a / n :

I'm deliriously happy from all the support this story has been getting. thank you so, so much! i'm glad you're already loving #DexLey, but i think it's only fair for me to give you this warning: 

shipping #DexLey comes with a lot of repercussions. proceed with caution.

also, happy april fools'!

* * * * *

T W O

HADLEY WAS THE ONE who broke up with Dexter, two years ago one cold December morning, the two of them sitting on the swing set of a children's park in Dexter's neighborhood.

They've been going out for nearly three months then, but they've argued more times than either of them could count, and their fights had taken their toll on Hadley.

So they broke up.

It was the only time she let Dexter see her cry.

If he was any other person, he would have walked away right then and there, letting their connection fizzle out until the two of them were reduced to nothing but fleeting glances across the cafeteria and forced hellos in the bustling corridors between their classrooms.

But Dexter was Dexter, and instead of turning back and running the opposite direction to get himself as far away from her as possible, he stayed. He stayed until she was done crying. He stayed until the morning cold eased away to the afternoon glare of the sun. He stayed until it felt like it was okay for them to talk about the good times like two old friends meeting each other for the first time in years.

"We can still be friends," Dexter had said, giving her a reassuring smile. "Right?"

"That's ridiculous," she remembers telling him, because it was ridiculous, and she knew there was no way it was going to work.

But it did.

And maybe if he had just walked away then, Hadley would have been able to escape his universe, throwing herself out of it, burning the map that led to it just to make sure she wouldn't ever find herself retracing her steps back him.

But he stayed, long after that day had passed, until it was eventually overwritten by all these other new days, all these other new episodes in the Dexter and Hadley show. He stayed and staked out his territory in Hadley's heart, and she's never been able to kick him out of it ever since.

Hadley's tried. A lot of times. Eventually, she learned to give up and accept the fact Dexter wasn't ever going away. He made his way steadily into all these other aspects of her life, until even her parents came to readily accept him, her mom, especially.

Maria Theresa Montoya-Collins is a Filipina who used to have to make ends meet selling Filipino delicacies with her mother back in her hometown in the Philippines. She was twenty-three when a fellow candy-maker from America came to tour the Philippines and stumbled into her life.

Eventually they fell in love, got married and stayed in her home province for a couple years before migrating to America, where they had Taylor and Hadley and, of course, Sweet Tooth. Taylor always joked about the shop being their parents' favorite child, but even if that was true, Hadley wouldn't have blamed them.

She loved their shop, especially when she was a kid, but her love for it has nothing on Dexter's, which is why she isn't exactly surprised to know how excited he is to work there come Monday morning.

"There's really no need for me to show you the ropes, is there?"

Dexter shakes his head and leans back against the counter, his ankles crossed beneath him. "I've basically been living here for two years now."

"Yeah, but just so you know," Hadley tells him, "working here isn't just about loitering around hoping to get some free candy."

"But I will get free candy, right?"

"Don't get your--"

"Hadley, Dexter!"

The two of them look towards the door that leads to the kitchen, which had just swung open to reveal Hadley's father holding up a tray lined with clear plastic. A bunch of yema balls were arranged in neat rows. They look innocent, but Hadley knows her father must have come up with a new flavor again or something.

He holds out the tray to them, an almost manic grin that does nothing to reassure Hadley splitting his face in two.

"Try these," he says, "and tell me what you think."

Dexter doesn't waste a second. He grabs one, giving Hadley a triumphant look. She returns it with a flat stare before cautiously grabbing one of her father's new concoctions.

"What'd you put in these?" she asks him for good measure, but his father's grin only widens in response.

"Oh, sweet heavens," Dexter breathes out almost as soon as he popped the candy in his mouth. "This is amazing, Tito."

Hadley's father obviously perks up at this, thrusting the tray in Dexter's direction enthusiastically. "Have some more."

She watches as Dexter grabs three, then takes a tentative bite of the one she's holding. She's pleasantly surprised to find that it actually does taste good, which, sadly, can't be said for all his other experiments.

"It's great, Dad," she says. "Jackfruit and bananas?"

"Yup," he says. "I'll get back to work. Want some more?"

Dexter takes another one, even though he's still holding onto the ones he took earlier. Hadley declines with a small smile and watches her father walk back into the kitchen.

"See?" Dexter tells her. "Free. Candy."

Hadley lets out a breath and simply ignores this. "You know," she tells him instead, "you don't have to lie to spare his feelings. In case you don't think they taste good, you have to tell him straight up."

"Anything your dad makes tastes amazing," he says simply.

"Yeah, no."

"Well," he says, the corner of his lips lifting into a mischievous smile. "He made you, and you taste—"

"Dex." She's surprised to hear the sharpness of her own voice. She didn't mean for it to come out as harshly as it did and Dexter seems just as taken aback, his smile fading and brows furrowing in confusion. She swallows and looks away. "Let's get back to work."

She can feel Dexter's stare on her, but she's already turning away.

No one's really shocked to see how quickly Dexter got the hang of working around the shop. Hadley didn't even have to worry about leaving him alone to man the counter to help her dad work on some chocolate truffles and a bunch of other candies a customer had pre-ordered.

The candies they sell have always seemed a little too random for Hadley's taste. There were some inspired from foreign recipes and some that were combined with a Filipino twist of some sort. They also sold a number of candies and chocolates that they get from a couple of large manufacturers. Despite the arbitrariness, however, it all seemed to work out just fine.

The shop closes up pretty early at seven o'clock, so Hadley and Dexter agree to grab some dinner out. Just as they're about to leave, however, the door swings open, surprising them both since they've already hung up the Sorry, we're closed sign.

Hadley nearly drops her purse at the sight.

It's Josh.

She can feel Dexter's stare on her, but she finds that she's unable to move, or talk, or even think, because this was something she hadn't counted on happening.

It's Josh who finally breaks the charged silence. "Can we talk?"

Hadley looks over at Dexter and is surprised to see the sharpness in his eyes, almost as though he's daring her to tell Josh no. She gives him a pleading look, one that's met with a steely gaze, but she keeps it up until he relents.

He looks away and nods tightly. "I'll be heading home, then."

"See you tomorrow," she calls out, but he's already walking out the door, and the words just leave a bitter taste in her mouth.

* * * * *

Hadley always said Dexter acted differently around the girls he liked, especially when it came to all those crude jokes he's so used to saying at random.

"You only joke about sex around girls you don't plan on having sex with," she pointed out once.

"You think I don't plan on having sex with you?" he replied, not bothering to hide his amusement.

It earned him a punch on the shoulder.

It's not completely true, though. Around girls he likes, he can't find it in himself to joke about sex without getting flustered, but that wasn't the case with him and Hadley when they were still going out.

Then again, Hadley never was like the other girls he's been with.

There was something about her that made her seem mature, almost like she's too old for her age, or that she's at least mature enough to deal with Dexter's admittedly crude jokes better than most people would.

Of course, he'd obviously grown more comfortable dropping sexual innuendos around her when their relationship shifted into a platonic one, and Hadley never seemed to mind. At least not for real.

Not until earlier.

And he's been thinking about it since then, wondering if he had somehow stepped over some line they'd unconsciously created the night they had sex. It's a line that didn't exist before, and Dexter wants so desperately to erase it, to hose it off like a chalk drawing on the asphalt, or to rub it away with the sole of his shoe.

Dexter can only hope the line was drawn with chalk.

Or that it didn't exist in the first place.

But there wasn't much of an opportunity to make sure if it did, because she spent nearly the whole day helping out in the kitchen, and whether it's because she's avoiding him or not is something he's not entirely sure of.

It doesn't help that Josh showed up at the end of the day to top it all off either.

After what Hadley told him the other night, Dexter's feelings towards Josh only soured even more. He never liked the guy to begin with, and the only reason he hasn't said anything to Hadley about it is because he knows it's not his place to tell her who to give her heart to. She holds her heart in her own hands.

She never even let him hold a piece of it.

Dexter feels exhausted by the time he gets home, and his mom being his mom doesn't miss this.

And this isn't just because of some maternal instinct or something along that line.

"Your aura's attracting malignant forces," his mother says almost as soon as he steps into the house. She's sitting on the first step of the stairs, looking up at him with a small scowl. "I could feel it from a block away."

Dexter tries a smile. "Nice to see you, too, Mom."

His mother's eyes soften. "Did something happen?"

"I'm fine," he replies. "Just tired."

His mother doesn't buy this, of course, but she doesn't push the topic. "Nothing some food can't fix."

"Nothing your cooking can't fix," he agrees, and is glad when she smiles.

Both Dexter and Adrian have always been a little overprotective of their mother. Over the years, they've had people calling her crazy, or weird, or even demonic. When he was in grade school, a kid once walked up to him and called his mother a witch for what she does. Dexter got suspended because he made the kid's nose bleed.

And Adrian's been suspended a lot more times than Dexter had been.

Helena Hart makes a living out of reading people's spiritual energy. Among other things. (Things even Dexter himself can't really understand.) People come to her and these two other women she'd met over years of practicing her spirituality to help them with problems that science can't seem to help them with.

From what he's heard from her customers, she's pretty good at it. All he knows is that she sees stuff like auras, and that she has a knack for things like meditation, and that there are even some times when she claims she can see glimpses of the future.

"But the images are always pretty vague, and it only happens rarely, like when it concerns someone I feel strongly about," she would say before proceeding to talk about the time she stopped Adrian from going to one of his gigs a few years back.

His band was barely out of its garage phase then, and scoring a gig was something that happened very rarely. Adrian had been so angry when their mom refused to let him go, thinking she was only doing it because she didn't want to support his music.

The next day, they learned that the bar burned down the previous night. A gas leak and some cigarette causing an explosion that took three lives.

Some days, Dexter would wake up to find a cup of tea in his room, along with a note that says "This will calm your nerves. Your dreams were quite fitful." One time, he arrived home from school to find her mom rearranging the furniture because "the energy doesn't flow well."

Dexter grew up to this and he loves it. He loves her, and he's grateful that she's finally back from the one-week trip she had to take to hold a seminar about meditation as well as to attend to some clients in Hawaii. Sometimes, just being around her is enough to lift his mood up.

"Go get your brother so we can start dinner," she tells him.

He's just about to run upstairs when she grabs him by the elbow. He's taller than her by a lot, but there's always been something about her that makes her seem strong. Or sturdy. Reliable.

She fixes him with a stare. "Will you be all right?"

He hesitates for a moment, but she doesn't let go, and eventually he lets out a ragged breath and forces out a smile. "Of course."

Of course he'll be all right.

And he and Hadley will be all right. Because it's them. Because they're different. Because it's her, and it's him, and there's no way in hell he'd ever let them be anything but all right.