ddk_mod (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ddk_mod) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
daredevilkink2016-04-21 06:34 pm
ddk_mod) wrote in daredevilkink2016-04-21 06:34 pm
Entry tags:
Daredevil Prompt Post #11
HEAD OVER TO PROMPT POST #12.
Keep filling prompts on this post! Make sure to link any new fic on the complete or work in progress fills posts so it doesn't get missed.
Please read the current rules before commenting on this post.
AO3 Collection | Searchable Prompts on Delicious | Fills: Completed & WIPs
Previous Rounds: #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 | #7 | #8 | #9 | #10
Other Prompt Posts: Marvel Comics | Jessica Jones | Luke Cage
Any prompts related to Luke Cage, even if they focus on Daredevil characters, must go on the Luke Cage Prompt Post until 31st October.
Rules:
- General
- YKINMKATO. Play nice. Respect others. If you don't like something, scroll on.
- All comments must be anon. If you would like to be politely banned to avoid anon-failing, leave a logged-in comment on the mod post or pm the mod account.
- Subject lines should only be changed if you're posting a prompt or a fill (indicators like OP or Author!Anon should go in the body of the comment).
- RPF is allowed. Crossovers, characters from the extended Marvel Universe and comics canon are allowed, but must relate to the 2015 TV show in some way.
- Prompts focusing on characters from Jessica Jones should go on the Jessica Jones Prompt Post, but crossovers with Daredevil can go on either post.
- Prompts that are exclusively about the comics should go on the Comics Prompt Post.
- Drop a comment on the mod post if you have any questions or problems.
- Prompts
- All types of prompts are welcome.
- Use the subject line for the main idea of your prompt (pairing or characters, keywords, kink).
- Warnings are nice, but not mandatory. Get DW Blocker if there's anything you really don't want to see.
- Reposted prompts are allowed once one round has passed - e.g. prompts from post #2 cannot be reposted until post #4. Please include a link to where it has been previously posted.
- Fills
- When posting a fill, either add [FILL] (or something similar) to the subject line, or change the subject line to the title of your fill.
- Announce your fill on either the Completed Fills Post or the WIP Post.
- Long fills can either be posted over multiple comments, or posted on AO3 and linked back here.
- Multiple fills are always okay.
- Fills can be anything! Fic, art and vids are all welcome.
Pregnant Matt, past(?) Matt/Frank, isolation and drama post S2
(Anonymous) 2016-12-21 02:35 am (UTC)(link)Without a way to contact Frank there’s not much Matt can do to inform him, and the deadline for an abortion is fast approaching. It would be the smart thing to do, right? But...it’s the one thing Matt has left, even if morning sickness sucks, and focusing on keeping the baby healthy is better than wallowing alone in depression and grief. Compounding on this, crime has picked up again with Punisher gone. Matt still wants to go out and be Daredevil, to work out the cage and try to help someone in the process, but the wrong kind of injury could cause a miscarriage.
How does the news of Matt expecting get out? Who learns about it first and why? Does someone connect it to Daredevil being more careful and/or vanishing? Do the Defenders play in somehow? Fisk? The Hand?
The angstier the better, anons.
Fill: Positive 1/?
(Anonymous) 2016-12-23 01:23 am (UTC)(link)Thanks for the prompt, OP. I have so many feels to throw around on all of these subjects. I worked a full schedule while pregnant and my wonderful coworkers always made it quite clear I was not allowed to be in any position where I might be harmed. People routinely put themselves in position to be headbutted or kicked to keep me safe while we all tried to work together.
Positive
Frank had been gone from her life and Manhattan in general for four weeks when she realized.
Usually Mattie paid very close attention to dates. She didn’t have lunch dates with Foggy or drinks with Karen to dictate into her calendar app. For a while she didn’t have any court dates. She didn’t bother taking Sundays off from her new job as a public defender. The courts weren’t open and the clients tended to stay home but she liked the cramped stinking office better when there was no one else’s heartbeat to clutter up the place. Mattie’s coworkers thought that she was a workaholic going through a divorce. She hadn’t bothered to correct their gossip.
She and Frank had never even talked about their relationship. The mere fact that the two of them were having sex with no sort of commitment at all left her feeling that Father Lantom didn’t need yet another vice that she wasn’t going to give up. As he had told her again, ever so kindly, there wasn’t any help in confessing a sin unless she had truly repented. If she was sorry she had hurt someone, he was glad to hear it, but the confession rang false if she planned to go out again and hurt someone else even in defense of an innocent.
She heard too many innocents to ever let herself rest.
A week before she realized, she had started the awful process of moving apartments. A few of Frank’s crowd had started scoping out her apartment. Her perfect apartment with the pleasant acoustics and open space was far more visible than his usual safehouses. A few local low-grade criminals had seen the Punisher going into her building a few times. She didn’t think anyone would connect Frank to Mattie, but with everything that had happened in her apartment, she liked the idea of a fresh start.
Moving was stressful enough that she blamed that for a delayed period. The foreman treated her as if she was an idiot and then tried to claim that the cash she handed over for moving supplies wasn’t enough. (Moving supplies had been listed quite clearly in the original contract as something that the company would provide. The foreman should have brought tape and dropcloths and whatever else it was that they wrapped her things in. Apparently her original company’s subcontract clause was used for far more than the moving agent claimed.)
(She was a damn lawyer and all she did was use her money-scanning app to prove that all of the damn bills were 20s. She was too tired to fight. She was going to give $200 as a tip but instead she carefully counted out the $160 he demanded for his crew’s use of tape.)
She realized that her period was two weeks late the same day she felt an odd flutter in her own abdomen. Mattie’s period tended to come every 30 days heralded by an ache in her breasts and then the smell of old blood and shed lining. Occasionally she would end up a week late and always ended up wondering if it was worth it to sneak into a Planned Parenthood or some similar clinic for the free pregnancy test. She could afford the test easily. Reading the thing, though… not one of her abilities would let her know if it was one stripe or two. An online search just found many other blind women frustrated by the lack of accessible options. Someone had made a USB pregnancy test but it didn’t have an audio option.
It was a Monday. She excused herself early and ignored the chatter from her coworkers. The pushy man who wanted to ask her out kept pestering the others to ask if she’d told anyone else about a date. She pretended that she was too far away to hear and found herself walking into one of the tiny crisis centers. She walked past Planned Parenthood when the smell of old blood and hospital disinfectant left her shivering. If she needed more than a pregnancy test, she knew where to find their front door.
She refused to give her name. For once, Mattie let the cane do all of the talking. The woman at the desk read Mattie’s mood well enough to offer a pregnancy test and no further commiseration.
Peeing in a cup probably wasn’t much easier for a sighted woman. Mattie was generous enough to imagine it might be just as disgusting with the way that the tiny cups they used were in no way useful to protect hands from splashes. She set the cup on the paper towel-topped stand that the woman had narrated and washed her hands very thoroughly.
The test was positive. The volunteer was stammering that they could write down a few websites, or perhaps just tell Mattie what to look up later, as they didn’t have any pamphlets in Braille. If she read Braille, that is, the volunteer had rocketed on in a kind voice climbing in pitch.
Mattie was quite sure the test was positive. The woman’s heartbeat had been true as a metronome before she became nervous. Mattie also was starting to be quite sure that the strange flutter somewhere between her hips was a heartbeat. The little heart was going double-time compared to Mattie’s own constant thrum. If the rhythms synced up just a little more, she could have the precise beat for Cohan’s You’re A Grand Old Flag.
Mattie walked home with the flutter of a heartbeat ringing through her ears. She had always been so careful. She hadn’t liked the way that her sense of taste changed with the progesterone-only pill and estrogen had been even worse. After that experience, she hadn’t been willing to try the depot shot when the symptoms would likely last for months. She had settled for being mostly celibate with a strong insistence on textbook use of condoms. Considering she’d only had two partners total before Frank, it hadn’t been an issue. Frank had been just as particular as she had. It had been such a relief at the time. She hadn’t had to explain that he couldn’t just “put the tip in a little” before getting a condom on. He hadn’t tried to negotiate for different rules. He had grunted agreement and that had been one of the only topics never up for debate.
If she wasn’t trying to imagine a lifetime of staying far away from Father Lantom and Saint Agnes, she would try to find someone who could contact him.
Mattie ended up at home with the kettle on before she realized that she wasn’t sure what she could do. If she took ibuprofen, would that end things? If she did end up as one of the many people who had a miscarriage, but one of the few who had taken a body-blow to the abdomen…
Her new apartment was smaller and cozier. She still felt cold. Wrapping herself in her softest blanket didn’t leave her feeling any more secure. She had chosen this apartment for the alleyway. She had a unit with a terrible view. Her windows on both walls of the corner unit looked out over alleys and other apartments. The landlord had been remarkably tactful in mentioning that if she was sensitive to low amounts of sunlight, a full-spectrum light was the recommendation from other people in the back corner.
She had moved here to let Daredevil be even harder to predict. She had easy access to several buildings she liked best. She would be a bit farther away from the precinct to give herself more time to lose any surveillance from the police. She had intended to be a one-woman operation against injustice and here she was in her apartment wondering if an accident would be so bad. She wasn’t meant to be a mother. Her father had done his best, and she would always adore him, but she’d never been able to consider him as an adult. He was gone and it didn’t seem fair to judge how much he had sacrificed to keep her in books and papers. She could just picture her mother, though, spending years mailing an envelope with a check and no note to Saint Agnes.
Mattie’s mom was a sister now. Mattie was still too angry to know just which stage her mother might have reached, but Maggie hadn’t been able to take her vows until her unwanted daughter was eighteen.
Maggie had postpartum psychosis. Mattie would be at risk for the same. Her father had always protected him from the rumors while he could but not even his protectiveness could cover her hearing after the accident.
Mattie couldn’t raise a baby alone as a laywer. She knew the better option was to end it and then to take her lumps. She would willingly swear off ever having sex again if it meant that she wouldn’t be trying to argue with a heartbeat that Mattie was not in any way going to be a mother. She would swear off having sex with anyone that wasn’t Frank anyway, really, because she was the biggest idiot on the planet and she had ended up attached. She was in love. She knew he killed and she knew that he never would replace Maria or their children. She still was in love and she’d been enough of an idiot to offer that a gun safe would fit in her closet. She’d made space and reorganized her court clothes so that her apartment could be a partial safehouse. He had shouted, she’d yelled back, and it ended with him screaming that he wouldn’t balance her checkbook and her yelling that if she could manage her own billing hours she could count something more than bullets in a clip.
Her screenreader read out articles in a drone. The few resources she could find specifically meant for blind would-be parents had awful caveats. She was financially stable for once, which checked one box, but that was because she had lost the one friend she had left. Elektra was dead and Mattie had her college roommate’s money and clothes and jewelry instead of a friend.
Foggy had been quite clear. So had Karen. Neither of them would count as ‘close network of friends’ that all of the articles mentioned. Frank was gone and she wasn’t sure how on earth anyone tracked down the Punisher when he went to ground. Claire… well, if Claire ever was going to be a friend, Mattie couldn’t only call her when she needed help.
Too many of the sites meant for the blind assumed that she was a married, stable person with no other medical issues and no laundry list of enemies. Their advice was meant for someone else.
Mattie was still floundering days later when there was yet another fluttering heartbeat in the office. One of her coworkers had managed to fit something in the corner between her desk and the wall.
“Sorry, Mattie,” Rachel called out before Mattie’s cane could touch the new addition. “I brought Miles in to work with me today. My parents were going to watch him but my mom fell and broke her hip. He’ll be old enough to go to daycare next week.”
Mattie remembered the chatter. “How old does he need to be for daycare?”
“Eight weeks,” Rachel replied. Her voice sounded distorted in a way not explained by the way that she had a baby cradled against her chest. “Isn’t that right?” she cooed at Miles.
Right. Mattie remembered now, everyone seemed to make faces at babies. Even the most reserved teenagers at Saint Agnes had made the same ‘baby faces,’ and Sister Mary Anne had said that Mattie did just as well. That would explain why Rachel’s voice shifted in an out of more adult inflection.
“Was there something in my way?”
Rachel paused a moment. “I’m trying to figure out the least rude way to let you know how much room I’ve taken up. It’s a rocker. It folds out into a tiny cradle, basically, and after Miles nurses and gets a fresh diaper he’ll be out like a light.”
Mattie reached down carefully. She could feel the fabric over plastic pipes and a gentle push sent the full device rocking.
“My mother-in-law swore by this and she was right. I’m going to try to get some work done and I can rock him with my foot,” Rachel said before shifting her weight. “I am sorry about the inconvenience. I brought in a diaper pail, too, so that it won’t smell quite so bad with the old diapers.”
Mattie’s lips twitched into a smile before she realized that she had missed the smell. “I grew up in an orphanage. I missed babies, I think.” The smell of formula going in and out of several babies had been overwhelming but it had been one of her favorite chores. A few sisters had made sure to look up tricks for successfully changing a diaper while blind but mostly they let her stay away from diaper duty. Mattie had been one of the best at soothing the colicky little ones back to sleep. Most of the younger babies had been adopted out quickly but she’d always liked sitting in a room where all non-infants were meant to be quiet.
“Want to hold him?” Rachel offered. “As long as you don’t have a cold. My pediatrician said that once he’s two months old then I can worry less about him having a fever.”
Mattie reached out and had a baby gathered against her chest before she’d quite decided. He was too young to burble much at her but he did smell good even past the soiled diaper. When she handed him back to Rachel, though, she could feel the blip in his heartbeat.
“Anytime you need a cooldown after a rude client, Mr. Cuddles in on the case,” Rachel promised. There was a smile in her voice. “Aside from the times where he just yells while I try to figure out what he wants, but well, hopefully he’ll be a good guest here.”
“He’s less likely to use profanity than most of our clients,” Mattie said drily. “They yell and sometimes we never know what they want.”
Rachel giggled and carefully stepped her way back to her chair. “Exactly. By the way, if anyone tries to give me heck for nursing at my desk, I’m planning to loudly quote the full text of relevant laws at them. Then point out that everybody else has coffee and snacks at their desk after wowing them with legal recitations.”
“Just point them at me,” Mattie said. She had only met Rachel the week before. Their desks were close together but Mattie hadn’t wanted to talk to most anybody, even her new work neighbor. Mattie had been lost in her isolation and Rachel had been frazzled at reading through the notes that had piled up during her maternity leave. “If anybody gets offended, I can do my best confused face and tell them I don’t see anything objectionable.”
Rachel laughed. She didn’t even make the reflexive pause some did, wondering if it was okay to laugh at the blind woman’s blind joke. “I will try to work that in if you’re not busy,” she promised. “Hey, so. I know you like your privacy, but you looked a little upset yesterday. Are you okay?”
Mattie might have made another decision if she hadn’t noticed the way that even a seven week old baby knew his mother. If Mattie completely failed at being a parent… well, maybe there would be a family tradition in appealing to Saint Agnes. There were more options later. Her mailed Braille copy of the parish bulletin frequently listed information for couples looking to adopt a child.
“I think so,” Mattie said. “At least I think I’ll get there.”
Re: Fill: Positive 1/?
(Anonymous) 2016-12-23 03:34 pm (UTC)(link)Just as your fill is based on the experiences you and your friend had, the idea canr in part because of a friend's circumstances last year (she has a lovely daughter now), so this was something I hesitated on for a while. You're doing an excellent job and I'm eager to see where this will go as it continues.
Re: Fill: Positive 1/?
(Anonymous) 2016-12-24 05:23 am (UTC)(link)I do have a LOT of feels about surprise pregnancies making life difficult. I was in a secure enough situation that my employers were very kind about all of my needs and I had hella BAMF health insurance. I was remote from friends/family though for a training program, though, so that made it harder. I had a few friends in similar circumstances. I tried to bring in talks from friends who did choose to terminate pregnancies but based on your prompt and canon Murdock stubbornness I feel like she would find a way. I'm actually still figuring out some of the end-game but the rest of it was just going its own way.
(My surprise baby is adorable and mostly behaves herself, but toddlers are a force of nature.)
Re: Fill: Positive 1/?
(Anonymous) 2016-12-26 05:04 am (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: Positive 1/?
(Anonymous) 2017-01-03 04:10 am (UTC)(link)And yes, this will be very real-life focused. I hope people don't get too turned off that abortion wasn't a more prominent option here, but I feel like people get to make a choice. Someone that chooses to continue with pregnancy is going to talk in very typical language about babies and think about their fetal human AS their baby. Coping mechanism for having fetal humans snap-kicking you in the intestines.
UGHHHH GRIMDARK also in Miller there's like a 95% chance she would've been a prostitute by now. Some of his stuff is actually pretty decent (hi Matt Murdock! You're a great exception!) but some of it makes me want to throw things. If you want to see one of the most beautiful and prolonged anti-Miller-and-ilk screeds EVER, and if you like Catwoman, Cat-Tales is the best. Catwoman-centric reaction to DC nonsense as it goes down.
Fill: Positive 2a/?
(Anonymous) 2017-01-03 04:39 am (UTC)(link)She ends up sending Brett a letter. That feels risky even with wearing latex gloves under cheap knit gloves from a street vendor. Her handwriting is awful even without the addition of layers but she won’t risk a stray fingerprint. She writes in inch-high letters to compensate for the mess.
She tells herself it’s coincidence that she agrees to go on errands to the precinct the next few times that the office needs a runner. Mattie definitely likes the fresh air and time away from her pushy coworker. She’ll have to deal with Paul sometime. He’s just the sort of person to assume it’s his business that she’s pregnant with no boyfriend around.
Mattie doesn’t manage to hear Brett’s reaction to the letter she worked into his inbox. She tells herself that it’s fine.
She walks out of an obstetrician’s office halfway through her first consultation. The doctor had been insinuating that she knew several talented abortion providers if Mattie wanted to make any other decision. Mattie would have accepted one offer with a smile. Two she would have let go as a persistent effort to make sure Mattie had made her choice. Three felt like the doctor’s decision should overrule any protest Mattie might make.
“Do you think that a blind woman living on her own should not be pregnant?”
“What are you even going to do when the baby comes?” the doctor had asked with terrible kindness in her voice. “You live alone, you did not list a single emergency contact on your forms… it might be better.”
Mattie was halfway down the block when she realized there might have been a copay. If they sent her a bill later, so be it. Of anything that she spent Elektra’s money to buy, paying off a doctor she annoyed might be something Elektra liked.
If Claire hadn’t been in Harlem, Mattie might have stopped by her apartment with takeout for a bribe to ask for insider knowledge on a better obstetrician. Instead Mattie sat and tried to focus on a case while her screenreader narrated reviews of far too many local doctors.
Mattie called ahead. She mentioned that she was blind and single, throwing the words out like a challenge. The receptionist calmly went forward with a rote recitation that the office was glad to offer medical care and would Mattie prefer any specific accommodations. They could offer Braille as well as a volunteer patient advocate who could remain with Mattie through all parts of her office visits.
In person, the receptionist patted Mattie’s hand and mentioned she could ask for an advocate at any time. She also could ask for space at any time.
That office used something called a ‘hat’ when collecting a urine sample. It sat over the toilet bowl and was far less problematic than a tiny plastic cup. Mattie never even had to touch it. One of the nurses volunteered to prep the bathroom for her and then pour the sample into a specimen cup afterward. She was sincere enough saying that it was no trouble, and something that they did for any squeamish sighted patients, that Mattie agreed. She just left an unflushed toilet behind and pretended not to know that other people were handling her urine. She was mollified that all medical staff were thorough in washing their hands before shaking hands.
All doctors in the office stopped by after her appointment. Mattie’s main doctor would try to be the one to deliver the baby, but as one of the visitors added, babies always liked to try something unexpected. They wanted her to be familiar with the doctors that might be on call. She did her best to sort out names of the four men and women before deciding they wouldn’t be offended if she couldn’t keep them straight. She left the office with braille pamphlets, a prescription for prenatal vitamins with an apparently pleasant aftertaste, and an appointment for a blood draw and ultrasound.
Her ultrasound was at 11 gestational weeks. That put it as nine weeks since probable conception and about nine weeks after Frank had left. It just figured that she and Frank managed to create a child just before both of them realized that the relationship couldn’t last. Mattie tried to hide her smile at the poor technician’s frustration. Babies at twelve gestational weeks and below were meant to stay still. Twelve-week gestation ultrasounds should show quiescent, helpful little jelly beans or crescents. The tech did his best to narrate between brief muttered swearing that the fetus was not supposed to be moving. Mattie’s was curling up and then straightening out just long enough to frustrate him. Finally, he recorded a measurement that looked just right for the first day of her last period, and she left smiling.
She told Rachel in a hushed whisper the next day at work. Rachel promised that she wouldn’t say a word to anyone else. She meant it, Mattie could tell, but maybe Mattie should have noticed Rachel’s slight emphasis on ‘say.’
There was a cardboard file box on Mattie’s seat the next morning. Instead of files, the box had a Braille note and a neat pile of clothing.
I hope you don’t mind the presumption, Mattie, but this seemed like the easiest way for me to fuss over you a little without drawing much notice. The bands on top fold over the waistband of pants when buttoning doesn’t quite work. I used the bands into the second trimester so that I could avoid maternity pants. That was a mistake in my opinion because maternity pants are incredibly comfortable.
The crinkly bag is ginger candies from an organic food shop near my house. I’ve noticed you’ve been in the bathroom a bit and if any of it is morning sickness, ginger is a great try. If you don’t like those then green tea is also pretty tasty and they make green tea candies.
I know you don’t use scents so the bottle is an unscented milk bath. Every pregnant woman deserves a warm soak.
If this was weird, I can stop, but I thought you deserve to know at least two people are rooting for you. (I didn’t tell Miles but he just knows things, and he liked spending time with you.)
--Rachel
Mattie scrawled ‘thank you, Rachel’ on a post-it note and left it on her desk. Rachel never seemed stunned that Mattie could find a bathroom without help or get through the metal detectors at court without having someone hold her hand. There was not a whisper that a blind person could manage to scrawl three words.
Aside from her obstetrician’s office and some crisis pregnancy center volunteer and Rachel, Mattie’s accountant is the only other person to know that she’s expecting even as the morning sickness finally starts to ease at 18 weeks gestation. The accountant certainly seems to disapprove that there is no father listed on any of the paperwork but he doesn’t say a word out loud to think that Elektra’s fortune shouldn’t revert into a trust for Mattie’s child on her death. If both of them die… Mattie would leave it to a friend, if they’d take it, but no one else comes to mind. Instead she fills in Rachel’s son as she knows Miles’ full name and birthdate.
That same week, she had the next ultrasound appointment. Her tech had fairly bounced into the waiting room trilling it was time to see Mattie’s baby. The sudden shock when Mattie stood and extended her hand, folded cane dangling from her wrist, was nearly palpable. The tech did manage to hold it together enough to confirm that she was here for the 1:30pm with Ms. Murdock and only apologized back in the room away from the crowd. Mattie wouldn’t hold excitement against her. Besides, the tech’s enthusiasm in narrating the entire ultrasound was a little infectious, even if Mattie couldn’t see the heartbeat fluttering. Mattie could feel it and she could tell that her baby kept rolling away from the probe.
“Now, don’t worry too much, okay?” the tech repeated. “I just cannot get a good view of the heart or the cord insertion here. I see four chambers but every time I try to capture an image your kid moves. It’s the same with the cord.”
Mattie smiled. Maybe it wasn’t quite being a fighter, but being troublesome was true to both parents.
“Now, just to check,” the tech continued. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to say anything about sex.”
“I’m not sure either,” Mattie replied. “I just… I want him or her to be healthy.”
“I think they’ll call you back to repeat the ultrasound, Ms. Murdock, so maybe they’ll have better luck. Any time I try to glance between the legs your kid rolls away.”
Mattie’s next appointment confirmed just what the tech said. Everything pictured was developing just fine but they couldn’t see the heart or umbilical cord connecting into the placenta. She would have another ultrasound the next week. Even better, Mattie’s near-constant nausea from the first trimester had finally settled into a marked aversion to garlic and any raw vegetables. Her obstetrician cheered and promised it would be easier to keep weight on when all of her meals didn’t end up making a second trip through the esophagus.
Her “nearly B” cup size had swollen to a C, at least according to the bra store clerk. Mattie thought “nearly B” was a ridiculous to say “needs a generous A cup” but didn’t deny that Cs felt pretty nice. Mattie despised shopping for bras on her best days. Having a stranger coo over her was not at all what she wanted. Still, she paid the money to get herself a few supportive bras and managed to smile at all of the innuendo Elektra would have managed in just one store.
She made it to 19 weeks gestation before someone else at work noticed. Mrs. Wallace was sweet and ruthlessly organized with paperwork for her lease dispute but rather deaf. Mrs. Wallace repeated the happy news loudly enough that the entire office including Paul knew all about Mattie’s baby.
Rachel was again the best work-friend that Mattie could ask for. Mattie overheard Rachel taking Paul very firmly to task about how inappropriate it was to continue hitting on a woman clearly uninterested in him. Mattie had declined all invitations to coffee, lunch, dinner, art exhibitions, and his apartment. Rachel devoted an entire extra minute to the idiocy of asking a blind woman to an art exhibit without some kind of background check if Mattie liked certain types of art or finding a gallery with interactive sculpture.
Gossip traveling into the court was inevitable. Mattie’s usual court suits had been out of the question for weeks already. She usually preferred slim-cut tailored shirts and pants or pencil skirts. If she bothered with heels, they were never higher than an inch, but on advice from her obstetrician she’d opted to stay with flats and extra arch support. Switching to A-line skirts and draping shirts brought her into the back of her wardrobe. The change in outfits might have been a clue already. One of her coworkers would be sure to pass on the latest gossip. Mattie Murdock, ‘the hot blind lawyer,’ was pregnant and absolutely refused to name the father.
She had tried to figure out if Frank had a website. She knew he occasionally accepted tips. Both cell phone numbers she had were out of service. Frank cycled through cell phone numbers faster than most people washed their sheets. Finally, she fought through the interface and typed a message onto the Punisher’s most reliable fansite.
Old ally of P here, she typed. New development in Manhattan he might want to know about. Tell him to call M, number’s the same.
Frank had teased often enough that she was three Ms. Madeline Margaret Murdock. If he didn’t know that she wanted to talk… she wasn’t bold enough to suggest that her new email account linked to the fansite would also link to Daredevil. If he wouldn’t talk to her, there wasn’t much else she could do.
Fill: Positive 2b/?
(Anonymous) 2017-01-03 04:39 am (UTC)(link)She waited in the street for a few minutes while she tried to imagine how obviously pregnant she was. Most strangers still thought she was at a normal weight. Foggy knew her better than that. Foggy had been the one that coaxed her away from her room after Elektra demanded a last-minute transfer the week before Thanksgiving. He had dragged her to his own home for Thanksgiving and somehow made it sound like she was doing him a favor. That was when she had known that he’d be a fantastic lawyer.
Finally she gave up. Her stomach was growling and it was past time to eat. Without walls in her way, she could tell that Foggy seemed to be holding wine bottles.
“Hi,” Foggy said before she could think of what to say. “Look. I… I don’t have any right to ask, and you did what I wanted. It’s really shitty of me to expect that you might have come to me to ask for help just because… um…”
Mattie wasn’t sure if the next part of the discussion would involve fucking the Punisher, having sex with a client she was actively representing, leaving the case abruptly and letting Foggy defend the Punisher, being Daredevil at all, any of the times Foggy had been in danger because of her, being pregnant…
She’d missed him too much to care which one it was. He was here and he’d brought a bribe. Foggy seemed to think she’d ever need a present to take him back. “Want to come upstairs?” she offered. “I hear the view in this place is nearly as awful.”
Her apartment was smaller. It still was not the kind of thing a public defender should be able to afford. She could almost hear Foggy totaling up the kitchen and bedroom and living room and not matching the numbers to a defender’s salary. Even lawyers at Foggy’s new level would probably hear gossip about the blind public defender chick who always pounced when their client just bent the truth a little bit. He didn’t ask, so Mattie told him.
“I’m working as a public defender right now, but I’m living off of an inheritance,” she said into the silence. “Elektra…” Mattie swallowed all of the pain and anger and sorrow that always colored her first friend’s name. “She died. She left everything to me including a few cocktail dresses that always drew a reaction. None of those will fit just now.” She tugged the bottom of her shirt snug against her hips. Mattie was done keeping secrets from Foggy. If he didn’t like what she had to give, then he could leave again and her heart would break again and Rachel would probably notice she was sad and give her chocolate.
“Um. Mattie. Not to sound at all like I am judging who you might have chosen as a sexual partner, but…” Foggy set both bottles on the counter. “Frank?”
“Yeah,” Mattie said. “First I didn’t want to tell anyone. I didn’t know what I was going to do, really, but someone else at the public defender’s office came back from maternity leave. She’s been helping me out.”
“Can I hug you?” Foggy asked carefully.
Mattie half-tackled him in response. She somehow hadn’t noticed she didn’t touch people anymore. She was fiercely independent to try to keep well-meaning people from dragging her around by the elbow. She didn’t hug clients as a rule. She didn’t even have fist-fights to entertain herself with. At Fogwell’s, the few idiots who thought a pregnant woman shouldn’t go near a punching bag had been very thoroughly told off during the gym’s open hours. She hadn’t had to say a thing but was cheeky enough to flip out of the ring once. Nobody would think Daredevil was a blind pregnant chick. Almost everyone still thought Daredevil was a man. Her tricks of using an Ace bandage and layering shirts had most people thinking she was a very lean and pretty man. The fansite devotion to her rear end seemed to distract any talk of her chest.
“That’s why you stopped?” he asked. “The… you know. Getting punched.”
“Yeah. I mean, I can keep a full schedule, but I couldn’t… if I was going to end the pregnancy I wasn’t going to let someone else take the blame. Then I decided that making decisions for me first hadn’t gone so great either. I still don’t know if I can do this but I have a few ads from couples that want to adopt.”
“Mattie, if you want to be a mom, you will be a great mom,” Foggy promised. “I feel stupider that I didn’t talk to you weeks ago. First I thought you were just out of town. Then I thought you were hurt. Then I didn’t know what to think but you were taking cases as a public defender so I stopped thinking you were dead, but there might have been a night at Josie’s where I gave a very slurred eulogy for you. Karen made me shut up before I said anything bad.”
“You can tell her,” Mattie said quietly before he could ask. “For a while I thought I’d be mad if anyone came back because I was pregnant. Like I wasn’t enough, maybe, but… it’s for the kid, right? Mini Murdock could use an Uncle Foggy. Plus my obstetrician was starting to get nervous that I didn’t have an emergency contact.”
“That was part of how I got my act together,” Foggy admitted. “I didn’t know if you had anyone helping you. Even if you were still doing your thing… maybe we just needed better limits. We didn’t work too well when we weren’t talking about why we had specific priorities. If you start up after baby’s born, well, maybe I can babysit some nights.”
“I don’t know yet.” Mattie let go of Foggy to run the pads of her fingers over what he’d brought for her. “Smells like apples?”
“Carbonated apple juice, basically. No alcohol.”
“Thanks.” Mattie let Foggy poke through her cabinets to find the glasses. He pestered her for stories about life as a public defender before reciprocating with stories about life as a lawyer that made non-monopoly money. She was leaning on his shoulder when she finally asked.
“I have a repeat ultrasound tomorrow. The one where you can see the face. Can you come narrate for me tomorrow at about 4?”
“I will be there with bells on. Except not literally bells, obviously, because your super-hearing self probably wants to be developing hand-sonar so you can see your baby all on your own,” Foggy replied solemnly. He only lasted a moment before laughing. She let him pay for delivery and both of them agreed that he should practice narrating again, as it had been a while. Mattie ended up falling asleep halfway through The Princess Bride while he was still trying to describe the facial features of every character on the screen.
Re: Fill: Positive 2b/?
(Anonymous) 2017-01-03 02:47 pm (UTC)(link)I'm not a fan of Miller at all, and I agree that he likely would have had Mattie working corners (or at least back rooms) because he lived for making fenale characters into sex workers for the lulz. Also, DD is dark enough already, and I like that you're adding in happy things, like Rachel and Miles, reconsiling with Foggy, etc., because bad choices or not Mattie needs a support system and some sort of positive human interaction. DD is done for atm but for now Fisk and co are in jail or in hiding (though they obviously aren't gone forever), so while tgey still represent a threat it isn't immediate. We'll have to wait and see on Frank, which will be interesting. I'm curious about your take on him.
However, I have one criticism to make. As someone with a crossdressing history and theater background, as well as several transgender friends, I'd like to point out that binding with Ace Bandages is really a big no-no, like breathing issues and potentially deadly damage to ribs+lungs over time bad. Using a sports bra, corset, or a binder is the way to go, especially if Mattie was rather flat before the pregnancy made her tatas grow. She could probably use a good sports bra or an athletic binder, which are designed specifically to flatten things out and in the case of a binder to actively reshape a more masculine figure, and they're also specifically designed for active athletic usage. Ace bandage binding is liable to cause damage to an average person, much less someone who fights, parkours, and frequently has torso injuries ranging from broken ribs to bruising.
Re: Fill: Positive 2b/?
(Anonymous) 2017-01-10 05:52 am (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: Positive 2b/?
(Anonymous) 2017-01-12 11:22 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: Positive 2b/?
(Anonymous) 2017-02-05 08:56 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: Positive 2b/?
(Anonymous) 2018-01-30 10:11 pm (UTC)(link)Also Foggy+Matt reconciliation! That makes this fic A+++++ in my book! :D