𝕯𝑨𝑵𝑻𝑬

Was she still upset about that? No, not really, but it was a very real, solid thing she could put out there to point at to explain everything. And everyone thought of her as some kind of salty, bitter bitch-type anyway, so she thought her plan was genius. Until Foggy called her on it one morning. She came in, as usual, glanced over at Foggy poking at the pie that a client had apparently just left, Karen at the desk typing something up. The door to Matt's office was closed and she could hear something that sounded like a sob. Okay, fine. So she'd wait until that one came out without barging in. See? She had tact. Foggy looked up from the pie, giving her a bit of a crooked grin. "Hey there, Dread Pirate Roberts."

Jessica blinked, nonplussed and confused at the comment. "What did you just call me?"

Foggy's smile widened, and Karen cleared her throat, as if trying to warn him of the impending doom lingering over his head. "Dread Pirate Roberts. You know, from the Princess Bride?"

Green eyes narrowed as she glared at him, trying to figure out just what was going on in the mind of this weirdly-named lawyer. Maybe he'd been hit on the head recently. "I'm carrying hot coffee and I have a short fuse. Explain with a little more detail, Nelson."

Karen had stopped typing at this point and looked like she wanted to get up and diffuse the situation. Foggy just kept on going. "Come on, Jessica. You know what I mean. You come here every week and threaten to kill Matt over your camera. 'Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.'"

Jessica stared blankly at him for a moment, memories of that movie flicking through her mind as she tried to decide if she was pissed off or not. Karen got up, apparently concerned by Jessica's lack of response and came over to stand by Foggy. "I don't think he's saying you're going to kill Matt or anything. Or that you say you're going to-."

"Oh, no. No, I don't mean that. Just that it's an empty threat. And you're using it as an excuse to keep coming here to check on him. I'm just not sure if you're planning on handing him your piratic legacy or making out with him." Foggy was grinning as he clarified what he meant.

Karen looked like she wanted to smack him. Jessica wished she would. She heard the screech of a chair being pushed along the floor and the door to Matt's office opened, the man having apparently been summoned by the silence and maybe Karen's panicked heartbeat. Or maybe he just smelled confusion, like neon or something. She had no idea at this point. "Jess. Hey. Ah, I'm just- Foggy, would you come in and talk to Ms. Ramirez for a moment? She needs to go over the severance clause from her job."

The odd static feeling in the air seemed to diffuse with Matt poking his head out, but Jessica was still just staring at Foggy, trying to figure out what kind of brain damage he'd suffered. Foggy was just grinning, moving to enter Matt's office, patting him on the chest as he passed him. "Whatever you say, buddy. Just trying to get that train moving where it needed to go." Then he went in and closed the door, leaving Jessica, Matt, and Karen standing there. Quietly.

Until Karen apparently couldn't quite take the tension and went to grab her purse. "I think I'm going to take my lunch. You good with that, Matt?" Not that she waited around to see if he was or wasn't, purse snagged and coat slung over her shoulder as she moved to leave.

"Yeah, yeah. Lunch is… good." And just like that, the room was cleared and aside from the sound of traffic outside, it was quiet in the main office of Nelson, Murdock & Page, and Matt licked his lips and smoothed down his tie as he faced Jessica, all signs that her very keen detective skills had picked up as his fidgeting tics.

"Is he high?" Jessica felt that slip out as she shot a glare at the closed door to Matt's office.

A choked laugh and a shake of his head, and Matt came a few steps closer. "No, just… he's Foggy." He said some pretty ballsy things to some people in a way that they just didn't expect it, mostly because of how soft and squishy he looked. Foggy being a stand up guy was one of the reasons Matt knew that they'd make such good partners as well as friends. But his affection for Foggy might not save him from a verbal tongue lashing from Jessica Jones. He just hoped to at least deter the barrage from happening in his office in front of clients. "He does have a point, though. You do come in and threaten me all the time, and get mad all you want, but we all know you're not going to follow through on it. I'm, ah, not sure about the last part, though." He had suspicions, but Jessica wasn't the person he wanted to be the one to cross that very firmly entrenched boundary with first.

Her mouth opened to counter that, but nothing came out. Instead, it snapped shut and she held his coffee out to him, scowling with enough force that he'd better feel it. "Take it before I dump it over your smug head. The balls on you guys. Make out with you? Why the shit would I want to make out with some smug goddamn lawyer who'd probably go cry in a confessional over it after the fact. I don't want your fucking priest knowing about my goddamn sex habits, Murdock. Are you kidding me? I'm being nice by not breaking both your legs instead of giving you time to-"

"I got your camera, Jess." He broke that quietly into the middle of her rant.

"-because some people aren't made of fucking money. Wait, what?" She tipped her head playing back in her head to the words she'd almost missed. "When?"

"About three months after I came back." He tucked his hands in his pockets, head tipped in that way that he had when he was listening to her, everything about her and not just her words.

She wasn't sure if she was more annoyed that he was doing it or that she knew him well enough to know what he was doing. Goddammit. "Why the hell haven't you given it to me?"

A half of a shrug, and his smile seemed a little too lazy for her liking. "I was waiting until your birthday. Or until one of those threats actually sounded like you meant it."

"I meant them." She firmed her lips in a line as she glared at him.

"No you didn't. And your heartbeat tells me that you know you didn't." The smile looked a little too smug again.

She came closer, finger out and poking him in the chest. "Don't use your creepy bat radar on me. That's cheating. My heartbeat is currently telling you to go fuck yourself."

No, it wasn't. "You sure it's not telling me you love me?"

Jessica felt her stomach drop out, and she scrunched her nose up, giving him another poke. "I don't say that. Nothing in my body says that. The only time I'd ever say 'I love you' is as a codeword for everything's gone to shit." She remembered saying similar words to Trish, and she felt that same complex blend of feelings that she didn't want to try to untangle while she was face to face with Matt Murdock and his stupid red glasses.

Matt felt something dip in his chest, something that was sad and sympathetic for her, but as he wasn't suicidal, he kept that to himself. "So what do you say when you like someone?"

"I don't like people. I tolerate them." What annoyed her the most about that was that she knew he was able to tell the lie of that and she couldn't do anything to hide it. Fuck. "You know you're a dick for not giving me my camera already, Murdock."

His smile curved up one corner of his mouth, making it seem cheeky. "Maybe I liked giving you a valid excuse to come see me so you'd keep doing it." Matt was a smart guy. He'd been learning that there was a method to trying to woo Jessica Jones. And that apparently meant pretending he wasn't and letting her figure it out on herself. Only it seemed she'd been in deeper denial than he'd thought. Which was apparently why Foggy had decided to poke the angry alcoholic bear.

"That doesn't make any sense. You don't make any goddamn sense." And yet he did. It all started to fall into place in her mind; the fact that if she happened to stay a little longer on one of her check-ins, Foggy and Karen never came in to interrupt them, even if there were clients waiting. How he always knew she was coming and never had her camera, pulling the stupid puppy face instead and just thanking her for the coffee. The looks that Karen and Foggy shared when she came in and left, like they were disappointed that something hadn't happened. "Oh goddammit."

Matt just waited patiently as she found her own way through the maze of her own actions and emotions to the center of it and the realization there. Quiet. Smiling. Uncertain how she'd react once she actually figured it out. He didn't want her to leave over it or to stop coming. He didn't want her mad over it, but Jessica was an unknown element to him and he didn't always know how she was going to react. So he reached out and finally took the coffee that he was pretty sure she'd forgotten she was holding at that point. "Thanks for the coffee."

She jerked a bit at the contact and the words that mirrored where she was in her thoughts, stunned a little at the fact that a whole office of lawyers apparently knew her better than she did. "I hate you."

"No, you don't." Said softly, because he didn't think being smug was a good move at that moment.

She breathed out noisily, huffing out an exclamation. "No, I don't." She didn't ask him why he didn't tell her. He'd read her file, after all. He'd been around her for more than five minutes. He knew how prickley she was, particularly with anything emotional.

"You going to be mad at me if I ask you out on a date?" He sipped at his coffee, doing his best not to sound like he was hanging his hopes on that simple request.

He kept catching her off guard, and she was frustrated with the fact that he'd had more time to come to terms with this than she had. Consciously, anyway. Apparently her subsconscious had been sending out a bunch of smoke signals that he'd picked up on. Weirdo. "Depends on what you want to do and where." Because she might be an emotionally stunted idiot at times, but she didn't pussyfoot around anything. Not the important things. She might be more careful with it if it mattered, but because it mattered, she wanted to be clear.

It was his turn to clear his throat, lifting his free hand to smooth down his tie. Matt Murdock's thoughts had gotten excessively prurient lately, both because of having a person that had gotten his attention and not having the access he wanted to that person. Maybe it that visible tension that had prompted Foggy to make that push. Probably. The man was almost as good as Matt was at reading the people that mattered to him. "I'm, ah, pretty open to whatever you'd like. I don't want you out of your comfort zone."

It was the way he smoothed his tie and- was that a blush? Jessica finally broke a smile for the first time since she'd stepped in the office that day. "Now you're worried about my comfort zone, huh? Pretty sure you couldn't keep up with my 'zone', Murdock."

Was that a challenge? It sounded like a challenge, especially to a born fighter who also argued for a living. His tongue tapped at the back of one of his teeth as he contemplated his answer, but the smile was back as he heard hers. "I think you'd be surprised at what I can manage, Jones."

No, she wouldn't be, but she was certainly interested. They were messy, the both of them. She had her baggage; her sister, her partner, her past relationships, her emotional and physical damage. So did he. He'd all but died in a hole in the ground because of his baggage. He cared, sometimes too much. He had an odd sort of hope that she'd thought had been squelched out in this day and age. Funny to find it in a lawyer that ran around in a Spank Me suit at night beating up the criminal element. "Then surprise me, Matt."

Her baggage was why he'd been so careful beforehand with acknowledging anything, but he'd been doing her a disservice. She was tough. She was a survivor. She could handle a little pressure, or a little wooing. She wasn't as fragile as Foggy told him she looked. "Keep tomorrow night open."

It was at that moment that the Matt's office door opened, Matt's client stepping out with a tissue in her hands that she'd been using to dab at reddened eyes. Foggy gave them an apologetic look as he started to lead Ms. Ramirez to the main office door, confirming another appointment for the following week that Matt nodded at Foggy to agree with. "Sorry guys, but we have another couple of clients coming in-" he checked his watch, "ten minutes."

Jess nodded, then moved to follow the soothed Ms. Ramirez out of the office. At the door, she turned back to both men standing there. "About tomorrow, Murdock...? As you wish."

She closed the door and it was a good two heartbeats before she heard a whoop from Foggy. "I knew it, man. I knew it. She is so the Dread Pirate Roberts, and she looooooves you, Princess Mattycup."