Work Text:
It was official. Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson were drunk, and anyone who looked at them could probably tell, given the fact that they were stumbling around like lost penguins. After they had left the bar, Foggy had taken Matt’s cane, saying, “How the heck do you see with this thing?” Matt then attempted to teach Foggy how to use it, but was mostly unsuccessful due to their laughter. They were now nearing the steps they always ate breakfast on during that one spring semester where they both had eight AM classes; which, honestly, who even thought that those were a good idea?
“Watch out, everybody! I’m Blind Matt Murdock!” Foggy stumbled around, managing to stay on his feet despite gravity’s best attempts.
Matt struggled to get the words out through his laughter, “Most- Most people just say, ‘Matt Murdock.’”
Foggy looked at his friend, askance, “I look like most people?”
“I don’t know, I can’t see you.” Was the dry response.
“Well, at the moment, that may be a blessing.”
Matt groaned suddenly as he thought of the finals they had to prepare for, “Oh, God, we should be studying.”
“You’re gonna graduate summa cum laude, you can take a night off, you nerd!” Foggy simply scoffed in response. Yes, he was worried about his grades, but he knew that his best friend/roommate would be fine without studying that night.
“Yup, you’d be… you’d be graduating with that too, if you took a few less nights off.” Matt pointed out. He felt that people underestimated Foggy. Ever since the first week of school, people would see a goofball, only to be shocked when Foggy was able to destroy all of their arguments with a few words. It bothered Matt more than he cared to admit.
Foggy’s voice broke him out of his thoughts, “Point being, we are both one day gonna be fine, upstanding members of the legal profession. El grande- how do you say ‘lawyers’ in Spanish?”
Startled by the sudden question, Matt struggled for a moment, “Lawyers? Abogados”
“El grande avocados!” Foggy announced triumphantly.
“That’s not Spanish, that’s fruit! That’s fruit!” Matt somehow managed to get out through his laughter.
“It’s a vegetable at best.” Foggy simply retorted.
Matt simply responded with more laughter and the words, “See, that’s what you get for taking Punjabi instead of Spanish with me, just to chase a girl.”
“What? No!” Foggy’s denials are cut short as he’s tripped by Matt’s cane, only to continue with, “I’ll have you know that Punjabi is the future language of the future of business. Couple years, we’ll all be speaking it.” He paused for a moment before continuing, saying, “And she was so hot. She was so hot!”
“Yeah, say that in Punjabi.” Was the simple challenge issued back to the blond.
Foggy stuttered for a few moments before saying, “God, shut up! Kiss my ass!”
“You can’t speak—“
Matt’s teasing laughter was cut short as Foggy interrupted, saying, “No! No, no, no, no. You’re telling me that you didn’t take Spanish to cuddle up to what’s her name…”
Matt’s heart thudded in his chest. “What?”
“The Greek girl!”
“Well, I… Surely I would take Greek?” Matt attempted to deflect, not wanting to talk about the mess that was his relationship with Elektra. For, while he no longer was with her, or even wanted to be with her, it was a mess that he couldn’t get into if he was going to tell Foggy about his senses.
Foggy scoffed, “No, because she was taking Spanish. She already spoke Greek. Whatever happened to her? She was smoking.”
Matt kept it simple, saying, “Man, it didn’t work out.”
“When does it ever with you, buddy? How can I help you?” Foggy paused before resuming in a voice that Matt assumed was supposed to resemble Yoda, “What are you looking for, my young Padawan?”
Deciding to be more honest than he had been in a while, yet still playing it off as a joke, Matt said, “I don’t know. I guess just someone I really like listening to.”
They both laughed for a moment, before Matt asked, “Where are those stairs?”
“Stairs, here.” Was the simple response.
Gathering up his courage, Matt said, “I would like to sit now.”
“Yes! We sit! And then we forage for hamburgers and more libations.” Foggy announced to their quiet surroundings.
“How about just the burgers?” Matt suggested instead, knowing that if Foggy were to get any more drunk he wouldn’t remember what he was about to tell him.
“Lightweight! Hey, do you get the spins?” There was a pause, as though considering the question for himself, “Can you get those if you can’t see?”
Matt laughed, while inwardly preparing himself to tell Foggy, knowing that this would be the perfect opportunity, “Yeah, I get the spins.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it’s- it’s an equilibrium thing, it’s not your eyes. Liquid in your inner ear gets disturbed, has trouble leveling off or something.” Matt explained, remembering the lessons Stick had given him, about how, ‘Even though you’re blind you can still get dizzy. So, we’re going to make sure you can’t, unless you’re sick or some bullshit like that.’
“Huh. That sucks. I thought you might get a pass on that one.”
“No, it’s even worse for me, I think. ‘Cause my senses are so- Are….” Matt trailed off, finding it harder than he thought it would be to tell his best friend.
Foggy seemed to know that there was something his roommate wanted to say, asking, “So what? Delicate?”
Matt took a deep breath and said, “Yeah, from what I’ve heard from other blind people, my senses are even stronger than theirs.”
Foggy sat up straighter as he asked, “What do you mean?”
“It’s like… After the accident, my brain decided that, since I can’t see through my eyes anymore, it would give me a different way to see. I can hear heartbeats, smell things that I shouldn’t be able to, sense the differences in temperature and air movement, and all of that adds up to one big image in my brain of a world on fire.” It was as though a flood of words escaped Matt. Barring the hesitance over the first few words, they just kept coming faster and faster, as though a dam had finally been broken after so many years.
Foggy simply stared at his friend, confusion and hurt warring for a spot on his face, before he asked, “So, you can see.”
Matt fiddled with his cane, saying, “Not through my eyes, but in a manner of speaking, yes.”
Foggy erupted, “No! No manner!” He then turned towards the other, held up his middle finger and asked, “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“One.” Matt uttered quietly.
Foggy seemed to lose steam and said, “All these years, I actually felt sorry for you.”
“I didn’t ask for that. I never- I never asked for that.” Matt said, near tears, knowing that the entire conversation just one word from going terribly wrong, with nothing he could do about it, not now that he had told Foggy.
“Yeah, I didn’t ask to be lied to. I thought we were friends.” Foggy seemed to regain some of his anger as he spat out the words.
“We are.”
The response was so quiet, that had Foggy not been looking at his friend, hoping for more answers, he would have missed it. He sighed and said, “You’ve lied to me, Matt, since the day we met.”
Matt turned his sightless eyes towards Foggy, tears beginning to well up, “What did you expect me to say, Foggy? “Hi, I’m Matt. I got some chemicals splashed in my eyes when I was a kid that gave me heightened senses.””
Foggy was beginning to understand how big of a secret Matt was confiding in him. However, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to yell at Matt or just be glad that he trusted him enough to confide in him. As a result, the words came out harsher than he meant, as he spat out, “Well, maybe not lead with that.”
“I didn’t even tell my dad after it happened.” Matt wanted to reach out to his friend, if they were still friends, and touch him, if only to reassure himself that he hadn’t lost him yet.
Those words were like ice to Foggy’s anger. It dissipated as he came to a huge realization and asked, “You’ve never told anyone, have you?”
Matt shook his head and murmured, “You’re the first one.” He took a deep breath, knowing that if he didn’t tell Foggy the entirety of the story now, he would be angrier later. “The only other person that knows is an old man named Stick. He found me at the orphanage, back when I couldn’t control it. God, it hurt so much, all the noise, and all the smells. But he was blind like me, well, almost like me, so I guess he just knew.”
Foggy gaped at the other, saying, “You’re shitting me.”
Matt laughed helplessly, saying, “I know how it sounds.”
“I don’t think you do.” Was the simple response, even as a smile began to form.
There was a lull in the conversation, as Foggy pondered the information he had been given, and Matt waited for his judgement. Foggy broke the silence, asking, “So what did this Stick dude teach you?”
“He did more than teach me how to filter out the noise. He taught me that my blindness wasn’t a disability… That sight was a distraction. He helped me understand everything I could do. He taught me that sometimes being seen as weak can be an advantage. He taught me how to fight.”
The last words alarmed Foggy, and he immediately asked, “What do you mean he taught you how to fight?”
Matt seemed to struggle with answering this question more than the others. Foggy gave him the time he needed to form a response, seeing that he was obviously struggling with how to phrase it.
Finding the words, Matt then said, “After my dad died, when I was in the orphanage, I would get picked on a lot. The others thought I was easy prey, I guess, but they never factored in that my dad taught me how to box. After the first few fights, they didn’t bother. At first, when Stick began to train me, I thought it was him picking up where my dad left off. You know, defense and all of that.” He took a shuddering breath, bending his head towards his shoes, and continued, “I began to see him as a father-figure. But he never wanted a kid. He wanted a soldier for some kind of mess he was involved in. He never told me what, I guess I got too attached for his tastes, so he just left one day.”
Foggy shook his head in shock, patting his friend on the back, “Man, Matt, that was a really shitty thing for him to do.”
“Yeah, it kinda was, wasn’t it?” Matt responded wryly, hoping that the physical affection Foggy was showing was a sign that everything would be all right between them. Foggy didn’t like touching people he was angry with. Matt never understood why, but he never questioned it either.
“Hey, how old were you when you had your first drink?” Foggy seemed to change the subject out of the blue.
“Nine.” Matt warily responded, not sure how it connected to their conversation.
“Nine?” Foggy laughed, before saying, “Lush.”
“My dad gave me a sip from this bottle of Scotch.” Matt shared, still not sure why Foggy brought it up.
“Go dad!” Foggy cheered.
“He didn’t want my hands shaking while I stitched him up. He got cut pretty bad over his eye. Boxing match.” Matt explained, showing on his own face where the cut would have been on his father.
Foggy got quiet before asking, “He win?”
“No.”
“He’d be proud of you, buddy.”
Matt smiled, knowing that with that one word, ‘buddy’, things would be all right. That was another thing about Foggy, he never used nicknames when he was angry. He then mentioned, “Thanks, man. All he ever wanted was for me to use my head, not my fists. Not like him.”
“My mom wanted me to be a butcher.” They both laughed over the image of Foggy being a butcher, before he continued, “I think she liked the idea of free ham.”
“Hey, are they coming to graduation? Your family?” Matt asked, knowing that Foggy’s parents were ridiculously proud of their son getting into law school.
“The whole extended brood. It’s not every day a Nelson breaks from the ranks of hardware and cured meats.” Foggy responded in a manner that implied seriousness, but was far from it.
“Franklin Nelson for the defense, Your Honor!”
Foggy nudged his friend, saying, “Defense? I like that! There’s money in that.”
Matt scoffed, “Oh, come on, is that all you care about?”
“No… no. Truth and justice and all of that.” Foggy paused, then said, “Couple of bucks?”
They both laughed, then the conversation quieted for another moment. Matt dared to ask, needing the reassurance, “So, we good?”
Foggy looked at the dark haired man, smiling, and said, “Yeah, we are.” He paused for a moment, then said, “I wanna know more about these senses, though! Just not when I’ve had a few beers.”
The two laughed for a moment, then Foggy gestured widely, “Me and you pal. We’re gonna have big, fancy offices one day, with steel and glass and chairs you don’t even know how to sit in. Murdock and Nelson, Attorneys at Law!”
“Nelson and Murdock. Sounds better.” Matt countered.
Foggy asked quietly, “You think?”
“Yeah, trust me. I can’t see worth shit but my hearing’s spectacular.” Matt smiled, trying to ignore the thudding in his chest.
The pair broke out into laughter once more, before Foggy said, “Me and you, pal. We’re gonna do this. We’re gonna be the best damn avocados this city has ever seen.”
Matt nodded and said, “Best damn avocados.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here, come on.” With these words, Foggy stood up and offered his hand to his friend, pulling him up.
“You’re strong.” Matt commented, somewhat in shock.
“I work out.”