small blurb written for the beautiful @foxmurdock based on the lovely idea they shared with me a few days ago
You sit under a lonely maple tree, Matt beside you, tree bark digging into your backs, grass tickling your skin. Surprisingly, It's actually quite comfortable. Your head lolls agaisnt his shoulder as you listen to the cicadas, and the early birds chirping lightly overhead. The sun isn't out yet, but the sky is tinged in a lighter blue than it was an hour ago. It won't be long until the day begins. For now, the world stands still, holding you gently in this rare moment of peace that you get to share with your sweet love.
You say his name softly, holding it in your mouth the way you hold him in your heart, "Matty?"
"Yes, Sweetie?" His reply is just as soft.
You lift your head from his shoulder, looking at over a dozen fireflies flittering over the grass. "When you were a kid, did you ever see any fireflies?" Your soft grip on his hand tightens with your growing excitement.
"No, I didn't." He lifts your hand to his mouth, kissing your knuckles with a tenderness he never realised he was capable of before you, "Describe them to me, Baby."
"Well…they're like these gentle wisps of light. Kind of like stars, you know, 'cause they blink. It's so beautiful…" He smiles beside you, already enraptured by your description, "They feel kind of innocent…hopeful, in a way…almost like little reminders that there's still good in this world…" A nervous laugh escapes your lips, "That probably doesn't make any sense."
He turns to you, the hand that's not holding yours reaching to cup your cheek, "I don't need to see a firefly to know there's still light in this world, Sweetheart. I have you for that, lovely girl."
notes: not proofread btw (divider by @cursed-carmine)
Had this one sitting in my docs folder for a while, decided to edit it and finally drop it in honor of the hot summer.
Ship: Matt Murdock x F!Reader
Wordcount: 2k
Warnings for this fic: SFW, no use of y/n, lots of descriptions about how hot it is but it's fine cause Matt still thinks you smell nice, Reader is AFAB, Matt is a brat
Fic Summary: Just a short, humourish drabble-ish bit about you and Matt dealing with the heat as I try to get back into writing.
Or: in which Matt is still somehow cuddly in triple-digit weather.
You were going to kill someone.
Matt would claim you were exaggerating, but you knew the truth. These were living conditions meant for lizards, not mammals, and when mammals—one particular flavor of mammal, especially—were forced out of their proper biome, murder wasn’t out of the question. You were pretty sure that was how it worked, anyway, according to Genesis. It was hard to remember when your brain was sizzling inside your skull like a wad of bacon.
One-hundred-and-fucking-six degrees.
You could have dealt with it if it had been a bit drier. Really. But during New York summers, the only thing more reliable than the honking of horns was the humidity, which had sent the index soaring up into the category of absolute hellscape. The rickety old air conditioning unit in the apartment had done alright until the heat index had hit triple digits. Then it had coughed, sputtered, and settled for, ‘Sure, you’re still a sweaty puddle of melting meat juice, but the outside is worse if you think about it, right?’ The A.C. at Nelson and Murdock had waved the white flag even sooner than that, to the point they’d closed the office four days ago and reverted to working from home. Matt hadn’t even bothered to go out as the Devil the past two nights, not when the very act of putting on the suit had become dangerous.
Not that there was anyone out there for Matt to fight right now. Apparently even the criminals had a temperature limit. Turns out the real secret to stopping crime wasn’t a Devil suit, but instead just cranking up the setting on the giant ball of fire in the sky until the very act of crime meant you might wind up with a chance to meet the real Devil first hand.
The fact that you were living in Hell’s Kitchen had never felt more accurate.
Matt, ever the practical masochist, was out in the bad air doing… something. Errands, you vaguely remembered, since it was after dark and thus moderately less like a pot of boiling soup outside. You didn’t much care, though. You were currently in the bedroom sprawled out on the floor where it was just a touch cooler, a few thin sheets and a pillow thrown down for padding. You’d stripped down to your underwear, five different fans whirring away around you in an attempt to stir the stagnant, sticky air in the room. If you were lucky, they’d help you retain the brief snatch of heavenly cold your body had greedily absorbed sitting in the shower for the past hour. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better, and at this point you’d take it. And as much as you loved Matt, it was far more pleasant without him here. That man was a furnace and the heat had only reduced his cuddling needs by about forty percent. On top of that, if he knew you’d cooled your body, he’d want in.
The bedroom door slowly rolled open with an ominous…
…squeak.
You blearily turned your head.
Matt had already stripped out of his shirt, his body so soaked in sweat he almost seemed to shine. On a good day you’d have compared him and his damp, pale skin to a beautiful marble sculpture, to classical paintings of gorgeous Greek Gods emerging from frothing rivers. Now, however, all you could think of was a hot dog pulled straight from the hot, cloudy water at that one food cart you didn’t really trust:
Shiny.
Questionably wet.
And not something you particularly wanted laying on top of you in triple digit weather.
Matt blinked innocently at you as he slowly shucked his shorts—shorts you hadn’t even realized he owned until this heat wave. It left him in nothing but damp boxers still clinging to his thick thighs. His intent was clear.
“Shoo,” you croaked. “My cold body. Go away. Go sit in the shower like I did.”
“Everyone else had the same idea. The water pressure’s too low now.” He took a creeping step, and then another, bit by bit making his way around the bed towards you like an overheated panther. “Share it with me. I want it.”
“Come back when it’s ten degrees cooler.”
“I love you,” he sighed sadly, aiming those big, dark, mournful eyes in your general direction as he rounded the bed. Foggy called it Matt’s ‘abandoned kitten in the rain’ look. It was far more effective on you than you’d ever admit to, and on a colder day, it would have worked. But you were quickly reminded of Matt’s true goal when a droplet of sweat rolled down his forehead and into his eyes. He blinked it away with a grunt, nose scrunching like a cat’s as he paused just long enough to wipe it away. Then he was back at it. He sank smoothly to his knees, crawling menacingly towards you across the floor on all fours. “I love you so, so much. Let me hold you, sweetheart. I need you.”
“Fuck off, you goddamn cold thief.” You kicked lethargically at him with one leg the moment he was in range, dodging his grip when he snatched at your ankle. You quickly shifted to your backup plan, which was mostly just rolling like an overcooked rotisserie chicken to the far side of the small cloth nest on the floor. But even after an hour in a cold shower, you still wound up partially stuck to the sheets where sweat had pooled against your lower back, bringing half the fabric with you, making you groan. “Do some Devil meditation to cool down.”
He’d made it fully onto the blankets now, inching towards you, that familiar predatory hunger radiating from every inch of him. He slowly tilted his head, honing in on you, on the exact positioning of his body. Then he flashed you a grin. “This is faster.”
“I’m not your cold pack—”
“You’re about to be,” he purred.
Before you could blink he’d flung himself across the blankets, twining himself around you, trapping you in his sticky grip. You squirmed and rocked weakly in an attempt to escape, a flopping wet fish caught in the clutches of your beloved cuddle octopus, but it was no use, and fighting him off would only heat you up further. You let out a miserable groan, sagging against the floor, and the sound was almost lost beneath his equally loud moan of relief.
The struggle clearly over, he made his final move, throwing one of his fuzzy, muscular legs over your waist and dragging you back in tighter against him, shoving his hips up against your ass without so much as a, ‘you want some dinner first?’ Just like that you were trapped against a mountain of sweaty, burning Devil. His contented, admittedly-mildly-heat-exhausted little purr into your hair was only matched by your grumble of irritation as his body eagerly began to drain you of every last drop of cold you’d managed to suck up in the shower.
“Why?” you moaned, his sticky, wet skin sliding against yours with every breath, the sweat already pooling between you. You felt like you were trapped against a slip-n-slide. “Why, Matthew?”
“You don’t want me to get heat stroke do you?” he mumbled sadly, though he wasn’t sad enough not to rub his great, big, obnoxious, sweaty head against your damp hair. There must have been some cold left up there, too. “Who will keep you warm in the winter? As if you don’t do this to me when you’re cold. Fair’s fair.”
“The pot is uncomfortable being called the fuck out by the kettle,” you muttered, reluctantly lifting one arm so he could more easily wrap himself around you. Which he did, with no small amount of pleasure. “This sucks, and I hate it.”
“There is one upside though.”
“What’s that?”
He dragged his head sleepily down to your neck and faceplanted against your damp skin without any hesitation, taking a few long, drunken inhales. When he spoke again, his voice had grown just a little slurred, glutted and thick. “You smell amazing, sweetheart.”
“No, I smell like I’m a bag of meat that’s marinating,” you said grimly. “Because that’s what I am right now thanks to this heatwave. I am God’s sentient bag of marinating meat.”
“Mm, but the bag smells good at least.” Matt rubbed his cheek fondly against your slick shoulder, no doubt luxuriating in all the pheromones bogged down in the sweat clinging to your skin. “We can marinate together.”
Who said romance was dead?
“As flattering as it is that you’re not turned off by how I smell soaked in my own sweat,” you told him tiredly, though not unkindly, “I regret to inform you that Club Vagina is closed until the air stops trying to kill us.”
“Fair. Just thought you should know how good you smell.” He yawned, adjusting himself against you. You grimaced when your skin and his stuck together awkwardly for a moment before sliding slickly against each other, only to seemingly glue itself back together a moment later when he settled.
Once he was cooled off, you were absolutely leaving him on this side of the floor nest and making an escape for the other side. Hell, you might be able to talk him into giving you a good six inches of space if you could convince him that a single pinky toe touching qualified as cuddling in spirit, if not in form.
That he still wanted to cuddle at all was the bigger mystery.
“What I really want to know is how you aren’t dying right now.” You furrowed your brow. “You’re tolerating this and the heat a lot better than I thought you would.”
“Let me put it this way.” He tapped one finger against you almost playfully. “Ninety degrees in the suit feels roughly equal to triple digits when not wearing it. At least this way the sweat has somewhere to go. Some nights I’m surprised I don’t make sloshing sounds when I move.”
Your brain unhelpfully offered up an idea of what that might sound like: a wet squish caught somewhere between the splashing of water in a bucket and the muffled squeak of a water balloon when you squeezed it in your hand.
You really wished your brain was a little less imaginative. Or specific.
“Oh god.”
“Mhm. Now you know why I sometimes avoid you until I shower after patrol in the summer.”
“That is very much appreciated. Speaking of showers, I could already use another one, but that’s not doable until the water pressure’s back.” You blew out a breath, staring at the wall, the only shield between both of you and the tacky, carnival taffy-thick humidity desperate to find a way in. One of the fans sputtered as if in sympathy, though that likely had more to do with the way it had been running almost non-stop for twelve hours. For all you knew, this was the fan threatening a lawsuit over unpaid overtime. “Until then we just survive. Or evolve into lizards.”
“I choose survival. Might be hard to keep the streets safe if I was a lizard.”
“Unless you were a really big, scary one. A Komodo Devil.” You groaned, flopping your head back against his shoulder. “Then you could chase people off before they take all the ice cream at the store. I don’t suppose you found some?”
“I could only find a box of popsicles.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Except they melted on the way home. So fruit-flavored, room-temperature water in a tube is the best I can offer until they solidify in the freezer again.”
Fuck.
This wasn’t fair. You bet Turk had ice cream. Somehow. Why couldn’t you have some of that
Actually…
“I don’t suppose,” you said innocently, “I could talk you into stealing an air conditioning unit, and maybe some ice cream, from a bad guy?”
Matt was quiet for a long, thoughtful, Catholic moment as he presumably considered the sin of thievery, especially if that thievery involving taking something from a very, very bad person who surely didn’t deserve the cold air and sweet, sweet relief of ice cream as much as you, the love of his life, did.
You pointedly leaned forward, your wet, sweaty body peeling away from him like the hands of a kindergartner who’d coated his palms in Elmer’s glue.
That did it.
“The second I’ve drained all the cold from your body, I’m willing to discuss it.”
summary: a small glimpse into how matt feels about you .ᐟ
tags/warnings: drabble, very lightly suggestive themes, made with original series matt murdock in mind, unresolved tension, mentions of catholicism / religious themes, worship of reader kinda?, matt murdock is down bad for you
wc: 0.5k
matt has never cared to exact the restraint necessary for denying himself earthly pleasures. after all, he knows he’s a sinner.
so, one night stands? sure. drinking at josie’s nearly every night of the week? sign him up. beating the shit out of the scourge of the earth as the devil, shrouded in the darkness of night? check.
but matt has the capacity for a type of discipline only practiced by the most pious devotees. an unrelenting, iron-tight grip on his control, despite popular belief. at least, when it counts. that isn’t often — because he doesn’t necessarily bump into the scriptural divine casually on the sinful new york city streets. but when he does — when, despite all odds, it matters? he would never dream to forsake something holy; would never defile or soil a tangible glimpse of heaven with his blood-stained hands and tainted soul, preordained and bound for hell.
that’s why he doesn’t dare allow himself the luxury of yielding to his desire for you. the desire that has become an endless hum in the back of his head; the desire that has seeped into his corporeal form and crawled into the darkest crevices of his soul, steeping and dying it impossibly darker. giving into it would be utter blasphemy. the very thought of doing so makes the cross hung around his neck burn.
he’s…undeserving.
even as he feels the sweltering heat of hell recede, recoil and slink back into the ground beneath him—(the ground that is usually so inclined to drag him back down to the dust with the weight of sin that leaves his tracks imbedded in the summer slough of mud)—when he so much as nears you, like it fears the very presence of something as holy as you. and for some sacred moment, he doesn’t feel the insistent, creeping whispers of the damned at his back.
matt is well aware that you are the closest he will get to being in the grace of god, of earning the experience; the bliss of heaven itself. so, like any good catholic, he worships. he pays his penance to you, despite you never asking for it. he would gladly take anything you gave him—whether it be curse or praise. he would relish in it. to simply be in your proximity was more than he ever felt he had the right to ask for.
and so, when an angel like you, sanctified by the very hand of god, whispers his name like a prayer from your lips for the first time? he swears he can hear the lord speak through you. he can finally, finally taste the success of his years of atonement washing over him — salvation in the purest of forms.
you breathe redemption into him with each and every brush of your skin. it’s a hypnotic lull — the heat of you beside him a sacred fire that deliciously fuels his pyre, purifying his corrupted spirit and coaxing that seemingly intrinsic wickedness out of his veins, a heady flame he’s drawn to like a moth. he could easily burn up in it—and would be content to do so—if he only selfishly let himself.
like the bonafide divine, you are what he prays to. because you’re his religion.
a/n: characterization of matt (from the original series) is partially inspired by @pastafossa ‘s matt in ‘the red thread’ ! i hope i did it justice :(
Pairing: Matt x mutant!fem!Reader Word count: 5k [Series Masterlist] [Matt Murdock Masterlist]
tags/warnings: 18+; dark themes/content, canon typical violence, emotional hurt/comfort, PTSD, smut, plot twists, fluff and angst, torture, mentions of sexual abuse, canon divergence, Reader has a fake name & is Matt's neighbor
a/n: And we're back with another chapter! All comments and reblogs are very, very appreciated!
A quiet, pained groan rumbled in the back of your throat as you caught two heated voices arguing nearby. You attempted to open your eyes as their words drifted around you, but your eyelids felt leaden and useless, barely fluttering open a crack. With your mind steadily returning to you, you became painfully aware of how battered and worn the rest of you felt. Your back was stiff and sore, your muscles protesting the slightest movement as you shifted on whatever uncomfortable surface you were currently on. Inhaling a sharp, ragged breath into your aching lungs, the voices that’d been fighting nearby came to an abrupt stop.
Eventually managing to blink your eyes open, you stared up at the dull, white ceiling above you. Brows knitting together in confusion, your sluggish mind was able to distinguish that this ceiling was not your ceiling. So where were you? From what you last remembered, you’d been out on a run around the city. You’d just finished and had been heading back to your apartment to make dinner, but then–
The ambush in the alley catapulted to the forefront of your mind, and you suddenly recalled the woman who’d attacked you out of nowhere before you’d passed out. Jolting upright in a rush, your vision temporarily swam at the abrupt movement, and a sharp, throbbing pain lanced its way through your skull. You winced at the sensation as your vision gradually grew clear again, but you didn’t recognize the dingy orange futon that you were sitting on, and you certainly didn’t recognize the apartment you were sitting inside. Though you did recognize the dark haired woman standing in front of you as the one who’d attacked you in the alley, and while you didn’t recall the blonde beside her having been present, she also looked oddly familiar.
But the sight of them standing there staring at you caused your hackles to raise. Despite being drained from your run, feeling decimated after being thrown around and strangled, and only just regaining your faculties from returning to consciousness, you anticipated another fight to break out. Because whoever this dark-haired woman was, she’d just kidnapped you, and you weren’t about to take that lightly.
“Stay the hell back!” you warned, trying to fight the slight sway of your body along the futon. “Or you’ll regret it.”
Despite the threat in your words, you admittedly felt far too weak and exhausted to do much to them. The alley fight had taken it out of you, especially with how you’d been slammed around a few times too many. And you were quite out of practice with summoning forth your abilities without completely losing control and weakening yourself further. But you still had your fists–though you had a feeling her punches would land harder.
The dark-haired woman scoffed at your warning, rolling her eyes dismissively in irritation. From beside her, the blonde shot her a sharp, reprimanding look over her shoulder before she turned her attention back on you. Gripping the edge of the torn futon, your nails dug into the cushion as you fought to steady yourself, but the small smile suddenly overtaking the blonde’s pretty face caught you off guard.
“Relax,” she said gently. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
Her hands slowly raised from her sides in a placating gesture as the friendly smile remained on her face. Beside her, the dark-haired woman let out a long, heavy sigh of annoyance before reluctantly raising her own hands in a half-hearted imitation of the gesture. She took a definitive step backwards as if to emphasize the point, putting more space between herself and you before she crossed her arms over her chest and fixed you with a scowl.
“That’s a little hard to believe,” you bitterly replied. “Considering you’ve already attacked me and dragged me here.”
“Which was a mistake, one that shouldn’t have happened,” the blonde persisted, shooting the other woman a pointed look. “All we want to do is talk, I promise.”
Still trying to keep yourself steady on the futon as you weighed the truth in her words, you began to look around the room, taking in the tattered state of the apartment you’d been brought to. On the far right of the futon sat a desk which was mostly littered with empty bottles of alcohol. Papers were messily strewn about, some even haphazardly covering what appeared to be a laptop. Beside the desk sat a garbage can which was overflowing with even more empty bottles of alcohol, the sight causing a crease to form between your brows. Whoever lived here certainly drank far too much.
Glancing around the rest of the space, you could just glimpse a messy kitchen covered in dirty dishes and more bottles of alcohol from where you sat on the futon. Shifting your attention to the left, you spotted a door which you assumed led out towards a hallway, the glass pane displaying the words ‘Alias Investigations’ along it. At least now you’d discovered the exit, you just needed to find your opportunity to bolt.
Your attention eventually returned to the two women standing before you, but your gaze lingered on the blonde. She stood cautiously eyeing you with that friendly, disarming smile still drawn over her lips as if she expected you to trust her. Eyes narrowing in contemplation, it finally clicked as to where you’d seen her face before–plastered all around the city.
“You’re Trish Walker, aren’t you?” you asked, tipping your chin at her. “You’re the one on all of those bus ads.”
Her smile turned sheepish as she nodded. “Yeah,” she agreed. “That’s me.”
“Great, so now that you know who she is, why don’t you tell us who the hell you are?” the dark haired woman impatiently snapped. “And how about this time you avoid passing out, yeah? I don't really have time for that.”
Glancing over at the dark-haired woman, you saw her leaning against a wall across the room still scowling at you. A frown settled onto your face at the rude, demanding way she kept speaking to you. Out of the corner of your eye, you caught the apologetic look that Trish sent you, and your gaze slowly slid back over to her. You didn’t understand how Trish Walker–someone that seemed to have status in the city–could be found in a place like this, or why she’d be spending her time with someone like the angry, rude woman. Nothing about this situation made much sense, but you’d started to figure that the only way to get any answers was to cooperate for the moment. Which meant participating in answering their questions.
“My name is Olivia Allen,” you said, giving them the fake one you’d chosen a few years back. Gaze sliding over to the rude woman you still didn’t know, your brows raised expectantly. “And you are…?”
The dark-haired woman continued to stare at you, the tension palpably increasing in the small apartment. It wasn’t until Trish waved a hand at the woman in an urgent motion, encouraging her to answer you, that she finally relented.
“Jessica Jones,” she stated flatly. “Now focus on answering my questions or I’ll be forced to break a few of your bones.”
“Jessica!” Trish scolded.
“Who are you to Kilgrave?” Jessica continued, ignoring the way Trish was roughly shaking her head at her. “And why does he have a framed photo of the two of you? Why the fuck are you jogging around my block? Are you the one he’s got watching me?"
Fear had the little hairs along your forearms raising at the mention of his name, and a chill made its way through your sore, beaten body. Swallowing thickly, you tried to remain in control of yourself. Wherever he was in the city, he wasn’t here in this room with you. You were safe for the moment.
“I was on a run,” you answered, the words coming out slowly. “I live just a few blocks over, and this is on my route. I’m not watching anyone. I’ve never even seen you before.”
Jessica huffed at your explanation, as if the idea of jogging for exercise was ridiculous. “So what’s with the picture then? The one of the two of you that he keeps framed?" she pushed. Uncrossing her arms from over her chest, she stuffed her hands into her jacket pocket and pushed off the wall. “What’s the reason for that, hmm?”
Lips pressing firmly together at her continued probing, you fell silent beneath her glare. That was a question you particularly didn’t want to answer. That photo was during a time in your life that you’d painstakingly tried to forget. The nightmares you’d been having about him lately were already bad enough, the memories of your time with him plaguing you as much during the day as they did at night. You weren’t exactly fond of the idea of drawing them to the surface by recounting them for complete strangers.
As if sensing your distress, Trish took a careful step towards where you were sitting on the futon. Tensing immediately at her approach, distrust passed over your features.
“It’s okay, you can tell us,” Trish assured you.
“Maybe I don’t want to,” you sharply countered.
Jessica took a single, intimidating step forward, her hands still casually lingering in the pockets of her leather jacket. “Well,” she replied cooly, “I really can break a few bones if that would help loosen your tongue.”
“Jess,” Trish warned, her head whipping towards the other woman.
“This is Kilgrave, Trish!” Jessica snapped back, rage contorting her features. “Kilgrave! You know what he’s capable of, and you know what he’s already done. If she’s not going to tell us, then I’m going to–”
“What?” Trish demanded, cutting her off. “You’re going to beat her to make her talk?” The blonde swung a hand in your direction, her stare still fixed on Jessica as she heatedly continued. “She’s clearly not working for him, can you not see the way she reacts when you mention his name? It’s the same goddamn look that’s always on your face when he comes up!”
That took you by surprise. As the two women stared each other down in silence, you slowly began to piece everything together. Jessica must’ve been another victim of Kilgrave’s mind control. She must’ve experienced something similar to what he’d done to you, and if someone was watching her for him, then you could understand where all of her violent anger was coming from–paranoia and fear.
“We were together,” you blurted, cutting through the tension. “A long time ago.”
Jessica’s head whipped in your direction, a myriad of emotions crossing over her face. Surprise melted into something that looked vaguely like understanding and sympathy before her expression became suspicious and guarded.
“He forced you to be with him?” she asked.
Guilt burned acidic in your stomach at the question, and your tongue pressed hard into the back of your teeth. You slowly shook your head in response, watching how her eyes narrowed into dangerous, disbelieving slits.
“You mean you chose to be with him?” she hissed incredulously.
“It’s–it’s not what you think,” you stammered, trying to defend yourself. “He found me years ago. When I was…”
Your words trailed off, your teeth clamping down onto the tip of your tongue. Kilgrave was the only one who knew about your past, who knew the truth about who and what you really were–at least as much as you knew. He knew what you were capable of, he knew how different you truly were, he knew the secret you’d been trying to hide ever since he’d freed you from The Facility. You’d spent years hiding and trying to pretend that the other side of you didn’t exist, it wasn’t something you ever willingly shared with people because you’d wanted to erase it all.
But Jessica also seemed different. She was far stronger than any normal person should’ve been, capable of feats that a woman her size shouldn’t be capable of–like throwing you across an alley with one arm. Maybe she was like you, which would’ve explained Kilgrave’s interest in her.
“You were what?” Trish gently prompted.
Tongue darting out to nervously wet your lips, you contemplated the situation you’d suddenly found yourself in. Both of them seemed to despise Kilgrave as much as you, so it was unlikely that they were working with him. You doubted they’d give him your location, not with how they were speaking about him. And if Jessica was different like you, maybe she’d be understanding of your own situation instead of terrified of the things you could do.
Unable to look at either of them as you tried to gather the courage to confess something you’d never told anyone before, your focus shifted towards your fidgeting fingers in your lap. “I grew up in a laboratory,” you admitted quietly. “Undergoing experimentation against my will, for as far back as I can remember. Because I’m different.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jessica cursed.
Trish let out a surprised gasp before taking a few steps back, struggling to control the shock written on her features. When she backed into the desk littered with alcohol, she leaned her weight against it as if she needed it to help keep her upright while staring expectantly at you, waiting for you to continue.
“It was a horrible place,” you told them, aware that was the biggest understatement. “Kilgrave he–he killed the doctors who’d been responsible for the experiments on me. And at first, he’d scared me because of what I’d seen him do to them. It was horrific. But then he’d been so gentle with me afterwards.”
As the words you’d never really spoken aloud before started to pour out of you, you were determined to make them understand. Determined for them to hear you out before they judged you for the relationship you’d had with him. They couldn’t even begin to fathom the horrors and pain you’d been subjected to over the course of your entire life, the way you’d been trapped in a cage like an animal until only a few years ago. They had no idea the sort of sheltered life you’d led, and how desperate you’d been to escape it.
"He freed me from that place,” you continued, nervously looking up at them from beneath your lashes. “He forced them all to forget about me so that I'd be safe from them. And then he took me with him, far away from the nightmare that I’d always known. He fed me, clothed me, gave me shelter.” You shrugged weakly, aware of how awful the rest of it would sound. “I’d seen him use his powers to tell people to do what he wanted, but I’d never seen him hurt anyone besides those doctors who’d spent years torturing me over and over. He kept telling me that they deserved it for how they’d hurt me, and I believed him. I didn’t know any better at the time. I-I spent my whole life in that place. Trapped in a small cell. He was the first person to show me any kindness. To give me freedom, to give me a chance at a life.”
The guilt burned hotter within you, and you could feel it sitting like a ball lodged in the back of your throat. Your vision grew watery, but you quickly wiped the heel of your hands against them, forcing the moisture away. You needed to finish explaining what happened.
“Eventually, I developed feelings for him,” you reluctantly admitted. “Just months after he’d freed me. I hadn’t seen him for who he really was yet, and we had a romantic relationship for a time afterwards.”
“But he was grooming you!” Jessica growled. “That asshole kidnapped you from some fucking labratory and kept you like a fucking pet! You didn’t know any better!”
Trish glanced over her shoulder at Jessica, and whatever face she made only seemed to piss her off even more. Shaking her head at Trish, Jessica strode towards you, her eyes burning with an intense fury as her boots stomped across the floor.
“I hate that son of a bitch,” she snarled. "He took advantage of you, of your situation. You were scared and alone and he used that to his benefit!"
“Jess,” Trish firmly reprimanded. “Let her finish.”
Jessica frowned but fell silent, arms crossing over her chest again as she shifted irritably back and forth on her feet. When Trish turned her attention back to you, she offered you yet another encouraging smile as she waited for you to finish.
“We were together for maybe four months after that,” you admitted uncomfortably, your hands still nervously fiddling together in your lap. “That was when he started pressuring me to use my abilities for things he wanted. But I didn’t want to do the things he asked me to, and then he started to get so furious with me when I denied him.” Closing your eyes, you tried to block out the memories from resurfacing as you continued. “I told him I wanted to leave, so he–he threatened to kill innocent people if I did. He told me he would kill everyone in his path if I didn’t stay with him. And that’s when he started giving me this–this pill.” Shaking your head roughly, you opened your eyes and focused back on Trish and Jessica. “I don’t know what it was, but it weakened my ability against him. I assumed it was something he’d gotten from The Facility.”
“Wait, what?” Jessica asked. She crossed the rest of the distance between you in three quick strides before dropping down in front of you, her eyes wide and disbelieving. “What did you just say? It weakened your ability against him?” she asked, her words coming in a rush. “As in you can fight him off?”
Nodding slowly, you saw the shock continue to linger on her face. Jessica’s head whipped over her shoulder before her and Trish exchanged a look with each other. You couldn’t understand what they were saying without using a single word, but you had a feeling you could guess. They’d probably never thought someone could be immune to Kilgrave’s power.
“How?” Jessica demanded, her attention abruptly returning to you. “How can you fight him off?”
“I have some abilities,” you answered carefully. “I overheard the doctors at The Facility say I'm psionic once, whatever that really means. But I was able to create a sort of shield to keep him out of my head when he wasn’t drugging me. And I can also do what he does, to undo commands he's given. It's just…not as easy for me as it is for him. It takes a lot out of me.”
“Holy shit,” Jessica breathed out, eyes widening even further. “Does that mean you can mind control him then?”
“I did once. The last time I saw him,” you told her, nodding. “I’d never done it before and I don’t know how I did it then, but somehow I managed to make it work on him. I couldn't take anymore of what he was doing to me, so I told him to let me go. Said that he wasn't allowed to hurt or kill anyone because of me, and that he could never look for me.” Your fingers played with the hem of your shirt, twisting the fabric nervously around them. “I forced him to hand over some money so I could book a flight and try to build a life, and then I just left him.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jessica cursed under her breath. Suddenly elated, she rose up to her feet and began pacing, a smile spreading over her lips. “You’re his fucking weakness–you’re his goddamn kryptonite! With you we might have a chance to bring him down!”
Remembering how she’d thought you were stalking her for him, fear crept its way up your spine like a trail of cold fingers. You didn’t like the thought of him being this close to you again–of being in the same city–not after everything he’d put you through. Not after how long it’d taken for you to move on past what he’d done to you.
“He’s here? In New York?” you asked her nervously. "You're sure of that?"
“Have you seen the news?” Jessica said, abruptly turning towards you and halting her pacing. “The Hope Shlottman story?”
“I wondered if that was him,” you admitted shamefully, hating that he’d found another victim to abuse. “I just didn’t want to believe it.”
“He’s been looking for me,” Jessica continued, her expression turning grim. “Six months ago I managed to get away from him, too. He discovered I had abilities–super strength.”
“That explains the alleyway before I passed out,” you muttered.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Jessica apologized, grimacing slightly. “I found out where he’d been staying the other day, and there was a room with pictures of me printed out everywhere. Like serious stalker vibes. He showed up and I almost had him. He’d gone back for a framed photo of the two of you that I’d found. So when I saw you running around my block?” She shrugged sheepishly. “I thought maybe it was you following me, taking the photos for him. Spying on me for him."
“I get it,” you replied.
Adjusting your sore body on the torn futon, you sat more upright. Jessica attacking you made far more sense now. She’d endured something similar to what you had with Kilgrave. She’d been trapped under his control, doing things against her will for months. Things that probably still haunted her. You couldn’t hold it against her that she’d assaulted you and demanded answers knowing that he was chasing her down, because honestly you’d have likely done the same thing.
“So what’re you going to do about him looking for you?” you asked her curiously.
“Well, I need him alive,” Jessica replied, running a hand through her hair. “He went after Hope to get my attention, and she became his victim because of me. It’s my fault she’s involved. So I need to find a way to prove his powers are real and that he really did force Hope to kill her parents. I need to find a way to prove that she’s innocent. She doesn’t deserve a life in prison because of what that asshole did to her just to get to me, and maybe there’s a way he’ll get justice in the process.”
“How are you going to prove it?” you asked curiously.
Jessica shrugged. “I don’t know,” she answered bleakly. “The media is crucifying Hope like she’s insane already. But her lawyer is a…friend of mine, if you want to call it that. I’m trying to get her ahead of the bullshit, help fix Hope’s image while I try to figure this all out. We’ve been lining up people to come forward, to testify against Kilgrave and the things he made them do, but it’s not easy. So many crazy fuckers are just making shit up to take the blame off of themselves for crimes they’ve committed. But even with the legitimate testimonies, it won’t be all that believable if I don’t have actual proof of his abilities. And I can’t–I can’t fuck this up. It’s all my fault that Hope is in this situation.”
“I’ll help,” you said, the offer tumbling out of you. “Whatever you need, I’m in.”
One of Jessica’s dark brows slowly rose curiously up onto her forehead. Pushing away from the desk she’d been leaning against, a grin spread over Trish’s lips in something that looked rather triumphant.
“Yeah?” Jessica asked skeptically. “You’d willingly get involved with him again? Put yourself in his path even though you know what he's like? What he can do?”
“I should have stopped him a long time ago,” you shamefully admitted. “Instead of just running off to save myself, I should have dealt with him. I should have done something to stop him from hurting anyone else. And maybe now it’s time I do something about it.”
Sympathy flickered across Jessica’s face briefly before it vanished behind a hard exterior. “Suppose we might have a shot to pull this off then. Especially since you’re immune to him as long as he’s not drugging you with those mystery pills,” she mused. “But there was also a doctor I met while interviewing others who’d been subjected to Kilgrave's powers. He said Kilgrave forced him to save his life by taking kidneys from someone else. Had the doctor perform surgery in an ambulance while he was awake because Kilgrave refused to be put under. Which has me thinking–”
"That anesthesia hinders his powers?" you guessed.
Jessica nodded, a slow grin spreading over her lips. "Yeah,” she answered. “So I'm trying to figure out how to get my hands on some Sufentanil. Maybe it'll work on him, get his guard down. Leave him weak. And having you around with your abilities would be helpful."
With your initial fear finally melting away at discovering that your enemies were actually allies, a small smile slipped onto your lips. Rubbing a hand over one of your sore shoulders, your head tilted curiously to the side.
“I've never met anyone else like me before,” you admitted. “Someone who was different, I mean. Besides Kilgrave and outside of that lab.”
“Well don't go getting any ideas,” Jessica replied. “I'm not some hero. I just lift heavy shit and punch really hard.”
“And save an innocent girl from a terrible, undeserved fate,” you added lightly.
The corners of Jessica’s lips twitched, but the smile never came to her face.
You finished rinsing off your toothbrush and turned off the faucet, your body exhausted, sore, and itching to crawl into bed for the night. You were hoping for a dreamless sleep, though after the events of this evening, you highly doubted Kilgrave wouldn’t be tormenting your unconscious mind. But as you reached over to set your toothbrush back into its place in its stand, you glimpsed your reflection in the mirror from the corner of your eye.
Eyes drifting back up to your own face, you stared at the woman looking back at you. Ever since the conversation you’d had with Jessica and Trish earlier tonight, it felt as if Kilgrave had wrapped his own fist around your throat, his presence nearby now entirely undeniable. You could see the guilt and shame lingering in your eyes as you stood there studying your reflection.
What Kilgrave had done to Hope Shlottman wasn’t Jessica’s fault at all, no matter how much she obviously blamed herself for the girl’s situation. Kilgrave might have been using Hope as a way to get to her, but it was truthfully your fault that he was still loose in the world preying upon whoever he wanted. You'd been a coward for the way you'd fled from him, for the way you'd only thought about getting away and protecting yourself. You’d never tried to stop him, too terrified of what he might do to you if you’d tried.
“And now look what he's done,” you said, your own reflection scolding you.
Who knows how many countless others he’d tortured, controlled, assaulted, and killed. All so that you could have your freedom. So that you could try to deny that other side of yourself in an attempt to be normal. But you weren’t normal and you never would be, it didn’t matter how hard and deep you’d buried those pieces of yourself, you could never completely erase them.
You weren’t normal. You weren't like everyone else. And maybe it was time you faced that head on. Because if you were going to help Jessica and Trish take on Kilgrave–to bring him to justice–you’d need to embrace that part of yourself again. You’d need to dig it back up from where you’d so deeply buried it away inside of yourself.
Still staring at the face in the mirror, the one you'd only glimpsed growing up in the reflection from your glass cell, you leaned forward and rested both of your hands flat on the bathroom counter. The cool stone beneath your palms sent a pleasant chill up through you, and that snapped you out of your spiraling thoughts. You needed to focus, to prove that you could still control what was inside of you.
It had been years since you'd truly used your abilities, years since you'd truly tapped into that power hidden in the far recesses of your mind. Inhaling a deep breath to stabilize yourself, your eyelids gently lowered as you reached out in search of it. Holding your breath, you concentrated inward, digging around inside of your own mind. But it was only seconds before you found it sitting there in the back of everything like an electrical current buzzing with energy.
The more you focused on it, coaxing forth the familiar prickle of energy, you started to feel it pulsing within your head, buzzing between your temples. The sensation gradually trickled down your spine like a gentle vibration beneath your skin, the hum of power causing your body temperature to increase. Curling your hands into fists along the cool countertop, you felt it flood you with warmth like the summer sun on your skin.
Exhaling the breath you’d been holding, the air came out in a long, steady stream between your lips. Relief washed over you as you realized that even after years of denial, it still felt like second nature to slip back into this energy. Opening your eyes once more, you stared back at your reflection in the mirror just two feet away as you leaned forward over the sink.
Except now the same eyes you’d just been staring into moments ago weren’t the ones you saw. Instead of the familiar color of your irises watching you, all you saw were the whites of your eyes with their eerie, faint glow.
author's notes: so i'm undecided if i want to release or even finish this entire slow burn series but i love these two. this scene gets referenced at some point in the main story that i'm still working on but can be read as a standalone. this is my first fic >⩊<
warnings: none, just fluff. established relationship. AFAB reader, some smooching, older Matt needs a warning for being yummy
wc: 795
𓂃۶ৎ
Cardamom.
Rose.
Brown sugar.
Matt.
"Sweetheart."
"Mm."
You could faintly taste the coffee on his lips as he kissed you good morning, the subtle notes of the homemade syrup you'd given him a few days ago lingering on your tongue as you licked your lips. A new concoction for one of the seasonal drinks at work. A bust as a cocktail syrup, but great in coffee.
"You said you wanted me to wake you up at 6:30 so we could have breakfast together."
"And?"
"It's 7. I tried at 6:30, but you said 'snooze' and poked my stomach."
You huffed and finally opened your eyes. His—thankfully glasses free—eyes landed somewhere along your chin. His lips quirked in an amused grin. Your sleep blurred vision took in that salt and pepper beard, shorter than you remember it last night. So he trimmed it this morning, then. He was unfair, really.
"I'm inclined to not believe you but okay." You sat up slowly and rubbed at your eyes. "Also you didn't even wait for me, jerk. I can taste the coffee on you."
He barked a laugh, pulling you with him out of the bedroom. "I made one for you too, princess. And grabbed us some bagels from downstairs."
You both made your way to the kitchen.
-------------------------------------------------
His and hers sinks. Your eyes continually wandered to the tray of skincare and toiletries for you that had appeared sometime last week.
His penthouse was ridiculous. HE was ridiculous.
"What time is your shoot?" he called from behind you.
"Noon, but I need to pick up a new lens hood first."
You stood at one sink, fussing with your hair in the mirror. Matt was somewhere in the closet behind you, you could hear the clink of his belt as he fastened it. There was the faintest whisk of fabric being pulled off a hanger.
"Mm. Maybe a late lunch after you're done?" He walked in with a silk tie in between his hands, lifting it over his head. Navy. Simple. Elegant.
You spun around to face him and put your hands over his where he'd begun to cross one end over the other. He raised a brow and his lips twitched. You felt a flush rise to your cheeks under his attention.
"Let me do it."
His eyes crinkled with an amused smile before letting go of the tie, his hands instead setting on your waist. "Alright."
You’d watched him do this before. You certainly stared long enough at his large, beautifully scarred hands whenever he did. How hard could it be?
Okay... he would cross one over, and then loop from the back?
Shit.
"You crossed the wide end too early.”
“I know that now.” You tried again, while Matt patiently allowed you to strangle him.
“I think you skipped the under loop.”
You tried about four more times, with each attempt becoming increasingly aggressive as you lost your mind.
“Sweetheart.”
“It keeps twisting!”
“You’re pulling too tight.”
“I’m gonna fight this tie.”
He snorted at that, amusement fading when you huffed in obvious distress. “Hey," he comforted.
Your face burned, “I just wanted to do something nice for you.”
Matt went completely still for a second after that. And suddenly the entire mood shifted. He stepped closer slowly until your bodies almost touched.
Then very gently:
“It is nice.”
Your eyes stayed stubbornly fixed on the tie instead. “I can’t even do it.”
“You can,” his fingers brushed lightly beneath your chin, “Look at me.”
You finally did.
Matt smiled softly. “You know how long it took me to figure these out after college?”
You blinked slightly. "How long?"
“Foggy had to do it for me for the first six months.”
That startled a laugh out of you immediately. Matt looked pleased hearing it. He took the tie back carefully before positioning your hands himself, large warm palms covering yours.
“This part first,” he murmured softly near your ear, "Wide end over. Now under.”
You focused hard while Matt guided every movement patiently. No teasing now, no rushing. He just gently met you where you needed him to.
“You feel the fold there?”
You nodded slightly.
“Good, now pull through.”
The knot finally started resembling something real.
Your eyes widened immediately. “Oh shit, wait.” You concentrated so hard your tongue peeked out slightly from the corner of your mouth.
Matt laughed softly hearing your excitement, his head tilting.
“No wait don’t move," you scolded him as you finally pulled the tie into a snug knot.
“I wasn’t trying to.”
You stared at it in shock, then immediately looked up at him, “I DID IT.”
He chuckled, his hands sliding around your waist and pulling you flush against him. "Yes, you did."
He touched his forehead to yours, and your eyes fluttered closed.
summary : “Well, well,” a man laughs somewhere to your left. “The Devil brought company.”
warnings : mentions of death- READER DOESN'T DIE I LEARNT MY LESSON I SWEAR- mentions of canon level violence, catholic guilt!matt, protective!matt, lmk if im missing any
word count : 6.6 k
a/n: based on a rq that i got from the very lovely @goawayplease95, thank you for the matt ideas trust i will write the rest later but u said this was ur personal fave.... now this lowk is rushed so it's not amazing- sorry for the emotional distress im going to cause (not proofread!)
Matt starts going to again church every night in November.
At first you don’t think much of it.
Matt’s relationship with Catholicism has always been complicated in a way that somehow still ends with him kneeling in a pew at two in the morning bleeding through a dress shirt. You learned early on not to question it too hard. Faith, guilt, grief — with Matt they all braid together until they become impossible to separate.
Still.
Something feels wrong.
It starts small.
He gets quieter.
Not distant exactly. Almost the opposite.
Softer.
Like every time he touches you he’s trying to memorize it.
He kisses your forehead more. Holds your hand tighter in public. Pauses in doorways just to listen to you moving around the apartment like the sound itself comforts him.
At first it’s sweet. Then it becomes terrifying. Because Matt Murdock has never behaved like a man planning for a future - he's always just let it happen. But he's absolutely behaving like a man preparing to leave one. You notice other things after that. He starts organizing files at the office nobody asked him to organize. Calling people back immediately. Returning books. Giving away clothes.
One night you find him sitting on the edge of the bed holding his father's old boxing rosary wrapped around his fist so tightly the beads left marks in his palm.
“Matt?” He startles hard enough your stomach drops. That almost never happens. He always hears you come up behind him.
“Sorry,” he says immediately, standing too fast. “Didn’t mean t’wake you.” You glance at the clock.
2:13 AM.
“You haven’t come to bed yet.”
“Lost track of time.” His voice sounds strange. You sit up slowly beneath the blankets, watching him carefully in the dark. Matt can feel it. You know he can. Because his shoulders tense almost imperceptibly beneath his t-shirt.
“You okay, Matty?” you ask quietly.
Too quick: “Yeah, honey.” Lie. You’ve learned the shape of them. Matt crosses the room toward you before you can push further, leaning down automatically to kiss your forehead. His hand lingers against your cheek afterward. Too long. Like goodbye. Your chest tightens.
“You smell like incense,” you murmur. His fingers still. Then:
“Church.”
“At two in the morning?” A pause.
“Couldn’t sleep.” Another lie. You don’t call him on it. Mostly because suddenly — horribly — you realize this isn’t the first night. The incense. The late hours. The exhaustion. Your stomach turns cold. Matt presses one last kiss to your hair before sliding into bed beside you, all careful quiet warmth and familiar muscle beneath soft cotton. But he doesn’t sleep. You can feel it. Even after your breathing evens out he stays awake staring at the ceiling. Listening. Thinking.
Mourning something in advance.
The next night he leaves again at 11:47. You pretend to be asleep. Matt stands near the door for a long moment before leaving. Like he’s struggling to make himself go. The apartment feels wrong the second he’s gone. Too quiet. You lie there for maybe thirty seconds before throwing the blankets off entirely. By the time you get outside, rain has started. Cold November drizzle slicking the sidewalks silver beneath streetlights. Matt is already half a block ahead of you moving fast, cane tapping sharply against concrete. You follow anyway. Guilt gnaws at you immediately.
You hate this.
Hate sneaking after him.
Hate the ugly suspicion curling tighter and tighter in your chest. But something is wrong. Something is deeply, terribly wrong. And Matt won’t tell you what it is. So you trail him through Hell’s Kitchen at nearly midnight while rain dampens your jacket and taxis hiss through puddles beside the curb. Matt never looks back. That’s what scares you most. Usually he notices everything. Usually he notices you. Tonight he’s somewhere else entirely. Lost deep enough in his own head that he misses your footsteps completely. The church appears three blocks later.
Saint Agnes.
Small.
Old.
Mostly empty this late. Matt climbs the front steps slowly. Not hesitant. Resolved. Like a man walking willingly toward judgment. You stay across the street at first watching through rain-streaked darkness as he disappears inside. The church doors close behind him with a heavy groan. And still— Something feels horribly wrong.
You wait maybe five minutes before crossing the street too.
Inside smells like candle wax and old wood and incense burned so deeply into the walls it’s become permanent. The sanctuary is empty except for a few scattered prayer candles flickering red in the dark. At first you don’t see him.
Then— Voices.
Low. Muffled. Confessional. Your pulse stutters. You move carefully down the side aisle before stopping dead near one of the wooden booths. Matt’s voice drifts faintly through the screen. Not loud enough for every word. Just enough.
“…don’t think i'm doing this for the right reasons anymore.” Silence from the priest. Then Matt again. Rawer this time. “If a man knows he’s not comin’ back…” Your entire body goes cold. Inside the booth the priest says something too quiet to hear. Matt answers immediately. “No.” A pause. “No, Father, I made peace with it.” Your heartbeat starts hammering violently now. You grip the edge of the pew beside you hard enough your fingers ache. Matt continues softly: “They’ll never stop unless somebody finishes this.” Another pause.
Then the priest finally says something clear enough to hear:
“Matthew… this sounds less like sacrifice and more like surrender.” Silence. Long enough to become unbearable. And then Matt says quietly:
“Maybe I’m too tired t’know the difference anymore.”
You feel sick. Violently and nauseatingly, sick. You barely realise you're moving until you're outside, gasping for air, backing away from the church like it's poison and not something Holy.
You don’t confront him. Not that night. Not the next one either. Because what are you even supposed to say?
"Hey, I followed you to church and overheard you discussing your own death like it was already decided?"
So instead you do what people do when they’re terrified. You pretend. You pretend everything is normal while your boyfriend quietly plans something catastrophic right in front of you.
And Matt— Matt lets you.
Maybe because he thinks he’s protecting you. Maybe because if he says it aloud, you’ll try to stop him. Maybe because some part of him already knows you would follow him into hell if he asked. So life continues.
Sort of.
Mornings at Nelson, Murdock & Page. Takeout cartons on the coffee table. Matt’s hand finding yours automatically when you cross streets. But underneath it all something awful hums constantly now. Like standing in a building with a gas leak. Invisible. Deadly. Waiting. You start noticing impossible things after that. Matt lingering in doorways longer than necessary. Touching the small of your back every time he passes you. Pausing conversations halfway through just to listen to your heartbeat. One night you wake up at three in the morning and find him sitting beside you listening to you sleep.
Not creepy. Heartbroken. Like he’s trying to memorize the sound of your breathing.
When he realizes you’re awake, he smiles immediately. Too quickly.
“Sorry,” he murmurs. “Didn’t mean t’wake you.” You reach for him instinctively. Matt folds into the touch like he’s starving.
Three nights later he walks into the living room, clearing his throat.
"Foggy just called. Some, uhm, emergency about our case. I gotta go back in to the office."
Your heart drops to your ass. You glance at your phone, the one laying face down beside you on the couch. The one where Karen, just seconds ago, sent you a picture of her and Foggy enjoying a drink at Josie's. Your fingers curl around the edges of your book, trying to school your breathing, your heartbeat- anything Matt could potentially hear.
“Sweetheart.” Matt’s voice gentles immediately. “C’mere.” You almost don’t. That’s the terrible part. Not because you’re afraid of him. Because you’re afraid if he touches you right now you’ll break apart and start screaming at him not to die. But then Matt reaches for you blindly across the small space between you, familiar and warm and achingly human, and your body betrays you immediately. You go. Of course you go. His hands settle at your waist with a tired exhale. For a second he just stands there holding you. Listening to your heartbeat. Then he kisses you.
And something is wrong. Not physically. Emotionally.
There’s desperation in it. A kind of grief. Like he’s trying to pour everything he can’t say into your mouth before it’s too late. Your back hits the kitchen counter softly. Matt’s fingers tighten against your hips. The kiss deepens. Hard enough your breath catches. And suddenly— You feel it. Beneath his clothes. Armor. Your entire body goes rigid instantly. Matt notices.
Of course he notices.
He pulls back slightly, brows pulling together.
“Hey.” His thumb brushes your hip automatically. “What’s wrong?” Nothing.
Everything.
"I promise i'll be back before you wake up." You can feel the ridged plating beneath his dress shirt now where your hands rest against his ribs. The Daredevil suit. Already underneath his clothes. Ready to go. Your pulse starts thundering so hard you’re convinced he can hear it.
Actually— He probably can. Matt stills.
“…Sweetheart?” You force your hands to relax. Force your face not to crack open.
“Heavy jacket,” you lie weakly. Silence. Matt knows immediately you’re lying. You know the exact second it happens too. His expression changes subtly. Not suspicious. Worse. Sad. Because he realizes you noticed something. And because Matt Murdock has always been smart enough to know exactly how much silence can say. His forehead rests briefly against yours. He sounds exhausted when he speaks.
“You should get some sleep. I'll be back soon.” There it is again. That goodbye tone. You hate it so much you could scream. Instead you nod mechanically because if you open your mouth right now, you’re afraid the truth will come pouring out.
I know. I know you’re planning something. I know you think you’re not coming back.
Matt kisses your forehead softly. Lingering. Then steps away. And you stand frozen in the kitchen , watching him walk out of the apartment.
For a long time you don’t move.
You just stand there in the kitchen staring at the closed apartment door while the silence rushes in around you all at once. Your heartbeat is so loud it makes you nauseous. He lied. Not a little white lie. Not a harmless omission. A goodbye lie. You can still feel the shape of the armor beneath his shirt. The way he kissed you like a starving man. The way he lingered afterward like he was trying to memorize the exact height of you against him.
Your knees almost give out.
“No,” you whisper to the empty apartment. Because suddenly every strange thing from the past month rearranges itself into one horrifying shape. The confessions. The sleepless nights. Matt touching you constantly like he was afraid he’d lose the right. The way he’d been softer lately. Sadder. More careful. You press both hands hard over your mouth. He thinks he’s going to die tonight.
And worse— He made peace with it.
A sharp panic surges through you so violently you nearly run for the door immediately. But then another thought hits just as fast:
What if you’re wrong?
What if you follow him and he hears you? What if this really is just work? What if you sound insane?
Your eyes land on the phone still sitting beside your abandoned book. Karen’s picture glows faintly on the screen. Josie’s. Timestamped seven minutes ago. Your stomach twists. You grab your jacket so fast it nearly falls off the hook. By the time you hit the hallway your hands are shaking too hard to zip it properly.
The city feels wrong tonight. Too loud. Too sharp. You stay half a block behind Matt, heart hammering every time he pauses. He moves quickly through Hell’s Kitchen, cane tapping pavement in that familiar rhythm that would almost fool you if you didn’t know better now. But you do know better. Because halfway down West 44th he slips into an alley. And Daredevil comes out. You stop dead at the mouth of the alley just in time to see him pull the mask down over his face. Red armor beneath dark civilian clothes. Batons at his hips. Your chest caves inward so hard it physically hurts.
Matt pauses for half a second before climbing the fire escape. His head tilts slightly. Listening. You flatten yourself against the brick wall instantly, barely breathing.
Please don’t hear me.
Please don’t make me go home.
For one horrible second you think he did catch you.
Then he turns and launches himself onto the next rooftop. Gone. You wait exactly three seconds before following.
It’s pathetic, honestly.
You are not built for rooftop chases. Within ten minutes your lungs are on fire and your shoes have absolutely no traction whatsoever. You nearly eat shit crossing a narrow gap between buildings and have to grab a rusted pipe to keep from plummeting four stories.
“Oh my God,” you gasp to nobody. “How does he do this every night?”
Somewhere ahead of you, faintly— A scream. Then gunfire. Your blood freezes. You run faster.
The warehouse sits near the docks, half abandoned and enormous. Every window shattered. Lights blazing inside. You crouch behind a stack of shipping crates trying not to throw up while voices echo through broken glass. Men yelling. Too many men. And underneath it— Matt.
You can always tell where he is now. Not by sight. By sound.
The brutal rhythm of fighting. The crashes. The impossible violence of him. But tonight there’s something different in it.
Recklessness.
He’s not fighting like someone trying to survive. He’s fighting like someone who already decided not to. Your entire body goes cold. Inside the warehouse another gunshot cracks through the air. Then another. Then a horrible sound— Matt choking on pain. You’re moving before you even consciously decide to.
“Matt!” The second your voice rings through the warehouse everything stops. Everything. Daredevil’s head snaps toward you beneath the red mask. Even from across the room you feel the absolute horror radiate off him.
“No—Baby, no, stay back-” The word tears out of him too late. Because somebody grabs you from behind immediately. A huge arm locks around your throat. A gun presses against your temple.
“Well, well,” a man laughs somewhere to your left. “The Devil brought company.” Matt goes completely still. And somehow that’s worse than the fighting. Because now you can see it clearly— The blood soaking one side of his suit. The way he’s breathing too hard. The dozens of armed men surrounding him. And the look on his face beneath the mask. Not fear for himself. For you. Pure. Animal. Terror.
“Let her go,” Matt says. Quietly. The entire room stills around the sound. The man holding you laughs harder.
“Or what?” Matt takes one step forward. Everybody raises their guns instantly. Your pulse nearly stops.
“Matthew,” the crime boss says almost conversationally, stepping from the shadows. “You really thought you could do this alone?” Matt doesn’t answer. His head tilts slightly toward you instead.
You realize suddenly— He can hear you crying.
“Oh God,” you whisper shakily. Because now you understand the plan.
He never intended to leave here alive. He was going to take all of them down with him. And Matt knows you know it. Even across the warehouse floor you can feel it happening between you. The awful understanding. The betrayal. The fear. Matt’s chest rises sharply beneath the ruined armor.
“Please,” he says. Not to the men. To you. Your breath catches. In all the time you’ve known him—through bruises and blood and impossible fights—you have never heard Matt Murdock sound afraid like this.
“Sweetheart,” he says again, voice roughening around the word. “Listen to me real careful, okay?” The man holding you jerks you tighter against him when you instinctively try to move toward Matt. “Don’t,” Matt snaps instantly. The room stills again.
Jesus Christ.
Even the criminals look unsettled now. Because Daredevil sounds dangerous. Not in the theatrical way they’re used to. Not cold. Not angry. Protective. The kind that turns lethal.
“You shouldn’ta come here,” Matt says, and it’s almost broken. “Why would you follow me?”
“Because you were going to kill yourself, Matty,” The words rip out of you before you can stop them. Silence detonates through the warehouse. The crime boss slowly smiles.
“Well,” he murmurs. “That’s interesting.” Matt goes perfectly still. Not one movement. Not one breath.
And suddenly you realize something horrifying— He never told them who you were. Not really. But now they know. Because you just handed them the one thing Daredevil would burn the city down to protect.
“Shit,” you whisper. Matt’s head dips once like he heard the realization hit you.
“Don’t panic,” he says quietly. "You're going to be just fine, honey."
Your eyes sting instantly. Because he says it the same way he always does. Crossing busy streets. Holding your hand during thunderstorms. Like this is fixable. Like there’s still a world after tonight. The crime boss sighs theatrically.
“You know,” he says, circling slowly, “I was beginning to think the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen didn’t have any real weaknesses.” Matt turns his head toward the voice.
“You touch her,” he says softly, “and I will kill every person in this room.” The certainty in it sends terror skittering down your spine.
Daredevil doesn't kill. But he would for you.
The man holding you laughs nervously, shifting his grip.
Matt hears it instantly. You see the exact second he clocks the gun repositioning near your ribs. His entire body coils.
“No,” he says sharply. Too late.
Everything explodes at once. Matt moves first. Of course he does. One second he’s thirty feet away. The next he’s airborne. Batons flying. Bodies crashing. Gunshots erupt deafeningly through the warehouse. The man holding you curses and jerks backward hard enough to wrench your shoulder painfully. Instinct takes over. You slam your heel down onto his foot and twist violently out of his grip.
“Fuck!” he shouts. You run. Not away. Toward Matt. Toward the red blur tearing through armed men like something divine and furious.
“Matty!” His head snaps toward your voice instantly.
“No, wait—!” Another gunshot cracks through the air. Then six more. Chaos. Screaming. You see Matt trying to get to you. See it in the frantic violence of him. He throws one man hard enough through a crate that wood explodes outward like shrapnel. Another gets dropped instantly with a baton strike to the throat.
“Baby, get down!” Matt roars. You’re almost to him.
Almost.
Then somebody catches your arm from behind. You scream and wrench free blindly— And the world erupts white-hot. For one strange second you don’t understand what happened. There’s just this hard punch against your stomach. A force. Then warmth. Too much warmth. Your legs stop working.
“Oh,” you breathe. The warehouse tilts sideways. You hear shouting. Gunfire.
Matt screaming your name.
Not yelling.
Screaming.
The sound tears through the entire building like something dying. You hit the concrete hard. Pain detonates through you a second later. Blinding. You curl instinctively around it with a strangled sob. Somewhere nearby men are still shooting. Matt is still moving. You can hear him. Can hear bones breaking now. Can hear the horrifying wet sounds of someone no longer holding back. People are screaming. Not you. Them.
“Move!” Matt bellows. Another crash. Another body hitting the floor. Then suddenly he’s there. Hands everywhere at once. Frantic. Shaking.
“Heyheyheyhey— no, no, no, no—” His gloves come away wet instantly. You don’t think you’ve ever heard panic like this before.
“Matt,” you whisper weakly. He tears his mask off, the hard shell clattering to the floor. You can finally see his face, his blind eyes darting all over the place.
“No.” His voice breaks apart completely. “No, sweetheart, stay with me, stay with me—” He presses both hands hard against your stomach. Agony explodes through you. You cry out. “I know, I know, I know,” he gasps desperately. “Baby, m’sorry, I gotta put pressure on it—”
Blood drips from his mouth. From his nose. From cuts split across his jaw. But he doesn’t seem aware of any of it. All he can hear is your heartbeat. And it’s getting weaker.
“Oh God,” he chokes. You’ve never heard Matt cry before. Not really. You hear it now. Raw and helpless and horrified. “This was supposed t’be me,” he whispers brokenly. Your chest tightens painfully. Because that confirms it. He really had planned to die here. His hands are shaking so hard against your stomach you almost don’t recognize them as Matt’s. Matt’s hands are always steady.
Even bloodied. Even exhausted. Even after fights that should’ve killed him. But not now. Now he’s falling apart right in front of you.
“Hey,” you whisper weakly, trying to reach for him. He catches your hand instantly and presses it hard against his chest like he needs proof you’re still moving.
“Don’t,” he chokes out. “Don’t do that voice with me right now.” Your vision blurs around the edges. Everything feels strangely far away already. Gunpowder. Blood. Sirens somewhere in the distance. Matt is still saying your name over and over like a prayer gone wrong.
“You’re okay,” he says frantically. “You’re okay, sweetheart, you hear me? I got you.” You try to laugh because the irony is unbearable. He was supposed to be the one dying tonight.
Not you.
Not because of him.
“You asshole,” you whisper. Matt breaks completely. A horrible sound tears out of him.
“I know,” he gasps immediately. “I know, I know, I know—”
“You lied t’me.” His forehead nearly drops to your chest.
“I’m sorry.” Raw. Destroyed. “God, baby, i'm so sorry.” Another wave of pain crashes through you so violently you cry out. Matt jerks closer instantly. “Heyheyhey— stay with me.” His voice rises sharp with panic. “Stay with me, sweetheart, c’mon, c’mon—” Your fingers fist weakly in the front of his suit.
“You were gonna die.”
“No.” Immediate. Automatic. You stare at him. Even now. Even now he tries to lie.
“Matt.” His face crumples. You’ve never seen him look this young before. Not the Devil. Not the vigilante. Just Matthew.
Just your Matthew.
Terrified.
“I didn’t know how to stop anymore,” he whispers finally. The confession nearly hurts worse than the bullet. Around you the warehouse has gone eerily quiet. The surviving men either fled or are unconscious. Somewhere nearby somebody groans in pain, but Matt doesn’t react to any of it. All his focus is locked onto you. Your heartbeat. Your breathing. The blood soaking through his fingers.
“You were just gonna leave me?” you whisper shakily. Matt makes another wrecked sound.
“No.”
“You said goodbye.”
“I was trying not to.” Tears spill hard down his face now, unchecked. “Christ, sweetheart, every time I looked at you I almost stopped.”
That hurts. God, that hurts.
Because you know he means it.
“I heard you in confession,” you whisper. Matt goes still. Not physically. Soul-deep still.
“You followed me there too?”
“You said maybe you were too tired to know the difference between sacrifice and surrender.” Your voice breaks apart. “How was I supposed t’hear that and not be terrified?” Matt shuts his eyes hard. Tears slip instantly beneath his lashes.
“I never wanted you to carry this,” he whispers.
“Well I do.” His breathing turns ragged. Sirens are louder now. Closer. But Matt doesn’t seem to hear them. “And I’d hate myself for still wanting to stay.” That does it. You start crying all over again. Matt immediately panics. “No, no, baby, please don’t cry—”
“You idiot,” you sob weakly.
“I know.”
“You absolute fucking idiot.”
“I know, sweetheart.” His shoulders are shaking now too. You don’t think either of you have ever been this scared before. Then suddenly Matt jerks violently upright. His head tilts. Listening. You feel it happen instantly. That terrifying shift in him. The Devil returning.
“Ambulance is two blocks out,” he says breathlessly. “Okay? Stay with me that long.” Your stomach twists weakly.
“I’m tired.” Fear detonates across his face so hard it’s almost ugly.
“No.” He grabs your face carefully. “No, you stay awake. Talk to me.” Your eyelids feel heavy. So heavy.
“Matt—”
“Talk to me,” he begs. “Please.” You swallow hard.
“Tell me somethin’ true.” He stares at you for half a second like the request guts him. Then:
“I love you more than God.” Your breath catches. Matt’s forehead drops against yours again. “And that’s the most honest thing I've ever said.” For a second neither of you moves. The warehouse feels suspended outside of time. Blood beneath you. Sirens screaming closer. Matt cradling your face like you’re the most fragile thing God ever made.
And then— A wet sound catches in his throat. Because your heartbeat stutters. You feel it happen too. The strange drifting sensation. The cold creeping slowly into your fingertips. Matt hears all of it. Every weakening beat. Every hitch in your breathing.
“No,” he whispers immediately. Fierce. Terrified. “No, no, stay with me.” You try to smile at him. It comes out crooked.
“Matty.” His entire face collapses at the nickname.
“Oh God.” His voice shakes violently now. “Baby, please.” You’ve never seen him beg before either. Not really. Matt Murdock negotiates. Threatens. Endures.
But begging? Never. Until now.
“I need you to keep talkin’ to me,” he says frantically. “C’mon, sweetheart, yell at me again. Tell me i'm an idiot. Tell me how pissed you are.”
“You are an idiot,” you whisper faintly. A broken laugh-sob escapes him instantly.
“Yeah,” he chokes. “Yeah, that’s my girl.” Your eyes burn. Because he sounds relieved just hearing your voice. Matt presses harder against the wound suddenly and you cry out. “I know, I know, m’sorry.” He’s trembling so hard now his words shake apart. “You gotta stay awake, baby. Stay with me.”
“You sound scared.”
“I am scared.” Immediate. Honest. “I am so fucking scared right now.” That almost undoes you more than the pain. Because Matt never admits fear. Not even when he’s bleeding out. Not even when he’s dying.
But now? Now he’s looking at you like the thought of losing you is the most horrifying thing he’s ever faced.
“You can’t die for me,” he says suddenly. You blink slowly.
“What?” His jaw tightens hard enough to shake.
“You can’t do that.” Tears spill freely down his face. “I can’t survive that.” Your chest aches. Not from the bullet. From him.
“You were gonna make me survive it,” you whisper. Matt flinches like he got hit. Actually flinches.
“I know.” His voice comes apart completely. “Christ, I know.” The sirens are outside now. You can hear tires screeching. Voices shouting. Matt barely reacts. His whole world has narrowed down to the sound your heart is making under his hands.
And it’s getting worse. His panic spikes violently.
“Hey.” He cups your face harder. “Hey, sweetheart, stay with me. Look at me.” You try. God, you try. But your vision keeps blurring.
“You smell like blood,” you mumble weakly. Matt lets out this startled, wrecked laugh through tears.
“Yeah?”
“Gross.”
“Oh, now y’wanna complain?” He brushes shaking fingers through your hair. “Now?”
“You’re still beautiful though.” That absolutely destroys him. Matt bows forward hard enough his forehead knocks against yours. A sob tears straight out of his chest.
“Don’t,” he whispers brokenly. “Please don’t talk like goodbye.” Your throat tightens.
“I don’t wanna leave you.”
“You’re not.” Fierce now. Desperate enough to border on angry. “You hear me? You are not leaving me.” The warehouse doors burst open.
Police. Paramedics. Chaos floods in all at once. But Matt barely notices until someone grabs his shoulder.
“Sir, we need space—”
“No!” Matt snarls so violently the paramedic recoils instantly. You’ve never heard that sound from him before either. Pure terror. “She’s bleeding out!”
“We’re trying to help her!” Matt’s breathing turns ragged. His senses are overloaded now. Too many heartbeats. Too many voices. Too much blood.
And yours— Yours is fading underneath all of it.
“She hates hospitals,” he blurts suddenly to the paramedic like it physically hurts him not to be the one fixing this. “She gets cold easy. She—” His voice breaks. “She was just supposed t’be asleep at home.” Your eyes sting instantly. Matt catches the tiny change in your breathing and snaps back to you immediately.
“Hey. Hey, stay with me.”
“I’m trying.”
“I know.” He kisses your forehead frantically. Your cheeks. Your hairline. Anywhere he can reach. “You’re doin’ so good, sweetheart.” Paramedics finally manage to get him back enough to work. Barely. Matt refuses to let go of your hand.
Even when they load you onto the stretcher.
Even when they wheel you away to surgery.
Matt sits in the surgical waiting room still covered in your blood.
Nobody can get him to leave.
Not the nurses gently suggesting he clean up. Not Karen crying quietly beside him. Not Foggy trying to press a cup of coffee into his shaking hands. Matt just sits there bent forward with his elbows on his knees, staring blindly at the floor while dried blood cracks across his knuckles every time his fingers twitch.
Yours. All yours.
And the worst part—the part that keeps hollowing him out from the inside—is that he can still feel his own body perfectly.
No broken ribs. No knife wounds. No gunshots. Nothing. He went into that warehouse ready to die and walked out untouched while you bled out on concrete because you loved him too much to let him do it alone. The shame of it sits like acid under his skin.
“She’s gonna be okay,” Foggy says again softly, for maybe the fifth time. Matt hears the exhaustion in his voice. The fear he’s trying to hide. “Matt, hey. Look at me.” Matt doesn’t move. Because he can still hear your heartbeat in his head. Weak. Stuttering. Fading every time the ambulance hit a pothole. He should’ve died there. That was the plan.
Not a fully formed suicide wish maybe—Matt’s too Catholic to call it that out loud—but close enough. A surrender disguised as martyrdom. One final impossible fight against men too powerful to stop any other way. He’d told himself it was noble. Necessary. Better him than anybody else. Then you got shot taking a bullet meant for him. And suddenly every justification sounds monstrous now. Matt drags both hands over his face hard enough to hurt.
“Oh God,” he whispers. Karen crouches carefully in front of him.
“Matt.”
“She heard me,” he says hoarsely. Karen stills.
“In confession.” His mouth twists violently. “She knew what I was planning and I still left anyway.” The guilt in his voice is unbearable. Foggy sits down hard beside him.
“Matt, you didn’t know she was gonna follow you.”
“I should’ve.” Immediate. Self-loathing soaked clean through the words. “I know her heartbeat better than my own and I still—” His voice breaks abruptly. Because underneath the antiseptic hospital smell and fluorescent lights and distant footsteps— He hears your heart stop for half a second in surgery. Matt folds instantly. Not dramatically. Not loudly. Just this horrible sharp inhale like somebody shoved a knife directly through his ribs. Karen grabs his shoulder immediately.
“Matt?”
His face has gone white.
No— Please— Then suddenly— Your heartbeat kicks back in.
Weak. But there. Matt nearly collapses from relief right there in the chair.
“Oh thank God,” he chokes. Foggy looks between them in alarm.
“What? What happened?" Matt can’t answer. He’s crying too hard now. Silent tears sliding down his face while his entire body shakes with delayed terror.
Because for one second— One single second— You were gone.
And he realizes with horrifying clarity that if you die because of him, there won’t be enough confessionals in the world to save what’s left of his soul afterward.
Hours later they finally let him see you.The room is dim and painfully quiet except for the steady beep of monitors. Machines breathe softly beside you. Tubes. Bandages. Brues already blooming beneath your skin.
Matt stops dead in the doorway. He can hear your heartbeat now. Stronger than before. Steady.
Alive. Alive.
His knees almost give out from relief. The nurse says something quietly to him before leaving, but he barely hears it. He moves toward your bed slowly instead, like approaching something holy. You look so small like this. Matt’s throat closes immediately.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he whispers. You don’t wake up. Of course you don’t. Surgery took hours. Pain medication still drags heavy through your system. But Matt reaches for your hand anyway, cradling it carefully between both of his like he’s terrified you’ll disappear if he loosens his grip even slightly.
“You scared the hell outta me,” he murmurs shakily. And then he laughs once. A horrible broken sound. Because the sentence is absurd. You should be the one saying it to him. Matt bows his head over your hand.
“I was gonna leave you,” he whispers. The confession slips out ugly and trembling. “I convinced myself it was okay because I thought losin’ me would hurt less than watchin’ me become…” He swallows hard. “Whatever the hell I’ve been turnin’ into.” His thumb strokes weakly across your knuckles.
“But then you got hurt and all I could think was—” His voice snaps completely. “I don’t wanna die.” The words wreck him. Because they’re true.
Not noble. Not heroic. Just honest.
Matt presses your hand against his mouth, shaking hard.
“I don’t wanna leave you,” he whispers brokenly. “I don’t care how tired I am anymore.” For a long time he just sits there listening to your heartbeat. Steady. Alive. Every beat feels like mercy. Eventually, sometime near dawn, your fingers twitch weakly in his hand. Matt jerks upright instantly.
“Sweetheart?” Your eyelids flutter slowly. Painfully. Confused from medication and exhaustion. The second you make a tiny sound of discomfort, Matt is already leaning over you.
“Hey, hey.” His hand cups your face carefully. “Easy. Easy, m’here.” Your gaze struggles to focus on him.
“…Matty?” The nickname almost kills him.
“I’m here.” His voice breaks immediately. “I got you.” Your brows pinch weakly.
“You okay?” Matt actually laughs. A disbelieving, devastated laugh. You’re barely conscious after emergency surgery and you’re asking if he’s okay. His forehead drops against your hand.
“No,” he whispers honestly. “No, sweetheart, I don’t think I will be for a while.” Your brows crease.
“Why?” you whisper. Matt looks at you like he doesn’t even know where to begin.
Because you almost died. Because he heard your heart stop. Because he walked into that warehouse ready to throw his own life away and instead watched yours spill across concrete in his hands. Because the universe handed him back alive while you lay here stitched together because you loved him enough to follow. His throat works hard.
“You got shot,” he says finally, voice wrecked. You blink slowly, like the memory has to swim upward through painkillers and exhaustion first. Then suddenly your face changes.
“Oh.” Yeah. Oh. Matt sees the exact second it comes back to you—the warehouse, the gunfire, him screaming your name—and his grip on your hand tightens instantly.
“Hey,” he says softly. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Go somewhere else in your head.” His thumb strokes over your knuckles compulsively. “Stay here with me.” Your eyes flick over his face sluggishly. The bruises. The split lip. The dried blood still staining the collar of his shirt.
“…You’re hurt.” Matt almost sounds offended.
“Baby, you got a bullet hole in you.”
“But you’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine.” You stare at him for a long moment through heavy eyelids.
“You say that like a liar.” Despite everything, a tiny broken laugh slips out of him.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “Probably earned that.” Silence settles softly between you after that. Hospital quiet. Monitor beeps. The faint hum of fluorescent lights overhead. Matt can hear every tiny shift in your body. The pain you’re trying not to show him. The exhaustion dragging at your heartbeat. He hates it. He hates all of it. His fingers brush shakily through your hair.
“I’m sorry,” he says suddenly. Raw. Immediate. Your eyes open a little wider.
“Matt—”
“No.” His voice cracks hard enough to stop you. “No, sweetheart, I need you to hear this.” He bows his head for a second, trying and failing to steady himself. “You were right.” You go still. “I was gonna die in that warehouse.” There it is. No hiding now. No careful wording. Just the truth sitting ugly and exposed between you. Matt laughs once under his breath. Miserable. “God.” He rubs hard at his face with his free hand. “Sounds even worse out loud.” Your eyes burn instantly.
“Why?” you whisper.
And that question— That one nearly destroys him. Because there isn’t one clean answer. Too much violence. Too many nights coming home soaked in blood. Too many people slipping through his fingers no matter how hard he fought. Exhaustion curling around his throat for so long he stopped recognizing it as drowning. Matt stares down at your hand in his.
“I got tired,” he admits quietly. “An’ somewhere along the line I stopped carin’ if I survived anymore.” Pain flashes across your face so sharply he hears your heartbeat stutter.
“You were just gonna leave me,” you whisper again, weaker this time. Matt closes his eyes.
“I thought…” His voice frays apart. “I thought maybe you’d hate me less if I died a hero instead’a slowly turnin’ into somebody miserable.” Your face crumples.
“Oh, Matty.” The tenderness in your voice guts him worse than anger would’ve. “You don’t get to decide that for me,” you whisper.
“I know.”
“You don’t get to love me enough to protect me from everyone except yourself.” Matt goes completely still. The monitor beside you speeds up slightly with emotion. He hears it immediately.
“Easy,” he murmurs automatically, thumb stroking your wrist. But his own breathing has gone uneven now too. Because you’re right.
God, you’re right.
You shift weakly against the pillows with a tiny sound of pain. Matt is on his feet instantly.
“Don’t move, baby—”
“I’m okay.”
“You literally got outta surgery six hours ago.”
“And you’re hovering.”
“I’m gonna hover for the rest’a your natural life, so you should probably adjust now.” That startles a tiny laugh out of you. Matt freezes. The sound hits him like sunlight after weeks underground.
“You really scared me,” you admit quietly. Matt’s face folds in on itself.
“I know.”
“No, I mean before.” Your fingers tighten weakly around his. “The last few weeks.” Your voice trembles. “It felt like you were already halfway gone.” Matt can’t breathe for a second after that. Because you noticed. Not just the mission.
Him.
The slow quiet disappearing act he’d been doing right in front of you. He sinks carefully into the chair beside your bed again, bringing your hand to his mouth.
“I’m here now,” he whispers against your skin. Your eyes search his face.
“Are you?” Matt nearly breaks all over again. Because you aren’t asking physically. You’re asking if he’s going to stay. If he’s going to choose it.
Choose you.
Choose himself.
Matt presses his forehead carefully against your hand and answers with terrifying honesty.
Hi! Can I have a peony with Matt where he is with a reader with chronic illness, perhaps fibromyalgia? 🫶🏻 I imagine he could sense her flare ups. Thank you!
a/n: As a fellow chronic pain girly, this was very cathartic to write. I tried to keep the painful areas generalized, I hope that’s ok!! Thank you for requesting, my dear! I hope this brings you some comfort!
A soft whimper ripped Matt from slumber, immediately raising his metaphorical hackles. Blinking the lingering sleep away, Matt surveyed the space for any threatening noises or unusual movements. The two of you were still alone, his arms loosely draped around you in the same way he'd passed out after patrol. In his hold, you grimaced, curling in on yourself with a whine.
If he hadn't expected this, the sharp tang of your distress would have been his first clue. But that acrid taste had been lingering all week—like static in the air before a storm. A warning of what was to come.
It wasn’t unusual for you to react this way as the seasons changed, your body adapting to the difference in temperature and humidity with the grace of a newborn moose on an ice rink. The myriad of pain receptors in your brain reacting to invisible stimuli, telling your brain that you needed to flee when the conditions were inescapable. You couldn’t protect yourself from the climate. But your nerve endings never got the memo.
Another mewl of agony drew him impossibly closer to you, as if he could shield you from the battle raging within.
“I’m here, angel. Right here.” Hesitating mere millimeters from engulfing you in an embrace, Matt whispered as soothingly as he could, terrified of exacerbating your aches with touch.
“Hurts, Matty. H-hurts so bad.” You cried softly, snatching a fistful of his shirt to tug him flush against you. Your forehead landed against his shoulder, your shallow breaths puffing over his collar.
“Then we’ll stay here today. We’ll stay here until it’s better.” He promised, cradling the back of your head with one hand.
You drifted in and out of sleep for the majority of the day, eyes fluttering as you woke whenever a new jolt of discomfort shuddered through your body. Matt refused to leave your side, readily supporting you against his chest and eagerly shifting whenever the position failed to suit your needs. He rubbed circles into your sore back, tucking a heating pad against you in the hopes it would relieve some of the tension coiled in your muscles. When his powerful hearing sensed the first growls of hunger in your stomach, he ordered you soup and bread, supplying you after with painkillers and plenty of water.
As the sunlight faded from his bedroom, you felt the tell-tale squeeze in your throat. Stifling a wave of tears, you pressed a kiss to his jaw.
“What was that for, love?” He asked, his chin tipping down as he returned the peck.
“For everything.” You murmured, sniffling as he swiped a runaway tear away with his thumb. “Thank you for everything.”
“My pleasure, angel.” He hummed, adjusting the blanket until it properly covered your shoulders.
it's this sunrise, and those brown eyes ▸ matt murdock x reader
[ao3]
summary: Matt was used to waking up alone. And now that he no longer did, his getting unused to it was only proving that he might just need you to consume every part of his life he'd never thought he'd have. | afab!reader
warnings: matt spilling some kinks in this one, dry humping (the entire premise for this fic!), this is just domestic soft boy matt fluff w/ a dash of softcore smut
wc: 6,253
and as per request, tagging @reisspiecess Hope you enjoy!
Matt was still blinking against the lingering edges of sleep as he leant against the bedroom doorframe, the awareness of the morning in his apartment stitching itself together around him in the taste of sugar and flour and the smell of home.
It had confused him, at first, waking up alone. When the initial rousing of his consciousness began to stir to life with his senses, his first instinct was to lean into you. His thoughts hadn’t been put together enough yet to register the weight missing from the mattress, or the lack of the contact his skin had grown so used to feeling, operating under the assumption of it being there for him. Languid and sleepy, he had pressed his face deeper into the pillowcase to drag in a long breath while his arm groped around mindlessly for whatever part of you he could touch.
It wasn’t until his fingertips had met nothing but the soft silk sheet that an involuntary frown twitched the set of his brows and corners of his mouth. He couldn’t help the cruel swoop of dread that tickled in the depths of his chest and took advantage of the careful consideration he lacked in the early moments of waking—the taut string of tension that had been longing to snap at him in the back of his mind—until he let his palm spread flat against the bed. He searched for you there, first in the moments where he felt the lingering heat of you under his hand, cooling but present, like you hadn’t been out of bed too long. Then with the command of his focus, casting his hearing out through a drowsy haze until he heard the gentle putter of your feet against the kitchen floor. The soft clinking of utensils against a porcelain bowl. The steady, relaxed, easy thrum of your heartbeat.
To say it had been only relief that had pulsed through his veins just then would be an insult toward the love he shared with you. A thrum of satisfaction had braided itself together, rumbling out in the quiet groan that escaped Matt when he stretched and in the surprise he felt at the twitch from between his legs. It was easy getting up after that, a hand running through his hair as he silently slipped to the bathroom when your back was turned. And it was easy to lounge back and pay attention as he settled near the bedroom again, letting the panel of the sliding door ground him as he yielded to the thoughts that crossed his mind in an anticipating familiarity.
Getting out of bed before Matt Murdock was usually the challenge you faced often. A sliding scale that ranged from being trapped in an assortment of limbs; Matt unable to let go of you, even in a state of unconsciousness, forever seeking the comfort of knowing he was holding you close to him, to not even having a chance to sneak away before he was yawning at the first miniscule shift in the bed and hearing the way your breathing signalled to him that you were awake. It was almost unfair, the advantage he had over you. How he could so easily sneak out—and in—bed without so much as brushing your awareness; how more often than not, he’d played this exact role for you, letting you rouse to the smell of coffee or bacon as he prepared a meal to share, already dressed and ready for the day.
But this time, you have done it. The stars had aligned for you that morning with only a single arm slung across your waist, and a Matt Murdock that had been so thoroughly exhausted from the night before, that in your careful ministrations, was too lost in the clutches of sleep to pick up on the way you lifted him off of you, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. The way you shimmied from under the covers without shifting them enough to drag too knowingly against his skin. Or the way you’d stared down at him as he slept, a gentle fondness in your eyes matching in the way your heart had spiked momentarily in that picture of his peace. You had fought the temptation to trace the curve of his cheek, knowing the touch would be the simplest way to fast track your plans to derailment. So instead, giddy and determined, you’d set forth to the kitchen.
Matt never thought he would have this; quiet, simple mornings that didn’t bear the weight of loneliness. He was all too used to rising easily, alone, and after an unfit rest to the sharp edges of the city—his only greeting the rumbling of car engines and honking of horns, the electric buzz of the neon sign right outside his window, and the underlying silence of it all that had always felt too empty. Too heavy. But now he had you, and the presence you brought into his apartment, his life. You had clothes in his dresser. An extra pair of shoes by his front door. He’d just lingered by your toothbrush when he used his. He bought things now, little things like your favorite tea or a few more plates or another hoodie of his for you to wear when your favorite was out in the wash. A small accumulation that with each further purchase cemented the mark you were leaving on him—whether you knew it or not. There was an expectancy now, that he quickly came to crave. Waking up with you in his arms. Coming home to you on his couch, in his bed. It was dangerous, how fast having you in his life became not only something he wanted, but needed. And he felt that now in this moment, in watching you cook for him, a gesture so domestic, so selfless. Unconditional and thoughtless.
Matt took a moment to think, realizing that he didn’t think anyone had ever…done this for him. Cooked a meal not out of necessity, or obligation, but simply because they wanted something to share with him in. Because they wanted to do something nice. And now here you were, in his apartment, using his food, his kitchenware. You woke up in his bed that you’d decided to stay in. You…chose him. He stood there, taking in the way you guided a sharp blade through fresh fruit, whisked milk in with flour and baking powder, hefted the skillet up onto the burner. All with a gentle ease and with familiarity as you floated on light feet through his kitchen like it was yours. Something in his gut curled tight and protective, and a wash of heat sent an excited shiver through him, his chest hitching on a breath caught in his throat and the sudden awareness in his boxers.
And that desire was so new, even now, even when he had time to get used to it. Matt parted his lips as if to drink it in, as if swallowing the taste of butter sizzling against cast iron and the pleasant heat that carried your ease in the air could quell how he felt although he knew damn well it would make it worse. It was when your gaze had locked onto him, finally spotting him in his wait across the room—an excited skip of your heart that had you humming contently to yourself—that his inhibitions wisped away and he wanted nothing more than to indulge in that new desire. One that didn’t race through him, furious and untamed, that wanted to pant into your mouth, strip the both of you as fast as he could, and not stop until the both of you were spent; needy and ravenous. No, this desire was slower. Sweeter. It dripped through him at a honeying pace, warming him from head to toe as he set forth to meet you in the kitchen. It cradled the swell of his heart and licked contentment down his spine, and he knew then that this morning would be something to take his time with.
Anticipation like this was new, a flutter in his stomach and a haze of security clouding his mind. And distantly, Matt realized he felt safe enough to welcome the bearing of you to consume him, to feed the fire that had his blood rushing through him, a gentle flood of invigorating overwhelm that began to thrum under his skin so insistent that he knew he needed you close to him if only in not wanting to find out what it felt like if he didn’t listen to his body's call.
You were expecting it, when Matt came up behind you, but it did nothing to stop the trickle of content that enveloped you whole as he started to settle. You let out another quiet hum as his arms wrapped warm and steadying around your waist. As you leant into the familiar comfort of the warmth of him against your back as the blaze of his body heat enveloped you in the press of his chest. You shared in his deep sigh as his chin slid against you, the soft scrape of his stubble well met and welcomed before he slotted his head upon your shoulder, fitting as if he had always been meant to be there.
Matt shuddered at the contact, feeling comforted and safe and whole. It reverberated through him, and he inhaled in preparation for another sigh, deep and steady and against your shirt only to be reminded that you were in fact, wearing his shirt; one that he’d pulled off his very back just the night before, and the same one that you’d picked up off the floor and slid on just as you were climbing back into bed. And that surged another roar of consistent, throbbing want through him, a soft gratification blossoming inside as he charted just how the scent of him had seeped from the fabric into your skin throughout the night, mingling with your own and creating something that now had the unique, innate ability to render him pliant and willing to give, to take, and to share.
It was natural at this point to predict his movements—knowing him—as you felt Matt’s head lift from you. You had already begun to meet him, willing to grant what he was seeking and turning your head over your shoulder to where he was already leaning in. The press of his lips were soft, and he kissed you with a sleepy slowness that almost made you think he had been testing if you were even real or a vivid dream. And upon greeting the former, chasing after the sensation as if he had been stunned by you, rendered shocked like he couldn’t believe he had you to hold.
Your voice was a murmur of quiet admiration as you spoke against him, a smile curving beside the shape of him. “Good morning,”
You let yourself brush against him again before the spatula in your hand demanded your attention back to the food in front of you. But Matt had been so quick, you barely registered his movement as an arm left your waist and two of his fingers were pressed against your jaw, lingering for a moment before gently guiding your face back toward him with a precise slowness and a firm pressure.
This kiss was lazy as he moved with you again. Different. There was barely time for the surprised giggle that bubbled from the shape of your throat before you met him in stride and you dove with him deeper. Determined, and insistent.
He kissed you then with the indulgence of a man of whom, if you hadn’t known any better, you’d think he’d gone without—kissing with a fervor that immediately keyed you in to his unspoken intent, and with an essence of a hunger that whispered at the edges, low and tempting yet interestingly docile. And with it, an intensity that made it very clear he was of no interest in the food you were preparing. The arm he still rested around your waist shifted down until his hand found your hip, dipping under the hem of your shirt to feel your skin under the weight of his palm, his fingers sliding against the waistband of your underwear playfully before stilling his hold into something chaste and content and stable.
“Good morning.” Matt breathed back, a pleased noise passing through the shape of his growing smile, voice low and still slightly rough from its early morning disuse, and like he hadn’t just made your knees go weak as your jaw hung open from the unexpected—but far from unwanted—affection. You rolled your eyes as Matt let you go back to cooking, the weight of his head yet again finding its home in your shoulder as he pressed his face against the crook of your neck. He adapted quickly to the sway of your body, relaxing into you as you flipped a pancake before leaning back against him.
Matt knew you felt it as he licked his lips, unable to help it, nor the way he teased himself on the taste of your skin, pulling you in alongside the faintness of the soap you used to wash your face and the juice of a fresh cut strawberry. The building pleasure in him reveled in the shiver he felt roll gradually through you, the easy reciprocation in your response, silent but inviting as you rolled your head further to allow him room. “What’re you making?” The question came out in a comfortable hum as he graciously accepted the space to press a proper kiss to your neck.
You chuckled, letting out a short breath at the sensation. “Like you even need to ask.”
“Tell me. Please.” And he truly had wanted you too. The thought of you vocalizing your plans, giving detail to how you were going to surprise him, only leant itself to the growing need that ballooned in his chest and instigating another twitch of his cock between his thighs. He was half hard now on nothing but the thought of how you’ve permeated into the crevices of his life and how he wanted nothing more than to keep finding you in his clothes. To keep you sharing in his space. To have you mix with him so intrinsically that he wouldn’t know where he began and you ended. “Wanna hear you.”
Your breath faltered at that, the earnestness of his voice that trickled out of his inflection and into your bones, swirling through you until it stirred up a lazy heat that brought a flush to rise just under your skin. “Well, there’s a strawberry compote staying chilled in the fridge. And I’ve got a bowl…bowl of pancake batter that—Matt,” You breathed out his name at his blatant show, dragging his cheek slowly against the juncture where your neck met shoulder as he pressed more of his scent into you. And your reaction had been immediate, the knowledge of what he was doing skyrocketed you forward until you nearly met him on the same page of this book. It was almost embarrassing in how fast your own want gathered to match his, this unhurried desire that seemed almost electric as it emanated from him in waves and introduced itself in the curling heat it nurtured in your core.
“Keep going,” Matt sighed again as his other hand mirrored his grasp on your hip, holding you tight. It took you a moment, eyes fluttering as his lips brushed just above your shoulder blade and you felt his breath, hot and eager, against your skin.
“I…just started cooking. The skillet’s on the stove. Was gonna…was gonna set the table for us to-to—” You lost your words as a gasp hitched on a soft moan when Matt pulled your hips back to meet his. You felt him then, hard and burning against you, the thin fabric of the sleep clothes the both of you wore doing nothing to mitigate the shape of him as he pressed into your ass. He didn’t move, didn’t shift or grind in search of any friction just yet. It was as if he was just showing you, wanting you to know in a silent display just what you were doing to him. What you have done simply, it seems, by just existing. “You’re not wondering when it’ll be time to eat, are you?”
“Nope.” Your head fell forward as he nuzzled against the back of your neck. “That pancake’s nearly done. Can I turn the burner off?”
“Yes.”
The curve of his smile at the nape of your neck grew wide and sappy.
Matt was swift as a flick of his wrist had him reaching out to turn off the gas, his hand back on you before you knew it to guide you with him as he pulled you along, sidestepping until the both of you were away from the stove. You placed the spatula down with a clatter against the counter before you turned under the grasp of his palms, gulping down a rising anticipation as you came to face him for the first time that morning.
The early morning sun might have been diffused through the cloudy stained glass panes of the apartment windows, but it was bright enough as it filtered in to more than light your surroundings when you had begun to gather ingredients earlier. And it was bright enough now, the red-orange beams of the dawn having turned into a pale, muted golden glow as you blinked up at the man in front of you. Matt was all gentle lines and sleep-tousled. His features hung slack and relaxed, hair messy and fluffy from bed, and his eyes…Matt hadn’t put on his glasses, and you were met with the sight of his unfocused gaze slowly mapping the shape of your face. There was a weighted reverence behind the action, behind the lazy droop of his lids and pupils blown so wide it almost obscured the beautiful warm brown of his irises.
You couldn’t help it when you raised a hand to cradle the side of his face, fulfilling the want you had to do it since you’d woken up, passing a thumb over the apple of his cheek. His smile drew wider then, the corners of his lips lifting and the crinkles besides his eyes deepening as he stared at you ardently, leaning into your touch. Your breath caught, wanting to savor this sight in subconscious knowledge. Because Matt was smiling at you like you’d hung the moon; all tenderness and love and utterly unguarded in a way you knew he didn’t give up easily. And you’d be damned if you didn’t try to commit it to memory.
Matt wasn’t hiding his intention any longer as he kissed you again. And he found you easily, mouth moulding to his in a rhythm that crooned both of familiarity and something new. Something yet to be explored. Matt made it obvious with how slow he set the pace, gentle and shy, like he was discovering you for the first time.
And in a way he was, Matt thought. You were different like this, open and relaxed and more than willing to let him have this. He could taste it as his tongue swiped over your bottom lip, searching for more and finding the sweet notes of anticipation, the lazy draw of satisfaction as you let him in. You moved with him like a gradual stream, kissing him tenderly as you cupped his face in both hands.
“Wanna tell me what’s got you like this?” You spoke gingerly when Matt pulled away, leaning his forehead to yours as you both shared in the same air. “Good dream?”
“Mm, no,” He shook his head once before pressing forward again. He kissed now with a yearning insistence. “You.”
“Me?” You couldn’t help but to laugh between each pass of his lips, Matt swallowing half the sound away with him as he shifted, hips pinning you to the counter as he took the moment of opportunity.
“Mhm. You.” He stated again. Like the explanation was that simple. To him, it was. “You’re here. And you want me, this. Want me despite everything. The late nights, the stress, Daredevil. You want me, and-and you were cooking for me, and,” A groan tore from his throat, but it wasn’t from frustration. More of a culmination of emotion he never thought he’d be granted. A mercy he thought he’d never see. You were the one to lean forward and kiss him that time as you met the sound with a conviction unique only to you, an equally vulnerable reply to his fragile admission. Matt’s hands left your hips to travel down, leisurely gliding over the curve of your ass until he landed firmly against the backs of your thighs. He hummed into your mouth, index tapping quickly to indicate what he was asking. “And I…want you too.”
You hopped at his signal, the motion helping as he grabbed you just enough to slide you onto the kitchen counter. It was natural instinct and blooming arousal that had you parting your legs before he could even ask, and Matt glided himself neatly into place within the room you gave him, hand curling under your knee to tug you closer until you sat precariously on the edge of the countertop, held up between the hand you shot down to balance your weight, and the firm solidity of the man in front of you.
There was a restrained desperation to him now, as you melted into his touch, his kiss. And with the gentle scrape of your nails at the base of his skull, you chased the way he whined into you with a pass over his tongue, the sensation enough to stir a quiet moan from your chest, and you hadn’t expected Matt’s reaction to be an involuntary buck of his hips. Except he wasn’t quite in the right position, sucking in a sharp breath between his teeth as his cock caught more of the hard surface of the counter than you.
“Here,” And you tried to shimmy further forward, tilting down the best you could and spreading your legs wider. Matt adjusted with you, hiking your leg up higher and holding you tight against the blaze of him that so deliciously threatened to burn.
Your head fell back at the first tentative roll of his hips against you, and Matt took advantage of the access, stealing his lips away to move against your neck as he pressed a wet kiss to the column of your throat. He’d moaned then too, a soft thing that vibrated against your skin and it shot straight south, feeling the throb between your legs grow stronger, hotter, as Matt kept consistent pressure when he dragged back down. He tested again as you fisted a hand against the strands of his hair, and in response, he pulled skin between his lips, coaxing a mark to bloom on the underside of your jaw as he ground against you harder.
The layers between you now seemed almost inconsequential; the silk of his boxers just as thin as the fabric of your underwear. Especially with the gathering wetness between the both of you; the sight that was the growing patch of precome leaking dark against it. But it served a purpose, offering a dizzying friction in the drag and clash of material. The heat was electrifying, and Matt couldn’t help but to grin as you shared in the offer to quell this new ache.
It was when Matt found an unhurried rhythm that you both dove in fully. He’d paused just before, pulling his face up to kiss you gently, reverently. And you mirrored him until his motions became a steady thrusting; a slow sinful drag acted with every intention to have you feel all of him as the kiss became needy and bruising. And you did, the full size of him rutting up against you firm enough to press enough pressure to your clit with every pass. A pulsing relief flooded through Matt as he moved, a giddiness riding alongside the pleasure as he gathered your shirt in his hands, bunching the fabric tightly in his grip as he moved to steady himself along your waist.
At first you’d tugged on it too, thinking he had wanted it off and more than happy to indulge. But Matt protested quickly, mumbling between kisses. “Want it on,” The glide of his hips was measured and controlled as he rocked up into you. “You smell like me. Wanna keep it that way.”
He was helpless against the need that burned through him, the feel of you against him, the way your hand shot up to cling, squeezing against his bicep. He licked into your mouth, unashamedly reaching to drag out as many moans and delicious sounds from you as he could. He glutted on them, high off the achievement of having you like this, off knowing that you didn’t mind at all that your very existence, your choice to stay, your choice to love him, could spur him so easily into an all-consuming desire to claim and protect.
“Oh god,” you pressed your cheek against the side of his head when Matt dipped back to your shoulder. He needed to taste you, drag you into his throat until it was all he could breathe in. You couldn’t help but to try and grind against him, attempting to meet his hips with yours when his tongue swiped hot and slow and filthy at the base of your neck, and Matt’s eyes fluttered shut as he worked it over in his mouth, clean skin and clean sweat. Him and you. But even coasting off the friction and the moans, it still wasn’t enough. And Matt found himself panting out soft little noises into you as he rocked faster, one of his hands leaving your side to cradle the back of your neck, trying to pull you closer.
He knew it wasn’t any use, that the only way to feel you any closer than he already was—your legs had wrapped around him some bit ago, ankles crossed and heels digging into the flesh of his ass as you tried to help guide his movements, your chests flush, and hands roaming to map every inch of skin you could feasibly encounter—was to be inside of you. But he wanted to drag this out as long as possible, make it feel good for as long as he could. So he instead opted to catch the collar of your shirt between his teeth, biting down on the fabric as he lapped with his tongue, drawing in the taste that was you blending with him after you had the night to soak into it. It was something heady and intoxicating, his copper and cinnamon and your quiet savor. If this were another time, if he didn’t want to last in this experience—if he let a different side of him loose and he were to be needier, rougher—he would have caught skin instead, biting to leave a mark, a claim that he could then soothe and admire under his touch.
Both of you shared in the broken moan that rang out across the apartment, and Matt shoved his face back against your neck if only to hear the rush of your blood, to feel the thrum of your life beat beneath your skin against his. He mouthed at your pulsepoint then, letting his teeth graze against the delicate skin before nipping lightly and delighting in the way you scrabbled for purchase against him. That was when he encouraged you to do the same, presenting the fact that he wanted nothing more than to have you mix with him until he couldn’t differentiate the nuances anymore. In wanting you to know that you have all of him, as much as you give him all of you.
Matt’s touch was soft as he slowed down, and you hadn’t known what he wanted until he slid his hand over yours. You watched as he pulled back, letting him move you how he wanted as the blush against the pale skin of his face grew deeper. “Want you…need you too…” He gave your hand a gentle squeeze where he held it, before coaxing the spread of your fingers to rest against the column of his neck. “You have me.”
A profoundness struck you from the heavens then, strong and consuming only in a way that was reminiscent to you of a mortal devotion to a higher power; an awe, a disbelief in which the both of you experienced. Matt in his pledge to you, this display of intimacy, this trust he gave in you wholly and explicitly.
Your mouth parted in the admiration that ravaged through you, and in a quiet voice, you urged Matt to slow further until the movement between you nearly stopped. You held him in your hand for a moment, considering the vulnerability laid bare against your palm, before your fingers traced around the line of his throat. They dragged over his skin in no rush, feeling in the prickle of his scruff and the heat that flushed warm and flooding just underneath. Matt rolled against you in such a slow grind you could barely feel him shifting, focusing more on the pressure that pleasured you both. His breath hitched in his chest when your fingertips found his pulse, pressing down until you could feel the beat of him, his heart fluttering erratically under your touch.
Trusting in Matt’s anchor to you, you pulled him in with both your hands. And when your lips met his, you hoped it came across as you poured your thanks, your love, your soul into him, sighing deeply and breathing him in like you could trap a part of him inside you if you kissed him hard enough, held him tight enough. Your fingers danced along the line of his jaw, before you tightened your grip mildly.
“I have you,” you whispered against his mouth, thumb dragging over his bottom lip as you swallowed heavily. “Want you too, Matt. As long as you'll have me.”
And Matt couldn't think straight, thoughts trapped under the security you blanketed over him. He couldn't tell if he replied to you, if the words worked past his tongue or if they were overshadowed by the feel of your firm kiss at the base of his throat, sound hitching out of him broken and ragged. And you continued to pull him apart as your every touch pressed brands against his very being, and he shuddered against you. He wanted this. He didn't deserve it, but you thought he did, and you gave it to him anyway. And Matt would never find it in him to turn down such a gift. Not with you. And if this was what it took for him to allow himself to give in to something so pure, then he'd indulge with you even at—despite—the cost his other life took from you. Because you've more than proven willing to stay with him through it all, and Matt couldn't understand who could have possibly spared him this grace, but he hoped his gratitude echoed in his overwhelm, in the way you buried your face against him, answering in his silent prayer as you reciprocated, marking him as equally yours.
Helpless little sounds tumbled from Matt, springing from and rumbling in his chest as you worked your way against him. Your nails dragged down his bare chest slowly as you pressed your cheek against his shoulder. It was easy there, to breathe hot against him, to respond in how he arched into you in earnest as you begun to kiss up the delicateness of his neck, swipe your hand over his ribs as you sucked little lovebites, tenderly trace the scar on his waist as you pulled back to look at him in a weighted bliss.
He slurred your name out in a whine, his hips stuttering as the time you’ve spent here worked him to a point where he desperately wanted more stimulation. You knew he could come like this if he wanted too, grinding over clothes and kissing slow, and in the back of your mind you thought maybe he would. But his ministrations came to a close as he panted over you, and the flat of his hand pressed firm against your back, helping you sit up and slide you back until you more comfortably sat upon the counter.
You made a noise of gentle confusion, a smile quirking your lips as you waited patiently for Matt to make what he was planning known to you, taking the moment of pause as a chance to drag your fingertips down the side of his face. His eyes were shut as he leant into the touch, nuzzling against your hand and turning his head to press a kiss against your knuckles as they slid close enough to his mouth. A comfortability sustained then, and you giggled at the easy smile that spread over his lips.
“This is bad, you know,” He began, his voice nothing but teasing and adoration. “Next thing I know, you’ll just be reading a book on the couch and I’m gonna want to bury my face between your thighs.”
“I’m not so sure I see what’s wrong with that,” You laughed easily, lacing your arms around Matt’s shoulders and tugging him close enough for you to capture his lips again.
“No surface in this place will be sacred.” He said, almost solemnly, sharing in your humor as he kissed you back. “You think me stopping you from making breakfast is bad, wait until it’s laundry. Or cleaning. Or making the bed—”
“Matt,” You sighed deeply, content, as your fingers lazily scratched at the back of his skull. Matt keened into the touch, lips parting on a silent moan. “What do you need, baby?”
“Need you.” He admitted earnestly and without hesitation, tilting into you. “Need to be in you. Need to feel it. Need you in our bed.”
Your heart flipped, expectancy coming easier now that this first wave from him was ebbing. Puzzle pieces were clicking in your head, and elation had you feeling light and airy inside. “Our bed?” You poke, the shape of the word alongside its meaning made you feel like you were floating and loved and wanted.
“Our bed,” he repeated, a hint of hesitation to his tone as a sheepish grin split his face, and he grinded himself against the inside of your thigh as if for emphasis. “Our kitchen. Our apartment.” He slid his arms around you, holding your waist loosely as he hung his head in front of you. This moment felt like the two of you were stripped bare, more naked than if you even lost your clothes. It was an ask long in the making, and somehow, the realization that he was ready had hit among you cooking breakfast for him in his shirt. The realization that a lifetime of this domesticity could be his. That Matt didn’t have to choose. Didn’t have to give up a part of him. Didn’t have to pretend. Because you knew all of him, loved all of him. And you didn’t run. You weren’t afraid. And he could find salvation in you waiting up for him with pain meds and a first aid kit just as easily as you offered your heartbeat, patience and time. Matt stood expectantly, sightless eyes searching back and forth over the map he had of your face, waiting. “If you want it.”
“Of course I do.” You had barely finished the statement before Matt was stealing your breath in another kiss. You suddenly felt yourself go weightless, and you were happy you had already been hanging on as he easily lifted you from the counter, your legs wrapping around his torso as his grip held you comfortably, fingers pressing into your thighs.
“Yeah?” And you’ve never felt so happy that Matt didn’t need to see to navigate as you held his face in your palms, peppering kisses over the shape of his grin as you nodded your head as enthusiastically as you could, breathing a longing ‘yes’ into his skin as you distantly saw the both of you pass through the doorway to the bedroom in your peripheral. “Good. Because getting my tongue in you sounds exactly like the best way to officially celebrate, now that I’m thinking of it.”
Matt had joined you in breakfast, after. After he’d been satisfied with the amount of devotion he’d breathed into your skin. After he’d committed how every inch of you, every breath, every touch responded to him in each one of his senses to memory. After he let himself fall apart against and inside you, pressing as close as he could possibly be without having the ability to become one. After letting the world around him fade away until the both of you were all that remained in quiet reverence under the feel of the radiant early morning sun. He’d joined you in breakfast, easy smiles and contentment filling the air as he flipped pancakes, as you set the table, and as you both sat down together in this life he shared.
Pairing: Matt x mutant!fem!Reader Word count: 4.2k [Series Masterlist] [Matt Murdock Masterlist]
tags/warnings: 18+; dark themes/content, canon typical violence, emotional hurt/comfort, PTSD, smut, plot twists, fluff and angst, torture, mentions of sexual abuse, canon divergence, Reader has a fake name & is Matt's neighbor
a/n: Can you guess who's made an appearance at the end of this one? All comments and reblogs are very, very appreciated!
Sitting cross-legged on the small bed in your confined quarters, a tray of food lay balanced along your lap. It consisted of the same three things that you were always given for dinner–plain baked chicken, steamed vegetables, a scoop of bland brown rice. Healthy, flavorless, simple. Your enjoyment wasn’t factored into meals, only your nutrition.
With a fork in hand, you half-heartedly speared a steamed carrot and brought it to your lips, but when you caught movement outside the clear glass of your cell from your peripheral, you paused. Looking up from the tray in your lap, you spotted Doctor Barlowe making her way down the hall dressed in her typical pencil skirt and blouse, the outfit partially covered by the white lab coat she always wore. Those thick, black glasses sat perched on her nose, and her hair was pulled up high into a tight bun. But it wasn’t Doctor Barlowe who ultimately held your attention, because someone else was trailing along just at her heels.
You’d seen the young girl plenty of times throughout the years that you’d grown up here, though you’d never been allowed much opportunity to speak with her. They referred to her as Test Subject 648, and she appeared to be around the same age as you. You assumed that was why you both were occasionally paired up to complete your studies while sitting adjacent to each other in the study rooms, but the study room rules were clear–there was absolutely no fraternizing allowed.
You'd never been allowed to say much to each other, and any time you’d ever tried to initiate a conversation, you were harshly reprimanded and severely punished for it. But that never stopped your growing curiosity about her. You wanted to know who she was, why she was here, and if they did the same things to her that they did to you. You wondered if she was like you, if she could do the same strange things that you could. You assumed she must, otherwise why else would she be stuck in The Facility?
Eyes tracking the girl as she continued down the hallway, you quietly studied her as your fork remained hovering beside your mouth. She looked a little different, as if her hair somehow had gotten even darker in the unknown length of time that'd passed since you’d last seen her. Brows furrowing a little in confusion, something felt off about her appearance as she walked down the sterile, white hallway outside of your cage.
It was still her, though. You could tell by the profile of her face and that timid way she carried herself behind Barlowe. She always moved around the same way when you saw her–fearful, anxious, uncomfortable. As if she was afraid of being caught doing the wrong thing, her head often ducked as she hid behind the curtain of her dark hair. You'd come to learn that fear of punishment worked well to keep her in line even if you occasionally toed it.
As if she could feel your eyes on her as she passed by your cell, her head marginally raised and her dark hair fell away from her face. Turning her head a fraction over her shoulder, she looked over at where you sat on your bed. Both of your eyes locked through the thick pane of glass, and the corner of her lips drew back so minutely that you barely caught the faint smile she’d sent you. You were quick to return one of your own before she abruptly ducked her head again, obediently following after Doctor Barlowe as if that miniscule interaction hadn’t happened.
Except it had. And you knew what it meant–an unspoken offer of friendship.
Slowly returning to consciousness, you awoke to the monotonous drone of infomercials coming from across the room as the memories of your childhood faded away. Nose scrunching at the sound of a nearby television, confusion flooded your groggy, sleep-addled mind. Beginning to blink your eyes gradually open, you squinted at the instant barrage of sunlight that hit them and your confusion only increased. Your bedroom was never this bright when you woke in the morning, and you didn’t have a TV in there. This wasn’t your bedroom, so where were you?
Feeling the stirrings of fear trickle its way through your veins like ice, your heart started to thump a frantic rhythm inside of your chest. Terrified that you’d been dragged somewhere else while you’d been asleep, you sucked in a sharp breath and held it. But as you opened your eyes again and they adjusted to the bright light, the familiar sight of your living room came into focus just before last night's events fully returned to you.
You’d simply fallen asleep on the couch in your living room. You were still safely inside of your apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, no one had carted you off anywhere else against your will. Letting your eyes fall shut at the realization, you took a few deep, steadying breaths in an attempt to calm the sudden swell of panic that’d surged within you.
You were safe. You were home. There was no reason to be afraid.
With your body back under control, you opened your eyes and recounted the night before as you stared at the infomercial on your screen, barely aware of the nonstick pan being marketed. You figured that Matt must have left sometime early this morning after you’d passed out. But considering how you were laying across the entirety of the couch now, you assumed that he must’ve laid you down and made you comfortable before he’d gone back to his own apartment across the hall. Your stomach dropped at the realization that he’d had to navigate his way out of your place alone without his cane, though there was nothing you could do about it now.
Pushing yourself groggily upright on the couch, you threw a hand up to stifle the yawn that fell out of you. Turning to look over the back of your sofa and into your kitchen, the time on the stove glared back at you in green: 6:57. Surprised that it was almost seven already–which meant you needed to get on your computer and log in for work before you were late–you started kicking the blankets off of yourself. Turning off the television, you darted up from the couch and hurried across the living room before roughly collapsing into your computer chair and turning on your computer.
You managed to clock into work just one minute before you were officially considered late. But unfortunately, having woken up so late this morning meant that you’d have to wait for a shower until you’d finished for the day. With a heavy, defeated sigh, your shoulders sunk as you opened up a few programs and started to settle in. But as the first few minutes of the day dragged by, you found yourself staring blankly at your screen, unable to focus on the lines of code in front of you.
Your mind kept drifting back to Matt’s unexpected visit last night. You thought about the strange sensation that always seemed to pass over your skin when he was near you, that gentle tickle that absolutely baffled you. You’d certainly felt something akin to static electricity when he touched you last night, when he’d let you guide him into your apartment. In all the time you’d interacted with people–which was admittedly limited–you’d never felt that before with anyone else. You’d never encountered someone who’d had such an odd effect on you.
Part of you wondered if it was just the effects of having a crush on someone, because you assumed that’s what you were experiencing now. Not that you’d ever really experienced that before, because it wasn’t like you’d had the opportunity to form positive attachments to anyone while you’d been trapped in The Facility. You’d read about crushes in books though, and you’d heard plenty of characters talk about them in movies and television shows. Maybe that’s all it was. A simple crush on your neighbor. One that you needed to ignore and push aside.
Sliding your desk chair back, you decided that you needed a coffee. Some caffeine would help you concentrate on work instead of on your attractive neighbor. The attractive neighbor that you needed to remember was solely your friend and nothing more. Trying to shake the thoughts from your mind, you crossed the short distance into your kitchen and stopped in front of your espresso machine.
You pushed a button and the machine whirred to life, beginning to heat up while fresh beans started to grind out into the portafilter. Reaching up into the cabinet above you, you grabbed a coffee mug and pulled it down. Going through the familiar motions of tamping down the grounds and attaching the portafilter to the machine, your mind still continued to drift and wander this morning. You placed your mug on the drip tray, and while the shot began to pour out, you turned and rested a hip against the kitchen counter.
Your tired eyes inevitably found their way back to the couch in your living room, your plush green blanket strewn along the cushions in a mess from where you’d kicked it off of yourself. Despite your best attempts to concentrate on something else, you could still recall the warmth of Matt’s solid body pressed against your side as you’d sat together on that very couch watching a movie last night. He’d smelled just faintly of cedar and clove, a comforting scent that’d gradually relaxed you after the nightmare that you’d woken from.
Your eyes slowly closed and you couldn’t help but remember the soft baritone of his voice beside your ear each time he’d spoken, and the pleasant way his hot breath brushed over the side of your face. Teeth pulling at your bottom lip, you wondered how it would feel to snuggle up against him on the couch after a nightmare instead of just sitting beside him. You wondered how it would feel to have those thick, strong arms pull you into his lap and have those calloused fingers soothingly running over your arms as they calmed you. You wondered if his skin smelled even stronger of that warm, rich scent, and if you buried your face against his neck, you were certain you could get lost in it.
But the face in your mind’s eye abruptly shifted without warning, and the illusion was quickly broken. The soft, gentle hazel eyes you’d been able to admire last night became the frightening dark ones which constantly haunted you. Plush lips quirked into a friendly smile turned into a thin, pompous grin. All the strong, warm features of Matt’s face twisted into the sharp, cold angles of another.
The second his face grew clear in your mind with that familiar twisted smile, your eyes snapped back open. Your pulse jolted as you cowered back against the counter behind you, your hands anxiously gripping the edge of it. The espresso machine softly sputtered as it finished pouring out the last bits of the shot, and all of your muscles went taut at the sound.
“Little dove, little dove,” he cheerfully sing-songed.
“He’s not here,” you reassured yourself, quickly shaking your head back and forth. Your eyes began sweeping your apartment, scanning the large, open space for any trace of him. “He's not here,” you repeated. “It’s in my head. I’m just imagining it. This isn’t real.”
“Come out, come out, wherever you are…”
Clamping your eyes firmly shut, your jaw clenched tight as your teeth grit together. The palms of your hands grew damp against the counter, and you felt your grip on it beginning to slip. The hair along the back of your neck prickled in fear when you swore you inhaled the expensive sharp tang of his cologne.
“You’re not here!” you shouted into your kitchen. “Go away! Leave me alone!”
“You were meant for me.”
You felt something brush against your cheek–the lightest graze of fingertips–and your eyes flew open in a panic. A shrill scream crawled itself from your throat, echoing around the empty apartment. With a trembling hand, you grabbed your coffee mug from under the espresso machine and threw it across the room. The steaming brown liquid of freshly brewed coffee rose out of the mug in an arc before splattering along the floor, and the ceramic cup shattered in pieces moments afterwards.
“Leave me alone!” you yelled.
Nothing but the sound of the traffic on the street far below came in response to your panicked plea. Finally losing your grip on the counter, you began to gradually sink down to the floor, your back sliding against the cabinet behind you. Burying your face in your hands, a choked sob fell out of you as tears sprung hot and wet along your waterline before spilling over and dampening your palms.
“Just leave me alone,” you begged softly, voice cracking. “Please, just–just leave me alone.”
Still wound up from last night's nightmare and this morning’s far-too-real scare which had you launching a perfectly good coffee mug across the kitchen, you'd left on another run after you'd finished work. You’d needed an outlet for your pent up nerves, something to help calm you down and settle your mind because you couldn’t risk losing control over yourself. It had taken you far too long and cost you far too much to suddenly go backwards because of your nightmares.
But having only managed a few hours of sleep over the past few days, you were noticeably drained this evening. You’d already lost track of how long you’d been out running, having circled your way around Hell’s Kitchen and towards a nearby park that you often jogged through, but you could finally feel your lungs stinging from the cold air.
Eventually slowing to a walk, your hands fell to your hips as you attempted to catch your breath. Your legs ached and burned from how hard you’d pushed them tonight, and you knew it was time to head home. You needed to shower, make dinner, and hopefully pass out into a dreamless sleep for once. And you certainly didn’t want to be out after the sun had fully set.
Breathing heavily, your chest continued to rapidly rise and fall as you maneuvered your way out of the park and back into the city foot traffic. Letting the soothing music in your earbuds help calm your earlier nerves, you navigated your way through the sea of people all around you. New York City was nothing like Anchorage, Alaska. Despite having enjoyed the more remote city where you’d spent a bit of your hard-earned freedom, you'd come to feel comforted among the endless sea of people that lived in New York City over the past couple of weeks. This was a place where someone could blend in and disappear.
Beads of sweat dripped down your back, gliding down the length of your spine beneath your shirt as you slipped past a woman loudly complaining on her phone. Continuing down the street in the direction of your apartment building, you contemplated what to cook for dinner with the minimal energy you had. But as you passed an alley, something darted out and latched onto your arm before roughly yanking you off balance and straight off the sidewalk. The force of the pull had managed to knock your earbuds loose from your ears, and the little purple devices descended to the pavement.
Before you even had an opportunity to react to the situation, you were ripped off your feet and thrown straight through the alley. Your back slammed forcefully into a brick wall right between two dumpsters, and the impact knocked the air completely out of your lungs. Wheezing for breath as you doubled over, a distorted, gargled noise came out of your mouth as pain shot itself through your body, your muscles stinging from the blow. You’d hit the brick with a devastating force.
You needed to get control of the situation. You’d been trained to fight your entire life, so you shoved your surprise aside and began to straighten. Though whoever had attacked you hadn’t given you time to recover, and something dark appeared in your line of sight just before you felt a hand wrap itself around your throat. Fingers squeezed around your windpipe before your feet were dangling in the air, your back scraping along the jagged brick behind you as someone lifted you single-handedly by the throat. The weight of their grip cut off your airflow, and as your vision grew hazy and splotchy, your mind abruptly flashbacked to the straps that used to restrain you at The Facility. Beginning to kick your legs wildly in a frenzy, you thrashed violently in their hold, desperately struggling to break free from it.
But it was no use. Their hand only tightened further around your throat, causing you to choke and sputter against the wall. White dots began to cloud your vision as your hands grabbed onto their wrist, tugging and pulling in an attempt to break their grasp on you. But nothing you did seemed to have any effect on them. Whoever had grabbed you was abnormally strong. Far stronger than the average person, and far stronger than even you.
Had they finally found you then? Were they dragging you back to your glass cage? Were you never to see the sunlight again, doomed to be endlessly tormented and tortured until they finally killed you? Panic shot through you like lightning and your nails began viciously clawing at their wrist as a familiar tremor vibrated in your skull. It was no longer a debate about whether to use your abilities or not, staying out of The Facility was worth ruining all those years of trying to be normal, but a voice beneath you cut through your attempt to concentrate.
“Who the fuck are you?” your attacker demanded.
Ignoring their question, clarity washed over you in an instant as you struggled to breathe. You would not go back to that cage. You would not go without a fight. Trying to quell the rising panic, you became keenly aware of the fact that you were running out of time before you fell unconscious from the lack of oxygen to your brain. You didn’t know what would happen to you then, but you could certainly imagine plenty of horrible scenarios. So you would survive by whatever means necessary.
Switching your focus away from the searing pain in your empty lungs and the failing buzz in your mind, you stopped kicking your feet and carefully pulled your legs up beneath yourself. With the soles of your shoes flat against the wall behind you, you abruptly pushed off of it with all of your remaining strength, successfully surprising your assailant. In their brief moment of shock, you were able to remove their grip from your throat before twisting their arm behind their back as they fell face first onto the cement. You fell onto them from behind, contorting their arm at an unnatural angle behind their body. Placing a knee into their back, you pressed with all of your weight and forced them to stay down.
Gasping for air, you tried to fill your burning lungs with oxygen again. As you sucked in each large gulp of air, you were finally able to get a look at your attacker. It was a woman. Slim with dark hair. Not someone you’d ever seen before, no one you recognized. Able to think more clearly now that you weren’t being strangled, you also realized that someone working for The Facility wouldn’t have asked who you were because they’d have already known. So why had this woman ambushed you? What did she want from you?
“Who the hell are you?” you pressed, though some of the bite was lost due to your breathlessness.
The woman let out a grunt beneath you, and before you knew what was happening, she swiftly swung the arm you’d been holding behind her back. The force of her throw was so strong that you once again went flying through the air as if you weighed nothing to her. This time your back slammed into the metal dumpster with a loud bang. The metal molded slightly around your body at the violent impact, and you were yet again left choking for air, tears stinging at your eyes as you sat helpless on the alley floor. You had clearly underestimated her strength.
“I’m pretty goddamn sure I asked that first,” she spat, pushing herself back onto her feet.
Readjusting her leather jacket, the dark haired woman crossed the distance towards you, her eyes narrowed into a piercing glare at where you sat slumped against the dumpster. Still fighting to catch your breath, you were incapable of doing much to stop her approach.
“And after witnessing what you just did,” she continued. “I’m definitely going to need an answer. So who the fuck are you?”
You shook your head, chest still heaving as you panted pathetically on the ground. “Why–why do you want to know?” you hoarsely croaked out. “What do you–you want from me?”
Her lip curled back in irritation as she stopped just in front of you, towering over you on the ground. “I want to know if you’re working for him,” she growled. “Because I think you’re the one who’s been stalking me, aren’t you? The one taking all the photos of me for him?”
The woman dropped down to one knee in front of you, her hand darting out fast before her fingers curled around the fabric of your shirt. She balled it into her fist before yanking you towards her like a ragdoll, but your mind was still spinning and trying to process what she was talking about. None of it made sense.
“What are you to him?” she snapped. “One of his mindless zombies? Someone he tricked? Or are you as sick of a fuck as he is?”
Forehead creasing in absolute confusion, you gently shook your head despite the pain it caused. You had absolutely no idea what the hell she was raving about. “Who?” you asked. “Who’re you–?”
“Kilgrave,” she spat the name. “Why does he have pictures of me? And why does he have a framed picture of the two of you? One he risked his life to make sure he took with him."
Without warning, she slammed her fist into the metal dumpster so forcefully that the metal indented just inches from your head. But you’d barely registered the metallic crunch beside your ears, your entire body reacting to the single name she’d just spoken.
"Who are you?” she snarled. “Tell me!”
With each question that tumbled out of her mouth, it caused the world around you to shift and spin. Your chest constricted, closing around your lungs like a vice. Throat feeling as if it was abruptly closing up, you felt your entire world shatter and crumble around you.
His face appeared in your mind for the second time today. That twisted, dark smile and the dangerous glint in his brown eyes. You could smell the expensive cologne he always wore, the scent of it rolling into your nose like a deadly poison.
"Little dove."
Beginning to hyperventilate, each breath felt like a knife stabbing you straight through the chest over and over. With every rapid beat of your heart violently hammering inside of you, tears began to burn your eyes. When your body started trembling, the woman’s hand instantly released your shirt, but whatever she’d said came muffled and distorted through your ears. All you could see was him now, grinning back at you as if he’d once more invaded your mind.
"You belong to me, little dove."
“No,” you whispered.
His laugh echoed in your ears, and you swore you felt his warm breath fanning down the back of your neck. Eyes snapping shut, your hands rose and started hysterically clawing at your throat, nails scraping against your skin so hard they’d leave marks. Because this couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t be here. You’d gotten away from him.
“You’re mine, little dove.”
“No,” you gasped, choking on the word.
A second voice called out through the alley, so faint that you could barely hear it. With how fast your blood was rushing through your veins, and how hard you were gasping for air, you couldn’t hear anything over the sound of your own ragged breaths. Everything began fading around you, as if you were falling deeper and deeper down a tunnel. But you couldn’t make it stop. You couldn’t quiet the sound of muffled screaming, not aware if it was coming from you or if you were imagining it.
Only one thought came muddied through the glaring panic overtaking your entire body before everything went dark: Kilgrave was in New York City, and you were no longer safe.
Dating a lawyer is bad. Dating Matt Murdock is worse.
You wish it was for normal lawyer reasons, like oh no, he argues too well, or oh no, he remembers every single thing you've ever said, or oh no, you can't win a fight because he'll calmly ask one question and suddenly you're hearing yourself out loud and realising maybe the point was stupid. Which is already annoying, by the way. Very annoying. Nobody is saying that part is fine.
But let's face it, that's not even the worst part.
Matt actually knows you're annoyed before you know you're annoyed.
Like you'll be sitting there, perfectly fine, living your life. Maybe washing a mug a little harder than usual, and he'll be behind you going, "what happened?" You'll just say, "nothing happened," because nothing has happened yet. You haven't even decided if something happened. You are still in the browsing stage of being irritated. And he'll just stand there, all soft voice and stupid face and say, "your breathing changed."
Jail. Immediately jail.
Privacy is a concept other couples get to have. You? No. Your body betrays you for sport, and unfortunately Matt has the hearing, smell, and nerve to know every single time.
You didn't realise how often you get turned on until you started dating a man who can hear your pulse do a backflip because he rolled his sleeves up while making pasta. He was COOKING. That's all he did. Garlic, sauce, shirt slightly tight on his back, forearms out. Suddenly you're sitting there like a pervert with a glass of water.
The worst part? He doesn't even turn around at first. He'll keep stirring the sauce, head tilted, smiling to himself like an absolute bastard. Then he'll go, "you alright over there?" Like he doesn't already know.
You'll say, "fine." Obviously, because you can't simply show your cards (even though he knows all your cards)
He'll hum. Just hum. Like he's heard enough.
Sometimes he lets it sit there too. He'll plate the food, pour wine, sit across from you like a normal boyfriend. But his ankle? It hooks around yours under the table. And you're already thinking, Matthew, don't do this near carbohydrates.
And the cooking thing became a Thing, by the way. He'll be next to you on bed, hand between your legs because let's face it, that man cannot keep his hands to himself. When he feels how soaked you are around him, he'll press his mouth to your jaw and go, "this all from watching me cook?" You'd want to die. But his hand is between your legs and his cock is hard against your thigh, so death can wait.
Fighting is somehow worse, which is like betrayal from your own body.
Because you'll be genuinely mad. Like fully correct, in your opinion. Pacing around, saying things with evidence, maybe even pointing at him a little because sometimes a finger needs to be involved. And then his jaw gets tight and his voice goes low, and your body immediately forgets the cause.
Feminism? Where?
He'll notice mid-fight too. You'll be halfway through a sentence, something very valid about how he cannot just disappear into Hell's Kitchen bleeding and expect you to be normal about it. Then he'll stop listening. Like not stop stop, he's listening to something else. He's compartmentalising listening. Your pulse. Your breath. The way your thighs shifted. Whatever. Disgusting surveillance state of a man.
Then he'll come closer, and say, "you can keep arguing with me," while his fingers slip under your waistband like he isn't the worst person alive, "but this is making it very hard to believe you."
Sometimes you still try to argue, which is embarrassing for everyone involved. Mostly you. You'd be stuttering, trying to finish a point while he has two fingers sliding through your folds, and mouth near your ear, like he's waiting for you to confess. Absolute lawyer behavior.
Sometimes he makes you say it too. That's the thing. He'll have you right there, hips lifting into his hand, your whole argument dead on the floor, and he'll ask, "what got you like this?" Like he needs it entered into record. And when you refuse, he'll slow down. You wish he'd stop. But no, he's just slowing down. Enough to get you you desperate. Leaving all dignity on the floor along with your skirt, you'll mutter, "your stupid voice," and he kisses your temple like he's comforting you through a problem he caused.
The court thing was the worst one though. You still haven't emotionally recovered from that.
You went to watch him because it seemed cute. Supportive girlfriend behavior. Very adult. You had coffee, you wore something decent, you sat there thinking this would be sweet, like look at him doing his job, look at my boyfriend being smart and competent.
No.
Bad idea.
He stood there in that suit, calm as anything, voice sharp but polite, sounding gentle while absolutely ruining someone's argument, and your body decided this was porn. Porn you hear me? You didn't even realise you were squeezing your thighs together, but he did.
Like the perfect boyfriend, he kissed you outside the courthouse, and then paused like a maniac. "During closing arguments?" He asked so softly, like he was trying not to laugh.
Traffic was right fucking there. You could have walked into it.
He brought it up for three days. Three full days. "I thought my opening statement was stronger." "Was it the objection?" "Should I wear that tie more often?" Shut up, Matthew. Shut up before you make it worse.
Because he can tell when you're lying, surprises are nearly impossible. You once tried to hide a birthday gift in your closet and he walked in, paused, smiled a little, and said, "is that for me?" You nearly threw the gift at his head.
And he had the nerve to act innocent after. "What?" Like he hadn't just ruined the whole operation. You had wrapped it. You had hidden it under sweaters. There was a tote bag involved. Effort had been made. Did he actually sniff out wrapping paper?
Dating Matt is basically losing every normal human advantage. You can't lie. Can't hide gifts. Can't be horny in peace. Can't even fight without your body betraying the cause.
And the really annoying part is he's sweet about it after. Which almost makes it worse. He'll kiss your forehead after being unbearable. He'll pull you close after making you admit you got wet because he made pasta. He'll plant a soft kiss to your mouth like he didn't just read you fully.
So yeah, dating a lawyer is bad. But dating Matt Murdock is worse.
and i wish this was my most worrying concern.
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