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sun-snatcher · 10 days

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( credits to the lovely @chrlie-cox for this adorable gifset ! )

✟ — 1/? | IN RE: “ODI ET AMO.” | i. The Problem with Stalemates.

summ. You and Matt Murdock have been rivalling for Summa cum laude since the start. It’s your guys’ thing. So when you start to slip— it only makes sense that it’s him who catches you of all people. pairing. college!matt murdock / f!reader w.count. 4k, baby! a/n. set pre-s1 , pre-established ‘frenemy’ relationship , academic rivals-to-lovers , Matty is a soft cocky boy with blindness for rizz , Reader is an aloof girl who has a staring problem , latin title quoted from below . fic tag. #INRE:

“Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior." — Catullus, "LXXXV"

SALUTATORIAN ; VALEDICTORIAN.

Magna cum laude ; Summa cum laude.

You and Matthew Murdock.

Or, in re:

“Heckle and Jeckle,” Foggy laughs, half-exasperated and half-impressed at the mock-trial unfolding before him.

( It’s nearing almost an hour in. Nothing new when it comes to the likes of both you and Matt. )

Backchat, bickering, and banter is to be expected whenever you and Murdock cross paths. You can barely remember when you even began locking horns with him, really— it’s almost become a staple of your week to get rapt in a practice dispute with him that almost always ends up without a verdict or pushed to the next lesson for a retrial.

Professor Nguyen likes to call you two ‘Stale-mates’ because of that, and much to your chagrin, it’s stuck.

God forbid Matthew Murdock ever becomes a mate of yours. The thought has you scoffing.

Murdock has always been outdoing you by a hair’s breadth since the start of law school, and you refuse to believe it’s ‘natural talent’ no matter how much everyone else claims it to be. He’s simply better. Which means you need to be better.

He’s also cocky, and charmingly so, you can admit that— the whole confidently-sweet-blind-gentleman shtick has half the class swooning and half the professors vouching for his success; which is exactly why he’s the bane of your existence. He had an, advantage, if you will, with a face like that.

And brains, ofcourse.

“Objection, Foggy— I mean— Your Honor,” he amends, “Uh, I believe the defendant just called me a stubborn dumbass? I’m pretty sure that constitutes misconduct.”

The lecture hall breaks into laughter.

You throw your hands up. That— well. Okay. Maybe you do tend to speak on impulse. But he had that effect on you: Disarming, as if acutely aware of your buttons to push and exactly when to push them.

Definitely not because he’s more level-headed than you when it comes to debates.

( Definitely not because of that jawline, either. )

…Whatever.

“Sustained, Mr. Jeckle Murdock,” Foggy waves. “As for you, Ms. Heckle, as much as I personally know how much of a pain in the ass my roommate can be, please maintain professionalism in court.”

Later, behind the lectern, Professor Nguyen dismisses the class short of a few minutes before it’s end. “As entertaining as it was, today’s trial went nowhere. Both parties ended up at an impasse, as usual. A stalemate.”

You wrinkle your nose at that. ( Matt notices from his end of the room. )

“And while it does show that dear Heckle and Jeckle here skilfully know their way around law, it also shows that both of them are terrible at exercising it. Why? Because what we’re trying to do here, at the end of the day, is find a conclusion. To seek resolution.”

Prof. Nguyen looks pointedly at Murdock. A swell of pride washes over you. ( Which, is recognisably a petty and self-indulgent thing to feel, considering he can't even see her look at him, anyway. )

“You should’ve taken the settlement, Matt. It was practically gift-wrapped,” Foggy tells him afterwards, during their usual trip down campus for a quick grab-and-go snack. “Doesn’t always have to be a cage fight, y’know?”

“And give Ms. Heckle the satisfaction of thinking she won on terms? Not a chance,” he snorts, nudging his guiding arm. “She’ll see that as surrender. At least, I would, with a compromise like that. Besides, even if the tables were turned, you know she wouldn’t have taken it either.”

“Aw, you guys know each other so well, don’t you?” Foggy sing-songs. “Practically all up each other’s faces earlier. Swear I thought she was gonna jump your bones for a sec—”

“Oh, c’mon, Foggy,” he groans, “Not this again.”

“I’m serious! God, if you can see the way she looks at you.”

“Fortunately, I can’t.”

He can. In a way, ofcourse. Not that he’d ever admit that. Yeah, sure, he’s privy in the fact that you’re undoubtedly attracted to him, what with the fluctuating heartrate and tell-tale scent of natural pheromones, but that still doesn’t discount how you genuinely find him grating above it all.

Matt would’ve almost considered it endearing— if he didn’t find you just as frustrating at times, too.

It’s the boldness, he reasons. You never seemed to hide. Unapologetically and deliberately agitating.

( …Pretty voice, too. )

“You’re still smiling. That’s creepy. What’re you smiling about, Matt?”

It’s only when they’re too exhausted to read through some lengthy case study about Torts, lazing over their beds in their messed up dorm room, that the conversation gains traction again.

“Next time, remind me to keep your ass out of settlement negotiations.”

“I was giving her a reason to come back with a better deal,” Matt says, face half-smushed against his pillow.

“Mhm, sure. Just admit it—” Foggy pokes his head out the side of his laptop. “—you want her to come back. Every. Single. Time.”

“That is, hah, not true. I just wanna win fair and square.”

“You can’t see, but I’m making the biggest ‘that’s bullshit’ face ever,” he snorts, setting the debris of his bed off to one side. “First of all, law isn’t about winning. It’s not a game, and you of all people know that. Second of all, you can’t deny the sexual tension and chemistry of academic rivals!”

Chemistry that don’t exactly mix well, Matt wants to argue, not with your cross-sword tempest of a personality and his cool as ice quickdraw against every contrement you two share. Half of the school calls the pair of you oil and water when really it’s more a struck match to open gasoline.

Instead, he goes with: “Did Marci tell you that, Foggy-Bear?”

Matt receives a pillow to the face. He barks out a laugh. “Okay, low blow, sorry, buddy.”

“You’re just jealous I got a girl and you’ve got the hots for the ‘Heckler’.”

“I do not. And in her defense, that nickname came from a good cause.”

( The ‘Heckler’, of which was borne: the time you discovered one of the University’s wunderkind sophomores got away with harassing Nabilah from your Interdisciplinary Legal Studies class under a registrar’s aegis.

You’d harangued both men, tore their reputation asunder with damning evidence, and left a monstrous shiner across the student’s face that printed all over the front page of Columbia Daily Spectator— the school paper— as a cherry on top.

Matt remembers your voice echoing the flagstones: Another victim’s story swept under the rug of shitty institutionalised silence along with all the untold scandals!

No one crosses you since.

Until Matthew Murdock, of course, and so turned ‘Heckler’ into Heckle and Jeckle. )

“Never thought I’d see you come to her defense, Mr. Jeckle Murdock.”

“Well, I am an aspiring lawyer.”

“And Ms. Heckle—” Foggy points with a finger. “—is your literal enemy! She’s the only person standing against you and a Summa cum laude distinction— right after me, ofcourse— and is also the most stubborn force to be reckoned with.”

Matt shrugs. “She’s… you know. Passionate. I respect that.”

He regrets his words as soon as they leave his mouth. He can feel the smirk cutting across Foggy’s lips before he could interrupt him.

“…Respect, huh? That’s what we're calling it now?”

“Foggy.” Another groan. Matt volleys the pillow back— manages to clock him straight to the head despite an attempted dodge. “I respect her. Doesn’t mean I care about her.”

Matt Murdock realises very quickly he eats his words.

If he had the time to feel humiliated about it, he probably would.

“Heckle!”

On a sunny Monday afternoon, you wince mid-step down the flight towards your seat in the lecture hall, a lovely— you glance at the clockhand— 15 minutes late to class.

The attempt to sneak in is ten times more awkward with the now-empty coffee cup in your hands.

“Nice of you to finally join us, Heckle,” comes the Professor’s terse voice. Tardiness has always been scorned by Mr. Lowell, and over the past few days— you’ve been arriving later and later. It’s unusual of you.

“…Good afternoon, Professor,” you greet, sheepish.

You’re suddenly pinned by a hundred gazes. All except your Jeckle.

Murdock’s standing with a cant to his head and a smirk on his face you want to wipe off, looking pointedly forward. He must have been called upon in class to dispute a case before you stepped in.

“Before you take your seat,” Prof. Lowell begins, “A tenant has claimed ‘illegal eviction’ after their landlord changed the locks to their door when they were away for a week. What’s the landlord’s best defense, in this case?”

You blink. Gather yourself by muscling your tote and laptop to another arm.

“Abandonment. Since there was an extended period without any notice, or in this case, a week’s absence of no communication— they have reasonable grounds to assume abandonment was the tenant's intention, and justify locking the door as preventing damage or unauthorized occupancy.”

Matt Murdock’s reply is quick as lightning.

“Abandonment is not a specific ground for eviction according to the law.” ( He doesn’t bother reminding you under which law and in what section; he knows you’re smart enough to know. ) “The landlord is still required to follow eviction procedures and file a holdover case in Housing Court to prove anything, regardless of their concerns about damage or squatters.”

Then, to add insult to injury: “Though self-help eviction can be deemed practical— it cannot be legally justified,” he shrugs. “So the tenant’s rights are still violated.”

The class turns to you.

Your mouth opens, and shuts.

Murdock smiles.

( It’s hardly a triumphant one, considering you were set up for failure. Little context, and even less evidence— Mr. Lowell is notorious of knowing exactly how to punish his students without making it blatant. Had the tables been turned, Matt knows himself he’d have argued the exact same thing and lost the exact same way. )

“Thank you,” the Professor nods. “Well argued, Heckle and Jeckle.”

You take your seat.

Then:

…Matt’s smile drops.

“Hey, uh, Foggy, is she—?”

Foggy is telling him something, probably clapping him on the back for actually winning, but he’s tuned everything out in favor of listening to you.

Matt tilts his head to concentrate. “Is she, Is she okay?”

“Hah, after that? Probably n—”

“I’m serious, Fog.”

A blink.

The tone in his voice sends Foggy looking over his shoulder to look at you. “Not that I can tell?” he scrutinises. “Looks like her typical self. Not exactly wallowing, but maybe she's tired today?”

No, Matt doesn't say.

You’re… crying. Been crying.

He can hear your quiet sniffles; feel the hitching of your breath in the air; can taste the salt in it from where they’ve dried down your cheeks. Your bracelet tinkers as you down the remaining droplets of your cold brew.

“Something’s wrong,” Matt says, an hour later, for the third— Or fourth time? He’s not sure. He hasn’t been concentrating on whatever the lecturer has been saying, too busy paying attention to you.

“I can’t shake the feeling.”

“As someone who’s job one day involves taking hyper-educated guesses; I’m pretty sure she’s just stressed as hell. I mean, we’re law students. Even the great Ms. Heckle is bound to lose herself every once in a while, Matt.”

This is different, he wants to insist, even though the logical part of him is reasoning out the same answer. It wouldn’t hurt to check, though, if the nervousness he can practically feel radiating from your end of the room is really just workload-stress.

He’s devised a flimsy plan by the time the lesson is over. Flimsy, by way of meaning: he thought of it on the spot as everyone rushes out of class when the clock struck 4pm.

A clumsy bump. Brailled papers sent fluttering to the floor. Matt’s stellar acting as a blind man struggling to gather scattered work.

You curse and mutter an uncandid apology. “Didn’t see you.”

“Makes two of us,” Matt jokes, and once you’d neatly stacked his papers and returned it, goes:

“Heckle.”

He feels your gaze flick up to him.

“Jeckle.”

A pause. Matt flounders. He hadn’t really expected to get this far. ( Neither did Foggy, apparently, who he can feel peeking around the corner. )

“I…”

“Listen, Murdock, I’m not in the mood,” you sigh in the silence, and he can hear your bracelet charm again as you raise your hand to rake through your hair. “You won. Congrats. Is it not enough for you that I got caught with my pants down in front of everyone already?”

“No, that’s not— That’s not what I was gonna talk about. I just,” he fumbles, fidgeting with his satchel’s strap, “Wanted to know if… everything’s okay.”

You blink.

Matt waits for a scoff. The curt counter. The caustic remark. Then, like a record-scratch jerk on a vinyl:

“I’m fine. Thanks.”

A lie. And an uncharacteristically polite one. The beat pulses late, loud and clear in his ears.

And, perhaps most curiously:

That rush of bloodflow around your elbows, carefully hidden under your sleeves; the faint scent of coagulate pooling into a fresh haematoma and forming a shaped contusion on your arm.

A bruise.

You’re late for Advanced Legal Ethics on Tuesday.

Professor Abena is a strict Ghanaian woman who never tends to be lenient, but you tell her you’re late because of a dragged-out interview for an externship. She buys the lie.

Matt doesn’t, for obvious reasons.

The bruise on your arm has begun to fade. He wonders how long it’s been there.

You disappear too quick for him to ask.

You’re absent on Wednesday.

It’s hard to focus without you.

“Where’s your stale-mate, Mr. Jeckle?” Professor Nguyen jokes.

Wish I knew.

You miss MBE Prep.

Matt tries not to worry.

He offers to take the theory typescripts out the Professor’s hands to pass along to you— just so he gets the excuse to ask around if anybody knew where you were, or whether you had a roommate.

( No one’s exactly sure— apparently your only friend had dropped out a year ago due to some medical issue, and you’ve been a loner since. )

Foggy learns from Marci, though, that she’s pretty sure you stay in a single-dorm at Lenfest Hall.

Word-of-mouth reaches you by Friday that Matt Murdock had demolished four other students back-to-back on a practice Defamation case.

He’d apparently told Foggy he misses having competition.

You don’t smile, but… it’s a very close thing.

The Diamond Law Library on campus is gargantuan, so you’d practically jumped out your skin when someone decided to take the seat across your work-scattered table. At 9:45pm on a Saturday night, the library’s mostly a ghost town.

It’s Murdock.

Under the moon and the flaxen-dim lamplights, he’s painted more softly than you’ve ever seen him.

( Perhaps it’s the sweater and the mussed hair. Whatever it is, you’re just glad he can’t ever see you staring. )

He greets you in lieu of the usual head tilt:

“Heckle.”

“Jeckle.”

You continue before he can. “What do you want?”

( Blunt. Cursory. Borderline rude— he almost sighs in relief from the familiarity of it. )

“It’s more of: What does Professor Nguyen want,” Murdock says, inviting himself by folding his cane and resting it on the table to take a seat. “Remember the Legal Research assignment? She wants it done in pairs.”

Ah. So this is where it’s going. “There is absolutely no way in Hell that I’d partner with you, Murdock.”

“Ah, well,” he shrugs, nonchalant. “You were absent Wednesday. A little too late to say no. ‘Sides, she already noted I’m gonna be your partner.”

Something in your frontal lobe haywires. Words catch in your throat. Your palms are thrown wide. “What do you mean—?! Why the hell didn’t you partner with your ‘B.F.F’ Nelson?!”

( Someone shushes you in the distance. Matt almost laughs when he senses you flick a middle finger their way. )

“Because I have an advantage,” he states, matter-of-fact, and because it’s far better verbiage than saying ‘you need me’ to one of the world’s most independent and mule-headed people alive. “And I know it’ll hel—.”

“I don’t want your help,” you override, pen placed down with an impatient slap.

Murdock leans back against his seat. There’s a mien you see washing over him; the same calm, collected and cocky one that he always slips into whenever he’s called up for an answer or dialogue. Prepared for a fight.

“Listen, Heckle. It’s the final year, and we’re drowning in work. Now, I can tell by the fact that you’re here on a Saturday night that you’re behind on something, because I know I would be if I missed nearly a week of classes. What you need the most is time, and fortunately for you, working with me grants you that.”

A confused look. “You’re gonna buy me time?”

“Us,” he rights, cheekily, before explaining simply: “Me being visually impaired has its perks. I’m blind; considered disabled. And students with disabilities have the right to ease of access and accommodations.”

The chair creaks as you sink back into it. He can tell you’ve already connected the dots.

“Like an extra week for submissions,” you huff, resigned.

Matt drums his finger on the table edge. “A week and a half if I push it. I mean, Ms. Nguyen loves me. Can’t blame her, really.”

Another eye-roll, but with less heat this time. Matt knows the space of contemplative silence is really just for show in favour of protecting your ego. Which— fair enough. He’d have done the same.

“You’re holding a cudgel over my head,” you say, testy.

“I prefer to call it an olive branch. Speaking of which: Mr. Ravi from the prep course handed out a review guide…” He trails off as he feels for his bag, sliding out two spiral bound booklets and setting it on the table. It’s a compendium of notes for the final year bar exam.

A braille label is pasted on the top right corners of both books. His fingers read the raised dots, before he slides it across. “This is your copy.”

Your finger runs curiously at the dents translating your name.

Unbidden, you picture him domestic in his dorm room, meticulously taking the time to emboss a label to differentiate yours from his. The thought alone has you with half the mind to rip it off.

(You end up leaving it as is. Wouldn’t’ve made a difference if you did, anyway. Yeah.

Totally not because you find it endearing— No. Never.)

Coloured sticky notes with chicken-scratch writing are littered across some pages as you flip through. He must have heard you thumb at some of them, because he goes, “Oh, I got Foggy to annotate whatever you might’ve missed. I hear he’s got bad handwriting so, uh, I made him do it on post-its. If you can’t read it, you can ask him.”

( …God, he makes it hard to be pissed off at, sometimes. Maybe you just need more caffeine. )

“Mh. How thoughtful of you.”

It’s the closest thing to a sincere thank you he’s sure he’ll ever get. Matt has to bite back a smile. “You’re welcome, Heckle.”

You set the guide aside with your other study materials, ignore the nickname. “How’d you even find me here?”

He shrugs. “You won’t believe me even if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“Alright. I caught a whiff of coffee and misery a floor away and knew it could only be you,” Murdock jokes, smoothly. (Except it’s not a joke. He could smell your perfume and your cold brew from the stairwell.)

When you scoff, he makes a you-asked-for-it face. Before you can remark, though, he lets out a soft exhale. It’s honest.

“…Your bracelet.”

Realisation takes a moment. “You heard it?”

“I recognise it,” he emphasises. “Always makes a sound whenever we argue because you like to throw your hands around. Like tiny bells.”

That shouldn’t have felt more intimate than it sounds.

You breathe sharply out your nose. Press your tongue against your cheek. The air is charged with something, but not so much the keyed up kind you two share in a mock-trial. If anything, it almost feels right; as if he’d filled in a space you hadn’t yet realised was empty.

Margining a comfortable silence.

“Where’d you go?” Matt decides to finally ask, so imperceptibly that had you not been in the silence of the library, he doesn’t think you would’ve heard him. “Mock trials have been boring,” he adds, before he can even stop himself.

It’s a sliver of heart. Unforgivable sentiment to extend to his so-called nemesis.

He hears your heartrate spike. The sleeve of your jacket shifting as you fidget at your arm. The bruise is healed, now. Matt can’t tell if the adrenaline he can sense is borne from his question or his admission.

“I visited my friend in the hospital,” you say, turning your attention to your pens and highlighters instead as you put them away. “She was my roommate.”

Steady pulse; honest truth. “A week-long visit?”

“I caught something there and ended up sick.”

The fib is delivered so fluently he’d have been convinced if he hadn’t been listening to your heart. Matt breathes a sigh out his nose. He’ll have to try again another time, he supposes, and fortunately he’s bought plenty with you.

“Feeling better?”

You zip your pencil case sharply. Shut your laptop with an abrupt click. “Well, I was, until you came along. So, no.”

A lie. Beat late, loud and clear.

Matt Murdock tilts his head at you. Puppy-like, almost— as if he’s studying you.

Then he ducks his head and smiles.

It’s punctuated by the briefest slip of knowing, soft laughter; Has you tarrying over the flash of his canines; the dimple carving into his cheek; the windswept look of him in his stupid navy, cotton-light sweater.

…Boyishly handsome. It stuns you into place.

“I’ll see you Monday,” he avers, “Don’t be late, Heckle. Remember, we’re stale-mates, now.”

“Shut up,” you snap, bristling.

Somehow, against all odds—

It’s the least insulting tone you’ve taken with him yet.

( Matt considers it a win. )