Fic: Independent Study
Title: Independent Study
Fandom: Daredevil (TV)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Matt doesn't have a problem with his new roommate being bi - until Foggy starts bringing boys home.
Notes: Requested by several people on Tumblr, my take on that story about the guy who was afraid he was being homophobic towards his gay roommate until he realized he was actually just in love with him. Slight AU in that Matt knows Father Lantom from his childhood, which I don't think is implied by canon. Thanks to becs1024 for the beta!
September
“Hey, Matt? Can I talk to you about something?”
Matt takes out his ear bud, turning away from his computer and towards the sound of his roommate’s voice. “Yeah, what’s up, Foggy?”
Then he pauses. In the eight days they’ve known each other, Foggy’s mostly come across as fairly happy-go-lucky, at least when he’s not fighting with the university’s antiquated website. But now Foggy’s heart is beating just a little bit faster than normal, and there’s a faint, acrid whiff of sweat about him. He’s nervous.
“Uh. I’m. I wanted to tell you something.” Foggy sits on his own bed with a creak of springs.
Matt turns his chair to face Foggy more fully. He’s starting to get nervous too. Foggy’s been totally cool about Matt’s blindness so far, but what if it’s suddenly become a problem for him? What if he wants a new roommate? Matt’s only just begun to get used to Foggy, he doesn’t want to have to start all over again with someone else.
“Is everything okay?” he asks.
“Yeah!” Foggy says, too loud, and then, “Yeah, sorry, everything...it’s nothing bad. Well, not for me. Well, not for anyone, really, but I don’t know if you…” He stops; Matt can’t make out his expression but he hears a puff of air like Foggy just blew out his cheeks. “I’m bi.”
Matt waits, but that appears to be the end of the sentence. “You’re by what?”
Foggy snorts a nervous laugh. “Bisexual.”
“You’re...oh! Oh.” Matt feels his face heat up. He hopes it’s not visible. “Um...okay?”
“Is it okay?” Foggy asks. “I mean, I’m not asking for permission or anything, and if it’s not okay then, like, fuck you, but also, like. I just. Wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to be a problem, I guess?”
“Oh!” Matt says again. “No, no, of course not.”
“Okay,” Foggy says, and, “Good,” and Matt hears the release of air and senses the curve of his spine as he lets out a relieved breath. “I didn’t think it would be, but...I mean, I don’t want to stereotype, but, like, the Catholic thing and...I don’t know.”
“No, I get it,” Matt says. He knows perfectly well what some members of the Church think of gay people. Or bisexual people, he supposes. It never made all that much sense to him; compared to some of the cruelties he hears people visit upon each other when they think no one’s listening, one man kissing another man hardly strikes him as a sin. “But I don’t care. I mean, it doesn’t matter to me.”
“Okay,” Foggy says again. “Good. Phew!” He laughs again, this time still uncomfortable but far less tense. “Some guys freak out, you know. At, like, the idea of...whatever.”
Matt raises an eyebrow. “I was raised in a Catholic orphanage, Foggy. I know those guys well.” He’s always found them ridiculous. Foggy being bisexual has nothing to do with Matt. Just because he likes boys doesn’t mean he likes Matt, right?
Although...he did call Matt good-looking the day they met. And sometimes his heart goes a little faster when he taps Matt on the shoulder or brushes his arm to get his attention, or just when they’re talking close and low in class…
But that could be any number of things. Matt doesn’t really know Foggy well enough to say, yet, and to assume it’s attraction now, just because Matt knows Foggy is bi, is probably homophobic or biphobic or something. It’s definitely ridiculously egotistical. People have said Matt grew up to be handsome, but he doesn’t have any real sense of what that means, and besides, Matt might not be Foggy’s kind of handsome.
He wonders, abruptly, what Foggy’s kind of handsome is.
“Right. Of course. Anyway.” Foggy shrugs, Matt thinks, from the shift in his heat and the sound of his clothes and hair rustling. “Just wanted to put it out there before I, like, brought a dude back to the room or something. Which I would clear with you first, obviously, I’m not gonna sexile you without warning, but this way we can keep it to one awkward conversation in the moment and not two.”
“Sock on the door might not work,” Matt says, feeling his face grow even hotter. “Maybe a bell on the door instead or something.”
“Ha, yeah, something like that,” Foggy says. “We’ll work out a system. Anyway sorry, I’ll let you get back to work.”
“Sure.” Matt turns back around, grateful to hide his burning face by pointing it at the computer screen. He knows it’s wrong of him, but something about the thought of Foggy bringing a guy back to their shared room makes him feel squirmy and anxious, like spiders crawling down his spine.
Well, he’ll just have to get over it. Foggy’s been a good roommate so far. Matt’s determined not to fuck this up.
*
October
Matt gets an email saying that some of the books he requested in Braille via interlibrary loan have come in, so Foggy tags along with him to the library, mostly for an excuse to stop at the coffee shop in the lobby. He gets a drink while Matt gives his name to the student worker at the checkout desk, a guy who smells like patchouli and spearmint gum; Patchouli grunts an instruction to wait and disappears into the back.
A minute later Foggy comes up beside Matt, smelling of coffee and cloyingly artificial pumpkin spice syrup. “At your right elbow,” Foggy says, and pushes a warm cup into Matt’s hand.
He can tell by smell that it’s a regular coffee, black with one sugar, just the way Matt likes it. “You didn’t have to get me anything,” he says with a smile, and Foggy gives him a gentle hip check.
“Yeah, but I did, so deal with it.”
Matt lets out an airy, faux put-upon sigh and feels triumphant when it makes Foggy laugh. “Well, if I must I must.”
Patchouli comes out of the back room. “All right, guy, I found your - Foggy! Hey, what are you doing here?”
Matt cocks his head, bemused. Patchouli had been dispassionate almost to the point of rudeness when Matt asked for his books, slouching off to the back room like just breathing was a nearly impossible feat, let alone walking. Now he’s standing up straight, his heartbeat fast, his voice bright and alert. Judging by his hand motions, he’s fussing with his hair.
“Oh, hey, Eric,” Foggy says. “Just here with my roomie.” He jerks his thumb at Matt, then murmurs, “I jerked my thumb at you, Matt. Matt, this is Eric, he’s in my Romantic Poetry class.”
“Hey,” Patchouli - Eric - says offhand to Matt, then turns back to Foggy. “What’d you think of last week’s reading assignment? Kinda racy, huh?”
“Well, Byron,” Foggy says, and Eric laughs like he’s made a joke. “Fun to read aloud, though. I subjected poor Matt here to some choice selections from Don Juan, didn’t I? What was the bit...” He strikes a pose and recites in a posh and frankly terrible British accent: “Wedded she some years, and to a man/ Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty/ And yet, I think, instead of such a one/ ‘Twere better to have two of five and twenty.”
“Wow, good memory,” Eric says. He leans in towards Foggy, as far as the checkout desk will allow.
Foggy shrugs. “I got a head for trivia. Rhyming stuff sticks.”
“All I remember is: pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure,” Eric says, voice dipping low. “But maybe we could study together for the midterm? You could help me remember the rest.”
Matt cocks his head again. He knows Eric’s tone. He’s heard it plenty of times, in girls talking to him, mostly, usually accompanied by a lot of hair tossing and touching of his arm. Eric likes Foggy. He’s flirting with Foggy.
“Oh,” Foggy says, and then in a voice warm with a smile, “Well, I’ll see what I can do.”
And Foggy is flirting back.
Matt lets his cane clatter against the counter. “Sorry about that!” he says when Eric and Foggy both startle. “I should, uh, get my books and get out of here.”
“Yeah, we gotta get back to the ol’ homestead,” Foggy says as Eric starts running the scanner over Matt’s books. Matt’s surprised - he thought Foggy would stay. “I’ve been doing an experiment and it turns out my Punjabi homework really won’t do itself.”
Eric laughs again. Matt feels his brow furrow. Foggy’s funny, but he’s not that funny. “Well, if you figure out the secret to making it, let me know,” Eric says as he shoves Matt’s books carelessly in his direction. “I’ll see if it works for French.”
“Books at your two o’ clock, Matt,” Foggy says, and Matt slings his backpack off his shoulder and piles the books in. On second thought, he folds up his cane as well and tosses that in too. He can’t juggle it, the coffee, and Foggy’s elbow, and he’d prefer the elbow at the moment. “I’ll see you in class, Eric.”
“Bye, Foggy,” Eric says, and gives Matt a vague wave that Matt pretends not to register.
Matt puts his backpack back on and snags Foggy’s elbow with his free hand. He can tell Eric’s watching them, or at least turned in their direction, as they walk towards the exit.
“Hey, uh, did you want to stay?” he asks as Foggy holds the door open.
“Well, I don’t want to do this homework, but I do actually have to,” Foggy says. “Why?”
“Oh. I just...I thought you...that you might…” Matt searches for what he’s trying to say and comes up empty. “Nothing. Never mind. Thanks for the coffee.”
“Hey,” Foggy says, and shifts his elbow up a little - not nearly enough to throw Matt off, just the ghost of what would be a playful nudge if Foggy weren’t in the middle of guiding, which he takes more seriously than anything Matt has yet encountered with him. It makes Matt feel almost as unsettled and confused as listening to Foggy flirt with Eric, albeit in a different way. “Any time, buddy.”
Matt swallows, and nods, and decides not to think about Eric any more. It’s none of his business.
*
November
“Nerd!” Foggy crows, too-loud but affectionate, as he opens the door to their room. “I can’t believe it’s two in the morning and you’re still studying.”
“Is it that late?” Matt asks, even though he’s perfectly aware of what time it is. But it’s Friday night, and the din of students partying all over campus would’ve made it impossible to sleep, at least without something quiet and soothing nearby like Foggy’s heartbeat to help Matt drown it out.
“Yes, I literally went to a party and came back and you are still studying, I am now going to wrest you away from your computer by force,” Foggy announces, giving Matt time to grab on to his desk before Foggy wraps his arms around Matt and his computer chair from behind and hauls him backwards. They’re both laughing as Foggy tries, not very hard, to drag Matt away from his desk, and Foggy smells like beer and spearmint and clove cigarettes and - and -
And cologne and arousal, neither of them his.
Matt’s so startled he lets go, and Foggy nearly overbalances before catching them both and straightening up. “Sorry,” Matt says quickly, and, “Okay, you win,” and tries to compose his face before finishing with, “How was the party?”
“Good!” Foggy says as Matt closes his computer and turns to face him. “Uh. Better than I expected. It was...yeah, it was good.” He suddenly registers as slightly warmer in Matt’s senses - is he blushing?
Matt frowns slightly and focuses on Foggy as he toes off his shoes and flops onto his bed. Yes, that’s definitely a cologne with unfamiliar notes lingering on Foggy’s clothes and hair, and the distinct scent of male arousal - Foggy’s and someone else’s, the aromas twined around each other. His heartbeat’s a little elevated, and there are three throbbing points of heat on his throat where the blood’s closer to the surface. Bruises, Matt thinks first, automatically, and then realizes, no, hickeys.
“Did,” Matt says. His voice breaks. He clears his throat. “Did you see anyone we know?”
“Uh, yeah,” Foggy says. His heart goes even faster. There’s a hot, sick, swooping feeling in Matt’s stomach. “Yeah, I ran into that guy Eric, from my Romantic Poetry class? He works at the library?”
“I remember,” Matt says faintly. That explains the spearmint.
“We, uh, might have fooled around a bit,” Foggy admits.
“Oh,” Matt says. “Are you two…” He’s not sure how to finish that. Together? Dating? Boyfriends? Does it work the same when it’s two guys? Doesn’t Foggy know he can do so much better than Eric?
“Oh, no, nah, I don’t think so,” Foggy says. “I mean, Eric’s fun and all but I don’t think he’s looking for anything like that, and neither am I, really. After all, it’s only our first semester of college, right? Plenty of time to play the field.”
“Right,” Matt says. He’s not sure why he feels so relieved. Eric seems like maybe a little bit of a tool, but Matt could handle him being around if Foggy started dating him seriously.
Then he realizes “playing the field” means Foggy will probably be hooking up with other guys, and he feels sick again.
Foggy chuckles. “Yeah, I thought you’d agree with that, Casanova. All those girls always hanging all over you?”
“That’s not...I don’t…” Matt fumbles. Yeah, girls here seem to really like to flirt with him, and sure, he enjoys flirting back, but that’s...it’s not the same, somehow. “I guess,” he finishes helplessly, and fakes a yawn to get out of this conversation. “I’m - I should get ready for bed.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Matt puzzles over it as he strips down to his boxers and puts his glasses safely on his nightstand. Why does the thought of Foggy hooking up with Eric bother him so much? He only met Eric the one time, he shouldn’t have such a strong adverse reaction to him - and yet his nose keeps twitching, bothered by the phantom scent of him like it’s a gas leak or a tendril of smoke curling through his home.
Is it because Eric’s a guy? That shouldn’t be it either - Matt has a few queer classmates that he’s friendly with, now, and two weeks ago his whole Comp Lit seminar had a very nice dinner with their professor and her wife, and none of that made him feel the way he does now, shaky and miserable. Maybe it’s just because this particular incident is so close to home.
Well, that’s his problem, not Eric’s, and certainly not Foggy’s. Matt murmurs good night to Foggy and resolves to get over himself, and the sooner the better. Foggy deserves no less.
*
December
Foggy insists on bringing Matt home with him for at least the Christmas part of Christmas break, though Matt plans on fleeing back to the peace and quiet of the dorms after New Year’s. Still, being at the Nelsons’ is less awkward than Matt expected. Foggy’s dad calls Matt “buddy” just like Foggy does when he’s sober, and Foggy’s mom calls Matt “sweetheart” just like Foggy does when he’s drunk, and the house smells like pine and eggnog and sweet cured ham basically all the time.
On Christmas morning they open presents in living room, sitting on the floor in their pajamas and cradling cups of hot cocoa. Foggy’s parents give Matt two incredibly soft and warm sweaters in a finer material than anything Matt’s ever owned. Foggy gives him three audio books, a bunch of novelty socks Foggy takes great joy in describing, and a sturdy, expensive leather bag to replace Matt’s battered old backpack, tricked out with over two dozen compartments inside so that Matt will never have to rummage for something by feel again.
Matt rubs the buttery-soft, rich-smelling leather with his thumb as Foggy opens the present Matt gave him: an iPod, the fanciest one they have, to replace Foggy’s battered and beloved first gen version. Matt’s been saving for weeks and will have to be pretty frugal for months to come to make up for this splurge, but it’s worth it when Foggy gasps out loud, giving Matt enough warning to put his cocoa down before Foggy tackles him to the floor in a bear hug.
Breakfast is towering stacks of chocolate chip pancakes drowned in butter and syrup, and when it’s over the extended Nelson family, plus half the neighborhood, spills into the apartment. It’s all food and happy noise and people recognizing Matt as “Jack Murdock’s boy, look how tall and handsome you’ve gotten” until Foggy pulls Matt to safety, runs cheerful interference with pushy neighbors and grabby aunts. His ten-year-old sister Candace shrieks gleefully that Foggy and Matt are now standing under the mistletoe, and Foggy laughs and leans over to kiss Matt on the cheek before dragging him off to try some of Gammy Nelson’s famous mince pie.
It’s the best Christmas Matt can remember since his father died.
*
January
In January, Matt meets Elektra.
*
February
*
March
*
April
*
May
Matt emerges from his post-Elektra haze to discover that Foggy has a girlfriend now. Well, sort of. Apparently he and Marci are an on-again, off-again thing. Currently, however, they’re on. Foggy’s eager for Marci and Matt to be friends, so they hang out all of one time before agreeing that it’s an experiment that doesn’t need to be repeated. Matt can’t for the life of him figure out what Foggy sees in Marci, and it’s clear that Marci feels the same way about Matt.
He’s secretly glad when Foggy and Marci switch back to “off” in the oncoming frenzy of finals. He feels guilty about it, especially when he essentially abandoned Foggy while Elektra was in the picture. But it’s been so long since it’s been just Matt and Foggy, and he finds he missed it. He’s glad it’s just the two of them again.
*
September
Matt stays on campus during break, courtesy of summer housing, but Hell’s Kitchen is only a quick subway ride away, and he sees Foggy at least three times a week. Still, moving into a new room with him and listening as he bustles around putting up posters and cramming clothes into drawers without folding them makes Columbia feel like home again.
They go to a party the first weekend after classes start, to blow off steam. Matt gets caught up in a conversation with a girl from one of his classes last semester and loses track of Foggy. When he finds him, after navigating the entire house by smell, he’s pressed up against the kitchen counter by some guy Matt’s never met before, and he’s making these almost inaudible little noises that abruptly make Matt want to smash every glass in the cabinets above them.
Instead, he puts on his most lost expression and says, “Foggy?”
Foggy startles, and pulls away from his makeout partner. “Oh! Hey, Matt, buddy. Didn’t mean to abandon you. You okay?”
His heart’s beating fast and this stranger’s hand is still on his ass. Matt frowns. “I just...have a little bit of a headache. I was gonna head out. Is there someone else here?”
“Oh, sorry, yeah. This is Lawrence. Lawrence, this is my roommate, Matt.”
“Hey,” Lawrence says.
“Hello,” Matt says - too brusque, too rude, but it’s out of his mouth before he can catch it. “Right, so I’ll just…”
He makes a show of touching his temple and hears Foggy step away from Lawrence. “Do you want me to walk with you?”
“I don’t want to keep you if you’re busy…” Matt says. Forlornly.
Foggy and Lawrence have a murmured conversation that’s mostly facial expressions and cut-off sentences, which means Matt can’t make much of it, but it ends with Foggy saying, “I’ll come with you, Matt, just give me a sec.”
He and Lawrence exchange numbers. Matt doesn’t bother to hide his impatience.
Finally, Foggy parts from Lawrence and gently bumps Matt’s hand with his own. Matt slides his hand up Foggy’s forearm and latches firmly onto his elbow. “All right, let’s blow this popsicle stand,” Foggy says. “I’ll, uh, talk to you later, Lawrence?”
“Definitely,” Lawrence says. “Nice to meet you, Matt.”
“Uh-huh,” Matt says, and tugs Foggy out of the room.
He sets a fast pace walking back to their dorm, cane clattering on the sidewalk as he whips it back and forth. “Hey, Matt, you okay?” Foggy asks again. “You seem...agitated.”
“I’m fine,” Matt says. “How’d you know that guy?”
“Oh, friend of a friend,” Foggy says. “I think he’s pre-law, like us.”
“What about Marci?”
“Yeah, she’s pre-law too.”
Matt sucks air through his teeth. “I mean, what about your thing with her?”
He feels Foggy shrug. “Suspended until further notice. I’m a free agent.”
“Seems pretty recent.”
“We broke up four months ago, Matt, this is hardly a rebound.” Foggy turns his head to look at him. “What’s with you? You don’t even like Marci.”
“Nothing’s with me. I’m just curious,” Matt says. He wishes Foggy would stop looking at him. “I’m your friend, shouldn’t I want to know what’s going on in your life?”
“Yes, I feel very attended to, thanks,” Foggy says. “It’s just…”
“What?”
“You seem kind of pissed.”
“What would I have to be pissed about?”
But Foggy’s right, of course - Matt is angry, so angry he’s practically stomping down the quiet campus paths, so angry he wants to pick a fight, so angry he wants to march back to Lawrence and tell him to - to - something. He knows he’s being unreasonable and that he saw Foggy plenty over the summer, but it’s still just the first week of being back together for real. He didn’t expect Foggy to ditch him the first chance he got for some random guy. Maybe Matt won’t make out with Foggy, but his company can’t be that bad, can it?
“Okay,” Foggy says. “So you’ve got that look on your face because…?”
“I told you, I have a headache,” Matt snaps.
“Right,” Foggy says. “Is there anything I can do to help? Once we get home, I mean.”
What Matt wants is for Foggy to somehow fix this the way he always does, coaxing Matt out of a bad mood with stupid jokes and his irrepressibly buoyant attitude. He wants it to be like they never went to that stupid party, like they’d had the roomies’ night in Matt was half-expecting for this first weekend back, tucked against each other on Foggy’s bed while Foggy narrated the worst movie he could find. He wants to be warm and happy and at home with Foggy instead of furious and shivering outside because he didn’t expect to need a jacket this early in the fall.
Suddenly he’s too melancholy to be angry. “No. Sorry. I think I just needed to be somewhere quieter,” he says. “Sorry I ruined your night.”
“What are you talking about? You didn’t ruin anything,” Foggy says.
“But Lawrence…”
“Possesses a phone that I can call if I want to see him again,” Foggy says. “You’re my best friend. You come first.”
And just like that, Foggy’s fixed it.
Matt tilts his head to smile at him, and bends his arm more deeply so that they’re walking a bit closer together. “Thanks, Fog.”
“Any time,” Foggy says. His heart’s still beating fast, but it doesn’t bother Matt so much anymore. Maybe the fast heartbeat had nothing to do with Lawrence in the first place. Besides, who cares about Lawrence? Matt will still be here when he’s gone.
*
December
Lawrence takes a long time to get gone, though.
Foggy actually dates him, fussing over his hair and clothes and asking Matt if he smells okay before meeting Lawrence for dinner or coffee or a movie. He’s never really dated a guy before, just hooked up with them. Perhaps having learned his lesson from Marci, he keeps Matt and Lawrence pretty far apart from each other, which doesn’t help; Matt feels left out and unwanted every time Foggy’s vague about where he and Lawrence are going or what time he’ll be back.
Three weeks in, Foggy stands in the door of their room, ready to go out and radiating heat as he tells Matt that he might not be back until morning. Matt takes the subway back down to Hell’s Kitchen once Foggy’s gone and pounds on the bag at Fogwell’s until his knuckles are raw.
But it’s fine. It’s fine. Matt throws himself into work, hauling his GPA back up to where it was before Elektra torpedoed it last semester, charming his way back into his advisor’s good graces. He spends his evenings in the library, studying late so that he doesn’t have to know for sure whether Foggy’s in their room or out with Lawrence.
It’s not a foolproof strategy, considering he comes home one night with his head too full of physics problem sets to realize there are two people in his room until he’s already opened the door.
There’s a wet noise and then Foggy says, “Uh,” and Lawrence says, “Shit,” and Matt says nothing at all, because his voice has deserted him. He’s - Foggy and Lawrence are on Foggy’s bed, they’re overheated and their pulses are racing and the room smells of sweat and sex and Foggy’s face is somewhere down between Lawrence’s thighs…
“Uh,” Foggy says again, and then, “Matt, buddy, could you close the door and...give us five?”
Matt wordlessly closes the door and stands outside it, fingers so loose on his cane he nearly drops it. He feels hot all over. He can hear Foggy and Lawrence inside scrambling for their clothes, Foggy stammering apologies and Lawrence telling him not to worry about it, that at least they know Matt didn’t see anything.
Matt seriously contemplates punching Lawrence in the nose.
Finally Lawrence opens the door. He reeks of Foggy. Matt’s fingers tighten on his cane. “Sorry, Matt.”
“Yeah,” Matt says, and Lawrence hesitates for a second before booking it down the hall.
Matt goes into the room. Foggy is tugging the covers up on his bed. He’s still flushed and breathing heavily. Matt’s not sure if it’s all from embarrassment now or if he’s still turned on. “Sorry about that.”
“I guess we never worked out an alternative to the whole sock on the door thing,” Matt manages.
“Yeah, you’re usually at the library later than this, so…” Foggy spreads his hands.
“Do you bring him over a lot when I’m at the library?” Matt asks. He knows Foggy doesn’t - he would have smelled it - but he can’t help the sharp, nasty edge that creeps into his tone anyway.
“No, we usually go to his room,” Foggy says. “His roommate’s always at his girlfriend’s, so it’s more...anyway, I’m sorry. I would have warned you if I’d known.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Matt says, dropping his bag on his desk with a thump. “Not like I could see anything, right?”
“You heard that, huh?” Foggy sighs. “That was a shitty thing for him to say, I’ll talk to him.”
“Don’t put yourself out on my account.” The room stinks of sex, and Lawrence. It sits thick in Matt’s throat.
“Look, Matt, I said I was sorry, okay?” Foggy says, and now he sounds annoyed. “I apologized, and I kicked Lawrence out, and I promise I’ll give you a heads up in the future. What more do you want from me?”
“I don’t know!” Matt snaps. “I just - I wasn’t expecting to find you two together.”
“Well, maybe you’d have a better idea of what you were likely to find me doing if you weren’t so busy avoiding me,” Foggy retorts.
Matt blinks. “What?”
“You never want to hang out anymore! You’re always at the library, or with a girl, or taking your weird late night walks,” Foggy says. “You can’t get mad at me for having sex in our room once when you’re never here anyway!”
“Well, neither are you!” Matt says. Two can play at that game. “You’re always off with Lawrence.”
“So this is about Lawrence,” Foggy says, and Matt realizes he’s talked himself into a trap. Foggy’s going to be a great lawyer someday. “Do you have a problem with him, specifically, or is it just that he’s a guy?”
Matt reels back, stung. “What?”
“You’re super weird every time I’m with a guy, Matt! Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” Foggy asks.
“I...I don’t...I’m not...I don’t care about that,” Matt says.
“You sure about that?” Foggy asks. He’s bending down, rummaging for something - oh, he’s putting his shoes on, shoving his feet in without bothering to untie the laces. “Because that’s not what it looks like from here.”
“Where are you going?” Matt asks, too thrown to remember he shouldn’t be able to tell that Foggy’s getting ready to leave.
Luckily, Foggy’s apparently too worked up to notice, too. “Out. So don’t worry, you’ll have the room all to yourself. I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“Foggy - ” Matt starts to say, but Foggy’s already slamming his way out the door.
Shit.
Matt sits down on his bed, head in his hands. He didn’t think - he’s never thought he was homophobic, but is that what this is? Is he just grossed out by Foggy being with another man?
But it’s not disgust, exactly, that he’s registering. He’s upset, yes, and after a minute he gets up and hauls the window open to air the room out despite the cold because he doesn’t want to smell Lawrence for another second - but he just feels hot, and angry, and sick to his stomach that Foggy’s so angry with him. Foggy’s never been angry with him before, not really.
He’s right to be angry, though, the way Matt’s been acting.
It’s earlier than he normally goes to sleep, but he knows he won’t be good for anything else, so he kicks off his shoes and his jeans and crawls into bed. He can’t sleep, though. His mind keeps gnawing at the argument he had with Foggy; at the suspicion that he’s a bad person and a worse friend; at the way Foggy and Lawrence sounded together and the way Foggy smelled, salt and musk and want, still clinging to his skin after Lawrence had left and it was just him and Matt, alone in their room together.
He finally drops off into a doze, not so deep that he doesn’t hear it when Foggy comes back and mutters, “You left the light on again, Matty, jeez.”
Matty.
Maybe Foggy doesn’t hate him after all.
He hears the window close and feels Foggy tug the extra blanket at the foot of his bed over him before real sleep finally catches up with him at last.
*
In his dream, Foggy and Lawrence don’t stop.
In his dream, Matt stands there in the doorway, transfixed by the heat radiating from Foggy’s body and the wet sounds as he bobs his head. His cane drops from his nerveless fingers with a clatter and Foggy looks up at him. In his dream, Matt can tell Foggy’s smiling.
“Why don’t you come in and close the door, Matt?” Foggy says. “You might learn something.”
Matt swallows and steps inside, closing the door behind him - and suddenly Lawrence is gone and it’s Matt in Foggy’s bed, Matt with Foggy leaning over him, his smell so rich Matt wants to drown in it. He reaches down and feels the curve of Foggy’s cheek as he smiles, the softness of his hair.
“You can pull it,” Foggy says. “I don’t mind.”
“Foggy…” Matt says, and then can’t manage anything else. He wants to touch everything. He wants to taste everything.
Foggy leans in. “What are you so mad about, Murdock?” he whispers, and they’re both naked, and Foggy’s so warm, and when his mouth touches Matt’s he tastes like he smells, coffee and cinnamon and salt -
Matt jerks awake with a gasp.
*
January
They don’t talk about the fight. Matt spends less time at the library and is sure to keep Foggy apprised of when he’ll be in and out of their room. Foggy spends more evenings at Lawrence’s, though he’s present and cheerful when he’s around Matt.
They don’t talk about the dream, either, mostly because Matt doesn’t tell Foggy about it. He doesn’t want to remember it. It creeps in at the edges of his memory, though - the heat of Foggy’s skin beneath his hands, the want so visceral he could taste it.
It's not the last dream he has about Foggy, either.
He doesn’t know what to do with the dreams. He feels guilty and furtive sometimes when he’s with Foggy, when Foggy’s voice suddenly dips low or his hand brushes Matt’s elbow in a way that makes all the hairs on the back of Matt’s neck stand on end.
It’s inappropriate. Foggy’s his friend. Just because he knows Foggy likes guys is no reason for his subconscious to make Foggy the dumping ground for…whatever’s going on with it.
He’ll ignore it. It’ll go away. Eventually.
Lawrence goes away first, and Matt tries not to be too visibly jubilant about it. Foggy tells him about the breakup one cold Sunday morning, after waking up and lying in bed staring at the ceiling for nearly an hour.
“What happened?” Matt asks. He’s already up and working on a paper, sipping the coffee he slipped out to get when he heard Foggy making waking-up noises. There’s a second coffee staying hot-ish in a travel tumblr on Foggy’s nightstand, but Foggy hasn’t touched it yet.
There’s a brush of fabric and a creak of springs - Foggy shrugging, probably. “It just wasn’t working out. He could be kind of shitty sometimes,” Foggy says.
“I’m sorry,” Matt lies. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Foggy says. He's lying too.
Unlike Foggy, though, Matt can tell. He bites his lip, then closes his computer and stands up. “Get dressed,” he says.
Foggy lifts his head to look at Matt. “What?”
“Get dressed. We’re finding somewhere that serves alcohol on a Sunday morning, and you’re getting drunk,” Matt says. He may be secretly glad that Lawrence is out of the picture, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still be a good friend.
“I’m clutching my chest, Matt,” Foggy says, and does. “Drinking on the Sabbath? And before noon, even. What would the nuns say?”
“Well, don’t tell them, then,” Matt says, and holds out a hand to haul Foggy out of bed.
Foggy maintains his grip once he’s vertical for a second, then pulls Matt into a hug. “Thanks, buddy,” he murmurs in Matt’s ear, and Matt fights a shiver.
“Hey,” Matt says, “what are friends for?”
*
February
Matt’s grabbing a coffee before class at the little cafe in the student center when he runs into Marci.
“Well, if it isn’t Matt Murdock,” she drawls, coming up to him as he adds sugar to his coffee. “It’s Marci Stahl.”
“I recognized your voice,” he says, and doesn’t add that he also smelled her perfume the minute she walked in the door. “Uh. How are you?”
“Still great at small talk, huh?” she asks. Matt raises his eyebrows but doesn’t say anything, and she laughs. “So I hear Foggy dumped Larry Cranston. You finally gonna make your move or what?”
Matt frowns at her, puzzled. “Make my...are you asking if I’m moving out?”
“Oh my God, how are you wrecking the grade curve with a brain like this?” she asks. “Make your move on Foggy. Cease this endless pining so we can all move on with our lives. Well? Yay or nay?”
She’s made her point clear now, but Matt’s still baffled. “What are you talking about? Foggy and I are just friends.”
“Right, and a unicorn is just a horse with a glandular disorder,” she says. “Do I look stupid to you? Never mind, you know what I mean. But trust me, your tragic lovelorn act is extremely obvious.”
“It's not an act,” Matt says, and she cackles. “I mean, there's nothing to act. Foggy is my best friend. That's it.”
“Oh, is that why you practically pissed in a circle around him every time I saw you when Foggy and I were dating?” she asks. “Come on, Murdock, you clearly loathed me, and since I'm basically a joy to be around I can't think of any reason but jealousy.”
“I don't…loathe you,” Matt says weakly. Severely dislikes her, maybe. But he's to distracted to split hairs properly right now, hung up on the last word Marci said: jealousy.
She pats him on the hand. “Don't feel bad. I literally could not care less about what you think of me. But do me a favor and don't draw out this whole will-they-or-won't-they thing too long? Foggy's kind of pathetic when it comes to you and I do not need a reputation as someone who dates pathetic men.”
She’s gone in a swirl of too-strong perfume, and Matt’s left standing there holding the lid of his coffee cup like he’s forgotten what it’s for.
Jealousy.
He’s not…jealous over Foggy. That’s...okay, he might be a bit possessive of Foggy’s attention. He can admit that. He’s never had a best friend before, and having Foggy’s full attention is like standing in sunlight. So yes, he might be a bit envious of the time Marci and Lawrence and anyone else take up, but that’s not the same as what Marci’s implying - that he’s jealous because he wants to date Foggy himself.
Besides, what would dating Foggy get him that being his best friend and roommate doesn’t already? They eat most of their meals together. They watch movies together - Foggy’s better than any official audio description track Matt’s yet found. They share clothes - well, okay, Matt steals Foggy’s hoodies and t-shirts, but in his defense they’re soft and they smell good and anyone would steal them. They stay up late talking and they plan for the future and they share each other’s secrets, or at least as many as Matt’s able to share. They just don’t sleep together, which is - is -
Suddenly Matt can’t breathe, swamped as he is by a sudden wave of want.
He puts his hand on the counter to steady himself. He’s never let himself think about Foggy that way while fully conscious and the idea is visceral and overwhelming. Being able to touch Foggy anywhere and everywhere, to ask for anything he wants and have Foggy give it to him…
Shaking, he puts the lid on his cup and makes his way towards the door. Maybe this is just curiosity, after living with Foggy for a year and a half. Maybe after hearing him with guys something in Matt is just wondering what it would be like. Maybe it’s just that it’s been nearly a year since Elektra and Matt’s barely flirted with a girl since, let alone slept with anyone, and this is just pent-up tension.
Then he thinks about kissing Foggy - not sleeping with him, just kissing him - and has to swallow hard past the sudden lump in his throat.
Not just curiosity, then.
Matt juggles his coffee and cane so that he can feel his watch to check the time. Twenty minutes until his next class. Nowhere near enough time.
Well, he’ll just have to skip it. He’s got to get to confession.
*
There's a chapel on campus but Matt's never visited it regularly. Right now he's shaken enough that he needs something familiar, so he heads straight for the subway and downtown to Hell’s Kitchen, to his childhood church and his childhood priest.
It's not anywhere near confession hours, but Father Lantom is there, sweeping the aisle unhurriedly. “Matthew,” he says when Matt walks in. “It's been a while.”
“Sorry, Father.”
“Don't be. You're here now.” Father Lantom leans the broom against the nearest pew. “Any particular reason, or just in the neighborhood?”
Matt swallows. “I. Could I talk to you? I know confession is over for the day, but…”
“Sit down,” Father Lantom says, and does the same.
Matt takes a seat in a pew behind him. He knows it doesn’t really matter, but somehow it feels easier to talk when he knows Father Lantom can’t see his face.
“I have this friend,” he starts.
“If you’re going to pretend this is about a friend and not about you, we might as well skip it,” Father Lantom says, sounding amused.
“No, this is about him,” Matt says. “Well, me and him. He’s...he’s my best friend. My only friend, really. I mean, I have other friends, people I talk to in class or study with, but he’s…” He picks at the rubber grip of his cane, folded up in his lap. “He’s the only person I trust.” He takes a deep breath. “And he’s bisexual.”
“Are you concerned for his immortal soul?” Father Lantom asks. There’s no hint of judgment in his voice, just mild curiosity.
“No!” Matt says, too loud. “Sorry. No. He’s...forgive me, Father, but I don’t think it’s a sin. I didn’t before, and now...if it’s him...it couldn’t be. He’s the best person I know. He wouldn’t do anything wrong.”
“But there is something bothering you,” Father Lantom says.
Matt takes another deep breath. He knows his face is flaming, and he’s grateful again for his choice of seats. “Recently I have begun having...sinful thoughts about him. Well,” he amends. You’re not supposed to lie to a priest. “Maybe not that recently.”
Father Lantom’s heart remains totally steady and unsurprised. “I thought you said you didn’t believe it was a sin,” he says.
“I don’t!” Matt says quickly. “Not for Foggy. Not for...other people.”
“Then why would it be for you?”
There’s no reassurance in Father Lantom’s tone, no promise that Matt is right, that this isn’t a sin, that he won’t be doomed to eternal torment for it. But there’s no condemnation either.
“Because…” Matt has to search for an answer. “Because I’m not like other people.”
“Because you’re better.”
“No!” Matt shakes his head. “No, not that.”
“But you hold yourself to a higher standard.”
“No. I don’t ask anything of others that I wouldn’t ask of myself.”
“That’s not really the same thing, but we’ll leave that for now,” Father Lantom says. “You came for confession, which leads me to believe you feel you’ve done something wrong. But am I correct in thinking you have had...earthly thoughts about women?”
Apparently Matt isn’t going to stop blushing any time soon. “Yes. More than thoughts.”
“Yet you haven’t come to confession for that since you were about...oh, what was it, thirteen?” Now Father Lantom sounds amused again. “What makes this different? Or, to be more precise...what makes this worse?”
Matt squirms in his seat. “It’s not...I don’t…”
“Are you hurting anyone with these thoughts?”
“No, but…”
“Would you act on them without his consent?”
“Of course not!”
“Is he unworthy of your affections? Are you lowering yourself by thinking of him this way?”
“No!” Matt snaps. “I don’t deserve him!”
Father Lantom is silent. Matt sighs and sinks lower in his pew.
“He’s my only friend, but I’m not his,” Matt says. “Everyone likes him. Everyone wants to be around him. I don’t know why he wants to spend his time with me, but he does, and if I - if I tell him about this and he doesn’t feel the same, what if it makes him too uncomfortable to stay my friend? What if I lose him?”
“There's another alternative here,” Father Lantom points out.
Matt swallows. “What if I'm no good for him?” he asks. “My last relationship, she - I - it didn't end well, and Foggy bore the brunt of it that time and he wasn't even in it. What if I'm…” What if he's Foggy’s Elektra, he wants to say, but can't bring himself to.
“You're not painting a very sympathetic picture of yourself,” Father Lantom says, and Matt shrugs even though Father Lantom can't see it. “But he's your friend anyway. He stayed through your relationship with this woman that you said was so hard on him. There must be some reason he chose to do that.”
“He’s a good person,” Matt says quietly.
“I’m sure he is,” Father Lantom says. “Still, it seems like an awful lot of effort to go to just for the sake of being good.”
Matt gnaws on his lip.
“I don’t know how your friend feels or what he’d tell me if he was the one bumming a confession after hours,” Father Lantom says. “But it seems like he’s already made his decision about whether or not you’re worth being friends with. Why don’t you give him a chance to make his decision about this, too?”
*
April
Matt chickens out.
He goes back to campus after talking to Father Lantom, and Foggy is sprawled on his bed half-asleep, half-reading, and he says, “Hey, Matty,” in a sleepy, fond voice that makes Matt’s heart thump hard in his chest, and he doesn’t say anything.
He goes to Foggy’s parents’ house for Easter just like he does for Thanksgiving and Christmas now, brings Mrs. Nelson flowers and lets her kiss him on the cheek and call him the son-in-law she always wanted while Foggy squawks an embarrassed “Ma!” at her, and he doesn’t say anything.
He crams for midterms and then finals with Foggy, sharing a tiny study carrel with him because it’s the only one free, studying late into the night until Foggy dozes off on Matt’s shoulder, his hair tickling Matt’s nose, and he doesn’t say anything.
What if Foggy doesn’t feel the same? What if Foggy doesn’t want to be friends anymore? What if Foggy moves out?
Everyone else in Matt’s life has left him. He’s not willing to risk Foggy on the slim possibility that Foggy might think Matt and his disastrous romantic history might be worth taking a chance on.
And then Lawrence comes back.
This time Matt hears him in the dorm room before he opens the door. Lawrence and Foggy are just talking but it still makes Matt freeze with his hand on the knob, cold panic clawing its way up his spine.
“...another chance,” Lawrence is saying. “I still don’t really understand what happened.”
“You know what happened,” Foggy says. “You didn’t give me space when I asked for it. And I didn’t like the way you talked about Matt.”
Matt goes even more tense. Foggy broke up with Lawrence because of him?
Lawrence makes a tccht noise. “Didn’t like the way I talked about Matt, or didn’t like the way I wasn’t Matt?”
“Don’t,” Foggy says. He’s upset; Matt can tell by the speed of his heartbeat and his smell, and it makes him want to charge in and get Lawrence by the throat. “I told you to cut it the fuck out with the blind jokes and all the other little digs, and you know it. Don’t try to turn it around and make this into some paranoid thing about me and Matt because you can’t deal with the fact that you were being a dick.”
“I’m not being paranoid! You’re obsessed with him!” Lawrence says. “Every other thing out of your mouth is Matt this and Matt that - ”
“He’s my best friend!”
“Who everyone knows you’ve been panting over for three semesters!” Lawrence says. “He’s straight, Foggy! You gonna keep carrying a torch for him or do you want to date someone who actually knows they’re dating you?”
Matt drops his cane. It clatters against the door, and inside the room, he senses Foggy and Lawrence both give a startled jump.
Well. No avoiding this now.
Matt opens the door and hears Lawrence let out an irritated noise. “Of fucking course.” He’s sitting next to Foggy on his bed, but he stands up as Matt walks in. “You know what? Forget it. I’m tired of competing with someone who doesn’t even know he’s in the game.” Matt doesn’t move aside as Lawrence approaches the door, and Lawrence checks him with his shoulder - not quite hard enough to hurt, but Matt suspects it’s only because even Lawrence knows he can’t get away with doing that to the blind guy.
“Hey,” Foggy says, angry - angry for Matt, and Matt’s heart swells in his chest - but Lawrence is already halfway out the door.
“Sorry,” he says, and Matt has a feeling Foggy can hear the lie too. “You know where to find me if you ever get tired of his bullshit.”
His footsteps recede down the hall, drowned out by Foggy’s pounding heart. Matt reaches behind him and pulls the door closed.
“So,” Foggy says. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that you didn’t hear enough of that to be incriminating?”
“I heard enough to incriminate Lawrence as a douchebag,” Matt says.
“Well. Yes,” Foggy admits. “I'm sorry about that.”
“It's not your fault.” Matt feels like he's on autopilot, walking through the motions of this bizarre conversation when it's taking all he has not to grab Foggy by the shoulders and demand to know what Lawrence was talking about, what does he mean, why is Foggy so palpably nervous…
“Can we pretend that never happened?” Foggy asks. “Just...pretend Lawrence didn’t say anything, or that he spoke in tongues before vanishing in a puff of smoke or something. I don’t want you to feel...uncomfortable, or pressured, or...can we just forget it?”
Pressured. Into what? Lawrence had acted like Foggy had feelings for Matt, and Foggy’s...Foggy’s not denying it.
“No,” he says, a little bit breathless. “No, I don’t want to forget it.”
“Matt, I’m trying to give you an out here,” Foggy says, sounding a little strangled.
Matt swallows. “I don’t want an out.”
Foggy’s heart roars in Matt’s ears.
Matt leans his cane next to the door and sits down on Foggy’s bed, not quite close enough to touch. “Do you remember the fight we had a couple months ago? And you asked me if I had a problem with you being with guys?”
“Yeah,” Foggy says. “That was probably out of line, I was angry and embarrassed and I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It wasn’t out of line,” Matt says. He looks down; it doesn’t change what he can see but he’s not sure how much of what he feels is showing on his face right now. “I...I do have a problem with you being with guys.”
“...Oh,” Foggy says, and shifts away from him with a creak of bedsprings.
“I have a problem with you being with girls, too,” Matt pushes on before he can stop himself, before Foggy can get further out of range. Stick always said the faster you do something the less time it has to hurt. “I have a problem with.” Breathe. “With you being with anyone but me.”
“...Oh,” Foggy says again, and Matt marvels at how a single word can sound so different.
“I thought you were right,” Matt says. “I thought I was just being, being prudish or homoerotic or a shitty, clingy friend, but the truth is I want you. To. To be with you. And maybe I misunderstood what Lawrence was saying just now, and you don’t have to do anything about it, but…”
“Matt, you dummy,” Foggy says. His hand curves around Matt’s, as soft and warm as the smile in his voice. “You know what Lawrence was saying.”
Matt can’t keep the smile off his own face. “I, uh, did hear something about you carrying a torch for me.”
“Mm, not so much a torch,” Foggy says. He’s leaning closer, making Matt shift and lean in as well to keep his balance as the mattress dips, a perfect equilibrium. “More like one of those giant beacons they used in, like, ancient lighthouses or Lord of the Rings. Sort of a visible from space deal.”
“I can’t imagine how I missed that.”
“I know you’re setting me up for a joke, but honestly I can’t either,” Foggy says. “You let me call you sweetheart when I’m drunk, Matt.”
Matt knows his cheeks are pink. He doesn’t care. “You can do it sober if you want.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Foggy says. “I’m gonna kiss you now, sweetheart, okay?”
Matt beats him to it.
*
September
Foggy drops his duffel bag on the bed with a satisfied grunt. “Ah, home sweet dorm. It’ll be nice not to be a squatter anymore.”
Matt tilts his head at him. “You’re not planning on sleeping on that bed.”
“Think outside the box, Murdock! We’ll push them together,” Foggy says. “Finally I can get some sleep without you all over me all night.”
Matt leans against the desk where he’s been setting up his computer and all its accoutrements, and gives Foggy a slow, lazy smile that he knows from experience usually wins him a kiss. “I don’t recall you complaining about that.”
Sure enough, Foggy lets out a faux-annoyed snort and crosses the room to peck Matt on the lips. As he starts to move away, Matt snags a finger in his belt loop, holding him in place.
“We’ll never get all our stuff unpacked at this rate,” Foggy murmurs against his mouth, but makes no effort to move away. He always stays when Matt asks him to, even if Matt doesn’t do it with words. Matt wonders how long it’ll be before that stops making his heart leap into his throat. Even after a summer where Foggy spent more nights squeezed into the twin bed in Matt’s summer housing single than at his parents’ house, it’s still hard to believe that Foggy loves him.
But that’s okay. Foggy’s promised to keep saying it until Matt knows it for sure.
Matt lets go of Foggy’s belt loop and twines his arms around Foggy’s neck, playing with his hair. “We’ve got all year,” he points out.
“I’m not living out of boxes until May,” Foggy says, even as his hands fall to Matt’s hips and he presses another kiss to the tip of Matt’s nose. “We are going to be civilized this year, Matthew. Responsible young men who keep a tidy living space and...and…”
“And spend their time studying instead of having sex?”
“In addition to, Murdock. In addition to. Moderation in all things,” Foggy says. “See, this is why the whole falling in love with your roommate thing is so convenient. Think how much time we’ll save being able to transition seamlessly from studying to boffing.”
Matt laughs. “I’m not having sex with you if you call it boffing.”
“Liar.”
“Yep.”
He kisses Foggy again, and knows he’s won when Foggy’s fingers start working at the buttons of his shirt. He’s not particularly concerned about unpacking. Classes don’t start for three more days, and Matt doesn’t have that much stuff anyway.
Besides, one single or two pushed together, living out of boxes or out of drawers, their first choice dorm room or the one they had freshman year with the drafty window and roach problem - it doesn’t matter.
As long as he’s with Foggy, he’s home.
Fandom: Daredevil (TV)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Matt doesn't have a problem with his new roommate being bi - until Foggy starts bringing boys home.
Notes: Requested by several people on Tumblr, my take on that story about the guy who was afraid he was being homophobic towards his gay roommate until he realized he was actually just in love with him. Slight AU in that Matt knows Father Lantom from his childhood, which I don't think is implied by canon. Thanks to becs1024 for the beta!
September
“Hey, Matt? Can I talk to you about something?”
Matt takes out his ear bud, turning away from his computer and towards the sound of his roommate’s voice. “Yeah, what’s up, Foggy?”
Then he pauses. In the eight days they’ve known each other, Foggy’s mostly come across as fairly happy-go-lucky, at least when he’s not fighting with the university’s antiquated website. But now Foggy’s heart is beating just a little bit faster than normal, and there’s a faint, acrid whiff of sweat about him. He’s nervous.
“Uh. I’m. I wanted to tell you something.” Foggy sits on his own bed with a creak of springs.
Matt turns his chair to face Foggy more fully. He’s starting to get nervous too. Foggy’s been totally cool about Matt’s blindness so far, but what if it’s suddenly become a problem for him? What if he wants a new roommate? Matt’s only just begun to get used to Foggy, he doesn’t want to have to start all over again with someone else.
“Is everything okay?” he asks.
“Yeah!” Foggy says, too loud, and then, “Yeah, sorry, everything...it’s nothing bad. Well, not for me. Well, not for anyone, really, but I don’t know if you…” He stops; Matt can’t make out his expression but he hears a puff of air like Foggy just blew out his cheeks. “I’m bi.”
Matt waits, but that appears to be the end of the sentence. “You’re by what?”
Foggy snorts a nervous laugh. “Bisexual.”
“You’re...oh! Oh.” Matt feels his face heat up. He hopes it’s not visible. “Um...okay?”
“Is it okay?” Foggy asks. “I mean, I’m not asking for permission or anything, and if it’s not okay then, like, fuck you, but also, like. I just. Wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to be a problem, I guess?”
“Oh!” Matt says again. “No, no, of course not.”
“Okay,” Foggy says, and, “Good,” and Matt hears the release of air and senses the curve of his spine as he lets out a relieved breath. “I didn’t think it would be, but...I mean, I don’t want to stereotype, but, like, the Catholic thing and...I don’t know.”
“No, I get it,” Matt says. He knows perfectly well what some members of the Church think of gay people. Or bisexual people, he supposes. It never made all that much sense to him; compared to some of the cruelties he hears people visit upon each other when they think no one’s listening, one man kissing another man hardly strikes him as a sin. “But I don’t care. I mean, it doesn’t matter to me.”
“Okay,” Foggy says again. “Good. Phew!” He laughs again, this time still uncomfortable but far less tense. “Some guys freak out, you know. At, like, the idea of...whatever.”
Matt raises an eyebrow. “I was raised in a Catholic orphanage, Foggy. I know those guys well.” He’s always found them ridiculous. Foggy being bisexual has nothing to do with Matt. Just because he likes boys doesn’t mean he likes Matt, right?
Although...he did call Matt good-looking the day they met. And sometimes his heart goes a little faster when he taps Matt on the shoulder or brushes his arm to get his attention, or just when they’re talking close and low in class…
But that could be any number of things. Matt doesn’t really know Foggy well enough to say, yet, and to assume it’s attraction now, just because Matt knows Foggy is bi, is probably homophobic or biphobic or something. It’s definitely ridiculously egotistical. People have said Matt grew up to be handsome, but he doesn’t have any real sense of what that means, and besides, Matt might not be Foggy’s kind of handsome.
He wonders, abruptly, what Foggy’s kind of handsome is.
“Right. Of course. Anyway.” Foggy shrugs, Matt thinks, from the shift in his heat and the sound of his clothes and hair rustling. “Just wanted to put it out there before I, like, brought a dude back to the room or something. Which I would clear with you first, obviously, I’m not gonna sexile you without warning, but this way we can keep it to one awkward conversation in the moment and not two.”
“Sock on the door might not work,” Matt says, feeling his face grow even hotter. “Maybe a bell on the door instead or something.”
“Ha, yeah, something like that,” Foggy says. “We’ll work out a system. Anyway sorry, I’ll let you get back to work.”
“Sure.” Matt turns back around, grateful to hide his burning face by pointing it at the computer screen. He knows it’s wrong of him, but something about the thought of Foggy bringing a guy back to their shared room makes him feel squirmy and anxious, like spiders crawling down his spine.
Well, he’ll just have to get over it. Foggy’s been a good roommate so far. Matt’s determined not to fuck this up.
*
October
Matt gets an email saying that some of the books he requested in Braille via interlibrary loan have come in, so Foggy tags along with him to the library, mostly for an excuse to stop at the coffee shop in the lobby. He gets a drink while Matt gives his name to the student worker at the checkout desk, a guy who smells like patchouli and spearmint gum; Patchouli grunts an instruction to wait and disappears into the back.
A minute later Foggy comes up beside Matt, smelling of coffee and cloyingly artificial pumpkin spice syrup. “At your right elbow,” Foggy says, and pushes a warm cup into Matt’s hand.
He can tell by smell that it’s a regular coffee, black with one sugar, just the way Matt likes it. “You didn’t have to get me anything,” he says with a smile, and Foggy gives him a gentle hip check.
“Yeah, but I did, so deal with it.”
Matt lets out an airy, faux put-upon sigh and feels triumphant when it makes Foggy laugh. “Well, if I must I must.”
Patchouli comes out of the back room. “All right, guy, I found your - Foggy! Hey, what are you doing here?”
Matt cocks his head, bemused. Patchouli had been dispassionate almost to the point of rudeness when Matt asked for his books, slouching off to the back room like just breathing was a nearly impossible feat, let alone walking. Now he’s standing up straight, his heartbeat fast, his voice bright and alert. Judging by his hand motions, he’s fussing with his hair.
“Oh, hey, Eric,” Foggy says. “Just here with my roomie.” He jerks his thumb at Matt, then murmurs, “I jerked my thumb at you, Matt. Matt, this is Eric, he’s in my Romantic Poetry class.”
“Hey,” Patchouli - Eric - says offhand to Matt, then turns back to Foggy. “What’d you think of last week’s reading assignment? Kinda racy, huh?”
“Well, Byron,” Foggy says, and Eric laughs like he’s made a joke. “Fun to read aloud, though. I subjected poor Matt here to some choice selections from Don Juan, didn’t I? What was the bit...” He strikes a pose and recites in a posh and frankly terrible British accent: “Wedded she some years, and to a man/ Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty/ And yet, I think, instead of such a one/ ‘Twere better to have two of five and twenty.”
“Wow, good memory,” Eric says. He leans in towards Foggy, as far as the checkout desk will allow.
Foggy shrugs. “I got a head for trivia. Rhyming stuff sticks.”
“All I remember is: pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure,” Eric says, voice dipping low. “But maybe we could study together for the midterm? You could help me remember the rest.”
Matt cocks his head again. He knows Eric’s tone. He’s heard it plenty of times, in girls talking to him, mostly, usually accompanied by a lot of hair tossing and touching of his arm. Eric likes Foggy. He’s flirting with Foggy.
“Oh,” Foggy says, and then in a voice warm with a smile, “Well, I’ll see what I can do.”
And Foggy is flirting back.
Matt lets his cane clatter against the counter. “Sorry about that!” he says when Eric and Foggy both startle. “I should, uh, get my books and get out of here.”
“Yeah, we gotta get back to the ol’ homestead,” Foggy says as Eric starts running the scanner over Matt’s books. Matt’s surprised - he thought Foggy would stay. “I’ve been doing an experiment and it turns out my Punjabi homework really won’t do itself.”
Eric laughs again. Matt feels his brow furrow. Foggy’s funny, but he’s not that funny. “Well, if you figure out the secret to making it, let me know,” Eric says as he shoves Matt’s books carelessly in his direction. “I’ll see if it works for French.”
“Books at your two o’ clock, Matt,” Foggy says, and Matt slings his backpack off his shoulder and piles the books in. On second thought, he folds up his cane as well and tosses that in too. He can’t juggle it, the coffee, and Foggy’s elbow, and he’d prefer the elbow at the moment. “I’ll see you in class, Eric.”
“Bye, Foggy,” Eric says, and gives Matt a vague wave that Matt pretends not to register.
Matt puts his backpack back on and snags Foggy’s elbow with his free hand. He can tell Eric’s watching them, or at least turned in their direction, as they walk towards the exit.
“Hey, uh, did you want to stay?” he asks as Foggy holds the door open.
“Well, I don’t want to do this homework, but I do actually have to,” Foggy says. “Why?”
“Oh. I just...I thought you...that you might…” Matt searches for what he’s trying to say and comes up empty. “Nothing. Never mind. Thanks for the coffee.”
“Hey,” Foggy says, and shifts his elbow up a little - not nearly enough to throw Matt off, just the ghost of what would be a playful nudge if Foggy weren’t in the middle of guiding, which he takes more seriously than anything Matt has yet encountered with him. It makes Matt feel almost as unsettled and confused as listening to Foggy flirt with Eric, albeit in a different way. “Any time, buddy.”
Matt swallows, and nods, and decides not to think about Eric any more. It’s none of his business.
*
November
“Nerd!” Foggy crows, too-loud but affectionate, as he opens the door to their room. “I can’t believe it’s two in the morning and you’re still studying.”
“Is it that late?” Matt asks, even though he’s perfectly aware of what time it is. But it’s Friday night, and the din of students partying all over campus would’ve made it impossible to sleep, at least without something quiet and soothing nearby like Foggy’s heartbeat to help Matt drown it out.
“Yes, I literally went to a party and came back and you are still studying, I am now going to wrest you away from your computer by force,” Foggy announces, giving Matt time to grab on to his desk before Foggy wraps his arms around Matt and his computer chair from behind and hauls him backwards. They’re both laughing as Foggy tries, not very hard, to drag Matt away from his desk, and Foggy smells like beer and spearmint and clove cigarettes and - and -
And cologne and arousal, neither of them his.
Matt’s so startled he lets go, and Foggy nearly overbalances before catching them both and straightening up. “Sorry,” Matt says quickly, and, “Okay, you win,” and tries to compose his face before finishing with, “How was the party?”
“Good!” Foggy says as Matt closes his computer and turns to face him. “Uh. Better than I expected. It was...yeah, it was good.” He suddenly registers as slightly warmer in Matt’s senses - is he blushing?
Matt frowns slightly and focuses on Foggy as he toes off his shoes and flops onto his bed. Yes, that’s definitely a cologne with unfamiliar notes lingering on Foggy’s clothes and hair, and the distinct scent of male arousal - Foggy’s and someone else’s, the aromas twined around each other. His heartbeat’s a little elevated, and there are three throbbing points of heat on his throat where the blood’s closer to the surface. Bruises, Matt thinks first, automatically, and then realizes, no, hickeys.
“Did,” Matt says. His voice breaks. He clears his throat. “Did you see anyone we know?”
“Uh, yeah,” Foggy says. His heart goes even faster. There’s a hot, sick, swooping feeling in Matt’s stomach. “Yeah, I ran into that guy Eric, from my Romantic Poetry class? He works at the library?”
“I remember,” Matt says faintly. That explains the spearmint.
“We, uh, might have fooled around a bit,” Foggy admits.
“Oh,” Matt says. “Are you two…” He’s not sure how to finish that. Together? Dating? Boyfriends? Does it work the same when it’s two guys? Doesn’t Foggy know he can do so much better than Eric?
“Oh, no, nah, I don’t think so,” Foggy says. “I mean, Eric’s fun and all but I don’t think he’s looking for anything like that, and neither am I, really. After all, it’s only our first semester of college, right? Plenty of time to play the field.”
“Right,” Matt says. He’s not sure why he feels so relieved. Eric seems like maybe a little bit of a tool, but Matt could handle him being around if Foggy started dating him seriously.
Then he realizes “playing the field” means Foggy will probably be hooking up with other guys, and he feels sick again.
Foggy chuckles. “Yeah, I thought you’d agree with that, Casanova. All those girls always hanging all over you?”
“That’s not...I don’t…” Matt fumbles. Yeah, girls here seem to really like to flirt with him, and sure, he enjoys flirting back, but that’s...it’s not the same, somehow. “I guess,” he finishes helplessly, and fakes a yawn to get out of this conversation. “I’m - I should get ready for bed.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Matt puzzles over it as he strips down to his boxers and puts his glasses safely on his nightstand. Why does the thought of Foggy hooking up with Eric bother him so much? He only met Eric the one time, he shouldn’t have such a strong adverse reaction to him - and yet his nose keeps twitching, bothered by the phantom scent of him like it’s a gas leak or a tendril of smoke curling through his home.
Is it because Eric’s a guy? That shouldn’t be it either - Matt has a few queer classmates that he’s friendly with, now, and two weeks ago his whole Comp Lit seminar had a very nice dinner with their professor and her wife, and none of that made him feel the way he does now, shaky and miserable. Maybe it’s just because this particular incident is so close to home.
Well, that’s his problem, not Eric’s, and certainly not Foggy’s. Matt murmurs good night to Foggy and resolves to get over himself, and the sooner the better. Foggy deserves no less.
*
December
Foggy insists on bringing Matt home with him for at least the Christmas part of Christmas break, though Matt plans on fleeing back to the peace and quiet of the dorms after New Year’s. Still, being at the Nelsons’ is less awkward than Matt expected. Foggy’s dad calls Matt “buddy” just like Foggy does when he’s sober, and Foggy’s mom calls Matt “sweetheart” just like Foggy does when he’s drunk, and the house smells like pine and eggnog and sweet cured ham basically all the time.
On Christmas morning they open presents in living room, sitting on the floor in their pajamas and cradling cups of hot cocoa. Foggy’s parents give Matt two incredibly soft and warm sweaters in a finer material than anything Matt’s ever owned. Foggy gives him three audio books, a bunch of novelty socks Foggy takes great joy in describing, and a sturdy, expensive leather bag to replace Matt’s battered old backpack, tricked out with over two dozen compartments inside so that Matt will never have to rummage for something by feel again.
Matt rubs the buttery-soft, rich-smelling leather with his thumb as Foggy opens the present Matt gave him: an iPod, the fanciest one they have, to replace Foggy’s battered and beloved first gen version. Matt’s been saving for weeks and will have to be pretty frugal for months to come to make up for this splurge, but it’s worth it when Foggy gasps out loud, giving Matt enough warning to put his cocoa down before Foggy tackles him to the floor in a bear hug.
Breakfast is towering stacks of chocolate chip pancakes drowned in butter and syrup, and when it’s over the extended Nelson family, plus half the neighborhood, spills into the apartment. It’s all food and happy noise and people recognizing Matt as “Jack Murdock’s boy, look how tall and handsome you’ve gotten” until Foggy pulls Matt to safety, runs cheerful interference with pushy neighbors and grabby aunts. His ten-year-old sister Candace shrieks gleefully that Foggy and Matt are now standing under the mistletoe, and Foggy laughs and leans over to kiss Matt on the cheek before dragging him off to try some of Gammy Nelson’s famous mince pie.
It’s the best Christmas Matt can remember since his father died.
*
January
In January, Matt meets Elektra.
*
February
*
March
*
April
*
May
Matt emerges from his post-Elektra haze to discover that Foggy has a girlfriend now. Well, sort of. Apparently he and Marci are an on-again, off-again thing. Currently, however, they’re on. Foggy’s eager for Marci and Matt to be friends, so they hang out all of one time before agreeing that it’s an experiment that doesn’t need to be repeated. Matt can’t for the life of him figure out what Foggy sees in Marci, and it’s clear that Marci feels the same way about Matt.
He’s secretly glad when Foggy and Marci switch back to “off” in the oncoming frenzy of finals. He feels guilty about it, especially when he essentially abandoned Foggy while Elektra was in the picture. But it’s been so long since it’s been just Matt and Foggy, and he finds he missed it. He’s glad it’s just the two of them again.
*
September
Matt stays on campus during break, courtesy of summer housing, but Hell’s Kitchen is only a quick subway ride away, and he sees Foggy at least three times a week. Still, moving into a new room with him and listening as he bustles around putting up posters and cramming clothes into drawers without folding them makes Columbia feel like home again.
They go to a party the first weekend after classes start, to blow off steam. Matt gets caught up in a conversation with a girl from one of his classes last semester and loses track of Foggy. When he finds him, after navigating the entire house by smell, he’s pressed up against the kitchen counter by some guy Matt’s never met before, and he’s making these almost inaudible little noises that abruptly make Matt want to smash every glass in the cabinets above them.
Instead, he puts on his most lost expression and says, “Foggy?”
Foggy startles, and pulls away from his makeout partner. “Oh! Hey, Matt, buddy. Didn’t mean to abandon you. You okay?”
His heart’s beating fast and this stranger’s hand is still on his ass. Matt frowns. “I just...have a little bit of a headache. I was gonna head out. Is there someone else here?”
“Oh, sorry, yeah. This is Lawrence. Lawrence, this is my roommate, Matt.”
“Hey,” Lawrence says.
“Hello,” Matt says - too brusque, too rude, but it’s out of his mouth before he can catch it. “Right, so I’ll just…”
He makes a show of touching his temple and hears Foggy step away from Lawrence. “Do you want me to walk with you?”
“I don’t want to keep you if you’re busy…” Matt says. Forlornly.
Foggy and Lawrence have a murmured conversation that’s mostly facial expressions and cut-off sentences, which means Matt can’t make much of it, but it ends with Foggy saying, “I’ll come with you, Matt, just give me a sec.”
He and Lawrence exchange numbers. Matt doesn’t bother to hide his impatience.
Finally, Foggy parts from Lawrence and gently bumps Matt’s hand with his own. Matt slides his hand up Foggy’s forearm and latches firmly onto his elbow. “All right, let’s blow this popsicle stand,” Foggy says. “I’ll, uh, talk to you later, Lawrence?”
“Definitely,” Lawrence says. “Nice to meet you, Matt.”
“Uh-huh,” Matt says, and tugs Foggy out of the room.
He sets a fast pace walking back to their dorm, cane clattering on the sidewalk as he whips it back and forth. “Hey, Matt, you okay?” Foggy asks again. “You seem...agitated.”
“I’m fine,” Matt says. “How’d you know that guy?”
“Oh, friend of a friend,” Foggy says. “I think he’s pre-law, like us.”
“What about Marci?”
“Yeah, she’s pre-law too.”
Matt sucks air through his teeth. “I mean, what about your thing with her?”
He feels Foggy shrug. “Suspended until further notice. I’m a free agent.”
“Seems pretty recent.”
“We broke up four months ago, Matt, this is hardly a rebound.” Foggy turns his head to look at him. “What’s with you? You don’t even like Marci.”
“Nothing’s with me. I’m just curious,” Matt says. He wishes Foggy would stop looking at him. “I’m your friend, shouldn’t I want to know what’s going on in your life?”
“Yes, I feel very attended to, thanks,” Foggy says. “It’s just…”
“What?”
“You seem kind of pissed.”
“What would I have to be pissed about?”
But Foggy’s right, of course - Matt is angry, so angry he’s practically stomping down the quiet campus paths, so angry he wants to pick a fight, so angry he wants to march back to Lawrence and tell him to - to - something. He knows he’s being unreasonable and that he saw Foggy plenty over the summer, but it’s still just the first week of being back together for real. He didn’t expect Foggy to ditch him the first chance he got for some random guy. Maybe Matt won’t make out with Foggy, but his company can’t be that bad, can it?
“Okay,” Foggy says. “So you’ve got that look on your face because…?”
“I told you, I have a headache,” Matt snaps.
“Right,” Foggy says. “Is there anything I can do to help? Once we get home, I mean.”
What Matt wants is for Foggy to somehow fix this the way he always does, coaxing Matt out of a bad mood with stupid jokes and his irrepressibly buoyant attitude. He wants it to be like they never went to that stupid party, like they’d had the roomies’ night in Matt was half-expecting for this first weekend back, tucked against each other on Foggy’s bed while Foggy narrated the worst movie he could find. He wants to be warm and happy and at home with Foggy instead of furious and shivering outside because he didn’t expect to need a jacket this early in the fall.
Suddenly he’s too melancholy to be angry. “No. Sorry. I think I just needed to be somewhere quieter,” he says. “Sorry I ruined your night.”
“What are you talking about? You didn’t ruin anything,” Foggy says.
“But Lawrence…”
“Possesses a phone that I can call if I want to see him again,” Foggy says. “You’re my best friend. You come first.”
And just like that, Foggy’s fixed it.
Matt tilts his head to smile at him, and bends his arm more deeply so that they’re walking a bit closer together. “Thanks, Fog.”
“Any time,” Foggy says. His heart’s still beating fast, but it doesn’t bother Matt so much anymore. Maybe the fast heartbeat had nothing to do with Lawrence in the first place. Besides, who cares about Lawrence? Matt will still be here when he’s gone.
*
December
Lawrence takes a long time to get gone, though.
Foggy actually dates him, fussing over his hair and clothes and asking Matt if he smells okay before meeting Lawrence for dinner or coffee or a movie. He’s never really dated a guy before, just hooked up with them. Perhaps having learned his lesson from Marci, he keeps Matt and Lawrence pretty far apart from each other, which doesn’t help; Matt feels left out and unwanted every time Foggy’s vague about where he and Lawrence are going or what time he’ll be back.
Three weeks in, Foggy stands in the door of their room, ready to go out and radiating heat as he tells Matt that he might not be back until morning. Matt takes the subway back down to Hell’s Kitchen once Foggy’s gone and pounds on the bag at Fogwell’s until his knuckles are raw.
But it’s fine. It’s fine. Matt throws himself into work, hauling his GPA back up to where it was before Elektra torpedoed it last semester, charming his way back into his advisor’s good graces. He spends his evenings in the library, studying late so that he doesn’t have to know for sure whether Foggy’s in their room or out with Lawrence.
It’s not a foolproof strategy, considering he comes home one night with his head too full of physics problem sets to realize there are two people in his room until he’s already opened the door.
There’s a wet noise and then Foggy says, “Uh,” and Lawrence says, “Shit,” and Matt says nothing at all, because his voice has deserted him. He’s - Foggy and Lawrence are on Foggy’s bed, they’re overheated and their pulses are racing and the room smells of sweat and sex and Foggy’s face is somewhere down between Lawrence’s thighs…
“Uh,” Foggy says again, and then, “Matt, buddy, could you close the door and...give us five?”
Matt wordlessly closes the door and stands outside it, fingers so loose on his cane he nearly drops it. He feels hot all over. He can hear Foggy and Lawrence inside scrambling for their clothes, Foggy stammering apologies and Lawrence telling him not to worry about it, that at least they know Matt didn’t see anything.
Matt seriously contemplates punching Lawrence in the nose.
Finally Lawrence opens the door. He reeks of Foggy. Matt’s fingers tighten on his cane. “Sorry, Matt.”
“Yeah,” Matt says, and Lawrence hesitates for a second before booking it down the hall.
Matt goes into the room. Foggy is tugging the covers up on his bed. He’s still flushed and breathing heavily. Matt’s not sure if it’s all from embarrassment now or if he’s still turned on. “Sorry about that.”
“I guess we never worked out an alternative to the whole sock on the door thing,” Matt manages.
“Yeah, you’re usually at the library later than this, so…” Foggy spreads his hands.
“Do you bring him over a lot when I’m at the library?” Matt asks. He knows Foggy doesn’t - he would have smelled it - but he can’t help the sharp, nasty edge that creeps into his tone anyway.
“No, we usually go to his room,” Foggy says. “His roommate’s always at his girlfriend’s, so it’s more...anyway, I’m sorry. I would have warned you if I’d known.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Matt says, dropping his bag on his desk with a thump. “Not like I could see anything, right?”
“You heard that, huh?” Foggy sighs. “That was a shitty thing for him to say, I’ll talk to him.”
“Don’t put yourself out on my account.” The room stinks of sex, and Lawrence. It sits thick in Matt’s throat.
“Look, Matt, I said I was sorry, okay?” Foggy says, and now he sounds annoyed. “I apologized, and I kicked Lawrence out, and I promise I’ll give you a heads up in the future. What more do you want from me?”
“I don’t know!” Matt snaps. “I just - I wasn’t expecting to find you two together.”
“Well, maybe you’d have a better idea of what you were likely to find me doing if you weren’t so busy avoiding me,” Foggy retorts.
Matt blinks. “What?”
“You never want to hang out anymore! You’re always at the library, or with a girl, or taking your weird late night walks,” Foggy says. “You can’t get mad at me for having sex in our room once when you’re never here anyway!”
“Well, neither are you!” Matt says. Two can play at that game. “You’re always off with Lawrence.”
“So this is about Lawrence,” Foggy says, and Matt realizes he’s talked himself into a trap. Foggy’s going to be a great lawyer someday. “Do you have a problem with him, specifically, or is it just that he’s a guy?”
Matt reels back, stung. “What?”
“You’re super weird every time I’m with a guy, Matt! Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” Foggy asks.
“I...I don’t...I’m not...I don’t care about that,” Matt says.
“You sure about that?” Foggy asks. He’s bending down, rummaging for something - oh, he’s putting his shoes on, shoving his feet in without bothering to untie the laces. “Because that’s not what it looks like from here.”
“Where are you going?” Matt asks, too thrown to remember he shouldn’t be able to tell that Foggy’s getting ready to leave.
Luckily, Foggy’s apparently too worked up to notice, too. “Out. So don’t worry, you’ll have the room all to yourself. I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“Foggy - ” Matt starts to say, but Foggy’s already slamming his way out the door.
Shit.
Matt sits down on his bed, head in his hands. He didn’t think - he’s never thought he was homophobic, but is that what this is? Is he just grossed out by Foggy being with another man?
But it’s not disgust, exactly, that he’s registering. He’s upset, yes, and after a minute he gets up and hauls the window open to air the room out despite the cold because he doesn’t want to smell Lawrence for another second - but he just feels hot, and angry, and sick to his stomach that Foggy’s so angry with him. Foggy’s never been angry with him before, not really.
He’s right to be angry, though, the way Matt’s been acting.
It’s earlier than he normally goes to sleep, but he knows he won’t be good for anything else, so he kicks off his shoes and his jeans and crawls into bed. He can’t sleep, though. His mind keeps gnawing at the argument he had with Foggy; at the suspicion that he’s a bad person and a worse friend; at the way Foggy and Lawrence sounded together and the way Foggy smelled, salt and musk and want, still clinging to his skin after Lawrence had left and it was just him and Matt, alone in their room together.
He finally drops off into a doze, not so deep that he doesn’t hear it when Foggy comes back and mutters, “You left the light on again, Matty, jeez.”
Matty.
Maybe Foggy doesn’t hate him after all.
He hears the window close and feels Foggy tug the extra blanket at the foot of his bed over him before real sleep finally catches up with him at last.
*
In his dream, Foggy and Lawrence don’t stop.
In his dream, Matt stands there in the doorway, transfixed by the heat radiating from Foggy’s body and the wet sounds as he bobs his head. His cane drops from his nerveless fingers with a clatter and Foggy looks up at him. In his dream, Matt can tell Foggy’s smiling.
“Why don’t you come in and close the door, Matt?” Foggy says. “You might learn something.”
Matt swallows and steps inside, closing the door behind him - and suddenly Lawrence is gone and it’s Matt in Foggy’s bed, Matt with Foggy leaning over him, his smell so rich Matt wants to drown in it. He reaches down and feels the curve of Foggy’s cheek as he smiles, the softness of his hair.
“You can pull it,” Foggy says. “I don’t mind.”
“Foggy…” Matt says, and then can’t manage anything else. He wants to touch everything. He wants to taste everything.
Foggy leans in. “What are you so mad about, Murdock?” he whispers, and they’re both naked, and Foggy’s so warm, and when his mouth touches Matt’s he tastes like he smells, coffee and cinnamon and salt -
Matt jerks awake with a gasp.
*
January
They don’t talk about the fight. Matt spends less time at the library and is sure to keep Foggy apprised of when he’ll be in and out of their room. Foggy spends more evenings at Lawrence’s, though he’s present and cheerful when he’s around Matt.
They don’t talk about the dream, either, mostly because Matt doesn’t tell Foggy about it. He doesn’t want to remember it. It creeps in at the edges of his memory, though - the heat of Foggy’s skin beneath his hands, the want so visceral he could taste it.
It's not the last dream he has about Foggy, either.
He doesn’t know what to do with the dreams. He feels guilty and furtive sometimes when he’s with Foggy, when Foggy’s voice suddenly dips low or his hand brushes Matt’s elbow in a way that makes all the hairs on the back of Matt’s neck stand on end.
It’s inappropriate. Foggy’s his friend. Just because he knows Foggy likes guys is no reason for his subconscious to make Foggy the dumping ground for…whatever’s going on with it.
He’ll ignore it. It’ll go away. Eventually.
Lawrence goes away first, and Matt tries not to be too visibly jubilant about it. Foggy tells him about the breakup one cold Sunday morning, after waking up and lying in bed staring at the ceiling for nearly an hour.
“What happened?” Matt asks. He’s already up and working on a paper, sipping the coffee he slipped out to get when he heard Foggy making waking-up noises. There’s a second coffee staying hot-ish in a travel tumblr on Foggy’s nightstand, but Foggy hasn’t touched it yet.
There’s a brush of fabric and a creak of springs - Foggy shrugging, probably. “It just wasn’t working out. He could be kind of shitty sometimes,” Foggy says.
“I’m sorry,” Matt lies. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Foggy says. He's lying too.
Unlike Foggy, though, Matt can tell. He bites his lip, then closes his computer and stands up. “Get dressed,” he says.
Foggy lifts his head to look at Matt. “What?”
“Get dressed. We’re finding somewhere that serves alcohol on a Sunday morning, and you’re getting drunk,” Matt says. He may be secretly glad that Lawrence is out of the picture, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still be a good friend.
“I’m clutching my chest, Matt,” Foggy says, and does. “Drinking on the Sabbath? And before noon, even. What would the nuns say?”
“Well, don’t tell them, then,” Matt says, and holds out a hand to haul Foggy out of bed.
Foggy maintains his grip once he’s vertical for a second, then pulls Matt into a hug. “Thanks, buddy,” he murmurs in Matt’s ear, and Matt fights a shiver.
“Hey,” Matt says, “what are friends for?”
*
February
Matt’s grabbing a coffee before class at the little cafe in the student center when he runs into Marci.
“Well, if it isn’t Matt Murdock,” she drawls, coming up to him as he adds sugar to his coffee. “It’s Marci Stahl.”
“I recognized your voice,” he says, and doesn’t add that he also smelled her perfume the minute she walked in the door. “Uh. How are you?”
“Still great at small talk, huh?” she asks. Matt raises his eyebrows but doesn’t say anything, and she laughs. “So I hear Foggy dumped Larry Cranston. You finally gonna make your move or what?”
Matt frowns at her, puzzled. “Make my...are you asking if I’m moving out?”
“Oh my God, how are you wrecking the grade curve with a brain like this?” she asks. “Make your move on Foggy. Cease this endless pining so we can all move on with our lives. Well? Yay or nay?”
She’s made her point clear now, but Matt’s still baffled. “What are you talking about? Foggy and I are just friends.”
“Right, and a unicorn is just a horse with a glandular disorder,” she says. “Do I look stupid to you? Never mind, you know what I mean. But trust me, your tragic lovelorn act is extremely obvious.”
“It's not an act,” Matt says, and she cackles. “I mean, there's nothing to act. Foggy is my best friend. That's it.”
“Oh, is that why you practically pissed in a circle around him every time I saw you when Foggy and I were dating?” she asks. “Come on, Murdock, you clearly loathed me, and since I'm basically a joy to be around I can't think of any reason but jealousy.”
“I don't…loathe you,” Matt says weakly. Severely dislikes her, maybe. But he's to distracted to split hairs properly right now, hung up on the last word Marci said: jealousy.
She pats him on the hand. “Don't feel bad. I literally could not care less about what you think of me. But do me a favor and don't draw out this whole will-they-or-won't-they thing too long? Foggy's kind of pathetic when it comes to you and I do not need a reputation as someone who dates pathetic men.”
She’s gone in a swirl of too-strong perfume, and Matt’s left standing there holding the lid of his coffee cup like he’s forgotten what it’s for.
Jealousy.
He’s not…jealous over Foggy. That’s...okay, he might be a bit possessive of Foggy’s attention. He can admit that. He’s never had a best friend before, and having Foggy’s full attention is like standing in sunlight. So yes, he might be a bit envious of the time Marci and Lawrence and anyone else take up, but that’s not the same as what Marci’s implying - that he’s jealous because he wants to date Foggy himself.
Besides, what would dating Foggy get him that being his best friend and roommate doesn’t already? They eat most of their meals together. They watch movies together - Foggy’s better than any official audio description track Matt’s yet found. They share clothes - well, okay, Matt steals Foggy’s hoodies and t-shirts, but in his defense they’re soft and they smell good and anyone would steal them. They stay up late talking and they plan for the future and they share each other’s secrets, or at least as many as Matt’s able to share. They just don’t sleep together, which is - is -
Suddenly Matt can’t breathe, swamped as he is by a sudden wave of want.
He puts his hand on the counter to steady himself. He’s never let himself think about Foggy that way while fully conscious and the idea is visceral and overwhelming. Being able to touch Foggy anywhere and everywhere, to ask for anything he wants and have Foggy give it to him…
Shaking, he puts the lid on his cup and makes his way towards the door. Maybe this is just curiosity, after living with Foggy for a year and a half. Maybe after hearing him with guys something in Matt is just wondering what it would be like. Maybe it’s just that it’s been nearly a year since Elektra and Matt’s barely flirted with a girl since, let alone slept with anyone, and this is just pent-up tension.
Then he thinks about kissing Foggy - not sleeping with him, just kissing him - and has to swallow hard past the sudden lump in his throat.
Not just curiosity, then.
Matt juggles his coffee and cane so that he can feel his watch to check the time. Twenty minutes until his next class. Nowhere near enough time.
Well, he’ll just have to skip it. He’s got to get to confession.
*
There's a chapel on campus but Matt's never visited it regularly. Right now he's shaken enough that he needs something familiar, so he heads straight for the subway and downtown to Hell’s Kitchen, to his childhood church and his childhood priest.
It's not anywhere near confession hours, but Father Lantom is there, sweeping the aisle unhurriedly. “Matthew,” he says when Matt walks in. “It's been a while.”
“Sorry, Father.”
“Don't be. You're here now.” Father Lantom leans the broom against the nearest pew. “Any particular reason, or just in the neighborhood?”
Matt swallows. “I. Could I talk to you? I know confession is over for the day, but…”
“Sit down,” Father Lantom says, and does the same.
Matt takes a seat in a pew behind him. He knows it doesn’t really matter, but somehow it feels easier to talk when he knows Father Lantom can’t see his face.
“I have this friend,” he starts.
“If you’re going to pretend this is about a friend and not about you, we might as well skip it,” Father Lantom says, sounding amused.
“No, this is about him,” Matt says. “Well, me and him. He’s...he’s my best friend. My only friend, really. I mean, I have other friends, people I talk to in class or study with, but he’s…” He picks at the rubber grip of his cane, folded up in his lap. “He’s the only person I trust.” He takes a deep breath. “And he’s bisexual.”
“Are you concerned for his immortal soul?” Father Lantom asks. There’s no hint of judgment in his voice, just mild curiosity.
“No!” Matt says, too loud. “Sorry. No. He’s...forgive me, Father, but I don’t think it’s a sin. I didn’t before, and now...if it’s him...it couldn’t be. He’s the best person I know. He wouldn’t do anything wrong.”
“But there is something bothering you,” Father Lantom says.
Matt takes another deep breath. He knows his face is flaming, and he’s grateful again for his choice of seats. “Recently I have begun having...sinful thoughts about him. Well,” he amends. You’re not supposed to lie to a priest. “Maybe not that recently.”
Father Lantom’s heart remains totally steady and unsurprised. “I thought you said you didn’t believe it was a sin,” he says.
“I don’t!” Matt says quickly. “Not for Foggy. Not for...other people.”
“Then why would it be for you?”
There’s no reassurance in Father Lantom’s tone, no promise that Matt is right, that this isn’t a sin, that he won’t be doomed to eternal torment for it. But there’s no condemnation either.
“Because…” Matt has to search for an answer. “Because I’m not like other people.”
“Because you’re better.”
“No!” Matt shakes his head. “No, not that.”
“But you hold yourself to a higher standard.”
“No. I don’t ask anything of others that I wouldn’t ask of myself.”
“That’s not really the same thing, but we’ll leave that for now,” Father Lantom says. “You came for confession, which leads me to believe you feel you’ve done something wrong. But am I correct in thinking you have had...earthly thoughts about women?”
Apparently Matt isn’t going to stop blushing any time soon. “Yes. More than thoughts.”
“Yet you haven’t come to confession for that since you were about...oh, what was it, thirteen?” Now Father Lantom sounds amused again. “What makes this different? Or, to be more precise...what makes this worse?”
Matt squirms in his seat. “It’s not...I don’t…”
“Are you hurting anyone with these thoughts?”
“No, but…”
“Would you act on them without his consent?”
“Of course not!”
“Is he unworthy of your affections? Are you lowering yourself by thinking of him this way?”
“No!” Matt snaps. “I don’t deserve him!”
Father Lantom is silent. Matt sighs and sinks lower in his pew.
“He’s my only friend, but I’m not his,” Matt says. “Everyone likes him. Everyone wants to be around him. I don’t know why he wants to spend his time with me, but he does, and if I - if I tell him about this and he doesn’t feel the same, what if it makes him too uncomfortable to stay my friend? What if I lose him?”
“There's another alternative here,” Father Lantom points out.
Matt swallows. “What if I'm no good for him?” he asks. “My last relationship, she - I - it didn't end well, and Foggy bore the brunt of it that time and he wasn't even in it. What if I'm…” What if he's Foggy’s Elektra, he wants to say, but can't bring himself to.
“You're not painting a very sympathetic picture of yourself,” Father Lantom says, and Matt shrugs even though Father Lantom can't see it. “But he's your friend anyway. He stayed through your relationship with this woman that you said was so hard on him. There must be some reason he chose to do that.”
“He’s a good person,” Matt says quietly.
“I’m sure he is,” Father Lantom says. “Still, it seems like an awful lot of effort to go to just for the sake of being good.”
Matt gnaws on his lip.
“I don’t know how your friend feels or what he’d tell me if he was the one bumming a confession after hours,” Father Lantom says. “But it seems like he’s already made his decision about whether or not you’re worth being friends with. Why don’t you give him a chance to make his decision about this, too?”
*
April
Matt chickens out.
He goes back to campus after talking to Father Lantom, and Foggy is sprawled on his bed half-asleep, half-reading, and he says, “Hey, Matty,” in a sleepy, fond voice that makes Matt’s heart thump hard in his chest, and he doesn’t say anything.
He goes to Foggy’s parents’ house for Easter just like he does for Thanksgiving and Christmas now, brings Mrs. Nelson flowers and lets her kiss him on the cheek and call him the son-in-law she always wanted while Foggy squawks an embarrassed “Ma!” at her, and he doesn’t say anything.
He crams for midterms and then finals with Foggy, sharing a tiny study carrel with him because it’s the only one free, studying late into the night until Foggy dozes off on Matt’s shoulder, his hair tickling Matt’s nose, and he doesn’t say anything.
What if Foggy doesn’t feel the same? What if Foggy doesn’t want to be friends anymore? What if Foggy moves out?
Everyone else in Matt’s life has left him. He’s not willing to risk Foggy on the slim possibility that Foggy might think Matt and his disastrous romantic history might be worth taking a chance on.
And then Lawrence comes back.
This time Matt hears him in the dorm room before he opens the door. Lawrence and Foggy are just talking but it still makes Matt freeze with his hand on the knob, cold panic clawing its way up his spine.
“...another chance,” Lawrence is saying. “I still don’t really understand what happened.”
“You know what happened,” Foggy says. “You didn’t give me space when I asked for it. And I didn’t like the way you talked about Matt.”
Matt goes even more tense. Foggy broke up with Lawrence because of him?
Lawrence makes a tccht noise. “Didn’t like the way I talked about Matt, or didn’t like the way I wasn’t Matt?”
“Don’t,” Foggy says. He’s upset; Matt can tell by the speed of his heartbeat and his smell, and it makes him want to charge in and get Lawrence by the throat. “I told you to cut it the fuck out with the blind jokes and all the other little digs, and you know it. Don’t try to turn it around and make this into some paranoid thing about me and Matt because you can’t deal with the fact that you were being a dick.”
“I’m not being paranoid! You’re obsessed with him!” Lawrence says. “Every other thing out of your mouth is Matt this and Matt that - ”
“He’s my best friend!”
“Who everyone knows you’ve been panting over for three semesters!” Lawrence says. “He’s straight, Foggy! You gonna keep carrying a torch for him or do you want to date someone who actually knows they’re dating you?”
Matt drops his cane. It clatters against the door, and inside the room, he senses Foggy and Lawrence both give a startled jump.
Well. No avoiding this now.
Matt opens the door and hears Lawrence let out an irritated noise. “Of fucking course.” He’s sitting next to Foggy on his bed, but he stands up as Matt walks in. “You know what? Forget it. I’m tired of competing with someone who doesn’t even know he’s in the game.” Matt doesn’t move aside as Lawrence approaches the door, and Lawrence checks him with his shoulder - not quite hard enough to hurt, but Matt suspects it’s only because even Lawrence knows he can’t get away with doing that to the blind guy.
“Hey,” Foggy says, angry - angry for Matt, and Matt’s heart swells in his chest - but Lawrence is already halfway out the door.
“Sorry,” he says, and Matt has a feeling Foggy can hear the lie too. “You know where to find me if you ever get tired of his bullshit.”
His footsteps recede down the hall, drowned out by Foggy’s pounding heart. Matt reaches behind him and pulls the door closed.
“So,” Foggy says. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that you didn’t hear enough of that to be incriminating?”
“I heard enough to incriminate Lawrence as a douchebag,” Matt says.
“Well. Yes,” Foggy admits. “I'm sorry about that.”
“It's not your fault.” Matt feels like he's on autopilot, walking through the motions of this bizarre conversation when it's taking all he has not to grab Foggy by the shoulders and demand to know what Lawrence was talking about, what does he mean, why is Foggy so palpably nervous…
“Can we pretend that never happened?” Foggy asks. “Just...pretend Lawrence didn’t say anything, or that he spoke in tongues before vanishing in a puff of smoke or something. I don’t want you to feel...uncomfortable, or pressured, or...can we just forget it?”
Pressured. Into what? Lawrence had acted like Foggy had feelings for Matt, and Foggy’s...Foggy’s not denying it.
“No,” he says, a little bit breathless. “No, I don’t want to forget it.”
“Matt, I’m trying to give you an out here,” Foggy says, sounding a little strangled.
Matt swallows. “I don’t want an out.”
Foggy’s heart roars in Matt’s ears.
Matt leans his cane next to the door and sits down on Foggy’s bed, not quite close enough to touch. “Do you remember the fight we had a couple months ago? And you asked me if I had a problem with you being with guys?”
“Yeah,” Foggy says. “That was probably out of line, I was angry and embarrassed and I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It wasn’t out of line,” Matt says. He looks down; it doesn’t change what he can see but he’s not sure how much of what he feels is showing on his face right now. “I...I do have a problem with you being with guys.”
“...Oh,” Foggy says, and shifts away from him with a creak of bedsprings.
“I have a problem with you being with girls, too,” Matt pushes on before he can stop himself, before Foggy can get further out of range. Stick always said the faster you do something the less time it has to hurt. “I have a problem with.” Breathe. “With you being with anyone but me.”
“...Oh,” Foggy says again, and Matt marvels at how a single word can sound so different.
“I thought you were right,” Matt says. “I thought I was just being, being prudish or homoerotic or a shitty, clingy friend, but the truth is I want you. To. To be with you. And maybe I misunderstood what Lawrence was saying just now, and you don’t have to do anything about it, but…”
“Matt, you dummy,” Foggy says. His hand curves around Matt’s, as soft and warm as the smile in his voice. “You know what Lawrence was saying.”
Matt can’t keep the smile off his own face. “I, uh, did hear something about you carrying a torch for me.”
“Mm, not so much a torch,” Foggy says. He’s leaning closer, making Matt shift and lean in as well to keep his balance as the mattress dips, a perfect equilibrium. “More like one of those giant beacons they used in, like, ancient lighthouses or Lord of the Rings. Sort of a visible from space deal.”
“I can’t imagine how I missed that.”
“I know you’re setting me up for a joke, but honestly I can’t either,” Foggy says. “You let me call you sweetheart when I’m drunk, Matt.”
Matt knows his cheeks are pink. He doesn’t care. “You can do it sober if you want.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Foggy says. “I’m gonna kiss you now, sweetheart, okay?”
Matt beats him to it.
*
September
Foggy drops his duffel bag on the bed with a satisfied grunt. “Ah, home sweet dorm. It’ll be nice not to be a squatter anymore.”
Matt tilts his head at him. “You’re not planning on sleeping on that bed.”
“Think outside the box, Murdock! We’ll push them together,” Foggy says. “Finally I can get some sleep without you all over me all night.”
Matt leans against the desk where he’s been setting up his computer and all its accoutrements, and gives Foggy a slow, lazy smile that he knows from experience usually wins him a kiss. “I don’t recall you complaining about that.”
Sure enough, Foggy lets out a faux-annoyed snort and crosses the room to peck Matt on the lips. As he starts to move away, Matt snags a finger in his belt loop, holding him in place.
“We’ll never get all our stuff unpacked at this rate,” Foggy murmurs against his mouth, but makes no effort to move away. He always stays when Matt asks him to, even if Matt doesn’t do it with words. Matt wonders how long it’ll be before that stops making his heart leap into his throat. Even after a summer where Foggy spent more nights squeezed into the twin bed in Matt’s summer housing single than at his parents’ house, it’s still hard to believe that Foggy loves him.
But that’s okay. Foggy’s promised to keep saying it until Matt knows it for sure.
Matt lets go of Foggy’s belt loop and twines his arms around Foggy’s neck, playing with his hair. “We’ve got all year,” he points out.
“I’m not living out of boxes until May,” Foggy says, even as his hands fall to Matt’s hips and he presses another kiss to the tip of Matt’s nose. “We are going to be civilized this year, Matthew. Responsible young men who keep a tidy living space and...and…”
“And spend their time studying instead of having sex?”
“In addition to, Murdock. In addition to. Moderation in all things,” Foggy says. “See, this is why the whole falling in love with your roommate thing is so convenient. Think how much time we’ll save being able to transition seamlessly from studying to boffing.”
Matt laughs. “I’m not having sex with you if you call it boffing.”
“Liar.”
“Yep.”
He kisses Foggy again, and knows he’s won when Foggy’s fingers start working at the buttons of his shirt. He’s not particularly concerned about unpacking. Classes don’t start for three more days, and Matt doesn’t have that much stuff anyway.
Besides, one single or two pushed together, living out of boxes or out of drawers, their first choice dorm room or the one they had freshman year with the drafty window and roach problem - it doesn’t matter.
As long as he’s with Foggy, he’s home.