A/N: Finally I can post to ff again! So here's a very belated second chapter which has been up on AO3 for years now.

Several years later, another one of Matt's secrets has been revealed. Foggy is shocked and angry, and Matt is badly injured, and they both still need each other. Set after Nelson v. Murdock, mostly season one canon compliant asides from cat. There isn't much cat in this chapter, though, not until right at the end, but that's for a reason.

The first call comes when Foggy steps out of the shower, and in his rush to the phone he almost picks up out of instinct. Then he sees who it is and drops the phone onto the bedroom rug. It lays there, face down, giving a final ring before quitting, while Foggy collapses on the bed. Not a minute later, it chirps with an incoming text, but Foggy is still sitting there in nothing but a towel because seeing that name on the screen drained all his willpower and he can't get up. His chest aches too much. His limbs are too trembly.

The phone stays silent. Eventually Foggy summons the energy to slide off the bed onto the floor to reach for the wretched piece of glass and metal. His hand shakes when he picks it up. One new text message – a voicemail notification. He's not going to listen to it. He is not. He taps the number.

'You have one new message. BEEP. "Foggy, please, I – I can't –" BEEP. Received today at –'

Foggy chucks the phone back on the rug. 'Yeah well, I can't either!' he yells at it. 'You dumb fuck,' he adds, but where he was going for vicious, his voice betrays him and settles on broken instead. He stares unblinkingly at the phone for he doesn't know how long as his vision grows increasingly blurry. There are twin oceans forming between his motionless eyelids, but his mind is blank. He finally blinks and the oceans spill waterfalls down his cheeks. Then he drags his hands down his face, gets up and forces himself to get dressed.

Breakfast is out of the question; he just downs a cup of coffee. It churns in his stomach like hot quicksilver and does nothing to alleviate the tremor in his hands. Probably the opposite.

The second call comes just when he picks the phone off the carpet for the second time that morning, and he almost drops it again. He stares at the caller ID, a picture of Matt wearing Foggy's beanie and smiling at the camera, all dimples. His thumb hovers over the reply icon. Two rings, three rings, four –

He picks up. He doesn't say a word. Matt can probably hear him breathing anyway, that bastard.

'Foggy?' His voice is small. 'Foggy, I'm sorry but I – there's no one else I can call and I –' Foggy hears Matt's breathing too now as he takes a deep shuddery breath followed by a weak whine of pain. 'I can't. I can't shift. I'm sorry, Foggy, please – I need –' Matt hangs up.

Foggy lowers the phone from his ear and stares at the black screen, torn. He wants to be mad, it's his only defence right now, but self-righteous anger and burning deceit are eroding away as a most familiar feeling starts dripping in. Worry; he's always worried. The need to protect, to care. His body moving on autopilot, he pockets the phone, steps into his shoes and leaves his flat. And he was going to go left and straight when he got out of his building, go the the office like a professional, but his feet have already turned right as the dripping feeling grows into a stream grows into a torrent. He's at Matt's house in minutes, climbing the stairs all the way to the top.

The day he moved in, Matt had given Foggy a spare key to the roof access, and the day of the second Reveal – which feels so much more distant than just a day and a half – Foggy had thrown it in the trash. But he knows where Matt keeps a third key, so he lets himself in. The déjà-vu makes him feel sick to his stomach, but he soldiers on down the stairs because the worry torrent has filled everything inside him by now.

Matt is on the sofa, just as he was when Foggy left him, curled up as tightly as his injuries will allow, which is to say not much. He is wearing sweats and the grey hoodie but his blanket has mostly slid off his shoulders where he half-sits against the far armrest. He turns his head marginally in Foggy's direction. Neither of them says anything.

This is all so wrong. How did they end up like this? How do they end this? There is nothing; Foggy's mind is nothing but anxious static and a confused jumble of worry and exasperation. He sits in the armchair again. He can't look at Matt.

'Thank you for coming,' Matt whispers.

Foggy shrugs helplessly. 'What do you even want me to do?' he asks, quite despite himself. 'Not like I can magically restore your catability or anything.' Matt is silent. 'Dammit, Matt –' but the sentence has no idea where it's going with this tug-of-war inside Foggy's chest, so he clicks his jaw shut, teeth grinding. He drops his head, grabs a fistful of hair and clenches, hard. The pain anchors him a bit. 'Do you even know how much I worry about you?' he grits out.

'Yes,' Matt says, still in a whisper, and Foggy looks up at him. He is facing the cabinet of doom over by the stairs and there are tears down his face. He is doing nothing to wipe them away, not making a single sound to go with them. This apathetic crying is actually more worrying than the face-crumply variety of a few days ago.

'Really? Because this,' Foggy gestures expansively at the broken form of his friend, 'is just so beyond what I ever… you know I worried you'd get hit by a cab or fall down some stairs or something, not get beat up by literal ninjas, Matt. And now it turns out that maybe those cabs and stairs and mundane shit like that aren't even dangers to you and instead I get this?' Foggy flings his arms out and resists the urge to get up and pace. 'I mean, bad enough that you lied to me, I'm pissed as hell about that, but I'm more pissed about how fucking scared I am for you now!'

Foggy thinks distantly that maybe this isn't the best topic to delve into right now, not when Matt needs his help and Foggy is so close to going full on volcano mode on him again, but he simply cannot stop the flow of words. It stems from deep within the pool of anxiety in his chest, and his mouth is its only outlet. Unlike Matt, he has never been one to punch things – people – for release. So he just lets the words run their course. After all, Matt isn't the only one who is upset here.

'I'm pissed at you for doing this to yourself,' he continues, 'and I'm pissed at myself for how scared I am, for how much I care about you after everything, but mostly I'm –' Foggy drops his head, losing track.

'I'm sorry,' Matt whispers, earnestly.

'I know you are.' He can't say it's okay, doesn't even know that he wants to, but the little word is stuck in his throat like a burr and it hurts.

Matt just nods. There is silence. There are oceans gathering in Foggy's eyes again and he locks them behind the dam of his eyelids. Matt sniffs, very wetly, and Foggy thinks dully that maybe with all that mucus he won't be able to smell Foggy's tears.

And now Foggy is hunched over in this armchair that he vowed he had sat in for the last time, that day, and he has almost forgotten why he came. He listens closely to Matt's short, pained breaths and finds after a while that this singular point of focus has driven the warmth from his eyes and the burr from his throat.

He looks up. 'What you you want me to do, Matt?' he repeats. His voice sounds tired, hollowed out. Matt doesn't respond, but he has stopped crying and wiped his face – there is a large wet patch on the sleeve of his hoodie. He looks so lost, though. Lost and scared and trapped all rolled into one. Foggy quells a desperate urge to go hug him, because what with the state he is in that would certainly not improve matters.

'I don't know,' Matt finally says, and he sounds as lost as he looks. Something shifts inside Foggy, a wave of ague rolling down into his chest, and he has to. He lifts the chair up behind him – it's heavy but he perseveres – and carries it over to Matt's side. Close enough that his knees press against the sofa cushions.

He reaches a hand out, slowly so that Matt can lean away if he want to, and place it carefully in the crook between his neck and his left shoulder, one of the few places he knows are largely uninjured. Matt slowly closes his eyes.

There are so many stitches holding him together. Foggy counted them, several times. He watched Claire put them there. And even though they're now hidden under fuzzy cotton, he can still see them. It's no wonder this body doesn't have the energy to change species.

'Why do you even want to?' he asks. 'Shift, I mean.'

Matt moves slowly, laboriously, under his palm. 'Purring helps,' he says. 'It's healing, calming, it's – therapeutic.'

'Oh.' Foggy recalls reading somewhere that cats don't only purr when content but also when hurt or ill. Then a thought strikes him. 'But your stitches! If you turn into a cat, they'll be all the wrong size and stuff.' He sits up straight, but keeps his hand on Matt's neck. 'It's probably a good thing you can't.'

Matt shrugs minutely. 'I've done it with stitches before. They just move closer together, maybe go a little looser.'

'Claire will kill you if you mess up those stitches. D'you have any idea how many there are? How close Claire was to taking you to the ER? You were unconscious and literally bleeding out all over the couch and she even had to stitch you up on the inside. Said you're lucky it wasn't your bowels or you would have gotten this peridot-something and died.'

'Peritonitis,' Matt provides.

'Yeah, that.' Foggy's hand has slid off Matt during his rant and he replaces it gently. 'You're still ICU material, you know. I just think you should conserve your strength to heal.'

'But that's why I need to purr!' Matt exclaims, ducking out from under Foggy's hand.

'Okay, yeah, I get that, but Matt… Claire said you had to take it easy for at least a week, and somehow I don't think one hundred percent altering your body counts as taking it easy. What's her opinion on that, by the way?'

'I didn't, I didn't tell her… about the catting.'

And oh, now Foggy gets it. There was no one else to call since Foggy is the only one who knows. At first this makes him feel honoured, but then anger creeps back in. Because if Matt had told Claire about the shapeshifting then he would surely have called her instead – which means he only called Foggy because he literally had no other option.

Well, he did, Foggy supposes: suffer alone and in silence, as is his wont. And that makes him feel rather honoured again, because for Matt to pick up the phone and call him when he needs him despite their current situation – that required trust.

But all he can think to say is 'Oh. Right.' This many conflicting emotions in one morning is more than Foggy can handle. Especially on an empty stomach. Speaking of which… 'Did you eat anything?'

Matt blinks in confusion at the drastic change of subject, or possibly from trying to remember the answer. 'I think I ate some oatmeal yesterday? Couple bananas.' He sounds like he knows Foggy will have a thing or two to say about this piss-poor excuse for nutrition, and he won't disappoint.

'Well, there you have it, then. You're running on empty. You need food, Matt. I'm making us a omelette.'

'Foggy…'

'Nope. No arguments. Besides, I haven't had breakfast either – because of you, I might add.'

Matt acquiesces and Foggy reports to the kitchen. There's a Get Well balloon with a monkey on it hovering by the fridge that's pretty much got Karen written all over it. He asks about it anyway just to hear Matt say something not depressing, but all he gets is a sighed 'yeah, she came by yesterday,' so Foggy drops that line of conversation. He drops any attempt at conversation, in fact, and just keeps an eye on Matt while cracking eggs and grating cheese into a bowl. There's not much to see; he just sits there, somewhat rigidly, eyes wide open.

Foggy texts Karen to tell her he'll be late to work, then dices a couple of tomatoes to chuck onto the omelette. He almost succeeds at folding the thing into a neat half moon. The cheese sizzles. Foggy's stomach growls at it.

There still is no sofa table, so Foggy gently places Matt's plate right into his hands. Matt stretches his legs out, taking up most of the sofa, so Foggy sets his own plate down by the armchair. He hands over half the bouquet of cutlery, then goes back for water.

They eat in silence, and Foggy notes that although Matt starts out picking at his food and only putting minuscule pieces in his mouth, he is soon virtually wolfing it down. It occurs to Foggy that this must be the first real meal Matt has had since before his ninja-induced trauma – unless Karen or Claire brought anything over – and the thought makes him want to covertly shove the last few bites of his own food onto Matt's plate. In the olden days he might have, and Matt would have pretended not to notice – and oh god, so many things he pretended not to notice. Foggy has barely scratched the surface of all this even though he has thought of little else since the night before last.

Once the eating is done and he has dunked the kitchenware in the sink, Foggy is at a loss. There is nothing he can say to take away the pain that stands between them, because it is not okay and he is not ready to forgive and forget. This is so much worse than the first Reveal; back then they barely knew each other and secrets could be excused. Besides, Matt never lied about cat related things, except maybe by omission, not like he did with this. This is their whole life together. All that they have. All that Foggy thought they had. Anything he can think to say will just dig them a deeper hole, and sure, he is still upset with Matt but he really doesn't want to hurt him any more than he already is. Than he already has.

One of the things that have been running through his head on repeat since he last saw him is how absolutely crushed Matt was just before Foggy left. The way his face crumpled and the forced control of his voice saying Foggy's name. He has been trying to unhear the sob that made it out into the corridor as he was leaning despondently against the wall by Matt's door.

Foggy cried that night, before calling Marci, but he would bet anything that Matt cried worse. He does not want a repeat of that now. He's here because Matt asked and because there is no one in the world he is more likely to be there for, present tension notwithstanding.

So Foggy just sits silently in the chair while Matt is slouched sideways and half curled up on the sofa, and oh shit, Matt can hear when Foggy is trying not to say things. This is so not helping. Why is he even here if this is the best he can do? A few more minutes of this and he will have made things worse without even speaking.

He makes himself look at Matt, then, really look at him, and it takes him right back to the night of the cat Reveal. His eyes are open wide and flickering; his hands fidget incessantly with the hem of his sweater; and he looks pale in the morning light streaming through the vast windows. Matt is terrified, and Matt is never terrified. He beats up ninjas and lord knows what else without even blinking and now he's scared of Foggy? Foggy, who is, in Matt's own words, "probably the one person I feel safe with, you know, really safe". Now Foggy is angry at himself for his shitty way of handling this, but to Matt it just sounds like anger, any anger – so with the self-flagellating ways of his mind, it's no wonder he looks like he wants to crawl under the bed.

Foggy forces his voice to behave. 'Matty…?' Matt flinches. 'I'm not angry at you, okay?' Matt frowns. 'I'm, okay, maybe a little, but mostly I'm worried.' Matt tilts his head; Foggy suspects that he's listing for the worry. 'Look, I know you're sorry. Well, guess what? I'm sorry too. I said some things I shouldn't have, and we really need to talk about that night, but for now can we just start off with that? We're both here, and we're both sorry, okay?'

'You don't have to be sorry, you had every right to say those things.'

'I really didn't, actually. You're my friend, and friends don't verbally tear friends apart like that. Not okay, okay? So yeah, I do feel sorry. Deal with it.'

Matt cracks a smile. It's small, almost imperceptible, but it's there. His nervous hands relax slightly, too. That's progress.

'So… do you know why you can't shift? Is it the physical injuries?'

Matt slowly shakes his head. 'I don't know.'

'You told me it's like meditation, that you have to be calm for it to work. Well, you don't exactly look calm.'

'I'm not.'

Wow, that's very forthright coming from Matt. 'Yeah… Why not?'

'Why do you think?' His tone doesn't match the rancour of his words. He just sounds defeated.

Foggy decides to take the question at face value. 'Because of Fisk.' He takes a deep breath for the next part. 'Because of me.'

'… yeah.'

'We will get Fisk, Matty, don't you worry. I'm not gonna let him hurt you again. Or anyone else. Plus we've got Karen on our side, and that woman is basically a pitbull-bloodhound crossbreed masquerading as a King Charles spaniel. So we'll take him down. You know we will.'

Matt nods. He struggles to unslouch himself, and Foggy helps him to sit up on the sofa the way sofas are meant to be sat on. Then he picks the blanket off the floor – it's a bit bloody but the blood is dry and Foggy's not easily squicked out by that kind of thing – and plops down at Matt's side, letting the grey fabric flutter down over their legs.

'And as for me,' he continues, 'I'm right here. You call, I come over. I wasn't going to, but my head got overruled. I'm here because I can't not be. A Goose does not abandon his Maverick, okay?'

'I thought I was Goose,' Matt says, a careful smile in his voice.

'No, you're a wounded handsome duck. Learn your ornithology. Anyway, I'm pretty sure vigilante is just another word for maverick.'

Matt giggles, then winces. His hand moves to his side atop the blanket as he pales again.

'Sorry, no more jokes.' Foggy wonders how he will make it through the rest of this conversations without joking. 'Don't want you hurting yourself.'

And that's really what this all boils down to.

'But apparently that's what you do now, isn't it? You get yourself hurt all the time in this mad quest for justice, and I get it, I do, and I know I can't get you to stop. But I'm just so worried about you, Matty.'

'I know.'

'That's why I'm angry.'

'I know. I also know that's not the only reason.'

Foggy winches internally, the pool of anxious energy inside him sending a spout of heat up his chest. 'Oh?'

'You're mad because I didn't think. Because according to you, I have two settings; overthinking and underthinking, and I obviously underthought this. I'm sorry, Foggy, I just hadn't even considered what my devilry might do to you, and to Karen – to the people I care about. I didn't want you to know because I thought ignorance would protect you from my… from this mess.'

Foggy has turned as far as he can towards Matt, his right leg up on the couch, and he is quite frankly staring because he may not be a human lie detector, but he knows Matt. He knows what he looks like, what he sounds like, when he's telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This is it.

'But honestly,' Matt goes on, 'I mostly thought of how I – I couldn't just stand by and let bad things happen, to our city, to our people, not anymore. I couldn't. I can't. I have to do this, Foggy. I have to.'

'Yeah, you said. "I don't want to stop," you said. Which sounds more like you're doing it because you want to than because you have to, really.'

'Can't it be both?'

Foggy sighs. 'I think you'll find that wanting implies enjoyment while having to implies being forced. I'd fetch a dictionary, but those don't come in Braille.' No more jokes, yeah right. But it's fine, because Matt doesn't even smile this time.

'Foggy…' He sounds pleading, but Foggy is rapidly going into lawyer mode.

'Look, just answer me this, Matt: Do you enjoy it? Do you enjoy hurting people?'

Matt's response is a long time coming, but Foggy can be patient when it counts. He looks him up and down as Matt plucks burls off the blanket and flicks the little balls across the room. He keeps frowning, and licking his lips, and opening and closing his mouth around half-formed sentences. And then his demeanour changes. His mouth twists down and he turns away, and when he faces Foggy again, his nostrils and chin are quivering as tears stand high in his eyes. Foggy can tell he just came to a previously unreached conclusion.

'No,' he says. 'But the devil does.'

Foggy has no idea what he's talking about. Whatever it is, though, it's obviously important, and he can't let himself bungle this now. Neither he nor Matt has ever felt weak or awkward about crying in front of the other, but Matt very rarely tells Foggy what goes through his mind when he does.

'The… the devil of Hell's Kitchen?' Foggy is so confused now, because Matt is the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.

'The devil… inside me. It's a thing my grandmother used to say about, about my dad and me. "Be careful of the Murdock boys; they've got the Devil in 'em".' Foggy cannot believe this is the first he's heard of this. 'And it's true – it's true. My dad, he, he let it out in the ring. He didn't want me doing the same. I've just – I've tried so hard to – all my life, I –'

The pent-up tears fall down Matt's face in one big cascade, his throat closing up around whatever the end of that sentence was going to be. Foggy can take a pretty good guess, though – not that he's going to voice it now. He will let Matt put it into words himself when he can. For now he will simply be here.

Matt is trying to hold himself together. He's got his hands balled up around the blanket, his mouth and eyes squeezed shut, and he's breathing carefully through his nose in an attempt to take control. But tears keep leaking out, and Foggy can tell this is a losing battle.

He places his hands on Matt's, softly. 'Thank you for telling me that,' he says. 'And for the record, that devil as you call it? I know that's not really you.' Foggy wonders why he even asked the question, because he truthfully did know the answer all along.

But maybe Matt didn't. Maybe that's why he's so distraught.

'And it's most definitely not a devil, buddy. It's anger, and pain, but it's not… evil, and it's not some internal monster, it's just your feelings. You're not bad, Matt, not one bit. Wanna know how I know? Because I know you.'

Matt shakes his head, sniffs. 'You said you didn't.'

Oh yeah. Maybe they really do need to talk about that day right now after all.

'I did, didn't I? But Matt, I was terribly upset right then. I thought everything I'd ever known about you was a lie, but I was so wrong.'

Matt's face twists as his carefully measured breaths lose their rhythm, and Foggy keeps going. This is something that Matt needs to know, and Foggy will do his all to get the point across.

'Hey, dude, listen to me. Okay, so I didn't know everything about what you do, and what you can do, yeah, that's true – but I know you. You're the most moral person I've ever known, and maybe sometimes your morals don't really match mine. So what? You always try to do what you think is right. You said we don't live in a world that's fair, but I think… your goal is making it one, right?'

Matt shrugs, but it's an affirmative sort of shrug; Foggy can see it in his face. Even though he's still breathing shakily, he has relaxed a fraction.

'Right. And you studied your ass off becoming a lawyer so you could do just that. And now it turns out you've also been training your ass off to become some sort of martial arts champ – all so that you can work the flip side, too.'

Another piece of the puzzle that will be putting their friendship back together just materialised in Foggy's head even as he was saying that.

'I'm hella proud, as the kids say,' he adds. Matt smiles through his tears. Foggy squeezes his hands. 'And I think your dad would be too.'

That is the wrong thing to say. Matt goes perfectly rigid, just for a moment – and then he folds forward across their joined hands as the sobs he's been holding at bay start pouring out of him full force.

It has to be agonising, what with the deep gashes and broken ribs, and Foggy lets go of his hands to steady him. 'Oh Matty, I'm sorry. Come here, it's gonna be okay….'

He somehow manages to prop Matt up against his chest with minimal wound touching, then holds him there with one hand at his neck and one in his matted hair. Matt is lost in waves of anguish, sobbing wordlessly, convulsively, into Foggy's shirtfront, and Foggy doesn't know what to do. He has seen Matt cry before, lots of times, but this violently? Only once – which was also dad-related, Foggy realises, kicking himself internally – and that ended with him hyperventilating to the point of nearly passing out. He does not want a repeat of that, ever, and particularly not with Matt in the state he's in now.

He rakes his fingers through his hair, because for all that Matt claims not to be a cat when he's a human, Foggy knows without a doubt that he enjoys being petted like one no matter his form. It calms him down.

'Hey, Matty, sch, ssssch. You know I'm all for crying, crying's healthy, but this… you're really friggin' hurt and this is… I need you to try and calm down, all right?' No response, just more sobs. 'Matt, buddy, nod if you're getting this?' Matt nods irregularly, gasping for breath. 'Okay, good. That's good.'

It's not good, Foggy thinks, this is anything but good. It's terrible and terrifying and he keeps petting his friend silently because he has no idea where he's supposed to go from here. Things had been going quite well there, up to a point, and then Foggy just had to go and mention Jack. He knows that's a deep wound that has healed all wrong, and he's so not equipped to handle this level of emotional trauma.

Unfortunately, he's all Matt's got right now, so he will just have to save the self-chastising for later and deal with this. Maybe redirection will help.

'Matt, can you hear my heartbeat right now?' Of course he can; his ears are less than a foot from Foggy's chest. 'What does it sound like?'

Matt is still wracked by sobs, grabbing at the front of Foggy's shirt like he's the only port in the storm.

'Sssch, Matt, just listen.'

Matt takes a breath and holds it, which while not exactly ideal is at least better than potential hyperventilation. Foggy tries to hear his own heart, but all he can hear are street sounds and the gurgle of Matt's freezer as it defrosts itself. And this not breathing thing should probably stop now, actually. He lets the air out of his lungs slowly, demonstratively, and is relieved when Matt shakily copies him.

Matt sniffs repeatedly – Foggy wishes he had some tissues or a gentlemanly handkerchief or something – and his voice is all hoarse, chopped-up and sticky when he speaks up.

'It sounds… like a running… like those gazelles on… on nature programmes… when the lions come…'

Okay then, fair enough. 'That bad, huh?'

Matt nods against Foggy's shoulder.

'I'm sorry, Fog.'

'Huh?'

'I'm sorry, I'm – I know I'm scaring you.' The words come out in stutters, but at least he's talking. Still crying, but not torn to shreds by it anymore.

'What scares me is how hurt you are,' Foggy says. Physically and emotionally, he doesn't add. 'And that I can't help you with that.'

'You're helping.' Matt sits up slightly by pushing himself off Foggy's waist, winching with pain. He leans his shoulder gently against the back of the couch and blots at his face with the cuff of his sweater. He looks awful. Foggy wishes again for tissues.

'No, I shouldn't have made you cry like that, I should have realised –'

Matt cuts him off. 'You know, even before, before Dad died, I studied so hard, because he wanted me to. It was important to him. And I learned Braille so I could keep at it. And then he –' Matt's mouth twists again, but he ploughs on, stammering increasingly but apparently unable to stop, '– he was – and suddenly I had a focus, a reason to keep studying. Lawyers help the wronged, punish the bad, that's what I figured. The men who hurt my dad, they wronged me. I needed him and he left me and those bastards got away.'

Foggy loses track a bit at the "he left me" because Matt's dad was shot. He didn't leave on purpose. Did he? But Matt is still talking, intensely and dejectedly all at once, somehow.

'I thought maybe I could – if not them, then at least others like them – I could make them pay, you know? Turns out it wasn't enough. What we do, it's within the law, and you know as well as I do – stare decisis be damned – the law's got holes. People like that always find the holes.'

Foggy nods, absently. He might be getting it now.

Matt is fiddling with the drawstring of his hood, unravelling the aglet bit by bit. 'So I followed them down the hole, and the hole swallowed me up, and I think maybe this is just where the devil was leading me the whole time.'

Now Foggy is shaking his head instead, out of disbelief more than denial. 'Matty…'

'Look, Foggy, this is part of me, it always has been, and now I've let it out I don't think I can reign it back in. I know you don't like to see it, and I never wanted you to, but –'

Foggy's hands shoot up to grab Matt's again, stilling their fidgeting and cutting him off. 'You're right, I don't like to see it. But I want to. Because I love you, okay, and if this is part of you then I have to see it. I can't just pick out the good parts like you're some box of assorted candy or – Matt?'

Matt has pulled his hands away and is hunching over slightly. 'You… I'm not – I'm sorry, I –' There are fresh tears in his eyes now, and he flings the blanket off and gets up, sniffing.

'Matt, what…?' Foggy begins, but then he realises that Matt is only heading for the bathroom. He shuts the door, blows his nose and probably washes his face, based on the sound of running water, then lifts the toilet seat. Foggy expects him to come out after he has flushed, but there's only silence behind the door. He gathers the tangled blanket and attempts to fold it into something neater, more for something to do than anything else, but this time when he sees the blood on it everything inside him just twists.

How is this apparently normal now? This will never be normal. Or okay. How could this ever be okay? He throws the blanket on the floor with a whispered curse, swipes at his eyes in annoyance. There has been too much crying this morning already. There's probably a quota, and right now Matt rightfully holds the claim to the vast majority of it.

He takes a steadying breath, hoping his voice will sound normal when he asks, 'You okay in there, buddy?'

Matt replies immediately, to Foggy's great relief. 'Yeah, yeah, just had to change this bandage…' Right. So not very relieving after all, then.

Maybe Matt will bring back tissues from the bathroom. Foggy would call out a request but his voice has mutinied and he's been set adrift on the ocean of anxiety, so he just stares dimly at the bloody blanket and wills his face to stop leaking and his chest to stop aching.

When Matt finally comes out into the lounge, Foggy doesn't dare look up at him at first because he's afraid of what he will see. But then he has to look, just to assure himself that it's an unfounded fear. Matt is walking slowly, stiffly, and his face is still puffy, but asides from all that he looks fine. He's okay, it's okay –

'What's wrong?' Matt asks, stopping in front of Foggy with a worried frown.

'"What's wrong?"?' Foggy's voice is a flat choke now. 'Have you seen yourself? Sorry, don't answer that, just…' Foggy shoves his hands between his knees to stop them shaking. 'Just sit down?'

He nudges the blanket under the couch with his foot so Matt won't trip over it, the movement almost instinctual after so many years of automatically accommodating. If Matt notices, he doesn't mention it as he sits back down by Foggy's side, groaning softly. Then he lays a hand tentatively on Foggy's arm.

'I'm okay, Foggy,' he says.

Foggy lets out a laugh that is half-sob. 'Yeah, well, your definition of "okay" really kinda sucks, dude.'

'I will be okay, then, is that acceptable?' There's a smile in Matt's voice.

Dropping all pretence of decorum, Foggy wipes his eyes on his shirtsleeves. He's clearly not going into work today anyway. 'You damn well better be,' he says. 'Because I need you, Matty. I can't have you leave me.'

He looks up imploringly, even though Matt can't see it. Matt in his turn mostly looks disbelieving, almost shocked.

'Please don't leave me,' Foggy adds.

'I won't, I won't leave you, Foggy, I – I didn't –' Matt is shaking his head, slowly.

Suddenly Foggy is pretty sure he knows what is going on inside that messed-up brain of his friend's. 'I needed him and he left me and those bastards got away.' 'No, Stick left when he thought I was getting too close to him.' 'This is why I didn't tell you. I wanted to keep you.' And the utter devastation the other night when Foggy walked out of his apartment.

Matt's worst fear is being abandoned. And Foggy will never put him through that.

He has stopped crying at this revelation, even though it's a devastating notion, because this is the core of their past, present and future – frighteningly codependent though it may be. They need one another, and that will have to be enough to rebuild on.

'You can say it too, if you want,' he suggests. Matt tilts his head towards him, mouth slack, wordlessly informing Foggy that he's got it right. He has hit the proverbial home run, and now he's just waiting for Matt to complete the lap.

It takes a while, because the lap around this concept must be a veritable obstacle course for Matt, but eventually he says, 'Foggy?'

'Yeah?'

'Please don't leave me?'

Foggy triumphs internally, smiling shakily but proudly. 'I will not leave you, buddy. I'm here, aren't I?' Matt nods. 'I'm sorry I walked out, but I'm back now.' Matt nods again.

Foggy puts an arm around his shoulder and tilts him carefully until they're leaning on each other.

'Thank you,' Matt mumbles, and then he breathes. Foggy recognises this breathing, although it's a bit shallower than normal, and he sits stock-still so as not to disturb anything.

Long minutes pass, and then Foggy finally feels the familiar shrinking next to him. Matt the orange cat crawls gingerly out of the hoodie, the newly replaced sterile compress still sticking to a patch of fur. Foggy eases it off and Matt lies down on top of the grey clothing next to him. He doesn't curl up into a cinnamon roll like he normally does, but lies flat on his left side with all four legs pointing at Foggy.

It is heartbreaking to see him like this, a small injured animal. Foggy puts a hand gently on his head, trying to figure out where he can actually pet him right now. The tail should be fine; Matt the human has no tail to hurt. So he sets up a soothing rhythm of head-scratching and tail-stroking, watching Matt relax for possibly the first time in two days. It takes a little longer than usual, but eventually he starts purring.

They sit like that for a long time, until Foggy excuses himself to go to the bathroom. Matt probably doesn't understand; Foggy has learned over the years that there is a window of a couple of minutes after transformation where Matt's mind still works rather like the previous species, after which he is… fully integrated. Still, it seems polite to communicate. Matt lies up on his elbows and listens in the direction Foggy went, then tracks him with his ears when he comes back and walks past him into the kitchen to fetch water: one bowl and one glass.

When Foggy lies flat on his back on the sofa, Matt immediately hauls himself up to limp over and ease down on top of his belly. His purring grows louder, vibrating through Foggy's chest and drying up the lake of worry ever so slightly. If the truth about who Matt is has tossed their lives into disarray, at least they still have this.

By now it's nearing midday. Foggy wonders idly why Karen hasn't texted him back. He should to drop her another line saying he probably won't be in at all today – that Matt needs him and she should just put up a "closed due to illness" sign on the door or something and take the day off. But Matt has tilted his head so Foggy can scratch him under the chin, his eyes closed with rapture. The world can wait.