Chapter Text
Dex has the sort of feline confidence that lets him claim Matt's personal space as his own without any hesitance whatsoever.
It makes Matt fluster and tense up every time it happens.
Every time Dex closes the four yard distance that he maintains during night patrols to lean his entire weight into Matt, Matt will go still and careful.
There's no reprimanding Dex. Or there is, for every other thing, except for this. Because there's nothing Matt can say that won't make him sound completely wrecked and give him away. Not now, not here, not in public. Dex would obey. He always obeys, listens to Matt's word like it's gospel. Good boy. But it's not what Matt wants no matter how hard he tells himself it's wrong for so many reasons.
That's why he freezes up. He'll tell himself it's caution. Caution from being nuzzled into by a predatory assassin who's displaying no sense of fear whatsoever. In truth, Matt stalls because the feeling of Dex's cheek against his jaw unravels something so archaic and hungry deep inside of him that it makes his teeth ache his muscles tense up with restraint.
Matt could remove him with his hands. Dex likes that. Dex would take to it, he wouldn't mind. Matt would mind, not only because putting his hands on Dex is in its own a sinful gratification. There's just no denying he loves the shameless, feline display of affection Dex performs with such trust. It makes him feel feral and possessive in all ways that are Daredevil and no ways that are Matt.
In the very beginning, Matt had tried to reason with Dex.
He'd sit him down, or grab him by the collar on a some dark rooftop, always making sure Dex's eyes are on him and that they stay on him as well. That part's not difficult, albeit very important.
Dex's attention is always on him. But his eyes are not. Both things can be true at the same time. The attention is on him, always, every time Matt is near, whether it be through a scope or a camera or a wall- or plainly with nothing but air and tension in between them. He has a staring problem, Matt figures. But can it really be called that, when it only ever applies to Matt and no one else?
It stops the second Dex knows his attention is returned. He could stalk Matt without a break for the whole better part of an afternoon with predatory ease: Matt in his office, then in court, then with a client; and the second Matt so much as indicates that he notices and is paying attention back, some animal part in Dex just goes slack and shy.
Matt couldn't tell you why it mattered so much to him that Dex kept his eyes on Matt rather than on the ground when Matt talked at him. It's not like they can maintain actual eye contact, even as Dex tends to avert his gaze as if he fears they just might.
It never sticks. None of it. The lectures, the morals- Matt's morals; none of it lands the way it should within a normal person. It's not your call to make. It's not justice. Death is never justice.
In the beginning he really tried. He tried for too long because Dex listens attentively and patiently, nodding along agreeably, only to prove an hour later that it hadn't changed a single thing in him.
He's just not wired for it. He lacks empathy where other people lack self-control. He tries, Matt can tell, which is the most frustrating part; that it genuinely feels like Dex makes an effort, sometimes, albeit only ever because Matt wanted him to and Dex is nothing if not subservient.
He used to get angry over it. He used to take it out on Dex, tried to hold him accountable after. That cold-blooded bastard. He'd push Dex up to the nearest wall, rough and loaded, and Dex would relax into it like Matt was rewarding him instead of making a point. Matt always backed off like he'd been burned. Not because of Dex, exactly. Not because of this behaviour. But because of the thing deep inside him that whispers to press closer, pin him there longer, feel his pulse and not just hear it, make him─
Matt's lost count of how many nights of patrol ended with him in the empty nave of Clinton. Not praying. Or at least not about him, not yet. But reminding himself.
There was that one time he lost control, not about the- the crowding and the pull, but rather quite literally during a mission: He lost control. First over the situation, and then over himself.
There were high stakes for Matt, which is exactly why he wouldn't have taken Dex with him in the first place, but Frank had been busy, and well, desperate times....they call. It was the kind of thing that was delicate, an intervention rather than an arrest. Ten human traffickers and thirty hostages of all age, packed unpredictably in an abandoned building that Matt had tracked down with difficulty and a lot of work.
It went wrong, and it had already been wrong, but then Dex threw a paperweight from the inside of an old office into the hall. It ricocheted twice against the wall with the quick succession of two vibrating metallic sounds and landed with perfect, freakish aim in a pile of explosives, in a run down building with both the human traffickers and the hostages Matt was trying to safe ─and it nearly cost them innocent human lives, the sort that Dex didn't register as worth failing a mission over.
In retrospect, Matt should've laid out the objectives differently. What he said was: don't allow any of the trafficking men to hurt a single hostage. And to Dex that had apparently not equaled to, none of the hostages can get hurt.
In retrospect, Matt should've accounted for it. His fault. He should've known better. He does know better now.
But in the heat of the moment his heart had been beating wildly against his ribcage and it hadn't wanted to come down, and it was just two of them and a situation that now required so much more. And he had felt, so suddenly and completely, out of control and the frustration had already been building in him over weeks and weeks on end.
And it was a line Dex crossed that Matt wasn't feeling forgiving about. This is what Matt tells himself. That it's about Dex, it's about boundaries, it's about containment.
It's not about Matt wanting to let go. It's not about Matt knowing Dex is the only other person in the world who could take Matt's hits, the real ones, and not break. It's not about Dex and his cogmium spine and his willingness to take the violence Matt restraints that reads like an invitation, all the time, all the damn time. It's not about getting his hands on Dex, whatever way he can.
He was on Dex, outside, immediately after. The hostages had run and scattered into the streets, spilling into corners and alleys and further and further out of Matt's reach. Half of the traffickers were dead, and Matt should've taken care of it, all of it; the hostages, the burning building, the trail of corpses, but he had had Dex on the gravel, face pressed into the ground and his fist coming down on him. Once, twice. Once more.
He wasn't proud of it. He was horrified by himself.
But only later on, which is perhaps what horrifies him the most. That it had only settled into him so so much later.
For in the moment he'd enjoyed it. Tremendously.
Dex went pliant and good beneath him.
Eyes on him, Matt could feel.
Attentive, elated. Good.
Matt had been breathless to the point where he wasn't sure whether he had been sobbing or not.
He slammed Dex into the ground, and felt the impact in his own forearms.
He could feel Dex scramble against him, a little. A slack hand around Matt's wrist, that Matt had, for a split second, equally been afraid of stopping him pulling him closer for more. It did neither, just holding on, barely a touch. Not even bothering to pretend he wants free. Matt sort of wished, with great self-disgust, that Dex had struggled more.
"Nobody dies," he'd spit out, hoping the words could manage to claw their way into Dex through the open gash he could feel in his brow.
Dex hadn't answered. Probably because Matt had been choking him.
"Nobody fucking dies." He didn't recognise his voice. "Unless. I say so."
That doesn't sound like him.
This was wrong. Matt felt wrong. Matt felt right. Which is how he knew it was wrong.
Dex made a sound, something akin to a whimper. Or a whine. A wound up sound, animal and submissive.
And Matt could feel it take, inside Dex. The last four words. Not the ones Matt had wanted but also exactly the ones he wanted.
He doesn't really remember how the rest of that night went.
(His hands checking Dex's injuries under a harsher light than the distant flames that had illuminated him as he comitted the very same injuries he was now pouring disinfectant over. Soft touches, medical in pretense, made apologetic by Matt. Too gentle for Dex's liking, not gentle enough for Matt to feel better.
But Dex held still for him, of course he did.)
After that one incident he stopped trying to reason with Dex.