I'll Most Likely Kill You in the Morning

by inkfingers mcgee

Foggy and Matt didn't go to school together. They meet for the first time while working opposite sides of a case, and Matt doesn't leave much of an impression; he seems like a nice guy, but no one Foggy will worry about a week from now. He has more important things on his mind, like the masked vigilante who keeps threatening him for information in dark alleys. Matt/Foggy, slow burn

4. Chapter 4

"How the fuck?"

Matt lets Foggy have his confusion. He faces him, and he schools his expression, and he tries not to give sound to any of the painful ways his throat tightens. The incredulity hurts like a blow to the solar plexus, but he's pretty used to taking those.

He steels himself before responding. "It's difficult to explain."

Foggy's heartbeat is racket; his face is a bright point of heat. "Well, you- you gotta try, because I want to take you on faith, I really do, but there's- there's no way a guy who can't see can do the stuff I've seen you do. Like. Like, seriously, I don't want to believe you're taking advantage of the disabled by lying about something like this, but how the fuck."

Matt sighs deeply, wretchedly. He expected it would be difficult for Foggy to believe him, but expecting and experiencing are two different animals, and he's never actually had this conversation before. Even now, with the truth halfway out there, he hesitates to say what he has to say next. His left hand fidgets, quick and helpless. He wants to stop it. He can't.

"Do you remember when you asked if I have an ability?"

Foggy makes an expression, something subtle that Matt can't quite place, known to him only by the sound of gently crinkling skin. "You wouldn't tell me what it was."

"Well." Matt draws a breath that shakes halfway in.

He had to pull glass out of his own back, once. He contorted into tangles, unable to pinpoint the locations of the shards because everything hurt, and ended up pushing more in than he got out.

This feels like that.

"I have… heightened senses. Super senses. If you prefer." It's supposed to be funny. Foggy doesn't laugh.

"My senses give me spatial awareness. I can hear things like blood moving through a body, people talking from a mile away, that man kissing his girlfriend on the other side of the street—" he pauses as Foggy spins to look out the window, making a sound of surprise as he apparently spots the couple. "I can feel— everything, really. Tiny changes in the airflow or atmospheric pressure, things like breathing, single strands of hair moving. It all comes together to form this… picture, in my mind's eye. Like an impressionistic painting; nothing detailed, but it's. It's enough. Smell helps me fill in the gaps, and taste, too." He takes a breath. "So, yes, I can, in the metaphorical sense of the word, see things. But I am blind."

It's quiet between them. Foggy's face doesn't move enough to betray his expression. Matt puts his left hand, the one that won't stop worrying, into his pocket to finger the pen light he bought at the drugstore on his way here. If Foggy needs proof, he'll let him shine it in his eyes to check his pupils. He doesn't know what exactly this is that's been growing between them, but he isn't willing to let it die under the heel of Foggy's disbelief.

"So, you—" Foggy stops, swallows. Gasps out a laugh, but there are no endorphins, only adrenaline. "That's why— the mask. You don't even see out of it. You can't. You can't see."

Matt shifts his weight.

"You can't see anything? At all? You're completely blind? As a bat? That's— am I being insensitive? I can't tell. I mean— are you sure?"

He wasn't expecting to laugh, but there it is, as it always is with Foggy, like he's used his bare hands to pull it out of him. "Am I sure that I'm blind?"

Foggy's voice pitches high. "Yeah?"

"I'm sure. When I was nine, there was an accident, a chemical spill. The chemicals gave me my abilities, but… The last thing I saw was my father's face." As soon as he says it, he feels unanchored, the way he feels as he goes off the edge of a building. He's never told anyone that before.

Foggy's lips part, but he doesn't say anything. In the pause, Matt hears the couple in the next building having that fight about the mother-in-law again. Two floors down, a microwave beeps. Someone giggles shrilly.

"Oh, my God!" Foggy says, sudden, with a palpable widening of his eyes. "I knew your name was familiar when we met! You're the Matt Murdock that was in the paper when we were kids! Man, I thought you were the coolest. I idolized you for months! You saved that old dude's life, when— wow, God, you were just a kid." He wipes his clammy hand over his mouth. "You really don't know when to stop, do you?"

Matt rolls his shoulders in a shrug. "It's who I am."

Though it's already a steady staccato, Foggy's heart flutters. "Yeah, I'm. I'm getting that."

Running his tongue between his lips, Matt draws closer to Foggy. He stops two steps away, and can't ignore the ways that Foggy lists toward him, minuscule but everywhere: the barest slide of his heel, a turn of his pelvis, a breath between his opening lips, his hand drifting centimeters into the space between them. It's how Foggy moved before he tried to kiss Karen, all those weeks ago.

She didn't let him, but Matt—

Matt would.

"Superpowers," Foggy says, faint.

"In a sense."

"In four senses, is what you're telling me."

Matt smiles. "See, now you've got it."

"So, you— when you said you heard me getting attacked, I thought that meant you were following me."

"I was on the other side of Hell's Kitchen."

"No shit?"

"I can hear you from two miles away."

"That's— I'm trying not to stroke your ego, here, because you've definitely been lying to me, but that's amazing. What else can you do? Besides the hand-to-hand combat, which is, what, just mad skills?"

Lips loose and easy, Matt grins with his teeth. "The spatial awareness helps."

"Oh, yeah, be modest. Very heroic of you. Does the spatial awareness help when you fling yourself off of fire escapes, too?"

Matt laughs. "I don't make a habit of that."

"Yeah, once is enough. Seriously, you can see— or- sense? You can sense enough to do stuff like that just by—" Foggy gestures formlessly out to his sides "—by tasting the air or some shit?"

"I can sense everything around me, more than a sighted person could. I know you left the toilet cover up because it changes the airflow in the bathroom, and I can smell the downstairs neighbor's cat sleeping on their fresh laundry, and right now, I can hear that you're either beginning to believe me or beginning to go into denial, because your heartbeat is leveling out for the first time since I came back."

Foggy pulls a sharp breath. "You can hear my heartbeat?"

"Anybody's, if I concentrate."

"Wait, so—" Foggy scoffs. "You said you could tell if I was lying. I thought you were just- saying that. Are you telling me you can actually go around and polygraph the world by listening to their heartbeats? That's—" his face scrunches. "That's invasive."

"It's not quite like that."

"So you can't tell when someone's lying?"

Matt shrugs and casts his hands out at his waist, a nonverbal what are you gonna do?

"Aren't you a lawyer?" Foggy's tone is softer but his heartbeat isn't. "That's illegal as hell, man. They'd disbar you in a second."

"I won't get caught."

"Seriously?" Foggy shakes his head. "I guess that shouldn't surprise me, coming from the local vigilante."

"I don't abuse it, Foggy. I'm just using everything at my disposal to keep the people of Hell's Kitchen safe. Do you think any other competent lawyer would have taken Karen's case? I knew she was telling the truth. I defended her."

Foggy makes a small noise. "Oh. That— It was you. You saved her life, in the mask."

Matt nods.

"And you saved mine, twice, that first time I saw you. Did I ever thank you?"

"It was implied." Matt takes a step, halfway to Foggy's space. If one of them reached out, they could touch each other. Neither moves.

"Well. Thanks," Foggy says, "officially."

He touches Matt's elbow, hardly more than a brush of fingers, but Matt lights up with it; he can feel the bones of Foggy's arm through the layers of skin and fabric, light and strong. The ulna was broken when he was young, maybe twelve or thirteen.

"Foggy," Matt says, soft so that Foggy will have to lean in, have to listen close, "when Fisk is out of this city, I want to see you again. I want you to come back to me."

"You'll need to give me something to come back to." Foggy's words aren't so much sounds as shifting shapes on the air. "Watch out for yourself. These guys are nasty. I hear they kidnap people and torture them."

"Not if I can help it."

"I'm serious, buddy— Matt." Foggy's other hand lands on Matt's other elbow. There's urgency in the line of his body; Matt can just picture the knit of his brows from their crinkle. "Matt, you watch out. If I thought I could say something to make you stop, or at least let someone help you, I would, but—" a wet press of Foggy's lips together, the flick of his eyelids shuttering, "seriously, you can't make me care about you and then get yourself killed, okay?"

He squeezes Matt's elbows, and Matt is undone. He draws a shaky breath.

"I didn't mean for you to care."

A laugh punches more through Foggy's nose than his mouth. He tilts his head back, leaving his lips the half-inch higher they'd need to be if he wanted to press them to Matt's. Matt leans forward, just enough to realize that he's doing it. Just in case.

"Buddy," Foggy breathes. "It's way too late for that."

"Yeah?"

"Oh, yeah."

Foggy's head angles, barely, so that his nose wouldn't bump Matt's, if their noses were to be that close. If—

Karen. Karen. Karen.

They pull back, Matt with his upper body and Foggy a whole few steps.

"Is that-?" Foggy starts.

"My phone. Karen. I—" Matt sucks a breath through his teeth then sighs it out. "I need to get to work. She's—"

"Yeah, yeah, you go. I need to get out of here anyway." Foggy's hands worry over his clothes for a moment, brushing the fabric down despite its already being smooth. Then his arms go limp, and he tilts his head toward Matt. "I'm serious. Be safe. And call me the moment this is all sorted out. I hate leaving New York."

Matt nods once. "You'll be the first to know."

"Matt." He takes Matt's elbow again and grips it tight. "You—" he swallows. "Really. Be safe."

"I will."

Lie, his heartbeat says, but Foggy's none-the-wiser. He gives Matt's arm one last squeeze, then heads for the door.

He calls, "See ya, buddy," and he's gone.

Matt deflates into the couch. It's then that he realizes, with a thin breath of a laugh, that he's still clutching the mask in his right hand. He worries it between his fingers, taking in the familiar texture, and the smells of everywhere he's been.

Karen. Karen. Ka—

He snatches his phone from his pocket. "Karen, hey. Sorry, my alarm didn't go off. I'll be there in fifteen, okay?"

"Oh," she says, and even through the phone he knows her throat is doing that wavery thing. "Yeah, okay."

"I am sorry, Karen. I don't want you to worry." He sighs. "You're important to me. You know that, right?"

"What? Yeah, I. I know."

"I— Okay. Okay. See you in a minute."

"Sure, Matt. See you."

Matt hangs up. He flings the mask across the room.

x+x

Now that Gao and the Yakuza have gone silent and Foggy is laying low, Matt feels he's spending more hours at the office than in the last several months combined. Without clients, he and Karen sit tensely at their respective desks or at the conference room table, scouring through what they have on Fisk. Foggy got them a substantial amount of information before going, but the bulk of it is complex and dry, the kind of reading that only yields results under a sharp eye and a fine-toothed comb. The feeling that they're missing something is impossible to shake. Matt knows he hasn't been at his best lately, and Karen isn't any better; since Ben was murdered, she's been ragged at the seams. Today, especially, she's in a sorry state. Her most recent meal smells distant and dismal, and she didn't sleep last night, if the twitch of her eyelids is my indication.

Finally, when her face drifts for the dozenth time toward the wall to their left that Matt's fairly sure is blank, he puts a hand on her shoulder and tells her to go home.

"Get some rest, Karen. Please."

She melts into his touch for a moment. "Okay," she sighs, like he beat it out of her.

Once she goes, Matt takes all the documents in Braille back to his desk, thinking he should be more able to focus without Karen's weariness tugging on the edge of his perception. He really needs a breakthrough with this.

Fifteen minutes later, he jerks to attention at the sound of his ringtone— Foggy. Foggy. Foggy— and realizes that he spent the whole time listening to the people downstairs discuss the Black Widow, and whether she should be in prison. He loses their conversation as he fumbles for his phone.

"Foggy? Is everything okay?"

"Oh yeah, I'm okay. I'm fine." He sounds comfortable, moreso than he did when he called last week to say he arrived safely. "You got a minute?"

Matt puts a hand to his temple and leans with his elbow on the desk. "Did you need something?"

"Oh." There goes the comfort. "Sorry, man, is this number for emergencies only? 'Cause I don't want to—"

"No, of course not," Matt says, although he's just now realizing that he didn't expect Foggy to call for any other reason. After the way they left things, maybe he should have expected them to talk, but that isn't the sort of thing he's used to. People don't frequently call him up for casual chats; he can't remember the last time he had a phone call for pleasure. "I didn't mean to give that impression. Are you doing well?"

Foggy chuckles. "Yeah, I'm doing well. Mostly."

"Mostly?"

"Not sleeping great. I keep wondering how you're doing."

"I'm alright. Not a lot of action here, these past few days."

"Have you seen Karen? I mean— shit. Sorry."

Matt smiles. "Foggy, it's part of the common vernacular."

"Ah- yeah. I guess. Have you?"

"Yeah. Just sent her home early, actually. She's taking it pretty hard, what happened to Ben."

Foggy makes a small noise. "Sorry I missed the funeral. He seemed like a good guy."

"You couldn't help it."

"How's his wife?"

"Given the circumstances? Not too well, I'd imagine. But I don't really talk to her. That's more of a question for Karen."

"Oh, sure. Yeah." Something shifts across the line. Clothes. A blanket, maybe. "How are you taking it?"

Sighing, Matt leans back in his chair. "I'm just trying to get something on Fisk. Sooner he goes down, sooner good people like Ben stop dying."

A sound of agreement. "I'm not keeping you from that, am I?"

"No, no." Matt loosens his tie. "I don't know. I'm no good tonight."

"Suppose I couldn't convince you to give yourself a break."

"I take breaks. I'm taking a break right now."

"Yeah, sure you are. You know what a break is, Murdock? It's sleeping in a room with a view over a forest. Connecticut is unreal when you haven't left New York in months."

"You know, I've never seen a forest. Not in person."

Foggy gasps. "Seriously? Aw, man, that's tragic. Sorry I brought it up."

"Stop. This is why I didn't want to tell you I was blind."

Foggy groans. "Listen, it would be sad whether you were blind or not. You never went upstate as a kid, before you lost your peepers?"

Matt smiles. "I didn't lose them. You've seen my eyes." Foggy makes a noncommittal noise, and Matt continues. "Never had the money to travel. I played with the neighborhood kids. Kicked a lot of cans." Without realizing it, Matt's gone relaxed into his chair, head tipped over the back. He lets himself have this, the momentary quiet. "Tell me about it."

"What, the forest? Oh, jeez. I'm not much of a wordsmith, unless you want a full legal description. I know a few surveyors."

Smiling still, Matt undoes his tie, drags it out from his collar and allows it to slither from his fingers to the floor. He lets the details fade from the edges of his world on fire. "Come on. Try."

Foggy chuckles. "Alright. Well, it's really green this time of year. Not quite that spring green, but kind of a tired green. More yellow than blue. Lots of fir trees and the like. The ground is mulchy and covered in pine needles, but they're the old ones from the winter, all brown. The trees are thick right now. You can't see the sun if you look up, but the light still comes through pretty strong. It's actually bright as hell in the mornings, which is annoying, but right now, it's— it's soft. Sun's setting on the other side of the house, so I get the nice, calm blue before it gets dark."

Matt hums. "That sounds beautiful."

"Yeah. Yeah, it's—" Foggy breaks off. There's shuffling. "Damn it," he says, arm's length from the receiver.

Matt strains after a sound in the background. "Is that a chihuahua?"

Groaning, Foggy flops down on something— a bed, if that tinny sound is springs. "Ugh, I'm not even surprised you can hear that. His name is Maxwell and every time he starts braking, he goes for about a solid thirty minutes before he shuts up. He's been waking me up at five AM."

"How inhumane."

"I've never contemplated animal violence before, Murdock. You should know that about me. But I'm being tested."

"Is that why you called? To tell me you're considering canicide?"

"I don't know, did I really just hear you pull that word out of your ass?"

Matt laughs. "It's just the Latin."

"Just the Latin. Jesus." Foggy expels air as he says it, trying to sound exasperated, but Matt knows how he forms his words when he's smiling.

"What can I say? I'm Catholic."

"I'm never gonna get over that," Foggy says, chuckling. "The gay Catholic vigilante."

Matt tips his chin down toward his chest. His ears are warm. "I'm not gay."

"Oh, yeah, you like women. But you like men too, right? If not, this is all very embarrassing for me."

"No, I do. I just never really thought of myself as…"

"Bisexual?"

"As anything specific. I don't do relationships."

"Color me shocked." He hears Foggy shifting. "So, no relationships. Is that a mission statement, or more of a summary of past affairs?"

"I don't know," Matt sighs, letting his head tip back again. "My last long-term relationship ended… badly." He's never told anyone about what Elektra did to him, the way she gasped halfway to eroticism as he almost beat a man to death. He thinks he could tell Foggy, given time— but not today. "Kinda turned me off the dating thing for a while. Then I started my… nocturnal hobby not long after. After that, I guess I didn't see myself being with anyone ever again."

"Why? Love's just a distraction when it's your destiny to stalk the night?"

"I didn't feel like I could be with someone while lying to them."

Foggy makes a soft, punched-in sound. His hand passes by the receiver, wiping his mouth, maybe. He does that when he's dumbfounded. "You keep doing that to me."

"What?"

"You let me think I know what you're about, then it turns out you're so much more. You're killing me, here."

Matt lays the crook of his arm over his face. His skin is flushed warm. "Foggy…"

"Hey, I'm into you, Matt. You get that, right? I mean, that was— when you took my hand the other night, and when you asked me to come back to you. That was all very romantic, but I want to actually put it out there in plain words, since your area of expertise seems to be more, you know, putting people in full-body casts. I'm into you and I want to be with you if I can. And I can't believe I said those sentences next to each other."

Against the crease of his elbow, Matt chuckles. It's stupid-breathless, like someone besotted. God help him. "You don't sound so sure of yourself."

"No, I am. I've thought about it. It's gonna take me a while to get used to what you do, to adjust to the fact that it's a real guy doing it, to— to reconcile the man in the mask and Matt the lawyer together into one cohesive unit, I guess. But I can do it. I want to. I've given it a lot of thought. Have you?"

"Not— not in so many words. But." He moves his hand to the bridge of his nose, pinching as he tries to find the right way to put it. "I want you around. In my life. I want—" he gasps out a small laugh. "I want you."

He can hear Foggy swallow. "Well. That's compelling. I, uh— oh, shit." Matt struggles to isolate individual sounds from the ambiance: footsteps, a door opening. An unfamiliar voice speaks. Foggy says, "Yeah, yeah, sorry," through his hand on the phone. When his proper voice returns, it's at a whisper. "Hey, listen, Matt, I'm in deep shit for waking up the dog with my— and I'm quoting here— big gay phone conversation. Can I call you back at a more reasonable hour?"

"Yeah. Of course. Any time."

"Okay. Yeah. Talk to you later, buddy. Go easy on yourself. Bye."

"Bye."

Matt hangs up and gingerly places his phone on the desk without lifting his head. He's warm all over. His heart beats faster than resting, but low for him, far from the realm of fear or exertion. It's a good kind of rhythm.

He smiles at the ceiling.

x+x

A "more reasonable hour" turns out to be 8 AM the next morning.

It's probably a little desperate on Foggy's part, but Matt can't judge him, because he was already up and waiting for the call.

"Good morning," he answers, thankful that no one is here to see the foolish proportions of his smile.

"Matt, hey. Get some rest?"

"Enough. Did the chihuahua survive the night?"

Foggy laughs. "Barely. It's like staring into the abyss, except the abyss is yipping at the top of its lungs and you're thinking about feeding it to the neighbor's doberman— who also barks, by the way. I don't know if I can take another day of this."

Still smiling, Matt takes a seat on the couch. "I'll pray for you."

"Yeah, thanks," Foggy says. "Oh, man, that reminds me. I didn't mean to bring up the sexuality-and-religion issue last time, so. Sorry, if that's a soft spot for you."

Unsure what to say to that, Matt waits with his lips parted for just long enough that Foggy stumbles onward, "I just forget that it can be a complication for some people. I had it easy. My parents weren't very religious, and they didn't mind that I wasn't. But I know some people have had hard luck with the whole God-and-gays conundrum."

Matt sighs, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "No, you're fine. I mean, it was— I'm not especially devout. And when I was, I had bigger things on my mind." He fiddles with the fingers of his left hand. "I'm not going to say that I never sat at confessional and agonized about having impure thoughts, but. It's been a while since then. Even if it is wrong, it's hardly the worst thing I'm doing."

"Ah. I'm gonna go ahead and sidestep the latent homophobia there. Have you been with guys before?"

"Sober?" Matt asks, working for his cool. "You'd be the first."

"See, this is good information. Now I know why you went from smooth to total dork the moment I started flirting back."

Matt goes warm all over. He puts a hand over his face. "I did not. That's slander, Mr. Nelson."

"Ha! You did. You're doing it right now."

"No, you're mistaken. I'm always smooth."

"And you're an awful liar. It's okay. I won't tell anyone." Foggy breaks off with a small, concerned sound. "Are you even out?"

Between his knees, Matt's hand won't stop fidgeting. He clenches his fingers into a fist. "I don't have much of anyone to be out to. My priest wouldn't care. He's… unorthodox. And I doubt Karen would mind." He sighs. "It hasn't exactly come up."

"Sure, I get it. It's not a big deal. I just wondered."

There's a brief pause, and for a moment the noises in the background are entirely indecipherable to Matt. It's only after straining to make sense of them that he realizes he's trying to place them in the wrong context; they aren't city sounds. It's nature. Birds chatter and the wind shudders through distant leaves. Foggy sits still, but Matt can just barely hear the tree trunks around him, the way they shape the air in loose, commanding swirls.

"Are you in the forest?"

"Yeah. You can hear that?"

"Sure. The birds sound nice."

Foggy breathes a surprised sound, smile-shaped. "Dude. The birds are like, miles away. I can barely hear them."

Matt doesn't know what to say to that. Some part of him thinks he should say thank you, like it's a compliment— but mostly Foggy sounds disbelieving. It shouldn't surprise him.

"So, you kind of— I mean, you explained it pretty well, but I'm still taking it in. Just how strong are your senses?"

Matt huffs a chuckle. "Strong."

"What, like, five times as strong as a normal person's? A hundred times?"

"I'm not sure."

"Ballpark it."

"I don't know if I could. It's difficult to measure it that way. I was only nine the last time I had normal senses, and sight kind of takes up all the space in your head, when you have it. I was too busy using my eyes to pay special attention to anything else, so I don't remember enough to draw a comparison."

"Hm. That makes sense." Foggy pauses, and opens his mouth around a few aborted starts before saying, "How much do you think it makes up for it? The blindness."

"It doesn't work like that. I mean, yes, I'm more able to do certain things than a normal blind person— or a normal sighted person, even. But I'm still—" his chest tightens a little bit, "—I still have a disability, at the end of the day. The Braille isn't for show. I had to get a lot of accommodations made for me, back in school. I have a service that buys groceries before me 'cause in the store I can't read the labels. There are things I can't do."

"Can you drive a car?"

"Ha!" Matt tips his head back, tickled by the thought. "No."

"Yeah, but have you tried?"

"I haven't. And I'm not going to, so don't get any ideas."

"Sorry! Had to ask."

"I mean, I've thought— I think I could probably drive a motorcycle, if I needed to. I've never tried, but… maybe someday, if I can find a country road. I'd never try it in the city."

"I'd pay to see that. Don't know if I'd go as far as to ride in your sidecar or anything— knowing you, it'd turn into some kind of X-games motocross shit pretty quicky."

Matt laughs. "And here I thought you trusted me."

"Listen, I wouldn't trust Captain America himself if he pulled up on a 1940s scooter and tossed me his own stupid helmet. I've seen way too many neck braces on way too many bikers in way too many courtrooms." Foggy rakes his hair away from the receiver, a rustle that feels empty without the accompanying brush of air. "Anyway. What other strange and fantastic things can you do? You can hear heartbeats, so what else can you hear? Molecules?"

"I can't hear molecules."

"Fine. Bet you can eavesdrop like a motherfucker, though."

"I try not to, but—" Matt's throat catches. Shit. Shit, he never planned on telling Foggy that he overheard his flub with Karen, but suddenly it seems like a lie not to. He spends so much time lying that it shouldn't bother him anymore, but this trust between them is so fresh, so fragile— before he knows what he's doing, he says, "Sometimes I hear things I didn't mean to."

"Yeah?"

"Specifically, ah. You. You and Karen, at the office a few weeks ago."

Foggy makes a sound that Matt's heard before, but usually only from people he's kicking in the gut. "You were spying on us?"

"No, no. I was in my office and I didn't hear you coming until it was too late. I didn't want you to see me— you would have recognized me in front of Karen— so I hid. And I. I was too close to block it out."

"Jesus." Foggy's hand moves near his face, maybe rubbing his temple or squeezing the bridge of his nose. "Wow. Fuck. That was, uh. Not one of my best moments. You heard everything?"

Matt's neck is hot. "Yeah."

"Awesome. Well, that's— hm." He sighs. "Wait. You knew? You knew that Karen has a thing for you?"

Matt tries not to groan. "Yes."

"And you didn't move on that?"

"No." He sighs. "She's a friend. It's not like that. She's- she's beautiful, of course. I'm not saying I'm not attracted to her."

"Wait, hold up. You can hear when someone's hot?"

Matt chuckles dryly. "More or less. My criteria are probably a bit different than yours, but I know what I like."

"So you like Karen, and you knew she likes you? And you're sitting here talking to me?"

"Don't put it that way. Karen doesn't… she doesn't know."

For a moment, there's nothing but wind a distant chirp of birds on the other end of the line. Shoes shift through the mulchy earth. "Is that why you're interested? 'Cause I'm the only person who knows about your secret?"

Matt shoots up off the couch. "No. No, absolutely not. I meant that she wouldn't get it. Or, maybe she would, but I would have to explain it to her, and it wouldn't be the same. But you get it. You get me." It should make him feel bad, coughing up the words that Elektra once said to him, all those years ago. It just makes him feel weightless. "Even when you thought I was probably a killer and you didn't trust me as far as you could throw me. You got me. And I— I do like you, Foggy. I told you that."

"You said you want me. It's different."

"It's not. I—" He doesn't do this. He never talks about this kind of stuff— about what he feels— and he doesn't know how to order it or refine it, so it comes rushing out: "I like your voice and the sounds that your hands make when you move them- and there's this certain way your body heat sits. I like that. I like talking to you. I like hearing what you have to say, all the good things. You have no idea how good you are, Foggy. You have no idea how rare it is for me to come across someone like you. Seems like everyone these days just— compromises, and lets the world break off the good pieces of them, but not you. Never you."

"Okay, okay. I get it. You're making me blush," Foggy says through a tight throat.

Matt swallows, trying to ground himself. "I do like you, Foggy."

"I know. I know. I get it. I didn't mean to get all insecure on you. I'm not usually like this. First vigilante-slash-super hero dating situation, uncharted waters."

"No. No, I understand." Are they dating? Is that what this is? Fuck, Matt hasn't been on a date in years. He doesn't even know if guys date each other the same way. (He decides it's best not to say that.) "This is different for me, too. It's hard."

"Yeah. I'm trying, though. I'm trying to understand you. You're a weird guy, Matt— crazy, to be frank. But I think I've come to a conclusion about you."

Matt sits. "And what's that?" he asks, hesitant.

"Well, I'm laying there last night while the chihuahua keeps barking its ass off, and I'm trying to figure out why you do what you do. I know you've told me, but you can only say 'it's the right thing' so many times before it loses all meaning. So I decide I need to come at it from a different angle. Play the jury's emotions instead of just slapping them with the cold facts, so to speak. And that's when I realize I've been trying to process it from my point of view, not yours, and that's the core of it: it's not something that a normal person can understand. You and your senses have a bad deal going for you. The rest of us can see tragedy occurring, and we know it happens everywhere, but to actually feel the amount of pain those tragedies deserve is too much for us. We can't spend our whole lives crying about it, so we have to distance ourselves from it. The only time we really access that tragedy is when it happens to us.

"That's the thing about your supersonic ears and everything, though: it happens to you every time. It's not someone else's tragedy, it's yours, right there where you can't get away from it. The more I think about it, the more I think, of course you're dressing in your Dread Pirate Roberts costume and getting in fights. I'd— man, I'd loose my shit, if I had to face the stuff you do on a daily basis. You're just doing what you can to deal with the bleak, bleak realities that the rest of us get to ignore. You were exactly right, when you said you do it because you have to. A lesser man might've just, I don't know, offed himself by now. But you're out there tying to fix it. It's more than most of us ever do in our entire lives. So I don't- I don't agree with it, but I gotta respect what you do. You deserve that much. You're a good man, Charlie Brown."

Something wet drips off of Matt's chin and down his hand, making him flinch. He hadn't realized he was crying.

"It's not like that," he says through his trembling throat. "I'm not— it's—"

"Whatever self-deprecating thing you're about to say, I'm gonna need you to shove that up your ass, Murdock. I mean, I wanna reiterate, what you do isn't even remotely legal, and it could get you killed, so I'm not condoning it. But at the same time, you've helped a lot of people, me included, so that- that's gotta count for something. I get that you can't stop. And I won't ask you to, not again."

Matt tries to breathe evenly around the edges of an approaching sob. "See?" he says, shaky. "You get me."

"Yeah," Foggy says like he's smiling. "Don't get weepy on me. If you cry, I'll cry."

Pushing the heel of his hand into his eye, Matt laughs wetly. "That isn't fair."

"I know, I know. I don't have a lot on you, with your super powers and- and ninja moves. Gotta play dirty."

"Ha- yeah." Matt spreads the thumb and first two fingers of his hand into his eyes, squeezing tears down over his cheeks. He remembers, abruptly, how spots of blue and purple used to burst across his vision when he did that as a kid. It seems like a different lifetime.

"I can't wait to see you again," he says, soft.

Foggy makes a strangled sound. "Yeah. Yeah, I miss you." He shakes his head, a whip of the breeze in his hair. "Jesus, Murdock, you're turning me into a teenage girl. Imagine me laying on my Justin Beiber bedspread with my legs kicking in the air, giggling on my Barbie phone."

Matt tucks his smiling face against his shoulder and laughs. "Oh, don't worry. That's how I've been imagining you this whole time."

"Good. I wouldn't have it any other way."

God, Matt wants to kiss him.

He draws a deep breath to keep from indicating that out loud. "I need to get to work," he says, finally.

Foggy sighs, catching a note of affection in his throat. "Yeah. Go kick some ass, okay? But carefully. I want you in one piece."

"Of course."

"I— mm. See you, Matt. Be safe."

"Bye, Foggy."

He sits on the couch with the phone to his ear for far too long after Foggy hangs up.

When he gets to work, Karen is more rested. She seems able to focus on her work, and her eyes don't struggle to open again when she blinks, and she even smiles when Matt says good morning. Her head keeps drifting toward him throughout the day, until finally she says,

"Hey, Matt. You okay?"

He faces his refreshable Braille display and tries not to smile too plainly.

"Yeah. I'm okay," he says.

He means it.

x+x

In the end, when Fisk is broken and bleeding and every TV and radio in the city clamors over the other with ever-sensationalized coverage of the arrest, Matt sits on the edge of his bed, halfway out of his body armor, and allows himself to be. His aching hands rest on his legs, palms inward. He lets the air pass through his stiff, curled fingers, around his arched thumbs. He tries to ground himself in this moment, where the inevitability of danger has given way to something else altogether: quiet.

He shakes as he gets his legs bare, hands rough against his own skin. The bottom of the suit pools around his feet, heavy and cool for all that it's drenched in his sweat. He listens for a moment to the slow crumple of the leather, then casts out, sensing the vibration of his helmet on the floor where the pipes rumble just beneath. Beyond that, the thin creak of his half-open bedroom door, and the rest of the apartment, largely untouched over the past few days. He can't sense much detail through the refrigerator door, but he can tell the pickings are slim. In the cabinets, there are a few boxes of cereal and a sleeve of stale crackers and a collection of spices that are useless without a dish to put them on. The only thing of promise is a bottle of whiskey with a little less than a double sloshing at the bottom.

It's just enough to drink alone.

But he won't be.

In the lull between Fisk's first arrest and escape, Matt called Foggy to tell him it was safe to come home. They were still on the phone when Matt heard that Fisk was loose.

"Should I still come?" Foggy asked.

"No— no, stay. Keep an eye on the news."

"Be careful, Matt. I'm serious, don't do anything crazy."

Matt smiled against the receiver. "I'll try. Stay there until you hear it's safe."

"I'll try," Foggy said, mocking, and then the line went quiet.

They haven't talked since then, but Matt is sure that Foggy was en route the moment he hung up. He may not be able to hear a heartbeat over the phone, but some lies don't need the clarification. By now, Foggy's probably back in New York state, at least. Matt wonders if he'll go to his own apartment before—

"Shit," he hisses, putting a hand to his side. Three bruised ribs, one cracked— not badly, but bad enough that he should be quieting his mind right now, rather than letting his thoughts run unchecked.

Laboriously, he shifts himself to the far side of the bed from the door, where the air is still, and pulls his legs up in front of him. He rests his hands palm-up on his knees. With a long, slow exhale, he casts off his raw skin, slips out of his bruised muscles. He strives for nothing, for healing, and tries to push the thought of Fisk's wrecking-ball blows out of his mind. Fisk is gone. He's gone, and it was Matt that sent him going. Matt's still whole. He's still here. His heart still beats, slowly, evenly— until he distances himself from that, too.

He leaves his body behind, and begins to heal.

x+x

New York has never felt so much like home. Though Foggy's cab hits a solid three hours of traffic on the way back in, he can't begrudge the city too much, because at least it's still here. It's where he grew up and it's where he'll grow old.

It's where Matt is waiting for him.

When he reaches the apartment complex, he bounds up to the door and buzzes 6A. A moment passes with no answer. He tries not to let it concern him. 2B answers, when he tries it.

"What?"

"Sorry to wake you, I think I left my keys in—" the door buzzes open before he can finish.

He rushes inside and up to the Mask's— Matt's, he still forgets sometimes— door and knocks as soon as he gets there. For a moment, he waits on the doorstep, practically vibrating. But Matt doesn't answer. Frowning, he knocks again. Matt should have heard him the first time, anyway, with his super ears. Should have heard him coming all the way from the street, if what he says about the extent of his abilities is true. Foggy isn't actually sure how comfortable he is with that, but he'd prefer it to this silence.

On a whim, he tries the knob. It turns under his hand.

"Matt?" he calls as he cracks the door, trying not to take this as a bad omen. "Matt, buddy, you here? Everything okay?" The interior of the apartment is highlighted neon, no sign of Matt anywhere, but also no indication of a break-in or a scuffle, so that's good. The bedroom door is slid ajar. Now that they're on a first-name basis, Foggy hopes it isn't crossing a line to go in there.

The first thing he sees is the helmet on the floor, deep red where a stripe of light falls between the horns. He blinks at it for a moment, because seriously, he has a very clear memory of saying that he did not endorse a the full-on devil iconography. Then his eyes catch the suit rumpled on the floor— red, too, because apparently this is what happens when the blind guy gets to choose his own look— and he looks past that, towards the bed.

"Matt, hey."

Matt sits on the far side of the bed with his legs crossed and his hands on his knees, meditating, if the cliche pose serves. At first he seems relatively unscathed, no guts hanging out. Then Foggy's eyes adjust and he discerns the shadows from the awful bouquet of bruises wrapped around Matt's bare torso.

Fisk always looked like a big guy in the news. Foggy is struck, sickeningly, by the thought of that monument of a man coming down on the much less-substantial Devil of Hell's Kitchen.

"Hey, Matt, you with me?" Foggy comes around the side of the bed to find Matt's face. Matt's eyes sit half-open, fixed motionless into the middle ground; Foggy wonders, Does he not see me? immediately followed by, Foggy, you idiot, of course he doesn't. He hovers a few feet away, unsure what to do. Matt seems okay, probably just finding himself some Really Deep Zen after an awful night, but Foggy doesn't care for him looking so unresponsive. But then, maybe that's none of his business. For all that he thinks Matt wants him here, he did come into the bedroom without explicit invitation. Here Matt sits, off in his own world, in nothing but his boxer briefs, thinking he's safe in the privacy of his own home, and here's Foggy: standing over him like a creep.

Foggy is halfway to thinking he should just leave when he sees the bruise peeking from beneath Matt's hairline, and that's— that's it. He isn't completely sure what a concussion victim looks like, but he needs to make sure that Matt isn't one.

Carefully, he takes a seat on the mattress. Matt's body dips slightly with the weight, but he doesn't acknowledge Foggy's presence.

"Hey, I'm gonna touch you, okay?" Foggy says, in case Matt is actually listening, then lays his hand feather-light on Matt's shoulder.

"Augh!"

Matt grabs Foggy's wrist with his closest hand and jerks the other back in a fist, practically snarling. Foggy yelps. Almost instantly, Matt's face loosens. He drops his hands.

"Foggy, shit. I'm sorry—"

"It's fine, buddy," Foggy assures him, and he means it, though his his voice runs a little thin. "Are you good?"

Matt sighs. He unfolds his legs slowly. "I'm okay," he says through a poorly suppressed wince.

"How do you make it in court with a poker face that flimsy, man?"

Matt laughs, then breaks off groaning, a hand going to his side. He angles his head away from Foggy, maybe trying to hide the pain. Foggy's never seen him so stiff. He looks kicked, both literally and metaphorically.

Without thinking, Foggy leans in and wraps Matt up in his arms, which is a great idea for the whole half-second before Matt gasps in pain.

"Shit." Foggy springs back as if burnt. "That was stupid. Sorry, sorry, you just—"

"Foggy."

Matt's arm crushes around Foggy's shoulders and pulls him into solid warmth, pressing his face against the hard line of Matt's neck. Matt's other hand threads up into his hair and clutches, just on the wrong side of painful, but Foggy lets him. He can't make himself mind.

"Foggy," Matt says again, like he means to say a whole lot more.

"Hey, yeah. I'm here." He eases his hands onto Matt's back, gentle because he doesn't know where all the bruises are. "You did good, Matt. You did good, and it's over." He strokes at Matt's back softly as he can. Maybe he expects Matt to cry, but there are no tears, only desperate hands and hard, unsteady breaths against his scalp.

A few moments pass before Foggy becomes uncomfortable with the angle, and then a few more before Matt's stillness starts to concern him again.

"Hey," he says against Matt's throat, so close that he thinks he can hear his pulse point— even with his regular old normal hearing— "C'mere, c'mere."

He slides his hands around to Matt's ribs and manages to get one as far up as his chest, then slowly, carefully, pushes him toward the bed. With reluctance, Matt's arm drops from around Foggy's shoulders, but his other hand stays fixed in Foggy's hair. His eyes linger on the middle-ground; it strikes Foggy, for about the hundredth time, that they really can't see anything. He wonders if it should make his chest feel so warm and strangled.

"I got you," he murmurs, and it feels so excessive to say it out loud, but it's worth it to see the lines of Matt's body go concave into the unmade sheets.

"I got you," he says again. Matt's eyes flutter, a hint of lash visible in the dark, and his eyes drift onto Foggy's face.

Foggy kisses him, softly, on the mouth.

Matt's eyes go wide, but he doesn't say anything, not like Karen did— he arches up, mouth closed, all pressure against Foggy's lips. Foggy reaches around for the back of Matt's head and tilts him so that their noses press against each other's cheeks. Their lips spread but their mouths don't open, not quite. They breathe against each other, noses smushing. Matt's hand fans against Foggy's skull. Foggy pulls away and kisses Matt's cheek, his chin, the underside of his jaw. He makes a path through Matt's stubble, knowing it'll leave his skin raw but not really caring, and takes solace in the unspooling of Matt's body beneath him. Matt's hand goes loose in Foggy's hair as he's kissed, still hanging on but drifting down to his neck, threatening to fall away at any moment. His breathing evens down.

Foggy loves him. Fuck, he loves him so much.

He pulls back, just punch-drunk enough to say it out loud, but he's saved from the impulse by the sight of Matt's closed eyes. His mouth is barely open, the hints of his smile lines and crow's feet gone lax. Asleep.

You bastard, Foggy thinks, but he's smiling.

He leans in close and whispers, "Good work, sleep well." If he kisses Matt's forehead, no one is there to judge him for it.

The couch is more comfortable than he remembers it being. Unlike the last time he slept here, he lays down feeling that he can actually rest. Matt breathes softly in the next room. Everyone's safe.

Even as the room bathes in yellow, he drifts off smiling.

x+x

Matt wakes up with his fingers threading around something half-forgotten. He turns toward his hand, flexes it. His face pinches— God, he aches— but the rest of him lays languid against the sheets, boneless like his strings are cut.

Someone lingers on his lips, a hint of intimacy against the tip of his tongue. Skin cells, saliva, an ever-so-slight chafe from the microscopic hairs of a clean-shaven face. The traces are too faint alone to identify as Foggy's, but the sound of his heart in the next room is enough.

Matt grins.

He sobers up a little when he has to push himself out of bed— he definitely should not have slept before putting ice on his ribs. He's almost too stiff to make it to the bathroom. Normally he keeps showers to their bare minimum, just the appropriate amount of cleaning and a shave if he needs it, but this morning he lets himself stand under the stream. The warmth seeps through his sides, up his sinuses, into his pores. Maybe he needed this, a moment to indulge, allowing himself comfort to the melody of a friend's resting heart.

Well. Friend, maybe, but— he touches his fingers to his lips— something else, too.

After his shower, he stretches to the best of his ability, and enjoys the throb left in his limbs as he picks out his clothes. Foggy's seen him in all manner of disarray, so he doesn't feel much of a need to impress; he puts on track pants and a t-shirt that'll be light on his bruised skin. He leaves his glasses on the bedside table, where he took them off before going out last night.

Five feet away from the couch, he stops and basks in Foggy's stillness. Daylight falls warm on Matt's lower legs, and he can sense where it lays on Foggy, over the crown of his head and down across his hands folded on his stomach. The small, sleepy breaths from his nose send air rushing through the grooves on his cheek and arm, where his skin spent most of the night pressed against the trimming of the couch. He doesn't snore, but Matt can sense the flutter low in his throat that means he'll start when he's older, in his 40s or 50s, maybe.

He's struck, right in the chest, by the hope that he'll still know Foggy then.

God, but he's in trouble.

Biting his lower lip, he rounds the couch without waking Foggy and sets about searching for something to eat. There are eggs in the fridge, but he can tell by the smell of them and the way the yolks sit inside that they've gone bad. The milk still has a few days, though, so he puts it on the counter. He reaches up to pull the cereal from the cabinet, then flinches back and has to stifle a hiss of pain. His ribs don't like that. Wincing, he leaves the cereal on the counter. After that, his side keeps catching and he moves stiffly, not as careful as he should be; he lets a bowl clatter against the counter when he sets it down.

Foggy's heart leaps. He jerks awake, then eases into the couch with a long exhale. A few moments pass before he sits up. When his head turns toward Matt, he grins. "Hey, he lives!" he says, fond.

Matt nods at him. "Good morning, Foggy."

"You really passed out on me last night, buddy," Foggy says against his hand as he staves off a yawn. "I'd, uh, chide you about getting more sleep if I thought it'd do anything."

Matt inclines his head at that, acknowledging the sentiment but not willing to engage with it. He stands with the cereal box in his hand for a moment, waiting for Foggy to say something more about last night.

When Foggy remains silent, Matt says, "Shower's open, unless you want breakfast."

Foggy releases a held breath. "Breakfast, absolutely." He stands. "You have a spare toothbrush, though? I'm pretty sure anything I put into my mouth right now will taste like— oh. Oh, no. You can't smell my breath from all the way over there, can you?"

Matt laughs. "I can. But I can also smell the garbage bins in the alley and the litter box in the apartment underneath us. There are worse things. And it's just information to me unless I focus on it, anyway."

"Yeah, if you thought that would console me, you're wrong. Please tell me you have that toothbrush."

"Drawer next to the sink."

"Thank god." Foggy makes a beeline for the restroom. Once he's pissed and washed his hands, he opens the door while he brushes his teeth. He calls through the foam, "Have you checked the news this morning? Anything on Fisk?"

Matt inclines his head toward the south wall. "Sounds like he's secure in custody." He barks a laugh. "And they've all caught on to the nickname."

"Yeah, you're the Daredevil now. What are you, about to cross a high wire juggling Molotov cocktails?"

"I could probably do that."

Foggy snorts— some toothpaste mists across the mirror— then spits into the sink. "You can hear the news from next door? It's nothing but racket to me."

"Hm? Oh, no, next door she's watching Good Morning America. The news is a couple of apartments over."

"Holy shit, dude." Foggy emerges from the hallway running his tongue around the backs of his teeth, feeling their squeaky surface, maybe. "I'm trying not to validate you when you show off, but you're making it hard."

Matt smirks at that. He can't deny the thrill of someone knowing what he can do. Over the years his ability has become commonplace to him, especially after Stick told him so often that he wasn't special, wasn't impressive, but Foggy— Foggy's making him feel like someone incredible.

"It's just cereal today," Matt says, pushing the boxes toward Foggy as he enters the kitchen.

Foggy stops next to him and makes a contemplative noise in the back of his throat. "Are these plain cheerios?"

"They're healthy."

"They're sad. You aren't supposed to buy these unless you have a toddler or you hate yourself."

Matt chuckles softly. "In my defense, I don't usually do my own shopping."

Foggy stiffens. "Aw. Man. I keep forgetting." He turns to face his bowl as he fills it, very deliberately keeping his nose pointed away from Matt. "You're really blind, aren't you?" he murmurs.

Matt turns his face towards him. "What?"

"It just keeps on hitting me. You know— the way you like to stand, with your head angled down. I always thought it was, uh, pretty melodramatic, before." He chuckles, quick and biting. "Thought it was a dumb macho thing. I wondered, 'how does he see where he's going?' But you didn't. You don't. See, I mean. At all."

Nodding, Matt gives a grim smile, lips pressed tight together. "No," he murmurs. "I don't."

"Sorry. I'm not— I don't mean to make you uncomfortable."

Matt raises his hands in gentle defense. "You don't. I get it. It's—"

"Amazing."

"Sure, if that's what you wanna call it."

"Maybe not. I don't know. It's a lot to process. It's different to actually… see you, how you don't really look at anything."

Matt's hand flinches involuntarily toward his breast pocket before he remembers that he isn't wearing his jacket, and his glasses are at his bedside. "I hope it doesn't bother you." He's unsure if he means it as a confession or a threat.

"No." Foggy's heart beats steady. "I'm staring into your eyes a lot, if you must know. But I bet you can sense that."

"I can't."

"Oh. It's probably taboo, isn't it."

"Probably," Matt murmurs. "I don't mind."

"Oh." Foggy drifts almost imperceptibly closer, but then turns back to his cereal. He uncaps the milk and pours some into the bowl.

They eat quietly, standing at the counter. Matt knows exactly what he's doing when he lets their elbows brush; he relishes the way Foggy tenses in reaction, how his face warms. Who's dorky now, Nelson?

The cereal goes quickly. Foggy finishes first, and rinses his bowl in the sink. His head follows Matt when he does the same a few moments later.

"So," Foggy says, soft to anyone else but so loud to Matt, filling up his entire world, "what now?"

"Well," Matt murmurs, glad he's the only one who can hear his galloping heart, "You've seen my face, but I haven't seen yours."

A small sound escapes Foggy's parted lips. "You can't super-sense my stunning good looks?"

Matt laughs. He feels like he can't stop doing that. "I don't get a lot of detail. I can feel parts of your face when you do something expressive, but mostly you're just…" He waves his hand over Foggy's face, a few inches out but close enough to catch the planes of his cheeks, the disruption of his nose. "Warm."

And now, even warmer. "Oh. Some superpower. Should get a refund on that."

Matt draws half a step closer. Foggy will be able to feel his heat, now; Matt can feel Foggy's entire body, the everyday strain of his muscles and the way his fat sits and how his hand keeps inching back and forth toward Matt's hip, wanting to touch but not to make the first move.

"I look like George Clooney, pretty much," Foggy breathes, "if you're wondering."

"I was thinking I could touch you."

"Or that."

Foggy gasps when Matt makes contact, only the fingers of his right hand at first. Foggy's skin is hot. His barely-there stubble and the on-end hairs of his upper cheek make Matt's breath catch. He slides his hand back, cupping Foggy's jaw in his palm and spreading his fingers as far as they'll go to get a feel for the size of his skull.

Everything's bigger through touch. Matt remembers seeing, how even things a few feet away only looked inches tall; his world on fire is that way, too, modeled with regards to perspective. But to his hands, nothing is far. It's all immediate under his fingers, every edge of Foggy's face, every plateau. For a moment, it's his whole world.

He runs his fingers systematically across the typography of Foggy's face, the plateaus and valleys of him, the the peak of his nose. He can't help but run his fingers into his hair, a little greasy right now but still a pleasant texture.

"Gotta admit, this is a little weird," Foggy breathes when Matt's fingers begin to trace over his eyelids. His heartbeat is already so uneven that it doesn't register as a lie, but they both know he's feeling more than weird.

"Sorry." Matt grins. He's not sorry. He lets his hands drift down to Foggy's neck.

Foggy clears his throat. "Like what you feel?"

"Exactly like George Clooney."

"Hey, how would you know? You haven't seen George Clooney in like twenty years. Don't bullshit me, Murdock."

They laugh, not so much because it's funny, Matt thinks, but because it's easy to do when they're together. He runs a thumb over Foggy's neck, feeling the mixture of sweat and fibers from the couch. There's a film of something mild, too, maybe a cheap soap. He wants to press his face there to find out.

"Okay," he says, sliding his hands around the back of Foggy's head, "I'm gonna kiss you now."

When their moths meet, Foggy's smiling. His lips part; Matt presses into it. He gets cinnamon toothpaste and bits of cereal and yesterday's onion rings and the metal twinge of fillings, and hundreds of things in the spit that there aren't words for because he's probably the only person who's ever tasted them.

Everyone has a world inside their mouth. Foggy's is the sort he thinks he could call home.

"Jeez, you're into this," Foggy breathes against him, too softly to hide his edge of wonder.

Matt chuckles into his mouth. "I'm into you."

"A man of taste."

"I'd taste you all day."

"That's terrible. Kiss me so I don't have to listen to you."

A magnet hits the floor when they stumble back against the refrigerator. Matt could have caught it, but his hands remain cupping Foggy's head, wrapped around his neck. He doesn't even remember where the magnet came from, anyway. Foggy's hands rise to Matt's shoulders and grip at his biceps, getting finger-fuls of his sleeves. They slacken into each other, and it's worth the pressure of the refrigerator against Matt's bruised back to be pinned under Foggy. His body is soft to Matt's hardness, curves to his edges. He feels he could wilt into him.

It's the southbound rush of blood that finally makes him tilt his mouth away. First his head knocks back against the fridge— "Watch it," Foggy chuckles, —then lolls forward against Foggy's shoulder. They both breathe hard, edged right up against arousal, but not too close to hit the breaks.

Matt doesn't want to fuck this up.

"You okay?" Foggy asks, which really makes it all worth it.

Matt sighs into his shoulder. "I'm fine. I'm great." He leaves a kiss against the crook of Foggy's neck. "I just, uh— not too fast, okay?"

Foggy makes a considerate noise and strokes at Matt's arm. "If this is too much, with a guy—"

"No. No, it's not. It's good. I just…" It went so fast with Electra. He can't say it out loud, not really, but he doesn't want to go tail-spinning into love again. He wants to ease his way into it, carefully, with Foggy's hand in his. "Too much of a good thing."

Foggy tips his head back and groans. "God, you're so Catholic."

Another kiss against Foggy's neck, then Matt laves his tongue across the skin. Foggy tastes like he smells: sweat, fifty-nine cent soap. He stiffens, and Matt laughs through his nose, a cold breath caught on the wet stripe he left behind.

"Okay, okay," Foggy says, strangled, patting Matt's arms, "I get it. No more cheap shots at your religion. Just don't do shit like that right after saying we should take it slow. Jesus."

"It has nothing to do with you being a guy," Matt murmurs. He slides his hands down from Foggy's neck, along his back. "I have an incredible talent for screwing up good things. The better it is, the worse the screw-up." He shifts until his forehead rests on Foggy's shoulder. His fingers play in the dip of Foggy's back. "I don't want to mess with this."

"Wow, that's a downer. Come here." Foggy draws back a step; Matt comes with him, hands still on his back, head lifting. Gently, fingers as soft as Matt knew they'd be, Foggy takes him by the jaw and kisses him close-mouthed. "You want my theory?" he says, so close that Matt can feel his eyelashes. "The first night we met, I almost got shot twice, and I also almost shot you. That's pretty screwed up, right? So you've already reached your screw-up potential for this relationship, just by meeting me."

Matt scoffs. "You weren't going to shoot me."

"I thought about it."

"That's a lie. And that wasn't the first time we met."

Foggy's brow lifts. "It wasn't?"

"We met at Landman and Zack the day of the bombings. You said you were rooting for us."

"Oh, yeah. We did." Foggy's other hand rises to Matt's jaw, and he holds him there, their faces a few inches apart, studying him, Matt thinks. He can hear the wet shift of Foggy's eyes, even if he can't tell where they're going. "Hardy seems like that was you."

"It wasn't," Matt murmurs, and feels his smile going sad. Foggy kisses it off of him.

Finally, for the first time in minutes, they drift out of each other's space. Matt's fingers hang against Foggy's back until he's too far to touch, and even then he can feel the weave of his shirt.

"Do you need to go to work?" Foggy asks.

Matt shakes his head. "Maybe later. I'm on call, if anything comes up with Fisk. Other than that, I'm all yours." He spreads his arms to indicate himself, and even as he does that, hears Foggy's heart picking up. It wasn't meant to be suggestive, but— well. He smirks for effect.

Foggy swears under his breath. "You know you're good looking, right? 'Cause I have trouble believing you'd act this way if you didn't know exactly what it does to people."

Laughing, Matt draws close to him again. With the shape of Foggy's face a clear memory under his fingers, it's so much easier to construct Foggy's expressions in his mind's eye. The look he has right now is— longing. Matt loves it.

"Maybe you just have a weakness," he murmurs, and relishes the jitter of Foggy's heart.

"Yeah, you keep telling yourself that." Foggy shoves lightly at Matt's shoulder, being careful of his bruises, no doubt— it doesn't even move him. "Listen, I need to go back by my place, just to check up on everything. You're— you're welcome to tag along, if you want. I've seen yours; you can see mine."

"I'd love to. Are you working today?"

Foggy groans. "Well, as of yesterday, I'm no longer a partner at Landman and Zach, so…" He shrugs, casting his hands out.

Matt should probably apologize, because it was his involvement that shook up Foggy's life in the first place, but instead he says, "You hated that job."

The muscles behind Foggy's eyes strain— he's rolling them. "That may be, but it made the difference between Foggy Nelson, Attorney at Law and Foggy Nelson, homeless drifter."

"You know," Matt says, putting a hand to Foggy's forearm, "it's not as glamorous, and I can't make any promises about salary, but there's a place for you at my firm, if you want it."

"Seriously?" Foggy's head draws back a bit, surprised. "Wow. Isn't that a conflict of interest, offering me a job right after we make out?"

Matt smirks. "I don't think Karen will mind."

"That's fair. I'll have to think about it."

"Sure."

They part. While Foggy gets loafers tied, Matt goes to gather his glasses and cane. Foggy's brow lifts when he sees Matt with the paraphernalia.

"Guess you always go out with that stuff." There's an edge to his voice. Matt hopes it isn't judgment. Foggy seems to hear it too, and amends, "I mean, not that… If you need it—"

"Gotta look the part." Matt extends the cane and knocks Foggy lightly on the thigh. "Comes in handy if anyone tries to start something."

"Ah. I see."

Foggy follows Matt to the door and waits while he slips into his sneakers and gathers up his keys. When Matt opens the door, Foggy reaches from behind him to pull it wider. Their hands brush. In the hall, as Matt pauses to lock up, Foggy's warmth lingers near his back. His face never turns from Matt once.

Matt is horribly tempted to say that he loves him. He doesn't even know if it's true. It just seems right.

"Here," he says instead, "let me take your arm."

He hooks his hand into the crook of Foggy's elbow, and gets a laugh scattered over his face.

"Fresh."

"You'll thank me later. No one's a bigger douchebag than the guy who refuses to help his blind friend get around."

Foggy chuckles. "Is that what you are? My blind friend?"

"If anyone asks? Yes," Matt says, and kisses his cheek as they step out into the midmorning warmth. They fall into step on the sidewalk. Foggy asks Matt hushed questions about what he senses, and Matt trades answers for Foggy's take on the sky. The tap of his cane mounts a rhythm between them.

Nothing has ever felt so natural.

x+x

All told, it takes more than a few months for them to end up in bed together, which by Foggy's account is too long. But he knew Matt had issues going in— it takes a certain kind of person to assume an alternate identity, is all he's saying— so he does his best to be patient. Sue him, he loves the dramatic bastard.

It pays off in the end, of course.

As the one more experienced with men, Foggy takes the lead. He's confident in his ability to induct Matt seamlessly into the world of gay sex; by the time Foggy figured out that he was pretty okay looking and his childhood bullies were dicks, he'd already spent years compensating for his appearance by getting good between the sheets. He's got tricks up his sleeves, among other places, and he thinks he has a pretty good read on Matt.

Turns out he doesn't.

He thought Matt would be noisy. With his smug grin and his habit of going in for the last word like the it's the kill, it followed that he'd be a talker. But for the most part, Matt is quiet. "Tell me," he says sometimes, or, "Let me hear you," and it's hot, Jesus, it's the hottest thing Foggy's ever heard. He spends a few nights wrestling over whether he should get so turned on by Matt's very utilitarian desire for sensory input, but then he sees Matt grinning at him the next time he says it, probably struggling not to laugh as he hears Foggy's moral fiber straining— or whatever it is he does— so that's that.

More importantly, he assumed Matt would be aggressive. For obvious reasons, he figured it would be all choke holds and rough riding, but Matt isn't… He's not lazy, per se, though with a body like that he could almost get away with it. He's just passive. He likes to lay and take it, whatever itmay be. They haven't fucked yet, because Foggy knows bringing that up the surest way to spook a guy who still isn't comfortable labeling his sexuality, so mostly it's hands and mouths or just getting off against the crevices of each other's bodies. Whatever it is, Matt will splay himself loosely like some Renaissance muse, eyes cast off into middle space, and become either overwhelmed by the moment or transported somewhere else entirely. It borders on concerning, really. Foggy will say, "Matt?" and touch him gently, wondering if he's lost him somehow, but Matt will always grasp his wrist or rake his nails down Foggy's thigh and nod. Sometimes he gasps Foggy's name.

Not to say that Matt never gets off his ass. Of course he does. He'll get Foggy up against the wall or the headboard, pinning him or draped across him. He likes to put his hands on Foggy: against his throat, his chest, in his hair, on his hips. He'll stroke him heavily, long sweeps up and down his skin, or he'll cling, nails and everything. He grabs Foggy's hair a lot. And the way he moves, shit— he'll arch his long, smooth back, a flash of muscle and scars in the lowlight, and do devastating things with his hips and the flex of his thighs. He's not as good in bed as Foggy is— face facts, Murdock— but he can mesmerize. Foggy loves the way Matt's stomach jumps if he's touched just right, how the tendon of his neck shoots a sharp shadow down to his collarbone when he tosses his head aside, flushed as anything. He likes to throw his arm over his face when he gets close, and Foggy might let him, but he might take his hand and bring it to his own face so Matt can both see and be seen, in the purest sense of the idea.

They don't spend a lot of time in bed, but it isn't a rarity, either. Sometimes their chaotic schedules have them wedging in kisses before stumbling to work, or leave Foggy breathless and half-hard as Matt slips into his suit saying, "Sorry, sorry, I have to go, I'll be back—" Sometimes they have the time but the mood isn't there. Maybe Foggy's too tired, or Matt's senses are all keyed up, or he went and got himself lacerations or something. Those nights, Foggy will invite himself to stay the night, and all they do is sleep— not as much as they should, but hey. They're together.

Tonight was one of those nights.

Fifteen minutes ago, Matt got out of bed saying he needed a drink. He never came back. Foggy finds him standing in the kitchen in nothing but his boxer-briefs, a glass in one hand. The whole room is violet.

"Hey, Matt." Foggy comes toward the kitchen, knuckling sleep out of his eyes. He stops with a hand on the bar. "You okay?"

"No," Matt says quietly. That's the arrangement. If he at least admits that things aren't fine, he doesn't have to tell Foggy what's wrong if he doesn't want to. He just has to let him know he needs the help.

It's a work in progress.

Foggy gestures at the empty glass. "Get your drink?"

Sighing, Matt starts the tap. "Did you know the woman down in C3 just lost her mom?"

"Matt…"

"She's been crying all night. I keep thinking she's going to stop, but she doesn't. She's dehydrated but she won't get out of bed."

"Matt." Foggy rounds the bar and puts his hand on Matt's shoulder. It flexes under his palm as Matt shuts off the water. "Is that what this is about? Just because someone is suffering doesn't mean you have to—"

"It's not about her." Matt takes a long, thin drink of water, then sets the glass down. He grips the counter. "It's—" His mouth pulls tight. "It's nothing."

Gently, Foggy lays his hand on top of Matt's; he knows better than to physically pry his hands off the counter, but it's hard to watch his knuckles go white. "Forgive me if I don't believe you. Gotta try harder than that with me, Murdock."

Matt huffs a humorless chuckle and turns toward Foggy, not moving to touch, but intersecting his personal space at every point. He likes to stand too close, much closer than a sighted person would stand without the intent to initiate contact. Foggy wonders if Matt can sense him better, this way. He tightens his hand on Matt's against the edge of the counter.

Matt sighs, a breath of toothpaste across Foggy's face. Foggy's found himself more attuned to that kind of thing, to smells and sounds, since learning about how Matt sees the world. He wishes he could understand it more fully. Matt's hand moves to Foggy's elbow, and trails up beneath the sleeve of his t-shirt. He wonders what Matt can feel, what he can learn from touch that Foggy doesn't even know about himself.

"I just need to get out of my head," Matt murmurs.

"Want me to help?" Foggy asks, and kisses the corner of his mouth. Matt leans into it.

"If it's no trouble."

Foggy laughs against his lips. "I mean, it's a burden, but I'll manage."

"My hero," Matt says, voice dropping low. He kisses him. His hands slide around Foggy's skull, thumbs hooked in front of his ears, holding him insistently, completely. Over the years, Foggy has kissed a lot of people, but Matt is the first one he feels is actually trying to taste him, which— it's weird. He won't pretend it's not. But it's the way Matt is, and Foggy has been falling in love with it for months.

He crowds Matt up against the wall the way he knows he likes— something about the pressure on all sides, maybe, he'll have to ask— and leans against him full-bodied. Matt's hands tighten in his hair. He kisses like he's about to go to war and Foggy is his teary-eyed girlfriend, but he always does that.

"Foggy," Matt says, between kisses, then, "Foggy," with the weight of a groan behind it.

"Well, when you put it that way…"

Hands on Foggy's hips, Matt guides them away from the wall. He pushes Foggy onto the couch and sinks between his knees.

"Oh, yeah?" Foggy asks, aiming for suave and achieving breathless.

Matt smirks at him. The way the shadows fall, only his mouth catches the pink glow from the windows. Without thinking, Foggy reaches to tilt Matt's face up, so that he can see his eyes; they drift around Foggy's face, looking-but-not-quite. Matt turns into his palm, inhales deeply, then leaves a kiss on his lifeline.

A few minutes later, Foggy finds himself gripping at Matt's hair, trying not to pull too hard. Matt's pain tolerance is off the charts, but Foggy's never really been into testing that kind of thing. Whenever he readjusts his grip, he can feel Matt smirking on him. It makes him moan, less intentionally than he'd like to admit.

"That good, huh?" Matt asks when he pulls off, warm against the crease of Foggy's thigh. He pushes his nose against the skin and draws a breath, smelling him.

Foggy feels himself blushing something awful, and begrudges that Matt can feel it, too. "Fuck you, Murdock."

"That's what I had in mind," Matt murmurs, ruining the line with the sincerity of his smile. Foggy rolls his eyes and tells Matt that he's doing so, even though he's sure that his pounding heart probably drowns it out. He folds to put a kiss on the wetness of Matt's mouth. Matt rises against him. The rough sweep of his hands lands on Foggy's elbows, and suddenly Foggy finds himself being pulled, no harder than he could overpower if he tried, but he's too startled to do anything about it— next thing he knows, he's being kissed against the floor, arms pinned at the elbows on either side of his head.

Matt draws away with a breathless sound, like he isn't entirely sure what just happened, and hey, welcome to the club.

"Where's that been?" Foggy asks.

Matt's mouth falls to his neck. "Don't know. Just trying not to think, right now."

That probably isn't healthy behavior, but Foggy can't argue against it with Matt's breath on his throat and their legs pressing in between each other.

"You really want me to?" Foggy breathes into the shell of Matt's ear before biting it.

"Mm?"

"You want me to fuck you?"

Matt gasps softly. "Yes. Yeah, I do." He drags Foggy up by the collar of his t-shirt and pins him against the couch. It's not the place Foggy imagined doing this, but then, he's now undressing for the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, and earlier this year he couldn't have imagined that, either.

He certainly wouldn't have anticipated the feeling welling up in him, soft and achy and so vulnerable he thinks a wrong touch could break him. Makes him lucky, he guesses, that Matt handles him so carefully.

Matt ends up curled in his lap, knees splayed around his chest and arms leaned on the seat of the couch behind his head. Foggy can't get over the way Matt's abdominals heave, or how the junction of his hips falls open so readily. He moves all languid, with juts of tendon and little flickers of muscle that would make Foggy feel inadequate if Matt didn't have such a thing for love handles. He rides the counter-thrust of Matt's body with a hand on the lowest part of Matt's back, and one even lower, fingers skimming them where their bodies converge. True to form, Matt is quiet, but with his mouth open just by Foggy's ear, every breath is an encouragement. His nails rake across Foggy's upper back, leap to pull at his hair, drop back to his shoulders.

"Fuck," Matt gasps and arches backwards. He hangs there a moment, eyes half-lidded, then leans forward with a roll of his hips and presses nose-first against Foggy's hairline.

That's hot.

"Fuck," Matt says again, with his nails in the back of Foggy's neck.

That's really hot. Of course Foggy's heard Matt swear, but it's always more of a calculated strike— never torn out of him that way. Makes him feel like he's doing something right. "S'good?" he asks into Matt's chest.

Matt rubs his cheek against Foggy's forehead in a half-hearted nod. He throws a hand back onto Foggy's knee and shifts to hook his other elbow around Foggy's head. That gets him leverage; his thighs flex against Foggy's sides and he really moves, pulling his own weight, as it were. Foggy, who's been thrusting on his knees for the past several minutes, takes the opportunity to just hold on and feel. All of Matt is reduced to spasms, like the careful crafting of his every movement went out the window the moment Foggy pressed inside.

He opens his mouth onto the hollow of Matt's throat, and sucks about half a hickey before a thought occurs to him. "Matt, Matt. How's it for you?"

"Mm?" Matt breathes. His eyes have found that place off in the ether, caught like he sees heaven opening— like he sees at all. Foggy pinches gently at his lower back, trying to bring him to earth again.

"What do you feel? What's it— ah, shit— what's it like?"

"Nh," Matt says into his hair, and lays his face fully against Foggy's head. He lifts his hand from Foggy's knee and lets his heels slip inward, causing his feet to cross behind Foggy's back and his body to drop flush to Foggy's lap.

"Jesus," Foggy hisses.

Gasping a laugh into Foggy's hair, Matt squirms, but he doesn't start moving again. "Sorry," he breathes. "You- did you want me to answer the question?"

"Yes? I mean— I was thinking more like, you wax poetic sexily, not we break for lecture—"

"It's hard to think when we're moving," Matt says, chin tucked toward his chest, putting his mouth on Foggy's ear.

"That good, huh?"

Another breathy laugh. "It's a lot. Normally, normally I filter out more— nh— the more intense sensations. But this is- the point is to feel it, so I have to- I have to shut off my reflexes, and then." His hand falls back to Foggy's knee; he shifts the arm around Foggy's head to grasp him, hand insistent against his skull. "I spend a lot of my life trying not to feel this much. It's overwhelming when- when I just let it all in."

"Hope that's a positive overwhelming."

"It is. It is." He kisses Foggy's cheek, then the corner of his eye. "It's good. You're good."

"Yeah, yeah, c'mere," Foggy murmurs. He grasps Matt's neck to guide their mouths together, because he's feeling suddenly weepy and that's not the kind of sex he signed up for. They kiss open-mouthed. Matt bites him.

"Shit," says Foggy.

Then Matt gets his feet flat against the floor and moves. Foggy lets his head fall forward against Matt's chest. While he's there, he runs his tongue across a nipple and gets a gasp for his efforts. Both of Matt's arms loop around his head, now, clinging; Matt's legs begin to tremble. Foggy shifts his weight forward, grips Matt's waist, and does that thing with his hips, the one he learned from his first boyfriend that made him realize he was Definitely Not Straight.

Matt actually cries out— not too loud, but enough that his eyes snap shut and his face darkens once he's done it. It's a pretty picture in the harsh light.

"Yeah," Foggy laughs into his shoulder. "Yeah, Matt. Fuck." He pitches forward to lay them down against the floor; Matt goes down hard on his back, and Foggy falls to his elbows on either side of his head, sending shadows in stripes across Matt's heaving body. Matt throws one leg around Foggy and lets the other one list to the side. His hands drift down to grasp at Foggy's hips.

"Talk to me," Matt breathes, like a benediction, or a fucking spell.

"Yeah, fuck, sure. Anything." Foggy drops his forehead to Matt's and groans as he feels Matt's hands sliding around to grip his ass. "Feel so good, Matt. You're so tight— ah, fuck. I'm— I'm close. Are you—?"

"Yes. Yes, Foggy." Even now, he still enunciates the syllables of Foggy's name. "I'm— ah—" Foggy runs his hand down between them, touches Matt how he knows he likes. A moment later Matt's spine bows; his head knocks forward into Foggy's shoulder and his hands rake up Foggy's back. His hips jerk, and his spine snakes. When it's over, he pools back against the ground with his lips parted and his eyes dazed, every line of him a gentle curve, with colors playing in the mess of his hair. That's what gets Foggy— he says Matt's name, broken, again and again as his body pitches into euphoria.

Finally he slumps down next to Matt. He edge of Matt's deltoid digs into his collarbone, but he doesn't care. They heave against each other, out of sync and yet in rhythm.

"Love you," Matt shudders against his cheek.

Foggy's throat goes tight. Matt gets a little spacey post-orgasm sometimes. Foggy tries not to read into it.

But he never was good at that, so he says, "Love you," back into the scratch of Matt's stubble, and doesn't pull away until he feels him start to smile.

x+x

It isn't easy.

Relationships never are.

Matt lies more than he should. Foggy understands less than he wants. They fight: about how far Matt should go, about how he needs to be more careful, about whether or not they should tell Karen. They circle back to that one, especially; Matt isn't ready for anyone else to know, but Foggy is uncomfortable keeping it from her. They hash it out again and again, every time she works on them with her eyes, all sad because she knows liars when she sees them. It should carve a rift between them, but they always mange to bridge it, tethered by Karen's longsuffering and their love for each other. She comes up between them sometimes and pats their shoulders, calls them her boys.

"See, Matt, I told you you'd like him," she says, and thinks that Matt can't see her wink at Foggy. Those are the good moments.

The Punisher ordeal tests them.

It's then that Foggy sees, undeniably, what Matt is really about. Sure, Matt's motivations haven't changed, but he will never give up to sit behind a desk and practice within the confines of the law, not as long as there are still punches to be thrown in the streets. Foggy thought he understood that going in, but it's different, to find Matt bleeding from the head on a rooftop; it's one thing to worry about him, and another thing entirely see him lying there and think for an ice-water moment that he's dead.

On the night the punisher is arrested, Matt sits, bruised, in Foggy's bed and tells him that he's done. He won't fight anymore. He promises.

Foggy doesn't believe him. It makes it that much easier, when Matt breaks his promise less than a week later.

He gives him the benefit of the doubt on Elektra. Matt may be reckless and violent, but he's unflinching, too; he loves Foggy. Sure, Elektra poses a threat to their relationship by bringing out the worst in Matt, but Foggy never worries that she'll steal him into her bed. She's more likely to get him killed.

It's bad, when Matt stands him up in court. They've fought before, but this is the first time that they shout.

The firm crumbles. The worst part is that Matt hardly seems to care.

Foggy thinks about leaving him. He thinks about it more than once. But then he gets shot, and Matt turns up by his bedside red-eyed and subdued, and he's glad that he didn't.

"I've been thinking," says Foggy, conversationally, like he's not so happy to have Matt by his side that he could cry, "that I need a vacation."

Matt laughs, halfway to a sob. He doesn't face Foggy, but his ear turns toward him. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I'm thinking Connecticut."

"You deserve it."

"Mm." He reaches for Matt's hand with his good arm, and squeezes his fingers when he gets them. "You'd have to come with me, of course."

"Would I."

"I wouldn't go without you."

To the surprise of everyone involved, they actually do it. After everything, after Frank vanishes and Elektra dies and Matt has The Big Talk with Karen, he leaves his suit locked in his apartment and folds himself shotgun into Foggy's rental car. He doesn't say much on the drive, weary beneath the weight of Elektra's passing. Foggy fills the silence by telling him about the scenery. He likes to think he's getting better at it.

"Ah, man. It's incredible. Do you remember them, much? Sunsets?"

"Some. I don't know how accurately."

"Well, they're all different anyways. This one is… Jesus, where to start. The clouds are thick near the horizon, like you could put your hand in them and they'd feel heavy, and they're all layered up. Makes the sky look deep and distant. It's easy to forget that it's not just, I don't know, some kind of backdrop rolled out by the props department. But right now it makes the world look so big. Further up you look, the clouds get thinner. They're remind me of- what's that stuff—? Gossamer. They're gossamer at the very top of the sky, so you can imagine how the atmosphere is thinning."

Matt's fingers land on the crook of Foggy's elbow. He chances a glance away from the road, at Matt's face— he's taken off the glasses, leaving his eyes glossy against the sunset. Turning back to the road, Foggy drops one hand from the wheel to take Matt's in his.

"Thank you," Matt says. He draws a shaky breath, the barest stutter against the constant hum of the air conditioning and the asphalt under the tires.

"Sure, buddy," Foggy murmurs.

Matt pulls their hands to his mouth. He rests his lips against Foggy's veins, not quite a kiss and somehow more intimate for that.

"For everything, I mean."

Foggy smiles. "I know."

A moment passes that way, where the most important thing in the world is Matt's breath on the back of Foggy's hand. This is why he wants to stay with Matt, even though it's hard: of all the unlikely things in the world, who would have guessed that the abhorrence and terror he once felt around the man in the mask would give way to this: this feeling of being needed and known— loved, even? Foggy doesn't believe in God, but the look on Matt's face as he holds Foggy's hand to his mouth is the kind of thing that makes him wonder.

Some time later, after the sort of silence that feels like home, Matt says, "Tell me about the trees."

And Foggy does.