Chapter Text
Matt had some time between when he woke up and when Foggy woke up to figure out how he'd explain everything. He had a lot of time, since he woke up when the campus did and needed to meditate to drown out a world of sensation. Even on the weekend, someone on the other side of the building would wake up at dawn for an early run, and Matt could hear them humming a tune from their headphones. He pulled at the covers, ready to get into the seiza position and sit there until he could get Foggy up, when the crawling feeling on his skin stabbed into every pore.
He tipped, suddenly feeling nauseous. Fabric rubbing against him never felt like his own flesh peeling off where it touched before. His tail curled defensively, prickly and raw, until he remembered. His tail's covered in hairs as delicate as cat whiskers, or supposed to be, when it's healthy. Keeping it bound tightly in jeans and cuffed pants every day and night isn't healthy. He shucked off his pants quickly so he only had one layer of clothing irritating old wounds, then his shirt, too, since even the hem of it brushing against the base of his tail felt like too much. It was better, but still not great.
Before he could deal with that, though, he needed to pull his senses in. Focus. He's painting a picture of the world, and his palette's overloaded with possible colors. Matt eliminated the ones he didn't need, letting them fade away, while the rest wetted his brush and gave him broad strokes of the world. It usually takes two hours. With the rattle of his tail to give him something to focus on outside of his heartbeat, he was done in minutes. He'd like to think that even after the shittiness of his accident and mutation, God was giving him a break with that. His gifts are usable when he can relax into them.
After that, he can pay attention enough to figure out what's wrong with his body. He never gave it much care before, just pushed through with no reason to fix it. He knows the scars from Stick's training will never fade, so he prefers long sleeves and tucked shirts. He always felt raised skin in slices on his arms, keloids on his back, flat patches where hair won't grow on his legs, one rib that catches sometimes when he breathes in…Stick never intentionally broke bone. Any lifelong injury like that would be as much of an impediment as the tail. Sometimes, they'd be training, and something would just happen. That's how Matt justified it for the longest time.
Now, he worries if there's blooms of red on his skin, if Foggy can see any of it, if he'd know just by looking. He loved that Foggy tried so hard to treat him normally, and how even when that backfired, it was never because he treated Matt as fragile. That could disappear so quickly.
He swallowed, grabbing for the slim appendage and squeezing it enough to feel it strain. He never knew what it looked like, how it was supposed to look, only how it felt, and it never felt good. It's been the source of training injuries for so long, wrapped up tensely, never allowed to heal or breathe. He can feel where Stick dislocated it when he was fourteen, and watched him sob without helping him set it back, because it was a learning experience and it was his fault he let his tail get trapped under his boot. There's more patches of bare skin than stretches of sensitive hairs, which spiked in a way that wasn't soft, just rough and raised. They were longer at the base and smaller as the tail went on, until they stopped existing altogether, because it's hard for fur to grow when stifled the way it was. Even the tip, hollow and flexible so it could make sound, was unfriendly. It felt like touching a cockroach.
This was a terrible idea. Of course those security guards listened to him, he probably looked like an abused cat. They could take one look at this ratty, neglected thing stuck to his torso, and there's no way it could be used to hurt someone.
But he can't fix it without making changes in his daily life to accommodate it, and that includes not sticking his tail in his pants where the fur all rubs off. Even if he's not going to class like this, he should stay unhindered in the dorm, while sleeping, maybe after a while just when they're together drinking coffee…
Matt heard Foggy's breathing shift, ceasing his snores as his heartrate increased. He's waking up. Matt grabbed for his blanket, flicking his tail behind him and tucking his sheets around it so he had a mound at his back keeping it hidden. Once again, the whiskers didn't appreciate getting bent like that, but he's ignored their protests for years, he can do it for a few more minutes.
Foggy flopped from his stomach to his back, smacking his lips like he had a bad taste in his mouth. Matt knew when he saw him because of that stopping immediately, sitting up with his heart hammering away. Matt didn't want to start this off by scaring him, but clearly, he didn't succeed. "You sound frightened."
Foggy's voice was wobbly and uncertain. "Didn't think you were coming back."
"A few rumors aren't going to make me drop out. Just needed time to check how worth it an escape will be."
"So you know what they're saying."
"Yes." There's a moment of silence. Matt had the wherewithal to know Foggy's expecting more, but there's so many places to take the conversation, that Matt didn't know where to start. He took a shot at what he's supposed to address. "I smoothed it over with campus security. They're not going to see me as a suspect, which means they also have no reason to contact you."
"That's not what I'm concerned about."
He didn't detect a lie, but it didn't sound like the truth. "It's part of what you're concerned about."
"Matt." Foggy climbed out of his bed only to clamber into Matt's, patting the edge of it as a warning of what he's doing first. It's a good thing he's still doing little signals like that. Matt was scared he'd doubt his blindness, take his lies about his mutation as a sign nothing between them was real at all. Foggy sounded disappointed for a separate reason, however. "Did you seriously almost drop out of college because you thought I'd freak out over you being a mutant, which I already knew?"
Ouch. When he put it like that, it sounded like a overreaction. "You knew I had scary eyes, not anything else. It's not the same thing."
"I never said they were scary."
"The only times someone saw them were when kids at the orphanage didn't understand why I was wearing glasses, and when they saw my face, they'd cry."
"Kids are stupid. Here, can I touch your face?" Foggy cupped his chin as soon as he got permission, turning Matt to be facing him. "See? I'm looking right in your eyes, and I can't find anything scary about them. They're just different from everyone else's, like a cat or snake or something, and people like cats. And like I told you, they're red, ruby red with gold shiny bits in these bands around the pupil, all fiery and…"
They're very close. Matt could feel the heat from Foggy's nose, the scant space between them. Foggy's heart jumped, quickly shifting back. Matt's heard his heart do that before. He felt foolish now. "You didn't lie to me, did you?"
"Huh?"
"I—Foggy, I can tell when people are lying. There are a million tells on a person for lying, and I can pick up on all of them. I know when someone's lying to me, and you're just going to have to trust me on that."
"…Okay."
"And when we were in Fogwell's, you—I was so sure you lied to me. I sensed it, how you did everything lying people do. Breathing levels. Heartrate. Sweat glands. Minute movement. All of that when you said you were fine with me, so obviously, I didn't believe you. But you weren't lying."
"Of course I wasn't," Foggy replied, sounding baffled. "I mean, when you started dipping out at every possible moment to exercise or whatever, I thought, 'oh, hey, I probably fucked up and didn't make it clear how okay with it I was', and that's why I pointed out the poster for the club, so you'd know I'm fine it. I wasn't going to let it go if that meant you'd think I hate you."
"I know you don't hate me."
"But you still thought I lied about it?"
"Well." Matt futzed with his hands, grabbing the edge of the blanket in limber fingers. "We're roommates. I like hanging out with you a lot, but you don't really get a choice in whether we do that. If you found something about me that you found weird, you couldn't move out that same day. So, you know, if you just kept quiet to keep the peace…"
"You would hate it, because that would be making you a special exception, which you've specifically told me you don't like and that you don't want me to do. I know I get pushy sometimes, but I do try to listen to you." Foggy means it, so much that his whole body changes when he says it. Matt's face burned. He's had people change their demeanor around him out of pity because of some misplaced sense of altruism, or embarrassment because they did something that made it obvious they thought he could see. It was never a positive thing, not unless it was Foggy. Foggy always tried to help him. Sometimes he'd try so hard that…
"Are you a mother hen?"
Foggy snorted, sounding more ashamed than amused. "I'm the oldest of three kids and five cousins who all lived on the same block. I'm trying not to be pushy, because you don't like it, but that's kind of my default."
"I never said I didn't like it. I just didn't get it." Matt perched his head on Foggy's shoulder, listening to how his cardiac system decided it needed to reboot again. Now that he knows it's not some desperate squelching of hatred, it's fun to instigate. "I want to be treated like everyone else. Having someone who does that by caring about me is great."
"Well, you'll have to try a lot harder than this to make me leave."
"I made you an accessory to an assault."
"Eh. What lawyer doesn't have something conveniently missing from their college record?" Foggy shrugged, making Matt's head bounce as he snickered. "I'd prefer if you didn't make a habit of it."
"That's easier said than done." Matt untangled himself, not wanting to feel Foggy's blood pressure rise when he said his next piece. "I told you I can tell when someone's lying through heartbeats, and that's because I have better hearing than you. Much better hearing. If anyone's getting hurt near us, I can hear the screams, smell the adrenaline, taste the blood. I meditate to turn the information I get into something navigatable, separate what I need to know from what I don't, but when it's late at night and I'm just trying to sleep…"
Foggy swallowed, a small warning of what came next. "But…you can't see. I know you can't see. I'm looking in your eyes right now."
"Oh, I'm still blind. I can't see color, or screens, and trying to decipher regular print gives me a headache. But I get enough information from the other senses to make things a little understandable."
Foggy twisted, turning to tuck his legs onto the bed. "Describe it."
"I don't know what else is important for you to know I can sense."
"I describe stuff for you to see all the time. I just go with what I think you'd want to hear."
Matt knew, inherently, that he was grinning good-naturedly, and matched it. "I know you're sitting on the bed with me. I heard the creaks, and I have pit organs in my mouth that sense the heat. You're warm. Your heartbeat's coming from right…" He extended his index finger, pressing it into Foggy's breastbone with pinpoint accuracy. "There. And now it's much faster, since I guess that was a bit freaky."
"I'm still not used to you listening to my heart."
"I can't really stop." Matt could get a better picture when he physically touched him, mapping out a system under his fingers. "I know you have long hair, it makes noise when you move your head. I can't tell what your face looks like. I can't see when you're smiling at me, but sometimes you do a little exhale through your nose like you're trying not to laugh, and I know you're smiling, then. I thought I knew when I freaked you out, too, but I'm starting to think…"
"Think what?"
"When my dad was scared and when the nuns were scared, it sounded different," Matt admitted. "I heard it when Dad would pick up the phone, and his heartrate go down, his lungs get all slow and deep, like a cat about to pounce. The nuns, when they'd see bruises on me, they were birds, all quick and breathless. I thought you were like the nuns. You sounded like the nuns at Fogwell's. But when you saw the blood the other night, you sounded like Dad. You only sound like him, when you're actually freaking out."
"Then what does it mean when I sound like nuns?"
"You like me." Matt felt his pulse crank up under his palm, grinning triumphantly. "I'm right."
"I told you that!"
"Not really."
"I thought you were confessing to me and kissed you. I called you, and I quote, 'objectively hot'."
"Well, you hadn't seen the scars." Matt wasn't sure which breaks in texture on his skin were visible, so he went for one of the more obvious gores into his shoulder flesh. It was a good deflection from the burning in his cheeks. "I can't imagine they look good."
"I already knew you had a tough life, man, a few marks weren't going to reveal that to me."
"My tail's worse." Matt tensed immediately, catching his tongue between his teeth. He should not have said that. They were doing such a good job avoiding the elephant in the room, talking it out without addressing the worst betrayal. Foggy even responded to the idea that he technically wasn't completely, totally blind with grace. The tail could be the breaking point. It was for his dad, for Stick…
"I think I'll be the judge of that."
Matt blinked, opening his mouth in surprise, then closing it again. He felt Foggy give him an encouraging pat on the knee as he shifted to sitting criss-cross.
"Come on. You haven't seen it either, right?" Foggy slapped his hands on his knees to give away their positions, then flipped his hands and squeezed at his palms for more sound. "I've got empty hands and ready eyes. I can describe it for you."
Matt hesitated.
"I promise I won't sound like a nun."
"Fuck off." Matt shifted in the blanket, letting his tail snake out and, after tapping against Foggy's legs, had it resting in his palms. It felt strange for Foggy to not pull on it to hurt him or start squeezing the flesh to test the strength. He just…held him.
"Oh, Matty." It's the same tone from when he caught Matt crying. He's not pitying him, but he still sounds sad.
"Told you it was ugly."
"Never said that." Foggy breathed carefully, rolling his wrists a little like he's checking for something. "Alright, so, the tip's red. Same red as your eyes, actually. I'm trying to think of an animal to compare it to—those corn and milk snakes, yeah. The fur I can see is red like your hair, which, you know, isn't actually red, it's orange, we just call it red when it's people's hair." One finger went down the spine, following the vertebrae along the narrow ridges. "And you have this big stripe down the spine, where the fur's longer, and it's all black. That's where most of the hair is. Everywhere else is, I'm sure you can feel that the parts that are supposed to be orangey-red are a bit…bald."
"It's because I kept it hidden. The pelt couldn't come in right."
"Makes sense. I think it can grow back, though. There's a few places, like right here—woah." Foggy poked the underside of the tail about halfway down, but he sounded like he was paying more attention to the spade, Matt shaking it on instinct. "Uh, what was that?"
"Sorry. The sound helps me focus my senses on stuff that needs more detail. It's echolocation."
"So it's not a warning? Like a rattlesnake?"
"No."
"Cool." Foggy touched him more gently anyway, fingers ghosting over the vulnerable skin. "I can see the little hairs trying to come back, so I think it can. And there's some scars that may not be able to grow anything over them, but I bet those are on the black stripe, too, and that's looking okay." He telegraphed where his hands were going by keeping them stuck in the fur as he crawled up to where he said the stripe was, separating the sensitive whiskers as they bristled against his touch. "Oh yeah, there's a ring all around the tail here like you snared it, but when I get to the dark bit? Can't see it at all."
"So…it looks fine?" Matt curled into himself slightly. "Not like I've been in fights?"
"I think if you told people you keep slamming it in doors they'd believe you."
Matt relaxed his shoulders, feeling like he cou.d finally breathe again with the weight lifted off them. "So what do we do now?"
"What do you want to do now?"
He considered the last twenty-four hours, slumping. "I'd like to make up the test I missed."
Foggy laughed. "Of course that's your first thought. You wanna shoot her an email?"
"After we get some breakfast."
"Obviously. We need their stale muffins before they throw them out for fresh ones." Foggy got up, his drawers opening as he shuffled around for clothes. Matt did the same, picking up one of his only pairs of pants that he's sewn a gap into. Matt was ready before him because he actually organizes his clothes, sliding his glasses on when a breath from Foggy let him know he was looking at him again.
Matt tapped his cane, tilting his head as the sound from it pinged off the room and highlighted every inch of his roommate. "Looking good?"
"I'm smiling."
"I know." Matt held out his arm, letting Foggy slot into his usual spot for guiding him. He nudged in, close enough that their temples knocked when Foggy opened the door. He laughed at the offended sound Foggy made and didn't let him go as he locked the door again, nor when they left the building. It was nice to let his body relax, following Foggy as people gave his cane a wide berth. Flicking his tail and listening to the rattle let him know that more than one turned around again when they passed, a double take that made him giggle.
"You alright?"
"Just laughing. I thought more people would be surprised."
"By the tail, or how you're clinging to me like we're lovers?"
"Lovers?" Matt gawked. "How old are you?"
"Hey, I thought you'd want to use that word. You were picky about physical stuff."
"I'd still much rather take it slow. Someone saying they like me and mean it is new."
"Doesn't bother me." Foggy shrugged. "I just know that when I tell my mom, she's going to insist you join us for Christmas."
"I said take it slow. Meeting your parents is fast."
"She wanted you over even as my roommate, but I'm sure she'll listen if I say next year."
"Foggy, you may not still be with me next year."
"Sir, you already reserved a room with me for then, that's practically a prenup. Murdock and Nelson are sticking together no matter what form that takes."
"Nelson and Murdock. It sounds better."
"You sure?"
"I have super hearing." Matt cocked his head, an idea coming to him. "So if we stay together forever, do you want to open a practice after college?"
"Duh."
"Any ideas for the business cards?"
"I assume you'd want braille on it."
"I think it would be fun to add a demon tail to it." Matt rattled the spade, chuckling at how he could feel Foggy creasing in delight. "Mutants are clearly in need of legal representation, and they may appreciate having a counsel like me."
"Please tell me I can put a halo over my name and gaslight people into thinking I'm really an angel."
Matt stopped at the crosswalk, shifting his cane to his other hand so he could hold one out to shake. "Only if you act really nervous every time someone makes a deal with me."
Foggy shook it, then let out a melodramatic squeal as he definitely couldn't escape his grip. "Oh no, the devil, he's taking…my soul…"
Matt laughed so hard they missed their chance to cross.