Chapter Text
1.
The matter first comes up when they reach a crosswalk on the way back to the office one afternoon. Foggy, in the middle of retelling a story about Karen's hilarious sandwich mishap from yesterday, instinctively stops to take Matt's arm, explaining, "We're crossing now." Matt makes a small noise of bemusement, but he complies, prodding Foggy to continue the tale of Cole Slaw Hell.
They make it seven steps across before Foggy freezes. His line of sight drops to their linked arms and the awkwardness between them that had started to finally fade comes back in full force. He'd gotten used to re-adjusting his life around the fact that Matt did not, in fact, need his help, because of magic superhero fiery sonar reasons. But it's hard to break years of training, and perhaps just as saliently, he had liked helping. He doesn't want to make Matt feel weird though, so he chooses the obviously correct action of wrenching his arm away like he's been scalded.
Matt, appropriately for a blind guy who's suddenly been thrown off balance by his best friend in the middle of traffic, stumbles a step before self-correcting and continuing on, but his face has fallen into that dejected puppy look he gets. People around them shoot Foggy dirty glances, and he can't blame them, because that really had been a dick move, even if Matt can cross the street and parkour upside-down and jump across rooftops perfectly well on his own. So he hurries to re-anchor their arms, muttering, "Dude, sorry for kinda flipping out on you back there."
"It's okay," Matt says generously, patting his hand. "You know, I don't actually-" he starts, before breaking off mid-sentence, looking guilty and conflicted as per usual.
"You don't what?" Foggy asks, directing them onto the sidewalk. "We're turning now, watch out for the trashcan on your-goddammit, sorry, forgot again. And pardon my French. Next time you go to church, ask Jesus to forgive me."
"I'm always impressed by how bad you are at Catholicism," Matt responds, pretending he's not amused.
"Yeah, yeah, tell it to the Pope. What were you saying before?"
"Nothing," comes the too-fast reply.
"Lies! Reveal your secrets, or I'll never tell you what Karen found under the lettuce. And that's the best part." He tightens his hold, trying to impart some supportive energy through his grip, but he thinks he might just be cutting off Matt's circulation.
Matt stays silent for a minute more, as they walk another block. Finally, he manages to grit out, "I don't actually mind this. Your help, I mean."
Foggy blinks at him. "I'm staring at you in confusion right now, even though you probably already knew that. In fact, because you probably already knew that. Why?"
"It's...nice."
"Wow, that sure is a ringing endorsement, buddy. The only way you could've made that more extravagant would be to hire a skywriter to plaster it where everyone can see."
Matt shakes his head, laughing. "No, it's just...familiar, you know? I've gotten used to it. I like having you by my side. And I like hearing your voice."
He sounds terribly earnest, and Foggy flushes, because sure, he knows objectively that he's not half bad, and that Matt thinks he's fantastic for some reason, but compliments still make his heart flutter.
"You're saying that you like hearing me tell you about revolving doors and wet paint and construction zones."
"Yes. It's scintillating," Matt says firmly.
"I 100% don't believe you, but whatever floats your boat, I guess," Foggy says. They reach another crosswalk and stop there, waiting for the cars to pass.
"No, I'm serious. It's like color commentary. I know you think I'm some sort of ninja wizard, but I still cannot actually see things. Listening to you talk fills in some of those gaps."
Oh. Well. Maybe Matt needs him a tiny bit. Settle down before you embarrass both of us, Foggy demands of his heart, but that train's long left the station. "Okay, well, if you put it that way, I oughta step it up. I've been slacking recently, but don't you worry, Matthew, 'cause starting now, you've been upgraded to the Triple Deluxe Foggy Nelson Vision Simulation Package. On the house."
"Now that's what I call customer service. Remind me to put in a good word with the higher-ups for you."
The traffic light begins chirping and they start to cross. "You better wait until after the trial run. So, uh, we're crossing the street. The crosswalk is white, and there's eleven, no, twelve stripes."
"I hope you're sure about that," Matt says sternly. "The number of stripes really changes the whole picture."
"Twelve, I'm positive. There's a flattened coffee cup in the middle of the street, and the girl in front of us just stepped in a lump of gum. It's blue. I can't tell what flavor it is, but I know you can taste it on the air somehow, so whatever." The grin that Matt gives him is worth the annoyed look that Gum Girl sends his way.
"See? Scintillating."
"You think that's good, wait til you hear this. There's a stampede of bikers headed our way. Or more like a mosquito cloud. It's a neon disaster. The taxi driver to the right looks like he needs some anger management classes. He's really grinding down on his teeth right now. They're totally flat. I bet his dentist hates him. And- oh, we're back." Foggy ends lamely as they stop in front of the office.
Matt beams at him like he's just recited a Homeric hymn from memory, instead of babbling about New York City traffic patterns. "It's like art. About taxis. Just what I wanted."
Foggy shakes his head, and shrugs, clapping Matt on the arm. "I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you have atrocious taste in art, buddy."
2.
With as much gravitas as he can muster, Foggy wiggles his fingers around in his best imitation of a game show host doing jazz hands. "And voila! It's Karen!" He's proud to note that his words are only mostly slurred, and not completely indecipherable.
Karen, barely managing to place her bottle back on the bar amidst her giggles, strikes a pose. But she's clearly misjudged how much alcohol she's imbibed, because she almost takes a nose-dive into a bar stool when her motor skills fail to live up to expectations. Foggy struggles bravely to catch her, and they both crumple into a sloshed mess at Matt's feet. "T-tada!" she mumbles out from under Foggy's arm.
Matt claps vigorously. "Encore! Encore! Great job, guys. Really. Spectacular." Despite the cloudy haze of his drunkenness, Foggy can still tell Matt is patronizing them. He sits up in indignation, letting Karen puddle away onto the floor.
"Excuse you, that was just the prelimnara-prelimatory...uh. First stage. Rough draft. We're still ironing out the kinks," he tells Matt crossly. "Karen doesn't even have her costume yet."
"Oh? It seemed pretty polished to me." Stupid Matt and his stupid smirk. Foggy wants to punch it off his face. Using his mouth.
"You couldn't even see it! And you were laughing the whole time, even during the suspenseful bits. You're a bad test audience. You're just...you're not good. Not good at all." Matt just laughs some more. Dick. With a staggering amount of effort, Foggy manages to find his way back onto his stool, only slipping off a little bit. Matt's hand at his shoulder, steadying him, is gentle and warm. He leans helplessly into the touch, which lasts a few more seconds, before Matt draws away to crouch down next to Karen.
"How are you doing?" Matt asks.
" 'm good. This bed is nice," Karen murmurs in his direction, her face hidden under her hair.
"I'm sure it is," he says fondly. "But I think the one in your apartment is probably better. And now I suddenly remember why it was a mistake to go drinking so far from home. Foggy, can you help her up while I call a cab?"
Foggy makes his sharpest, crispest salute, but still somehow chops himself in the eye. "Yessir. Mission accepted." Matt flashes a smile at him, before stepping away to call.
Carefully, Foggy untangles Karen's fingers from around the gross fallen bar dish she's gotten her hands on, and pulls her up. They sway back and forth shakily for a second, until he arranges their arms in a middle school slow dance formation, shimmying them closer to the door. Karen starts giggling again, little hiccups popping up in every other word.
"Don't let Matt see, or he'll get jealous," she warns him.
Foggy crinkles his eyebrows, trying to process the words. "Matt can't see anything, Karen," he reminds her patiently. " 'Cause like. He's blind."
She shakes her head vehemently, hair flying every which way. "No, no, don't let Matt hear, then. You're not supposed to give it away to just anybody, Foggy."
He steers them slowly toward the doorway, careful not to tip over any furniture on their way out. "Give what away? The secret? I wouldn't do that. I'm very trustworthy," he whispers to her, sotto voce. Which, at this level of inebriation, is not very quietly at all.
Karen frowns at him disapprovingly. "Not the secret. What secret? No, forget that. Your last dance, silly. You can't just pick any old jerk. You save it for, you know, 'the one'."
Foggy stops to mull this over. He doesn't know much about dance etiquette, but if Karen says so, it must be true. "Okay. I promise to save it for 'the one,' " he says solemnly. She nods, satisfied.
"What are you saving?" Matt asks, suddenly at their side. He hooks his arm in with theirs, tugging them out the rest of the way, before Foggy remembers he's supposed to pretend to be leading.
"It's a secret," Foggy says primly, even though Matt probably heard the whole conversation. He herds the other two into the cab before squishing in last.
"A secret!" Karen agrees, leaning her head against Matt's shoulder. He responds by brushing a loose strand of hair out of her eyes and tucking it behind her ear. There's a tenderness to the gesture that makes something in Foggy's heart twinge, and he has to look away, directing his gaze out the window instead. The city lights blur together in a symphony of color as they drive toward Karen's, and each puff of his breath leaves the glass frosted. With autumn fast departing, the midnight chill seeps in from outside, sending tremors down his side.
Using his pinky finger, Foggy draws a stick figure in the condensation on the glass, adding a smile and two lines to designate his long hair. It wouldn't do to leave his stickself homeless, so he draws himself a little house, with a chimney and a tree in the yard. A squiggle of smoke from the chimney, for extra authenticity. It looks lonely, so he starts drawing Matt next to him. All Foggies need a Matt with them, even if they're stick people.
The weight of Matt's hand on his knee causes him to turn, waves of heat pulsing from the palm through the rough material of his pants to his skin. He shivers again, for an entirely different reason.
"What are you doing?" Matt's voice is canted low, so as not to disturb Karen, now asleep on his arm. Foggy wants to curl up in the sound and stay there forever. Build himself a hollow in the forgotten corners of Matt's existence and thread himself into the cobwebs and the foundations. Gradually insinuate himself into all those shrouded places in Matt's life that were never meant to be his, until he can prove to Matt that he can be trusted. That he can be reliable. If five, ten years were not enough, then he will wait twenty. Thirty. He will tend the garden that Matt lets run wild; he will sweep the floors and light the hearth.
I'm making you a home. Every day, for the rest of my days. Whatever it takes for you to come back to me safely.
But those are secret words. Things filed away and labelled 'stuff we don't reveal to our best friends'. Karen, she's good. She'll never tell on him. But the whiskey still runs hot through Foggy's bloodstream, so he concentrates and punts those thoughts back down where they belong.
"Sketching my masterpiece," he says instead, summoning up as much faux haughtiness as he can while sleepy and morose. If Matt can hear it in his voice, he kindly doesn't comment.
"Yeah? What's the subject matter? Beautiful women? Allegories for justice?"
"Matt, you fool, every artiste must have a self-portrait. Here," he takes Matt's hand in his and uses it to trace over his drawing. "That right there is yours truly, dashing as ever, of course. There's my eyes, and- hey stop it, you're screwing up my hair!"
Foggy doesn't hear Matt's laugh so much as feel it, resounding through his arm where they're pressed together. "How about a collaboration?"
"Alright, but only if you let me help. I drew my house over there; it's got a roof and a window. You can add another one, so there's two." Matt, with his guidance, adds a second window, just a tad lopsided. Foggy has to exhale on the window again to increase their drawing surface; his breath leaves a touch of warmth against their fingertips.
"Can I draw myself? I mean, it's a picture of you, so you can say no, but-" Strangely enough, Matt sounds kind of nervous. Foggy wants to kick whoever first caused Matt to go brittle at the edges like this.
"You're already there, you goof," Foggy reassures him. "Well, your head is. Right now you're just a floating torso holding a walking cane."
"You drew my cane, but not my legs?" Luckily, the fragile note in his voice is gone, replaced with that soft amusement that never fails to make Foggy smile.
"I was getting there! You're lucky you made the cut at all, you know. I was seriously debating just surrounding myself with all my childhood pets. Marshmallow down there next to my picket fence, and Chirps on the roof maybe, and George Flopsington with her own hutch up here, in the sky. Carrot shaped clouds. Catnip up the wazoo. Be glad you even got arms, pal."
"Sorry, sorry. I'm very thankful that you chose me over, what was it? Mallard Billmore?"
"Ha. What I wouldn't have given for a pet duck," Foggy says, lazily adding in Matt's legs. He deserves them. "But no, I'll always pick you," he confesses, slumping down against Matt. Exhaustion has finally caught up to him.
In the quiet of the cab, Foggy thinks he hears Matt say, "Me too," but with the sweet call of sleep pulling at his consciousness, he can't be sure.