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You know how babies can get hairs stuck around parts of their body, and sometimes parents won’t notice until their kid’s toe is about ready to fall off?
If Dr Mercer hasn’t died by the time next week’s session rolls around, then that’s how Dex wants to kill her. Take her stupid cassettes, pull the tape out, wrap it around her and pull tight until her blood can’t flow. She deserves it. If she’s still alive by next week then she could’ve done their therapy, so she’s a liar. She just doesn’t want to see Dex anymore and she’s a liar, trying to ship him off to another shitty therapist, giving him a box of tape recordings as if that’s all he needs for the rest of his life.
It’s not. He doesn’t need a new therapist, doesn’t need fucking tape recordings of someone who’s leaving him anyway.
The alley he’s been hiding out in since leaving therapy is a testament to that. Dex has spent his evening behaving perfectly appropriately: disembowelling each cassette, tape strewn across the concrete like black, magnetic, cat guts. Could stay out all night if he wanted, working each tape out with his stinging nails, session by painstaking session. If he hasn’t done it by now then the home manager won’t call him in missing until the morning; it’s midnight and still a little humid, warm enough to stay out all night with just his jacket.
Then of course Daredevil has to come and pull half of NYPD’s attention onto Dex’s hideout.
He hears the crack, sharp snap, crunch of a spine compressing all too fast. So fast that the man’s shouts are over before Dex can even catch his breath. His exhale is slow, but clearly not quiet enough compared to the dead night ambience of the alleyway.
The Devil turns and drops back down the fire escape, so Dex knows he’s been spotted; he’s not stupid enough to think their Kitchen’s precious protector isn’t suped up enough to hear him let out a breath. Someone smarter would run, maybe. The boys at Lyndhurst sure would, but Dex has never really had enough self-preservation to stay out of trouble. More importantly, he’s never seen anyone actually die without it being his fault before.
Kind of fucked up.
(Mercer wouldn’t call it fucked up; she’d call him good for admitting it, sweet boy, dealt a rough hand, brain working against him, all the usual crap.)
He doesn't want to think about Mercer. Stupid bitch for dying. What he wants now is Daredevil.
“You should go home. It’s late.”
And God, if that isn’t the most generic insufferable hero bullshit phrase the Devil could’ve said. Dex forces a tremble onto his lips as if to hide the brief flash of a smirk. “Is he dead?” His voice shakes a perfectly curated amount (if he says so himself), toeing the line between fear and excitement.
“No, no, he’s…not.” Daredevil’s tone shifts as he slows, and Dex can just imagine his brows furrowing beneath his shitty DIY balaclava. He's been caught out, then. The guy isn’t dead and Dex should never have been happy about the possibility anyway.
Dex nods slowly, bides his time. “Good.” He digs his thumbnail, already torn up and bitten to the nailbed, into the grazed skin on his knuckles, prying up individual flakes as if revealing the fresh skin beneath can show Daredevil he’s not all bad. “That’s good. I’m– glad he’s not,” he finishes with a sigh.
That was shit. Always been good at acting in his own favour, never good at outright lying. The Devil clearly picks up on it too, if the way he falters silently over his words is anything to go by. Dex sucks a deep breath in, but there's a rotting taste in his mouth and his lungs feel stuck as if they're having to fight against his ribs just for some space.
"I'm not glad," Dex rushes out just to make the buzzing in his ears fade that little bit. It's overshadowed by Daredevil telling him to go home again, and it might be the first time in Dex’s life he hasn’t wanted to kill someone for interrupting him.
The way the boys talk about Daredevil at Lyndhurst… they claim it's awe. Only problem being they're all too fucking stupid to tell the difference between awe and fear. They’re scared of him because he’s stronger than them. What Dex would give for just a taste of that power over all the other boys. The city’s scared of Daredevil. Dex isn't. He wants to be Daredevil.
No. He wants Daredevil for himself. If it takes some more acting to get him then he'll do it.
"Wouldn't be out this late if I had a home to go to," Dex mumbles after a beat – just quiet enough to come off as embarrassed, poor teen orphan-turned-runaway ashamed of being caught out.
A car stalls as it passes the end of the alley, and Dex takes the opportunity to fake a flinch, scrambles to his feet with his back pressed to the cool brick behind him. Textbook signs of a battered kid, he knows, but it's neither lying nor acting this time. Just that he was always good at reading Mercer's handwriting upside down and if the boot fits, well. Why shouldn’t he use it to his advantage? Another car passes, and the Devil keeps on watching him, so Dex keeps putting on a show. He swallows thickly around the fabricated lump in his throat.
The buzzing starts up again. There's a certain pressure to it, as if the entire weight of the universe likes to bear down on him occasionally, boring into his skull until he does something interesting enough for it to back off. Daredevil's head is still cocked and it's just a moment too long for Dex to be observed. He snaps.
"Gonna say something instead of just standing there staring? Fucking creepy of you to spend your night staring at a kid if you ask me, what next, you're gonna touch me up? Get off by throwing guys offa' roofs and feeling orphans up at night. No wonder police are after y-"
"I'm an orphan."
The scowl on his face then is reflexive, and Dex needs a moment to clear his features of a reaction like that. Daredevil seems a bit of a bitch with no bark to not have anything to say back, considering what Dex just accused him of. Then again, maybe he’s all bite and no bark, if growing up in the system is what made him into the Devil.
He’s an orphan. Grew up just like Dex is growing up right now. They’re the same. Childhoods that never were. Blood on his hands, a rage so thick and jagged it feels like rust coating his insides, pouring out his throat with every calculated lie and attack. The constant buzzing that threatens to split Dex in two, straight down his spine? The Devil gets that too. The only difference is where Dex has to play nice (one death is easy enough to play off as a child’s accident, two is a pattern), he doesn’t. Daredevil is-
He's everything. They’re the same and that means Dex can be everything too.
“How did they die?” Dex asks when he comes back to himself. Wraps his arms around himself at the same time for good measure, because he’s already messed up on the difference between vulnerable and excited once. Somewhere in him, he knows that the first thing you do when someone tells you their parents died isn’t to ask how it happened, but he also knows that orphans get leeway in just about everything. Even with other sad little parentless brats.
Daredevil hesitates again, and God, for a superhero, he’s real fucking slow.
“I'll head back to my home if you tell me how. You can follow me back and make sure I go in.” Dex offers.
It’s a suggestion he knows the Devil will take him up on. He may want to claw the eyes out of some of the other kids getting treated at the Riviera, but he still waits until they’ve been picked up by their house managers when it’s dark. It’s a rule – not official, obviously, and no one but Dex would be out this late anyway. But it’s a rule nonetheless, instilled into every new boy when they’re fresh and still a little raw from their parents kicking the bucket or running off. Everyone gets back home. If Dex knows it then Daredevil will know it too. They’re the same.
His smile grows anew when he sees the Devil shift, silent but unsettled as he acquiesces. “My mom didn’t– I don’t know if she’s… dead, or not.” Daredevil grits his teeth as he forces out the word ‘dead’. It’s delightful. “She was sick and the best thing she thought she could do for me was to leave.”
Playing his part in this show is exhausting. Dex has to hide his (admittedly, somewhat exaggerated) yawn with a hand to his mouth, as if he’s utterly shocked that a parent would up and leave by choice rather than just dying.
“My dad got shot.” The Devil finishes.
“You gonna cry about it?” Dex asks finally, and it is so fucking refreshing to not have to play empathy games anymore. The subject change comes back at him almost immediately.
“Where’s your home?”
"God, okay, whatever. It's Lyndhurst."
Daredevil doesn’t say anything at first. Just nods once, as if Lyndhurst is some landmark worth recognising. Maybe it is, to him. Dex wouldn’t be surprised if it’s on some grim mental map of tragedies and juvenile records, every boy inside already ticked off as a potential headline.
They walk.
Not side by side. The Devil keeps his distance. Half a pace ahead. He’s up on the rooftops, of course. Watchful. Like he’s expecting Dex to bolt, or maybe just doesn’t trust him not to do something stupid.
Smart. Dex likes that.
Streetlamps cast long shadows and Dex steps deliberately into every one, letting the light carve him out in silhouette, waiting for Daredevil to say something about it. He doesn’t. Just keeps walking like he's done this a thousand times before.
Maybe he has. Hell, an orphan in Hell’s Kitchen, Daredevil would’ve spent time at Lyndhurst for sure. Slept under the same piss-stained ceilings, had the same grey oatmeal and mood stabilizers for breakfast, learned to flinch the same way Dex did. Maybe one of the splintered bed frames was carved by his fists, some mattress still holding the shape of his back.
Dex is going to find out which one. He’s going to crawl into it like it’s a shrine, bury his face in the sheets and breathe in whatever trace is left, like that could be enough to make him more like him. He’ll wrap the threadbare blanket around himself like a cocoon until he molts into something Devil-shaped.
The thought burns in his chest — hot, itchy, electric. Makes his voice come out quieter than it should.
"You know you could kill someone if you wanted to." He kicks at a crushed can on the sidewalk, watches it skitter into the gutter. “Like really kill someone. Not just a broken arm or whatever. You know that, right?”
“No,” Daredevil says, too fast, too clipped. “That’s not how it works.”
“Sure it is.” Dex stops and smiles, craning his head back to look atop the butcher’s canopy. “You might not want to right now, probably shouldn’t when there’s people about. But you could, if you wanted to.”
Silence stretches. Dex can hear the buzz of the overhead wires. Feel the weight of that pause. The Devil’s stopped a few paces ahead, but he doesn’t turn around. So Dex taunts.
"Bet you’ve thought about it."
Daredevil exhales loud enough to be heard at street level. “I think about what I’m going to do to help people. Not to hurt people.”
Dex scoffs. It’s low, knowing. As if killing can’t help people. “Sounds like you think about it a lot.”
They round the corner onto Castillo and Dex slows his pace as Lyndhurst comes into view, dull and slumped behind its too-high gates. The hallway windows glow faint and yellow like sick teeth. Home sweet fucking home.
Which means his time with Daredevil is running out.
Which means Dex gets a little desperate.
He presses again, voice dropping, quiet but sharp. “But for real, did you ever kill anyone?”
“ No,” Daredevil answers, as flat as before.
Dex halts in front of the gate, turns. Stares the Devil down, all of his pent-up frustration packed into the word. “Liar.”
It’s not an accusation. Just… something close to awe. Because if Daredevil hasn’t — not once, not even on accident — then he’s not just strong. He’s a level of perfect even Dex can’t reach.
“You think I should?” Daredevil says finally, carefully, head tilted ever so slightly.
“I think it’d be a waste if you didn’t.”
Dex lets the silence hang between them again. There’s no buzzing, for once. His grin comes easy, well-rehearsed. It’s a mask that doesn’t fit too well anymore (too wide; too sincere; hasn’t practiced with Mercer since he was 14) but he wears it anyway.
Shit, Dex’d let Daredevil kill him if he wanted. He could already imagine how his hands would feel ripping him open, tearing out the parts of him that don’t fit. Fixing him, in a way.
“You should go inside,” Daredevil says, his voice hardening just enough to shift the tension.
Dex doesn’t flinch this time.
“Are you gonna come back?”
“I’m not a babysitter.”
“I didn’t ask for one.”
He swings the gate open with more force than needed, jimmying the fire door and slipping inside before their broken-down alarm can catch up.
Daredevil waits until he’s in before moving. Rule-follower.
Dex doesn’t bother holding the door to silence it shutting before turning to watch from behind the curtain.
Daredevil doesn’t look back. That’s fine. That’s fine.
Because he will come back.
Dex knows it.
And if he doesn’t, then Dex will make him.