Work Text:
He doesn't call.
She'll always be there when he needs her, she says, and he needs -
He needs.
He doesn't call.
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Matt doesn't understand half measures. He never has. The city gets his days and it gets his nights; it gets his mind and it gets his body. Some - Foggy - might say things about bullshit training, might throw around the word brainwashed, but Matt knows: there's nurture, but there’s also nature, and no one taught him to throw himself in front of that truck. Nine years old, and Matt Murdock already knew how to go all in.
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He falls a couple of stories one night, lands on his back. Standing is fine. Lying down is fine. It's the transitions, the in-betweens.
Those he could do without.
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Anyway, if he'd been brainwashed - if Stick had left because Matt had completed his training, not because he’d been a failure - Matt wouldn't have a partner. He wouldn't have friends. He would've slipped away from Landman and Zack like a silent gray ghost, there one day, gone the next, and he would be that much more effective, the streets would be that much safer, for however long he lived.
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Loving from a distance, a shadow in the night.
Everyone safe, safe, so blessedly safe.
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Matt doesn’t call.
But the sound of Claire’s heartbeat echoing up six stories, the rough brick of her rooftop under his fingertips, the smell of her neighbor’s’ favorite casserole - those he learns by heart.
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Matt takes a morningstar to the back. These things happen. It’s not, particularly, all that bad: multiple points of impact, yeah, more lacerations than one round with a knife would give you, but there’s really only one deep place, at the farthest corner, where the last spike had dragged on its way out.
Foggy goes for the burner phone, but Matt gets there first, and the sound of metal and glass shattering against brick is pleasantly satisfying, as intentions turned into deeds often are.
He doesn't even have to apologize. He bought that phone anyway.
The patch job Foggy does is entirely sufficient. The blood flow is sluggish, and Matt knows it’ll end before daybreak. And the location of the wound works in his favor; as long as he’s careful about how high he raises his right arm, the muscles shouldn’t pull at the skin and aggravate the cut. The matter is handled.
Foggy’s late to work the next morning, and announces that he had to make a stop on the way in a tone that dares Matt to ask where, or why. Matt doesn’t need to ask. It's not like Foggy doesn't know exactly where Claire works. He’s careful with his arm, he remembers not to sling his laptop bag against his back, and when there’s a knock at his door not twenty minutes after he gets in from work, he has an extra order of spring rolls and drunken noodles waiting.
He fully expects her to turn it down, for it to become his tomorrow night’s dinner. But he picks it up anyway. He still -
He needs.