Izzy here, with my fanfic, “Until I Can’t Breathe,” a Matt/Foggy piece of angst and a bit of smut, written as a last minute short fic before the second season of Daredevil gets released, and heavily influenced by the second trailer. Marvel owns them.

Until I Can’t Breathe

By Izzy

Sometimes Foggy doesn’t wait until morning to show. Matt doesn’t know when he decides he wants to come earlier, though he supposes it most likely depends on how able he was to sleep that night. But sometimes Foggy’s there when he comes in. So far it’s probably saved his life two times.

Guilty as it makes him feel, Matt’s always at least a little glad when he lands on the roof and hears Foggy’s heartbeat below. There’s part of him that still craves any moment with Foggy he can get, when he left once and he could oh so easily leave again, and Matt still fears he will. This remains true even when Foggy is yelling at him, or crying, or otherwise making Matt feel awful.

Anyway, they rarely argue during the night. The next morning, sure. But when Foggy comes there and Matt comes in, there seems to be an understanding that both are too tired for that, or simply that now is not the time.

In fact, if Matt isn’t too injured, the thing they do most often is literally sleep together. Usually in the bed, because Foggy insists Matt should not be damaging his back further on the couch if he can help it. Foggy holds him close as they settle down together, and he just lets himself breathe in Foggy. He sleeps deeply until Foggy wakes him up the next morning; he always gives him as much time to sleep as possible.

That’s also what they do almost every night before they have a court day. They’ll wake up and discuss last-minute things, and fistbump before heading out. It makes Matt feel stronger going in, and he’s pretty sure it does the same thing for Foggy.

But there are nights where they don’t go straight to sleep, especially if Matt’s got the kind of injuries that don’t need Claire but do need tending to. Unless there’s something he really has to concentrate to do(and he’s made comments about being able to bandage Matt in his sleep), Foggy likes to talk. He’ll bring up any topic that isn’t related to what Matt does at night. Their current cases are a popular choice, as are the latest Nelson family antics. Some of the weirder ones have included whether their computers ever meet at night and conspire to fail at the same time, whether President Ellis is a closet Taylor Swift fan(“that joke he told at the White House Press Conference Dinner was pretty telling”), and how many birds fly past their window during the day(Matt thinks Foggy might have been a little drunk the night that one happened).

They often keep it up even after Matt’s injuries have been dealt with and there’s nothing left to do but sit. One time they got into a conversation about baseball where Foggy described to Matt every incredible thing he’d seen some player do, and they ended up going on until morning. He apologized to Matt for that one. “You don’t get enough sleep as it is,” he said, never mind that lately, he didn’t either. Matt told him it was okay. He didn’t know how to say being with Foggy was something he’d chose over sleep every time.

Occasionally, they’ll do something else. Sometimes Foggy will bring a movie he wants to do a prepared audio description for; that almost always ends with Matt laughing more than he ever does otherwise these days. Once he brought the baseball and they just tossed it around to each other for an hour.

Basically, those are the times where they can pretend, for a brief while, that they don’t have anything standing between them, that Matt’s heightened senses are nothing but a secret they share now, rather than one he kept from Foggy for so long, and that what he does when he goes out at night isn’t important. They both know they can’t do that too much; if their friendship is to have any kind of future, during the day they have to live in the new normal. But those nights allow them to escape and just enjoy each other’s company again.

Then there are the nights that are both the best and the worst, the ones Matt both hopes for and dreads as he comes down the stairs into his apartment, though they don’t necessarily start then. Sometimes they happen when they try to sleep, and one of them wakes too early. Other times they’ll be in the middle of talking and Foggy will snap, because it’s always Foggy who initiates it; Matt doesn’t feel he has a right to. And sometimes Matt will barely have time to take his mask off after coming in before Foggy has him pressed against the wall and is kissing him like a man drowning.

Matt doesn’t know whether this ever would have happened had he not become Daredevil. Foggy had been attracted to him beforehand, sure. But that he never went for him makes Matt think it wouldn’t have, that Foggy would have always thought their friendship was too valuable to jeopardize, especially considering what trainwrecks all of Matt’s romantic relationships have been, and probably wouldn’t have even regretted what had never been more than a possibility, not something he’d ever desperately wanted or anything.

Now the ground was shifted, and it was something they downright needed, both of them. Except that the same thing that had driven them into each other’s arms had also doomed the possibility of their ever getting too far with it. Foggy will never move in with Matt, will never introduce him to anyone as more than his best friend. Once, they compared their going into partnership to getting married; that is the closest to marriage they’ll ever get. Foggy never even kisses him during the day.

Matt’s not sure any of that actually reduces his best friend’s pain, but they have to at least try. He hates how much pain he causes Foggy as it is.

Actually, another reason they don’t kiss during the day might be the difficulty they’d have with stopping there. Once Matt is wrapped up in Foggy’s warmth, Foggy’s want, the searing heat of Foggy’s skin, all he wants is more. They’re always in the bedroom within minutes. Matt’s kind of amazed they’ve never resorted to doing it on the couch, or to one of them blowing the other against the wall and to hell with what Matt's floor would do to their knees.

Certainly Foggy can’t keep his hands or his mouth off of Matt once they’re naked. Sometimes Matt thinks Foggy is deliberately trying to overload him with sensation. He’s at least trying to get him to make noise. He’s made clear how much he loves every sound that comes out of Matt’s mouth in bed. Matt never tries to hold them back anymore; he’ll give Foggy everything he wants when they’re like this.

But nothing overwhelms Matt quite so much as the way Foggy presses frantic kisses to his skin or runs his fingers through his hair or over his forehead. And it’s not all together a good feeling. Because often it feels less like anything else than him saying, “You’re everything to me and I know I’m going to lose you.”

At least Matt loses his ability to think much once Foggy’s pounding him. He’s always gone a little crazy when being fucked anyway, having another man’s flesh, hot and hard, inside him, and Foggy will find his prostrate and be relentless. But combining that with the feeling of Foggy’s hands holding him down, Foggy’s pants a furnace on his neck, Foggy having him, Foggy taking his pleasure from Matt’s body, Foggy chanting Matt’s name in that way that makes him feel so loved…he finishes a mindless, shaking, crying, overstimulated wreck every time.

But then there are the moments after. Because while sometimes Foggy’s good and affectionate and cuddly, more often than not, he’s not good at all. Instead, he’ll break down completely, giving full rush to all the emotions he can’t let out otherwise like this, not even when he’s telling Matt about them. He’ll burrow against Matt’s back and wail into his skin. If it’s possible for him to form words, he’ll choke out things like, “Oh Matt, I don’t want to….I can’t stand it, Matt…please, I want just you to stay…”

All Matt is able to do then is pray. He’ll ask God to lessen Foggy’s pain, to show him some mercy. Or he’ll simply ask him to give Foggy strength when the time comes, to make him able to move on and be happy and live a good and fulfilling life, because he’d gladly stand before God and argue like never before on how no man in the world deserves that more.

They do eventually get to cuddling though, if of the sadder kind, which is good, because that’s the only time Foggy seems able to handle telling Matt he loves him, or hearing it back-although sometimes Matt thinks those words couldn’t begin to describe how he feels about Foggy. Oh, he’ll say it every occasionally during the day too, but not in the same way.

Not that Matt doesn’t know it anyway. That he’s there with Matt in the first place is statement enough.