Work Text:
“But I didn’t know!” Foggy protests for the hundredth time, which proves just as ineffective as the first 99 times he tried to explain. Across from him, sitting up on a dais on a throne made out of twisting branches and climbing ivy, an actual goddamn elf-king blinks his creepy grey eyes, utterly unmoved. "You took payment for your services." He says in a deep, echoing voice that rattles in the air and rings in Foggy's ears.
Foggy throws his hands up, which upsets the weird silver chains around his wrist. They jangle and bite into his skin simultaneously until he drops his arms again. God, he hates magic. "Yeah, that's how it works where I’m from. I did my job and got paid. But I didn't know my client was paying with stolen fairy treasure, it doesn’t really happen that often,” by now he’s too tired and honestly, pissed off to not be a little flippant. The chains around his wrists squeeze threateningly. “Listen, it's yours alright? I don't want it. We seriously don’t have to do this—”
The elf-king raises his hand and suddenly Foggy can’t speak, his voice clogging his throat like phlegm. He gags on it. "It has been decided. Because you accepted this payment in ignorance you will not be sentenced to death." The invisible force choking him eases its hold and Foggy bends forward over his bound hands. Behind him Matt exhales audibly, and Foggy wonders if he’s been held silent by fairy magic this entire time. That would explain his uncharacteristic patience while Foggy got chewed out in a magical courtroom.
"Instead,” the elf-king continues, immediately stamping on the seedlings of hope taking root in Foggy’s chest, “you will have the chance to reclaim your honor in the arena."
" What —?"
" No —"
"To reject this offer is to accept your death." The elf-king says, speaking over them both. His voice rolls over their objections.
It’s a struggle to get the words out, the air suddenly too thick to breathe in a proper lungful, "Accepting it is accepting death! I'm a lawyer not a gladiator I can't—"
"I'll do it." Matt says at Foggy’s back—stupid, noble, thick-headed Matt with his raging hard-on for defending the weak and defenseless, this goddamn hero with a martyr complex so big Foggy doesn't even know how he isn't dead already—and steps forward, as close as he's gotten to Foggy since they got apparated into this crazy fairy court. "I'll fight for him."
Foggy opens his mouth to thoroughly object because fuck this he's not going to just let his happen, this is crazy, this is wrong —but then the elf-king raises one of his ring adorned hands and says, "So be it.”
-
"This is the stupidest fucking thing you've ever done and I really fucking hate you and I am never speaking to you again Murdock—I am—" Foggy can hear the bustle and racket from the arena just outside the tent they got magicked into after Matt volunteered as tribute on Foggy's behalf. He wonders what Matt can hear—or smell or feel, in this weird place between worlds where elves apparently conduct their business of fucking with humankind—but doesn’t know how to ask without Matt taking it as some kind of consent to be championed. Which Foggy is not about to give him.
This is categorically the worst day of Foggy's life, coming out on top of a lot of really fucking bad days. Somehow, they all have Matt in common.
Goddamn Matthew Murdock. Foggy snaps his mouth shut, stares hard at Matt. Foggy holds on to his anger, knows it’s the only thing holding him up and that without it he'll fold in on himself like cheap office furniture.
Matt's not even wearing the suit, Foggy thinks to himself, his anger taking on a sickly edge.
A suit sure, because they were on the courthouse steps when this all started, working a solid case together, and Foggy doesn't know when he's going to learn that things that are too good to be too are too good to be true for a reason. And that mysterious clients who offer to pay in “family heirlooms” shouldn't be taken at face value.
Matt's going to get himself killed fighting off an elven Russell Crow , Foggy can’t help but think bitterly, and he's not even wearing his superhero onesie, he's just wearing a tie.
Matt takes off his tie. Foggy clenches his fists.
"It's okay." Matt says, even though it really isn't. “Foggy I’m going to get you out of here.” He takes off his glasses next, folds them carefully and slips them away somewhere inside his suit jacket with perfectly steady hands.
Matt ducks his head like he can feel Foggy staring. "Believe it or not, I've been known to hold my own in a fight, Fog." His smile is purely theatrical in nature and Foggy wants to punch him in the nose himself. He can make it hurt. Jessica taught him how.
"Spoken like a man who’s obviously never seen his face in a mirror the morning after." Foggy grunts, taking Matt's jacket like preventing it from wrinkling while Matt's out there getting murdered is going to make a difference. Matt has the nerve to smirk. “I can’t really help that part.”
Foggy actually takes the swing.
Matt dodges it easily, stepping back for half a second before he's right back within arm's reach. He closes both his hands around Foggy’s still clenched fist, his grip firm and borderline brutal in its strength. Foggy grits his teeth. "Foggy, it's going to be alright." Matt tries again, this time gentle and placating.
"Stop saying that!” Foggy snaps, yanking his hand out of Matt’s. “You saying it isn't going to make it true."
Matt presses his lips closed, probably on another empty platitude, and guilt bites at Foggy's gut. He's never wanted their last conversation to be a fight. God, someone save us. He prays, hopes someone, somewhere, picks up on it. Jesus. Thor. The Starship Enterprise. He's not picky.
"You said it yourself Foggy, if you’d accepted the challenge you'd be as good as dead." Matt says solemnly, because he's a bastard. Foggy bites down on the inside of his cheek so hard it makes his eyes water, because it’s not as though Foggy can argue differently. But he can still argue, his anger fang-toothed and vicious. “So what? I’m just supposed to be okay with you dying for me?”
“In self-defense and in defense of the innocent, cowardice is the only sin.” Matt replies, eyes looking somewhere over Foggy's ear.
"Jesus say that?" Foggy snaps, the back of his neck burning hot under the collar of his shirt.
Matt's mouth twitches, apparently ready to try a different tactic. "Dean Koontz."
Foggy opens his mouth, ready to verbally eviscerate Matt (he wants to keep fighting, not just because it's some straight up bullshit that Matt can't let Foggy die in some magic Battle Royale, because it isn’t just this once. Its every single time Matt goes out into the night and leaves Foggy waiting for a call, breath caught in his throat, the same night on repeat over and over with only one end in sight) when a trumpet call cuts through the air.
There's a deafening cheer outside their tent.
Foggy's stomach drops to the soles of his shoes, and he wants to reach out, wants to grab Matt by the shoulders and hold on. He isn’t ready to let him go.
Matt nods stiffly, knows as well as Foggy does what that trumpet means.
There’s a guardswoman at the tent entry, beautiful and tall and stoic, unwavering in the face of Foggy’s bargaining (more time, they just need more time to figure something out, they always do). She leads Matt away before either of them can say another word.
Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die. Foggy prays. He prays and prays and hopes it means something to anyone who might be listening.
-
Foggy’s pretty sure he’s worn a groove in the richly carpeted tent floor by the time another trumpet blasts through the cheering, gasping crowds. Foggy’s heart jumps into his throat so quickly he chokes on it.
Matt gets led in by the same guard that led him out, Matt bloodied and battered, but still standing. He grins at Foggy when he crosses the threshold. “Jesus Christ.” Foggy exhales, fighting back the urge to rush over and touch him, settles instead for checking Matt over with his eyes and keeps his hands to himself.
Foggy knows every part of Matt now, not the way he would have thought to know him once, not even the way he thought he did. He knows Matt in the horrible smell that builds up inside the suit that’s supposed to keep him safe, in the scowling face of the devil looking back at him from the shadows of the city. He knows Matt in bruises and scar tissue, in blood and pain and brutality he would have considered inhuman in another life. Foggy knows Matt in ways he used to wish he could forget and that he's still learning how to make sense of.
“Told you so.” Matt says, playful despite the blood on his face, the gash oozing freely across the bridge of his nose. Foggy covers his face with his shaking hands, tells himself to breathe.
They did it. Matt did it. He’s not dead. They can go home now. His shoulders remain locked rigidly up around his ears, his heart thudding painfully against the backs of his ribs.
Foggy’s never speaking to Matt again. For real this time.
-
Of course, nothing is ever that easy.
-
“Three rounds? You didn’t say anything about three rounds.” Foggy says. Matt’s good humor is gone now, his face a mask of barely banked fury.
“Do you forfeit?” The elf-king asks, like a douche, and Foggy opens his mouth to give him a piece of his mind about assholes who go around changing the terms and conditions of a contract on the fly when Matt steps forward, shoulder barely brushing Foggy’s as he goes.
“No.” He snarls like the competitive shit that he is.
Foggy closes his eyes and counts to three. Why is he surrounded by assholes? Who did he piss off in his previous life?
The king nods his head, his hair ripples like a curtain of spun gold. Foggy hates him.
“Then we proceed.”
-
Round two doesn’t go as well for Matt as the first.
It lasts longer and the crowd seems to be holding its breath for long portions of it before erupting into chaos. Foggy scrabbles at the tent walls but the material is simultaneously too slippery to grab hold of and too heavy to lift, so he can’t catch a glimpse outside. Foggy claws at the tent walls until his fingertips go numb, collapses on to a low pillowed bench a few feet back, pulls at his hair and bites his nails down to the quick until finally the trumpet sounds again. The crowd is still going crazy and it's impossible to tell who for.
It feels like it takes a century for the tent entrance to lift and for Matt to actually come back. The guard seems to be doing most of the work holding him upright, Matt’s legs less steady than before, face a mess of blood, left cheek swollen nearly purple, the pupil of his left eye wreathed in red. His dress shirt is missing and there’s a long thin slice down the length of his arm.
When Foggy can finally tear his eyes from Matt to the guardswomen behind him, he’s surprised to find the guard looking back at him. She looks mildly impressed.
“If he doesn’t die, he’ll have brought your name great honor.” The guard says, voice echoing with the same shivery chime as all the other fairies. Matt winces, head jerking away from her shoulder, looking as though he’d like very much to crawl into a hole. If the guard notices she doesn’t seem to take it personally. “You’ve picked a worthy champion.”
“Thanks?” Foggy croaks, rooted in place until the guard leaves and Matt’s whole body topples forward.
“I got you.” Foggy says, taking Matt’s weight against his chest, arms caught under Matt’s armpits. He’s definitely got practice in this. “I got you.” He knows the steps to this dance, half-drags, half-carries Matt over the bench and lowers Matt down carefully, mindful of his hissing exhales and the soft grunts of pain he can’t hold back.
“What happened?” Foggy asks, grabbing a cloth and tipping cold water from a silver pitcher out into a waiting basin. Matt takes a heaving breath inward, his chest shaking with the force of it. Foggy sits down beside him so Matt will have somewhere to fall on if he tips over. Matt accepts the cloth and wipes at his face, the soft white cloth ruined within seconds, before letting Foggy take the cloth back. The water in the basin goes cloudy and pink after Foggy rings it out, and Matt tips his face upward, a silent invitation for Foggy to give into the caretaking urge raging inside him. Neither of them say anything for a long while.
Matt clears his throat as Foggy chases a trickle of blood down the side of his neck from a cut behind his ear. “Uh, I think—I think I fought a centaur.”
Foggy’s hand stills. “The fuck?”
Matt sighs, his Adam's apple bobs under Foggy’s thumb when Matt swallows. Foggy doesn’t know how to breathe.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought too.”
-
There’s a longer lag time between the second round and the third. Foggy wishes he could believe it’s because they know Matt needs the time to recover but his gut tells him it’s in preparation for something even more terrible than a goddamn centaur.
Matt sits in mediation on the tent floor, hands over his knees and back stupid straight, unfocused eyes heavy and half-lidded. Foggy sits on the low bench opposite of him. He doesn't bother pretending he's doing anything other than staring right at him.
Matt doesn’t tell him to stop.
-
“I’m sorry.” Matt says what feels like hours, if not days, later. They’re sitting side by side on the tent floor, leaning back against the bench, legs stretched out in front of them. Matt’s running his fingers over the edge of the heavily embroidered throw Foggy draped over his shoulders, following the overlapping designs of flowers and leaves twisted over and around one another in shimmering gold and silver thread. Foggy follows movement of Matt's fingers with his eyes, his swelling knuckles, watches them go this way and that. “I know you’re not—I know you didn’t want this but—you know I had to—”
Foggy sighs, shoulders sinking, “You really didn’t. You never have to do anything Matt.”
Matt shakes his head, “I did. I do. I have to—you’re my best friend. I have to take care of you. And that means not letting you get yourself killed in a fairy tournament.”
Foggy rubs at his face. There’s a splotch of dried blood on the side of his wrist. Jesus, what a day. “You’re my best friend, too dumbass. I have to take care of you too—”
Matt pulls a face like Foggy’s willfully missing the point. “You do. All the time. You—you wait up for me and you check police blotters and you—you call hospitals and you—you undress me like—like I’m a child and you bring me soup when I’m sick and I—I have to do this okay? This is what I’m good at Foggy. This is how I can take care of you.”
There’s a shivering, burning thing lodged in Foggy’s throat, almost as violent as the elf-king silencing him with the Force, but it’s all coming from inside. Because Matt’s face is ignited with earnestness and determination, because Matt is physically incapable of doing anything half-heartedly. It’s his biggest flaw and most indispensable strength, it’s why he succeeds so beautifully and why his stumbles are goddamn catastrophes.
It’s why Foggy hitched his wagon to this train wreck of a hero and why he’s going to love him for the rest of his fucking life no matter what calamities befall them.
"It's one way, Matt. Just one way. And you dying in the process, that won't do anything but ruin me Murdock. You have to know that. I don't know who I am without you."
Matt sucks in a breath, shaky and scared, and it's the fear in his face that propels Foggy forward, that makes him grab Matt by the back of the neck and pull him forward. Because he knows it's true, knows that Foggy isn't himself when Matt and he are out of sorts, his world thrown off solid ground without Matt there beside him.
It isn't a nice kiss. They're a goddamn mess.
Their teeth clack together and Matt's nose presses too hard against Foggy's face, draws a hiss from him that burns Foggy’s lips. His heart is on the verge of thumping its way free from his chest cavity. He feels like he's about to throw up.
“Foggy,” Matt breathes, eyes fixed in the vicinity of Foggy’s chin, his thumb tracing the curve of his bottom lip. “I’m gonna win for you. I promise.” He says and Foggy nods against Matt’s hand where it rests against his jaw. “I’m going to get you home.”
“You’re going to get us both home.” Foggy says, when he can find his voice again. Matt chuckles, a short dry sound, tips his forehead against Foggy’s temple.
Foggy closes his fingers against Matt’s wrist and reminds himself that if there’s one thing Matt Murdock excels at it’s at surviving impossible odds.