what they wouldn't do | DAREDEVIL

thirty two

Matt's kiss with Sarah was far from the most romantic setting one could think of, though it was strangely fitting for the two of them.

He was still in his Daredevil costume, a layer of sweat and dirt clinging to his skin and dried blood lining the creases of his gloves. There was a large, deep bruise radiating pain across his thigh from where he'd caught a baseball bat earlier, and he was bleeding somewhere midway down his back. They were arguing on the rooftop of her father's building, and he had just given her a series of half-assed recycled excuses for the way he'd been acting. Explanations about isolation and duty—things that Stick had drilled into his head, words that didn't feel like his own even as he said them. The only truthful things he'd said so far were his confession that she was the only bright part of his nights—something he maybe should have made sure she knew before things got this complicated—and, of course, pointing out that he was solidly a part of the life that she rightfully wanted to leave behind.

And then she'd kissed him, caught him completely off guard in that way she somehow always managed to do. All those times he'd nearly kissed her and then held back, not wanting to step over that line and ruin things, and now she'd gone and blown past it herself. When it came down to it, he knew this probably was a bad decision, and he suspected she did, too. Crossing this line would just be piling another complication on top of the already dangerous and fragile situation they were caught in. He knew in the rational part of his brain that he shouldn't kiss her back, but that was so much harder to remember when she was hovering on tip toes in front of him, the warmth of her hand still splayed against his chest and the scent of her citrus shampoo saturating the heavy summer air around him.

Matt could feel her breath skating across his jaw as she waited uncertainly for what was probably only for a few seconds. He felt the tiny, nearly imperceptible shift as she started to pull away, and then before he knew what was happening his hand was on the back of her neck and he was kissing her, more roughly than he probably should have—but really, he shouldn't have been doing any of this, should he? That thought lingered somewhere in the back of his mind, vastly overshadowed by the distracting counterpoint that Sarah tasted like mint and green tea with a slight, sweet hint of honey.

His hand slid down to her waist, where the breeze drifted lazily between her skin and the thin fabric of her t-shirt, picking up all of the scents that he had grown so used to around her, but which were now a little darker and heightened by the heat that flushed through her skin.

Sarah's fingertips ghosted across his neck and jaw, her touch maddeningly light against his skin in contrast to the intensity with which she returned his kiss. Then she caught him off guard again, pressing herself closer to his chest and arching her back to seal the space between them. The last of his careful restraint dropped away, and he tightened his grip on her waist, his fingers curling into her lower back as he drew her closer to him hungrily so that her hips were flush against his own.

At some point, the normally overwhelming noise of the city had faded to a muted thrum, drowned out by both of their heartbeats hammering in his ears, so it was especially jarring when a police siren screamed by directly underneath them, breaking them both apart.

As soon as they pulled away from each other, a low panic hit him. He'd come here to tell her they needed to take a step back, that he needed time to figure out if Stick was right about them being bad for each other. And now he'd done the one thing that was going to make that even harder on both of them.

"I have to leave," he forced out unevenly. It was a cop out. He could hear the chatter on the radios in the police cars; they were headed towards a car accident, not anything he could help with. But he needed to extract himself from this situation, and he knew that was the easiest excuse, as shitty as it was.