Defenders Prompt Post #1

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Defenders-only Discussion Post

This post is for prompts involving everyone in Netflix's The Defenders! Crossovers between anyone in the four individual shows should go here. Prompts only including characters from one show should still go on the relevant show prompt post.


Rules:

• General
  
  1. YKINMKATO. Play nice. If you don't like something, scroll on.
  
  
  2. 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.
  
  
  3. 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).
  
  
  4. RPF is allowed. Crossovers, characters from the extended Marvel Universe and comics canon are allowed, but must relate to the 2017 TV show in some way.
  
  
  5. Drop a comment on the mod post if you have any questions or problems.


• Prompts
  
  1. All types of prompts are welcome.
  
  
  2. Use the subject line for the main idea of your prompt (pairing or characters, keywords, kink).
  
  
  3. Warnings are nice, but not mandatory. Get DW Blocker if there's anything you really don't want to see.


• Fills
  
  1. Put [FILL] or something similar in the subject line when posting a fill.
  
  
  2. Announce your fill on either the Completed Fills Post or the WIP Post.
  
  
  3. Long fills can either be posted over multiple comments, or posted on AO3 and linked back here.
  
  
  4. Multiple fills are always okay.
  
  
  5. Fills can be anything! Fic, art and vids are all welcome.



Please post any prompts related to Season 2 of Punisher over on the dedicated Punisher prompt post, and put SPOILERS in the subject line!

Comments

[Fill] Untitled dom!Matt fill

[(Anonymous)]

1. Jessica Jones

With Matt, it’s not about control; it’s about stability.

Matt doesn’t order her around, call her pet names, or take her to dinner.

“May I give you a massage? You sound tense.”

Sometimes Jess will say, “No,” and Matt will nod and put on another pot of coffee.

Sometimes Jess will say, “Yes,” and feel the knots in her shoulders and upper arms loosen beneath Murdock’s warm and calloused fingers.

Sometimes Jess doesn’t want to talk, and will sit at his feet and lean against the solid weight of him – compact and warm and safe.

It doesn’t feel like submission, like she is giving anything up when she lays across his lap while he brushes her hair out, or reads aloud from braille books open on her back. It feels like setting down an anchor in a storm, and knowing that if she starts to drift, she will be held steady until she’s ready to sail again.

2. Luke Cage

He’s grown accustomed to treating the world around him like the fragile and breakable thing it is. People are breakable, too. Luke has grown used to caution and restraint, to holding himself back all the time. He always had to be aware of himself.

Matt always knows when he’s on the verge of losing that edge of restraint. And Matt holds the key to his salvation and ties it around his throat.

The collar is thin and fragile. Even if he did not have his enhancements, he would be able to tear it away if he wanted to. But while it’s on, he doesn’t want to.

His skin may be bulletproof, and his physical strength may be great, but it proves little against Matt who can read his scent, his breath, and his heartbeat and can maneuver his own strength against him with the same sharp focus he uses to destroy his enemies as Daredevil. There is a security in that knowledge that lets him relax and react unburdened.

Luke still feels, even if he can’t be hurt. Ice and heat combined with a blindfold send his mind tingling and his toes curling. Matt whispering encouragements against his ear and brushing his face with barely-there touches makes his limbs go boneless and heavy with relaxation even as his heart still pounds like a drum in his chest.

If he holds itself back, it’s because he wants to. Not because he has to.

The promises hidden in the dark smile Matt presses against his temple when he succeeds is worth it every time.

3. Danny Rand

In many ways, Danny suffers from a lack of positive role models. His parents died when he was young, and the monks of K’un L’un were many things, but kind was not one of them. He feels a constant need to prove himself, to assert his own self worth.

“I am the Immortal Iron Fist,” are words he says often. Because to him, they mean something. I am not worthless. I exist and I am important.

Colleen is a martial artist and a teacher – he seeks her approval as a matter of course. He’s confused when she says kind things, because teachers are not supposed to be kind. They are supposed to beat you down and break you apart so you can be reforged into something stronger. Something useful.

…People make strange expressions when he tries to explain this.

Matt understands.

“They were good teachers, Danny,” he agrees. The melancholy lilt to his voice and the tilt of his head show he is thinking of Stick – that terrifying warrior of the Chaste, and his own martial teacher. “But that doesn’t mean they were good people. Ms. Wing is both.”

“Oh.” That makes much more sense.

Matt teaches Danny. How to make sense of the modern world when the sounds and smells get too much. Why Ward gets pissy about things like profit margins and wearing shoes in the office. Things other people have tried to explain before, but Danny couldn’t quite understand.

Danny remembers things so much better when Matt rewards him for doing well.

…And for punishing him when he doesn’t.

Danny doesn’t want to be punished, but sometimes he feels like he’ll burst from his own skin, nerves vibrating in the empty air if he isn’t. The monks broke something in him that they couldn’t fix, and trying to ignore it makes it worse until-!

…Until Matt presses him down hard enough that spots form in the corners of his eyes and he aches with the marks of Matt’s hands and teeth on his skin. Marks to remind him in the days to come so that next time, he will succeed.

“Good boy,” Matt will tell him, and Danny will believe it.

4. Matthew Murdock

Matt was on a downward spiral with Elektra. She took to much of him away into herself, gave too little back. It’s a theme that followed him through too many of his relationships. He tried too hard to cater to others’ expectations and desires, fearing they would leave him otherwise.

It’s the closest he gets to admitting that he had issues with abandonment.

With most people he fears losing them when they know him completely – Matt and the Devil inside him. He grows used to pretending, but even that isn’t always enough to hold onto the few people close to him.

Foggy and Karen – he loves them dearly. He knows his own flaws enough to know he has wronged them with his secrets and his mismanagement of himself and the circumstances of keeping a double life. But there’s a part of him that knows that even without the barrier of secrecy between them, that they can’t accept both sides of him.

The Defenders save him.

The first name he gives them is Matt. They know him as Daredevil, and as Matt Murdock. He is not one or the other, different symptoms of the same personality – he is both. And they don’t begrudge him that.

Jessica doesn’t need him to be anything other than there. So he gives her his time, and his presence. In return he never feels alone. She doesn’t need to be saved – she just needs an ally to stand on her side while she saves herself.

Luke just needs to be trusted to let go. So Matt brings him high and low and researches ASMR and practices simple knots with fragile ties to cycle Luke through sensations where everything stops when the ribbon tethering him tears. And Luke learns to flail and writhe and sink gracelessly against the most delicate of materials without causing damage even when his conscious thoughts are spinning spinning spinning. In return, Matt learns to trust himself and his own judgement.

Danny needs Matt to be Matt. Traumatic childhoods and all. He needs someone who understands. And in teaching Danny to understand the world, Matt learns to understand himself.

The matters of Elektra and Castle and Fisk hurt him in ways he didn’t notice until he finds himself smiling in the office, genuinely happy.

Because his Defenders took from him, but they gave pieces of themselves back, too.

Bonus: Frank Castle

“…What the fuck. Red.”

Luke Cage is sitting on a chair, wrapped in thin lines of red lace, tying his wrists against his knees, and his ankles to the chair legs. A red scarf is tied around the man’s eyes, his breath coming in shallow pants as behind him Matthew fucking Murdock holds a spoon to the back of Cage’s neck.

Jessica Jones is sitting on the breakfast bar holding an open tub of ice cream. Rum Raisin, because of course it is. She glances up at him, tenses a moment, then shrugs.

As he stands there, trying to make his brain comprehend what he is seeing, Danny Rand drops down from the rafters in front of him buck naked and brandishing a glowing fist. “It’s not polite to stare at people,” he says with a seriousness that only makes the situation more absurd. “And… you need to knock before entering a space that isn’t yours.”

Danny Rand immediately ruins any gravitas by turning towards Matt – who is now using the spoon to eat a scoop of icecream – licking it obscenely, what the hell – and bouncing like a blond puppy dog. “I got that one right today! Did I get it right?”

Matt holds up a hand, licks the spoon clean and presses it against the side of Cage’s neck below the tied man’s ear. Luke Cage jolts, a soft whine escaping between clenched teeth and Frank comes to the realization that the ice cream made the spoon freezing cold.

“…Yes,” Red says, tilting his head and suddenly Frank feels naked. “Mr. Castle has been very rude.”

“Ohhh…” Danny Rand turns back to stare at Frank wide-eyed, with some kind of realization. “Are you here to ask Matt to punish you, too?”

Jessica Jones snorts with laughter.

He can hear it down the hallway even as he nopes the hell outta there.

Fin.