Chapter Text
Weeks of this, and Tony never truly says thank you.
At least he pays as discreetly as he does generously.
You’ve checked it yourself: all the bank records look clean from an external perspective. He makes deposits in cash, or transfers between fake accounts stemming from a dead source if poked at. You’ve heard no qualms from anyone who has received your money in rent, groceries, or takeout orders. The money is no problem. You’re not swinging a bat at a wasp’s net.
You think about that money as you wheel yourself to the meeting point: Red’s All-Night Diner. A quiet, public area. It’s also close enough to your apartment where you don’t feel like you’d need an armed escort back at night in Manhattan.
You’re not afraid of Tony— that’s all you know him as. Tony. You figure it’s short for Anthony or Antonio, with his last name being the same level of “CLASSIFIED” that the nuclear launch codes are to civilians. You could find out if there weren’t a mutual understanding between the two of you to keep your respective cats curious, not by lack of skill on either end.
For example, you’re pretty sure that Tony could find out where you live based on the diner’s proximity to certain apartment complexes, the fact that you’re almost never late, or whatever else he may notice because he’s a very professional, very paranoid vigilante. He could find you if he really wanted to, just like how you could track his burner anywhere on the planet like a Watch_Dogs character.
The wheelchair button at Red’s entryway is busted (again), so you knock on the glass door and wave lamely until a waiter spots you. He holds the door open wide enough for you to wheel in. The scent of grease, sugar, and coffee waft out with the sound of Yacht Rock Hits.
“Sorry,” the waiter says. “I could’ve sworn it was working this morning.”
You give him a tight-lipped smile, the kind that comes automatically when you don’t quite know what to say. It makes you look awkward. Out of depth in an average conversation. You need to start speaking to more people.
“S’okay,” your voice is a little scratchy from lack of use and hydration. “It’s a good thing you saw me so quickly, though. Thank you.”
The waiter smiles. A little fake, and a lot tired. “Can I get anything for you?”
“A vanilla shake? Thanks.”
The waiter nods. You wheel yourself to your usual booth— the only one that has a chunk of seating carved out for a wheelchair. You keep your eyes on the door for Tony, your fingers tapping along to Chaka Khan on the sticky table.
The waiter gives you the shake. It’s borderline saccharine, but you drink half of it in one long sip through the straw. You check the time on your phone. Christopher Cross plays overhead.
It’s 12:14 AM. Tony’s running a little late. Or he’s intentionally tardy to make meeting this look more casual to outside observers. Who knows. You’ve been turning paranoid enough to think of things like this. You drink half of the remaining shake, and the door chimes.
Tony enters with nearly perfect posture either without trying or he’s spent a long time doing this with the intent to look effortless so now it’s muscle memory. His brownish-blond hair is maintained with its usual set sweep. He wears his usual dark wash denim jacket.
Tony sits across from you in a way that exudes no emotion, the way a random person may sit by you on the bus. There’s no accidentally mistaking that the two of you being on an odd midnight date here. The chemistry (read: lack thereof) between you two reads as “acquaintances” or “strangers forced to share a table.”
You put the envelope on the table right in front of you. Tony’s right index finger twitches in silent request, but he doesn’t encroach on your personal space.
You slide it to him. You watch him open it. Read it. It starts to drizzle outside. You sigh through your nose at the thought of going home in the rain.
“Two weeks,” he says finally, when he looks satisfied with the information you’ve stolen for him. The set of his eyes in his skull looks lethargic and sunken, but his gaze is razor-sharp. He tucks the file between his plain black shirt and jacket.
You nod. Two weeks until you receive full payment. The money will trickle slowly into your account.
“Do you need anything else?” You ask.
Tony looks behind you, at the clattering of utensils a waiter is disposing. “I’ll give you a call if I do.”
You nod. That’s his usual answer.
Tony swallows. “Actually… I need something else. Not immediate information.”
You look back up at him. That’s new.
You’re about to ask what he means, but Tony waves over the waiter before you open your mouth. He orders a small black coffee for himself to blend in and talks to the waiter like he’s rehearsing lines as an extra in a TV show. You finish your shake and leave a ten dollar bill on the counter for it.
“I’ll cover it.” Tony says, a little less like he’s following that script of his and more like an awkward shot at trying to be decent.
“Then let this be the tip,” you reply. It’s still enough to cover the shake.
“Let me—” his jaw flexes. Not angry, but something else you can’t quite pinpoint because you don’t know him well enough. “Please. Let me.”
You slide the ten off the counter and replace it with a five.
“My tip,” you tell Tony. “It’s late. It would be rude leaving a restaurant without a tip.”
He nods at you, just one jerk of his chin going downward. Nothing more.
You wheel yourself out of the diner. The rain is still light as it falls, only making your clothes damp. It’s a cool night in autumnal New York, and it’s looking to be a cooler day tomorrow.
☆☆☆☆☆
The program you've dubbed Saberfind is your baby. Handcrafted and run on various desktops in your at-home office, it's the messiest form of information retrieval you've made.
It’s also precisely why you liked it so much. It was like watching a kindergartener’s rendition of a sports car win a Formula 1 championship. Amateur, but an undeniable elegance about it if it can win a race. A Lego tower that keeps getting new floors and rechecked for structural issues.
You’re running a retrieval on a businessman with dirty hands when you hear the rickety window of your living room slide open.
Your ice crystalizes in your veins and arteries, your stomach dropping down to your feet.
Your hands fumble for the gun that you keep in the small compartment under your desk, and you make sure it’s loaded. You keep the safety on, though, just to make sure you don’t shoot yourself before wheeling out.
The gun rests on your lap as you move. The floorboards creak under your wheels as you move, obviously. It’s a design flaw of most apartments you’ve been in, but you didn’t really care much about it until now.
There’s a single heavy footstep in the living room, like whoever’s broken in is wearing sturdy boots. They don’t walk around with urgency, or in a way that seems to examine your belongings and furniture.
Shit. You think. Because if this person isn’t here to rob you, they’re here to kill you.
You go through a list of dissatisfied customers. It’s small, but all of them are deadly.
Another step. Your heart leaps up to beat a rhythm in the hollow of your throat. You stop your wheelchair in the doorway of your office and slowly click the safety off. Unfortunately, your lack of speed doesn’t help silence the action.
“It’s me,” a voice says casually after the safety’s sound breaks the tense silence.
“Tony,” you wait in the doorway. “Is this the something else you needed?” Is your first question. You don’t care how he found you, really. You always knew he could: stalking, a hand in his FBI database, a tracker on your wheelchair you can’t detect or see. “Breaking into my house?”
“Yeah,” a pause. Then, “I’m not here to hurt you.”
Relief like a bucket of ice cold water tips down over your head, shoulders, and the rest of your body. You’re still breaking out in cold sweat—Tony is objectively a dangerous guy.
But alas.
You wheel yourself out.
Tony is wearing clothes similar to the ones he was the day before, the only change being a plain white shirt instead of a black one under his denim jacket. He looks at you, then the framed photo of MoistCr1TiKaL Photoshopped like Jesus, a gift you got in university. His demeanor relaxes as he exhales slowly, a balloon deflating. You almost want to make a really lame joke—can Internet Jesus ease your woes?
You don’t make it. The moment passes, and Tony’s shoulders settle back into their usual rigid line.
“What do you need?" you ask, keeping the gun visible on your lap. Not pointed at him, but not hidden either.
Tony’s eyes flick down to it, then back to your face. Something almost like approval crosses his features before they go blank again. “I need you to find someone for me.” He reaches into his jacket pocket and you tense, but he pulls out a folded piece of paper, setting it on your coffee table like he's placing an offering. “But this one’s... different. I thought I could wait until tomorrow, but I just want to get it over with..”
You nod, sliding the paper off the table. You keep it folded and pin it under the gun. “Okay. Follow me.”
Tony’s footsteps are less heavy as you wheel to your office. He lingers in the doorway of the office like an uninvited vampire as you position yourself behind the U-shaped desk.
“I have a couch in here for a reason,” you say. You don’t tell him that it was the cheapest loveseat you could find on Facebook Marketplace. Or that you bought it for the illusion of a homier vibe in your office, not for guests. “Come in.”
Tony’s strides are long and he settles onto the loveseat like he’s been here before. It’s not quite as if he were a friend treating your home like his own, but he looks uncannily at ease. Like if you told him to walk around the apartment blindfolded, he’d do it without bumping into any of the furniture.
“Who do you need info on?”
“It’s on the paper.”
You nod. You rub your nose a little— it feels icy cold in this weather, and you don’t keep the heating up very high. Frugal with the bills, though you know you can pay for it and then some. You’re a dragon, hoarding digital gold like it’s your only purpose. You slide your keyboard closer to you, make sure it’s plugged into one of your PCs not already running Saberfind, and unfold the paper.
Neat all-capital handwriting spells: Benjamin Leonard Poindexter, born March 2, 1984. Blond hair, brown eyes. 6’0”. Likely hits in law enforcement, FBI and municipal level specifically. Heavy on municipal.
“Who is this?”
“Me.” Tony—Benjamin, whoever—says flatly. “I need to know if anyone’s looking into that name. Running checks, pulling records, making inquiries. Anything."
You look at the paper, then at him. The rain picks up outside, drumming against your windows in uneven heartbeats. “You want me to monitor your security. Continuously.”
He nods.
“Why?”
Tony-Benjamin’s jaw works. For a moment he looks almost human—tired, frayed at the edges, like someone running on fumes and bad decisions. Then the mask slides back into place. He’s back to being impartial and cool.
“Because someone else might be, and I need to know before they find me.”
You think about the file you gave him last night. The two week payment timeline. The way his eyes are completely hollow, but sharp all at once. Whatever he's planning, whatever information you’ve been feeding him for months—he’s getting closer to the bottom of the iceberg.
“This isn’t the kind of work I usually do,” you say slowly. “Monitoring for threats against someone specifically? That’s closer to security work. Personal protection, private security. Well, digitally.”
Tony’s mouth twitches. For a moment, you’re afraid he’ll threaten you. Instead, he exhales slowly through his nose and cracks a small smile like you’re Marcello Hernández. “You’re just a hacker. Not a bodyguard.”
“I’m an information broker,” you correct automatically. The difference sounds nicer. “What you’re asking… this means I have to watch local law enforcement channels, P.I forums here, the F.B.I, maybe even Interpol if whoever’s looking has reach. That’s a lot of ground to cover.”
“I’ll pay.”
“I know.” You tap your fingers against the armrest of your chair, realizing you have a song by The Turtles looping in the background of your mind— Eleanor, gee, I think you’re s-well, and you really do me well! Ambient noise. It always comes around after sitting in Red’s. You push The Turtles out and think about how to phrase your next point to Tony. “I need to know why you need this. Not the whole story, obviously. I’m not stupid enough to ask for that. But give me enough to understand where to look? Is this an alias?”
Tony stares at you for a long moment. The rain fills the silence between you, pattering against glass and brick. A car alarm goes off somewhere down the street, then cuts out.
“A while ago,” Tony says finally, each word measured so tersely you can practically see the cogs of his brain. “I did something that made some powerful people very angry. They thought I was dead, but now they know I’m alive. That… name is my real name. My friends called me Dex.”
Even while you ignore the past tense, the pieces click together in ways you don’t quite like. The late-night meetings, the information you’ve pulled, the way he moves through the world like a ghost wearing a human suit. It’s not just paranoia that comes with the usual underground job.
“If they’re that powerful,” you say, “and they think you’re dead, why would they be looking into your name? Aren’t you, uh, Tony now? Not Dex?”
You wonder what made him pick the name Tony. Maybe he was a fan of The Sopranos. Dex made you think of the serial killer, which fit. If this were a book, you’d call the author a little heavy-handed.
Dex’s eyes go distant. “Just look into it.”
You want to ask more, but you don’t. You’ve learned enough about Dex to know that questions like that don't get answers—they get pointedly ignored until he decides to leave the room.
“Fine. I’ll run the program, see if anyone's poking around. If I find anything, I’ll text you.”
Dex nods. “So, your rate for this?”
“Double.”
His mouth twitches again. “Double?”
“You're asking me to live in a federal database for hits. That’s riskier than pulling people’s addresses and corporate dirt like I usually do.” You meet his gaze steadily. It takes more than you wish it did. “Double.”
A long pause. Then Dex reaches into his pocket again, and pulls out an actual checkbook. He scribbles something onto it and sets it on the coffee table next to an empty mug. “First installment.”
Your eyes skirt over the fake company name and you look at the amount and feel your eyebrows climb toward your hairline. It’s more than double. It’s triple what he usually pays.
“Consider it a retainer,” Dex says. “If I need you again—and I mean really need you—you drop everyone else you’ve got on your plate.”
You don’t tell him that for this money all at once, you’d send a mail bomb to his enemies’ houses and take the fall for him. For this money, you’d do something horrific, like volunteering at the old folk’s home where his grandparents live if he had any. You fold the check and tuck it into a drawer. “I’ll start now.”
“Then I’m done here.”
You follow Dex out of your office. He goes to the window with his heavy, steel-toed boots thunking on the hardwood. Your downstairs neighbor is probably cursing you out. Dex turns back, and for a moment he looks almost like he wants to say something else. His hand twitches at his side—that same index finger movement you’ve noticed before.
“Use the door next time,” you say. “I hate closing that window. The lock’s a pain in the ass.”
Something shifts in his expression. Not quite a smile, but adjacent to one.
“The door,” he repeats.
You feign nonchalance. “Yeah. I’ll even give you the entry code for the buzzer. Saves us both the hassle.”
Dex considers this. "You trust me that much?"
“I trust that you need me alive for the most part,” you tap your armrest. The Turtles are re-entering the building. “And that I’m not important enough for you to kill. Close that window behind you?”
Dex nods, that single jerk of his chin, and the window’s shut before you even register his shadow climbing down the fire escape.
You don’t hear him leave, but when you turn around minutes later, the window is shut and the room is empty except for the paper still sitting on your coffee table.
Benjamin Leonard Poindexter. You run the name through your mind as you wheel back to your desk. It feels strange to have it now. Like registering someone commenting a stupid thing on YouTube is a person, not a bot. Benjamin Poindexter. Forty-three years old. You can find his blood type, his old addresses, his family.
You open your Saberfind program and start building new parameters. Live search, consistent monitoring, hits on Ben Poindexter, Benjamin Poindexter, Leo Poindexter, Leonard Poindexter, Anthony Poindexter, Tony Poindexter…
You fall asleep thinking of him.