It's just as well the dark things owe him no loyalty. The man in the mask, the Devil of Hell's Kitchen is Matt.
Well, that's just fucking fantastic. Matt's bleeding out on the floor. Foggy doesn't know a lot about how normal people work, but he knows they break easily and he's pretty sure Matt's broken. Matt would be dead if he hadn't been born and raised in the crossroads of New York, if Foggy hadn't stuck so close to his side and called him family. Or maybe the fucker was just too damned stubborn to die and Foggy had nothing to do with it, much like most of Matt's secret life.
Foggy calls Claire, just like Matt asks him to before blacking out. Then he moves Matt, and peels him out of the black clothing and mops up the blood before she gets there.
He watches her ply her trade. It's really not all that different from some of the things that he's seen done before, when he was a teenager.
"Listen," she says when she's done, "I can't stay. He's mostly out of the woods, but he's lost a lot of blood."
"Yeah, I know, I mopped most of it up," he says.
She glances up at him, her eyes dark and wary and measuring. "Well," she says. "When he wakes up, you need to get fluids in him. He's going to be in a lot of pain, but I've never managed to get him to take anything for it. Maybe you'll have better luck."
"Uh huh," he says, and she looks at him again sharply again.
After a second, she says, "He's a jackass, and God knows I don't have what it takes to be a part of his life, and I don't know what your history is with him, but the city needs him."
"Well, I'm not going to fucking turn him in," he says, flat and annoyed. Matt was his guide, his compass. "You sure you can't stay? What if he starts dying again?"
"He shouldn't," she says, "but you have my number is he does. I have a job I have to get to."
So Claire leaves and then it's just Foggy and Matt, breathing shallow and straining on the sofa. Foggy comes to sit down across from Matt and look at him, at his deathly pale skin, and the black thread holding his skin together, and more blood had leaked out when Claire had disinfected the wounds and sewn him up.
Foggy sympathized, a bit. There was a trick to not-bleeding when you got cut; his relatives had known it, and they'd tried to teach it to him, but he'd never quite learned how to do it. Whenever he got hurt, it was always just as much of a mess as this.
When the shadows start unfurling out from under the sofa and up toward Matt, Foggy gets up and gives the sofa a kick and shoos them away. Then he goes to the kitchen to get a glass of water for Matt and a beer for himself. Beer actually doesn't do a lot for Foggy, unless he lets himself forget that it doesn't.
Forgetting that isn't on the menu for tonight. He needs to be sober for this, or he might actually get mad at Matt and that - that wouldn't be good.
Matt eventually does wake up, of course, and he's in a lot of pain and his stupid brow is all pinched up into the perfect picture of tragedy. Foggy puts his hand over, and Matt is icy to the touch, which is slightly worrisome, and says, "hey, something to drink."
"Foggy," Matt croaks and looks a little panicked and wriggles on the couch and he needs to stop that absolutely right that moment. Foggy does not need any of those particular instincts triggered right now - Matt's stronger, maybe, than the average person, but he couldn't withstand those kind of games even at the top of his game. "Foggy -"
"Yeah, shut your mouth, Murdock," Foggy says, taking his hand away to get the glass of water. He wishs Matt had straws in his house the way Foggy does, but of course not. They'll have to be careful.
He helps Matt drink the water, then sets the empty glass aside and sighs loudly and puts his elbows on the edge of the sofa, and his chin into his hands, and looks down at his best friend, his native guide, the guy that's supposed to show him how this normal thing goes and really can't because he's a fucking superhero with enhanced senses.
Matt's just wheezing and looking tortured with his head cocked and his sightless eyes staring straight up at the ceiling. Foggy tilts his head up to look at it, just in case, but it's a pretty normal ceiling, no shadows or things with teeth or eyes at all. A pity; it looks homely.
"So," Foggy says, "you're a dirty liar, pants on fire."
Matt's breath creaks, and he says, small and twisted, "yeah, but I had to, Foggy."
"Yeah, I'm sure," he says flatly, leaning his head on one hand so he can poke at Matt's twisted brow some more. "You feel a bit cold. Claire didn't say anything about that. Should I get blankets?"
His face twists and crumples and straightens again, and he shakes his head with the saddest sad orphan face that Foggy's ever seen in real life, and he's seen stay puppies.
"Well, I'm gonna get you blankets," Foggy says, "Since there's not a lot of point in listening to the words that come out of your mouth." He ignores the way Matt's face twists at that and gets up, wandering off into Matt's bedroom. Matt doesn't really have much in the way of blankets, relying on the central air or perhaps just suffering, but he gathers what he can find, and some of Matt's soft, warm sweats.
"What was I suppose to say," Matt says pathetically when Foggy comes back. He's getting angry, which just won't cut it.
"Dunno," Foggy says, "Not my secrets, Matt. I just thought that I knew you better than this, and I don't, and it's a lot to take in. Okay, believing that you're the Devil of Hell's Kitchen is hard enough, but could be done. Believing that you would have done that and not told me, though?"
"Foggy, please," Matt says, the anger leaking out like so much blood.
"Shut up, and put these on," Foggy says, which is kind of dumb because Matt isn't really strong enough to sit up on his own yet. He tries, and his wounds start to bleed again, and Foggy sighs and comes over to help.
Matt's cold all over, and shaking with it or pain or shock or something. Foggy's not sure if that's just how the human body is, or if there's something wrong with Matt, or if he should call Claire or what. He can't ask Matt - Matt obviously won't tell him.
"What if," Foggy says, quiet, "I hadn't shown up when I did, Matt? You're barely alive now. What if you died on this floor, bleeding out and cold, and when you wouldn't pick up your phone, Karen or I came over and found your body, huh?"
Matt made a thready, sad noise. It hurt to move, obviously, even if it was just to get dressed. Foggy slung the thin, threadbare flannel blanket around Matt's shoulders over the hoodie that he'd found for him.
"You're not invulnerable, even if it feels that way sometimes, Matt," he says quietly. "Claire's good - at least you have her, but you should have told someone else. If not me then someone, Matt. Even if you can't trust me, you gotta stay alive."
"I do trust you, Foggy," Matt protests, slightly strangled.
"No, you don't," he says. "We've known each other for years, and you never even tried."
Matt breathes like existing hurt and doesn't seem to have anything to say to that.
Eventually, Foggy decides that he's had his fill of watching Matt turn himself inside out with fingernails and teeth like every good, Catholic boy does, and puts away the 'I'm not mad, just disappointed' game. Foggy's not a particularly good person, just because he prefers to kill with kindness.
He pulls the truth from Matt's mouth like stubborn, slick teeth, like the pliers he picked up aren't suitable for the job at all. Not that it matters - Foggy's been taught how to make all sorts of plier work. It hurts Matt, he can see that, but he also knows it could hurt Matt worse. Matt's the Devil of Hell's Kitchen - his mouth twists over the words, like he likes and hates it in equal measure, much like he likes and hates himself - and he has enhanced senses, and can -
"Wait," Foggy says, mystified, "you can hear heartbeats?"
"If I'm close enough," Matt says cautiously. "I can." And apparently he uses it like a polygraph, which is particularly interesting and pretty - pretty impressive.
"You ever listen to my heartbeat?"
Matt's lashes flicker as his eyelids twitch, and he licks his lip. "Sometimes," he admits cautiously. "I can't really - not. Listen. I try not to."
Foggy imagines that his heart is probably pounding at the moment. He doesn't really feel it, not like most people do, not unless he remembers to feel it. "Huh," he says, and waits a moment, but Matt doesn't say anything else. Doesn't say whether or not he listens to Foggy's other organs, doesn't mention if they sound different from anyone elses. Maybe they don't, and isn't that interesting?
He gets some more fluids in Matt because the deathly cast is pretty, but not Matt's standard color and Foggy needs Matt to be his standard colors and warm and not shaking again.
"Look, Matt," Foggy says, "I don't know if it matters to you, but this - this hasn't done you and me a lot of good. Not telling me about a girlfriend is one thing, but not telling me about this?"
"It matters," Matt protests, looking small and hurt again. "Foggy, it matters."
"Yeah, well, again, lies, so you're going to have to actually prove that, Murdock," he says.
Matt still seems a bit upset, but he says, "Okay," so apparently he's invested in their friendship enough to at least pretend to try to work on repairing it. That's something. That's enough of a basis for Foggy to start with, anyway. He needs his native guide.
"Well, alright," he says, "on that note, I have things that I had planned for today that don't include watching over my stupid, suicidal vigilante best friend, so I'm going to leave. I'll - call, or whatever, to check in if you need something, okay?"
When he actually does, later that day, Matt sounds like he hadn't believed that Foggy would, which - right well. They have a lot of things to work on.
Re: Fake Fill: its not a first date if someone else is cutting your skin
Well, that's just fucking fantastic. Matt's bleeding out on the floor. Foggy doesn't know a lot about how normal people work, but he knows they break easily and he's pretty sure Matt's broken. Matt would be dead if he hadn't been born and raised in the crossroads of New York, if Foggy hadn't stuck so close to his side and called him family. Or maybe the fucker was just too damned stubborn to die and Foggy had nothing to do with it, much like most of Matt's secret life.
Foggy calls Claire, just like Matt asks him to before blacking out. Then he moves Matt, and peels him out of the black clothing and mops up the blood before she gets there.
He watches her ply her trade. It's really not all that different from some of the things that he's seen done before, when he was a teenager.
"Listen," she says when she's done, "I can't stay. He's mostly out of the woods, but he's lost a lot of blood."
"Yeah, I know, I mopped most of it up," he says.
She glances up at him, her eyes dark and wary and measuring. "Well," she says. "When he wakes up, you need to get fluids in him. He's going to be in a lot of pain, but I've never managed to get him to take anything for it. Maybe you'll have better luck."
"Uh huh," he says, and she looks at him again sharply again.
After a second, she says, "He's a jackass, and God knows I don't have what it takes to be a part of his life, and I don't know what your history is with him, but the city needs him."
"Well, I'm not going to fucking turn him in," he says, flat and annoyed. Matt was his guide, his compass. "You sure you can't stay? What if he starts dying again?"
"He shouldn't," she says, "but you have my number is he does. I have a job I have to get to."
So Claire leaves and then it's just Foggy and Matt, breathing shallow and straining on the sofa. Foggy comes to sit down across from Matt and look at him, at his deathly pale skin, and the black thread holding his skin together, and more blood had leaked out when Claire had disinfected the wounds and sewn him up.
Foggy sympathized, a bit. There was a trick to not-bleeding when you got cut; his relatives had known it, and they'd tried to teach it to him, but he'd never quite learned how to do it. Whenever he got hurt, it was always just as much of a mess as this.
When the shadows start unfurling out from under the sofa and up toward Matt, Foggy gets up and gives the sofa a kick and shoos them away. Then he goes to the kitchen to get a glass of water for Matt and a beer for himself. Beer actually doesn't do a lot for Foggy, unless he lets himself forget that it doesn't.
Forgetting that isn't on the menu for tonight. He needs to be sober for this, or he might actually get mad at Matt and that - that wouldn't be good.
Matt eventually does wake up, of course, and he's in a lot of pain and his stupid brow is all pinched up into the perfect picture of tragedy. Foggy puts his hand over, and Matt is icy to the touch, which is slightly worrisome, and says, "hey, something to drink."
"Foggy," Matt croaks and looks a little panicked and wriggles on the couch and he needs to stop that absolutely right that moment. Foggy does not need any of those particular instincts triggered right now - Matt's stronger, maybe, than the average person, but he couldn't withstand those kind of games even at the top of his game. "Foggy -"
"Yeah, shut your mouth, Murdock," Foggy says, taking his hand away to get the glass of water. He wishs Matt had straws in his house the way Foggy does, but of course not. They'll have to be careful.
He helps Matt drink the water, then sets the empty glass aside and sighs loudly and puts his elbows on the edge of the sofa, and his chin into his hands, and looks down at his best friend, his native guide, the guy that's supposed to show him how this normal thing goes and really can't because he's a fucking superhero with enhanced senses.
Matt's just wheezing and looking tortured with his head cocked and his sightless eyes staring straight up at the ceiling. Foggy tilts his head up to look at it, just in case, but it's a pretty normal ceiling, no shadows or things with teeth or eyes at all. A pity; it looks homely.
"So," Foggy says, "you're a dirty liar, pants on fire."
Matt's breath creaks, and he says, small and twisted, "yeah, but I had to, Foggy."
"Yeah, I'm sure," he says flatly, leaning his head on one hand so he can poke at Matt's twisted brow some more. "You feel a bit cold. Claire didn't say anything about that. Should I get blankets?"
His face twists and crumples and straightens again, and he shakes his head with the saddest sad orphan face that Foggy's ever seen in real life, and he's seen stay puppies.
"Well, I'm gonna get you blankets," Foggy says, "Since there's not a lot of point in listening to the words that come out of your mouth." He ignores the way Matt's face twists at that and gets up, wandering off into Matt's bedroom. Matt doesn't really have much in the way of blankets, relying on the central air or perhaps just suffering, but he gathers what he can find, and some of Matt's soft, warm sweats.
"What was I suppose to say," Matt says pathetically when Foggy comes back. He's getting angry, which just won't cut it.
"Dunno," Foggy says, "Not my secrets, Matt. I just thought that I knew you better than this, and I don't, and it's a lot to take in. Okay, believing that you're the Devil of Hell's Kitchen is hard enough, but could be done. Believing that you would have done that and not told me, though?"
"Foggy, please," Matt says, the anger leaking out like so much blood.
"Shut up, and put these on," Foggy says, which is kind of dumb because Matt isn't really strong enough to sit up on his own yet. He tries, and his wounds start to bleed again, and Foggy sighs and comes over to help.
Matt's cold all over, and shaking with it or pain or shock or something. Foggy's not sure if that's just how the human body is, or if there's something wrong with Matt, or if he should call Claire or what. He can't ask Matt - Matt obviously won't tell him.
"What if," Foggy says, quiet, "I hadn't shown up when I did, Matt? You're barely alive now. What if you died on this floor, bleeding out and cold, and when you wouldn't pick up your phone, Karen or I came over and found your body, huh?"
Matt made a thready, sad noise. It hurt to move, obviously, even if it was just to get dressed. Foggy slung the thin, threadbare flannel blanket around Matt's shoulders over the hoodie that he'd found for him.
"You're not invulnerable, even if it feels that way sometimes, Matt," he says quietly. "Claire's good - at least you have her, but you should have told someone else. If not me then someone, Matt. Even if you can't trust me, you gotta stay alive."
"I do trust you, Foggy," Matt protests, slightly strangled.
"No, you don't," he says. "We've known each other for years, and you never even tried."
Matt breathes like existing hurt and doesn't seem to have anything to say to that.
Eventually, Foggy decides that he's had his fill of watching Matt turn himself inside out with fingernails and teeth like every good, Catholic boy does, and puts away the 'I'm not mad, just disappointed' game. Foggy's not a particularly good person, just because he prefers to kill with kindness.
He pulls the truth from Matt's mouth like stubborn, slick teeth, like the pliers he picked up aren't suitable for the job at all. Not that it matters - Foggy's been taught how to make all sorts of plier work. It hurts Matt, he can see that, but he also knows it could hurt Matt worse. Matt's the Devil of Hell's Kitchen - his mouth twists over the words, like he likes and hates it in equal measure, much like he likes and hates himself - and he has enhanced senses, and can -
"Wait," Foggy says, mystified, "you can hear heartbeats?"
"If I'm close enough," Matt says cautiously. "I can." And apparently he uses it like a polygraph, which is particularly interesting and pretty - pretty impressive.
"You ever listen to my heartbeat?"
Matt's lashes flicker as his eyelids twitch, and he licks his lip. "Sometimes," he admits cautiously. "I can't really - not. Listen. I try not to."
Foggy imagines that his heart is probably pounding at the moment. He doesn't really feel it, not like most people do, not unless he remembers to feel it. "Huh," he says, and waits a moment, but Matt doesn't say anything else. Doesn't say whether or not he listens to Foggy's other organs, doesn't mention if they sound different from anyone elses. Maybe they don't, and isn't that interesting?
He gets some more fluids in Matt because the deathly cast is pretty, but not Matt's standard color and Foggy needs Matt to be his standard colors and warm and not shaking again.
"Look, Matt," Foggy says, "I don't know if it matters to you, but this - this hasn't done you and me a lot of good. Not telling me about a girlfriend is one thing, but not telling me about this?"
"It matters," Matt protests, looking small and hurt again. "Foggy, it matters."
"Yeah, well, again, lies, so you're going to have to actually prove that, Murdock," he says.
Matt still seems a bit upset, but he says, "Okay," so apparently he's invested in their friendship enough to at least pretend to try to work on repairing it. That's something. That's enough of a basis for Foggy to start with, anyway. He needs his native guide.
"Well, alright," he says, "on that note, I have things that I had planned for today that don't include watching over my stupid, suicidal vigilante best friend, so I'm going to leave. I'll - call, or whatever, to check in if you need something, okay?"
When he actually does, later that day, Matt sounds like he hadn't believed that Foggy would, which - right well. They have a lot of things to work on.
-