Laurel smoothed over the skirt of her dress and smiled to the full length mirror. Thea stood in the doorway, head cocked and grinning. "So who's the banging dress for?" She asked.
"My client," She said as the smile stood bright on her face and she picked up a jacket. This was her first day in the big city as an attorney and she wanted to make a good impression. This wasn't her first rodeo, but it was the first one of her new life. She wanted to do it right. And dressing the part, that was the first step.
Thea nodded. "Figured you might say that, so I brought you this," She said as she put a piping hot thermos full of coffee just the way Laurel liked it in her hand. Laurel was so good at her job and Thea learned a lot from CNRI about how coffee made Laurel nearly unstoppable. Even more than usual. "You kick a lot of ass, today, okay?"
Laurel took the coffee and put it on the end table beside the door and hugged Thea. Everything about this whole life, none of it she loved more than this girl. She loved Thea more infinitely than justice. If anyone asked her to give it up, she could only do it because of this girl. The one thing in the world she would give everything up for. "I love you, you know that, right?" She asked.
Thea nodded. "God, you're a sap." She said, trying to break the spell. Laurel laughed so it worked. She put the coffee back in Laurel's hand and went back to the kitchen, presumably to get some of her own.
Laurel picked up the briefcase that had her legal pad full of ideas and her computer and her coffee and headed out of the apartment. She thought how different this would be. No more fighting in the grey lines of morality, all she had to do was show up and convince people of blacks and whites.
When she walked into Nelson and Murdock and only saw Murdock, she looked a little surprised. "Thought our client would be here, already," She said as she put her stuff on Karen's desk. "So what's she like?" She said as she as sat down and looked over the case files, before she looked up at him.
Matt snorted a little. "You want to know about the beauty queen?" He asked with a little bit of disbelief.
She furrowed her brow. "Why is that funny?" She asked him.
"You don't seem like the type of girl who would be interested in pageants. I mean, no offense." He told her with a little bit of a smile that was on just on the right side of charming.
She shrugged. "There's a lot you don't know about me, Matt. And trust me, pageants and the girls who do them aren't as vapid as you think they are." She told him. "They have to be up on current events, they have to be articulate, they have to have talent, as well as embrace a femininity all while being sneered at by people who think we're above them, because they know how to do their eyeliner better than we do."
He smiled. "You've had some time to think about this," He told her.
She nodded and looked through some of the work that Foggy had left her. "I paid for some of college with a small pageant scholarship." She said. "I only did it once, but it was enough," She told him. "To defend these girls and their choices from people who would think less of them."
"I'm sorry," He apologized and he meant it. Yeah, when he thought about it, that was probably not the right thing to say to her. Or anyone in that position. And thinking about people complexly, well that was supposed to be his thing, right?
She waved her hand at it and didn't look at him again. How could he have been so stupid? Personally, yeah, he thought this case was a little crazy and that's exactly why they gave it to her. But then she surprised him by actually believing in this client, someone other people would have shrugged off. Someone and something he shrugged off, but not her. To her, this was important work.
He went to go say something again when the door creaked open. "Hello, everyone." Adrienne's lilted voice sang through the door. She looked up and only saw Laurel and Matt and looked around. "Where's Foggy?" She asked.
"He had other plans today," Matt said, "But Laurel and I, we're gonna take care of you," He promised her.
Adrienne looked over at Laurel, "You weren't here last time." She said.
Laurel shook her head. "I sure wasn't, but I'm here now. And I want to help you. Now, Foggy said that the pageant was televised?" She asked.
Adrienne nodded. "Yeah, it's on the local news and everything. The man who runs the pageant, Anthony Davis, he's always going on about how this pageant is one of the widest watched local events. Everyone loves this pageant. It's an honor even to be a contestant, but I just want it to be fair," She told Laurel.
Laurel looked at Matt and smiled and then looked back to Adrienne, "Well, since it's televised, we can go to the FCC and we should be able to get this all figured out in no time," She said.
"Really?" Adrienne squealed.
Laurel nodded actively. "Yeah, it should be a simple matter of telling an FCC official all of the pretty damning evidence we gathered and they should be able to launch an investigation into Anthony Davis and the pageant." She said. "We'll make an appointment for tomorrow,"
Adrienne threw her arms around Laurel and hugged her. "I can't believe I ever found this place," She said. "I never thought someone would want to help me,"
Laurel blushed. "We're just doing our jobs." She said. "Now, go get some rest. You deserve it." She said as she shooed Adrienne out of the room, before she looked at Matt.
He nodded once. "I have to admit, that was something I had never seen before." He told her.
She shrugged. "If we don't believe in our clients, who will? And besides, she believes in this system. However silly it might seem to everyone else, that's real to her. We should respect that." She told him as she took a sip of her coffee.
"You were never a beauty queen," He told her.
She shook her head, "But you believing that I was helped you see her as a more whole, a complexity that deserved to have our full attention," She said as she shrugged. "Besides, taking down a man like Anthony Davis, isn't that why you became a lawyer?"
He looked a little bit in awe of her. She hadn't once said anything about the fact that he was clearly blind and every time he saw her, the passion for justice just spiked in the room. It seemed to blossom around her like a beautiful aura in a rainbow of colors. God, he wondered what she looked like. He always wondered that really. How people looked. He didn't miss sight anywhere more than seeing people.
He couldn't believe that she had lied to him. Even more intriguing, that she made the lie so compelling that he believed it. He thought about her question about whether he became a lawyer to take down men like Anthony Davis, who seemed pretty detestable. He was making money off of women who were smart and valuable and only giving them a small portion of what he raked in.
"Anthony Davis isn't the reason I became a lawyer, but taking down men like him reminds me why it's worth it," He told her. "Why I come here everyday instead of sitting in a corporate high rise with my free bagels, helping clients getting the biggest divorce settlement they can just to screw over their ex."
She grinned. She loved hearing that he had a choice at another life. One that could have been way easier on him in almost every way, but that it wouldn't have been as fulfilling as this life. It reminded her that choosing this, it was always a choice. It was something she chose to do, because it made her life better. She didn't have to do this. Her life could be easy, but this was something she chose to do. She chose to come to New York. She chose Nelson and Murdock. She chose this life. And she would have so many more choices in this life. Happiness and fulfillment were choices that she made everyday and she would continue to choose those things.
Laurel looked more directly at him, studied him for a few moments. He sat with excellent posture and his figure, though he hid it under the slightly wrinkled shirt was solid. There was something about him that was different. And not just the obvious.
She slumped her shoulders. "How do you pick your clothes out in the morning?" She asked him as she rocked her chair side to side by gently moving her foot.
He couldn't help but laugh. She just went there, went for it. Didn't lead up to it. It was out in the open and so she asked. "I have braille tags on the hangars. And someone who meticulously makes sure they're on the right hangars," He told her as he nodded. "I was wondering how long it would take to get there. Although that's not usually the first question I get asked."
She blushed and looked down at her papers and then looked back at him. He was beautiful. He was a gorgeous human. "I'm sorry for blurting it out," She cringed. Having something like that be such a part of you, it had to be hard.
He shook his head. "Don't even worry about it," He smiled. "You held out for a long time. I can see why it would just come out," He laughed a little. "Seriously, I'm so used to it being the first thing people ask. And all you wanted to do was talk about work." He told her as he took his coffee cup in his hand and sipped.
"It's refreshing," He said when he put his coffee cup down. "You're refreshing." He told her and grinned.
Her lips quirked a little bit. How could he go from the guy who told her she didn't seem like a girlie girl this morning, then be this guy? She nodded and looked out the window. "We should go out for lunch." She told him as she took her purse in hand and stood up abruptly.
He nodded and pushed up from his chair and held out his arm for her to guide him. What? People couldn't resist. Even if they weren't curious about it, they always liked to help. She entwined her arm with his and led him out of the office and felt the breeze on her face and smiled a little bit brighter.
"So where do you suggest, Mr. Murdock?" She asked him. Hadn't planned this out very well, she scolded herself. How did she not have a suggestion for lunch? How didn't she think about that last night? She had planned where she was getting takeout in her last eight jobs the night before they started. How did she not think about this?
He laid his other hand on her arm. "Relax," He said. "I can feel your brain going a million miles a minute," He told her. Wasn't exactly untrue, but it was more complicated than that. "How about Greek food?" He asked.
She let out a small happy noise. "Yeah," She said as she looked up at him in his red glasses and smiled, "That sounds perfect," She told him.
Matt Murdock wasn't the first person who made her smile, in new york or in life, but he was the first person here who made her blush while doing it. He was the first person who helped her remember that liking someone didn't have to be complicated. It didn't have to involve cheating or families or being part of a legacy or even justice. Sometimes liking someone, she remembered as they walked down the street and talked, could just be about liking someone and it was as simple as that.
