blindfighter: <user name=easystreet> (but now I'm servin' hemp)
Matt "sexual rain man" Murdock | Daredevil ([personal profile] blindfighter) wrote2015-11-20 11:39 pm

There was a time when I was good, but there are witches in the woods.

It's around 630 when Matt stops pretending to be asleep.

Though that's a lie, just a tad--Matt has slept. On and off, on his silk sheets and curled up naked with another man in what feels like forever. It's nice, and for a few hours it lasts. It really and truly lasts, and Matt can hear the steady beating of Tim's heart. He can hear every creak as his bones adjust, can still smell scotch and bourbon as he exhales in his sleep. It's not the kind that's overwhelming, it's natural and in a way comforting.

But it's still another person and Matt Murdock is used to being alone. He's used to not getting close.

He's used to one night stands and relationships that barely last a month, if that. He's used to Foggy clapping him on the shoulder and telling him there'll be more.

He's used to going to their place. This is the first time he's brought someone home.

Someone here.

He's brought people over, but not for a one night stand. This is a different circumstance in many ways--mostly that they're going to see each other again. They're going to pass each other in the courtrooms even if they're not going to actively see each other although, if Matt's being honest, he does want to. It had been one of the best lays in a while.

And that's how, at exactly 6:40 in the morning, Matt Murdock decides he can't get used to it just yet. So instead, he gets to work. Turns the alarm off to let Tim sleep in, gets half-dressed (socks, slacks and a dress shirt, the first few buttons undone and the collar a little rumpled), and is in the kitchen. He gets to work.

If this is a one-night stand with special circumstances, he may as well make breakfast. That includes half a grapefruit for each of them, fresh fruit, and Matt himself is in the middle of cooking up some of the bacon and eggs. Simple and scrambled, but if there's one thing Matt can do better than most thanks to his olfactory senses being heightened, it's cook.
comfortablyerect: (no pussy no dope this ain't saigon)

[personal profile] comfortablyerect 2016-01-16 01:41 am (UTC)(link)
"I know," he murmurs. He knows Mat didn't mean to make him worry, but that doesn't mean he didn't. That doesn't mean he didn't spend several hours in the hospital trying to convince himself and Foggy and Karen that Matt wasn't dead. That doesn't mean he hasn't done more working than sleeping the past few days because people he cared about got hurt and died and all he wants to do is get that shot he couldn't get before.

It doesn't mean he's not frustrated. It doesn't mean he's not angry about it.

But it's a quiet anger. It's not like that sudden, exploding rage that his father possessed, the kind he can see in Matt sometimes. He's always had his mother's temper. Too slow to build to be worth mentioning.

He wants to ask Matt what happened. How, exactly, he got hurt. This time, the last time, next time, because it's not as if this is a one-off occurrence. It's not as if Matt hasn't been littered in these sort of injuries before. He wants to demand a real explanation that's not some bullshit about being clumsy.

But Matt doesn't owe him that. Didn't even owe him the vague string of texts over the past couple of days assuring Tim that he's fine. Matt doesn't owe him anything, and Tim-- he needs to stop expecting more than he deserves.

He follows Matt into the living room, closely watching the way the other walks, trying to determine just how bad the damage is.
comfortablyerect: (but that don't make no sense to me)

[personal profile] comfortablyerect 2016-01-16 02:33 am (UTC)(link)
There's too much distance between them. It's insane how one incident can completely undo weeks worth of growing closer, getting more and more attached. And now he looks at Matt and feels like he hardly knows him at all.

It's probably better that they aren't dating. That they're not serious. There's too many secrets, too many unspoken personal issues between them, and they're both to blame for it. Matt's, maybe, are a little more serious, but Tim's never forthcoming with the truth, either.

It's almost like they're strangers again, and Tim doesn't like that. But there are blinds over the windows and Kentucky brewed bourbon in the cabinet, and those didn't show up until after Tim started staying the night. There's a book he accidentally left here weeks ago sitting on the coffee table, and that too is proof that they know each other. They're not dating, but they're not strangers.

"I got it," he says, moving into the kitchen. He knows where everything is, and that's more proof that they're not strangers. "Go sit down."
comfortablyerect: (and taped to the wall)

[personal profile] comfortablyerect 2016-01-16 03:29 am (UTC)(link)
Matt is capable. He's capable of navigating a staircase drunk with someone all but clinging to his side, and he's capable of pouring some drinks for the two of them. Tim doesn't doubt it for a second, but he also doesn't care. He feels like, at the very least, he's earned the right to be worried. They're not dating, but they're friends, sort of.

At least, Matt's the closest thing Tim has to a friend in the city.

"You," Tim says, slowly and carefully, trying his best to keep the anger and frustration out of his voice. "Look like you got hit by a bus. I'm not gonna bother askin' where you were or what you were doin' when the explosions happened, because I know you're not gonna answer me. So just go sit down and let me get the liquor so we can get drunk. Please."

They'll be better when they're drunk. Less stiff and awkward and formal. It'll be better.
comfortablyerect: (ain't gonna see no more damage done)

[personal profile] comfortablyerect 2016-01-16 04:14 am (UTC)(link)
Tim doesn't deserve him. But not for the reasons Matt thinks.

His expression softens, just a touch. Matt can't see it, of course, but it reflects in his voice, soothing over the raw edges of his frustration. He's glad, actually, that Matt doesn't bother with any ass-covering explanations, doesn't even bother trying to lie. The apology, while not as good as the truth, is almost welcome.

"I know." He doesn't say 'it's okay', because it's not, really. It's not okay, and Tim's not going to lie, either. But he does shift his wrist in Matt's grasp, turning his hand so he can curl his fingers around the other's, and bring Matt's hand up to kiss the palm of it briefly.

"Now go on, go sit down. I'll be there in a minute."
comfortablyerect: (i'm fighting i'm bleeding)

[personal profile] comfortablyerect 2016-01-16 04:43 am (UTC)(link)
This, he thinks, is where it starts falling apart. This is where the other shoe drops, like Tim's been waiting for, and Matt starts drifting away. Where there are longer and longer stretches of Matt being "busy" until eventually, they're only seeing each other in the court room. Tim can feel it, the distance already squeezing between them. It's only a matter of time now.

He should probably just cut it off now. Beat Matt to the punch and do it himself just to save him a little less heartache. He knew it was coming and it's still twisting in his stomach uncomfortably. It'll just hurt worse if he lets it drag on.

But Tim's never been very good at saving himself.

Instead, he grabs the bourbon and the scotch from the cabinet, two glasses, and joins Matt in the living room, sitting down before answering.

"Yeah. Of course." Of course. It doesn't matter how frustrated he might be, or how angry he was before, Tim doesn't think he'll ever be able to tell Matt no. Ultimately, it will be his downfall. But for tonight, it only means curling up with a good looking lawyer between silk sheets and catching up on sleep.
comfortablyerect: (red white and blue)

[personal profile] comfortablyerect 2016-01-16 05:41 am (UTC)(link)
"Me, too," Tim admits, all quiet, drawling murmurs. It's not the sort of thing he'd normally admit, because it feels like he's admitting to a weakness. He's a soldier. He shouldn't feel weak. But he does, and he admits it to Matt in different, fewer words.

He pours the bourbon for himself, then pours the scotch for Matt, sliding it across the table until it touches his hand. It feels like these past few days that he's been running on nothing but cat naps and bourbon and coffee. He can't get away with keeping a bottle in his desk (or, as it is, in Nelson's desk) here like he could in Kentucky, but there's a bar down the street from the station, and more often than not, Tim ends up taking his work home with him.

He smiles ruefully as he sits back against the couch, leaning just slightly towards Matt. He always said he'd be nothing like his daddy, but he thinks that maybe Matt was right to be concerned about his drinking. It's a little more than just 'a glass before bed'.

But he's functioning. As long as he's still functioning, it's alright.

"The thing about bein' a sniper," Tim says, voice quiet as he takes a sip of bourbon. "Is that you're almost always out of harm's way. You watch a lot of people get hurt and a lot of people die while you're tucked away safe and sound on whatever rooftop or cliff side they put you on."
comfortablyerect: (keep your heads up for roadside bombs)

[personal profile] comfortablyerect 2016-01-16 06:58 am (UTC)(link)
Tim's never been entirely comfortable with affection. He's grown used to rejecting it, hand holding and cuddling and all that stuff, because that's when the hook-ups and the one night stands get too personal and too messy and all those things he tries so hard to avoid.

He tried to avoid them with Matt, too, but clearly failed. He didn't stand a chance. Not against a justice-driven, good-looking lawyer with a smile that rivals the fucking sun.

It's different, with Matt. He likes holding Matt's hand, likes twining their fingers together, as he does now. His thumb brushes along the length of Matt's index finger, and he can feel bruised, split knuckles beneath his fingertips. He's never been entirely comfortable discussing this sort of thing either, but here he is, gazing at their joined hands as he talks.

"Not this time. I couldn't get the shot." He takes another drink of bourbon, a long one. "And instead of lettin' the response team go in, I tried to find a better angle. He got away. The team went in to find him and some of 'em didn't come back out."

He's not being specific, but he figures Matt probably knows anyway. He can put two and two together.
comfortablyerect: (a sign in his hand)

[personal profile] comfortablyerect 2016-01-16 08:22 am (UTC)(link)
Logically, he knows that. Or, he suspects it, anyway. If he'd let the team go in the first time, a lot more bodies would've been dropped courtesy of the vigilante. It does not, however, make it any easier to deal with. Tim is used to being directly responsible for peoples' deaths. But usually, it's the bad guys dying, not the good ones.

His hand tightens around Matt's briefly, just a quick squeeze. He gets through his first glass of bourbon in nearly record time, and leans forward to pour himself another without letting go of Matt's hand.

He knows there's not enough alcohol in the world to combat the nightmares he's bound to have tonight, but he's sure as hell gonna try anyway.

"They don't teach you how to get rid of the guilt," he says. "In the army. They teach you how to compartmentalize, how to lock it all away and separate it from your job so you're a more proficient killer. So you won't hesitate when you pull the trigger. What they don't tell you is that you can't keep it separate once you get home. Doesn't work. Don't have a mission to bury it under."

He pauses, frowning at his glass. He won't look at Matt. He doesn't think he can right now, honestly. Not when he's talking about this. "I could never decide if livin' with the guilt was better than never feelin' it again. Some soldiers can't find their humanity again when they come back. Kept it buried to long, I guess. They end up losin' their wives, their kids. They're the ones that become hired guns. Sometimes I think the only difference between snipers and hitmen is that hitmen are paid better."
comfortablyerect: (they're gonna rip it off)

[personal profile] comfortablyerect 2016-01-16 09:01 am (UTC)(link)
There's a part of him — and it's a part that Tim has become very familiar with — that is doing this, saying all of this out loud, finally, for the first time, because he's hoping it'll make Matt push him away faster. This part of him is the self-destructive part, the same part that picks bar fights just so he can taste blood in his mouth. This is the thing that kept any other potential relationship from working. The baggage they couldn't carry, even though Tim never asked them to.

It will be the same, he reckons, with Matt. He'll talk about it and there will be nightmares, and afterwards he'll drink and become just a little more distant as he tries to stop seeing the ghosts. And soon, Matt will realize he doesn't want to deal with these issues either, and he'll leave.

It'll hurt, but it'll be a familiar hurt. And the sooner it happens, the sooner Tim can make it happen, the less painful it'll be. The sooner he can remember why second dates are a bad idea, the better.

He'll make Matt let go because Matt deserves to be with someone who isn't quite so damaged.

Matt's lips find his jaw, and Tim's eyes slip shut, his grip on his glass of bourbon tightening slightly. Matt will assure him like this until assuring him becomes too much work. And it will, eventually. It always does. He turns his head, pressing his cheek against the palm of Matt's hand.

"You don't want to hear about it. It's not pretty."
comfortablyerect: (one step ahead of you)

[personal profile] comfortablyerect 2016-01-16 09:38 am (UTC)(link)
Talking about it doesn't make Tim feel better. It doesn't lift some metaphorical weight off his shoulders. It's part of the reason he never bothered with any sort of therapy. Talking about it just makes him want to drink more, and that, usually, is something he wants to avoid.

Except for tonight. Tonight, he wants to drink well past the point of being too drunk, past the point where the nightmares should stay at bay, even though he knows that this time around, it's pointless to bother. The nightmares will come no matter how much alcohol he consumes or talking he does. It's inevitable.

He downs what's left of his glass and refills it. He wants to lean into Matt's side, but doesn't want to jar any of his injuries. So he settles for scooting a little bit closer and kissing him on the mouth, briefly, before leaning his shoulder against the back of the couch and talking. He doesn't discuss everything. He doesn't talk about his kill count, and there are some missions that involved such big name terrorists that, legally speaking, he can't talk about them. But he talks about what it's like to watch a man live his life for days before shooting him through the head. He talks about how, sometimes, there's a wife or kids around, and the people giving the orders don't care about that. He talks about how he hasn't ever missed, not once in his entire military and law enforcement career.

He talks about Mark, his friend with the shattered leg and the oxy addiction. He doesn't talk about Mark's death, or Colt, and he definitely doesn't talk about how he goaded Colt into drawing on him so he could put his friend's killer down.

There's a lot more he doesn't talk about. A lot of parts he's vague on. He talks until he's had too many glasses of bourbon, and it's late and all those days of sleepless working are catching up with him. He and Matt crawl into bed, and it's warm and comfortable and Tim closes his eyes, even though he's scared of falling asleep.

But he does. And the nightmares come. They're vivid and intense, a little more so than usual. He can taste smoke, but it tastes more like the smoke from the bombings a few nights ago than the smoke in Afghanistan. This dream is different. This dream is rooftops and New York City's nipping chill instead of dusty cliff sides and Afghanistan's hot sun. There's a terrorist still, but instead of it being the Taliban, it's the vigilante, right in the sight of his scope. And as Tim watches, the vigilante turns into Matt, and then his mother, then Raylan, Rachel, Art, Nelson, then Matt again. And it's Matt when he pulls the trigger and wakes up.

Waking up means sitting bolt upright in bed, gasping for breath like he's broken water surface. The silk sheets around him are damp with sweat, and a gunshot echoes loudly in his head. He can smell gun powder and blood and the city air, and he can see crosshairs on everyone he loves when he closes his eyes.

He can't catch his breath. He can't even think straight as he pushes himself back against the headboard of the bed.
comfortablyerect: (a sign in his hand)

[personal profile] comfortablyerect 2016-01-16 10:10 am (UTC)(link)
Tim, despite all his training and all his instincts, does not choose fight over flight, in this instance. He doesn't want to attack, he wants to get away. He's unused to other people being around when he wakes up from his nightmares, and so his immediate reaction to the contact is to jerk back. But Matt's grip is firm and so Tim's hands ball into fists instead, tense and trembling.

His heart is slamming against his rib cage and he's looking at Matt like he's not really seeing him at all. All he can see is Matt's body, dead eyes, a bullet through the head. Dead before he even knew what hit him.

He might be sick, honestly.

Matt's talking. Tim squeezes his eyes shut until he sees bright colors blooming on the dark insides of his eyelids, until he can't see the crosshairs or the blood or the bodies anymore. And he listens to Matt's voice through the echo of the gunshot, and though he can't quite get a handle on what the other's saying, it's the sound itself that starts to ground him.

It's just a little, like one root in the ground, but it's something. His breathing is shaky, unsteady, catching in his throat regularly. There's smoke in his mouth and blood and gunpowder in his nose, and his jaw is clenched just as tight as his fists. He does not open his eyes, but he focuses on Matt. The Matt that's here and real and alive and talking, not the Matt that's still and dead in his dream.
comfortablyerect: (red white and blue)

[personal profile] comfortablyerect 2016-03-19 07:59 am (UTC)(link)
Slowly, but surely, the instinct to get away starts to ease. Matt doesn't try to get closer, and that's fine. That's good. It's what most people do, on the rare occasions things like this happen, and it only ever makes things worse. He doesn't like being around people when he feels vulnerable, let alone being touched. And nobody seems to get it.

It's different, with Matt. Not because Matt gets it, or because he knows what to do (he's not sure that Matt does know what to do, and that's fine. Tim doesn't know what to do either, truthfully), but because he's learned that feeling vulnerable around Matt Murdock is not altogether a bad thing. Somehow, Tim feels vulnerable all the time around the lawyer, like he's raw and exposed despite how much he works at keeping himself closed off. Either he fails terribly or it doesn't seem to matter, because it's like Matt can see right through him sometimes.

Ironic, maybe. But not untrue.

And here, now, when Tim's at his weakest, he can feel Matt's thumbs against the rapid pulse in his wrists, and he knows that even though he feels awfully exposed, he will be okay.

With some effort, he manages to concentrate on the words Matt's saying just as he starts talking about lunch. And just like the instinct to flee, everything else begins to fade too. It's not fast. He hardly notices it's happening, and honestly, it'll probably be days before he can forget the fine, gritty taste of sand in his mouth. But it's better. He's getting better.

"That was the third time that week my lunch got cut short," Tim says, and his voice is quiet and pained and it breaks twice just in that sentence alone. He moves a little closer, doesn't open his eyes, but puts his forehead on Matt's shoulder. He still doesn't think he can look at the other man without seeing a bullet hole in his forehead. And until he's positive that he won't see the blood and the death, he won't look Matt in the face at all. He can't.

"Keep talkin'," he murmurs.
comfortablyerect: (they're gonna rip it off)

[personal profile] comfortablyerect 2016-03-19 08:39 am (UTC)(link)
Tim exhales slowly. Matt's hand in his hair is grounding, a steadying force just like his voice. These little things — Matt's fingers and the way he talks about the menial things, even the silk sheets on the bed beneath him, the feeling of the other man's skin when Tim turns his head so it's his cheek resting on the lawyer's shoulder instead of his forehead — they're like individual anchors for him, dragging him back to reality.

Back to the present. Back to Matt.

Somehow, despite this being one of the worse nightmares he's had in a long time, he's seeming to come down from it sooner than he ever has on his own, or with anyone else for that matter. Eventually, all he can hear is Matt's voice, and the sound of the city outside. No more gunshots. He can still smell smoke, still taste dirt in his mouth, though those always linger longer than the rest.

But he still doesn't dare open his eyes. He's too afraid to.

"I know you're sensitive to things like that," Tim says quietly, and there's still a faint tremor in his voice, but at least it doesn't crack this time. "I remember you sayin' something a few weeks ago about the guy's cologne next to us at the bar."

It was for Matt's benefit, though it's not something he'd admit under normal circumstances. But tonight is different. Tonight, he can't possibly feel any more vulnerable than he already does, so he might as well tell the truth.

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