Work Text
They have a client first thing in the morning and Matt’s knuckles are torn all to hell again, so Karen has to pull a quick distraction while Matt slips away and wraps them up because he forgot about them when he fell onto the couch of bleeding last night to get three seconds of shut-eye before it was time to get up again. It’s a narrow thing, but they manage, and when the door swings back shut two hours later Matt’s vibrating all over the office because apparently the case that’s just been dropped in their laps has ties to something he’s been chasing whispers over the rooftops about recently.Foggy and Karen banish him to go fetch sustenance for this disgusting display of energy, and then Karen loses rock-paper-scissors and has to stay and do paperwork while Foggy tagged along.It depended on the day whether that was considered winning or not.Matt looks sufficiently not-mauled enough to pass for ‘mildly banged up bystander of supervillain attack’ under the light of day and not, say, ‘mugged car-crash victim’, so the wrapped hands and split lip and massive blossoming jawbone bruise half-hidden by stubble go without a second glance. Foggy totes the food back with one arm and keeps Matt’s hand hooked firmly in the crook of the other, because whenever Matt goes out he gets twitchy and if nobody went with him to keep him on track the food would probably be dumped somewhere, tragically forgotten, while Matt goes off chasing screams and like, the smell of illicit dealings or something.At least this way the food gets back.Matt twitches again. Foggy sighs, and releases him.“Karen’s going to eat yours,” he warns after Matt’s already vanished back; tilts his head, swears he can hear a faint clunk of something light hitting the side of a dumpster, then what could conceivably be someone’s feet landing on a fire escape.Well, he’s gone then.Foggy shakes his head and keeps walking. “Twenty says he splits that lip back open,” is what Karen greets him with when he walks back in the door. Her phone’s propped up against the tallest stack of paperwork and chiming away. Foggy’s doesn’t know what kind of alerts she has set up on there and he’s honestly too afraid to ask.“That’s a sucker’s bet,” Foggy retorts, depositing her order in front of her. Months ago, this mayhaps would have been where he said ‘ but he doesn’t have the suit’ . He’s since learned better- All Matt needs is something to tie around his eyes and the Devil’s ready to smash some heads. A couple of times he hasn’t even bothered with that much. “Bet on if he’ll be coming back today or if the next time we see him he’s bleeding on the floor again.”“Maybe we should warn Claire,” Karen says thoughtfully, and then the door rattles open and they have to work again. Matt never resurfaced and he wasn’t home when Foggy and Karen dropped by after closing time with booze, so they let themselves in to continue what’s been rapidly becoming a tradition of light drinking and waiting with a finger on Claire’s speed dial. It’s almost relaxing, in a weird sort of way, as long as no one involved mentions or thinks too hard about how they’re literally waiting for their blind vigilante friend to drag himself back home, fully expecting him to be bleeding all over everything as a best-case scenario.Really, really try not to think about that. That’s what the booze is for.Despite Foggy’s dire warning, Karen did not, in fact, eat Matt’s food. This is because Matt doesn’t eat actual people food 80% of the time and you could not pay Karen to touch 70% of that. Instead the bag sits, forlorn and cold, on Matt’s countertop, for when Matt inevitably needs to eat something to kick-start replacing whatever blood he’s most recently lost.Matt tumbles in after they’ve been there an hour. Short for him.He’s split his lip back open again. Karen holds out her hand expectantly. Foggy hisses and reminds her he didn’t take her up on that bet.Karen remains unmoved and wiggles her fingers.Foggy gives in and deposits a twenty. Karen smiles brilliantly and makes it vanish.Matt is ignoring all this. Matt is digging through his closet, because apparently Daredevil hasn’t been punched in the head enough yet today. Daredevil has people to trail and criminals to terrorize and might not make it to the office tomorrow morning.Foggy reminds him that the office is closed tomorrow anyway for the repaint. You know, the one we’ve been waiting for for three months?Matt does not appear to comprehend this. Matt’s mind could not physically be further away from this conversation. His head keeps tilting, tracking something nobody else in the room can hear. Matt either does not realize or does not care that the suit he’s wrestling on has an old splotch of blood on the shoulder and reeks of old sweat and gunpowder.Come to think of it, Foggy doesn’t actually know if Matt ever cleans the suit. Does he?Matt actually stops, tilting his head, kind of like a baffled puppy. “... No?”Alright then. The morning dawns on a gleeful Daredevil crawling through Foggy’s window and almost getting smacked by a baseball bat because Foggy’s learned how to be paranoid very well in the past year.Daredevil is not bothered by this. Daredevil dumps a bunch of papers with horrifying bloodstains all over them on Foggy’s previously crime-free table and rolls back out the window as fast as he came.Foggy squints at the table. Squints at his open window. Back at the table. Get reminded bizarrely of cats bringing home mutilated small rodents to place lovingly in their owners shoes.Goes back to bed, because no.Too early for this nonsense. Matt pops back up at lunch with two fingers taped together, butterflies tacking together his face, and the old hoodie and baseball-cap combo that generally means he’s got busted ribs or stitches underneath.He’s in a good mood because Daredevil scared three muggers into finding religion last night. Karen has footage, summoned up from the depths of the internet and playing tinnily from the speakers of her unholy phone. Karen is in a very good mood because those bloody papers, apparently, were to be a gift to her- they had disappeared from Foggy’s table before he had staggered back out of bed- and they had vanished in a bag Foggy feared only a little less than her phone.Foggy was in a good mood because a) the highly unsanitary and guaranteed illegal papers were off his table, b) Matt was not dead, half-dead, or currently dying at the moment, and c) this deli made really good sandwiches.The sun is warm, the food is good, Karen and Matt are bantering light and playful in the background. Foggy cuts in with remarks of his own and gets drawn in rapidly, and ends up getting a piece of apple bounced off his forehead at one point that somehow vanishes as it falls and leaves him and Karen scrambling to find it. Matt laughs at them. Karen accuses him of being the culprit, which he denies. They proceed to put him on trial to discover the truth. It’s a good day.