Shatter the Darkness
(N. Clevenger, October 2022)
Notes: Apparently I've decided to use Whumptober as an excuse to clear out the old fics dying a forgotten death in my Google drive. (Sorry Daredevil fans – this might be the last one I've got for you. But there's still a lot of October left, and I seem to be on something of a roll, so…) This one wasn't so much abandoned as left, sitting unfinished for years after I stopped writing in the fandom. Spawned originally from another kinkmeme prompt, it also nicely fills Whumptober 2022 prompt #9, "The Very Noisy Night." The title comes from a quote by Natsuki Takaya. Set preseries and post S2. Boo S2.
Netflix/Marvel canon. They'll never belong to me.
He's been alone with the noise for hours, days, the unceasing barrage slowly becoming his everything. Wedged as far as he can get into this corner, curled as small as he knows how to be. He isn't sure if the explosions booming in his bones, his blood, are real or remembered. Isn't entirely sure even of his own name.
Something brushes his shoulder; the shock of it jerks him backward, away. His skull collides abruptly with the wall behind him, a liquid pain washing his head from back to front. It barely registers in his flailing disorientation, between the rockets screeching their whistling ascents along his nerves as he scrambles to escape. Panic strangles his senses, and he strikes out blindly with feet and fists when the corner gives him nowhere to go. There's only the smell of his own sweat. The salty thick taste of his snot. The ringing in his ears and the desperate rhythm of his heart. His heel connects with something, the impact reberverbating up his leg. A target identified, he kicks that way again.
His ankle's circled in a sudden restraint. He tries frantically to yank his leg free, but he can't get loose.
Now his forearm's caught up too; lashing out with his available limbs he finds only empty air. There's an undulating buzz under the ringing, the roaring, that might be a voice, but if it is he can't decipher any of the words. Muscles trembling in their useless resistance, he struggles snarling as his arm's pulled forward, as he's dragged from the relative safety of his corner.
The buzzing arcs sharply. Angrily. He fights even harder to get away.
His captured hand is forced against something warm and solid. Held there. It's a few seconds more before he can see through the terrified rebellion to the soft cotton against his skin, the familiar heartbeat against the knuckles of his tight fist. Recognition pops the bubble of his hysteria, and he slumps under the rush of relief.
"There he is," Stick says. "You finally with me, kid?"
The hold on his leg disappears, but Stick doesn't release his arm even after Matt grunts a weak affirmative. He can't manage much else, drained as he is. He can hear Stick's heartbeat now, the in and out of his breath. Can smell his soap, the Chinese food he'd brought back with him. But it's difficult to pull together the pieces through the throbbing of his head, the persistent whine in his ears. The wood floor is hard beneath him, unyielding under his sprawled angles.
He tenses dramatically at a far off scattered popping, sick with the fear that the whole thing's starting up all over again. He can't stop shaking. When Stick's fingers unexpectedly find his hairline he jerks reflexively away from the contact, but the man's hold on his arm keeps him close. Matt squirms, tries to relax as searching fingertips run through his hair to play over his skull. Tries to remember how to breathe in some pattern other than these feeble shuddering gasps.
There's a sore spot on the back of his head, the smell of fresh blood under the eggy scent of fried rice. He can feel a stinging across his palms now where his short nails have broken through the skin. His small fingers are cramping in the clenched curve of their fists. He can't seem to uncurl them.
"Easy, Matty, easy," Stick murmurs when a muscle spasm twitches through his entire frame. A thumb smoothes a repetitive path over the inside of Matt's wrist. "Remember what I taught you…"
Seemingly satisfied that there's no major head trauma, the fingers leave his hair. They hover for a moment near his cheekbone, evaporate into the lingering din. Matt battles to map out the shape of him, to focus on Stick instead of the steadily increasing sound of explosions coming from across town. It's not working. Hot tears prickle his eyes as he ducks his head between his hunched shoulders.
The hand at his wrist wraps itself around his cold fingers, peels them out of their locked fist. "Christ, kid…" comes a gravelly exhale, bright sparks trailing along behind Stick's featherlight exploration of his exposed palm. The skin's on fire, feels slippery. "The other one like this too?" Without waiting for an answer he finds Matt's other hand, just as knotted and apparently just as gouged.
A car horn blares out on the street; Matt's jump of a reaction wrenches his slick hand from Stick's hold. He crumples, folds in on himself with his arms thrown protectively up over his head. It's too much. Everything hurts. Everything's shrieking. Even the distant detonations feel an assault to his overstimulated brain. Tears leak from his closed eyelids, rewetting the dried tracks on his cheeks.
Silently Stick gets to his feet, exits the room. Matt imagines his irritation, his disappointment, at this inexcusable display of childish weakness. He knows Stick's got no patience for this kind of thing. He honestly hadn't meant for it to be like this, had been determined that this year he wouldn't let it bother him.
He's crying in earnest now, the sobs growing uglier the more he tries to make them stop.
Another lurch of anxiety flips his stomach when someone sets off a string of cracklers in the street outside; he feels flayed raw inside and out, bruised all over. A door slams somewhere nearby, and for a crushing second Matt's sure that Stick has abandoned him entirely. He can't breathe, choking on tears and terror between inadequate gulps of air. When he finally thinks that he hears the man's familiar tread, it does little to calm him. It's a barely there sound under all the noise clouding his head, and he isn't entirely convinced that he's not just making it up.
But Stick appears out of the agitation from a few feet away, moving in this direction. "Alright, enough. Pull it together," he grumbles, rejoining Matt on the floor. "This ain't your first Fourth of July."
It's not. The first with this merciless new twist had come when he was still in the hospital after the accident. The horrifically overwhelming cacophony that his existence had become had still done nothing to prepare him for those initial fireworks, for the booming and screaming that seemed to build without end. It sounded the way he imagined war would; it sounded like the end of the world. He doesn't remember making it to the finale that night, only the pain and the fear and his dad squeezing his hand. The rest fades into the medicated miasma that embodied so many of those days.
Last year he'd been at the orphanage, already in the tiny infirmary. A mess of anticipatory dread over the approaching holiday that everyone else was so excited for, he'd been vaguely feverish and unable to keep any food down for days. All he recalls of the actual festivities is a futile suffocating effort to smother both the punishing external noise and his own shouting with his hopelessly thin pillow. The rustling of the nuns as they fluttered impotently in and out of the sickroom.
The few kids who'd before made some kind of an attempt at a connection had stopped talking to him entirely after that.
He flinches when Stick touches him, fighting to swallow his sobs. The long-fingered hand resting across his spine spans most of his back. "Come on, kid, breathe. Slowly. Pretend you actually paid attention to all those lessons."
The hand on his back is a grounding weight, something substantial to focus on. A place to start. He mentally traces the shape of the fingers, the heat of the palm through his t-shirt, follows the pulse that he feels there to sketch out an outline of Stick beside him. With his forehead against the floorboards, he struggles to color in the details of the man. It feels impossible, his concentration fractured, continuously leaping away.
But the distraction helps to slow the heaving sobs, exhaustion wrapping its arms around him and pressing him into the floor. The tears still shiver through him, but with less emotion to them now. An afterthought, an echo. His muscles jerk unpredictably as he lies raggedly sucking in air.
"That's it," Stick says, uncharacteristically encouraging. His hand shifts, and Matt's reminded of how his dad would rub his back to comfort him when he was curled in a ball in his hospital bed. The thought that he'll never be with him again rolls over him like a truck, the force of it utterly undulled by repetition. His throat closes around another sob.
The hand vanishes. "Sit up," Stick demands, with a gruffness that Matt's more accustomed to. "I don't mean later, boy," he growls, when Matt doesn't immediately move.
It's a tone that expects to be obeyed, and Matt peels the shield of his arms away from his head. His nails have rediscovered their grooves in his palms; he pushes himself up with knuckles and protesting, wobbly muscles. The brutal headache pounds at his balance to leave him unconquerably dizzy. When a siren whoops through the intersection outside, it blurs his picture of Stick, the room.
There's a crunch of plastic, a cracking and the sound of liquid splashing against ceramic. Distant through the ringing in his ears despite its proximetry. Water, he assumes, unable to smell anything through his clogged sinuses. His entire face feels swollen.
He waits head bowed and body trembling for the lecture he deserves for his failure, and the sudden certainty that Stick will give up on him for this hits like a slap to the face. Fresh tears burn threateningly at the back of his nose, his throat. He tries desperately to come up with an argument – a reason, a promise, a plea, anything – for letting him stay, but he can't think around the panic. This headache.
Reality whirls when Stick's hand appears under his chin to tip up his head, the firm grip of forefinger and thumb on either side of his jaw preventing him from pulling away. Matt remembers the expression his dad would put on before those fights where he was the clear underdog; it's an out of focus image now, but he tries to replicate it on his young features. His steadying breath is mostly sniffle as he pretends to be ready for whatever comes next.
"Should've said something, kid." A worn terrycloth towel swipes at Matt's eyes, at the invisible trails he can feel on his cheeks. When it leaves his face there's a ripple of a splash near the floor, the towel reappearing wet and cold at his left wrist to clean the tacky skin there. Now his fingers are gently coaxed from their bend; in the confusion of his surprise, they open with little resistance. "Should've told me it was going to be this bad," Stick continues softly, sponging at the cuts that cross his palm.
Water drips on the floorboards in a pattering mimicry of the explosions still crashing around town. When Stick left earlier, Matt had barely kept himself from breaking down and begging him not to go. Not to leave him alone to this, to offer up some way to get through it. But he'd wanted to show Stick how strong he can be. How well he's listened, how much he's learned.
His dad would've been able to handle it.
If his dad hadn't left him, he wouldn't have been alone.
His mind shies quickly from the mutinous thought, allowing Stick to unfold the fingers of his other hand as he wavers under the weight of his weakness, his loss. The water briefly soothes some of the bite from his torn skin. Wincing as the far off fireworks start their crescendo, he squeezes shut his eyes like this might somehow block out the sound. Unaware of much else, he doesn't realize he's listing forward until his head bumps Stick's chest.
A warm arm circles his shaking shoulders. "Alright, Matty. Alright," Stick says.
He smells of soap and sweat, of that cheap detergent from the coin machine at the laundromat down the block. One of his shirt buttons presses an indentation into Matt's cheek, splitting the stream of tears to dampen fabric and skin around it. Matt knows he should move, that he really needs to find a way to stop this crying. But Stick doesn't push him away, not yet. Without the energy to question this unexpected kindness, he sinks into it.
He's drowsy, drifting, when Stick sits him up again to wind strips of gauze around his palms. Hands under his elbows pull him to his feet; the room dips, and his knees instantly buckle. Stick scoops him up without a word, carries him to the lumpy mattress that serves as his bed. Awareness spins, his head filled with a deafening hum.
The mattress solidifies beneath his heavy limbs; Stick's hands retreat. "M'sorry," he tries to say. He doesn't want to be a burden. He wants to stay.
"So am I, kid," he thinks he hears from the other side of the room.
He's been alone with the noise for hours, days, the unceasing barrage slowly becoming his everything. Sitting on the floor with his forehead on his knees, twitching at every pop. The edge of the bedframe digs into his spine, the mattress at his back a totally insufficient barrier against the sound.
Meditation is proving elusive, so he's trying to distract himself with good memories of Elektra. The sound of her laugh, the way she tasted. The unique beat of her heart and her favorite perfume. But his mind keeps circling back to the weight of her lying lifeless in his arms.
He doesn't want to think about that.
Doesn't want to be conscious at all, really. There's no chance he's going out on patrol tonight, not with the city still celebrating and this migraine that's been shaping itself for hours. Not when it's already… he has no idea what time it is. He hopes it's late, hopes this is almost over. People have been setting off their own illegal fireworks in the street since early evening.
His entire body jerks when it happens again. He hates those brief explosions almost as much as the formal shows that seem to go on forever; their unpredictability leaves no possibility of being prepared, and in his anxiety they hit like auditory electric shocks. Tightening his arms around his bent legs, he struggles to remember the smell of Elektra's hair.
All he can smell is blood, dust.
Elektra so still. Elektra so silent.
Another round of scattered bangs from outside comes accompanied by shouts and shrieks of laughter; his pulse jumps, takes to slamming against the back of his left eyebrow in response. He feels the whimper in his throat more than hears it under the buzzing in his ears.
Knock it off, boy. This ain't your first Fourth of July.
The annual mantra seems louder this year after having so recently heard Stick's voice. Regardless of its volume, it does, as usual, very little to help.
He remembers the one Fourth of July he'd had with Elektra, a day spent in bed while she'd done her best to keep his attention. No other woman had ever been able to compare with Elektra. He'd almost had her. Almost had everything.
Everything, except…
Matt?
Another voice to be relegated only to memory. He hasn't talked to Foggy in weeks.
You in here?
He'd heard Foggy had gotten a new job. A good job. I would've been here sooner, but there was a work thing. He'd thought about calling to congratulate him, but there'd been that liquor store robbery later the same night; he didn't make a habit of it, but he'd finally appeased the grateful owner by taking a case of Foggy's favorite beer. He'd left it on the fire escape outside Foggy's window.
Matt?
Maybe not the best delivery method, in retrospect; undoubtedly it had just reminded his friend of the wedge that had come between them. Probably why Foggy never called.
"Huh. Maybe you're actually not h— Oh. Hi." Somehow Foggy seems to have stepped out of his head and into his bedroom. With the annoying ringing continuously fading in and out in Matt's left ear, the voice sounds as if it's coming from underwater. "Sorry," the ghost continues, even dampened undeniably uncomfortable. "I knocked, but… I still have my key, and I thought maybe you might not feel like answering the door."
He can't recall the smell of Elektra's hair, but he's having no trouble conjuring up the nostalgic scent of Foggy's aftershave. He misses Foggy. Sometimes more than he misses Elektra.
"Maybe I shouldn't have… I dunno. Am I still allowed to come over? Maybe I should go. Or give the key back. Both. Matt? Anything?"
His headache beats in the spaces between the words; there doesn't seem much point in conversing with a figment of his imagination. He's alone again. He knows how to do alone.
"You're seriously not going to say anything? Really? Okay, fine. Let it not be said that the Nelsons can't take a hint. I'll just leave these on the bed. They're headphones. I thought… nevermind. I guess, uh… take care of yourself, Matt."
There might be the faintest noise as something drops onto the bed behind him; the heartbeat he thought he'd invented definitely seems to be moving away. Matt lifts his head from his knees. "Fog?" he croaks in disbelief. "What…?"
The motion stops. "Yeah, it's me. What, were you sleeping?" Footsteps reverberate through the floor as Foggy comes back around the bed. "Because otherwise I have to tell you that you really know how to make a guy feel –" A sucked-in breath; Foggy's heart rate suddenly races. "Holy crap! What happened?"
Matt winces at the raised volume, his head drooping. He still doesn't understand how Foggy's here. "Huh?"
"There's, uh, blood. Kinda everywhere. Hang on."
Foggy moves away, disappears for a moment. Matt can taste the blood now, finds half of his lower lip swollen and sore. It's nothing when up against the throbbing in his skull; his forehead falls back onto his knees.
He's floating exhaustedly in the unbroken beat, almost a meditation in itself, and Foggy's return is a jolt of surprise. Two heavy steps and a displacement of air; a flood of adrenaline wrenches Matt away, but the bruising bedframe blocks his escape. He bounces off of it into a defensive crouch, trying to see through the blurry roaring in his head. Wavering, he has to brace himself with a fist on the floor.
"… okay. Everything's okay. Are you listening to me? Matt?" Foggy's voice filters through. Coming from the same level, only a few feet away. A bit breathless.
Matt tries to slow his own breathing as his bedroom reshapes itself around him; each inhalation brings a pinging in his ribs where he'd hit the wooden frame and a bolt through his brain as the migraine objects to even the concept of further motion. "Yeah," he grunts. He clears his throat, scowling as it rumbles through his head. "M'here, m'listening…" Foggy's on the floor. Why is Foggy on the floor? "You okay? Did I –?"
"I'm okay," Foggy's quick to assure him; he struggles to find independent confirmation of this in all the noise. Foggy's moving, inching nearer. Matt slumps against the side of the mattress. "But I'd be a lot better if my best… if you weren't doing this freaky vampire impression. Trust me, it's not a good look. What happened? Can we…? Here."
Matt swipes at the slick moisture on his chin with the back of his hand, reaches for whatever Foggy's holding out to him. They miss each other with an unusual lack of synchronicity, fumble to make the connection. His fingers finally find the soft folds of a towel. Obediently he rubs at his face, the wet terrycloth scritching through the stubble of his beard. "Bit my lip," he mumbles. "S'fine."
He prods at his puffy lip with his tongue, tastes a zing of fresh blood. Once he starts poking at it, he can't seem to stop. The hand holding the towel falls to the floor, his head dropping listlessly back against the bed.
"You sure it doesn't need, like, stitches or something?" Foggy's close, concerned, and for a moment it's like nothing's changed. "I think it's still bleeding. Though it's hard to tell with the way you just sorta smeared around what was already there." There's a tug on the cloth lying beneath his fingers. "Can I maybe–?"
His fingers flutter in acquiescence; the towel is pulled out from under them. Foggy's touch feels hesitant as he dabs at a spot on Matt's jaw. "It looks like someone punched you in the face," he observes unhappily. His breath smells of whiskey. "Along with several other places, actually."
Matt's not wearing a shirt, hadn't been expecting company. The last two nights had been busy, heat waves tending to make people crazy; now that Foggy's called his attention to it, he can feel the evidence dotting his body. The hit he'd taken to his right shoulder, some improvised wooden weapon that had broken upon contact. The boot to the back of his left leg that'd just missed his knee but still left him limping for hours. From outside comes a car horn, more hoots of laughter. He flinches, twisting his head away as he grabs Foggy's wrist. "Fog, stop. It's okay."
The pulse under his thumb is still faster than normal, and Matt thinks Foggy seems nervous. "Well okay, but don't blame me if you get blood on your sheets," Foggy says, pulling out of Matt's hold and shifting back a little. "You might not want to go outside in those sweats either, by the way."
Matt finds a damp spot on the cotton at his knee. "Thanks." He knows he's probably not imagining the awkwardness shimmering in the air between them. It's a sick hollow feeling that he can't squirm away from. "What, uh… what're you doing here? What time is it?"
"Almost nine," comes the answer, and Matt smothers a groan. It has to be later than that. Nine means the big show hasn't even started yet. Nine means things are still going to get worse.
"You sure?" he asks stupidly, something spasming deep in the fused mass of muscle and tendons along his neck.
"Pretty sure, yeah." Foggy sounds sympathetic. "Can I do anything?" he asks. A second later his heartbeat stutters with the recollection of who they are now. "Or should I just go?"
Matt remembers with him, suddenly realizes that once Foggy leaves it's entirely possible that he may never see him again. It's a spike through his chest. "No… no, uh…" He uses the bed to get to his feet, faltering when the headache protests vehemently to the motion. Waves of vertigo distort his view of the apartment, of Foggy. "Want a beer or something?" he forces out through his teeth, the heel of a hand pressed uselessly to his forehead.
"Um… sure." Foggy's standing too; Matt notices the hand hovering near his arm just as it disappears. "But maybe I should get it. You're really pale under all those bruises."
Intentional or not, this feels like an accusation. He should put a shirt on, bury the elephant in the room at least under a layer of cotton. He tries to force his body to straighten up; there's no way to loosen the painful hunch to his shoulders. Without acknowledging Foggy's comment, he takes a few unsteady steps. Has to stop and reorient himself to locate his bedroom door.
There's a rush of water from a neighboring apartment, but at the moment he can't tell which one. The wood floor's cool and smooth beneath his bare feet as he shuffles over it, an ineffective counter to the stuffy heat of his living room. Foggy trails along behind him, keeping the same sluggish pace, and Matt feels an unfamiliar itch to fill the silence between them. He stumbles when the dull ringing abruptly returns to replace sound in his left ear, says nothing.
He makes it as far as the sofa before there's more unexpected snapping explosions from outside; way too jumpy, too off balance, he's startled into tripping over his own feet. A flailing hand brushes the sofa frame as he tumbles down onto the cushions, and he moans as the migraine smashes against his skull. Foggy's voice is just a disjointed series of meaningless syllables, but even with their new unclear boundaries Matt can guess at the gist of the words. He tries to dismiss the supposed worry with a vague flip of his hand, his scowl lost in the sofa.
A blink later, Foggy's gone. The awareness of this lifts his head from the cushion, an insistent nausea sluicing through him with the motion. He swallows it down, finds the other man in the kitchen. Appeased, he doesn't bother trying to determine what it is that Foggy's doing. Somewhere in the building a dog begins a miserable-sounding howl. Matt wonders if he's simply projecting.
He'd swear he can hear the purr of Elektra's accented voice out in the hallway.
Impossible, though real enough that he almost gets off the sofa to prove what he definitely already knows. But Foggy interrupts any thought of standing up. "Hey, thanks for the beer the other night…" The statement's loud with artificial cheer as it precedes him back into this part of the room; Matt turns in his general direction, the headache squeezing his eyes into a permanent squint. "Unless of course your next words are going to be 'What beer?' in which case we should maybe talk about how there's someone else out there who knows way too much about me."
"… welcome," Matt manages. "Congratulations. On the job."
"Yeah, thanks." Foggy stops in front of him. "Here, I got you a glass of water. Unless you want a beer; there's a couple left in the fridge." It's uncertain; he's shifting his weight back and forth between his legs.
Matt stretches out a hand for the water, mumbles a thank you before taking a few sips. His headache flickers, and for a moment he dares to hope that it might be dimming. He should've known better; he bends to set the glass on the floor, and the pain returns a solid presence behind his left eyebrow.
Foggy settles on the other end of the sofa. The beer splashes around inside the glass bottle, and Matt hears him swallowing. "It's… different, you know?" Foggy says. "Great, totally great," he's quick to add, "but definitely not the same vibe as Nelson and Murdock."
Matt's not going to apologize for making the only decision possible. For making a decision he was forced into. A toilet flushes in the apartment below them. Someone shouts at the dog to shut up. "Happy for you," he says, leaning back into the cushions and closing his eyes. His punctured lip is thick and noticeable when he moves his mouth. "Really."
Foggy's breath hitches like he's going to say something, but instead he takes another drink. Matt listens to his friend's heartbeat, thinks about getting up to wash his face, put a shirt on. It seems like a lot of work.
"I had lunch with Karen the other day," Foggy eventually says. "She asked about you."
"Mmm." He hasn't spoken with Karen since he'd shown her the mask. He'd hoped… It doesn't matter. How can I ever trust you again? What he'd intended as protection she'd seen as betrayal.
Alone is better. Alone is easier.
There's a stream of police sirens on the next block over, a splitting wail that goes on and on. Something big then, something that maybe he needs to help with. He's up before any conscious decision, but the air around him instantly goes cold and liquid and he grabs for the back of the couch with a flailing hand. The ringing in his ears rises for a second to blot out everything, and all he can do is lock his knees and hang on.
"… going? Matt?"
Foggy's voice returns first, then a murky sense of his surroundings. Slowly the apartment takes shape in his head. He's still on his feet, skin tingling. Fingers cramping in their desperate grip on the leather of the couch. Hot and chilled at the same time, his legs trembling with his weight. He licks his lips, swallows blood.
Foggy's close, at his elbow, and Matt realizes he's waiting for the usual physical contact only when it doesn't come. "I, uh…" An ambulance races by outside. "I have to go. M'sorry." It doesn't sound at all motivated, even to his own ears, but he makes himself release his hold on the leather.
"Are you serious?" Foggy explodes. Too near and too angry even if it didn't already feel like his head was cracking apart. "Where? Why?"
Matt cringes, stumbles a few steps away. "Don't…" Don't what? Don't yell, don't be mad, don't make this harder than it already is.
"It's those sirens, isn't it? You can't even stand up straight, and you're going out to get involved in –"
"There's something going on," he starts in protest, because Foggy doesn't seem to understand. "I –"
"Don't you get it? I don't care!"
It's a cry so choked with exasperation that Matt spins his way in surprise. The quick motion is a mistake immediately understood as the ringing spikes again and the world washes away.
He's falling.
Arms thrown around him in a clumsy crushing hug, whiskey breath panting unevenly in his ear. Now the couch cushions beneath him, some semblance of stability. Foggy drops down beside him hard enough to rattle the frame, taking his body heat with him. The beat in Matt's head swells against the inside of his skull. He shivers, groans.
"I don't care about them. I care about you." The anger's gone from Foggy's voice. Replaced by a quiet sadness.
And it tastes like truth. But he doesn't know how he can trust it, not with everything that's gone on. "Don't worry," Matt mumbles. "M'okay."
"Obviously."
They sit next to each other for a minute, breathing. Their shoulders almost close enough to touch. It's a moment he's lived through countless times, but it feels different now. Like they're both searching for something to say.
"You hungry?" Foggy finally asks. "I could make something."
If he eats he's going to throw up. The anxiety clenching his stomach is very clear about that. "I'm okay. Go ahead and have something if you want." Not that Foggy's ever needed permission to raid his kitchen.
"You sure? Because honestly, man, you don't exactly look like you've been pigging out lately."
He really should get up and grab a shirt. The migraine demands he never moves. "M'good. Thanks."
The argument he's bracing for never materializes. "Okay." Foggy gets up and moves to a chair across from the couch; from behind his eyelids, Matt hears the liquid splash inside the bottle when he picks up his beer from the floor. The swish of fabric when he slides a hand into his pocket. The peck of the keyboard as he types something on his phone.
The deviation is unnerving. Maybe it's just that Matt feels so out of sync with everything.
"You, uh, you have plans tonight?" he tries, grasping for normal. He realizes he's bouncing his knee up and down. Forces himself to stop.
"Just the work thing I couldn't get out of. And this, I guess."
"This," Matt repeats. He's not sure what this is.
Shrieks of laughter and miniature explosions in the street. It fires brightly across strained nerves and his migraine, and when his whole body flinches he's embarrassed by the sound that escapes through his teeth. Matt drops his head into his hands, the headache banging against the walls of his skull. His fingertips won't stop tingling.
"So, um, this is kinda why I came over, actually."
God, what time is it? Maybe Foggy would punch him in the face, knock him out before the big city show. "What?"
"Headphones. The fancy noise-canceling kind. I thought maybe they'd… help."
He knows what all the words mean, but his brain is struggling to translate them in this order. Matt lowers his hands. "You bought me headphones?"
"Well, technically, someone gave them to me. So I guess I'm regifting you headphones. They're nice. Supposed to be really good."
He frowns. "Thanks, Fog, but –"
"I know that time you tried it was a spectacular failure. But technology's come a long way since then. It might not block everything, but they really might help."
The only time he'd spent the holiday with Foggy; they'd been on summer break, sharing the cost of a miniscule apartment in the city while they temporarily interned with different firms. There had been nowhere to hide, and Foggy had offered his headphones out of desperation after only fifteen minutes of being forced to play witness. There was nothing spectacular about it. Matt doesn't want to tell him that there wasn't anything unusual about him ending this particular night curled up and whimpering on the bathroom floor.
Shouts outside. A series of car horns. Matt's stomach lurches, his heart thudding inside his head. "Okay. Sure. I guess it can't hurt."
"Cool." Foggy springs up like he's been waiting for the signal, the feet of the chair jumping on the wood floor. "I'll go get them."
He hangs his head over his knees, listening to Foggy's footsteps move into the bedroom. He's not hopeful that this is going to work. This ain't your first Fourth of July. He just wants this night to be over.
Cardboard slipping over cardboard, plastic. A lot of plastic, that sharp tang that can only come from something fresh out of the box. Matt swallows, tasting the vapors as they slide down his throat. Foggy crosses the room back to the couch. He floats in front of Matt like a ghost, a shape that's presumably the miracle headphones dangling from one of his hands.
"Where's your phone? I need to pair these."
When he scratches at the scruff on his chin, tiny flakes of dried blood crumble under his fingertips. "Dunno. The bedroom, probably." He can't remember the last time he had it.
Foggy disappears again; Matt rubs at the ache pulsing behind his cheekbone. The scattered noises from outside are becoming more frequent, closer together, every one ricocheting from muscles to nerves and back like a demonic, unpredictable ping pong ball. He realizes he's breathing way too fast now, works to get it under control before Foggy returns. He can't do anything about the trembling.
"Show me your pretty face, Murdock." Foggy's shoes stop in front of the couch.
Matt lifts his head. "Huh?"
"Need to unlock your phone." He swoops in closer; Matt hears the sound that signifies he's accomplished his goal. Foggy takes a step back, but continues to hover. Matt wishes he would just sit down.
There's a string of sounds he doesn't have context for as Foggy does something on his phone. A startling bang from outside starts the dog howling once more, and Matt doesn't have the energy to protest. He shifts position carefully, sinking back into the cushions to rest his head on the top of the couch. Wraps his arms around his bare ribs. His knee's bouncing wildly again.
"Here," Foggy says, pushing the plastic smell toward him. Matt peels an arm off his ribs to reach for it.
The headphones are oversized and light in his hand; he idly runs his thumb over one of the thick ear pads. Giving Foggy a skeptical look, he puts them on. Drops his head back onto the cushions and closes his eyes. He feels like a broken science experiment.
"Okay, so there's all these playlists of sounds. Like for meditation or white noise or whatever." Foggy sounds nervous, barely muffled by the soft padding pressing on his ears.
Matt's own anxiety is quick to zone in on this and feed from it. He squirms against the leather, a failed attempt to get comfortable. "Okay. Pick something. Just, um… not too loud."
"Oh. Right. Got it. Let's see…" Foggy's pacing now, footsteps tracking left and right across the living room space. Another siren fills the inside of Matt's skull, and he bites his lip to cut off a moan. He can taste blood again.
"What exactly are desert noises?" Foggy asks. It sounds like he's talking to himself. "Like the wind? Bamboo forest? Definitely not thunderstorms…" Matt's horror at this thought must show on his face. "Yeah, definitely not. Um… the beach?"
Between the headache and the exhaustion, everything hurts. He's rapidly losing his patience for this whole thing. "Sure. I guess."
"Okay, I'm going to start it. Give me a thumbs-up when the volume's good." Matt complies obediently, feeling like a child.
He tries to relax into it, he really does. At first he's able to focus more on the whisper of the tide across the sand, the crashing of the waves soft and repetitive enough that it only bumps gently against his inescapable headache. But the longer he drifts in it, the more present the ocean becomes. He hates the ocean. Hates being underwater, the isolation an almost complete stripping of the senses on which he relies. Can't smell, can't hear, can't be sure which way is up. Can't breathe. Can't breathe. The sound cuts off a second before he rips the things off his head, and he sits up gasping.
"Geez, Matt? I'm so sorry! What happened? Are you okay?"
Foggy's a storm of worry buffeting against him, and he needs to make it stop. His entire body feels like it's vibrating, about to shake apart. "No ocean," he pushes out through his teeth.
The other man deflates a little, and Matt releases a slow, modulated breath. "Oh. Sure. We can do that," Foggy agrees. "What about… rain?"
Matt's fingers tighten around the headphones resting on the couch beside him. He really doesn't want to try this again, but a new disbursement of detonations outside reminds him he's rapidly approaching a deadline. Maybe if he wears the damn things long enough he can convince Foggy it's working and get his friend to leave before things get too much worse. Anxiety churns in his stomach, and he breathes through a renewed wave of nausea.
"Yeah. Sounds good," he lies, sliding the headphones back on with quivering fingers. He wonders if Foggy can tell. "Let's try it."
The rain is far gentler than the waves, pattering irregularly against what sounds like concrete or tile. Quiet. Insulating. There's no way it's going to be able to combat the tension locking up his neck and shoulders, but it is soothing. His hypersensitive hearing still picks up the sounds coming from the streets, but they're definitely dimmed. Distant unless he really reaches for them. Maybe this will actually be enough.
He doesn't know how long he sits like this, but the reflexive jerk of his body when Foggy speaks tells him he'd fallen into something of a daze. "You doing okay?" comes the question from the chair opposite him, more muffled now.
"S'good idea. Thanks," Matt mumbles. The rain sparkles softly behind his closed eyes; when he drags them open, he finds they're wet. He rubs at them with a heavy hand, the other having fallen limp at his side. He doesn't remember when he stopped hugging his ribs. "Really. Appreciate it, Fog. But m'okay. You don't have to stay."
"Dude, do you know how hard it'd be to get across town right now?" Automatically Matt stretches for the sensory input; it spikes his headache, and he winces. "I mean, of course you do," Foggy corrects. "I thought I'd just hang out for a bit, if that's cool."
Matt shifts, and one of his cervical vertebrae slips back into its proper position. The unexpected blip of relief is pure bliss, and he has to blink away more moisture from his eyes. Rain splatters in and out of his living room. It's making him sleepy. "S'long as you're not jus' gonna sit there and stare at me," he murmurs.
"Don't flatter yourself, Murdock. I've got reading to do for work."
A warm flutter of familiarity pulls at the corners of Matt's lips, tugging on the mangled wound. He pokes at it absently with his tongue. "Okay," he agrees, before remembering he'd intended for Foggy to go. Everything feels a little fuzzier now. Slightly less urgent. The back of his head finds the couch cushions again. "Jus'... if I'm not… lock the door when you leave."
"Said like this is the first time I've been over."
The rain continues around him, virtually muting Foggy and the apartment after a while. Suppressing the sounds from outside enough that when the popping starts up on the next street over, he twitches instead of jumping out of his skin. The next bursts sound farther away. Gradually he sinks further into the cushions, is able to make his fingers release their cramping grip on the edge of the leather. He even asks Foggy to turn up the volume.
But it's still an imperfect solution, technology still no match for his ridiculous hearing. He's wandering, almost asleep when the building crescendo registers. Ingrained panic jerks him upright, at a speed his migraine vehemently objects to. His brain spasms and his stomach flips; a blink and he's retching into the trash can Foggy's shoved into his hands.
Everything's exploding. His guts, his skull, the entire world. Each concussive boom crashes around the one before it, reverberating faster, louder – faster, louder, faster, louder faster louder fasterloudermoremoremore – as the finale heads toward its climax. The headphones had slipped off his ears when he'd moved, and he can't let go of the trash can to try and fix it. Curling himself around it, he tries to make himself as small as possible. Choking on bile as the migraine beats him flat.
"It's okay. It's over," Foggy's saying, despite the way the noise still echoes in Matt's head. He comes back to himself to find that his face is wet, that he's shaking so hard his teeth gnash together. Perched at the very edge of his couch, hunched over the trash can between his knees. There's a foul taste in his mouth. A haze filling the inside of his head. "Everything's okay. It's over now." Foggy swirls in the air around him.
And it is, Matt discovers, when he can finally pull out of himself enough to look at the room. A ringing silence when compared to before. Foggy's weight dips the cushion beside him, a warm hand on the clammy skin of his back. He realizes he's covered in sweat. Shivers.
"Sorry," Matt coughs out, when he can get his tongue to move. His body, the air, feels denser than it should be. He relocates the trash can to the floor next to his feet.
"Yeah, me too," Foggy sighs. "I'm sorry that didn't work. Sorry this sucks so much for you."
"Helped. Really." His eyelids slip closed; he wrests them back open. Finds the water from earlier and rinses out his mouth, bending to spit into the trash can. "Might try it again."
"Oh. Well good. But still."
The migraine still compresses his brain, warps his equilibrium, and when his eyes close again he feels himself sway. Matt flinches, nearly falls off the couch. Foggy's hand moves from his back to a hard grip on his shoulder.
"Come on," his friend says. "Bed time."
"Yeah," Matt mumbles. "Another good idea."
Getting to his feet makes him want to be sick again; it's obviously reflected in his expression, because Foggy's got one hand on his arm and one on the trash can as they start unsteadily across the room. Matt's muscles are leaden, his neck feeling permanently bowed. When a late-comer sets off a handful of cracklers in the street, it rattles through him and he stumbles. Foggy's hand cinches around his bicep, keeping him upright.
He crashes down onto his bed in a grateful jumble of limbs, smothering a hiss in the sheets as the migraine adjusts to another change of position. "Trash can's right here," Foggy says, probably noticing the silk wadded and clenched in Matt's fist.
"Thanks. M'okay." He eventually gets his fingers to relax.
"Uh-huh. Well, it's here. You want anything else?"
He should really get up and brush his teeth, but even the thought of lifting his head forces Matt to swallow down the nausea. "You leaving?" he asks, his lips brushing against the silk.
"You kidding? Traffic is so much worse out there now. I thought I'd stick around for a while. If that's still okay."
Exhaustion hums through Matt's brain, dimming the bedroom around him. "S'okay. Gonna sleep."
"Excellent. The smartest thing I've heard you say since I got here." Foggy's shoes move away from the bed, toward the arched open doorway. "I'll be out here. Just yell if you want something."
"Thanks, Fog." His voice is fading with his awareness, and he has to make an effort to be sure he's heard. "For trying. For staying."
Foggy's facing the other room. "Yeah," he says, and it's so defeated that it momentarily flares for Matt's flagging attention.
He gets his head an inch off the bed, drops it back onto the sheets again. Makes himself roll onto his back. "Let's do… something," he croaks. "When I'm not… when…" He doesn't feel like he's getting the words in the right order.
Foggy's breathing shifts. Matt's past the point of being able to interpret it, but something about the room feels lighter. "Sure. I'd like that," he says after a moment, not turning around. "Now go to sleep, Matthew."
His footsteps trail off into the other room. Matt closes his eyes.
end.
