This fic was inspired by an idea broached by Matt's Dirty Alarm Clock (the Twitter account, not the actual clock, because that would be weird), and possibly others as well. It's the first piece of fanfic I've written in almost a decade - after churning out a lot of it back in the day - and the first that follows television canon, as opposed to the comicsverse.
I've been wanting to start writing Daredevil fanfic again for a while now, and on the final day of the #SaveDaredevil Fanworks Initiative, I got my s**t together and finished this. This story takes places between seasons one and two of Marvel's Daredevil.
000
Foggy climbed the stairs to Matt's apartment a little too quickly and had to take a moment to catch his breath outside his friend's place. Of course, Matt would already know he was there. After all, he was carrying a six pack of beer - not at all discreet with its rattling clinks of glass on glass - and now he was standing there panting like a weirdo. At times like this, Foggy wished that he could go back to before he knew anything about Matt's heightened senses, because knowing these sorts of things could really mess with your head.
As if wanting to prove how weird both of them were, Matt opened the door before Foggy could raise his hand to knock, looking very amused. "So, I take it you're my new stalker?"
Foggy let out a chuckle along with a breath he didn't even know he was holding. "Yeah… You think the fact that I'm apparently very out of shape will be a problem?"
Matt opened the door wider and moved out of Foggy's way. "Well ordinarily, the heavy breathing would go great with the overall creepiness of your typical stalker, but I guess I'm a little harder to sneak up on."
"No kidding..." Foggy wasn't sure he'd completed adjusted to the idea of everything Matt could do, but at some point they had both come to some kind of silent agreement to address the issue with a touch of humor. "So, I brought beer. Should we order some pizza?"
"I just did actually, figured you'd want the usual?"
"Good call."
Matt reached out his hand in Foggy's direction. "Hey, I'll take the beers, put them in the fridge. I've got a couple of cold ones in there to start with.
Foggy handed them over, with much less care than he had in what now seemed the distant past. His eyes followed Matt over to the fridge, where he started moving things around before pulling each new bottle of beer from the sticky cardboard packaging.
It had taken Foggy some time to get used to that too, the way Matt moved now when they were alone together. It was a strange mix of patterns, really. At first, Foggy had just noticed the differences from before, how gracefully Matt would just move around things, or reach for things. Just as easily as if he could see them. And the betrayal of that particular "before and after" had stung; still did every now and again. But before long, he had started noticing the quirks too. The not-quite-sighted ways of doing things that were distinctly Matt.
As if to underscore Foggy's train of thought, Matt stood back up, weighing a bottle in his hand, while lightly tracing the shape of the label with the other. "These aren't Heinekens?" He looked deeply perturbed by this finding.
"Um, no. I decided to get something different. Some new APA with an over-ambitions hipster name I can't recall." He thought about it for a second, and then "They were right next to the Heinekens though. You think…"
Matt had grabbed the discarded cardboard wrapping and sniffed it. "Yeah, someone's pretty much poured an entire bottle of Heineken on top of these. No wonder it threw me off." Satisfied to have settled this apparent challenge to his understanding of the universe and all things in it, Matt shrugged before grabbing the cold beers he'd saved from their previous evening of drinks and trips down memory lane.
Foggy smiled to himself while accepting the bottle from Matt's hand. He had often wondered what life was like from Matt's point of view. Recent discoveries hadn't changed that. Quite the opposite. "Thanks, man."
"Oh, pizza's here." Matt did that thing where he tilted his head like a Golden Retriever trying to make sense of a dog whistle, and Foggy figured he must have heard the guy approaching.
While Matt went to the front door and started going through his wallet, Foggy turned around in the direction of Matt's bedroom. He noticed that something was different immediately, but it took a beat or two to narrow it down to that thing hanging on the wall in the corner. When the hell did Matt get a painting. More importantly: Why?
"Hey…" Foggy called out, interrupting the pizza and money transaction taking place by the door. "What is that?"
Matt ignored him for the seconds it took to carry the large pizza inside. "What is what?"
"That!" Foggy declared again while forcefully straightening his arm in the direction of the corner of the room.
"Whu…" Matt looked flabbergasted, until it dawned on him. "Oh, you mean the painting?"
"Yeah! When did you get that?"
"Oh, Vanessa what's-her-name gave it to me." From where Foggy was standing, Matt didn't seem to think anything of it and dropped the pizza box on the coffee table.
"Whoa…" Foggy felt a chill run down his spine. "You mean Vanessa, as in Fisk's Vanessa?" He uttered the last part in a half whisper.
"Yeah, remember how I was going to go down there and look at some art?" Matt smiled to himself, adding "And of course I'm using the word 'look' metaphorically."
"But you didn't actually buy anything, did you?" Foggy was stunned by how this whole thing seemed to amuse Matt.
"Uhm, no. But she sent these to me for free. This one, and another one I put in the bedroom."
Foggy had absent-mindedly taken a sip of his beer because this whole conversation had caused his throat to dry up, and now he found himself coughing and gasping for air.
"You okay?" Matt finally expressed some kind of concern.
"Fisk's girlfriend sends you art! And my God why do you not see that as, like, a huge threat? She knows where you live?" Foggy tried and failed to keep his voice down.
"Oh, actually, no. She had the paintings sent to our office and I took them home. But this was a long time ago, right after my visit to her gallery. She wouldn't have known at the time what we were looking to do to Fisk. It was long before we brought him down."
"Why haven't I seen them before?"
"I just put them up last week. I'd almost forgotten about them, kept them in my closet, and then I figured why the heck not. You know?"
Foggy sighed. Matt and all his ways of not making any damn sense. "Yeah, I guess it's safe. Maybe. What if she wants them back?"
Matt chuckled and took a sip of his beer. "If she wants them back, I'll consider it." He sat down on the couch and opened the pizza box. "But, since you're here… What does it look like?"
"You didn't try to feel it up? With your touchy-feely super senses?" Foggy threw a tired glance at his friend who wasted no time digging into the pizza, even though Foggy had always suspected Matt didn't like fast food nearly as much as he did.
"I did," Matt said matter of factly. "It feels like paint. Uneven paint."
Foggy turned back around and stared at it for a few seconds. "It looks like it's supposed to look like something. You know? Like, there's this bunch of color blocks that might be buildings. Or, like the top of buildings? Or not?" He leaned in for a closer look. "Hm, is that a ladder of some sort?"
"So is it something or nothing?"
"Is it bad that I can't tell?"
"Yeah…?" Matt gave Foggy his trademark wide-eyed look, complete with the raised eyebrows, that seemed to plead with Foggy to go on.
"It looks like something rained on it." Foggy looked back at the thing and sighed.
"Did something rain on it?
"No, no… It's more like it's supposed to look that way. Like, all fuzzy around the edges. You know, there this shape of something in the back that could be a water tower. If you squint."
"If you squint? Huh."
"Or maybe it's what Hell's Kitchen looks like if you're on a bad acid trip. Except it's not bright. It's like a muted palette of blue, gray, some brownish yellow."
"Nice use of the word palette, you should be an art critic." Matt was back to his amused smirk. "And now I kind of want to know if you've ever actually tried acid."
"Well, thank you," Foggy replied, letting the sarcasm drip from his words. "I'm just trying to sound way more cultured than I actually am. And no. Never did try acid."
"So, I guess what I really want to know is if it's just really bad art that she couldn't sell, and that she figured the best use of it would be to give it to a blind guy who doesn't know any better. Come to think of it, maybe I should be offended." Matt did not look offended.
"I wouldn't have the first clue if it's worth anything, I guess it's a conversation piece. For when you have people over." Matt's smirk faded just a bit, making Foggy wonder. There was so much he didn't know about what Matt did when he and Karen weren't around. "Do you ever actually have people over?"
"I mean, there's you. And Karen."
"That sounds kind of sad." Foggy finally walked over to sit next to Matt on the couch and grabbed his own slice of pizza.
"Oh, I forgot to mention the super. He came by last week. Leaky faucet." Matt looked quite pleased with himself.
"Yeah, that's not any less sad, buddy. Are you at least on a first name basis with the super?"
"His name is Bill. I think."
"You think?"
"Or was it Bob…?"
"Dude, I'm starting to doubt this guy even exists."
Matt laughed. "Yeah, I probably would too, if I were you. But he's definitely real. He stunk up the whole place for two days. Yikes."
"That bad, huh?"
"Oh yeah. For someone who regularly fixes other people's pipes, he doesn't take a lot of showers."
Foggy couldn't think of anything to say to that and the silence hung in the air for a while. It was Matt who interrupted it.
"As for what you were really asking. I've occasionally had people over." Matt looked embarrassed now. "I mean, you know. Women. But you know that."
"Yup." No surprises there. Foggy could easily recall a number of times they'd been out together where Matt didn't go home alone.
"But that was a while ago, to be honest." Matt paused, as if deliberating whether to go on. "And here's the thing. You and I have friends. Collectively. That we hang out with together."
"That's been ages too though," Foggy said. He thought back to first Landman and Zack, and then law school. Most of the people they'd hung out with were acquaintances, at best, but there were at least a handful that he still thought of as friends.
"I guess what I'm saying is that I don't have any secret friends I hang out with that you don't know about. In case you were wondering." Matt sighed, then smiled wistfully. "You've always been the one who makes friends, and I get to tag along."
Foggy stared at Matt in disbelief. "Have you been doing acid? You've always been, like, a thousand times cooler than me."
"I'm not," Matt insisted, but he couldn't hide a slight blush. "But even if I were, and that's a big if, you're still like this… social glue. Let's face it, I freak people out. A little."
"And yet those people have no idea how freaked out they really should be," Foggy deadpanned.
"Touché," Matt responded in kind.
"Anyway, cheers buddy." Foggy held up his bottle, waiting for Matt to do the same.
"Cheers."
Foggy looked back up at the painting. Considering where it came from, it really did look quite innocent, and not entirely out of place.
"I'll bet it's not actually worthless."
"What, the painting?"
"Yeah. I wouldn't know – like I said – but she wouldn't give you something completely crappy would she?"
"You know, I actually could have sworn she was coming on to me."
"Of course she was." Foggy didn't doubt it for a second.