Archive of Our Own ^beta

Nobody knows how soulmarks work. What exactly causes them, how or why the universe decrees that two people who have the chance to meet in person will love each other. That they’ll be so important to another the world declares it for all to see. Platonic, romantic, familial, sexual -- the exchange of color means these two people are meant to find a deep and true love in one another, whatever the form. Not guaranteed to be good for each other, not destined for romance, but to develop such a significant love, so beyond the norm, that it’s marked out on a genuinely cosmic level.

There are arguments for this or that cause, all over the spectrum. Fate, maybe, or God, or perhaps something biochemical. Nothing ever conclusively proven. Whatever the case, people walk around with their bonds proud on their skin as proof that they are a cornerstone in someone else’s personal universe. Explicit assurance that someone loves them, that someone is meant to love them, that they love someone in return.

Matt knows better.

How could he not, when he’s lived out their empty promises for years. When he knows an exchange of color doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things, that just because there’s visual indication of a bond doesn’t mean one truly exists. Even if he weren’t blind, to him soulmarks hold as much significance as stains made with washable marker, soulbonds as much strength as cobweb. Meant to love does not mean will. People may be more inclined to spend time with the person that makes their bond flare, but it’s no guarantee.

A soulbond doesn’t mean people can’t or don’t walk away, even if they profess to love you still. It doesn’t mean they won’t leave.

It doesn’t mean that they’re obligated to love you at all.

His grandmother hadn’t left a mark. Familial soulmarks aren’t guaranteed, but there are a depressing amount of child abuse or abandonment cases where the flimsy justification is a failure to leave parental soulmarks on new, vulnerable skin. He does remember a handprint cradled on his dad’s jaw, faded to dove-grey with death. Ashed out, they call it, ash-grey, death-grey. The cremains of a soulmark, lost and gone with its associated person into the darkness.

As tragic as an ashed-out soulmark is, far more damning is a faded soulmark. Losing the color of a mark due to death is involuntary. Inevitable. A faded mark, on the other hand, declares: someone who could have loved you no longer will. Someone who did love you no longer does. Here is the incontrovertible proof. How wretched, how pitiful. What kind of person are you that your bonded now finds you unworthy of love?

Sometimes, deep in the darkness at St. Agnes, Matt could hate the marks on his face. He wouldn’t give up proof of his dad’s love for him for anything but that mark and the other proclaim his story for the world to read: poor blind boy with nobody left to love you. Nobody who will claim you. Otherwise you would not be here.

Other times, greyed out and few as they are, Matt is grateful for them. They’ve spared him from further pity as the boy with nobody who loved him in the first place. Once, someone loved him. They left proof of that on his skin. They’re simply... no longer here.

His father is dead and his mother is gone. Who is left to love him now?

There was one moment where he thought -- but Stick does not love him. Stick emphatically does not love him. He’d hoped -- but it’s fine. It’s fine. The mark itself still serves as proof he cares about him in some manner. He has to accept that. It was more than he had before.

And then Stick leaves. For long nights Matt lies sleepless and hurting, staring sightlessly up at his ceiling. Wonders if people could just decide not to love their soulmate. Is that a thing that happens? Because if so, that’s twice now it’s happened to him.

Maybe it’s just him.

Or maybe soulmarks are a lie.

So Matt enters Columbia with exactly three soulmarks, two of which have no bearing on his life and one of which is nothing more than a grave marker. The rest of his skin is an empty canvas, blank to him in all senses of the word. He doesn’t have much hope to fill it out any further. Doesn’t really care to.

That’s fine. He’s fine. It’s not what he’s here for. They’re not a factor in his life, and it’s not likely he’ll be marked again anytime soon. Life doesn’t work like that.

And then he is immediately proven wrong.

Physical touch can be fraught faced with the reality of soulmarks, but Foggy Nelson extends his hand to him and Matt takes it. Two puzzle pieces find each other, two tumblers fall into place. The circuit closes and his heart lights up, and he gasps as something slots home in a way nothing has in years. If sunlight were made solid and hewed from the sky to be shaped into a tree, a rock, a monolith, that could come somewhere near to describing the flash of Foggy’s soul as the bond completes itself through the medium of their hands. Strength and bright gold, ambition and care, singing, searing, sealed.

Foggy, Matt thinks, is inaptly named.

“Well, would you look at that.” The amazement in Foggy’s voice is promptly eaten by self-conscious embarrassment. “I mean, well, not look, but--”

“We’re soulmates,” Matt breathes, focusing on what’s important. The burst-impression of first contact fades as it always does. He pulls his hand out of Foggy’s continuing grip and splays out his fingers, palm-up, stunned. His entire palm must be colored vibrant, Foggy’s thumb and finger marks wrapped about the sides and back of his hand. He can’t see it, can’t sense it, wishes he could feel it tingling on his skin, a palpable indicator of a connection that God has decreed right and true. “We’re soulmates.”

“Hell yeah, we are!” The resumption of Foggy’s briefly-interrupted excitement has him bouncing on his toes. “Roommates and soulmates, what’re the odds? My parents are gonna flip.”

“I--” A moment. He needs a moment. He sways, his world knocked askew.

Excitement immediately morphs to concern. “Whoa, whoa, Matt, sit down, you look like you’re gonna faint.” Solicitous hands guide him to sit down on his bare bed. Matt tries to breathe, dropping his cane and clenching his fist. “You okay?”

“I don’t know,” he says, shocked into imprudent honesty. He hears Foggy’s breath catch. “We’re soulmates.” Oh, that was even worse. He wants to bury his face in his hands. He wants to walk out the door and come back in to try this again. He wants to walk out the door and put in a room change request. First new soulmate in years and he is already fucking it up, just like all the others. Par for the course, Murdock, why would he have expected any different. Past patterns predict future results.

He hears Foggy lick his lips, hesitantly venture, “I don’t know if I’m reading this right, but is this... are you... unhappy about being soulmates?” He sounds confused, concerned, a little hurt.

Matt considers for a moment, staggered and stripped down, then slowly shakes his head. “No, I’m not unhappy about it,” he says, still running on bewildered sincerity. “I’m not unhappy about the fact that we’re soulmates, really. I just don’t know what to do about it.”

“Do about it?” Foggy repeats, confusion decisively overtaking the hurt. He sits down on Matt’s right side, a careful handspan or so between them. “You don’t do anything about being soulmates, you just are. I mean, I’d like to get to know you better, for the sake of a harmonious roommate experience if nothing else, but you don’t have to do anything with a soulbond. The sky is blue, water is wet, we’re soulmates. We’re meant for each other. That’s it.”

That’s... not exactly what Matt meant, but he wonders, Is it really that simple? Matt imagines his roommate, mentally paints in the rainbow of soulmarks he probably sports to have such an ease with the entire concept. He wonders if any have ashed out or faded. He wonders if it matters. “It’s just -- it’s a lot,” he says. Hesitates before confessing shamefully, “You’re only my fourth soulmate, and all of my others are...” What’s the correct word here, how to explain his life. “Gone,” he finally settles on. There, that neatly and concisely encompasses the trainwreck of his scant significant relationships. He hears Foggy’s wince, braces himself for pity.

But surprisingly, there is none. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry, man,” Foggy says, full of sympathy. But no pity, which is a subtle but crucial distinction. Matt scrapes together a smile for him made of spare parts, appreciative beyond his ability to properly express. “Yeah, I can see how that’d be a lot to deal with.”

Matt’s chuckle emerges a little bleak, a lot self-deprecating. “I’m sorry. It is literally not you, it’s me.”

“Oh my god, I’m being roommate-broken-up-with already and we’ve known each other for all of two minutes,” Foggy groans, but there is a clear smile underlying his dramatics. “I think that’s a record. I’ve never gotten dumped just because I shook hands with someone before.” Then he brightens completely. “But no, you’re stuck with me now, for at least this academic year. And beyond, if I have anything to say about it. Call me a greedy bastard but I tend to keep my soulmates close. You should see my Christmas card list,” he laughs. Truth, his heart beats. Truth.

Matt can’t help but chuckle more genuinely, an unexpected lightness stealing through his being, before it dies under the resurgence of his unsettled emotions. He licks his lips nervously, ventures, “I don’t know how to be a good soulmate. It’s not something I have much experience with.” Poor little blind orphan, nobody left to love you.

“Like I said, in my experience, you don’t have to work at being soulmates -- it’s just a thing that exists and happens naturally. And even if that weren’t the case, lucky for you, I gotcha covered.” Foggy knocks into his shoulder. “I am gonna be the best damn soulmate you’ve ever had, Matt Murdock. You’ll see. Or not-see. Experience. You get it.”

“I do.” Matt’s lips curve in a rueful smile. “It’s not exactly a high bar.”

“Still. I am going to clear that bar like an Olympic high jump medalist. I am going to set records.” Matt hesitates, and Foggy must read something in his face. “Or not? Maybe? Should I tone it down? Honorable mention instead of placing on the podium?”

“I... sorry, it’s still a lot to process.” He shakes his head in an attempt to straighten out the knocked-over china cabinet of his thoughts. “Sorry,” he says again. Ah, yes, five minutes into his brand-new law school career and his roommate already knows he’s a mess over something the rest of the world finds completely normal. Auspicious start, you goddamned disaster.

He hears Foggy chew on his lip before drawing a determined breath. “Look,” he says, patient in a way Matt doesn’t feel he deserves, “if the soulmate thing really bothers you, we don’t have to talk about it right now or anything, but I’d like to at least give being friends a shot. Whatever happens after that, happens. All right?”

And that... yeah. Yeah. Matt thinks he can do that. “All right.” He extends a hand in Foggy’s direction -- the left one, the unmarked one. “Friends?”

To his credit, Foggy doesn’t stumble, taking his hand and shaking it just as firmly as the first time. “Friends.”

True to his word, Foggy doesn’t talk about being soulmates, to Matt or to anybody on campus, introducing them to various and sundry merely as roommates and fellow 1L students. It’s not even awkward past the first two hours and the initial hitch of discovery: Foggy recognizes his name from what he did as a child, raves about how they’re going to be like Maverick and Goose (whose colors were red and yellow, or as Foggy descriptively puts it, tomato and canary), talks him into getting coffee and scoping out coeds. By the end of the night they’ve migrated between one of the dining halls and two different drinking establishments and have had more beer than caffeine or food, and they stumble their precarious way home leaning on each other and laughing like lunatics. Matt hasn’t even unpacked.

Yeah, he thinks the next morning, after the hangover subsides. Yeah, this could work.

Foggy does tell his parents. Matt is walking back to their dorm after another frustrating runaround at the bursar’s office when he hears his roommate say his name. So he stops along the tree-lined path and eavesdrops shamelessly. “--only been a day but so far all evidence points to this working out,” Foggy’s saying. An indistinct, low-fidelity electronic murmur responds to him. He’s on the phone. “He’s actually from Hell’s Kitchen too, so we’ve got that in common. I don’t think he’s ever been to Nelson’s Meats, though.” He hasn’t. Foggy laughs. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll ask if he likes pastrami. But you know what’s insane? We’re actually soulmates!”

Excited squawking, multiple voices. Sounds like Foggy’s on speakerphone. “I know, right? We found out within a minute of meeting each other -- we shook hands.” More excited squawking. “It’s a little early to be inviting him to stay the weekend, Dad. Yeah, I know it shouldn’t matter because he’s my soulmate, but--”

Someone knocks into Matt, disrupting his concentration. By the time they get that sorted out (“Hey, watch it, you blind or something?” “Actually, yeah,” plus other assorted awkwardness) and Matt can tune in once more, Foggy’s saying, “--don’t think he’s had good experiences with soulbonds before so we’re taking it slow on that front. Just trying to be friends first, you know? We can deal with the whole soulmate thing later, and I’d want to get to know him even if we weren’t bonded. He’s a great guy.”

Something in Matt settles upon hearing that. Foggy would like him even if they weren’t soulmates. Foggy still wants to be friends first before being soulmates. Maybe things will be different this time. Maybe Matt can forge a bond beyond simply that of God’s decree because he knows, he knows the soulbond itself isn’t enough. He doesn’t want to lean into its unproven guarantee no matter how tempting, but friends? Friends aren’t defined by the presence or absence of a soulmark.

Not all close friends are soulmates. They don’t have to be. If a soulmark does not guarantee love, thankfully neither is it required for love, and love without a soulmark is no lesser a love, no matter what the great romances say. A friendship without a soulmark should not be demeaned by its lack; in the age of internet relationships, it’s more and more common to not know if a friend is your soulmate since it’s likely you’ve never met in person. Really, Matt and Foggy’s soulmarks shouldn’t even be a factor.

Matt resettles his bag on his shoulders and resumes his trek back to the dorm, a new sense of hope and determination lightening his steps. He doesn’t have to depend on the false promise of a soulbond to earn himself a friend. This will be on him. ... God help him.

He almost caves to a sudden desire to cross himself, then laughs, rueful, at his ridiculousness. But that’s the tradeoff, isn’t it. He can’t lean on an unearned connection, so he has to put in the work, no matter how paltry his offerings. But for once in his life, he thinks he’ll be able to manage on his own.

And maybe, this time, he can hold on to someone without them pulling from his grasp.

Friendship is strange and new. Opening up, spending time with someone that’s not mandated outside of class or mere cohabitation, allowing himself to say what’s on his mind instead of packing himself conveniently into a corner for fear of being seen as angry and strange -- it’s a lot. It’s a lot.

Foggy makes it easy, though. It’s not without wrinkles, but they’re minor in the warm expanse of what slowly develops between them. Days spent propping each other up in class after too-late nights studying or talking or drinking ill-advised amounts of second-rate alcohol together. Nights where they stagger home after too-long days of mixers or cram sessions at the library, or from catching a meal at the diner because sometimes you just need a three AM waffle with chocolate chips in it (Foggy) or a burger with all the fixings (Matt). Afternoons of shared grumbling over coursework and reading and logic sets, screaming into pillows, quizzing each other on pertinent case law, convincing each other to take a damn break and enjoy the sunshine (Matt) or the coeds on the quad (Foggy). Celebrating victories. Sharing dreams, sharing time. Just sharing.

It’s the best time of his life, and Matt tries not to put stock in the soulbond, enjoying Foggy’s company for what it is. But as time passes and they get to know each other, he can’t help but wonder: maybe this one will be real. Maybe this one won’t prove false. Hope is a slowly-filling outline. Hope is an arm slung across his shoulders, the scent of cheap drugstore shampoo, the phantom sensation of a hand clasped in his. Hope is a yearning that transcends his skin, reaching for its other half and praying that someone is reaching back.

It takes two months before Matt gives in, in spite of his ongoing reservations. “Hey, Foggy?”

“Yeah, man?”

He licks his lips. Asks, “What’s your color?”

Foggy’s beaming smile lights up his entire demeanor. It shines through his voice as he informs him, all excitement, “Yellow ochre. Leaning toward goldenrod.”

Matt has no earthly idea what “ochre” looks like but he recalls golden sprays of flowers as a distant memory. “Yellow ochre? Not just yellow?”

Foggy laughs. “My uncle owns a hardware store, I learned to read from Black and Decker catalogues and paint color chip books. Some of those names are so weird. Like, Gentleman’s Gray is dark blue? But yellow ochre is between dandelion yellow and -- shit, have you ever seen dandelions? Sorry, sorry, I should have asked.”

“I’ve seen dandelions,” Matt reassures him. “I had sight for nine years, it’s just hard to remember some colors now.”

“All right, good to know. So, between dandelion yellow, gold, and orange. Like if gold were a flat color instead of metallic.”

Matt hums, tries to imagine it. “I think I’ve got it. You describe things well.” Any remaining trepidation is falling away, giving rise to an unaccustomed giddiness. He has a soulmate, his name is Foggy Nelson, and his color is yellow ochre. He runs mental fingers over those thoughts and feels nothing but good things. And curiosity. “Paint chips, huh. So what color would you call mine?”

Foggy doesn’t even have to look at his hand. “Carmine,” he declares right off the bat. Like he’s already spent time studying Matt’s soulmark on him; the thought warms Matt beneath his sternum. When Matt repeats the word, questioningly, he elaborates, “It’s red. Dark red. Not maroon, more ruby or garnet. Not light enough to be crimson, so, carmine.”

Carmine. He vaguely remembers. A deep, rich red on the backs of his dad’s calloused boxer’s knuckles, from when he first brushed them against his face in wonderment at his birth. It was his only opportunity to see his color on anybody else before he was blinded. And of course it hadn’t mattered afterward, both for lack of opportunity and lack of sight.

It matters now. He can’t stop his smile. Can’t stop squeezing his hand open and closed. “Carmine,” he says again.

“Yeah! It’d be a hella sexy lipstick color.”

The laugh that bursts out of him and throws his head back is wholly unexpected. He smiles, hapless, as Foggy giggles. Carmine and yellow ochre. Red and yellow, like Maverick and Goose. He holds out a hand once again, the right one this time, just like when they met. “I’m so glad I met you, Foggy Nelson,” he says.

Foggy takes it, and the bond flares. “I’m so glad I met you, Matt Murdock.” Matt hears the delighted grin, returns it tenfold. “Roommates and soulmates. This is gonna be awesome.”

Foggy is right, it is awesome.

It’s strange how not much really changes after Matt acknowledges their bond; being soulmates is still almost an afterthought. But it also makes sense: Foggy is his soulmate, but a very different kind of soulmate. He’s a friend, first. Which is good, because Matt still doesn’t have much practice in being either of those, friend or soulmate, but even if he’s still not sure what being a good soulmate entails, he works hard at being a good friend.

But they are still soulmates. Matt feels the truth of it more and more: they’re made for each other, meant for one another, and Matt falls into Foggy with an intensity he didn’t think he could feel for another person. Best damn soulmate he’s ever had, indeed. Even with the secrets he still keeps, Foggy knows his soul better than anyone else on this earth. And he wants to know more about Foggy’s.

It’s not taboo to ask about soulmarks, but it’s certainly personal. The acceptability is somewhat culturally dependent from what Matt understands, and he’s never asked anyone about theirs since he was nine, but he wants to know. Matt wants to know everything about Foggy, including who his important people are, what bonds in his life are significant enough to leave the proof of themselves on his skin.

He asks now, daring, in the privacy of their dorm room: “Tell me about your other soulmarks?”

Foggy obliges without a second thought. “So, totally embarrassing, but I’ve got a lip print on my forehead from my mom when I was a baby. It’s yellow, too, but more like a sunshine yellow.” He pauses only for a second before adding, “She’s not my birth mom, but she’s my real mom, you know? She’d be my mom even if she wasn’t my soulmate.”

“Family of choice.” Matt’s only academically familiar with the concept, one of his foster parents having brought it up in a pointed sort of manner his first night with them, but he thinks he gets it.

“Yeah. It almost means more that way since she wasn’t, like, obligated to love me or anything. Though the soulmark kind of makes it extra special, too.”

Matt smiles. “Lucky you.”

“Don’t I know it.”

Foggy outlines his other marks. A swipe of Kelly green hidden in his hair from his dad, a violet handprint on his chest from a cousin when they met at age six and she shoved him into a pool. A friend named Brett who’s enrolled in the police academy and shows up as a sky-blue splotch on his right elbow. “We’ve hated each other since we were four and I convinced his mom to give me the last Chips Ahoy the first time they had me over to be babysat,” he says fondly. Matt laughs.

“Already a silver tongue as a preschooler.”

“Yep,” Foggy says, shameless. “Mortal enemies ever since. Pretty sure she still likes me better.”

Other marks, a whole list of friends and family. Foggy, Matt is pretty sure, has above the average number of soulmates. He doesn’t find that surprising; Foggy beams goodwill and welcoming energy like sunshine. For a moment he wishes he could see the artwork of Foggy’s skin, the evidence of how he is so loved. He thinks it must be beautiful. He thinks he must be beautiful.

“--and, of course, you.” Foggy laughs. “My Twister mark. You know, right hand red?” he clarifies at Matt’s confused expression.

Matt has dim memories of playing the game once at a classmate’s birthday party. “So that would make me right hand yellow. Ochre.”

“You got it.” They share a laugh, Matt warmed through, before Foggy settles and asks curiously, “How about you? What about your other marks?”

He really should have expected this. Matt tips him a sideways smile. “You know I don’t have that many,” he demurs. “You can probably see all of them from where you’re sitting.” He waves indistinctly around his face, around where he thinks he remembers his first two are located. “Yours was my first new one in ten years.”

“Quality, not quantity,” Foggy declares. Matt’s smile softens and broadens into something more fond.

“Finest kind,” he agrees. They’ve been working through M*A*S*H together, Hawkeye’s color indigo and BJ’s tangerine. Foggy laughs.

“Finest kind. Tell me about them?”

He asked about Foggy’s, it’s only fair he tells Foggy about his in turn. But none of Foggy’s are as... history-laden as Matt’s. A few people who have died and left behind ash, but certainly nothing as fraught. No tragic backstories.

But if Matt indulged in the woe-is-me game as much as the circumstances of his life demanded he should, he’d never have time to do anything else. Like breathe. And it’s not Foggy knowing about them he minds so much, though a part of him still shrivels with shame over being so unworthy that two out of three soulmates willingly left him behind. It’s the telling. He’s never explained all of his marks at once to anyone before; the only people whom they may have concerned enough to require informing had either already known or didn’t care. The cumulative weight of them weighs visceral and hot on his tongue, a heavy, heavy heart.

It takes some effort to gather his thoughts. More to begin pushing them past his lips. “I don’t... really remember what they look like,” he admits lowly. “The ones on my face. And I’ve never seen this one.” He pushes up the left sleeve of his hoodie to display his forearm. “I just had it described to me.”

Foggy hums thoughtfully. “Well, tell me what you remember them looking like and I’ll let you know if it’s still accurate.”

The prospect of seeing himself through Foggy’s eyes shivers over his skin like a physical touch. It seems unconscionably intimate. But a part of him perks up at the prospect of certainty after all these years of nebulous, fading memories. Who else is he going to ask for confirmation? His mirror won’t speak to him. And he can trust Foggy with this, he knows that to his bones. So he holds up his left arm diagonally, the back of his hand facing Foggy.

“This one’s the most recent before yours.”

Thumb wrapped inward, fingers curled around outward, a right handprint on his outer mid-forearm with the broad splotch of the palm on the flat and the V of the webbing between thumb and fingers pointed away from his elbow. He’d hidden it for a week because Stick also left a bruise. It already looked incriminating enough, an adult’s entire handprint on a prepubescent boy’s body. Only the fact that it was a soulmate mark saved Stick from being dismissed when the nuns finally found out.

Not that Stick would have left if bidden. No, he only did that of his own volition. “One of my teachers,” Matt says. He tries to replicate the grip, scoots his hand up an inch at Foggy’s direction. “He left a while ago. I was told it’s green?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of an olive green.” There is a small, shamefully young part of Matt that whines in relief. It’s not faded, it’s not an outline. He hadn’t dared imagine it being otherwise for all of these years, hadn’t had the strength or the audacity to hope. He’d assumed it faded the instant Stick decided to leave. Still, it’s more confirmation that an unfaded soulmark is no proof of love. Once upon a time, in some tiny way, Stick cared about him enough to leave a mark. That obviously changed when Matt inadvertently exposed something that was wrong with him. He still doesn’t even know what it could have been.

“I don’t remember the others so clearly,” he says instead of dwelling on it. He waves at his face again, taps a finger against the outer corner of his right brow. “There should be a set of spots around here.”

“Yeah, they’re--” Foggy pauses before rising from his desk chair. He stops in front of Matt, bearing oddly hesitant all of a sudden. “I have an idea. I know it’s weird, but can I touch you? Over your soulmarks,” he specifies at Matt’s moue of confusion. “To show you where they are.”

His first inclination is to turn him down, because Foggy is right, it is a little weird. It’s one thing to describe them to Matt, another thing entirely to make contact with them. The Church teaches that soulmarks are sacred, and he’s never heard of deliberately touching someone’s soulmarks that were completely unrelated to yours before. It sounds intimate in an invasive manner, almost gross. Like shoving your fingers into someone’s mouth or nose.

Then again, most people can see their own soulmarks. And it’s Foggy. He trusts Foggy. He’s already resolved that he can trust Foggy with his marks. His history.

So after another moment of consideration, Matt slides his glasses off in lieu of a verbal response, hooking them into the collar of his shirt. Turns his face toward Foggy, bare in more ways than one, and closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to make Foggy uncomfortable.

He holds his breath as Foggy approaches, makes contact. Foggy’s fingertip is soft but searing as he rubs over the shape of his dad’s long-faded mark. It’s smaller than he expected; he remembers his dad’s hands being so big on his face, warm and rough and worn with callus. That makes sense. Soulmarks don’t change size over time, the body growing around them instead. He’s grown now. He’s left his dad behind, even as he still looms large as ever in his memories.

There’s no sense of connection, no soulbond warmth that sparks to life at the press of skin to skin. Foggy’s touch is not the right one for that. His dad’s gone. Nobody will ever have the right touch again. But something else flowers under his ribs, a different kind of warmth entirely that suffuses him to the core.

Matt’s breath stutters and he holds it, releases it in a slow, shuddering gust of air. “It was. Um. Brown,” he says, voice catching. “A medium brown, not dark like chocolate.” It will be ashed out now.

Foggy’s touch continues to fill in the area of the mark. “Your dad?”

“Yeah.” He swallows. “He touched my face, when I was born.” A very common location for a parental soulmark. “Like this. Um.” He reaches up, stops with his hand halfway between them. “May I show you?”

“Sure.” Foggy’s hushed but unhesitating acceptance has him swallowing again. Butterfly-soft, he orients himself against Foggy’s cheek, then brushes the backs of his knuckles near the corner of his brow. Foggy replicates it on his face, settling over the marks that Matt can’t sense with anything he has but that he now knows precisely the location of thanks to the generosity of Foggy’s touch. He presses into it involuntarily, lashes fluttering. God, nobody’s touched him there since -- since--

Leather, boxing tape, blood, sweat, canned soup, cheap soap: Dad’s hands hovering near his face, slipping off his glasses, pressing against his soulmark. Any touch there is associated with love unconditional. Foggy’s knuckles bring it up now, Pavlovian.

Foggy’s hand disappears and Matt nearly sways toward him, bereft, but he’s not gone for long. He moves to a spot on the left side of his forehead near his hairline to trace out a longer diagonal mark with the tip of his finger, before continuing onward to the shell of his left ear.

“There’s more to that one,” Matt says. His voice emerges more broken than he’d like and he swallows hard before elaborating, “Behind my ear,” and turning his head to show him, where fingers had curled there as the thumb smudged across his skin. “Like...” He reaches out again to demonstrate the correct position like his dad showed him, fingers brushing Foggy’s hair back as he tucks the tips behind his ear, palm against the outer curve while he presses the pad of his thumb against his forehead. Foggy’s hand is delicate, so delicate as he mirrors the touch, and Matt has to keep his eyes firmly closed against the brimming swell of emotion. “Purple,” he breathes. The moment shivers between them, as fragile as snowflakes, as apt to disappear under a too-harsh exhalation. “Lilac? My mother.”

It’s been years. Another mark he doesn’t know may or may not be faded, or even ashed out, and he’s never had the courage to ask someone to be his eyes until now. But surely one of the church staff would have told him had there been any change while he lived at the orphanage? Surely? Or he could count on the cruelty of children to tell him so. Still, the uncertainty gnaws at him.

“Lilac,” Foggy confirms. Matt releases the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. So his mother’s still alive. Supposedly still loves him, if the color hasn’t faded. It’s an abstract sort of thing on his part. He doesn’t love her; he may as well love his anonymous hospital bassinet for all the impact she’s had on his life. And Foggy -- he told him himself, that all of his soulmates were gone from his life. He knows now that Matt’s mother left him behind. But somehow, Matt still misses her.

He asked his father about her, once. She was obviously not dead, the un-ashed lilac on his forehead and on his dad’s face was proof of that, so where was she?

“She loved you very much,” his dad told him, “but she had to leave.”

“Why?”

“She just had to.” The words were heavy, slow to emerge. Worn, Matt thinks now, with futile repetition. “Sometimes it just don’t work out, Matty. Even between soulmates.”

She loved him, his dad said. She loved him, but not enough to stay. Not enough to come back.

That night he caught his dad rubbing the lilac mark next to his mouth, face looking... looking complicated. He’d never asked again.

The silence that’s fallen is leaden on his shoulders. Matt shrugs with a lightness he doesn’t feel, saying, “And... that’s it, for marks,” before leaning back and unfolding his glasses. Every motion is deliberate and studied as he lifts them back to his face. Otherwise his hands would be shaking.

To his surprise, Foggy stops him with a hold around his right wrist. “You forgot this one,” he tells him, quiet but firm.

Matt’s laugh is tremulous. “I thought we already covered yours. Besides, you were there for that one, Foggy, you don’t need me to explain it to you.”

“And? It still counts, doesn’t it?” Foggy plucks the glasses from his hand and shifts his grasp to a handshake grip, palm to palm, mark to mark, fingers pressed into his skin around the side of hand over every inch of what they share. The connection flares to life between them, warmth unfurling and flowing into Matt’s soul. His breath stutters. Oh... “Right hand yellow,” Foggy says, hoarse now, but with a curiously determined cast. He squeezes once. “You’ve got me now too, Matt.”

Matt thoroughly understands why Foggy sounds a little unsteady. The atmosphere between them breathes with emotion, weighty and palpable, a near-tangible touch on his skin. The intimacy of this entire scenario has its fingers pressed to his throat, stroking. His pulse flutters wildly. He’s sure Foggy can see it.

Strange. His heart is the most laden it’s ever been in years, burgeoning with a depth of feeling for someone else he hasn’t experienced since his father, yet it’s not a burden at all. Overwhelming, certainly, but he’s not laboring under its weight as he has on other intense days. He is light. He is supported. His hand is held, and he is lifted up.

At that moment, Matt knows he would do anything for Foggy. His soulmate, his other half, his external beating heart. It takes him a few concerted swallows to work around the lump blocking coherent speech, and even then he’s not sure what tone to strike. But he finally squeezes Foggy’s hand back, says, “You’re right, I did forget. Sorry, Foggy,” with a mix of apology and gratitude, then draws in a breath and smiles in an attempt to lighten the mood. “But it’s right hand, yellow ochre. Unless you’ve been misrepresenting your color all this time and it’s actually, I don’t know, puce.”

Foggy sputters, outraged, then ugly-snorts in laughter as Matt throws his head back and laughs. The intensity breaks, lets them go. Matt teases him for lying to a blind guy, what a cad you are, Nelson, while Foggy yells about slanderous imprecations and being impugned and how dare you, Murdock, no, you know what, I did lie to spare your feelings, your color’s friggin’ Opaque Couché which is officially the ugliest color in the world according to Pantone, so--

Somehow they end up on the floor, Matt’s glasses having gone flying off to who knows where as they wrestle and poke each other like children. By the time they finally collapse in a breathless pile, Foggy’s laughing too hard to speak while Matt’s half-sprawled on him breathless with giggles, head bouncing a little with the force of the other’s amusement where he’s got it resting on Foggy’s sternum.

The quiet that settles after they finally calm down is comfortable, heavy with what they’ve shared but not oppressively so. An arm around the shoulders, companionable and supportive, warm. Matt listens to the drum of his other heart beneath his ear and curls the fingers of his right hand in, cupping Foggy’s mark on him as if he could likewise hold his soul to his own chest.

“Hey, Foggy?”

“Yeah, man?”

“Thanks.”

It shivers with everything he can’t articulate, and he feels more than hears Foggy’s understanding smile. “Anytime, Matt. Anytime.”