I see a stairway so I follow it down;

[matt_murdock]

As he sidles up to the long, polished length of the Smoking Room's bar, Matt is distinctly aware of not being remotely good enough for this particular drinking establishment. Not good in the moral sense—Although that's certainly questionable—but in terms of wealth and entitlement. The floor is marble and the chandeliers have real crystal in them. He's a long, long way from Josie's comforting stench and pock-marked tabletops.

"Scotch and water," he orders as he settles onto a stool, white cane propped against the bar beside him. He sips, wondering how much this is going to cost him, and draws in a slow breath as he listens.

Lavish as this place may be, just like the hotel around it there is more diversity within its walls than most streets in Manhattan. Some patrons lounge with privilege, but just as many are roughly raucous or scented with cheap shampoo. A few lift their glasses with calloused fingers and drink with the deep resignation of the working class. Some, he thinks, may not even be human.

Comments

[nightnurse]

The reservation of self she'd maintained all this time was still present in the forefront of her mind, reminding her that she'd cut off all contact, all intimacy with this man for a very good reason. Still it was hard to look at him, this one familiar thing in a very strange place, and not want to fall back into the little groove she'd made for herself there for a while. It'd felt too much like a rut to her when she'd been in the thick of it, but now, with both time and distance and life as she knew it far behind her, it was almost appealing.

"I'm alright," she replied, her smile gentling. "Tired. This thing was a whopper on top of a fourteen hour day, but I guess I've had worse." She looked over him, attempting to assess whether or not he had any injuries she could not immediately see. She didn't have his uncanny ability for hearing broken ribs, so she would have to rely on his honesty. "How are you? You didn't go and get yourself busted up on the way through that door, did you?"

[matt_murdock]

"Not today," Matt mildly answers with a gentle curve of his lips. "Things have been quieter, since..." Since Fisk, since he nearly lost everything, since she left. "And I finally took your advice, on what I was wearing," he adds, purposely keeping his description vague in this very public place where anyone might be listening. If Claire can end up here, who else might?

"I didn't know you were back," he says, allowing the faintest bit of hope to fringe his words. "To work, I mean."

[nightnurse]

If it were something like hope, something like optimism that rose at his "quiet" description, she ignored it wholly, as she had ignored all things Matt-centric for weeks. She took pride in keeping herself mostly together, and still it was all too easy for him to twist her up in knots until she was all frayed edges and exposed nerves if she let him. She couldn't be anything other than what she was, and neither could he. The key to that being, of course, the reminder that what he was was not what she needed.

"Well I'm glad you're looking out for yourself a little better," she after a moment, a reply to both his change of "uniform" as it were, and his managing to make it somewhere without winding up with a few busted ribs. "I wasn't sure it would matter either way if you did know," she said as she turned away momentarily to signal for the bartender, her tone purposefully breezy. "Besides, I can't really be 'back' if I'm here, can I?"