Next two parts are from Matt's POV! Heads up, there is some violence and body horror (kinda) about half way down, in the section starting with "that night."
This, Matt decided, was bad. It had been a long time since someone had amused him this much, much less charmed him. And what was even worse was that Foggy made it so easy.
The summoning itself was unconventional. Matt had been stuck unwinding a red tape clusterfuck at his desk for the better part of a few days with nothing else to do (the weeks after Sam-Hain’s day were usually quiet, after the mortal plane moved away from less earthly ones and the spike of joke demon summoning that jammed up their lines around the season quieted down).
But then he had felt a tug. He hadn’t felt a summoning call specifically for him for a few years as the more accurate texts to get a hold of him were dwindling. It was a shabby spell, with a minimal sacrifice and a few of the candles being used a bit off-center. But it was there and Matt would rather be scaring the ever-loving crap out of a few cultists than doing this paperwork.
Scratching the rune for “back in 5!” on his office door, Matt followed the spell, relishing the feel of his power solidified a vessel around him as he went. Getting closer, he found that the chanting was only coming from one measly mortal and he couldn’t help but feel a little insulted. Perhaps a bit petulantly, Matt set up one of his nastier dramatic entrances for when he got to this sorry bastard.
However after the smoke cleared and the fanfare ended, Matt was left holding a pizza box and more questions than answers.
“Wow, no one told me demons were so good-looking.” The breathy voice made Matt turn his attention to the summoner and he had to hold back a laugh. The human had no idea what he was doing! His heart was beating out of his chest, his palms were sweaty, and the smell of cheap whisky that sat around him like a mist was strong.
Still, the summoning was honest, the sacrifice was made, and Matt had no choice but to stay and hear his demands.
And here’s the thing that really blindsided Matt (well, one of the many things). The human— Foggy, he later learned— didn’t have a dirty soul in the least bit. Matt could barely find a single stain of deeply-rooted sin in him.
The idea was fascinating enough to make him sober Foggy up and goad him into microwaving a few slices of the offered pizza for him, to make the sacrifice just a bit more substantial. This way, his form could be a bit closer to human and allow him to stick around long enough to really get into the nitty gritty details of the Contract without… disintegrating a little bit.
And what a good choice that had been. Foggy was making a deal out of good will to help out his fellow meat sacks! The first decent summons that Matt had gotten in a long while and the deal wasn’t even a selfish one. And he was interested in logistic details and writing up a solid Contract in pen and ink, so this wasn’t something done out of desperation as much as genuine interest. The idea was laughable.
However even after all was said and done, Matt found himself looking for excuses to show up at Foggy’s apartment again and again. And Foggy kept on offering him sacrifices like it was nothing! Sure he just saw it as an odd meal or a few beers, but it allowed Matt to stick around for a few hours and listen to whatever what was on Foggy’s mind.
And with as long as Matt had been around, you would have thought that Foggy prattling on about his perpetual trouble with buggy copy machines and printers (Matt made himself a note to promote whoever came up with those, the low-level frustration they gave off was ingenious) to be utterly inane. But Foggy was genuinely funny, and wasn’t out to build himself this flawless reputation that he had seen ad nauseum in these lawyer deals.
However there was once incident where Matt knew that he was well and truly screwed. It started over a shared bowl of popcorn, and a shitty sci-fi movie (Foggy-Narrated ™).
“Aw man, Matt, these special effects are fantastic! The dude’s running through the forest and- and these hellhounds look like they’re just German Sheppards dyed black! They didn’t even try- oop! Aaaand down he goes!”
“Hellhounds are real dogs, you know.”
“Shush! You’ll miss the one-liner!”
From the screen, the voice of the main protagonist sounded, “What an a-paw-ling way to go.”
Matt groaned and Foggy laughed uproariously, as per usual. Below them, Foggy’s neighbor knocked against her ceiling with a broom, the wrath she felt outlining her form to Matt clearly. It was sharp pinprick of a moment when Matt was reminded of how unclear Foggy was to him.
“Earth to Matt, you in there?” Matt shook his head at Foggy’s questioning voice, “This movie’s just a tragedy. Why are you making me watch this?”
“Because you never bring anything to movie night.”
“This is the first time!” Matt felt a laugh bubble out of his chest, far too sincere for his liking. The two fell back into companionable silence until Matt broke it.
“How’s your caseload?”
Foggy hummed, “Not too bad. I ended up taking on that one girl’s case you recommended, the one with the dirt on Union Allied that she's refusing to give up. Her name’s Karen. She’s nice, sharp as a tack, but her impulse control’s a bit lacking. Lemme tell you, she can ask all the right questions to put someone on the ropes, but doesn’t always have the power to ask them safely. She needs to know when to back off.”
“She’s going to get hurt,” Matt pointed out, bitter experience tinting his words, “And it could end badly for a lot of people.”
“Some people just have to learn the hard way,” Foggy countered, before the two let the sounds of the movie fill in the space between them.
“But I do worry about her,” Foggy eventually murmured, soft enough that a normal human wouldn’t have picked up the words but not at all lacking in emotion. “She’s going to do something rash and she’ll have no one to blame but herself and she’ll have to face the consequences.”
The tone in Foggy’s voice made something low in Matt’s belly twitch, but he pushed it aside. There was an obvious pain in Foggy’s voice and the urge to do something about it made Matt’s fingers twitch. Without pausing to think, he quietly offered, “She’ll continue on.”
Foggy sighed, “That she will. I can just hope for the best.”
They fell back into companionable silence, just in time to hear the protagonist grunt, “This is one breed of trouble that won’t turn tail.”
Foggy didn’t laugh.
Matt’s fingers twitched again, harder.
—
That night, Matt took out a hit man waiting in Karen Page’s apartment for her to come home. Matt told himself that he had it coming; there were enough past misdeeds and wicked intentions in him that it made Matt’s skin tingle being in the same room as him.
“Hello,” Matt whispered next to the man’s ear, chuckling quietly as he whipped around to throw a wild punch at him. The fist connected, but Matt was unmoved even as the bones in the offending appendage were literally shattered like broken glass up to his shoulder.
The man’s screech of pain was probably more satisfying than it should have been, but that did not deter Matt. Sighing, he felt the effect of Foggy’s sacrifice completely wear off.
Bones cracked and reformed themselves while cells swelled under his vessel’s skin, which began turning a color best described as “void.” Like a ripple passing over his body, eyes began popping open across his chest and arms, able to pick out the slightest impure thought. Great curved horns sprouted from his skull and almost like a crown, Matt felt his other faces blink into existence around him, scarred and misshapen as they might be, fire and stars flaring up along with them and throwing him into sharp relief.
He decided to keep his wings in, however. The time it would take for them to rip their way out of his back just wasn’t worth the time.
Feeling much more in his skin, Matt let out a contented groan, and the sound of it was enough for the hitman to drop to his knees, even his useless arm struggling to cover one of his ears.
Scaling back his voice, Matt growled, “You have a lot to answer for.” The man said nothing, as he was too preoccupied with babbling his way through rusty prayers and half-remembered verses. His fear stung like bile at the back of Matt’s throat.
Just on time, the door to the apartment opened, and Karen Page (made unaware of the sounds coming out of her apartments by a nifty little trick of Matt’s) came face to face with Lucifer, Father of Lies, First of the Fallen, and any other title that TV Tropes could spit out.
Wisely, she said nothing as he leaned down to grasp the assassin's uninjured shoulder, gripping down hard enough to make his babbling voice stop with a pained gasp. Calmly and carefully, Matt turned only one set of eyes back to meet the collection of white lies and petty greed that lay behind Karen’s, as he did want her relatively intact.
“Consider this a warning,” he murmured, “From one curious soul to another. A mutual friend of ours wants you alive and the truth out; try not to disappoint me.”
With that, Matt vanished, taking both the hitman and the body with him. He could use the latter to make a statement. The former would allow him to blow off some steam.
No part of him doubted that he was doing this for Foggy. A lot of those parts however were content with ignoring that fact in favor of focusing on the drag of metal against human skin and despairing screams.
—
It was during another one of their movie nights that Matt’s repressed motivations came back to bite him (‘Mean Girls’ this time around, Foggy was maintaining his role as movie night czar until further notice).
“Karen’s my secretary now.”
Matt grunted in acknowledgement, prying the lid off of the milkshake Foggy got him. “Is she?”
“Yeah. You know, I asked her what made her want to go public with those files. Know what she said?”
“What?”
“That something put the fear of God into her.”
Matt reached for his basket of fries, silently chuckling over the irony. “And did everything work out with her?”
“As far as I can tell.”
Matt didn’t have to be an angel of unimaginable super powers to feel the look Foggy was sending his way. Matt didn’t say anything though, and hoped that that would be that.
“That was wrong of you. And what you’re doing to your fries is almost as bad.”
Matt paused, halfway through dipping the aforementioned fries into his milkshake. He was too caught up in thought to tell Foggy how wrong he was about the jab at his fries.
Finally he asked, “What was wrong of me?”
“You’re shit at lying. I know that you’re the one who scared her into going public with those files.”
Matt shrugged, keeping any sort of sheepishness off of his face. “I don’t see the problem. She got her files published, you got justice for your client and secretary who seems to be very friendly with you.”
“Friendly?”
“You were over at her house yesterday, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, we had dinner.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes Matt, that’s it. I know you’d be able to tell if it was anything else.” Matt didn’t say anything, but Foggy barreled straight ahead. “And you’re trying to distract me from the point; that’s very childish of you.”
Again, Matt said nothing, but did sit up a bit straighter and crossed his legs, seeming to listen closer to what Foggy was saying.
“Her decision should have been hers and hers alone, with no outside influence. And while I do appreciate you taking care of the hitman— no really, I do— do I want to know what you did with him?”
Matt’s brain flashed to bones and viscera, ripping and thudding, copper and bile. “No,” he muttered, “you really don’t.”
“Then I won’t ask for specifics. But did he deserve it?”
“Yes.” Matt’s answer was immediate. He remembered all that the man had confessed to. He definitely deserved what Matt did to him. Foggy didn’t sound as convinced as Matt would have liked him to.
“I’ll trust you on that then. However,” in the background, Matt could hear Rachel McAdams's character get hit by a bus, “you don’t get to use other people as props to help our deal along. That’s manipulative, buddy.”
Matt felt that he couldn’t speak. The accusation rolled down his spine and once again, Matt found his insides tightening. Of course Foggy would have few enough survival instincts to chastise him, Matt mused as he popped a few of his fries into his mouth. It made something petty and spiteful in him want to remind the human just what he was dealing with.
However a bigger part of him wanted to lay out everything that he had done to that hitman, describe the way that he had snapped at the other demons that had gotten in his way, really sit down and walk Foggy through just what he had done to send a message to the people after Karen (he was sure that a few of them had gone straight to church after finding their underling’s body in the state that it was in).
Foggy would be furious, and rightfully so. He would yell and berate and not have the slightest concern for the fact that it was Matt he was talking to, Actual Devil and Rotten Bastard Extraordinaire.
No one had done that sort of thing for him in a long, long while. No one had ever that sort of thing and lived ever, but Matt was willing to make an exception. This wasn’t an overly-righteous religious zealot from the Dark Ages, this was Foggy. And Foggy, Matt knew, Foggy would forgive him. Eventually. Maybe.
Most likely.
But Matt didn’t want Foggy’s forgiveness; there was something a bit sharper than that he wanted. Something that would hurt a bit more.
“I’m going to take your silence to mean that you get what I’m saying.” Foggy’s voice broke the silence, and Matt nodded distractedly. The human sighed, obviously seeing straight through Matt’s bullshit answer, but let it drop and turn back to the movie.
—
It was after Matt had left Foggy’s apartment that Matt realized what he wanted.
He wanted to confess to Foggy, for Everything. Matt wanted Foggy to get mad at him for sins that were almost as old as the Earth. He wanted Foggy to lash out at him. He wanted to feel Foggy’s rage batter up against him.
And the kicker was that Foggy was His come four years and nine months from now, and he could certainly demand that of the human. But a bigger part of him wanted Foggy to give it to him of free will. This was the same part of Matt that didn’t want to give up movie nights, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, and Foggy laughing loud enough to stupid jokes to upset the neighbors.
This was the moment that Matt realized how much he wanted from Foggy. And the very thought of it unsettled him greatly.
Applied Contract Law, 4/?
This, Matt decided, was bad. It had been a long time since someone had amused him this much, much less charmed him. And what was even worse was that Foggy made it so easy.
The summoning itself was unconventional. Matt had been stuck unwinding a red tape clusterfuck at his desk for the better part of a few days with nothing else to do (the weeks after Sam-Hain’s day were usually quiet, after the mortal plane moved away from less earthly ones and the spike of joke demon summoning that jammed up their lines around the season quieted down).
But then he had felt a tug. He hadn’t felt a summoning call specifically for him for a few years as the more accurate texts to get a hold of him were dwindling. It was a shabby spell, with a minimal sacrifice and a few of the candles being used a bit off-center. But it was there and Matt would rather be scaring the ever-loving crap out of a few cultists than doing this paperwork.
Scratching the rune for “back in 5!” on his office door, Matt followed the spell, relishing the feel of his power solidified a vessel around him as he went. Getting closer, he found that the chanting was only coming from one measly mortal and he couldn’t help but feel a little insulted. Perhaps a bit petulantly, Matt set up one of his nastier dramatic entrances for when he got to this sorry bastard.
However after the smoke cleared and the fanfare ended, Matt was left holding a pizza box and more questions than answers.
“Wow, no one told me demons were so good-looking.” The breathy voice made Matt turn his attention to the summoner and he had to hold back a laugh. The human had no idea what he was doing! His heart was beating out of his chest, his palms were sweaty, and the smell of cheap whisky that sat around him like a mist was strong.
Still, the summoning was honest, the sacrifice was made, and Matt had no choice but to stay and hear his demands.
And here’s the thing that really blindsided Matt (well, one of the many things). The human— Foggy, he later learned— didn’t have a dirty soul in the least bit. Matt could barely find a single stain of deeply-rooted sin in him.
The idea was fascinating enough to make him sober Foggy up and goad him into microwaving a few slices of the offered pizza for him, to make the sacrifice just a bit more substantial. This way, his form could be a bit closer to human and allow him to stick around long enough to really get into the nitty gritty details of the Contract without… disintegrating a little bit.
And what a good choice that had been. Foggy was making a deal out of good will to help out his fellow meat sacks! The first decent summons that Matt had gotten in a long while and the deal wasn’t even a selfish one. And he was interested in logistic details and writing up a solid Contract in pen and ink, so this wasn’t something done out of desperation as much as genuine interest. The idea was laughable.
However even after all was said and done, Matt found himself looking for excuses to show up at Foggy’s apartment again and again. And Foggy kept on offering him sacrifices like it was nothing! Sure he just saw it as an odd meal or a few beers, but it allowed Matt to stick around for a few hours and listen to whatever what was on Foggy’s mind.
And with as long as Matt had been around, you would have thought that Foggy prattling on about his perpetual trouble with buggy copy machines and printers (Matt made himself a note to promote whoever came up with those, the low-level frustration they gave off was ingenious) to be utterly inane. But Foggy was genuinely funny, and wasn’t out to build himself this flawless reputation that he had seen ad nauseum in these lawyer deals.
However there was once incident where Matt knew that he was well and truly screwed. It started over a shared bowl of popcorn, and a shitty sci-fi movie (Foggy-Narrated ™).
“Aw man, Matt, these special effects are fantastic! The dude’s running through the forest and- and these hellhounds look like they’re just German Sheppards dyed black! They didn’t even try- oop! Aaaand down he goes!”
“Hellhounds are real dogs, you know.”
“Shush! You’ll miss the one-liner!”
From the screen, the voice of the main protagonist sounded, “What an a-paw-ling way to go.”
Matt groaned and Foggy laughed uproariously, as per usual. Below them, Foggy’s neighbor knocked against her ceiling with a broom, the wrath she felt outlining her form to Matt clearly. It was sharp pinprick of a moment when Matt was reminded of how unclear Foggy was to him.
“Earth to Matt, you in there?” Matt shook his head at Foggy’s questioning voice, “This movie’s just a tragedy. Why are you making me watch this?”
“Because you never bring anything to movie night.”
“This is the first time!” Matt felt a laugh bubble out of his chest, far too sincere for his liking. The two fell back into companionable silence until Matt broke it.
“How’s your caseload?”
Foggy hummed, “Not too bad. I ended up taking on that one girl’s case you recommended, the one with the dirt on Union Allied that she's refusing to give up. Her name’s Karen. She’s nice, sharp as a tack, but her impulse control’s a bit lacking. Lemme tell you, she can ask all the right questions to put someone on the ropes, but doesn’t always have the power to ask them safely. She needs to know when to back off.”
“She’s going to get hurt,” Matt pointed out, bitter experience tinting his words, “And it could end badly for a lot of people.”
“Some people just have to learn the hard way,” Foggy countered, before the two let the sounds of the movie fill in the space between them.
“But I do worry about her,” Foggy eventually murmured, soft enough that a normal human wouldn’t have picked up the words but not at all lacking in emotion. “She’s going to do something rash and she’ll have no one to blame but herself and she’ll have to face the consequences.”
The tone in Foggy’s voice made something low in Matt’s belly twitch, but he pushed it aside. There was an obvious pain in Foggy’s voice and the urge to do something about it made Matt’s fingers twitch. Without pausing to think, he quietly offered, “She’ll continue on.”
Foggy sighed, “That she will. I can just hope for the best.”
They fell back into companionable silence, just in time to hear the protagonist grunt, “This is one breed of trouble that won’t turn tail.”
Foggy didn’t laugh.
Matt’s fingers twitched again, harder.
—
That night, Matt took out a hit man waiting in Karen Page’s apartment for her to come home. Matt told himself that he had it coming; there were enough past misdeeds and wicked intentions in him that it made Matt’s skin tingle being in the same room as him.
“Hello,” Matt whispered next to the man’s ear, chuckling quietly as he whipped around to throw a wild punch at him. The fist connected, but Matt was unmoved even as the bones in the offending appendage were literally shattered like broken glass up to his shoulder.
The man’s screech of pain was probably more satisfying than it should have been, but that did not deter Matt. Sighing, he felt the effect of Foggy’s sacrifice completely wear off.
Bones cracked and reformed themselves while cells swelled under his vessel’s skin, which began turning a color best described as “void.” Like a ripple passing over his body, eyes began popping open across his chest and arms, able to pick out the slightest impure thought. Great curved horns sprouted from his skull and almost like a crown, Matt felt his other faces blink into existence around him, scarred and misshapen as they might be, fire and stars flaring up along with them and throwing him into sharp relief.
He decided to keep his wings in, however. The time it would take for them to rip their way out of his back just wasn’t worth the time.
Feeling much more in his skin, Matt let out a contented groan, and the sound of it was enough for the hitman to drop to his knees, even his useless arm struggling to cover one of his ears.
Scaling back his voice, Matt growled, “You have a lot to answer for.” The man said nothing, as he was too preoccupied with babbling his way through rusty prayers and half-remembered verses. His fear stung like bile at the back of Matt’s throat.
Just on time, the door to the apartment opened, and Karen Page (made unaware of the sounds coming out of her apartments by a nifty little trick of Matt’s) came face to face with Lucifer, Father of Lies, First of the Fallen, and any other title that TV Tropes could spit out.
Wisely, she said nothing as he leaned down to grasp the assassin's uninjured shoulder, gripping down hard enough to make his babbling voice stop with a pained gasp. Calmly and carefully, Matt turned only one set of eyes back to meet the collection of white lies and petty greed that lay behind Karen’s, as he did want her relatively intact.
“Consider this a warning,” he murmured, “From one curious soul to another. A mutual friend of ours wants you alive and the truth out; try not to disappoint me.”
With that, Matt vanished, taking both the hitman and the body with him. He could use the latter to make a statement. The former would allow him to blow off some steam.
No part of him doubted that he was doing this for Foggy. A lot of those parts however were content with ignoring that fact in favor of focusing on the drag of metal against human skin and despairing screams.
—
It was during another one of their movie nights that Matt’s repressed motivations came back to bite him (‘Mean Girls’ this time around, Foggy was maintaining his role as movie night czar until further notice).
“Karen’s my secretary now.”
Matt grunted in acknowledgement, prying the lid off of the milkshake Foggy got him. “Is she?”
“Yeah. You know, I asked her what made her want to go public with those files. Know what she said?”
“What?”
“That something put the fear of God into her.”
Matt reached for his basket of fries, silently chuckling over the irony. “And did everything work out with her?”
“As far as I can tell.”
Matt didn’t have to be an angel of unimaginable super powers to feel the look Foggy was sending his way. Matt didn’t say anything though, and hoped that that would be that.
“That was wrong of you. And what you’re doing to your fries is almost as bad.”
Matt paused, halfway through dipping the aforementioned fries into his milkshake. He was too caught up in thought to tell Foggy how wrong he was about the jab at his fries.
Finally he asked, “What was wrong of me?”
“You’re shit at lying. I know that you’re the one who scared her into going public with those files.”
Matt shrugged, keeping any sort of sheepishness off of his face. “I don’t see the problem. She got her files published, you got justice for your client and secretary who seems to be very friendly with you.”
“Friendly?”
“You were over at her house yesterday, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, we had dinner.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes Matt, that’s it. I know you’d be able to tell if it was anything else.” Matt didn’t say anything, but Foggy barreled straight ahead. “And you’re trying to distract me from the point; that’s very childish of you.”
Again, Matt said nothing, but did sit up a bit straighter and crossed his legs, seeming to listen closer to what Foggy was saying.
“Her decision should have been hers and hers alone, with no outside influence. And while I do appreciate you taking care of the hitman— no really, I do— do I want to know what you did with him?”
Matt’s brain flashed to bones and viscera, ripping and thudding, copper and bile. “No,” he muttered, “you really don’t.”
“Then I won’t ask for specifics. But did he deserve it?”
“Yes.” Matt’s answer was immediate. He remembered all that the man had confessed to. He definitely deserved what Matt did to him. Foggy didn’t sound as convinced as Matt would have liked him to.
“I’ll trust you on that then. However,” in the background, Matt could hear Rachel McAdams's character get hit by a bus, “you don’t get to use other people as props to help our deal along. That’s manipulative, buddy.”
Matt felt that he couldn’t speak. The accusation rolled down his spine and once again, Matt found his insides tightening. Of course Foggy would have few enough survival instincts to chastise him, Matt mused as he popped a few of his fries into his mouth. It made something petty and spiteful in him want to remind the human just what he was dealing with.
However a bigger part of him wanted to lay out everything that he had done to that hitman, describe the way that he had snapped at the other demons that had gotten in his way, really sit down and walk Foggy through just what he had done to send a message to the people after Karen (he was sure that a few of them had gone straight to church after finding their underling’s body in the state that it was in).
Foggy would be furious, and rightfully so. He would yell and berate and not have the slightest concern for the fact that it was Matt he was talking to, Actual Devil and Rotten Bastard Extraordinaire.
No one had done that sort of thing for him in a long, long while. No one had ever that sort of thing and lived ever, but Matt was willing to make an exception. This wasn’t an overly-righteous religious zealot from the Dark Ages, this was Foggy. And Foggy, Matt knew, Foggy would forgive him. Eventually. Maybe.
Most likely.
But Matt didn’t want Foggy’s forgiveness; there was something a bit sharper than that he wanted. Something that would hurt a bit more.
“I’m going to take your silence to mean that you get what I’m saying.” Foggy’s voice broke the silence, and Matt nodded distractedly. The human sighed, obviously seeing straight through Matt’s bullshit answer, but let it drop and turn back to the movie.
—
It was after Matt had left Foggy’s apartment that Matt realized what he wanted.
He wanted to confess to Foggy, for Everything. Matt wanted Foggy to get mad at him for sins that were almost as old as the Earth. He wanted Foggy to lash out at him. He wanted to feel Foggy’s rage batter up against him.
And the kicker was that Foggy was His come four years and nine months from now, and he could certainly demand that of the human. But a bigger part of him wanted Foggy to give it to him of free will. This was the same part of Matt that didn’t want to give up movie nights, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, and Foggy laughing loud enough to stupid jokes to upset the neighbors.
This was the moment that Matt realized how much he wanted from Foggy. And the very thought of it unsettled him greatly.