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What’s a ghost story? He asks his mother when he’s young, soft and dimpled in a way that he never really out grows.
It’s wanting, his mother tells him, drying her hands on a dish towel, it’s missing something you can’t have back.
-
Anna Nelson never really says that. Instead she sends Foggy away to play with his brother and sister, wiping her hands on her apron before rushing back to the storefront to help Dad.
But if she’d time, just a second more, she would have told her youngest boy as much. Instead it’s a lesson Foggy learns on his own.
-
A ghost story Foggy learns quickly, isn’t just dark stormy nights and phantom footsteps. It’s silence. It’s waiting.
It’s pouring two cups of coffee in the morning even though no one is coming to claim the second. It’s waking up in a cold sweat just a little after four in the morning, unsure whether to think of it as the night before or the morning after, listening for the sound of a window easing open and hearing nothing. It’s ignoring shadows and still looking for clues he knows aren’t there.
It’s knowing Matt’s gone, knowing Matt is not coming back, not this time, knowing all their miracles have run out. Foggy is supposed to be the level-headed one, the reason meant to temper Matt’s idealism, rational to a fault because someone had to be in this clusterfuck of a situation Matt put them all in the second he put on the mask. Karen and he can’t both leap without looking, can’t both be reckless and foolhardy and brave. Not if they’re going to survive the fall out of Midland Circle.
It’s knowing Matt’s gone and accepting that Foggy couldn’t save him, wasn’t meant to save him, and coming to terms with the truth of that.
It’s dreaming about Matt, watching his sightless eyes widen behind the tinted lenses of his glasses when he realized what was in the duffle bag Foggy brought him, hearing the echo of his own words, “That’s what family is for.”
-
Foggy’s honestly relieved when Karen volunteers to pack Matt’s apartment up.
He feels like it’s something he should do. He knew Matt longer, knew him best for whatever that’s worth theses days. Matt was his family and Foggy was his. Foggy killed him.
But he can’t. He can’t.
He could buy the casket and call the church and ask Matt’s priest to say a few words, could sit his parent down and tell them Matt was missing, Matt was gone, but he can’t do this.
Because the last time Foggy was in that apartment he opened the closet door and pulled the devil out of his tomb and sent Matt to his grave. ‘Go be a hero’ Foggy told him once, and Foggy should have known then that it was only ever going to lead them here.
(He went back once, after Midland Circle, he walked to the front door and let himself in using the key hidden behind the radiator, hoped against hope the past might repeat itself, hoped he’d come in and find Matt sprawled on the floor, bleeding and half-dead, but half-alive still. But the place was empty, just like Foggy had left it, and there was nothing and no one to find.)
-
Foggy works more hours.
He cuts his hair and buys a closet’s worth of new suits. Tailored, clean cut, made from good quality material, better than anything he’s ever owned before. Foggy doesn’t let himself think about what Matt might have to say about the fabric, the haircut, the aftershave.
Foggy wonders if Matt would even recognize him in a crowd now, or if Foggy would just be another body, one more in a city of hundreds.
He looks at himself in the mirror some mornings and is reminded of a house Theo told him about once. Some place all the way out in California, spooky and old, built by a crazy old woman who was trying to make a place where she could outrun her family’s mistakes. Theo said she’d built and built and built to keep spirits away, always trying to build a better to hide.
Foggy doesn’t know who or what he’s hiding from.
The ghost of Matt, maybe. But probably not.
-
Foggy has different nightmares every night.
He starts to spend the night on Marci’s couch and then in her bed, but it doesn’t seem to matter where he goes to sleep because he dreams of Matt all the same. He dreams of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, cruel and vengeful, demanding his pound of flesh. He dreams of Matt standing in the middle of their new office, holding his fist out for Foggy to bump, glasses glinting red in the early fall light. Worst of all, Foggy dreams of Matty, soft, goofy, kind, sprawled out on the floor of their dorm room complaining about torts.
Foggy dreams of Matt buried in books that turn to rubble, or under the buzzing lights of the bar, their feet sticking to the beer drenched floor before it opens up and swallows Matt whole. Foggy dreams of Matt as the kid he never knew him as, knobby kneed and blazing with courage, the way Foggy imagined him when Matt was little more than a name captured in print.
Foggy dreams of Matt so much he’s half afraid to close his eyes.
-
“I know what he meant to you.” Marci says and there’s no judgement in her voice, her hand warm at the back of his neck.
“He was my best friend.” Foggy mumbles, because it’s true, because Matt was Matt and even when he was an asshole, even when Foggy wanted to strangle him, he was always Matt.
He doesn’t cry, because he hasn’t cried since the precinct, Karen shaking in his arms and the world dissolving into nothing but heat and grief, but Marci still makes a soft noise, moves closer to him on her couch and strokes his hair, pulls him close so that his head is resting on her shoulder and her hand is against the side of his face. She’s so careful, so unlike the Marci he remembers from school and the Marci he knows now, this sharp-edged woman full of every kind of capability, and that more than anything makes Foggy feel like he’s a breath away from breaking and never piecing himself back together. Because the world must truly have gone to hell if Matt's dead and Marci’s being nice and Foggy wants to tear what’s left of his hair out of his head.
“He was more than that, baby.” Marci says, calm and sure, and Foggy remembers her teasing him back at Columbia, asking him if he was ever planning on looking at her that way he looked at Matt. (“What look?” Foggy deflects, hot under the collar and embarrassed, because Matt is his roommate and Matt is his friend and Matt is very straight and Foggy is mostly there with him, except sometimes, sometimes—)
Now Matt’s just gone. Foggy doesn’t think the particulars matter as much.
-
He helps Harlem’s Hero and bails Jones out of jail for trespassing and reads all of Karen’s articles in The Bulletin.
Foggy goes to Sunday dinner at his parents and people stop asking where Matt is and they stop acting like Foggy’s some kind of widower walking the shoreline looking for a ship that’s never coming back to harbor. He lives his life, the life he’s always wanted for himself. He has a beautiful woman who likes him enough to give him a drawer at her place and a brilliant friend who’s working hard to expose the corruption still left in the city, and money enough to donate to people who are still fighting the fight Matt left unfinished.
Foggy has everything but he still can’t sleep through a goddamn night.
-
He’s seen Matt an hundred times in his head since he disappeared but he’s never looked anything like he does when he finds Foggy at that bar.
(He doesn’t frequent Josie’s nearly as often nowadays, only goes in when Karen insists it’s convenient to her. The place has always been small but it feels suffocating now, crowded with all the reminders of how things used to be.)
Matt looks: Terrible. Beautiful. Half-dead. Alive.
Alive.
Alive.
Foggy throws his arms around him and doesn’t miss how Matt stiffens in his grasp, a sharp inhale as Foggy presses as close as humanly possible. Matt’s jacket radiates cold but Matt lifts his arms after a moment’s breath, and his hands land firm against Foggy’s back and Matt is real.
Then he tells Foggy to stay out of Fisk’s warpath and that they can never see each other again. And then he walks away.
Matthew Motherfucking Murdock, ladies and gentlemen.
-
Foggy fumes and rages at Marci for the length of the night, maybe a little less sober than he was when he started but not even the liquor is enough to blot out the fuzzy, fizzy incredulous joy of knowing that Matt’s alive, he’s actually alive, even if he’s using his life to be a self-isolating asshole.
Marci sends him to sleep and Foggy lies in bed, feels the anger wane to something else, something different, less like betrayal and more like hope, the possibility for redemption. Because Matt might be the one walking away now but Foggy isn’t blameless. He’s turned his own back on Matt a few times in the last few years and no matter what Matt does or says now, Foggy doesn’t have it in him to do it again.
He falls asleep and for the first time in long time he doesn’t dream of anything.
-
When Matt smiles at him it’s almost like the last few months disappear. Foggy’s sitting there holding a shitty plastic wallet, textured and yet somehow slippery smooth, growing hot under his fingertips, and in a few minutes he’s going to handing Matt over to the fucking feds, but Matt smiles at him and everything feels like it’s going to be okay. Somehow.
(Ghost stories are all about waiting. Waiting and false hope.)
-
The next time he sleeps he dreams of a madman in a red suit staring him down and it’s the devil Foggy looks back at. Not Matt, but the devil himself, vicious and cruel, looking to hurt, and Foggy wakes, heart aching with fear.
-
“Nelson and Murdock, attorneys at law.” Foggy says and there’s no denying the pride in his voice when the words leave his mouth.
This is how it’s supposed to be, he thinks, shoulder to shoulder with Matt, using the law to help make the world a better place.
He doesn’t know that’s the type to believe in Fate in but if he were, if there were ever a plan laid out for Foggy Nelson, it’s working alongside Matt. He knows that now.
-
He wakes up with an aching face and a faint ringing in his head, the tile floor close beneath his head and Matt kneeling over him. Foggy blinks and time shifts, slides, slips away from him until he’s lying on the floor of the DA’s office with a bullet buried in his shoulder.
Matt says his name and Foggy falls back into the present, blinks and half-expects Matt to dissolve into thin air. “Didn’t think you were coming back.” He mumbles, and Matt’s face twists, relief and happiness and fear all knotted together behind his dark glasses. Matt exhales, jagged with something that almost resembles laughter.
“Fog.” He says, hands careful over Foggy’s arms, gentle as he eases him into an upright position. The world tilts dangerously but Matt’s there, keeps Foggy steady.
-
Fisk gets put away, again.
Foggy quits his job, scrawls a new napkin, and agrees to foot the catering bill for the next six months of union meetings in payment for all of Brett’s help.
Nelson, Murdock, and Page opens their doors in the rooms above the Nelson family deli where Foggy grew up. It’s small, too small for three desks, stuffy unless they have all the windows open but the weather isn’t quite there yet. Karen’s coffee is still one of the worst things Foggy’s ever consumed and Matt still comes in bruised most days that end with y.
But it doesn’t feel like they're living on borrowed time anymore.
Foggy’s not waiting for his life to make sense anymore. He’s just living it.
-
Foggy knows something about history repeating itself but Marci still catches him by surprise the day she tells him they’re better off apart.
“Is this because I’m not going to be DA after all?” Foggy asks, half-joking, and Marci smiles, bridges the distance between them and kisses him slow.
“You know I’m not good at sharing, Foggybear.” She says, running her fingers over the short hair at his temples.
“Marce—”
“Listen, I’ve known you for a long time.” She says, dropping on hand to pat over his chest. “You’re a good guy, Foggy, maybe one of the few. And I know you’re never going to pick Murdock over me.”
Foggy opens his mouth, wants to know how that’s grounds for separation when Marci continues, “But I know you’re never going to pick me over him either.”
And Foggy wants to tell her that it isn’t anything like that. That he loves her and loves Matt but that there’s no competition to it. Marci kisses him again, almost sweet.
“Listen, I love you. But I’ve never been the kind to drag out the inevitable.” She takes a step back and Foggy thinks there’s sadness in her stare but more than that is the determination he’s always known her for. “You were never going to be happy in my lane, Foggy. I know that. And I want you to be happy. You deserve that.”
“I really do love you, Marci. You know that right?” Foggy says, even though he knows there’s no changing her mind now that’s its made.
Marci nods, smiles, “Of course you do. I’m fucking awesome.”
Against all odds, Foggy chuckles. His heart tightens, uneasy and unsure of what to feel, but there’s no arguing with the facts, “Yeah, you are.”
-
“I’m tried of waiting.” Foggy says and Matt has about three seconds to say something that sounds like, “Huh?” before Foggy’s leaning forward and wrapping Matt in a hug.
Matt doesn’t pull away, just lets Foggy hold him like some kind of lamprey, right there in the doorway of his apartment.
“C’mon,” Matt says, after a minute, pulls back enough that he can shuffle them into his apartment. He doesn’t stray far, stays close enough that Foggy can reach out and touch him. Matt’s wearing sweats and a t-shirt that Foggy recognizes as his own, stretched tight in his arms and faded nearly grey everywhere, white CUNY insignia almost completely washed away now. Foggy feels sort of guilty for waking him, but he woke up this morning and couldn’t wait any longer, rushed to Matt’s place without stopping to second guess himself.
“I keep thinking you’re going to disappear.” Foggy says once they’re further inside, caught up in the light that spills in through Matt’s naked windows. Matt frowns, eyes cast somewhere over Foggy’s head, but Foggy shakes his head before Matt can say anything about how he isn’t planning to stop fighting crime any time soon. “And I’m trying not to. Because I know what we’ve got going is real Matt, it’s—it’s the realest thing in my life and I love—I love what we have. The three of us. It works. The way it was always supposed to. You can feel that right?” He doesn’t know what he’s saying, the words are just spilling out of his mouth, but it almost doesn’t matter because Matt’s nodding, face soft and voice gentle when he says, “Yeah, Foggy, I feel it.”
“Good.” Foggy says, balling his hands into fists, heart racing and he hopes Matt can hear it, can read it, can understand what it costs him when he says, “Marci broke up with me. And that’s not why I’m doing this but I just wanted you to know that you’re not, like, the other woman—man, you know what I mean. I just—I’m tried of waiting Matty, I feel like I’ve lost all this time I can’t get back because I wasn’t brave enough or—because I was too caught up in what I thought I was supposed to be doing and I—I’d really like your permission to kiss you. You can say no— no harm done just—”
Matt crashes into him so violently their teeth clack together and Matt definitely hasn’t brushed his teeth yet but Foggy doesn’t care. “Ow.” He mumbles between their mouths and Matt’s grinning too wide to really kiss properly so Foggy kisses his cheek and his temple, wraps him in another hug and rocks them messily from side to side until some of the nervous energy between them settles.
“Foggy,” Matt says, holding on to the front of Foggy’s sweater, “I—I didn’t know how to ask for this.”
Foggy nods, feels like his whole body is liable to shake apart with excitement, giddy and bright, “I didn’t either—”
Matt kisses and there’s a little more finesse this time, but not by much.
But Foggy doesn’t have to wait long for the next kiss, or the one that comes after.
Matt kisses him and Matt wants him and Foggy can have this, can have him, Matt Murdock alive and happy and close, a miracle of his very own.