Now Isn't That A Laugh
Karen
Karen had also been struggling to sleep, although she didn’t notice so until she had finally gotten a good night's sleep. Waking up in Matt’s bed, she stretches her limbs, shaking the sleep out of them as she comes to, groaning as she turns to shove her face in the pillow.
Somehow, despite using so many unscented products, the silk pillow case smells like Matt. She can also smell bacon cooking, the pops of grease echoing off of the brick walls.
“Good morning.” She hears Matt say loudly from the kitchen. Turning back over, Karen sits up to look at Matt, blushing when she notices his lack of shirt and the sweatpants that rest low on his hips. She quickly looks away.
“Morning.” Karen mutters, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and shuffles over to the kitchen island. She sits down in a seat and smiles when Matt places a mug of coffee in front of her.
“My saviour.” She grabs the cup, making sure to take a sip as quietly as possible as to not bother Matt’s sensitive ears. Matt laughs, moving back towards the stove to continue cooking.
“I have literally saved you multiple times and you are more impressed by me giving you coffee?” Karen nods, holding the mug tightly in both hands. It spreads warmth up to her elbows. Karen opens her mouth to respond but is cut off when she sees a red blur fly by out the window.
“What was that?”
“Spider-Man.” He quickly answers.
“What does he sound like?” She asks, understanding that the only reason Matt knew who it was so well was because of the way he sounds.
Matt pauses what he’s doing, thinking.
“For starters, everything about him is very loud, especially his heart. It’s really fast too. That’s one of the reasons I try to avoid working with him, it’s hard to hear what’s going on around me. His suit smells a lot like chemicals too, the spandex gives me a headache.”
Karen laughs.
“I think that’s the most I’ve heard you say in, like, months.” Matt shrugs, head twitching when the stove top clicks as he ignites a second burner.
“I don’t usually have much to say.”
Karen scoffs at that.
“Bullshit, I’ve known you for, like, nine years, you never shut up.” Karen can see Matt tense as he notices her not mentioning the five years that she had been blipped.
He doesn’t want to think about what could have possibly happened between him and Karen had they had those 5 years, or even what would have happened had Foggy not been blipped either.
“Are you okay Matt?” Matt almost gags at the sincerity in her voice. It drips down his throat, thick and sweet as honey, and suffocates him.
He nods, knowing if he spoke his voice would crack.
“Are you really-” He cuts Karen off, placing a plate of food in front of her. She jumps as the plate clatters loudly.
“Here. Breakfast.” He moves to sit down next to her, leaving more space between them than usual. Karen doesn’t seem to notice, or she just chooses not to.
They leave the unfinished question of ‘are you really okay?’ in Matt’s kitchen, to be answered the next time the two decide to open up again. They finish their breakfast, with Karen’s compliments to the chef warming Matt’s chest.
The two walk to work together and ignore the other unfinished and unspoken things that they would like to say to each other, instead choosing to talk about the weather.
Discussing the mundane would stop them from starting what they once had again.
Would stop Karen from realising once again why vigilantes could only ever be friends.
~~~~~~
Matt holds the business card that fell out of Peter’s wallet, concentration scrunching his face up. He flips it over and rubs his finger over the writing on the back of it again.
Karen had forgotten about the card that they had found a few days ago, remembering it when it fell out of her skirt pocket when she was trying to do laundry. She had brought it in to Matt for work that day.
Karen sat on the corner of his desk, watching him like a hawk.
“You’re sure you don’t recognize that date?” Karen asks, with the same urgency that she had the first million times she had asked the same question. Matt nods.
“All I’m getting is that something took place at some point between 2018 and 2025, during the month of September. That really doesn’t help me at all Karen.” She groans as Matt flips the card back over, dropping it on the desk and looking at it.
“I just don’t understand. Something tells me he knows us Matt, or at the very least knows you, and it confuses me because neither of us know him.”
“Weren’t you the one that told me to give my neighbour a break or something, that he was young and called you Ms. Page.” Matt asks, looking at Karen knowingly.
“Yeah, okay, he calls me Karen now, but that was before I saw what you saw in him. There is something off about him.” Matt shakes his head, placing his fingers back on the card. He frowns as his fingers run over the braille. “What? Matt, what is it?”
“I didn’t read the braille earlier because, y’know, it’s the same on every card, but I think this is one of those cards with the messed up braille.” He removes his fingers from the braille, pushing the card towards Karen and grabbing a newer card from his desk.
“What?”
“Remember when we got an order of business cards and they messed up the braille on it?” He asks. Karen grabs the new card and pulls it closer to her, looking between the two cards. She holds them up for closer inspection, squinting as she looks at the braille.
It’s almost unnoticeable but some of the small bumps on the paper are different from the newer cards.
“Oh my god, when did that happen again?” Karen’s voice is higher pitched, excited at finding evidence of some sort.
“Um, 2023? 2024? Yeah, 2024, the year after you and Foggy got back from.” He waves his hands in emphasis. “All that blip stuff.”
Karen hops off of the desk and rushes out to her own. Reading over the filing cabinets behind it. She spent a lot of time alphabetically organizing all of the client identification information and other documents.
“P, Q, R. P, Q, R.” She repeated over and over again, as she looked over the filing cabinets. She locates the filing cabinet labeled ‘P, Q, R’ and grabs the keys from inside her desk drawer, unlocking it.
“What is she doing?” Foggy asks, leaning out of his office.
“Remember my neighbor that I thought was kind of sketchy?” Matt asks him, eyes trained on Karen’s back.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Well, Karen has reason to believe that he was a past client of ours or something.” Foggy smiles, clapping his hands together excitedly.
“I love it when Detective Karen comes out.”
“Got it!” Karen shouts, standing up abruptly, scaring the two men. In her hand are two pieces of paper. A pen-written one, and a braille one. She slams it down on the table in front of her.
Foggy looks down, then moves to look closer. He looks up at Karen, his eyebrow raised. Turning around he grabs Matt’s arm and pulls him over, placing Matt’s hand on the braille paper first, which he quickly skims his fingers over, then he moves his hand over to the non braille one, which he takes longer to run his fingers over.
“There’s nothing on here Karen.” Matt pulls his hand away and Karen shakes his head.
“Water damage ruined the paper. We, despite the shitty offices, have never had water damage of any type, and even if we did, the other papers would be ruined as well!”
“Karen, what are you even talking about?” Foggy asks voice strained in confusion. Matt has a curious look on his face.
“I pulled this paper out from between two other people’s papers, both of whom had the last name Parker. I don’t know why there are so many people with the last name Parker, but Peter Parker would fit right between them, and miraculously, this paperwork is the only one damaged.”
Matt nods, hesitantly following what she is saying.
“The only thing truly destroyed by the water damage is the more personal stuff, y’know, names, contacts, birthday. Other than that, payment methods are all here, as well as the date.” Matt lowers his hand again, running his finger over the date on the regular piece of paper.
Etched into the paper, in messy pen writing, is the same date as the back of the old business card, dated 2024. Matt laughs, incredulously.
“Karen Page you did it again.”
Foggy grabs the paper looking closely.
“So what now? You think you’ve found out that Peter Parker is a past client, and it’s slightly suspicious that his paperwork is ruined, but what are you going to do about it?” Karen shrugs and Matt looks over at her, nodding along with Foggy.
“He has a point Karen, and why exactly does this matter so much to you anyway?”
“It means that maybe Matt’s not overreacting and that his neighbor is someone that we should worry about after all.”