Work Text:
Of course the city would be doing road work - very loud road work - in front of the office, bright and early on a Monday morning. Karen tries to cover her ears without dropping her keys or the bag of muffins, anything to drown out the noise of jackhammers ripping up concrete. “How perfect,” she mumbles darkly, half-tempted to submit a complaint about the noise. Mercifully, the building’s door gives way and shuts tightly behind her, even though the old walls don’t provide much of a sound barrier.
Foggy’s angry shout of “GODDAMMIT, MATT” greets her before she rounds the corner leading to their office. She slowly approaches the door to Nelson & Murdock, feeling her fight-or-flight instinct kick in. Something’s wrong. They normally show up at least 20 minutes after she’s made coffee and coaxed the ancient copier into warming up, and that’s considered an early day for them.
“You’ve got to be more careful, man! I can’t believe you got stabbed and literally tried to walk it off.”
“Stop yelling, Foggy, and please close the window - my head is pounding.” Matt’s voice. Tired, more than usual, from the sound of it.
“No - you deserve it. This is what happens when you go out every night and then come into work early pretending that everything’s normal, when instead you’re bleeding into our office sink because your stupid suit couldn’t even stop a goddamn knife.” Foggy’s voice is equal parts frustrated and concerned.
“I said I was sorry, and the guy got a lucky hit. The suit’s still better than what I had before.”
“That Dread Pirate Roberts outfit was a fucking joke. I want it known that any and all stabbings are unacceptable under the Daredevil code of conduct.”
She can hear Matt’s small laugh through the wall. “But I’m not the one going around stabbing people, so wouldn’t it be the combatant’s code of conduct?”
“You’re not allowed to lawyer me while I finish bandaging you up. There. Now please put a shirt on before Karen gets here and I have to lie for you, again.”
Foggy must have gotten up to close the window because the construction noise is suddenly dampened. Karen’s head is spinning. She’s not sure she could think clearly even without the background noise. She’s rooted to the floor outside the office, trying to make sense of anything she just heard and breathe even though her heart feels like it could beat right out of her chest -
Matt and Foggy stopped talking. The only things she can hear are the boiling coffee pot and the muffled staccato of jackhammers from the street below. Karen takes a deep breath and counts to ten Mississippis before taking care to make the noisiest possible entrance.
Her eyes quickly scan the small office. Foggy’s pouring coffee in the kitchen and Matt’s putting on his blazer in his office. She notices the kitchen trash bag is already tied off with a knot, ready for disposal. Garbage day was yesterday.
“Oh, I didn’t expect you both in so early!” she exclaims with as much surprise as she can convincingly deliver.
Foggy half-smiles at her, guilt clouding his eyes. “Yeah, we wanted to get a jump on the Bennett case before the DA starts summoning its forces of darkness.”
Matt is stiff - his back to her, unreadable as ever.
Karen nods and plays along. “That makes sense. Need anything on my end?"
“Yeah, fire up LexisNexis and get ready to do some digging. Oh sweet, you brought muffins!”
She was prepared to write off the morning as another strange moment in her life at Nelson & Murdock when Matt started acting, well, guilty.
He was avoiding her, for one thing. He said all of a dozen words to her before lunch, and when he needed to talk to her, he couldn’t even fake eye contact (the glasses usually helped give the impression that he was at least looking at you). He wouldn’t even turn his face toward her when he asked for a file, or wanted to know about a pending case. Foggy at least has the sense to pretend like she hadn’t nearly caught them in the middle of something secretive. Their guilt all but confirmed what she'd overheard: in his spare time, mostly at night, her blind boss dons a special suit and semi-anonymously beats people up.
Karen knows that she has a compulsive inability to let anything go. She finishes every book she reads, even if she hates it. As a teen, she could never let her acne recover on its own, always picked at it and made it worse. After watching her basketball games her father had proudly called her tenacious, but she knows better. She is obsessive, for better or for worse. Set a problem in front of her, be it a pension file or a vast criminal conspiracy, and she’ll tear the city apart to find answers.
She doesn’t need to raze the city this time. She watches Matt all week; the slope of his shoulders (pretty built for a blind guy, she thinks more than once), the way his shirts pull tight across them when he reaches for a file. She stares at his mouth, tries to remember what it looked like in the rain outside her apartment. She stares at his mouth for a few other reasons. She watches his hands fly over his Braille reader and thinks about those hands pummeling the man who broke into her apartment. She looks down at her own hands and tries to forget the recoil of a .38.
An acronym gets stuck in her head one morning and she can't remember what it stands for, but the wi-fi is slow again and she can't google it. She watches Matt easily avoid tripping over a box of paper she had yet to put away. The box she hadn't warned him about.
The acronym finally comes to her: SNAFU (Situation Normal: All Fucked Up).
“... And that’s how I found Matt the next morning: passed out on the roof with the ambassador’s daughter, wearing nothing but the school flag.”
Karen laughs and turns to Matt, her words playful and slightly slurred. “Anything to say for yourself, counselor?” She hasn’t enjoyed herself this much in a long time.
Matt can’t keep the grin from his face. “I have no comment.”
Karen and Foggy laugh so hard they nearly fall off their barstools. They came to Josie’s to celebrate a round of indictments handed down to a dozen of Fisk’s old cronies, and somewhere after drink number three they started playing a game of “who’s done the stupidest shit?” So far Matt and Foggy were tied, but Karen wasn’t sure if anyone was actually keeping score. For now, she’s content to listen to Foggy’s increasingly outrageous college stories and watch Matt laughingly deny or confirm the details.
Matt gets up to go to the bar again. Foggy’s phone buzzes with a text that Karen can see is from Marci. Foggy immediately shoots off a reply, only to have his phone buzz again a minute later.
“We’re not keeping you from your girlfriend, are we?” Karen teases again. She’s somewhere past her fourth drink of the night, comfortably drunk and definitely in a teasing mood.
“Nah we’re just making plans to meet up later.” He taps out another reply. Karen wags her eyebrows at Foggy, who in turn flips her off. They both giggle.
Matt returns with a glass of water that he sets in front of her. She watches the delicacy in his placement, not so close that she’ll knock it over but not so far that she won’t notice it. It feels like a challenge.
Foggy puts his phone away. “Alright, gentleman and lady, I am still very much drunk, and we’re not done embarrassing each other yet. Which brings me to our next question of the night. What,” he bangs a drumroll on the table, “is your craziest sex fantasy?”
“Easy,” says Matt. “That I don’t feel guilty afterwards.”
Foggy raises an accusing finger. “Bullshit! You slept with more girls in law school than were actually enrolled in Columbia Law. You don’t get to pull that ‘good Catholic boy’ crap with me. I lived with you for three years, and I know for a fact that you’re about as celibate as Tony Stark.”
Matt just smiles and takes a drink. Foggy rounds on Karen. “Alright, Miss Page, please answer the question, and remember that perjury is a felony.”
“Never mind that we’re not in a court-”
“No comments from the gallery, Mr. Murdock! What say you, Miss Page? Whips and chains? Cowboys and barmaids?”
Karen laughs nervously. She steals a glance at Matt, watching his hands peel at his beer label. He’s focused, listening to her above the din of the bar. She thinks about the tension between them this past week, and the undercurrent that’s been there since he took a scared murder suspect into his home. She thinks about that footage of the Man in the Mask taking on three cops with his hands cuffed and tries to match that with the exhausted lawyer next to her who complains when she switches coffee brands, who works his hardest for clients who don't have anyone else. He hasn’t said anything to her about the morning she almost walked in on him, but he still acts like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. They’ve been dancing around each other for so long, lied about so many things, and she's not sure how to build anything out of the mess they've made. Stubborn and guarded, neither of them will make a move. They’re not in a cold war, exactly, but Karen can feel their game of brinkmanship coming to a point of no return. The real question is who will cave first.
“Now I know you’ll both make fun of me for this.”
Foggy motions for her to continue. “This would be pointless, otherwise.”
She takes a sip of her water. If she’s learned anything in her time in the legal profession, it’s how to lead a witness.
“Well, it started after the Man in the Mask saved me from the guy that Fisk sent to my apartment.”
Matt stops peeling at his label. Foggy’s smile slips.
“It was raining and everything, and it’s not like I could see his entire face or anything, but I could see his mouth, and... God this is so embarrassing.”
Foggy stares at her. Matt is stock still. Too easy.
“Well… from then on I started fantasizing that I’d find him in my apartment one night. Waiting for me. Mask on, head to toe in black. He’d pin me against a wall and go down on me, and he’d really just,” she does a hand motion that makes Foggy’s eyes go wide, “go to town, you know? And the mask would stay on. That’s the important part.”
Matt and Foggy are silent next to her. She takes another sip. “And that’s pretty much it. Like I said, it’s kind of embarrassing.”
Matt shakes his head. “It’s not….” he trails off, the rest of the thought already gone.
She doesn’t fail to notice the glance Foggy shoots at Matt. “Well one thing’s for certain,” he says before knocking back his drink.
“What?” Matt and Karen ask simultaneously.
“If the whole crime fighting thing doesn’t work out, Daredevil’s got one hell of a future in answering Craigslist personals."
Karen’s indignant “hey!” hits Foggy at the same time as Matt’s crumpled beer label.
Karen cracks her back while she waits for her email to refresh. She’s the only one in the office, Matt and Foggy left hours ago for some alumni reception at a bar uptown, and she can’t close up until Interpol records actually turn up something useful. She’s about to get up to pour herself another cup of tea when she hears the familiar “ping!” that means someone six time zones away finally woke up and gave her what she needed for their client’s international custody hearing later that week.
She texts Matt and Foggy to let them know the file came through and that she’s locking up for the night. Matt’s reply is an immediate “thank you.” Foggy’s comes as the office door clicks behind her: “Finally! Freakin’ Interpol is the worst! (Just kidding, NSA)” followed by the thumbs-up emoji. She smiles to herself and pulls the mace out of her bag, preparing for the walk home.
The city’s dark corners will always be there (how could they not, after a kidnapping, assault, and two attempts on her life within the span of a few months?), but there are fewer of them now that Fisk sits behind bars in Rikers. Still, she walks a little faster than normal, clutching her keys in one hand and her mace in the other. She knows fear, and she knows how to turn it into a weapon. She didn’t trick her would-be strangler into dropping his guard by letting fear take control.
There are no dark corners waiting for her tonight. She finally relaxes once the door to her building is safely latched behind her. The feeling of relief carries her up the stairs and into her apartment in record time.
She nearly empties her can of mace at the dark figure sitting in her open window before she realizes who it is. Daredevil, or The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, judging by the black clothes. Or my boss, she corrects, wondering which name he would prefer.
He doesn’t flinch, waits for her to make the first move. She sets her bag, keys, and mace on the kitchen table, and shuts the door.
“I…” she trails off and starts again. “Well, this is sort of a surprise.”
“I wasn’t sure how serious your offer was.” To his credit, he doesn’t try to deepen his voice or pretend like she wouldn’t recognize the voice of the man she’d been mildly obsessed with for the better part of a year. There can be no other pretense for this visit. Her stomach flips and she can feel her heart pounding in her ears again, idly wondering if she was first attracted to Matt or the Mask, or if it even matters anymore.
She takes three steps towards him, her voice less confident than her stride. “Dead serious.”
He remains seated in the window sill. It’s a warm spring night and a light breeze stirs up the stale air in her apartment. His eyes are hidden by the mask, but she knows how uncanny they look, like he can see every part of her.
The man in question interrupts her thoughts, his voice full of uncertainty. “Do you still want this? Because if you don’t, I can leave. I can leave, and we can pretend that I was never here, and Foggy doesn’t ever have to-”
Karen reaches for his face, effectively silencing him. Her fingers trace the stubble on his jaw, her thumb ghosting over his lips. “I want this,” she says to him in a voice barely above a whisper. “But this is about you, too.”
He leans into her touch and raises his head toward her. Looks at her, she supposes. His face feels warm under her hands, and she can smell the dried sweat on his skin.
“I. I, uh, I’ve wanted this for a while now.” His quiet admission gives her the confidence to bend down and meet his lips. He returns the kiss with enthusiasm, though the angle is awkward for both of them. He doesn’t taste of anything, she notes, which isn’t necessarily an absence of taste.
She pulls away first. “I, um… We should probably move away from the window before my neighbors get curious and break out their iPhones.”
He shuts her window and draws the blinds as she toes off her heels. He pulls off his gloves and sets them next to her purse before turning to pin her against the wall.
“Your perfume is my favorite thing about coming into the office,” he says into her neck. Karen feels an involuntary shiver run through her like an electric current, and arches her back against the sensation.
“I…” she manages to stammer out. “How do you…”
He finds a spot behind her ear that momentarily makes her forget his name, her name, anything that isn’t his mouth on her skin. The gasp that forms in her throat turns into a moan by the time it escapes her lips.
“Oh fuck it. The questions can wait.”
He laughs and kisses his way along her jaw, effectively short circuiting her brain and sending spots across her vision. She pulls up the hem of her dress and wraps one of her legs around his, slotting their bodies together. He inhales sharply and she takes the opportunity to pull at his bottom lip with her teeth, enjoying the way his stubble rubs against her skin. He lifts her up and she wraps both legs around his hips, her dress up around her waist and her weight balanced between Matt and the wall. Her nails rake at his shirt in an attempt to pull herself deeper into the kiss.
Karen finds herself simultaneously frustrated and turned on by the fact that they’re both fully clothed. “I need…” she sighs into his mouth.
“What do you need?” his attention to her is immediate, and she feels something twitch in her stomach. She kisses him lightly again before untangling her legs and touching back down on the floor. “I need,” she kisses him again, “to get out of these tights before someone gets hurt.”
He gives her enough room to pull her tights off (and underwear, for good luck, she thinks) with alarming speed. Almost immediately his hands slip under her dress to find the bare flesh of her hips and rub circles against the indents left by her tights. Karen’s not religious, but she’s pretty fucking sure that this is as close to heaven as she’ll ever get in any lifetime.
Matt stills under her for the first time that night, and she can practically hear the gears turning in his head. “I know,” he pauses, thinking carefully about his words. “There’s still something in your voice, and I know there are plenty of secrets you don’t want-”
Karen cuts him off with an open-mouthed kiss and feels his nails dig into her hips. The memory of Wesley’s lifeless body flashes briefly across her mind, and she quickly shuts down that particular train of thought before it gets out of control. “Bad timing,” she manages to gasp. Matt grunts in what she thinks is agreement.
“You really weren’t making up any of that fantasy stuff, were you?” he mumbles into her ear as he massages slow circles into her inner thigh.
“Naaaaah,” she lets out in a contented sigh, pulling her dress back up around her waist. “And I’m dead serious about the mask staying on.”
His free hand ghosts around her labia and she doesn’t think she’s ever been more turned on in her entire life. “As you wish,” he whispers, getting on his knees.
She thinks this might be some wonderful, crazy fever dream. “Right outfit, wrong fantasy.”
His mouth meets her clit in response and she momentarily forgets to breathe. When she finally remembers, it comes out in shuddering gasps while he does things with his tongue that she’d only ever read about. His stubble is almost painful against the sensitive skin of her thighs, though she’s pretty sure that he could rub them raw and she wouldn’t complain. In that moment Karen decides that any and all stories about Matt Murdock are true. Her nails dig into his shoulders in a losing battle to steady herself.
She considers steering him toward the couch because she’s not sure how much more of this she can take when she feels his fingers raking across her backside and oh shit holy shit she’s really not sure how much longer her legs will support her. She feels him work two fingers in and knows she’s a complete goner. “Move… left” she manages to gasp out. A spasm of pleasure says he followed her directions. “Perfect. Harder.” She leans into him a little and oh god oh god oh fuuuuuck rides out the most satisfying orgasm she’s had in a long time.
Boneless and breathing heavily, she resists the urge to slump onto Matt for support. He tilts his face up to her, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, and she thinks she could get ready for round two based on that sight alone.
“What can,” she tries to catch her breath and wait for the world to right itself again. “Thank you, for that. Jesus, just… Please tell me what I can do for you because holy shit, Matt, that was-” He stands up and takes both of her hands in his, guiding them to the base of his neck where his mask is knotted. She hesitates briefly before tugging it off.
Karen understands that knowing and seeing are two different, albeit related, things. Knowing that it was Matt - her lawyer, boss, friend, crush, source of constant fascination - under that mask was one thing. But seeing his familiar face in an unfamiliar costume is something entirely different.
Matt takes the mask from her hands, leaving them free to card through his hair. Her eyes find his, though she doesn’t know what she expects to see there. Maybe answers. They lie to each other all the time, started lying to each other from the moment they met, which maybe wasn’t the best start to an honest relationship. But he came here tonight, let her unmask him. She hopes she has the courage to meet him halfway.
“Seriously, Matt, if you want me to return the favor I am more than happy to-”
He cuts her off with a short kiss, which she supposes is only fair. She only notices the distant sound of sirens when Matt looks up. “We should talk about this tomorrow,” he says in a quiet voice. “I have to go. But Karen, I… I don’t want this to be a one time thing.”
She hands him his gloves, already planning rounds two through two hundred. “This was way too good to be a one time thing. And as for the other stuff, well… we’ll figure it out.”
He smiles at that and slips the mask back on. Within minutes he’s out the window, down the fire escape, and running into the night.
Morning comes a lot faster than Karen anticipated. She feels weightless on her mattress, perfectly relaxed and rested, only rising when her final “oh shit” alarm tells her that she’ll be late for work if she doesn’t get up right now.
Despite the late start she’s the first one at the office, as usual. She’s in the middle of bribing the copier to start up when Foggy walks in, complaining about both the hor d'oeuvres at the alumni event and his former classmates. Aside from her resilient afterglow, this feels like any other day at the office.
“I swear it’s like three years out and everyone forgot they had a soul. And don’t even get me started on the cheese spread. Hey, Matt,” he calls to the creaking door behind him, “did you eat anything from the reception last night? We were lucky. I think some people got food poisoning from the salmon rolls.”
Matt pauses on the way to his desk, cane at his side and briefcase in hand. “I thought they smelled off to me. No, I ate out afterwards.”
Karen fights the blush threatening to creep up her face. She’s never been happier to hear the loud whirring of the copier booting up.
“Coffee, anyone?” she manages. They both shout “yes!” after her as she retreats into the small kitchen to collect herself.
Matt walks in a few minutes later to put something in the fridge, their hips bumping together in the cramped space.
“I was thinking,” she starts in a low voice.
“Hm?” his voice feigns nonchalance, but he’s wearing a shit-eating grin that she’s half-tempted to relieve him of right here and now.
“I know you, ah, ‘ate out’ last night, but I was wondering if you’d want to try this new Peruvian place with me tonight. Unless two nights in a row of eating out is too much for you.”
The coffee maker buzzes. He turns to face her, his eyebrow quirked in a challenge, and she is definitely going to wipe that smile off his face later.
“I’ll try to wrap up work early, then. Give us enough time to eat and talk about everything?”
“Ceviche and conversation, then. It’s a date.” She presses his mug into his hands and plants a kiss on his cheek. She leaves to give Foggy his coffee and duplicate the Interpol records when a thought strikes her.
“Oh, and Matt, you got the check last time. Tonight's on me - my treat.”
Matt nearly chokes on his coffee.