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There’s a Devil in Hell’s kitchen. Foggy stares at the front page of the paper, squinting through the grainy picture to discern his features. He’s lithe, mysterious, flipping in the shadows, hidden in black— Foggy shakes his head. Sure, he’s hot, but ogling vigilantes he’s supposed to hate doesn’t pay the bills. Foggy’s a busy man. Crime’s rampant enough as it is.
The printer makes an awful sound, shuddering, and Foggy can peek his head out at Karen’s unimpressed form and watch in horror and hope that he isn’t actually seeing smoke come out of the sad thing. Fresh out of college, L&Z would be proud of their first solo violent act.
“Is—” he’s afraid to ask, “Is everything okay, Karen?” Things do not look okay, he can tell from the glare she’s giving the junk, from the way her posture just gets stronger, like she’s going to roundhouse kick it if it keeps acting up. She takes in a deep breath and Foggy rushes forward ‘cause he really thinks she might.
“I’ve got too much shit to scan, Foggy, it was making funny noises, I’ve got an eight-hundred page affidavit, I am going to kill ,” she says. She sounds like she means it. She doesn’t take her eyes off the machine. Foggy hurries, poking through the printer with practiced hands. Murder avoided. They can’t afford another printer-scanner; they’re stuck with it, it’s stuck with them.
“I know, I’ll take care of it. Hey, how about you go make coffee?” No one’s told Foggy that the coffee machine is also having a rough time, but everyone thinks he should be able to tell by how red Karen goes.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll go do that. Good luck,” she says. Foggy doesn’t know if she’s saying it to him or murmuring it to herself but, hell, he thinks, everything in this office needs a little luck either way. He gets to his knees and rolls his sleeves further back. His dad’d owned a hardware store, and he’s choosing not to think about how it went under as he gets to work.
The little bell on their door jingles and Foggy’s got printer ink running down his arm. Excellent first impression, but he also supposes that no one comes into a building like their office and expects a pristine service. Foggy’s middle name may be
Percival
professional, but he is over the number of embarrassing impressions he’s had in this office
.
Then again, maybe it’s just that they can’t get a single fucking client and he’s not expecting anyone of importance to walk through that door right now.
Foggy shrugs off his second-hand embarrassment and first-hand broke-ness and gets to his feet.
Matt’s hanging up his coat, scarf unhooked from his neck to showcase a series of purple bruises along his jaw.
“Yep,” he says, wiping himself off (and smearing the ink even more), “I was right.”
Matt grins, pale lips red and chapped from the cold and his own bad-habit lip-biting. His skin looks slightly translucent from the chill, bordering on light blue, and Foggy knows he’s getting him a better coat for Christmas.
“No one important’s walking through that door.” Matt chuckles, shaking his head. Foggy looks away before he turns himself into a man-sized tomato. Matt’s too pretty for Foggy’s work ethic to take— the one case they’ve got—
Bruises. Purple bruises, blooming on Matt’s skin, was he in a fight— did he—
Foggy fails his attempt to not turn into a human-roma. Karen cackles briefly from their kitchenette; the scent of burnt coffee fills the air.
“That’s pretty rude,” he’s still smiling, his stupid smile with a cut on a bottom lip. There’s a smudge of foundation over it, like he tried, but didn’t really. Either too tired from getting mugged or… fighting crime?
Foggy feels like he might be losing it. It had to be the chill, getting to him. He blinks, and for a moment, he sees Matt, twenty-one, bruised and bloody with that dark red hair wild. It’d been mussed in the rave, and had only gotten worse in the New York’s winter wind. The blood’d been from a fight. A fistfight.
Matt takes his cup from Karen, thanking her with a sincere, and genuinely smile and Foggy considers faking his death to avoid the dilemma of suspecting his friend of vigilante-ing and avoiding Karen’s coffee
He’s just thinking about it too hard. He’d seen Daredevil’s ass on the news and Matt’s one of the only hot guys he knows. Excluding himself, and Karen. Yeah, he’s just overthinking it.
Foggy focuses on his cases, returns to fight the office supplied (the printer this time), and forgets about Daredevil.
–
Today’s injury of the week is worse. Is he hallucinating? He should be getting this checked out but, health insurance? In his financial situation? Foggy mentally chuckles and shakes his head. Physically, he’s too focused on Matt’s bruised eye to think about laughing. They’re good friends, through the shit of leaving a horrible internship, opening a business, stressing over said business, etc. they still haven’t lost what they’d been in college. So Foggy invites him out drinking.
Matt makes enough excuses to avoid hanging out to make Foggy’s emo twelve-year-old self want to steal some. His family had been extremely uncool, and emo Foggy? Was (and is, to a degree) extremely cool. Matt even whines a little. Foggy thinks about adding it to his excuse-repertoire. The whining almost works.
But Foggy’s been alive for (a little) longer than Matt, and he’s probably going to die a little sooner than Matt. A couple mentions of a cold, sad funeral have Matt moving. They go drinking, and Foggy knows this isn’t what healthy communication looks like. He’d be okay with Matt being Daredevil; Matt knows how to fight, Matt is very angry a lot of the time, Foggy thinks it’s a natural conclusion. He feels a little like a conspiracy theorist, just minus the cork-board. He knows normal friends don’t coerce their friends through some drink and guilt-tripping. But he and Matt are known functioning co-dependents, and Matt is some angsty freak straight out a comic book. Besides, Matt did it first, it’s practically revenge at this point.
They head for Josie’s, sober and tidy; he tells Josie to get a good look at them when she glares over, ‘cuz you know we’ll be leaving even handsomer!
Matt laughs, and orders his drink; Josie looks unimpressed as she slides it across the booth. Matt, sat to Foggy’s left, sat closest to Josie, catches it without trying. Foggy doesn’t know how Daredevil works, what his powers are, or how the vigilante thing would work if the guy behind the mask was blind. But he definitely thinks it’s weird that Matt reacts without fumbling, unless he’s putting on a real front. He’s a horrible liar, so he always looks like a cliche blind man from every movie he could ever name, and it only makes Foggy more suspicious.
There’s a commotion over their shoulders, and Matt, as per tradition, asks Foggy for a of pool. And, as per tradition, kicks Foggy’s ass. He looks at Matt from across the table, grinning, flushed, his softest scarf still wrapped around his shoulders. Foggy knows it’s his softest, cuz Matt’d been all excited about it, and Foggy hasn’t found one capable of beating the material yet. He hadn’t tripped on the binder Foggy’d left in front of his feet, minutes ago, discarded in finals haze. But there’s no way Matt could’ve been bluffing. He knew what he looked like when Foggy described the sunrise to him, and the color of freshly falling snow.
No, Foggy was suspicious, alright, and he was going to get the secret out.
They ended up tripped over one another hours later, dueting the first song in an EP they’d just promised themselves they’d write. It was a mock-u-album, dedicated to Karen’s coffee, with guest performances by the printer (Matt), the scanner (Foggy), and the AC (both). It was beautiful, and Matt flicked on the lights for him as they stumbled into Matt’s living room.
For all his audacity, Foggy wasn’t sure how to bring it up. He ends up saying, “You’re…. Daredevil….?” with a lot of pause and a tone that veers up toward the end.
There’s a silence, almost stifling, and Matt’s weak smile comes out, dry and sad. “Is my suit around?”
Foggy’s first instinct is to jump to his feet and tell him I told you so! which makes no sense, but the childish drive is there. He stomps that reaction down, heavily, but can’t help the quiet I knew it! escape him.
Matt turns to him, looking startled. His little duckling, his eyebrows peek up behind the red glasses, already skewed on his face. “You knew?”
“I guessed!” Foggy cheers silently to himself. “That ass– I’d know that ass anywhere,” he says, maybe smug, but he deserved to feel a little smug.
“You’re not mad?”
“Matt, what? No– you’re practically a ninja, dude!” Foggy’s definitely losing it, maybe he’s even lost it. How much does it matter? His best friend Dare-fucking-Devil. “Not that I know how you do it– I mean, you’re not just getting your ass kicked every night right for, ya know, martyrdom, right?”
Matt’s smile is bright, tilted towards the ceiling. He looks lighter, that goofy grin on his face Foggy’s only seen when he’s getting his ass kicked at pool. “It’s my senses,” he says, getting to his feet, “I can feel everything, Fog, it makes a… I can—”
He flips backwards and without warning, and lands on his feet. He stumbles just a little; his hair’s starting to look even scruffier, and he looks the happiest Foggy’s seen in a while.
“Can you do a front-flip?” Matt flips forward and springs off his hands, to hang to the exposed ceiling beams. Foggy calls him a show-off as he leaps off again. His dumb vigilante best friend.
Karen’s going to lose her shit when she finds out.