Work Text:
“So do the sounds ever overwhelm you? Like, to the point where you wanna shoot yourself in the head?”
The door hasn’t even closed behind him completely when he is confronted with the question. The rusty spring at the top prevents it from shutting quickly, instead slowly bouncing its way back to a closed position behind him with a resonating croak.
Your voice stuns him, stopping him in his tracks as he reels in from the suddenness of it.
It should feel rather awkward, what with him standing atop of the gravely rooftop of your apartment building holding two small plastic cups and your third cheap bottle of wine in his hands, still dressed to the nines in his formal attire from his earlier session in court.
But, with the wind bringing in a slow breeze that cools the exposed parts of his heated skin and gently displaces his hair, while the nightlife of the city begins to play it’s lively anthem in the background, it strangely doesn’t. It floods him with nostalgia, images of two giggling children sneaking out of their apartments way past their bedtimes popping into his head.
“That’s a bit insensitive, don’t you think?” Matt asks, with a wry smile on his face, whether at the question or the lingering memories, he doesn’t necessarily know. His feet stay glued in his place near the roof door, his blind eyes seeing a vast array of memories from his youth. It gently pulls at his heartstrings and his cheeks begin to tingle from his incessant grin.
“You didn’t answer the question.” You respond back in a teasing tone from your position on the blanket. You lie on your back, contentedly staring up at the dimly lit stars in the sky.
He can hear your even breaths and the gentle thrum of your heartbeat from where he was standing. It beats steadily, like a metronome, keeping him balanced in his place while his surroundings begin to swirl and his focus seems to pull in and out at a more rapid pace.
“I love this city,” He says nonchalantly, his words slurring slightly as he begins his slow saunter towards your supine body and the worn-out blanket you were laying on. There was no need to rush over to you, not when the moment was perfect, as it was now. If he rushed or moved too fast, he would ruin the ambience of this rare moment between you two; He would ruin the peace of it all.
And he might throw up.
You scoff, tilting your head upwards to turn your gaze from the decorated nighttime vista towards his face. You took note of his face as he stood above you: He had a scratch on the underside of his chin, something remarkably tame considering the hell he is usually put through. His smile remained unwavered, shining brighter than the full moon in the sky. He wasn’t wearing his usual red glasses allowing his eyes to meet yours perfectly.
Iris to iris, pupil to pupil.
You’d think that after all these years, you’d manage to get used to it.
“That still doesn’t answer the question.”
“What kind of an answer are you looking for?” He shuffles around in his still posture, swaying forward and backward on the balls of his feet, his hands still holding the drink and cups rather tightly. “Obviously not the one I’m giving you.”
You sit up, letting out a small grunt as you change positions, an instant relief being placed upon your back as you no longer lay on the rough concrete. You’re sure that you could place a hundred blankets on the floor and still feel the gravel on your back.
You raise your hand up, opening and closing your fists rather quickly, motioning to him for a cup. He indulges. “Exceptional deduction skills, counselor.”
“That’s what I’m paid to do.”
He sits beside you on the rather thin comforter you’ve placed, listening intently to the sound of the cork popping out of the cheap bottle and the wealthy amount of the liquid you were pouring into your cup. He holds his out to you, silently asking for you to fill it.
“What are we toasting to?” You ask with a drunken giggle, holding Matt’s arm with your own to steady to his slightly trembling hands. He scoffs in response, shaking his head with furrowed brows and a smile as he stares off to the side in question.
“Well, our first toast was for thanking Fridays–”
“Praise our heavenly father for making such a momentous day–”
“–Our second toast was to ‘Cheez-Its’, so I think we should make this one pretty serious.”
You can’t tell whether there was sarcasm in his voice or not. His face gives no indication to the question either.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?”
He rolls his head over to you, his brown eyes once again finding yours immediately, with pinpoint precision. Despite his drunken fidgeting, his eyes maintain a still gaze, never darting around or looking off to the side, indicating his seriousness.
Matt manages to always– with little to no hesitancy, mind you– find your eyes instantly in any situation. Whether surrounded by a crowd of people, or separated at the opposite sides of a room, a quick glance upward and you could find his gaze staring right back at you. It still startles you at times, to be talking rather candidly with him about something or other to then find him staring straight into your soul as though he actually could. It catches you off guard sometimes, seeing his beautiful eyes unabashedly watching you without actually be able to see.
You wouldn’t trade it for the world.
You snort, “Alright. You do the honors.”
You release his arm, having filled his cup to the brim. He quickly raises it in the air, spilling some of the contents while he looks over the ledge of the roof as if he were addressing a large crowd seated before him. The corners of his eyes crinkle and the lines around his mouth deepen as the grin widens. He clears his throat.
“To (Y/N)’s promotion!” He calls out to the imaginary group, pride seeping through each syllable he speaks. His face resembles one of pure joy and if you knew any better, you would think he was the one who received the promotion instead of you. Matt wore it with more pride in two minutes than you did in two hours.
If you could have frozen time and lived in a moment for the rest of your life, this would be it.
You’d live in the constant memory of this Matt, with a smile brighter than the moon above you and cheeks tinged pink from the previous bottle of wine he drank. His sleeves messily rolled up his arms with no care in the world as the various snack you have brought surround him at this midnight picnic in the city you both love.
There were few moments in life when you saw Matthew Murdock truly happy. Those times came far and few nowadays, what with the world seemingly being placed upon his shoulders every time he donned that damned suit.
Ironically, you can’t make the distinction between which suit: his fancy three piece suits, or the red leather one. They were both devilish in your eyes.
The two worlds collided in more ways than one, always leaving Matt as the injured party in their vicious war between each other. You could see him grow more tired with each day that passed, if you at all even got to see him that day. His body was permanently decorated in scars and bruises and his job never felt done.
They took your Matthew, chewed him and spit him out, crushing every pure and precious part of him, leaving the hollow silhouette of the man you once knew.
But, in all the dark fog comes a sliver of a joyous moment, like this one. Where a smile washes away all the hurt and the virtuous man you loved rises from the shadows.
You wanted more than anything to freeze this moment, and keep Matt in this suspended nirvana for as long as possible. You would be content to sit and watch him for hours. Anything, anything, to give him this slight moment of happiness.
The happiness he deserves.
You hadn’t realized you’d been staring until his head turns to you again.
A laugh slowly dies on his lips, his smile disappearing as he notices you studying him. A comfortable silence befalls the two of you.
A pause seems to come over you two, the surrounding environment slowing down to a complete halt and only your heartbeat resounding in his ears, beating like a drum. It was loud, but not overpowering, drowning out the sirens and horns of the city below you two. Just a present reminder of your company and your liveliness. It calms his breathing and the frazzled thoughts his tipsy mind brought forward.
It reminds him of the months after his accident, when you purposely skipped school under the guise of a feigned illness just to spend time with the young and aggravated Matthew. Even as his anger and frustration consumed him in those trying months, your heartbeat managed to calm him down more than any words of encouragement from his father could.
It was the first time he learned to be appreciative of the heightened senses he adapted; It got him closer to you.
In this still and tranquil world, Matt felt all the weights that seemed to take permanent residence on his chest disappear. There was no Daredevil here, no lawyer, no rules based on his faith that he needed to abide by.
Just you and him. He and you. How it’s always been. How it always should be.
But there’s something off.
He doesn’t really know where he feels it or why, but he does. He knows you’re looking at him, but your attention isn’t on him. There’s something beneath the surface.
Is that attributed to his heightened senses or just knowing you that well? He doesn’t know.
“Penny for your thoughts?” He gently asks, his hand reaching upwards to tug lightly on your earlobe.
You slowly blink, your attention being drawn away from the thoughts you didn’t realize were consuming you, “Hmm?”
“What’s on your mind?” He asks again, letting his hand drop from your face and move towards the box of ‘Cheez-Its’ laid between you two. He grabs a couple and pops them into his mouth.
You open your mouth and close it, only to open and close it again. You let out a breathless laugh, shrugging your shoulders and shaking your head. You turn your head towards the view of the city, eyes darting around the numerous figures until fixating onto the neighboring building.
“I don’t think I’m going to take it.”
Matt suddenly inhales, a piece of the cheesy cracker sucking into the back of his throat, forcing a string of coughs out of his mouth. He hunches over, trying to breathe through his numerous coughs while you hit your hand repeatedly on his back.
“Jesus Christ, Matt!” you laugh out, finding his cup of wine and handing it to him. He graciously drinks it between coughs.
“What– what do you mean you’re not going to take it?” His eyes are wide when they meet yours, shock written over his face at the prospect of your news and from seeing his life flash before his eyes.
You keep a steadying hand on his back until his breathing returns to normal, keeping your voice even as he recuperates. “I’d have to move halfway across the country for this job. I’m not going to leave everything I have here for that.”
You explain this to him as though it was normal, like he was the crazy one. His face contorts into one of deep confusion, the skin wrinkling between his eyebrows and his mouth agape as stares at you. He loosens the tie around his neck.
“But, you worked so hard for this.” There’s a twinge of desperation? disappointment? in his statement.
You take your hand back, fiddling with the stray threads on the blanket below you that have become ten times more interesting than the piercing eyes of the man beside you. You can feel his judgement creep up your shoulders and it becomes very clear that you’ve made the wrong choice to tell him this. While he was drunk. After he just so graciously celebrated with you.
Queen of good timing is what you are.
“Yeah, well, y'know,” you grow quiet with each words, a sheepish tone taking over, “I realized I’ve got everything I want here.”
You still don’t meet his eyes. He is still looking at you like you’ve crushed his dreams.
He is adamantly unhappy, but he can at least understand the sentiment behind your reasoning. He feels it in some ways too, whenever he is confronted by the nightly tragedies both of his jobs seem to throw at his feet. Hell’s Kitchen isn’t the greatest of places, but it holds everything near and dear to his heart.
He’s still displeased with this decision and will continue to argue against you, but he understands it.
“Besides,” you resume, and you can hear the little voice in your head to stop where you are. To not go any further and ruin the advantage you have (sentiment for the city has and always will be Matt’s weakness). But you’re too drunk to really listen to the voice and it ends up tumbling out of your mouth, “David’s still getting his feet on the ground and I can’t do that to him.”
Again, the absolute queen of good timing.
You can literally sense the waves of anger rolling off of Matt’s body and you’re stuck in the middle of the tide, unable to swim off to the side to get out.
He groans loudly at the mention of your boyfriend’s name, the confusion being replaced by disbelief and rage. It settles over him like a mist, putting a dampen on his mood instantly. His teeth grind against each other and his fists instinctively curl up.
You wince at his sudden rising from the blanket, watching him resort to his stereotypical “lawyer stance” with his hands placed upon his hips and an intense frown etched on his face. He slightly sways from the quick movement, swallowing the bile that rose up his throat with a contortion of disgust on his face before returning to the stern father persona he tended to don whenever your disappointment of a boyfriend was mentioned.
You really should’ve waited.
“David’s been ‘getting on his feet’ for the past four years.” Matt spits out, tapping a hand lightly onto his chest to help ease the acid that made a quick appearance back down his esophagus.
“You good?” you ask him as he releases a rather nasty burp, silently wondering if you were going to have to make a quick run down to your apartment to grab some cleaning supplies.
“Yeah, ’m fine.” He grunts out.
“You sure? I can go get a bucket if you want.”
He sternly points a finger at you, “Stop changing the subject.”
“I’m just worried you’re going to–”
“(Y/N)!”
You sigh, letting your head drop down. You wish you didn’t mention the name of your boyfriend, knowing now that you were going to have to justify the reasoning behind his incompetence in life, and even you knew there was no way you could positively spin his inadequacy.
You place both of your hands over face, rubbing your eyelids deeply, wanting to wake up from this self-inflicted nightmare.
“He’s just having trouble, is all.” It sounds pathetic in your head and even more so as you say it. You cringe with each word.
“Cause he’s an idiot.“
"Matt–”
“Come on, (Y/N). You’re going to give up the promotion of a lifetime because some loser can’t handle you actually being better than him?”
“No! Well, yes and no.”
“What?!” Matt’s voice raises a couple of octaves, disbelief coating the question like paint.
“He would have trouble adjusting to L.A. and I just want to make things easy for us. It’s just one of the things you have to do for love.”
Matt, who had been pacing during this conversation, suddenly stops in his tracks. His head snaps towards you and you can imagine the sound of a whip accompanying the curtness of the movement.
“Love?!” He asks loudly, “You call that, love?!”
It was your turn to groan, flopping back down onto your blanket as you have to repeat the same argument you’ve had with Matthew since you first started dating David five years ago.
“Love is not holding your partner back from success based off of your own insecurities, which he has done to you multiple times might I add. Love is not dragging your feet in the dirt because you didn’t get what you want, (Y/N).” Each word hits you like a knife; Whether it was the alcohol or the reality of the situation suddenly hitting you doesn’t really matter when you realize that the stinging you felt in your eyes was actually due to the tears suddenly springing forth to the surface.
David wasn’t a bad guy; He could be funny when he wanted to and particularly kind on a good day, but there was nothing more than that. You dated him out of attraction and combined with the desire to escape from the constant feeling of loneliness, you began to put up with the negatives in favor of a relationship.
“He doesn’t love you because of the kind of person you are,” Matt continues his tirade, his speech fast and unrelenting as he releases his pent up frustrations, “And you don’t love him because of who he is, because we all know what a massive dick he is. You love him because you’re in a relationship with him!”
You forcefully lie back down onto your blanket, keeping your focus trained on the stars above than Matt’s anger. You can hear him kick some gravel off the ground.
“You need to be with someone who cares about you, and wants you to live the life you deserve and get all the promotions in the world. You need to be with someone who is willing to go all the way to L.A. for you, or even maintain a long-distance relationship for fuck’s sake! I’m tired of seeing that bastard use you because he can!”
Matt opens his mouth to add onto his spiel until he hears the low sniffles emitting from you. His throat dries up and he realizes just how much of bastard he’s being. He always tried to approach the situation with a gentle attitude, aware that there was a definitive power struggle in the relationship that just couldn’t be solved with tough love. He’s done enough cases to understand even the basics of that idea, alongside many classes of psychology.
Apparently drunk Matt didn’t care about that.
He runs a hand through his hair and down the front of his face, moving to rub the back of his neck. Shame encompasses his body, replacing the adrenaline shot the anger provided. He kicks his feet around the gravel, uncomfortably listening to your sniffles grow before forcing himself to sit beside you on the worn out blanket.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes out.
“No, no,” you wipe away the tears and wipe your nose with the back of your hand, “You’re right. I just– I don’t think I can do it.”
There’s too much wallowing in your tone for him to feel any happiness about the revelation you’ve just made. Instead, it makes him feel like the biggest piece of shit.
Rightfully so.
“Leaving David would mean that I actually have to do something with my life. It would mean that I have to take the job in L.A. and have to leave home and my family and I’d have to leave you. And I can’t do it,” you whisper.
He can hear your heart break when you say it, because his does too. The thought of you leaving is unfathomable to him and it’s much too depressing for him to even think about it. He can’t remember a time in his life when he wasn’t with you. He finds that he doesn’t want to.
But he has too.
"Yes you can,” Matt tells you sadly, his eyes once again finding your red rimmed ones like a boat finding the lighthouse in the dark. “If anyone can do it, it would be you.”
He grabs your hand, holding it tightly, “You’re going to accept that promotion, you’re going to go to L.A. and make a ton of money– and I mean a ton– and you’re going to come back here and make sure I’m still alive every couple of months.”
A watery laugh bubbles out of your throat and Matt responds with a small laugh of his own. A bittersweet smile falls over your face as you look at his soft, unstressed one. “You’re gonna be happy, (Y/N). And you’re going to forget all the pain David put you through.”
You remove your hand from his, placing it on his cheeks and rubbing your fingers over the light stubble he’s been growing. He leans into your touch, mirroring your sad smile.
“Y’know, we could’ve avoided all this if we were in love. Probably would’ve been so much easier,” you murmur to him like you were the only two people on the world, and it doesn’t feel too off.
“Who knows? We’ve still got a couple years left.”
“It’s been twelve years, Matt. If it hasn’t happened yet I don’t think it’s gonna happen anytime soon.”
“Never say never.” He takes the hand placed on his cheek and places a soft kiss against your knuckles. He holds it with such delicacy and warmth as though if he tried hard enough, his love could fix all your problems and heal all your pains. He doesn’t realize that his presence already does that.
He turns his body, lying down beside you on the comforter, already feeling the gravel poke and prod on his back but he doesn’t mind it. He won’t until you do. Your fingers intertwine together and you’ve suddenly been transported back into your days as a youth, gazing up at the sky when you were supposed to be in bed. But like before, you’ll deal with the consequences of your actions tomorrow, much too immersed in the silence and tranquility that comes with being at Matt Murdock’s side.
“You’re still going to dump David though, right?”
You laugh loudly, the comment eliciting a hearty giggle that shook the entirety of your body as though you had never laughed before. It clears all the toxic waste that held you down, filling you instead with bubbly liquid that warms your chest.
You lie there in a still silence, breathing in the chill breeze and relaxing in the geniality of each other. On the rough concrete protected only by an old blanket where no pain or hurt can touch either of you.
You have each other, and that was all you really ever needed.