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your-not-invisible-to-me · 5 months

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Pages Toward Your Future (Matt Murdock x Reader)

A/N: *whispers* Guess who isn't dead? Long story short: this fic was supposed to be written for @pastafossa's birthday so many months ago. Since then, my laptop broke, and my apartment flooded twice. Alas, it is now here.

Happy late birthday pasta I adore you<3

Ship: Matt Murdock x F!Reader

Summary:

When you wake up one morning sick, Matt makes sure you still get to celebrate your birthday. or The time you can't go to the bookstore, so Matt brings the bookstore to you.

Word Count: 1,684

Warnings for Chapter: None! :) just some birthday fluff

Read me on Ao3 as Aaron gets his shit together.

Matt knew something was wrong the moment he woke up that morning. On a normal day, you were always up before him, rushing around your shared apartment getting your things ready for your day as an elementary school teacher. Even on weekends you would be up early – spending your mornings grading and catching up on lesson plans so that you could spend the rest of the day with him. You always made your plans around the both of you to make sure you had time together, and he loved you even more for it every time.

So, color him surprised when his alarm started going off at ten on a Saturday, and you were still asleep next to him.

“Sweetheart?” he called out, softly. He ran his hand through the knots in your hair. Immediately he could feel the tenseness in your shoulders. You were stiff as a board. “Are you alright?”

You let out a groan as you attempted to bury your head deeper into the pillows.

“Head.” you said so softly that no one else would have been able to hear it if it had not been for his senses. He caught on immediately. Sometimes you would get massive migraines, so bad it would leave you incapable of anything.

Usually, you would pop some Tylenol and force your way through them. Luckily, you would not have to do that today.

Matt slowly slipped out of bed, making his way to the kitchen. He grabbed a glass of water as well as his “comically large bottle of pain meds” – your words, not his – and made his way back to the bedroom. He placed them on your nightstand.

“I have some medicine for you, sweetheart. Can you take some for me?” asked Matt. He kept his words soft. If anyone knew the need for quiet on days of pain, it would be him.

He felt you nod before feeling you sit up, grabbing the glass and swallowing the pills. He couldn’t help but chuckle as you fell right back into his chest.

“I have to get some work done, but it should only take me a few hours. Try to get some sleep, alright?” He tucked you right back into bed and headed back towards the kitchen, ready to make his own breakfast and get some work done.

As Matt opened the fridge, a slip of paper that had been stuck to it fell off, sliding across the floor. Confused, he went to go pick it up, wondering what it could have been.

Of course .

Your birthday was next weekend, and while he had his own plan for a celebration with you, he had forgotten your own tradition that you did for yourself every year.

Your bookstore trip.

Every year you would spend weeks compiling a list of books from your TBR list that you wanted. You rated them, scored them, and made a list of books you would buy yourself for your birthday. It was something your parents had started for you when you were a kid, a way to keep their wallets safe when all their kid wanted for their birthday was more books to read.

It was important to you. He clearly hadn’t seen them before, but there were spreadsheets involved.

It was the one day of the year that he knew you allowed yourself to splurge on you.

It was also what you had planned to do for the day – hence the list on the fridge.

He also knew that with how busy you were, you weren’t going to get another free day for a while.

Suddenly, he knew his plans were changing for the day. He dug his phone out of his pocket.

“Foggy? Yeah, change of plans. I need your help today.”

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“You know, when you said we needed to make a quick shopping trip, this isn’t exactly what I thought you meant.”

Matt and Foggy stood inside Barnes and Noble, having taken the train down to Union Square so they could shop at the biggest one. Currently Foggy’s hands were full as he balanced a stack of books under his chin. Matt, on the other hand, was making his way down the list as best he could. ��

“We’re almost done, Fogs, I promise.”

“You said that an hour ago.”

“Well, that was before I found out they had a lot of the books in brail.” When Matt had originally given one of the workers your detailed list of books, they had assumed it was for him, leading him over to the small brail section that the store had. While he had since corrected them, he wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to be able to read some of your books along with you, or even be able to read to you.

Since the image came to his mind, he had never wanted anything more. Reading was your thing, you devoured books so quickly, always excited about getting into the storylines and into the characters. While he was always happy to listen as you went on and on, the idea that he could read along with you and be able to know more about what exactly was going through your mind just brought him pure joy.

Then there was the idea that he could be the one to read to you. It wasn’t something you had ever voiced before – hell it wasn’t something he had ever thought of before, usually it was other people reading to him – he knew he wanted to be able to give you this too. On days just like today when your head hurt too much to open your eyes, on days where your work was too stressful, where life was too stressful – he wanted to have a chance to give you something like peace.

It was in conveying all this to Foggy, however, that his friend’s silence suddenly had him second guessing himself.

“What is it, Fogs?”

“Nothing.”

“Not nothing, your being weird.”

“I’m not being weird. You’re being weird.”

“Foggy-.”

“Really, Matt. It’s nothing bad. It’s just, I’ve never seen you like this before is all.”

“Like what?”

“Hopeful.”

Matt paused, stunned a bit by his best friends' words. Maybe he was putting too much weight on a couple dozen books, but a bigger part of him knew Foggy was right.

The scenes he was seeing in his head of times together with you reading were scenes of a future, your future together. With him.

Maybe he had more thinking to do about what lied ahead. More planning. Books were okay for now, but he wanted more, and he wanted that badly.

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It wasn’t until a week later that you learned what exactly Matt had done. He had decided to save the actual surprise for your real birthday, wanting to add it to your list of presents.

He had everything prepared when you woke up, excited for your reaction as you slid open the bedroom door.

“Matt?” you asked, the clunk of the door echoing behind you. You looked around the living room, your mind filled with confusion.

In front of you, scattered across the living room, were stacks of books in different places. There was a stack on the coffee table, a few across the kitchen counter, and more filled across the room.

Right in the center of the apartment, there was Matt, a nervous smile spread across his beautiful face.

“What’s going on, Matty?” you asked.

“Happy birthday, sweetheart.” said Matt, softly. He took steps toward you, bringing you to a spot in front of one of the books. It was then you realized that the stacks of books were arranged in a sort of line, clumped together waiting for someone to follow the path.

“What’s all this?”

“Well, I know you weren’t feeling well last week.” You nodded. “Well, I also know that because of that, you missed your day out to the bookstore.”

You thought back to the previous week, remembering the details. You had almost forgotten your original plans for the day, yourself, too distracted by the pounding in your brain. When you woke up hours later, all you could be was annoyed at the idea of having to reschedule.

Matt must have noticed your contemplation, as he continued.

“I know you were upset at missing it, so I thought I would just bring the bookstore to you.”

You let out a gasp, looking around the room at the specific books that were laid out. It was only then that you noticed the titles of the books, recognizing them off the list that you had spent just a detailed amount of time creating.

All the books you had chosen, and all of them Matt had bought for you to read.

“Oh, Matt...”

Matt wrung his hands nervously. A myriad of thoughts went through his head. What if he had made a mistake? What if this was something you had wanted to save for yourself? What if he had picked the wrong books, made the wrong choices?

“Is this, is it alright?”

Even with his senses, he couldn’t predict the speed at which you threw yourself against his body, engrossing him in a hug. He felt the breath you took. He felt the drop of tears against his shoulder.

“It’s absolutely perfect, Matt.”

He felt you telling the truth.

Later, after Matt had led you around the apartment on your own little book spree, after the birthday breakfast he made was eaten and wishes were given, Matt couldn’t express how happy he felt as you curled up against him with one of the new books he had gotten you. You had wanted to read some passages to him, and he was more than happy to listen.

He couldn’t help, however, thinking about the new plan he was forming. The stack of his copies of the books, hidden in his trunk. Soon, he thought. Soon the night would come when he’d make you dinner, where he would spend time getting to read to you, and he’d ask you the question about your future and hope you would want forever.

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