Work Text:
Claire leaves, and it's just them. Just Foggy, really. Matt is off in some warm, drug induced dreamland, courtesy of Claire's IV, and her desire not to earn a black eye from a semi-conscious, combative Matt. A semi-conscious, combative Daredevil.
The lax face resting on the arm of the couch is so innocent, so unknowing. A sharp contrast to the frightened, animalistic expression that had twisted it before Claire had managed to get the needle in, earning Foggy a shiner to the chin and a deep, sick feeling at the pit of his stomach. He'd nearly lost his dinner as he held his best friend still as a stranger stitched him up, skin paling as blood leaked onto the couch.
This is not how he expected his night to go.
Somehow, despite how goddamn tired he is, how much shit he's already done tonight, he can't just leave things like this.
He can't sit this vigil while the meticulously clean Matt Murdock lies unknowingly stained from head to toe in gore and dirt. It's a matter of principle. He can't.
Foggy lets out a sigh as he heaves weary limbs from the hard floor; the blood's not going to wash itself off. He fills the basin in the kitchen sink with lukewarm water, finds a clean looking cloth in the bathroom, and settles back on the floor beside the couch. Matt's hand has slipped from his battered chest, fingertips brushing the ground.
Foggy's always taken notice of Matt's hands. Flying over braille, gesticulating enthusiastically, resting gently on Foggy's elbow, lightly gripping his cane. They're as open and expressive as his face. Though how the hell is he to know now if any of that is genuine?
Today, those slender fingers are stained a deep jewel red, having staunched one of the several holes that should not have been in his body until he no longer had the strength to hold them up. His knuckles are split wide open, oozing blood, the tell tale purple of deep bruising rising up underneath.
It's all so wrong.
Foggy starts with the fallen hand, gently resting it in his lap, dipping the cloth in the water, and erasing the evidence of the night. Some of the blood is dried already into the crevices of his cuticles, the creases between fingers, but slowly and surely a pale hand is revealed from beneath the gore.
The other hand is much the same, aside from a deeper cut on the side of the thumb. He disinfects it, cursing his heart for skipping a beat when Matt's face twitches in pain, and then sticks a small plaster over the site.
He runs the cloth gently up arms and shoulders, working out the debris. Giving a wide berth to the plethora of raw new stitches decorating his front, he wipes everything away. Applying only the softest pressure to Matt's face, littered with cuts and yellow bruises, he reveals the slice at the bridge of his nose, the enflamed gash at his temple, the scabs along his chin. He finds blood dried inside Matt's ear, and painstakingly removes every flake.
The liquid in the wash basin is now pink, and he dumps it down the sink with gritted teeth. Drops of it splash back on his face, and he scrubs for five minutes after, his hands, his face, unable to bear the thought of Matt's blood being anywhere but inside his body, despite it being currently painted halfway across Hell's Kitchen.
He grabs a beer from the fridge and a blanket from the bedroom. Claire had said to keep him warm, stop him from going into shock. He'd cranked up the heating earlier, and the apartment is certainly far from cold, but it seems wrong not to throw a blanket over him. Old habits die hard: he's tucked Matt in so many times over the years. Slumped over a library desk, drunk and passed out on their dorm floor, head tipped over the back of a chair at the office.
He tucks the blanket gently around his friend, and settles back down on the dirty floor beside him, swigging the beer. Everything smells like blood.
Foggy jerks awake. His face is stuck to the couch by drool, the indentation itching his cheek. Matt's kicked the blanket below his hips, legs tangled in the fabric, face tense and pained as his chest pants, small, wounded animal noises escaping his mouth. The cut at his temple is bleeding again.
It comes so naturally, because it is natural. It wasn't uncommon, in college, for Foggy to wake up to strangled screams coming from the bed beside him, Matt's eyes open in waking nightmare, drenched in sweat and chest heaving. It took time and practice, but Foggy learned how to to wake him gently, how to remind him where he was, who he was, and to get a bowl under his chin quickly when the nausea got the better of him afterwards.
"Shhhhhh, Matty, it's ok," he soothes, hands coming to rest on either side of the bruised face. "It's just me. Its Foggy. You're safe."
Matt's shoulders buck momentarily, until the words seemingly make it through to his brain, and the tension drains out if his muscles as if by magic.
A shaky hand fumbles its way up to Foggy's face, the pinky finger at the pulse point on his neck, thumb reaching towards his cheekbone.
"Don't go, Fog."
It's barely a whisper, vocal chords rasping and dry, but for now Foggy's anger melts away. This is not fake.
Foggy gently raises Matt's head, sliding it onto his lap as he settles on the couch. He tucks the blankets up to the stubbled chin, wipes away a tear dribbling down Matt's face. Wipes away a tear from his own face.
"Not going anywhere, buddy."
Everything is different, but nothing has changed.
Matt will wake up tomorrow to his best friend cold and so deeply hurt it is beyond even Foggy's rich, eloquent, lawyer vocabulary. But tonight, and always, Foggy is here to hold him as he shakes, put his pieces back together.
He is here.