Fic: Boy Wonder [3/4]
Title: Boy Wonder [3/4]
Fandom: Daredevil (TV)
Rating: PG
Notes: Co-written with becs1024!
Warning: Brief mention of past disordered eating, fatphobia, and children being bullied by adults.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
“So I have some news.”
Matt shifts the phone between his ear and shoulder so that he can use both hands to dab at the blood he can feel oozing from the cut on his side. “Tell me.”
Foggy’s voice is bright and excited. “Marci worked whatever dark magic she works and scored me a headlining gig at the Beacon. It’s like this whole one night only featured performer thing with two openers, it’s actually a big deal!”
“That’s amazing. Not that you don’t deserve it, but seriously, Foggy, that’s incredible.” The cut stings as Matt dabs at it, but he’s beaming. Foggy sounds so happy.
“It’s two months from now, but I’m already comping you VIP seats right in front, buddy,” Foggy says. “I mean, if you want to come.”
“Don’t be silly, of course I want to come.”
“That’s right, I need you there to be my sexy arm candy,” Foggy says, and his voice is so fond that Matt loses track of what he’s doing for a minute and just sits there, smiling stupidly at nothing. It’s been three weeks - three impossibly joyful weeks - but Matt still can’t believe that he’s actually dating Foggy. It’s not even Foggy Nelson, Musician that’s throwing him off - it’s Foggy Nelson, Regular Human Being who’s so delightful as to be frankly implausible.
“Yeah, take me to the after party so that I can brag about you,” Matt says, and Foggy chuckles.
“I dunno, I feel a little silly being this stoked, but I am. We used to do stadium tours when I was in Boy Wonder - well, we opened stadium tours - but. This is my stuff, you know? Something I built. It feels different.” His voice goes soft and inviting. “You sure you don’t want to come over tonight and celebrate?”
God, does Matt want to say yes. But his eye is bruised and swollen shut thanks to last night’s patrol, and no amount of claiming he walked into a door is going to explain this gash in his torso. Luckily it’s too shallow to need stitches, but he should still wait a few days before he sees Foggy, until his face is less alarming and his side’s scabbed over and easy to handwave away.
“I’d love to, but I really have to hit this deadline,” he says, and pushes down the little twist of guilt, like a cramp. “Give me a couple days to get everything in to Jameson and I promise I’ll be able to rejoin the living.”
“All right,” says Foggy easily, trustingly, and the guilt twists tighter. “Happy writing, babe. Call me when you’re out of the woods, okay?”
“Yeah,” Matt says, hoping the tightness of his throat doesn’t come through in his voice, “will do. Talk to you soon, Foggy.”
He hangs up and turns his attention back to his cut. He has to tell Foggy that he’s Daredevil, he knows that. He can’t keep this up forever. But everything between them is still so light and easy, so joyous, that he hasn’t been able to bring himself to confess.
Still. Foggy deserves the truth, and the longer Matt waits, the worse it’ll be when Foggy does find out. Matt will tell him everything, and soon.
Just...not yet.
*
[Image description: A teenage Elden Henson wearing a bandana over long-ish hair and leaning against a bannister. The image is designed to look like a pinup from a tween magazine: there’s a Young Avengers logo in the upper lefthand corner, a starburst in the lower righthand corner that says “FOGGY” in neon yellow and “Boy Wonder” in neon pink, and another starburst halfway down the right side that says “WOW!” in rainbow letters with glittery rainbow stars behind it.]
*
"Thanks for cooking,” Foggy says when they're lying in bed, Matt’s head cushioned on Foggy’s chest. It’s a week later. Matt’s wounds have faded, and if he keeps the lights low and Foggy distracted, Foggy doesn’t ask about the scars. He’s glad; they’ve barely been dating a month but already going a few days without seeing Foggy feels like a famine.
"Thanks for...everything else," Matt says, and turns his head slightly so that Foggy can feel his smile. Foggy snorts and threads his fingers through Matt's hair.
"The first time I had pasta puttanesca was on tour in Italy when I was twelve," Foggy says a minute later. "Rick and Bucky found out what 'puttanesca' meant in Italian and they thought it was hilarious. They kept whispering 'whoresauce' during interviews to crack each other up." There's a soft smile in his voice, faint amusement.
Matt's quiet. Foggy's never been ashamed or embarrassed of his pop idol past, but he rarely shares details from it, either.
"The General caught them doing it during an interview in Germany and told them he'd take a solo away for each time he caught them saying it again," Foggy goes on. "He hated it when we made dirty jokes.” He drops his voice an octave in a gruff impression. “'You kids are supposed to be fucking wholesome, so watch your fucking mouths.' I think the irony was intentional."
"The...you mean Ross?" Matt asks. "General" Thaddeus Ross was the music impresario who'd assembled a whole flock of boy bands in the late nineties, including Boy Wonder. Some of the bigger bands later sued him for embezzlement and breach of contract; Boy Wonder, from what Matt can tell, dissolved before financial matters could come to a head.
"Yeah," Foggy says. "God, I was terrified of him. He was this really, just, this huge guy, and you never knew what'd set him off. Sometimes he'd be laughing and joking and then you'd say the wrong thing, and..." He shifts under Matt, something that feels like a shrug. "Besides, I wasn't one of his favorites. He liked Rick and Flash best and didn't care about Happy, but Bucky and I had smart mouths. He was always threatening to kick Bucky out of the band."
"Not you?" Matt asks.
"Who would've done the singing?" Foggy asks without a trace of ego. "He used to say I had a face for radio, but hell if I didn't have a voice for it, too."
Matt lifts his head, turns towards Foggy with a frown. "He said that to a twelve-year-old?"
"Oh yeah. Lots of cracks about my weight, too. I was on a pretty intense diet for most of Boy Wonder. Sort of ballooned after the band broke up, then panicked and kind of stopped eating the year I was fifteen. There was some yo-yo-ing for a while there, weight-wise. I was not always the Rubenesque beauty you're currently fondling."
Foggy's voice is cheerful, matter-of-fact, but Matt's horrified. It must show, because Foggy smooths his hair back and says, "Hey, no, don't make that face. I'm fine. My tweenage insecurities are a thing of the past, I promise."
“Okay,” Matt says, putting his head back down, even though nothing Foggy has just told him is okay.
“I can hear you being skeptical at me, you know,” Foggy says, giving him a little poke in the ribs. “Don’t you try the ‘poor little child star’ routine on me. I got out relatively unscathed. I’m a model of mental health! Not everyone’s that lucky, you know.” His joking tone falls apart on the last sentence, and he goes silent for a minute. Matt pets his hip and waits.
“We did this world tour with a couple other bands on the label, towards the end,” Foggy says eventually. “I was thirteen, and this older girl - she probably wasn't even eighteen, but she was older than me - offered to give me a blowjob if I introduced her to Rick. He was fifteen."
“What?” Matt asks, horrified anew.
He feels a shift beneath him as Foggy nods. "Yeah, I made up some excuse about having to go check on Flash and then hid in my dressing room for two hours. Later Bucky told me I was really stupid for passing that up, but...I mean, come on. I was a child. So was she, really."
“Did.” Matt’s not sure he's allowed to ask this. “Did you ever…”
“No, no,” Foggy says. “I lost my virginity to my first girlfriend after prom, just like any other normal all-American boy.”
Matt swallows. “And Ross never…” There have never been any allegations of sexual misconduct around him, but other managers, other Svengalis...
“Oh God, no!” Foggy says. “Please. He could barely stand to be in the same room as us. He would never...I mean, yeah, calling us shrieky-voiced little shits, sure, all the time, but in a strictly hands-off kind of way.”
“Good,” Matt says. He hates that he even thought it, but there's something in Foggy's voice when he says “the General,” a sort of banked fear and awe and fury, that reminds Matt of Stick. Not that Stick ever touched Matt that way either, but...anyway, Matt's relieved.
“Like I said. I was lucky,” Foggy says. “I wasn't molested. I'm not in rehab. My parents didn't steal all my money.”
“But…?” Matt asks gently. He's still getting to know all of Foggy's little tells, still memorizing the loveliest song he's ever heard, but he knows that little hitch in Foggy's breathing that means there's something more he wants to say.
“...It was hard, after,” Foggy admits finally, very softly. “We were never that famous, but still, I’d always felt…important. I'd always felt special. It was hard to go back to being, you know, ordinary.”
Foggy's the least ordinary person Matt knows, but Matt doesn't want to interrupt him now. It feels like Foggy's working up to something, like he's been working up to something since he started talking.
“I'd had a lot of freedom away from my parents, and I was kind of a little shit to them when I got back. We got in a lot of fights,” Foggy goes on. “Tutoring can only do so much, so I was behind on all my subjects, and my grades were bad. I felt stupid and fat and...and useless all the time, because I'd failed, we'd failed. I was fourteen and I'd already peaked. And I didn't really have any friends, just people who made fun of me or people who thought I could get them a record deal. Or people who thought I thought I was better than them, because I'd already had a record deal. Maybe I shouldn't have gone to a performing arts school, but…” He shrugs, another shift under Matt. “Hindsight.
“Anyway, I had a therapist, of course, my parents weren't stupid, but I was just so...so angry, and isolated, and ashamed…” He takes a long, steadying breath. “And then I read this story in the paper. About this kid my age, a kid who lived right here in my neighborhood, who lost his eyesight saving an old man’s life.”
Matt goes very still. Foggy's hand is warm on the back of his head.
“I was obsessed with your story for months,” Foggy says. “I read everything I could find. There wasn't much, so I read about your dad instead. I learned a lot about boxing.” He laughs a little, low and embarrassed. “Anyway. It...I don't know. It was like, here I was acting like such a little shit because I wasn't in a stupid boy band anymore, and here you were, doing something important and selfless, and you'd lost so much more than I had.” The gust of his exhale ruffles Matt’s hair. “I don't mean to be like, oh, I learned wisdom and acceptance from the handicapped guy’s bravery, that's shitty and you're not a Hallmark card, but...I don't know. It put things in perspective, sort of. It made me...I wanted to be more like you.”
Matt doesn't say anything. His heartbeat roars in his ears.
“I didn't make the connection, at first,” Foggy says. “I mean, your name rang a bell but I couldn't place it...and then you walked into my dressing room.”
“And you saw that I was blind,” Matt says. His voice comes out rusty.
“Yeah. Well, once I finished losing my mind over how damn gorgeous you were, and what an idiot I'd made of myself.”
“You.” Matt swallows. “You weren't an idiot.”
“I was kind of an idiot,” Foggy says, faint amusement in his voice. “You walked out the door, and I thought, wow, that’s Matt Murdock. And then I thought...wait, that’s Matt Murdock.” His fingers play with the short hairs at the back of Matt’s neck. His heart is beating fast. He’s nervous. “Anyway, I just. Wanted you to know, I guess? That you...that I know it wasn’t for me, that it didn’t have anything to do with me, but...you helped me, way back when, when things were shitty, and I’m grateful.” Matt can hear the slide of him licking his lips. “Is that okay?”
Matt pushes himself up on one elbow so he can face Foggy, the warmth of him and the soft sound of his breathing. He wants to say that Foggy helped him too, that Foggy’s voice was something to hold on to when Matt felt like he was drowning in darkness, but it feels too big to put into words. And besides, he’s pretty sure Foggy knows at least a little - from the way Matt awkwardly thrust his old Boy Wonder album at Foggy to sign, from the way Matt gushed about Foggy’s music in his early reviews, from the way he knows Matt, can see through all his half-spoken requests and secret anxieties in a heartbeat.
Instead he kisses Foggy, soft and sweet, and then lays his head back down on Foggy’s chest. “Yeah,” he says to Foggy’s heart. “It’s okay.”
*
[Image description: The bottom half of a page torn out of a tween magazine. At the top, near the ripped part, is the lower half of a photo of five teenage boys in 90s clothes. In the bottom righthand corner of the page is a picture of a young Sebastian Stan in a striped shirt and blazer with a little thought bubble next to him that says: “Bucky loves ziplining! What’s your favorite winter activity? Send YAM a postcard with your answer for a chance to win backstage passes to a Boy Wonder concert near you!”
Below the photo of the boy band is the following interview:
Hey, YAMmers! Have you been WONDERING what the guys from Boy Wonder are like? Wonder no more, because YAM sat down with these five dreamy dudes and asked them the questions we know you've been dying to hear the answers to!
YAM: Most of you guys have nicknames. Where did those come from?
Rick: Well, Happy's such a cheerful guy, and we call our little buddy here Flash because the camera loves him.
Bucky: My middle name's Buchanan, so Bucky's short for that.
Foggy: And I control the weather.
YAM: Foggy, you're such a kidder! What's your idea of the perfect date?
Flash: I'd take her to an arcade and win her a stuffed animal, so she'd always remember our special day together.
Happy: How about a moonlit drive around Malibu?
Bucky: I love extreme sports, so we'd go ziplining or something. Maybe in the mountains somewhere, I love the cold!
What's your favorite thing about being in Boy Wonder?
Bucky: Getting to travel all over the world, and meet all our fans!
Rick: Definitely the fans, and performing with my best bros.
Foggy: Getting to spend every day with my best friends. Even if Boy Wonder ended tomorrow, we'd still be brothers.
Lightning Round!
Favorite Color:
Rick: Green
Bucky: Black
Flash: Blue
Happy: Yellow
Foggy: Red
Favorite Subject:
Rick: Science
Bucky: History
Flash: Gym
Happy: Driver's Ed
Foggy: Civics
Favorite Boy Wonder Song:
Rick: "You're My World"
Bucky: "Miss America"
Flash: "You're My World"
Happy: "Girl You Are My Girl"
Foggy: "Someday"]
*
Later, when it’s over, Matt’s not sure whether to blame the arms dealer who shot him or a lifetime of Pavlovian eager responses to Foggy’s voice. He supposes it doesn’t matter. Either way, it ends with Foggy walking out the door.
He’d been tracking the arms dealer for weeks, tracing the flow of assault weapons and armor-piercing bullets into the Kitchen by shaking answers out of mooks higher and higher up the food chain until he gets a solid lead. He postpones another dinner date with Foggy when he finds out about it - a shipment coming in Friday night that will flood Hell’s Kitchen with weapons that can take down Daredevil, and more importantly the police, even through kevlar.
Foggy can wait until brunch. This can’t.
It’s a hard fight, and Matt takes a bullet through the meat of his right shoulder. He puts down the seller and his men, though, and that’s what’s important. But it’s late by the time he’s listened to the police collect the gang and their weapons, woken up Claire so that she can patch him up, and made his careful way home. He can already feel the heat of the morning sun creeping through the windows as he leaves his suit in a crumpled heap on the living room floor and collapses into bed.
So when Foggy knocks on his door for the third time less than four hours later and calls, “Matt! Are you decent? Come on, babe, eggs benedict and mimosas wait for no man!” Matt’s too groggy to remember to grab a shirt before he staggers to the door and opens it.
He realizes his mistake instantly when Foggy’s heartbeat goes into overdrive. “Matt! Holy crap, Matt, what happened to your shoulder?”
“I’m fine,” Matt says quickly, idiotically.
“What do you mean, you’re fine? You’ve got a huge bandage on your shoulder and you’re covered in bruises - what happened?”
Foggy’s voice is getting louder with every word, sharp with anxiety. Matt winces and pulls him into the apartment with his good arm, shutting the door behind him. The last thing he needs is for his neighbors to see this, too - neighbors who might already have noticed him coming and going at odd hours.
“It was just a little accident. I’m okay, really,” he says. “See, I’m already all patched up! It’s nothing.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” Foggy says, following him into the living room. “It looks like…”
He trails off, and Matt’s stomach sinks. What is Foggy looking at, what made him stop talking, why is his heart beating even faster…
“Matt,” Foggy says, and oh no, that’s not a happy voice. “Is that Daredevil’s suit?”
It’s still on the floor. Shit.
“I can explain,” Matt says immediately.
“I hope so,” Foggy says. “Because from where I’m standing it looks like either you’ve been lying about being blind to cover up your illegal vigilantism, or you’re into some really violent roleplay and have been cheating on me to get it. Although I guess we never talked about exclusivity so maybe ‘cheating’ is the wrong word but you’ve got a look on your face like a dog that got into the garbage so whatever’s going on I’m pretty sure you know I won’t be happy about it, and I’m babbling now so please just put me out of my misery and tell me what it is?”
Matt takes a deep breath. There’s no talking himself out of this now. “I am Daredevil. But I’m not lying about being blind.”
God, he wishes he was lying, because he’d give anything to see Foggy’s face right now.
Foggy’s silent for a long moment. Then he walks over to the couch, making a wide berth around the suit - Matt can’t blame him, to his own nose it reeks of blood and guilt and he’s tempted to throw it in the trash right now - and sits.
“Explain,” Foggy says.
Matt sits gingerly on the opposite end of the couch, trying not to crowd Foggy, and does his best. He tells him the truth about the accident, and his senses, and learning to control them. He tells him about Stick - a little - and his training, and keeping up with the training even after Stick left. He tells him about hearing screams in the night, screams and sirens and little girls crying, and how the need to do something about it bubbled up in him, hotter and hotter like a pot boiling over until he had to take action or risk immolation.
“It's illegal, Matt,” Foggy points out when Matt's done, spent and tired and raw-throated. “What you do. You're breaking the law.”
“Sometimes the law isn't enough,” Matt says. “I don't like breaking it, I really don't, but it's worth it to me if I can help people. And I can, I do.”
“You hurt people.”
“I save more. I saved you.”
Foggy makes a low noise, like he's acknowledging it but doesn't really want to. “You'll still go to jail if you're caught.”
“I know. It's still worth it.”
Foggy's silent again. From the direction he's facing, Matt's pretty sure he’s staring at the suit. He wishes he wasn't.
“You lied to me,” Foggy says. “Last night. When you said you weren't feeling well - you were doing this, weren't you?” Matt nods miserably. “How often do you lie to me, Matt?”
“I. I try not to. I hate lying to you.” He feels pathetic, twisted and hunched small on the couch, ashamed of his bloody hands.
“But you do it anyway,” Foggy says. “Were you ever going to tell me? Or were you going to just keep lying until...I don't know. Until you got arrested? Until I read about it in the Bugle? Until some criminal got lucky and I waited and waited for you to come home and never knew what had happened to...to the man I…” He cuts himself off before he finishes the sentence that Matt, selfish as he is, desperately wants to hear the end of.
“I was going to tell you,” Matt says. “I was. I just...I didn’t know how.”
“Okay, but here’s the thing, Matt,” Foggy says. “How do I know that isn’t just another lie?”
Matt flinches. “It’s not,” he says, but what good is his word to Foggy now?
“Christ,” Foggy says, suddenly bitter. “You’re gonna get yourself killed, you know that?”
“This is something I have to do, Foggy,” Matt says. “This is what I can do. I’m not like you, you...you have this music in you, this art, this light, and that, that’s what you give to the world. This is what I can give.”
“What are you talking - there’s no comparison!” Foggy says, standing up. Matt has a moment of sheer panic, but Foggy’s not leaving - just pacing, angry. “I write pop songs. You put people in the hospital!”
“I have to try to help people,” Matt says. “I have to. It’s who I am.”
“No. You’re making a choice,” Foggy says. “You don’t get to just chalk it up to compulsion. This is a choice.”
Matt closes his eyes. It doesn’t matter either way - he can hear the angry beat of Foggy’s heart, his pacing footsteps, the rush of his breath - but he’s not wearing his glasses, and he suddenly can’t bear the thought of Foggy seeing him like this, in this moment where he’s probably throwing it all away. “Then it’s the one I’ve made.”
Foggy stops pacing and just...stands there for a minute. Matt can’t read him. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to.
“All right,” Foggy says finally. “That’s...I’m gonna go. I have to go.”
“Foggy…” Matt starts, but he doesn’t finish the sentence.
“Yeah,” Foggy says, and walks out the door.
At least, Matt thinks, he doesn’t start crying until Foggy’s already gone.
Chapter 4
Fandom: Daredevil (TV)
Rating: PG
Notes: Co-written with becs1024!
Warning: Brief mention of past disordered eating, fatphobia, and children being bullied by adults.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
“So I have some news.”
Matt shifts the phone between his ear and shoulder so that he can use both hands to dab at the blood he can feel oozing from the cut on his side. “Tell me.”
Foggy’s voice is bright and excited. “Marci worked whatever dark magic she works and scored me a headlining gig at the Beacon. It’s like this whole one night only featured performer thing with two openers, it’s actually a big deal!”
“That’s amazing. Not that you don’t deserve it, but seriously, Foggy, that’s incredible.” The cut stings as Matt dabs at it, but he’s beaming. Foggy sounds so happy.
“It’s two months from now, but I’m already comping you VIP seats right in front, buddy,” Foggy says. “I mean, if you want to come.”
“Don’t be silly, of course I want to come.”
“That’s right, I need you there to be my sexy arm candy,” Foggy says, and his voice is so fond that Matt loses track of what he’s doing for a minute and just sits there, smiling stupidly at nothing. It’s been three weeks - three impossibly joyful weeks - but Matt still can’t believe that he’s actually dating Foggy. It’s not even Foggy Nelson, Musician that’s throwing him off - it’s Foggy Nelson, Regular Human Being who’s so delightful as to be frankly implausible.
“Yeah, take me to the after party so that I can brag about you,” Matt says, and Foggy chuckles.
“I dunno, I feel a little silly being this stoked, but I am. We used to do stadium tours when I was in Boy Wonder - well, we opened stadium tours - but. This is my stuff, you know? Something I built. It feels different.” His voice goes soft and inviting. “You sure you don’t want to come over tonight and celebrate?”
God, does Matt want to say yes. But his eye is bruised and swollen shut thanks to last night’s patrol, and no amount of claiming he walked into a door is going to explain this gash in his torso. Luckily it’s too shallow to need stitches, but he should still wait a few days before he sees Foggy, until his face is less alarming and his side’s scabbed over and easy to handwave away.
“I’d love to, but I really have to hit this deadline,” he says, and pushes down the little twist of guilt, like a cramp. “Give me a couple days to get everything in to Jameson and I promise I’ll be able to rejoin the living.”
“All right,” says Foggy easily, trustingly, and the guilt twists tighter. “Happy writing, babe. Call me when you’re out of the woods, okay?”
“Yeah,” Matt says, hoping the tightness of his throat doesn’t come through in his voice, “will do. Talk to you soon, Foggy.”
He hangs up and turns his attention back to his cut. He has to tell Foggy that he’s Daredevil, he knows that. He can’t keep this up forever. But everything between them is still so light and easy, so joyous, that he hasn’t been able to bring himself to confess.
Still. Foggy deserves the truth, and the longer Matt waits, the worse it’ll be when Foggy does find out. Matt will tell him everything, and soon.
Just...not yet.
*
[Image description: A teenage Elden Henson wearing a bandana over long-ish hair and leaning against a bannister. The image is designed to look like a pinup from a tween magazine: there’s a Young Avengers logo in the upper lefthand corner, a starburst in the lower righthand corner that says “FOGGY” in neon yellow and “Boy Wonder” in neon pink, and another starburst halfway down the right side that says “WOW!” in rainbow letters with glittery rainbow stars behind it.]
*
"Thanks for cooking,” Foggy says when they're lying in bed, Matt’s head cushioned on Foggy’s chest. It’s a week later. Matt’s wounds have faded, and if he keeps the lights low and Foggy distracted, Foggy doesn’t ask about the scars. He’s glad; they’ve barely been dating a month but already going a few days without seeing Foggy feels like a famine.
"Thanks for...everything else," Matt says, and turns his head slightly so that Foggy can feel his smile. Foggy snorts and threads his fingers through Matt's hair.
"The first time I had pasta puttanesca was on tour in Italy when I was twelve," Foggy says a minute later. "Rick and Bucky found out what 'puttanesca' meant in Italian and they thought it was hilarious. They kept whispering 'whoresauce' during interviews to crack each other up." There's a soft smile in his voice, faint amusement.
Matt's quiet. Foggy's never been ashamed or embarrassed of his pop idol past, but he rarely shares details from it, either.
"The General caught them doing it during an interview in Germany and told them he'd take a solo away for each time he caught them saying it again," Foggy goes on. "He hated it when we made dirty jokes.” He drops his voice an octave in a gruff impression. “'You kids are supposed to be fucking wholesome, so watch your fucking mouths.' I think the irony was intentional."
"The...you mean Ross?" Matt asks. "General" Thaddeus Ross was the music impresario who'd assembled a whole flock of boy bands in the late nineties, including Boy Wonder. Some of the bigger bands later sued him for embezzlement and breach of contract; Boy Wonder, from what Matt can tell, dissolved before financial matters could come to a head.
"Yeah," Foggy says. "God, I was terrified of him. He was this really, just, this huge guy, and you never knew what'd set him off. Sometimes he'd be laughing and joking and then you'd say the wrong thing, and..." He shifts under Matt, something that feels like a shrug. "Besides, I wasn't one of his favorites. He liked Rick and Flash best and didn't care about Happy, but Bucky and I had smart mouths. He was always threatening to kick Bucky out of the band."
"Not you?" Matt asks.
"Who would've done the singing?" Foggy asks without a trace of ego. "He used to say I had a face for radio, but hell if I didn't have a voice for it, too."
Matt lifts his head, turns towards Foggy with a frown. "He said that to a twelve-year-old?"
"Oh yeah. Lots of cracks about my weight, too. I was on a pretty intense diet for most of Boy Wonder. Sort of ballooned after the band broke up, then panicked and kind of stopped eating the year I was fifteen. There was some yo-yo-ing for a while there, weight-wise. I was not always the Rubenesque beauty you're currently fondling."
Foggy's voice is cheerful, matter-of-fact, but Matt's horrified. It must show, because Foggy smooths his hair back and says, "Hey, no, don't make that face. I'm fine. My tweenage insecurities are a thing of the past, I promise."
“Okay,” Matt says, putting his head back down, even though nothing Foggy has just told him is okay.
“I can hear you being skeptical at me, you know,” Foggy says, giving him a little poke in the ribs. “Don’t you try the ‘poor little child star’ routine on me. I got out relatively unscathed. I’m a model of mental health! Not everyone’s that lucky, you know.” His joking tone falls apart on the last sentence, and he goes silent for a minute. Matt pets his hip and waits.
“We did this world tour with a couple other bands on the label, towards the end,” Foggy says eventually. “I was thirteen, and this older girl - she probably wasn't even eighteen, but she was older than me - offered to give me a blowjob if I introduced her to Rick. He was fifteen."
“What?” Matt asks, horrified anew.
He feels a shift beneath him as Foggy nods. "Yeah, I made up some excuse about having to go check on Flash and then hid in my dressing room for two hours. Later Bucky told me I was really stupid for passing that up, but...I mean, come on. I was a child. So was she, really."
“Did.” Matt’s not sure he's allowed to ask this. “Did you ever…”
“No, no,” Foggy says. “I lost my virginity to my first girlfriend after prom, just like any other normal all-American boy.”
Matt swallows. “And Ross never…” There have never been any allegations of sexual misconduct around him, but other managers, other Svengalis...
“Oh God, no!” Foggy says. “Please. He could barely stand to be in the same room as us. He would never...I mean, yeah, calling us shrieky-voiced little shits, sure, all the time, but in a strictly hands-off kind of way.”
“Good,” Matt says. He hates that he even thought it, but there's something in Foggy's voice when he says “the General,” a sort of banked fear and awe and fury, that reminds Matt of Stick. Not that Stick ever touched Matt that way either, but...anyway, Matt's relieved.
“Like I said. I was lucky,” Foggy says. “I wasn't molested. I'm not in rehab. My parents didn't steal all my money.”
“But…?” Matt asks gently. He's still getting to know all of Foggy's little tells, still memorizing the loveliest song he's ever heard, but he knows that little hitch in Foggy's breathing that means there's something more he wants to say.
“...It was hard, after,” Foggy admits finally, very softly. “We were never that famous, but still, I’d always felt…important. I'd always felt special. It was hard to go back to being, you know, ordinary.”
Foggy's the least ordinary person Matt knows, but Matt doesn't want to interrupt him now. It feels like Foggy's working up to something, like he's been working up to something since he started talking.
“I'd had a lot of freedom away from my parents, and I was kind of a little shit to them when I got back. We got in a lot of fights,” Foggy goes on. “Tutoring can only do so much, so I was behind on all my subjects, and my grades were bad. I felt stupid and fat and...and useless all the time, because I'd failed, we'd failed. I was fourteen and I'd already peaked. And I didn't really have any friends, just people who made fun of me or people who thought I could get them a record deal. Or people who thought I thought I was better than them, because I'd already had a record deal. Maybe I shouldn't have gone to a performing arts school, but…” He shrugs, another shift under Matt. “Hindsight.
“Anyway, I had a therapist, of course, my parents weren't stupid, but I was just so...so angry, and isolated, and ashamed…” He takes a long, steadying breath. “And then I read this story in the paper. About this kid my age, a kid who lived right here in my neighborhood, who lost his eyesight saving an old man’s life.”
Matt goes very still. Foggy's hand is warm on the back of his head.
“I was obsessed with your story for months,” Foggy says. “I read everything I could find. There wasn't much, so I read about your dad instead. I learned a lot about boxing.” He laughs a little, low and embarrassed. “Anyway. It...I don't know. It was like, here I was acting like such a little shit because I wasn't in a stupid boy band anymore, and here you were, doing something important and selfless, and you'd lost so much more than I had.” The gust of his exhale ruffles Matt’s hair. “I don't mean to be like, oh, I learned wisdom and acceptance from the handicapped guy’s bravery, that's shitty and you're not a Hallmark card, but...I don't know. It put things in perspective, sort of. It made me...I wanted to be more like you.”
Matt doesn't say anything. His heartbeat roars in his ears.
“I didn't make the connection, at first,” Foggy says. “I mean, your name rang a bell but I couldn't place it...and then you walked into my dressing room.”
“And you saw that I was blind,” Matt says. His voice comes out rusty.
“Yeah. Well, once I finished losing my mind over how damn gorgeous you were, and what an idiot I'd made of myself.”
“You.” Matt swallows. “You weren't an idiot.”
“I was kind of an idiot,” Foggy says, faint amusement in his voice. “You walked out the door, and I thought, wow, that’s Matt Murdock. And then I thought...wait, that’s Matt Murdock.” His fingers play with the short hairs at the back of Matt’s neck. His heart is beating fast. He’s nervous. “Anyway, I just. Wanted you to know, I guess? That you...that I know it wasn’t for me, that it didn’t have anything to do with me, but...you helped me, way back when, when things were shitty, and I’m grateful.” Matt can hear the slide of him licking his lips. “Is that okay?”
Matt pushes himself up on one elbow so he can face Foggy, the warmth of him and the soft sound of his breathing. He wants to say that Foggy helped him too, that Foggy’s voice was something to hold on to when Matt felt like he was drowning in darkness, but it feels too big to put into words. And besides, he’s pretty sure Foggy knows at least a little - from the way Matt awkwardly thrust his old Boy Wonder album at Foggy to sign, from the way Matt gushed about Foggy’s music in his early reviews, from the way he knows Matt, can see through all his half-spoken requests and secret anxieties in a heartbeat.
Instead he kisses Foggy, soft and sweet, and then lays his head back down on Foggy’s chest. “Yeah,” he says to Foggy’s heart. “It’s okay.”
*
[Image description: The bottom half of a page torn out of a tween magazine. At the top, near the ripped part, is the lower half of a photo of five teenage boys in 90s clothes. In the bottom righthand corner of the page is a picture of a young Sebastian Stan in a striped shirt and blazer with a little thought bubble next to him that says: “Bucky loves ziplining! What’s your favorite winter activity? Send YAM a postcard with your answer for a chance to win backstage passes to a Boy Wonder concert near you!”
Below the photo of the boy band is the following interview:
Hey, YAMmers! Have you been WONDERING what the guys from Boy Wonder are like? Wonder no more, because YAM sat down with these five dreamy dudes and asked them the questions we know you've been dying to hear the answers to!
YAM: Most of you guys have nicknames. Where did those come from?
Rick: Well, Happy's such a cheerful guy, and we call our little buddy here Flash because the camera loves him.
Bucky: My middle name's Buchanan, so Bucky's short for that.
Foggy: And I control the weather.
YAM: Foggy, you're such a kidder! What's your idea of the perfect date?
Flash: I'd take her to an arcade and win her a stuffed animal, so she'd always remember our special day together.
Happy: How about a moonlit drive around Malibu?
Bucky: I love extreme sports, so we'd go ziplining or something. Maybe in the mountains somewhere, I love the cold!
What's your favorite thing about being in Boy Wonder?
Bucky: Getting to travel all over the world, and meet all our fans!
Rick: Definitely the fans, and performing with my best bros.
Foggy: Getting to spend every day with my best friends. Even if Boy Wonder ended tomorrow, we'd still be brothers.
Lightning Round!
Favorite Color:
Rick: Green
Bucky: Black
Flash: Blue
Happy: Yellow
Foggy: Red
Favorite Subject:
Rick: Science
Bucky: History
Flash: Gym
Happy: Driver's Ed
Foggy: Civics
Favorite Boy Wonder Song:
Rick: "You're My World"
Bucky: "Miss America"
Flash: "You're My World"
Happy: "Girl You Are My Girl"
Foggy: "Someday"]
*
Later, when it’s over, Matt’s not sure whether to blame the arms dealer who shot him or a lifetime of Pavlovian eager responses to Foggy’s voice. He supposes it doesn’t matter. Either way, it ends with Foggy walking out the door.
He’d been tracking the arms dealer for weeks, tracing the flow of assault weapons and armor-piercing bullets into the Kitchen by shaking answers out of mooks higher and higher up the food chain until he gets a solid lead. He postpones another dinner date with Foggy when he finds out about it - a shipment coming in Friday night that will flood Hell’s Kitchen with weapons that can take down Daredevil, and more importantly the police, even through kevlar.
Foggy can wait until brunch. This can’t.
It’s a hard fight, and Matt takes a bullet through the meat of his right shoulder. He puts down the seller and his men, though, and that’s what’s important. But it’s late by the time he’s listened to the police collect the gang and their weapons, woken up Claire so that she can patch him up, and made his careful way home. He can already feel the heat of the morning sun creeping through the windows as he leaves his suit in a crumpled heap on the living room floor and collapses into bed.
So when Foggy knocks on his door for the third time less than four hours later and calls, “Matt! Are you decent? Come on, babe, eggs benedict and mimosas wait for no man!” Matt’s too groggy to remember to grab a shirt before he staggers to the door and opens it.
He realizes his mistake instantly when Foggy’s heartbeat goes into overdrive. “Matt! Holy crap, Matt, what happened to your shoulder?”
“I’m fine,” Matt says quickly, idiotically.
“What do you mean, you’re fine? You’ve got a huge bandage on your shoulder and you’re covered in bruises - what happened?”
Foggy’s voice is getting louder with every word, sharp with anxiety. Matt winces and pulls him into the apartment with his good arm, shutting the door behind him. The last thing he needs is for his neighbors to see this, too - neighbors who might already have noticed him coming and going at odd hours.
“It was just a little accident. I’m okay, really,” he says. “See, I’m already all patched up! It’s nothing.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” Foggy says, following him into the living room. “It looks like…”
He trails off, and Matt’s stomach sinks. What is Foggy looking at, what made him stop talking, why is his heart beating even faster…
“Matt,” Foggy says, and oh no, that’s not a happy voice. “Is that Daredevil’s suit?”
It’s still on the floor. Shit.
“I can explain,” Matt says immediately.
“I hope so,” Foggy says. “Because from where I’m standing it looks like either you’ve been lying about being blind to cover up your illegal vigilantism, or you’re into some really violent roleplay and have been cheating on me to get it. Although I guess we never talked about exclusivity so maybe ‘cheating’ is the wrong word but you’ve got a look on your face like a dog that got into the garbage so whatever’s going on I’m pretty sure you know I won’t be happy about it, and I’m babbling now so please just put me out of my misery and tell me what it is?”
Matt takes a deep breath. There’s no talking himself out of this now. “I am Daredevil. But I’m not lying about being blind.”
God, he wishes he was lying, because he’d give anything to see Foggy’s face right now.
Foggy’s silent for a long moment. Then he walks over to the couch, making a wide berth around the suit - Matt can’t blame him, to his own nose it reeks of blood and guilt and he’s tempted to throw it in the trash right now - and sits.
“Explain,” Foggy says.
Matt sits gingerly on the opposite end of the couch, trying not to crowd Foggy, and does his best. He tells him the truth about the accident, and his senses, and learning to control them. He tells him about Stick - a little - and his training, and keeping up with the training even after Stick left. He tells him about hearing screams in the night, screams and sirens and little girls crying, and how the need to do something about it bubbled up in him, hotter and hotter like a pot boiling over until he had to take action or risk immolation.
“It's illegal, Matt,” Foggy points out when Matt's done, spent and tired and raw-throated. “What you do. You're breaking the law.”
“Sometimes the law isn't enough,” Matt says. “I don't like breaking it, I really don't, but it's worth it to me if I can help people. And I can, I do.”
“You hurt people.”
“I save more. I saved you.”
Foggy makes a low noise, like he's acknowledging it but doesn't really want to. “You'll still go to jail if you're caught.”
“I know. It's still worth it.”
Foggy's silent again. From the direction he's facing, Matt's pretty sure he’s staring at the suit. He wishes he wasn't.
“You lied to me,” Foggy says. “Last night. When you said you weren't feeling well - you were doing this, weren't you?” Matt nods miserably. “How often do you lie to me, Matt?”
“I. I try not to. I hate lying to you.” He feels pathetic, twisted and hunched small on the couch, ashamed of his bloody hands.
“But you do it anyway,” Foggy says. “Were you ever going to tell me? Or were you going to just keep lying until...I don't know. Until you got arrested? Until I read about it in the Bugle? Until some criminal got lucky and I waited and waited for you to come home and never knew what had happened to...to the man I…” He cuts himself off before he finishes the sentence that Matt, selfish as he is, desperately wants to hear the end of.
“I was going to tell you,” Matt says. “I was. I just...I didn’t know how.”
“Okay, but here’s the thing, Matt,” Foggy says. “How do I know that isn’t just another lie?”
Matt flinches. “It’s not,” he says, but what good is his word to Foggy now?
“Christ,” Foggy says, suddenly bitter. “You’re gonna get yourself killed, you know that?”
“This is something I have to do, Foggy,” Matt says. “This is what I can do. I’m not like you, you...you have this music in you, this art, this light, and that, that’s what you give to the world. This is what I can give.”
“What are you talking - there’s no comparison!” Foggy says, standing up. Matt has a moment of sheer panic, but Foggy’s not leaving - just pacing, angry. “I write pop songs. You put people in the hospital!”
“I have to try to help people,” Matt says. “I have to. It’s who I am.”
“No. You’re making a choice,” Foggy says. “You don’t get to just chalk it up to compulsion. This is a choice.”
Matt closes his eyes. It doesn’t matter either way - he can hear the angry beat of Foggy’s heart, his pacing footsteps, the rush of his breath - but he’s not wearing his glasses, and he suddenly can’t bear the thought of Foggy seeing him like this, in this moment where he’s probably throwing it all away. “Then it’s the one I’ve made.”
Foggy stops pacing and just...stands there for a minute. Matt can’t read him. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to.
“All right,” Foggy says finally. “That’s...I’m gonna go. I have to go.”
“Foggy…” Matt starts, but he doesn’t finish the sentence.
“Yeah,” Foggy says, and walks out the door.
At least, Matt thinks, he doesn’t start crying until Foggy’s already gone.
Chapter 4