First Born

Foggy was happy for the first time in a long time. The Witch he summoned did a great job, he was pretty much silent when he did his work. Foggy just awkwardly stood around when the man started speaking in Latin under his breath. The guy was, odd, to say the least- but then again Foggy hadn’t met any Witches before. Maybe they all wore glasses inside? He didn’t know. He didn’t even know Witches could be men. Really, really hot men.

Weren’t they Warlocks or something? Wizards?

Sure, Foggy owed something, his first-born child apparently…but he barely even gave a thought to something that could happen 19 years in the future. He’ll find a way around the rules, he’s going to be a lawyer. He’ll be the best damn witchcraft lawyer ever. There are always loopholes, and Foggy will take advantage of them.

The Witch left just as quickly as he came, and after the man disappeared Foggy went immediately to his mom. When Foggy rushed into his mom’s room he was relieved to find her looking healthy. Better than healthy, she looked bright. Her hair had grown back, her skin was glowing and the bags under her eyes had miraculously disappeared.

Despite Foggy’s happiness, his mom was pretty pissed.

“Foggy. What did you do?” She reached towards her chest, her voice sounded clear. It wasn’t wrought with phlegm and rough like it had been. Foggy didn’t answer her so she spoke again, “Franklin Percy Nelson…What. Did. You. Do?”

His head snapped up at his given name. “I…Uh- I got a Witch to heal you.”

She shook her head and paced the room, “What did you give her? Your soul? Foggy…magic isn’t- you know Witches are very dangerous. I could have been fine, Foggy!”

“It was a man, actually. He was nice. He didn’t just heal you he…look at you mom!” Foggy held his hands out towards her in a grand gesture. “Your hair is back! You look beautiful and young! Like all those years never happened!”

His mother sighed and she smiled, “Of course. I’m happy, Foggy. I’m happy to be healthy…but at what cost? What did you give up?”

Explaining the whole first-born thing left her sobbing, but Foggy had explained what the Witch told him.

“Look mom…he said that I’d still technically be a parent. I’d still be able to meet them. And that’s years away! I’ll find a loophole, mom. Remember when I got that 30% discount off of brie cheese after finding a loophole in that coupon book? Remember? It’ll be like that.”

“Giving up your first-born child isn’t the same as expensive cheese, Foggy. What if you don’t have a child by that time? What if you get my cancer by the time you turn my age?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, mom. This can’t be undone. I need to pack now, call the rest of the family and let them know…Wait- call up dad and Candy! Oh my God! We need to tell them!”

His father was at work, and his younger sister Candace was on a carefully arranged outing with her friends.

It’s not like Foggy would’ve gone and summoned a Witch with the rest of his family around.

The rest of the night was spent putting Foggy’s things together so he could go to his dorm in the morning, and calling up different relatives and letting them know about his mom’s miraculous recovery. They only let the immediate family know about the Witch thing…he didn’t need the rest of the Nelson clan calling him up and scolding him. His thoughts wandered to his Aunt Bertha and he gave a full-body cringe. Aunt Bertha can never find out about this.

His mother, sister, and father all insisted on driving with him to his housing, even though it was a 30-minute drive, traffic was terrible…and seriously, he would have been fine taking the subway and a few buses. Yes, he will be visiting them next week. He swears. No, he won’t be making friends with Witches- seriously, Candy, stop mentioning it.

It was a long, and arduous car ride. As car rides with his family always were.

When they got to his dorm it took a considerable amount of convincing to get his family to leave him. They all wanted to meet his roommate…but he made the argument that for all he knew, they could show up hours later- and he needed to start signing up for his classes.

So now, his classes won’t load. He’s already got five classes down (legal methods, constitutional law, criminal law, contracts and torts) but his civil procedure and Punjabi class just will not load. There’s a beautiful woman who spoke Punjabi…he saw her at orientation, he will get that class.

“Goddamn it, come on! Load. Load!” He screamed at his computer and then heard a knock on the door as it opened. “Wha’?”

“Excuse me, is this room 312?” a voice asked. A pretty familiar voice.

Foggy paid no attention, still looking at his classes. “Yeah, who are you looking for?” He looked up from his computer and took in the man.

A very familiar man.

“Holy shit, you’re my Witch.” Foggy stared at the guy who now stood stock still. He was in the same glasses as the night before, and Foggy’s eyes drifted down to the cane he was holding. “Oh. A blind Witch,” so that would explain the glasses inside then.

“I…” The man’s jaw was wide open. “Um, I’m sorry I can leave. I didn’t mean…this is-“

Foggy broke into a wide smile, “Holy shit, man! This is crazy!” Foggy took in the large bag that the man was holding, “You’re my roomie! You don’t need to leave… We don’t need to change rooms. You saved my mom. She’s looking great, and I’m so grateful for that.”

“You owe me your first-born son,” the man looked perplexed.

“Yeah, but-” Foggy stood up from his bed and shrugged. “That’s years in the future and you did an awesome job with my mom. So really I’m just happy you saved her. It was my choice to make the deal. I just think it’s insane we both ended up in the same room…” Foggy furrowed his brow, “Wait. You didn’t do that right? To keep tabs on me? Make sure I get laid and have a kid? Because that would be weird.”

The man chuckled, a confused chuckle, but a chuckle nonetheless. “No! No, this is just as crazy to me as it is to you,” he held out his hand. “Uh, Matt Murdock.”

Foggy shook it. “Foggy Nelson,” then the name dawned on him. “Wait…Matt Murdock? Are you- you’re not from Hell’s Kitchen, are you?”

“Yeah, born and raised.”

“So am I!” Foggy was just getting more and more interested, “Yeah. I heard about you when you were a kid, what you did, saving that guy crossing the street.”

Matt finally started to put down his things. Foggy could see the tension slowly ease from his shoulders. His…very nice shoulders.

“I just did what anyone would have-“

“Bullshit. You are a hero,” Foggy pointed at finger at him. “You saved my mom too. Do you just go around saving people? Is that your job, as a Witch too? Why are you going to law school?”

Matt shook his head, “I’m really not a hero- and well, my job- it uh…” Matt cleared his throat, “It’s just that. A job. I have to do it, the New York coven chose it for me. I chose to go to law school for myself.”

“I beg to differ on the hero thing- come on, you got your peepers knocked out saving that old dude. And you did a lot more than just do ‘your job’ with my mom. I just asked for you to cure her cancer, but you made her glow. Her hair was back…she looks years younger.”

“Well, I don’t consider my job done if I don’t do it well. Making your mother healthy again, includes all of that,” the tension continued to ease out of Matt. “And my eyes- they didn’t get knocked out.”

“Good,” This guy was really, really hot. Foggy was awkward. Why is he saying these things. “Cause that would be a little freaky. But no offense.”

Matt eased into a wide smile, “Please, none taken. Most people dance around me like I’m made of glass. I hate that.”

“I mean…you’re a pretty powerful Witch, right? Definitely not made of glass. You’re just a guy. A uh,” Foggy nodded and gulped. Maybe he could make a move on Matt now. Maybe his parents could forgive him for going out with a Witch. “A really, really good-looking guy.”

Foggy could see all of Matt’s tension come crawling back into his shoulders. Matt looked at him awkwardly, “Oh, um.”

Okay. So obviously straight.

“I mean, girls must love that right, the whole…wounded, handsome duck thing. Am I right?” And now he is stumbling on his words. To this strange beautiful Witch man.

“Right,” Matt chuckled. “Yeah, it’s been known to happen.”

“What do the girls think of the whole Witch thing? Do they think it’s hot?” Foggy asked.

“You see,” Matt frowned. “I’d rather you not mention it to anybody, please. I don’t go around telling people I’m magic and…people aren’t as open as you seem to be about these things. I want to leave that behind me. I want people to think I’m as normal as anybody else.”

“Yeah, of course, of course,” Foggy quickly agreed before he heard a ding on his computer. “Oh shit…” He want back to his computer and saw his registration complete. “Yes, I’m in!”

“In what?”

“Punjabi, I got the last spot.”

“You’re taking Punjabi?”

Falling into a routine with Matt was easy enough. There was still some residual tension around the whole magic thing, but Foggy worked to make Matt as comfortable as possible. Even though the Latin was kind of hot, to be honest, and made his heart pick up quite a few paces anytime Matt spoke it. Foggy walked in on Matt whispering in Latin to his cup of coffee once, he was extremely confused until Matt explained.

“It got cold. I made it warm again.”

That lead to him asking Matt to warm up his coffee…and then asking a lot more about magic. He’s already got some vocabulary down that Matt explained to him. Apparently people like him are called Regulars. He remembered when Matt first started talking about it,

“You’re a Regular, Foggy I can’t do too much for you,” Matt said after Foggy asked him to warm up his cup of coffee for the fifth time that day.

Foggy turned his head to Matt, who sat on his desk, studying. “What do you mean I’m a regular? A regular, what?”

Matt vaguely looked up at him from the book he had been running his hands over. He wasn’t wearing glasses, so Foggy could see his eyes drift somewhere towards Foggy’s left shoulder, “Oh. Have I not explained anything to you about the terms Witches use? Do you not know any of them?”

“Matt, I think I’ve made it pretty clear this whole magic thing is new to me. You’re the first Witch I’ve ever met, and I thought you had to be a women,” Foggy leaned in from his bed. Where he still had the cold coffee in his hands. “So give me a little vocabulary lesson. Tell me why you can’t do too much for a regular guy like me.”

Matt turned toward him and tilted his head. Something Foggy was beginning to realize was something he did whenever he was thinking.

“Well…when somebody is a Regular, it just means somebody who doesn’t have magic.”

“Like me.”

“Yes, like you. Then there are Witches like me, people who are part of a coven. Magic has been gifted to certain people, for whatever reasons- nobody knows why it chooses certain people over others…but it runs in families. When a lot of magic is used on a Regular, somebody who hasn’t been gifted magic, it usually wants some kind of payback.”

Foggy frowned, “Why?”

“I don’t know, why. In fact, I think it’s a little odd that you haven’t had to give any payback, because recently I’ve been warming up your coffee a lot, and giving you just that extra bit of food. Making sure your hangovers go away,” Foggy listened as Matt explained.

“I didn’t ask you to do all that.” He didn’t. Really, the only thing he’d been asking about is coffee. Matt had been doing all that for him?

“I just do something for you whenever I do it for me, Foggy. I think that’s common courtesy.”

Foggy nodded. “Maybe I don’t need to pay it back because you gave those things to me without me asking.”

“That’s probably why,” Matt continued. “Anyways, do you want me to keep explaining the vocabulary?”

“Yeah, go on. So I’m a Regular. You’re a Witch. Any other terms I should know?”

“There are also people with magic called Matchless. They are naturals when it comes to performing magic, but are not a part of a coven. My dad was a Matchless,” Foggy was about to interrupt and ask why Matt was in a coven if his dad wasn’t, but Matt kept speaking. “Then there are Inklings. Inklings are people with magic, but they’re not naturals at it. A person can go their entire life as an Inkling, simply thinking that they’re a Regular.”

“Matt. You said your dad was a Matchless. Then why aren’t you a Matchless?”

“I…” Matt frowned. Foggy had heard Matt explain to him that the coven gave him his job, that he had to do his work, but never why. “The New York coven found me and made me a part of their coven. They gave me a job, that I have to do.”

“That doesn’t answer my question Matt, you’ve told me that already.”

“You know how you owe the coven your first-born, Foggy?”

Foggy nodded, “Yeah.”

“Well my mom made a similar deal you did. She gave me up, before leaving us. Then my dad was able to protect me from the coven for a while with the magic he had as a Matchless. After he died I was… taken, trained for my work and given my job,” There was a bitter note in his voice while Matt explained.

“Do you not want to be a Witch, Matt?”

Matt shook his head and looked down, his eyes darted quickly back and forth, “I never wanted to be a part of the coven, Foggy. It’s like I’m being controlled every time someone calls me. Every time somebody wants me to use their magic for greed or corruption- I have to help them, even if I don’t want to.”

“I’m sorry,” Foggy said. He didn’t know Matt felt that way. Did Matt secretly dislike him? Did he feel controlled by Foggy anytime he asked him to warm his coffee? Or the first time they met…that was Foggy using Matt, taking something that wasn’t his.

“For what?”

“For using you,” He didn’t know Matt felt controlled.

Matt shot his head up and quickly waved his hands in Foggy’s direction. “No! No. Foggy I never thought about it like that with you. What I did for your mom I was happy to do. What I do for you, I am happy to do. There’s nothing about it I regret, except for the price I had to deliver the first time.”

“So why can’t you leave the coven, Matt? Is there anything you can do to leave? Do people get kicked out?” He needed to start doing some reading. Some people were specializing in witchcraft law, maybe he could ask them for their books.

“Well there’s another bit of vocabulary for you,” Matt chuckled darkly. “The Removed. Some people- who are either really bad with magic, or are shunned by the coven, or aren’t a first-born like me and want to leave. They’re a Removed. I’ve only known one person who ever left the coven, and he did it by disappearing completely,” Matt got a far away look in his eyes. Foggy could tell there was more to the story, but decided not to press on.

“What if you start just really sucking at your job. Maybe they’ll kick you out,” Foggy smiled. “Somebody wants three-million dollars? You get them three-million sand dollars. They’ll never see it comin’.”

Matt started to laugh, “Foggy I can’t do that.”

“Matt! Sand dollars. It’s a genuine mistake…Or…Or maybe somebody wants something and…Uh… Remember Fairly OddParents?”

“Fairly OddParents?”

“They ask for a ham and cheese omelette and you give them their omelette…just not on a plate. You can be like that genie who tricks people if they’re not specific enough.”

“Foggy, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why would someone summon a Witch for a ham and cheese omelette,” Matt sounds confused but Foggy considered his efforts a job well done considering that Matt was now throwing his head back in a laugh.

Conversations like that started to become pretty common, but Matt made it clear that the New York coven was obsessive over loopholes, and the jokes they made about it were really just jokes. Not solutions.

The first time Foggy saw Matt get called for a job was in the middle of their torts class. Foggy was half-way asleep. It was about two months into the semester, and Matt was listening intently to the lecture before he stood up out of the nowhere and walked out of the classroom.

Foggy, rightly concerned with his friend’s sudden change in attitude, stood up and followed him silently. When he made it out of the classroom he saw Matt move into a secluded hallway.

“Matt!” He called out and walked towards him. “What are you doing?”

Matt turned his head toward him, “I’ve been called for a job, Foggy. Go back into class, I’ll follow up with you later,” before Foggy could respond Matt put both his hands together and whispered. “Accipio.”

He was gone, and Foggy blinked at the empty space before he sighed and went back to the torts class. Now he had to actually pay attention and take some really good notes for Matt. He’ll read them out to him when Matt comes back.

He went back in, sat down, rubbed his eyes and got his notebook out. God. He had to actually pay attention instead of reading the lecture notes afterwards. Torture. He chuckled. Torts-ure. He began to write with his pen, and stayed focused for the rest of the class.

When he stood up to leave he noticed Matt’s cane was folded up in the seat next to him. Foggy picked it up and groaned. His friend was alone, at some random place in Hell’s Kitchen, because some random person summoned him- and without his cane.

He shoved it into his messenger bag and headed to his last class of the day. Civil procedure, well, at least he liked civil procedure. Matt didn’t show up for the entirety of the class, and Foggy was concerned.

He walked alone back to his dorm and when he opened the door he saw Matt sprawled out on his bed. His face was pale and he was sweating enough that strands of hair stuck messily onto his forehead.

“Holy shit, Matt. Are you okay?”

Matt didn’t move his position but spoke quietly, “I’m fine. This happens sometimes.”

“You’ve been gone for two hours, Matt. Do your jobs usually take this long?” From what Foggy remembered Matt had only been there to help his mom for about ten minutes.

“No. No. It’s just some guy asked me to kill his wife.”

Foggy’s eyes widened, “Oh my God…Matt, did you?”

“No!” Matt’s voice was strong. “Absolutely not. I had to call the coven and they took the guy away. I was gone for so long because they had to do a separation spell.”

“Separation spell?”

“I was summoned, when I don’t do anything after being summoned it can really mess with me. A spell has to be done to make sure that whatever ritual he did to make me do a job is officially broken. It leaves me…” Matt lazily turned his head into a pillow. “A little wiped out.”

“Okay, I took some good notes from class. I’ll read them to you later. Do you want anything?” Foggy got up and fetched a towel, he went to the sink and dampened it with water before throwing it in the microwave. “I’m getting you a hot towel. You want some tea? We’ve got calming chamomile, mint medley, and jasmine green tea.”

“You don’t have to do that Fog…”

“Bullshit, Murdock. I want to do it. Now what kind of tea do you want?”

Foggy could see Matt make a small smile. “Mint, please.”

And thus, Foggy really hated the whole Claimed first-born thing. Matt didn’t want to do this. Why should he be forced to do it? Especially if it can leave him weak and sick like this.

He’s definitely signing up for a witchcraft law class next semester.