LOVE WAS AS MUCH A poison as hatred, and Celine Lawson—Angel—had allowed them both to ravage her from the inside out, leaving her in irreparable ruins. She had inhaled them, ingested them, and absorbed them. Each one of her cells had parted to make room for the poisons. Her bloodstream had darkened with them, and the substances spread resolutely through her vessels, seizing her heart in a shuddering, fatal grasp. She had gotten what she'd deserved.
She deserved destruction. She deserved ruin, but the person who'd poisoned her did not.
Angel had gone after him first. She remembered that night— the night they'd met. She'd known the truth about him, and she relished in his blatant sin. He lied with a smile and spoke with the tone of a man unburdened by dishonesty. And maybe he just wasn't. Perhaps it hadn't been an act. Perhaps he had no problems living a lie. She didn't know, and she hadn't cared. She'd planned to end his life before either of them had the chance to take their clothes off. She would flirt with him, let him take her home, and have him bleeding out before sunrise.
God—terrible, merciful— had spat on her plans, though, or maybe He'd paid them no regard in the first place. Matthew Murdock would not die by her hand. That was never his fate, and she'd known as much with just a few words from him.
"Your apartment is nice," she'd said, looking around the spacious and modern area. It was too bright for nighttime, she'd realized, and the digital billboard right outside the window was to blame. She hadn't known the extent of his blindness, and his white cane was no true indicator given the circumstances of his vigilantism, but he must not have been able to see the light. It was utterly intolerable, and he hadn't even tried to snuff it out with curtains.
"Not too bland?"
"It's got character." She'd forced an easy laugh from her throat, and their conversation had gone on, their words casual, but their voices tinged with an unsure lilt—for different reasons, no doubt.
She could trace her thoughts back to the moment he began to present the poison so beautifully to her. It was a gift and a punishment, and she'd been prepared for neither. "I just want to help people who need it," he'd answered when she asked why he, as a lawyer, took on the cases he did—pro bono—which had little monetary reward.
"Does that make you feel good about yourself?" By then, all her capacity for teasing had evaporated. She didn't do well with people who had savior complexes, but she couldn't exactly ignore the good in him regardless. It's also not as if the answer really mattered, but her purpose had begun to slip from her mind.
Poison, and it might as well had been real.
"I want people to be ok," he'd said simply. "Is that a crime?"
She'd stopped short at that, and after a moment, she'd approached him. He'd stood casually, leaning on his white cane, his brown hair falling into his face and his red tinted glasses hiding his unseeing eyes. She'd taken the edges of his blazer in her hands, further wrinkling it. And because she couldn't help herself, she'd asked, "Could you live without it? Without helping people?"
He'd tilted his head, and leaned closer to her. "Probably, but if I don't have to, then why should I?"
And maybe if she would've tried before that moment, she would've gone through with killing him. And maybe if he hadn't kissed her, she could survive his awaiting poison, but she was unlucky, and God's mercy hadn't extended to her that night.
Kissing Matthew Murdock—Matt, he'd wanted to be called Matt— was like death and life and sorrow and joy, and she'd never wanted someone so badly. At the time, she'd chalked it up to a personal lack of human touch and being married to her work, but it was decidedly more than that.
Matt had devoured her, his lips claiming hers, his hand snaking up to rest on her neck. She'd tasted the scotch on his tongue when her mouth opened to his. His other hand had moved to grip her waist through her red dress.
Her own hands had still been clutching his blazer, but she tightened them, realizing that it was the only thing keeping her from falling completely into him. She gasped into his mouth when his teeth grazed her bottom lip.
He pressed her up against the nearby wall, his cane forgotten. Her shoes barely grazed the floor then. She'd moved her arms to hook around his neck but not before taking his glasses in her hand. Both of his hands were now tight on her waist, holding her up.
She'd wrapped her legs around his waist, her dress riding up. She felt the vibrations as he hummed into her mouth, the sound something akin to satisfaction.
Angel had pulled her lips away from his, but kept them glued to his skin. His five o'clock shadow was rough against her cheek as she kissed his jaw. He'd breathed heavily in her ear, whispering her name— a name that meant nothing to her— a thousand times.
Angel. Angel. Angel.
Celine, she'd wanted to correct, but she'd made too many mistakes that night, and that couldn't become one of them.
Angel. Angel. Angel.
And Angel had let him carry on like that. She'd allowed his hands to do unholy things to her, to slide over her skin and press into her. When their bodies had collided, their breathing synching, their bare skin meshing together, Angel had learned too many things at once. She didn't love him, not then, but that poison had still been lying with their discarded clothes at the time, waiting to be administered. She didn't hate him, but the way she felt about herself was a different story.
The problem had been that she'd still felt something, and that was enough not to kill him. Killing good people had not been something she could ever bring herself to do, and she'd been misled. Matt wasn't the devil to all.
He was just the devil to those whose sins cursed those around them— the devil to people like her.
And if loneliness hadn't plagued her so heavily, she would've left him the moment she'd realized there would be no leaving him to bleed out.
Her hands would remain clean of his blood, but not of him. She would never be clean of him because of love and hatred and poison and death and life and sex and happiness and cowardice and a million other things that would leave them stained with one another.
Angel would not let him be destroyed, though, even after the poisons— which were truly no poisons at all— had taken all that she had left.
She'd slept that night, dreaming of serenity and poison and him.
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hi! so the next chapter will be written in a more present sense, beginning with the aftermath of matt finding out her true intentions. thanks for reading!
