warnings: (18+ minors dni) eventual smut. mention of blood and graphic scenes of violence. blasphemy. constant mention of the catholic religion. fem!reader.
word count: 5.2k
clarification: english is not my native language, so i apologize in advance for any mistakes.
ㅤㅤㅤㅤII. SAVIOR
Night settled over Clinton Church with the same solemn grace it had carried for generations. The last prayers had long since dissolved into silence, the chapel candles burned low beneath the watchful eyes of the saints, and the old church surrendered itself to that peculiar stillness found only in places built for God. It was a silence you had once cherished. Before 1923, it had always reminded you that the world, no matter how cruel beyond those walls, eventually grew quiet enough for Heaven to be heard.
Now, it only made one sound impossible to escape.
His heartbeat.
You sat alone within your room, a medical textbook lying open across your lap, though your eyes had not lingered upon a single page for nearly an hour. The words blurred together into meaningless lines because every fragment of your attention had been stolen by something infinitely simpler.
Thump.
A measured rhythm.
Thump.
Steady.
Alive.
It drifted through the ancient corridors of the church with impossible clarity, weaving itself between the old stones as though the convent itself had become an instrument designed solely to carry that single heartbeat to your ears. There were other sounds, of course. The distant breathing of the sisters asleep in their rooms. Father Lantom’s slow footsteps crossing the chapel before retiring for the evening. The groaning of old beams surrendering to the cool air of autumn.
You heard all of them.
Yet they faded into insignificance the moment his heart beat again.
You closed the book.
The sound did not stop.
It could not.
Your senses had sharpened into something no human should possess. Distance had become meaningless. Walls were little more than suggestions. Somewhere above you, separated by layers of stone and timber, Matt Murdock lay asleep, his body still struggling to mend what Midland Circle had broken. His heart labored faithfully beneath bruised ribs, pushing warm blood through tired veins with quiet perseverance.
You heard every contraction.
Every pulse.
Every drop.
It should have been no different from listening to anyone else within the convent.
It wasn’t.
You had tried convincing yourself that exhaustion was responsible. That the lingering scent of blood from earlier had unsettled your instincts, leaving them raw and oversensitive. You had repeated the explanation so many times it had almost begun to resemble the truth.
Almost.
Because no matter how carefully you reasoned with yourself, one impossible fact refused to disappear.
You could no longer hear the convent. You could only hear him. There was something unbearably intimate about it.
Not merely because his heartbeat called to your hunger, but because it betrayed everything he never allowed himself to speak aloud. You had spent enough years tending the sick to understand the language of the human body. Hearts quickened with fear, stumbled beneath grief, settled during peace. They confessed truths their owners buried beneath smiles and carefully chosen words.
Matt’s heart carried exhaustion.
Pain.
A grief so old it had begun to resemble part of its own rhythm.
And beneath all of it, an astonishing determination to continue beating despite the man who carried it seeming to wish otherwise.
Despite all that, despite having felt Matt in the most intimate way, delving into the deepest recesses of his feelings and violating his privacy, your thoughts betrayed you. The monster inside you continued to think of Matt as prey, but also as a man.
The image of him sweating, in pain, and defenseless beneath you kept echoing in your mind. Your throat remained dry, craving the blood of the man who was trusting in the church and in you.
What kind of being were you, wanting to suck the life out of someone good and innocent? Someone who wanted what was best for his city and found himself under the care of a demon created by God? It was an injustice. You didn’t want to think of Matt, of the faint pulse that marked his life, of what it would be like to taste him as his cock pumped blood inside your tight cunt.
You wouldn’t be quick, you wouldn’t drain all of Matt’s blood and kill him instantly. Instead, you would be slow, letting the barrier of pleasure and pain blur as you took him completely. Perhaps you could feel his being again, his feelings, as you reveled in the pleasure of fucking him and sucking the life out of him; perhaps he would be so drunk from the lack of blood that the pleasure would overwhelm any pain.
Perhaps—no. You couldn’t keep thinking like that, you didn’t want to dwell on those kinds of ideas, those temptations of the devil.
Those were temptations imposed by the dark being who wanted to ruin what God had given you.
You wrapped your fingers around the rosary resting against your palm until the beads pressed painfully into your skin.
“Lead us not into temptation…” The prayer escaped your lips in little more than a whisper. “...but deliver us from evil.”
Another beat.
Closer.
Louder.
You bowed your head.
It was grotesque, you thought, how easily devotion could become indistinguishable from desire. The saints had written endlessly of longing for God, of yearning so profound that it became almost physical, an ache beneath the ribs that no earthly comfort could soothe. You understood them now in a way they could never have imagined.
Only your longing was not directed toward Heaven. It was directed toward the warm, relentless rhythm of a mortal heart. You hated yourself for recognizing the beauty within it.
Every beat sounded like an invitation your body had already accepted long before your conscience could object. They echoed through your mind with the persistence of cathedral bells, slow and reverent, transforming into a liturgy your monstrous nature understood far better than Scripture.
Drink.
The word never truly formed. It didn’t need to. Your body translated the rhythm instinctively.
Thump.
Life.
Thump.
Warmth.
Thump.
Blood.
You pressed the crucifix against your forehead until the cool metal bit into your skin.
“Please…” Whether you were praying to God, to the Virgin, or merely to the frightened woman you had once been, you no longer knew. “I don’t want to hear it anymore.”
The convent remained silent.
No answer came.
Only the steady, unwavering music of Matt Murdock’s heart, continuing its patient hymn somewhere in the darkness above you, while your own cursed existence listened like a penitent kneeling before an altar, terrified that what it worshiped had never been God at all.
The following morning, you made a decision that felt almost cowardly.
You would not go near Matt Murdock unless Father Lantom or Sister Maggie explicitly asked you to.
It was a pitiful resolution, fragile enough to collapse beneath the smallest temptation, yet it was the only one your conscience could offer. If prayer had failed to silence the hunger and animal blood had become little more than an illusion of restraint, then distance would have to suffice. It was a miserable substitute for discipline, but at least it was still a choice.
The infirmary remained untouched by your hands that day.
Sister Maggie assured you, with the quiet practicality that characterized her, that Mr. Murdock needed little more than rest until the evening. His wounds had been cleaned, his fever had not returned, and Father Lantom intended to remain close should anything change. There was no need for both of you to hover over the same patient.
You accepted the excuse with a gratitude that bordered on relief.
Instead, you buried yourself elsewhere.
The convent had become unfamiliar in ways that had nothing to do with architecture. The old stone corridors remained where memory insisted they should be, the stained-glass windows still bathed the hallways in fractured colors whenever the sun crossed the sky, and the chapel continued to smell faintly of incense, beeswax, and ancient wood. Yet every room contained reminders that nearly a century had slipped past while you remained beneath the earth.
Medicine had changed.
The books Sister Maggie had gathered for you occupied nearly an entire shelf inside the small library adjoining the convent offices. Anatomy had become more precise. Surgical procedures had evolved beyond anything you had once believed possible. Medications bore names you struggled to pronounce, let alone understand. Entire chapters described machines capable of seeing inside the human body without opening it, as though miracles had quietly exchanged their robes for white laboratory coats.
You spent hours reading. Or rather, pretending to read.
Your eyes traveled dutifully across every page while your thoughts wandered somewhere several floors away. Every now and then your attention abandoned the words entirely, straining instead toward the distant pulse echoing somewhere within Clinton Church.
He was awake.
Then resting.
Then walking a few uncertain steps with Father Lantom nearby.
Your heightened hearing betrayed each effort before your imagination could. You closed the book and moved to another. Copied passages into a notebook Sister Maggie had left for you.
None of it helped.
The heartbeat found you anyway.
Eventually, when even the library became too small to contain your restlessness, you volunteered to clean. The request surprised one of the younger sisters, who tried insisting that the chores could wait until you had rested more yourself. You smiled, thanked her kindly, and assured her that occupying your hands would do you good.
That part, at least, was true.
You polished pews inside the chapel until the old wood reflected the colored light pouring through the stained glass. You dusted forgotten corners of storage rooms that probably hadn’t been touched in months. You folded clean linens inside the infirmary supply closet without once allowing yourself to glance toward the patient rooms beyond the corridor.
Every task became another excuse not to walk in a direction your body desperately wished to follow.
The convent itself seemed blissfully unaware of the war unfolding beneath your skin.
Novices passed carrying baskets of freshly washed linens, exchanging quiet laughter that disappeared as respectfully as it had appeared. Elder sisters discussed tomorrow’s meals while preparing vegetables in the kitchen. Somewhere outside, children from the orphanage played in the churchyard, their distant voices drifting through the open windows before dissolving into the afternoon air.
Life continued.
Simple.
Ordinary.
Blessedly human.
You wondered whether God had always intended sanctuaries to be this cruel to creatures like you. You were surrounded by the inherent innocence of humanity, by the symphony of children’s lives, by the altruism of the nuns, by the words of Father Lantom, yet your mind was fixated on only one thought: Matt Murdock.
You craved blood, but not just any blood, his. Before, you believed yourself a danger to any human being; now your thirst demanded a particular name.
You didn’t know if that was more bearable or worse than wanting to drink from everyone.
By late afternoon, exhaustion settled over the convent with the gentle inevitability of approaching dusk. Sunlight stretched across the stone floors in long bands of amber, slowly withdrawing from the hallways as evening approached. You found yourself standing beside one of the tall windows overlooking the courtyard, absently folding the last of the freshly laundered sheets into careful squares.
You ignored the lingering itch the sun’s rays had caused throughout the day. The itch was good; it was a distraction, a way to tear at your skin and punish the profane thoughts within your mind.
The work should have required your attention, the itching too. Instead, you were counting heartbeats.
Without meaning to.
Without even realizing when you had begun.
Your lips pressed into a thin line.
This had to stop.
Not tomorrow.
Not eventually.
Now.
You lowered the folded linen into the basket and closed your eyes for the briefest moment, silently asking for the strength to endure one more night.
When you opened them again, the sunlight had faded another shade darker.
Evening was coming.
And with it, you already knew, the silence that would make Matt Murdock’s heartbeat impossible to escape.
As evening descended upon Hell’s Kitchen, Clinton Church surrendered itself to a familiar ritual.
The last rays of sunlight withdrew from the stained-glass windows one color at a time, until the chapel was left illuminated only by the quiet glow of votive candles burning beneath the Virgin’s statue. Their flames trembled gently every time the old building sighed, throwing restless shadows across the stone walls where generations had whispered prayers long before you had ever been born. Outside, the city continued without reverence. Tires hissed against damp pavement, distant sirens dissolved into the night, and somewhere beyond the churchyard a train rumbled beneath Manhattan, indifferent to the sacred silence that had settled over the convent.
You remained within your room until you could no longer pretend to read.
The book rested open in your lap, its pages unmoving beneath your fingers. At some point you had stopped following the lines entirely. Your eyes remained fixed upon the paper while your mind wandered elsewhere, tracing the steady rhythm that had accompanied you since dawn.
Matt was awake.
You could hear it.
Not because he spoke or moved about the infirmary, but because the cadence of his heartbeat had changed. It no longer belonged to the deep, measured rhythm of sleep. It carried awareness now, fatigue woven through every beat, yet unmistakably conscious.
You closed the book.
Perhaps he had awakened to drink water.
Perhaps Father Lantom was checking his bandages again.
Perhaps Sister Maggie was speaking with him.
You forced yourself to accept each explanation without allowing your thoughts to linger any further.
Then another minute passed.
Then another.
The heartbeat continued.
You stood, crossed your room, knelt before the crucifix, and folded your hands together. The familiar words of the Rosary came instinctively, polished smooth by years of repetition.
Hail Mary, full of grace...
The prayer faltered.
Not because you had forgotten it.
Because another sound had interrupted it.
Silence.
Your eyes opened.
For one suspended moment, you simply remained there, unable to understand what had changed. The convent itself had not grown quieter. The candles still crackled softly in the chapel beyond the corridor. Somewhere upstairs, an old pipe groaned beneath the weight of running water.
Everything remained exactly as it had been.
Everything except...
You listened harder.
Nothing.
Matt’s heartbeat had vanished.
The realization did not arrive all at once. It unfolded slowly, almost gently, as though your mind refused to believe something so impossible. You had spent two days trying not to hear him. Trying to outrun the relentless music of his heart. It had followed you through every corridor, every prayer, every page of every medical textbook.
Now there was only absence. An emptiness where certainty had lived only moments before.
You rose so abruptly that the wooden chair scraped softly against the floor.
“No…” The whisper escaped before you realized you had spoken aloud.
Your senses reached instinctively beyond the walls of your room, stretching through the ancient stone of Clinton Church with a desperation that bordered on panic. You searched for the familiar rhythm again.
Nothing.
Not in the infirmary.
Not in the corridor.
Not anywhere inside the convent.
A cold weight settled deep within your chest.
Matt had left.
Your first emotion was relief. It came so suddenly that it almost embarrassed you. If he had gone, then the temptation had gone with him. The constant ache beneath your ribs, the impossible pull toward his living heartbeat, perhaps at last you could breathe without feeling your own nature clawing at your conscience.
The relief lasted scarcely a heartbeat because another thought arrived immediately afterward. He should not have been able to leave.
Not alone.
Not in his condition.
You had treated enough broken bodies to know what his injuries demanded. Even if his determination eclipsed common sense, his ribs had not healed overnight. His shoulder remained unstable. His balance had only begun returning. Walking through the streets of Hell’s Kitchen after sunset was reckless for a healthy man.
For Matt Murdock, it bordered on suicidal.
You lowered your head, closing your eyes as your fingers instinctively found the rosary hanging around your wrist.
You could remain where you were. Father Lantom would eventually notice. The police might find him. Someone else could intervene.
Those were reasonable thoughts. Human thoughts.
Yet they crumbled beneath a far older truth.
Long before you had become a creature sustained by blood, before the darkness beneath Clinton Church had rewritten your existence, you had been a nurse.
A nurse did not ignore an empty bed.
A nurse did not hear the absence of a patient and simply hoped someone else would care enough to look.
The hunger stirred almost immediately, sensing the direction of your thoughts. It whispered that you were lying to yourself.
That concern had nothing to do with it. That somewhere beyond the church walls walked the one heartbeat your cursed body desired above all others.
Perhaps it was right.
Perhaps it wasn’t.
You no longer trusted yourself enough to know the difference.
The only certainty left was that Matt Murdock had disappeared into the night, injured, exhausted, and determined to die whether he admitted it aloud or not. If you remained inside Clinton Church and something happened to him...
...you would hear that silence for the rest of eternity.
You reached for your coat without allowing yourself another moment to think. A piece of clothing that was donated to you by the sisters.
Whether you were following your calling...
...or your curse...
...you suspected Heaven had already decided long before you stepped beyond the doors of Clinton Church.
The first blast of fresh air was brutal. It wasn’t the same air as before, the air of your time; this one felt heavier, stronger, and overwhelming. You could feel the heaviness in the new natural scent of your city, and the sensation wasn’t welcome; you wanted to push it away, but it had already seeped into your nostrils.
You had to lean against the wooden doors of the church. Suddenly, the air ceased to be the main invader; instead, the sounds became louder, more present. They reverberated in your ears with the force of an orchestra preparing for war: distant police sirens, nighttime shouts, drunks, the hum of new technology. Everything. Everything you had previously allowed yourself to ignore within the safe walls of the church was now tormenting you as you faced a new world you knew nothing about.
You hissed, squeezing your eyes shut as the artificial lights invaded your vision. You could feel the weight of this new world suffocating you, sensations unfamiliar to you; the whirring, powerful electricity that had once been a privilege now adorned every moment of your beloved Hell’s Kitchen.
In your desire to become a savior, you had never considered what it would mean to face the modern world, a world you weren’t a part of. You were faster, stronger, more lethal; everything about you was enhanced, but you never had practice, never learned to control the abilities God had bestowed upon you.
You heard everything and nothing at the same time because you were incapable of focusing on anything in particular.
You could smell every kind of aroma, even the garbage left in a bin that poisoned the purity of the oxygen.
You felt your skin sting from every chemical in the air; you felt the pollution of the world you now lived in.
Your eyes didn’t burn, but they couldn’t withstand such stimuli. The electricity present everywhere seemed to laugh at your naiveté.
Were you really that pathetic? Was it really that easy to defeat a creature that had massacred men with ease? A creature that conventional weapons couldn’t harm?
It seemed like a joke, a ritual for humble you.
You had to kneel because you were so overwhelmed, and…
then…
only then did you smell it.
A drop, a single drop spread across the floor.
A drop of blood. His blood.
Matt’s blood.
“Oh my God…” you moaned, and without realizing it, your trembling finger went to the drop of blood and pressed into it. You didn’t even think about it, and you carried the remnants of what was surely Matt’s open wound to your lips.
The change was instantaneous.
The city was gone, the visual and air pollution were gone, you didn’t feel the itch or anything. There was only a smell, a sound, a sensation.
Matt.
You could feel him even from afar. You could smell him completely; blood and sweat. You could hear the siren song that was his heartbeat. You could almost visualize the tense movement of his muscles.
Everything else was gone, only him.
Only your prey.
Your limbs didn’t feel the same as before. You didn’t feel foolish from uncontrolled strength, lost, or overwhelmed.
You were no longer a foolish woman trapped in a new world. Now you were back in the moment you destroyed those who had harmed your home.
You became the huntress again, guided this time by the excuse of helping a man who had no idea that he was the obsession of the thirst monster.
You moved without thinking, not as quickly as the first time you became undead, but with a need that almost equaled the desire to protect your home.
This time, you were being selfish, and you couldn’t control it.
The alley announced itself before you ever saw it. The rain had joined you as you approached, as if the atmosphere had decided to be your companion.
The heartbeat had changed.
Its rhythm no longer carried the weary cadence of a man wandering without purpose through Hell’s Kitchen. It staggered now beneath violent exertion, each beat crashing against the next with painful irregularity before slowing again, as though determination alone kept it from surrendering altogether. Around it, other hearts thundered with the reckless confidence of men who believed themselves hunters. Their laughter spilled into the street before the words themselves reached you, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of fists meeting flesh.
You stopped at the mouth of the alley.
Darkness gathered there differently than it did elsewhere in the city.
The towering brick buildings devoured what little light the streetlamps offered, leaving only narrow ribbons of pale gold stretched across wet pavement. Rainwater lingered in shallow puddles that reflected broken fragments of neon signs from the avenue beyond, while overflowing dumpsters and rusted fire escapes transformed the passage into little more than another forgotten wound carved into Hell’s Kitchen.
At the very end of it stood Matt.
Or rather, what remained of his resolve.
His back collided violently against the brick wall before his knees nearly buckled beneath him. One of the men struck him across the face with enough force to send fresh blood spilling from his split lip. Another laughed—a short, satisfied sound utterly devoid of mercy—as he drove his fist into Matt’s ribs.
The same ribs you had wrapped only hours before.
The impact reached your ears before the cry itself.
Bone protesting.
Air leaving exhausted lungs.
A heartbeat stumbling.
Matt recovered his footing only long enough to receive another blow.
He scarcely defended himself.
His hands rose by instinct now and then, but there was no conviction behind the movement. No precision. No relentless confidence belonging to the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Whatever had once made him terrifying had remained buried beneath Midland Circle alongside that woman. Elektra.
He did not fight.
He endured.
There was a profound difference.
One of the attackers grabbed the front of his shirt, shoving him hard enough that the back of his head struck the wall. Another said something you barely registered through the deafening roar of blood rushing inside your own ears.
Matt answered.
You couldn’t hear the words.
Only the resignation beneath them.
Then his heart slowed. Not because peace had found him, because he had stopped resisting. Something inside you fractured.
For two days you had prayed that God would grant you strength enough to master the monster living beneath your skin. You had counted rosary beads until your fingers ached. You had swallowed blood that tasted like ash simply because Father Lantom believed there remained goodness worth preserving inside you.
You had done everything a faithful soul was meant to do.
Yet now, standing in that rain-soaked alley while an injured man quietly accepted death with open hands, your prayers dissolved into something infinitely simpler.
No.
The word echoed somewhere deep within you.
Not spoken.
Felt.
The men never heard your footsteps.
One moment they stood over Matt Murdock. Your steps were silent, your presence equal to that of a ghost. The next, every instinct they possessed screamed that they were no longer alone. Silence descended first. A peculiar, unnatural silence, even the laughter disappeared.
One of them turned.
You saw confusion settle across his face before fear had time to replace it.
There was nothing remarkable about your appearance. No monstrous transformation. No grotesque revelation announcing the creature you had become. You remained exactly as Father Lantom had found you each morning: dark coat pulled tightly against the cold, hair dampened by the evening mist, hands hanging quietly at your sides.
Only your eyes had changed.
Not in color.
In stillness.
They regarded the men before you with an absence of humanity so complete that language itself seemed incapable of reaching it.
One of them frowned. “...Who the hell are you?”
You did not answer because you no longer knew. For nearly a century you had asked God the same question without receiving one.
Nurse.
Orphan.
Daughter.
Monster.
Miracle.
Punishment.
None of the names fit comfortably anymore.
Behind the men, Matt shifted weakly against the wall. His head lifted only slightly, blood running freely from the corner of his mouth. His damaged senses searched the alley with desperate confusion, trying to understand the impossible stillness that had fallen over it.
He heard you. Not your heartbeat, but the absence of one.
Your gaze found him for only a single instant.
He looked impossibly tired.
Not merely wounded.
Tired in the way old churches appeared tired after sheltering generations of grief. Tired in the way Father Lantom sometimes sounded after burying another soul taken too soon. There existed a profound weariness within him that no physician could treat and no medicine could soothe.
You remembered the touch of his hand against yours two days earlier.
The flood of sorrow that had poured through you without invitation. The certainty that this man carried enough suffering to drown an ordinary heart. Perhaps that was why yours had answered him so completely.
Or perhaps...
Perhaps God had always intended monsters to recognize broken things.
In that moment, you forgot the sinful lust that had gripped you while you cared for him; now… now there was a certainty of not wanting to see him dead.
Not at the hands of these criminals, at least.
One of the attackers stepped toward you. Bravado still lingered in his posture, but uncertainty had already entered his heartbeat. You heard it quicken beneath his ribs, betraying the confidence his face struggled to maintain.
“Lady,” he muttered, attempting a smile that convinced neither of you, “this ain’t your business.”
You lowered your eyes. For the briefest moment, your fingers tightened around the crucifix hidden beneath your coat.
Forgive me.
The prayer was almost soundless. Not because you expected absolution. Because it had become a habit.
When you lifted your gaze again, the man took an involuntary step backward.
He did not know why. Neither did you.
Perhaps every human soul carries, buried somewhere beneath instinct and reason alike, the ancient memory that there are creatures the world was never meant to contain.
The rain continued falling softly between you.
Behind you, church bells began ringing somewhere in the distance. Or perhaps it was your imagination, or the work of some demon enjoying what was about to happen.
Nine slow chimes.
Their solemn voices drifted across Hell’s Kitchen, reaching the alley just as they had reached Clinton nearly a century earlier. For one suspended heartbeat, they sounded almost like a benediction.
Then the darkness moved.
It was simple. Incredibly simple. They were nothing more than fragile vessels of flesh before you. Not in the way you easily tore their skin with your fangs, not in the way you sucked with a force that would surely leave giant bruises on their hides, not in the way each drop of blood, denoting life, now cascaded down your throat, quenching an ancient thirst.
The first man couldn’t even scream; you made sure to cover his mouth as you drained the life from him. The other man watched in horror the spectacle of a demon from ancient legends that didn’t belong to this country, or at least, not to this part of it.
He couldn’t even move; fear was too great, the fear that engulfs prey that knows it’s next.
You were a dark and lethal flash; it wasn’t enough for you to suck the blood of the first man. The second man met the same fate. Judgment belonged to the Lord; you were only the blade He wielded.
Afterward, Hell’s Kitchen would remember only fragments. Bodies almost devoid of blood, bites from a beast, and bruises that formed faster than usual. Their bodies in a state of absolute pallor, as if life itself had been stolen from them, but perhaps because it had. Not lives that had died in the conventional way, but by divine intervention.
Perhaps it was a wild animal that had escaped from a zoo, its disappearance never reported to avoid the scandal. Maybe an exotic animal being trafficked; it was Hell’s Kitchen after all, these things happened... right?
Rumors are born wherever fear fails to find an explanation.
Saint Agnes had always protected its own. And somewhere beneath its ancient stones the convent had been hiding a demon all along.
Not an animal, but a demon wrought by the Lord Himself.
When silence finally returned to the alley, the bells had already finished ringing, if they ever started ringing at all.
Rain continued washing the pavement with patient indifference.
Matt’s heartbeat remained.
Weak.
Unsteady.
Alive.
You knelt beside him immediately, your trembling hands reaching not for the darkness still clawing beneath your skin, but for the man slumped against the brick wall. His breathing came shallowly now, his consciousness drifting somewhere beyond your reach. Blood still marked his face, his ruined knuckles, the collar of his shirt, and every instinct within you recoiled in equal measure between horror and longing.
Your fingertips hovered only a moment before gently brushing the damp hair away from his forehead.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered, though you no longer knew which sin the apology belonged to.
For following him.
For failing to stop what had happened sooner.
Or for the truth that frightened you more than anything else—that despite everything, despite every prayer and every act of restraint, the first thing you searched for was not whether he could still see or speak.
It was whether his heart was still beating.
It answered beneath your hand with one slow, stubborn pulse.
Then another.
He was going to live. He would live another day thanks to your intervention.
You closed your eyes, bowed your head in silent gratitude, and gathered his unconscious body into your arms with a strength no ordinary woman could have possessed.
The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen had gone into the night believing no one would come for him.
He never saw the Demon of Saint Agnes carry him home.
notes: so… yes, reader saved matt!!! but she drank human blood after years of not doing so… 🙂↕️🤭
The Demon of St. Agnes stalking the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. How fitting 🤭 I love that she finally caved and drank some blood, I'm honestly kind of rooting for the vampire side of Reader if I'm being honest. But I can't imagine finally drinking human blood is going to make it any easier for her to keep resisting it or Matt 🙃
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warnings: (18+ minors dni) eventual smut. mention of blood and graphic scenes of violence. blasphemy. constant mention of the catholic religion. fem!reader.
word count: 5.2k
clarification: english is not my native language, so i apologize in advance for any mistakes.
ㅤㅤㅤㅤII. SAVIOR
Night settled over Clinton Church with the same solemn grace it had carried for generations. The last prayers had long since dissolved into silence, the chapel candles burned low beneath the watchful eyes of the saints, and the old church surrendered itself to that peculiar stillness found only in places built for God. It was a silence you had once cherished. Before 1923, it had always reminded you that the world, no matter how cruel beyond those walls, eventually grew quiet enough for Heaven to be heard.
Now, it only made one sound impossible to escape.
His heartbeat.
You sat alone within your room, a medical textbook lying open across your lap, though your eyes had not lingered upon a single page for nearly an hour. The words blurred together into meaningless lines because every fragment of your attention had been stolen by something infinitely simpler.
Thump.
A measured rhythm.
Thump.
Steady.
Alive.
It drifted through the ancient corridors of the church with impossible clarity, weaving itself between the old stones as though the convent itself had become an instrument designed solely to carry that single heartbeat to your ears. There were other sounds, of course. The distant breathing of the sisters asleep in their rooms. Father Lantom’s slow footsteps crossing the chapel before retiring for the evening. The groaning of old beams surrendering to the cool air of autumn.
You heard all of them.
Yet they faded into insignificance the moment his heart beat again.
You closed the book.
The sound did not stop.
It could not.
Your senses had sharpened into something no human should possess. Distance had become meaningless. Walls were little more than suggestions. Somewhere above you, separated by layers of stone and timber, Matt Murdock lay asleep, his body still struggling to mend what Midland Circle had broken. His heart labored faithfully beneath bruised ribs, pushing warm blood through tired veins with quiet perseverance.
You heard every contraction.
Every pulse.
Every drop.
It should have been no different from listening to anyone else within the convent.
It wasn’t.
You had tried convincing yourself that exhaustion was responsible. That the lingering scent of blood from earlier had unsettled your instincts, leaving them raw and oversensitive. You had repeated the explanation so many times it had almost begun to resemble the truth.
Almost.
Because no matter how carefully you reasoned with yourself, one impossible fact refused to disappear.
You could no longer hear the convent. You could only hear him. There was something unbearably intimate about it.
Not merely because his heartbeat called to your hunger, but because it betrayed everything he never allowed himself to speak aloud. You had spent enough years tending the sick to understand the language of the human body. Hearts quickened with fear, stumbled beneath grief, settled during peace. They confessed truths their owners buried beneath smiles and carefully chosen words.
Matt’s heart carried exhaustion.
Pain.
A grief so old it had begun to resemble part of its own rhythm.
And beneath all of it, an astonishing determination to continue beating despite the man who carried it seeming to wish otherwise.
Despite all that, despite having felt Matt in the most intimate way, delving into the deepest recesses of his feelings and violating his privacy, your thoughts betrayed you. The monster inside you continued to think of Matt as prey, but also as a man.
The image of him sweating, in pain, and defenseless beneath you kept echoing in your mind. Your throat remained dry, craving the blood of the man who was trusting in the church and in you.
What kind of being were you, wanting to suck the life out of someone good and innocent? Someone who wanted what was best for his city and found himself under the care of a demon created by God? It was an injustice. You didn’t want to think of Matt, of the faint pulse that marked his life, of what it would be like to taste him as his cock pumped blood inside your tight cunt.
You wouldn’t be quick, you wouldn’t drain all of Matt’s blood and kill him instantly. Instead, you would be slow, letting the barrier of pleasure and pain blur as you took him completely. Perhaps you could feel his being again, his feelings, as you reveled in the pleasure of fucking him and sucking the life out of him; perhaps he would be so drunk from the lack of blood that the pleasure would overwhelm any pain.
Perhaps—no. You couldn’t keep thinking like that, you didn’t want to dwell on those kinds of ideas, those temptations of the devil.
Those were temptations imposed by the dark being who wanted to ruin what God had given you.
You wrapped your fingers around the rosary resting against your palm until the beads pressed painfully into your skin.
“Lead us not into temptation…” The prayer escaped your lips in little more than a whisper. “...but deliver us from evil.”
Another beat.
Closer.
Louder.
You bowed your head.
It was grotesque, you thought, how easily devotion could become indistinguishable from desire. The saints had written endlessly of longing for God, of yearning so profound that it became almost physical, an ache beneath the ribs that no earthly comfort could soothe. You understood them now in a way they could never have imagined.
Only your longing was not directed toward Heaven. It was directed toward the warm, relentless rhythm of a mortal heart. You hated yourself for recognizing the beauty within it.
Every beat sounded like an invitation your body had already accepted long before your conscience could object. They echoed through your mind with the persistence of cathedral bells, slow and reverent, transforming into a liturgy your monstrous nature understood far better than Scripture.
Drink.
The word never truly formed. It didn’t need to. Your body translated the rhythm instinctively.
Thump.
Life.
Thump.
Warmth.
Thump.
Blood.
You pressed the crucifix against your forehead until the cool metal bit into your skin.
“Please…” Whether you were praying to God, to the Virgin, or merely to the frightened woman you had once been, you no longer knew. “I don’t want to hear it anymore.”
The convent remained silent.
No answer came.
Only the steady, unwavering music of Matt Murdock’s heart, continuing its patient hymn somewhere in the darkness above you, while your own cursed existence listened like a penitent kneeling before an altar, terrified that what it worshiped had never been God at all.
The following morning, you made a decision that felt almost cowardly.
You would not go near Matt Murdock unless Father Lantom or Sister Maggie explicitly asked you to.
It was a pitiful resolution, fragile enough to collapse beneath the smallest temptation, yet it was the only one your conscience could offer. If prayer had failed to silence the hunger and animal blood had become little more than an illusion of restraint, then distance would have to suffice. It was a miserable substitute for discipline, but at least it was still a choice.
The infirmary remained untouched by your hands that day.
Sister Maggie assured you, with the quiet practicality that characterized her, that Mr. Murdock needed little more than rest until the evening. His wounds had been cleaned, his fever had not returned, and Father Lantom intended to remain close should anything change. There was no need for both of you to hover over the same patient.
You accepted the excuse with a gratitude that bordered on relief.
Instead, you buried yourself elsewhere.
The convent had become unfamiliar in ways that had nothing to do with architecture. The old stone corridors remained where memory insisted they should be, the stained-glass windows still bathed the hallways in fractured colors whenever the sun crossed the sky, and the chapel continued to smell faintly of incense, beeswax, and ancient wood. Yet every room contained reminders that nearly a century had slipped past while you remained beneath the earth.
Medicine had changed.
The books Sister Maggie had gathered for you occupied nearly an entire shelf inside the small library adjoining the convent offices. Anatomy had become more precise. Surgical procedures had evolved beyond anything you had once believed possible. Medications bore names you struggled to pronounce, let alone understand. Entire chapters described machines capable of seeing inside the human body without opening it, as though miracles had quietly exchanged their robes for white laboratory coats.
You spent hours reading. Or rather, pretending to read.
Your eyes traveled dutifully across every page while your thoughts wandered somewhere several floors away. Every now and then your attention abandoned the words entirely, straining instead toward the distant pulse echoing somewhere within Clinton Church.
He was awake.
Then resting.
Then walking a few uncertain steps with Father Lantom nearby.
Your heightened hearing betrayed each effort before your imagination could. You closed the book and moved to another. Copied passages into a notebook Sister Maggie had left for you.
None of it helped.
The heartbeat found you anyway.
Eventually, when even the library became too small to contain your restlessness, you volunteered to clean. The request surprised one of the younger sisters, who tried insisting that the chores could wait until you had rested more yourself. You smiled, thanked her kindly, and assured her that occupying your hands would do you good.
That part, at least, was true.
You polished pews inside the chapel until the old wood reflected the colored light pouring through the stained glass. You dusted forgotten corners of storage rooms that probably hadn’t been touched in months. You folded clean linens inside the infirmary supply closet without once allowing yourself to glance toward the patient rooms beyond the corridor.
Every task became another excuse not to walk in a direction your body desperately wished to follow.
The convent itself seemed blissfully unaware of the war unfolding beneath your skin.
Novices passed carrying baskets of freshly washed linens, exchanging quiet laughter that disappeared as respectfully as it had appeared. Elder sisters discussed tomorrow’s meals while preparing vegetables in the kitchen. Somewhere outside, children from the orphanage played in the churchyard, their distant voices drifting through the open windows before dissolving into the afternoon air.
Life continued.
Simple.
Ordinary.
Blessedly human.
You wondered whether God had always intended sanctuaries to be this cruel to creatures like you. You were surrounded by the inherent innocence of humanity, by the symphony of children’s lives, by the altruism of the nuns, by the words of Father Lantom, yet your mind was fixated on only one thought: Matt Murdock.
You craved blood, but not just any blood, his. Before, you believed yourself a danger to any human being; now your thirst demanded a particular name.
You didn’t know if that was more bearable or worse than wanting to drink from everyone.
By late afternoon, exhaustion settled over the convent with the gentle inevitability of approaching dusk. Sunlight stretched across the stone floors in long bands of amber, slowly withdrawing from the hallways as evening approached. You found yourself standing beside one of the tall windows overlooking the courtyard, absently folding the last of the freshly laundered sheets into careful squares.
You ignored the lingering itch the sun’s rays had caused throughout the day. The itch was good; it was a distraction, a way to tear at your skin and punish the profane thoughts within your mind.
The work should have required your attention, the itching too. Instead, you were counting heartbeats.
Without meaning to.
Without even realizing when you had begun.
Your lips pressed into a thin line.
This had to stop.
Not tomorrow.
Not eventually.
Now.
You lowered the folded linen into the basket and closed your eyes for the briefest moment, silently asking for the strength to endure one more night.
When you opened them again, the sunlight had faded another shade darker.
Evening was coming.
And with it, you already knew, the silence that would make Matt Murdock’s heartbeat impossible to escape.
As evening descended upon Hell’s Kitchen, Clinton Church surrendered itself to a familiar ritual.
The last rays of sunlight withdrew from the stained-glass windows one color at a time, until the chapel was left illuminated only by the quiet glow of votive candles burning beneath the Virgin’s statue. Their flames trembled gently every time the old building sighed, throwing restless shadows across the stone walls where generations had whispered prayers long before you had ever been born. Outside, the city continued without reverence. Tires hissed against damp pavement, distant sirens dissolved into the night, and somewhere beyond the churchyard a train rumbled beneath Manhattan, indifferent to the sacred silence that had settled over the convent.
You remained within your room until you could no longer pretend to read.
The book rested open in your lap, its pages unmoving beneath your fingers. At some point you had stopped following the lines entirely. Your eyes remained fixed upon the paper while your mind wandered elsewhere, tracing the steady rhythm that had accompanied you since dawn.
Matt was awake.
You could hear it.
Not because he spoke or moved about the infirmary, but because the cadence of his heartbeat had changed. It no longer belonged to the deep, measured rhythm of sleep. It carried awareness now, fatigue woven through every beat, yet unmistakably conscious.
You closed the book.
Perhaps he had awakened to drink water.
Perhaps Father Lantom was checking his bandages again.
Perhaps Sister Maggie was speaking with him.
You forced yourself to accept each explanation without allowing your thoughts to linger any further.
Then another minute passed.
Then another.
The heartbeat continued.
You stood, crossed your room, knelt before the crucifix, and folded your hands together. The familiar words of the Rosary came instinctively, polished smooth by years of repetition.
Hail Mary, full of grace...
The prayer faltered.
Not because you had forgotten it.
Because another sound had interrupted it.
Silence.
Your eyes opened.
For one suspended moment, you simply remained there, unable to understand what had changed. The convent itself had not grown quieter. The candles still crackled softly in the chapel beyond the corridor. Somewhere upstairs, an old pipe groaned beneath the weight of running water.
Everything remained exactly as it had been.
Everything except...
You listened harder.
Nothing.
Matt’s heartbeat had vanished.
The realization did not arrive all at once. It unfolded slowly, almost gently, as though your mind refused to believe something so impossible. You had spent two days trying not to hear him. Trying to outrun the relentless music of his heart. It had followed you through every corridor, every prayer, every page of every medical textbook.
Now there was only absence. An emptiness where certainty had lived only moments before.
You rose so abruptly that the wooden chair scraped softly against the floor.
“No…” The whisper escaped before you realized you had spoken aloud.
Your senses reached instinctively beyond the walls of your room, stretching through the ancient stone of Clinton Church with a desperation that bordered on panic. You searched for the familiar rhythm again.
Nothing.
Not in the infirmary.
Not in the corridor.
Not anywhere inside the convent.
A cold weight settled deep within your chest.
Matt had left.
Your first emotion was relief. It came so suddenly that it almost embarrassed you. If he had gone, then the temptation had gone with him. The constant ache beneath your ribs, the impossible pull toward his living heartbeat, perhaps at last you could breathe without feeling your own nature clawing at your conscience.
The relief lasted scarcely a heartbeat because another thought arrived immediately afterward. He should not have been able to leave.
Not alone.
Not in his condition.
You had treated enough broken bodies to know what his injuries demanded. Even if his determination eclipsed common sense, his ribs had not healed overnight. His shoulder remained unstable. His balance had only begun returning. Walking through the streets of Hell’s Kitchen after sunset was reckless for a healthy man.
For Matt Murdock, it bordered on suicidal.
You lowered your head, closing your eyes as your fingers instinctively found the rosary hanging around your wrist.
You could remain where you were. Father Lantom would eventually notice. The police might find him. Someone else could intervene.
Those were reasonable thoughts. Human thoughts.
Yet they crumbled beneath a far older truth.
Long before you had become a creature sustained by blood, before the darkness beneath Clinton Church had rewritten your existence, you had been a nurse.
A nurse did not ignore an empty bed.
A nurse did not hear the absence of a patient and simply hoped someone else would care enough to look.
The hunger stirred almost immediately, sensing the direction of your thoughts. It whispered that you were lying to yourself.
That concern had nothing to do with it. That somewhere beyond the church walls walked the one heartbeat your cursed body desired above all others.
Perhaps it was right.
Perhaps it wasn’t.
You no longer trusted yourself enough to know the difference.
The only certainty left was that Matt Murdock had disappeared into the night, injured, exhausted, and determined to die whether he admitted it aloud or not. If you remained inside Clinton Church and something happened to him...
...you would hear that silence for the rest of eternity.
You reached for your coat without allowing yourself another moment to think. A piece of clothing that was donated to you by the sisters.
Whether you were following your calling...
...or your curse...
...you suspected Heaven had already decided long before you stepped beyond the doors of Clinton Church.
The first blast of fresh air was brutal. It wasn’t the same air as before, the air of your time; this one felt heavier, stronger, and overwhelming. You could feel the heaviness in the new natural scent of your city, and the sensation wasn’t welcome; you wanted to push it away, but it had already seeped into your nostrils.
You had to lean against the wooden doors of the church. Suddenly, the air ceased to be the main invader; instead, the sounds became louder, more present. They reverberated in your ears with the force of an orchestra preparing for war: distant police sirens, nighttime shouts, drunks, the hum of new technology. Everything. Everything you had previously allowed yourself to ignore within the safe walls of the church was now tormenting you as you faced a new world you knew nothing about.
You hissed, squeezing your eyes shut as the artificial lights invaded your vision. You could feel the weight of this new world suffocating you, sensations unfamiliar to you; the whirring, powerful electricity that had once been a privilege now adorned every moment of your beloved Hell’s Kitchen.
In your desire to become a savior, you had never considered what it would mean to face the modern world, a world you weren’t a part of. You were faster, stronger, more lethal; everything about you was enhanced, but you never had practice, never learned to control the abilities God had bestowed upon you.
You heard everything and nothing at the same time because you were incapable of focusing on anything in particular.
You could smell every kind of aroma, even the garbage left in a bin that poisoned the purity of the oxygen.
You felt your skin sting from every chemical in the air; you felt the pollution of the world you now lived in.
Your eyes didn’t burn, but they couldn’t withstand such stimuli. The electricity present everywhere seemed to laugh at your naiveté.
Were you really that pathetic? Was it really that easy to defeat a creature that had massacred men with ease? A creature that conventional weapons couldn’t harm?
It seemed like a joke, a ritual for humble you.
You had to kneel because you were so overwhelmed, and…
then…
only then did you smell it.
A drop, a single drop spread across the floor.
A drop of blood. His blood.
Matt’s blood.
“Oh my God…” you moaned, and without realizing it, your trembling finger went to the drop of blood and pressed into it. You didn’t even think about it, and you carried the remnants of what was surely Matt’s open wound to your lips.
The change was instantaneous.
The city was gone, the visual and air pollution were gone, you didn’t feel the itch or anything. There was only a smell, a sound, a sensation.
Matt.
You could feel him even from afar. You could smell him completely; blood and sweat. You could hear the siren song that was his heartbeat. You could almost visualize the tense movement of his muscles.
Everything else was gone, only him.
Only your prey.
Your limbs didn’t feel the same as before. You didn’t feel foolish from uncontrolled strength, lost, or overwhelmed.
You were no longer a foolish woman trapped in a new world. Now you were back in the moment you destroyed those who had harmed your home.
You became the huntress again, guided this time by the excuse of helping a man who had no idea that he was the obsession of the thirst monster.
You moved without thinking, not as quickly as the first time you became undead, but with a need that almost equaled the desire to protect your home.
This time, you were being selfish, and you couldn’t control it.
The alley announced itself before you ever saw it. The rain had joined you as you approached, as if the atmosphere had decided to be your companion.
The heartbeat had changed.
Its rhythm no longer carried the weary cadence of a man wandering without purpose through Hell’s Kitchen. It staggered now beneath violent exertion, each beat crashing against the next with painful irregularity before slowing again, as though determination alone kept it from surrendering altogether. Around it, other hearts thundered with the reckless confidence of men who believed themselves hunters. Their laughter spilled into the street before the words themselves reached you, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of fists meeting flesh.
You stopped at the mouth of the alley.
Darkness gathered there differently than it did elsewhere in the city.
The towering brick buildings devoured what little light the streetlamps offered, leaving only narrow ribbons of pale gold stretched across wet pavement. Rainwater lingered in shallow puddles that reflected broken fragments of neon signs from the avenue beyond, while overflowing dumpsters and rusted fire escapes transformed the passage into little more than another forgotten wound carved into Hell’s Kitchen.
At the very end of it stood Matt.
Or rather, what remained of his resolve.
His back collided violently against the brick wall before his knees nearly buckled beneath him. One of the men struck him across the face with enough force to send fresh blood spilling from his split lip. Another laughed—a short, satisfied sound utterly devoid of mercy—as he drove his fist into Matt’s ribs.
The same ribs you had wrapped only hours before.
The impact reached your ears before the cry itself.
Bone protesting.
Air leaving exhausted lungs.
A heartbeat stumbling.
Matt recovered his footing only long enough to receive another blow.
He scarcely defended himself.
His hands rose by instinct now and then, but there was no conviction behind the movement. No precision. No relentless confidence belonging to the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Whatever had once made him terrifying had remained buried beneath Midland Circle alongside that woman. Elektra.
He did not fight.
He endured.
There was a profound difference.
One of the attackers grabbed the front of his shirt, shoving him hard enough that the back of his head struck the wall. Another said something you barely registered through the deafening roar of blood rushing inside your own ears.
Matt answered.
You couldn’t hear the words.
Only the resignation beneath them.
Then his heart slowed. Not because peace had found him, because he had stopped resisting. Something inside you fractured.
For two days you had prayed that God would grant you strength enough to master the monster living beneath your skin. You had counted rosary beads until your fingers ached. You had swallowed blood that tasted like ash simply because Father Lantom believed there remained goodness worth preserving inside you.
You had done everything a faithful soul was meant to do.
Yet now, standing in that rain-soaked alley while an injured man quietly accepted death with open hands, your prayers dissolved into something infinitely simpler.
No.
The word echoed somewhere deep within you.
Not spoken.
Felt.
The men never heard your footsteps.
One moment they stood over Matt Murdock. Your steps were silent, your presence equal to that of a ghost. The next, every instinct they possessed screamed that they were no longer alone. Silence descended first. A peculiar, unnatural silence, even the laughter disappeared.
One of them turned.
You saw confusion settle across his face before fear had time to replace it.
There was nothing remarkable about your appearance. No monstrous transformation. No grotesque revelation announcing the creature you had become. You remained exactly as Father Lantom had found you each morning: dark coat pulled tightly against the cold, hair dampened by the evening mist, hands hanging quietly at your sides.
Only your eyes had changed.
Not in color.
In stillness.
They regarded the men before you with an absence of humanity so complete that language itself seemed incapable of reaching it.
One of them frowned. “...Who the hell are you?”
You did not answer because you no longer knew. For nearly a century you had asked God the same question without receiving one.
Nurse.
Orphan.
Daughter.
Monster.
Miracle.
Punishment.
None of the names fit comfortably anymore.
Behind the men, Matt shifted weakly against the wall. His head lifted only slightly, blood running freely from the corner of his mouth. His damaged senses searched the alley with desperate confusion, trying to understand the impossible stillness that had fallen over it.
He heard you. Not your heartbeat, but the absence of one.
Your gaze found him for only a single instant.
He looked impossibly tired.
Not merely wounded.
Tired in the way old churches appeared tired after sheltering generations of grief. Tired in the way Father Lantom sometimes sounded after burying another soul taken too soon. There existed a profound weariness within him that no physician could treat and no medicine could soothe.
You remembered the touch of his hand against yours two days earlier.
The flood of sorrow that had poured through you without invitation. The certainty that this man carried enough suffering to drown an ordinary heart. Perhaps that was why yours had answered him so completely.
Or perhaps...
Perhaps God had always intended monsters to recognize broken things.
In that moment, you forgot the sinful lust that had gripped you while you cared for him; now… now there was a certainty of not wanting to see him dead.
Not at the hands of these criminals, at least.
One of the attackers stepped toward you. Bravado still lingered in his posture, but uncertainty had already entered his heartbeat. You heard it quicken beneath his ribs, betraying the confidence his face struggled to maintain.
“Lady,” he muttered, attempting a smile that convinced neither of you, “this ain’t your business.”
You lowered your eyes. For the briefest moment, your fingers tightened around the crucifix hidden beneath your coat.
Forgive me.
The prayer was almost soundless. Not because you expected absolution. Because it had become a habit.
When you lifted your gaze again, the man took an involuntary step backward.
He did not know why. Neither did you.
Perhaps every human soul carries, buried somewhere beneath instinct and reason alike, the ancient memory that there are creatures the world was never meant to contain.
The rain continued falling softly between you.
Behind you, church bells began ringing somewhere in the distance. Or perhaps it was your imagination, or the work of some demon enjoying what was about to happen.
Nine slow chimes.
Their solemn voices drifted across Hell’s Kitchen, reaching the alley just as they had reached Clinton nearly a century earlier. For one suspended heartbeat, they sounded almost like a benediction.
Then the darkness moved.
It was simple. Incredibly simple. They were nothing more than fragile vessels of flesh before you. Not in the way you easily tore their skin with your fangs, not in the way you sucked with a force that would surely leave giant bruises on their hides, not in the way each drop of blood, denoting life, now cascaded down your throat, quenching an ancient thirst.
The first man couldn’t even scream; you made sure to cover his mouth as you drained the life from him. The other man watched in horror the spectacle of a demon from ancient legends that didn’t belong to this country, or at least, not to this part of it.
He couldn’t even move; fear was too great, the fear that engulfs prey that knows it’s next.
You were a dark and lethal flash; it wasn’t enough for you to suck the blood of the first man. The second man met the same fate. Judgment belonged to the Lord; you were only the blade He wielded.
Afterward, Hell’s Kitchen would remember only fragments. Bodies almost devoid of blood, bites from a beast, and bruises that formed faster than usual. Their bodies in a state of absolute pallor, as if life itself had been stolen from them, but perhaps because it had. Not lives that had died in the conventional way, but by divine intervention.
Perhaps it was a wild animal that had escaped from a zoo, its disappearance never reported to avoid the scandal. Maybe an exotic animal being trafficked; it was Hell’s Kitchen after all, these things happened... right?
Rumors are born wherever fear fails to find an explanation.
Saint Agnes had always protected its own. And somewhere beneath its ancient stones the convent had been hiding a demon all along.
Not an animal, but a demon wrought by the Lord Himself.
When silence finally returned to the alley, the bells had already finished ringing, if they ever started ringing at all.
Rain continued washing the pavement with patient indifference.
Matt’s heartbeat remained.
Weak.
Unsteady.
Alive.
You knelt beside him immediately, your trembling hands reaching not for the darkness still clawing beneath your skin, but for the man slumped against the brick wall. His breathing came shallowly now, his consciousness drifting somewhere beyond your reach. Blood still marked his face, his ruined knuckles, the collar of his shirt, and every instinct within you recoiled in equal measure between horror and longing.
Your fingertips hovered only a moment before gently brushing the damp hair away from his forehead.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered, though you no longer knew which sin the apology belonged to.
For following him.
For failing to stop what had happened sooner.
Or for the truth that frightened you more than anything else—that despite everything, despite every prayer and every act of restraint, the first thing you searched for was not whether he could still see or speak.
It was whether his heart was still beating.
It answered beneath your hand with one slow, stubborn pulse.
Then another.
He was going to live. He would live another day thanks to your intervention.
You closed your eyes, bowed your head in silent gratitude, and gathered his unconscious body into your arms with a strength no ordinary woman could have possessed.
The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen had gone into the night believing no one would come for him.
He never saw the Demon of Saint Agnes carry him home.
notes: so… yes, reader saved matt!!! but she drank human blood after years of not doing so… 🙂↕️🤭
warnings: (18+ minors dni) eventual smut. mention of blood and graphic scenes of violence. blasphemy. constant mention of the catholic religion.
word count: 7.7k
clarification: english is not my native language, so i apologize in advance for any mistakes.
ㅤㅤㅤI. THE TEMPTATION
Thirst was the first thing you encountered upon opening your eyes.
Not the stone ceiling that had replaced the interior of the coffin where you had lain for nearly a century. Not the dim light filtering through the narrow window in the depths of Saint Agnes. Not even the rosary that had rested on your chest since the night before, clutched in your fingers by a habit that outlived even death. It was thirst. Always thirst. A constant, silent presence that seemed to awaken a few seconds before you, to remind you that, although the Lord had returned you to the world, He had not done so under the same laws that governed others.
Two weeks had passed since your awakening.
Two weeks trying to learn how to live in a century that wasn’t yours. Two weeks discovering that the streets weren’t the same anymore, that Clinton had become, colloquially, Hell’s Kitchen, that electricity had gone from being a luxury to something as commonplace as air, and that the medicine you had once studied with dedication now seemed like a completely different language. But none of those differences tormented you as much as the certainty that your own body was drifting, day by day, away from everything that had once been human.
Animal blood was no longer enough.
At first, you had wanted to believe it was true. When Father Lantom, with an almost touching discretion, began bringing you small amounts of blood—the source of which you didn’t question—you accepted the gesture with the naive hope that it would be enough to sustain this second chance God had granted you. You had thought you could live like this. That simply enduring would be enough. That the sacrifice you had made before the altar wouldn’t end up becoming an unbearable sentence.
You were wrong.
That morning you held the porcelain cup in both hands, gazing at the dark liquid resting inside. There was no repulsion in your eyes. Nor desire. Only a weary resignation, the same with which a sick person accepts a remedy that ceased to ease their pain long ago. You slowly brought it to your lips and drank in small sips, forcing yourself to finish every last drop, even though you knew, before you did, that the result would be exactly the same.
Cold.
Metallic.
Empty.
Without the fervent thread of a life unraveling beneath your sharp bite.
The blood trickled down your throat, offering absolutely nothing. Your stomach no longer felt empty, but that which truly craved nourishment remained untouched, hidden in some corner of your being beyond the reach of reason and faith. It was a different kind of need, one that belonged not to the flesh but to the creature you had become; a patient thirst that seemed to watch you from the depths of your soul, waiting for the day you would cease fighting it.
You placed the cup on the small wooden table and remained motionless for a few moments. The convent was just beginning to stir. Muffled sounds descended from the upper floors: the scrape of soles on the old floorboards, a door closing carefully, the distant murmur of a prayer uttered by an early-rising nun. For decades, those sounds had meant home. Now they served only to remind you that you shared that building with people whose blood ran warm beneath their skin.
You looked down at the rosary around your wrist.
Your fingers closed on the beads with an unconscious force.
You had prayed to God.
And God had answered.
That conviction remained intact even after ninety-four years locked in a coffin. Even after the starvation. Even after the bloodshed. Because if you began to doubt it, then your entire existence lost its meaning. All the suffering, all the guilt, all the decades of darkness were reduced to pointless cruelty. You needed to believe there was a reason to stay. You needed to believe the sacrifice had been worth it.
Father Lantom believed it too.
And that was, perhaps, the reason why the guilt weighed so heavily.
He had never looked at you with fear. He had never uttered the word “monster”, nor had he allowed you to. He had accepted your existence with a serenity that could only spring from unwavering faith, insisting time and again that God did not err in granting a mission. It was He who convinced you to return to nursing when Matt Murdock arrived at the convent between life and death; He who had placed in your hands the responsibility of caring for a man whose blood awakened in you a need you were only beginning to understand.
You could not betray that trust.
Not after everything He had done for you.
Not after having protected your secret for those two weeks when the modern world threatened to devour you as much as hunger itself.
You stood up slowly. Your movements remained elegant, almost silent, as if your body had forgotten the weight it once bore. In a few hours, you would have to return to the infirmary, change Matt’s bandages, check that the wounds were still healing properly, and pretend, once again, that the faint scent of his blood didn’t disturb every fiber of your being.
You were still unaware that this effort was beginning to turn into an unwinnable battle.
The convent was quieter in the mornings than you remembered.
Not silent—Saint Agnes had never truly been silent—but the sounds had changed. In 1923, dawn had carried the scrape of coal being delivered to nearby buildings, the distant shouts of dockworkers heading toward the Hudson, the creak of wagon wheels on wet streets. Now the world beyond the church woke beneath the low growl of engines and the occasional wail of a siren somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen. The rhythm was different, yet the old stone walls still held the same patient stillness they always had, as though the building itself had decided that time was a concern for everyone else.
You were crossing the corridor toward your destination when Sister Maggie stepped out of the chapel.
She paused when she saw you, one hand still resting against the heavy wooden door. The morning light from the stained-glass windows softened the sharp lines of her habit and painted faint colors across the floor between you.
The itch on your skin appeared, mild thankfully. You scratched the skin of your neck with a touch of embarrassment; the hot sting of the sun’s rays hadn’t yet arrived—you had no idea why—but instead, whenever you were more exposed to the sun, an allergy-like itch reigned.
You preferred that to your skin burning. You could still remember your flesh roasting that dawn when you were reborn.
“You’re up early,” she said.
A small smile touched your lips. “I could say the same to you.”
Maggie gave a quiet huff that might have been amusement. “Some habits survive every century. Besides, children don’t really have a set rest schedule.”
The words settled between you more gently than they should have. Most people still stumbled around the fact that you had slept through nearly a hundred years of history. Maggie rarely did. She spoke about it the way one might speak about an old scar: impossible to ignore, unnecessary to prod.
In your short time awake, you discovered that Maggie was the person Father Lantom seemed to trust the most. At least when it came to you. She seemed to know your whole story, and although she was cautious around you in the first few days, she didn’t judge the divine hand that had fallen upon you years before.
You fell into step beside her as she began walking toward the infirmary, or what was the makeshift infirmary that the church had. For a few moments neither of you spoke. The silence was not uncomfortable. It carried the familiar weight of shared faith, the kind that did not always require words to make itself known.
“You prayed this morning,” Maggie observed at last.
It was not a question.
You glanced toward her, faintly surprised. “How did you know?”
“You have the same expression afterward every time.” Her gaze remained fixed ahead. “Like someone trying to decide whether God answered… or simply listened.”
A soft breath escaped you before you could stop it. “I’m beginning to think there’s a difference,” you murmur solemnly.
Maggie’s footsteps slowed almost imperceptibly. “And which would you prefer?”
The question lingered longer than you expected. For ninety-four years you had clung to the certainty that your transformation had been an answer, that the voice in the darkness had belonged to God and that the hunger you carried was the price of a sacred duty. Yet the certainty felt less solid whenever you stood beside a bed and smelled fresh blood.
“I don’t know anymore,” you admitted quietly. “Sometimes I think being heard would have been easier.”
Sister Maggie turned her head then, studying you with that calm, penetrating look that made it impossible to hide behind polite answers.
“Faith isn’t certainty,” she said. “If it were, it wouldn’t be faith.”
The words should have sounded like a lesson. Instead they sounded tired, as though she had spent years repeating them to herself.
A silence was shared, not one filled with discomfort or reproach due to the slightest doubt in faith. Rather, it was a silence laden with the certainty of a belief so deeply rooted that you both carried.
You reached the infirmary door before speaking again. “You care about him,” you said softly, though with a certain intention.
For the first time that morning, something shifted in her expression. “Mr. Murdock?” she asked.
You nodded.
Maggie’s hand tightened briefly around the edge of the door. “He’s suffered more than he lets people see.”
There was no hesitation in her voice, only a tenderness so carefully controlled that most people would have missed it. You didn’t. The warmth beneath those few words felt deeper than simple concern for a patient.
“He seems angry,” you said.
“He is.” A faint smile touched her mouth, sad and knowing. “At God. At himself. At surviving.”
You looked toward the room beyond the door, where Matt rested somewhere inside. “He believes surviving was a mistake,” you whispered.
Maggie was quiet for a moment before answering. “Many people do, when they wake up and discover the world hasn’t become easier while they were gone.”
The sentence struck you harder than she could have known.
For an instant you saw the dark wooden coffin beneath Saint Agnes, the decades slipping past above your head, the city changing while you remained suspended between death and whatever came after it.
Maggie must have noticed the shadow that crossed your face, because her voice softened.
“You don’t have to understand why you were given another chance,” she said. “You only have to decide what you’ll do with it.”
The room smelled faintly of antiseptic, old wood, and healing wounds. Matt lay where you had left him the night before, still pale, still exhausted. Morning light cut through the window and touched the bandages wrapped around his ribs.
As you moved toward his bedside, you suddenly became aware of two things at once: the quiet steadiness of Sister Maggie watching from the doorway for a few moments, and the dangerous pull that lived beneath the scent of blood no matter how carefully the wounds had been cleaned.
One reminded you of the woman you had once been.
The other reminded you of what you had become.
The door closed softly, leaving the room enveloped once more in the quiet rhythm that seemed to belong exclusively to places where people fought to stay alive. Sister Maggie would be outside, nearby, because that's what you asked for, for Matt's sake and yours.
It was noticeable how several times she deliberately sought you out to talk before you went to deal with Matt on Father Lantom’s ‘orders’.
The infirmary was modest, little more than a handful of beds separated by curtains that had seen better decades, shelves crowded with bottles whose labels belonged to a medicine you were still trying to understand, and a single window through which the pale morning light filtered without much warmth. It was not the infirmary you had once known, yet there was comfort in the familiarity of its purpose. Illness, pain, recovery—those things had not changed with the century.
Neither had the instinct that guided your hands whenever someone needed care.
You crossed the room without making a sound. Matt remained asleep, though not peacefully. Even before reaching his bedside, you noticed the slight tension lingering across his brow, the almost imperceptible tightening of his jaw every now and then, as though whatever dreams occupied his unconscious refused to grant him the mercy of rest. His body had survived Midland Circle. His mind, you suspected, was still buried beneath the ruins.
For a long moment, you simply looked at him.
He seemed younger in sleep.
Not because the bruises had faded—they had not—but because unconsciousness had stripped away the guarded expression he carried while awake. Without it, he looked less like the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen and more like a man who had reached the limit of what one soul could endure.
You couldn’t help but be astonished the first time Father Lantom told you about Matt’s situation. A blind man who went out at night to keep his city safe, regardless of the physical sacrifices he made. It seemed unbelievable, but who were you to judge the decisions of the Lord’s followers? Who would judge someone who gives without expecting even a kind word in return?
It was something you admired: his resilience in the face of danger, his sacrifice for a stranger. You understood it with a depth you doubted Matt himself could grasp. It was about giving of oneself so that others could have a better future. A somewhat twisted sense of justice on your part; instead of remaining silent for the years following your rebirth, you chose to lock yourself in a coffin to avoid confronting what you had done and what you could do.
You were filled with the silent judgment of Matt, even though he remained asleep. He didn’t even know you, he probably wasn’t even interested in your situation, but he was someone who wrecked his body and mind for Hell’s Kitchen. You, on the other hand, chose to hide for fear of losing control of the innate thirst that gripped your throat.
You sighed; it wasn’t the time to question your decisions or see yourself reflected in a man who needed support more than answering other people’s questions about faith itself.
Carefully, you set the clean bandages and fresh gauze upon the bedside table before reaching for the basin of warm water Sister Maggie had prepared earlier that morning. Steam no longer carried any pleasant sensation against your skin; your body had forgotten warmth long ago. Still, habit prevailed. Warm water soothed wounds. It comforted patients. That was reason enough.
Your fingers found the edge of the bandage wrapped around his ribs.
Slowly.
Delicately.
The dressing peeled away with only the faintest resistance, revealing the angry bruising beneath. The stitches were holding. The swelling had begun to subside. It was progress—slow, imperfect progress, but enough to reassure the nurse in you.
As you leaned closer to inspect the wound, Matt stirred.
His breathing shifted first, even and shallow, followed by the slight turn of his head toward the sound of your movements. There was no confusion in the gesture this time, only the instinctive vigilance of someone accustomed to waking up expecting a threat.
“...Who’s there?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
“It’s me,” you answered softly. “I came to change your bandages… I am… the nurse,” you said with some doubt about whether you still deserved such a title.
For a moment, he said nothing. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly before a weary sigh escaped him. “...Right.”
You waited until the silence settled again before carefully continuing your work. The fabric peeled away from his ribs, exposing bruises that had darkened overnight. The stitches were holding, though only just.
“Does anything feel different today?” you asked, keeping your attention on the wound.
You had to keep your attention on the wound. Not on the throbbing of his body, not on the slight rhythm moving beneath his bruise, not on the fine lines of sweat running down his neck, caused by his elevated body temperature.
You could almost smell it, the saltiness of his natural fluid. You smelled it, you smelled Matt, his very essence of masculinity that tempted you to sniff more closely, to discover the scent of his blood.
You wondered what the scent of his innermost being would be like, if tasting it would be the same as having felt it the first time you touched him. An intimate act you tried to forget, but couldn’t. You remembered Matt’s pain.
Perhaps you could take away his pain if you let yourself taste him—
Matt let out a quiet, humorless scoff, which brought you back to the now and not the living of your mind. “Yeah.”
You glanced toward him.
“I’m still alive,” the words fell into the room with a weight far greater than their simplicity.
There was no bitterness directed at you. Only exhaustion. A quiet resentment that seemed to have rooted itself somewhere so deep inside him that even speaking required effort.
You lowered your gaze back to the wound. “The body heals slowly after something like this.”
At this moment, you were almost grateful that his bitterness kept you focused on him and not on his physical self.
“I wasn’t talking about my body,” his reply came almost immediately.
You didn’t answer. There wasn’t an answer that could reach a man who had already decided survival itself was a punishment.
The room returned to silence, broken only by the soft sound of clean gauze unfolding between your fingers.
After several moments, Matt spoke again, though his voice carried less edge this time.
“...Father Lantom said you’ve been helping.”
“I’ve done what I can.”
“You were the one stitching me up,” he said, without any emotional charge that could be felt.
“I was.”
Another pause.
“...Thanks,” the gratitude sounded reluctant, almost uncomfortable, as though he disliked needing anyone’s help as much as he disliked remaining in that bed.
You secured the fresh bandage around his ribs with practiced movements.
“You don’t have to thank me,” you murmured.
His talking to you kept you distracted. You needed to keep it that way.
“I know,” his answer came quietly. “...Doesn’t mean I won’t.”
He didn’t mention anything about the devil inside him, the nocturnal creature he became to keep the city safe. You knew it was complicated, but that your discretion, and that of all the nuns in the convent, was necessary. Matt was a refugee of the church, another son, in Father Lantom’s words.
A son who needed guidance and support, as you remembered hearing Father Lantom whisper to Sister Maggie once.
You shouldn’t have heard that, but you did.
As you smoothed the last fold of the bandage against his side, your fingertips brushed the bare skin beneath his arm.
Matt frowned almost immediately. “...Your hands are freezing.”
Every muscle in your body tensed. You withdrew only enough to continue your work without drawing attention to yourself.
“I’ve always had cold hands.”
“Hm,” he didn’t sound convinced.
Then again, his senses were still fractured, distorted by pain and whatever damage Midland Circle had left behind. Had he been well, perhaps he would have lingered on the observation. Today, however, the thought seemed to drift away almost as quickly as it had appeared.
You had some idea that the man you were caring for had special abilities, or something like that. A man who could feel everything better except for his sight.
“...Lucky you,” he muttered after a moment, his head sinking deeper into the pillow. “At least one part of you still works the way it’s supposed to.”
The sentence carried the faintest trace of dry humor, but it dissolved almost immediately beneath the crushing weariness that had become his constant companion.
You lowered your eyes once more to the clean bandages wrapped around his torso.
For the briefest of moments, you found yourself wondering whether surviving could truly hurt more than dying. You saw it in that instant, the way his body was bruised in ways it shouldn’t be, and his inner being broken.
It wasn’t a deduction, it was a certainty.
You cared for him physically, you felt him emotionally.
That moment when you were able to feel Matt Murdock remained etched in your memory. You had never felt another human being like that, not in such a complete and invasive way.
You knew it was something to criticize because he hadn’t given you permission to delve so deeply into his being, but you had no idea how you had done it, and, for now, it hadn’t happened again.
The time passed more quickly than you expected.
Perhaps it was because keeping your hands occupied had always been the easiest way to silence your thoughts. Ever since you had first learned to hold a needle without trembling, to recognize an infection before fever announced itself, to wash blood from skin without allowing pity to interfere with precision, medicine had demanded something wonderfully simple of you: to think of the patient before yourself.
You clung desperately to that discipline.
Matt’s recovery was slow, but it was recovery nonetheless. The first time you saw him, he was a spectacle of purples, reds, and browns. It was shocking that a human being could survive so long, but you couldn’t help but be amazed by how the world actually worked.
His body possessed the remarkable stubbornness of someone who had survived far more than any ordinary man should have. He had bruises, swollen, feverish areas, sutures, cuts that needed daily bandages... but he was still alive. Not standing yet, but alive and healing faster than the average human.
It was his spirit that worried you, every time you let your gaze rest on him longer than necessary.
You noticed it the moment you met him. You noticed it now that Matt remained silent while letting you treat him as if he were just a practice dummy.
People who wished to live clung to pain. They fought against it, cursed it, begged for it to end. Matt accepted it with a frightening indifference, as though every fresh ache merely confirmed something he had already decided—that surviving Midland Circle had been an error neither Heaven nor Earth intended to correct.
By midday, Sister Maggie stopped appearing to watch over you; you wished she would stay, even if she wasn't in the room with you, you could hear her heartbeat on the other side. It was reassuring; you needed a watchful eye on you if God had decided not to intervene again.
But now you had to trust yourself, your own control. They had given you their trust; you had to give it back.
You busied yourself preparing fresh dressings, carefully arranging clean gauze, disinfectant, and surgical scissors on the small tray beside his bed before returning to examine Matt’s body. It was a precaution; you knew he wouldn’t communicate his internal pains or fevers, but you knew the human body well enough to know what hidden wounds or internal pains might need treating.
It was protocol, so you focused on that, on the things you knew. Your selfish desires and personal thoughts had no place in front of a man who seemed to be melting away before you.
“This will sting,” you warned softly.
You were going to take care of a wound on his arm, one that you suspected was not as serious as the one on his ribs or shoulder, but that remained there as a nuisance that could escalate.
Matt’s expression hardly changed. “I’ve had better afternoons.”
His answer carried the dry edge of a man too exhausted to waste energy on complaints. You allowed yourself the smallest smile before carefully lifting the edge of the bandage.
It resisted. Only slightly.
The dried blood had adhered to the fabric during the night.
You paused. “I’m going to remove it slowly.”
“Do whatever you have to,” Matt said dryly.
Your fingers worked with practiced patience, dampening the cloth before easing it away from the stitches one careful movement at a time. For several long seconds, everything remained still.
Then one stitch gave way.
It happened so quietly that another person might not even have noticed. A single thread snapped beneath the tension, reopening the smallest part of the wound.
A bead of crimson welled immediately against pale skin.
Tiny.
Harmless.
Entirely expected.
Your body disagreed.
The scent reached you before your eyes truly registered the blood itself.
Warm. Living. Human.
It unfolded through the room with terrifying gentleness, slipping beneath every thought you tried to hold onto. The smell of antiseptic disappeared first. Then the linen. Then the old wood of Saint Agnes.
Everything you had tried to ignore, everything you wouldn’t allow yourself to focus on. That which remained screaming inside, tearing at your throat.
There was only blood.
Something inside you lurched with such violence that your hand tightened involuntarily around the edge of the dressing.
No.
You forced your fingers to loosen.
The wound was insignificant.
You had treated injuries far worse in another lifetime. Your hands knew exactly what to do. A clean cloth. Gentle pressure. Replace the broken stitch. Fresh gauze.
Simple.
Except nothing felt simple anymore.
Your throat tightened.
For one horrifying instant, your gaze lingered on the small ribbon of blood trailing along the curve of Matt’s side.
Not as a nurse, but as something else.
Something infinitely older than the woman standing beside the bed.
You looked away so abruptly that the movement caught Matt’s attention.
“...Something wrong?” His voice was quieter this time.
Not suspicious, just observant.
You swallowed before answering. “The stitch came loose.”
“I figured that much,” his tone remained dry, but there was a hint of interest now. Interest or something else, as if something inside him knew the situation wasn’t right, but his senses couldn’t seem to confirm it.
You reached for a fresh compress, deliberately keeping your eyes fixed upon your work rather than the blood itself. Every movement became slower, more deliberate, as though precision alone might drown out the monstrous instinct clawing patiently beneath your skin.
“I’ll replace it,” you said, letting out a nervous exhalation.
“You sound nervous,” the words were simple.
Matter-of-fact.
Matt wasn’t accusing you.
He was listening.
Even with his senses fractured, he had always possessed an unsettling ability to hear what other people tried to bury beneath their voices.
You hesitated only briefly.
“I haven’t treated injuries this severe in... a very long time.”
It was not the truth, but it wasn’t entirely a lie either.
You forced yourself to clench your jaw, grinding your teeth together painfully as your hands trembled slightly.
First, you had to clean the blood, then redo the loose stitch, bandage it, and that was it. It was simple enough; you’d treated worse wounds on Matt.
Why did this tiny opening now seem worse than the others?
You carefully wiped away the small trail of blood from that stray drop. It was a slow movement, careful not to stain his skin. But you knew you weren’t doing it out of any sense of cleanliness, but rather out of a selfish feeling that, at the time, you didn’t even notice.
You lowered your gaze to the sterile cloth in your hand, which was lightly stained with the rest of Matt’s blood that had dared to escape his body. It was fresh blood, blood that had just left his body and was more than alive. That blood wasn’t dry, it wasn’t dead to you yet.
You dared to take a deep breath, just for a moment. An action Matt might have interpreted as a way to calm your nerves.
A mistake.
The fangs began to descend, barely visible. They forced you to break the tension you’d strained in your jaw, forcing their way through for the first time in so many years.
It wasn’t your decision; it was more the reflex of a creature desperately seeking attention.
Your fingers curled tightly around the sterile cloth. Beneath your hand, the fabric remained slightly damp with Matt’s blood; you could smell its strong scent, the very essence of his flesh and blood. It was tempting, the call of a siren that could lead you to the most delicious of treasures.
You forced yourself to put the cloth down on the table, not even noticing if it was on the tray you’d carefully prepared, nor if your nervous, tense movement caught Matt’s attention.
You took two steps back, clasping your hands behind your back.
You needed to calm yourself, needed to force yourself to hide the darkness inside you, in the deepest recesses of your being, in that part that shouldn’t come out.
You breathed slowly and nervously, even though you didn’t really need to, even though it might have worsened the situation but you couldn’t completely control it.
You focused on Matt by mistake. You allowed yourself to observe the way his chest rose and fell, the toning of his arms and abdomen covered by bandages, patches, and stitches placed by you or other hands that assisted you.
He was handsome, even beneath all those wounds and the weight of a lost life. His neck forked perfectly, forming his shoulders and then his collarbone. There was a faint perspiration, one you had smelled before, but now allowed yourself to observe; his skin glowed delicately, the natural scent of his body and that of his blood distinct yet the same. One saltier, the other sweeter.
The rhythm of his heart tormented your mind. You could hear its beats resonating in his ribcage like the sweetest symphony. That was the organ that pumped all the blood in his body, the organ that kept one of his being’s systems alive.
Your eyes traveled from his chest, the exact spot where his heart was, to his neck where his pulse was also visible to you. You saw him swallow slightly, surely because he was thirsty, and for a few seconds, a new thought entered your mind.
You imagined yourself on top of him, your hands pinning his weaker ones against the bed.
You traced your nose from the nest of his heart to the sweaty skin of his neck and inhaled deeply as the rhythm of his heartbeat condensed into a sinful mingling. Your body was heavy on him, even though you now moved more lightly, his body rigid, hard, yet fragile because of his condition.
Completely at your mercy.
You saw yourself baring your fangs this time at will, letting them emerge in all their glory and tracing their points across Matt’s sensitive skin—sensitive to you, anyway. The ancient edge would tear or irritate the skin in that area, and then, with a slow lick to savor the saltiness of his skin, you would prepare the area before slowly sinking your fangs in.
You would hear him groan in pain, arching beneath your touch as you secured your bite and began to suck.
You were going to do it slowly; you wanted to savor it. Perhaps you would even move on top of him because a man like this deserved to feel more than the pain of a monster feeding on his exposed body.
Perhaps a satisfied moan would escape you because, for the first time, you would be hunting for pleasure and not for justice, because that’s what it was: a selfish pleasure roaring inside your gut to take something you had no right to.
Perhaps you could make it more pleasurable for him, perhaps you could free his hands and let him touch your cold being while you fed on his natural warmth.
That blood—his blood—, which was surely sweet, would travel to his cock, make him hard beneath you, and perhaps, out of mercy because you were a child of God, you would break the grip and take him in another way.
He would be all yours. To feed on, to fuck. A mixture of cold and heat. The living and the dead.
Matt’s voice, thankfully, brought you back to earth.
What the fuck were you thinking? What’s happening to you?
“You know what Father Lantom keeps telling me?” he said. There was something unexpectedly thoughtful beneath the fatigue and a desire to break the tension you yourself had created. You didn’t know if he even noticed the emotional outburst that had just occurred, but you were aware that he had noticed something.
You glanced at him, forcing yourself to look at him with a nurse’s eyes, not with the eyes of the demon inside you.
You swallowed hard and forced your fangs to stay inside your jaw, no matter how painful the thirst was.
“What?” you said, threading the needle now, because you needed to behave like his nurse and not like a predator.
“’God leaves work unfinished because He expects people to finish it’,” a humorless smile touched his mouth. “I think He’s giving Himself too much credit.” The bitterness in his voice did not shock you.
That saddened you.
You lowered your eyes to the wound once more, carefully guiding the needle through damaged skin with the steadiness born of years spent saving lives. The sadness of what he said forced you to focus on the reality of the matter, not on the dark selfishness within you.
“Do you believe that?” you asked quietly.
This was good; you could focus on its bitterness, born of pain, to ignore the persistent thirst that threatened to contaminate you even further.
“Which part?”
“That God leaves.”
Matt’s jaw tightened.
For a long moment, you thought he might refuse to answer.
Then he exhaled through his nose. “I think…” he began slowly, “...if He has something to say, He’s had plenty of chances.”
Silence settled over the infirmary.
Not uncomfortable.
Heavy.
Sacred, almost.
You tied the final knot with careful fingers before pressing fresh gauze over the repaired stitch.
“I used to believe,” you said at last, your voice barely louder than the rustle of linen, “that silence didn’t mean abandonment.”
“And now?”
You didn’t answer immediately, because the truth frightened you.
Because somewhere beneath the convent, hidden inside a body that no longer belonged among the living, there existed a hunger that grew stronger every day despite every prayer you whispered.
“...Now,” you admitted quietly, “I’m trying very hard to keep believing it.”
You secured the clean bandage around his arm and stepped back.
Only then did you realize how fiercely your hands were trembling. It was incredible how your hands lost control and trembled from your inner strength to not act.
Your hands wanted to grasp; you could feel it deep within your being.
It wasn’t fear, it was restraint.
Matt, mercifully, mistook the silence that followed for exhaustion or nervousness of a nurse who was afraid of blood.
“You should get some rest,” he murmured, turning his face slightly toward the ceiling. “Can’t imagine patching up stubborn idiots is easy work.”
The corner of your mouth lifted despite yourself.
“No,” you answered, gathering the bloodstained gauze onto the tray before either your eyes or your instincts could linger on it any longer. “It rarely is.”
You left the infirmary almost immediately afterward. The door closed behind you with a quiet click.
Only once the corridor swallowed the scent of Matt’s blood did you allow yourself to lean against the cold wall, lowering your head as an involuntary breath escaped your lips.
For the first time since opening your eyes beneath Saint Agnes two weeks earlier, you understood with terrifying clarity that your greatest fear had never been becoming a monster.
It was becoming one in the presence of a man you had sworn to heal. A man who, despite his bitterness, trusted in this place, in its people, in you to heal him.
What the hell were you thinking? Was the devil inside you forming perverse thoughts about a vulnerable man to break you?
Your composure shattered at the thought, at the thirst that threatened to dry your entire throat and demand to be quenched.
It wasn’t something visible. Not in any way another person might have recognized it. Years spent tending to the wounded had taught you that panic rarely announced itself with trembling hands or desperate breaths. More often, it settled somewhere beneath the ribs, quietly dismantling every certainty you possessed until the simple act of remaining still became an unbearable labor.
You walked.
Not because you had anywhere to be, but because movement was the only thing keeping your thoughts from returning to the scent still lingering inside your memory.
Blood.
Fresh.
Human.
Him.
You descended the narrow staircase that led toward the oldest corridors beneath Saint Agnes, your footsteps barely whispering against the worn steps. The convent above continued with the gentle rhythm of ordinary life. Somewhere overhead, a bell rang softly, announcing the midday Angelus. A few sisters answered with prayer as they crossed the chapel. Their voices drifted faintly through the ancient masonry, weaving together fragments of Latin that had once comforted you.
Now they only reminded you of what you feared losing.
The hunger did not leave with distance.
If anything, it became crueler.
Your body remembered the scent of Matt’s blood with an almost offensive clarity. It replayed it relentlessly, separating it from every other smell until it occupied your senses entirely. You could no longer recall the antiseptic that had filled the infirmary, nor the soap Sister Maggie favored, nor the old linen drying beneath the sunlight.
Only him.
Only the warmth that had escaped beneath your fingertips when the stitch gave way.
Your throat tightened painfully.
It was absurd.
The wound had barely bled. No more than a few drops.
And yet every instinct hidden beneath your skin had reacted as though you had been standing beside a river.
You pressed the heel of your hand against your mouth, ashamed of the thought before it had fully formed.
There had been a moment—a fleeting, monstrous instant—in which you had not looked at Matt Murdock as a patient.
You had looked at him as prey.
The realization hollowed something inside your chest.
You reached your room without remembering the walk itself. The small chamber remained exactly as you had left it that morning: modest, orderly, almost painfully devoid of personality. A narrow bed stood against the wall beside a worn crucifix. A bookshelf overflowed with medical texts Sister Maggie had patiently gathered for you, each one thicker and more incomprehensible than the last.
You sat on your bed, your whole body trembling, and it was then, in the clarity of solitude, that you noticed your hand tightly gripping the gauze that held Matt’s blood.
You had grabbed it. You didn’t remember when, or perhaps you did, but you weren’t fully aware of the act’s significance.
It was a grave transgression, a theft of a part of a body that was healing, that you were helping to heal, but that you were now stealing without shame or even realizing it. It was true that you hadn’t caused this blood, you hadn’t hurt Matt; it was blood that came out on its own because of the things he himself had done.
Even so.
You squeezed your lips tighter as you exhaled shakily once more. Your lips were as dry as your throat, and as you fought the urge to bury your nose in that forbidden piece, you breathed in again.
Another scent, not as strong or enticing, lingered in your room. Resting atop the wooden table, untouched since dawn, was another glass bottle.
Dark.
Opaque.
Animal blood.
Father Lantom must have left it while you were tending to Matt.
You stared at it for several seconds.
Then, stealthily, you tucked the gauze under your pillow and reached for the bottle with hands that no longer felt entirely your own.
The cork gave way beneath your fingers. The familiar metallic scent rose immediately and you drank quickly. Desperately. Not because it offered relief, but because you wanted—needed—to believe that it still could.
The liquid slid down your throat with the same disappointing emptiness it always had. It filled your stomach. It coated your tongue with iron.
Nothing else.
The ache remained.
No.
Not remained.
It deepened.
Something inside you recoiled almost violently, rejecting the substitute with growing impatience. The hunger was no longer content with survival. It had begun to recognize the difference between living blood and everything that merely resembled it.
The bottle slipped from your hand onto the table with a dull sound.
Your fingers dug into the edge of the wood until it groaned beneath the pressure.
It wasn’t enough.
Dear God...
It wasn’t enough anymore.
It was unfair that it wasn’t enough, unfair that sinful thoughts you now seemed to recall had assailed you and made a poor man, who was only just recovering after losing so much of himself, the protagonist.
You didn’t understand this injustice. You didn’t want to hurt Matt, nor did you want to think of him in such a lustful way. You barely knew him, and yet that was enough for your mind to turn him not only into a victim of your thirst, but also of a dark desire you’d never had before.
When you killed Owney Madden’s men, there was nothing but a thirst for justice, a bloodlust justified by the evil deeds of sinful beings who didn’t care about imposing their wickedness on the innocent.
Now… now what was the justification? You could understand the bloodlust, but the desire that took hold of you, that desire to have Matt vulnerable beneath you and take him in such a profane way, was something new.
And it was terrifying. You hadn’t wanted to think that way about him, and yet you did. Part of you wanted to give in, wanted to feel his blood rushing down your throat and his cock plunging into you.
A knock sounded softly against the open doorway, interrupting your new crisis.
You did not answer.
A moment later, Father Lantom appeared, pausing just beyond the threshold. He took in the room with a single quiet glance—the empty bottle, your rigid posture, the silence hanging heavily between the stone walls—and understood far more than you had hoped.
He did not ask whether you had finished drinking.
He did not ask whether it had helped.
Instead, he stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind him.
“I thought I’d find you here,” his voice carried the same calm warmth it always had, never intruding upon another person’s suffering, merely accompanying it.
You kept your eyes lowered. “I’m sorry,” the apology escaped your lips before you could stop it.
Lantom frowned almost imperceptibly. “For what?”
You let out a brittle laugh that sounded painfully unfamiliar in your own ears.
“I almost…” Your throat tightened around the confession. “...I looked at him and, for a moment, I wasn’t thinking like a nurse anymore.”
Silence settled gently between the two of you, not because he didn’t know what to say.
Because he refused to interrupt your honesty.
Your voice became quieter. “I could smell it… all of him,” another pause. “It was only a little blood,” your fingers loosened against the edge of the table, only to curl tightly once more. “But my body didn’t care, my mind didn’t care,” you closed your eyes. “It wanted all of it.”
The words remained suspended in the room long after you finished speaking.
You had expected revulsion or pity. Perhaps disappointment.
Instead, Father Lantom slowly approached until he stood beside you. He rested one weathered hand upon the table rather than upon your shoulder, leaving you the dignity of choosing whether you wished to close the distance yourself.
“You didn’t hurt him,” his words were gentle.
“I wanted to,” you said.
“No,” he shook his head. “You wanted blood.”
The distinction struck you harder than any reprimand could have.
“There is a difference.”
You swallowed painfully. “It doesn’t feel like one,” you said in a sigh that hid the storm inside you.
“No,” he admitted. “I imagine it doesn’t.”
Another silence followed, quieter than the last.
Outside, somewhere above the old stone ceiling, the bells finished their midday prayer. Father Lantom waited until the final echo faded before speaking again.
“When our Lord fasted in the desert,” he said softly, “His hunger did not make Him sinful.”
You looked at him. “It made Him tempted.”
His gaze met yours with unwavering steadiness. “Temptation is not the same as surrender,” he said.
A bitter smile found your lips. “I don’t know how much longer I can tell the difference.”
“I do,” there was no hesitation in his answer. “Because every day you continue choosing it.”
You lowered your eyes. “It doesn’t become easier.”
“I never expected it would,” his voice remained impossibly calm. “Grace is not measured by how little we struggle,” he smiled faintly. “It’s measured by how often we choose to stand back up after we do.”
The room fell silent once more.
This time, however, the silence no longer felt empty.
It felt inhabited.
Not by certainty.
Certainly not by peace.
Only by the quiet presence of someone who had decided long ago that your soul was worth accompanying, even when you no longer believed it yourself. Which was unfair to a man as willing to help you heal as he was; Father Lantom had no idea of the thoughts your mind was forming to tempt you to sin once more. It wasn’t just about the blood now, but about taking, about using your strength to make Matt your complete prey.
You looked toward the empty bottle resting upon the table.
You had drunk it all, only the ghost of animal blood remained as a presence.
And yet the thirst remained exactly where it had always been, coiled somewhere beneath your breastbone with infinite patience, whispering not for blood in general...
...but for one heartbeat in particular.
That realization frightened you more than the thirst itself.
notes: hmm, a few small things happened in this chapter… reader is lucky matt is still disoriented. we'll see how long that lasts. 🤭
to better fit the fic, i changed some things, obviously, about the church and the beginning of season three.
i had to shorten this chapter quite a bit because it was almost 20k words, lmao. but thanks to that, chapter two will come out much faster. <3
warnings: (18+ minors dni) eventual smut. mention of blood and graphic scenes of violence. blasphemy. constant mention of the catholic religion.
word count: 7.7k
clarification: english is not my native language, so i apologize in advance for any mistakes.
ㅤㅤㅤI. THE TEMPTATION
Thirst was the first thing you encountered upon opening your eyes.
Not the stone ceiling that had replaced the interior of the coffin where you had lain for nearly a century. Not the dim light filtering through the narrow window in the depths of Saint Agnes. Not even the rosary that had rested on your chest since the night before, clutched in your fingers by a habit that outlived even death. It was thirst. Always thirst. A constant, silent presence that seemed to awaken a few seconds before you, to remind you that, although the Lord had returned you to the world, He had not done so under the same laws that governed others.
Two weeks had passed since your awakening.
Two weeks trying to learn how to live in a century that wasn’t yours. Two weeks discovering that the streets weren’t the same anymore, that Clinton had become, colloquially, Hell’s Kitchen, that electricity had gone from being a luxury to something as commonplace as air, and that the medicine you had once studied with dedication now seemed like a completely different language. But none of those differences tormented you as much as the certainty that your own body was drifting, day by day, away from everything that had once been human.
Animal blood was no longer enough.
At first, you had wanted to believe it was true. When Father Lantom, with an almost touching discretion, began bringing you small amounts of blood—the source of which you didn’t question—you accepted the gesture with the naive hope that it would be enough to sustain this second chance God had granted you. You had thought you could live like this. That simply enduring would be enough. That the sacrifice you had made before the altar wouldn’t end up becoming an unbearable sentence.
You were wrong.
That morning you held the porcelain cup in both hands, gazing at the dark liquid resting inside. There was no repulsion in your eyes. Nor desire. Only a weary resignation, the same with which a sick person accepts a remedy that ceased to ease their pain long ago. You slowly brought it to your lips and drank in small sips, forcing yourself to finish every last drop, even though you knew, before you did, that the result would be exactly the same.
Cold.
Metallic.
Empty.
Without the fervent thread of a life unraveling beneath your sharp bite.
The blood trickled down your throat, offering absolutely nothing. Your stomach no longer felt empty, but that which truly craved nourishment remained untouched, hidden in some corner of your being beyond the reach of reason and faith. It was a different kind of need, one that belonged not to the flesh but to the creature you had become; a patient thirst that seemed to watch you from the depths of your soul, waiting for the day you would cease fighting it.
You placed the cup on the small wooden table and remained motionless for a few moments. The convent was just beginning to stir. Muffled sounds descended from the upper floors: the scrape of soles on the old floorboards, a door closing carefully, the distant murmur of a prayer uttered by an early-rising nun. For decades, those sounds had meant home. Now they served only to remind you that you shared that building with people whose blood ran warm beneath their skin.
You looked down at the rosary around your wrist.
Your fingers closed on the beads with an unconscious force.
You had prayed to God.
And God had answered.
That conviction remained intact even after ninety-four years locked in a coffin. Even after the starvation. Even after the bloodshed. Because if you began to doubt it, then your entire existence lost its meaning. All the suffering, all the guilt, all the decades of darkness were reduced to pointless cruelty. You needed to believe there was a reason to stay. You needed to believe the sacrifice had been worth it.
Father Lantom believed it too.
And that was, perhaps, the reason why the guilt weighed so heavily.
He had never looked at you with fear. He had never uttered the word “monster”, nor had he allowed you to. He had accepted your existence with a serenity that could only spring from unwavering faith, insisting time and again that God did not err in granting a mission. It was He who convinced you to return to nursing when Matt Murdock arrived at the convent between life and death; He who had placed in your hands the responsibility of caring for a man whose blood awakened in you a need you were only beginning to understand.
You could not betray that trust.
Not after everything He had done for you.
Not after having protected your secret for those two weeks when the modern world threatened to devour you as much as hunger itself.
You stood up slowly. Your movements remained elegant, almost silent, as if your body had forgotten the weight it once bore. In a few hours, you would have to return to the infirmary, change Matt’s bandages, check that the wounds were still healing properly, and pretend, once again, that the faint scent of his blood didn’t disturb every fiber of your being.
You were still unaware that this effort was beginning to turn into an unwinnable battle.
The convent was quieter in the mornings than you remembered.
Not silent—Saint Agnes had never truly been silent—but the sounds had changed. In 1923, dawn had carried the scrape of coal being delivered to nearby buildings, the distant shouts of dockworkers heading toward the Hudson, the creak of wagon wheels on wet streets. Now the world beyond the church woke beneath the low growl of engines and the occasional wail of a siren somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen. The rhythm was different, yet the old stone walls still held the same patient stillness they always had, as though the building itself had decided that time was a concern for everyone else.
You were crossing the corridor toward your destination when Sister Maggie stepped out of the chapel.
She paused when she saw you, one hand still resting against the heavy wooden door. The morning light from the stained-glass windows softened the sharp lines of her habit and painted faint colors across the floor between you.
The itch on your skin appeared, mild thankfully. You scratched the skin of your neck with a touch of embarrassment; the hot sting of the sun’s rays hadn’t yet arrived—you had no idea why—but instead, whenever you were more exposed to the sun, an allergy-like itch reigned.
You preferred that to your skin burning. You could still remember your flesh roasting that dawn when you were reborn.
“You’re up early,” she said.
A small smile touched your lips. “I could say the same to you.”
Maggie gave a quiet huff that might have been amusement. “Some habits survive every century. Besides, children don’t really have a set rest schedule.”
The words settled between you more gently than they should have. Most people still stumbled around the fact that you had slept through nearly a hundred years of history. Maggie rarely did. She spoke about it the way one might speak about an old scar: impossible to ignore, unnecessary to prod.
In your short time awake, you discovered that Maggie was the person Father Lantom seemed to trust the most. At least when it came to you. She seemed to know your whole story, and although she was cautious around you in the first few days, she didn’t judge the divine hand that had fallen upon you years before.
You fell into step beside her as she began walking toward the infirmary, or what was the makeshift infirmary that the church had. For a few moments neither of you spoke. The silence was not uncomfortable. It carried the familiar weight of shared faith, the kind that did not always require words to make itself known.
“You prayed this morning,” Maggie observed at last.
It was not a question.
You glanced toward her, faintly surprised. “How did you know?”
“You have the same expression afterward every time.” Her gaze remained fixed ahead. “Like someone trying to decide whether God answered… or simply listened.”
A soft breath escaped you before you could stop it. “I’m beginning to think there’s a difference,” you murmur solemnly.
Maggie’s footsteps slowed almost imperceptibly. “And which would you prefer?”
The question lingered longer than you expected. For ninety-four years you had clung to the certainty that your transformation had been an answer, that the voice in the darkness had belonged to God and that the hunger you carried was the price of a sacred duty. Yet the certainty felt less solid whenever you stood beside a bed and smelled fresh blood.
“I don’t know anymore,” you admitted quietly. “Sometimes I think being heard would have been easier.”
Sister Maggie turned her head then, studying you with that calm, penetrating look that made it impossible to hide behind polite answers.
“Faith isn’t certainty,” she said. “If it were, it wouldn’t be faith.”
The words should have sounded like a lesson. Instead they sounded tired, as though she had spent years repeating them to herself.
A silence was shared, not one filled with discomfort or reproach due to the slightest doubt in faith. Rather, it was a silence laden with the certainty of a belief so deeply rooted that you both carried.
You reached the infirmary door before speaking again. “You care about him,” you said softly, though with a certain intention.
For the first time that morning, something shifted in her expression. “Mr. Murdock?” she asked.
You nodded.
Maggie’s hand tightened briefly around the edge of the door. “He’s suffered more than he lets people see.”
There was no hesitation in her voice, only a tenderness so carefully controlled that most people would have missed it. You didn’t. The warmth beneath those few words felt deeper than simple concern for a patient.
“He seems angry,” you said.
“He is.” A faint smile touched her mouth, sad and knowing. “At God. At himself. At surviving.”
You looked toward the room beyond the door, where Matt rested somewhere inside. “He believes surviving was a mistake,” you whispered.
Maggie was quiet for a moment before answering. “Many people do, when they wake up and discover the world hasn’t become easier while they were gone.”
The sentence struck you harder than she could have known.
For an instant you saw the dark wooden coffin beneath Saint Agnes, the decades slipping past above your head, the city changing while you remained suspended between death and whatever came after it.
Maggie must have noticed the shadow that crossed your face, because her voice softened.
“You don’t have to understand why you were given another chance,” she said. “You only have to decide what you’ll do with it.”
The room smelled faintly of antiseptic, old wood, and healing wounds. Matt lay where you had left him the night before, still pale, still exhausted. Morning light cut through the window and touched the bandages wrapped around his ribs.
As you moved toward his bedside, you suddenly became aware of two things at once: the quiet steadiness of Sister Maggie watching from the doorway for a few moments, and the dangerous pull that lived beneath the scent of blood no matter how carefully the wounds had been cleaned.
One reminded you of the woman you had once been.
The other reminded you of what you had become.
The door closed softly, leaving the room enveloped once more in the quiet rhythm that seemed to belong exclusively to places where people fought to stay alive. Sister Maggie would be outside, nearby, because that's what you asked for, for Matt's sake and yours.
It was noticeable how several times she deliberately sought you out to talk before you went to deal with Matt on Father Lantom’s ‘orders’.
The infirmary was modest, little more than a handful of beds separated by curtains that had seen better decades, shelves crowded with bottles whose labels belonged to a medicine you were still trying to understand, and a single window through which the pale morning light filtered without much warmth. It was not the infirmary you had once known, yet there was comfort in the familiarity of its purpose. Illness, pain, recovery—those things had not changed with the century.
Neither had the instinct that guided your hands whenever someone needed care.
You crossed the room without making a sound. Matt remained asleep, though not peacefully. Even before reaching his bedside, you noticed the slight tension lingering across his brow, the almost imperceptible tightening of his jaw every now and then, as though whatever dreams occupied his unconscious refused to grant him the mercy of rest. His body had survived Midland Circle. His mind, you suspected, was still buried beneath the ruins.
For a long moment, you simply looked at him.
He seemed younger in sleep.
Not because the bruises had faded—they had not—but because unconsciousness had stripped away the guarded expression he carried while awake. Without it, he looked less like the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen and more like a man who had reached the limit of what one soul could endure.
You couldn’t help but be astonished the first time Father Lantom told you about Matt’s situation. A blind man who went out at night to keep his city safe, regardless of the physical sacrifices he made. It seemed unbelievable, but who were you to judge the decisions of the Lord’s followers? Who would judge someone who gives without expecting even a kind word in return?
It was something you admired: his resilience in the face of danger, his sacrifice for a stranger. You understood it with a depth you doubted Matt himself could grasp. It was about giving of oneself so that others could have a better future. A somewhat twisted sense of justice on your part; instead of remaining silent for the years following your rebirth, you chose to lock yourself in a coffin to avoid confronting what you had done and what you could do.
You were filled with the silent judgment of Matt, even though he remained asleep. He didn’t even know you, he probably wasn’t even interested in your situation, but he was someone who wrecked his body and mind for Hell’s Kitchen. You, on the other hand, chose to hide for fear of losing control of the innate thirst that gripped your throat.
You sighed; it wasn’t the time to question your decisions or see yourself reflected in a man who needed support more than answering other people’s questions about faith itself.
Carefully, you set the clean bandages and fresh gauze upon the bedside table before reaching for the basin of warm water Sister Maggie had prepared earlier that morning. Steam no longer carried any pleasant sensation against your skin; your body had forgotten warmth long ago. Still, habit prevailed. Warm water soothed wounds. It comforted patients. That was reason enough.
Your fingers found the edge of the bandage wrapped around his ribs.
Slowly.
Delicately.
The dressing peeled away with only the faintest resistance, revealing the angry bruising beneath. The stitches were holding. The swelling had begun to subside. It was progress—slow, imperfect progress, but enough to reassure the nurse in you.
As you leaned closer to inspect the wound, Matt stirred.
His breathing shifted first, even and shallow, followed by the slight turn of his head toward the sound of your movements. There was no confusion in the gesture this time, only the instinctive vigilance of someone accustomed to waking up expecting a threat.
“...Who’s there?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
“It’s me,” you answered softly. “I came to change your bandages… I am… the nurse,” you said with some doubt about whether you still deserved such a title.
For a moment, he said nothing. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly before a weary sigh escaped him. “...Right.”
You waited until the silence settled again before carefully continuing your work. The fabric peeled away from his ribs, exposing bruises that had darkened overnight. The stitches were holding, though only just.
“Does anything feel different today?” you asked, keeping your attention on the wound.
You had to keep your attention on the wound. Not on the throbbing of his body, not on the slight rhythm moving beneath his bruise, not on the fine lines of sweat running down his neck, caused by his elevated body temperature.
You could almost smell it, the saltiness of his natural fluid. You smelled it, you smelled Matt, his very essence of masculinity that tempted you to sniff more closely, to discover the scent of his blood.
You wondered what the scent of his innermost being would be like, if tasting it would be the same as having felt it the first time you touched him. An intimate act you tried to forget, but couldn’t. You remembered Matt’s pain.
Perhaps you could take away his pain if you let yourself taste him—
Matt let out a quiet, humorless scoff, which brought you back to the now and not the living of your mind. “Yeah.”
You glanced toward him.
“I’m still alive,” the words fell into the room with a weight far greater than their simplicity.
There was no bitterness directed at you. Only exhaustion. A quiet resentment that seemed to have rooted itself somewhere so deep inside him that even speaking required effort.
You lowered your gaze back to the wound. “The body heals slowly after something like this.”
At this moment, you were almost grateful that his bitterness kept you focused on him and not on his physical self.
“I wasn’t talking about my body,” his reply came almost immediately.
You didn’t answer. There wasn’t an answer that could reach a man who had already decided survival itself was a punishment.
The room returned to silence, broken only by the soft sound of clean gauze unfolding between your fingers.
After several moments, Matt spoke again, though his voice carried less edge this time.
“...Father Lantom said you’ve been helping.”
“I’ve done what I can.”
“You were the one stitching me up,” he said, without any emotional charge that could be felt.
“I was.”
Another pause.
“...Thanks,” the gratitude sounded reluctant, almost uncomfortable, as though he disliked needing anyone’s help as much as he disliked remaining in that bed.
You secured the fresh bandage around his ribs with practiced movements.
“You don’t have to thank me,” you murmured.
His talking to you kept you distracted. You needed to keep it that way.
“I know,” his answer came quietly. “...Doesn’t mean I won’t.”
He didn’t mention anything about the devil inside him, the nocturnal creature he became to keep the city safe. You knew it was complicated, but that your discretion, and that of all the nuns in the convent, was necessary. Matt was a refugee of the church, another son, in Father Lantom’s words.
A son who needed guidance and support, as you remembered hearing Father Lantom whisper to Sister Maggie once.
You shouldn’t have heard that, but you did.
As you smoothed the last fold of the bandage against his side, your fingertips brushed the bare skin beneath his arm.
Matt frowned almost immediately. “...Your hands are freezing.”
Every muscle in your body tensed. You withdrew only enough to continue your work without drawing attention to yourself.
“I’ve always had cold hands.”
“Hm,” he didn’t sound convinced.
Then again, his senses were still fractured, distorted by pain and whatever damage Midland Circle had left behind. Had he been well, perhaps he would have lingered on the observation. Today, however, the thought seemed to drift away almost as quickly as it had appeared.
You had some idea that the man you were caring for had special abilities, or something like that. A man who could feel everything better except for his sight.
“...Lucky you,” he muttered after a moment, his head sinking deeper into the pillow. “At least one part of you still works the way it’s supposed to.”
The sentence carried the faintest trace of dry humor, but it dissolved almost immediately beneath the crushing weariness that had become his constant companion.
You lowered your eyes once more to the clean bandages wrapped around his torso.
For the briefest of moments, you found yourself wondering whether surviving could truly hurt more than dying. You saw it in that instant, the way his body was bruised in ways it shouldn’t be, and his inner being broken.
It wasn’t a deduction, it was a certainty.
You cared for him physically, you felt him emotionally.
That moment when you were able to feel Matt Murdock remained etched in your memory. You had never felt another human being like that, not in such a complete and invasive way.
You knew it was something to criticize because he hadn’t given you permission to delve so deeply into his being, but you had no idea how you had done it, and, for now, it hadn’t happened again.
The time passed more quickly than you expected.
Perhaps it was because keeping your hands occupied had always been the easiest way to silence your thoughts. Ever since you had first learned to hold a needle without trembling, to recognize an infection before fever announced itself, to wash blood from skin without allowing pity to interfere with precision, medicine had demanded something wonderfully simple of you: to think of the patient before yourself.
You clung desperately to that discipline.
Matt’s recovery was slow, but it was recovery nonetheless. The first time you saw him, he was a spectacle of purples, reds, and browns. It was shocking that a human being could survive so long, but you couldn’t help but be amazed by how the world actually worked.
His body possessed the remarkable stubbornness of someone who had survived far more than any ordinary man should have. He had bruises, swollen, feverish areas, sutures, cuts that needed daily bandages... but he was still alive. Not standing yet, but alive and healing faster than the average human.
It was his spirit that worried you, every time you let your gaze rest on him longer than necessary.
You noticed it the moment you met him. You noticed it now that Matt remained silent while letting you treat him as if he were just a practice dummy.
People who wished to live clung to pain. They fought against it, cursed it, begged for it to end. Matt accepted it with a frightening indifference, as though every fresh ache merely confirmed something he had already decided—that surviving Midland Circle had been an error neither Heaven nor Earth intended to correct.
By midday, Sister Maggie stopped appearing to watch over you; you wished she would stay, even if she wasn't in the room with you, you could hear her heartbeat on the other side. It was reassuring; you needed a watchful eye on you if God had decided not to intervene again.
But now you had to trust yourself, your own control. They had given you their trust; you had to give it back.
You busied yourself preparing fresh dressings, carefully arranging clean gauze, disinfectant, and surgical scissors on the small tray beside his bed before returning to examine Matt’s body. It was a precaution; you knew he wouldn’t communicate his internal pains or fevers, but you knew the human body well enough to know what hidden wounds or internal pains might need treating.
It was protocol, so you focused on that, on the things you knew. Your selfish desires and personal thoughts had no place in front of a man who seemed to be melting away before you.
“This will sting,” you warned softly.
You were going to take care of a wound on his arm, one that you suspected was not as serious as the one on his ribs or shoulder, but that remained there as a nuisance that could escalate.
Matt’s expression hardly changed. “I’ve had better afternoons.”
His answer carried the dry edge of a man too exhausted to waste energy on complaints. You allowed yourself the smallest smile before carefully lifting the edge of the bandage.
It resisted. Only slightly.
The dried blood had adhered to the fabric during the night.
You paused. “I’m going to remove it slowly.”
“Do whatever you have to,” Matt said dryly.
Your fingers worked with practiced patience, dampening the cloth before easing it away from the stitches one careful movement at a time. For several long seconds, everything remained still.
Then one stitch gave way.
It happened so quietly that another person might not even have noticed. A single thread snapped beneath the tension, reopening the smallest part of the wound.
A bead of crimson welled immediately against pale skin.
Tiny.
Harmless.
Entirely expected.
Your body disagreed.
The scent reached you before your eyes truly registered the blood itself.
Warm. Living. Human.
It unfolded through the room with terrifying gentleness, slipping beneath every thought you tried to hold onto. The smell of antiseptic disappeared first. Then the linen. Then the old wood of Saint Agnes.
Everything you had tried to ignore, everything you wouldn’t allow yourself to focus on. That which remained screaming inside, tearing at your throat.
There was only blood.
Something inside you lurched with such violence that your hand tightened involuntarily around the edge of the dressing.
No.
You forced your fingers to loosen.
The wound was insignificant.
You had treated injuries far worse in another lifetime. Your hands knew exactly what to do. A clean cloth. Gentle pressure. Replace the broken stitch. Fresh gauze.
Simple.
Except nothing felt simple anymore.
Your throat tightened.
For one horrifying instant, your gaze lingered on the small ribbon of blood trailing along the curve of Matt’s side.
Not as a nurse, but as something else.
Something infinitely older than the woman standing beside the bed.
You looked away so abruptly that the movement caught Matt’s attention.
“...Something wrong?” His voice was quieter this time.
Not suspicious, just observant.
You swallowed before answering. “The stitch came loose.”
“I figured that much,” his tone remained dry, but there was a hint of interest now. Interest or something else, as if something inside him knew the situation wasn’t right, but his senses couldn’t seem to confirm it.
You reached for a fresh compress, deliberately keeping your eyes fixed upon your work rather than the blood itself. Every movement became slower, more deliberate, as though precision alone might drown out the monstrous instinct clawing patiently beneath your skin.
“I’ll replace it,” you said, letting out a nervous exhalation.
“You sound nervous,” the words were simple.
Matter-of-fact.
Matt wasn’t accusing you.
He was listening.
Even with his senses fractured, he had always possessed an unsettling ability to hear what other people tried to bury beneath their voices.
You hesitated only briefly.
“I haven’t treated injuries this severe in... a very long time.”
It was not the truth, but it wasn’t entirely a lie either.
You forced yourself to clench your jaw, grinding your teeth together painfully as your hands trembled slightly.
First, you had to clean the blood, then redo the loose stitch, bandage it, and that was it. It was simple enough; you’d treated worse wounds on Matt.
Why did this tiny opening now seem worse than the others?
You carefully wiped away the small trail of blood from that stray drop. It was a slow movement, careful not to stain his skin. But you knew you weren’t doing it out of any sense of cleanliness, but rather out of a selfish feeling that, at the time, you didn’t even notice.
You lowered your gaze to the sterile cloth in your hand, which was lightly stained with the rest of Matt’s blood that had dared to escape his body. It was fresh blood, blood that had just left his body and was more than alive. That blood wasn’t dry, it wasn’t dead to you yet.
You dared to take a deep breath, just for a moment. An action Matt might have interpreted as a way to calm your nerves.
A mistake.
The fangs began to descend, barely visible. They forced you to break the tension you’d strained in your jaw, forcing their way through for the first time in so many years.
It wasn’t your decision; it was more the reflex of a creature desperately seeking attention.
Your fingers curled tightly around the sterile cloth. Beneath your hand, the fabric remained slightly damp with Matt’s blood; you could smell its strong scent, the very essence of his flesh and blood. It was tempting, the call of a siren that could lead you to the most delicious of treasures.
You forced yourself to put the cloth down on the table, not even noticing if it was on the tray you’d carefully prepared, nor if your nervous, tense movement caught Matt’s attention.
You took two steps back, clasping your hands behind your back.
You needed to calm yourself, needed to force yourself to hide the darkness inside you, in the deepest recesses of your being, in that part that shouldn’t come out.
You breathed slowly and nervously, even though you didn’t really need to, even though it might have worsened the situation but you couldn’t completely control it.
You focused on Matt by mistake. You allowed yourself to observe the way his chest rose and fell, the toning of his arms and abdomen covered by bandages, patches, and stitches placed by you or other hands that assisted you.
He was handsome, even beneath all those wounds and the weight of a lost life. His neck forked perfectly, forming his shoulders and then his collarbone. There was a faint perspiration, one you had smelled before, but now allowed yourself to observe; his skin glowed delicately, the natural scent of his body and that of his blood distinct yet the same. One saltier, the other sweeter.
The rhythm of his heart tormented your mind. You could hear its beats resonating in his ribcage like the sweetest symphony. That was the organ that pumped all the blood in his body, the organ that kept one of his being’s systems alive.
Your eyes traveled from his chest, the exact spot where his heart was, to his neck where his pulse was also visible to you. You saw him swallow slightly, surely because he was thirsty, and for a few seconds, a new thought entered your mind.
You imagined yourself on top of him, your hands pinning his weaker ones against the bed.
You traced your nose from the nest of his heart to the sweaty skin of his neck and inhaled deeply as the rhythm of his heartbeat condensed into a sinful mingling. Your body was heavy on him, even though you now moved more lightly, his body rigid, hard, yet fragile because of his condition.
Completely at your mercy.
You saw yourself baring your fangs this time at will, letting them emerge in all their glory and tracing their points across Matt’s sensitive skin—sensitive to you, anyway. The ancient edge would tear or irritate the skin in that area, and then, with a slow lick to savor the saltiness of his skin, you would prepare the area before slowly sinking your fangs in.
You would hear him groan in pain, arching beneath your touch as you secured your bite and began to suck.
You were going to do it slowly; you wanted to savor it. Perhaps you would even move on top of him because a man like this deserved to feel more than the pain of a monster feeding on his exposed body.
Perhaps a satisfied moan would escape you because, for the first time, you would be hunting for pleasure and not for justice, because that’s what it was: a selfish pleasure roaring inside your gut to take something you had no right to.
Perhaps you could make it more pleasurable for him, perhaps you could free his hands and let him touch your cold being while you fed on his natural warmth.
That blood—his blood—, which was surely sweet, would travel to his cock, make him hard beneath you, and perhaps, out of mercy because you were a child of God, you would break the grip and take him in another way.
He would be all yours. To feed on, to fuck. A mixture of cold and heat. The living and the dead.
Matt’s voice, thankfully, brought you back to earth.
What the fuck were you thinking? What’s happening to you?
“You know what Father Lantom keeps telling me?” he said. There was something unexpectedly thoughtful beneath the fatigue and a desire to break the tension you yourself had created. You didn’t know if he even noticed the emotional outburst that had just occurred, but you were aware that he had noticed something.
You glanced at him, forcing yourself to look at him with a nurse’s eyes, not with the eyes of the demon inside you.
You swallowed hard and forced your fangs to stay inside your jaw, no matter how painful the thirst was.
“What?” you said, threading the needle now, because you needed to behave like his nurse and not like a predator.
“’God leaves work unfinished because He expects people to finish it’,” a humorless smile touched his mouth. “I think He’s giving Himself too much credit.” The bitterness in his voice did not shock you.
That saddened you.
You lowered your eyes to the wound once more, carefully guiding the needle through damaged skin with the steadiness born of years spent saving lives. The sadness of what he said forced you to focus on the reality of the matter, not on the dark selfishness within you.
“Do you believe that?” you asked quietly.
This was good; you could focus on its bitterness, born of pain, to ignore the persistent thirst that threatened to contaminate you even further.
“Which part?”
“That God leaves.”
Matt’s jaw tightened.
For a long moment, you thought he might refuse to answer.
Then he exhaled through his nose. “I think…” he began slowly, “...if He has something to say, He’s had plenty of chances.”
Silence settled over the infirmary.
Not uncomfortable.
Heavy.
Sacred, almost.
You tied the final knot with careful fingers before pressing fresh gauze over the repaired stitch.
“I used to believe,” you said at last, your voice barely louder than the rustle of linen, “that silence didn’t mean abandonment.”
“And now?”
You didn’t answer immediately, because the truth frightened you.
Because somewhere beneath the convent, hidden inside a body that no longer belonged among the living, there existed a hunger that grew stronger every day despite every prayer you whispered.
“...Now,” you admitted quietly, “I’m trying very hard to keep believing it.”
You secured the clean bandage around his arm and stepped back.
Only then did you realize how fiercely your hands were trembling. It was incredible how your hands lost control and trembled from your inner strength to not act.
Your hands wanted to grasp; you could feel it deep within your being.
It wasn’t fear, it was restraint.
Matt, mercifully, mistook the silence that followed for exhaustion or nervousness of a nurse who was afraid of blood.
“You should get some rest,” he murmured, turning his face slightly toward the ceiling. “Can’t imagine patching up stubborn idiots is easy work.”
The corner of your mouth lifted despite yourself.
“No,” you answered, gathering the bloodstained gauze onto the tray before either your eyes or your instincts could linger on it any longer. “It rarely is.”
You left the infirmary almost immediately afterward. The door closed behind you with a quiet click.
Only once the corridor swallowed the scent of Matt’s blood did you allow yourself to lean against the cold wall, lowering your head as an involuntary breath escaped your lips.
For the first time since opening your eyes beneath Saint Agnes two weeks earlier, you understood with terrifying clarity that your greatest fear had never been becoming a monster.
It was becoming one in the presence of a man you had sworn to heal. A man who, despite his bitterness, trusted in this place, in its people, in you to heal him.
What the hell were you thinking? Was the devil inside you forming perverse thoughts about a vulnerable man to break you?
Your composure shattered at the thought, at the thirst that threatened to dry your entire throat and demand to be quenched.
It wasn’t something visible. Not in any way another person might have recognized it. Years spent tending to the wounded had taught you that panic rarely announced itself with trembling hands or desperate breaths. More often, it settled somewhere beneath the ribs, quietly dismantling every certainty you possessed until the simple act of remaining still became an unbearable labor.
You walked.
Not because you had anywhere to be, but because movement was the only thing keeping your thoughts from returning to the scent still lingering inside your memory.
Blood.
Fresh.
Human.
Him.
You descended the narrow staircase that led toward the oldest corridors beneath Saint Agnes, your footsteps barely whispering against the worn steps. The convent above continued with the gentle rhythm of ordinary life. Somewhere overhead, a bell rang softly, announcing the midday Angelus. A few sisters answered with prayer as they crossed the chapel. Their voices drifted faintly through the ancient masonry, weaving together fragments of Latin that had once comforted you.
Now they only reminded you of what you feared losing.
The hunger did not leave with distance.
If anything, it became crueler.
Your body remembered the scent of Matt’s blood with an almost offensive clarity. It replayed it relentlessly, separating it from every other smell until it occupied your senses entirely. You could no longer recall the antiseptic that had filled the infirmary, nor the soap Sister Maggie favored, nor the old linen drying beneath the sunlight.
Only him.
Only the warmth that had escaped beneath your fingertips when the stitch gave way.
Your throat tightened painfully.
It was absurd.
The wound had barely bled. No more than a few drops.
And yet every instinct hidden beneath your skin had reacted as though you had been standing beside a river.
You pressed the heel of your hand against your mouth, ashamed of the thought before it had fully formed.
There had been a moment—a fleeting, monstrous instant—in which you had not looked at Matt Murdock as a patient.
You had looked at him as prey.
The realization hollowed something inside your chest.
You reached your room without remembering the walk itself. The small chamber remained exactly as you had left it that morning: modest, orderly, almost painfully devoid of personality. A narrow bed stood against the wall beside a worn crucifix. A bookshelf overflowed with medical texts Sister Maggie had patiently gathered for you, each one thicker and more incomprehensible than the last.
You sat on your bed, your whole body trembling, and it was then, in the clarity of solitude, that you noticed your hand tightly gripping the gauze that held Matt’s blood.
You had grabbed it. You didn’t remember when, or perhaps you did, but you weren’t fully aware of the act’s significance.
It was a grave transgression, a theft of a part of a body that was healing, that you were helping to heal, but that you were now stealing without shame or even realizing it. It was true that you hadn’t caused this blood, you hadn’t hurt Matt; it was blood that came out on its own because of the things he himself had done.
Even so.
You squeezed your lips tighter as you exhaled shakily once more. Your lips were as dry as your throat, and as you fought the urge to bury your nose in that forbidden piece, you breathed in again.
Another scent, not as strong or enticing, lingered in your room. Resting atop the wooden table, untouched since dawn, was another glass bottle.
Dark.
Opaque.
Animal blood.
Father Lantom must have left it while you were tending to Matt.
You stared at it for several seconds.
Then, stealthily, you tucked the gauze under your pillow and reached for the bottle with hands that no longer felt entirely your own.
The cork gave way beneath your fingers. The familiar metallic scent rose immediately and you drank quickly. Desperately. Not because it offered relief, but because you wanted—needed—to believe that it still could.
The liquid slid down your throat with the same disappointing emptiness it always had. It filled your stomach. It coated your tongue with iron.
Nothing else.
The ache remained.
No.
Not remained.
It deepened.
Something inside you recoiled almost violently, rejecting the substitute with growing impatience. The hunger was no longer content with survival. It had begun to recognize the difference between living blood and everything that merely resembled it.
The bottle slipped from your hand onto the table with a dull sound.
Your fingers dug into the edge of the wood until it groaned beneath the pressure.
It wasn’t enough.
Dear God...
It wasn’t enough anymore.
It was unfair that it wasn’t enough, unfair that sinful thoughts you now seemed to recall had assailed you and made a poor man, who was only just recovering after losing so much of himself, the protagonist.
You didn’t understand this injustice. You didn’t want to hurt Matt, nor did you want to think of him in such a lustful way. You barely knew him, and yet that was enough for your mind to turn him not only into a victim of your thirst, but also of a dark desire you’d never had before.
When you killed Owney Madden’s men, there was nothing but a thirst for justice, a bloodlust justified by the evil deeds of sinful beings who didn’t care about imposing their wickedness on the innocent.
Now… now what was the justification? You could understand the bloodlust, but the desire that took hold of you, that desire to have Matt vulnerable beneath you and take him in such a profane way, was something new.
And it was terrifying. You hadn’t wanted to think that way about him, and yet you did. Part of you wanted to give in, wanted to feel his blood rushing down your throat and his cock plunging into you.
A knock sounded softly against the open doorway, interrupting your new crisis.
You did not answer.
A moment later, Father Lantom appeared, pausing just beyond the threshold. He took in the room with a single quiet glance—the empty bottle, your rigid posture, the silence hanging heavily between the stone walls—and understood far more than you had hoped.
He did not ask whether you had finished drinking.
He did not ask whether it had helped.
Instead, he stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind him.
“I thought I’d find you here,” his voice carried the same calm warmth it always had, never intruding upon another person’s suffering, merely accompanying it.
You kept your eyes lowered. “I’m sorry,” the apology escaped your lips before you could stop it.
Lantom frowned almost imperceptibly. “For what?”
You let out a brittle laugh that sounded painfully unfamiliar in your own ears.
“I almost…” Your throat tightened around the confession. “...I looked at him and, for a moment, I wasn’t thinking like a nurse anymore.”
Silence settled gently between the two of you, not because he didn’t know what to say.
Because he refused to interrupt your honesty.
Your voice became quieter. “I could smell it… all of him,” another pause. “It was only a little blood,” your fingers loosened against the edge of the table, only to curl tightly once more. “But my body didn’t care, my mind didn’t care,” you closed your eyes. “It wanted all of it.”
The words remained suspended in the room long after you finished speaking.
You had expected revulsion or pity. Perhaps disappointment.
Instead, Father Lantom slowly approached until he stood beside you. He rested one weathered hand upon the table rather than upon your shoulder, leaving you the dignity of choosing whether you wished to close the distance yourself.
“You didn’t hurt him,” his words were gentle.
“I wanted to,” you said.
“No,” he shook his head. “You wanted blood.”
The distinction struck you harder than any reprimand could have.
“There is a difference.”
You swallowed painfully. “It doesn’t feel like one,” you said in a sigh that hid the storm inside you.
“No,” he admitted. “I imagine it doesn’t.”
Another silence followed, quieter than the last.
Outside, somewhere above the old stone ceiling, the bells finished their midday prayer. Father Lantom waited until the final echo faded before speaking again.
“When our Lord fasted in the desert,” he said softly, “His hunger did not make Him sinful.”
You looked at him. “It made Him tempted.”
His gaze met yours with unwavering steadiness. “Temptation is not the same as surrender,” he said.
A bitter smile found your lips. “I don’t know how much longer I can tell the difference.”
“I do,” there was no hesitation in his answer. “Because every day you continue choosing it.”
You lowered your eyes. “It doesn’t become easier.”
“I never expected it would,” his voice remained impossibly calm. “Grace is not measured by how little we struggle,” he smiled faintly. “It’s measured by how often we choose to stand back up after we do.”
The room fell silent once more.
This time, however, the silence no longer felt empty.
It felt inhabited.
Not by certainty.
Certainly not by peace.
Only by the quiet presence of someone who had decided long ago that your soul was worth accompanying, even when you no longer believed it yourself. Which was unfair to a man as willing to help you heal as he was; Father Lantom had no idea of the thoughts your mind was forming to tempt you to sin once more. It wasn’t just about the blood now, but about taking, about using your strength to make Matt your complete prey.
You looked toward the empty bottle resting upon the table.
You had drunk it all, only the ghost of animal blood remained as a presence.
And yet the thirst remained exactly where it had always been, coiled somewhere beneath your breastbone with infinite patience, whispering not for blood in general...
...but for one heartbeat in particular.
That realization frightened you more than the thirst itself.
notes: hmm, a few small things happened in this chapter… reader is lucky matt is still disoriented. we'll see how long that lasts. 🤭
to better fit the fic, i changed some things, obviously, about the church and the beginning of season three.
i had to shorten this chapter quite a bit because it was almost 20k words, lmao. but thanks to that, chapter two will come out much faster. <3
I am absolutely behind on this apparently, but this first chapter was delicious. Seriously, the internal struggle alone that Reader is going through with wanting Matt's blood and trying not to give into temptation is just so perfect. And with the way that man is always battered and bleeding, that's going to be a constant issue. Curious to see how you continue this series! 🤍
I’m already camped outside the theater. Guys I’m ready
Are you ready?
Side note: I realllllyyyy want a Daredevil cameo unfortunately I think Charlie was in fact not lying to us 😭😭 I can’t figure out how it would make sense for him to be there if he’s in prison 💀💀
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all these faces, all this fun is overrated ▸ college!matt murdock x reader
[ao3]
summary: If you were finally going to allow yourself Matt—allow the indulgence that had you burning for him day after day, night after night—you quickly came to the realization that it would be now. It would be tonight. And it would be before there was any chance you could talk yourself out of it.
warnings: 18+ MINORS DNI bc oh god is this smutty. banter as foreplay, mutual pining, matt's an established whore, slightly buzzed but otherwise consenting adults, the porn that grew feelings, fingering (f!receiving), grinding, heavy petting, unintentional edging (if you squint), oral (f!receiving), matt has an oral fixation (if you really squint), unprotected piv sex, creampie(s), overstimulation, general filth, and feelings did I say feelings yet | afab!reader
wc: ...28,463
a/n: after god knows how long (3 weeks! sob!) i finally finished this fic. first, it was around 5k and I was like okay! it's taking a bit to get to the vision. then it hit 9k and I went oops okay so this is getting pretty long. next thing i knew, i wasn't writing the fic anymore, it was writing me, and i was just the vessel it chose to get it out onto the internet. that being said, i swear this was literally originally supposed to be like a 3k filth oneshot based off that gd MSI song that went with that tiktok trend bc i couldn't get it out of my head. the exact vibes were lost in the feelings and plot that slapped me across the face, but i ripped the title from it in honour of this fic's humble beginnings. i worked so hard on what is actually like. my first full blown smutty fic ever so. please, i hope everyone enjoys!
It wasn’t fair of you to say Foggy had convinced you to come to this party. That would be giving him too much credit. You did make him beg first.
The worst part was that you unfortunately understood why he was so insistent. That between mid-term preparations, the job you worked to pay for your off-campus apartment, and the fact that it'd take counting more than your fingers—you would need not just another set of hands, but maybe also some feet to accurately portray the amount of days last since you’d been able to spend any time doing anything you wanted—the accusation that you were beyond stressed couldn’t be dismissed without its rightful merits.
But agreeing with him hadn’t been enough to breach your resolve. You and Foggy Nelson had two different definitions when it came to the word ‘break’. Relief came to you in the quiet moments where there was no work to be done; in the time you spent doing what you wanted, or simply in some much neglected self-care. Foggy found his in letting loose with cheap alcohol and loud music, seeking out the right environments to safely let his frustrations and stress shake free until the burden felt lifted. You had originally shot back that you couldn’t afford the headache. Or the hangover. He retorted simply that you were too tense and probably needed to get laid. Maybe you were and maybe you did. You weren’t going to give him that satisfaction simply because it hadn’t been enough to sway your decision.
Then came the preceding week leading up to it, and Foggy's asks became teasingly persistent. The simple yes or no question of whether or not you'd go evolving into increasingly persuasive reasons he thought you should: There'd be non-alcoholic drinks. The house was big enough to have more than enough rooms to duck away and hide in. If you weren’t vibing, there would be no one forcing you to stay. He was your friend and would promise not to leave you alone and that he just wanted to see you have some fun before exams beat both of your asses.
Your ‘no’s’ had become hesitant over time, the reasons against why you shouldn't go quickly being overshadowed by the fact that you not only had the day off from your job the next evening, but also only one afternoon class to worry about. Not to mention that Foggy Nelson had a charm that made it nearly impossible to argue against—that being the tough to swallow truth that he was usually always annoyingly right.
You began to realize that maybe a party wouldn't be too bad. Maybe it'd be good to be in a place that wasn't your apartment, workplace, or lecture halls. Maybe it'd be good to interact with people other than your friend, even if it was stupid and drunken conversations you might not even remember. Maybe it'd be good to flirt around because he damn sure hit the nail on the head when it came to clocking the pent up sexual frustration you’ve been trying to ignore.
He knew he got you when he’d cornered you in the campus library the day before the party, both hands down on the table in front of you, a mischievous grin glinting against the blue in his eyes and the words ‘Matt will be there’ coming out teasing and far more knowing than you appreciated. You had rolled your eyes, shut your book, and turned to leave him behind before he could only add the flush that quickly rose to your cheeks as fuel to the fire. But it had been no use—he'd caught up to you in no time, matching your step in stride and launching into a victorious animated speech, the sound ringing louder than it had any right to be in his voice.
“Party starts at seven, but we won't be there until nine or so. I'll text you the address. Wear something comfy. I'm so down to fist fight any weirdos or creeps to defend your honor. And oh! Put on that really subtle perfume Matt likes, he'll go crazy.”
And it didn’t matter how long you’d spent your time getting ready grumbling about Foggy’s audacity. In the end, he had won. In the end, it only took a quick glance at your phone to make sure you were in the right place. In the end, it was now nine-forty at night and you were standing in front of the door that separated you from the party already in full swing inside.
You didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that the mention of Matt Murdock was the icepick stabbed into the glass that shattered every defense and half-assed excuse that had you stalling your answer for the better part of a week. In defense of your say in the matter, you refused to give any more ammunition to Foggy. The fact that he had not only already picked up on the almost ridiculous sized crush you had on his best friend, but was more than willing to weaponize it against you kept you reeled in, in spite of his unsuccessful attempts. Why he thought it would be a good idea for the two of you to get together, you would never know. Between Matt’s well-known revolving door of commitment issues, and the promise you made to yourself to not to fuck around with anyone not worth it for the long haul, it didn’t matter how attractive you found him: Matt Murdock would be nothing but trouble.
That being said, you told yourself you dug that perfume out from where you’d misplaced it among your other products because you liked it, and not at all because the thought of giving the blind man something else to recognize you by made your chest tighten with a theoretical satisfaction.
Just as you were telling yourself he had no sway over why you were currently twisting the knob to the front door. You wanted to be there. Have a couple of drinks, relax, and have some of the fun you’d been putting on the back burner for the last month and a half. And if you also had a chance to check Matt out and fantasize about a couple of things, then hey, you were supposed to enjoy yourself tonight anyway.
It was the music that hit you first. Loud, catchy, and with enough bass to remind you of sitting front row during your high school’s orchestra performances whenever the brass sections would be featured, but amped up to twenty. You were already buzzing out of your skin and the door had barely shut behind you. Casting your sight out, you noticed a couple of people you didn’t know wave at your arrival, and you managed to give a polite smile as you began to weave yourself through the crowd of moving bodies. If the outside was anything to go off of, Foggy had been right; this place was huge. You had entered a foyer that opened up to a hall that connected its adjoining rooms with large marble arches that gave the impression of distinction, but allowed for direct sightlines from the hall, living, and dining rooms. All of which were packed to the brim with both people you recognize from and around Columbia, and other faces you wouldn’t even begin to try to remember. You made a mental note to ask Foggy who was throwing this party and if they were a rich socialite or what.
It was warm, despite your notice of the window air conditioner units and box fans set up in every room you shimmied through, passing through people dancing and chatting. All things considered, with the amount of bodies in the building, the machines were working overtime to keep it as comfortable as it was. The air was thick with that heat as well as the faint smell of weed and heavy fog of alcohol that mingled in every breath you took. Interestingly enough, through the initial overwhelm and nervous jitters, you felt yourself beginning to relax. There were no expectations here. No deadlines, or professors, or bosses. Just the inviting thrum of the music, the beckoning call of a cold drink, and the thought of just maybe being able to let off some steam.
You followed the trail some people holding cups left, navigating to where you could only hope had a path to a kitchen, passing a flight of stairs that looked like it led up to a hall with an endless amount of rooms until you pushed open a double-action door that revealed a large tiled kitchen. Your eyes scanned over the buffet of chips, finger foods, and other junk meant to be enjoyed before cholesterol caught up in old age spread out appeasingly on an island counter until they swept the room, catching on the stainless steel of the refrigerator. It wasn’t until you were contemplating your choices, bent over to gaze at your pick of poisons, that you realized you weren’t exactly sure what you were looking to get out of the night. So until you figured it out, you were satisfied with grabbing a bottle of water, grateful for something cold and crisp as you shut the fridge, shuffled out of the way so the other people filtering in and out would have room, and leant against the counter, taking a few sips as you pulled your phone from your pocket.
Shooting Foggy a quick message letting him know you made it there easily enough, you sighed into your surroundings, closing your eyes while you tracked the next gulp of water travel through you, welcoming the chill down your spine and the clarity it brought to your mind as you thought. You truly weren’t sure what you were expecting out of your showing up. Having some fun, of course. But when it came down to it, that was only a base level goal. You had options: you could dance until your feet fell off. Drink enough to feel bold and weightless and have to come back to pick up your car in the morning. Do something stupid with someone pretty. You pursed your lips—you could do all of the above.
“You look like you’re thinking too hard.” Your head jerked up at the sound of Foggy’s voice, bottle halfway to your lips before you swiveled to see him holding open the door for someone exiting the kitchen as he came in. His smile was infectious, and you felt one mirroring in your own features as a gentle relief filled you, the distant memory of his promise to not leave you alone and enjoy the night with you echoing faintly and you were grateful to have a friend like him as he hopped over to you, swinging the door to the fridge open and pulling out two beers from a brand you didn’t recognize. “What happened to giving that hard-working brain a rest?”
“This hard-working brain needs to form a gameplan, Fog.” You laughed, finishing up your water as he crossed the room, held out a bottle to you and settled into a spot next to your side. “Figure out what I should expect.”
He frowned playfully, poking your shoulder with a firm finger, “You,” his opening statement was emphasised by a wiggle against your arm, “shouldn’t expect anything. You’ve made it to this cool party, so now enjoy the party! Do what you feel is right! Go with the flow! What do you wanna do?”
“Not sure.” You answer honestly, shaking your head with a light chuckle, twisting off the cap to the beer and taking a tentative sip. The taste had you second-guessing whether you should drink it at all, but it was beer and it would get the job done. “What’s going on around here?”
Foggy sighed, following your actions and shrugging. You noticed the pink dotting his face, the tenseness already gone from his shoulders. He’s barely been there more than a half-hour before you arrived, yet he already looked incredibly care-free. Maybe you really should take notes. “Nothing much upstairs, since those are all the bedrooms. Mainly dancing and stuff out there. There’s a few card tables set up on the patio by the pool if strip poker and skinny dipping appeal to you at all.” You snorted into your drink, raising your eyebrows as he continued. “I was planning on heading back down to the basement—bringing you with me, of course.”
“What’s down there?” You groaned slightly as you stood back up straight, the tension you carried yourself cruelly making itself aware in a threatening tease, and followed the nod of Foggy’s head and his lead as the both of you crossed the threshold back into the main party. He raised his voice so you could hear him over the noise.
“Well for starters, it’s so much quieter. Matt basically made a beeline when he realized he could go down there. But it’s also just chill. Hangout space, mostly. Couple of games going, few joints being passed around, but nothing you don’t have to join if you don’t want.”
You hummed an acknowledging reply as he led you back to the stairs that led to the second floor, and to a door just to the side of them you hadn’t noticed your first go around. You swallowed hard as you descended behind Foggy, shutting the door behind you and feeling for the railing even though the light above the stairs was bright enough for you to see your way. An excitement rose in the pit of your stomach, giddy and childish, at the thought of seeing Matt down there, but you squashed it down just as fast as it came, the words ridiculous and get yourself together slapping across it and you found yourself dragging another mouthful of beer in the moment your feet landed on the basement floor as a means to prime yourself for whatever the night held for you.
The basement was dimly lit, well furnished, and while still moderately packed, incredibly calmer than the first floor. Most noticeably, it was quieter—quiet enough that a small speaker was able to softly play its own music, a smooth R&B playlist going on to filter in with the background noise of chatter, footsteps thumping from above, and the amicable laughing from the apparent groups of friends clumping together in the space. You started to sweep over the room before you realized that Foggy was moving without you and you wasted no time catching up, trailing behind him until you reached a couple of couches pressed up against the corner. There were a few seats left, one of which Foggy didn’t hesitate taking next to Matt, flopping down onto the couch with a pleased noise that had to be exaggerated, or else that had to be the comfiest couch in existence.
Your chest tightened for a moment, heart doing a flip in your chest at the sight of him. Matt, with an easy smile on his lips, drink in hand, dark lenses over his eyes, and unbuttoned shirt over a thin white tee. Once upon a time, you balked at Foggy’s confrontation about how you felt about Matt, your instinct to deny, not willing to believe you were that obvious. But as you stood just off to the side of the couch, your eyes shamelessly lingering where his shirt stretched across his chest, almost tight enough to map out the shape of his pecs underneath, and trailing up his neck, you knew for damn sure you were as obvious as fire truck sirens in a burning city—even when your blatant staring led your gaze to where that easy smile was pointed in the direction of a pretty brunette on his other side. Well, you thought mournfully to yourself and pointedly looked away when her eyes flickered to yours, a look of wanting all too familiar on her face because you’ve caught it too often on your own, definitely still attractive.
Huffing a sigh, you go to take the seat next to Foggy with plans to rest against the arm of the couch and sink into it much like him, but as you approached, you just barely caught the way Foggy’s eyes shifted from you, to Matt, and to the seat you were turning to take before an all too impish smile accompanied the way he suddenly slid into the corner seat and patted the cushion next to him. You stalled for just a moment, surprised betrayal dropping your jaw as Foggy tried to hide his content smile behind a non-chalant sip of beer.
“Gonna sit?” Foggy couldn’t help himself, and you shot him the dirtiest glare you could muster in the split second you had before your loitering would become awkward and you turned to sit in the last spot available to you. Next to Foggy, but also, very purposely—and you would be sure to harbor this grudge as leverage against him for however long you could get away with—next to Matt.
“Remind me to pencil killing you into my schedule for next week.” You hissed as you sat down, indignation stuttering as in fact, the couch was incredibly comfortable. But your point had been made, you couldn’t enjoy the nice fluffy couch, and Foggy cackled next to you as you were slowly made all too aware of the fact that if you shifted over even slightly, you’d be brushing up against Matt’s side. He has to be trying to make you suffer, you were sure of it. This wasn’t clumsy matchmaking, this was psychological torture.
Foggy laughed again, louder, when you kicked his leg softly out of the way so you could adjust in your spot. “I’m a little busy then. Do you mind pushing my murder back a few weeks?”
“Extensions are only for friends who aren’t also trying to kill me.”
“I literally have no clue what you’re talking about,” He sang under his breath, blissful and entirely perceptive to the way you choked the neck of your bottle.
“Your days are numbered, Nelson. Count them.”
“Who’s committing murder?”
You jumped at the sound of Matt’s voice, and you turned your head to see his head turned toward you and Foggy. A playful smile tugged his lips as he tilted his face, and your name passed through them in a quiet question; a gentle wonder if he was addressing the right person, and you suddenly felt horrible for not letting him know you were there first. If your offered greeting was sheepish and soft, it was only because you held yourself up to a higher standard. Not at all because you watched Matt lean in ever so slightly, as if being closer could help him discern you.
“Hi.” His smile widened at the sound of your voice, and you tried to ignore the way your heart skipped in your chest.
“Hi.” You returned, unable to help the smile of your own as your eyes quickly darted around his face. It wasn’t like it had been an eternity since you’ve last seen him—being friends with Foggy more often than not meant hanging out with him also meant hanging out with Matt—but it was always nice to check the mental boxes of what made this man so appealing to you. The crinkles by his eyes when he smiled like that. The way his hair swept down onto his face. The fullness of his pink lips. When you felt yourself staring, your heart beginning to race, you cleared your throat and took another sip from your bottle.
Matt shifted next to you, angling himself closer as he adjusted on the couch. Curious, knowing he was talking to someone, you glanced over his shoulder to find his other side empty.
“Where’d your friend go?” The question came out before you even thought about it, borne of both a curiosity and masochistic urge to know, and you quickly found her retreating body settling down in a group of people sitting in what looked like a circle on the floor a few yards away.
Matt’s brow twitched before he sighed, shrugging his shoulders like dismissing beautiful women was a simple pastime he couldn’t be bothered with. “Ah, it wasn’t going anywhere, so I told her she should go enjoy herself.”
“Oh, let me tell you, she wanted it to go somewhere.” You scoffed against the glass, remembering the look of desire you caught. A little while longer, if you didn’t interrupt, and she might have gotten it. A sliver of green jealousy you couldn’t help rose at the mental image of Matt between her legs—or anyone else's, for that matter—but you quickly stomped that down into the closest recess of your mind you could manage. It would be helping no one, and certainly not you, for you to unpack any of that.
“I know,” Matt said airly, deep breath filling his lungs before letting his head and voice dip toward you. “But you’re here now, and I enjoy talking to you much more.”
You stared Matt down, keeping a straight face your only defense to the way his voice shot straight through you. It was hard to tell if there was an implication he ended that conversation for you or if you were simply losing it. So you ignored the way you felt heat stir in the pit of your belly, ignored the way Matt seemed to wait for you expectantly, head cocked and smile turned teasing, ignored the way Foggy shook silently with laughter next to you—you could handle it. So he wanted to flirt. He’s done this before. You do it too. Yeah…you can handle it.
“Sure you do.” Flippantly, you hummed, and Matt’s leg brushed against yours as he shifted to prop his head up on his hand, elbow on the back of the couch. A tingle washed over you then, light and full of a crackling potential, before it dissipated across the surface of your skin. “You should say goodbye to Foggy, by the way. He might not be here in a few days.”
“Should you be confessing ideals of premeditated crime to me?”
“Oh this isn't a confession. It’s a statement. I’m just telling you everything so there’s no surprises during the trial. Which, you’ll be representing me, of course, Counsellor.”
Matt grinned. “I don’t know, I haven’t quite passed the bar yet. Besides, I might be biased. Considering he’s my best friend and all. Lines get even blurrier when you take into account my prior knowledge of this first-degree murder. I’ll have you know, by telling me this, I’m well within my moral means to stop you.”
You raised your drink, letting the invitation of the alcohol spur you on as it warmed your body. Despite yourself, you were having fun, honeying your words as excitement thrummed through you. “Go ahead.” Slyly, you lowered your voice. “Stop me.”
Admittedly, watching Matt’s reaction did more to you than you thought it would. He paused just for a moment, sitting in the weight of your statement before he wet his lips—an action you followed all too closely—and brought his own bottle up to his mouth, smirk hiding around the edges. You watched the way his throat worked down his drink, unable to stop the thoughts of wanting to kiss down the motion. You knew he couldn’t see, yet it seemed that behind those dark frames, he was fixed entirely onto you.
Desire loomed just under your skin, itching to strike flint against the kindling, but you were quick to abate. Teasing was fun, but you had to remind yourself that that’s all it was: teasing. For as much as you wanted to grab Matt Murdock’s face and make out with him on his lap right there on the couch, or drag him out to your car and lead him to your apartment, party be damned, you also couldn’t bring yourself to do anything you would regret. And Matt, in all his bed-warming glory, would be something you’d regret. One fun night wouldn’t dull the ache you felt in foolishly wanting to be something more, something meaningful with him. Exclusivity wasn’t a word he knew. Or at least one frequently honoured, if you pieced anything about him together correctly.
A flicker of embarrassment wasn’t the only thing that warmed your face as you sat back against the couch, dropping your head and letting your eyes flutter shut against the picture of the ceiling, but it was what you focused on as you let out a deep breath. Maybe it was silly of you, to want a relationship. You definitely felt silly, knowing that most of your peers—including the ones at this party—most likely weren’t looking for anything serious. It was hard enough, getting into Columbia. And working during your graduate program on top of that…no wonder short-term flings or one night stands were so popular. And as worked up as you were, however tempted you might get, you told yourself you weren’t looking for throwaway easy stress relief. At least, not with Matt. Briefly, you contemplated if you would go home with someone tonight, someone you wouldn’t have to remember the name of, or face again in your small circle of friends. Someone just to help ease the ache that always grew tenfold whenever you let Matt get to you; someone to help you pretend. The thought flickered before you shook it from your mind. You frowned, feeling wrong to even be thinking about it with Matt right there, and stretching your spine as you felt Foggy bounce on the couch by your side.
“That has to be a record, you two,” Foggy threw out casually into the air. “Should I give you the couch? Clear out the basement?”
“You can keep dreaming.” You chuckled as you quickly dragged your hand down your face, sitting back up.
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles, face screwing up into a frown before he rolled his eyes. “So what’s the plan, gang? Getting wasted? Should we plot world domination? Or—”
“Foggy! Matt!” Your heads swivelled to the sound of the voice calling them, and you spotted a guy with cropped blond hair that’s sitting in the circle you noticed earlier waving his arms up. You didn’t know him, but obviously your friends did. “Come play with us! And bring whoever’s with you, the more people the better.”
Foggy’s face lit up. “Or we could play—”
“No.” Matt said simply.
It dimmed just as fast.
“Why not! Don’t you wanna feel like a pre-teen again?”
You watched as Matt grimaced, but not without amusement. “Not necessarily, no. I went through enough getting to my twenties. Totally fine not participating in middle school games.”
Glancing between them, and spotting that blond man again as there was a sudden cheer from the circle, you bit the bait. “Okay, so what are they playing over there?”
“Take a guess,” Matt leaned in closer to you, and it took a decent modicum of strength not to study his profile from the angle, holding up his beer like he was scrutinizing it before you realized he was displaying it out in front of him for example. “There’s a bottle, drunk undergrads, and a closet the next room over.”
You felt a laugh bubble up from your chest as you finished off your own drink, squinting over at the circle and watching as someone from the group leant forward to spin a bottle, and two of them were ushered into another room off the basement. “Oh, that is so middle school.”
“But it could be fun!” Foggy sighed, like he was contemplating but not quite arriving at a decision. “Besides, you don’t gotta go make out with someone. There’s like, truth or dare or something. Unless standing in a cramped space making awkward conversation is your thing.”
Rolling your eyes, you snorted. “I’ll pass.” The idea greeting you with a childish humor—alongside the gut selfish thought of how you’d be a horrible player, and would only choose the closet if that bottle landed on Matt.
“Yeah,” Matt agreed in a soft voice, and you had to tell yourself he wasn’t looking at you. He literally couldn’t. “Me too.”
“So it’s been decided.” Foggy nodded his head once, slashing his hands through the air. “World domination it is, then?”
“Think I might need another drink before I’m meant to get nefarious,” You said, leaning forward and placing your empty bottle on a small coffee table in front of you. “But by all means, where do we start?”
But when Foggy doesn’t answer you, and questioningly, you look over to see his gaze fixed on a group of people that just descended into the basement. As if sensing your question, you hear Matt’s voice close to your ear, his breath hot and low. And even though he didn't even say anything remotely sensual, the shiver that ran down your spine was imagining he did. “Think the NYU 3L’s just got here.”
“Oh no.” An oxymoron, given your grin, watching as Foggy began to frantically smooth out his shirt. “I think—” Your eyes scanned over the new heads dispersing around the room until you spotted the sway of blonde hair tied up high. “Yup, she’s here. And he’ll be gone in three, two…”
“I um,” Foggy shot up, hands combing nervously through his hair as he turned, torn between addressing the two of you and glancing over to where Marci Stahl just sat down in the spin the bottle circle, “think I might go play afterall. I’ll just be- you know where to find me!” You and Matt erupted into laughter, cheering as Foggy stumbled his way over, hovering only long enough to strategically pick a seat before plopping himself down and sending you a thumbs up.
“Ugh,” you groaned playfully, and it wasn’t hard to miss the way Matt stretched to rest his arm behind you when he settled back down. And you leant into it, his forearm behind your neck and his fingertips lightly grazing your shoulder in lazy passes. “Young love. They grow up so fast, don’t they?”
“If growing up means Foggy still thinking there’s any way she’ll give him a shot, then sure.”
“Put that cynicism aside, Murdock.” You looked over to see his brows shoot up in amusement, then even further when you plucked his bottle out of his hand. “They’re gonna Romeo and Juliet that shit—sans poison, just you wait.”
Matt chuckled. “You can get your own beer, you know.”
“Payment.” You took a sip, watching him from the corner of your eye. “For thinking you were slick enough to pull this off.”
He pressed his fingers into your shoulder purposefully then, caressing a line where he could reach, then back up. “What, this?” The corner of his mouth pulled up in a smirk, a flash of teeth. “Guess I’ll note that a little affection means you wouldn’t be above stealing a blind guy’s drink.”
“Yet somehow, I don’t feel bad at all.”
“Didn’t think so.” Matt shimmied in his seat, getting comfortable when he reached through the air to grab his drink back. You guided it to his hand and watched as he sighed into another swig, licking his lips again and you almost swore he bit back a low groan that still escaped, feeling a rumble where you pressed against his side, despite his effort. “Mm, I actually think you feel pretty good right now.”
“Yeah?” Nonplussed, and completely aware of how your heart beat quickly behind your ribs, “How’d you figure?”
“One can hazard a guess.” He turned toward you, and you met his face with enough conviction to try and see through the black lenses and try to get a glimpse of his eyes behind them. “But also,” he dropped his voice to a whisper as he shifted closer. You’re not sure if he knew just how close he was to your ear or not, but the heat of his words licked down your spine. “You haven’t pulled away from me yet.”
Unable to help it, your gaze dropped to his lips as you swayed back just to breathe. He was so close to you, it would barely take anything to kiss him. A few inches forward. An upward angle of your head. And it was tempting, as you stared longer than you should have, breath catching in your lungs at how they were parted so prettily, hinging on as if on an unspoken word. Or an invitation. If this were anyone else, they probably would have clocked the intent you beat down and have done it already. But Matt couldn’t see the way your eyes darkened, or the way your chest rose and fell slightly quicker. There was always part of you that thought he had to know, or at least, in his words, be pretty spot on with his guesswork. You supposed Matt knew the effect he had on people, and how you weren’t much different.
You may have thought any different, but you apparently loved the self-punishment that came with declining his every attempt to tempt you into dark corners and private rooms, it seemed.
“Don’t think anything of it. Just comfy.” You rolled your neck, leaning back against his arm. “Don’t need that head of yours getting any bigger.”
“Oh, but don’t you wanna see how big it can get?”
You groaned, ignoring the traitorous way your stomach fluttered at the double entendre or how the baritone of his voice travelled straight in a quick clean pulse between your legs. You would not think about the size of his dick. You would not look down at the crotch of his jeans. “You ruined it, Matt. Really. Got me going there and everything. Might’ve rerolled your chances.”
He threw his head back and laughed, deep and real. “Sure I did.”
Then, there was a silence. A moment passed between the two of you that was easy to settle in. Found in the overlap of too loud voices, the faint sounds of Mario Kart, the background beat of Frank Ocean, and the creeping alcohol flushing through your bloodstream. It made it easy then, sharing the rest of Matt’s drink and just soaking in the environment. A hum formed in the back of your throat, pleasant and almost content; and for the first time that night, you started to actually feel relaxed, tucked into Matt’s side on a comfy couch in someone’s basement.
But the thought didn’t linger for long, your brow furrowing at the realization that you could get used to this, to easy comfort and sharing a beer. That you wanted to get used to it. That maybe next time, you could steal his drink away in a bout of distraction, in a kiss, perhaps. That you’d be leaving just as you arrived: together. That you wouldn’t have to suffer showing up to parties you only went to for him just to see him flirting with other people anymore, simply because he would be yours.
But he wasn’t. And he wouldn’t be. And you’ve already made your peace with that. Because that’s just how it was, selfish thoughts aside. You could flirt with Matt Murdock, let him flirt with you. But that’s as far as you would ever let it go. Because if you ever gave in, you wouldn’t be able to help yourself from wanting more. You wouldn’t be able to take anything he wouldn’t be willing to give.
You inhaled sharply, sitting up and moving away. An inch. It was truly only an inch. But an inch was more than noticeable when your thigh had been fully pressed into his. You never truly realize just how warm someone is until you lose contact. Or just how cold you leave them.
“Are you okay?”
Matt followed you to where you sat at the edge of the cushion, straightening his back, and you almost missed the way he hesitated before deciding to place both of his hands in his lap. “Hm?”
“You…you got quiet. Is something wrong?” Your face twitched against a pout at the earnestness in his voice, soft and simple. “Did I- was it the joke? Not feeling it today?”
You shook your head, a dry chuckle escaping. “No, Matt. No it wasn’t you, don’t worry.” He seemed to relax then. You didn’t notice how much he had tensed at the thought of him making you uncomfortable until you saw his shoulders sag. “I…yeah. Don’t worry.”
He frowned. “You’re telling me not to worry, but your entire mood just changed.” He stated pointedly. “I can- I don’t know, it’s like I can feel it. Tell me what’s up.”
You sighed, heavy and full. You didn’t know if you could tell him even if you wanted to. You and Matt were friends—or at least, you thought you were—but you weren’t particularly close despite the fact that Matt tended to be an open book with you. Purposefully, you’ve kept yourself from establishing that return in connection, from wanting to indulge in him to weather your frustrated rants or hold safe a few of your secrets. That kind of connection would only make the way you felt about him worse, if you craved him not only under the sheets but as a confidant. It was bad enough that you wanted him so much based on what you knew of him just from this last year since you’ve met him—being exactly your type in more than just looks and humor. You never could quite find it in yourself to cross that line, because then you knew, you’d truly be lost.
“I’m fine, Matt.”
“You’re not.”
Defensive, and upset with yourself for not being able to just be normal about him, you couldn't control your tone. “What’s it even matter to you?” You spit back, your eyes widening just as you said it, and a lick of regret stinging the back of your throat from how sharp the words came out.
You watched Matt, taken aback, confusion and…something else you couldn’t quite place creeping onto his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t get the chance.
“Murdock!” Glaring, your eyes snapped back to that same blond guy that called out to Matt and Foggy earlier. “Bottle landed on you man. Get your ass over here!”
Without even thinking, you called out in his defense. “He’s not even playing. Spin it again.”
“You have to see how clearly it’s pointing to him!” And you did. A quick glance, and you could see over the distance that there was a clean gap between seated bodies, the open bottleneck of a long empty drink pointed barrel straight across the room. There was no doubt, if someone were to draw an arrow from it horizontally until it reached another, the line would hit Matt dead and center.
For a split second, you watched Matt’s jaw tick with a restraint that you couldn’t decide if it was rooted in anger, annoyance, or a special third thing you just weren’t picking up on, opting safely for all of the above. You went to go roll your eyes, to tell Matt to ignore them. But then suddenly, he grabbed your hand, fingers wrapping around yours as his other one reached down to where his cane was on the ground by his side.
“Come on,” He murmured, only loud enough for you to hear. “Let's go somewhere quieter.”
Confusion sent a shock through your system, a gentle short-circuit as it felt like you blinked and the dynamic changed drastically. “Aren’t we already somewhere quieter?”
He sent you a small sardonic smile, tugging your hand as he stood up. You tried not to think about how warm his palm felt in this moment that caught you off guard, or the slight callousness of his fingertips where they pressed against your skin as you followed. “Private, then. So we can talk.”
The question sat on your tongue as Matt began to move swifter than you thought he would, dipping out his cane and taking careful, measured, yet confident strides before your brain could even catch up. Talk. He wanted to talk. Your reply came out in a whisper you weren’t sure if he heard. “Okay.”
The both of you were already across the basement floor before you started to hear a sound of a protest. One you intentionally ignored to instead tell Matt about the stairs coming up. The angle ascending was weird, and you didn’t want to inhibit his navigation in any way, so you gently slipped your hand from his, but not without muttering an assurance that you were right behind him.
The main party was just as loud as ever, and you swore you saw Matt take a deep breath and brace himself before he opened the door that led from the basement, and you couldn’t blame him. He waited until you stepped out, shut the door behind you, before his fingers caught the hem of your shirt and he leant down so you could hear him better. “Upstairs?”
You nodded your head, momentarily forgetting he wouldn’t have picked up on the gesture as you guided him through the luckily sparser crowd in the hallway until you rounded the corner of the staircase. Matt found the railing, and you looked at him. He motioned for you to lead the way. This house really was huge. And the assumption you had earlier when you’d gotten there that the second floor was a neverending assortment of rooms wasn’t far from wrong. You supposed Foggy hadn’t been either, his comments about places you could hide being one of his selling points to you. The first door you had opened was a bathroom. The second, a bedroom that was fully furnished and sheets unmade. The third was when you’d hit the mark, finding unlocked entry into what looked like a long since unused guest room after you’d flipped on the light. There was a full-sized bed in the middle of the room, pressed against the wall with immaculately folded sheets and crisp tucked edges, a small hallway side table that housed a fake potted plant, a lamp at the bedside that was slowly collecting cobwebs, and what looked to be an ornate dresser that had in its past, seen better days.
The second the door closed, clicking against the latch, Matt wasted no time.
“Just to get it out of the way, you matter to me, so of course if something upsets you, I want to know.” Your jaw dropped as you watched him trace the wall and navigate a little around the room before leaning his cane up against the dresser, casual all the while you suddenly felt like you were frozen where you stood. “So could you please…If it’s me, I want to know, so I can do better. If it’s not, then if you’re willing to share, I’m willing to help out.”
Your mind raced, suddenly overwhelmed and in a whirlwind state of shock as to how you’ve gotten to here, alone with him, when just five minutes ago everything was normal. Everything was fine. “Matt.”
“Is it me?”
There was a pain in his face, subtle, but tugging just enough to be evident as you studied him. “No it’s…it’s complicated.”
“How?”
You threw your hands up in the air. “It just is! I don’t know!” Squeezing your eyes shut, you continued. “I like what we have Matt, whatever it is. I just. Don’t want to mess it up, with the shit I don’t tell you, I guess.”
“What we have.” He repeated. Slowly. Gently. Then softly, taking a step forward, he asked, “What do we have?”
Suddenly, you felt like you were under a spotlight in an otherwise pitch black room. You always thought the weight of a person's focus came from how they looked at you. But now, in the quiet, music muffled and distant, alone with Matt, you realized just how wrong you were. You could nearly feel the way he was honed in on you, five feet away and steadily approaching in small measured shuffles forward. By all outward appearances, it seemed to be like he knew exactly where you were, featherlight steps that almost seemed feline in nature, and was giving you ample time to make a decision.
“We’re friends.” You began. “Joking around. Hanging out. It’s easy with you, sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“Yeah, sometimes.” He nodded. Waited for you to continue. He was three feet away now. “I like…I like messing around with you. Don’t mind it at all. So if you were worried you crossed a line, you didn’t, Matt. You’re okay. Promise. It’s all in good fun.”
If you weren't so aware of your thoughts right now, you might not have noticed the way that last sentence snagged in a lie against your tongue.
“There.” He stopped just a foot in front of you, a firm set to his face as his brows furrowed in thought.
“There, what?”
“Your voice wavered, just then.” It was an accusation, but it didn’t make you feel targeted. It was simply as if Matt was sorting through the interference of your mind and plucking out the loose strings. “I know you like the flirting, but it never goes anywhere. And you say it’s only easy with me sometimes. Why?”
“Why does it never go anywhere, or…”
He lowered his head, chin dropping just slightly. “Both.”
You scoffed, and for the first time since this conversation started, you felt like you were ready to throw in the towel and switch topics as your heart flipped in disbelief. He couldn’t seriously be asking about this right now. “Matt, really, you’re getting worked up over a random stray thought that made me go quiet. I’m fine. Everything is fine—”
“Everything is not fine, because you’re all I can think about, and I need to know if I'm about to say something that'll majorly screw things up or not!” And Matt swayed where he stood, like he was torn between stumbling away and reaching forward to you. Your heart thudded in your chest.
Then it was silent—music, party unheard—save for the roaring in your ears.
“What?”
Matt’s head suddenly shot up. And in an action in which you thought you’d find a breath of clarity, he instead turned sharply toward the door. Briefly, you weren’t sure what impressed you more, the fluid strides in which he made it over, or how he remembered which direction it was in after turning around a couple of times in his pace of the room to find a wall. It also took you by surprise, the inherent trust he had in how he moved, like he was past guessing the space he had to work with and simply acted. But that was a moment quickly pinned to the background, as when you saw Matt’s hand grab the door knob and twist to push it open—it wouldn’t budge.
Matt tried again, and you heard the jiggle of the knob, and watched, befuddled and disoriented and trying to make sense of the last thirty seconds, while Matt shoved a shoulder into the door to only be met with no give.
The door was locked.
“It locks from the inside,” Matt replied, voice low with a dangerous edge of an irritation you've only witnessed from him rarely, and you realized you said that out loud all the while you saw him pathetically twist the lock back and forth as if he were reveling in the cruel joke of it all. “Someone out there blocked the way.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Matt takes a step back, and you wonder if he was contemplating making another pass at the door. His head seemed to tilt around the general direction of the frame as if trying to trace it out mentally, his fingertips splayed on the wood at the end of an extended arm. For a second, it looked as if he were lost in a contemplation under the warm light of the room, studying…whatever it was he could gather. If he was going to throw himself at it again, you realized you should probably stop him. You also realized that somehow, he knew the door was locked before either of you had tried to leave.
He also had just admitted to thinking about you all the time. And selfishly—or at least in the hierarchy of emotional distress those three things gave you—that seemed like the most pressing thing to address.
His fists clenched at his side and you saw him take another step back as if to gear up for a charge before you blurted out, “What do you mean I'm all you think about?” He seemed to falter, going stiff and turning away from the door in a shaky glide as he pivoted on his heels. “Because if that's just a line to try and get me to open up, that's so not cool, Murdock. And blind or not, I'll use you as a battering ram to get out of here.”
“Oof.” A little amused huff shook him before he pursed his lips, shaking his head. “No. No that…that wasn't a line. I'm not trying to—” he flung his hands frustratingly down by his sides after they drifted up to rub at his face, shifting his glasses until he replaced them on the bridge of his nose— “It means exactly what you think it means.”
With a shaky confidence, you took a step toward him. “And what did you mean when you said you don't want to say anything that could screw things up?” Your voice dropped to a whisper. “What do you wanna say, Matt?”
He approached slowly. So slow it was almost a prowl, and you might have equated it to one under different circumstances. On instinct, you took a half step back just from the sheer intensity Matt seemed to carry with him, your stomach fluttering with a new craving despite yourself. Again, he paused in front of you, and you noticed the way his chest rose and fell just as violently as yours.
“Tell me what had you freezing up next to me down there first.”
“Not fair.”
“I asked you first.”
“No, you confronted me.” You said stubbornly, deciding to go rambling down that path than to admit he was right. “Very rudely, might I add. Killed my buzz from that crappy beer and everything. And then you dragged—”
“You followed me willingly,” He took another step forward. And another. You moved back if only to keep space between you.
“—me up here, then go and say an incredibly insane thing to me—”
A smile started to tug the corners of his mouth. “It was a truthful admission.”
“—Then you did that weird and somehow sexy thing with the door.” You felt your heart leap to your throat as the back of your thighs tapped against the blunt edge of wood grain and you let out a soft grunt. Your hands reflexively grabbed onto the sides. Matt grinned at the sound of your surprise. “And now you're…you're backing me into a table, y'know—”
“It was either that or a wall, I figured.”
“—and it should be threatening, maybe, and I probably could’ve darted around you without you knowing, but it's honestly kinda hot, and—”
“I want you.” Your mouth went dry, parting on an expression that was a mix of shocked and aroused as he stopped in front of you, his knee bumping into your leg and stilling himself only just before he'd have to brace himself on the wall to lean over you. “That's what I was gonna say.”
As all things lit up in you much like restoring power to a city grid, you swallowed thickly against the hammering of your heart in your throat. If you were a better person, you would roll your eyes and push him away, calling Matt out on what had to be another line and focus on the more pressing issue of getting out of the locked room. If you were a stronger person, you could blame the heat that rolled through your veins like molten magma and primed every nerve on the drinks you had, and come up with some other excuse as to why its epicenter would lead straight to your core. But you were neither, and the long, long months of this game you played were starting to catch up to you. Whether you were winning or losing, it was hard to tell.
“And that's the big thing you were afraid would make shit hit the fan?” You breathed, your hands growing restless as you fought the urge to touch him. You didn’t. That’s how you held your line. That’s how you lasted so long. You could last a little longer.
“Mhm.”
You lifted your chin, emboldened by the forbearance that twitched a muscle in his cheek. “And here I thought it'd be something I didn't already know.”
Matt tilted his head, a slight cant toward his shoulder as a confident lilt yet again infiltrated his words. “You knew, huh?”
“Believe it or not, there is a limit to how many times you can proposition me before I started to suspect you actually might have started to mean it.”
He paused, and briefly, giving way to a sober moment, his face softened, a fragility you were surprised to find, not thinking clearly enough for insight, whispering on the coattails of his question. “So you're saying, I…didn't just catastrophically ruin things?”
“Nope.” The question of ‘why would it?’ carefully lingered at the front of your mind, but the words died before you even had the forethought to speak them; the idea that Matt could have been implying anything more than what seemed to be surface level desire not even crossing into your realm of possibility in this moment. This moment, where all you could think of was how close he was. How warm he was. How every time he shifted on his feet, he bumped into you and it sent a flicker of anticipation that did nothing but join the haze that began to carve out space for the one way track you seemed to be careening toward.
That softness didn't fully disappear, it lingered, only just now hidden behind the zealous intent of his concentration and the unconscious way Matt drew his bottom lip between his teeth. “And you're admitting to knowing I've wanted you for months now and you've just been having your fun brushing me off?”
“Trust me, it's not always fun.” Came your reply, shameless memories flashing behind your eyes of the countless numbers of days you've gone back home with your heart racing from the exercise of your restraint around him. Or the way you'd daydream about Matt while you worked until you often found yourself snapping out of distraction. Or how you'd be unable to sleep sometimes until you got yourself off to the thought of him.
For a brief moment, you contemplated not being fair in your confession. One final sense of preservation reminding you in alarm bells why you've spent all this time ignoring him—ignoring yourself. Why you've shouldered and toughed through all the flirting, the invitations, and sometimes downright filthy observations. The reason you'd declined him that first time nearly a year ago being the same reason that's held strong over the course of the time that's passed: there was no real way for you to tell, for you to be certain, that you wouldn't just be another notch in Matt's bedpost. That despite the fact that he's been nothing but a gentleman to you otherwise, playing nice by your rules, heeding within the boundaries of the cat and mouse you'd encouraged. It's been months, and you don't think you've ever witnessed Matt Murdock hang on so long to anyone—the fervor that at first felt like him trying to do better, do more to convince you, slowly turning into a comfortable normal. A playful back and forth you two shared in. The both of you truly had been playing a game. Playing a game, and having fun, despite the main reward doing nothing but adding to the pile of tension that in this moment, felt so unrestrained, you were bursting at the seams.
Unable to ignore it any longer, you couldn't even find the will in you to summon the strength you always mustered to stop any risks for escalation. Any opposition that might have bubbled up in the forms of bad idea or you'll regret it dying out like the last burning embers of a flame doused in enough water to flood.
If you were finally going to allow yourself Matt—allow the indulgence that had you burning for him day after day, night after night—you quickly came to the realization that it would be now. It would be tonight. And it would be before there was any chance you could talk yourself out of it.
Your equal admission came mild, words concentrated and accentuated from carrying the truth you've wanted to share for far too long now, and not without its own equity in weight. “I want you too.”
The air turned electric; the silence that bridged the remaining gap between you charging quickly into something thick and heady as active reality was starting to actually settle in. Matt let out a little breath, as did you, shaky and involuntary, as he deliberately pressed closer. His knee found the seam of your legs, and he effortlessly nudged himself between them. Your hand shot out to steady yourself against his arm, nerves producing a slight tremor you couldn't quite control.
Your voice, thick, and seeming all too loud to your ears, tested the waters. “We should get out of here.” Out of this room. Out of the party. You weren’t sure which. You wanted both. You wanted Matt.
Matt gravitated toward you, like he was unable to help the pull anymore, same as you. You froze when his fingers pressed featherlight against the side of your neck, thumb sliding just under your jaw enough to tilt your head the most minute of degrees. He was close enough, his breath fanned distantly against you when he spoke. “After I kiss you first?”
A breath was held, thundering anticipation in your chest, and you let the frantic nod of your head against his touch do the talking.
You’ve known Matt Murdock for a while now, pulled into the little bubble he shared with Foggy Nelson quickly after stumbling into an unlikely friendship. You’ve been around long enough to know the rumors and which of those actually held truth. To overhear the occasional giggles and whispers every once in a while from men and women around campus. Long enough to know that Matt had steadily built a repertoire well known amongst a select group of the co-eds. But nothing you gathered, assumptions you weighed, and the personal experience you used to supplement your own fantasies could have predicted this.
Against your expectations, Matt’s kiss was surprisingly soft. It was almost unsure, as if he were on a trepid venture, using the way he moved slowly against you as permission still. You could almost taste the trickle of hesitation intertwined with the sparks behind your eyes and behind the way your brain roared and heart sang with the simple satisfaction of ‘finally’. When you kiss him back, he let out a gentle little sigh, and you felt him smile into you, seemingly enough of an acceptance to abate the incredibly trivial worry he had that once it happened, you would somehow want it to end. And as he pressed closer, deeper, your pulse leaping under your skin as you felt his fingers slide into a delicate cradle around your throat, the thought of wanting it to end was so far removed from your immediate mind, it was easily humbling the version of you that swore you’d never allow this. Allow him.
When Matt pulled back, it was instinct to chase after him. But through the pleasant haze that muddled your thoughts, the gentle passes of pleasure that lazily rolled through you like low tide lapping at the shore, you instead opened your eyes. Through your lidded gaze, blinking, you watched a quiet gratification steadily bloom across his face alongside a grin that was almost boyishly giddy, and settle into a content as he released another deep sigh; an indulgent revel as you both shared in this long awaited moment.
It might not have been a good look, but after a couple of flips of your heart in your chest, you dictated the moment was over as you impatiently leant forward to wrap your arms around his neck and pulled him back in. You could relish in finalities later. You wanted to kiss him now. And Matt had little objection as he melted back into you.
“So, about the door—” He wisped in the inbetweens, soft laugh interrupted between each press of your lips to his and his hands steadied himself on the table as he leaned into you.
“Mm, not yet.” And Matt grins because he already knew you wouldn’t even entertain the tease. Not when you were like this. Not when you felt like the world was spinning beneath you, weightless, and his kiss dizzying. You responded to him at first equally, before a surge of more overtook you.
Unbidden, you gave way, relenting to every part of you that craved him; that wanted to take. You’ve dreamt of this for so long: the feel of him close to you, the weight of him as he had you hemmed against the table, his hands by your sides, hot and solid and willing. The taste of him—oh how you wanted the taste of him, whether you found it against his skin, in his mouth or in yours. You didn’t want to stop, despite knowing you should, knowing that maybe this wasn’t the time or place, a distant reminder that you were a guest in somebody’s home locked in a bedroom that wasn’t yours. But you cling tightly onto that flicker of greed, letting it fuel you as you surged forward into him, your fingers curling against the strands of hair at the back of his neck. A surprised little noise escaped Matt then; a soft startled whimper falling from him as you tugged him to you, your kiss insistent as you took the next step, wordlessly telling him what you wanted with a swipe of your tongue against the plush of his lips.
Matt’s hands were on your face faster than you felt him move, warm palms cupping your jaw, fingers pressing into your temples as he held you in place, body leaning forward until his hips pinned your own. There was a reluctance in the way he pulled back, and you felt the shudder that ran through him, a shiver that seemed to crackle through his system and percolate to you where you were skin to skin, raising goosebumps that formed anywhere they could as he parted from you only the smallest fraction. Matt shook, and you gulped, swallowing hardly at the feel of his breath mixing with yours, lightheaded and yearning, as time seemed to slow.
“Fuck,” The curse is breathed against the skin of your lips, hot. Whispered like a resolution; burning like a brand. Your hand curled tight in his shirt collar, shivering with him. Waiting. Restless. Curious.
You understood in the split-second just before it happened, what you must have done. And it was like you could feel in this limbo of space the power in the aftermath of Matt's undoing, restraint unraveling as the fervor you'd fed him convincing enough to turn the lights green and the throttle red. He hovered there, in front of you, ghosting another kiss he was gearing up to give as the cogs in his head turned, inhibitions flicking off one by one. A single second stretched into an agonizing eternity—galvanic and volcanic.
He let go.
Now this…this is what you expected; a kiss full of a hunger and desire so explosive it was nearly overwhelming, static crackling in your ears and a reticent moan freely opening the gates to the roaring flame Matt brought with him. His insistence seeped into you heavy and sudden, reminding you of the swift fury that can come with rain against bare skin during a thunderstorm. His hold on you tightened ever so slightly, trying to pull you impossibly closer as if he wasn’t already pressing bruises onto your lips. You felt a hand card through your hair, a sharp pull that was far from unkind tilting your head back until he was almost on top of you. It was a steady devouring; months of want, of self-control, pouring into you with the press of his body and the surprising nip of his teeth and no apparent plan of stopping until you were made up for lost time. If this were any other person, you might have struggled to keep up with his intensity. Instead, you matched Matt in stride as you parted your lips in a gasp, opened up to the way he eagerly slid into your mouth. You moved without thought, without reason, guided simply by the carnal instinct that sought to fill in its depravity.
He was everywhere; carding through your hair, tracing down your neck, the curve of your shoulder, like he was mapping out the shape of you under his touch, charting a path he could later reference and follow. His hands fell to the dip of your waist, holding you steady as you tried to lift off from where you were leaning against the wood and into him, your turn with your hands on his face as you swiped over his cheeks and held him against your palms as you dared to drag your tongue over his. You were not at all prepared for the burst of him—beer and slightly sweet with a faint whispering of copper—or the sensual groan that tore from a place deep and ragged, ripped from the stirrings in his chest. He parted for you, a silent ‘again’ as his grip found its banded attention on your hips. He settled there and jolted when you licked into him again with the intent to see what other sounds you could pull from him. The table creaked as the both of you collided firmly with it, and Matt rocked against you, denim catching the side of your hip in a clumsy, unconscious grind.
You were burning now. This wasn’t enough. Nowhere near. Fingers clawed at Matt’s button up, and you began to yank it off his shoulders before he helped shrug it to the ground and he was on you again like he’d never left, tugging through strands of your hair and kissing you like the only way he could breathe was to siphon the air straight from your lungs. You’re lost for a moment, a delayed shock catching up, running through you, before your mission stirs back into awareness once more. Your touch is unwavering and steady as you stroke down his arm, as you claw gently against the cotton still over his chest. Matt released a quiet growl then, a low rumble from the back of his throat that you couldn’t quite classify—warning or invitation—so you heeded it, flicker of fire igniting through you, as both.
Frantically, you began to yank up his shirt from where it was tucked into his jeans, tugging at the fabric until you could bare skin. Your goal had been to get it off him, to have Matt shirtless in front of you, but you quickly found out he had a similar idea before you could even swipe across his hipbones, your motions stuttering as you felt a large hand slither under your own shirt, blazing palm sliding up, up, up, against your stomach to your chest. His fingers prodding mildly at the lower curve of your bra.
“Holy shit,” You gasped, and you tried to push into his hand. “Matt, please.”
There was an appreciation in the way he carefully grazed over the curve of you, but it was quickly overshadowed by the way he grabbed at your breast, kneading you in the palm of his hand and earning him another low moan, that in response, had him rocking into you again. There it is. And you felt more of him this time, your nerves shot and hyperaware, and Matt now hard enough that you could faintly begin to etch out the shape of him growing against your leg. You almost whine when he suddenly stops kissing you, panting heavily, but it catches on a choked gasp when wet lips instead start roaming other skin. Your chin. Your jaw. With a soft chuckle, Matt licked playfully at the lobe of your ear before he pressed a kiss to a spot right beneath it, firm and emphatic. His first move against your neck was lazy, and languid, and you felt yourself susceptible to slipping away as he began to take his time to explore. So you groped around wherever you could reach, your hands sweeping over the muscles in his shoulders, skirting down his back. You passed over cotton and skin and denim until your hands reached their target along the curve of his ass. Briefly, you wondered if you weren’t so distracted if you’d be embarrassed by how much you wanted him. But frankly, you were too turned on to care. Your thoughts came simple, one right after another. Right now, you wanted to feel him again. And your hands helped to prove your point, cupping at him until you had a solid grip, pulling him to you, guiding, encouraging.
Matt moaned so close to your ear, hot and heavy as his head dropped helplessly into your shoulder, it only stoked the flame. He granted your wish, bucking into you again with a slow roll of his hips and a high, strangled noise against your collar. And this time, you laughed; wild and full of the disbelief that this was actually happening. A lazy pulse of heat coursed a new warmth through you, rocketing intensely through your veins until you couldn’t ignore the ache between your legs any longer. You could probably try and make Matt moan for you all day if you had the patience, but now wouldn’t be the best time for that trial. You’d nearly forgotten, when you tried to squeeze your thighs, tried to relieve some of that pressure in search for some—any—friction, about Matt’s leg. Instead, you found yourself clamping around where his thigh was slotted between yours, thick and strong, and responding in a knee-jerk reaction as it lifted higher, giving you an expanse to find relief on as you twitched instinctively.
“Oh, shit,” Matt all but yanked you down onto him, panting into your skin as his touch, his direction, persuaded you all too easily to grind against him. Relief however wasn’t the only thing you found, your eyes fluttering shut as you rolled your head back at the feel of a soft suction at the column of your throat, skin pulled between lips. The smallest graze of teeth. You wondered if it’d leave a mark.
Then Matt suddenly startled against you, and just when you had started to chase a rhythm against him, working against the thick solidity of his thigh, he pulled away. This time, you did whine. A protest as you opened your eyes and your jaw dropped. Too worked up, your body kept moving, racing after and wanting. You were just about to speak, whether words would be a snark or a plea unknown to you until they would come out, when you spotted him, face flushed a deep pink and mouth hung open on a hinge. It was hard to choose what exactly you should focus on: the way his tongue pressed out against his bottom lip, curling up slightly as if dragging in the smell of sweat and arousal in the air, or the way his palm again found the plane of your abdomen, pressing flat with his fingers pointing down, grazing the waistband of your pants, dipping ever so criminally slight under them. Despite his cocksure demeanor, Matt trembled before you, like a rubber band strung too tight, ready to snap. And yet again, his touch was hesitant. Waiting for permission. You tried to form a coherent sound, but your body was already reacting to the possibility of what he was offering, an indecent groan falling from your lips instead as you pushed off your toes to try and rock into his touch. That was enough for him to slide down further, not yet under clothes, but your legs spread the best they could from how he’d caged you in to let his hand slip through.
“Want some help?” Husky, Matt’s voice was so low it rumbled through you like a train on the tracks. He was warm, so warm, as he cupped over you, the sudden heat and pressure making you twitch almost violently as you didn’t even hesitate to grind into the heel of his palm. Flashes of white flickered behind your eyes as you finally got the friction you sought after, pressure enough to make you bite your lip and dig your fingers around the flesh of his arm, a broken cry dying in the well of your chest in a last effort to stay a semblance of quiet.
“Need more.” You choked out, subject to how his touch stayed firm and consistent, following your motions to keep the stimulation you wanted, but deliberately slow.
“Can I?” Matt swallowed hard, thumb hooking once again along the edge of your pants, brushing just ever so slightly against the sensitive skin below the belt. Never once in your life, ever, have you seen a man look as wrecked as Matt did now asking to pleasure you. Words stumbled out of his mouth in an eager plea, laced with a genuine excitement, a sincere want, as he rutted against you again, breathing hot into your skin like proximity would compel you further. Like he even needed to convince you more. “Say yes. Please say yes.”
You tugged Matt into a kiss that was hot and messy and uncoordinated, tongue and grazing of teeth, his glasses bumping against you. “Yes.”
To your surprise, Matt didn’t tease. He was swift, deftly slipping his hand under pants and your underwear alike, moving like a man on a mission about to accomplish his goal. He only paused once, heavy breaths from the both of you stirring the air as he took a moment, feeling you hot and bare and throbbing against his palm. Unconsciously, you nodded, and you think Matt felt it where he still was tucked against your shoulder, because at your signal he pressed a single finger forward, dragging slow and careful through the warm slick heat that’d been there waiting for him since minutes after you’d sat on that damn couch.
Matt moaned with you, his mouth parting on a ragged breath and his other hand on your hip tightening like feeling you was affecting him just as equally. “Oh, sweetheart I knew you were wet,” His voice was thick as it crooned out to you, parting you further as he explored, spreading through your wetness and nudging just enough against your clit to make you gasp and try and chase after it. “But all this? You’re gonna kill me.”
“Not before you finish what you started- ah!” You clutched onto his arm as he intentionally brushed over you again.
Matt stumbled over a laugh, but it lacked any cruelty. Just the same breathless intoned disbelief you’d expressed earlier. “You were saying?”
“Asshole.”
“I could be.” But he wasn’t. Far from it as he sighed into you and began tracing your clit in slow, featherlight circles. “But not tonight. Not with you.”
With how much you needed something, anything, the soft touch was more than enough at the start. Something direct and consistent in its way he revolved his fingers to send fleeting, gratifying waves through you. It made you shiver, flex your hand where you’d found purchase against his shoulder. Matt moved patiently, thoroughly, taking his time to see what touches, what movements, drew out which noises. He was hedonistic enough for the both of you, humming pleasantly into your skin and lips quirking against you with every gasp and twitch and tremor, moving with no rush. Just the simple intent of making you feel good.
Eventually, however, your desire began to outweigh the input of pleasure. Matt’s sweet, satisfying motions grew unintentionally teasing. You tried to hold on, scolding yourself for a capacity for greed you hadn’t yet known you were capable of. You were getting what you wanted. There was no real reason to rush. Yet your need for more again grew with every languid pass over you and occasional roll of his own hips against your upper thigh. Despite the way you usually got off, satisfied with your fingers alone, Matt’s unlocked a craving that burned rampant, smoldering and deep.
He seemed to sense it somehow, whether it was in the way your soft groans evolved into seeking whines, or in the frantic disposition of how you tried to meet him, torn between pursuing more from his hand, and leaning into, meeting him where he rubbed against your leg. Matt made the decision for you, pressing his fingers firmer against you and catching your lips in his as he swallowed your moan before it even had time to breach the air.
“What do you want?”
“Put them inside.” You panted the words into his mouth, tugging his bottom lip between your teeth and nipping lightly just to hear him groan. “Please.”
You watched the way his brow furrowed when he screwed his eyes shut, and he ground harder against you, an opened mouth grunt tumbling out with a sudden jerk of his hips. That band was still winding. You wanted to be there for when it snapped. “Open wider for me then, honey.”
And he shifted, taking a half-step back from where he corralled you enough just to give you room to spread your legs further where you stood. It was a momentary loss, the direct stimulation, but you couldn’t complain as your entire body coiled with a quiver of excitement, tight pressure just aching for release. Testing, Matt slid a finger along your entrance, wetting himself in slick arousal and pressing his face into the side of yours to muffle the raspy noise that escaped him at the way you instinctively bucked into him, needy and borderline impatient.
“You really do want me, huh?” A grin curling around the shape of the kiss he pressed against your cheek.
“Matt, I’ll lose it if you try teasing me right now.”
“But I can tell you like it,” he whispered hotly, running his finger over you again, pressing ever so slightly with just enough force to almost push into you without actually getting there. And you clench around the projected impression of him, your body craving what was just barely out of reach. “I can feel it.”
You didn’t know what to say to that, your cheeks, your face, everything burning with want. Of course you liked it. You liked him. The multitude of things you imagined him saying to you far exceeded the tameness of that statement in comparison. But coherent thoughts were slipping from you, and you just wanted to feel. You could tell that Matt didn’t have the capacity to drag this out any longer either, meeting the roll of your hips as you’d tried to coax him in perfectly with the easy glide of his index slipping into you. Your back bowed on a heady moan as suddenly, that coil was being acknowledged. Matt moved in a lazy search, pumping his finger with a small curl that gave only the slightest amount of pressure, but was enough to send small pulsing shocks of heat through you, too turned on to pretend you would be able to last long at all if Matt played his cards right.
And you’d no doubt he would, a quiet, satisfied hum buzzing against you as it seemed he had his fill preparing before a second finger joined the first. You clawed at him where your arm was thrown around his shoulders, your head tipping forward against his breastbone as you panted into him. With how wet you were, the stretch was nothing but pleasant and comfortable. But your undoing truly lied in sensitivity. You couldn’t think back to a time you had been this horny in your life, and the first slow push of his fingers pressing up inside you almost had you choking on a plea, a flash of white blinking behind your eyes as the stirrings of that familiar build up in your core teased that it might be there sooner than you thought.
“Oh, fuck,” You inhaled sharply, that first drag of his fingers sending a shiver down your spine. “Jesus, Matt, oh my god.”
He responded to you with a smooth roll of his wrist, a shudder complimenting your own as he parted his lips, licking them and breathing heavily against your shoulder. Matt’s voice was rough. Like you were slowly tearing him apart by barely doing anything. “Did Foggy tell you to wear that?”
Your thoughts were muddled, nothing existing around you but you and Matt and the room you were in, so it took you a moment to parse through your thoughts until the puzzle pieces clicked. An off-hand comment made. A recommendation followed. “Really don’t wanna think about Foggy with your hand down my pants,” you turned your head until you could press closer to him, your other hand coming up to rest on his chest. “But he might’ve mentioned it, yeah.”
“Compliments you so fucking well.” And he bows his head closer to you, twisting until he could just barely graze the back of your neck with a kiss. “Not overwhelming. Still very you. Smells so good—you smell good.”
And despite still feeling the ghost of his kiss on your lips, despite already having his hand, a small swell of mundane accomplishment bubbled in your chest. Enough to make you smile, and some of the easiness you shared trickled into the lilt of your voice. “Aw, does Matt Murdock have a sensitive nose?”
He grinned, and you matched him the best you could before he curled his fingers just a little sharper, pressing up into you a little harder. You clutched onto him tighter, biting off a moan. “You’ve got no idea.”
He found a steady rhythm then. He had to work, adjust with the obstacle that was your pants—since neither of you had the foresight to work them off—but if anything it bid in his favor. Matt couldn’t pull too far away, constricted by the fabric, but that didn’t matter, him opting to work you up in a steady grind and fervent pressure. The pace became heated, natural, as you met him the best you could, and the air rang out in shared whimpers and soft cries. It only took two grinds of your hips into his hand before he adjusted, maneuvering until the heel of his palm started to build the tension again on your clit, rocking into it with every steady push and pull.
Sparks snapped in the corners of your eyes as heated pressure built in your core. You were getting close. You were getting close and it would be Matt that’d get you there. You pressed your mouth to him over his shirt if only to help prove your point, shifting into him as you listened to his short, tiny breaths, or the lewd wet sound that was proof of your indecency. You felt the way his thumb swiped comfortingly against your hip after he’d roamed down to grab at your ass and come back up. This wasn’t a dream, or a fantasy, or some sort of cruel illusion. It was actually happening. And you were letting it.
“Fuck.” You held onto him tighter. “Shit, Matt, please- fuck! Right there.”
“Such a dirty mouth,” But his tease fell flat on a breathless sigh, almost distracted-like as he concentrated on the spot that made you keen into him.
“Says the Catholic boy fucking me on his hand, shut up.”
He in fact did not shut up, his voice dropping, low and trembling with something you could only describe as excitement. “Are you close?”
“Mhm,” And you mouthed at his collar again, nudging his shirt out of the way to reach skin.
“God, if you sound like this only with my fingers, I can only imagine what you’ll sound like when you’re taking me.” He breathes, an awe in his voice like he’d just come to the same realization you had: that he couldn’t believe this was happening. And it was everything at once; his voice, his words, the insistence of his strokes. You clenched around his fingers as a sharp bolt a pleasure wracked through you, unable to help the way you visualized helping Matt out of his jeans, pulling your pants down too. Finally being able to see all of him. Hedging your bets on whether the old table you were using as a foundation would be able to handle it. “You like that? Like thinking about what it’ll feel like when I fuck you?” When, he said. When.
If you were going to answer, it got cut off by the way your eyes fluttered open only to see the way his hips snapped against the air. You remembered at that moment he moved away from where he could use you to be able to touch you better, but now you could see the way his cock strained tight against his jeans. Untouched. You’d fix that.
Clumsily, you leant more of your weight against the table, leaning back only enough for your shoulderblades to wisp the cool wall behind you. And before Matt could ask anything, you reached out to hook a finger in his belt loop to pull him closer. He stumbled over his feet, faltering for just a moment, and you grinned at how cute it was that you caught him by surprise.
“What are you—”
“Let me help.” Your voice a sultry drawl that danced upon his skin.
Matt couldn’t help the throaty moan that tore from his chest at the first feel of your fingers skirting over the length of him over denim, nor the way he jerked into you, barely even touched and seeking something more substantial. He was so hard, you could only imagine how much he ached, warmth radiating from him in pulses against your hand. And you had meant to pop that button, try and fail because of your lack of patience to inch down his zipper. But a sweet little whimper tumbled from Matt’s trembling lip as in one fluid motion, he rolled up hard against your palm and ground his hand harder into you. Your resolve cracked at that, not knowing if you currently had the bandwidth to focus on him like this. You felt bad for a second, before you found resolution in the way he eagerly chased you. If Matt was satisfied with fucking himself against your hand, then you wouldn’t have any problem diverting your attention back to the fact that you were so close now, the crest of your high was almost in sight.
You still felt like you needed to do something though. And your first thought was to pull Matt back to you, kiss him until your lips went numb, but the noises he was making went straight to your head, your heart, and between your legs. To cut those off would be a sin, you thought. So you settled for trying to spur them on, pressing in firmer drags against him as you met his thrusts, and fisting your other hand tightly in his shirt, yanking it down to pull him closer. You heard the solid thump of his palm hitting the wall behind you, and a shaky moan vibrating under your lips as you grazed your teeth across his clavicle before pressing a kiss to the column of his throat.
“So good,” You managed to get out, following a straining tendon in Matt’s neck, him rolling his head back to give you space before you sealed your mouth over the thin skin just under his jaw. “Doing so good.”
It was as if you were held suspended in that pleasure for an extended period of time, the whole world both falling away and stopping in those few moments before you came. Nothing but the thundering in your chest, the taste of Matt against your tongue, and his fingers inside you. Your thighs clamped his hand in place as you shook, orgasm washing over you in a deep powerful wave that momentarily stole your breath, black creeping into the corners of your vision. And Matt worked you through it, slowing his ministrations but not stopping, riding the way you still grinded against him until your spasms grew too sensitive, edged on the cusp of an intensity you hadn’t yet explored.
He kissed you, both to distract you from the way he slowly slid his fingers out of you, hand creeping back out from under your pants, and to swallow down the blissed out whine that came with the movement. He breathed with you, and distantly you felt his hips retreat from your hand. With your eyes closed, still basking in the lingering pleasure of your climax, you tried to feel back around for him only to be met with the gentle clasp of Matt’s hand around your wrist, guiding you away.
“He-hey,” You stuttered out the word, blinking against the heavy rise and fall of your chest. “What ‘bout you?”
He didn’t answer immediately, and you lifted your head just in time to see Matt pull his fingers over the flat of his tongue as he licked over the hand he’d just had in you. Your jaw dropped as you watched his full body shudder, a strained moan stuttering from his chest at the taste of you and you watched him work you down his throat as he tilted his head ever so slightly back, hips thrusting forward once again against nothing but air. When he came back, he grinned, devilish and wicked.
“Unless you want me to come the second I’m in you, sweetheart, give me a minute.” His laugh was short, rough, and delirious. And giddy, you found yourself sitting up.
“You were that close?” Wide-eyed with wonder, you cast your gaze down to his crotch, rolling the odds for what little else it might’ve taken. “Didn’t even get your pants off.” He swayed, tilting his head and raising his brows as if to say ‘well,’ before he dipped back to you, drawing in a long, deep, indulgent breath.
Your thoughts slowly began to clear as the both of you lingered in the growing calm. But then dizzy awareness began to come back to you in time with the thumping bass of the music playing downstairs under your feet. You bit your lip, suddenly tasked with making what shouldn’t have been such a hard decision.
“Still wanna get out of here.” You couldn’t tell if the words came out as a statement or a question, but the meaning held true either way. You stumbled as you stood, Matt moving back slowly to accommodate you, his hand on your waist.
“This is a pretty spacious closet, though.” His joke was melodic, irony of what made you go upstairs in the first place not lost on you, and you couldn’t lie: it was so incredibly tempting, whether you’d stay put and he’d have you right there against the wall, or if you dragged him over to that pristine bed and found satisfaction in messing up the owners sheets.
That snapped you back to it.
You swatted playfully at his chest. “God’s sake, Matt, I have no clue whose house this is. Have some decorum.” The smirk he sent your way was absolutely sinful. “Besides, the car ride’ll give you some more time to cool off.”
“Car ride?” Matt hummed as the hand on you found skin again, squeezing you gently. “You gonna bring me to a secondary location?”
“I know somewhere even more private than up here we can use for the main event.” You whispered in the space that rapidly closed before he kissed you again and you added: “I still wanna keep going.”
He nodded against your lips. “Me too.”
Your sigh was deep and content, an excitement brewing up a fresh new wave of anticipation. “First thing’s first—”
“Call Foggy.”
You blinked. “What?”
Matt shrugged like he was being obvious. “Well, we can go see if the door’s still blocked. If it is, we can just call Foggy and have him move the chair for us.”
“I…right.” You scoffed in disbelief, a solution as simple as that had not even been given a chance to cross your mind since the two of you went upstairs. But as long as he picked up, it really would be
You leant to press what was meant to be a quick kiss to Matt’s lips as you pulled your phone out of your back pocket, but he grabbed your bicep just as you were about to pull away and brush past him, lingering just a few moments more into it before he let you go. You smiled at the ridiculousness of it all, mumbling that you were gonna move to go test the door, leaving him behind at the nod of his head.
Your mind reeled as you crossed the bedroom, dialing Foggy’s number and hearing it start to ring out against your ear. Your body was still coming down from your high, nerves settling and want still politely throbbing and waiting for permission to grow again between your legs. When you reached the door, and before you tried the knob, you glanced back to see Matt shuffling around until he grabbed his cane and started in the direction toward you. Like he knew you were watching him, his face split into a wide smile, and you couldn’t help the giggle that started to bubble up your throat when the call picked up, and you were blasted with a cacophony of noise.
“Finally!” Foggy exclaimed over the loud background of music, nearly screaming into the receiver. “I’ve only tried calling you two like a million times. I know Matt’s with you, saw you guys walk out together. Where are you?”
“We are, uh,” You let out an annoyed groan as you rattled the door knob, pushing forward, but no luck was spared. “We’ve been locked in a room.”
You would say there was silence over the line, but it was truly impossible in this house. Nevertheless, you waited until Foggy decided how long he should hold for dramatic effect. “What?”
Rolling your eyes, you shifted to get comfortable on your feet. “We left the basement because Matt needed to get away from that shit-head trying to get him to play that stupid game—”
“That was pretty shitty of him, to keep asking,” You heard Foggy grumble in agreement over the phone.
“—so we went upstairs to talk, and…” You faltered as you felt Matt sidle up behind you, a smile creeping back onto your face before your eyelids fluttered at the press of his lips against the back of your neck. “...and we found out the door was blocked behind us.”
There was another pause, and you could almost see the way Foggy must have been balking if you closed your eyes. “And you’re just telling me somebody trapped you in a room, now?” You felt your face grow warm, weighing the odds on how fast he might get to you if you let him know in just what way you and Matt had been preoccupied. “And why didn’t you pick up my calls earlier?”
“We were talking! And doing uh, something important.”
“Something important.”
“Yes.” You could facepalm, the way you weren’t subtle at all. You knew it didn’t really matter, that once Foggy made it up to you, he’d be able to read it all over the place. You hadn’t yet taken inventory of just how wrecked either of you looked, but you bet it was more than enough to cross lying out of the equation.
“Something very important.” Matt chirped seductively next to you, nuzzling into the side of your neck and hands pulling your hips back into his as if to give you a reminder—as if you could forget—that he was still in fact, very hard, and the plan was to get out of there as soon as you could.
You couldn’t tell if the exclamation you heard on the other end was Foggy actually hearing Matt’s addition, or just a general party thing, but in all honesty, you didn’t care. “Could you please get your ass up here and let us out? Probably won't be hard to miss. The only door up there with a chair shoved up against it, most likely.”
There was a distant ‘oh my god,’ as it faded presumably with a phone being pulled away before the call disconnected. Spinning around, you drew your brows together as you scanned over the state Matt was in. He simply smiled, smug around the edges, as you smoothed out his white tee and carded through his mussed hair. There was nothing to be done about the way his lips were slightly shiny and clearly kiss-swollen, or the fact that all it would take was one look to catch a glimpse of the very clear tent in his jeans, but you still did your best if only for your peace of mind. You couldn’t even bring yourself to go over to the mirror you just now spotted in the corner of the room, knowing you were probably too far gone to pretend to look put together. You at least fixed how your pants hung on you, adjusting and pulling them back up to a decent, modest place.
“He should be on his way,” You told Matt, and in a final sweep of the room, you spotted his discarded button up on the floor. Patting his chest, you went to go pick it up. “Shouldn’t take too long.”
“Don’t think it will.” You heard him muse as you slung his button up over your shoulder.
And just as you returned to him right beside the door, there was a faint thunk against the frame, and a muffled scrape of something being pulled out of the way. You barely had time to find amusement in it before Foggy was yanking the door open, gaping at the two of you where he stood in the doorway, slightly out of breath like he ran through the house and up the stairs.
“Did you…?”
“Holy shit!” You couldn’t tell if it was pride or embarrassment that was winning in the fight for control over his features as his eyes flickered from you to Matt. “I knew it! You guys finally—”
“Two questions.” Looking back at Matt, you saw him holding back laughter, both hands clutched on his cane in front of him and his shoulders pulled slightly up to his ears.
“Two- I get two questions?”
“Get to answer them,” You clarified, resting your hand on your hip as you let out a deep sigh. Your car keys were salaciously weighty in your pocket. “First: any luck with Marci? And second: do you have a safe way back to the dorm?”
Stammering, and caught off guard, Foggy cleared his throat. “Yes! Yeah, and…also yes, why—”
“Good.” And with that, you reached behind you to grab Matt’s hand, tugging him with you as you breezed through the doorway past Foggy. “Then we’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Wait, why are you leaving- oh my god.”
You remembered to yell a thanks to Foggy over your shoulder as you fervently dragged Matt with you down the hall, muttering a quick stairs, stairs, stairs, to him as your heartbeat began to pick up again behind your ribs. Surprisingly, he matched you in speed and swiftness, just as eager to get out of the party as you were, entirely entrusting you to guide him safely through the mass of moving bodies and heat of the building.
Despite doing nothing inherently scandalous, it felt oddly liberating to be leaving with Matt as the both of you met the outside, breaching into the cool night air. If anything, getting out of the house made the growing flush you felt glow hotter—the temperature difference a blaring sign to the lustful way your awareness grew stronger. With every step you took down the block to reach where you parked, with every hushed giggle and squeeze of his hand in yours, your heart pounded heavy with anticipation and arousal. You’d led Matt over to the passenger side door first when you’d finally reached your car, and you waited until he opened the door and started to slip in before you joined him, hands shaking as you yanked your seatbelt on and turned the key in the ignition.
At first you were primed to go, an uncontrollable smile playing on your lips as you went to shift the car into reverse, but then you paused, hand hovering over the gear shift. It was not for lack of want, or even the threat of regret that caused you to take a moment. It was simply the weight of it all. The reality. You've wanted this for so long—wanted Matt—you just…needed to be sure.
“Are we,” the engine was stalled, primed, rumbling and ready to go. “Shit, Matt, do you actually wanna do this with me?”
“Of course I do.” Came his soft reply, instant, and not needing to be loud for the heft of his words to carry across the small space. “But if you don’t, I won’t ever say a damn thing if you decide just to bring me back to campus.”
He states it as if it were that simple. Presenting you the choice. It wouldn’t even be fair, seeing as he’s already got you off just a few minutes ago and it was your decision to make what the two of you were doing more tangible, more real, by wanting to take it back to your apartment instead of staying in the haze of thumping music, weed, and mist of cheap alcohol. You didn’t even really need to think about it that hard though, when it came to it. It really was that simple. And the fondness that had you craving Matt deeper in the first place returned in an intense and almost overwhelming wash over you. The choice was yours. And he’d respect it either way. Just like how he respected the game, never pushing you for the sex you swore yourself off from even when the both of you would part ways hot and bothered too many times to count. Or the way he’d back off the second you weren’t in the mood, or if neither of you had the time or patience to rile each other up, and you would settle the air into something calmer and closer to easy friendship.
Your decision came easy. You shifted the gear.
Before you could press down on the pedal however, Matt continued, words blazing a silken fire in their wake. “But if I’m being honest, I really want to get back to your place so I can drop to my knees and get a better taste of you.”
“Oh my god.” That torch he placed in you blazed again, and you were already pressing your thighs together to relieve the ache that came back with a reckless abandon. You knew it’d be a mistake, knowing the visual would only spur you further, but you couldn’t help but to look over to see Matt’s head turned to you, a wide cocky grin lazily splitting his lips as his tongue darted out to make a show of licking over them. “Jesus Christ. You really are such a bad Catholic.”
“Never said I was a good one.” He shot back in a smooth reply. “How far away are you?”
You flicked on your headlights and pulled out of your parking spot, guiding the car onto the road. “Like four minutes.”
Matt isn’t subtle at all as he sucked in a sharp breath between his teeth, deliberate in the way he let a breathy moan ring out in the confined space of the car. One glance over, and the sight of him grabbing hold over the straining shape of him over his jeans, rutting into his own hand, was something you replayed over and over in your mind the entire drive. “Bet you could get us there faster.”
You did.
The second the both of you stumbled through your apartment’s front door, kicked shut carelessly—by you or him, you couldn’t tell—all bets were off. Matt’s cane clattered to the floor in the distance of your front hall, and he wasted no time pressing his lips to yours in a searing kiss; hot and needy and filthy. You might have been the one Matt was relying on to lead him through your space, but you couldn’t even rely on your talent as a guide as navigating became the least of your worries. If bumping into a coffee table or the couch arm was the price the two of you would have to pay just so your hands wouldn’t have to leave him, or for you to have to send your focus anywhere else, then you would pay that price willingly. Luckily for you, the front door to your room was a straight shot.
There was no thinking as you and Matt fell in time as you led with your back turned, the speed of eager steps only hindered by the fact that nearly every second involved a clumsy attempt at removing more articles of clothing. It almost felt like a passionate waltz—if waltzing had evolved into a feverish assault on the senses; your shirt too tight and your pants too constricting and your head spinning as Matt’s hands fumbled with the clasp of your bra while you moved. Your hands yet again found themselves snaking under his shirt, this time pulling it up with you as you went, pressing firmly up the lines of his abdomen, feeling him flutter under your touch, and spreading your palms over the muscle of his chest, being sure to brush your thumbs over his nipples if only for the way it made him shiver.
Matt broke this kiss solely to help you pull his shirt over his head, and you sighed half in content, half in satisfaction as you finally set sights on him topless, broad lines and firm muscle, shirt flung somewhere into the depths of your living room. And despite Matt trying to dip down to find your mouth again, you busied yourself littering kisses from one edge of his collar bones to the other as you undid the button to his jeans, and carefully pulled the zipper down. Your plan of action had included tugging the denim down far enough to get him in your hands, but you were interrupted. Unexpectedly, he stopped you, his hands, strong and firm, grasped both your wrists, guiding you and placing them to hold him chastely low on his hips.
“Not yet,” He kissed you through your quizzical groan, pulling your bottom lip into his mouth, sucking on it gently before letting go, “Told you what I wanted to do first.” Freshly set alight at the reminder, you murmured an agreement, arching into the way he held you tight, cradling against your ribs.
You knew it couldn’t be much farther to the bedroom when you suddenly hit the wall, jolting against it with a small ‘oof’ before a frown twitched your expression. When you swung your head to the side, it was an easy realization that the two of you faintly veered off course, unable to follow the easy path to the door in favor of a curve that now situated you up against the wall, inches from the frame. Reaching over, you could almost brush your fingertips against the doorknob.
“We’re right- right here,” You tried to begin, “Just gotta get the door open.”
“Hold on.” He whispered, distracted, hands finding your face again as he cupped your jaw.
For the second time that night, Matt subverted your expectations. What had been a desperate, messy kiss, slowed down into something intoxicatingly sweet. His thumb grazed your chin as he kissed you softly. Tenderly. Like you were something sacred to him. You weren’t prepared for the sudden shift, but you let this tentative affection float over you, envelop your mind in its subdued passion and careful reverence. For the second time that night, a flicker of what this really meant, what you were really doing, brushed your thoughts with a pigment that lingered.
This…with Matt, this wasn't just sex to you. It was a desire, sure. And lust, no doubt. But it was also the way his face lit up when he laughed. His quick, whip-sharp wit during a debate. It was the way he threw himself into his studies not just with the goal of being the best, of being the smartest, but being humble in his intention. It was the way he was intolerant of any bullshit, but was kind, despite being hard on himself. The way he could flash a smile and bring someone to their knees and all the while it just felt right and normal and safe, because this was Matt Murdock and it was easy to trust him to not abuse the power he must've known he had.
Your breath hitched as you lifted your arms for him, Matt slowly pulling your shirt off over your head. You heard it land quietly on the floor, and Matt lowered just enough to place a leisurely kiss to your sternum. His hair was soft, so soft, as you brought a hand up to run through it, raking gentle caresses against his skull and wondering if you had been patient long enough to deserve the delicate purr he rewarded you with.
Hesitation did prick in the undercurrent of your thoughts. This wouldn't be just sex for you. That sometime along the way, in banter and teasing…in drinks and time shared, you'd started to grow feelings for Matt. Ones that seeded firmly with roots fixed in wanting no excuse to hold his hand, or to kiss him in broad daylight, or to not need a reason or pre-made plans with friends hoping he'd actually be there just to be able to see him. You knew, as his kisses between the valley of your breasts stole your very breath in the gentle coax of gasps from your lungs, that if you only said the word, if you told him to stop, he would. You knew, that by the end of this night, there was a good chance that regret would eventually catch up to you; that the shape and form, the phantoms of his touch and attention would litter your consciousness until it drove you mad.
But you pushed it all aside, because right now, in this moment, even if only for the night, Matt Murdock was yours.
In the way he paused in an instant when your fingertips pressed the lightest pressure against him, happy and willing to wait without a second thought or question.
And in the way he let you gingerly lift the dark frames of his glasses, slow and controlled, and with a bated breath just waiting for him to tell you to stop. But he didn't, a warm smile instead bloomed a light that reflected in his dark eyes as he rested his head against your skin. And this would be a memory you'd never forget; Matt, slipping to his knees, head tilted against your chest, before you, and an unseeing gaze cast up in your direction filled with a burning devotion you felt undeserving of—as if he knew you needed the comfort despite the way he guarded it for his own. He was giving it to you. Giving him, to you.
Yeah, you thought, a heat consuming you from the inside out, ravaging in want and emotion and simple, sanguine greed as you slipped the last shield he wore onto the little hallside stand to your side. If only for the night.
Matt Murdock was yours.
You'd forgotten all about your bedroom at the first rasp of his tongue swiping at you over the fabric of your bra. The action was enough to set your nerves once again aflame, and Matt was reverent in how he slid the straps down your arms, gracefully tugging it down and off and discarding the garment amongst the floor to be found in the morning with the others. He was taking his time, sweet, like your experience was paramount to his. He hummed pleasantly as his concentration settled on you. And your breasts weren't an afterthought, just a means to an end as he gave equal time to both of them, licking and sucking and leaving a trail of liquid fire in their wake as he rolled your nipples in his mouth and left a bright red mark you could already see blossoming against the swell of one of them.
Your head fell back just enough to meet the wall behind you, eyes screwing shut at the drag of his cheek down your stomach, jumping under the small nip of teeth at your hip, and twitching over the feel of his hands sliding firmly against the small of your back. Your ass. Your thighs. Matt sank fully onto his knees in front of you, hands dragging down until he settled against your legs and between your thighs like he belonged there. He rested, for a moment, breathing a happy sigh against your groin and you swore you started to burn so hotly, you felt like you were about to burst into flames.
The kiss he pressed just below your navel was like a signature he penned in permanent ink, as if tagging his presence, eyes fluttering shut as he finally inched your underwear and pants down until they rested around your ankles. He hadn't even done anything, but your legs were already shaking as you went to step out of them. Deft fingertips guided you against your calf as you did, using in the motion to trail his touch up until he hooked just under your knee and lifted your leg onto his shoulder. That same hand slid up as your voice trembled, tumbling from your lungs, to hold you steady at the hip.
Every part of you burned. Ached. And at his pause, you swallowed hard at the sight of him beneath you, stilled where he settled comfortably on the floor, mere inches from where you were fully naked and flayed bare before him. You've never seen a hunger like this until your half-lidded eyes gazed down at him, smoke and flame and an indulgent breath tugging up a satisfied smirk like a man presented a feast of every one of his favorite meals. And if that wasn’t a sight to behold; you wanted him, and you couldn’t tell if the heat grew warmer because of you or him, as you squirmed against the fan of his breath and the way he held you. Your plea was quiet. So quiet—as if a single decibel louder would convince him to pull away—you barely even heard it.
He dove in.
You weren't sure whose moan was louder: yours or his, as his thumbs spread you apart to make room for the flat of his tongue. Hot. His mouth was so hot it burned, fire licking into you alongside him. He was in no rush, no hurry; just an agonizingly long, slick sweep of his tongue up the line of you. Spurred by the way a broken whine gleaned off your lips, Matt took his time in his savor, being sure to swipe against every inch, gather as much as he could with that first dip in, only pulling back after pausing when reaching your clit, relishing in the way your cry morphed into something filthy, and giving it an extra pass before he rolled his head back.
There was a pure bliss in the way his eyes were shut and in the eagerness of his groan. His chest heaved like he’d hiked a mountain as you watched him swallow you, his head resting on your thigh as his throat worked the taste of you down. And if you’d known, if you expected even a fraction of what was about to happen, you might have recognized what he was doing for what it was—that in the languid way he settled back against you, hand adjusting his grip on your thigh tighter—you might have been able to prepare faster.
You couldn’t count the amount of dreams you’ve had about Matt eating you out. The amount of times you’ve fantasized of this very moment, against a wall like this, or on a bed, a couch. You pulled from past experiences, ex-lovers, the unrealistic feeling of your own knowing fingers or toys; a hybrid amalgamation of all of the above. The point was, you could never pinpoint exactly how it would feel, only the idealistic fiction that formed because of a soul in pining. And in spite of the multitude of ways he’s already proven you wrong or unknowing in one night alone, this was an expectation that apparently, you didn’t hit too far off the mark.
There was a mercy, yes, in the way he built up to it, but a vicious magnitude hung thickly in action. When he delved back in, it was with abandon. He moaned openly, making it known to you to make no mistake of how much he wanted to be there, and he parted you on his tongue until your body finally caved and sank into him. Then he started to work; steady, avid laps against you that had you choking on a shout. The rough grind of his nose against your clit when it escaped his focus encouraged slow-building tremors to meet his pace.
Rough, rolling pleasure began to consistently flutter over your skin like the silkiness of a hearty Spring breeze. Your back bowed and your hand clawed at the wall above you, trying to find some sort of grounding reprieve against drywall and paint. But you found none. And you wouldn’t find any if you kept fighting it, tension growing in the pit of your belly as your abs flexed and shuddered. Matt’s glide against you grew smoother, your arousal smearing across his mouth and chin as he drank you in. You jumped, a hoarse whimper tumbling out as you felt the eager tip of his tongue testing, settling, then pushing into you with the firm press of his head between your legs. His entire body rolled up into it, like the only thing he was made for was this. And with the ardent way he latched on as if he were only an extension of your own body, you’d have half a mind to believe he was.
There was no thought, capability escaping you in the moment, when you fisted a hand in his hair, your hips moving with him as you tried to grind against his face. And Matt let you, letting out a staccato moan that ravaged and ripped through you with the way he buried his tongue so far up your cunt it was like it was him being pleasured. Making sounds he'd make as if it were you taking him in your mouth. And that had your mind racing anew—marveling at the odds of you being able to return the favor, wondering if he’d teeter on the whim of your control, set by your pace, or if he’d work you how he wanted, held back by fine lines of constraint.
Matt of course, was first to know how that line of thinking affected you. Both his hands formed a sturdy grip on your waist, flicking at your hipbones, before he pulled you down onto him with a grunt and curl of his tongue.
“Oh, shit.” Your back thudded against the wall as you rose and fell against it. “Matt. Fuck, Matt, baby, please, that feels so good.” You weren’t even sure what you were asking for, but you weren’t disappointed as he preened under the praise, offering a decadent hum of appreciation that flickered through you like blinking starlight.
And he seemed to keep offering. With every tug at his hair and rock of your hips—even at every broken breath and easy moan—he rewarded you with something of his own. A sigh or a dirty little growl; a change in pace or intensity. It kept you on edge, unable to prepare for what he might do next because his every move was reliant on and responsive to you. When the leg that was thrown over him started to shake and slip off his shoulder, Matt made a sound of disapproval, bumping you back with his bicep against your thigh and his fingertips digging imprints into your ass like he wanted to be caged in, trapped by you.
It was like he could read your thoughts. “Could stay here for hours,” he breathed wetly against you, pulling back only far enough to speak. You shivered at the feel of his lips brushing over you at the form of each word. “Tastes amazing, you know that?”
“Figured. Or else I don’t think you’d be trying to kill me like this.” You had patience. You had restraint. You really did. But your body was truly trying to ruin your image as it reacted involuntarily against your character, hips jolting forward and down in search of his mouth again, anything that would bring the friction back as the burning ache grew more insistent and seeking.
Matt simply grinned, confident and cocksure and all too pleased with himself, turning just slight enough to plant a wet kiss to the inside of your thigh. And you couldn’t even fault him. You and him both knew he was doing a good job.
“So needy.” His sigh was playful as it buzzed across your skin. You couldn’t even bring yourself to argue what would most definitely be a weak defense. You were. Your want didn’t even come close or fall short of needing him to keep going.
And at your tiny whimper, he honoured your request, slack-jawed as he pressed his face against your leg, drawing you in as he slicked two of his fingers along the line of your entrance. And sucking in a breath similar to yours as he twisted his wrist until the angle was right, and thoughtfully, he began to push.
This was familiar even in the ways it wasn’t, the second time this night Matt’s had his fingers in you, and there was a confidence now in how he moved. He already knew where to go, how to press. And that’s how you knew, in the way he paused, the pressure the pads of his fingertips used teetering on the edge of just too little, that it was all too deliberate.
“Please don’t tease me.” Your whisper was feverish and wild, darkened gaze peering down at Matt as if keeping your eyes on him would shed some insight into what he was planning.
“I’m not.” He stated simply, words thick with a molten craving.
And pulling in a ragged breath, he was on you again.
If he later told you his plan was simply to make you come again, you’d believe him. If you were told he actually was trying to kill you, you’d also believe him. But within the case lies that you truly believed it had nothing to do with goals as superficial and simple as those. Because as his mouth found you again, tongue laying flat before his lips moseyed into place, settling in a seal around your clit, you truly, firmly, and irreparably believed, that Matt was out to devastatingly ruin you.
With the first gentle suction, his fingers held fixed but unmoving. Just a waypoint, a guiding compass only there to ease against the way you pulsed against him. A steady hand that right now, acted as anchor in contrast to the delicate, almost exploratory way he licked softly at you. Desperate, you had to remind yourself to breathe through it, feeling the way it was instinct to hold it in your lungs at the most direct stimulation you’ve had all night in light flicks and reserved kisses. If you had any bite in you, you’d accuse him of toying around. But you found no malice in the way he wound you up like this, and you could only equate it to the prep a runner went over before a marathon. The stretch. The warm up. The sprint.
You struggled to hold on to coherency, ghosts of it whizzing by, as you felt his steady build rise and rise, running parallel to the growing volume of the symphony of sounds the both of you poured into the air, until seemingly, Matt found his content in working you up for him. For a split second, he paused. A hair of a second, a fraction. Then in the surety of his position, the readiness in which he was wrapped around you, he sucked. And he sucked hard.
The moan was pulled razor sharp and sudden from you, unrestrained on a breathy cry as it took everything you had to not double over. The way his other hand shot up to splay over your stomach helped, a weight that kept you against the wall as if to say ‘I’ve got you, I’m here’, like he wasn’t the one disassembling you piece by piece. The way his fingers curled inside you was delicious; a firm grind into where he knew you would fall apart, and pressure teetering just on the cusp of excessive.
The rasping strokes of his tongue could be considered criminal. Premeditated in the way that told you he’d truly spent his time studying, attuning to your body and how it responded just so that he would know exactly how to ravish you. That sweetness that you’d shared on display slipped into the background, replaced instead by a sinful greed that startled you but was far from unwelcome. Frantic, and breathless, your hand curled tighter in his hair, the pulling only earning you more reckless moans that shocked your system like lightning. You rocked faster against him. It was almost too much—the intense consistency of the suction, the burning insistence in every pass of his tongue—but it came as a shock to precisely no one in the swaths of fire that swept up your spine, or in the white-hot static that blurred the edges of your vision, that it was exactly what you needed.
Your high arrived loud, righteous, and fast in steady heat and heady pleasure that rippled through you in waves Matt only sought to draw out. His touch grew gentle, but unyielding, the brushes with his tongue against your clit mild and subtle, and the thrust of his fingers slowing to an indirect tender massage. He stayed like that until your body stopped convulsing, and the waves of blazing pleasure ebbed until it was nursed back down into a fervent ember toeing the border of pain.
You'd have thought it would be safe of you to assume that your satisfaction would be enough to tide you over, but it was nothing but desire that burned in you despite the way you were still trembling. Matt didn’t seem to care too much as you slowly slipped your leg off of him, awareness coming to him to help steady you on shaky legs as he panted heavily on the ground. You probably should have given yourself more time to pull yourself together, but then the reminder that you’d already waited months for this moment was enough to steer you toward determination. Reaching down, Matt rose to his feet on your command, drawing breath just as he cradled your face and pushed himself into you. This kiss was a thanks you gratefully accepted, wet and tasting of you and debauched desire, before you spoke.
“Bedroom. Now.”
“Yeah,” Matt’s words were slurred, thick like honey as he nodded quickly. “Right. Okay.”
The fact that both of you were steady enough on your feet to make it through the threshold was testament tenfold to the solid argument carnal instinct and innate want could make in defense of overriding any warning signs to take a break. Matt laved down your neck as he followed you blindly, suckling at your skin and pressing wet open-mouthed kisses wherever he could reach. And even with your eyes rolled back into your head, you were still able to pirouette the both of you through your room until you felt the backs of your knees collide softly with the sheets over your mattress.
“Bed,” You murmured urgently, running your hands down his chest. “Bed. Bed, we’re at the bed Matt.”
One of his arms reached around to hold you, a welcome relief against the small of your back as you leaned to give yourself space, edging your hands back to the belt of his jeans. Restlessly trying to tug them down to no avail. With a loud groan, you weren’t above voicing your displeasure as yet again, Matt flicked your arms away, opting instead to push you down gently until your back hit the covers and he could climb over you.
“Jesus, Matt, why won’t you let me take off your pants—”
His reply was quick and raggedly depraved, apology laced beneath his blatant desire. “Next time.”
The dissonance in your mind barely allowed the implication to rocket through you. The idea of a next time had you arching against his grounding touches as he shifted away enough to hold himself steady against the floor to shove the rest of his clothes off and kick them away in a crumpled pile against the wood panel where they should have belonged minutes after you’d gotten inside. ‘Next time’ meshed, melted in your mind and against every thought, syrupy and sticky like ice cream outside on a hot sunny day. It was intoxicating and exciting and faintly distinctive. ‘Next time’ implied that you’d be doing this with him again. ‘Next time’ meant that maybe, just maybe, Matt was open to not letting this wonderful, incredible night fade away with memories and time. And what he meant by that, well. You didn’t have the capacity to linger on it for too long at the moment.
You watched as he carefully climbed back onto the bed, fingertips using your legs as a guide on where to settle as he shifted against the mattress on his knees. Propping up onto your elbows, you stared at the line of him in quiet awe. From the ruined, deep blush that splotched the features of his face pink, to the broad line of his shoulders that bled into a lean muscled torso. And it was like Matt could feel your eyes raking over him as they drifted further down and down, over tensing abs and the dusty patch of his happy trail until you finally set your sights on his cock in a full thatch of dark hair between his legs; thick and leaking and flushed so hard it looked heavy, that at your audible moan, Matt couldn’t help the way it jumped, his hand shooting down to grip at the base of him.
You’d give in to the way you wanted to throw yourself back down into the bed, if not for fear of missing the way Matt adjusted, spreading himself out wider as he shifted on his knees, his other hand feeling around for your leg as you made it easier for him, spreading until you could drape your legs against his thighs and around him and he could shuffle forward enough to be able to reach you easily, slotting, nestling between you. It was unreal, this display in front of you. Matt like this. It almost felt dreamlike—like any second now your alarm would go off and you’d wake up in your bed with a wicked hangover and the distant, receding echo of drunken fun.
But it wasn’t a dream, and Matt trembled as he rubbed down your thigh with one hand, feeling out your position, and jerked a few times against his fist with the other.
“You’re gonna have to- pillow, sweetheart.” He managed to choke out roughly, and you clumsily followed his request, words floating in a halo of ecstasy in the air around your head as you yanked a pillow from above you and crudely lifted your hips enough to shove it under and raise you to him. Matt tried to help, his fingers bumping against yours in a way that made the both of you giggle as you adjusted and flattened any lumps out.
Then came the held breaths. Matt shifting forward until he accidentally brushed up against you. Both of you jolted at the feeling, anticipation skyrocketing nerve endings to their very limits. You watched, guiding another pillow just under your head for support, as Matt drew his lower lip between his teeth so tight you’d be surprised if he didn’t break skin as he bit back a moan the moment he slid himself against you. You didn’t care for such restrained abandon, letting your voice ring out loud enough to carry the sentiment for the both of you.
He was slow, thorough, as he dragged the length of him through slick heat, coating himself in the proof of your want for him and the aftermath you’d pulled him away from before he could spend the time with you in his mouth to clean up. A raw, stripped noise drifted wantonly from his lips and he hunched into his shoulders, breathing heavy and swallowing hard against the rising presence of the two of you in the air.
You reached out, fingertips brushing his forearm, feeling his skin prickle under his touch, as you curled your legs around him; a gentle urge forward. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah. Yeah, yeah.” He crawled closer, and you felt his tip part through you until he was right there, lining himself up. The way he nudged against your entrance shot like an arrow straight to the heart. “Are you?”
“I’m ready. I’m so ready,” Your words came out in one big aching breath. “Please give this to me, Matt, I need it. I want it. I want you.”
And you’d given him enough—more than enough—to have him moving without a second thought, both you and him sharing and certain in your desire, incentive, and mutual need. The necessity to chase what had been building up for far too long, to follow through with the only natural conclusion to the night. The press in was easy. You were so turned on, prepared enough, that there wasn’t even a chance for any modicum of pain or discomfort. Instead, all you felt as Matt pushed, inch by inch, was the glide, your body yielding to the stretch of thick brazen velvet heat, and the truly addictive sensation of being full.
You both shared in the helpless, shattered moans that danced, twining in the air as Matt bottomed out, tilting over you with a final flex of his hips before he stilled. It might have been easy, but you still needed to adjust to the feel of him and he kindly and wordlessly accounted for that. But when your whispered ‘okay’ fell on deaf ears, and your eyes fluttered open to see Matt’s chin dropped to his heaving chest, you realized something more than just comfortability was making him wait.
“Matt?”
“Just…” His voice rattled wetly on a deep breath, slow and steadying. “It’s- I haven’t done this in a while. I just need a minute. Wanna savor it.”
For a moment, everything around you disappeared. Your brain blanked, your thoughts froze, and your chest felt too full. Then everything…roared. Your heart sped up, flipping ceaselessly, pulsing heat coursing through you and Matt let out a broken whimper. You spoke with the ghostly fiery remnants of the hope that added up in months of desperate deprivation. “What do you mean?”
You weren’t sure how Matt found the brazenness in him to grin, wide, yet not without its share of sheepish admittance in its soft edges as he opened his eyes for you. “Told you I’ve wanted you.” He stole the breath of your reply with the slow way he began to draw back, fueled by the gasp that parted your lips and the feel of astonishment in your body’s reaction. “For a while, it’s only been you.”
Over the next few minutes, words felt too heavy. A thick reverence settled like a warm blanket over the room, and Matt set a slow, steady pace that gave you all of him in full long strokes. A gentle power as the full weight of him helped drive him forward. For a bit, there was nothing you could do but feel, helpless and content and beyond satisfied. There was a distant happy floating part of your subconscious that drew the conclusion that you didn’t even need to come again. That you could find a perfect ending entirely in the way Matt moved in you and with the force of his vulnerable admission.
That bubble grew around you until it too started winding in. This pleasure was overwhelming in only the best ways possible. Matt’s hands on you, grip strong and unwavering. The way the front of his thighs met the back of yours, skin sweeping together in an easy sweat slick rhythm with every potent, rolling thrust. In the melodic, reverent moans and the obscene way your hips collided. That sweetness was back. The shared bliss that you now recognized as equally returned veneration. Devotion of the highest power; something just shy of possibly becoming worship found in the wells of a yearning heart.
It was easy to lock on to Matt, easy to watch. There was a restraint in the way he rocked to meet you, as if his thin grasp of control was entirely dependent on how deep his fingerprints imprinted against your skin and in the way you flexed against him, slipping more and more with every tiny gasp and blissful shiver. The stretch of him was all you could have asked for and more, hot and steadfast and every glide stoking a gratification that thrummed shockwaves through you like electricity in a body just granted life; satiatingly full.
You found yourself reaching out for him, your hand finding the side of his face and Matt wasted no time leaning over into the affection. You cradled him there for a moment, before your thumb swiped over the ridge of his brow, and your fingers slowly began to trace the curves of his features. The swell of his cheek. The line of his jaw. When your fingers swept back up to follow the shape of his lips, he pressed a soft kiss to them. You held them there for him, heart blooming with how he craved such intimacy, until you began to drag them down. The gentle touch parted his lips, and you were intent on continuing on with your path until the tip of his tongue darted out against you. Surprised, you paused, and Matt did it again, firmer, opening his mouth wider and oh.
Sliding your fingers into his mouth slowly, your eyes went wide as you settled them against the flat of his tongue. His lips closed around a pleased hum and with a gentle suction, and he worked you over in a strained groan, tongue swirling around you until he was satisfied in thinking he sucked all the taste off of them, salt and sweat. Testing, you curled your fingers down into him, a slight pressure just to see what sort of spark it striked. And you might as well have struck gold, Matt moaning into it, his eyes rolling shut against a helpless, rougher thrust. When he let you go, a faint string of saliva hung from your fingertips, and you painted his skin with it, following the original trail you’d detoured from down his chin and grazing over the column of his throat.
And whether that was the prompt, or simply the turn of the tide, there was no mistaking in the way Matt paused, adjusted your legs up just enough to hook around his waist, and drove in deeper. Charged and riled up, there was truly no more waiting as the change settled over you, fierce and filthy.
His mouth hung open now on a perpetual tangible sound, heavy groans and hitching breath amongst your own chorus of noise keying you into just how badly he needed this. Needed you.
“I’ve been dreaming about how this would feel.” He begins, wildfire blaze and honeysuckle aroma. “You’re just like how I imagined, you know that?”
You hummed a wordless reply as you felt that blaze drop closer to you, the line of his chest now matching yours as he settled onto his arms, elbows digging into the mattress just above your shoulders. Your back arched off the bed at the angle shift that came with the way your legs followed him, pulling toward your body until you instinctively crossed your ankles around his back when he fully situated himself on top of you.
Matt’s voice dropped into a register soaked in honeyed hedonistic pleasure, his lips ghosting the shell of your ear as he weaved sin into the very fabric of your being. “Feels like Heaven.”
You never wanted this to stop; the weight of Matt pushing you into the mattress, the way his kiss still ignited your bones and sent sparks to burst behind your eyes. You wanted to explore the slight possessive cant his thrusts took on as he snapped his hips forward, and the way he shuddered into you when you dragged your nails down the trail of his spine.
The shape of his name felt so good as it tumbled into the air, gaining traction in time with each press of his cock inside you and each rough grind against your clit he tried his hardest to keep consistent when the roll of his hips perfectly met yours. Getting lost in it was easy, natural, as minutes ticked by and the stirrings of another climax grew. This was everything you wanted, everything you needed and more. Matt seemed to know exactly what to do, sometimes even before you did. Shifting to match the way you squirmed, speeding up before you could even ask, fucking into you harder as you clawed into him in the hopes that the raging tension, that winding coil of pressure in your core, would snap and let you drift apart against the sheets. But instead it stayed steady. Which in itself wouldn’t be a bad thing—hung, suspended in an endless pleasure—if it wasn’t for the way you began to notice the way Matt’s rhythm started to falter. He tried to hide it too, a determined furrow to his brow as he kissed you through choking gasps and low moans. And the thought of him coming edged you nearer, lighting a flame beneath you that burned brilliant and bright.
But it wasn’t enough.
“Oh, fuck,” The taste of your name was reverent and pleading on his tongue as it echoed against skin and sheets. His hips started to stutter, his careful control growing uneven and instinctual. “I’m so close, sweetheart. Tell me you are too. Tell me, please. Fuck, please, honey, because I don’t know if I can stop it. Tell me—”
And you were truthful in the way meaning lingered as you tried to gasp it out, orgasm crawling up from the tips of your hands and feet like the slow creep of wall-crawling ivy, but you could also see where this road was ultimately leading. The tightening peak in your core didn’t yet match the desperation in how Matt moved in you. You were close, yes, but Matt was already there tipping, falling over that cliff.
You did what you could to try and help, dragging Matt back down into a messy, chaotic kiss, seeking in the way his tongue flicked skillfully against yours, and snaking a hand between your bodies to try and rush you along, match him in stride. Together, it sent washes of a bone-deep pleasure flickering through you, but it still wasn’t enough. It wasn’t that your climax wanted to remain elusive. You simply, inherently, apparently, just needed a little bit more.
And when he started slowing, frantic and sloppy, you couldn’t find it in yourself to try and make him hold on in the way you knew he’d try if you’d just asked when he was right there. A single whisper against his lips sealed the deal, you pushing permission in hushed tones and wrapping both of your arms around his neck as he moaned into your mouth.
Matt lasted as long as he could for you.
It stoked the flame, the way his body tensed. You could feel the way the muscle of his thighs contracted, and you grew hooked on the lightheadedness you felt as he rapidly panted above you. You don’t think you’d ever hear a sound prettier than the noise he made as he buried himself completely into you, coming deep in hot steady pulses, a slew of praise, and a strangled, guttural moan.
You could hear the way your heart pounded in your ears as he struggled to stay upright above you. And when he flinched at the first shaky caress of your hand, you waited until he was ready to lean back into the touch. The brush of your kiss was gentle, and you hoped it sang of the gratification that rejoiced just under the surface of your skin. Maybe another day, the satisfaction would have been enough, but your own edge was just barely within reach. And while Matt breathed, settling down, you took advantage of the way he was still seated in you, throbbing and filling you up. The sigh that parted your lips when you dipped your hand between your legs again was heady, and you chased it, not wanting to lose sight of the way that heat still curled at the edges. You focused on the burning weight of Matt. The cognizance of what he’d just done only spurring the roll of your wrist.
When Matt sucked in a breath and began to pull back, you steadied yourself for the inevitable loss of him. But then it never came. Matt shifted, a hand tracing down your body until fumbling fingers laced with yours just to bring it up to rest on the pillow beside your head, and he pushed back in. You froze, feeling the way you instinctively clenched around him, your body seeking the more you craved.
“Didn’t you-” Your voice shattered when he did it again, this time building closer to a slow, sloppy, full thrust as his body reared up over yours. “Matt, didn’t you just…”
His reply was broken, words cracking at the edges. But he managed to send you a smile full of filth and desire. “Yeah.”
“You can stop.” Although you arched into him, torn between your orgasm billowing on the horizon and worry for his overwhelm. “Fuck, baby, it’s okay, you can stop. Isn’t that too much—?”
“Only a little.” It wasn’t easy to look past the way his voice was shaking, trembling above you as he struggled to keep himself held up on his arms, but there was no mistaking the determination in the echo of his words. Or the unmistakable edge of pain cutting sharp around his subdued gasps only furthering the way his brow furrowed in slack-jawed pleasure. “But right- right now, I like it.” He groaned as he found a new, shaky, lazy pace. And he dipped his head down, burying himself against the crook where your neck meets shoulder, and determinedly ground himself in every feel of you he could manage.
You’d never been engulfed in something like this before and you didn’t know what to do—didn’t think there was anything you could do except ride it out, filing away Matt’s bitten-off little whimpers as he fucked you through overstimulation into a sacred little folder, let the wave of your climax crest over you again to the caress of his tongue against your throat and the sinewy shift of muscle working overtime above you under the soothing weight of your palm sweeping over shoulderblades and the dip of his waist.
“Know you're close, sweetheart—wanna feel it.” he gasped, dragging his nose against the line of your throat before his lips captured yours. “You'll give it to me, won't you? Need it so bad. Fuck. Please, god I need it.”
It was the mix of his words and the way he continued to drive himself forward, an unwavering resolve in his want to give you another orgasm strong and unyielding even in the frantic snap of his hips that almost whispered temptations of holding back something rough and hard. It was a race to take care of you, see you to your fulfillment, before the consequences of his own caught up to him. You could tell it nipped at his heels by the way his eyes were blown wide and glassy as you caught glimpses behind a heavy half-lidden gaze, in how the power of his thrusts grew unpredictable as he shifted you in angle until you clawed out for him to make up for consistency, and in how his hand replaced your own, fingers circling your clit with a persistent coaxing desperation.
You came with a snap of the rubber band that had been winding since that bedroom at the party, hard and uncontrollably; a raging, wild storm of white-hot sparks that dotted your vision and a smouldering ember that wrapped a thick, weighty smoke around your head.
When he felt you shake, when you cried out a grateful ‘thank you’ against his ear and started to spasm around him, Matt couldn’t keep going. He came again too, choking on a hoarse cry of your name, when his arms finally gave out from under him, twitching in time with you as he collapsed onto your chest, and the aftershocks of your lingering pleasure bleeding out all he had left to give.
You don’t know how long you laid there. A few seconds. A few minutes, maybe. It didn’t matter; as long as it took for your heart to stop racing and the sheen of sweat that beaded along skin to dry. Matt was…somewhere else, for the majority of that time, him adjusting only once in the swarming aftermath to drag his head over your breast, ear pressed down over the left side of your chest. You enjoyed combing your fingers through his damp hair, lightly scraping your nails at the back of his neck, humming softly in a quiet content while he listened to the steadying beat of your heart until he began to stir on top of you.
He didn’t lift his head when he breathed your name; a tiny little question.
“Yeah?”
“I should pull out of you.”
“Think it’s a little too late for that.” And what began as a breathless little giggle morphed into a deeper laugh when Matt snorted, dragging his cheek against your skin as he breathed deep and rolled his shoulders to begin his ascent.
Lifting up, Matt faced down at you with a wide, blissed out smile that scrunched a line above his nose, beckoned the crinkles by his eyes, and a harnessed glow you’d never seen before. He rendered you breathless—how he was giving this so freely to you, you couldn't even fathom.
“You ready?” He asked in a soft, reverent whisper, reaching behind him with one hand to coax your legs to return to the mattress, the strong press of his fingers rubbing a soothing apology into the soreness of your muscles from holding the position for so long, the other pressing a kiss against the back of your hand where he still held it.
The both of you flinched when he shifted back to achingly reel his hips in enough for him to pull out of you, soft and spent. You bit back a whine at the loss of that fullness, but it was quickly replaced by the place he claimed by your side, rolling against the sheets until he laid down next to you, throwing an arm like a brace across your torso and splaying his fingers against your back.
You laid together as long as it took before you floated back from that dreamlike mist and to reality. Before the stickiness between your thighs and the way his come dripped down your leg grew uncomfortable. It was breaching a fragile quiet, how you got out of bed on shaky legs. Matt's hold on you was hesitant, grip tight but careful, like he was afraid that if he slipped away, you would slip past him right along with it, as you guided him with you to the bathroom. And with every tender swipe of the warm washcloth, and with every time your gaze flickered up to Matt under the stark fluorescent lights, you knew there was no escaping the elephant that tried its best to sneak, mild and embarrassed, but justified in its presence, into the room. Back by your bed, in fresh underwear and after fishing Matt’s silk boxers off the ground, you paused as he caught your elbow, stilling you before him.
Turning toward him, Matt held you close. The way he touched you is reminiscent of earlier that night, the light touch of hesitant fingertips tracing the length of your neck, wisping across your collar. Except now they also dragged down to where you were still topless, forging a new path where he’d begun to press softly against the curve of your chest and gently tracing the indents of your ribs. His fingertips left lines of something bittersweet against your skin, hanging just on the precipice of resolution in his touch. Like he was trying to memorize what was given to him tonight, what he had. What he might lose.
You caught his arm, brushing your thumb across his skin as you held loosely onto his bicep, trying to push some comfort through your action. “We don’t have to talk about this today.” The offer felt heavy as it pushed through your lips, the growing weight of distant fear twisting in your stomach as the dust began to settle to shed light on the reality of what remained. “You could stay the night if you’d like. I’ll drive you back to campus in the morning. We can take some time.” Your lip stung as you bit it, reluctant to even breathe air into these next words, but it wouldn’t be fair of you to not put the option on the table. “Or just…or we could just forget it.”
“No.” The statement was firm, instant, but Matt’s voice was frail—like he was losing the battle with the urge to beg, the plea echoing in its shadow. “I don’t want to forget it. I want- I wanna talk about this now. If…if that’s okay?”
You swallowed thickly, nodding your head. “Okay.”
But you weren’t sure where to begin. Hovering in this dense silence that filled your bedroom, in the wake of everything that just happened. Everything you’ve kept yourself from experiencing. Everything you swore you’d never let yourself have. Every way you could think of to begin died on your tongue, words escaping you alongside their meanings. You suddenly felt selfish, what you wanted from him. And foolish. So incredibly foolish. It wasn’t exactly regret that started to seep in with the tumult in the pit of your stomach. You didn’t think you even could regret tonight if you tried. There wasn’t just a satisfaction, or just the pleasant hazy post-sex bliss that rippled through you like gentle reminders of what was probably the best experience you had with someone up until that point. It was a loss: the pride you held out in front of you as the last barrier of defense that fell the moment he asked for a kiss sitting, trembling with the possibility that these next few minutes might give something substantial to the fears that had up until recently, kept you in check. A victory: a deep furrowed craving that had sat lying in wait, yearning for months, finally coaxed forward, rewarded, and fulfilled in more ways than you could have even feasibly imagined.
Further still, it was easy to let those seeds of doubt influence your expectation. To let the character of Matt, tonight rewritten and brand new before you, be overshadowed by the interpretation of him you protected your heart from for months. This conversation wasn’t one you think you could be ready for, but you prepared yourself for the fallout regardless. Opting instead to brace yourself for the worst possible outcome, leaving yourself vulnerable and hopeful if not unaware for if it came to the best.
The silence, now stretched too long, brought a frustrated heat to your face. You hated that it couldn’t be simple. You hated that you couldn’t just file away this night under something cut and dry. Because you knew—deep down, you knew—this wasn’t a carefully chosen conquest. The onus wasn’t on Matt Murdock charming his way into your pants with an offer you couldn’t refuse and the bitter taste of knowing you were doing something stupid stinging in the back of your throat. The whisperings had been there all night; in the vulnerability shared, in the way he responded, in the utterance of raw admissions strung up plain for anyone to see. You struggled to find the balance of that coin, some part of you drenched in such arduous disbelief that of all people, Matt chose you, that you had to search every word, action, touch, and endearment for the punishment, the joke, the end to the dream.
It was like Matt could sense the hill you were slipping down, the soft mutter of your name cradling around you like a gentle lifeline. “Look at me.” So you did, taking in his expression in the rapid movements of your eyes over his face in the low light. And what you found could only be a mirror of what you were sure reflected on your own features; a breath held back by the bite of fear. Apprehension. Longing. Then his voice fell into something hesitant in the quiet moments that followed, question echoing all too familiar as he repeated it. But this time, it was searching for something else. Something more. Desperate for something solid to grasp onto. “What do we have?”
And you charted it all out, laying the answer down flat in your mind. Months—term after term of falling into step. Of playful banter and risky flirting. Of drinks shared and quiet moments when lines were drawn. Of finding authenticity in an otherwise easily misunderstood performance. A gentle evolution from somebody you off-handedly knew to tentative friendship. You knew what you and Matt had; a relationship that thrived on sharp tongues and a scrutinizing study of character that despite your effort, opened the gates of possibility to something calm and dangerous in its delicacy. But that's not what he was asking.
Instead, you steeled yourself where you stood. He was looking, searching for the next step forward. All the while giving you the agency to his heart, allowing all power over dictation and final say to whatever you chose to establish. You couldn't ignore the infliction he dealt to himself, seeing straight through the spaces in between to the fear, the cruel reminders of the last time he gave himself so freely to someone. That was before you met him, but ghosts were best known for haunting. “What do you want?”
It was almost as if you could see the wheels in his mind turn, a sightless focus casting his eyes from side to side as he tried to settle on the right words to say, finding the extent of which he was comfortable enough to voice. “Can I still kiss you?”
You weren’t the same person you were when you arrived at that party. That version of you, if placed in your position now, would have had no trouble making a joke out of it. Putting a teasing spin on how if he didn’t think he’d earned it after single-handedly raising some bars that were admittingly far too low, then that was on him. And that version of you did linger, buzzing in the back of your thoughts and offering a hand should you take it for the easy way out. Instead, in this moment, you were wholly the part of you you sought so long to protect; the one that didn’t miss the vulnerable cadence of his voice, or the way his eyes darted rapidly across where he assumed your face to be. So you tried to solve the puzzle in his quiet, shimmying closer to him until you could press your lips to his.
This kiss was something new. It wasn’t the sweet satisfied devotion that could breathe fire into a soul, or the lust-driven hunger that fueled nothing but go, go, go. It was a soft, tentative ask. Not just seeking permission, but in search of solace. A place to stay. A kiss aware of the possibility of rejection. It wasn’t until you pulled away that you confidently thought you dug your way to grasp at its roots, a clarity finding you in what it meant for him to also have expressed his want. And the picture you’d missed, too otherwise distracted to place how his consistent, fervent intensity seemed to match yours—and all it included, carefully considering that you’d poured yourself into him with months of lonely yearning. And the steady implication that he had also, maybe, possibly, done the same. The pieces had not been handed to you all at once, but incrementally; inside the quiet, intimate spaces that slipped through the cracks between feverish touches and hot, liquid desire. It was so easy to overlook them in the moment, but felt nothing but so incredibly monumentally substantial now.
Taking a calculated risk that had your heart leaping up into your throat just on the incrementally slim off chance that you were wrong—now that the haze over your thoughts, and other carnal distractions were clear—you broached the topic with a solemnity and offer you wouldn’t be able to come back from. “You can kiss me whenever you want.”
“Yeah?” Matt looked almost surprised, like the part of him that already knew your answer was still caught off guard by his own doubts, but he fought to not let the entirety of his expression show; a twitch that opted to lean more into the favor of the cool demeanor much like you’d seen him display only a few hours ago. Like what he was used to doing when he fell into step with you. Like he expected in this wind-down that you wouldn’t take him seriously—or not understand the nuance of what he was even asking. When in reality, you were glad he asked first. Because you weren’t so sure if you’d have had the guts to bring it up in the next couple of days, let alone so incredibly soon. “Even tomorrow?"
You hoped he could feel the weight of your stare as you studied his face, your voice dropping to a fragile whisper that clung to every hope you’ve ever had. “Especially tomorrow.”
The urge to bask in the grin that split his face wide was overwhelming and you caved in an instant. The light of him filled you to the brim, your heart doing airy flips in your chest while your mind raced, fervent disbelief that this was how it all sorted out; resolution found in the sharing of admissions equally matched in tenacity.
The quiet was simple, when you met Matt back on the bed after throwing on the first sleep shirt you found. He’d laid in wait, an almost incredulous smile widening at the first dip of you crawling up to lay next to him. You wondered if he would always like this, eager hands reaching out to touch you the moment he could, guiding you to where he could lay your head on his chest and grab your thigh, comforting and purely there, when you lifted a leg to tangle with his. He held you then, the two of you breathing together in the comfortable quiet against the sheets, letting the realization that the platter was just given to you, the door was now open to a future where you did have this—cuddling into Matt with his arms wrapped around you, the wisp of a kiss pressed to the top of your head—and not just for the night.
It was only a few hours ago in which that very realization held an opposite sentimentality. That thinking about wanting him only led you to find a disappointment welled deep inside your chest. And despite the surrealist way you bathed in the gentle circles being traced onto your skin, or hearing Matt’s heart beat beneath your ear, that hesitation still persisted. If only in insecurity.
Your voice was small, as it spoke. Like you tried to keep the edges blunt as if you were in a room full of bubbles ready to burst. “Tell me you mean it,” Swallowing against your nerve, a part of you that wondered if maybe you should have saved this for another day, you continued, “I mean, neither of us have actually said what this is yet, and I don’t want to rush labels or anything, I just…I wanna make sure we’re on the same page.”
The pause Matt took wasn’t hesitant, but careful. He knew just as well as you did that he was walking on the eggshells of a pretty consistent history that more than spoke for itself. “Of course I mean it.” The reason why you even asked at all hung perilous and sharp like a sword above both of your heads. “I want to be with you. Do this. Us.”
It was hard not to chew at your lip, cast your gaze down until you felt Matt’s finger hook under your chin, tenderly prompting you to look up at him. “And you think we’ll last?”
“I certainly hope so.” Then he dipped into something you’d never seen from him before. Something heavily guarded and drawn out in rough breaths that were hard to take. When he spoke, everything in you stilled. “I hide things, from people. It’s hard to share. Hard to explain. I can’t be myself with others.”
You felt now like you were just handed something fragile pulled up from the depths of him, a gift of something made of a porcelain he was trusting you not to drop. You cradled it gently, shifting to wrap it in silk and lay it amongst the pillows. “Is that why you want to try? Are you yourself, with me?”
“Not fully. Not even close.” He offered you a sad smile that ticked up with hope scattered around the way his lips tugged it into shape. “But I think one day, with you…I could be.”
The realization that you were edging into territory that presented Matt more naked than you’ve seen him tonight clutched heavy around your heart. A swell of veneration, of appreciation. A flicker of coffee dates and hand holding. A rediscovering of who you were and the beginnings of a future together. It was almost overwhelming, the way Matt stripped down and offered this to you; the willingness to figure things out, to grow close, to try again. You leaned up to press a slow and gentle kiss to his lips, sighing into his smile as you nodded your head in reverent understanding.
“Sounds a lot like you’re hoping I’ll hold out in the meantime, waiting for you to be ready.”
For a moment, he met your reply with open relief, welcoming how you saved the conversation from becoming too much of a weight to burden at the hour it was with how deftly you spoke, letting a trickle of your normal rhythm with him sooth every syllable. “Well, you’ve already waited for me once.” He pointed out, not a single hint of triumph or smugness in his voice at how you held out hope all the while unknowingly, Matt was gathering the nerve to ask you to be his. Just a steady stream of admiration and gratitude. The plea never gained the strength it needed to become vocal, but the ask rang just as clear as the echoing toll of a church bell in the breath in between.
Would you wait a little longer?
And for all of him, it barely took anything to weigh the odds—finding a conclusion in his sigh of relief, the way Matt seemed to compliment even the most neglected parts of you, and the way you knew if given the chance, you would protect any and everything he’d share with you. For all of him, it didn’t matter how much time may pass, if all you had to do was love him while in wait…you knew you would.
if you made it all the way to the end, ty and i hope you enjoyed :)
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There's a bit at the end of the series where the two of them are just alone in an elevator together and they're looking at each other and we didn't know what it was gonna be, we didn't know what was gonna happen, we didn't know what it was gonna mean, but it definitely means something.
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knight!Matt Murdock who, after coming home jaded from war, had his eyes gouged out from a crossroads deal gone wrong. see:
To endure pain was one thing, but enduring loss was another. Helpless, he knew himself to be, and in his inability to stomach being powerless, he did as desperate men have always done. He knelt at a crossroads at midnight, and upon the thinned veil, he called out for his God to listen. Sweating wretched beads of blood, he prayed, Bless me, O Lord, with the power to protect, and endow upon me the strength that I lack, so that what the wicked dreads will come upon him, and the desire of the righteous will be granted.
Winds howled and stilled, giving way to rustlings in the hedgerows.
Very well, the voice in the bush said. I will make you more than a man.
Upon its response he had become a touch frightened; he fell lower to the ground and prayed fervently. Blessed be you, my Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle, he extolled. Are you my God? he asked wondrously. Or are you an Angel?
It only laughed.
Finely tongued and disembodied, the voice humoured him, and offered him divine-limbed vigour. It took him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the glory of a life to be lived deliciously, with senses of the hawk, ears of the wolf, a nose of the hound, reflexes of the serpent. Only one thing did it want in return, and all the better for it, it said sweetly. It would only take the one thing that caused him such pain in his dreams at night. That made him weak.
A trade more than fair, was it not? That he might never again be accosted by those visions, those memories of the horrors of war?
It would take only his eyes for a world seen more truly.
