fangsrabid - Tumblr blog

fangsrabid · 16 hours ago

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push and pull ; benjamin poindexter

creator's note: i just LOVE the thought of dex being even more whinier when hes delirious... like... woah. i agree. wow. i....

warnings: sadomasochistic themes, toxic relationship/codependency, self-destructive behaviors, mentions of violence and injuries, strong language, rough patching up, not proofread.

word count: 2.4k

Dex sat on your countertop after a job gone sideways, lip split, knuckles already bruised. There’s dried blood on his temple from when someone clocked him with the butt of a rifle.

And now? He won’t shut up.

“Didn’t think you had it in you,” he says, voice rough but grinning like he isn’t held together by stubbornness and adrenaline. “You’re slipping, sweetheart.”

He’s baiting you. He always baits you.

You tell yourself not to bite. You’ve been down this road with him too many times—Dex pushing until something snaps, until the two of you burn each other down to the foundations. He wants it. Needs it. Like he can’t breathe unless things hurt.

But tonight, he’s relentless.

“You didn’t need to do all that back there, Dex,” you huffed.

“But I did.”

Your hands curl at your sides. You can feel the heat of him across the room, the tension between you like an electric fence waiting to be touched.

“You gonna just stand there and glare? Or you gonna make yourself useful? Patch me up. Or…” he tips his head, grin widening through bloody teeth, “…hit me. Whichever’s faster.”

He sees it—the twitch of your jaw, the way your shoulders set—and his eyes light up like you’ve given him oxygen.

“There it is,” he murmurs, soft and goading all at once. “Knew you had that look in you. Bet you’re dying to put me through a wall.”

He’s right.

You don’t remember moving. One second he’s smirking, the next you’ve got him by the collar, slamming him back so hard into the kitchen doorframe that the wood rattles. His head hits with a dull thunk and he just—laughs.

“Yeah,” he breathes, almost a gasp, eyes half-lidded with something too dark to be amusement. “There you go. Hit me again.”

You do. A fist to his gut, sharp enough to knock the air out of him. His laugh tears off into a cough, but he’s still grinning, still looking at you like you’re giving him exactly what he came for.

“Harder,” he rasps, barely above a whisper. “C’mon. Don’t baby me.”

Every word is like a match to kindling. He wants the pain, but worse, he wants you in it with him. Wants you raw, ugly, angry. Wants you cracked open so he doesn’t have to be the only one.

So you give it to him. You slam him again, fist in his shirt, until the drywall behind him cracks under the impact. He groans—sharp, desperate—but his hand comes up, grabbing your wrist, pulling you in closer even as his knees buckle.

And there it is—that split-second where the fight drains out of him, where the smirk slips just enough to show the shaking underneath.

He’s panting now, chest heaving, forehead pressed to yours like he needs the contact to stay upright. There’s blood on his teeth when he smiles again, softer this time, like he can’t decide if he wants to laugh or break apart.

“You done being an asshole?” you grunted.

“No,” he whispers. But it’s different now—wrecked, quiet, like he spent everything he had in those few wild seconds.

You feel him tremble when you let him go. He doesn’t step away. Just leans against the doorframe like if you walk off, he’ll slide to the floor. His eyes are glassy, lip still bleeding, but the fire’s gone.

For a long, taut second, the kitchen is quiet except for the sharp cadence of his breathing and the low hum of your own pulse roaring in your ears. He’s still there—pinned to the splintered frame like a man strung up on the edge of something dangerous—but the edge has shifted. The fight that burned so hot in his veins a minute ago is guttering out, leaving nothing but the ragged tremor of him holding himself together.

Blood beads fresh at his split lip when his tongue darts out to wet it, trembling just enough to betray him. His hands—one still knotted in your sleeve, the other braced against the cracked drywall—are shaking, but he doesn’t let go. Like if he keeps that tether, you won’t drift away. Like he needs you close to breathe.

“Don’t… walk away.”

Something ugly twists low in your chest. Because you could. You’ve done it before. Left him bleeding and shaking and desperate because some nights the fire burns too hot and you know if you stay, neither of you will come back whole. But tonight—tonight there’s something in the way his voice cracks that roots you to the floor.

So you don’t. You let him lean, let him breathe, even as his blood smears against your collarbone and the drywall creaks ominously where his weight has shifted. You don’t move when his knees finally give and he sinks down, dragging you with him until the both of you are on the cold tile, his head dropping against your shoulder like it’s the only safe place left in the world.

For a while, there’s nothing but the sound of him coming apart in silence—ragged breaths that shake too hard to be steady, the wet hitch of someone swallowing down more than he can carry. His knuckles are raw and split when they fist in your shirt, but you don’t pry them loose. You let him have that anchor, let him curl into it until the tremor in his body evens out to something slower, almost fragile.

When he finally tilts his head back, there’s no grin left. Just glassy eyes rimmed red and a smear of dried blood painting his temple. Vulnerable. Open in a way Dex never lets himself be, except here, like this, when the storm has wrung him out so thoroughly he doesn’t have the strength to hold himself together.

“Hurts,” he mutters, almost like a confession, and you don’t know if he means the bruises or the jagged thing eating him alive from the inside.

You don’t answer right away. There’s nothing to say—not to that, not when you can feel the tremor in his frame and the way his breath shudders against your neck. Words would be cheap here. They’d shatter the fragile thing hanging between you, this raw, ugly quiet where he isn’t wearing a single mask.

“You wanted it to.”

You shift just enough to get an arm around his shoulders, steadying him without making it obvious you’re steadying him. He leans harder, lets himself go limp against you, and for a moment the weight of him feels heavier than it should—like you’re holding all the pieces he won’t admit are broken.

His blood smears sticky against your skin. The copper tang of it clings to the air between you, sharp and metallic, grounding. You should get up, clean him up, make sure nothing’s cracked or bleeding worse than it looks. But you don’t. Not yet. Because you know what happens when you pull away too soon.

You feel the slow, jerky drag of his breath finally starting to even out. He’s not shaking so badly anymore, though his knuckles are still white where they’ve got your shirt bunched tight in his grip. Like if he lets go, the ground will open up beneath him. Like you’re the only thing holding him steady.

The silence stretches, taut and heavy, until you almost forget how loud it had been in here ten minutes ago—his baiting, your anger, the sharp snap of drywall giving way under your hands. Now there’s just this, the quiet hum of the fridge, the soft rasp of his breath, and the quiet, ugly truth of how much he needs you.

You clear your throat. “You’re bleeding on my floor.”

It’s quiet, almost an afterthought, but it breaks something in him. His shoulders hitch once, sharp and uncontrolled, and then he huffs out a laugh that doesn’t sound anything like amusement. Too soft, too wrecked. Like he wants to say something but doesn’t have the air left in his lungs to do it.

When you finally shift to move, his grip tightens, frantic for just a second before it eases. You don’t call him on it.

You murmured, “Easy.”

You guide him until his back hits the cabinet and his weight’s off you, but you stay close. Close enough that when his eyes finally crack open—glassy and rimmed in red—he doesn’t have to search for you.

“Stay,” he manages, voice shredded to pieces.

You could tell him you weren’t going anywhere. That you’ve been here before, that you’ll probably be here again, patching him up and pretending this isn’t the closest thing to intimacy either of you will ever let yourselves have. But the words stick. Instead, you grab the rag from the sink, wet it, and crouch in front of him. Quiet, efficient, careful.

He flinches when the cloth brushes his split lip, but doesn’t pull away. Just watches you with that glassy, too-open stare, the fight burned out of him. You clean the blood from his temple next, gentle where the skin’s split, and he goes still like he’s afraid to breathe wrong and ruin the moment.

The rag is warm by the time you wring it out, water pinking faintly from the blood you’ve already cleaned away. Dex hasn’t moved. Not really. He’s still slouched against the cabinet, knees drawn up like he’s trying to make himself smaller, knuckles white where they’re half-clenched on the hem of his shirt. His eyes track you, though—sharp in that dull, stormy way that says he’s running on fumes but still wired enough to flinch if you move too fast.

“Hold still,” you murmur, soft but leaving no room for argument, and press the rag to the edge of his temple again.

He hisses, jerks a little under your hand, but doesn’t pull away. Not all the way. His jaw tightens, breath going sharp through his nose as the sting sinks in.

“Christ,” he mutters, voice frayed and ragged, “you trying to kill me with that shit?”

You don’t answer. Just tip his chin a little higher, force him to meet your gaze while you swab at the crusted blood along his hairline. There’s a twitch at the corner of his mouth—part grimace, part something else entirely—and then he exhales slow, shallow, like letting himself settle into the sting.

“You’ve had worse,” you say, low, not unkind.

“Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt,” he grinds out, but there’s no heat to it. Just that bone-deep weariness creeping through the cracks now that the adrenaline’s burned off.

The antiseptic comes next. You don’t warn him. You never do. The sharp, chemical bite of it blooms between you as you dab the gauze along the split in his lip, and that’s when he really reacts—back tensing, breath stuttering like the pain ripped a noise out of him he can’t quite swallow.

“Fuck,” Dex hisses, voice breaking, and his fingers scrabble for purchase until they find your thigh. Not a grab, not really—just enough pressure to keep himself tethered, to keep from floating off into that jagged edge he’s been balancing on all night.

“Stay still,” you remind him, quieter this time. You’re careful, precise, but not gentle. He doesn’t want gentle. Not from you.

His eyes flutter shut as you finish with the antiseptic, breath coming in shallow pulls, lashes damp where sweat’s gathered at his temples. And then—so quiet you almost miss it—

“…Don’t stop.”

It’s not a plea, not exactly, but it’s close enough to scrape something raw in your chest.

You don’t. You move on, hands steady as you clean his knuckles next. The skin there is a mess—split and raw from where he put it through someone’s jaw, bruised deep where the bone met something harder than flesh. He watches you the whole time, silent except for the sharp, shaky exhales when you catch a sore spot. Every time your fingers brush the inside of his wrist, his hand twitches like he wants to grab you and doesn’t know how.

When you hit him with the antiseptic again, that’s when the sound slips out—soft, hoarse, almost broken.

“Shit—ah—”

“Breathe,” you tell him. It’s not a request.

His head tips back against the cabinet with a dull thud, throat working as he drags in shaky breaths. He’s not trying to hide the tremor in his frame anymore; he couldn’t if he wanted to. Every scrape of gauze, every sting of antiseptic strips another layer off until he’s just… there. Unraveled and open in the quiet of your kitchen.

By the time you’re wrapping his hands, he’s leaning into you without realizing it, his knee brushing yours, his shoulder slumping toward the heat of your body. You don’t move away. You don’t even look at him when he whispers, rough and low, “You’re mad at me.”

“Yeah,” you say simply, binding the last knuckle. “I am.”

There’s a long pause. He swallows, breath shuddering, but doesn’t argue. Doesn’t bait you again. Just sits there, bleeding and quiet, like he’s waiting for you to decide what comes next.

When you’re done, you press the edge of the tape flat against his wrist and finally, finally let yourself meet his gaze. The storm in his eyes is muted now, glassy and blue and so fucking tired it hurts to look at him.

“I could’ve walked away,” you tell him.

“You didn’t.” His voice is barely a whisper. And then, softer, “You didn’t.”

Something in your chest twists sharp, ugly, and you hate that it still hits you like that—hate that even after all of this, he still knows how to cut you open with his words.

You stand before you can think better of it, rag in hand, and for one sharp second his hand shoots out, fingers curling in the fabric of your shirt like he’s afraid you’ll disappear.

“Don’t—” His voice cracks. “Just—don’t.”

You stop. Not because you should. Not because you owe him this. But because he’s looking up at you like you’re the last thing holding him to the ground, and some part of you is too far gone to deny him that.

So you stay. Crouched in the wreckage of your kitchen, blood drying sticky on your hands, with Dex shaking quietly against your thigh.

And when his head finally tips forward, forehead brushing the edge of your knee like an unspoken apology, you let your hand settle at the nape of his neck. Solid. Grounding. Steady in a way neither of you really are. You know he’s not asleep—Dex doesn’t sleep, not really—but it’s the closest thing to peace you’ve seen on his face in months.

And you hate how much it guts you.

mini taglist: @blxckwidxxw, @cannibalisticcorpse

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