Work Text:
180-something 192 Days After
Matt lost track of the days again.
His therapist – whom he’d found on his own, because he is a functional human, thank you very much – says that’s a good thing. He hasn’t been to enough sessions to decide if he trusts all her advice.
You could decide faster if you kept all your appointments. Apparently, he spends enough time with Kirsten to hear her voice in his mind.
Twice a week is really a lot, he retorts. Who has time for that? Have you noticed we’re Manhattan’s hottest boutique defense firm?
He’s started arguing with Kirsten in his head instead of Foggy. It’s somehow the most painful thing and the most comforting thing that’s ever happened to him.
When he was a kid, before he was blind, he’d dropped his keyring on the ground in the midst of the coldest winter New York had ever seen. His cheap gloves soaked through the second he shoved them in the snow; by the time he found the keys, his fingers were so stiff he could barely work the lock. He still remembers holding them over the radiator inside, how warming them up was – up to that point – the worst pain he’d felt in his life. That’s what it’s like to hear a new best friend in his head: searing agony that’s keeping him alive.
Maybe he should tell his therapist.
195 Days After
His therapist says he’s counting again because he feels guilty about his friendship with Kirsten. He ends the session after that, so he doesn’t get to tell her about the keys and the snow.
196 Days After
Matt’s working, which he’d promised Kirsten he wouldn’t do on Sundays anymore, but if he doesn’t bill it, she won’t know. Then she won’t ask why he’s working on Sundays, so he won’t have to consider the reasons. It’s a win for everyone.
Especially the lucky client who receives up to eight hours of free legal services.
The knock on the door startles him; he hadn’t even heard footsteps approaching.
Stick would say he’s getting sloppy. But then, he doesn’t need Stick’s advice now that he’s not a masked street fighter anymore.
The knock sounds again.
He smells Chinese food, which he hadn’t ordered. He’d roused himself from his work for nothing.
“I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong address,” he says through the locked door.
“I’m old, but I’m not that old,” says the voice on the other side.
“Cherry?” Matt’s been disorganized lately, at least in his personal life, but he really didn’t think they had plans.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know. Are you going to open this door or not?”
“Yeah, I - of course.” He opens it a crack. “I didn’t think we had plans.”
He’s stalling. Now that Cherry’s here, with food, it’s suddenly clear how badly he needs both sustenance and companionship. Unfortunately, if he opens the door any wider, Cherry’s going to notice his apartment’s a wreck.
“I was in the neighborhood. I figured I’d stop by with some dinner,” Cherry says, shouldering his way inside.
Matt hears Cherry’s breath hitch when he registers the disarray of the living room and the kitchen beyond it. Matt doesn’t blush easily, but his cheeks feel hot, like a little boy caught skipping his chores.
“I’ve been working a lot,” he mutters.
Cherry’s voice is steady when he says, “How about you clean up that mess on the table so we can play dominoes? You know how to play dominoes?”
“No. I take it I’m learning tonight?”
Cherry’s voice is firm. “Right after you clean up that mess on the kitchen table.”
***
Matt comes back from a bathroom break and finds Cherry washing his dishes.
“What are you doing?” he asks. It’s exactly the sort of obvious question that Cherry hates.
Cherry says, “I’m washing your dishes, dumbass. You’re on drying duty.”
Matt feels his jaw clench. He’s glad for the company, but he’s not a child. He doesn’t need someone to cajole him into cleaning.
“If you don’t get over here, I’m gonna think you’re rearranging the dominos behind my back.”
Matt slides a hand along the counter, guiding himself toward the sink, swallowing his irritation as he goes. If he’s mad at anyone, it should be himself; none of this would be necessary if he’d been cleaning up after himself.
“A funny thing happened about six months after my wife died,” Cherry says, his voice softer. “People quit checking up on me. I had a new place, I was back at work, and I guess they just thought six months was long enough to be okay. I was not okay.”
Matt’s fingers still around the stem of the wine glass he’d been drying. His annoyance – always close to the surface lately – flares again. “You’re checking up on me?”
Cherry ignores the question.
“I thought if I kept acting normal, eventually I was going to feel normal. But it didn’t work that way.”
The silence stretches out. Matt thought he’d unclenched his jaw, but he feels his teeth grinding against each other anyway. According to his therapist, pushing people away is a maladaptive habit, one he’ll have to fight against. He’s supposed to be more open with his feelings, now that Foggy’s gone.
“I’m fine.” The protest is too automatic to fight against.
Cherry says nothing, just keeps rinsing the wine glasses. The water sings over the crystal rims.
“Alright, I thought the housewarming party would solve things,” he admits. “A new beginning, or something.” He waves a hand toward the dirty plates and wine glasses on the counter, wishing he’d had the sense to use something disposable. “Clearly I was overly optimistic.”
“This has been here since the housewarming party?” Cherry says sharply. “That was two weeks ago, Matt.”
Matt’s been counting days since Foggy died; the days since he last cleaned the kitchen seem trivial in comparison.
“It sounds bad when you put it like that,” he concedes.
“It happens,” Cherry says. “But trust me, you’re gonna feel better if you take out the garbage every once in a while. And it’s okay to let somebody else wash the dishes sometimes.”
“I’ll save some for you next week,” he says.
Cherry laughs. “Next time not quite so many. This is really cutting into our domino time.”
And just like that, they have a weekly date.
197 Days After
“I’m sorry for ending our last appointment early,” Matt says. Getting up for a 7:00 am therapy appointment is his Monday morning penance. “I’m finding it difficult to face some things.”
Once he starts talking, their appointment runs long, and he misses the finance meeting with Kirsten.
198 Days After
Kirsten greets him by smacking him with a rolled up stack of paper.
“Some people think it’s wrong to hit the blind,” Matt says.
“And some people think it’s wrong to do random pro bono work for clients who can obviously pay,” she says. “It sucks to try and hide it by skipping the finance meeting, by the way. You wanna tell me how all the discovery motions on the Pepino case got done? Without anyone billing any hours over the weekend?”
He hears all her muscles lock into place at once, and he guesses she’s standing over his desk, probably with her arms crossed over her chest. He knows one thing for sure: she can hold disapproving silence for a shockingly long time.
His collar feels tight, but he resists the urge to adjust his tie. Showing weakness in front of Kirsten is never wise.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he says.
She scoffs. “That’s a lie.”
Matt holds up his hands. “Sue me. I like working on weekends.”
“If you work, you bill. Period.” Kirsten clucks her tongue. “And that’s enough of the business partner speech. As your friend, I’m worried you’re working this much.”
Matt tries to deflect. “Surely you have better things to do than worry about my personal life.”
“My mind is capacious. I get bored.” She settles into one of his office chairs. “You know I’m not leaving without an answer.”
You didn’t ask a question, Councilor. Hiding behind legalese is another habit his therapist wants him to work on.
“I don’t know what to do with my time,” he confesses. Something about Kirsten makes him want to talk. Yesterday, his therapist said he’s the one who wants to talk, only he can’t admit it because being this open with someone new makes him feel guilty.
Kirsten’s fingernails tap against his desk. “So you need a hobby. Did you have anything you liked to do before?”
Is now the right time to say out loud that he liked putting on a suit of armor and fighting the criminal underworld? Did that even qualify as a hobby? No, more of a second job.
“Foggy figured things out for me,” he says finally. His throat constricts around the name.
“You mean he would show up at your place and drag you out?” Kirsten’s voice is light. She’s good at making his old memories sound like a gift.
“Something like that,” Matt concedes, smiling in spite of himself.
Kirsten’s heart skips. “You know who’s a lot of fun? My friend Sheila, the one with —”
“The pole dancing studio,” Matt fills in. He swallows. “Kirsten, I don’t think I can…”
His words trail off when the ache in his chest gets too big. He expects her to push, but she only squeezes his hand.
“That’s okay,” she says softly, and Matt figures they’re done. He’s a workaholic mess. What else is there to say?
It’s a silly thought; Kirsten rarely gives up at anything, and certainly not after a ten-minute conversation. She lunges forward and flicks his chest.
“Yup, you keep yourself in shape,” she says. “You like to run? Or just pick up heavy things and put them back down?”
“I run,” Matt says, feeling a touch defensive. “Mostly in the stairwell in my building,” he adds before she gets any ideas about testing whether he can run in a crowd by himself.
She knows about Daredevil – he’d all but confessed it – but she wants evidence, which he does not plan to provide. She should have plausible deniability in case of criminal investigation. And also, pleasure’s been on thin ground these past few months. Denying Kirsten legally admissible evidence is one of his true joys in life.
“Hey, aren’t you training for a triathlon?” he asks, smiling innocently. “We could run the stairs together this weekend.”
Kirsten emits a noise just this side of a whine. “Your building has twenty-seven floors.”
“It’s just so hard to run in the street with a cane,” Matt says, drawing out the words for maximum pathos. “What’s the matter? Are you afraid of a challenge?”
“Never.” Kirsten stands up, her high heels clicking against the wooden floor. “See you Saturday morning, Murdock.”
200 and
The alarm goes off, and he doesn’t let himself look at the calendar. He puts on his running shoes and goes to meet Kirsten in the lobby.
“You’re late,” she says.
A breeze blows through the open door, but he doesn’t hear ruffling her hair. She pinned it up, he thinks. She means business.
“Let the record show I’m actually five minutes early.” His shoe soles squeak against the tile floor, and he realizes he’s bouncing a little, eager to stretch his legs. “You must be eager for a beating.”
“Never.”
She bolts toward the staircase, breaths even and focused, and Matt closes the gap between them in the first couple floors. He can’t remember the last time he’d run just for the pleasure of it. He’d usually run with a backpack full of rocks, or devised elaborate time trials that pushed him to the point of breaking. Or both. The two weren’t mutually exclusive.
Now there’s only the steady rhythm of his feet on the stairs, and the rise and fall of his chest as he pulls breath after breath deep into his lungs.
There’s also Kirsten cursing behind him.
He has a bad habit of turning things into a competition. And he really likes to win.
The door to the rooftop is twenty steps away, then fifteen, then five. He bursts through first, grinning stupidly even though Kirsten is only a few paces behind.
“I hadn’t done that in a long time,” he says, leaning against the railing to catch his breath.
“Fuck you, Murdock.” Kirsten’s breath rattles in her chest. “That’s you out of shape?”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” He’s panting too, although his breathing’s evening out faster than hers. “I meant thank you. For getting me out. For not taking no for an answer.”
“Oh. You’re welcome.” Her voice shoots up half an octave, breathy with surprise. This suggests certain deficiencies in his end of the friendship.
“I’m sorry that thank you is a rare thing to hear from me,” he says. He’d never been a particularly well-functioning human being, but he hadn’t been so bad when Foggy was here. To himself, he mutters, “I don’t know why this is still so hard.”
He’d gotten a new job, a grief counselor, a better apartment – wasn’t he supposed to be finished with whatever grieving entailed?
“It’s because best friends aren’t supposed to die,” Kirsten says.
Since he’d been talking mostly to himself, he hadn’t expected an answer, but he probably shouldn’t be surprised that Kirsten has one. She takes a breath before she pushes on, like the words are hard for her too.
“Even when you’re a kid, you see all these movies and tv shows about brave little orphans. It’s like the world is telling you that your parents can die, and you can get through it. But nobody ever warns you that your best friend can die, and I can’t think of a single story about surviving it.”
The sunlight up here is too bright without his glasses; it turns his normal fiery swirls into a piercing yellow that feels like an icepick to his head. He turns toward her anyway.
“Kirsten, did you lose your best friend?”
She swallows. “Ten years ago, I think. Maybe eleven now? He was my cousin, and he OD’ed.”
Matt sucks in a breath. He’d only barely stopped keeping count of the days since Foggy’s death. He hadn’t considered that he’d lose track of the years.
If it’s a hard thought for him, it must be worse for Kirsten, and he holds out a hand in her general direction – an invitation, if she wants to take it.
There’s a long pause, but then she lays her hand in his. It’s tiny, almost ridiculously so, but more calloused than he expected. Weightlifting, he thinks. It fits: she’s small, but she’s tough.
“Do you want to tell me something about how he lived?” he asks.
He smells salt in the wind; her eyes have probably filled up, and he squeezes her hand.
“That’s a nice question,” she says, and her voice is thick. “He was always up in my business, dragging me out of the library if I’d been studying for too long. It was annoying, but I always went.” She laughs, although her voice is ragged. “He was the life of the party. Never met an experience he didn’t want to have, or a new thing he didn’t want to try. It caught up to him though.”
“Do you hate it when people say they’re sorry?” Matt asks.
She lets go of his hand, but she leans against his shoulder. “No, not really. They just mean they wish it hadn’t happened.”
“Then I’m sorry,” Matt says, even though it’s his least favorite thing to hear. “Does it ever get easier?”
“Easier isn’t the same thing as easy. But yeah, it does.” She nudges him with her shoulder. “The first year’s the worst. You’ll get through it.”
Matt manages a strangled laugh. “I know. That’s the worst part.”
“Survival’s a real bitch, isn’t it?” Kirsten says. Then she laughs. “Race you to the bottom? Loser has to make lunch!”
She sprints past him without bothering to call an official start, and Matt knows he’s going to lose. Kirsten’s very food motivated.
205 Days After
Every time he stops counting the days, he starts again. Usually when a new friend comes over.
“I thought you were going to save me some dishes,” Cherry’s saying. The box of dominoes rattles in his hand.
“There’s more time for dominoes this way,” Matt shoots back.
He might have overdone it on the cleaning; the scent of Pine-sol is making his head ache. Maybe Cherry’s too. Metal groans and wood creaks as the sticky kitchen window opens, and a breeze rushes into the apartment.
“Fresh air is good for you,” Cherry mutters. “Maybe go easy on the industrial solvents next time you clean.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Matt says. It chafes a little, but Cherry has a point. He tends to do things at extremes, or not do them at all. “Do you want a beer? Or a glass of wine? I have some things for salad, if you’re hungry.”
Cherry huffs. “I’m ordering us a pizza, but I’ll help myself to a beer.”
Matt knows it’s an excuse to check the inside of his fridge, but this time, he has nothing to hide. It’s well stocked, and he’d thrown out the expired milk and questionable leftovers days ago.
“Good man. You’re taking care of yourself again.” The refrigerator door swings shut, and Cherry squeezes his shoulder.
Matt feels his fingers clench around his own beer bottle. This kind of affection feels…
A word doesn’t come to mind.
Weird is the best he can do.
Nobody’s checked up on him this way since his dad died. Before that maybe. He remembers going to the store with his father’s grocery list and a stack of crumpled bills, then sneaking to the church food bank when it wasn’t enough.
Dominos clatter across the kitchen table, and Cherry says sharply, “You playing or not?”
Matt shakes his head, pulling himself out of the past. He has a bad feeling Cherry’s taking it easy on him where the game is concerned; even so, it’s going to take all his attention not to get his ass kicked.
Not that his attention makes much difference. He still loses three games in a row. Honestly, he feels bad for Cherry. Every fighter deserves a decent opponent.
But Cherry’s humming contentedly while he resets the tiles. “You know, I haven’t gotten to do much of this lately,” he says. “Not since my son moved to Omaha.”
“Omaha?” Matt can’t keep the disbelief out of his voice. “Who would trade New York for Omaha?”
Cherry clucks his tongue. “I thought I raised him better than that. But he met some girl…”
“And now he’s eating corn? And driving everywhere?” Matt honestly can’t imagine the horror.
Cherry laughs. “You suck at dominoes, Murdock, but at least I know you’re not gonna ditch me for the midwest.”
“Right you are,” Matt says, reaching for one of the cool white tiles. He can learn from defeat; it’s what he’s best at.
They play late into the night, and Cherry’s footsteps sound light when he finally walks out the door.
206 Days After
“Sometimes we can care for other people by letting them take care of us,” his therapist says.
After work, Matt calls Cherry to ask if he knows what to do about a sticky window latch, and he doesn’t protest when he insists on coming over with a can of WD-40.
240 Days After
He’d missed the seven-month anniversary.
He can’t even say why.
He’d like to imagine it was a trial day, or that he was busy deposing some hostile yet important witness. Maybe he’d been at the courthouse, demanding bail for a client he knew was innocent, or –
Maybe he was playing dominoes with Cherry.
Maybe he was running the stairs with Kirsten.
“Matt, do you honestly think you love Foggy any less if you don’t know the exact number of days since he died?” his therapist asks.
“No,” he chokes out.
She says some other things, about how grief isn’t linear. How he should expect bad days and good days, and it’s alright if the good days outnumber the bad ones.
It’s all very valid and healthy and reasonable, but he doesn't listen very well. He’s getting so tired of the therapy talk.
241 Days After
Foggy’s mom is waiting outside his door when he comes home from work. He smells Dove soap and lavender-scented lotion, and then he’s enveloped in arms that feel much too thin.
“I got your new address from your partner,” she says.
She sounds triumphant, not sad or angry, but Matt feels a lance go through his chest anyway. He should’ve invited her to the housewarming party, he thinks. Or called. Or returned at least one of her calls.
She smacks his shoulder like she knows what he’s thinking.
“No guilt. We all grieve differently,” she says. “Now are you going to let me in?”
Thank god he’d been keeping the apartment clean for Cherry.
“Let me help you with that,” he says hastily when he hears a cardboard box scrape across the floor.
“I brought you some of Franklin's things,” she says, depositing the box in his outstretched hands. It’s lighter than he expects but awkwardly large, and he feels another pang that she’d schlepped it here all by herself.
Jars clatter, and he realizes that she’s picking up another bag, one that sounds much heavier than the box.
“This one is tomato sauce,” she says, and then she’s marching across the kitchen toward the fridge. “I made you a few jars, in case you want to freeze some.”
Of course. Sunday gravy, she calls it. Back in undergrad, he’d never missed a Sunday dinner at the Nelsons’ apartment. Mrs. Nelson’s maiden name was Bianchi, and she made the finest Italian food in New York City.
He puts the cardboard box on the kitchen island, trying to think if he has any food suitable for entertaining, but of course, he’s too late. Mrs. Nelson pulls another, smaller box out of her bag, and the scent of sugar and butter wafts out. She’d brought cookies, and now she’s playing hostess in his apartment.
“Coffee?” he asks, dashing toward the machine before she can take on the burden of making a fresh pot.
“Surely you’ve got something more fun than that,” she says, and Matt pulls the bottle of O’Malveney’s out from under the counter. They used to drink it together, just the two of them, when he’d stayed in the Nelsons’ cramped apartment while the dorms were closed. Our little secret, she’d said then.
She drains the glass in one gulp and returns it to the counter with a clink. Matt refills it automatically. This is part of the tradition too – one fast, one slow. He remembers her little giggle, like she’d gotten away with breaking a rule. Years later, he’d overheard her say every child needs their own tradition, something to make them feel special, and he’d realized this one was his.
They’re both on their second drink when she taps the big cardboard box expectantly.
“Don’t you want to know what’s inside?”
He doesn’t, actually. He’s terrified. But opening it is the least he owes the woman who’d all but adopted him.
He’s not sure what he expects to find. T-shirts, maybe? Old Columbia Law hoodies? He’s startled when his fingers brush against terry cloth.
“Are these towels?” he asks. A belated housewarming gift, maybe, but they’re soft in a worn-down sort of way, and they smell freshly laundered.
“Yes, and sheets at the bottom,” Mrs. Nelson confirms. “You remember how small our old apartment was, right? When my mother died, we didn’t have room for any of her big things, but I kept all her sheets and towels and used them for years and years. It was like a little hug from her every day.”
“These are Foggy’s sheets and towels,” Matt says stupidly.
It seems like they should both be crying – he can feel the familiar lump straining against his throat – but Mrs. Nelson’s voice is light and happy. He wonders if this is how grief recovery is actually supposed to work: not the slow process of forgetting that he’d imagined, but finding small, quiet ways to let the past in.
“The towels are green, dear,” Mrs. Nelson adds. “And don’t worry, I didn’t give you any of his race car sheets, only the nice dark blue ones.”
Foggy slept on race car sheets? All these years, and he’d never known. He clenches his fingers around the towel at the top of the box, imagining wrapping the soft fabric around himself after every shower. The lump is rising in his throat again, and his eyes are stinging, and god he’s tired of crying, but he’s not going to be able to hold this one back – not now, when Mrs. Nelson is wrapping her too-thin arms around him, rubbing his back, whispering that he’s going to be alright.
Afterward, he lets her make dinner for him – even though it seems wrong – because sometimes we take care of other people by letting them take care of us.
And sometimes we take care of people by calling them, returning their phone calls, and accepting their dinner invitations, no matter how much it hurts. The second he closes the door behind Mrs. Nelson, he programs a recurring reminder to call her on Sundays.
Day Two Hundred Forty–
Nope.
He closes the calendar app.
It’s possible he’s been counting the days because he’s been dodging better – and harder – memorials.
Now that he’s wrapped in one of Foggy’s towels, on a bed freshly made with his sheets, it’s somehow easier to face that.
Murdocks fall down, but they always get back up. For the first time in his life, he wants to stay down, but he can’t do that. It makes him a terrible friend, a terrible business partner, a terrible adopted son. That’s no kind of memorial for the kindest, most open-hearted person he’d ever known.
“Call Kirsten,” he tells his phone.
She picks up on the first ring, like she always does.
“Are you still trying to ask out that barista at the Starbuck’s on Fifty-Seventh?” he asks.
Kirsten huffs. “It’s a three-day weekend, Matt. Our first three-day weekend in six months. And you’re haunting me with my own romantic failures first thing in the morning?”
“No, no,” he says hastily, smoothing out the worn fabric of Foggy’s old bedspread. “I’m offering to help. I’m a really good wingman, you know.”
He can’t actually hear her narrowing her eyes over the phone, but he knows she’s doing it anyway.
“Seriously?” she asks.
“For you – and only for you – I’ll drink coffee from a chain store,” he confirms.
“My treat,” she says. “Meet you there at one.”
For the first time in a long time, he hears Foggy’s voice in his head. I’m proud of you, he says.