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The first thing Matt registered was a vacuum where the world’s constant hum should be. Beneath that oppressive quiet lay a pounding, monolithic ache centered behind his eyes, pulsing in time with the sluggish beat of his heart. A roiling nausea, hot and acidic, coiled in his gut. The taste in his mouth was foul, metallic and sour. His skull felt too full, too tight, each throb a distinct, localized agony.
Concussion, his mind supplied, the thought moving slowly through thick mud. Wouldn’t be the first time a concussion resulted in auditory disruption. He stayed still, hoping he hadn’t revealed he was awake yet, still not sure if he was with friends or foes.
Matt stiffened when he realized he was in his civilian clothes. Did he go out without his mask? I didn’t happen often, but it wasn’t unheard of if he caught wind of something while walking around. It necessitated even more caution.
He tried to reach for memory, to orient himself in time. The last clear point of reference was a client meeting in the early evening. The sound of Foggy’s voice, a reassuring rumble. Karen’s pen tapping a staccato rhythm on her legal pad. The warm, paper-and-dust scent of the room. He’d been tired. He’d been about to head home.
Everything after was a blank wall of static.
He was lying on his side. The surface beneath him was firm but slightly sunken, upholstered in a fabric he knew. The weave was coarse under his cheek, a blend of polyester and something cheaper. It wasn’t his couch, but it held familiar smells… old pizza, the stale ghost of cheap beer and expensive wine, the underlying scent of laundry detergent. He knew that detergent. He knew this couch. This was Foggy’s couch.
He was at Foggy’s apartment. The realization brought a wave of dull relief. He was in a place of safety, of known quantities. He wasn’t in an alley, a dumpster, a strange warehouse. He was on Foggy’s couch.
The relief was a momentary anchor. The nausea surged again, a threatening lurch. He swallowed against it, focusing on his other senses to ground himself. The air in the room was still, slightly stuffy. He could smell the lemon pledge Foggy used last week, the mixture of Marci’s many perfumes, his own sweat, the faint trace of Karen’s deodorant from her last visit—
A shift in the air to his right. A displacement, a subtle drawing nearer of warmth. Then, a touch. Fingers, cool and dry, brushing the sweat-damp hair from his forehead. The touch was gentle. The fingertips were slimmer and softer than Foggy’s, and the nails were long, smoothly filed.
Instinct took over. His hand shot up, his own fingers closing around a slender wrist. He held it, not aggressively, but as a point of reference. He tried to listen, to parse the rhythm beneath his thumb, but the silence was absolute. He could only feel the rapid, fluttering pulse against his skin. It was a quick, light rhythm, anxious. Not Karen’s steady, resilient tempo; not her perfume either. His fingertips skimmed over the hand, which had stilled, patiently allowing him his exploration. Oh. That ring. Marci. Of course. He was in their apartment, after all.
“Marci?” His voice felt raw, and he wasn’t even sure if he’d been loud enough to be heard.
The air near his face shifted again. Puffs of breath, the faint vibration of vocal cords transmitted through the space between them. She was speaking to him. He gave a small, painful shake of his head.
“Can’t hear,” he forced out, each word an effort. “Concussion, I think. Don’t… remember.” His free hand came up, exploring his own head. His fingers traced over his temple, through his hair, until they found it: a swollen, tender knot above his left ear, already cleaned and bandaged. Under the bandage, he could feel the skin had been broken. A contusion. An impact. That explained the silence, the nausea, the gap in his memory.
He needed to ask questions. What happened? Where was Foggy? Was he hurt? The need to know warred with the escalating revolt in his stomach. The sour heat in his throat was climbing, a tide he couldn’t hold back. He tried to sit up, to turn away, to offer some warning. A strangled sound was all he could manage.
Before he could even properly move, something large and hollow was pressed against his chest, then guided firmly under his chin. Plastic. Cylindrical. A familiar, faint chemical smell of lemon-scented disinfectant. Foggy’s bathroom trash can. He knew the shape, the weight, the specific scent of the bag liner. He’d thrown up in it a few times before.
His body convulsed. He retched, violently and helplessly, emptying the burning, acidic contents of his stomach into the container. The act was exhausting, wracking, leaving him trembling and hollow, strands of saliva clinging to his lips.
As he gasped for air, slumped over the can, the memory surfaced. Not of last night, but of another time. The last time he’d been this sick into this specific trash can. Foggy’s birthday. The taste in his mouth now… it was similar. The sharp, burned flavor of cheap liquor, the sour tang of stomach acid, the underlying note of something greasy and fried.
Had he been drinking? Before going out as Daredevil? Maybe he’d gone out with Foggy and had to leave after hearing something? A little reckless, even for him… but again, not without precedent.
Thinking made the pain in his head spike, a white-hot needle behind his eyes. He was too tired, too sick, too overwhelmed by the discordant input… the deafening silence, the pounding ache, the lingering burn in his throat. The mystery was a weight he couldn’t hold right now. At least he was safe. He’d figure out the rest later.
He felt himself listing to the side, away from the foul-smelling container. Gentle hands guided him back against the couch cushions. The trash can was removed.
Something new was pressed into his hand. A cool, smooth cylinder. A glass of water. Then, two small, chalky tablets were placed in his palm. He didn’t have the energy to question them. He placed the pills on his tongue, their dry bitterness a momentary shock, and washed them down with a gulp of water that felt like a blessing. The glass was taken from his slack grip.
The pull of unconsciousness was a tangible force, a dark, warm current dragging him down. He didn’t resist. He let go, sinking back into the silent, painless dark.
~
The second time he surfaced, the world had sound.
It was distorted, muffled, as if he were listening from the bottom of a deep well, but it was undeniably there. The persistent, low drone of the refrigerator compressor. The irregular, metallic plink… plink… of the leaky kitchen faucet. The faint, rhythmic sigh of traffic several stories below.
Ugh. And the taste. This wasn’t the fading aftertaste of a few beers. This was the direct, acrid evidence of a significant volume of alcohol, consumed recently.
Then a voice. Muffled, miserable, emanating from Foggy’s bedroom.
“Nnngh… every thought is a tiny hammer. A tiny, mean hammer.”
Foggy. Alive. Complaining. A profound, secondary wave of relief washed through Matt, gentle this time.
A clearer, sharper voice cut through the fuzz in his ears, much closer. Marci. “The hammers are your conscience, Franklin. And they’re working overtime. I told you that the eel stuff was a biological weapon.”
“It’s traditional!” Foggy’s protest was weak, pitiful.
“It’s a crime against distillation. And you’re lucky a headache and some nausea are your only punishments. I’m still trying to process how you managed to steer a grown-ass ninja directly into a fixed municipal object.”
"Hey," Foggy objected, "that street sign came out of nowhere."
Matt lay still, processing. The words parsed slowly through the lingering fog.
The nausea had receded to a dull queasiness. The headache had settled into a deep, pervasive ache, a constant pressure he could now contextualize. The story was assembling itself, and it pointed away from shadows and sirens and towards something utterly mundane.
He pushed himself up on one elbow. The movement made the room tilt gently, then settle. He was still in yesterday’s clothes, wrinkled dress shirt and suit pants. He smelled of stale sweat, alcohol, and city grime. No kevlar. No sweat-soaked mask. Just Matthew Murdock, blind, hungover, and confused.
“How did we get back here?” Matt asked, his voice still rough.
Marci’s footsteps approached. He could smell fresh coffee now. “A cab driver with the patience of a saint,” she said, her voice right beside the couch. He felt the cushion dip slightly as she perched on the edge of the couch near his feet. “Foggy called me, sobbing incoherently about killing you. I found you both comatose in the hallway leaning against our downstairs neighbor’s door. She was five seconds away from calling the cops.”
Matt furrowed his brow. “Did we scare her?”
Marci’s sharp laugh was an icepick to Matt’s skull. “You were covered in blood and Foggy was crying into his phone about killing you… She thought it was a crime scene.”
Matt winced. “Headwounds bl—”
“Bleed more, yeah. You’re telling me. But I got you both up here, patched you up, and gave you your usual spot on the couch. I’ve gotten good at getting blood out of it, actually.”
Foggy groaned from the other room. “Is that why you insist on having a leather couch, dude? Clean up??”
Matt shrugged.
“He just shrugged,” Marci called out. Seeing Matt’s confused but amused expression, she explained that Foggy had his head covered by a quilt to keep out the light. “He’s been reacquainting himself with his own poor choices all morning.”
A fresh, louder groan from the bedroom. “The smell! Why does it smell like regret and bile in here?”
“Because it is regret and bile, you magnificent disaster,” Marci called back fondly. She returned her attention to Matt. “You, at least, had the decency to wait until you were semi-conscious.”
Matt’s head was clearing. He hadn’t been Daredevil last night. He’d just been Matt. And Matt had gone out for drinks with his best friend and things had gotten wildly, stupidly out of hand.
A strange sound escaped him, a breath that was half sigh, half disbelieving laugh. He’d woken up braced for the aftermath of a fight, for the grim ritual of patching up. Instead, he was facing the aftermath of a bad night out, and in all likelihood a story that would be told with eye-rolls and laughter.
“Street sign?” he asked, the sheer absurdity of it hanging in the air.
“A big, blue, very immovable one on the corner,” Marci confirmed, amusement coloring her tone. “You have an impressive egg on your head. Foggy has a black eye that’s going to be a masterpiece of purples and yellows, and a soul that’s currently seeking witness protection from itself.”
Matt slowly swung his legs over the side of the couch, sitting up fully. The world stayed put. He ran a hand through his messy hair, his fingers finding the tender knot again. A hangover. A concussion from a street sign. The most dangerous thing he’d encountered last night was Foggy Nelson’s judgment. And his, but that was beside the point.
“I thought,” he began, then stopped, shaking his head slightly. “When I woke up… I assumed it was something else.”
Marci was quiet for a beat. He could hear the soft click of her fingernail against her coffee mug. “I know,” she said, her voice dropping its sarcastic edge, becoming almost soft. “When you grabbed my wrist like that… for a second…”
He nodded, a tight, small gesture. The relief was now tinged with a different kind of weight, the weight of a life so routinely catastrophic that a simple, mundane accident felt like a reprieve.
“This is better,” Marci said decisively, as if reading the turn of his thoughts. “The blood is usually yours, but the bad ideas were a collaborative effort this time. It’s more fair. And the fallout involves ibuprofen and Gatorade, not my good towels and a suture kit.”
From the bedroom, Foggy made a noise of profound grievance.