Chapter Text
“Fiancée?” Foggy asks, the gears of his brain finally catching. This would be pretty much the perfect moment, if Danny was going to go through with it.
“Newly-minted,” Karen confirms. “I decided to give you two some privacy and ran smack into that.”
“I’ll go,” Matt says immediately. The second Foggy puts weight back on his feet, he’s extremely grateful to Matt for volunteering. Then it occurs to Foggy that there are more tactful ways to handle this, and he checks to see if he has any bars.
“Hang on a second,” Foggy says, and he’s vaguely surprised when Danny picks up for him.
“As your legal counsel, I’m begging you to not involve me in bailing you two out on public indecency charges on Christmas,” Foggy blurts.
“I, uh.” Foggy can hear snow crunching on the other end, and what sounds suspiciously like a zipper. “We weren’t. Doing anything, I mean.”
“Then it won’t be a big imposition to continue not doing anything, right?” Foggy asks brightly.
“Uh…”
“I’m asking you to wait the hour it’ll take to get you back to locking doors and closing blinds, not join a monastery,” Foggy points out.
“Fine,” Colleen huffs, too close to the mouthpiece, and Foggy hopes they at least stopped kissing long enough to listen to him.
They’re disheveled and can’t keep their hands off each other on the hike back down, but Foggy raining on their exhibitionism parade doesn’t seem to have dampened the moment. Foggy’s torn between being in significant pain even around leaning heavily on Matt and being delirious at the fact that he gets to basically climb Matt without concealing ulterior motives.
Matt kissed him.
Matt seemed really into kissing him.
Kissing Matt is even better than Foggy’s been dreaming it would be.
The drive back to town is spent in dazed, happy silence. Matt promises to swing back for the party later, and Foggy feels like he’s limping on a cloud as he hobbles back into the house. Colleen and Danny practically vanish in a puff of smoke, and Foggy holes up in the bathroom for the next half hour to deal with the mess he’s made of his feet. He doesn’t come back down to earth until he has to get the first boot off, and that hurts enough to finally knock some of the endorphins out of his system.
Foggy knows better than to pop the blisters. He does. But they’re so big that the thought of them bursting unexpectedly inside a shoe is stomach-churning. He lances them carefully, drains them, and uses up his parents’ decades-old collection of mammoth band-aids from the variety packs they always buy even though they only ever use the medium-sized ones. It’s a move that justifies their hoarding, and he’s in for at least a week of I-told-you-sos.
Foggy’s in the process of figuring out whether he can tolerate his sneakers after all that, or if he’ll be attending the party in slippers, when he gets a call from an unknown number.
“Foggy Nelson’s phone, Foggy Nelson speaking,” he says, confident he’s talking to a telemarketer. No rest for the wicked, after all.
“I don’t suppose you know a Luke Cage and Jessica Jones?” Frank asks, and Foggy’s mouth goes dry.
“Oh god,” he says, straightening up so suddenly that he almost knocks the bottle of iodine off the edge of the bathtub and all over the rug. “What happened? Are they okay? Where are you--I’ll be right there--”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Frank sighs. “Relax, they’re fine. Physically, anyway. Legally, they’re ‘the Mounties aren’t pressing border-hopping charges because it’s Christmas,’ whatever that counts as.”
“The Mounties? Border-hopping?” Foggy repeats, trying to wrap his brain around it. “They went to Canada? Why?”
“You’d have to ask them,” Frank says, and he sounds about done with everything now that Foggy’s got the spare brain cells to pay attention. “They’re both pleading the Fifth until the quote-unquote meanest lawyer in the state shows up.”
“Yeah, I don’t think they want Marci Stahl driving up here right now. She’d murder them in cold blood and then beat the rap,” Foggy tells him, not thinking about the fact that he’s telling a law enforcement officer this on what’s probably a recorded line. He could kick himself when it registers.
“Pretty sure they were talking about you,” Frank points out, and Foggy can’t help the hysterical little laugh that bubbles up.
“Oh, boy. Okay, seriously though, where do I come get them?”
Frank rattles off the station’s address, and Foggy stuffs his aching feet into his sneakers and goes to collect HC&B’s crack team of directionally-challenged detectives. It’s not until he has eyes on them that he remembers his promise to text Marci and let her know they’re safe, which he does, with an asterisk that has her texting him back with fifteen question marks as soon as his own text sends.
“Hike go okay?” Frank asks, as Foggy’s filling out the ungodly stack of paperwork that’s involved in zero charges but an acknowledgement that neither of them are welcome on Canadian soil for the next five years.
“Mixed bag,” Foggy admits. “By which I mean everyone else had a blast and I learned a valuable lesson about hiking boots.”
Frank tilts his head at the sullen pair glowering at them from the bench in the cell. Luke looks done with life; Jess looks done with sobriety.
“Can’t you please--” Foggy gestures at the cell door.
“As soon as you’re done with the paperwork,” Frank promises, “and with great pleasure.”
It’s a promise Frank keeps, and Foggy texts Marci back with a timeframe for a full response as soon as Jessica and Luke have collected their things and Foggy has a copy of the casefile.
“What the hell?” Foggy demands, as soon as they’re loaded into the back of the SUV. “Canada?”
“So it turns out the GPS that came with the car thinks your parents live in Champlain, Quebec,” Jessica begins.
“And that driving around at night with heavy flurries that close to the border isn’t the best idea anybody ever had when they’ve left their passport at home,” Luke finishes, sounding tired. Now that they’re out of the station, he seems completely exhausted, and Foggy sympathizes.
“You’ve been here two days, and you’re already on a first-name basis with the cops,” Jess comments, arms crossed.
“I also caught a divorce case and made out with opposing counsel,” Foggy informs her. “Oh, and Colleen said yes.”
“Good,” Luke says, and Foggy can tell he means it.
“I threw the prenup in the Saint Lawrence River,” Jessica says, and Foggy can tell she isn’t the least bit sorry.
“While screaming obscenities,” Luke adds, rubbing his temples, and Foggy shrugs.
“I just assumed, honestly.” He surveys the damage the last day has wrought on them. “Are you two heading back to the city now, or--”
“I’m getting drunk, and Luke’s going to sleep until New Year’s,” Jess tells him. “We can do that in public or not, it’s up to HC&B’s closest representative.”
“My parents’ last remaining spare bedroom, it is,” Foggy says with forced cheer. “Please be nice to them, I’m this close to getting disowned.” He holds his thumb and forefinger up with maybe a quarter inch between them. “Turns out in the game of Christmas, you win or you wind up with a year’s supply of fruitcake.”
Luke frowns at him in the rearview. “So you win or… you win?”
Jessica pats his knee, her expression eloquently communicating the “You poor, benighted fool.” that she’ll never say, and Foggy laughs, because that’s maybe the only silver lining to this entire thing. His mom’s going to kill him, but having a genuinely appreciative and naive audience for her cooking might be oil on troubled waters. “Oh, man. Mrs. Miller is going to love you.”
“Franklin,” his mom hisses, as soon as Luke and Jess are safely tucked away. For all Jess’s talk about drinking to forget, she curls up around Luke and is out like a light almost as soon as he is.
“I’m sorry, mom,” he says, and he really is. “Our boss sent them upstate with something for Danny, and it’s turned into this whole big thing. There’s no room at the inn--believe me, I checked before volunteering you.”
She softens slightly. “So long as they don’t expect--”
“They’re just grateful for a place to sleep and a hot meal before they head back to the city,” Foggy insists, though how they’re going to manage that, he doesn’t know. The train, maybe--the rental agency apparently broke the sound barrier reclaiming the car after the Mounties threatened to impound it. Not that his mom won’t pull out all the stops feeding them. So long as the pair of them can sleep through the party, the rest is smooth sailing.
Foggy goes to call Marci and sees a text from Matt. “Fruitcake? And here I thought we were friends.”
He grins like an idiot. If he didn’t get the Braille perfect, it was at least clear enough that Matt could tell it was for him, from Foggy.
“All’s fair in love and pastries,” he texts back, and he can’t stop smiling. “You still coming to the party?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” is the immediate reply.
It makes the phone call to Marci more fraught than it should be, because he sounds almost happy about Jess and Luke’s misadventure.
“Canada? No wonder they weren’t answering their phones,” she says. “I’d refuse to leave any cellular evidence, too.”
“Not how telemetry works, and you know it,” Foggy tells her. “But they’re resting comfortably now, I’ve got them, they’re fine. If Jeri’s still bent on that prenup, we’re going to need a new copy, though. It didn’t survive contact with law enforcement.”
“Ugh. Is there a chance in hell he’s going to let her sign it?” Marci asks.
“Nope. And even if she did, he wouldn’t.” Foggy’s even more sure of it than he was a week ago, and somehow it feels like they’ve been discussing this since the stone age.
“Then screw it,” Marci says, “it’s Christmas. We took heroic measures, but we couldn’t save the patient.”
“Jeri’s got until they tie the knot to work her magic,” Foggy reminds her.
“They set a date yet?”
“It’s Danny,” Foggy says. “Tomorrow, a decade from now, maybe the next time a lunar eclipse coincides with a harvest moon--there’s no telling.”
“Small favors,” Marci says.
“You’re not still at the office, are you?” Foggy asks.
“Are you kidding me?” she retorts. “It’s Christmas. Of course I’m at the office. It’s deserted, it’s quiet, my neighbors’ peppermint-addled gremlin-children can’t try to hug me.” She stops, as if she’s really considering something. “I could prance around in nothing but those Louboutins you gave me all night, and nobody would be the wiser come Monday morning.”
“I mean, far be it from me to dissuade you from following your bliss,” Foggy says, swallowing, “but please don’t?”
“That handsome wilderness lawyer is a good influence on you,” Marci sighs. “I don’t like it.”
Downstairs, Foggy can hear guests beginning to filter in. “I have to go,” he says. “Go home, Marci. Do something fun. Wear nothing but those Louboutins around your apartment instead of the office.”
She laughs, and it’s a genuine one. “Good night, Foggy. Happy holidays.”
“Happy holidays to you, too.” He hangs up and turns to find Matt, arms folded and that weaponized smirk on his face.
“Do I want to know?” Matt asks.
“HC&B is a reputable firm whose employees are sterling examples of the profession?” Foggy offers.
Matt laughs, and it’s like his whole body opens up with it. Foggy is mesmerized.
Matt sobers after a moment, and he takes off his glasses and goes through the motions of cleaning them on his shirt. “I, ah, might have spent some time looking you up, this morning. One of my old teachers asked, when I told him about you, and I realized I didn’t have as many answers as I’d like.”
“Swear to god, that’s the only time I did a strip-tease in public,” Foggy says, suddenly nervous. There’s a lot someone like Matt could take issue with, in Foggy’s record. Hogarth, Chao, & Benowitz is very much a harm-reduction firm, and his time with Landman & Zack is better left in the past. “And I didn’t even keep any of the money.”
“I’m being serious,” Matt tells him softly. “I didn’t know what to expect, but you… you really dive into the trenches, for your clients.”
“They’re entitled to a vigorous defense,” Foggy answers, because they are.
“I can’t think of five other lawyers who graduated with us who’d have been willing to do a weekend on contempt charges in pursuit of that.”
Foggy flushes. He stood his ground, and a fat lot of good it did his client. He shakes himself and tries to remember the good it did for all the people who didn’t have to deal with an inebriated judge at the worst moment of their lives, after the publicity sparked an investigation and got the judge removed from the bench. Harm-reduction. The system isn’t perfect, but he dug in his heels, and now it’s a little better.
“I think you underestimate our classmates by an order of magnitude,” Foggy says gently. He met a lot of crusaders, at Columbia. Most of them are still in the trenches, and a lot deeper down than he is.
“I only wanted to say, I’m impressed,” Matt murmurs. He puts his glasses back on and offers Foggy his arm. “Buy me a drink, counselor?”
“Any time,” Foggy laughs, linking elbows.
Matt leans in, and Foggy can just about forget his sore feet as he walks Matt back downstairs. Karen is showing Danny and Colleen the pictures she took in the immediate aftermath of stumbling onto Matt and Foggy--she got a perfect angle of Danny down on one knee, Colleen ecstatic and speechless--and they’re demanding copies. She has their blessing to make it front-page news, it seems, and Foggy thinks that it could be worse.
Foggy’s mom corners Matt and asks how he liked her cranberry oatmeal cookies, and Foggy finds himself face to face with a man he hasn’t been introduced to but who seems dead set on talking to him.
“Franklin Nelson, I presume?”
“Uh, most people call me Foggy,” Foggy says, looking around. There’s some social contract that just kicked in, and everybody’s studiously ignoring them, which seems weird.
The man nods. “Chuck Outerbridge.”
Oh, boy. Foggy forces a professional smile.
“I need you to listen to me, Mr. Nelson, because I’m only going to say this once,” Mr. Outerbridge says, and Foggy’s already planning an exit that won’t ruin his parents’ party. “My wife is entitled to a bit of fun. I know that. I strayed, and it’s only…” He swallows, composes himself, and plows ahead. “It’s only fair. But I love my wife, Mr. Nelson, and I’ll be damned if I let you spirit her away to some soulless jet-setting life in the city. Not without a fight.”
Foggy stares at him, trying to formulate twenty different responses. None of them are right, and he gives up.
“Mr. Outerbridge…” He rubs the bridge of his nose. “Have you told your wife this?”
Mr. Outerbridge draws himself up, the picture of wounded pride, and Foggy holds up a hand.
“Because your wife is a beautiful woman, Mr. Outerbridge, and a man only has so much restraint. It’s up to her who she picks, and if you can’t even tell her what you just told me, I’m fairly confident of what her decision will be.”
Mr. Outerbridge’s jaw sets, and he sweeps out of the party in what can only be called a dramatic fashion.
“What the hell, son?” his dad asks, once the surprised lull in conversation blows over.
“Attorney-client privilege,” Foggy says, shrugging.
His father shakes his head. “You didn’t.”
“Well, I mean, she didn’t file anything yet. I recommended arbitration, which it sounds like they won’t need after all.”
“That damn fool,” his dad mutters. He heads back to the kitchen. “Jeanie, sweetheart, have I told you how much I love you lately?”
That has Foggy’s mother’s spider-senses tingling, and he doesn’t wait around to disappoint her for the third time in as many days by explaining why he felt the need to facilitate the Outerbridges’ divorce-cum-reconciliation. He finds Matt in the hall doorway, chatting happily with Danny and Colleen. Karen takes a quick picture with her phone, then smirks at them.
“Matt Murdock finally finds a publicly-acceptable location for mistletoe,” she says. “News at eleven.”
Foggy glances up and can’t help laughing. They are, in fact, directly under a generous sprig of it. When he informs Matt of this fact, a sly grin steals across Matt’s face, and Foggy’s heart skips a beat.
Matt dips his head and catches Foggy’s lips with his own, and Foggy closes his eyes and leans into it. He could get used to this. He could get used to all of this.