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“We can always cancel.”
“We’re not cancelling.”
“I figured we weren’t going to, but I was just sayingthat we could cancel. It’s simply a possibility.”
“Kirsten.” Matt lightly tosses a stress ball in her direction, smiling when he hears her catch it in her hands. “We’re not cancelling.”
“I knew you’d say that,” she grumbles as she squeezes the stress ball several times. She throws it back and forth between her hands, and she sighs while looking up into his closet. “I was just hoping you’d think cancelling was a fabulous idea, and we’d get out of having to suffer through this evening.”
“Why do you hate your dad so much?” Matt asks curiously. He knows that hate is a strong word, a word that represents a feeling he’s not entirely sure Kirsten McDuffie is capable of feeling. He knows that she experiences strong distaste and immense dislike for things, but he’s not sure she’s actually capable of hating something. If anything, that makes her all the more attractive to him.
“I don’t hate him,” she protests. She examines the ties hanging on the inside of the door, glancing back to Matt’s dress shirt to check the color so she doesn’t choose a tie that clashes. “We just don’t get along very well. He’s pretty headstrong.”
“And you’re not?” Matt asks. He makes sure to grin at her so that she knows he’s teasing. He feels the stress ball hit his arm, and he grins even wider.
Kirsten smirks and rolls her eyes. “And that’s precisely why we don’t get along. After my mom died, things got a little worse. She’d always been kind of a buffer between the two of us, but then when she died…poof. Buffer gone. So with my mom gone, we fought a lot more. About everything. We just…don’t get along.”
“That’s understandable,” Matt sympathetically answers. Kirsten’s eye lands on a dark purple tie, and she picks it up. When she turns to Matt, who’s closed the distance between them to stand beside her, she holds the tie up to his light green shirt. “What color is it?”
“The dark purple one. I’m nixing it, though.” She makes a face. Looking back at Matt, she tilts her head to the side and thinks. “Actually, I dig this look without a tie, Counselor. Dinner at my dad’s place doesn’t require a tie, and you look nice but casual, which is good. So. I think we can skip the tie.”
“We?” Matt repeats, still smiling at her.
“We, Counselor. Need a definition of the word?” Despite how stressed Kirsten’s been feeling today over the thought of dinner at her dad’s, she can’t help smiling when Matt wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her into him in a loose, warm hold.
“No, I already have a definition.” Matt’s head goes a little fuzzy with how strongly he can smell her shampoo. She’s never brought up the fact that she chooses scents she knows won’t bother him, but he suspects that the switch from citrus-scented shampoo to lavender wasn’t just because she felt like switching things up. Then again, knowing her, it very well could have been. Kirsten is completely unpredictable, and he can’t decide whether he loves it or hates it. In moments like this, when she’s touching his chest exactly how he likes it even though they have to leave in 10 minutes, he loves it. But during moments that include her going off-script to badmouth the Serpents, he’s almost afraid of that quality she so beautifully possesses.
When people are predictable, he has an idea of how to keep them safe. Like Foggy—Foggy’s predictable. Matt looks at Foggy like a brother, and he doesn’t criticize Foggy at all for being predictable, but he knows almost down to the very detail how Foggy will react to certain news. He knows how Foggy spends his weekends, he knows what books Foggy likes to read, and he knows the pick-up lines Foggy thinks are the best. Foggy is predictable.
But Kirsten. She’s anything but. One second she’ll sass him so hard his head is spinning, but then she’ll spend the next second gently running a hand over his face or squeezing his wrist beneath the table during a meeting. She’s unpredictable, and that makes Matt worry that he won’t be able to keep up with her, to know how to best protect her.
“What’s your definition?” Kirsten asks. Matt can feel the warmth of her mouth close to his—he can feel the muscles of her back move as she rises up onto her tiptoes to be closer to him.
“My definition of ‘we,’ Counselor McDuffie is ‘us,’ and ‘us’ can refer to any gathering of people with two or more members. However.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “Whenever I use the term ‘us,’ and it involves a certain Kirsten McDuffie, I am speaking about Kirsten McDuffie and myself being involved in a romantic relationship. There will always be large groups of people, whether we’re at a party or a press conference, but the only ‘we,’ the only ‘us’ that matters…is the ‘we’ that you and I make up.”
Kirsten’s heart flutters, and she swallows hard. “Well. I accept your definition of the word ‘we.’”
“Good. Kiss me, Counselor.”
“Right away, Counselor.”
Kirsten manages to get through the first half hour at her dad’s house without getting annoyed. Well, majorly annoyed. Just kind of being in Wendell McDuffie’s house gets under her skin in general, but she tries to put everything aside for tonight. If all goes well, and she’s trying to be optimistic, Wendell won’t mention the book deal once, and Matt won’t say anything too political to get her dad going.
“I need wine,” she announces after sitting in the living room for half an hour. Matt’s detailing the last case he’s handled, and Wendell looks genuinely interested, which annoys her because she he’s never been that interested in her cases.
“Do you remember where the wine is?” Wendell asks.
“Yes, Dad, I do. I used to live here not that long ago,” she deadpans.
“It was a long time ago, Kirsten, and I’m just making sure. Dana and I have redone the house and—“
“Do you want any wine? Anyone else?” she quickly asks, cutting him off. Matt nods, and Wendell shakes his head, but Dana hops up.
“I’ll help you,” she offers. Kirsten thinks about declining the offer, but she doesn’t. Instead, she just turns over her shoulder and starts walking to the kitchen. Once she’s in the kitchen, she opens the door to the wine cellar and holds it open for Dana.
“Thanks for helping,” she says, hoping she doesn’t sound so strained.
“Thanks for actually agreeing to come to dinner tonight,” Dana replies as she takes the door from Kirsten’s hand. “Your dad’s been very excited about it. Actually, he’s just been excited in general to know that you live closer now.”
Kirsten descends the stairs and shoots a look over her shoulder. “I’m not 100% sure I believe that, but thank you for trying to…bridge the gap or whatever. I guess.”
“I mean it. He’s very happy to have you back. It means a lot to him that you’ve let him meet Matthew, too.” Dana follows Kirsten’s lead and stands back while she waits for Kirsten to make a wine selection. Even though Kirsten’s looking at the wine bottles, she’s focusing on her stepmother. Dana’s not her favorite person in the world. At all. Kirsten’s never been supportive of her father’s marriage to someone that much younger than him, and she was very vocal about it at the time. But once she’d realized that Dana wasn’t going anywhere, and there was nothing she could do to be any more vocal, she’d toned it down to passive aggressive comments.
“I can’t ‘let’ him do anything. If he’d wanted to meet Matt, he would’ve found a way,” Kirsten drily remarks, pulling a bottle of wine out from the rack to look at it. “Especially since he wants to make a business deal with him. And that’s what this whole evening is about.”
“Kirsten—“
“Oh, please.” Kirsten rolls her eyes. “That’s exactly what this is. I’ve been in San Francisco for months now, and he just called last week to catch up? And the same day he invites us out for a sail, he asks Matt to do business with him? He’s in this for Matt. He’s not in this for me.”
“Do you really think so little of your dad, Kirsten?” Dana asks with a frown.
Kirsten snorts. “Please don’t give me a parent lecture on how he’s doing the best he can. I’ve heard that sob story for years since my mom died. I mean, literally, people have been feeding it to me left and right after every fight we’ve had.”
“Well, he’s trying,” Dana insists, her face now looking frustrated. “He’s really trying. Can you say the same for yourself?”
Kirsten scowls, and her face draws downward into an even deeper scowl. She’s not in the mood for this. She didn’t come here tonight to get lectured by her father’s younger wife. She didn’t come to talk about her relationship with her dad in a wine cellar while Matt’s upstairs talking about the very rare case that they’ve had since coming to San Francisco. Finally, she grabs a bottle of pinot grigio and starts towards the stairs without saying anything. “Can you grab the glasses, or do you need me to do it?”
Dana’s quiet for a few seconds, but then she sighs and follows Kirsten up the stairs. “I can get them.”
Kirsten pours a glass for her and Matt but leaves the bottle for Dana to pour her own glass before she heads back into the living room. When she walks through the doorway, she sees a scene she’s least expected to find. Her dad has a large book out on his lap, and he’s said something to make Matt laugh pretty hard. Wendell looks up when he notices Kirsten walk in.
“Kirsten!” he exclaims. “I’m showing Matt some of your kid pictures!”
Kirsten’s heart jolts. “What?! Dad—Dad, what are you—Dad, Matt’s blind.”
“I know.” He gives her a half-annoyed, half-smug expression. “That’s why I’m describing the pictures to him.”
“You were Abigail Adams for Halloween?” Matt asks, his voice joyous as he tilts his face in her direction. “I knew you liked Halloween, but I didn’t know that you liked Abigail Adams.”
“Oh, she loves history,” Wendell interjects. Kirsten stands still for a few seconds, glancing back and forth between Wendell and Matt as she tries to reconcile herself to the fact that this is actually happening. This stereotypical, corny, straight-out-of-a-rom-com scene is happening before her, and she’s powerless to stop the ridiculousness of it all. “She’s always been very historical.”
“Dad—Dad, please—“ she tries to protest, feeling her cheeks start to turn red.
“What? There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. You were adorable. Smart as a whip, too. Oh, do you remember when you were Selena for Halloween that one year? Your mother was so happy.” Wendell turns the album around for Kirsten to see a picture of herself when she was eight years old, decked out in a flashy Selena costume that had made her feel like a professional singer.
“Yes. Yes, I remember,” she mumbles as she crosses towards Matt and hands him his glass of wine.
“Pinot grigio,” he murmurs to her after the first sip. “Good choice.”
“Thanks,” she says back to him under her breath. “Hey, Dad, why don’t we put the photo album away?”
“Daredevil, are you enjoying this?” Wendell asks. Matt shifts and turns his face towards Kirsten.
“Not if Kirsten’s uncomfortable,” he says. His instinct is to place his hand on the small of her back or her knee or something—he wants to make some kind of little contact with her so that she knows he’s on her side, that he supports her, but he doesn’t know if it’s too soon to start making affectionate gestures in front of her father.’’
He’s really trying. Can you say the same for yourself?
Kirsten wants to insist that the photo album disappear, but Matt really does look like he’s having a good time, and honestly, she can’t get Dana’s damn words out of her head. She twists her mouth to the side for just a second, tips back a large swallow of wine, and then sighs. “You know what…keep the album out.”
“There’s your party spirit,” Wendell says happily. “Hey, did you ever tell Daredevil about how you slaughtered Debate Club?”
Matt suddenly grins. “Kirsten?”
“Ah…no. No, I didn’t tell him about that,” Kirsten mumbles. Dana comes back into the room with her own glass of wine, looking like she hadn’t just been arguing with Kirsten in the wine cellar. Kirsten tries hard not to scowl when she sees her, so she focuses instead on how nice Matt looks beside her.
“You didn’t? Well, let me tell you. Kiki was the best. Absolutely destroyed every Debate Club meeting. When—“
“Kiki?” Matt interrupts, confused.
Kirsten’s cheeks go red again as she remembers that Matt doesn’t know her old childhood family nickname. Quickly, she steps in. “Dad, remember that debate I did senior year? My third from last debate?”
“Wait. Kiki?” Matt repeats.
Kirsten’s attempts to distract Wendell have failed as he notices Matt’s confusion. The older redheaded man looks surprised as he glances at Kirsten. “She hasn’t told you we all call her Kiki? Oh, man, that was her nickname ever since she was a little thing.”
“Kiki?” Matt can’t seem to form any other words in the English language except for Kirsten’s childhood nickname as he turns his face back in her direction.
“It’s…it’s a family thing,” she mumbles before taking another large swallow of wine. “Short for Kirsten.”
“My God. You never told me you were a Kiki,” he says accusingly, though he’s smiling wide as he says it.
“Don’t you dare call me Kiki, Matt Murdock. Don’t you dare,” she warns, but Matt’s laughing now, and she often has trouble keeping a straight face whenever Matt’s laugh decides to make an appearance.
“Oh my God. Kiki. I had no idea. All this time we’ve known each other, and you withheld this.” Matt can’t stop laughing, and Kirsten’s a mixture between annoyed and amused as he tilts his head back with full enjoyment.
“See what you’ve done, Dad?” she asks over the sound of Matt’s hearty laughter. “Now he’ll never let me live it down.”
“Oh, you’ll live, Kirsten,” Wendell replies with a gentle smile she can’t quite read. “You always do.”
With Dana's words ringing through her head, Kirsten gets through the rest of the night without once losing her temper. Wendell even manages not to bring up the memoir business until the very end of the night as she and Matt are saying their goodbyes. Of course, she would have preferred he not say anything at all, but if he has to, she’s glad he waited until they were about to leave.
Matt holds her hand during the cab ride back to her apartment. When she gets out and drags him along behind her, only letting him stop to pay the driver, he doesn’t protest. He happily goes along with her up the elevator and through the door of her place.
“That was fun,” he says when she closes the door and locks it behind them. He places his hands on her hips and moves his mouth to the nape of her neck. He listens to her heart skip, her muscles relaxing beneath his touch.
“I wouldn’t say it was fun, but it was…bearable. It was at least that,” she replies, keeping her voice steady, nonchalant.
“I thought it was fun.” He plants a warm kiss against her neck and lingers there to let that warm rush come to his head at the smell of her shampoo.
“You thought it was fun because you were the guest of honor,” she teases.
“Not true. You totally were. Everything was about you. I liked it.” He kisses her again, and his hands start to roam.
“Well. I can think of something else I’d like to be about me,” she says with a bright grin.
“Don’t have to tell me twice!” Matt’s voice is full of enthusiasm. “…Kiki.”
“Matt!” She whirls around to protest, but before she can get another word out, he’s got her scooped up in his arms, and he’s carrying her to her room.
“I also like your nickname.”
“Matt, it’s not funny!”
“I like it a lot.” He sets her down gently on the edge of her bed, so she’s sitting upright, and he grins cheekily at her. “But I do like your full name better. I can see you being a Kiki. But to me, you are amazingly—“ He kisses her. “—thoroughly—“ He kisses her again. “—fantastically—“ Another kiss. “Kirsten. So don’t ever change. Because I’d miss you.”
“You’re sweet,” she mumbles, her voice soft now as Matt manages to finagle his way into her heart even more.
“I’m honest,” he counters. He pauses to face her, taking in the heat of her face being directly in front of his. When she lifts her hands up to his face and slides his glasses off, he doesn’t stop her, nor does he close his eyes. He simply lets her. “I like you a lot, Kirsten McDuffie.”
This time, she kisses him. “I like you, too, Matt Murdock.” She touches his vivid red hair. “And I like that we’re a we.”
“I like that we’re a we, too.” He gets lost in kissing her back, moving his hands from the edge of the bed to the sides of her face. “I like that we’re an us.”
“We’re the best kind of us.”
His thumb brushes over one of her deep dimples, and he can’t help grinning again as he leans over her, pausing with his mouth by her ear. “And I also like Kiki.”
“Matt!”