Work Text:
We’re The Gladiators
Every cell in Matt’s body hurt and he was all too aware of the fact that the bed beside him was cold, And bloody. He could recognize it as mostly his own blood, and slowly the memory of himself and Elektra giving each other stitches after the fighting and before the sex came to him. Fighting had always been their foreplay, but the stitches and barely surviving, that much was new.
So much of last night was new for them but so much was just like old times. The sound of glass breaking would always make him think of her, it was her using his cane to make their entrance, it was the two of them dropping glasses just to hear them break, last night it was the sound of one or both of them sending a member of The Hand through a window. In all the chaos of the night, there was calculation in everything. Even still, Matt couldn’t believe they both made it out alive. He didn’t bother to remember how; all he cared about was that they had made it out together.
Before he could be conscious enough to question why Elektra had left the bed he heard her shoes on his stairs and smelled the food in her hands. He stumbled out of bed attempting to meet her at the door but his bruised body was barely was able to carry him to his couch before she entered the apartment.
There was a moment, he wasn’t sure exactly how long, where they stared at each other or at least she stared while he listened to the steady rhythm of her heart beat, slightly elevated. Chance was the only game they had played the night before, and now in the light of day they were both staring down confessions of love and promises of forever, but then again they had never shied away from any battle, let alone one with each other.
“We made quite the spectacle, Matthew.” He let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding at the same moment she spoke. He heard her drop a newspaper down. “They lose their minds over us.”
“Oh?” Matt’s mind is still foggy with pain and too much sleep, or maybe it’s still lack of sleep. “How are you…” She seemed almost chipper, but he could hear how gingerly she moved. She too was still feeling the affects of war.
She made her way towards him across the apartment, sitting on the battered couch in a way that told him she was waiting for him to sit. “Glory and gore go hand in hand, Matthew. That’s why we’ve made headlines.”
Matt knew that she sounded crazy, but he knew what she meant. She was on the kind of high that only a victory can give you. A smile settled over his face before he leaned forward, one hand coming out to grasp the back of her neck and pull her closer to him, allowing him to kiss her. It was different than the sloppy kisses they had exchanged the night before, this one was gentle and almost chaste. Elektra nipped at his bottom lip just as he broke it off, almost as though she was reminding him that soft had a different meaning between them.
“You made a lot of promises, Matthew, none of them lies I hope.” Her tone was teasing, but he knew it to be her way of asking if he still wanted to runaway and be hers. “You love this, Do you even want to go free? We’re gladiators now, after all.”
Matt sucked a deep breath in, this was his city, the deafening noise and sprawling crime but Elektra pulled out something reckless in him. Something that made him so willing to throw all caution to the wind, something that made him willing to leave his city and go anywhere she wanted to take him. Despite the bruising and stitches, his hands found her waist, pulling her onto his lap, his nose pressing into her collar bone. “I’ll show you what I mean, Sweetheart.”
They were losing themselves in each other all over again and neither knew what their future would hold but they had made headlines in their victory and now they were gladiators with the whole world as their ring