July 1 for @whumperless-whump-event
Emergency First Aid: Self stitches/alcohol as sanitizer/it's just a scratch
Fandom: Daredevil
CW: I am terrible at tagging I have no idea what people tag, let me know if there's something you think should be tagged. Disability. Abelism. Internalized ableism. First aid.
--
A clatter in the bathroom is the first indication that something is amiss.
Foggy's ears pick up in a way they do when he's trying to be helpful. After living together as long as they have, he knows Matt is much more capable than many might give him credit for. And more fiercely independent than a clause that can stand by itself in a sentence. That's a grammar joke.
When they were first assigned as roommates, he stumbled into a few casually abelist situations in which he tried to be Matt's knight in shining armor, and only discovered how much Matt had no need of rescuing. But still, when your roommate is blind there are certain things you should watch out for. For example: you should make sure you shut the kitchen cupboards and drawers after opening them. You should always put the sharp knives in the same spot, and never sticking up in the dishwasher. You should refrain from accidentally moving the coffee table into the middle of the walking path in order to create more room for pushups in front of the tv. And you should keep your ears open for things like clattering in the bathroom, and the subsequent string of barely audible curses that seem to be happening now.
"Matt?" He ventures.
A *whack*, *thud*, and then *moan*.
Foggy gets to his feet and paces to the bathroom door cautiously, wincing. He doesn't want Matt to think that he's interfering, but... "Buddy do you need help? I'm just out here twiddling my thumbs. Happy to be of assistance."
A heavy sigh.
"Okay," Matt calls. "Come in."
Foggy braces himself. The fact independent clause Matthew Murdock is accepting an offer of help is already putting him on edge.
He pushes the door open and tries to parse the sight in front of him without causing a scene. "Uh...Matt...what the hell?"
Shirtless, Matt is bleeding from a sizeable gash on the back of his shoulder, and in his hand he wield's a needle and thread. He's twisted into something akin to a pretzel in his attempt to perform his own stitches, and appears to be failing miserably, the gash looking irritated and awful, the thread tugging awkwardly at both sides of torn flesh.
"I...can't reach," Matt admits sheepishly, gaze drifting to the left even though the pleading look in his eyes is obviously meant for Foggy.
"For God's sake- Matt!" Foggy gestures at his impossible roommate with his boxer-father toxic masculine trauma and his hyper-independent internalized ableism. "What the hell are you doing? What happened? Why didn't you go to the nurse?"
"It's just a scratch," Matt sighs, a sense of defeat in his tone. "Could you...help?"
"And what do you want *me* to do?" Foggy demands. "I'm not a doctor!"
"Look, a twelve year old could do this," Matt insists, doing that infuriating thing where he wets his lips and then talks down to you like you are, in fact, twelve.
"Speak for yourself," Foggy huffs. "When I was twelve *I* was playing Operation. And losing!"
"Come'on, Fog! It doesn't have to be pretty. Just has to keep my bleeding on the inside," Matt quips, lips tugging sideways in the charming way that Matt's lips tug right before Foggy agrees to do whatever he's asking.
Foggy rolls his eyes. He's already committed. "Sit down," he demands. "You're getting blood everywhere and you look like you're going to fall over."
Matt does as he's told, reaching for the bathroom vanity and following it to the corner before he lowers himself down to sit on the closed toilet. He straddles it, baring his shoulder and the jagged wound to Foggy.
Reluctantly, Foggy washes his hands and takes the needle. "So what *did* happen this time?"
Matt shrugs, which makes the wound a moving target. "I got caught by a branch while Elektra and I..."
"Elektra did this to you?" He dabs hydrogen peroxide on a cotton ball over the cut.
"No," Matt cuts in. "No, we were...on a bicycle. In central park. And we...went off trail."
"For the love of god, please tell me you weren't driving the bike."
Matt chuckles. "No, I was not."
"And you came all the way home bleeding like this?" Foggy poises the needle on one side of the gash, chewing his lip worriedly. Finally he gets brave enough to stab it through one side and push to the other. Matt barely flinches.
"It didn't seem so bad, but when I took my shirt off I think I made it worse."
Foggy's eyes flick to the discarded shirt on the floor. There's a good amount of blood on it. Some dark and dried. Maybe the wound scabbed over and reopened when Matt reached up for his shirt?
"Looks like it hurts."
Matt shrugs again, which causes Foggy to stab him with a sharp poke. That time he does flinch and Foggy makes a small sound of distress. "Stop moving."
"Right. It didn't hurt when it happened, I didn't notice till later. Hurts a fair bit now."
"Matty..." Foggy wets his lips. "You seem to get hurt a lot...when you're with Elektra." It's very clear to Foggy, since Matt and she have been dating, that if Elektra were Matt's roommate there would be no closing the cupboards and drawers, and the sharp knives would always be pointing up in the dishwasher. Blind or not.
"We just have a lot of fun," Matt insists. "She doesn't treat me like... You know."
Foggy takes a breath. Does he treat Matt differently? All those small accommodations he makes in his life to keep Matt safe and comfortable, does Matt notice the coffee table hasn't moved since he last hit it with his shin and think, Foggy only sees me as *disabled*? But he *is* blind. Treating him like he doesn't have a disability doesn't make his disability go away. A conflicted ball of thought is forming in Foggy's gut, but he's not sure how to verbalize it. Knowing him, at some point it will force it's way out wether he wants it to or not.
"Just...try to be safe," he manages. God, he sounds like someone's mother.
But "I will," Matt says.
The stitches or ugly. Uneven. They're the first ones Foggy's ever done, and hopefully, the last he'll ever do. He sighs.
"Good thing you're blind," he grumbles.
Matt freezes for a moment, eyebrows lifted, and Foggy worries he's stepped in it.
"I mean-"
But Matt starts laughing and then wincing and then apologizing all at once.
"Good thing," he agrees.