Chapter Text
It was one of those days.
Those days were happening more often than Foggy would’ve liked.
You know, the days not only did Matt show up late (meaning Foggy had to spend the first hour or so of his day squashing his instinctive panic that Matt was dead or dying in an alley somewhere), but when he did show up, he looked like something a raccoon dug out of a dumpster.
So today Matt limped into the office at a nine-thirty (nine-thirty-three, to be exact), and to his credit, he was wearing a nice suit. Clean, ironed, all the buttons buttoned in the right place. And his tie! His tie was a nice, subdued color and tied very nicely.
That was about all Foggy could say in terms of positives.
His knuckles? Bruised and swollen and cut, obviously.
His hair? Looked like Matt made an attempt to comb it and forgot what he was doing halfway through and maybe he managed to successfully wash the dirt and sweat and who-knew-what-else out of it, but he failed to get rid of all the blood, which had dried in messy streaks dribbling from his hair down around his left ear.
And his face? Foggy wasn’t sure what was worse: the stupendous black eye visible despite his glasses, the cut lip, or what looked like road burn on his jaw. He apparently had decided that a razer wasn’t a good idea on such raw skin, so he was looking scruffier than usual, which Foggy normally would say wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but today it really contributed to the dumpster look.
Oh, and then there was the limp, and the way he sounded out of breath just from, you know, walking to the office. This from the man could parkour for a mile and call it warming up.
So Foggy was, to put it mildly, concerned. Anxious. Apprehensive, even.
Unfortunately, Matt didn’t respond well to concern. Doubly unfortunately, he could read concern in Foggy’s heartbeat, or something like that.
“…Hey, buddy,” Foggy said. “Rough night?”
Matt, curse him, had the audacity to smirk even while he leaned heavily against the nearest upright surface (the doorframe) while he held his cane loosely with one hand. “You could say that.”
The smirk, Foggy concluded, meant the night had been successful (in Matt’s mind, at least), no matter the damage to his physical person. “What was it this time?”
“Gang war,” Matt said simply.
Foggy waited a bit, but he didn’t elaborate. Foggy raised his eyebrows (a wasted effort). “…And?”
“And I took them all out.” The smirk got smirkier. “There must’ve been thirty of ’em. Too busy fighting each other to realize I was there. Then it was too late.”
Gang war. Great. “…Guns?” Foggy asked, even though he definitely didn’t really want to know.”
“A few.”
Foggy closed his eyes. “Are you okay?”
“Thirty of them, Fogs. These people have probably been responsible for a third of Hell’s Kitchen’s murders in the last six months.”
Yes, murder bad, but he was avoiding the question. Foggy stepped closer. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
That was such a typical Matt response, Foggy didn’t know why he even—
“It mostly just hurts here.” Matt gestured to his chest.
And that wasn’t normal. “What’s wrong?” Foggy demanded, but his hands were softer than his voice as he took Matt’s arm and guided him carefully to the nearest chair.
A wince flashed across Matt’s face as he lowered himself (very stiffly) onto the seat. Now to be fair, the chair was like seven dollars at the thrift store and one of the most uncomfortable things Foggy ever had the misfortune to sit on, but this was Matt. He never winced when he sat on that chair.
“Nothing,” Matt said.
Sometimes Matt said things and Foggy elected to ignore it entirely. This was one of those times.
“Are you bleeding?” Foggy asked, debating whether to try to feel for injuries. It was just, he didn’t have Claire’s magic healing hands, and trying to feel up Matt for stab wounds or bullet holes or whatever might end up with Foggy knocking a rib out of alignment. Or something.
Matt made a face. “Everything tastes like copper.”
“That would be the split lip, buddy,” Foggy said as patiently as he could while visually scrutinizing Matt’s suit. It was a dark gray so dark it was almost black. Did he choose it on purpose so no one could see if he was bleeding through it?
“Oh,” Matt said.
Did he…did he forget his lip was split?
“Matt,” Foggy said slowly, “did you get hit on the head?”
Wait, stupid question, what with the blood in his hair and everything.
“Matt,” Foggy tried again, “how hard did you get hit on the head?”
Matt tried to cock his head in his signature head tilt, but the rapid motion apparently hurt, because he winced again.
Head injury. Yep. All right. The good news was that Foggy was very used to handling this by now. “Did you pass out? Feel sick? What day is it? Make a sentence out of ‘hunter,’ ‘field,’ and ‘fox.’”
Matt opened his mouth…but all that came out was: “Huh?”
Admittedly, maybe Foggy wasn’t as used to handling head injuries as he liked to think. Still, a non-concussed Matt would absolutely have a better response than “huh.”
“I’m calling Claire,” Foggy announced.
“No,” Matt protested.
“Yes,” Foggy shot back, already getting out his phone.
“Fogs—” Matt reached for Foggy’s wrist and missed by about three inches.
“Too late,” Foggy informed him as he punched in Claire’s number.
“Wait!” This time, Matt actually snatched Foggy’s phone from his hand.
Foggy gaped at him. “What’s wrong with you?”
He expected Matt to make some dumb argument about how he wasn’t actually hurt or maybe a slightly less-dumb argument about how Claire didn’t need to be bothered, but what he actually said, in a clipped voice, was: “New client.”
Oh. “What, now?”
“They’ll be knocking in about thirty seconds.”
Foggy swore under his breath. All right. Time to triage. “Don’t move.” He gave his hand a massive lick, grabbed Matt by the lapel, and started rubbing at the blood by his ear.
“Gross, Foggy.”
“Shut up. I’m helping you.” Foggy managed to get the worst of the smears off. No time to do anything about the black eye or the split lip, though. Hopefully the road rash wasn’t too obvious under his scruff. “You’d better have a story worthy of a Pulitzer.”
“Uh…”
The knock sounded on the door. Right on time.
Foggy plastered on a winning smile.
The door opened. It was…oh no. It was a young woman, probably in her mid-twenties, that was all. She clutched a manilla folder of papers and looked nervous enough just setting foot in a law firm.
She saw Foggy, tried to smile, opened her mouth to say something…and then she saw Matt, and the words died.
Great.
“Hi!” Foggy said cheerfully. Probably too cheerfully. “I’m Foggy Nelson, and this is my partner, Matt Murdock. Don’t mind him, he walked into a…uh…a forklift.”
Matt’s eyebrows scrunched in confusion that clearly said: a forklift?
“Oh my goodness,” the young woman said, sounding completely baffled.
“Yeah, y’know, it happens.” Foggy shrugged with a grimace. “Looks worse than it is, though. Anyway. Um. How can we help you?”
“I…um…I just had some questions about some stuff going on with my ex…”
“Yeah, absolutely! If you wanna just follow me, we can come sit down.” Foggy led her into the conference room. Matt followed behind. Limping. Foggy noted where she sat at the conference room table, and picked a chair at an angle (not directly across; that tended to make people feel intimidated) and noted out of the corner of his eye as Matt limped into another chair. Foggy cleared his throat loudly, explained how attorney-client confidentiality worked, and asked, “What’s the situation?”
Her name was María. She started talking about a child custody nightmare (it sounded like she had a different attorney at one point and they massively screwed it up) but after only like ten minutes, Matt started coughing and she broke off with a gasp.
Foggy whipped around and…and yeah. Matt was. Coughing up blood.
Blood.
On their nice conference room table.
A strange calm settled over Foggy. This was the kind of thing that used to send him into a panic. Well, it was the kind of thing that would send every normal person without medical training into a panic. And Foggy used to be actually sort of normal. At least, he was only weird in fun, quirky ways.
He was not normal anymore.
He stood up. “María, I am so sorry, but it looks like the forklift did more damage than I thought.” He was already getting out his phone and punching in Claire’s number. “Can we reschedule?”
“Sorry,” Matt said dazedly.
“He needs to go to a hospital!” María blurted out.
“No,” Matt whisper-groaned.
“It’s all right,” Foggy said quickly, trying to sound very Calm and Professional. “I’ll take care of him. María, here’s a card, give us a call any time to—”
She didn’t take the card. She was, instead, scrambling to get around the conference table and over to Matt. “Do you guys have a car? I have a car! I can drive you, it’s no trouble—”
Oh, no. “No, no, we don’t need—”
“Are you insane?”
Well. Yeah. Maybe.
Foggy missed the days when “let’s go to a hospital” actually felt like a feasible plan and was his natural response to medical emergencies.
Foggy braced himself. “Okay, Matt, she’s right. Hospital.”
Matt flinched. “No—”
María was now looking at them like they were both insane.
“Yes,” Foggy said in his most stern voice. “What if something’s broken?”
“S’not,” Matt said weakly. “S’just bruised lungs.”
Was that true? And did that mean he didn’t need a hospital? Foggy hesitated. Because a hospital meant…well. It meant coming up with a better cover story than “he ran into a forklift.” And it meant the possibility that no cover story would be good enough and someone would actually figure out the truth.
And it meant activating a not-insignificant portion of Matt’s PTSD.
So if it really was just bruised lungs, and if bruised lungs weren’t the kind of thing that needed a hospital, then maybe it wasn’t worth it.
Problem was, Foggy had no idea and he couldn’t exactly trust Matt’s opinion on the subject and he couldn’t very well call Claire with María standing there with her car keys literally in hand.
And so, hating himself a little, Foggy made an executive decision. “María, thank you very much. We’re going to the hospital.”