Disclaimer: I don't own the comic or TV rights to Marvel's "Daredevil" or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: Prompt fill for the Daredevil kink meme: "Foggy has a special ability: He can travel two seconds into the past. It may not sound like much, but in a space between life and death, it's a lifetime."
Warnings: *Contains: adult language, adult content, mild sexual content, spoilers for the whole first season.
The one who sees back (doesn't know shit)
Chapter One
He was five and a half - yes, the half was important – when Mickey from the blue-trimmed house down the street threw a baseball at him on purpose. It didn't hit him, but then again it didn't have to. It was his ice cream cone – the same gorgeous double scooped, rocky-road waffle cone goodness he'd been looking forward to for days - that ended up being collateral damage.
The ice cream hadn't even finished falling before he closed his eyes and wished.
It took him years to get it right. To figure out exactly what he'd done to rewind it back. To understand what it all meant. But at the time, all he'd been aware of was his cone flying back into his hand. Blinking as a blur of Foggy-skin snapped back as the truck going past leapt half a meter backwards – muted and retracting. Expression twisting as a sudden, unsettling swoop dipped like sick-up in his belly just before the world hiccupped and smoothed back into normal again.
And for two glorious seconds, he had it all back. The ice cream. The waffle cone. The unbridled sense of sugary joy. Then he caught the tail end of white and red stitching out of the corner of his eye and he dropped the stupid cone all over again.
He spent the next two days convinced he could control things with his brain. Giving himself his first ever migraine following the kid around, squinting at him. Trying to make him do ridiculous things like trip over his shoe lace or stick a twig up his nose.
Mickey, as you might have guessed, was an asshole.
It wasn't until he was old enough to get a library card and brave the shitty dial-up at the public library back home - because his family were basically a trope in of themselves and had to yet to embrace the modern age – that he figured out that strange lurch in his belly had a name.
Déjà vu.
It'd even sounded cool for about a grand total of thirty-five seconds. Right up until he scanned the rest of the article and nearly had the pants scared off him. Or scarred. Maybe both. He ended up tipping a dictionary off one of the shelves to look up what the words: "precognition" and "epilepsy" meant. Consequentially regretting everything before one of the librarians called his parents because they found him half an hour after closing feverishly flipping through the pages of a lobotomy textbook muttering about nerve clusters and antiseptic.
Still, since he'd always been a glass half-full sort of person, once he'd gotten over himself, he decided to embrace the weirdness. He was Déjà vu man. There were worse things. Like Aqua man. He figured that so long as he was above the marine life lameness scale he was in the clear. More or less. Probably less. Anyway-
After that it pretty much became a non-issue. He was already a sponge of weirdness so after a while it barely made the Richter scale. He was adaptable. Malleable. He was squish. Foggy squish. So, he dealt with it. Even used it, here and there. And life, as it always did, trotted on. Threatening to leave him in its metaphorical dust as he eventually broke it to his mom that the butcher's life wasn't for him and instead, starting dreaming about law books and "Legally Blonde" courtroom sass.
Honestly, it was like the mental equivalent of blue balls. Sure, he had it, but he couldn't exactly do anything with it. Could he? After all, other than adverting ice-cream cone disasters and milk spills, what good could going back in time for two seconds actually do for anyone?
A decade or so later, he could have fucking punched himself.
In the same way as Matt was the best thing, he was also the worst thing.
It was a metaphor in and of itself, but at the end of the day he figured it fit.
Because not only was he a smart, dashingly attractive wounded duck, he was also a smart, dashingly attractive blind wounded duck whom he probably would have stooped into the Aqua man territory if it meant he could save him from continuously getting beaned by light poles and slow moving cars.
Matt was a magnet for trouble. He kept trying to pester him into leaving his body for science when he died because honestly, there had to be some sort of metal in his body somewhere that tugged him just a few inches too far. Usually when there were witnesses. Or a hot girl. Or both. Sometimes he swore he did it on purpose. Like, just to remind the world that no matter how well he could zip around on his own, that hey- still blind!
And while the guy didn't have to look in the mirror every day, everyone else did. And spending half a week watching his best bro's bruises fade was so not kosher. So, of course, halfway through their first semester he appointed himself Matt's protector against all things stationary or otherwise.
It gave him a weird sort of purpose. Using his powers for good. Because while he had crap reflexes and usually couldn't even save Matt from the occasional light pole let alone the asshole pushing their way through the hall despite obviously being in the presence of his wounded duck, he did have the ability to make sure it didn't happen after the fact or at least mitigate the damage the second or third time around.
The world was a dangerous place on the best of days. For a dude that couldn't see, it was a fuckin' deathtrap. By mid-terms he was half sure he'd mother-henned himself into an ulcer. Which, honestly, could have just been the mid-terms themselves. But either way, whenever the dork flashed him that stupid smile he always did, nothing ever felt more worth it.
He was like a human guide dog and really- he just embraced it. Why the man didn't have one in the first place was a mystery to him. Because one, it was actually a thing. And two, dogs were awesome. He had it on good authority that if he were a dog he would probably be a Golden Retriever of righteousness. But not just any Golden Retriever mind you- no. He'd totally be one of those one hundred and ten percent more fluff kind where you could tag-team braids into its fur and lose your fingers in it when you petted it. But apparently Matt was immune to the charms of all things dog and decided he liked Foggy better.
Which, hey, that worked for him.
Like, a lot.
Because the whole Matt thing had also kind of been a love at first sight thing that'd aged like expensive wine or a particularly good wheel of apple-smoked cheese. The kind that smelled like feet until it was melting in your mouth and your taste buds were singing like it was rapture time and you were already floating up to the big farm in the sky.
He would do anything for the guy.
Probably even murder.
Okay, maybe not murder.
But like, helping hide the body?
He could do that.
His poker face was shit but he was loyal, so he figured that was something.
But the point was, he'd accepted it, you know?
He was content with being best friends.
Partners.
They were the best damn avocados and he'd rather die than lose that.
Eternal blue-balls be damned.
Hell, they were basically lifers in a completely nonsexual way anyway, and that was okay.
It was cool.
He'd kinda loved the guy since forever, but considering Matt had never-
Yeah, anyway.
Content.
That was him.
Yup.
And, because his brain was a complete dick and even his own sub-conscious couldn't cut him a break, like, ever apparently-
"Liar liar pants on fire," he muttered into his stack of paperwork. Ignoring Matt's confused head-tilt as he passed by the open door of his office. Somehow balancing a tray of coffees for all of them one handed as they burned the late night oil working on Mrs. Cardena's case against Tully.
Crap.
A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – There will be two more chapters, stay tuned.