Chapter Text
The face Matt is wearing when great-uncle Horatio pulls back is priceless. It's woodenly polite, with a screaming undertone of "what the fuck just happened." Foggy pats Matt's shoulder and leads him away.
"I thought your great uncle was married!" Matt hisses.
"He is," Foggy hisses back.
"He just kissed my neck!"
In retrospect, Foggy should have steered Matt towards Aunt June first. She does the hug-and-peck. Probably a better plan for a novice-hugger like Matt (and Foggy had nearly cried when he realized how much remedial education Matt needed in that area).
Uncle Horatio's a bit eccentric, and a lot stooped. His hug is pretty unthreatening—good solid hold, a manly pat on the back, but just when you think it's safe, he tries his hardest to give you a hickey. Foggy theorizes it's because he so bent over he can't reach most faces anymore, or because Horatio's so old everyone looks like a baby and gets a raspberry.
"Yeah, it's a family thing."
"You don't do that, do you?"
"Sometimes," Foggy admits. His littler cousins do squeal when he does it, and sometimes it's a code when he hugs his older cousins and aunts and uncles goodbye— "Did you get Horatioed?" "Yeah, I got Horatioed."
Matt's face goes stupidly red, and Foggy's heart goes out to him. Foggy's heart goes out to him so often it should just live out there. This poor duckling, honestly, Foggy should have been issued with a blanket and a tub of ice-cream when he elected to be his friend, because he's a tragedy.
"Don't worry, Matt, I will never ever kiss your neck. I promise."
"Oh. Great."
***
"Oh my god," Foggy groans, and Matt nearly chokes on his noodles at the positively pornographic sound. "Fran, this is the best pad see ew I've ever had. You're a goddess. Marry me."
Fran laughs, and Matt uses the distraction to take a long drink of water to clear his throat. It's been a few weeks since the Uncle Horatio Incident ("Again, I am SO sorry about that, I totally should have warned you.") and Matt can't stop thinking about Foggy kissing his neck. And his mouth. And his...everything.
"I have dishrags older than you, Foggy," Fran scolds. She leans in and Matt hears her press a kiss to his cheek. "Now, stop flattering an old woman and eat."
Matt shoots her a smile. "Thanks, Fran."
The mingled smell of chili peppers and fish sauce overwhelms him for a second as Fran pats the side of his face in a motherly way. "Enjoy, boys."
"Someday I'll wear you down!" Foggy calls after her, before turning to Matt and sighing. "Matty, I am gonna die alone and unloved, with a hundred cats."
Matt shrugs and hums noncommittally. He's heard Foggy propose marriage in gratitude for everything from the librarian holding a book for him to a really good blow job (the walls in their apartment are so thin as to be almost useless), so he knows Foggy's never serious about it. It's just something he does, part of what makes Foggy, well, Foggy. Just because he's never said it to Matt and Matt has had more than one fantasy that involved Foggy proposing to him for real doesn't mean a damn thing.
"What's that face for, Matt?"
And there's another thing that makes Foggy who he is—he's perceptive. "Nothing," he lies, forcing a smile.
Foggy huffs, and Matt's sure he's rolling his eyes. "Whatever, keep your mysterious blind guy...mystique. I'm going to eat the hell out of these noodles, and if I remember my bar specials correctly, O'Malley's has cheap pitchers tonight."
Matt smiles, his momentary melancholy washed away by the unstoppable force that is Foggy Nelson. "Cheap beer is always a plus."
"And," Foggy adds, his heartbeat doing something odd, "the cute bartender who always gives you a discount is probably working tonight."
Matt blinks, confused by the sudden change of subject. "Oh. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I wouldn't know," he adds, motioning to his glasses.
Foggy reaches across the table and pokes Matt gently with his chopstick. "You are a terrible liar, Matty. You should, you know, try to hit that tonight," he says. "I'll be your wingman, it'll be great."
"Yeah," Matt says, his voice sounding far away, "it'll be great."
***
Matt wakes up with a hangover. This is neither surprising nor undeserved, but it's still a spectacularly bad scene.
"Jesus Mary and Joseph," he chokes, and pulls the blanket over his head. A second later he's whipping it off because the smell of beer and socks and his own sweat is alarmingly concentrated under there.
It was an awful night.
Well.
It was a great night, because the more Matt said "no, no, no" to hitting on the cute bartender, the more Foggy took it to mean "I need you to tell me how gorgeous and wonderful I am, and how anyone would be lucky to have me," and cheerfully obliged.
"No, come on, Matt. It'll be great. Just roll up your sleeves, your forearms are spectacular—" Foggy grabs his shirt cuff and folds it back, "and undo this button, because that chest, amirite—" Matt feels Foggy's breath on his breastbone, "and let me just with your hair" Foggy's hands tugging and smoothing, "and voila, they won't know what hit ‘em. Wow. Like really."
"Maybe later," Matt says, but Foggy's heart is ticking up, so he leaves his shirt the way it is.
"Here guys, one of the new bartenders made these by accident—drink 'em quick before someone notices I didn't dump 'em down the drain," one of the waitresses puts two highballs on the table.
"Sazeracs! When will we be wed, Odessa?" Foggy says, delightedly. Matt bites the inside of his cheek.
"When you bring me da a cow and a bushel of wheat, as is the custom in me wee village," Odessa says virtuously, then cracks her gum as she tells them to "no, seriously, down these fuckers."
Shrugging, they clink their glasses and sip the drinks. Well. Foggy sips. Matt throws most of it back in one gulp.
"That's not lemonade," he wheezes.
"That's a shandy, you loon, this is a Sazerac. It's whiskey and absinthe."
"I know that now." Matt wipes his mouth on his wrist. He's sweating all of a sudden. "Whoo."
In Matt's defence, the whole bar stank up to the rafters of hard liquor, and he was distracted, trying to parse Foggy's reaction to Odessa and how it compared to him fiddling with Matt's shirt.
"You're hopeless," Foggy says fondly, after Matt spends a few minutes tilting from side to side and not answering questions right away, and pushes their chairs together so that Matt can lean into Foggy and rest his head.
"Marry me," Matt says into Foggy's sweater, but it's muffled and sounds like little more than Matt smacking his lips.
Then one of the thousand random New Yorkers that Foggy inexplicably knows shows up. "Milly!" Foggy shouts and gets up so quick he almost dumps Matt onto their table. Milly is a head shorter than Foggy, and he bends to kiss her on the cheek three times: left, right, left.
How...Gallic. Matt busies himself with a beer mat.
When Milly says, "this is my fiance, Tom," Tom also gets three kisses. Even though he's a total stranger. And probably not even French.
Suddenly Matt's holding half a beer mat in each hand. He throws the halves under the table as Foggy introduces the couple and invites them to sit down.
While Foggy catches up with Milly and challenges Tom to no fewer than three duels for her hand in marriage (and challenges Milly for Tom's hand twice), Matt offers to get the next round.
He says hi to Taylor, the bartender that Foggy tried to aim him at earlier.
"What can I get you, Matt?"
"A pitcher of pilsner and a house white," Matt says, jerking a thumb back at his and Foggy's table.
"Gotcha. I'll bring it to you," Taylor says, taking Matt's cash and knocking something small and glass on the bar.
"What's this?"
"Jaegermeister, on the house. You're looking both hot, and a mess."
Matt laughs, a little grimly, and picks up the shotglass. He does need this; weak beer isn't going to anaesthetize the rest of this night. He downs the shot.
"Marry me," he half-says, half-coughs.
"Dude, that's not cool. I'm working," Taylor says, affronted.
Protesting that both he and Foggy'd assumed beer discounts equated invitation seemed like a pretty weak plan right then, so Matt just said, "right, sorry," and slunk back to the table. When their order came, he climbed into his pint glass and didn't emerge for the rest of the night.
Foggy's oh-god-my-head moan cuts through his sulk. Matt levers himself up and totters to the coffee maker, resting his face on the counter while it hisses and gurgles.
"Foggy?" Matt calls through Foggy's bedroom door. "You up?"
"Yeah, and I'm not happy about it," says Foggy hoarsely. Matt pushes the door open with one of the mugs in his hand.
"Brought you a coffee," Matt says, putting one with milk and sugar, just like Foggy likes, on the nightstand. He almost tips over doing it.
"Sit down before you fall down," Foggy croaks, and Matt climbs onto the bed and cradles his mug close to his chest. He really should have left his pyjama shirt on, what was he thinking? He knew the heating was crap this early in the morning.
Foggy takes a long pull of the coffee, and exhales. Matt holds his breath.
"You're a saint."
Matt considers just chucking his hot coffee into his own face.
"Get under the blanket if you're staying. I can already see you're shivering," Foggy says dully, but his heart gives a tiny trill.
Take that, Odessa, Matt thinks, shuffling towards the pillows and lifting his hips to get the blankets over him. He sits shoulder to shoulder with Foggy, silently sipping coffee and occasionally blowing out huge breaths like it's too much carbon dioxide in their bodies and not too much ethyl alcohol that's the problem.
"I'm going to get us some Advil in about three minutes," Matt whispers, and hopes. It's literally the perfect opening. Come on, just this once.
"I fucking love you," Foggy says, very quietly and very fervently.
Matt sighs. Not close enough.
***
"I'm never drinking again," Matt says, wrapping the blanket tighter around himself.
Foggy groans in agreement, and shifts lower on the couch, careful not to jostle his still-questionable stomach. After their breakfast of coffee and advil, Foggy had suggested moving to the living room since he was too hungover to go back to sleep, and it's easier to be miserable and awake with David Attenborough narrating a nature documentary in the background. Now, Matt is curled up in the fetal position, his face pillowed on Foggy's thigh, and Foggy is mostly upright. "We say that every time, Matt, and yet we end up like this: miserable and hungover."
"Mmmph."
"Definition of insanity, bud," Foggy continues, "trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."
Matt whimpers in pain and frees one arm from his blanket burrito to swat ineffectually in the vicinity of Foggy's face. "Shhh. Brain hurt. No talking."
"You know I can't do that," Foggy said, easily catching Matt's hand in his own. He holds it a little longer than bro-code dictates is acceptable, but Foggy has never really been one for such heterosexist bullshit anyway. If he wasn't struggling with his own inappropriate attraction to Matt, he'd have kissed his hand too, since God knows Matt needs affection. Which brings him to the next thought.
"So...Taylor."
Matt turns his head until he can frown at Foggy. "Huh?" His hair is sticking up in a hundred directions, and he looks far too much like a cute, wounded duck for Foggy's heart not to give a little lurch. Down, boy, he tells himself.
"Taylor," he repeats, "the bartender. How'd that go?"
Matt turns back toward the TV. "She's not interested," he says, voice flat.
"Shit, Matt, I'm sorry," he says, patting Matt's head carefully. Matt pushes up into the touch, and Foggy's sure that if he were a cat, he'd be purring.
"'S okay," Matt mumbles, words muffled against Foggy's thigh. "Guess I don't have your charm."
Foggy cuts his own laugh off with a groan of pain. "Don't make me laugh like that, Matty. It hurts too much."
Matt turns over fully and stares somewhere in the vicinity of Foggy's ear, expression serious. "You think I'm kidding?"
"Uh, yeah. I mean, come on, look at you." Matt raises an eyebrow at the phrase, and Foggy rolls his eyes. "I just rolled my eyes because you know what I mean, asshole. I have to be charming to make up for my lack of six-pack abs and biceps the size of—" he trails off, flapping his hand around vaguely, "—I don't know, big things, and you have a tragic backstory worthy of a comic book. I have really great hair and sarcasm."
"You have more than that," Matt says, brow furrowed. "You're amazing, Foggy."
Foggy swallows, trying to calm his flip-flopping stomach. Matt's straight, and though he's never been weird about Foggy's bisexuality, Foggy has always tried to be mindful of that invisible line between friend and potential romantic partner, and his responsibility to stay on the one side of it. It's not easy, especially for someone who's as tactile and affectionate as he is, but Foggy manages. But when Matt says things like that, it takes every single bit of Foggy's self-control not to flirt back—because Matt isn't flirting.
"You're thinking too loudly," Matt mumbles, turning back over so the words are muffled against Foggy's thigh. "Stop."
Foggy huffs out a quick laugh, and threads his fingers through Matt's hair. "Okay, buddy. I'll stop thinking."
"Good," Matt says, rubbing his cheek into Foggy's thigh like a cat.
"Great," Foggy replies, voice slightly strangled.
***
When the headaches recede a little, Foggy swaps out the nature documentaries for proper procedures of evidence discovery, read out loud. Matt's loathe to shift his head, so Foggy steadies the six-pound textbook on the arm of the sofa and strokes Matt's hair with his other hand.
"The superior court in any county may provide, by court rule, a procedure for the exchange of valuation data which shall be used in lieu of the standard procedure if the Judicial Council finds that the raspberry tuna hovercraft of the marzipan superimposition is adequate."
"Uh huh," Matt mumbles, "wait, what?"
"Just checking if you were listening."
"I'm listening!"
"So what did I just say?"
Matt screws up his face, then says, in a serious voice, "raspberry hula supernova." It's worth the head-jarring laugh to hear Matt intone gibberish with all the dignity he can muster.
"Yeah, close enough. You wanna keep going?"
"No, I want to fill my stomach with activated charcoal and forget yesterday ever happened."
Foggy snickers. "Get your coat then. We can decide on the road if it's the hospital for a stomach pump or the bar for a round of mind-erasers."
Matt digs the heels of his hands into his eyes and laughs a moan. "Noooooo."
"Ok, then," Foggy's index finger tap tap taps away at Matt's neck as he thinks, "how about food? If we go back to Fran's, it's only seventy percent guaranteed she'll laugh at us."
Matt's shoulders hunch up and he crosses his arms like he's cold, or feeling cornered. "Can't. I'm out of cash."
"I'll buy this time." It's the wrong thing to say. Foggy's learned that Matt can go from happily melted to spiky and defensive in a quantum cosmic tick, and sure enough, Matt starts to hurtle himself off of the sofa. He'll hide in his room, not eating, until Monday if Foggy doesn't do something.
He lets his textbook fall off the arm with a crash, grabs Matt's wrist and pulls. Now, this could have ended badly, since at a party once, some drunk idiot had bodychecked Matt into a sofa, and somehow Matt rolled over the back of it into a standing position. The scary part was that Matt had grabbed the collar of the idiot and had yanked him into something resembling a chokehold, using the back of the sofa as leverage.
Matt lands against his chest with a lot of weight and a startled "oof!" and when Foggy's arms go around his shoulders, he relaxes and tenses further at the same time.
"Stop it, Foggy, this isn't funny."
"Let me buy you noodles," he chants as he rocks Matt back and forth in time to his words, "let me buy you noodles."
"I can't, I—"
"You're my friend and I want to feed you. You're my friend and I want to feed you." He leans heavily on the words "friend" and "want". "If it really bugs you, you can do the dishes for the next week."
Matt's eyes aren't even pointed at him, but Foggy feels the weight of his disbelieving stare. It's how Foggy would look if the devil himself had offered to make Matt love him—horrified, and tempted, and horrified at himself for being tempted. For the eleventy millionth time, Foggy's saddened that Matt can feel so torn over something as inconsequential as Thai food.
"Two weeks," Matt says, at last.
"Eight days."
"Ten days."
"Deal." Foggy lets his head fall back. His brain is fizzing again, and not in a fun way.
"Foggy?"
"Mm?"
"Gonna let go of me?"
Foggy grins down at Matt. "Never, not ever ever. I'm going to keep you right here because I'm in love with you and someday I'm gonna marry you," he says.
No. No, he doesn't, because he's a flipping coward.
"Shhh. No talk. Brain hurt," he says, settling Matt's head more comfortably in the crook of his elbow. Matt grumbles under his breath, but he stays.
***
They get there between the lunch crowd and the dinner rush, so Fran's restaurant is empty. She looks up from her Thai language newspaper and smiles when she sees them.
"Back so soon? Oh, boys. You look terrible!"
Foggy lowers Matt into a seat before pulling out a chair for himself, making sure not to scrape.
"That's good to hear. We'd hate to look better than we feel, wouldn't we Matt?"
Matt manages a wan smile, then burps ominously. Fran's face is horrified.
"Don't move, and don't throw up. You throw up, you clean up." She turns and hollers a food order to the kitchen. Behind his glasses, Matt's eyes squeeze shut.
"Oh my god, ow," Foggy says, dropping his forehead onto his folded hands.
"Agreed," Matt says. His hand lands on Foggy's head, scritching gently. It makes the throbbing in his head quiet a little, but not entirely, and that's his only excuse for what happens next.
"Two pad kee mao, extra spicy," a plate lands next to Foggy's head, "perfect for a hangover."
"Marry me," Foggy says, lifting his head. But it's not Fran, it's one of her sons. Tousled black hair dyed green at the ends. Silver nose ring and a rainbow triangle on a chain around his neck. Super cute. "Oh, umm."
The guy—Foggy's brain flat out refuses to provide a name—tips his head, a smile on his lips. "Well, ok then!"
Matt spits out his noodles with a choke.
***
Fran's son's name is Dustin. He's 24, studying for his Master's in Social Work at Hunter College, and working at the restaurant to supplement his scholarships.
Matt hates him.
Foggy's heartbeat has been at a steady staccato since his accidental proposal, and the more Dustin flirts with him, the warmer his face gets. Matt knows it's not from the spice—Foggy hasn't even taken a bite of his food yet. Matt tries to ignore them, shoveling noodles into his mouth like they're going to run away from him in the hopes that the nearly atomic level of chili peppers will disguise his growing irritation.
Both he and Foggy flinch when Fran yells for him from the kitchen, a good ten minutes after he delivered their food, and Dustin sighs. "Sorry, gotta get back to work. Nice to meet you, Foggy," he adds, and Matt scowls.
"You too, man. Thanks." Dustin retreats back to the kitchen, and Matt can feel Foggy staring at him. "Food that bad?"
Matt swallows and shakes his head. "No, it's fine. Just..." He points at his head, which is still aching dully.
Foggy makes an agreeing noise and starts in on his own noodles, which are anything but bad, if the sound he's making is anything to go by. "Spicy pickled avocado," he mumbles around a mouthful. "We could sell that. Make millions."
Matt snorts. "That sounds terrible."
Foggy swallows and waves his fork in the air. "Listen, Mr. Ba-jillion Tastebuds—"
"That's not even a real number, Foggy."
"—some of us are more culinarily adventurous than others."
Matt arches an eyebrow at Foggy. "Is that what you call smothering microwave burritos in alfredo sauce, a culinary adventure?"
Foggy chokes out a laugh, and a bloom of warmth starts low in Matt's stomach at the sound. "You are not allowed to question the food decision one makes while under the influence."
"At least the smell of the burrito masked the stench of that skunk weed you were smoking," Matt offers.
Foggy groans. "Don't remind me. All I wanted was one last hurrah before becoming a responsible citizen, and I end up with the worst stuff this side of Brooklyn."
"Serves you right," Matt says as he scoops up the last of his pad kee mao. "I told you that guy was sketchy."
“‘That guy' went to undergrad at Yale and was in our contracts law class." Matt gives Foggy his best unimpressed face, and finally Foggy relents. "Yeah, okay, probably should have known buying weed off a dude whose name ends with 'the Third' and who wears Vineyard Vines shorts unironically wasn't the best plan."
"Yalies," Matt agrees, pushing away his empty bowl. The restaurant is slowly filling as the dinner rush gears up, and Matt feels almost human for the first time all day. He smiles across the table at Foggy. "How're you feeling?"
Foggy sighs and Matt can hear his hair brushing against his shoulders as he shrugs. "Not...terrible? Actually pretty okay. Apparently Fran's food is magical."
"Don't let her hear you say that," Dustin says as he steps up to clear away their dishes. "Her head is big enough as it is."
Foggy's heart speeds up. "Well, we wouldn't want that, would we?" he jokes back, and Matt grits his teeth. "It would be terrible if it got too big to fit through the kitchen door."
Dustin throws back his head as he laughs, and Matt can hear jewelry jangling around his neck. "That would be terrible. Then you'd all have to suffer through my cooking, and while I've learned a lot from Mom, I'm not quite in her league." His voice drops to a lower register, soft and intimate. "I'd love to get some practice in, though. You could tell me what to do to improve."
Matt's knuckles creak as he balls his hands into fists under the table and a hot flash of anger replaces the warmth from earlier. It doesn't matter, he tries to tell himself. Foggy is his friend—his best friend—and he deserves to be happy even if the thought of him being happy with someone other than Matt makes his stomach churn. He deserves better than Matt anyway.
"Hey, earth to Matty," Foggy says, snapping his fingers in front of Matt's face and Matt jerks back to attention. "You want dessert?"
Matt shakes his head. "No thanks. Don't want to add to my tab," he adds with a frankly pathetic attempt at a smile.
"Okay," Foggy says, drawing the word out. "Let me settle up with Fran and I'll be right back."
Foggy scoots his chair back and he and Dustin both make their way to the front counter, leaving Matt alone. He knows he shouldn't eavesdrop, he knows that Foggy deserves privacy, but he can't seem to help himself.
"So," Dustin says as he rings them up, "can I call you sometime? It's a little early for an engagement, but..." He trails off with a laugh.
"Yeah, I'd like that," Foggy says a smile in his voice, as he pulls out his phone along with his wallet. "What's your number?"
Matt pushes back from the table abruptly, and unfolds his cane with a snap as he makes his way to the door. He can't sit here and listen to this.
As soon as he's on the sidewalk, the sounds and smells of the city swirl around him in a cacophony of sensory input, pushing Foggy and Dustin from the front of his mind. The sun has dropped below the skyline, deepening the afternoon's chill, and the wind is starting to pick up. He drags in several deep lungfuls of cold air, and concentrates on matching his breathing to his heartbeat.
By the time Foggy joins him outside, Matt's got himself under control, and is leaning against the building, waiting. Foggy doesn't say much, just offers Matt his elbow with a quick "on your left, bud."
The walk in silence for about a block, before Foggy asks, "What was that?"
Matt swallows. "What was what?" he asks, voice as innocent as he can make it. He can feel his face warming up, and hopes that Foggy can't tell.
Foggy sighs, and he sounds exhausted all of a sudden. "Ignorance does not become you, Matt. Why'd you flip out about Dustin?"
Matt licks his lips and shrugs. "It's not a big deal."
"Now that's obviously a lie," Foggy shoots back. "Hold on, light's red. So?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Matt lies.
He can hear Foggy's hair brushing his shoulders as he shakes his head, but Foggy doesn't push. It isn't until they've made it back to their apartment and flopped back onto the couch that he asks again. "Okay, truth time, Matt. Why did you act like a douchebag at Fran's?"
Matt knows Foggy isn't going to let this go; it's part of why he's going to be such an excellent lawyer someday. He sighs and looks up toward the ceiling. "He was flirting with you," he mumbles.
Matt doesn't need sight to know that Foggy's eyebrows have just reached his hairline. His pulse spikes, and he sucks in an angry breath. "People do flirt with me, you know," he says, voice chilly. "Even when you're around looking like you do."
Matt's mouth falls open, and he wonders how in the world Foggy jumped to the conclusion that Matt was upset because Dustin wasn't flirting with him. "That's not what I meant," he says, his own temper rising to match Foggy's.
"No?" Foggy asks, voice sharp. "How else am I supposed to take that?"
Matt balls his hands into fists and looks down at his lap. "It's not about me, it's about you! You flirt with everyone," he bites out, "you kiss everyone, you propose to everyone! It's driving me crazy!"
Foggy's anger goes from hot to sub-zero in the space of a second, and he practically jumps off the couch to get away from Matt. "Wow. That's... Wow. We've been friends for years, and all of a sudden you have a problem with, what? Me being bi? Is that what this is? Because that's fucking low, Murdock."
"That is—I would never," Matt hisses, and stands, stalking toward Foggy. "Give me a little credit here, Fog."
Foggy crosses his arms defensively. "Okay. Then why?"
Matt growls low in his throat and grabs Foggy by his upper arms, drags him close, and kisses him for all he's worth.
***
For a long second, Foggy doesn't move a muscle, and Matt's heart plummets.
Then Foggy heaves an enormous breath and starts kissing back, uncrossing his arms and leaning into it. Matt makes a broken, pleading noise he fully intends to deny making later when Foggy's fingers start trailing up and down his back, and Foggy just goes "shh, shh," like Matt's an anxious horse or a weeping child.
The comparison isn't completely unearned.
"You know it's you and me, right? You and me forever," Foggy says when he pulls away. Matt stays close, lets their foreheads touch, and just breathes.
"I know," Matt says. He's not angling for another kiss, he's staying right here. He's gonna wait and stay put and not push, and Foggy will see how hard he's trying to be good.
"So you don't have to kiss me to keep me from leaving you," Foggy says gently, so gently, "Matt, I'm always going to be your friend."
For a second, Matt doesn't understand, like Foggy started speaking Norwegian all of a sudden. Then the realization—Foggy thinks I'm just jealous—hits him like a bucket of icewater. He pushes out of Foggy's arms and grabs for his cane.
"I have to go," he says, choked.
"Matt, wait!" Matt slams the door on Foggy's startled voice.
He takes the stairs two at a time because at his normal walking pace Foggy would catch up without breaking a sweat, but when he reaches the lobby, he realizes Foggy isn't coming after him at all.
He pushes open the front door and lets his feet lead him.
When Matt's a block away, his phone starts talking to him. "Foggy. Foggy. Foggy." Matt sticks his hand in his pocket and hits the power button, declining the call. It's petty, and it'll make Foggy mad, but Matt can't listen to him swear up and down that they'll be friends forever right now. Not because he's not literally on his knees every Sunday thanking God for sending him Foggy, but because no matter who Foggy falls in love with—Dustin, Odessa, Milly and Tom at the same time, if Matt's luck is anything to go by—it's Matt's fate to be right there next to him. Watching and not having.
It's fucking unflattering that Foggy thinks Matt would kiss him out of some sense of twisted possessiveness, but maybe he deserves it. Any time before now would probably have been better. After a class. At a party. Hell, even this morning, sitting in Foggy's bed like an old married couple drinking coffee. But no. It took a cute, interesting, noble, out-and-proud guy like Dustin to kick Matt's dragging ass into gear. Why wouldn't Foggy be suspicious?
"Foggy. Foggy. Foggy," his pocket calls. He declines again.
***
Foggy finds him about three hours later.
"They say the thing you've lost is always in the last place you look. I say, of course it is, why would you keep looking after you find it?" Foggy voice is falsely jovial. His heart is pounding and he stinks of running around the city and also of nervousness. Still, everything about him, to Matt, is home.
"How did you find me?"
"Around the corner from your dad's old gym? It wasn't hard." Matt lifts an eyebrow. "Fine, it was super hard. It's why it took me three hours. I checked your church first, then the library–which was a wasted journey since you didn't have your bag with your library card in it—then I hung around Times Square for a bit before realizing you hate it there. So then I remembered how you sort of hate this place but you love it too. And then I just started walking up and down the streets till I found you."
"Not bad," Matt says dully.
"Thanks, I thought so. So are you coming home now?" Matt doesn't say anything, and Foggy lowers himself onto the bench beside him. "I sent you like a thousand texts."
"I got them."
"So you're just ignoring me?"
"I just—needed some time," Matt says.
"Time to do what?" Foggy asks. Time to come to grips with the fact that you're never going to want me, Matt thinks. But he just pulls his lips into something like a smile and hopes it'll do.
"It's ok, you don't have to talk. I'm just gonna sit here. Yeeeepp," Foggy stretches out the word and his arms, draping himself all over the bench, "just sit here, feel my ass go flat and cold because it's not like it's autumn in New York or anything. In a few minutes I might even twiddle my thumbs."
"Please stop narrating,"
"Nope. This is me laying siege to your sulk and it's gonna be blind-accessible. I'm going to sit here until we clear this up. I've got a bagel in my pocket, Matt. I'm prepared."
Completely against his will, Matt smiles. God, he loves this man so much. He sobers quickly, remembering.
"Dustin seems like a good guy. You should give him a call."
"I might, but we're not talking about him right now."
"Yeah, we are," Matt says tiredly.
"Look, for the record, I'm sorry I accused you of being a jerk about the bi thing. I know you're not that kind of guy.
"No," says Matt, "you just think I'm the kind of guy that kisses people because I’m—what? Jealous? Marking my territory?"
"No! I thought you were scared that I would dump you for Dustin."
Matt growl is a frustrated, tightly wound noise. "You can't dump me, Foggy, you're not dating me."
"Oh come on, you know what I mean!
Of course he does. "Nice. That's just—so nice, Foggy," Matt says bitterly. He stands up and paces a few steps away before turning back, his hands balled up into fists. "Alright, if you think I would suck on your tongue just because I'm going to miss my best friend, why did you kiss me back?
Foggy slumps, and Matt is momentarily, viciously triumphant before it hits him that he just made Foggy sad.
"Because it was you, Matt," he says quietly.
Matt whips his head around so fast his glasses nearly fall down his nose. "What?"
"Ugh, you're going to make me say it again? Because it was you. Because even if you were just pitching a fit about Dustin, I wasn't going to waste a kiss. Not from you."
Matt's completely confused. Has Foggy started speaking Norwegian again? "Huh?"
"Knock it off, Matt. Ignorance doesn't suit you," he sighs.
"But you kiss everyone. You propose marriage to everyone."
"I'm not being serious when I do, Matt!" Foggy bursts out, "it makes people laugh! Do you remember that I said it to Fran yesterday and Brett's mom the day before? I don't actually mean it–oh. "
Matt goes cold. Foggy's "oh" is a lethal thing. It means that Foggy's taken an acorn of information and grown the whole oak tree in his head. There are people in their debating classes who are afraid of that quiet little "oh".
"I never say it to you."
"No. You don't."
"And you want me to."
Matt can't actually answer that.
"Thought so. Listen to me, Matt. I am never, ever going to ask you to marry me because you made me coffee, or brought me food, or because I want to make you laugh."
Matt lowers his head. Well, at least it's out there now.
"If I ever propose to you," Foggy goes on, his voice a little shaky, "I'm going to be holding a goddamn ring."
***
Foggy holds his breath, waiting for Matt to just say something goddammit, but he just stands there, eyebrows beetling over his glasses and his jaw working.
"The fuck?"
Total miscalculation, Nelson, that's cool. "Look, it's just a thing that I say. People laugh, life goes on," Foggy backpedals, "but I'll knock it off since it bugs you."
"No, hold on," Matt plants himself in front of Foggy, his expression in full lawyer-mode, "you don't get to walk that one back. You're saying you're just joking when you kiss people and ask them to marry you?"
"It's called being sociable!" He's still not 100% on how he got Matt all twisted up but he refuses to feel bad for not having a steel-hard grip like Matt and expressing the odd emotion. He already knows that his emotions can get pretty odd.
Matt barrels on. "Nevertheless, do you expect anyone to reciprocate romantically in a real, non-joking way?"
"Of course not!"
"And then Dustin did."
Foggy blows out a frustrated breath. "Sure, I guess you could call it that. People do like me sometimes, you know."
"Entirely too well," Matt says grimly, which—what? Foggy watches his throat bob as he swallows, and Foggy could almost convince himself that Matt looks nervous.
"And the reason you never tell that kind of joke around me is..."
It's unlawyerly to leave a sentence dangling like that. Ask a question or make a statement. But even with the field open for possible feints and dodges, Foggy swallows down a trapped feeling. He stares at his knees and wishes he could rewind back to before he had all but admitted his feelings for this inconveniently beautiful, inconveniently tenacious human being.
"I don't know. I just never did."
"I wish you had," Matt says, disappointed.
Foggy takes his hands, leads him back to the bench. Matt perches, his body stiff and his face determined.
"It wasn't an excluding-you thing, Matt. I promise. It was just. You're my best friend. And it just wouldn't be..." It wouldn't be a joke. All those times he looked at Matt and thought earnestly, I'm gonna marry the hell out of you some day, it must have come through in his voice or how he kept trying to be close to him all the time. It must have been so obvious. "I wasn't trying to make you feel left out on purpose. It just didn't feel like the kind of thing we did."
"I wish it was."
"Oh, hey, I don't mean it like we're not close, Matt. We're good, aren't we? Best of buddies, best of—"
Matt throws his cane on the ground. "Dammit, Foggy!"
"—avocados." Foggy trails off. "Uh?"
"I wish, Foggy," Matt says, leaning on every word, "Foggy, I wish...oh fuck it."
For the second time that day, Matt clasps Foggy's face in his hands and presses their lips together. The touch of his tongue is a shock—like a static charge, like electricity. But this time, he's not gonna look a gift Matt in the mouth.
"Matty," he gasps, holding on tight so he doesn't run away, "don't stop this time."
"Don't doubt me this time," Matt says, breathing heavily against Foggy's lips and steaming up his glasses, "Foggy, I—"
"Yeah?"
"I have. I've always been. I wish." Matt's face pinks up but Foggy lets him keep on phumphering. After all the running around he's made Foggy do. Anyways, It's character building.
"Yeah?"
Matt butts his head against Foggy's shoulder. "You're gonna make me say it, aren't you?"
Foggy grins like all his birthdays have come at once. "I've been chasing you for three hours—or three years, depending how you look at it. You're gonna say it."
Matt harrumphs, makes a few more vowelly-sounding stabs at what Foggy really hopes is some kind of confession of feelings , and sighs.
"Can we?" he rests his forehead against Foggy's, and Foggy's heart swells at the yearning in Matt's touch, "you and me forever, Foggy. Can't we?"
"What happened to Stoic McLawyerface giving me the third degree back there?" Foggy nuzzles his cheek sweetly. "Don't you have any pretty words for me now, Murdock?"
Matt's throat bobs under Foggy's fingers as he visibly gathers himself and nuts up to whispering, "I love you. Not like a friend. More than a friend. I'm in love with you."
"And here's the twist you weren't expecting," Foggy whispers back, feeling like his heart might crack open from happiness, "I'm in love with you too."
Matt's smile is like the sun breaking through the clouds. "That wasn't a twist, I guessed that when you kissed me back."
Of course, now that the scary bit's done, Matt wouldn't be Matt if he didn't claim he had it all figured out from the start. "The first time or the second time?" Foggy asks.
Matt grins sheepishly, caught out. "The second time. The first time—I hoped. But you thought I was just jealous of Dustin."
"Yeah. It was the only thing I could come up with. I mean, I just never thought you could actually go for a guy like me."
"You're right. I'd never go for a guy like you." Foggy rears back. "A guy like you still wouldn't be you." Matt pulls gently at his coat, trying to calm him. "Sorry, that wasn't supposed to freak you out."
"I'm hungover, Matt, you have to be gentle," Foggy grumbles as Matt cuddles him close to his chest, tipping his chin up for another kiss.
"I will if you will. My head still kind of hurts."
"Ugh, mine too." He snags the discarded cane with the toe of his shoe and disassembles it before putting the bundle in Matt's lap. "Can we go home now? We can kiss more if you want to. It's just that my ass is cold." Matt's smile is all teeth. "Yeah, you would think that's an invitation, wouldn't you?"
Matt dimples at him as they unfreeze themselves from the bench. "Isn't it?"
"Only mostly," Foggy admits as Matt kisses him again, smiling against his mouth.
They get a fortifying coffee from their regular place on the way home, and when Amrita behind the bar squeezes free caramel syrup into their drinks while hushing their thanks and cutting a glance at the store's manager, Foggy clutches at the paper cup gratefully.
"You're my saviour. Marry me," he says, drinking deeply.
Matt's hand freezes in the course of feeling over the bar for a cardboard sleeve. "Seriously?"
"What seriously? Oh, so I'm not allowed to even—Seriously? Fine, Amrita," he turns to the befuddled barista. "Please ignore what I just said, I can't marry you."
"My wife'll be so relieved," she deadpans, waggling her hand and making her wedding ring sparkle.
"I know, I'm a cad," he says. Matt presses his lips together, but Foggy can tell he's trying not to laugh.
"Well, he's already asked half of Midtown to marry him, so," Matt shrugs.
"You scoundrel!" Amrita gasps. "Old love' em and leave' em Nelson."
"Not if I have anything to say about it," Matt tries to hide his grumble in his coffee, but Amrita's eyes widen.
"Wait, did you two finally..."
"He hasn't proposed to me, if that's what you're asking."
"Wow, really? Joking about it already," Foggy says incredulously.
"Well, it's true. You haven't," Matt sniffs.
"And I told you," Foggy says, trying make his voice convey that he would like to be not doing this in front of their caffeine dealer, "that if I did, I would have something other than a bagel in my pocket."
Matt gives his cheek a caramelly kiss, and Amrita's jaw drops. "I'll look forward to it." Foggy blushes, already thinking about the shine of titanium and what he'd get engraved on the inside.
"Alright, um. Thanks for the coffee. See you later," he coughs at a waving Amrita and prods Matt out the door. When they're out on the street, the sun sinking low, he turns to Matt. "So I guess I'm retiring that line, huh?"
"You don't have to, you can say anything you want. To anyone."
"But I'll just have to put up with your sass until I put a ring on your finger, huh?"
Matt considers this. "Maybe. But we're in love, so is it really such a bad thing?"
Foggy slips his hand into Matt's and pulls him in for another kiss. "Eh, I've had worse offers."