"I'm really sorry, Matt. I swear this won't take more than an hour," Foggy says despite the fact that Matt's asleep. He really doesn't want to leave but their (well paying) client needs bailing out. Again. "I should be back in a couple hours tops. Karen is coming by, she's going to keep watch. This will be fine," Foggy says, mostly to convince himself given that Matt's not awake and thus not listening.

After Matt had apparently refused to sleep for three nights in a row they'd finally had to confront him at the office. He had very grudgingly explained he didn't feel comfortable with the idea of sleeping in bed because he had such hard time getting up. So rather than do the sane thing like find a way to sleep around the problem, like say, propped on his fairly comfortable couch, Matt had gone nuclear and decided to just wait it out and sleep once his ribs weren't causing him so much grief.

"How have you not managed to kill yourself by now?" Foggy had asked, only half joking. "You can't honestly think you can just stay awake for weeks on end?"

"No," Matt said tentatively. "Look, I just didn't feel safe, and its not a big deal."

"You know what's not safe?" Foggy had started into yelling again despite telling himself not to. "Staying up for days on end and trying to keep functioning! Thank God you don't drive cause I'm pretty sure you'd have kept doing that too!" Why concern comes out half the time as anger he's not sure. Foggy is willing to accept its just a personality flaw he has. And Matt really, really exacerbates it.

Matt had just shook his head, not even trying to defend himself at this point.

"You are going home now. And you are most definitely going to bed. I will stand there and stare at you in bed 'til you sleep."

"That's not exactly going to help me sleep you know," Matt said, sounding half amused.

And that amused tone just sets off Foggy even worse. "And who else is volunteering to stand around and watch over you while you sleep, huh Matt?"

Matt apparently realizes he's made a misstep here but Foggy's 99% sure Matt doesn't even get where he went wrong. "Okay, I'm sorry, you're right. It actually would be really nice to get a full night's sleep with my fellow turtle flipper at my disposal. But I'm fine to finish out the rest of today-"

"You fell asleep standing up getting coffee, Matt!"

"But see at least I knew I NEEDED that coffee," Matt says, again trying to make it a joke and entirely missing Foggy's now thoroughly boiling emotions.

He doesn't even hesitate, just grabs Matt by the collar of his suit jacket, the clothing equivalent of the scruff of the neck, and starts bodily hauling him to the exit.

"Karen!" he barks out. "Really sorry, need to get Matt home now. Can you take all the calls?" He's literally dragging his partner out the door. Matt seems so surprised by this abrupt manhandling he's not even trying to resist. Or, that's how Foggy justifies his compliance to himself cause he can't even consider the thought that he's hurting Matt enough to get him to cooperate. Could Matt get away if he really tried? Absolutely. Is he going to attempt that? Probably not if its finally gotten through his thick skull exactly how determined Foggy is at the moment.

"Got it under control," Karen reassures them, watching Foggy force Matt out the door without so much as letting him get his bag and over coat. "Call if you need me."

"What did we do to deserve her?" Foggy asks as they pass the office threshold.

"Not nearly enough," Matt concedes, still being propelled forward by Foggy.

…

"For fuck's sake's Matt! You're half asleep standing up. Why is this such a problem? Lay down and get some rest already!" He'd gotten Matt to the point he was changed into pajamas but he was still stubbornly refusing to get into bed. The man was literally swaying on his feet but it didn't seem to stop him from digging in his heels at the last second and pouting like a toddler.

"I'll just crash on the couch. Its fine," Matt says, starting to head towards the living room.

Foggy easily blocks the doorway. "No. You need to get proper sleep in a real bed. You've never slept more than four hours in a row on that sofa. Tell me I'm wrong."

Matt snorts but doesn't argue. It looks like he's quickly running out of both excuses and energy as he slowly lowers himself to sit on the side of the bed.

"I don't get what your problem is but Matt, I'm gonna stay here and make sure you're fine, okay? If there's a fire alarm or whatever I will help you haul your broken ass out of bed, okay? Besides, if there was an honest to God emergency, like life or death, you telling me you couldn't figure some way to I don't know, roll yourself out of bed or something?"

Matt looks miserable but admits, "Okay yes, if there was a life and death emergency I could get up. It would definitely take awhile, would be stupidly awkward and hurt like hell but yeah, I could."

"Good. But don't worry cause nothing is going to happen and I'm literally going to be in the next room. Just please do us both a favour and sleep?"

Foggy had succeeded finally in getting Matt to lay down and it had taken all of about 10 seconds for him to fall asleep. And Foggy had been able to enjoy his little triumph for all of 10 minutes before getting the call from Karen about their client needing immediate assistance. She'd easily agreed to come by Matt's place and cover for Foggy. He really hated to leave but knew Matt would just tell him to go (and quite likely insist on coming along with) were he to wake him and explain what was going on. Didn't make Foggy any more happy about the situation though.

He opens the door to Karen at the first knock.

"Hey, thanks for coming," he says, quickly gathering up his stuff, ready to dash out. "I don't expect this to take too long."

"Of course," Karen says. "I don't mind."

"Don't wake him up. Just … I don't know, make sure he stays in bed. I mean he probably can't really get up himself anyway from what he says. Just…" he can't figure how to articulate that he needs Karen there more to save Matt from himself than to actually protect him from outside threats. But honestly? Both Daredevil and Matt have managed to really cheese off a number of people over the years and Matt has admitted problems have managed to break their way into his place at the most inopportune times previously so who knows?

"Foggy, relax. I can handle this. Go do what you need to do," Karen says, putting a steady and reassuring hand on his arm.

"Thanks Karen," he says and hurries out the door. The faster he can deal with this the faster he can get back.

…..

Karen slips off her shoes and makes her way to Matt's bedroom as quietly as she can. She knows Foggy will be pissed off if she wakes Matt but she feels the need to check if he's really sleeping anyway.

"Matt?" she says at normal volume from the doorway. She knows Matt can usually sense when he's being stared at. She read somewhere that (normal) humans can sense being stared at even when they're asleep so she'd almost expect him to feel her gaze from the doorway now. But there's not even a twitch, he's totally dead to the world. Three days without sleep would definitely account for that. Its rare she can indulge in just taking him in unnoticed. 'Damn is he handsome,' she thinks for the millionth time. That they broke up before they even really got started still hurts despite the fact that it was she who made it very clear when things were over.

Foggy has repeatedly and delightedly told her how much better Matt's been about telling the truth and cutting out all the bullshit, lies and excuses. Or trying to as best he can at any rate. It's a tall order for someone so set in his ways of lying and omitting the truth on a near constant basis. And while she's really happy that Foggy is seeing a noticeable change, Karen is still not so sure this propensity for truth extends to her as well. She wouldn't say Matt's exactly been closed off to her but there's definitely been an undercurrent of polite professionalism in their interactions of late. He may not be openly lying to her but he's certainly distancing himself in a way that's not easy to define.

Karen has no doubts that Matt was very attracted to her before. She could feel how he was drawn to her, terrified to misstep and holding back even when she knew some part of him desperately wanted to surge forward. But a hell of a lot has happened between those first few tender moments and the present and she's very much aware there may not be any way back, she's not even sure if he would want that. She's not sure if she would either.

Before she has the chance to overthink it Karen finds herself laying in Matt's bed beside him. What he doesn't know won't hurt him so she decides to indulge her curiosity just a bit. And really, he looks like he could use the comfort of someone with him right about now. She carefully lays against his side, puts her head on his shoulder. She fits perfects against him, his height and build a puzzle piece match to her own body just like she'd expected. And it feels exactly right.

Maybe it's a little overstep but she reasons he'd want this too as she gently plays with his hair, softly strokes his arm, his chest. Surely some part of his brain will register she's being nice to him, making him feel better, right? And whoa, yeah, she notices that its not Matt's brain that's clued in to her presence. Those grey sweatpants are not hiding much and there's totally a reaction to her soft touches. Interesting.

Clearly he's on board with this so Karen decides despite the fact that Foggy will be pissed off she's woken Matt up, she might as well keep making him feel better. On some level she's aware this is more than a little forward but hey, this is where they were headed before and he's obviously enjoying it. She just needs to give him a nice wake up. She gently runs her hand along the side of his face, calls his name softly and slides her leg to nestle comfortably between his own, gently nudging against him.

And quite suddenly Karen becomes aware that she has completely and totally misjudged this situation.

Matt's eyes snap open and his expression is not at all one of comfort or lust or excitement like she had expected. Its blind panic. Before she can stop him Matt's scrambling away, untangling himself as best he can. But he's not making all that much progress for all the apparent effort, hampered and half trapped by busted ribs. And its gotta hurt cause he's hyperventilating and wrapping his arms around himself in some effort to keep his chest from moving despite the fast breaths. Karen's horrified to see tears rolling down Matt's cheeks as he tries to get more distance between them though she has no idea if that's from pain or fear at this point.

"Matt! Matt! Its okay! Its just me. Karen. You're fine," she frantically tries to reassure him.

"Karen?" Matt says, sounding totally confused but still hyperventilating, whole body now shaking as he stops actively trying to get away.

Something inside Karen dies just a little when he moans and clutches at his sides harder, obviously hurting. This is so far from what she was trying to do for him, in fact its pretty much the exact opposite.

"I'm sorry, I thought you wanted it, I thought I was helping," she blurts out and makes a second mistake of trying to reach out to touch and soothe her distressed friend.

Matt cringes away, keeps gasping for a moment then apparently his exhausted brain sorts out what was happening, what's going on with his body, with ALL of his body. As the situation downstairs abates quickly on account of the fear and panic, his brain revs up and switches rapidly from terrified to super, super angry.

"What the FUCK KAREN!?" he shouts.

Karen has never once heard Matt drop an F bomb. And she's also most definitely never been the target of his rage. She hurries off the bed, putting as much distance between them as she quickly can.

"What the fuck was THAT about? You think you can just come in here and do what you want? Like I'm some fucking play thing?" Matt barks. The shaking has not stopped, if anything its getting worse. She sees his fingers, white and bloodless with force, clawing at his sides as he tries to hold himself together and lessen the pain.

"Get out," he finishes, icy and now quiet yet somehow far more threatening and dangerous.

Karen flees from the bedroom, hurriedly pulls on her shoes and yanks open the front door only to find Foggy on the other side, key poised for the lock that's been torn from his hands.

"Oh my God, Karen, what's the matter?" Foggy says taking in her tear streaked face. "Is Matt okay? Did he freak out on you? I know he can be crabby when he's this tired – I told you not to wake him up."

Karen goes from mild tears to full on bawling as she pushes past Foggy and runs for the stairs. Foggy is horribly torn for a moment because his first impulse is to chase after Karen but he needs to know if Matt's okay. He tells himself Karen is too upset to talk about whatever happened right now and he will ring her cell in a little bit once she's had time to settle and get whatever distance she needs.

"Matt!" he hollers as he makes his way inside and towards the bedroom. "What the hell happened? I've only been gone 45 minutes and Karen's a crying mess! What on earth did you say to her?"

"Not talking about this Foggy," Matt says. He's seated on the side of the bed, facing away, one arm wound tightly around himself, the other putting on his glasses. Foggy does not miss the fact that Matt's tightly vibrating in place. There's some really scary vibes coming off him and Foggy wants to back the hell up and out of the room. But he wants answers just slightly more. "No way, you can't just expect me to walk in on whatever the hell was going on between you two and expect me to not ask what's happening."

"I said I'm not talking about this," Matt growls, tone clearly indicating he has zero intensions of discussing the matter further.

"I deserve some answers!" Foggy says, trying not to lose his cool. There are just way too many emotions flying around the apartment at the moment and its hard to not let the situation crank him up too.

"I don't have any," Matt says, hunching further in on himself.

"FINE! You don't want to explain what just went down? FINE!" Foggy snaps. "I'll tell you one thing though – you are fixing this. I am NOT working in a office with you two at odds. Fix your shit Matt!"

…

Monday morning Matt is about 20 minutes late but does not arrive empty handed. He enters the office with an absolutely gorgeous and rather large bouquet of flowers and his best apologetic expression. Foggy quietly shuts his office door to show them he's giving them privacy but he definitely peeks out the window a few times, tells himself he's just making sure things are going smoothly. He half wishes he could borrow Matt's super hearing and eavesdrop but given that neither of them wanted to talk about whatever went down on Friday at Matt's apartment he's pretty acutely aware he's not invited into this conversation. Matt's pulled up a chair beside Karen at her desk, he's holding her hand in his and whatever he's saying must be acceptable to Karen because she nods repeatedly and continues to look increasingly more comfortable as they talk. It's not long but they end up leaning together in a seated hug and Foggy lets go of the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Knowing that his two best friends were in conflict gave him the same antsy feeling as when his parents argued and he's felt equally useless at fixing this problem as he did when he was a kid and his family was at odds with one another.

It looked like all was well at the offices of Nelson, Murdock and Page until Matt heads out the front door. Foggy yanks open his office door to ask Karen what happened but she cuts him off before he can get a word out.

"Its fine, Foggy. We're all good. Matt just said he needed a couple minutes to go grab coffee and donuts for us. He said he couldn't manage them and the flowers on his way in this morning."

"Okay. Uh that's good," Foggy says, relieved, plopping down at his desk, willing his nerves to stop over reacting. "I'm glad he apologized to you."

"Yeah, the flowers are super gorgeous but well, it WAS kinda MY fault," Karen says looking a little uncomfortable. Apparently now that the issue is resolved Foggy is allowed to hear at least some of what went down. It seriously irks him that he's been kept in the dark so far so he absolutely does not stop her from continuing, just nods and motions towards the seat across from his desk. He can literally feel himself slip from friend to professional listener. Its involuntary but damned useful. Karen takes the seat but immediately starts squirming despite Foggy's best efforts to appear chill and non judgemental.

"So I got absolutely nowhere with Matt when I tried to get answers about what happened between you two. I would really like it if you could tell me about what happened, Karen," Foggy says, professional voice in full effect. Waiting a couple days to talk was definitely the right move. Karen is not tearful anymore and if he had to pin down her expression its more along the lines of contrite.

"Yeah so, um, when I was with Matt I might have kinda overstepped my bounds."

When it appears she's not going to go into details Foggy asks, "Can you elaborate on that?" His tone is even, he's absolutely not going to get emotional here even if he does not think he likes where this is going one bit. Matt may be pretty much unable to keep his shit together half the time lately but Foggy is clamping down hard on his emotions and ramping up on his professionalism.

"Uhhh, I might have crawled into bed with him. I was trying to make him feel better, that's all Foggy, I swear!" Karen says sounding distinctively uncomfortable. The intensions may have been good at the time but now there's nothing but guilt written all over her face.

Foggy just looks at her silently, metaphorically giving her enough rope to hang herself.

"He was enjoying it I swear! I thought if I woke him up when he was, you know, uh, really 'happy with what was going down' he'd be totally into it." She air quotes while emphasizing the words assuming Foggy can suss out the meaning. "But when he woke up he was just so terrified and he tried to get out from under me so fast I know he was just hurting himself but it was like he didn't care cause he wanted away from me so badly," Karen says, hands twisting together in her lap nervously.

Foggy takes a deep breath. Sure his gut reaction is to tear a strip off her loudly and maybe even indulge in Matt's recent favorite pastime of yeeting some random office equipment off his desk. But no, getting all bent out of shape is absolutely not going to improve this situation and he's definitely let his concern morph into anger much too often of late. Their office just isn't big enough to contain two emotionally liable lawyers. Foggy centres himself and quickly arranges in his head exactly how he'd pull this apart if Karen was on the stand. Cause dammit this absolutely is going down but its going down really, really professionally.

"Let me see if I've got the facts clear here, Karen," he begins. "You decided to hop into Matt's bed, without an invitation. Then you decided to touch him, again with an invitation, all while Matt was dead asleep and wasn't able to tell you if he didn't want this? Is that correct?"

"Yes," Karen admits in the smallest of voices without looking up.

"And you decided it was fine to just keep on going because Matt unconsciously responded?"

"Look I know it sounds bad-"

"Do you? Do you really get the implications here, Karen? Cause I don't think you actually do. You wanna know what you did is called?"

Karen puts her head in her hands. Foggy decides he's probably made enough impact now and just barely keeps himself from naming the offence lest he completely tear Karen apart. The message has clearly been received.

"And you let HIM apologize to YOU?" Foggy asks. Inside he's barely swallowing down his own guilt for blaming Matt for the situation. He knows he's definitely messed this up. Large. Maybe not Karen large here but yeah, he totally feels like a five star asshole for yelling at Matt and demanding he fix the situation.

"I'm sorry!" Karen says and she certainly looks it, tears forming in her eyes.

"Am I the one who needs to hear that?" Foggy points out.

Karen jumps up and tears out of the office and yeah, now this is the second time she's booted it away in tears. She can absolutely be tough as nails scary and frighteningly capable under the normal run of things but that is definitely not how its been the past few days. Foggy hopes she's taken off in search of Matt but has no idea. Either way this go round he has no desire to chase after her. It doesn't feel good making a lady cry and he know his father would be less than impressed with him right now but honestly? Right now all he cares about is Matt.

And speak of the devil Matt walks into his office and plops a coffee down on Foggy's the desk. He and Karen must not have crossed paths in the lobby, though its entirely possible Matt avoided Karen without difficulty. Actually, given the timing its not just possible, its pretty damned likely.

Foggy has definitely not had enough time to organize his thoughts to figure how to broach this whole debacle with Matt and, most importantly, he has not had the chance to decide how to apologize for his own poor reaction of blaming Matt for the whole mess. Maybe Matt senses his hesitation but he doesn't wait expectantly for any words from Foggy. Rather he sets down the donut box, fishes out the one he know is Foggy's favorite and sets it atop the coffee cup with a small smile. When Foggy takes a deep breath, readying himself to launch into some kind of haphazard apology, Matt cuts him off with a 'no' quick shake of his head. Foggy belatedly realizes Matt may very well have heard the entire preceding conversation between himself and Karen. Whether he did or not he does not look upset and keeps giving Foggy a reassuring smile before scooping up the box of donuts and silently leaving the room. A moment later he returns and silently slides a business card across Foggy's desk, then heads out, closing the door quietly behind himself. Foggy picks it up and sees its for a nearby florist, presumably where Matt got Karen's flowers earlier that morning. Foggy looks at the card for a moment before flicking it directly into the recycle bin. Matt may well have had the good grace not to turn Foggy's words of, "You need to fix this," back on him but that doesn't mean Foggy is about to buy Karen flowers. She'll be lucky if he doesn't change the locks and toss the contents of her desk onto the sidewalk.

Foggy munches down his victory donut, very aware it does not taste as good as usual.