elinor

Frank Castle x High School Sweetheart!Reader — Glory Days

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Summary: With your birthday coming up, neither of you think much about Billy Russo. But he’s not someone you should let go unnoticed. Frank confronts you about your home life, why you’re turning 19 in a few days, but not about the “L word” you let slip earlier today. It ends in tears, Frank’s vow for love and vengeance, and dinner with his parents.

Warnings: Glory Days High School Series AU, dual pov, hurt/comfort, discussions of reader’s trauma and home life, past death of a parent, present but absent father, financial struggles, alcoholism, cancer, Frank’s in a tank top, mini make out sesh, dynamics shifting deeper, bonus points if u know the song the title is named after

w/c: ~3660

(first of two birthday fics dedicated to the wonderful @veralinasol! hebd 🥳, beautiful!!! love you!)

Somewhere between the third fuck and Frank spilling half the bottle of motor oil, his sweatshirt found its way onto you.

The alleyway’s like any other. Garbage left to rot in the corners, scuttling mice squeak and feast on trash, dark, damp, but… private.

…Andddd directly next to his house. Therefore also his parents. Who you still haven’t met yet. Your choice, not Frank’s.

Frank doesn’t let the filth of the alley touch you.

You sit on the rolling stool he uses when he works under the truck, your legs tucked up to your chest, arms banded around your knees.

Evening time drags in a cooler breeze, reminding everyone summer’s still a ways away. But you… you’re running a little warm as you watch Frank work.

Grease and oil smear his forearms as he digs into the popped hood of the truck. Veins branch from the backs of his hands until they disappear into the density of his biceps, on full display in the thin black tank he wears.

Conversation’s been… oddly normal since this morning.

Since you accidentally said love you, Frank and bolted off like a dumbass before you died of embarrassment.

But there’s nothing quite normal or dismissive about the way Frank keeps glancing at you. A constant flicker of lingering, quizzical looks like so much time’s passed that he doesn’t trust what he heard. Trying to figure you out. The truth behind what you confessed, maybe even why you haven’t said it again.

He’s not forgotten or let go… No.

He’s waiting.

For now, though… you enjoy the avoidance.

“Your birthday’s comin’ up,” Frank says, adjusting his backwards hat with the crook of his arm as he squints into the engine bay. He’s either extremely focused, or he’s giving you freedom from the intensity of his stare. You know which.

“Already?” Your brows bounce indifference. “Hm… seems like just a year ago I had one.”

“Funny.” He does crack a smirk.

You do not. Your eyes lift to the clouds loading the sky, hiding behind the act of simple observation.

Wrench in hand, Frank buries his arm in mechanical guts and starts to loosen the oil drain plug. “Well… whaddya want f’it?”

“To not talk about it,” you muse.

Frank snorts. The wrench clatters as he tosses it aside and reaches his fingers in to finish the job. “Yeah, well, we are. I let you off the hook all the time with not talkin’ ‘bout things, huh?”

“And I greatly appreciate you for that,” you chime, and it earns you a deadpan glare.

“So. Lemme ask again.” A metal scrape as he adjusts the drain pan under the uncapped plug with a grunt. “Whatchu want f’your birthday, pretty girl?”

Indecision has you gnawing your lip, genuinely thinking now.

Don’t ask for too much, that’s rude.

Don’t ask for too little, that’s also rude because it’s dismissive.

“…Another movie?” the proposal lifts your brows as you look at him, hopeful he accepts.

Frank huffs. A laugh? Shaking his head, he moves around the truck. Tosses out the old filter, wipes his hand on a stained, threadbare rag tucked into his front pocket. “We do the movies anyway. Pick sumthin’ else.”

“It’s my birthday. That’s what I want.”

“Congrats. Tryna celebrate with you. Lemme getchu sumthin’ f’it.”

“But…? I asked to go to the movies…?”

“You done with the bs?” Frank greases the rubber lip of the new filter with an oiled finger, shooting narrowed eyes at you. “‘Cause I am.”

You puff a weak laugh. “Why’re you making this such a big deal?”

“One of us’s got to, huh?”

“…Not entirely used to that,” you mutter, your thumb making anxious tracks on your opposite hand.

A rubbery squeak as Frank screws the filter in by hand. Hypotonic in the repetitive motion, dangerous in the sweat defining his muscled arms. Staring’s your only option here.

“So whatchu want?” Frank prompts again, brows knotted as he focuses on the oil change. “Jewelry? ‘R- ‘r, shit, I dunno, books? What the hell else girls like? I ain’t pickin’ out any damn lipgloss. Ain’t good at that. Too many goddamn flavors.”

Newsflash: he absolutely would if you asked for lipgloss.

“Flavors.” Endeared laughter shakes your shoulders but makes little sound. “I don’t want jewelry, oh my god. Okay, okay, look…” you lift a hand with your invisible offer. “How about weee… hit the roller rink? Orrr… go bowling?”

A very pointed look that says no bowling.

You laugh and conjure up other ideas. “Okayyy… roller rink, or a picnic, orrrr… the arcade?”

“Arcade?” Hands planted on the front fender, Frank pauses to eye you up and down, waiting for the catch. “That what you want? Wanna go to the arcade? Play games with sticky controls ‘n get ripped off on prizes?”

You shrug and bob your head in a well… yeah that’s what I said.

Frank nods once. “Can do that f’you, alright. Arcade, picnic, roller rink, yeah, you got it.” It’s a done deal. He drops the funnel in, pouring oil until it glugs.

“Oh,” you point a finger at him, crinkle your nose. “If we do the arcade? You have to win me a stuffed animal.”

There’s the catch.

“What makes you think I can do that? Ain’t much ‘f a video games guy.”

As if the oil on his arms and calluses on his fingers aren’t enough proof.

“I can see you kicking ass in ski ball,” in a dreamy sigh. “And the basketball game. And maybe using your genetically dominant build to intimidate grown men into giving me a bigger stuffie than my tickets allow for, if all else fails.”

“Oh, so you’re only with me f’m’ size, huh?”

“Yup, you caught me,” a cheeky sarcasm to it, your face red hot. “But seriously…” you settle down, smile flickering to fade. “Any of those would be perfect and more than enough. I don’t need any of them. You pick. Based off any of those. I’ll be happy with anything.” Your legs unravel, dangling. You shrug again. “I just want time with you.”

Inspecting the dipstick at eye level, Frank clicks his tongue. “That it? Time with me? Askin’ ‘n arm ‘n a leg, pretty girl, Christ.”

By the time your eyes circle back from rolling, you find him with a half-cocked smirk.

Clouds swallow the sun and the day with it. A harsher chill rolls in. Somehow the dark and the cold don’t mean as much when Frank’s with you. He’s safe and warm and all things a best friend should be.

Windows become golden boxes in the apartment complex across the street. People coming home to their lives, their families, dinner… How different it feels for everyone.

How you envy those greeted with hugs and warm food and love, even in—especially in—the absence of a meal.

Coming home for you looks like faulty lighting, smells like liquor and vomit, and feels cold because there’s no one waiting. Not anymore.

How…

How would it feel with Frank, though…? Coming home to him… being at home with him…

You don’t get long to ponder.

The truck hood comes down in a squeak of hinges and a final latch. Maintenance done.

That means you have Frank’s full attention. And that’s a vehement concentration of emotion—much like a storm—and you’re in the eye of it.

It’s a great thing. And a dangerous thing, because there’s nowhere to hide.

Wiping his fingers (rather, smearing stubborn oil) one at a time on the rag, Frank ambles in closer. Closes the distance with the loose confidence of an apex predator. You’re no prey. You’re simply his. And nature has an innate disposition over possession no man can hide.

“Gotta ask you sumthin’,” he says, boots scuffing to stop where you sit.

In the one second he looks away, you visibly cringe. Great, here we go. Time to meet your maker and discuss your fuck up in the hallway when you said you loved him like an idiot.

Mouth desert dry, your throat bobs a swallow. “About what?” your question more strained than you want it to be.

“‘Bout you turnin’ nineteen.”

Okay. So it’s actually worse than you imagined. A cringe you can’t hide, reactionary, as if the number slapped you across the face. Your lips roll in, sealing shut every ugly truth you desperately run from in every new town, new school, new acquaintances.

You can only run so far.

“Hey.” Frank ducks his head to infiltrate your blank stare, rugged face kind. Patient. Kind and patient coexist with inescapable. “Why they hold you back? Huh?” Head craned, his eyes squint as they rove over your face. “I know it ain’t your grades.”

“Frank… do we have to do this?”

When you refuse to give him your eyes, dirty fingers gently cup your chin, redirect your face until it’s three inches from his.

Exactly. Inescapable.

“Yeah. Yeah, we do,” he says, tone low. “Alright? That’s shit I gotta know, shit you gotta get comfortable tellin’ me, hm? Tryna do right by you, really am, doll. Ain’t ever tried f’sumthin’ like this,” Frank admits, head bowed but his eyes dark and honest cutting up under his brow. “Ain’t ever tried hard t’ keep sumthin’ like you. Lemme in, ‘kay? You do that f’me?” A pained smile that falls with a breath from his mouth. “Tell me what’s goin’ on. What made you, you. What got you t’ be this girl ‘m sick for.”

Tears balance in your eyes where you stare over his shoulder, at the sky.

Those clouds, empty rolls of a diseased grey, loom with latent malice. It looks exactly how it did the day your mom passed.

“I seen your English papers, sweetheart,” Frank coaxes. “Know you know words. I jus’ need t’ hear ‘em. You do that f’me?”

“Frank, I can’t…” it comes out crackling, throat pinching your vocal cords taut.

You don’t realize a tear falls down your cheek until Frank uses a thumb to collect it.

“Know it’s hard,” Frank murmurs, crouching down in front of your legs. Both of his hands cover your knees, thumbs working soothing arcs at the bend. “But ‘m here f’you, ‘kay? Here f’all’a you. ‘Specially the parts you ain’t fond of. Start small, sweet girl. Little sentences, s’all I need, yeah?”

Little sentences. A few words. Big, warm hands squeezing assured praise on your legs. With Frank? For Frank? Maybe you can manage this.

“Okay,” you croak, face mottled red after two tears. Swiping the cuff of his sweatshirt under your eyes, your hands find both of his pointer fingers and you cling. You hold for dear life by just two of his fingers, white-knuckling as you brace for purge. “Okay. You- you deserve to know… Just… please don’t look at me differently after this, okay?”

“Never. Promise, sweetheart.” He even crosses his heart.

Sucking in a stuttering breath, hands sweaty on his fingers… you begin.

You tell Frank about how things used to be better. It was never perfect, moving state to state for a father you had as an acquaintance with a mother, though, you had as a best friend. Your mom… she was everything. Love and light. Joy and life. Someone to see the good in the nastiest days. It’d rain cats and dogs and she’d thank it for the flowers or for the birds who would benefit from flushed out worms.

When Dad would come home, Mom sheltered you from his… obscurities. She said he was a complicated man with a brilliant mind. That’s still true. But now there’s no checks and balances. There’s only the obscurities and the liquor and the vacuum-suction black hole of grief.

While you talk, Frank rests his chin on his hands, never letting go of your knees. He says nothing, but his eyes always do. Sympathy softens them, has them bouncing around from your face, to your stomach, to where he grounds you through touch, then the sky. A glare so vile you wonder if he’s mad at God.

Talking about your mom while she was alive’s the easy part.

She’s not alive anymore. Hasn’t been for six years.

She died, you tell Frank through saliva stringing your mouth, tears chasing each other.

Pancreatic cancer. Terminal. You were thirteen. You learned to change IV bags, what an infected needle sight looked like. And how to purée food when she couldn’t feed herself. You learned about aspiration and how to stop her from choking and how much blood was too much blood to cough up.

You watched your mother die while your father fought wars.

You held her hand as each day took more of her vitality and left you with a wheelchair, oxygen tanks, and a corpse.

For that one year—diagnosis to death—you didn’t go to school.

You watched cancer take first her light, and then her life.

Involuntary response to catharsis, your body rocks. Small, jerky movements as you talk.

Somewhere along the way, Frank smashes the side of his face against your chest, his arms locked in a vise around your middle as he hugs you, holds you.

Frank Castle, on his knees in a rat-infested alleyway as he embraces you where you sit with such ferocity it can be considered rage.

Your arms tie around his head, his hat bent off his head, ragged breath wet and hot in his hair as you tell him everything. The hard, ugly pieces of you you’ve tried to bury, but they’re zombified; always coming back from the dead to eat you alive.

Mom died and Dad picked up drinking when he was home. The Corps kept him domestic when they could, but there’s no special treatment in combat. Family friends and distant relatives raised you if you weren’t raising yourself.

Drinking escalated to drugs. Drugs escalated to psychosis and dishonorable discharge when he accused the Department of Defense of money laundering and arms deals with hostile nations.

Now…? For the last year?

It’s just been you and Dad.

Well…

What’s left of him.

Alcohol’s leeched him into a cold, disoriented shell.

No more income. No more benefits. His title, rank, and financial security stripped from when he tried to take down the US government himself based on a hallucination.

“I- I just do what I can, you know?” you stammer, cries hiccuping. “There’s- there’s all these fucking bills to pay, and credit cards over the limit, and groceries to buy. I’m just r-ready to start this f-fucking job next week. I fucking h-hate it here, Frank. I hate it at home. And a p-piece of me? It hates my dad, too. He just- he forgets I even exist.”

Frank doesn’t ease you off when your fingers knot in his hair, or when your nails bite into his scalp as your teeth chatter.

Frank can handle pain.

But he can’t handle this. Your pain.

Frank learned young how to hold a grudge.

What punishment should look like.

And what it means to get even.

Frank’s gotta do sumthin’ before his fuse detonates.

First spark happened when you said you wasn’t used to your birthday bein’ a big deal. Caught fire when he realized you never had much of a dad and burned to ash every word after. Now ain’t the time for him, though. This’s about you.

You. Frank’s girl. Been payin’ for a grown man to drink his life away for a goddamn year while dust piles high on the pantry shelves ‘cause you can’t afford groceries.

You shouldn’t fuckin’ have to.

You’re fuckin’ eighteen.

Minutes go by.

The alley stops echoin’ your cries ‘cause you stopped cryin’ five minutes ago.

You just… hold ‘im. Arms wrapped around his head still on your chest, holdin’ on with a desperation like you’re scared he might die and you’ll be alone again. Maybe this’s just the first time you ain’t felt alone in a long time.

Hiccuped sobs jerk your chest. Frank damn near startles and squeezes you tighter every time.

“Sh-sh-sh,” he hushes without disregarding. “Okay, s’okay. I gotchu, pretty girl, right here.”

He’s glad you can’t see his face.

The wrath blackening his eyes. The prick of his own tears biting the sclera red. The fantasy of revenge winding his jaw until the muscle aches.

Your arms unravel in inches. Robotic movements unlatching him enough he can pull back, look you in the face since you won’t meet his eyes.

Your hands—shakin’ like a leaf—fly to wipe your face, nose.

First thing he does’s inspect you. Throat working, Frank pats you down. Both hands start on your jaw. It trembles.

“Hey, you’re alright. Alright.”

Hands on your shoulders. They shake.

“Did a brave thing, you tellin’ me all that. Know that?”

Your elbows. Pinched into your sides.

“Know how proud I am ‘a you f’that?”

Your knees. Knocking together.

“Now lemme tell you sumthin’…”

Frank plants a boot on the ground. Pushes up, standing in front of you. He takes your head in his hand, palming the back of it gently. Guides you in ‘til you’re slumped pliant against his sternum.

His fingers thread through your hair, little twitches of his fingers mistaken for light scratching. With his other hand, he cups the side of your face. Thumbs your cheek, the rough pad catching on a sticky track of drying tears.

“Thank you,” he says first, glancing down where you stay burrowed into his tank. “F’doin’ that. Bein’ brave like that. Talkin’ t’ me. ‘ppreciate it, I really do.”

His hat’s upside-down on the ground.

You don’t move. S’okay. He doesn’t expect you to. Your breath seeps warm into his shirt when you exhale. Drags cool when you breathe in against him.

“I ain’t gonna let anythin’ bad happen t’ you, you hear me?”

You nod, raising your hands to bunch them in the sides of his tank.

“I gotchu. You got me. How this works, yeah?”

Another nod.

Frank strokes your hair, your face. Settles you down, limp body using him as a support beam.

“…Think ‘m gettin’ oil on your face, sweet girl.”

He’s not.

It gets a weak laugh out of you, no more than a reluctant huff.

He’ll take it.

Hot swells of anger itch under his skin. Tics in his right forefinger like his body already knows it’s made for a gun, but right now he uses it to hold you.

There’s only one solution. The bells will toll eventually. Not now, not even soon… but eventually.

“How ‘bout you come up, huh?” he suggests.

You tense under Frank’s touch, breath stalling.

“C’mon. Come in f’dinner, huh? Meet m’folks. Tell ‘em all the time how they’ll love you, but shit… they think you ain’t real. Think ‘m makin’ you up, two months ‘n they ain’t seen you.”

“Frank…” Muffled by his body, you rub your face into him. A no, hiding, and embarrassment all in one. “No way. I look like a mess right now. Not tonight.”

“Nah. Ain’t possible.” Still skimming his thumb over your jaw. “Always lookin’ beautiful, sweetheart. Always callin’ you m’pretty girl, ain’t I?”

The silence following is your answer.

Frank sighs through his nose, anything but disappointed. Feels almost at ease, things clickin’ into place. Knows you more now.

“…Helps me, y’know?” Frank says. “You tellin’ me like you did.”

For the first time since he drew you in, you peer back just enough to look at him with furrowed brows. “…Helps you what?”

“…Love you better.”

Shock hits you first. Looks like you black out. Eyes scrunching hard before they fling wide. Mouth drops open with a sharp gasp. Caught.

Frank lets you process. Takes both hands, palms wide over your cheeks, thick fingers cradling the sides of your head.

“Yeah I heard you this mornin’,” he says, eyes on you with a softness reserved for devotion. Traces every feature, memorizing you ‘cause no picture can do you justice like this. Face still blotched, lashes wet, bits of mascara under your eyes. Brave, though. Yeah, brave as hell.

Your hands—sweat damp, shaky—curl around his wrists, pressing his hands harder against you. Eyes falling shut, you deflate. “You don’t have to say it just because I did. I’m sorry if it was too fast, it just slipped out, I—”

“Sh.”

Frank stops you with a kiss. A firm smash of his lips on yours, crushing any possible apology, excuse, or back pedal.

Jesus, you taste perfect. Fruit Stripe gum and somethin’ he can’t get enough of. You’re warm and soft, melting into him more every second.

Tilting his head, lips slotting in a tight stack, he asks for more before taking it.

You sigh into his mouth: permission.

He eases your lips apart with his own. Guides your mouth in agonizingly slow, open kisses. Never rushes. Shows you. A tentative dab of his tongue in your mouth, drawing it back so you can chase. The chase of exploring laps and tormenting kisses comes to a shared end when you’re both breathless.

Lips red and puffed, Frank drops his forehead against yours, eyes closed.

“Christ,” he rumbles a chuckle, mouth flitting a smile.

Your breathy laugh fans his mouth. Makes his dumb smile widen.

“C’mon,” he murmurs again, a sway of his head as he grazes your lips with his. “Come up. Please? F’me, sweet girl? Have dinner with me, huh? Jus’ this once. Hate it ‘n you don’t gotta come back.”

A full laugh pulls your mouth wide. Maybe it’s the exhaustion, or the please he so rarely gives, or the fact you two love each other… “Okay, yes. Yes, fine, I’ll go, I’ll go. Just… don’t leave me hanging, okay? Your mom makes me insanely nervous.”

“Heh. Makes two ‘a us.”

Frank takes a step back. Offers his hand to you.

You take it like you’ve always been meant to; a natural reach for him.

He pulls you to your feet, then close to his side as you take the sidewalk—Frank by the road, you safe on the other side—and stroll for the front door.

Your shoulders bump. Hands stay held. All the time in the world, it seems.

“…Ma’s gonna kill me,” Frank says as he glances up at his bedroom window.

“Oh, god,” you hesitate a step, but he keeps going. “Why? Because I’m an uninvited guest?”

“Nah.” Frank stops at the front door, hand in yours. Grins at you, all honest, a little sheepish, a lot lopsided. “‘Cause ‘m bringin’ home the prettiest damn girl I ever met.”

And you both walk into the Castiglione household together, not realizing this……

This is the start of forever.

content is mine, always without the use of AI. i am strongly against AI in fandoms. do not share or repost on any other site without consent of the author (hi, me). characters are not mine. do not feed my work to any AI platforms. this is not a place for anyone under 18.

Tags (tag list open, only for 18+ users): @emma-frxst @tigerf-cker @harbouredsoulss @gingin3-blog @notimminent @yesshewrites1 @allinourprivate-traps @saintcastiglione @cinamqnr0ll @peterftpercy @star-yawnznn @gradysbaby @writeoffside @tintedrose2609 @hyperfixationsgobrr @athalia-amor @januaryyjailer @torturedstarryeyes @esposadomd @mmiiinxx @nxxrxm

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Now, PLEASE, I'M IN LOVE!!! I'm not lying when I say I'm smiling while reading because this is so sweet, it fills my heart with warmth!!! Please, don't be cruel and don't let anything happen to Reader and Frank because they deserve ONLY LOVE.

Frank Castle x High School Sweetheart!Gf!Reader

Summary: Before war and murder and vengeance, Frank existed as… well, Frank. Young, wary of the world, but determined to make an impact. And then…? Then came you. You changed everything. Ah… to be 18 again.

Warnings: non-canon timeline set in the 90’s. Frank & reader are both 18, nearing the end of their senior year of high school. Reader has family trauma, mentally unstable alcoholic dad but not abusive. Hints of reader enduring poverty/experiencing hunger. Frank being adorable and trying real hard for reader. LOTS OF FLUFF. No use of y/n. Cute shit, kissing, firsts, some drama. Healing my inner 18 year old me because we all deserved a bf like Frankie.

Requests OPEN for Glory Days! Whatever lil’ cute or angsty or hurt/comfort high school bits you think of, send ‘em my way.

Chapter I: How It Started

Chapter II: How It’s Going

Chapter III: …You Love Me?

Chapter IV — coming soon

No Chance in Hell 4:| Fanning the Flames

Pairing: Jax Teller x fem!fitness instructor!Reader Word Count: 5k [Series Masterlist] [Jax Fic Masterlist]

Warnings: 18+; gym rat!Reader, enemies to lovers, opposites attract, sexual tension, forced proximity, smut, arrogant Jax, canon typical violence

a/n: All I'll say is have fun with this one...Feedback is very appreciated!

Series tag list: @kmc1989 @lycanbeks92 @catswonderland @magic-sprinkled-daydreams @shiggynuggiez @rayray017 @stevie75 @deesh-e @chloe-skywalker @kylorensbaby @themusingofagothicsoul @lanadelrey10 @dugiioh @latinakitty17 @persephone-in-the-reeds @peterftpercy @mermaidlover006 @jmamas92

“Not low enough, Teller. Ass to the grass,” you ordered.

With his knees ninety-degrees parallel to the floor, you caught the beads of sweat glistening along his temples and the strain in his quads where the hem of his gym shorts had ridden up. A barbell slotted with a couple of plates sat balanced across his shoulders, but at the sound of your stern voice, Jax’s attention shifted from his reflection in the gym mirror to where you stood leaning against the squat rack beside his. 

Part I • Part II • Part III • Part IV • Part V • Part VI • Part VII

Rating: 18+ MDNI

Explicit Sexual Content: Sex, Oral Sex.

Canon-Typical depictions of violence and gun violence, attempted assault, crime, and injury, etc. There's also an age gap. See my AO3 for the full detailed warning list.

•

Summary: When you move into your new apartment, you don't run into your only direct neighbour straight away.

When you do finally meet him, he's certainly not what you expected, considering you'd heard him climbing up and down the fire escape in the dead of night before.

Word Count: 10,092 • Masterlist

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

“You love it” he teases back, before he’s catching your lips again, slipping his tongue into your mouth while he holds you in your new shared living room. “I really, really do” you sigh happily into the kiss, unable to keep the love sick smile off your face

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artist!reader x sugardaddy!matt

chapter summary: Matt is acting very weird today. he comes home with a few surprises.

series warnings: 18+ for smut, canon-typical violence, age gap, huge wealth gap, AFAB reader, slow burn, semi-retired daredevil

notes: additional warnings for this chapter include premature ejaculation, oral(fem receiving), and slight degradation if you step away and squint.

word count: 5.8k

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

series masterlist — chapter one — next chapter

matt murdock x vampire!reader

warnings: (18+ minors dni) eventual smut. mention of blood and graphic scenes of violence. blasphemy. constant mention of the catholic religion. fem!reader.

word count: 5.2k

clarification: english is not my native language, so i apologize in advance for any mistakes.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤII. SAVIOR

Night settled over Clinton Church with the same solemn grace it had carried for generations. The last prayers had long since dissolved into silence, the chapel candles burned low beneath the watchful eyes of the saints, and the old church surrendered itself to that peculiar stillness found only in places built for God. It was a silence you had once cherished. Before 1923, it had always reminded you that the world, no matter how cruel beyond those walls, eventually grew quiet enough for Heaven to be heard.

Now, it only made one sound impossible to escape.

His heartbeat.

You sat alone within your room, a medical textbook lying open across your lap, though your eyes had not lingered upon a single page for nearly an hour. The words blurred together into meaningless lines because every fragment of your attention had been stolen by something infinitely simpler.

Thump.

A measured rhythm.

Thump.

Steady.

Alive.

It drifted through the ancient corridors of the church with impossible clarity, weaving itself between the old stones as though the convent itself had become an instrument designed solely to carry that single heartbeat to your ears. There were other sounds, of course. The distant breathing of the sisters asleep in their rooms. Father Lantom’s slow footsteps crossing the chapel before retiring for the evening. The groaning of old beams surrendering to the cool air of autumn.

You heard all of them.

Yet they faded into insignificance the moment his heart beat again.

You closed the book.

The sound did not stop.

It could not.

Your senses had sharpened into something no human should possess. Distance had become meaningless. Walls were little more than suggestions. Somewhere above you, separated by layers of stone and timber, Matt Murdock lay asleep, his body still struggling to mend what Midland Circle had broken. His heart labored faithfully beneath bruised ribs, pushing warm blood through tired veins with quiet perseverance.

You heard every contraction.

Every pulse.

Every drop.

It should have been no different from listening to anyone else within the convent.

It wasn’t.

You had tried convincing yourself that exhaustion was responsible. That the lingering scent of blood from earlier had unsettled your instincts, leaving them raw and oversensitive. You had repeated the explanation so many times it had almost begun to resemble the truth.

Almost.

Because no matter how carefully you reasoned with yourself, one impossible fact refused to disappear.

You could no longer hear the convent. You could only hear him. There was something unbearably intimate about it.

Not merely because his heartbeat called to your hunger, but because it betrayed everything he never allowed himself to speak aloud. You had spent enough years tending the sick to understand the language of the human body. Hearts quickened with fear, stumbled beneath grief, settled during peace. They confessed truths their owners buried beneath smiles and carefully chosen words.

Matt’s heart carried exhaustion.

Pain.

A grief so old it had begun to resemble part of its own rhythm.

And beneath all of it, an astonishing determination to continue beating despite the man who carried it seeming to wish otherwise.

Despite all that, despite having felt Matt in the most intimate way, delving into the deepest recesses of his feelings and violating his privacy, your thoughts betrayed you. The monster inside you continued to think of Matt as prey, but also as a man.

The image of him sweating, in pain, and defenseless beneath you kept echoing in your mind. Your throat remained dry, craving the blood of the man who was trusting in the church and in you.

What kind of being were you, wanting to suck the life out of someone good and innocent? Someone who wanted what was best for his city and found himself under the care of a demon created by God? It was an injustice. You didn’t want to think of Matt, of the faint pulse that marked his life, of what it would be like to taste him as his cock pumped blood inside your tight cunt.

You wouldn’t be quick, you wouldn’t drain all of Matt’s blood and kill him instantly. Instead, you would be slow, letting the barrier of pleasure and pain blur as you took him completely. Perhaps you could feel his being again, his feelings, as you reveled in the pleasure of fucking him and sucking the life out of him; perhaps he would be so drunk from the lack of blood that the pleasure would overwhelm any pain.

Perhaps—no. You couldn’t keep thinking like that, you didn’t want to dwell on those kinds of ideas, those temptations of the devil. 

Those were temptations imposed by the dark being who wanted to ruin what God had given you.

You wrapped your fingers around the rosary resting against your palm until the beads pressed painfully into your skin.

“Lead us not into temptation…” The prayer escaped your lips in little more than a whisper. “...but deliver us from evil.”

Another beat.

Closer.

Louder.

You bowed your head.

It was grotesque, you thought, how easily devotion could become indistinguishable from desire. The saints had written endlessly of longing for God, of yearning so profound that it became almost physical, an ache beneath the ribs that no earthly comfort could soothe. You understood them now in a way they could never have imagined.

Only your longing was not directed toward Heaven. It was directed toward the warm, relentless rhythm of a mortal heart. You hated yourself for recognizing the beauty within it.

Every beat sounded like an invitation your body had already accepted long before your conscience could object. They echoed through your mind with the persistence of cathedral bells, slow and reverent, transforming into a liturgy your monstrous nature understood far better than Scripture.

Drink.

The word never truly formed. It didn’t need to. Your body translated the rhythm instinctively.

Thump.

Life.

Thump.

Warmth.

Thump.

Blood.

You pressed the crucifix against your forehead until the cool metal bit into your skin.

“Please…” Whether you were praying to God, to the Virgin, or merely to the frightened woman you had once been, you no longer knew. “I don’t want to hear it anymore.”

The convent remained silent.

No answer came.

Only the steady, unwavering music of Matt Murdock’s heart, continuing its patient hymn somewhere in the darkness above you, while your own cursed existence listened like a penitent kneeling before an altar, terrified that what it worshiped had never been God at all.

The following morning, you made a decision that felt almost cowardly.

You would not go near Matt Murdock unless Father Lantom or Sister Maggie explicitly asked you to.

It was a pitiful resolution, fragile enough to collapse beneath the smallest temptation, yet it was the only one your conscience could offer. If prayer had failed to silence the hunger and animal blood had become little more than an illusion of restraint, then distance would have to suffice. It was a miserable substitute for discipline, but at least it was still a choice.

The infirmary remained untouched by your hands that day.

Sister Maggie assured you, with the quiet practicality that characterized her, that Mr. Murdock needed little more than rest until the evening. His wounds had been cleaned, his fever had not returned, and Father Lantom intended to remain close should anything change. There was no need for both of you to hover over the same patient.

You accepted the excuse with a gratitude that bordered on relief.

Instead, you buried yourself elsewhere.

The convent had become unfamiliar in ways that had nothing to do with architecture. The old stone corridors remained where memory insisted they should be, the stained-glass windows still bathed the hallways in fractured colors whenever the sun crossed the sky, and the chapel continued to smell faintly of incense, beeswax, and ancient wood. Yet every room contained reminders that nearly a century had slipped past while you remained beneath the earth.

Medicine had changed.

The books Sister Maggie had gathered for you occupied nearly an entire shelf inside the small library adjoining the convent offices. Anatomy had become more precise. Surgical procedures had evolved beyond anything you had once believed possible. Medications bore names you struggled to pronounce, let alone understand. Entire chapters described machines capable of seeing inside the human body without opening it, as though miracles had quietly exchanged their robes for white laboratory coats.

You spent hours reading. Or rather, pretending to read.

Your eyes traveled dutifully across every page while your thoughts wandered somewhere several floors away. Every now and then your attention abandoned the words entirely, straining instead toward the distant pulse echoing somewhere within Clinton Church.

He was awake.

Then resting. 

Then walking a few uncertain steps with Father Lantom nearby.

Your heightened hearing betrayed each effort before your imagination could. You closed the book and moved to another. Copied passages into a notebook Sister Maggie had left for you.

None of it helped.

The heartbeat found you anyway.

Eventually, when even the library became too small to contain your restlessness, you volunteered to clean. The request surprised one of the younger sisters, who tried insisting that the chores could wait until you had rested more yourself. You smiled, thanked her kindly, and assured her that occupying your hands would do you good.

That part, at least, was true.

You polished pews inside the chapel until the old wood reflected the colored light pouring through the stained glass. You dusted forgotten corners of storage rooms that probably hadn’t been touched in months. You folded clean linens inside the infirmary supply closet without once allowing yourself to glance toward the patient rooms beyond the corridor.

Every task became another excuse not to walk in a direction your body desperately wished to follow.

The convent itself seemed blissfully unaware of the war unfolding beneath your skin.

Novices passed carrying baskets of freshly washed linens, exchanging quiet laughter that disappeared as respectfully as it had appeared. Elder sisters discussed tomorrow’s meals while preparing vegetables in the kitchen. Somewhere outside, children from the orphanage played in the churchyard, their distant voices drifting through the open windows before dissolving into the afternoon air.

Life continued.

Simple.

Ordinary.

Blessedly human.

You wondered whether God had always intended sanctuaries to be this cruel to creatures like you. You were surrounded by the inherent innocence of humanity, by the symphony of children’s lives, by the altruism of the nuns, by the words of Father Lantom, yet your mind was fixated on only one thought: Matt Murdock.

You craved blood, but not just any blood, his. Before, you believed yourself a danger to any human being; now your thirst demanded a particular name. 

You didn’t know if that was more bearable or worse than wanting to drink from everyone.

By late afternoon, exhaustion settled over the convent with the gentle inevitability of approaching dusk. Sunlight stretched across the stone floors in long bands of amber, slowly withdrawing from the hallways as evening approached. You found yourself standing beside one of the tall windows overlooking the courtyard, absently folding the last of the freshly laundered sheets into careful squares.

You ignored the lingering itch the sun’s rays had caused throughout the day. The itch was good; it was a distraction, a way to tear at your skin and punish the profane thoughts within your mind.

The work should have required your attention, the itching too. Instead, you were counting heartbeats.

Without meaning to.

Without even realizing when you had begun.

Your lips pressed into a thin line.

This had to stop.

Not tomorrow.

Not eventually.

Now.

You lowered the folded linen into the basket and closed your eyes for the briefest moment, silently asking for the strength to endure one more night.

When you opened them again, the sunlight had faded another shade darker.

Evening was coming.

And with it, you already knew, the silence that would make Matt Murdock’s heartbeat impossible to escape.

As evening descended upon Hell’s Kitchen, Clinton Church surrendered itself to a familiar ritual.

The last rays of sunlight withdrew from the stained-glass windows one color at a time, until the chapel was left illuminated only by the quiet glow of votive candles burning beneath the Virgin’s statue. Their flames trembled gently every time the old building sighed, throwing restless shadows across the stone walls where generations had whispered prayers long before you had ever been born. Outside, the city continued without reverence. Tires hissed against damp pavement, distant sirens dissolved into the night, and somewhere beyond the churchyard a train rumbled beneath Manhattan, indifferent to the sacred silence that had settled over the convent.

You remained within your room until you could no longer pretend to read.

The book rested open in your lap, its pages unmoving beneath your fingers. At some point you had stopped following the lines entirely. Your eyes remained fixed upon the paper while your mind wandered elsewhere, tracing the steady rhythm that had accompanied you since dawn.

Matt was awake.

You could hear it.

Not because he spoke or moved about the infirmary, but because the cadence of his heartbeat had changed. It no longer belonged to the deep, measured rhythm of sleep. It carried awareness now, fatigue woven through every beat, yet unmistakably conscious.

You closed the book.

Perhaps he had awakened to drink water.

Perhaps Father Lantom was checking his bandages again.

Perhaps Sister Maggie was speaking with him.

You forced yourself to accept each explanation without allowing your thoughts to linger any further.

Then another minute passed.

Then another.

The heartbeat continued.

You stood, crossed your room, knelt before the crucifix, and folded your hands together. The familiar words of the Rosary came instinctively, polished smooth by years of repetition.

Hail Mary, full of grace...

The prayer faltered.

Not because you had forgotten it.

Because another sound had interrupted it.

Silence.

Your eyes opened.

For one suspended moment, you simply remained there, unable to understand what had changed. The convent itself had not grown quieter. The candles still crackled softly in the chapel beyond the corridor. Somewhere upstairs, an old pipe groaned beneath the weight of running water.

Everything remained exactly as it had been.

Everything except...

You listened harder.

Nothing.

Matt’s heartbeat had vanished.

The realization did not arrive all at once. It unfolded slowly, almost gently, as though your mind refused to believe something so impossible. You had spent two days trying not to hear him. Trying to outrun the relentless music of his heart. It had followed you through every corridor, every prayer, every page of every medical textbook.

Now there was only absence. An emptiness where certainty had lived only moments before.

You rose so abruptly that the wooden chair scraped softly against the floor.

“No…” The whisper escaped before you realized you had spoken aloud.

Your senses reached instinctively beyond the walls of your room, stretching through the ancient stone of Clinton Church with a desperation that bordered on panic. You searched for the familiar rhythm again.

Nothing.

Not in the infirmary.

Not in the corridor.

Not anywhere inside the convent.

A cold weight settled deep within your chest.

Matt had left.

Your first emotion was relief. It came so suddenly that it almost embarrassed you. If he had gone, then the temptation had gone with him. The constant ache beneath your ribs, the impossible pull toward his living heartbeat, perhaps at last you could breathe without feeling your own nature clawing at your conscience.

The relief lasted scarcely a heartbeat because another thought arrived immediately afterward. He should not have been able to leave.

Not alone.

Not in his condition.

You had treated enough broken bodies to know what his injuries demanded. Even if his determination eclipsed common sense, his ribs had not healed overnight. His shoulder remained unstable. His balance had only begun returning. Walking through the streets of Hell’s Kitchen after sunset was reckless for a healthy man.

For Matt Murdock, it bordered on suicidal.

You lowered your head, closing your eyes as your fingers instinctively found the rosary hanging around your wrist.

You could remain where you were. Father Lantom would eventually notice. The police might find him. Someone else could intervene.

Those were reasonable thoughts. Human thoughts.

Yet they crumbled beneath a far older truth.

Long before you had become a creature sustained by blood, before the darkness beneath Clinton Church had rewritten your existence, you had been a nurse.

A nurse did not ignore an empty bed.

A nurse did not hear the absence of a patient and simply hoped someone else would care enough to look.

The hunger stirred almost immediately, sensing the direction of your thoughts. It whispered that you were lying to yourself.

That concern had nothing to do with it. That somewhere beyond the church walls walked the one heartbeat your cursed body desired above all others.

Perhaps it was right.

Perhaps it wasn’t.

You no longer trusted yourself enough to know the difference.

The only certainty left was that Matt Murdock had disappeared into the night, injured, exhausted, and determined to die whether he admitted it aloud or not. If you remained inside Clinton Church and something happened to him...

...you would hear that silence for the rest of eternity.

You reached for your coat without allowing yourself another moment to think. A piece of clothing that was donated to you by the sisters.

Whether you were following your calling...

...or your curse...

...you suspected Heaven had already decided long before you stepped beyond the doors of Clinton Church.

The first blast of fresh air was brutal. It wasn’t the same air as before, the air of your time; this one felt heavier, stronger, and overwhelming. You could feel the heaviness in the new natural scent of your city, and the sensation wasn’t welcome; you wanted to push it away, but it had already seeped into your nostrils.

You had to lean against the wooden doors of the church. Suddenly, the air ceased to be the main invader; instead, the sounds became louder, more present. They reverberated in your ears with the force of an orchestra preparing for war: distant police sirens, nighttime shouts, drunks, the hum of new technology. Everything. Everything you had previously allowed yourself to ignore within the safe walls of the church was now tormenting you as you faced a new world you knew nothing about.

You hissed, squeezing your eyes shut as the artificial lights invaded your vision. You could feel the weight of this new world suffocating you, sensations unfamiliar to you; the whirring, powerful electricity that had once been a privilege now adorned every moment of your beloved Hell’s Kitchen.

In your desire to become a savior, you had never considered what it would mean to face the modern world, a world you weren’t a part of. You were faster, stronger, more lethal; everything about you was enhanced, but you never had practice, never learned to control the abilities God had bestowed upon you.

You heard everything and nothing at the same time because you were incapable of focusing on anything in particular.

You could smell every kind of aroma, even the garbage left in a bin that poisoned the purity of the oxygen.

You felt your skin sting from every chemical in the air; you felt the pollution of the world you now lived in.

Your eyes didn’t burn, but they couldn’t withstand such stimuli. The electricity present everywhere seemed to laugh at your naiveté.

Were you really that pathetic? Was it really that easy to defeat a creature that had massacred men with ease? A creature that conventional weapons couldn’t harm?

It seemed like a joke, a ritual for humble you.

You had to kneel because you were so overwhelmed, and…

then…

only then did you smell it.

A drop, a single drop spread across the floor.

A drop of blood. His blood.

Matt’s blood.

“Oh my God…” you moaned, and without realizing it, your trembling finger went to the drop of blood and pressed into it. You didn’t even think about it, and you carried the remnants of what was surely Matt’s open wound to your lips.

The change was instantaneous.

The city was gone, the visual and air pollution were gone, you didn’t feel the itch or anything. There was only a smell, a sound, a sensation.

Matt.

You could feel him even from afar. You could smell him completely; blood and sweat. You could hear the siren song that was his heartbeat. You could almost visualize the tense movement of his muscles.

Everything else was gone, only him.

Only your prey.

Your limbs didn’t feel the same as before. You didn’t feel foolish from uncontrolled strength, lost, or overwhelmed.

You were no longer a foolish woman trapped in a new world. Now you were back in the moment you destroyed those who had harmed your home.

You became the huntress again, guided this time by the excuse of helping a man who had no idea that he was the obsession of the thirst monster.

You moved without thinking, not as quickly as the first time you became undead, but with a need that almost equaled the desire to protect your home.

This time, you were being selfish, and you couldn’t control it.

The alley announced itself before you ever saw it. The rain had joined you as you approached, as if the atmosphere had decided to be your companion.

The heartbeat had changed.

Its rhythm no longer carried the weary cadence of a man wandering without purpose through Hell’s Kitchen. It staggered now beneath violent exertion, each beat crashing against the next with painful irregularity before slowing again, as though determination alone kept it from surrendering altogether. Around it, other hearts thundered with the reckless confidence of men who believed themselves hunters. Their laughter spilled into the street before the words themselves reached you, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of fists meeting flesh.

You stopped at the mouth of the alley.

Darkness gathered there differently than it did elsewhere in the city.

The towering brick buildings devoured what little light the streetlamps offered, leaving only narrow ribbons of pale gold stretched across wet pavement. Rainwater lingered in shallow puddles that reflected broken fragments of neon signs from the avenue beyond, while overflowing dumpsters and rusted fire escapes transformed the passage into little more than another forgotten wound carved into Hell’s Kitchen.

At the very end of it stood Matt.

Or rather, what remained of his resolve.

His back collided violently against the brick wall before his knees nearly buckled beneath him. One of the men struck him across the face with enough force to send fresh blood spilling from his split lip. Another laughed—a short, satisfied sound utterly devoid of mercy—as he drove his fist into Matt’s ribs.

The same ribs you had wrapped only hours before.

The impact reached your ears before the cry itself.

Bone protesting.

Air leaving exhausted lungs.

A heartbeat stumbling.

Matt recovered his footing only long enough to receive another blow.

He scarcely defended himself.

His hands rose by instinct now and then, but there was no conviction behind the movement. No precision. No relentless confidence belonging to the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Whatever had once made him terrifying had remained buried beneath Midland Circle alongside that woman. Elektra.

He did not fight.

He endured.

There was a profound difference.

One of the attackers grabbed the front of his shirt, shoving him hard enough that the back of his head struck the wall. Another said something you barely registered through the deafening roar of blood rushing inside your own ears.

Matt answered.

You couldn’t hear the words.

Only the resignation beneath them.

Then his heart slowed. Not because peace had found him, because he had stopped resisting. Something inside you fractured.

For two days you had prayed that God would grant you strength enough to master the monster living beneath your skin. You had counted rosary beads until your fingers ached. You had swallowed blood that tasted like ash simply because Father Lantom believed there remained goodness worth preserving inside you.

You had done everything a faithful soul was meant to do.

Yet now, standing in that rain-soaked alley while an injured man quietly accepted death with open hands, your prayers dissolved into something infinitely simpler.

No.

The word echoed somewhere deep within you.

Not spoken.

Felt.

The men never heard your footsteps.

One moment they stood over Matt Murdock. Your steps were silent, your presence equal to that of a ghost. The next, every instinct they possessed screamed that they were no longer alone. Silence descended first. A peculiar, unnatural silence, even the laughter disappeared.

One of them turned.

You saw confusion settle across his face before fear had time to replace it.

There was nothing remarkable about your appearance. No monstrous transformation. No grotesque revelation announcing the creature you had become. You remained exactly as Father Lantom had found you each morning: dark coat pulled tightly against the cold, hair dampened by the evening mist, hands hanging quietly at your sides.

Only your eyes had changed.

Not in color.

In stillness.

They regarded the men before you with an absence of humanity so complete that language itself seemed incapable of reaching it.

One of them frowned. “...Who the hell are you?”

You did not answer because you no longer knew. For nearly a century you had asked God the same question without receiving one.

Nurse.

Orphan.

Daughter.

Monster.

Miracle.

Punishment.

None of the names fit comfortably anymore.

Behind the men, Matt shifted weakly against the wall. His head lifted only slightly, blood running freely from the corner of his mouth. His damaged senses searched the alley with desperate confusion, trying to understand the impossible stillness that had fallen over it.

He heard you. Not your heartbeat, but the absence of one. 

Your gaze found him for only a single instant.

He looked impossibly tired.

Not merely wounded.

Tired in the way old churches appeared tired after sheltering generations of grief. Tired in the way Father Lantom sometimes sounded after burying another soul taken too soon. There existed a profound weariness within him that no physician could treat and no medicine could soothe.

You remembered the touch of his hand against yours two days earlier.

The flood of sorrow that had poured through you without invitation. The certainty that this man carried enough suffering to drown an ordinary heart. Perhaps that was why yours had answered him so completely.

Or perhaps...

Perhaps God had always intended monsters to recognize broken things. 

In that moment, you forgot the sinful lust that had gripped you while you cared for him; now… now there was a certainty of not wanting to see him dead.

Not at the hands of these criminals, at least.

One of the attackers stepped toward you. Bravado still lingered in his posture, but uncertainty had already entered his heartbeat. You heard it quicken beneath his ribs, betraying the confidence his face struggled to maintain.

“Lady,” he muttered, attempting a smile that convinced neither of you, “this ain’t your business.”

You lowered your eyes. For the briefest moment, your fingers tightened around the crucifix hidden beneath your coat.

Forgive me.

The prayer was almost soundless. Not because you expected absolution. Because it had become a habit.

When you lifted your gaze again, the man took an involuntary step backward.

He did not know why. Neither did you.

Perhaps every human soul carries, buried somewhere beneath instinct and reason alike, the ancient memory that there are creatures the world was never meant to contain.

The rain continued falling softly between you.

Behind you, church bells began ringing somewhere in the distance. Or perhaps it was your imagination, or the work of some demon enjoying what was about to happen.

Nine slow chimes.

Their solemn voices drifted across Hell’s Kitchen, reaching the alley just as they had reached Clinton nearly a century earlier. For one suspended heartbeat, they sounded almost like a benediction.

Then the darkness moved.

It was simple. Incredibly simple. They were nothing more than fragile vessels of flesh before you. Not in the way you easily tore their skin with your fangs, not in the way you sucked with a force that would surely leave giant bruises on their hides, not in the way each drop of blood, denoting life, now cascaded down your throat, quenching an ancient thirst.

The first man couldn’t even scream; you made sure to cover his mouth as you drained the life from him. The other man watched in horror the spectacle of a demon from ancient legends that didn’t belong to this country, or at least, not to this part of it.

He couldn’t even move; fear was too great, the fear that engulfs prey that knows it’s next.

You were a dark and lethal flash; it wasn’t enough for you to suck the blood of the first man. The second man met the same fate. Judgment belonged to the Lord; you were only the blade He wielded.

Afterward, Hell’s Kitchen would remember only fragments. Bodies almost devoid of blood, bites from a beast, and bruises that formed faster than usual. Their bodies in a state of absolute pallor, as if life itself had been stolen from them, but perhaps because it had. Not lives that had died in the conventional way, but by divine intervention.

Perhaps it was a wild animal that had escaped from a zoo, its disappearance never reported to avoid the scandal. Maybe an exotic animal being trafficked; it was Hell’s Kitchen after all, these things happened... right?

Rumors are born wherever fear fails to find an explanation.

Saint Agnes had always protected its own. And somewhere beneath its ancient stones the convent had been hiding a demon all along. 

Not an animal, but a demon wrought by the Lord Himself. 

When silence finally returned to the alley, the bells had already finished ringing, if they ever started ringing at all.

Rain continued washing the pavement with patient indifference.

Matt’s heartbeat remained.

Weak.

Unsteady.

Alive.

You knelt beside him immediately, your trembling hands reaching not for the darkness still clawing beneath your skin, but for the man slumped against the brick wall. His breathing came shallowly now, his consciousness drifting somewhere beyond your reach. Blood still marked his face, his ruined knuckles, the collar of his shirt, and every instinct within you recoiled in equal measure between horror and longing.

Your fingertips hovered only a moment before gently brushing the damp hair away from his forehead.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, though you no longer knew which sin the apology belonged to.

For following him.

For failing to stop what had happened sooner.

Or for the truth that frightened you more than anything else—that despite everything, despite every prayer and every act of restraint, the first thing you searched for was not whether he could still see or speak.

It was whether his heart was still beating.

It answered beneath your hand with one slow, stubborn pulse.

Then another.

He was going to live. He would live another day thanks to your intervention.

You closed your eyes, bowed your head in silent gratitude, and gathered his unconscious body into your arms with a strength no ordinary woman could have possessed.

The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen had gone into the night believing no one would come for him.

He never saw the Demon of Saint Agnes carry him home.

notes: so… yes, reader saved matt!!! but she drank human blood after years of not doing so… 🙂‍↕️🤭

taglist: @lilacmurdock @silentrreader @supremeshrimpy2 @perpetualmess @kitkatq05 @uselessnewt @riverjane-d @scarletddevil @myoldblogisdead @unfortunatelyacertifiedcrashout @mooucifer @nerdytrash-panda @energerstar @vvitchesh3x @cloudnuggettt @hellilovedit @theyateastarnamedaquarius

series masterlist — prologue — next chapter

matt murdock x vampire!reader

warnings: (18+ minors dni) eventual smut. mention of blood and graphic scenes of violence. blasphemy. constant mention of the catholic religion.

word count: 7.7k

clarification: english is not my native language, so i apologize in advance for any mistakes.

ㅤㅤㅤI. THE TEMPTATION

Thirst was the first thing you encountered upon opening your eyes.

Not the stone ceiling that had replaced the interior of the coffin where you had lain for nearly a century. Not the dim light filtering through the narrow window in the depths of Saint Agnes. Not even the rosary that had rested on your chest since the night before, clutched in your fingers by a habit that outlived even death. It was thirst. Always thirst. A constant, silent presence that seemed to awaken a few seconds before you, to remind you that, although the Lord had returned you to the world, He had not done so under the same laws that governed others.

Two weeks had passed since your awakening.

Two weeks trying to learn how to live in a century that wasn’t yours. Two weeks discovering that the streets weren’t the same anymore, that Clinton had become, colloquially, Hell’s Kitchen, that electricity had gone from being a luxury to something as commonplace as air, and that the medicine you had once studied with dedication now seemed like a completely different language. But none of those differences tormented you as much as the certainty that your own body was drifting, day by day, away from everything that had once been human.

Animal blood was no longer enough.

At first, you had wanted to believe it was true. When Father Lantom, with an almost touching discretion, began bringing you small amounts of blood—the source of which you didn’t question—you accepted the gesture with the naive hope that it would be enough to sustain this second chance God had granted you. You had thought you could live like this. That simply enduring would be enough. That the sacrifice you had made before the altar wouldn’t end up becoming an unbearable sentence.

You were wrong.

That morning you held the porcelain cup in both hands, gazing at the dark liquid resting inside. There was no repulsion in your eyes. Nor desire. Only a weary resignation, the same with which a sick person accepts a remedy that ceased to ease their pain long ago. You slowly brought it to your lips and drank in small sips, forcing yourself to finish every last drop, even though you knew, before you did, that the result would be exactly the same.

Cold.

Metallic.

Empty.

Without the fervent thread of a life unraveling beneath your sharp bite.

The blood trickled down your throat, offering absolutely nothing. Your stomach no longer felt empty, but that which truly craved nourishment remained untouched, hidden in some corner of your being beyond the reach of reason and faith. It was a different kind of need, one that belonged not to the flesh but to the creature you had become; a patient thirst that seemed to watch you from the depths of your soul, waiting for the day you would cease fighting it.

You placed the cup on the small wooden table and remained motionless for a few moments. The convent was just beginning to stir. Muffled sounds descended from the upper floors: the scrape of soles on the old floorboards, a door closing carefully, the distant murmur of a prayer uttered by an early-rising nun. For decades, those sounds had meant home. Now they served only to remind you that you shared that building with people whose blood ran warm beneath their skin.

You looked down at the rosary around your wrist.

Your fingers closed on the beads with an unconscious force.

You had prayed to God.

And God had answered.

That conviction remained intact even after ninety-four years locked in a coffin. Even after the starvation. Even after the bloodshed. Because if you began to doubt it, then your entire existence lost its meaning. All the suffering, all the guilt, all the decades of darkness were reduced to pointless cruelty. You needed to believe there was a reason to stay. You needed to believe the sacrifice had been worth it.

Father Lantom believed it too.

And that was, perhaps, the reason why the guilt weighed so heavily.

He had never looked at you with fear. He had never uttered the word “monster”, nor had he allowed you to. He had accepted your existence with a serenity that could only spring from unwavering faith, insisting time and again that God did not err in granting a mission. It was He who convinced you to return to nursing when Matt Murdock arrived at the convent between life and death; He who had placed in your hands the responsibility of caring for a man whose blood awakened in you a need you were only beginning to understand.

You could not betray that trust.

Not after everything He had done for you.

Not after having protected your secret for those two weeks when the modern world threatened to devour you as much as hunger itself.

You stood up slowly. Your movements remained elegant, almost silent, as if your body had forgotten the weight it once bore. In a few hours, you would have to return to the infirmary, change Matt’s bandages, check that the wounds were still healing properly, and pretend, once again, that the faint scent of his blood didn’t disturb every fiber of your being.

You were still unaware that this effort was beginning to turn into an unwinnable battle.

The convent was quieter in the mornings than you remembered.

Not silent—Saint Agnes had never truly been silent—but the sounds had changed. In 1923, dawn had carried the scrape of coal being delivered to nearby buildings, the distant shouts of dockworkers heading toward the Hudson, the creak of wagon wheels on wet streets. Now the world beyond the church woke beneath the low growl of engines and the occasional wail of a siren somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen. The rhythm was different, yet the old stone walls still held the same patient stillness they always had, as though the building itself had decided that time was a concern for everyone else.

You were crossing the corridor toward your destination when Sister Maggie stepped out of the chapel.

She paused when she saw you, one hand still resting against the heavy wooden door. The morning light from the stained-glass windows softened the sharp lines of her habit and painted faint colors across the floor between you.

The itch on your skin appeared, mild thankfully. You scratched the skin of your neck with a touch of embarrassment; the hot sting of the sun’s rays hadn’t yet arrived—you had no idea why—but instead, whenever you were more exposed to the sun, an allergy-like itch reigned.

You preferred that to your skin burning. You could still remember your flesh roasting that dawn when you were reborn.

“You’re up early,” she said.

A small smile touched your lips. “I could say the same to you.”

Maggie gave a quiet huff that might have been amusement. “Some habits survive every century. Besides, children don’t really have a set rest schedule.”

The words settled between you more gently than they should have. Most people still stumbled around the fact that you had slept through nearly a hundred years of history. Maggie rarely did. She spoke about it the way one might speak about an old scar: impossible to ignore, unnecessary to prod.

In your short time awake, you discovered that Maggie was the person Father Lantom seemed to trust the most. At least when it came to you. She seemed to know your whole story, and although she was cautious around you in the first few days, she didn’t judge the divine hand that had fallen upon you years before.

You fell into step beside her as she began walking toward the infirmary, or what was the makeshift infirmary that the church had. For a few moments neither of you spoke. The silence was not uncomfortable. It carried the familiar weight of shared faith, the kind that did not always require words to make itself known.

“You prayed this morning,” Maggie observed at last.

It was not a question.

You glanced toward her, faintly surprised. “How did you know?”

“You have the same expression afterward every time.” Her gaze remained fixed ahead. “Like someone trying to decide whether God answered… or simply listened.”

A soft breath escaped you before you could stop it. “I’m beginning to think there’s a difference,” you murmur solemnly.

Maggie’s footsteps slowed almost imperceptibly. “And which would you prefer?”

The question lingered longer than you expected. For ninety-four years you had clung to the certainty that your transformation had been an answer, that the voice in the darkness had belonged to God and that the hunger you carried was the price of a sacred duty. Yet the certainty felt less solid whenever you stood beside a bed and smelled fresh blood.

“I don’t know anymore,” you admitted quietly. “Sometimes I think being heard would have been easier.”

Sister Maggie turned her head then, studying you with that calm, penetrating look that made it impossible to hide behind polite answers.

“Faith isn’t certainty,” she said. “If it were, it wouldn’t be faith.”

The words should have sounded like a lesson. Instead they sounded tired, as though she had spent years repeating them to herself.

A silence was shared, not one filled with discomfort or reproach due to the slightest doubt in faith. Rather, it was a silence laden with the certainty of a belief so deeply rooted that you both carried.

You reached the infirmary door before speaking again. “You care about him,” you said softly, though with a certain intention.

For the first time that morning, something shifted in her expression. “Mr. Murdock?” she asked.

You nodded.

Maggie’s hand tightened briefly around the edge of the door. “He’s suffered more than he lets people see.”

There was no hesitation in her voice, only a tenderness so carefully controlled that most people would have missed it. You didn’t. The warmth beneath those few words felt deeper than simple concern for a patient.

“He seems angry,” you said. 

“He is.” A faint smile touched her mouth, sad and knowing. “At God. At himself. At surviving.”

You looked toward the room beyond the door, where Matt rested somewhere inside. “He believes surviving was a mistake,” you whispered.

Maggie was quiet for a moment before answering. “Many people do, when they wake up and discover the world hasn’t become easier while they were gone.”

The sentence struck you harder than she could have known.

For an instant you saw the dark wooden coffin beneath Saint Agnes, the decades slipping past above your head, the city changing while you remained suspended between death and whatever came after it.

Maggie must have noticed the shadow that crossed your face, because her voice softened.

“You don’t have to understand why you were given another chance,” she said. “You only have to decide what you’ll do with it.”

The room smelled faintly of antiseptic, old wood, and healing wounds. Matt lay where you had left him the night before, still pale, still exhausted. Morning light cut through the window and touched the bandages wrapped around his ribs.

As you moved toward his bedside, you suddenly became aware of two things at once: the quiet steadiness of Sister Maggie watching from the doorway for a few moments, and the dangerous pull that lived beneath the scent of blood no matter how carefully the wounds had been cleaned.

One reminded you of the woman you had once been.

The other reminded you of what you had become.

The door closed softly, leaving the room enveloped once more in the quiet rhythm that seemed to belong exclusively to places where people fought to stay alive. Sister Maggie would be outside, nearby, because that's what you asked for, for Matt's sake and yours.

It was noticeable how several times she deliberately sought you out to talk before you went to deal with Matt on Father Lantom’s ‘orders’.

The infirmary was modest, little more than a handful of beds separated by curtains that had seen better decades, shelves crowded with bottles whose labels belonged to a medicine you were still trying to understand, and a single window through which the pale morning light filtered without much warmth. It was not the infirmary you had once known, yet there was comfort in the familiarity of its purpose. Illness, pain, recovery—those things had not changed with the century.

Neither had the instinct that guided your hands whenever someone needed care.

You crossed the room without making a sound. Matt remained asleep, though not peacefully. Even before reaching his bedside, you noticed the slight tension lingering across his brow, the almost imperceptible tightening of his jaw every now and then, as though whatever dreams occupied his unconscious refused to grant him the mercy of rest. His body had survived Midland Circle. His mind, you suspected, was still buried beneath the ruins.

For a long moment, you simply looked at him.

He seemed younger in sleep.

Not because the bruises had faded—they had not—but because unconsciousness had stripped away the guarded expression he carried while awake. Without it, he looked less like the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen and more like a man who had reached the limit of what one soul could endure.

You couldn’t help but be astonished the first time Father Lantom told you about Matt’s situation. A blind man who went out at night to keep his city safe, regardless of the physical sacrifices he made. It seemed unbelievable, but who were you to judge the decisions of the Lord’s followers? Who would judge someone who gives without expecting even a kind word in return?

It was something you admired: his resilience in the face of danger, his sacrifice for a stranger. You understood it with a depth you doubted Matt himself could grasp. It was about giving of oneself so that others could have a better future. A somewhat twisted sense of justice on your part; instead of remaining silent for the years following your rebirth, you chose to lock yourself in a coffin to avoid confronting what you had done and what you could do.

You were filled with the silent judgment of Matt, even though he remained asleep. He didn’t even know you, he probably wasn’t even interested in your situation, but he was someone who wrecked his body and mind for Hell’s Kitchen. You, on the other hand, chose to hide for fear of losing control of the innate thirst that gripped your throat.

You sighed; it wasn’t the time to question your decisions or see yourself reflected in a man who needed support more than answering other people’s questions about faith itself.

Carefully, you set the clean bandages and fresh gauze upon the bedside table before reaching for the basin of warm water Sister Maggie had prepared earlier that morning. Steam no longer carried any pleasant sensation against your skin; your body had forgotten warmth long ago. Still, habit prevailed. Warm water soothed wounds. It comforted patients. That was reason enough.

Your fingers found the edge of the bandage wrapped around his ribs.

Slowly.

Delicately.

The dressing peeled away with only the faintest resistance, revealing the angry bruising beneath. The stitches were holding. The swelling had begun to subside. It was progress—slow, imperfect progress, but enough to reassure the nurse in you.

As you leaned closer to inspect the wound, Matt stirred.

His breathing shifted first, even and shallow, followed by the slight turn of his head toward the sound of your movements. There was no confusion in the gesture this time, only the instinctive vigilance of someone accustomed to waking up expecting a threat.

“...Who’s there?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“It’s me,” you answered softly. “I came to change your bandages… I am… the nurse,” you said with some doubt about whether you still deserved such a title.

For a moment, he said nothing. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly before a weary sigh escaped him. “...Right.”

You waited until the silence settled again before carefully continuing your work. The fabric peeled away from his ribs, exposing bruises that had darkened overnight. The stitches were holding, though only just.

“Does anything feel different today?” you asked, keeping your attention on the wound.

You had to keep your attention on the wound. Not on the throbbing of his body, not on the slight rhythm moving beneath his bruise, not on the fine lines of sweat running down his neck, caused by his elevated body temperature.

You could almost smell it, the saltiness of his natural fluid. You smelled it, you smelled Matt, his very essence of masculinity that tempted you to sniff more closely, to discover the scent of his blood.

You wondered what the scent of his innermost being would be like, if tasting it would be the same as having felt it the first time you touched him. An intimate act you tried to forget, but couldn’t. You remembered Matt’s pain.

Perhaps you could take away his pain if you let yourself taste him—

Matt let out a quiet, humorless scoff, which brought you back to the now and not the living of your mind. “Yeah.”

You glanced toward him.

“I’m still alive,” the words fell into the room with a weight far greater than their simplicity.

There was no bitterness directed at you. Only exhaustion. A quiet resentment that seemed to have rooted itself somewhere so deep inside him that even speaking required effort.

You lowered your gaze back to the wound. “The body heals slowly after something like this.”

At this moment, you were almost grateful that his bitterness kept you focused on him and not on his physical self.

“I wasn’t talking about my body,” his reply came almost immediately.

You didn’t answer. There wasn’t an answer that could reach a man who had already decided survival itself was a punishment.

The room returned to silence, broken only by the soft sound of clean gauze unfolding between your fingers.

After several moments, Matt spoke again, though his voice carried less edge this time.

“...Father Lantom said you’ve been helping.”

“I’ve done what I can.”

“You were the one stitching me up,” he said, without any emotional charge that could be felt.

“I was.”

Another pause.

“...Thanks,” the gratitude sounded reluctant, almost uncomfortable, as though he disliked needing anyone’s help as much as he disliked remaining in that bed.

You secured the fresh bandage around his ribs with practiced movements.

“You don’t have to thank me,” you murmured.

His talking to you kept you distracted. You needed to keep it that way.

“I know,” his answer came quietly. “...Doesn’t mean I won’t.”

He didn’t mention anything about the devil inside him, the nocturnal creature he became to keep the city safe. You knew it was complicated, but that your discretion, and that of all the nuns in the convent, was necessary. Matt was a refugee of the church, another son, in Father Lantom’s words.

A son who needed guidance and support, as you remembered hearing Father Lantom whisper to Sister Maggie once. 

You shouldn’t have heard that, but you did.

As you smoothed the last fold of the bandage against his side, your fingertips brushed the bare skin beneath his arm.

Matt frowned almost immediately. “...Your hands are freezing.”

Every muscle in your body tensed. You withdrew only enough to continue your work without drawing attention to yourself.

“I’ve always had cold hands.”

“Hm,” he didn’t sound convinced.

Then again, his senses were still fractured, distorted by pain and whatever damage Midland Circle had left behind. Had he been well, perhaps he would have lingered on the observation. Today, however, the thought seemed to drift away almost as quickly as it had appeared.

You had some idea that the man you were caring for had special abilities, or something like that. A man who could feel everything better except for his sight.

“...Lucky you,” he muttered after a moment, his head sinking deeper into the pillow. “At least one part of you still works the way it’s supposed to.”

The sentence carried the faintest trace of dry humor, but it dissolved almost immediately beneath the crushing weariness that had become his constant companion.

You lowered your eyes once more to the clean bandages wrapped around his torso.

For the briefest of moments, you found yourself wondering whether surviving could truly hurt more than dying. You saw it in that instant, the way his body was bruised in ways it shouldn’t be, and his inner being broken.

It wasn’t a deduction, it was a certainty.

You cared for him physically, you felt him emotionally.

That moment when you were able to feel Matt Murdock remained etched in your memory. You had never felt another human being like that, not in such a complete and invasive way.

You knew it was something to criticize because he hadn’t given you permission to delve so deeply into his being, but you had no idea how you had done it, and, for now, it hadn’t happened again.

The time passed more quickly than you expected.

Perhaps it was because keeping your hands occupied had always been the easiest way to silence your thoughts. Ever since you had first learned to hold a needle without trembling, to recognize an infection before fever announced itself, to wash blood from skin without allowing pity to interfere with precision, medicine had demanded something wonderfully simple of you: to think of the patient before yourself.

You clung desperately to that discipline.

Matt’s recovery was slow, but it was recovery nonetheless. The first time you saw him, he was a spectacle of purples, reds, and browns. It was shocking that a human being could survive so long, but you couldn’t help but be amazed by how the world actually worked.

His body possessed the remarkable stubbornness of someone who had survived far more than any ordinary man should have. He had bruises, swollen, feverish areas, sutures, cuts that needed daily bandages... but he was still alive. Not standing yet, but alive and healing faster than the average human.

It was his spirit that worried you, every time you let your gaze rest on him longer than necessary.

You noticed it the moment you met him. You noticed it now that Matt remained silent while letting you treat him as if he were just a practice dummy.

People who wished to live clung to pain. They fought against it, cursed it, begged for it to end. Matt accepted it with a frightening indifference, as though every fresh ache merely confirmed something he had already decided—that surviving Midland Circle had been an error neither Heaven nor Earth intended to correct.

By midday, Sister Maggie stopped appearing to watch over you; you wished she would stay, even if she wasn't in the room with you, you could hear her heartbeat on the other side. It was reassuring; you needed a watchful eye on you if God had decided not to intervene again.

But now you had to trust yourself, your own control. They had given you their trust; you had to give it back.

You busied yourself preparing fresh dressings, carefully arranging clean gauze, disinfectant, and surgical scissors on the small tray beside his bed before returning to examine Matt’s body. It was a precaution; you knew he wouldn’t communicate his internal pains or fevers, but you knew the human body well enough to know what hidden wounds or internal pains might need treating.

It was protocol, so you focused on that, on the things you knew. Your selfish desires and personal thoughts had no place in front of a man who seemed to be melting away before you.

“This will sting,” you warned softly. 

You were going to take care of a wound on his arm, one that you suspected was not as serious as the one on his ribs or shoulder, but that remained there as a nuisance that could escalate.

Matt’s expression hardly changed. “I’ve had better afternoons.”

His answer carried the dry edge of a man too exhausted to waste energy on complaints. You allowed yourself the smallest smile before carefully lifting the edge of the bandage.

It resisted. Only slightly.

The dried blood had adhered to the fabric during the night.

You paused. “I’m going to remove it slowly.”

“Do whatever you have to,” Matt said dryly.

Your fingers worked with practiced patience, dampening the cloth before easing it away from the stitches one careful movement at a time. For several long seconds, everything remained still.

Then one stitch gave way.

It happened so quietly that another person might not even have noticed. A single thread snapped beneath the tension, reopening the smallest part of the wound.

A bead of crimson welled immediately against pale skin.

Tiny.

Harmless.

Entirely expected.

Your body disagreed.

The scent reached you before your eyes truly registered the blood itself.

Warm. Living. Human.

It unfolded through the room with terrifying gentleness, slipping beneath every thought you tried to hold onto. The smell of antiseptic disappeared first. Then the linen. Then the old wood of Saint Agnes. 

Everything you had tried to ignore, everything you wouldn’t allow yourself to focus on. That which remained screaming inside, tearing at your throat.

There was only blood.

Something inside you lurched with such violence that your hand tightened involuntarily around the edge of the dressing.

No.

You forced your fingers to loosen.

The wound was insignificant.

You had treated injuries far worse in another lifetime. Your hands knew exactly what to do. A clean cloth. Gentle pressure. Replace the broken stitch. Fresh gauze.

Simple.

Except nothing felt simple anymore.

Your throat tightened.

For one horrifying instant, your gaze lingered on the small ribbon of blood trailing along the curve of Matt’s side.

Not as a nurse, but as something else.

Something infinitely older than the woman standing beside the bed.

You looked away so abruptly that the movement caught Matt’s attention.

“...Something wrong?” His voice was quieter this time.

Not suspicious, just observant.

You swallowed before answering. “The stitch came loose.”

“I figured that much,” his tone remained dry, but there was a hint of interest now. Interest or something else, as if something inside him knew the situation wasn’t right, but his senses couldn’t seem to confirm it.

You reached for a fresh compress, deliberately keeping your eyes fixed upon your work rather than the blood itself. Every movement became slower, more deliberate, as though precision alone might drown out the monstrous instinct clawing patiently beneath your skin.

“I’ll replace it,” you said, letting out a nervous exhalation.

“You sound nervous,” the words were simple.

Matter-of-fact.

Matt wasn’t accusing you.

He was listening.

Even with his senses fractured, he had always possessed an unsettling ability to hear what other people tried to bury beneath their voices.

You hesitated only briefly.

“I haven’t treated injuries this severe in... a very long time.”

It was not the truth, but it wasn’t entirely a lie either.

You forced yourself to clench your jaw, grinding your teeth together painfully as your hands trembled slightly.

First, you had to clean the blood, then redo the loose stitch, bandage it, and that was it. It was simple enough; you’d treated worse wounds on Matt.

Why did this tiny opening now seem worse than the others?

You carefully wiped away the small trail of blood from that stray drop. It was a slow movement, careful not to stain his skin. But you knew you weren’t doing it out of any sense of cleanliness, but rather out of a selfish feeling that, at the time, you didn’t even notice.

You lowered your gaze to the sterile cloth in your hand, which was lightly stained with the rest of Matt’s blood that had dared to escape his body. It was fresh blood, blood that had just left his body and was more than alive. That blood wasn’t dry, it wasn’t dead to you yet.

You dared to take a deep breath, just for a moment. An action Matt might have interpreted as a way to calm your nerves.

A mistake.

The fangs began to descend, barely visible. They forced you to break the tension you’d strained in your jaw, forcing their way through for the first time in so many years.

It wasn’t your decision; it was more the reflex of a creature desperately seeking attention.

Your fingers curled tightly around the sterile cloth. Beneath your hand, the fabric remained slightly damp with Matt’s blood; you could smell its strong scent, the very essence of his flesh and blood. It was tempting, the call of a siren that could lead you to the most delicious of treasures.

You forced yourself to put the cloth down on the table, not even noticing if it was on the tray you’d carefully prepared, nor if your nervous, tense movement caught Matt’s attention.

You took two steps back, clasping your hands behind your back. 

You needed to calm yourself, needed to force yourself to hide the darkness inside you, in the deepest recesses of your being, in that part that shouldn’t come out.

You breathed slowly and nervously, even though you didn’t really need to, even though it might have worsened the situation but you couldn’t completely control it.

You focused on Matt by mistake. You allowed yourself to observe the way his chest rose and fell, the toning of his arms and abdomen covered by bandages, patches, and stitches placed by you or other hands that assisted you.

He was handsome, even beneath all those wounds and the weight of a lost life. His neck forked perfectly, forming his shoulders and then his collarbone. There was a faint perspiration, one you had smelled before, but now allowed yourself to observe; his skin glowed delicately, the natural scent of his body and that of his blood distinct yet the same. One saltier, the other sweeter.

The rhythm of his heart tormented your mind. You could hear its beats resonating in his ribcage like the sweetest symphony. That was the organ that pumped all the blood in his body, the organ that kept one of his being’s systems alive.

Your eyes traveled from his chest, the exact spot where his heart was, to his neck where his pulse was also visible to you. You saw him swallow slightly, surely because he was thirsty, and for a few seconds, a new thought entered your mind.

You imagined yourself on top of him, your hands pinning his weaker ones against the bed.

You traced your nose from the nest of his heart to the sweaty skin of his neck and inhaled deeply as the rhythm of his heartbeat condensed into a sinful mingling. Your body was heavy on him, even though you now moved more lightly, his body rigid, hard, yet fragile because of his condition.

Completely at your mercy.

You saw yourself baring your fangs this time at will, letting them emerge in all their glory and tracing their points across Matt’s sensitive skin—sensitive to you, anyway. The ancient edge would tear or irritate the skin in that area, and then, with a slow lick to savor the saltiness of his skin, you would prepare the area before slowly sinking your fangs in.

You would hear him groan in pain, arching beneath your touch as you secured your bite and began to suck.

You were going to do it slowly; you wanted to savor it. Perhaps you would even move on top of him because a man like this deserved to feel more than the pain of a monster feeding on his exposed body.

Perhaps a satisfied moan would escape you because, for the first time, you would be hunting for pleasure and not for justice, because that’s what it was: a selfish pleasure roaring inside your gut to take something you had no right to.

Perhaps you could make it more pleasurable for him, perhaps you could free his hands and let him touch your cold being while you fed on his natural warmth.

That blood—his blood—, which was surely sweet, would travel to his cock, make him hard beneath you, and perhaps, out of mercy because you were a child of God, you would break the grip and take him in another way.

He would be all yours. To feed on, to fuck. A mixture of cold and heat. The living and the dead.

Matt’s voice, thankfully, brought you back to earth.

What the fuck were you thinking? What’s happening to you?

“You know what Father Lantom keeps telling me?” he said. There was something unexpectedly thoughtful beneath the fatigue and a desire to break the tension you yourself had created. You didn’t know if he even noticed the emotional outburst that had just occurred, but you were aware that he had noticed something.

You glanced at him, forcing yourself to look at him with a nurse’s eyes, not with the eyes of the demon inside you.

You swallowed hard and forced your fangs to stay inside your jaw, no matter how painful the thirst was.

“What?” you said, threading the needle now, because you needed to behave like his nurse and not like a predator.

“’God leaves work unfinished because He expects people to finish it’,” a humorless smile touched his mouth. “I think He’s giving Himself too much credit.” The bitterness in his voice did not shock you.

That saddened you. 

You lowered your eyes to the wound once more, carefully guiding the needle through damaged skin with the steadiness born of years spent saving lives. The sadness of what he said forced you to focus on the reality of the matter, not on the dark selfishness within you.

“Do you believe that?” you asked quietly. 

This was good; you could focus on its bitterness, born of pain, to ignore the persistent thirst that threatened to contaminate you even further.

“Which part?”

“That God leaves.”

Matt’s jaw tightened.

For a long moment, you thought he might refuse to answer.

Then he exhaled through his nose. “I think…” he began slowly, “...if He has something to say, He’s had plenty of chances.”

Silence settled over the infirmary.

Not uncomfortable.

Heavy.

Sacred, almost.

You tied the final knot with careful fingers before pressing fresh gauze over the repaired stitch.

“I used to believe,” you said at last, your voice barely louder than the rustle of linen, “that silence didn’t mean abandonment.”

“And now?”

You didn’t answer immediately, because the truth frightened you.

Because somewhere beneath the convent, hidden inside a body that no longer belonged among the living, there existed a hunger that grew stronger every day despite every prayer you whispered.

“...Now,” you admitted quietly, “I’m trying very hard to keep believing it.”

You secured the clean bandage around his arm and stepped back.

Only then did you realize how fiercely your hands were trembling. It was incredible how your hands lost control and trembled from your inner strength to not act.

Your hands wanted to grasp; you could feel it deep within your being.

It wasn’t fear, it was restraint.

Matt, mercifully, mistook the silence that followed for exhaustion or nervousness of a nurse who was afraid of blood.

“You should get some rest,” he murmured, turning his face slightly toward the ceiling. “Can’t imagine patching up stubborn idiots is easy work.”

The corner of your mouth lifted despite yourself.

“No,” you answered, gathering the bloodstained gauze onto the tray before either your eyes or your instincts could linger on it any longer. “It rarely is.”

You left the infirmary almost immediately afterward. The door closed behind you with a quiet click.

Only once the corridor swallowed the scent of Matt’s blood did you allow yourself to lean against the cold wall, lowering your head as an involuntary breath escaped your lips.

For the first time since opening your eyes beneath Saint Agnes two weeks earlier, you understood with terrifying clarity that your greatest fear had never been becoming a monster.

It was becoming one in the presence of a man you had sworn to heal. A man who, despite his bitterness, trusted in this place, in its people, in you to heal him.

What the hell were you thinking? Was the devil inside you forming perverse thoughts about a vulnerable man to break you?

Your composure shattered at the thought, at the thirst that threatened to dry your entire throat and demand to be quenched.

It wasn’t something visible. Not in any way another person might have recognized it. Years spent tending to the wounded had taught you that panic rarely announced itself with trembling hands or desperate breaths. More often, it settled somewhere beneath the ribs, quietly dismantling every certainty you possessed until the simple act of remaining still became an unbearable labor.

You walked.

Not because you had anywhere to be, but because movement was the only thing keeping your thoughts from returning to the scent still lingering inside your memory.

Blood.

Fresh.

Human.

Him.

You descended the narrow staircase that led toward the oldest corridors beneath Saint Agnes, your footsteps barely whispering against the worn steps. The convent above continued with the gentle rhythm of ordinary life. Somewhere overhead, a bell rang softly, announcing the midday Angelus. A few sisters answered with prayer as they crossed the chapel. Their voices drifted faintly through the ancient masonry, weaving together fragments of Latin that had once comforted you.

Now they only reminded you of what you feared losing.

The hunger did not leave with distance.

If anything, it became crueler.

Your body remembered the scent of Matt’s blood with an almost offensive clarity. It replayed it relentlessly, separating it from every other smell until it occupied your senses entirely. You could no longer recall the antiseptic that had filled the infirmary, nor the soap Sister Maggie favored, nor the old linen drying beneath the sunlight.

Only him.

Only the warmth that had escaped beneath your fingertips when the stitch gave way.

Your throat tightened painfully.

It was absurd.

The wound had barely bled. No more than a few drops.

And yet every instinct hidden beneath your skin had reacted as though you had been standing beside a river.

You pressed the heel of your hand against your mouth, ashamed of the thought before it had fully formed.

There had been a moment—a fleeting, monstrous instant—in which you had not looked at Matt Murdock as a patient.

You had looked at him as prey.

The realization hollowed something inside your chest.

You reached your room without remembering the walk itself. The small chamber remained exactly as you had left it that morning: modest, orderly, almost painfully devoid of personality. A narrow bed stood against the wall beside a worn crucifix. A bookshelf overflowed with medical texts Sister Maggie had patiently gathered for you, each one thicker and more incomprehensible than the last. 

You sat on your bed, your whole body trembling, and it was then, in the clarity of solitude, that you noticed your hand tightly gripping the gauze that held Matt’s blood.

You had grabbed it. You didn’t remember when, or perhaps you did, but you weren’t fully aware of the act’s significance.

It was a grave transgression, a theft of a part of a body that was healing, that you were helping to heal, but that you were now stealing without shame or even realizing it. It was true that you hadn’t caused this blood, you hadn’t hurt Matt; it was blood that came out on its own because of the things he himself had done.

Even so.

You squeezed your lips tighter as you exhaled shakily once more. Your lips were as dry as your throat, and as you fought the urge to bury your nose in that forbidden piece, you breathed in again.

Another scent, not as strong or enticing, lingered in your room. Resting atop the wooden table, untouched since dawn, was another glass bottle.

Dark.

Opaque.

Animal blood.

Father Lantom must have left it while you were tending to Matt.

You stared at it for several seconds.

Then, stealthily, you tucked the gauze under your pillow and reached for the bottle with hands that no longer felt entirely your own.

The cork gave way beneath your fingers. The familiar metallic scent rose immediately and you drank quickly. Desperately. Not because it offered relief, but because you wanted—needed—to believe that it still could.

The liquid slid down your throat with the same disappointing emptiness it always had. It filled your stomach. It coated your tongue with iron.

Nothing else.

The ache remained.

No.

Not remained.

It deepened.

Something inside you recoiled almost violently, rejecting the substitute with growing impatience. The hunger was no longer content with survival. It had begun to recognize the difference between living blood and everything that merely resembled it.

The bottle slipped from your hand onto the table with a dull sound.

Your fingers dug into the edge of the wood until it groaned beneath the pressure.

It wasn’t enough.

Dear God...

It wasn’t enough anymore.

It was unfair that it wasn’t enough, unfair that sinful thoughts you now seemed to recall had assailed you and made a poor man, who was only just recovering after losing so much of himself, the protagonist.

You didn’t understand this injustice. You didn’t want to hurt Matt, nor did you want to think of him in such a lustful way. You barely knew him, and yet that was enough for your mind to turn him not only into a victim of your thirst, but also of a dark desire you’d never had before.

When you killed Owney Madden’s men, there was nothing but a thirst for justice, a bloodlust justified by the evil deeds of sinful beings who didn’t care about imposing their wickedness on the innocent.

Now… now what was the justification? You could understand the bloodlust, but the desire that took hold of you, that desire to have Matt vulnerable beneath you and take him in such a profane way, was something new.

And it was terrifying. You hadn’t wanted to think that way about him, and yet you did. Part of you wanted to give in, wanted to feel his blood rushing down your throat and his cock plunging into you.

A knock sounded softly against the open doorway, interrupting your new crisis.

You did not answer.

A moment later, Father Lantom appeared, pausing just beyond the threshold. He took in the room with a single quiet glance—the empty bottle, your rigid posture, the silence hanging heavily between the stone walls—and understood far more than you had hoped.

He did not ask whether you had finished drinking.

He did not ask whether it had helped.

Instead, he stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind him.

“I thought I’d find you here,” his voice carried the same calm warmth it always had, never intruding upon another person’s suffering, merely accompanying it.

You kept your eyes lowered. “I’m sorry,” the apology escaped your lips before you could stop it.

Lantom frowned almost imperceptibly. “For what?”

You let out a brittle laugh that sounded painfully unfamiliar in your own ears.

“I almost…” Your throat tightened around the confession. “...I looked at him and, for a moment, I wasn’t thinking like a nurse anymore.”

Silence settled gently between the two of you, not because he didn’t know what to say.

Because he refused to interrupt your honesty.

Your voice became quieter. “I could smell it… all of him,” another pause. “It was only a little blood,” your fingers loosened against the edge of the table, only to curl tightly once more. “But my body didn’t care, my mind didn’t care,” you closed your eyes. “It wanted all of it.”

The words remained suspended in the room long after you finished speaking.

You had expected revulsion or pity. Perhaps disappointment.

Instead, Father Lantom slowly approached until he stood beside you. He rested one weathered hand upon the table rather than upon your shoulder, leaving you the dignity of choosing whether you wished to close the distance yourself.

“You didn’t hurt him,” his words were gentle.

“I wanted to,” you said.

“No,” he shook his head. “You wanted blood.”

The distinction struck you harder than any reprimand could have.

“There is a difference.”

You swallowed painfully. “It doesn’t feel like one,” you said in a sigh that hid the storm inside you.

“No,” he admitted. “I imagine it doesn’t.”

Another silence followed, quieter than the last.

Outside, somewhere above the old stone ceiling, the bells finished their midday prayer. Father Lantom waited until the final echo faded before speaking again.

“When our Lord fasted in the desert,” he said softly, “His hunger did not make Him sinful.”

You looked at him. “It made Him tempted.”

His gaze met yours with unwavering steadiness. “Temptation is not the same as surrender,” he said.

A bitter smile found your lips. “I don’t know how much longer I can tell the difference.”

“I do,” there was no hesitation in his answer. “Because every day you continue choosing it.”

You lowered your eyes. “It doesn’t become easier.”

“I never expected it would,” his voice remained impossibly calm. “Grace is not measured by how little we struggle,” he smiled faintly. “It’s measured by how often we choose to stand back up after we do.”

The room fell silent once more.

This time, however, the silence no longer felt empty.

It felt inhabited.

Not by certainty.

Certainly not by peace.

Only by the quiet presence of someone who had decided long ago that your soul was worth accompanying, even when you no longer believed it yourself. Which was unfair to a man as willing to help you heal as he was; Father Lantom had no idea of ​​the thoughts your mind was forming to tempt you to sin once more. It wasn’t just about the blood now, but about taking, about using your strength to make Matt your complete prey.

You looked toward the empty bottle resting upon the table.

You had drunk it all, only the ghost of animal blood remained as a presence.

And yet the thirst remained exactly where it had always been, coiled somewhere beneath your breastbone with infinite patience, whispering not for blood in general...

...but for one heartbeat in particular.

That realization frightened you more than the thirst itself. 

notes: hmm, a few small things happened in this chapter… reader is lucky matt is still disoriented. we'll see how long that lasts. 🤭

to better fit the fic, i changed some things, obviously, about the church and the beginning of season three.

i had to shorten this chapter quite a bit because it was almost 20k words, lmao. but thanks to that, chapter two will come out much faster. <3

taglist: @lilacmurdock @silentrreader @supremeshrimpy2 @perpetualmess @kitkatq05 @uselessnewt @riverjane-d @scarletddevil @myoldblogisdead @unfortunatelyacertifiedcrashout @mooucifer @nerdytrash-panda @energerstar @vvitchesh3x @cloudnuggettt @hellilovedit

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

Oh BABY have I got some goods for you.

*takes a huge deep breath in*

Please enjoy these phenomenal writers & their fics!! 🩷✨

@agirlcandream84 @little-miss-dilf-lover @thedownbaddiaries @saintcastiglione @emma-frxst @lottie-sweetheart @peterftpercy @sochkila @art-by-jas @mmemarvel @sunflowersandsapphires @starlord3000 @luvloamy @tuesdayiminlove @wtredprch @lawboysammyy @francixoxoxo @honeybeechestnut @final-sights @castleabbot @digital-moth-cafe

Honestly anyone that I reblog! Those are ones off the top of my head. I know I’ll have more recs later lol.

To the best of my ability, I will not recommend AI content. I don’t fw no AI bs.

series masterlist — chapter one — next chapter

matt murdock x vampire!reader

warnings: (18+ minors dni) eventual smut. mention of blood and graphic scenes of violence. blasphemy. constant mention of the catholic religion. fem!reader.

word count: 5.2k

clarification: english is not my native language, so i apologize in advance for any mistakes.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤII. SAVIOR

Night settled over Clinton Church with the same solemn grace it had carried for generations. The last prayers had long since dissolved into silence, the chapel candles burned low beneath the watchful eyes of the saints, and the old church surrendered itself to that peculiar stillness found only in places built for God. It was a silence you had once cherished. Before 1923, it had always reminded you that the world, no matter how cruel beyond those walls, eventually grew quiet enough for Heaven to be heard.

Now, it only made one sound impossible to escape.

His heartbeat.

You sat alone within your room, a medical textbook lying open across your lap, though your eyes had not lingered upon a single page for nearly an hour. The words blurred together into meaningless lines because every fragment of your attention had been stolen by something infinitely simpler.

Thump.

A measured rhythm.

Thump.

Steady.

Alive.

It drifted through the ancient corridors of the church with impossible clarity, weaving itself between the old stones as though the convent itself had become an instrument designed solely to carry that single heartbeat to your ears. There were other sounds, of course. The distant breathing of the sisters asleep in their rooms. Father Lantom’s slow footsteps crossing the chapel before retiring for the evening. The groaning of old beams surrendering to the cool air of autumn.

You heard all of them.

Yet they faded into insignificance the moment his heart beat again.

You closed the book.

The sound did not stop.

It could not.

Your senses had sharpened into something no human should possess. Distance had become meaningless. Walls were little more than suggestions. Somewhere above you, separated by layers of stone and timber, Matt Murdock lay asleep, his body still struggling to mend what Midland Circle had broken. His heart labored faithfully beneath bruised ribs, pushing warm blood through tired veins with quiet perseverance.

You heard every contraction.

Every pulse.

Every drop.

It should have been no different from listening to anyone else within the convent.

It wasn’t.

You had tried convincing yourself that exhaustion was responsible. That the lingering scent of blood from earlier had unsettled your instincts, leaving them raw and oversensitive. You had repeated the explanation so many times it had almost begun to resemble the truth.

Almost.

Because no matter how carefully you reasoned with yourself, one impossible fact refused to disappear.

You could no longer hear the convent. You could only hear him. There was something unbearably intimate about it.

Not merely because his heartbeat called to your hunger, but because it betrayed everything he never allowed himself to speak aloud. You had spent enough years tending the sick to understand the language of the human body. Hearts quickened with fear, stumbled beneath grief, settled during peace. They confessed truths their owners buried beneath smiles and carefully chosen words.

Matt’s heart carried exhaustion.

Pain.

A grief so old it had begun to resemble part of its own rhythm.

And beneath all of it, an astonishing determination to continue beating despite the man who carried it seeming to wish otherwise.

Despite all that, despite having felt Matt in the most intimate way, delving into the deepest recesses of his feelings and violating his privacy, your thoughts betrayed you. The monster inside you continued to think of Matt as prey, but also as a man.

The image of him sweating, in pain, and defenseless beneath you kept echoing in your mind. Your throat remained dry, craving the blood of the man who was trusting in the church and in you.

What kind of being were you, wanting to suck the life out of someone good and innocent? Someone who wanted what was best for his city and found himself under the care of a demon created by God? It was an injustice. You didn’t want to think of Matt, of the faint pulse that marked his life, of what it would be like to taste him as his cock pumped blood inside your tight cunt.

You wouldn’t be quick, you wouldn’t drain all of Matt’s blood and kill him instantly. Instead, you would be slow, letting the barrier of pleasure and pain blur as you took him completely. Perhaps you could feel his being again, his feelings, as you reveled in the pleasure of fucking him and sucking the life out of him; perhaps he would be so drunk from the lack of blood that the pleasure would overwhelm any pain.

Perhaps—no. You couldn’t keep thinking like that, you didn’t want to dwell on those kinds of ideas, those temptations of the devil. 

Those were temptations imposed by the dark being who wanted to ruin what God had given you.

You wrapped your fingers around the rosary resting against your palm until the beads pressed painfully into your skin.

“Lead us not into temptation…” The prayer escaped your lips in little more than a whisper. “...but deliver us from evil.”

Another beat.

Closer.

Louder.

You bowed your head.

It was grotesque, you thought, how easily devotion could become indistinguishable from desire. The saints had written endlessly of longing for God, of yearning so profound that it became almost physical, an ache beneath the ribs that no earthly comfort could soothe. You understood them now in a way they could never have imagined.

Only your longing was not directed toward Heaven. It was directed toward the warm, relentless rhythm of a mortal heart. You hated yourself for recognizing the beauty within it.

Every beat sounded like an invitation your body had already accepted long before your conscience could object. They echoed through your mind with the persistence of cathedral bells, slow and reverent, transforming into a liturgy your monstrous nature understood far better than Scripture.

Drink.

The word never truly formed. It didn’t need to. Your body translated the rhythm instinctively.

Thump.

Life.

Thump.

Warmth.

Thump.

Blood.

You pressed the crucifix against your forehead until the cool metal bit into your skin.

“Please…” Whether you were praying to God, to the Virgin, or merely to the frightened woman you had once been, you no longer knew. “I don’t want to hear it anymore.”

The convent remained silent.

No answer came.

Only the steady, unwavering music of Matt Murdock’s heart, continuing its patient hymn somewhere in the darkness above you, while your own cursed existence listened like a penitent kneeling before an altar, terrified that what it worshiped had never been God at all.

The following morning, you made a decision that felt almost cowardly.

You would not go near Matt Murdock unless Father Lantom or Sister Maggie explicitly asked you to.

It was a pitiful resolution, fragile enough to collapse beneath the smallest temptation, yet it was the only one your conscience could offer. If prayer had failed to silence the hunger and animal blood had become little more than an illusion of restraint, then distance would have to suffice. It was a miserable substitute for discipline, but at least it was still a choice.

The infirmary remained untouched by your hands that day.

Sister Maggie assured you, with the quiet practicality that characterized her, that Mr. Murdock needed little more than rest until the evening. His wounds had been cleaned, his fever had not returned, and Father Lantom intended to remain close should anything change. There was no need for both of you to hover over the same patient.

You accepted the excuse with a gratitude that bordered on relief.

Instead, you buried yourself elsewhere.

The convent had become unfamiliar in ways that had nothing to do with architecture. The old stone corridors remained where memory insisted they should be, the stained-glass windows still bathed the hallways in fractured colors whenever the sun crossed the sky, and the chapel continued to smell faintly of incense, beeswax, and ancient wood. Yet every room contained reminders that nearly a century had slipped past while you remained beneath the earth.

Medicine had changed.

The books Sister Maggie had gathered for you occupied nearly an entire shelf inside the small library adjoining the convent offices. Anatomy had become more precise. Surgical procedures had evolved beyond anything you had once believed possible. Medications bore names you struggled to pronounce, let alone understand. Entire chapters described machines capable of seeing inside the human body without opening it, as though miracles had quietly exchanged their robes for white laboratory coats.

You spent hours reading. Or rather, pretending to read.

Your eyes traveled dutifully across every page while your thoughts wandered somewhere several floors away. Every now and then your attention abandoned the words entirely, straining instead toward the distant pulse echoing somewhere within Clinton Church.

He was awake.

Then resting. 

Then walking a few uncertain steps with Father Lantom nearby.

Your heightened hearing betrayed each effort before your imagination could. You closed the book and moved to another. Copied passages into a notebook Sister Maggie had left for you.

None of it helped.

The heartbeat found you anyway.

Eventually, when even the library became too small to contain your restlessness, you volunteered to clean. The request surprised one of the younger sisters, who tried insisting that the chores could wait until you had rested more yourself. You smiled, thanked her kindly, and assured her that occupying your hands would do you good.

That part, at least, was true.

You polished pews inside the chapel until the old wood reflected the colored light pouring through the stained glass. You dusted forgotten corners of storage rooms that probably hadn’t been touched in months. You folded clean linens inside the infirmary supply closet without once allowing yourself to glance toward the patient rooms beyond the corridor.

Every task became another excuse not to walk in a direction your body desperately wished to follow.

The convent itself seemed blissfully unaware of the war unfolding beneath your skin.

Novices passed carrying baskets of freshly washed linens, exchanging quiet laughter that disappeared as respectfully as it had appeared. Elder sisters discussed tomorrow’s meals while preparing vegetables in the kitchen. Somewhere outside, children from the orphanage played in the churchyard, their distant voices drifting through the open windows before dissolving into the afternoon air.

Life continued.

Simple.

Ordinary.

Blessedly human.

You wondered whether God had always intended sanctuaries to be this cruel to creatures like you. You were surrounded by the inherent innocence of humanity, by the symphony of children’s lives, by the altruism of the nuns, by the words of Father Lantom, yet your mind was fixated on only one thought: Matt Murdock.

You craved blood, but not just any blood, his. Before, you believed yourself a danger to any human being; now your thirst demanded a particular name. 

You didn’t know if that was more bearable or worse than wanting to drink from everyone.

By late afternoon, exhaustion settled over the convent with the gentle inevitability of approaching dusk. Sunlight stretched across the stone floors in long bands of amber, slowly withdrawing from the hallways as evening approached. You found yourself standing beside one of the tall windows overlooking the courtyard, absently folding the last of the freshly laundered sheets into careful squares.

You ignored the lingering itch the sun’s rays had caused throughout the day. The itch was good; it was a distraction, a way to tear at your skin and punish the profane thoughts within your mind.

The work should have required your attention, the itching too. Instead, you were counting heartbeats.

Without meaning to.

Without even realizing when you had begun.

Your lips pressed into a thin line.

This had to stop.

Not tomorrow.

Not eventually.

Now.

You lowered the folded linen into the basket and closed your eyes for the briefest moment, silently asking for the strength to endure one more night.

When you opened them again, the sunlight had faded another shade darker.

Evening was coming.

And with it, you already knew, the silence that would make Matt Murdock’s heartbeat impossible to escape.

As evening descended upon Hell’s Kitchen, Clinton Church surrendered itself to a familiar ritual.

The last rays of sunlight withdrew from the stained-glass windows one color at a time, until the chapel was left illuminated only by the quiet glow of votive candles burning beneath the Virgin’s statue. Their flames trembled gently every time the old building sighed, throwing restless shadows across the stone walls where generations had whispered prayers long before you had ever been born. Outside, the city continued without reverence. Tires hissed against damp pavement, distant sirens dissolved into the night, and somewhere beyond the churchyard a train rumbled beneath Manhattan, indifferent to the sacred silence that had settled over the convent.

You remained within your room until you could no longer pretend to read.

The book rested open in your lap, its pages unmoving beneath your fingers. At some point you had stopped following the lines entirely. Your eyes remained fixed upon the paper while your mind wandered elsewhere, tracing the steady rhythm that had accompanied you since dawn.

Matt was awake.

You could hear it.

Not because he spoke or moved about the infirmary, but because the cadence of his heartbeat had changed. It no longer belonged to the deep, measured rhythm of sleep. It carried awareness now, fatigue woven through every beat, yet unmistakably conscious.

You closed the book.

Perhaps he had awakened to drink water.

Perhaps Father Lantom was checking his bandages again.

Perhaps Sister Maggie was speaking with him.

You forced yourself to accept each explanation without allowing your thoughts to linger any further.

Then another minute passed.

Then another.

The heartbeat continued.

You stood, crossed your room, knelt before the crucifix, and folded your hands together. The familiar words of the Rosary came instinctively, polished smooth by years of repetition.

Hail Mary, full of grace...

The prayer faltered.

Not because you had forgotten it.

Because another sound had interrupted it.

Silence.

Your eyes opened.

For one suspended moment, you simply remained there, unable to understand what had changed. The convent itself had not grown quieter. The candles still crackled softly in the chapel beyond the corridor. Somewhere upstairs, an old pipe groaned beneath the weight of running water.

Everything remained exactly as it had been.

Everything except...

You listened harder.

Nothing.

Matt’s heartbeat had vanished.

The realization did not arrive all at once. It unfolded slowly, almost gently, as though your mind refused to believe something so impossible. You had spent two days trying not to hear him. Trying to outrun the relentless music of his heart. It had followed you through every corridor, every prayer, every page of every medical textbook.

Now there was only absence. An emptiness where certainty had lived only moments before.

You rose so abruptly that the wooden chair scraped softly against the floor.

“No…” The whisper escaped before you realized you had spoken aloud.

Your senses reached instinctively beyond the walls of your room, stretching through the ancient stone of Clinton Church with a desperation that bordered on panic. You searched for the familiar rhythm again.

Nothing.

Not in the infirmary.

Not in the corridor.

Not anywhere inside the convent.

A cold weight settled deep within your chest.

Matt had left.

Your first emotion was relief. It came so suddenly that it almost embarrassed you. If he had gone, then the temptation had gone with him. The constant ache beneath your ribs, the impossible pull toward his living heartbeat, perhaps at last you could breathe without feeling your own nature clawing at your conscience.

The relief lasted scarcely a heartbeat because another thought arrived immediately afterward. He should not have been able to leave.

Not alone.

Not in his condition.

You had treated enough broken bodies to know what his injuries demanded. Even if his determination eclipsed common sense, his ribs had not healed overnight. His shoulder remained unstable. His balance had only begun returning. Walking through the streets of Hell’s Kitchen after sunset was reckless for a healthy man.

For Matt Murdock, it bordered on suicidal.

You lowered your head, closing your eyes as your fingers instinctively found the rosary hanging around your wrist.

You could remain where you were. Father Lantom would eventually notice. The police might find him. Someone else could intervene.

Those were reasonable thoughts. Human thoughts.

Yet they crumbled beneath a far older truth.

Long before you had become a creature sustained by blood, before the darkness beneath Clinton Church had rewritten your existence, you had been a nurse.

A nurse did not ignore an empty bed.

A nurse did not hear the absence of a patient and simply hoped someone else would care enough to look.

The hunger stirred almost immediately, sensing the direction of your thoughts. It whispered that you were lying to yourself.

That concern had nothing to do with it. That somewhere beyond the church walls walked the one heartbeat your cursed body desired above all others.

Perhaps it was right.

Perhaps it wasn’t.

You no longer trusted yourself enough to know the difference.

The only certainty left was that Matt Murdock had disappeared into the night, injured, exhausted, and determined to die whether he admitted it aloud or not. If you remained inside Clinton Church and something happened to him...

...you would hear that silence for the rest of eternity.

You reached for your coat without allowing yourself another moment to think. A piece of clothing that was donated to you by the sisters.

Whether you were following your calling...

...or your curse...

...you suspected Heaven had already decided long before you stepped beyond the doors of Clinton Church.

The first blast of fresh air was brutal. It wasn’t the same air as before, the air of your time; this one felt heavier, stronger, and overwhelming. You could feel the heaviness in the new natural scent of your city, and the sensation wasn’t welcome; you wanted to push it away, but it had already seeped into your nostrils.

You had to lean against the wooden doors of the church. Suddenly, the air ceased to be the main invader; instead, the sounds became louder, more present. They reverberated in your ears with the force of an orchestra preparing for war: distant police sirens, nighttime shouts, drunks, the hum of new technology. Everything. Everything you had previously allowed yourself to ignore within the safe walls of the church was now tormenting you as you faced a new world you knew nothing about.

You hissed, squeezing your eyes shut as the artificial lights invaded your vision. You could feel the weight of this new world suffocating you, sensations unfamiliar to you; the whirring, powerful electricity that had once been a privilege now adorned every moment of your beloved Hell’s Kitchen.

In your desire to become a savior, you had never considered what it would mean to face the modern world, a world you weren’t a part of. You were faster, stronger, more lethal; everything about you was enhanced, but you never had practice, never learned to control the abilities God had bestowed upon you.

You heard everything and nothing at the same time because you were incapable of focusing on anything in particular.

You could smell every kind of aroma, even the garbage left in a bin that poisoned the purity of the oxygen.

You felt your skin sting from every chemical in the air; you felt the pollution of the world you now lived in.

Your eyes didn’t burn, but they couldn’t withstand such stimuli. The electricity present everywhere seemed to laugh at your naiveté.

Were you really that pathetic? Was it really that easy to defeat a creature that had massacred men with ease? A creature that conventional weapons couldn’t harm?

It seemed like a joke, a ritual for humble you.

You had to kneel because you were so overwhelmed, and…

then…

only then did you smell it.

A drop, a single drop spread across the floor.

A drop of blood. His blood.

Matt’s blood.

“Oh my God…” you moaned, and without realizing it, your trembling finger went to the drop of blood and pressed into it. You didn’t even think about it, and you carried the remnants of what was surely Matt’s open wound to your lips.

The change was instantaneous.

The city was gone, the visual and air pollution were gone, you didn’t feel the itch or anything. There was only a smell, a sound, a sensation.

Matt.

You could feel him even from afar. You could smell him completely; blood and sweat. You could hear the siren song that was his heartbeat. You could almost visualize the tense movement of his muscles.

Everything else was gone, only him.

Only your prey.

Your limbs didn’t feel the same as before. You didn’t feel foolish from uncontrolled strength, lost, or overwhelmed.

You were no longer a foolish woman trapped in a new world. Now you were back in the moment you destroyed those who had harmed your home.

You became the huntress again, guided this time by the excuse of helping a man who had no idea that he was the obsession of the thirst monster.

You moved without thinking, not as quickly as the first time you became undead, but with a need that almost equaled the desire to protect your home.

This time, you were being selfish, and you couldn’t control it.

The alley announced itself before you ever saw it. The rain had joined you as you approached, as if the atmosphere had decided to be your companion.

The heartbeat had changed.

Its rhythm no longer carried the weary cadence of a man wandering without purpose through Hell’s Kitchen. It staggered now beneath violent exertion, each beat crashing against the next with painful irregularity before slowing again, as though determination alone kept it from surrendering altogether. Around it, other hearts thundered with the reckless confidence of men who believed themselves hunters. Their laughter spilled into the street before the words themselves reached you, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of fists meeting flesh.

You stopped at the mouth of the alley.

Darkness gathered there differently than it did elsewhere in the city.

The towering brick buildings devoured what little light the streetlamps offered, leaving only narrow ribbons of pale gold stretched across wet pavement. Rainwater lingered in shallow puddles that reflected broken fragments of neon signs from the avenue beyond, while overflowing dumpsters and rusted fire escapes transformed the passage into little more than another forgotten wound carved into Hell’s Kitchen.

At the very end of it stood Matt.

Or rather, what remained of his resolve.

His back collided violently against the brick wall before his knees nearly buckled beneath him. One of the men struck him across the face with enough force to send fresh blood spilling from his split lip. Another laughed—a short, satisfied sound utterly devoid of mercy—as he drove his fist into Matt’s ribs.

The same ribs you had wrapped only hours before.

The impact reached your ears before the cry itself.

Bone protesting.

Air leaving exhausted lungs.

A heartbeat stumbling.

Matt recovered his footing only long enough to receive another blow.

He scarcely defended himself.

His hands rose by instinct now and then, but there was no conviction behind the movement. No precision. No relentless confidence belonging to the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Whatever had once made him terrifying had remained buried beneath Midland Circle alongside that woman. Elektra.

He did not fight.

He endured.

There was a profound difference.

One of the attackers grabbed the front of his shirt, shoving him hard enough that the back of his head struck the wall. Another said something you barely registered through the deafening roar of blood rushing inside your own ears.

Matt answered.

You couldn’t hear the words.

Only the resignation beneath them.

Then his heart slowed. Not because peace had found him, because he had stopped resisting. Something inside you fractured.

For two days you had prayed that God would grant you strength enough to master the monster living beneath your skin. You had counted rosary beads until your fingers ached. You had swallowed blood that tasted like ash simply because Father Lantom believed there remained goodness worth preserving inside you.

You had done everything a faithful soul was meant to do.

Yet now, standing in that rain-soaked alley while an injured man quietly accepted death with open hands, your prayers dissolved into something infinitely simpler.

No.

The word echoed somewhere deep within you.

Not spoken.

Felt.

The men never heard your footsteps.

One moment they stood over Matt Murdock. Your steps were silent, your presence equal to that of a ghost. The next, every instinct they possessed screamed that they were no longer alone. Silence descended first. A peculiar, unnatural silence, even the laughter disappeared.

One of them turned.

You saw confusion settle across his face before fear had time to replace it.

There was nothing remarkable about your appearance. No monstrous transformation. No grotesque revelation announcing the creature you had become. You remained exactly as Father Lantom had found you each morning: dark coat pulled tightly against the cold, hair dampened by the evening mist, hands hanging quietly at your sides.

Only your eyes had changed.

Not in color.

In stillness.

They regarded the men before you with an absence of humanity so complete that language itself seemed incapable of reaching it.

One of them frowned. “...Who the hell are you?”

You did not answer because you no longer knew. For nearly a century you had asked God the same question without receiving one.

Nurse.

Orphan.

Daughter.

Monster.

Miracle.

Punishment.

None of the names fit comfortably anymore.

Behind the men, Matt shifted weakly against the wall. His head lifted only slightly, blood running freely from the corner of his mouth. His damaged senses searched the alley with desperate confusion, trying to understand the impossible stillness that had fallen over it.

He heard you. Not your heartbeat, but the absence of one. 

Your gaze found him for only a single instant.

He looked impossibly tired.

Not merely wounded.

Tired in the way old churches appeared tired after sheltering generations of grief. Tired in the way Father Lantom sometimes sounded after burying another soul taken too soon. There existed a profound weariness within him that no physician could treat and no medicine could soothe.

You remembered the touch of his hand against yours two days earlier.

The flood of sorrow that had poured through you without invitation. The certainty that this man carried enough suffering to drown an ordinary heart. Perhaps that was why yours had answered him so completely.

Or perhaps...

Perhaps God had always intended monsters to recognize broken things. 

In that moment, you forgot the sinful lust that had gripped you while you cared for him; now… now there was a certainty of not wanting to see him dead.

Not at the hands of these criminals, at least.

One of the attackers stepped toward you. Bravado still lingered in his posture, but uncertainty had already entered his heartbeat. You heard it quicken beneath his ribs, betraying the confidence his face struggled to maintain.

“Lady,” he muttered, attempting a smile that convinced neither of you, “this ain’t your business.”

You lowered your eyes. For the briefest moment, your fingers tightened around the crucifix hidden beneath your coat.

Forgive me.

The prayer was almost soundless. Not because you expected absolution. Because it had become a habit.

When you lifted your gaze again, the man took an involuntary step backward.

He did not know why. Neither did you.

Perhaps every human soul carries, buried somewhere beneath instinct and reason alike, the ancient memory that there are creatures the world was never meant to contain.

The rain continued falling softly between you.

Behind you, church bells began ringing somewhere in the distance. Or perhaps it was your imagination, or the work of some demon enjoying what was about to happen.

Nine slow chimes.

Their solemn voices drifted across Hell’s Kitchen, reaching the alley just as they had reached Clinton nearly a century earlier. For one suspended heartbeat, they sounded almost like a benediction.

Then the darkness moved.

It was simple. Incredibly simple. They were nothing more than fragile vessels of flesh before you. Not in the way you easily tore their skin with your fangs, not in the way you sucked with a force that would surely leave giant bruises on their hides, not in the way each drop of blood, denoting life, now cascaded down your throat, quenching an ancient thirst.

The first man couldn’t even scream; you made sure to cover his mouth as you drained the life from him. The other man watched in horror the spectacle of a demon from ancient legends that didn’t belong to this country, or at least, not to this part of it.

He couldn’t even move; fear was too great, the fear that engulfs prey that knows it’s next.

You were a dark and lethal flash; it wasn’t enough for you to suck the blood of the first man. The second man met the same fate. Judgment belonged to the Lord; you were only the blade He wielded.

Afterward, Hell’s Kitchen would remember only fragments. Bodies almost devoid of blood, bites from a beast, and bruises that formed faster than usual. Their bodies in a state of absolute pallor, as if life itself had been stolen from them, but perhaps because it had. Not lives that had died in the conventional way, but by divine intervention.

Perhaps it was a wild animal that had escaped from a zoo, its disappearance never reported to avoid the scandal. Maybe an exotic animal being trafficked; it was Hell’s Kitchen after all, these things happened... right?

Rumors are born wherever fear fails to find an explanation.

Saint Agnes had always protected its own. And somewhere beneath its ancient stones the convent had been hiding a demon all along. 

Not an animal, but a demon wrought by the Lord Himself. 

When silence finally returned to the alley, the bells had already finished ringing, if they ever started ringing at all.

Rain continued washing the pavement with patient indifference.

Matt’s heartbeat remained.

Weak.

Unsteady.

Alive.

You knelt beside him immediately, your trembling hands reaching not for the darkness still clawing beneath your skin, but for the man slumped against the brick wall. His breathing came shallowly now, his consciousness drifting somewhere beyond your reach. Blood still marked his face, his ruined knuckles, the collar of his shirt, and every instinct within you recoiled in equal measure between horror and longing.

Your fingertips hovered only a moment before gently brushing the damp hair away from his forehead.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, though you no longer knew which sin the apology belonged to.

For following him.

For failing to stop what had happened sooner.

Or for the truth that frightened you more than anything else—that despite everything, despite every prayer and every act of restraint, the first thing you searched for was not whether he could still see or speak.

It was whether his heart was still beating.

It answered beneath your hand with one slow, stubborn pulse.

Then another.

He was going to live. He would live another day thanks to your intervention.

You closed your eyes, bowed your head in silent gratitude, and gathered his unconscious body into your arms with a strength no ordinary woman could have possessed.

The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen had gone into the night believing no one would come for him.

He never saw the Demon of Saint Agnes carry him home.

notes: so… yes, reader saved matt!!! but she drank human blood after years of not doing so… 🙂‍↕️🤭

taglist: @lilacmurdock @silentrreader @supremeshrimpy2 @perpetualmess @kitkatq05 @uselessnewt @riverjane-d @scarletddevil @myoldblogisdead @unfortunatelyacertifiedcrashout @mooucifer @nerdytrash-panda @energerstar @vvitchesh3x @cloudnuggettt @hellilovedit @theyateastarnamedaquarius

You’re nailing it.

Reader isn’t in love with Matt. She craves him carnally. Like. Literally.

It’s hot as fuck. You have the essence of a vampire captured in all aspects: the guilt, the vampire, the lust, the battle for blood, the secrecy.

We forgive reader for drinking blood. It’s fine. Seriously. No biggie girlfriend you earned it. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen & The Demon of Saint Agnes goes FUCKING HARDDDDD.