#06: What's Haunting You? (Curses and Dark Attachments) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pendragonfics · 7 years ago

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Shiver

Paring: Matt Murdock/Reader

Tags: female reader, canon compliant, blind date, blind humour, bed sharing, fluff, angst and a happy ending bc why not

Summary: "And Matt, this is ________, practically my keeper and non-biological sister, and you are each other's blind date. More-so for Matt."

Foggy sets his two BFFs up, and Matt's life gets in the way of romance.

Word Count: 2,241

Posting Date: 2017-03-18

Current Date: 2017-06-11

"The last time this happened, he set me up with the non-English speaking son of his landlady, said, 'Have a good night, children', and ran off into the night." You laugh at the memory, and how you spent the whole time walking around the city repeating what little English words the guy had known. "And, ever since I moved here, Foggy has not been off my case about being single in a city like this. Says I need protection, but I've got pepper spray and a can of whoop-ass in my fist." You sigh, looking at yourself in the mirror, playing with the stubborn hair that keeps falling into your eyes. "Don't say whoop-ass on the first date. One a blind date."

It was common knowledge that Franklin 'Foggy' Nelson was best friends with you since birth. Everyone knew it. It was like a word association game; always together. In fact, your mothers had been friends, and you two had been friends, and if it ever came to it, your children would be friends too, and so on. The Nelson family and the ______'s had known each other for eons, and would always do. And that was why you followed him to this side of the city, to the only place you knew.

Of course, thankfully, you had a job, and a dinky apartment that used to be someone's basement underneath a gym, and the same guy trying to get you out in the dating world and find someone to hook up with. But that was what best friends were for, right? Getting people out of their own little ruts and out into the world where the sun shone through the skyscrapers and warmth came from disposable coffee cups.

But there was ten minutes to go until the date (meeting place: a street corner near a park and a bar) and you were still trying to figure out what to do with your hair when you heard a text alert come through your phone. But checking it, it was none other than Foggy, sending you a picture of someone's shoe (attached to somebody's leg, thank goodness) and the words don't leave matty standing around under it.

Rolling your eyes, you fluff your hair the way it normally is for everyday life, and grabbing a scarf, rush out the door. It doesn't take long to get to where the meeting place is, and once you're there, you can't help but laugh. After knowing him all of those years, and tying ties for all of yours, you swear you'd taught him how to not to tie it backwards. And the suit? You'd need to take him out around town for another - he looked like a used-car salesman.

"I'd know that laugh anywhere, even if I was in a room of ________ doppelgangers all laughing," Foggy grins, crossing the distance away from you, smothering your outfit and you in a crushing hug. "Glad you could make it."

"I'm getting the feeling that there was no choice between making it, or not," you whisper back, and add, "Being single isn't a curse, Fog."

From your peripherals, you notice a guy, wearing a suit, but unlike Foggy who looks somewhat like a child invading his uncle's old raggedy clothes pile from the spare room, this guy makes the suit look like he's on-loan from Armani for the weekend. And without really planning to, you feel yourself get flustered at the sight of him without even speaking a damn word to the guy.

"Ah. _______, this is Matty-Matt-Matt, BFF and lawyer friend-slash-partner in our business," he motions to the guy. "And Matt, this is ________, practically my keeper and non-biological sister, and you are each other's blind date. More-so for Matt."

It's only then you link the white cane and the glasses on the edge of his nose.

"He's always joking about it, don't you worry," he extends a hand to you, and like something like a magical Disney prince, he's linked his arm in yours, and your heart is racing a million miles a minute because the freaking hot blind guy has treated you like a goddamned Disney princess and you're sure you've forgotten to brush your teeth or something dumb. Leaving Foggy behind, he muses, "So, he told me you've moved?"

You nod, and realising your mistake, add, "Um, yeah. Grew up in the place beside the Nelson's, but there's nothing really left for me there. I mean, new job. I'm a typist for a clinic downtown." You tell him.

Matt grins. "I'm good with my hands too, what with all the Braille," he jokes, and adds, "Please, relax, I can take a joke, and Foggy knows that way too well." He pauses, "If you like, we can play that game where you ask a question, and then I do." You can't help but smirk, because all this time, with his cane out, he's been navigating around people and the bustle of the city and somehow managed to lead you toward a park bench in the park across the road. "You start."

Taking a seat, you hum, and chewing on your lip, deliberate on what to ask Matty-Matt-Matt, Foggy's lawyer friend-slash-partner. "Okay. Have you always been ... blind?" you ask.

He shakes his head. "Got into an accident. Saved an old man, but lost my eyes." He replies, folding his cane up, sitting the stick on his lap. "What made you become a typist?"

You blink. "I - I don't know. I remember being six and watching my grandmother on her old typewriter ... I've always had a thing for the way the keys clack. Okay, that sounds really dumb." You feel a roaring blush coat your cheeks.

"No, no, not dumb," Matt places a hand on yours, "It's better than why I became a lawyer."

You cock an eyebrow, and use up your next question on that, and go back and forward in the game until the sun seems to be fading into the distance behind the skyscrapers of Hell's Kitchen and you're feeling less than strangers with the handsome man beside you. As you shiver in the evening air, he seems to come out of a charm from your voice, and spell unbroken, he proposes moving toward a place with reservations for the pair of you. Before you know it, the night is over, and he's walked you back to your place, and you've added your number into his talking phone and his to yours, and vowed to go out again next Thursday after his rota of clients for the day.

It's like this every week until almost a year later you wake up beside him in his bed, and turn to him in the midnight air. In the darkness that isn't quiet, you see the shadow of his form in the sheets, the way his hair falls every which-way, his lips parted ever so slightly to take in the night air. But your eyes see the haunting linger of bruises and battered ribs and the blister on his hand, how they become increasingly calloused as the days pass by.

Your boyfriend calls them his accidents, but you know inside you don't believe him. You've been with him for very nearly twelve months, and you know what Matt Murdock, the guy who kisses you goodbye on his way to work, and forgets his lunch in the fridge in the apartment and asked you to move in with him only eight months after knowing him, and had the freaking Punisher as a client.

The Matt you know would never just let himself 'fall down the stairs' or 'trip over the sidewalk' and, your personal favourite, 'walk into a door'. No. The Matt you knew, the Matt you met when you first went on that date, walked proficiently around people like his blindness was only a defined term to some and not a complete concept for him. The Matt you knew would never just let a guy step off the curb too early, almost like he could sense what was happening, would never do the same for himself.

He was lying, and it was simple.

Slipping a foot from the bed, you pad over to the main living area as quiet as you can be, and curl in on yourself on the couch. It's been months since you left your apartment and assimilated into his, and longer still since you've seen your family or the dog face to face, or on Skype. Perhaps it's the fact you're wondering if Matt is either into hardcore BDSM and cheating on you or the vigilante Daredevil (which is nigh impossible) and perhaps it's that which is making you shiver on the lounge, or that you've been such an adult for so long and need to feel the arms of someone you love around you to tell you that it'll all be okay.

"________?" His voice is groggy, tantalising to hear, and you can practically picture his face as he realises you're not in the bed beside him. "I can hear crying, is that you?"

It isn't until he says this you realise that yes, it is you, and you're giving Alice from Wonderland a run for her money, as your nightshirt is soaking. You shakily give a breathy yes and hear his feet hit the hardwood, making their way toward to you on the sofa. "Matt, please, you need sleep, you've got a court date tomorrow with the Frank Castle case," you protest, but he's taking you into his arms, to his chest, cradling you like you're goddamned four years old and just had a nightmare. "Why are you so hard to understand, Matthew?"

He's still for a moment. "Do you remember that date, the one Foggy set up?" He asks you, like there's any possibility you could have forgotten meeting the best guy you'd ever come to be with. "Do you want to play that game where you ask a question, and then I do?"

"Are you cheating on me?" your voice is barely a whisper, but you know he hears you.

Matt shakes his head. "No – no, I'm not." he whispers back, his fingers combing the hair from your eyes, from your face. "Why couldn't you sleep?"

You take a breath before answering. "I just...I don't know. Mid-midlife crisis." You can't see, but hear the puff of laughter that comes from his smirk. "Why don't you trust me?" you ask. It's truly a silent night after the words leave your lips; Matt stills behind you, his big spoon to your little one is almost a statue, the flashing lights beyond the apartment of the billboard orchestrate the passing of time. "You never tell me where you go when you just disappear, and come back beaten and battered all over. I met a girl named Clare on the stairs one day, and she knew your middle name. Which, I learned, from her, Mr. Matthew Michael Murdock," you murmur your defences to the lawyer, backing up your facts, "Foggy calls a lot, and we're basically the founding members of the What Is Up With Matt club, and on top of it all, you don't tell me a damn thing!" you sit up, leaving the arms of Matt empty on his side of the lounge.

"________ -,"

You shake your head. "I'm a typist who if was better at school could be a damn court stenotype, and if you can't tell me what you've been hiding since I met you, then I'm sure that I can be out of here by the sunrise, Matt. I swear, there's nothing worse than knowing there's something going on and you can't do a thing to help." Your voice chokes up, arms tight around yourself.

"It's not that I don't trust you, _______," he starts. "I just want to protect you."

You wipe your tears on the back of your wrist, and knowing well enough it's not your turn to ask, you implore, "From what? Truth? Isn't that a fundamental thing about being a lawyer, an American?" You sniff. "I'm the same age as you. I kicked the ass of the last guy who tried to mug me. I know how to do taxes and I know there's shitty things in this world that happen for shitty reasons, but out of all of that, you're still defending your motive that you're protecting me?" You swallow. "From what, Matt?"

He lowers his head, wiping a hand over his face. "Please, I know you're upset, and I never intended you to be. But ... I have, uh, abilities. I can hear really well, and smell, and feel. I'm also the son of Jack Murdock, and I can't just step down from a fight.

You're not sure you like where this is going, but you sit there, silent, waiting for the next part to come.

"I - I'm Daredevil. I'm the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, and I just want you to know that I don't go out to do it for fun. I do it because I love you, _________. And I want to make the city safer for you."

A silence settles between you, and slowly, you reach out, and cradle his cheeks in your palms, cupping them to raise his head to face your own. "Matt, you idiot..." you whisper, gazing into his eyes.

He gives a wan smile. "But I'm your idiot?"

You nod. "Yeah. You're my idiot."

#matt murdock #daredevil #matt murdock/reader #matt murdock x reader #daredevil x reader #marvel x reader #marvel fanfic #chaotic--lovely #pendragonfics

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kristipetersenschoonover · 7 years ago

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The Extinct Species Graveyard at the Bronx Zoo’s BOO AT THE ZOO Event was fascinating–and sad.

Nathan and I love to visit the Bronx Zoo, which is just about an hour from our house—it’s like being on vacation for a day, and it could be said the zoo is part of our lives (we’ve “financially adopted” many of their animals over the years, everything from a bat to a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach we named Mountain King). Since we’re members, we try to make it down for the zoo’s special events throughout the year.

October brought Boo at the Zoo: weekends full of activities such as a beer garden, pumpkin carving demonstration, not-really hay rides, marshmallow roasting pits, candy trails, a corn maze—and my favorite, a Haunted Forest in the abandoned World of Darkness Building. Little known fact about me? It was my first-ever walk-through Haunted House, and I did pretty well!

It was lots of fun to see kids in costume.

Look who I ran into in New York City!

…and to visit our hissing cockroach, Mountain King.

My Valentine’s Day Gift to Nathan

Check out Mountain King! He is clearly aptly named. Look how large he is compared to the others, and a spectacular gold color (which you can’t really see in this terrible light).

The exhibit that struck me most was the Extinct Species Graveyard, which was set up in a little-used grove of trees next to The Mouse House. It wasn’t there for a Halloween thrill, nor was it there as just another decoration to fill up space; it seemed part educational, and part memorial. I was surprised by the profound sense of sadness I felt as we wandered through the headstones.

Here’s a tour!

The graveyard was located on a perfect, flat, shady — and unused the rest of the year — spot next to The Mouse House.

The area where this was set up made it feel real.

Officially discovered in the late 1600s, the Falkland Islands Wolf’s tame nature spelled its doom—it hadn’t learned to fear humans, so settlers could easily trick it into coming close enough to kill it. They were hunted for meat and fur, and were considered threatening to sheep. The last one was killed in West Falkland in 1876. For a thorough history (that looks to be well-researched—loads of legitimate sources, here), visit http://messybeast.com/extinct/warrah.htm

Passenger Pigeons were abundant in the 19th century, and tales of their titanic flocks—they took over entire forests, appeared thick as waterfalls, and left entire towns blanketed in feces—are just plain hard to believe. They were basically hunted out of extinction, both for their meat by starving frontiersman, and because they were a nuisance: they competed with farm animals for foodstuffs, among other things. Once the railroads came into being, there was no stopping hunters and trappers from sporting these animals right out of existence. The last known Passenger Pigeon’s name was the Cincinnati Zoo’s Martha, and she died in September of 1914. For more information, check out Audubon’s “Why the Passenger Pigeon Went Extinct” here: http://www.audubon.org/magazine/may-june-2014/why-passenger-pigeon-went-extinct

The Tasmanian Tiger was killed off on the Australian mainland by widespread hunting, but survived on Tasmania until the last one died in a zoo in the 1930s. Australians haven’t given up on the hope that this thylacine is still alive, however—to this day, reports of sightings are frequent, and even a recent episode of Expedition Unknown had Josh Gates out hunting for it. Initially, scientists had proposed many theories for the creature’s extinction on Tasmania, although there is new evidence to suggest that it was a changing climate that was the culprit http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/28/mystery-disappeared-tasmanian-tiger-finally-solved/.

The story of the last authenticated Labrador Duck’s demise is rather sad http://www.chemunghistory.com/pages/labradorduck.html, but literally, almost nothing is known about this bird—its breeding was done in such remote areas (it’s suspected way up in Greenland) that it died out almost before we noticed. Apparently once prevalent on Long Island Sound, we do know, thanks to a journal called Arctic Zoology in 1785, that a specimen was sent from Connecticut to England (see where I got this from here: https://birdsna.org/Species-Account/bna/species/labduc/introduction). Not very exciting, but there is one ornithologist who made it his mission to visit every single specimen (there are 55) left in existence, which he details in his book The Curse of the Labrador Duck. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-curse-of-the-labrador-duck-16641319/

Probably the poster child for extinction, the Dodo Bird has something in common with the Falkland Island Wolf—it had no fear of humans, because it had never had to fear anything before. Although it’s widely held that sailors arriving on the island of Mauritius, near Madagascar, hunted them and ate their eggs, another theory suggests that it was the cats, rats, pigs and other animals the sailors brought with them went feral. Read more in a Forbes Magazine Quora reprint, “What Happened to the Last Dodo Bird?” here. https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/09/20/what-happened-to-the-last-dodo-bird/#2eb2d48e9c2b

The Pig-footed Bandicoot, an adorable little Australian marsupial, is believed to have not survived the introduction of European cattle, as that would’ve cause a major change to the environment and the availability of food. Although the last verified individual was seen in the early 1900s, there’s photographic, video and audio evidence to suggest the creature may still be alive and well…sounds a little far-fetched to me, but judge for yourself: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2007/04/pig-footed-bandicoot-rises-dead

Related to today’s manatees and dugongs, Steller’s Sea Cow, indigenous to the northern Pacific, were hunted to extinction in the 1700s by Russian and European fur traders. Another theory floating around out there attributes the final blow for this species to the stress on the sea otter population which caused a rise in sea urchins which caused a depletion of kelp—the Steller’s main foodstuff. More information here: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/04/pleistoseacow/522831/

The Golden Toad lived in Costa Rica’s Monteverde Cloud Forest and was declared officially extinct in 2004. This animal was unique in that males were a dazzling orange, but the females came in many different colors, among them yellow and green. For a long time it was thought that global warming killed these stunning animals, but now they think it might’ve been a fungus: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/03/global-warming-didnt-kill-golden-toad

In another case of “we didn’t realize what we were doing,” the Quagga, which was indigenous to South Africa, died out in the late 1800s. Like many other animals of the plains, they were ruthlessly hunted—they were regarded as competitors for the same food as sheep and goats. What’s come to light is that they were not a separate species of zebra, but a subspecies of the zebra we all know and love. There is a revival project going on in South Africa, which you can read more about here: https://quaggaproject.org/

The Greak Auk—which I’ve seen referred to as “the original penguin”—was scattered all over the northern Atlantic, and was exploited for its eggs, feathers, oil, and fat. Archeological finds also suggest that it was important to ancient maritime peoples. The saddest story, though, is the one of the crew of a ship which tied the bird’s feet together and attempted to take it home. When a violent storm hit, the sailors were certain it was the work of the “devil bird” they’d brought on board, so they stoned it to death. An extensive history in Smithsonian Magazine’s “When the Last of the Great Auks Died, It Was by the Crush of a Fisherman’s Boot,” here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/with-crush-fisherman-boot-the-last-great-auks-died-180951982/

The Carolina Parakeet’s story is especially tragic, because it was the only species of parrot native to the United States. The last known wild specimen was killed in 1904, and the last captive one died in a zoo in 1918. This bird had a few causes of death: habitat loss, the pet and fashion trades, and farming. There’s a pretty extensive discussion in Audubon’s “The Last Carolina Parakeet” here: http://johnjames.audubon.org/last-carolina-parakeet

I’ve always had an affinity for toads, so here I played around with getting a selfie. Not great.

Me and the toad’s ass. Nathan took this one.

Nathan loves the Tasmanian Tiger. So this is the one he chose to pose with.

The Bronx Zoo’s Extinct Species Graveyard Nathan and I love to visit the Bronx Zoo, which is just about an hour from our house—it’s like being on vacation for a day, and it could be said the zoo is part of our lives (we’ve “financially adopted” many of their animals over the years, everything from a bat to a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach we named Mountain King).

#Boo at the Zoo #Carolina Parakeet #Dodo Bird #extinct species list #Falkland Islands Wolf #Golden Toad #Great Auk #Halloween events in New York City #Labrador Duck #Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches #Passenger Pigeon #Pig-footed Bandicoot #Quagga #Steller’s Sea Cow #Tasmanian Tiger #The Bronx Zoo #where can the kids go to dress up in costumes in New York

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