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After Mass, in the kitchen, Father Lantom says, “You know, I really will miss your confessions, if you ever throw in the towel.”
When Matt laughs, he continues, straight-faced, “Not that you aren’t free to come confess for any of your daily sins. It just won’t be the same, without your hobby involved. It really gives me something to dig into.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Matt promises.
Scripture doesn’t neatly wrap itself around what Matt is doing, and Father Lantom tries when they have time to study together, but in the end he always tells Matt to believe in whatever he needs to wake up in the morning and keep going. That God is beauty inherent and Matt should know well enough by now that a lot of things can be beautiful; he didn’t stop experiencing beauty when he lost his sight, just had to fill in the gaps.
(Matt thinks about Foggy’s laugh, the smell of good coffee, the soft sound of Karen walking in stockinged feet around the office after she gives up on her heels for the day.)
He doesn’t say that Matt should find beauty in what he does—broken skin on both of his fists, sixteen stitches in two weeks—but maybe that’s what he means. Matt can’t see a sunset but he can taste a fight, salt and blood and his heartbeat in his throat, and maybe beautiful’s not the word for it but it’s something that he can have for himself. Nobody can appreciate a fight quite like a Murdock boy and he’s the last one fighting.
When he gets home that afternoon, Foggy is sitting on his couch with a beer, watching a movie on his laptop with the volume down low. He makes a vague noise when Matt says, “Hey,” before he kicks off his shoes by the door and shrugs out of his jacket.
When he slumps down next to him, Foggy starts to describe what’s happening on-screen without skipping a beat.
He’s been doing this lately. Matt will come in at 3 AM, change out of the suit, and find Foggy asleep on his couch surrounded by files. When he’s not there, Matt will come home to half-asleep voicemails telling him that Foggy’s going to be really mad if he shows up to work dead in the morning. Foggy’s good at this, pretending that everything’s normal. Filling in the gaps.
*
“Pizza, Murdock,” Foggy says, in lieu of hello, as he walks into Matt’s apartment. “I have pizza and whiskey and I was going to bring Karen, as well, but then I realized you might be covered in a mix of different people’s blood, so I decided not to extend the invitation.”
“You could call ahead,” Matt suggests, lightly, “to gauge the normal blood ratio.”
“First of all, you never answer your phone, you troglodyte,” Foggy says, deadpan. “Second of all, how is it our lives that I have to call ahead to make sure you just have a normal amount of blood on and in your person?”
“I make bad choices,” Matt says.
“It’s so refreshing to hear you admit that,” Foggy replies. “Now, come over here. This entire pizza isn’t going to eat itself.”
Matt’s just going to have a couple of pieces, maybe one drink because he was planning on going out later, but Foggy’s an enabler. Shots happen, and then the pizza’s gone and they’re sprawled out on the couch together with the whiskey on the floor between them.
“You know,” Foggy says, three shots of whiskey in. “You could tell Karen. She’s good people.”
“I know she is, and I’m not telling her for the same reason I didn’t tell you,” Matt says, resolute even though he’s on his fourth shot.
“Because you’re a self-sacrificing dumbass?” Foggy asks.
“Yes,” Matt replies, nodding.
“Well, she’s going to find out anyway,” Foggy says. Matt can hear him combing a hand through his hair, a little violently, like he does when he’s frustrated. “Karen’s an evil genius. She got our possessed copier to bend to her will and she will get you, in time.”
Matt takes another shot of whiskey and thinks about it. He hasn’t had anything to drink in a couple of months, at least, and the first shot went immediately to his head. He feels warm and nice, which is exactly the opposite of how he felt after the first time Foggy found him with multiple stab wounds. If he’s being honest, and Matt’s apparently trying that out, he’s not exactly looking forward to another dramatic reveal.
“Should I tell her?” he asks, quietly, after a long pause.
“She deserves to know,” Foggy says. “Also, the likelihood that you’ll end up collapsing in a pool of your own blood in our office just seems really high at this point, so, may as well bite the bullet there, buddy.”
“Will you text her and ask her to come over?” Matt asks.
Foggy smiles at him. Matt’s not sure how he can hear it, when he’s not talking, but he knows.
“Absolutely,” Foggy says, and, yeah. That’s how he sounds when he’s smiling at Matt, just at Matt. “Pizza, whiskey, and secrets.”
“My favorite things,” Matt agrees.
*
When Matt tells Karen that he’s Daredevil, she is a little drunk already and laughs for about thirty seconds straight before she stops abruptly and says, “Oh, fuck, that makes so much sense. Except for all the parts that don’t. Please elaborate.”
So, Matt tells her everything, and Foggy inserts helpful interjections and claims to be Matt’s normal person translator. Karen listens with rapt attention, making soft noises to let him know that she understands what he’s saying.
“Well, thanks for saving my life that one time,” she says, when he’s finished. She sounds shaken, maybe worried, but not angry. Or scared, which might be worse.
“No problem,” Matt says, smiling at her.
“Also, please assume in the future that anything weird that happens to my heartbeat at any point is due to a rare and non-fatal heart condition,” she continues, “and has absolutely nothing to do with any feelings I might be experiencing.”
“How surprising,” Foggy says, “that I also have that very rare condition.”
Karen laughs and takes the whiskey from him to drink directly from the bottle and Matt loves them both so much that it hurts to feel it all at once. Karen sleeps on the couch later in a pair of Matt’s sweatpants rolled up at the waist, a blanket over her head so she can’t see the light from the billboard. Foggy crawls into Matt’s bed after him, stealing his side.
“Foggy,” Matt says, because Foggy’s not asleep yet even though his breath is coming steady and soft, even though they’ve been laying here awhile now.
“Yeah?”
“Are we okay?”
Foggy sighs, turns to rest his forehead against Matt’s shoulder.
“I don’t know, Matt,” he whispers, and they don’t say anything else.
*
Matt wakes up with a horrible headache and his chest pressed against Foggy’s back, arms around his waist. He can’t get himself together enough to pull away and Foggy doesn’t move, either, just groans low in his throat so Matt can feel it vibrate and asks, “Am I dying?”
“Probably not,” Matt says, hoarsely.
“I guess you’d know,” Foggy murmurs around a yawn, and, yeah. Matt would. Foggy saw it in action. Great. “Alright, buddy. Relinquish me. I need water and possibly to throw up half a bottle of whiskey.”
Matt makes a face but rolls away from him, onto his back. He listens while Foggy slowly climbs out of the bed, making a low pained noise when his feet hit the floor.
“We too old for this?” he asks. Matt huffs out a laugh.
“Surely not,” he replies.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Foggy agrees, walking out to the living room. “We’re still young and nubile and—hey, Karen’s still here!”
“Who’s nubile?” Karen asks, blearily. “Also, ow.”
“All of us,” Foggy says, from the kitchen. “Young and beautiful and definitely not about to throw up in the sink.”
“Please don’t throw up in my sink!” Matt calls, but he can already smell it. He turns over to bury his face in his pillow with a groan. He stays like that even when Karen shuffles in and sits cross-legged on the bed next to him.
She’s silent for a few long moments before she asks, “Hey, did we talk about something important last night?”
Matt might have to throw up in the sink next.
“You don’t remember?” he asks, lifting his head slowly.
“. . .no, I’m just joking,” Karen says, laughing quietly. “How bad is to smell vomit with super senses?”
“Bad,” Matt assures her, dropping his face back down to his pillow.
Karen runs a gentle hand over his back a couple times.
“Thanks for telling me,” she says, softly. “I’m probably going to freak out about it later when my head feels like it’s not going to fall off my neck, but. . .thanks.”
“It was liquid courage,” Matt says. “And Foggy.”
“We can really blame so much on booze and Foggy,” Karen replies, ruffling his hair. “I’m gonna go help him clean your sink.”
Matt’s pillows smell like Foggy’s shampoo and he can hear them whispering and giggling in the kitchen, rifling through his cabinets for aspirin and trying to figure out the best place to get hangover food delivered from.
Later, they eat breakfast burritos in Matt’s bed, and it’s almost like his entire side isn’t covered in bruises from fighting on Monday night, like the life he might have had if he had kept ignoring everything that he could hear around him. It’s bittersweet, like a lot of things, lately.
*
After Foggy has fallen asleep on his couch three nights in a row one week and wandered home sometime in the early morning, Matt makes a choice. He climbs in through his bedroom window after going out chasing sirens and hears Foggy’s soft snoring from the next room, and he makes a choice.
After he changes out of the suit into boxers and a soft t-shirt, he wanders out to gently shake Foggy awake.
“Come to bed,” he says, softly.
Foggy’s heartbeat speeds up but he’s just waking up, too. It doesn’t mean anything.
“I can just go home,” Foggy says, yawning and stretching, joints popping. “I need to actually use my apartment if I’m going to justify paying rent.”
“You don’t have to,” Matt replies, trying to be normal, move forward, just like Foggy has been. “I don’t mind. I just don’t want you to think you have to sleep on the couch, if you do want to stay.”
Foggy swallows thickly, shifting to sit up. Matt can feel him looking at his face, like he’s waiting for something else.
“Yeah,” Foggy murmurs, eventually. “Okay.”
Matt goes back to his bedroom to let Foggy make his own decision but feels a secret pleased thrill when he hears footsteps near his door. He turns over to say something, but the footsteps don’t stop.
Foggy keeps walking, and his heartbeat is faster than his footsteps and it’s the only thing Matt can hear, over the sound of the door shutting behind him and cars on the street below and another siren. In the hallway, Foggy stops for a long time and then says, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Matt.”
Matt’s breath catches in his throat until he can’t hear him anymore.
*
“Do you think maybe our repayment plans are too lenient?” Foggy asks, as soon as he walks into the office. “And I’m definitely not asking because I might have let Mr. and Mrs. Katsaros pay me in baklava this month.”
“My bank account says yes,” Karen offers, wryly.
Matt finishes pouring his coffee. He can tell it’s too strong already, but he’s getting used to it.
“Was it good baklava?” he asks.
“It was amazing baklava,” Foggy says, “but, also, all my bills this month have this big red stamp on them, so. Maybe we can get a little less generous.”
“Maybe you can stop prioritizing baked goods over your livelihood,” Karen suggests.
“Okay, let’s be serious here, we all know that’s not going to happen,” Foggy says. “I guess we’re just going to have to become phone sex operators on the weekend to make ends meet.”
“Yeah?” Karen asks, gamely, grin at the edge of her voice. “How’s your dirty talk?”
“Well, I’d give you a preview,” Foggy says, “but we’re in mixed, very Catholic company.”
“Don’t hold back on my account,” Matt says, straight-faced.
“No, no,” Foggy says, stepping around Matt to get to his office. “I’d just make Karen fall in love with me, and you know that we’re strictly against intra-office comingling here at Nelson and Murdock.”
The phone in his office starts to ring, and Foggy sighs in what might be relief, turning and shutting the door behind him. Karen laughs before going back to her computer, so Matt goes to his office, as well, coffee untouched on his desk as he listens to Foggy talk to Marci on his phone. He should block it out, but a tiny vicious part of him doesn’t want to. It’s hard to block Foggy out. It always has been.
*
Matt didn’t go out expecting a challenge, which is why he gets hurt again. It’s a low grade mob lackey with a knife; if Matt has to tell the story, he might lie about it just to make it sting a little less. The blade gets a little too friendly with his neck where it’s exposed, deep enough that Matt’s having to stop the bleeding in the middle of the fight, one glove sprawled across the wound as he spins around and knocks out the guy with a kick to the neck. It’s a little too eye for an eye, even for him. He’d been aiming for his head.
“Great job,” he mutters to himself, heading for the rooftop to call it a night. By the time he makes it home, he’s lost more blood than he’d expected, and his hands shake as he sorts through the first aid kit. He’s really been getting good at doing his own stitches, especially since Claire’s been gone, but he’s weak and he can’t get the angle right to get past the first one.
He thinks about going to the hospital, briefly, changing into street clothes and trying to pass it off as a really bad papercut. Even more briefly, he thinks about calling Karen, but she’s never seen more than bruises and cuts in the aftermath.
Foggy answers, on the second ring, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Matt says, then: “A small neck injury. I just need help with the stitches.”
“Nothing,” Foggy repeats. “We’re going to talk about what that word means later. I’ll be there in ten.”
He’s there in seven, voice ragged when he comes in without knocking and says, “Show me the damage,” like he ran the whole way here. His heartbeat rabbiting in Matt’s ears.
Matt moves the blood-soaked washcloth from his neck as Foggy crosses the room, and Foggy swears softly and violently at the sight of it, the skin split neatly open with one stitch at the start. Blood isn’t exactly pouring out of it, but it’s definitely not stopping, welling up and slipping down to his collarbone.
“Alright, talk me through this,” Foggy says, gently picking up the needle. “Wait, did you take any painkillers?”
“No, I don’t need them,” Matt says.
“. . .add that to the things that we’re talking about later then,” Foggy says, and Matt nods, wincing at the mistake as it splits the wound a little more.
He talks Foggy through the process, breathing through the pain. The stitches are unsteady, and Matt can smell the bile rising in Foggy’s throat, but they do the trick. Foggy runs his fingers through Matt’s hair before he stands up, leaving his hand there for a few seconds while Matt tries to resist arching up into the touch before he asks, “Can you get cleaned up on your own?”
“Yes, of course,” Matt says, automatically, bracing himself on the arm of the couch to stand up. His legs shake ominously, but he can make it. “You. . .you should get back to whatever you were doing.”
“Matt, it’s four in the morning,” Foggy says, slowly. “What do you think I was doing?”
“I thought you might be with Marci,” he says.
“. . .because you could hear our phone call,” Foggy says, with a sigh. “Number three on the list of things we’ll talk about later. I’m not dating Marci. Now, go take a shower, Murdock. I’m going to make this place look like less of a crime scene.”
“Okay,” Matt agrees. He reaches out to run a hand down Foggy’s arm, fingers stopping at his elbow, familiar. He tries to sound as earnest as he feels when he says, “Thank you. For answering your phone.”
“I’m not the one who doesn’t answer his phone,” Foggy replies, quietly, walking away to wash his hands in the kitchen sink. Matt can picture what the blood looks like, turning pink in the water. He saw enough of it as a kid.
*
When he comes back out, wearing clean sweats, Foggy says, “Don’t set your alarm for the morning. I already told Karen to take the day off.”
Matt starts to argue but stops when Foggy takes a sharp breath, ready to fight back.
When Matt doesn’t say anything, Foggy adds: “You should sleep.”
“I will,” Matt promises, and, again, “Thank you.”
He crawls into bed slowly, feeling the fight in his muscles and older bruises as he settles in, pulling his sheets around him. He can hear Foggy’s breathing from the other room, maybe a little too fast, and he doesn’t know what he wants, if he’s more overwhelmed by the idea of Foggy leaving or staying. He holds his breath when he hears footsteps close by.
“Does the offer still stand?” Foggy asks, almost a whisper, from his bedroom door.
Matt makes what he hopes is an affirmative noise and moves to give him room as Foggy toes out of his shoes, pulls his dress shirt over his head with a soft gasp of fabric on fabric and then he’s climbing into the bed next to him. They don’t touch, a couple of inches between them, both of them laying on their backs. Foggy’s probably staring at the ceiling. Matt doesn’t think he’s looking at him.
“I’m okay,” Matt says, eventually.
“I didn’t ask,” Foggy replies, but he laughs, a little soft thing.
“Are you?” Matt asks. Foggy smells like mint and antibacterial ointment and fear, underneath it all, sour and sharp.
“I don’t know,” he says, honestly. “I might be okay like you’re okay, but you got stabbed in the neck tonight, so I think that word’s pretty relative at this point, Matt.”
They lay in silence for awhile before something inside Matt shatters. Like another siren, a night-splitting noise deep in his chest, under healing ribs. He turns over to press up against Foggy, lifted up enough with one arm to slide a hand over his face and hold him still for a kiss.
Foggy pushes up into it, sighing out Matt’s name into his mouth.
When they pull away, Foggy doesn’t say anything, just falls back against the pillow and breathes in slow, measured breaths.
“Number four on the list of things we’ll talk about later?” Matt offers, with a half-smile. Foggy reaches up to pull him down into one more kiss, soft but insistent.
“In the morning,” he says, like a promise.