InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "THE prom, it's THE prom!"

"Matthew D." (propatria) wrote in rooms,
@ 2015-06-22 21:04:00

Entry tags:

!marvel comics, *log, bucky barnes, matthew murdock

log: bucky barnes/matt murdock, alley fight
Who: Bucky and Matt Murdock
What: Matt gets in a fight, Bucky wanders by and can't resist.
Where: The alley outside Clem's.
When: Immediately following that forum conversation.
Warnings/Rating: Violence?

It was swiftly becoming a habit of his to wander the city. He wasn't looking for memories, or excavating the past, or anything so prosaic. No, he just wanted to be out, and to see the place, to map it. He felt better when he had a strong sense of his surroundings, and New York wasn't familiar. He knew it was supposed to be, but it wasn't, which meant starting from the beginning and pacing the lengths of it like a cell. But what a cell.

He wore unobtrusive clothes and stayed as anonymous as possible. After the first few long stretches out by himself, he didn't relax, or stop looking for tails out of the corner of his eye, but he did start to take in his surroundings with a slightly less narrow view.

It felt like years since he'd collapsed on a street vendor in Eastern Europe, dragged down by fragments of memory firing in his head. It had only been a few short months, though. Those kinds of memories had slowed down when he was awake, but he didn't risk a relapse in New York. He could walk around out in the open so long as there was no sign he'd drawn anyone's attention. That was the rule. He stayed out of narrow places, alleys, bars after dark. He stayed away from the perched, dirty girls waiting for cars to pull up around sundown. It wasn't idyllic, but moving through the city was a good way to keep the restlessness at bay, and it helped him sleep to be on his feet until he couldn't be. It wouldn't satisfy him forever, but it was enough for now.

When he walked past an alley and heard the distinctive impact of fists and flesh, the grunts of men fighting, he didn't really intend to stop. Fights definitely broke that rule of lying low and avoiding attention. He looked, though, of course he looked, he was always too stupid not to.

Five guys on one never was fair, especially not when the one was fighting injured, and there was no question of that fact. But look at how well the one was holding his own against the five, even with the injury.

He stayed still for a moment. That scene, the one guy dodging and weaving away from the others, fighting fierce and hard against all odds when he ought to be wheezing all the way, it brought back something, more a feeling than a memory.

That was enough to carry him into the alley. He tugged the hood over his head down a little lower, and came face to face with one of the five, who'd broken off the brawl to tell the homeless guy to mind his own business. He held up his left hand, supplicating, then grabbed the back of the man's shirt and yanked him down to meet his face with his knee. The crack was distinct and satisfying.

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Re: log: bucky barnes/matt murdock, alley fight

propatria
2015-07-05 11:15 pm UTC (link)

There was a burner in his pocket. Stolen, like his clothes. He had a list in his head of those he had taken from, and an intention to pay them back someday, when such a thing was possible. He took it out now, pulling the back off to slide the battery fully into place. As it flickered to life, he ran over the phone number again in his mind. He wouldn't forget it.

No hospital. He made no reply to that, or to his new friend's disbelief that women were being allowed to study medicine. There was a little dissonance for him about such things as well - he knew they happened, but they still felt strange, like something he'd read about a foreign culture and then been dropped in the middle of. He felt like that about a lot of things, though. "The roof," he agreed. He would need a doctor, and soon, but the roof was better than trying to get him miles away to his hiding place. It was removed enough to be safe for the moment, but they couldn't stay long.

He slid his arm under Matthew's again, wrapping it around his shoulders, holding him up with that stiff metal weight.

"You have a name?" he asked, as they mounted the steps. It would be good to know it, when he called a woman he didn't know and asked her to come stitch up the man who'd just thrown a man through the window of her apartment.

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Re: log: bucky barnes/matt murdock, alley fight

sightless
2015-07-06 02:22 am UTC (link)

Matthew was not especially light-fingered, but he certainly had stolen a number of things in his time. Valuable documents, baubles, seal and sigil rings, that kind of thing. He had been a spy for hire, after all, and spies for hire could not afford those kinds of scruples. Really (he thought now) he should have learned more than to memorize the shape of a name, but reading had not been high on his list of survival skills at the time.

"Matthew Murdock. Best not to repeat it. I have been called the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. I think it likely God is not amused at my hubris. I will remember to inform the priest next confessor's box I visit." He smiled a faintly bloody smile at himself, distracting himself from the climb as much as possible, though he still had to stop and gasp for breath at every landing. "And what be your title? I suspect you a man of military business, unless I miss my guess."

The limping was growing heavier and so was his weight on the soldier's arm. He moved his free hand to catch the blood sliding down from the old knife wounds, not wanting to make their trail quite so obvious.

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Re: log: bucky barnes/matt murdock, alley fight

propatria
2015-07-06 02:50 am UTC (link)

He took the steps slowly, pausing at each landing long enough for Matthew to get his breath. Having a name to attribute to him did make things easier.

But his own name, that still wasn't easy, or uncomplicated. "James," he said. This was their first time meeting, after all. There had to be a few thousand Jameses in New York, but there weren't many 'Buckys.' Even if the name felt like it fit yet, it was probably best to keep it to himself for the time being.

The Devil of Hell's Kitchen. Why did that strike a chord? Something he'd read in the news, maybe, when he was trying to catch up on what was happening in New York. They had reached the top of the steps, now, and the door to the roof was mercifully unlocked. He twisted the handle and opened it against the wall, offering enough room for them both to pass with his arm still hooked under Matthew's shoulders.

"I'll go back for it," he said. He'd already noted the trail they were leaving, and had already made a plan to duck back and erase what he could. Across the roof, there was a small, round metal shape - a roof turbine, his brain helpfully supplied. It was just big enough to hide a man around the other side, so he moved that way. He could drop him off, wipe some of the blood from the stairs, and call his friend. But what then?

A man of military business. He didn't say anything at first. He'd had a lot of titles, once. Titles, but not a name.

"I'm a soldier," he said, glancing behind them. "Or...was." He blinked away the thought that came with that. He was wrong. He was a soldier now, that hadn't changed. But he was more than just that, and that had. "Good guess," he added, after a moment, and made the connection that the Devil of Hell's Kitchen could not only fight, he could identify a soldier without being able to see him.

He set Matthew down again, this time behind the turbine. "Going to clean up, and call your friend," he said. But he didn't move right away. He wanted to be sure, first, that Matthew wasn't going to die while he was gone. He wasn't sure why, but he didn't like the prospect.

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Re: log: bucky barnes/matt murdock, alley fight

sightless
2015-07-06 03:19 am UTC (link)

Matthew senses were like all the rest of humanity's: they dimmed with distraction and abuse. Typically the additional scents and temperature detection were the first to go, not that he really had a name for either one of those. He was getting closer to truly blind as the minutes ticked by, and for the most part he just wanted the mess of the forever it took to move from one place to another to finally complete. He focused on staying on his feet, but the solider had to do most of the work the last stretch of the roof.

Once they got there--exposed but for a gently rotating metal structure that permitted stale-smelling air up from the interior of the building--Matthew slumped down and gave up on stopping the blood. There was a great deal of it, but he was still having a relatively coherent conversation. He switched to holding onto his ribs, instead, like he could keep them in place. Marks suggested he had removed bandages (or they'd been torn during the battle) in places.

"Well met and God save you, James." An ironic pause. "Not a thing I thought to hear myself saying, that." He coughed a wet cough, and turned his head to spit out some blood in a way that was almost casual. "James won himself a throne in my time," he added, by way of explanation. "He had no love for the likes of me." He looked for the right phrasing. "Thank you."

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