Chapter Text
Matt didn’t like lying.
That’s not to say he never lied, no, that he did constantly, but he never liked it. Every time he lied to Foggy he felt sour inside.
But it was the right thing to do, in Matt’s mind. And most of the time it was just a lie by omission. Anytime he bumped into something because he ‘didn’t see it’, he really didn’t see it, but he knew it was there. He could have stepped around the dropped book, but that would have been obvious, so he would grit his teeth and walk right into it.
Sometimes it was funny to surprise Foggy with unexpected agility, but mostly he stayed on the down low.
But there were some things he never did.
He never took off his glasses, and he never wore shorts.
Even in the thick of the summer, when their shitty dorm a/c crapped out on them, he still wore sweats. Foggy asked about it once, but after Matt stumbled though an excuse, Foggy assumed it was from his Sad Orphan Backstory (TM) and dropped it.
Matt didn’t correct him. It was partially true.
~*~
After the accident, Matt lost his vision, and gained his world on fire.
And with it, as if in some twist of wicked fate, the sweet Catholic boy, grew a tail.
A devils tail. Pointed and everything.
It was thin and light, like a rope made of sinew and flesh, but imbued with a surprising strength. It could coil around a persons ankle and tug them to the ground. It brushed the space between his feet, tip scraping a line like a snake.
The night it grew in was immediately after the accident, Matt still laying in the hospital bed with bandages over his eyes. He had writhed and screamed in pain, not knowing what was happening, not being able to see, but hearing everything. Hearing his skin split like paper and bones expanding. He couldn’t block it out.
But after the pain was worse. A new limb, with new information to take in. The skin was covered in small hairs that twitched. They picked up every movement with an extreme precision.
When they unbandaged his eyes, they assumed the discoloration(from his bright baby blues to a dark amber) was from the chemicals, but after a particularly bad emotional brea down, his father caught his eyes, no longer seeing the warm amber, but a bright red. When he calmed back down, they dimmed.
Matt felt it was ironic one of his biggest giveaways was also his best disguise.
His father was scared for him, but never of him. Matt was his kid and nothing would change that, but they had to find a way to hide.
Matt was the one to insist on finding a way to conceal his new appendages. He was already seen as a martyr, and eyes would linger pitifully on him when he walked past with his cane. He didn’t feel the need to draw more attention. After they left the hospital, Matt and his father decided the best way to hide his tail was simply to wrap it around his leg while wearing pants, saying the lumps around his leg were just a result of the chemicals (somehow). While it did imped his walking, it only played into the disguise.
After some time, things felt like they returned to normal. Or, well, normal to Matt. He would still stitch his dads face after a fight, would still come with him to Foggwells hear him train, would still stay up late to listen to his fathers matches.
But all dreams must come to a close eventually. And sometimes that means waking to a nightmare.
~*~
Matt wasn’t used to feeling happy. The last time he could remember being happy for more than three days he was twelve.
Even when he was training with Stick ( especially when he was training with Stick), it was always shut down. Stick never let him train with his glasses on, he said it was a crutch.
‘You have to control your emotions, not the other way around’, he would snap.
‘Its not like you can tell…’ Matt would grumble.
‘you’d be surprised.’ Matt never knew how, but he could always tell.
So emotions were never really in the cards for Matt. Sure, he felt them, but they were faint, a memory caused by a smell or a touch.
Then he met Foggy, and it was like getting hit with a brick.
Foggy was always smiling, eyes crinkling softly. His laugh was good natured and full of warmth, sometimes faint, sometimes as loud as a train. The way he spoke always had an undercurrent of mirth or a hint of irony.
And he made Matt laugh. He made him smile the way only his father could. Whenever Matt was around Foggy everything else dulled and the fire cooled and everything was… nice.
Too nice. Too nice for Matt.
He wasn’t used to this kind of care, this kind of attention and respect. Everything about Foggy was perfect and it scared him.
But what scared him more was the thought of losing him.
The idea of Foggy learning about the senses and the eyes and the tail and leaving, of running away screaming.
Matt had dreams, nightmares really, about Foggy walking in while Matt was changing and seeing his tail, or his glasses falling off while he’s mad and Foggy seeing the red.
So he hides. And hides and hides, and hopes that he’ll never find out.
But it gets harder everyday as Matt lets his guard down, lets Foggy narrate the movies they watch or guide him in the halls or dictate peoples faces. His eyes change more often, he can feel it, like the rush of blood to a wound. The days stretch out long ahead of him, filled with classes and studying and parties and Foggy. They feel like landmines.
He doesn’t know what he’s going to do.
Until he does.
They always said the Murdock boys had the Devil in them. And the Devil sure does look pretty when he’s desperate.