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Karen calls the first week of January, as Foggy is avoiding both icy patches on the sidewalk and the tourists that keep on trying to make snowballs out of the brown slush lining the streets. He’s edging into late, and he’s worried about his latest case and he spent half of the night up following a tense hostage situation on the news in which an idiot in red was heavily figured. So he’s not even surprised, not really, when Karen’s voice comes out cutting and sharp.
“So. Daredevil, huh?” she says, and he has to stop and rub at his face, torn between relief and abject horror at Karen being subjected to Matt’s special brand of crazy.
“Yeah,” he finally says with a sigh. “Yeah, it’s been a weird year.”
Later that night, Karen tears the hell out of her beer label as they compare notes at the back of Josie’s, until he finally offers her his own bottle for her to destroy once they get to the whole Frank Castle debacle.
It’s weird, being here without Matt. He keeps expecting to turn around and see him there, laughing at something one of them said or tripping up the people on Josie’s blacklist with his cane before giving them his most disarming ‘who, me?’ look.
“Somehow,” Karen says, “Matt dressing up in a devil suit and beating people up never seemed like an option whenever I wondered what the hell was going on with him,” she says with raised eyebrows, and who can blame her. Foggy could hardly believe it and he was the one that had to help cut him out of his suit.
“I was so ready to surprise him with a guide dog, I swear,” Foggy says before taking a long swig of his drink. They’ve moved on to shots, and he already knows he’ll regret it in the morning.
“I’m almost glad, you know, that it didn’t work out between us before I knew,” Karen says as she tucks her hair behind her ear, attacking one of the napkins now that she’s run out of beer labels. “This way, I never really have to choose if I can handle it or not.”
Foggy nods and offers to buy the next round and doesn’t mention that he feels like he had to make that choice anyway, on the day he finally made himself take down the Nelson and Murdock sign, or that he constantly wonders if it was the right choice at all.
They shuffle home arm in arm, constantly tripping each other up and laughing at absolutely everything, stinking like a brewery and singing show tunes as they wait to cross the street. He hasn’t felt this carefree in ages, and by Karen’s easy smile, it must be the same for her.
----
It’s not like he and Matt are not talking. It’s more like they’ve become the casual acquaintances they never really were. They still live five blocks away from each other, and they still see each other in line in the same coffee shop at least once a week, where Foggy studiously avoids mentioning the brand new bruises and Matt in turn avoids talking about the red elephant in the room.
It’s terrible, actually. Foggy feels perpetually unbalanced, like he’s missing a limb, and he keeps on turning around to his right to tell Matt a joke, or to retell an anecdote for the eleventh time. He gets funny looks out whenever he describes aloud that the lights have changed, or the color of a specifically dumb-looking dog, or how there’s construction on the sidewalk near that Korean barbecue place again. He’d never even noticed how often he did it, not even after he had to stop himself consciously those first few weeks after the whole ‘finding out your best friend masquerades as a ninja’ thing, not after Matt confessed he liked it and could he please do it again?
It just feels inherently wrong, not having Matt around all the time, and he hates how much he misses it.
----
The only reason Foggy’s even reading the social pages is because he’s waiting for his pastry to be warmed up at the Starbucks on his way to work, so when he reads about the first outing of the former Greek ambassador and his wife after the tragic loss of their young daughter, he chokes on his coffee.
He starts leaving an angry, ranting voicemail on Matt’s phone in the café’s bathroom, gesticulating hard enough that he keeps on hitting the cubicle walls, and then deletes it before it can send.
Instead, he spends a long time during his lunch break writing him a mature, logical and grammatically correct text in which he extends his condolences and wishes Matt had told him before and wonders if he needs anything and asks, in so many words, to know what the hell is going on.
He gets an absolutely infuriating I’m ok back, and he wishes he’d sent that voicemail after all.
----
He introduces Karen to Claire. It goes as well as expected, and all three of them spend the next day hungover as all hell and with a standing drinking reunion on Tuesday evenings.
If there’s any justice in the world, Matt’s ears must have been ringing like crazy.
----
When he hears the tap on his window, he’s not even surprised to see Matt there, horns and all like the world’s creepiest stalker, body tense where he’s crouching on Foggy’s fire escape.
Foggy sighs and slides the window open, wishing he were capable of just flipping Matt off and going back to bed. “So what is it,” he says, not even bothering to make it a question.
“Because unless I’m being kidnapped by the mob, I got sleep to catch up with.”
Matt, who is already climbing into the room with one hand on Foggy’s shoulder, stops dead in his tracks. He cocks his head with his mouth open in confusion, like he’s just processing where he is, oddly disoriented, and that’s when Foggy starts worrying.
“Matt,” he says after it’s been a moment too long without an answer, eyes already roving over him looking for injuries.
“No, I— you’re not in danger,” Matt finally says, but he stays crouched on the windowsill, head angled somewhere towards the apartment next door and fingers tightening and releasing rhythmically on Foggy’s shoulders, making Foggy’s hair crinkle under his gloves.
“What the fuck, Matt,” Foggy says before he starts patting Matt down, heart racing as he tries to remember Claire’s number. Matt leans into him, slow but noticeably, with a low sound of relief that does nothing to stop Foggy from freaking out.
“I’m ok, really. I just— nothing. I should go,” Matt says, and he does start to climb back into the fire escape, before Foggy grabs at his collar to keep him in place.
“The hell you are, not before you tell me what’s going on.” Matt does a poor attempt to resist him, but his head falls forward as in defeat, and his hand goes back to messing with Foggy’s hair, his focus entirely on it, and Foggy’s trying really hard not to panic but Matt’s making it very hard for him not to.
Now that his eyes are getting used to the dark, he can see that Matt looks terrible, pale and clammy under the current batch of bruises, his breathing ragged and far too loud in the dark room. He pulls at Matt until he’s sitting on the windowsill with his toes dragging on Foggy’s ancient rug, his whole body listing to the right and leaning into Foggy.
“What happened?” He reaches to help unclasp the helmet, only for Matt to turn his head sharply away. Foggy’s hand hovers in mid air for a moment, before he drops it to ball into a fist near his hip, suddenly furious at Matt and whoever did this and at Daredevil for taking his friend away from him; for making every action into a minefield.
“You’re mad,” Matt says, sounding vaguely surprised, head coming up to hone in on Foggy again. He sounds drunk, but Foggy’s seen him drunk a thousand times, and this is not it, not this confused, disperse mess at odds with Matt’s easy smile and exuberance when he’s had one too many.
“You think?”
Matt looks even worse once he finally takes the helmet off, his eyes glassy and feverish as they blink back blood that’s dried tacky on his eyelashes. The cut on his eyebrow has closed, even Foggy can tell, but the way Matt keeps rubbing at his eyes and throat with the back of his hands worries him more. His eyes are dilated, black drowning out the hazel, which Foggy has only seen on the few times they’ve done uppers, and the voice on the back of his mind reminding him that blind people still get dilated pupils while in shock will not quiet down.
“Start talking, Matt, or I’m calling Claire,” he says, the ace up his sleeve for when he wants answers. Sure enough, it works.
“It’s nothing, I just got dosed with— something. I wasn’t paying enough attention.”
“We’re really calling Claire then,” Foggy says, already turning to go look for his phone, his stomach dropping with fear, when Matt grabs at his arm to pull him back.
“No no, it’s fine, I know what it does, I’ve seen it before, it’s nothing really bad,” he says, aiming for calm and soothing and somehow still scaring Foggy with how fast his breathing is, with the heat he can feel coming off him even through his gloves.
“Yeah, I don’t really trust your definition of bad, man, you’d probably say that about having your guts hanging out.”
“Foggy—”
“I mean, look at you, Your breathing’s all crazy, and you’re probably running one hell of a fever—” he presses the back of his hand to Matt’s sweaty forehead, and then freezes when Matt closes his eyes and let out a low moan, a short needy sound that’s so inherently sexual it goes straight to Foggy’s cock.
The silence afterwards is thick and awkward, cut only by the rustle of Matt’s suit as he shifts in place.
“Matt. What the fuck?”
Matt grunts in annoyance and slaps Foggy’s hand away. “It’s a lust thing, ok?” he says with his hands raised. “The thing I got dosed with, it’s just this stupid aphrodisiac thing that’s getting sold on the streets as the cool alternative to viagra and like, rhino horn or whatever and I was tracking where it came from and got it thrown on my face and it was stupid, ok, it was really fucking stupid and I really didn’t want to ever talk about this, so.”
There’s a long silence after Matt’s little speech, in which Foggy is torn between laughing or pushing Matt out to the fire escape and shutting the window closed, because how is this bullshit his life now.
If this were four months ago, Foggy would be doing the obvious horny pun, but he has five meetings tomorrow, and he’ll probably get ulcers at an early age from worrying about Matt and he’s tired, he really is, from missing his best friend and wishing he didn’t, and there Matt is, sitting on his windowsill like he’s still got the right, breathing hard and looking flushed and embarrassed and lovely in the dim light.
Now that he knows for sure he’s not about to bleed to death in his bedroom, Foggy can see the tension for what it is, the constant gasps and the way he keeps sneaking little touches at Foggy; the way he’s moving his hips ever so slightly against thin air, every dream and fantasy Foggy’s had in the past ten years of knowing Matt Murdock.
“So why are you here, then?” Foggy finally asks, and he can tell Matt is asking himself the same question.
“I was close by, I don’t know, and I smelled you—”
“You what?”
“—and everything was hazy and it seemed like a good idea,” Matt says, rolling right over Foggy, leaning further and further into him as he speaks, like he doesn’t even realize what he’s doing until he’s got his forehead pressed into Foggy’s collarbone, and then he takes a deep breath against his skin, sending Foggy’s thoughts haywire while Matt keeps on talking casually.
“And, the other day I heard you walk into that barbershop you like, and I kept wondering if you’d cut your hair all short for your brand new corner office but no, look, it’s here, it’s still here—I like your hair, Foggy.” He punctuates this fact by grabbing said hair again, humming, and this is probably the first time ever Foggy’s out of words, because this is just too much to process, what with Matt sniffing him and petting his hair and stalking him, apparently and—yep, when he checks, Matt is hard and panting against him in his stupid devil suit on a Wednesday, what the fuck even.
“Jesus Christ, Matt.”
Matt raises his head again. “I’m sorry. I’ll leave, I’ll just—I’ll leave now.”
“What, no, you’ll slip and break your neck like this, screw that.” he grabs at Matt’s arms before he can decide to try and jump out of the building anyway, and Matt gives out a relieved sigh, pressing himself back to Foggy, arms going around his waist.
But even as he presses closer, what he says is “I really should go.”
“You really should sleep, or, I don’t know, take lots of fluids to flush this out, or better yet call Claire, and make sure you won’t go into cardiac arrest or something.”
Matt shakes his head against Foggy’s shoulder. “Best way to get rid of it is to do what it wants,” he says, making a somewhat obscene hand gesture in the small space between them as if to illustrate his point.
“You’re kidding me.”
Matt shrugs. “That was why I was looking into it. Could be used, well, like this. And, slipped into drinks. Wasn’t gonna let it be.”
Foggy shakes his head, unbelieving. “Jesus, Matt. Your life is a clusterfuck.”
Matt laughs, and Foggy shivers at the warm breath against his skin. “Yeah, tell me about it. Managed to even lose you, didn’t I?” he says, low and soft and sounding so sad that Foggy drags a hand through his sweaty hair, a huge mistake as it turns out because Matt then lets out another moan and drags him closer by the hips before tensing and pushing him away, eyes wide and scared.
“I gotta go,” he says, his mouth a thin line of tension.
And Foggy—Foggy should really get him in the shower, or give him time to chill on the couch, or something, anything else, but Matt’s eyes are so big and he looks so devastated, his hands clenched shut like he itches to touch Foggy again, that what he actually says is “I can help out.”
“What?”
“It’s no big deal, I mean, you said it yourself, best to let it run its course, right? And it’s fine, I’m fine with it,” he says in a rush, half of him wondering what the fuck he’s doing and the other half thinking of nothing but Matt’s red wet mouth; of the way Matt keeps smelling him as if to drink him in.
“Foggy, I—”
“Last offer before I change my mind.”
“You’re too—you’re too much,” Matt says, not really making that much sense, but he’s got his hands on Foggy again, pulling him in before he buries his face in Foggy’s neck, lips hot right under his ear, and this thing might be contagious because Foggy can’t think, not with the way Matt jumps and shivers when he first drags the back of his hand against Matt’s crotch, heartbeat a mile a minute.
“God. Okay, just let me,” he whispers, and Matt nods against him, his fingers tight on Foggy’s arms and his legs parting for Foggy to slip between them. It takes him a couple of tries to figure out the fly on Matt’s suit, hands shaky with adrenaline, but the moment he slips his hand in to grasp Matt’s cock, Matt lets out a deep sigh, his eyelashes brushing Foggy’s neck as he shuts his eyes, nosing softly at him.
“Alright?” Foggy asks, low and husky, and gets another nod in return.
“Yes. Please, Foggy.”
That’s all he really needs to start moving in earnest, half crazy with the feel of Matt’s cock silky in his hand and the occasional brushes of lips and tongue on his neck. He feels like every single nerve ending in his body is wide awake, body shivering with how good it feels, having Matt falling apart in his arms like this.
Foggy’s trying, he really is, to keep this as clinical as possible, just helping out, but the way Matt keeps on moaning against his neck isn’t helping, and neither is Matt taking one of his gloves off with his teeth and moving his fingertips against Foggy’s face, roaming over his brow and cheek and mouth like he’s trying to read Foggy’s expression, and then Matt is grabbing his chin and kissing him, almost too hard and needy, and Foggy’s resolve can only go too far.
It’s not the first time they kiss, not after stupid college parties when everyone mentally regressed to puberty after finals and ended up playing truth or dare like teenagers; it’s not even the first time they kiss when it’s just the two of them and they’ve had too much to drink, but it’s never been like this, desperate and fast as Matt clings bodily to Foggy, making little broken noises against his lips in time with Foggy’s upwards strokes, humming approval into the kiss whenever Foggy twists his hand just so.
Foggy stops keeping himself at bay and presses in, Matt immediately rubbing his thigh against Foggy’s hard-on, his gloved hand sneaking underneath Foggy’s threadbare Columbia t-shirt, making him shiver. It’s hot and heady, and Foggy’s head is swimming with the feeling of Matt biting at his lower lip, his chin, only to head back for another kiss, messier than the last one. When he comes, Matt throws his head back, eyes wide open and blinking fast, and god, but he looks beautiful.
“No, wait—wait,” Matt says breathlessly as Foggy tries to pull back, Matt’s thighs digging harder into Foggy’s hips where they’re holding him in place. The suit is rough and abrasive where it rubs against the skin of Foggy’s belly where his t-shirt has hitched up, but it’s only more of a turn on, both of them up against the open window with most of their clothes on and a bunch of kevlar between them, the smell of come and sweat washing everything out.
“Fuck, Foggy,” Matt says in his ear, reverent, and Foggy almost comes from just that, moans sharply when Matt uses his gloved hand to stroke him through his pajamas, steady and verging on too hard. Matt props him up when he comes, his mouth sucking a bruise onto the soft underside of Foggy’s chin before he goes in for another kiss, softer and messier, barely brushing their lips together as Foggy comes down, still seeing spots behind his eyes.
They stay there for a long moment, silent and curled into each other, breathing hard in the silent room with their sweat cooling with the cold air coming in from the window. Foggy’s getting drowsy, rocking on his heels only to put more of his weight on Matt, who holds him up easily, one of his hands coming up around his shoulders and the other one carding his fingers through his hair.
“You smell good,” Matt says after a long time in a hazy whisper, and it’s so far from normal Matt behavior that Foggy leans backwards just a little, flinching at the come still sticky on his hand. He wipes it hastily on his pajama bottoms, and then he swallows hard and looks around the room until he inevitably has to face Matt again, reality setting in.
“All out of your system, then?” he says, trying to put himself back together, but Matt just hums a little question sound, dreamy and with his eyes half closed. “The toxin, Matt, you think it’s gone?”
Matt tenses up again, and the hand that was buried in Foggy’s hair slowly drops down until it’s just resting on his shoulder. “Oh. Yes, I—yes. Thank you.”
“Um, yeah. No problem.”
Foggy stands back, and Matt drops his arms, and they spend the most awkward few minutes of Foggy’s life as Matt zips himself back up and and Foggy cringes in his sticky clothes, face flaming.
Finally, Foggy can’t take this anymore. “I refuse to make this weird, just, you know, go and whatever.”
Matt bites at his lips, but he eventually does stand up to pick up his helmet from where he dropped it what it feels like hours ago. “Sure, I guess I’ll see you around. Good luck on the Martinez case, by the way.”
“Yeah, thanks. You too, with the, uh, keeping sex drugs off the streets and whatnot.”
Matt turns around to face him while he’s halfway out the window, looking poised to speak for a moment before he seems to think better of it, and then he just gives him a stern nod before climbing up the stairs towards the roof, his feet barely making any noise against the rusting metal.
Foggy waits until he’s closed the window to give out a big sigh, his forehead pressed against the cool glass. He’s not exactly sure how he ended up here, with come in his pants and the image of Matt whispering his name as he touches Foggy burned into the back of his eyelids.
It takes him a long, long time to fall asleep once he’s cleaned up and gone back to bed, torn between feeling like he just took something from Matt, no matter how eager he seemed, and feeling drunk on the smell of Matt still strong on his skin, on the knowledge of how Matt feels under his hands as he falls apart.
Right before he falls asleep, he vaguely thinks about how he’s pretty sure he’s never mentioned the Martinez case to anyone outside work before.
----
The next morning, Matt is leaning against his building when Foggy leaves for work.
“Mind if I walk with you?” he asks, blushing just the tiniest bit but otherwise looking perfectly normal. It’s such a stark contrast, this composed, put together Matt, to the one that kept on playing with Foggy’s hair the night before, dreamy and soft.
“You wanna carry my books too?”
“Only if you wanna look like the asshole that piles your stuff on the blind guy,” Matt says with a little shrug and a crooked smile.
“Well maybe I do, my street cred could do with some help,” Foggy says, leaning on the wall next to Matt.
Matt laughs, but he sobers up fast enough. “I wanted to, um. Apologize,” he says.
“For scaring me to death or for coming ‘round for a bootycall?”
“Both, I guess,” Matt says with his hands twisting around his cane, mouth pressed into a thin line.
Suddenly, it’s awkward again. Foggy has two hickeys on his neck that he’s now really glad Matt can’t see; he also hopes to god his weird powers don’t extend to knowing Foggy brought himself off in the shower this morning with his fingers pressed against them, wishing he could remember if he left marks on Matt in turn.
“Look, I—”
“Maybe we should just forget about it,” Foggy cuts him off. “If anything, maybe I should be the one apologizing—”
It’s Matt’s turn to cut in, with a vehement “No, no, don’t, I was fully aware, trust me.”
They fall silent again.
“Well it’s been charming to have this horribly awkward conversation, but I’m running late,” Foggy finally says. “So I’m voting in favor of never mentioning this again and just go.”
Matt nods, visibly relieved. “I second the motion, lead the way.”
They walk together for barely a couple of blocks before going their separate ways. The rest of the day is a blur of mindless meetings and bad chinese food and a light-hearted argument with a coworker about the latest season of Dance Moms, followed by the thrilling mating courtship in the subway of a dude giving out flyers while dressed like Thor and a Sailor Moon cosplayer. New York, am I right?
But he keeps on going back to Matt saying his name breathlessly into his ear; to the way he keened whenever Foggy pressed an old bruise by mistake, and how much he wants to find out if he’d do that every time. To the red of his lips and the heat of his hands on Foggy. Forgetting seems miles away from him.
----
He starts dreaming of Matt, dressed in red and black, pushing him up against brick walls and pressing closer before kissing him hard and fast, his gloved hands hot against Foggy’s hips.
He always wakes up pissed off at both Matt and himself, because Jesus, but this is the last thing he needs.
----
Foggy tries surprising Karen with a cake for her birthday in late April, only to find her harboring a blood-drenched Frank Castle in her kitchen instead.
“Oh, hardly any of it is his own blood,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand, because that was obviously the thing he was most worried about. They have a whispered argument in the next room while the accused murderer that ended Foggy’s law firm munches on stale cheerios straight out of the box, sitting casually on Karen’s counter.
“I could hardly tell you I was in contact with a wanted felon, Foggy,” Karen says, and also, “he’s helping me with another case, and you of all people know he’s not the monster they say,” and his personal favorite: “and like you can speak about secrets, sneaking around with Matt all the time,” which, fair enough, but still.
Foggy ends up having cake and being sworn to secrecy as Frank makes a show of letting him know he knows exactly where the knives are kept when Karen’s back is turned, like the world’s biggest creep. He even drinks Karen’s terrible coffee without a single complaint and asks for seconds and calls her ‘ma’am’. Jesus.
But Karen looks bright and utterly alive when she talks about the story she’s looking into, eyes alight and wispy hair flying out of her bun—and Frank looks at her like he’s seeing a fairy tale come true, like he’s found his true north.
He leaves with a plate of leftovers and an unease in his stomach, feeling like his entire world tilted up on its axis one day and that it’s never really settled back ever since. Matt is some kind of superhero ninja, Karen is a reporter that hides confessed murderers in her apartment and Foggy has an assistant and an office with a view and a deep-seated ache to go back to his old dingy office on top of the hardware store and get paid in peach cobbler. He wonders when they all became such different people, if he could even trace it back to when it first happened.
He really, really struggles with asking himself if he should tell Matt or not, because by the easy way Karen and Frank were around each other, this isn’t new, and it isn’t gonna stop. He decides not to when he admits to himself that he hardly has any moral high ground at all.
----
When he gets mugged a month later, it’s not Daredevil that saves him but a rumpled Matt that hits one of the muggers with his cane and drops the other one with a kick to the face that should not be physically possible before casually offering him a hand up.
He’s wearing the dark green tie Foggy’s mother got him for graduation and that Foggy chose himself, feeling awkward in the store pawing at ties with his eyes closed until he got the softest one of the bunch. Foggy always goes a bit weak at the knees when he sees Matt wearing it.
“What the fuck are you doing, they could’ve recognized you!” Foggy hisses at him as he picks himself up from the dirty alley floor, bypassing the offered hand but steadying himself with a hand on Matt’s shoulder as a peace offering.
“Oh, excuse me, you wanted that switchblade in your stomach?” Matt says, looking oddly normal with his raised eyebrows and his hands on his hips, never mind that this is not court and that he’s standing between two unconscious men in the dark. Really, Foggy should’ve known before. It’s not like that low thrum of tension and rage hadn’t been there all along, through asshole teachers and ableist jerks and every single injustice done to the defenseless on their periphery and beyond. Matt has been a force to be reckoned for as long as Foggy’s know him, red suit or not.
“Do you treat everyone you save this way? I may get you a course in customer service for your birthday,” Foggy says as he starts digging through mugger number one’s pockets to get his wallet back.
“Only the ones that start with the bad Yelp reviews as soon as I’m done saving them,” Matt fires back, fussing at the dent that mugger number two’s skull left on his cane before finally giving it up as as a loss.
“What, you wanted a thank you kiss instead?” He says it without thinking, but the way Matt colors slightly makes his pulse race, gets him blushing when he remembers Matt must be able to tell.
Matt has always been good at pretending though. “Some coffee, at least, would be appreciated.”
“Well, tough luck. It’s way too late for coffee anyway.”
Matt gives him a crooked grin and casually steps on mugger number one’s hand as he follows Foggy out of the alleyway. “Night’s only starting for me, anyway” he says, all charm, and all of Foggy’s anger is back immediately.
“Yeah, I’m not joking about that,” he says, and he licks his lips in annoyance when Matt’s face falls. It’s like Matt forgets sometimes—that their partnership is done, that they’ve hardly talked to each other in the past few months. Foggy can’t not remember.
“I know.”
They fall in step with each other, so familiar it doesn’t even register as strange, and Foggy doesn’t even realize if it’s him that offers his elbow or Matt that reaches out for it, but Matt’s fingers are warm and steady on his arm, something he hadn’t even realized he’d missed until that moment. It’s late, but it’s still Hell’s Kitchen, so they have to walk around fighting couples and the ever present bags of trash outside restaurants and excited tourists wearing—Foggy notices with dismay—Daredevil t-shirts.
“What were you even doing there?” Foggy asks after he glares at one of the offending t-shirts. It’s not even a good likeness, far too demonic for his liking.
“Sheer luck, actually. Just getting home too,” Matt says with a shrug and a raised eyebrow.
“And you what, just happened to hear me?”
“Well, yeah, your heart went into overdrive, it was pretty noticeable.”
“You heard my heartbeat rather than my voice?” Matt stumbles a bit into Foggy when he stops suddenly, turning around to face him.
Matt shifts awkwardly. “I’m used to it, alright?” he says, defensive. “I don’t even think about it, i’m just really attuned to it.”
“That’s creepy as fuck,” Foggy says, sharply.
“Yeah, I’m aware.” He lowers his voice as an asshole in a hoody walks forcibly between them, not that he needs to with the loud death metal coming from his earphones.
“Also creepy? You keeping tabs on me, Matt.”
Matt has the decency to look somewhat uncomfortable. “I know. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“There’s a thing called phones, Matt, you’re so worried about me, you can always call and ask me yourself.”
“And you would’ve picked up? After everything?” Matt asks with raised eyebrows.
“Well it seems like you’ve made up your mind about what I would or wouldn’t do already, why even bother asking now?”
“Look, I’m sorry—”
“I thought you were tired of apologizing for what you do,” Foggy says, aiming to hurt. That comment still stings, even after all this time. It’s not like he doesn’t notice Matt is trying to cut everyone out in a misguided attempt of sparing them the fallout from his choices, but given that it’s stupid and it happens anyway, he refuses to give him a pass on this.
Matt rubs at his forehead before running a hand through his hair and leaving it a fluffy mess. “Yeah, but I’m also tired of missing you,” he finally says, stupidly honest, and any other day that would make Foggy melt, and it does a bit, god, but it also fuels his anger.
“And whose fault is that, Matt?” he practically yells into Matt’s face, gesticulating wildly, in contrast with the picture of restraint Matt cuts right now.
“I know that’s on me, Foggy, I know, but—”
“I was shot, Matt. I was shot, and I was in the hospital, and you didn’t even stopped by. Tell me more about how you’re the wounded party in this friendship, because I’m not buying it.” Matt’s silent, head hanging down and one of his hands fiddling with his cane anxiously, but he doesn’t try to deny it. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he finally says before turning around to keep walking.
“I was on the roof,” Matt says in a low voice after Foggy is a few storefronts away, stopping him dead in his tracks.
“What?”
“I was on the hospital’s roof, you were watching the game, I couldn’t—you were fine, and there was other stuff going on, I had things to do, I—”
Foggy strides back until he’s right back in Matt’s space, his finger digging into Matt’s chest, and he’s barely restraining himself from shaking Matt until he snaps, or moves, or does something other than just stand there with his knuckles white around his cane.
“What other stuff, Matt? Elektra stuff? Because I still don’t know what the fuck went down with that, I had to read about it on the social pages, goddamnit. I know shit of what’s going on with you!”
“Well you didn’t want to know! You made it very clear that you wanted to just ignore it!”
“Not when it’s your life that’s in danger, Matt! Or me, or Karen, or the fucking city, I don’t know. Yes, I hate that you do this, but that’s because I’m scared to death that one day I’m gonna find you dead in some alley—or that I won’t even know, that someone will dump you into the river and I’ll just always wonder what the hell happened to you, did you ever consider that?”
“And I’m sorry about that, I really am, I always wanted to spare you that, but this is who I am now, and I’m not stopping,” Matt says, and then he swallows hard and pushes his chin up as he adds, “not even for you.”
“What does that even mean?”
“That you’re the most important person to me, you know that, you must know that.”
Foggy throws his head back, anger fading into exhaustion, at Matt and the whole of tonight and probably the last year too. “Jesus Christ. You’re unbelievable.”
Matt finally takes a step back, though they’re still too close, and Foggy just can’t think of the last time they were this close together now. “I will stop, if you want—stop keeping tabs on you and all the other creepy stuff, I mean,” Matt says, eyes wide and his mouth trembling, and Foggy knows him well enough that he’s sure his eyes are wet behind his glasses. Matt hates crying.
Foggy rubs at the bridge of his nose. “That’s not what I want.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I don’t know, Matt. You safe, for starters. My best friend back, and world peace and for my student loans to magically disappear, but I know not all of it can come true.”
Matt starts fidgeting, barely noticeable but Foggy can tell he’s working himself up to something, with the way he’s licking his lips and tapping his foot.
“What if we try,” he finally says.
Foggy frowns. “Compromise, you mean?”
“Yeah. Just, stop with this bullshit thing when we pretend we’re just old classmates if we run into each other.”
Foggy fiddles with the strap of his messenger bag, until he nearly drops it and then he starts fiddling with his hair instead. Matt is quiet beside him, looking awfully eager and hopeful and oddly young, eyes open too wide and jaw set as he waits patiently for whatever Foggy has to say. It’s the kind of face Foggy has never been able to say no to, through the fallout of Elektra’s first appearance and soul-sucking internships and cases that surpass them both.
“Compromise,” Foggy says again, wondering what the hell he’s doing but missing seeing Matt’s smile on the regular too much to care. He sighs. “What the hell. Let’s give it a shot.”
Oh, and there it is, that smile and the creased eyes with the cocked head and the ever-present flutter in Foggy’s chest. He’d missed them so.
----
They do try, sitting awkwardly at Josie’s while telling each other about their day, Daredevil shit included, no matter how weird it sounds next to Foggy’s watercooler drama. They manage a whole two hours of near normal conversation until Matt’s head turns sharply in the direction of the backdoor, his entire body tensing for a fight, and Foggy can only sigh.
“You can go.”
Matt turns towards him again. “What?”
“Someone’s probably in danger, I get it. Just. Tell me about it tomorrow, no sugarcoating it.”
Matt hesitates, his knee hitting Foggy’s with the way he’s tapping his foot anxiously against one of the table’s legs. “Yeah, okay,” he finally says. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” He’s already loosening his tie as he stands up to leave. Foggy watches him weave through the crowd on his way out, wondering what he got himself into. But he can’t deny that he feels lighter than he has in months.
----
In the world’s biggest plot twist, Matt does indeed call him the next day. He even explains exactly what happened. It’s like a Christmas miracle right in the middle of May.
----
“I may need some help,” comes Matt’s shaky voice over the phone, and Foggy is immediately awake, nearly falling off his bed in his haste to disentangle himself from his sheets.
He finds Matt in an alleyway by the docks, pale and stiff with his back against a crumbling wall, trying to put pressure on the long cut on his thigh with slippery hands. He snaps into attention when Foggy gets there, but the tension bleeds out of him the moment he realizes who it is, leaving him limp and malleable for Foggy to help him put on a change of clothes and prop him up to take a cab back to Matt’s place, the single least superhero thing Foggy can even imagine. He seriously doubts Iron Man even knows what the inside of a taxi looks like.
Matt perks up immensely once Foggy settles him down on his couch with painkillers and about three pints of orange juice that he runs out to the bodega across the street to get, though not before mumbling about how much he doesn’t need fussing after, because god forbid Matt lets someone take care of him.
Foggy helps Matt clean the wound on his thigh unflinchingly, but he blanches the minute Matt digs out a surgical suture kit from one of his kitchen cabinets. “I’m a terrible sewer, Matt, you know that, you’ve complained about the way I darned your socks that time in law school for at least seven years.”
“Oh, I’m never forgetting that, believe me. I didn’t mean for you to do it.”
“Are we finally calling Claire, then, because hallelujah, it’s high time we did.”
“I can do it myself,” Matt says with a little laugh, and he must somehow sense the horrified face Foggy is making, because he turns back towards him. “I’m serious, it’s not that hard, I just need you to keep me from passing out, or to tell me if I‘m messing it up too badly,” he adds with a little self-deprecating smile, and seriously, what the hell.
“That doesn’t entirely reassure me, Matt!” Foggy says, scrubbing at his eyes and groaning.
Matt shrugs. “Well Claire is out of town, so it’s either you or me, pal, and I still have those socks clear on my mind.” So does Foggy, to be completely honest, and the idea of putting a needle through Matt is turning his stomach a bit.
They end up with Foggy sitting sideways on the couch with Matt’s back pressed against his chest, using one of Foggy’s legs to lift up his thigh for him to stitch up. It’s been ten years of friendship, so this isn’t even the weirdest thing they’ve done, but it still ranks high up there.
Foggy spends the next queasiest twenty minutes of his life babbling about everything and nothing as Matt does practiced stitches, back muscles trembling with the effort to hold himself still. Foggy’s hands around Matt’s middle are as sweaty as if he was the one doing the stitching, reflexively holding him closer every time the needle goes in and Matt starts sucking in breaths, making tiny pained noises through clenched teeth.
Once he’s done, Matt lets his head fall backwards onto Foggy’s shoulder rather than moving away, breathing hard and with his blood-covered fingers dangling off the edge of the couch. He looks exhausted, and Foggy doesn’t feel far behind.
“Well that was illuminating,” Foggy says, and Matt gives a weak snort of laughter. He then leaves Foggy breathless by turning his head and placing a kiss on Foggy’s throat, ever so light, sweet like he only is while drunk or sleepy.
Foggy swallows hard. “Matt, I don’t know how loopy you are, but—”
“I’m not. I know what I’m doing.”
“Yeah, I’m not so sure about that, buddy.”
Matt sits up just a bit with a little grunt of pain, not so much that he’s not resting on Foggy anymore but enough so that their faces are level. Like this, they’re so close Foggy can feel his warm breath on his face, can see the unmistakable intent when Matt leans in to drag his lips against his, barely a brush that still turns his breathing erratic.
“This isn’t new, Foggy,” Matt says, looking determined, his mouth so very red where he’s been biting at it while stitching himself.
“It’s news to me,” Foggy says, but his eyes are slipping closed as he moves his mouth over Matt’s, and his fingers on Matt’s belly are pressing harder, dragging him closer while hardly realizing it.
“Is it really?” Matt says, nuzzling at Foggy’s cheek with his nose before he goes back for another small kiss. “Think about it, Fog. It’s not really that surprising.”
It is and isn’t, because Matt has always had far too many people looking his way - has been looking back, too. But they’ve always been too tactile, and they’ve always been a bit too codependent, and they both struggle through seeing a future in which the other is not involved. And the way Matt kisses him now, languid and unhurried as he uses his fingertips to turn Foggy’s head around for a better angle feels almost familiar, like the natural continuation to the rhythm of their friendship.
“That’s still a stretch,” Foggy says, but he’s kissing Matt in earnest now, blood up as Matt shivers when he drags his nails against his belly, inching lower as he does his best to learn the topography of Matt’s mouth, to memorize the taste of his skin.
“Well, people say I’m daring. Thought I’d give it a shot,” Matt says, barely able to keep a straight face as Foggy groans and struggles not to laugh.
“That was terrible,” he says, but he’s smiling, and Matt is too, and he feels buoyantly happy, like he hasn’t in ages, like he could do anything at all in this moment.
“Made you laugh.”
“Made me despair I’m actually doing this, is what.”
“Liar,” Matt says, and draws him into another kiss, deeper and harder until they’re both panting, mouths slick.
Matt turns further towards him, his free hand dragging upwards slowly until it’s closing around Foggy’s neck, thumb and fingers pressed against his pulse points as if to feel for himself how faster it goes as Matt gets closer, to feel on his fingertips the rush of blood that’s leaving Foggy breathless; and the expression on Matt’s face, the awe and sheer thrill there make Foggy crazy, make him wonder just a bit if he might not be dreaming.
“I meant it, that time,” Matt says, as he drags his lips all over Foggy’s face, teeth catching on his chin. “I love the way you smell like this.”
“Stupid for you, you mean?” Foggy says, making Matt laugh and kiss him again.
“Yeah, that too. But I can smell how turned on you are, and it’s like a heavier version of your normal scent. You’ve always been distracting, Foggy,” he says, nosing all around Foggy’s neck, taking deep breaths and god, but Foggy is so hard, and Matt is pressing backwards against his dick, making little encouraging noises in the back of his throat.
Matt’s fingers tighten on his neck for just a second before he startles away. “Shit, I got blood on you,” he says, his nostrils flaring, and it’s only then Foggy remembers that that’s the hand he’d used to sew himself up. He can only imagine what he looks right now, flushed and heavy-lidded and with bloody prints on his neck in the shape of Matt’s hands. He doesn’t particularly mind though.
“Jesus, who even cares right now,” he says, and Matt laughs into his mouth when he drags him back up for a kiss, mindless of everything that is not Matt touching him right that moment.
Matt turns around in his arms, trying to straddle him only for him to groan in pain, both of them suddenly remembering the cut on his thigh and his cracked ribs and the myriad other bruises covering his skin; the fact that he couldn’t even walk home on his own tonight.
“Shit, wait, wait,” Foggy says in a whisper, moving around until Matt can lie beside him on the couch, pressed together tight in the small space. He cards a hand through Matt’s messy hair as he waits for him to get his breath back, face slowly relaxing from a grimace.
“Better?” he asks after a bit, and Matt nods against his forehead, eyes closed, before diving in for another kiss, with far too much heat for someone that seemed to struggle not to moan in pain just a moment ago, so Foggy drags himself away as far as the limited couch space allows him, which is not much.
“Whoa, Matt. Limits. Have them.”
Matt snorts, but he does give him a nod. “all right, all right. I just don’t want to let you down,” he says, his teeth biting hard at his lower lip.
“Because it’d be sexy as hell for you to pass out while I’m trying to blow you. This isn’t a one time offer, Matt,” he says, somehow not really surprised Matt is so desperate to please. Screw Stick, anyway. If he’s gotta fight at Matt’s issues with an onslaught of affection, he’ll do it gladly.
“Rain check, then,” Matt says, his eyes slipping closed. “Come here though,” he adds, before chasing Foggy’s mouth for a soft, barely there kiss.
They kiss for a long time, unhurried and purposeless, just touch and warmth until it’s just sharing breaths, sleepy and soft as they fall slowly into sleep, with Matt’s fingers a small pressure against Foggy’s neck and the smell of him sharp on his nose.
It’s the best night’s sleep Foggy’s had in ages.
----
They wake up the next morning still lying across the couch, the sun in Foggy’s eyes and Matt’s sour breath fanning his face. He has the most awful crick in his neck and the start of a tension headache on his temples, but Matt snuffles quietly in his sleep beside him, warm against his skin, and when he finally wakes up, he gives Foggy a small smile as he drags his hand up to curl in Foggy’s hair, and the thrill of it curls deep in Foggy’s belly.
They both take the day off. They get each other off on the couch and have omelettes standing up side by side by the counter before doing it again in bed, slow and unhurried in the morning light, learning each other by touch.
Foggy’s year may be looking up after all.