@mybestfriendisarock
Thinking about another AstroDevil scenario where PHM isn’t a coma dream, but they somehow still meet
Thinking they probably meet in undergraduate school in a library, and bonded over being lonely nerds, and Matt (being a pre-law student) helped Ryland find his teeth in terms of arguing his point
They get married a couple years before Ryland gets kicked out of academia, and decide to keep their names publicly separate on everything except their legal documents (Matt insists), where they’re hyphenated as Grace-Murdock
Sometime before they get married but after they’ve already gotten together, Ryland finds out that Matt is Daredevil and they have to work through that mess
Matt is the one who encourages Ryland to go into teaching, and the kids absolutely love it when he visits the classroom and Mr. Grace gets more smiley than usual, especially those first few years after his fallout with academia
But everything crashes down around Matt’s ears when he loses contact with Ryland, and he can’t find him at all until he gets word that his husband has been kidnapped by some new dictator-type, but he doesn’t have to go get him because he’s back home by the weekend
That’s the beginning of the end, though
Just two short years later, Matt is standing in front of an empty grave with one half of a ring pair, and a voicemail weighing heavy in his pocket
He then bullies his way onto the team prosecuting Eva Stratt, petitions to add the charge of the murder of Ryland Grace-Murdock, and that voicemail goes from a last plea sent to a spouse to the last condemnation of Eva Stratt
(If you want a happier version where Ryland doesn’t go to space, you can use attempted murder instead)
Thoughts?
