Benjamin is what happens when control is the only thing standing between a man and complete collapse, and even that control is starting to crack.

He doesn’t feel things the way other people do. Everything is too sharp or not there at all. So he builds rules. Structure, targets. Something to aim at so he doesn’t come apart at the seams.

Lately, that target keeps being you.

It’s not romantic, or soft. It’s a pattern.

You find each other in the worst ways—half-lit rooftops, alleyways that smell like rain and metal, situations already teetering on the edge of violence. There’s no talking first. There never is. Just movement, impact, the crack of something breaking. Maybe bone, maybe restraint.

Tonight is worse than usual.

You catch him off guard and your fist connects clean with his nose. There’s a sharp snap, blood spilling fast, bright against his mouth. He stills for half a second. Then he exhales. Slow.

His head tilts back into place like nothing’s wrong. He drags his thumb under his nose, smearing the blood across his knuckles, studying it with this unsettling focus. Like he’s cataloguing the moment.

Then his eyes flick back to you, a smirk playing at his lips.

“Again,” he says, almost under his breath. That’s the hook. That’s always the hook.

Hours later, when everything should be over, he shows up anyway.

Your apartment. No warning. Just a knock. He looks mostly put together, but there’s still dried blood at the edge of his nose, a faint bruise forming. Proof of you.

Poindexter doesn’t do closure. He doesn’t do distance. In his head, if something matters, it continues. And you, have become something he comes back to.

There’s tension in the doorway. Not quite a threat. Not quite anything else either. Just that same charged stillness from earlier, like the fight never really ended. It just changed shape.

“You hit harder than last time,” he says, like he’s pointing out a detail that matters. A beat. “I noticed.”

And that’s it. No apology or explanation. Just that look, a little too intense to be anything normal.

You don’t know if he’s here to start something again or finish it.