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daredevilkink2016-04-21 06:34 pm
ddk_mod) wrote in daredevilkink2016-04-21 06:34 pm
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Daredevil Prompt Post #11
HEAD OVER TO PROMPT POST #12.
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Civilian and Daredevil Bond (matt/foggy)
(Anonymous) 2016-06-26 03:12 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Civilian and Daredevil Bond (matt/foggy)
(Anonymous) 2016-06-26 03:13 pm (UTC)(link)Daredevil: Try to stay away from whomever he’s dating, tell myself he’s better off with them, and then spend a lot of time hitting a punching bag.
Civilian: That’s a strangely specific answer.
Daredevil: *mumbles*
Re: Civilian and Daredevil Bond (matt/foggy)
(Anonymous) 2016-06-26 03:47 pm (UTC)(link)Daredevil: Don't do that.
Civilian: Yeah, no shit.
Re: Civilian and Daredevil Bond (matt/foggy)
(Anonymous) 2016-06-26 03:37 pm (UTC)(link)Fill: Stars May Collide 1a/2
(Anonymous) 2016-06-27 02:37 am (UTC)(link)+ + +
Josh’s vision was greying when a lot of aggressive and dangerous vigilante slammed down onto his thigh. Abruptly, everything flared white and his entire body arced up even before the pain hit.
First he’d been grabbed because a couple losers decided they wanted a hostage when they were robbing a bank with cooperative tellers, then they grabbed him because he was waiting his turn in the lobby because he’d lost his ATM card in a mugging last week. The idiot robbers already had a teller filling their duffel bag with quite enough money that nobody needed a hostage. After that, his life quickly downturned into this fresh sense that he was being punished for being that annoying guy that needed to get over himself.
Some idiot cop had drawn his weapon when the bank robbers had seemed close to running away without their Trusty Hostage. Well, maybe not an idiot, Josh had to admit, but the cop’s impulsiveness had spooked the robbers and then there had been two gun barrels pressed against Josh’s head while a cop looked ready to fire in their direction. Some hysterical woman walking three dogs convinced the cop to lower his weapon, which almost helped, but then Josh had been shoved into the back of some creepy grey cargo van and had ended up in an empty parking garage where one of the pathetic excuses for a bank robber had accidentally fired his gun into Josh’s fucking leg.
It was just bad luck that the Robber With The Asymmetric Goatee had fired a bullet into Josh’s thig. Asymmetric Goatee hadn’t panicked because of Daredevil until after the gun had already fired. Then both bank robbers had been panicking and Daredevil had started throwing punches.
Those movie tough guys? The ones that took a bullet and then just kept running? He was pretty sure all of those scenes had been written by people who had never been shot, because he’d crumpled to the floor like the useless fast food worker he was. He was not an action star and he wasn’t even brave enough to ask his friend to go to coffee with him.
Daredevil had knocked both of the guys out, fast, and had left both handguns in different pieces several feet away. The bank robbers were bound together with the same zip ties they hadn’t bothered using on Josh, actually. They were in a parking garage, somewhere, and focusing on the translucent cheap white of the zip ties helped Josh try to forget that blood outside of scary movies was a very startling shade of red. It also was pooling around him fast. That was probably why Daredevil had done a pile-driver with his fucking knee into the hole in Josh’s left thigh, maybe, but it hurt.
When he could think in something that wasn’t static, Josh noticed that Daredevil was keeping his knee pressed into Josh’s thigh. It hurt, still, but his leg didn’t look like a squirting fountain anymore. Daredevil tilted his head, looking down at Josh, but kept his attention on his phone.
Daredevil was making a phone call and keeping his red-suited knee pressed into the ragged denim that had been blue before it went dark with blood.
“I’m in the FedEx parking garage at 49th Street and 12th Avenue. Fifth floor. A man has been shot in the thigh, Yes, he was bleeding, I can’t estimate how much blood he’s lost. Not currently, ma’am, I’m holding pressure. With my knee, ma’am,” Daredevil said between pauses while someone else must be talking. Probably 911, that was the smart place to call. His voice was gruff but hardly the uneducated mook that third shift always assumed. He turned his face toward Josh. “Can I get your name, sir?”
“J-Josh. Josh Henderson. I was at the New York Community Bank, and they grabbed me for a hostage.”
Daredevil relayed that to the dispatcher, word-for-word. “This is Daredevil,” he added. “I’m staying with him until EMS gets here.”
Josh thought about breathing while Daredevil and the person on the phone said a few more things, something about his breathing being regular and pulse being about 110. The weird part was that Daredevil hadn’t even touched him to try to get a pulse, but when Josh tried to time it out, his pulse was at nearly two beats a second. The better part about leaning back into the grey was that his leg hurt less.
“-osh. Josh,” Daredevil said, gently shaking his shoulder with one hand. He was leaning across Josh’s torso to reach, limited because his knee was still digging into Josh’s thigh. That suit was probably a total bitch to clean, dry-cleaners weren’t all that private and neither were laundromats. It was probably going to be an awful day’s work getting all that blood off of it. Josh’s blood. It was redder than the suit.
“Blood can be tricky,” Daredevil agreed. Either Josh had been babbling out loud or the guy was psychic. “I recommend talking about something else, but keep talking to me. Those guys over there are unconscious and the paramedics are on their way.”
Probably not psychic, then. That was good, the guy’s reputation was scary enough without that. “Well. Don’t want to talk about being a hostage, or the part where there is way too much blood outside of me. Um. If you ever stop at the record store down the street from the bank, you should ask for Desiree. Well, if you’re in this outfit, more, but she doesn’t work that late. She thinks you’re cool.”
“Desiree?”
“My best friend.” Josh was probably dying, the crazy vigilante said that talking helped… if anything would keep him from feeling grey and numb inside, just pretending that he’d see Desi again would probably do it. “What would you do?” he asked in a sudden fit of inspiration. Daredevil didn’t know him or Desi, he couldn’t join the few friends he’d told that kept harassing him to take the chance and maybe ruin everything. “If you fell for your best friend.”
Daredevil didn’t even hesitate. “Try to stay away from whoever he’s dating, tell myself he’s better off with them, and spend a lot of time punching something.”
Josh blinked up at the orange-tinted light on the ceiling. There were a lot of dead bugs in the casing. Then he looked back at the scary-ass vigilante who still looked a tiny bit like someone had showed him an adorable puppy then said that puppies hated vigilantes so he should stay away. That was what Claudia said, anyway, minus the vigilante part. “That’s a strangely specific answer.”
Daredevil muttered something.
Josh didn’t give up. This was the best thing he’d heard all day. If the Man Without Fear was too scared to tell someone, then maybe Josh wasn’t just a giant loser. “It’s just… I feel like a stereotypical dipshit. She’s my friend. Desi is my best friend and we have known each other for years. I did not get her through the breakup with Shawn because I wanted to get in her pants, we have been actual friends since high school.
“I am not some asshat who whines about friend-zoning. Being her friend is great,” Josh continued. It was weird, getting his rant on flat on his back on a concrete floor, but so was having a vigilante’s knee kind of dangerously near his junk. “I just… it feels like lying, now. The movies all act like I’m only holding us back from happy ever after and all I feel is greedy.”
“Y-yeah,” Daredevil agreed. “Like it isn’t good enough already.”
“I figure she’s going to find out eventually, though,” Josh continued. “A couple other friends figured it out on their own. If one of them tells her, or if she figures it out, then I’ve been pining for her and it turns into a way bigger deal than if I just told her and got shot down like a braver guy. Just, y’know, the guy she’s been friends with for years also noticed that she is gorgeous.”
“Then they wonder why you didn’t say it sooner,” Daredevil agreed quietly. “It’s hard when they actually don’t keep secrets, they don’t work that way. I- um- well. Vigilante stuff,” he said, swallowing hard. “It’s similar.”
Josh knew that look and shouldn’t feel glad that someone else was with him, but it turned out that misery really did love company. He wasn’t alone, Daredevil was in the same boat. “Same friend that makes you want to punch bank robbers?” he suggested brightly. That was his ‘I’ve been at the counter for 10 hours straight and if one more person smugly mentions they’d never be stuck working fast food I will end him’ smile, mostly, but with friends it mostly meant that he was being a shit and he knew it.
Daredevil actually fidgeted for a second, though the knee in Josh’s thigh stayed steady. “Yeah.”
“Wow.” Josh took a moment to marvel about how his life could be worse. “He didn’t take the vigilante thing well?”
“It’s not something I would expect him to take well.”
“Yeah, well, it is something that you’re doing.” Josh motioned grandly to his leg in its pool-o-blood. “Personally, I really appreciate you being here and being a vigilante right now. I do not think either one of them would have put pressure on for me and nobody else could have gotten here fast enough.”
“Thanks.”
“Really, though, that sucks,” Josh said with admiration. “I mean. I really should just mention to Desi that I’m interested If all else fails, hey, if I do actually live through this- and if I don’t you are completely not to blame, those idiots didn’t notice you until the goateed dude shot me- maybe the whole tragically avoiding death thing will help it not be terminally weird. I mean. I’m figuring there will be nice painkillers at the hospital- again with the I do not blame you, I do understand that not bleeding out is great.”
“You should.”
“You and me both,” Josh decided. “C’mon, it’ll be great. You can tell your friend that I insisted. I am the tragic New Yorker that got taken hostage when the assholes already had money going into their bag.”
“He said no more secrets. When he found out about…” Daredevil made an odd gesture that seemed to involve the outfit, the blood, the unconscious robbers, and the very welcome wail of approaching sirens. “I’m lucky he talks to me at all. If he found out I was holding that back, too? One more secret and he’s gone.”
Josh worked his arm up off the floor to make some emphatic kind of gesture, anything really to pretend his arms didn’t feel numb. He managed to point at him, but that only left Josh noticing that Daredevil looked nearly as pale as the guy bleeding out of his leg. “Hate to tell you this, dude, but you’ve already got a secret.”
The look on Daredevil’s face… well, Josh thought that his pining was tragic, but Desiree was amazing. She’d known him when he was an acne-covered nerd and had stayed friends with him as he transitioned to the acne-speckled nerd that was working through an online computer science degree. If she did turn him down, it was going to be weird for a while, but he could soldier on through it like the time when she was dating Shawn and the absolute jerk didn’t want her talking to any other guys.
Daredevil looked like he’d been shot, almost, but maybe part of that was just how loud sirens could resonate in a parking garage. Josh turned his head to see a couple cop cars and an ambulance all pulling close.
“Use me as your excuse,” Josh said firmly. “Trust me, people that do not see this shit every day think you’re supposed to get all this dramatic stuff like life flashing before your eyes and life-changing epiphanies. I am going to tell Desiree that I want to date her and you are going to tell your friend that you didn’t want to make things awkward.” He was talking fast, and keeping his voice low while the police started to get out of their squad cars, but Daredevil was listening.
“You didn’t want to make things awkward, you won’t say anything else about it unless he brings it up, but you wanted to clear the air. Maybe bring beer or whatever along to apologize with or even better to drink together, because whether or not it goes well somebody needs to be drunk after that.” Josh was pretty sure somebody would need a drink, anyway, because if his advice was shitty he’d not exactly be able to tell.
Josh was maybe a lot too punch-drunk on lecturing a willing vigilante, because when the cops escorting the ambulance had their weapons drawn, all Josh felt was anger.
“Hey! Could we please not shoot the guy putting pressure on my leg,” Josh barked in his best ‘do not ever have sex in the office again or I will tell regional management’ voice. “This very nice Good Samaritan was on his way back from a costume party when he decided to not have me bleed out of my thigh.”
One of the paramedics was peering from behind the police officers. The other was already on his way over. When one of the cops tried to grab him, the giant of a man in blue scrubs turned slowly. “Sir,” the paramedic said evenly with all signals that ‘sir’ was an insult. “I am a combat-experienced medic and Army veteran. If we do not get a tourniquet on that man’s leg, we have zero chance of this encounter ending with an alive civilian. Past that we are not risking a tourniquet on the damn potholes. Mattingly, call in an airlift.”
Josh decided the big paramedic was his second favorite person. Well, third favorite, because Desiree was always first and Daredevil still made a strong case for second. The big man worked some apparent tourniquet just above the vigilante’s knee-pin. When the paramedic yanked it tight, he checked his work for several seconds before nodding. “Alright. You in the mask, ease up slightly,” he said. The paramedic smiled a few seconds later. “Great. Unidentified concerned citizen, I no longer need you to keep pressure.”
The taller cop had already holstered his handgun. He checked the pulse on each bank robber before looking back to his partner. “Bob, these guys shot an unnecessary hostage. I vote we wait on the next paramedic units for these two and unfortunately missed whatever parkour shit Daredevil played right when the tourniquet went into play.”
The broad-shouldered cop nodded slowly. “Just this once.” He looked over the scene again before nodding. “We don’t have the body cameras and nobody’s given a shit in two weeks that our dash cam is broken, there isn’t a scrap of audio anybody’s going to get. Hell of a lot of blood for somebody to photograph, though. Thanks for staying on the scene, Mr. Samaritan, but I imagine the DA doesn’t need bonus testimony on this one. The less you’re involved the more easily these two stay in jail.”
“It's your lucky day. Go talk to your friend,” Josh muttered. The paramedic glanced at him, puzzled, but Daredevil nodded once before ran away from the group and jumped out the damn window of the fifth floor parking garage.
Fill: Stars May Collide 1b/2
(Anonymous) 2016-06-27 02:42 am (UTC)(link)Josh woke up in a hospital bed surrounded by a lot of wires and tubes and lines. There was definitely a bag draining blood down a red tube into Josh’s arm, which was weird, but the button that added more pain medication into the mix from a green tube was quickly a favorite. The clear tube of other fluids was too complicated to puzzle out yet. A nurse explained he was in the ICU in case he started bleeding again, and that the surgeon would stop by to explain how he had fixed his femoral artery sometime when Josh was awake and the surgeon wasn’t operating on someone else. Josh stayed awake long enough to realize that ice chips were fantastic and to add Desiree to his approved-visitors list, she’d been calling trying to get an update but all they could say was ‘serious condition.’
Late the next morning, Josh really hoped that Daredevil’s friend wasn’t too harsh on him. Daredevil was probably doing all kinds of illegal things, and he definitely punched people a lot, but Josh was very happy to be doped up in his hospital bed taking occasional sips of nasty lukewarm hospital broth while Desi held his better hand.
She’d had a crush too. They were dating. She was already his best friend, so instead of being nervous about the first date, he was incredibly happy that the two of them were going to try turning his fifteen minutes of fame into Hamilton tickets. They were going to see a show and get some coffee after and he’d already kissed her and never wanted to stop.
That afternoon, Josh accepted an interview from the Bulletin because he had to do something for his favorite superhero. He kept it cool and stayed with the facts, of course, because Daredevil didn’t need his personal business anywhere near the media. Josh made sure that the paramedics and cops got credit, too, because he had no idea that slamming somebody’s knee into a thigh was sometimes a life-saving move.
“I’m just lucky that he was there,” Josh had said when the reporter asked for any final messages. “Whatever he does with the rest of his life? He took the time to save mine. So… thanks, Daredevil. I know that nobody else would have been there in time, and I hope he knows that someone appreciates his work.” He shook the reporter’s hand and smiled at Desi. Turned out the only sensation on par with a dose of pain medication so far was Desi smiling back and leaning in to kiss him on the cheek. The reporter was already cooing over the pair that the two made and Josh bet half the article was going to be the part where half the ICU staff was calling them cute pet-names. Whoever Daredevil's friend was... Josh hoped that both Daredevil and his friend took someone else's happy beginning as a hint.
Re: Fill: Stars May Collide 1b/2
(Anonymous) 2016-06-27 04:26 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: Stars May Collide 1b/2
(Anonymous) 2016-06-27 05:51 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: Stars May Collide 1b/2
(Anonymous) 2016-06-27 07:11 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: Stars May Collide 1b/2
(Anonymous) 2016-10-05 08:48 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: Stars May Collide 1b/2
(Anonymous) 2016-12-30 10:28 am (UTC)(link)Fill: Stars May Collide 2a/2
(Anonymous) 2016-10-08 10:45 pm (UTC)(link)There is no intention of bashing past behavior, just a familiar sense that what you yelled in the moment that felt so right might seem harsh when you look back. It went a bit off planned direction but here’s the rest of the fill. I still have no great ending for this but I like the rest of it, so here it is.
Stars May Collide 2/2
Matt was still peeling himself out of the suit when he felt Foggy’s heartbeat at the edge of his senses and moving closer. He could still sense Foggy before almost anyone else, more than he’d tracked anyone after Stick left, but lately it was hard to understand just what Foggy wasn’t saying to him.
He didn’t begrudge Foggy’s anger. Matt was definitely more of the ‘log in your own eye’ type when it came to anger issues. It was hard to tolerate having Foggy angry with him all of the time but it wasn’t as if Matt could give anything that his friend wanted. Listening to people that needed his help and just staying in his apartment wasn’t an option anymore. He’d saved someone, tonight, someone who hadn’t made a single pretense at a lie. He would never believe that it would be better to give up Daredevil when there were people like Josh alive because of him.
He wasn’t all that sure that ‘Matt Murdock, Attorney at Law’ was more useful than Daredevil. He might have done better to focus more on his hand-to-hand and get some unremarkable job that let him moon over Foggy from a little more distance.
Foggy was heading up the stairs now, though, fast enough that he’d need to catch his breath soon. He was carrying something heavy enough to leave his footsteps uneven and really should slow down a little. Matt gave up on the very idea of getting back into the armor. Both legs were tacky and blood-soaked, worst at the knee that had been putting pressure directly on Josh’s femoral artery and the leg that had been directly in the pool of blood. He was wearing boxer-briefs and half of an outfit, Foggy would just have to deal.
The tumblers in the lock fell into place as Foggy let himself in. Foggy, always careful, shut the door and turned the lock before dropping his burden and storming forward.
“What the fuck, Matt, how much blood is even on you.”
Matt winced. He should have guessed that the story would have been leaked already. Identifying himself in the 911 call hadn’t been his brightest move, maybe, but he didn’t know what would have happened if the ambulance crew had been afraid of him or if the cops hadn’t expected to see him. He had wanted the police to know that he couldn’t move away from the civilian. “None of it’s mine?” he offered hesitantly.
“It was breaking news, so congratulations you made the local station.” Foggy turned away, seemingly appeased that Matt wasn’t wounded, and went back for his bag. “Nice on the painter drop-cloth there, by the way. I figured you usually had a better plan for blood than swooning and waiting on me. How did you swing a blind guy getting one of those?”
“Said that I was buying supplies for a friend to paint my apartment,” Matt said. Finally, he worked both of his legs out of the outfit and left it on the dropcloth. “Anything on my feet?”
“Doesn’t look like it,” Foggy said, shifting to see better. “Are you going to rinse off?”
“Yeah. I’ll be back in a minute to clean that up.”
“I can start it for you,” Foggy offered.
Matt tilted his head, considering. If Foggy was willing, he wouldn’t turn down the help. “The left part of the kitchen sink. Body armor can’t be soaked. It’ll need to get rinsed, first, with cold water. If you want to do any more than that, I have baby shampoo in the bottom drawer.”
“Baby shampoo? Matt, that stuff is for innocent little babies. That’s… a mess.”
“My- um- tailor. He recommended it. It works better than laundry detergent but still can get some of the stains off of ballistic panels.” Matt wasn’t sure if he should say more, or if Foggy wanted to hear more, but he was abruptly aware that he was standing in the middle of his apartment streaked with blood and only wearing underwear. He retreated to the shower to try to get the last traces of blood washed down the drain. There wasn’t much chance of the smell of blood leaving his sinuses any time soon.
Pajamas were a completely unsatisfying replacement for armor. Being Daredevil felt like being someone important. Nobody grabbed him by the elbow to tug him across the street. Nobody acted like he was deaf and mute as well as blind because nobody knew he was blind. Wearing the ragged-edged Columbia Law t-shirt and flannel pants Foggy’s mom had given him for his first Christmas at the Nelson home just felt like he was wearing all of his feelings on his sleeves, but Foggy had said no more lies.
Foggy had settled onto the couch and opened a bottle of beer. It wasn’t one that Matt recognized but it already smelled better than their last experiment. “It looks cleaner, you can check later,” Foggy said when Matt hesitated in the doorway. “I didn’t see any more blood on it but that was a lot of blood.”
“What did the news say?”
“Somebody leaked a 911 call where somebody said he was Daredevil.”
Foggy’s heartbeat still hadn’t settled back into its normal rhythms. It made new accelerations and skips, now, new fluctuations in the pattern that hadn’t been there before. It left Matt feeling like he was trying to learn a new person’s patterns all over again. “There were a couple bank robbers that panicked and grabbed a hostage. I heard a few cops talking about it, some off-duty rookie pulled a gun and just made them panic more and run.”
“The news didn’t say even that much,” Foggy said, patting the cushion next to him. “Just that Daredevil had reportedly called 911 on behalf of an injured person, and then a lot of people hypothesizing what had happened. The police refused to release a transcript or a recording of the call as it was an ongoing situation.”
“I was staying a floor up from them. They were in a parking garage over by the water, trying to figure out what they would do next. The shooter said that he didn’t mean to fire.” Matt settled onto the couch carefully, not quite sure of his welcome. It was his apartment, maybe, but Foggy had been setting all the limits about how much contact and how much friendship was too much lately. “I knocked both of the robbers out before I realized how bad the bleeding was. They hit their hostage in the thigh—Josh. His name is Josh,” Matt added, because talking about the man as ‘the hostage’ didn’t seem right after long minutes spent pressed against him. It was the most contact he’d had with anyone since the last time he and Foggy had staggered home drunk after a good night out.
“I didn’t wait for updates. The police gave a statement that the suspects were in custody, the hostage was being transported to Metro General, and Daredevil got away and I headed this way.” Foggy cracked the cap off a second bottle and held it out. “Not sure if you want a drink, but I figured I’d want one.”
“Yeah, sure.” It smelled good. The beer was a stout, this time, not the IPAs Foggy had been finding lately. They had used fresh hops, not something that had been portioned out into a plastic wrapping, and they hadn’t overdone the isinglass. The last brewery used enough that all of their beer tasted like fish.
“My victory for the night,” Foggy announced happily. “You made the ‘this is not swill’ face and took a second sip without any hints of the ‘I will not waste this awful beer that should be used as floor cleaner’ face.”
Matt really wanted to know what Foggy and his face looked like when he was happy. He needed to get a grip, though, because that wasn’t going to happen. “It’s pretty good, yeah.”
“Alright. I’m half a beer in, buddy, go for it.”
Matt nodded. “The bullet hit Josh in the thigh. About here,” he said, tapping his own thigh in demonstration. “I could smell the blood and could hear more of it spraying out. Veins leak. Arteries pulse out blood.”
“There was blood everywhere, Matt. Was it…”
“It was pretty bad,” Matt said, turning the bottle in his hand. “I was a floor up to start with and then had to waste time with the robbers. I lucked out that one had zip-ties in his back pocket. By the time they were going to stay out of the way, Josh had already lost a lot of blood. I… a few weeks ago, there was something similar. Someone died before the ambulance could get there, so I asked Claire. She taught me something from her trauma life support class. It’s hard to put enough pressure on the femoral artery with a compress, so they teach soldiers and first responders to use their body. It hurts, a lot, but if you compress with your knee…” He pressed just where he’d had to put almost all of his weight. “You slam down on top of the artery to compress it down. When the paramedics got there, one of them had a tourniquet ready and then they could move him.”
“That’d do it.” Foggy shuddered and set the empty beer bottle aside with a clink. “You don’t carry tourniquets in your sad lack of a utility belt, so it was just you.”
“Right. That’s why I called it in.”
“Burner phone?”
“I broke the sim card and threw that in the Hudson. I broke the phone into a few more pieces and left them in a few different dumpsters on my way back.”
“That doesn’t even sound paranoid anymore, Matt, how is this our life.” Foggy leaned back into the couch. “I’m surprised you’re not out there still punching people. I think I have a contact adrenaline high. I really thought I’d get here and be asleep on your couch before you made it back.”
“Too much blood. I would have stopped if I heard anything on my way back, still, but I just wanted to get out of that.” Matt felt something inside him thrum with an embarrassing amount of happiness that Foggy said ‘our life.’ Every little slip like that made it increasingly likely Matt still had his friend.
Josh would never meet him again. Matt didn’t have to care that somewhere in the city, if Josh was alive, he was going to tell Desiree from the record store what he felt.
The words were paltry and inadequate and definitely weren’t eloquent enough to begin his case. Matt forced them out anyway. “Josh and I talked,” he started, still tasting the blood in the air. There had been so much he’d thought that Josh’s heartbeat would stutter into nothing below him, and without the pressure on the leg, CPR would have been useless. “I had to keep him awake.”
“Heck of a time to try to figure out small talk. Nice weather we’re having, do you happen to take any blood thinners, are you a Jehovah’s Witness.” Foggy reached over to nudge Matt in the shoulder. “You won today, buddy. That guy wouldn’t have had a chance without you. Legal system kind of has a zero on being the first responder to an accident outside of ambulance-chasers.”
Fill: Stars May Collide 2b/2
(Anonymous) 2016-10-08 10:46 pm (UTC)(link)Life-changing epiphanies, Josh had said. He had been edging toward dying and just saying her name had changed something in his heartbeat. He’d stopped drifting so far and everything about his voice was stronger and softer all at once.
“He had a crush on his best friend,” Matt said. “He didn’t say how long it had been going on, but long enough where he felt stupid bringing it up and like people would think he was only there to get a date instead of a friend.”
“That is rough,” Foggy said, reaching forward for another beer. “I’ll drink to your buddy Josh, that is an unhappy situation to be in.”
Matt felt unhappy. He didn’t want to ruin the peace between them. He didn’t want to listen to all of the reasons that he should have said something years ago. He at least could have mentioned that he’d had two dates with a guy from his Spanish class. Morgan hadn’t been a girl and he should have corrected Foggy’s assumption at the time. He just couldn’t stand having the talk every single time he admitted that he liked men, too. Everyone else would tell him how they thought he should feel. It was ungrateful for him to say something like that when a Catholic orphanage had taken them in. Clearly he couldn’t be Catholic and bi. They’d act like it was something that he’d never discussed with Father Lantom, as if it was any business of theirs what he’d discussed with Father Lantom.
They acted like everything else about his entire being was some kind of elaborate smokescreen and lie to justify hiding something.
They were probably right.
“Um. Matt?”
“Sorry. Long night,” he said. He couldn’t feel anything on the beer’s label. It was just smooth plastic over the adhesive.
“You saved somebody today, though. You and your crazy hearing.” For the first time, Foggy sounded fond, like it was just any other weird trait you knew about a friend. “I… are you even up for this? I don’t want to shove you into a serious talk if you aren’t up for it.”
Foggy was always letting things go and letting Matt get away with too much.
“I should talk about it before I stop myself.” Matt set the beer bottle aside even as he really wanted something to do with his hands. People that used sight to imagine what people were feeling cared all too much about what someone’s hands were doing. “You said no more secrets, and I…”
Matt didn’t know what his face was doing, but Foggy set his hand on Matt’s knee.
“I was kind of in a shitty mood, Matt. I realized a few days later that it isn’t like I told you everything in my life, and that I try to figure out if you’re lying by what you’re doing with your face and hands. There’s this way your eyes move when you’re upset,” Foggy continued, voice too gentle. “Kinda like now. You have your glasses on for the rest of the world, Matt, but this? This is not a happy face.”
It had to be today. Someone had almost died and Matt had saved him. Maybe helping Josh was enough to ask for consideration just once, and then Foggy never had to mention it again and Matt wouldn’t have a secret eating away at Foggy’s trust for him.
“You don’t have to ever mention this again,” Matt said when he could force the words out. “Ever, actually. But the reason that I never liked Marci is that I wanted to date you instead, but figured it out a bit late and you’re the best friend I’ve ever had and I never wanted to lose that. I’d still rather date you than anyone else. But I never knew how to mention the senses, or the… Stick. Anything with him is always a disaster. I never wanted to be somebody that you felt sorry for, though, so that’s… it,” he finished weakly. Foggy was sitting completely still, breath caught as if he had tried to interrupt two sentences back, and Matt had maybe ruined everything except a promise to some ex-hostage he was never going to meet again.
“Okay. Before addressing any of the rest of that—I should not have said that, Matt,” Foggy said slowly. His heartbeat was still off-kilter, compared to Before, but settling back toward something. “I should not have said I felt sorry for you or that I wanted to kick your ass. Reasonable-Foggy of the present feels bad about that too. At the time, I was scared and mad and had the super-mature middle schooler mentality of feeling like our friendship was all a joke to you because you were a little nervous about mentioning your super-senses. Which, um, fair, because the scent thing alone makes me feel uncomfortable about the times I thought you had no idea that Marci and I didn’t always go to her room.”
Whatever else would come after, Foggy didn’t hate him.
Matt hadn’t realized just how many times he had lost sleep to wondering how Foggy would explain that this was one secret too many and that Foggy was going to get his life back on track and go to a Matt-free law practice where he was paid in wages instead of goodwill.
“Aw, Matt,” Foggy said. “Honestly I’m glad you didn’t tell me that part when there was still your blood everywhere. That would not have gone well at all, and I definitely wouldn’t have thought it sounded possible. But if we’re dating, Karen needs to know, and probably needs to know about Daredevil too since there’s no way I am taking blame for all the bruises you pick up.”
Matt replayed the last minute of his life and still wasn’t sure what had just happened. He was pretty sure that this was the best dream he’d developed in years, however, so he wasn’t about to break the scene.
“That’s getting ahead of things, though, because first you’re going to drink water and go to sleep. We’ll repeat this conversation when you’re not exhausted,” dream-Foggy said, patting him on the back and gently nudging him into drinking two glasses of water before getting some sleep. Dream-Foggy was the best, Matt decided, a feeling that lasted all the way until waking up in the morning and realizing that Foggy’s heartbeat was still in his apartment. So was Foggy, who was awake and scrolling through something on his phone.
“Your buddy’s okay,” Foggy called when Matt opened the bedroom door. “Josh, from last night? His surgery went fine, they’re just making sure that the repair job sticks. He said that he’s lucky you were there. He appreciates your work. He’s also making reciprocated goo-goo eyes at a very pretty young woman named Desiree.”
Matt frowned. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to ask if they’d actually had that talk last night. “I’m… glad.”
“Matt. I hit on you the first time you walked into our room. I am friends with all of my exes, not that I’m planning on being your ex, but we have that fallback. I wouldn’t be Lois Lane for just anybody, either.” Foggy paused just long enough to be sure Matt was paying attention to him- one of his new tricks since finding out about the senses. “You had a big damn hero moment yesterday that was tangentially related to beating on people, Matt, just… work with it. Telling people the truth feels good.”
“Karen should know,” Matt agreed slowly. The idea was strange, after years of secrecy being the best way to protect himself, but he trusted Karen. He trusted Foggy.
“Sounds like a plan,” Foggy replied.
He could hear Foggy’s smile in the way it shaped his words. There was also an easiness to his posture and the way that he shifted over to make room for Matt. Maybe this was a new baseline for Foggy being happy with Matt.
Re: Fill: Stars May Collide 2b/2
(Anonymous) 2016-10-09 02:34 am (UTC)(link)Wonderfull job!
Re: Fill: Stars May Collide 2b/2
(Anonymous) 2016-10-09 01:31 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: Stars May Collide 2b/2
(Anonymous) 2016-10-09 04:25 pm (UTC)(link)