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Matt sighed through an uncomfortable smile, adjusting his glasses as he tried once more to assuage Karen’s guilt over the coffee she’d spilled on him just moments ago.
She was being overly apologetic, though there was no real way to tell her that, a new friend and newer employee, begging forgiveness of a person she didn’t yet know well enough to be sure of their reaction. “I’ll pay for your dry-cleaning,” she’d mumbled from where she knelt on the floor, sopping up spilled coffee with a roll of paper towels. “I-I’ll buy you a new shirt! And I might not have enough right now for the jacket, but I’ll replace it as soon as I can!”
“Karen, really, it’s fine…”
He couldn’t tell her that one coffee-stained shirt and jacket weren’t going to make much difference in a laundry bag full of clothes he'd stained with his own blood. He kept an awkward but gentle smile on his face as he tugged his suit jacket off and, taking care to fumble a little with ‘blind’ uncertainty, laid it over the back of the chair behind the desk.
“I can’t believe I’m so clumsy,” she went on. “Matt, I’m so sorry, I swear I will make this up to you.” A wad of used paper towels slapped wetly against the inside of the metal wastebasket next to the desk. Karen picked up the roll again and tugged another several sheets off with a quiet tear.
“Alright, Matty, here we go,” Foggy announced as his footsteps re-entered the room from his own office. “Good old Columbia. Knew it was around here somewhere.”
Matt could smell the sweatshirt in Foggy’s grasp even before he offered it. He wrinkled his nose a little and reached for it as Foggy approached, fingers meeting the well-worn and pilled fleece in Foggy’s hands. He accepted the sweatshirt reluctantly and ran his fingertips over the front, following the embroidered letters with his fingertips: C-O-L–
“Foggy,” he choked as the smell overpowered him, “good god, have you ever washed this thing?”
“Probably,” Foggy replied, a grin in his voice. “Come on, Matt, it’s a piece of history!”
“It’s something …” Matt grimaced.
“Beggars can't be choosers, Matt,” Foggy said, reaching over and patting Matt on the shoulder with a warm hand. "So unless you want to rebrand as the new Shirtless Lawyer of Hell's Kitchen..."
Matt cleared his throat softly as Karen got to her feet, fumbling with the coffee-saturated paper towels in hand. “Matt, I'll...I'll go get you a new coffee. You too, Foggy.”
“No, no, no,” Foggy tutted, stepping away from Matt and over in the direction of Karen’s voice. “ I’ll get us new coffees. But you come along with me so he doesn't seduce you with that whole Shirtless Lawyer thing.”
“Foggy…” Matt smiled crookedly as Foggy took the wad of paper towels from Karen's hand and added them to the waste bin with the others. Matt wasn’t overly concerned with getting his morning coffee, but Foggy was unknowingly providing him a prime opportunity to change without either of them present to see or ask questions about the bruises and stitches on his torso, and he wasn't about to interfere with that.
He heard Karen tug her purse down from the hook by the door, her keys and the tin of breath mints rattling inside, before she hauled it over one shoulder and stepped back for Foggy to open the door for her.
Karen lingered there in the doorway for a moment, and though Matt couldn’t see her, the awkward helplessness radiating from her was palpable. He wished there was a way to assure her that having hot coffee spilled on him by a friend was in fact one of the better things to have happened to him so far that week.
He tilted his head a little, opening his mouth: “Karen–”
“I’m so sorry,” she blurted and quickly walked out.
Matt sighed as Foggy chuckled before following her out. “Be right back, Matt.”
The door closed with a soft thud, the latch clicking back into place. The paper sign--"Nelson & Murdock"--taped to the glass fluttered for a moment before falling still.
Matt listened til their footsteps had taken them significantly away from the office before he set the old sweatshirt down on the desk and began carefully undoing the buttons of his dress shirt. He tugged the shirt off and draped it over the same chair as his jacket, no longer having to feign uncertainty about its exact location. For a moment, Matt checked his most recent wounds, fingers tracing over the bandages and still-raw stitches in his skin, confirming that the only dampness he was feeling was from the coffee and not from seeping blood. The last thing he needed was to bleed on Foggy’s apparently ‘historical’ Columbia sweatshirt and then have to explain it.
Satisfied that he was still in one piece, he picked up the sweatshirt once more and, bracing himself, breathed in deeply.
There was the musky aroma of Foggy’s aftershave, the same aftershave he’d used since those early days of law school. There was an eclectic collection of assorted food smells: mustard, pizza sauce, a hint of Indian spices. Lingering cigarette smoke, absorbed over years of late nights in bars, and the sour smell of beer that had just never fully come out. If he really focused, he could smell the faintest hint of laundry detergent, intermixed with the musty smell of moisture and dust, absorbed after years of being packed away inside of a box.
“Good lord, Foggy,” Matt muttered as he reluctantly pulled the sweatshirt on over his bare arms and chest. He didn’t know how he was going to make it through the rest of the day with a veritable smorgasbord of… aromas wafting up from his torso. At least he doubted that anyone else’s senses would be assaulted quite as violently as his own.
It wasn't long before Foggy’s heartbeat caught his attention, one of the few he could reliably pick up on without even really focusing, approaching from the street to the building’s front door. Matt made sure the sweatshirt was properly covering his torso and arms before the latch on the door clicked open and Foggy stepped back into the office, bringing his jovial mood with him as only Foggy was capable of. “Alright, Matty, cheap replacement coffee acquired.”
Matt was leaning on Karen’s desk, legs crossed. The glass in the door rattled again lightly as Foggy shut the door behind him. “Hey, look at you, Columbia looks good on you.”
Matt reached out his hand as Foggy crossed the room, taking the coffee with gratitude as it was offered. “Where’s Karen?”
“Picking up some paper clips and highlighters.”
Matt tilted his head slightly in question.
“She really needed to do something to make her feel like she made up for spilling coffee on you.”
Matt sighed with half-hearted exasperation. “She doesn’t have to do that.”
“It’ll make her feel better," Foggy said dismissively. "Drink your coffee.”
Matt shook his head, adjusting his glasses with one hand. “Thank you, Foggy.”
“Don’t mention it,” Foggy said, his footsteps fading as he headed into his own office. “Like literally, do not mention this to Karen. If she knows I got you a cheap substitute she’s gonna go back out there and get you another fancy coffee.”
Matt’s lips quirked in a smile as he tilted his head down, inhaling the warm, familiar smell of cheap coffee in hand. If he held it close enough to his face, it actually drowned out the insufferable smell of the sweater he was currently wearing. Well, mostly.
He listened to Foggy in the other room, dropping his bag on the desktop, fishing out files, opening drawers, the rustle of paper. Matt was quiet for a moment, listening to him, before pushing off the desk lightly and rising to his feet.
“Foggy?” Matt called.
“Yeah, Matt?”
“Why do you still have this old sweatshirt?”
The floorboards creaked as Foggy stepped back into the doorway to the office. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve never known you to be particularly sentimental,” Matt said, tilting his head. “Not only have you kept this old thing, you…have it here with you in the office.”
He could feel Foggy’s eyes on him, but his partner’s steady heartbeat made it clear this wasn’t the source of some big secret or surprise. “Oh,” Foggy said after a pause, “I just shrugged.” He folded his arms, hands brushing against the fabric of his shirt quietly. “I don’t know. I guess I just never really considered getting rid of it. Just feels like it belongs with me. You know, a reminder of where we came from.” Foggy let out a long, wistful sigh. “Lotta good memories in that sweatshirt.”
Matt chuckled, fingering the worn-out hem.
The floor creaked as Foggy shifted his weight. “Plus, you never know when someone might get an entire cup of coffee uphanded onto ‘em. Handy to have around.” Foggy pointed a finger gun at Matt and accompanied it with a click of his tongue to make sure Matt was aware of the gesture, before retreating back into his office again. “Now get to work,” he called through the wall, “how’s Karen gonna afford to buy you a new shirt if we can't pay her?”
Matt smirked, shaking his head as he retreated into his own office and stepped around the desk to his chair. He knew, no matter where he went for the rest of the day, the smell of Foggy Nelson’s college sweatshirt was going to follow him.
It turned out, he didn’t mind so much after all.