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Matt orders Foggy's favorite delivery for the office when Karen takes a personal day. Foggy is back, but they haven't spent much time together alone, none of the moving forward Matt mentioned in the gym, a glimmer of possibility he hadn't felt in too long. He'd accepted since putting on the mask that Foggy would leave if he found out, and he'd been terrified of Foggy leaving long before that. Foggy coming back, that was new data. Is new data, and it makes Matt want to see how far forward they can go, the two of them. If they can go as far as he's wanted for longer than he wants to admit.
Matt wants to try, so he makes the call and intercepts the delivery boy before he can knock so he can set the food out in the conference room.
“Oh God, we've got another pro bono client,” Foggy says the second he smells curry. “I appreciate that you're feeding me to remind me that you won't let me starve, but this screams bribery. You're a lawyer, can you not be more subtle?”
“It's not client bribery,” Matt says, though he can't help smiling. “I wanted to talk, though. I thought this might make it go a little easier.”
Foggy was sounding good-natured, if annoyed, but when he speaks again he sounds a lot more wary. “I think maybe we shouldn't take on cases related to your nighttime activities anymore, if that's what you want to talk about. I've been thinking about it. It might keep them from coming under as much review when … if—”
“I never meant the firm to get involved the first time,” Matt says, even though he wants to wince, and starts dividing the containers up by scent. It's easier than waiting for Foggy to do it, since he's still standing at the door to the conference room like he wants an escape route. “This isn't about that, though. Will you come in and sit down?”
“Is there a reason we couldn't have this conversation at one of our homes?” says Foggy, but he takes a step in. “Because I am nervous.”
Their apartments aren't neutral ground right now. Matt's is a reminder of their terrible fight to both of them, and he hasn't been brave enough to ask for an invitation to Foggy's when an invitation has never been necessary before. “Please don't be nervous. I just … I'd like to make sure that we're okay.”
“Oh, Matt.” Foggy's voice comes out choked-off and upset, but he doesn't deny it, and after a few more seconds he comes in and sits down next to Matt, just like normal. “We're okay. You can tell I'm telling the truth, right? We're still working on things, but I wouldn't be here if I didn't think we were going to be okay.”
“Watch your tenses, counselor, you're contradicting your own statements.”
The sound of Foggy's hair brushing his shoulders, a shake of the head. “I'm allowed to be kind of ambivalent. Are we okay from your end, Matt? I mean, I walked out on you. Maybe I was justified, but still. Kind of an asshole move.”
Matt frowns. He wasn't sure what would come from this conversation (he knows Foggy well enough to not bother trying to predict what he's going to say), but this is still unexpected. Maybe it shouldn't be. Matt sometimes forgets what a good lawyer Foggy is, beyond the academic memorization and interpretation. He knows how to read a witness, and how to cross-examine one. “I don't blame you. Besides, you came back.”
“Did you think I wouldn't?” Foggy asks, and he sounds so honestly surprised that Matt has to open one of his containers and take a few bites. It's an obvious stalling tactic, but Foggy lets him have it, just lets the silence spin out, on and on, until he gets an answer from the silence. “You thought I wouldn't.”
“I wouldn't have blamed you if you didn't.” Foggy or the devil. He'd always told himself that just meant he couldn't have Foggy as a boyfriend, but he was aware it could mean losing Foggy completely, if things went wrong. “But you're here, so everything is fine.”
“Jesus.” Matt wants to smile and tease him about his language, but he can smell salt, just a little. Tears, not quite ready to fall. No. That's not what he wants. “Yes, Matt, everything is fine.”
“I just want to make sure that you can trust me. That we can move on from this.” That maybe when they come back together, they'll come back different. “If curry helps, I'll order it every night.”
“Out of what paycheck, Murdock?” Foggy finally gets his containers open and starts picking through. He always takes apart mixes of things, eats them element by element, saves his favorites for last. “You want to curry favor—I hope you see what I did there, that's a good one—then get us some clients who can pay us and aren't evil. You're charming. I know you can.”
Foggy will want him to listen and take him seriously, because so few people understand when he is serious, through the joking. This is at least a way to start to reconcile Foggy and the devil. He's always thought he couldn't have both at once, not the way he wants them, but he's beginning to wonder if he should try. “We'll both try. I'm sure we can find someone. Perhaps I should start giving out business cards at night?”
“Yes, because the people you beat up are definitely the kind of people we want to be defending,” Foggy says, with his mouth full, but it's not as bitter as it could be. “There's still time to be those horrible lawyers who help their clients sue for everything.”
“If that's what you want.”
“Would you quit that?” Matt tilts his head, surprised. “Obviously that's not what I want, Matt. I want money, sure, I'm pretty fond of not living with my parents and having health insurance, but you get that I had the opportunity to bail on this any time I wanted, right? I'm not here under coercion or anything. I could have said 'no way, we'll hang out after work, I'm staying at L and Z' but here we are. I just want a couple paying clients along with the justice, that's all.”
Matt leans back in his chair and puts his fork down, considering. He knows Foggy has made his own choices about them, about all of this, but it still feels sometimes like Matt is dragging him along with him with no thought for Foggy's consent. “Then we'll find some paying clients. We have at least some reputation to start us out, now. Or we can always wait for the next time your cousin Stan gets arrested.”
“Harsh, but fair.” Foggy sighs, but he sounds like he's smiling. “I guess everyone's got that one cousin.”
“I don't.”
“Yeah, but Stan is basically yours by proxy, you couldn't take two.”
Matt swallows, taken off guard. Foggy calls him family all the time. It shouldn't be unusual or strange. It still matters more than it did a few weeks ago. “But if he's my family, that means I can't charge him.”
Foggy snorts and takes another bite of his lunch. “Au contraire, Aunt Kathy knows we're broke, she would insist on paying and then I'd have to do chores for her next time I'm home. And you'll end up reciting age-inappropriate literature for the kids like you always do while I sweat.”
Matt makes a note to memorize some fairy tales and some facts about astronauts for the next time he's told to entertain the Nelson children. “I could help you, if you'd prefer. Hand you tools. I can identify a screwdriver.”
“I bet you'd make a great plumbing assistant,” says Foggy, through a laugh. Matt grins. Foggy's laughter has always felt like a victory, if an easy one, and it's become even more so since he came back.
Foggy starts talking about spending a weekend with his family sometime soon and bringing Matt along so they can both have food and time with family, and Matt nods along even though it's been harder and harder to leave Hell's Kitchen since he put on the mask. He's willing to do a lot for Foggy. Something he already wants to do, something Foggy describes as family without a hint of hesitation, isn't even close to a hardship.
*
Foggy's favorite flowers are hollyhocks, because his mother has grown them in window boxes his whole life. Foggy doesn't know they're hollyhocks—he probably should, but he just calls them “Mom's window flowers” and points them out happily whenever he and Matt pass them while walking. Matt's the one who knows what they are, after asking Mrs. Nelson and taking careful note when she pressed one into his hand about just how it felt, just how it smelled when he crushed the petals in his hand. It's a beautiful flower.
Matt brings Foggy a planter box full of them one evening after smelling them out in front of a vendor's stall as he passed, and Foggy stands in his doorway for a long time. He must be staring, trying to put the picture together, wondering why Matt is at his apartment with flowers.
“They're Mom's window flowers,” he finally says. He's choked, and his heart is speeding up, and Matt tries not to get his hopes up. “I feel like I should be telling you that you don't have to sleep on the couch anymore. Do you want to come in?”
“Not if I'm interrupting.”
“You never are,” says Foggy, and it sounds a little more natural. He steps away from the door and takes the planter box from Matt as he enters. He must rub a few of the leaves, because there's a sudden rush of scent. “Not that I'm not grateful, these are great, but is there an occasion?”
“They were on sale. What color are they?”
“They're this really great vivid pink, a little darker in the centers. Not, like, Barbie packaging pink, you've got to remember that. A nicer pink.” Foggy walks a few more steps and puts them down on his table. It makes a few papers rustle. They aren't working on a case right now, so Matt's not sure what he's working on, but he must be working on something. Foggy likes to have something tangible in his hands to shuffle through when he's researching precedent and case law. “My windows aren't really conducive to having boxes of my own, but I can put it next to the window, anyway. Thank you, buddy.”
“I don't know if you want to keep plants alive, but it seemed a shame to get cut flowers.”
Foggy laughs, and he's filling a cup of water from the tap and bringing it over to the hollyhocks. “I've kept you fed and watered for half a decade, right? I can handle some flowers. I'll ask Mom how to take care of them, but I think I'll be okay. I had kind of a green thumb when we planted things in paper cups in elementary school, that's got to mean something.”
Matt can imagine it: Foggy, with a plot in a community garden, or on a rooftop if he moves to a better building, the strong smell of flowers and tomato plants, pollinators buzzing around, the smell of dew on plants at night when Matt comes home, and the sound of Foggy talking to the plants as he watered them in the mornings, because he will have read every article in existence on how talking to plants helps them grow. “You'll be a very good gardener.”
“I suspect you of making fun of me, but joke's on you, I'll decorate the office with flowers.” Foggy pauses and then walks back over to his kitchen, opens the refrigerator. He's staring at its contents, from what Matt can tell, not actually getting anything out. “You'll just have to tell me if anything smells too strong. Now, did you just come to deliver flowers, or are we having dinner?”
Matt wants to stay. It isn't part of his slow plan to show Foggy that Matt can give him something besides pain and worry, but it's part of their friendship. “That depends. What are you cooking?”
“I see how it is.” Foggy laughs again and starts getting something out of the fridge with a purpose now. A drawer opening and shutting—produce, he thinks from the placement, and it's confirmed by the rustle of a bag a second later. “You're lucky, Jen e-mailed me a great new Italian recipe the other day and I've got all the ingredients. I'll just have a few less leftovers if you're eating too.”
“If I'm not intruding, that sounds wonderful.”
“How would you be intruding? People who have spare keys are never intruding.” Foggy hums, hunting for something, and then there's the snap of a rubber band, him putting his hair up before he cooks, a habit he says he got working shitty food service jobs in undergrad. “Now, tell me about buying the flowers while I cook.”
It's not much of a story, but Matt exaggerates the details as much as he can while he listens to the sound of Foggy chopping vegetables while the water in his pot comes to a boil. Foggy even laughs a few times, though it really isn't worth it. All it was was a kind older woman who seemed bemused when he stopped and went for the flowers and who directed him to the best box of them when he said they were for someone special, and he can't tell Foggy that part, not yet.
“They're really pretty hollyhocks,” Foggy says at the end of the night, when Matt is pleasantly full and lingering, wanting to do anything but put his mask on and go out.
“I knew you knew what they're called.”
Foggy just laughs at him and packs up half the leftovers to send home with him, and Matt leaves feeling more like he's been wooed than the opposite.
*
“It's late,” Matt says when they get their next client and promptly stay at the office until ten trying to get ahead on building the case they need. “I'll walk you home.”
Foggy pauses in stuffing papers into his briefcase. Matt would wince at the way they're crumpling, but they aren't his copies anyway, and Foggy always manages to be organized even when his papers have crinkles in them. “I figured you were going to head right off and do your extracurricular activities. Maybe even related to this case, I don't see how this one could be related to some shady crime kingpin but you're a magnet for trouble so I could be wrong. But either way, my apartment is out of your way.”
Matt doesn't go out every night (contrary to what he knows Claire and Foggy and even Father Lantom think, Matt knows that if he goes out every night he'll burn out, get so tired he misses something he should catch and end up dead for no purpose), but he does want to go tonight. “That doesn't mean I can't walk you home, though.”
“Oh God, I'm a damsel in distress.”
Foggy doesn't actually sound upset, but Matt frowns an apology anyway. “It's just as much to keep you company as it is to make sure that you're safe, if that helps.”
“And I probably would have worried a lot about you walking home from my place before,” Foggy says, slow. Matt's starting to recognize that tone. It's the one Foggy uses when he's having to reexamine some aspect of his relationship with Matt, frame it differently now that he knows about Matt's abilities. Matt hates it. “If you're sure I wouldn't be keeping you from something more important, sure, walk me home.”
“You're important,” says Matt. It's the truth. He tries not to lie to Foggy these days.
Foggy takes a minute to answer, long enough to get his briefcase packed and closed. His heartbeat is a little fast, but it's hard to say why, especially when all he has to say to that is “Okay, then. Let's get going, or you won't get out of your apartment till midnight.”
Matt falls into step next to Foggy easily once they get into the street, holding his arm, and Foggy's intake of breath, probably the start of an apology for guiding him unnecessarily, makes him shake his head. “I don't mind you guiding me, or worrying about me. I worry about you too, and the guiding helps, with things like traffic lights especially.”
“But.”
“But what?”
“I don't know, that just seems like the kind of statement that comes with a huge 'but' attached to it.” Matt shakes his head, but Foggy makes a displeased, thoughtful sound, and doesn't speak for half a block. “It has to feel shitty knowing everyone is worrying about the wrong things. Hell, I feel shitty that I was worrying about the wrong things. Did you ever want to punch me for telling you not to fall in a manhole? You can probably see one from way farther away than I can.”
“Sense, not see,” Matt corrects. “I'm still blind, Foggy. I never wanted to punch you, but I hated that you thought I would lie about that, of all things. If I had the chance to make people stop feeling sorry for me, I would have taken it.”
“Ouch. Touche.” Matt opens his mouth to apologize, but Foggy shakes his head. “No, don't, okay, that was completely fair and for what it's worth I'm sorry about that. I was pissed off and not really thinking and I shouldn't have said it. Or thought it.”
Matt sighs and walks a few more steps. “I didn't mean to have this conversation, I'm sorry. I just thought it would be nice to walk home together at the end of the night.”
“Probably kind of necessary, honestly. We're still figuring shit out. You were the one who said it. A way to move forward, right?”
It doesn't mean anything, only that the phrasing stuck in Foggy's head, for some reason, but Matt still has to swallow before he can answer. “Right. I'd say we're not doing a bad job at it, so far. Especially now that we have another client.”
Foggy's step immediately lightens, his back straightening, even though they've been working on the case for hours now. “Man, a countersuit,” he says, sounding dreamy. “We might even be able to let Karen stop living off her Union Allied hush money if we can get that off the ground.”
Matt laughs and they talk about the case the rest of the way to Foggy's building, tossing ideas back and forth like they're in law school again, helping each other even when they weren't assigned to team projects because at some point it became second nature to work together. “Thank you for letting me walk you home,” he says when they get to the steps to Foggy's building. He won't ask to come up, because then he won't get out at all, and he's heard sirens three times on their walk. Foggy and the devil. He's still learning the balance.
Foggy hugs him, and for once it's a surprise. “Thank you for walking me,” says Foggy, and his voice is a little low, a little rasp behind it, and for a dizzy second Matt wonders, until he pulls away, moves to the bottom step so he would have to lean down, if Matt were to kiss him. “I'll see you tomorrow morning, okay? Be safe. I'll bring coffee, for you and me and Karen.”
“I'll try. And I'll look forward to the coffee,” says Matt, and shifts his grip on his cane so he can start walking home.
He doesn't hear the door on Foggy's building open until he's most of the way down the block.
*
The three of them go to Josie's a few nights later, after a first meeting with opposing counsel goes better than they could have hoped.
Karen is laughing more than she has since Fisk was arrested, trying to dance to the music Matt is fairly sure Josie picks specifically so people can't dance to it. Foggy keeps warning her that he's recording it, leaning his arms against Matt's shoulder so he can get a steadier picture.
Matt just smiles and takes sips of his liquor (sometimes, at Josie's, it's best not to allow himself to get any more specific than that) and leans into Foggy's touch, glad when Foggy finally puts away the phone when Karen sits back down but doesn't move away at all. They don't move apart for the rest of the evening, even when Karen and Josie get into a friendly argument about city statutes that Matt can't begin to follow and Foggy keeps laughing over.
Karen is the first one to leave, complaining that they're terrible influences and someone in the office needs to be awake and not yawning in the morning, but they aren't far behind her.
They're tipsy more than drunk, and Foggy doesn't ask where they should go, just starts leading Matt toward his apartment. Matt doesn't want to ask if Foggy intends to stay or not.
“I love Josie's,” Foggy says a few yards on, expansive and happy. “It always makes me think of the night we decided to do this. You know what I mean?”
“Yes.” Though he suspects they remember it for different reasons. Matt remembers Foggy drawing on a napkin and the two of them committing to Nelson and Murdock, but he remembers other things as well: mentioning wedding vows, unable to resist, and the way Foggy's heartbeat was so light and fast, and how it was the only night where the timing ever seemed right for Matt to confess and kiss him and take him home, before he remembered the fresh bruises on his ribs and gave up, decided that he could have Foggy in his bed or the devil but not both.
“You've been quiet all night. Is there extracurricular stuff going on?”
“You know how suspicious that sounds, don't you?”
“What else am I supposed to call it?” Foggy elbows him gently, and Matt doesn't bother pretending to be thrown off-course. “Seriously, Matt. If something's wrong, you have to tell me. Otherwise Karen and I are going to get involved again, you know how our luck is.”
“Nothing is wrong. Most of what I'm dealing with is small-time, nothing that will touch Nelson and Murdock. I've just been thinking about Josie's too. There are a lot of good memories there.”
“Someday I'm going to convince Josie to fall madly in love with me so I can hang around all the time and not have to spend so much money.”
“Good to know you have priorities.”
“Don't worry, buddy, you and Karen will drink free too.”
“We'd have to, Nelson and Murdock wouldn't make much money with one of its name partners abandoning ship to co-own a bar.”
“You underestimate my ability to multitask. Plus, my blushing bride might be willing to invest.” Foggy's trying to sound serious, but the laughter is leaking out anyway, either from trying to imagine marrying Josie or imagining Josie even considering investing in a law firm, much less their law firm. “Come on, Matt, you don't sometimes fantasize about marrying some—someone who could keep you in the style to which you'd like to become accustomed?”
“Not really.” Matt lets himself tighten his grip on Foggy's arm.
“What do you fantasize about? Claire? You kind of never talked about her, after I met her.”
“No, Claire and I … the timing wasn't right.” He wished it was, but it wasn't, and he's almost grateful for it. He wouldn't have regretted being with her for as long as she wanted, he knows that, but now there's Foggy and the possibility of something he's been wanting on and off for longer than he wants to admit. “But right now, you're my priority, rebuilding something. I can worry about anything else later.”
“Oh my God, you're terrible,” says Foggy, and Matt's throat goes tight with panic before he continues “I'm trying to joke around and you're being all sincere. Either you are drunker or way more sober than I am.”
Matt relaxes. “I'm not sure either. Probably more sober. I usually am.”
“Those are accusations that I would offer fisticuffs for if I were not so drunk, so yeah, you're probably right.” Foggy taps his arm, making sure Matt waits for a car to pull out in front of them, and then waits a second too long after it's out of their way. “Matt?” Matt nods, and Foggy starts walking again. “You're my priority too. None of this is one-sided. I'm paying attention to how much you're trying, and I'm trying too.”
Some of it is one-sided. “Then we'll be fine.”
“We're always fine, buddy,” says Foggy. “Now come on, you can probably see better than I can at this time of night, any obstacles ahead? Hey, we should do trust games or something, let you steer me around the city while I'm blindfolded.”
“That sounds like a disaster in the making, if only because people would talk.”
Foggy laughs. “You're no fun. I think it could work out. I mean, not tonight, I'm not exactly at the top of my game, but we will make this happen. Nelson and Murdock company picnic, Karen and I can do a three-legged race, you can be sole contestant in the potato-sack race. And then we'll figure out how to play softball with three people. You can pitch.”
What, and you'll catch? Matt doesn't say. It's not the right time, and those definitely aren't the right words. “You might want to wait until we have a few more clients and perhaps some employees for that. We can make it a long-term goal.”
For the rest of the walk home, Matt is treated to Foggy rambling about writing out a list of goals for Nelson and Murdock, and how the second item (the first being paying clients on a regular basis) is going to be a softball team. Matt laughs and asks about the third item and lets Foggy leave him at the door to his building, since he's sobered up enough that he should make it home safe.
“Thanks for last night,” Foggy says the next morning, clapping Matt on the shoulder as he enters the office. “I really needed a night out with you guys.”
“Anytime,” says Matt, even if that's something he can't really promise. Foggy must know that, but he still sounds like he's smiling for the next five minutes straight.
*
“Chocolate?” Foggy sounds bemused. “This is the expensive shit too, Matt, are we celebrating something?”
“No.” Matt keeps holding the package out. It took a while to identify in the store, because the chocolates were always the parts of his mother's care packages Foggy hoarded, so he couldn't exactly ask about the brand, but they seem to be the right ones. “I smelled them in the store and thought of you.”
“What, me and not Karen?”
Karen, across the office, laughs, a little high and nervous. “No, I am not involved in this, I'm going to make a few copies of those forms from yesterday and you two can figure this out.”
“There's nothing to figure out.” Matt keeps holding out the chocolates. “You don't need to be suspicious, Foggy. It's just chocolate.”
“Thanks.” Foggy finally takes them, hand brushing Matt's as he does. “Grandpa George always had these at his place, always gave me one when I did well at school. Honestly, probably half the reason I became a lawyer.”
“The other half being the butcher thing?” Karen asks, passing with papers rustling in her hands, and Foggy laughs and turns away from Matt.
It's still not the right time, but it's at least a little bit closer.
*
Matt invites Foggy over to his apartment on a Friday night and makes soup. It's the one kind of dinner he's reliably good at making, because it doesn't require constant attention and he can usually tell easily if it's missing something and what it's missing.
Foggy brings bread from the market and eats and makes sounds like he's enjoying it, but he's tense the whole night. Matt can feel the way his leg is jigging up and down under the table.
“Okay,” Foggy says, after two bowls of soup and groaning at Matt when he mentions ice cream too late for Foggy to pace himself. Even the one word sounds like he's speaking to a witness or a jury, too serious for the way Matt thought the night was going, and Matt's throat goes tight. He doesn't think Foggy will walk out again, but suddenly he's not sure. “I have to ask.”
“What?”
“Food, flowers, walking me home … I never thought this is a question I would need to ask you, but Matt, are you courting me?”
Matt can't really breathe well enough to answer for most of a minute, and he spends the whole time in agony because Foggy's heartbeat is fast and Matt can't tell why, if he's excited or upset or something else completely. For all he's been trying to show his interest and see how far it can go, he hasn't figured out how to say it. “Should I be?”
“Come on, Matt, you can evade a question way better than that if you put your mind to it.”
If he says no, Foggy will never mention it again. If he says yes, Foggy might say no. If he says no, Foggy won't have the opportunity to say yes if he wants to, and Matt knows how game theory works. Sometimes greater risk allows for greater reward. “It seemed like it might finally be time to try.”
“Finally,” Foggy says, and then “God, finally” in a completely different tone, and then they're both standing up, Matt stumbling over his chair in his desire to get the table out from between them.
This part, Matt has thought about perhaps a little too much. He's wanted Foggy for years, on and off, and he's imagined it more than a few times, climbing into a bed with Foggy, pressing him against a wall, and kissing him until neither of them could breathe. Now that he might finally get that, he fumbles with the collar of Foggy's shirt when he grabs for it and pulls Foggy in, clumsy, both of them bumping against a corner of the table. It smarts, but Matt forgets about it in an instant because Foggy is kissing him.
Foggy tastes of ice cream and soup and mint and his mouth is soft when it opens under Matt's, and he grips on Matt's elbow like he's going to lead him somewhere after a second of his arm flailing in the air. He's good at kissing. He knows just what pace Matt wants to go at and he meets him there, breathing into the kiss, their mouths making little wet noises as they move together until Matt finally pulls away to get a full lungful of air.
“Thank you for not doing this before I found out about everything,” says Foggy, and he sounds just as breathless as Matt feels. “That would have sucked.”
“I couldn't. I thought about it, but I didn't.”
“So, like I said, thanks.” Foggy puts his other hand on Matt's shoulder. “Are we doing this? I kind of skipped that step, but maybe we should talk about it. Not just making out, boyfriend stuff. We can try to schedule it around your vigilante activities.”
Matt swallows, because he should have guessed this, that Foggy would take everything out of his hands once he caught on, turn it all around until it made sense to both of them. That's what Foggy does. “That is what I'd like, yes. I wouldn't want this to be just kissing or sex.”
“But you do want those things too.”
Matt kisses him, because he wants to and because it seems like the most efficient way to answer that question, and only allows himself a few minutes to get lost in Foggy this time. “Yes. I'd like anything you're willing to give me.”
“Not completely what I asked, but I get where you're coming from. Okay.” Foggy's breathing and his voice are both a little shaky. He's more nervous now than he was when he first kissed Matt. “Do you want me to stay, or do you want me to go home?”
Foggy smells like arousal. Matt doesn't need their hips pressed together to know he's getting hard, and Matt isn't far behind him. “I'd like you to stay.”
“Thank God, masturbation is great but I'd kind of like to try something else.”
Matt laughs and leans forward enough to rest his forehead against Foggy's shoulder. They've always touched, always been physically close, but this feels different. “Let me put away the soup and the ice cream before it melts on my counter, and we can try anything you want.”
“Anything I want,” says Foggy, and his voice evens out again as he touches Matt's face, encourages him to look up and leans in again. “I like the sound of that.”
They'll have to talk again later. Matt wants to make sure this doesn't go wrong, that he won't give Foggy a reason to leave again.
That's later, though. Their hearts are speeding up in fits and starts and Matt kisses him and listens to Foggy's breathing stutter.
*
Foggy doesn't stop touching him.
They're clumsy, together. They run into doorways on the way to the bedroom, trip on nothing trying to get into the bed, and Matt gets his shirt caught on his glasses trying to take it off, but it's easy to laugh about it when it's Foggy right there with him, complaining that Matt is going to elbow him in the face and they're going to have to explain the bruises to Karen because he's delicate.
When they're naked and in the bed, Foggy is the first one to stop laughing, and he's so suddenly sober that it makes Matt tense up, worried. Foggy doesn't stop touching him, though, just skates his hands over bruises and scars, breathing fast.
“I'm fine,” says Matt, when Foggy returns to one of his worse scars, one of the ones Claire stitched the night he fought Nobu and Foggy found out. “I'm here.”
It takes just a little too long for Foggy to answer. “Well. I guess to make sure you don't get hurt, you're going to have to be on top of me.”
Matt only has enough time to register Foggy's voice lightening before Foggy grabs him and pulls him up and over, Matt moving easily until he can straddle Foggy's hips and bend to kiss him, and oh, that's good, Foggy smiling and soft underneath him, letting Matt keep him there. Matt is already sensitive, already shuddering, so when Foggy reaches for his chest he traps Foggy's hands between them and moves against him instead.
“What do you want?” Foggy asks, his voice several tones lower, and Matt kisses him just for the sound. “No, come on, use your words.”
Matt wants everything. He's imagined this a hundred times but never thought to consider what he might want to do first. Foggy is hard against him, though, and he smells amazing, and Matt says “I'll blow you” before he can second guess himself, and listens to Foggy's pulse jump.
“Oh God. So much for Daredevil not killing people,” says Foggy, and any other time Matt might wince, but Foggy's voice is high and strangled and Matt can smell how sharp his arousal gets. He wants it.
Matt still wants to do everything at once, but he has a focus now, enough of one that he can let go of Foggy's hands and start moving down the bed, feeling Foggy as he goes, using his hands and his mouth, mapping him out. There's the raised edge of a scar from where he was hurt in the bombings, a mole or two, scattered hair. His skin is softer than Matt expects, and he doesn't know how long he stays, but it's long enough for Foggy to make an impatient noise and then groan when Matt grins against his stomach.
“Matt, listen to me, you can definitely tell I'm not lying: I am already seduced. Would you just do something?”
Matt laughs. “I'm doing plenty, and I'm enjoying myself, but if you like, I can come back to it later.” He wants to know what every inch of Foggy's skin feels like, tastes like, all the sensory impressions he's been missing out on, everything he imagined and tortured himself with when Foggy changed for bed with his back turned to Matt like he thought Matt would notice or care (and he did, but Foggy didn't know that then).
“Oh, well, if you're enjoying yourself,” says Foggy, and whatever he wants to continue with chokes off into silence when Matt takes a second to plan his movements and then twists until he can lick out, taste the salt and sweat of Foggy from his cock. It's warm, almost fever-hot, and Matt ignores Foggy's thundering heartbeat for a second to move in closer, to touch it, lick it again. Warm, and hard, and everything Matt wants right now.
There's resistance behind Foggy's breathing, like he's trying not to make a noise on every exhale, and his pulse has evened out somewhere fast. He's doing something restless with his fingers on the sheets. “Tell me when to stop, and touch me if you like,” says Matt, and bends to work.
Foggy yelps when Matt takes him in his mouth, but his voice pitches lower after that. He's quieter than Matt might have guessed, though—he makes noise sometimes, but not words—and he clutches at the sheets until Matt reaches out, searching for his hand, and he holds on to Matt instead, holding on just shy of tight enough to bruise. His hand is mostly soft too, with some interesting calluses from spending his life helping his family out with household projects, and Matt wonders how his hand feels to Foggy, if it's too rough or leathery from years of boxing even before he put on a mask and went out.
Matt can't say the taste of it is pleasant, exactly, sweat and pre-cum and skin, but for once, it's a taste he doesn't feel the need to break down into component parts. All of it just adds up to Foggy, and that's reason enough for his mouth to be watering as he goes down as far as he can, uses his free hand to cover what his mouth can't.
Foggy's hips twitch up against his mouth and he can't help moaning.
“Jesus Christ,” says Foggy, maybe to himself, but no matter how quiet he is he has to know Matt can hear him, could probably feel the vibrations of the words in Foggy's body even if he couldn't hear him, and Matt squeezes his hand to remind him. “We're good, Matt. Just don't let me choke you.”
Matt goes deeper—it's a little too deep, but it proves his point, and when he pulls back a little, Foggy's hips move again. It's easier to find a rhythm, somehow, without Foggy holding himself so carefully still. Matt isn't very good, he hasn't been with as many men as women, but he knows how to follow clues, and he knows when Foggy wants him to move faster, to suck harder, to finally let go of Foggy's hand so he can press down on Foggy's hips while Foggy cradles the back of his head in his hands, not pressing, just holding on.
He wants to touch himself, so badly he almost does it, but he'll come, too soon. He doesn't want to come without Foggy's hands on him.
“Fuck, fuck,” Foggy says when Matt's lost track of the time, pulling on Matt's hair a little. “Come on, I bet this is not going to taste good with supersenses.”
Matt pulls off and laughs. “I'm willing to try if you are.”
A sound. Foggy's head dropping back against a pillow, judging by the sudden scent of detergent and shampoo. “First-degree murder. My mom's going to be so sad when they throw you in prison.”
“Manslaughter, at best.” Matt grins into his stomach. “Are you going to let me try?”
“Oh, well, by all means, if it's in the spirit of experimentation.”
Matt nips his stomach, just to hear the noise he makes (low, more turned on than offended, and oh, Matt will have to remember that), and then he puts his mouth around Foggy's cock again, all at once. All it takes is a little suction, just the right movement of his tongue, and Foggy is coming, making a noise Matt recognizes from years of trying not to listen to him in the shower.
Foggy is right—it doesn't taste good, and he can't pretend that it does. There's something strangely satisfying about it, though, knowing that he made Foggy come, that the evidence is inside him, and smeared across his mouth and chin because he had to come up for air and couldn't swallow it all.
“Up, up, come on,” Foggy is saying, already tugging at Matt's shoulders, impatient, and when Matt goes, he finds his face wiped with the edge of a pillowcase before Foggy kisses him, long and deep and amazing. “What do you want? I'm feeling fairly generous at this point, just so you know. Your options are many and varied.”
That almost freezes him with indecision, but Matt knows what he wants right now. “Just like this.” He grabs one of Foggy's wrists and steers it down between their bodies. “Just your hand. I want to stay right here.”
“Okay, I can make that happen. I will show off my blowjob prowess later, we'll put it on the list.”
Matt kisses him again, and Foggy loops one arm around his shoulders and turns them onto their sides, presumably so he can get a better angle as he reaches down and wraps his hand around Matt's cock. His grip is firm, and his calluses are even more obvious like this, and Matt gasps into his mouth and feels Foggy grin.
Foggy is good in bed. Matt knows it, he's heard people whisper about it, had Marci say it to his face during one of the private conversations they had where they were both dancing around being too possessive of Foggy. It's one thing to know it, though, and another thing to experience it. Foggy pays attention so well that Matt could almost wonder if his hearing is as good as Matt's, because every time Matt hears his own pulse rate change, Foggy responds in kind. He knows when Matt wants him to steady out at a pace, and when he needs it faster again, when he needs a firmer grip or the smallest change of angle.
Matt comes with his face buried in Foggy's neck, gasping for air, muscles shuddering as he relaxes all at once.
“Hey,” Foggy says after a minute, tapping gently on Matt's shoulder. He must have wiped his hand somewhere, and Matt knows washing the sheets will be horrible tomorrow, but he's too lazy to move tonight. If they do this again, he'll have to make sure to keep supplies near his bed. “Am I staying?”
“Please.” They're already touching nearly everywhere, but Matt shifts even closer, just to prove his point.
“Great.” Foggy smiles against the top of his head, and then stops. His heartbeat, which has been slowly returning to normal, speeds a little again. “Are you staying?”
It takes Matt a minute to understand what he means, and there's the old fear again, that no matter how Foggy feels about Matt, he and the devil can't coexist. “Yes, tonight. I don't want to leave you. We can talk about other nights later. If you want to.”
Foggy moves in closer too. “Obviously I want to. But we should definitely talk about it once we've slept and maybe had some breakfast and a few more orgasms. You want to do this, though? Because I really don't want to have … well, if superpowers can't ruin our friendship blowjobs probably can't either, but I don't want to have made things awkward if things aren't going to change.”
“I want to do this. Have wanted to. The timing was just always wrong.”
“Well, it's right now. Right-ish. As right as it's probably ever going to get with you and me, and I have every intention of making sure it stays right.”
“Me too.” It's early, but Matt's head already feels heavy. He wants to sleep and wake up with Foggy, hear his breathing and his heartbeat from up close all night.
Foggy, judging from the yawn that makes his jaw creak, feels the same. “Great. Then we'll talk in the morning. And shower. I am pretty gross right now, and you don't exactly smell like hollyhocks yourself.”
Matt laughs and kisses him, nudging at his face until their mouths fit together like they should. “Night, Foggy. We'll talk in the morning.”
He isn't sure which one of them falls asleep first, but it doesn't take very long for either of them.
*
Matt, for once, wakes up first in the morning.
He eases himself out of the bed while Foggy is still breathing heavily and washes himself quickly in the bathroom because he can't stand the sticky feeling even if he likes smelling like Foggy and himself all at once. Foggy is still asleep, sprawled over more of the bed, by the time he's clean, so Matt goes to the kitchen and starts making breakfast.
Mostly, when it's just him, he eats a granola bar or some fruit, but this morning he takes some eggs out of his refrigerator and starts putting together omelets. The smell of the food will wake Foggy, if nothing else does.
By the time the first omelet is on a plate in the oven to keep warm, Foggy is moving around the bedroom, making tired noises and taking the sheets off Matt's bed like it's the easiest thing in the world. When Matt turns the heat off on his stove and starts dishing up the second one, Foggy comes out of the bedroom. He's dressed, at least partly, in clothes that smell strong enough that he must have had them on yesterday, and he hovers until Matt holds his hands out.
Foggy tastes terrible in the morning, and Matt kisses him until they both have to come up for air.
“Definitely not just a vivid hallucination, then,” says Foggy, and his voice is rough enough that Matt has to lean in and kiss him again. “Stuffed your sheets in your laundry hamper, we should remember to get that started later. Do I get an omelet? I'm already seduced, but I appreciate that you're polite the morning after too. You're a gentleman and a scholar, Murdock.” Foggy shoulders by him and checks in the oven, getting out his omelet.
Matt, bemused, listens as Foggy finds himself a seat and starts eating, and only remembers to get his own plate and fork when Foggy pauses and makes an impatient noise. “I'm not doing this to seduce you,” he says as he sits down next to Foggy. “I didn't do any of this for that reason, or only for that reason. I just like making you happy.”
“Well, I've got good news for you there, buddy.”
Matt takes a few bites of his omelet. “I don't always make you happy.” Foggy is happy this morning, but what happens when Matt tells him he wants to go out tonight?
“Yeah, well, ditto.” Foggy elbows him in the side. “Can we at least get twenty-four hours of honeymoon phase before you decide you're no good for me? I'm not asking for a lot there.”
“It's a discussion we might need to have sometime.”
Foggy takes a few bites of his omelet while he thinks, but he doesn't move away, and he doesn't seem upset or angry, or even annoyed. “Probably. But this is us finding our way forward, right? We're going to need to have a lot of discussions. Right now I'm feeling pretty good about the directions they might go in. I mean, call me an optimist, but I think we're going to make awesome boyfriends, even if we have to schedule around vigilantism.” Matt opens his mouth, but Foggy shakes his head, hair brushing his shoulders. “Matt. I'm going into this with my eyes open, pardon the phrasing. I know exactly what you do, and I still kissed you last night. Okay?”
“Okay.” He'll never stop being terrified that Foggy is going to leave, or have to leave, or get killed on his watch, but he trusts Foggy. For now, they're fine, they're better than fine, and Matt's going to make sure they stay that way for as long as he can, if that means cooking or kisses or another planter full of flowers. “I want to try.”
“Then we'll try,” says Foggy, simple as that. “Now, would you finish your omelet? I think we said something about a shower last night, and then we can do laundry and see what that leads to. Sounds like a pretty busy day to me.”
Matt kisses Foggy, because anything he has to say to that is too big, too soon, too much for a quiet Saturday morning when they're just getting started.
Judging by the way Foggy kisses him back, though, shoulder leaned against Matt's, he must guess at least some of it, and that's enough for now.