Chapter Text
The first call comes on a rainy evening.
The lights are on; her television is muted but playing something colorful. The curtains are shut, because there's a weird guy with a beer gut living in the opposite building who stares unabashedly when she opens her window, but otherwise the apartment is as bright and cheerful as she can make it.
It's stupid. Karen knows that. But something about the rain - the sound of it lashing against the glass, the way it cuts her off from the rest of the world - it always takes her back to the night she was creeping around in her apartment looking for the Union Allied file. She'd been cold, shivering, the rain dripping down her neck and into her shirt. The apartment had been very dark. Every long shadow on the wall was a threat.
Then one of them really was a threat.
She still has nightmares about being thrown into walls while knives gleam in the darkness.
She turns on all the lights when it rains, now.
"Hello?" she asks, tucking the phone between her ear and shoulder. She brings her knees under her and snags an afghan off the top of the couch.
No one answers.
"Hello?" she asks again.
When there's still no response, a sick feeling comes to her stomach.
She didn't recognize the number. She's alone, at night, in the same apartment where she's been attacked before.
"Answer me," she says, a bit too loudly, because there it is, there's the waver in her voice that always gives away her fear. She swallows hard and tries again. "If someone doesn't open their mouth and start talking, I'll send this number to the police."
There's the sound of - something - a breath, maybe, or a distant shuffle - and then the line goes dead.
Karen spends about five minutes sitting on her couch, knees curled to her chest, heart racing in time with the pitter-patter of rain on her windowsill.
Then she calls Foggy.
*
"Is this a booty call?" Foggy asks, the second he's through the door. Karen looks both ways down the hall before she shuts it behind him, turning the lock with a secure click. "Because I feel a moral obligation to share that things are actually going really well with Marci right now, so if you're only interested in me for my body - "
He shrugs, wiggling his eyebrows, letting his sentence trail off. He's absolutely drenched, hair hanging in strings and khaki coat almost brown from the rain.
At this moment, he's the best thing she's ever seen.
"Let me get you a towel," she says. He makes an 'after you' gesture, and she adds, "Nuh uh. No way. You stay right there and don't drip all over my carpet."
In the hall closet, however, she realizes she hasn't done laundry in awhile and doesn't have any clean towels at all. There's a robe hanging in her bathroom, but the thought of Foggy using it - wrapping it around himself like she'd done just that morning, his body where her body had been -
Well. She'll just have to find an alternative.
When she returns to the entryway, dish towels in hand, Foggy is exactly where she left him, standing studiously in a puddle and not making it any bigger.
"Nice," he says, spotting the towels.
"Sorry. It's laundry day."
"Liar," he says easily, accepting one and rubbing it over his face. "I bet you have no plans to do laundry at all. I bet all your lady things are just piling up in the basket - "
"Lady things?" she asks, amused.
"You know, bras and - uh - " He stops rubbing, dish towel squished over his left eye, apparently completely incapable of saying the word panties.
She decides to have mercy on him. "As a matter of fact, my lady things are all packed up and ready to go to the dry cleaner. Not all of us are willing to wear the same shirt with a mustard stain on it two days in a row - "
"Different shirts, different shirts, and I just happened to get mustard on both of them - "
"Oh, I'm so sorry," Karen says, smiling at him, and he smiles back, that curve of his lips that always sends a slow warmth through her. He's still soaked, his hair falling into his eyes and little droplets of rain rolling down his nose, and she feels almost overcome with affection for him. "Thanks for coming out in this, Foggy."
"Hey, you need me, I'm here," Foggy says. Then he pauses. "Is this a booty call, though? Because it's really kinda late, so if we have sexing to do - "
"God! No!" she says, and then they're laughing together, all her doubts vanishing with the sound. She made the right choice in calling him. She feels much better just by having him here, his presence somehow filling her entire apartment with the kind of light and humor she didn't even know she was craving.
She gets him settled on the couch with a cup of tea and one of her oversized basketball hoodies from eleventh grade. He looks absolutely ridiculous in it, and they pass some time debating the merits of varsity athletics, the rain and the shadows reduced to ambient things in the background. They talk about the firm's newest case, a cop accused of taking a bribe. They spend fifteen minutes arguing about bananas. They talk, for some reason, about Britney Spears.
After awhile, Karen stretches her legs, pointing her red toenails together. Foggy watches the movement without raising his head from the armrest.
"I don't think I've ever seen you dressed so casually before," he remarks.
"What?"
"The shorts," he says, gesturing. "The t-shirt. You're usually dressed to the nines."
Karen feels oddly warm, but she doesn't know if it's because Foggy notices her clothes or because Foggy is sitting two feet away from her while she has bare legs and messy hair. "I wear casual clothes," she says, a bit defensively. "I was in casual clothes the first time you saw me."
"Oh, when you were being suspected of murder?" Foggy asks. "That time?"
She takes a swat at him, but the movement only pulls the afghan off the couch.
"Whoops," he says. "Here you go." He picks it up and drapes it over her shoulders with a flourish, like a queen receiving a cape.
Karen reaches up and tangles her fingers in the soft fabric. She still feels a bit hot under the collar, but there's something else there too, a combination of good company and gratitude. "I really do appreciate it," she says. "You, I mean. Coming out here."
Foggy leans back on the couch. His posture is completely relaxed, but his eyes are keen. "You wanna tell me why you called me?" he asks. "I don't mind, obviously, but if there's something bugging you, or if you wanna talk..."
She looks at her toes again. She needs to re-do her polish. "I got a phone call," she says. "Unknown number. No one on the other end of the line. I don't know, it might've been a prank call. It might've been nothing." She forces a laugh, her fingers clutching the blanket. "Maybe I'm just getting paranoid in my old age."
Foggy reaches out and gently places his hand over hers. "You're scared," he says.
She meets his eyes, his dear, kind eyes. "Yeah, I am."
"Well, it's a good thing I'm here, isn't it?" he asks, and pulls his hand back, stretching out fully on the couch. He puts his feet in her lap, and she rests a hand on his ankle, his pants still a little damp because he'd refused to let them air-dry with the rest of his clothes. There are some lines, he'd said, that shouldn't be crossed. And then: at least not without a lot of vodka.
"You don't have to stay," she says, because she knows what he's doing, and there's still some small, polite part of her that wants to insist he go home since she's clearly blowing all of this out of proportion.
"I've spent plenty of nights on couches," Foggy replies. "College was crazy. Tons of girls. I watched Matt sleep with all of them while I spent the nights on the couches."
Karen smiles. "Was he really that bad?"
"God, don't get me started," Foggy says. His eyes drift shut, and she finds herself rubbing his ankle with her thumb. Somehow her hand slipped to skin without her realizing it. "Speaking of Matt," Foggy says, "don't let me sleep past seven, okay?"
"Seven am?" she repeats.
"He likes to be in the office by eight."
"What does that have to do with you?"
"It's raining," Foggy says. She cocks an eyebrow that he can't see, but then he adds, "Puddles, you know. He has his cane, but it slows him down when he has to tap around them before he can cross. No depth perception."
"Oh," she says, startled. "So you - "
"Just lend him an elbow."
The thought of Foggy waking up extra-early to help Matt across rainy streets does something to her that she can't explain. Especially since he's already trudged to her apartment in a downpour to soothe some of her craziness. "You're a really good friend, Foggy," she says, because she wants him to know that, to know that he's appreciated. She reaches out and gently combs his hair behind his ear.
He falls asleep with a smile on his face.
*
Karen wakes to an empty apartment the next morning, but there's a note on her fridge that says OFF TO HELP BLIND GUYS AND SAVE PUPPIES FROM MANHOLES in Foggy's horrible chicken scratch. She can't help but laugh, and her mood only improves when she throws open her curtains and sees the sun shining through a completely cloudless sky. The storm has passed. She even manages to wave at Mr. Beer Belly.
Once she reaches the office, however, she finds Matt and Foggy squaring off in front of her desk.
"Um," she says, closing the door behind her with her hip. "Coffee?" She has a tray of them in hand, strong ones, because she knows she'll need them and Foggy probably will too. She bought one for Matt as well, non-fat and sugar-free, because he's very picky. He says it's an assault on his senses when it's made too strongly or too sweetly. Matt can be intense about his coffee.
"Karen," he says now, stepping forward. He looks the same as ever, a sharp suit and a dark pair of shades, but his voice is concerned. "Are you all right?"
She looks at Foggy, who looks guiltily back.
Goddamnit.
"I'm fine," she says, with a glare at the traitor.
"I was worried!" Foggy protests, taking the coffee tray from her hands. "I mean, strange calls in the middle of the night, that isn't something we should ignore."
"I'm fine," she repeats, this time to Matt. "I overreacted." She can't believe Foggy blabbed. God, it's Matt.
"You didn't overreact," Matt says, which just makes her feel stupider. "It was smart to call Foggy. But you should've called me too - "
She would honestly rather die than call Matt Murdock at two in the morning because she's having a freakout.
" - I could've helped you trace the number," he continues.
"It's untraceable," Karen says. "I tried."
"You did?" Foggy asks.
"After you fell asleep," she replies, and flushes a little, because it sounds weird in the daylight, especially in front of Matt's cool, dark gaze, the one that absorbs everything.
"Well, that's awesome," Foggy says. "Where'd you learn how to trace calls? Was it all the Nancy Drewing you've been doing recently? Can you teach me?"
"Can we focus?" Matt asks. His voice has just the slightest edge, nothing out of the ordinary after working together through all kinds of ups and downs, but Foggy's mouth snaps shut like a trap, his shoulders going tight and unhappy. He also stares at the wall in the distance like it's holding all the secrets of the universe.
Karen looks back and forth between them, Matt gripping his cane with forced casualness, Foggy's shoulders a line of tension.
The silence stretches.
"Matt thinks I shouldn't have left you alone this morning," Foggy says eventually. He still isn't looking at him.
"I didn't say that," Matt replies.
"It was implied."
"Foggy," Matt says, a quiet appeal. It isn't easy to read his face from behind the glasses, but he looks... tired. Karen knows their relationship has been waxing and waning ever since their fight. She's witnessed it, the odd, uncomfortable beats in what used to be a steady back-and-forth. She still doesn't know how to fix it, if they'd even want her to. There's so much history between them, jokes that she still doesn't get, threads of long-ago conversations that flow between them, stitching together something she used to think was rock solid.
"Please don't fight because of me," she blurts out. They open their mouths in unison, but she knows what they're going to say, so she barrels on. "It was nothing, okay? Just late-night weirdness. Probably a wrong number."
"Or a prank call," Foggy suggests.
"Or someone from Union Allied."
"Or Fisk," Matt says.
They both turn to look at him.
"We put him away," he says. His cane taps lightly on the ground, a rhythmic gesture. "We represented Hoffman. We hired the secretary from Union Allied. Any digging at all and he'll know that we've been targeting him for awhile. He could be going after us in retaliation. He could be going after you, Karen."
Her heart beats furiously against her ribs. "I'm not afraid of Fisk," she lies.
The cane stops tapping.
"Well, I am," Foggy says frankly. "The guy's two steps away from becoming a supervillain. He's got money and resources and what I'm guessing is a pretty big vendetta against us - "
"He doesn't have money anymore," Karen counters. The words come on autopilot, which is good, because the only images playing behind her eyes involve seven gunshots and a jerking body, bullets ripping through a suit jacket, red blood seeping through a white dress shirt. "Owlsley - " she starts, but her mouth is so dry she has to stop and begin again. "Owlsley stole a bunch of it, remember? And then they froze his accounts on his arrest."
"He was still able to hire a bunch of men in black to help him escape custody," Foggy points out.
A sudden thought slams into her, and she grips the edge of her desk to keep from falling over, or throwing up, or both. "Do you think he'll try to escape again?"
Foggy looks stunned, but Matt's face could be made of stone. He isn't at all shocked or dismayed by the possibility of the most dangerous man in Hell's Kitchen escaping from federal custody and/or hiring his goons to harass her with phone calls in the middle of the night.
Karen grips the desk a little tighter. "How long have you been watching him?"
Matt doesn't even have the decency to look ashamed. "Awhile," he admits. "With one escape under his belt, I thought another was likely."
"Dude, thanks for sharing," Foggy says. "It's not like we're all in danger here. It's not like we would care that Mr. Stay Puft might spring himself from lock-up and come stomping over our tiny little houses."
"I'm not going to let anything happen to you," Matt says. His knuckles go white on the cane. "To either of you."
And he turns and strides to the window, putting his back to the room.
Karen glances at Foggy, expecting him to be looking back; they've perfected it, the art of wordless communication when the third member of their firm is being weird. But Foggy isn't looking at her at all. He only has eyes for Matt, and he's watching him with a strange expression on his face, one of the many that she doesn't understand anymore. "Let's not be rash about this," he says.
"I'm not," Matt replies. "I'm thinking logically. If Fisk is holding a grudge, he'll come after us. We need to be prepared."
"And then what?" Foggy asks, with a weird note in his voice.
Matt looks at the ground. Or - turns his eyes to the ground. He does that sometimes, when he's thinking particularly hard about something, and Karen wonders, not for the first time, if it's an ingrained habit left in him even after years of blindness, or if it's something that maybe all people instinctively do, turning from others to hide whatever would give them away with their gaze.
What she doesn't say is that it thrills her a little, that glimpse of his eyes over the rims of his shades. They're dark eyes, just as dark as his glasses, just as dark as they were on the night she spent in his apartment, sitting on his couch with the lights off but not feeling afraid, not when he was near.
Foggy fills her with light, but Matt makes her unafraid of the dark.
"I think we should be careful," he says eventually, and Karen realizes both she and Foggy had been waiting for that, for Matt to reach some kind of decision. "Karen, if you wouldn't mind, I think one of us should stay with you until we're sure you aren't getting any more phone calls. Or you could stay with one of us."
"Mi casa es su casa," Foggy says immediately.
"You're welcome at my place too," Matt says, ever the gentleman.
Looking at them both, Karen doesn't have the words to express what they mean to her, how she feels about the two of them standing between her and whatever lurks outside. Twelve months ago she was new to the city with no prospects and no real future. Twelve hours ago she was sitting alone in her apartment and jumping at shadows. Both of these times seem so distant now as she stands in a sunny office with what are probably her best friends in the world.
"Okay," she says, smiling and blinking a few times to hide the tears in her eyes. "Sleepovers it is."