why ask politely, why go lightly, why say please

Chapter 1

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

“You’re Murdock’s second in command.”

“We’re partners,” Foggy says, but he can’t not trip over the words because it’s fucking cold in here and his tongue feels swollen in his mouth. Maybe he’s got a chipped tooth. “That’s how lawyers work, we’re partners.”

This guy knows about Matt. He fucking knows.

The bored-looking goons have filed off into the hall, though they probably haven’t gone far. Neither of them is the guy with the glasses who came in to unsubtly hint that Murdock & Nelson, Nelson & Murdock should take up with his employer’s incredibly shady organization instead. Talk about sharks and skin suits. That guy probably made the call that Foggy was on his way back from work, alone. That he was looking at his phone and not at his surroundings. Distracted, like a dumbass.

The chair beneath him is cold metal, institutional quality. If he had Matt’s crazy kung fu moves, he could probably make an okay weapon out of it, but his right hand is cuffed to a table leg, and the table leg is bolted to the floor. The extent of his data-gathering tells him they’re in an office block somewhere, which makes the bolted-down table kind of incongruous – but Foggy’s eyes are refusing to focus, and his vision swims too badly to pinpoint any specifics. There’s no helpful street view out the window, mainly because there’s no window. Matt could probably pinpoint where they were just by vibrations from the street, because he’s the auditory equivalent of Captain America, but Foggy can’t – there’s a dull buzz in the air that might just be a ringing in his ears from getting clipped on the side of the head when they pulled him out of the car.

Beige carpet, beige table, pockmarked plaster ceiling made up of the same kind of tiles that are in the offices of Nelson & Murdock. For all he knows they’re in the same building as the office, one of those neighboring suites he hasn’t been able to charm his way into yet. For all he knows they’re in Jersey, it certainly looks bleak enough. There’s nothing like a convenient fire alarm to pull (to evacuate all the armed guys in suits or what?) or a window to fling himself out of after heroically picking the lock on the cuffs and scampering to safety. On the far wall, there’s the bleached outline of where a bulletin board used to hang – maybe a whiteboard.

There’s nothing here to really work with, except the knowledge that Fisk is there and he hasn’t killed him yet.

Fisk comes up to him from behind. Foggy stays very still.

“I had,” Fisk says, “a very good friend, who had a run-in with the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. He was shot seven times in the chest. I’m told he died more or less instantly.”

One of his hands dips into Foggy’s shirt, grazes against the cotton undershirt next to his skin, presses with a fingertip. Like the trajectory of a bullet, or the phantom presence of a wound. Fisk has big hands and blunt fingers; the sensation of them probing at skin raises the hairs on the back of Foggy’s neck. That’s the kind of thing that he was really better off thinking was just a saying; the disturbed prickle makes his breath hitch, and Fisk seems amused. Or maybe he’s just pissed.

Foggy really doesn’t want to get shot.

If he doesn’t turn around, he can pretend it’s not Fisk, the asshole from TV. His voice is worse in person, it’s got all these weird hesitations and pauses but it’s even deeper, even bigger, it’s everywhere.

“When they showed me the body, I was… shocked. He looked much the same as he had alive, apart from having been shot seven times in the chest.” Which isn’t supposed to be funny, but Foggy gasps back a horrible snicker of inappropriate laughter anyway. Fisk does not seem amused when he continues. “And there was a remarkable amount of blood.”

He’s not going to look at his face. He’s not going to look at his face.

“I’m sorry, but why are you telling me this?”

Fisk grabs him by the collar like Foggy is a kid and pulls him out of the chair like a squirming rabbit. The chain rattles, carving a crescent of clear pain into his wrist, and Foggy is terrified for a split second that he’s going to throw him down on the ground and start kicking. He’s a really fucking big guy, okay. But Fisk’s preposterously strong grip does not release, and he instead drapes him over the edge of the table like a dry-cleaner bag full of shirts. This is easy for him; he doesn’t seem bothered, like he does this all the time.

Foggy’s cheek presses against the cold metal tabletop. Maybe he can twist over onto his back and ninja-kick this guy in the face. Fat chance.

“I’m not going to tell you anything.” Not about Matt. Not about the guy in the mask. Not about their cases. Foggy’s a lawyer and Wilson Fisk is a major-league criminal, those two things aren’t going to change. If this is the part in the script where Fisk makes him an offer, tries to get him on board, he’s not going to leave happy. It’s way too late for that. Maybe a couple years ago when they were both desperate interns, and Fisk was nothing but a completely anonymous shadow on the horizon, but not now. Definitely not after having him abducted and poking him in the chest.

“I wasn’t planning on asking you any questions,” Fisk says, almost affably, “but it might help to be forthcoming.”

What’s the worst he can do? Break some bones? Foggy’s had that happen before; it sucks, but it’s not fatal, and he can always tell the girls he got his legs busted standing up to a psychopathic gangster. This guy could beat the ever-loving shit out of him, go all Reservoir Dogs, and Foggy still won’t tell him anything about Matt’s dumbass secret identity.

Unless Fisk knows about Matt already (he does) and plans on blinding him as a matter of dramatic irony. Which would suck. But he’s not going to die from being blind.

Unless Fisk doesn’t care about dramatic irony and is going to shoot him seven times in the face.

Basically the only thing he does not want Fisk to do is kill him. Anything short of that, Foggy reasons, he can handle. Matt’s made of sterner stuff than he is, as categorically proven by upholding the whole double-life thing so long, so maybe Foggy won’t make it out with such a stiff upper lip, but he won’t die–

The proximity of his body is a horrible thing. Wilson Fisk is a man with a presence, and it’s been a long time since Foggy has ever felt small next to anybody, but his skin is crawling. It’s honestly a minor miracle that he hasn’t pissed himself yet.

Anger surges at the core of him, a little reservoir of pure and total hatred buried deep in his gut – he’s pissed about Elena Cardenas and all her neighbors, he’s pissed about whoever hurt Karen so bad, he’s pissed about the state of this whole damn town and the one guy who’s still lording it over one shitty neighborhood like he’s the Second Coming despite persuasive evidence to the contrary. Fisk thinks he’s got him scared, when really he’s just got him mad.

Foggy shuts his eyes hard enough to see yellow spots. With luck he can martial enough willpower to sound confident, if he can just stop shivering in the A/C.

“You know, I wouldn’t fuck with me if I were you. He’s going to come after you and he’s gonna nail your ass to the wall. You’re a dead man.”

He, him. Matt. The guy in the mask. Heat prickles at the back of his neck, down his spine, weight shifting and chain slinking against metal.

“I could crush you like an insect,” Fisk rasps against his ear, and Foggy shuts his eyes tighter. “But then I wouldn’t have anything to turn back over to your friend.”

The worst thing Fisk could do? What’s the worst thing Fisk can do to him, now, before he goes for Karen or for Matt or for the people in the office next door to theirs – or maybe he’s done all that already and that’s why nobody’s been returning Foggy’s calls and that’s why him, just because everybody else is already dead. He starts to protest, an awful animal treble that escapes his throat before he can stop himself, and Fisk slams his head against the table.

Foggy feels something crack, or chip, or something, and the pain starts to blossom from the corner of his eye socket all at once. A sound escapes his throat that is a scream.

Fisk strikes his head against the metal again. It’s not as hard this time, and Foggy’s gone slack so it’s easier. Everything’s gone kind of gray.

With one sweep Fisk knocks the chair aside. Foggy lashes out at him but his dizzy impreciseness means he manages exactly nothing but making himself black out. Reality strobes out like a broken lightbulb.

His shirt’s untucked, his pants are down, he doesn’t know when he went from being fully-dressed, albeit trussed to a fucking chair in a murder basement, to feeling the cold air on his naked legs and feeling Fisk palm in his underwear. His hands are warm, and the edge of the table is freezing cold. His thumb digs into the softness of Nelson’s stomach.

“You’re soft,” he says, with blistering contempt.

The cloth of Fisk’s suit brushes the backs of Foggy’s thighs.

“So what? What are you going to do to me?”

Is he going to say the words? Is he going to say the actual words, stuff Foggy can remember for later – he knows all the words for this, chapter and verse, just in case, the stuff like physically helpless and forcible compulsion and if he’s really unlucky tonight foreign object. Or is this guy too macho to say he’s raping him?

Fisk doesn’t answer the question. He tugs on a fistful of Foggy’s hair and twists, pulling his head back so sharply for a moment Foggy thinks he’s going to snap his neck. “Look at me,” he says, “you’re worthless to me. I ought to break you apart.”

He’s an animal, there is no way this is a person, Foggy’s vision is edged in black and Fisk’s monstrous face is framed impassively in the kind of staticky dimness that probably means brain damage.

“I’m looking. I get it. I see you.”

His head is grudgingly released, allowed to drop. Fisk smooths his hair back into place with weird conscientiousness; Foggy can only grunt his distress through a sudden sweep of nausea.

“Tell him what you’ve seen.”

He’s still got one hand free. He’s not totally spread-eagle here. He balls up a fist and drives it back, twisting around to drive it full-force somewhere in the vicinity of this guy’s solar plexus –

–and Fisk twists it right back, presses it into the table’s edge with a rolling motion and crack. The world shutters out like a camera lens. When it wells back into focus again it’s harder and colder; the lights are so bright he can’t see a difference when he shuts his eyes.

Foggy screams. Wilson Fisk undoes his belt.

There’s a stiff, artificial little rustling sound from somewhere behind him. Foggy knows it from dorm rooms and extra-long twin beds, from office bathrooms and lots of other places he would really rather be right now. Fisk is unwrapping a condom, because just because he’s fucking him up the ass is no reason not to be polite.

This is going to suck. This is going to be so bad.

Foggy reflexively hugs his ruined hand to himself, gasping huge breaths, like pressure will mitigate the blinding pain – it won’t, Fisk pulls his arm away from his side and wrenches it up behind his back. His thigh presses apart Foggy’s legs; his dick is brushing against his ass as he fumbles for an angle. His dick’s already hard.

There’s a deep ballpoint-pen gouge in the tabletop, like somebody scribbled there, and Foggy tries to focus on that. But the sensation of somebody else’s dick touching him makes it impossible not to struggle, not to twist around protesting while his chained-down arm shoots out in pins and needles. Fisk makes an annoyed sound and leans against him, hard.

They’re beyond talking now. The first hard press is like nothing else – it trips an involuntary sob, and the heel of Fisk’s hand presses into Foggy’s back, to hold him in place or to press the air out of his lungs. He doesn’t feel him up lasciviously or waste a whole lot of time being theatrical about what he’s doing, because it’s pretty obvious. But he takes his time. It’s not like either of them has anywhere else to be.

This part Foggy’s not even trying to fight. He can’t. He’s not like Matt is, he’s just a guy. Fisk exhales in annoyance when he’s breaching him, not even exertion. Foggy will remember that sound maybe, forever.

By the time an actual dick is inside him, Foggy is trying not to cry or throw up or both. Nothing else hurts like this, not the cotton-padded ache in his head or the bones in the back of his hand, or the press of the table’s edge against his stomach. His shoulder feels as if it’s about to be wrenched from its socket by the strain, the position he’s in is all kinds of unnatural, but Foggy can’t even focus on that splintering patch of pain without being reminded of each splitting thrust. It can’t be easy.

Fisk’s size would be enough to keep him in place, but he braces him there for better access, front and back. He doesn’t bother touching him really, after a cursory grope that feels more like a mistake. The pressure of his hand is nightmarish now, an infinitely worse bracketing restriction than the otherwise minimalistic restraints.

Maybe the low-budget ambiance and the stuff about Matt and Fisk’s dead friend is just the set-up to getting bent over like a twenty-dollar hooker, getting fucked in silence with nothing but the strike of flesh against flesh, not even that, Wilson Fisk’s cufflinks digging into the shallow flesh over his ribs through cloth. Now he knows what this guy sounds like having sex and he sounds like he’s having sex with somebody else, somebody who knows to shut up, not Foggy who can barely breathe.

Something in him is broken apart now, maybe something small but he’s bleeding badly. He’s starting to black out before it’s done, stuttering shortages in his vision like a buffering video. Throbbing in his head like a blood vessel – where the fuck is Matt for all this? Where the fuck is Matt?

Foggy regains consciousness to the feeling of a massive hand clasping his throat. Not even hard, though it elicits a shudder of animal panicking that’s put to rest with a jostle, just the sweaty folds of the inside of a hand waiting to grip and press. Waiting.

He keeps waiting for Fisk to tighten his grip and press the life out of him, but he hasn’t done it yet. Foggy keeps waiting.

(“Soft,” he says.)

*

The second time, he doesn’t even cuff him to the table. The third time, he must get bored, because he uses a gun to do it.

*

Foggy doesn’t notice when he’s done, or when he leaves him there on the floor like dirty laundry. He doesn’t leave him there naked, but it wouldn’t matter if he did.

Afterward, after the last time, the guys in suits come in again – one of them has a glass of water, Foggy remembers that with weird clarity and basically nothing else. Some nameless mook has a plastic cup of water in his hand and an ugly class ring on his finger and he holds the cup up to Foggy’s lips while the other guy lifts his head.

It doesn’t occur to him, what if it’s drugged or something like that because they didn’t bother chloroforming him or whatever to take him here, they just hit him over the head. He’s so pitifully grateful that he drinks. He can barely swallow; his throat is one long raw patch.

He can’t keep it down for long, and he has to lie there in the consequences of that until he passes out again. Here it goes, this is him dying – this is how he dies, fucked bloody on the ground and puking. His shirt sticks to his back between his shoulder blades, it’s adhered to his bare thighs with sweat. He’s dirty, bleeding, concussed, near-dead already. He’s done. He’s ready for giving up, even if it means having it happen like this.

It happens like this, and he still doesn’t die.

Chapter 2

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

Oh god, I’m so sorry for the delay here – all your comments have been so nice, I don’t normally write WIPs so the delay of getting this thing done has been agonizing, I hate the thought of leaving people waiting. This monstrosity has grown a third chapter too, which hopefully will be the last and a lot quicker – I also plan on de-anoning once it’s all posted, since I’ve got other Daredevil fic, just not as dark as this. Thanks so much to the people who hung in there for this installment; I swear I didn’t forget about you guys.

Also, fair warning, the medical stuff in this is totally handwaved. Foggy would probably get whisked through getting triaged even without a known sexual assault as a factor, since head injuries are nothing to treat lightly, but the whole thing is kind of accelerated for story purposes.

As soon as the bathroom door closes, Foggy can smell the blood – Matt’s blood. It’s fresher than Foggy’s busted nose and not so crusty-sweet. Some of it might not even be Matt’s. He’s upright, limping maybe but ambulatory. Foggy pries his eyelids open, like wrenching up an old-school garage door, and feels a fresh throb of pain.

Matt must not know this place that well; he’s still putting out a hand to feel for the edge of the sink or the murky outline of the radiator. This apartment is nearly empty; there’s little in it to suggest it’s anybody’s permanent year-round dwelling, but what’s there doesn’t seem overtly out of place. Foggy keeps looking, his squinting eyes keep skittering around the baseboards and the taped-up windows. It’s nearly pitch-black in here, except for– a freaking night light plugged in at the baseboard, a lonely rectangle of chemical blue. He doesn’t know what he expects to see.

Whatever it is Matt senses, it isn’t pretty.

“Jesus, Foggy. Jesus, oh–”

For a long moment speech is impossible, and Matt is just standing there taller than life in the blue near-dark. Foggy presses his working wrist against his more operational eye socket, feeling the tenderness like a missing tooth.

Foggy tries to estimate the odds of Matt dropping to his knees right then and there. “How bad is it?” Then again, stupidly, because Murdock hasn’t answered and he’s not even sure he heard him trying to talk around a mouthful of spit and sore gums – “Is it bad? Matt, are you bleeding? I think you’re bleeding.”

“Not bad. But you’re alright. You’re safe now.”

“Me? What about you?” How many times has Matt been bleeding and Foggy hasn’t noticed? Bleeding under his clothes?

“Safe is a relative term.” He’s trying for a quip, a charming Matt-icism, but it makes Foggy flinch. “It’s handled.”

Handled. Foggy is floating, a little island of pain – but he’s not there any more, and he could cry, he’s lying on tile and not laminate tabletop, Matt is here.

One thought snags like a broken tooth.

“Where’s Karen? What happened to Karen?” Foggy tries to sit up, which is stupid and instantly upgrades each distinct unpleasant sensation from discomfort to kill-me-now. Matt guides him back against the porcelain.

“Just stay put, okay? You have a concussion.”

Foggy exhales sharply between the gaps in his teeth. He’s dirty and he stinks and he’s not wearing pants; Matt needs to be nowhere near him right now. It’s just like freshman year. “Yeah, that makes sense. Was that your friend who came along with the pen light, because–”

“Yeah, she won’t do that again. You can hear me alright?”

“Clear as a bell,” Foggy says, feeling a slimy web of blood migrate out from between his teeth. “I think I just took a bad hit.”

Already he can’t remember. He can’t remember, which makes him next to useless. Even trying to think about last night is like sweeping up broken glass.

Matt settles down in a cloud of painful earnestness, depositing a plastic bag of ice wrapped in a dishtowel. “Don’t talk. You’ve got a broken cheekbone – Claire doesn’t think you’ll need surgery, but you’ve got a hell of a black eye.”

The side of his face is swollen like a plum; he can feel it. It encroaches onto his vision a little, but all things considered given that anything brighter than basically no light at all makes him want to start vomiting again and never stop, it’s okay. He’s fine, he’s all right. He’s gotten knocked around a little before. One time he got elbowed in the face playing touch football and it hurt worse than this. Foggy tries to inventory the injuries he can tell Matt about. His head, his shoulder. His whole face, which has got to be ugly, judging by the way Matt sucks in a breath when his fingertips brush his cheek – but Foggy’s whole face was a work in progress to start with. In another 12 hours he’ll be needing to shave.

The list of things he can’t tell him about is short but memorable.

“I think I fucked up my hand,” is what he settles on. His hand is bound up uselessly, close to his body, and he still feels the phantom of somebody else’s grip.

“Claire jimmied everything back into place. You just need to keep it immobilized for now.”

Foggy cautiously swallows a mouthful of saliva before trying to talk again. “Jimmied? Is that a technical term?” The press of the swelling would be painful on its own, but at least some of what Claire the Friendly Nurse had him dry-swallow earlier must be taking, because it’s only a dull pain now, like a bruise and not like, say, a broken finger.

“Until you can get an x-ray, it’s the next best thing.”

“Matt, what the hell am I going to tell somebody at a hospital?” It’s impossible not to raise his voice a little and immediately Foggy regrets it.

Matt lifts his chin in an approximation of a shrug. “Car door?”

“Did it bounce off my hand and hit me in the face?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

Like Matt and his car accident, Matt and his mylar balloon with a monkey on it. That much is reassuring, in the sea of shifting variables: it can’t be that bad, because Matt’s had it worse. He doesn’t have any broken ribs. He doesn’t have a popped lung or a broken arm or a busted eardrum. The pit of his stomach hurts, like something is broken in there, like something is bruised. The sensation of something torn located not far off makes a nice counterpoint to it, and both of them combined present a persuasive reason not to get up and wobble away.

“Where’s Karen?”

“Karen’s fine. Karen’s safe. What the hell happened, Foggy?”

Someone else pushes through the doorway, indistinct in the blotchy dark until the figure’s close enough to be in approximate focus. Somebody wearing white. Claire holds out a hand, lets it press against Matt’s chest in an eloquent gesture of forbidding. “I’m going to need you to step into the other room for a while.”

Matt takes the hint.

*

“Nice place you got here,” Foggy says, slippery with weird detachment as the pills settle in his stomach and Claire tugs his waistband down, slides his pants out from beneath him. “Very modern. Lots of charm.”

“It’s not my place. I’m just borrowing it for a little while from a friend.”

“A friend who knows about your secret life of crime?”

She sucks a little breath between her teeth. “Just a friend. But yes.”

Claire’s still in her pyjamas, underneath the oversized white sweatshirt shucked up to her elbows. She has steady hands, and she’s still really pretty, even like this – which hadn’t jumped out at him that first meeting on the night with Matt, because he’d had bigger things on his mind then – like now he doesn’t, like this isn’t some confusing brute-force effort to short circuit his brain into not thinking. But she’s pretty and she’s all business and she smells nice, which makes sense because this must be her bathroom.

Foggy lets his brain go blank, empty like an empty room as he braces. Claire is tearing the packaging off a swab, rustling around in a gallon plastic bag for a wad of cotton.

“How many guys?” So quiet that she’s practically just mouthing the words. Just in case.

Foggy’s sore tongue goes to make the syllables I can’t remember, but he stops. Everything is fogged and dim and gray, but he can remember. That much is concrete. Laid out plain, like the details in a brief. How many bad guys? How many doers?

“One.” Just one. He’s pretty sure.

Claire doesn’t tsk or exhale. “He used a condom?”

“Yeah.”

Foggy remembers that much.

Then, not like a doctor but like a friend: “Fuck. I’m sorry, Foggy. I really am.”

Foggy doesn’t know if that’s dismay at this state of affairs, or just a general comment on it, on the perpetrator, on Fisk. Foggy doesn’t know if that basic fact is good or bad. It could have been worse.

What happens after that could certainly be worse.

*

*

*

Claire’s hands are steady; she has small, steady hands. When Foggy’s voice finally comes unstuck in his throat it isn’t much more than an empty rasp. “Don’t tell Matt.”

“I’m not going to tell anybody unless you want me to. In which case I’m more than willing to say how I found you.”

His eyes are scabbing shut with salt. “Great.”

“If you press charges, you’re going to need to get checked out in a hospital. I can’t do that here.”

“I’m not pressing charges for this, all right? Why, why would I stand in a courtroom and–”

“I get it, okay. Believe me, I get it. You’re going to want to talk to somebody about this. But it doesn’t have to be Matt.”

*

Foggy Nelson’s pants are in a paper bag in the fridge so Matt can’t smell them quite as well. The laundry room’s all the way in the basement and no way is Claire making that haul alone, or Foggy with her. From the waist down he’s 75% beach towels and little sticky wing bandages, draped for modesty in a festive throw blanket and a sheet – why couldn’t he just get shot? There would be dignity in getting shot.

The swelling darkness presses in on everything, it sucks him down like a whirlpool. Part of him feels like he should call his mom. He’s not sure what he’d tell his mom, but these are the times you’re supposed to call your mom. Not when you can’t move your jaw without it clicking.

In the nauseating not-light from the window, Matt’s unshaven face is white as a sheet. Foggy tries to focus on it, but can’t fight through the blear in his eyes. Matt is sitting in a folding chair and watching him like a hawk; one of those same little sticky bandages is holding shut the cut along his hairline, what must have accounted for the blood. Foggy tries to focus on the clean white edges and instead his vision strobes.

(I know you haven’t showered since yesterday. Matt knows he hasn’t showered for at least three days, apart from a half-assed cleanup job with a wet washcloth. Matt knows more than that. Matt knows what he’s been throwing up. Matt knows more than he ever wanted to know about Wilson Fisk. Two possibilities present themselves: that Matt has no idea what happened, and that Matt knows exactly what happened and will never ever mention it.)

He can barely hold his head up; it feels like it’s been hollowed out and stuffed with old socks. He can feel himself slipping back between the pillow and the cushion. Matt’s hands are on his face, steadying him, and Foggy grunts in a way that is almost certainly embarrassing.

“Can I get you a glass of water or anything? There’s juice, but I don’t know if it’d do you any good if your throat hurts.”

Who told him that?

Foggy swallows. The sensation of being choked is embossed on the inside of his throat, and suddenly he’s dizzy again.

“I’m fine,” Foggy says. “Claire gave me a drink earlier.” This is a lie.

Matt’s stiff hands withdraw from him. “Still feel like throwing up?”

“Nope. Is that good?” He’s still nauseous, awash in weird Tilt-A-Whirl dizziness every time he moves his head even a little. But he no longer wants to vomit everywhere. He’ll have to get Claire a big flower arrangement or something, spelling out sorry about all the puking in miniature crinkly roses. They’ve gotten to know each other pretty well, him and Claire.

“Pretty good, in my experience. How’s your hand?”

“Shitty.” He can’t even begin to think of moving it, no more than he can contemplate going on a brisk jog. “But better. Thanks.”

Looking on the corners of those dark eyes creasing, Foggy thinks, what if it had been him? Matt wouldn’t have been so incapacitated he couldn’t walk – he’d have limped home come hell or high water. Foggy doesn’t remember being carried, Foggy doesn’t remember how he got out.

Matt would have gotten out. It wouldn’t have been pretty, but he’d have made it out on his own one way or another. Matt would have fought harder. Karen would have gnawed off her own arm rather than spend thirty seconds in the same room as Fisk.

Why him? Why Foggy and not someone else– he can’t say why not Karen, he can’t say why not Matt, because those are shitty questions. Because he was there, or if there was something he did that he can’t remember in the concussion wash of merciful forgetfulness, because he took a different route home from work, because he turned off on the wrong street–

(because he was soft–)

*

Foggy doesn’t remember the time, but he sleeps the heavy dreamless sleep of the dead until the first 2-hour interval for making sure he hasn’t actually died. Claire takes a look at his eyes again, and it must be all right because she lets him go back to sleep – but it’s not the same, that druggy twilit sleep where he still half-hears the floorboards creak and the doors close, where even behind closed eyes he sees murky colors. It’s too fucking cold.

People are touching him while he sleeps. Claire trying to be gentle, Matt incapable of it, fumbling him in his hands like a coffee cup. Foggy wakes up a couple times and can’t remember where he is, too weak to roll off the cushions and too sick to complain even though irritability surges in him. Sometimes he thinks Karen is there, and he jerks upright trying to pull up the tangling sheets to make sure he’s covered, only succeeding in fucking up his hand again.

He hears doors opening and closing, bandage tape unspooling from its roll, whispers turning into raised voices. They argue about some guy named Luke for a while. Claire’s friend Luke owns the place. Claire wants to make a phone call. Talking about ordering delivery, and Claire laughing, a hard gallows laugh. The words “police custody”.

They’re not using Fisk’s name, but he might as well be there in the room with them. The words are drumming hard against the inside of Foggy’s skull, he’s gonna come back, he’s gonna come back, he’s gonna come back. Police custody. Afraid.

They argue about Foggy too. He can tell. Matt’s voice, stiff. “No. That’s not possible. We need to do it here.”

And Claire’s voice around the corner, sharp and heated. “He could have a brain bleed.” Talking about him like a patient. Like some random injured civilian who just wandered in and passed out. Talking about him like a thing.

He could be sitting right here listening to you guys, is what Foggy wants to say. But he’s too ragdoll weak to straighten up, and the words come out looping and garbled. If they hear it they don’t let him know.

*

Matt again in the frigid dark, Matt’s hands on his shoulders, trying to press him awake like he’d rather be shaking him. Foggy wants nothing more than not to be there, and Matt keeps dragging him back to the surface.

“Stay awake, come on. I need to know what you remember.”

Foggy swallows, feeling his throat tighten. Dirtiness prickles on his skin. “I remember Fisk. He thought you had one of his pals whacked, and he took it really personally.”

“I need a name, Foggy. Did he give any kind of indication–”

“He didn’t say. I don’t fucking know, Matt.” Jerking back from his grip. It’s like a test he didn’t study for, these answers are potentially of critical time-sensitive importance to their case and they’re nowhere to be found. “He knew you were – you. Or maybe he thinks you work for the guy in the mask, I can’t tell.”

“What?” Matt stiffens, drawing back. “Foggy, are you serious? Are we compromised?”

“I don’t fucking know, maybe ask someone who doesn’t have brain damage. What does that even mean, are we compromised–”

“This isn’t to make your life harder. I need to know what we’re dealing with.”

His lungs are aching with the effort not to scream. Keep his voice down. People can hear. Hell, maybe they aren’t even in Hell’s Kitchen any more. “I didn’t tell him anything. You’ve got to believe me.”

“I can hear your heart beating,” Matt says, voice flat with exhaustion. “I know you’re not deliberately lying.”

“But you think I’m lying on accident?”

“I’m saying you wouldn’t necessarily know. Tell me what you saw. What you heard.”

“I didn’t see anything. It was just a room, there was a table, and – and I’d know if I told him anything, Matt. If he knew anything about you he’d be here already.”

(Two options present themselves. Somebody who thought he could shake down the guy in the mask by freaking out his lawyer. Or somebody who thought Foggy didn’t matter enough to kill.)

Matt says nothing.

“I’m not lying, Matt. One of his guys got shot, and he thinks you did it. He didn’t even ask me any questions.”

Foggy is crying now, hunching up against his knees with the sharp ugly embarrassing tears bubbling up in his eyes. Matt is recoiling. What’s worse – He had bigger shit to deal with at the time, or: He didn’t even know you were gone? Where the fuck was Matt? Where the fuck was he?

“All right,” Matt says, nakedly uncomfortable. “All right, I believe you.”

Lifting his head, Foggy grimace-smiles, feeling his cheek tug and tear. Things were a lot easier when he was just getting jabbed full of broken glass.

*

Somewhere after that, Matt folds, and lets Claire make the judgment calls. Last time Foggy was in a hospital he was still wearing a tie. They ask him questions in the hospital; they’re not like Claire’s questions, and Foggy must give good answers, because they keep bumping him up in the line.

He just keeps thinking, he doesn’t freaking have the insurance for this, twice in six months? After managing to get by without a hospital visit for six years – when it rains it pours. They know that there, about his terrible insurance at the hospital he doesn’t know the name of, and they let him go. They don’t know about anything else. Nobody’s looking too closely at his ass when he’s only complaining about his face – when somebody mugged him for his phone, conveniently thumping him in the noggin hard enough to make an ID impossible, and Claire’s just his Good Samaritan friend-of-a-friend who picked him up off the ground after a bad night. It might as well be true, and he keeps stupidly groping for the mobile device that isn’t there, in moments when his head’s not swimming. He doesn’t want to think about where it is.

They don’t notice cuff marks in with the mottled bruises; either that or they don’t look for them.

There’s only an hour-long wait for x-rays, since the rest of him is in such piss-poor shape – sixty minutes without Matt, too damn long when all Foggy can think when he can’t even think straight is that they shouldn’t have left, that it can’t be that bad, that it doesn’t matter if his hand stays fucked-up forever because he walked right into that one and Matt is off somewhere touching base with Luke Cage, man of mystery, and hopefully not getting chopped up into little pieces by ninjas or gangsters. Big looping sentences, forced through his brain that still feels like a sieve.

As expected, his hand’s broken, but it’s not a bad break, not after Nurse Claire’s expertise in jimmying things back into place. He’s bleeding into his underwear when the doctor tells him he’s free to leave. Provided Claire can wheel him home.

They let him go. They don’t know.

Compared to Claire’s place, the hospital barely registers, a moment in time that winks away like nothing. It barely makes an impression. Institutional blue and gray blinks out of view and it’s back to green walls, gray carpet.

The layout of the apartment as Foggy understands it so far is this:

The empty bedroom is the war room, the arsenal; Claire has some kind of bug-out bag in there permanently unzipped, like a lot of people do after what happened in ‘12. The empty kitchen is where Matt’s burner phone lives and doesn’t have room for much else. The living room is for narcotic-induced Foggy naps and the bathroom is for other stuff. Matt has generously loaned him a toothbrush and a pair of sweatpants; under other circumstances, Foggy would appreciate the sensuality of the gesture, since with Matt’s senses any leisure wear of his has to be hand-stitched from silk thread by Danish virgins. (Foggy used to think Matt was just fancy, imagine that. Monastic Matt Murdock, getting attached to small pleasures.) But with his ass being basically a wad of pain and gauze it’s hard to appreciate how luxe that shit is. The toothbrush is probably a lost cause.

If not for everything hurting and having a memory of the last 48 hours that’s ripped full of jagged holes he’d be at ease in his domain – sweatpants, little beige couch, a nice buzz from the pain meds, all of it. The half-furnished apartment is the size of an Altoid box but for a single lady in New York – not bad. Less airy than Matt’s place, but not lit in neon. More like a panic room. Foggy is too tired for panic; he’s landed squarely in some intermittent valley of exhaustion where the dread isn’t creeping up on him but already covering him, already over his head. He’s too tired to be afraid.

In between sleep he watches the door like he expects someone to come through it. What good is it going to do him to watch?

*

Foggy’s feet have only just hit the floor when he claps his one good hand against his thigh, hard. The sound it makes startles Matt into halting in his tracks, and in the weird hollow quiet of the apartment it must have been louder than the actual creak of the opening door. The fingers on Foggy’s bad hand twitch against the taped splint.

“Excuse me, were you trying to leave?”

“Actually, I–” Matt coughs a little and turns gingerly on his heel. His shoulders are bunched up almost imperceptibly underneath his coat, but Foggy from his little island of bruises can perceive it loud and clear. All that’s missing is the mask. “Yes.”

“Matt, you’re not seriously thinking about going back out there. I thought you said it was covered.”

Maybe they already got him. Maybe the guy’s already cooling his heels in jail. Wilson Fisk in a little dark room, waiting for a fancy lawyer.

Matt’s face is masklike, almost completely impassive. It couldn’t be creepier. “I’ve got some stuff I need to get from the office. For work on Wednesday.

For somebody who knows exactly what indicates when other people are lying, he’s a really shitty liar. For work, because they’re really hitting an all-time productivity high these days. He doesn’t even have his cane. Knowing that Matt doesn’t really need that thing as such for a lot of the stuff Foggy assumed he did demystifies some of his competence, but he’s still blind, he shouldn’t be booking it unassisted through midday traffic like that – or early morning, or afternoon, whatever it is–

(not when Fisk’s going to come back, he’s going to come back and he’s going to do it again)

“Bullshit. You know that place is being watched like a hawk. He wants you to bust out guns blazing so he can mess you up a second time. And I’m guessing he’s low on manpower.” (Manpower. Two guys in suits, maybe three, and Fisk. Foggy feels his throat starting to tighten.) “I’m not asking you this as your friend. I’m telling you. That’s not what I need you to do right now, okay?”

Matt slowly, carefully lets the door slip closed. Foggy expects to hear, ’this is bigger than what you need’, maybe because he knows it is – he can’t even say it’s not Matt’s problem. It started being Matt’s problem as soon as it happened to Matt’s known associate and not just some suspected pal of his alter ego. This is every bit Matt’s problem and it’s on Matt to make the call, but damned if Foggy doesn’t hate deferring to him on anything.

Matt is still, there in the low light from behind the drawn blinds, and without the glasses his eyes are intent and dark. They’re wet, too.

It’s not hard to tell when Matt’s mad; just usually he’s quivering with indignation at social injustice and not rigid with anger because of something that happened to Foggy. All things considered, compared to the people whose cases they handle and compared to – well, definitely compared to Matt or Karen, Foggy’s lived a charmed life. Maybe that’s what this is, a backlog of 28 years of misfortune getting dislodged by the universe in one colossal fuck-you to Franklin Nelson, Esquire.

Matt’s hands are already balled in fists. Foggy’s own wet congested breaths are loud in his ears, and he slowly watches Matt’s fingers uncurl.

“Please, Matt.”

Matt wipes his nose on the back of his scabby wrist, and asks, “What do you need me to do?”

“Don’t freaking walk out on me, Murdock. I don’t want to be alone right now.” Foggy is blithering like a bad girlfriend and he can’t stop, he’s pretty sure his nose is running and he’s pretty sure Matt must be mortified. A few more paces and he’s close enough to smell him now, positively, lurching like a puppet. Matt shouldn’t be going back out there anyway.

“You wouldn’t be alone. There’s Claire, there’s Luke, there’s Karen–”

(He hasn’t even met this Luke guy yet, he’s just bled all over his towels, how on earth is that supposed to be comforting? Foggy’s cheekbone is throbbing in time with his pulse, and he can feel the craziness rising in his chest, the reedy franticness like he’s gearing up to bawl Matt out–)

“So we’re just the civilians? You need to stay right here and rest up and tell me if shit gets any worse. It’s stupid. I’m sorry. I just need you to be here where I can see you.”

He needs to know where Matt is, needs to know for sure. Needs to know he’s in one place and not chopped up in a bunch of garbage bags. Who cares if the bad guys got Nelson; he needs to know they didn’t get Murdock too.

Matt’s shoulders untense a little; his mouth splits from its rigid pink line into something marginally more at ease, showing teeth. This is him beaten. But he’s still not happy.

“Then I’ll stay.”

*

Claire’s sleeping the sleep she so richly deserves, and it’s somebody else’s job to make Foggy Nelson doesn’t die for another 2 hours. Matt lowers his body down next to him on the cushions – so carefully that it’s unreal, the showroom-new piece of furniture barely sags under him. Featherweight Matt Murdock, weird.

The washcloth is slipping down Foggy’s cheek, dribbling a rivulet of water down into his ear. Matt tugs it back into place by a corner, a weird slithering sensation administered by clean hands. “You should eat something. It’s no good taking that stuff on an empty stomach.”

“Better now than never, I guess. Heavy chewing might be out of the picture. Spices. Tastes. God, now I want a bagel.”

“Claire has a toaster, but I don’t know about bread.”

It comes out kind of burned, but between the two of them, completely wrecked, they can manage two pieces of wheat toast. Who eats just one piece of toast? Matt takes the heel of the loaf, like some kind of culinary martyr. Foggy can barely handle his – can barely manipulate a piece of toast even with the hand that didn’t get pulped – but his hunger comes back with a vengeance after the first few bites and he finds himself too embarrassed to ask for anything more, too unwilling to have Matt get up from the couch to get it. It’s like they’re in school again and they both have matching massive hangovers and did a lot of shit they regret and any moment now Matt will just keel over like a felled tree and slow-motion slump against Foggy’s shoulder. But if he did that now Foggy would probably be sick, and Matt’s rigid upright, quietly thrumming with hurt and horror.

It’s Foggy who slumps, heavy with pain and too stiff to move more fluidly; his head’s not exactly in Matt’s lap, but there’s not enough room on the couch for them to entirely not touch.

He doesn’t know what time it is or how long it’s been, but Foggy calls him by name. His own hoarseness sounds grating. Matt can’t look at him, but he still turns his face, and the worry written there makes Foggy so scared he’s been calling for him before and just doesn’t remember it.

“Yeah,” Matt sort of breathes. There’s a scrape across his cheek, down from his mouth like a lipstick mark. Even beat up, he still looks kind of pretty. Foggy looks like a reject from the produce section, the kind of bruised fruit they can’t sell.

“Would it be too weird for you to pray for me? I’m just saying, I need all the help I can get.”

Matt’s religious, but he’s not the kind of religious that ever made Foggy feel like he was anything less for not really coming along for exactly that ride. Or for that matter, he’s not the kind of guy who would do that kind of thing without being asked, except maybe really quietly. Lots of Matt’s favorite things are not precisely on the Catholic Church’s list of recommended hobbies either. Maybe it’s just fanciful thinking thanks to his brain being scrambled but it’s not like it can hurt.

Matt sighs, and rearranges his arm so he’s not actually touching Foggy, he’s just almost touching him. The distance between them is a chasm. “Not at all. It’s not weird at all.” And with scraped-up hands he makes something that from a low angle looks a hell of a lot like the sign of the cross. Foggy doesn’t know why people do that, definitely not now, but he knows that they do and that he’s never seen Matt do it before.

(It hurts too much to think, but he does something that’s more like a prayer than he’d like to admit, lying in the dark with a hollow belly and a wet washcloth over one eye, still too broken to move – a clear inward enunciation that he needs Matt to be fine even if he’s not, that this can’t be the thing that breaks it all. Foggy doesn’t know what he’s going to do.)

Chapter 3

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

(This whole thing was written pre-s3 and it in no way takes s3 into account, I have sinned. I hope this does something to wrap up the self-contained universe of the fic, even if its relevance to canon is… uh… extremely doubtful. Thanks for sticking with me this far.

This chapter deals to some degree with disclosure and reporting of sexual assault.)

He can’t remember how he got back, and it’s probably because he didn’t. Most days it feels like Foggy died back there, and waking up in his overpriced apartment with just the normal amount of muffled pain and mounting dread is kind of a nice surprise, every time.

He can’t do a lot of anything at first. Or he’s not supposed to do a lot of anything, which doesn’t mean he doesn’t, because by God the Nelsons are titans of industry and if he can’t do something worth getting paid for he might as well lay down and die, because he’s certainly not getting paid. He can’t read up on family law because after about six minutes of trying to focus on a printed page he gets a splitting headache. Maybe Nelson & Murdock will branch out into family law, the nice kind that’s all about old people getting gay married and kids getting adopted and not the kind that’s about restraining orders and people getting murdered.

He works from home for the next couple weeks, for a generous definition of “work” — with Brett’s number already punched into his phone for him to clumsily swipe at and summon for chitchat about the outside world once Mahoney’s off the clock. Sometimes Claire will come over, or Karen, but it’s hard to entertain when most things that are entertaining are off-limits to him. His vision comes back, more or less, without any weird glitches —, though it’s hard to appreciate what a good sign that is outside of the context of Claire’s advice. He’s not even supposed to read things, but he does anyway like a dumbass because he’s a lawyer thank you very much and if he can’t even do that he’s worse than useless. But the words swim when he tries to focus on the lines of type, and dictating into a tape recorder feels so 70s.

Brett is pretty nice about looking after Foggy Nelson, Professional Invalid; there’s nobody around here who doesn’t know that guys who fuck around in other people’s business get way worse than a bump on the head on a regular basis. They’re both lucky Brett isn’t visiting him in the morgue. Brett’s not gentle with him or smarmy, he mostly wants to talk about his insane work week and what he’s binging on Netflix at 3 AM when he can’t sleep and it’s a weird kind of treat, a voyeuristic fantasy trip into a reality where all that’s keeping you up at 3 AM is office politics and dirty cops. It’s not about being taken care of, Brett would probably drop dead before admitting he out-and-out cared about him — not being alone is the medicine Foggy needs right now, and not being around people who treat him like a shattered victim is part of that. Karen mostly comes with food, and she insists on paying, which is awesome and also sad. She does a lot of reading aloud, and also a lot of drinking. Even Foggy’s landlady is sympathetic, which is not usually the case when there’s comings and goings at all hours and strange shifty women asking after F. Nelson, Esq. They talk over harmless cases, most importantly not criminal cases, and he has the unpleasant sensation that Karen is handling him with kid gloves as much for her own sake as his. She’s scared too, tired and trying not to act tired, and no amount of temporary triumph will wash that away.

The pair of them must be single-handedly keeping Seamless and Postmates going in Hell’s Kitchen, but Karen’s still easy on the eyes, at least, and it’s so much better than being alone, a good reason to remember to keep washing his hair instead of collapsing into a complete heap of self-pity. He hasn’t changed out of sweatpants in two weeks, he hasn’t called his mom or answered his sisters’ texts, and the headaches are there to stay. The stomachaches don’t go away either. It would be a hell of a lot easier to get back on his feet if he didn’t feel so sick.

*

Matt never comes to see him for the first two weeks, not once. He’s there — the cryptic phone calls, the two-sentence work emails advising Foggy to take it easy, the nice little alerts to goings-on in the neighborhood so there’s no surprises — but it’s all the weird little things that pass for protection when Matt’s not being Matt any more that really start to creep up on Foggy. Hunky lawyer Matt Murdock goes on walks; the guy with the horns and the tight pants goes patrolling, and Foggy’s terrible apartment is just one stop along his route.

Now, if he’d quit showing up at the edge of Foggy’s couch when Foggy just got done napping away his feelings, then it’d be perfect.

“Foggy?”

Foggy swings his legs over the side of the couch, grinning nervously and stifling the deep twinge of pain. The dark shape takes a couple moments to register as human, but he’s holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Matt, you creep!”

“Don’t get up.”

“Take off your gloves, stay a while. It’s 4 AM, what the hell is your deal? Are you hurt?”

Matt drops into a broken-down leather armchair and all Foggy can think is oh no, oh no, oh fuck no — somewhere under all that black cotton and leather Matt is bleeding, Matt’s got some secret injury that’s killing him. Why else would he be here?

 

Matt’s bathed in a fine mist of sweat — Foggy can smell it before he sees it, eyes focusing reluctantly on his friend’s face. He’s dressed like a prowler — no mask, thank God, and no armor, but a dark long-sleeved henley and black pants tucked into serious shit-kicking boots. He looks like he’s going to drag somebody into a white panel van. The sight of him gets Foggy’s adrenaline jumping — not because he’s afraid of Matt, he could never really be afraid of Matt even when Matt’s been out roaming the alleys of Hell’s Kitchen karate chopping zombie ninjas, but because Matt doesn’t look like that unless some seriously bad shit has been going down. Foggy can feel it, the surge of chemicals like a cold wash.

“Matt?”

“Foggy. I know what happened.”

For a split second, Foggy thinks, what the fuck is that supposed to mean? And then he remembers. How is it that he can still forget?

That’s just perfect, it really is.

“I know you did. That you do, I mean. How?”

Did he smell it on him? Did Claire tell him? Or did he just guess? That’s the only thing that makes any sense — why Matt’s been avoiding him, why he let Claire tackle it. No wonder Matt can’t stand to be around him; Foggy can’t stand himself either.
He may not be as tough as Matt is, and he may not be as strong as Matt is, but he’s not — this isn’t something that just happens to him. It’s just not. Lucky that Fisk only wanted to fuck him and leave him behind

That part Matt doesn’t answer. Maybe he just guessed, or maybe Fisk told him, or maybe he sees it in his face now. “He should have been locked up.”

Matt’s gone taut; all the veins and stuff are standing out in his neck. Foggy flinches back.

“What, was I supposed to make a citizen’s arrest?”

“I wasn’t blaming you. He shouldn’t even have been — Jesus, Foggy, he shouldn’t even have known where you were. He needs to know he can’t do this.”

“He’s not going down any harder for a one-and-done sex crime than for everything else. This is what happens when you stand up for something. I’m cool with that, really. This is how it goes.”

Foggy is raising his voice without even meaning to, and the way Matt winces makes him feel a pang of nausea.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Are you kidding? It’s so freaking gross, that’s what it is — I didn’t want to tell you because it’s gross, and it’s degrading, and I thought if I didn’t actually say anything you wouldn’t have to think about it. I don’t even want to think about it.”

“I’m not going to see you any differently, I just would have done something different if I knew—”

 

“Like what? You did everything right. Claire did everything right. What could you possibly have done?”

Everything short of going to a hospital. But you know what, he’s really okay not going to a hospital ever again. That would have been so much worse than the jerry-rigged version, just so much worse. Matt’s fingers just barely brush the back of Foggy’s hand. He hasn’t touched him like that since all this shit started happening, gentle touch instead of probing and pressing. He doesn’t need to touch Foggy to feel what’s going on with him anymore, that’s the one balance they haven’t struck — yeah, the one, the balance between Matt the blind guy who really is seriously blind and Matt the guy with superpowers.

He has bruises on the backs of his fingers. Matt’s voice is low and solid, eminently reasonable. “I would have killed him.”

There are bruises on the backs of his fingers, like the shapes of somebody else’s teeth.

“What the fuck, Matt?” Foggy grabs his hand and Matt pulls back, hard — his knuckles are split, little stars of freshly scabbed skin. “What have you been doing tonight?”

Matt’s voice is dangerously soft, creepy-soft. “And what if it hadn’t been you, Foggy? What if it had been someone else? What if next time it’s someone else?”

Matt’s arm is braced against the wall, probably getting dirt on the plaster. He’s going to lose his deposit. Foggy shoulders into it, holding him at a distance like Matt couldn’t snap his arm into a fresh 90-degree angle if he wanted to, like he couldn’t bend back his wrist until it flopped like a ragdoll. Matt’s not just well-built, he’s strong. He does stuff with that strength that poor schmucks like Foggy can’t imagine, until it’s already happening. All Foggy sees any more is all the different ways to get hurt, all the different ways his body might betray him.

“Would I barrel on in and try and press charges if they didn’t want to? No! Why are you acting like I haven’t thought about that?”

“I didn’t mean pressing charges. Do you want him to get away with it? Because that’s what’s going to happen if nobody does anything about this.”

“Is that what I’m doing, Matt? When I want to go and live my life like it didn’t happen, am I letting him get away with it? He’s in jail, Matt, he’s already racked up a shitload of Class A felonies, I’m not going to let you go do a murder on my behalf.”

“Mitigating circumstances,” Matt says. “You really believe they’re keeping Fisk locked up for good? After all the shit that’s happened? They’ll be lucky if they can keep him in there six months.”

The sound of Fisk’s name — that name — cuts like a razor. “Yeah, I really, really believe that! Because if I don’t believe that I’ll lose my effing mind! God, I’m gonna throw up—” The dizziness is all around him like a squeezing hand. Foggy presses the bridge of his nose, trying to press down the feeling of nausea as he swallows bitterness. “If I thought for a second he might come back and find me I’d fucking kill myself, which is why I don’t think about that! So let me live a little, okay?”

Foggy smudges his face with the back of one hand, trying not to lose it, and now Matt’s crying — oh, great, Matt’s crying, and Foggy’s going to start any time now, his breath is hitching up hard in his throat.

“Foggy, you’re my best friend.”

“Yeah, I know, Matt, I love you too, that’s not carte blanche to go and get your ass kicked. I didn’t die. Other people died. I’ll go up to bat for them, but not me.”

Foggy’s gripping Matt’s sleeve for balance, trying not to be sick on the couch. Here he is, telling Matt he doesn’t need or want his help, and here he is hanging on Matt like if he lets him go he’ll drown. Or Matt will drown —

“I can’t let it go by. It was a crime, and you know it was a crime—”

“I thought you didn’t kill people, Matt. Is this really proportionately worse than finding out your best friend’s a vigilante who beats people half to death every damn night? Is it worse than getting shot?”

Matt gives an annoyed exhale and it sounds suspiciously like a snort. “It’s not the same.”

“I know it’s not the same, I just— I really need you to just be my partner right now and not my pal the Avenger.”

“I’m not like those guys,” Matt says, stiffening. Oy vey, his poor wounded dignity. “And I’m not your pal. We operate a small business together, what happens to you is literally my business.”

Foggy shoves his hair out of his face and tries to stick out his jaw at least as much as Matt is gritting his.“What would you do if I were your client?”

He just keeps thinking about Matt and that little girl, Matt thinking he can just punch his way through sex criminals and it’ll all be okay — and it was even worse than that because Matt liked it, it wasn’t just righteous anger pumping through him when he told that story but satisfaction at the violence of it, some hard-on for direct action. That’s not what lawyers do. That’s not what the law is. And where the hell was Matt when that little girl wanted to get emancipated at fifteen, or when her mom wanted to get a divorce, or when they wanted an order of protection from Family Court?

Matt’s voice is cracking now. There’s a split in his lip. “I would ask you what you wanted to achieve.”

“You would apprise me of my options.”

“I would follow your lead.”

“Right. So let me make the decision instead of careening off to make it for me. I really appreciate it, Matt, but you guys already did a lot.”

“Let me know what you need.”

“I want a six-pack and a grilled cheese sandwich. I want you to take off your shoes and stay a while. I wanna watch a movie or something.”

“Well, I can’t really help you there.” The corners of Matt’s eyes crease pitifully when he smiles; there’s a little bit of blood on his teeth, and it’s hard for Foggy to resist the urge to rub at it with his thumb.

“Yeah, fuck it. There’s nothing good on anyway. Just hang out with me for a while. Just stay with me.”

He squeezes Matt’s hand and watches the little scrapes on his knuckles twist — but Matt is smiling a little and his hands are warm.