No Good Deed

June 12, 2018:

Foggy Nelson pays Kinsey Sheridan a visit, and gets coffee, and emotions, ALL OVER his nice shirt.

The Garage

Kinsey's. It's in Gotham.

Characters

NPCs: None.

Mentions: Matt Murdock, Wilson Fisk

Mood Music: [*\# None.]


Fade In…

It's not a secret that Kinsey Sheridan owns and operates a garage — a Garage, in fact — in Gotham City. Certainly it's not a secret from one Foggy Nelson, whose partner in the opposite of crime has spent plenty of time there in one capacity or another. The number of strange reasons Matt Murdock has had to spend time at the Garage seem out of all proportion with the amount of time he and Kinsey have known one another, and they range from fun things like 'blind guy with rocket boots at the end of a long tether, because Kinsey didn't know he wasn't actually completely blind' to not-fun things like 'making sure Kinsey doesn't die after being shot in the back by a Russian with an assault rifle.' The weird things, like 'Kinsey's personality is being actively undermined by the AI that lives in her head, because Jane Foster created a weirdo quantum computer virus while she was possessed by some kind of bear demon, also she was a bird at the time,' probably don't bear extensive mention.

At any rate, he hasn't been here in a long while, and Kinsey doesn't swing by Nelson & Murdock anymore, either — and she was doing that frequently for a while, on her way home from some part-time gig at Stark Tower.

Immediately following Matt's initial disappearing act she spent a lot of time calling, hoping Foggy had heard something. Eventually those calls stopped. She hasn't been taking any since then, either.

Nevertheless, the Garage is open for business. The bay doors at the front are open, a blaze of sterile white light and feeble air conditioning spilling out into the dusk street along with a veritable wall of sound: heavy blues rock. It's a cavernous space, but the jean-clad legs emerging from beneath a half-disassembled VW Bug probably belong to her.

—-

Cars are overrated in New York City; public transportation is king, and being a pedestrian is the only way Foggy stays just on the lovable side of chubby — particularly with Mrs. Garza bringing pies by the firm once a week. To get to Gotham to visit Kinsey, he rents a car. The adorable powder blue Fiat pulls up outside the garage, and there's several long moments after the engine goes quiet before the Nelson half of Nelson and Murdock pulls himself out of the driver's seat with his almighty messenger bag. He's dressed in a lilac button-down with a loose collar and maroon tie, wrinkled slacks, and heavily-broken in shoes.

There's a tiredness about his features that he's becoming famous for, and his brow is set in a worried furrow as he steps into the garage. He looks around with a quick sweep of green eyes, and when he notices the VW bug, he turns his steps toward it until he's standing just beside Kinsey's legs. He leans down, speaking to the chassis. "Um. Kinsey? Are you being eaten by a Volkswagen? Should I send for help?" He seriously hopes this is Kinsey, or he's going to be abashed — as if that isn't his normal state of being.

—-

Under the partial husk of what was once also a car never meant for the streets of Gotham City, the individual to whom those limbs belong goes very suddenly still, all of the little incidental side-effect movements from whatever it is she's doing under there suddenly halted.

"Shit," is the word that echoes through the accidental amplification of the hollowed-out shell of a car, carried up and over the sonic distortion of the music belting out of the in-wall speakers. It's punctuated with a beat of silence, then a sigh, and then wheels on the mechanic's creeper she's laying atop rattle as she slides out from under the car with a tug of her heels on the glossy cement floor.

It's definitely Kinsey.

Out of skirt-suits and heels, wearing clothing soiled with who knows how many different kinds of oil or grease, she looks worlds distant from the creature he's probably gotten used to seeing. Tired, too. "You can't send for help around here unless you're really into bats." She stays where she is, settled on her back, wringing a rag over her hands in a completely useless, entirely automatic attempt to wipe them clean. Hazel eyes tighten slightly into the glare of the fluorescents, traveling his face in momentary silence. Then: "I didn't think you owned a car."

—-

The utterance of that echoing word stalls Foggy for a heartbeat, and a bit of tension builds at the corners of his weak smile. He waits until the creeper wheels out, and he steps back a bit to give her some room. By now, his hands are buried in his pockets, bag pushed back behind him. He gives her all the room she needs to get up, if that's her intentions.

Which it isn't based on how dedicated she is to her seat on the floor. He shifts awkwardly, trying not to loom. "I don't, but… Enterprise Rent-A-Car… low and affordable rates." He gives one rather lame thumbs-up before he takes a precarious glance around the garage, and then back down to Kinsey.

"Matt doesn't know I'm here."

—-

It's subtle, but it's possible to watch the flint in her expression and the tension in her shoulders slowly relent. The set of her eyes changes, lashes lowering, honey-dark over earthy green that slants off away from him some heartbeats later. "Of course he doesn't," she says, tone gentled. The words don't mean what they seem to mean; the meaning is all in the way they sound: not of course he doesn't know but of course you wouldn't tell him, and you rented a car to come check on me, and maybe I shouldn't take all of this out on you.

Her next sigh is lost in the sound of the wheels on that creeper as she sits up, gaze dropped to the rag in her hands and the awful job it's doing of cleaning her up. It's less improving on the mess than just sort of…shifting it around. She seems, for a moment, as though she's trying to work herself up to saying something — apologizing, maybe? — but she can't quite get there, and makes an abrupt left turn into easier things, pushing herself to her feet, slinging the rag over her shoulder and gesturing at the table in the back as she turns that way. "I'm gonna have some coffee. You want some? It's probably lukewarm now, but…"

—-

Foggy works his hands in his pockets, fingers curling into fists and then loosening again. He can feel the weight of her stare and the words that go unsaid with it. A bit of his own tension melts out of his frame as Kinsey's tension releases. His observant gaze does not leave the mechanic now, watching her work with that rag, smearing grease around instead of actually cleansing it. There's some deep metaphor there that Foggy could write an entire dissertation on if not for his utter exhaustion.

Then Kinsey mentions coffee. "Only way to drink a good cup of joe." He starts to follow her, hands still in his pockets. He sinks into a long silence before he finally musters up enough courage to speak again. "Why you look like you need to say that you're sorry about something, Kinsey?"

—-

Only way to-

Kinsey turns her head to send a quirk-browed look over her shoulder as he trails behind her. "Lukewarm?" On any other occasion that would no doubt be chased with a fleet smile and goofy joke, but tonight she turns back to the table with its weirdly outdated coffee machine and the mugs stacked in a pyramid next to it, attention on the very important business of procuring caffeine.

Ostensibly, anyway. She could do this in her sleep, and often more or less does, pre-opening…but it's a convenient reason not to look at him. Not to say anything, until the moment he shatters the silence with his question.

The lines of her face in profile tighten slightly, and probably not in response to the scent of the coffee, which she checks before pouring the remainder out into two mugs. "I know you called. Before." She sinks into a crouch beside the table, wedges open the door of a mini-fridge underneath, and pulls a little bottle of creamer out to set beside the mugs. "I probably should've answered those," she admits, words that seem grudging, as she leans to drag a bowl of sweetener packets close to the mugs, a thing that definitely did not need doing, as they were in plain sight already, and after the doing of which she runs completely out of busy-work to occupy her hands and her eyes. She folds her arms, unfolds them to reach for her mug, and then pivots to lean her hips back against the edge of the table, somehow managing to set herself up so that it's more natural to watch the far bay doors than the man in the lilac shirt.

"I just…" Everything in her throat is visible as shadow or highlight when she swallows. "I don't, I wasn't- I didn't know what…what to say."

—-

Foggy shrugs almost sheepishly. "I haven't been making it to the coffeemaker before it shuts off lately. I've gotten used to the lukewarm coffee." He shuffles along behind her. He notes the pyramid of mugs, and something about its pleasant geometry makes Nelson smile. It's shortlived as he collects his cup of coffee, keeping to black despite the sugar and creamer. It gives his hands something to do beside worrying about in his pockets; he just holds it between his palms, gaze drifting between the black coffee and Kinsey.

"You know… this is super awkward. Like junior high dance awkward." He takes a sip of the coffee, barely grimacing at the cold bitterness. "Look… we both know about Matt, right? You know… um… his pro-bono work?" He glances nervously toward the open garage and then back to Kinsey. He lifts his hand toward the side of his head, and twitches his forefinger up and down like a horn. A Devil's horn to be precise. "And he thinks you broke up with him… over it." Or at least that's Foggy's assumption of how the whole thing went down. "He's real shit with personal relationships, Kinsey. Particularly lately…"

—-

"I've been told I'm good at awkward, yeah," Kinsey murmurs against the lip of her mug in a flat monotone, as the inside of her head brims with the memory of her minor meltdown on the couch of Jessica Jones. Over Matt. That happened. Yep.

She might have apologized for that, too, but Foggy decides this is the moment to begin upending her evening, and he has a strong opening. Pro-bono work, he says, and those hazel eyes of hers slide sidelong, the sip she was about to take awkwardly delayed, mug held aloft but unmoving. Then the gesture, with the finger. The horn thing. She slowly lowers the mug, tepid coffee forgotten, and her mouth opens, but nothing comes out, hesitation in her expression. Caution. Care. Foggy didn't know about Matt before. He does now. That's probably something worth asking about. But Matt, she feels sure, wouldn't have told Foggy about Six, and it might be difficult to address the-

And he thinks you broke up with him over it, says the well-meaning young man with the fabulous shirt and the tired eyes, who probably can't be faulted for not seeing the landmine before he stepped on it.

Her eyes tighten. Her open mouth closes with a click of perfect teeth. "Bull-fucking-shit," is her oh-so-eloquent response, suddenly too restless to lean against the table — she's back on her feet, surprise and anger, and maybe something else, vying for supremacy in her face. The fingers of her right hand tighten against the curvature of her mug. "Is that what he told you? That is not why. He- he-" Indignant, she wants to launch into a tirade, but she has no idea what Foggy does or doesn't know about Matt Murdock's alternate persona, or the things he's involved in, and even now, while their relationship is on the rocks, she can't quite bring herself to play fast and loose with that information. So she stands there, angry and incredulous, as things she wants to say aggressively bottleneck in her until she makes the mistake of forgetting about the coffee mug she's holding — gripping, now — in her perfectly lifelike, perfectly inorganic hand, and it shatters, spraying coffee and bits of ceramic everywhere.

She gasps, shock jolting her out of her fury. Things drip. In the stillness afterward she stares at Foggy's poor shirt, now a casualty of someone else's war. "Oh. God. Foggy. I'm- sorry, that- uh." Entirely on reflex she drags the (oil-stained, grease-riddled) cloth from her shoulder and reaches out with it, like that's going to fix the problem, all because she's too busy freaking out about Hulk smashing a mug in front of her boyf- ex-boyf- — in front of Matt's partner.

Never has anyone's expression more concisely conveyed the sentiment: FML.

—-

"Do you mean that you're good at being awkward or you're good at making other people awkward? Or both?" Foggy takes his own sip from the lukewarm coffee, his grimace improving with each tilt of the mug against his lips.

Foggy is just looking over the garage again when Kinsey drops the smooth combo-explicit and he blinks back toward her. His mouth opens, but words fail to manifest before the mix of anger and surprise from the mechanic. "Kins, I…" Then his jaw shuts tight and he just gives her the space to let it out. Or he would have, if the mug hadn't suddenly shattered into thick shrapnel of ceramic.

He staggers back a step. "Holy shit!" He fumbles his own mug, sloshing coffee up over his tie and shirt and onto his shoes. He rattles into the table with the coffee machine, managing to set down the mug with a clunk before he's down on his knee to help Kinsey with the shards, surviving totally in instinctive autopilot. In the back of his mind, he's piecing everything together — quickly. He doesn't speak until they've got the shards cleaned up, and only then does he murmur a wary, "So. You're like Jess then, huh?"

—-

His backward stumble saves his shirt from the additional indignity of grease stains, dodging him out of the way of that perilously dirty garage rag long enough for her to realize what she'd been about to do.

If Foggy Nelson had the same suite of metahuman abilities as his college friend and law partner, there would be no hiding the blush: he'd probably feel the temperature difference. Hell, he'd probably smell the change in her blood chemistry. Maybe he'd hear the capillaries in her face flushing. Who knows, with that guy? But Foggy doesn't, and Kinsey positions herself just carefully enough to keep her face out of view while they clean up the mess and she sweats her way through trying to come up with an explanation.

When he broaches the issue at last, she's washing her hands of the coffee they're soaked in, and rinsing a (mercifully clean) cloth to bring him, too — not that it's going to do much for his shirt. She glances over her shoulder with the intention to lie written all over her face, and then visibly hesitates, for only one reason — and that reason is Jessica Jones.

Her shoulders, previously squared by tension, slump a little. "No." The word leaves her on a sigh, which ends in a weak laugh. "No, I'm not. I'm pretty…pretty fragile, actually. The bits of me that are actually me." It's a delayed reaction, but it was probably inevitable. Two silent beats of time after that confession, her expression trembles, and then she lifts both hands to cover her face, fighting not to — it would seem — cry.

You know. Just in case Foggy might not feel yet that this endeavor was a top-to-bottom mistake.

—-

But, Foggy Nelson is just human. Flawed, weak, beautifully human. His only superpower manifests in the way he smiles at Kinsey in that almost apologetic, lighthearted manner that reflects a pure, earnest soul. He sees the way her shoulders slump after she foregoes the lies for the truths, and the fragility of her confession draws him forward. Surprisingly strong fingers come to rest on her shoulder, giving a good squeeze. "But you can break a coffee cup with your bare hands. That's pretty neat. I can quote pages 134 to 189 in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures, so… there's that."

He sighs deeply, dropping his hand from her shoulder to dig into the pockets of his slacks. He searches the concrete floors a bit, as if looking for more ceramics. It's a good way to occupy his mind, letting his questions build. "So. What's that mean then? 'The bits that are actually me.' How much of you isn't you?"

—-

As is so often the case, sometimes it's the tender gesture in a moment of struggle that undoes a stubborn strength. Her fingertips — of both hands! — whiten with the slight increase of pressure where she holds her hands to her face, as Foggy offers that gesture of reassurance. But it's hard to stay hidden when he's so obviously trying to be kind, and it's not as though she's fooling anyone, is it? With a sniff and an impatient pass of the heel of her palm beneath each eye, she sniffs and angles a too-bright look at him, looking for a smile, however pale, to offer him for his effort at humor.

The question he asks is deeper than he can possibly understand in the moment: questions of identity when you share the interior of your skull with another intelligence, even before it went strange, stopped 'talking' to you. It takes her a moment to navigate her thoughts through the labyrinth of things she's not sure she wants to say, to find the things she's willing to share.

"A lot more than you'd think," she says, finally. Her lips twist. "I was in an accident two years ago. I lost both of my legs from the knee down. My left arm, too." Hazel eyes drop, centered on her rising left palm, turned ceiling-ward. It looks no less real than the one on the right, and when she curls and uncurls her fingers, they look and move the way they're supposed to. "Matt knows. Matt knows…a lot. Jess knows, too. Not many other people, though." Her lips thin, pressed together around a bit of irritation that seems to steel her in her watery dismay. "Stark too."

—-

Foggy combs back his shag of blond hair as she draws herself out from behind her hands. He offers another weak, and yet genuine, smile to meet her own false brightness. He leans back into the coffee cart, arms crossing loosely at his chest. He has the air of patience, letting the words flow from her without interruption. He frowns when she mentions the accident, and it redoubles when he glances down at her legs and then to her arm in puzzlement.

Then something clicks. "Prosthetics? Super prosthetics?" Beat pause. "Like Luke Skywalker?"

—-

Whatever momentary pique mention of Stark brought on, it dissipates in the surprise that follows his characteristically nerdy attempt to grasp the particulars of her situation. Why she ought to be surprised at this point in their acquaintance by something like that is a mystery. Maybe it's the timing, but whatever the reason it's just enough to coax another short laugh out of her, this one slightly less bleak. "Sort of. It's, uh, complicated."

Sniffing, biting the inside of her cheek, her expression is overtaken with a subtle misery as she visibly tries to work herself up to asking the question that does eventually arrive, soft and hollow: "Is that really what he told you?"

—-

"You know… I don't think there's a single mutant, inhuman, billionaire playboy, or Asgardian god on this whole damn planet — whole damn universe — that isn't complicated." He scrubs at his scalp a bit more, before he exhales another heavy sigh. That exhaustion is settling back into him again. He shuffles back and forth on his feet.

"About the break-up? No. He just said you two broke up — no, wait. He said he broke up with you. Is that right? Because of this gangster guy who is trying to hurt him, so that means he's breaking up with you because he's a self-sacrificing dumbass. He tried to break up with me, too. But, girl… I don't put up with that."

—-

This smile is a half-smile, melancholy but understanding. "I don't know many normal humans who aren't complicated, either," she offers, and rolls her shoulders, folding her arms into a loose self-hug over her ribs. She sinks back against the edge of the table and silently absorbs the rest, brows knitted just enough to hint at the movement of deeper currents, restless under a motionless surface. The last quip produces a mixed response: a flicker of a smile more like her usual, wry variety, but something pained, too, and evasive. Her eyes drop to the toes of her chucks. "That guy has been after me for months. Since way before I knew about Matt's…" She tilts her eyes up toward the ceiling briefly. "Extracurriculars. And way before he knew about…you know…mine. This guy just — he got him where it hurts, and Matt, he…" She swallows, the cut of her jaw clear and sharp for a moment. "He just lost it, Foggy. He said 'I killed those women.' I told him he was crazy, that it's not his fault, and you don't — you can't — you can't do this, what we do, and then make yourself to blame when some crazy asshole decides to try to punish you for it. Like, what was the solution? Just not saving those women from the situations they were in, because this douchebag was going to murder them down the road? It doesn't make sense."

Now she's talking, and with the words coming, they don't seem to want to stop. She eases up from the table and starts to pace, some of that earlier frustration resurfacing to buoy her up. "He had himself convinced that the only way to deal with this fucker is to kill him. But that's — that's not Matt. And anyway, I'd have done it already if I thought it would fix the problem, but it won't. This guy's organization is huge. It's a bigger problem than this. It's a bigger problem than Matt's. He's not the only person whose life has been turned upside-down by this asshole."

—-

"I'm blissfully uncomplicated. I'm simple." Foggy contemplates this for a heartbeat. "Like a golden retriever." Then he sighs, sinking into the real heart of the words spilling out from the friendly Borg named Kinsey. He listens with that dutiful ear, hearing the emotions braided in with the simple outpour of words. He keeps to his lean against the table, watching her pace. He finds himself minding her gait, as if trying to find that subtle difference that would indicate the place where organic becomes inorganic. He looks up with a start, however, when Kinsey really gets to the meat of the Matt Murdock Paradox.

"We all do that, Kins… won't matter what you say to him. He's going to hold onto that guilt until he finds redemption from it." The brutal honesty of his analysis of his friend causes his own throat to bobble again, and he shrugs his shoulders after a heartbeat.

He loosens his tie, drawing it out from his collar before he wraps the maroon tie about his hand in an idle gesture. The mention of the mysterious nameless face behind this all lifts his green eyes to hers. "So, what do we do?"

—-

Once someone knows to look for it, there is something unusual about her gait, and when he looks he'll find it: something slightly too smooth. It's impossible to say where she ends and the prosthetic limbs begin, though. Certainly in jeans. Maybe at all. That cup-crushing hand looks utterly lifelike even under intense scrutiny.

"And what if there's no redemption from it, Fog?" She slows, stops in her pacing, half-turning to look at the man who knows her some-time paramour better than anyone else. It might have seemed a rhetorical question, but she looks at him long enough, plaintively enough, that it probably becomes clear she's hoping for an answer.

He has questions of his own, though. Her head bows, a taut breath leaving her as a sigh, and then she turns, pacing trajectory taking her toward the sidewall of the garage, and a set of secure lockers. One of them pops open on her approach, and she reaches inside to rifle the contents.

"I don't know what I'm going to do. But I know what you're going to do."

—-

"There's always redemption, Kins… until there isn't, and I don't think we're at that point yet."

The foreshadowing there is immense, as the soon-to-be-dubbed Punisher is just days from starting his reign of terror on the gangs of Hell's Kitchen. That will be a real test of just how far redemption's reach can be.

Now, though…

Nelson tracks Kinsey's movements, and while he sees it, he tries not to let it become an obsession. Her next words help with that, as he snaps his head up toward her with a dumbfounded, "Wha—?"

He blinks. "What do you mean what I'm going to do?"

—-

Something complicated passes through her expression, viewed in profile over her shoulder, as Foggy Nelson takes a firm stance on redemption. Complicated, and unexplained. Her hands still, just for a moment, and then she turns back to the locker and what she was doing, retrieving something metal, indistinct. She does something with it, in front of herself, out of sight. It clicks. It clicks again, and then she tosses it into the locker, which closes seemingly of its own volition as she turns back to face him and holds up-

"A while ago, Matt set a bug. Remember this Mariah Dillard thing? Cottonmouth? She's dirty, he's dirty, she's trying to sue Jess…" Whether he demonstrates any awareness about this situation or not, she waggles the device in the air and then tosses it his way, continuing: "It's all on there. You should do lawyer-y things with it. And that's it, Foggy. We need Jess. For all I know the stuff on that thumb drive ties in, because there's stuff in there about Harlem, too. But you should stay out of this stuff with-" She hesitates. "With this guy." Apologetic, then, the tilt of her head, the set of well-manicured brows. "Okay? And then you're going to tell me what day you have free next week so that I can come to your place and give you a security system that Tony fucking Stark Himself would need more than five minutes to compromise. Matt…" This pause isn't hesitation. It's a struggle against some cresting wave of feeling. She presses her lips into a thin, bloodless line. Swallows down the knot. "I don't have whatever it is that he needs right now. For a lot of reasons. Just…a lot of them. If anybody's gonna be able to pull him back from the brink right now, Fog, it's you. You've gotta stay safe."

—-

Foggy finally falls into a slow pace after Kinsey. His head half-cocks, trying to spy around the woman — robot? — to spot the device. But then he straightens up just a few feet from her, hands nervously pushing into his pockets. He frowns slightly at the bit about Dillard, and his brows lift briefly before then sinking down back over his green eyes once more.

"Yeah… I remember." He catches the device, looking over it with a half-tilt of his head again. Then his frown deepens, and he starts to shake his scruffy, leonine head. "Yeah, well… this nameless boogeyman of yours is a bully. I hate bullies." He steps forward again, holding up the device slightly. "Wednesday. I'm free Wednesday."

He looks down at the device again, turning it over a few times in his hands. "I'll look out for him… and make sure he doesn't do something stupid." Beat. "Okay, outrageously stupid." He hesitates more earnestly, and reaches out to touch Kinsey's shoulder in a gentle squeeze. "I'll be careful… but I'm not going to avoid danger if it means helping Matt. Okay?"

—-

A bully, he says. The sound she makes is like a laugh, but it's not a laugh — it's too grim, a little bit sick. "Yeah," she agrees, and means that. Because really, he's right about that. Fisk is a bully. What is a bully, if not a person who takes what they want, and throws their weight around enough to ensure they can go on doing that with impunity?

But it's maybe something only Foggy would say, and for that reason some weary, helpless appreciation lingers, even after he refuses to promise to stay on the sidelines.

She'd rather that weren't true. Obviously, she would. But after the long silence, within which hazel eyes track over and over his face, all she does is nod, a movement small enough that it would be lost in any kind of crowd. "I know. Just…if you have the luxury of calling for help? Call for help."

Pause.

She has the good grace to look slightly rueful as she adds, "I…promise I'll pick up the phone this time."

—-

"Oh, I'm definitely calling for help… because I'm not an idiot." Like Matt. It's unspoken, but definitely conveyed through his tone. He's sure that Matt would still be keeping him in the dark if not for Foggy's ability to spot the obvious clues.

He gives Kinsey an earnest smile now. It's the smile a friend gives another friend when they really need it. "Do me a favor though, alright? Don't assume that I'm just calling because I need help. I like you, Kins. And being Matt's significant others means we probably need a drinking night."

Because Foggy is still operating under the assumption that Matt and Kinsey will figure this all out.

—-

It's a strange fact of human nature that often, it isn't hardship that causes the dam to break, and tears to fall. People fight against that impulse, locking those things away, because to get through the difficult patches they have to stay strong.

Most of the time, at least in Kinsey's experience — and certainly now, in this moment — it's the kindness in the aftermath, the gesture of comfort, that dissolves what hold a person has on those feelings, vented the first time someone makes it feel safe enough to do that.

He means what he says in the kindest of ways, and that just means that Foggy Nelson is the first one to make Kinsey feel safe enough to cry over the loss of something that meant more to her than she properly knows how to articulate: the first normal relationship she's had since her accident. With someone strange, like her; someone with secrets, like her. Someone with a disability to overcome, too, who turned that into a strength…

She covers her face, but there's no hiding that.

Foggy definitely deserves a drinking night.

—-

"Oh… oh… shit… Kins."

He's made her cry. He has no idea how he made her cry, but there's Matt's girlfriend — ex-girlfriend? — crying. He winces as he steps forward closer now, hands going on her shoulders in a comforting gesture. He draws her in if she consents, and then hugs her. It's a good Foggy Hug (tm) — almost bearlike in its warmth and hidden strength.

"Yeah… I know… this is all total shit."

—-

The real victim here tonight is Foggy's shirt. Such a nice shirt, and a nice tie. First there was coffee. Now there's a grease-smudged Kinsey at the end of a working day in a garage, adding the bodily fluid of vehicles and a trace amount of saline-diluted mascara to the list of insults levied on that innocent garment.

She gets herself back under control in a minute or so, finally able to say what she couldn't quite manage to get out as she cried: "It's not your fault. Shit. I'm sorry. I'm…really sorry. You're just- you're too sweet." She sniffs, gives an embarrassed little laugh, and wipes under one eye with the pads of her fingers. "I'm gonna need you to dial back on that a little. I'm good. I promise."

—-

Foggy just is a steady presence while Kinsey works it all out, and he pats her back gently through the tears. When she gets herself back under control, he steps back into a comfortable distance. He doesn't even care about the tie or the shirt. That's why God invented dry cleaning.

"Don't apologize… I think you probably needed that." He hesitates a moment and then nods back. "Cm'on… I saw this hole in the wall like three blocks over, and I love a good, shitty local bar. It's better than church."

The blaspheme comes easily without Matt around. He gives Kinsey's shoulder a squeeze. Booze and two friends just shooting the shit is probably just what Kinsey needs, and Foggy is more than happy to provide.

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