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Karen checked her watch for what had to be about the hundredth time. Matt was supposed to meet her half an hour ago. He'd called yesterday, entirely out of the blue, to tell her that he had some information that she might find valuable for a story she was investigating. It was the first she'd heard from him in weeks, and his was the last name she expected to see pop up on her caller ID, considering how they had left things the last time they spoke. She wondered how he even knew what she was working on, and his wry answer, "You really don't want to know the answer to that," left her so infuriated that she nearly rejected his help. But he insisted, so here she was, and now he was late. Typical Matt.
The iced tea that she'd ordered while she was waiting had long set empty, and the ice nearly melted when she finally dug out her phone and called him. It rang once and went directly to voicemail. Karen furrowed her brow with a combination of frustration and concern. It was the middle of the day--Matt never had his phone off in the middle of the day. The middle of the night, sure, but at two in the afternoon, the line should have rung five or six times if he wasn't going to pick up. Something had to be wrong. She gathered up her things, left a five dollar bill on the table for her drink and tip, and hurried to hail a cab to Matt's apartment.
She knocked on his door several times, calling his name, and got no response. She tried calling his phone again, in case he'd turned it back on, only to have it go straight to voicemail again.
"Matt? It's Karen. I waited for you where you said we should meet and you never showed. I'm outside your apartment. Are you ok? Please call me back, you've got me a little worried."
Karen was beginning to think of all kinds of unpleasant scenarios that may have befallen Matt, most of them related to the activities of his alter ego. She tried to shake these from her mind, trying to convince herself that maybe he'd lost his phone or forgotten to charge it and that he was not lying dead in an alley or unconscious and bleeding half to death on the floor of his apartment. Scouring every alley in Hell's Kitchen was a bit more than Karen thought she could take on, but scaling the fire escape to the roof entrance, which Matt invariably kept unlocked, could at least put to rest one of those fears. She took the elevator back downstairs, walked outside and around to the side of the building, where it took her a few tries to reach and pull down the ladder to the fire escape. She scaled the ladder, then the many flights of creaky, narrow metal stairs that ran up the side of the building, and finally another ladder to the roof. As she hoisted herself over the roof's ledge, she saw an arm splayed out from behind a rooftop storage unit. She scrambled forward, barely taking time to get her feet under her properly as she gasped and said over and over, "Oh, no. Oh, no no no..."
She reached the arm, which was, as she feared, attached to Matt Murdock, whose unconscious figure lay face-down on the roof. He was dressed, not as Daredevil, but in sweatpants and a hoodie. His feet were bare.
"Oh, God, please don't be dead," she said under her breath, suppressing panic.
She checked him over, sighing with relief as she found that he was breathing, seeking any wounds, and finding only those which were days and weeks old and already beginning to heal. When she felt his head, looking for signs of head trauma, she pulled her hand back in shock.
"Holy shit, you're burning up!" she exclaimed to Matt's still unconscious figure.
With some difficulty, she rolled him over onto his back, resting his head in her lap as she sat down on the rooftop. She felt his face and neck, and began to unzip his hoodie in hopes of cooling him down a little. She stopped short when she exposed what had to be a half-dozen large scars that criss-crossed his upper chest.
"Jesus Christ, Matt," she exhaled as she ran her fingertips across one of the more prominent ones a couple inches below his collarbone.
She shook his shoulder in an attempt to rouse him. "Matt. Matt, wake up. It's Karen."
He remained unresponsive. Karen moved her hand to his chest and rubbed there vigorously. "Wake up, Matt. Please wake up." Tension rose in her voice as she repeated herself and continued to rub and shake him. Finally, after what seemed like a small eternity, a small groan emanated from Matt's lips.
"Wha--" he moaned, his head moving slightly in Karen's lap, and his left hand reaching up, grasping at nothing.
"Matt? Matt? Oh thank God," Karen breathed, the tension sliding out of her voice.
"Karen? What-- what happened?" Matt started moving his head around more rapidly, trying to get his bearings, and panicking somewhat. "Where am I?"
"Shh. Shh," Karen said, stroking his hair, "you're on the roof of your apartment. You have a fever. I think you passed out."
"I-- I don't remember that," he replied.
"No, I don't imagine you would."
"How did you find me?"
"You were supposed to meet me this afternoon. When you didn't show, and you didn't answer your phone, I got worried, so I came to your apartment. When you didn't answer the door, I got really worried, so I climbed the fire escape intending to come in through the roof and make sure you weren't bleeding to death."
"Shit, Karen, I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It's ok. You're not bleeding to death, you're just really sick. Which sucks, and you scared me half to death, but it beats all of the awful scenarios I kept coming up with when I couldn't get in touch with you."
Matt curled his lips into a groggy smile. "You still care."
"What?" Karen was taken slightly aback. "Of course I do! Now let's get you inside and find something to bring your fever down."
She helped Matt to his feet and let him lean on her for balance as they descended the stairs from the roof entrance into his apartment. She led him to his bed, where he sat down and allowed her to take off his hoodie before he laid down and adjusted a pillow under his head and neck.
Karen walked into the bathroom, where she looked around briefly for where Matt kept extra small towels or washcloths, finding a small stack of each in the cabinet above the toilet. She took several and soaked each with cold water before wringing them out and setting them on the counter. She then picked them all up and carried them back into Matt's bedroom, where he was now curled up on his side, hugging the edge of his pillow. A small smile threatened the corners of Karen's mouth; his posture was more that of a sad little boy than a heroic vigilante, and for whatever reason, she found it endearing.
She sat on the edge of the bed, placing one towel across his forehead, one over his neck, and one each on his wrists and ankles, remembering the times she'd done this for her brother when he had the flu. Matt shivered slightly.
"Can I have a blanket?" Matt asked, his tone pitiful.
Karen felt Matt's cheek again, gauging his temperature. He was still quite warm. "Maybe in a minute," she replied, "You're still burning up. Do you have a thermometer anywhere? I didn't want to snoop through your medicine cabinet if I could help it."
"Yeah, it's in the first-aid kit. Under the couch."
"Why is your--you know what? Never mind." Karen walked to the living room to retrieve the thermometer. As she rifled through the bandages and suture kits looking for it, Karen found it both worrying and comforting that Matt had such a well-stocked first-aid kit. She also kind of wondered who was stitching him up, though that was a question better left for another time. Or possibly never. She'd decide later.
She frowned somewhat as she found the ancient-looking mercury thermometer in its case at the bottom of the box. "I've always hated these," she said, walking back into the bedroom with the thermometer between her fingers, "They're impossible to read."
"Yeah, I know," Matt replied, a wry smile playing at his lips.
It took a beat for Karen to register that Matt was making a joke, and another for her to process exactly how ridiculous it was that he had a thermometer that he couldn't even use. She let out a tense chuckle. "Why do you even have this thing?"
"I never use it. It's been in that box since it belonged to my dad."
"So what, you never need to take your own temperature?"
"Never much saw the point. If I'm sick, I'm sick. If I have a fever, I have a fever. The severity seems of little importance to me."
"Except when you pass out on the roof."
"I still don't remember what I was doing up there."
Karen held out the thermometer and tapped Matt's bottom lip with it gently. "Open," she commanded. He obliged, and Karen placed the thermometer under his tongue. "I forget exactly how long you're supposed to keep that there," Karen said, "I'm used to those digital ones that just beep at you when they're done."
Matt shrugged to indicate that he didn't know either.
"I guess I'll just watch it," she said, leaning forward and squinting at the marks on the glass tube, watching the mercury expand along them.
Matt was unsure if the chills he felt were due to his fever or Karen's close proximity. Her face was inches from his as she stared intently at the thermometer in his mouth, and he could feel her breath as it traveled across his shoulder with each exhale.
The mercury crept past 100, then 101, and 102. It slowed as it crossed 103 and came to a stop just beyond. After Karen was sure that the mercury wasn't moving anymore, she plucked the thermometer from his mouth and held it up, studying it carefully.
"A hundred-and-three and a little bit," she announced, an edge of concern in her voice, "And that's probably down a bit from whatever it was when I found you. You should really go to the hospital."
"No, no hospital," Matt said firmly.
Karen looked at him warily. "Fine, then I'm going to sit here with you until your fever comes down enough that I'm satisfied you're not going to actually die."
"That's fair," Matt said, "And I do enjoy your company."
He flashed the same wry smile as he had a moment ago, and Karen felt her stomach lurch slightly. She stood up and headed toward the kitchen.
"What? What did I say?" Matt called after her, half-worried, half-joking.
"I'm going to get you some water. We have no idea how long you were unconscious, and you're probably really dehydrated," she replied as she opened and closed cabinets looking for a glass.
"Right, yeah, that's probably a good idea. Glasses are in the cabinet to the left of the sink," he said, as he heard her opening and closing the cupboards.
Karen opened the door Matt had indicated. "Ah," she said, mostly to herself, and selected a tall glass from among the mostly mismatched mugs and glasses that sat on the shelves. She filled it from the tap and carried it back to Matt, who sat up slightly, leaning against the headboard. The towel that Karen had placed across his forehead dropped into his lap. He accepted the glass from Karen carefully, with both hands, and took a long drink before lowering the glass to rest against his stomach.
"It couldn't have been more than a few hours," Matt said, a thoughtful look scrunching onto his face as he tried to recall his morning.
"What couldn't have been more than a few hours?" Karen asked, her own thoughts having wandered as she found herself looking a little too intently at Matt's hands wrapped around his water glass.
"How long I was unconscious. I remember getting up this morning and feeling a little crappy, but I'd had a long night last night--working on a case, not...the other thing," Matt interrupted himself when he heard Karen's heart speed up, "Anyway, I felt a little better after I had some coffee and took a shower, and then I was making sure I had everything in order for our meeting this afternoon because I wanted to actually be on time for once..."
He trailed off for a moment, an expression of shame crossing his face. "I think...it may have felt stuffy in here, or maybe I thought I was just nervous about meeting you, considering, you know, how we left things. So I wanted some fresh air. And I guess I must have gone up to the roof, which would make sense, but I don't actually remember going up there."
Karen considered this information and counted backward in her head. "Three hours, then, maybe" she said, "You were an hour late meeting me when I found you, and you were still wearing sweats, which tells me you hadn't gotten dressed yet when you went up to the roof. Unless you were planning on meeting me wearing that." Her last statement came out a little less teasing than she'd intended.
"No, I was actually planning on wearing a tie," Matt said, a defensive edge to his voice, genuinely hoping that Karen didn't actually think he was going to meet her wearing sweats.
"I'm kidding. I know you take a certain amount of pride in how you dress," Karen said, smiling gently and placing a hand on Matt's leg, "Though to be entirely honest, you do that hoodie some favors."
Matt tried to contain the smile that crept across his lips into a small grin, but the force of it was such that there was nothing he could do to stop it. Hearing Karen's heart skip as he did so caused him to smile even more broadly, making his cheeks hurt and his eyes crinkle and squint. He bowed his head in a futile attempt to hide it, succeeding only at looking like an embarrassed teenager. He brought his water glass to his lips and took a couple of gulps while he collected his emotions.
"I could always put it back on," he finally said, regaining control of his facial expressions and forming his mouth back into the wry, teasing grin that he knew pushed Karen's buttons, "But seriously, though, I'm freezing. Where did you put it?"
Karen hesitated a moment, looking up and down Matt's bare torso admiringly before picking up his sweatshirt from where she'd draped it over the foot of the bed and handing it to him. She was likewise hesitant in rescinding her grip from the garment, resulting in a brief, gentle tug-of-war that ended with Matt's infuriatingly knowing smile as he wrested it from her hand. He pulled it on over his arms and shoulders, and only because he suspected that Karen was enjoying the view, left it unzipped.
Karen let out the breath she'd been unconsciously holding and silently cursed herself for letting Matt suck her back in like this. She was still angry with him, but that anger didn't seem to change the fact that when it really came down to it, she did care about him. And that was probably why she was angry with him. But for now, she supposed, she could set that anger aside and appreciate the relative simplicity of the moment--no lies between them, no Daredevil, no cases or investigations--just Matt sitting there in his sweats, looking determined not to appear as sick as he was and failing spectacularly. She pressed his water glass back into his hands. "Drink," she said, "I really don't like how pale you're starting to look again."
Matt took a few healthy gulps from the glass, nearly emptying it. "I should probably cool these back off, too," Karen said, picking up the damp washcloths that had fallen from Matt's wrists, forehead, and neck.
"I have a couple of ice packs in the freezer," Matt said, "They might work better."
"Yeah, those would work better," Karen replied, gathering the rest of the cloths, "Where should I put these?"
"Just put them in the bathtub for now, I guess," Matt said, "I'll pick them up later when I'm feeling better."
Karen placed the damp cloths where Matt had instructed and retrieved two ice packs from the freezer. Matt had placed his now-empty water glass on the nightstand and had laid back down, this time stretched out on his back. Karen tucked one of the ice packs behind his neck and placed the other on his forehead. He smiled up at her and brought a hand to her face.
"Thank you," he said softly, "I'm pretty sure you saved my life."
A thousand thoughts and emotions flooded Karen's mind, and she felt as if someone had let all of the air out of her lungs. She knew that Matt's situation was serious when she found him, but until this moment, she'd largely been operating on emotion and instinct. His words suddenly made the gravity of the situation tangible to her intellect, and she broke down, sobbing into Matt's chest.
"Hey, hey...I'm fine now. I'll be fine," he said gently, wrapping his arms around her and stroking her hair. "Thanks to you, I'm fine."
"I was so scared, Matt," Karen murmured into his chest between choking sobs, "Knowing...knowing what you..."
"Shh...but it wasn't that. It wasn't that at all," Matt said, still stroking Karen's hair and back as she'd curled herself into a tight ball against him.
"But sometimes it is!" she shouted, lifting her head, looking directly at him, her face red and wet with tears.
Matt let go of her and let his shoulders drop into the mattress, taking on the posture of the defeated little boy once again. Karen sat up, tucking her feet under her, and tried to regain some of her composure. Matt was still very ill, and this was not the time to have this conversation. Noticing his comportment, she took his hands in her own.
"I worry, that's all," she mumbled, looking down at his hands in hers, "I can't help it."
Matt squeezed her hands. "I know. And I know that's why you're mad at me. And why you're here now. I need that, you know."
Karen looked up at him through her eyelashes, not moving her head. Tears still silently dripped from her face onto their hands.
"If I promised to check in with you, would it help?" he offered.
Karen lifted her head, sniffled, and nodded. "Yes," she added a moment later, catching herself in her nonverbal response, "I think it would."
Matt smiled slightly, "I think it would help me, too. And I could tell you nodded, but I still like hearing your voice."
Karen sniffled again and cracked the tiniest of smiles. Matt took this as a signal to continue elaborating on his idea. "I don't leave and get in at the same time every night, and I don't always go out. So how about this? I'll always call or text you before I leave, and I'll tell you something about my day, or ask you about yours. But I don't want to wake you up if I get home safe, which I usually do."
"I don't care if you wake me up. I'll sleep better the rest of the night knowing," Karen said instantly.
"Ok, then...if you don't hear from me by nine the next morning, come check on me. Come look for me."
"What if you never made it home?" Karen asked tentatively, as if the words might bring a curse if she spoke them too loudly.
"You're resourceful, Karen. If there's anyone in this world I trust to find me, it's you."
Karen set her jaw and her gaze. "I'd tear the city apart," she said with a dark, fierce tone that took her a bit by surprise.
"I know you would," Matt said plainly. He reached up to cup her face in his hand, thumbing away the last tears that hadn't quite dried on her face. "Which is why I never made this offer to Foggy."
Matt's smirk betrayed his deadpan delivery, and Karen cracked a smile and chuckled lightly.
"You know Foggy would be the first call I'd make, right?" Karen teased gently.
"I wouldn't have it any other way." Matt cleared his throat. "Um, would you mind getting me some more water?"
"Yeah, sure, no problem," Karen said, rapidly shifting back into caretaker mode as she collected his glass from the nightstand. She returned quickly, handing the full glass to Matt. She felt his face with her hand, checking his temperature again.
"You're still warm, but I think the ice is helping," she concluded, sitting back down on the edge of the bed.
"It's weird, you know, I somehow feel less cold with the ice on me than without," Matt mused.
"I think that means it's working to bring your fever down. And you seem a lot more alert now than you did, so that's good."
"I also think I'm hungry," Matt said, pulling a face and rubbing his stomach, "I missed lunch."
"Come to think of it, I did too," Karen replied, "I was waiting on you."
Matt frowned. "Sorry about that."
Karen waved him off. "How about some of that coconut soup from around the corner?"
"Yes," Matt said enthusiastically, "And curry shrimp. And maybe some of those drunken noodles."
Karen smiled. She'd nearly forgotten that Matt shared her exact taste in Thai takeout. "Got it. I'll run and go pick it up."
"No," Matt said, grabbing her hand, "Call and have it delivered. I don't want you to leave me yet."
Karen looked at his face, which wore perhaps the most pitiful expression she'd ever seen. She wasn't sure if he was messing with her, so she stood up anyway. Something changed minutely in his expression, and he suddenly looked terrified as he gripped her hand more tightly. Perhaps he wasn't joking around. She took the hand he was holding hers with and placed her other hand upon it.
"Alright," she said softly, "Just let me go get my phone."
Matt loosened his grip hesitantly, and Karen stepped around the foot of the bed where she had dropped her purse. She dialed the Thai restaurant, put in their order, and returned to Matt's side.
"Sorry," Matt said quietly as he turned onto his side and wrapped his arms around Karen's waist, "I think I get needy when I get sick."
His skin felt like fire against the bare skin of her midriff, where her shirt had ridden up under his arms, and it was only partly the heat from the fever that caused it. The hairs on her neck prickled and relaxed as a different kind of warmth spread through her, and she melted a little into Matt's embrace, laying down next to him, faced away. He buried his face into her hair and between her shoulder blades, a contented sigh escaping from his lips.
They laid there in silence, just against each other until the delivery guy rang the downstairs buzzer about a half-hour later. Matt had begun to doze off, and Karen was considering carefully the offer Matt had made to her to check in and let her know that he was safe. She played out scenarios in her mind where he didn't call. She played out ones where he called her, but he was still injured. She thought about how she would handle it if she had to look for him. She wondered if she could handle it if she ever found him dead. It was likely a blessing that the food arrived just at that moment, because had she followed that train of thought any further, she may have lost her nerve entirely. She moved to get up to buzz in the delivery guy. Matt whimpered and pulled her closer.
"Matt, I have to let the guy with the food into the building. I'm not leaving you."
He whined again, and let go of Karen. She returned a few minutes later with a giant brown bag as well as plates and utensils that she's retrieved from the kitchen. Matt sat up, propping himself up with several pillows and tucking his legs underneath him.
"Picnic on the bed?" Karen asked with a smile, setting the bag and the dishes in front of Matt.
"Sure," he said, smiling in return, "Just try not to spill anything. I don't have a spare set of sheets anymore and I'm not really up for a trip to the laundromat."
"Mm," Karen intoned in acknowledgement, already focused on the task of unpacking and serving food for both of them, finding herself nearly painfully hungry at this point.
They ate in silence for several minutes, both focused on sating their hunger. After he had mostly devoured a plate of noodles and curry shrimp, and with a bite of food still in his mouth, Matt was the first to speak.
"So, about the information for your story," he began, still chewing. Karen looked up at him from her plate as he swallowed. "I know I'm a few hours late, but if you're still looking for a tip..."
He flashed a smile at Karen as he spoke. She pressed her lips together to compose herself, as she wasn't sure at this point if she was going to laugh at his joke or lunge forward kiss that stupid grin of his off his face, infection be damned. She settled on a pleasant smile and a serious response. "Honestly, as I said, I'm at a dead end here. My leads have dried up, and I'm getting stonewalled. At this point, I don't have a story, just a lot of conjecture. And again, how do you know about what I've been working on at all?"
Matt's expression turned part-guilty, part-embarrassed. "Well, I..."
"You've been following me." Karen's tone was more matter-of-fact than it was accusatory, though Matt hung his head to avoid her gaze, which still felt uncomfortable on his face.
"Yes, but only after I was pretty sure that I'd figured out what you were up to from the other articles you've written."
"You...you've been reading my articles?" Karen sounded genuinely surprised. And genuinely moved.
"Every single one. I set up an alert to send them to my email so I can get my screen reader to read them to me."
Karen thought she might cry. She blushed and smiled broadly, looking down at her plate as she pushed around some noodles with her fork.
"If my leads pan out for you, maybe you could read this one to me yourself?" Matt asked hopefully, sensing Karen's emotional response to learning that he'd been reading her work.
"Y-yeah...anytime," she said somewhat weakly, clearing her throat, "So what have you got for me?"
"Well you seem to be right that a lot of the city's organized crime seems to be allying under a new...what was the word you used?"
"Kingpin."
"Right. Kingpin. So, I still have some friends I trust down in D.O.C., and they all seem too afraid to say much, but all of them seem to be alluding to someone in Rykers pulling the strings."
Karen gasped slightly and whispered, "Fisk."
Matt nodded and continued, "Again, largely hearsay and conjecture, so I did some more digging. I started comparing names and known associates of some of the current players to prison records--you're about to say that you tried that already, but just hang on--I found the same thing you probably did. No real connection among any of them, right?"
Karen nodded, "Yeah, that's right. I expected to find at least something. There's always something."
"I thought the same thing. The assignments were too random. So I checked the prison records against sentencing records."
Karen's eyebrows shot up. How did she not think of that? She knew something seemed fishy about the prison records, but she treated it like just another dead end with a hunch that she couldn't corroborate. "You found a discrepancy."
"I found a couple hundred discrepancies. Nearly every major and mid-level player who's been released from Rykers or transferred in the past year has had their corrections record altered in some way from the original sentencing records. It's unusual that Fisk would be so sloppy, but then I remembered that the New York courts changed to a new computer system last year that is far harder to tamper with through Fisk's typical human means. He had no way to manipulate those records because he would have had to have manipulated dozens of D.O.J computer programmers whose identities are a closely-guarded government secret."
Karen sat motionless, save from her intermittent nodding, staring in awe at how Matt had singlehandedly untangled this story for her.
"So anyway," Matt continued, "I printed out some summaries and a couple of highlights on what I found on some of the biggest players I think Fisk has his claws in. Tug on those threads, and they should unravel to reveal Fisk as your Kingpin. The folder should still be setting on the dresser over there." He gestured to the bureau across the room, where, indeed, Karen saw a manila file folder thick with papers.
Karen climbed off the bed, Matt thought, to retrieve the folder, but instead, she moved the takeout containers and their plates to the floor. She then jumped back on the bed, lunging forward and wrapping her arms around Matt in a vigorous hug, kissing him on the cheek. Matt exhaled, a bit of wind having been knocked out of him, in part from the force of Karen's embrace and in part from surprise.
"Oh my God, thank you, Matt. You have no idea...but, God, what if it is Fisk again...He threatened you, Matt, and Foggy...What if I get to the bottom of this and he comes after you? He'll have to know that you were involved, that you were asking questions..." Karen's mood switched from grateful, to scared, to protective, all without her taking a breath.
Matt put his hands on Karen's shoulders and pushed her out to arm's length. "Karen, look at me. You get to the bottom of this. Publish the article. Let me worry about the rest. I handled Fisk once before; I can do it again."
Karen sighed deeply. "Alright," she said tentatively, "I trust you, but I'm not digging any further on this until you're well. One-hundred percent. And that I won't take your word on. I've seen you play hurt too many times."
Matt smiled and nodded. "That's fair. And thanks for moving the food before you tackled me."
Karen laughed. "Have you had enough to eat, or should we break into the soup?"
Matt thought for a moment. "Mm, I think I've had enough for now. I'm a bit tired."
"I'll put this all away," she said, already packing the containers back into the paper bag and stacking the empty plates.
"Just leave the plates in the sink. I'll get them tomorrow," Matt said, already crawling under the sheets and lying down.
By the time Karen returned from the kitchen, Matt had already begun to doze off. She picked up the thawed ice packs from where they littered the bed, set them on the nightstand, and felt Matt's forehead. He leaned into her touch. He was still warm, but no longer alarmingly so. It was probably safe to leave him to a good night's sleep. He'd likely sweat out the rest of the fever by morning.
"I'm going to go, and let you sleep now. I'm a bit worn out myself, and I should get home," she said quietly.
Matt's hand shot out quickly and caught her by the wrist as she turned to walk away. "Don't leave," he said, his voice sleepy and a bit whiny, "Sleep here. Please."
"Matt, I don't have anything here. Even if I slept here, I'd have to go back to my place to get my things anyway."
"Use my things. There's a spare toothbrush in the cabinet over the sink. Mi casa es su casa."
He grinned up at her in the way that always seemed to get him what he wanted.
"What am I going to sleep in? And don't you dare say 'nothing' because I will march right out that door and take your hand with me."
Matt chuckled. He loved this side of Karen--the side that fought ferociously to get her way, and even more ferociously to get as much as she could even when she didn't. "There are some T-shirts in the bottom drawer. Pants, too, if you want them, though they're mine, so they might be a little big."
Karen walked over to the bureau and opened the bottom drawer, verifying that the contents were as Matt had said. She selected a faded Columbia Law T-shirt and a pair of black shorts that didn't look like they'd fall off of her.
"Fine," she sighed, closing the drawer and turning around with the clothes in her hands. "Will you at least be okay by yourself while I take a shower? I climbed a fire escape and was nearly scared to death today. I feel gross."
"For what it's worth, you still smell ok," Matt said brightly. Karen exhaled through her nose in irritation. "I'll be fine here without you for a few minutes," he said more seriously, not wanting to push her buttons too much, lest she change her mind about staying.
Karen turned and entered the bathroom, closing the door behind her with a soft click. Matt stretched out on his back and closed his eyes, listening intently to Karen moving about. He drifted off not long after, her quiet humming in the shower lulling him to sleep.
Karen exited the bathroom quietly, in case Matt had fallen asleep. Seeing that he had, she walked softly around his apartment turning off lights and checking the locks on his doors. Matt might never lock the roof access, but she wasn't sleeping here with it unlocked. She crept back into Matt's bedroom and climbed into the other side of his bed as gently as she could, trying her best not to wake him. The bed was large enough that they could both easily sleep on it without touching, and she situated herself in a spot that she deemed appropriate for both the situation and her current sensibilities, which, in a nutshell, were, "I trust myself far less than I trust him right now."
She rested on her side, facing Matt, and watched him sleep for awhile, his face illuminated by the diffuse light of the billboard that shone through the living room window and reflected through the open door of the bedroom. Karen pondered getting up and closing it, but decided that the light wasn't really bothering her enough to do so. She wasn't sure if it was because he was sick or if he slept this way all the time, but the only other person she'd ever seen sleep curled up in a ball and wrapped around a pillow like that was her baby cousin--when he was six. Karen smiled to herself and absently reached out to brush Matt's hair out of his face. Before she could catch herself, her light touch disturbed Matt just enough that he reached out to draw her closer to him. Karen pulled her hand away from his face and scooted back a few inches, silently cursing herself and debating internally whether or not allowing him to hold her as they slept would impact her ability to keep things strictly platonic in the future, if she needed to.
"Karen?" Matt's voice interrupted the great debate going on in her mind, "Where are are you?" His voice was sleepy, small, and to Karen's ears, a little frightened.
"I'm here, Matt. I'm right here." She reached out her hand and grabbed his.
"Okay," he said sleepily, and pulled himself toward her several inches, narrowing the gap between them before drifting back into sleep. Karen had run out of bed behind her to retreat to, and resigned to sleeping more closely to Matt than she'd originally meant to. She let go of his hand and rolled onto her other side, facing away from him, still close enough to feel his breath on her neck. She stared into the semi-darkness for awhile, her mind still anxious, before finally drifting off to sleep herself.
When she awoke the next morning with Matt tangled around her the same way he'd been tangled around a pillow the night before, Karen couldn't help but smile to herself and snuggle deeper back into his chest. The warmth that radiated from him seemed much more normal now, and she suspected that his fever had broken sometime during the night, as the bedding felt humid from sweat. She closed her eyes again, focusing on how he felt against her and trying to convince herself that this changed nothing. But that was a lie. Yesterday changed everything. Almost as much as the day that Matt Murdock strode into that NYPD interrogation room where she'd been held. Almost as much as the day when he held that red mask out to her as an offering. On both of those days, her world fell apart. Yesterday, she thought it had again. But then it came together. This morning, Matt was better. They were better.
Fevers burn out an infection, Karen thought. Maybe this one was so intense because it needed to burn out a different kind of infection--one that threatened to destroy all that was between her and Matt. She pondered on this for several minutes before Matt began to stir. He pressed his face into her hair and her neck and mumbled something she couldn't quite make out.
"Hmm?" she intoned, hoping he'd repeat himself.
Matt turned his head slightly so he wasn't speaking directly into her neck. "Mm...nothing," he replied sleepily, "Just thinking out loud. By the way, my shampoo smells a lot nicer on you than it does on me."
Karen laughed and tried to wriggle free of Matt's grasp just enough to turn over and face him. After a few moments of awkward struggling and untangling of legs, she and Matt were forehead-to-forehead, nose-to-nose. Both wore stupid grins and laid there in silence for several minutes, each taking in the other's presence. Neither Karen nor Matt knew who moved first--perhaps they both did--when their lips finally met, first hesitantly, then hungrily. It crossed Karen's mind briefly that whatever had caused Matt's fever, that he might still be contagious, but as for the infection that had put their relationship on its deathbed, it had been burned away.