the shape of home
matt murdock x reader with chronic pain (f!reader)
summary: you arrive home after a long day at work, only this time it's one of those days where your body reminds you of that pain that may never go away. despite everything, you know that matt is always there for you. always.
warnings: reader has fibromyalgia; it is a chronic disorder that causes widespread musculoskeletal pain, fatigue, and sleep problems.
content: pure fluff. matt being the man of my dreams (once again).
word count: 5.8k
a/n: one-shot thanks to this request! my apologies for the delay.
clarification: english is not my native language, so i apologize in advance for any mistakes.
The apartment had always smelled different whenever Matt cooked.
Not because he followed recipes with unusual ingredients or because he possessed any remarkable talent in the kitchen—although he would stubbornly insist that he did, and perhaps his super senses gave him a tremendous advantage in many culinary matters—, but because there was something almost ritualistic about the way he approached the simplest meals.
Garlic softened slowly in olive oil instead of being hurried over high heat, fresh herbs were crushed between his fingers moments before they found their way into the pan, and every now and then the faint scent of toasted bread drifted from the oven, filling the small apartment with a warmth that seemed capable of pushing Hell’s Kitchen several blocks farther away. Outside, the city remained faithfully itself; impatient traffic rolled beneath the windows, distant sirens dissolved into the evening, conversations floated up from the sidewalk only to disappear again beneath the rumble of a passing train. Inside, however, the world had narrowed into something gentler, measured only by the quiet simmer of tomato sauce and the soft scrape of a wooden spoon circling the bottom of a saucepan.
Matt preferred it that way.
Cooking had become one of those quiet habits that slipped into his life without asking permission, somewhere between nights spent patching wounds in his bathroom and mornings that began far too early at Nelson, Murdock & Page. It demanded just enough of his attention to quiet the constant stream of sounds pouring in from the city, and if he concentrated on the familiar rhythm of chopping vegetables or listening to butter melt across a hot pan, it became remarkably easy to imagine that, for an hour or two, the rest of the world could wait.
Not to mention that for Matt, learning to cook was a necessary extra task. A man who lost his sight, but gained the ability to elevate his other senses to a superhuman level. Matt was quite picky about food, and for his own survival, he learned to cook and found considerable comfort in it. The aromas, the sounds, the textures; everything made him feel enveloped and in control, more focused on self-care than on caring for others. It was one of the few things he learned to do for himself.
Tonight, though, he found himself smiling more often than the meal itself deserved. Every so often he would catch the aroma of rosemary rising from the skillet and think of you teasing him for seasoning everything ‘like an old Italian grandmother,’ despite the fact that neither of you possessed a single Italian relative. He remembered the afternoon you had stood in this very kitchen insisting that pasta tasted different depending on its shape, launching into an explanation so unexpectedly passionate that dinner had gone cold while he listened. He hadn’t cared in the slightest. Listening to you had always seemed more important than eating while the food was still warm.
By the time he lowered the flame beneath the sauce, dinner was nearly finished. The table had already been set without much thought, two plates resting side by side beside a bottle of wine he wasn’t entirely sure the meal deserved, though he suspected you would laugh at him for opening it anyway. There was nothing special about the evening. No anniversary. No celebration waiting to be acknowledged. He had simply wanted you there after work, wanted to steal a few ordinary hours before the city reclaimed both of you again.
The elevator stopped on his floor just as he reached for the serving bowl.
Ordinarily, he would have paid little attention to it. People came and went from the building at every hour, their footsteps blending together until they became little more than another familiar thread in the fabric of the neighborhood. This time, however, recognition settled over him long before your key touched the lock, because of the way your natural perfume seeped into his nostrils and the natural sounds you made as you moved.
There was something unmistakable about the cadence of your steps, about the quiet rhythm he had unconsciously memorized over months of hearing you walk through his apartment, across sidewalks, down courthouse corridors, and along crowded streets where everyone else became little more than background noise.
Tonight, your pace had changed.
Not enough for anyone passing you in the hallway to notice. Not enough for a stranger to think twice.
Just enough for Matt.
He remained where he was, one hand still resting against the edge of the counter as the familiar jingle of your keys echoed softly through the hallway outside. You always hesitated for the briefest moment before choosing the right one, usually because you insisted on carrying far more keychains than any sensible person should, and he had long ago learned to distinguish the tiny metal charms by the sounds they made whenever they collided. Tonight, however, that hesitation lingered just a fraction longer. It was subtle enough to disappear into the ordinary rhythm of an apartment building at the end of the workday, yet to Matt it stood apart with quiet clarity, another small change in a pattern he had spent months learning without ever realizing he was memorizing it.
The lock finally turned, and a breath later the door opened.
Cool evening air slipped into the apartment before you did, bringing with it the scent of damp concrete, rain that had already come and gone, and the faint trace of your perfume beneath the far more stubborn smells of the city. You closed the door gently behind you. The latch settled into place with deliberate care, followed by the soft rustle of your coat as you shrugged it from your shoulders.
Your bag came next.
Ordinarily, it would have landed near the entryway with the familiar carelessness of someone who had finally made it somewhere safe, dropped from your shoulder without another thought before you crossed the apartment looking for him. Instead, the leather descended slowly until it met the hardwood with barely a sound, your hand lingering on the strap for an extra heartbeat before letting go.
Matt lowered the flame beneath the saucepan.
His head tilted almost imperceptibly, then came your breathing.
Not labored.
Not uneven.
Simply... restrained.
Every inhale stopped just short of becoming completely full, as though your ribs had quietly decided that expanding any farther required more effort than they wished to spend. Most people would never have noticed such a minute difference, but Matt had spent his entire life listening to the bodies around him. Heartbeats, lungs, muscles tightening beneath skin, the unconscious ways people carried themselves before words ever reached their mouths; they had become part of the language through which he understood the world.
Yours had become his favorite to learn.
He could hear the faint tension settled across your shoulders before he ever touched them, the tiny adjustments your body made as weight shifted from one foot to the other, unconsciously searching for whichever position demanded the least from aching muscles. Your heartbeat was steady, reassuringly so, but beneath its familiar rhythm rested the quiet fatigue of someone who had been carrying herself through discomfort since long before the workday had ended.
He knew that rhythm.
Not because he knew your pain.
No one could.
But because he knew what it meant to wake every morning inside a body that asked something different of you than it asked of everyone else.
Blindness had taught him that lesson years ago. Not because the two experiences were alike—they weren’t—but because both demanded a kind of quiet negotiation with the world that most people never had to consider. His mornings began with sounds instead of light, with memory instead of sight. Yours began with a careful assessment of what your body might allow that day. Different roads, perhaps, but they had both learned what it meant to adapt before breakfast.
The world was built upon assumptions—stairs climbed without thought, glances exchanged across crowded rooms, street signs meant to be read instead of memorized, faces recognized at a distance. Every ordinary thing required adaptation, patience, and the quiet acceptance that some days would simply ask more of him than others.
Your body asked different things.
It asked you to measure your energy before the day had even begun. To decide whether lifting a grocery bag was worth the ache waiting hours later. To smile through conversations while pain settled beneath your skin like a second heartbeat, unseen by everyone around you because invisibility has always been mistaken for absence.
Fibromyalgia was like that.
It rarely announced itself loudly.
There were no dramatic collapses, no sudden cries of pain that warned the world something was wrong. Instead, it threaded itself through ordinary moments so discreetly that most people never learned to recognize it. It lived in the extra second before standing from a chair, fingers that lingered around a coffee mug because warmth soothed aching knuckles, in shoulders that gradually climbed higher throughout the day until every muscle seemed determined to carry a burden invisible to everyone else.
The world had a habit of mistaking invisible pain for ordinary tiredness.
Matt never did.
Not because his senses granted him some impossible understanding of what you felt, but because he knew you. He knew the difference between the exhaustion that followed a particularly difficult day at work and the fatigue that settled into your bones long before your alarm rang in the morning. He knew that there were evenings when your laughter arrived effortlessly, your footsteps light despite the hours you’d spent working, and others when every movement became an unconscious negotiation with a body that refused to cooperate.
He had learned those differences one ordinary day after another.
Never by asking you to explain them.
Simply by paying attention.
Only then did he hear your voice.
“Matt?”
It floated through the apartment exactly as it always had, warm enough to make something soften inside his chest, yet touched by an unmistakable weariness that rested beneath every syllable. You had become remarkably skilled at hiding pain from the rest of the world. Your coworkers rarely noticed when your hands hurt too much to type comfortably, or when the stiffness spreading through your back made every trip across the office feel twice as long. You smiled when expected, laughed at the appropriate moments, assured everyone you were simply tired whenever concern briefly crossed their faces.
By the time you reached his apartment, pretending had already become second nature.
Perhaps that was why you forgot you never needed to pretend with him.
You had promised yourself, somewhere around lunchtime, that today would be different.
The flare had begun before noon, quietly enough that you had ignored it at first, mistaking the familiar ache creeping across your shoulders for the consequence of sleeping in an awkward position. It would pass, you had thought. It usually didn’t, but hope had a peculiar way of making itself believable before reality had the chance to disagree.
By three o’clock, every hour had begun to feel longer than the last.
Sitting for too long made your hips ache. Standing for too long coaxed the pain into your knees and lower back. Even typing eventually became an exercise in quiet endurance, your fingers stiffening around the keyboard until every email demanded just a little more concentration than the one before it. None of it was unbearable on its own. That was the cruelest part of fibromyalgia. It rarely arrived all at once. Instead, it accumulated patiently, layering itself upon discomfort until your body no longer felt entirely like your own, but like something you had been borrowing all day and were expected to return in worse condition than you had found it.
Still, work continued.
Phones rang.
Meetings started and ended.
Someone laughed across the office about plans for the weekend.
Another coworker complained about the weather, insisting the humidity was unbearable.
You smiled when they looked your way. You laughed when the conversation invited you to. When someone asked if you were doing alright, the answer came as naturally as breathing.
“Just tired.”
It was easier that way.
People understood tiredness.
Pain was far more complicated.
Pain invited questions you didn’t always have the energy to answer. It summoned well-meaning advice you’d heard dozens of times before, recommendations for miracle supplements, miracle diets, miracle stretches, miracle doctors. It turned ordinary conversations into explanations, and explanations into reassurance, until somehow you found yourself comforting the very people who had asked whether you were okay.
You had grown tired of making your body understandable.
So you learned to translate everything into simpler words.
“Long day.”
“Didn’t sleep very well.”
“I’m okay.”
Most people accepted those answers without another thought.
Matt never did.
The thought surfaced almost involuntarily as you stepped inside his apartment, and despite yourself, you smiled.
Not because you intended to tell him.
Quite the opposite.
You loved him enough to know that he already carried more than his share of the world on his shoulders. Between the law firm, impossible clients, sleepless nights spent disappearing into Hell’s Kitchen wearing bruises he always tried to dismiss, and the quiet burden of believing every stranger’s suffering somehow belonged to him, the last thing you wanted was to become another problem waiting at the end of his day.
It was one evening.
One flare.
You could survive one evening.
Tomorrow would probably be kinder.
You had been telling yourself that for years.
Your hand lingered on the strap of your bag a moment longer than necessary before easing it onto the floor. Even that small movement sent a dull ache across your shoulders, the muscles there protesting after carrying tension since the moment you’d stepped out of bed. You pretended not to notice it. Pretending had become almost instinctive by now, a habit practiced so often that sometimes you caught yourself doing it even when no one else was around.
The apartment smelled of garlic and rosemary.
Warm bread.
Butter.
Something rich enough to make your stomach tighten with sudden hunger.
You closed your eyes for the briefest moment, letting yourself breathe it in.
Home.
The realization came so naturally that it startled you a little.
Not your apartment.
Matt’s.
Yet somewhere between the evenings spent falling asleep on his couch, the sweaters he’d stopped asking you to return, the mug you reached for every morning because he’d quietly begun keeping your favorite tea stocked in the cupboard, and the way his heartbeat had become one of the safest sounds you knew, the distinction had begun to blur.
Your body, however, hadn’t received the same comforting reassurance.
Every joint seemed to hum with quiet resistance, as though each movement required permission from muscles already exhausted by the simple act of existing. There were days when pain arrived sharply enough to command your attention, impossible to ignore no matter how determined you were. Today was different. Today it settled everywhere at once, diffuse and persistent, wrapping itself around your limbs until even standing still demanded more energy than you wanted to admit.
You heard the burner click off in the kitchen.
A familiar smile found your lips before you even realized it had appeared.
“Matt?”
There was comfort in saying his name.
Not because you needed him to answer—you already knew he was there—but because hearing his voice had become the quiet punctuation at the end of difficult days, the gentle certainty that no matter how heavy your body felt, there was at least one place where you no longer had to convince yourself that you were fine.
His answer came almost immediately, warm enough to reach you before his footsteps ever could. “In the kitchen.”
There was something about hearing his voice after a day like this that always seemed to loosen a knot somewhere deep inside your chest, as though your body recognized safety before your mind had the chance to catch up. You followed it instinctively, one slow step after another across the apartment, your fingertips brushing lightly against the edge of the hallway wall as you rounded the corner more out of habit than necessity.
The kitchen greeted you first with warmth.
The windows had fogged ever so slightly from the steam rising off the saucepan, softening the lights outside until Hell’s Kitchen became little more than blurred shapes and scattered colors reflected against the glass. The overhead light cast a golden glow over the countertops, over the cutting board still dusted with chopped herbs, over the loaf of bread resting beneath a folded kitchen towel to keep it warm.
And then there was Matt.
His sleeves were rolled to his forearms, revealing the faint constellation of old scars that crossed sun-warmed skin, while the apron Foggy had once jokingly gifted him—Kiss the Cook stitched crookedly across the front—hung from his shoulders with the quiet dignity of a man who had long ago accepted that his best friend would never stop finding ways to embarrass him.
He turned his head the moment you stepped into the room.
Not toward the sound.
Toward you.
It never ceased to amaze you how natural that gesture had become. People often mistook Matt’s blindness for an absence, as though not seeing meant forever searching for where someone stood. Matt never searched. He simply... knew. Every movement he made carried the certainty of someone who had spent a lifetime building a map of the world through everything except sight.
“There you are,” he said, smiling.
You returned it almost automatically. “I made it.”
His smile widened just enough for you to hear it. “I noticed.”
A quiet laugh escaped you. “You say that like there was ever any doubt.”
“There wasn’t.”
The answer came so matter-of-factly that it made you shake your head before finally crossing the remaining distance between you.
You always kissed him first.
It had become one of those unconscious rituals neither of you remembered beginning. Some evenings it was little more than your lips brushing his cheek while he continued stirring whatever was simmering on the stove. Other times it was slower, enough to make dinner wait another minute or two.
Tonight, however, your body hesitated.
The movement barely existed, little more than an instinctive pause before taking those final steps, but it was enough for your muscles to remind you of every hour they had carried you through since morning.
You hated that.
Not the pain itself—although you hated that too—but the way it occasionally stole ordinary things before you realized they were gone. A hug delayed by aching shoulders. A staircase climbed more carefully than yesterday. A kiss postponed for no reason other than your body deciding that even leaning forward deserved consideration.
You were already scolding yourself for it when Matt quietly closed the distance instead.
He did so with such easy familiarity that, had someone asked later, you wouldn’t have been able to say who had moved first. His hand found your waist, resting there with the effortless gentleness that had always defined the way he touched you. Never possessive. Never demanding. Simply present.
“There,” he murmured after pressing a lingering kiss against your forehead instead of your lips. “That feels better.”
You blinked. “What does?”
“I came to you.”
There wasn’t the faintest trace of teasing in his voice.
Nor pity.
Just quiet certainty, as though he were explaining something so obvious it hardly needed saying.
Your heart tightened unexpectedly.
He hadn’t asked why you hadn’t crossed the kitchen.
Hadn’t asked whether something hurt.
Hadn’t looked at you with that careful sympathy people reserved for moments when they believed your body had somehow become the most interesting thing about you.
He had simply noticed the distance...
...and removed it.
The realization settled over you with surprising force.
Matt did that often.
Not only with pain.
With everything.
He was forever adjusting the world in ways so subtle they almost escaped notice. Chairs were pulled out before you reached them, not because he thought you couldn’t do it yourself, but because he happened to be passing by. Heavy grocery bags somehow found their way into his hands before you’d properly decided which arm to carry them with. If you fell asleep on the couch, you would wake beneath a blanket you never remembered him placing over you. If your tea grew cold while you lost yourself in a book, another cup would quietly appear beside you without either of you acknowledging the exchange.
He never announced those things.
Never asked whether you needed help.
He understood, perhaps better than anyone, that there was a profound difference between offering support and reminding someone of their limitations.
Living without sight had taught him that lesson years before the two of you had ever met. Too many strangers had mistaken independence for stubbornness, kindness for insistence, help for something to be forced upon him whether he wanted it or not. Matt had learned, sometimes painfully, that care given without listening could become another way of taking choice away.
So he listened.
Always.
Not only to the sounds your body made, but to you.
To what you reached for.
To what you stopped reaching for.
To the tiny negotiations you made with yourself that most people would never think to notice.
And because he listened, he somehow always seemed to know the difference between the moments when you wanted his hand...
...and the moments when you simply wanted him beside you.
You looked up at him, your forehead still resting lightly against his shoulder now, breathing in the familiar scent of soap, basil, and the faintest trace of cedar that lingered in every sweater he owned.
“You've been cooking,” you commented softly.
“I have.”
“It smells amazing.”
“It’ll taste better if you sit down before you try to convince me you’re not tired,” he said, and you noticed a hint of reproach in his voice. Not angry, but that Matt-like tone that was a mix of concern and firmness, but gentler with you. Always gentler with you.
You drew back just enough to narrow your eyes at him. “I wasn’t going to say that.”
“No?”
“No.”
A smile tugged at his mouth. “You were going to say you’re fine.”
The words caught in your throat.
Because he hadn’t said them with accusation.
He’d said them with the quiet affection of someone who already knew the script by heart. And somehow, standing there in the warmth of his kitchen with dinner waiting on the stove and his hand still resting lightly against your side, you realized that you didn’t particularly want to recite it tonight.
For a moment, neither of you said anything.
The silence settled comfortably between you, interrupted only by the quiet bubbling of the sauce and the muffled sounds of the city beyond the windows. It wasn’t the kind of silence that demanded to be filled. It never was with Matt. Somehow, he’d always possessed that rare ability to make silence feel inhabited rather than empty, as though simply sharing the same room was conversation enough.
His thumb brushed absentmindedly across the fabric resting at your waist before his hand slipped away, not because he wanted to let go, but because he remembered the saucepan waiting patiently on the stove.
“I need another minute,” he said, reaching for the wooden spoon again. “Otherwise the sauce’s feelings are going to get hurt.”
You laughed softly. “The sauce has feelings?”
“It spent two hours becoming dinner. I’d say it’s emotionally invested,” he said, with a smile that took your breath away.
“I think you’re projecting.”
“I think you’re hungry,” he said.
You opened your mouth to argue.
Your stomach answered before you could.
The unmistakable growl echoed through the quiet kitchen, startling you into embarrassed laughter as you instinctively covered your face with one hand. “Oh, my God.”
Matt’s grin spread immediately. “I rest my case.”
“I hate you,” you said, even though it wasn’t true at all.
“No, you don’t.”
“...No.”
“I know.”
There was something unfairly comforting about the ease with which those conversations unfolded. You never had to search for the next sentence with him. Words arrived naturally, drifting back and forth between the two of you with the familiarity of people who had long since stopped worrying about impressing one another.
You wandered closer to the counter, resting one hip lightly against it while watching him finish dinner. Or rather, watching the version of watching that existed with Matt: the practiced confidence with which he moved around the kitchen, the precise way his fingers found every utensil exactly where he’d left it, the effortless certainty of someone who had transformed memory into sight long ago.
You were always fascinated by the natural way he moved, how the aromas, the sounds, and the natural rhythm of things guided him despite his blindness. He was precise and measured when he got lost in the kitchen, perhaps because he was a man who felt things more deeply, so the flavors he savored were more important to him than they were to the average person.
Matt took care of every detail, both for himself and for you. Always.
“You know,” you murmured, “Foggy still doesn’t believe you made dinner by yourself,” you said, laughing. “He can’t forget that awful coffee you had once.”
Matt snorted. “Foggy also thinks cereal counts as cooking,” he muttered with a grin. “And that coffee was delicious; you two have no taste.”
“He’s very passionate about cereal.”
“He once burned toast,” he argued.
“You can burn toast?” you asked, smiling.
“I asked myself the same question.”
A smile lingered on your lips as you watched him reach for two bowls.
Without thinking, you straightened.
“I’ll get those,” you said quickly.
Your body regretted the decision almost immediately.
It wasn’t dramatic.
No sharp cry escaped you.
No sudden collapse announced itself.
Only that familiar resistance spreading quietly through your shoulders as you pushed yourself away from the counter, every muscle reminding you that it had already spent an entire day doing exactly what you’d asked of it.
You took one step.
Then another.
Matt spoke before you reached the cabinet.
“Hey,” his voice remained as gentle as ever. “Would you do me a favor?”
You paused. “What?”
“I forgot the parmesan.”
You frowned. “I thought I smelled parmesan.”
“You did.”
“So... you didn’t forget it…”
“I forgot to grate it,” he said, smiling.
“...Matthew,” you said, narrowing your eyes as you stared at him.
“I know.”
“You absolutely did not.”
“I absolutely did,” Matt defended himself without really much effort.
“You are a terrible liar.”
“So I’ve been told,” his smile was impossible to miss, even from where you stood.
He wasn’t trying very hard to convince you.
Instead, he reached past you with practiced ease, retrieving the small wedge of parmesan from the refrigerator before placing it on the cutting board.
“The grater’s somewhere to my left.”
“You know exactly where it is.”
“I do.”
“So why—”
“I need my favorite kitchen assistant,” he said simply.
You looked at him for a long second before shaking your head with quiet amusement. “You manipulated me.”
“I delegated.”
“That’s not what delegation looks like!” You protested, laughing.
“It is when you’re a lawyer.”
Another laugh escaped you despite yourself.
By the time you found the grater, you realized you were no longer standing with your arms lifted toward the cabinet.
You were sitting.
At some point during the conversation—so naturally you couldn’t even pinpoint when—Matt had pulled one of the kitchen chairs away from the table with his foot until it rested lightly against the back of your legs.
He hadn’t told you to sit.
Hadn’t suggested it.
Hadn’t looked at you with concern or asked whether you were hurting.
The chair was simply... been there.
Waiting.
You lowered yourself onto it almost absentmindedly, only realizing afterward how grateful your body was for the invitation.
Matt said nothing. He only resumed stirring the sauce as though this had been the plan all along.
You watched him for a while, the parmesan forgotten in your hands. “You know,” you said quietly, “most people make helping feel... loud.”
He tilted his head slightly. “Loud?”
“They ask too many questions.”
He hummed, encouraging you to continue.
“They notice every little thing,” you traced your thumb along the edge of the cheese without really looking at it. “Then they look at me differently for the rest of the day.”
Matt was silent for a moment.
When he finally spoke, his voice carried that same calm steadiness that had first made you fall in love with him. “I don’t think you’re different on the days you hurt.”
Your fingers stilled.
“I think…” He searched for the words with characteristic care. “Some days ask more of you than others.”
The simplicity of it caught somewhere behind your ribs.
No sympathy.
No carefully rehearsed reassurance.
Just understanding.
“You don’t ever seem... bothered,” you admitted quietly.
“Bothered?”
“By it.”
Matt let out a soft breath, almost thoughtful. “I’m bothered that you hurt,” the wooden spoon rested against the rim of the saucepan. “But I’ve never been bothered by you,” his head turned toward you then, the gentle smile returning as though it had never left. “I spend most of my life asking the world to let me exist without treating me like I’m made of glass,” a faint chuckle escaped him. “I figured it’d be pretty hypocritical if I did that to the woman I love.”
Something inside your chest gave way so suddenly it almost ached.
Matt reached across the small space between you, his fingers finding your hand with the same quiet certainty they always did.
He didn’t squeeze.
He didn’t cling.
He simply intertwined your fingers with his.
A familiar gesture.
An ordinary one.
As natural as breathing.
“As far as I’m concerned,” he said softly, brushing his thumb once across your knuckles, “this is just your body,” he smiled. “And you’re still my favorite person to come home to.”
For reasons you couldn’t quite explain, that simple sentence undid you far more completely than any grand declaration ever could. It wasn’t that he loved you despite your body, nor that he loved you because of what you endured. He loved you so completely that your pain had never become the defining feature through which he saw you. To him, it was simply one more truth about the woman whose laugh filled his kitchen, who argued passionately about pasta shapes, who stole his sweaters without asking, and who had quietly become the safest part of his own complicated life. That, somehow, was the greatest kindness he could have offered.
Your eyes lingered on your joined hands, on the easy way his fingers remained woven through yours as though they had belonged there all evening. There was no urgency in the gesture, no silent expectation waiting to be fulfilled. He simply held your hand because he wanted to, because loving you had always revealed itself through quiet habits rather than sweeping declarations.
You smiled to yourself. “Matt.”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
Instead of answering, you gave his hand the gentlest tug. It was hardly enough to pull him anywhere.
You knew that.
So did he.
Still, he followed without hesitation.
The corner of his mouth curved upward long before he reached you, his expression softening into something so unmistakably fond that it made your chest ache in an entirely different way than it had all day. He stopped between your knees where you sat, one hand still loosely entwined with yours while the other found the edge of the chair beside your hip.
“What is it?” he asked quietly.
You looked up at him, taking in the familiar curve of his smile, the faint scar tracing his cheekbone, the strands of dark hair that had fallen across his forehead sometime between chopping herbs and pretending to forget the parmesan.
“I just wanted you closer.”
The smile he wore then was almost bashful, the kind that always caught you off guard because so few people ever got to see it. For all the confidence he carried in courtrooms and the fearlessness with which he stepped into danger night after night, there were still moments when loving someone seemed to leave him wonderfully, almost painfully human.
“I was already pretty close,” he murmured.
“You were,” you conceded, smiling softly.
“And yet…”
“And yet,” you echoed with a quiet laugh.
His thumb brushed once across the back of your hand. “I can fix that.”
You barely had time to smile before he leaned down, slow enough that you could meet him halfway if you wanted to. There was never any rush with Matt. Even something as familiar as a kiss carried an unspoken question, an invitation rather than an assumption, and you found yourself closing the last inches between you with the same quiet certainty that had led you to him a hundred times before.
His lips met yours with impossible tenderness.
Warm.
Unhurried.
The kind of kiss that asked for nothing except your presence.
His hand slipped from the chair to cradle your jaw, his thumb brushing lightly against your cheek as though memorizing you all over again. You could still taste the faint sweetness of the tomato sauce he’d sampled only minutes earlier, mingling with the soft laugh that escaped him when you smiled into the kiss.
When he finally drew back, he rested his forehead against yours, neither of you speaking for several heartbeats.
The apartment had grown wonderfully quiet.
Dinner waited patiently on the stove.
The bread was probably cooling beneath the kitchen towel.
Somewhere outside, Hell’s Kitchen continued exactly as it always had—sirens, traffic, lives unfolding at a relentless pace—but none of it reached you here.
You felt Matt’s hand slide gently from your cheek to tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear.
“You know,” he said softly, a smile lingering in every word, “I think dinner can survive another minute.”
You laughed, the sound lighter than it had been all day. “I think you’re right.”
“I usually am,” he said, not hiding his cheeky smile.
“Oh?”
“Mhm.”
“Counselor Murdock…” you said in a tone that mimicked reproach, but was clearly disguised as a joke.
“I know,” he interrupted with the most shameless grin. “I’m impossible.”
“You are.”
“And you still came home.”
The words settled somewhere deep inside you, quiet and certain.
Not despite the long day.
Not despite the pain.
Simply... home.
You reached for him once more, pressing one last, lingering kiss to his lips before resting your forehead against his, your eyes closing as his heartbeat found its familiar place beneath the quiet hum of the apartment.
For the first time that day, your body still ached.
Nothing about that had changed.
But neither had this.
His hand in yours.
His warmth surrounding you.
The gentle certainty that, whatever tomorrow asked of your body, you would never have to carry it alone.
notes: this one-shot took me a while because i wanted to do it right, since i suffer from fibromyalgia myself, so yes, it was more personal than usual.
i hope anyone who reads this can find a little comfort in my matt. <3
This was so beautiful!! This feels like a cozy day in the fall, wrapped up in a blanket and drinking a warm beverage beside flickering candlelight. Such a cozy, woody feeling, I adore it!! 🧡
