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daredevilkink2015-08-14 07:00 pm
ddk_mod) wrote in daredevilkink2015-08-14 07:00 pm
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Prompt Post #6
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FILL: (4/?) (Matt the Baker/Superhero Magnet)
(Anonymous) 2015-09-05 12:55 am (UTC)(link)=====
Karen, with more courage than he’d given her credit for, eventually shooed them away, possibly with an actual broom. Matt wasn’t sure.
And that wasn’t the only way Stark affected his life. Generally Matt could tell when he was about to go on an all-night bender in his lab. The Avengers occasionally put in an order for an assortment of things, the size of which led Matt to assume they were sharing the box of goodies, but Stark tended toward crisp and light, fruit or custard fillings, with the occasional side venture into something flavored with coffee, and he’d load up for bear. Someone from the Tower would come by to pick up his order -- never another Avenger, just a regular intern for SI who Matt always plied with an extra cookie or two -- and then soon enough he’d hear stories about SI’s latest technological breakthrough or outlandish-but-strangely-obtainable proposal. Not that all of SI’s developments came directly from Stark’s personal lab, but there was a definite correlation between Matt sending out a box of raspberry puff pastry straws and half a dozen apple-cinnamon cream puffs and Stark Industries releasing another press statement down the line.
It was, to be sure, an odd relationship. If it even qualified as a relationship. But he eventually received a thank-you note from Ms. Potts about putting up with Tony’s occasional intrusions and he sent her a selection cupcakes of by means of saying no problem.
Matt came around to a -- ha -- blinding headache and the sensation of pavement against his cheek. For a moment the world reeled around him: how had -- what--
--had he really just been knocked out by a run of the mill mugger? Embarrassment and shame flushed his entire body. Oh dear god.
Biting back a noise of sheer self-disgust, Matt lay still and focused, expecting his pockets to have been turned inside-out. But -- no? There were no foreign smells on his clothes save for what he was rolling around on. He and his belongings appeared to be unmolested. Though not alone: overhead, two voices were talking in strident tones. Pushing past the pain with the ease of long repetition, he focused. There was something odd about the fear that permeated one voice -- they’d just coshed a supposedly helpless blind man in a back alley, why would either of them be afraid?
“Shit, man, you know who this is?” one of his attackers was saying. He sounded genuinely terrified. “This is the guy who runs Jack’s Breadline! You know, the place with the pignoli cookies you like?”
There was a moment of horrified silence. Then the man who liked pignoli cookies whispered, in a way that suggested abject denial of an imminent horrible future, “No.”
“Yes. We’re fucked. We’re fucked. Fucking Captain America is one of his regulars!” He swallowed, a rattling noise in a suddenly-dry throat. “We are so fucked.”
If Matt’s head weren’t pounding like a conga line on steroids, he would have found the situation hilarious. Apparently his baking afforded him more protection than his armor ever did. Criminals weren’t afraid to hurt Daredevil, but the repercussions for laying a finger on Matt Murdock, baker to superhumans...
“Calm down, calm down,” Cookie-man said. He seemed to be trying to assuage both his companion and himself. “He’s blind and we caught him by surprise. There’s no way he can identify us.”
“You think that’d stop the Avengers?” the first voice demanded. “Oh shit, I don’t wanna die!”
If they were smart, they would have left already. Not that it would stop Daredevil from tracking them, but they couldn’t know that. Matt pointedly let out a pained sound, stirred.
“Oh god, he’s awake.” There was a scuffling noise before someone dropped to their knees beside him. “Can we escort you home, sir?” Cookie-man’s fright bled out of every pore even as he attempted to be respectful. Matt choked down laughter. “Shit, we didn’t hit you too hard, did we?”
“I’m -- ah -- I’m fine.” He bit back the groan and carefully sat up, assisted by rough but worried hands. This probably qualified as one of the strangest situations he’d ever been in.
“Please don’t sic Captain America on us, sir,” one of them pleaded.
“Or the Hulk,” the other added. “We’re sorry, we are so sorry.”
It was like they thought he had them on speed-dial. “You just tried to roll a blind man,” Matt pointed out, not a little acerbic. “What makes you think you don’t deserve Captain America on your ass? Or Daredevil?” He paused meaningfully. “If you’re lucky, Daredevil won’t find you tonight. He likes my raspberry muffins.”
“Oh shit,” Cookie-man breathed. And then Matt was alone in the alley as the two gave up any pretense of helping him and fled. Matt dragged himself to his feet, winced as he ran cautious fingers over the goose-egg developing on his skull. The soreness on his cheek meant a visible abrasion as well. If those two were lucky, his regulars wouldn’t storm the city looking for them tomorrow after they got a glimpse of his face.
Somehow, Matt wasn’t counting on it.
There were only a few permanent items on the rotating list that comprised Matt’s offerings from day to day. Cinnamon rolls were one, as were the chocolate espresso brownies. Blueberry buttermilk muffins were a mainstay -- couldn’t argue with the classics -- as was coffee cake and an assortment of danishes and croissants. Otherwise, Matt played around. The display case was always stuffed near to overflowing with his experiments: glazed fruit tarts, rows of fresh cookies and colorful macarons, pastries dotted with nuts and chocolate or filled with flavored creams and drizzled with lines of thick sugar icing. Three different kinds of cut bars took up half a shelf daily, chocolate and hazelnut rich beside bright lemon and lime or strawberry-cinnamon or peach and ginger. Brownies dusted with mint sugar nudged shoulders with caramel walnut blondies.
Pies fought for space atop the display case. Today one golden French coconut pie and one orange creamsicle pie, topped with a good three inches of toasted meringue, were set proudly there on cake stands. On the counter itself were any cakes Matt baked as the whim struck him. He didn’t have much call to practice his cake-baking skills, though he made a mean champagne lemon chiffon, light as air and delicately flavored. And his Death by Chocolate was always in demand.
People asked him how he’d learned how to make so many different things, or more perspicaciously, where he’d been trained. To which Matt always smiled disarmingly, said something pithy about helping out a lot in the kitchen when he was younger. Foggy was the first person in a long time to learn the additional detail that it was the kitchen of a Catholic orphanage.
It wasn’t just kneading bread dough that Matt liked, as he’d said to Foggy. The focus it took to properly measure out ingredients, to mix them just enough and not overmuch, to make sure the flour was clear of bug parts or the cinnamon wasn’t ten months old, it had helped to push the world away, made it less immediate. The fact that he got to eat the results of his efforts was a bonus. The fact that they didn’t always taste good drove him to improve.
He was so angry, after Stick left. Everybody left. His mom, his dad, Stick -- but he had his hands, and he could create things, and the things he created made people around him happy with him, less likely to forget him. His senses could be used for something tangible and immediate, not just the unknown purpose toward which Stick drove him. Baking settled him in his skin.
And if he occasionally punched down bread dough with a little too much enthusiasm, well, the bread didn’t mind.
Matt sniffed the contents of the open sack of flour, brows knitting. “Uh oh,” Peter said from where he stood across from him. “I know that look. Not good?”
“Not so much,” Matt said, thoroughly displeased. “We’re sending it back.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.” Opening this first sack was for show; he didn’t have to check the rest of them to know that the flour was tainted with some sort of chemical additive. Not the usual bleaching agents or other dough improvers found in factory-use flour, but something else. Matt frowned, running the powder through his fingers. The additive felt crystalline to his touch, rough and ragged in a way that the grains of flour lacked and wholly unfamiliar. He chanced a quick lick of his finger and then spat it out into the sink. Oh no. No matter what the crap was, Matt was not going to suffer this flour in his kitchen.
Why would Joe Beleskey add anything to his product? To cover up sub-par wheat? An unlucky contamination at the mill? But why would an organic flour mill have any sort of chemicals on the premises in the first place? Maybe it wasn’t his fault, maybe he’d been taken in by his own supplier, but either way Matt had to send it back. Dammit. With barely any suitable flour, their week was fucked.
Peter had long since become accustomed to Matt’s excruciating standards regarding his ingredients and he didn’t ask why Matt was rejecting what to him was probably perfectly acceptable flour, but he had another concern in mind: “Uh, boss. Not arguing with you but we’re a bakery.” He sounded uncertain, echoing Matt’s own thoughts. “What’re we going to make without flour?”
Carefully washing his hands, Matt quickly rifled through his repertoire of items, trying to remember what he could bake without wheat flour. Their usual flourless chocolate cake was going to be a lifesaver, as were macarons and anything else based on ground almonds. Meringues dipped in chocolate? Maybe macaroons topped with toasted almonds. Flourless peanut butter cookies, flavored mousses. Polenta cake.
“We’ll manage,” he said aloud. “It’ll be a good chance to test some new items. Here--” He groped for the pad of paper that hung from the walk-in door and began scribbling down possibilities with the attached pen. “No special orders this week, we don’t even have enough regular flour to fill Mrs. Johnson’s cookie box for church.”
“Maybe we can declare it gluten-free week,” Peter said, still sounding dubious but gamely trying to spin this. “Though we’re totally going to be accused of selling out.”
“That’s a good idea,” Matt said, thoughtful. “We don’t carry as many gluten-free items as I’d like in general, so this would be an opportunity to see which ones are popular.” He could imagine Peter’s grin at Matt’s approval, heard the pleased chuff of breath. Sometimes he forgot how young his assistant still was, Spider-man or not. “You want to handle the press?”
“Oh yeah. All over it, boss.” Peter dealt with the social media side of things out of both necessity and preference. JAWS hated Facebook with the fire of a thousand suns, and Matt would rather spend his time baking than updating his status for all of their account’s so-called friends. Peter jokingly called his posts press releases, said it was good practice for his journalism class.
“I’ll get you a list of items soon so you can start advertising,” Matt told him. “In the meantime, get Karen to call up Joe Beleskey and ask him what went wrong with this batch. He’s usually dependable so I’m hoping this is a fluke instead of the start of a trend.” It wasn’t many mills that would grind flour to Matt’s specifications and he and Beleskey had had a good working relationship for years. He’d hate to give that up.
“Will do.” Peter went to find Karen and Matt considered his list.
@jacksbreadline Jack’s Breadline, Hell’s Kitchen NY
It’s gluten-free week at Jack’s! Try our flourless chocolate cake and peanut butter cookies. Trust us, you won’t miss the flour. #glutenfree
Gluten-free week was surprisingly successful, save for a few die-hards who really couldn’t live without their morning cranberry-orange muffin. Matt assured them that the muffins would be once again available next week, as soon as they sorted out things with their supplier. Beleskey had no idea his product had been contaminated, but used to Matt occasionally rejecting a batch for one reason or another, was willing to test samples and get back to him. In the meantime Matt turned out tray after tray of macarons, grain-free chocolate chip cookies, amaretti and biscotti, honey-almond squares, and flourless orange cake. Peter had his hands full with gluten-free chocolate cake the entire week.
On Sunday morning, Beleskey called to tell Matt that he couldn’t find any contaminants in that particular batch of flour, causing Matt to frown as he hung up. Either their tests weren’t calibrated for whatever additive it was that had found its way into the shipment, or the shipment had been contaminated between the mill and the bakery. Neither option was pleasing.
Matt did the only thing he could think of: he gave a sample he’d kept to Bruce Banner when he came around for a slice of pecan-maple pie and asked to have it tested, citing suspicions that his supplier was doctoring his product. Surprised but appropriately concerned, Banner agreed, and then all Matt could do was wait.
And then the week after, this one yielding a perfectly normal flour shipment, things were clarified.
If Matt could admit it, it honestly felt weird to be held in so much regard based on the quality of his chocolate-chip muffins as opposed to anything more personal, like his character or his convictions. But sometimes, such as right now, it might come in handy. People had to be looking for him, right? People who could do something effective about his situation? Which was currently bound to a chair in an echoing warehouse near the Hudson, listening to a woman lay out a request.
“It’s simple, Mr. Murdock,” the woman said, businesslike. Her voice sounded odd, muffled and echoing at the same time. Matt figured she was likely wearing a mask, a metal one. “All you need to do is add this powder to all of your wares for a week. Nothing easier. It’s heat-stable, tasteless, and odorless so it won’t even affect the quality of your baking.”
Surreptitiously Matt tested his bonds again. Nothing doing -- the zip ties were nearly cutting off his circulation and there was nothing sharp in his vicinity he could use to saw through them. “Somehow I don’t think that should be my main concern,” he said, sitting back in the chair he was bound to. “And if I refuse?”
“I really don’t wish to get anyone else involved,” the woman sighed. “It’s a waste of time, money, and resources. But soon your employees might find it necessary to quit working for you and go on... disability. And I understand Mr. Parker lives with his elderly aunt?”
He couldn’t help but grit his teeth at the threat to Karen and Peter. And Peter’s Aunt May; Matt had met her a few times and found himself delighted with his assistant’s guardian. And the woman’s voice had briefly slipped from its brisk tones to something more -- eager. Anticipatory. Unstable.
Dammit. “And if I were to agree, I suppose it’s not so simple as my agreeing to do your bidding and you letting me go.”
“Of course not, Mr. Murdock. We won’t insult you by taking you for a fool -- please extend us the same courtesy.”
Heels clacked across concrete toward him. The woman held something up in her hand: metal and glass and plastic, liquid trapped in a narrow cylinder -- a hypodermic. Shit, shit, goddammit, no--
“You will not touch him.”
Re: FILL: (4/?) (Matt the Baker/Superhero Magnet)
(Anonymous) 2015-09-05 02:46 am (UTC)(link)i love that matt's daytime career as a baker actually makes him more intimidating to crooks than his nighttime career of, you know, actually beating them to hell.
Re: FILL: (4/?) (Matt the Baker/Superhero Magnet)
(Anonymous) 2015-09-09 03:57 pm (UTC)(link)Thank you so much for writing and sharing, author!anon.