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“You should--probably get out of my apartment,” Foggy says, yawning and squinting at Wade. He’s making coffee, so it’s probably not really convincing. It probably says a lot about his life that a masked vigilante--not even his masked vigilante--crawls through his window and his first instinct is to sigh and start the coffee.
“Daredevil told me I couldn’t play with him,” Wade says, pouting. “I have nowhere else to go.”
“That sounds like a lie,” Foggy says. “The second part, the first part sounds very true. Will you--put the guns on the table? We’ve talked about this.”
“Yes, daddy,” Wade says, pulling off his mask so Foggy can see him waggle his eyebrows.
“We’ve talked about that, too,” Foggy mutters, washing mugs from the mess of dishes that he’s been ignoring for a couple of days. When he looks up again, there are two guns on his kitchen table and Wade is getting undressed.
“Like what you see?”
“I don’t know how to answer that question,” Foggy says. Their relationship is confusing. Wade is confusing. “Go get clothes if you’re staying. I have a limit to how many half-naked idiots I can have in my apartment in a week.”
Foggy’s basically been assigned to make sure Frank Castle takes a goddamn nap instead of going back out to murder people. He’s not sure how it happened, except Matt made a pretty face at him and batted his eyelashes and now Foggy’s had to buy three different couch covers to hide the bloodstains.
Matt doesn’t want Wade coming here but apparently, he felt left out.
"How many men are you stringing along, Nelson?” Wade asks, raising his voice as he goes into Foggy’s bedroom, leaving the door open.
“None,” Foggy says. “I’m just unwillingly running a halfway house for hot extralegal crimefighters. And the occasional spider child.”
Wade’s fully naked when he appears in the doorway.
“You callin’ me hot?” he asks, grinning.
Foggy sighs.
“I don’t even know anymore,” he says.
*
“I guess this is happening,” Foggy says, surprised to find that he doesn’t actually care that Wade stole his bed before he could get in it. He’s wearing a pair of fuzzy teddy bear pajamas that Karen bought Foggy for Secret Santa last year--Karen grabbed onto the Foggy Bear nickname with way too much zeal.
There’s something about Wade that’s cute. It doesn’t override some of the more questionable parts of his existence, but--cute enough to put up with, at least, if he has to. At least he’s not vaguely threatening like Castle is.
“Jump in, daddy,” Wade says, yawning. “Water’s fine.”
“. . .you don’t make it easy, y’know,” Foggy murmurs, but he climbs in to lay next to him. “What’s with the whole daddy thing?”
“Mmm, you’re a real goddamn adult, Nelson,” Wade says. “Got a job, pay your bills, take care of people--pretty sure I’m not the only one who wants you to hold them down and fuck ‘em just right and hold them until the sun comes up.”
That doesn’t sound like a joke.
“Do you really want that?” Foggy asks, softly.
“Kiss me and find out,” Wade says, turning to look at him. “Or fuck me--either way. Both ways. I’ll take my pants off right now. Your pants. Both pairs of your pants currently in your bed.”
Foggy laughs despite himself.
“Just go to sleep, Deadpool,” he says.
“Whatever you say, daddy,” Wade says.
*
Peter has the decency to knock at Foggy’s window, because clearly he was raised right, though Foggy wishes that he’d come up the fire escape instead of cling to the side of building outside of his living room.
“Can I come in, Mr. Nelson?” Peter asks, mask pushed up so Foggy can see him smiling. “I just need some water and a band-aid.”
When he climbs inside, there’s a gash down Peter’s side that would need about seventeen band-aids.
“Jesus, kid, you can’t take after Matt when it comes to first aid skills,” Foggy sighs, putting an arm around his waist when Peter sways to one side and taking him to sit on the coffee table. It’s not bad enough that he has to bother Claire to come do stitches, at least--Foggy took a class down at the Y and he knows basically enough to keep someone alive until they can get to somehow who knows what the hell they’re doing.
“Matt?” Peter asks, making a confused face.
“Uhm,” Foggy says, freezing for a moment. “Oh, fuck it, he knows your name—that’s Daredevil.”
“Huh,” Peter says, wincing as he sits down. Foggy wants to bundle him up in a coat and ground him for being out after dark. “I thought his name would be something scarier.”
“Like what?” Foggy asks.
“I dunno,” Peter says, pulling the mask off fully and sitting it beside him. “Beelzebub or something.”
Foggy laughs, bringing his kit over to kneel in front of Peter.
“It’s a good name,” he says. “Okay, I’ve got to clean the wound—this’ll hurt, but I guess the getting of the wound was probably worse.”
Peter makes a wobbly motion with his head but hisses when Foggy starts, saying, “Shit—oh, sorry.”
“You can say ‘shit’ here,” Foggy says, trying not to smile too much. “That’s it, though. If I hear a single ‘fuck’ out of you, I’m calling your aunt.”
“She swears more than I do, sir,” Peter says.
Foggy laughs.
“You call her if you’re crashing on my couch, okay?”
“I will,” Peter says, nodding. “I promise.”
After Foggy gets him patched up, he goes to take a shower and get the blood off his hands and comes out ten minutes later to find Peter mostly hidden in a pair of Foggy’s pajama pants and a t-shirt and completely passed out on his couch.
He gets a blanket from his bedroom and covers him up, texting May to let her know she should grab Peter in the morning so he doesn’t go swinging through the city with a hole in his side. She texts back he failed to mention the HOLE. see you soon.
*
“I bought you something ridiculous,” May says, offering Foggy a cup of coffee when she shows up in the morning to get Peter before he runs off on his own. He only looks a little sulky about it. “I asked for something that a very kind man who makes terrible decisions would like. I think there are two cups of sugar in it.”
Foggy tastes it and nods, smiling.
“Yum,” he says. “What did you get?”
“Just, like, seventeen shots of espresso,” she says, shaking her half-empty cup a little. “How bad is this alleged hole in my nephew’s side?”
“It’s more of a really dramatic scratch,” Foggy says. “Just make sure he keeps it bandaged up so it doesn’t get infected. And tell him not to fight crime for a few days—” He glances behind him to see Peter come out of the bathroom wearing the change of clothes that May brought him. “Hey, don’t fight crime for a few days.”
“What if the crime fights me first?” Peter asks.
“Then you ask for help,” Foggy says. “I’ll make sure you’ve got friends in your area.”
“So good to know he’s being looked out for by the violent grown adult men whose company he keeps,” May sighs, wiggling her fingers at Peter who goes willingly into a hug, pulling a face when she presses a firm kiss to his temple. “We’ll be playing a three-day long marathon of Scrabble. You won’t even have time to think about kicking ass.”
“I hate Scrabble,” Peter mutters. “You always cheat.”
“Boggle, then,” May says. She wiggles her fingers at Foggy, too, who steps closer and lets her kiss him on the cheek. “Thanks for watching out for him.”
“Any time,” Foggy says. “He’s always my least offensive houseguest.”
“Did you hear that, buddy? High praise,” May says, gathering a squirmy looking Peter against her side tightly. “See you later, Nelson.”
Foggy waves them off and takes another drink of the coffee. It’s disgusting but also perfect. She’s his new best friend; he’d drop Matt for her in a second.
*
When Foggy’s going home after a late night and someone tries to take his wallet, the guy gets a bullet in his shoulder.
“What the fuck?” Foggy says, whirling around to see Wade somehow managing to look sheepish through a mask.
“That might have been an overreaction,” he says.
“Might have been?”
“He was threatening you!” Wade says. “It was self-defense!”
“It literally wasn’t!” Foggy says, hysterically.
He drops down to kneel next to the guy who’s crying, which is—it’s reasonable, Foggy’s had a bullet in his shoulder and crying is a very reasonable reaction. Restrained, actually. He strips off his shirt and presses it against the wound to stop the bleeding, apologizing five times when the guy screams.
“I’m calling 911,” he says, as reassuringly as he can. “Do you have health insurance?”
“No,” the guy gasps.
“Shit,” Foggy says. “The fee for the ambulance alone is—yeah, hello, our system’s broken. Sorry, I mean, someone’s been shot. I’ve already stopped the bleeding.”
Once he gives them the street and they tell him that an ambulance will be there as soon as possible, he tells the guy to apply pressure to the wound and goes to grab his wallet from the ground—when he goes through it, he has about $100.
“Money,” he says, snapping his fingers at Wade who looks like a chastised child. “Do you have any?”
“Uhm,” Wade says, digging around in his pockets. “$3.50.”
“Oh my god, just get out of here,” Foggy says, moving to kneel next to the guy again. “The cops are coming.”
“I—”
“Go. Sorry about him, he has no social skills and unjustified access to firearms. Do you have Venmo?”
“. . .seriously?” the guy asks.
“I’m thinkin’ you don’t mug people because you’re an unforgivable monster,” Foggy says. “It’s a hard world and I’ve lucked out job-wise lately. I’ll come with you and make sure you don’t go bankrupt, if you’re okay with that.”
This really wasn’t how he expected his night to go, but shit—might as well go with it.
*
When he finally gets home, well after midnight, Wade is sitting on his couch in a pair of Foggy’s sweatpants and old worn Columbia t-shirt, looking contrite. Foggy sighs with everything in him.
“I think maybe we should establish more ground rules,” he says.
He’s wearing wrinkled slacks and a bloody white undershirt like he’s freaking John McClane or something and he really just wants to take a shower and go to bed.
“DD said we had to watch out for you,” Wade says, sounding weird, which is saying something for him, “and I—shoulda done that without being trigger happy, I guess. I don’t fully get it but I’ve been told people don’t like that.”
“Daredevil said that?” Foggy asks, narrowing his eyes.
“Well, he told me not to get within 500 feet of you,” Wade says, turning to look at him, “but yeah—if you’re gonna babysit, then it’s the least we can do, right?”
“Is that what I’m doing?” Foggy asks, laughing. “Babysitting?”
Wade’s smile goes kind of sweet and lop-sided.
“Yeah, daddy,” he says. “Want to sit on me?”
Foggy kind of does, god help him, but he shouldn’t reward this behavior.
“You’re sleeping on the sofa,” he says, pointing at him. “If you’re staying until morning, I expect to wake up with breakfast ready. And new ground rule: don’t shoot someone if the situation could be easily fixed by canceling my credit cards and buying a new wallet.”
“Sure, daddy,” Wade says, kind of dreamily. It doesn’t sound like he’s just being a dick, which is worrying but also—interesting. “I won’t fuck up anyone for you unless they really, really deserve it.”
“Jesus,” Foggy says. “Good boy, I guess.”
Wade’s whole face lights up.
“Go to sleep,” Foggy says, nervously, heading to the bathroom. “You know where the blankets are and—I wasn’t joking about breakfast.”
“Sleep tight, daddy!” Wade calls, and Foggy rests his back against the door once he shuts it behind him and covers his face with his hands.
He was just supposed to be a nice, normal lawyer. Just a regular guy. He blames Matthew Michael Murdock for every single thing that’s happened to him lately and will happen in perpetuity.
*
Foggy wakes up to Wade crawling into his bed with a plate of French toast and bacon, looking puppy dog proud of himself when Foggy accepts it and moans after taking a bite.
“Like tit-fucking an angel, right?” he asks, watching Foggy intently.
“. . .I couldn’t say,” Foggy says, trying not to laugh, “but they’re really good.”
Wade sprawls out in his lap and watches him eat and Foggy just kind of lets him, letting out a soft surprised laugh when Wade crawls up to wrap his arms around his waist as soon as Foggy puts the plate on the nightstand, face hidden in his chest.
“Can I sleep in the bed next time?” he asks, muffled. “You’re cozy as shit.”
“I am?” Foggy asks.
“Curves in all the right places.”
“Jesus Christ.”
The thing is that Foggy doesn’t have to be anywhere this morning, and apparently, Wade doesn’t have anyone to—murder or whatever—god, he’s really got to sit Matt down and talk more in-depth about how he and his supposedly moral ass started spending time with gun-toting maniacs. And also a child. Matt’s answer so far has just been some vague mumbled nonsense about proximity and holding them accountable but Foggy came home with blood on his hands last night and he wants to blame Matt for that, too.
But, basically, they don’t have anywhere to be. And for all that Wade’s kind of terrifying, he’s also—snuggly.
“I’m going back to sleep,” Foggy says.
“Oh, yay,” Wade says, yawning, kind of wiggling against him when Foggy moves to lie down so Foggy feels Wade’s half-hard dick drag against his leg. Foggy isn’t unaffected by it but he ignores it. No dicks should probably be a ground rule, too.
*
“Why does Deadpool keep calling you daddy?” Matt asks, with guarded outrage.
“. . .no coffee tonight,” Foggy says, when Matt crawls through his bedroom window a little before midnight on a Friday, following Foggy into the kitchen where he pulls out the whiskey. Matt just nods and accepts a very full glass, settling onto Foggy’s sofa. He’s not dressed up in his gear, just dark jeans and a black hoodie. “Geez, you could’ve just used the front door.”
“It’s less fun,” Matt says. “Why does Deadpool keep calling you daddy?”
Foggy sighs and sits next to him, on the other side of the sofa, taking a sip from his glass before he says, “He’s become a frequent guest and is apparently into the fact that I’m a normal, competent adult.”
“I told him to stay away,” Matt says, drinking a questionable amount of whiskey at once before he pulls an adorable grossed out face and sits the glass down on the coffee table. “You should, too—he’s dangerous, Foggy.”
“So’s Castle,” Foggy says, shrugging. “And—you, if it comes down to it.”
“He’s unstable.”
“My answer remains the same.”
Matt sighs. They drink in silence for a while before Matt asks, a little too sharply for Foggy’s comfort, “Are you fucking?”
“Wow,” Foggy says, laughing. “Straight to the point.”
“Foggy,” Matt says, softer, almost apologetic.
“We’re not fucking,” Foggy says. “There’s been some snuggling and a lot of flirting on his part, but I think he’s only half serious about the daddy thing—he’s probably mostly doing it to fuck with me. And you, apparently—you’re, like, really mad about this, aren’t you?”
Matt looks away, makes a vague affirmative noise. Foggy’s not sure where to go from there so he doesn’t go anywhere, sits there and sips whiskey and watches Matt get increasingly uncomfortable, pent up. It’s familiar—it’s I need to say something but I don’t know how emotions work. It’s Foggy, run away with me and start a firm even though we’ll both fuck everything up so hard that we’ve barely put it back together even now.
“Did you like it?” Matt asks, without looking up.
“. . .be more specific,” Foggy says, curiously. Matt raises his head slowly.
“Him calling you daddy,” he says, moving closer on the couch. “Did you like it?”
Foggy moves closer, as well. It seems like the thing to do.
“I—didn’t hate it,” he admits.
“Is it because he’s the one calling you that?” Matt asks.
They’re close enough to touch. It’s been a second since Foggy’s really thought about touching Matt, with this much intent, with this much possibility. Sometimes, throughout their life together, Foggy really thought they might be something—that they’d pull a relationship out of lingering touches and waking up in bed together after drunken nights and the fact that they love each other. That the line between love and in love isn’t that obvious.
He hasn’t been in love with Matt this whole time but it comes and goes and the former is easy.
“I’d still be into it if it was somebody else,” he says. “More, depending on the somebody.”
Matt puts a hand on his arm but it’s shaking.
“Daddy,” he says, softly.
“Matty?” Foggy asks, feeling like his heart’s been ripped out of his chest then thrust back in.
Matt smiles faintly before his face falls and he shakes his head, getting to his feet and mumbling, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—we can’t do that. I’ve got to go.”
“Hey, no,” Foggy says, getting up, too, a little dizzy which he thinks Matt takes advantage of it by apologizing breathlessly and leaving through the front door for once. Foggy stands there and looks at the door like maybe Matt’s gonna come back—he’s not used to the feeling. He’s normally the one who leaves.
That night, after he’s calmed down enough to get back in bed and try to sleep, he texts May with embarrassingly trembling fingers and tells her that he’ll buy her brunch in exchange for girl talk.
He gets back a line of thumbs ups and a restaurant name.
He’s definitely exchanging Matt for her.
*
“Daddy,” May says, flatly.
“I need you to be supportive in this my time of need,” Foggy says, equally as flat. They’re one mimosa in, but it’s Saturday and they’re bottomless and the whole day is ahead of them.
“I am so supportive,” she says, clearly fighting a laugh, “of your kinky hi-jinks and your weird-ass love triangle.”
“You’re mocking my pain,” Foggy says, accusingly.
“Sorry,” she says, biting her lip. “Don’t be mad, daddy.”
When Foggy glares at her, she bursts out laughing, loud enough to catch the attention of people walking by them where they’re sitting outside and to upset the table as she leans backward in her chair to catch her breath.
“Okay, I’m actually sorry,” she says, after a few moments to compose herself. “I have no clue what to say about Deadpool but what Matt did was shitty. Do you think he was being genuine?”
“I’m— seventy-five percent sure,” Foggy says. “I don’t always know his lying face but I think I know his genuine face. And the alternative is that he’s just—toying with me because he doesn’t want me around Deadpool, which I can’t stand to think about, especially considering he’s probably been able to tell that I—uhm—”
He hasn’t actually told her about his waxing and waning Matt Feelings. Or anyone, for that matter, except for Marci but he was really drunk and it was right after their firm dissolved and she sarcastically promised to take it to her grave.
“Uhm?” May says, expectantly.
“If this goes sideways, you have to keep this to yourself,” Foggy says.
“Cross my heart.”
That’s her genuine face, too.
“Let me take you back to the year I turned eighteen, when I met Matt whose last name is redacted, at that point the hottest person I had ever encountered in real life,” Foggy says, then spends arguably too long relaying the tale of years and years worth of what ifs before finally getting to the point. “If Matt’s been able to super sense that I have feelings for him, the idea that he’d use that to get his way kind of makes me want to throw myself down a flight of stairs.”
“I am familiar with the flight of stairs emotion,” May says, sympathetically. “Look, one of my only interactions with our friendly neighborhood devil involved him shamelessly hitting on me, which was adorable but—doesn’t give me much to go off in terms of who he actually is beyond the fact that he thinks he’s very charming.”
Foggy grins at her.
“You’re my best friend,” he says, and she grins back, tips her mimosa at him.
“Keep these up and you’ll be mine too, kiddo,” she says. “Do you want some actual advice?”
“Please,” Foggy says.
“Talk to him,” she says, smiling lop-sided. “I know it sounds like the worst but I’ve got a couple years on you and eventually you figure out that life’s short and you might as well just say what you feel before you get killed by an alien or something.”
“. . .but what do I feel?” Foggy moans. May laughs and finishes her mimosa, immediately reaching for the pitcher.
“That I can’t help you with,” she says. “Have you considered therapy?”
“Have I,” Foggy mutters, making a grabby hand so she passes him the pitcher next.
*
Frank sits across from him at the kitchen table, a minor wound in his head and a cup of tea in his hands.
“I’m not calling you daddy,” he says, eyebrows raised.
Foggy sighs and gets up to get the whiskey, opening it and pouring a liberal amount in Frank’s cup.
“God bless you,” he says.
*
Foggy tries his best to take May’s advice, but Matt’s not answering his phone. Foggy’s tempted to fake a damsel in distress type emergency, but it doesn’t seem worth it—and that’s why, when Wade kisses him in his kitchen at 2:00 AM, Foggy kisses him back for a few minutes. His skin’s—kind of fucked but his lips are surprisingly soft and he kisses Foggy like he’s fragile. It’s unexpectedly romantic.
“I can’t,” he sighs, squeezing Wade’s waist where his hands are resting.
“It’s because of him, isn’t it?” Wade asks, squinting.
“God?” Foggy asks. “Yeah. I’m headed to confession right after this.”
Wade barks out a laugh and lets go of him.
“I’m giving him the shotgun speech,” he says, pointing at Foggy. “I’ll fuckin’ kill him if he hurts you.”
“. . .you actually have a shotgun, don’t you?” Foggy asks.
Wade is pointedly silent and Foggy smiles before he can help himself, stepping in to wrap his arms around him again and hold him close for a few moments until Wade hugs him back aggressively, maybe straining a couple of Foggy’s ribs.
“Daddy,” he says, a little petulant.
Foggy kisses him on the cheek when they step back and Wade gives him a sad look.
“One last ride?” he asks.
“. . .one more night,” Foggy agrees. “Unless Matt doesn’t actually want me, in which case we should revisit this.”
“That’s incredibly offensive but I’ll consider it,” Wade says, without a hint of offense in his voice. “Now, carry me to bed like I’m your beautiful bride.”
His attempt to leap into Foggy’s arms just ends with both of them on the kitchen floor and a twinge in Foggy’s back but they make it to bed eventually.
*
This is the worst idea that Foggy’s ever had and Foggy has obviously made some choices to make it to where he currently is, climbing up Matt Murdock’s fire escape in the middle of the night. He’s so winded by the time he actually makes it to Matt’s window that he has to sit down and catch his breath for ten minutes, at which point Matt comes to his window and asks, “. . .Foggy?”
“I can break and enter, too,” Foggy says, still wheezing.
“Your heart’s going crazy,” Matt says. “You should’ve just used the front door.”
“I’m making a statement, Murdock,” he replies, lurching to his feet. “I’m coming inside.”
He swats Matt away when he tries to help him through the window and only hurts himself mostly before he’s standing in front of Matt.
“Deadpool kissed me last night,” he says.
Matt’s curious, confused face flashes briefly to anger.
“Congratulations,” he says, breathing out sharply and turning away.
“He’s a good kisser,” Foggy says, stepping forward to touch Matt’s cheek. “You would think too much tongue and—like, groping, right? But no—it was kind of just—”
He leans up to kiss Matt softly, stroking fingers through his hair.
“Oh,” Matt breathes, shakily.
“I don’t want him, Matt,” Foggy says. “Not like I want you.”
“You want me?” Matt asks, softly.
“. . .how could you not have known?” Foggy asks. “You can smell feelings.”
“. . .no, I can’t,” Matt says, laughing. “Foggy, you want me?”
Foggy takes a moment to look at Matt’s face—cautious and excited and scared.
“Yeah, Murdock,” he says. “What’re you gonna do about it?”
Before Foggy realizes it, he’s pinned down on Matt’s mattress and Matt is grinning down at him, sleep-mussed hair, no visible bruises, looking for the world like the last part that Foggy needs to put his life back together.
“Whatever you want, daddy,” Matt says and Foggy laughs, surprised.
“Just you, Matty,” he says, reaching up to pull Matt into a kiss. “Just you.”
*
“Who’re you texting?” Matt mumbles, half asleep and curled around Foggy with his head resting on his chest.
“My best friend,” Foggy says, finishing a text to May about getting laid before he tosses his phone on the bed and wraps his arms around Matt to pull him closer.
Matt makes an offended noise.
“Excuse me?” he says, around a yawn, lifting his head.
“You got knocked out of the spot, Murdock,” Foggy says, smiling. “You’ll have to climb your way back up. Gotta earn it.”
Matt yawns again and buries his face in Foggy’s neck, mumbling, “I’ll blow you in the morning.”
“That’s a start,” Foggy says, but Matt’s already snoring.