Chapter Text
Matt Murdock was not your usual blind guy.
Not that Foggy knew many blind guys: no other blind people at all in fact. But it wasn’t his blindness that was the issue: Matt just knew stuff. Stuff he couldn’t possibly know. He had ESP or something because sometimes Foggy could swear it was like Matt could read his mind.
For one thing, Matt had never believed that Foggy was only interested in women. Admittedly that had been mostly his own fault after practically waxing lyrical about how hot his roomie was when they first met. He thought he had made a pretty convincing come-back, but Matt had never bought it. Luckily Matt was also a straight-up gentleman who had no problem with a somewhat gay roommate because Foggy didn’t think he could take being treated like a leper again after all that had happened in undergrad.
Matt also always knew where he’d been. It was like he’d bugged Foggy or something. He would know exactly where he had got his coffee, or who he had spoken to in the hall. And speaking of speaking: Matt always knew who the hottest woman in the room was. Always. There was no way that he could find all of them by accident unless that was his mutant power or he was some kind of wizard.
“Hey,” Foggy said off-hand one evening when they were both studying in their room. “Did you go to that school out in Westchester? What’s it called…” Matt looked up at him quizzically. “You know, that school for special kids…gifted kids? Nah they never would have used ‘kids’...gifted children?”
“‘Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters’?”
Foggy practically bounced out of his seat. “That’s the one! Man, that would have bugged me all day…so did you go there?”
Matt sat stiffly, his face serious, one hand on his desk as if he was ready to push off and start running. “Why would you think I went to a school for mutants?”
“Oh, you know, your whole,” Foggy gestured helplessly in Matt’s direction, “thing. Oh wait, are we not supposed to talk about your thing? Is it a secret? I haven’t said anything to anyone.”
“What ‘thing’ Foggy?”
Matt’s voice was hard enough that Foggy was actually a little scared. “Come on, Matt, we live together. It’s not like I’m not going to notice. You know stuff you couldn’t possibly know.” A thought came to him. “This morning! You knew I went the long way to our tort lecture. It’s ok,” Foggy said and he really meant it, “I don’t care if you’re a mutant any more than you care if I’m sorta, maybe a bit gay. We’re still buds…right?”
Matt held himself still for a moment that seemed to Foggy to last far too long before he let out a breath in a long sigh.
“I’m not a mutant,” he said, hesitantly. “The chemicals,” he waved at his eyes. “They heightened all my other senses. I knew you went the long way because you smelled like the broken Xerox machine outside the student union office.”
Foggy pondered this. “So you’re not a mind reader?”
Matt smiled. “No, I’m not a mind reader.”
Foggy let out an explosive sigh. “Thank god! I mean, no shame if you were, my dude, but there is some stuff in this old noggin’ that you don’t need to know about.”
Now Matt’s smile was wide and evil. “Like lustful thoughts about a certain TA?”
Foggy dipped his head back with a groan. “Oh my God Matt, he’s so hot! Like unreal levels of hotness! If you could see him he’d turn even you I swear!”
Matt chuckled and Foggy let himself smile with him. “So you didn’t go to the gifted kid place then?”
“‘Gifted Youngsters’, and no. I was at a Catholic orphanage and they didn’t really know what to do with me. Someone found me and taught me eventually, but he…”
Matt’s look darkened again. Rage and sadness clear on his face. Foggy wondered sometimes whether Matt knew just how expressive his face was. The wistfulness when people talked about family, the passion when he talked about Thurgood Marshall and his dreams for the future. It was one thing to wear your heart on your sleeve and another to not even know that everyone else could see it there.
“Hey,” Foggy reached out and laid his hand on Matt’s shoulder. “It’s ok bud, you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want. I shouldn’t be prying anyway.”
“You’re not prying Foggy. It’s just…” he floundered and Foggy waited, giving him time to put his thoughts together. “I was taught that it’s dangerous for people to know what I can do. And with the way things are going, with mutants and other ‘gifted’ people popping up all over the place and all the talk about how to regulate us….I can see what they mean.”
“Hey, you don’t have to worry about a thing, pal.” Foggy said with a smile, patting his shoulder. “I may not legally be allowed to call myself your lawyer yet, but consider this covered by client confidentiality.”
“Thanks man,” Matt said and there was that open face again, his gratitude right on the surface.
“Now, come on my dude! Those assignments will not write themselves!”
Matt groaned theatrically, but Foggy saw his smile linger as he turned back to his desk.