Karen dragged him out for beer on a Tuesday, which was weird enough that didn't ask questions before grabbing his coat and scarf. Sure, he glared at Matt - not that it would ever help - and said, "you can work as late as you want, I'm not your dad, but I bribed one of the kids to come pull the fire alarm at seven."
"Thanks for confessing in front of witnesses," Matt said, agreeably enough. "I only need another half an hour, I'll lock up by six."
"I heard nothing," Karen declared. She took Foggy's arm, tucking herself neatly into his shoulder, and they ambled towards Josie's. It wasn't that cold, when they bundled up, and for an early winter's night in Hell's Kitchen, the streets looked surprisingly peaceful.
"You and Matt doin' okay?" Foggy asked, thoughtfully. "Ice coming up here, look out."
"Yes - no - he's your best friend," Karen sighed, and thankfully did not tease Foggy about his slip-up. Look, he'd been in the habit for years, and even though he'd tried to break it after finding out about Daredevil, it'd been surprisingly difficult. And it wasn't like Matt minded, or complained, or did anything more than duck his head and try to hide his dorky grin when Foggy wound up narrating for him again. Foggy had given up feeling embarrassed about it: he was always going to be that guy telling everyone about the bumps and potholes and telephone poles while they walked.
"Which means we've given each other more headaches than anybody else. He can give you the four page long essay on my sleep habits and at what points he nearly smothered me," Foggy said. "Because he is a nitpicking grudge-holding bastard, don't let anyone tell you otherwise."
"Hmm." She sounded non-committal, and squinted as the streetlights lit up. "You're sure that -?"
"I told you," Foggy said, cheerfully. "I bribed a kid to pull the fire alarm. Not in our building, but Matt's gonna be out of the way for a little bit."
"I feel bad," she admitted. "Aw, he's gonna be so grumpy tomorrow, will you bring muffins?"
"I'm not made of muffins, Karen," Foggy mock-growled, and she giggled, leaning into his arm for two or three steps.
"Nothing's gonna happen," Foggy said. "We're just - I mean, he can't worry about everything that happens everywhere in Hell's Kitchen, can he?"
"No-o," Karen agreed, but she still sounded a little dubious. "I feel like every time we lie to each other somebody gets shot, though."
"Holy shit, bite your tongue. It's not lying, it's just - creative helping." Foggy held the door open, and Karen shivered as the hot air blasted across her damp hair.
Josie looked up as they came in, raised one (excessively, in Foggy's opinion) eyebrow, and grunted. "In the back," she said. "Nelson, don't make trouble in my place."
"Would I ever?" he started, ready to get comically aggrieved, and Karen groaned and pushed him through the back door, her hand small and unrelenting on his shoulder.
Gregg Rourke groaned when he saw them. He was the old-fashioned kind of guy, though, which was why he stood up and held Karen's chair out for her, nodded companionably enough and met Foggy's eyes. He'd come with two men Foggy sure as hell didn't know, which was enough to make Karen smile bright and toothy. Both of 'em were big, the kind of men with heavy, imposing shoulders and beer guts spread over the solid muscle. Both guys were white, solidly working class, in muddy Redwings and heavy old coats: one wore an old cap with furred earflaps pinned up, and one wore a knitted baklava. Foggy wouldn't have seen the broken nose if he hadn't gotten stuck straightening Matt's nose just last week, and hadn't that been some of the grossest shit he'd ever had to deal with.
Karen sat very straight with her hands loose at her sides; her posture was picture-perfect. She looked like something out of a magazine, and yeah, it looked fucking weird, in the fug of cigarette smoke still hazing up Josie's back room.
"These are the guys?" Earflaps said, squinting in frankly hurtful suspicion. Sure, they were new at this, but they were doing so much better than Matt had when he'd...stepped outside of the strict letter of the law. Karen and Foggy hadn't been shot, or stabbed, and ever since that first (fucking terrifying meeting) no one had even tried to get aggressive.
("It's because we're so pretty," Foggy had told Karen, a few weeks ago, "Matt would do so much better if he tried catching flies with honey instead of punches, the asshole."
"No, you!" Karen had giggled. They'd both been more than a little high on adrenaline. "You're the sweet talker, Mr. Nelson, oh my god, we're gonna die.")
"Don't be a pain in the ass, Steve," Gregg groaned, sounding - well, sounding a lot like Foggy felt, actually. Twelve hour shift, and then this extra work. "Steve, Max, meeet Mr. Nelson, Ms. Page. They're the ones who handled the thing with Garcia."
"Huh," Max - Broken Nose - said. He shifted, curling both hands around his beer, and great, that showed that yes infuckingdeed he had a gun tucked into his waistband.
Foggy sat between Max and Karen, even though every instinct was screaming get out: hey, his instincts were terrible. He'd spent years around Matt without picking up on all of that violent crazy, after all.
"Look," Gregg started, pretty bluntly. "Everything's gonna be a lot easier to resolve if Kaplan goes to prison for a few years."
"He's not guilty, though." It seemed like a good idea to throw it out there, see who got most upset about it.
Steve snorted into his beer. Max glared at Karen. Gregg rolled his eyes. "Do we gotta fuck around here?" he asked. "Beggin' your pardon, Ms. Page. Look, Nelson, don't bust my balls, it's thirty degrees out and I got sh - stuff to do tonight after we play legal eagles, yeah?"
"It doesn't matter if he's guilty," Steve grumbled. "He stays out of jail, he's gonna keep pissing off the wrong people because he's an idiot, and we're gonna have -" he dropped his voice. "Feds up in Hell's Kitchen. More of 'em. They're almost done hanging around after they cleaned up after that asshole Fisk."
"We don't want that either, trust me," Karen said. "He has a family. Call it fifty grand, every year he's in jail, then yeah, absolutely." Her voice shook, just the tiniest bit, at the end there, but it was a much better performance than she'd been able to pull off even two months ago.
Max met her eyes, obviously more than a little surprised: people did that, Foggy'd noticed. Assumed that Karen was the lovely and fragile secretary, more often than not: hey, she'd been the one who worried and fretted until Foggy applied for his gun license, the one who'd spent hours online looking for something easy and quick for a beginner.
("I can't," she'd said, looking weird and uncomfortable: "haven't lived in New York long enough, Foggy, but if we're really going to help Matt by...keeping things from blowing up in his face, don't you think we'd better take it seriously?"
"We're not shooting people, Karen!" Foggy had yelped, but it had started to seem like a reasonable security measure, after a while.)
Karen, to Foggy's surprise, turned out to be surprisingly ruthless and careful: she was good at compromise, and she was excellent at balancing shitty options and figuring out the best ones. She didn't know anyone in the neighborhood, not really, but Foggy'd known Gregg Rourke since before Columbia. Since they'd stepped in to - well, to try to minimize the damage from Fisk's abrupt imprisonment, the local stuff, anyways - Foggy'd found himself spending more than a little time with a couple of Brett's buddies from the precinct, cops who knew the neighborhood and had a pretty good idea of who could be trusted to keep the peace, as it were, and who was going to wind up making trouble.
Every one of his ethics professors would've screamed their heads off, but this wasn't law school, after all.)
"You're kiddin'," Steve said, immediately. "Nope. I ain't paying a hundred and fifty k to get him outta the way. Cheaper if he has an accident, shit."
"Right," Foggy said. "That's a nice inconspicuous way to handle things, let us know how that goes." Oh god,, he thought. I need to work on my manners..
"You're gonna wind up paying that much if he gets off on a non-guilty," Gregg sighed. "C'mon, man, I've known Nelson for years, let's move this along, yeah?"
Steve and Max stared each other down, obviously considering their options, and Foggy considered his life. They'd covered the possibility that your clients would confess to serious crimes at Columbia, sure, but it never stopped feeling more than a little surreal, to watch people plan crimes, even hypothetically.
Max grunted, and made a face, and said "fine. Your man better know what he's doing, Rourke," which was neither a glowing agreement or a refusal. They could work with this.
Karen squeezed Foggy's hand, under the table.
"Aw, Nelson and Page are their own team," Rourke said. "Yeah? We good here?"
After Steve and Max had slouched off to do things that Foggy was deliberately not thinking about, for fuck's sake, Rourke gave the two of them the side-eye. "Could walk you two home," he said, which was a) comforting, because he was six and a half feet tall and while he was nowhere near as fast or flippy as Matt, he could still stop a grown man in his tracks with one punch, and b) a little humiliating, still, because he continued to look at them like - well, like kids playing games with the adults at the table.
"No thanks," Karen said, fair enough; it wasn't even that late, yet. "I'll protect Foggy." She smiled, and Gregg smiled back, a little helplessly.
**
Karen spent the night at his place, crashed out on his couch, which was fair: she'd gotten into the habit of spending the night at someone's apartment, especially after she and Foggy had started this middling-to-absolutely-illegal campaign of Help. Foggy left her with half a pot of hot coffee, listening to her talking to herself in the shower, because she was right: Matt would want food and ibuprofen, this morning, and he was probably going to be a miserable asshole until at least lunchtime.
There was no way he'd beat Matt to the office: he got to the door, hands full with a tray of coffees and the bag of muffins, and thank god for those crazy sensitive ears. Matt opened the door for him, mouth pinched, huge bags under his eyes.
"You look like shit, bud," Foggy said, because it was true, and because he felt honestly guilty.
"You make jokes," Matt said, rubbing his temples. "Why did you bring food into this office. I declare a ban."
"That's bullshit, my friend: these are the organic muffins you were crazy about two weeks ago."
"Ugh." He poked at the bag, and frowned, and stashed it on Karen's desk, looking decidedly queasy. "Someone did pull the fire alarm on one of the buildings on my street, last night. Couldn't sleep all night."
Foggy patted Matt's shoulder, wishing, for just a minute, that he had the right to come in and rub his temples, like Karen did. Well. They were - they were dating, obviously, and Foggy was just - he was just everyone's best friend, that was all, and best friends probably weren't supposed to offer soothing scalp massages. "Ibuprofen in the first aid kit," he said, instead, and, "Karen's running late this morning."
He waited til mid-morning to bring it up, because by then they'd tricked Matt into consuming food. (Foggy'd brought a muffin into Matt's office and perched on the edge of his desk, muffin between them, and taken bites of it while discussing new tax regulations. It worked like a charm; once you got Matt distracted enough and put something he liked in front of him, he'd wind up eating it almost accidentally.)
"Hey," he said, thinking this is not a big deal as hard as he could: "a buddy sent me some notes on a case like the Garcia one, he had some good ideas. I'll send 'em to you, but I think we should rethink our strategy for defense?"
Re: Foggy takes over Fisk's empire and becomes Kingpin thing
Karen dragged him out for beer on a Tuesday, which was weird enough that didn't ask questions before grabbing his coat and scarf. Sure, he glared at Matt - not that it would ever help - and said, "you can work as late as you want, I'm not your dad, but I bribed one of the kids to come pull the fire alarm at seven."
"Thanks for confessing in front of witnesses," Matt said, agreeably enough. "I only need another half an hour, I'll lock up by six."
"I heard nothing," Karen declared. She took Foggy's arm, tucking herself neatly into his shoulder, and they ambled towards Josie's. It wasn't that cold, when they bundled up, and for an early winter's night in Hell's Kitchen, the streets looked surprisingly peaceful.
"You and Matt doin' okay?" Foggy asked, thoughtfully. "Ice coming up here, look out."
"Yes - no - he's your best friend," Karen sighed, and thankfully did not tease Foggy about his slip-up. Look, he'd been in the habit for years, and even though he'd tried to break it after finding out about Daredevil, it'd been surprisingly difficult. And it wasn't like Matt minded, or complained, or did anything more than duck his head and try to hide his dorky grin when Foggy wound up narrating for him again. Foggy had given up feeling embarrassed about it: he was always going to be that guy telling everyone about the bumps and potholes and telephone poles while they walked.
"Which means we've given each other more headaches than anybody else. He can give you the four page long essay on my sleep habits and at what points he nearly smothered me," Foggy said. "Because he is a nitpicking grudge-holding bastard, don't let anyone tell you otherwise."
"Hmm." She sounded non-committal, and squinted as the streetlights lit up. "You're sure that -?"
"I told you," Foggy said, cheerfully. "I bribed a kid to pull the fire alarm. Not in our building, but Matt's gonna be out of the way for a little bit."
"I feel bad," she admitted. "Aw, he's gonna be so grumpy tomorrow, will you bring muffins?"
"I'm not made of muffins, Karen," Foggy mock-growled, and she giggled, leaning into his arm for two or three steps.
"Nothing's gonna happen," Foggy said. "We're just - I mean, he can't worry about everything that happens everywhere in Hell's Kitchen, can he?"
"No-o," Karen agreed, but she still sounded a little dubious. "I feel like every time we lie to each other somebody gets shot, though."
"Holy shit, bite your tongue. It's not lying, it's just - creative helping." Foggy held the door open, and Karen shivered as the hot air blasted across her damp hair.
Josie looked up as they came in, raised one (excessively, in Foggy's opinion) eyebrow, and grunted. "In the back," she said. "Nelson, don't make trouble in my place."
"Would I ever?" he started, ready to get comically aggrieved, and Karen groaned and pushed him through the back door, her hand small and unrelenting on his shoulder.
Gregg Rourke groaned when he saw them. He was the old-fashioned kind of guy, though, which was why he stood up and held Karen's chair out for her, nodded companionably enough and met Foggy's eyes. He'd come with two men Foggy sure as hell didn't know, which was enough to make Karen smile bright and toothy. Both of 'em were big, the kind of men with heavy, imposing shoulders and beer guts spread over the solid muscle. Both guys were white, solidly working class, in muddy Redwings and heavy old coats: one wore an old cap with furred earflaps pinned up, and one wore a knitted baklava. Foggy wouldn't have seen the broken nose if he hadn't gotten stuck straightening Matt's nose just last week, and hadn't that been some of the grossest shit he'd ever had to deal with.
Karen sat very straight with her hands loose at her sides; her posture was picture-perfect. She looked like something out of a magazine, and yeah, it looked fucking weird, in the fug of cigarette smoke still hazing up Josie's back room.
"Hey," Foggy said. "New friends?"
"Old friends," Gregg said, and winced. "Sorry, Ms. Page, should've said."
"These are the guys?" Earflaps said, squinting in frankly hurtful suspicion. Sure, they were new at this, but they were doing so much better than Matt had when he'd...stepped outside of the strict letter of the law. Karen and Foggy hadn't been shot, or stabbed, and ever since that first (fucking terrifying meeting) no one had even tried to get aggressive.
("It's because we're so pretty," Foggy had told Karen, a few weeks ago, "Matt would do so much better if he tried catching flies with honey instead of punches, the asshole."
"No, you!" Karen had giggled. They'd both been more than a little high on adrenaline. "You're the sweet talker, Mr. Nelson, oh my god, we're gonna die.")
"Don't be a pain in the ass, Steve," Gregg groaned, sounding - well, sounding a lot like Foggy felt, actually. Twelve hour shift, and then this extra work. "Steve, Max, meeet Mr. Nelson, Ms. Page. They're the ones who handled the thing with Garcia."
"Huh," Max - Broken Nose - said. He shifted, curling both hands around his beer, and great, that showed that yes infuckingdeed he had a gun tucked into his waistband.
Foggy sat between Max and Karen, even though every instinct was screaming get out: hey, his instincts were terrible. He'd spent years around Matt without picking up on all of that violent crazy, after all.
"Look," Gregg started, pretty bluntly. "Everything's gonna be a lot easier to resolve if Kaplan goes to prison for a few years."
"He's not guilty, though." It seemed like a good idea to throw it out there, see who got most upset about it.
Steve snorted into his beer. Max glared at Karen. Gregg rolled his eyes. "Do we gotta fuck around here?" he asked. "Beggin' your pardon, Ms. Page. Look, Nelson, don't bust my balls, it's thirty degrees out and I got sh - stuff to do tonight after we play legal eagles, yeah?"
"It doesn't matter if he's guilty," Steve grumbled. "He stays out of jail, he's gonna keep pissing off the wrong people because he's an idiot, and we're gonna have -" he dropped his voice. "Feds up in Hell's Kitchen. More of 'em. They're almost done hanging around after they cleaned up after that asshole Fisk."
"We don't want that either, trust me," Karen said. "He has a family. Call it fifty grand, every year he's in jail, then yeah, absolutely." Her voice shook, just the tiniest bit, at the end there, but it was a much better performance than she'd been able to pull off even two months ago.
Max met her eyes, obviously more than a little surprised: people did that, Foggy'd noticed. Assumed that Karen was the lovely and fragile secretary, more often than not: hey, she'd been the one who worried and fretted until Foggy applied for his gun license, the one who'd spent hours online looking for something easy and quick for a beginner.
("I can't," she'd said, looking weird and uncomfortable: "haven't lived in New York long enough, Foggy, but if we're really going to help Matt by...keeping things from blowing up in his face, don't you think we'd better take it seriously?"
"We're not shooting people, Karen!" Foggy had yelped, but it had started to seem like a reasonable security measure, after a while.)
Karen, to Foggy's surprise, turned out to be surprisingly ruthless and careful: she was good at compromise, and she was excellent at balancing shitty options and figuring out the best ones. She didn't know anyone in the neighborhood, not really, but Foggy'd known Gregg Rourke since before Columbia. Since they'd stepped in to - well, to try to minimize the damage from Fisk's abrupt imprisonment, the local stuff, anyways - Foggy'd found himself spending more than a little time with a couple of Brett's buddies from the precinct, cops who knew the neighborhood and had a pretty good idea of who could be trusted to keep the peace, as it were, and who was going to wind up making trouble.
Every one of his ethics professors would've screamed their heads off, but this wasn't law school, after all.)
"You're kiddin'," Steve said, immediately. "Nope. I ain't paying a hundred and fifty k to get him outta the way. Cheaper if he has an accident, shit."
"Right," Foggy said. "That's a nice inconspicuous way to handle things, let us know how that goes." Oh god,, he thought. I need to work on my manners..
"You're gonna wind up paying that much if he gets off on a non-guilty," Gregg sighed. "C'mon, man, I've known Nelson for years, let's move this along, yeah?"
Steve and Max stared each other down, obviously considering their options, and Foggy considered his life. They'd covered the possibility that your clients would confess to serious crimes at Columbia, sure, but it never stopped feeling more than a little surreal, to watch people plan crimes, even hypothetically.
Max grunted, and made a face, and said "fine. Your man better know what he's doing, Rourke," which was neither a glowing agreement or a refusal. They could work with this.
Karen squeezed Foggy's hand, under the table.
"Aw, Nelson and Page are their own team," Rourke said. "Yeah? We good here?"
After Steve and Max had slouched off to do things that Foggy was deliberately not thinking about, for fuck's sake, Rourke gave the two of them the side-eye. "Could walk you two home," he said, which was a) comforting, because he was six and a half feet tall and while he was nowhere near as fast or flippy as Matt, he could still stop a grown man in his tracks with one punch, and b) a little humiliating, still, because he continued to look at them like - well, like kids playing games with the adults at the table.
"No thanks," Karen said, fair enough; it wasn't even that late, yet. "I'll protect Foggy." She smiled, and Gregg smiled back, a little helplessly.
**
Karen spent the night at his place, crashed out on his couch, which was fair: she'd gotten into the habit of spending the night at someone's apartment, especially after she and Foggy had started this middling-to-absolutely-illegal campaign of Help. Foggy left her with half a pot of hot coffee, listening to her talking to herself in the shower, because she was right: Matt would want food and ibuprofen, this morning, and he was probably going to be a miserable asshole until at least lunchtime.
There was no way he'd beat Matt to the office: he got to the door, hands full with a tray of coffees and the bag of muffins, and thank god for those crazy sensitive ears. Matt opened the door for him, mouth pinched, huge bags under his eyes.
"You look like shit, bud," Foggy said, because it was true, and because he felt honestly guilty.
"You make jokes," Matt said, rubbing his temples. "Why did you bring food into this office. I declare a ban."
"That's bullshit, my friend: these are the organic muffins you were crazy about two weeks ago."
"Ugh." He poked at the bag, and frowned, and stashed it on Karen's desk, looking decidedly queasy. "Someone did pull the fire alarm on one of the buildings on my street, last night. Couldn't sleep all night."
Foggy patted Matt's shoulder, wishing, for just a minute, that he had the right to come in and rub his temples, like Karen did. Well. They were - they were dating, obviously, and Foggy was just - he was just everyone's best friend, that was all, and best friends probably weren't supposed to offer soothing scalp massages. "Ibuprofen in the first aid kit," he said, instead, and, "Karen's running late this morning."
He waited til mid-morning to bring it up, because by then they'd tricked Matt into consuming food. (Foggy'd brought a muffin into Matt's office and perched on the edge of his desk, muffin between them, and taken bites of it while discussing new tax regulations. It worked like a charm; once you got Matt distracted enough and put something he liked in front of him, he'd wind up eating it almost accidentally.)
"Hey," he said, thinking this is not a big deal as hard as he could: "a buddy sent me some notes on a case like the Garcia one, he had some good ideas. I'll send 'em to you, but I think we should rethink our strategy for defense?"
(FLUFF. FLUFF CRIMINALS. idk.)