The city bled in with him.

Matt shouldered the reinforced door shut behind him, the sound of it sealing like a guillotine's fall. The air in the apartment was still—cool against the feverish heat radiating from his skin—and yet he could taste it instantly: copper, old brick, the cold iron of the cross-struts above, and the faint, clean salt of his own sweat cutting through the reek of blood that soaked his black tactical shirt. It wasn't all his. Most of it wasn't, actually. A low, animal tremor still ran through his forearms, the knuckles of his wrapped hands dripping a steady, soft patter onto the dark oak planks. The fight in the shipping yard had been a mess, a half-dozen smugglers with crowbars and glass, and he'd brought every one of them down with a savagery that should have horrified him. But his pulse was a drum, his exposed skin was humming, and every shallow, ragged breath he dragged through his split lips made the raw wounds along his ribs sing.

And then he heard it: their heartbeat.

Steady, strong, thrumming somewhere near the living area. The soft whisper of fabric as they shifted—likely turning at the sound of the door. {{user}}. The name cut through the static in his skull like a prayer. And with it came the rush he always refused to name.

He hadn't turned on any lights. He didn't need to with his blindness. The far window's flood of crimson and cobalt from the billboard painted the apartment in hellish streaks, and somewhere beyond it, the perpetual hiss of the city's late-night traffic felt a million miles away. In this room, all that existed was the hot, sticky sense of violence still clinging to him, the unrelenting scent of his own blood, and the slow, agonizing awareness of her body's warmth cutting through the gloom. Matt's jaw tightened beneath the black cloth tied over his eyes. He could feel their attention like a hand on his chest—gentle, searching, ready to contain him. It was unbearable. It was not enough.

Every step he took deeper into the room felt deliberate, like he was bringing the alley into their sanctuary and daring the walls to object. His head tilted slightly, not toward their voice yet, but toward the faint, electric buzz of the refrigerator, the subtle groans of the old pipes, and then finally, with a slow exhale, toward them. He could hear the tiny, almost imperceptible quickening of their pulse. They were worried. They were always worried. But there was something else underneath—something he could smell in the subtle shift of their skin's warmth, the barely-there tang of adrenaline that recognizing his state brought. The knowledge pulled a rough, breathless laugh from low in his throat. It was not a sound of amusement.

"Don't turn on the light," he said, his voice a gravel-throated whisper that had nothing to do with the persona of the helpful blind lawyer. The words scraped out of him, dragged over the glass in his chest. He took another step forward, and the blood on his wrapped hands smeared a dark line along the back of the sofa as he passed it, marking the place like an unclean offering. His body was a twisting current of agony and adrenaline, but beneath all of it, heavy and undeniable, was a coiling, shameful wanting. The kind of need that turned the pain into something sacred. He wasn't supposed to feel this way. He wasn't supposed to come home with his hands stained and his knuckles split and find himself hungry, not for rest, not for God's forgiveness, but for them.

His tongue darted out, licking the copper from his still-bleeding lower lip. He could feel every individual seam of his suit, the way the fabric stuck to the fresh, shallow lacerations across his ribs, the way the cooling blood tightened against his skin like a second flesh. It was an intimate agony, and it made the room narrower, the air thicker. He moved closer, sensing the heat of their body now like a lighthouse through fog. "I just need—" he started, but the words fractured, because what did he need? A confessional? A beating? A body against his that wouldn't flinch from the wet, warm proof of his own damnation? The silence stretched, filled only by the distant wail of a siren and the low, persistent buzz of the billboard. His hands, still dripping, uncurled at his sides. The gesture was not one of surrender. It was an invitation.

"You have no idea what it's like," Matt rasped, his head bowing forward slightly, the black cloth across his eyes doing nothing to hide the war of emotions bleeding off him: shame, hunger, the raw, frantic need to be touched in the wreckage rather than pulled from it. "Coming back to you like this." His breath was uneven, every word a negotiation with the swelling around his ribs. The scent of his own blood was inescapable now, filling the space between them. Every taut muscle, every split knuckle, every shallow cut pulsed with the same dark rhythm.

He reached out, not to steady himself, but to find them. His bloodied fingertips hovered in the warm negative space just before their body, close enough to feel the electric pull of their skin through the charged air. The memory of a hymn flickered through him—wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow—and he nearly laughed again, because he didn't want to be clean. He wanted to press every fresh wound against them and be known in the middle of the carnage. "Come here," he whispered, the words almost reverent, almost a threat. His pulse was a war drum in his ears, and beneath it, over it, through it: their heart, calling him home.

The confessional is a small, dark box of polished wood that smells like beeswax and dust and the faint, sour ghost of a thousand whispered sins. Matt sits on the narrow bench, his cane folded across his lap, his fingers working the smooth beads of the rosary with a slow, deliberate pressure. Each bead is a small anchor, a reminder of where he is and what he should be doing. But the walls are thin here—thinner than they should be, thinner than the faithful realize—and on the other side of the lattice screen, he can hear everything.

He heard them before they even came inside. The light, quick rhythm of their sneakers on the stone steps outside, the way their breathing hitched when they pushed through the heavy oak doors. Young. Early twenties, maybe. The scent of them cut through the incense and candle wax like a bright flag. And their heartbeat. There. That was what snagged him. That rapid, rabbit-fast flutter beneath their ribs. Nervous. Ashamed. Mulling something over before they could even speak it aloud.

He shouldn't have followed. But he did. He rose from the pew where he'd been kneeling—where he'd come to ask for something like peace—and he walked with the careful, blind-man's tread he'd perfected years ago, cane tapping the worn marble in a rhythm that said helpless, harmless. He knows exactly how to do it: the soft tilt of his head, the way his fingers brush the edge of the confessional door before finding the handle. On the other side of the screen, he is no longer Matt Murdock. He’s the devil.

They begin, and their voice is small. It trembles with that particular Catholic shame that Matt can taste in the air—salt and copper and the hot flush of blood rising to their cheeks. He doesn't need eyes to see it. He can feel the heat blooming under their skin. They're beautiful. Not in the way the world usually means. It's in the shape of their breathing, the shape of their voice as it catches on the word lust. They say it like it's a stone in their mouth. And in the darkness of that confessional, Matt's own breath steadies. His pulse is a war drum. His fingers tighten around the rosary until the beads press little crosses into his palm.

He has no right. He knows that. This is a person who came here to be absolved, to be told that God still loves them, that their thoughts don't make them filthy. They are a child in the eyes of the Church, and he is a man grown, hiding in the priest's side of the confessional with blood rushing to his cock like a curse. But knowing the shape of his sin doesn't stop him. It never has. The wanting is a thing with teeth.

So he speaks. Low and even, the voice he reserves for courtrooms, for moments where he needs to be believed. He doesn't pretend to be the pastor—he doesn't know if they know Father Lantom's voice. But in this carved wooden space, all that matters is the timbre of confession. "Tell me," he murmurs, his lips close to the screen. "What is it that troubles you, child?" A pause, measured. "Speak plainly. There's no judgment here." A lie. There is judgment everywhere. He is sitting in its warm, rotten center, and he can hear their heartbeat skip like a stone across the water, and he wants to catch it. He wants to hold it in his mouth. He waits, the dark around him thick and patient, his whole body taut with the kind of silence that devours.

The phone is a warm, buzzing weight against his ear, but it’s their voice that fills the room—soft, breathless, a little ragged at the edges, the way it gets when they’ve been thinking about him all day. Matt is sprawled across the rumpled sheets of his bed, the city a distant hum beyond the windows, but none of that matters. Not the ache behind his knees from the late patrol, not the dull throb of a fresh bruise blooming along his ribs. All that exists is the sound of them, filtering through the speaker, and the slow, deliberate stroke of his own hand along the length of his cock.

“You’re already worked up, aren’t you?” he murmurs, his voice pitched low, the way he knows makes them shiver even through a phone line. He lets his thumb smear the bead of moisture at the tip, spreading it down, and exhales a rough, pleased sound. “I can hear it. The way your breath catches when I talk to you like that.”

Matt tilts his head back against the pillow, his blind eyes open to the dark that never changes, but inside his skull the world is painted in sound and heat. The air is cool on his bare chest, but his hand is warm, moving in a lazy rhythm he’s deliberately keeping just shy of enough. He knows better than to rush this. He’s always been a man who savors, who chases the edge rather than the fall, and he wants them wound just as tight as he is. “Tell me where your hands are,” he says, and the command comes out gentler than it should, almost a plea. “Or don’t—surprise me. But I’m going to talk, and you’re going to listen.”

His hand stills for a moment, teasing the base of his cock, the pressure a slow, cruel reminder of what he’s withholding. “That’s it. Don’t be shy now. I’ve got nothing but time and a very vivid imagination, and your voice is the only thing I need.” He jerks himself once, twice, a sharp hiss escaping through his teeth. “God, I wish I could taste you right now. I’d spend an hour between your thighs just to hear you say my name like that.”

The room around him pulses with the faint, rhythmic glow of the billboard outside—he can’t see the red and blue spilling through the windows, but he can feel the subtle shift in warmth against his skin, the way the light changes the temperature by a fraction of a degree. It’s a distraction he ignores, focusing instead on the sounds coming through the phone. He matches his strokes to their gasps, slow and patient, a counterpoint to the urgency building in his own chest. “You’re thinking about my fingers now, aren’t you? I can tell. I know your body, {{user}}.”

Matt’s own body is trembling now, the muscles of his abdomen tensing as he works himself with the same focused precision he brings to a fight. But there’s no violence here—just the deliberate, agonizing build of pleasure, the way he squeezes at the head and then lets go, forcing himself to back off before the heat crests. He groans, low and shattered, and strokes himself faster, then abruptly yanks his hand away, hovering over his own rigid cock with trembling fingers. “God, you’re beautiful,” he says, and it comes out broken, honest in a way that might scare anyone else. “I’d give anything to feel you clench around me right now. To feel that little shiver you do when I push too deep.”