Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s supposed to be a court day (an important one at that), and Matt shows up late. He hovers in the doorway, folding his cane, smoothing his rumpled shirt.
Karen calls a greeting from the kitchen, where she’s ruining another pot of coffee. Foggy can already smell it, burnt and bitter.
Matt responds, in turn, baring his teeth in an imitation of a smile, though for whose benefit, Foggy is unsure. It’s not like Karen can see him around the flimsy partition wall which is starting to bow under the weight of the ceiling, despite clearly not being load bearing. God this place is a shithole. 

Foggy blanches as he takes proper stock of Matt. Of the wonky Steri-Strips, criss-crossing his brow, of his swollen lip, split and red-black, of the nasty bruises, purpling his left cheek and his forehead and his lower jaw.
Injuries which would be concerning on anyone, let alone a blind guy. Though Matt would flip that around on its head, as he is wont to do, say that that it’s to be expected that you run into things, when you can’t actually see where you’re going. As if he doesn’t float on air sometimes, feather light, impervious to what really should be hidden obstacles.

Foggy already knows what the response will be, before he even asks. They’ve danced this dance before. And yet—

Matt seems different. Jumpy. He strides over to his desk, which is strewn with papers, pulls out a chair, shoulders hunched.

Now that he’s closer, Foggy can see the tension, vibrating down his spine. Like his sinews are pulsating, barely contained by blemished skin. He keeps tilting his head, shifting and fidgeting, in those strange semi-robotic little movements that he does.

Foggy clears his throat, makes his presence known.

“You look awful. What the hell happened to your face?”

Smooth.

Matt furrows his brow, in that way that he always does, like he’s puzzling out more than just the words of the question.

“My face?” He echoes. He touches a hand to the Steri-Strips on his brow, smoothing down the edge of one where it’s already lifting up. His shirt-sleeve rides down with the motion, and Foggy can see dark marks, ringed around his wrist, almost circular, as if someone had grabbed him there, dug their fingers in.

Shit.

Foggy tries not to stare, though he doesn’t know why he bothers. It’s not as if Matt should be able to tell the difference. Emphasis on should be. God that guy freaks him out a bit sometimes.
He doesn’t want to have this conversation. He knows how Matt gets, all clamped up and defensive, brittle and biting, using their expensive lawyering education against him.
But Matt is twitchy and hurt. Bruised in way which couldn’t be anything other than intentional.

He goes softer this time. “Matt, buddy. What’s going on with you?”

Matt flickers, then settles. “What do you mean? Nothing. I’m fine.” He fumbles around his desk, straightens his disorganised papers, runs his fingers over the braille letter, light and ghostly. His knuckles are red as well.

“What do I mean? Your face for one. And don’t tell me that you fell, because I happen to know that it’s impossible to fall on both the left, right, and front of your face.”

“Unless it’s down the stairs.” Matt offers, weakly.

“And was it? Again? Really?”

“I can’t actually see where I’m going, Fog.”

Foggy wants to scream. He’s so predictable. It was so much more believable the first five times it happened. But now, with that bracelet of bruises? Foggy doesn’t want to let this one go.

Karen walks in from the kitchen, steaming mug in hand. How she drinks that stuff is beyond him. “Jesus Matt, what happened to you?”

“I’m fine.” Matt drags out the word, in a way that makes it less believable, rather than more. “Don’t we have a case to be preparing for?”

“Stop avoiding the subject.” Foggy folds his arms in front of him, on the defensive. He wants to take Matt by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. “What happened.”

Matt furrows his brow again. Flattens his lips into a straight line. The cut opens, oozes a little.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“So, there’s something to talk about?”

Foggy exchanges a look with Karen, one which says, ‘we’ve got him now’.

“No. I’m just—”

A phone starts ringing, as if on cue. But it isn’t Matt’s phone, it couldn’t be, because instead of repeating a name, in that monotonous (annoying) voice, it’s just ringing.

Matt pulls it out of his pocket. It’s old, blocky, unfamiliar.

“Yes.” He says, his voice flat. Then, softer. “I’m at work. Can it wait?”

The mystery at the other end says something, low and muffled.

“Shit.” And he’s getting to his feet, gripping his folded cane. “I’m coming.”

“Coming where?” Foggy asks, incredulous. “Court is in three hours, we have to go over—”

Matt continues speaking, as if uninterrupted, the phone clutched to his ear, right over that bruise. Foggy has a bad feeling about all of this, uncurling in his chest.

“You don’t need to bring that up right now. I know you didn’t mean it.” Matt pauses, then with a strange emphasis, “I’m at work, I can’t—Okay. Okay. I’ll be there.”

Matt returns the phone to his pocket.

“I have to…” He trails off. His breathing shudders, just slightly. “I’ll meet you at the courthouse, okay?” He offers, like its some sort of compromise.

“Not okay. What the hell was that? Who the hell was that? When did you get that phone?”

Matt feels his way around the desk, walks towards the door.

“I’ll be at the courthouse in three hours. I promise.” His voice is thick. And then he’s gone.

Karen is the first to speak. “Is he usually—” she pauses, “Like this?”

Foggy thinks about the time that Karen’s known them, between their first meeting in that dingy jail cell and her standing over him with her perfect hair and her perfect skin in their creaking office. Thinks about how Matt’s been. How he hasn’t been fully there for any of it, not really. Thinks about how Karen doesn’t actually know Matt. Hopes that he actually knows Matt. Feels sick to his stomach again.  

“No. Yes. I don’t know. This is more than usual. He’s never been good at asking for help, even in college, but Jesus.”

“What kind of help?” says Karen, carefully, skirting around the issue, which isn’t like her.

Foggy laughs, humourlessly. “Any kind. Any kind of help at all. I mean, I get wanting to be independent, but I wish that he’d just speak to me, to us.”

“Who was he calling?”

“Hell if I know. It didn’t sound good though, did it?”

“You know I didn’t mean it.” Karen echoes. It sounds kind of haunting, the way she says it. Foggy can see the cogs in her brain turning as she ruminates. “Foggy.” She pauses, searching for the right words. “You don’t think that, that someone could be hurting him, do you?”

Foggy wants to say no. God, he wants to say no. He thinks of the bruises on Matt’s wrists, of the tension in his shoulders, the weight in his voice. He thinks of her, back in college, of Matt broken and bloody and crushed.

“I don’t know.” He says.

It’s easier than the truth. 

Matt is at the courthouse before them, more than twenty minutes early. He’s standing in the foyer, arms folded in front of him, jaw set, though a little tension seeps out of him as they get closer.

“Matt.” Foggy calls, alerting them to his presence.

His face twists into a smile, which seems a little more genuine this time around. God, his face looks even worse somehow, under lights which actually work properly.

“Ready to get this show on the road?”

“Okay, so we aren’t going to talk about it then? The weird phone call, the urgent business.”

“Not before the case, Fog. Come on. We owe Mr Pemberton that much, at least.”

Foggy wants to scream. He might actually scream.

“Fine.”

“Now let’s get in there and win.”

Matt is incredible in court. He always is. His voice open, and genuine, his speech soaring and moralising and personal. Though, wrongful termination on the grounds of Mr Pemberton’s recent disability may hit a little closer to home for Matt than for most. Foggy can see a glimmer of it in the jury’s eyes as they track Matt’s pacing around the room, with his beautiful words and his unseeing eyes and his bruised face, that pity.

Foggy knows that Matt hates it. But he also knows that it’s made so much worse by his visible injuries, the ones which make him look battered. The red and the purple and the white of the Steri-strips, which, Foggy notes with confusion, are newly straightened, and flat against Matt’s brow. Weird.

Mr Pemberton thanks them profusely afterwards, even though no verdict has been reached. It might have something to do with the extremely discounted rate which they took his case at. One day their bleeding hearts will bleed Foggy dry.

Matt hooks his arm around Foggy’s elbow, clicks his cane along the parquet floor, and Mr Pemberton wheels alongside them, towards the exit.
There’s a long way to go, but they’re hopeful. They’re always hopeful, it’s sort of their brand. Foggy thinks about Landman and Zack, about Marci, about what their brand is, about what his would’ve been if he’d stayed there. He supresses a shiver.

As they move down the corridor, Foggy notices that Matt is limping, a stark contrast to his fluid movements as he gave his performance in court. He suppresses a wince, hissing slightly through his teeth.
Foggy grits his own teeth and doesn’t comment. Not in front of a client. There’s a time and a place, though Matt, and his disappearing act, seem intent on ensuring that both of those stay well out of reach.

As they come to a stop by the exit, Mr Pemberton clears his throat, staring up at Matt from his wheelchair.

“Are you alright, Mr Murdock?” He asks, looking concerned.

“Of course, I am.” Matt replies, too quickly, the ‘why wouldn’t I be’ hanging unsaid, in the air. “I just fell. It happens a lot, you know, when you can’t see where you’re going.”

“Makes sense.” Says Mr Pemberton, relieved. Foggy wonders how many people Matt has brushed off like that, blasé and self-deprecating.

“Do you need any help getting home?” Foggy asks, glancing between Mr Pemberton’s chair and the busy street.

“I’m fine, honestly. You’ve done enough.” He gives Matt one last, lingering look. “Thank you again, gentlemen.”

Matt sets off walking in the opposite direction as soon as Mr Pemberton is out of (Foggy’s) sight.

“Matt, Matt, hey buddy, slow down.”

“I’ll see you later, Foggy, for drinks at Josies, to celebrate.”

Matt doesn’t show.

Chapter Text

Foggy ends up at Matt’s apartment, a little drunk. He’s only three drinks in, to be precise, but his body isn’t what it used to be, and he feels himself sway, just slightly on the spot as he knocks on the door. Knocks again.

He hears the low rumble of a voice (voices?) inside.

And then—Matt. He looks just as terrible as earlier. He’s wearing that ugly grey hoodie, fraying cuffs bunched up in his palms and hooked over his thumbs.

“Who is it?” Matt says. And God. Doesn’t that just remind Foggy of how utterly helpless he is. How completely at the world’s mercy he is. He looks younger with his glasses off, unseeing eyes staring out into the corridor, past Foggy’s shoulder.

“It’s Foggy. You didn’t come to Josies, Matt. I was worried.”

“Sorry. I got—” he tilts his head slightly, almost subconsciously, “—distracted.”

Foggy hears a sound, from inside Matt’s apartment. A faint clatter, impossible to place.

“Is someone here with you?” It comes out sounding like an accusation.
Foggy wants to shove past Matt, where he’s stood, deflated in the doorway. Wants to get to the bottom of all of this, once and for all.

“No. Just me.” The way Matt says it makes him seem so small. There’s some cream or something on his bruised cheek, like it’s been half rubbed in. It reminds Foggy of a little kid with schmutz on their face.

“Can I come in?”

“I’m tired, Foggy.” Hell, he sounds it. But Foggy knows that a good night’s sleep won’t fix all the things that are wrong with Matt. Knows that this part is supposed to be hard. Like antiseptic in a wound to draw the infection out. A metaphor which Matt seems to have an unreasonable amount of familiarity with.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Can it wait until—”

“Matt.” Foggy fixes Matt with his best lawyering look, the withering one which he only pulls out on special occasions. He knows that Matt can feel it, can hear it in his voice.

“Foggy.” Matt responds in turn, steely, sans the look, for obvious reasons.

The silence stretches between them, taut and tense. Foggy doesn’t mind. He’ll wait here in this doorway all night if he has to. God he really hopes that he doesn’t have to.

Matt wavers first. Opens the door wider, allowing Foggy entry.

Matt moves around his sparse apartment fluidly. Foggy tracks his confident movements, watching that tell-tale way that he shifts his weight, never fully resting on his left leg. He’s playing the limp off better now, but still. Foggy can tell.

There’s a saucepan on the draining board. Two bowls, with suds on them still. It smells like garlic, even with the window ajar, no doubt to get rid of the cooking smells which Matt so abhors. Which is weird in itself because Matt doesn’t cook, not really.

“Can I get you another drink?” Matt asks, already pulling two beers out of the fridge. He pops the caps, throws them in the bin from a distance, the way he always used to do in college to impress people. “I think I have some catching up to do.”

He extends the bottle in Foggy’s vague direction.
He’s stalling. Playing it off like he’s fine, like this is fine. Foggy can see right through it, right through him, but accepts the beer. Liquid courage, and all of that.

“Matt, come on, what’s going on with you?”

Matt takes a gulp. Clenches his jaw. Foggy thinks that he’s gearing up to deny it again. That they’ll go round and round in circles all night.

“It’s my dad.”

“Your dad?”

Foggy feels remarkably sober all of a sudden. They don’t talk about this. Not really. And only properly that night in college, when Foggy was drunk and Matt was drunker, and Matt told him, monotone, about the time that his dad hit the mat, and didn’t get back up again. Told it like it was just a story he’d heard. Something that had happened to someone else.

“Yesterday was the day he died. I, uh.” Matt trails off. Grips the edge of the counter so hard that his fingers tremble, red and white.  

“Oh. I’m sorry buddy, I didn’t realise.”

Matt ploughs on, like now he’s started, he can’t stop. Like open floodgates. “I’ve been going to the boxing gym, Fogwells, where he used to fight. It makes me feel— closer to him, I guess. Not that he ever wanted me fighting.” He says the last part strangely, almost bitterly.

Foggy thinks of the tension in Matt’s shoulders. The jittery, almost electric energy pulsating through him. The bruises marring his face.

“You’ve been boxing.” He doesn’t mean for it to come out so incredulous. “Like, in a boxing ring? With other people?” He tries not to balk at the absurdity of it. How would that even work? Matt is graceful for a blind guy, on occasion, but it’s not as if he could track a moving target. Not as if it would be anything like a fair fight.

“Here and there.” Matt replies, evenly. As if its normal. Regular. To be expected. “I took it too far, yesterday.” He takes another long swig of his beer, which is more bubbles than liquid at this stage.

“Seems more like the other guy took it too far.” Foggy can hear his voice rising, in heat and in volume. “I mean, what the hell Matt? Who’s stepping into the ring with a blind guy?”

Matt scowls. “I knew what I signed up for.”

Foggy laughs, sardonically. In disbelief. Wondering how someone as intelligent as Matt can’t see how utterly fucked up this is. “So did the other guy? The one beating on a blind person.”

“I got him too.” Matt insists, holding his reddened knuckles out like a trophy. As if that makes any part of this better. As if Matt’s pride in his pain makes any part of this tragic.

“Oh Matt.” Foggy doesn’t know what to say, not really. Doesn’t know how to respond to the fact that Matt made himself bloody trying to box. Trying to remember his dead father. Trying to be normal.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

As if that’s the part to be sorry about.

“You don’t have to be sorry, we’re just worried about you, buddy.”

“I know. I’m fine. Just miss him.” Matt blinks, quickly, his eyes growing even glassier.

Foggy deflates, with a strange sort of relief, some of his earlier bravado evaporating. Because Matt’s hurt is different than he expected. Older. More like a scab than an open wound. But still, he doesn’t know how to deal with dead fathers any more than he knew how to deal with the alternative. He doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that Matt is doing this to himself.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Let’s have a drink then, something stronger than this beer, which tastes like piss, by the way.”

Matt bares his teeth, in a slightly feral imitation of a smile which reminds Foggy that he could’ve been a shark, he really could’ve, if not for the guilt and the Catholicism and the bleeding heart. “Whisky?”

It takes Foggy until he’s halfway home, thoroughly drunk off Matt’s fancy liquor, to remember that boxing doesn’t normally involve being grabbed by the wrist until you bruise.

Chapter Text

“He’s okay, I think, it’s just a rough anniversary for him.” Foggy alludes, vaguely, to Karen the next morning when she asks. “He gets self-destructive when he’s sad.”

Karen purses her lips, looking like she wants to say something, to ask something. She manages about thirty seconds of minding her own business. “A rough anniversary?”

“It’s really not my place to say, Karen. It’s personal, like with a capital P.”

“Okay, but self-destructive? How can a blind man be self-destructive?”

Foggy is about to say “boxing”, which he’s fully aware makes the both of them sound insane, when Matt walks into the office.

“Good morning.” He says, brightly, striding over to his desk, yesterday’s limp forgotten, or just concealed better. “Ready for another day of making this city a better place?”

His face looks worse, but in a puffy, healing sort of way, no new injuries. At least none that they can see. Foggy pushes thoughts of Matt’s wrist way down. He believes him. Mostly. Boxing whilst blind is the kind of idiot thing which Matthew Murdock would do.

‘Chipper’ Karen mouths, confused, to Foggy.

Foggy shrugs.

“Matt, how are you? We missed you at Josies yesterday.” Karen asks, innocently, poking the proverbial bear.

“Yeah, sorry, it was, uh, a rough evening.” He pauses, tilts his head slightly, seeming to consider something. “My, uh, it was the anniversary of my dad dying.”

It’s such a jarring 180 from yesterday, when Matt was seeping sorrow like an open wound, that it almost gives Foggy whiplash.

“Oh Matt, I’m sorry.” Karen gets to her feet, walks right up to him, wavers in his personal space before settling a hand on his shoulder. She probably would’ve hugged him if he didn’t look like the gesture would break him in two.

“Don’t be. It’s fine. I’m fine now.”

And he angles his shoulders towards Foggy, as if to say see. See, I’m fine. Better. So much better that I can talk about it now, in the light of day, and it doesn’t bother me at all.

Foggy almost believes him.

For about a week, things seem fine. Matt’s bruises fade from purple to blotchy yellow. The Steri-Strips come off, and the cut underneath gets all pink and pinched and fleshy. He seems less jittery. Rundown, sure, but aren’t they all?

Mr Pemberton wins his case, and they go to Josies to celebrate. Of course, they probably would’ve gone to Josies to drown their sorrows as well, had they lost. It’s good to support local businesses, at least that’s what Foggy tells himself.

Matt throws back shots like someone who is fine. Sways to the music like someone who is fine. Laughs at Foggy’s jokes like someone who is fine—well without groaning, so maybe more like someone who is tipsy.

And then—

“What time is it?”

“Uh, Karen?” Foggy prompts, as if Karen’s secretary duties extend to checking the time in a bar. She lets him have it, maybe because she can see the way he’s slumped, eyes are so lidded they’re barely open. God, he’s lost his touch.

“Almost one, well twelve fifty-eight.” Karen says, ever the perfectionist.

Matt’s demeanour changes, instantly. “Shit.” He grabs his cane, stumbling slightly as he makes it to his feet. “I didn’t realise it was so late.”

“Late? The night is young!” Foggy responds, exuberantly, throwing his arms up. He’s matched Matt pretty much shot for shot, but suddenly Matt seems stiff and sober.

“I have to go.”

Foggy swallows down the taste of bile which isn’t just from the booze.

“Go where Matt? Where do you suddenly have to go at one in the morning?” Karen asks, voice flat, echoing exactly what Foggy’s drunk brain is thinking.

“I said I’d be back by midnight.”

“What, are you Cinderella?” Slurs Foggy at the same time as Karen asks, “Said to who?”

Matt ignores both of their questions, just waves goodbye as he slips out of the bar and into the unforgiving night.

The next day, Matt comes in with a nasty scrape on his chin. His spare glasses, the big John Lennon looking ones, pushed up high, as if they do anything to hide the bruise blooming over his right eye, the cut on the bridge of his slightly crooked nose, almost as if—as if someone punched him there, breaking his other glasses (and his face) in the process. As if someone kicked his legs out from under him and let his face smash into the ground. As if someone slammed his head into a wall.

Not a boxing injury.

Foggy takes deep breaths at his desk, and not just because of the rising nausea from his splitting hangover.

He watches Matt struggle to straighten his papers, with two fingers splinted together, packed with fluffy white gauze.

Foggy’s breathing gets more erratic.

Matt’s I-have-to-go act at the bar, plus new injuries, do not add up to anything good. In fact, they add up to something which is distinctly rotten, and ugly, and unspeakable.

They have a last-minute client in the waiting room, though, and despite the hangovers, they are professionals, really, they are. So Foggy swallows his worries and his nausea, and plasters a smile on his face, which feels more than a little wooden.

It can wait. Though for how much longer, Foggy can’t say.

Their new client, Mrs Cooke, is the quintessential little-old-lady, with her hand-knitted cardigan and her hanky half tucked up her sleeve and her reading glasses around her neck on a beaded string. Though, remarkably, she remains unaffected by Matt’s charming smile. She just stares at him, unabashedly, with a complicated, worried expression, like he’s a wounded animal.

Foggy finds himself unable to look in Matt’s direction without getting choked up, so he focuses on the case files in front of him, running through Mrs Cooke through her tenant’s rights.

Matt says all the right things, interjects at the perfect moments, sounds warm and kind and compassionate. If Foggy stares straight ahead, then Matt seems okay, seems like the competent and confident lawyer that Foggy knows him to be. Rather than this broken and bruised and pitiful thing which he can tell that Mrs Cooke sees. He wonders which one of them is more correct.

“We’ll be in touch, Mrs Cooke.”

“Thank you, Mr Nelson, Mr Murdock.” She shakes each of their hands in turn, and Foggy can see the way she grips onto Matt’s, as if she’s trying to send him a message or something through her warm, wrinkled palm. “Are you alright dear?” She asks, lowly, knowingly. “Nasty scrape you’ve got there.”

Foggy suddenly feels uncomfortable, like he’s witnessing something he shouldn’t be, which is ridiculous because Mrs Cooke is a virtual stranger and Matt his best friend.

“I’m fine Mrs Cooke, it’s hard when you can’t see where you’re going, lots of obstacles in this city.”

“Hm.”

Matt seems to flounder slightly, “Honestly Mrs Cooke, it looks worse than it is, or so I’ve been told.”

By who? Foggy wants to scream. Wants to ask Matt who exactly has been telling him what his battered face looks like.

Mrs Cooke still hasn’t let go of Matt’s hand, and she turns it over in her own, with what can be no force at all. Matt lets her.

She stares at his split knuckles, his fingertips, which are red-raw, the skin shredded, as if he dragged them along a rough surface. As if someone dragged him along a rough surface. Foggy wonders, not for the first time, what Matt’s crinkled shirt is hiding.

She tuts. “What have you done to yourself?”

Matt shifts, uncomfortably, tucks his bandaged hand behind his back, as if it hadn’t been in full view for the whole meeting.

“I’m okay, Mrs Cooke, honestly. Just clumsy, you know.”

“I do know, Mr Murdock.” Says Mrs Cooke, her voice a little thick. “It’s not okay, though. It’s never okay for them to do that to you.”

Matt looks slightly bewildered at that, like a deer in headlights, his brow furrowing, head tilting.

Foggy wants to shake him. Wants to scream that it’s so obvious that their octogenarian client can see it.

Matt smiles, still looking confused. “We’ll be in touch, Mrs Cooke.”

“You take care of yourself.”

She shuffles out of the office, and Matt is quick to follow, calling back something about an early lunch.

Foggy chews on his lip, feeling a little shell shocked, considering his next move. Wondering how a little old lady beat him to the proverbial punch.

Chapter Text

Matt is impressively slippery for someone who can’t actually tell who is in the office at a given time. He decides to extend his lunch unilaterally, informing Foggy in a slightly breathless voicemail, punctuated by the rapid tap, tap, tapping of his cane along the pavement. He picks up papers at the precinct, visits a former client who lives a few blocks over, and avoids the elephant in the room with a blatancy which is almost enviable.

Karen heads out at about five, with a lairy look in her eyes, like she’s up to no good. Foggy worries about her as well sometimes, though not as much as Matt. Never as much as Matt. He follows suit a little later, still with no Matt in sight, wondering how long he really thinks that he can weasel his way out of the conversation.

Foggy gets most of the way home before he realises that he’s missing the case papers that he wanted to go over. He almost leaves it, almost decides to just turn in, call it a night, sleep off the tendrils of his hangover. But he’s fallen behind recently. He’s been so consumed by thinking about Matt and worrying about Matt that his actual job has fallen by the wayside.

As he rounds the corner, struggling with his keys, he can hear Matt through the glass of the office door.

“You are angry.” Matt’s voice is pinched and strained. “I’m not telling you how you feel. I’m stating a fact.”

Matt pauses, and Foggy realises that he must be speaking on the mystery phone again.

“You promised.” Matt sounds upset, his voice increasingly thick. “You promised you wouldn’t.”

Whoever is on the other end says something loud, loud enough for Foggy to hear a garbled noise. Shouts, probably. Then, Matt makes a sharp, pained sound, like a kicked dog or something. Then, silence.

Matt jumps when Foggy walks in. Which is weird, because of course Matt couldn’t have known that Foggy was lingering outside, but he never normally does that. Never normally shows his surprise. Sometimes it feels like Matt just knows.

“You alright, buddy?” Foggy asks, even though he clearly isn’t.

He wishes that he had super hearing or something, wishes that he could’ve unpicked whatever the other voice was saying, filled in the gaps with something concrete, to stop his mind from running wild with the worst. Though, the worst may be apt in this situation.

“Yeah, I—uh.” Matt stammers around an acceptable answer, struggling to find his footing. He’s not got his glasses on, and the bruise is darker and uglier than Foggy had imagined, his eyelid swollen and purple and fleshy.

“Who was that?”

“No one.” Says Matt, as if on reflex. Then he shudders, just slightly, gathering himself. “I’m, uh, seeing someone. I’ve been seeing someone. Well, not seeing.” He tacks on the end, as if he just can’t help himself.

“Oh?” Foggy wasn’t expecting him to admit it. It throws him off kilter slightly, Matt changing the script like that.

“We fought. It’s fine.” Matt’s words ring hollow, like even he doesn’t really believe them.

“You fought?” Foggy coaxes, gently, as if Matt is a wild animal. “Is that what happened to your face?” He tries to school his voice, keep it neutral, keep it from shaking, keep himself from screaming. Baby steps.

“What? No. I fell, like I told Mrs Cooke earlier. I broke my favourite glasses and everything.”

Foggy clenches his fists, digging his fingernails into his palms. “Right. You fell. Again.”

“I’m blind.”

“You’re bleeding.” Foggy responds, as if one cancels the other out. He watches the fat bead of blood run down Matt’s forehead, from somewhere in his hairline. He tries to quiet his mind, stop it from running wild imagining how Matt’s many injuries may have been caused. Imagining all the open, oozing wounds hidden by fabric or hair or lies. He tries a different tact. “What did they promise?”

“Huh?”

Foggy presses. “I heard you say it on the phone, ‘you promised’, and you seemed pretty upset.”

Matt looks indignant, his brow pinching and pulling together in the middle. “Were you eavesdropping? Come on Foggy that’s—”

“No, don’t turn this back around on me. What did they promise?”

Foggy thinks that he might be able to guess. I promise I won’t lose my temper. I promise I won’t hurt you. I promise I won’t do it again.

Matt sighs, heavy, defeated, the hot air of his anger dissipated into nothing. “Nothing that meant anything.”

Foggy scoffs, though the sound comes out a little strangled. “Matt, you can’t say stuff like that, show up here looking like that, and expect me not to be concerned about you.”

“I’m fine.”

Foggy wishes that he could ban that stupid four-letter word. Wishes he could erase it from existence. Wishes that Matt would stop lying.

“You keep saying that, but you’re making it really hard to believe you.”

Matt fiddles with his folded glasses on the tabletop, busying his hands, tilting his head away, which is his version of avoiding eye contact. “Please Fog, just leave it.”

“That makes it sound like there’s something to leave.”

Matt turns his shoulders away. Sets his jaw. Stubborn as he ever was. “I’m really not in the mood for this conversation.”

Foggy feels the worry, and the annoyance, and irritation, and the fear, and the frustration rise up in his gullet. “What, and you think I am? Do you think that I want to sit down my blind, stubborn, self-destructive best friend and ask him why he keeps coming to work looking like he’s been used as a punching bag, why he lies to me, saying that he fell, saying that he was boxing of all things, why he uses his dead dad as an excuse?”

“Oh.” Says Matt, sounding small.

And Foggy realises that he’s taken it too far. Way too far. “Shit Matt, I didn’t mean—”

“No, I heard you.” Matt gets to his feet, rigid, steely. “Goodnight Foggy.”

Fuck.

Matt doesn’t come into work the next day.
Foggy leaves him about five voicemails apologising.

Karen looks pissed when he recounts the conversation back to her, unedited, because she’d sniff him out if he so much as bent the truth. He wonders if that makes him a bad lawyer.

“You called him a punching bag? What the hell Foggy. That is not how you’re supposed to go about this, not at all. If you push him away, then you’re just pushing him closer to…”

And she trails off, because neither of them actually knows.

Foggy feels even more terrible, somehow.

“Just give him some space.” Karen decides, designating herself the leader of all things Matt, though it’s not as if she can do a worse job at it than Foggy has. “You’ve said sorry, you didn’t mean it. Let him cool off, he’ll be back tomorrow.”

But Matt doesn’t come into work the next day either. No text, no call, nothing. Foggy’s sixth, seventh, and eighth voicemails go unanswered.

Despite her previous, pragmatic position, Karen manages to work herself up into a bit of a lather over it, starts listing off statistics about disabled people and abuse. She’s clearly been doing her research.

Foggy feels nausea and guilt and shame curling in his stomach.
He replays that weird phone call in his head. Matt’s voice, oscillating between soft and hard, angry and sad. Matt’s admission that he’s seeing someone, that they fought, that they fight. His weary ‘nothing that meant anything’. The his stoney expression as he stormed out of the office. The fact that all Foggy succeeded in doing was making things worse.

Foggy makes it two hours into the workday before he gives in. The case notes blur before his eyes, and all he can think about is Matt bruised, Matt bleeding, Matt hurt, in more ways than one. About how at least some of that hurt is Foggy’s doing.

“I’m going to check on him.” He announces.

Karen offers to come along, but it feels like something that he needs to do alone. Especially the apologising bit. He brushes her off, insisting that if they’re going to be a real law firm (and they are going to be a real law firm), then at least one of them needs to be in the office.

He’s resolved by the time he makes it to Matt’s apartment. He’ll apologise, profusely. He won’t raise his voice, won’t lose his cool. But he also won’t let Matt get away, not this time. Won’t let him get another mysterious phone call and squirm out of talking about what’s really going on. For a lawyer, Matt is remarkably conflict avoidant in his regular life, especially when it comes to things like this, though Foggy still clings to a distant, naive hope that he’s wrong somehow about the this that it is.

Foggy knocks on Matt’s door once, twice, three times. He waits for a minute, then knocks again, harder, more desperately.

He hears shuffling inside. Low voices. Heavy footfalls. And then it swings open.

Foggy jumps slights, he can’t help himself.

The stranger who answers is big. Muscle bound in a way which can only be intentional. The dog tags and military boots make it clear that the cropped haircut is for function, not fashion. He’s almost handsome in a sort of rugged, scary way.

“Can I help you?” The stranger asks, his voice flat and hard.

“Uh, is Matt home?” Foggy asks, feeling stupid, though he’s not quite sure why, seeing as this is Matt’s apartment.

“He’s sleepin” Says the stranger, possible intruder. His lips curl, into a sort of leer. “Long night.”

Foggy feels his cheeks flush slightly with the insinuation. It’s not the idea of Matt sleeping with someone exactly, because as Foggy well knows, Matt has slept with a lot of someones. It’s more the idea of Matt and this guy, all looming and leering in his doorway.

Then Foggy’s eyes travel to where the guy is gripping the door, to his big, bruised knuckles. And the dots connect.

“Oh.”

Chapter Text

“I really need to speak to him.” Says Foggy, hoping that he sounds braver than he feels.

The guy narrows his eyes, scoffs, as if Foggy’s (very reasonable) request to see his friend is ridiculous. As if Foggy is interrupting his day somehow.

“Like I said. He’s sleeping.”

“I have some case notes that I need to talk over, I—”

“You’re the other lawyer.” The guy seems to realise, then snorts, dismissively. “Work can wait, he’s sleeping. Said not to let anyone in.”

The lie is so thin that Foggy can see right through it. He balls his hands to fists by his sides, in an almost subconscious reaction. As if that would make any difference. “If you don’t let me into this apartment right now, I swear I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” The guy says, looking vaguely amused and entirely terrifying.

Foggy wishes that he was bigger, more imposing, more threatening. Wishes that he stood a chance against this guy, realises how little hope Matt would have, even if he wasn’t blind.
Where does he find these people, Foggy wonders, not for the first time.

“I’ll have you arrested for breaking and entering.” Foggy says, decidedly.

The guy snorts again. “Thought you were in the defence business, counsellor. Besides, nothing’s broken.”

“Please. I need to see him.” Foggy hates having to beg this man, who may actually be a monster. One who beats up defenceless blind people.

The guy seems to consider something, then sighs. “Doubt he’s up to talking, but knock yourself out, I guess.”

Foggy shivers at his choice of words.
He sidles into the apartment, feeling on edge, out of place.
There are dishes on the draining board again, a pan of something bubbling on the stove, filling the apartment with those cooking smells that Matt hates.

The guy stares him down. God he’s fucking intense. There’s a bruise on his face as well, right on his cheekbone, though nowhere near as vicious and purpling as Matt’s.

“Matt? Are you there, buddy?” Foggy calls, hopefully, fearfully.

“Foggy, ‘sthat you?” Matt’s voice sounds, from his bedroom.

He sounds awful, hoarse and slightly slurred.

“He’s concussed.” Says the guy. Then, under his breath. “Stubborn bastard.”

Foggy freezes. As if the rest of it wasn’t evidence enough. It’s practically an admission of guilt.

“What did you just say?” He hears his voice tremble. Every synapse in his body is screaming, like his body is about to go into overdrive, into fight or flight mode.

“I said he’s concussed. I’ve been waking him up.” The guy says slowly, as if Foggy is stupid.

“I heard that was a myth.” Foggy retorts, pointlessly, in spite of himself. He’s forgotten where he read that, somewhere online maybe, and it’s hardly relevant.

The guy shrugs, like he couldn’t give a shit. Wanders over to the kitchen, grabs a beer from the fridge. He doesn’t offer one to Foggy. Not that he’d accept it. Even he can’t stretch the ‘it’s-five-o’clock-somewhere’ to include eleven thirty a.m. on a Tuesday.  

The guy pulls the cap off with his teeth, because of course he does. Throws it into the bin with Matt’s sharpshooter accuracy, though being able to actually see your target makes it infinitely less impressive. He meanders back over, boots clunking across the wood, toe and heel. Foggy wonders if they’re steel tipped. Feels even sicker at the implications of that.
The guy slouches on the sofa, kicks his possibly steel tipped, but definitely muddy, boots up onto the coffee table, stares at Foggy again, hard and appraising. Like Foggy is the one acting suspicious. Like Foggy is the one who’s a threat. There’s a book next to his feet, a non-braille one with a red cover and a receipt tucked halfway through, which is weird because this guy doesn’t strike him as one for light reading, somehow.

“Well. Go and do your case notes.” He waves a dismissive hand towards Matt’s bedroom, which is dark, as dark as it gets with that billboard, the door pulled most of the way shut.

Foggy doesn’t need to be told twice.

The air is stale. Foggy blinks, as his eyes adjust to the darkness, and he takes in Matt’s prone form, laid out on his back like a corpse, with the duvet tucked up around his armpits. The slither of light coming through the open doorway catches in Matt’s glassy eyes, which are wide open, staring vacantly at the ceiling. His face is that same mottled canvas of reds and purples. It’s hard to tell if he looks worse, in this light. He seems worse. All blank and horizontal.

The guy’s earlier declaration that ‘nothing’s broken’ rings in Foggy’s head. Nothing except for Matt. Nothing except for his stupid, vulnerable, stubborn best friend.

“Matt, buddy. What happened.” Foggy crouches down by the bedside, places a hand on his shoulder. Matt winces through gritted teeth, but doesn’t move away.

“You’re always asking me that.” Matt’s voice is wobbly, though Foggy can’t tell whether it’s from emotion or from his alleged concussion.

“You’re always getting in situations where you seem to need asking. Who’s that guy?” Foggy asks, even though he already knows. He thinks that maybe if Matt says it, he’ll realise how messed up this whole thing is.

“Oh. You met Frank. I didn’t…” Matt trails off.

“He let me in.”

“I asked him not to do that.” Matt actually seems annoyed, pursing his lips, furrowing his brow. As if that’s the part to get upset about.

“Why?” Foggy coaxes.

“Knew you’d worry.”

“Of course I’m worried, Jesus Matt, look at yourself.”

Matt’s lips quirk slightly, but he doesn’t rise to it. “I’m fine.”

That fucking word again.

“You don’t seem fine. You don’t look fine. You aren’t acting like someone who is fine.” Foggy can hear his voice rising again, to a fever pitch. He promised himself that he wouldn’t lose his temper, but in this situation, it seems entirely justified.

Matt waves an arm in the air, as if to brush it all away. “I’ll be alright soon. Just need to sleep it off, that’s what Frank said.” He says the last bit strangely, with an emotion that Foggy can’t quite place. Could be fear or shame or resignation.

Foggy wants to cry. Wants to bundle Matt up, and take him far away from here, somewhere safe. Somewhere where he isn’t told to sleep off his injuries, day after day, only to get beaten worse and worse and worse.
He can feel the presence of the guy, Frank, heavy in the doorway. Hears him take a long, slow glug of beer, mutter something under his breath.

He glances back, and Frank is staring directly at Matt, eyebrow arched, like a challenge.

Foggy wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t this. So big and blatant and rough around the edges. Wasn’t expecting Matt broken in his bed, and the guy who did the breaking lingering over him, unabashed, unapologetic.

Then Matt is struggling upright, his silk sheets pooling around his midsection. He doesn’t normally sleep in a shirt, let alone one which comes down past his wrists, and it strikes Foggy as odd. More than odd. Suspicious. He’s about to swing his legs outwards, try to stand up probably, or something equally idiotic, even though he’s clearly in no condition for it.

“Lie the fuck back down.” Frank shoves his shoulder, lightly, and Matt slumps back. “I told you, didn’t I?”

Foggy didn’t even hear him walk over. When he wants to be, he’s surprisingly light footed for a tank of a person.
He’s also not even trying to hide it. Stubborn bastard. Lie the fuck back down. I told you.

Foggy wonders, breathlessly, what Frank is like when it’s just the two of them, if he’s willing to show so much ugliness in front of a third party. Realises that at least some of what Frank is like is evidenced on the skin of his blind, concussed friend, lying alone in the dark whilst the man who did it drinks his special German beer.

Chapter Text

“The soup’s ready.” Says Matt, by way of explanation. Foggy wonders how Matt could possibly know. Realises that he’s probably just deflecting, appeasing, distracting. “And don’t call me that.” He directs this part at Frank, despite the fact that Frank didn’t say anything.

“Soup. Now?” Frank says, in a strange, layered voice. “Can’t it wait?”

Foggy realises that his presence might be part of the problem.
But the more that Frank wants him gone, the more determined he is to stay. Digging his proverbial heels in.

“It’s ready.” Matt replies, like it’s obvious, either missing or intentionally misunderstanding Frank’s strange concern.

“Fine, I’ll get your soup, dammit. Just stay in bed.” Frank’s hand still hasn’t left Matt’s shoulder, and he grips onto it, almost possessively, like he’s scared Matt will disappear if he doesn’t. “Want some?” It’s begrudging, but directed at Foggy, for some inexplicable reason.

Foggy blinks. “No thank you.” He tries not to sound as bemused as he feels, because not all of them have to forget their manners.

Frank huffs in response, mouth and shoulders.

With creaky knees unable to crouch at Matt’s bedside for any real length of time, Foggy hovers, upright and awkward and silent. He’s perplexed as he watches them, Matt propping himself up on wobbly elbows, facing outwards, unseeing, expectant. Purple and red. Frank, framed by the gap in the door, poking around in the kitchen, riffling through the cupboards with practiced ease, muttering to himself all the while. Slamming the doors a little harder than seems necessary.
Foggy wants to say something, wants to do something, but he has no idea where to begin. Because Matt is right there—but then so is Frank.
He always knows what to say. Or at least, he always says something. That’s kind of his whole thing. And he only sometimes ends up with foot in mouth. But now, he goes to speak, and the words evaporate before they have a chance to form.

As Frank carries a steaming bowl back into the bedroom, still grumbling, Foggy wonders if he’s doing this because feels guilty for the hurt that he’s caused. Wonders if this is the part where the abuser manipulates their victim into thinking that nothing’s wrong by being nice (yes, he’s been reading about it). Except Frank isn’t very good at the nice part.

“You’re dropping it everywhere. Fucking silk sheets.”

He’s blind. Foggy wants to scream. Just because you’ve flicked the bedroom light on, doesn’t mean that Matt can.

“You like them.”

“Course I like them.” Frank draws the words out, with a smirk, lips twisted upwards for once.

Matt takes another spoonful, shakily, with Frank watching him like a hawk, and Foggy feels a little bit like an intruder. A little bit like he shouldn’t be here. “I feel better now.”

“Like hell you do.”

“Soup has restorative properties, doesn’t it. Good for the mind and the soul—”

“Here we fuckin going about the soul again.” Says Frank in his awful, mocking voice.

Matt sticks his bottom lip out, like a little kid. It’s still red in the middle, the ghost of a cut lingering. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Then, without warning, Frank snatches the spoon out of Matt’s hand, clearly fed up with the way that he’s doing it. He brings the spoon to the bowl, and up to Matt’s mouth. Feeding him. Like Matt is a child. Like Matt is inept. Like he can’t stand for Matt to have control, even for a second. But worse still, not even telling him where the spoon is going to be, just jabbing it towards his mouth.

“No, you meant that soup cured your concussion.”

“It might’ve done.”

“Which you wouldn’t have if you had just listened to me.” Frank clatters the spoon against the bowl, particularly forcefully, scrapes it across, and Foggy flinches.

“I did. Eventually.” Matt actually sounds sheepish. Rather than angry. Rather than scared. Rather than any other emotion which might be fitting in this situation.

“It’ll be worse next time. You need to let yourself heal.” Frank warns, and the threat trembles in the air. Trembles in the suddenly airless room.

“So I’ve heard.” Matt concedes, a little wearily, like they’ve had this conversation a million times. He continues letting Frank feed him the soup.

Foggy feels bile, rising in his throat again. At Frank’s blatancy. At Matt’s concession.
Matt who is usually so stubborn and unyielding, to the point that it’s actually annoying, who won’t be talked down and across, or to any position other than his own, entirely at this man’s mercy. Matt who clearly thinks that it’s his fault, what this man is doing to him.  
Fuck.

Foggy doesn’t want to leave Matt alone with Frank, but he also doesn’t want to throw up or start sobbing in front of the both of them. Somehow, he doesn’t think that this situation needs more volatility. And it’s not as if he’s the one with a reason to cry. Though, covering Frank with the contents of his stomach wouldn’t exactly go amiss.
He excuses himself to the bathroom, by squeaking ‘bathroom’ and shuffling around the bed. Frank’s eyes track him out, he can feel them burning into the back of his head.
He shudders against the sink. Blanches at the two toothbrushes, side by side in the cup, one with overworn bristles and a notch on its neck. Thinks about the dishes on the side and the book on the coffee table, and the homemade handfed soup, like some perverted, distorted version of domesticity. Struggles to compose himself.

He needs a plan of action. Something to make this whole thing disappear.

He thinks about calling the police, then remembers the messy, clumsy way that they deal with cases like this. Thinks about how upset Matt would be to have his personal life dragged out in the open like that. Thinks about Matt’s tight-lipped mantra of I’m-fineness. Thinks about what he’s learned about advocacy and victim centred approaches, from that module in law school but more from his avid Googling which has overtaken his actual lawyering of late.

And then he thinks about Frank’s hulking frame. His arched eyebrow. His cruel sneer. His palpable threats. The bruises which no doubt match his fists littering Matt’s face and probably his body, under that ugly, unfamiliar shirt, hooked around Matt’s wrists as if its fooling anyone. Thinks about Matt’s shredded fingertips, his broken glasses. He can imagine that guy dragging Matt along the ground, punching Matt, slamming Matt’s head into the wall. All of Foggy’s worst nightmares realised.

He feels a sharp pain, rising up in his chest, and wonders distantly if he’s having a heart attack. If this is the thing that kills him off. Of all the ironies. Coming to rescue Matt and dying on his bathroom floor. He should’ve been a butcher. Could’ve would’ve should’ve. Butchers don’t die on bathroom floors from stress induced aneurysms.

He takes deep breaths and glares at his reflection. Orders himself to get it together. Wavers for a second. Focuses.
Listens to the hum of the lightbulb overhead. It actually works for once, which is no doubt Frank’s doing. Listens to the whining of the pipes, to his own heart thudding (though he isn’t sure if that one counts), to the gurgle of the drain, to the muffled rumble of voices in the next room.
He wouldn’t normally (okay, maybe he would), but its not exactly a normal situation.
Foggy presses his head, flat against the bathroom wall. It’s thin (thank you shitty New York infrastructure) and he can hear them with almost comical clarity.

“Your friend’s jumpy.”

“He’s just worried.”

Too damn right, he is. Foggy is more worried now than he has been this whole time, in fact (and admittedly, he’s been spiralling a little bit). Somehow reality fulfilled his darkest fears.

“But you told him.” Frank’s tone is flat, but his words are pitched like a warning. They must be. Foggy wonders what he would do if Matt said that he had. Wonders what he would do if he knew that Foggy had figured out what Frank was doing all on his own. Not that it was hard. Not all of them are blind.

“Not yet I—”

“Oh fuck.” Foggy’s spine straightens at Frank’s confusing anger, a bolt of fear firing through him. Frank continues, voice low and oddly thick. “So he must think—”

“Frank.” Matt’s voice is soft, placating.

“That’s why you didn’t want me letting him in.”

“Sorry.” Matt says, in his small voice. As if he’s the one who needs to apologise.

“He’ll go to the police. You know how this makes me look. All of this.”

Foggy is a little surprised with the pinched certainty with which Frank says it, though it sounds more like an accusation, but he’s not wrong. Foggy was considering it. Is considering it. It’s ironic though, that Frank can’t actually bring himself to say what the this is out loud. That he’s skating around the issue. That he can cause the hurt but can’t own up to it. Pathetic, is what it is.

“I actually don’t.”

“Ha. Ha. Not the moment.” Frank’s voice sounds even more sardonic when it’s muffled through plasterboard. And then, inexplicably soft. “Give a guy some warning next time.”

“You’re the one who let him in.” Matt retorts, ever the lawyer.

Frank makes a strange sound. “You’re the one who insisted upon your damn soup.”

“He wouldn’t have left, even if I hadn’t.”

“I could’ve… encouraged him.” Frank replies, darkly. Which is more than a little unnerving. “That’s what he fucking thinks, isn’t it?”

“Stop that. Leave him be.” Says Matt, sounding tired. “I don’t—I don’t know what to do. I’m not ready.”

Foggy wishes he was in the room with Matt now, wishes that he could say that he doesn’t get this thing that Matt has going on, doesn’t know why Matt is confiding in the man who is hurting him, but that he already knows. He knows that Matt is hurting. He knows why Matt is hurting. That he wants to help him. That he’ll never stop wanting to help him.

Frank makes that dismissive sound again. “Speak to him. Tell him something. Stop avoiding it. That’s not how you solve things.”

Foggy thinks that if Frank knew anything at all, he’d know that that’s exactly how Matt solves things.

“I don’t know what to say to him. I’m concussed.”

“I thought you were fine.” Frank draws out the word, meanly. “You’re meant to be a fucking lawyer. Do your job. I’m not having your inability get in the way of mine.”
He hears indistinct scuffling.

“Don’t go.” Matt says, in his small voice, again. Foggy has to strain to hear it, through the plasterboard and the pain and the (well-earned) self-pity.

“S’not my mess.”

Foggy wants to scream at that. Wants to grab Frank and shake him and ask him who else’s mess it could possibly be. He’s glad that Frank is leaving (read: fleeing the repercussions of his actions), but he isn’t glad about how pained Matt sounds over it.

Frank continues “He doesn’t want me here.”

“I want you here.”

“Funny way of showing it.”

Something passes between them, through the wall, and Foggy hears Frank sigh.

“Fucking puppy dog eyes.”

Chapter Text

Eavesdropping leaves Foggy with more questions than answers, as it is wont to do. He replays the lopsided grooves of their exchange. Feels scared and sad for his stupid best friend, always ending up in complicated, confounding, painful situations. But also, feels like he’s missing something. An elephant in the proverbial room, more than Frank’s angry fists and Matt’s bruised body. Something in Frank’s thick voice and Matt’s wordless plea.

He wonders what Karen would do, if she was here. Probably something reckless.
He wonders what Matt would do, if the shoe was on the other foot. Probably something reckless and idiotic.
He settles for the Foggy Nelson approach, flushing the toilet and washing his hands, trying to play it off when he walks back into the belly of the beast. Hoping that they’re too caught up in their own psychodrama to notice how long he was gone for. Hoping that his pink face and slightly ragged breathing go unmentioned.

Frank looks distinctly uncomfortable. Won’t make eye contact, isn’t touching Matt anymore. He looks as if he’d rather be anywhere else.
It’s weird.
Foggy takes the opportunity to glare at him, venomously, returning the favour.

Matt looks small in the bed, even almost fully upright against the backboard, with Frank’s earlier order to lie the fuck back down apparently forgotten. He looks better, marginally so. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. The soup does smell good. Foggy wishes that Matt could find a guy who would cook for him, who didn’t also leave him purple and red.

And Foggy doesn’t know what to say, not really. Hell, it seems like none of them do.
They’re caught in a strange limbo where Matt doesn’t want Frank to leave, and Frank doesn’t want to stay. Where they don’t know that Foggy knows that. Don’t know what Foggy has heard. Where he knows but they don’t know that he knows (and they don’t know that he knows that they know that he knows). God, he’s spiralling again. And no one is saying anything. The proverbial pin drops.

“M’get some air.” Says Frank.

“Frank.” Matt says, something strange, almost adjacent to warning seeping into his tone. “Just let me try.” He sighs. “Foggy.” He pauses. “It isn’t what it looks like.”

Frank makes a strangled, sceptical sound. Stares at Matt like he can’t quite believe it.

“What do you mean, what it looks like?” Foggy says, carefully, blind jokes temporarily sidelined. Eyes on Frank, all the while. Feeling like they’re in a Mexican Standoff or something. His heart is thundering as though it might beat right out of his chest.

Matt dithers for a second, then sighs again. “Frank, give us a minute, will you?”

Frank rolls his eyes, scoffs slightly. “Told you. A minute, or a minute?” He asks, intonation going all funny, implying something which Foggy can’t decipher. He can’t decipher any of this, truth be told. God, he wishes that he’d forgone the charade of handwashing to carry on listening.

“A minute.” Says Matt, in his I’m dealing with it tone.

Frank stomps out, muttering something under his breath. Matt’s bruised lips twist slightly, his brow furrows. Matt will probably suit his early frown lines, Foggy realises, with muted and irrelevant annoyance.

Foggy breathes out air that he didn’t even know he was holding when Frank is gone. That guy is beyond intimidating. Even if he is a coward.

Matt tries a different, perpendicular tact. “When you leave, where will you go?”

“Back to the office probably.” Foggy lies. “I have lots of work to catch up on.” The so do you hangs in the air, unsaid. The you’ve been missing in action for a while now and now I understand why, but that doesn’t make it any easier, on any of us.

“Not the police station.” It’s pitched down, like he’s more telling than asking.

Foggy chews the inside of his cheek, macerates Matt’s non-question. He clearly takes too long to respond, because Matt huffs.

“I’m a grown man, Fog, I can take care of myself.”

At times like this, Foggy wishes that Matt could see, if only to fully appreciate his incredulous expression. Wishes that someone else was there to narrate the look on his face to Matt. Wishes that could’ve fooled me wouldn’t sound way too harsh when said with actual words.
Settles on. “You shouldn’t have to. Not against people hurting you.”

“He isn’t—it isn’t Frank.” Matt’s face gets a little pinched when he says it. God, he’s a horrible liar.

“What isn’t?”

“Frank wouldn’t do that.”

Foggy contemplates the chasm between wouldn’t and didn’t.
“Wouldn’t do what?” It’s like pulling teeth, but at least they’re getting somewhere.

A strange look flickers across Matt’s face, which must be panic. Must be a realisation that he can’t avoid it anymore. Can’t avoid Foggy anymore. It’s taken him a while, but he’s finally worked it out.  
Foggy is tenacious when he has to be. It isn’t the Karen or the Matt approach with guns a-blazing, it’s more of a war of attrition, slowly, slowly. But sometimes it wins the race.

“Foggy, please, I can’t do this with you today.”

And Foggy takes a deep breath, swallows barbed words about fake boxing and dead fathers that he hadn’t even known he was capable of until they spilt out of him the last time.
Because this isn’t Matt’s fault. Matt doesn’t have to be ready. He can’t force the issue, as much as he wants to. Matt is a grown man. But he’s a grown man who will soon be getting a home visit from one Officer Brett Mahone. On or off the books. Preferably on. Rescuing Matt seems to be a fair exchange for all those cigars.

Matt might not be ready, but Foggy isn’t about to let Frank harm one hair on his head. He imagines it now. The police, they’ll take one look at this whole ugly wretched thing, and Frank will be in jail. For a night at least. Longer, if Foggy has anything to do with it. He happens to know a fair few lawyers. Enough time to give Matt some breathing room. Enough time to stop hurting so acutely and have unblemished skin again. Enough time to break whatever spell this guy has over him. Enough time to realise how insane this whole thing is.

“Okay. It’s okay.” Foggy says, already scripting what he’s going to say to Brett in his head. How he’ll explain this whole mess. “I won’t go to the police.”
He won’t. He’ll go his (almost) friend Brett, who happens to be a police officer.

Matt frowns. Blinks, gummily, with that swollen eyelid. Cocks his head to the side. Then sighs, wearily.

“Frank.” He hollers, with more power behind it than Foggy would think he was capable of, from his sickbed. “Come on then.”

“Matt. What is this? What’s happening?”
For a moment, Foggy almost thinks that Matt is going to sic Frank on him, like a guard dog or something, encouraging him to leave, just like Frank threatened. Then, his brain catches up, and he realises how insane that thought is. Swallows it down.

“Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad at you, how could I possibly be mad?” Says Foggy, all soft and sentimental.

“Frank.” Matt prompts again, softer.

Foggy turns around, and there’s Frank, in the doorway, framed in silhouette, like they’re in movie or something. And he’s holding something, gingerly in his hands. Foggy casts his eyes downwards. Stares at it. Incredulous. Because Frank is holding the creepy, weird, horned mask of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

Foggy turns from the mask, back to Matt (troubled, pale, guilty), and back to the mask again.
He can’t form a single coherent thought, because none of the thoughts that are coming into his mind make the least bit of sense. Matt, the mask, and Frank, all buzzing and contorting, around and around in his brain, all coming together in disturbing and troubling ways. The mask, the bruises, the limp, the steri strips, the shredded fingertips, the early night, the strange phone calls, the red (bruised) knuckles, the Catholic guilt. The broken glasses and eyes which clearly see more than Matt ever let on. The mask. His dangerous, stupid, complicated, idiotic best friend. More batterer than battered.

Frank shrugs his shoulders slightly, as if to say, what can you do.

“What the actual fuck.”