PRAYING • MATT MURDOCK

v

"THINK WE COULD stop standing in an awkward silence?" Nick spoke up, feeling tense with how Matt wasn't speaking. The two of them just stood in the middle of Matthew's trashed living room.

Sighing, Nicholas moved to the overturned couch, picking it up and turning back to sit normally. Brushing off the weird look Matt was giving him, he just motioned towards the couch.

"Matthew, this is your cue to sit." The man slowly moved toward the couch, not bothering to argue. Nicholas let out a soft breath, and went Matt's kitchen to grab a towel and a bowl of warm water.

Matt stayed silent as Nick rummaged around his kitchen, his breathing a little heavily as he thought about what he just discovered. About the fact that Nicholas, the same Nicholas that helped him calm down from a panic attack, the same Nicholas he wanted to protect from Wilson Fisk, was the Silver Wolf vigilante. Matt was so caught up in his own thoughts that he didn't hear Nick walk back to him.

"I'm going to clean your face, is that okay?" Nick asked Matthew, not wanting to touch the man without permission. Matt nodded his head mutely. Nick started to dab the cloth at Matt's bloodied cheekbone. Realising how tense the blind man was, he let his body duplicate, sending his reflection into Matt's kitchen to grab them both a beer from the fridge.

Matt was too focused on the way Nick's fingers felt on his face, the way his pointer finger was brushing against the back of his jaw, the warmth of his palm emitted resting on Matt's cheek. It distracted him, intoxicated him. He was too distracted to hear the way Nick's reflection had walked into his kitchen and opened his fridge. At the sound of the glass bottles clinking, Matt shot up from the couch, standing in a defensive position.

"Matthew, it's okay. It's just me." Nick's voice was barely a whisper but he knew Matt could hear him. "It's just me." Matt untensed, slowly letting himself fall back to the couch, not speaking. He gave Nick a look that Nick just knew meant 'explain'.

"It's a gift of mine." Nick grabbed the cloth again, this time focusing on his busted lip. "I can physically exist in more than one place at a time." He left his explanation short, focusing more on cleaning Matt's face than telling him his whole life story.

Nick let the cloth drag slowly across Matthew's bottom lip, hyper aware of how Matt's eyes were burning a hole into his face, and of how his own breathing hitched as he watched the way Matt's tongue ran over his pink lip. Nick let out a soft cough to break out of his stupor, backing away from Matt.

"Are you going to say anything, Matthew. Because this silence is a little bit unnerving." Nick bounced on the balls of his fist, letting his right hand fly through his hair and rest at the base of his neck. Matt stayed quiet for a minute. All that was heard throughout the apartment was the mixed breathing of the silent two.

"I just- " Matt's voice was low and soft, as if speaking to the man physically hurt him. He bit his lip, hearing the way Nick shuffled his weight from one foot to the other. "I just need some time to think, Nicholas."

He didn't know why, but it felt like he was breaking up with Nick, despite not being with him in the first place. Not that he wanted to be with him, right?

Everything felt confusing to Matt. These feelings he was having, something he never experienced before, it was all so new, so difficult for him to understand. So when Nicholas walked out of his apartment without a word of argument, Matt felt his heart sink into his stomach, yet he didn't quite know why.

Nicholas made his way back to his own apartment complex, feeling as if he were just rejected by the one man he thought he could really, truly feel something for. He knew that Matthew just asked for time to think, but it felt less like Matt had to think about him being a vigilante and more like he had to think about him being the vigilante. Like Matt needed to make his mind up about Nicholas, not the Silver Wolf.