Chapter Text
The bell trills cheerily as he taps through the front door of the café three blocks from the office. The café is near empty; there’s a few suited men talking ostentatiously on phones, a pair of mothers chatting obliviously as their children doze in rickety prams, and at least one college student trying desperately to finish a paper.
The barista greets him by name and begins to make his usual order without asking. Matt begins to sort through his wallet to find a five dollar bill, searching for a triangular fold. The coffee here is dear, but worth the price. Back in law school, he and Foggy spent hours trawling through greasy spoons and diners and chains and independents searching for a cup of coffee that didn't taste like a mug of chemical runoff. When they first came in here, Foggy complained that he was the most expensive broke person he’d ever met.
“Silk sheets and organic coffee? Really? Who do you think you are, Tony Stark?” Matt just laughed, and paid for his friend’s double-shot macchiato as well as his own flat white.
Once he’s gotten his coffee he makes his way over to his favoured seat, a recess relatively close to the door with a convenient wall to shield his back; it pays to be paranoid. He sets the coffee down alongside the newspaper printed in braille, thoughtfully provided for him by the owner, who knows the value of a good customer. Leaning his cane against the wall, he settles down into the chair with half a wince, side protesting. It’s been several long weeks since Fisk was put away, and he honestly hasn't been exerting himself that much (because Foggy would actually murder him if he did) but the wound from the incident with Nobu only really began to close up recently. To make up for his laxness on the vigilante side of things, he’s been putting in extra hours at Nelson & Murdock; ostensibly to build their practice, but mostly to ground himself amidst the mess his life has become.
The door rings as he starts reading, heralding a patron's entry. He brushes his hands across the masthead - 'The Daily Bugle' - as a feminine voice sighs. “Steve, don't you have Sam for technical assistance? No, you just press it twice. Lightly. If you keep battering it like you do, it’s going to break again… I am not letting you use a flip phone, and neither will Tony. He’ll get offended that you’re not using it after he made it for you, and- You’re not an old man! Not technically, anyway. Are you seriously using a pay phone? Do you know how much it costs to call mobiles from those?” The call cuts off, and the woman laughs, a sound borne more of exasperation than amusement.
Matt chastises himself for listening, and goes back to his paper, an article about illegal dumping demanding his attention. He can’t really help it; the world is loud and angry and demands to be heard, but eavesdropping on innocent people is just plain rude.
He’s progressed into the latest senatorial scandal when light footsteps alert him to her presence. Her gait is almost regular, but she walks on her toes, ever so slightly. Coupled with the slow beat of her well-exercised heart… a ballerina. He doesn’t look around. “I was wondering who the paper was for,” she says, voice quieter than earlier. “May I?”
He gestures towards the seat opposite him and she settles into it with a small sigh. He smells raspberry and white chocolate mixed with coffee - her drink. She herself smells of lingering expensive perfume - vanilla, perhaps Dolce and Gabbana? - and metal, like the barrel of a gun. “I haven’t noticed you here before,” he says. “Either I’m very unobservant, or you’re very quiet.”
“The latter.” She sips her drink. “I really didn't think I’d find the best coffee in the city in Hell’s Kitchen, of all places.”
“We’re gentrifying - or at least, we were.” The inexorable spread of the prosperous and well-heeled middle-class was halted by the Battle of New York two years, when a Chitauri dreadnought ploughed through Tenth Avenue and left most of the neighbourhood in ruins. Despite Fisk’s efforts, Hell’s Kitchen is still a nicer place now than it was when he was a kid. He hasn't stepped on a spent needle in weeks; in contrast, back when his dad was still alive, some of the kids in his building used to collect them as a game, which the possessor of the most needles won. He never participated; his father taught him that, at the very least, even if he couldn't help him with long division.
The woman’s heartbeat spikes just the tiniest bit as she speaks. “Those aliens did a lot of damage, didn't they? I had to move out of my old place.” Matt listens intently as she speaks, and catches the barest nasal undercurrent of Russian, well concealed by a homogenised American accent. This woman is unrelated to the mafiya, of that he is sure, but… A ballerina born speaking Russian, who smells like guns and expensive perfume and who is scared by the Battle of New York... There’s something there, if he could just put his finger on it -
“Pardon me, but I doubt you had much trouble finding a new place. Park Avenue, maybe?”
She isn't offended. “What gave it away?”
He smiles affably. “A lucky guess. Maybe your perfume, too. I've gotten very good at identifying them. I generally take Chanel as a sign to duck and hide." That was what Marci wore - doused herself in No. 5. Karen’s perfume is easily identifiable too, seeping into his suit jackets, flowery bursts of scent emanating from sheaves of paper. She doesn't wear it on the bad days, replacing it with the astringent scent of cheap vodka.
The woman laughs huskily, the type of laugh calculated solely to lead a man's mind astray. “You’re sharp…”
“Matthew,” he supplies.
She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. “Natasha,” she says. “Matt and Nat - like some awful comedy duo.”
“Or hair product.”
She snorts - attractively, which is a wonder in itself - and the conversation flows easily from there. She is a trained ballerina, apparently, but is currently “taking a break for herself,” and just got back from DC. "I visited the Smithsonian. It was... interesting." She is completely unashamed of her girly coffee, admits that the perfume was present - “from another Matt, actually,” - and, after she slides the sugar in his direction, tells him that one of her friends is deaf. “Not completely,” she admits. “I’ve tried to learn how to make things easier for him, and for others in a similar situation, but he knows how to live with it. Like you, I would assume.”
“You have to make the world work for you.” He tries to ignore the phantom rap of Stick’s stick against the back of his head, a memory of creaky laughter echoing through his skull.
She doesn't respond, and he thinks she might be smiling. He imagines she has the kind of smile that balances on a knife edge and can as easily tip into happiness as rage.
He picks up his cup, and finds, to his surprise, that it is empty. When he runs his fingers over his watch it tells him it is nine a.m., and he realises with a start that he's late for the client waiting in the office for him. Pushing his chair back, he feels around for his cane. “It was pleasant speaking to you, Natasha, but I do, unfortunately, have a job to go to.” In what is probably an unwise move, he extracts a business card from his pocket - pure Karen, she insisted on them, said they were more ‘professional’ - and slides it towards her. The card clicks as she picks it up, and he can hear her fingers as they slide over his name, embossed on the card in braille.
“If I do get into a spot of legal trouble, I promise to call upon Nelson & Murdock.” The card slides against denim into her pocket. She hands him his cane, and he nods at her as he leaves, rapping against chairs and wooden boards.
Red haired, he thinks later, as Foggy and Karen do battle with the photocopier, trying to replicate their client's birth cert. There were some business men in the booth next to him, and he caught some choice comments about redheads. Fitting, he thinks; after years and years of flames he's forgotten the other colours - cold blue and fresh green and pure white - but he would never forget red, the colour of his hair and his dad's robes and fire and blood. Red haired, and pretty, too - there was a sort of confidence about her than he's learned to associate with the consciously beautiful. Confident, and rich and strong, going by the way her heeled boots dug heavily into the parquet floor. She's like her home country, he thinks drily; a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.
Matt pushes his glasses back up his nose, clears that husky laugh from his mind, and goes to rescue his coworkers from the evil office equipment.