Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Foggy’s minding his own damn business, for a change, and it still gets him literally nowhere. He was just walking around the corner to the dumpster, and he trips over what he thinks is a pile of trash bags, a really hard pile of black trash bags, maybe full of lead pipes but then it moves. It’s a person dressed in black, and Foggy jumps a little, okay, a lot, and then drops his cup of tea on the guy.

Because the guy wasn’t having a bad enough day, basically lying in a dumpster. He needed to have a cup of hot tea spilled on him to take it to that next, transcendent plane of awful. And now Foggy has no tea, and also, fuck.

“Shit, sorry dude, are you okay? I uh, oh, here are some napkins.” At the sound of Foggy’s voice, the guy startles up like he’s been shocked, is on his feet and keeping his back to the wall, and Foggy thinks maybe he’d better stop sticking a wad of paper napkins in the guy’s face and give him a little space. And maybe talk slower. And is that blood on the guy’s face?

“Hey. Sorry. I stepped on you? and spilled tea on you? It’s English Breakfast so at least it smells good, and shouldn’t stain, but hey, you’re wearing all black anyway so it probably doesn’t matter.” Trying to talk slower isn’t working for Foggy. What else is new. “I mean, it matters that I spilled tea on you, and also I have napkins,  if you want them?”

Foggy stops talking to breathe for a second, and the guy now has a more familiar expression on his face, the one that wonders whether Foggy is just slightly out of his mind. On the other hand, the guy is definitely bleeding, there’s a sluggish drip from somewhere above his left temple, sliding down his cheek and neck in a dark slick, and his lip’s busted open. His eyes are unfocused, drifting around the vicinity of Foggy’s face, and he might be swaying on his feet slightly. He might be high, thinks Foggy. 

“Do I know you?” 

“Uh, I’m Foggy Nelson, Attorney at Law, pleased to meet you. Did you know that you’re bleeding? Also would you like a napkin? Or to sit down?” the guy just stares at him. “My office is up the stairs right there? It has very nice chairs?” Why does Foggy keep speaking in questions? It's a fact that his office has nice, very comfortable, perfectly squishy chairs.

“Is there something actually wrong with you?”

“Well, I mean. I’m kinda a klutz, and now I have no tea. Other than that, no, I don’t think so?”

“Do you normally invite all the homeless people you find by dumpsters into your place of work, or only the ones you spill your tea on?” And wow, he’s sassy for a dude who’s bleeding into his shirt, but he looks like he’s thinking about it, and Foggy can’t figure out why he’s inviting this guy into his place of work but his mouth keeps trotting ahead without any input from his brain. 

“You’re the first person I’ve found in a dumpster, so I’ll keep you posted. I mean, I’d offer to call an ambulance or the police--” and oh, look at the way that he tenses up and his eyes narrow, but yeah, he’s definitely not steady on his feet “--but you kinda don’t look like you’re into that so. Comfy chairs?” If he passes out, Foggy decides, then he’ll call 911.

---

Matt wakes up to a voice. Wakes up is the wrong term, regains consciousness might be a better one. It’s a nice voice, a pleasant rattle of syllables. There’s a bright, herbal scent mixed in with the smell of exhaust and dumpster water. His head hurts. But there’s something in his face, and his back’s to the bricks and his feet are under him and adrenaline is the only thing making his muscles work. He listens to the voice before he breaks its owner’s face.

Foggy Nelson. Foggy Nelson, Elena Cardenas. Oh. Right.

Foggy Nelson has no sense of self-preservation. Matt learns this thirty seconds after meeting him. He shouldn’t go inside but. His head hurts and his knees want very badly to surrender to gravity. He shouldn’t but. Chairs sound nice.

getting soft, says Stick’s voice in the back of his head. fuck you, asshole, Matt thinks.

If anything goes wrong, it’s only the second floor. There are always windows to go through.

It’s not that far down.

---

The guy follows him up the stairwell, keeping a clear route to the exit, Foggy assumes, then half-sits, half-tumbles into one of the aforementioned chairs. Foggy fills the electric kettle and goes to grab a roll of paper towels. When he walks back in, the guy has cleaned off his face with the napkins, and is applying steri-strips and antiseptic ointment to his own face without the benefit of a mirror. Damn. 

“Foggy Nelson,” he says. “You represented Elena Cardenas.”

It’s not a question, and all the air in the room has suddenly gotten caught in the back of Foggy’s throat. This guy can’t be another junkie scumbag sent by Armand Tully, Jesus Christ, he can’t have misread him so badly. The kettle whines in the background, and Foggy’s hand itches for the baseball bat propped behind the door.

“Yeah.” and Foggy can’t help the way his voice has gone flat and brittle.

“I. I knew her. She was…. good.”  The guy’s expression cracks with his voice, a flash of something raw and ragged, and then it’s inscrutable again.

Not one of Tully’s junkies, Foggy thinks.

---

He had been too late. He had carried her groceries up those four flights, and Elena had given him chicken stew.

He had been too late, two blocks away when he’d heard the junkies hassling her on the stairs. She’d told him about Guatemala, how she missed the sun but this was her home now, while she made tamales colorados with bright tomato recado sauce, roasted red pepper, capers, steaming in the cold air.

He’d been a block away, running, when he heard her cry out, her keys hit the floor. Aqui, we take care of each other, she had told him while she made coffee.

He’d been a quarter of a block away, lungs on fire, when he heard the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the ground, the twist and crackle of bone giving way, the jagged empty space where a heartbeat should have been.

He came in through the second story window, boots through a pane that Tully was too cheap to re-inforce with steel bars. Elena was on the landing. She wasn’t breathing, her neck at the wrong angle,  arms splayed out to catch at all the air that had refused to hold her, the shape of a bird who had mistaken a window for something safer. The sort of thing that CPR doesn't fix.

Matt went out through the third story window, with both hands around the junkie’s throat.

When he walked away, he wore the wet slick of blood on his hands up to the wrist. The junkie was still breathing, sort of, when Matt left him. (every breath was a wet little sound, with the dry-chalk crackle of splintered ribs.)

Tully hadn’t put cameras in his buildings. Tully would live to regret that.

---

“Fucking Armand Tully. I can’t believe the shit people like him get away with, smug in their Park Avenue penthouses.” Foggy lets out a long sigh.  “I have to get to work, but I’m making coffee, if you like instant. Or tea.” 

“You know what they say. Beggars can’t be choosers.” He gives a crooked little smirk, and Foggy snorts a little, and resists the urge to ask him about the circumstances that led to that particular condition.

“New York’s finest instant coffee, then.” 

“Thanks. I’m Matt, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Matt.”

Foggy makes instant Folgers, and digs out a couple chocolate-chip chewy granola bars from the back of a cabinet. Matt is probably hungry. Foggy would be hungry if he slept next to dumpsters after sustaining traumatic injuries, or at least Foggy imagines he would be, so Matt needs a snack. When he walks back out, Matt is wearing sunglasses, which what. And then Foggy notices the white cane by Matt’s feet.

“You’re blind?” Matt stiffens, and Foggy thinks he might have asked that more tactfully. Or not at all.

“Is that a problem?” and wow, the room just got frosty.

“No, just, a minute ago, I had kicked a homeless guy with a head wound and then dropped my tea on him. Now, I’ve kicked a blind homeless guy with a head wound, so this whole situation is looking even more embarrassing for me. Although that’s pretty self-centered of me, I guess, since you’re the one who got stepped on, so there’s a further layer of humiliation. But I offer granola bars as reparations for my crimes, so.” Matt relaxes just a little, and Foggy puts the coffee and snacks on the desk in front of him.

“Just-- mostly blind. But I get around pretty well.” Foggy believes him.

“I bet. I’m going to do some work now, law things, lawyering. Um. Drink your coffee, you don’t have to go anywhere. Just. Yeah.” Matt smirks a little but sips the coffee and almost hides the face he makes in reaction to the taste.

Foggy opens his laptop and starts lawyering.

Matt eats two granola bars, drinks half his coffee, and falls asleep in one of Foggy’s comfy chairs.  Foggy’s absolutely not watching him while he sleeps. That would be creepy. Okay, Foggy’s watching him while he sleeps. 

His face loosens a little, his mouth gone soft and slack as his breathing evens. His eyebrows are knitted up in a dent that even sleep refuses to soften.

--

Matt wakes up slowly, rising from the depths of sleep like a corpse from the cold depths of the Hudson. He’s warm, he doesn’t understand. There’s another heartbeat, steady breathing, across the room. He fell asleep. In a stranger's office. He needs to go.

--

Matt straightens up, zipping his duffle and gathering up his jacket when the phone rings. It’s Confederated Global, the caller ID announces; Foggy groans internally. Actually, he groans audibly, and Matt raises an eyebrow.

“Corporate scumbags, want me to represent some top-earning sales exec who lets his hands wander with underage waitresses. I’ve told them no twice, they keep calling, thinking I’m playing hard to get with the price. Probably the same thing the exec thinks about the fifteen year old waitresses.”

“You want me to get it?”

“Go wild,” Foggy sighs.

“Good morning, this is the office of Franklin Nelson. No, I’m afraid I won’t be able to transfer you Mr. Nelson, as he is utterly unwilling to take your case.” Matt tilts his head, listening to the response.

“While I understand your confusion, Mr. Nelson has a certain standard. I know that it may be bewildering to realize that someone might have compelling interests other than money, Mr. Nelson, unlike the individuals at your corporation, has not allowed his conscience to wither through decades of neglect, and therefore prefers not to represent clients who are the equivalent of festering garbage heaps. I hope that you can comprehend this in at least some theoretical sense, and desist in calling here.” He pauses again, and the voice on the other end of the other line seems distinctly more perturbed. “Thank you, I’ll pass that along to Mr. Franklin,” he replies serenely, and hangs up.

“I don’t think they’ll be calling again.”

“That was amazing, oh my god.”

“Thanks. Happy to help.” Matt cracks a ghost of a smile, and it briefly transforms his face even as it splits his lip again.

“I wish you were here to take all my calls, that was incredible.”

“Well, if you need any additional secretarial services, you can find me on the rooftops and in the dumpsters of Hell’s Kitchen.”  He stands, and shoulders his bag with a nearly imperceptible wince.

“If you get tired of dumpsters, you have a standing invitation for shitty coffee and secretarial work. Or just coffee.”

“Thank you. You’re a strange one, Foggy Nelson.” And that might be the pot calling the kettle black.

“I mean it. You know where to find me.”

Matt pauses and tilts his head a little. “Okay.” Foggy thinks that he might mean it. Matt swipes his tongue through the blood on his split lip as he turns away, and Foggy’s stomach gives a funny little twist.

--

When Matt left Foggy’s office, he went to the church. Father Lantom leaves him well enough most of the time, sometimes tries to give him cappuccino and the cookies gifted by middle-aged parishioners. Sometimes Matt even accepts. Today, Father Lantom is in the rectory, a full building away, and he is relieved. His body keeps remembering all the things that he’s told it to forget, soft chairs and steady heartbeats and voices that have smiles lingering between the syllables. There is too much softness there. There is only loss, only death, to be found among the softness of feathers. Those are fragile things, easily broken, easily lost, hollow bird bones to be shattered against merciless windows.

He dips his fingers in holy water, dips his knees in genuflection to the altar, and folds himself into a dark corner pew. His bruised knees hit the floor, and it feels like relief. The press of cold stone to bruised flesh. He lets the cold seep through him until his marrow is all full of frost. He breathes the rosary, his hands clenched in prayer.

Here, he can feel the devil rising within him, not clawing now, but rising slow and steady in his heart, plucking apart its bindings with careful fingers. Father Lantom had said we all have a monster inside us. and we’re all responsible for what it does when we let it out. He can feel it unfurling, shaking off its shallow sleep. when he says, I’m not a killer, is it a vain plea to reassure himself that he is not the thing that he teeters close to becoming. or is it with regret, that it is not within him. that it’s not a sharp cliff that he teeters upon, but a brick wall that he beats his hands bloody against. He supposes that he will find out, sooner or later.

He does not need to see to know that above him, as he bows his face to the earth, the crucified Christ hangs above the altar, limbs splayed out in agony and eyes upturned in endless supplication to a heaven that remains mute.

He crosses himself again as he leaves, the smear of holy water burning under the bite of icy gusts as he turns uptown.

--

When Foggy walks to work the next morning, the headline on the Post declares that Armand Tully took a tumble down the very expensive marble staircase in his very expensive mansion, veins full of pricey designer drugs. It says that he was declared dead on the scene. Foggy fails to summon up a single drop of sorrow, but his mind does briefly flash to Matt.

Two days after Foggy sees Tully’s name in the headlines, he walks to his office with his breath crackling white in the early winter frost, and finds Matt tucked into the back stairwell of his office. This time he doesn’t step on him.  Maybe Foggy bought some real coffee and a few packs of granola bars. Maybe he bought a sampler of English Breakfast tea. It certainly wasn’t because he hoped that Matt would reappear.

Okay, it was.

Matt changes his shirt in the bathroom in the morning, and Foggy can see the pale expanse of his back, the shadows of the knobs of his spine and the curves of his ribs. Foggy can see a bruise that he’s relatively sure is the shape of a bootsole. Foggy can count his ribs and see the glisten of scar tissue under the shitty florescent lights from half a room away.

Foggy buys more granola bars, and Matt keeps coming back. A week in, Foggy has developed certain suspicions, after listening to Matt answering the phone with superbly eloquent language, and suggesting a precedent for the housing case that Foggy's working on (Matt says he must have heard about it on the news or something, and Foggy's pretty sure that's utter bullshit, unless there's a radio station that exclusively broadcasts decades-old case law, presumably as a soporific). 

Then Matt mentions offhandedly that he was in law school "for a while". Until, he says "things came up", and when Foggy attempts to unsubtly pry a little deeper, and Matt shuts him down so hard that he's afraid that he won't come back the next day. But he does.

Two weeks later, when Matt appears, he has a machine, that turns out to be a Braille reader attachment, and an old laptop. Turns out that Foggy has a secretary.

Five weeks after they first met, Foggy gets a call from Brett, the cop from the old neighborhood.

“You know how you said to call you about anything weird? I’ve got something. Your, uh. Your secretary got picked up on vagrancy charges. He’ll be in front of the judge in an hour. Oh, and he’s representing himself.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

---

Matt shouldn't have done it. He could have just moved on.  But he’s got his hands wrapped around a paper cup of hot coffee at the outside seating of a hipster cafe two blocks from Foggy’s office, when two beat cops start giving him shit. Young, new, trying to prove to themselves and each other-- whatever it is that people try to prove. that they’re not afraid . But Matt’s not done with his coffee. 

He doesn’t have a problem with cops, or he wouldn’t, except that he’s wearing bruises on his knuckles that he earned off the face of some scumbag who went after his wife with a butcher’s knife twenty minutes after the cops who got called told the guy to take a walk around the block to cool off, buddy and went back to base. So this morning he’s got a problem, and when they tell him to move along buddy , he says,

“I didn’t realize that drinking coffee was a crime.” He leans back just a little and takes a long, slow sip.

“Don’t make this difficult, just move along.” The officer taps the flat of his hand on the table in front of Matt, and oh, difficult. Matt specializes in difficult.

“I’m a law-abiding citizen. A paying customer. And I’m-” he pauses for another sip “--enjoying my coffee.” He can feel the cop’s gaze as it ticks down over his three-day stubble, his torn shirt, bruised knuckles, the hole in the knee of his jeans, his beat-to-shit boots, the white cane leaning on his battered duffle. The hipster kids in their beanies and beards at the nearby tables have stopped instagramming their latte art to watch the scene unfold.

“Look, I’m going to say this one more time.” The cop’s just a kid, really, and they've got an audience, and Matt can hear his heartbeat ticking faster like a watch gone wrong, adrenaline trickling out under all those eyes. But Matt’s got a shovel in his hands, and he’s going to keep digging this hole until his arms give out. “ Move along. ”

“No.”

“Okay, buddy. Stand up. You’re under arrest.”

When they put their hands on him, every instinct wants to kick for faces, break noses, loosen arms from their sockets, and run. When they put the cuffs on his wrists, his body wants to hook the chain around the kid’s neck and twist . But he makes his body slacken as they haul him to his feet.

He knows more than one way to fight. His body forgets that.

--

By the time that Foggy gets on a suit and makes it down to midtown, Matt’s already in front of the judge, because this would be the day that the docket ran on time. It’s The Honorable Judge Sheindlin who has the case, and Foggy did his clerkship with her, and maybe he can call in a favor or three; she’s a formidable woman, takes names and no prisoners. That could work to Foggy’s disadvantage, but hopefully to the disadvantage of the DA. Foggy hurtles through the courtroom just as the bailiff calls Matt’s name.

“I plead not guilty, and will be representing myself.”

Matt rises to his feet at the front of the courtroom, and Foggy freezes at the back of the gallery as the doors swing slowly closed behind him. Matt is dressed in black jeans and boots and his shirt is torn a little at the collar, but he straightens his shoulders and suddenly he takes up more space than he should, and Judge Sheindlin glances up from her docket; her eyes flick to Matt and then to Foggy.

“I plead not guilty on the basis that the statute itself is unconstitutional and that my arrest is invalid, in the eyes of the United States Supreme Court, and furthermore a violation of the 8th and 14th amendment.”

Now Judge Sheindlin is just looking at Matt. The DA swivels sharply, looking up with his mouth half-opened, and drops the file that he’s been idly flipping through. He’s a late-30 something with a bad haircut and an ill fitting suit, and he makes an abrupt protestation that the judge silences with a scathing glance.

“You may wait your turn, District Attorney Anderson. Mr. Murdock, you may continue.”

Matt inclines his head slightly, and continues. Foggy’s heart beats a little faster.

“The statute, New York Penal Law 240.35(1), has thrice been struck down by the Second Circuit. The City’s continued arrest of its citizens under this statute is offensive to the rule of law, your Honor.”

Matt smoothes his hands down the front of his shirt, as if he is wearing a suit and not a ripped shirt. When he turns, inclining his face to the morning light through the broad windows. Foggy can see that he is wearing his dark glasses, and that there is a dark bruise rising on one cheekbone beneath the silver rim. Foggy’s stomach twists, and he wonders if a cop was the one who put it there.

“The human toll has been borne by the tens of thousands of individuals who have, at once, had their constitutional rights violated and been swept into the penal system. We are the most vulnerable of the City’s citizens. I say citizens.”

Matt’s voice is low and steady, but it fills the courtroom. Foggy can see that Matt is holding to the rail, that his hands are tight and his knuckles are clenched and bleached white. Foggy’s stood at the front of a courtroom plenty of times, and his knees still get a little soft every so often. But there’s no fear in the way that Matt has set his bones.

“Yes, we are citizens of your city, the men sleeping on benches in the park, the women washing their hair in the public bathroom, the teenagers huddled in your doorways. We are citizens, and the fourteenth amendment states that the State shall not make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, that the state shall not deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The statute defines the vagrant as one who is found loitering and is ‘unable to give a satisfactory explanation of his presence.” I ask, is human existence not a satisfactory explanation of our presence? Is arresting an individual for that presence not a violation of the privileges of its citizens? Is that arrest not a denial of equal protection under the law?”

There’s a kind of coiled fury running deep in his voice; he clips off his words with clean precision. His fists are clenched tight, but there’s a looseness in his shoulders like a boxer ready for a fight. Foggy doesn’t know who the fuck Matt Murdock is, really, but he thinks he might be in love.

“Furthermore, as was argued before and upheld by the Ninth Circuit, the City cannot expressly criminalize the status of homelessness without violating the Eighth Amendment, nor can it criminalize acts that are an integral aspect of that status. Because there is substantial and undisputed evidence that the number of homeless persons in far exceeds the number of available shelter beds at all times, including on the night of this citation, New York has encroached upon Eighth Amendment protections by criminalizing the unavoidable act of sitting, lying or sleeping at night while being involuntarily homeless.”

Matt steps a pace toward the bench, takes the span of floor and faces the judge. Foggy did his internship with Judge Sheindlin, and the expression on her face is one that he has rarely seen there. She’s impressed .

“That this law remains in the statutes of the great state of New York is shameful, that this law is still enforced is a travesty, your Honor.”

Matt turns his face to the window, toward all the light he cannot see, as if in memory or supplication.

“Prejudice is not a distant memory, it is here with us, in our city. In the words of Thurgood Marshall, “we must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust…We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.”

Matt draws in a slow breath, and continues,

“I would argue before you, Your Honor, that the City of New York can do better, because the City has no choice but to do better. ”

“Have you concluded your statement, Mr. Murdock?”

“Yes, Your Honor. For the moment, I have.”

“In that case, before I dismiss all charges, I would like to ask the district attorney to explain why he has chosen to bring this case forward in my courtroom.” The DA staggers to his feet. He looks a little green, as though he might be sick.

Foggy’s definitely in love.

When Matt is released, Foggy takes him back to the office. There’s a bottle of champagne in the bottom drawer of Foggy’s desk; it’s lived there since Foggy put his name on the door, bought champagne to celebrate, and then couldn't bear to drink it by himself in an empty office.

Foggy opens it up, and they drink it out of coffee mugs.

Chapter Text

It’s Monday morning, it’s two months after they first met, and Matt’s busy running his tongue over the jagged edge of a chipped tooth, one back from his left incisor. Goddamn Russians. He’s making coffee and listening the the sound of Foggy’s breathing.

Foggy’s got a ragged cough, and Matt’s had about enough of this shit. Foggy’s lung is making a noise like it’s trying to eat itself, little thin-walled alveoli snapping open at the crest of each breath, making little crackling noises as they drown in fluid. Right middle lobe. Fuck.

“Get up. We’re going to the ER.” Realistically, Matt had established that Foggy’s instinct for self-preservation was non-existent, which means that this is not entirely Foggy’s fault.

“What? Wait, are you hurt? Tell me who did it, I’ll sue--” He dissolves into a coughing fit and has to gulp desperately at his coffee.“Why didn’t you tell me? Are you bleeding? Where are you bleeding? Why are you bleeding? ”

“No, asshole. You’ve got pneumonia. You’re going to get out of your chair and see a medical professional.”

“It’s a cold, Matt, I slept most of the weekend, it’s no big deal. I’m taking day-quil, it’s working.” The chill out, dude, is implied in his tone.  

Dayquil doesn’t fix pneumonia. Matt feels a cold little slither of fury. Foggy’s not taking care of himself and he’s an idiot, and Matt should have done better and now Foggy has pneumonia and he’s still too stubborn to get help. Matt grabs Foggy’s coat off the hook and tosses it at him. And now Foggy actually looks up from his laptop.

“Put on your coat. You can walk or I can call an ambulance, but we’re going. Now.” There’s a low, dark hoarseness in Matt’s voice that he didn’t mean to put there. And Matt’s not quite sure what Foggy sees on his face, but his heartbeat briefly ticks up into something in the range of terror and Matt would feel stricken, but he boxes that up for later, because really right now he can’t feel bad about anything as long as it gets Foggy on his feet. There will be time enough, later, for self-loathing. (There’s always time, later, for self loathing)

Foggy would say, Okay, Mom, if 1) Matt didn’t look feral half a minute ago, 2) if he weren’t too busy trying to find the armholes of his coat, and 3) if walking and talking and breathing at the same time weren’t suddenly so very difficult. Okay. He concedes that Matt may have a valid point.

It’s three blocks to the hospital, and they have to stop twice while Foggy doubles over in coughing spells that are thickened by the scum he has clogging up his airways.

Matt’s glad that he’s wearing clean clothes, that he showered yesterday. It’s generally useful to have the homeless bum aura, the one makes people’s eyes skate right over you when you’re in an alleyway, a doorway, on a bench in the park. Better than invisible, most of the time-- negative visibility, where people put effort into not seeing you. It’s not a useful trick in a hospital, where invisible is clean-cut and unobtrusive. It’s not useful in the street where man helping sick friend becomes junkie assaulting law-abiding citizen.

It would be easier, helping Foggy, if Matt had left his knapsack in the office, but he couldn’t make himself do it; it feels like he has a phantom limb when he walks without it, suddenly too light and too naked. He still tucks it under the desk in the office, tucks his body over it. There’s no valid threat, there, but he didn’t survive this long by being sloppy. You carry everything you care about and you don’t let it out of your sight. The less you care about, the less you carry; the less you carry, the faster you can run. He sighs, and adjusts his grip around Foggy.

Claire’s on shift and Matt texts her with the hand he doesn’t have wrapped around Foggy.

incoming w a friend. pneumonia not trauma.

And Jesus Christ, this is why he doesn’t let anyone close, because this man can’t even take care of himself, and Foggy’s body is all pressed against his side, and this might be the closest, physically, that he's been in years to someone who hasn't been trying to break him, and when Foggy coughs Matt can feel the dull rattle of air through lungs that won’t open right, through Foggy's body and his coat and into Matt's own ribcage. It makes his heart beat faster. It makes him worried . Fear is for people who have something to lose.

Matt didn’t mean to have anything to lose.

you fucked up, kid, says Stick’s voice in the back of his head.

you’re right, but you’re still an asshole, Matt thinks back.

And now they’re going to a hospital, and the thought of it makes Matt want to crawl out of his skin, just peel it off and find a dark corner where he can hide. He know so many dark corners. Instead, he hauls Foggy through the front doors of the Emergency Department.  

Claire’s there when they walk in, and Matt says a tiny prayer of thanks to Saint Jude.

---

There’s a woman there, in the emergency room, who looks at Matt and then Foggy, dark hair and high cheekbones and the sharpest eyes he’s ever seen.

Foggy thinks, at least I wore a nice shirt and clean underwear. and also, why are you looking at me like that, and don’t eat me.

“I’m Claire, I’ll be your nurse, and you’re going into bed ten.”

Matt has one arm wrapped around Foggy, across his shoulder blades, and he thinks that this might be the first time he’s physically touched Matt for more than a few seconds, and it’s too bad that he’s too busy focusing on breathing to really appreciate it. He’s suddenly sitting in a bed and there’s one of those blinky clip things attached to his finger, and there’s a blank warm spot where Matt was a second ago. He’s got his back against the wall beside the bed and he’s talking in a quick low voice to Claire about productive cough and crackles in the right middle lobe, and a lot of other words that are medical and sound like incantations or lessons in conjugation, words that Foggy doesn’t know and Matt shouldn’t have any reason to know.

“Good timing, I just switched to the ambulatory care triage. You’re Matt’s friend.”

He nods, because those three blocks made talking difficult. She tilts her head just a little.

“I didn’t know Matt had friends. You’re going to get a chest x-ray, and a culture of whatever you’ve been coughing up. If it’s bacterial, we’ll get you antibiotics.”

“Oh, goody.” Matt’s nurse friend is beautiful and scary. Matt’s facial expression in the office was scary. Matt now seems profoundly uncomfortable, shoulders tucked in like a cornered cat, jaw locked like he’s got a scream behind his teeth that he’s swallowing down. Foggy wants to say something soothing, but he doesn’t think that Matt can be soothed right now.

“Any other recent illness?” She’s taking his blood pressure, temperature, and she’s goddamn efficient.

“Uhh. I had the flu a couple weeks ago? It got better, though.”

“Influenza increases your chances of a secondary infection, viral or bacterial. Were you vaccinated this year?”

“No.” One eyebrow goes up. Nonverbal communication, she’s good at it. Her disapproval makes him want to hide under the flimsy hospital blanket. “Matt, she’s giving me a look. A very mean look. I was busy fighting for truth justice, and the American way.”

“Mr. Nelson, your friend here was busy being dragged out of dumpsters and taking naps on rooftops, and he still managed to make time in his busy schedule.” Apparently Matt has a thing for dumpsters. Matt doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even smirk, and this is one of those times that he’s reminded that he hardly knows the man.

Claire takes the rest of his medical history with the brisk efficiency of a trained interrogator. He doesn’t like the way her gaze keeps shifting to Matt. He doesn’t like the way Matt keeps curling in on himself, like he’s trying to find a way to vanish. He doesn’t like the part on the form where it asks for Matt’s relation to him.

this is the homeless man who I spilled tea on three months ago, who is apparently a brilliant, terrifying legal mind, who keeps on showing up with bruises.

this is my secretary, I try to pay him but he won’t take my money and only lets me pay him in food and he’s too skinny still and I don’t know who he is because he doesn’t want to tell so I try not to ask. I don’t know where he lives, where he goes at night; I’m just glad that he comes back in the morning. this is the man who I stepped on, invited into my office, no I don’t know him but I trust him. This is a man who just half carried me for three blocks and probably would have carried me for three miles. Try to fit that into the little box on your form, he wants to say, but he just shrugs.

“Write, ‘co-worker’,” he says, blandly.

Two hours later, he’s on his way home with an orange bottle of antibiotics rattling in his pocket, a prescription for rest, and Matt’s still at his elbow like a shadow.

They’re at at his apartment sooner than Foggy expected, and Foggy invites Matt in. Briefly, Foggy considers that maybe Matt is some supernatural creature, that he needs an invitation to cross a threshold; it would explain the apparently infinite knowledge and the attraction to dark spaces. Doesn’t explain the dumpsters though.

“Do you want to come in?” The invitation hangs in the air and Foggy feels like he’s crossed some invisible line, here on the steps with their dark footprints trailing through snow-whitened sidewalks into the gathering dusk. He wants to reel it back in but he can’t, so he does the next best thing and fills the air with more words. “I mean, sorry, you’ve already done more than you had to, today. But it’s snowing and it’s gross and winter is an over-rated season, and it’s just if you want, I have a couch.” Matt’s jaw is tight and it looks like it’s hurting him to think about it. And Foggy is worrying at his hospital wrist band, twisting it around in an endless loop of Nelson, Franklin; Nelson, Franklin; Nelson, Franklin.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay”

Foggy lets out the breath he’s been holding and fumbles for his keys.

---

In the hospital, Matt kept wanting to run, caught by the poor music of wailing monitors and alarms, the smell of antiseptic and fear, panic rising in him in a flood as he kept plotting escape routes through curtains and down stairs and through windows. Had to keep pressing his fingers through fabric to the bruise along one hipbone, the neat line of sutures across one bicep (Claire’s handiwork, dark little railroads holding flesh to flesh and keeping his blood contained). Had to keep listening to Foggy’s heartbeat, the steady work of valves and muscles and the turbulence of blood. Had to curl his fingers around his own wrist until he wore his own fingerprints and four little crescent moons of blood, until Claire uncurled the fist that he hadn’t meant to make.

He was more vulnerable here than he had meant to be. Claire could see too much of him, he trusted her, but she shouldn’t know about Foggy. Foggy shouldn’t know about Claire. Two hemispheres of his world colliding at the edges, and sending everything else tilting on its axis.

Fuck.

He should have called an ambulance and left.

Instead, he takes Foggy to Foggy’s apartment. It’s snowing, and when they exhale, the steam turns the snowflakes back to water. He remembers to ask Foggy where it is, remembers to let Foggy lead a little, remembers that he isn’t supposed to know where Foggy lives. Matt’s been squatting in a half-finished condo complex, a product of the Reconstruction, swanky, with marble counters and cold water and tarps over the windows. There’s probably a nice view, up on the fourteenth floor, not that Matt would know. He wonders if the snow has gotten under the edges of the tarps. Then they’re up to Foggy’s doorstep. Foggy invites him in. In a buddies-way, not a sex-way, but. Foggy’s not supposed to invite him in. Matt hadn’t made a plan for this contingency.

Maybe it’s a thing that normal people do. That friends do. Invite a person in.

Matt wouldn’t know.

He should leave. He can sit on the roof. There’s a vent, and it’s not much below freezing outside anyway, he’ll be able hear from there. He shouldn’t go inside. He doesn’t understand why Foggy is inviting him in. He scared Foggy, earlier. He should leave.

He goes inside.

Foggy stumbles to his bed and flops face-down, then mumbles into his blankets, “There are new toothbrushes under the sink. A lot. My mom worries about my dental health. The couch is pretty comfy. It’ll be great. Like a really shitty sleepover.”

Matt’s never been to a sleepover.

Based on the way Foggy turned his head to actually look at Matt, Matt thinks that he might have said that out loud. Matt talks to himself, sometimes, yeah. But not usually in front of people.

”We can build a blanket fort when I feel up to walking again, dude. You can take a shower if you want. Towels are in the closet.” Foggy takes a break to cough a little, and Matt’s still standing in the middle of his living room.  “The bathroom door locks. If that matters.”

It shouldn’t matter. Like Foggy would do anything. Like Foggy, pretty much immobilized by pneumonia, is going to do anything or capable of it.

It does matter.

Matt takes a shower. He triple checks the lock. He usually washes up at Claire’s, has permission to let himself in through the window when she’s on shift, and she has two locks on hers, which he likes. But he needs to wash the smell of antiseptic off of his skin now . He can’t see that the water swirling down the drain is faintly rusty with blood, but he wouldn’t be surprised. Foggy’s asleep when he walks out, left him a neatly folded little pile of clothing that turns out to be a hoodie and a pair of old sweatpants; they smell like detergent and like Foggy.

It’s another thing that Matt shouldn’t allow himself. Getting soft. Walk away while you still can, says Stick’s voice in the back of his head, a whisper that wraps itself around his throat. go fuck yourself , thinks Matt. It’s already too late.

He stays inside.

He stays awake all night, pressing his fingertips into old bruises, drawing out bright little blooms of pain, touches them like he’s counting stars.

He stays awake all night, listening to Foggy breathe.

--

P.S.A.: I mean this in an entirely apolitical way. If you haven’t gotten an influenza vaccination yet this year, and can, go do it. (I’m wearing my angry-Matt face, seriously, cause I care.) Get vaccinated. Not just for yourself, but for the people around you, for the old lady behind you in the checkout line at the grocery store, for that toddler who keeps sticking his hands in his mouth. Those most at risk for dying from influenza are those least able to respond to the vaccine, the elderly and the very young. But you can get the vaccine, and help to protect them.

Like a superhero.