Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Matt can hear Foggy hiding behind his door.

Foggy’s early by seven minutes and — if the slow squeaking slide of his thumb across his phone screen is any indication — he’s trying to stretch that seven minutes out as long as he can. It’s Matt’s fault. He’s the reason amends need to be made, so he should let Foggy dictate how this whole thing goes. Foggy didn’t have to come all this way, could have been done with him when he’d first walked out the door. Still, the irritation builds with every tap of the soft pad of his finger on slick glass into something restless pacing back and forth within his ribs. Is this on purpose? Or is it just him not being used to the fact that Matt can hear him — has been listening out for every similar gait coming from the route he knew Foggy would take? That he’s been trying to match the walk to the breathing as far as he can stretch his hearing for the last half hour?

Best to rip off the band-aid. It’s not right; it’s definitely not the way Matt wants to act, but a moment longer and he’s going to end up punching a hole through the door, so instead he opens it. He can feel the way Foggy’s shoulders stiffen, engaging muscle all the way down his back. His lips twitch, mouth opening and breath deepening, but he only nods — right side of his neck squeaking stiffly — hair brushing against his shirt. It feels wrong to speak first. This is his penance, he should let Foggy set the pace.

Matt nods back and lets him in.

Foggy takes his shoes off, not letting Matt remind him like normal. Thankfully, Foggy takes a long moment staring at the couch but doesn’t approach. It probably doesn’t smell to him, but the heavy chemical stink of bleach hovers over it, and still under that is the stench of blood that’s seeped through the threads in the leather and into the foam. Instead, Foggy turns to the island.

“Seriously?” Foggy asks. Probably as good a reaction as Matt could expect to the helmet he’d left out. “Are you kidding me?”

“You don’t think it makes a nice centrepiece?” Matt’s voice can’t seem to break a monotone despite his attempt at humour.

“Why is that out?” Foggy doesn’t sound amused. Maybe he should have left this for another time.

“I was—” Matt swallows. Honesty. “I wanted to ask something, but let’s leave it.”

“Were you going to ask if it looks stupid?” Foggy approaches it, socked feet making cautious sliding steps. Dull skin pressing against one of the horns. “Because the answer is yes.”

“I was going to ask about the colour,” Matt explains. He’d left the mask next to his father’s robe, hoping to break the ice. It’s manipulative; he’d wanted to let Foggy lead. And yet. He edges over the other side of the island.

“What about it?” Foggy’s hand drags over two-day-old stubble.

“What colour it is.”

“You don’t know?” Foggy asks. His forehead wrinkles — how deep are those ridges now? Has he visibly aged from the number of times he raises his eyebrows at Matt? 

“How would I?” Irritation seeps into his words, but it’s not fair. Foggy’s still getting used to his… everything. “I know it’s red. It said so in the paper. But that’s it.”

Foggy blows out a long whistle, the air bouncing from the countertop and onto Matt’s face. “You know I’m bad at this.”

“Just,” Matt gestures to the robe, “is it the same?”

Foggy’s hand hovers over the robe for a moment. “Is that your Dad’s?”

Matt nods.

“You know Daredevil’s a stupid name, right?” Foggy tells him. He pushes the mask until the robe slides against it.

“I didn’t pick it.” Matt points out, relieved that Foggy’s humouring him. “At least it’s better than Iron Man.”

Foggy huffs out a laugh. It’s wrong — leveraging old jokes like this — but the suit’s not even made of iron, like Foggy had argued with anyone who would listen every time it came up. “Did you ask for the horns to be this small?”

“I approved the sketch.” Matt pulls his lips into a smile. His voice won’t cooperate with his jokes, but at least his face will.

“You need a manager,” Foggy states. His fingerprint scratches against the bumpy surface of the helmet. “Or an agent. Something.”

“Do you think Karen would take on extra responsibility?”

“Not without a raise,” Foggy quips back. “Is this bulletproof?”

“The mask is,” Matt confirms, “The suit’s knife-proof.”

Foggy’s heart pounds, breathing picking up like he has something to say about that, but he just nods. “I just nodded. Fuck. Sorry.”

“What are you sorry about?”

“The nodding thing, you don’t need that,” Foggy tells him.

“It’s fine.” Matt shrugs. No, he doesn’t need it, but what does that matter? “Do it or don’t.”

“Right.” The inside of Foggy’s cheek squishes as he bites into it. “It’s the same red. But it’s matte — not shiny. The robe’s shiny.”

In the lights of the ring that robe glistened in patches, practically white where the light hit it directly, with Matt watching from the office when he was too young to be left on his own. Brilliant red hair, sweaty red face, bright artificial looking gloves — red like gumballs and toy cars and clicky pens from the bank — and that blood red robe falling off his father’s shoulders.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, well,” the empty helmet echoes hollowly when Foggy raps it with his knuckles, “you asked.”

There’s a girl crying.

It’s nothing new: a girl crying in the middle of the night. He could find a dozen of those frightened hiccuping sobs if he tried — a nightmare, parents’ fighting, fear of the dark. He’d started awake so suddenly he still doesn’t know why this girl in particular woke him. Heart racing, Matt turns onto his back and runs the soles of his feet over his silk sheets in an effort to calm down. Was he the one having the nightmare?

Then he hears the man’s voice, hushed enough that Matt can’t quite make out the words themselves, only the reassuring tone. The girl — his daughter, it clicks into place — takes in deep breaths, calming down. Trying to, at least. The gentle sound of a hand through the girl’s hair and Matt’s stomach rolls, tilting the world until he feels like he’s slipping — sliding through frictionless silk.

Two floors down a woman is snoring gently while a medical drama plays out softly on her TV. Someone’s flatlining. A crash cart is called. Matt presses his tongue to the back of his throat until the rushing of blood deafens him. It’s nothing. It’s nothing. It’s nothing. The girl had a nightmare; her father is comforting her. It’s all in his head. He doesn’t know this girl. He doesn’t know her voice.

But… what if? If there’s something wrong, if Matt’s right, then he’ll have to call someone. Have to leave another tip while he sits impotent and useless a block away. If she knew, he’d have to beg for forgiveness. And he’d deserve it if she refused.

Matt’s teeth squeak, stealing himself to listen again, not daring to hope one way to the other.

“Remember, this is just for us. It’s a secret, even from Mommy.”

“O—okay, Daddy.”

His hand explodes into pain, bed shaking underneath him. Breathe. Mind, body. ’Get your shit together, Matty’.

Laying, luxuriating, in silk fucking sheets. On a soft fucking bed, with a bedframe that has a new hole in it; two fingers with new hairline fractures all he has to show for it. A block away there’s a little girl that thinks no one can save her.

And she’s right.

There are only two men who know what’s happening.

Matt rips himself from his bed, feeling each notch scratched into his palm from his stubble. The grain of the floor is just abrasive enough on his feet. He can’t stop this — there’s no way to help. ’Be smart, head, not hands’, call it in. There’s nothing to be done now, but he can stop it from happening again. He can stop this.

Fingers catch on the slick surface of his phone, and he wills down the bile climbing his throat. Call it in, anonymous tip, then — there’s an itch too far below his skin to scratch, a deep growling breath from the cage of his ribs, something about the Murdock in him — then he’ll go to Fogwell’s. 

“You’re hurting me.”

“Then make me stop.”

One time when Matt was eight, and the third shortest in his whole class, Andy — who was twelve and already in middle school and a whole foot taller and definitely way out of his weight class — called his dad a loser and Matt forgot every word he’d ever been told about fighting with his head and not his hands and ended up pinned, bending in on himself, forced further and further to the floor as his arm was pushed higher and higher up his back. He’d ended up with half his face covered in bright red road rash that stung when his eyes leaked down not-tears that he was not crying when his dad chewed him out — sounding more worried than mad while he cleaned out the dirt.

But that was before the accident. Now the squeeze rakes straight through the muscle, and the twist — bending him to the ground — rubs his nerves one over the other, lighting his arm on fire, prying his shoulder apart. It’s enough to turn his stomach and make him taste metal.

It hurts.

The dining hall echoes with a hundred voices that give him an unpleasantly vivid picture of the space. The man Matt is going to spend the next year of his life sleeping only feet away from smells of cheese-flavoured dust, aspartame, and faint tobacco between his fingers. And he’d hit on Matt within a minute of meeting him. He’d backed off quickly. Matt can’t remember what he’d done with his face, but it must have conveyed his lack of interest to shut him up. Not enough for Foggy, Franklin Nelson, to decide things were awkward enough to leave him alone.

“So, Matt—is Matt cool? Or Matthew?” Foggy needles. “Or like Matty?”

“Just Matt,” he cuts in, nostril twitching. All the smells bleed into one heavy grease taste at the back of his throat and the limp salad they’d both gotten out of obligation smells a little too sweet under thick ranch.

“Just Matt,” Foggy agrees with a hum, shoveling fries into his mouth. They crunch and mush and join the ensemble of eating sounds surrounding him. “We’re both doing law, right?”

“Right.” Matt picks at his own fries, oil seeping into his skin.

“Yeah, so, like—” Foggy scoots forward, his limp hair crinkles its split-ends against his hoodie. “—why?”

“Why?”

“Yeah. Like… I guess, practicing for the questions we’re gonna be asked by estranged aunts for the rest of eternity,” Foggy says, pointing a fry at him like he can see it. “Why did you want to be a lawyer?”

Matt’s top lip pulls until it clicks the seal of his mouth open. He tries to smooth his face back out into something more neutral. “Well. I don’t have any aunts, let alone estranged ones.”

“Well, you know.” Foggy’s hand waves and he bites into his fry. “Potential future lovers.”

Matt snorts. He doesn’t mean to and schools himself back to something light and easy. “What about you? Why did you want to be a lawyer?”

“Oh ho ho!” Foggy’s spine clicks straight and his chest puffs up and out. “So. I’m the first in my little pocket of the Nelson Clan to have a real college degree. Nevermind that my baby sister is going to come in second in a couple years. I was the first.”

“Congrats,” Matt says dryly.

“Thank you.” Foggy bows his head solemnly. “Now, my parents have had a string of businesses all around the Kitchen and they had their eye on me to take over one of them. You see, my mother wanted me to be a butcher.”

Matt’s eyebrows shoot up. He hadn’t meant it to invite any more conversation, but, really? A butcher?

“Yep. A butcher. Something about free ham with the family discount,” Foggy says with a smile. “She’s got another son for that, though. My brother, Theo. He’s taking over the shop they bought. Anyway, she wants me to be a butcher, but I told her, ’No, Mom. I’m going to be a lawyer’. You see, I was super into debate club and true crime and Legally Blonde and most of all I think I’m actually exceptionally into the idea of paying off my student loans, you know?”

“Hm,” Matt hums. Of course. Money.

“Yeah, like, can you imagine? Owning, not renting. Food without the unpronounceable chemicals someone’s always trying to get me to worry about. Like… if I had kids they can go on all those trips I’ve heard so much about,” Foggy’s voice grows dreamy and distant.

Matt nods vaguely. Money. He squares his shoulders, sitting higher and tilting his chin up further. “My dad bought me a book of civil rights advocates. There was a chapter on Thurgood Marshall. I’ve wanted to work in law ever since.”

“Oh,” Foggy’s little noise comes with his sinking shoulders. Good. Just because he’s not already got money doesn’t mean he’s not part of the same grinding machine that crushes the kind of families he comes from. He should feel bad. Feel small and guilty. “That’s cool, actually. Like, seriously.”

“Uh,” Matt tries.

“No, I mean. I feel like an asshole now.” Foggy laughs. “Here I am, dreaming of obscene wealth and you’re like… little twelve year old Matty—”

Matt’s shoulders jump, but he draws them back down. “Seven. Actually.”

“Seven? You wanted to be a lawyer when you were seven?”

Matt shrugs. “It was a good book.”

“No shit. It must have been,” Foggy says as he rocks on his bench. “That’s so cute. Seven and you already wanted to save the world.”

“Well. Not… I mean…” Matt feels tight. In his back, shoulders, insides. It’s off. He squeezes his fists against his knees. “The law can change things. Correct things. It can make things better.”

“No, for sure.” Foggy nods along. “I didn’t know what a lawyer was until I had a crush on Elle Woods when I was thirteen or something though. Just picturing seven year old little Matt telling me about Thurgood Marshall… that’s too good, man. Real lady magnet stuff.”

Matt laughs. Lets it join the cacophony around him. Laughing, talking, chewing, squeaking knives against cheap plates. He feels the hanging cotton shirt itching along his neck. Maybe he can get along with Foggy. It’s only a year, anyway.

The chair under him has high legs, and Father Lantom’s office is dusty in the corners and on the tops of shelves.

His first communion class had been about a third St Agnes kids, so twelve kids in total. At that time Matt had been like anyone else and wasn’t quite sure how to speak to them. They’d all file in together and they knew the nuns well enough to get away with more than Matt could do.

By the time Matt got here — to this office, nearly ready for his first communion — he’s one of them. The oldest in the class by far: his enrolment disrupted by his accident, then his father’s death and the way he’d fallen apart too much to leave his bed some days. Even the simple act of confessing was deemed too much for him.

He’s ten by the time he has confession for the first time, Father Lantom poised facing him — outside of the confessional just like all the other kids’ first confessions — ready to absolve him of three years’ worth of sins. Stick’s the only reason he’s patched together enough to make it here, and most of the sins Matt can think to confess involve him. He tries not to think of what Stick would say if he were here, though. He doesn’t believe.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” Matt’s mouth is so dry his thick spit has made it sticky. “This is my first confession. These are my sins—” He licks the backs of his teeth, wracking his brain for the sins he can say. He wants to absolve himself for some of it, at least, “—I’ve lied, to you and the Sisters and my father.”

“Are there any specific lies that come to mind?” Father Lantom probes. “You can be specific with me here, Matthew. I cannot act on the things you say here.”

Matt’s leg shakes, vibrating his whole chair. “Doing my homework,” he lies, “stuff like that.”

Father Lantom’s face does that thing where all the muscles tighten like it does when he finds something funny but doesn’t want to show it. “Any sins of a different nature?”

“I got into fights, here and at school,” Matt’s been getting in fights his whole life, but apparently only the last three years count against him, “I’ve been rude to my teachers—”

Father Lantom makes a barely perceptible hm in his throat.

“—And the sisters,” Matt loves that his glasses keep people from seeing when he rolls his eyes, “I’ve had lots of thoughts I know I shouldn’t. Violent, or hateful, or uh—” it’s weird but he’s not here to tell Father Lantom, he’s here to tell God that he knows it’s wrong and he’s sorry, “—sex, um, sexual thoughts.”

“These thoughts,” Father Lantom’s voice is steady as always but he smells like discomfort, “Do you ever act on them?”

“I…” Matt frowns. “Sometimes.”

“God is not in the business of punishing thoughts we choose not to entertain,” Father Lantom says.

Matt presses his toes into the floor, chair tall enough that his heels can’t match with the same weight. “But if the thoughts…” Matt squeezes his eyes for the way his skin tightens and heats. The sin of self abuse — the thing that he and Stick did, he can’t talk to Father Lantom about that, but the sins in his own room. Everything else, “What if the thoughts are sinful.”

“Thoughts can’t harm anyone, only actions,” Father Lantom assures him, “If you’re having thoughts that are upsetting you, we can speak about them once we finish the confessions.”

Matt’s sweaty hands press until they scrape on his jeans. So he can think, so long as he doesn’t… do anything. “It’s okay.”

Father Lantom exhales almost like a sigh from his nose. “Is there anything else?”

“No, Father.”

“Alright, Matthew,” the Father’s voice is very tight, “do you remember what to do next?”

“I’m sorry for this and all my sins,” Matt speeds through, hoping that will cover everything he can’t say.

“And now the act of contrition.”

The copper in his mouth gets fainter as the cold water runs over his knuckles. They still ache — sore, scratched, split — but they numb under the tap as the blood that girl’s father left on them washes away, leaving only Matt’s own beading to the surface. 

He grips his sink, his whole body leaning on it, the shoddy seal threatening to crumble and send him tumbling down onto the floor, but he can’t stay upright on his own. In through the nose — feel the air warm down his back and through his lungs. Hold. Then back up, a slow stream out of his mouth. Again. Until the shaking stops. His mind, his bruising grip, keeping his body in check.

He got away with it.

He helped.

It felt—

Good.

His hands shake, but he forces them steady — under control. The law couldn’t help. Someone needed to save her. The law wouldn’t touch that man, Matt could. No one would blame him if they knew. He’d used his head, did everything he could. He’d worn a mask at the very least.

He had helped.

Why did that little girl deserve his help more than anyone else? It wasn’t— He couldn’t— 

Matt bows his head, the fine ends of his hair rasping against the mirror, carving grooves through the film of glass cleaner he only hopes hasn’t streaked through his reflection.

He can’t stop now.

The weekend before Halloween coincides with Matt’s birthday. He’d put up a token fight about going out, but Foggy doesn’t pull his punches even a little and by Friday evening they’re in their room, and Foggy’s poured him his first drink of the night.

Foggy had been completely relentless in his pursuit of making Matt his friend. All through undergrad, Matt survived all the kind-hearted would-be friends with the same routine of polite detachment, thanking them for inviting him but insisting he needs to study and therefore would not be going out to this party. Nodding and smiling and agreeing with whatever they say when they try to make conversation until they get bored and decide to leave him in peace. Foggy withstands it all. Matt doesn’t want to go to a party? He begs and whines and comes back early to let Matt know how much more fun it would have been with him there. Matt agrees with everything he says? Then Foggy starts spewing out more and more ridiculous ideas until Matt can’t help but inform him that a political system based on representatives for each zodiac sign was fucking ridiculous and they get into a loud debate in the middle of the library where Foggy fights for all it’s worth about something he couldn’t care less about. Stick would be so disappointed in him to realise that it takes a measly two months before Matt can’t help but agree that they are, in fact, best friends.

“Fuck, Fog,” Matt hisses before he even takes a sip. It smells like fruit scented paint thinner. He tries to block it out, but there’s no escaping the burning that nearly causes him to gag. “That tastes like turpentine.”

“How do you know what turpentine tastes like, birthday boy?” Foggy somehow manages to take a healthy gulp out of his drink without it coming right back up. There’s the dull sound of skin on glass while he taps at his phone, bringing up whatever prompt the drinking game app he’d downloaded decides to subject them to. “Okay. First one — one drink for the number of orgasms you’ve had this week.”

“Can you dilute mine first?” The thought of trying to choke down any more of what tastes like a straight split between sugar-water and mouth burning ethanol makes him wrinkle his nose.

“You’re such a baby,” Foggy mumbles, “there’s no room anyway. Take a big drink and I’ll squeeze some more Sunny D in there for you.”

“Sunny D?” That explains the chemical burn.

“Who doesn’t like Sunny D?!” Foggy sounds indignant, “I practically grew up on it. Drank this more than water.”

“And look at you now,” Matt grumbles before taking one long drink that he has to swallow twice to keep from coming back up. “You’ve gotta tell me how many drinks you take.”

“You can hear me swallow, can’t you?” Foggy takes three big gulps. His heart speeds a little, but more with effort than lying. Matt can vouch for two of those three — pretending to be asleep to try and give Foggy a little privacy. Something he’s been very used to, not having a room to himself since he was nine. “That was three, just in case you couldn’t tell.”

“Noted.” Matt extends his cup to Foggy, “Please.”

“Alright, alright. Lightweight.” Foggy refills the mouthful Matt drank. It’s still going to be almost undrinkable.

“I’m not sure this counts as a screwdriver,” Matt points out.

“No, it’s better. Like a drill or allen key or something.” Foggy taps his screen again. “Name a sex toy. First to run out drinks three… I start.” Foggy takes a drink, which sort of defeats the purpose of letting an app tell you when to drink. “We’ll kick off with a classic: dildo.”

“Vibrator,” Matt says. “I don’t think this could prevent scurvy.”

“Of course not. That’s about vitamin C, right? And we all know this stuff is pure, unadulterated vitamin D.” Foggy drinks again. “Buttplug — a classic.”

“Um…” Matt’s drawing a blank. “What was the Sunny D slogan? The stuff kids like?”

“Sunny Delight,” Foggy recites, “The good stuff kids go for.”

“And it’s in the bottle that’s shaped like—” Matt tries to draw the memory from the commercials when he got home from school. Sat on the floor, waiting for his Dad to come home. Tall neck and then wide and round. Bright, warm orange. Nothing like the cheap stuff they had in the fridge that looked dim and unappetizing in comparison to six year old Matt. Today he’s twenty-three and he knows just how wrong he was.

“Yeah, it’s still kinda shaped weird.” Foggy thrusts the bottle to him, the sloshing enough that a normal blind person would surely know exactly where it is, but Matt still pretends he’s got no idea. “Oh, uh, here—” And Foggy taps it against Matt’s shoulder. “Feel that up.”

Matt takes the bottle from him, running his hands along the weirdly sloped and ridged neck and down until it angles vertically to the base. “Is it still bright orange?”

“Oh yeah, packed full of delicious chemicals,” Foggy confirms with a long swig of his drink. He pokes Matt with his toe. “Your move, Murdock.”

“Clamps?” Matt suggests. Are they sex toys?

“Ooh! Very kinky!” Foggy seems absolutely delighted. “Fleshlight.”

Matt just shakes his head. “I’ll drink. Otherwise we’ll be stuck here a while.”

“Boo!” Foggy yells, but Matt forces three more drinks down so he can top himself back up. “Right, I want you blasted before we head out. I can only afford one round of shots. Next question. Person who lost their virginity earliest gives out five sips.”

“Fourteen. So… you drink,” Matt says. It’s young, and he’s pretty grateful that he doesn’t have to take five drinks.

“Woah!” Foggy gulps down his drink. “What the story?”

Story? It’s not exactly something he wants to talk about. “Uh, her name was Katie.”

“Oh?” The heat radiating from Foggy comes closer as he scoots in. “Details, Murdock.”

“There’s no big story.” No fun story, at least. “Same foster house for a bit. And what about you?”

“Ah.” Foggy’s stomach tightens and gurgles. Knowing what he knows, Matt’s own stomach drops suddenly, cold sweat seeping down his back. It’s likely Foggy doesn’t have a fun story either. “There’s — I should probably tell you this. Because it’ll come up.”

“Oh?”

“I’m bi,” Foggy admits. He’s nervous, but not scared. Heart picking up, but no sweat breaking out.

“Bi,” Matt repeats. He had known from the first second Foggy had laid eyes on him that he was attracted to men, but he didn’t know if it was something Foggy identified with, or identified in himself. But he’s clearly different from Matt, and he’s not tried anything yet. “Okay.”

“Yeah, I was seventeen,” Foggy explains, “and it was like a weird mutual handjob situation with this guy at a party. Sort of figuring things out with a bit of Irish courage thing.”

“That doesn’t count,” Matt snorts. Mutual handjob. Like that’s sex.

“Wow, okay Mr. only-vaginal-intercourse-counts,” Foggy’s words are starting to bleed together at the ends, “Sorry we didn’t all live in the same house as hot sexually appropriate girls.”

“One, how would I know she was hot,” Matt points out, “and two, are you jealous that I lived in a mixed gender foster home?”

“When you put it like that,” Foggy grumbles, he leans back slowly until his back meets the floor. “So if we’re only counting penetration, then I was just shy of nineteen and she was really into me being bi. Like, she kept trying to stick a finger in there and at the time I was not into it.”

“At the time?”

“It seemed gross, y’know?” Foggy swirls his cup, a drop slips down out of the rim and bleeds against his fingers. “I had to keep telling her to stop — like she kept forgetting I’d told her I didn’t like it.”

“She kept doing it?” Matt wrinkles his nose, “You let her?”

“Basically, yeah,” Foggy says, voice lowering to barely more than a whisper. “She was my first real girlfriend, though. Hard to be open with sex stuff. Met my parents and everything, like serious-serious.”

“If that’s the bar—” Matt focuses his mind on the smell of the room, dirty laundry and dust, and tries to let it overwhelm the taste in his mouth while he takes a drink, “—I’ve never been in a serious relationship.” Foggy doesn’t know him well enough to know that he’s never, by any definition, had a serious relationship.

“Never brought a girl to your Dad’s grave?” he asks, semi-sincerely, but a laugh erupts from his throat. “Now that’s a different kind of shovel talk.”

“Jesus Christ, Foggy.” Matt almost chokes. Laughter bubbles out over his throat, taking over his whole body — shaking his shoulders and down his chest. He’s never joked about this, but Foggy’s bluntness shocks the tension out of him.

“I made you blaspheme!” Foggy screams, sitting up quickly. “I made you do it! I win!”

Matt wasn’t aware this was part of a game they were playing, but he drinks anyway.

The paper cup bleeds out heat through the cardboard sleeve they’d given him. Matt can tell from the smell of burnt milk and under-roasted beans coming from Foggy’s cup that this coffee shop is not in danger of their regular patronage, but Foggy insists on trying all the new independent coffeehouses cropping up in the neighbourhood.

’How are we going to expect them to support local businesses if we don’t?’

’How are you going to afford a five dollar coffee every day before the firm’s even open?’

In each one he’s ordered something milky with far too much syrup to taste the coffee through and relied on Matt’s judgement to determine whether or not the coffee is worth it.

“Realtor says she’ll meet us outside in fifteen,” Foggy rattles off again, “so we leave here in five in case there’s slow walking assholes.”
“Fog.” Matt nudges Foggy’s ankle with a slight kick. “Her job is to get renters, she wants us to rent.”

Foggy huffs, picking up his too-hot latte and putting it back down just as quickly. “We should make a good impression anyway. Show her we mean business-business.”

“As opposed to… business-fun?” Matt asks, switching his watery filter coffee into his other hand.

“Non-serious business, yeah,” the correction comes. Foggy leans back. Leans forwards. Shakes his leg under the table. “Remember when we were looking for off-campus apartments in 3L?”

“Yes.” How could he forget? Cheaper rent, their own bathroom, but looking at shoebox sized one bedrooms, being evaluated before they’d even be let in. “But we were students. We’re both wearing suits now. We look legitimate.”

“You? Yeah, I guess. I hate to break it to you, but my whole… everything doesn’t exactly scream ’working professional’,” Foggy admits, leg going faster. “I should cut my hair. Maybe let people call me Franklin.”

“You’re not going to do that,” Matt tells him.

Foggy sighs, wearily. “No I’m not. But I should. Frank, at least.”

“Hey.” Matt reaches out, too far to the left, sleeve pulling up his arm. He knows Foggy will move to let Matt catch his hand. He presses his lips together, weighing the corners down. “It’s going to be fine. She wants us to like the office, she’s not going to turn us away. We’re in charge of this deal.”

Despite Matt’s attempts, Foggy’s brows drop to brush against his eyelashes. His untethered hand takes a hold of Matt’s sleeve and pulls it down slightly. “Yowch.”

Matt pulls his hand back, tugging his sleeve back over his wrist.

“That’s a nasty bruise, dude,” Foggy informs him. He knows. “What happened there?”

“Smacked into my island,” Matt assures him. It’s not like the apartment is new, but it’s new enough that Foggy hisses in sympathy.

“Yikes,” Foggy picks his coffee back up, “We should head.”

“Sure.” They’ll arrive early, but if it eases Foggy’s mind then it’ll be worth it.

Foggy takes an experimental sip of his drink and hums. “You think this is the place?”

Matt grimaces his way through his own unnecessary drink, swallowing reluctantly. “I think I liked the first one better.”

“Ditto,” Foggy agrees, standing with his free arm angled for Matt to grab. “Let’s try to get to the viewing without any more accidents.”

The college bar they like always smells of sweat, beer, and cheap cologne. The first time they came in Foggy told him, ’it’s very, uh… yellow?’. It was a few weeks before Matt hit a breaking point. He’s not getting his vision back, so no, he doesn’t need to know what places look like, but he does need to know if there’s a wet floor sign in the middle of a pool of vomit before he swings his cane into both of them. Even if he had wanted a description, Foggy is pretty bad at them. Matt still doesn’t know if the yellow-ness is about the lighting, the decor, or the walls. All three? It doesn’t matter, but now the smell of the bar reminds him of all those yellow things. A raincoat from when he was six. The beer with too much head his dad gulped down over a basket of fries in a dim bar, talking and laughing with friends while Matt sipped juice and pretended to do his homework. The sun he drew, a swoop of lemon yellow crayon in the corner of a sheet of paper, a smile and sunglasses pressed into it because he’d seen someone else do it and he’d liked the idea.

At his age, Jack Murdock would have had to bring a four-year-old boy with him: not enough money for a babysitter and too much pride to ask his mother. But here Matt is, in this yellow bar, surrounded by other future lawyers, foam from his own beer coating his upper lip. There’s an arm over his shoulders, shaking with laughter at something one of Foggy’s friends said. What Jack would have wanted.

“No way, man,” Foggy says, clouds of liquor-heavy breath pouring from him, “I would kick your ass at pool.”

“You kidding?” One of Foggy’s friends — David, one of those rich generational lawyer kids. Matt’s about ninety percent certain he’s going to end up disappointing his parents. “We had a pool table in our family room. I’ve got years of practice on you.”

Foggy laughs, full from his gut, throwing his head back and smacking Matt in the face with the scent of Head and Shoulders three-in-one. “You’re so on. The second those guys give up that table I’m sending you to pound town.”

“You’re seriously ditching us?” Foggy’s other friend — Jay, who Foggy has a huge crush on — gestures between herself and Matt.

“We’ll take turns. Tournament style,” Foggy says. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

“Uh…” David trails off. No one’s head moves, but Matt would bet money all eyes are on him now.

“It’s fine,” he waves them off, “I don’t mind, well… not watching, but— ”

“No,” Foggy cuts him off. “ No, no. We can do this. We’re literally lawyers— ”

“Law students,” Jay corrects.

“Details.” The skin either side of Foggy’s nose bunches. “Okay. Got it,” he says, before he pulls a scarf onto the table.

’Got it’, he explains, means they’re going to be playing through proxies.

“That’s not, uh,” Foggy starts and doesn’t have to end with ’offensive?’. It’s in both his tone and the fact that he’s asked something similar about a dozen times by now. It does get irritating, but Matt’s decided he prefers to be asked — so he can promise that it’s fine if Foggy wants to put his posters up on Matt’s side of the room or if he asks Matt if he’s ’seen’ his textbook — rather than Foggy assuming he’s upset and ignoring him to spare them both discomfort. 

In fact, this might be one of the few times Matt actually needs the accommodations. Sure, he knows where the balls are. And he’s confident that he’s got the skills to sink them easily, but crucially, Matt’s got absolutely no clue which one is which. He might actually need a pair of eyes — someone to tell him stripes, solids, and which one’s the eight. He doesn’t need to be bent over the table with Foggy at his side micromanaging exactly where the cue is going. It doesn’t help that Foggy kind of sucks at this anyway, telling Matt to go ’medium fast’ when the ball needs a gentle bump. Matt decides he’s willing to let Foggy steer him wrong, though. It’s not his reputation on the line.

And twenty minutes later, Foggy claps him on the shoulder.

“This time, Matt.” He’s got this pep talk practised. It’s their fourth attempt at the same ball. “This time. Redstripe, say your prayers!”

“I’m sure it’s shaking in its boots,” Matt mumbles. He leans over the pool table, cue in hand, perfectly aligned. Until Foggy comes up next to him and moves his arms out of place. 

“Okay,” Foggy mumbles, “just a little to the riiiight.” Matt can tell he’s going to miss, that the adjustment is going to send the ball spinning away from the pocket. But there’s no way he should know that, so he keeps his mouth shut, “And there. Go for it.”

Matt goes for it and, exactly like he thought, he hears the click of the cue ball glancing off the red stripe and sending it careening away.

“Mm, you’re pretty bad at this, huh, Murdock?” Foggy hums.

Matt can’t help the laugh that rips through him. “Yeah, it’s all my fault.”

“Exactly!” Foggy’s breath is beer, mint, grease, Cheetos. “Seriously, Matt, Jay’s twice as good at being blind as you and you’re like the professional!”

“That’s what they pay me the big bucks for.” Matt grins. It’s stupid, but the smile aching his cheeks is there of its own accord, and there’s nothing Matt could do to get rid of it if he tried.

“Yeah, man, I don’t know why you decided you wanted to go into law with a cushy gig like that.” Foggy bumps his hip. “Now, I’m getting four shots of tequila. I’m counting on you guys to help me out with them.”

The tequila burns down his throat and warms his stomach. Jay and Dave absolutely destroy them. They swap the scarf, but not before Dave insists on paying back Foggy’s generosity with another round of shots. Then Jay pitches in too. 

“Y’know.” Foggy stumbles while standing somehow. The world on fire is starting to turn to smoke. If he concentrates he can put everything right back in place — but then it starts to slip away again. No one’s made a single shot yet. “Everyone else had a turn playing blind but me.”

“You’re abandoning me?” Matt jokes, childishly, he doesn’t want to give up Foggy. He doesn’t know the others. Not really. He doesn’t want Jay’s hands on him or Dave directing him to go left or right when Matt knows better than any of them.

Foggy claps his hand on Matt’s shoulder, “Never!” He takes the cue from Matt’s hands, “I haven’t been blind, and you haven’t had a chance to boss anyone around yet.”

“Foggy,” Matt can’t believe how stupid this is, “We can’t both be blind.”

“Sure we can!”

“For the last time we’re not—”

Onions burning, dredging up old oils from the pan.

“—really should consider—”

Shattering of a plate against the wall.

“—the time? Seriously—”

Sirens.

Rumbling of the subway below.

Bubbling, gurgling, rushing through sewer pipes.

Barking.

“Dumb fucking whore!”

Honk!

“—off of me.”

“...and fifty-three cents.”

Bursts of warmth, laughter.

“Wait, wait.” Foggy giggles behind him, pressed so close his breath might as well be Matt’s own. Foggy’s arms wrap around him tightly, ineffectively guiding the cue in his hands. “Hold on. I think, just a little to the left.”

“Are you sure?” Matt suppresses the smile tugging at his cheeks because he knows he’s right on the money with this one.

Jay and Dave are… somewhere. Matt can hear them more clearly than the rest of the bar, but that might be because he knows how they sound.

“Well, no,” Foggy concedes, “I mean literally blind leading the blind here, so…”

If nothing else, Foggy’s non-stop begging to get Matt out got those two together. If Foggy hadn’t decided to be part of one team with no eyesight — trading places, taking turns — they might still be here actually trying to play. 

Matt’s not sorry he came.

A childish giggle escapes Matt’s mouth, too drunk to keep it in. Not drunk enough to stop the embarrassment that cuts it off at the change in Foggy’s heartbeat, one he feels as much as hears: on his back; through Foggy’s fingers; up against his ass. He coughs to clear his throat. “If you’re sure.”

“Hell yeah, I’m sure.” Foggy’s hair tickles against Matt’s back. “Let’s let this thing fly, Murdock!”

And Matt can’t help it. He wants to hear Foggy’s jubilation when he takes off the blindfold and sees that they’ve sunk two balls. He subtly guides Foggy’s shoulders with his own so they’re aligned for the shot.

There are two girls talking about them, rolling their eyes and not seeming to realise he can’t see either. Jay presses her body against the wall. Dave’s hand presses between them. A man’s spine pops straight when a girl leans her head on his shoulder.

Matt knows he’s drunk, far past gone drunk, when he whiffs. The cue ball spinning backwards to sink itself.

Fuck.

“I heard something go in!” Foggy yells. The girls eyeing them up snort in sync, devolving into giggles, feeding off of one another. Foggy rips the scarf off his face. “Oh.”

It’s a stupid game. Foggy has no reason to be disappointed — he doesn’t know that Matt should have been able to do this. Foggy’s got no reason to—

Thick arms wrap all the way around Matt’s waist before he can figure out what the choking, bellowing, sputtering noise is as it shakes his bones. Foggy’s solid weight collapses against his back and that deafening noise wrings out of him in gasping breaths.

“Oh—oh,” he tries to speak before more laughter crushes him back down on Matt’s back, “Murdock! Don’t ever—fucking hell—don’t let me go blind too, huh?”

“Fog—” Matt tries to push Foggy off of him. Foggy’s laughing. He thinks the whole thing’s funny. It is. It is funny. Jay gasping into Dave’s mouth. Jeans against jeans. Heat pressed against him.

“Is she sick?”

“Worse. She’s in love.”

The couple at the park. He thinks about them a lot. Her skin — hot. Her heart. The smell of them: anticipatory sweat… Something else.

Stick twisting Matt’s arm back and back and back until his shoulder feels as though it’s going to rip and pop, and he has to bend to touch his nose to the rough concrete floor. He can feel the heat of Stick’s skin through his wrist. Can hear a thundering fierce heartbeat. Smell…

Stick is right on him and he reeks.

“God, Murdock!” Foggy’s hands grab his own wrists and yank them into Matt’s stomach. His feet leave the ground.

“Fog!” he yells. Plenty more than only the two girls are looking at them now. “You’re hurting me!”

“Oh shit!” Matt crashes back to the floor. “Sorry, man. You good?”

Matt hums and it’s not a play when he fumbles for his cane, mumbling something about the bathroom and taking off in exactly that direction. He knows where they are, what with the rushing water, the stink of waste, and of course — the closer he gets — the stench of sex. College bar. Of course. Musty, disgusting, hot, clogging his sinuses. His stomach rolls. Ghost hands below his waist. The stink like a barrier. Seat covers in both of them smell like semen. Like sweat. Like— like— 

Watery vomit — partially digested beer, liquor, the barest hint of stomach acid — bursts from his mouth and onto the floor before he can stop it. Idiot. 

“Oof, alright Matt, time to get home,” Foggy claps a hand on his back, “FYI, the right door is the men’s.”

“Right, gotcha,” Matt mutters. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve. It’s going to be at least four washes before the smell comes off his sweater. It’s humiliating. Matt’s sense of space keeps tilting on its axis, distances jumble. He collapses it down until the only thing he can hear is his own heartbeat and uneven breaths. His body desperately wants to start hyperventilating.

Breathe. In. Hold. Out. Hold.

Foggy thinks he didn’t have time to check the braille. Like the men’s room doesn’t stink of urine-soaked floors, like he can’t hear the way the pipes are arranged to accommodate the urinals. “Sorry.”

“It’s all good.” Foggy takes the arm closest to him and hooks it around his own bicep and Matt cringes when he realises it’s the one with vomit on the sleeve. It’s on his shoes too, splashed up onto his pants. The stink is going to linger on his single pair of jeans all week, “You know what they say about beer and liquor, man. If I start to feel sick on our way back you gotta promise to hold my hair back.”

It happened again last night — waking up in a warm, wet patch. Like a baby.

It doesn’t matter if he takes care of it himself: stripping the bed; washing the sheets; drying them; cleaning the mattress protector. Sister Maggie hardly sleeps as it is, so she’s the one to find him when humiliation drives his fist through the wall.

Stick is going to know and tell him he should have used that anger more productively. All he’d done was hurt his hands. He’s going to lose any respect he has for Matt. As a warrior, as a soldier, as his apprentice. As anything but a disgusting fucking baby.

“Now, Matthew,” Father Lantom’s gentle voice and his pity and his understanding make Matt want to drive a hole in the table between them. “The sisters have already said this, but I want to assure you that no one is angry with you and we understand that this is no fault of yours.”

Except he’s lying. Matt can hear the sisters when they talk about him and talk about this phase he’s going through. First it was all the tantrums, and just when they thought he was getting better, this. All they do is talk. In the halls, the kitchen, dorms. Speculating whether the chemicals made him retarded too. If his Dad hit him or touched him or simply raised him wrong. They keep asking when he’ll be moved, when he’ll be sent somewhere more equipped. Father Lantom’s heart beats steady. Calm. But he can’t be this stupid.

“I was hoping we could talk. If there’s anything happening you’d like to speak about,” Father Lantom probes, like he thinks that Matt would tell him anything. They’re not even in a confessional. Matt keeps his mouth shut. Father Lantom tries again, “Perhaps we could discuss the dreams you’ve been having.”

Matt twists his fingers along the grip of his cane, the feeling of the rubber sliding against his skin makes his palms itch. Dreams. If they knew that he and Stick were training, what they were training for, they wouldn’t let him anywhere near Stick again.

“Your dreams,” he says, the same gentle worming his way into Matt’s head — the kind of interrogation you give to children, “Are you having nightmares again? About your Dad?”

“My Dad,” Matt confirms the convenient lie. He curls his toes in his too small shoes, toenails scraping at the thin material of his sock, where there will soon be a hole. It’s an easy lie, like how he’s blind, and Stick has taught him how much easier it is to go for the lies that have some amount of truth. Yes, his eyes don’t work, and yes, he has had nightmares about his Dad. About the way that brains smell when they’re cooked with hot lead. About spiderweb fractures beneath skin. “It’s, he—” He’s so pathetic that the real memories of this old dream turn his stomach, “—I don’t—” he chokes, “It’s not fair.”

“It’s okay,” Father Lantom lets him trail off, lets him be so overwhelmed by his emotions that they take over his mind. “Matthew, we may not understand God’s design now, all the suffering, but we need patience. The way that these events shape our lives isn’t known to us, and the fallen nature of humans leads us all to making poor decisions. God is able to take all these ragged threads, the muddied colours of our free will, and create a beautiful tapestry — even if we are only privy to the back of it.”

The free will of Man took his Dad, and Father Lantom wants to tell him that it’s part of God’s purpose. That it will mean something. Like it doesn’t already mean everything. Matt drives his fingernails into the grip of his cane to keep from swinging it. To keep from breaking it on the Father’s face. It takes a humiliating amount of self discipline.

“I know things happen for a reason,” anger bleeding into his voice, “everyone tells me, all the time. I’m blind. I don’t have a mom, or a Dad, and I keep—” His face heats like it’s an inch from a fire, like his insides are going to cook like Saint Eustace in the Brazen Bull, “I don’t want to talk about my Dad. The sisters only want me to talk with you because they think I’m retarded.”

“Matthew,” Father Lantom’s voice goes stern. Matt can only roll his pointless eyes. What can the Father do to him anyway? “Do not say that.”

“It’s what they say,” Matt insists.

A slight tick from the back of Father Lantom’s mouth, as his tongue separates from the roof, but he doesn’t speak straight away. There’s one of those long breaths, calming his own heart in a way that Matt normally only hears from Stick. “Do they call you that?”

Matt bites the inside of his lip until he can taste blood through the skin. They don’t say it to his face, no. “It’s what they think.”

“I’ll speak to the Sisters. But you cannot know what they think about you, Matthew. You cannot read minds—” No, but Matt can read their hearts and their own words and every time they call him a freak or creepy or brain damaged, “—So when someone behaves in a way that feels unkind, remember that may not be what they intended. Many people may simply be guilty of the sin of ignorance.”

Just because the Father reads as steady as ever doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth. Matt nods politely because any words out of his mouth would convince Father Lantom, like half the Sisters, that he’s possessed.

“Matthew, I know this is something you will find difficult, no matter how much I tell you there’s no shame,” And here it is. The moment he knew was coming. He’d heard Sister Maggie and Father Lantom discussing it before they called him in. They’re going to make him wear fucking diapers to bed, “But I believe this may make you more comfortable until we can get to the root of your problem. We can have you speak to someone more qualified, and you’ll have a doctor’s appointment coming up soon. In the meantime…”

Matt lets his teeth break the skin.

“Did I ever tell you about the worst thing that ever happened to me?” Foggy asks, apropos of nothing on some random night after only six months of knowing each other, “There was this girl. We were friends for like two years, two whole years, man! And I thought the vibes were totally there, so when prom time rolled around I asked her out and — bear in mind, super public crowded hallway and everything — she like yelled ’Aren’t you gay?’”

“Oh?” Matt mumbles; he was halfway between sleeping and redrafting his essay in his mind, but even if he wasn’t he’s not sure what response Foggy is looking for here.

“There’s other stuff,” Foggy’s bed creaks as he shifts and his voice becomes a little louder. Must have turned to face him. “I’m fat, in case you somehow missed that, so middle school was never, like, a good time. Some family members were assholes about it too. Nanna Nelson, and my Mom. Not my Mom-Mom, my birth Mom, y’know. That gave me, like, some problems.”

Matt hums, “That sucks.”

“It did,” Foggy says decisively, “I got mugged once too, and I’ve had some shitty exes too. I might have told you about some.”

“Not that you can’t tell me anything, or that I don’t want to hear this,” Matt says, even though he doesn’t want to hear it. He wants to be in a coma. “But why are you telling me this?”

“Just thought, I know I can tell you this stuff, and I wanted to make sure you know it’s a two way street,” Foggy turns back onto his back, “Like. You can tell me anything, you know that?”

“Of course I do.”