Translation of Languages Murdock

N. Clevenger (June 2015)

Notes: More overly detailed nonsense from me, inspired in part by a prompt on the Daredevil kink meme – see end notes – and written mainly because I can't seem to stop. I was going to do something from another POV, if only for variety, but I'm having trouble finding my way out of Matt's head. This one's all migraine, and if nausea and the like squicks you as much as it does me, consider yourself warned. But there's plenty of bromance and comfort – plus the angstiest of angsty angst – and if you make it through I promise you the (questionable) reward of more Drugged!Matt toward the end.

Poor Matty's not really making it out of bed in this one. Set post s1, though with no real spoilers or references. Netflix/Marvel canon. As always, your comments make me very happy – I love hearing what you enjoyed (or didn't), and that sometimes you're cursing me for tricking you into reading something you never meant to. I make no money, because they don't belong to me.

TickTick

It's raining. But he can't feel it. Pouring, a flood of water he can hear but not smell. It's baffling.

TickTick

No – shower. His neighbor's shower, streaming down in the next apartment over. The man's singing, an off-key warble that could be floating from the pillow beside Matt's head. He groans, rolls over and buries himself under its feathery softness. The pillow does exactly nothing to help.

TickTick

Chumbawamba. A complex flow of syllables for so early in the morning, but it rolls unrequested through Matt's mind. "Tubthumping." Another bizarre word, and one that brings with it a remembered chunk of the chorus. I get knocked down, but I get up again... He'd be able to hear the lyrics even if his neighbor wasn't shrieking them in his ear. As no doubt now he's going to be hearing them all day.

TickTick

What is that?

Matt pokes only his nose out from under the pillow, all the effort he's willing to make at the moment. There's coffee brewing – probably from more than one apartment in the building – and the garbage truck responsible for his block has been through sometime in the last half hour. Stirred-up odors of rotting food and molding cardboard, filling the room even though he knows he left the window closed when he went to bed. Disgusting, but not ticking.

TickTick

He takes a whiskey drink, he takes a vodka drink. Matt feels like he's been drinking. Hasn't managed to lift his head yet, but he can already tell there's a headache lurking. He'd been out late last night. The night before. Daredevil hasn't made it home before four all week, leaving Matt with only a couple of hours to sleep before starting the whole thing over again with his day job.

Sleeping's never been much of a comfort anyway.

When he's finally able to narrow the ticking down to his nightstand, to his wristwatch, there's no sense of accomplishment. He just feels stupid. Slow. The echoing noise is far too impactful to be coming from that tiny motion of the second hand, but Matt darts out a hand to snag it and it's muted a bit when he pulls it back under the bedsheets. Not enough. Still, the causal relationship seems indisputable.

His hand curls a fist around it, the stem on the side biting into the back of a knuckle and the flat face cold against his palm. The ticking taps a steady rhythm against his skin; he can still hear it, almost louder now with the tactile reinforcement. Matt drops it between the silk sheets, flexes his hand. Rolls over the other way and drags the pillow back over his head.

The singing has stopped at least. As expected, though, the song lingers. Danny boy, Danny boy… Matt growls, and he flinches as it rumbles through his skull. Chumbawamba. Chum-ba-wam-ba.

He should really just get up.

His phone's on the nightstand too; he tugs the pillow with him as he rolls to that side again, unwilling to surface yet. Only his hand, his forearm, exposed to the air as he looks for the thing. A sneaking reach, groping across the varnished surface. Retreating back into the bed's warmth the moment it locates its prize.

The correct combination of swipes and jabs, and his phone informs him – too loudly – that it's just after six. Barely morning. Granted, most days he'd already be out of bed by now, and he needs to do exactly that if he wants to get in a workout before the office. Instead Matt shifts onto his back, phone abandoned somewhere near the watch, and hugs the pillow against the curves of his face.

Downy feathers, still dipped in the faintest hint of scent from their original cleansing chemical bath. But better than the smell clinging to that polyester fill, an inescapable odor close to the one coating the ubiquitous laminated Do Not Remove tags. The ones he removes the moment he gets home. Not just because of the scent; because he can hear them rustling every time he takes a breath with his head on the pillow. Every time his heart beats. It's his pillow anyway.

There's cotton and silk, detergent and the slightly plastic tinge to the industrial thread stitching up the sides. Mostly though the thing smells like him – his sweat, his shampoo, his unscented soap – fragrances so close and so constant that they're a part of the background. He can still identify them, if he wants to, but for Matt this is the nearest something gets to not smelling like anything at all.

Even if the "unscented" laundry detergent still has its own distinct odor.

But it's difficult to breathe like this, and eventually he has to pull the pillow off of his face. Fresh air that still tastes a bit of garbage, coffee. People moving about in the building, traffic beginning to pick up outside. If he's not going to work out – he really should work out – he could at least get up and meditate. It's usually more refreshing than sleep. Hiding slightly fewer nightmares.

His alarm goes off, making its vote known. Matt silences it, but doesn't otherwise move.

A car horn blares; the one following immediately after sounds tiny and silly in comparison. An ambulance siren sets two of the dogs in the building to howling, a mournful noise that curls fingers around his brain and digs in its nails. Matt pulls the pillow over his face again.

There's a bruise on his right hip – a reward for losing focus and misjudging a landing, a mistake that the Stick in his head had found hilarious – and he's reminded of it when he shifts his legs against the sheets. Not an error he often makes, and one he's going to be paying for for a couple of days. He needs more sleep; his body tingles with it.

Could have been worse. It has been. And he's fine.

Who you trying to convince, boy? No one here but us.

Matt cringes. Good morning to you too.

The street noise is getting louder, but evening out as it does. More of an unbroken progression now than the random bursts of solitary sound. A hum, like the billboard. Matt surfs along the top of it, above the coffee that's creeping in through his airvents and under the door. Beneath the headache that's a growing pressure on the back of his eyeballs.

He's supposed to be getting up. He's getting up.

He twists his fingers in the smooth sheets, vaguely registering the whispery spill of the silk over his hands. It tickles the hairs on the backs of his knuckles, slides slippery through his sensitive fingertips. His other arm's still slung up over the pillow pinned to his face, but the fingers of both hands wiggle absently in concert.

The traffic's becoming a monotone lullaby, and he floats through its blurry song. He doesn't notice when he gradually sinks back into sleep.

"Foggy. Foggy. Foggy." Matt jerks awake, completely disoriented. "Foggy. Foggy. Foggy."

His phone. He paws through the bedding, his only clear thought to find it. He can feel the rectangular shape, the vibrations, but he can't find the boundaries of the sheet that it's wrapped up in. "Foggy. Foggy. Foggy." Even smothered by the folds of silk, the computerized chirp's a mallet smacking Matt repeatedly between the eyes.

The pawing becomes a desperate shaking of the bedsheets, and the phone falls to the mattress with a bounce. He makes more of an incoherent noise than forms any actual words when he holds it to his ear, but at least the thing's stopped ringing.

"Matt? Where are you?"

He's still settling from the shock of his abrupt return to awareness, and his headache hasn't improved with the nap. "Huh?" It's pure confusion. "Where're you?"

"At work," Foggy says. "Wondering if my partner forgot to tell me he's taking a personal day."

"What? Shit." On the other end of the line, Foggy chokes; Matt doesn't swear often. Out loud, anyway – Stick's got a foul mouth. "What time is it?" he asks, trying to sit up and get free of the tangled sheets. The world gives a sickening lurch as he changes position, but he makes it up to leaning against the headboard. He pauses there for a moment, doing his best not to breathe too heavily into the phone.

"Ten-thirty," Foggy tells him.

"Shit," Matt says again. "Sorry." He scrubs a hand over his face, through his hair. It does nothing to help him wake up. Or calm down. "We've got the thing. With the Waylons. Give me, uh…" He needs to shower, shave. His pulse reverberates against the inside of his skull. "I'm on my way. I'll be there."

"Don't worry about it. They just called to push it to next week. Your schedule, Sleeping Beauty, has unexpectedly cleared."

Then what to do with this flurry of unspent adrenaline? "Oh," Matt says, tasting it coppery on the back of his tongue. It's making the headache worse, and without really planning to, he slides sideways down the headboard to the mattress. "Okay. I'll be there soon anyway." The sentence is a little garbled, the side of his face not occupied with the phone now smashed into the depths of a pillow.

"Not much going on, if you wanted to stay home." Foggy's too tentative, too carefully nonchalant. It's taken Matt this long to collect himself enough to be able to hear it. "Just wanted to make sure you were okay. That nothing happened, you know, last night."

He says the last two words like they're some kind of a code, and the only reason Matt doesn't roll his eyes is because he knows it'll hurt. "I can hear your quotation marks," he mumbles. "Sounds salacious."

"Last night?" Karen asks in the background. "What was 'last night?'"

Foggy fumbles the phone, a clatter of noise that has Matt wincing and holding his own far from his ear. "See?" he smirks into the pillowcase, when he can hear his friend breathing again. "All innuendo."

"Matt ran into a, um… an old friend," Foggy lies to Karen, ignoring Matt. "He might not make it in today."

"I'm coming in," Matt insists. "I'm fine. Nothing happened, I just overslept."

"An 'old friend?'" He can hear Karen's implied quotation marks too.

"Yeah," Foggy tells her. He sounds distracted, uncomfortable. "He, uh, overslept."

To Matt it's obvious that Foggy's lying, but the conversation's become somehow layered with insinuation and Karen misinterprets his discomfort. The comment. Matt doesn't miss her little snort of laughter, and he wonders who it is she's imagined he's gone home with. "Overslept, huh?"

"Hanging up now," Matt says. He feels forgotten on this end of the line.

"You sure you're okay?" Suddenly he's got Foggy's entire focus; Karen must've walked out of earshot. He pulls his eyes open, as if his friend can see him. As if it matters.

"Yeah." The hand not holding the phone searches for an angle on the mattress to leverage himself up. "Rough start."

"Because you sound all… growly."

Matt blinks, utterly derailed. "Growly?"

"Like you're in pain," Foggy explains. "Shut up," he adds, though Matt has yet to come up with a response to this.

"Growly," Matt repeats.

"Nevermind. You say you're fine, then I'm sure you're fine. Because we all know Matt Murdock's famous for never keeping secrets."

"Foggy, come on…" It feels unfair, though he knows it's not. But it's been months, and his head's throbbing and he's exhausted and he doesn't want to do this now. Today already sucks, and he hasn't even made it out of bed. "I'm hanging up. You can lecture me in person when I –"

He pushes himself up, and someone stabs him through the frontal sinuses for his trouble. "Oh god," Matt moans, unable to choke it back. His hand slips; his arm collapses underneath him. He goes face first into the mattress and stays there.

He can't move, even though Foggy's calling his name from wherever he dropped his phone. Shouting. He know he needs to find it, to say something. But he's pretty sure that his head will explode if he does.

"Sshhhh…" He hisses it into the sheets, feeling around for the voice without lifting his head. Each inhalation drags the silk between his parted lips, suctioning it for a moment to his teeth before the exhale blows it back out again. "Sssshhhhhh…"

But Foggy's still deafening, even this tiny representation of him lost somewhere in the sheets. "Sshhh," Matt tries again, but he can't find the volume necessary to shut Foggy up. When his fingers finally locate the phone, he slides it toward himself face down. Doing anything he can to muffle it.

"… way over. Dammit, Matt – if you don't have something to say in the next thirty seconds, Karen's calling an ambulance. You hear me?"

"Fog. No. Shh. Stop." He's only shifted his head enough to get his lips close to the speaker; they're mashed against one end of the phone, but he's not certain it's the right one. "M'okay. Stop."

"What the hell happened?" Foggy's terrified, and still way too loud. "What's going on?"

"Headache." As if such a mundane, overused word could possibly describe it. "Got up too fast. M'okay."

"Oh. Oh." Foggy gets noticeably quieter. The migraines might not come as often as they did when Matt was a kid, but his friend's witnessed a few of them over the years. "Bad?"

"Nah." Not entirely a lie – no doubt it's going to get much worse than this. "But I don't… I think m'gonna…" He has to take a break, a breath, and remind himself where he's trying to end up with the sentence. "Sleep," Matt says. "Maybe it'll go away."

Maybe. He wonders if Foggy can hear the false optimism.

"Want me to come over with anything?"

"No… call you. Few hours." There's a clipped conversation on the other end of the line – Foggy reassuring Karen, probably – but he doesn't attempt to separate the words. They're softer when they're all stuck together. The silk's a damp circle of condensation spreading around his lips where he's been breathing on it.

"Okay," Foggy says, back into the phone. "Sleep. Call me when you wake up."

"Yeah." His hand twitches, and his phone falls from his fingers before he breaks off the call. Foggy says something else, but it's murmured into the bed and Matt's not going to try and find the thing again. He pulls a fistful of covers over his head. Sleeps.

They've got him trapped, at the end of the alley. He can't figure out what's wrong with him, but he can't get to his feet. They're coming. He can't get away.

His body's not working as it's supposed to; he strains against invisible bonds. They're close now. Footsteps. A presence looming over him, and a hand reaching to grab. He tenses, but makes himself wait. Another second. Two. Closer…

Now. Matt finds the hand, wraps fingers around its wrist and pulls. A fluid automatic movement has his attacker flipped onto his back with Matt on top of him, and he pins the guy down with his weight. With an arm bearing down firmly across his trachea. The man under him struggles, gurgling something incomprehensible, but Matt's not really interested. He presses down harder on the guy's throat. Fingers claw frantically at his restraining forearm.

"–att… –op…"

The dream shivers, dissolves. Suddenly he's in his own bedroom, in his apartment. Not an alley. He doesn't understand what's happening, why there's still someone here if the dream has gone. But there's definitely a body squirming underneath him – even if he can't grasp how it got here – and it certainly feels real enough. The headache slams into him now, and his hold slackens a little. "… s'me, stop…" Matt can feel the fractured pleading vibrating through skin and muscle to his bones.

It rings abruptly familiar.

"Foggy?" His universe spasms, contracts with nauseating speed. Apartment. Bed. Foggy. Matt rolls off of him, as far away as he can get; he huddles shaking against the headboard. Foggy doesn't move immediately, and Matt lies there listening to nothing but his best friend's strangled breathing. He fights not to throw up.

Nothing makes sense. Nothing else matters.

Fingertips crawl across the sheets to brush his bare forearm; Matt's entire body flinches at the unexpected contact. "Matt?" Foggy croaks, the silk sliding over itself as he pushes up onto an elbow. "Okay?"

"God, Foggy…" His friend coughs, a painful sound, and Matt gags. He crushes his teeth together. "Sorry. I'm so –"

"M'alright." Foggy coughs again, and his tie loosens. The whisper of his hand sliding under his shirt collar to rub at his neck. Matt winces; he can't stop trembling. "My fault. You okay?" Foggy sits up in the bed now, leaning closer.

"Sorry," Matt mumbles. "I didn't mean to. Didn't… didn't know…"

"I should know better than to sneak up on you." His voice is rough. Matt wonders if he'd left a bruise. Knows he must have. "Even if that's usually impossible." The hand hovering hesitantly between them – shaking, he realizes; Foggy's shaking too – slowly curls around his forearm, a grip that grows more confidant when Matt doesn't jerk away. It's a solid unwavering point in the turmoil, and he twists his arm without breaking the contact to be able to wrap his own fingers around Foggy's wrist.

"Hey, it's okay. Really," the other man insists, when Matt can do no more than lie there. Shuddering and hanging on. "I promise, I'm okay. Matt? Buddy?"

"Yeah," Matt exhales, even though he doesn't believe him. "Okay." He needs to focus on his breathing; this hyperventilation is making him light-headed. Only feeding the migraine. He works to swallow the horrible gasping sound wheezing from his lips.

"Okay," Foggy repeats. "Everybody's okay." It sounds like he might be trying to reassure himself.

Gradually – so, so gradually – the trembling begins to die down. Matt's world inches outward; he instantly wishes it would stop. Too many crowding sensations with each new expansion. But he tries to push through it, to find Foggy.

"Sure you're…" He licks his lips. Starts over. "Fog… did I…?"

Matt struggles to sit up with the aid of the headboard at his back, without losing the physical contact with his friend. It's a serious error in impaired judgement, this aspiration of motion; his equilibrium quickly buys a ticket and hops on a roller coaster that somebody's just built in his brain. An appallingly wet noise chokes out of his throat, and Matt drops back onto the bed. Equilibrium throws up its hands and screams as the coaster goes over – and doooooooooown – a steep crest. He moans, and the rickety wooden tracks rattle inside his skull.

"Was it this bad when I talked to you?" Foggy demands, and Matt moans again in protest of the volume. Not that it matters. Equilibrium won't quit shrieking, helplessly trapped on the ride. "Forget it," Foggy says now, his voice at a more reasonable level. Nearly inaudible. "Doesn't matter. What can I do?"

He fights to focus on Foggy and nothing else. He needs to concentrate on something, before he throws up all over his bed. "What're y'doing?" he slurs into the sheets. "Here."

He doesn't care. Nice that he is.

"Came to make sure you were still alive. And you are, so all in all I'd say that worked out pretty well…"

Matt can hear the swelling spreading through Foggy's bruising throat; once he latches onto it, he can't block it out. His grip on Foggy's wrist tightens, as he recalls again the visceral feeling of his friend's trachea being compressed under his arm. He drags in air through his nose, unwilling to unclench his jaw.

It hurts, but he forces himself to search for more specific indications of the damage. Something beyond just blood vessels and tissues going about their frenzied, reactive work. But other sensations swamp in, too many to be sorted. Nausea joins Equilibrium on their loop-de-loop ride, and Matt concedes momentary defeat.

"Sorry," he hears himself say, hoping to convey everything in this one word. Now he remembers how much Foggy hates it when he gets overapologetic, and he finds himself reflexively apologizing for that. "M'sorry."

"I know, man." It's so quiet, buried under so much else, that Matt can't be sure he didn't imagine it. "Already forgotten," Foggy says, at a volume that seems more meant to be heard. Though thankfully still cautiously low.

"… call?" Matt asks. He distantly notes that forming complete sentences has apparently removed itself from the shortening list of his skills.

But Foggy proves himself to be versed as ever in translating the various languages Murdock. He gets this one with no effort. "It's late. After five. I didn't want to wake you up, but I was getting worried. Figured I'd come by on my way home instead."

"Five?" He'd lost the whole day then. The recognition of this speeds up his pulse, lends strength to its incessant pounding.

"Yeah. Now though –" Foggy's voice gets thinner, higher "– I'm mostly just worried that you're gonna break my arm…"

Matt suddenly registers the pain – and the horrifying shifting of Foggy's bones in his clamped, grinding hold – that the contrived humor in the tone is fighting to bely. His fingers fly out of their clawed shape, and he tries to pull away from the grip the other man's still got on his arm. Foggy doesn't want to let him go, but Matt's stronger. Especially with this new frantic determination. A final sharp yank abruptly releases his arm; momentum almost smacks it into his own nose. "Le'me alone," he begs, pressing into the headboard behind him. "God…"

It echoes around in his head; feels like he's saying it a lot today. If he's intending to start going to Confession more regularly, he should probably start keeping track.

Foggy's heart is a herd of galloping horses, but it's his voice telling Matt to calm down. He'd point out the hypocrisy, but he can't breathe. Matt's hands are fists held close to his body, and he's afraid that to relax them even a little means he's going to somehow hurt Foggy again. Every muscle is tensed; pain marches heavy boots up and down the corded length of his neck.

"Matt," Foggy's saying, and it doesn't sound like it's the first time. "You didn't hurt me. I'm fine."

He wants to be able to trust this. The migraine and the guilt and the anxiety conspire to overload his universe, making it difficult to think and edging everything with a sleepy drag. He can't trust anything. Foggy reaches for him; Matt squirms away. "Don't –" He can't move any further without going through the wood and fabric of the headboard, but he tries anyway.

He has to calm down. He's fighting to calm down. But he can still feel Foggy's bones moving under his fingertips. Matt's short nails bite into his palms.

"Will you please just listen to me? Matt?"

Foggy sounds close to hysterical. It's this that finally captures his attention, centers it solid and cold and sudden. It's an iron weight in his stomach. Any icy tingling in his chest. Matt tries to climb out of himself – back to his best friend – but the roller coaster goes into a three-sixty curve and he's having trouble figuring out which way is up.

"Mmph." The attempt at communication disappears into the sheets. He's not sure he can do it again.

But the effort has been noticed. "Are you hearing me now? Everything's okay. Seriously." Foggy's hands float between them, but it seems like there are way too many; Matt can't track their erratic patterns long enough to keep count. "Breathe, buddy. Please."

He can do that. Why isn't he doing that? Matt obediently sucks in a gulp of air.

"Awesome," Foggy says, and it shines like a reward though he can't remember for what. So he does it again, and then once after that. Eventually it settles into a sustainable rhythm.

Foggy slides off the bed. Matt can hear each crease of his clothing as he stretches, and there's a faint puff of his deodorant as his hand snakes back under his collar to rub at his throat. "We should get Josie one of those machines. You know, one of those games that's supposed to test the strength of one's studly manly grip?" The massage switches to his bruised arm; Foggy's suit jacket shifts noisily over the sleeve of his shirt. "We could set you up. Hustle people until word gets around."

It isn't nearly as funny as he's trying to make it, and this must show on Matt's face. He swallows hard, feeling bones, cartilage. Foggy instantly backpedals, getting panicky again. "No, shit – forget I said that. Stupid joke. Matt?"

Breathe. He presses his forehead against the resistance of the mattress. The silk smoothes a cool palm over his skin. Breathe.

"Christ… I'm sorry, Matt. You didn't hurt me, really. Dammit, look."

It sounds all desperation. Matt forces himself closer to the surface of things. Tries to piece together at least one more complete sentence. For Foggy. "Jus'… you jus' holding your arm up? Cuz –"

"Yes, Matt. Because I just met you yesterday." Foggy's hand closes roughly around Matt's, guides the fingers back to his arm. It's a jerky movement that teeters the coaster car on the tracks and he groans; Foggy follows through with the contact. Insistent. "Look. You can tell it's not broken. Right?"

Ordinarily he'd be able to simply listen for most of the damage, not need to touch him at all. But he plays his fingers over his friend's arm. Can't find any fractured lines, only the slight sponginess of a spreading bruise. The tactile confirmation relaxes some of the tension in Matt's gut, his chest, but there seems to be no hope for the knots in his neck.

"Well?"

"S'not broken." He wants to sleep. It feels the path of least resistance. His hand rests motionless on Foggy's wrist now, soaking up the warmth of his friend's skin. "But…"

His voice trickles away; Foggy translates this one too. "Quit it. Enough. We're both sorry. I'm starting to feel like we're trapped in a rerun here."

His pulse is finally slowing under Matt's fingertips. "Boring episode," he slurs, his lips brushing against the silk. He's working to put in the same effort Foggy's managing. "Season six. Throw'way."

"Psh," Foggy says above him. "Season six is when shows get to experiment."

"… shark." There was supposed to be a verb in front of that. Jumping.

Matt really wants to sleep.

"Don't be such a snob, Murdock."

"Mmm…" He feels with his mind for the dimensions of the bed, his position in it. The thing seems to go on forever. An infinity of headboard stretching in either direction behind his back. An ocean with a retaining wall, an expanse of tiny ripples. They're all the same – quiet, rocking – and their unending continuity is surprisingly hypnotic.

"The X-Files: 'Arcadia,'" Foggy starts, pleading his case. "Supernatural: 'The French Mistake.' And Buffy? 'Once More, With Feeling.' A musical, man. A musical."

Everything's gotten slightly fuzzy, a peripheral creeping softness Matt welcomes. He wills it to continue its progression, to cover everything. Hopes that the weird clicking noise he just made with his tongue – meant to coax the fuzziness onward – has stayed confined to the inside of his head. "Buffy?" he gets out.

"Right. Like you didn't watch half of it with me. I know you were paying attention."

"S'good show," he admits. Probably out loud.

"When you're feeling better, we need to give some serious attention to your television education."

TV's an interesting diversion sometimes, a challenge to put together the pictures with no other cues than Foley sounds and dialogue. It can be tiring though, and when the levels are off and the background effects encroach over the spoken lines – as they so often seem to, with his oversensitive personal definitions – it just gives him a headache.

He's got such a headache. He just wants quiet, sleep. For Foggy to figure out some magic to make it go away.

"You want anything? I'll hang out for a while."

"G'home," he mumbles. Foggy sounds tired, but Matt can't reach deeply enough to determine if it's anything more than simply the length of a day. "Sleep."

"Good idea. You sleep."

He thought he'd been referring to Foggy, had meant it as sage advice. Matt frowns, and he can feel the motion of the individual hairs of his eyebrows when they shift against the sheets. It's a strange – distracting, crawling, impossibly vivid – feeling over his forehead; he smothers a moan as he shudders and tries to roll away from it.

But there's nowhere left to go, not wedged up against the headboard. Hard and real and pressing against his spine, an odd position to be in in his own bed. He's not really certain anymore how it was that he got like this. What he does know is that someone – Foggy? Foggy's still here, right? – said sleep, and that this sounds a brilliant idea. He doesn't understand why he didn't think of it himself.

Matt echoes it. A tiny prayer. "Sleep."

"You want to, uh, maybe…?" Foggy's fingertips on his arm, a testing, barely-there touch before the weight of the rest of his hand. There's a couple of futile tugs on the bedsheets – Matt's on the beach, lying with his face on the sand as the waves tease it back to sea from under his skin – but Foggy can't pull them out from underneath him. By the time Matt realizes that this is his goal, he's stopped trying. "You don't look comfortable," Foggy mutters, but he gives up on the fussing. The comforter is dragged sloppily over the top of him; the rumpled sheets stay as they are.

"M'not." It's annoyed; he feels like this should be glaringly obvious.

Stupid episode. Terrible dialogue, maybe a writers' strike. Definitely not worth the rerun.

The hand on his arm squeezes, lets go. "I guess just try and remember that it will go away eventually. Always does, right?"

So much easier for Foggy to say, when no one's crammed an amusement park in his head. But he's offering all that he's got, and Matt knows this. He can't really put words to the recognition, but it's in there somewhere.

"… good nurse."

"Me? Nah. I'd look terrible in that dress."

Matt snorts; the silk flutters around his nostrils. He can see it in his mind – an image painted only in the broadest of strokes, but once it's appeared it proves impossible to jar loose. There's even a little white cap, set at a jaunty angle on Foggy's head. He wonders if nurses still dress like they did when he was a kid.

He listens to Foggy moving around the room, back out into the rest of the apartment. Can't help but imagine every motion being performed in that dress. The picture follows him into sleep, messing with his dreams.

Matt wakes up, lifts his head. The world smashes into him like the grill of a gleaming semi loaded with containers of chemical waste.

The only thing there's time for is a desperate guess as to the edge of the mattress and a reckless lunge. He's lucky, though he doesn't at all feel it; he finds the side, and throws up on his floor instead of the bed. It splatters on the hard wood and the smell bounces back with the horrid noise. He hangs there helplessly and retches, incapable of doing anything else.

Hurried footsteps from the other room, too heavy even though he can tell their owner's only wearing socks. They slide to a stop just inside the doorway. "Aw jeez…"

Foggy? Matt tries to remember when Foggy got here, but the room goes into a barrel roll and he heaves and it's difficult to focus on anything.

When his abdominal muscles finally stop their compulsive convulsing, he can't move. He wants to get further back on the bed – his only goal – but he isn't capable of shifting more than a few inches. Not nearly far enough away from the disgusting mess. He's miserable. Pathetic. But he doesn't have the energy just yet to try and do anything about it.

The semi had apparently run him over after it hit him – a double insult that seems triply unfair – and one of its giant tires is crushing his head. Even his own breathing is devastatingly loud inside the compressed cracked shell of what used to be his skull.

"Water," he hears Foggy say, his voice fluttering carefully low. Matt's not sure how long he's been lying here. "But sadly, you're gonna have to sit up."

He isn't positive that he knows what all of those words mean. He works backward through them, struggling to follow the connecting thread, and when he gets to the first one – water – it floods him with the giddiness of an entirely new concept. Water. Genius. The inside of his mouth tastes terrible.

Foggy slides an arm under him to raise him up off of the bed, and though it feels like a slo-motion parody the slight change in altitude still comes too fast. Matt groans, grinds his teeth together. The pressure sends fissures of light sparking about randomly inside of his head, but Foggy's sitting on the mattress behind him and when Matt starts to slide down his arm he ends up resting against his friend's chest. Foggy's warm, comfortable. If his heartbeat wasn't pulsing electric shocks through Matt's brain.

"Close enough," he thinks Foggy says, and now there's the smooth curve of a glass against his lips. It's a good thing his body's paying enough attention and swallows on its own, because Matt suspects he wouldn't have come up with the proper procedure for accomplishing it deliberately. Not in time. He manages a couple of sips, but his stomach clenches in rebellion and the added thudding of Foggy's heart becomes intolerable. Matt moves with the intention of sitting up, getting away, but the motion plays out a limp wiggle that goes nowhere.

He's never been so pathetic. He groans again, and bile pushes at the back of his throat as the sound thunders vibrations through his skull.

Gotta stop doing that.

"Rinse your mouth?" Foggy is the King of All Good Ideas, and were Matt feeling more mobile and less repulsive he might kiss him for this one. He swishes the mouthful of water around without working out the logistics of it; when Foggy tells him to spit, he's so far removed from things that he does it without thinking. The water hits thin crinkly plastic and something more unyielding, and after a bit of a lag his brain offers up plastic bag and trashcan. The questionable identifications evaporate almost immediately. He's left only wondering why it still seems like Foggy's got too many hands.

Matt does the useless wiggle thing again, and this time Foggy gets the hint; he's pretty sure that several hours have passed by the time he's back flat on the bed and everything can be called relatively settled. He can hear Foggy moving around, and realizes with an unpleasant jolt that the other man's cleaning up the mess on the floor. Humiliating.

He fights to sit up, instantly shredding his newfound fragile balance. "Fog, don't… I'll –"

"It's already done," Foggy says, though he's down there a few moments more. "Don't worry about it. You'd do the same for me." His voice is that same modulated murmur, and Matt is no less grateful. "Kinda my fault anyway – should've seen it coming. It's not like this is the first time we've done this."

Matt doesn't want to think about how many times they've done this. How many times Foggy's had to take care of him over the years. A burst of effort gets his arm slung up over his eyes, as if this can block out the thought. As if he can somehow combat the unbearable internal pressure with this meager external one.

Foggy leaves the room; the acidic smell of sickness lessens, but not enough. It lingers under the cleaning chemicals, drips a cartoon scent trail out through the doorway and into the other room. When he returns there's the metallic thunk of the trashcan set beside the bed, with the rustle of a new plastic bag.

"Pretty sure I already know your opinion," Foggy begins – hesitantly, not gonna like this – and Matt's eyes narrow under his arm, "but I'm thinking it might be time to break out the meds. You know, the ones that were prescribed for you? For when exactly this kind of shit happens?"

Last year he'd gone out a handful of times with a woman named Emily, a doctor. She'd shown up spontaneously at Matt's apartment one morning with breakfast, unfortunately picking a day beginning with a difficult start after Daredevil'd had a particularly rough night. When she wouldn't stop pressing him as to what was so off – the second time he'd clipped the corner of the sofa when he'd passed by – he'd admitted to having a bad headache. Not a lie – some thug had tried to demolish a brick wall with his skull.

The last time he'd seen her she'd brought with her an unasked for bottle of pain pills, and he'd thrown them in a cabinet and forgotten about them. He certainly hadn't intended to tell Foggy. But his friend had found them at some point – he'd never figured out why Foggy was rifling through his stuff that day, actually, distracted by the conversation that followed – and after a quick web search to discover their purpose, he'd refused to let Matt hear the end of it.

He'd taken… one? Two? He hated them.

"They'll make you sleep," Foggy promises.

It's true; it seems to be the one thing they're good at. Hard to recall, when the only times he's conceded to take them are memories shrouded in such desperation, but there's a definite association between the two. He'll sleep, but it'll be a sleep with straightjacket dreams, clinging nightmares he can't escape from. He remembers that too.

A fair trade? Right now it might be. His downstairs neighbor gets home – the scrape of a key in the lock and a door swinging open on hinges begging to be oiled – and Matt flinches when it sounds loud enough to be coming from his own apartment. From his bedroom.

An angry shouting rises above the traffic outside, sharp jumps and dips of noise; the world batters at the windows, the walls, the floors. Pigeons nesting near the roof, the building's elevator returning to the ground floor. Foggy's footsteps crossing the room. A chihuahua yipping downstairs. A breeze that wafts over his bare skin, tickling up goosebumps. The hum of an air conditioner and water rushing through pipes. Subway, cars, buses, motorcycles, helicopters, planes. Garbage. Hot dogs. Pizza. Laundry detergent, sweat. Grilled onions and fried fish. Vomit.

Matt makes Foggy a silent, one-sided deal. If his friend can find the pills – wherever it was that he'd put them; he hasn't seen them in a while – then he'll take them. Sleep has to be better than this.

A throbbing base kicks in somewhere on this floor – from his own floorboards, it seems like. The Wilsons, he thinks. Making dinner. He searches for the signs automatically, immediately regretting it when he finds them. That everywhere smell of fish. He's going to throw up again.

He struggles to find something – god, anything – else to concentrate on. The tangle of silk in his fingers, the solidity of the bed beneath him. Foggy rummaging around in the bathroom, making way too much noise. Like he's tearing the place apart for a remodel. A big truck rumbles through the intersection outside, and somebody gets out of the elevator while talking on their cell phone. There's a piercing cackle of an overheard laugh. Bright and sudden and stabbing.

Onions, garlic, sick. Fish, everywhere fish. Dog and cat dander. Moist garbage. Foggy's aftershave. Ammonia. Hamburgers and fries, gasoline. Tar and shampoo and piss in the alley. Cologne. Marinara sauce.

Matt gags. Swallows, and rolls onto his side. He pulls his knees up to his chest and clasps his arms around them, burying his nose and mouth as far into the sheets as he can while still being able to breathe. He's rocking – a stuttered motion, irresistible – but there's a comfort to the repetition, and when he notices he decides not to stop.

Eventually Foggy's footsteps – stomp stomp stomp, shaking the entire apartment – come out of the bathroom, and Matt catches the victory rattle of the pill bottle in his hand floating out of the rest of all the malicious stimulation. Stomp stomp stomp, and Foggy's sitting on the bed. His knee's only a couple of inches from Matt's face: laundry detergent, soap, sweat. Fabrics grown and engineered; a tiny sticky spot from the teriyaki chicken he had for lunch. Familiarity. Foggy.

"So?" He's forgotten his delicate volume control while he was out of the room; it's not very loud, but Matt winces. "Sorry," Foggy starts again. Better. "Will you take one of these? Maybe without me having to work up some intricate argument with which to persuade you? Cuz I'm kinda tired, man. But I will. It's within my skill set." The pills clamber over each other as Foggy shakes the bottle again. "Don't make me go all Super Avocado on you."

"… scary…" Matt tries to say, but he's not sure how audible it is. Outside, the street lights begin to click on, one after another adding their hum to the overall buzzing mass. He can't remember what this specifically indicates – other than dark, nighttime – what part of Daylight Savings Time they're currently residing in. Why they insist on changing the clocks twice a year anyway.

"They're expired. Maybe they won't hit you quite as hard."

Matt wonders if this was supposed to be the whole argument. Hardly complex or inventive.

Plastic twisting against plastic, and a pop as the cap comes free. He realizes now that he's going to have to move again, if only a little. It feels a monumental and intimidating task, and there's a couple of seconds of serious, if scattered debate as to whether or not the effort's truly worth it.

Foggy makes the decision; Matt's happy to let him. More nauseating motion, a new awkward – hopefully temporary – position. Foggy's flat chest and the walloping rhythm of his heart, a small chalky tablet pressed into his hand and the water glass that somehow hovers on its own in the air. He's pretty sure he swallows the pill, if only because now Foggy's lowering him back down onto the bed as if some kind of aim has been achieved.

"… sucks," Matt gets out. "Sorry."

The bedsheets are a disaster; he can tell this without having to work for it. There's a slippery hiss as the last edges of the comforter are pulled loose from the bed entirely, and a wobbly cloth ripple through the air above him before the thing falls into its blanketing reorientation. It settles over the curves of Matt's body, half covering his head.

"What else am I going to do on a Thursday night when my best friend's not up for hanging out?" A verbal shrug; Matt doesn't notice if there's a physical one to go with it. The comforter's warm. Cozy. Almost smells like nothing. Amazing. "Josie's a crappy conversationalist – you know that."

"Karen?" he suggests, from inside the blanket cavern where he's hiding. Trying to participate. There's a sudden image of the two of them close, kissing. Matt can't remember if this actually happened, or if he's making it up.

Foggy puffs out a breath of air; nearly a casual laugh. But not. Too layered, like everything else in the universe right now. "I'm sure she's got, you know, friends she'd rather spend time with." Even if they've seen little evidence of this, never met any of these "friends" since they've known her. Matt wants to make the point, but it feels too much work.

"We're friends," he mumbles instead, and it's possible he's managed to find the one Murdock dialect that Foggy doesn't speak, because the other man doesn't respond.

The drugs begin to do what they're supposed to, gradually smearing Matt's world dull and soft. It takes forever. It takes no time at all. Foggy hasn't moved from where he's sitting on the bed, but he hasn't said anything else either. Unless Matt's missed it. Not inconceivable.

The pain is slowly trickling into the mattress, and the relief is literally unbelievable. He's never felt anything so fantastic as this tangible lessening, as overwhelming as the agony in how incredibly wonderful it seems in comparison. An incremental easing, but still he thinks he might cry because he already feels so much better. Few things in life are as blissful as the cessation of pain.

The rollercoaster in his head is being deconstructed by tiny careful hands – possibly elves – and in its place they put up a circus tent. Billowing canvas stretching up to the sky. Matt doesn't question this, merely observes; no one seems to be looking for his opinion on the matter anyway. There's a crowd inside the tent, but their discordant sounds and smells are kept mostly confined by the canvas. He can only sense them in swells, when the wind catches the huge tent flaps and lifts them open for a moment or two.

It's nice. Distant. Muted.

Foggy's respirations have sprouted wings, ethereal and light and covered with thousands of gossamer feathers. They flutter about the room, barely displacing the air above the bed. Everywhere – the air is full of them – but somehow not at all smothering. Just Foggy, comprising his usual portion of Matt's world.

He shifts; the wings brush against the comforter as his motion scatters them. He wonders what Foggy's doing, just sitting here in his silence. Maybe even asks the question, because seemingly out of nowhere Foggy says, "Turns out that, from the right angle, the mortar on one of these bricks looks just like Santa Claus."

"What?" Matt's not sure if this answered his question. Or what the question was, really. There's a floor lamp in here, a match for the one in his living room – a concession to the occasional guest – but it's inside the circus tent and he can't hear if it's on.

"He sees you when you're sleeping," Foggy says. Matt wonders if he's dreaming this.

"Creepy," he mumbles from under the blanket. "Don'want Santa watching me sleep."

"Never noticed it before. Now I can't unsee it. It's right in the middle of the wall."

"Don'want you watching me sleep either."

Foggy runs a hand through his hair, a rustle of fabric and the individual follicles falling back into place in its wake. "You need some art in here. Cover that up."

"G'home," Matt thinks he says. "Seriously."

"Totally planning on it. Feeling any better?"

Foggy swallows, an oddly labored noise. It abruptly grabs Matt by the ankles and hurls him into tangible memory. The clear outline of Foggy's radius, ulna, mapped out under his clenched fingers. The give of the cartilage in his throat under Matt's forearm. It feels real – nauseatingly real – but as he scrambles backward through hazy recent events for some kind of context to put with it, he prays it was all just a freakishly vivid dream. He wouldn't hurt Foggy.

Not for any reason. He didn't hurt Foggy. Couldn't.

Did he?

He can't be sure, but with every ticking second it feels more likely. More true. Foggy's familiar shape pinned to the bed beneath him, his voice pinched and pained. Matt doesn't remember why, but he thinks he may have done something unforgiveable.

"Is that a no?" Foggy asks, when he moans.

"Fog…" His voice is the smallest of things, a lost shiver of sound. "... what did I do?"

"Nothing," Foggy says – artfully off-handed, if a bit too immediate – but it doesn't ring at all confused or uncertain as to the subject. Matt can hear how narrowed his swollen airway is, now that he's looking for it; there's a minute rasp to each of his breaths. It's evidence stacked high against him, and it's ominous. Towering.

"No, I… I remember…" He doesn't want to remember. "Did I –?"

"Everything's good, man. Or at least getting there." A deliberate assurance, one Matt tries to hold onto. It's slippery, and he drops it more than once. "Except for Creepy Santa. I don't think he's going anywhere. I may never be able to sleep in here again."

He wants to force the discussion; he wants to lock the whole thing away and never revisit it. If something happened – muscle squishing against bone, the miniscule pinging of burst blood vessels – Foggy's obviously trying to skate past it. Matt can tell this even muddled as he is, and there's a little voice whispering that maybe he should take the easy route and let the matter drop.

Coward. Of course Stick would have an opinion.

There's a ringing, a shrill sound that comes from everywhere at once before localizing itself to the other room. The edge of the mattress springs up as Foggy's weight leaves it; Matt tracks his friend's footsteps. A breeze ruffles the bottom edges of the tent, the world contained within leaking out. A growling dog, and its owner's ineffectual commands. Brussel sprouts steaming. The phone's trilling cuts off, replaced by the high-pitched wails of a crying baby.

"Hey…" Foggy's voice drifts from the living room. "He's fine. Everything's good." It sounds more convincing this second time he says it, as if the phrase is gaining credibility through repetition. Or maybe it's just easier for Foggy to lie to himself when he's lying to Karen.

Karen? It's got to be Karen. There's a unique note in Foggy's voice when he talks to her, a lightness that to Matt always sounds both glaringly artificial and achingly sincere. From inside the tent comes a rush of jagged laughter, a group of kids. It rakes pointed fingernails across the nerves behind his eyes.

"That's great," Foggy says, at a volume pumped by the honesty of the emotion backing it. It reaches in from the living room to shout in his ear; Matt swallows, trying to find his way back to the soupy painlessness. But he doesn't have the arm span to stretch around the entire diameter of the tent, doesn't possess enough appendages to pin down all the rippling canvas edges. The crowd pushes at the walls from the inside.

"No, I just stopped by on my way home."

Matt. Stop. It's me.

The drugs are potent, even expired; their invincible pull combats the rising anxiety, diffuses it into a vague restlessness. The part of his brain that's screaming is inside the tent with everybody else. He can barely hear it, but still he's unsettled.

What did I do? What the hell did I do?

"Sure. I'll tell him. Yeah."

A woman shrieks, nearly classifiable as a scream. It might be a joyous noise, but Matt's brain identifies it instead as danger. He realizes suddenly that it must be late. That he should be out on the streets. He rolls onto his stomach – more effort than such a simple move should require, by far – and tries to get the arms now trapped under his chest to straighten out. He doesn't understand why they won't, so he keeps trying; eventually the connection travels the distance from his fuzzy brain to his useless arms, and he makes it up onto his knees.

The blanket slides off of his shoulders, but Matt doesn't notice. He's distracted by how high it is up here. He may not be able to see the drop on either side of him, but he can definitely feel the depth of its echo. Sounds like a long way down.

He wavers – way up here on his knees – and fights to remember how his bed got so far removed from the ground. Harder to breathe up here, too, balancing like this – altitude – and Matt wonders why he's bothering at all. It's cold up here. Like it might even snow. He can't exactly tie together the strings representing now and then, but he thinks that then was at least warm.

But he'd climbed up here for a reason; not much to be certain of, but he's certain of this. He just needs to figure out what that reason was. Daredevil. He's supposed to be out doing his job.

"Going somewhere?" Foggy asks. Matt freezes in his tentative inching toward the side of the mattress.

He knows he has to go. He's going. It's just proving more difficult than he'd expected.

Everything's shifting, even his mountaintop of a bed. An unanticipated and unpredictable slanting that threatens to throw him off. Foggy's in the doorway, but it takes Matt a few moments to find him. "Out." The cold's starting to numb his lips. "Gotta…"

His right leg locates the edge of the mattress completely by accident, and there's a vertigo lurch when it slides over the side. His bare foot hits the floor hard, closer than he'd expected; the rest of his weight catches up and momentum topples him that direction. It happens so quickly – his body's so alarmingly unresponsive – that he notes it abstractly without there being anything he can actually do.

There's a gust of surprise when he doesn't land on the floor, but it's days before Matt can credit this fortunate turn of events to Foggy. Days during which people have no doubt been suffering, the people he's supposed to be protecting. People could have died during those days. He's wasted too much time already. Needs to get out there.

"There's nothing you need to do, man." Foggy's attempting to steer him back onto the bed; Matt registers this in time to twist the other way. Like his traitorous arms, his legs are being unusually uncooperative. Their support is decidedly dubious, and he's not sure how long it'll last.

The wood floor is cold under his feet, and the faint breeze floating through the apartment feels an exaggerated brisk wind on his exposed oversensitive skin. Foggy's a thermal blanket by contrast; his body blocking the air in random patches, his hands – arms, chest, hips, legs – hot where they're pressed haphazardly against him, trying to hold him up. Matt's annoyed by the recognition of this. Foggy's holding him up, holding him back. He needs to get dressed. Get outside.

"Le'go," he pushes out through listless lips; nothing's working properly at the moment, and he's confused as to how Foggy seems to be everywhere. Matt shoves at the restraining hands, breaks free. He stumbles toward where his bedroom doorway used to be.

Somebody's moved it. About six inches to the left, and he clips it with his elbow as he goes by. It spins him off course; he staggers a few feet in the other direction, cradling the elbow futilely against the electric zing that races from the joint to his fingertips. He feels utterly unbalanced. Misaligned.

But Matt's persistent, and he has a well-defined goal. Get into the costume, get on the streets. Be Daredevil. Keep everyone safe.

No problem. As soon as he can find the door.

He does, though it seems less of an accomplishment in that he's got no actual door, just a wide open archway connecting the two rooms. And that it's the second try. Every tiny motion he makes is accompanied by a disproportionate amount of the universe subsequently sloshing that way, like he's balancing a bowl of water on his head. Or in it. It's a sloppy enhancement to his usual fluidity that he doesn't at all need; Matt's steps across the living room are slow. Uncertain.

When he reaches the tall closet cabinet, he doesn't immediately pull it open. Instead he rests his palms flat against the doors, his forehead between them. The wood smells of cedar and the richness of age – cool, solid, undemanding – and Matt can't make himself move. Even when he hears Foggy follow into the room behind him.

"You're kidding, right?" Foggy says, presumably deducing the plan in relation to where Matt's currently standing. If he's referring to something else, Matt's at a total loss. "Even superheroes need the occasional night off, man."

The split in the two cabinet doors runs directly down the center of Matt's forehead, his nose, his chin. He presses into the vertical groove, splitting his face into halves. "Not… superhero."

"Sure you are." It's quiet – inside the tent – and Matt doesn't really have the time to waste going in there to examine its echo. "I'm just saying that maybe Hell's Kitchen can survive on its own for a night." This second sentence is clearer, outside the canvas and closer to Matt's ear.

"Fog, don't…" he says into the wood, not really certain what it is he's requesting. "I have to go." He doesn't want to go. "I can't…"

Each muscle movement, each thought, is summoned purposefully and bought with an exhausting drag. His universe is cotton candy fluffy when he's not fighting against it, but any focused efforts are a resistance that morphs everything into toothy metal ridges and complicated gravity. Especially shaping entire sentences. Even standing's getting tricky.

"'Course you can." Clever Foggy, always deciphering what's dropped between the lines. "You don't have to go."

For a moment Matt allows himself to believe it, to enjoy how tempting the idea sounds. But now he remembers all the people – so many people – that rely on the Daredevil for protection; he pushes himself off of his bifurcated wooden support wall, and pulls open the closet doors before his resolve can fully crumble.

Everything's too difficult, taking too long; he stands there for another minute, leaning with hands on the open doors, before he's able to talk himself into the next bit. Bending over the chest turns out to be a position his disturbed equilibrium's not prepared to attempt, and Matt sinks to his knees in front of it as a weak compromise. There's a jarring connection when he misjudges the speed of his descent.

"Matt…"

He's wearing nothing but his boxers, he realizes, when the reverberations stop traveling his bones and his skin registers as cold against the floor. That point of naked contact calls attention to the rest of his exposed skin, the air brushing – pulsing, itching, tickling, caressing – over it. Matt shivers. Runs his hands along the lid of the trunk. The lid's heavier than he recalls it ever being when he lifts it, and there's a second where he wonders if maybe Foggy's holding it down.

But Foggy's still behind him, at least two feet away. And not usually that deliberately obstructive. "They need me," Matt tries to explain, without turning around. The cotton candy's beginning to melt, dripping sticky sugar over everything; the words are gummy, gooey and unintelligible around his head inside the closet. He can't see them – they may be glued to the walls, not even having made it out.

His fingers find the suit, and he gathers up its pieces while gearing himself up for Stage Three. Getting back to his feet, something he's looking forward to even less than finding the floor. At least the part coming after that – getting dressed – can only be made easier by the fact that he's just in his shorts. It's infuriating to have to plot everything out like this.

Or it would be, were he not so chemically disoriented. With the drugged haze, the emotion fizzles almost as soon as it's formed.

He gets one leg bent, a bracing hand on the chest, but the melted sugar adheres his other knee to the floorboards. "Not sure what you think you're going to be able to do out there tonight anyway," Foggy says at his back. It's not helping. Merely an amplification of a murmur already circling around in Matt's head.

He darts out mental fingers to snatch at it, to grasp the idea tight and really look it over for a minute. Standing up feels a feat near impossible. What aid can he possibly be to anyone like this?

Quit bitching and focus. If you can't do it, it's because you're not concentrating hard enough. Stick's voice is strangely disjointed, a radio station tuning in and out. Matt thinks he might be in the tent. He's surprised; he would've guessed Stick would loathe the circus. You've appointed yourself the self-righteous protector of these people, so go fucking protect them. Enough wallowing, boy.

Up. Focus. Protect.

With the costume clenched in a fist, Matt forces his body upright; he gets there, but instantly pitches sideways into the cabinet door. The thing swings away under his weight, hits the wall and bounces back. It's fast – a slapstick-style inevitability – and the only reason it doesn't crash directly into his face and quite probably break his nose is that Matt's already sliding slowly back down the wood frame to the floor.

He absently notices the dull thud as Foggy's arm – shoulder? hip? – comes between him and the still swinging door; there's no noise of pain or surprise, and Matt thinks it was probably on purpose. Nice that he's got a friend like that. Willing to put himself in harm's way, battling the cabinet for him and all. Good thing too, as Matt's feeling totally blindsided – it had never crossed his mind that the cabinet might turn on him. The blender? Possibly.

"Thanks," he thinks he says from the floor.

Foggy doesn't hear him, so far away. Busy, maybe, keeping that door at bay. "You're kinda proving my point for me here." It seems to Matt a nonsensical response; he can't tie it back to anything. Rude of him not to be paying attention, if Foggy's making a point. Especially when he's doing so much work on Matt's behalf.

In just a second, he's getting up off this cold floor. He'll fight his own battles.

His fingers twitch; he's got Daredevil's suit mashed in his fist. It takes a few dry-mouthed moments to recollect why. When he does – protect – he's struggling to shove himself up again, this attempt a clumsy effort that involves the closet wall. It's no more successful – and just as comically inept – when the heel he's pushing himself up with slips without warning, and he drops a hard-won foot and a half back to the ground. His teeth click together with the impact.

"Ow." Matt lets his head fall back against the side of the cabinet.

"Yeah, I bet." Foggy's hand curls around his bicep, fingers wrapping around his skin like they belong there. Matt realizes that he's freezing, an all-over sensation sublimated until he felt the warmth of that hand. "Give me this," Foggy says. There's a tug at the costume.

Matt holds on more firmly, not ready to surrender it. "… can do it," he insists. Stick's right – Stick's always right, Stick's never right – if he can just concentrate, he can best this… whatever this is. "Just need a minute," he tells Foggy. "Then m'going."

His body's all foreign lines and angles, odd proportions and tensions and weights. Is he sick? Concussed? It's a feeling familiar and yet bizarrely alien. Poor baby had a headache, Stick sneers. Drugs, then. It must've been bad, a last resort. But Matt can't really remember.

"Trust me, buddy – you're really not." Foggy sounds certain of this, though he's stopped trying to pull the suit away. "I doubt you can even find your own front door, as miserably as you're currently failing at the simple art of standing. And no, that wasn't a challenge."

It's matter-of-fact, doesn't feel unkind. He's not necessarily incorrect. "Going out the window," Matt clarifies.

"Well the window is probably easier to find, I'll give you that. You do remember you're on the sixth floor though, right?" Matt makes a face, unamused.

"Fire escape." He thinks he cuts off the Don't be stupid.

"I meant when you fall off the fire escape. As I'm one hundred percent sure that you're going to. Long way down, my friend. Totally unworthy end for a crime fighting superhero."

"Not a superhero."

"Right, I forgot. The costume always throws me."

"Not a hero," Matt says. "I'm just…" Blundering. Exhausted. Useless. "They don't have anyone else."

"Yeah, well – tonight they're going to have to fend for themselves. They'll be fine."

The hand on his arm nudges hum upward, and this time his body complies. Matt can't help but wonder where this obedience was when he was the one giving the orders. "You can't know that," he protests. The floor tilts unexpectedly, and he staggers a step into Foggy. "Not… not all of them."

"You can't save everybody, Matt. Please tell me you know that."

"Sure." He's going to try. "Yeah. 'Course."

"Gimme." Another yank on the bundle in Matt's fist. "Unless you're planning to sleep with it, like a blankie. I won't judge you, but I can't promise there won't be pictures taken and saved in case of future blackmail opportunities."

Matt finally relinquishes his grip; the costume disappears from his hand, and he hears it sail a short arc to land in the open trunk. Foggy hasn't let go of his arm, and he's supporting a good chunk of Matt's weight. There seems no way to fix this, not when the ground keeps slanting into such weird gradients.

Foggy slings an arm around his waist, the sleeve of his shirt viciously scratchy against Matt's back. He'd taken off his suit coat at some point; Matt tries to figure out why he thinks this. What time it is. What day. "Ready?" his friend asks.

He wants to object that he's not an invalid, but it's too many syllables. He barely manages a nod. He leans on Foggy as they make their way back to his bedroom, shocked that Stick's got no comment regarding his capitulation. Matt suspects that wherever he is, he's sulking.

The doorway's much easier to locate with Foggy's guidance; he doesn't even have to try. His world narrows to the path of his footsteps, the sound of Foggy breathing near his ear. Matt finds the edge of the mattress with his knee, a hand. He pulls himself out of the one-armed hold, crawls up onto the bed. Collapses face down.

"Karen says hi," Foggy says from somewhere above – beside, behind – him; he can't lift his head to work on getting more specific. Somebody snipped the tendons when they cut out the knots in his neck. He won't deny that it's preferable, but he's having a hard time moving. "She's got a new case. She wanted to bring the notes by, but I'm pretty sure that was just an excuse to come check on you. I'm starting to think she might be into you."

It's said lightly, but Matt's known Foggy for what feels like forever. Long enough, certainly, to catch the hint of resignation underneath. It may be muffled by the sheets and the exhaustion and the drugs, might have to reach a bit farther to get through his skull. But he doesn't miss it. Even like this.

Just as he hasn't missed what could be interpreted as signs, little clues he'd been trying to ignore. Individually innocuous, probably simple kindnesses. Merely friendship. And the fact that her pulse tends to pick up when he enters the room – that she always applies a bit of perfume before coming in from the hallway, that she laughs just a tiny fraction louder at Matt's jokes than Foggy's – could mean all kinds of things. He hopes he's wrong, that he's wildly misinterpreted.

It would never work out between them. Not when his best friend's already claimed her with his heart.

"You're here," he says into the silk. "… see you."

"Sure. The ladies always go Nelson over Murdock."

Matt frowns, though it's an expression somewhat wasted with his face smashed into the bed. He hates when Foggy says stuff like that. Hates that he believes it to be true. "Fog…" It hardly counts as a noise.

"Whatever. She's not invited to our Season Six marathon."

Matt has no idea what this means.

He thinks about asking, but he's distracted before he can put the words into order. Ticking. Something's ticking. "Can you hear that?" he asks Foggy, groping around for its source as best as he can without actually moving his arm. "Tastes like peppermint." That's not right. He tries again. "Crisp. Sharp. No, wait – ticking. Something tastes like ticking." Closer.

"Oh-kay," Foggy says. "Definitely bed time."

Matt can't find it, reluctantly decides he may have to expand his search. His arm shifts a couple of inches to the right. "Maybe a bomb." It slips out unfiltered as it occurs to him. "Like in the movies." His fingers crawl over the sheets.

"You're awfully calm for a guy with a bomb in his bed."

It's a good point, but then Foggy doesn't sound particularly concerned either. "Probably not a bomb," Matt assures him, just in case he's only pretending not to be worried. "But something."

"Awesome." Foggy's voice switches to the opposite side of the bed like a blink, the transition lost. A hand dives into a pile of silk near Matt's head. "Survey says…" The ticking gets louder as the not-bomb is fished out, held up in the air. "It's your watch."

"Stupid watch," Matt grumbles.

"You love this watch," Foggy protests. "You've had it forever. Didn't your dad give it to you?"

He loves that watch. Just not so much today. "Loud."

"Oh. Got it." There's a wood-on-wood squeak as Foggy pulls out a drawer; another to make a matched set when he closes it. The ticking becomes softer, more in tune with everything else. "It's in the drawer. You going to remember?"

"… find it." He drags the comforter over himself; it's all lumps and twists but he's mostly covered. "You staying?' he mumbles from underneath it.

"Yeah, maybe. For a while, at least. You want anything?"

Sleep. "No. Thanks."

"Enjoy it while it lasts. If Josie starts getting chatty, you're gonna find yourself with some serious competition for my time."

Foggy's voice is growing quieter, as if he's backing into the circus tent with the rest of the world. "M'hurt," Matt gets out, playing along. He can hardly hear himself anymore.

"Sorry, man," Foggy says. "You might be cuter, but she's the one with the free booze."

It feels an argument worthy of a Super Avocado.

end.

End Notes:

Just as "Carry On, My Wayward Son" will now in my head always be associated with Dean Winchester, "Tubthumping" has been entirely given over to Matt Murdock. There's a great fan vid set to the song, and the moment I saw it I thought of course. If you're my age and it's now stuck circling in your brain, I apologize. But only a little, because it's still a good song.

The Daredevil kink meme is a wonderful and overwhelming list of requests, and I'm having trouble finding my original prompt. Essentially it was that Matt wakes up disoriented, unable to hear, and mistakenly attacks one of his friends. I didn't take away his hearing, but the effect is the same.