Getting to Know You, Getting to Know All About You


A/N: Missing first stop on Foggy and Karen's bar-crawl in "Cut Man" (1.2), or Foggy decides how to much to share and doesn't end up telling her quite a bit, including what it's like to go apartment hunting with Matt.


"Should we try calling Matt again?" Karen asks. She smiles at Foggy over the top of her pint, and Foggy wants to pretend for just a second that her insistence on including him is general job insecurity, not her obvious crush on Foggy's very good looking best friend.

"We'll give it a couple more minutes." Foggy takes another swallow of the Scottish ale. It's cold and smooth even though it has little bits that will eventually float to the bottom of the glass. Foggy thinks fondly of damp drizzle and green hills and cuddling under an afghan. "It's really just as well he's missing this part of our evening anyway," Foggy continues with a shrug. "Matt totally would have tricked you into eating a salad too."

"Foggy!" She throws a tiny remnant of french fry in his direction. "I said I wasn't hungry! And I wasn't. You totally tricked me into eating that burger."

Foggy smiles and nods, entirely unapologetic. Sure, she said she wasn't hungry, but girls always say they aren't hungry. He'd noticed that despite offering, several times, to get food for both him and Matt, she hadn't eaten anything herself all day. So he'd ordered the sliders, casually pushed the plate so it was sitting in between them, and kept his big mouth shut as she started nibbling first french fries, still sizzling from the grease, and then one, and then a second, burger, thick with crisp lettuce leaves and slices of tomato and the most awesome dill pickles this side of 57th Street.

"What can I say? I know my meat."

Karen snorts ale and shakes her head. "You probably shouldn't say that to people. They might get the wrong idea."

"Point taken. But it was awesome, wasn't it? And really bad for you. All that butter on the grilled buns? So good! Talk about a heart-attack waiting to happen. Matt, he would have pushed a salad. Turned this whole pleasant start of our night into something filled with virtue and good nutrition."

"Listen. Foggy." Karen shreds the damp napkin under her pint and doesn't look at him.

Here we go, Foggy thinks.

"About Matt. This job is important to me. And Matt's been so nice. Both of you have been, really. I can't ever repay you for what you did for me. But you're an open book. I already feel like I've known you forever. Matt, on the other hand..." Her voice trails off.

"More complicated? A closed book written in Russian Braille?"

"Yes," she agrees with a smile that reminds Foggy how young and sweet she is. When she smiles at him like that, he almost doesn't care that she teases him the way she would an older, favorite cousin. "I've never personally known someone who's blind, and I don't want to do something horribly wrong or hurtful without realizing it. I want to be helpful."

"So we're really doing this? The Being With the Blind, 101?" He leans closer and fake-whispers. "That's what Matt calls blind-lessons."

"Yes. Please. Help."

Foggy swallows the rest of his pint and motions to the waitress to bring another round. Her interest certainly isn't anything new. People are always asking Foggy about Matt because as friendly as the guy is, he keeps his cards close to his chest. People see Foggy, whose foot is permanently residing in his mouth, as some kind of fount of Matt-knowledge, incapable of not spilling secrets.

Normally, Foggy doesn't say much. Oh sure, it's hard sometimes because he wants to gush to someone, maybe even everyone, about how incredibly awesome Matt is. He wants to shout it from the rooftops that he won the fucking best friend lottery the day Matt walked into room 312. But he doesn't spill the beans. Not about Matt. Matt is... different. Special. Matt makes him bristle with protective instincts. But Karen must be someone special too or Matt wouldn't have taken her home with him.

Foggy was stunned speechless, not something that happens very often, when Matt offered her an invitation to spend the night. Although, looking back, Foggy shouldn't have been surprised. Matt chose her the second they sat down across from her in that interrogation room, the same way he chose Foggy. In a breath, a heartbeat, he'd decided she belonged with them, and that was that.

"Here's the thing," Foggy finally says. Karen leans toward him, and Foggy thinks she'd be taking notes if she paper and a pen. "I've asked around, and some of this stuff is general living with a blind guy safety tips, like always remember to push in chairs, and tell him right away if you rearrange the furniture, even just a little bit, like shifting your desk out of the way of the afternoon glare coming in from the window."

"You sound like someone speaking from experience?" she quietly says.

Foggy swallows a grimace. He had learned a lot of this their first few weeks together, when he just wasn't thinking that dude, his roommate was fucking blind. Matt was always really nice about it. He seemed more sorry than Foggy did even though he was the one sprawled on the floor or clutching his foot.

"What else?" she asks.

"Well," Foggy thinks. "It'll probably be going against your instincts, but try not to grab onto him unless you think it's a life-or-death situation. He prefers to be the one doing the holding on to someone's arm if he needs to. Which he doesn't, not nearly as much as you think he should. I don't know, Karen. It's just habit for me by now. And honestly, a lot of this is just going to be learning how to be around Matt. He's a weird dude."

"Foggy!"

"I say that with all the affection, Karen. And it's not a secret. I would say it in front of him, if he were sitting here. I do say it in front of him. All the time. I love the guy, but he can be kind of freaky sometimes."

"I'm going to need some evidence to support such a serious accusation, counselor," she teases.

Fresh pints arrive and their empty plate is cleared away. Dessert is offered, which Karen declines but Foggy orders the apple crisp because, like the burger and fries, she doesn't know what she's missing. It is as unassumingly awesome as the dill pickles. Also, it will go nicely with the ale, and, also like the burger and fries, she says she doesn't want any, but she will eat more than her half when it appears, swimming in a pool of melting vanilla bean ice cream.

Foggy's not nearly as clueless as he sometimes pretends to be.

"Here's one for you," he continues. "The salad thing."

"Foggy, eating salad isn't weird. It's healthy."

"Sure, I get that. But why do I have to eat them too? Why does he care whether or not I eat a salad instead of something else? Sometimes I let him guilt me into it because I know it's for my own good. And sometimes I don't because Jesus, enough already with the organic produce. He's worse than a crack dealer, especially if it's local, pushing it on you, all 'You know you want it.' How you handle that is entirely your call."

"Nope," Karen laughs and shakes her head. "I'm not accepting that as evidence of anything weird or freaky. I'm overruling it."

"On what grounds?"

"Um."

She bites her bottom lip while she thinks, and Foggy sort of hopes Matt stays where ever it is he's disappeared to. Maybe he went to the gym and can't hear his phone. Maybe he has a date, or maybe he's soaking in the tub. As long as he's okay, and Foggy worries but knows he probably is, Foggy doesn't really care at the moment.

"I don't know. I've only been a legal secretary for day."

"Yeah, but come on," Foggy teases. "You've watched Law and Order, haven't you? Make something up. Run with it! Own it!"

"Just tell me something else about Matt."

The apple crisp arrives, and he doesn't even have to ask for two spoons or set it in the middle of the table. He sits back and watches Karen ease a spoon into it, releasing steam and a delicate waft of cinnamon and sweetness. She closes her eyes as she savors her bite. Foggy knows well and appreciates the juxtaposition of hot and cold, smooth and crunchy, sweet and tart.

"This is the best thing ever," she says.

"So glad we didn't order any. How terrible would that have been?" Foggy nods and digs his spoon into the dessert and takes a too-big bite.

"Foggy. Dammit."

"I know," he agrees. "I totally suck. As a lawyer. At cheering people up. At ordering food in restaurants."

She laughs and their spoons playfully duel over the bowl, complete with Foggy making light saber sound effects.

"You were telling me something weird about Matt," she reminds him.

Foggy sighs because she is worse than a dog worrying a bone, and he is not getting away from this line of questioning. "Fine. He thinks you stink."

"What? I smell bad?" Karen sticks her nose in her armpit and sniffs a lock of her hair. "I do not. I mean, sure, I smell a little bit like grease now, but I didn't before."

"I didn't say you smell bad. In fact, quite the contrary. I think you smell great. Very clean but still girly." Foggy wants to kick himself in the ass for saying something so lame. "I said Matt thinks you stink. But that's the weird thing. It's not that you smell, it's how much he's able to smell you."

"That doesn't make any sense." She's blushing so furiously, Foggy starts to wonder if a person can pass out from all their blood rushing away from their brains to the surface of their skin.

"He won't ever say anything because he doesn't. Not unless you catch him when he's drunk or really tired. Or both, actually. He's normally really good at not answering questions."

"Yeah. I've noticed that."

"I saw this documentary once about the blind brain, and it sort of explained it. See, your visual cortex takes up a lot of space in your head. Not all the time, but sometimes, when someone is blind, since that part of the brain doesn't have anything to do anymore, the other parts have room to expand."

"That makes sense." She takes another bite and leans back in the booth. "I think I'm going to burst. Because he doesn't see, he's more sensitive in other ways?"

"Yes!" Foggy smiles, remembers Matt calling his senses delicate, and has to take the final bit of apple crisp to keep from telling Karen that little detail. That word's not for her. "And smells drive him especially crazy."

"Why does he live in Hell's Kitchen? This place, especially after it rains? Gag. It's enough to knock me over sometimes."

"He's in love with this city," Foggy quietly says. "And there's no sense trying to reason with the heart." Foggy clears his throat and quickly continues, afraid he's revealed too much. "So your perfume or laundry detergent or even shampoo? Yeah, he can smell it in his office. Things like that start to get to him. You'll want to switch to fragrance free and be sure to brush your teeth because he will know if you skip."

"Who comes to work without brushing their teeth?" Karen asks with a smile.

"Um. No one reasonable, of course. Gross. And it should go without saying to stay away from scented candles or incense or those little dishes of smelly things girls like to put on window sills or spicy garlic shrimp take-out accidentally left on the desk over the weekend."

"You didn't, Foggy?"

"Yeah. It was at the fancy law office where we used to intern. We had this windowless shoebox of an office, too. There was no air flow. It stunk up the entire floor."

"Did you have to leave because of the rancid shrimp?"

"No." Foggy takes a long swallow of his ale.

"Noted," she says when she realizes Foggy isn't going to say more on the subject. "No potpourri or rancid take-out. Also, good to know my boss thinks I stink."

"Just one of your bosses," Foggy corrects her. "I stand by my earlier observation that you smell really nice."

"What else?" she quickly asks. Too quickly, Foggy thinks. "Tell me something else about Matt."

"You're going to want to touch his things," Foggy says, as much to alleviate her curiosity as to distract him from the fact that she obviously doesn't want Foggy to go anywhere near complimenting her. She's here with him, sure. She thinks he's nice and funny. But she's eager for Matt to join them. Maybe not even just because she likes him, but so it's a group and not just her and Foggy.

"Foggy," she bursts into laughter.

"Don't bother denying it. I used to live with the guy. I know you'll try to deny it, but it will become an obsession. A compulsion. You'll just have to run your fingers over his books or the computer terminal or his watch and wonder how the fuck he reads that shit."

"His watch is Braille? They make those?"

"How else would he know what time it is?"

"Now that is kind of weird."

"I tell you he can smell your deodorant from his office and you just nod your head, but you think his Braille watch is weird? Oh Karen, Karen. You're going to fit in just fine. My point is that you should go ahead and touch things. Get it out of your system. But do it knowing no matter how careful you are, he knows. He always knows."

"Does it make him mad?"

"No. but he'll give you the ol' stink eye to let you know he knows."

"He wears sunglasses, Foggy. How does he give stink eyes?"

"One of the universe's unanswerable questions, Karen. Matt Murdock is a mystery."


"Oh my God, Matt, these stairs!" Foggy huffed as they climbed what felt like a staircase to the sky. "This is bad, dude, even by Hell's Kitchen walk-up standards. Is it some kind of weird Catholic penance thing 'cause I am not Catholic, and I can't take it."

"Keep going, Foggy," Matt encouraged, not sounding even slightly winded, the cheerful bastard. "We're almost there. Top floor."

"You are going to have some 'splainin' to do, if you go through with this. My mom was not kidding when she said she wanted you to move into the apartment that just opened up down the hall."

"She was definitely not kidding. But you know, she didn't mean just me."

"Please don't remind me," Foggy begged. "If she had her way, we'd be sleeping in a bunk bed in my old room. I can't live in my mom's building. I'd never get laid again."

"But you expect me to live there?" Matt asked.

"Dude, she's not your mom. And I still don't see why you don't like that two-bedroom we looked at. It was nice. Spacious. Newly renovated. On the second floor, for the love of all that is holy." Foggy paused on the landing and glanced up to see how much farther they had to go.

"For a sighted man, the amount of things you don't see astonishes me."

"Harsh."

Matt was quick to smile and pat Foggy's arm. He nodded towards the stairs and they kept going up. "Besides," Matt said. "You can't miss me yet. You just got rid of me."

"That was crappy student housing that happened to be included with our scholarships. Our own place would be awesome. A couple of swingin' bachelors, you and me, young lawyers out on the town? Come on, Matt!"

"Aren't you looking forward to throwing your towels on the floor and leaving random glassware laying about?"

"Well, yeah," Foggy admitted. "Except by now it's habit. I've given up my slovenly ways. Well, mostly. You've domesticated me."

"Your wife can thank me one day," Matt laughed.

"Matt. Listen to me. Seriously." Foggy stopped on the stairs and turned towards his best friend. His blind best friend. "What if...?" he quietly began to ask, not able to keep the worry from his voice.

"You do realize you channel your mother sometimes, don't you?" Matt interrupted before Foggy could list all the many things that could go terribly and hopelessly awry. "As I keep reminding you, I'll be fine. I can take care of myself."

"Yeah, I know that. But Matt..."

"Foggy, you need your own space, and so do I. We will spend our days together, at least we will as soon as we find an office, and we will surely pass a lot of evenings and weekends together too. There will be times when you won't want to look at me anymore. Certainly not when you bring someone home with you."

"But you know how I like to watch your mad-skills with your lady-callers."

Matt laughed. "That's a terrible thing to say, Foggy. So much for my powers of domestication. Besides, there have never been nearly as many lady-callers as you like to think."

"Dude, don't be a buzzkill and ruin all my fantasies."

"Why are you fantasizing about my imaginary love life anyway?"

"Because you get more offers in a week than I will in my lifetime. It's not my fault you're a freak show and drive them all away. It's like you beat them off with your cane, not that that would stop a lot of them. In fact, I think that secretary over at Cravatch would pay big bucks for you to beat her with your cane."

"Oh, Foggy."

"Just sayin'. Something to keep in mind if you need to supplement your income or the whole law-thing doesn't work out for you."

"For us, you mean," Matt reminded him.

"That's exactly what I mean," Foggy agreed, all teasing gone from his voice. "Us. Nelson and Murdock. We're a team, Matt. Maverick and Goose. You don't need to get your own place."

"I do. I am." Matt turned to face Foggy so Foggy could see his serious-face.

"I know that look," Foggy sighed in resignation. "I am wasting my breath trying to argue with that look."

"Thank you for seeing things my way. I've done my research, and I think this is the one. I'm just asking you, as my best friend who knows me better than anyone, to give me your honest opinion before I sign the lease."

"Yeah, yeah. First you reject me, then you try and butter me up."

"Foggy."

"Maybe I'll get over it if you invite me over to watch the caning orgies?"

"Foggy," Matt sighed again, but Foggy knew he really didn't mind.

"Don't spoil things by telling me the girl-smells linger."

"They do," Matt insisted.

"I repeat: freak show. Your average fawning female has smell better than me, and you smell me all the time. That can't be a picnic, yet somehow you manage."

"I'm used to you. It's not distracting anymore. Unless there's garlic shrimp. Or you've been to dinner at Aunt Marge's."

"The cats?" Foggy asked with a sympathetic nod.

"Jesus, the cats."

"All right. This is it. Shit, man, that is a lot of stairs."

"The entire building has high ceilings. Ensures I won't be bothered by ambivalent guests causally dropping by."

"I'm not sure I'm ever climbing them again either," Foggy told him. "I prefer to get my exercise the old fashioned way."

"You mean not at all?" Matt teased.

"Yeah, you're so not worth it."

"Mr. Murdock?" a beautiful, dark haired woman opened the door to apartment 6A. "I'm Charlotte Mason. We spoke on the phone."

She held out her hand to shake, but Matt just stood there, smiling pleasantly. Foggy knew he knew it was there. Matt is usually quick to offer his hand first to avoid this kind of awkward hanging. Unless that's exactly what he's going for because he wants to deniably put the other person on the defensive.

"Hand," Foggy whispered loud enough for Charlotte to hear, well-practiced at this particular game of 'Yep, he's really blind. Don't you feel a bit like a shit now?'

"Please call me Matthew," he told Charlotte, all charm as he took her hand in his. Charlotte blushed and put her other hand on top of his and held on longer than was polite. Even Foggy could smell her perfume, and inwardly he cringed at the thought of Matt scrubbing his hands raw washing her scent off of him as soon as they left.

"I have to tell you," she confided as she opened the door. "This place is a steal. This much square footage for the price? It's not going to stay on the market for long."

"Why is it vacant then?" Foggy asked as they walked through into the living area.

"I was going to tell you about that," Matt said.

"There was a... misunderstanding... with the zoning next door." Charlotte gestured unnecessarily toward the large windows in explantion.

"Fuck," Foggy muttered.

"What are we looking at?" Matt asked.

"Huge-ass LED billboard spitting distance from your very tall windows. Astronauts can see this sign from space."

"How bad is it?" Matt's fingers ghosted across the old panes of glass, and Foggy knew it was a lost cause. Matt was touching the place like he was already in love and committing every inch of it to memory.

Foggy sighed and turned so he could watch the colors swirl across the living room floor. It looked like a nightclub. It looked like an LSD trip. It would give you the spins if you sat there cold stone sober and stared at the shifting patterns.

"No way you could have a tv in here," Foggy honestly answered.

"I guess it's a good thing I don't watch tv," Matt said with a smile. "Charlotte, would you mind walking me around the space?"

Foggy swallowed his groan because that is one of Matt's go-to lines, and it always works. Matt can get himself around a room just fine, thank you very much, but there are times he asks someone to show him around. It makes the other person immediately feel both powerful and trusted, while also making sure they feel just a little bit of sympathy for the blind guy. Plus, Matt then gets to touch gorgeous women, even if they are wearing too much perfume. They're always beautiful, lucky bastard.

While she guided him around, extolling the apartment's various features, Foggy stood in the middle of the room and closed his eyes and listened, really listened. It was nearly 7:00 at night, which meant people were home from work, but it was too early for them to be headed out or going to bed. The witching hour, probably the noisiest the apartment will get.

"It's quiet," he finally said when Matt was done with his tour and charming Charlotte half-way out of her stilettos. She was not eager to let go of his arm, and it took a pointed look from Foggy before she excused herself and walked toward the kitchen area to give them some semblance of privacy.

"Double brick walls," Matt said. "Only two units per floor."

"Which means no one will hear you when you're lying dead on the floor, screaming for help."

"How am I going to be both dead and screaming, Foggy?" Matt asked with a grin.

"Details."

"Unusually tall ceilings," Matt continued, sighing with contentment as he raised his face to the wooden beams he couldn't see. "They don't make them like this anymore."

"Not again with the crushing on the city, man. I swear, Hell's Kitchen is your one true love, but she is a vicious mistress. She will take your money and swallow your dreams and then kick you when you're down."

"I love it when you talk dirty to me," Matt teased, nudging him in the side.

"Freak show," Foggy muttered.

"You should know better than to try and reason with a man's heart."

Foggy sighed again in defeat and breathed deeply through his nose. "A lot of take-out places nearby, but the smell isn't overwhelming," Foggy added. "Top floor in the corner, so not that many shared walls. Nice wooden beams in the ceiling. Makes it feel homey, you know? Warms up the exposed brick walls. Won't seem too weird when you don't hang anything up."

"Are you trying to get a date with my new apartment?" Matt beamed at him. "'Cause she's spoken for."

"Well, there are these pretty arch-things over the windows."

"Arch-things? Really, Foggy? What kind of pick-up line is that?"

Foggy eyed the staircase leading up the tall ceiling. "What's the security like for the roof access?" he asked Charlotte.

"This is the original entry point," she replied, all business now that she's not drooling over Matt. "But there's another from the stairwell now, so workmen would never need to use it."

She was as good as not answering questions as Matt. Foggy jogged up the stairs to look at the door.

"I love the roof access," Matt said. "Don't mess with my roof access."

"It's a good, solid door," he called down to Matt. "But I'll get someone to beef up the lock. And Charlotte? The light fixtures suck."

"I'm not too worried about that," Matt grins.

"Just because you aren't going to use them doesn't mean you should pay full price when they suck. If you actually needed to see, you'd be screwed without a crap-ton of lamps."

"We can take that into consideration," Charlotte said as Foggy rejoins them.

"Along with the fact that the living room looks like a disco ball?" Foggy gestured to the swirling colors on the floor. "He may have overnight guests who object to the floodlight right outside the windows when they're trying to sleep."

"Foggy," Matt scolded, but Charlotte only eye-fucked Matt like she would just love to spend the night and not sleep as soon as he signed the lease.

"Dude, do you even have any furniture?"

"Details," Matt said like this was already a done-deal. "Let's see these considerations in writing, Charlotte," he said without any trace of irony before turning back to face Foggy. "And don't get any funny ideas because you are not barricading my rooftop door. I'm already imaging unwinding at the end of a long day with a beer, admiring my city."

"You're blind, buddy."

"Thanks for reminding me. You'll have to describe my view so I know exactly what I'm not-looking at."

"Great, now I have to worry about you plummeting to your death from the roof." Foggy looked over at Matt and sighed. "I just channeled my mom again, didn't I?"

"Yeah. Sure did. I love you, too."


"He knows I hate it when he doesn't answer my calls," Foggy mutters, glaring at his phone when Matt's immediately went to voicemail again.

"He was right when he called you a mother hen," Karen says with a smile. "You do sound just like a mom."

"Whatever. I just..." Foggy's voice trails off.

"Worry about him?" Karen quietly offers.

Foggy shrugs. "I know he doesn't need me to. Matt's just fine, trust me. But he can be." Foggy abruptly stops talking again and raises his empty pint to his mouth just so he won't say something he regrets.

Sure, Matt let Karen stay at his place when they thought there was a good chance she would be visited by a professional killer, but that doesn't mean he's okay with her knowing about. Well. Anything, really.

"He's a loner," Foggy finally decides to say because it seems kind to gently wave her off if he can.

"I find that hard to believe," Karen says.

Foggy shrugs. "It's true. His choice, I might add, but that doesn't make it less real. His dad died when he was a kid, so he was raised at St. Agnes Orphanage. I know it's this really nice place, but still."

"My God." Karen swallows. "That's really sad."

"Look, I know he'd rather I didn't tell you this. But it's public record. You'd be stupid not to Google-search both of us in the not-too-distant future. For all you know, we're serial killers."

"Would that show up on a Google-search?" Karen asks with a little smile.

"Fair point," Foggy agrees. "It's just. Well, since you're going to be working with us every day, you should know that for all his many loveable qualities, Matt is hard to get to know. Don't take it personally if he uses his irresistible charm to keep you at arm's length. He likes to be alone."

"Foggy, no one likes to be alone."

Foggy half-nods, half-shrugs because while her words ring true for most people, he's not sure they apply to Matt.

"Enough about us," he says. "We weren't going to think, remember? This is suddenly way too serious. Let's settle the bill and move on to stop number two. The night is." Foggy glances at his watch. "Jesus, not young. Not young at all. And sadly, neither am I." He yawns into the back of his hand. "More libations before I curl up in this booth and take a nap. But your introduction to the neighborhood won't be complete until we go to a couple more places."

"Do you think Matt will call back?"

"Matt who?" Foggy asks. "I'm ready to learn more about you."

"There's nothing to know," Karen obviously lies. "I live her now. I have the best bosses, who are not serial killers, in the city. We are going to do amazing work and help people."

Matt can surely pick them, Foggy thinks as Karen smiles that sweet smile at him and doesn't tell him a goddamn thing.

"Getting to know you," he sings loud enough for people to turn and glare because he knows it will make her laugh, and he isn't going to push her. Not yet, anyway. At least not until they have more drinks. He'll take this nice and slow. "Getting to know all about you."

"Foggy," Karen laughs.

"Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me."

She laughs so hard she has to wipe away tears when Foggy stops and smiles at her.

"What?" he asks. "You think I only know Pirates?"


A/N: I should have done this before I posted 4 stories to the fandom, but I'm subscribing to the Better Late Than Never school of philosophy: It's probably pretty clear I'm not sailing a particular 'ship at the moment, content to enjoy all the various potential and crackling energy and feels, no matter where I find them. I have a couple more stories bouncing around (a Claire POV, a Matt), but I am open to suggestion if there's something you'd like to see. I can't guarantee that 1) I'll write it, or 2) that you'll like what I write if I do, but I promise to take any ideas under advisement.