Title: Black and Blue
Fandom: Daredevil (TV)
Author: lexigent
Content notes/warnings: canon typical violence
Summary: Matt Murdock and various feelings he has about his heightened senses.
Word count: ~500


It's a curse sometimes, having heightened senses. Controlling his own body was the first thing Matt learned when Stick was training him, but there are moments and hours and days when it's hard. The worst, as he soon learns once he takes up the mask, is after a bad fight, when he's bleeding from a dozen cuts and bruised from too many punches that even he couldn't duck from, and the adrenaline isn't buoying him up any more. He's got energy either for walking back home where he can patch himself up, or for putting a damper on things, and one of them is more important than the other.

By the time he gets home, the pain is so bad he can barely stand up straight and unlock his own front door. Nothing for it except swallowing painkillers like candy and praying his stomach is strong enough to take it.

Being blind isn't a hindrance to stitching up the odd cut; it's feeling as though his body is on fire, his joints about to come out of their sockets, his skin so fiercely burning that he turns the shower to cold then sits down under it because he doesn’t trust himself to stand and not faint.

Finding Claire is a blessing because it means he doesn't have to do this by himself, and that can only be good. His flesh is scarred enough as it is, but his amateur attempts at self first aid have not helped this. He figures out how to protect himself because he thinks if he doesn't, the next time he gets hurt he will be toast.

Despite Foggy's insistence that all the women he talks to are "hot", and that he is apparently good-looking, he's not used his body as anything other than a weapon for ages, and so it comes as a bit of a shock when Karen hugs him, tells him he is not alone. It's more intense than it should be because he's unguarded, trying to stop from crying and not paying heed to what his senses might let through. She's warm and her heartbeat is steady even though her hands are shaking, and he clings to her just like she clings to him.

He feels relieved in a way he can't quite name after this; hoping against hope that somehow he can keep Karen safe and Foggy safe and that Foggy will forgive him and that everything will be okay in the end.

Days later they're clinking bottles in their office, such as it is, and they're all still alive, and Matt thinks maybe it will all turn out okay. It's still brittle ground they're walking on, him and Foggy, but there's something in the way Karen laughs at Foggy's jokes, something in the way Foggy leans toward her and his voice changes ever so slightly. Matt raises his bottle to his lips to hide a smile and thinks that, whatever it is he has broken between them, these two will help each other heal. There's nothing much he can do - he knows from bitter experience that time heals most wounds and that he should probably step back and let them make their minds up as to what this partnership is and whether it will still exist in the morning.

It surprises him how much it hits him when they leave together; like a punch that comes out of the left field, but he reckons in time he'll learn to deal with it. Murdocks always get up, after all.