Chapter Text
Foggy takes his studies seriously, of course, and house parties weren't as enticing as they were in undergrad, but he still makes sure to get out every other weekend or so; sometimes the best cure for the ever-present looming specter of student debt is a bit of loud music or/and booze.
Okay, mainly booze. A lot of booze.
This is beside the point.
Bluffing aside, he knows he's not a whole lot to look at - the long hair and beard often get him mistaken for either an engineering student or a hobo, or some combination thereof - but that isn't as important as it used to be, and Foggy enjoys the occasional female companionship in between all-nighter study sessions.
And then there's Matt, who is really, really, ridiculously, male-model good looking, but doesn't get out much (ever) and has not once brought anyone back to their room (lady-friend or friend-friend).
Granted, Foggy doesn't invite people to hang out in their room often, but for him it's a matter of common roommate decency. He has this feeling that for Matt, it's different.
He's not an idiot; he knows that inviting Matt out with him won't be some magical panacea to bring him out of his funk. It doesn't stop him from trying, but the knot of worry in his chest grows with as each attempt to reach out is neatly sidestepped with some carefully crafted excuse.
"Want to head over to Steve's tonight? He's been brewing his own beer in the spare bathroom, first batch is ready and waiting. He promised it would only kinda smell like bathtub."
"Nah, I should really focus on this assignment, I'm a bit behind. Tell 'em I said hi."
Which one, the one you finished last week or the one you were printing out last night?
- or -
"I think I know a girl or ten into the whole tall-dark-and-handsome thing. C'mon, man, the 'loner dressed all in black' thing you've got going on is so high school goth."
"After the thing with Rachel I'm not exactly in any hurry to meet someone new. You know how it is."
Yeah, I know about 75% of your girlfriends are made up.
Though that other 25% is still a lot of girls - okay, Foggy, can the jealousy.
- or even -
"Matt, seriously, everything okay lately?"
"I'm a bit sleep deprived, maybe, but who around here isn't?"
That has got to be the saddest, most lopsided attempt at a smile I have ever seen. Do you, like, know that other people can see your face?
And let's not mention the time he finally asked Matt to talk to someone professional.
He can't really be mad, even if all the little lies get under his skin because what, doesn't Matt trust him to be there for him?
Okay, that's unfair. Take a step back.
Matt is depressed. Matt is totally the most depressed person he has ever known, is screwed up in ways Foggy didn't even know people could be screwed up, and it would almost be funny if this weren't actually the complete opposite. His mood goes up and down like the tides, this Foggy already knew. The problem was that it felt like the tide was taking its dear sweet time coming back in this time around.
He tries to think back to that psych class he took in freshman year. Along with the typical curriculum the professor, hippy-dippy little thing that she was, had them practice role playing the issues they had covered in class. And it was kinda stupid, yeah, but he remembers clearly how his heart pounded and how hard it was to just practice saying, "Are you thinking about committing suicide?"
And then his partner had wondered at what it might take to pull off suicide-by-Iron Man and the professor swooped on their giggles with her shawl fluttering like a large, bejewelled hawk.
The thought strikes him that he might need to ask that question for real to his best friend and the bile rises in his throat. He takes a deep breath, trying to calm the sudden flutter of his heart. Behind him, Matt's shitty desk chair squeaks as he shifts his weight.
It was one thing to research how to live with a blind roommate - the results of which had been hit or miss anyway. He'd even held out his elbow to guide Matt for the first time... and then left it sticking out as they walked like a Southern gentleman leading his country belle around by her delicate, gloved hand. The fit of giggles that description elicited was well worth the embarrassment.
It's another thing entirely when it came to something as not-to-be-fucked-around-with like this. The next thing he'll be looking up for this assignment is the contact information for the on-campus counseling center. All of the tips he'd read so far on "how to help a depressed friend" had felt so laughably trite or insincere and he couldn't help the vague fear that he wouldn't be able to help if something really did snap. He shoots off his unusual request ("counsel me on counseling my stubborn-ass friend 'cause he won't go in to see you", only in not so many words) and frowns at the 1-2 week waiting list.
It's dark in the room when he comes back from a late night study session a few days later, which isn't unusual - part 'blind guy doesn't need lights' and part 'blind guy does occasionally leave his cave to feed' - but the small sniffle coming from a lump near Matt's bed definitely is.
"Hey, hey, hey, buddy, what's wrong?" Foggy asks, voice pitched quiet, crouching down in front of the bundled-up pile of long limbs. Matt's legs were drawn up against his chest, propping up his arms to let his hands fall against his ears.
Remembering something about hearing and other senses becoming more sensitive after losing sight, Foggy feels a pang of sympathy in his chest. He cranes his ears a bit and wonders, not for the first time, what his friend actually perceived. To him, the building was quiet besides a soft thump-thump of music down the hall.
His hands hover indecisively around Matt's head before falling back to his side, ineffective. Matt doesn't say anything, but his posture loosens infinitesimally.
"Can - can I, uh - " and now his fingers brush over Matt's hesitantly, afraid of spooking him, then settle on the line of the dark glasses still catching moonlight from the window. Matt bows his head ever so slightly in permission, so Foggy sucks in a breath and tries to take the frames off without incident. Naturally, he nearly jabs Matt in the eye with one of the ends, but laughing now seems wrong, so he folds them and sets them respectfully on the bedside table.
Matt cants his chin up, rubbing the wetness from his glazed eyes before letting them rest somewhere in the space between them.
"Talk to me." Inhale. Is this the time to ask? Is he way off the mark? Better to ask and be wrong than never ask at all - "Are you th-"
"I can't... always focus. Tune it out. It was just... overwhelming, for a moment."
"Tune what out, Matty?" But he had already schooled his face back into that impassive mask and shut Foggy out again, shaking his head.
"Sorry if I worried you, Foggy. It was just loud and I-I couldn't - hey!"
If Matt wouldn't talk about what kept that quiver in his voice, there was one last resort Foggy knew of - a good ol' fashioned Nelson clan hug. He pulled Matt to his chest, letting his friend rest an ear against him. Matt held his hands against Foggy's arms, not yet pushing away, but not yet relaxing, either.
"What are you doing?" he asked, muffled.
"Hugging you, what does it feel like?"
And Foggy had only said that because hell, even he couldn't see what it looked like in this darkness, even if he was supposed to use "seeing" verbs or whatever shitty advice he'd already thrown out, but Matt seemed to take it at face value and stilled for a moment, considering, before going almost entirely limp.
"Okay, c'mere." A bit of shuffling around put them in a slightly less awkward position, both now leaning against the bedframe, though Matt does his best to keep his ear glued to Foggy's chest through the entire process. "There we go."
He wants to get it, he does, but he just can't wrap his head around what's happening. Clearly, he's doing something right, but he has no idea why or what, exactly, is right about this. And it's a little weird, especially when he starts petting Matt's hair, but it's what his mom used to do for him, and for now, he could deal with weird; weird is far better than any other imaginable alternative.
"I'm here for you, buddy. Whatever you need."
"... thanks."
For now, it would have to be enough.
----
Ever since that night, things have been different. Not as awkward as he had been afraid of, but different. Matt seems to be coming out of his head more often, smiling a bit easier, and if he is still clearly in a funk, well, one step at a time.
And then there's the whole thing where they end up sitting side-by-side in Matt's bed - god his sheets are nice - after a night out drinking, which is another change, and totally new.
"I think it freaks people out. The lack of eye contact," Matt admits. Foggy wracks his brain for the lost thread of conversation and finally remembers asking about the ever-present glasses roughly forever ago, or just before the last short period of silence, either one.
"Well, fuck those people. I like your face, and your eyes. They're like the opposite of freaky."
"You really need to work on your pickup lines."
"I do just fine for myself, thank you very much!"
Rather than continue their usual rhythm of give-and-take, Matt falls silent, rolling an empty bottle between his palms in contemplation. This is Matt-ese for 'I want to say something but will probably wimp out' so Foggy gives him a nudge. "What's up?"
"What do I look like?"
"Like a drunk law student who is just hitting the part where he regrets every decision that took him to this point?"
"No," Matt says around one of his little drunk-giggles, "seriously, I've never really asked anyone before. I mean, I trust you to be honest. What do I look like?"
And sure, Foggy's not entirely certain how he feels about this, but it gets Matt to set aside his bottle and take off his impenetrable glasses, and he's looking so earnestly at a point about two feet to Foggy's right, so he can't say no.
"Welp, let's see, dark hair, dark eyes - big, dark eyes with long lashes, so yeah, basically cow eyes -" Matt manages to choke on nothing.
"Cow eyes," he repeats incredulously. "What does that even mean."
"It means girls glue shit to their eyes to get that look, you should be thrilled. Yeah, and, uh, action-hero stubble, like you just need to stuff some watermelons in your biceps to get that manly bulk and you're set." Not that he'd noticed that Matt is half-way to the muscle part, too; he's bizarrely built for an underfed grad student.
The drunk-giggles morphed into outright laughter and Foggy couldn't help but laugh along with until Matt calms down enough to ask, "And what about you?"
"What about me?"
"What do you look like? No -" Matt cuts him off before he can even begin to brag "- wait, after that I don't think I trust you to be honest anymore." He's close, now, enough that Foggy can see the flick of a tongue as Matt wet his lips and smell the hops on his breath. "Can I...?"
It takes him a moment to register what Matt is asking.
"You want to do that touch-seeing you people do?"
"You people? That sounds like discriminatory language, Mr. Nelson."
"Yeah, well," but whatever smart-ass comeback he has dies in the sudden dryness of his mouth. He hopes Matt isn't so close he can hear the sudden fluttering of his heart.
It started along his hairline. He smoothed over Foggy's eyebrows with his thumbs, letting the other fingers drift along his temple. The pads dragged across his eyes and down the ridge of his nose before spreading out along his cheeks. And yeah, he's a little self-conscious about his double chin but Matt doesn't seem to care, drawing his fingers back together at Foggy's throat and trailing them back up to fan out across his mouth, one fingertip catching his lower lip and pulling it down ever so slightly as Matt pulled away.
"Thanks," Matt says after a pregnant pause.
"Was it good for you?" Foggy asks huskily. "I'm wagging my eyebrows at you, by the way."
"I can almost see it now."
Foggy likes to think of himself as a good friend and game for whatever he can do to help, but yeah, that would be yet another entry in the chapter of his life titled "Being Friends With Matt Murdock is Really Freaking Weird". He tries to tell himself the heat in his face is due to the beers, the awkwardness, the laughing fit. "Well, that was refreshingly heterosexual," he says once they finally calm down, setting them off again.
"But seriously. I've said it before, but I appreciate that you treat me like 'just a guy.' That we can joke about these kinds of things. With a lot of people, they're either patronizing, afraid of offending, or feel like they can ask personal questions." Matt toys with the arms of his glasses. "Someone actually asked me once how I watch porn."
Foggy digests this for a moment. "... So, how do you -"
He totally deserved that jab in the ribs.
What he doesn't say is that Matt's not just a guy. He's Foggy's best friend. He's really goddamn smart and will make a great lawyer some day. He's been dealt a shit hand in life - and Foggy suspects he doesn't even know the half of it yet - but is still so fucking good it makes Foggy want to not only be better, but try to make things better for Matt, too. Maybe some day Matt will be in a place that he can hear that he deserves someone who cares about him (and sticks around, unlike his revolving door of girls).
Until then, he'll keep the floor clean, steer Matt around puddles, be a shoulder to lean drunkenly against. It may not solve all his problems, but it doesn't have to. Everyone deserves good things in their lives, and Matt has a lot of catching up to do.