not a hero! You're not even a good person!"
You grimaced, your features pulling into a genuinely offended scowl at the blunt, unglamorous evaluation.
"Alright, go easy on her," John Walker intervened, his hands lifting in a half-hearted attempt to dispel the sudden volatility of the Russian's anger.
"Oh, so what, you're nice now!?" she bit back, her eyes flashing with a terrifying malice.
John slowly turned his head, his wide eyes landing on Dex, the closest variable to him in the immediate space. Silently signaling a bewildered disbelief at the scale of the emotional outburst. Dex merely allowed an uncontrollable, sinister smirk to tug at the corner of his bleeding lip, his entire posture explicitly projecting that he wanted absolutely no legal or physical part in this.
“So it's my turn now?” John asked.
"No, you know you're a piece of trash, Walker. So does your family," Yelena delivered the final, crushing blow.
"Jesus," Dex muttered under his breath, his brows lifted imperceptibly and your jaw dropping in offense for John.
"We're all losers. And we lost."
With that grim, definitive finality, Yelena turned and walked away into the urban sprawl. You didn't hesitate; pivoting sharply on your chunky heels, you began to trudge in the exact opposite direction, your pleated mini skirt swirling with the momentum of your own tantrum.
"Where to now?"
Dex’s tall, imposing frame appeared seamlessly at your flank, his long legs instantly matching the lazy, deliberate rhythm of your stride. He didn't frame the words like a question; it was a flat, possessive statement of fact. It carried the certainty that whatever destination your brain decided on, his body would follow.
"Well, I need a new gun. And I want a taco," you shrugged indifferently. Dex offered a single, understanding nod.
Two blocks away, you both found yourselves in the vinyl-wrapped interior of a greasy, fluorescent-lit diner. It wasn't a taco establishment, but the fading neon sign in the window had promised a good milkshake, which was good enough for you. Ignoring the overt, lingering stares of civilian patrons, who were understandably alarmed by a six-foot scarred assassin sitting next to a half-naked woman in a pink bikini, you slid onto a chrome bar stool. Dex claimed the seat immediately beside you, his large hands settling on the counter.
"Are you okay?" he asked. The syllables were stiff, delivered with the awkward, hesitant cadence of a man who possessed absolutely no blueprint for treading on sensitive emotional terrain. The hesitation wasn't born from an uncertainty regarding your physical state. He knew you were fine, he simply just didn't ask people if they were okay. In his universe, targets either lived or died. But looking at the tight line of your shoulders, his fractured mind had deduced that this was the correct, human protocol to initiate, even if the underlying sentiment felt entirely foreign beneath his skin.
"Yeah. Yelena's right. I'm not even a good person," you shrugged it off with a lazy indifference, wrapping your fingers around the cold glass and taking a slow, rhythmic sip of your vanilla milkshake. "And I'm okay with that," you added, your doe eyes tracking the condensation down the glass.
Dex went quiet, his analytical brain turning the statement over like a complex equation. "Why?"
"I can't handle being America's sweetheart," you confessed, the words carrying a rare, unpolished truth. The mere conceptualization of it, being anchored to a rigid, moral team where you had to behave, follow a script, and act with selfless restraint. It was a suffocating, unbearable prospect.
"We are who we are," Dex nodded. The statement was absolute, a cold comfort born from a man who had finally stopped trying to force his broken pieces into a normal template.
"And I'm not sorry I took your kill," you chimed in, your tone instantly shifting back to its signature, provocative sweetness.
A genuine, slow-burning smile spread across Dex's scarred face, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he looked down at his own drink. "No... I didn't think you were."
"I would've gotten you too, if none of this shit fucking happened," you hummed.
Having thoroughly finished the contents of your own glass, your roaming gaze landed on his milkshake. Without a single shred of respect for personal space, your manicured fingers plucked your red straw out of your empty glass and slid it directly into his, leaning in close enough for the scent of your perfume to collide with the metallic edge of his cologne as you began to drink.
Dex didn't flinch. He didn't pull away. Instead, his large, calloused hand reached up, his fingers sliding against your hair as he wrapped his palm around the dark blue fabric of his mask, lifting it off your head like a hat.
"Nothing's stopping you now, angel," he hummed, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that sent a sudden, dangerous spark straight down your spine.
"Hey!? I liked that!" you protested, reaching for the hood as he twirled it around his fingers. "And you're wrong."
His sharp brows furrowed, the system of his mind slightly disrupted by the contradiction. "How?"
"There's this annoying feeling now... like, like I can't just end it that way. That you shouldn't go out that way," You expressed, your voice tight with a genuine, thoroughly frustrating confusion at the uninvited moral latency currently taking root in your brain.
A dark, mocking glint danced in Bullseye’s eyes. "What? Does it ache right here, Love?" he mocked softly.
Before you could dodge, his large, heavy palm slid across the exposed skin of your midriff, settling flat and warm over your bare stomach. The sudden, intense proximity of his touch sent a visceral jolt through your nervous system, and your thighs subconsciously pressed tightly together against the chrome base of the stool.
Your mouth opened to deliver a sharp, defensive retort, but the words were violently severed as a sudden, concussive rumble of chaos began to stir outside the diner windows. The civilian patrons let out a synchronized gasp, scrambling toward the glass as the distant sound of detonations and screaming echoed down the asphalt.
"Trouble in paradise," you calculated down to, your eyes tracking the plumes of dark smoke rising toward the neon skyline.
"I can think of ten other bad things we can do instead of that..." Dex murmured, his gaze shifting from the window back to your face. He nodded toward the back exit, his mind instantly mapping a path that involved leaving the city to burn while the two of you discovered exactly what happened when two monsters stopped pretending to be soldiers. A slow, sinister smile flashed across his scarred face, an unsettling predatory expression that should have terrified you, but instead it felt entirely beautifully fitting.
The temptation was immense. God knows every subcutaneous instinct in your blood desired nothing more than to slip into the dark with a man who looked at you like you were his entire universe. But as you stared into the fractured blue of his eyes, that small, stubborn voice in the back of your head, the one that had felt a fleeting, lonely warmth while army-stomping up a concrete shaft with a group of rejects, spoke up. And somehow, against every law of your selfish, bulletproof physics, it completely overpowered the rest of the noise.
"We can't leave the team hanging," you sighed begrudgingly, letting out a heavy, dramatic breath of utter exasperation.
Sliding off the bar stool, your small, perfectly painted hand slid into his large, calloused palm, your fingers locking tightly around his as you began to physically drag the massive, muscular assassin toward the front doors of the diner. And Dex, with a slow, resigned exhale that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle, simply let you.
The bell above the diner door jingled a useless, cheerful note as you burst through the threshold, the neon-lit sanctuary instantly dissolving into a gray, suffocating landscape of dust and screams. Your scuffed heels skidded over loose gravel just in time for your acute vision to map the immediate layout of the street.
Across the avenue, the rest of the team was violently strained against a massive, shearing wall of concrete that had sheared off an office building, currently teetering at a devastating angle above a trapped, weeping civilian woman.
"Move!" you shrieked, playfulness vanishing in a fraction of a second as the bootleg serum in your veins surged, elevating your central nervous system to a state of roaring, singular focus.
You and Dex arrived at the structural ruin simultaneously, a synchronized strike of absolute physical momentum. Your small, unarmored hands slammed flat against the freezing, jagged stone right alongside John Walker’s straining shoulder, your hyper-dense musculature locking into place as Dex wedged his broad frame directly beside yours. His large, scarred forearms flexed, veins bulging against his tactical gear as he poured every ounce of his mortal strength into the vertical plane. Together, a group of rejects and assassins heaved against the dead weight of the world. With a deafening, grinding screech, the massive slab shifted, toppling backward away from the civilian and shattering into harmless, billowing plumes of white powder on the asphalt.
Instantly, the atmosphere shifted. The trapped woman scrambled to her feet, her face streaked with tears as she looked at the bizarre, mismatched group.
"Thank you! Oh my god, thank you!" she sobbed, and a small, scattered chorus of surviving onlookers joined in, cheering openly for the monsters who had just played the part of saviors.
Slowly, you lowered your hands, turning your head in absolute, unvarnished confusion toward Dex. He looked equally, profoundly perplexed. The white target emblem on his mask sat static as his empty eyes darted across the appreciative crowd. Neither of you had ever received positive feedback so openly, so unprompted, without a script or a handler validating the kill. It was a completely foreign, intoxicating frequency.
But the celebratory high was violently short-lived.
The air temperature plunged into an impossible, sub-zero freeze. Several sharp gasps and panicked screams cut through the dust, and ahead, a towering, absolute darkness began to bleed over the high-rises. A void of crushing anti-matter that defied the afternoon sky. The sheer, existential weight of it pressed down on your chest, and for the first time in your bulletproof existence, a visceral, heart-hammering panic rippled through your core.
You took a staggered step backward, your heels clicking weakly against the debris. Instantly, Dex’s heavy, solid arm snapped out, anchoring you firmly against his side. You looked up at him through the gloom, your doe eyes pleading, silently begging the one man who never missed a shot to never, ever let that abyssal thing consume you, as a far more troubled vulnerability awakened deep within your mind.
You looked back up at the hovering, empty silhouette at the center of the dark.
"I think Bob's not playing nice anymore..." you whispered, an uncharacteristic, terrifying edge of genuine fear slipping into your melodic voice.
The street erupted into instantaneous tactical pandemonium. Walker and Bucky were already yelling, their voices booming over the din as they commanded the civilian crowd to get inside the nearest shelter before the growing void could swallow the block. But amidst the sweeping panic, your gaze drifted to the center of the avenue.
Yelena was standing there, her unmoving figure a monument of shock against the oncoming blackness. Then in the next microsecond, a distortion rippled through the air, her solid form was there, and then she was simply gone, sucked violently forward into the unknown of the dark.
Your brain barely registered Alexei's distant, heartbroken roaring before your body acted on pure, human instinct. You tore away from the perimeter, sprinting directly toward the mouth of the void after the fallen widow. And Dex, without a single syllable of hesitation, was running right beside you.
As the threshold of the dark swallowed his physical frame, Benjamin Poindexter’s internal universe fractured entirely. He didn't fully comprehend the reason why he had been compelled to move, why he had abandoned a perfectly viable exit vector to sprint into a cosmic meat-grinder. But his body had long since decided its primary directive: it would follow you into the dark, regardless of the chances of survival.
His mind twisted under the sudden manipulation of Bob's influence, the reality around him bending as his thoughts turned violently inward. He was deeply, agonizingly confused by these new moral tugs. He had spent his entire life operating as a perfect organic machine, requiring a rigid script, a Julie, a Fisk, a bureau manual, to dictate what was acceptable. He didn't like people. He didn't form attachments to the meat he was assigned to clean.
Yet, your chaotic, hyper-feminine frequency had dug so deep beneath his skin that the song of your pink heels had become his new operational baseline. He liked you with a terrifying, possessive intensity because you didn't ask him to be a hero, nor did you look at his scars and see a monster. You saw an equal. You were just as beautifully broken, just as desensitized to the slaughter, yet you moved through the world with an unbothered, radiant happiness that he had never been permitted to possess.
And that cheering... the sound of the civilian woman thanking him... it had sparked a dangerous, volatile wildfire within his compulsive brain. For a man who had spent his existence begging external forces for a sign that he was doing a 'good deed,' that unscripted, organic praise was the ultimate narcotic. He realized, with a sudden surge of adrenaline, that he would do absolutely anything, he would dismantle a god, he would march through hell itself, to receive that kind of unvarnished validation again. To be worth something.
But the void didn't offer redemption; it offered psychological execution.
The gray dust of the street suddenly dissolved, and Dex found himself violently wrenched out of the present, waking up with a gasping lurch on the floor of his old, sterile apartment in Hell's Kitchen. He was entirely alone. The air smelled of stale rain and old paper.
Through the dim, unfeeling light, he watched in horror as a familiar silhouette began to systematically destroy the room. It was him. A younger, unscarred version of himself, still clad in the rigid, pristine tailoring of his FBI tactical uniform. The younger Dex was unhinged, his eyes wide with a manic, obsessive-compulsive desperation as he smashed furniture, searching for an order that didn't exist in the world.
Suddenly, the younger iteration stopped. He drew his standard-issue sidearm, his large hand trembling with a pathetic, agonizing instability as he aimed the barrel directly at the framed photograph of Julie affixed to the wall.
The sight struck the current Dex like a physical blow to the sternum, transforming the space into a theater of pure torture. He hated this exact point in his timeline. He loathed every single second of that stifling, rigid era, the suffocating loneliness, the terrifying mental instability. The pathetic dependency on a woman who was nothing more than a temporary bandage on a bleeding psychic wound. He watched his younger self weep in the dark, a visual manifestation of how desperately unstable and unloved he had felt before the world had finally broken him completely. He wanted to scream, to reach out and shatter the mirage, to pull his identity out of the pathetic trap of his own history.
The younger himself stood frozen in the center of the decaying room, his knuckle whitening against the trigger as the barrel of the service weapon migrated from the wall, finding a jagged home directly beneath his own chin. His fractured, inexperienced mind had seemingly calculated a final, desperate answer to the static noise. The current Dex explicitly looked away, his jaw clenching as he refused to witness the pathetic, unvarnished depth of his past misery. Even though he knew that he had never possessed the nerve to pull the trigger.
"Dex!"
The heavy wood of the apartment door violently bursted open, splintering against the drywall as you crashed through the threshold.
More importantly, you were bleeding. LoveShot Killer never bled. The universe simply didn't permit the ballistic physics of flesh-ripping trauma to apply to your augmented skin. Yet, here you stood, looking entirely worse than he had ever seen you. Your meticulously styled hair was completely disheveled, your glossed lip split open, and deep, blooming cuts traced the exposed skin of your thighs. Worst of all, a dark, smoking bullet wound marred the toned surface of your stomach, the left strap of your top torn and dangling loosely off your bare shoulder.
The visual layout of your desecration struck Dex with a sudden, roaring wave of overwhelming anger. It wasn't an offense born from your sudden indecency; it was a found protective fury directed at whatever psychological entity had dared to lay a hand on you.
You ran straight past the current Dex, your awareness entirely blinded by the illusion of the void as you scrambled toward his younger, uniform-clad self.
"Hey— what're you doing?" you asked, your frantic gait halting as a pained gasp escaped your throat. "Stop being silly, okay?" Your sweet voice broke under the weight of the exhaustion, your painted fingers desperately reaching out to pry the cold metal of the service weapon from his stiff fingers.
"I-I'm here now, s-so we can go and find Yelena, okay?" you whispered urgently, your chest heaving beneath the ruined lace as you pleaded with the ghost.
"Who are you," the younger Dex spoke. The syllables were flat, dead, and entirely devoid of the predatory heat you had grown accustomed to.
You took a staggered step backward, your perfect brows pulling together in a grimace of profound distaste. You hated that look in his eyes, the hollow, mechanical emptiness that mirrored a clinical ledger. Those weren't the same electric, obsessive blue irises you had looked into across the diner counter merely twenty minutes ago.
"What?..." you muttered, unsure.
"Who are you!?" the younger Dex yelled, his posture dropping into an aggressive, unrefined sprint as he approached you with a manic malice.
He didn't waste a single second evaluating the outcome. His choice was instantaneous, a reflex born of his need for your safety. His solitary firearm raised, aligning perfectly with the space of the room, and he fired a single, deafening shot.
Bang.
You flinched violently as a hot spray of crimson landed across your cheek. Downward you stared, your wide, terrified eyes tracking the heavy thud of his body hitting the linoleum, your brain temporarily freezing as you tried to register the paradoxical sight of Dex killing himself to keep you unblemished.
Dex stepped forward through the smoke, his large, rough hand reaching out with a rare, uncharacteristic gentleness to guide your chin upward, forcing your gaze away from the corpse until your eyes finally locked onto his current, scarred face.
"That version of me died a long time ago, okay?" Dex muttered softly, his large thumb brushing against your cheekbone to smear the wet blood away from your skin. It was the only clumsy, unscripted statement of reassurance his damaged psychology could offer.
You let out a ragged breath, your chest heaving as the sheer horror of the void threatened to pull you under. But looking at him, really looking at the rigid intensity in his irises, the terror in your veins suddenly mutated into something else entirely. A sharp, intoxicating surge of adrenaline. You didn't want comfort; you wanted to feel alive, to feel the brutal, grounding heat of the only person who understood the dark as deeply as you did.
Your fingers curled into the fabric of his tactical shirt, aggressively yanking him down to your level. The collision of your lips was instant and unrefined, a heated, desperate crash of friction that tasted faintly of copper and vanilla. Dex let out a low, guttural growl in his throat, his restraint snapping like brittle glass. His large hands instantly abandoned their gentleness, trapping the sides of your face and sliding into your disheveled hair to tilt your head back, burying his mouth into yours with a fiercely hungry desperation.
It was intoxicating. The world around completely dissolved as he dragged your body flush against his broad chest, his heavy grip sliding down to clamp around your waist, lifting you slightly off your platforms. Every subconscious barrier you both possessed collapsed. You whimpered into the kiss, your mouth parting to invite the suffocating, dark heat of him, your hands moving frantically up his neck to anchor him closer, needing to consume him just as badly.
The heat turned dangerous, spiraling rapidly out of control as Dex backed you into the nearest wall. The thud of your spine hitting the plaster didn't even register. His hand slid beneath the torn bikini, his calloused palms searing against the bare skin of your breast, his thumb digging into your hip with a bruising, desperate possessiveness that signaled he was ready to completely lose his mind right here in the ruins of his past. The kiss grew deeper, heavier, a breathless, bruising dance that went entirely too far, blurring the line between survival and volatile ruin.
A sharp, concussive rumble from the hallway outside rattled the floorboards, the reality of the collapsing void violently bleeding through the threshold.
The sudden vibration forced Dex to tear his mouth away from yours with a sharp, ragged gasp. His forehead dropped heavily against yours, both of you breathing the same hot, frantic air as his chest heaved against your ruined lace. His pupils were completely dilated, dark and wild with an unadulterated, dangerous desire that took every ounce of his remaining physical leverage to actively restrain. Your breathing increased to a frantic, erratic tempo, lungs hitching as you stared up at his flushed, scarred face, your heart hammering a relentless rhythm against your ribs.
"What happened, hm... Love?" Both hands cradled your face again, softer now.
"It was so awful...... I was in the lab and I had to watch myself get locked in the room and it was dark—then I started attacking myself!?" you heaved out in a sudden, panicked rush of words, your knees buckling slightly under the weight of the memory.
Dex muttered a succession of soft, low-register shhs into your disheveled hair, his broad chest anchoring your trembling frame against the concrete reality of his presence. His blue eyes darted across the ruined apartment, instantly finding a discarded, oversized button-down shirt draped carelessly over a baseball trophy in the corner. The fabric was stained with old, dried patches of his own blood, an atrocity in his historical world back then, but a thoroughly familiar, comforting sight in his current line of work.
Carefully, his large hands gathered the heavy shirt. He wrapped the oversized cotton around your bare, bruised shoulders, his fingers meticulously helping your small hands slip through the wide sleeves before he began to work the plastic buttons up to your collar, concealing the ruined pink lace beneath his own dark history.
"Let's go find the others, okay?" he nodded, the directive surprising his own internal computer the moment the words left his lips. He wasn't a team player. He didn't care about the meat. But as he looked down at you, swaddled in his clothes and breathing against his chest, he knew he couldn't leave the puzzle unfinished.
The illusionary walls of Dex’s old apartment didn’t shatter so much as they bled away, dissolving back into the shifting, unstable architecture of Bob’s fractured psyche. Navigating the void was like wading through a fever dream, but together, the two of you managed to anchor the crumbling pieces of the others.
Ava was discovered first, trapped in a terrifying, perpetual loop of high-frequency phasing, her form screaming as she rapidly disintegrated and rematerialized. It wasn't until you stepped into her space, your voice cutting through the static to explicitly remind her that she was no longer trapped in the clean-room labs of her childhood, that her molecular matrix finally stabilized. Bucky was worse. He was marooned in a desolate, frozen play of his own past atrocities, surrounded by the bleeding ghosts of the Winter Soldier program. The heavy weight of his historic damnation was palpable, but your presence offered an uncharacteristic, grounding sanctuary. You reminded him, with a blunt, unvarnished simplicity, that he had no choice that they made him do it. The ancient tension in his shoulders finally fractured just as Alexei and John stumbled into the perimeter, their own psychological hazes clearing in the wake of Bucky’s dissipating nightmares.
But finding Yelena required traversing the deepest, most concentrated gravity of the anti-matter.
She was entrenched at the absolute epicenter of the darkness, standing guard over the trembling figure of Bob. The real Bob. He was slumped on the floor of his own mental prison, his eyes wide and leaking brilliant, terrifying tears as he looked up at the mismatched, bruised assembly. He literally could not believe you had all descended into the abyss for him.
"We're a team, right?" you said, the sentiment delivered with a half-hearted, beautifully cynical shrug as you adjusted the oversized sleeves of Dex’s button-down shirt. The sentimental beat was violently cut short by your own impatience. "Now do that god-thing and break us out of here!"
"It's not that easy—they just get worse and worse, and I—" Bob’s voice cracked, a devastating thunder vibrating in his throat.
"We'll go through it together," Yelena nodded, her voice a solid, unyielding anchor as she stepped directly into his collapsing perimeter.
The space violently rejected the intrusion. The wall's physical form convulsed into visual manifestation of his internal monster, the Void itself. Shadows with the density of collapsing stars erupted around, lashing out with whiplash velocity to tear the room apart. The transition from a quiet mental prison to a raging internal warzone was instantaneous and brutal. As You anchored yourself in Bob’s collapsing perimeter, the darkness didn't just lash out, it organized itself. From the bleeding shadows surrounding the real, trembling Bob, a towering silhouette materialized. It was the absolute presence of his devil: a faceless, undulating mass of pure anti-matter. The shift in the architecture was instantaneous and violent, the metaphorical walls of the mind hardening into an industrial, sterile labyrinth.
The illusionary sky vanished, replaced by low-slung, humming fluorescent lights that flickered erratically as the fabric of the facility began to fold in on itself.
Bob didn't possess the roaring, cosmic majesty of a god here; he was stripped entirely of his radiant luminescence, reduced back to a trembling, frantic man trapped in a plain cotton shirt. He was locked in a brutal, desperate grapple with a towering, shifting silhouette of pure anti-matter, his own shadow,. Bob was flailing, his pained, unrefined punches cutting through the air as he desperately tried to beat back a psychological parasite that was physically suffocating him.
"He's killing himself!" You yelled over the rising, mechanical screech of the collapsing room.
The rest of the team was instantly pinned down by the sheer atmospheric pressure of the failing reality. The floorboards buckled upward, and gravity wells erupted across the laboratory floor, anchoring Dex's heavy frame and dragging Ava down as her phasing matrix flared out. Heavy steel support beams groaned and snapped overhead, dropping a cascade of sparks and debris that threatened to bury Walker and Alexei entirely.
But the restraint didn't hold. Not after what you all had just crawled through to get here. With a collective, roaring surge of adrenaline, you broke free from the spatial gravity. John shoved a falling concrete pillar aside with his bare shoulder; Bucky and Alexei used their combined physical leverage to clear a path through the warping space, and Dex moved with flawless, unblinking precision, using a discarded piece of rebar to block oncoming threats.
You and Yelena spearheaded, rushing headlong into the heart of the epicenter where Bob was violently collapsing under the weight of his own shadow.
"Stop! Bob, stop!" Yelena commanded, her voice an desperate, unyielding anchor as her arms wrapped securely around his right shoulder, using her entire body weight to stall his frantic, self-destructive momentum.
You slid across the cracked tile floor, your platforms skidding through the white dust as you threw yourself onto his left side. Your solid arms locked around his trembling forearm, your fingernails digging into the fabric of his sleeve as you forcefully halted another pained, desperate punch aimed at the empty, suffocating air.
"We've got you! Just hold on!" you shrieked over the roar of the void, your face flushed with sheer physical exertion as Dex materialized directly behind you, his large, steady hands slamming onto your shoulders to add his massive, stabilizing weight to the human anchor.
Bucky and Walker dove into the huddle next, their massive hands locking onto Bob’s chest and legs, physically pinning the man to the floor to separate him from the dark entity feeding on his panic. Alexei, the father and guardian that he was, hunched over the mess you all were, serving and protecting in the way that he knew how. The eight of you became a single, solid monument of support. Broken pieces whole by each other.
"Look at us!" Yelena ordered, her eyes burning into his leaking, terrified gaze. "We're leaving!"
The declaration was the final, critical and promising in a way the void could not assimilate. A collection of selfish, discarded assassins putting their bodies on the line for a man they barely knew. The towering shadow let out a final, deafening screech of frustration, its form fading into a harmless, dissipating thread of dark smoke as Bob’s chest heaved in a massive, ragged breath.
Gravity snapped. And it was like waking up from a dream. The heavy, real-world atmosphere of New York rushed back into your lungs with a vengeance. The eight of you collapsed in a tangled, bruised heap onto the freezing, unpolished floor, gasping for air as the cold starlight of reality finally washed over your faces. The velocity with which the universe could pivot from an apocalyptic nightmare into a complete, bureaucratic farce was a testament to the joke of their existence.
With Dex’s steady, calloused hand anchoring your weight, you rose from the cold concrete floor of the real world. Your knees were still a little weak from the phantom trauma of the void, but the mocking cadence of your voice returned the exact millisecond reality solidified around you.
"Dammit, you're still alive," you joked, a soft, melodic huff escaping your lips as you looked up at him through your disheveled hair.
"Unfortunately," he shot back, the gravelly register of his voice carrying an uncharacteristic fondness. His eyes crinkled at the corners as he stared down at you, his obsessive internal self completing a massive, definitive calculation. He was keeping you. How could he not? You were a beautiful, bulletproof thing that had literally shot its way through his worst nightmares just to drag him back to the light.
His analytical gaze wandered downward, mapping the damage. The blood-stained shirt he had buttoned around you in the dream was gone, vanished back into the confines of Bob's mind. Your own baby-pink top remained violently torn, the strap dangling loosely over your bare shoulder in an explicit invitation to indecency. Without a single word of hesitation, Dex stepped intimately behind you, his large, scarred forearms wrapping securely around your chest to serve as a firm, protective barrier against the elements. He would have to find you a completely new, meticulously styled uniform later, but for now, his body was your defense and he already liked the way you fit into him.
Your eyes instantly locked onto the distant, unmistakable silhouette of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine barking orders across the plaza, and a sudden, subcutaneous heat flared in your veins. You began to stalk forward, Dex seamlessly moving with you, his muscular form still securely wrapped around your short body as the rest of the broken team rallied into a tight, unified formation alongside a confused but conscious Bob.
"I'm going to kill that person," you nodded, your voice taking on a dangerously sweet edge.
"We stick together from now on," Yelena declared, her hand firmly pulling Bob along as she assumed the baseline orientation of a leader.
"We can't kill her. We have to take her in," Bucky countered, his cybernetic arm gleaming under the city lights as his moral programming reasserted its heavy, unyielding authority.
"Maybe we break a few bones," Alexei offered with a boisterous, entirely unbothered grin, cracking his massive knuckles in anticipation.
"I'd like to kill her," Ava nodded flatly, her form stabilizing as desperately tried to bend his taco-shaped vibranium shield back into a practical shape, failing miserably with a quiet grunt of frustration.
Valentina, sensing the immense threat marching down the avenue, scrambled backward into the false, temporary safety of a haphazardly strung perimeter of construction tarps. The team surged forward, preparing to execute a thoroughly unglamorous, heavy-handed arrest, only to be violently ambushed by a blinding, deafening wall of flash photography and shouting members of the press.
You felt Dex freeze instantly behind you, his large chest tensing against your back as the intrusive media lights washed over his scarred face. Your small hand subtly reached behind his hip, your small hands sliding into his low-slung utility belt to wrap around the grip of one of his blades. You weren't above a televised murder. In fact, you thought it would look rather spectacular on the evening news.
"For years, I've been secretly developing a new age of protection," Valentina’s voice boomed through a microphone, her performative, corporate-politician smile turning radiant as she completely hijacked the narrative in front of the rolling cameras. "Today, the citizens of the United States needed that protection, and thanks to my hard work, they got it. Ladies and gentlemen, meet... The New Avengers."
The sudden, sheer absurdity of the announcement hit your brain with the force of a physical blow. The blade slipped from your fingers, dropping toward the pavement before Dex’s secondary hand snapped out with whiplash velocity, catching the steel mid-air while his other arm remained firmly across your chest to keep you modest in front of the flashing lenses.
Your perfect brows raised to the clouds as you looked around at the mismatched, bruised assembly of rejects standing in the glare. Everyone was equally, profoundly confused.
A silent, completely bewildered laugh broke free from your throat, your shoulders shaking against Dex's chest. An Avenger? You? A hyper-sexual, bulletproof liquidator who wore lace to a black-ops infiltration? It was a hilarious, beautiful joke. Dex tried desperately to suppress the amused, sinister smirk tugging at his mouth, quickly deflecting by looking over at Walker, whose face was frozen in a comical state unvarnished cognitive dissonance next to Ava’s utterly stunned, wide-eyed expression.
As the media circus swarmed around Valentina, the chaotic, bright energy of the plaza seemed to soften into something entirely different, something uniquely quiet and grounding.
You leaned back into the heavy, solid density of Dex’s torso, your laughter fading into a soft, genuine breath of contentment. For the first time in your life, the silence that usually amplified the terrifying static in your brain didn't arrive. The frantic, subcutaneous urge to keep killing, to keep hunting just to survive the noise, simply wasn't there. The static had been entirely replaced by the steady, rhythmic thump of Dex’s heart against your shoulder blades and the unpolished, exhausting warmth of the people standing beside you.
You looked over at Yelena, who was currently nursing a bruised jaw but looking back at you with a faint, weary smirk of mutual understanding. Bucky stood half a step away, his cybernetic arm catching the starlight, his posture no longer carrying the crushing, solitary weight of his past atrocities. They were all pieces of trash, as Yelena had so eloquently put it, discarded side characters, losers who had been marked for deletion by the very system that created them.
But as Dex’s grip tightened just a fraction more around your waist, a possessive, silent promise cementing itself between the two of you, you realized that being a loser didn't feel so bad when you were surrounded by your own specific brand of freaks. You weren't America's sweethearts. You were never going to be good people who followed a script or sought the sterile validation of a heroic title. You were the Thunderbolts. You were broken, desensitized, and thoroughly unhinged, but as the eight of you stood under the flashing lights, whole by each other, you knew the universe was finally going to have to make room for the supernova unleashing.
Bonus :)
The heavy, reinforced doors of the infamous Midtown high-rise groaned as they were forced open, the pristine, high-tech sanctuary of the former Avengers Tower completely vacant and swaddled in dust sheets.
"Are we even supposed to be here?" Ava asked, her voice flickering with latency as she stepped tentatively into the cavernous, sleek lounge space.
"You heard what they called us earlier- The New Avengers. Why wouldn't the Avengers live in the Avengers Tower!?" you justified, offering a brilliant, entirely unbothered grin that completely brushed past the legal definition of breaking and entering.
"Seems perfectly reasonable," Bucky nodded, his eyes gleaming under the ambient security lights as he casually tossed his tactical duffel onto a multi-million dollar sofa.
"Where are you going," Dex’s low voice cuts through the spatial geometry of the room. His large, calloused hand snapped out with precision, his fingers catching the bare skin of your upper arm the exact second you attempted to slip away into the shadows of the corridor.
"Exploring!" you chirped, turning your head to pout at him.
"I'm coming with you," he stated flatly. It wasn't an offer; it was a baseline directive. He wasn't letting his bulletproof girl out of his sightline.
Behind you, the team seamlessly dissolved into their own pockets of the tower. Alexei and John immediately migrated toward the industrial kitchen, the super-soldiers already bickering over the expiration dates of the high-end rations left in the sub-zero refrigerator. Ava collapsed onto the expansive couch with a long sigh, her form finally resting against the cushions, while Bob quietly located the remote, turning on the massive television screen with the wide-eyed wonder of a man re-learning how to be human. Near the primary terminal, Yelena and Bucky were already huddled over the control panels, their heads together as they systematically began rewriting the building's security codes to ensure Valentina’s cleanup crew could never breach their perimeter again.
The transition into this bizarre, unauthorized new life was characterized by an unglamorous peace. When the bureaucratic handlers eventually attempted to deliver the official, standardized "New Avengers" uniforms. Stiff, unyielding suits of muted Kevlar and patriotic insignias, you had rejected the garment with a tantrum that nearly resulted in the delivery agent getting a pink dagger thrown through his shoe. You absolutely refused to hide behind the heavy, suffocating cowardice of standard armor.
Instead, a compromise was meticulously engineered in the privacy of the tower's lower levels, drafted entirely between yourself and Benjamin Poindexter.
The resulting uniform was a magnificent, feminine middle finger to military pragmatism: a baby-pink, high-collared crop top with form-fitting long sleeves, constructed from a dense, blast-resistant weave that left your midriff entirely exposed. Emblazoned directly across the center of your chest was a stark, stylized symbol, a pristine target, mathematically perfect in its form, but curved beautifully into the distinct shape of a heart.
Dex loved it. His obsessive mind was completely captured by the design; it was a flawless, physical synthesis of his rigid, ordered universe and your chaotic, beautiful self. It was a literal bulls-eye, a love invitation to the world to try their absolute best to hit you.
The eight of you were undeniably fucked up. There were no grand illusions of moral nobility or pristine redemption within the walls of the tower; you were a ragtag parade of weaponized rejects, side characters who had survived the cleaning house. Dex still spent hours silently realigning the silverware in the kitchen to achieve perfection, and the static in your own brain still whispered of the dark labs.
But as you sat on the edge of the polished mahogany bar, swinging your new platform heels while Dex meticulously strapped a fresh dozen of your custom enameled knives around your low-slung belt, you realized the noise didn't matter anymore. It was nice to finally be around a group of people who looked at your broken pieces, looked at the wild, predatory gleam in Dex's blue eyes, and didn't ask a single damn question. The team didn't blink at whatever it was that was happening between you and Dex. There were no juvenile jokes from Alexei, no mocking smirks from Yelena, and John Walker never offered a single, unsolicited piece of advice about workplace decorum. Nobody taunted you when Dex spent forty-five minutes straight meticulously sharpening your throwing knives at the kitchen island, his eyes tracking your movement across the room with a laser-focused, protective intensity. Nobody commented when you casually lay across his lap on the massive plush sofa while Bucky and Ava argued over what to watch on the monitor.
It simply made sense. In a world that had spent years trying to break, script, or eliminate every single one of you, you had found an equal who looked at your unhinged, bulletproof nature and saw an absolute certainty. The rest of the Thunderbolts understood what it meant to be an anomaly; they weren't about to interrogate the physics of the only two people who could look into Sentry's void and find a way to make it hotter.
The New Avengers and Bob will be back?
=========================================
A/N: So that was long as hell, anways! I hope you all enjoyed it! Depending on how busy I am with fashion school I may continue this story some more bc I really wanted to write some smut but I left like it just didn't blend into the setting. Let me know what you think and I'll see yall in the next one! Which may or may not be a Clark Kent story because I'm working on a Supergirl corset irl for the new movie! Also I didn't proof read anything so if a few italic points are missing my bad gang.
For those that don't know I originally started writing bc of kpop lmao. While I think I'm too grown now to fully immersive myself in the culture, I wouldn't be opposed to writing again. Right now I've mainly been listening to BTS again because bro WTF HAPPENED to half the group's I used to love???? Like they're either disbanded or there's crazy scandals. We're not even gonna get into NCT omfg, ik that's how majority of my followers found me, they were my favorite.
Anyways, lmk if yall even remember my kpop era bc that was like ages ago.
Introduction: After a particularly hard day dealing with social media and learning how to navigate being a superhero with no secret identity, Clark decides that you need a little bit of slice of home. The only problem is that you're a city girl through and through.
In other words, Clark rushed to your apartment at two in the morning because "your smile wasn’t real" in the single photo you sent him.
CW: NO USE OF Y/N OR ANY NAMES, Your features AREN'T described, Reader has space powers, somewhat established relationship with Clark, Fluff, Mild Angst.
ONESHOT but if you're interested in reading more of this AU check out
You sent Clark a selfie at 2 a.m. Lips glossed to liquid shine, lashes curled into soft daggers of seduction, hair spilling across silk pillows like midnight waves. The photos shimmered with practiced perfection. Chin tilted, collarbones kissed by dim shine, a gaze balanced between regal amusement and something inviting. Chewing on your perfectly painted nails as you awaited a response, anxiety began to build in the bellows of your stomach. It wasn’t a calculated move like you'd done with guys in the past, no. This was just a subtle update, because that was what coworkers did, update each other…
Clark, bleary-eyed, blinked at his phone in the low light of his bedroom. His reply was instinctive. A sleepy shot of tousled curls, cheek pressed to a pillow, tie discarded on the nightstand like a surrendered weapon. But even half-awake, his eyes caught it. The subtle tightness around your smile, the way your gaze skirted the lens. Something in him twisted, unshakable and protective as the pull of gravity itself.
He lingered on the photo a second too long, heartbeat stumbling into resolve. Without hesitating, he rose from tangled sheets, the cool kiss of the floor against bare feet shocking him fully awake. In a breath, the city blurred around him. Mirroring reflections and whispered midnight breezes. Seconds later, he stood outside the towering silhouette of your highrise. He knew almost immediately which floor you were on, windows glowing soft rose and deep magentas against Metropolis’s horizon. Your signature colors.
Inside, the elevator hummed a polished lullaby of old money and curated luxury. He impatiently bit the inside of his cheek, foot tapping on marble. And then he was at your door. An expanse of polished white inlaid with mother-of-pearl swirls that caught the hallway light like moonlit waves. You opened it faster than he expected, surprise flashing across your perfectly painted features. "What are you doing here!?" You demanded, voice sharp with shock, the brittle margin of someone caught unguarded. One moment you were staring at his photo, the next he was here. Was he in your mind!?
"I came to check on you." He said simply, words soft yet immovable as bedrock. For a moment, you faltered, defiance crumbling, eyes wide, then narrowing in deflection. "At two in the damn morning?" You shot back, voice feathered with disbelief and something more vulnerable lurking underneath.
Clark stepped in without invitation, gaze sweeping over the space. A ridiculously vast living room spilling with ornate furniture upholstered in dusky pink velvets and sharp, modern blacks. Soft spotlights traced marble statues and crystal vases. Shadows gathered like Hades' presence in high corners of Persephone's home.
"Yes.” He answered, quiet certainty in every syllable. "Because you sent me a picture, and your smile wasn’t real."
You scoffed, too quickly, too rehearsed. "I take hundreds of selfies, Clark. It’s a part of my job." But the words dissolved before they could finish. Caught by the weight of his gaze, unflinching, kind, unbearably sincere.
"Even the brightest star burns out sometimes.” He murmured, stepping closer until the city glow behind him haloed your silhouette in a soft pink.
You sucked in a shaky breath, fighting the urge to drop your eyes. "Had a rough PR day. Happens. I can handle it."
"I know you can.” He said, voice deepening into something that wrapped around you, warm and steady. "Doesn’t mean you have to do it alone."
For a beat, you stood frozen as an angel painted in archaic portraits, wings clipped, heart hammering. Then you turned sharply, striding to the coffee table where your phone lay blinking with a thousand curated notifications. Fingers tight, you snatched it up, thumb hovering over the feed that had once felt like home and now felt like a stage. Without asking, Clark stepped closer and gently took the phone from your grasp. He pressed the button, screen going black. "Just for tonight.” He murmured, words low, almost an apology. "Let the world keep spinning without you."
"That’s not how it works, Clark.” You whispered, voice catching on the edge of confession. "If I stop, they all keep talking. And I… I hate being silent."
"Then let them talk.” He countered softly, reaching past you to the sleek kitchen island. His hands moved with unexpected grace, finding a porcelain teapot painted in swirling roses. Filling it from the filtered tap before setting it to boil. "They’ll talk whether you’re happy or not. But you-" His gaze pinned you, gentle yet unyielding, "-deserve to breathe."
You opened your mouth to argue, words trembling at the precipice, then closed it. Silence pooled between you, delicate as spun sugar. Minutes stretched before steam curled from the pot, the floral scent of chamomile spilling into marble and velour. Clark poured the liquid carefully into two delicate cups, their edges traced in pale gold.
"Here.” The very definition of a man murmured, pressing warm porcelain into your hands. You curled your fingers around it, nails clinking gently against the glass. The heat seeped into your skin, thawing something tight around your chest.
You sat, perched on the low blush velvet chaise, him on the cool marble floor, back resting against the ottoman. The city glowed beyond floor-to-ceiling windows, lights reflected in glass like constellations caught in a crystal sphere. You exhaled, slow, makeup smudging faintly where your knuckles brushed under your eyes. "Normally I’d post something funny. A picture. A caption." Your voice was softer than you meant it. "But tonight it just… felt different." Clark listened, really listened, the way old trees might listen to the wind. His silence wasn’t empty; it was space you could finally fill with truth.
"It always felt safe, you know? The likes, the noise. It was mine." Your words splintered under the weight of truth you’d never dared say aloud.
"I know that sounds ridiculous but it makes me feel less alone… And it sucks to say that, to be so known but still be so lonely. Because that shouldn't be me.” You whispered, voice raw. You were Metropolis’s glowing star, the one who always had a smile on her face, the one that always forced everyone to shine with her and not behind her. It was hard to say that you hated being without it, the stage presence, the press tours, the interviews after a fight…
"This is still you.” He replied, voice so gentle it was almost breaking. "Maybe it’s the part I’ve been wanting to see most."
You drew a trembling breath, lids falling half-closed. Then, as if gravity itself pulled you, you leaned forward, resting your head against his shoulder. Warmth met warmth. Your perfume mingled with chamomile steam and the faint scent of rain still clinging to his hair. Clark lifted a hand, brushing tangled curls behind your ear, then, in a moment unguarded and impossibly soft, pressed a kiss to your forehead.
Woah what!? your mind screamed, shock flaring electric across your skin. But your body didn’t flinch. Instead, your breath caught, then released, long, shaky, like stepping into freedom after too long in a gilded cage.
"Maybe you need a break from all of this," Clark murmured, thumb tracing an absent path along the edge of your temple.
"I love this!?" You protested, voice breaking around the admission. "The cameras, the rush, the stage- it’s not fake for me. It’s- it’s who I am!"
"I never said you didn’t.” He answered gently, words threaded with something raw and honest. "Just… I’m heading back to Smallville for the weekend. Do you want to come with me?"
The question slipped free before he could catch it, heart thundering. Too forward? Too much? But it was too late. You froze, cup balanced between palm and trembling fingers. Home. He wanted to bring you home. The thought ricocheted through your mind. Was this a soft gesture? Or was this more? You searched his face and found only open sincerity, blue eyes unguarded and terrifying in their tenderness.
"I…" you began, words sticking like honey. Your pulse rattled in your throat. "Yeah. I’d like that."
A breath he didn’t know he’d held eased from his chest, shoulders loosening. "Okay," he murmured, relief folding his voice into quiet warmth.
"Okay.” you echoed, softer still, as if testing how the word felt on your tongue. Outside, the city still roared and sparkled, but inside the pink-lit hush of your highrise, calmness outweighed it all.
♡
The Kansas sun rose like molten spilling across endless fields of green, glinting off dew-beaded corn stalks and turning dust motes into drifting specks of amber. The truck Clark drove rattled gently along country roads, the ancient suspension creaking with every dip and rut. Beside him, you sat perched on cracked leather seats worn soft by decades of sun and seasons, overdressed in a perfect pink sundress that shimmered like spilled champagne against a rustic picnic table.
You kept shifting, crossing and uncrossing your legs, tugging at the hem as if you could will your nerves to calm down. The humidity curled the edges of your hair, softening the precise perfection of your morning routine into something almost real.
“Does the air always smell like... grass and cow?” You asked, voice pitched between complaint and curiosity. Clark chuckled, the sound low and fond. “That’s the smell of home,” He said, eyes on the road. “And you look real nice.”
“It’s a shame it’s too hot for it.” You countered, but a flush rose to your cheeks anyway, betraying that part of you that liked hearing it.
You turned onto the Kent driveway, gravel popping under worn tires. The house stood as it had for generations, paint fading gracefully, windows catching morning light like old gems. The porch swing swayed faintly in the breeze. The sight made Clark’s chest loosen with memory and quiet pride. You stepped out, stilettos instantly sinking into the soft earth. “Are you kidding me?” You hissed, balancing awkwardly. Clark offered his hand. You hesitated, then took it, your manicured nails cool against his callused palm.
The day unfolded like a patchwork quilt, each hour stitched with mismatched colors. Your laughter was loud as spilled pearls when the cow’s tail flicked mud onto your shin. Your shriek when a rooster flapped too close, feathers catching in a sunbeam. Your grimace of horror at finding fresh eggs still warm in the nest. “There’s poo on it!” You insisted, voice shrill, almost affronted by nature’s refusal to follow your rules. Clark laughed until his ribs ached, each sound loosening the years of restraint knotted into his chest. Yet, between your complaints, there were quieter moments. When you checked on him mid task, your fingers finding the worn wood of the barn door, tracing initials carved decades ago. When you paused to sort out the buttons of a faded scarecrow, its straw hat askew like an old man asleep in the sun.
And then there was Martha.
You tried to prepare yourself, shoulders squaring, smile polished bright enough to blind. But Martha Kent saw past sparkle and posture in a single glance. “Oh, sweetheart, you must be hot in that dress,” Martha said, voice warm as fresh bread. Her accent heavy with southern hospitality. “Come help me snap beans in the shade.”
You sat together on the porch, the quilt beneath you soft from countless washings. You fumbled, breaking more beans than you saved, but Martha only chuckled, her patience boundless. Stories flowed. Of Clark as a boy, of harvest seasons, of love that held firm through droughts and storms.
“He doesn’t bring many people here,” Martha said, hands moving with steady grace. “Means he sees something real special in you.” Your breath caught. For once, words failed you, leaving only a quiet, naked hope beating in your chest.
Later, when the sky deepened to violet and stars pricked the horizon, Clark led you past the barn, where the grass whispered against your ankles. You lay on a patchwork quilt, the same one his mother had made when he was small and the same one she had draped over you earlier. Your fingers grazed the fabric as you looked up, tracing the lines and stories of his life that were woven into it.
You tilted your head back, lashes brushing your cheekbones. The cosmos stretched infinite above, a familiar tapestry to you, but somehow, here, softer, closer. As ridiculous as it may be, being two individuals who can fly up to the heavens, stargazing.
“What is this place to you?” You asked, voice hushed by the immensity of the sky. You felt as though you had to ask. The Clark you observed here seemed calmer, happier.
“Where I learned to be Clark,” He answered, eyes reflecting starlight. “Not Superman. Just… me. Where my parents taught me that being good mattered more than being strong.” You listened, heartbeat slowing to match the calm that settled over the fields. The world felt smaller than usual, quieter, like you could hear the earth itself breathing beneath you.
“Okay.” You declared. “Maybe tomorrow I’ll try not to scream at the chickens.” His laugh rumbled low, and he turned to look at you, eyes soft as the Kansas dusk. “I’d like that.”
You lay there longer than you meant to, your hair spreading across the quilt like spilled ink, his hand resting near enough to feel the warmth of your skin but not quite touching. Fireflies blinked above the grass, tiny lanterns dancing in and out of shadow.
“You know,” You murmured, “I thought I’d hate this. The dirt, the quiet. But... it’s kind of beautiful.”
“It is,” he agreed. “Especially with you here.” The words slipped out before he could catch them. Your breath hitched, but you didn’t look away. Instead, you reached out, fingers brushing his wrist, the contact feather-light but electric.
“I never thought someone like me could belong somewhere like this,” You confessed, voice softer than moonlight on water.
“And I never thought someone like me could have someone like you here.” He replied, the honesty in his voice cracking something open in both of you.
In the quiet that followed, the wind shifted, bringing the scent of cut hay and summer rain. Crickets sang in the dark, the sound ancient and constant. And in that patch of Kansas earth, under stars older than memory, two hearts edged closer to something neither could name, but both recognized by feel alone.
When you rose to head back, your dress was creased, a smear of grass on the hem. For once, you didn’t brush it away. And Clark, watching you walk beside him through the firefly-lit field, thought you had never looked more perfect. In the house, Martha watched from the porch, a knowing smile ghosting her lips. And the wind, carrying whispers of grain and night-blooming flowers, seemed to sigh around you, as if even the land itself hoped this moment might last a little longer.
♡
Morning unfurled over Smallville like a warm breath, sunlight catching on the dew still jeweled along fence posts and flowerbeds. The town’s weekly farmers market stirred awake under striped awnings and hand-painted signs, the scent of fresh bread and lavender soap drifting through the warm breeze.
You walked a half step ahead of Clark, sandals tapping on the sun-warmed pavement, your baby blue dress fluttering at your thighs like a flag of soft rebellion against the rustic quiet. Around you, stalls bloomed with color: baskets of peaches blushing gold and rose, mason jars of honey so thick they caught light like amber, wildflowers spilling from tin pails in tangled bouquets of daisies and thistle.
You paused, for just a moment at each table. Fingers ghosting over a jar of blackberry jam, a hand-carved wooden comb, a floral teacup chipped at the rim but painted with such delicate care it seemed to hum with its own small story. And always, Clark watched. Not staring, not intruding, but quietly noting the slight softening of your gaze when you lingered too long, the subtle hitch in breath when you brushed a velvet petal or caught the buttery scent of fresh croissants.
“Pastries for brunch.” You announced, chin tilting up, voice high but threaded through with an unspoken desire to share something of your world with him. “And fresh flowers. Hydrangeas if they have them.” You felt familiar here, amongst commodities that weren't manufactured but individually made. Shopping always brought a sense of happiness to you, and you felt that knowing rise of your dopamine begin.
Clark’s answering smile was softer than dawn on cornfields. “Hydrangeas. Got it." He murmured, and with an ease born of practice, took the paper-wrapped bundle of blooms from your arms, balancing it against the growing weight of bags already draped across his broad shoulders.
You fussed, of course. Complaining gently, that your hand was getting tired, that the sun was too bright for proper lighting, that the pastries were going to look too rustic next to your curated brunch spread. But the complaints were softer than usual, frayed at the edges with something like contentment.
You posted: a shot of sugar-dusted pastries nestled in a paper box, the swirl of cream glistening under sunbeams; a video of flower petals trembling in the breeze; a close-up selfie framed by the delicate blush of peonies and the deeper plum of ranunculus. Captions polished to playful perfection, hashtags neatly lined up like soldiers. But there was one photo you didn’t share. Taken quickly, almost shyly, when Clark turned to you, his smile open and utterly unguarded. A moment of such quiet tenderness it caught your chest between beats. You kept that one, saved to a folder no algorithm would ever touch. Just his eyes crinkling at the corners, the easy curve of his mouth, sunlight catching in his dark curls.
It wasn’t the grandeur you usually curated, but it felt truer than any magazine spread. A secret constellation mapped only for you.
You stopped by a potter’s stall, where mugs glazed in shades of moss and river-stone gleamed under the day sun. You picked one up, thumb brushing the uneven rim. “This is ugly." You said, but your voice lacked conviction, and you turned it over in your hands more gently than you meant to. Pink. But a muddy pink. The mug and handle in the shape of a heart.
Clark’s brow rose, amusement flickering in his gaze. “Ugly?”
“It’s charmingly ugly.” You corrected quickly. “Like... perfectly imperfect.”
“Sounds familiar.” He teased, words so soft they brushed you like the whisper of linen.
Your gaze darted to his, caught off-guard by the warmth there. “Shut up.” You murmured, but your lips curved anyway.
You bought it, of course. And three more mugs, and a lopsided bowl painted with lavender sprigs. More than you’d ever need, but each transaction came with a conversation, a compliment, a laugh shared with the vendor that left them smiling even after you moved on. Coins exchanged for pottery, but what you really bought was brightness, a little blessing left behind at each stall.
Clark, trailing beside you, carried every fragile treasure without complaint, his hands large yet impossibly careful. The sight tugged at something in you: that a man who could stop meteors could cradle chipped ceramics like they were shells.
You bought honey too, drawn in by the warm glow in glass jars and the older woman selling them, whose voice wove stories of bees and clover fields. And when you pulled out a sleek card, Clark gently laid his hand over yours, offering a crumpled bill instead. “Let me.” He whispered, and you understood, letting the moment pass unspoken.
In between stalls, you kept up the performance, pouting at your phone, narrating in playful scorn how the humidity ruined your hair, how the sun made you squint. But more often, the camera lowered to your side as your gaze wandered across ivy-draped awnings, dusty chalkboards advertising lemon tarts, the weathered lines on a potter’s hands.
At one stall, a little girl offered a bracelet of woven grass and daisies, petals already beginning to brown at the edges. You hesitated only a breath before lowering yourself to the child’s eye level, the sundress spilling around you like liquid blush. “For me?” You asked, voice gentler than you used for any camera.
The girl nodded, wide-eyed. You smiled, a smile without angle or calculation, and slipped the bracelet over your wrist, daisies brushing your pulse. Clark watched, chest tightening at the sight. At that moment, you weren’t Miss Universe or a celebrity. You were just you: warm, flawed, and radiantly alive.
As midday settled, you found a bench under an arch of climbing roses, petals drifting like soft confetti. You insisted on arranging freshly bought sweets for photos, the box turned just so, flower stems fanned behind them. But your laughter was freer, the tilt of your chin less deliberate. Clark bit into a pastry, powdered sugar dusting the corner of his lip. “You’ve got—” you started, leaning forward, thumb brushing it away without thinking. Your mind froze, skin tingling where you touched, eyes meeting in a moment that hovered, delicate as a held breath.
You broke it, both laughing too loud, the sound spilling into warm air. And yet, the spark lingered, warm and secret.
By the end of the day, your hands were full: flowers, honey, pastries, imperfect mugs wrapped in paper. And Clark carried them all, weightless in his arms, but each object meaningful because you had chosen it.
“Not bad for a dusty little town, huh?” he teased gently.
“Shut up.” you retorted, rolling your eyes, but softer than before. Your gaze swept over the market. Painted stalls, sunburned faces, laughter spilling like water, and something inside you softened further. “It’s… sweet.” you admitted, voice almost shy.
You lifted your phone for a final photo, the golden haze of afternoon catching on Clark’s profile. This one you didn’t post, just saved silently into the growing folder of him and you. A keepsake of sunlight, freckled smiles, and the first day you let yourself see past what the world demanded of you.
And as you walked back to the truck, flowers bobbing gently with each step, the market behind you hummed on, unaware it had become, for you, something quietly extraordinary.
♡
AN: If you'd like to read more check out MISS UNIVERSE though please note that it's not written quite the same because this story is actually a snippet taken from a 36k worded novel I wrote for me and my friends haha. Anyways let me know what you guys think! I'll see you all in the next one!
Introduction: You don’t remember where you went. But your body does. And whatever touched you out there… it never let go...
In which Clark Kent learns not to dim his light around you.
WC: 9.8k (Full Story)
CW: Smut with Plot, Shy x Confident? Introvert x Extrovert? More Intimate than exciting Superhero stuff, No use of Y/N, Your features aren't described aside from the fact that your eyes turned pink, I haven't written in 2 years so I'm really rusty. 5th picture above is your suit.
The crown feels heavier than you thought it would. Standing center stage with a smile so big your cheeks begin to strain, but you refuse to let it drop as you stared out past the blinding lights into the crowd. Your eyes tried to focus onto something, hoping to calm yourself from the overwhelming emotions overtaking you. But everything beyond the floodlights is a blur, hundreds of people you can barely make out watching you in this moment. This was your moment.
The host’s voice echoes somewhere far behind your shoulder, drowned out by the thunder of applause and the high, glimmering chime of celebration music. This was it. this was your legacy. All the years of struggling with self image, bandaged by the knowing feeling that you were going to be something fucking amazing, is being proven correct right now as you stood victorious. The lights above burn warm against your skin, dazzling, overstimulating, yet somehow still not bright enough to ground you.
Your heart hammers violently in your chest, like it’s trying to escape. Flashbulbs burst like miniature stars, catching the proud smile you wore. Practiced, poised, perfect. You stood with shoulders back, head held up high, like perfection personified. Years spent training for this moment. And now finally it was happening like a dream cone true. You wear the pain in your heels with pride as you walked, savoring every moment of it because it reminded you of the journey it took to get here. You learned how to walk like a goddess and speak like a diplomat. And now here you were. The whole universe just crowned you its queen.
The crown is nestled into your scalp, digging slightly beneath the hairspray and bobby pins. You ignored the sight discomfort. This was a symbol of your triumph. Of everything you endured to get here. There was no time to complain. The cheers, the glamour, the applause, It made you feel like you were on top of the world. Untouchable. Like the world moved for you and around you as you stood center of it all. Inhaling deeply as you try to steady your stance, a bouquet of flowers pressed into your arms, cameras zeroing in. A trembling breath escapes your lips, chest tight beneath the fabric of the shimmering pink gown you wore. Maybe it’s just the adrenaline. Maybe it’s-
The stage shakes.
Not a rumble. A lurch. Like something sacred just snapped in the bones of the world. Brows furrowing in confusion as you stared at the shaking floor. Uh oh...
Confusion flickers through the air like static. The host stumbling on their words briefly before stopping all together. You glance upward, instinct tightening your spine. Something’s wrong. You can feel it before you see it. Your body knows before your mind catches up.
And then it happens.
A soundless tear cleaves through the sky above the audience, impossibly high, impossibly wide. A jagged gash in the fabric of existence, a cracking center but glowing around the edges in a multitude of different colored fog, like the eye of a dying star. Violet lightning crackles outward, warping light, bending time. You don’t understand what you’re seeing.
But you understand what it means...
You start to run.
Too late.
The ground splits open a few feet away from your heels and you lose your footing, stumbling backwards with a thud. The bouquets scatter, rose buds discarded. The crown clatters and bounces on the floor. No! You were not going to let it get away. In the midst of panic as everyone around you begins to run for safety, you crawl after the crown. Your crown. It would've been an injustice to yourself if you let it go just like that. Your body jerks forward as another shockwave rips through the ground but you manage to grab hold of the sterling silver, holding it for dear life.
Gravity turns cruel, and you don't fully process what was happening as the world whirls past you and your ears ring from the quake. It takes a second or two, or three, before you snapped back into reality and a scream breaks from your throat. A wild ragged thing, so raw and filled with terror as the floor crumbled and yanked you into it's depths. You couldn't think, couldn't do anything as you looked up and prayed. Prayed to who? God? The universe? You don't know.
Then him.
A flash of crimson and cobalt blurs towards you, faster than any plane, human, hell even faster than most meta humans. An hand outstretched is all your vision zeros in on as you fell. You extended a hand up, the other tightly clutching your crown to your chest. It was your only comfort in this moment, you couldn't let it go. You can feel the rush of need and panic in the air but you couldn't decipher this tension in your stomach. He'll save you. He'll catch you... He'll fly faster to get to you. The words repeated in your head as he seemed to grow further away. Blue eyes wide with focus and maybe just a little bit of horror. Superman. The symbol of hope.
But hope doesn’t reach you in time.
You fall.
The light devoured you. The world went quiet. Before everything stopped.
Hope couldn't save you...
Clark doesn’t sleep after that night. How could he…. He replays the moment over and over again in his head, hearing the scream echo behind his eyes every time he shuts them. That flash of terror on your face. How close he came. He should’ve caught you. He always catches them. But he didn’t catch you.
For seven days, you were lost. The world mourned the death of their Miss Universe. It was quiet after that, no one said anything. They couldn't, they didn't know how to. Clark wrote about you on the paper, a small memorial that he hope would bring himself peace. But yet somehow he couldn't shake off the all encompassing sense of sorrow that choked him, failure clawed at his mind. Screaming the word over and over.
Then the sky opened again, like heavens gate blessing the earth with an angel. A calm Sunday morning for Metropolis as the community tries to rebuild is suddenly disrupted by a supernova.
There’s no ceremony this time. No eyes watching in awe. Only clouds tearing apart as something pierces the atmosphere and hurtles downward in a streak of pink flame. Fear brews in Metropolis as the comet is spotted. The devastating events of last week still rest heavily on people's minds. Somber tones intertwine with the quiet, there was no screaming… Only silence as everyone turned to the sky. Clark took to the clouds in an instant, following after the beaming glow.
Her body drops from the stars like dead weight, limp and dead looking with your arms slack. Curls of stardust and cosmic smoke follow you like a veil, swirling around your body. Crashing into the soil just outside Metropolis with enough force to shake the ground for miles. Kicking up rubble and scorching the earth, the shockwave rattles the skyline and Superman had to fight against it as he neared.
In the center heart of the destruction, you stirred. Finger tips tightening on the metal of the crown you still clutched.
Your chest rises, barely. Eyes flutter open, blinking against the harsh light of a world you no longer recognize. Stars fill your vision, stars that don't exist on the morning sky but you can see them so clearly. A gasp rips out of you, one that escaped like you’ve never breathed air before. A high pitched string of rasping heaves tears through your lungs. The man of steel lands hard. Throat tightening with constriction as a boa of anxiety creeps around him like a vice. Clark stares at you like he’s seeing a ghost because in a way he was. His lips move, your name a broken prayer on them, but he doesn’t say it out loud. He looks at you there, glittering pink dress torn, hair messy, body pristine and an iron grip on that damn crown. The woman stared up at him and for a moment his instincts to save and protect stills. Those eyes.... The eyes that burned themselves so deeply on the cortex of his brain, that he's seen in his nightmares.
They glow.
Pale and iridescent pink. Otherworldly. Wrong. Very wrong.
She stared past him. Through him. Dazed. Empty. But not helpless. You try to speak, but your voice fails. You feel like you’re burning from inside out. But not with fire. Not with heat. Something deeper. Something like power. A searing reminder that your soul was torn open and patched together with something else. You remember flashes. Pieces. Screaming through stardust. Silence that made you forget your own name. Something touching your mind and changing it. That day you prayed to many. To the gods, to Superman, to the universe. And one of them answered.
The male stepped closer, this was not the same girl who fell….
She was something new. Something the universe ripped apart and forged back together and hurled back onto Earth without warning. Clark sees it in your eyes, the power. The shift. The ghost of what you were clashing with whatever you’ve become. He whispers your name again.
You don’t answer.
Because you’re not sure who that even is anymore.
♡
"Miss Universe."
Clark Kent sits opposite you in a small, private conference room tucked into the upper floors of the Daily Planet. The city pulses outside the glass windows behind him, buzzing with its usual electricity. But inside, the air is still. He's watching her now. Pretty in pink, legs crossed like a proper lady, that crown still perfectly perched atop her head. He couldn't quite decide if she’s being playful or arrogant or with her smile. Maybe both.
You don’t blink under his gaze. Why would you? You’ve stared into the maw of the universe and came back blinking pink stardust beyond your lashes. One more pair of eyes trying to dissect you? Child’s play. Still, there’s something about him, that quiet steadiness, those eyes that see more than they say, that tugs at the armor you’ve spent the last month carefully crafting.
He's just hot and you're intrigued, get a grip.
Clark clears his throat and taps the recorder. "Just for the record," he says gently.
"Anything off limits?"
You flash a smile, perfectly lined lips curving like the crescent of a sickle moon. And her eyes shined. Those pink eyes. Clark clears his throat quietly.
"No, I'm all open Mr. Kent."
He forces a smile at that. The reporter’s smile. Tight-lipped. Patient. But behind the glasses, he's analyzing you already. How fun, you thought as your smile widens just a bit.
“Right,” he says. "Then let’s start simple. You disappeared for over a week. No explanation. No trace. And then you fell out of the sky, literally. What happened out there?" His voice is low and firm, heavy but not accusing or pressing.
She leaned forward slightly, letting the light hit her just right, the silk of her dress shimmer like a galaxy woven into fabric. “Oh, I just took a shortcut through the edge of existence and came back radiant. The show must go on after all.”
He watches you. Not with awe. Not even with skepticism. But with concern. It’s subtle, but you clock it. However you've trained your face not to react.
“…So you don’t remember?”
You hum softly. "I remember enough. But I don't think the world is ready for that story yet."
There it is. A flicker across his face. The pull of his brows, the way his large frame settled back, hand resting under his chin. He didn’t expect that. And he could already tell that you were going to be a headache. You don’t just dodge. You drop breadcrumbs and skip away, leaving him to trail after you. A calculated dance. Clark leans forward now, changing his posture with his elbows on the table, fingers laced.
"Try me."
She looked at him for a beat too long, like you’re trying to decide what kind of truth he deserves. Her fingers toyed with the edge of her dress. His eyes immediately noted it before darting back up.
“They told me I was gone for a week.” You begin slowly. "But time out there doesn’t move the same way. It stretched and collapsed in on itself. I watched suns die. I saw things bloom out of the void... things that don’t have names. I met something. someone… and it looked at me like I was a puzzle it forgot it had started.”
Clark doesn’t interrupt. He just listens.
“I came back different.”You admit. “I didn’t choose to be like this. Whatever I am now though.... I think I'm starting to love it.”
Your smile falters a bit in the beginning, just slightly, and he catches it before the dazzling grin pulls itself back. “You make jokes, but you’re scared.” He says quietly.
You look away, out toward the skyline. “Wouldn’t you be?”
Clark waits.
You sigh. "Who I am now... It goes beyond just some pageant queen."
There’s a tremble in your fingers, just for a second as you feel an overwhelming sense of what? Power? Self love? But then again you've always been rather self assured-absorbed-. You don't know what you feel but it was threatening to break out of you. Resting your palms on your lap to try and steady whatever it was flowing through you as you straightened your posture.
“And you still wear the crown.” He says.
You glance up at it. “it was the only thing keeping me sane while I floated in space.” A simplified answer, one drenched in humor because you didn't want to explain how this crown meant everything to you now. You didn't want to tell him that whenever you were scared of what you were becoming you'd put it on to remind yourself of who you were, what you did before this. A brief memory flashed across Clark's mind. Of her falling and how she held onto that thing so close to her chest like it was her own heart.
The silence thickens.
He leans back, just slightly, a slow exhale leaving his lungs as he locked eyes with her. “What changed?”
You hesitate. The pageant smile tries to rise again, but you swallow it. “Out there, I felt small. Insignificant. And then, I felt… chosen. Not by God. Not by destiny. But by something vast. Like the universe took one look at me, broke me open, and filled the cracks with something it thought I needed. But then again I've always felt like I was meant for great things... now I just have more proof of it.”
That was complete honesty. You've always had a big personality, thought very highly of yourself ever since you were little. And maybe in some strange way you've always felt chosen… But out there… You didn't like feeling so meaningless. Not when you'd spent years building yourself into the woman that you are now.
She was so confident it almost borders arrogance but in some strange way it was endearing. Clark thinks for a moment, he gets it... sees how she's gotten this far. The glits, the glam, the big doe eyes that held the world. But the man doesn't voice those thoughts. Instead he asks gently. “Do you know what it puts in you?”
You shake your head. “Not yet. But it’s waking up.”
A beat.
Clark straightens slightly, the journalist mask slipping for a moment. “Do you feel dangerous?”
She laughed, quiet and bitter and he squinted. “I feel capable. Does that scare you?”
He doesn’t answer. The woman reached up, adjusting the crown. Not because it needs it, but because the weight centers you.
“They want me to walk in parades. Kiss babies. Keep smiling. They want the spectacle. They don’t want the truth.”
“But I do." He says and there was something about his voice, the bravado married to it that made you believe him.
“Then tell it right." You say, eyes sharp. “Don’t make me some tragic beauty who touched the stars and came back broken. I’m not broken. I was never broken..”
He nods, slowly. “You said you feel like you were chosen. Does that come with a purpose?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I am the purpose.” She tilted her head.
Clark scribbles something in his notebook. You let him. You’re giving him just enough. Letting him think he’s pulling it from you, when really, it’s all carefully chosen. Still, somewhere deep beneath the performance, the pain simmers.
You’ve woken up screaming more than once. The silence still haunts your dreams. The moment your feet left that stage, when you fell through that rift, you felt something else watching. Still watching. The pink glow in your eyes isn’t just cosmetic. It burns, sometimes, when your heart races. You’ve shattered cement. Melted steel. Bent reality. But no one knows that part.
Not yet.
Clark puts down his pen.
“What would you say to the people who still see you as just Miss Universe?”
You smile again. This one is slow. Sharp. No longer the queen on stage. More like the calm before a storm.
“I’d say they’re lucky that’s all they see. And I’d tell them to enjoy the illusion. While it lasts.”
His eyes narrow slightly.
“And when the illusion fades?”
Your voice drops, soft as a whisper. “Then they’ll see what the universe made me into. And they’ll realize the crown was never the power and Miss Universe isn't just a title. It’s me and it's who I am.”
Clark is quiet for a long time. You think maybe he’s done, maybe the questions have dried up. But then he looks at you differently. Not like a journalist. Like something else. Something... familiar. And your eyes narrowed.
“You remind me of someone.” He says.
“Oh?”
He nods. “Someone who had to pretend to be normal for a long time, just to survive. Someone who learned how to smile to protect the people around them.”
You study him now. Really look. And suddenly, the glasses, the stiff posture, the humble voice... It all feels like a costume. Like a very large man was trying to dim his own light for the world. Clark Kent shrinks himself to appear smaller, whilst you, well you thought you were larger than life.
“You’re not what you seem either." You say.
Neither of you smile.
The silence stretches, not heavy this time, but warm. Honest..
“You don’t have to wear that crown if it’s too heavy." He says with an earnest, like it was meant to reassure you.
Your response is instant.
“I deserve it, I'm never giving it back.”
Five minutes pass into their small break.
Clark’s still standing in the hallway, just around the corner, notebook clutched tightly in one hand. He replays every word you said. Every pause. Every glance. Inhaling a deep breath as he composed himself. For a moment there he felt himself begin to slip, like he wanted to burn with you and collide in interstellar. It was silly, he spent years making sure he wasn't too much, yet with her he almost felt like not enough. Like he had to match her sun.
Outside the window, clouds gather.
And the pink in your eyes burns a little brighter as he enters the room again.
The interview continues, this time the tone is lighter, focusing more on her personal life. Her charm and cosmic edge loosened just a bit, while he begins to see the truth beneath the performance. Clark leans in, a slight grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Is there a reason you always deflect serious questions with sarcasm?”
You smirks. “Deflection? Mr. Kent, I call it charm. You should try it sometime. Might help with that whole brooding thing you’ve got going.”
He chuckles, just under his breath. “Not brooding. Observing.”
“Mm.” You tilt your head, eyes sparkling, glimmering with playfulness even. “And what exactly are you observing right now?”
He meets your gaze steadily. “That you’re performing. And that behind the glitter and gowns, there’s someone terrified of what she brought back.”
You blink. Just once. “Maybe. Or maybe I just like watching smart men squirm.” When did this get so flirty? He thought. One moment they were having a conversation so heavy it nearly suffocated him and now they were going back and forth… But he couldn't deny that it was enjoyable talking to her. She made it easy.
Clark raises a brow. “That so?”
You lean forward, a mischievous gleam in your eye. “You tell me, Mr. Kent. Feeling a little warm under that collar?”
His jaw tightens slightly. He adjusts his glasses. “I think this interview’s heating up, sure.”
A laugh breaks free from your plush lips, light and melodic. Your hand tightens slightly on the armrest. Oh he liked that sound… Flirting keeps the edge at bay. Keeps the fear from taking shape. You keep dancing around the truth, but Clark… He’s not here to dance. And maybe, you don’t want him to be. The male taps the edge of his notebook, his voice calm but probing. “You keep saying you came back different. What exactly does that mean?”
Tilting your head to the right as you study him. “Do you always ask your interview subjects to strip down for you like this?”
His brows furrow. And for a split second you could've sworn you saw a blush creep onto his cheeks before he desperately tried to hide it by pushing his glasses up. “Emotionally, you mean.”
You flash a grin. “Sure. Let’s go with that.”
Clark looks at you over the rim of his glasses, steady, unfazed. “You’re deflecting again.”
“I flirt,” you correct. “Big difference.”
He bit into the bait, the first real crack in his professional composure. “Is that part of the strategy?”
You rest your chin on your hand, eyes narrowing playfully. “Maybe it’s just how I keep the upper hand. Everyone else sees me as sparkles and speeches. You? You look like you want to dig until something bites.”
“I do.”
That lands. The air changes. You straighten in your seat, eyes fluttering.
“And if it does bite?” You ask softer now, teasing as if you're trying to lure him into the vast expanses of the enigma that was you.
“Ma'am a little love bite never hurt nobody.”
You stare at him, something tightening behind your ribs. God you wanted to gush and scream and call your best friend Sam to tell her all about this man. But instead you kept your composure.
“Brave man.”
He nods. “Just persistent.”
Leaning closer now, your voice barely above a whisper. “And if I said I remember what it feels like to fall through the stars? That I hear things now when I close my eyes?”
He doesn’t blink. “I’d believe you.”
You search his face, testing his sincerity, and find no fear there. No doubt.
“I don’t scare you?”
“You intrigue me.”
Your smile returns. Smaller. Realer.
“Careful, Kent. I might start thinking you actually like me.”
He flips a page in his notebook but doesn’t look away. “Maybe I do.”
The recorder between you keeps rolling. But for a moment, neither of you are thinking about the interview. The crown on your head. The past. The pain.
Just each other.
And maybe, what could come next.
♡
He hears the soft shift of air first, barely a ripple.
Then her voice, smooth as silk and sin “You made me look good.”
Clark turns midair.
She descends behind him like something conjured from a dream and maybe a nightmare. Floating. Balanced. Beautiful in a way that feels more dangerous than divine. The suit she wears gleams in the moonlight, sleek, skin-baring in a way that makes it impossible not to look… Pink metallic threads trace across her form like constellations etched into skin, like the universe itself dressed her.
You grins when you see the look on his face.
You float closer, deliberately, liking the slight delay in his reaction. He didn’t sense you… That’s the part that thrills you. He always senses everything. Except this. Except you. His eyes shift, first over your face, then to your hand. Not even daring to look at your bare thighs.
The article. His article.
The one about you.
“You figured it out.” He says, voice lower now, wary. Curious. Maybe a little impressed.
You flip through the paper between your fingers, letting it flutter in the night breeze. “I always do.”
Clark studies you like a riddle he wants to solve. “I couldn't sense you….” The words were spoken slowly.
Your smile sharpens. “That’s because I didn’t want to be found. You, however…”
“I never forget a face. Especially not one I wanna see in between my legs so bad.”
The words drop like a live wire.
He doesn’t flinch… doesn't even react. But his pupils do dilate. Just a little. And that was enough for you.
“You’re very forward.” He replies, voice steady. Almost too steady.
You close the distance, drifting around him like a planet orbiting its sun.
“I’m honest.” You murmur, trailing a finger just shy of his shoulder. “I don’t waste time pretending I don’t want things. Do you?”
He turns with you, following your movement. “Sometimes the truth complicates things.”
You shrug. “So does lying. At least mine feels good.”
Clark’s eyes don’t leave yours. “So this is what changed. This is what came back.”
Your light pink eyes glow subtly, the air around you shimmering. Clark takes in the way you seemed to exude celestial dust, magenta and sparkling.
“No.” You say, drifting in close enough that your breath touches his collarbone. “This is what was born. Out there.”
He glances down at you. “And what are you calling yourself these days?”
You smirk. “Haven’t decided yet. But don't worry, you'll be the first to know.”
He lets out the barest laugh, quiet and slow. “That suit wasn’t made for subtlety.”
You wink. “Neither was I.”
Then, in a blink, you take off blasting upward, a nebula trailing behind you like a comet’s tail. A parting gift. A statement. Clark watches until you disappear past the clouds. And for the first time in a long time, he’s not sure if he wants to catch up with someone, or just keep watching her fly.
Because this?
This was not just some girl who won a crown.
This was the woman who earned the name Miss Universe.
♡
She was already waiting for him when he landed on the rooftop.
Not in costume. Not in silk or sparkles. Just her hair tied up, in a soft pink hoodie clinging to her form. Her legs crossed as she sat on the ledge like gravity never really mattered. She looked so human compared to the all dolled up woman he was growing used to seeing on the tv. She didn't adorn the usually shimmering eyeshadow that was so signaturely her. Instead she sat there with a bare face in comfortable clothes. Clark thought she looked really pretty like this, he thought she looked pretty always, but her sitting here just existing…. It brought a sense of humanity to her. There was no performance or facade puppeting her, she wasn't the usually confident super with a penchant for finding trouble like it was in her name. She was just one of the people.
“You’re late.” You say without looking at him, your words cutting him from his thoughts.
Clark walks toward you, his steps quiet despite his heavy heart. “I wasn’t aware we had a time.”
You smile into your cup of ice tea, you weren't much of a coffee person and you had a slight addiction to the drink. “We didn’t. But I knew you’d come.”
He stops beside you, hands in the pockets of his jacket, as he gazes out at the skyline with you. Metropolis glows like it always does, too bright to sleep, too loud to forget. But up here, it’s different. Still.
“You’re not wearing the suit.”
You glance at him. “Neither are you.”
“Fair.”
The silence between you stretches, but this time it doesn't weigh a ton. It’s warm. Familiar. A routine has started to form between you two. Unspoken, delicate, but undeniable. He checks in. You let him. Sometimes. Other times you fly away, not because you didn't want to talk to him but because you liked the chase. The world knows your face now. There’s no hiding. Though admittedly you never really wanted to. Cameras follow you like satellites. Interviews. Brand deals. Editorial shoots. They call you “Miss Universe” now, unsurprisingly, because of how you fell from space like something forged in a super nebula. You liked to think it was because you earned the name and not because you were crowned in a pretty competition. You didn’t pick the name. But it suited you in more ways than one.
And the world? It eats it up.
“You’re adapting fast,” Clark says after a moment, sitting down with you without questions. You liked when he did that, just followed whatever you did no matter how strange it was.
“I always did like attention.” You loved it.
“But this is more than attention. You’ve got reporters hounding you. Protestors. Supporters. People obsessed with you. People terrified of you.”
She met his gaze, with a hum. And he hummed back. “And I smile for all of them.”
“You make it look easy.”
“It is easy.”
You were made for the public eye, with a personality that wasn't meant for the mundane life. And years of experience as a beauty queen. This life was practically perfect for you. Sure you stumble and there's a lot more about hero work that you need to learn. But you've always been honest to the public that you were here for them. Something in your voice makes him pause. You were so sure, so at peace with reality. He looks at you. At the giggling, happy girl with her issues and all that he's come to grow to like. At first he thought you were slightly ridiculous. Back before when he was just him and you were just you and your souls didn't know each other yet. Then he thought you were heartbreaking. Till Clark realized how you didn't like being seen as some broken shell of a person with issues seeping through her smiles. So you had a few problems, everyone did, why should yours be over analyzed. Now? Now he sees that this image isn't a shield for you to cower under. It was unapologetically you down to your core.
“Is it?”
You sip your ice tea, eyes softening. “It’s easier now. I used to think I had to split myself in half. Be the girl in the gown or the girl who hears planets groan in their orbit. But I’m both. Always was. They just... never had space for that kind of girl before.”
Clark nods slowly, eyes scanning your features. “You made your own space.”
You look up at him, your pink irises glowing faintly in the dark. “I can literally make space.” That makes Clark laugh before it dies on his throat. He doesn’t say anything for a beat. Just breathes you in. You smell like florals and something warm underneath, like stardust baked into your skin.
“How do you do it?” He finally asks.
“What?”
“Blend it all together. The fame. The power. The past.”
Letting out a slow breath as you place your cup on the ledge. “I stopped asking for permission. That’s when it clicked. I stopped apologizing for being too much. Too loud. Too proud. Too powerful. I've always known who I was, I'm not going to let this change it, if anything it fuels it. When I was a little girl I used to promise myself that I would be greater than the world.”
There’s a softness in your voice now. Not vulnerable. Just real as you think back to the past. All the confidence issues you had to work through to get to this point. All the years you spent doubting yourself before you surrendered and accepted yourself whole. The over dramatic, the anxious, the complex insecurities, you loved every bit that made you whole. Because it made you human.
“I don’t need them to understand me.”
He smiles. And it’s a full smile this time, rare and true. “You don’t.” You lean back on your hands, hair blowing gently in the wind. He watches you for a long moment.
“Do you still hear it?”
You nod. “In the quiet. Still whispering. But it’s softer now. Like it’s watching instead of pushing.”
“And what does it see?”
You turn to him. Smiling big. “A very hot woman who is doing a damn good job saving the world.” Clark laughs, shaking his head.
“I mean it.” You say, nudging him with your knee. “I came back different. Maybe even dangerous. But every day I wake up and decide who I want to be. Not what they expect. Not what they hope for.” Maybe you were crazy, sometimes you thought so. But thinking that you were crazy is easier than thinking about the fact that some cosmic being brought you back for a greater purpose. A purpose bigger than winning crowns or picking ball gowns. But hey, it did a damn good job proving what you've always known right. That you were fucking phenomenal.
Clark’s expression shifts, there's something deeper behind it. Admiration? Maybe. But there’s heat in there too, hidden behind his ocean eyes. You feel it rising between you two. The pull. The gravity. The intensity of whatever danced in this moment, it radiated in the air between you both. Electrifying as he leaned in closer just a little bit, but it was enough to pull you into his magnetic gravity. Then his voice drops and your knees feel like collapsing if it weren't for the fact that you were already sitting down. “And what do you want to be tonight?”
You tilt your head. “Hmm. Just a girl. Sitting next to a guy. Thinking about kissing him.”
Clark's eyes met yours in a heartbeat. The tension snaps tight like a wire. He'd like that. He decided. He'd really like that…
He swallows, slowly. “Oh, is that what you’re doing?” Blue eyes darted for your lips for a second but you caught it, of course you did, nothing gets passed you.
You nod once. “Thinking real hard about it.”
Silence again, but it’s thick with everything neither of you has said. Mutual attraction, want, need, desperation. Months of glances. Of late-night check-ins. Of watching each other hold the world at bay. You shift closer, voice softer now. “You know, I used to have this dream. Back before all this. When I was just a girl with a small tiara and a publicist.”
“What kind of dream?”
“I was at a party. Glitter everywhere. And there was this guy across the room. Tall. Broad shoulders. Smiling like he could split the moon in half.”
Clark raises an eyebrow. “Sounds familiar.”
You smile. “In the dream, I’d walk up to him. Ask him to dance. And he’d say no.”
Clark frowns slightly. “Why?” He'd never say no to you. He'd give you everything you didn't already have.
“Because I was too much. Too bright. Too dangerous.” Though that was just your own internal struggle telling yourself that your light was too bright for most people…
He exhales. “That guy is an idiot.” It was funny how defensive he got over a made up man when he was very real and sitting very close beside you. You could feel the heat emitting from him, the soft thumps of his heart in his chest.
You laugh. “Maybe. Or maybe he was scared. Of getting burned.”
Clark moves closer, now just inches between you.
“Why would I be afraid of my little star?” He says.
You stare at him.
And then you kiss him.
He welcomed it without hesitation. It’s soft at first. Just a brush. Testing. Your lips meet like a secret, like a truce. You pull back for a second but it deepens quickly, he deepens it. Your hand rising to his chest, his fingers slipping into your hair. It’s warmth and lightning and the weight of everything you’ve both carried, colliding. It feels like a supernova, stars dancing across your skin. God you've been aching for this. The need that flows through you isn't just some sexual tension bubbling to the surface. No it's the result of three months of wanting, of begging. Venus feels like it's being reborn as he pulls you closer, the world is spinning and for a brief moment all you focused on was him. On the way he smelled like pine and home. On the way he tasted, minty and oh-so sinfully good. When you finally pull back, your breath comes out shaky.
“Well... that was overdue.”
Clark looks a little dazed. “Yeah.”
You lean your head on his chest. “Next time, you kiss me first.”
He grins. “Deal.”
You sit like that for a while. Two gods in street clothes. Holding onto a quiet moment like the world below doesn’t need saving. And maybe, just for tonight, it doesn’t.
♡
Clark walks through her penthouse suite, his footsteps light on the marble floor as he takes in every detail. The first thing that hits him is the scent, sweet, floral, like gardenias mixed with something expensive and warm. Then comes the space itself. It's large. Ridiculously large. And unapologetically pink. Like Aphrodite's temple. Everything from the curved velvet couch to the soft throw pillows glows in shades of rose and champagne, accented with gold. The floors gleam like they’ve never seen dirt. There’s a sense of luxury here, but not cold. No, this place is lived in. Bright. Personal. Loved. Feminine divine.
It fits you.
Normally, Clark would never follow someone home after a first date. His mother raised him right and that was not the right way to do things. But this wasn’t normal. It wasn’t a real date, not in the traditional sense. Normally he would've taken her to a fancy restaurant, given her the moon and all. Hm… maybe a date on the moon next time. But with her identity public and half the city still unsure whether to worship her or worry about her, privacy was non-negotiable. A public dinner, even under cover, was too risky. So the date had been here. Takeout. A bottle of wine. Music. Laughter. And now he’s walking through her space like he belongs. Secretly he felt like he did. Despite the fact that the space screamed like it lacked male presence. They'd work on that, but if pink made her happy he'd hold her in her princess bed and keep her safe from the world.
“You have a cat.” He says, raising a brow when a fluffy white and gray Persian blinks at him from atop the bookshelf. He didn’t notice the feline before. Though his senses would have if it weren't for the fact that Clark had a habit of listening in on her heartbeat and ignoring everything else. He had been absolutely engrossed in her presence and their conversation for him to even pay attention to anything else. It was late and he's more laid back now, comfortable. Too comfortable to start heading back home so he wandered around to distract himself. Distract himself from what? From the fact that he didn't want to go back to his empty apartment? He couldn't, not now that he's seen what rests beyond the cosmic vascular of the rarity that is her.
You appear behind him, barefoot, holding two glasses and a bottle of wine. “That’s Monti. He thinks he’s royalty.”
“Of course he does.” He leans down slightly. Monti blinks once, unimpressed.
Clark takes the glass she offers, hands instinctively reaching for the bottle before you could tip it. “You sew.” He adds once he finishes pouring them both a drink. Pretty ladies shouldn't pour their own drinks, he thought. His eyes drifted back toward the corner of the living room where a dress form stands. There’s a half-pinned bodice wrapped around it, fabric shimmering under the soft ambient lighting.
“I’ve been sewing my own gowns since I was fourteen.” You say, sipping your wine. “Even during the pageants.”
Clark turns to face her fully now, surprised. “I didn’t know that.”
“I graduated from fashion school. I learned how to make beauty from scraps. Sewing calms me down when the thoughts get too much.”
There’s pride in her voice, but also a softness. Like she’s letting him into something she doesn’t show the world. He loved seeing her like this, in her space where she can be open about anything with him. He steps closer, close enough to take in every detail. The edge of her lipstick, the flush in her cheeks, the glint of amusement in her pink eyes.
“You’re full of surprises.”
You smirk, stepping backward just slightly, as if daring him to follow. “You have no idea.”
He does.
Or at least, he thought he had an idea. But every time she peeled back a layer beneath the superhero, beneath the star, there was just more of her he couldn't get enough of. Smart. Fierce. Soft in the places. And right now, all of that was standing in front of him in a silk robe that barely clung to her hips. Such a complexity in a short body wrapped up in pretty pink.
You set your wine glass down.
And then you're in front of him.
“I like you like this.” You say, fingertips brushing the collar of his shirt. “Here. Quiet. Just Clark.”
He catches your wrist gently. “And I like you like this.”
You lean in. “Oh?”
“Real.”
The smile that curls on your lips now is something wicked and warm. A second beats then their lips meet in a kiss that’s soft. Less desperate, more knowing. More earned. Like this kiss wasn't an opportunity but a deserved privilege. Your hands slide into his hair. His press to the small of your back, pulling you against him like a call of something they choose to obey. The heat between them builds slowly. Measured.
But it builds. There was no rushing. Not eagerness. They savored every moment down to the brief second they parted.
You pull back just enough to murmur against his mouth, “You sure about this?”
Clark didn't know what she was asking. Sure of her? Yes absolutely. He was so completely enthralled by her that nothing else would feel as right as having her. Sure that he wanted more of her? Absolutely. He wanted all that she was willing to give him. He nods, breath catching. “Are you?”
“I’ve been sure since you printed that article.”
The kiss he gave her again was deeper this time, and everything else fell away, Monti’s watchful gaze, the city outside. The stars still burn in the sky but they scorched hotter. She kissed him like she was pulling oxygen from his lungs, like space had taught her hunger. There was only the two of them. Fire and restraint. Heat and softness. And as he lifts her gently, carrying her toward the bedroom, she wraps herself around him like she’s always known how to fit there. Their connection wasn’t loud. It was like dark matter, unseen, but shaping the very existence of reality. Clark didn't normally do this but she was a singularity, and he didn’t care what it cost to fall in. He held your frame for dear life, the unspoken promise that they were meant to find each other in this lifetime singing in his heart. The universe bent everything for this.
Like this was always going to happen.
Like the universe had sent her back for this moment. For him.
The bedroom is dimly lit, cast in gold from a low lamp in the corner. The walls are soft blush, the bed dressed in velvet and satin, like it was home for a goddess. Or maybe just a girl who once wore a crown and never stopped ruling. He almost laughs when he sees the crown that started it all just sitting there on her nightstand. Clark sets her down slowly, gently, like she’s breakable, as if she was made of the finest most precious jewels. Which earns him a quiet laugh against his neck. She could hold up the weight of an entire skyscraper yet he still refused to squeeze her too tightly.
“You don’t have to be that careful.” You murmured.
He kisses her shoulder. “You scare me a little.”
She pulls back just enough to look him in the eye. “I’d be disappointed if I didn’t. But it's okay, really.”
Then you're pulling him down with you, silk robe slipping loose, revealing the warm skin under his hands. His eyes looked away out of respect before you were guiding his eyes back to the sight of you in a baby blue slip. Your body arcs into him with fluid confidence, nothing hesitant, nothing shy. The crown might be gone, but you still move like royalty, like you owned everything, even him. Their touch sparked like solar flares, brief bursts of chaos too wild to contain. He orbited you not out of gravity, but will. A choice, every time, to be pulled closer to you. To follow you.
Clark's shy mouth trails soft kisses on your neck, a bit on your chest if he was feeling brave. Every sigh gets louder. But he doesn’t rush. He memorizes. The slope of your collarbone. The softness of your thighs as he glided his palm up the skin. His body fits perfectly on top of you, nestled between your parted legs. And for a moment he pulled back, a stray plea left your soft mouth before you opened your eyes to meet his gaze. He was asking, begging, silently with his eyes. You nodded once only and that was all he needed. The quiet gasps when his hand finds the places you rarely let anyone touch. His fingers trailing lax circles around your clothed clit. You were the event horizon of his composure… once he crossed, there’d be no coming back
You taste like wine and starlight.
And when you slide your fingers under his shirt, dragging it up and off with one smooth motion, you hum in satisfaction. His own fingers never left the space between your legs, lazily pulling and tugging at the soft cotton of your underwear. But not in a needy sense, like he's in a rush to pull them off you now and have his way with you. No… He toys with the fabric. Slipping his hand under your panties and you inhale in anticipation. But he doesn’t touch you… or at least properly touch you. Instead he glides his fingers and thumb along the seam of the cotton that clothed your pussy. He strokes up and down the damp material, not bored, or like he was waiting for you to take them off for him. Just… playing… Letting the back of his hand brush against your inner thigh with every movement.
“God, you’re built like a sin.” You whisper, raking your nails lightly down his chest. Trying to bite back the urge to beg him to explore you. He was enjoying his time, you knew he was so you don't rush him. Yet as his knuckles graze over one of your wet folds while he plays with your underwear, you couldn't help but want to scream at him to do something.
His breath stutters at your words. Something ancient hummed between you both, like a song older than the stars, vibrating through the bones of the universe.
Your mouth is on his again before he can speak, and this time, there’s no restraint. No roles. No performance. Just two people, gods in disguise, letting the walls fall. When he presses her down into the mattress, other hand laced with yours, your smile is wicked and reverent all at once.
“I’ve had dreams about this,” You admit, voice hoarse, body flush against his.
Clark kisses your jaw, your neck, lower. Fingers still playing “Me too.”
“You’re gonna ruin me.”
He kisses her cheek and replies without hesitation.
“No. I’m going to worship you.”
He unlaced your hand with his, stroking your hair for a fleeting moment before his hand trailed down to join the other one. You were too lost in the feeling of his lips, eyes shutting in bliss. Your Clark was so attentive, so kind, so- Your eyes snap open when you hear your underwear tearing apart. For a second your mouth drops just slightly to stare. He was already looking down at your exposed heat, dripping and waiting for him before his gaze met yours. The man had the audacity to flash a sheepish grin before his eyes locked back onto your wetness. A shy hand trailing up the soft skin as he gently parted your folds. For a second he just looked, as if he was in a trance. With a faint hum you began to slide the night slip off your body, throwing it over your head. And for a second you could've sworn he whined when you moved before he pulled you back to him. Your presence bent the air around him like a black hole bends light. He couldn’t stop looking, couldn’t look away.
Enjoying the way Clark's eyes widened when he takes in the sight, eyes quickly darting on the artistry that was you. He drank it all in, your breasts on show, drawing his attention to your perky nipples. He'd desperately do anything you wished at that moment. He felt the need to pull you closer to have a better look but he couldn't bring himself to move.
With an exhale, he captured your lips in his. Eagerly returning the kiss, you sighed into his mouth in contentment. This was interstellar. It felt like watching the cosmos breathe, expansion and collapse, intimacy and destruction, all at once. Your lips move in sync with one another, passion and fervent surging through your veins as your arms wrap around his neck, pulling Clark closer. Vehement needs to have you flooded his senses as a tumultuous spectrum of emotions overtakes his reasoning. He was drunk on your body. Drunk on your scent. God you were so soft. You had him trapped in a state of insanity with your divine. Clark was well versed in passion, taking attentive care of you. He traced constellations on your skin with his mouth, like he could memorize the sky through you.
At that a rugged breath breaks free from his mouth, falling in ardor. Clark quickly guides his hardened cock to your dripping folds. When did he take his pants off? Did you not notice, too lost in your own pleasure to care about anything else.
You don't have time to think as he rubs his swollen head up and down on your drenched heat before slowly sinking into you. A gasp falls from your lips followed by a desperate cry of want. More. You wanted more. But fuck. They collided like twin stars on a doomed trajectory. Beautiful, violent, inevitable. You were so tight. He's barely halfway through and already he has to stop and compose himself. Clark lets out a hiss, halting all movements as you clench around him. Whining impatient, you lift your hips up, causing him to sink into you just a little bit. He loses balance for a moment before stabilizing himself with the headboard. Pretty angel statues carved into the wood of your ornate bed. And now they were about to watch him fuck you.
Grabbing a hold of your waist, he gently uses it to ground himself. His head falling to the crook of your neck. Clark holds his breath for a moment before he fully thrusts into you. Their bodies spoke a language older than stars, slow, ancient, filled with longing written in heat. A breathy moan falls from your lips as you feel him deep within you. God he was big... You take a moment to adjust to his size, praying you might meet the celestials as comet tears begin to form in your eyes. It was painful, but not in the sense that you wanted him to pull out and stop, no. Instead you wanted him to fuck you through the pain, it hurt yes, but there was pleasure in the pain. He preened you, large hands brushing your hair out of your face as he murmured sweet nothings in your ear. Clark didn't move, not until you told him to.
And when you did, he slowly began thrusting into you in a sedate, gentle manner. But peace is short lived... His movements slowly grow faster till he was fucking you in a steady eager pace. He tried to go soft, he really did, but the way you sounded, the way you said his name. This was ecstasy, rapture floods through you as the pain quickly subsided. It felt like the stars were aligning, and all felt right in the world as he molded your body to his. Lewd sounds left your lips as your eyes rolled back.
A song of moans and gasps filled the room as a symphony of skin meeting skin was heard with it. Loving the crude sounds your nails rake down his back and he groans. The walls welcome the sound with open arms as the atmosphere becomes hot and heavy, if it wasn't already. You try to grab at him, all of him, anything you can get your hands on. You needed something to pull you back down onto earth and not up into the singularity. Too much. It was all too much, but by the stars it felt so good. He fucked you good, liking the way you could handle all of him and he didn’t have to worry about breaking you. Though he still worried, you can tell in the way he refused to put his entire body weight on you. You didn't care, you pulled him down, never in your life had you ever experienced such bliss, the feeling was euphoric. Of knowing that this man, your man, was built so perfectly for you. To have you, to hold you.
For him to fill and crown you as his and his alone. No other feeling was comparable to this moment as pleasure overtakes your body, pulling you to the depths of insanity. A string of moans and cries of 'please' breaks from your mouth. You don't know what you're begging for but you chant the words like gospel. A story of profanities was told by Clark as buries himself into your neck once more, moving his grip from your waist to lock hands with you.
You reciprocate the touch as you feel him pound into you much harder than before. Tightly squeezing his hands as you feel the pressure begin to build. You cry his name out, your back arching off the bed from the pleasure. His cock sliding in and out of your dripping cunt, desperate for release. Answering your prayers, he quickened his pace and adjusted himself slightly, taking you in a deeper angle. In this position his pelvis rubs perfectly against your clit, causing you to plead for him. He loves the way you say his name, so breathy and blinded by ecstasy. Clark, too lost in the stars to think, bites into your neck, the sensations becoming too much and your eyes roll back, mouth beginning to part as you feel yourself about to climax.
With one powerful thrust he sends you both over the edge of the galaxy. Melody fills the air as he finishes after you, spilling his cum deep within your core. You grab onto the sheets once he finally releases your hands, heaving in an endless euphoric haste. Clark is quick to lean over you, supporting himself with his elbows as he watches the way your chest rises and falls. Eye locked onto your hardened nipples. Your body glows in radiance as a smile spreads across your face. For a moment Clark didn't know what to do with himself as an overwhelming sense of happiness pierced his heart. You were so perfect.
After a while he pulls out of you, and in a sleepy daze you feel him soothe your body with a wet towel. Frowning as he takes in the red marks around your wrists, thanking the stars when the bite mark didn't stay. Once he finished tending to your body he carefully lifted you up to lay properly on the bed, pulling the blanket over your shoulder. At this point you were conscious and not as tired as you were before, watching the way he takes his space beside you.
At first, he thought you were slightly ridiculous.
All pink and perfume and a presence that's larger than life, louder than caution, drenched in spotlight. He hadn’t understood you, not really. Back then, when he was just him and you were just you and your souls didn’t know each other yet. When he still thought crowns were hollow and confidence was something people wore like armor.
Then, he thought you were heartbreaking.
He saw the cracks. The way you laughed a second too long, the way your eyes glazed over when the world expected too much. He watched you bear it all with a grin and assumed you were hurting underneath. Assumed you were surviving instead of living.
But then he realized.
You didn’t want to be seen as some broken thing. Some shattered, porcelain figure held together by sequins and sarcasm. Your fire didn’t need pity.
Now?
Now he sees it. The truth of you. Not as a performance. Not as deflection. But as a declaration.
The pageant queen. The cosmic force. The one who fell and returned crowned in stardust. All of it, it wasn’t a mask. It was you. Unapologetic. Unfiltered. Stunning in your clarity.
You weren’t using the image to hide.
You were using it to say look closer.
And he did.
And he kept looking. And somewhere along the line, the weight of the world didn’t feel so heavy when you were near. Because your world had made room for him. You, with all your gravity. All your glow. All your impossible, radiant intensity. You had made space for him in the vast openness of your heart.
Not as a footnote.
But as something constant.
And he would orbit that forever.
Thanks for reading :)
Final Note
Guys I'm going to be so honest, this was such a self insert lmao, but I tried to keep it relatable and enjoyable for everyone. Also apologies if some things aren't accurate. I haven't actually watched the Superman movie yet but I'm already so deep in and you know I'm a superhero nerd. I'm going to try and write more Clark Kent stuff before I start school so look out for that, let me know what you think of the story! I don't think it's as good as my other fics but I'm pretty happy with how it went, considering the fact that I haven't written in 2 years. Sorry I switched back and forth from 2nd to 3rd person a few times. That's because I forgot how to write 😀 I'm not joking I actually did forget how to write.... The smut was only good bc i copy and pasted it from a draft I did when my writing was peak that's why it seemed more detailed 😔 I wrote this story in a day and it definitely could've been done better but I just had this idea of Clark Kent being with a very confident, not afraid to be seen woman. Maybe I'll write little stories to go along with this one because I want to explore their dynamics more. Anyways let me know what you guys want to see me write! Update I actually do not like how I wrote this story lmao.
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