Chapter Text
MARCH, 1968
He wouldn’t say it anywhere near Home, but the suits he’s given on these little outings are nowhere near as nice as the ones he used to be given, as a teenager, when the Hand required more camouflaged, more modern, missions. Crisp and ironed, sure, but not quite tailored for him perfectly. Really, who could blame Mr. Fisk? Matthew is tall and lean and angular and full of corded muscle all the same. Not exactly the wet dream of an expensive off-the-rack department store.
But it does the job. The shabbiness adds to the aesthetic. Trying to look nicer than he is, trying to appear richer than he is; it’s good for college campuses. Gives him the crunchy vibe he’s going for, a well dressed Haight Ashbury Christian missionary expat who just wants nothing more than to make sweet little friends with the college idiots clicking their heels down the campus sidewalks.
These missions he’s on are demeaning. He’s certain Mr. Fisk could send someone else to do this. The girls with the long straight hair or the boys with the curly overgrown locks that’ll make undergraduates think of the Beatles or Bob Dylan or someone. Not him. It all feels like a test.
Which is fine. Matthew is excellent at tests, and if Mr. Fisk wants him to bring in more people to the flock, he can do that. He can pretend to be something he isn’t and make people actually like him, lie to people and give them promises of anything and everything under the sun and wow, wouldn’t you know it, God’s grace is within us all if we just learn to love each other and get some peace on Earth?
He’ll do better than any of the other Recruiters, this season. It means not coming home caked in blood and barely able to smell anything other than iron for weeks at a time until incense and bonfires dull his senses again and leave him numb.
The first recruit is no one special. A man of twenty two that Matthew knows either he or Bullseye will have to kill by the time winter comes. An idiot, a dullard, a boy with no sensibilities who lets Matthew’s words fill him up with glee and excitement and delusion and falls in love with the compound the second Matthew brings him Home, hickies pressed into his neck that make him blush and giggle when they’re in private and Matthew laughs with him breathlessly and the second the man won’t be leaving, he returns to his quarters and refuses to take company with him again. His own neck is dotted in love from the college-dropout, and it burns Matthew’s skin with a passion he’d rather never feel.
It’ll be fine; the recruit will find someone else and will get to have a story the entire time he’s here about how the Devil courted him , Mr. Fisk’s own dark angel brought him in. It’ll give him power, here, and Matthew will pretend he doesn’t exist. Might be fun for a week until Mr. Fisk sends him out to kill one of his adversaries on the streets again.
He wonders, sometimes, if anyone here realizes the kind of influence Mr. Fisk wields outside of this secret little pet project of his. Bullseye, certainly not. Wesley, probably. Everyone else? He doesn’t know. Maybe his next recruit will be high-profile enough to know what’s going on. That could be fun.
It’s the end of winter in ‘68 when his recruitment turns towards Elektra Natchios. April is around the corner and New York is still cold, because when isn’t it, but it’s sunny, and if you know where to sit when you’re scouting out the campus, it’s possible to hit a warmer spring draft.
She’s impulsive, and she’s dealing with a loss, and she is so incredibly unhappy, deep down. She’s perfect. She calls him Michael with her curt, deliberate way of speaking, and she wants, so clearly, the excuse to just fall apart and dive deep, deep into a dark bottomless hole.
Luckily, Mr. Fisk’s religious inclinations can accomplish that goal rather succinctly.
He stays chaste with her; the first few times, when she gets handsy, it’s clearly a test, and he pulls back away from her. Part of this game, this Performance, is to be the good, good religious boy who just wants to spread his gospel and not her legs.
So the most he does is kiss her hand, and hold her elbow when they walk, and guide their conversations slowly into the realm of the spiritual every chance he gets. ‘Michael’ plays a good preacher, persuasive and open to listening to critique and just so ‘deeply moved by the spiritual forces of this beautiful earth.’
It’s a load of shit. And Elektra knows it, but still, she plays along willingly.
By the second week he’s visiting her on campus, he doesn’t understand how a woman as smart as her so willingly listens to dogma she clearly sees right through.
It’s a Thursday, and so her final class for the day lets out at 2:50, and so he sits beneath a tree, an old bench that would be shaded if spring was struggling to arrive. She was impressed, he thinks, the first time he found her after class and waited patiently for her, just to have the chance to walk her down the quad. She likes the effort.
There’s a game to this; they both pretend to be certain people and test one another along the way. He has to admit, in his darkest, quietest moments, he truly does look forward to walking with her, even beyond the scope of the mission, of her Recruitment.
But he wouldn’t say it out loud to anyone, least of all her.
Elektra finds him quickly; He can tell by the way her heels stop for a moment, turning on a dime, but then she slows down and makes her way leisurely to him, trying to not care. She doesn’t know how well his hearing is, so he won’t call her out on it; it would be too much. There’s a fine line between the gentle pokes at their personas, and making it all so abundantly obvious how easily they see through one another.
Matthew wants her poking at this persona, not looking close enough to realize there’s more of them, that Michael is just a mirror suited to speak to her.
“Darling,” She says by way of greeting, sarcastic and cruel and god Michael certainly likes her, and Matthew just might, too.
She calls him an Angel, and it always makes him smile, a wry twist of his lips that reads as flattered but is his own private little joke. She means it sarcastically, so ooey-gooey honeyed that it’s almost a caricature of middle class heterosexual America, but she doesn’t know the full story. Won’t, until she understands his purpose and realizes why the Devil like him is necessary in the function of the commune’s health.
All trees need pruning, and he functions like shears.
She invites him to a party.
A couple years ago and he would have declined. Too noisy, too risky, too overwhelming to keep a good lock and key on his target. Too many drugs that would make him look suspicious if he declined. But he has been retrained, recalibrated, and Michael enjoys parties.
"Hmm." He makes a real show of deciding, stroking his chin and everything. Knows she'll like that, this little game of tantalizing deliberateness. But at the end of the day, the true name of the game is to buckle under each and every one of her whims, right up until she's guided to the right Path by Michael's soft hands.
She presses her thigh against him, and he imagines he's let this game go on long enough. “I suppose I could afford some down time. I’m not a kid, after all. I don’t have to sneak out after curfew to spend a night on the town with a lovely young woman like you.”
More than the other things he's had to be, he enjoys this version the most, perhaps. Less blood, less anger. In the deepest, quietest moments, when his paranoia isn't running high and he is certain Mr. Fisk can't hear his thoughts, he wonders if Michael is close to what he would have been, if he'd stayed in New York after the accident.
“Perfection! You do remember where my apartment is located, yes?” She's gleefully plum about the whole thing, and really, it just tickles him pink that she gets off to toying with boys like this.
“I think I can find my way. When should I pick you up?”
He doesn't tell her that he's researched her, done his homework, knows things about her that she'd never, ever willingly tell her. Of course he remembers where her apartment is.
A small press to her thigh, nothing obscene, just the ghosting of affection, is enough to get her to fidget. He imagines the curl of her smile growing at the display of arrogance. Oh, she'll get such a kick out of him pressing his fingers along her face, navigating through her facial expressions. Not until she's drunk, though. Such naked affection wouldn't work for a sober Elektra.
“Oh, after dinner at least. I do not imagine we will have much time for eating at this party.”
She's having such fun with him. He can almost feel the glee leaking off her as she toys with Michael, and Michael wants to shiver in electric mirth every time she opens her mouth and attempts to tear apart the little preacher's boy piece by piece.
“Am I allowed to ask why you think that?” Michael laughs, a clear thing with no bitterness and just the tiniest tinge of embarrassment, like he doesn't want to disappoint her.
Really, he doesn't. He almost feels bad that she'll get sucked in, easy as the rest, but that's Blasphemy and it sends a stab of pain down his head even thinking about it. Of course she'll get sucked in, because it's the best path of the heavenly Earth. She needs saving and, after all, he is her angel.
"Why, Michael, darling, are you telling me that you have never been to a college party?” She's mocking him, adds a little gasp to go with it, and Michael feels his lips curling up at the theatrically of it.
He just can't get performances like these back home, with the spiritually awakened pastoral cows.
“I can’t say I have been, Elektra; it’s not like preachers make Columbia money.”
She’s leaning closer to him, playing some tantalizing game that she knows he’ll eat up, and damn it, he admits he’s so lost in the folds of figuring out what she’s doing that he catches her in the middle of her next sentence, her voice rolling into what can only be described as a purr. “--find some enlightenment of your own, my love.”
And then she kisses him on the cheek, and he feels his skin blossoming in heat, his hand jerking to brush lightly against the back of her hand. Elektra doesn’t pull away, just presses herself closer, closer, until her forehead rests against his cheek and she can pull her hands around his shoulder, all but in his lap. He can smell her everything, the sweet, flowery perfume that she probably spent ages picking out, trying to figure out just what scent would complete whatever Look she’s going for this week, her long nails perfectly manicured and tickling at the back of his shoulders like little promises.
“I will be waiting for you, my angel,” she breathes, and he almost, almost shivers. Not just Michael. Matthew, too, and he doesn’t know what to do about that information, so he squares it away for later. Instead, he makes fine work of making it seem like he’s having the hardest time in the world not pulling her in close, his lips open just a little in a dazed smile. “Do wear something nice for me, darling.”
Ah. So she noticed the suit isn’t actually perfectly tailored. Of course she would; she pays attention to these things, and a curated and meticulous wardrobe is important . And were his pockets deeper, he’d dress better for her, but then again, that’d be suspicious. He can’t look too perfect, not even for her. It’d ruin the game, and Elektra needs something about him to point to and mock.
“If you want me to dress up, dear,” Michael smiles, and he layers on the honey in every term of endearment so thick it almost sounds like a caricature, because it is, “Why don’t you buy me a suit?” Elektra doesn’t know who he truly is, but he knows her, and they’re both playing at sharks pretending to be people. Sharks don’t get dears and honeys and sweethearts and each time they say it, it’s through a mouthful of sharp teeth.
Elektra likes to feel like a predator.
She purrs into his ear, “I only buy things for special boys, my love.”
His smile slips, just a smidge, something he covers up quickly. Most people wouldn’t notice it, but Elektra, he knows, is not most people. She pays attention to him in ways that, honestly, should make him drop her as a recruit, but it would be a shame. It would be such a shame.
Matthew will get Mr. Wesley to help him choose; the man might be an annoying prick, but his attire is meticulous.
“Well I’ll just have to work my way up to that, hm, darling?”
She starts to pull away, and Michael holds onto her wrists a moment, just a moment, a lingering touch that implies a promise of intimacy that he has stayed stubbornly pious about, until now.
Elektra leaves first, because she wouldn’t have it any other way. Michael listens to her walk away, can only envision the deep-seated smirk lining her features like a caricature of some femme fetale in a movie his father once showed him as a child.
He lingers on the bench for a moment, collecting himself, straightening his tie, letting it sink in where the Mission has taken him. Mr. Wesley will be none too happy to receive a call from him requesting money to get a nicer suit, but desperate measures must be made; if he doesn’t impress her tonight, she has made it all too clear that he will lose her, and Michael will have fallen infatuated for nothing.
That just won’t do.
The party is atrociously loud. Michael hears it two blocks before they reach the party, Elektra’s driving slightly erratic in her wobbly little Beetle Bug and her parking is sudden and jerky at the first available open spot. He’s noticed she doesn’t mind a walk, would prefer an easy accessible way to return or leave than the closest and most perfect spot possible.
My calves , she said once, when one of her tests included taking him along with her on errands, will thank me for the longer walk .
The boys on the lawn outside the party are a fine mix of boys living within fraternities who somehow still think they’re the downtrodden intellectuals of their time, and counter culture zealots who believe their taste in music will ever actually get them ahead in life.
Pathetic, and most of them wouldn’t even be worth the time of recruiting, because they would never be able to stick with one ideology and actually believe it.
He would have pegged Elektra for the kind of beatnik parties down in Greenwich, but then again, all the counter culture in her is carefully manicured, carefully produced to create an image for her college peers. Going to a party where she’ll be seen by her classmates must be required. He respects the lengths to which she goes.
Michael keeps a hand on her elbow as they walk inside, letting her guide him partially through the crowd. People move fluidly and heavily all at once, as though the earth is pressing down upon them, and he tries figure out just what it is the party’s been afflicted by. Acid, probably, and he can smell people smoking in the backyard, and there’s probably pills being passed around to make everyone feel all the more pleased with their decisions tonight.
It’s a big crowd, bigger than the parties at home, and younger, too.
“I never would’ve thought you’d be one to be fashionably late,” He laughs, his voice high over the sound of music and talking and dancing.
“My angel, I do most everything fashionably.”
He laughs again, and lets himself be pulled by her, her grip strong and unyielding and once again he feels himself almost shivering under her touch. The kitchen is quieter, less suffocating, but his ears are full of blood and his mind is clouded with how close she is, drawing him in even closer and leading the way through a mockery of a dance.
“Surely you have allowed more than just communion wine to pass those pretty little lips of yours.”
Maybe she doesn’t quite get what he’s playing at here. So he leans in closer, his words pressed delicately into her jaw, to try and remind her that he isn’t just a sweet little pastor’s boy. “I assure you, I’m no angel .”
Maybe it’s a little much; he’s not sure. But she all but dramatically gasps, and says, “Michael, dear, restrain yourself! After all, we have the entirety of the evening.” An admonishment and then more flirtations; he moves away from her, giving her some space.
Elektra pulls him to the drinks, and so begins the next part of her game. He has to drink, has to get inebriated, but he doesn’t want to get to the point that he slips up and Michael’s inherent hollowness shines through. So he tries to stay on her level, drinking with her and trying to figure out where her inebriation levels lie and where his do.
The drink makes them handsy, but he tries to meet her where she wants, kissing and touching, but letting her lead, not too passive as to do nothing that surprises her, but nothing more than macking on one another, either. He’s good at this part, and it’s easier than usual; he actually likes Elektra, and he almost whines when she pulls away from him, his nose chasing the flesh of her neck where she grants him access to the hollow of her collarbone.
“Michael, darling, tell me, have you ever partaken in any hallucinogens?”
That, that makes him pause. Whatever joy he derives from her, however much he likes her and she likes him, this is one of those lines of thought that he can’t ignore. She’s falling right in line, and now’s the time to dig in deep, get her to start thinking about true Salvation.
Can’t sound too eager, so he huffs against her, his teeth almost sharp against where her collarbone juts out, and says, “If I didn’t know you, I’d say you were a cop.” Matthew isn’t the biggest fan of the drugs she’s wanting; Michael knows all about these things and relishes in this new test.
“I believe someone here has, hmm, I believe as this group refers to it, ‘acid’?”
Maybe he’s a little drunk. Or maybe she just really makes him laugh, past her tests, past these games, past these theatricalities, she’s funny in a way that’s pointed, clever and whip-smart, and it makes him laugh, pulling himself from his neck to let his head fall back against the back of the ratty communal couch they’re splayed over.
He lifts his face back up and gets really close, his nose almost touching hers. “I can do you something better than that back home.”
Acid. It was good if you wanted to burn a few brain cells and find an artificial high, but it wasn’t the path to Righteousness and Salvation. Not under the eyes of Mr. Fisk.
“You could?”
Matt starts moving back into her neck again. He likes the way she smells, likes coming home smelling like her perfumes and having the lingering scent of her shampoo in his nostrils. He’d made Bullseye sleep by himself after one of their… outings… because he’d wanted to be reminded of her, even when he woke up. “Oh, yes. Only for special occasions, but we do know how to have fun.”
Elektra pulls him back, leans his head up against the back of the couch so she can press her fingers to his face, trailing them down his cheeks and to his lips, lining them like her fingers were lipstick. “Perhaps you could show me, one day.”
Michael opens his lips for her; he can be hers, if it means she’ll come Home with him eventually. His glasses are pushed up to his hairline so she could explore his face more, and when she sticks her fingers into his mouth, he lets his eyes close and he leans in closer.
He smiles, something that curls upwards in mischievous glee, something he hopes she appreciates. A devoted, self-aware little thing punctuate by a breathless and muffled, “Yeah, maybe one day.”
She starts to pull his fingers from his mouth and Michael’s hand shoots up to stop her for a moment, letting his eyes open again, facing up at her and giving her an earnest, unapologetic look of hope , something he sincerely hopes himself looks like devotion, rather than pitiful clinginess. He lets go and she replaces her fingers with a solid hand wrapped around his jaw, returning to the kissing as though that answers that.