Matt made his usual entrance via the window while Foggy was attempting to delicately wrestle information on a weapons smuggling scheme from his favorite teenager’s grip and announced to the world that he had good news.
“You bought your coffin?” Gwen asked.
Matt bared his teeth at her and snapped his face towards Foggy.
“Why is this one here?” he demanded, “You said you weren’t dealing with her anymore.”
“No,” Foggy said evenly, “I said I wasn’t playing games with either of you anymore.”
Matt didn’t get it. But then he wouldn’t would he?
He didn’t dwell on that particular puddle of misunderstanding though, instead he hopped gracefully from the windowsill to the top of Foggy’s desk and jabbed a confident finger down at him.
“I have located that which every good kingpin requires to preserve the longevity of their reign,” Matt expounded grandly.
“A chest wound,” Gwen said.
The finger jabbed itself her way this time.
“Silence, Spider,” Matt said, “This does not concern you—not everything in the world is your business.”
“Well, you’re kind of a perpetual pain in my ass, so it kind of—”
“SILENCE, SPIDER.”
Foggy wasn’t sure the ceasefire he’d painstakingly drafted between these two was working as intended. At least they were upholding the promise of no bloodshed in the DA’s office. That was a plus.
“What is it, Matt?” he interrupted before the bickering could start up in earnest.
He was gratified to receive Matt’s complete and undivided attention. Matt grinned with all his teeth. They looked unusually pointy today.
“I,” he said with dramatic hands arcing in front of him, “Have found an apprentice.”
Matt hadn’t so much found an apprentice so much as he’d gotten ahold of Gwen’s friend Itsy, for once accompanied by his body double Bitsy, and terrorized the two of them at knife point into providing information they weren’t usually so willing to give.
It turned out that Big Red, the alternate Matt Murdock in Bitsy’s verse, had acquired an apprentice. Who was, allegedly, just the man for the job Matt was in the process of creating. He was capable, acrobatic, studious. And had not a lick of common sense rattling around his skull. For Big Red, this apprentice was perfect, ergo for Matt he was close but not quite there yet.
This apprentice, according to Matt, was going to need some fucking work to get him down from his moral high horse. But in the meantime, he was satisfactory enough in all the important areas and Matt had already organized an interdimensional heist to steal him in addition to googling some guidelines regarding the care and keeping of an apprentice.
“Matthew,” Foggy said to his palms while Gwen’s mask eyes went and stayed huge in awe, “You cannot just go steal another Murdock’s apprentice. That isn’t how this works.”
“It does,” Matt sniffed. “The man is a bastard and whatever disgusting training regiment he has developed for this child is sure to corrupt it in all the worst ways.”
“Big Red’ll break your arms if you try to take his apprentice,” Gwen pointed out.
Matt scoffed.
“He can try,” he said. Chin high.
Foggy did not know Big Red but he got the feeling that the man was putting a hell of a lot of effort into rearing his apprentice. Matt in any verse never did things by halves.
“Matthew,” Foggy said carefully, “Why don’t we sleep on the apprentice thing? We don’t know if what you really need is Big Red’s apprentice; there might be a perfectly acceptable apprentice for you in our universe, just waiting for moral corruption.”
Matt was displeased at the lack of warmth his scheme was receiving here and clicked his tongue at both Gwen and Foggy before huffing and puffing and abandoning them for the window again, in search of a better audience. He didn’t even bother slamming it after himself on the way out.
Gwen watched him go with wide eyes and then turned them onto Foggy.
“Big Red is gonna break him in half if he so much as lays a finger on his kid,” she pronounced.
“Yeah, I’m counting on it,” Foggy said. And then went back to drawing Gwen’s attention to their weapons situation.
Matt rapidly realized a few flaws in his plan which he worked through while standing with one foot planted firmly on each side of Foggy in Foggy’s bedroom. He at least had the decency to take off his shoes this time. Although the nattering and opaque grumbling could go anytime now, too.
“The boy will need education,” Matt said to himself with a fist to his palm. “Education takes time.”
“Right,” Foggy said, trying to coax Matt back down by pressing fingers into the backs of his knees.
“He will need security—the Bastard has probably taught him fuck all about defensive technique.”
Foggy kind of doubted that, but Matt was determined to hate Big Red from top to bottom, so he left it.
“Uh-huh,” he said instead.
“Bodies get horrible if they stay in other universes for too long,” Matt observed with stunning foresight for once.
“Maybe it’s a sign that you should focus your efforts on finding this apprentice in our universe then?” Foggy offered.
He got a sneer in return and Matt brought his left foot over Foggy’s hip so that he could drop down and ruminate on these problems from the far corner of the bed.
“I need to acquire a biologist,” he determined.
“Or—”
“Silence, Nelson. It will take ages to find and corrupt the boy in this universe. If the Bastard has already found him, then he can go out and find another one, he’s friendly like that.” Matt pronounced ‘friendly’ the way a nun would pronounce ‘promiscuous.’
Foggy had tried on multiple occasions by then to imagine a version of Matt that was friendly and the best he could do was a version of Matt perpetually grooming Lola or Cat. For whatever reason, a fine toothed comb and a hairy beast created a Matthew which was not only far quieter than usual, but one which was also amendable to interruption and occasional touching.
That was as close to ‘friendly’ as they were getting here. Still, though. An apprentice was not a dog or a cat. They were a whole person on their own. They were going to need more than feeding and education. They would need emotional support and somewhere to sleep and enrichment activities. And furthermore, they didn’t know how little Big Red’s apprentice was. For all they knew, he’d adopted a particularly gifted toddler.
Foggy loved Matt, for better or worse, but the thought of him holding a child made Foggy’s heart beat very fast in his chest and not in a nice way. He could not let Matt steal a toddler. Or a baby. Or anything younger than, say, 14 at the least. He would say that he couldn’t let Matt steal anyone period, but that would just be naïve.
Matt was an unstoppable force 99% of the time. He had a will and so you could be damn sure he’d find a way. It was only a matter of time before Foggy was being presented with Big Red’s apprentice.
On the upside, the sooner Foggy was presented with Big Red’s apprentice, the sooner he would finally get to meet the man himself—after all, if there was anything that all the Matt Murdocks in the multiverse would have in common, it would be a taste for bloody vengeance.
He broached the issue of age with Matt a few days later, when he caught the guy putting together a program to test the apprentice’s skill level at his still mostly empty apartment.
Matt hissed at him and took himself and his braille display out of the living room and into the corner by Cat’s perch in his bedroom. Foggy gave him five minutes and left the apartment for the little grocery around the corner to acquire an adequate bribe for the occasion.
It was strawberry season.
Plied with sweet berries, Matt submitted to Foggy’s questioning. And he made a face like he honestly hadn’t even considered the possibility of becoming a literal kidnapper.
“It can’t be a toddler,” he snapped. “The Bastard knows better than to take on something so unbalanced.”
Right. Because balance was the issue here.
“Matt, correct me if I’m wrong here, but it is my understanding that Big Red is the Matt Murdock married to Sick Foggy, is that correct?” he asked.
Matt didn’t like where that was fucking going. He squinted hard in Foggy’s direction.
“Yes,” he ground out.
“And so—again, stop me if I’m wrong—but if I know anything about myself, it is that I and every version of myself have a constant yearning for a family. Were you aware of this?”
Foggy waited for an answer.
Matt’s face had frozen stiff. His fingers flexed anxiously against the hardwood.
“You…do?” he asked.
“Yes,” Foggy told him solemnly.
“Like? Right now?” Matt tried.
“Yes, like right now. Like always,” Foggy said.
“Always-always? Or like—”
“Matt, I have wanted to be a dad since I was four. Yes. I want babies, it’s fine. I get it, it’s not gonna happen with us. The point is that Sick Foggy very likely also wants a family more than he’s ever wanted anything and so if he and Big Red are married, there is a good chance here that Red’s apprentice is not just his apprentice, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down here. And if he’s not just Red’s apprentice, then there is a very strong likelihood here that he is much smaller than you’re thinking he is,” Foggy said.
He wasn’t entirely sure Matt had caught all of that since his face hadn’t changed at all. The only thing going on with him now was that both hands were flexing against the floor.
“I can’t—Foggy, I can’t—tiny humans are awful,” Matt finally managed to creak out.
“Well, that’s not my problem, pal,” Foggy said. “You’re the one trying to steal an apprentice over here.”
Matt bit his lip and processed that. Then looked back up with bent eyebrows.
“Do you really want…one? You want a tiny human?” he asked.
Foggy’s heart squeezed for a second and he swallowed back the emotion.
“Yes,” he said, “But I know that it’s an impossibility, so I try not to dwell on it too much.”
Matt stared his way in silence. And that silence hung for a long couple of beats.
“Matt, it’s fine,” Foggy sighed. “I told you before, I love you. Even if you’re a piece of work. I don’t need a baby. We don’t need a baby, God knows we’ve already got Cat.”
Still nothing.
Foggy didn’t like this level of quiet.
“I will find one for you,” Matt decided to himself.
What.
Oh, hell no.
“Matthew—”
“I will find one.”
“You will not.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got this. You stay right there.”
“MATTHEW.”
“Relax,” Matt said with both hands making patronizing calming gestures in front of him. “You want a tiny human, I will get one. They aren’t hard to come by.”
“If you steal a child, I swear to god--,” Foggy started.
“Apprentice,” Matt said slowly. “I will steal an apprentice. If it is a child, then that works out for both of us. If it is not, then I will find a—”
“MATTHEW.”
“Is this not what you want?”
“I swear to fucking god, you asshole—"
Matt did not steal a baby, thank the Lord. No.
No, no, no.
That would be too easy.
No.
Instead, he wandered off and showed up a few days later with Gwen shrieking under one arm and a young man doing his damnedest to break his ribs in the other.
Foggy wasn’t sure he’d seen Matt this delighted so far this year.
“Apprentice,” he introduced once Gwen had been discarded to hide behind Foggy.
The apprentice was not a baby. Or a toddler. The apprentice was a young man with dark hair who was strong enough and wily enough to break out of Matt’s grip time after time. Matt was rough with him. His knuckles went white when he reestablished his grip on the young man’s wrists over and over.
The kid looked somewhere in the ballpark of 18 to 21. Furious. Punching, kicking, trying to bite. He knew how to roll his wrists against Matt’s thumbs to break out of each hold and he kept throwing his weight to the side, trying to overbalance Matt and, in doing so, make a window for escape.
Big Red had taught him well. Boy was a fighter. And a good one.
His main problem here was that he was young, spindly, and about twenty pounds too light to gain the upper hand.
He also broke Foggy’s heart. Crying out for his teacher. Fighting to get back to his teacher. The loyalty was a little surprising, but humbling.
“Matt, let him go,” Foggy pleaded.
Matt scowled at him.
“I spent weeks preparing for this,” he hissed, “You can’t be serious.”
“Let him go,” Foggy reiterated over the apprentice’s cries. He felt Gwen press in a little closer to his side.
Matt stood up a little straighter and huffed.
“I won’t,” he said.
“Matt,” Foggy begged.
“Foggy.”
“Matt. Please.” He knew Gwen was peeking up at him, but he didn’t look back down at her. “Please,” he said.
Matt sneered at him and bared his teeth, but didn’t follow through. He let go of the apprentice for the briefest moment, but it was only to catch hold of him again in a different grip, one which forced the apprentice to turn around and face him and which made the poor kid start struggling even harder.
“SENSEI,” the young man cried back in the direction he’d come.
God.
“Hush,” Matt ordered.
“NO. BOSS!!”
Matt squeezed the wrists and ducked down hard, catching the young man off guard and cracking their foreheads together. The apprentice jolted at the pain and blinked hard in shock.
“You. Will. Be. Silent,” Matt ordered, leaving no room for argument.
“Fuck you,” the kid spat. He jerked forward as though to strike Matt despite being tangled up in his grip. A brave one, he was. Really.
“Matt, let him go,” Foggy repeated.
Matt growled at him over the kid’s head.
“No,” he said simply. “He’ll learn. They always do. You,” he spat down at the apprentice, “You must learn obedi—”
“FUCK. YOU.”
Well, damn.
“Is that how you talk to your teacher?” Matt demanded.
“You’re a snake,” the apprentice gritted out, on his way to pulling his shoulder out of its socket.
“Rather a snake than that pathetic excuse for a warrior,” Matt said viciously. “Is that what you want to be like? Him? All he is, is soft, Samuel. You want to be stronger, don’t you?”
“SENSEI!”
“I’m your sensei, now, kid. The sooner you accept that, the easier it’ll be on all of us.”
“I don’t do easy,” Samuel snarled in a really good impression of Matt’s own.
It was kind of stunning.
But stunning or not, it didn’t help him, Matt seemed intrigued by that more than anything else. Foggy didn’t know what to do here. He didn’t know if calling the police would help this in any way, for anyone. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes to collect himself.
He’d persuaded Matt out of a few absurdly violent acts these last few months. There was a chance that he might be able to do it again.
Just as he moved a hand forward to call for a halt in the hostilities, he found it ripped painfully behind him and crushed against his own back. And it was only then that he realized that Gwen had disappeared.
Oh, fun.
“Two can play at this game, Snake,” a dangerous growl rumbled out right behind Foggy’s head. It made his neck crawl. It was the same one he knew, but oh, so different all at the same time. Matt’s dangerous tone was often playful. This guy—and his rough fucking mitts, dear god—was all raspy, whiskey-burnt threats.
"Boss,” the apprentice gasped in relief.
“You’re alright, Sammy,” Big Red—good name. Fitting name—said next to Foggy’s ear. “And this guy’ll be alright too, provided our mutual friend makes his first wise decision of the year.”
Big Red was, judging by the location of his lips by Foggy’s ear, around Matt’s height, but the grip on Foggy’s wrist said that he was heavier. Stronger. The smoke in his voice gave weight to his fury in a way which Matt’s own voice did not.
Matt, for his part, bared all his teeth at Big Red. Big Red huffed a laugh.
“Don’t like it when it’s done to you, do ya?” he taunted. “I already got my Fogs, you know. And he’s real breakable these days. Wonder how breakable your guy is.”
Let’s not find out, shall we?
“His heart’s beatin’ all kinds of fast, Snake. Throbbing away, right here.” Foggy found his breathing speeding up as the wide, calloused fingers on Big Red’s other hand crawled their way up his chest to rub against the pulse in the side of his neck.
Big Red didn’t kill, right? That’s what Gwen said?
That’s what she said…right?
“Shame if it just stopped,” The baritone at Foggy’s ear rumbled.
“Funny, I could say the same for your boy here,” Matt challenged like a fucking idiot. Never could be outdone, this guy. He’d risk—not his life, but Foggy’s even to get the last word. Oh, that was going to be a fucking conversation if they got out of this.
Matt jerked the apprentice in closer to him, tight up against his side so that the guy couldn’t escape. Samuel tried to shove at Matt’s chest, but didn’t get far before Matt latched a hand over his neck with one of his narrow thumbs pressing into the soft underside of it in a harsher imitation of the hold Big Red had on Foggy. Foggy winced at the bruise that would undoubtedly form there.
“Matt, let him go,” he said, pulling his own arm up to pull at Big Red’s hand on his throat. “You’re hurting him. He’s not doing anything to you.”
“This fucker’s hurting you, why should I?” Matt demanded.
"Boss, don’t hurt Foggy,” Samuel gasped through the pressure on his airway. “He’s good, he’s Foggy. Don’t—” he seemed to be struggling for air.
Foggy felt Big Red’s hand go stiff and solid and he realized that it wasn’t applying pressure anymore.
He’d? Followed the request?
Well, fuck. Alright. That was his cue, he guessed.
Foggy tried to twist back to face what in his head was a burly version of Matt, packing sixty extra pounds and covered head to toe in hair.
What he got was not that. It was a tall, broad, and strangely tan man with a square face and red reflective glasses. He got a man with thick, deeply furrowed eyebrows and firm, but not necessarily bulging muscles.
Big Red was beautiful. Really. With wrinkles in his forehead and crows feet and laugh lines. Older than Foggy. Older than Matt. His ginger hair was coifed back neatly in a short cropped style and he wore an impeccably selected slate blue suit.
It was only then that Foggy realized that Samuel was wearing a button up and a jacket himself.
There was something more going on here. Or at least something different.
“Let me go,” Foggy asked Big Red. “I’m going to try to reason with him. I won’t let him hurt your friend.”
Big Red didn’t acknowledge him. He remained hyperfocused on Matt a few yards away, slowly suffocating his apprentice. But his grip on the arm he’d folded behind Foggy’s back loosened. Foggy took that as a sign to press forward.
It was a sign of trust.
Foggy was kind of shocked.
He carefully stepped forward and the grip fell away entirely.
Holy shit.
Trust while that poor boy was gasping in earnest now. Trust even though Big Red didn’t know Foggy from Adam.
Good Lord. Okay, add that to the conversation list.
He cleared his throat and stepped forward.
“Matt,” he said. “He just let me go. You see this? Look.” He spread his arms wide at each side. “Come on, man. And eye for an eye. Let the boy go. You’re choking him. A dead apprentice helps no one.”
Matt blinked and seemed honestly surprised that he’d tightened his grip on Samuel’s neck. He released some of the pressure and Samuel coughed and breathed in sharp pants. Both of his hands had migrated from pushing against Matt’s chest to clutching at his hands. Matt sneered at him and then at Foggy. Foggy rolled his shoulders and brought down his chin.
“I’m not gonna ask again,” he said at half-voice.
This boy was not going to die in front of him. Even if it meant the end of whatever he and Matt had been building over the last couple of months.
It would be heartbreaking, but there had to be a line somewhere.
“Let him go,” Foggy said with finality. “Or I’ll let this guy over here do the same to me.”
Matt’s body language went from rigid to frigid. Practically ice over there. Big Red said nothing and when Foggy glanced his way, he saw that he was just as unreadable.
Samuel’s panting was the only noise between them all.
He made a soft whimper and in a flash, Matt threw him away. Sent him stumbling a couple of steps and choking, coughing, grasping at his neck.
“Your apprentice is filth like you,” Matt told Big Red, who lunged forward and wrapped his kiddo up in his arms. He withdrew just as quickly in silence and let Samuel catch his breath with his forehead pressed against his shoulder.
Foggy sighed. The tension was unbearable, he couldn’t deal with it.
“There’s no need for that,” he said. Then turned to Big Red. “I’m so sorry for him—”
“You lay a fucking finger on this kid ever again and I will break every fucking bone in your godforsaken body,” Big Red said at full voice over Foggy. Matt chuffed a laugh.
“You think I’m scared of you, old man?” he asked in his horrible smarmy tone.
It was Big Red’s turn to show off his teeth and man, guy could have done dental ads.
“Fine,” he said and before Foggy knew it, one of those rough, broad hands had slipped around his waist and yanked him in close enough to smell Big Red’s cologne. Big Red was only a bit taller than him. Their lips were uncomfortably close. Big Red’s smoothly twisted out of his snarl, they softened to frame a charming white smile. When he crinkled his eyes down towards Foggy’s, the laugh lines dug into his cheeks deepened.
He had a dimple on one side. A couple of freckles, too. Dear fucking God.
“I’ll just steal your darlin’, then,” Big Red crooned in a come-hither tone.
Oh.
Okay.
There was a brief whirlwind of movement and before Foggy knew it, he was once again being dragged somewhere not on his own volition.
Matt tucked him safely behind his back and mugged at the offender with his blade fully drawn.
Big Red laughed.
A big, booming, almost barking sound. It made his apprentice wriggle out from his shoulder and glare up at him.
“This is horrible,” the kid rasped.
Big Red’s good humor carried him through patting Samuel on the back affectionately.
“Agreed,” he said. “You’re in one piece, though.”
“You cannot become a villain,” Samuel coughed. “You’re a terrible villain.”
“Are you hurt?” Big Red asked, transitioning beautifully from charming to mother hen in a heartbeat.
“Am I—Yeah. I’m fucking hurt. I am fucking hurt. I am scarred. I cannot breathe. We are going to create some kind of hole in the time space continuum. I am ready to go home any minute now,” brave, excellent Samuel the apprentice griped as best as he could through his undoubtedly bruised windpipe.
“I can help with that,” Gwen announced, finally making herself known and giving both Foggy and Samuel heart attacks. Samuel threw his arms around Big Red’s neck and practically climbed up onto the guy’s shoulders.
“I’M DONE,” he announced as Big Red struggled not to drop him. “I AM DONE. BOSS. BOSS, I AM TAPPING OUT. THIS IS ME TAPPING OUT.”
“Really?” Big Red grumbled, “Not sure I heard you there, partner, why don’t we—”
“I’M DONE.”
“Jesus,” Big Red hissed after he’d flinched. “You’re fine, Sam. Breathe. Let go, I can’t be carrying the weight of both you and my conscience—”
“No!” Sam barked, effectively scrambling up onto Big Red’s shoulders and hunkering in there to glare at Matt through squinting eyes. “If I do, that fucking lunatic snake-man is gonna come over here and—”
“Jesus, Sam. I’m not gonna let him—”
“You say that every time, bossman, and let me tell you—”
“You’re gonna break my fuckin’ back, kid. You ain’t twelve. Get down.”
“What part of ‘lunatic snake-man’ did you miss?”
That was…not what Foggy had been expecting from this relationship. And evidently, it hadn’t been what Matt had been expecting either. Gwen at least appeared to be having a good time now that she’d made her appearance. She bounced on her toes a little and hid her giggling behind her hands. Foggy made a mental note to give her whatever the fuck she wanted as a reward for finding a solution while everyone else was distracted here.
Foggy watched as Big Red removed Samuel from his shoulders by leaning dangerously to the side until the kid overbalanced and slipped right off. Big Red cocked his head down at the pile of limbs he’d created in interest until said piles of limbs righted itself and cried, “That’s it! I’m telling Foggy.”
Big Red shrugged. Samuel whacked him in the knee. Big Red stepped out of his reach and twitched his head around, searching for something, or someone.
Fuck, he was handsome.
Foggy realized abruptly that Matt was gawking at the side of his face in horror.
“No,” Matt decided quietly.
Big Red looked up from where he’d located Gwen.
“Pardon?” he said. “You talking to me?”
“Hell no,” Matt snapped, shoving Foggy over and stomping over towards the guy. Samuel lurched up off the ground and, to Foggy’s surprise, leapt in between the two redheads. Matt ignored him and jabbed at Big Red’s breast pocket.
“Your apprentice is shit,” he said. “You are too. Leave immediately. Spider. Use your webpowers to banish this one to wherever. Preferably a desert.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Gwen snipped immediately.
Aaaaaand we’re back.
Big Red’s crazy senses must have picked up Foggy’s sigh because he looked back his way and gave another dazzling smile.
And Foggy didn’t like, mean, for his heart to do what it did.
The guy was just so friendly. So, so friendly. Foggy totally got it now. He was disarmingly friendly and warm and boy did he weaponize it.
That other Foggy had gotten both sides of the stick with that one, hadn’t he?
“Stop,” Matt snapped at both him and Big Red.
“Please,” Samuel added.
Matt mugged at him and then at Gwen.
“This has been nothing but a waste and a disappointment,” he pronounced and then spun around to leave them all standing there. He stormed right up to Foggy and latched an unnecessarily strong hold on his elbow. He did not slow his pace one bit, Foggy stumbled a bit before he got his feet under him enough to follow.
Matt didn’t look back and dragged Foggy’s attempt to wave at least at Gwen right back down, grumbling.
Well, so much for closure.
Foggy’s apartment was closer, so Foggy was deposited on his own couch while Matt went and scrubbed the sense of failure off himself in the shower, occasionally punctuating his cleaning with swearing.
Foggy stayed on the couch and tried to will the fluttering out of his chest.
Big Red was lovely.
No wonder Matt hated him.
He thought he was competition.
Ha.
Wait. Maybe Foggy could use this.
He let Matt stew in his irritation for an hour or so before attempting to get in anything resembling a cuddle.
It didn’t work out for him. Matt wasn’t in the mood. He was feeling delicate.
Foggy stopped trying to hug the guy after the second attempt and laid a quick kiss on the back of his neck before jumping out of range back towards the kitchen.
Matt lashed out and then went back to brooding on the couch.
Foggy let him while he made dinner and then, armed with a bowl of rice and stewed veg, he re-approached the beast. He put another kiss on Matt’s neck and then set the warm bowl in the small of his back before perching himself on the arm of the couch with his own bowl.
Matt growled at him and left the bowl where it was.
Foggy hummed and took a bite while Matt pouted.
“So, Big Red,” Foggy said.
“We are speaking of this never again,” Matt snapped.
“He’s handsome,” Foggy continued. “And he’s got an apprentice who would die for him. That’s very sweet.”
Matt practically vibrated with rage.
“He’s a tease,” he growled. “Old. Sloppy.”
“Sloppy’s charming,” Foggy said, watching Matt’s blood pressure skyrocket on the chart in his head.
“He’s a bastard,” Matt said.
“Smells nice.”
“A real bastard. Fucking soft. Bad knees.”
“I do like me an older man.”
A long pause.
Matt finally turned his way a little with a quiet, blank face.
“I know,” he said, then laid back down with his chin on the back of his hands.
Aw. Hey, now.
“It was a joke, Matty,” Foggy said.
“I know,” Matt said into the arm of the couch.
“I love you, Matt,” Foggy reminded him.
“Maybe,” Matt said into his safe confined corner of feelings, “But if I could be more like him, maybe it would be easier.”
Woah. Hold up a minute here.
Foggy set his bowl on the coffee table and swiped Matt’s out of the small of his back to set it on the table, too. He laid his hand in the warm spot that it left.
“Matthew,” he said. “Big Red is handsome and charming, but he’s—”
“No, shut up,” Matt said. “Just listen, alright? That guy is everything I could have been if I hadn’t—if I’d had the courage to just say no. If I’d been faster—if I hadn’t let them kill Stick. If I hadn’t been stupid and selfish. He’s a fucking idiot, yeah, but he’s at least a good idiot. He’s good, Foggy. Like you. You deserve someone good like you.”
Woah. That was.
The fact that Matt thought he was good after all the morally grey shit they’d done over the years and all the deals Foggy had cut with people over and underground was very, very sweet. Extremely endearing.
Not even a little bit true.
He smoothed his hand up the arch of Matt’s back until it hit red hair and then he kneaded it a little bit. Dragging his fingers through the waves on the back of Matt’s head.
“Matty, I love how fucking terrible you are sometimes,” he admitted. “I love the pigheadedness and the anger; the impulsiveness and your complete inability to have normal reactions to little shit that happens to you. I think it’s adorable. I think it’s hilarious. Yeah, Big Red’s tall and glamorous and without a doubt having that kind of Matt would make my life easier, but would it be more fun? Would it keep me on my toes?”
He waited and at the lack of response he answered himself, “No, it wouldn’t.”
“You don’t know that,” Matt said.
“No, but I do know that you stopped when I told you to and I know that Big Red targeted me because he could tell that I’m important to you, and yeah, maybe it’s kind of fucked up, but that got me all warm and fuzzy inside, you know that?”
He got a grumbly half of a face his way this time.
“Am I lying?” Foggy asked to drive the point home.
Matt turned his face completely his way and rested his temple against the arm of the couch. He still didn’t say anything.
Foggy decided to take silence as affirmation. He leaned forward and smacked a kiss on Matt’s cheek to make him make a noise of disgust and then shuffled around to lean his own back against the couch.
“Anyways, things worked out. You really don’t need an apprentice, man. That’s the last thing you need right now. I’m thinking we should go for nemesis first and then apprentice, what do you think?”
Still quiet, but Foggy knew Matt’s silences by then and this one was definitely a charmed one.
“You should at least meet the other Foggy,” Matt said softly, which took Foggy completely by surprise.
“Meet him?” he repeated.
Matt hid away into the couch again. Too many emotions for face-to-face discussion, apparently.
“He’s nice,” he mumbled towards the cushions. “Better than the bastard, you’d get along.”
Huh.
Well, okay then? Maybe that could be arranged.
Foggy asked Gwen.
Gwen said she’d ask Big Red.
Big Red apparently said that he’d allow this on the condition that he got to beat the shit out of Matt in return for scarring his beloved apprentice.
Matt thought that Big Red could do his worst, he wasn’t intimidated and Foggy wasn’t quite so sure if he was fascinated or concerned at the ideas of a potential battle of the Murdocks.
The logistics didn’t really matter too much in the end since Foggy found himself sitting with a date and a time to meet another Franklin P. Nelson.
He was kind of excited.
Franklin P. Nelson the formerly ill was a delightful human being who smashed all the negotiations which had taken place prior to his and Foggy’s arranged meeting with not a single care in the world. He stood in the center of Foggy’s living room with his knobbly-wristed hands on his hips and a tapping foot and the red-headed wrestling match of the century presently wedged between the couch and the coffee table came to a grinding halt. He was, and Foggy could not stress this enough, unbelievable.
Franklin P. Nelson the formerly ill bent all Matt Murdocks’ wills to his own with the bat of a single eye.
And for the record, his eyelashes were as blond as his hair.
Wild.
But not half as wild as whatever the hell he did, which made Matt get a little nervous and wriggle out from under Big Red so that he could stiltedly and awkwardly semi-apologize to Samuel the apprentice who, it turned out, was an incredibly rational human being who served as Nelson the formerly ill and Big Red’s paralegal.
You know, for their fucking adorable firm out west in San Francisco. With their adorable two golden retrievers.
Foggy was maybe a little jealous. But then again, he had not survived cancer. He figured that gave Nelson the formerly ill a solid right to have nice things.
Sam rejected Matt’s apology out flat and told him that kidnapping folks was a pretty concretely bad thing and Matt declared him too far gone for a potential apprenticeship to him anyways, which Sam at first took offense to. But after it was made clear to him that Matt was sort of, kind of the opposite of Big Red in the ways that mattered, Sam decided that that could be a point of pride instead.
Big Red, for his part, once no longer pinning Matt to the floorboards with intent to maim, if not murder, rolled off and transformed back into the charm monster from before.
He sidled on up to Foggy and the flirting began almost instantaneously.
“You smell warm like bark,” he said like that was a description that normal humans used with each other.
“Matthew,” Nelson the formerly ill warned. Gwen giggled. It was very clear here who her favorite Nelson was. And her favorite Murdock.
“Bark is nice,” Big Red defended.
“Rein in the ho, please. You’re teaching Sam bad habits.”
Foggy almost choked. Sam’s hand shot up without missing a beat.
“Please continue, sensei,” he said. “I’m here for bad habits.”
“Samuel,” Nelson warned. Big Red gestured at the kid with his arms in a helpless shrug. Nelson grimaced at him too. “I’m separating you two and I’m taking the dogs,” he said.
This had the greatest effect on Sam. Big Red just carried on being a defensive asshole.
“Take them,” he said. “Nasty things.”
“Those are your daughters,” Nelson pointed out. “You brought them into our house.”
“You let me,” Big Red countered.
A long pause bracketed the standoff.
“So!” Sam burst out in Foggy’s direction. “You’re the DA here.”
The married couple did not stop mugging at each other. But it was a good try, Sam.
“I’m one of the DAs, yes,” Foggy said.
“But you’re fucking the evil man,” Sam summarized, gesturing to Matt.
“He’s 80% evil,” Foggy explained.
“One hundred,” Matt snapped, ever threatened by any potential chinks in his armor.
“You must be very busy,” Sam decided.
Well, that was true enough.
“I think Foggy went for DA once—hey, Fogs didn’t you go for—” Sam started.
“We don’t speak of it,” Both Nelson and Big Red said at the same time. Sam recoiled. Foggy felt his eyebrow jump unintentionally.
“Rough campaign?” he asked gently.
“More like—” Nelson started.
“We’re not speaking of it,” Big Red said over his husband.
“Fucking someone—”
“Not speaking of it.”
“And his fire-engine red ass got over-protective—”
“We were so busy—”
“And attracted the attention of the fucking Hand—”
“It wasn’t my fault—”
“Who very conveniently showed up at the first debate and reminded everyone in the fucking city just who I specialize in getting out of jail,” Nelson finished with barely concealed fury. Big Red patted at him, shoulders to face, and bent down a little to nuzzle into the hair under his ear.
“You did such a good job despite that,” he praised. “Very composed. Karen recorded it for me.”
“Anyways,” Nelson said over him, “It worked out for the best. I was up to my eyes in vigilante cases for months after that.”
Oh, no shit?
“You specialize in vigilante stuff, then?” Foggy clarified.
“I specialize in getting people who should not be in jail out of jail,” Nelson said stiffly. He shoved Big Red away. “And that, unfortunately, includes this one.”
“I look hideous in orange,” Big Red informed Foggy with gravitas. Sam snickered and got cut eyes from his teacher as a warning. Nelson caught Big Red in the act and threatened him for threatening his favorite employee. Then he appeared to remember that Matt had also threatened said employee and went to go hunt him down from where he was hiding in the foyer to exact retribution. Sam went after him, evidently to witness the deeds about to be done in his name. That left Foggy with Big Red.
Big Red seemed to lose interest in everything happening around him when there was no longer anyone to antagonize or any trouble to get into.
Foggy couldn’t help but laugh.
They were the same, him and Matt.
High-maintenance. Easily distracted. Prone to ennui.
They were just on opposite ends of the whole morality spectrum thing. Or so Gwen had explained. Big Red didn’t kill. He could and he often wanted to, but he didn’t. He drew his line there and tended to wander off in the direction of making himself a headache for society instead. Matt, on the other hand, could and did kill, but often found it to be less fun and productive than making himself a headache for society at every level he could cram his bony fingers into.
The similarities were kind of endearing.
Foggy looked up and saw that Big Red had cocked his head his way in curiosity.
“You smell like woodsmoke,” Big Red said, again, as if Foggy knew what the fuck that was supposed to mean.
“Thanks?” he tried.
“The snake smells like pine,” Big Red elaborated. “You two go together. It’s unfortunate, but I suppose it’s probably fate.”
That was almost romantic.
“You and your Nelson suit each other too,” Foggy observed, “In an opposites-attract kind of way.”
He got an empty stare in return for a long couple of beats.
“Fogs isn’t my opposite,” Big Red said. “He’s everything I could be if I wasn’t a bipolar thrill junkie.”
Oh.
Well, now that level of self-awareness Foggy hadn’t anticipated.
“I guess that’s sweet?” he offered.
Big Red chuckled.
“Sure,” he said, “Sweet. You, on the other hand, my dear, have a problem. An undiagnosed one.”
“Yeah, ain’t that the truth,” Foggy sighed.
Big Red hummed.
“Your problem might become slightly less of one with medication and mental health support,” he noted casually.
Foggy snorted.
“The day Matt admits he’s got some kind of affective disorder is the day they put him into his grave.”
Big Red shrugged.
“Who knows?” he said. “I’m sure there’ll come a day wh—”
“YOU ARE MANICALLY DEPRESSED, YOU STUPID BOY.”
There was a pause while both Big Red and Foggy processed the fact that neither of them had said that and that this particular string of rage had come from the foyer, in which the dulcet tones of Matt trying to talk his way out of trouble also seemed to be echoing.
“I’m sorry about that,” Big Red said kindly on behalf of his apparently enraged husband.
“Oh, no. Totally fine,” Foggy said magnanimously.
“No one—literally no one—believes you, Matthew, do you understand that?? Do you actually, literally, for real understand that everyone in this entire building—including yourself—knows that you are lying to yourself?” Nelson’s voice carried on scathingly in the other room.
Big Red winced and gestured that way.
“Very sorry. I’m gonna go, uh, control the damage,” he said.
Foggy loved him. Them. Both of them.
“By all means,” he said, waving that way.
By the time they got to the kitchen, Matt had just about crawled up into the window over the sink to escape Nelson’s boiling energy. Big Red swept into the room and dropped into a calming voice himself. Another novelty Foggy had yet to experience from his own Matthew.
“Fogs, darlin’, this isn’t me,” Big Red said. “Save all the rage for me.”
“He is you and god help me, it is painful to watch this all happen again and again and again,” Nelson hissed. “I told him the last time we crossed paths to go get help and what does he do, Matthew? I don’t know but I can tell you for damn sure that none of it is help.”
“Right, so love,” Big Red clarified over his shoulder at Matt and Foggy. “This is coming from a place of love. Sweetheart, let’s not. This isn’t our business. You can’t save all the Matt Murdocks in the universe; it’s just not meant to be.”
“Why is every version of you a reckless idiot?” Nelson demanded of his husband.
Big Red slowly arched an eyebrow.
“Because I am inherently an idiot?” he offered.
Nelson took a few beats to appreciate that and for whatever reason the admission seemed to take some of the wind out of his sails. He rolled his shoulders and scratched at his scalp under his beanie, then huffed in thought. He shot a strong look at Matt in the window just in case he thought that this was over.
“I guess,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t improve yourself, Murder-whatever. Go do yoga or—I dunno. What is it you’re always spewing, Matt?”
“Mind controls the body,” Big Red said lightly.
“That shit,” Nelson said, jabbing his finger at Big Red. “Listen to that shit. If you get more control over the mind, you’ll get more control over your body. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Matt seemed a little stumped by this.
“Uh,” he stammered. “Kind of? I’m personally more of a mass chaos and destruction kind of guy, but—”
“If you get control over that brain of yours and deal with some of your issues, then you’ll be the best fucking kingpin on this side of the Atlantic,” Nelson amended. “No one could use your issues against you.”
Now, that was shit that got Matt’s attention. Nelson realized this and threw up his hands in aggravation.
“I am encouraging a kingpin,” he lamented to the ceiling. “This is my life now. I am encouraging criminal behavior—Matthew, I can’t. I need Jesus or Satan or someone of a higher power. Take me home to a higher power.”
“Right-o,” Big Red chirped. “Samuel, come assist.” And he and Sam disappeared to go find Gwen wherever she was, probably trying to teach Lola how to shake again in the living room.
Foggy was kind of sad. Everything had happened so quickly. He’d only gotten maybe five minutes of interaction with these strange, twisted versions of himself and Matt. It seemed like the two of them had a lot of wisdom in there, somewhere below the volatile tempers. He sucked it up, though. Some things aren’t meant to be. And anyways, he didn’t want to throw the universe too far out of alignment.
When he glanced over to the side of the room Matt was not on, he found himself at the end of Nelson’s irritable gaze.
“You,” Nelson said fiercely, “Need to speak up.”
“Sorry?” Foggy said.
“You,” Nelson repeated, “Need to speak up and learn how to tell him,” he pointed at Matt curled up behind the sink still, “‘No.’”
“I tell Matt ‘no’ all the time,” Foggy said, trying not to be defensive.
“But do you mean it?” Nelson snapped.
Uh.
Well.
Like, most of the time.
“If you don’t learn to say no and mean it, both of you are gonna get hurt,” Nelson said relentlessly. “If that’s your kink, fine. Whatever. I don’t know your life. But if you want to make this shit work; if you want to bring out that spark in your boy—because it is there, don’t think I can’t see it, too, you troublemaker—then he’s gonna have to learn how to cope with limits and boundaries. And you are, too, man. A camel can only carry so much straw. It’ll be hard and someone is definitely gonna cry, but you’ll both be better for it, I promise.”
Yikes.
Big words from the smaller Foggy.
“I understand,” Foggy said, hoping that he wasn’t lying.
“No, you don’t,” Nelson said. “But you will.”
“He’s nice,” Matt told Foggy later when the interdimensional guests were gone. When Gwen had been finally extricated from the dog and sent on her way.
“Nice?” Foggy said. “I wouldn’t say ‘nice.’ Big Red is nice. That guy is maybe ‘well-meaning.’ Possibly ‘grumpy as fuck.’”
Matt hummed and burrowed down into the space between all the pillows he’d hoarded on Foggy’s bed.
“Nice,” he repeated. “Assertive.”
Ugh. Foggy got it now.
“You like him because he’s a dom,” Foggy sighed.
Matt made a pleased sound.
“You’ve got problems, Murdock,” Foggy said.
“Very nice,” Matt hummed happily.
“Oh my god.”
“Why don’t you yell at me?”
“Do you want me to yell at you??”
“I mean, yeah. That’s what I’ve been saying for a while now?” Matt reminded him.
“No,” Foggy said, “You’ve been telling me to tell you what to do.”
Wait.
Goddamnit, Nelson. You’re the one who ignited this shit. Now Matt had all these expectations of what Foggy should be like.
Damn, this interdimensional doubles shit was a two-way street wasn’t it?
“Alright,” Foggy said, “Then I want you to go get your head examined.”
Matt snorted.
“Not gonna happen,” he said.
“What the fuck, man? That’s literally what the other Nelson told you to do.”
“No,” Matt said, emerging from the pillows to glare. “He told me to get my shit together. And you’re asking, not telling. It’s different.”
“Okay,” Foggy huffed. “Now I’m telling you to get your head examined.”
“Ehn.”
“Matt.”
“What?”
“I am literally telling you.”
“Ehn.”
“Matt.”
“Tone’s all wrong.”
“Oh my god. This is not a sex thing.”
“I mean, it could be, but not with that attitude.”
“For fuck’s sake.”
“Like I said, not with that tone.”
Thanks for the advice, Nelson. Unfortunately, it looked like applying it was going to be an uphill battle for everyone here.