Work Text:
Matt has a way of looking calm even though he’s not. It’s simple composure—back straight, jaw locked, cane drawn up protectively in front of him. Foggy’s commented on it more than once, how he never seems to panic before a final, break down over an essay. How he seems so sure of himself in new places, situations. Matt doesn’t know how to tell him that it’s usually because he can’t, that there’s an emptiness inside him, a deep black bowl that hasn’t been filled since he was young. That there are times he wants to cry, or panic, but instead his head starts spinning and his senses get overwhelmed, his senses are on fire, the world is on fire, and it’s like his entire body just shuts down. He isn’t calm. He’s losing it. But he doesn’t know how to say that, how to express it without also telling Foggy his secret, so he lets him think he has emotional superpowers instead.
Tonight isn’t that bad, but Matt certainly isn’t calm. It’s spring semester of his junior year and midterms are next week. How the hell could he be calm? What’s confusing to him—but not surprising—is Foggy’s own inability to focus, his incessant distractions and interruptions, even though focus was the precise reason they chose this private study room in the first place.
Matt checks the time—he can probably finish up this chapter in the next half hour, then move onto his research paper. He just needs to buckle down and—
“Hey, Matt?” Foggy asks.
“Again, Foggy?” Matt says, but he’s smirking, lighthearted. He goes ahead and lifts his fingers off the page. “You promised me you were going to work.”
“I am, I am!” Foggy protests. “I’m just—can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” Matt answers automatically, at this point used to Foggy’s bluntness. Well, not bluntness, exactly. There’s genuine curiosity, innocence, in everything Foggy asks him. But he’s not really one to transition, to lead into things. At first this took Matt by surprise. Almost made him uncomfortable, actually, until he learned to appreciate the fact that he always spoke his mind. Was always—honest, regardless of the consequences.
“I was just wondering,” Foggy says. “Does it really work? Touching people’s faces, I mean?”
Matt crinkles his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It just kind of sounds like b.s. Like, no offense, but how...accurate could it be?”
Matt doesn’t tell Foggy that he’s right, this isn’t something that blind people actually do. It’s just a trope, overused in novels and sappy movies. That it doesn’t really help him get to know someone. He tried it, once, with some girl he knew in middle school. It was her idea, actually. “It’s just so…romantic,” she’d gushed, giggling as she guided his sweaty palms too fast over her lips and cheeks. “Now I feel like you can really see me.”
Instead he says, in a voice that shouldn’t be his, “I don’t know.”
Matt doesn’t need to see Foggy. By now he knows too well the weight of his footsteps, how long his hair has grown by the sound it makes when it brushes his collar. The pocket of air that gets trapped somewhere when he’s laughing too hard, the tiny burst of a wheeze it produces.
And maybe it’s the fact that it’s March but the outside air is still bitter with cold, and maybe it’s the fact that Matt’s been feeling lonelier than usual lately and Foggy seems to be the only one who can pull him out of it, but at any rate, suddenly Matt wants to. He doesn’t want to touch Foggy’s face to “see” him—he wants it, somehow, for the warmth, the closeness, the tiny electrical trills in his fingertips.
Then he realizes Foggy has stopped talking. “Anyway—” Matt starts.
“I guess you can,” Foggy interrupts. “If you really...want to, I mean."
“Uh,” Matt says. He licks his lips, catching the lower one between his teeth. “Okay, sure.”
They aren’t like this, usually. They’ve never been like this, awkward and fumbling and grasping at words like straws. So their bodies take over, somehow, Foggy scraping his chair to be closer to Matt’s, Matt awkwardly reaching towards the sound of his breathing.
His skin is warm, like he’d imagined. But Matt listens to his heartbeat and knows it’s because he’s blushing. Don’t be embarrassed, Foggy, he thinks. He moves his hands up from his cheeks to meet at his forehead, which is incredibly smooth—does Foggy moisturize?—before it crumples under his touch. “You can relax, Foggy,” Matt says softly, laughter under the words. Muscles flick below Foggy’s temple and Matt realizes he must be smiling back.
It’s not like it was in middle school. Instead of Foggy leading him, Matt lets his hands find their way, over his eyebrows, his eyelids closing under his touch. Right—Matt suddenly feels a wave of embarrassment himself, wondering what he looks like as he traverses this new terrain, if Foggy’s watching him explore. He doesn’t have his glasses on. He moves over Foggy’s nose, down to his lips, his chin, scraggles of hair prickling his fingers. Matt spends an extra second on his jawbone, not expecting it to be so detailed, so delicate. He hopes, abstractly, that Foggy doesn’t notice.
There’s a breath between them that neither of them can name as Matt lets his hands fall back into his lap. He was the one seeing Foggy, but he doesn’t know if he’s ever felt this exposed.
Matt, finally, clears his throat. “So. I, uh, hope that wasn’t too awkward,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.
“Not awkward,” Foggy says, though Matt can feel him shift away. “Just, you know. Weird.”
Matt listens—his heart doesn’t slow. Matt pauses, considers saying thank you but decides that’s too…he doesn’t know what, but it feels like the wrong thing to say. Instead he gathers his things and stands up, prompting Foggy to do the same. There’s a silence between them, as they walk back to the dorm arm-in-elbow, that starts out uncomfortable but eventually turns natural.
Matt closes his eyes. He focuses simply on Foggy, one step ahead. He does this, lately, fully submits to letting Foggy guide him even though he doesn’t really need it. It feels less like a lie that way, somehow.
The world is still on fire. The world will always be on fire. Matt knows this. But he wants to thank Foggy, still, for making it calm, for making the colors soften inside his chest. Even for just a moment: it’s calm.