Work Text:
Matt slammed open the door to his apartment with a rapidly-bruising shoulder, not caring if it woke the neighbors. His more imminent concern was the steady flow of blood leaking out of his chest from a criminal’s particularly well-placed slash. Normally something as silly as “Daredevil gets stabbed by a petty thief” wouldn’t be a major issue, but this particular criminal had been wielding a particularly nasty jagged knife, and the man hadn’t even done the vigilante the courtesy of sharpening the knife before pinning him to the pavement like a Post-It note stapled to the front page of a legal document and hacking away at his chest like a horror movie villain. The man was in handcuffs, Matt’s shirt was ruined, and he had to fix up the wound with what meager supplies he had left in his apartment after being forced to go several days without a restock.
Wonderful.
No longer having the strength to walk down the stairs, Matt sat on the floor and gradually lowered himself down, step by step, one at a time. The small jolts to his chest as he inched down each of the steps was like a Taser firing repeatedly into his bloodstream. Each breath expanding his ribcage sent another sparkle of electricity through his whole body. Having received many types of injuries over the years, Matt was well acquainted with the fact that chest pain was a special kind of Hell on Earth. He prayed a quick Hail Mary in his head as a preparation for what he was about to do.
Finally at the bottom of the stairs, Matt reached into the box he had left by the banister before he had gone out. There were meager medical supplies left: some butterfly-shaped gauze clips, an eighth of a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a sterilized needle and several inches of stitching thread, a nearly-spent tube of antibiotic ointment, and… no bandages.
He would have to get creative.
The wound wasn’t deep enough to need stitches, but that also meant that Matt would have to suffer through it healing on its own. He could make a shopping trip before work the next day to get bandages for the upcoming healing. The drugstore around the corner usually had hydrogen peroxide and antibiotic ointment for a decent price, and although the bandages could be more expensive at times, they were well worth it.
In the moment, no bandages meant ruining his shirt the rest of the way.
Testing both arms and finding that lifting the left one made him hyperventilate the least, Matt ripped his shirt clear down the middle, using the slashed hole as a starting point. He then felt the inside of the shirt to find the area with the least amount of blood and dirt on it. It would have to serve as a bandage for the night, or until he could get to the drugstore next.
With as little motion as he could manage, Matt shucked off his ripped shirt, using his weaker arm to open the bottle of hydrogen peroxide. He tilted his neck back, jaw trembling at the anticipation of pain, and carefully poured some of the bottle’s contents onto his chest.
The hissing and bubbling of the liquid as it came into contact with his pierced flesh was enough to tear an agonized sound from his lips. He remembered days in his youth where he would patch up cuts and scrapes on his father’s face, and he remembered how the liquid would turn a stark white if the hydrogen peroxide was foaming and killing any bacteria that may have entered the cut. He could only imagine how the white would look spilling out of his chest like a holy light, dripping puddles onto his floor of something divine.
The sudden onslaught of even more pain was making it difficult for Matt to remain sitting up. His head tilted back, back, back, until it gently collided with the floor. Matt laid there for a long while, trying to control his rapid breathing. The agony in his nervous system shot deep into his chest, mimicking what he imagined a heart attack might feel like, if you could have multiple heart attacks in the span of a few seconds. He could feel his heartbeat thudding at the base of his skull, so realistically, he knew he was fine. But his brain kept trying to take him into that overloaded anxiety-attack place where every spike of pain could actually be a heart attack.
He needed to focus his mind on something else while he wrapped the cut in his makeshift bandage.
He needed a distraction.
His phone was ringing.
“ Foggy. Foggy. Foggy, ” the digital female voice was declaring.
With some effort, Matt fished his phone out of his pocket and answered the call. “Hey, Foggy, what’s up?”
“Matt, thank goodness you picked up. I have this absolutely wild story to tell you- wait, are you alright?” Foggy’s tone switched from an excited ramble to holding a note of concern as he processed Matt’s vocal tone.
“I’m fine. What makes you think I’m not?” Matt replied, forcing his voice to remain steady.
“You sound like you’re halfway to hyperventilating. Did you just run a marathon, or did you get too excited with a girl again?”
“I promise, I’m fine,” Matt rebuked, attempting to sit up for a moment before resigning himself to laying on the floor again. “And even if I, for some reason, wasn’t fine, I don’t need you to help me. I can handle things myself.” Matt winced at his own phrasing. “Sorry, that sounded rude. I meant it like- like, if I needed help, you know I would say something about it, right?”
“I getcha,” Foggy replied, and though most people would hear it as a brush-off answer, Matt could feel the sincerity in his best friend’s voice.
“I’ve got some time on my hands, you wanted to tell me a story?” Matt asked.
As Foggy began rambling in his well-intentioned-yet-still-terrible way of setting up every single story he had ever told, Matt spared a little more hydrogen peroxide for cleaning off the shirt-turned-bandage. He then used up the remaining antibiotic ointment by slathering it directly onto the cut. Even if the bandage was terrible, at least the cut wouldn’t get infected.
“You’re not ready for what happened next,” Foggy said. Matt could hear the proud smirk in his voice.
“Give me every insane detail.”
Not having the strength to remain sitting up while in so much agony, Matt remained laying on the floor as he bound his wound. He slipped the strip of shirt fabric beneath his body, knotting it into a loop beneath his right arm since he wouldn’t be moving it as much anyways, and then made sure every part of the slash was adequately covered and coated in healing cream. Range of motion was difficult in such a state, every misplaced twitch aggrandizing the existing injury tenfold. It was mental strain enough for Matt to bite his tongue and keep from crying out.
The background was a consistent narration of Foggy’s misadventures of accidentally entering a biker bar, and then doubly accidentally challenging a bike gang leader to a game of pool. Which Foggy then won. He also apparently won fifty bucks off of the guy for doing so. Matt didn’t even want to ask what would have happened had Foggy lost.
The one-sided conversation helped.
“And yeah, that’s why tomorrow we’re buying the finest beer fifty dollars can get us,” Foggy finished his massive rambling anecdote.
“Thanks, Foggy. I needed that.”
“Needed what, the story of how I definitely almost fought an entire biker gang and won single-handedly?”
“A break. I needed a break.”
“A break from what?”
“She’s just about to leave, Foggy, I gotta go convince her to stay the night,” Matt lied through his teeth.
“I knew it!” Foggy cheered. “I knew you were with a girl!”
Matt laughed, but the vibration shook his chest enough that he started hyperventilating again from the feeling of electricity arcing through his pectoral muscles, so he stopped laughing and regulated his breathing instead.
Thankfully, Foggy didn’t notice. “Have fun, champ,” he said in a stereotypical old man accent. “Go get ‘er.”
The line disconnected, and Matt sighed out a deep, pained breath. The nerves in his chest still echoed with the remnants of the violent struggle, but everything would be okay. Foggy had helped, even if he had no idea just how much.
The way Foggy had helped the most was motivating Matt to crawl into bed to sleep. Dealing with an egregious chest wound wasn’t as bad when you were laying on a fluffy mattress and covered in fine silk sheets. And he and Foggy would get shitty drinks in the afternoon and act like they were kings.
His flesh would heal, and his mind would too.