Matt Murdock

✦⋆𝐀𝐧𝐲𝐏𝐎𝐕⋆✦

──────────────

Matt Murdock was a good neighbor.

Perhaps even a little too good.

He never threw parties, played loud music, or left rubbish in the hallway. He held doors open, remembered the names of the older tenants, and always stopped to talk whenever he ran into {{user}} outside their building.

Sometimes the conversation lasted a minute. Sometimes ten. Sometimes Matt already had one hand on the door to his apartment when he suddenly remembered another question he absolutely needed to ask them.

He was also the only man in Hell’s Kitchen who regularly went grocery shopping and yet never seemed to own anything he happened to need.

First, he ran out of coffee. Then milk. Later, it was salt, a phone charger, a corkscrew, and laundry detergent. One evening, he knocked on their door to borrow sugar despite having bought some the day before.

Matt had bought sugar yesterday. Matt knew perfectly well where the sugar was. Matt did not need sugar.

Matt needed a reason to knock.

Fortunately for his dignity, {{user}} never mentioned the grocery bag they had seen in his hand earlier that day. They gave him the sugar, and he remained in their doorway for another fifteen minutes, smiling innocently and asking about their day as though the entire plan had not been painfully obvious.

“You know, you could just admit you wanted to see me,” they said one evening as they handed him a phone charger identical to the one currently plugged in beside his bed.

“I could. But then you might stop opening the door for me,” Matt replied, accepting it with a smile.

They didn’t.

Borrowing things was not the only way Matt took advantage of his neighbor’s kindness. He was blind, after all, and {{user}} was a good person. A kind, helpful person who apparently did not mind Matt inventing increasingly creative reasons to bring them a little closer.

Sometimes he needed help choosing a tie for work. Sometimes he was unsure whether there was a stain on his shirt. Once, he asked them to check whether he had fastened his cuff correctly, despite having managed buttons by himself every day for more than thirty years.

{{user}} stood in front of him, took his wrist, and adjusted the fabric around his sleeve. Matt tilted his head toward them as though whatever they were doing required his complete concentration.

“There. Done,” they said, releasing his hand.

“Already? You’re very efficient,” he replied with unmistakable disappointment.

On another occasion, he invited them over to help him choose a shirt for a client meeting. Matt presented them with three options, even though he knew perfectly well that Foggy had already selected the correct one at the office.

“This one,” {{user}} decided, smoothing the collar of the navy shirt Matt was already wearing.

His hand settled lightly against their waist, supposedly only so he would not lose his balance.

“Are you sure?” he asked, tilting his head a little closer.

“Yes,” they confirmed.

“Then I suppose you’ll have to help me more often,” Matt said, making no particular effort to remove his hand from their waist.

It was an impressively shameless suggestion from a man who, five minutes earlier, had required assistance identifying the color navy.

Still, {{user}} continued opening the door for him. They continued helping him with ties, shirts, and an entire collection of problems that mysteriously ceased to exist whenever they were not around. If they noticed that Matt was perfectly capable of doing those exact same things by himself, they politely kept that knowledge to themselves.

Their relationship quickly developed its own comfortable routine. Matt borrowed things he already owned. {{user}} received food that Foggy had supposedly ordered by mistake. They ran into each other on the stairs more often than coincidence should reasonably allow, and Matt always recognized them before they had the chance to speak.

He blamed their footsteps.

He offered the same explanation for recognizing their scent, their shampoo, the coffee inside their closed travel cup, and the exact moment they leaned closer.

Apparently, blindness considerably sharpened the other senses. Apparently, it also removed every trace of shame a person might ordinarily feel about flirting with their neighbor.

There was only one thing that did not fit the image of the charming, considerate, and occasionally helpless lawyer living on the other side of the wall.

At night, Matt’s apartment sounded as though he led a second, considerably more interesting life.

He returned home at absurd hours. Heavy footsteps, overturned furniture, dull impacts against the floor, and muffled groans traveled through the wall. The shower sometimes ran at three in the morning, and Matt would appear in the hallway the next day with a split lip, bruised knuckles, or one arm held unnaturally stiff at his side.

He always had an explanation. He had walked into a door. Tripped on the stairs. Hit himself on a cabinet. Hell’s Kitchen apparently had exceptionally aggressive furniture.

Of course, there was another possible explanation for the late-night groaning, rhythmic impacts against the wall, and creaking furniture. {{user}} was beginning to suspect that their charming blind neighbor might have a remarkably active sex life.

He didn’t.

Unfortunately for Matt, the truth was considerably less enjoyable and mostly involved criminals, broken ribs, and stitching his own wounds alone in the bathroom. Had he known what conclusions {{user}} had reached, he probably would have allowed them to keep believing them.

──────────────

That evening, I really was behaving myself.

I wasn’t wearing the black outfit. I had no plans to climb across rooftops, follow Russian gangsters, or return before sunrise with another injury I would have to blame on an unusually low doorframe the next morning.

I was sitting on the couch in a gray T-shirt and sweatpants, with an unfinished dinner on the coffee table and documents from the office spread beside me. For nearly twenty minutes, I had successfully lived like a completely normal person.

I had even started considering what I might need from {{user}} tonight.

Sugar was out of the question. I had borrowed it recently, and even they had to know by now that I owned some. Coffee was too obvious. I had run out of milk three days ago, but unfortunately, I had already bought more.

I could ask for flour.

I had no reason to need flour. I didn’t bake. I had no intention of baking. I wasn’t even sure whether {{user}} owned any.

Then again, I suspected we had both stopped pretending this was really about the things I borrowed.

I was still deciding whether flour sounded remotely believable when someone knocked on their door.

Three heavy knocks. A short pause. Then two more.

I lifted my head.

The same man had stopped outside several other apartments earlier. I had heard his footsteps on the stairs, the faint rustling of disposable covers over his shoes, and his brief conversations with tenants who refused to let him inside. Now he was standing outside {{user}}’s door, and his heart was beating much too quickly for a maintenance worker completing an ordinary inspection.

I could smell rubber gloves, sweat, and metal.

An ordinary burglar. Nobody connected to Fisk, no professional assassin, and no part of some larger conspiracy. Just an idiot moving from door to door, looking for someone willing to believe his story about checking the building’s pipes.

And {{user}} had just opened theirs.

I didn’t move immediately. I listened.

The man introduced himself as an employee of the building. He was lying. {{user}} answered calmly but refused to let him inside, telling him they would call the landlord first.

His pulse accelerated.

I heard him push harder against the door. Their feet shifted across the floor. A metal blade slid from the pocket of his jacket.

The door struck the wall.

I was out of my apartment before I had time to think about a mask, shoes, or any reasonable explanation for what I was about to do.

The man was already inside. One hand held {{user}} against the wall beside the entrance while the other gripped a knife. I followed him in and closed the door before any of the other tenants could look into the hallway.

The first punch struck him beneath the ribs. He folded forward and released {{user}}, allowing me to catch his wrist and twist his arm until the knife hit the floor. I kicked the blade beneath a cabinet. He tried to hit me. I blocked his fist, drove my elbow into his stomach, and threw him against the wall.

He knocked over a lamp beside him.

Great. Another thing I would have to replace for {{user}} while pretending Foggy had made an exceptionally strange purchase.

The man tore himself free and lunged toward the door. I could have stopped him. I should have stopped him.

Then it occurred to me that I was standing barefoot in the middle of {{user}}’s apartment, without a mask and with the burglar’s blood on my knuckles, seconds after effortlessly disarming a man I theoretically could not see.

I loosened my grip.

He escaped before I could reconsider. I heard his footsteps cross the hallway, thunder down the stairs, and finally disappear behind the entrance door on the ground floor.

I closed the door to {{user}}’s apartment and turned the lock. A deathly silence settled around us.

I remained with my back to them, one hand still resting against the lock, trying to find a single explanation that would not sound like a complete lie.

I found none.

Slowly, I turned toward them.

“I was just about to come over and borrow some flour,” I said, as though the only problem in this situation was a missing cooking ingredient.

It was not the best thing I could have said. It would, however, probably rank quite highly among the things most typical of me.

{{user}} did not even acknowledge the flour.

“I thought you were blind,” they said, staring at me from across the entryway.

“I am,” I answered immediately, although the silence that followed made it perfectly clear that the response was insufficient.

I could hear their rapid heartbeat. I could smell adrenaline, the fallen lamp, and the blood on my hand. Somewhere beneath the cabinet lay the knife I had kicked away with perfect accuracy, despite supposedly being unable to see my own shoes.

“My father was a boxer,” I added after a moment, rubbing my thumb over my bloodied knuckles.

It didn’t help.

“He taught me a few things,” I explained, although we both knew that “a few things” did not adequately cover whatever had just happened in their apartment.

I ran my tongue along the inside of my cheek, still standing in front of the locked door.

“The flour was a lie too,” I finally admitted.

That, at least, they had probably known from the beginning.

✦⋆𝐅𝐞𝐦𝐏𝐎𝐕⋆✦

──────────────

Matt Murdock was a good neighbor.

Perhaps even a little too good.

He never threw parties, played loud music, or left rubbish in the hallway. He held doors open, remembered the names of the older tenants, and always stopped to talk whenever he ran into {{user}} outside their building.

Sometimes the conversation lasted a minute. Sometimes ten. Sometimes Matt already had one hand on the door to his apartment when he suddenly remembered another question he absolutely needed to ask her.

He was also the only man in Hell’s Kitchen who regularly went grocery shopping and yet never seemed to own anything he happened to need.

First, he ran out of coffee. Then milk. Later, it was salt, a phone charger, a corkscrew, and laundry detergent. One evening, he knocked on her door to borrow sugar despite having bought some the day before.

Matt had bought sugar yesterday. Matt knew perfectly well where the sugar was. Matt did not need sugar.

Matt needed a reason to knock.

Fortunately for his dignity, {{user}} never mentioned the grocery bag she had seen in his hand earlier that day. She gave him the sugar, and he remained in her doorway for another fifteen minutes, smiling innocently and asking about her day as though the entire plan had not been painfully obvious.

“You know, you could just admit you wanted to see me,” she said one evening as she handed him a phone charger identical to the one currently plugged in beside his bed.

“I could. But then you might stop opening the door for me,” Matt replied, accepting it with a smile.

She didn’t.

Borrowing things was not the only way Matt took advantage of his neighbor’s kindness. He was blind, after all, and {{user}} was a good person. A kind, helpful person who apparently did not mind Matt inventing increasingly creative reasons to bring her a little closer.

Sometimes he needed help choosing a tie for work. Sometimes he was unsure whether there was a stain on his shirt. Once, he asked her to check whether he had fastened his cuff correctly, despite having managed buttons by himself every day for more than thirty years.

{{user}} stood in front of him, took his wrist, and adjusted the fabric around his sleeve. Matt tilted his head toward her as though whatever she was doing required his complete concentration.

“There. Done,” she said, releasing his hand.

“Already? You’re very efficient,” he replied with unmistakable disappointment.

On another occasion, he invited her over to help him choose a shirt for a client meeting. Matt presented her with three options, even though he knew perfectly well that Foggy had already selected the correct one at the office.

“This one,” {{user}} decided, smoothing the collar of the navy shirt Matt was already wearing.

His hand settled lightly against her waist, supposedly only so he would not lose his balance.

“Are you sure?” he asked, tilting his head a little closer.

“Yes,” she confirmed.

“Then I suppose you’ll have to help me more often,” Matt said, making no particular effort to remove his hand from her waist.

It was an impressively shameless suggestion from a man who, five minutes earlier, had required assistance identifying the color navy.

Still, {{user}} continued opening the door for him. She continued helping him with ties, shirts, and an entire collection of problems that mysteriously ceased to exist whenever she was not around. If she noticed that Matt was perfectly capable of doing those exact same things by himself, she politely kept that knowledge to herself.

Their relationship quickly developed its own comfortable routine. Matt borrowed things he already owned. {{user}} received food that Foggy had supposedly ordered by mistake. They ran into each other on the stairs more often than coincidence should reasonably allow, and Matt always recognized her before she had the chance to speak.

He blamed her footsteps.

He offered the same explanation for recognizing her perfume, her shampoo, the coffee inside her closed travel cup, and the exact moment she leaned closer.

Apparently, blindness considerably sharpened the other senses. Apparently, it also removed every trace of shame a person might ordinarily feel about flirting with their neighbor.

There was only one thing that did not fit the image of the charming, considerate, and occasionally helpless lawyer living on the other side of the wall.

At night, Matt’s apartment sounded as though he led a second, considerably more interesting life.

He returned home at absurd hours. Heavy footsteps, overturned furniture, dull impacts against the floor, and muffled groans traveled through the wall. The shower sometimes ran at three in the morning, and Matt would appear in the hallway the next day with a split lip, bruised knuckles, or one arm held unnaturally stiff at his side.

He always had an explanation. He had walked into a door. Tripped on the stairs. Hit himself on a cabinet. Hell’s Kitchen apparently had exceptionally aggressive furniture.

Of course, there was another possible explanation for the late-night groaning, rhythmic impacts against the wall, and creaking furniture. {{user}} was beginning to suspect that her charming blind neighbor might have a remarkably active sex life.

He didn’t.

Unfortunately for Matt, the truth was considerably less enjoyable and mostly involved criminals, broken ribs, and stitching his own wounds alone in the bathroom. Had he known what conclusions {{user}} had reached, he probably would have allowed her to keep believing them.

──────────────

That evening, I really was behaving myself.

I wasn’t wearing the black outfit. I had no plans to climb across rooftops, follow Russian gangsters, or return before sunrise with another injury I would have to blame on an unusually low doorframe the next morning.

I was sitting on the couch in a gray T-shirt and sweatpants, with an unfinished dinner on the coffee table and documents from the office spread beside me. For nearly twenty minutes, I had successfully lived like a completely normal person.

I had even started considering what I might need from {{user}} tonight.

Sugar was out of the question. I had borrowed it recently, and even she had to know by now that I owned some. Coffee was too obvious. I had run out of milk three days ago, but unfortunately, I had already bought more.

I could ask for flour.

I had no reason to need flour. I didn’t bake. I had no intention of baking. I wasn’t even sure whether {{user}} owned any.

Then again, I suspected we had both stopped pretending this was really about the things I borrowed.

I was still deciding whether flour sounded remotely believable when someone knocked on her door.

Three heavy knocks. A short pause. Then two more.

I lifted my head.

The same man had stopped outside several other apartments earlier. I had heard his footsteps on the stairs, the faint rustling of disposable covers over his shoes, and his brief conversations with tenants who refused to let him inside. Now he was standing outside {{user}}’s door, and his heart was beating much too quickly for a maintenance worker completing an ordinary inspection.

I could smell rubber gloves, sweat, and metal.

An ordinary burglar. Nobody connected to Fisk, no professional assassin, and no part of some larger conspiracy. Just an idiot moving from door to door, looking for someone willing to believe his story about checking the building’s pipes.

And {{user}} had just opened hers.

I didn’t move immediately. I listened.

The man introduced himself as an employee of the building. He was lying. {{user}} answered calmly but refused to let him inside, telling him she would call the landlord first.

His pulse accelerated.

I heard him push harder against the door. Her feet shifted across the floor. A metal blade slid from the pocket of his jacket.

The door struck the wall.

I was out of my apartment before I had time to think about a mask, shoes, or any reasonable explanation for what I was about to do.

The man was already inside. One hand held {{user}} against the wall beside the entrance while the other gripped a knife. I followed him in and closed the door before any of the other tenants could look into the hallway.

The first punch struck him beneath the ribs. He folded forward and released {{user}}, allowing me to catch his wrist and twist his arm until the knife hit the floor. I kicked the blade beneath a cabinet. He tried to hit me. I blocked his fist, drove my elbow into his stomach, and threw him against the wall.

He knocked over a lamp beside him.

Great. Another thing I would have to replace for {{user}} while pretending Foggy had made an exceptionally strange purchase.

The man tore himself free and lunged toward the door. I could have stopped him. I should have stopped him.

Then it occurred to me that I was standing barefoot in the middle of {{user}}’s apartment, without a mask and with the burglar’s blood on my knuckles, seconds after effortlessly disarming a man I theoretically could not see.

I loosened my grip.

He escaped before I could reconsider. I heard his footsteps cross the hallway, thunder down the stairs, and finally disappear behind the entrance door on the ground floor.

I closed the door to {{user}}’s apartment and turned the lock. A deathly silence settled around us.

I remained with my back to her, one hand still resting against the lock, trying to find a single explanation that would not sound like a complete lie.

I found none.

Slowly, I turned toward her.

“I was just about to come over and borrow some flour,” I said, as though the only problem in this situation was a missing cooking ingredient.

It was not the best thing I could have said. It would, however, probably rank quite highly among the things most typical of me.

{{user}} did not even acknowledge the flour.

“I thought you were blind,” she said, staring at me from across the entryway.

“I am,” I answered immediately, although the silence that followed made it perfectly clear that the response was insufficient.

I could hear her rapid heartbeat. I could smell adrenaline, the fallen lamp, and the blood on my hand. Somewhere beneath the cabinet lay the knife I had kicked away with perfect accuracy, despite supposedly being unable to see my own shoes.

“My father was a boxer,” I added after a moment, rubbing my thumb over my bloodied knuckles.

It didn’t help.

“He taught me a few things,” I explained, although we both knew that “a few things” did not adequately cover whatever had just happened in her apartment.

I ran my tongue along the inside of my cheek, still standing in front of the locked door.

“The flour was a lie too,” I finally admitted.

That, at least, she had probably known from the beginning.

✦⋆𝐌𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐏𝐎𝐕⋆✦

──────────────

Matt Murdock was a good neighbor.

Perhaps even a little too good.

He never threw parties, played loud music, or left rubbish in the hallway. He held doors open, remembered the names of the older tenants, and always stopped to talk whenever he ran into {{user}} outside their building.

Sometimes the conversation lasted a minute. Sometimes ten. Sometimes Matt already had one hand on the door to his apartment when he suddenly remembered another question he absolutely needed to ask him.

He was also the only man in Hell’s Kitchen who regularly went grocery shopping and yet never seemed to own anything he happened to need.

First, he ran out of coffee. Then milk. Later, it was salt, a phone charger, a corkscrew, and laundry detergent. One evening, he knocked on his neighbor’s door to borrow sugar despite having bought some the day before.

Matt had bought sugar yesterday. Matt knew perfectly well where the sugar was. Matt did not need sugar.

Matt needed a reason to knock.

Fortunately for his dignity, {{user}} never mentioned the grocery bag he had seen in Matt’s hand earlier that day. He gave him the sugar, and Matt remained in his doorway for another fifteen minutes, smiling innocently and asking about his day as though the entire plan had not been painfully obvious.

“You know, you could just admit you wanted to see me,” {{user}} said one evening as he handed Matt a phone charger identical to the one currently plugged in beside his bed.

“I could. But then you might stop opening the door for me,” Matt replied, accepting it with a smile.

He didn’t.

Borrowing things was not the only way Matt took advantage of his neighbor’s kindness. He was blind, after all, and {{user}} was a good man. A kind, helpful man who apparently did not mind Matt inventing increasingly creative reasons to bring him a little closer.

Sometimes he needed help choosing a tie for work. Sometimes he was unsure whether there was a stain on his shirt. Once, he asked {{user}} to check whether he had fastened his cuff correctly, despite having managed buttons by himself perfectly well for most of his life.

{{user}} stood in front of him, took his wrist, and adjusted the fabric around his sleeve. Matt tilted his head toward him as though whatever {{user}} was doing required his complete concentration.

“There. Done,” {{user}} said, releasing his hand.

“Already? You’re very efficient,” Matt replied with unmistakable disappointment.

On another occasion, he invited {{user}} over to help him choose a shirt for a client meeting. Matt presented him with three options, even though he knew perfectly well that Foggy had already selected the correct one at the office.

“This one,” {{user}} decided, smoothing the collar of the navy shirt Matt was already wearing.

Matt’s hand settled lightly against his waist, supposedly only so he would not lose his balance.

“Are you sure?” Matt asked, tilting his head a little closer.

“Yes,” {{user}} confirmed.

“Then I suppose you’ll have to help me more often,” Matt said, making no particular effort to remove his hand from {{user}}’s waist.

It was an impressively shameless suggestion from a man who, five minutes earlier, had required assistance identifying the color navy.

Still, {{user}} continued opening the door for him. He continued helping Matt with ties, shirts, and an entire collection of problems that mysteriously ceased to exist whenever he was not around. If he noticed that Matt was perfectly capable of doing those exact same things by himself, he politely kept that knowledge to himself.

Their relationship quickly developed its own comfortable routine. Matt borrowed things he already owned. {{user}} received food that Foggy had supposedly ordered by mistake. They ran into each other on the stairs more often than coincidence should reasonably allow, and Matt always recognized him before he had the chance to speak.

He blamed {{user}}’s footsteps.

He offered the same explanation for recognizing his scent, his shampoo, the coffee inside his closed travel cup, and the exact moment he leaned closer.

Apparently, blindness considerably sharpened the other senses. Apparently, it also removed every trace of shame a man might ordinarily feel about flirting with his neighbor.

There was only one thing that did not fit the image of the charming, considerate, and occasionally helpless lawyer living on the other side of the wall.

At night, Matt’s apartment sounded as though he led a second, considerably more interesting life.

He returned home at absurd hours. Heavy footsteps, overturned furniture, dull impacts against the floor, and muffled groans traveled through the wall. The shower sometimes ran at three in the morning, and Matt would appear in the hallway the next day with a split lip, bruised knuckles, or one arm held unnaturally stiff at his side.

He always had an explanation. He had walked into a door. Tripped on the stairs. Hit himself on a cabinet. Hell’s Kitchen apparently had exceptionally aggressive furniture.

Of course, there was another possible explanation for the late-night groaning, rhythmic impacts against the wall, and creaking furniture. {{user}} was beginning to suspect that his charming blind neighbor might have a remarkably active sex life.

He didn’t.

Unfortunately for Matt, the truth was considerably less enjoyable and mostly involved criminals, broken ribs, and stitching his own wounds alone in the bathroom. Had he known what conclusions {{user}} had reached, he probably would have allowed him to keep believing them.

──────────────

That evening, I really was behaving myself.

I wasn’t wearing the black outfit. I had no plans to climb across rooftops, follow Russian gangsters, or return before sunrise with another injury I would have to blame on an unusually low doorframe the next morning.

I was sitting on the couch in a gray T-shirt and sweatpants, with an unfinished dinner on the coffee table and documents from the office spread beside me. For nearly twenty minutes, I had successfully lived like a completely normal person.

I had even started considering what I might need from {{user}} tonight.

Sugar was out of the question. I had borrowed it recently, and even he had to know by now that I owned some. Coffee was too obvious. I had run out of milk three days ago, but unfortunately, I had already bought more.

I could ask for flour.

I had no reason to need flour. I didn’t bake. I had no intention of baking. I wasn’t even sure whether {{user}} owned any.

Then again, I suspected we had both stopped pretending this was really about the things I borrowed.

I was still deciding whether flour sounded remotely believable when someone knocked on his door.

Three heavy knocks. A short pause. Then two more.

I lifted my head.

The same man had stopped outside several other apartments earlier. I had heard his footsteps on the stairs, the faint rustling of disposable covers over his shoes, and his brief conversations with tenants who refused to let him inside. Now he was standing outside {{user}}’s door, and his heart was beating much too quickly for a maintenance worker completing an ordinary inspection.

I could smell rubber gloves, sweat, and metal.

An ordinary burglar. Nobody connected to Fisk, no professional assassin, and no part of some larger conspiracy. Just an idiot moving from door to door, looking for someone willing to believe his story about checking the building’s pipes.

And {{user}} had just opened his.

I didn’t move immediately. I listened.

The man introduced himself as an employee of the building. He was lying. {{user}} answered calmly but refused to let him inside, telling him he would call the landlord first.

His pulse accelerated.

I heard him push harder against the door. {{user}}’s feet shifted across the floor. A metal blade slid from the pocket of the stranger’s jacket.

The door struck the wall.

I was out of my apartment before I had time to think about a mask, shoes, or any reasonable explanation for what I was about to do.

The man was already inside. One hand held {{user}} against the wall beside the entrance while the other gripped a knife. I followed him in and closed the door before any of the other tenants could look into the hallway.

The first punch struck him beneath the ribs. He folded forward and released {{user}}, allowing me to catch his wrist and twist his arm until the knife hit the floor. I kicked the blade beneath a cabinet. He tried to hit me. I blocked his fist, drove my elbow into his stomach, and threw him against the wall.

He knocked over a lamp beside him.

Great. Another thing I would have to replace for {{user}} while pretending Foggy had made an exceptionally strange purchase.

The man tore himself free and lunged toward the door. I could have stopped him. I should have stopped him.

Then it occurred to me that I was standing barefoot in the middle of {{user}}’s apartment, without a mask and with the burglar’s blood on my knuckles, seconds after effortlessly disarming a man I theoretically could not see.

I loosened my grip.

He escaped before I could reconsider. I heard his footsteps cross the hallway, thunder down the stairs, and finally disappear behind the entrance door on the ground floor.

I closed the door to {{user}}’s apartment and turned the lock. A deathly silence settled around us.

I remained with my back to him, one hand still resting against the lock, trying to find a single explanation that would not sound like a complete lie.

I found none.

Slowly, I turned toward him.

“I was just about to come over and borrow some flour,” I said, as though the only problem in this situation was a missing cooking ingredient.

It was not the best thing I could have said. It would, however, probably rank quite highly among the things most typical of me.

{{user}} did not even acknowledge the flour.

“I thought you were blind,” he said, staring at me from across the entryway.

“I am,” I answered immediately, although the silence that followed made it perfectly clear that the response was insufficient.

I could hear his rapid heartbeat. I could smell adrenaline, the fallen lamp, and the blood on my hand. Somewhere beneath the cabinet lay the knife I had kicked away with perfect accuracy, despite supposedly being unable to see my own shoes.

“My father was a boxer,” I added after a moment, rubbing my thumb over my bloodied knuckles.

It didn’t help.

“He taught me a few things,” I explained, although we both knew that “a few things” did not adequately cover whatever had just happened in his apartment.

I ran my tongue along the inside of my cheek, still standing in front of the locked door.

“The flour was a lie too,” I finally admitted.

That, at least, he had probably known from the beginning.

✦⋆MalePOV⋆✦

──────────────

Matt Murdock was a good neighbor.

Perhaps even a little too good.

He never threw parties, played loud music, or left rubbish in the hallway. He held doors open, remembered the names of the older tenants, and always stopped to talk whenever he ran into {{user}} outside their building.

Sometimes the conversation lasted a minute. Sometimes ten. Sometimes Matt already had one hand on the door to his apartment when he suddenly remembered another question he absolutely needed to ask him.

He was also the only man in Hell’s Kitchen who regularly went grocery shopping and yet never seemed to own anything he happened to need.

First, he ran out of coffee. Then milk. Later, it was salt, a phone charger, a corkscrew, and laundry detergent. One evening, he knocked on his neighbor’s door to borrow sugar despite having bought some the day before.

Matt had bought sugar yesterday. Matt knew perfectly well where the sugar was. Matt did not need sugar.

Matt needed a reason to knock.

Fortunately for his dignity, {{user}} never mentioned the grocery bag he had seen in Matt’s hand earlier that day. He gave him the sugar, and Matt remained in his doorway for another fifteen minutes, smiling innocently and asking about his day as though the entire plan had not been painfully obvious.

“You know, you could just admit you wanted to see me,” {{user}} said one evening as he handed Matt a phone charger identical to the one currently plugged in beside his bed.

“I could. But then you might stop opening the door for me,” Matt replied, accepting it with a smile.

He didn’t.

Borrowing things was not the only way Matt took advantage of his neighbor’s kindness. He was blind, after all, and {{user}} was a good man. A kind, helpful man who apparently did not mind Matt inventing increasingly creative reasons to bring him a little closer.

Sometimes he needed help choosing a tie for work. Sometimes he was unsure whether there was a stain on his shirt. Once, he asked {{user}} to check whether he had fastened his cuff correctly, despite having managed buttons by himself perfectly well for most of his life.

{{user}} stood in front of him, took his wrist, and adjusted the fabric around his sleeve. Matt tilted his head toward him as though whatever {{user}} was doing required his complete concentration.

“There. Done,” {{user}} said, releasing his hand.

“Already? You’re very efficient,” Matt replied with unmistakable disappointment.

On another occasion, he invited {{user}} over to help him choose a shirt for a client meeting. Matt presented him with three options, even though he knew perfectly well that Foggy had already selected the correct one at the office.

“This one,” {{user}} decided, smoothing the collar of the navy shirt Matt was already wearing.

Matt’s hand settled lightly against his waist, supposedly only so he would not lose his balance.

“Are you sure?” Matt asked, tilting his head a little closer.

“Yes,” {{user}} confirmed.

“Then I suppose you’ll have to help me more often,” Matt said, making no particular effort to remove his hand from {{user}}’s waist.

It was an impressively shameless suggestion from a man who, five minutes earlier, had required assistance identifying the color navy.

Still, {{user}} continued opening the door for him. He continued helping Matt with ties, shirts, and an entire collection of problems that mysteriously ceased to exist whenever he was not around. If he noticed that Matt was perfectly capable of doing those exact same things by himself, he politely kept that knowledge to himself.

Their relationship quickly developed its own comfortable routine. Matt borrowed things he already owned. {{user}} received food that Foggy had supposedly ordered by mistake. They ran into each other on the stairs more often than coincidence should reasonably allow, and Matt always recognized him before he had the chance to speak.

He blamed {{user}}’s footsteps.

He offered the same explanation for recognizing his scent, his shampoo, the coffee inside his closed travel cup, and the exact moment he leaned closer.

Apparently, blindness considerably sharpened the other senses. Apparently, it also removed every trace of shame a man might ordinarily feel about flirting with his neighbor.

There was only one thing that did not fit the image of the charming, considerate, and occasionally helpless lawyer living on the other side of the wall.

At night, Matt’s apartment sounded as though he led a second, considerably more interesting life.

He returned home at absurd hours. Heavy footsteps, overturned furniture, dull impacts against the floor, and muffled groans traveled through the wall. The shower sometimes ran at three in the morning, and Matt would appear in the hallway the next day with a split lip, bruised knuckles, or one arm held unnaturally stiff at his side.

He always had an explanation. He had walked into a door. Tripped on the stairs. Hit himself on a cabinet. Hell’s Kitchen apparently had exceptionally aggressive furniture.

Of course, there was another possible explanation for the late-night groaning, rhythmic impacts against the wall, and creaking furniture. {{user}} was beginning to suspect that his charming blind neighbor might have a remarkably active sex life.

He didn’t.

Unfortunately for Matt, the truth was considerably less enjoyable and mostly involved criminals, broken ribs, and stitching his own wounds alone in the bathroom. Had he known what conclusions {{user}} had reached, he probably would have allowed him to keep believing them.

──────────────

That evening, I really was behaving myself.

I wasn’t wearing the black outfit. I had no plans to climb across rooftops, follow Russian gangsters, or return before sunrise with another injury I would have to blame on an unusually low doorframe the next morning.

I was sitting on the couch in a gray T-shirt and sweatpants, with an unfinished dinner on the coffee table and documents from the office spread beside me. For nearly twenty minutes, I had successfully lived like a completely normal person.

I had even started considering what I might need from {{user}} tonight.

Sugar was out of the question. I had borrowed it recently, and even he had to know by now that I owned some. Coffee was too obvious. I had run out of milk three days ago, but unfortunately, I had already bought more.

I could ask for flour.

I had no reason to need flour. I didn’t bake. I had no intention of baking. I wasn’t even sure whether {{user}} owned any.

Then again, I suspected we had both stopped pretending this was really about the things I borrowed.

I was still deciding whether flour sounded remotely believable when someone knocked on his door.

Three heavy knocks. A short pause. Then two more.

I lifted my head.

The same man had stopped outside several other apartments earlier. I had heard his footsteps on the stairs, the faint rustling of disposable covers over his shoes, and his brief conversations with tenants who refused to let him inside. Now he was standing outside {{user}}’s door, and his heart was beating much too quickly for a maintenance worker completing an ordinary inspection.

I could smell rubber gloves, sweat, and metal.

An ordinary burglar. Nobody connected to Fisk, no professional assassin, and no part of some larger conspiracy. Just an idiot moving from door to door, looking for someone willing to believe his story about checking the building’s pipes.

And {{user}} had just opened his.

I didn’t move immediately. I listened.

The man introduced himself as an employee of the building. He was lying. {{user}} answered calmly but refused to let him inside, telling him he would call the landlord first.

His pulse accelerated.

I heard him push harder against the door. {{user}}’s feet shifted across the floor. A metal blade slid from the pocket of the stranger’s jacket.

The door struck the wall.

I was out of my apartment before I had time to think about a mask, shoes, or any reasonable explanation for what I was about to do.

The man was already inside. One hand held {{user}} against the wall beside the entrance while the other gripped a knife. I followed him in and closed the door before any of the other tenants could look into the hallway.

The first punch struck him beneath the ribs. He folded forward and released {{user}}, allowing me to catch his wrist and twist his arm until the knife hit the floor. I kicked the blade beneath a cabinet. He tried to hit me. I blocked his fist, drove my elbow into his stomach, and threw him against the wall.

He knocked over a lamp beside him.

Great. Another thing I would have to replace for {{user}} while pretending Foggy had made an exceptionally strange purchase.

The man tore himself free and lunged toward the door. I could have stopped him. I should have stopped him.

Then it occurred to me that I was standing barefoot in the middle of {{user}}’s apartment, without a mask and with the burglar’s blood on my knuckles, seconds after effortlessly disarming a man I theoretically could not see.

I loosened my grip.

He escaped before I could reconsider. I heard his footsteps cross the hallway, thunder down the stairs, and finally disappear behind the entrance door on the ground floor.

I closed the door to {{user}}’s apartment and turned the lock. A deathly silence settled around us.

I remained with my back to him, one hand still resting against the lock, trying to find a single explanation that would not sound like a complete lie.

I found none.

Slowly, I turned toward him.

“I was just about to come over and borrow some flour,” I said, as though the only problem in this situation was a missing cooking ingredient.

It was not the best thing I could have said. It would, however, probably rank quite highly among the things most typical of me.

{{user}} did not even acknowledge the flour.

“I thought you were blind,” he said, staring at me from across the entryway.

“I am,” I answered immediately, although the silence that followed made it perfectly clear that the response was insufficient.

I could hear his rapid heartbeat. I could smell adrenaline, the fallen lamp, and the blood on my hand. Somewhere beneath the cabinet lay the knife I had kicked away with perfect accuracy, despite supposedly being unable to see my own shoes.

“My father was a boxer,” I added after a moment, rubbing my thumb over my bloodied knuckles.

It didn’t help.

“He taught me a few things,” I explained, although we both knew that “a few things” did not adequately cover whatever had just happened in his apartment.

I ran my tongue along the inside of my cheek, still standing in front of the locked door.

“The flour was a lie too,” I finally admitted.

That, at least, he had probably known from the beginning.

Past Route — Neighbor Days

✦⋆AnyPOV⋆✦

──────────────

Matt Murdock was a good neighbor.

Perhaps even a little too good.

He never threw parties, played loud music, or left rubbish in the hallway. He held doors open, remembered the names of the older tenants, and always stopped to talk whenever he ran into {{user}} outside their building.

Sometimes the conversation lasted a minute. Sometimes ten. Sometimes Matt already had one hand on the door to his apartment when he suddenly remembered another question he absolutely needed to ask them.

He was also the only man in Hell’s Kitchen who regularly went grocery shopping and yet never seemed to own anything he happened to need.

First, he ran out of coffee. Then milk. Later, it was salt, a phone charger, a corkscrew, and laundry detergent. Somehow, every few days, Matt discovered another completely ordinary household item he desperately needed to borrow from the apartment next door.

Fortunately for his dignity, {{user}} never seemed particularly interested in pointing out how often those little emergencies happened to end with Matt remaining in their doorway for another fifteen minutes, smiling innocently and asking about their day.

“You know, you could just admit you wanted to see me,” they said one evening as they handed him a phone charger identical to the one currently plugged in beside his bed.

“I could. But then you might stop opening the door for me,” Matt replied, accepting it with a smile.

They didn’t.

Borrowing things was not the only way Matt took advantage of his neighbor’s kindness. He was blind, after all, and {{user}} was a good person. A kind, helpful person who apparently did not mind Matt inventing increasingly creative reasons to bring them a little closer.

Sometimes he needed help choosing a tie for work. Sometimes he was unsure whether there was a stain on his shirt. Once, he asked them to check whether he had fastened his cuff correctly, despite having managed buttons by himself every day for more than thirty years.

{{user}} stood in front of him, took his wrist, and adjusted the fabric around his sleeve. Matt tilted his head toward them as though whatever they were doing required his complete concentration.

“There. Done,” they said, releasing his hand.

“Already? You’re very efficient,” he replied with unmistakable disappointment.

On another occasion, he invited them over to help him choose a shirt for a client meeting. Matt presented them with three options, even though he knew perfectly well that Foggy had already selected the correct one at the office.

“This one,” {{user}} decided, smoothing the collar of the navy shirt Matt was already wearing.

His hand settled lightly against their waist, supposedly only so he would not lose his balance.

“Are you sure?” he asked, tilting his head a little closer.

“Yes,” they confirmed.

“Then I suppose you’ll have to help me more often,” Matt said, making no particular effort to remove his hand from their waist.

It was an impressively shameless suggestion from a man who, five minutes earlier, had required assistance identifying the color navy.

Still, {{user}} continued opening the door for him. They continued helping him with ties, shirts, and an entire collection of problems that mysteriously ceased to exist whenever they were not around. If they noticed that Matt was perfectly capable of doing those exact same things by himself, they politely kept that knowledge to themselves.

Their relationship quickly developed its own comfortable routine. Matt borrowed things he already owned. {{user}} received food that Foggy had supposedly ordered by mistake. They ran into each other on the stairs more often than coincidence should reasonably allow, and Matt always recognized them before they had the chance to speak.

He blamed their footsteps.

He offered the same explanation for recognizing their scent, their shampoo, the coffee inside their closed travel cup, and the exact moment they leaned closer.

Apparently, blindness considerably sharpened the other senses. Apparently, it also removed every trace of shame a person might ordinarily feel about flirting with their neighbor.

There was only one thing that did not fit the image of the charming, considerate, and occasionally helpless lawyer living on the other side of the wall.

At night, Matt’s apartment sounded as though he led a second, considerably more interesting life.

He returned home at absurd hours. Heavy footsteps, overturned furniture, dull impacts against the floor, and muffled groans traveled through the wall. The shower sometimes ran at three in the morning, and Matt would appear in the hallway the next day with a split lip, bruised knuckles, or one arm held unnaturally stiff at his side.

He always had an explanation. He had walked into a door. Tripped on the stairs. Hit himself on a cabinet. Hell’s Kitchen apparently had exceptionally aggressive furniture.

Of course, there was another possible explanation for the late-night groaning, rhythmic impacts against the wall, and creaking furniture. {{user}} was beginning to suspect that their charming blind neighbor might have a remarkably active sex life.

He didn’t.

Unfortunately for Matt, the truth was considerably less enjoyable and mostly involved criminals, broken ribs, and stitching his own wounds alone in the bathroom. Had he known what conclusions {{user}} had reached, he probably would have allowed them to keep believing them.

──────────────

That evening, I really was behaving myself.

I had been home for almost an hour, sitting on the couch with dinner half-finished on the coffee table and paperwork from the office spread beside me. No rooftops. No broken ribs. No particularly convincing reason to end up outside {{user}}’s apartment.

Which was unfortunate, because I wanted one.

I leaned back against the couch and considered my options. Coffee was too obvious. I had borrowed their phone charger three days ago, and even I had enough self-respect not to lose the same imaginary charger twice in one week. Milk might have worked if I hadn’t carried a fresh carton upstairs that morning.

Then I remembered the sugar.

Technically, I had sugar. I had bought it yesterday. {{user}} had seen me buy it yesterday.

That complicated things, but it did not make them impossible.

Five minutes later, I was standing outside their door with an empty cup in one hand, listening to their footsteps move somewhere inside the apartment. I knocked twice and waited, already smiling by the time I heard them approaching.

The lock turned. I lifted the cup slightly toward them.

“I need sugar.”

I gave that statement approximately two seconds to survive before adding, with considerably less conviction:

“And before you ask, no, you did not see me buy some yesterday.”