Work Text:
1.
“Is it just me or has Matt been rocking a face lately?” Karen asks surreptitiously as she flicks through the Allende case file for the third time this morning. Foggy glances at the closed door of Matt’s office and knows that Matt can totally hear them if he’s so inclined to try. There’s a wrinkle of annoyance Foggy’s can never keep smooth when he thinks about all the conversations Matt’s overheard that Foggy thought were private. It’s easier now, to remind himself that Matt tries not. Matt says he has to focus now to listen through walls, that he spends most of his time tuning it all out. “I’d go crazy otherwise,” he’d explained with a mirthless grin and Foggy thinks the world would be better if it could just hand out an instructions manual when it’s giving out superpowers.
“You mean the devastatingly handsome one the good Lord saw fit to equip him with? Yeah I’ve noticed.” Karen rolls her eyes, snapping the folder closed.
“No—I mean—have you seriously not noticed? He’s got this like,” she waves the manila folder in front of her face. Then she covers the upper half of her face and lets her jaw go a little slack, mouth soft and just a little upturned. Foggy laughs.
“What is that?” Karen huffs, “It’s the full facial equivalent of cow eyes.”
Foggy laughs harder.
Karen slaps him with the Allende file. “Don’t be an ass. You know what I mean.”
And the thing is Foggy really doesn’t. He’s had years to get to know Matt’s face: The crease between his brows when he’s reading Marshall, the swift flick of his grin before he laughs, the particular shade of red he turns when he’s really drunk. Foggy’s seen Matt’s face when he’s single and he’s seen him when he’s dating and nothing Foggy’s ever seen would he think to describe as cow eyes. Even at the heights of his turbulent relationship with the politician’s daughter during their law school days, Foggy doesn’t think he ever saw Matt as anything less than totally together. Matt’s too cool for school like that.
He doesn’t tell Karen any of that, on the grounds that he’s still laughing pretty hard.
“What’s so funny?” Karen turns pink at the sight of Matt in Foggy’s doorway. Foggy chokes on exactly nothing and his laughter fail spirals into a coughing fit. Matt has the grace to look a little guilty for scaring ten years off their lives.
“Sorry I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Yeah bud, gonna get you a bell or something. You’re—” a freaking ninja “crazy quiet. Like a cat.”
“We’ll have to check if we have enough in the budget for that.”
“We don’t.” Karen chirps, but she’s pointing at her face and jerking her thumb in Matt’s direction. Foggy fights the urge to drop his head in his hands, he doesn’t want to give Matt anything else to pick up on. “I’m gonna get this faxed.” Karen says by way excusing herself, gesturing at Matt one more time before retreating back into the front of the office. “What was that about?” Matt asks, dropping into the folding chair set up across Foggy’s desk. Foggy clears his throat and gets ready to regale Matt with the tale of Karen’s wild speculation when— Matt’s turns to face the direction of Foggy’s voice, gives Foggy an opportunity to study him before he launches into his story. Matt needs to shave, his facial hair edging closer to grizzly man levels of beard, but his face is easy, relaxed in a way Foggy hadn’t realized had gone missing. His mouth is just beginning to curl, a precursor to a full smile. And he doesn’t look any different than he has any other time Foggy’s seen him since that initial meeting, once the tidal wave of holy shit he’s beautiful calmed into holy shit Matt’s great. Foggy never actually gets around to the part of the story where Karen walked into his office, it’s too easy to get into a conversation about how the bail bondsman downstairs is totally selling ferrets out of their office. Neither of them is particularly bothered. Besides, Foggy thinks to himself, Matt probably heard it all anyway.
2.
One Monday Foggy finds a Hershey bar in his desk drawer.
On Wednesday there’s a Twix. On Saturday when he decides to put in a few hours because they’ve actually picked up not one, but two clients (and Ms. Morales can pay) his stapler is framed by cookies n’ cream kisses in shiny silver wrappers.
“This you?” Foggy asks Karen the following Monday when he's unearthed a Snickers in his junk drawer. (Matt would say they’re all junk drawers, which Foggy takes offense to. He just applies all his excellent organization skills to Matt’s office and the hundreds of braille labels he helped Karen stick around the office. Matt argues there’s no reason for the light switch to be labeled but Foggy’s just doing his due diligence. “That’s not—” “Due diligence buddy.”)
“You know we have rats.” Karen scolds, after she shamelessly accepts half of Foggy’s candy bar, “You should be careful with this.” Foggy would rather pretend he doesn’t still occasionally hear scampering little feet in the ceiling and takes his investigation elsewhere.
“Do you need a favor?” he asks Matt after washing his hands and drinking two cups of the battery acid Karen calls coffee in a valiant effort to disguise sugar and nougat. Someday he’ll be able to eat a pastrami sandwich without freaking out that Matt will know the exact brand of mustard he used but that day’s still a ways coming. Matt dislodges his ear bud, head tilted not quite towards the door. “Are you offering?” he answers with a pleased grin that means he thinks he’s being clever.
Foggy rolls his eyes. “I’m rolling my eyes.”
Matt chuckles.
“I just dropped by to say if you’re leaving the candy: Thanks. But Karen thinks we’re practically inviting the rats back. And, not that I’m complaining, you know I’ll never turn down a Kit-Kat but, um, why? If you’re working your way up to asking me to be your one call I think we’re passed that point.” So passed that point. That point is a small, rapidly diminishing dot on the horizon now. The fact that they are here, right now, is a testament to that. Foggy shifts his weight back and forth, suddenly aware of how still he’s holding himself. Matt smiles, but it’s small, uncomfortable, the same smile he gives Foggy’s mom when she asks if he’s been taking care of himself when he's really been surviving on day old pizza and black coffee. “Oh, I uh—I made sure there weren’t any rats.” The lighting in Matt’s office is terrible and his light’s off—Matt goes whole days without turning it on at all—but Foggy catches the twitch of Matt’s fingers over the edge of his braille reader. “That’s cool,” Foggy says, and he has to measure the words before they rush out altogether. “Cool. Totally cool. Keep the candy coming. I’ll keep up my end. All-star team like us, we’ve got those rats beat.”
Matt raps his knuckles against his desk, exhaling a little before he starts. “Yeah that’s us. All star-team.”
3.
The upside-downside-upside of Matt the-one-man-polygraph Murdock is that Foggy doesn’t have to lie about his feelings regarding Daredevil.
He can make fun of the horns and the red leather of it all and shrug his shoulder and say, “Guess the guy’s not half-bad,” when Brett tells him about yet another criminal left behind the station for the police to arrest. And when Matt comes into the office favoring his left side or trying (and failing) to hide a limp or with blood collecting under the skin of his check, swollen and tender to look at, Foggy can tell him he needs to be careful, please just—try man and know that Matt knows how badly Foggy needs Matt to try. Because Foggy believes in the law, he does, but he’ll never forget the sight of Elena in the morgue, washed grey by the overhead lights either. Matt believes in what he does and even when Foggy doesn’t, when Foggy can’t believe in the symbol he’s turning himself into for the sake of the city, Foggy knows now, he’ll always believe in Matt.
It’s what took him to the gym that night when he realized Matt would never approach him on his own, what kept him in the office when he thought their awkward silences would strangle them both. Unfortunately it’s not enough to keep him from taking a swing at Daredevil with a discarded pipe. In Foggy’s defense, it is pretty fucking dark in the, Christ, abandoned warehouse these assholes dragged him to. Trying to scare him off the Myer case as if this were a gritty crime drama. How the fuck is this his life?
Luckily Daredevil’s crazy-cool reflexes are a matter of fact and he stops the pipe before Foggy does anything impressive. “Oh fuck your hand.” Foggy yelps, voice hoarse, and he drops the pipe with a hollow ring on the cement floor. Daredevil doesn’t even flinch, just grabs for Foggy’s arm and runs his palm down to Foggy’s elbow. “Are you alright?” he asks, and he sounds terrible, voice ragged in Foggy’s ears.
Not even remotely Foggy doesn’t say. Daredevil can probably hear it anyway.
His head is killing him and his shoulder hurts and that pipe was pretty friendly with Foggy’s knee before the goons in question went off to investigate the sounds of a disturbance downstairs. (If Foggy hadn’t been trying his hardest not to puke he would have cackled. What a rookie mistake.) But in that single second Daredevil isn’t the mask he’s wearing—wow those horns don’t get any better up close—he’s Matt, coiled tight but already starting to unravel.
“Could be worse.” Foggy half-wheezes and Matt doesn’t say anything, just listens, and then he nods. Just like that he’s gone, slipped back beneath the murky surface and the Devil takes his place.
“We have to move.”
It hurts to walk even with Daredevil there to help support most of his weight and Foggy’s pretty sure they didn’t bust his knee cap or anything but he’s also pretty sure he’s going to need a doctor. “You have to go.” He says once they’ve put some distance between themselves and the waterfront. (Mental note: first thing tomorrow Foggy’s investing in rundown riverside property he can rent out to the criminal element. There is definitely a market for it apparently). “I’m gonna call the cops and they’re gonna call the paramedics and then the hospital’s gonna call Matt.” Foggy’s gonna want Matt.
Daredevil tenses besides him and there’s a solid second where Foggy thinks he’s going to argue, that he’s going to drag him through the city and leave him on the stoop for some good Samaritan to find. Or god, up a fire escape to Claire’s apartment. Not that Claire isn’t wonderful, because she is, Foggy’s shared a few cups of coffee with her by now. He knows she’s got steady hands and a good heart, but Foggy’s going to want the best drugs his health plan will get him not just whatever Claire’s been able to appropriate this week for her scarily impressive first-aid kit. “I’ll take you another block over, you can wait for the cops there.” And he does.
Foggy leans against the exposed brick wall of the alley while they’re waiting, watches the Man in the Mask leaning back in the shadows. And there’s that glimpse of Matt again, in the weary slope of his shoulders, the unhappy furling of his mouth. “Those guys back there,” Foggy starts, his heart pounding inside his ears, “The cops gonna need paramedics for them too?” Matt’s shoulders roll and he keeps head turned straight ahead. His hands hang limp at his sides, the illusion of ease (he doubts Matt remembers it now, almost hopes he doesn’t, how he’d swung and kicked and fought that night Foggy found him. He’s bared his blood-stained teeth and scratched the phone from Foggy’s hands when he’d tried to call the hospital). “Yes.” He says unapologetically, flexing the fingers of his left hand.
“Do we know who sent them?” Foggy asks, edging closer, even if moving feels like the worst idea. Matt hangs his head, and Foggy wants to touch him, just to make sure it’s really him in there underneath the shadows. “People say I can be very persuasive.”
Matty Foggy wants to say, are you going back out there tonight? Are you gonna be able to answer when they call? but that would be dumb, even here in the dark, so Foggy doesn’t say anything at all.
“Thank you.” He manages at last, because he’s officially joined ranks with Karen and Claire and the dozens of others plucked from harm’s way by Hell’s Kitchen very own vigilante. Maybe it was just a matter of time, like Foggy first feared when he found out what the mask was hiding, maybe being close to Matt will always mean falling in the line of fire for the Devil. Maybe one day Daredevil won’t be quick enough to stop the bad guys and someone won’t come back—but at least it isn’t today.Foggy will let that be enough for now.
“You never—” Daredevil starts, and he’s Matt there too, however much Foggy wishes he weren’t, “This is what I do.”
There’s the echoing song of sirens in the distance and before Foggy can say another word Daredevil’s gone and Matt with him.
“You’ve got a guardian angel looking out for you Nelson.” Brett says after the final doctor has given Foggy a beautiful painkiller and a green light to go home. “Those guys in the warehouse had record a mile long, battery, assault, arson, you name it, they’ve done it at least once.” Foggy’s mouth twists against his will and he’s surprised to hear himself giggle. He half expected to burst into tears. It’s been that kind of night. Brett sighs, “Alright, just sit tight then, your better half should be here soon.” The curtain rings clink along their rail and there’s a harried looking Matt, clutching the arm of a unfamiliar nurse, decked out in a grey Columbia hoodie Foggy gave him years ago.
Speak of the devil…
Foggy hiccups. Brett excuses himself with a half-fond, “Next time you get kidnapped Foggy, can you do it on my day off.” The nurse closes the curtain behind them and then it’s just Foggy and Matt behind the partition. Matt shuffles closer and his hesitation catches Foggy off guard after the spectacle of Daredevil earlier tonight. Matt reaches out a few steps away from the bed and Foggy takes his wrist in hand before he lets his hand drop. “Thanks for coming buddy.”
Matt shakes his head, pale behind his dark lenses (Foggy doesn’t wonder that Matt hid everything he did for as long as he did now, those glasses are as effective as any mask), breaks free of Foggy’s grasp in order to pat the back of his hand. “C’mon Foggy. Let’s get you home.”
This is what I do Daredevil said in the alley, but Foggy likes what Matt does better.
4.
Claire is the living embodiment of exhaustion when she answers the door for Foggy. Not that he blames her. It’s a quarter to four on a Thursday morning, the whole stinking day still ahead of them, and she’s got blood drying brown on the cuff of her sweater.
Foggy makes a note to buy her a new one (for her birthday or Christmas or Saturday. Foggy could buy her a sweater for everyday of the week for the rest of her life and still be in her debt). For now Foggy hands her a box of Krimpets he snatched off his counter before racing out the door. He doesn’t know if it’s better or worse than the orange he brought last time he was here, but Claire manages a thin smile when she takes the box for him.
“He wasn’t really in a state for mediating the pain away so I gave him something.”
Foggy sighs, the anxiety of the last twenty minutes dropping off into something like relief when Matt comes into view. The suits gone, nothing more than a lumpy pile on the floor, the horned cowl discarded on Claire’s coffee table and makeshift nurse's station. It seems to scowl at Foggy the closer he gets. The man in question is half-slouched, half-sprawled at one end of Claire’s couch, his arm bandaged and a new trail of Claire’s impeccable stitches traverse the curve of his shoulder. Foggy already knows it wasn’t the case, but he really hopes Claire gave him something before she did her thing.
“Hey man.” Foggy says, soft and careful, toying with the strap of the gym bag slung over his shoulder. He unceremoniously dumps the contents of the bag on the vacant end of Claire’s couch—a fleece-lined hoodie and sweat pants, Matt’s ancient sneakers. He starts stuffing the costume into the gym bag, imagines tossing the whole thing in the river and being done with it. Then he remembers Matt used to fight crime looking like the Dread Pirate Roberts. Fuck.
Matt jerks his head towards Foggy’s voice, eyes searching, searching, like he can’t quite pinpoint Foggy’s location. “Foggy?” His voice is rough, from disuse or strangulation, who the fuck knows anymore. Both are possible. Matt moves his hand over the empty couch cushion, the knuckle of his middle finger split, and Foggy stops what he’s doing long enough to reach back. Matt’s wrist is solid under Foggy’s fingertips, his skin warm over the knobby bone. Matt’s hand turns over beneath Foggy’s, closes almost painfully around Foggy’s fingers.
He can hear Claire moving around in her kitchen, the rumble of water in the building’s pipes that doesn’t require super hearing to pick up. He wonders what it sounds like to Matt now, stitched together and stoned out of his mind on Claire’s couch.
“C’mon dude, we gotta get out of Claire’s hair, your bed awaits.”
“Foggy I—” Matt stops short, swallows like he just remembered it was an option. When he starts again he drops his voice to a whisper, all his syllables end in a faint hiss. “Foggy I need to tell you something but you can’t—it’s a secret okay.”
“Sure Matt.” Foggy answers, already working on a strategy to get Matt into his clothes—which, y’know, good one universe—and Matt sort of tips over, would overbalance all together if it weren’t for Foggy propping him back up. “Foggy, Foggy,” Matt half-chants, reminds Foggy of Matt after five too many drinks back in school, tipsy and loose-limbed, leaning heavy against Foggy’s side. Matt reaches over with his free hand, palm up, an unconditional surrender.
He can’t be, Foggy tells himself, he can’t seriously—but then he does, he touches Foggy’s face, palm curving over his cheek, thumb just under his eye. His hand is warm, so warm, and it is on Foggy’s face. It’s just a little sweaty, which should be grosser, probably, but Foggy’s heart is racing inside his chest and he’s too busy hoping Matty’s too far gone to listen in to be bothered by it. Matt strokes his cheek and Foggy is genuinely surprised he doesn’t squeak.
“Foggy,” Matt repeats, like it’s the only word he has left. His eyes are still moving, like he’s still searching for Foggy even now, and it makes Foggy squeeze their linked hands. “I—”
There’s a bang from the kitchen that sends Matt lurching to his feet. He practically tears Foggy’s arm out of its socket when he goes.
“¡Coño! You stupid piece of shit.” Claire’s voice dissolves into a hiss of Spanish and profanity. Matt’s breathing is hard, his chest rising and falling with every quick inhale, and Foggy can’t. He literally cannot. “Um,” He clears his throat. “I think Claire’s lost another fight with her coffee maker. We should totally get her one. Y’know, as like a hostess present. Or something.” He doesn’t know how to touch Matt right now, not with the phantom feel of his hand still lingering on Foggy’s face. Foggy balls up the spare clothes and presses them into Matt’s hands. “Get dressed bud, we should hit the road before she starts threatening it with her potato peeler again.” Matt blinks down at the clothes in his hands and Foggy feels a little bit like an ass, but the shaky breathless feeling from before is still there, just as irresponsible, impractical, and impossible as it was back in school when Matt took his face in hand the first time. Nothing’s changed, Foggy tells himself. Except everything that has, Foggy remembers.
He sighs. To think he could have been a butcher.
5.
Foggy’s list of Shit I Never Expect to See is getting shorter by the minute.
Aliens in Manhattan. Check.
Killer robots. Check.
Matt Murdock in his doorway holding a bunch of sunflowers. Check, check, check.
“Did someone die?” Foggy asks instead of hello, but Matt doesn’t laugh, doesn’t say anything. He just smiles nervously. And hold the flowers out for Foggy to take. Matt is offering Foggy flowers and no one is even dead. Will wonders never cease? Foggy takes them because he would be a dick to leave Matt hanging. And maybe he sniffs them too, because it would be rude not to, these flowers gave their lives so that someone could appreciate them. It’s not their fault that lot has fallen to Foggy in this weird alternative universe of his life where Matt loses whatever is left of his sanity and gives him flowers.
Matt jumps a little, a barely visible jolt that runs through his whole body, like he’s remembering something important. “I thought you’d like them.” Matt says, “Sunflowers…I remember they’re pretty cheerful. Right?” He actually ducks his head, sheepish, and Foggy never really thought much of sunflowers one way or another, but they’re rapidly moving up another list he keeps. Best Things in the World.
“They are.” He answers, torn between staring at Matt and down at the flowers in his hand, “Yeah, no, they’re really nice Matt. Super happy.”
Matt nods, flushed pink. “Good. That’s good.” There’s a way too long pause between them. Foggy should probably ask Matt in, because god only knows what they look like to anyone coming down the hall, but his brain is still trying to retrace his steps to the beginning of this dream and surely any minute now Tom Hardy will descend from the ceiling to whisk him away.
“I wanted—” Matt says, “I know how lucky I am that you’re my friend. You’re a great friend Foggy.” The word lost it's sting for Foggy within minutes of earning it. There's never been such a thing as settling when it comes to Matt.
“Good to know I didn’t make us matching best friend bracelets for nothing, Murdock.” Foggy jokes, earns a weird not-quite-smile from Matt.
“Yeah, you’re my best friend. And I know that I almost ruined it when you—” Foggy is seconds from slapping his hand over Matt’s mouth to shut him up before he tells Mr. Wu in 8D that he is The Night or whatever, but Matt hasn’t made it this far by being that stupid. Arguably. “—found out I wasn’t always honest with you. I promised you the truth Foggy and I mean to be honest, I want to be honest with you. You matter to me. As a friend. And as more than that.” Matt stops short, and it’s nothing like he is in front of a jury or when he’s debating his way to victory. Foggy tightens his grip on his flowers. Somewhere in time a goatee rocking version of himself is falling over. This can’t be happening. “I want you to know—the quality of my intent—”
Foggy doesn’t mean to. He swears. This could be one of the greatest moments of his life, up there with getting into law school, kissing Sonia Bhakta in junior high and passing the bar. He's not trying to ruin whatever Matt came prepared to say. He just also can’t help himself.
Matt frowns. “When I was practicing this in my head you weren’t laughing.”
But Foggy can’t help it, hanging onto the door with his free hand and almost doubled over, laughter loud and deep. He even snorts a couple of time. His eyes are watering.
“Oh my God are you wooing me with Thurgood Marshall?”
Matt is definitely blushing. “I’m trying to ask you to dinner you asshole.” He grouses, his earlier nervousness fading into something familiar. He shrugs his shoulders, playful exasperation, but his smile is already starting to spread out, “I’ve been trying for months—”
Foggy is still trying to catch his breath. “Bullshit. Where the hell have I been for all this?”
Matt flaps his hands, “I’ll give you a play-by-by of my apparently flawed technique at a later date. Can I ask you to dinner or not?”
Foggy grins, at Matt, at the sunflowers, at Ms. Sanchez scurrying behind Matt’s back to make her way to her apartment. This is apparently happening. Even an inexplicable appearance by Tom Hardy couldn’t make this better. Except. “Yeah, we can discuss your complete lack of game over candlelight. Or—” Matt’s smile slips a little, his forehead creases.
“Or—”
“I could kiss you right now and we can order from Hamro’s.” Matt doesn’t need to be told twice. One second he’s in Foggy’s doorway the next he’s there, pressing Foggy into the door, flowers crushed between them. His stubble is rough beneath Foggy’s hand, but his mouth is gentle, warm and soft and Matt’s. It’s not the sort of kiss Foggy expected Matt would know how to give, but Matt’s wrecking all his expectations today.
Matt kisses Foggy like he’s been waiting for this,and now that he has it he doesn't want it to end.
Foggy breaks the kiss with a quiet chuckle, traces the line of Matt’s jaw, up to his ear, presses a quick kiss to the corner of Matt’ mouth and the laugh lines that live there. “You were pining.” Foggy crows, his heart doing a series of medically unsound acrobatics behind his ribs, but whatever, Matt’s not calling him out yet. “How could you be so smart and so dumb at the same time?” Foggy wonders aloud, tracing the shell of Matt’s ear and watching the red blush deepen further on Matt’s face. Foggy does it again. “What am I gonna do with you?”
Matt huffs a laugh, leans back in to drop another kiss on Foggy’s mouth, then one on his cheek, another just off his nose. “I trust you’ll think of something.” He whispers against Foggy’s ear, and okay, yeah, they need to get behind closed doors now. “I’ve got a few ideas.” Foggy answers, pushing at Matt’s shoulders long enough to maneuver them inside. Matt’s not the only one who’s been waiting.
"Oh." Matt pouts, mouth reddening already, eyes fallen down in the direction of Foggy's chest. "We killed your flowers." Foggy glances down at the mess of petals and pollen and leaves, his happy flowers scattered all over Foggy's sweater and the floor between his feet.
"That's okay." Foggy says slowly, sending a quick salute to his sunflowers, lost in the line of duty. "You can buy me some more."
He sets his ruined bouquet down on the nearest surface, throws the lock on the door. Matt closes the distance before the last tumbler has slipped into place. "I'll buy you the flower shop." He promises, so earnest Foggy doesn't doubt it for a second.
"Works for me." Foggy says. There's not much worth saying for a while after that.
The End