Chapter Text
“Did you really expect me to stay away from you?”
The words hover, sitting in the space between them.
From where Dex stands, running his fingers over the solid surface of Matt’s countertop, counting the electric whirs that rumble from the refrigerator every five seconds, to where Matt stands, just feet away, half his body still eclipsed by cream colored wall.
The night is dark and aged. Perhaps fifteen past eleven, or just a bit less.
They’re unevenly matched—here it is, Matt in a wife beater and soft sleep pants, no glasses, no shield to speak of beside the weak sheetrock hiding the right side of his body, all six feet of him, strong and sturdy, gazing a visionless path into the kitchenette. His hair is mussed. His face is tired, this much Dex understands immediately from the darkness underneath his eyelids and the set of his jaw, relaxed, even under the pressure and undoubtable stress of such an uninvited guest.
But also, even if Dex could not see him, he would know that Matt has had a long week and he is exhausted to his very bones. Dex has been watching him for months. He stares at him openly for what feels like forever, his eyes drinking in every part of him. The fullness of his beard, grown out more now—and good, Dex prefers it this way rather than shaven so low, he likes the way the color comes through that much richer, nearly midnight black—and the curve of his bare arm. He has not been this close to Matt in so long.
It hurts to tear his eyes away. His chest feels as though it might cave in on itself. His hand finds a heavy-duty lock. It hangs off the utensil drawer like a bright yellow sticky note. A tidbit, a clue. It lets Dex know the answer to his question before Matt can even respond. Before he steps fully into his line of sight, the whole of him bringing a shiver down Dex’s infallible, false spine.
No.
He didn’t expect Dex to stay away. He would have been stupid to expect such a thing.
He expected Dex to return and when he returned, he expected that he’d be angry. He expected that he would express this anger in the only way he often knows how. Violence. Bloody, furious, metallic violence. Dex feels the weight of the lock in his hands. He looks at Matt, who still does not look particularly perturbed.
He instead looks as if he’d been expecting this. Dex. Here. Tonight.
This particular night.
The thought makes Dex’s fingers twitch, holding the lock tighter in his hand, it makes his heart stammer, just so, because if Matt had been expecting him on this particular night, then that means in some way, their brains aligned, that in some way, Matt cares to remember things.
He cares.
He remembers.
He knows Dex.
When Matt finally speaks, he only asks, “Did you lock the door back on your way in?”
“Someone else coming to kill you?”
“Maybe. You never know with my line of work.”
With a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, Dex says, “They wouldn’t be able to make it through me.”
The side of Matt’s mouth lifts. “I know.”
“You need better locks. It was easy to get in.”
“Ah.” Dex lets the lock go and at the barest clink it makes, Matt’s head tilts. “Did the lock piss you off?”
Dex adjusts his hat—it’s dark maroon, he grabbed it on his way out of a bookstore a few days ago, his bag full of fifty cent novels with broken spines and yellowed pages thrown into a box. Abandoned. “A bit, yeah.”
“Wasn’t my intention,” Matt shrugs something barely there. “Self-preservation and all that.”
Dex runs his thumbs over the skin of his pointer fingers. “Not for…disciplinary reasons?”
This makes Matt’s mouth lift on one side. “Would that make you feel good?”
Dex pointedly ignores that question. “You think I’d come here to kill you?”
He notices that Matt hasn’t moved any closer, thinking it best to keep a good distance to stay prepared in case Dex attacks him, maybe.
“I think it’s not far-fetched to say that when your emotions run high you can make…rash decisions,” Matt says and Dex laughs, but it’s dry and his throat is tight. Matt’s eyebrow raises. “Am I wrong?”
He isn’t but Dex isn’t prepared to give him the satisfaction of agreeing, especially when so much of Dex’s meltdowns are directly related to things Matt does or says.
Faced with his silence, Matt speaks again. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I just didn’t want to wake up with my butcher’s knife lodged in my heart. I’m sure you brought your own, anyway.”
Again, Dex finds himself silent.
Matt draws in a deep breath, his glassy eyes flitting slowly across the room. He tips his head in the direction of his couch, pristine, off-white, slivers of moonlight in stripes over the cushion. He flexes his long fingers. “Do you mind if we sit?”
“I don’t want to sit.”
“Then what do you want?” Matt asks. “Do you want to fight?”
“What do you think I want, Matt?”
Matt’s mouth twitches. “I think you want to kill me, but you can’t, so you’re going to settle for the closest thing you can get.”
And Dex thinks that he’s right.
The truth Matt Murdock does not wish to tell anyone is that this is all his fault, this much Dex knows.
There was not much special about the evening Matt first visited Dex’s apartment—a partially abandoned building in a part of the city so seedy the sidewalks were lined with bent needles and discolored spoons and the cars weren’t younger than ten years—except maybe that Dex was at home at all and not out and about, searching for things to do, people to understand.
Dex had not been expecting him.
The small space was not filthy, despite the building. Dex had managed to transform it into something livable, tidy, with nice curtains, a small television and a decent, iron bed, smelling of lemon and disinfectant. The evening was dim, just after six thirty. The sky was a swirl of melted sorbet, orange, grape, pineapple. The setting sun cast a glow into the apartment, dust flying in a strip of light as Dex stretched his arms over his head, nuzzling his face into his thick biceps.
His stomach rumbled. A healthy cut of chicken sat on the counter of his kitchenette, defrosting in the summer heat. Dex smelled of salt, sweat, and soap. He hadn’t left home, wanting to rest his body after a night well spent battling agents who managed to best him at one certain point, tearing a chunk into his thigh. The wound bled beautifully, soaking through his black, heavy-duty pants. It was an excellent blade, an even more impressive hit for someone he first considered painfully average.
It was a joy to be wrong.
It got his adrenaline pumping.
It sometimes made his dick hard.
He asked the man, who he eventually stabbed in the neck, with a crazed, bloodied smile, where he’d gotten his spirit, as he watched the man’s life leave his eyes.
Mid-stretch, he was smiling even, just remembering the moment. A soft knock on his door tore into his memory, ripping it down the middle. Dex did not have guests. He did not have friends.
If someone visited, it was not because they were happy to see him.
The television droned. A rerun of Married… with Children.
Dex’s pale brows furrowed lazily as he cocked his head toward the door. He turned the TV down three notches. From under the chair’s cushion, he produced a pouch of blades.
With one in his hand and another folded knife tucked into his pants, he walked, barefoot to the door. He laid his body flat on the wall beside it, preparing himself for another knock designed to trick him, to throw him off his game, then the inevitable kicking in of the door itself.
He prepared himself for a fight and he felt the blood in his veins boiling with anticipation. He became hungry for it.
But he would not get it.
“Dex.”
Matt’s voice was one he couldn’t mistake, even as muffled as it was then.
His breath caught in his throat. Shocked. Following Fisk’s sentencing, the two of them had gone their separate ways. Matt, in his daredevil suit, had bid Dex farewell in an alleyway with a warning and Dex had been amused to watch him go.
He’d been amused to know that some things would never change.
“I can hear you.”
“What do you want?”
This seemed to quiet him. He seemed to think about it. “To talk.”
“What about?”
“Just..catching up.”
“I find that hard to believe, Matt, when there’s a boatload of bodies in a warehouse somewhere with my name on it.”
“There’s what—” he cut himself off. He cleared his throat. “Okay. Do you have a peephole on your door? Look at me. I’m not even dressed to fight. I just want to talk.”
Dex put his knife away.
His front door had four different locks. They all clicked free until Dex could swing the door open. Matt stood with one hand in his pocket, his sunglasses dark and haunting.
He smiled and he looked younger and older all at the same time.
“Miss me?”
Dex stared at him. He wore a navy-blue wool suit, a white button up underneath. Black dotted tie, black leather belt, black leather shoes. He smelled of heady firewood spice. The scent of him made Dex shift uncomfortably.
Still, a sort of excitement remained.
“What a lovely surprise, counselor.”
“May I come in?” He readied his white cane as though Dex had already answered and Dex found this amusing.
Without knowing exactly why, Dex stepped aside and so, Matt Murdock entered his orbit once again.
“I would offer you a better seat,” Dex said as he pulled out the soft chair just in front of the television, creating more space for Matt to sit. “But I’m afraid I don’t have one.”
Matt chuckled just once, walking over to the chair. With his hands on the back of the seat, Dex watched him, catching a glimpse of himself in Matt’s glasses. Matt sits, the chair creaking with his weight.
“I’m hardly the King of England. I think I’ll survive. Thank you.”
Dex dragged over the fold-up chair from his small, square dining table. He placed it right in front of Matt, leaving a healthy amount of space between them. Just in case.
“Ah, it’s hard to tell these days. You’re cracking big cases, aren’t you?”
Matt looked intrigued yet not surprised. “Keeping tabs on me?”
“How could I resist the Daredevil?” Dex responded with a dry smile. “We both know I can’t help myself.”
“I’m flattered.”
“Mm. Would you like something to drink?”
Matt cocked his head. “Do you have something to drink?”
“Sure. Orange juice. Tea.” He slid a little closer, as if telling a secret. “Think there’s a carton of chocolate milk somewhere in there too.”
“Tea would be fine.”
“Green or black?”
“Don’t you have peppermint?”
Dex smiled. “I do have peppermint. You really are like a hound, aren’t you?”
“Peppermint would be good.”
Dex got up with a sigh. In the kitchen, the teapot was still warm from earlier. He caught glances at the back of Matt’s head as he prepared his tea, wondering, his thoughts so loud and incessant he found it hard to parse through them all to find something tangible.
He returned.
Standing above Matt, he studied him. He carefully pushed the mug near his already waiting, extended hands. “It’s very hot.”
“Thank you.”
During the exchange, their fingers brushed, and if it bothered Matt, he didn't make it known.
They sat in silence for a while, Matt sipping his tea, Dex’s eyes locked onto him.
Dex sighed slowly. “Matt.”
“You still can’t be quiet for more than five minutes,” Matt noted, bringing the cup back up to his mouth.
“Not when I’m in a very...peculiar situation.”
Matt did not answer him.
Dex linked his hands together, elbows on his knees, resting his chin on his fists. He breathed, “Okay. So, you’re not here to fight. You’re not here to kill me. What are you here for? Am I supposed to believe you came here to spend time with me and be my friend?”
Matt placed his teacup down on the chair’s armrest. “Well, you aren’t trying to kill me either. That’s surprising.”
“What’s surprising is that you trust me well enough not to give you poison,” Dex pointed at the mug.
Behind his glasses, Matt’s crow's feet crinkled. “That’s because you’d never take the coward’s way out. You’d want to do me with your hands.”
At that, a part of him warmed. Matt knew him, if only just a sliver.
“Could’ve slipped something just to loosen you up.”
“No need. I’m plenty loose. Not that it’d work anyway.”
Dex’s head cocked. “You’re not here to see me either.”
“How do you figure?”
“I’m guessing.”
“You don’t guess.”
Matt was wrong. So much of Dex’s life comprised of him guessing. Guessing how to feel like other people, guessing how to act like other people, guessing how to be normal one day at a time, and failing, horrendously, one day at a time.
Hit by a sudden bout of anxiety, Dex fidgets with his hands.
“Nervous?” Matt asked, crossing one leg over the other.
“I’m confused, is all.”
A beat of silence.
Matt ran a hand over his mouth, rocking his foot back and forth through the air. He sighed, as if steeling himself. “How…has your life been? In these past few months, I mean.”
Caught off guard, Dex struggled to find an answer, and when he managed to grasp something, it came out curt. “Fine.”
“Tell me about it.”
Perplexed, Dex said, “You came here to ask about my day?”
Matt readjusted in the chair, thrumming his fingers on his thigh. “Do you want me to tell you the truth?”
“That’d be nice.”
“I came here to speak to you because…lately, I’ve been wanting to kill you again and I figured that if I could come here and I could remind myself that there’s part of you that’s actually human then maybe I could stop.”
Dex blinked. “Are you serious?”
“Quite,” Matt admitted. “It took me a long time to build up the backbone to come here in the first place. I didn’t want to—I’ve built a good life. I don’t want to ruin it but…”
“You can’t let go of the past.”
Matt grimaced at the words. “I guess not. I guess I need…help. So, I suppose I’m really just here asking you to help me move on. I’m asking you to help me forgive you.”
Dex considered this.
“Even after all this time?”
Matt said, “It’s the least you can do. I just want to talk, if you’ll have me.”
There was something about the way he said it, and also something about the energy in the air, and also, too, something in Dex’s very body that unnerved him.
Dex is a solitary creature, this much is true.
His days are spent trying to stay on the straight and narrow, as much as someone like him can, even now.
He promised Matt he would try, all of those months ago. He owed it to him, Dex felt, after everything they’d been through, after everything Dex had put him through.
Foggy.
Father Lantom.
Even Karen. Hadn’t Dex ruined her too? Imprinted on her soul?
And hadn’t Dex enjoyed doing these things? Causing harm, causing pain? Did it not feel much like slipping into a warm, fitted glove to do these things? Did it not feel like home?
Matt told him it did not have to be, and Dex, though he hardly believed him, wished to try.
From Dex’s perspective, things had been going well.
Torture, he found, could be just as fulfilling as murder. Who would’ve known?
“What do you want to know? You want a list of people I—” he clicked his tongue and slid his thumb across his throat.
“No. I think I’d just like to know what you’ve been doing. Aside from…that.”
Dex ran his hands over his thighs, careful to avoid his injury, which still throbbed every so often just to remind him it was there, sitting back into his chair. “Okay. I’ve been, what, reading.”
“Oh,” Matt said. “What have you been reading?”
“Books.”
“What kind?”
“I just finished this one called, uh,” Dex looked at him for any trace of mockery. When he found none, he shrugged, still feeling just a little stupid. “Notes on an Execution.”
“Did you like it?”
He hated it. It felt like staring into a mirror. It felt like something he’d written himself, like the author took a hacksaw to his skull and stuck fingers in his brain, parsing through his memories, reading his truth like braille. It felt like Packer was birthed from the very soul of Benjamin Poindexter. It made him uncomfortable. He did not read the end.
“It was alright.”
“What’s it about?”
Dex blinked. He looked at the floor. Matt did not rush him.
And so, he talked. Matt did his best not to be outwardly disturbed by the book’s summary. Dex told him of another, A Book of Two Ways.
He told him of his mornings. Of his egg-based breakfasts, his lounges in the sun, his long, masked walks. Of his afternoons. His nights, full of violence and blood, underground boxing, and blades. And Matt listened and occasionally commented.
“You’re back in therapy?” Matt asked when he let it slip that he started seeing someone—no one official, just a leader at an AA meeting who used to be a therapist a lifetime ago before she met Gordon.
They’d been in love for many years. She chose him over her husband, her children, her career. She was still trying to piece her life back together, even ten years after she put him back on the shelf.
Somehow that seemed more raw than anything else he said.
“Yes.”
“How’s that going?”
“It’s okay.”
“Does your therapist understand you?”
“She tries.”
“A woman.”
Hesitantly, he confirmed. “Yes.”
“Huh.”
Dex let it sit for a moment until he had to ask, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Matt smiled. “I suppose Fisk attempting to be your father scarred you is all.”
“I had a female therapist before,” Dex defended. “But you know that. You called me to taunt me about it, remember?”
“How could I forget our first phone call?” Matt said and Dex was struck by how far away that felt then. He lived so much life since then. It’d been so long since he was a young, confused agent. It’d been so long since he heard Dr. Mercer’s voice in his head. He wondered what she’d think of him now. “I imagine you feel safer with women.”
“I don’t feel safe with anyone.”
Matt hummed at that. “I’d like to hear about your childhood.”
“You already know all about that, Matt.”
“There’s more than one way to tell a story,” Matt uttered. When met with silence, “Alright. Maybe next time. You’ve given me plenty already.”
“Next time?”
Matt began to stand, the legs of his chair scraping on the floor as he rose up. He unfolded his cane, and Dex looked up at him, at how he was eclipsed by the last of the evening sun. It darkened him, a glowing outline around his body, making him look ethereal.
Matt rolled his neck.
From where Dex sat, he looked like something powerful.
“Thank you for indulging me.” His head rotated, as if he was looking around the room. “This is nice. Comfortable. How long have you been living here?”
“A month or two.”
“I like it. Will you be here when I come back?”
Saliva built in Dex’s mouth for no other reason than a certain hunger.
“Maybe. Depends on how long you take to come back.”
Matt’s lips pulled into a toothless smile. “Do you already miss me?”
And so, for several evenings each week, for weeks that somehow turn into months, Matt Murdock visits Benjamin Poindexter, and Dex, despite himself, begins to look forward to these meetings more than he expected himself to.
He shares more than he expected himself to.
They’re three months in of this…situation when Matt is late.
Usually, Matt finds himself on Dex’s door no later than eight p.m., and from his spot at his bathroom window, Dex watches his sleek, black sedan creep up to the building to a sure stop. Matt will let himself out of the backseat, and he will utter something Dex can’t hear to his driver, then, he will look up at the window, knowing that Dex is there waiting for him.
Perhaps he can hear his heartbeat. Perhaps he can hear the thrum of his blood. Perhaps he can even smell him from there, three stories away. It’s amazing, the things he can do. Dex heard it from his own mouth just three weeks ago, when they sat across from each other, Matt wearing all black, a grey coat thrown over the back of his chair, his hand curled underneath his jaw.
Dex asked him what it felt like. If he ever missed being able to see. If it hurt to know that he would never be able to see a sunset again, to see his children if he ever had any. If it broke his heart to never see the pale, yellow glow of a full moon on an October night. He asked him if he’d ever wanted to kill the man who blinded him.
Matt took his time to respond.
He had never been asked, it seemed.
He told Dex what it had been like, what it was still like.
Dex said, when Matt told him that it sometimes hurt to be touched, that it sometimes drove him crazy to be in public for too long, “How do you know I’m not going to use this against you?”
Matt rubbed his fingers back and forth over his mustache, freshly trimmed. “I don’t. I’m trusting that you won’t. Like you’re trusting that I won’t use what you told me against you.”
And Dex had wondered to himself, like he had done so many times before, if that was the basis of human connection.
Vulnerability.
Compassion.
But only now did he understand that it was and that this was also in so many ways a conscious decision, this thing he’d chased for so much of his young life.
On a particular Wednesday night, Matt did not show up until forty-five minutes after nine p.m.
Wednesdays were usually Dex’s nights to practice underground boxing and earn money for the matches, however they seemed to be one of the only nights Matt had ample time to sit around and talk, so Dex adapted accordingly. Usually, Matt visited on Sunday nights, Wednesday nights, and Friday nights, but he never stayed particularly long on Sundays and Fridays. Only Wednesdays.
Wednesdays had become Dex’s favorite day of the week, a waiting game no matter where he found himself. In a hole in the wall restaurant, in a bar, in a secluded park, performing a breaststroke in a motel pool, in a dark alley.
He waited for hours that evening, his anticipation melting away to anxiety, to cold fear, to disappointment, then ultimately some sort of sour anger that kept him up, unable to do anything other than lay on his bed.
The sedan pulled up and Dex did not hear it through the voices in his head that told him he was foolish for thinking that Matt would return, that Matt considered him at all, for thinking that there was anything substantial or significant about the relationship they’d managed to forge. Their relationship was not a relationship at all. It was Matt’s quest to salvation. It had little to do with Dex at all.
He’d been stupid. He reddened with the shame of how stupid he’d been.
Of course, Matt didn’t consider him to be anything other than what he was. He’d killed his best friend, he’d killed the man who raised him, he’d killed and killed and killed because such was the nature of a monster like Dex.
There was no redemption for him.
Yet. A familiar knock on the door. Dex did not move. The door was unlocked anyway. His neighbor was an elderly woman. He had knives underneath his mattress. He had things like snow-globes and paper stoppers littered around. There was only one end for someone breaking into his home and so on the nights Matt visited, he did not lock any of the four locks.
Matt let himself in, the door creaking as he did so.
He called his name, shutting the door behind him, and childishly, Dex did not answer.
Matt’s footsteps grew closer, and he came into view, the open arch revealing him almost immediately. Matt stared into the small bedroom, where Dex laid on the bed, fingers roped together across his chest. At the sight of him, a butterfly found flight in Dex’s chest.
“There you are,” Matt said.
Dex did not trust his voice. There were too many sounds in his mind that he could not quiet. There were too many thoughts he did not want to be true. He did not trust himself to speak. At his silence, Matt’s head tilted left.
“Are you angry with me?”
“Why would I be angry?”
Matt looked as though he found this cute. “Did you think I wasn’t coming?”
“You don’t have to come.”
“But I always do. And you thought I wasn’t coming this time.” Matt began to walk again, carefully dodging furniture, feeling the archway with his bare hand, until he was nearly at the foot of the bed. “I got caught up.”
And what did that truly mean?
He found something better to do with his time?
Dex grinned.
Matt wore deep maroon and it looked good on him. Dex began to realize that there was not a color that didn’t look good on him.
This thought made him blush.
Matt asked, his voice even, maybe even cloying, as if he were speaking to a child, “How can I make it up to you?”
Dex felt stupider than he had when he felt like Matt was not going to come. Out of his element. He didn’t deserve kindness. He didn’t deserve anything. This felt like mockery. He swung his legs off the bed, and he stood so that he would no longer feel small but though he was an inch or so taller than Matt, it still didn’t matter. It didn’t help.
It didn’t make him feel any more in control than he previously had.
It didn’t make him feel stronger than he was.
Abandonment was a festering, infected wound that never went away. This would never change, Dex was sure of it. Once abandoned, always abandoned.
The truth as Dex knew it was that in the time they’d spent together, the control rested in Matt’s hands because Dex had put it there and there was no way to get it back.
Dex wasn’t even sure he wanted it back.
“It’s fine,” Dex said then.
Matt began to walk to the side of the bed, to meet him where he stood, and Dex felt himself flinch from a concoction of emotions: anxiety, anger, apprehension.
He wanted to push him away, but he didn’t.
In fact, as Matt grew closer to him, so close he could now smell his cologne, his aftershave, Dex did not realize that he was backing away until he was flat on the wall, nowhere else to go, his back on hard brick.
The thud of his body against the surface made Matt smile, his teeth white and rich. In the reflection of his frames, Dex almost didn’t recognize himself. He looked stern but that was but a ruse. Underneath it, he was terrified. Of what? He did not know. Everything.
There was so much to be scared of.
Matt asked, nearly laughing, “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.”
“Yeah?”
For a moment they were suspended in time, and Benjamin had never been more confused. He had never wanted to scream more. He had never wanted to smile more. He had a strange vision: he wanted Matt to wrap his hands around his throat and choke him until he felt close to death, and like an angel, he wanted him to revive him by pushing air back into his lungs.
He wanted Matt to save him.
He wanted Matt to see something worth saving, like he had before in the church.
Matt remained the only person, besides Dr. Mercer, who ever tried.
Who ever almost died trying.
“I’m not mad,” Dex lied, halfhearted, lackluster.
“It’s okay if you are.” Matt folded his cane, then he pushed it into Dex’s hands. He asked him to hold it for him and Dex did. Matt said, “I’d like to try something.”
He didn’t ask for permission to touch Dex, he just did. He raised his big, wide hands, resting them on Dex’s shoulders, adjusting them, skin on skin. It felt warm, hot even, and so weird. Dex failed to remember the last time he was touched by someone he wasn’t fighting.
Matt had touched him before but this was different and they both seemed to know it.
Matt’s eyebrow crooked. “No shirt?”
Dex had stripped himself down to only his sweatpants just fifteen minutes before Matt arrived. His hope was to find slumber, but it never came.
“What can I say? You caught me at a bad time.”
Matt paused. “Do you have on any clothes at all?”
“Are you going to check?”
Matt smiled. “Would you enjoy that?”
Dex’s throat grew dry. For a second his mask slipped. He no longer felt like Bullseye. He felt like the man standing across from Julie, begging her to understand him. He felt raw as skidded knees.
“I was just joking.”
“Oh, were you? It was funny.” Matt’s hands slid up to Dex’s neck, fingers mapping out his flesh, his bone, thumbs on his Adam’s apple, swiping over his jaw, and Dex did not get it. He also didn't have the chance to ask. “I hope you don’t mind. I’d like to know what you look like. Is that okay?”
“Oh.”
“I’d never really wondered before. I think I was too consumed with…other feelings.”
The idea of this thrilled him, it made his heart flutter like a runner at the beginning of a race.
The idea of this made him feel special.
How many adversaries had Matt faced as Daredevil? How many got this?
And too, how many people had gotten this, period?
Maybe only Karen. Maybe only Foggy.
It seemed so intimate.
Dex nodded, his anger suddenly diminished, as if were nothing but a puff of smoke. “Okay.”
And so, Matt nodded too, his face soft and pleased, and he began to touch him. His touches were tender, strange on Dex’s skin. Dex’s flesh had never known tenderness as a matter of fact. The drag of Matt’s fingers over the curve of his nose, his thin lips, it was hard work to keep his spine—his reinforced, infallible spine—straight. Dex felt like a popsicle on a summer day. He felt like the river, free and body-less, unconfined.
He tried not to fidget. He did not want to move at all as Matt’s thumb ran over the deep scar that marred his cheek, as his thumbs swept over the sensitive flesh beneath his eyes, over his thin eyelids, his pale eyelashes. The flatness of his forehead.
For a second, Matt’s fingers massaged his temples, his cheekbones, until his hands took rest on his cheeks, fingertips reaching to trace the shape of his ears, making Dex swallow a sigh.
The most he had been touched in years.
In forever.
Matt said, his voice light, “I just felt this was only fair, seeing that you’re always staring at me.”
Dex bit into the flesh of his gums. He said, “What’s the verdict, counselor? Am I pretty?”
Matt’s hands ran back down to the generous curve of his shoulders, then downward over the thickness of his biceps, feeling the muscles in his palms and tracing the veins all the way down to his forearms. Just shy of his hands.
The barest touch of Matt’s fingers on his palms. The tease of holding hands. Dex feels a pit of fire in his core. Sweat dripping down his back, despite the coolness of the night as it surfs in through his cracked window.
Matt raised his hand by the wrist, touching his fingers with his free hand, in a way that was almost contemplating.
“It’s funny. Something so dangerous. Right in my hand.”
He wanted to ask then, how does it feel to hold me, but instead he said, “And you’re not dangerous?”
“Guess it goes both ways then.”
Dex felt a longing to feel special. “It’s not just my hands.”
Matt looked up. “Sorry?”
“It’s not just my hands,” he repeated. “I’m sure you know but I can do it with whatever. My feet. My mouth. It’s just me.”
“Interesting. Your whole body is…”
“A weapon.”
Matt’s shoulders stiffened at the word, and he looked as if he might’ve responded. Like he might’ve said that he knows the feeling all too well. He did not.
“What color is your hair?”
“Blonde.”
“Light or dark?”
“Dark.”
“And your eyes?”
“I don’t know. Brown. Hazel, maybe.”
“Mm.” Matt exhaled through his nose. “Thank you for indulging me.”
Dex could not help himself. There was a greed within him so sharp it felt like it was cutting his organs from the inside, fighting to claw its way out of him. “You’re not going to tell me what you think?”
“I think…that I know you better than I did five minutes ago.” Matt let go of him, his touch still scorching Dex’s flesh like a tattoo, but he made no move to give him back his personal space. Dex didn’t want room anyway. “You’re disappointed. You want something else.”
“I’m not.” But that was a bold-faced lie, especially when he was partially hard in his pants, his dick alive and wanting.
Could Matt smell it on him?
“You’re a bad liar.” Matt said and his face looked strained then. Caught between a rock and a hard place. “Would you mind turning around? There’s something else I’d like to feel.”
“You can’t say that to someone who’s been in prison, Matt.”
It’s meant to break the ice.
“Oh," Matt laughed. "Did the boys in gen-pop put their hands under your skirt?"
The tactlessness rendered him silent for longer than he wanted. “No.”
“Another joke then?”
“Yeah, man.”
“Are you sure? I wouldn’t be surprised."
“Nah. I’m sure. You helped me break out before anything like that could happen. But even if I didn’t, I could’ve defended myself.”
“But would you have wanted to?” Matt asked and Dex stiffened. The words were mean, carrying a different cadence not unlike Matt’s regular voice, but still…different.
It spoke to a part of Dex that did not often come out, that needed coaxing.
It dragged it to the forefront.
Dex remembered it from that day in the prison.
Oh, sweetheart, what do you want me to do?
Do you want me to get you out?
“You’re so needy, I wouldn’t be surprised if you let it happen.”
Dex defensively said, “Fuck you.”
But it lacked any fire.
“I believe you, Dex. I’m just saying. I wouldn’t think less of you if you did what you had to to survive. But I just think that…you’ll die if there’s not someone to reassure you every ten minutes. How’d you make it so long by yourself?”
Dex swallowed thickly.
Matt looked pleased and he pushed his glasses up with his index finger. “It’ll make me very happy if you turn around.”
With his teeth clenched, Dex obeyed him. In return, Matt’s hand settled between his shoulder blades, pushing him into the wall. He ran his knuckles down the length of Dex’s spine, feeling the scar tissue, the touch drawing out a small, involuntary sound from him.
“Does it still hurt?”
Dex carefully said, “When it gets cold outside.”
And as fast as it began, it was over.
“Thank you,” Matt said. “Can I have my cane back please?”
Dex turned around and gave it to him.
Matt patted his cheek. “Thank you. You did a good job for me even though you were mad.” Dex winced from the touch. Matt unfolded his cane. “My meeting ran late. I didn’t mean to upset you. Do you feel better now or do you still want me to leave?”
He never wanted him to leave.
“I’m fine.”
“Good. Will you read to me tonight?”
It was the first time he had ever made that kind of request. It gave Dex pause.
“You want me to read to you?”
“Yes. Whatever you’re reading. Just one chapter.”
Dex thought it was ridiculous. He thought Matt’s lips were a perfect shade of pink. He thought he would do anything he asked. He thought that this was pathetic. “Okay.”
“Will in here be fine? Or do you not want me to sit on your bed in my outside clothes? I know you’re neurotic, to say the least."
Typically, he would rather scalp himself than allow it, but feeling softer from the warmth of Matt’s hands, still a ghost over his body, he considered it.
He almost said yes, but Matt instead took back his words. Maybe realizing that it was far too intimate of an ask.
Too much for one night.
They walked over to the chair Matt frequented and Matt sat down, waiting for Dex to drag his own chair over.
He did not have to ask for tea, for the kettle was still hot.
He did not have to ask for peppermint, for Dex had picked up three boxes from a Mom and Pop shop over the weekend, a habit he’d made ever since he realized that Matt would not stop coming.
While Matt held his piping hot mug, Dex cracked open the spine of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and in tandem again he felt Matt’s knuckles against his own back, the sensation still alive, haunting him.
He tore his eyes away from Matt to stare into the book and though he knew that Matt could not stare back at him, he knew that he was thinking of the unique shapes and slopes of his face, of his jaw, the indent of his chin, the age of his flesh. He knew that he was putting together every piece of him like fallen Legos, piecing him together like the brushstrokes of a portrait.
Dex cleared his throat.
“On Sunday morning the change was one day nearer,” he read.
Matt sipped his tea.
Dex spoke into the atmosphere, “I was resolute about not thinking my three magic words and would not let them into my mind, but the air of change was so strong that there was no avoiding it. Change lay over the stairs and the kitchen and the garden like fog.”
And now.
How much time has passed since they last saw each other, face to face?
Dex would swear that he has not been counting.
Yet he has.
Five months to the day.
One year since Matt first knocked on his door.
On Matt’s counter sits Dex’s sense of humor.
“If I wanted to kill you, would I have come bearing gifts?”
Matt looks up. He sniffs the air. He looks like he doesn’t know if he should smile or not. He ends up wearing a mixture of things; fondness, disgust, and the barest hint of guilt.
“You brought me a cake?” Matt asks. “What flavor?”
“Angel food cake. Delicious like you wouldn’t believe. Got it for a discount, too. Told the baker it was a very special occasion. Started up the waterworks. I’d cut you a slice but you locked me out of your fucking cabinet.”
“I could unlock it,” Matt says, his exhaustion laid bare in every syllable. Dex can't help but wonder if he sees this as some kind of sacrifice. Himself on some kind of cross, atoning for his sins.
“You should.”
And so, Matt takes a step forward.