we were written in the stars

EMBERS AND ASHES

Chapter One is located here on tumblr, and here on AO3. 

FLUFF

Audiometry - You test Matt’s hearing and make a game out of it

Mimicry - You, Matt, Karen, and Foggy play Description Charades

Frivolity - You and Matt go to a playground in the middle of the night

Devil’s (Bad) Luck - You get cursed to be extremely unlucky for a day

Deprivation - You try to go 60 hours without sleep to win a bet

Lie Detector - You have 48 hours to try to lie to Matt without him noticing

Echolocation - A bat gets into the apartment and Matt isn’t much help

Lights Out - The power goes out while you and Matt are in a haunted mansion

HURT/COMFORT

(Un)Stealthy - You get injured and try hiding it from Matt

The Sleeping Bag - Matt accidentally hurts you

Keyholes - You get assaulted and Matt’s not there to save you

Obstinacy - You get sick and refuse to let Matt help you

Strawberry Rhubarb - You get kidnapped by Fisk

Muted Dawn - You get mugged in the middle of the night

Head Over Heels - You sprain your ankle wearing high heels

Solidarity - Matt isn’t happy about you joining him and Frank on a mission

Cayenne Pepper - You get concussed while ice skating

ANGST

Summer Hues - You have to put your pet down

Discordant (part i) - Matt is angry with you when you risk your life for his; Concordant (part ii) - You and Matt must endure a “kidnapping” to make up

ROMANCE

Wavelengths - You go shopping for a dress and Matt decides to come

Big Fish - Matt wants you to go swimming with him

Castle in the Sky - Matt tries to teach you self-defense

Matt x Autistic!Reader

“Can’t you let me just be better than you at something? Anything?” You tested out the ice gingerly with your right skate as Matt easily began to glide backwards—backwards—while shrugging. “Actually, scratch that. Don’t ever let me win at anything. Because when I win, I want to know I really won.”

“Last I checked, there’s no competition here.” Matt looped back around to you, and took your upper arm with his hand. To anyone watching, you were leading Matt around the rink; in reality, his grip above your elbow was firm for only your own benefit, and it gave you a sense of stability as you picked up speed together. 

Rockefeller Center was probably one of the most touristy outings you had ever done with Matt, who preferred to frequent the quieter “hidden gems” of New York—if there was such a thing as a hidden gem in New York—but you’d won two free tickets through work and convinced Matt it wouldn’t be completely horrible. In retrospect it was ridiculous that you had to persuade him in the first place, because he was obviously enjoying himself, getting a feel for the ice and working up to a speed just slightly beyond what you would have done if you were alone. 

“And you’ve never done this before?” you asked. 

“Never.”

“That is so unfair. I even took a semester of ice skating back in college. What, are the touch receptors on the pads of your feet giving you extra dexterity or something?”

“Well, my dad took me roller blading once.”

“Ah, yes, that must be the source of your prowess: roller blading once when you were a little kid.” You rolled your eyes. “Matt, you realize that you could probably be an Olympian athlete at any sport if you decided to dedicate yourself to it?”

As you spoke, the toe pick on the front of your skate caught on the ice, and you nearly faceplanted; Matt’s steadying yank backwards on your arm was the only reason you stayed upright. 

“I thought you said you’ve done this before,” he commented.

“I have. And I did learn some things.” You broke away from his grasp and attempted a rotation, pulling your arms into your chest to pick up a bit more speed. “I can sort of spin. That stuck, apparently.” 

Matt was smiling. “Not too shabby. Show me how?”

And so for a brief minute you did get to teach him something, demonstrating how you dug your right toe pick into the ice and then looped your left foot around to pick up speed before spinning a few times. He, of course, picked up on it almost immediately, and then the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen was practically twirling on the ice, not one hint of instability in his movement. 

“I know why you’re so good at this,” you said, observing him. He joined you again and you resumed your lap around the rink, his hand around your arm. 

“Didn’t you already establish that I’ve got great receptors on the pads of my feet?”

“Well, that too. But it’s all those spinning midair kicks you do,” you said, in a much lower voice. “You spend half your nights tornado-ing your way around Hell’s Kitchen; of course you can spin on ice.”

“Should I try a jump?”

“I’m of the opinion that the fun of trying to jump on ice is not worth the potential injury it could entail.”

“That sounds like a challenge, sweetheart.”

“Matt, I’ve cleaned up enough of your injuries that the last thing I want is for you to get one figure skating—”

“Watch out!” Matt pulled you in towards his chest just as another man whizzed by on the ice, weaving in and out of the crowd. 

“It’s like we’re playing Frogger,” you said, watching the man cruise down the other side of the rink. “Thank you.”

“He’s giving everyone on the rink a heart attack when he goes by them,” Matt said, head tilted ever so slightly. “Stay closer to the middle; he’s keeping to the edges.” And then, without warning, he skated forward away from you, sprung off the ice, and did a half-rotation so that he landed skating backwards on his other foot. It was ridiculously flawless.

“Matt Murdock, you are a liar! When the hell did you learn to ice skate? This is not your first time!”

“Stick might’ve made me go on skates a few times,” he said, not bothering to turn around and skating backwards still. He was grinning, his hair unkempt from the movement and nose red at the tip from the cold air. You skated forward, closing the gap between you and wrapping your arms around him, cautiously keeping your skates away from his to avoid tripping both of you up. 

“Stick ice skates?” you said dubiously.

“Not in the way you’d think of ice skating. It was more a training exercise to practice balance. He didn’t exactly teach me to do a waltz jump or anything.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t strike me as the triple axel coach sort of guy,” you said, trying to envision Stick being graceful on the ice. It was nearly impossible to picture. “I’m sorry. I hope coming out here doesn’t bring back bad memories or anything—”

“No, it was one of the few exercises I liked.” Matt picked up speed, separating himself from you, and waving you on to speed up. 

Alright, then. You picked up speed, lifting your feet and pushing off the ice harder. It felt good; the frigid air on your face and blue skies above, the thrum of New York tourists gaily looping around the rink beside you. 

“See, you’re a natural,” Matt said, quickly flipping around to face forward again. “Just keep the inner edge of the skate—watch out!”

You also heard the man coming up behind you before you saw him, and you lurched to the side. What happened next was not entirely clear: if you had ever imagined what it would be like to be able to teleport, that was what it felt like, because without any realization or memory of actually falling, you were suddenly on your back, head throbbing on the ice. 

Matt was at your side in an instant, as was the blue-jacketed Rockefeller worker who must have seen and come over immediately. 

“I’m okay,” you said automatically, but even lifting your head to sit up made the world teeter and wisp around as though it were a ship bobbing on the ocean. Under other circumstances, your utter failure to get up on your own would have been mortifying, but as it was, you hardly even noticed; more pressing was the violent pain on the back of your head. Matt and the attendant helped you up, one on either side, and shakily you went off the ice, the world blinking by you like a stop-motion movie. As soon as you were safely seated on a bench off the rink, Matt’s hands were skimming your head.

“Hey,” he said, a bit urgently. “You fell hard. How are you feeling?”

“Like…” Dazed was how you were feeling. You could see his eyes, concerned and fixed at a spot just around your eyebrows that felt as though you were almost achieving real eye contact. “I’m okay,” you said instead, a bit woozily. 

“Here.” A woman wearing a Rockefeller Center jacket in the same shade of blue came over with a bag of ice and a clipboard. “You doing good, honey?”

“I’m okay,” you repeated, feeling like a broken record. Your balance still felt like it was slightly tipped, and the back of your head hurt like a bitch. How the hell does Matt deal with knocks to the head every night? 

She asked you for your name, and contact information; she looked into your eyes with a penlight. 

“Is it a concussion?” you asked, even though it was hard to imagine that it couldn’t be a concussion, considering how muzzy your thoughts were—scattered, like a wind kept blowing them away, and only half-formed anyway. 

“I’m not permitted to make any diagnoses,” she said flatly. “But we can call you an ambulance and get you to the hospital.”

“Oh. No, no,” you said hastily, the horrifying thought of a damn ambulance breaking through the fog in your head. “No, thank you.”

“Then you’ll have to sign here stating that we offered and you declined an ambulance,” she went on, and turned to Matt. “We’ll need you to sign a witness form here—saying that you saw what happened—”

“I’m blind,” he said. “I didn’t see it.”

The woman blinked. “Oh. Well, it’s just a formality. Just sign here.” She handed him a pen and showed him where the line was, and Matt formally signed a statement that he had “seen” you fall on the ice, an entirely ironic situation that would have been comedic if you had been able to entirely think it through. 

You kept the ice on the growing lump that felt like a golf ball, staring straight ahead at the other ice skaters, willing the terrible pressure on your head to go away. 

“Sweetheart—”

“No, Matt. I’m not taking the ambulance and I’m not going to the hospital, either.”

“You hit the ice hard.” His hand was devastatingly gentle as he brushed the side of your face and then took your hand, rubbing your palm in a circular motion with his thumb. “I heard it.”

“What?” you said, a bit derisively. “The sound of my brain smacking the inside of my skull?”

His silence spoke volumes.

You sighed. “I’m okay, Matt. Really. Look, there’s… there’s ten minutes left on the ice with the ticket, go enjoy yourself, go skate—”

He smiled, but without any humor. “I’m staying with you.”

Your head pulsed. “Is that guy still jetting around the rink?”

“I’d throttle him if I could,” Matt said darkly. “You know, with some good lawyering that could be a tort claim.”

“I’m not suing him. And you’re not finding him to beat him up tonight,” you added, as an afterthought. 

“I wouldn’t do that,” he said, but he still had a scowl on his face. “If not the hospital, then I’m calling Claire to have her come over.”

“Oh, that’s even worse, Matt. She’s so busy. I’d feel awful if she took time out of her evening to come look at me because I had a little bump on the ice—”

“It was more than a bump.”

You sat in silence together, watching the skaters go by, some of them falling too but none with the lack of grace that you apparently had. Why hadn’t you put out your hands? At least your elbows? Why the hell had you used your head as a way to catch yourself on the ice? You grazed your hand against the bump; it throbbed in response. The area in question was so raised that it felt like an egg was slipped under your skin, and it made you feel more nauseous. 

And that was the worst of it: your head was hurting, but there was a wrongness to it, a type of nausea that just didn’t sit right and made you feel like everything was awry, inside and out. Matt seemed to catch onto your growing anxiety, because he squeezed your hand. 

“Hey. Bumps to the head happen all the time. You’ll be good in no time.” 

You nodded, breathing in air that didn’t quite feel like it was enough air. “Why—why don’t you go skate, Matt? Go enjoy the time before it runs out. Really.”

“Our session ended fifteen minutes ago, sweetheart.” 

Had it really? You hadn’t even noticed that much time passing, and it was terrifying; the afternoon was passing by without you even registering it. 

“I want to go home,” you whispered, suddenly sick of it all: the smell of the rubber floor, the constant chatter of tourists around you, the bright sky gleaming on the ice. Matt obliged you immediately, helping you to stand, and then you let go of him, determined to get back to your shoes on your own. Stepping carefully in the ice skates, you made your way towards the lockers, the world twisting and turning, tilting to the side, tumbling and twitching; you held out your hands for balance, and Matt made to help you but you shook him off, a sudden paralyzing sense of terror gripping you like a deep frost. You’d gotten hurt before, but never like this, and the feeling of your very thoughts being difficult to formulate was worst of all. Injuries were usually physical for you: pain, entirely separate from your mind. The physical realm now bleeding into the mental was horrifying. What if it lasts? What if it doesn’t go away? What if I’ve permanently hurt my brain, all because I couldn’t catch myself while falling? 

“Hey.” Matt’s arm was around your waist. “You need to breathe.”

“I’m—” But you couldn’t get any more words out. Fear had seized you like a boa constrictor, relentless and vicelike. You turned to look at Matt and the world seemed to continue spinning as you turned to him, set off with no friction to slow it down. “I’m—”

“In and out. Breathe with me.”

You found yourself against the wall, trying to draw in a breath, but each time you tried it grew harder; it was as though your nose had closed off altogether and no air could get in, and each breath was rejected, because it hit an invisible wall in your throat—tears were streaming down your cheeks, and you didn’t even know why because it was so stupid, just a bump to the head. But you couldn’t stop, and only shook your head at Matt, trying to blink away the tears before he realized you were crying. Which was also stupid, you knew, because Matt surely knew you were crying even before you did. 

“Feel my breathing, sweetheart.” Matt took your hand and placed it on his chest. “Breathe in deep with me, slowly.” 

You felt the rise of his diaphragm under your hand, and struggled to draw in a breath with him. Your ears were ringing. 

“And out. Just let it out.” His chest fell, and you slowly exhaled with him, the pounding ceasing every so slightly. 

“Again. In and out.” 

And the world stilled. Matt pulled you in, hugging you, his embrace so warm and full and safe that for a moment, all felt well; his hand was braced against your back and he had drawn your face in against his body.

--------------------------------------

The apartment was freezing when you returned. Matt, who was no rookie when it came to concussions, was quick to turn up the heat, get the ice pack out of the freezer, and pull the shades down. 

“At least the dim light won’t bother you,” you said, trying to force a smile. 

“How does your head feel?”

“Good. I’m really okay.” Which was mostly the truth, compared to the immediate post-fall way that it had been hurting. “Probably not even a concussion. I think I just hit my head hard.”

“It’s a concussion.”

“See, this is why I don’t even need to go to a doctor. You’re just as good at making a diagnosis.”

“It could’ve been so much worse.”

“Like the Punisher putting a bullet in your helmet, then deciding to go out and fight anyway? Yeah, I know, Matt.” 

He didn’t smile. “Just rest, alright? Take a nap. I’ll make something for dinner.”

“I can still help,” you objected. “I didn’t get knocked out or anything. You don’t have to make me dinner like you’re my nurse or something.”

“Remember what you said the last time I got concussed? Something along the lines of, ‘Sit here and be still, you idiot.’”

“Well, that was because you got thrown against a brick wall by a three-hundred-pound arsonist. Me, on the other hand—I just bumped my head ice skating. It’s no big deal.” The vulnerability that came with being hurt was something you always struggled with. Maybe it was a deep-rooted sense of perfectionism, or the fear of being at someone else’s mercy, but being perceived as weak, or incapable, or worst of all, helpless—it made your skin crawl in a horrible way. The only remedy to such a vulnerability, of course, was standing up to that perception: defying it, proving you were stronger.

‘ You started to push yourself off the couch, but Matt blocked your path. 

“It’s not a request,” he said, unfairly being a completely impregnable barricade; you tried to push by him to no avail. “I get it. It’s not fun. But how many times have I had to lay out on this couch while you took care of me? How about you let me return the favor for once?”

“Matt—”

“Sit.” He gently took you by the arms and lowered you onto the couch. “We’ve got onions. Pasta. Broccoli. Tofu. How about I make a casserole?”

“I can chop the onions.” 

“I know. I know you can. But you said it yourself that you’re going to be alright. And being alright happens when you rest, and let your body heal. It’s not a weakness.”

He understood, then. He knew what was bothering you. “Fine,” you said, defeated, slumping over. It made the room start spinning rapidly, and you had to turn your head the other way. “ . . . Ow.”

“Don’t lean that way,” he advised. 

“Too late.” 

Matt went into the kitchen, leaving you to sit and do, quite literally, nothing. You fiddled with your hands, and then a loose thread on the couch, and then picked at a fingernail. It came off a bit too low, and throbbed in rhythm with your head, a bead of blood bubbling up at the base. Matt undoubtedly could hear it—and smell it—but he must have restrained himself from saying anything, because the only sound was the bubbling of boiling water. 

Your book was sitting on the coffee table in front of you. You leaned over and grabbed it, flipping it open to where you had left the bookmark. It was dim lighting, but your eyes had adjusted enough to see it enough. You managed to read three sentences before Matt’s hands grazed your shoulders and plucked the book right from your hands. You jumped; you hadn’t heard him leave the kitchen. 

“Wait forty-eight hours,” he told you, then leaned over to kiss you, upside-down from his position behind the couch. “Reading is exactly what you’re not supposed to do with a concussion.”

“Ugh. I’m going to remember this the next time you get hurt and try to go back out within the next forty-eight hours.”

Matt returned to the kitchen, and the sound of chopping resumed. 

“Is now a good time to confess something to you?” he said, just as the scent of onions began to waft through the apartment. 

“I don’t know,” you said warily, turning your whole body to look at him, in an effort to not swivel your head. “That’s never a good way to start a conversation.”

“I didn’t want to say anything, because you were excited about the Rockefeller tickets.”

“This doesn’t sound like it’s going to be good.”

“But I might’ve had a slight sprain last night,” he continued. “My ankle. And I didn’t want you to have to cancel because of me, so—”

“You were skating on a sprained ankle? Matt! How the hell is that supposed to convince me to rest if you go off gallivanting with an injury whenever you want?”

“It was weighing on my conscience, I guess.”

“The fact that you’re a raging hypocrite?” You got to your feet. “I’m chopping the rest of the damn onions, Matt.”

He didn’t protest, at least. “I guess there are worse activities to do while concussed.”

“Don’t antagonize me when I have a knife in my hand,” you warned him, picking one up and wagging it at him. “Who knows? I have a concussion, I might be unstable.”

In a flash, he disarmed you, plucking the knife out of your hand as quickly as he’d taken your book. “I don’t think I have anything to worry about.”

“I’m helping whether you like it or not.” You reached for the knife, but he quickly swapped it into his other hand.

“I know,” he said, twirling the blade expertly in his left hand. Damn show-off. “Which is why I’m putting you on tofu duty. The onions are almost all chopped, anyway.”

You glanced at where the tofu sat in its press. “Tearing it tonight?”

“Increases the surface area,” he confirmed. “Gets more flavor in.”

Mollified, you moved to the press and took the block of tofu out. “This doesn’t get you out of trouble, Murdock. And if your ankle is sprained, you should probably be sitting, and I should be doing all of the food prep—”

“My sprain was longer ago than your concussion.”

“My concussion was more mild than your sprain.”

“How would you know?”

“Because I know you, and I know you don’t do things halfway. I’ve stitched enough bloody wounds to know that.”

“We make quite the team, don’t we?” Matt drew you in again, and brushed your hair out of your face. “Gimpy and Helmetless?”

“Helmetless?” you said, laughing. “Though . . . now that you mention it. I wouldn’t have minded having a helmet on.”

“Which is why I wear one now, too.” Matt slid the seasoning drawer open. “What do you want? Cumin, chili powder? Ginger? Garlic powder?”

“Do we have cayenne pepper?”

“Right here.” While stirring the pasta, he reached out with his other hand and slipped the cayenne pepper out from the back of the drawer.

“You never cease to amaze me.”

“Funny. I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

“Trying to compliment me after bestowing the nickname Helmetless on me?” you said, tossing cayenne pepper over the tofu. “Are we baking or stir-frying this?”

“Stir-frying would be quicker.” Matt ran his fingers over his watch. “That way I can get suited up. I want to be here by the time you go to bed, because of the concussion, but I want to do a quick patrol for an hour or two after dinner—”

“Not on your sprained ankle, you’re not.”

“I think the jump on the ice proved that I’m fine. Fine enough, at least.”

“Lawyer you may be, but that’s a terrible argument. Plus, if you go on patrol, then I’ll stay here to read and watch TV, plus anything else that I’m not supposed to do. And if you listen to my heartbeat, you’ll know I’m not lying.”

For a moment, he was silent. The pasta nearly boiled over the edge of the pot and he turned down the heat; the apartment grew quiet. “Alright. Truce. We’ll stay in, and you rest.”

“Deal,” you agreed. “We will rest.”

A deal with the devil, as it turned out, didn’t always have to be a bad thing.

This had been sitting in my drafts for awhile, and I wasn't very happy with it, but I wanted to post something in honor of it being Weekend Before Daredevil Born Again Season Two is Officially Released.

I'm SO excited for the new season but sadly I have to wait until Wednesday evening to watch because I have a law exam Wednesday morning (and watching DD the night before a big exam probably wouldn't be the smartest thing to do).

I hope that this is fun to read in the days leading up to the new season, even though it's a bit campy. Hopefully the next addition (whenever that may be) is a tad more intricate/interesting/long. Thank you all so much for reading!!