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The first sound is so small you almost convince yourself it’s part of a dream, something your brain made up to justify the way you’ve been sleeping with one ear open. You don’t get the luxury of pretending for long, because it comes again—soft, deliberate, and it’s definitely not a branch scraping glass or a neighbor’s door slamming downstairs. It’s a tap that knows exactly where your window is, exactly how much pressure to use, and exactly how to wake you without waking the whole building.
You sit up without thinking and the sheet slides off your shoulder. The room is dark enough that you can’t make out much beyond the vague shape of your dresser and the line of the curtain, but you don’t need a clear view to find what your hand is looking for. Your fingers go into the bedside table drawer, curl around the grip, and pull the gun free with the quiet familiarity of practice. You stand, bare feet on cold floorboards, and the chill climbs up your legs like the apartment is trying to warn you.
The hallway is narrow and familiar, and you’ve walked it a thousand times, but tonight it feels like a corridor in someone else’s life. You keep the gun up, not waving it around, not shaking, just steady, and you listen with everything you’ve got. There’s no heavy breathing, no footsteps scuffing. That’s what makes your stomach tighten, because a drunk would stumble, a thief would rush, and a normal person would knock at your door.
The living room opens up around you, a patchwork of darker shadows where your furniture sits. The window by the fire escape is cracked open by a few inches, the curtain pushed aside like a hand slid it back and held it there. The air coming in is colder than the air in your apartment, and it carries the faint scent of city grime and rain. You take one more step in, muzzle tracking toward the window, and then you see him in the corner where the light from the street doesn’t quite reach.
He’s standing with his back close to the wall, like he chose a spot that gives him the whole room and keeps him out of the line of sight from anyone walking past outside. He’s dressed dark, of course, and he’s not moving like he’s trying to spook you. He’s still in that unsettling way that makes it feel like the apartment belongs to him now, like he’s been there longer than you have and he’s just waiting for you to catch up.
“Step into the light,” you say, and your voice comes out flat, the way it does when you’re forcing yourself not to feel something first.
He exhales, slow, and the sound is quiet but familiar enough to pull at something inside your chest. Then he shifts, and you get a glimpse of his face as he moves just enough that the streetlight catches the curve of his cheek and the pale line of his mouth. The light shows the tension in his jaw before it fades again as he settles back into shadow.
A pause, and then a voice from the darkest part of your living room, low and steady like he’s been standing there listening to you breathe. “You still sleep with it that close.”
Your grip tightens before you can help it. Your aim doesn’t wobble, but everything in you goes hot and cold at the same time, because you know that voice, you know the cadence, you know the way he makes the simplest sentence sound like he’s filing it into place. You take another step forward without meaning to, then stop yourself before you get too close. “What are you doing in my apartment, Dex?”
He says your name, and he says it like he’s allowed to, like he hasn’t earned the right to have it in his mouth. It hits you anyway, because your body is stupid and memory is worse, and there’s something about hearing him say it that makes your grip tighten on the gun until your knuckles ache. “I needed to see you,” he says.
“That’s not an answer.”
His shoulders lift a fraction, not quite a shrug. “It’s the only one I have.”
You keep the muzzle steady, aimed center mass, the way you were taught, the way you taught yourself when no one else was around to correct your stance. “How did you get in?”
He glances at the window. “You already know.”
“I want to hear you say it,” you tell him.
He shifts again, and this time he steps out far enough that you can actually see him. The light catches more of him now: the shape of his shoulders under the jacket, the tired set to his eyes, the faint shadow of bruising that’s either healing or never fully fades when a body’s been through too much. He looks leaner than you remember, like prison carved away whatever softness he had left, and he looks too controlled for someone who just climbed up to your window in the middle of the night.
“I came up the fire escape,” he says, and then his eyes flick down for a second, to the gun, and back to your face. “You didn’t change the latch.”
Your pulse jumps, not because he’s wrong, but because you hate that he knows. You hate that he’s cataloging details like he’s always done, like he can’t help it, like your life is a pattern and he’s already traced the lines. “You could’ve knocked,” you say.
He gives you a look that’s almost dry, almost amused, and it doesn’t belong on his face after everything. “Would you have opened the door?”
You don’t answer that, because the truth is complicated and ugly and it doesn’t deserve to be spoken out loud with a gun between you. “What happened?” you ask instead, because something had to have pushed him here. “Did someone follow you? Is this some kind of—” You cut yourself off before you say trap, because saying it gives it more shape than you want to hold in your head.
He shakes his head. “No one followed me.”
“Then why are you here?” you repeat, and you keep your voice sharp enough to cut. “Why now?”
His mouth opens like he’s going to say something, then closes again. For a second he looks almost… careful, like he’s choosing words in the same way someone chooses where to step on thin ice.
“I got out,” he says finally, and his voice stays quiet, but there’s a roughness under it that wasn’t there before. “And the first night I was out, I didn’t come here. I didn’t come anywhere near you. I went somewhere else and I sat there until morning, because I told myself if I made it through one night, I could make it through the next.”
You don’t let yourself soften at the sound of him trying. You keep the gun up, because you remember the things he’s done and you remember how quickly trying can turn into something else when it’s Dex Poindexter doing it.
“How many nights did you make it through?” you ask.
His gaze holds yours, steady as the muzzle pointed at him. “Not enough.”
Your breath comes out harsh. “So you decided to break into my apartment.”
He doesn’t flinch. “I decided to see you.”
“You don’t get to decide things for me anymore.”
His expression shifts at that, something tightening behind his eyes like he’s swallowing down a reaction. “I’m not asking for permission,” he says, and then he adds, almost softer, “I’m here. That’s all.”
“That’s not all,” you snap, and the gun wavers a fraction before you force it steady again. “You don’t show up like this and pretend it’s nothing. You don’t get to stand in my living room like you didn’t—”
The words knot in your throat and refuse to come out, and Dex watches you with that awful focus that makes you feel seen in a way you never asked for.
He takes one step closer.
“Stop,” you say immediately.
He stops, but the fact that he moved at all sends heat crawling under your skin. He’s closer now, close enough that you can see the faint scar on his cheek you don’t remember from before, close enough that you can see how his pupils look too wide in the low light. His hands hang at his sides, relaxed but not casual, and he keeps them visible like he knows you’ll put a bullet in him if you have to.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
“I’m not,” you lie, and it’s stupid because he’s right. The tremor is small, but it’s there.
His mouth twitches. “You used to shake when you were angry.”
“Don’t,” you warn him.
He doesn’t stop, because Dex has never been good at stopping once he’s latched onto a thread. “And you used to hate it when I noticed,” he continues, and his voice is almost gentle now, like he’s trying to smooth something over with tone alone. “But you always let me.”
“I don’t let you do anything,” you say, and you lift the gun a fraction higher, aiming for his head this time because you want him to understand you mean it. “Take one more step and I’ll put you down.”
He looks at the gun, then back at you, and then he does the most infuriating thing he could do: he steps forward anyway, slow and deliberate, like he’s approaching an altar instead of a weapon. You don’t move, because you refuse to give ground in your own home, and the next second the barrel meets his forehead with a soft, undeniable bump.
He doesn’t jerk away, he doesn’t blink fast, he just leans in until the pressure is firm, and you feel it through the gun, through your arm,, straight into your chest. “There,” he says, voice low. “That’s better.”
Your stomach flips, half disgust and half something you don’t want to name. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
He breathes out through his nose, and you can feel it in the space between you. “A lot.”
“Back up,” you order, but he doesn’t move an inch. Your grip tightens again. “Dex.”
His eyes stay on yours, and there’s something in them that’s so naked it makes your throat go tight. It’s not a plea, not exactly, and it’s not a threat. It’s need in its purest form, stripped of all the lies he usually wraps around it.
You hold the gun steady even though your arm is starting to ache, and you hate that he can stand there with the barrel pressed into his skin like it’s a point of contact instead of a warning. He stays close enough that you can see the faint sheen of sweat at his hairline, close enough that you can feel his breath when he exhales, and he doesn’t do the decent thing and back away.
“On your knees,” you say, and you make your voice mean it.
For a beat he doesn’t move, not because he’s refusing, but because he’s watching you like he’s memorizing the exact set of your mouth, the angle of your wrist, the way you’re not stepping back. Then he nods once, slow, and he lowers himself like he’s trying not to startle a wild animal. His knees touch the floor with a quiet sound that makes your stomach twist, because the sight of him down there is wrong in a way that feels too right, and his hands lift up beside his head with his palms open.
“Like this?” he asks, and the question comes out calm, almost polite.
“Don’t talk to me like you’re doing me a favor,” you say, and you keep the muzzle angled down at him, not because you’re easing up, but because the geometry changes when he kneels. “You don’t get to play nice now.”
His eyes flicker, and something tight pulls at the corner of his mouth like he wants to smile and doesn’t trust himself to. “I’m not playing,” he says. “I’m doing what you said.”
“Good,” you tell him, because you need something solid to hang onto. “Stay there.”
He stays there, hands still up, shoulders squared even on his knees like posture is another kind of armor. The streetlight catches his face better now, carving shadows under his cheekbones and making his eyes look even darker, and you hate how familiar he still is. He looks at the gun, then at you, and he doesn’t look away from either like he’s proving he can take it.
“You shouldn’t be here,” you say. “You shouldn’t even know where I live anymore.”
“I didn’t forget,” he answers, and he says it like it’s a simple fact instead of a confession. “I missed you.”
You swallow and your throat aches, because you can hear the old softness threaded through the words and you don’t want it. You don’t want the version of him that sounded like that when he was in your bed, when he’d tuck himself behind you and pretend the world couldn’t touch him if he had you in his arms.
“Don’t,” you say again, and this time it comes out quieter than you meant it to.
His gaze lifts to your face and he holds it like he’s holding onto a ledge. “I missed you, baby,” he repeats, and he doesn’t push the nickname like a knife. He says it the way he used to say it when you’d fall asleep mid-sentence, the way he’d say it when he was trying to be gentle.
Your breathing shifts, shallow for a second before you force it back into something steadier, and the gun stays in your hand even though your fingers tighten around it like you’re afraid it will disappear if you loosen your grip. “You don’t get to just show up,” you tell him. “Not after everything.”
He doesn’t argue, and the lack of fight is almost worse than if he’d tried. His shoulders rise and fall with one slow breath, and his hands stay up where you can see them. “I know.”
“You don’t get to stand in my living room and look at me like that,” you add, because anger is easier than the other thing pressing up behind your ribs. “You don’t get to say you missed me like it means something.”
His throat works like he’s swallowing down something sharp. “It means something to me,” he says, and he says it like he hates himself for it. “I’m not asking you to forgive me.”
“You should be,” you say. “If you had any sense left, you’d be begging.”
His mouth opens, then closes, and for a second he looks almost like he wants to laugh and can’t find the sound. “Do you want me to beg?” he asks, and his voice stays even, but there’s a tremor under it that makes your teeth clench. “If you tell me to beg, I will.”
Your hand trembles just enough that you feel it in your wrist, and you hate that he notices because he always notices. His eyes flick to your hand, then back to your face, and the intensity in his stare doesn’t change, but his posture does. It’s small, careful, and it makes your skin prickle, because his hands lower a little from beside his head to hover closer to his shoulders like he’s testing whether you’ll stop him.
“Hands up,” you order immediately.
He freezes with his hands halfway down, and he lifts them again without complaint. “Okay,” he says, soft.
You take a breath that scrapes, and you try to keep your voice sharp enough to protect you. “You think you can come back and act like this,” you say. “You think you can walk right into my life and—what? Remind me of how it felt? That’s your plan?”
“I don’t have a plan,” he says, and his eyes flicker with something that looks like frustration, not at you, but at himself. “If I had a plan, I wouldn’t be here.”
“That’s the first smart thing you’ve said all night,” you mutter.
He shifts his weight slightly on his knees, the motion controlled, and the gun tracks him on instinct. He notices that too, of course, and his gaze drops to the muzzle for half a second like he’s checking where it is, like he’s measuring distance in his head the way he measures everything. When his eyes lift again, they’re too steady, too direct. “You’re still holding it like you mean it,” he says.
“I do mean it.”
“I know,” he replies, and he sounds almost relieved by that. “That’s why I came.”
Your jaw tightens. “What do you mean?”
He doesn’t move his hands, but his fingers flex once like he’s fighting the urge to reach. “You don’t lie to yourself,” he says. “You never did.”
“That’s not a compliment,” you tell him.
“I wasn’t trying to compliment you,” he says, and then he adds, quieter, like it costs him to say it out loud, “I needed something real.”
You stare at him, and the room feels too small for the two of you, because he’s taking up all the air with that gaze and you’re letting him. The gun is still there between you, still a line you can draw any time you want, but your arm is tired and your hand is shaking just a little, and you’re furious that he can make you feel anything other than disgust.
“Get up,” you say, and your voice is steady again because you force it to be. “Slow.”
He watches your face like he’s waiting for you to change your mind, and then he rises in the same careful way he knelt, one measured movement at a time. His hands stay up for a moment even when he’s standing, palms open beside his head, and the sight is almost absurdly intimate, like you’re the one holding him in place with nothing but a word.
When he’s upright, you lower the gun just enough that it’s not pressed against him anymore, but you don’t put it down. It stays in your hand, pointed between you, not quite aimed at his heart now but still close enough that he understands what it means. He steps closer anyway, not quickly, not like he’s trying to take it from you, but like he’s following a gravity he can’t resist.
“Stop right there,” you say, even though you don’t move back.
He stops, so close that your breath hits him you exhale. His hands are still raised, and you notice the tension in his forearms, the way he’s holding himself back on purpose. His eyes flick to your mouth and back up, and the movement is so fast you almost miss it, but you don’t. You never used to miss it.
“This doesn’t fix anything,” you say, and it comes out harsh, like you can say it hard enough to make it true.
“I know,” he answers immediately, and the speed of it makes your throat tighten because he isn’t pretending. “I’m not here because I think it fixes it.”
“Then why are you here,” you demand, “if you’re not here to fix it?”
His voice drops, and it’s barely above a breath. “Because I couldn’t stand not knowing if you’d look at me.”
Your fingers curl tighter around the grip. “You’re looking at me right now.”
He shakes his head once, tiny. “You’re looking back,” he says.
You hate the way your body reacts to that, the way heat crawls under your skin like an old reflex waking up. You hate that you want to slap him and kiss him in the same breath, and you hate most of all that he’s watching you like he can see every ugly thought as it passes through you.
“Don’t,” you whisper, and you don’t even know what you mean by it, because it’s too late for a dozen different kinds of don’t.
He holds still like you’ve pinned him there with your voice, and then he leans forward just enough that his forehead almost brushes the gun again. He doesn’t touch it this time, like he’s learned the boundary you’re actually holding, and he stays in the thin space you allow. “Tell me no,” he says, and his voice is steady even when his eyes aren’t. “Tell me no and I’ll go.”
You stare at him, and the word sits in your mouth like a coin you can’t swallow. You could say it—you should say it, but you don’t.
Dex’s breath stutters once, like he felt your silence land. His hands are still above his head, still open, and for a moment the two of you just stand there with the gun between you and the air too thick to breathe. Then you step in, because you’re tired of being the only one pretending you aren’t about to do something you’ll regret.
You kiss him.
It isn’t gentle, and it isn’t sweet, and it isn’t anything like an apology. It’s hot and angry and familiar in the worst way, like your mouth already knows his and your body already remembers the shape of him. His hands stay up for one strangled second like he doesn’t believe he’s allowed, like he’s waiting for you to shove him away, and that pause makes your pulse kick hard.
“Don’t—” you start, pulling back just enough for the words to hit his mouth, but you can’t finish because he swallows the rest of it when you kiss him again.
“I’m not,” he murmurs against you, and it’s breath and sound, barely a sentence. “I’m not.”
His restraint breaks in slow motion. One hand lowers first, hovering near your waist without touching, and he waits like he’s asking permission without using words. When you don’t flinch, his palm settles against you, warm and firm, and the contact sends a sharp shiver through you that makes you hate yourself.
Your other hand is still holding the gun, angled down now, forgotten and not forgotten at the same time, because you can feel its weight even as you drag your free hand up his chest. Your fingers catch on his jacket, then slide up to his collar, and when you fist the fabric there his breath turns rough.
Dex makes a sound that he tries to swallow, and his other hand comes down to your side, then your back, pressing you closer. He doesn’t force you, he just follows the contact like he’s starving for it, like he’s been holding himself together with rules and silence and the idea of you, and now you’re here and his hands don’t know how to be anything except reverent and desperate at the same time.
You break the kiss long enough to glare at him, your mouth still close to his. “This isn’t—”
“I know,” he says again, and his eyes flick to your lips like he can’t stop himself. “I know.”
“Say it like you mean it,” you challenge, because you need something that hurts more than this does.
He nods once, and his voice comes out rougher. “It doesn’t fix anything,” he repeats, and there’s no argument in him, no illusion. “It just… makes it quiet.”
Your chest tightens at that, and you should step back, you should put the gun away, you should make him leave, you should do a hundred sensible things. Instead you kiss him again, slower this time, and he sinks into it like he’s been waiting for permission to breathe.
His hand slides up to your jaw, thumb brushing your cheek with the kind of careful touch that makes your stomach flip because it’s so gentle it feels wrong coming from him. Your fingers tighten in his collar, and you feel the tremor in him when you do, like he’s trying to hold himself to a line he’s drawn and you’re daring him to cross it.
“Look at me,” you say, because you want to see if he’s still there in his own eyes.
He does, immediately, and he doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what he is. “I’m looking,” he says, and his voice is low, steady, too intimate for the middle of your living room with your gun still in your hand.
You don’t answer with words. You answer by pulling him back into your mouth, and his hand tightens at your waist like he’s anchoring himself, like you’re the only thing keeping him from floating apart.
When the kiss deepens again, it’s messy in the way you remember, not because it’s out of control but because it’s full of everything you haven’t said. His hands roam—your side, your back, up to the base of your neck where his fingers curl like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he lets go—and he keeps checking you with tiny pauses, tiny hesitations, like he’s still waiting for you to push him away and he’s bracing for it even as he kisses you like he can’t live without it.
You don’t push him away; you keep him close, gun still hanging loose in your hand and angled toward the floor, because you haven’t decided what any of this means and you’re not going to lie and pretend you have.
Dex stays pressed to you like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he blinks, and when he kisses you again it’s slower, heavier, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of your mouth. He pulls back just enough to breathe, his forehead hovering near yours, and his eyes search your face like he’s bracing for the part where you tell him to leave. “Tell me to go,” he murmurs, voice rough, like it hurts to offer you the out.
You swallow, your grip on his collar tightening, and the words come out low and sharp like you’re daring him to believe you. “Don’t go.”
For a second he looks stunned in a way you almost never see on him, and then something in him gives with a quiet, relieved exhale. His hands tighten at your waist like he’s anchoring himself, and he kisses you again like he’s starving, like he’s been holding back for days and you just cut the last thread.
“Thank you, baby,” he breathes against your mouth, the nickname soft enough to make your chest ache. “I missed you.”