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Foggy was absolutely certain he was making some real quality friends out of the neighbors, banging on Matt's door this way. He was sure that any moment now they would emerge from their apartments and smile and ask him out to coffee. Which he would unfortunately have to decline as he was actually pretty busy trying not to panic over Matt's unanswered, firmly locked door.
“Fine, I'm coming in through the roof then,” Foggy said to it, his voice quieter. If Matt was not lying bled out on the rug, he would hear him. Somehow that thought was not comforting as he climbed the steps to the roof and ducked through the alternate entrance to Matt's apartment. He scanned the open living space quickly as he trotted down the steps, bag over his shoulder, the strap clutched nervously in his hand. No movement. No signs of... anything.
“Matt?” he asked quietly, the panic in his chest rising. He stepped out into the large empty space, his footsteps seeming loud compared to the silence around him. If Matt was hurt somewhere on a rooftop or dead in an alley, he would have no clues this time. Foggy was nothing if not persistent, but he was no detective.
A handful of beer bottles in various degrees of emptiness sat out on the coffee table, hatefully calm despite the fear coursing through Foggy's veins. His eyes fell on Matt's phone, one corner tucked in between the cushions of the couch. Foggy took it up and pressed the power button, expecting the screen reader to begin chirping the time and date and Foggy's five thousand calls and texts since this morning. But instead it was silent, because of course the phone was dead by now.
Dropping his bag to the couch, Foggy turned toward the half closed bedroom door. To the left the bathroom light was still nonexistent, but there were to his eyes no dead vigilantes inside. His eyes flicked instead toward the bed, which was empty, naturally, the silk sheets twisted and draping off to the far side by the window. Light streamed in, as it always did at all hours of the day and night, and Foggy noticed with a start five pale toes peeking out from under the cascade of sheets. In two quick strides he was at the far side of the bed, standing over a very tangled, very pathetic Matthew Murdock.
“What the actual fuck, Matt.”
There was a pause, and Matt seemed to rouse slightly, though he hardly moved. “Foggy?”
“Yes, it's me. You locked the bolt, thanks for that.” Foggy dropped to his knees in the cramped space, a strange feeling of relief and anger and lingering anxiety hanging over him. “What are you doing? Are you hurt?” His hands probed at the hunched body swaddled in the dark sheets, not quite sure what they were searching for. Matt's head shook gently, his eyes hooded and glassy. “Sick?” Foggy brought a hand up to Matt's forehead, but the skin felt normal. He brushed Matt's messy hair back and pulled his hand away. “Alright so you just sleep on the floor now or what? Or do I need to get those side rails so you don't fall out of bed? Honestly my mom probably still has the ones from when I was a kid. It can be arranged, dude.” Matt's face remained blank, not even a quirk of the lip.
“Weren't you going to meet with- uh- someone for lunch today?”
Foggy frowned, his brow furrowed. “Mrs. Horvath? That was yesterday. It's Friday night, buddy.”
“Oh.... How'd it go?”
Foggy swallowed, feeling the anxiety bubble up again. “Fine. I texted you about the clouded title for the lot, remember?”
Matt was silent a moment. “Right. Yes. I got the number for the guy-”
“I know. You sent it to me already.” Foggy studied what he could see of Matt's face. An old bruise from the week before was fading along his jaw. He was unshaven, and not in the normal handsome-and-carefree way but in the I-have-lost-control-of-my-life way. All skin appeared intact. Though his eyes seemed puffy and his hair was a hot mess even for Matt's standards, he truly didn't seem any more injured than the morning before. “Is everything okay? Do you need something? Maybe some food? Or like... a hug?”
Matt cleared his throat. “I'm alright. Thank you for checking on me.”
“Uh, no, you're not alright. You're laying on the floor pretending to be alright and not doing a very good job of it.” Foggy stood, one his knees popping loudly in the cramped space. “You're an awful actor, you look like shit, and I'm going to order us a pizza. I'll be right back.”
It took all of three minutes to call the pizza place on the corner and order the least offensive smelling pizza possible in the largest size, but some part of Foggy had still expected Matt to- well- get up. But when he returned to the bedroom, his tie discarded and top two buttons of his dress shirt unfastened, Matt hadn't budged. Perhaps movement had been a bit optimistic.
Foggy crouched down next to him and squeezed his shoulder through the sheet. “Matty,” he began in a gentle tone, trying to just be soft. Matt needed soft. “Let me help you up. Pizza is way better on the couch than on the floor. Scientific fact.”
Matt blinked as if trying to process the words, and then slowly turned over. His eyes stared out, unfocused as always as Foggy took up his hands and pulled him into a sitting position, then a standing one. For a moment Matt swayed, light-headed from the lack of not-beer Foggy guessed, and the sheet fell away.
“Okay, well, you're somewhat clothed. That's good.” Not that Foggy exactly minded the bare-chested, abs-for-days thing Matt had going on, though the enormous scar on Matt's side dampened the minor thrill he still felt at seeing his friend's body. “The missing sock and wrinkled sweatpants aren't exactly a strong aesthetic choice.”
“Everything else smells,” Matt mumbled, running a hand through his hair and causing it to stick up even more wildly.
“Right. We'll put laundry on tomorrow's list then. To the couch.”
Matt sighed, his hand resting heavily on the back of his neck, and shuffled toward the door, bumping awkwardly and uncharacteristically into the door frame as he went. He didn't flinch, just found his way to the couch with one hand outstretched and collapsed heavily next to Foggy's bag.
Foggy eyed him warily as he continued into the kitchen, then scanned the cabinets for just one clean glass, until he eventually found a wine glass on the top shelf. “When was the last time you washed dishes?” he asked as he filled the glass with tap water and took note of the mold in the bottom of the sink. There was hardly an inch of empty counter space, every surface covered in at least a week's worth of plates and cups and bottles. That thought gave him pause. A week. Not since yesterday morning, not since last night. A week.
“I don't remember.”
The answer made Foggy wince. They had been busy certainly, with Karen out on Monday, the entire city of New York giving them the run around on parcel numbers and deeds, and CPS being the absolute shit show that it was known to be, but he should have noticed this. He should have seen the signs that Matt was taking a nose dive into the abyss.
Problem was he couldn't remember any signs.
Foggy made his way back to the couch, but not before peeking into the fridge to find three bottles of beer and a lonely bottle of ketchup. He paused a moment at the arm of the couch. “Sounds about right. Here, by your left hand.” Matt took the glass of water with no comment about its shape or intended purpose but did not drink. “They said twenty minutes on that pizza. Luckily for us-” Foggy moved his bag further aside and plopped down on the couch beside Matt. “-I have my laptop, and your neighbor has a spectacular and exquisitely rare open wifi connection.” He slid the computer from his bag and set it amid the bottles on the coffee table, glancing sideways at Matt, who sat slouched and blinking slowly. A small movement drew Foggy's eyes down to where Matt's hand twitched against the grey fabric of his sweatpants, fingers dancing subtly without any particular rhythm.
“What's with your hand?” he asked, frowning slightly before pressing the power button.
Matt sniffed, then downed the entire glass of water. With a soft click he set it down on the table, and when he spoke his voice was still gruff with disuse. “It just does that sometimes.”
It didn't 'just do that.' Not normally. Not ever, that Foggy could remember. “Did you hurt your arm or shoulder or something? Pinch a nerve?” he asked, bringing up the Netflix streaming options to read aloud.
“I'm not hurt.”
Like hell you're not, Foggy thought, giving him another glance before reading out the options.
“Alrighty. So, based on your grunts, I think we've narrowed it down to The Last Unicorn, How To Train Your Dragon 2, or we pick up where we left off on The Next Generation.”
The response came with effort. “Whatever you want is fine, Foggy.”
Foggy smiled crookedly, turning back to the laptop. “Okay, animated dragon movie it is. I believe Karen told me that it is 'cute,' which I know is just up your alley.” Matt at least forced a fake smile to his face, though it dropped away a bit too quickly, as if to highlight that it was only for Foggy's benefit.
The pizza arrived before Matt was able to melt into the couch and slip between the cushions, never to be found again, and Foggy piled three slices of pizza on some folded paper towels and set them on Matt's thigh.
“If you eat these, I will bring you a beer instead of water next time.”
Matt's fingers skirted over the crust, counting the slices.
“I made sure they were the least greasy ones. You got this.” He patted Matt's knee encouragingly and waited until Matt took up the top slice before pressing play on the queued up movie.
It took a bit for the first slice to begin to disappear and Matt's stomach to stop growling so loudly that even Foggy could hear it. Matt was listening though, Foggy could tell by the way his eyes flitted about more when he was trying to draw up a mental image of what was described to him. Listening to Foggy describe a movie about dragons was better than slipping away into an existential crisis. Listening was a distraction that Foggy knew how to use.
“Dude, okay. Imagine me as a viking kid on a really fat bulldog of a dragon. That's what's happening right now. Glorious.”
Matt let out a tired little huff of a laugh.
“I can't decide if the main dragon- he's black and very catlike- is more like you or if the kid is. Kinda both? The dragon has little nubbin horns, but the kid has a stupid helmet. Oh now the kid has a wingsuit and they are flying together. It's very acrobatic.”
Matt took up the second piece as Foggy continued describing.
“This kid has a way better suit than you though. Just sayin'. Oh, it has knives also. Christ and the dragon- Toothless- he's scratching his armpit with his teeth. It's literally like you are both the kid and the dragon at the same time. Weird.”
By the time they were discovering the sweet ass dragon paradise, Matt had eaten all the pizza with only minimal coaxing. Foggy paused the movie and headed to the kitchen to fetch the beer he'd used as a bribe. “As promised,” he said, gently tapping the cool glass to Matt's hand.
Half the bottle was gone in one go, and Matt seemed to sink even further into the crevices of the couch, his thigh coming to rest against Foggy's, the touch hot even through two layers of fabric and causing Foggy's heart to skip a little.
Foggy eyed him as he clicked 'play' and began to describe again. “If I was a dragon, I would definitely want to live there. Very spacious, lot of plants. It seems happy.” He paused as the characters began to speak again, his eyes flicking back and forth between the screen and Matt's now tightly held fist. The tremor in his right hand remained despite the food, distraction, and Matt's clear but futile efforts to stop it. To Foggy's eyes, it actually seemed worse, and his heart ached as he watched Matt clench his fist so tightly that he thought the veins might burst.
The decision was automatic and the movement, in the end, was smooth, Foggy's hand moving faster than his mind could keep up. In the time it took for single breath, Foggy's hand was sliding over his friend's fist, cupping the knuckles warmly and smoothing his thumb over the outside. Matt's reaction was defensive: he started at the touch, his entire arm jerking slightly as he let out a small gasp of surprise, his entire body tensing out of instinct. He hadn't sensed Foggy's movement at all then, and Foggy had a sinking feeling in his core. How could he have allowed things to get this far? He forced himself to speak.
“There's a ton of new looking dragons there, all different colors.” Foggy pulled Matt's fist into his lap and held it with both hands. It went with only mild resistance. “The one she called the Bewilderbeast is down in the water. It's mostly white, but its spikes have black ends.” His fingers pried gently, coaxing Matt to relax. With incredible slowness, Matt's fingers began to unclench, though the tremor remained, causing them to skitter under Foggy's touch.
The skin of Matt's hand was calloused from the regular beatings he gave the heavy bag. In some places it was cracked- not quite raw, but not quite healed- and Foggy trailed his fingers over those in careful reverence, recognizing them for the symbols that they were. In the beginning he had wondered how many people Matt had hurt as Daredevil. For longer than he wanted to admit he hadn't been able to shake the look of the people Matt went after. Bloodied and bruised and beaten within an inch of their lives sometimes. But now as he sat soothing this trembling fist in his lap, he began to wonder just how many people it had quietly saved, the ones he didn't know about. The ones before he knew or the ones Matt kept to himself. Other heroes swooped in and saved the day on galactic scales, but Daredevil fought silently for the ones the world tried so hard to forget. The poor, the abused, the people beaten by a system, the people who couldn't help themselves, the people Nelson and Murdock couldn't even help no matter how badly they wanted to.
It made him uncomfortable and sad for some reason, and Foggy swallowed a painful lump in his throat. “The outside and the ceiling are ice, but the center must be warm. There is moss and grass and vines and stuff.” Matt's hand was open beneath his touch, and Foggy stroked each finger as if to quiet them.
“It doesn't work like that,” Matt murmured. “You won't make it go away.”
Foggy's hands didn't falter. “Does it feel nice?”
Matt swallowed with closed eyes as though pained by the very thought of niceness.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“... no.”
“Okay then.”
--------
By the time the credits rolled Foggy had decided three things. One, that Karen had a very good grasp of what things constituted 'cute.' Two, that DreamWorks Animation deserved all of the awards. All of the them. And three, that Matt Murdock was absolutely, one hundred percent not going to be left alone that night.
“So,” Foggy began, trying and failing to stop the movie with his socked foot to avoid letting go of Matt's hand. “Do we watch something else? Do we eat more? Do we....” He let the last one trail off. 'Talk about what the fuck is happening with you' seemed a little... forward.
He waited several seconds for a response, but Matt was silent. “You still alive there, buddy? Or have I killed you with too much dragon cuteness? Probably shouldn't let any potential enemies know about your weakness for-”
“What didn't you say?” Matt cut in, voice low. “Just now, why didn't you finish?”
After all this time, a little bit of anger still boiled up in Foggy at having his literal insides listened to, but he pushed it down, encouraged that Matt seemed less dead to the world. He cleared his throat. “I was just thinking maybe we could talk about... you know, stuff. Things. Whatever. If you want to, but you probably don't.”
“But you do.” It wasn't a question.
“Can you blame me, Matt? Coming in through the roof doesn't exactly bring back good memories. And you look like shit and pretty much half dead honestly."
“I'm not-” Matt's hand slid away as he stood, and Foggy felt the loss of it more profoundly than he expected. “I'm sorry I scared you, Foggy. Thank you for-” He waved his hand in indication of something before it balled up again at his side. With a half turn back he added, “Don't feel like you have to leave. Stay if you want.” He padded slowly into the bathroom and shut the door to the pitch black room.
Foggy didn't need persuading of course. With a sigh he headed to the kitchen in hopes of making some headway there if he couldn't make it with Matt. There was- blessedly- some soap beneath the sink. He set to work, scrubbing and rinsing and stacking haphazardly, sorting through every recent moment together for a clue, some sign he had missed that his best friend was straddling the line of Okay and Not Okay. But he was sure there was nothing this time. No Matt sitting blankly in his office, no refusals of lunch or drinks, no lack of sarcasm or the truly awful jokes he was prone to. Just one phone call to tell Foggy he wasn't coming in the next morning, but he would stay late Monday to make up for it. One phone call to say no, he wasn't hurt. No, he wasn't going out to do something stupid. Yes, he promised. And now here they were.
The bathroom door opened and Foggy's eyes snapped up and away from the Harvard mug in his hands. Matt stood silently a moment. He'd found a shirt somewhere, and Foggy wondered distantly if it actually smelled badly to a normal human nose.
“I'm really tired, Foggy.”
Foggy took that as an invitation and dried his soapy hands on his slacks as he came around the counter. “That's alright, buddy. I mean it is the weekend.” He stopped at the arm of the couch, glancing at his watch. “It's 10:20, but if you want to sleep that's fine. I could use some sleep too.”
Matt swallowed, drew in a shaky breath. “No, I mean that I'm... really tired. And I can't-” His voice was pleading, begging Foggy to understand.
He did understand and closed the space between them in three steps. “I'm going to hug you because you fucking need it.” In a moment he had both arms around Matt's shoulders and pulled him in. Matt's breath came hot against his neck, and Foggy cupped the back of his head with one hand and let the other stroke the tense muscles of his back. Matt's arms hung limp at his sides, but he didn't resist. Eventually Foggy felt one tentative palm rest against his own side. Soon it was clutching, and then there was a second unsteady touch, fingers making a fist around the fabric of Foggy's shirt.
“I know this stuff gets to you, buddy.” Foggy turned his head slightly, murmuring against Matt's hair. “You don't have to do it alone. I don't want you to do it alone. You're scaring me a little bit.”
Foggy spoke this all to the back of Matt's neck. He was not going to be the one to pull away. In fact he'd stand in that spot and hug Matt for the rest of his life if it would make things okay again. He kept smoothing circles over Matt's body, tracing the lines of tension with his fingers.
Matt sniffed and pulled back, his left hand remaining on Foggy's side, the heat of it pleasantly strong even through Foggy's shirt. “It's not that bad.” He kept his damp face shadowed and down turned.
“You have a tremor.”
Matt's right hand flexed at the words, then shook in irritation.
“You forgot what day it was and let your phone die. You fell out of bed and just slept on the floor. You have no clean clothes or dishes and your place is a wreck. You know, in case you needed more evidence.”
Matt worked his jaw a moment. “Things are just getting... I- I'm having a hard time.” His head shook slightly, frowning at his own words. He removed his hand and reached back to the feel for the bit of wall behind him to lean against. There was a small thump as he tilted his head back against it. “There,” he said gesturing with his hand as though he had just bared his soul in a ten minute monologue on the intricacies of his declining mental health. From Matt, a broken, vague statement of vulnerability might as well have been exactly that.
Foggy grimaced. He couldn't ask Matt what he wanted. Matt would rather die than admit he wanted for anything. But they had come this far, and Foggy would not let this go. “I'll cut you a deal Murdock, and trust me that this is a really sweet deal. You need to take a break. No, no objections. I'm holding up my hand, just let me finish here.” He placed that hand on Matt's shoulder. “I want you to take a little break. Just a small one, and then you can go back to Daredeviling. And when you do go back, I want you to tell me about it, okay? We'll pick a night each week or something, and you can describe all the sleazeballs in Hell's Kitchen. We could like, write their descriptions down and make a fire in an alley and burn it all away.” He squeezed Matt's shoulder for emphasis. “Or maybe I could just hold on to some of it for you, and you won't have to carry it all.”
“People get hurt if I'm not out there, Foggy.”
“I know. And imagine how many people will get hurt if you take a little stroll up to the roof to listen one night and decide to step off instead.”
The words were harsh, and Foggy knew it. The thought itself brought tears prickling to the back of his eyes. He braced himself for Matt's predictably Catholic reaction: that he would never do that, he couldn't do that, this city needed him, how could Foggy even suggest that?
It didn't come.
Instead Matt swallowed and pressed his eyes closed a moment. Then two small nods. “Okay.”
A moment of utter shock blanked Foggy's mind. Despite the ebb and flow of Matt's mental health, never once in a decade of friendship had Matt ever admitted to such a thing. A thousand different scenarios filling his mind, Foggy's heart pounded, and he didn't care who could hear it. A moment of silence passed between them as Foggy chose his words carefully. “Uh, just so I'm clear,” he began in a low tone, smoothing his thumb over the front of Matt's shoulder. “Is that an... imminent possibility?”
Matt's face flushed with color, and he lowered it again, scratching aimlessly at his arm. “I, uh... No. Not... specifically.”
Foggy studied his face. “You would tell me, right?”
Matt nodded silently, looking as though he might completely crumble now that this was exposed.
In a moment, Foggy had him in an embrace again, and Matt didn't hesitate to encircle Foggy's middle with the tight leanness of his arms. “It's alright, Matty.”
A little coaxing and Foggy was steering Matt back to the couch by his shoulders- the dishes could wait- and plopping him down where Foggy had been before. “Ah yes, under the couch is a perfectly normal place to keep a throw blanket,” he quipped, untangling the blanket with a little shake and placing it on Matt's legs. He took up a position on the far cushion and patted his thigh. Matt's brow furrowed in confusion, his head tilted just slightly, and Foggy chuckled. “Grab that pillow and lay down. Head this way. If your other clothes smell that sock probably does too.”
With a confused but tired air about him, Matt placed the pillow against Foggy's thigh and rested his head on it. His body curled upon itself as it often did when he was hurting, knees drawn up, arms tucked in close to his chest. The outline of him was just visible under the blanket, and Foggy smiled sadly to himself as he began to stroke Matt's tousled hair.