#ler!matt

"I'm not even-"

"If you say you're not doing anything one more goddamn time Matt I'll kill you."

This has been going on for days.

Matt - sweet, clueless Matt - had gotten a bit too adventurous with his hands about a week ago when you were engaging in your standard sickening amount of PDA, touch just a little too light and a little too fast. And you'd flinched, because of course you had, and he'd given you that puppydog-tilted-head look that anyone else might find sweet but you knew meant he'd taken note of the reaction and would be making you regret it later.

Only, later never came.

Sure, there had been small things here and there - the hand on your waist when he needed to get by you being suspiciously teasing, the kisses he pressed to your neck getting lighter and lighter, the casual pokes when you had to stand on your toes to reach something he'd yet again decided to hide on the highest possible shelf. But nothing beyond that. No evidence he knew what he was doing aside from the amused grin on his face and the fact that he'd never done any of that before.

And god help you, it was driving you insane.

"Really, honey. I'm not sure what you're talking about," he tries again, voice placating and confused. But the look in his eyes, you'd know that smug amusement anywhere.

And, okay, maybe you're beginning to crack a little.

"Listen, I- if you're going to do something, just do it already!" You're ranting at this point and you know it, equal parts nervous and infuriated (and, okay, maybe a little amused) in the way only he could make you. "I'm pretty sure this is like, psychological torture or- or gaslighting, or something! Not to mention you-"

The words stop coming only when the world tilts on its axis all of a sudden, the ceiling taking over your vision as your weight works against you, one light but intentionally placed little push to your shoulder, a foot behind your ankle, and you're laid out flat on your back on the couch.

You don't have time to process before Matt follows you down.

"Psychological torture? That would never hold up in court, y'know."

His fingers are digging into your sides gently, and it's all so sudden you almost forget to laugh. Almost.

But you don't forget to laugh. Instead, some high pitched sound between a squeak and a scream is all you can manage before your words are crumbling to giggles.

"MATTHEW!"

You use the last of your breath to put as much venom and accusation in his name as possible, like it's a curse. He seems a little too entertained to care.

"What? You gave me permission and everything!"

"Ihihi did nohohot-!"

“Why not?”

“The Succubus, of all people-”

Karen scoffed. “Um, that’s kind of harsh, Foggy.”

“No, that’s a pretty…” Matt ducked his head to the side and fished in his pocket for his phone. “… apt description. She can be difficult.”

“Difficult?” Foggy stood, his chair scraping along the floor as he slammed his hands on the table for dramatic effect, perhaps forgetting it had no sway on his business partner. “Difficult?! She gutted us like fish in her story on the Petrenko trial!”

“She also praised our performance last month on the Harvey acquittal- Foggy…” Matt held up a hand to pacify his friend. The same hand that held the phone ready to dial your number. “She might have a press pass to the gala. It’ll be a high-profile case so if we offer her an exclusive interview-”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Foggy muttered, sniffing and stewing as Matt listened to him slowly come to terms with the reality that it was a good idea to call you. While this exchange was happening, Karen had been clicking and typing away at the computer she’d shifted to stand behind.

“If one were to use a phrase to describe the closing statement made by Mr Nelson, ‘nail in the coffin’ would be most appropriate- wow, I forgot that she did not pull any punches on this article.”

“It wasn’t our best work,” Matt winced, still remembering the ferocity with which Foggy had slammed down his empty beer glasses, adding to the dents on the thick wooden table at Josie’s Bar after he’d read the piece. In between gulps he’d muttered about the ethics of journalism until Matt managed to convince Foggy putting some carbs in him, and then him in a taxi, would probably be for the best. People were staring. Matt didn’t need sight to know that.

“I don’t like this, Matt. She’ll turn on us the second we mess up.”

“The gala is tomorrow night and we don’t have any other options,” Matt reasoned, holding up his phone as if it were a weapon he was declaring. “I’m going to call her.” He held the phone close to his mouth, activated the voice-command mic, and told his device to dial your number.

It was perhaps the call you least expected to receive that day. After years of reporting on the strange, the scandalous and the scathing underbelly of Hell’s Kitchen, you took pride in the fact that not much surprised you anymore. Though, you had to admit, seeing Matt Murdock’s name on an incoming call certainly made you stop in your tracks - which was a problem, considering this was New York. Someone clocked your shoulder as you were about to hit the answer button, then gave you a dirty glare for stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Yeah, humans don’t come with brake lights,” you sneered back. “Watch where you’re going!” Rolling your eyes, you stepped off to the side of the pavement and held the phone to your ear. “Murdock,” you greeted, and didn’t try to hide the curious smile in your diction. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Seriously, not much surprised you. You’d uncovered countless schemes, reported on the strangest crimes (who knew the balloon industry was built on so much money-laundering?!), met supposedly terrifying people who crumbled at the simplest well-placed question, been propositioned for affairs by numerous elite, their wives, their husbands, with both of them… but for the second time today, you were stopped in your tracks. Nothing could have prepared you for what Matt Murdock was about to say:

“We need your help.”

The wooden hallway creaked and shifted with the sound of your shoes in search of the sign for the modest legal firm. A wooden door, painted white, charmingly worn, had a frosted pane adorned with words which informed you you’d found the offices of ‘Nelson and Murdock, Attorneys at Law.’ Curious as anything about the latter lawyer’s ambiguous phone call, you pushed the door open and entered. As you shut it behind you, you took the chance to take in the sight of their practise.

A small smirk tugged at your lips, as with a shake of your head you wondered if any other setting would’ve suited the two renegades so well. There was something homegrown and authentic about the men that you had to admire as a fellow human. They were certainly ambitious in the clientele they took on, so you wondered if the whole vintage office aesthetic was a means to be less intimidating to the blue-collar workers who preferred law firms like this. They didn’t put a lot of effort into looking modern. In fact, the only Big Law type feature they had was the stereotypical beautiful woman behind the front desk.

You approached her with a polite smile. “I’m here to see Matt Murdock. He’s expecting me.”

She returned your polite smile, albeit hesitantly, and flipped her strawberry-blonde hair behind her slender shoulders as she stood and smoothed out her pencil-skirt. “Just one moment,” she sounded a little breathless, which made you fight a smirk. God, what Nelson must have said to her about you. “Have a seat,” she gestured to a series of metal-framed chairs with cream tweed cushions, then walked over to an office with the internal blinds drawn. Her heels clicked loudly against the wooden floor all the way from her leaving the desk to when she entered the room and shut the door behind her.

You didn’t heed her suggestion, dubious of one of the stains that someone evidently couldn’t quite eradicate from the fabric. A small laugh escaped through your nose when you spied a forgotten swing tag just peaking out from underneath one of the seats, telling you they’d bought these chairs for seven dollars each from some kind of charity shop. Good on them, you supposed, for not wasting money to impress people with stuff.

A few minutes passed as you took in the details of their workplace. How long did it take to say you were here? Murdock was the more open-minded of the two. They were probably still trying to calm Nelson down. Maybe you should-

“Sorry for the wait,” a familiar lower voice, with just a hint of gravel, pulled you from examining the view outside the window behind the secretary’s desk. When you turned, you saw Matt Murdock in his charcoal grey suit and dark crimson-tinted glasses gesturing for you to enter the office. “Please, come in.”

You didn’t respond with words, just by walking past him and into a slightly darker room. As soon as you entered, the secretary pulled the blinds up and let more light in. “Nelson,” you sang with a smile, trying to not make it look too unenthused. He gave a sarcastic smile back, which made you scoff a laugh. “Still mad about the Petrenko article?”

“Just doubting you’ll be willing to help us.”

“Then why’d you call?”

“Because,” Murdock’s voice snapped your attention towards him and his commanding demeanour. He stood up straighter. “We don’t really have another choice.”

He explained as best he could. Their client, Harold Avery, owned a shopfront on the corner of 4th and 19th - up-and-coming prime real estate in Hell’s Kitchen. An apartment block built by Hanlon Developments had recently gone up across the street selling units for $400,000 at minimum. Avery said even the rich people in those fancy new apartments seemed to appreciate the convenience of having his store there. They were mostly nice. He’d inherited the shop from his mother, who’d come to New York with less than fifteen dollars in her pocket. She’d worked hard at the store as a clerk, eventually buying it from the owner who’d expressed interest in moving on to a slower-paced state.

It was easy to see why Nelson and Murdock took this guy on - they were real suckers for salt-of-the-earth people, grassroots, tragic backstories, the like. Or maybe they were trying to convince you why it would make a good story. Fighting the urge to interject, you found yourself settling a little more on the arm of the couch, also a cream tweed, listening as Murdock did his bit.

“A separate developer, Mercury Holdings, recently purchased the block across from the new apartments, having seen the success of how all the original units were snapped up.”

There you cut in. “Let me guess: that developer has offered your client more than fair compensation to give up his storefront in order for them to purchase another entire block, and he’s refused. Now they’re playing legal hardball, trying some kind of hostile takeover.”

“Yes and no,” Nelson chimed in, sounding a little too smug that you’d gotten at least half of it wrong. He swivelled around his desktop computer to show a charred and destroyed lower corner of a city block.

“Oh, shit,” you breathed out, bumped your eyebrows and leaned towards the screen to watch the photos as he clicked through. With the context of the conversation, it was obvious this destroyed piece of real estate belonged to Harold Avery. “Hope he had insurance.”

“He did. That’s part of the problem. Police found clear signs of sabotage at the scene,” Karen piped up, and you again fought the urge to interrupt and ask her what the hell her job description even was. Still, you accepted the manila envelope she held out to you. When you opened it, you caught a glance at some twisted gas valve before noticing the NYPD watermark. Looking up at Nelson, you narrowed your eyes. “Is this discovery?” He nodded. You slapped it closed. “I do have ethics, Nelson. You can’t show third-parties discovery before a civil case is settled-”

“It’s not a civil case,” he shot back with another smug smile.

You quickly put the pieces together. Furrowing your brow, you opened the files again. “They think he torched his own bodega to commit insurance fraud.”

“Yeah,” Murdock said in his low near-whisper, shifting as he perched against the window dividing the two offices. “He‘s facing a litany of charges. Fraud, arson, reckless endangerment of the other tenants in the block, animal cruelty-”

“Animal cruelty?”

“His cat was in the store,” Nelson told you. “She got out alright.”

You sighed and flicked through the pages. “So… what? You want me to whistleblow on some faceless developer? Do you even have any evidence that he didn’t do this?”

“Insurance would’ve paid him less than a quarter of what the developers were offering. He had no motive.”

“The police certainly think he had motive,” you pointed out. “Or else they wouldn’t have arrested him.”

The room was quiet for several long seconds before Karen, the secretary who was apparently in on meetings, spoke up. “The store had been running at a deficit for a while.”

You turned your head slowly to look at her, “Define a while.”

She fidgeted with her fingers in her lap before shooting an apologetic glance to Nelson. “About three years.”

“Three years?!” You stood out of shock. She rushed to explain, to placate you.

“But- but, he said that since the development had gone up he’d been experiencing record sales-”

“He’s been losing money for three years and refuses to sell his store for, what, five or six times its market value?” You scoffed, tossing the file down on the desk next to Nelson. “If you think my readers are going to sympathise with this guy, much less believe some property tycoon orchestrated the arson of a convenience store that was on the verge of bankruptcy, you’ve got another thing coming. All Hanlon, or Mercury, or Fireside, or any of these developers had to do was wait six months to a year and then duke it out with the bank.”

“There’s evidence he didn’t do it,” Murdock spoke up again, and you felt yourself losing patience.

“Then why was he arrested, hmm?”

“Because the police say the evidence implicates him. But unless our guy spent money hiring some street-level crony to burn it down for him, a few guys with Slavic accents didn’t anticipate the CCTV cameras they blacked out would also record sound.”

You bit your tongue to stop yourself from saying something you’d regret. Giving yourself a second or two to calm down, you carefully said, “Murdock, I’m running out of patience and I’ve got some prep to do before a huge charity gala tomorrow evening-”

“This ties in to that,” he nodded sincerely. “Just a minute more and you’ll see. Foggy,” he turned to his partner. “The tape.”

You let them hear your sigh as you once again perched against the couch arm, lingering your eyes on Murdock before lazing them back to the blackened screen.

“Now there’s black spray paint on the lens,” Nelson clicked the mouse and the video started. “But if you listen closely…”

There was shuffling of shoes, of coats, people sniffing and moving carefully around the store. “Back here,” a thick accent, yes, Slavic, was heard in the background. “There are too many people outside,” another voice, different, more anxious, spoke. The first voice said again, “The boss wants this done now. I cannot be with him on Friday night without this being completed. He wants to tell the others of his plans.” The more anxious voice spoke, “Get on with it then. And be quiet.”

There were a few more minutes of tinkering, the sound of the two people leaving the store, and then several moments of silence before the hissing, crackling blaze began. After another minute, the fire alarm started sounding just before the tape cut off.

You pondered for a few seconds. “So the police think this implicates Avery.”

Murdock ducked his head to the side. “It’s pretty vague.”

“You got that right,” you stuck your tongue against the inside of your cheek, trying to figure out how to let them down easy. “Why am I here?”

“Because if this was in fact one of the developers who orchestrated the arson, then what the men on the tape are referring to is most likely the charity gala being held at the Swanson Gallery tomorrow night. At least one of these men will be there with their boss,” Murdock pointed to the screen. “If we can find them and link them to a developer-”

“Then whahat?” You laughed, holding up your hands in frustration. “And how are you even planning on finding someone when you have no idea what they look like?”

“I’m good with voices,” Murdock said.

You sighed again.

“All we’re asking is that you get Matt in as a plus-one,” Karen said with a hint of desperation.

You looked between the three of them in their tiny office, thinking about the cases they’ve taken on, their cheap old computer monitor, their earnest desire to help and their seven dollar waiting-room chairs. You thought about the story of it - the exclusive they were sure to offer you since they couldn’t really offer you anything else - and knew if some real estate developer was burning down mom-and-pop stores in Hell’s Kitchen to create high-end appartments for the wealthy… well, that kind of outrage was sure to sell papers. Everyone loved a David taking down a greedy Goliath.

“I have to go to the Starlight Gala to try and convince Arthur Reynolds to give me an interview, or at the very least a quote. So… yeah, I think I can get Murdock in but we’ll have to be sneaky about it. I don’t get a plus-one on a press pass.”

“So then-”

“I have an idea that might work but it’s going to require you to be able to act like you’re not blind. Can you do that?”

Matt opened his mouth to speak, thick silence filling the room once again. Nelson tried his best to not look suspicious but he’d always worn his heart on his sleeve, and it was then that you knew you were out of the loop on something big. So was Karen, apparently, since she gave her bosses a curious glance. However, no way in hell were they about to trust you with that kind of information, whatever it was.

He cleared his throat and nodded. “I can.”

“Good,” you nodded back, then ignoring the moment of stupidity you felt for nodding at a man who couldn’t see it.

“What’s in it for you?” Nelson snipped. “No way you’re doing this for nothing.”

You rolled your eyes and hiked your bag a little higher on your shoulder. “Eighth-page exposé on a desperate store-owner, or front-page jaw-dropper on developers committing arson… this’ll be a story regardless. I’ll expect an exclusive from the attorneys who took it on,” you said, then turned back to Murdock. “Text me your address. Wear a black suit, white shirt, black tie. I’ll pick you up at nine.”

The rain fell in a rough steady onslaught outside his corner loft as Matt Murdock picked out the correct clothing to follow your instructions. He knew his pieces by touch, knowing which colour was associated with each unique feel and thread count. As he did up the buttons on his sleeve and the watch on his wrist clicked in its unique way to inform him it was quarter to the next hour, the next hour being nine in the evening, he tried to forget the conversation that’d occurred the second you’d left their offices the day before.

Foggy damn near threw a fit at the idea that trusting you was a good idea, and Karen seemed shaken to have come face-to-face with you for the first time. She’d heard your name, of course, having been around for the past year or so. You’d written stories on a few on their more public trails, taken quotes from them a handful of times, you were a name that was certainly known amongst media circles, though Matt got the impression Karen had never seen what you looked like. You certainly had the confidence in your effortless commanding demeanour of a woman who knew she was beautiful, and knew how to use it to her advantage. Women like you never quite seemed to know how to interact with him, given their usual tricks couldn’t work. He couldn’t be disarmed with a perfect smile or a flirty gaze, which is perhaps why he was the only person in the room you seemed to be talking to as an equal. Or as someone you trusted.

Interesting, it was, that the only person you trusted was the one you couldn’t easily manipulate.

He was downstairs at exactly the correct time, umbrella in hand as he heard the car roll up outside his building. The driver got out and opened the back door for Matt to slide into. So, not a standard taxi. The luxe leather seats in the back and the pristine atmosphere of the car was the second sign. Your perfume, the rose-tinted scent of your lipstick, the way the silk you wore shifted against the leather as you turned to him and the car continued on its journey - that was the third sigh.

“Corporate car,” Matt smirked. “Who knew journalism paid so well.”

“When your name sells papers the boss likes to keep you happy.”

Matt nodded and stuck his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “Right. And the three-hundred dollar bottle of perfume - was that to keep you happy too?”

“It was business expense, actually.” He could hear the way your lips were curled into a sly smile. “The fact you noticed it is case and point. It ranked number two for most seductive fragrance on a poll in GQ.”

“Why not go for number one?”

“Can’t smell like every other woman, can I? Men like to feel like they’ve found something special.”

“Right,” Matt chuckled, then turned to you. “What’s the plan?”

The raucous city rain was unrelenting as the car’s driver drew his expert path over the slick roads. He was level-headed enough to not blare his horn in chorus with his impatient neighbours, but assertive enough to swear under his breath and place the wheels in the very space someone was seeking to cut into. All in all, a pretty standard ride in New York.

Hell’s Kitchen was a stone’s throw from the Upper West Side. Matt had spent some time there for meetings and depositions and the occasional back-alley punching match, though the nights were usually far too alive for him to slink around unnoticed. He was more likely to find young people and the Class C drugs they took to feel more interesting and slip out of the grips of Daddy’s Money for just one night, than he was to find the gritty underbelly of crime. That’s not to say it didn’t happen, but he was called the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen for a reason.

You’d never written about him. About The Devil. The Nut in the Mask. Daredevil, as some had recently started calling him. Part of Matt wanted to ask you what you thought of the vigilante but the second he had the desire he was gripped with the uncomfortable idea that he just might care what you thought, and that was dangerous. Because that was stepping into pride’s territory. You may have no idea you sat side-by-side with the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen but if there was one thing Matt knew, it’s that you could sniff out a prideful man from a block away. For what other reason would you be wearing the second most seductive perfume, as rated by men.

The car pulled up to the back of the gallery where there was, thankfully, an overhang. On the way, you’d explained the press entrance to him. You’d explained how you’d try to sneak him inside and you’d made him swap his glasses for ones you brought that were darker and thicker and felt more official. As per the plan, he exited the car first and rounded the back to open the door for you. He offered you a hand as you stepped out. Your touch was softer than he expected it to be. He took half a second to wonder if he’d been expecting a vice grip because of your tenacity, or because he was so used to the nights belonging to tussles with enemies. Either way, you didn’t thank him for his help.

He matched your pace a step or two behind as you approached the entrance and fished in your bag for your press pass. Then, you faltered in your step and he heard you grin and laugh through your nose.

“Richie,” you greeted the guard like an old friend.

“Hey, Mama,” he chuckled back. You two exchange a quick kiss on the cheek and you said you hadn’t seen him work these things in a while. He told you his wife gave birth to twin boys three months ago. You sounded… genuinely interested. Happy for him. Aware there was somewhat of a line building, you promised to catch him later and that you wanted to see photos of his sons. Matt stood dutifully behind you the whole time, giving the impression that he was looking around as you flashed the press pass Richie already knew you had and you turned to gesture towards the black-suited man you brought along.

“This is Murdock. Private security.” There was something unimpressed in your voice, though this time it was forced. You wanted Richie to think Matt was an annoyance.

“Hey now, you know your pass doesn’t cover-”

“I know, I know,” you lowered your voice. “Look, I’m working this story on someone big and I got a teeny little death threat so now the paper’s paying this guy a hundred bucks an hour to follow me around.” Richie sighed, Matt tensed his lips into a polite smile and nodded. “Richie… this place can only be safer with him here. What’s the problem?”

“Yeah,” he sighed again, waving you on through. “Yeah, yeah, go.”

“Thank you,” you smiled sweetly. As he passed him, Matt heard Richie do the small disappointed scoff of someone who knew he was yet another man giving into a beautiful woman, but didn’t really seem to mind.

“Flirting with married men?” Matt clicked his tongue as you two walked down a hallway. You stopped in place and turned to him, perhaps a little surprised that he didn’t walk into you. A small wave of rage surged in your chest. Or, rage wasn’t the correct word. Injustice, more like.

“If you think that was flirting, you are sorely unprepared for the real world, Murdock.” Your words were quiet, but precise, and dripping with venom. “So help me, if you pull some stupid shit here that gets Richie in trouble for letting you in I will eviscerate you, and Nelson, and your secretary who somehow sits within the bounds of Attorney-Client privilege. Have I made myself clear?”

Good one, you scolded yourself. Now he‘ll know you’re nothing but another bitchy journalist.

Good one, asshole, Matt stuck his tongue to the inside of his cheek. That wasn’t a fair call.

Instead of apologising, he said: “Crystal.”

“Good,” you responded instantly, then dropped the matter all together. You weren’t one for grudges anyway.

As you turned and started walking down the hallway again, the sounds of the party swelled and reverberated until the clicking of your heels against the wooden floor was nearly drowned out completely. But not to Matthew, who was using it as one of the many ways to track your movements. That, and the lingering trail of your perfume.

“Arthur Reynolds is my priority tonight,” turning your head to remind him, you felt pleasantly surprised to see he was playing his part to perfection. Some kind of comment died at your lips. Maybe you were going to ask why he bothered with the stick at all, or accuse him of something much more villainous like faking his blindness, but the ramifications of that assumption were clearly something you’d never explore. Still, he liked to feel the curiosity building in your stance. Why wasn’t this perfume number one?

You scanned the crowd for the man who matched the various press conferences and interviews you’d watched. You’d never seen Reynolds in person, much less met him. He was a hard man to pin down but he was recently divorced so he may be more willing to mingle with the masses.

In your experience, nothing pissed a rich man off more than feeling duped. Even a man like Reynolds, who dedicated most of his life and his funds to humanitarian work, would react badly to a woman flirting with him for ten minutes and then revealing she wanted something. It wasn’t about being taken advantage of - no, he would be used to that. Being tricked, however? Unacceptable. It was a pride thing, and you could smell pride from a block away.

“There’s a silent auction at our ten o’clock,” you told Murdock. “Reynolds might be there. Your man might be too.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Who, me?” You put on a voice of mock outrage. “I’m a nice business man who purchases art for charity. I wouldn’t order an arson attack.”

He chuckled behind you, and a satisfied smile pulled into one side of your lips. Something about cracking his brooding shield made you relax and sink into the confidence of wearing a black pure silk dress at a party.

As you made your ways through the crowd, Matt found himself unwittingly picking up on conversations he was sure you couldn’t hear. He was glad you couldn’t hear. There were comments, some lewd, turnings of heads, whispers about what they’d like to do to you. Claims of what they’d already done. He could hear their heartbeats and knew they were all liars. Then, someone stepped into your path.

“Jack,” you greeted, not hiding how unenthusiastic you were to see him.

“You look gorgeous.”

Matt recognised his voice from the news reels, from the court recordings of him paying yet another fine for some stupid frat-boy-maturity offence. John Alexander McBride III. Jack, as he went by, was your standard Upper East Side playboy with too much money and too much time to kill before he was slated to take over his father’s company. Yachts, casinos, private islands and the like were his entire personality.

“I’m working,” you quickly shut down.

“Who are you here to see? I’ll introduce you.”

“Jack, I’m not-”

“No strings attached. I swear.”

Fucking liar. Matt felt his fist clench. You were fast out of the gate to express your doubt. He could hear the way you jaw was tensed as you let out of a puff of air through your nose. Still, you were obviously uncomfortable here with him. With his senses, Matt had a pretty good picture of Jack. He was tall, used way too much cologne, Matt had heard people fawn over his piercing blue eyes. You seemed completely aware of Jack’s halo effect and you were, not completely but still sufficiently, immune to it.

“There are always strings with you.”

As you moved to step around him, Matt heard Jack’s suit jacket shift, he heard a hand close around your upper arm, and before you could react Matt’s own hand snatched rough around Jack’s wrist. The shock of the strength of his grip put Jack on the back foot, and he released you in an instant. Matt held on for a second longer to make a point, feeling the metal cufflink dig into the skin of his palm, before gruffly releasing him and making to step in between you two.

“It’s okay, Murdock.” Your voice was firm, but still thankful. “He won’t make a scene when he’s on the verge of losing the company to his little sister.” Jack scoffed and looked at you for several moments before he walked away, making sure to shoulder-check Matt as he took his exit.

Matt didn’t know whether or not to ask you if you were alright. He could risk coming off as uncaring when you were clearly trying to cover up some mountain of negative experiences with the future billionaire, or else the risk lay in assuming you couldn’t handle yourself when you clearly could.

He kept his mouth shut.

You let out a silent release of relief when Murdock didn’t pry into asking about your history with Jack. It would’ve been undeniable that there was a whole pile of unresolved conflict that, like every problem in his life, Jack liked to throw charm and money and influence at, but you’d dealt with enough hot rich assholes in your life to stop letting them get away with it. They wouldn’t get away with it with you, at least.

“I don’t see Reynolds,” you said, still scanning the crowd as the two of you approached one of the silent auction tables. Matt heard you laugh under your breath as you inspected whatever was hanging behind the table. “A painting,” you told him. He walked up to stand beside you as you took apart the canvas with your eyes.

Splashes of royal blue and a warm chocolate brown encircled and ensnared each other, striking across the white canvas in a remarkably unremarkable way. Something about it, though, was unsettling.

Art didn’t bore you, not at all. Not even modern art. You weren’t a cynic but you were a realist, and so you knew the modern art industry from start to finish was built on a system of washing dirty funds for dirty businessmen. “I don’t need to explain the money-laundering that’s rife in the modern art industry to you, do I, Murdock?” It was a rhetorical question, one that made him smirk and take a step back to regain his illusion of being a bodyguard. He caught a linger of your fragrance on the way, and it nearly drew him back in. Before he could, a strong presence began approaching you. The man found his place near you, taking on a demeanour of casual analysis.

“Earth Whip,” he spoke the title of the painting in a British accent so charming, you nearly didn’t clock who it belonged to. “I’ve adored having this piece in my collection for years. Alas, time for it to move on.”

“Why donate it if you love it?” You turned to him, being very careful to not fawn or show any sort of overtly flirtatious signals as you smiled at Arthur Reynolds.

“Well,” he took a confident step closer with his hands in his pockets, still looking mostly at the painting. “All things in life are temporary, I suppose. We mustn’t hold too tightly to things. I also heard my good friend Johnson would be here and the bugger has been pestering me to sell to him since I bought it. Figured I‘d make him bleed a little in the name of a good cause,” he joked, shooting an amused glance down to you. You smiled back and tilted your head to signal you were impressed by his cheekiness. “Arthur Reynolds,” he greeted with an outstretched hand, turning to face you.

You smiled shyly and took his hand, making sure to maintain a confident eye contact as you were honest with him. “I know who you are, Mr. Reynolds. It’s nice to finally meet you.” You flashed him your press pass in the interest of full transparency. “I’ve been following your work in Haiti for some time.”

“I see,” he looked only somewhat disappointed. You played it off, turning back to the painting, only now seeing the flecks of black in the brown’s wake. Scorched earth.

“It seems unfair to liken Earth’s power to a whip.”

Matt’s ear pricked with your choice of comment, curious as anything to see where you were going with this. He also clocked that Reynolds had security close by. Not as close as Matt was to you, so he took a step or two back. Of the three men watching Reynolds, not one was without a weapon. He could hear the thick plastic of the 9mm handguns hitting against their sides and belts with every turn of their heads to clock threats.

“She is a mighty force,” Reynolds explained, with somewhat of an edge to his voice. He wasn’t insulted, more intrigued.

“Mighty, yes. But an aggressor? Whip feels like a conscious choice to imply nature is intentionally subjugating those she hurts.”

“We are in her domain. She can do with us what she pleases, whether the cruelty is intentional is up for debate. A lawless beast, she can be.”

Matt heard you shift, he heard your desire to argue with this man. You didn’t trust him. Based on this painting, based on his comments, your heart was pounding. You wanted to get away. Instead, you lied. “Very true, Mr Reynolds.”

“Arthur.”

You turned your head to smile shyly again. Checkmate.

You knew after ten more minutes of conversation he’d be offering you an interview. That interview would probably take place in his apartment overlooking Central Park, and he’d probably cook you dinner to prove he did things himself, that he wasn’t a useless wealthy man. The steak would be two hundred dollars a cut and the wine would be hand-chosen by him, but he’d bring you to his wine cellar and entertain the idea of letting you choose a different one. You’d agree with his first choice and laugh and say you trusted his judgement, and he’d fight his urge to kiss you right there and then. Because you needed to think he was a gentleman. You knew his game. These men were all the same.

Some kind of scuffle in the crowd drew Matt’s attention. He turned, still with half an ear on Reynolds’ charmed accent working to undo your resolve. The incident ended up being someone who was already a little too drunk, but the unknown factor caused Reynolds’ security team to move closer to him and whisper among each other to enquire what was happening across the room.

It was him.

Matt licked his drying lips, listening intently to make damn sure he was hearing this correctly and not just letting his mind trick him into believing what he wanted to believe: that this charming humanitarian who was chatting you up was far too good to be true. But it was him. The man from the shop fire was in this room, and he was watching Arthur Reynold’s six. His boss’s six.

Matt needed to alert you. To get you away. But you were working Reynolds so well. He held his breath, hating how he seemed to be inconveniently conflicted when it came to you more than a few times now.

Then:

“Murdock.”

His named rolled off your tongue in a quiet whisper as Reynolds spoke to you. You’d called out to him with nothing louder than a breath. Matt’s stomach tightened when he heard the fear you were failing to conceal, and also with the realisation that you had somehow clocked that he’d be able to hear your near-silent plea in a sea of voices. The more important matter at hand was the fact that Reynolds had moved closer, and your heartbeat had altered its cadence from skepticism, to discomfort, to anxiety.

Alarm bells rang in your head as Arthur’s striking hazel eyes bored into your own. The painting. Never mind the implications of money-laundering - why did he adore this painting? Why did he refuse to sell it to his friend, just to give it away? There were too many questions you wanted to ask him with his collar clenched in your fists while you called him a bastard and told him you could see right through him, but there were too many pieces you hadn’t yet put together. Damn your brain for moving slower than your intuition. A crooked chord rose up in your nerves and rang in your head like two side-by-side piano keys being struck over and over and over again.

You and Murdock weren’t exactly friends, but he was the only person in this room you trusted right now and so you’d said his name in the most subtle way you could risk. Your brain did move slower than what you could feel in your bones so even though you didn’t know how, some subconscious part of you made it known that he would hear, he would understand, and he would get you away without a second thought.

Just as you started doubting yourself and wondering if you should take another stab at trying to get his attention, you felt yourself ease with the arrival of his presence just behind your shoulder. You turned to him, looking up to the glasses you’d provided, vaguely seeing yourself reflected. His features were stoic, professional, playing the part to perfection. “A person of interest has arrived. I’d like to remove you from this location.”

You casted a glance towards the front entrance in case Reynolds had heard what Murdock said to you.

“Private security for a journalist?” He chuckled. He did hear.

Your gaze shot to his, and you gave a wry smile. “Some people will go to great lengths to stop the truth from getting out.”

“Am I to believe you’re in your business for truth, and not simply the sensationalist headlines?” He teased with a wink. It was good-natured. Flirty. He was trying to get you to engage in a playful verbal spar. You smiled again, fighting the urge to grimace.

“I’m an honest person, Arthur.”

“Are you, now?”

“Mhmm. I’ll prove it,” you turned to take your leave, to follow Murdock as he led you away. Before the billionaire could stop you, you left him with a little piece of honesty: “I don’t like your painting.”

“Bad. News. He’s bad news,” your chest heaved with your deep breaths as you tried to collect your thoughts, now having the space off in an abandoned hallway.

“I know, he’s-”

“No, you don’t get it,” you took a step forward, and Matt could hear the urgency in your voice. “That painting. That fucking painting...”

“What about it?”

“He “adored” it,” you seethed, getting frustrated that you hadn’t been afforded the time to put down your thoughts on paper and proofread them. “I‘m sorry, I know you can’t see it but you have to trust me. This makes no sense- I… I need to go talk to him again.”

As you, in your flurry, went to move past Matt he placed a hand on your shoulder and told you what he’d heard.

“His bodyguard started the bodega fire.”

You spluttered incredulously, and shook your head in outrage. “Well now I’m definitely gonna talk to him.” You kept walking and Matt turned, gripping your arm with more urgency.

“Hey!” He whispered loudly. You stopped and turned back to him with impatience dripping from your tensed shoulders. “Don’t be stupid.”

“He’s on the verge of asking me to dinner. I can get more information-”

“Or you could get yourself hurt.”

“I’ve dealt with far more dangerous people, Murdock. You don’t need to-”

“Let’s just-” he sighed, exasperated, and let go of your arm, holding his hands out as if to calm a charging army because, by god, you were on a war path. “Let’s be smart about this. Right now, he doesn’t know what we know. We can use this information, go over the offers from the developers to Avery for the purchase of the store, maybe link one to Reynolds, maybe there’s dirty money involved. Hell, maybe he bought the fucking painting with it- hey-” he moved to catch your attention as you let out a breath through gritted teeth. “We’ll do this the right way. Take him down with the law. Just like Fisk.”

You were silent for several long moments before Matt felt your resolve break. He felt a sense of relief wash over you when you realised you wouldn’t have to face Reynolds again that night, and he also got the sense that you weren’t letting this go for the time being.

“Do you have a copy of the Avery files at your place?”

“I do.”

“We’re starting now.”

The entire ride back to his loft, Matt toyed with the idea of calling Karen and Foggy to come over and help with the research, but there were too many things stopping him from sending the message. The bickering, for one - whether or not he could stand the way you and Foggy would inevitably get under each other’s skin or the way you would probably unintentionally hurt Karen’s feelings by dismissing an idea that wasn’t worth your time. There was the weather, of course - the rain had substantially increased and now peals of thunder were once again filling the sky. There was some kind of electricity tangible in the air too, which Matt noticed on the short outside journey from the gallery back to the car. Those were two very good reasons. They made sense. Surely he didn’t have to worry that not calling Karen and Foggy had anything to do with him wanting to be alone with you. Even though you were the one who suggested going back to his place, he felt discomfort at the notion you might assume he was in any way trying to weasel you into a situation where you were by yourself with him. Not after two of the three men you’d spoken at the gala had made you vastly uncomfortable, and that you seemed used to being treated like that. Not okay with it, but used to it.

Perhaps it was risky, you thought, being so brazen in inviting yourself back to his apartment. After all, you didn’t know him that well. But you had good instincts and you trusted your gut. For all his quips and the insulting assumptions he’d ever thrown you way, there was no doubt in your mind that Matt Murdock was a good man. Intelligent, strong, far more capable than what could be assumed on the surface. And he looked damn good in a suit.

“You play a convincing seeing person,” you commented as you emailed yourself a reminder to send Richie and his wife a gift for their new babies.

Matt shrugged. “It’s easy in a crowded room when everyone bumps into each other anyway.”

“You hardly bumped into anyone. And you were on Jack the second he touched me.” Matt was silent for a few moments. You looked up from your phone and assured, “I’m not… I’m not accusing you of anything.”

“Didn’t think you were.”

You turned more towards him as the car slowed. “What’s your deal?”

Matt unbuckled his seatbelt and put his hand on the door handle, “On or off the record?” Before you could respond, he’d opened the door and drawn his umbrella. You scoffed after he closed the door, sitting back in your seat, wondering if he was hoping you’d take a hint and drive away and come back to bother him during business hours. There wasn’t much chance to make the decision. He’d rounded the car, like earlier in the evening, and opened the door for you as he held the umbrella over the gap. The gesture surprised you, but not as much as his willingness to have you in his home. You didn’t question it, instead going along for the ride.

You two rushed into the front door of the apartment building just as the wind picked up and sent the rain on a diagonal course. Catching your breath from the small jog, you wiped the droplets from your bare arm and inspected your dress as you began following Murdock up the dimly-lit staircase. There wasn’t much chance to take in your surroundings, just an elevator that he didn’t need or didn’t trust, and a row of mail locker boxes.

Matt didn’t say anything as he led you up the stairs to his home. He felt his stomach rumble with a lack of food and so asked, “You eaten dinner?”

“No.”

“There’s good Thai place close by that delivers to the door.”

“In this weather?”

“Especially in this weather,” Matt fished in his pocket for his keys as you two approached his door. “Don’t worry,” he inserted the key and opened the door. “I tip them well.”

You stepped into what looked like another hallway, the space only being betrayed as a home with the coat hooks on the wall and some small wooden entrance furniture. He tossed his keys into a large bowl on one of those tables and then rested the umbrella against it. The lightening of the wood on the edge of the table told you wet umbrellas were strewn against it frequently, and that he didn’t really care about it. Usually that would tip you off that you were dealing with someone who didn’t really care about their space in general, but following him through the entrance and stepping fully into Matt Murdock’s apartment reminded you he was a very eligible bachelor in the city. Men like him kept their spaces clean and nice because he might be bringing someone home with him on any given day. At least, that’s what the minimalist but homely furniture, the rugs, the few throw cushions and the clean kitchen told you. Those things, and that Murdock had the subtle effortless confidence of a man who knew he was attractive.

“Call Thai House,” he spoke into his phone as he gestured towards the kitchen table. “Files are there. Any allergies?”

“I don’t eat red meat.”

“Drink?”

“Water’s fine.”

“Hi, it’s Matt Murdock. Yeah, yeah good-” He talked like an old friend to the person on the other end of the line before rattling off an order. You watched as he loosened his tie to the point it came undone, and the memories of that move in your experience brought a very unprofessional blush to your cheeks. An undone top button and a discarded tie could look sloppy, but Murdock really had a rugged quality that made it work better than you’d seen on any other man. Reminding yourself you were not here for that, you cleared your throat as quietly as possible and pulled out a chair to sit in front of the files stacked on the small round dining table.

Your host hung up his call and poured you a glass of water from a jug out of the fridge just as you opened a folder to see stacks of blank pages. Upon closer inspection, your face fell into a disgruntled frown. “These are all in braille.”

“What’d you expect?” He set the glass in front of you, then pulled out the other chair. Before you could ask him if he was having you on, or wasting your time as some kind of power-play, he shifted some papers aside and revealed a laptop. He opened the lid, typed in a password and then traded it to you for the files. “I’ll find the offers, you can look them up on the Business Entity Database.”

You set the laptop in front of you. “Nice place you got here,” you muttered as you pulled up the database online. “I’m guessing that giant neon billboard across the alleyway got you this corner loft at very nice price.” You glanced out the window as a bright pink advertisement for an energy drink sent rain-filtered colours spilling into the large picture windows lining the wall which overlooked the side alley.

You looked to him and saw him smirk and bump his eyebrows as his finger scanned over the page faster than you could’ve hoped to read. “You’re very observant.”

“Force of habit.” You looked back to the database and waited for him to give you a name. “Readers like it when you build the scene. It adds depth. You’d know.”

“How would I know?”

“Opening statements,” you chuckled through your nose, your lips twisting into a wry grin. Come on, it was obvious. “You’re inviting the jury into your world. Setting the scene. Giving them context to help understand reality… Our jobs aren’t so different.”

“Mercury Holdings.”

Once he gave you that first name and you typed it in, you were off like a rocket. You scanned the publicly available information as he gave you name after name of companies who’d placed offers on the now-burned bodega.

Matt couldn’t help it. He found himself keenly analysing the way you worked. Your lips silently formed the words you were reading, which he only knew because the silence was betrayed by the smallest amount of breath slipping through. You didn’t use your thumbs at all when typing, which he found somewhat intriguing considering how fast you typed. You hit the backspace a lot though, which was unsurprising - it was no secret that your brain worked faster than what you could consciously keep up with. That was a human thing. Or, a thing that afflicted most humans. Not him.

He heard you shift in your seat. It was unrelated to the work. Then, he kicked himself for not realising sooner that it was cold, and for not remembering that when he’d placed his hand on your arm, and on your shoulder, much earlier that night, he’d been met with bare skin. Impossibly soft, if he cared to recall how it felt. The internal debate mounted as to whether he should offer you a blanket or go so far as to offer you a change of clothes, then your phone went off.

“Shit,” you hissed as you got the news notification that the mayor was issuing a stay-at-home advisement for the entirety of New York City. You fumbled for your bag to start making moves and looked through your phone to see if there were already any road closures.

“What’s wrong?”

“This storm’s getting bad. I should try getting home before they shut the streets.”

As if on cue, a large flash of lightning cut across the sky, followed by a loud thunderclap after only a few seconds. It was right on top of you. The whole building rumbled with its force. Murdock raised his eyebrows. “I don’t think you’re getting home tonight.”

“At least your couch looks comfortable,” you half-joked, setting your phone back down. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he stood and beckoned you to follow. “I should have some clothes that’ll fit you.” You opened your mouth to say it wasn’t necessary, then immediately resigned yourself to actually really wanting to change into something more comfortable. It was kind of chilly.

You kicked off your heels before following him over the cool hardwood floor, past the living area furniture, through a large industrial barn sliding door and into his sparse bedroom. If you’d told yourself when he called yesterday that you’d end up in his room the very next evening, you’d never have believed it. But here he was, not at all treating you like an inconvenience.

He had a large, cozy-looking bed with a steel coloured comforter set. A small beside table sat next to it. Light from the billboard, now blue-green, painted the bedspread with waterlogged light and shadows from yet another picture window. There was a dresser next to his-

“Here,” he stepped closer and you drew in a breath when his hands met your hips. You tried not to flinch at the surprise of his touch, or as you felt the gentle pressure of his thumbs against your hipbones through the thin silk, teetering on the edge of bearable. Though, in less than a second, he’d removed them and turned back to the dresser before pulling out a pair of red basketball shorts with a drawstring. “These should fit.” He tossed them to you, along with a soft white t-shirt, and gestured to a sweatshirt and some white tube socks he’d put on his bed.

“Did you just measure me?” You narrowed your eyes as your fingers found the zipper in the centre of your back.

He ducked his head to the side as you pulled the zipper down. God, that sound. Matt had to very consciously not think about the memories he associated with the sound of a dress being unzipped and billowing to his bedroom floor moments later. He cleared his throat and conceded, “It’s not exact, but I got a pretty good idea.”

“You could’ve just asked me my size,” you said flatly. Matt could hear your smile, how you were strangely impressed. He could practically feel your blush and that’s when he knew he was in more trouble than he realised.

He slipped his tongue out to wet his lips before shrugging. “You were busy observing.”

He heard you pull the shorts on as he found himself a pair of sweatpants. “They do fit. That’s a nice flirty trick you’ve got there, Murdock.”

No, flirting would be teasing you for being ticklish. I hardly touched you and you practically jumped out of your skin.

But Matt didn’t say that out loud.

There was a knock at the door just after you pulled on the too-big socks. Matt went to answer it but you stood and placed a hand on his upper arm. “I’ve got it.”

“There’s cash in the-”

“I said I’ve got it,” you called as you exited his room, leaving him to change. He found himself smiling at the carefulness of your steps as you nearly faltered in the big socks over the slippery floors. There was something in the way you walked that always sounded so sure. It was nice to have you a little off-guard. He changed quickly and made a mental note to make sure your dress got thrown over a chair in the living room before he went to bed; the perfume may as well have been wafting off of it, and he shuddered to think he may dream of you if the scent was allowed near his slumber.

By the time he exited the room he heard you shuffling around the papers on the dining room table. “Don’t bother,” he waved a hand. “We can eat on the couch.”

“I didn’t forget the big tip.”

You saw him half-grin as he settled himself on one end of the leather sofa and you brought the food over. You passed him one of the meals and unceremoniously plopped yourself on the other end because, well, the jig was up. As much as you tried to come across as sharp and put-together, here you were on the couch of one of the most eligible men in Hell’s Kitchen, and you were in basketball shorts and a baggy t-shirt. It was kind of freeing, though, to not feel insecure about how you looked. To not feel the pressure to be immaculate, lest you be picked apart or over-analysed based on the way you presented yourself.

But the more you thought about it, something about the old faded clothes and your host’s inability to see you brought a pang of longing to your chest. Because maybe… if Murdock tried something… maybe there was some element of desirability in you that superseded how you looked. You’d never really been given the chance to figure that out before.

Shooting a glance over to where he folded his leg underneath himself, you found yourself blushing at the sight of his hand pushing the hair away from his face. He’d taken off the glasses. It was nice to see him without them.

You nearly scoffed at yourself, and at the very stupid idea this man would want anything to do with you. Sure, he was hospitable, but this obviously wasn’t the first choice for either of you when it came to Friday night plans. The last thing you needed was your insecurity clawing its way from the depths of your stomach to seduce Matt Murdock in some desperate attempt to prove to yourself that you were more than “That Pretty Reporter Chick.” Because that’s all it would be… right?

Bringing yourself back to the moment at hand, “This is gonna be huge,” you said, snapping your chopsticks apart and cracking open your container. “Reynolds has never been publicly associated with the real-estate industry in the United States, much less a development company.”

“There must be a reason he keeps it under wraps.”

“An illegal reason,” you agreed. “Heads are gonna roll.”

“I’m sure this’ll be a front-page feature.” Matt bumped his eyebrows, his voice laced with cynicism. “Secure you those corporate cars for years to come.”

You paused mid-grab with your chopsticks, holding in a scoff, quite literally biting your tongue. Of course. Of course that’s what he thought. That’s what everyone thinks. It’s all for the story. You’d only ever responded badly to that assumption, or you shrugged it off - hell, let people think what they want - but something about Matt Murdock not seeing the best in you irked you more than it had with anyone else. Keeping your gaze on your chopsticks, sifting around for a piece of chicken in the meal, you tried to not think too deeply about it. He’s a defence attorney. He’s supposed to believe the best in people. It probably wasn’t any deeper than that... right?

Regardless, you couldn’t shake the discomfort of having him think you were only in your line of work for the story. “It’s not about the headline,” you replied in a voice that sounded too meek for your liking. “It’s about the truth, Murdock.”

Matt was silent as he chewed over the food in his mouth. He could feel the sting of his words in your voice. A nagging guilt built up in him now that he’d made two somewhat unfair assumptions about you on a night you’d only been helpful. You’d even paid for dinner. And you didn’t forget the big tip.

“The painting,” he broke the silence, then heard you scoff through your nose. “The fucking painting,” he clarified, trying his hand at easing the tension. This time, the puff of air through your nose was almost a laugh.

“You’d never guess a man who builds schools for girls to get educated in third-world countries would hate women so much…” You twirled some noodles around your chopsticks. “But the painting gave him away.”

“How so?”

“It’s some sick commentary on the aggressive destructive capability of feminine power. He sees women a-as threats. But threats he can control.”

“The painting told you that?”

“‘Earth Whip’ itself, and that he mentioned a “good friend” had been wanting to buy it from him for years but he refused, only to turn around and give it away.” Murdock as silent, so you elaborated. “He wouldn’t let someone else act on its value. Instead, he passed it on when he was done with it.”

“That’s a lot to infer from a fucking painting.”

You laughed and bumped your eyebrows, eyes still trained on your food. “Sure. But it alerted me to the fact that he’s a piece of shit. So call it the hysterical overanalysing of a feminist if you want-”

“I never said that,” he interjected. “You were right.”

Nodding to yourself, you stole another glance over at him and noticed that his knuckles had a purple hue blooming up from under the skin. The skin, being covered in healed scars, toughened from what looked like seasons upon seasons of fighting. Maybe he was like his dad. God, you wanted to know, but you weren’t about to bring up his dead father.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to relax until I find out what he’s up to,” you admitted, still looking at his hands. Remembering the dull clamp of his right hand around Jack’s wrist, remembering his firm request for you to not go back and talk to Reynolds. His hands were rough. They held great power. This entire man held a power simmering beneath his surface. Though, when his hand was on you, there was a protectiveness to his touch. Not unlike when someone would pull a person out of the way of oncoming traffic, and not unlike when someone would place a kind hand on your shoulder to ask if you were okay.

Matt heard the hunger dripping from your teeth as your whole body surged with the idea of bringing Reynolds to justice for what he’d done. The bodega, of course, and everything else that you were soon to uncover. That hunger was dangerous. He knew because it felt all too familiar. How it would churn and simmer just below overflow. He knew you’d do something reckless, so he said, “Don’t get dinner with him.”

“Somewhere public. I’ll be fine.”

Matt felt his jaw set. “Don’t.”

“If I can handle Fisk, I can handle Reynolds.”

“Hold on- you had dinner with Fisk?”

“Nothing to call home about. We mostly talked about art.”

“Why do you know so much about art?”

“The same reason I know a lot about real-estate, and law, and yachts and how the private jet industry works: because I have to talk to a lot of insanely rich people for a living.”

“And you care about those things?”

“The readers care.”

“But what do you care about?”

There were a lot of ways to answer that question. You had the urge to defend the way you so fiercely pursued a story, or to maybe drop into conversation that your father hadn’t talked to you since you wrote an article picking apart the US Military’s response to the Battle of New York - just so Murdock could truly understand the lengths you’d go to do stand up for what you believe.

You could tell him about the gruesome death threats you’d received, or the way the wheels of your cab were once shot out after a second-page story on a real-estate tycoon’s daughter and the dangers of nepotism. You could snark that that was the reason you got corporate cars with armed drivers, and not because you were some stuck up brat the boss was trying to bribe with shiny pretty things. Because as much as you hated to finally admit it to yourself, you really did care about what he thought of you.

“I care about the truth. Whatever form it comes in.”

“Yet you lied to get me into the gala. To a friend, no less.”

“For a greater good,” you said firmly. “You’re welcome, by the way.” Sensing that hot anger creep into your ears, you very consciously tried to level your voice. That anger wasn’t anger - it was hurt. You were at least self-aware enough to know that. “Besides, this city runs on compromises in the name of the greater good.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Devil,” you said as if it were obvious.

Matt felt his throat constrict at your first mention of his other self. It wasn’t unexpected - you were a journalist after all - but something about having you talk about him while sitting on his couch in his old clothes felt precarious.

“Sure, he may be taking the law into his own hands and I’m not exactly a big fan of vigilantes,” you elaborated. “But New York needs him.”

“So you’re not trying to be the one to finally unmask the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen?” He kept his tone teasing, probing.

You laughed once or twice. “Noho,” you sniffed. “No way.” You paused, mulling something over, sifted around your food. “Honestly, I think anyone who tries has checked their morals at the door.”

“But what about the truth?”

“The truth… is the NYPD can’t tell their hats from their asses,” you scoffed. “There’s no way they brought down Fisk without the Devil. So the person who exposes his identity is gonna have his blood on their hands. His blood, and the blood of his family and friends. Hell, with Fisk, it could be anyone he’s ever met.” You turned back to your food and Matt could sense a small morsel of vulnerability unfurling itself in you.

“So it’s not just truth,” Matt offered. You lifted your head. “It’s integrity.”

Touched by the warmth of his sentiment, you spun over his words in your mind before a wry smile made its way to your lips. “Murdock, was that a compliment?”

He laughed, smirked, and teased, “It was an attempt at helping you out with the inconsistencies in your statement.”

“Don’t talk to me about inconsistencies,” you teased back. “You’re Catholic.”

“Ahalright,” he conceded with a chuckle, still wearing that damn smirky grin. Then, he mulled over your answer for a second or two. “How did you know I’m Catholic?”

“You really think I haven’t done my research on you and Nelson?” You deadpanned, finding a piece of chicken. “Summa cum laude from Columbia… very impressive.”

Matt felt a small indignant pulse rise in his chest as he so longed to wipe away that smirk he could hear in your voice. So he braved his hand at teasing you a little bit. “Do you look up all the lawyers you write stories on, or just the good-looking ones?”

“All of them.” Your reply was instant, and there was a cheeky smile in your diction.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“So where did Charles Frankston go?”

You paused, let out a single laugh, and felt your smirk grow into a grin. “You keep up with my work.”

“Answer the question.”

“Harvard,” you drew out, leaning back into your seat.

Matt chuckled and held up a hand. “Alright, I stand corrected.”

“In the interest of full disclosure, Charlie is really hot. But, you do… you read my work.”

“Well, I listen to it, but yes. It’s good work.”

The compliment was so sincere, and so out of left-field, that it kind of shook you. “Even the piece on the Petrenko trail?” You stood by everything you said, of course, because it was the truth, but it had been rather harsh.

“I still hold a grudge for the Petrenko article,” he joked. “Where did you go to college?”

“NYU,” you leaned to the side and placed your almost-finished dinner on the coffee table. “Good school, but way too many rich kids who don’t want to leave the safety of New York affluence.”

“Like Jack McBride.”

“Like Jack,” you confirmed. “He’s always been an dumbass.”

Matt clicked his tongue. “What does that say about you?”

“That I used to be a dumbass too,” you laughed and laced your fingers through your own hair before propping your elbow on the back of the couch. “But come on, Murdock. You’re telling me you never had a reckless college fling with a borderline-sociopathic billionaire’s kid?”

Matt choked on his food. He knew it was a joke because no way in hell did your research go that deep, but now he’d definitely given it away.

“Oh, no wahay,” you laughed. More than he’d heard you laugh before. It was sweeter, too. He cleared his throat and tried to rid it of the chilli flakes that’d found a home in his trachea. “There’s no way you’re not telling me this story. What was her name?”

Matt coughed a bit more and stood to go get a drink of water, or maybe some hard liquor now that he was thinking about her again. He decided on something in-between. Something that felt fair. Appropriate. You called over to the kitchen and asked him if he was okay and he spluttered a laugh and said yes, picking up two wine glasses and an unopened bottle of red.

He sat back down and opened the bottle of wine, then poured near-perfect amounts into both of them. You saw a familiar look on his face as you took the wine from him - a look you were sure you made when thinking about your history with Jack.

“I can’t think about Elektra sober.”

“That bad?”

“Yes and no,” he ran his finger around the rim of his glass, and his mind went elsewhere for a few moments.

“Off the record, I swear,” you comment with a sly blush, trying to not sound nosy. “… What was she like?”

“Pure chaos,” he breathed out and took a very large swig of wine as he remembered the bar, the boxing ring, the mansion, the broken glasses on the ground. “She was intense and sharp… passionate. But life was just a game to her. She only ever wanted me to see it the same way. And I couldn’t.”

There was a genuine loss in the way he carried his voice. A heaviness he bore, buried beneath the words. “I’m sorry.”

“I‘m better off,” he tried shrugging it away, but his voice caught just that little bit to let you know it still stung.

“Sounds like you lost something real,” you said. “That must be hard.”

“It wasn’t real with Jack?”

“Nothing’s ever real with Jack.” The words tumbled through your lips in a whispered scoff as a knee-jerk reaction. Your real answer then came: “No. It was a dumb fling he tries to rekindle once or twice a year. He only ever wanted one thing, but I’m used to that by now.” You sipped your wine, and wondered where the bottle had been hiding. You hadn’t seen it in your search for the silverware. “What you and Elektra had… was it worth it?”

Matt thought about it, and thought about how to answer it honestly. There wasn’t a way to let you into the truth of Elektra’s violence and how screwed up she made him feel, and almost be. How the clashing of their skin in a fight was akin to foreplay, and how she craved pain as a form of pleasure. Not the sexy, fun pain. The gritty, real pain. So much of Elektra was tied up in the Matt Murdock who put on a bulletproof suit and brought down gangs in the dead of night, not the Matt Murdock who gave you too-big socks so your feet wouldn’t get cold. But he cared that you cared about the truth, whatever form it came in, so perhaps you’d accept it in a tiny fragment.

“Yeah,” he answered in an honest whisper, suddenly becoming aware of a cut on the inside of his lip from a fight last week. “It was worth it.” Thinking about Elektra always made him remember the taste of blood. That metallic bitterness she liked to mix with top-shelf whiskey before pulling him for an intoxicating kiss. Elektra never wanted to kiss away the pain, she only ever wanted him to feel the fullness of everything all at once.

There was an intensity in you that reminded him of her. An unrelenting pursuit of what you wanted in a world that longed to confine you to being one thing, to being good for one thing. But there was a confession in your question. One he couldn’t let go. He softened his demeanour. “You’ve never had anything real.”

You shook your head from instinct, then remembered to verbally answer, “No. It’s… complicated, I guess. I have a good gut instinct but intuition isn’t instant. I need time to figure out what someone really wants.”

“You don’t have time?”

“No one’s tried.”

“Tried?”

Embarrassed and weirded out that you were even having this conversation with Matt Murdock of all people, you didn’t quite know how to respond. Strangely, you felt tears threatening to well up as the loneliness you covered with busyness was being pulled to the forefront. Even more strangely, this felt safe.

“To actually get to know me.” It felt unbearably cheesy to say that, so you threw in a dash of self-deprecating humour for good measure. “I mean, maybe there’s not a lot to know. What you see is all you get,” you chuckled.

“That is one advantage to not having sight,” Matt, again, toyed with the rim of his glass. “No distractions.”

“Maybe that’s why I get the uneasy feeling you know a lot more about me than I realise,” you laughed a bit, rubbing the back of your neck to self-soothe. “Come on, what did Karen dig up about me? All the cities I’ve lived in? Old high school photos? Writing competition submissions?”

He smiled kindly, “I wouldn’t know. I don’t need any of that.”

“Then how do you do it?”

There it was. The opportunity. The explicit permission for him to figure you out. And Matt had no idea what to make of it.

An unusual self-doubt creeped in as he wondered if you were playing him better than he could sniff out. Maybe you were gathering experiences and conversations to pad your story, to set the scene in a loft on a rainy night where two hyper-aware people unravelled a so-called humanitarian’s evil scheme. He hated that he wished, for a second, that Foggy was right about you.

But Foggy wasn’t right. You were no Succubus, nor a sleazy reporter without ethics or morals. Right now, you were just a person who’d never been truly understood, and you were aching to be known.

He stood, slowly, and placed his wine on his coffee table before giving a gentle beckon for you to stand with him. “I’ll show you.”

You stood in front of him, crimson light from the billboard spilled around the edges of his strong stance as he lifted his hands to show you his intent. “May I?”

“Sure.” There was hesitation in your tone even though you tried to hide it.

You uncrossed your arms when his palms met the bare skin below the t-shirt sleeves which skimmed just above your elbows. He stayed against your skin as his hands travelled upwards, sliding underneath the baggy sleeves. His thumb brushed over your tricep on one side, and then the other, before his hands left your sleeves and found your shoulders. You could’ve melted under his touch. Thank goodness he couldn’t see your eyes, because they didn’t leave his except to flit down when his tongue would slip out subconsciously and wet his lips.

The gentle pressure of his hands gliding from your shoulders to the sides of the base of your neck made you feel more calm than it should have. Safe. You felt your brow furrow, and you were hit with a wave of loneliness. In the wake of his hands, where your skin was untouched again, lay a melancholic empty graveyard. You couldn’t recall a time in your life that anyone had ever touched you just to know you. Not your body - you.

“You played volleyball.”

His first deduction pulled you from your trance. His hands were still on you. Thank goodness, because you didn’t know how you’d cope when he would eventually pull away. What if this was the only time this ever happened?

“I-I got into NYU on a scholarship,” you fumbled to answer. “I was good. How did you know?”

“Here,” he pressed two fingers gently into the space between your shoulder blade and the muscle beside it. It hit your nerves in such a way that brought a gasp through your lips, but not necessarily one of pain. “Common repetitive injury in volleyball players.”

“What’re you a doctor now too?” You blushed at the noise you’d just made, and at the smirk it’d pulled into his cheek.

He could hear your heartbeat. He could feel the way you anxiously wiggled your toes in his socks. He could feel the changes in you, your stance, the way you probably didn’t realise you were rising to meet his touch and had leaned in a fraction closer to him. If he didn’t know you’d never lied to him, he wouldn’t believe it, not one bit, that your perfume hadn’t been ranked number one.

Shit. You’d asked him a question.

“The same reason you learn about private jets. I had to argue a health insurance claim about this particular injury.”

He took a half-step closer and you suddenly became very conscious of your breath. Did it smell? Was it too loud? His hands met just behind your neck before you saw his mouth twitch into a knowing smile. You narrowed your eyes.

“What?”

“Was it your mother or your father who was in the military?”

“Okay,” you laughed nervously and took a step back. Matt let his hands be pulled over the front of your shoulders with your movement. They landed by his sides as his grin rose. “You’re messing with me.”

“I’m not.”

“What did Karen find?” You crossed your arms but he just laughed, which made you scoff and roll your eyes.

You couldn’t fight that smile though. That charming smile he could hear in your protest. The protest you didn’t really mean because you were more curious than nervous - about what he could discover about you.

“Your posture is impeccable,” Matt told you. “But it’s not forced or strained. You must’ve stood like that your whole life. It’s natural.”

You relaxed, but also didn’t. You shifted from one foot to the other and then confirmed his suspicions. “My father.” You stuck your tongue against the inside of your cheek and sized him up, wondering how much you could know if you didn’t have the curse of first impressions. The smile pulling at his lips told you he knew you were thinking about it, so you tried to distract him with something other than a smile. “What else?”

He stepped forwards again, his hands finding your forearms, and then your hands. Calloused fingertips told him you spent a lot of time typing, your nails were short but painted; you were practical, but cared about looking tidy. Looking the part. Another callous halfway up the middle finger on your right hand betrayed you as someone who valued the process of hand-written notes.

Most importantly, the way your hands relaxed into his told him you felt safe.

You looked at this hands up close and wondered more about the bruises. You knew all about Battlin’ Jack Murdock and wondered if it would ever be the right time to say, ‘my father taught me how to fight too.’ In a different way, of course, and Matt Murdock clearly faced battles you’d never understand as someone who could see only with their eyes. You felt disarmed. You felt nervous. Because what if he went through all of this and confirmed your worst fears: that there was nothing worth knowing about you.

He felt your breath hitch, heard you swallow thickly, and wondered if he’d gone too far. But the way you’d drawn in closer, and the way your thumb brushed his knuckles and drew a subtle dull attention to his fresh bruises, made him understand you were seeking to know him the way he was knowing you. You could feel there was a carefully concealed cavern of truth just ready for you to uncover. For you, that would be a temptation too great to resist. What’s more, you probably didn’t find it fair that here you were in his house under his hands and he could figure out that you had a killer overhand serve that tore your rotator cuff and you didn’t even know where he kept the wine.

“That bad, huh?”

He grinned with the realisation he hadn’t said anything for over a minute.

“No,” he assured you in that low gravelly whisper that made you look at his lips again. Damn it. Maybe you should close your eyes.

He rattled off a string of facts about you, your work, the way you wrote, that you didn’t use your thumbs to type - that one made you wear a sheepish smile, don a shrug, and excuse it as an unnecessary rule.

“My hands say a lot,” you said. He nodded. “Yours do too.”

“Hmm,” his smile faltered as you once again brushed your thumbs over his knuckles.

“Do you box?”

“Sometimes.”

You furrowed your brow and drew the inside of your lower lip in between your teeth. God, you so desperately wanted to ask him more but you didn’t want to make him lie to you.

Feeling curiosity close its vice grip around your breath, Matt knew he had to throw you off with something good. His fingertips found the place on the underside of your wrist and grazed over the soft skin. “You never grew out of being ticklish.”

Your head twitched in surprised confusion. “My hands told you that?”

“No,” he smirked, “but I thought it was interesting.“

“Get out,” you scoffed a laugh. “You’re guessing.”

“I’m not guessing-”

“Is that was this whole thing is? Guessing?”

He laughed a genuine, amused laugh that lit up his eyes and pulled an endeared smile into your blushing cheeks. He had to be guessing. He tried to bite back his grin as he released your hands. “I’ll prove it.”

“Hohold on a second,” you stepped back and held a hand out in defence. He held his own up in surrender, grin out in full force. If he didn’t know for sure, he certainly knew now.

“I’m just showing you how I know,” he whispered loudly.

Your cheeks were on fire at this point as you looked back at the strong and steady hands he sought to put back on your body. “Fine,” you whispered loudly back and stepped back into his reach. Surprisingly, his left hand met your jaw. You nearly asked him why, then decided to see what he was playing at. Then, his other hand met your waist and slid several inches down, passing over the waistband of the faded red shorts. While you were distracted by his hand finding your hip, his thumb swiped over the soft skin on your cheek until it found a resting place over the corner of your mouth. No sooner had it settled than his other thumb ever so gently brushed over your hipbone through the smooth red fabric. You tensed for a half-second, your mouth twitching into a ticklish smile. His own smile took on an air of self-satisfaction as he experienced you realising you’d just smiled against his thumb.

“Uh-huh… so the flirty shorts trick wasn’t without purpose.”

He laughed again and shook his head, letting his hand at your face fall to your other hip. “Not necessarily. I don’t make a habit of trying to discover whether or not my guests are ticklish.”

“But you did with me?”

“Oh no, I wasn’t trying,” he smirked. Under his hands, you held a shallow breath and flitted your eyes to where his thumbs lay on the susceptible pressure points beside your hipbones. It would’ve been hard to articulate why it felt so normal, so natural, like the way you’ve stood your entire life. His hands on you didn’t feel exploitative or hungry or dishonest. And you cared about the truth.

“Of course you don’t have to try,” you rolled your eyes and looked to the ceiling. “You know, you’d be a hell of a journalist, Murdock. What I’d give to be able to weed out people’s biggest weaknesses by accident.”

“This is your biggest weakness?” He grinned, brushing his thumbs once up over your hipbones. You jolted in place, hands instinctively clamping around his wrists. His grin turned half into a smirk as he lifted his hands off you. “Good to know.”

You looked at him incredulously, slack-jawed, still with your fingers clasped around his wrists. Oh, what you’d give to wipe that grin from his cheeks. So as you let go of his hands you decided turning the tables would be more than fair. Faster than you could considering there may be consequences, you shot your hands out towards his ribcage.

The air shifted, you took a sharp breath in to wind up, Matt heard your intentions before you’d acted on them, and he caught one wrist in each hand before they’d even come within inches of his body. He used a tilt of his head to convey his disappointment in your lack of foresight, and he was sure to flash you a smirk that would make you- ah, yes - he could feel that your knees had gone a little weak.

The confusion you felt was trapped in your throat, released in small spluttering breaths through blushing lips as you scoffed and tugged on your hands. The man was unwaveringly strong. “W-what the…” you breathed out, giving a nervous laugh or two. “How did you-”

“Predictable.”

Your jaw dropped at the word, the insult, but you didn’t have much chance to verbally spar with him before he slowly tugged you closer. The socks failed to gain any sort of traction on the hardwood floor, and you were now nearly chest-to-chest with Matt Murdock. “How did you catch my hands?” You asked just above a whisper, as a distraction, now hyper-aware that this man was clearly able to read people in ways you never could’ve imagined. “And how dare you call me predictable.”

“You care about justice-”

“As do you-”

“You weren’t going to let me get away with that-”

“Is that why you did it?”

He titled his head, licking his damn lips again. “Maybe it’s just fun having you on the back foot.” With that, he released your wrists and turned away to pick up the half-finished bottle of wine, leaving you to linger your stare after him.

“Who knew you were such an unbearable flirt, Murdock?”

He uncorked the bottle and sassed, “Your research didn’t tell you that?”

“Oh, fuck you,” you laughed and picked up your own glass, holding it out to him. But maybe you over-estimated his abilities, because he cleanly missed your glass and sent wine spilling all over the centre cushion of the couch.

“Whoops,” he grimaced and swiftly pulled the bottle back upright. “Uh, there should be a towel in the kitchen-”

“Yeah- got it!” You rushed to the oven as quickly as you could without slipping over the floor, having spied the dish rag hanging over the handle. Still with the glass in your hand, you filled it with water at the sink in some hopes the red wine wouldn’t stain his nice leather couch.

After five minutes and a lot of furious dabbing, the centre cushion was free of any potential stain but it was absolutely soaking. You propped it up to dry next to his kitchen sink then made sure none had got on the carpet next to the couch. There was a small exposed gap of wood so the rug was unsullied. He thanked you for taking care of it and apologised for being clumsy.

“You’re not clumsy,” you assured him, stifling a yawn. “You can’t see.”

“Take the bed. I insist.”

“No way,” you scoffed. “I’ll be fine on the floor.”

“No, you’re my guest and I-”

“-You didn’t even invite me here and the storm-”

“-really can’t have you sleeping on the floor, it’s-it’s-”

“-it’s not your fault that you couldn’t- woah…”

You bickered back and forth until there was a sudden shift in the atmosphere. Matt felt the change a second or two before you’d audibly reacted. That low buzzing, the one that was always there, the sparks that were sometimes tangible on his tongue, the power in the air, all gone.

“Power cut?”

“Yeah,” you breathed out. He heard you shift and look around, now in some way finally wearing his experience in his own home. Except it was unfamiliar territory to you, and now it was pitch-black.

So here you finally were, truly in his world. Surrounded by the things he chose to have close, except for you of course, under his roof, behind his windows, between his walls. You could vaguely make out the shapes of the furniture around. There was something about his presence that was more that the feeling of not being alone. As your brain whirred to unravel the pieces of instinct your subconscious sent to you in feelings, you understood that Matt Murdock was a protector by nature. He’d probably been that way his whole life. Still, it was disorienting being here in the pitch black. After perhaps a few too many seconds of silence and sympathy, you had to ask: “How do you stand it?”

Your question was laced with sympathy, but more a desire to understand. He felt tongue-tied. He felt his brow lower in conflict.

“You learn a new way of doing things.”

“But the world-”

“Is so much more than what you can see,” he finished and changed your sentence. “Try. Build the world without sight. What do you hear?”

“Rain. Sirens. You.”

“What about the door in the alley swinging open? It’s rusty hinge?”

You looked through the pitch back in search of the sound, trying to pick it out amongst the obvious. And there it was. Subtle, but there. “Yeah, and… the dumpster lid. It’s banging in the wind.”

“What else?”

You swallowed thickly and focused your senses on what was around you. “Neighbours?”

“Mrs Gonzales might be distraught that the power cut interrupted her reruns.”

And there it was. The muffled noise of a woman grunting and- wait, did she just whack the TV? You brought a hand to your mouth as you giggled at the thought of it, and the airy noise spilled through your fingers. You heard Murdock chuckle through his nose, and as your eyes adjusted to the dark you could see him taking a vague step closer.

His hand met the fingers you’d whipped over your mouth, his other hand finding the one you’d wrapped over your middle. He pulled them between you and rested your palms on top of his. “What do you feel?”

You certainly felt your heart pounding in your throat and the way your mouth went a little dry. And for the first time, more than you heard it, you felt the low gentle rumble of his voice. He somehow always sounded like he’d recently woken up. His voice had a rasp, a growling gravel quality, that struck your ears and perhaps vibrated through your hands.

“You box sometimes,” you sniffed, running your hands over his while being careful to not press too hard on his bruised knuckles. You let your fingertips trail over his palms, down the length of his fingers, back up to his wrists, before stopping and letting out a huffy sigh. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for.”

“You’re not supposed to be looking,” he said, and you could hear the grin in his voice. The sound of his grin conjured the image of the dimple in his right cheek, somehow more memorable now that you couldn’t see it. “Just tell me what you feel.”

“Your hands.”

“What about them?”

“They’re strong. Rough, but… controlled. They don’t shake, which is strange for a boxer. Whatever you hit, you‘re careful to protect your fists.”

“Keep going,” he encouraged. You drew a look up to see if your eyes had adjusted anymore, then let your hands smooth up the insides of his forearms. To prevent yourself from awkwardly stretching over to him you had to take a small step closer. As he’d done, your hands went up under his sleeves on the outside of his upper arm. You were met with a surprisingly large and firm biceps.

“You’re… strong.”

“Thank you?”

“How am I supposed to know what biceps mean?” You argued defensively. “Am I supposed to know exactly how many days a week you work out- hey, stop laughing at me!” You retracted your hands to hit at his chest as he laughed at your offence. You really hated not knowing something.

“You’re doing a great job,” he teased, taking control of your forearms and holding them away from where your hands had been shoving at him.

“You’re an ahasshole,” you struggled for a second before he loosened his hold and dropped his hands to yours. A yawn unfurled from within you and you turned your head to try muffling it against your own shoulder. He went quiet and released only one of your hands.

“You’re tired. I’ll guide you to the bed.” He started leading you away from the couch on the path that’d been forged in his memory. Your step didn’t falter and you didn’t place your feet cautiously; you trusted him. He surged with victory, knowing there weren’t many men you would trust like this. The only resistance was in your half-hearted words.

“Seriously, I‘m not letting you sleep on the floor.”

A loud clap of thunder outside the window was then mirrored by a pounding of your heart. Matt felt you instinctively hold his hand tighter and he knew then - the trust was undeniable.

“You’re not winning this fight.”

“Then I’ll sleep on the floor too.”

“You’re that desperate to spend the night with me?” He teased and you scoffed. Again, he could practically hear your blush.

“No, no,” you snapped back. “You’re not tricking me into stealing your bed.” You stopped in your tracks, holding tighter to his hand to make him stop too.

He sighed and turned to you, both of you now being two steps inside his bedroom. “Are you always this difficult?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not sleeping on the floor.”

“Well, neither are you.”

The way your breath all but stopped told Matt you hadn’t quite thought that one through, so he started chuckling as you moved to pull your hand away. Instead of making some big deal about your suggestion, he skipped right over the explicit ‘we’re agreeing to share the bed as two mature adults and we’ll totally keep our hands to ourselves’ conversation that would just waste time and breath.

“I can build a pillow wall between us if that’ll ease the temptation,” he teased, knowing your splutter was pure flustered energy instead of anything uneasy. His comment broke the tension, and you ripped your hand away from his.

“I’m a big girl, Murdock. I don’t need a pillow barrier. But I don‘t suppose you have an extra toothbrush?”

“I do.”

His answer surprised you, and you laughed at him as his hands met your upper arms and he spun you around to lead you towards the bathroom.

“If you’re prepared for impromptu overnight guests, why am I wearing your old sports clothes?” You were suddenly in a smaller space, the feeling underneath your socks now a cool, slick tile.

“Impromptu overnight guests aren’t usually putting clothes on.”

You smirked and blushed, biting your lip as you heard him open a cabinet, close it, then press a small cardboard box into your hand. You fumbled with it for a second before a plastic toothbrush slid out, and he then handed you some toothpaste. Around the time your teeth were all clean and sorted, some kind of streetlight backup generator must had kicked in because a very small amount of warm lamplight was now creeping into the bathroom window that was being battered and pounded by the rain. You peered into his bedroom and could now sufficiently see enough to make your way over to it. He followed close behind. You shook your head once more in disbelief as you pulled back the covers and slipped in on the side that had nothing on the bedside table. Murdock threw off his t-shirt, climbed in the other side, and you both lay in silence for several long seconds as the storm raged outside.

“We’ll find out what Reynolds is up to,” he promised, not turning his head towards you. “He won’t get away with this.”

He heard you fidget your fingers atop the covers. He heard you take a deep breath in and release it. “I know.”

“Then you should rest.”

He’d forgotten to put your dress in the living room but it didn’t matter - there was no way he wouldn’t be dreaming of you. There you were, right next to him, smelling like fresh mint and that damn perfume. He was keenly aware of the power he held in this situation, and he didn’t want to betray your trust. Because you weren’t just in his home and in his bed, you were in his world.

“Wake me if you need anything,” was all he said before turning on his side, turning away from you. It was a lame goodnight but he’d just taught you to listen, and he wasn’t too keen on the idea of you deciphering his desire.

“Night,” you whispered, and then you lay there wondering if you’d really sleep at all.

Storms didn‘t scare you, but this one was closer that any had ever been. As close as Reynolds had been. Not as close as Murdock had. You didn’t dare steal a glance at the shadowy outline of his bare back as it raised and lowered in a steady rhythm, as his breathing became deep and peaceful, as whatever turmoil he so heavily carried was finally leaving him be. You wanted to ask about what you could see beneath the surface. That strength. What he used it for. Why his fists were bruised. How you so longed to grip the wrists of the demons that had sunk their claws in. Then, maybe, one day he’d trust you enough to whisper your name in a crowded room and know you’d be there too.

You bit your lip at the thought of his hands around yours. At how easy it was for him to predict your moves. It was exposing, having someone with that much innate knowledge of how you worked. His keen awareness wasn’t something you’d experienced before. You were used to having the upper hand in the realm of anything flirty, anything that required a sly smile and a twinkle in your eye, but those things couldn’t work on him. He was impervious, and he didn’t hide how much he liked that. Strangely enough… he seemed to like you. Even without the repertoire of tricks you usually used to get someone to like you. Surely he wouldn’t be sharing his bed with you if he dislike you. At the very least, he would’ve built a pillow barrier.

No, he wasn’t shy about his delight in having you on the back foot. However, he was asleep now. He couldn’t read you when his subconscious was hard at work creating angelic dreams. If he couldn’t read you, he couldn’t predict you. Now was your chance for some justice. He was a Catholic lawyer - he’d understand the pursuit of atonement and justice. Especially since he stole the chance from you earlier and, hey, stealing is a sin. There were too many reasons to take advantage of this moment and get a little cheeky revenge, so you didn’t have to worry that doing so would be in any way trying to provoke him into retaliating... right?

So you held your breath and let you hand lift from the pillow beside your face. Your fingers creeped through the air towards the exposed skin on his side, just above where the comforter lay draped over his waist. A foot away…

Eight inches…

Six…

Two… and-

A sharp gasp was forced from your lips as his steadfast hand once again closed around your wrist. You struggled to free your other arm from underneath yourself to use it to shove at his back. “You were asleep! How did you do that?!”

With your hand still straining against his, he turned to face you, hovering on his side and listening intently for your next moves. He heard your chest rise and fall, he heard the smile in your voice, he felt the strength you held back from your fight and the way your breath caught in your throat. He smirked, then swiftly got to his knees beside you. Another gasp bubbled from your throat, accompanied by a nervous giggle or two, as he reached out and caught your other wrist as it freed when you turned more onto your back.

“Perhaps I gave you the wrong idea earlier,” he wrestled with you for control of your arms, expertly dodging the knees you hurled towards his side through the top sheet, though it wasn’t much of a fight. In less than five seconds he’d ripped the sheet away from you, swung his leg over your hips and had your wrists pinned beside your head. “Because you seem to think I have reservations about using your “biggest weakness” against you.”

“Okay, okahay,” you breathed, swallowed nervously and tugged on your wrists. “H-how did you do that?”

“Better question is,” he grunted with the shift of sliding your hands higher above your head as you strained against him. “Did you really think I’d let you get away with it?”

You strained and stuttered, tugging on your wrists in vain as he pinned them across each other and stuck them against the pillow with one firm hand. “C’mohon. Y-you cahan’t-”

“Observe,” he interjected.

With the limited light of the backup streetlights, you saw his free hand lift and then meet your side. You sucked in and shifted away as his palm came to rest on your lower rib cage but you found yourself hesitantly relaxing when he didn’t make any effort to exploit the way he’d trapped you. His hand smoothed down your side, pausing to slide underneath you at the groove of your waist, before travelling back towards the centre of your stomach.

“What are you-”

“Shh,” he hushed you, and turning his right ear ever so slightly towards you. You grumbled at being shushed and gave another yank on your wrists, finding them well and truly trapped above you as his hand moved calmly to your lower stomach. Your heart pounded a little harder as his hand slowed, his palm lifting and leaving his fingers sparsely grouped over the space below your navel. Curse your instincts, your fingers fidgeted and flexed. The silhouette of him tilted his head and without another word, his palm firmly flattened against your shirt and pushed it upwards. You gasped as your lower stomach was exposed to the night air, then clamped your mouth shut to stop from bursting into loud giggles when his fingertips met the bare skin above your waistband.

“Mmhm-Murdock!” You scolded in a loud whisper, lifting your head as you did your damned best to keep the laughter in your throat as you watched his fingers graze the soft skin just above the shorts.

He chuckled through his nose as he lifted his four fingers, allowing him thumb full dominion over your reactions. That was enough, it seemed. At least for now.

“The way you fight. The way you move,” he started, skimming his thumb upward to barely miss your navel by a millimetre. “Your words. Your breath. Your heartbeat…” his voice trailed off as he let his touch wander further from the centre. Despite yourself, your arms tensed, braced, pulled just a smidge harder against his hands. “Like that,” he chuckled again.

“Like what?” You huffed, tense with the exertion of trying to measure your reactions.

“You’re an open book.”

You scoffed. “Like hell I am!”

He tilted his face towards you and you could’ve sworn you saw him raise his eyebrows at your challenge. Then, his five fingers started tickling at the bare skin halfway between your stomach and your side, still just above your waistband.

Damn you, you yelped and instinctively yanked on your hands as the frantic giggles burst through your lips. From past experiences, you knew you were done for; once the floodgate had been breached, there was no chance to hide your laughing. Your head fell back against the pillow as you struggled underneath the lawyer, every ticklish shock twitching through your arms and legs, pulling sweet laughter from your lips.

Matt didn’t hold back his grin as he let his fingers explore this sensitive part of you. He knew it would do you good - to not feel in control for once in your life - to not so easily gain the upper hand in this interaction. When one finger trailed a little higher, and your knees tensed for half a second, he let his tickling touch travel up several inches to dance at the skin just below your lowest ribs. Your giggles hitched up to laughter, which made him laugh through his nose, through his grin, and helped him understand that your reaction wasn’t just about his current place of attack. He wagered a guess that if he were to move his hand further outward and change his touch to lightly dig into the sides of your ribs, he’d be greatly rewarded with a desperate reaction. But, of course, this was about fun. It wasn’t about putting you in your place. Not yet, anyway.

“Okahay!” You whimpered between giggles as he undid you with the lightest touch, pulling hard on your arms to no avail as he relentlessly scratched his fingers along that godforsaken spot. It wasn’t too unbearable, but the nervous part of you wondered if he was planning to take his search outwards, maybe find the more sensitive places along the side of your rib cage.

“Like I said… open book,” he taunted, slowing his hand.

You huffed, blowing some hair away from your face. “I am not,” you gritted your teeth, tightening your fingers into fists before attempting to twist your hands from under his grasp. God, you felt so transparent. The worst part about it was that you’d always found the whole tickling thing to be a very effective method for flirting. A favourite, in fact. Sure, as time had gone on you’d most been involved with people who’d grown out of it, but Matt Murdock’s uncanny ability to delve into your psyche made it dawn on you that he understood this whole game. And fuck, was he playing it well.

“Now, do we need a pillow barrier?” He smoothed his palm down your side to chase away the ticklish feeling, to let you feel the strength of his touch, and to accept the chance to drink in the feeling of your skin you’d so tauntingly offered to him. “Or are you going to behave?”

“Fuhuck you,” you scoffed a laugh to hide your blush and the way he was making your toes curl with nerves. Just as you were about to make some snarky comment about assembling a pillow barrier he squeezed his hand where it lay just above your hip.

Matt felt the ticklish shockwave shoot down your leg to make your foot twitch as it simultaneously travelled to the depths of your lungs to be released it a quick burst of laughter. He laughed as he felt the surge of energy travel through your body and disperse quickly as his hand stilled once again, still at the ready should you choose to continue this game. Because as long as you were prepared to provoke him, he was prepared to retaliate. “Well?”

“Yohou’re ridiculous,” you let out a small cough and assessed how stuck you were. Yeah… there wasn’t any getting out of this. “This whole thing is ridiculous,” you laughed and let your head fall back against the pillow. “Is this how you flirt? I mean, it’s kinda cute, I guess.”

Matt stuck his tongue against the inside of his cheek and chuckled at the pure gall of you. This was the pot calling the kettle black if he’d ever heard it. Deflection to the highest degree. Perhaps he shouldn’t give in and indulge. At the very least he should draw it out, make you admit your game. But the intoxicating promise of you laughing and willingly struggling against him was too good to refuse. So he tightened his grip on your wrists and pulled his hand away from your waist before leaning in and leering with a slack-jawed smirk.

“Oh no, sweetheart. This is me flirting back.”

Several things happened in the immediate seconds following Matt digging his four fingers into the sliver of your rib cage where your back became your side. Your gasp was accompanied by a reactionary arching of your back, which sent your hips bucking under his seat. Your heels scrambled for a second before digging in just a millisecond before you gave a valiant effort in pulling your wrists from his grasp. Futile, of course, but valiant nonetheless. Surprisingly, the last thing to happen was the laughter bursting through the grin pulled deep into your cheeks. That laughter, as to be expected, had been preceded by a loud expletive when you first registered where he’d chosen to attack.

The struggle continued as you exploded in laughter. Your head tilted back further into the pillow, the occasional youthful shriek being mixed in with your laughter. The squeaks too - they were adorable. So was the way your feet kicked behind his back, and how your knees occasionally pressed into his lower back, or how you tried so hard (but not as hard as you could’ve) to twist your wrists out of his grasp.

You tossed and struggled underneath him as he took you to pieces with only one hand. Even over your own shrieks and belly-laughter you could hear him chuckle, even more so when he added his thumb to drill into the front of your lowest ribs and you let out a yelp before shaking your head and dissolving into a snivelling breathless mess.

As abruptly as he’d started, he stopped all together and even released your wrists. Worn down from the exertion, you didn’t even make a move to bring your arms down immediately. After you’d caught your breath for a few seconds you brought your hands to your face and groaned. “Youhou’ve gotta be kidding me,” you sniffed, then tried another slapdash chance at getting some revenge.

Your hands barely got half a foot away from your face before Matt grabbed them again. You growled in frustration as he pushed himself further up your waist and wrestled your wrists to be pinned under his knees. “Tell me, what’s the definition of insanity?”

Knowing he was trying to make some cute remark about you doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result, you decided to double down on being difficult.

“A mental defect or disease that makes it impossible for a defendant to understand their actions,” you snarked between giving tugs at the new way he’d trapped you. “So much for summa cum laude.”

“Cute,” he scoffed, pinching at one of your hips behind his seat. With your lips shut tight, your laughs spluttered through your mouth as the leg below his attack bent in reaction. Which, you learned, is what he was looking for. He shot his hand behind his back and caught your knee, forcing it bend out to the side as he brought his other hand behind your back to handle your leg in his grasp. After only a few seconds, he had a firm grasp around your ankle and the fingers of his other hand at the ready to attack your foot, terrifyingly close. Close enough that you could feel the shadow of their presence.

You stuttered, “Uh-um, okay. M-Matt, wait.”

“Ah, Matt now? No more last name basis?” He flitted his fingers once over the baggy sock and you jolted. “Had enough?”

How in the hell did you answer that? Had enough of what? Of his playful torture, of the way he teased you in that voice of his, of the strength with which he held you? Of being difficult? You certainly hadn’t had enough of the feeling of his body pressed into yours, or the way he seemed to so easily find the things that made you tick. It was complicated, it was incriminating, it was a yes and a no. So you gave the only sufficient answer.

“I plead the fifth.”

Matt laughed a genuine, amused, surprised laugh, and before it was over he’d started dusting his fingers against the sole of your trapped foot. You drew in a sharp breath before pressing your lips together to in some way try to hide the evidence of your hyper-sensitivity, even though you knew it was futile.

“Th-this is cruel aha-and unUSUAL punishment,” you struggled to say as you forced the giggles down with all the will you had.

“Oh, I think it’s more than fair.” Then, his fingers fluttered a little firmer at the space below the ball of your foot and he felt a strong search for freedom. He grinned. “As the saying goes, the best defence is a good offence. However, as Nelson and Murdock proved over the course of the four-day trial…” Your eyes widened as your recognised the words you’d written about them. He tightened his grip. “The best offence is an incompetence defence.”

With that, he effortlessly returned to that particularly sensitive patch of skin just above the centre of your foot and scratched his tickling fingers at it without giving you time to respond. Your reaction was instant and explosive, high-pitched giggles welled up in your stomach and burst up through your lips as you thrashed as much as you could - which wasn’t much, considering he’d rendered you near-immobile.

“Perhaps Nelson should consider a career jump to prosecution,” Matt quoted as he felt your belly shake with laughter and your leg attempting to pull itself out of his grasp. “Considering he’s so adept at proving defendants guilty.” Matt smirked as a shriek burst through your laughter and took it as a chance to back off for a second. “You have to admit that line was rather harsh,” he chuckled as you pulled air into your lungs and gave another test at kicking your foot out of his grasp. But he wasn’t quite finished with you yet.

“It… it was a shoddy defence,” you panted. “But it’s nice you took the time to m-memorise my writing.” There was a satisfied laugh in your breathlessness, and so Matt scoffed.

“Petrenko was innocent.”

“You really believe that?”

“Yes.”

You laughed hard. Not because he was tickling you, because he wasn’t in that moment, but because you’d immediately come up with something hilarious to say that just may be the nail in your coffin. “Wehell you hahad me fooled,” you taunted through cackling giggles. The switch from amusement to mirth was evident with your little scream when Matt’s fingers reunited with the bottom of your foot, this time with far less mercy. Hell, you hadn’t even clocked that he’d been showing you mercy until he went straight in for the kill and scratched his fingers harshly against the outer edge of your foot.

Your free foot planted against the bed in some desperate attempt to gain traction as you were soon overrun by squealing belly-laughter. You pushed, pulled, twisted, yanked on the ankle trapped in his grip but he held it fast as he sent you reeling with every sweep of his fingers. One semi-successful attempt yielded a bittersweet result when you twisted in a way that made his grip slide down with the sock. It wasn’t much, but at least the sock going limp over your foot was a bit more protection that it had been. That is, until he paused his tickling to give it a swift tug and pull it clean off.

“OKAHAY ENOUGH!” You squeaked, trying to sit up underneath him with your forearms still pinned under his knees. With your eyes better adjusted to the dark, you could see his damn satisfied smirk as he let your ankle fall to the sheets behind him. You fell back to the pillow and caught your breath, then successfully pulling your arms out from underneath his knees. But that was impossible, so he must have let you. Ugh, turning the tables is more than fair if you could just-

“Don’t even think about it.”

With a growl of frustration and an indignant slap at his knee, you then propped yourself up on your elbows as his smirk turned into a grin. “That’s not fair.”

“Cry me a river.”

“Isn’t your whole career about the pursuit of justice?” You challenged, then taking the chance to move your hand back to his knee. The second your fingers closed around the muscle above his kneecap his grasp was once again around your wrist, then your other, as he slowly pushed you back down to be laying against his sheets with him hovered over you.

“You just don’t give up, do you?”

“That wasn’t obvious?”

He scoffed with a sly smirk. “You’re so fucking difficult.”

“You deserve it.”

“You started it.”

“You spilt the wine on purpose.”

The room would’ve fallen dead silent if the storm hadn’t still been howling and rearing its head. If Earth in all her power had decided to cease her impressive show. But she kept on with her demonstration of beauty and might as Matt listened to the sound of your beating heart, how it danced with desire and drummed with the downpour. He removed his hands from around your wrists and planted them strong either side of you, just above your shoulders. Your heartbeat quickened with the rain, with his closeness.

You’d intended to call him out in the morning and make some kind of joke about it. About how his trick didn’t work and he’d need to try harder to fool you. Then it occurred to you that maybe he didn’t want to fool you. That maybe, like before, he was trying to help you with your inconsistencies. Because there you were wanting him close but doing not a damn thing about it. Because if he could sense Jack’s hand around you arm he would‘ve felt your peace in his presence. If he could hear your cry for help in a room louder than this storm, louder than Earth’s powerful performance, he could surely hear your breath beckoning him closer.

“I offered to take the floor,” he said, his voice a low rumbling that was closer than it had been before.

“So did I.”

He leaned in closer, just by a few inches. “So we’re agreed then?”

You took a shaken breath in, eyes fixed on his slightly parted lips. Damn him, he licked them again. You smiled softly at his question. How he made sure you were fine here, in his world, under his hands. What a beautiful world he had in the dark.

“I’m in if you are,” is all you managed to breathe out before he wasted no time lacing his fingers through the hair below your ear with firm palm against your jaw. You barely had time to take another breath in before he stole it again, capturing your lips in an eager and fiery kiss.

The movement of the sheets beneath your colliding bodies fit so naturally within the orchestra of the storm, your hungry breaths hit each other’s lips as warm and whispered declarations of desire. As his body met yours a small noise of satisfaction was sighed out through your nose as you kissed him passionately, fervidly. Your hands so naturally found their places laced behind his neck and running over his firm shoulders. He tangled his fingers in the hair at the nape of your neck and tightened his fist, pulling just intentionally enough to keep you in place as he ducked his head to kiss at your jawline.

He heard you hum to show your pleasure at his touch, as his stubble-framed lips sought out the parts of your neck and collarbone that would make you shiver beneath him. The place your neck became your shoulder, he found, sent you pressing harder into his craving touch. He chuckled into the space below your ear, which made you scoff between your deep and satisfied breaths. Your hands wandered over his upper back, his shoulders, gripped at his hair like he had yours, as you pressed yourself further into him. Your disheveled shirt allowed a part of your skin to clash with his, and Matt knew it was at the back of your mind while his lips were at the forefront - that soon his old t-shirt and basketball shorts would lay where your dress had not an hour before. He felt you tug, so he let you win and pull him back in to kiss him like you meant it. Of course you meant it; you cared about the truth.

These next few weeks and months would be interesting. You were stubborn and unrelenting and harsh and fiercely good. You wouldn’t let Reynolds get away with whatever he was doing. Matt wondered how he’d navigate you and Foggy and Karen. He wondered whether his other self would soon step in from the shadows, and how long it would take you to know it was him. Certainly longer than it took with the wine, maybe longer than it took for you to trust him fully, but both of those things happened in the end.

So as the sidewalk lamps stayed dim and the streets flooded with torrential rainfall, as his leather couch cushion dried by the sink and your dress sat folded on his dresser with that damn perfume wafting off of it, and as you kissed each other delirious and placed your hands anywhere you both could find, Matt made a silent promise to himself.

He was going to find that fucking painting, and burn it to the ground.

-