Chapter Text
It had been two weeks.
Two weeks since Foggy made the new napkin while sitting at the old wooden table in the storage room of Nelson’s Meats. Two weeks since the three of them toasted, celebration and excitement hanging in the air between them as they started a new chapter. Two weeks since Matt moved back in with his husband in his apartment that smelled like home and dust and plastic police tape. Bruises were fading and wifi was set up in the space above Nelson’s Meats and they filed for a new business license.
And yet, despite a new door that spoke of hope for a bright future being open in front of him, Matt could still hear the echoes coming from the closed door behind him—violent reminders of the past months that stole his breath away, ghosts of the people he had lost haunting him in the shadows, the betrayal of those he had hurt bleeding through in their words.
And the ache in his lower back and the ringing in his ears reminded him it was all his fault.
He shifted on the vinyl booth seat he was sitting in. The curve of the back put his hips at an odd angle and he was squirming to find a position that took pressure off of them. He crossed his legs and then uncrossed them under the table.
“...strawberries. A whole festival for them in the summer,” Foggy stabbed into the air with his french fry. “Which, we would have to wait until the firm started making money again to visit. I forgot how expensive starting a new business was.” He stuck the fry in his mouth.
Matt was only half-listening to Foggy, distracted by the ache where his spine met his hips, where a building crushed multiple bones and the nuns did their best to set them with ace wraps and prayers.
“And I mean,” Foggy continued, taking loose fries off of Matt’s plate, “it could be worse, I guess. We could have deposits and first month’s rent to pay for.” He sighed, his head cocking. “Utility deposits to pay for. The new sign itself…”
Matt tuned into a siren outside – long and low. A firetruck. He cocked his head to try and listen to the radio inside the vehicle as it passed, but the dispatcher’s voice was garbled and lost amongst the other noises blending together. Matt felt his fist ball on his lap in frustration.
“Matt?”
Matt turned his attention back to his partner. “Hmm?”
“You with me?” Foggy blinked.
Matt chastised himself. “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry. I heard…a siren.” He said lamely, picking up a cold french fry and popping it into his mouth to make it look like he at least trying to participate in this half-date that was his idea in the first place.
Foggy sighed – a short, huffed breath through his nose that prickled the surface of Matt’s skin and twisted his stomach into knots. The pain in his back was forgotten as he focused on this unfamiliar emptiness in his chest. Foggy was sitting three feet away from him, but it could’ve been like he was on a different planet, orbiting on a completely different path now. And Matt knew it was all his fault.
Matt was trying. Now. He was. He didn’t want to lose Foggy. He couldn’t lose Foggy. He had just gotten him back.
Foggy was trying too – jokes came fast and loose at the office, he agreed to drinks after work at Josie’s again, and pecked Matt back when Matt leaned in for kisses.
Foggy laced his fingers together. He was still wearing his wedding ring. Matt didn’t know where his ended up after Midland Circle and at this point, he was too afraid to ask.
“I actually wanted to talk to you about something,” he started, his words weighed out before they were spoken. Matt’s breathing stopped as he focused wholly on Foggy–his heartbeat, on the wafts of cortisol that tipped off Matt that he was growing anxious about what he had to say, the anxious jiggle of his leg underneath the table.
Matt uncrossed his ankles and recrossed them. It didn’t help the pain or the nausea at the sudden tension that filled the space on the table between them, smothering out the smell of greasy french fries and Matt’s half-eaten patty melt sandwich.
“I was initially looking for myself,” he started, “I mean, God knows the whole office needs it, but I found a therapist in the area that you might want to make an appointment with?”
“Therapist?” Matt repeated, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion. Therapists were for crazy people. He wasn’t crazy.
“Yeah, Matt,” Foggy sighed again and it felt like an arrow shot right through his heart. Matt hated those sighs. He couldn’t read anything in them. Was Foggy exasperated with him? Angry? What would he be angry about now? Matt was trying now. “With what you’ve been through the last couple of months, I thought you would like to talk to someone about it? I know you used to see Fath–,”
Matt’s hands were already balled into fists, but he felt his fingernail dig into the skin of his palms as the sound of blood soaked pleads of forgiveness filled his ears and the weight of not being good enough punched through his chest with enough force to leave him breathless. “No,” he cut Foggy off before he could say his name. “I don’t need a therapist.”
Foggy sighed again and Matt fought the urge to writhe around in his seat in frustration. He ground his teeth as he held back words he knew he would regret.
You would lose him like you would lose Father Lantom. A voice mocked. The last couple of months, it had sounded like his father. Or Wilson Fisk. Rarely Stick. Now it was an amalgamation of all three of them at the same time. A voice not of this world. A voice vicious and cruel and broken. The voice of the Devil.
Matt could suddenly smell the heavy weight paper that was used for braille. Crispy and prickly with divorce decree on the same line as their names. He tried to imagine his life empty of Foggy’s presence again.
He suddenly couldn’t find oxygen.
“But, text me their information anyway,” he said quickly, which made Foggy’s form perk up a little. He wasn’t promising he would call. He probably wouldn’t call. But he could show that he was trying. For Foggy.
His attention went back to his empty third finger. Where was his wedding ring?
He couldn’t lose Foggy. He was home and Matt had been homeless long enough that he knew that he never wanted to go back to that place ever again.
“I put it all in a box,” Marci said before Foggy even had a chance to greet her. She stepped to the side so Foggy could enter her spacious, airy apartment that looked over the Hudson filled with enough Anthropologie furniture that it could’ve been a catalog ad.
“Thanks,” Foggy said, his eyes zeroing in on the file box that was overfilled with his stuff.
“You know,” Marci said, her heels echoing through her sparsely furnished place. “I could’ve dropped it off at your new office.”
Foggy ignored Marci as he squatted and rifled through the box. He had some t-shirts and a hoodie and a throw blanket in here. His extra toothbrush and a box of Chex Mix he forgot he pity-bought sat at the bottom. But, that’s not what he was looking for. He dug harder, pulling out things and setting them on the floor next to his knee.
“What are you looking for?”
“The picture,” Foggy’s eyebrows furrowed as he dug, growing more and more alarmed that he couldn’t find it. He wanted it for his new desk. He couldn’t bear to look at it during the months that Matt was gone and Foggy was convinced he was dead. He threw it in Marci’s bag one night before they went to go drown Foggy’s sorrows in alcohol. “Oh, wait,” his fingers gripped the frame and he pulled it out. “Here it is.”
Foggy sat back on his heels as he looked at the picture. It was his favorite candid of Matt that the photographer managed to snap when he didn’t know she was there. He was standing next to one of the many candle stands in the byealter of Clinton Church, the lights casting a glow around his figure that looked like a halo as he enjoyed a peaceful moment before their wedding. And maybe that’s why Foggy had such a hard time looking at it during those months without Matt, because it had reminded him of where Foggy convinced he was – amongst the angels and the saints.
Foggy wasn’t religious, but he felt God when he looked at that picture.
“Thanks for not throwing this out,” Foggy dropped it into the box and hastily covered it with the stuff he displaced.
“I wouldn’t throw out your stuff, Foggy Bear,” Marci said. “I will throw you out, though. I have a date coming in half an hour.”
“Damn,” Foggy rose with the box in his hands. “Already replaced me, huh?”
“That implies you were there to even need replacing to begin with,” Marci joked as she leaned against her breakfast bar.
“Ouch,” Foggy said with mock hurt and then shifted the box to his hip. “He cute?”
“You already know he is,” she said. “It’s David from accounting.”
“David? Really?” Foggy repeated. David was nerdy and smelled like Fruit Loops. And…kind of looked like Foggy with the soft, nerdy funny-guy thing he had going on. Foggy pressed his lips together. Marci definitely has a type.
“Yes, really,” Marci rolled her eyes. “And now I can bring him back to my place now I don’t have a depressed, grieving widower camping out on my couch.”
“Ouch,” Foggy said again.
“How is the zombie hubby now that he’s back from the dead? What happened with that, anyway?” Marci asked, her green eyes boring into Foggy as her head cocked.
“Coma,” Foggy said the rehearsed lines of the story that Matt, Karen, and him devised to explain Matt’s sudden appearance. “They couldn’t ID him while he was out, I guess.”
“Your life is so weird,” she shook her head and glanced at her expensive watch again. “Anyway, it was nice visiting with you,” she gave a big, megawatt smile full of bright, white teeth and started ushering Foggy towards the door. Foggy adjusted his grip on his box again and headed for the exit, knowing he was already a month past his welcome in Marci’s place.
“Thanks for letting me crash here,” Foggy said in the doorway. “You didn’t have to do that, but I appreciate it. It was a hard couple of months.”
Marci’s eyes went sympathetic. “Of course, Foggy Bear,” she said, “you’re my friend and it was hard watching you sulk so hard.”
Foggy rolled his eyes, wishing he could take back every heartfelt word. “I wasn’t sulking. I was grieving. Matt’s my husband and I thought he was dead.”
“I know,” Marci said. “I’m glad you got him back. It’s not everyday people survive building collapses.”
“No,” Foggy said. Or fights with mob bosses or men who could throw office supplies like projectile weapons or prisons full of violent convicts or corrupted FBI agents. But, Matt did it. Foggy thought of that picture at the bottom of his box. Matt had a guardian angel or two looking after him, that was for sure.
“Alright,” she said. “Bye.” She closed the door on Foggy.
Foggy huffed a breath. Out of all of his friends, Marci had been there for him the most the last couple of months. But, in her unconventional, uncouth way. She hoisted him back up and dusted him off when he was at his literal lowest. She was the one that pushed him to run for DA to keep him safe. She was the one who let him go through her files. He was thankful.
He rode the elevator down to the lobby, placing the box down at his feet as he watched the floor number decrease. He sighed and kicked the file box. Besides some things he would probably never see again because they were rotting in an evidence bag in a police station somewhere, this was the last of his scattered things collected. He could finally take comfort in the fact that the horrifying Wilson Fisk nightmare was finally 100% over.
The sigh his body made had his knees almost giving out. He gripped the golden bar that ran the length of the elevator and tried to keep on his feet as it shuddered to a stop and the doors slid open.
David From Accounting was standing in the elevator banks waiting for Foggy’s elevator. His eyebrows shot high with surprise as he took in Foggy.
“Foggy, hey,” he greeted.
Foggy let his eyes wander over David. Yeah, he had the geeky charm and they probably wore the same size in pants, but Foggy was leagues hotter than this guy in his Northface zip-up and Reeboks? Foggy choked back a scoff.
“Hey, David,” he greeted. “Here for Marci?”
“Yeah,” David said, a new defensive edge to his voice. “You?”
Foggy thought about messing with this guy, but he decided to throw him a bone instead. He was in a good mood. “Nope,” Foggy felt himself smile cheekily as he picked up his box. “Date with my husband, actually.” My super cute, very alive husband, he tacked on in his head.
David mentally wheeled back as surprise flitted across his face. God, Foggy would never grow tired of knocking straight people off-balance with his sexuality. “Oh,” he stammered and blushed. “Well, have fun.”
“You too. Tell Marci I said hi.” Foggy said and held in his giggle until the elevator doors were firmly closed.
Matt rose when he heard the office door click open and Foggy’s heartbeat step through it. His spine cracked audibly in multiple spots like a cheap glow stick as he stood to his full height and he winced through the pain that started right above his hip and shot through his leg to his knee in arcs of hot lightning.
“That didn’t sound too good,” Foggy commented as he dropped a file box onto his desk. “Are you okay?”
Matt massaged his lower back as he motioned to the mess. “I’m alright,” he said and dropped his hand, “just trying to get these files sorted."
Foggy sighed one of his unreadable sighs and Matt felt his chest tighten as he stepped gingerly (not because of pain; because of the stacks files on the floor) to his own desk. Their office was mostly just a big storage space. They had enough room for three desks – Foggy’s and Matt’s next to each on one wall, Karen’s on the other – and a table to hold their fax machine, printer, and a small coffee pot. A four-person table sat in the middle of the room as a makeshift conference table of sorts. And since Karen was no longer the office manager, it was up to all of them to do paperwork.
“You want me to try and rub out the knots?” Foggy offered.
Matt felt himself give a wan smile. While a massage from his husband sounded nice, knots of lactic acid did not cause the kind of pain that could be soothed with some rubbing. “I’m okay,” he assured and lowered himself down to his creaky, uncomfortable office chair. He hoped his glasses hid how tightly he shut his eyes through the transition from sitting to standing.
“How’s the filing going?” Foggy had turned to the box on the desk. He pulled items – mostly clothes, by the sound – and set them aside until he pulled out a picture frame and set it down on his desk, angling it so it was facing him. Matt opened his mouth to teasingly ask him if it was Taylor Swift, when a scent hit him in the face.
Expensive hair spray, cheap self-tanner, Coco Chanel perfume.
Marci Stahl.
The Devil sunk his claws into Matt’s chest, poisoning him with a churn of emotions that left him jarred and stole the air from his lungs.
He replaced you.
Matt felt his hands ball into fists as a flash of white hot rage hit him like a bullet, his whole mental map blazing crimson. How could Foggy just replace him? With Marci? He was only gone for…for a couple of months. Foggy couldn’t even wait until his corpse grew cold to fall into the arms of Marci Stahl?
Matt fought to recenter his breathing, his fingernails digging crescents into his thighs through his trousers. Foggy didn’t replace him. He wouldn’t. Marci was just his friend. And he could just ask him. He could ask him and Matt could convince himself that he was blowing this all way out of proportion. Foggy wasn’t currently twisting a knife in his back. He wasn’t.
Matt opened his mouth and the words died right on his tongue as the Devil hissed in his ear.
Pathetic.
“Matt?”
Even if it was true, it was all of Matt’s fault anyway. His fault for telling the cabby to take him to Father Lantom instead of Foggy. His fault for almost losing himself to permanent corruption. His fault for betraying Foggy. His fault, his fault, his fault...
It was amazing Foggy didn’t leave him permanently for Marci Stahl.
The fire inside Matt died to the chill of emptiness. The Devil’s poison turned his soul gangrenous.
“Darling?” Foggy asked and walked over. “You alright?”
Matt forced a smile to his face and his hands to his laptop. “Yep,” he rewound the last couple of minutes of conversation in his head to Foggy’s original question about the files. “The files are a mess, Fog. I can’t make heads or tails out of them.” He huffed out a chuckle that sounded more like he was a prey animal being constricted by a large snake.
Foggy sighed and Matt felt like pulling his skin from his flesh.
“It’s your fault,” Foggy said and Matt’s heart dropped into his stomach over the thought of Foggy could suddenly hear his thoughts. “Putting the one with the attention span of a goldfish to sorting the files.”
Matt snorted, but he was still trying to take, deep meditative breaths to calm himself down. Matt hadn’t been enough for Foggy these last couple of months. Matt had so much to make up for. There was so much time stolen from both of them. Matt could make it up. Matt could be good enough for Foggy.
Because if he wasn’t…if he wasn’t good enough...
He inhaled another breath of Marci Stahl as the Devil hissed in his ear again. He closed his eyes.
You’ll lose him.
Foggy woke up to the sensation of being tickled.
His eyebrows scrunched over bleary eyes as he blinked and focused on what was tickling him, never expecting that it was Matt’s lips. He sucked in a breath as Matt skated loose kisses down his torso towards his happy trail and became fully awake when Matt’s fingers bunched around the waistband of his boxers. “Matt,” he gasped, “wh-what are you doing?”
Matt answered by climbing over Foggy’s thigh to get between his legs. Well, if Matt insisted. Foggy spread his knees to allow Matt enough room. Matt laid on his belly between them, pulling down Foggy’s shorts enough to free his hard dick and balls.
“I’ve been thinking about it for ages,” Matt said in his gravel-y, just woken up voice.
Foggy moaned, pressing his head back into the pillow as Matt licked around his head and then traced the vein with his tongue all the way to the base. He then took Foggy all the way, his throat fluttering with a light gag around Foggy’s head.
“Oh, you’re so sensitive,” Foggy groaned out, sleepiness making his voice low. “Missed feeling you gag around my cock, darling.”
Matt picked up Foggy’s hand and twined their fingers together. Foggy instinctually went to spin his ring, to remind him how missed he was, and he found it wasn’t on his finger. Oh. That’s right. Foggy put his ring in his keepsake box. He’d have to dig it out.
That thought was deleted from Foggy's brain as Matt’s bobbed, low and tight, forcing Foggy’s cock deeper into the hot, wet heat of his throat. From this angle, Foggy could see Matt’s untouched dick leak spread precum over the blanket he was humping. It was delicious and obscene and caused Foggy’s hips to buck and shove his cock down Matt’s throat. Matt audibly gagged that time, his cheeks pinked and blown hollow to accommodate Foggy.
Matt pulled off Foggy’s dick, drool coating his hand as he jerked Foggy off. “You like to make me gag? Huh?” He asked as his fist grew faster.
“I like watching you make yourself gag,” Foggy argued and groaned as Matt’s fist tightened. “Fuck, Matt. Fuck.”
Matt went down on Foggy again, shoving Foggy’s cock all the way to the back of his throat. Foggy could feel him gag again and he pressed his fingers to Matt’s adam’s apple to feel how absolutely full his throat was. “Fuck, you’re so beautiful like this,” Foggy almost said with a sob.
Matt’s cheeks reddened, and he moaned. Foggy felt like he had suddenly transported into the filthiest, nastiest wet dream he could ever possibly conceive as he watched Matt’s hip stutter as he came all over their bedspread, the head of his cock still rutting unashamedly against the silk.
Foggy was cumming shortly after that, his fingers disconnecting their hands to dig greedily in his hair. “Fuck. You like coming untouched for me? Desperate and drooling–,” He mumbled as he bucked his hips up. He could feel Matt switch between gagging and swallowing his load. Some of it he swallowed and some of it leaked down his chin and dribbled out the corners of his mouth.
Foggy sagged back into the bed once he was finished. He loosened his grip on Matt’s hair to stroke through it instead. He studied the touches of gray that dusted his temples now and his smile lines as he relaxed between Foggy’s thighs with a self-satisfied grin on his face. He didn’t move to clean off his chin, just let his eyes flutter close under Foggy’s touches.
“I love you,” Foggy mumbled as he petted through Matt’s hair. “My only sunshine.”
And realization socked Foggy again that Matt was back. Wholly and in one piece. Foggy let out a long sigh of relief, tension rolling out of him peals like a thundercloud moving on.
“Alright?” Matt asked, his voice now beyond its early morning roughness into straight scratchiness. He traced little circles on Foggy’s hip and his eyes reopened to settled somewhere past Foggy’s leg.
“Perfect,” Foggy said. “You’re perfect.”
Foggy wanted to tease Matt over the blush and the little smile that he tried to suddenly hide in his leg, but whatever he was about to say died in his throat when he watched Matt’s smile morph into a frown and his eyebrows pulled together. It only lasted for a second before he fixed his face into something more neutral, but Foggy caught that flash of…something.
Something that didn’t give him the warm and fuzzies.
“Oh,” Foggy’s delight in his words was glitter. It was magic. “These are pretty.”
Foggy took the flower arrangement from Matt, immediately digging his nose into a rose. Unlike Elektra, whose standards were impossible to meet when it came to displays of affection, Foggy’s standards were not so high. Especially for flowers. Matt didn’t have a ton of discretionary funds, but he managed to find enough to purchase a pretty grocery store bouquet. Or at least, he trusted the bouquet was pretty. It was the one that smelled the best and seemed the freshest.
“What’s the occasion?” Foggy asked as he continued to press his nose into a flower.
Matt felt his face heat and he ducked his head as he headed for his desk. “Just because,” he offered lamely. He wanted to relish in Foggy’s happiness. He wanted to prevent those sighs that felt like a shank between his ribs. He wanted to prevent the voice from pointing out how he wasn’t good enough for Foggy. He wanted to prove to himself that he just wasn’t taking up space in Foggy’s life that wasn’t meant for him anymore.
And he could still smell Marci Stahl in the air and he wanted to choke it out with the heavy scent of lilies and roses.
Foggy pouted. “They’re so pretty, Matt.” He rose from his office chair and walked the short steps to Matt’s desk to lean down and kiss him. Matt enthusiastically accepted the kiss back. He was loved and there wasn’t anything the Devil could do about it.
Foggy pulled away first. He poked around drawers and closets until he emerged with an empty bucket. He filled it with water from his water bottle and dropped the flowers inside. “I’ll have to put them in a vase when we get home.” He said. “Thank you, darling.”
“You’re welcome,” Matt felt like he was hanging onto every word and change in Foggy’s physiological tells that could tip off that he was lying. He didn’t sigh, which was good. Matt counted that as a point for him, but he couldn’t shake this feeling of unease either. Foggy was so enthusiastic about simple flowers. A little too enthusiastic to be real.
Matt felt his eyebrows furrow as he opened a random file and pretended to sort through its contents. That unease was pervasive. Matt elicited the response he wanted – making Foggy smile. Why did it feel like Foggy’s reaction wasn’t genuine? It read genuine, but a seed of dread in the pit of his stomach had Matt studying Foggy’s every move as he lowered himself to his own office chair and opened his laptop.
Matt wasn’t allowed to ruminate on his thoughts for long as Karen came through the door with a latte in one hand and some files in the other. She was wearing jeans and sneakers and smelled like the subway. “Already pounding the pavement?” He asked from his desk.
“Ugh,” Karen grunted as she leaned over her desk and started manically flipping open files. “Yeah. I need to go back to the archival building, but I forgot something.” She shoved a couple of papers into her bag and hurried out the door.
“Always on the move,” Foggy commented as he looked between two documents.
Matt felt that burning hot rage again. Why couldn’t Foggy pull his head out of his ass for a second to see that Matt was trying? Why couldn’t his efforts be acknowledged past a simple ‘thank you?’ Matt had been alone for all of those months too. He had been alone and hurting and afraid of what he was becoming.
Your fault.
Matt was back to digging his fingernails into his thighs to keep himself from shaking. It was his fault he had been alone. It was his fault that he had been hurting, that he was hurting. Present tense. It was his fault that he almost became what he despised. He just wanted Foggy to remind him that he was strong enough, he was good enough. Over and over and over–
Matt wanted Foggy’s touch. He needed his touch.
Matt pushed himself to his feet, the pain twinging his lower back putting him back on earth long enough to question what he was doing. Pathetic. The voice spat at him. Foggy didn’t even glance over at him. The anger inside of him was all-consuming over Foggy’s obtuseness. He twisted to grab for his cane from where it was leaning against the wall behind his desk. He needed to get out of here before he threw something at his husband. He was dangerously close to throwing something at his husband.
“Matt?” Foggy finally asked. “Where are you going?”
“Walk,” Matt said. “I’ll be back.”
He went up instead of down, heading towards the roof of the building where a picnic table was set up and a vinyl cloth covered a coal barbecue to protect it from the rain. Only when he was at the picnic table, lowering himself down to the bench, did he finally let the tears that were threatening to spill over drop, but then he immediately sniffled hard and reeled himself back in. Part of him felt stupid for wanting Foggy to come and find him up here. Part of him feared what he would say if he did.
Two stories down, Matt could hear Foggy sigh instead. Matt’s eyes pressed shut as the Devil forced more tears involuntarily down his face. Pathetic.
Matt tried to channel his momentary insecurity from that day into his fists that night.
He found a group of car boosters–some kids too young to really be out at night trying to commit grand theft auto. He dropped from the fire escape above them, landing silently on the balls of his feet like a cat. Ignoring the shooting pain in his back, he focused on the three young men in front of him. Their heartbeats were loud, young, and anxious with inexperience as they jimmied an unbent wire hanger through the window of a sedan.
He cleared his voice, and all three heartbeats froze.
“Oh shit,” one of them said in a whisper. “It’s the Devil.”
Matt felt that flash of hot rage. His fingers gripped into tight fists.
“Hey, man,” another one said in a bolder voice, “this ain’t what it looks like.”
Matt felt himself give a sardonic smile at their turn of phrase. He cracked his neck. If they only knew what it looked like to him.
“Run, man!” The third said, gripping his friend’s shirt. “Run!”
They scattered in three different directions, dropping the wire hanger on the sidewalk. Matt sighed as he let them go. They were young and frightened enough now that he was certain that he wouldn’t ever find them trying to boost cars again. He bent and picked up the wire hanger, folding it over twice before tossing it down the alley behind him. He turned and headed back up the fire escape.
Since Ben Poindexter had completely ruined Daredevil’s public reputation in the armor, Matt was forced to go out again dressed in the black mask. At least the police knew he was on their side. That was a consolation he did not take for granted.
But the last couple of weeks had been…quiet. Matt spent most of his nights sitting on various roofs of Hell’s Kitchen, listening to its population below live their lives. He couldn’t figure out if everyone was keeping their heads down in the light of Fisk’s arrest and it was a matter of time before Matt’s nights were full of bloody fists pounding the crime out of his city again or if he had finally, truly made a difference with his presence.
He had been enjoying the peace. This night, however, it was grating to him in the worst of ways.
He heard a scream and turned towards it, but then a siren kicked on and Matt relaxed. Hell’s Kitchen police could do their actual jobs now without being distracted by Fisk’s schemes. This made Matt feel…
Useless.
The Devil was screaming now, itching to claw out through Matt’s chest at the first chance at a fight. Matt wanted to pound someone who deserved it into the pavement until he felt delicate bones crack under his fists and screams gurgle in the back of their throats as they lost consciousness. He was not useless. He took Fisk down. He brought peace to his city. His very presence struck fear in the hearts of criminals now. He was not useless.
He jumped the gaps between roofs to the opposite end of the block and squatted, listening for the first sign of struggle. He pressed and pressed out with his senses, listening to couples watch television and the closing windows and hushing children and tapping on their computers as they finished work late into the evening.
Finally, he heard a scream. A woman.
He was off the roof before she could inhale her next breath.
A man was harassing her outside a club. Matt stopped before he got too close. There were people – drunk clubgoers mostly – milling around the sidewalk. The woman screamed again and Matt realized she wasn’t being harassed, she was being carried. Thrown over the man’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. The scream was punctuated with a laugh as she beat on the man’s backside with her clutch bag. A group of friends looked on, their laughs rising and disappearing into the night. After a couple of moments, he set the woman down on her feet and she lightly punched the guy in the arm. Matt felt immense disappointment as he retreated into the shadows.
He should be happy. He should be pleased. He should be resting on his laurels and enjoying the peace that he was the direct result of. Their ability to be outside, carefree and living their lives was his doing.
But, all he felt was rejection. Rejected by the city he loved.
The Devil screamed to be let out.
Foggy roused to consciousness, freezing where he laid with a second of alarm as he listened intently to the refrigerator open and then shut. A moment later a bottle cap hit the floor. Matt. He pulled the covers off his body and rose to his feet.
“Light night?” He guessed after he had shoved the barn door that separated the living room and their bedroom to the side.
Matt’s mask was off, but his shoulders were tense like he was still readying to fight as he stood in the middle of their tidy kitchen. He took two sips of his beer before he answered. “Yeah,” he said. “Light night.” He didn’t seem at all pleased with admitting that.
Matt’s bruises from that Night of Reckoning (as Foggy was labeling it in his head) were fading to yellow his skin, but Foggy knew that the invisible wounds that inflicted Matt from dancing so close with fate did not heal as easily. He was still going out, despite eradicating the king of crimes from his neighborhood. He still sought to do good, even though he already pushed himself to the limit trying to do his absolute best.
Foggy sighed. “You want to come to bed?”
“Shower,” Matt just grunted back, finishing his beer and pulling out a second one.
“Is it a two-beer night?” Foggy asked. “What happened out there for it to be a two-beer night?” His brain started churning up worse case scenarios, each bloodier and more gruesome than the last.
“Nothing,” Matt answered curtly. “Go back to bed, Foggy.”
“If something happened, you should talk about it.” He truly hated that Matt never seemed to be able to talk about what was going on in that enigmatic head of his. That’s why Foggy was Googling therapists. Maybe if he couldn’t talk about it with him, he could do it with someone who had objectivity to his situation. Or at least, someone he respected the intelligence of enough to point out when he was being irrational. He never seemed to trust Foggy on that front.
“Foggy, stop–,” Matt’s form tensed further, if that was even possible, and he cut himself off with a short sigh. He shifted on his feet. “It’s fine, alright? I’m just pent up.”
Foggy didn’t need to be a human lie-detector to register all of that as bullshit. He pressed his lips together as frustration built in his chest. “I thought we were done lying to each other?” His tone was more annoyed than he intended, which was never a good strategy when trying to get Matt to open up. Actually, it did the opposite. Foggy almost watched him physically pull his cards tighter to his chest.
Matt bristled and his fist hit the counter. “I’m telling the truth,” he said. “Nothing happened. Nothing’s been happening. The city doesn’t need m–,” he shook his head and pressed his lips together. “Can we just go to bed?”
Foggy nodded. Two in the morning didn’t seem at all an appropriate time to have this discussion, but was there ever an appropriate time with Matt Murdock? He was tired and annoyed and that rarely added up to any sort of productive outcome to their conversations. “Fine,” he said. “I’m sorry your night wasn’t…what you expected it to be.” He made a face.
“Thanks,” Matt said flatly, draining his second beer and tossing the empty bottle in the sink to be rinsed for the blue bin. “I’m sorry I snapped at you,” his tone changed. It was small and tired. Exhausted even.
“It’s alright.” Honestly, he used to beg for Matt’s petty snaps and his brooding and his sudden moodiness back. He wanted all of Matt’s bad parts because they came with all the good. He just wanted Matt back alive and well. “Come to bed soon, okay?” He said in an equally small voice and turned around.
Foggy climbed back into his side of the bed. Then he was reminded as he was getting comfortable again that Matt still didn’t have his wedding band back. He leaned over and dug his keepsake box out from underneath the bed. He fished around past the photos he never wanted to part with and important documents like his passport to Matt’s ring, sitting at the bottom in the corner. He replaced the box in its place and spun the ring on his finger as he waited for Matt to come back from the shower.
Hopefully, getting this back would ease Matt’s bad mood.
About fifteen minutes later, Matt pushed himself into the bedroom, his form silhouetted by the neon wash of pink and green billboard lighting from outside. He slid into his side of the bed with a small, pained groan.
“I got this out for you,” Foggy held out the ring for Matt. “I’ve been meaning to give it back to you for a while.”
“My wedding ring,” Matt pulled himself up to take it from Foggy.
Foggy picked up Matt’s hand and slid the ring on himself. He swallowed as he remembered when Matt’s personal effects that were recovered from the collapse were returned to him – his gym duffle full of his clothes, his ring tucked in the hidden side pocket it was always kept in when he went to workout. They never recovered his body. Foggy was always tormented with the idea that Matt knew he was going into that building to die and that’s why he took it off in the first place. That he chose his ex-girlfriend Elektra over his own husband. He wanted to ask, but he was a coward and was too afraid of the answer.
“Thank you,” Matt inhaled a shuddering breath as he adjusted his ring so it sat as close to his knuckle as it could, “darling.” His voice was shaky and low.
Foggy wrapped his arms around Matt, comforting himself with Matt’s warmth and the weight of his body in his arms. They didn’t find a body, because he had miraculously survived. And now he was back safely in Foggy’s arms where he belonged. Foggy’s eyes slid shut as Matt’s face tucked into his neck and his hands filled with handfuls of Foggy’s sleep shirt.
“I love you,” Foggy whispered in the dark.
Matt didn’t answer back. He was already asleep.
Chapter Text
Matt woke up in a tangle around Foggy, his spine twisted in a way he knew if he tried to roll off, he would be met with the zinging, static of nerve pain radiating from his back into his lower extremities. His ear was against Foggy’s chest and he tuned into the sound of home instead, letting his warm pulse lull him back into a state of almost-unconsciousness.
Foggy’s heartbeat matched the steady thrum of a hangover in his temples. He only had two beers. These last couple of months of involuntary sobriety living in the basement of Clinton Church had turned him into a lightweight.
Matt loosened his fingers from where he was gripping Foggy’s shirt in his sleep. Matt chastised himself for feeling like he needed to be this close, but couldn’t will himself to separate. He felt like a child sneaking into his dad’s bedroom during a harsh thunderstorms to be comforted through the noise of the wind that shook their windows and made their building sway again.
He shouldn’t need comfort. He was a warrior, and he had proven that fact many times over now. But, he learned that day that shame wasn’t a powerful enough force to make him disconnect from Foggy’s hold.
Actually, he felt himself snuggle closer. Foggy was still asleep, but he wished he would wake up so he could pet through Matt’s hair, rub his sore back. He wanted Foggy’s groggy voice in his ear, telling him he was loved and perfect and wanted. He just wanted to be wanted.
He braced himself as the Devil mocked him. Pathetic. It spat.
The Devil replayed their conversation from last night in vivid detail like Matt was reliving the whole thing. The fire in Matt’s gut from striking out, the spike of adrenaline when Foggy asked I thought we were done lying to each other? Matt never wanted to relive the flash of soul-crushing, pure rage he felt in that second. Especially when it was directed at Foggy, his husband. The Devil had blinded him to all the good Foggy was in his life and for one solid second, Matt’s brain only screamed hate, hate, hate like an alarm.
And then Foggy gave him his ring back. He saw Matt was struggling and tried to ease it. Foggy was perfect and kind and his actions were woven with the little, tangible reminders of his love for Matt. He loved Matt.
It wasn’t Foggy that Matt hated, it was himself. He hated himself.
He didn’t realize he was digging his nails into Foggy’s skin until Foggy stirred. “Matt?” He mumbled groggily and gave him a little shake by the shoulders. “You’re having a bad dream again,” he whispered into the air.
“I’m awake,” Matt said and unclenched his fingers. “Sorry.”
“Oh,” Foggy picked up his head and then let it clunk back onto his pillow. “What time is it?” He groaned and rubbed at his face.
Matt reached behind him and slapped his alarm clock and the tinny voice said it was six in the morning.
“Ugh,” Foggy groaned again. “Too early.” He rolled towards Matt and re-tucked him against his chest. He sighed, but Matt knew this one, at least, was a happy sigh by the way he dug his nose into Matt’s hair and rubbed his face with the backs of his fingers. Matt relished in his touches and his smell and the heartbeat that enveloped him, that reminded him he was loved. And wanted.
Matt stood in the kitchen, sleepiness and that light hangover making everything a little hazy in the world his senses built. It was Saturday, so they didn’t have to go to the office, but they were planning on going in anyway to finish the filing so they could get some floor space back before the next work week. Matt wanted to make breakfast before they headed out, so while Foggy was in the shower he got some eggs going on the skillet and pulled out a ripe cantaloupe that needed to be cut into slices.
But, then he froze in front of their knife block. It was old and chipped from them not taking care to aim when he put the knives back in their slots and their knife set were worn and old, needing constant resharpening with the included knife sharpener. He went to pull out the butcher knife and his fingers just…stopped as his brain played out a possibility he had never considered before.
Ben Poindexter gripping the hilts of their old kitchen knives and flinging them with his inhuman precision. Except his brain also supplied all the vivid, horrible scenarios if Matt failed to stop him. They all ended with Foggy bloody and dying on the floor of his own home.
He quickly counted the knives, touching each one like he was afraid he was making a mistake. He counted twelve knives – eight steak knives, the small paring knife, the butcher knife, the serrated bread knife, and the long filet knife. And the kitchen shears.
He did it again when he wasn’t sure if he had touched all of them properly. He did, didn’t he? He pressed his lips together as he counted their knives again, feeling silly now because he had just done this. He made it a point to pull each knife halfway out their slot to prove to himself that they were all there.
But, he put them away correctly, right? The sound of Foggy’s foamy, gurgling last breaths from being stabbed in the jugular by an impossible shot filled every corner of his brain where doubt wasn’t as he quickly counted the knives again and made sure they were all seated correctly in their proper slots.
He turned and put the cantaloupe back in the refrigerator. They didn’t have to eat it today and Matt could avoid having to displace a knife he painstakingly counted. Three times now.
He was finishing breakfast – eggs and toasted slices of bagel – when Foggy came out of the bathroom dressed comfortably in an outfit appropriate for early spring weather.
“You made breakfast,” Foggy gave Matt a kiss, his hands circling around Matt’s waist in a way that made him never want to disconnect. “Thank you, my love.”
“Filing will go better if we’re not counting down the minutes until lunch,” Matt pointed out as he set their plates on their dining room table.
“Smart and beautiful,” Foggy said as he sat down. He took a sip of coffee. “How did I get so lucky?”
Matt kissed his head and settled next to him at the table. He tried to focus on his food – eggs fresh and a little runny, just how he liked them. But, those knives almost called to him with whispers of doubt that plagued his brain. What if he didn’t count the knives correctly? He should go check again. He needed to check again.
He opened his mouth once he was done choking down his last bite of eggs to ask Foggy to check for him. He would feel better if Foggy counted them too. If just to ease the doubt drip, drip, dripping in the back of Matt’s mind.
Foggy was currently scrolling some loud social media app on his phone as he munched on his bagel, the sound changing every couple of seconds with his thumb swipes. Matt closed his mouth, not wanting to disturb Foggy’s breakfast.
He decided to just count the knives again and hoped that would be enough to alleviate the sounds of Foggy choking on his own blood that was filling his brain like a prophetic vision.
“I have brought sustenance and libations,” Foggy announced as he stepped back into the office with two expertly wrapped sandwiches and a couple of cold beers. If spending every holiday and summer break helping out behind the counter taught him anything, it was how to make a damn sandwich.
“My hero,” Matt said as he shifted around to his knees from where he sat on the floor in front of a filing cabinet. He didn’t move to get up and Foggy could bet actual money it was because of his bad back now. Foggy had also been Googling doctors, but he wasn’t sure where to even start with that. What doctor treated bodies that had been crushed under a building? What damaged lied underneath the surface of Matt’s skin?
And then there was convincing Matt to see a doctor in the first place.
Foggy didn’t want to bring it up and lose the mirth that had Matt’s easy smile on his face as they bantered with stacks of manila files between them. Easy, carefree banter that reminded Foggy of a time before he knew ancient, undead ninja clans existed and FBI agents were corruptible. He hoped desperately that falling back into well-worn habits was a sign that they didn’t completely lose what they had before, they just misplaced it.
Matt shifted around so he could lean against the filing cabinet, stretching his long legs out in front of him and crossing his ankles. His college sweatshirt was the same color as his glasses and the hidden red in his hair. He was beautiful. And alive. And Foggy’s. All Foggy’s.
“Foggy, darling,” Matt said as he bit into his sandwich. “You’re heaven sent.”
Foggy was pleased as he settled next to Matt. He clinked beers with Matt before diving into his own lunch. Oh, yeah. He outdid himself this time.
“You think we can make Karen come in next Saturday?” Foggy asked around a bite of food. He picked up a napkin and wiped mustard from the corner of Matt’s mouth for him.
Matt snorted beer through his nose. “She probably already does.”
Foggy rolled his eyes. “Always the overachiever.”
Matt giggled. “Even when it’s dangerous.”
“Especially when it’s dangerous!” Foggy griped as he took another bite. “How did I surround myself with thrillseekers with no senses of self-preservation? I used to be boring and, and safe.” He said around his mouthful.
“‘Daredevil’ is a fitting name then,” Matt just pointed out.
“Yeah, a little too fitting,” Foggy muttered. “Hopefully with Fisk put away, criminals will think twice now and save me some grief.”
Matt’s smile slid off his face. “It’s been pretty quiet out there lately,” his eyebrows furrowed behind his glasses as he finished his sandwich.
“Yeah, that’s what you said last night,” Foggy said carefully. “Hope it stays that way.”
Matt’s mouth opened and then he closed it. He wasn’t pleased that the streets seemed quiet now. But, Foggy knew that the suit’s reputation was tanked due to Ben Poindexter’s impersonation of him, Matt had some work to do to get back in the good graces of the city. Foggy bet that was a lot pressure.
Well, if Foggy had completely ruined Matt’s mood, there was no harm in bringing this up now. “Have you called the therapist I texted you?”
Matt inhaled a deep breath. “Not yet.”
Foggy noted the ‘yet’ in that statement. That meant he hadn’t completely rejected the idea. “I think it would be good.”
“I don’t need a therapist, Fog,” Matt said again, wadding up the parchment paper the sandwiches were wrapped in and setting it on the floor next to his leg. “I’m fine.”
“Well,” Foggy said. “I’m going to call them because I do.” He said and wadded up his own lunch trash. He grabbed Matt’s so he didn’t have to get off the floor just yet to throw it away himself.
“Why?” Matt blurted, suddenly very tense.
“Because I’ve been through hell the last couple of months,” Foggy blurted. “I had to go through all five stages of grief when I thought you were dead, had to do it again, but backwards when you weren’t. I’ve been shot at and almost took one of your batons to the face, live in fear that Fisk was going to have me killed. It’s been a rough–,”
“Okay,” Matt cut him off, his shoulders tense now. “I get it. You should…make the appointment then.”
Foggy twisted so he was facing Matt. He grabbed his hand. “But, I know that whatever I went through doesn’t hold a candle to what you’ve been through.”
Matt yanked his hand out of Foggy’s hold. “I’m fine.”
“We could go together?” Foggy pitched.
“I don’t need a therapist!” Matt snapped, his face flushing the same maroon his glasses and sweatshirt was. “Stop saying I’m crazy.”
“I’m not saying you’re crazy,” Foggy shook his head.
“You’re implying it,” Matt rose to his feet, his back cracking on the way up. Foggy wasn’t a doctor, but it sounded like bones were grinding together somewhere inside of him. “And I don’t appreciate it.”
“Matt, no,” Foggy rose as well. “I just want you to be able to talk to someone you trust.”
“I trust you,” Matt said weakly and Foggy rolled his eyes because that was a crock of shit. “I talk to you.”
Foggy audibly sighed at that one. Because, no, he didn’t. Not in any way that really counted when it came to whatever Matt was waffle-stomping down the Deal With This Never drain. He hadn’t even mentioned Father Lantom since his funeral. Foggy hadn’t even seen him actually grieve for the priest that had done so much for him.
“What do you want from me?” Matt snapped again, his form practically vibrating with anger now.
“I just want you to be okay,” Foggy said without really thinking about his words as they tumbled unchecked out his mouth. “I love you and I worry over you and I just…” he shrugged, “never want to see you in that place you were a couple of months ago again, okay?”
“You won’t,” Matt said, sincerity and determination in his voice. “Things will be different now, alright?” His hand reached out for Foggy’s.
Without permission, tears clouded Foggy’s vision. “It’s been so hard without you,” he whispered, also without his permission. Jesus Christ, Nelson. He chastised himself. Get it together.
“Foggy,” Matt breathed. “I’m sorry.” He removed his hand from Foggy’s grasp to cup his face. All the fight and anger had oozed out of him and he pulled Foggy into his arms. Foggy sniffled and fought for air as he dug his nose against Matt’s shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
Foggy just gripped Matt in big fistfuls and squeezed his eyes shut. His husband was alive and here and they were starting a new chapter and Foggy wasn’t going to let anything ruin it. Nothing was going to come between them again. They’d have to kill him first. That was a fact. That was a promise.
Foggy changed strategies. Maybe a therapist could be worked up to. Let’s get Matt’s visible injuries addressed first and then they can work their way up to the invisible ones. “If you won’t make an appointment with a therapist, would you make one with a chiropractor or something instead?”
Matt’s face pinched up. “Foggy–,”
“I know,” Foggy interrupted him before he could completely reject the idea. “But, they might be able to give you some stretches or something you can do for your back? Come on, darling, even I can hear the way your spine sounds like a xylophone being tuned in a clothes dryer every time you stand up.”
Matt chuckled at Foggy’s joke. Foggy almost jumped for joy that he managed to get Matt’s smile back. “Is it that bad?”
“My back hurts just watching you get out of bed in the morning,” Foggy insisted. “Like sympathy labor pains or something.”
Matt’s eyelids fluttered as he rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “So, let me get this straight,” he started, walking over to his desk to lean against it. “You want me to go see a chiropractor to help your back pain?”
“Whatever gets you in the door, my beloved,” Foggy answered diplomatically.
Matt sighed. “You won’t stop until I make an appointment, huh?”
“I’m a trained orator,” Foggy pointed out. “I can argue my point for a long, long time.”
“Fine,” he relented. “I’ll make an appointment for my back, but we’ll have to come up with a different story to explain the injuries.” He moved around his desk and sat down.
“We’ll think of something,” Foggy nodded. Foggy wondered if it was because they were that severe or if they were getting in the way of Daredeviling. Either way, Foggy was just glad that one of his ideas wasn’t being immediately shut down. “I’ll start looking for doctors,” he said and pulled out his cell phone.
“And Foggy?” Matt said.
“Yes, darling?”
“I’m glad you’re…” Matt started slowly, his fingers fidgeting with his ring. Foggy couldn’t help but feel a pang of grief. He missed Matt’s fidgets. “I’m glad you’re talking to someone.”
“Oh,” Foggy said, looking up from his phone. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“You can…” Matt continued to fidget, spinning his ring round and round his finger. “You can talk to me too, you know? I know we haven’t…yet. And we should, eventually.”
“I think we should talk about what happened too,” Foggy nodded. “But, we don’t need to do that today. We can wait until the time is right.”
Matt looked relieved he was off the hook for now. And maybe it was too soon for Foggy to push Matt into something he didn’t want to do. He already spent the better part of the year getting forcibly involved in situations beyond his control. He didn’t also need that from his husband.
Baby steps, Foggy reminded himself. Baby steps.
Matt was trying. He was.
“Left,” he directed and then winced. “Too much.”
Foggy volunteered to massage Matt’s back after they had gotten home from the office. Matt wasn’t sure it would do anything to help – his injuries were in the bones and nerves, not the muscles – but he didn’t want to argue with Foggy anymore that day.
He made Foggy cry. He made Foggy’s heartbeat stutter when he said yes like Foggy had already convinced himself that Matt was only capable of shutting him down. Foggy was seeing a therapist now over what Matt had put him through.
He was trying, but it wasn’t hard enough.
And it was the Devil’s fault. Or well, his fault for not being able to contain the Devil. It felt like a wildfire inside of him, a spark bursting into an uncontrollable flame that just completely took him over. Foggy didn’t deserve to be a target of his rage. Foggy loved and worried over him. Foggy had been through enough already just being with Matt.
You made Foggy cry.
The Devil was having a field day. Matt needed to be better to his husband. He had to be. When would Foggy say enough is enough? When would the next tear over Matt be the last? Matt absolutely feared the moment Foggy realized that Matt was too much trouble and left him and Matt was pushing him towards the door by arguing with him. He had to do better.
Matt hissed with pain as Foggy’s fingers found an especially sore spot. He dug his nails into his thighs as he flinched away from Foggy’s touch.
“Baby,” Foggy sighed and Matt’s fingers gripped harder. He hated those sighs. Was he disappointed with him? Angry for not seeing a doctor sooner? “Your back…”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not a doctor,” Foggy said from behind him, “but your part of your spine is…sideways?”
“What?” Matt unclenched his hands.
“These bones,” Foggy traced a finger down Matt’s spine, “are not in line anymore with these one,” he said and moved his fingers up Matt’s back. “They’re, like, zig-zagged.”
Well, that would explain all the pain and the pins and needles Matt would get in his extremities sometimes. It would explain his inability to feel his legs after the accident.
“It’s crazy that you can even get to your feet,” Foggy breathed. “Does it hurt?”
All the time. Matt thought to himself. The pain was a souvenir from running from his problems instead of facing them head-on. It was punishment for spitting on God and turning his back on his friends and family. He sighed, but didn't say anything. Foggy already knew the answer to his own question.
“I have a heating pad somewhere,” Foggy shifted from the couch. “It might help.” He disappeared in the bedroom.
Matt bristled. Heating pads and therapy and soft sheets and comforting touches were all soft stuff that would eventually lead to his demise. And maybe shame wasn’t a strong enough force to keep him away from Foggy’s hold or separate him from his silk sheets, but he didn’t have to give in to the other shit. He had done more with a lot less. He was fine. Fine.
You made Foggy cry. Matt clamped his mouth shut before he could protest.
Foggy reemerged with a heating pad he set up on the side of the couch closest to the wall, plugging it into the wall and turning it on. “Voila,” he said, “your throne awaits.”
Matt hesitantly shifted over to sit on it, the pad already warm against his back. He hissed in pain again, his back spasming all the muscles up his spine, but then they relaxed as the heat radiated into his back. He wasn’t really sure if it was doing anything to the unhealed fractures, but at least everything was warm enough to not crack when he finally let himself sink into the couch.
“Good?” Foggy asked as he hovered and Matt nodded. “Good.” Foggy smiled and took his place next to Matt on the couch. His arms folded around Matt’s shoulders and he kissed Matt’s temple.
And maybe Matt could do the soft stuff sometimes. At the very least, just to please Foggy. Because relishing in Foggy’s happy, loving touches was a balm more powerful for Matt’s pain than a heating pad and some aspirin or even a doctor could ever do. This was trying, Matt reminded himself. He was trying.
Matt wanted to go out, but like with the knives, he was stuck again.
This time it was on the door that led to the fire escape. He didn’t usually lock it when he went out patrolling. Nobody had access to the roof except for him and their neighbor Fran and Fran was currently asleep. Matt could tell by her slow breathing and her four cats that surrounded her on all sides in her bed.
He had locked it this time, wanting to give Foggy some peace that night. He was planning on seeing a therapist over the stress in his life and Matt didn’t want to be the cause of any more. But, as he walked away that faucet of doubt started drip, drip, dripping in his brain again, forcing himself to turn around and check the door.
He gave the doorknob a twist, feeling it catch on the lock for the sixth, seventh, eighth time. He could physically tell the lock was in place by sensing the bar in its slot. It didn’t matter. That same prophetic vision of Ben Poindexter sneaking in and murdering his husband was steamrolling over him at high speeds. He could smell and feel the heat of Foggy’s blood and hear his dying breaths like he was currently living it.
“Come on,” he grunted to himself, his hand still on the doorknob and anxiety still twisting his guts up into knots. “It’s locked.”
He pressed his forehead to the door. The Devil was currently egging him on to find a fight, his palms itchy and hot to punch the first criminal he found into the dirt. If he could only placate the panic that was currently making him jittery and irrational.
Mind controls the body.
What controls the mind?
Fear. The Devil answered for him. You’re afraid.
He growled lowly in his chest at himself, at the doorknob. He couldn’t lose Foggy. He didn’t even know where Ben Poindexter was. Rotting in a jailhouse somewhere, Matt was certain. He should ask Karen to track him down so he could keep tabs on him.
He gave the doorknob another careful rattle and then finally, finally he felt satisfied enough that he could remove his hand. He did so slowly, just in case it was a trick somehow and the faucet was going to flood him again with the illusion of Foggy dying in his arms. Why was he at odds with his intuition? Why was he doubting his own senses? This was going to get him killed.
He shook his head as he slipped on his mask. He didn’t have fear.
He couldn’t have fear.
He jumped off the roof to prove to himself that he still could between his “zig-zagged” spine and self-doubt. He grabbed a fire escape on his way to cushion his fall and landed with a soft grunt on the balls of his feet. Pain radiated from his back upon impact, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been the last couple of days. Maybe Foggy’s heating pad made a difference after all.
He could hear a struggle the block over – two men, by the sound of it – and headed that direction, climbing up another building so he could assess the situation before intervening.
It sounded like a drug deal gone bad. A man that smelled like cheap whiskey had another man that smelled like he was three days past when he was due for a shower pinned to the wall of a closed bodega. “Where’s my fucking money, Joe,” the guy doing the pinning demanded, wrenching the other guy’s arm behind him.
“I’ll have it for you tomorrow,” the guy, Joe, shrieked when his arm was twisted. “Please, Ricky. I promise I wasn’t trying to steal from you.”
“You think I’m stupid or something?” Ricky asked and slammed Joe’s head into the wall.
That was enough of an invitation for Matt. He dropped from the building, cracking his neck before he approached, his boots crunching on the asphalt underneath his feet, alerting the two men of his presence.
“Fuck, it’s the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.”
Matt’s world went red.
And then he struck.
And it was like all the doubt and fear melted away. He was fully, irrevocably in control. Hyperaware of the way his tendons tightened over the bones in his fist, of the zing in his wrist when it impacted with this fucker’s face. Those Murdock boys, his grandmother’s voice rang in his head. They got the devil in them. And it was past due for Matt to let it out.
Ricky, or whatever, managed to get a punch in on Matt, his fist sloppily connecting with Matt’s chin. It made him laugh, even though his head snapped back and the pain of broken capillaries under his skin immediately stung. The pain was centering, clarifying – a baptism of fire and rage. Matt was still in control. This hit was calculated to give the illusion that this guy was in a fair fight. Matt was still in control.
He let himself punch forward. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Matt hoped this guy studied for his physics test as the bones of his nose crunched under his fist and forced him to the ground.
And, on another night, that probably would’ve been it. The guy was already unconscious, his heart was still pounding hard with fear and adrenaline. But, it had been days since Matt had a real fight. The Devil was still clawing to get out, his palms still itched for violence.
He continued to punch. And punch.
And punch.
He heard gurgling, clear as a bell and froze halfway to his next hit. It sounded like Foggy during his visions when he was stuck at the door or in front of the knife block. He gasped in deep, breathless inhales and only smelled blood, thick and cloying in his nose. The fire of rage was replaced by an icy chill.
Pathetic. The Devil mocked.
This wasn’t Foggy. This was some lowlife scum. Matt punched again, yelling in frustration, in vindication. But, it was no use. The fight was steaming out of Matt, leaving him shivering and cold in this alley. He turned, looking for the other guy, but he was already a couple of blocks over, running as fast as the meth leaking from his pores allowed.
Matt was still in control. He was.
He bent over, groaning with the pain in his back, and picked the guy up by his shirt collar. He was still breathing, albeit shallowly, and he let him thump back down to the ground in a pile.
He pressed his fingers into the new bruise on his jaw, feeling how hot it was and letting the pain recenter him. He should go home. He found the fight he was looking for, even though it was short and about as unsatisfying as the cheap beer they served at Josie’s. He should go home and check on Foggy. That’s what he wanted, right? He was still in control. It wasn’t the sudden doubt flooding his brain or the cold fear in his chest that made him desperate to get back to his husband right at that moment to check to make sure he was still there.
No. He was still in control. Mind controls the body.
What controls the mind?
Fear.
Notes:
Comment and kudos if you would like! Everytime I get an email from AO3 telling me I have a comment, I do a little Korok dance and go "yahahahaha!" If you enjoy this visual, please consider leaving a comment. You can also catch me on tumblr, where I will be girlblogging about Matt Murdock.
Chapter 3
Notes:
Matt's like a snow globe except for glitter and maybe a little train scene or something in there, it's his extremely disorganized attachment style and trauma. I'm just giving him a shake, if you will.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Foggy woke up to Matt clinging to him in his sleep again, his ear pressed against Foggy’s sternum and his hands knotted in Foggy’s sleep shirt like he was afraid he was going to float away.
Foggy smiled at Matt’s light snores that vibrated through his chest. He carded his messy hair out of his face and inspected a new mark on his lower cheek—nothing too bad, just a round bruise—and let his eyes slide shut as he relished being able to wake up with an armful of his husband again after so long of waking up alone. Usually on Marci’s expensive couch because falling asleep in his own apartment had turned into an impossible task for him.
Foggy carefully detached Matt’s fingers from his shirt and pressed his lips to his knuckles, sniffed at his skin that smelled like their bathroom hand soap and pretty much just gave himself permission to be a little weird and clingy with his husband who he had to go without for so long.
He roused Matt from slumber as he was tracing the lines on his palms with his fingertip. “Good morning, sunshine,” he said when Matt’s eyes popped open without any workup or preamble.
“Morning,” he shifted his head to give Foggy a kiss and then resettled it on his chest. “You’re so warm,” he mumbled in a gravely voice and then snuggled his chin into Foggy’s diaphragm.
Foggy chuckled. “Well, you are sleeping on top of me.”
“It's my favorite sleeping spot,” Matt smiled and rubbed his sides.
“How was last night?”
“Fine,” Matt answered.
“I see it wasn’t a light night,” Foggy touched his jaw to inspect the bruise again.
“No, it was,” Matt said, his smile never fading. “He was a schmuck. I let him get a hit in to boost his ego.”
“How charitable of you,” Foggy commented as he grimaced at the thought of Matt letting criminals hit him to…fuck with them?
Matt turned his head so his chin was on Foggy’s chest. “What are we doing today?”
“Well, given that we spent the better part of yesterday sorting files,” Foggy said, gently rolling Matt off of him to kiss on his neck and chest. “I thought we could spend the morning in bed and you can let me kiss every square inch of your body.”
“Hmm,” Matt hummed, his hand cupping Foggy’s cheek. “I would like that.”
“I think I will start,” Foggy made a big show of looking over Matt’s person. “Here,” he kissed his aquiline nose, eliciting a giggle that was music to Foggy’s ears. “Is that not,” Foggy said in faux surprise. “Is that not the proper place? How about here?” He kissed Matt’s cheek and then his chin and then his forehead. “Or here or here or here?”
Matt was laughing at Foggy’s antics and Foggy couldn’t help smiling back. He settled himself on his forearms that were next to Matt’s head to keep his weight off of Matt’s crushed spine that was bearing a load beyond its capacity as it is. “How did I get so lucky to have you?” Matt asked in that reverent tone of voice that seemed meant for a sermon at church and not the bedroom, like Foggy’s love was as holy as God’s.
“I don’t think it’s luck,” Foggy disagreed. Not anymore. There were angels around Matt. That much he was convinced now. “It’s you, darling. All you.” Foggy nosed Matt’s face. “I wouldn’t stick around for just anyone, you know?”
Matt picked up Foggy’s left hand. “I guess I’m doing an okay job, then?” He fiddled with Foggy’s wedding ring.
“Hey, now,” Foggy said, “I would like it on the record that I proposed to you.”
Matt’s nose scrunched. “Before I had a chance to.”
“Were you going to propose?” Foggy asked, surprise in his voice. “I didn’t know that.”
Matt’s eyes rolled in his sockets. “Foggy Nelson, I’ve been planning on getting down on one knee for you since the day I met you.” He gave Foggy a little shake for emphasis.
“It’s Nelson-Murdock to you.” Foggy said. “It was too expensive to replace the sign.”
Matt laughed, his arms wrapping around Foggy. "Nelson-Murdock & Nelson-Murdock. I kind of like the sound of that. Are you sure we can't replace the sign?"
“What about our tragic, dramatic divorce plotwist? You know, when you decide to leave me for all the alimony and the vacation home in the Hamptons.” Foggy said with another chuckle as he continued to joke. “Then you really wouldn't need to replace the sign. Although, I'm keeping the Porsche. It was in the prenup."
That was the incorrect thing to say, Foggy realized, when Matt’s smile he had faded from his face completely. “Don’t joke about that.” He clipped.
“Hey,” Foggy said soothingly. “It's just a joke. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
Matt’s arms loosened, but his smile didn’t reappear and he didn’t relax. “I should go to Mass,” he said. “Maggie is…expecting me.” He started to wiggle and Foggy rolled off to the side to give him room. He rose like he normally did nowadays - slowly and with lots of popping in his back. He took a second to breathe and rubbed at his left venus dimple.
“Matt,” Foggy said, feeling suddenly off-balance and that he did something wrong. “I didn’t mean it. It was just a joke.” He swallowed. “You know you can’t get rid of me that easily.”
“I know,” Matt said. His smile didn't return.
“Matt,” Foggy said, still feeling like he had just been transported to the Twilight Zone. Everything was just fine one second and then like a light-switch turning on, it wasn’t. He felt like his head was spinning just trying to keep up. “I just spent the better part of the morning counting the lines on your palms.” Which sounded silly and a little deranged now that Foggy admitted it out loud. Oh, well. He continued on. “Because I couldn’t believe that you were there sleeping in my arms. I love you.” You emotionally-constipated asshole, Foggy tacked on his head.
Matt’s hand froze on his back. “I love you too, Fog.” He winced and Foggy didn’t know if that was out of pain or not.
“What did I say?” Matt just shook his head, letting Foggy know that he didn’t have an answer. Or he wasn’t planning on answering. Foggy sighed as he watched Matt rise to his feet. “Do you really have to go to Mass?”
“Yes,” Matt said, his eyebrows twisting together. “I do.”
“Alright,” Foggy sighed again in disappointment and picked at a scab on the back of his hand where he got himself with a runaway stapler the other day at the office. “Hurry back?”
Matt didn’t say anything in response as he headed out of the room. Foggy just sat in bed, trying to understand how he ruined the whole morning with one misplaced joke.
Matt didn’t go to Mass.
With Father Lantom’s death fresh in his memories, he truly didn’t think he could step foot in the main sanctuary of Clinton Church without suffocating on the smell of heavy, viscous blood in his nose and the sounds of Father Lantom’s dying pleads ringing like cathedral bells in his ears.
Matthew, please forgive us.
Instead he slipped into the basement of the church, inhaling the stale smell of dust and candle smoke. He moved past the pile of laundry and the shelves of extra supplies to his old cot in the corner. He lowered himself down to sit and dropped his cane to lean against his shoulder so he could lace his fingers together.
And then he did something he hadn’t done in a long time.
He prayed.
“Hail Mary,” he licked his lips, winced and then started over. “Hail Mary, Full of Grace, The Lord is with thee…” He prayed this three times. It wasn’t even penance. He hadn’t been to confession since Father Lantom had died. He just couldn’t…stop.
Suddenly he was fourteen again, sitting huddled in a pew clutching his dad’s old rosary. Hail Marys were on his lips, but they weren’t words anymore. They weren’t even prayers. It was a mantra, a chant. Matt was trying to cast a spell that released him from the invisible prison he was trapped in. A prison built by the childish lie that if he just said the perfect Hail Mary, the absolute, most holiest Hail Mary, he could prevent another person he loved from leaving him. Stick. His mother. His father. The first boy he ever had a crush on. His first real friend. They all left.
They all left.
And Matt prayed.
“Nice of you to finally show up,” Maggie said and Matt started out of the loop of Hail Marys he felt ensnared in like being caught in a spiderweb. He adjusted his position on the bed, giving Maggie room to sit down next to him. She sat straight-backed with her hands folded in practiced grace. “How’s your firm doing?”
“It’s fine,” Matt said and straightened a bit. Not as straight as Maggie. He wasn’t sure if he could roll his shoulders that far back anymore without making his spine pop. “We’ve been doing a lot of…paperwork.”
On top of the new business filing they had to do, Matt had to reverse his legally dead status with the Social Security office and the state and then Karen and Foggy had been subpoenaed as witnesses in the on-going trials around Fisk and Fisk’s companies. It had been…a lot of paperwork.
Maggie hummed. “I’ve witnessed a lot from you, but you on the phone with the Social Security office is something I gotta see.”
Matt laughed. “It’s not that bad. Everyone's been...nice so far."
Maggie shifted. “You didn’t come to Mass.”
Matt sighed. Matthew, please forgive us. He closed his eyes at the sudden weight of guilt falling through his stomach. “I…can’t yet.” He managed before his throat completely closed.
“Have you been to confession?”
Matt just shook his head and laced his fingers up tighter.
“So,” Maggie said, “I take it this is a social visit then? Not a theological one?”
“No.” Matt shook his head again. “I need some…advice, actually.”
Maggie inhaled a surprised breath. “Well, you must be desperate then. Should I make some tea? Or is this more of a…bloody molly situation?”
“Bloody molly?”
“Come on,” she beckoned as she rose.
Matt followed Maggie to the sacristy and then passed it to that small kitchen where Father Lantom’s espresso machine was stored. Matt could smell him here. It was faint now, stale, but Matt could smell him and his chest tightened as he lowered himself down the table.
He focused on his mother as she rose on her tip-toes to pull down a large bottle of bloody mary mix and a bottle of whiskey from the top shelf of a cabinet.
“I don’t have celery,” she said. “So an olive will have to do.” She said as she down a coffee mug full of bloody mary mix and a heavy shot of whiskey. Floating at the top was a cocktail olive.
“So, bloody mollies have whiskey in them?” Matt said and took a sip. The tomato was acidic to a painful degree and it was multiplied with the burn of whiskey on the back of his throat.
“They’re Irish-Catholic,” Maggie explained. “Can’t have bloody marys in the church. Can’t have vodka either. That’s disrespectful.”
“Father Lantom used to make lattes.” He realized that was the first time Matt had said his name since his funeral. Guilt twisted viciously in his middle and he was suddenly very afraid that he was going to vomit up his sip of bloody molly. He set the mug down on the table.
“Paul got soft as he got older,” Maggie said and took a sip of her own brunch beverage. “So, what’s going on?”
“Foggy–,” Matt started.
Maggie tongued an old filling and her heart skipped in a way that Matt didn’t recognize. “I’m not really one for relationship advice…” she said. “You know, besides with the Big Guy.”
“It’s not relationship advice,” Matt said and shifted in his uncomfortable chair. He winced. “Not really.”
“Everything going…alright?”
Matt huffed a sigh as his throat started to close around the words he wanted to say. And this was in front of his mother. How could he do this on a couch in front of a perfect stranger? He wanted to laugh at Foggy’s attempts at getting him into therapy.
He finally inhaled a breath. “Father Lantom told me once that guilt is the soul’s call to action and the only way to get rid of it was to amend my mistakes.” He ran his fingertips over the surface of his mug. “But, what happens when whatever I do isn’t good enough?”
Maggie tongued her filling again and shifted around in her seat. “I guess,” she sighed, “I know how Paul would answer this. He would say that you would need to take it up with God. Only He could determine your penance for whatever burdens you. And only He can lift your guilt of your sins with redemption.”
“And your answer?” Matt prompted.
“As someone who has lived with an immense amount of guilt my whole life,” she said, her head cocking at him. “And have had the same questions over guilt, I know that God’s answers aren’t linear and that sometimes He lets you…live with it as a reminder to always do right. You couldn’t prevent the wrong then, but you can work on preventing and reconciling future wrongs now.”
Matt fidgeted with his mug. “What if you can’t…live with it? The guilt?” He asked, an ache so fierce in his core he was afraid to breathe.
“Then you drown in it,” Maggie said simply.
Matt closed his eyes at the sudden smell of divorce papers, of the sound of Foggy walking out the door. Hail Mary, full of grace…
Matt stopped for flowers again. And he got Foggy’s favorite Indian takeout on his way home for lunch. He was going to do better, be better. He kept fucking up. He kept letting the Devil have control, letting him twist Matt’s rage and poison his love of Foggy. He wasn’t going to let that happen anymore. Because if he did…if he did…
He could smell the papers, hear the door open and close.
Because if he did, he would lose Foggy and then lose himself in the guilt.
“Darling?” Matt called gently, hearing the television on and that loud app playing again.
“How was Mass?” Foggy asked, silencing his phone.
“Fine,” Matt lied. “I brought home lunch.”
Foggy stood up from the couch as Matt put the bags of food down on the breakfast bar.
“I got these for you too,” Matt thrusted out the bouquet.
Foggy’s heart skipped a delicious beat. “But, you just got me flowers,” he said and took the bouquet with a big smile. “These are beautiful.”
“What color are they?” Matt asked.
“They’re pink, mostly. With some white and red.” Foggy leaned forward for a kiss, which Matt enthusiastically accepted.
Matt disconnected first. “I’m sorry for being an ass this morning,” he started the speech he practiced in his head as he climbed the stairs. “I promise it wasn’t what you said. I just…took it the wrong way.” He tipped his chin in shame. Don’t drown under it.
“I’m sorry for saying it anyway,” Foggy said, burying his nose in the flowers. “We just got each other back. I know we’re both going to be…sore on the subject of losing each other again.” He whispered.
Sore. Matt wasn’t sure his fear of losing Foggy could be described as just sore. Sometimes it felt like his flesh was being pulled from his bones. Sometimes it felt like he was burning at the stake. The pain was immeasurable, intolerable.
“Yeah,” Matt tried to smile and he knew it came out wrong and crooked. “It’s…touchy.”
“I get it,” Foggy’s eyes brimmed with tears and Matt could taste salt in the air. He didn’t want to make Foggy cry. He didn’t want to make Foggy feel guilty for cracking a stupid joke. That was the opposite of what he wanted.
“But, hey,” Matt cajoled, “we’re together now. Just with no more,” he swallowed and almost choked as he rounded out “divorce jokes.” The papers. He could smell the papers again.
Foggy chuckled and then sniffed. “Got it. No more divorce jokes.”
Matt hoped Foggy couldn’t see how nauseous he got when Foggy said that word.
“Let me put these in water,” Foggy said. “And then we can eat lunch. It smells so good, I’m drooling.”
Matt laughed and finally, finally felt like he found his gravity again. Orbiting Foggy like a planet orbiting a star – relishing in his warmth at the very center of his galaxy.
Karen sat at her desk that was, thankfully, finally clean of all the random files and boxes that had cluttered their office the last couple of weeks. Who knew their dinky firm accumulated so much shit over the last couple of years? She picked up her coffee and sipped it as she cross-referenced account numbers from the record she found, her eyes flicking back and forth on her screen.
The door clicked open and Matt stepped in alone. He greeted Karen with a smile and an eyebrow raise before turning and leaning his cane against the wall. He turned towards his desk, moving stiffly. Karen frowned watching him. His back must still hurt.
“Hey, Matt,” Karen smiled warmly at him. “Where’s Foggy?”
“He stopped along the way to grab coffee. He'll be up soon."
“Ah.” She nodded and looked up at Matt. He seemed exhausted, but he always seemed exhausted nowadays. She wondered how he was managing with Father Lantom's and Ray Nadeem’s deaths. With Elektra’s death. With what happened with…everything. But, she assumed Matt didn’t want to have those conversations while everything was still so…raw. So, she left it alone.
“Hey, Karen?” Matt started, leaning against his desk. He hadn’t taken anything out of his briefcase yet.
“Yes?” She turned towards him.
“Can you, um,” he circled around his desk so he could lean his butt on the edge. “Have we been keeping tabs on Ben Poindexter’s whereabouts?”
Karen hummed. “The last I checked, he was still in the hospital for his injuries, but under police custody.”
“Do you know which hospital?” Matt asked.
“I don’t,” Karen shook her head. “I can maybe look it up?” She jotted down a note on her sticky pad to check later. “Why?”
Matt shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m just…” his mouth clamped shut and his jaw flexed. “I just want to keep tabs on our enemies.” His nail dug into the ‘70s panel particleboard that made up his desk and chipped at the coating.
Karen nodded, not really believing that was the whole story. But, he did have a good point. She should be more weary of the people who could potentially hurt them. Even when she was certain they were thrown in a hole somewhere and left to rot.
Hello Karen, nice to see you again.
Karen shivered at the memory. Especially that bastard.
“Yeah, I’ll see what jail he’s going to be sent to. I’m sure he’s going to be denied bail.”
“Thanks,” Matt crossed his arms. “Appreciate it.” He finally went back to his chair and sat down, taking a moment to adjust his position before settling. He pulled out his laptop and Karen watched him thumb through his pen cup like he was looking for something. He did it again. And again.
Karen opened her mouth to ask what Matt was doing, but was interrupted by the door slamming open. Foggy strode in with a tray full of coffees. “I have brought caffeine that wasn’t dripped out of a pot purchased during the Clinton administration.” He announced brightly.
“Our coffee pot isn’t that bad.” she said, her eyes zeroing in on the drink carrier anyway, the smell of lattes permeating the air.
“Is that why there's drool dripping down your chin right now?” He joshed before turning to the drink carrier. He pulled out the coffees and handed one to Matt and one to Karen. “Vanilla latte, sub almond milk.”
“Why, thank you.” Karen closed her eyes with delight as she sipped the fresh coffee that wasn’t dripped out of a machine that was, well, twenty-ish years old. Perhaps from the Clinton Administration.
“Ah, shit!” Foggy exclaimed.
She put down her cup to see that the lid of Foggy’s coffee cup had come loose and a majority of the contents was now a big stain on the front of his shirt. He put the cup down on his desk.
“Foggy,” she stood up, alarmed. “Did you burn yourself?”
Matt was already at his side, patting him down with paper towels.
“No,” Foggy said. “I didn’t burn myself. Just…ruined my shirt. Shit. I’m going to smell like vanilla for a week.”
“Darling, you always smell like vanilla,” Matt joked as he tried to clean him up. "And sugar. And..." he sniffed the air. "Lavender?"
"The nice barista with the nose ring convinced me to try it," Foggy pouted.
“Do you have an extra shirt here in the office?” Karen asked.
“Uh,” Foggy hummed. “Yeah, in the box under my desk. I think I have an extra dress shirt.”
“I can get it,” Matt volunteered. The paper towels were pointless anyway. He dropped them into the wastebasket before bending down for the box underneath Foggy’s desk. He must’ve slept in the wrong position again, because where his back connected with hips radiated heat and pain like a furnace. He made an involuntary grunt as he bent at the waist, his eyes squeezing shut with pain.
“Darling,” Foggy said, stepping forward. “I can get it. Sit down.”
But, Matt was already halfway there. He slid the box out from under the table and inhaled a thick, almost tastable breath of Marci Stahl. He had almost forgotten the cloying smell of fancy hair products and designer perfume that clung to this mystery box. And as he pawed through the contents, his hand touched clothes, a box of crackers, and…and…
His breathing stopped as his hand gripped a toothbrush.
He replaced you.
Matt learned in that second the Devil could never be contained. That trying to convince himself that it could was the most foolish delusion Matt’s ever thought of. The rage was an all-consuming fire. Matt suddenly felt like he was being burned alive at the stake.
“Matt?” Foggy asked, coming to stand behind him. “Do you need help back up?”
Matt dropped the toothbrush. His fingers brushed over the soft cotton of a dress shirt. He pulled it out and almost threw it at Foggy, enveloping Matt in a cloud of Marci Stahl’s scent. “Here you go,” Matt said, acid corroding his voice until it was ragged.
He replaced you.
There had to be an explanation other than...cheating, right?. Foggy wouldn’t cheat on Matt, right? Right? He could just ask and it would be something mundane and innocuous, like he asked Marci to store some stuff at her place or something. He wouldn’t cheat. He loved Matt. He did. He wouldn’t…he wouldn’t…
But, he would because this was Matt’s fault. His fault for lying. His fault for letting his anger and hatred consume him. He let the Devil out and this is how he paid for it – with a shattered marriage, with Foggy walking out the door and into the arms of a woman. Matt would never be good enough for Foggy. He couldn’t believe he was even trying.
He should’ve died under Midland Circle.
Pathetic. The Devil taunted. Anger and hatred swept through him like a wildfire. He couldn’t tell if it was directed at Foggy or himself anymore.
“Matt,” Foggy put his hand out to touch him. “You alright?”
He jerked to straighten to get away from Foggy’s touch, the shooting pain in his back grounding him long enough to put himself back in his own body for a second. He could tell he was hot and breathing heavy like he had just finished running sprints. Tears leaked without permission down his face, pooled behind his glasses. And Karen was watching him make a spectacle of himself, frozen where she stood from behind her desk.
“Matt,” Foggy breathed. "What’s wrong?”
Matt needed to get out of here. The walls felt they were closing in on him, his skin suddenly felt too tight for his body. He turned for the door.
“Matt!” Foggy called after him.
But, he just kept moving. He just had to get out of there.
Foggy wasn’t sure what was happening, but he ran after Matt anyway. “Matt,” he bounded up the steps of the roof access, feeling trepidation of the worst kind. He didn’t even know what upset him. It was like that light switch had been turned on. One moment he was fine, and then suddenly he looked like he wanted to hit something—a violent blaze of heat in his eyes.
He found Matt at the picnic table, sitting on top of it with his feet on the bench. He didn’t grab his cane on his way out, so his empty hands tore at a hangnail that already looked red and inflamed on his cuticle.
“Go back inside Foggy,” Matt said once Foggy was close enough to hear him, his voice devoid of all emotion, like he didn’t have the energy to power it anymore.
“What happened?” Foggy asked, ignoring Matt.
“Go away,” Matt clipped, his eyebrows furrowing into his signature Scowl, capital s.
Foggy didn’t move. He rooted himself where he stood against Matt’s attempts at blowing him over with his compulsive need to keep everyone at arm’s length. He crossed his arms over the coffee stain that was starting to dry now. “I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s wrong.” He wasn’t going to do this anymore. Foggy wasn’t going to play this game where Matt dug himself into a hole to run away from his issues. “I thought we were done lying–,”
Matt’s form vibrated for a second before he exploded. “Why does your box smell like Marci Stahl?”
Foggy took a full step back in surprise. “Marci?” He repeated. “This is about Marci?”
Matt was suddenly on his feet now. Foggy took another step back. “You had a toothbrush in the box. Clothes. What am I supposed to think?” He spat and Foggy was still trying to find Matt’s line of logic. All he could register was that Matt was mad because he could smell Marci on his box. This made no sense to Foggy’s brain that was only playing a dial-up tone in response to Matt’s anger.
Wait.
“Do you think I cheated on you…” Foggy finally figured out where Matt was heading with this. “W-with Marci?” He stuttered out in white, hot disbelief.
Matt made a face. “Don’t play dumb. Yes, Marci.”
Foggy felt offended at the accusation, but mostly he felt hurt that Matt would assume that he would even be capable of adultery? It stabbed in his middle like that building debris after Fisk made Ms. Cardena’s house explode. “I didn’t cheat on you with Marci,” he seethed.
“Really?” He asked in a way that made Foggy feel absolutely nuts. “The hot lawyer with the big boobs swooping in as soon as I’m out of the picture and you didn’t sleep with her?”
Foggy bristled at the implication, the crossword puzzle word that could be deciphered in that sentence. “She was a friend that sat with me at night when I was crying over my dead husband.”
Matt shuddered, but it wasn’t enough to wipe that angry look off of his face. He scoffed again instead. “Yeah, that’s all you two were doing at night. Do all your friendships involve sucking your dick or just your professional ones? Next you’ll tell me Karen–,”
“What parallel dimension are you living in right now?” Foggy snapped back, his fingers flying to his hair in frustration. “I didn’t cheat on you with Marci!”
“Then why does your box smell like her?”
“Because she let me sleep on her couch when I couldn’t bear to be in our apartment surrounded by the things that remind me of you.” Foggy’s voice cracked as the words tumbled out of him. “While you were off playing martyr and getting pancaked with your vampire of an ex-girlfriend.”
Matt froze. “Don’t bring Elektra into this.” He said, a tone of anger he had never used with Foggy in his voice. Foggy never understood the phrase ‘dancing with the devil’ until that moment.
And yet. Foggy had a big mouth. It was his fatal flaw. “Yeah,” he snorted and resisted the urge to spit on Matt’s shoe. “Of course I wouldn’t. I definitely wouldn’t bring up the fact that you left your wedding ring in your bag before running right to her.” He felt tears hot in his eyes as he processed the idea of Matt spending his dying breath with a woman who only wanted to destroy him. They fell down over the fact that Matt had himself convinced that Foggy was cheating on him.
“Foggy,” It was Matt’s turn to take a step back now. “That’s not why I stayed at Midland Circle. The others had to get out of there and she wasn't going to let them."
“Yeah,” Foggy said. “Well, I can’t hear heartbeats and I’m not the compulsive liar in our relationship. So, where does that leave us?”
Matt’s form deflated and he suddenly looked inches smaller than his 5’10 frame. The pain on his face was chafed and raw. But, Foggy maintained his distance, sniffling back tears and trying not to be lost in this maze Foggy was suddenly transported into.
“I didn’t cheat on you,” Foggy said again, so lowly that he knew if Matt didn’t have powerful hearing, it would’ve gotten lost in the breeze that was kicking their hair up. “Hear it in my heartbeat. I’m telling the truth.” Foggy turned around to walk away. He still had his new shirt in his hands. He wadded it up and started back towards the door.
“Foggy,” Matt said. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to go change my goddamn shirt,” Foggy said tersely.
“Wait,” Matt said, stepping forward with his hands out. “Foggy, wait. Wait. I’m sorry.”
Foggy inhaled a deep breath and let it out in a short sigh. He continued to walk away. “Yeah, I heard that one before.”
Notes:
Comment and kudos if you would like! You may also find me on tumblr where I spend 22 hours a day doomscrolling to ignore my own problems.
Chapter 4
Notes:
I posted this chapter while listening to Pop! by Nayeon. That has nothing to do with what's in the chapter, I just wanted you all to know that.
There's also smut after the fourth line break, just a warning.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Matt spent the next three days in hell.
The Devil raged and raged, replaying their fight as clearly as he was back there, roof gravel crunching under his feet and fire in his chest as he opened his mouth and spat acid at the love of his life. It tore him to ribbons with his faults. It destroyed him underneath his own guilt. He blamed Foggy. He blamed himself. He went back and forth so many times, he came to a point where he was convinced he was just going to be consumed by his own hatred.
Foggy wasn’t speaking to him. Or at least, not anymore than he had to, being his business partner again. It reminded Matt of the period after Foggy found out about Daredevil. He could smell the anger on his skin and read the unease in his form. Matt could hear his breath hitch like he wanted to say something and then would sigh like he decided it was too much trouble, like Matt was too much trouble.
And the Devil raged and blamed Foggy. For what exactly? Seeking comfort from a friend while he was grieving? He didn’t cheat, Matt could read that loud and clear in his heartbeat that only rang truth. But, it was easier to direct his anger elsewhere than to swallow down the guilt of knowing he drove Foggy out of his life permanently now by being irrational. Matt had already taken the sledgehammer to their relationship with his behavior the last six months, what’s a little dynamite too?
But, in the dead of night, when Matt loosened the leash on the Devil, he felt that fire of resentment in his soul. He hated himself, loathed himself. It washed over him in a rain of fire. He could smell the divorce papers and hear Foggy’s steps walk out the door permanently and it felt like this was his retribution for treating the only person in the whole world that loved him like a criminal on a witness stand.
And there wasn’t anything he could do to save him from drowning in it. So, he punched.
And he prayed.
“Hail Mary, full of grace…” he whispered under his breath as he threw his fist forward. He wasn’t really aiming anymore. This was his third fight of the evening and his world was a little soft and wiggly from punch-drunkenness. It connected with something organic and he wheeled back and moved to strike again.
This punch was blocked and a fist hit his ribs hard enough that Matt could hear bones snap. The pain that arced through his side was immediate, but it was centering, purifying. A holy flagellation.
You should’ve died that night with those thugs.
Yeah, perhaps. But, he didn’t. For some wicked reason, God wanted him on earth. So, he could feel the pain of having someone he loved ripped from him again? So, he could live his life lonely and afraid? As punishment for being too weak to control the Devil inside of him? He wasn’t sure.
Another fist connected with his face, snapping his head back and giving him momentarily whiplash. He hit the wall of the alley he was in and used that to push off in the opposite direction, wheeling his fist out and striking the criminal’s solar plexus. He heard a gun cock to his left and his hand darted out immediately, circling a wrist and wrenching it in an angle that put two hairline fractures in his radius. He heard a yelp and the gun dropped to the ground. Matt swung his other arm around and popped him in the center of his skull, breaking his nose.
The first guy tried to rush him and Matt jumped and hooked the toe of his boot on the back of his neck, kicking his head into the pavement. Matt heard it connect with a crack and then the man lost consciousness.
He groaned with his new injuries, his whole body throbbing, but the very core of it in the area where his back met his hips. He spat blood onto the pavement and pressed fingers into a new bruise, gasping as the physical pain replaced the pain in his chest. He could almost feel the flood of endorphins being dumped into his system. Endorphins that targeted any pain – emotional, physical, pain he inflicted on himself, pain inflicted by others. It was a relief. It was a vacation.
And then – it was almost like watching it happen in real time – the rage burnt out like a candle being blown out, leaving only a hollow ache that hungered so fiercely it left him shaking and empty and cold in the middle of that alley, surrounded by a group of unconscious wannabe muggers. The blood in the air was suffocating and the fear that Matt suddenly felt…it was…it was too much.
He couldn’t breathe.
And desperation crashed over him like a tsunami wave. He had to apologize to Foggy. He would beg for his forgiveness. He was stupid and foolish. Foggy was so kind and patient and full of love and Matt ruined it. He always was always ruining it. He needed to fix this. He needed him in his arms like he needed air in his lungs.
He turned and ran. He ran as fast as his pain would allow him to go.
Foggy heard the fire escape door creak open and then boots thunk heavily down the stairs. He waited to see what direction he would go in. The last couple of days, Matt headed directly to the refrigerator for beer before heading straight to the bathroom to shower. Foggy didn’t get up to greet him. He didn’t want to get in the way of his new routine…or whatever.
“Foggy?” Their bedroom door slid open. “Foggy? I know you’re awake.” Matt asked into the night, his voice soft and gentle like a lullaby.
Foggy just curled tighter under the covers, almost pulling the pillow over his ears to block out whatever epiphany Matt decidedly had at two am on a Wednesday. And maybe it had been long enough for Foggy to dole out punishment in the form of cold-shouldering him. And maybe Foggy knew better than to prolong it to elicit a more sincere apology out of him.
But, it wasn’t Matt that got accused of being a cheater now, was it?
Matt huffed a short, frustrated breath at Foggy’s apathy. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” he said, his voice still milky velvet. “I’m sorry for saying all those horrible things to you. I smelled Marci and let myself conjure up the worst case scenario and I know that it isn’t an excuse, but,” his breathing stuttered and Foggy’s fingers gripped the bedspread. “I love you, Fog. You’re my whole world and I’m sorry I called you a cheater. I know you’d never do that to me. I’m sorry.”
Foggy sighed. He guessed that Matt learned his lesson. He rolled to sit up, running his fingers through his hair and breathing in deep breaths as he figured out what he wanted to say because you’re a fucking dickhead didn’t seem all that appropriate, even though it’s what danced on the tip of his tongue.
But, then he saw.
“Matt,” he jumped out of bed. “Are you okay? You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine, Fog,” Matt said, which was a lie. He was not fine. His hand was squeezing his side like he was afraid his guts were going to fly out and had blood dripping out of his nose, landing in big, maroon splats on their hardwood. It was broken by the new bruises Foggy could see forming underneath both of his eyes and he teetered back and forth like he was currently on a rocky ship.
“Let’s get you cleaned up first,” Foggy just sighed, hoping the exhaustion he felt wasn’t as apparent in his voice, his hand coming out to support his husband’s weight. “And then we can talk, alright?”
Matt nodded and followed him, one of his hands moving to his back. Foggy directed him to his heating pad and turned it on to heat up while he got out the first aid kit. He cleaned up whatever visible wounds he could see first while Matt bled through their good bathroom hand towel that was only meant to be put out for visits from the Pope or Trixie Mattel as he held it to his face.
He then stitched up a wound he found on his chest that was too deep for butterfly bandages and inspected his obviously broken ribs.
“Not a light night tonight, huh?” He joked as he feather-touched the purple and red bruise on his chest that was the same shape and size as a large fist.
“No,” Matt groaned as Foggy replaced his shirt. “It wasn’t.”
Foggy took a seat next to Matt, cleaning up the bandage packaging and used gauze by pushing everything in a pile. Anything to keep his hands busy and his focus on anything but his husband’s tired, pained puppy eyes that were rimmed with old tears.
“Foggy, I’m sorry.”
“I heard you the first time,” Foggy said curtly and then chastised himself. He sighed and Matt tensed and he sighed again because Matt was in self-flagellation mode. Whatever punishment he was giving himself was ten times worse than whatever Foggy could conjure up in his wildest dreams. “I’m sorry.” He whispered, “for bringing up Elektra, for blowing up. I’m sorry too.”
“You don’t,” Matt scrubbed at his face, turning his own cheeks rosy. “You don’t have to apologize, Foggy. I started it. I was being…” he sniffled and fidgeted. “Unreasonable.”
Foggy wanted to agree with him. He saw the fire in Matt’s eyes. The same fire that was there when he talked about killing Fisk. It was unmistakably hatred, written so clearly over Matt’s face it could probably be seen from space. Matt hated him, truly hated him at that moment. It scared the shit out of Foggy. He’s been at the end of a lot of things when it came to Matt – his rope, his nerves, his fuse. But, Foggy never wanted to be at the end of Matt’s wrath. Never. Ever.
“I should tell you,” Foggy blurted. “What I was doing those months. You deserve to know.”
Matt froze, but gave a small, hesitant nod. Foggy got up to get them beers because this was a conversation he didn’t want to have without alcohol involved somehow.
“First of all, I want it on the record that you fucking died.” Foggy said when he sat back down, handing a beer to Matt who tensed at Foggy’s opening statement.
“Not…legally,” Matt tried to joke back, but it came out stilted and off.
“Well, you weren’t putting on a show at the Ritz,” Foggy said, deadpanned. “I thought you would come back to the police station after that building came down.” Foggy said, playing with the condensation on his bottle as he spoke. “Everyone else showed up, you know—Luke, the annoying blonde guy with the glowing hand and the nice girlfriend, Claire, Jessica Jones. But, you,” Foggy motioned. “You never did. Me and Karen waited and waited and…”
And I thought it was my fault. Foggy added in his head, but didn’t say out loud. He took a sip of beer instead and huffed out a breath.
“I didn’t cheat on you with Marci,” Foggy reiterated, watching Matt flinch. “I went back to work and life and I tried to keep fighting the good fight.” Tears flooded his eyes as he spoke. “But, it was so hard. She saw me struggling with grief and in her own Marci way, offered to help. I was depressed, Matt. I couldn’t sleep or eat. I was just stuck in this horrible Groundhog Day where I woke up stuck in this nightmare reality where I had to live my life without you in it.” His voice cracked.
“Foggy–,” Matt started.
“No, let me finish,” Foggy cut him off. “Karen was losing grip without you too, you know? She was wholly convinced that you were still out there somehow. Me? I went from waiting for a phone call from you to waiting for a call from the police to tell me they recovered your body. I couldn’t fight without you in my life anymore. My family couldn’t understand what happened. Marci…just ended up being the one there for me. She picked me up from the floor, dusted me off, and usually we went to a bar to drown my sorrows. Sometimes enough where I crashed at her place so she could make sure I didn’t aspirate on vomit in my sleep. But, that was it. Nothing happened between us. Nothing could happen between us when all I thought about was you.”
Matt was silent and eerily unmoving at Foggy’s words. His fingers twitched, but otherwise he was still.
“Why would I throw away our marriage on a fling?” Foggy’s voice was raw with emotion as he continued. “You mean so much more to me than that. You mean everything to me.” He said with so much conviction he startled himself.
“I know,” Matt shifted around. “I’m sorry, Fog. I truly am.”
Foggy huffed a sigh, now all pent up as he re-lived those months of despair and grief. His hands were shaking so bad, he had to set his beer down. He pressed tears from the corners of his eyes with his knuckle and fought for control over his breathing.
Matt was silent for a long moment, his mouth opening and closing as he gathered his words. But, instead of talking, he just reached out a hand and placed it on Foggy’s arm—warm, alive, bloodied, and smarting with bruises and pink, stung skin. All Matt’s. All his.
“I’m sorry, Fog.” He whispered again. "You mean everything to me too."
And then, Foggy was rushing to embrace his husband. He crushed himself against the other man without thinking about his injuries or even if he was okay with that yet. He just needed him in his arms. He felt so terrible. The world was already so cruel to Matt Murdock, Foggy should be his reprieve, not throwing stones with the rest of them.
Matt was crying now – sobbing big, gasping breaths that he tried to muffle against Foggy’s shirt. Matt was trained to cry silently. Foggy always felt splintered when he thought about the conditioning he had to go through to learn that not even his tears were safe.
“I’m so scared of losing you.” Matt said as his hands gripped fistfuls of Foggy’s shirt. “I just got you back,” he continued, “I can’t lose you again.”
Foggy’s throat choked with tears and he buried his nose into Matt’s shoulder and tried to convey with his whole heart how mutual that feeling was.
“It’s nice to see that you two have made up,” Karen said gently when Foggy and Matt came into work the next day clutching each other again, kissing before they headed to their respective desks again. They had apologized and cried and drank beer and made up. And then they fell asleep, exhausted and tear-logged, in each other’s arms.
And even though Foggy kissed his cheek while he was brushing his teeth and inspected all his bandages and joshed him about getting a mouth guard, the Devil degraded Matt. It called him a piece of shit, a horrible partner. Why would anyone willing subject themselves to being in a relationship with him? He was so unlovable.
But, at the same time, Matt had just gotten Foggy back after making a huge mistake. He never wanted to do that again. He felt like he was on a tightrope. One misstep and he would lose Foggy forever.
He was going to do better. That wasn’t a promise anymore. It was a threat to himself. He was going to better, because if he didn’t…if he didn’t…
He focused vigilantly on Foggy. On the muscles in his shoulders as they tensed throughout the day, on the levels of stress Matt could smell in his sweat, on his breathing patterns, and his heartbeat. Looking for any sort of spike in frustration or unease that would tip Matt off that he was mad at him, that Matt was losing his footing with him again.
His guts were all tied up with anxiety over it, so much so that he felt ill for most of the day. So much so that he started counting Foggy’s touches – analyzing them, adding them to his running total, memorizing them for when that emptiness threatened to consume him again. He made up bets with the Devil in his head. If Foggy touches me ten times before the end of the day, I know he’s not mad at me. It was foolish and made Matt feel like he was coming unhinged.
But the numbers, the adding. It helped. Every touch he relished in. Every touch he could throw at the Devil as proof that he was wanted. See? He does love me. It eased the fear that had Matt gripped so tightly around his throat.
Matt was focused on Foggy's hand on his shoulder when it suddenly gripped. “Candace,” Foggy groaned to his sister who was sitting across the table from Matt. “You need to get off social media.”
Foggy was standing behind Matt, his hands on both of his shoulders. He rubbed and squeezed as he chit-chatted with his family in the backroom of Nelson’s Meats on their lunch break. Candace strolled in while Theo was talking with Foggy, announcing that she just retook the MBTI test and it gave her INFJ, the rarest MBTI type.
Matt’s hand hesitantly came up and covered Foggy’s and Foggy fixed his grip so he could lace their fingers together. He counted that as a touch. So, eight. He was up to eight touches.
“It’s true,” Candace insisted.
“I think you’re getting your acronyms confused. It’s actually A-D-H-D, Candy.” Theo said and laughed.
“I don’t have ADHD,” Candace said.
“Uh-huh,” Theo didn’t sound convinced. “Is that why you left twenty pounds of meat sitting on the counter all night?”
“I was being rushed!” Candace defended. “I forgot!”
“About twenty pounds of meat?” Theo asked skeptically.
Foggy bent forward and kissed the top of Matt’s head. Nine touches. And it wasn’t even the afternoon yet. “You good?” He asked.
“Yeah,” Matt nodded, taking in a real breath of air for the first time in a while. “I’m fine.”
“You went quiet,” Foggy said and rubbed his shoulder again. “Makes me nervous.”
“I’m okay,” Matt said. “Just enjoying the conversation.”
“Matt,” Candace was addressing him now. “What’s your MBTI?”
“Oh, uh,” Matt said. He did the test once in college, if he was recalling correctly. He couldn’t remember what it assigned him. He was under the assumption that most of those psychological tests were mostly bullshit anyway. “I don’t remember.”
“I’m an ESFJ,” Foggy volunteered. “The caregiver.”
“No, that’s because you’re a middle child,” Theo said with a laugh and Foggy picked up a chip from Matt’s plate and threw it at his brother.
“I want Matt to take the test and see what he is,” Candace said and Matt opened his mouth to beg off having to take a psychological questionnaire, but Foggy beat him to it.
“Don’t subject my husband to your bullshit armchair psychology,” Foggy’s hand squeezed and Matt registered his heartbeat skipping and the heat of annoyance on his face. Matt’s brain then cataloged all of this as mad and even though it wasn’t directed at him, it almost felt like it.
All those touches were for nothing. His counter was back at zero.
He felt like he was slipping off the tightrope, dropping into the dark void made out of his guilt and dread. He didn’t realize how tightly he was holding Foggy’s hand until Foggy gasped in pain above him and he immediately disconnected.
“I think our lunch break is over,” Foggy said to his siblings and rubbed Matt’s shoulders again. “We should head back up.”
Theo and Candace said their goodbyes and went back to tending the deli. Matt rose with Foggy, grabbing his cane and clearing his trash in the process. Foggy was silent and his posture unreadable to Matt, which made icy fear numb his fingers to the point where he fumbled his cane.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Foggy turned suddenly in the stairway that separated their office from the deli. “You’re acting weird.”
“I’m okay,” Matt said automatically, getting a skeptical head-cock back from Foggy. I thought we were done lying to each other. He didn’t want to lie to Foggy anymore, but trying to put words to the hurricane of dread and guilt inside of him was an impossible task. “I think I just got overwhelmed,” he admitted. It was true…sort of. But it was internal – the fear, the guilt, the doubt, the Devil’s rage. It was on the brink of overflowing inside of him.
Foggy’s posture softened and Matt stepped close enough to feel his body heat. He tried to let it put some feeling back in his cold fingers. “You’re allowed to be comfortable, Matty,” Foggy said gently. “If you need to tap out of conversations because Nelsons are loud and obnoxious, no one is going to fault you for that.” He smiled.
“Well, I’m technically a Nelson too now,” Matt smiled back, hoping to steer this conversation somewhere safer.
“Yeah, but you’re still a Murdock.” Foggy twined their fingers together. One touch. “And I know your hermit tendencies make you steer clear of the raucous din that are Nelson conversations.”
“I’m not a hermit,” Matt tried to fake frown, getting a big laugh out of Foggy.
“This is coming from the guy that spent the whole time he was at a frat rager sitting in a corner and reading Thurgood Marshall.”
“Well, that I can explain that,” Matt teased. “I was trying to get the nerdy guy from Torts to hit on me.”
“Did it work?” Foggy asked.
Matt shrugged and blushed. “Yeah, sort of.” He started to walk past Foggy towards their office door.
Foggy paused as he connected the dots. “Wait,” he said and then ran after Matt. “Was the nerdy guy…me?”
Matt paused before they could enter their office and laughed. “It’s only ever been you.”
Foggy leaned forward for a kiss, his whole form reading jovial and in love. Matt kissed him back, counting all the touches Foggy made and hoarding them like a dragon covetously guarding his treasure.
Foggy fucked up.
Foggy knew he could be petty. And he knew he could be really petty with Matt when he was upset with him. But, he must’ve taken it too far in the days after their fight about Marci, because in the weeks afterwards Matt became…clingy.
To the untrained eye, everything seemed copacetic. They were done filing for new business licenses in the state and could finally open their doors again. They got a client almost immediately thanks to Bess Mahoney that kept them busy. Foggy was called to be deposed as a witness to one of Fisk’s many crimes And Foggy didn’t forget about making appointments – one for Matt’s back and the other for Foggy’s therapist.
To the untrained eye, it really seemed that everything was good, great even. They lived and they worked. They put drinks on their reopened tab at Josie’s. Foggy had a wonderful, loving husband. Everything was great.
Except, Foggy wasn’t untrained. Matt’s behavior was getting weird. He clung to Foggy to an almost obsessive degree. Foggy figured out he needed to be touched, but he never voiced that need. He would just follow Foggy around like a lost puppy – big, sad eyes and all. Then Foggy would touch him and he would almost physically sigh with relief under the contact. Foggy woke up to Matt clinging to him in his sleep, whispers of “Fisk,” and “Poindexter,” clinging to him like the sweat did. He found Matt glued to his side at night on the couch, or when he cooked in the kitchen, or even in the shower.
Matt’s affection was usually odd and sporadic, but it was pure and quiet and reverent. It was in the secret smiles he gave, in lingering touches, in small gestures, chaste kisses, and in his need to protect those he loved.
But, now? Now, it was like he couldn’t relax until he knew it was safe to.
And Foggy could only really blame himself. He cold-shouldered his orphaned husband with the mile long list of abandonment issues out of spite for a couple of days and broke him.
And part of him knew he had to fix this somehow. He couldn’t let Matt live thinking that affection was only okay now when Foggy initiated it. And Foggy couldn’t live his own life while also making sure that his touch-starved husband wasn’t suffering silently because he hadn’t kissed him good morning.
And, yet…
And yet, part of him didn’t want to press the matter. Because, to the untrained eye, to a normal person with normal-person lived experiences, everything was copacetic. Matt got him flowers and took him on dates. He gave him long kisses and wanted to have sex so often, Foggy was starting to chafe in parts he didn’t even realize could chafe in. They laughed at work and got drinks with their friends. It was only weird because Matt was not his usual brooding, moody, standoffish self.
Maybe this wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe Foggy didn’t break his husband, just gave him some…perspective?
So, Foggy just increased the PDA and the not-so-public-DA and left it alone. It was fine, really. So what if Matt was just extra cuddly now? That would usually be a good thing, right?
Foggy was kissing down Matt’s chest. They figured out together that Matt’s back liked sex the best when he was propped up slightly in bed. Foggy lightly massaged a hickey that was purple and blue on the inside of Matt’s thigh while he fingered him open. Matt’s bottom eyes were in full force – wide and starry and red-rimmed with his oversensitive sex-tears. He was opening so well around Foggy’s fingers. He was so beautiful.
Matt gave a shuddering breath and Foggy realized he said that last bit out loud. His eyes rolled up and around in his skull. “Foggy,” he whined in a desperate plea. “Please, I need you inside of me. Please.”
“So needy,” Foggy cooed, cupping Matt’s face. He ran the back of his hand over Matt’s stubble and watched him come completely undone under his touch.
Foggy bent down so he was crouched over Matt’s body, being careful about not putting too much weight or pressure on him. He kissed his chest again, working himself up to Matt’s neck. Matt whimpered softly as a response, each breath a measured gasp like he was trying to ration the oxygen in the room.
“You want me to fuck you?” Foggy asked. “You want me to fill you up with my cock?”
“Please,” Matt whispered, his hands on Foggy’s back gripping tight. “Please.”
“Shhh,” Foggy hushed, watching Matt’s diaphragm contract with a gasp. He laid a hand on Matt’s chest to calm him down. “I’ll fuck you. You’re being so good,” he cooed again in the tone of voice he figured out relaxed Matt and reminded Foggy of comforting a scared prey animal. “So good for me.”
“Please, Foggy,” Matt garbled back, his eyelids fluttering and his chin tipping back.
Foggy pressed a kiss to the underside of his chin and then slid his lubed fingers out of Matt. He watched with awe as Matt’s hold fluttered for a second and then closed before scooting forward, sliding his clean hand down Matt’s abs, feeling them tense and relax under his skin, under Foggy’s touches.
This would be the part where Matt would usually start getting demanding. Now, Foggy skated delicate touches down his skin like he was made out of porcelain and watched his whole body shudder violently in response. Matt’s legs widened for him. “Foggy,” he begged instead, his eyes rolling again. “Please. I need you.”
“Shhh. You'll get what you need.” Foggy hushed and lubed his own cock standing tall and proud against his hip first. Then he lined himself up and pressed in, going achingly slow.
Foggy stopped to inhale a deep breath as Matt clenched and relaxed around him. Matt was so sensitive. That, at least, hadn’t changed. And Foggy pretty much had Matt completely memorized in the fucking department, so he pulled back and pushed back in, automatically adjusting to hit Matt where he needed it the most.
“Oh,” Matt’s face was enraptured and Foggy was an addict injecting that expression straight into his veins. “Oh, Foggy.”
“Good?”
“So good,” Matt whispered, his stubby nails digging into Foggy’s skin. He garbled something else, but it was lost amongst his gasps and whimpers as Foggy pulled and pushed back in. He did that slowly, methodically, moving his arms to cradle Matt’s shoulders as he did so. Matt dug his face into Foggy’s neck and took deep inhales.
“You’re being so good for me. So, so good. My lovely Matty.” Foggy started rambling in Matt’s ear as he thrusted shallowly, aiming them perfectly to hit Matt’s prostate. Every thrust elicited a gasp and every praise elicited a whimper and Foggy could feel Matt go boneless in his arms as he reached whatever high he was aiming for.
He was so focused on Matt’s pleasure, he kind of forgot about his own. Matt’s eyes clamped shut and his body went from completely relaxed to completely tense. “Darling, I’m gonna come,” he warned a second before his voice broke. He moaned noisily through his orgasm, taking Foggy by surprise.
Well, that was okay. Foggy was glad Matt got something out of it. He gripped the base of his dick and started to pull out.
“No,” Matt gripped Foggy’s shoulder tighter to stop him. “Please finish. Please, baby. I want to feel you come inside of me.” He said with almost a desperate tone.
“Shhh,” Foggy hushed again, rubbing Matt’s face to coax the blissed out, happy expression back out. “I’ll finish, but it’ll hurt. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I’ll be okay,” Matt assured. “Please finish. Please?”
Foggy answered by pressing a kiss to Matt’s lips – slow and soft, like everything was nowadays. He pushed back in and listened to Matt take a deep breath through his nose. His whimpers went pained and tears trickled down his temples, into his hair.
“Baby,” Foggy stopped again, “if it’s too much–,”
“No,” Matt said, knotting his fingers into Foggy’s hair. “Please don’t stop. It feels good.”
Foggy’s eyebrows puckered in concern, but he started again. This time, he picked up the pace, now trying to finish quickly to save Matt from the overstimulation. He also angled down, away from Matt’s prostate as much as he could. Matt’s face went lax again and Foggy adjusted his position, finally catching the spark of pleasure and coaxing it into a full blaze as he chased his own orgasm.
“I’m gonna come, darling,” he warned in a whisper and then his head exploded into fireworks as he thrusted deep, deep into his husband and came into the tight heat of his spasming, oversensitive hole.
Foggy kissed Matt again. “I love you,” he whispered as he breathed with their foreheads pressed together. “Love you so much, angel.”
Matt was zooted out of his mind. Foggy could tell by the way his eyeballs rolled like marbles in Matt’s skull. Love-drunk and spent, he just breathed. “Good?”
“So, so good.” Foggy praised and kissed him again. “The best. Let me get a towel and get you cleaned up.”
“No,” Matt protested, his words desperate again and his hands flying without grace to Foggy’s face, his shoulder. “Just stay. For a couple of more moments. Please?” The please was misplaced – too polite, too small. Like a child begging for another cookie.
“You alright?” Foggy petted his face, trying to calm him down.
“Fine,” Matt answered, his eyebrows furrowed. “Just…stay.”
“Okay,” Foggy whispered, confused. It would only take him a second to run to the bathroom before the cum on Matt’s chest went hard and sticky. “I’ll stay.”
But, he obliged his husband, who Foggy may or may not have accidentally broken, by settling in next to him and letting Matt curl in his usual spot in his arms.
Notes:
Anyway Candace is here because Foggy gives me mad middle-child energy. Tell me what you think Matt's MBTI is in the comments or on tumblr where you can find me at most hours of the day.
Chapter 5
Notes:
I promise this isn't abandoned. Actually, it's like 93% written. I just started to think that maybe I need to split it into two works and then got caught in a loop of decision paralysis, started working on the sequel, and decided to stop editing and posting until I got my shit together. Which I haven't yet. Oh well.
We are exploring Matt's interesting aversion to the American healthcare system in this one! I added a headcanon in that Matt's probably sensitive to x-rays due to his hypersensitivities around most other things just to add some spice (like this fic isn't already topping out the scoville scale already lmfao)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“It’ll be over before you know it,” Foggy said to Matt, who was death-gripping the handle of his folded cane between both fists as Foggy filled out Matt’s intake form for him. He put the clipboard down on his knees so he could rub Matt’s leg through his jeans while he flipped through the pages. Most of this he just left blank. Matt’s parents were out of his life before he had a chance to ask them about hereditary conditions, so all those pages he scrawled big N/As over. He flipped to the HIPAA compliance page and put his own name and phone number down as someone who could talk about Matt’s health with the doctor.
Then flipped again to a little diagram of a man standing in the Vitruvian Man pose with lines to grade his pain.
“Okay,” Foggy said. “Where is your pain the worst?”
“Lower back,” Matt said as he laid his hand on top of Foggy’s and squeezed with about as much force as he was using on his cane. Foggy resisted the urge to yank his hand back. “Right above my hips.”
Foggy circled that spot on the diagram. “And if you could rate your pain? Scale of one-to-ten?”
“Normally?” Matt’s voice was taking a panicked edge. “A seven?”
“Seven?” Foggy blurted and turned towards his husband. “Has it always been that bad?”
Matt looked like he was on the verge of either bolting or crying. “Um, a six then?”
Foggy sighed and wrote seven down on the line.
“Did I…” Matt asked in the tiniest voice Foggy had ever heard from the man that regularly beat up criminals as a side hobby. “Did I say something wrong?”
“What?” Foggy asked, confused. “No, Matty. No. You didn’t say anything wrong. Not at all.” He shifted their hands so he could lace their fingers together. “I’m just sorry you’re in so much pain all the time. You need to sign, okay?” Foggy passed the clipboard over and Matt scrawled his signature over the lines Foggy guided his pen to.
Foggy returned the clipboard to the receptionist and fetched Matt’s ID and insurance card back for him. Matt was back to strangling his white cane as he sat alone in the sparse, bright waiting room for the orthopedic surgeon that Foggy made an appointment with a couple of weeks ago.
“The story,” Matt said once Foggy was sat. Foggy immediately picked up his hand again at least to save his cane from being dented. He didn’t have many of those anymore. “We should go over the story one more time.”
“Car accident. Walk signal voice was broken. Some jerk rounded a corner too fast and you went splat. You didn’t have insurance at the time, so you tried to walk off your injuries.” Foggy patted Matt’s hand. “Although, being crushed under a building with a clan of ninjas is a way cooler story.” He tried to joke to ease some of Matt’s tension.
Matt started and his head jerked towards the door that led into the back. He started to pale as he turned his head back to Foggy. “They’re not going to make me take…x-rays right?”
“I mean,” Foggy continued to rub. “Probably. So, they can see whatever damage was done.”
“Fog,” Matt was poised on the edge of the chair now and Foggy was seriously starting to think that Matt may make a run for it out the front door of this medical complex they were in. “I-I can’t take x-rays.”
“Why not?”
“They give me hives.”
Because, of course they did. Foggy sighed again and Matt looked like he was going to throw up. Foggy twisted in his chair to lay a hand on Matt’s back. Matt only incrementally relaxed under the touch. “Darling, you either see the doctor or you live with level-seven pain for the rest of your life.”
Matt looked truly torn between those two options. His mouth opened and then closed.
“Okay, but what happens when this injury comes between you and the, uh,” Foggy made horns with his fingers and put them on his forehead. “That guy? Huh?”
Now, he really looked like he was going to run or be sick or both. But, he slid back into his seat and started bouncing his leg with anxiety. Foggy rubbed his shoulders. Only Matt would consider a lifetime of pain to save himself from going through a medical exam.
“Mr. Murdock?” A nurse called them back.
For the first time in a couple of weeks, Matt initiated touch first. His hand clamped around Foggy’s arm in a vice as they followed the nurse to a scale where they made Matt take off his shoes to get weighed and then led them to a small exam room. Matt paused in the doorway, his fingernails digging crescents into Foggy’s skin as he realized he had to sit on the vinyl table in the middle of the room with the crinkly paper.
“Ouch,” Foggy said and pulled Matt’s hand off of his arm.
“Sorry,” Matt whispered and stepped up to sit on the table, his posture nervous and agitated as he dutifully sat through the blood pressure cuff and the thermometer swipe over his forehead.
“You’re doing great,” Foggy said once the tech left. “Just a couple more minutes and then you’ll be done.” He picked up Matt’s cane and looped it around his own wrist.
“Foggy, I can’t do this,” Matt shook his head, his fingers picking at a hangnail. “I can’t…” he started to slide off the table. “I can’t do this.”
“Matt!” Foggy maneuvered to get in front of him before he could make a run for it. “Matt, you’re panicking. There’s no reason to panic, okay? They see this stuff all the time.”
“Bullshit!” Matt spat back in a whisper, the fire Foggy hadn’t seen in awhile alight in his eyes. “You don’t think they’re gonna see a blind guy with a broken spine and not question his stories? They’re going to figure out who I am.”
“They don’t care about that,” Foggy assured him. “Trust me, alright? Doctors only care about treating your injuries and they’ve seen some really weird stuff, okay? Nothing is going to surprise them anymore.”
Matt was breathing heavily now, but he didn’t look like he was one wrong word away from sprinting out the door and climbing the first fire escape he found anymore. It was an…improvement.
“You’ve been through worse,” Foggy pointed out.
Matt paused for a second and then nodded, short and curt. “Okay,” he relented. “But, we’re sticking to the story.”
“Absolutely,” Foggy said. “And I’ll be right here with you, angel, okay?” He cajoled in the same tone he used in the morning when Matt tried to climb into his embrace. The same tone he used in sex.
Matt deflated and the fire in his eyes died. “Okay,” he said. “You won’t leave, right?” His voice was small and very un-Matt-like again. It was raising alarms in Foggy’s brain. Matt was so aggressively independent and this tone of voice was…scared. Foggy’s heard fear and panic and desperation in Matt’s voice before, but not like this. Not without the courage that chased the fear on its heels.
“Not on your life.” Foggy said and helped Matt step back up to the exam table. He looked defeated, but more than that – he looked small as he took in deep, meditative breaths and fidgeted with the hand that wasn’t currently in Foggy’s grasp.
Matt had almost calmed himself down when the doctor opened the door. And then all that work was undone. Matt paled and looked like he was going to vomit all over his shoes again.
“Good afternoon,” the guy – a bald guy that looked a bit like a miniature Luke Cage stepped into the room. “Mr. Murdock. I’m Dr. Campbell. I’m going to be taking a look at you today.” He took in Matt having a silent panic attack and Foggy holding his hand next to him with wide eyes.
“Afternoon, doctor,” Foggy greeted for Matt.
“So, I see we have some old injuries that are bothering you,” the doctor took a seat on the backless roll-y chair near the computer. He wiggled the mouse to wake up the screen and logged himself into Matt’s chart. “Want to tell me what happened?”
“Um,” Matt fidgeted so hard, he was drawing blood. Foggy shifted his hand over to cover the hand Matt was currently abusing. “Accident. I didn’t hear the traffic signal and was…hit by a car.” Matt stuttered out.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Dr. Campbell said with a headshake.
“Thanks,” Matt said flatly.
“Can you tell me about your pain? Is it shooting? Pins and needles? Muscle-achy like you’re getting the flu?” He started typing at the computer.
“Um,” Matt’s head chin ducked. “Radiating? Sometimes electric and shoots pain down my leg,” he motioned to his right leg. “It’s hot and burning usually. Like a broken bone. Stiff too. And, um,” he ducked his chin, “sometimes I can feel bones grinding together.”
It was Foggy’s turn to feel like he was about to throw up.
“And you didn’t seek treatment when the injury first happened?”
“I did…sort of.” Matt admitted. “But, not with a doctor or anything. I have…a friend,” he winced, “who knows first aid.”
“Does it hurt anywhere else?”
“My hips.”
“Does the pain get better when you’re laying down?”
“Yeah,” Matt said.
“Okay,” Dr. Campbell said. “I’m going to have you take off your shirt so I can take a look at your back.”
“Can I do it with my shirt on?” Matt asked, suddenly so anxious he was vibrating.
Catholic, Foggy mouthed to the doctor silently. Shy. The doctor’s eyes widened and then he nodded. “Uh, yeah. Sure. Whatever you’re most comfortable with.”
Matt lifted his shirt just high enough for the doctor to inspect his lower back and the top of his pelvis. Dr. Campbell palpated the skin and asked if different areas hurt. He pointed out the fading bruise on Matt’s chest and Matt gave a lame excuse about delivery bicyclist gig-workers. He put a hand on Matt’s shoulder and asked him to straighten up from the hunched position he was in. Matt obliged – but with a lot of struggle and wincing. “Okay,” he said and patted his shoulder. “You can relax.”
The doctor went back to his chair. “I’m going to order an x-ray and a CT scan,” he said as he tapped on the computer. “The x-ray is to look at your bones and the CT scan is to make sure you didn’t suffer any permanent nerve damage.”
Foggy slid his hand back in Matt’s, whose was sweaty with exertion and anxiety now. “Do we do that here?”
“Yes, we’ll be able to take care of all the radiology here in-office,” the doctor said. “Have you been doing anything for the pain in the meantime?”
“Heating pad,” Matt said.
“Does it help?”
“A little,” Matt admitted.
“Okay. Keep doing that if it helps. Switching back and forth between heat and ice may help with pain relief too.” The doctor squinted at him. “Do you do any contact sports?”
“He boxes,” Foggy volunteered before Matt could lie.
“Okay,” Dr. Campbell sighed. “You might have to take a break just until we have a better look at your injuries. Injuries that close the spine make us doctors nervous because a wrong move may paralyze you.”
Foggy swallowed so noisily, Matt’s head turned.
“Switch to light stretching in the morning, don’t lift more than forty pounds over your head, and if you have to walk more than ten blocks, call a cab,” the doctor continued. “I’ll write you a couple of prescriptions for pain.”
“Do you have an idea of what it is?” Foggy asked.
“Not yet,” the doctor said, “but given the pain level and the type of accident you were in, I don’t doubt there are some fractures that haven’t healed properly. Those can be treated, though, and we can get you some relief, Mr. Murdock.” He nodded warmly.
“Thank you, doctor,” Matt said politely, but his chin was tipped down and his voice was quiet, small.
Scared, like a child’s.
Matt wasn’t sure what he was going to do if he couldn’t go out patrolling.
His whole universe felt off-balance. The Devil was raging, but there wasn’t anything Matt could do about that. There was also the constant churning storm of fear and doubt and shame that threatened to drown him, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that either. His thoughts were racing and his chest felt tight and he just felt so overwhelmed, that even the idea of trying to parse through his thoughts seemed like an impossible task.
He needed to patrol. If he couldn’t let the Devil out, just a little, then he was afraid it was going to become uncontrollable. If it became uncontrollable, then he was going to lose Foggy. He had worked so hard these last couple of weeks to not lose Foggy. The number of Foggy’s touches each day were about the same – a fact that he was proud of. His loops he got in with the knives and the door and his pens he had down to a science to keep the visions about Dex from bothering him. Even the fear that choked him out was waning a bit. Things were starting to finally feel right again.
“You want to try and eat something?” Foggy touches were gentle and loving as he rubbed on his back. It was really the only reprieve in the hurricane that Matt was currently stuck being buffeted around in.
“Yeah.” Matt couldn’t will himself to move.
After the appointment, Matt had a panic attack in the one-person bathroom of the medical office. A true, head-between-the-knees panic attack that left Matt gasping in oxygen while the Devil mocked and taunted him with nasty, piercing words, kicking him in the ribs while he was already down for the count. If only Stick could see him now. He would laugh in Matt’s face over how weak and pathetic he was now.
And then he felt exhausted, his battery depleted as he stumbled out the door back to Foggy. His senses were hazy and made everything feel unreal. Like he had slipped into a dream. No – a nightmare. He felt like he was an onlooker observing himself as Foggy gathered him up and took him home. He could still hear the Devil, but it was muted, far away. All he could focus on was the fact that he was going to lose Foggy. That fear was churning and violent inside of him like the Hudson during a storm. It was the only thing that still felt real.
Foggy sat down next to Matt on the couch, where he had been placed when they got home like a mannequin. Matt just gripped the couch arm like he was trying to grip the reins of himself, his fingers slipping and fiddling with the edge like he couldn’t put the strength in his hands to get them to do what he wanted them to.
“Matt,” Foggy picked up his other hand. “You’re scaring me. Can you at least tell me what’s going on?”
Matt couldn’t open his mouth. He was afraid of what may come out. He was afraid of his own voice.
“Matt,” Foggy said again, his own name sounding strange in Foggy’s mouth. “Is this like, uh, a PTSD thing? Like a flashback?”
Matt’s head turned and he felt his facial muscles tense in a scrunch of disagreement. He didn’t have PTSD. Frank Castle had PTSD. Matt was nothing like Frank Castle.
No. The Devil said. You’re pathetic.
Matt felt himself wince as those words penetrated through the haze to sting right in Matt’s middle. He continued to fidget and pretend that he wasn’t trapped in some version of hell where he was a bystander to his own undoing. He hummed and fidgeted. “No,” he said, his voice rougher than he intended. “Not a ‘PTSD thing.’”
“Then can you tell me what’s going on?” Foggy shifted closer. “Darling, you’re worrying me.” His voice went low and soft like a lullaby. Brushed wool soft enough to sink into. Matt wanted so desperately to sink into it.
“I’m…” Matt started, his voice cutting off as he felt himself choke. He was what? Guilty? Angry? Sad? Petrified out of his mind at the threats he conjured up himself? Waiting for the other shoe to drop and Foggy to disappear out of his life forever? “...afraid.”
“Afraid of what, angel?” Foggy asked, his voice still silk.
You’re afraid of the day he’ll realize you’re no angel.
“What if I can’t…” Matt started and then licked his lips. “What if I can’t protect you?” What if I can’t control him? He amended in his head.
Foggy’s relief was palpable. “You’re worried about me?” He asked with disbelief in his voice, like Matt didn’t spend every waking moment nowadays hypervigilant of Foggy’s every emotion, move, and expression. He moved forward and kissed his favorite spot above Matt’s eyebrow. Seventeen touches today, a new record. He noted absently. “Don’t worry about me, darling. You said it yourself that it’s been pretty quiet lately, right?”
Matt felt his shoulders tense. It had been quiet, but he didn’t want to think about the fact that at night he went out looking to save his city he loved, and every morning he came back feeling scorned and rejected by her. That it wouldn’t matter if Matt had to take a break, because the city that he poured so much blood, sweat, and tears into wouldn’t miss him. It wouldn’t even care.
“I’ll be fine, okay?” Foggy moved his hand to Matt’s back. “No one’s coming after me. You made sure of that.” He pressed his forehead against Matt’s shoulders.
And Matt wanted to sink in the velvet weight of Foggy’s voice. He wanted to bathe himself in the conviction of his words. He wanted to memorize his heartbeat and his breathing pattern and the touch of his skin. Being enveloped in the heaven that was Foggy’s love distracted him from the hell of his own eventualities. Even for a little bit.
Even though he knew it would hurt more in the long run.
Matt wandered out of the bedroom the next morning, feeling like he missed his alarm and that the sun was way higher in the sky than it should be for eight in the morning. Foggy was in the kitchen, so that’s where Matt naturally headed too. Music played low from his stereo and the air was filled with the scents of coffee and breakfast.
“What time is it?” Matt asked as he leaned against the counter, close enough to Foggy to feel his heat, close enough that Foggy only had to lean over a couple of inches and kiss him good morning.
“It’s ten-thirty,” Foggy said and Matt felt suddenly prickled that he didn’t kiss him first before speaking. He twitched a finger against Foggy’s thigh.
“It’s Tuesday,” Matt pointed out. So, he definitely missed his alarm.
“I texted Karen that we weren’t coming in today,” Foggy said, finally leaning over for a smooch. Matt accepted it, despite the earlier slight, and he accepted the temple kiss Foggy gave him too. Apology accepted, he thought to himself.
“Why?”
“Thought we could take the day off?” Foggy shrugged with feigned airiness. “Maybe go to the Park?”
Matt sighed, knowing Foggy was only doing this because of how he acted yesterday. And Matt felt the roar of fire under his skin, angry that Foggy had to deal with that in the first place. He should be better than that. He should’ve maintained better control over himself.
Mind controls the body.
What controls the mind?
Fear.
“Will you do me a favor?” Foggy asked. Matt liked to pal around the kitchen with Foggy when he was making food. Well, actually, he felt the sinking weight of dread whenever Foggy left the room without telling Matt where he was going first. It was annoying and frustrating to Matt. He couldn’t just tell Matt where he was heading? It made him feel like Foggy was trying to get away from him.
But, Matt would get up and follow him and Foggy would always be happy to see him. Matt would have to remind himself that Foggy was allowed to move around his own house freely and then he would be ashamed of himself for feeling like that in the first place. And then Foggy would kiss him or call him his new favorite pet name ‘angel,’ and Matt would suddenly be flooded with Foggy and forget why he was mad in the first place.
“Hmm?” Matt cocked his head, his fingers fiddling with his wedding ring.
“Can you chop this onion?” Foggy asked, picking up an onion from the basket and setting it on a cutting board that already had the butcher knife on it. “I’m making omelets.”
Matt froze, his head twisting towards the knife block as that clairvoyant prophecy suddenly overwhelmed him. He could sense they were all there besides the butcher knife, which was on the cutting board. He didn’t have to count the knives before cutting the onion. He didn’t…he didn’t.
“Sure.”
He turned around to wash his hands at the sink, now only a foot away from the knife block. He counted them again. All were present, minus one, which was behind him. All were accounted for. He had nothing to worry about.
He washed his hands again. Just once more. Just so he could count the knives again. Eleven. And twelve was behind him. Kitchen shears were…not there. Matt felt panic punch through his middle with two fists. He twisted and found Foggy had used them to cut up bacon. Okay. Everything was fine.
He turned off the water and dried his hands. He cocked his head and tuned into Foggy. He was humming along with the song while he worked over the stove, not paying attention to Matt at all. And part of him wanted to cry suddenly. Why couldn’t Foggy see he was struggling? Did he care so little about him?
And Matt felt suddenly selfish. He took and took and took and gave nothing in return like a parasite. He had so much to lose and nothing to give.
“Darling?” Foggy had turned from the stove. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Matt put down the towel. “I’m okay.” He touched the knife block, skating his finger against their wood handles, pretending he was looking for one and counting under his breath instead. Eleven. Kitchen shears were with Foggy. Butcher knife behind him.
“I already pulled out a knife,” Foggy said and Matt jumped, startled.
“Oh, okay,” Matt said, hoping he didn’t look as on edge as he felt. He usually counted six or seven times before he felt comfortable enough to walk away; before the vision died and the anxiety in his middle untwisted. He turned around and found the knife and then the onion. He started to peel the paper skin off.
“Was Karen okay with us not coming in?” He asked, trying to distract himself with talking before he involuntarily turned around and started counting knives again.
“Oh yeah,” Foggy shook his head. “She said no worries and would cover for us.”
“That’s good,” Matt tipped his chin to his task. “I hope she isn’t working too hard.”
Foggy hummed. “The whole office needs to be better about work-life balance,” he motioned to Matt with his spatula. “Including you and your night job.”
Matt didn’t respond to that. He just turned his head and mentally counted the knives again. Eleven. There were eleven. But, he didn’t feel like he could trust himself until he touched them all again.
He picked up the butcher knife and sliced the onion in half, the blade making a muted thwock against the cutting board. Matt ignored the nausea in his middle over the fact that the sound reverberated in the same way his baton impaling Father Lantom’s sternum did. He realized his hands were shaking, so he put the knife down and turned to grab another to cover it up. “Knife’s dull,” he said before Foggy had a chance to ask what he was doing.
He counted the knives. And then he counted them again. And again. And again. The sound of the baton grew louder, the memory shifted and changed and suddenly it was Foggy there, blocking Karen. Tears flooded his eyes as he counted.
“Matt?”
Matt started for a second time that morning, his hand freezing.
“Why are you counting the knives?” Foggy was at his side. “Is one missing?” He turned around in a circle, taking stock of Matt’s old Bed Bath & Beyond set.
“No,” Matt said and dropped his hand. “Um,” he fidgeted. “My back hurts. I think I should probably actually sit.” It was a lame excuse. The lie made the words heavy and wrong on his tongue.
“Okay,” Foggy kissed Matt’s head, his tone that light and sweet. “I can finish up. Do you want some ice?”
“No,” Matt said quickly. “I’m okay.” He didn’t move. He didn’t want to move from Foggy’s side, he couldn’t be pulled away anymore than a compass arrow could be pulled away from the North Pole. He could tell Foggy was watching him, his posture expectant and his blinks heavy.
“Matt?” Foggy prompted.
“I’m sorry,” Matt just blurted, words tumbling out of him without permission.
“What are you sorry for?”
“For yesterday,” Matt winced. “For…acting like that.”
Foggy’s eyebrows furrowed and he shifted. And then he asked a question that threw Matt completely off. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Therapist. Foggy still wanted him to see a therapist. But, he wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t. Even though rational people didn’t count knives to alleviate imagined fears. Even though Matt felt torn between jumping out the window to escape this conversation and begging Foggy to give him the comfort and reassurance he desperately craved. He just wanted to sink back into the bliss that was Foggy’s pure and unadulterated affection.
“C-can I just...?” He whispered, his hand fishing for Foggy's. His voice sounded so odd and he wondered if he was slipping back into the dreamlike state where he felt like he was just observing himself from outside his own body. "I just want a hug," he admitted shamefully.
Foggy brightened, his whole body radiating warmth and Matt felt like he was going to melt. He reached his arms around Matt’s torso, dug his nose into Matt’s shoulder. “You never have to ask for my hugs, angel.”
Matt hugged him back, the need for Foggy’s physical touch so fierce, it felt like he would die without it. He tucked his arms up against his chest and laid his head on Foggy’s shoulder and let himself just let go for a second. One solid second where he was suspended in that space above his fears, above the Devil, above the doubt and guilt and loathing. The space where he wasn’t Matt Murdock, the blind and orphaned catholic lawyer with unhealed spinal fractures and a laundry list of issues. Or the warrior Stick trained for the war. Or the Clyde to Elektra’s Bonnie. Or even the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.
He was just Foggy’s angel – just the love of his life, the center of his world.
Foggy rubbed his back gently and hummed Taylor Swift in his ear. Heaven. He sighed, his happy bubble pervaded by one, singular thought.
He needed to count the knives again.
They ended up staying in. Despite the pile of laundry they had to get to the laundromat, despite it being a warm spring day with the sun shining, despite needing groceries, Foggy decided for the both of them that they just deserved a day to not worry about responsibilities. He was pretty sure Matt was cracking under the weight of worrying over his responsibilities. His spine snapping every time he shifted wrong reminded Foggy of that fact.
He put on a Disney movie he knew Matt had enjoyed from his childhood and they settled on the couch together. Foggy covered Matt’s legs up with their throw blanket and held his hand. Once the movie started, Matt shifted around until he was tucked under Foggy’s chin.
A mental health day. A very deserved one. They had a lack of those in recent months.
But, Foggy knew that what Matt needed was more than a mental health day. He needed to talk to someone, because Foggy knew it wasn’t going to be him. And even if Matt was forthcoming about his issues, Foggy wasn’t trained to handle them. And something was wrong. Foggy thought back to Matt standing at the knife block, counting them over and over like he was lost in an endless cycle.
And then the hug? Matt had that small and petrified tone of voice again. He just imagined a little Matty—freckled and small with wide hazel eyes—scared and alone, requesting hugs from ghosts that never answered his plea.
Fuck.
“Foggy?” Matt’s head tipped up, probably tasting Foggy’s tears in the air or something. “Are you okay?”
Luckily, the movie they were watching was Dumbo and Dumbo just got picked on by those clowns. He pressed the corners of his eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “Just a sap.” Which was true, but he was mostly a sap for his husband and his tragic past, not the Disney classic.
Matt retucked his head under Foggy’s chin and Foggy cinched his arms tighter around his shoulders. “It has a happy ending,” Matt reassured, like Foggy hadn’t seen Dumbo a million times before and knew exactly what was going to happen.
“Yeah, I know he will,” Foggy just whispered back and nosed Matt’s hair.
Notes:
Thanks for reading! I hope to be posting this story more regularly. Comments give me +30 bonus to my health bar, so drop them if you wanna! In the meantime, I will be on tumblr speculating about Matt's soup preferences.
Chapter 6
Notes:
This chapter is a bit short but the next one is topping off at 9K and some change so I don't feel bad about this li'l short guy here.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Matt?” Karen touched his arm. “You alright?”
Matt resisted the urge to wheel back from the unexpected touch. “I’m okay,” he said. “Heard something outside. What were you saying?”
Matt was only three days into his prescribed hiatus from patrolling and he already felt like he was going to jump out of his skin. The Devil raged to be let out and then raged harder when Matt denied himself the release. The churn of fear and guilt was congealing to his insides, making him feel heavy and useless. He was useless. The Devil spat that every moment of everyday. And then he would feel angry with himself for being so pathetic he couldn’t even last a work week without letting the Devil claw out of his chest. For letting the words the Devil taunted him with get to him like a bully on a schoolhouse playground.
Without being able to vent his frustrations into fighting criminals, the Devil set his targets elsewhere. Where? Matt wasn’t sure yet, but it scared the shit out of him that it might be Foggy.
Matt felt like his hypervigilance on his husband was in overdrive now. Sighs were starting to feel like hot cattle prods on Matt’s skin and touches that weren’t long enough to Matt’s liking were read as a slight, immediately putting Matt’s teeth on edge. In every other behavior, Matt looked for signs that Foggy was done with dealing with him.
And the other side of him, the side that just wanted everything to be okay, was desperate. Desperate for reassurance, desperate to be heard, desperate to be loved and wanted and cherished despite the Devil dancing right on the tip of Matt’s tongue.
He felt like he was being pulled in two directions and somewhere in the middle, he was going to split open.
Karen’s eyebrows furrowed. “I found where Dex is.”
She had pulled him to the side when Foggy left the office to use the restroom. Matt tuned into him as he stomped down the stairs, said hello to Theo, and then excused himself to the restroom. Matt heard him pull out his phone and Matt’s first immediate thought was a relationship that Foggy was trying to hide from Matt – his mind turning first to Marci Stahl, whose very name now sparked this bonfire blaze of hatred in Matt’s chest – but then the noises turned on and Matt sighed with both relief and frustration that it was that loud social media app he was always on now.
“Oh?” He said and shifted, his back aching. Which was not helping his mood.
She sucked in a breath. “He was being treated by a Dr. Kenji Oyama at Bellevue,” she said.
“Okay?” He asked, a little confused at her choice of wording. “What do you mean ‘was’ being treated? Is he not anymore?”
“That report is now a month and a half old,” she said as she leaned against her desk. Matt shifted so he could lean too and cross his arm. “I’m trying to see if there’s a newer one, but right now…” she shrugged, “that’s all I found.”
“Do you know what he was being treated for?”
Karen shook her head. “No,” she said, “just ‘injuries received by Wilson Fisk and Daredevil.’” The Devil inside raged against being lumped in the same category as Wilson Fisk. Matt felt a flash of anger so hot, he had to yank his tie away from his neck.
“Do we know where he was assigned to?”
“Yes,” she nodded, “Bellevue’s prison ward was where he was going to be held due to his past mental health diagnoses.”
Did you enjoy the feeling you got when you killed those birdies? Matt shivered involuntarily at the memory and tried to fight off the prophecies his mind conjured up about Dex finding and killing Foggy.
Matt sighed. This didn’t really help his peace of mind. The report was old enough now that Dex could’ve been halfway around the world by now. He could’ve been killed with his body floating in the Hudson. He could be in Matt and Foggy’s closet, waiting for them to come home.
He could be anywhere.
Matt’s fingers twitched towards his pen cup where he held seven pens, two pencils, and a sharp letter opener. He should count them again to make sure they were all there.
“I’ll keep looking,” Karen assured him, touching his arm again. He leaned into the touch this time, trying to posture himself as someone who wasn’t being completely curb-stomped to the ground with fear. She disconnected and moved to sit behind her desk. “I don’t like that the paper trail ends there. There should be more.”
“What about Fisk?”
She gave a terse sigh as she reopened her laptop. “We all know where Fisk is being held. The news won’t shut up about it.”
“I know you’re keeping tabs.” He shifted around, leaning one hip against the edge of her desk.
She sighed. “Yeah. NYPD put him in the closest thing they could call a ‘hole’ to rot in. He has no contact from the outside except for his lawyer.” She started typing loudly. “Not even his precious Vanessa," she mimicked Fisk's low, chesty growl, "who is no longer in the country again, by the way.” She shook her head. “Probably sipping mai tais on some Tahitian island waiting for all of this to blow over again.”
“The police would never let him escape a second time,” Matt played with items on the edge of her desk – straightening her stapler and fixing her sticky notes. His hand twitched to her pen cup where she held a couple of highlighters and some pens. There were pens strewn all over her desk too. Matt tried to stomp down his anxiety.
“Neither would you,” she muttered lowly as she rested her chin on her hand. They hadn’t told her about Matt’s appointment. Matt hadn’t wanted to hear the pity bleed into her voice over him yet. She sighed again. “Anyway, I’ll make sure everyone knows what a huge piece of shit he is in my deposition.”
“Is there a question on his ‘piece of shit’ status?” Matt joked to cover his unease.
Foggy opened the door to their office. “Who are we talking about?”
“Fisk,” Karen spat like the word disgusted her.
Foggy headed right up to Matt’s side smelling like bathroom hand soap now. He kissed Matt’s face and Matt resisted the urge to beg for more. “Oh, yeah,” he agreed as he disconnected to sit down at his desk. “Biggest piece of shit. The king of pieces of shit!"
“You have a deposition too, right?” Karen asked.
“Unfortunately,” Foggy wiggled his finger on his trackpad to wake his computer up.
Matt decided he had probably spent enough time loitering around Karen’s desk and went back to his own chair. He had to brace himself against his desk to sit down and he squeezed his eyes shut tight behind his glasses through the pain. He hadn’t taken any of the medication, even though the prescriptions were filled and picked up by Foggy a couple of days ago. It was another thing for the Devil to ridicule him about.
He let his fingers glide through his pens. He was so fast at counting them now, he was pretty sure no one in the office noticed. He did it again and again, letting the rhythmic counting lull his anxieties back down from the fire it was to waning embers.
“I’m not drunk.”
“If you’re drunk I should probably take you home.”
“I’m not drunk,” Matt protested again, a scoffed sigh escaping from him as he slouched in the booth they were sitting. “I’m just…tipsy.” His words were slurring.
Foggy combed Matt’s hair down in the back where the booth he was slumped against was trying to make it stand up with static. His tie had been loosened four drinks ago and his glasses had been discarded on the table two drinks after that. His eyes rolled heavily and his blinks didn’t completely cover his eyes, but it had been the most relaxed Foggy had seen him in ages.
“Hey,” Matt leaned against Foggy. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Foggy smiled down at his husband, who was leaning against Foggy’s shoulder. “But, you are very drunk.”
Matt’s hand ungracefully reached out for his drink – a Macallan, neat – and the backs of his fingers slapped against his heavy glass before he got a grip around it. He took a swig and then straightened up. “I have a thought,” he said.
“You are still able to have those with all the alcohol in your system?” Foggy teased.
Matt ignored him. “We should get a pet together. Like a cat!”
“Okay,” Foggy said and picked up Matt’s drink and set it on the other edge of the table. “I’m cutting you off.”
“Give me my drink,” Matt said with a furrow in his brow after groping unsuccessfully around for it on the table in front of him. “Don’t hide things from a blind man. That’s rude.”
Foggy relented, passing Matt’s half-drunk whiskey back. Matt sipped it and then set it down. He sighed deeply.
“Foggy,” he slurred, his furrow still deep in his eyebrows making him look brooding and pensive despite his eyes still rolling with alcohol consumption. “I’m not crazy if I go to therapy, right?”
Foggy perked up at Matt mentioning therapy unprompted. “No, of course not. Who said that?”
Matt just made a lazy motion to himself and then sighed.
“I made an appointment with a therapist,” Foggy pointed out. “Do you think I’m crazy?”
“No,” Matt shook his head and leaned himself over so much he was almost in Foggy’s lap now. “I think you’re perfect.” He whispered.
“What’s got you thinking about therapy?” Foggy tried.
Matt sighed again. “I don’t like feeling this way.”
“What way?” Foggy was starting to feel like Karen with all the pushing and pushing. And sober-Matt would be horrified knowing that his drunk self was betraying him like this, but if getting Matt wasted was the only way he would actually talk about what was bothering him, Foggy made a note to pick up some more booze for their liquor shelf.
“Afraid,” Matt said simply, his furrow still in his brow.
“Therapy can help with that,” Foggy tried. Anything to help at this point. He wasn’t even against begging.
Matt made a noise and straightened up. “Would you go with me?” His voice was back to being small. That’s not where Foggy wanted this conversation to go, but he followed along anyway because at least they were getting somewhere.
“Of course, darling,” Foggy nodded. “I’ll go wherever you ask me too.”
Matt’s face suddenly twisted and heated red like he was going to burst into tears in the middle of Josie’s. He inhaled a shuddering breath.
“Oh, God,” Foggy said, turning in the booth. “What’s wrong, Matt?” Foggy was suddenly terrified that he was breaking his already broken partner more by trying to help. He put his hands on Matt’s shoulders, which must’ve reminded him where he was or something, because in the next second he pulled himself together and picked up his drink and swallowed it down with a grimace.
“I think I’m ready to go home,” Matt said, his fingers knotting in Foggy’s shirt. “Foggy, take me home.”
“Alright,” Foggy soothed. He picked up Matt’s glasses for him and slid them back on his face. “I’ll take you home, okay?” He picked up his cane for him and then guided him gently out of the booth and then out of the bar by the elbow.
“No cabs,” Matt said as he leaned on him heavily on the sidewalk.
“We have to take a cab, Matty,” Foggy said, his arm around Matt’s waist as he flagged a cab down. “Josie’s is too far from the house to walk now. You heard the doctor.”
“I don’t want to take a cab,” Matt started to tug Foggy’s arm, his red glasses reflecting the neon light of the bar sign. “It’s not that far. We can walk.”
Foggy sighed tersely, because arguing with a drunk Matt Murdock never ended well, but the doctor specifically said not to walk more than a couple of blocks. Josie’s was almost twelve blocks away from their apartment.
Matt shuddered and his fingers dug tighter into Foggy’s shirt as a cab pulled up to the curb. “Please don’t make me get in a cab.” He begged in a tone that read desperate and afraid all over it.
“Why not?” Foggy asked.
Matt licked his lips and swayed on his feet. “If I say it’s a PTSD thing, will you not question it?”
Foggy choked on his own spit because that only made him want to ask a million questions. What happened to Matt in a cab? His brain started churning out worst-case possibilities. Each one more gruesome and horrible than the last. Especially in these last months?
“Foggy,” Matt begged again. His face heated red again with unshed tears. “Please.”
“Okay,” Foggy finally agreed and really just because he was actually afraid Matt was going to have a breakdown if he made him get in the back of a cab. “We can walk.” He turned and waved the cab away.
“Thank you,” Matt breathed with relief. “Thank you. Thank you.” He stepped forward, curled his arms against his own chest as he tucked himself against Foggy. “Thank you.”
“Angel,” Foggy sighed as his heart skipped four beats. He rubbed Matt’s back. “You know it’s not normal to be scared to get into a taxi cab, right?”
“I know,” Matt said despondently, his words still garbled with drunkenness. “I know. I’m…” he sighed again, “pathetic.”
Alarm hit Foggy like a truck. “What?” Foggy asked and pushed him back to look into his face. “No. No. That’s not what I said.”
Matt just looked incredibly hurt that he was shoved off. “What did I say?” He asked, looking like he was really about to cry now, his lower lip wobbling. “Are you mad at me?”
“Oh, Matty. No. No.” He cupped his face, squeezing his cheeks up enough that a couple of tears were let loose. “No, I’m not mad at you. It just…hurts me when you talk about yourself that way. You’re strong and smart and beautiful. Don’t call yourself things like that.”
Matt sniffled. “You’re really not mad?”
“No,” Foggy said and hugged him again. “Not at all.”
Matt sniffled against his shoulder, tucking his arms against himself again. “Okay,” he said. “Can we go home now? I’m really drunk.”
Foggy gave a nervous chuckle and rubbed up and down Matt’s back. “Of course, beloved. Anything you want.”
And Foggy closed his eyes, trying to convince himself that this was only the alcohol talking. Matt was drunk and a little delirious and just needed some sleep and water. But, Foggy knew with the guilt making the back of his throat taste metallic that this wasn’t just the alcohol talking. This was something way beyond just drunken emotional ramblings. Matt was hurting.
And Foggy knew deep down, he was to blame.
“Matty,” Foggy carded fingers through his hair. “Darling. It’s time to wake up.”
The pain of a hangover headache ricocheted about the interior of Matt’s skull like a trapped, angry hornet. He rolled over, the electric fire of anguish shooting from his back into his hips. He had fallen asleep in the wrong position and was now unable to move. Shit.
“Good morning, sunshine.” Foggy whispered, perched on the edge of Matt’s side of the bed. “How’s that hangover?”
“Hurts,” Matt just grunted back. “What time is it?”
“Eight,” Foggy said. “I brought water and some meds.”
Matt felt his eyes squint with the pounding pain behind them. “What meds?”
“Tramadol,” Foggy said. “The good stuff.”
Matt shook his head immediately, causing his world to go wobbly with his headache and his stomach to sour like he was suddenly seasick. “I don’t need tramadol,” he said. “Just aspirin is fine.”
Foggy sighed, which was a punch to Matt’s gut and made him feel like such a huge trouble to the only person that mattered. “What about the muscle relaxer? There’s no narcotics in it. It’s just to help with the stiffness.”
Matt tried to roll to his back again and sucked in a short breath of pain. He squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. “Can you help me sit up?” He asked and the Devil threw pathetic at him like a poisonous dart. Matt was so tired of hearing that word. He was pathetic. He didn’t need his face rubbed into it like a beaten dog.
Foggy wrapped his arm around Matt’s shoulders and helped him get to a sitting position, pausing when Matt gasped or whimpered with pain. Matt felt suddenly transported back to St. Agnes, where the pain was so bad and his injuries so extensive, he had to be physically rolled over by the nuns. Where every touch was an embarrassing reminder of how big of a failure he was. He was a shame, a blight.
Burden.
Medications were handed to him and he swallowed them down with a sip of water that didn’t do anything for the sour taste in his mouth or the feeling of being a huge, fucking inconvenience for anyone who had the misfortune of interacting with him. His head hurt too much to really try and put any effort into silencing that churn of doubt and self-hatred inside of him. Especially now that the Devil was replaying all the times he accidentally made a mess of himself at the orphanage because the nuns were too slow to get him to the bathroom in time.
“I think I need to call out today,” Matt admitted once he handed the glass of water back and it was replaced with a coffee cup. The Devil raged and Matt felt defeated.
“I already texted Karen for you,” Foggy said and rubbed his leg and Matt realized that he was already showered, dressed, and ready for work. “Don’t worry.”
“Where are you going?” Matt blurted. It was a stupid question. Obviously Foggy was well enough to go to work. Foggy didn’t get crushed under a multistory building and now had to deal with the aftermath. Foggy didn’t drink himself into a blackout last night to try and escape the feeling of losing control of the anger inside of him, to escape the need of having to punch and be punched back to feel sane. Foggy could function like a regular adult with a job.
But…what if Matt needed him? He was just going to be left all alone all day? Did Foggy not care that Matt could barely move? Did he not see how much pain Matt was in? Did he not care? He could feel himself start to shake. The part of him that only wanted to be loved felt…left behind.
Matt felt like his whole world was suddenly crumbling.
Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee…
“I’m just going to my appointment,” Foggy said. “I’ll be back in about an hour or two.”
Appointment. Okay. That was fine and normal. Matt fought for control of his breathing.
“Do you need help to the bathroom or anything?” Foggy asked as he rose to his feet.
Matt felt like he was going to throw up at the memory of being manhandled into a tiny, ancient bathroom by two nuns. “No,” he shook his head. “I’m alright.”
“Okay,” Foggy leaned over and kissed his head and then cupped his face. “I love you, my darling. I’ll be back soon.” He sounded pained to say that. Your fault. The Devil reminded him.
“I love you too,” Matt breathed back, feeling only alright with Foggy touching him and feeling completely off when he dropped his hands and turned around. He felt a sudden wash of desperation. “Foggy, wait.”
Foggy stopped in the doorway and turned around. Matt didn’t know what to say, besides a plea for him to come back. He gripped his bedspread. “Um,” he stammered. “Can you bring back the good coffee when you come back?” He asked lamely. He didn’t even care about the coffee. He just wanted to prolong Foggy leaving.
Foggy snorted. “Are you telling me the cup of brewed grounds I slaved over isn’t good enough for your delicate sensibilities?”
Matt knew it was meant to be a joke, but Foggy’s words stung on the peaks of Matt’s face like a slap. He ducked his head and fidgeted with the warm mug in his hand. Then Foggy sighed and Matt pressed his eyes closed. “Nevermind. It’s fine.” He said quickly.
“Hey,” Foggy said, realizing his joke didn’t land. Matt couldn’t even find enough willpower within himself to even fake laugh. “Of course I’ll get you the good coffee.” He stepped back into the room and lowered himself back onto the bed, his eyes fixed on Matt’s face.
“You’re going to be late for your appointment,” Matt said, suddenly not wanting to have this conversation and knowing he was stuck in the middle of it nonetheless.
“Matt, are you okay? Is there anything you want to talk about?” Foggy asked that same question he did the other day. A cold wind of frustration replaced the shame. How many times did Matt have to tell Foggy that he didn’t want to talk. Not to him, not to a therapist, not even to himself. Talking would mean having to admit he had a problem and he. Was. Fine.
“No,” he snapped.
Foggy sighed again and the Devil raged. It took all of Matt’s inner strength to not start screaming. “Do you remember anything about last night? You drank a lot, so you might not’ve.” He asked, his voice gentle like he was trying to console a petulant child.
Matt started to sift through his memories from the previous night. Everything was hazy and there were definitely big blank spots where he couldn’t remember anything. He shook his head. “Not really.”
“You brought up therapy.”
He did?
“You asked if I would go with you.”
He did?
“You called yourself pathetic,” Foggy shifted around, his voice hurt and chafed. “Matt, I know you don’t want to have this conversation, but I really think you should talk to someone.”
Matt was suddenly very, very fearful of whatever bullshit managed to make it out of his mouth last night. He went to Josie’s with the intention of drinking enough to not feel the Devil trying to punch his way out of Matt’s chest for a bit. He was hoping to get some alcohol-induced sleep and maybe just the smallest relief from the chronic back pain. Not to spill his guts out all over the sticky floor of Josie’s. What did Foggy hear? Enough to see how much of a pain in the ass Matt was? Enough to drive him out of Matt’s life permanently?
“I’ll definitely go with you,” Foggy assured when Matt didn’t speak. “Absolutely, I will. But, I think you’re bottling up a lot of shit right now and it’s not healthy to keep all of that in.”
That didn’t make sense to Matt. If he didn’t keep it in, where would it go? What happened when the dam broke? What happened when he lost control of the Devil?
You would lose him.
“Is that something…” Foggy started hesitantly, “is that something you’re seriously considering? I don’t mind making the appointment for you.”
Yes. No. Maybe. Matt gripped his mug tighter.
“No,” Matt finally said. “I don’t want to see a therapist, Fog. I already said that.” His tone was too sharp and too rough and he felt like he was undoing all the work he put in these last couple of weeks. His touch counter was in the negatives now. Matt felt like crying.
“Fine.” Foggy nodded and stood up again. There was no fight in his voice, just resignation. He said all the wrong things. The buzzer was sounding, the ref was counting. Matt was defeated, the knee pinned on his neck the sigh that Foggy threw his way.
Mind controls the body. What controlled the mind? What controlled the mind?
Matt learned that day how loud doors could be. He flinched violently when the front door shut, the noise sending seismic waves through Matt’s whole body, shaking the sobs up and out of him.
Foggy’s first therapy appointment was pretty anticlimactic.
“So, what brings you in to see me today?” the therapist – Richard was his name – asked as he crossed his legs. Foggy found this behavioral health office on their shitty health insurance’s doctor search results. And because he found a therapist in the office who Foggy thought would be best for Matt based on her little blurb of specialties and schooling on their website.
Foggy himself set an appointment with a different clinician in the office whose blurb stated he specialized in family/marital conflict, anxiety, and helping patients navigate daily life stressors when they are feeling overwhelmed. Foggy wasn’t a math major in school, but he was pretty sure that succinctly summed up his life.
“Well, these last couple of months have been…a lot,” Foggy started. They had already gone over introductions. Foggy told him about being a Hell’s Kitchen native, a Columbia graduate cum laude, a self-diagnosed overthinker. He hadn’t told him about also being married to a blind man who moonlights as a vigilante and was served with a side of issues that regularly gave Foggy indigestion.
“Yeah?” Richard asked. “How so?”
“My husband, Matt, is, um–,” Foggy laced his fingers together. He expected the Freudian talk-therapy set up with the long black couch and the wiry therapist that said things like ‘how do you feel about that?’ and ‘this is somehow caused by your mother.’ Instead he sat on a plush armchair in front of a guy that vaguely looked like Matthew McConaughey feeling like he was about to betray Matt. He inhaled a deep breath. “He’s been going through some things lately and it’s putting a strain on our marriage, I think. He has a lot of issues caused by his…childhood.” Foggy felt suddenly nauseous. “I just think he’s struggling a lot right now but he doesn’t want to get help at all. He doesn’t think he needs it.”
The therapist shifted in his seat as he wrote down. “That’s really hard,” he affirmed. “I assume the strain is causing a lot of emotions for you? Anxiety, depression, anger?”
Foggy sunk in the chair. “Mostly? I think I just feel guilty more than anything else.”
The therapist nodded. “Because he won’t seek help himself, you think you should be doing more for him?”
And because I always feel at fault somehow, Foggy thought to himself. He nodded emphatically. “Yeah,” he said and sighed. “He’s so…aggressively independent? I mean, I get it. He’s blind. Like, completely – non-light perceiving, the whole shebang – but he’s never let that stop him. He hates when people treat him like he’s glass. But, he’s like that with everything else in his life too. Everything else.” Foggy repeated with a deep sigh. “Even when he’s legitimately suffering, he’ll just…” Foggy thought back to his pain levels with his back. A seven. That was a Very Severe on those pain charts with the faces on them on the walls of doctor’s offices. “He’ll just take it in silence and get annoyed when I try to help.”
“You said he has childhood trauma?” The therapist shook his head. “You don’t have to get into it, but was it his parents that caused it?”
“That’s the thing – he didn’t have parents,” Foggy said. “He was orphaned and lived at St. Agnes for a good chunk of his childhood.” Foggy rubbed his fingers together, feeling bad that he was here dumping out all Matt’s issues for inspection like they were his to dump.
“So, it sounds like your husband grew up with a severe lack of emotional support,” the therapist said as he continued to write notes. “And this lack of emotional support taught him that the only way he was going to survive was on his own. He built maladaptive coping mechanisms to internalize his struggles. Does this sound about right?”
“Eerily so,” Foggy just said.
“Is he always independent?” The therapist asked. “Are there times where he isn’t?”
Foggy thought back to when Matt’s voice would grow timid and small. When he asked if he said the wrong things like a child scared of getting a scolding. He chewed on his lip as he connected those dots and thought of little Matty scared and alone again, his pleads for affection that would never be answered. “He gets this tone of voice sometimes,” he said, “like he’s scared. It freaks me out because it’s very much not him.”
“When people go through trauma at a young age it can cause kind of a snapshot in the amygdala,” Richard pointed to the back of his head. “When those children grow up, that snapshot remains. Your husband is an adult, but he has an hurting inner child frozen in that moment, still living through those traumas.”
Foggy nodded. Part of him felt like he already knew this about Matt. When the mask he vigilantly held cracked just enough, Foggy would catch glimpses of what was hidden underneath. And Foggy’s knee-jerk reaction wasn’t to offer support, because doing that meant trying to acknowledge that Matt wasn’t fine. It was to fill those cracks back in, to smooth the mask back out, sand the hurting out like trying to cover up the pinholes he made in the walls of his first apartment. It was a bandaid over a bullet hole, but neither of them were very good at triaging their wounds.
“Can we discuss how – you said his name is Matt, right?” The therapist asked as he scanned his notes.
“Yeah, Matt. Matthew,” Foggy said.
“How is the guilt of Matt’s current state is affecting you?” He squinted at Foggy.
Foggy fiddled his thumbs together like he was playing thumb wars with himself. “It’s putting me on edge,” he said, hoping that communicated how very precarious and high this edge was. And every time Foggy looked down into the cavernous pit underneath it, all he felt was dread. One wrong move and he would slip and fall forever.
The therapist wrote something down. “You feel…nervous? Anxious?”
Foggy stared at his hands. “Yeah. Something like that.”
The therapist pushed his glasses back up his face. “While we can’t do anything about Matt’s unwillingness to seek support, we can work on some coping mechanisms for you when his decisions impact your life and relationship and find some peace from the guilt. How does that sound?”
“Fine.” Foggy echoed the last word he said to Matt. It rang hollow then and it rang hollow now. A lost foghorn in the middle of a black sea.
Matt was still in bed when Foggy got home. He had to pee and he needed to shower and shave, but he couldn’t move. And he couldn’t even blame it on the back pain. He was just afraid of what he would do if he pulled the covers off and stood to his feet. Go find a criminal to release the pent up rage that filled his chest? Drink himself into a numb blackout? Throw himself off the roof of his apartment complex and hope it was high enough to end his misery permanently?
It probably wasn’t. Matt wasn’t ever that lucky.
The smell of espresso and hot milk found him before Foggy did – loose tendrils of warmth that didn’t exactly pierce deep enough to touch the ice in his middle. He didn’t roll from his side he managed to get to. There wasn’t any point.
Matt felt the bed dip behind him with Foggy’s weight. The coffee from the Good Coffee Place was set on his nightstand behind him. A hand rubbed the dip between his hip and his ribs and Matt gripped his pillow harder in his fists, the cold fear leaving him shaking while the fire of anger made his skin clammy.
“Stop.” The word was dropped like a nuclear bomb. Foggy’s hand froze.
“Sorry,” Foggy whispered. His fingers curled in like a wilting flower before dropping from Matt’s body. He shifted, his posture growing expectant.
“You should go to work,” Matt said, curling tighter. Go away. He screamed in his head. Don’t leave me. He also screamed. Round and round the carousel ride from hell went.
“Oh,” Foggy breathed and then his shoulders slumped with disappointment. The pain of that was worse than a sigh. “Do you want me to make you some food first?”
“No,” Matt said quickly, his eyelids pressing shut so Foggy couldn’t see the lie in them. “I’m fine.”
“Alright,” Foggy shifted back to his feet. His breathing hitched like he wanted to say something, but then he exhaled the extra air like he realized it was going to be a waste of oxygen after all and walked back out the door. Matt pressed his hand to his mouth to keep the sobs from spilling out again until he heard Foggy on the sidewalk.
“Hey,” Foggy’s voice said. He had pulled out his phone and dialed someone. “Do you want coffee before I come in? I thought my appointment was going to go longer than expected, but it didn’t, so I’m coming into the office.” He was talking to Karen. “Matt’s still taking the day off. Yeah. Doesn’t feel well.”
Foggy’s voice faded as he walked down the sidewalk and Matt’s gut was telling him that Foggy was spilling how much of a waste of time he was to their closest friend. Soon Karen would realize how useless and terrible he was too and then he would really have no one.
Matt cried silently into his hands again. This time smothered by the heavy, sweet scent of coffee that reminded him of Foggy.
Notes:
you're in her dms? Well, I'm 8 pages deep in the 'Matt Murdock needs a hug' tag. When I'm not there, you can find me on tumblr ! Comments and kudos are always appreciated <3
Chapter 7
Notes:
This chapter is hovering around 9K and is it thicker than a bowl of oatmeal - Matt's lack of coping skills, a CT scan, BRETTKAREN! All part of a balanced breakfast.
Warning! There is smut between the 3rd and 4th line breaks that has absolutely no other reason to be there except for that I wanted to write some smut. You can skip it as it's not really relevant to the plot. Or not! You can do what you want forever.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Matt forced himself up before Foggy got home.
He wasn’t going to be so pathetic to be found hiding in bed for a second time that day. He told himself to scrape himself off the mat, to get up because Murdocks always get up. He was stronger than this. He could prevent his marriage from crumbling in his hands. Mind controls the body, right? No matter what controlled the mind. No matter if the thought of going through his morning routine and making his first meal of the day at four in the afternoon made him so overwhelmed, he felt like he was going to vomit.
He stood under the shower, forcing it as cold as possible to help snap himself out of this funk, to reduce the evidence of spending his morning crying from his face. He skipped the shaving and hair-combing step of his morning routine and put on one of Foggy’s old t-shirts that still smelled like him despite being cleaned and laundered.
He felt a little more like a functional human by the time he was done. It didn’t help the overwhelm that wanted him to just climb back into bed. When he walked into the kitchen where the knife block was sitting on the counter like a challenge, he almost turned around and did.
I can do this. He pep-talked himself. He took down a whole prison of criminals single handedly. He fought Frank Castle, the Hand, and Wilson Fisk. He can make dinner without breaking down over their kitchen knives.
He purposefully ignored the knives, instead opening the refrigerator to take stock of its contents. They didn’t have much and Matt almost caved and just ordered takeout, but that would be the easy way out. He could do this.
He pulled out cheese, butter, and bread to make grilled cheese. That didn’t involve any cutting, so he didn’t have to count the knives, use them, clean the one he dirtied, and then count them again. Making grilled cheese only had a couple simple steps. Hell, he was making grilled cheese as soon as he was tall enough to see over the stove. He could do this.
He opened the cheese and the smell was so overpowering – even though it was the normal artisanal cheddar Foggy would take home from his family’s business – and almost broke down. He had to check the knives. He couldn’t do all of these steps. He wanted Foggy here to tell him it was going to be okay, but he essentially kicked him out of their apartment this morning. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this.
He spun and started counting the knives. The visions of Foggy dying at Dex’s hand were distressing, but there was comfort in the counting. At least, this was something he could put his whole focus on. He could count and pretend he was still in control with his silly rituals and ignore the fact that he was screaming internally.
Except, it wasn’t helping this time. He counted and counted and the number of knives stayed the same but so did the weight of overwhelm on his chest. Instead of being pulled in two directions, it felt like he was being pulled in a hundred; quartered and drawn until he was broken down into his base components.
He put one foot over the other when his back pain interrupted his counting long enough to make him shudder. He needed to get off of his feet. He threw the ingredients back into the fridge, deciding to cave and order takeout. The monologue of guilt and shame from not even being able to make a simple grilled cheese played through him like a news ticker, but the pervasive doubt and overwhelm drowned it out.
He sat down on his cold heating pad and opened his phone and almost threw it across the room as soon as the screenreader started dutifully reading off app names as he tapped with his thumb. Even the female robotic voice droning on felt too much.
He managed to order something and then tapped into his texts. “I ordered dinner,” he said with a sigh into a voice message to Foggy. “So, don’t pick up anything on your way home. I’m sorry for–,” he cut himself off and sent that as is. Then he kicked himself as tears sprung to his eyes. Foggy deserved better. He deserved better than what Matt could give him. Why was this so fucking hard? He scrubbed at his face that was probably all red and blotchy again and started a new voice message.
“Hey, Fog,” he said, “I’m sorry for this morning. I don’t really have an excuse other than–,” he cut himself off again, his fingers knotted into the shirt he was wearing. He took in a shaky breath. “Just…I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He sent that and then threw his phone to the other side of the sofa.
He wanted to curl up into a ball, but doing that on the couch was no better than doing it in bed. He could meditate? He hadn’t tried to meditate in awhile. It might help with the overwhelm. Meditating when his senses felt like they were in overdrive always helped. He sighed and rose to his feet.
He pushed the coffee table over to give himself some room and sat down in the middle of the living room floor, crossing his legs and laying his hands face-up on top of his thighs. He didn’t bother undressing when he felt so disconnected from himself, he couldn’t even really feel the tag of the t-shirt he was wearing digging into his skin on the back of his neck anyway. All the distractions were internal.
He inhaled a deep breath, focusing on the air expanding his lungs, trying to tune in to the oxygen transaction within the chambers of his own heart as his pulse thrummed through his body.
He continued to breathe as he went to task on clearing his head and indexing his emotions. As a kid, he would literally imagine shoving fear and doubt into the pages of the minor prophets of his Bible where he knew no one would look and shutting it.
He didn’t imagine a Bible anymore, but the concept was the same – he would dive underneath the layer of constant sensory noise like he was diving into a dark sea, finding the silence within himself where his emotions lay. They would get mixed up in his day-to-day life – distant screams that spiked adrenaline, words that invoked nostalgia or melancholy, the smell and sounds of Foggy that made him both happy and deeply afraid– and when he meditated he would separate them. And then in the liminal space between the noise of the world and the noise of his thoughts, while floating in the dark sea, he would finally find peace.
He worked on separating, but the overwhelm felt like it was churning the dark sea underneath the sensory input. His mind kept jumping to the sounds of the city he couldn’t block out. He was lost in the static, in the maze of his own emotions.
Focus. His eyebrows furrowed as he tried harder. He dove down again, focusing on really slowing his breathing, tuning in with the network of synapses running through his body. He needed to just push a little harder, fight to get to that peace he knew was in himself…
He didn’t find peace, he found the Devil instead.
You’re going to lose him. You’re going to drive him out of your life.
Pathetic. Weak. You don’t deserve him.
You never deserved him.
You should’ve died that night.
He stopped breathing.
Don’t you wonder why you can never feel peace? Because everything is your fault. You cause your own misery and then get angry when others can’t do anything about it. Why should they?
You say you’re a warrior, that you’re strong. You know it’s a lie. Foggy knows it’s a lie. He’ll walk away when he sees how weak and selfish you are.
Why do you cling to him so hard? Are you afraid he’s going to disappear like Dad? Like Maggie? Like Stick? Like Elektra? Like Father Lantom? You’ll lose him too. You know you will. He’ll wake up one day and tell you to go fuck yourself and disappear forever.
You can’t ever protect him. From Ben Poindexter. From yourself. Everything you do is a waste. You’re a waste.
You ask what controls the mind, but you already know the answer to that. I do. And you won’t ever control me.
I am in control.
“No!” Matt shouted, forcing himself out of meditation so violently, it stole the air from his lungs like a punch to his ribs. He gasped in short huffs like he had been drowning and couldn’t find enough oxygen. And he had been, he truly had been. His senses were warping his surroundings like a kaleidoscope and Matt couldn’t figure out what was real and what was not. The Devil laughed at his struggle.
His fingers found the edge of the thrice-replaced coffee table and he clung to the cold, hard wood like it was a life-raft. Nothing was real and everything was real. He felt shattered into jagged pieces. A broken mosaic of Matt Murdock.
Get a grip. He ordered himself. It sounded like Stick in his head. Get a hold of yourself. But there was another thought too, voiced in a tone that was scared and confused and too immature for the horrors it had witnessed.
Where is Foggy?
He wanted Foggy. He wanted Foggy’s soft touch and his light words. He wanted to be enveloped in his love that was so simple and pure and made Matt feel safe. He just wanted to be loved. He just wanted to be wanted.
Matt forced himself to his feet, letting the lightning of pain in his back shock him back into his body like a defibrillator restarting his heart. Everything was still wrong and unreal, but he managed to find his phone on the sofa. He went to check his messages.
Nothing.
Matt was an open wound that Foggy just rubbed salt into. Everything hurt. Everything. He was suddenly angry and betrayed, emotions compounding on themselves until Matt felt like he was going to explode. Foggy didn’t text back because he didn’t care. He just didn’t give a fuck about Matt anymore.
The door knocked and Matt jumped out of his skin. His focus shifted and he realized it was the UberEats guy. He dropped the food next to the door and walked away. He whistled to himself, completely oblivious to Matt’s struggle. Matt fantasized bashing his head into the wall. Just for a second. And then the disgust of committing violence on someone innocent made his stomach roll so intensely, Matt ran to the kitchen sink, almost tripping on the leg of the coffee table on the way there, and vomited up water and bile.
Maybe he should go to therapy.
He turned on the faucet and rinsed his mouth out, feeling spent and tired and overwhelmed. Always overwhelmed. The tap water didn’t really do anything for the sour taste in his mouth, so he turned to the fridge and shakily pulled out a beer, resigning to drowning it out with the heady taste of alcohol. He was still in control. See? He took a sip of beer.
Control.
Foggy found dinner sitting outside the front door. He picked up the double-bagged grocery bags with Thank you printed in red lettering down the front of them and let himself into the apartment. He slowly dropped his keys and wallet on the table next to the door, taking his time since he was not looking forward to having yet another conversation with Matt that ended with him apologizing for acting irrational. He was starting to miss the Daredevil arguments. At least those felt normal now.
He placed his briefcase on the bench and stepped out of his shoes before rounding the corner of the entryway, pleasantly surprised that Matt was clean and dressed – in Foggy’s t-shirt that said ‘I Play For Both Teams’ – and sitting on the couch with a beer. If Foggy didn’t know better, he would assume Matt was having a relaxing night in.
But, Foggy did know better. Matt’s tear-stained face and the coffee table had been pushed to the side and the way his leg bounced told Foggy that Matt’s night had been far from relaxing.
“Hey,” Foggy greeted neutrally. “You rearranging furniture?”
“Why didn’t you text back?” Matt just asked, his eyes staring through the wall. He sipped his beer and then gave a little burp.
“Was I…” Foggy’s eyebrows furrowed. “Was I supposed to?”
“It would’ve been nice.” Matt snapped.
Foggy felt like the two of them were playing a board game and as soon as Foggy felt like he had a grasp to the rules, Matt would change them. Matt never answered texts. He just sent them occasionally and called if it was urgent. He hated texting. He barely used his phone at all. It had never been an issue to not answer texts before. Why was now suddenly different?
Foggy replayed all the times Matt let his calls just go to voicemail, let the literal hundreds of Foggy’s worried texts go unread and tried not to let the double-standard cause him to snap back.
Matt burped-hiccuped in that I-just-slammed-a-beer way. His eyes rolled and he blinked heavily, but not enough to cover his whole eyeball – a cat giving lazy slow blinks.
“Are you drunk?” Foggy asked.
“A little,” Matt conceded, tipping his chin down to his hands that were working the label off his beer bottle. “Sorry.” He whispered.
Irritation licked at Foggy and he tried to contain it by trying to remember what the therapist said about hurting inner-childs and all that jazz. He instead put the food on the slanted coffee table with a sigh. He wasn’t even that hungry.
“Are you mad at me?” Matt asked in a whisper.
“No,” Foggy said truthfully. Because he wasn’t. He was just worried, mostly. And guilty.
He sat down next to Matt on the couch, close enough that he could watch him pick at the bottle label, far enough away that he couldn’t feel his body heat. Matt’s chin tipped towards him, but continued to pick the sticker.
“I want to make the appointment,” Matt said when he had finally worked the label off of his bottle, “with the therapist.”
Foggy almost laughed at him. After this morning? Not on his life. “I’m not having this conversation with you while you’re drunk again,” he said quickly. “We can save it for tomorrow.”
“I’m not that drunk,” Matt said with a scowl and then hiccuped like a cartoon character.
“Matt,” Foggy groaned. “We can talk about it tomorrow, okay? Have you eaten anything today?”
“No,” Matt said lowly and Foggy sighed again. “I tried.” He said, his shoulders rising with tension. He folded the sticker in half and then into fourths. “I tried.” He whispered again.
Foggy pressed the butt of his hand to his forehead for a second, oscillating between just letting this go for the evening because Matt wasn’t really in a state to have a coherent conversation and trying again to break through the impenetrable fortress that Matt built around himself.
“Okay,” he said, sliding towards Matt once he made a decision. He pulled the empty beer bottle and set it next to the three others on the coffee table and pulled the sticker out of his hand, shaking it off his thumb to the ground. “Matt, darling,” Foggy started, “I really, really need to understand what is going on so I can help you. You’ve been acting strange for a couple of months now. Did I do something?”
“No,” Matt said quickly, his head turning. He didn’t have anything in his hands to fiddle with anymore, so he just picked at a loose thread in the denim of his jeans. “I’m sorry, Fog. If I could explain it, I would.”
“Do you want to at least try?” Foggy asked, desperate for anything at this point.
“I’m just…” Matt shrugged, “afraid.”
“Over what?”
“I don’t know,” Matt shook his head. His shoulders were practically in his ears at this point. Never a good sign, but Foggy decided to take a page from Karen and press on regardless.
“Matt,” Foggy said, grabbing his hand with both of his. He spun his ring on his third finger and Matt tensed. “I’m your husband and that means I took a vow to be with you through anything, even all the scary parts.” Foggy rubbed his fingers. “I don’t want to repeat six months ago where you asked to be brought to the church instead of me.”
Matt flinched and pulled his hand out of Foggy’s grasp. “I won’t make that mistake again,” he said intensely, his eyes bright with that fire that frightened Foggy in them. But, as soon as it was lit, it was snuffed out. A candle blown out by a tornado.
“Well, can I do anything to ease your fears?”
Matt looked suddenly pained. He balled his hands into fists. “I just…” he pressed those fists to his forehead. He dropped them with a sigh and Foggy knew that was about the best answer he was going to get that evening.
“You should eat,” Foggy said and started to get up to get some plates from the kitchen.
“Foggy,” Matt whispered and Foggy stopped. “I’m sorry about this morning,” Matt said, his eyes pointed at Foggy’s knees. “I don’t know what came over me except I know I was in a lot of pain.”
Foggy sat back down with a sigh. “You did drink pretty heavily last night. I know that hangover must’ve been killer.”
Matt huffed what could’ve been a chuckle. You know, if you squinted. “Yeah.”
“I love you,” Foggy ran his fingers through Matt’s uncombed hair. “If and when you want to talk, I’m all ears, alright?”
“Thank you, darling,” Matt whispered, his face tipping towards his hands. He had his I-want-something-but-I-can’t-ask-for-it face and Foggy could bet real money that it was for physical affection. He slid closer and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Matt deflated into the touch, his chin finding Foggy’s shoulder. Tension released from Matt’s face and body in an almost touchable way.
Foggy felt that guilt low and hot deep in the pit of his person. Matt was scared, that’s what he said and Foggy could only speculate about what. The monsters from Matt’s nightmares had been very real as of a couple of months ago.
But, Foggy knew deep down that the fear wasn’t about Fisk or the Hand or whatever. Foggy closed his eyes as he snuggled into Matt’s neck.
He had to be more careful with him.
Karen walked through the dim throughway of the 15th Precinct, her Keds squeaking against the tile floor that was desperate for a polishing. She stood up on her tip-toes to look over the stream of uniforms and detectives as they brought criminals in to be processed or dropped files on others’ desks. She scanned for a particular face, growing disappointed that she was coming up empty handed.
“Karen Page?”
She wheeled around to the man she had just been looking for. “Brett,” she greeted, trying to make herself as friendly and as happy to see him as possible. “How’ve you been?”
“I’m okay,” Brett shook a file in his hand. “Drowning in paperwork from the Fisk case.”
“We are too,” She hiked her bag higher up on her shoulder. “We’ve been so busy, I realized that we hadn’t really seen each other since everything went off.” She cocked her head. “Could I buy you lunch?”
Brett blushed. “Oh,” he said, “I would, but I just ate lunch.”
“Coffee then?”
“I could go for a coffee,” he nodded. “Let me drop these in my office.”
Karen followed him to a cube-shaped, windowless office that was off to the side of the bullpen. His desk was stacked with files and a picture of Brett and his mother sat in the corner and a Jets pennant was pinned to the wall. “How’s the Fisk case going?”
“I can’t say much,” Brett said as he dropped the file on top of a stack of others. “But, we’re really gutting him like a fish.” He said cheerily.
Karen let her shoulders fall with relief. “That’s great to hear. I know the whole city would be happy to hear it too.”
“I’m just happy he’s not sapping our resources so hard anymore,” he said as he shrugged on a jacket that was draped over his office chair. “We can actually do our jobs now instead of chasing his breadcrumb trails.” He shook his head.
Karen nodded and accepted Brett’s arm as they walked out of the police office together. Brett was cute and he respected his mom, which Karen knew would make a girl or guy very happy someday, but she had ulterior motives for this coffee date. And maybe it was a little sordid to mislead Brett like this, but hey, she was an investigator first and she didn’t like that Ben Poindexter’s paper trail on his whereabouts ended at a report that was almost two months old now.
They ordered and sat down at a corner table with their coffee. Brett ordered his black and took his time flicking two Splenda packets before dumping them in. Karen got a vanilla latte with almond milk and paid for them both.
“How’s your mom?” Karen asked. “I know she was the one that recommended Nelson, Murdock, and Page’s first client to us. So, thanks for that.”
“She accepts thank-yous in cigars,” Brett chuckled. “But, she’s doing fine otherwise.” He took a sip of coffee and dropped his eyes. “I hadn’t told her about Nadeem yet. She really liked his wife and boy and I know that it would break her heart knowing he was still a victim no matter how hard we tried to keep him from being one.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That they’re staying in India with family,” Brett shrugged. “I know Seema gave her an address and she’s been sending letters.”
“It’s a shame about Ray,” Karen said and shook her head. “About Father Lantom too.” She chewed on her lip as the memory of her closing her eyes expecting to be impaled only to open them to Father Lantom throwing himself in front of her to save her.
Brett inhaled a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “That was Murdock’s priest, right? How is he holding up?”
Karen shrugged as she thought of Matt. He had been a bit on edge lately, but they all had been. “He’s…processing still. We all are.”
“Understandable,” Brett said and leaned back in his chair. “I’m just glad we got to arrest the bastard that killed the priest.” He said in a huff.
“Speaking of that,” Karen said, easing their conversation in a different direction. “Have you investigated more on how deep the FBI corruption went?”
“We’re not really allowed to touch that,” Brett said. “That’s all gotta be done by the Feds,” he waved his hand in the air. “We got to arrest Poindexter on murder charges and the state is holding him the last time I checked, but I think he might get transferred to a federal facility.”
Karen gripped her mug tighter. That could be a reason why the paper trail ended. But, how could she get ahold of FBI files? She didn’t have anyone on the inside. But, maybe she didn’t need someone on the inside. Maybe if she knocked on enough doors, one would open with the answers she was looking for. “If that happens, does he fall out of state jurisdiction?”
Brett shrugged. “For the most part, yeah,” he said. “The Bureau will probably open their own investigation. Top brass-type too when it involves that many agents. When that happens it’ll become a steel trap to us until they’re finished.”
Karen was disappointed. That made finding the information she was looking for harder. Crap. “You think they’ll lock away Poindexter?”
Brett sighed and shrugged. “You’re not a reporter now, so I don’t feel bad telling you this anymore, but I looked at Poindexter’s file that we found at Fisk’s place. Dude’s messed up. If I had to guess, he’ll get thrown into a hole somewhere and be left to rot.”
That piqued Karen’s interest. She leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
Mahoney shook his head. “I don’t know how he got hired into the FBI. He had a file as thick as a dictionary of psychiatric notes. Killed animals as a kid. Pets?” Brett said. “That’s the first sign of a serial killer, you know?”
“And then Fisk got ahold of him…”
Brett shook his head and took another sip of coffee. “And turned him into a true monster.”
Karen huffed a breath and shook her head. “I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse that he tried to kill me.” Hello, Karen. It’s nice to see you again. She shivered.
Brett tapped the edge of a stray coaster on the table for a moment. “I still have the file,” he said. “If you want to take a look.” He caught himself and paused for a second. “You’re not being subpoenaed to testify in his case, right?”
Karen shook her head quickly. “Just Fisk’s.”
Brett chuckled. “Alright, then. If you want a horror story to read before bedtime, then I got it.”
“I would like to take a look,” Karen nodded and sipped her cooling coffee. “For curiosity’s sake.”
“I’ll make you some copies then,” Brett said. “If you could do me a favor?”
Karen cocked her head. “Hmm?”
Brett suddenly leaned forward. “You know the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, right?” His eyes were suddenly excited and bright like she just flashed a toy to a child.
Karen’s eyebrows puckered at the same time her gut twisted with anxiety. “Uh, well, we’ve crossed paths a couple of times and I knew of him from getting wrapped up in Fisk’s schemes. Why?”
“I need his help with something,” he said. “I got a lead on a trafficker. I’ve been trying to find them at night, but I don’t know if he’s been going out anymore.” He sighed.
Karen’s eyebrows froze in their twisted state. Matt wasn’t going out? Why not? “Oh,” she said and shrugged. “If I see him, I’ll pass the message along.”
“Thanks,” Brett said with a smile. “I know you or Nelson or someone actually knows him. And I don’t really care to know his identity, but I could really use some of his professional expertise with this case.”
Karen’s stomach twisted again. This time with worry over Matt. Was it his back? He always walked stiffly nowadays and would lean to the side in his chair like he was trying to keep his weight off his hips. Or was it edginess that always kept him fidgeting and his voice strained? Was it Foggy? He seemed extra clingy to him now.
And why hadn’t he told her?
Matt figured out sex was the only time he could truly get the Devil to shut the fuck up for a moment.
Because, in the middle of sex, when Foggy was inches deep inside of Matt, chasing his own pleasure while he filled the air above them with moans and praises, Matt felt truly loved and useful and wanted. He just wanted to be wanted.
When Foggy was ramming into Matt’s prostate or fucked into his mouth, his brain finally emptied of the fear and doubt and self-blame that plagued him constantly now. Pliant and thoughtless and fragile in Foggy’s arms, he finally found a moment of peace. It was a second of vulnerability he escaped to when everything was so overwhelming, all he could think about was sinking into the tranquility that was Foggy Nelson’s love for him. All he could think about was how to be the best angel for Foggy.
If Stick could see him now…
“You’re taking it so well for me,” Foggy huffed panting gasps, his skin smelling of sex and sweat and Matt. “Stretching so beautifully around my cock.”
Every praise that tumbled from Foggy’s lips was like taking a shot of tequila straight to the head. He moaned brokenly and his fingers grasped at Foggy – his face, his shoulder, his chest – not really finding purchase anywhere. Matt just wanted to hold him all at once, to meld together in a way only two people who were in love could.
Foggy thrusted low and hard into Matt’s prostate, electrifying him from the crown of his head to his toes that were curling so hard, his foot cramped up. He crossed his ankles around Foggy’s back and pulled him closer, as deep as he could go. “Foggy,” he exhaled, his eyes rolling. “Foggy, I love you.”
“I love you too, angel,” Foggy leaned down and kissed him slowly, his tongue tracing psalms against Matt’s lips. He disconnected and moved his lips to his favorite spot above Matt’s eyebrow. “Fuck, Matty. You’re so lovely. So perfect.” Each adjective was punctuated by a controlled, fast punch to Matt’s prostate as Foggy slid in and out of him. “So beautiful.”
Matt felt like he was high; an all-consuming addiction of Foggy’s affection. Tears rolled down his face and he was whining out vowel sounds as his body tensed with a hard wind up as he approached his orgasm. “I’m gonna come,” he warned.
“Come for me, darling,” Foggy whispered against his forehead.
Matt unspooled at the same time Foggy did. He relished in the release, coming untouched in the way he knew Foggy loved and felt the heavens roll in each time he felt Foggy pulse with his own orgasm. Matt was sensitive enough to feel the temperature difference between his friction-hot insides and Foggy’s body-warm cum, to feel the way he filled him up and then leaked out, feeling claimed in an almost primal way.
The Devil wasn’t in control, he was. And he was lovely, perfect, beautiful – just like Foggy said.
Foggy collapsed on the bed next to Matt, pressing kissed to Matt’s neck and the space underneath his ear. “Love you,” he whispered. He usually climbed off the bed immediately to go get wipes and water, but Matt hadn’t let him the last couple of times. He wanted to prolong the inevitable as much as possible. He was floating in a bubble that was their bed and body fluids and lingering smells of salt and sex. When Foggy left to clean up and rejoin the world again, the bubble would pop and Matt would be left feeling cold and alone.
“Love you too,” Matt mumbled, not completely back in his head yet. His senses were in tatters and his energy was too zapped to try and make sense of the noise, but he was still at peace enough that the agitation of not being able to suss out his environment hadn’t hit him yet. He pulled Foggy’s arm around him instead and snuggled into him, his cum on his chest gluing them together.
“My cuddle bug,” Foggy just whispered, stroking the backs of his fingers against Matt’s face. “My angel.”
And Matt sunk into the caresses and the ‘my’s and the deep breaths against his forehead. This is all he wanted, forever and ever. The tiny piece of sanctuary that he claimed in Foggy’s gentle words and even gentler touches. The light in the cracks between his eternal darkness. The security and reassurance that was Foggy Nelson’s love.
And the peace he got from the hell in his own head.
Matt gripped the handle of his cane so hard, he could feel the aluminum give underneath the rubber. He couldn’t get his wrist to move to tap it back and forth and instead the tip dragged against the tile even though this cane wasn’t meant to do that. I should’ve brought my roller tip cane, he thought absently like he was observing his thoughts like reading a news ticker instead of actually thinking them.
Nothing felt real except the very present and constant fear in his chest as he was led into a small exam room with Foggy to change into a gown. He was going to have a CT scan done today and while he knew, logically, those were extremely standard and normal tests, part of him was currently trying to figure out the best escape route from this orthopedic surgeon’s office that offered the least resistance.
“You’re okay,” Foggy assured, both of his hands around Matt’s as he subjected himself to the blood pressure cuff and thermometer read again. Everything in this office was beeping or humming or whooshing like it was alive. Big machines turned on in another room and Matt’s hair stood on end as he felt the electricity pulse through the building. Techs and nurses walked around in scrubs that slid together in a grating way.
He felt like a kid again struggling to make sense of the sensory onslaught and only succeeded in drowning in the noise. And then the Devil was mocking him for being so weak and pitiful. Because he knew that he was safe and that these were normal procedures and that there wasn’t anything to be afraid of. He was a warrior and had faced worse before. This should be nothing.
So, he tried to only focus on Foggy. Foggy, who radiated warmth and love and concern for him. Whose heartbeat was Matt’s comfort sound. Whose hand was soft and firm and grounding around his. Matt clung to him like a life-raft as he tried to stomp down the hurricane of panic he could feel build in his chest.
“Alright, everything looks good,” the tech plopped a square of fabric on the bench next to Matt. Matt cringed away from it. “Go ahead and get changed into this gown and open the door when you’re done, so I know you’re ready. Do you have any questions about the procedure?”
“F-Foggy can stay with me, right?” Matt asked with no power in his voice, feeling embarrassed that he basically admitted he couldn’t do a simple scan without his husband right there with him.
“Your partner can come in with you before we start the machines and then he can hang out in the other room while they are going,” the tech said patiently. “You’ll be able to hear him through the intercom that is linked to the rooms.”
Matt shifted uncomfortably and he felt his fingers tighten around Foggy’s. He didn’t want to be separated from him. Their linked hands was the only thing keeping Matt from hurtling off the edge into a breakdown. They couldn’t separate them.
“It’ll be alright, darling,” Foggy patted his hand. “I’ll be there the whole time, okay?” Foggy turned to the tech. “He’s a little claustrophobic.” He explained.
“It’ll go really fast,” she explained, her tone turning gentle and sympathetic. “And we can stop at any time if you need us to.”
But, he shouldn’t need them to. All he felt was this tornado of paralyzing fear and then shame for letting himself be afraid in the first place. And part of him just wanted Foggy to see how much he was struggling. He just wanted him to ease it with his love and comforting words.
It made him feel foolish.
Mind controls the body. The body controls our enemies. What if the enemy wasn’t an enemy? What if it was all built up in Matt’s head?
Matt hadn’t noticed the tech had excused herself until Foggy had turned and started unzipping Matt’s hoodie for him with the hand that wasn’t holding his.
“I can’t wear my clothes?” Matt asked numbly, letting Foggy undress him.
“You can’t wear anything metal,” Foggy said and kissed his head at the same time he pulled his glasses off for him and slid them to hang from the collar of his shirt. “You’ll be okay, Matt. I promise.”
Matt could only exhale a shaky breath as a response, but he dutifully dropped his hand and stood up to change out of his clothes, handing articles to Foggy as he stripped and donned the gown. He slid back onto the table at the same time Foggy detached to go reopen the door. Matt felt cold and lost suddenly without Foggy’s presence right next to him. He felt like he had slipped into a waking nightmare again, detachedly observing himself with disdain as he slid his hands underneath his thighs to keep them from shaking. Across the building, another big machine turned on like a monster waking from a slumber and Matt suddenly felt a rush of panicked adrenaline. “Foggy,” he whispered, his hands automatically flying up. He banished them to his lap.
“I’m right here,” Foggy said from his side again. Matt’s senses were being pulled in a million directions and he couldn’t focus on anything. If Stick was here, he would’ve laughed at him for being so unprepared.
“Are you ready?” The same tech suddenly popped their head in the doorway and Matt started. “Oh, so sorry.” She apologized when she watched Matt jump. Matt suddenly felt a blaze of rage that made his palms itch to punch something, anything.
His cane was handed back to him as he steamed all the way out of the exam room and into a large adjacent room with one of the large, monstrous machines in the center. And any anger he felt earlier, however, vaporized as he realized he had to get into that thing.
“You’ll have to remove your wedding ring,” the tech directed as she laid out a sheet or something on the table. Matt couldn’t put in any effort into focusing on anything except for the sudden seizing in his chest and the fact that there was no oxygen in this large, echo-y room.
Matt was too frozen to obey orders, so Foggy, with his overpowering helpfulness, picked up Matt’s left hand and started working his ring off for him. Matt yanked his hand back, feeling the sting of tears in his eyes at the same time he felt the sting of betrayal sock him in the ribs. This was his wedding ring. They couldn’t take it from him. He had just gotten it back.
“You have to give me your ring, angel,” Foggy cajoled and tried to take his hand back. “You can’t wear anything metal.”
“Foggy,” Matt’s breathing was ragged as he cradled his hand like Foggy had burned him. “Foggy, I can’t do this.” He admitted, feeling defeated and ashamed. He knew his fears were irrational and yet he was being dogpiled by them anyway.
Foggy sighed and Matt felt like breaking down. “Matty,” he said in a gentle voice, his hands finding Matt’s arms. They were already up to eleven touches today, he noted. “You’re going to be just fine, alright? It’ll go really, really fast.”
Matt’s hands found the material of Foggy’s shirt. It didn’t feel real between his fingers. It was like touching a mirage. “I want to go home,” he blurted, sounding like a petulant child. “Please, Foggy. Don’t make me do this.”
Foggy sighed again and Matt couldn’t hold back the tears this time.
“Matty,” Foggy hugged him and Matt dug his face into Foggy’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.” His hand rubbed up and down Matt’s spine, underneath the gown.
“If he’s not ready to do it today, we can reschedule and I can see about having the doctor prescribe him some anti-anxiety medication?” The tech offered.
“If you could just give us a moment,” Foggy said, a protective edge to his voice.
“Of course,” the tech said and left the room. Matt sighed with relief once it was just the two of them. However, the relief also came with losing the grips on his own emotional control and he felt himself curl tight against Foggy and sniffle back the tears that dropped anyway.
“Hey, hey,” Foggy hushed, his lips in Matt’s hair. “Do you really want to go home? We can, if you want. We don’t have to do this today if you’re not ready.” His tone was gentle and non-judgemental and it made Matt cry harder because he should be judging Matt. Matt was pathetic and weak and pitiful. Foggy should hate him for being such a big fucking inconvenience all the time.
But, he didn’t. Because Foggy was perfect and loving and Matt wanted nothing more than to be his angel. He just wanted to make him happy. Because if Foggy was happy then he would continue to put up with all of Matt’s bullshit. If he was happy, he wouldn’t leave Matt.
And while everything in Matt was screaming to get out of there, to say yes to the rescheduling if it meant not getting into that machine, he knew that would solicit a disappointed sigh from Foggy.
He could smell the divorce papers. He squeezed his eyes shut tight.
“I can do it,” he finally said into Foggy’s shoulder, sniffling back tears.
“Are you sure?” Foggy asked. “We can reschedule. It’s not a big deal.”
If they reschedule, Matt would have to do all of this again. That thought made him really want to break down into tears.
“I can do it,” Matt said, but didn’t dare move from Foggy’s hold. “Sorry. Just…overwhelmed.”
“I know,” Foggy continued to rub long, slow strokes up and down Matt’s back. “I know, angel. It’s alright. Shhh.”
“Have we decided?” The tech asked, popping their head back into the doorway.
“I can do it,” Matt said before Foggy could pipe up for him, finally pulling away. “I’m sorry I’m holding you up.”
“No worries at all,” the tech said. “Go ahead and lie down on the table when you are ready and we can get started.”
Matt did as he was told, getting on a flat, uncomfortable table. A blanket was thrown over his legs and Foggy’s hand slid into his. “I’ll be right in the other room,” Foggy said. “Do you want me to tell you about the time I almost got stuck in an airduct at L&Z? Or I can read off the statues I memorized for L-two midterms? Or I can reenact your favorite Friends episode?
“Do you know my favorite episode?” Matt joked weakly.
“Is it the episode with Brad Pitt?”
“Close,” Matt joked.
“Your ring still needs to come off,” the tech said as she adjusted things around Matt’s head. Matt’s stomach swooped as he worked his ring off and handed it to Foggy, who placed it in his breast pocket and then patted it.
“You’ll take care of it?” Matt swallowed noisily.
“I always have,” Foggy assured and leaned down to kiss his head. “I’ll be in just the other room, okay?”
“Alright,” Matt nodded and the table he was laying on slid forward.
And then he was left alone. He focused his whole attention on Foggy’s heartbeat as it exited the room. Matt’s stomach bottomed out for a second at the thought of Foggy leaving him completely alone, but he entered the adjacent room with the tech and Matt breathed a sigh of relief.
A speaker crackled to life next to his head. “You have to remain very still for me,” the tech said. “I’ll have you hold your breath for a couple of seconds. You might hear some clicking. That’s just the sound of the machine taking pictures. Can you hold a thumbs up for me if you got all of that?”
Matt did what he was told. Where’s Foggy? He wanted to ask, but then the speaker crackled again. “Darling?” Foggy asked. “Can you hear me? This thing is so fancy. I feel like a cool principal or something. Hello, students,” Foggy said in a funny voice. “Today, the cafeteria is serving meatloaf. Please no more fooling around behind the bleachers. We can’t keep asking the janitor to clean the floors.”
Matt chuckled at Foggy’s antics as electricity started to hum throughout the room.
“Anyway, I gave it some thought,” Foggy said. “I think your favorite Friends episode is The One Where Ross Finds Out, right?”
Technically Matt had six favorite episodes, but that was one of them. He held up a thumbs up.
“Oh, I’m so good,” Foggy patted himself on the back. “I would offer to flash you like Monica did with Chandler…oh, I’m getting weird looks now from the tech.” Matt laughed.
“I’m going to start getting pictures now,” the tech interjected. “You’re going to hear clicking. Just remain as still as possible with your hands at your sides and breathe normally.”
Matt inhaled a deep breath and exhaled it. It didn’t do anything for his nerves.
“Anyway,” Foggy said. “Instead of flashing you–I’m not going to flash him here. It’s a joke from the show Friends. He’s blind anyway. What’s flashing going to do for him?” he said with annoyance to someone – the tech probably.
Matt heard clicking like he was warned. He felt his eyes dart around and he closed them in case that movement screwed something up and listened to Foggy ramble about the episode. He focused on Foggy’s heartbeat, his voice, his fingers fiddling with the cord of the intercom mouthpiece.
Matt felt his hair on his stomach and pelvis stand up. X-rays made him itchy. He assumed it had something to do with him being extra sensitive to stimuli including invisible waves. Or maybe it had to do with the type of chemicals that splashed on him when he was a kid reacting to whatever x-rays were made of. Either way, he felt his skin prickle up into hives that itched fiercely and he gritted his teeth to keep himself from moving.
“You doing okay?” The tech interrupted Foggy. “We’re about halfway done now.”
Matt held up a weak thumbs up.
“You’re doing really great, babe,” Foggy said. “Just a couple more moments.”
“I’m going to have you hold your breath now to get a really clear picture of your spine. One, two, and hold,” the tech instructed and Matt held his breath, counted the clicks, listened to Foggy’s heartbeat, and resisted the urge to tear at his own flesh as he felt an invisible belt of thorns wrap its way around Matt’s torso. He ended up twitching at the burning sensation and closed his eyes in frustration.
“Okay, go ahead and take a breath. That one came out a little blurry,” the tech said, disappointment in her voice that made Matt’s stomach bottom out as he gasped in air. “I’m going to do it again. Try and hold still. Okay, one, two and hold.”
Weak. The Devil mocked him. Pathetic.
Matt felt the overwhelm again. A tidal wave of self-loathing and fear that he could barely hang on against. He felt unbalanced without the weight of his ring. He felt like he was floating. He must’ve made a noise or something, because the intercom crackled again.
“You’re doing so great,” Foggy said. “Really, darling. I’m so proud of you.”
“Almost done,” the tech said. “Okay, you can breathe now.”
Matt sucked in a gasp of air. “Foggy,” he whispered, desperate for connection as he hung out of the maw of this monstrous machine that threatened to swallow him up. “W-what’s for dinner?” He blurted, just wanting to hear his voice again.
“What do you want for dinner?” Foggy asked. “I think we have the ingredients for reubens?”
“Yes, please,” Matt said, suddenly desperate to get off this table. He sucked in a ragged inhale. “A-are we done?”
“Almost,” the tech said. “Just getting some pictures of your pelvis now. Just hang on two minutes longer.” The table moved a couple of inches forward and Matt felt like he was being eaten alive.
Matt started to count seconds, trying to breathe in every fifth second and exhale on every tenth second. It wasn’t really working. Air wasn’t finding its way down to the bottoms of Matt’s lungs. He gripped the blanket with his fingers and tried not to have a panic attack.
“You know, those bananas we bought are going brown. I can make my mom’s banana bread recipe with them, if you want.”
The only thing Matt wanted at that moment was out of this room. “Are we done?” He tried again. His whole middle part of his body was burning and itching – including his groin. He got jock itch one time at the orphanage and this was that level of misery multiplied by ten. And he couldn’t do anything to relieve it.
“Yes, we are done.” The tech finally said. “Wait for me to move the table and then you can sit up.”
It took all of Matt’s self-control to wait until the table had stopped moving to jump up. This gown he was wearing felt like sandpaper against his irritated skin. The overwhelm was battering him into a full-blown panic attack and the hum of the machine powering down around him reminded him that he was having these extreme, irrational reactions over what was essentially a giant camera.
All he could really focus on was tracking Foggy’s heartbeat as he walked around and back into the CT room Matt was in. He was on his feet as soon as he heard the door click shut.
“Where’s my ring?” Matt demanded first and Foggy fished it out of his pocket and handed it back to him. Matt slid it back on his finger, finally feeling a little more balanced with it securely back on his hand.
“You did great! I’m so proud of–” Foggy said and started to grab at Matt’s waist, hitting the tender skin there that felt bruised and chafed now.
“Don’t touch me,” Matt basically growled and then felt a sudden flood of regret. He wanted Foggy’s touch. He wanted to be held and loved. Why did he always have to ruin it? It was amazing Foggy even still wanted to touch him at all.
Foggy yanked his hand back. “Sorry.”
“It’s not–,” Matt said quickly, his words stumbling out as his throat closed with panic. “My skin…is sensitive after x-rays. It…hurts. Sorry.”
“If you guys want to follow me?” The tech said. “I’ll take you back to the exam room so you can change.”
Matt’s cane and glasses were handed back to him and he didn’t fail to note how Foggy avoided touching him now. This is not what he wanted. This is not what he wanted at all. The part that just craved Foggy’s love felt discarded. It was torturous as he followed them back to the exam room. And he was just expected to dress himself and act like nothing was wrong while his world crashed around his ears? It was too overwhelming.
And the other part, the Devil, was eroding his soul by telling him that Foggy’s avoidance was because he didn’t love him anymore. Matt snapped at him and now he didn’t want anything to do with him.
The tech left them alone and Foggy unfolded Matt’s clothes for him. “Do you want some help?” He offered.
“I got it,” Matt said because he shouldn’t need the help, reaching behind himself and undoing the knots. He threw the uncomfortable gown onto the table and reached for his sweatpants.
“Oh, Matt. Jesus Christ.” Foggy said, his hand coming out. He dropped it and Matt felt like he had been slapped. “The scans did all of that?”
Matt gingerly brushed his abs where it hurt the most – raw and throbbing like a road burn every time his fingers made contact. He wondered what it looked like. “It’ll go away in a couple of hours.” He assured.
“Still,” Foggy said and sighed. Matt rubbed his left eyelid until the static of that sensation numbed the static in his brain. “That looks like you slept on a mattress made out of poison ivy or something. Would an oatmeal bath help?”
“I don’t know,” Matt shrugged as he tugged on his sweats, being careful of where he placed the waistband on his hips. “The last time I got an x-ray, I was a kid and they couldn’t finish because I started screaming.”
“Here,” Foggy said and started pulling his button down out of the waistband of his pants. “Put my t-shirt on instead. It’s bigger and it won’t rub as much.” He took off his undershirt and handed it to Matt.
Matt slid on Foggy’s t-shirt. It was warm and smelled like him. It was a poor substitute for his actual touch, but it would have to do.
It’s not like he wants to actually touch you anyway, the Devil mocked.
Notes:
Matt's a Friends fan in every lifetime. I don't make the rules.
Every comment and kudos I receive activates a trap card so I can beat the legendary Blue Eyes White Dragon. Or you catch me on tumblr.
Chapter 8
Notes:
Sorry it's been like a month since I have posted. I got very into my own head about this fic and I stopped posting chapters because of that but there was a shrine erected to call me back (thanks Ellis) and like Beetlejuice, if you say my name thrice I'll end up showing up where you least expect me (your inbox)
I'm still not entirely satisfied with this chapter and it's making me grumpy but c'est la vie and all of that. Hopefully, I can get future chapters up quicker. I have until Chapter 22 written so far!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
What was the opposite of Midas? Who was his evil twin that turned everything into dust instead of gold? Foggy was starting to think he must be the answer to those questions because everything he did ended up just hurting Matt in some way or another.
Matt had a rash. Foggy got stung by a jellyfish once on vacation when he was a kid and it was probably, hands-down, the worst rash he had ever gotten – pink with inflammation, stinging where the tentacles touched him, itching and burning all at the same time. This rash looked like that except it covered the area from Matt’s belly button down to almost his knees. It was red and irritated and painful looking. And by the way Matt gingerly peeled off his sweats to change into a pair of Foggy’s briefs when they got home, Foggy knew it had to hurt as much as it looked.
Dressed in Foggy’s clothes that were loose enough to not chafe at his poor skin, Matt spent his evening huddled on the couch. Foggy draped a blanket over him, but he kicked it off to the floor and grunted that it was too overstimulating.
So, Foggy left him alone, not wanting to worsen his already sour mood. He put a random Friends episode on the television, turning the volume down low and started making dinner. Whether or not Matt was actually paying attention was another story, but at least he was calm and resting.
Foggy was in the middle of turning a sandwich on the stove when Matt finally stirred.
“Foggy?”
“Yes, Matty?”
Matt made a noise. “N-nevermind,” he said and resettled with a sigh.
“Did you need something?”
“No,” Matt said. “It’s not important.” Foggy watched him curl tighter against the arm of the couch. Foggy put his spatula down and walked into the living room, stopping in front of the couch.
“If you need something, I can get it. I don’t mind.” Foggy assured him. Annoyingly independent? Isn’t that what he said to his therapist? More like self-destructively independent.
Matt’s large eyes pointed at him and then flicked to the right. He remained silent, just sighing with his head on the arm.
“How’s your rash?”
“It’s alright,” Matt pulled up the hem of his t-shirt. The red was fading now into a light pink. Foggy felt a knot of something release in his chest.
“Is it itchy?” Foggy asked as he watched Matt palm at his hip over his clothes.
“A bit,” Matt conceded.
“I can put some aloe vera lotion or something on it?” Foggy offered. “My mom would put the bottle in the fridge so it was cold when she put it on bad sunburns when I was a kid. Helped the itching a lot.”
“Okay,” Matt whispered, his fingers tightening into fists like agreeing to care was a painful task for him. “If you think it’ll help.”
Foggy went to their bathroom and found some aloe vera lotion. He put it in the refrigerator to cool it down and then pull the sandwiches off the stove before they burned. He left them to come back to once he was done with Matt.
“Alright,” Foggy tried to joke as he flipped the cold bottle in the air. “Remove thy pants.”
Matt sat up and Foggy took the spot he was laying in next to him. Matt pulled up his shirt first, revealing a very sunburn-like rash now. Parts of it were bumpy with hives, but it looked a lot better than it did even an hour ago.
“It’ll be cold. It just came from the fridge,” Foggy said as he poured a little of the clear goo right in the divot of Matt’s abs. He watched him shudder. “Told you.”
The rash was warm to the touch like a sunburn was too. Foggy rubbed it gently in his skin, making it glisten and tried to be as gentle as possible to not cause him anymore pain than necessary.
It must’ve been relieving, because the tension in Matt’s shoulders released. “Thank you, Fog,” Matt said, his hand finding Foggy’s leg and his eyes sliding shut. “That feels nice.”
“I’m sorry the scanner did this to you,” Foggy clicked his tongue as he pushed Matt’s waistband down and applied the lotion to his hip. “I know you said x-rays give you hives, but I didn’t realize it was going to be this bad.”
Matt sighed. “I’ve never had a CT scan before. I didn’t know it was going to be this bad either.” He shuddered again when Foggy poured more cold lotion on his skin.
“Why do you break out into a rash from x-rays?” Foggy asked.
Matt just shrugged back. “Just too sensitive, I guess.”
“Well,” Foggy moved his hand to work on Matt’s other hip. “Hopefully something will come from all of this…” he tugged the leg of Matt’s briefs he was wearing up so he could get to his leg, “...allergic reaction or whatever.”
“Yeah,” Matt whispered. “Me too.”
Foggy finished up the best he could, handing the bottle to Matt so he could get his groin himself, warning about not getting aloe on his balls. He did that once and it was not fun to wash off later. It was like lube without the happy ending. Matt snorted and smiled a little and Foggy couldn’t resist kissing his cheek, making him turn his head in surprise.
“I love you,” Foggy said, nose-to-nose with Matt now.
Matt had one hand jammed underneath the hem of his boxers. Under different circumstances, the view would be kind of sexy. But, Foggy knew that Matt’s junk was probably itching like it had been afflicted with a severe venereal disease. Instead, Foggy used his clean hand to rub Matt’s stubble and watched his lips part with that tense, disbelieving breath he gave every time Foggy showed him a modicum of attention.
“What did you want to say earlier?” Foggy asked.
Matt’s face reddened. “I just…” he shrugged and removed his hand, wiping the excess lotion on his shorts. “I just…” he huffed and Foggy continued to rub his face. “It’s been a really shitty day.” He finally whispered. “I feel like I’ve been stuck in a loop of shitty days.”
Foggy’s eyebrows pulled together in concern, but he didn’t want to interrupt so he just nodded.
“I wanted…” Matt fidgeted as he weighed out his words. “I wanted you...I wanted…you to sit with me.” He whispered like the words had to be tortured out of him, his eyes still wide and full of that same scary vulnerability.
Foggy was deeply confused. Was that all he wanted? Just some cuddles? He tried to sift through their last hundred interactions, trying to pinpoint when Matt got it into his head that he had to ask for Foggy’s affection, getting that deep guilty feeling again that he somehow ruined his already traumatized husband.
“If you don’t want to-to–,” Matt stuttered out when Foggy didn’t say anything. “It’s fine.” It didn’t sound fine.
“No, darling,” Foggy said quickly. “I would love to sit with you.” He straightened his bangs and tucked the ends behind his ear. “Let me finish dinner and then we can spend the rest of the evening on the couch, alright?”
Matt nodded, relief folding his shoulders inward. “Okay,” he whispered.
Foggy kissed his head. “I’m always here when you have a bad day.”
Matt didn’t say anything back, but by the way he played with the hem of shirt and by the funny expression he held on his face, Foggy knew that he didn’t believe him.
Matt was panicking.
He was only at seven touches from Foggy for the day and it was almost four o’clock. He was at a steady average of about twelve touches before the workday ended and this was five under his normal threshold. This was not good. The Devil was goading him for it and all the explanations that Matt conjured up to explain Foggy’s sudden withdrawal of affection ended with the conclusion that Foggy was either upset or disgusted with him.
The half of him that only wanted affection and love was weeping and gnashing for something. Anything. A sign of reassurance that everything was actually okay between them and that Foggy’s lack of physical contact was for a mundane, normal reason.
The other half was raging at Foggy for not seeing that his needs weren’t being met. It was making Matt act…rashly – stepping in front of walkways to block Foggy’s paths so he had to interact with Matt before stepping around him, positioning himself next to Foggy at his desk, bumping him with his foot.
And Foggy was acting like everything was fine – he was still smiling and joking. When he did touch, they lingered and weren’t forced. He spent the day zipping around the office, going through books and files as they researched precedents on the case they were working on together. But, the distraction of work wouldn’t prevent Foggy from touching Matt, right? That wouldn’t make Foggy suddenly realize that Matt was too loathsome and vile to touch? Right?
But, each time Matt’s silent requests were buffeted, Matt felt something splinter inside of him. He felt this odd paranoia that something had to be wrong. There was no explanation to why Foggy had just been as cuddly as he could be the night before and now was trying to torture Matt by withholding the one thing that truly kept him sane.
You know what’s wrong. The Devil taunted. You.
Matt was truly starting to be convinced he had a cancer of the soul and all of his loved ones knew. Everyone could see how monstrous Matt was now and was trying to keep their distance. There was no other explanation that he could think of that made sense.
Unless he’s cheating.
Marci Stahl crashed into Matt’s thoughts uninvited and he dug his fingernail into one of his cuticles so hard it bled. It took all of his willpower to keep himself from spiraling into that dream-state where he felt he was attending a feature film of his life. He currently sat two feet away from his husband and it could’ve been like they were on different planets.
“Matt?” A touch. Matt almost jumped out of his skin when he realized it wasn’t Foggy. He must’ve jerked back, because Karen also wheeled back. “Are you okay?”
Foggy’s eyes were on him now, his finger froze on his trackpad.
“Fine,” he muttered.
“You were a space cadet there,” she settled in the seat next to Matt and Matt suddenly felt claustrophobic. This wasn’t the attention he wanted. Actually, this was the opposite of what he wanted. He wanted Foggy’s comfort, not his actions to be psychoanalyzed by Karen who was judging him with frozen eyes. Not her well-meaning, friendly touches that were a leftover from well-worn habits from a time before she knew what Matt was capable of. He didn’t need her touch to tell him where she was in the room. He did that just fine on his own.
Another touch – this time Foggy’s hand on his knee under the table. This is what he wanted. He moved his knee closer to Foggy and he rubbed back and forth in a soft, reassuring way. Eight, he noted. Four more to meet his goal.
“Sorry,” Matt said quickly, pulling himself together and zipping up all the poison that he was sure was geysering out of him for the whole office to see. “This case is wearing me out.”
“I know,” Karen agreed. “I can’t believe the injustice. He’s just a kid.”
Foggy’s hand stopped and Matt almost, almost started screaming. “Could you take this to Ellison? I mean, blatant discrimination like this would definitely get the attention of the press.”
Karen nodded and launched into a conversation over the best way to get the details out there without violating any privilege. Matt tuned her out, instead focusing on Foggy’s hand that laid motionless on his knee. He wiggled his leg back and forth to get Foggy to pet him again and only successfully managed to get Foggy to take his hand back. Matt felt like crying.
Matt tuned back into the conversation at the same time Brett’s name was mentioned and Foggy’s form perked up at the mention of the cop in a way that made Matt suddenly nauseous. “That could work.”
Karen hummed. “I already had to take him out for coffee to ask about Ben Poindexter. I think someone else from the office needs to take one for the team and treat him to lunch or something.”
Matt piped up before Foggy could volunteer and completely ruin Matt’s life. “What did he say about Poindexter?” He asked, changing the subject.
“Not much, unfortunately,” she sighed. “He’s getting me copies of his files that were recovered from Fisk’s penthouse. Apparently he has a psychiatric report that’s a mile long.”
Matt already knew all of that already from the tapes he found in his safe. He was disturbed and that’s why Fisk was able to manipulate him so wickedly into doing what he did to Jasper Evans. To Ray Nadeem. To Father Lantom. To countless others. The fire of rage in Matt’s chest churned and smoked like an active volcano.
“If Dex is One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, would they put him in gen pop?” Foggy leaned back. “Or do you think he would be held at the psych ward?”
“That’s a good point,” Karen said.
“That would depend on his lawyers,” Matt added, still trying to contain the bonfire blaze in his chest.
“Why are we trying to find him anyway?” Foggy asked, looking between the both of him.
Matt felt his stomach bottom out and opened his mouth to spew the first lame excuse he could conjure up, but Karen beat him to it. “It’s good to keep tabs on your enemies, Foggy.”
Foggy rubbed his forehead and Matt could suddenly smell faint cortisol in the air. “I could’ve been a butcher,” he muttered to himself as he pushed his chair back from the table and started to rise. “I could’ve been the king of slicing meat!” He sighed like he had to get that out of his system to be calm again. “I’m going downstairs to grab some food before we head out for the evening. You guys need anything?”
“Nope,” Karen said and started to rise herself. “I will be getting out of here shortly as well.”
Matt started to rise to follow Foggy downstairs, the surprised frustration at his sudden departure just fanning the fire deep in his core and his stomach twisting at the same time when he realized it was the end of the day and he was still missing touches.
But, Karen stopped him. “Matt?” She asked at the same time Foggy closed the door. Matt spotlighted his senses on him as he walked downstairs and behind the counter. “How have you been?” She asked sincerely, which irritated Matt immensely. And he knew deep down she was just being caring, but he was a floor above Foggy now and still missing four touches and why couldn’t she just open her eyes and see that he was two seconds from ripping his own flesh from his bones?
“I’ve been alright,” he said, rising from his own chair slowly – partially for his back, partially to avoid the inevitable prying conversation that he knew Karen was itching to have by the staccato of her heartbeat and was trying to come up with as many believable excuses as he could for all of her potential questions.
“Um,” Karen folded her arms across her chest. “Have you been going out as Daredevil?”
Oh. Well, that’s not the question he was expecting at all.
“I’m–,” he stammered, suddenly flushed and hungry for a fight – for a nose on the other end of his fist, on his knee in someone’s diaphragm. He wanted to hear the air wheeze from someone’s lungs as he knocked it out of them. He gripped the table and fought for control of himself, masking it by jerkily gathering documents up. “I’m taking a break.”
“Why?” He could hear Karen’s eyebrow muscles squeeze together.
“Um, well…” he straightened. He might as well be honest with her. He still had the x-ray to do and then a follow-up appointment that would take him out of the office more than he liked.
And then…what after the follow-up? Surgery? His hands suddenly went clammy.
“Are you okay?” Karen asked again when Matt’s sentence fell off to a noisy swallow. “I know you’ve just been through a lot. I’d understand if you wanted to take a vacation for a bit.”
“It’s not like that,” and the volcano was boiling, churning, threatening to spill over. “I’m fine, okay?” He huffed a breath and put his hands on his hips. “I went to an orthopedist for my back and I’m having some scans done. He doesn’t want me doing anything too…physical until he can figure out what is wrong.”
“Oh,” Karen’s heartbeat skipped with surprise. “That’s…” a very normal reason to take a break from patrolling. Matt had a forty story building collapse on top of him. There were injuries he had to address. Matt could almost hear the gears whirr in Karen’s head as she applied that logic. “Alright, Matt. Well, let me know if you need anything.”
“Yeah,” Matt grunted, drumming his fingers on the table. “Thanks.”
Karen suddenly snorted. “Brett’s convinced either Foggy or I know Daredevil – which is true, but we have to be more careful about that with him – and wanted me to put the signal out for you.”
“What?” Matt cocked his head, the Devil stirring inside. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Karen shook her head. “Something about a drug ring? Or a trafficking ring? He’s been looking for you at night.”
The Devil ricocheted around the confines of Matt’s being like a feral animal locked in a cage. A drug ring? A trafficking ring? In his city? The city that needed him? The city that will always need him? Matt needed to go. He needed to go find these scumbags now.
The door of their office opened and Matt wheeled around to Foggy holding some subs that smelled of vinegar and salami in his hands and the Devil raged even harder. He would need to wait and sneak out tonight. Foggy would never let him patrol after what the doctor said.
He could wait. It would make that first swing, that first impact even sweeter in the long run.
He could wait.
Matt stood at the door of the roof, feeling the pressure of every moment he wasted checking the stupid lock was a moment a crime ring was still out there hurting people. He groaned impatiently, waiting for his brain to finally give it up as it flooded him with that same horrible, exhausting fear that something was going to happen to Foggy if he didn’t make sure this door was locked.
Foggy, who was sleeping soundly below him. Matt had waited until his breaths evened out into light snores to slip out of bed to his chest under the stairs. He knew he would get chewed out when he got back and part of him wanted to stay in Foggy’s safe, comfortable arms all night.
But, all of that was dimmed by the hunger deep within Matt’s black soul. The Devil was screaming to break free and Matt was going to give him what he wanted, what he craved.
As soon as he finished with this goddamn door.
It didn’t help that they were still no closer to finding Dex. Actually, that sharpened the fears into icy needles that pierced Matt’s chest and made it hard to breathe. But, the hunger extinguished them as they were made. A furnace fed by the furious need to prove to himself that the city still needed Daredevil. They still need its protector.
He was finally able to let go and he exhaled a sharp breath before about-facing and running off the edge of his apartment building. Brett was easy to find amongst the quiet of the night – sitting in his unmarked patrol car a couple of blocks from the precinct, clicking through the laptop built into the dashboard. Every once in awhile the radio would crackle to life as the dispatcher called out codes in a bored tone.
Matt headed that direction, being careful to land as soft as possible to help keep the shock out of his lower back. He wanted to at least say he tried to protect himself when he got lectured by Foggy later. He scaled down a construction scaffolding and jumped so he landed in the middle of Brett’s roof with a thunk of his boots. Brett’s heart took off like a jackrabbit and Matt smirked as he stepped off the roof of the vehicle, landing on the balls of his feet.
“You gave me a heart attack,” Brett said as he swung the door of the cruiser open and stepped out. The car bonged that the door was open.
“What’s this about a ring?” Matt grunted at Brett.
“I see you got my message,” Brett snorted.
Matt felt a flame of impatience lick at his ankles. His fists balled. “Do you want my help or not, Detective?”
Brett sighed. “Part of the evidence we recovered from Fisk involved some of his ledgers. We think he has connections with a human trafficking ring. They’re using New York as a layover point before getting the victims – children and women mostly – up to Canada in shipping containers. We're not sure where they're taking them after that.”
Matt shook his head. “We eradicated the Russians.”
“These folks ain’t Russian,” Brett said. “They’re a church. One of those…” he motioned in the air, “closed-off, secretive religious cults."
Matt internally sighed. He was so tired of dealing with cults after The Hand.
“It’s been hard to get any information out of them,” Brett admitted. “Even with a warrant, they got wind we were coming somehow and cleaned shop before we got there. I was thinking if you could sneak up on them and investigate…”
Oh. Matt was going to do way more than that.
“We could get them quicker that way?”
Matt nodded. “Do you have any information on where they operate?”
“They have an actual church, but we already checked it and it’s clean. They have a thrift store too with a warehouse and a truck on fourteenth. We haven’t discussed going over there yet in case they have someone on the inside, but we got rid of all the crooked cops at the same time we got Fisk.” Brett shook his head. “I can’t even begin to tell you who it could possibly be.”
“The cop could be a part of the church.” Matt pointed out.
Brett sighed. “Shit. I didn’t think of that.”
“I’ll check out the thrift store,” Matt said.
“Thanks,” Brett said and tipped his chin up. “Glad to see you out again. I thought the city lost you.” He said before ducking back into his cruiser and closing the door.
Matt preened.
And then he ran.
Security on the thrift store and its adjacent warehouse seemed minimal. Matt scaled the chain link fence surrounding the perimeter with no problem, noted the security cameras whizzing with electricity on the corners of the store front and kept to dark shadows to not set off any hidden motion lights.
When he got to the store, he didn’t detect any life inside, but all the windows were barred over and unable to be broken into. He went to the back door where there was a bucket that was half-filled with cigarette butts and a chair. He found the hidden key under the bucket and let himself into the store.
He exhaled a breath of frustration and disappointment that there was no one inside. The store was filled with racks of clothes and knick knacks. He went behind the counter, searching for anything that would give him a clue to where they held their operation and only found glossy pamphlets and what he assumed was an employee schedule book.
He headed to the back area next, finding a manager’s office. He investigated the desk, but even if he found a clue on paper, he wouldn’t be able to read it. He gave up pawing through stacks of paper and instead looked for keys or thumb-drives or something that might have incriminating evidence on it. He let himself out and checked a small break room that provided nothing further.
The store was disappointing, so he hoped the warehouse would be more exciting as he crossed the small parking lot, still keeping to the shadows as much as he could.
He could hear heartbeats as he closed in on the warehouse. Voices. He crouched under a window to listen.
“Hit me,” one voice said. “I’ll stand.”
“I’ll double-down,” another voice said. Cards were dealt with a soft shick, shick noise as they glided over a folding table.
There were three of them – young men, muscular and armed – sitting around a card table. Matt could smell beers and old clothes and the wood of palettes. A security guard doing a graveyard shift at a warehouse wouldn’t be suspicious, but three armed guards for one thrift store? Seemed like overkill for some secondhand clothes.
Unless that’s not all they were hiding.
Matt hung out for another couple of moments to see if there would be any more information he could get from the guards, but they continued to play Blackjack and sip from open beers. He was about to rise out of the squat position he was in that was starting to strain his lower back when one of them received a phone call. He froze.
“Yeah?” The dealer answered the phone. “Yes. We’ll check it out.” He hung up. “Zeke, go check the store. Boss caught something on the camera.”
Matt moved to the side of the warehouse when one of the guards stood to his feet. Hiding alongside the wall opposite where he could sense a lone bulbed outside light, he crouched and waited for the man to emerge. He tightened his fists instinctually, but he had to wait to find evidence of a crime before he could serve punishment and at this point, he still hadn’t found anything.
The man exited the building and Matt tracked him while he crossed the parking lot and went back to surveilling those on the inside of the warehouse.
“You think it’s the cops?” The other player asked the dealer, who seemed to be the leader of their trio.
“Nah,” the dealer said. “The boss would know if it was the cops and would’ve told us not to store the children here earlier.”
Children? Matt pushed his senses out, but the only heartbeats he sensed were the goons sitting around the table and the one that was currently walking through the store. He drummed on the ground with his fingertips, trying to pick up hollow pockets in the earth through the vibrations in case they had a hidden basement or something, but they were too close to a subway line and all he could sense was the train rumbling on its tracks.
He had to get closer.
Matt went to the door the other guy just came out of and let himself in, being careful of any squeaking hinges or slamming doors. There was a stairwell to his immediate right that led to an additional loft for storage. He crept up the wooden steps and kept close to the boxes.
He could smell wood and gunpowder and metal oil. He touched a crate, sensing a rack of rifles inside of them. He grimaced and made a mental note to mention that to Mahoney.
“Even if it was the cops,” the other guy said as he helped the dealer shuffle cards. “They wouldn’t find anything anyway after that shipment went out earlier.”
Ah. So, that’s why Matt didn’t detect any other heartbeats. That disappointed Matt immensely. If he was faster or set out earlier, he could’ve intercepted them. The Devil was clawing out of his chest and it took all of Matt’s self-control not to launch himself onto these men. The third—Zeke — returned, the door opening and closing.
“Nothing,” he said and lowered himself back down to his seat. “Boss must’ve seen a shadow or something.”
“Can’t be too careful,” the dealer said. “Heretics are everywhere.”
The other guy grunted. “I know what to do with heretics when I see them,” he patted his holster on his hip.
“Hey,” the dealer scolded. “Save your energy. Once the children are gathered, we’re going to light ‘em up. What’s that the boss always says? ‘Patience will bring us what we are deserved.’”
The first guy grunted again. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I just wish it would hurry up. I’m tired of smelling like the pier all the time.”
The pier? Matt leaned forward.
“You smell like a pier even after three showers,” the dealer joked and the other guy laughed. “Fucking fish-smelling ass.”
Matt sighed when they went into a round of joshing each other for smelling like fish. He didn’t think he was going to get anymore useful information out of this conversation.
And, it was about time to let the Devil out anyway.
He straightened to his full height, taking a second to stretch out his back before stepping over the railing of the loft and right onto their table. It crunched into pieces under his boots, making all three men fly to their feet. Matt grabbed the first collar his fingers touched and forced the man to the ground headfirst. His skull made a deliciously sickening crack against the cement floor.
Matt let the man’s limp body fall and focused his attention on the next goon, who was scrambling to get his gun out of the holster. With a quick, disabling kick to the kneecap, the second man crumpled. Matt grabbed him by the shirt and gave him three quick pops to the face. His nose broke on the third strike and the Devil rejoiced by bathing Matt in fire and conviction. He was Daredevil. He was the protector of his city.
“Who the fuck are you?” The dealer asked, aiming a gun at the back of Matt’s head. The slide had already been pulled and his fingertip danced over the trigger.
“I’m the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen,” Matt whispered as he let the second unconscious man drop to the ground.
In a flash, he whirled around and struck his hand up, breaking the elbow of the dealer’s arm holding the gun. The joint gave a sickening pop and the man’s gun dropped to the floor.
The dealer let out a frustrated, pained howl and punched forward, connecting with Matt’s cheek. Teeth bit through tongue and Matt could taste copper, but the pain was a holy temple, a familiar sanctuary. There was a rush of endorphins in his ears, of adrenaline pumping in his veins at the same tempo of his heartbeat.
Matt would never tire of that feeling.
He let him get in a second hit. The pain was a baptism that cleansed Matt’s self-doubt and fears. He was in control. Not Fear. Not Stick or Fisk or his father. He decided when the Devil was let loose and he decided when the fight ended. He allowed a third strike before jamming the dealer’s nose into his skull with an open fist. Fragile cartilage crunched easily under Matt’s hand. The Devil celebrated and Matt took his first real breath in three weeks.
He gasped in the taste of sweet oxygen like a drug addict getting a fix.
Foggy awoke to the roof-access door opening. He sat up in confusion, blinking back the sleep in his eyes as he willed his tired brain to connect the dots of what that sound meant. He knew the answer to this pop quiz exam question, he was sure. His thoughts were just too slow to conjure up the answer that was right on the tip of his tongue.
He looked over at the empty side of the bed and finally the answer came to him.
Matt.
He threw the blankets off his legs and hurried to the living room. He found his husband at the fridge, still dressed in his black Daredevil pajamas as he rummaged around the contents of it.
“Did you go out?” Foggy blurted dumbly. Of course Matt went out. Why would he get dressed up in his night-job uniform otherwise?
Matt straightened and closed the refrigerator door, a fresh beer in his hand. He used the heel of his boot to pop the cap off and took a long swig before answering. “Yeah,” he said and then burped.
“Why?”
“Trafficking ring,” Matt said simply as he wandered across the kitchen towards the window, his shoulders back with pride and self-confidence. “A big one.”
“But why?” Foggy asked again. Matt had been told three weeks ago by the doctor not to do any physical activity besides light stretching. He hadn’t gone out since that doctor’s appointment.
“You know why,” Matt answered back in a whisper. And the thing was, Foggy did. There wasn’t anything that could really hold back Matt from Daredeviling. Not Foggy, not Karen, not even physical injuries. Matt heard the city call out for a savior and had to answer it. Every time.
Foggy rubbed his forehead with the butts of his hands and let out a long, frustrated sigh. When he looked back at Matt, his shoulders had tensed and he was slamming back his beer in long, methodical gulps. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” Matt said when he finished chugging his beer. He wiped his face on the back of his sleeve as he walked back to the fridge for, to Foggy’s lack of surprise, a second beer. Their beer budget was rivaling their rent nowadays.
“Okay,” Foggy said, suddenly exhausted. “I’m getting back into bed, then.” He didn’t want to fight over Daredevil again. He didn’t want to fight about therapy. He didn’t want to fight so hard to get his husband to just take care of himself for once. Every baby step forward was ten Luke Cage-sized strides backwards.
He just didn’t have the energy in him anymore.
“That’s it?” Matt asked when Foggy turned around.
“What?” Foggy asked.
Matt was halfway through his second beer now. “No lecture?” His tone was snotty, petulant.
Foggy felt a flash of white, hot irritation. He opened his mouth to tell Matt to go to hell because he wasn’t fighting with him in the wee hours of the morning while Matt was tipsy off of two lagers again. But then he closed it and instead painted a big, sarcastic smile on his face. “Nope,” Foggy hoped that Matt could hear how his teeth were grinding together in his head.
“That’s a first,” Matt snorted and finished his beer, dropping the empty bottle into the sink.
“Goodnight,” Foggy just clipped and headed back to bed.
In an act of pettiness that Foggy wasn’t proud of, he knocked all of Matt’s pillows on the floor. He then rolled over, pulling the covers up to his ears and closed his eyes tight.
He could hear the shower run and about fifteen minutes later, the barn door slid open and Matt stumbled into the bedroom. Foggy wasn’t sure if it was punch-drunkenness or actual drunkenness or a combination of the two that was making Matt’s steps heavy, but he didn’t care to open his eyes to figure it out.
Matt let out an annoyed huff when he found his pillows on the floor, but he was silent as he picked them back up and put them back in their proper place on the bed. He climbed under the covers with a low groan that Foggy could bet actual money on was because he overworked his injured back.
“Foggy?” He whispered and Foggy just squeezed his eyes shut tighter as a response. Matt sighed when he didn’t answer and rolled over to face the wall. “I can tell you’re awake, you know.” He whispered.
Foggy held his ground, even when Matt let out an annoyed sigh that pierced through the darkness like loosed arrow. “Fine,” he muttered under his breath and then curled up into himself under the covers. “Goodnight.”
Foggy inhaled deep, timed breaths to keep his heart rate low and even. He was exhausted and wanted this night to just end already, but his thoughts were racing round and round, trying to make sense of Matt’s behavior the last couple of months. And, his conclusion was that there was no explanation to Matt’s behavior. Not really. Matt fell into the deep end months ago and was somehow still refusing the multiple floatation devices tossed to him.
Foggy opened his eyes to see his wedding ring on his finger sparkling with the light of the billboard. He closed his eyes against it, deep fear in his heart that when Matt eventually drowned, their marriage wouldn’t be pulled down to the dark depths with him.
Notes:
I'm basing this new criminal organization off of an actual secretive, closed-off cult/church that got busted for moving drugs and exploiting kids in my area so that's been some fun research. The FBI guy that lives in my computer must be so confused.
Anyway, when I'm not researching criminal organizations filed as religious entities with the IRS or procrastinating on posting, you can find me on tumblr ! And comments are always, ALWAYS appreciated! Thank you!
Chapter 9
Notes:
heyy sorry for the slow updates on this chapter! I edited it and edited it and now I'm at the point where I'm just going to throw it into the story like a grenade and put my fingers in my ears when it explodes.
fair warning, no one in this chapter is doing anything correctly. No one can communicate. The bag is being fumbled. They're cooked, chat.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Foggy finally drifted to sleep.
Matt had laid in bed and listened to Foggy’s breathing hitch and then even out and then hitch again—a percussive symphony of irritation and vexation composed to drive Matt completely up the wall. He was refusing to talk to Matt now, which shouldn’t have been surprising. Foggy was always good at giving him the cold-shoulder when he was upset.
However, Matt was surprised. He was bracing himself for the lectures, the long looks where Matt could physically feel Foggy appraise him and weigh him out against his worth like Anubis. He was even ready for the therapy sales pitch again. Instead, he got…nothing. Foggy went back to sleep and Matt laid awake in the dark, ready for a fight that never came.
The silence of the early morning was oppressive and only made the Devil’s voice louder, echoing off the walls of Matt’s skull. And it was only screaming the same sentence over and over.
He’s going to leave you.
And the part of Matt still basking in the glow of a good fight, the part that was still stinging from fist blows and vibrating with vindication, just wanted him to fucking do it already. If Foggy was unhappy with him, he should just go. Matt never understood, even after all these years and despite the mounds of grief and heartache Matt had caused him, why Foggy didn’t just go. He could fall into the arms of trophy-wife Marci Stahl, live in the Upper East Side penthouse he always wanted, produce a bunch of babies and live happily ever after without Matt screwing up his life like he always did.
Instead Foggy punished him. He was lazy, cowardly, and immature and instead of having a conversation like an adult,—or better yet, just leaving like he always seemed to be on the brink of—he just stayed and punished Matt until Matt relented to smooth everything over, to beg for his praises and touch again. It was a cruel cycle. It was a cruel cycle Matt didn’t deserve to be stuck in. He didn’t deserve to be treated like this.
The anger Matt felt was smothering.
Matt scrubbed his face of boiling hot tears and ground his teeth together. Foggy was two feet away from him in bed, fast asleep and completely oblivious, and Matt was alone, asphyxiating on his own rage and trying with all his might not to just head back out and find a fight. It was still dark. He could probably find someone to put on the ground, to punch until the Devil was finally satisfied.
You can’t leave him.
That thought finally had him on his feet. Because it was right. As much as he tried to push Foggy away, he never did it wholeheartedly. He didn’t want Foggy to leave him. He was too pathetic and weak to kick out the only constant he had left in his life. He tried to alienate himself from his loved ones once and failed. He even tried to kill himself and failed at that too. He was just a failure. Useless, stuck in a marriage where his husband loathed him and he couldn’t do anything about it.
He went to the fridge and pulled out another beer. The first two already dulled his senses enough that he couldn’t really pick up anything worthwhile outside. Distant sirens that he had no energy to put stories to, street sweepers starting their routes, and clubgoers stumbling home is about all he could hear as he sipped his third beer of the evening and tried not to go insane under Foggy’s light snores and the resentment that poisoned his soul. Even if he tried to go out, he wouldn’t be able to fight like this.
He gulped down the alcohol and tossed the bottle into sink with the others, not caring how loud it clattered. Foggy still snored, uncaring that Matt was in the other room. He didn’t give a shit about Matt. He never gave a shit about Matt. He liked the idea of Matt—law partner, handsome-ish, willing to go to happy hour with him. But what did they really have? Especially now? The Devil answered for him.
Nothing.
And why the hell were his pillows on the floor? Did Foggy do that? He had to’ve. What a goddamn petty move. Matt huffed a breath of disbelief. He was glad that even though there was enough alcohol floating around in his system for him to do something really drastic, he still knew if he went and actually woke Foggy up to yell at him for being a fucking child didn’t seem very appropriate for three am.
Matt sat himself down on the couch. He’s going to leave you still reverberating around his head like the club song he could hear the block over. His back hurt, his heart hurt like he was grieving over his dead relationship that hadn’t actually wheezed its last yet, and he could smell divorce papers again.
Except this time, he couldn’t figure out if they were being served to him or Foggy.
Surprise! Foggy woke up to an empty bed again.
He woke up thirty minutes before his alarm went off and he had very little motivation to actually start his day when he knew Matt was somewhere in the apartment, probably still ready to pick a fight. Like he didn’t already find one, Foggy thought as concern flitting through him over Matt’s twisted spine and whatever other invisible injuries that were garnered from being flattened like a French crepe underneath a skyscraper.
With his zombie ex-girlfriend, that he vehemently insisted he didn’t have feelings for anymore or was even attracted to anymore, despite running into a building that was armed to be leveled to the ground for her.
Can’t forget that part, of course.
Instead, Foggy picked up his phone and scrolled through social media. He liked his sister’s Instagram post of his niece and nephew and Karen’s story post she took of some flowers she saw blooming in the park.
He flicked to his own profile, where most of his posts were from various holidays. The last post he made was from Matt and his honeymoon that felt like an eternity ago now. He flicked through various candids he took of Matt, feeling both that anchoring guilt that made him feel dragged down to the ground and a longing to wrap his husband in his arms and hold him as close as possible for the rest of his life.
They had been happy once. They could get back there again, right? Wilson Fisk, Elektra, ancient ninja clans, and all the conspiring in the world never keep Matt and Foggy separated for long, right?
God wanted Matt with Foggy. Out of all the uncertainty in their lives, that was never a question.
Soon, his alarm was ringing and Foggy had already methodically gone through every app and cleared his notifications out. There wasn’t really anything left for him to do except get out of bed and get ready for work. So, he pushed himself to his feet, pushing the barn door open and greeting whatever waited for him on the other side.
Matt was not pacing up and down the living room waiting to jump Foggy, like he expected. He asleep on the couch, curled tight like a pillbug against the arm. Foggy headed to the kitchen to start coffee before he got in the shower. There were six empty beer bottles in the sink now. Did Matt consume a whole six-pack in one evening?
Foggy started moving the bottles to the counter, lining them up like guarding sentinels so he could rinse them out for the blue bin. Six beers. Jesus Christ. He didn’t think Matt had a drinking problem, but Foggy was rarely ever right when it came to Matt anymore.
He turned on the sink and Matt finally roused.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Foggy used his normal morning greeting, hopefully in his seemingly normal tone, to mask the dread and guilt that was currently seizing his chest as he swirled water in each bottle and then dumped it out.
Matt sat up, his back audibly cracking like a handful of dry spaghetti as he straightened. He groaned and pawed at his face and hair for a moment before rising to his feet. He didn’t greet Foggy back. Instead he walked across the wood floor with heavy steps and disappeared behind a firm slam of the bathroom door.
Foggy sighed. His expectations that Matt would bounce back out out of whatever attitude he was in last night once the alcohol had worn out of his system were low, but he was disappointed to see that was not the case anyway. He worked on starting coffee as he devised a plan to try and break through to Matt again. He knew Matt had been preparing for an argument. Maybe if he just instigated one, Matt could work through whatever pent up emotions he came home with last night.
And then maybe Foggy could communicate that playing WWE with New York’s criminal underworld when you have orthopedic surgeons concerned over the state of your spine wasn’t very intelligent. And also try to ask about therapy again.
But, at the same time, part of him didn’t want to press the matter anymore. Matt would usually snap out of his moods in a day or two. If Foggy just exercised patience, this would probably blow over too.
Foggy was finishing coffee when Matt emerged from the bathroom, freshly showered with a towel wrapped around his waist. He still didn’t acknowledge Foggy, which was both irritating and concerning in equal parts. Concerning because when Matt went quiet, it never amounted to anything good. Irritating, because if Matt just talked once awhile, he wouldn’t go quiet in the first place.
“Made coffee,” Foggy said, more deadpan than he wanted.
Matt didn’t answer again as he disappeared into their bedroom. Foggy rolled his eyes, hoping Matt could hear them. So, the Silent Game is what they were playing. Well, fine. Foggy had been patiently waiting for a decade plus for Matt to finally open up to him. He’s waited months for Matt to even return texts about his condition, to finally answer his calls and not let them go to the voicemail he never answered.
He could wait a little longer.
“I was hoping we could get coffee again soon?”
Karen opened and closed her mouth like a fish. She hadn’t expected Brett to enjoy their previous coffee date so much that he wanted to do it again. She spent the whole time grilling him about the cases he was working on. The shock of being asked out again left her speechlessly giving an awkward chuckle as her only response. “Oh…”
“Brett,” Foggy sighed as he sidled up Karen’s desk where Karen and Brett were standing. “You can’t flirt with my coworker in front of me like this.” He said with his hand over his heart in mock hurt. “What’s next? An ‘it’s not me, it’s you’ speech before a tearful breakup—,”
“I’m trying to work,” Matt said tersely from his desk—the first words he had said all day.
“Nelson,” Brett said, exasperation bleeding into his voice. “I’m trying to have a conversation with Karen. Would you please?”
Karen inhaled a deep breath and exhaled it. Dating wasn’t really something on her radar right now between work, tracking down Dex, keeping her eye on Fisk, and trying to figure out why every two weeks her coworkers seem to fall into a schoolyard quarrel that turns the atmosphere of the office tense and impossible. But, she could go out for coffee with Brett one more time. He did help them a lot when it came to getting the FBI off their backs.
“I would love to get coffee again, Brett,” Karen smiled at him, clutching the file of Dex’s psychiatric report he had dropped off in person to her chest.
Brett smiled. He had a nice smile. He seemed very…normal. Karen wanted that right now. Lord only knew her time in New York hadn’t been completely normal. Besides, he wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon, so what was the harm?
She tucked her hair behind her ear as Brett shifted. “Great,” he said. “I’ll look forward to it.”
“‘I’ll look forward to it,’” Foggy mocked him and Brett shot him a look. “Alright, Brett. Hate to see you go, love to watch you leave and all of that, but—,”
There was a thunk! that had everyone’s heads turning towards Matt. He had pushed his chair back until it hit the wall of their small office. He jumped to his feet and grabbed his cane. “I’m going to lunch,” he tossed in their direction before heading towards the door.
“He alright?” Brett asked.
Karen chewed on her lip as she watched Matt stomp out of the office. Matt’s behavior the last couple of months he had been back had been…concerning. He came in exhausted and yet spent the day with agitation putting an edge in his voice and a chronic strain-line in his forehead. And Karen had been initially chalking it up to recovering from all the stress of the previous months, but now she wasn’t so sure that was it.
“Fine,” Foggy said, all humor dropping from his voice. “Just in a mood.” He went back to his own desk, his shoulders tense now and a bright gleam of irritation in his eye.
And then there was the clashes that Matt and Foggy seemed to regularly get in nowadays. She wasn’t going to get involved. She shouldn’t get involved. It seemed to be private, whatever was going on. At the very least, not involving her.
Brett snorted. “Trouble in paradise?”
“Weren’t you in the middle of asking Karen out?” Foggy said coldly.
“Listen,” Karen said, pulling Brett’s attention back on her. “Would tomorrow work for you?”
“Yeah,” Brett nodded and smiled again. “That sounds great. I can pick you up around one?”
“That’s perfect,” Karen said and then started scooching Brett out of their office. “I’ll see you then.”
Brett left with a sincere “see you later,” and Karen closed the door after him, glancing in the hallway for Matt before she did so. She didn’t find him and wondered if he went downstairs or even left the building completely. She shut the door.
“Okay,” she said, dropping the sweet act as she turned to Foggy. “What the hell is going on between you and Matt?” She demanded as she went back to her desk. She dropped the file—the label printed with Poindexter, Ben in a crispy font—and then thought again and lowered herself to her seat so she could dig into it immediately.
“Nothing,” Foggy said, not even taking his eyes off of his computer screen.
“Foggy,” Karen groaned as she flipped the cover. “Is Matt alright?”
Foggy rubbed at the lines on his forehead. “He’s fine,” he said firmly allowing no room for arguing.
“Are…” Karen started. “Are you going to find him?”
“I think he just wants to be alone right now,” Foggy said with a scowl and Karen huffed an unsatisfied breath and rolled her eyes in response. Whatever. She was tired of being the only one in the office that actually gave a shit.
She focused her attention on the file, opening it up to a page of identical, tiny tapes made from a tape recorder. She pulled one out of their holder and flipped it. They had dates and Dex’s name on each one, but other than that there was no indication of what was on the tapes. She replaced the tape she flipped the page over, finding notes from a doctor named Eileen Mercer.
New patient, 12 years old, parents were killed. Patient shows interest in baseball and little else. Spent the session drawing himself as a baseball player. Patient admitted to killing coach…
Karen double-took at that sentence. “Did you know Ben Poindexter killed his coach when he was twelve?” She shivered when she thought back to when Fisk’s mother retold how Fisk murdered his own father with a hammer. No wonder Dex fell so hard to Fisk’s schemes. They were two birds of a feather.
“Jesus Christ,” Foggy just answered back.
…and admitted that he does not feel remorse. Patient shows intense emotional dysregulation. Killed coach after perceived abandonment. Making note of potential BPD dx. Will explore.
Karen turned to her computer and Googled BPD, pulling up an article about Borderline Personality Disorder. Borderline personality disorder is a mental illness that severely impacts a person’s ability to manage their emotions, the website explained. This loss of emotional control can increase impulsivity, affect how a person feels about themselves, and negatively impact their relationships with others.
Karen wasn’t sure what to do with that. She wasn’t a psychologist, but she guessed that seemed on track with Dex. She went back to the notes.
Practiced expressing empathy. Has to be prompted to show remorse, sympathy, and understanding to others’ pain. Picked up scripting phrases quickly. Making note to bring up practice in next session.
Karen closed the folder and pushed it to the side, feeling revolted and a little nauseous. How did someone have to learn how to be empathetic? Practice it? Like a figuring out a math equation or studying for a history test? Is this what murderers were? Cold and calculating without feeling guilt or remorse or even sadness that they were doing this to actual humans?
Fisk never showed remorse. He never showed sympathy.
Karen ultimately decided to save the reading for later. She would pick it up again after a couple of glasses of wine and when she wasn’t reeling with how disgustingly low humanity could get.
And maybe after her coffee date with Brett.
Matt went out again that night after spending the day being obviously ignored by Foggy.
Matt spent the day watching Foggy interact, flirt even, with everyone in the tri-state area except for his own goddamn husband. Matt waited. And he waited. And he wanted some more for Foggy to bring up the night before, to lecture Matt about Daredevil, his back, anything. And then Matt switched to waiting for Foggy just to acknowledge him in general.
But Matt could’ve been a ghost haunting their own office, their own apartment. He got ten words out of Foggy the whole day and his touch counter was firmly at zero now. Foggy was so exasperated with Matt that he was punishing him. It was the only conclusion Matt could draw. It made Matt feel completely off-balance that Foggy wasn’t talking to him at all. Not even to fight.
And it made the Devil inside of him absolutely crazed.
He sat crouched on the roof of an office complex near an air conditioning unit, waiting for any sign of struggle. If anyone so happened to breathe wrong, he would know and he would be there.
And while he waited, he simmered over Foggy Nelson.
He wanted to tear Foggy a new asshole that was so big, it could be seen from space. How dare he ignore Matt? He was supposed to love Matt. Ignoring was not love. Ignoring was abandonment. Ignoring was disposal. Ignoring was telling Matt he wasn’t worth Foggy’s time. Not anymore.
A siren caught his attention and he tuned in immediately to the patrol car’s dispatch radio. …noise complaint, fourteenth and… Matt tuned them out with a disappointed sigh. He wanted to investigate the pier to see if he could find more evidence of trafficking, but he knew the cultists would probably be laying low if they knew Daredevil was on their trail now. And it was only practical to wait so he could tell Brett what he had found at the warehouse first.
Brett. Matt’s fists automatically tightened at the thought of the detective. Yeah, he was probably handsome by the way Foggy talked about him and he was polite, with good moral compass. None of that mattered to Matt. Not now. All he felt was hate, hate, hate blaze under his skin every time the Devil replayed Foggy’s comments to the officer, dripping with coquetry, like a faulty projector in his brain.
And Foggy knew what he was doing, hanging all over Brett like that. He was trying to make Matt jealous. It was stupid and immature and petty. Foggy was stupid and immature and petty.
The rage Matt felt like it was going to overflow. He just wanted something to punch, to fight back. He shifted, squatted and resumed his scanning. The night was quiet, however, besides the low din of nightlife and electricity that buzzed unceasingly. Matt instead tuned into happy couples laughing over drinks and mothers tucking children into bed and one guy below him on the street was lowly begging his dog to finally pee so he could go back inside.
The Devil raged harder against all of this peace, this repose, the cage Matt kept him locked in. He wanted to let him out. He did. He just had to be patient. He knew the city he loved wouldn’t disappoint him. Unlike his own spouse.
Who doesn’t love you anymore.
Has he ever loved you? Does anyone love you?
Matt suddenly felt chilled. He felt his breathing catch and he forced himself into exhale into the darkness. Tears prickled involuntarily into his eyes and he sniffed them back hard. He was a warrior. He was the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. He had a city to protect and Foggy couldn’t handle it. He was weak, inadequate, spineless and he couldn’t handle the fact that Matt wasn’t. Could he have ever loved Matt when he had always loathed such a fundamental part of him?
The Devil answered for him with a simple, no.
Finally, he heard a scream. He straightened up, forcibly cracking his back so the pain centered his nerves, lit the blaze of rage into a full bonfire.
If Foggy didn’t want to talk to him, fine. He could talk to Brett. Or Marci. Or one of his hundred other shallow, brainless friends. Matt had a duty, a purpose.
And it wasn’t him.
Foggy woke up Matt curled up on the couch again. This time, he hadn’t even bothered to take off his night-job uniform—passing out dressed in all black, his shoes kicked off into a pile next to the sofa and a new bruise smarting angrily across his cheek. Foggy leaned in as he passed to inspect him for wounds, but he didn’t seem injured in a way that required Foggy’s intervention. So, he straightened and headed for the kitchen.
Matt still wasn’t interested in having a conversation outside of a fight, as far as Foggy could tell. And he wasn’t about to wake him up and accidentally cause one. Foggy also assumed that Matt was grossly underestimating how long Foggy could go without talking to him. Every attempt at exchange from Matt got more bitter and passive-aggressive as the day went on.
In a horrible, ironic way it was funny to Foggy. Didn’t Matt realize Foggy learned how to cold-shoulder someone from the best?
So, Matt’s comments got mean and pointed and his tone grew more exasperated and Foggy continued to ignore him. He knew Matt just wanted to get him riled up, to yell at him. And maybe it was Matt’s backwards way of getting closure of the situation, or whatever, but Foggy wasn’t going to give in to the goading. There was no point.
And he thought he deserved at least a little bit more respect than that, right?
Foggy sighed audibly when he saw another six-pack’s worth of empty beer bottles in the sink because going and and picking fights with thugs wasn’t thrilling enough apparently for Matt so he had to add getting plastered to his nightly routine now. He started the sink and rinsed them all out for the blue bin, thinking about how their trash people probably thought they were alcoholics based on the sheer volume of their recyclables.
He started a pot of coffee, surprised to see that Matt was still sleeping despite all the noise—his hand squished up underneath his cheek and his knees pulled tight to himself in a fetal position.
Foggy moved to the living room, putting his hands on his hips as he watched the slow rise and fall of his husband’s chest with his deep breaths. He sighed and wondering if he should just give Matt what he wanted. Because Foggy knew that as much as he wanted Matt to just suddenly come to his senses and realize this wasn’t how adults worked out their issues with each other, he knew that would be a miracle of only God’s doing.
That guilt sat heavy in his stomach like a dense rock. He knew Matt wouldn’t ever get there because Matt never asked for anything for himself. He would rather suffer in silence until it broke him. Or until he coped by playing Batman in his underwear and drinking enough alcohol to inebriate the John Cena.
God, he was infuriating sometimes.
But, if Foggy gave in, Matt would just learn that’s what he had to do to get reactions out of him. He was like training a cat how to do tricks—cool in theory, but way harder than it looked. No. Foggy couldn’t give in. Matt would just have to use that big, beautiful brain of his to figure this one out by himself.
And then everything could finally go back to normal.
He spun on his heels and headed for the shower, appreciative that he got to it first for once so he could actually have some hot water. Matt always bathed at acid-rain temperatures.
“Where are you going?”
Wow, Foggy thought to himself. A sentence that wasn’t dripping with sarcasm, passive-aggression, or animosity. He checked his watch. They were on hour twenty-eight of non-communication. He wondered if he would have to wait a whole twenty-four hours again to get the next non-hostile remark or if Matt was starting to finally come around.
“Appointment,” Foggy said casually as he stuffed papers into his bag.
“You just had an appointment,” Matt said from his own desk, his fingers frozen around his earbuds. He was frowning, but it wasn’t the deep-seated scowl he usually had. It was…worried and disappointed. Foggy stopped before he headed to the door with a short sigh.
“It’s therapy,” Foggy answered. “I have these appointments every two weeks.”
“Therapy,” Matt repeated like he was tasting it, his pitch shifting downward into a monotone.
Yeah, you would know if you went, Foggy bit his tongue from saying. Instead he hitched his bag up his shoulder. “I’ll be back after lunch,” he said to mostly Karen, who was sitting at her desk with her cerulean eyes shooting lasers through her computer screen.
He wondered as he walked out of Nelson’s Meats if Karen was going to corner Matt like she had with Foggy the day before, but she tended to be more sensitive to Matt’s need to stick all of his issues behind a highly guarded and locked vault door. Foggy didn’t wish for Matt’s abilities often, but what he wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall of their dinky office now.
He couldn’t dwell on what Matt would say behind Foggy’s back for long. The therapist was only a couple of blocks away—farther than Matt’s radius of hearing, but close enough that he didn’t have to take a subway to get there. He checked himself in and was called back shortly afterward.
“How have things been?” Richard asked, his notepad open on his crossed legs.
Foggy sat across from him in a matching, overstuffed armchair. From his angle, he could see a family picture sitting on his desk of Richard and who Foggy assumed was his wife and daughter. They smiled happily for the camera and Foggy felt that stone of guilt weigh him heavily to the ground. He ended up only shrugging as a response, despite having a yellow legal page of topics he wanted to discuss tucked in the pocket of his coat.
“I don’t want to assume,” Richard started in a gentle tone, “but that shrug doesn’t seem like a ‘fine’ to me.”
Foggy let out a long sigh and rubbed his forehead. “Me and Matt are fighting, I think.”
The therapist wrote that down. “You think?”
“He’s giving me the cold-shoulder,” Foggy explained. “So, I’m giving him the cold-shoulder. We’re pulling a real Kennedy vs the Soviets over here.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Since yesterday morning.”
“Are you sure it’s the cold-shoulder?” The therapist asked as he wrote. “Not…taking a moment to cool down before regrouping?”
“No,” Foggy sighed. “I don’t think Matt is capable of ‘cool downs’ or ‘regrouping.’” He said with more acrimonity than he meant.
“Do you want to talk about what triggered the fight?” Richard asked, cocking his head. “Why don’t we start there?”
Foggy rubbed his forehead again. He couldn’t very well tell Richard about Matt’s double-life. He was pretty sure therapists had to report criminal activity like that if it meant someone was going to get hurt. “Um,” Foggy started and then shrugged again, because how do you explain someone like Matt Murdock? “He came home late, the other night and he didn’t tell me he was going out or anything,” Foggy said and shook his head, “and then he got drunk and was looking to have a blowout fight. I didn’t want to have a blowout fight at three in the morning, so I just…went back to bed.” Foggy sighed and shrugged again. “Pissed him off, I guess.”
Richard flipped back through his notes. “You said Matt has childhood trauma, correct?”
“Yeah,” Foggy said. He’s a real basket case sometimes, he thought, but didn’t say. He didn’t think therapists appreciated calling people with trauma ‘basket cases.’
“Did he fight alot in his childhood?” The therapist asked.
Foggy thought back to Matt’s father, to the elusive, blind man Stick. “Yeah,” Foggy said, “he was taught to fight. His dad was a boxer.”
Richard shifted around. “I thought he was orphaned. Do you know much about his parents?”
Foggy shook his head. “Not really. His dad was killed when he was a child. As far as I know, by the way Matt speaks of him, he was a good father, just got involved with the wrong people. He had this other guy who mentored him for awhile, but he was a piece of work. He just wanted to use Matt for his own purposes and didn’t actually care about him all that much. He left when Matt stopped being useful to him. His mother…” Foggy didn’t know much about Maggie besides the fact that she was a nun and left sometime when Matt was still a baby. He wasn’t sure if Matt knew much beyond those high-level details himself. “I know of her, but she wasn’t in his life at all.”
And as Foggy laid out all these people who had abandoned Matt in some way or another, that same knot of guilt twisted and twisted around. What if Matt thought Foggy was going to leave him too? Is that why he had been so clingy the last couple of weeks? And what about now? What was causing Matt to act so resentful towards him now? What did Foggy do for him to flip so suddenly on him?
Foggy’s thoughts started racing around and around at high speeds while his vivid imagination started splattering him with painful worse-case scenarios like he was being pelted with paintballs.
“I know I’m asking a lot about your husband when this is your therapy session,” Richard explained with a small chuckle. “I’m just trying to get a better understanding of what may have triggered the contention, but let’s pivot. How are you managing with your husband’s sudden…animosity?”
“I feel guilty.”
“Like, it’s your fault the fight is happening?”
“No. Or well, sort of?” Foggy said. “I know I’m the cause of it. I’m usually the cause of it. I feel guilty because I know I shouldn’t start a fight with him, but if I don’t and just let this…fester…” Foggy made a face, because that’s exactly what was happening. This was a fresh, open wound that Foggy was just rubbing dirt into now. “Then I know Matt’s going to implode eventually.”
“Are you cold-shouldering him to avoid triggering a fight?” The therapist asked. “Or are you avoiding the conflict in general?”
“I don’t see the difference,” Foggy sunk in the chair.
“Okay, let me rephrase,” the therapist said. “Are you avoiding the conflict because you are afraid of it? Or are you avoiding the conflict because you don’t want to instigate an escalated fight? We can speculate about why Matt is upset until the cows come home, but why is this your response to him being upset?”
“I don’t want this end in a blow-out fight,” Foggy said. “I want Matt to realize he’s being ridiculous, but he’s not going to figure that himself, huh?” The therapist gave him a sympathetic look that had Foggy whispering out a little “fuck.”
“He might,” Richard shrugged. “I don’t know Matt. I can’t say for certain. But, I can tell you, as a behavioral therapist is what I am seeing is that Matt’s pretty emotionally dysregulated and has a lot of abandonment trauma in his life, right?”
“Yeah,” Foggy lowered his eyes to hands like he was about to receive a scolding for breaking his husband. You know, more so than he was already.
“And I’m starting to think you might be avoiding the conflict out of fear of invoking a strong emotional response, correct? Have you guys have blown out fights before?”
Foggy’s brain cranked all the way back to when he first found out about Daredevil—the tears, the yelling, the pained gasps from Matt every time Foggy’s breath hitched like those inhales ripped open all of the wounds Claire had just stitched up. He fast-forwarded to the Frank Castle case, when Matt explained in broken, strangled, almost incoherent sentences that Elektra was the bomb that destroyed their case in a fiery explosion, that Elektra was back in Matt’s life and he didn’t even bother to inform Foggy, his husband. He fast-forwarded again to Fogwell’s, dusty and abandoned, fighting over whether it was an appropriate move to commit literal murder after Foggy hadn’t seen him in months.
Lie after lie after lie. Excuse after excuse after excuse.
“Yeah,” he managed to say. “We have.”
“So,” Richard said, “are you afraid of the conflict?”
“I think I’m just tired,” Foggy managed, his eyes still on his hands. “I’m tired of the excuses. I’m tired of forgiving him over and over again. I’m tired of him putting me in a position where I have to forgive him in the first place.”
Richard hummed. “That’s incredibly difficult.”
“Yeah,” Foggy agreed again. It was difficult and Foggy still did it. Because he loved Matt. He would always love Matt and his stomach twisted in a new, horrible way with a new, horrible thought.
Because, if he didn’t love Matt, who would?
“Forgiveness can be tough to do,” Richard started. “Especially when you’ve been burned before but, I want you to keep in mind forgiveness, ultimately, isn’t for Matt.”
Foggy perked his head up. “Who is it for then?”
“It’s for you,” Richard said. “Forgiveness allows you to let go of that hostility and resentment because if you don’t, you’ll hang on to it and it will fester into something truly ugly. I’m not saying you are excusing Matt’s mistreatment and you aren’t expected to embrace forgiveness immediately, but if that is something you would like to work on, you may find that forgiveness may bring you peace from the anger that gets triggered by Matt’s emotional dysregulation and from the guilt you hold when you feel like you aren’t doing enough for him to prevent this behavior.”
Foggy rubbed at his face. This sounded like so much work. Why was everything so much work? “This seems like a lot of effort for something he started.” Foggy grumbled, feeling like a little kid again, trying to buck blame off onto his siblings.
Richard shrugged. “Healing takes energy and motivation.” He shook his head. “But, again, it’s not something you need to instantly embrace. Think about it for the time being. In the meantime, I know telling you to talk to Matt is better said than done. How about instead, when Matt’s behavior triggers angers you and you feel like it’s going to escalate, taking a deep inhale of breath and really focus on getting air all the way into your belly,” Richard said and demonstrated at the same time, taking a deep, deep breath of air. “You can also roll your neck out. Try and focus on the tension anger causes in your body and stretch it out. Do this a couple of times until the feeling passes.”
“Alright,” Foggy said skeptically. He wasn’t sure what stretching and breathing was going to help, but he guessed he would try.
Matt strained to hear Foggy above the noises of the city.
But, it was midday and everyone was awake—talking, working, laughing, fucking, shouting in a multitude of languages. And that was what he was able to pick up above the other noises of car honks, construction, air conditioning units running, pets barking, registers slamming shut, sirens, milk frothers squealing in coffeeshops, knife chops in restaurants, boats sounding horns in the bay, the Devil hissing poison in his ear and the chronic tinnitus that cut through the white noise with a droning beat.
He wanted to get closer. He knew Foggy had turned east when he exited Nelson’s Meats. If Matt followed him in that direction, he knew he would pick up his heartbeat eventually and then he could sit on top of the office out of view and listen in to all the shit Foggy was probably spewing about him to his therapist. He was probably weaving a whole tapestry about how Matt was a shitty husband and that Foggy was a saint for putting up with the friendless, awkward, blind guy all of these years.
Matt stopped focusing on the noise outside their office when tears stung his eyes and blocked his sinuses. He wasn’t going to cry. Not in front of Karen. He didn’t need her misplaced hypervigilance on him. He wasn’t anyone’s charity case. He was a warrior.
Mind controls the body. He repeated to himself as he reeled himself back in. Mind controls the body. Body controls our enemies.
Foggy wouldn’t have to put up with Matt for long. Matt had Googled divorce lawyers, despite the fact that every time his screen reader read out the word ‘divorce,’ it felt like he was being shanked in the guts. He wasn’t anyone’s charity case, friend or, least of all, partner. He was a warrior and Stick was right—all of this soft shit was going to be his downfall.
However, he couldn’t will himself to actually contact one. He knew it was for the best and he knew they both would be happier out of each other’s lives. Foggy could run to Marci—God, even thinking her name was getting almost impossible for Matt nowadays—and live his dream life and Matt could dissolve into the white noise of the city. He could go no-contact for the rest of Foggy’s mundane, shallow life if that’s what pleased him.
And he had started dialing one, but hung up before his phone had a chance to connect when he was plagued with sudden nausea that almost made him vomit all over his desk. It would be a lie to say he wanted this, but the writing was already on the wall—Foggy wanted out, that was apparent. Matt would be a fool to try and stop him, no matter how he felt. He should just rip the bandaid off and save the hassle for the both of them.
Pathetic. The Devil ridiculed. You can’t even call a lawyer.
And Matt heard Foggy’s steps walk out the door, he smelled the divorce papers, and couldn’t decide if the pain in his chest was because of anger or just grief over the fact that Foggy wasn’t afraid to lose Matt like Matt was afraid to lose him.
So, he resigned to putting a couple of numbers in his phone and decided he would call and leave a voicemail later when a couple of beers and a night of fighting made the pain a little soft and fuzzy around the edges.
He tried to reach out with his senses again, but couldn’t penetrate the wall of noise that made up New York City, so he just gave up and went back to work. Foggy would say what he wanted to say to the shrink. Matt knew that listening in would just make him feel worse.
Foggy didn’t like being eavesdropped on anyway. He made they implicitly clear from the beginning, even though Matt’s sensitive hearing wasn’t something he could exactly control. How much did Foggy actually hate about Matt? How much did he actually love?
Not enough to talk to you, the Devil pointed out. Matt chewed on the inside of cheek to prevent having a breakdown again in front of Karen, who was on her feet now, gathering items into her purse. “Gotta meet Brett at the coffeeshop,” she said as she pulled her purse onto her shoulder.
Matt felt his mouth fall open, but he clamped it shut quickly. He gave a little nod and tried to focus back on his screen like he was actually doing work and not being currently flushed down the tubes of his own wretchedness. There was a kindling of fear inside of him that she was leaving to just get away from him, that she couldn’t stand to be the same room with him anymore.
Karen left the office with a little “bye,” and a soft closed door behind her. Matt tracked her to the sidewalk, where she pulled out her cell phone and started to text as she walked. Two stories above her, Matt listened to her wind chime giggle rise above the cacophony of the city and finally let himself break down at his desk, never feeling so empty before.
Notes:
If you leave a comment, I print the email out and fold it into a paper airplane and then throw them at my neighbors. It's quite fun, actually. Quality entertainment. When I'm not doing that, I am on tumblr
Chapter 10
Notes:
Chapter 10 is here! We all cheered. Except, that everyone is not having a good time so maybe we just golf clap instead?
Editing this chapter reminded me why I decided to make mattfoggy married in this and it's 100% so I could have one of Foggy's nieces or nephews say "Uncle Matt"
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Karen sat down at her kitchen table, Dex’s file sitting unopened next to her wine glass. She had about half a bottle of chardonnay in her and all the lights in her place were fuzzy and warm as she tried to look at them with tipsy goggles on. She flipped open the file, past the tapes and the first entry and then decided to start in the middle somewhere in case Poindexter had another murder confession at the same age he was growing armpit hair. She shivered.
She was not unfamiliar with the unsettling feeling of finding disturbing information about their foes—in fact, that was her job—so she wasn’t entirely sure why Ben Poindexter’s file was so intimidating to her. She thought it was because he threatened her directly, but Wilson Fisk threatened her too and while she had feared for her life, the information she dug up always made her feel vindicated, like she was finally a step closer to getting ahead of his schemes.
Maybe it was because he was an FBI agent? A government official that was supposed to uphold the law, not break it?
She chewed on her lip as he flipped through note entries. Dr. Eileen Mercer was incredibly invested in Poindexter’s behavioral healthcare and took meticulous notes of all their sessions. Huh. No wonder Fisk got into his head so savagely, he had access to Poindexter’s whole brain.
She stopped at an entry—
Patient had an outburst of rage during the session directed towards me. Was able to mitigate violence through deep-breathing exercises, but did not calm down anger. Patient states he has been exercising regularly, eating normally. Insomnia still present and emotional dysregulation is high. Trigger=school starting? Making note to bring up first day of school next session.
She flipped to the next entry.
Patient is showing signs of idealization of me. Made comments about how he wanted me as his therapist forever. We went over acceptance of change again and patient agrees that relationships aren’t usually permanent, but still claims that he was going to be my patient forever. Making note to revisit next session.
She flipped to the next entry.
Patient is idealizing a schoolmate, expressed frustration at her lack of attention on him despite using practiced scripts. Explained emotional permanence, but patient seemed confusion over the trait. Making note to bring her up next session.
Karen dragged her laptop across the table and opened it, googling BPD again. She scrolled past the intro she had read the other day, finding the list of symptoms. She read through them—frantic efforts to avoid real or perceived abandonment, a pattern of intense and unstable relationships, impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, anger, self-destructive tendencies, suicide—and then scrolled to causes, which didn’t provide much insight as to why this mental illness happened to people outside of childhood trauma and biology.
She closed out the window and then closed to the file, downing the rest of her wine in one, big gulp. She wondered if Wilson Fisk would be turned into a case study by an overzealous shrink like Dex was. She wondered what he would be diagnosed with.
She picked up her phone when she saw she had a notification. It was from Brett. When she actually sat down to have coffee with the guy with no ulterior motives she figured out he was…sweet, kind, stable. He grew passionate when talking about injustice in a way that was very attractive to Karen.
So, she gave him her social medias. They had been texting during the day—nothing too serious, just flirty banter. And she was finding that she liked it. And they were making plans to have a legitimate date soon—actually have dinner and some fun in the city.
She stared into her wine glass, wondering if this is what normalcy felt like? She extinguished that thought as it was made. She wasn’t superstitious, but she didn’t want to give an idea like that hope. Her life was far from normal, after all.
She pushed the file away from her and turned back to her phone, giggling at Brett’s message.
Five days.
It had been a whole work week since Foggy stopped talking to Matt. That fact hit him harder than the headache from the hangover that pounded like a drum behind his eyes. It had been four days since he put the numbers for those divorce lawyers in his phone. Which he promptly failed to call. Weak, The Devil bemocked him, which felt like a punch to the ribs every single time. And it wasn’t like it was wrong. Matt was weak. Pathetic. Useless. Vile—whatever nasty thing the Devil wanted to call him every second of every minute of everyday.
The only comfort Matt really had as he laid awake on the couch, unable to move or breathe or really think, for that matter, was that it was the weekend. He wasn’t expected to get up, shower, and show up to work with the man that hated his guts and didn’t want anything to do with him anymore while pretending he wasn’t being strangled to death by his own overwhelm.
“Matt,” Foggy said from the kitchen. The smell of coffee permeated the air, making Matt suddenly nauseous enough he could taste old beer mixed with the sourness of bile in the back of his throat. He winced and swallowed it down.
There was an invisible noose around Matt’s neck, cutting off his air and blood to his head. He hadn’t been touched in days. Days. He didn’t even risk sleeping in his own bed, close to Foggy’s warmth and smell. He was afraid of what he would do.
“Matt,” Foggy sighed and Matt would rather be hit by a garbage truck than have to listen to Foggy sigh with disappointment at him. He tucked his face into his pillow and tried to block out his voice. “I know you’re awake. Your eyes are open.”
“What?” Matt snapped back.
Foggy started to sigh and then caught himself. Matt rose up on his elbows because that…was new. Foggy instead inhaled a deep breath, held it, and then let it out. “I’m going out,” he said. “Help yourself to coffee.”
“Where are you going?” Matt blurted.
“Grocery store. Laundromat.” Foggy rattled off the weekend chores they usually did together. “Cleaners. And then Ollie is belting up in karate this afternoon and asked if we would be there for the ceremony.”
Matt rolled his eyes. Foggy had a million nieces and nephews and they seemingly multiplied all the time. “Belting,” he scoffed and put his head back down on the pillow and worked to untwist his spine from the fetal position he fell asleep in. “Right.”
He could hear Foggy’s neck muscles tense. “This is important to him and we’re his family.”
I’m not his family, Matt thought to himself. I don’t have a family.
“It would be nice if you were there.”
That definitely interfered with his very crucial plans of not moving from the couch that day. “I’ll pass,” he said, his voice dead as he finished the high-effort task of untangling his own legs. He sighed back into the couch like his energy stores had been completely depleted with that simple move.
“Okay,” Foggy scoffed under his breath as he walked away towards the bathroom, an annoyed edge to his voice. “I tried.”
And maybe if Matt wasn’t currently sinking into the numb vacuum of his own exhaustion, or fighting against the rage burning holes through his chest, or trying not to drown in the overwhelm of misery and pain, maybe he would’ve stopped Foggy from disappearing behind the bathroom door. Maybe he would finally sit him down and figure out what happened. Maybe he would’ve apologized.
But, he couldn’t. He was weak. Pathetic. Useless. Vile. A vessel for violence and rage and a soul as black as a dying star. He wanted Foggy to see how bad he was struggling to prevent him from walking out the door. He wanted to call the divorce lawyers because he knew letting Foggy go was the only way he would find peace. He wanted to get off the goddamn couch and go to his nephew’s belting ceremony and believe that he wasn’t a plague on everyone around him.
But, he couldn’t. He just…couldn’t.
Foggy emerged from the bathroom, a trail of steam and eucalyptus following him. Matt scrunched his nose against it. He was so exhausted, parsing through the bombardment of his senses was an impossible task. He was able to read an almost imperceptible stutter in Foggy’s heartbeat when his head tipped in his direction, though and Matt could only assume he looked like a wreck, but he couldn’t get himself to be assed to really care.
“Matt,” Foggy said, his tone completely different now—gentle, cajoling, but chafed and annoyed still that made Matt pull into himself. His back hurt too much to roll over to face the back of the couch, but if he could, he would’ve. “Can you at least tell me what’s wrong?”
He’s not asking out of love, he’s asking out of obligation, Matt reminded himself. Because, of course, he was married to a Helper, capital h. Foggy wasn’t ever happy unless he was being praised for doing the right thing. Matt felt sick.
“Nothing,” Matt said finally said.
“Alright,” Foggy said, resigned and disappeared behind the sliding bedroom door.
Matt felt tears in his eyes and he banished them with the pad of his thumb. He wasn’t going to cry. He was a warrior. He was still in control. Mind controls the body, right? Right?
“Do you want me pick up food?” Foggy asked as he was kicking on his shoes after he had dragged their laundry bag to the door. Matt probably should’ve helped him, but that required talking and they weren’t doing that at the moment. Not in any way that was meaningful.
“No,” Matt said. He did need beer, though.
“Alright,” Foggy said again and finally left, the door clicking shut in a volume that had Matt wincing.
He waited until he could hear Foggy finally on the sidewalk before letting the tears finally fall, unable to figure out if he could last another day like this. He needed to get up. He needed to shower and eat breakfast and rejoin the world. Or at least move to the bed, where it was more comfortable on his overworked back.
But, he knew he wasn’t going to, not when he felt chained and shackled by the shear force of his overwhelm, by the vast emptiness inside of him. Why couldn’t have God just let him die that night with those thugs? Why must Matt continue to live this painful halflife where he felt so much for people who didn’t love him back? Who were never going to love him back?
He rose to a sitting position and rubbed at his face. He couldn’t let this, whatever this was win. He wasn’t going to drown under the guilt, the pain, the anger. He was going to call the divorce lawyer and that was going to be it. He groped for his phone on the coffee table, picking it up and opening it.
A bubble popped inside of Matt’s chest. Loneliness and ache and that knife blade of abandonment that stole air from lungs washed over Matt in one, vicious tidal wave. He dropped his phone onto the ground and pulled his knees to his chest. He rocked like he did when he was a child and the knowledge that nobody cared was too heavy to bear.
“Where’s Uncle Matt?”
It was Allie that finally asked. Foggy assumed that he would be accosted as soon as he let himself into the kid-friendly dojo that his nephew trained at. But, the ceremony had already started by the time he had got to the large, cement building and he had to sneak past other parents who were aiming their phones at the gaggle of children that were gathered in a tight bunch in the middle of the floor to get to the two free seats his family had saved for him.
“He’s not feeling well,” Foggy said in a whisper to not draw attention to himself. They were already getting looks from others.
“Is he sick?” Allie did not whisper. She spoke at the same conversational volume she always did. Someone turned around and shushed them.
“Allie,” Candance said and patted her shoulder. “We can talk after the ceremony, alright?”
Allie snapped her headphones back onto her head and pinched her face into her usual moody-pre-teen look she had nowadays. Foggy fidgeted his thumbs around each other while he watched a group of kindergarteners do a high-kick.
Matt was not doing well. Foggy had already tried to talk to him. He tried just talking to him like he normally did, trying to get back to normal. That didn’t work. He tried to instigate the fight that Foggy was convinced he was desperate to have. That didn’t work either. Foggy was slowly resigning himself to the fact that Matt would have to work through this himself. He was hurting, but if he didn’t want to have anything to do with Foggy, then there wasn’t much Foggy could do for him.
When Foggy got home after the cleaners and grocery shopping, he had found Matt in the same position on the couch, except his face was red and swollen like he had spent the whole time Foggy was out crying. And Foggy thought about the forgiveness pitch his therapist gave him earlier that week and decided it was all pretty much bullshit.
Matt didn’t need forgiveness, he needed help. And soon.
“Do you want to take a shower?” Foggy had asked after going back and forth between leaving Matt alone to wallow or trying to break through that impenetrable shield again. Foggy decided on the latter, because if Matt wouldn’t ask for help, maybe he would finally give in to having it forcibly thrust upon him.
“No,” Matt said back, his tone as dead as his eyes.
“Well, you’re kind of funky,” Foggy said. “And you’re still wearing your clothes from yesterday.”
Matt gave a deep sigh. “I’ll shower in a bit.”
“Do you want some food?” Foggy tried again. He wasn’t against begging at this point.
“I want to be left alone,” Matt said back, his Scowl-capital-s back.
Why are you being so difficult, Foggy wanted to snap at him. It was right there on the tip of his tongue—but he stopped himself and breathed, inhaling a deep breath and exhaling it until all the air was dispelled from his lungs. “You’re worrying me,” he just said instead.
Matt’s scowl deepened. “Leave me alone, Foggy.”
And Foggy did and he breathed. He breathed all the way to the dojo, trying to figure out what flipped so drastically in Matt for him to act like this with Foggy. Even when he had been angry with him before, he was still civil. Having a conversation with him now was like trying to feed a hungry lion and Foggy was an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Maybe some time alone would be good? At this point, Foggy was willing to try anything.
He cheered at the appropriate times and was only a second later than everyone else to clap at the end. Foggy felt so off-balance without Matt sitting there next to him, dropping facts about different moves or giggling at what the kids were whispering to each other about. Matt’s behavior was scrambling Foggy’s brain up like an omelet.
The ceremony ended and Ollie ran up to them to show off his belt and pose for a picture. He darted back off towards his group of friends once he was released by his mother. Allie was stimming by rocking in her chair and playing with her fingers. Candace twisted in her seat.
“So,” Candace started, Allie’s rocking blocking her from Foggy’s view every couple of seconds. “Where’s Matt?” Allie stopped rocking to tune into the conversation.
“He’s not feeling well,” Foggy echoed himself from earlier. “Doesn’t want to spread germs around a bunch of kids.”
“But you came,” Allie pointed out.
“I’m not feeling sick,” Foggy defended.
Candace’s eyes narrowed like she didn’t really believe Foggy. “Is he doing…alright?”
“Yeah,” Foggy shrugged, keeping himself casual. “Why?”
“Well, he disappeared for all of those months,” Candace started. “And then he shows back up and you quit the ‘dream job’ and your run for DA to restart the firm up with him and act like he just didn’t…” Candace shrugged, “fall off the face of the planet for half of a year?”
“Look, I was never going to win DA,” Foggy said, half-dodging Candace’s question. “That was all Marci’s plan.”
“Speaking of which,” Candace said. “What happened to Marci? I don’t see her around anymore. Are you guys even friends, still?”
“Yes,” Foggy said, feeling like he was suddenly stuck in a cross-examination. “We are,” he lied. After that fight about Marci, Foggy didn’t dare to bring her up in case he elicited another accusation of cheating by his husband. “I don’t know if anyone told you this, Candy, but I don’t need to inform you of everything going on in my life.” He said a little meaner than he meant.
“I do,” Allie said suddenly. “Otherwise, I feel like I’m going to explode.”
Candace laughed and smoothed her daughter’s strawberry-blonde hair down. “I’m just saying, it’s weird, Fogs,” she said, “and it’s got the family talking.”
Foggy rolled his eyes. “About what?”
“I know you told everyone coma, but Georgie thought they saw Matt on the street a couple of months ago. I didn’t want to tell you while you were grieving in case it wasn’t him,” Candace shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re both being weird and cagey—,”
“What’s cagey mean?” Allie interrupted.
“Secretive,” Candace said without missing a beat. “They’re both being secretive.”
Foggy groaned and rolled his eyes. “First of all, it was a coma.” He held up his finger. “Second of all, Matt’s got some…issues. You know, he’s orphaned and went blind early on his childhood, which was pretty…traumatic,” Foggy felt his gut tighten. “But, that doesn’t mean he wants his in-laws prying into his life.”
“Okay,” Candace held up her hands in surrender. “He’s a private guy, I get it.”
Foggy cocked an incredulous eyebrow up at her.
“I do. I’m just saying,” Candace said, her voice softening. “If you guys ever need help, we are right here.”
“I know,” Foggy took a deep breath, feeling it expand his lungs, held it, and then released it. “It’s just…he’s touchy, but I know he appreciates the support. He’s just not used to having such a large family now.”
“He only has you,” Allie pointed out again. “You’re his family.”
And Foggy opened his mouth to respond to that and then closed it, because she was…she was right. And it completely stole all the air he had just breathed down into his lungs when he realized that Matt’s only family, his only support system had been ignoring him for the last week.
That ever-present guilt felt suddenly so heavy.
“We’re his family now, too,” Candace said to her. “All of us.”
But, they weren’t. Not in the way Matt needed. He needed someone to love all the bad parts and the good. Someone he could trust to be completely himself with, someone he didn’t have to chameleon himself around to survive. Someone he could lean on when he was too exhausted and in pain to prop himself up.
God, Foggy felt like such a failure to his husband, because that was supposed to be him.
Matt did shower, like he said he would.
Standing under the water he cranked all the way hot until the knob stopped turning. Steam fill the air until it was dense enough to taste, the drops of water cascaded down his body, but he couldn’t feel any of it. He was numb to anything except for the weight of misery sitting on his chest.
He was counting down the moments he could go out patrolling again. He no longer snuck out after Foggy fell asleep. It seemed Foggy had given up on convincing Matt to stay in. Matt couldn’t tell if he gave up out of realization that Matt wasn’t going to stop no matter what he said or if he decided Matt just wasn’t worth the effort anymore.
Either way, Matt felt like shit. He felt so much like shit, he was overflowing with it. A dumpster where everyone who had ever had the displeasure of interacting with him threw their shit until he collapsed under the weight of it.
“Pull yourself together,” he told himself. “Murdocks always get up.”
But, Matt…couldn’t. Everything was too overwhelming.
He would be so disappointed. The Devil purred. Is this who you are now, Matty? Matt hung his head in shame as his father’s voice rang in his ears like the old bell in Fogwell’s. He should’ve died that night.
He should’ve died.
He should die.
He pressed his palms against the tile of the shower wall as a wave of misery shook new sobs from his chest up and out. He didn’t want to call the lawyers. He didn’t want to push Foggy out of his life. He wanted him here with Matt. He had just gotten him back and was preparing to lose him. Again. And it was all Matt’s fault.
It was always Matt’s fault.
How could he live like this when he didn’t want anything to do with himself? When even those he should consider closest to him didn’t want anything to do with him either? Where would he go?
Just end it. You know how.
The city would be better off without you. Foggy would be better off without you.
Matt stopped breathing as the voice of the Devil filled every corner of his being.
Unless you can’t. Failure.
“Matt!”
Matt didn’t expect Foggy home so soon and wasn’t paying attention to hear him approach. Rookie mistake. He startled in the shower, violently enough he ended up slipping from where he was leaning on the wall. His shoulder hit the tile with a low thud. He could hear Stick sigh at him in his head and felt a million needles of shame and regret in his lungs, making it hard to find air.
There was a knock at the bathroom door. “Matt,” Foggy said, “I’m glad you’re showering.” His voice gentle and cajoling again. Apparently, he was over whatever made him upset and distant. The shame and emptiness suddenly blazed crimson with rage. He didn’t get to control Matt like this. He didn’t get to decide how the scales of their marriage tipped just with his mood at the time. It was unfair. It was cruel.
Matt didn’t answer. He didn’t need to be praised for just simply taking care of his own hygiene. Murdocks always get up, he reminded himself. No matter if he felt like a vessel where everyone dumped their bullshit. No matter if he was so chronically overwhelmed now, tasks with more than a couple of simple steps felt impossible.
Matt’s handled worse, he was a Murdock after all. And Murdocks always got up off the mat.
Matt dropped into the alley behind Brett’s patrol car, landing on the balls of his feet. Brett himself was waiting for him against the hood, his arms crossed and his foot tapping impatiently. “Nice of you to show up,” he said.
Matt was late because he got stuck at the fire escape door again. The rituals of rattling the door over and over until he found peace from the anxiety in his chest were starting to get longer and longer. The scenes from his prophetic visions got more gruesome and real. Matt could smell the acridity of blood, hear the exact second Foggy crumpled to the floor. It induced panic, but Matt couldn’t think of any else that would help relieve it except shaking the goddamn lock over and over.
Brett didn’t need to know that. He needed to know that Matt was still the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen—its savior, its warrior, its protector. Brett needed to know that he was still a man without fear. “Warehouse has arms—a lot of them,” Matt said, ignoring Brett’s jab, despite it igniting a flame of irritation in Matt’s chest. “But I didn’t see any sign of trafficking.”
“Shit,” Brett cursed. “They probably expected someone to show up.”
“Mentioned a shipping off of a pier,” Matt continued. “Know anything about that?”
Brett sighed and rubbed his chin. “Yeah,” he admitted after a second. “We know there’s something going down at pier ninety-two, but I hadn’t wanted to connect it to this until I had more proof.”
“What’s going on?”
“We got a call from a security guard from another pier heard gunshots,” Brett said.
Matt hummed and tipped his chin. “Did someone go check it out?”
“Yeah, we dispatched a uniform down there,” Brett said, “but it was empty and cold by the time he showed up.”
Matt nodded and then caught himself when that movement caused a wave of anguish to curl down his spine and settle in the space where his back met his hips. “I’ll go down there,” he said. “Take a look.”
“Alright,” Brett said. “I’ll cover for you at the fifteenth. Meet back here tomorrow, same time?”
Matt nodded again and resisted the urge to wince. Brett got back into his car and drove off. Matt waited until he turned the corner to turn around and hike back up the fire escape he had jumped down from. His back was protesting. Loudly. Matt breathed through the pain and pressed on. This was more important.
Pier 92 held little. There was a warehouse at the base and some crates that were on pallets, ready for shipping at the end. Matt snuck up to the warehouse first. He didn’t hear any heartbeats inside, but he did hear a faulty lock on the back door. He kept to the shadows as he headed that direction, listening for security cameras, but not picking up any.
Are you sure you didn’t hear cameras? Doubt flooded Matt the same way it did with the door, the pens, the knives. He paused, closed his eyes, and dropped to one knee. This wasn’t happening right now. He had a mission to do. He needed to stop doubting his own senses. He was a warrior.
A warrior with tinnitus, a constant wopwopwop cutting through the input like a knife, making what Matt could hear fuzzy like trying to watch television in a storm. What if Matt didn’t hear cameras because he couldn’t hear them? What if he was too focused on the pain in his hips from running that he missed them?
He rose back to his feet and did the only ritual he could think of that may help stop the drip of doubt in his brain—he crossed himself. It didn’t really help the doubt, but it helped Matt accept that if the cameras did catch him that he would be able to handle those consequences.
With a quick strike from the butt of his hand, he broke the flimsy lock on the back door and let himself into the warehouse. It was smaller for a warehouse, but was stacked floor to ceiling with crates. Matt inhaled deeply, picking up gunmetal and ballistics powder and something…else. Something very…human.
He headed the direction where the organic smell was the strongest, coming to a row of large, square crates. He traced the smell to one crate in particular. He squatted and listened, still smelling human, but not hearing a heartbeat or feeling body warmth. He snatched up a crowbar and popped the lid off of the crate with a solid lightning strike of pain in his back.
And inside was…nothing. At least, not now. By what Matt could smell there had been a human here recently—a kid based on the size of the crate and the extra-sweet smell that always came from children—but there wasn’t anymore. They must’ve moved whoever was in here. Or…killed them. The Devil inside raged in fire and brimstone, but was chilled with a new realization—if they moved the kid, they must’ve known the pier had been compromised.
Which means, Matt just walked himself into a trap.
He stretched out his senses in a giant radar sweep. Sure enough, there were six men descending on him, armed to the teeth. Matt stood up straight and rolled out his neck, wondering how many blows to the head would actually kill him. Six guys should do the trick, right?
He guessed he would find out.
He ducked to the right, squeezing himself up between two crates until he was on top of them, above the heads of the cultists or whatever that were entering the front entrance and fanning out. “He should be here somewhere,” one said. “Come out and play, little Devil,” another said in a sing-song.
Oh, I’ll play. Matt smirked as he squatted on top of the crate, letting them make their way to him. He pulled out his batons as one approached. With some quick geometry and a snap of his wrist, the baton triangulated itself right in the center of one goon’s head, taking him down. This alerted the others, who turned off their safeties as they approached.
Matt let two find each other with a panting thumbs up. Cute, Matt thought before he hurled his second baton at one and descended onto the other. Matt definitely felt a shoulder blade crack under his weight and sealed the deal by grabbing his head and taking it all the way down to the pavement with a crack of skull against concrete.
Matt rolled back to his feet, gripping his back for a second as pain shot through his sciatic nerve. He forced himself to his feet and limped to hide behind a box, waiting for the fourth to come to him. Matt’s fist connected with a chin and he was blasted with a breath of stale coffee and cheap cigarettes. “Gross,” he whispered to himself and then quickly climbed back up a stack of crates. His hand gripped around a stray hammer as he ascended and he brought it up to top of the crates with him.
Matt waited until the last two came around his row, flipping the hammer over and over in his palm. He threw it up towards the buzzing fluorescent light above the men, shattering the bulb with a crack and fizzle. The men yelled as glass rained down on them.
But, they had no idea what they were in for.
Matt jumped off the crate, landing in front of the goon on the left. He knocked the rifle out of his hand with his heel and then twisted to kick the gun out of the other guy’s hand. They skittered and crashed against wood ten yards off and Matt snorted. Now they could have an actual fight.
Goon 1 balled his fists first, so that’s where Matt naturally headed. He went for his ribs with an uppercut, his fist making impact with a satisfying “oof.” Matt sensed Goon 2 coming behind him and he stepped to the side so he accidentally punched his fellow cultist in the face. Matt kicked the knees out from under Goon 2, who hollered in frustration and twisted to strike.
Matt could’ve raised his arms in time to block the hit, but he didn’t. Matt anticipated it, wanted the fist to connect. And it did and Matt relished the burst of heat as capillaries broke under the skin, the strike of nerves at the sudden impact, the pain raw and cleansing like holy fire. His head snapped back and he laughed, relishing in the way his brain suddenly flooded with endorphins and adrenaline, unleashing the Devil and quieting the roar.
Matt was distracted long enough that he didn’t anticipate the next hit to his chest. Anger suddenly blazed and the momentary euphoria was suddenly replaced by rage. Matt wheeled forward to grip this guy’s shirt and punch him in the center of his face. He felt bone crunch and he wheeled back and punched again, hot, sticky blood covering his knuckles.
Goon 1 was back on his feet and Matt let Goon 2 crumple into a heap before twisting to swing on the last guy standing. Matt’s back spasmed violently, interrupting his punch long enough that he was instead punched in the head. Matt staggered backwards and fell. Goon 1 jumped on his chest and punched at Matt’s face, each strike causing heat to bloom into poppy fields of Matt’s blood.
“Blessed be the Lord my strength,” the Goon chanted he punched down. Matt recognized the verse from Psalms.
Matt rolled, causing more pain to blast through his back, but he gritted his teeth through the motion and kicked the goon off of him and switching places on top of him.“Which teacheth my hands war,” Matt wheeled his fist back as he finished the verse for the goon, “and my fingers to fight.” He threw one more knock out punch and the man sagged unconscious underneath him.
Matt lurched back to his feet, spat blood onto the concrete floor, and rolled out his neck again. His hips were so stiff with pain, he could barely turn and he had no idea where his batons ended up. He sighed, disappointed with himself for letting himself get into a trap like that. God, he was so stupid and foolish all the time. He was disappointed with how much of a waste of a night this was.
He touched his jaw, where the ache was the fiercest, and pressed his fingers into fresh bruises.
Well, not that much of a waste.
Foggy awoke to Matt stepping down the fire exit stairs, his boots clunking heavily in a volume that made him wince for their downstairs neighbors. Foggy listened to the tempo of Matt’s steps as he moved through the living room. The last couple of nights, Matt had dragged himself down the stairs with slow, heavy steps when a couple of days before that he almost sprinted through the apartment and bee-lined for the fridge for beer.
This was a new tempo. Or rather, lack of one. They were short, uneven, and even dragging on some parts. And Foggy rose when he realized what this tempo meant—Matt was hurt.
He pulled the linens off of himself and quickly found Matt staggering across the floor, a hitch in his step and one of his hands out like he was trying to keep balance. His face was covered in blood and it soaked into the neck of his black shirt.
“Matt,” Foggy stage-whispered quietly, crossing his arms in front of him. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Foggy,” he said, his hand on his jaw. “Go back to bed.”
“Do you need stitches anywhere?”
“No,” Matt said, heading towards the couch. “I’m—,” he cut himself off with a sharp gasp.
And then in the next moment, Matt’s knees gave out or something, because he fell to the ground in a heavy heap with a yelp in pain.
“Matt!” Foggy rushed forward. “What happened?”
Matt’s hand flew to his back. “Ah shit!” He twitched and convulsed in pain. “My back. It’s my back.” He balled his fist and punched the hardwood and growled. “Shit. It hurts.”
“Alright, you’re okay,” Foggy soothed, his fingers gliding automatically through his husband’s hair and Foggy ached so fiercely. He hadn’t be able to touch him like that in a week. “What can I do to help?”
“It hurts,” Matt just whimpered, the anger steaming quickly out of him as his face screwed with pain.
“I know,” Foggy rubbed the dip between his shoulder blades. “I know it does. I’m sorry.” And there was the petty part of him that wanted to turn this into a teaching moment as a way to win their cold war standoff. If you listened to the doctor, this wouldn’t have happened. If you stopped destroying yourself by picking fights every night, this wouldn’t have happened.
If you didn’t run after your ex-girlfriend into a building armed to be leveled, this wouldn’t have happened.
But, Foggy inhaled a deep breath, felt it go all the way into his belly. Then he released it. And Foggy wasn’t sure if what Richard taught him was actually helping or if it was all psychosomatic, but it did help him realize that Matt didn’t need a lecture right now.
He needed his goddamn husband.
“I’m going to get you to the couch,” Foggy said. “Where your heating pad is and get you some pain meds, alright?”
Matt didn’t answer. Tears turned the drying blood on his face crimson again, running off in rivulets down his temples and into his hair. Foggy breathed a deep breath again and then kissed Matt’s forehead. “This is going to suck,” he warned.
He put his hands under Matt’s armpits. With a quick, but careful move he rolled Matt to his back, Matt gasped sharply, his eyes darting everywhere and rolling in his sockets.
“I’m going to sit you up now,” Foggy talked through all the steps. He wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be for Matt or him, but he hoped with everything that it helped. With a little huff, he got Matt to his feet and half-dragged, half-led him to the couch, depositing him on his heating pad that was a permanent fixture in their living room now. Foggy turned it on and then turned to the record table where they stored their prescriptions and Matt’s industrial-supply container of aspirin.
“Foggy?” Matt said from the couch, curled over again like a roly-poly bug trying to hide, his hand on his back.
“I’m right here, darling,” Foggy said. “Getting you some meds and water.”
Matt let his head fall against the back of the couch. He spasmed and his fist clenched again tight enough to make his knuckles go white underneath the smear of maroon blood.
Foggy reached passed the aspirin, grasping the tramadol. He pulled out two and then headed for the sink, filling a glass up with water. He hurried back to Matt. “Here, take these. They’ll help with the pain.”
It must’ve been that bad, because Matt’s fingers groped around on Foggy’s palm for the pills for a second before Foggy grabbed Matt’s hand and dropped them in. He tossed them back and swallowed them dry.
Foggy’s hand rose to touch Matt’s face and Matt tensed, his eyes blazing with that fire deep within them. “It’s just me, angel.” The fire snuffed out in an instant and was replaced by fearful vulnerability that Foggy hadn’t seen in ages.
“Foggy,” his eyes welled with tears. “Foggy, I’m sorry.”
“Shhhh,” Foggy said, pulling Matt closed to him. Matt tucked his arms between them and made himself small in Foggy’s hold, small gasps and whimpers slipping through the cracks of that wall Matt built around himself. “Shhh. Just rest.” Foggy repeated as he kissed the spot above Matt’s ear and rubbed his shoulders. “Just rest.”
Notes:
The verse quoted is Psalm 144:1. All comments received will be annotated, printed, and taped to my orange 1997 Ford Fiesta.
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