Archive of Our Own

It started when he was thirteen. It was a hot summer that year. Matt remembered the smell of sweat dripping off the other boys at St Agnes. He also remembered the rule that was introduced by an irate Sister Maggie, who had a sensitive nose, though not nearly as sensitive as Matt's.

All boys aged twelve and up were to apply deodorant before entering the church for Mass. It solved nothing for Sister Maggie, who then complained about too-strong deodorant making her sneeze, and for Matt, it only amplified his awareness of something he'd known for a while now.

He liked it: the sweaty smells, the sharpness of men's deodorant, the heat and the firmness of their bodies. He liked thinking about being manhandled by a guy bigger than him, who could pin him down and kiss him until he couldn't breathe.

He had dreams about it sometimes. Those dreams only became more frequent when he got a new dorm-mate. Dwayne Dodson was older than him. He was sixteen… and he liked to touch himself when he thought that Matt was asleep.

After the first time he heard him he always pretended to be asleep anyway. It wasn't something anyone ever talked about at St Agnes and so Matt didn't either, but he listened and he imagined. That went on for a long time before he realized that maybe it wasn't the normal heterosexual behavior that he told himself it was.

He liked other boys. Everyone felt that way though, right? Everyone found attractive qualities in their peers. It was just that he was jealous of them, Matt told himself for a long time.

He wasn't attracted to them. He wasn't gay. He was just envious of a few guys like Dwayne, Chris, and Nicolas. They were his friends and he just liked certain things about them.

Dwayne always smelled amazing, like sweat and too much deodorant, and one time Matt could have sworn that he smelled cigarette smoke on him. Chris was really funny and Matt melted inside and got all hot and flustered anytime he laughed, whether Matt was in on the joke or not. And Nicolas, who was his own age and read aloud to him in the evenings sometimes… he had soft, silky hair and even softer hands that felt amazing clasped in Matt's.

He couldn't —and didn't— tell anyone about how being near other boys made him feel, not for a long time, nearly two years. By the time he was fifteen, he'd realized that girls made nice friends but that was all.

He wasn't attracted to them and he didn't have secret, sinful thoughts about them. He liked to talk to them sometimes, but that was as far as it went. Girls were nice, but boys were irresistible and he had a lot of thoughts about them.

It took him a long time to work up the courage to tell someone that he thought he might be gay and when he did, it didn't go quite how he thought. He took Father Lantom aside one day and told him very quietly by himself.

But Father Lantom didn't say any of the things that Matt thought — hoped — he would. He didn't tell him that it was normal or okay and he certainly didn't tell him that he understood. He used other words instead, words like "Unnatural," "Abomination," "Intrinsically disordered," and "You need to repent, Matthew."

Things got so much worse after that. Father Lantom brought in Sister Maggie to pray with him to turn away from the sinful, disordered thoughts he was having. It wasn't long before everyone at St Agnes seemed to know exactly what those thoughts were so that they could be praying for him too.

That was the point when the other boys turned on him, even Nicolas, who wasted no time in telling him that he was "nothing like you, Matt," and that if he told anyone that they'd kissed a couple of times before, he'd make him regret it.

Matt did regret it, not because he told anyone — he didn't — but because the other boys were eager to prove that they weren't abominations like him and they made their point repeatedly, with their fists more often than not.

All Matt had to do was accidentally brush against one of them in a crowded hallway and then the slurs — and the fists — would start flying. The other boys never got in trouble for it either — for fighting — only Matt, who had always "started it" without question.

At first, he would go to the infirmary and cry to Sister Maggie, hoping for sympathy, but he never got much of that from her — from anyone — and so he stopped seeking her out and tended to his bruises and even his nose that time Isaac Drake broke it because Matt "looked at him the wrong way," (he hadn't; he was blind).

Over time, it got easier to isolate himself from everyone and to fight back with his fists. Words were wasted. As soon as people heard those two hushed, shame-filled words — "Matt's gay" — they made up their minds about him.

"Matt? Hello? Earth to Matt!" Foggy's voice called, summoning him, drawing him out of painful memories.

"What?" Matt mumbled, shaking his head slightly to clear the vestiges of his childhood tormentors away.

"Dude, you totally zoned out on me!" Foggy complained and Matt allowed himself a penitent part-smile, part-grimace.

"Sorry," he immediately apologized. "I was just thinking."

"About what?" Foggy asked with such genuine curiosity that it burned Matt to deflect the question.

He sighed. "Nothing."

He ducked his head to conceal his tortured expression from his new roommate. He'd known him for less than a day and it was too soon to let Foggy Nelson see how damaged and disordered he truly was. He fidgeted with his cane instead, adjusting the nylon cord for no reason at all.

"Don't worry," Foggy said comfortingly, patting the hand Matt had left resting on the tabletop and nearly making him jump at the unexpected contact. "I'm totally dreading that Legal History class too. Total snooze fest, am I right?"

"You probably are," Matt said warmly, allowing himself a true and rare smile.

"Come on, eat up, Matt," Foggy said, tapping the table impatiently. "You've got the best bagel in NYC sitting there abandoned, alone, uneaten. It's practically a crime."

Matt laughed in a self-deprecating kind of way and said appreciatively, "Thanks for this, Foggy."

"No problem. I take all of my roomies out for breakfast in the first week," Foggy told him. "I mean, okay, I didn't take my last one out ever, but Dave was one of those intermittent fasting guys. Crazy health conscious, you know?"

"Yeah," Matt said, eagerly seizing an opportunity to disparage the crazy, health conscious Dave, who was no threat to him at all. "Don't worry, I'm not into anything weird like that."

"Good," Foggy replied as Matt picked up his bagel and started to eat. "I need a nice, normal roommate, because let me tell you, this one time with Colin… He was, like, an applied math major, not my thing, anyway…"

Foggy rambled on about his former roommate and Matt zoned out again. He'd known Foggy Nelson for approximately nine hours and he was already in full, painful awareness of the fact that he liked him in all the ways that would've earned him a beating as a teenager. Foggy was more dangerous for his health than a bagel stuffed with cream cheese and he was unfortunately also — knowing Matt's luck — equally delicious.

He'd chosen a bad time to come out to Father Lantom. There was probably never a good time where the priest was concerned, but choosing the month of June, when Pride parades were happening and people were marching in the streets 'flaunting' their sexual orientations was quite possibly the worst time Matt could have chosen.

Father Lantom was hyper aware of the 'unnatural homosexual demons' marching in his city, waving their rainbow flags, and celebrating sin like some kind of achievement. He wouldn't allow the 'gay agenda' to pervade the walls and halls of Clinton Church, not on his watch.

He selected a squad of volunteers from within Clinton Church to march for God in direct opposition to the sodomites and their heinous parade. Matt didn't volunteer. He was chosen anyway. There was no argument or plea he could make that would prevent Father Lantom from ordering him to stand alongside his brothers and sisters in Christ, fighting for faith and family values.

There wasn't any chance of Matt agreeing to be on a bullhorn shouting 'Christ's words' at those flagrant homosexuals. Christ's supposed words weren't any that Matt had read in his Bible, and he winced every time someone from Clinton Church shouted to the homosexuals marching in the street with all their music and infectious joy that they were going to hell.

Matt shrank inwardly from the condemnation of all homosexuals as unnatural perversions who would never enter the Kingdom of God. Well, they wouldn't if Father Lantom had anything to say about it. Matt hid his face behind the sign he'd been forced to hold up. He was too afraid to ask what it said. He had a feeling that it wasn't 'Jesus loves you.'

He cringed when the parade-goers marched by, chanting things like "Love always wins" and "Give love, take Pride." They hardly seemed to heed the words that were shouted at them by the soldiers of Christ, who Matt recalled had been charged by Jesus himself to 'love [their] enemies' and to be known as his disciples by their 'love for one another.'

This wasn't love, hurling abuse at strangers. It was hate and Matt took each word as a barb to his heart. Because if they hated other homosexuals with such vigor and religious venom, then they hated him at least that much too.

If anyone says "I love God" and hates his brother, he is a liar rose in his mind later that night when he cried himself to sleep. He was the hated brother among them. Did that make them all liars? And if it did, what was true? That God loved and accepted homosexuals as equal heirs and children of the promise? Matt desperately wanted that to be true, but he knew from all that he'd been taught that it wasn't. He was going to hell, a condemned homosexual to burn for all eternity.

He couldn't sleep. Matt lay perfectly still, the only movement he allowed himself the wandering hand that crept silently to the face of his tactile watch, skirting around the raised dots that bordered its circumference to determine the position of the smooth, metallic minute and hour hands.

It was two a.m. precisely and a long sigh left his lips. He rarely allowed himself to be so aware of another person, but a mere two feet separated his bed from Foggy's. It was a small dorm room and in such close quarters, there was little use pretending even to himself that he wasn't listening to every sound Foggy's body made.

His soft, slightly snuffling breaths closed around Matt, interspersed with the slow, steady beats of Foggy's heart, and the occasional gurgle of his stomach. Were Matt to guess, he'd say that hamburgers loaded with hot sauce and pickles didn't agree with his roommate, although Foggy of course enjoyed the fare too much to give it up for so small a price as a gurgling stomach.

He could smell the body wash he'd used in the shower before bed. The sweet, flowery scent of his cheap shampoo lingered in the air and Matt struggled to control his breathing, not knowing if he should try to restrain himself or whether he should gulp down every note of that addictive scent.

He could still smell Foggy's peppermint toothpaste and even pick up the slightly chemical overtone of his cheap laundry detergent. It was the one that Matt had grown up with, the only one his dad could afford and the only one that St Agnes allowed, believing in cleanliness, but not in the luxury of the sweet-smelling fabric softener that Matt had purchased during his first month of college.

The reminder of St Agnes brought painful clarity and Matt sat up as suddenly as if he'd been doused in ice water. He couldn't lie here wandering in delicious half-dreams of Foggy because if he smelled this good, then what did he feel like?

What would it be like to touch him? To explore the curves of his body and to feel the warmth of his skin beneath his hands? What would it feel like to kiss him, to worship his skin with his lips? Would he be able to discern Foggy's natural scent beneath the layers of soap and deodorant? Would it even matter?

Would Foggy let him? Could he possibly? What if he did? What if he let Matt kiss him, touch him, know him intimately, taste him on his tongue? No. Matt got out of bed because he had to because if he stayed here letting himself dwell on the impure and unnatural longings that dwelt within him, he was going to give in. Sin was crouching at his door. Its name was Foggy Nelson.

Matt dressed quickly and left the dorm, picking up his cane out of habit and wandering out into the coolness of the night air. It brought him clarity and his feet carried him quickly away from Columbia and out onto the streets of New York City.

He wandered aimlessly at first, sounds and distractions filtering in as he prowled the streets that he knew almost as well as his own name. He'd spent many hours walking these same paths as a teenager, when he'd grown tired of what little entertainment St Agnes offered or whenever Belinda Hoyt was practicing for choir and making Matt's ears bleed.

He lost track of the time, not feeling any compulsion to check his watch or even any guilt for sneaking out of the dorm while Foggy was asleep. He needed to clear his head and there was one way of doing that which had always proved very effective in Matt's adolescence.

He tossed his cane carelessly into the mouth of an alleyway when he heard trouble a few blocks over. He'd come back for it, he told himself, assuming that he could find the same alleyway again, tucked between the broad brick expanse of a hotel and a noisy intersection.

He took off running, not stopping until he was almost on top of two thieves attempting to smash their way into a parked car. They never saw him coming and Matt didn't hold back at all. He was too full of anger over his impure, immediate attraction to Foggy Nelson.

He caught the first thief off guard, seizing his hooded sweatshirt and yanking him off balance, dealing him three vicious blows, twice to the head and once to the throat before the man collapsed, wheezing, to the ground.

The second assailant came to help his friend and Matt kicked him squarely in the chest. The man slammed into the car and fell with a groan, although he quickly rallied. Before he could get to his feet, Matt kicked him in the stomach and then kneed him in the face, knocking him out cold.

He stood there panting, adrenaline and anger coursing through his veins. The fight had lasted less than two minutes. He didn't feel better for it. He didn't feel justified or righteous or even as if he'd balanced the scales by taking down two criminals as penance for his attraction to a man like Foggy.

No, the only thing that Matt Murdock felt as he turned and fled back to his dorm room was anger directed solely at himself. He slipped inside the room and approached his bed, kicking off his shoes and crawling under the covers.

Tears fell, hot and silent as Matt nursed his self-loathing and his split knuckles in the quiet of the pre-dawn hours with no one to comfort him. Foggy slumbered on, his deep, even breaths whispering in the silence, each one like a barb to Matt's conscience. Foggy's very existence made him long for him in the deepest parts of his soul and he had no idea how to go about removing that particular thorn from his flesh.

His nightmares always started the same way, sweet and mundane, fragments of a life that was no more, returning to him in the quiet of the night. He sank into them so easily, always remembering too late that his subconscious was merely lulling him into a false sense of security.

This time he dreamed that he was in his father's closet, surrounded by winter things: coats, jackets, and boots that were stored safely away until they were needed. On the rare occasion, small, inexpensive presents would be shelved up high, out of Matt's reach.

He was small and sighted in his dream, maybe five or six years old. The hands over his eyes could be taken away as soon as he counted high enough. The darkness was fleeting, temporary, and easily removed; that was how he knew that it was a dream.

"…six… seven… eight… nine… TEN!" he cried triumphantly. "Ready or not, here I come!"

He removed his hands from his eyes and opened them, his surroundings hazy with memory rather than rich with color and real life. There were shoe boxes on the floor and he could pick out a blue denim jacket among the blurry swathe of colors arranged on hangers.

They smelled like him, like Dad, like sharp deodorant and aftershave and soap. He turned around, put his hand on the shiny handle of the white closet door, and pushed it open, stumbling eagerly around the apartment, searching for his dad.

He'd never lost at Hide and Seek. He was too good. He would find Dad this time and every time. His dad wasn't very good at hiding. He was too big and Matt would always find him under the kitchen table or hiding behind the thick drapes in the living room.

He searched his room first, but Dad wasn't hiding under the bed or behind the drapes. The bathroom was empty too and the living room. There was nowhere for him to hide in the kitchen unless he climbed on top of the tall cabinets and laid down flat (Matt had wanted to try that once, but he couldn't quite reach).

Concern niggled at him when he didn't immediately find him and he doubled back, searching under the kitchen table again and behind doors and even places he knew that his dad couldn't possibly fit, like behind the TV.

He paused uncertainly in the middle of the living room floor. The rug still smelled the same, like dust and age (it had belonged to his grandmother). He spun on the spot, hearing footsteps in the hallway, which was out of bounds.

It was cheating to hide outside the apartment and Matt started across the floor with a feeling of irritation toward his father. A gunshot split the air and Matt threw his arms over his head and then froze, terror and dread clawing at his insides as he woke in the dark, an immovable, impenetrable darkness that was all too familiar.

He must have cried out. He could hear footsteps in the hall, the quick, shuffling movements of one of the Sisters. The door to the dormitory slowly opened and Matt held his breath, ever uncertain as to how his nightmares would be received, with sympathy, annoyance, or Biblical platitudes about perfect peace.

"Matthew?" Sister Maggie's voice called as Matt wondered whether it was worth pretending to be asleep.

Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord: but they that deal truly are his delight flashed through his mind and he sighed and slowly sat up, resigned to the fact that deceiving Sister Maggie was not an acceptable action, even if he didn't want to talk to her.

"It was just a dream," he mumbled to his knees, drawing them up to his chest and locking his arms around them.

"Do you want me to pray with you about it?" Sister Maggie offered, stepping inside the room.

Matt bit his lip but answered truthfully, "Not really."

He was getting tired of people praying for God to fix and correct his myriad shortcomings and sinful behaviors. It had been scarcely more than a month since his disastrous 'coming out' to Father Lantom and his persecutions at the hands of the St Agnes boys were only intensifying with the passage of time.

"Matthew," Sister Maggie addressed him, her tone stern. "What does 1 Peter 5:7 direct us to do?"

"Cast all your anxieties upon Him because He cares for you," Matt repeated dully.

"And Galatians 6:2?" Sister Maggie prompted him, almost as if the two of them were in Bible Study together.

Matt sighed. "Bear one another's burdens and thereby fulfill the law of Christ."

"Hmm," Sister Maggie said approvingly, almost seeming impressed. "Well, I'll certainly tell Sister Teresa that you do pay attention in her lessons, no matter how it appears. So let's put the lesson into practice, shall we? Let's share our burdens."

She seated herself on the end of his bed, making the mattress dip. Matt still hesitated, although he sensed that any choice he'd had in the matter had evaporated with Sister Maggie's successful use of Scripture intended to corner and coerce him into confiding in her.

He acquiesced reluctantly. "It was about… my dad."

"Nobody else?" Sister Maggie pressed him.

Matt shook his head. "No. It was about how he… died."

Sister Maggie paused to consider that and then murmured, "I'm more concerned about how he lived. Aren't you?"

"He cheated," Matt confessed, feeling tears well in his eyes with that admission.

"That's not what I mean," Sister Maggie demurred. "He raised you in poverty and violence. You hero-worshiped him."

"That's not —" Matt protested, fighting her criticism of his father instinctively. "He was my dad. I… I wanted to be proud of him. I was!"

He clenched his hands into fists, scrunching the cotton sheets in his hands and glowering, although he was careful to keep his face averted from Sister Maggie, lest she see something that looked like anger and resentment in him.

When the Sister next spoke, her tone was more gentle, but no less firm. "Can't you see that your current difficulties are a direct result of the way he raised you around men, strong, violent men? He taught you to admire them. He filled your head and your heart with these unnatural desires. He poisoned you and called it love, Matthew."

"No," Matt croaked, tears spilling free and cascading down his cheeks.

"Yes," Sister Maggie said with such conviction that Matt let a tiny corner of his heart believe her. "Your father is the reason for your unnatural perversion, but you can renounce the toxic path he sent you down and be restored to God. You only have to ask. Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find —"

"Knock, and it shall be opened unto you," Matt said tearfully.

"So shall we pray together?" Sister Maggie offered once more and this time Matt surrendered.

"Yes," he whispered, bowing both head and heart, capitulating to the will of one he held out as wiser and more learned in spiritual matters than himself.

Doubt crept into his heart as Sister Maggie laid her hands on him and prayed words of comfort and sanctification over him. Self-loathing slithered into the crevices of Matt's heart and took up root alongside its companions: guilt and shame, their tendrils and offshoots so small as to be undetectable at first, wrapping him in a stranglehold of slow asphyxiation, siphoning off love, hope, and joy and leaving only fear and self-loathing in his heart.

The old scars itched today. Matt rubbed them unconsciously, unwilling to bare them in the lecture hall and scratching at the sleeve of his jacket instead. Giving any attention to the area, however, didn't ease the itching but intensified it and Matt rubbed harder at the inside of his wrist, distracting Foggy, who leaned over to whisper to him.

"Matt, is your arm bothering you?" he asked, the warmth and sweetness of his breath brushing against Matt's cheek, tempting him to move closer.

"Mosquito bite," Matt quickly lied.

"Ugh," Foggy groaned sympathetically. "They're so annoying. I have some of that topical anti-itch spray back in the dorm. We can go back and get it after the lecture if you want."

"Uh… yeah, that'd be great," Matt replied, offering him a small smile. "Thanks."

"No problem," Foggy said, patting Matt's arm and making his stomach do back flips.

Foggy was true to his word. At the conclusion of the lecture, he guided Matt through crowded hallways and across campus to the dorm room, rummaging through the bathroom cabinet until he found the spray, plunking it down on the counter.

But then he lingered. "Do you need any help or —"

"I've got it, Foggy. Thanks," Matt said quickly.

"Alright then," Foggy replied, agreeable as ever. "I was thinking about lunch in the dining hall in like ten, fifteen minutes?"

"It sounds great, Fog. I'll just be a minute," Matt promised, his fingers dancing across the counter in search of the bottle of anti-itch spray, his fingers closing around it in moments.

"You got it, buddy," Foggy said, backing out of the bathroom and letting the door swing shut behind him.

His scent lingered in the air in sweet trails of cheap body wash that had Matt clutching the counter, finding himself — as he often did — fighting a base attraction that had controlled his thoughts for much of his adolescence.

He set Foggy's bottle back on the counter, abandoning all pretense that he planned on using it. Then he retrieved his toiletries bag from the bathroom cabinet, plucking a small packet of disposable razor blades from the bottom of it.

The small piece of steel Matt pulled from the packet was familiar in his hand and he drew a deep, steadying breath, listening to Foggy whistling to himself in the next room, needing to be absolutely certain that he wasn't going to walk back into the bathroom for this.

He rolled back his sleeve, the itching subsiding almost as soon as the coolness of the steel touched his bare skin. He released a long breath, anticipation making him dizzy as he pressed down hard and drew the razor blade across his wrist, letting it bite into his flesh.

Relief coursed through him when he felt the familiar warm, wet trickle of blood snaking its way over his wrist. It was paid for. The lies, the attraction to his roommate, the deceit, the shame, the guilt, covered by warm, wet blood, his transgressions blotted out once more.

There, he thought as he rinsed and dried the razor blade and returned it to its place, before pressing a wad of toilet paper to his wrist. All better.

Father's Day wasn't a holiday that Matt observed after his dad died. Not because he was gone. Father's Day at St Agnes was often a day of remembrance. A day to remember earthly fathers and pray for the 'adoption of sonship' when they would all have fathers again.

Well, not all. Matt wouldn't.

The prevailing opinion of both peer and elder alike was that he'd squandered his chances at adoption due to his perversion. It was sometimes suggested that this was the reason for his blindness. God was punishing him for what He saw in his heart even back then. He knew all things. He knew that Matt would be gay.

He'd earned his Divine wrath early in life. He was blind and fatherless because God in His infinite wisdom allowed it to pass. It was His plan to bring about Matt's repentance for his good, to give him hope and a future, so said Father Lantom, who no longer allowed him to participate in the remembrance activities on Father's Day.

Jack Murdock was an unworthy father who died in sin, although not before tainting Matt, making him so disordered as to harbor attractions toward people who were of the same sex as his deceased and unworthy father. For that reason he was never to be mourned. Never to be missed or remembered with anything but condemnation.

Jack Murdock was the Devil on Matt's shoulder who whispered unnatural thoughts in his ear and gave him wicked desires that led only to death and destruction. Matt was to spend Father's Day disavowing him and all that he stood for.

To refuse would be to disobey, to defy the will of God Himself and bring further wrath and judgment down on his head. "Repent," Father Lantom told him when he sent Matt to his dormitory, away from the other children, who were busy sharing the best, most precious memories they had of their earthly fathers. "Confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, Matthew. Do not be a slave to sin any longer."

He left and shut the door then, leaving Matt alone with a holy order to renounce the sinful man whose name he bore forever. He struggled against it for hours. He cried, stormed and raged at the unfairness of it all. But he craved acceptance and love more than anything and so he called Father Lantom back, knelt obediently at his feet and he prayed with tears rolling unchecked down his cheeks.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…"

On the second Friday in October, Foggy left campus for a couple of days, borrowing his brother's car and driving Upstate to visit his aunt and uncle for Cousin Jerome's thirteenth birthday. Matt breathed a sigh of relief upon Foggy's departure.

It wasn't that he resented his presence in the dorm room, quite the opposite, in fact. It was that Foggy — fortunately or unfortunately depending on what mood Matt was in — seemed to have no idea of how irresistible he was to him. Columbia being a markedly different environment to the one Matt had spent his teenage years in didn't help matters.

Difference and diversity were celebrated here. There were clubs and protests and out and proud gay and lesbian couples, not many, but enough that Matt had noticed. He'd even overheard Brooke Ayers in the library last week telling Marcia Hester about her bisexual awakening as a teenager.

An empowering and "damn near religious experience" it might have been for Brooke, but for Matt Murdock, coming out had been an entirely different religious experience and he couldn't comprehend — read: was angered by — Brooke's seeming happiness and joy in embracing the duality of her sexual orientation. Matt's own sexual orientation had never been anything but a sin and a curse to him and he left the library that day feeling more confused and angry than he had in a long time.

He had no idea what Foggy's sexual inclinations might be and he never planned to ask him. Foggy was popular with just about everyone. He exuded kindness and geniality like nobody Matt had ever met before. He was sunshine in a bottle: warm and life giving in a way that made Matt want to be around him as often as possible and dread his company at the same time.

Unfortunately, being roommates enrolled in the same college degree, there was little opportunity for that. A weekend away from Foggy was a rare gift and Matt wasted it entirely by going out and drinking his feelings on Friday night, nursing a vicious hangover for most of Saturday, spending Sunday studying in the library and cursing himself for having wasted a whole day being headachey, nauseous, ill-tempered, and miserable.

When he returned to the dorm room around three o'clock, it was to the dispiriting realization that Foggy had returned from his weekend Upstate. His brief reprieve was over. He gritted his teeth and stifled a groan as he seized the door knob and turned it, letting himself into the dorm room.

He realized almost immediately that something was wrong. Foggy seemed unusually agitated. He was pacing with quick, shuffling footsteps, and muttering to himself, hardly seeming to notice that Matt was standing awkwardly in the doorway.

"Foggy," he ventured at last, shutting the door behind him. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. No. I'm fine," Foggy babbled in reply.

Matt frowned. "You seem… worried about something."

"Yeah. Um. Sorry. This is so not your problem," Foggy muttered, his stress evident. "It's… I got pulled over by a cop on my way here."

Well. That wasn't what Matt was expecting at all and he froze for a moment, not having any idea what he was supposed to say in response to that. He busied himself with folding his cane, needing to have something to do with his hands to give himself time to think of an appropriate response to the news that his roommate had had a run-in with the law.

"Were you…" Matt said hesitantly, looping the nylon cord around the cane and securing it. "Uh, not to sound accusatory, but…"

"I was speeding, Matt," Foggy freely confessed.

Matt sighed. "How bad was it?"

"I was nearly seventeen miles over the limit," Foggy reluctantly admitted and Matt gave a sympathetic groan.

"Oh no," he said with a sigh, moving to deposit his cane on his bed.

"I know!" Foggy said despairingly. "I know that sounds bad. But I was in a thirty mile zone and I've driven that road a dozen times before. I know it becomes a fifty mile zone at the end of that stretch of road. I just… sped up before I was supposed to and…"

"They caught you," Matt finished, his tone grim.

"Yeah," Foggy agreed. "I don't know how I'm going to pay for this ticket. I can't tell my dad, not when I talked all weekend about how great law school is and how much I don't regret not taking an apprenticeship with him. God, I'm not going to be able to afford to eat for a month and a half."

Right on cue, Foggy's stomach grumbled and Matt almost smiled. He'd never let his roommate go hungry or thirsty, no matter what kind of trouble he was in. He longed to lay a hand on Foggy's shoulder and offer him comfort, but he held himself back, remembering years of teaching himself to avoid touching another man, thereby resisting temptation (if only).

"How much is the ticket?" he asked quietly.

Foggy balked immediately. "Dude, no. I see where you're going with this. I can't ask you to pay for it. That's so not cool. I'd get all weird and awkward about it if you did."

"Okay, so I'll loan you the money instead," Matt countered with a careless shrug. "You can pay me back whenever."

Still, Foggy hesitated. "Matt…"

"We're friends, right?" Matt persisted, feeling manipulative for even saying it. "Friends help each other. Let me help you, Foggy."

He couldn't have said why he was so set on lending him the money. Mostly it was the thought of Foggy being stressed and worried unnecessarily when Matt could relieve his anxiety so easily. It was only money. Foggy's happiness and peace of mind were worth so much more.

"Are you sure about this?" Foggy asked, teetering on the very cusp of accepting his offer.

"Positive," Matt confirmed and his roommate sighed.

"Matt, it's nearly three hundred dollars," he confessed, but Matt didn't flinch at the excessive total owing.

"That's fine," he said quickly. "I'll pay it."

"I'll pay you back as soon as I can," Foggy promised, his tone one of mingled relief and guilt, underscored by earnestness. "I'll work extra shifts at my dad's butcher shop, whatever it takes to get that money back to you."

"Foggy, it's fine," Matt said reassuringly. "Just say thank you. It's no trouble, honestly."

"Thank you," Foggy breathed and then he hugged him, wrapping his arms around Matt and making wave after wave of shock crash over him, winding him.

It was the first time another man had touched him so intentionally in a while. It was so innocent, so pure and unassuming. Touching Foggy Nelson didn't feel like corruption and brokenness. Not even close.

He wasn't allowed to sit with the other boys during Mass anymore. Everybody knew about it, even if no one but the Sisters said it directly to him. The problem was that some of the girls at the orphanage so obviously pitied him for his loneliness and isolation that Father Lantom seemed to think that they were in danger of being tainted by Matt's unnatural perversion too.

So he sat alone. He wasn't allowed to miss Sunday Mass. In fact, Sister Maggie had started hinting lately that perhaps Matt should attend a mid-week Mass and Saturday Mass as well to ensure that he was being fed wholesome, spiritual food more regularly than once per week.

Father Lantom assured her that he was taking care of it and Matt returned his attention to the task that he was supposed to be helping Sister Gertrude with: drying the dinner dishes. It wasn't his fault that his hearing was so heightened that he could hear Father Lantom and Sister Maggie having a whispered discussion in the rectory.

It was on the following Sunday at Mass that he understood just what Father Lantom meant by 'taking care of it.' Matt Murdock had endured many a pointed sermon in his young life, although few came close to the one that Father Lantom delivered on the parable of the weeds and the wheat that week. It started innocuously enough, with a comparison of wheat and a weed that looked like wheat, but wasn't.

"It may look like the real thing, but it isn't," Father Lantom declared and Matt nodded along, only paying enough attention to be able to answer any questions that Sister Maggie posed during the week, when she would test if he'd really listened to Father Lantom.

"It looks like the real thing, but it's actually going to do us harm. Take the young people of St Agnes for example," Father Lantom continued. "Right now, none of us can say what they'll grow up to be: wheat or weeds. Right now, all I see is grass, potential for the Kingdom of God, but that isn't all that's there. It is only by letting wheat and weeds grow together to maturity that we learn which they are: wheat for the barn or weeds for the eternal fire."

Matt sat up a little straighter then, a familiar feeling of dread washing over him as he listened to Father Lantom condemn those among his parishioners whom he called 'false wheat' and who bore all the hallmarks of 'seeds sown by the Evil One.'

Matt grimaced, knowing exactly what the priest was getting at, even if it was stated implicitly: the seeds of his unnatural perversion, sown by his father, himself an agent of the 'evil one' in Father Lantom's view. He sighed to himself, feeling hot, angry tears burn his eyes as the priest continued to speak.

"Time will tell, but not always. The discerning among us can tell with reasonable certainty which of us are weeds and which of us are wheat," Father Lantom said with such authority in his tone that Matt ducked his head and attempted to slouch in his seat. "Our Lord promises to send his angels among us to uproot the weeds: those that cause sin and those that live in it, who are evil and disordered by nature."

Matt closed his eyes. He wanted to run. He didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to think about the condemnation that was so much a part of his daily life. He willed his focus to shift elsewhere, zeroing in on the scuffling hops, indignant squawks, and soft feathery rustles of the birds in the courtyard, playing among flowers and weeds alike, with impunity, like it was of no consequence to them, which it wasn't.

"The question we need to ask ourselves," Father Lantom said so loudly that Matt knew his absence of attention had been noted, "is whether we are promoting sin, either privately or publicly. I could comment on any number of issues tearing apart the Kingdom of God at this very moment, but this is the one that I think is the most prevalent these days: the movement for same sex marriage."

Matt didn't hear another word of his message. His ears filled with a buzzing that made everything around him quieten. Blood rushed to his face. He felt angry, embarrassed, humiliated, condemned, and despised most of all, the weed among the wheat that Father Lantom bid his brothers and sisters in Christ to uproot and destroy at the appointed time.

His attention snapped back to the priest just in time to catch the end of his prayer. "Let us pray, friends, to be discerning as our Father is discerning, able to distinguish between weeds and wheat in the world."

Matt didn't say 'Amen' with everybody else. He couldn't. He stayed in his seat long after Mass ended, officially reflecting, and unofficially wrestling with more doubt and self loathing than he'd ever felt in his life. If there was one thing that Father Lantom had made apparent to him, it was that he was a weed, left to grow in the garden of God, until such time as he was plucked free of the wheat and left to burn.

He cradled the dandelion in his hands as he sat alone on a rooftop in Hell's Kitchen. Foggy had gone to bed hours ago, but Matt couldn't sleep, and so he'd wandered out into the coolness of the nighttime hours as he tended to do. It helped to clear his head. Sometimes.

Foggy had given him the dandelion between lectures this morning. It was limp now, its delicate head still full of magical, wish-giving florets of fluff. It was a weed. Like that long-ago lesson, it had been plucked from the midst of worthier plants, but it hadn't been thrown into the fire. It had been given to Matt.

What kind of man, Matt wondered, found beauty, worth, and magic in weeds? Foggy Nelson did. He gave him a flower; the most magical he could find and he told Matt to make a wish. Well, Matt couldn't do that with Foggy listening in, so he kept it instead.

Now that he was alone, he wanted to make a wish, and simultaneously, didn't. He wanted to press it and preserve it forever, to place it between the covers of his Braille edition of the book of Matthew: a reminder that even weeds weren't always weeds. Sometimes they were magical and special, depending on who picked them.

Well, Foggy picked this one and Matt wanted to keep it, even if it was maybe a little silly. He hadn't been given a lot of gifts since his dad died and he wanted to treasure this one. It was the giver more than the gift that mattered, but he wasn't about to admit that to himself.

He stood up, still holding the precious dandelion, catching something light, sweet and overtly bitter in its scent. The smell of newly mowed grass lingered about it, and that of rose, the flower that was worth so much more to the world, but not to Matt, who wouldn't have traded this flower for another.

He moved to climb down from the roof, flailing when his phone rang, startling him. He over-balanced and plummeted, dropping the dandelion and falling fast. He reached out desperately and snagged the cool, metal railing of a fire escape as he fell, jerking painfully to a halt, drawing short, harsh breaths into his lungs as he slowly, and with great effort, hauled himself up onto the fire escape.

His phone was still chanting in the pocket of his jeans: 'Foggy! Foggy! Foggy!' It was almost the last sound he'd ever heard and Matt collapsed on the fire escape, adrenaline flooding his veins, making his heart race and his head spin. He slipped his phone out of his pocket, still panting as he hit 'accept call' with the assistance of his screen reader.

"Hey," he said, trying to sound casual and only managing to sound frightened and out of breath.

"Dude, where are you?" Foggy asked with obvious concern.

"Oh," Matt said a little breathlessly. "I was… I felt like going for a walk."

"At four in the morning?" Foggy muttered, his tone slightly incredulous.

"I couldn't sleep," Matt admitted.

That much, at least, was true. The closer he got to Foggy and the more he enjoyed their growing friendship, the harder it became to justify arcane prejudices against same sex attraction. But even arcane prejudices were sometimes right. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?

"I swear I don't snore that loudly," Foggy complained in his ear and Matt almost smiled.

"You do. Don't worry, it's cute." Then he realized what he'd said and he quickly strove to backtrack. "I… I mean…"

"Cute?" Foggy practically crowed. "Well, now I know that you're flirting with me. Nobody has ever called my snoring cute. Quite the opposite actually."

"It wasn't what I meant," Matt grumbled, annoyed, his cheeks burning with humiliation. "I was just… being nice about it."

Foggy snorted, amused. "Okay, Matt. Seriously, where are you? I'll come pick you up."

"Oh. You don't… have to do that," Matt mumbled uncomfortably.

There was exactly zero chance of him letting that happen. It was just too humiliating for Foggy to have to drive out in the middle of the night to collect his blind roommate. Not a chance. Matt still had some pride left. Of course, it was only when Foggy next spoke that he realized that his hesitation had given him entirely the wrong impression.

"Are you with a date right now?" Foggy asked eagerly. "You are, aren't you?"

"Yeah, that'll be the day," Matt muttered sarcastically.

"Dude, you're hot and smart. That's an irresistible combination. Trust me on this," Foggy insisted as Matt shrank inwardly from the unexpected admiration he offered. "Are you blushing right now? You are. I can totally tell."

"Good night, Foggy," Matt muttered, shaking his head.

"Okay, okay," Foggy said with a laugh. "But seriously, do you want me to come pick you up?"

Matt smirked. "Oh, I'm not getting in the car with you, Speedy Gonzales."

Foggy groaned. "I get a ticket one time and I never live it down. Come on, I'm not some crazy daredevil."

"Still no," Matt said firmly.

He leaned his head against the cool, metal railing of the serendipitously placed fire escape, finding the feeling of it against his heated skin invigorating rather than unpleasant. He needed the chill of it for clarity. God forbid that he should say anything else stupid to Foggy that could be misconstrued as flirting.

"Are you coming back to the dorm anytime soon?" Foggy asked with a sigh.

"Soon, Foggy. I promise," Matt replied, his tone as warm and kind as he could make it with guilt pricking at his conscience for worrying his roommate with his vanishing act.

"Be safe, Matt," Foggy murmured and Matt nodded, accepting the mild reproof.

"Always," he said quietly.

He hung up then, pocketing his phone once again and making his way down to street level more carefully this time. He followed the smell of cut grass and bitter perfume to a section of rough pavement, retrieving his dropped dandelion before it could be trampled underfoot or blown to pieces by the wind. Sometimes weeds were precious too, if not to their Creator, then to His fallen and unworthy creations, who made wishes on even the most scorned flowers in Heaven's garden.

Do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. He couldn't do it. He'd tried so many times to change, to transform into God's heterosexual soldier, walking the straight and narrow path with Him.

Holy words mocked him in his every waking moment, tormenting him with his failure. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. He couldn't do it in his own strength and he found the strength of Christ insufficient for this, for all that Father Lantom talked about the sufficiency of grace, and the power of God made perfect in weakness.

He despaired over repeated failings to control and regulate his own thoughts, turning again and again to the words of Philippians 4:8 and berating himself for the stubbornness of his sinful heart in refusing to keep them. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

He couldn't do it. His body and mind betrayed him at every turn. Thoughts would catch him off guard. Scents would carry him high into delicious daydreams and sounds would filter into fantasies that Matt dared not confide in anyone except for Father Lantom.

Touch was the worst, the most damning. Just the slightest brush of a body against his and Matt's heart would race, sensations flooding him that he would curse himself — and puberty — for, hiding away in bathrooms while he waited for the intensity of that desire to be touched, to be held and loved by a member of his same sex, to fade.

Once it did, guilt and shame set in and Matt would cry and shame himself for being weak. The more he failed to deny himself, to take up his cross and follow his Lord, the angrier he became with himself. Tears turned to rage and with no boxing bag to beat his self-hatred into, he turned to his surroundings.

He beat on the walls of the bathroom, on the door, on porcelain sinks and glass mirrors, and then he turned on himself. He pounded his thighs with his fists over and over, feeling bruises bloom under his knuckles and continuing to hit and punch until he couldn't anymore, until he collapsed on the floor of the bathroom, panting, dry sobs wracking him as he lay there, physically and emotionally spent.

The first time a sliver of broken glass sliced into his skin, it was an accident. He was lying on the floor after expending every ounce of rage he possessed and the broken shard just happened to nick his elbow. He slowly sat up, feeling the warm wetness of blood trickling down his arm.

There was relief in it and penance. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. Matt craved forgiveness. He longed for it, for acceptance and love. It was conditional, freely given only when it was paid for in blood.

He held the shard of broken glass in his hand for a moment, contemplating. craving the perfect peace [of] those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in [God]. Then he drew the sharp edge of that broken mirror shard against his flesh with purpose and intent, peaceful in surrender, forgiven through the shedding of blood.

He was going to delete his profile in the next thirty minutes anyway, he told himself as he scrolled through his second dating site this week. None of them were what he needed. The man he wanted was asleep in the bed across from him, but he couldn't have him. He couldn't taint him like that.

As Matt knew from past experience, resisting his devil didn't make him flee, but feeding him shut him up for a while. That was all he wanted, to feed his desires for a night, suppress everything connected to it afterward, and carry on with his life. Normal. Simple. Healthy. Right?

Unfortunately, finding someone whose wants paired with his was proving to be a challenge. The pictures on the site meant nothing to him, since his screen reader interpreted them only as 'image' or worse 'IMG' followed by a maddeningly lengthy sequence of numbers that was frankly excessive, ending with .jpg and chipping away at his sanity bit by torturous bit.

He wasn't waking Foggy up to ask him to describe the images of other men and he certainly wasn't going to ask him to debate whether Simon, 27, would be a more suitable choice than Donnie, 23. No, all Matt had to go off were the profile descriptions, which were equally as unhelpful as the images his screen reader described.

'Frequent flyer. Financial executive. Pro surfer in a past life. What's your story?' Matt skipped right to the next profile. What was his story? Complicated. Long. Filled with many mistakes and many crossings out of names of people who had walked in and out of his story and forgotten to come back.

'Banker by day,' his screen reader found on the profile of Bruce, 22. 'Dessert connoisseur by night. Message me. Let's talk.' Let's not, Matt thought, grimacing. He didn't want to talk for hours… or at least not to Bruce. Foggy snuffled in his sleep and Matt scrolled further down the page.

'My life expressed in emoji, your turn.' Matt didn't even bother entertaining the idea of that one. Norman, 23? He thought it sounded like a fake name. Possibly a fake age too. Norman was probably fifteen and set up a dating profile on a dare from one of his friends. Norman was going to get himself grounded when his mom found out.

'Looking for someone who shares my sense of adventure,' his screen reader announced next. He hesitated before he scrolled past it. The sentiment sounded romantic. Romance was a bad idea. It would mean feelings. He couldn't do feelings right now. He had enough feelings for his roommate that he didn't want to add more to the self repression pile.

He scrolled past it and found the profile of Erik, 24: 'I'm ready to find a long-term partner to share my life with.' Something inside Matt ached when those words were uttered in his ear by the flat, monotone of his screen reader. He wanted that more than anything. He also knew that he could never have that. Not with Erik. Not with anyone. Definitely not with Foggy.

He almost gave up on the whole idea when he heard the next one come through his earbuds. 'I'm a free spirit who's down for anything spontaneous.' Read: I live out of my car and I haven't showered this week. Pass, Matt thought with a groan.

But then came Frank, 33. 'Looking for a good time? Hit me up.' There was a link to a second site and Matt never even hesitated before he clicked it. And yeah, okay, it was pretty clear that Frank was a sex worker, as much as he styled himself a 'pro-dom' who liked to keep things interesting.

He certainly was that — interesting. Matt actually caught himself drooling when he read the extensive list of 'services' Frank offered, which weren't limited to sex, but also extended to things like impact play and degradation and yeah… this guy could be an answer to prayer. Not a prayer that they'd ever pray at Clinton Church, but…

He licked his lips and decided to message him before he changed his mind. He had enough money saved from tutoring sessions he'd run last summer break, enough to cover Frank's fee with plenty to spare. Maybe it was better this way, he decided, justifying it to himself with ease. No feelings. No relationship. Just business. A transaction, plain and simple. What could go wrong?

"One."

It wasn't getting better. It hadn't diminished in the slightest, not his attraction to men, not his unnatural desires, and not his growing feelings toward Foggy, who had no idea how great the pull Matt felt to him was. To Foggy, they were just friends and roommates. To Matt, they were… well, they weren't anything. He was alone in his unnatural perversion as he always had been.

"Two."

Matt gasped, feeling heat and pain radiate and feeling better for it. He deserved it. He wanted it. He needed it, the pain, the punishment, the feeling of rightness and wrongness mingling so deliciously. This was what he'd asked for, what he'd paid for, what he'd spent a week and a half talking himself into and feeling guilty for.

"Three."

It was supposed to help. That had been his plan going into it, to associate domination and impact play with the corporal punishment he'd endured in his teenage years and for it to cure him of his attraction to Foggy. Thus far, it wasn't working out at all as he'd intended: he was too breathless and too full of damning pleasure for that.

"Four."

He groaned, pleasure sparking, deepening, throbbing with the feeling of the paddle striking his ass. He was hard. He was so hard. This wasn't helping. It wasn't making his perversion less. It was making it more. He ground desperately against the pro-dom's denim-clad thigh nonetheless, craving release.

"Five."

Matt whimpered and gasped, breathless and aching, yet wanting more. This was a bad idea. He wasn't going to want to stop now. He'd known that it was wrong. The guy was a sex worker. What his priest would have to say about this situation, Matt didn't like to think.

"Six."

His elbows gave way and he slumped helplessly, pillowing his head on his arms and trying to remember how to breathe. God, he hurt. He dreaded the next time the paddle landed on the throbbing, smarting flesh of his ass, and yet he craved it at the same time. On the plus side, he wasn't thinking about Foggy, not at all.

"Seven."

Matt bit his lip, holding back a sound of mingled pain and ecstasy that rose in his throat. He held himself still, struggling not to writhe and sob out his pleasure, but Frank had said no. No moving. He had to stay still for him. He had to be a good boy. God, he'd never been good at that, but if he didn't do what he said, Frank would stop and Matt didn't want him to, not when he was this close.

"Eight."

He jerked involuntarily, his nerves screaming from the impact and then singing, pleasure thrumming through his veins, making him pant, whine, and whimper. He felt tears escaping, trickling from the corners of his eyes and he made no attempt to wipe them away. He was too consumed with the feeling of throbbing building in his ass to even attempt to preserve his dignity.

"Nine."

Matt panted desperately, a sob tearing from his throat. One more, he told himself, comforted and disappointed by the limit that he and Frank had agreed on earlier. He thought of Foggy then, his roommate drifting into his mind, unbidden. He'd told him that he was going to the library. It sounded ridiculous now, a stupid lie that would be found out all too easily.

"Ten."

Matt made a choked sound and then dissolved into tears, gasping and sobbing, heat and pain radiating, pulsing through him as a feeling of completion washed over him. He'd done it. He'd also failed. His attraction to Foggy was as deeply rooted as ever.

"Good boy. You did so well," Frank cooed, a callused hand gently smoothing over Matt's abused ass as a low chuckle escaped the pro-dom. "I should just call you Red. This is fucking beautiful."

He trembled at his touch, his throbbing, sensitive skin shrinking from it, even as Matt's inner abomination purred, eager for more. He licked his lips and tried to compose himself, dragging air into his lungs and summoning the courage to ask for something he'd initially balked at, despite knowing that it was part of the services Frank performed.

"Fra— Sir?" Matt mumbled, earning an approving hum when he addressed Frank by his preferred title. "I've changed my mind."

"Have you?" Frank asked, amusement lacing his tone. "Ask me nicely then."

"Please," Matt begged, surrendering to his most sinful of desires. "I want you to fuck me. Hard, sir. Rough. I need it. Now. Please."

"Okay, Red," Frank purred in reply. "Are you gonna be a good boy and do exactly as I tell you?"

There was only one reply Matt wanted to give and he never even hesitated. "Yes, sir."

His nose was broken again. It wasn't Isaac Drake who did it this time. Matt couldn't tell whose fist did the actual breaking. There were so many of them, eight or nine enraged fifteen and sixteen-year-old boys at least. Nobody hit quite like Catholic boys who felt justified in their hate and condemnation.

They despised him for something that he couldn't change about himself, for a stain on his soul that God in His infinite wisdom refused to remove. Praying it away hadn't yielded any results even after months of supplication. So he resorted to Plan B: physical suffering with the aim of spiritual restoration.

It was promised to him, after all, and he clung to that throughout the entire ordeal. And the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will Himself restore you, and make you strong, firm, and steadfast.

The suffering was indeed only 'a little while' as promised, at least the inflicting of it. The fight barely lasted five or six minutes before it was broken up by the Sisters. The damage was done, the suffering patiently endured, the price paid… and the restoration eluded him nonetheless, the addictive smell of his current crush Charlie Irving's shampoo and sweat taking him to dizzying heights previously unreached, even as he was carted off to the infirmary.

It may have been the concussion, but Matt couldn't help a feeling of disappointment in himself. He'd failed yet again to rid himself of the homosexual stain on his soul. Nothing changed it: not prayer, not punishments, not bruises and swelling on his face, not a broken nose or fractured ribs, or any price he attempted to pay to attain heterosexuality.

He was starting to think that he wasn't supposed to, although Father Lantom would, of course, tell him that they all had their crosses to bear. Matt's cross was the smells of the other boys clinging to his clothes long after the assault ended. It sickened him and it thrilled him and by the time Sister Maggie came to check on him at dinnertime, his conflicting feelings had driven him into a dark mood indeed.

"Matthew," she said, bursting into the infirmary with such an air of relief at finding him still breathing that it annoyed him.

"Go away," he mumbled, rolling his head to the other side of the pillow so that she wouldn't see the tear stains that he could feel drying on his cheeks.

"No," Sister Maggie said (just to spite him, Matt was sure). "You're going to hear what I have to say."

"Am I?" Matt said coldly, wishing that he was in a position to escape through the window and into the courtyard below, rather than held captive by pain.

"I'm sorry," Sister Maggie said so quickly and so quietly that for a moment Matt was convinced that he must have misheard.

"What?" he snapped, blaming the concussion, at least in part, for one, hearing things and two, being irritable about it.

"I'm sorry," Sister Maggie repeated, slightly louder this time so that there was no mistaking her meaning. "What's happened to you is my fault. I should have done more to protect you."

Matt frowned. "I don't… what?"

He couldn't comprehend what she was telling him. Protect him? Nobody had done that since… Well, so, okay, he didn't feel like protecting him had been all that high on his dad's priority list as his last protector, or even if it had been, Jack Murdock failed to protect him at times when Matt felt like he should've, when it would've counted for a lot more than a few extra hundred dollar bills did.

"You look like your father," Sister Maggie quietly observed, nearly stunning him into silence, "at his best and his worst. They were always one and the same."

"You…" Matt shook his head and almost sat up; he would have if his ribs didn't hurt so much. "You knew my…"

"A very long time ago," Sister Maggie admitted, her tone tentative and nervous, almost as if she feared his reaction, as well she should, since all she'd offered the memory of Jack Murdock was criticism and condemnation previously. "He was a better fighter back then, more principled."

Matt set his jaw, something that only made his bruised cheekbone hurt as he said stiffly (and truthfully), "I wasn't fighting."

Sister Maggie only sighed and moved to sit on the end of his bed, making the mattress dip. "I know. You didn't even try to defend yourself."

Matt scoffed. "I am blind, you know."

"I know," Sister Maggie said wearily, her tone lacking its usual stern bite. "Matthew, what were you hoping to accomplish by antagonizing them?"

"Accomplish?" Matt repeated, disliking the intentionality the word suggested, something that made him uncomfortable with admitting his failed plan aloud; it would sound… well, extreme. "That would have required me to actually plan on it."

"Didn't you?" Sister Maggie asked as Matt allowed a guilty smile to curve his lips. "Don't answer that. I don't want to give Paul any additional concerns about you."

Matt obediently remained silent, fidgeting with a loose thread in his coverlet. If he just pulled hard enough, it would break. That was the attitude he'd brought to curing himself of his unnatural perversion for months. 'If I just try hard enough…' The gay thread that ran through his core being wasn't breaking. He was… unraveling at the seams with every failed attempt to conquer his demons.

"I deserved it," he mumbled, swallowing hard against the painful lump that rose in his throat. "I thought… if praying about it didn't fix me —"

"A beating would?" Sister Maggie exclaimed, her tone incredulous. "You really are Jack's son."

Matt didn't take that as the insult that it was probably intended as, but as fond frustration, and he said quietly, "How did you even know him? You… he didn't exactly…"

"—have an exemplary attendance record at Mass?" Sister Maggie supplied and Matt almost smiled. "No. It was before I took my vows. In a way, it was Jack who made me see that I should. He was always good at that… finding clarity in violence, you know."

"Oh, I know," Matt muttered bitterly. "Did it make you happy? Taking your vows?"

"No," Sister Maggie replied and Matt sighed, sinking a little deeper into his pillows, defeat tasting bitter in his mouth. "The goal of this life isn't happiness, Matthew. It's pursuing rightness with God, living a life of service, a life of faith, even when it's painful to do so."

That didn't help. Not at all. Not when he felt cut off from God, from the saints who had lived godly lives, from his peers who hated him for who he was, whether he tried to conform and become like them or not. It was unattainable to him, rightness with God. He was stained by an abomination that even grace couldn't cover.

"That's your advice then?" he said bitterly. "That I should pursue rightness with God over… everything else?"

"Oh," Sister Maggie said somewhat distractedly. "I didn't come to give you advice."

"Then why did you? Pity?" Matt mumbled crossly.

"Charity," Sister Maggie corrected him. "Caring for the sick and suffering."

Matt scowled, fed up with her condescending platitudes, which weren't much of an improvement on her usual criticism. "I'll pass on the intercession of Raphael, thanks," he said just to spite her.

"And I'll pray to him for healing anyway," Sister Maggie declared, unmoved.

"I assumed that you would," Matt mumbled, more to himself than because he particularly cared whether she heard him or not.

Maggie sighed and got up, making the mattress coils creak. "When some of the sting has gone out of this and you're not as angry with the world, think about whether this lifestyle choice of yours is worth it, Matthew. It doesn't bring happiness or rightness with God. At least the Lord gives certain assurances. There's comfort in that and wholeness."

She left soon after, departing in huffy sanctimony, but if Matt was assured of one thing, it was that it wasn't a choice for him. Rightness with God was out of reach at this point and he wouldn't condemn himself even further by pretending to attain it. He'd accepted it. He was never going to be justified or made right with God. He was, as Sister Maggie had pointed out, Jack Murdock's son down to the last depraved degree.

It was quiet in the dorm room so close to midnight. Matt was absorbed in study, as was Foggy, who kept trying to persuade him to take regular breaks nonetheless, not something that Matt was particularly good at remembering to do. This wasn't something that Foggy had failed to observe about him as Matt knew perfectly well.

His roommate seemed to have an endless supply of snacks ("It's called brain food for a reason, Murdock!") and he never quit asking until Matt at least tried a handful of Jelly Bellies or Pringles. Cups of freshly made (instant) coffee were brought to him at regular intervals by Foggy, who didn't seem to put much stock in water ("There's no caffeine in that; what's the point of it?") only in coffee and energy drinks, and after a few weeks of futile resistance, Matt gave in and joined Foggy for snack breaks.

He could sense his roommate fidgeting nearby and he slipped off his headphones with a sigh, abandoning his notes on Comparative Legal Systems (and his smooth jazz playlist) in favor of joining Foggy for a coffee break and his share of Twizzlers, since it was late and he was feeling a little bit hungry anyway.

But Foggy wasn't holding a packet of candy in his hand this time. There was no smell of refined sugar and artificial sweeteners about him, only paper, ink, and traces of sweat that came from spending hours trying to make progress on a particularly hellish research paper that was due in a week.

"Hey, Matt?" Foggy said uncertainly.

"Yeah?" Matt mumbled, setting his headphones on his desk and running a weary hand through his hair.

"I meant to mention this earlier, but… You've got mail," Foggy announced, shuffling over to him, bringing the smell of shampoo and deodorant with him.

Matt stifled a yawn behind his hand. "It's probably more advertising. Just throw it out, whatever it is."

"It's not," Foggy quickly assured him. "It has the name of a bank on it. M&R Credit Union?"

Matt frowned. "Read it to me. Please?"

The name of the bank wasn't familiar. Matt only had one account and it was with the Bank of America, since their SafeBalance Banking program was designed for college students and had no monthly account fees or overdraft penalties. He listened intently as Foggy carefully opened the envelope and shook out a piece of paper.

"Okay, um," he said, clearing his throat and beginning to read. "'To the account holder, Mr. Matthew Murdock,' blah blah, 'trust account managed on your behalf at the direction of the late Jonathan Murdock…' From what I can tell, your dad left you some money and the bank was holding it in trust for you. It's yours now. I guess they were waiting until you were old enough to handle this kind of money. That is some serious zeros." Here he faltered, seeming to read something in Matt's face. "Matt, did you hear what I said?"

Matt bit his lip and nodded. "I heard."

"Hey, what's the matter?" Foggy asked, his tone gentle.

"It's… it was complicated with my dad," Matt admitted, horrified when the words came out croaky and hoarse. He cleared his throat and managed to continue in a slightly more normal tone. "I, uh… I have to think about it, Foggy."

"What's to think about?" Foggy asked, his confusion evident.

Matt didn't know whether to smile at his naivety or whether to cry because Foggy wouldn't understand. How could he? Most college students who got handed an inheritance check would rush out and buy a new car. Even the more conservative ones would have put it aside for a future real estate deposit.

Not Matt. Not with the kind of father that Sister Maggie had helped him to realize was poisonous and cruel to him, raising him to fixate on other men to the point where even his college roommate was a desirable sexual partner to him.

His heart hardened a little more against Jack Murdock and he said quite icily, "My dad wasn't a good pers— I mean, he did a lot of damage, Foggy. I don't even know if I want that money. I should probably donate it or… I don't know. It's just… it's tainted, okay?"

"Okay, Matt. It's totally your decision," Foggy replied, his tone soft, soothing in a way that Matt needed it to be at that moment. "I'm just gonna leave this here on your desk for you. If you need me to put the number of the bank in your phone or anything so that you can talk to them about the account, I can. Or if you need me to take you down there to cash the check, I can do that too."

"Thanks, Foggy," Matt murmured, offering him a small smile. "I'll… I'll think about it."

That wasn't a lie as far as he was concerned. He did think about it. He weighed the check and his twisted relationship with his father in his mind for six days before he came to a decision and cashed the damn check. His father owed him this, he decided as he waited impatiently for the check to clear.

When it finally did, Matt wasted no time in booking a hotel room and a second night with Frank Castle, spending a portion of his inheritance on feeding the unnatural desires that had been caused at least in part by the father who had tainted him and damaged him so permanently and with such eternal consequences.

There was only one name that Matt wanted to cry out as he was pinned down and fucked senseless in all the ways that he'd craved for years. His phone chanted it from the bedside table where Matt had left it. The call was one that he knew he'd never answer while he had another man's cock sliding deep inside him, but the name seared itself into his mind and conscience with every thrust of Frank's cock anyway.

'Foggy! Foggy! Foggy!'

Father Lantom never seemed to run out of inspiration when it came to curing Matt of his unholy demons. There had been others before him whom the priest had cured of perversions like his and so he was utterly convinced (as anyone would be) that the key to removing Matt's evil nature was well within the power of the blessed saints and the congregation of Clinton Church itself.

After many months of searching and prayer, he located a teacher, an instructor who purported to cure Matt of his unnatural affinity for men by teaching him how to embrace his masculinity and connect positively with men and boys through the medium of sport rather than the impure acts his sinful nature made him crave.

The instructor was hired for Matt's benefit and he came to St Agnes a month later at Father Lantom's invitation, to meet Matt and to begin teaching him about an approach to masculinity that would fix him. His name was Stick and he was blind like Matt.

But what Matt quickly came to realize about Stick was that while he was blind like him, he also possessed heightened senses, attained through years of training rather than through the trauma of an accident and exposure to experimental chemicals.

Stick didn't care about Matt's sexual orientation. That couldn't have been more apparent. Stick cared about curing him of his homosexuality only as far as his claims of being able to do so got him inside St Agnes and with the freedom to teach Matt with whatever methods and means he deemed necessary.

Stick didn't teach him about masculinity. In the five months that he spent at St Agnes with him, the only thing that he showed him was the incredible violence of which Matt was capable with his heightened senses. He didn't teach him how to connect with other men, only how to connect his fists with their faces (and any other part of their bodies, really; whatever caused incapacitation and pain).

The only thing that Matt felt that he was left with after Stick departed the orphanage was a newfound appreciation for domination, pain, and masochism. He said nothing about it to Father Lantom for a very long time, allowing him to believe that Stick had left because he was ashamed that he couldn't cure Matt of his unnatural desires.

The priest had no idea that exposure to Stick's violence had only intensified those desires and Matt couldn't find the courage to tell him the truth about Stick so soon after his instructor's abrupt departure. His deceit was paid for in blood, tears, and increasing shame, damning him with what he perceived as an eternal failure to master his most intrinsic desires and inclinations.

The research paper for Legal History was designed to be the death of him, Matt decided. After spending five hours in the library working on the same section, he was just about ready to give up or cry. If that wasn't bad enough, his wallet wasn't in his bag where he expected to find it.

That meant no cash, which meant no access to the vending machine outside and no quick caffeine or sugar fix. He did give up then, making his way back to the dorm room, feeling tired and a little out of sorts. Struggling to make progress on a research paper that was due in two days could have that effect.

It was windy and blustery outside and that didn't improve Matt's mood, neither did the awareness that it was Halloween tomorrow. All Saints Day would follow it in the Catholic tradition, and then the day to remember the 'faithfully departed.' He'd been forbidden from remembering Jack Murdock on such a day as a teenager and he wasn't altogether sure whether he wanted to risk defying that instruction even now with all the things that Frank made him feel when they were together.

He pushed thoughts of the pro-dom to the back of his mind as he approached the dorm room. Thinking about him would make it that much harder to appear normal around Foggy, who had no idea that Matt had moved from basic attraction to developing feelings for him that made Matt despise himself. It was different with Frank. Frank was interested and he was paid for what he did. Tainting Foggy wasn't an option.

He put his hand on the door knob and turned it as a warm, welcoming voice exclaimed, "Oh, there you are! Some guy came by the student services office looking for you."

"Some guy?" Matt repeated, stepping inside the dorm room, which was at least warm.

"Uh, dark hair, brown eyes, six foot or just under," Foggy said vaguely as Matt folded his cane and moved to set it on his desk. "He's got one of those noses that you can tell has been broken a couple of times. Kind of cute in a dirty-hot, smoldering kind of way."

Matt allowed himself a small smile. "That's really not helpful to me as far as descriptions go."

"Right. Yeah, it's kinda visual, huh?" Foggy mumbled, seeming to struggle for a moment. "Uh, I think he said his name was Fred or… no! I remember because it's similar to my name. I remember thinking that, but that doesn't matter — Frank. His name was Frank."

"Frank," Matt repeated faintly, fear making his stomach clench painfully. "Wh… what did he want?"

Panic rose inside him and he scrabbled for the arm of his desk chair, sinking into it, shaking internally. Frank was here. Asking for him. Did Foggy know? Oh God. What if he did? Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. He was going to be sick. He moved to stand, intending to stagger to the bathroom, but the wave of dizziness that swept over him put a halt to that idea and he collapsed back into the chair, feeling positively faint.

"Uh, Frank said that you'd left your wallet in a hotel room the other night," Foggy explained, seeming oblivious to Matt's distress (thankfully). "He found your student ID and brought it back here. I was at the office getting my photo redone, so I picked it up for you. All the cash is still in it. He seems like an okay guy."

"Right. Thanks," Matt mumbled as Foggy set the familiar leather wallet in his hand.

"So…" Foggy said expectantly.

Matt frowned. "So what?"

"You and Frank!" Foggy said eagerly and Matt nearly choked on his tongue. "I mean, I get it. He's hot in an I-like-leather-and-motorcycles-and-the-occasional-bar-fight way. It's literally written all over his face."

Panic turned to ice inside him and Matt said stiffly, "There is no me-and-Frank."

He tossed the wallet carelessly aside, cursing Frank for being decent and bringing it back, but stupid, so, so stupid. Foggy knew. He suspected at the very least and Matt was going to lie and bluff his way out of this situation if it was the last thing he ever did. He got unsteadily to his feet, intending to go and shower and avoid Foggy for the remainder of the day, but his roommate's words halted him in his tracks.

"Matt, you don't book a hotel room just to hang out," he said with a laugh that grated on Matt's nerves. "I'm not trying to 'out' you or anything — safe space, I promise. I was just curious about him. I didn't think he was your type."

"And what is my type?" Matt asked icily.

"Well, men, obviously," Foggy remarked, not seeming to register Matt's mounting fury until it was entirely too late. "I just thought you liked them a bit more…"

"A bit more what?" Matt snapped, the bite in his tone so severe that he immediately registered it when Foggy took a hasty step back.

"Forget it," he said quickly. "I… I can see that I'm upsetting you, so I'm just gonna drop it, okay? My bad. I'm sorry. This will just stay between us, I promise."

Matt could have taken that. He could have left it. He didn't. He rounded on Foggy, on the very object of both desire and deepening feelings, who'd had the gall to laugh in his face, about attraction to the same sex, about Frank. Matt's fury built to peak levels in about five seconds flat and he couldn't have tempered his response if he'd tried… which he didn't.

"I don't like men!" he spat furiously. "I don't have a type and if I did," he added, raising his voice. "Frank wouldn't be it! I'm not… it's unnatural! It's… against nature! It's an abomination!"

Foggy staggered as if he'd been slapped. "You… you don't really believe that, do you?"

"I do," Matt said coldly.

"Um. Okay," Foggy said, his tone unbearably brittle, "I just — I… I… I've gotta go."

"Where are you going?" Matt asked and then Foggy rounded on him too, although with hurt rather than hate.

"Out, Matt!" he exclaimed, his voice hoarse. "I need to go out! I need some air or a minute, several minutes," he said with a watery croak. "I'll … I'll be back later."

He was lying about being back later, Matt could hear it in his voice and in his heartbeat. Foggy was bothered by what he'd said, more than bothered, he was hurt and scared of Matt holding that view for a reason that Matt hadn't comprehended until now. Foggy wasn't straight. His panic told him that much as his roommate escaped into the hall and shut the door behind him.

Matt listened to him hurry down three flights of stairs before Foggy slipped his phone from his pocket and made a call. "Theo, hey," he said with a barely stifled sob. "Can you come pick me up — now? I just — no, no, I'm fine. Someone just said something to me and I — I need a safe space right now." There was a garbled sound from the other end of the line and Foggy gave a wet sniffle. "Yeah, and a hug, maybe a drink or, like, three of them. Okay, yeah, I can be out the front in fifteen minutes. That's — that's great, thank you. I'll see you then." He paused as Theo said something else that Matt caught this time, although Foggy was quick to shut him down. "No, you don't have to do that. I'm fine, I promise. I'll see you soon."

Matt sank onto the floor, tears sliding down his cheeks. He huddled there, alone in his guilt and self-loathing. Theo had offered to punch the guilty party who'd said whatever it was that hurt Foggy. He'd deserve it if he did punch him, Matt couldn't help but think. If he ever met Theo Nelson, he'd let him have that first punch for free, and every one after.

It was only the second time he could remember waking up in a hospital. The first time was bad, but not as bad as this. They were sending a therapist to talk to him in a few minutes. CPS had already been and gone. The social worker they'd sent was going to write a report.

Matt knew what it was going to say, some of it at least. 'Matthew Michael Murdock. Fifteen years of age. Admitted to Metro General suffering complications of a near lethal drug overdose. Self induced. Unresponsive on arrival. Suspected attempted suicide. Investigation to follow.'

Unresponsive on arrival. He knew what that meant. A nurse had explained it in a tone of such pity that Matt felt ashamed. He'd been comatose. He did it to himself. He took pills from the infirmary. He hid in the bathroom while he took them. He wanted it all to stop.

And it did. He'd been in Recovery for nearly a week now. Nobody from the orphanage was allowed to visit him until a cause had been determined and triggers identified. He felt indifferent about that. He was just so tired of everything lately, so heavy, so weary of being hated and condemned for being a homosexual.

He'd tried to change and failed. Then failed again. And again. And again. He failed repeatedly. Sometimes he thought that he just wasn't supposed to succeed, that God made him this way on purpose. They wouldn't agree with that idea of course. Because God didn't make mistakes.

He still didn't know what to do, what he was going to tell the therapist. The truth? The truth was that he was gay and he hated it and so did everybody else. The truth might mean that he never went back to St Agnes. The truth was wonderful and painful all at once.

Matt twitched as the door to his hospital room opened. "Matthew?" A low, masculine voice rang out; he sounded young, nervous. "My name is Sam. Do you mind if I come in and talk to you for a little while?"

"You're the therapist," Matt said in a flat, deadened tone.

He made up his mind then. He was going to lie. He'd tell him that he did it because he was bullied or that it was hard being blind, but he wouldn't tell him that he took those pills because he was gay and everyone despised him for it, himself included. No. He couldn't risk Sam trying to fix him too. He wanted it to stop, not to get worse.

Foggy was avoiding him. Matt knew it, but he also knew that he deserved it, so he couldn't call Foggy out for it. His roommate hadn't spoken to him since Matt had snapped at him about Frank and about his sexual orientation and the completely accurate assumptions that Foggy had made about him.

He had a nagging feeling that he should apologize to him. His pride rebelled against the very idea. He hadn't said anything to Foggy that wasn't true, he reasoned over and over. Foggy was the one who (accurately) labeled him gay and assumed (again, accurately) that Matt was hooking up with Frank and… so okay. Foggy was right and Matt was a dick to him about it.

He wanted to apologize, but what he wanted even more than that was to never talk about it ever again and that proved to be the stronger feeling. He was threatened by Foggy, threatened by his attraction to him, threatened by the entirely justifiable distance Foggy was keeping from him, and threatened by the fact that Foggy had chosen to sit with Marci Stahl during the lecture this afternoon instead of with him.

He gave a start and jerked back suddenly when Foggy set a plate of food on the desk in front of him. "Here," his roommate said brusquely. "Mac and cheese."

Matt shook his head and mumbled guiltily, "I'm not hungry."

Foggy scoffed. "That's a lie. You haven't eaten anything in two days."

"Yeah, well, you haven't spoken to me in three, so..." Matt shifted uncomfortably. "I'm sorry about what I said to you."

A tense silence descended between the two of them, but nothing that he feared happened. Foggy didn't shake him, call him a liar, storm out or tell him that his brother was waiting for him in the parking lot. He just stood there, tense and uncertain, and then he released a long sigh.

"Did you mean what you said?" he asked quietly.

Matt gave a helpless shrug. "I don't know."

Foggy fired up immediately. "What do you mean you don't —"

"It's what I was taught growing up in the orphanage," Matt quickly sought to explain. "But I've always been…" Gay. Gay. Gay. "You're right about me. I have a type and it's… men, not women. I've hooked up with Frank twice and I probably will again. I hate myself for it every time, but I also don't wanna stop. I'm weak and a hypocrite and I'm sorry."

He stopped talking then, his words seeming to have exhausted themselves. The smell of mac and cheese assaulted his senses, tempting him with creamy, cheesy, salty comfort that came from Foggy's hands. He couldn't eat it. He didn't deserve it. He wanted it, but he couldn't have it.

Foggy exhaled slowly. "Okay, um, that was kind of a lot."

Matt ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "I know. I'm sorry."

"Matt, stop apologizing," Foggy insisted, a little warmth creeping back into his tone, layering softness over hurt. "Okay, yeah, it hurt and it sucked and I have a room transfer form sitting on my desk because I just can't stay with someone who's, I'm sorry, massively homophobic."

Matt's devastation at the thought of Foggy leaving must have shown on his face because his roommate quickly hurried on. "But if this isn't as simple as that, if this is you trying to figure this stuff out for yourself and if you don't say any of that shit to me again, I can help you. I can point you to resources. I can help you make an appointment with student counselors who you actually can talk to about that stuff…"

Matt swallowed hard, hot tears burning his eyes. "I don't want to lose you, Foggy."

"So okay, you won't. I'm giving you a chance here," said Foggy 'Generosity Personified' Nelson, to Matt's everlasting relief.

"I appreciate that," he croaked in reply.

There was more that he wanted to say, but the words wouldn't come. Tears came instead, choking him, rendering him mute and immobile as he struggled to hide their existence from Foggy. He longed for a hug, for human touch, for comfort and reassurance that he had no right to ask for and that hadn't been given freely to him very often.

"Just so you know, Matt," Foggy mumbled uncomfortably. "Just because people have repeated the same old bigoted bullshit for a couple thousand years, doesn't make it true, okay?"

"Okay, Foggy," Matt immediately agreed, although, he would have agreed to anything to keep Foggy in his life at that point, something that made him loathe himself all the more.

"Okay," Foggy repeated, stepping back. "Good talk."

Matt frowned, turning Foggy's words over and over in his mind as his roommate retreated to his own desk. Wrong? Them? Wrong? The church? The interpretations applied to Biblical texts? Wrong? Father Lantom and Sister Maggie the wrong ones, not Matt? No. He dismissed the thought with a scoff. No, he was the one who was broken and damaged and disordered and a freak. No, Foggy was wrong. He was sweet and Matt adored him, but he was wrong about this. He had to be. Right?

He was dreaming about him again. Frank always smelled different in his dreams. His aftershave was sharper and underneath that, the natural, salty muskiness of his sweat lay, addictive and inviting. His body felt different in his dreams too. His muscles were harder and the angles of his hips were sharper.

Matt loved to feel them under his hands, to smooth his callused palms over the hard lines of his muscles and the angles of his bones, to map out every glorious inch of him. He straddled him confidently. He could do that in his dreams. He could be bold and take hold of what he wanted.

He did. He wrapped a hand around Frank's thick cock, guiding the tip to his opening and sinking onto his hard length slowly, rocking his hips as he worked to take him deeper. He panted and whined, desperate to be full of him, not even caring if he damned himself by doing so. It felt so good — freeing.

A long sigh left his lips and he slumped slightly, content with the feeling of Frank's cock pushing up inside him as deep as Matt could possibly take him. He leaned forward, casting himself, prone over Frank's chest, almost as if he was bowing in reverence or praying.

He worshiped his body with his tongue, savoring the taste of him on his lips as he mouthed soft, open-mouthed kisses to Frank's skin. A presence moved behind him and Matt stilled, fear making his heart race before he recognized the smell of cheap shampoo and men's deodorant: Foggy.

He melted at his touch as Foggy placed a hand — gentle, firm, warm — against his hip. He basked in the gentleness of him, whimpering with hedonistic longing when he felt the firm, wet press of Foggy's cock against his opening, pushing for space inside an already crowded channel.

Matt bit his lip and sobbed out his over-stimulation and ecstasy as Foggy's cock slid inside him, moving alongside Frank's length and nestling deep. Matt couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't speak. He'd never been so full.

Frank's hand cupped his cheek, his thumb brushing away the wetness that had escaped from the corners of Matt's eyes. It was too much. It was everything he wanted and more. He nodded and panted as Frank's hands joined with Foggy's, intertwining over Matt's ass and the twin cocks competing for space inside him.

Foggy started to move, sliding back and then pressing in again, making Frank's cock twitch in anticipation and causing a feral, animalistic sound of want to fall unsolicited from Matt's lips. He leaned into the sensation of too-muchness, his hole burning, stretched tight around two big, wonderfully thick cocks.

The abomination in his blood, in his heart and soul sang as Foggy started thrusting deep into his tight, wet heat. That was another thing that told him it was a dream: the lube was always sufficient — not so much as to be messy and not so little as to cause friction, discomfort, and pain. It was just right. Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, only with a pornographic soundtrack.

He drowned in ecstasy, caught up in every delicious slide of Foggy's cock. Frank's length throbbed inside him, increasing the rush of head spinning bliss he felt, making his nerves pulse, his pleasure spiking, rising when Foggy's did.

Frank's warm, callused hand closed around Matt's cock and he whined, fighting the impulse to bat his hand away. It was too much. He didn't need — this was enough. Foggy was enough. Foggy and Frank at the same time was almost more than he could handle.

Frank was relentless as he started to stroke him and a stream of cut-off moans and half-whimpered pleas fell from Matt's lips as he hurtled closer and closer to the edge, with Foggy chasing his own orgasm with many eager smacks of his hips on Matt's ass.

The obscenity of those sounds drove him wild and he shouted when he came, pulsing in Frank's fist, spurting wildly, drowning in the hedonistic pleasure of it all. Foggy followed him and then Frank, the relentless throbbing, pulsing wetness and warmth taking Matt to such heights of ecstasy that his brain short circuited and he collapsed limply against Frank's chest.

When awareness returned to him, Frank and Foggy were gone and Matt was sitting in a patch of warm sunshine on a pew in Clinton Church, while other parishioners mingled in the aisle across from him, speaking in low murmurs of disapproval.

"Matthew, it's good to see you," a familiar voice addressed him and Matt inwardly shrank from the approaching shuffle of his priest's feet.

"Is it?" he asked, moistening his suddenly dry lips.

"Of course," Father Lantom assured him, taking a seat beside him on the pew. "The Sisters have all missed you, Maggie in particular."

"And you?" Matt asked warily.

"I've been praying for you," the priest admitted. "How is life on campus treating you?"

Matt shrugged. "Well, it's a different experience. Loud. Liberal."

"Do we need to talk, Matthew?" Father Lantom inquired, his tone suddenly sharp, almost as if the word 'liberal' had set alarm bells ringing, which Matt supposed that it should.

"We?" he repeated doubtfully.

"You," Father Lantom clarified.

Matt shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know."

He could feel the priest staring at him and he restrained his natural tendency to fidget, knowing that Father Lantom would interpret any tells as attempts at deception. He wasn't eager to tell all. If he did, his time of penance would never come to an end until Father Lantom was satisfied that his repentance was genuine, which it wouldn't be; Matt was too enamored with members of his same sex for that.

"Did you come here because on some level you wanted a confidante?" Father Lantom inquired and Matt wilted, sensing condemnation and entrapment.

"I don't know," he repeated because that at least was true.

"What's happened?" the priest pressed, but Matt shook his head.

"Nothing," he lied quickly (and unconvincingly).

Father Lantom sighed. "Matthew, how are those demons of yours?"

"Alive and well," Matt mumbled shamefully.

"Tell me about them," the priest encouraged him. "Let me help you fight them."

Matt wasn't fooled by the old man's optimism. He'd been trying to combat his demons for years. They always got the upper hand. He wasn't destined to defeat them, just like his father hadn't been. Like father, like son, right? I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children. He'd never had a chance.

Nevertheless, he sought to unburden himself. "I was at a… hotel a few nights ago."

"Were you drinking?" Father Lantom asked almost immediately.

"Yes," Matt admitted; he and Frank always met at the bar to discuss what Matt wanted to do with him; it was routine by now.

"Very well," Father Lantom said gravely. "Continue."

"I met a man," Matt blurted out, determined to get the worst over with quickly.

"And have you called him since?" Father Lantom demanded to know, his tone loaded with suspicion.

Matt quailed internally. "No."

Father Lantom swooped on him with all the piercing accuracy of a bird of prey. "Have you texted him? Thought about him? Fantasized perhaps?"

Matt sighed. "Yes."

He didn't feel better for confessing that he contacted Frank regularly. As a teenager he had. His confessions had been frequent, the temporary relief of unburdening his soul only fleeting, soon replaced with the heaviness of guilt and repeated failings to master his sinful nature. It was different now.

"You're afraid, aren't you?" Father Lantom guessed, his tone grim. "Of where this road will lead you? That's why you're here."

Matt bit his lip but forged recklessly ahead. "I'm… terrified that I'll —"

"Bow to temptation? I don't think so," the priest said firmly, surprising him. "I have faith in you, Matthew. I also have faith in accountability."

Matt shook his head. "I've prayed about it more times than I can… He doesn't answer my prayers."

"He answers mine," Father Lantom said warmly. "He brought you back to us."

Matt wished that there was comfort in that, but there wasn't. It felt more like willing entrapment, like he'd handed himself over to the jailer with a full, signed confession and no hope of getting out again. He sighed, feeling weary of it all, wishing for an end to his torment.

"You think that the Lord has closed His ears to you?" Father Lantom gently inquired.

Matt shrugged. "Sometimes."

"Then trust that mine are open," the priest implored him. "Come to me as often as you need to, for whatever weakness needs prayer and correction: when you experience sexual feelings toward men or attraction toward them, when you allow yourself to imagine being with them, when you text them or when they contact you, come to me and let me strengthen you in the Lord, Matthew. This is a test and I believe that you can withstand it with help and prayer. But only if you ask. Ask, Matthew."

A painful lump rose, unbidden, in Matt's throat and he choked out, "I will. I do — help me, Father."

"Let me see those messages so that I can understand how to," the priest ordered.

Matt hesitated, but he handed over his phone, surrendering his privacy, trusting in Father Lantom's discernment. Horror overtook him when he heard the screen reader respond to the priest's taps. 'Delete contact: Frank Castle? Contact permanently deleted.'

"Wait!" Matt protested, reaching desperately to reclaim the phone.

"Trust me, Matthew. This is for your good," Father Lantom promised.

'Delete contact: Foggy Nelson? Contact permanently deleted."

"No!"

Matt woke with a desperate howl and a sob, struggling to extricate himself from a sweaty tangle of sheets. He kicked to free himself to no avail. But then a gentle hand was placed on his shoulder and someone helped free him, someone who smelled like cheap shampoo and midnight snacks.

"Matt! Hey! Whoa, are you okay?" Foggy asked anxiously, helping him sit up.

"Where's my — I need my phone!" Matt cried, scrabbling desperately for his bedside table and knocking half the contents onto the floor in his panic.

Foggy took a nervous step back, his heart thudding anxiously in the space between them. "It was just a dream, Matt."

"Help me find my phone, please!" Matt begged, dissolving into a fit of fearful tears.

"Okay, okay, here it is," Foggy said reassuringly, setting the familiar device in his hand.

Matt didn't even say thank you. He was too focused on opening his contacts list, finding reassurance in the familiar names his screen reader read aloud to him: 'Foggy Nelson,' 'Frank Castle.' He breathed a sigh of relief and let his hand fall, his phone dropping onto his soft comforter.

"He hasn't…. He doesn't know. He doesn't know. He doesn't know," Matt told himself over and over, taking comfort from the words; none of it was real, not the three-way with Frank and Foggy and not Father Lantom removing them from his phone and his life.

"Who doesn't know what?" Foggy asked confusedly.

"It doesn't matter," Matt mumbled, swiping the tears from his cheeks. "Sorry I woke you."

"Matt," Foggy said, his tone thick with concern.

"It was just a dream," Matt insisted, needing to convince himself quite as much as Foggy.

"I know that. Are you okay though?" Foggy asked, moving to sit beside him on the bed.

It was the closest that he'd been to him since they'd fought about Frank and Matt's views on his sexual orientation. Foggy's closeness and comfort felt undeserved and Matt gripped his comforter in his hands, traitorous tears still leaking from the corners of his eyes; it had felt too real and hit entirely too close to home.

He sniffled and confessed to Foggy, who he trusted more than anyone, "I dreamed that I… I sold you out, and Frank, everyone I care about."

"To who?" Foggy asked, perplexed.

"My priest," Matt admitted with a half shrug. "He… privacy didn't really exist in the orphanage, but it does now and I… there are things… people I wouldn't want him to know about."

"Well, that's fair enough," Foggy said agreeably. "He sounds like a scary guy, just going off how bad that nightmare sounded."

Matt allowed himself a sad smile. "He's not. Well, he's not if you're — you know, straight."

Foggy hesitated for a beat too long and Matt worried that he'd offended him, but then his roommate declared, "I never liked that word. I prefer heterosexual. Straight kind of implies that anyone who isn't is curly, twisted, crooked… wrong. And I'm not."

"Not straight or not wrong?" Matt muttered, surprised when Foggy actually laughed.

"Matt, I'm just a guy who likes other guys," Foggy declared and Matt's heartbeat stuttered in his chest as he wondered what he'd said to invite this level of trust and confidence, feeling desperately afraid of saying the wrong thing and making it go away. "Girls sometimes too," Foggy continued. "And non-binary people. They're kind of amazing and beautiful, rare and special, you know? Oh, and I met this trans woman the other day and let me tell you — wow. She was the most beautiful woman in the room and the kind of effort she put into her appearance, it was like this whole other level of self-love, you know? Just incredible. Amazing. Stunning. Sorry, I'll stop talking now."

"Don't. Don't stop talking. Tell me about her. My whole life it's been like a curse or at least that's how I was treated for being…" Matt hesitated and then reluctantly uttered the despised word. "…gay. Sometimes I think, what if it wasn't a curse?"

"It's not," Foggy said emphatically. "It's a gift, Matt, a gift that not everyone gets. Men loving men — gift. Women loving women — gift. Trans people getting to express their true gender identities — gift. Non-binary people not having to be restricted to some gender code, getting to be completely outside it, to be defined on their own terms, not anybody else's, and being so unapologetically themselves as a whole person — gift. Love — whether you're hetero or gay or whether it's platonic or romantic or familial or any of the hundred kinds of love there are in the world — gift. You're a gift to the world, Matt. Don't waste that."

Matt was pretty sure that he stopped breathing somewhere between Foggy telling him about his beautiful trans acquaintance and his insistence that men loving other men was a gift, and that Matt too was a gift. Everything in him rebelled against that idea. Well, not everything. It sounded too wonderful, too good to be true… kind of like Foggy really.

Matt shook his head and smiled despite himself. "How did you get to be so —"

Wonderful, his brain supplied, but then Foggy said, "Loved? I've got a pretty awesome family."

"Right. Yeah, of course." Matt nodded. "Your brother sounds pretty… protective."

"When he wants to be," Foggy muttered, his tone nonchalant. "You could meet him if you wanted to, you know."

Matt frowned, unable to imagine crossing paths with Theo Nelson by chance. "How?"

"Well, I'm going home for winter break in a couple of weeks," Foggy explained, his tone hesitant as if he wasn't sure he wanted to speak the words that came out of his mouth next. "You could come with me."

Internally, Matt balked at the very idea. Concentrated time with a family of Foggy's? That seemed like a good way to deepen his attraction to his roommate (not that he needed any help with that). What if he said something hard and cruel again and Foggy's brother punched him? It just seemed like a bad idea.

He grimaced, deciding to politely refuse. "Foggy, thanks, but —"

"Listen," Foggy said gently before Matt could reject the invitation outright, "I know that it's awkward to be the odd one out who doesn't know anybody, but I think it'd be really great if you came. You wouldn't have to spend Christmas alone."

Matt scowled and folded his arms over his chest. "I don't have to. I choose to."

"Yeah, okay, buddy," Foggy scoffed and Matt sighed as his roommate shifted away from him and climbed off the bed.

No matter what he did or how he tried to change, whether to fit Father Lantom's views or even the temptation to fit in the wonderful world of accepted creations that Foggy described, he couldn't seem to. He was destined to be alone… or maybe not. Maybe… maybe he could try for Foggy.

"What would I bring?" he asked quietly. "I… I haven't bought anyone a present in a long time. I… I have money now."

"Keep it," Foggy insisted, his tone warm. "Just come, okay?"

"I'll think about it," Matt promised.

Foggy seemed satisfied with that. Matt listened to him climb back into his own bed and settle back down. He felt torn between tentative, not-quite-there hope and deep, visceral fear. Fear of disappointing Foggy or worse, his family, and fear that Foggy might be wrong about him being a gift to the world. He didn't dare let himself hope for that.

It was Christmas Eve and he couldn't sleep, although not for the reasons that used to disrupt his sleep when he was younger: excitement, anticipation, hope of good things that would come in inexpensive packages. He missed his dad. He missed him so much that it made his heart ache and his throat and eyes burn.

It didn't matter what anybody said, not Sister Maggie, not Father Lantom. Maybe they were right and his dad was to blame for his unnatural perversion or maybe they were wrong and it was Matt's fault that something inside him was broken, distorted, and wrong, not his dad's.

He slowly sat up, pushing the thin blankets off himself and shivering in the drafty dormitory. He dressed quickly, zipping up a too-large leather jacket over his clothes. It had been in one of the donation bins last Friday and Matt had picked it up because he liked the feeling of the supple leather under his fingertips and because it reminded him of his dad; he'd had a jacket like that once.

He pulled on two pairs of threadbare socks and his sneakers, picking up his folded cane from his bedside table and unfolding the pieces as quietly as he could before he slipped out of the dormitory and into the silent corridor. The good thing about stone, cold as it was, was that it carried echoes and whispers of movement; he'd hear anyone coming toward him well in advance and be able to evade them with ease.

Having Stick teach him last year hadn't helped instill humility in him at all, something that had been pointed out to him by the Sisters a number of times. Just because he'd had a special teacher didn't mean that he was special. They were all God's children, equally special in His eyes.

They had no idea what they were talking about and Matt wasn't about to enlighten them. He crept along the corridor, following a path that he knew by heart and repetition, out through the winding maze of corridors and dormitories, past the kitchen, into the bracing cold of winter, onto a gravel path, through an iron gate, and into the cemetery.

Gravel crunched under his feet and he winced at every noise that reached his ears, but he didn't stop. He knew the way. Sister Eugenie had shown him enough times. She'd been kinder to him than most of the other Sisters, filing a lot of his shortcomings under grace, one of few not to speak ill of the dead.

She'd passed away in August. At the age of eighty-four, it perhaps wasn't so surprising, but her loss was keenly felt by Matt, who had few people he could turn to for empathy and kindness. He followed the line of the fence on the southwest side of the cemetery, knowing where his father's grave was positioned: four graves from the end, underneath the creaking branches of an old tree that dropped crunchy dead leaves, but never soft, perfumed flowers.

It was cold in the snow, but Matt knelt in front of his father's grave nonetheless, stretching out trembling fingers to trace the embossed letters that spelled out a name he couldn't read but knew quite as well as the path that led to it: 'Jonathan "Jack" Murdock.'

It wasn't the name that he'd died with or even the one that Matt knew him by. Battlin' Jack. Dad. He didn't fight the tears that trickled silently down his cheeks. His grief for him returned to him so easily, even such a short distance from the place that so condemned the man whose grave marker Matt clung to, the only tangible piece of him that he had left, apart from his name and if Sister Maggie had her way, someone would take that too.

If a family adopted him (they wouldn't) he'd be expected to take their name, to leave Jack Murdock behind, like he'd been left. The grave marker was cold under his fingertips, unlike the last time he'd touched his dad's face. He'd still been warm then. Bodies stayed warm for a few hours after death. And boys mourned their fathers years after they'd been taken from them.

A familiar prayer came to mind and he prayed it with tears and trembling lips, "Eternal rest, grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen."

He brought his fingers to tear-stained lips and kissed them, placing them reverently against the cold stone marker beneath which no living heart beat, leaving Jack Murdock with a kiss and the love of his gay son, who had begun to doubt that his father would have condemned him for it in the same manner as Sister Maggie and Father Lantom.

"Love you, Dad. Merry Christmas, okay?" he whispered to him as he trudged back to St Agnes, upon which soft snow was falling.

Foggy Nelson's family was loud. Matt had only been staying with them for two days and he had a perpetual migraine. They were loud. They were happy. They squabbled over trivialities quite as often as they laughed at private jokes. And they loved Christmas, the more commercialized aspects of the holiday rather than the religious elements that Matt was accustomed to.

After only a couple of days, he'd reached peak levels of frustration for one reason: he couldn't anticipate them. Whatever he expected, the Nelson's did the opposite. If he expected to be left out of festivities and fun because he was blind, they went out of their way to include him.

Perhaps more baffling than that, he'd fully expected to be accosted by Theo Nelson for the things that he'd previously said to Foggy that had driven him out of the dorm room and into his brother's car. But no such confrontation occurred. On the contrary, whenever Theo spoke to him, it was with kindness and geniality, like he actually liked him.

The Nelson family as a whole were uncommonly kind and generous, welcoming to the stranger in their midst, and eager for him to celebrate the holiday with them. On Monday afternoon, the Nelson men: Ed, Uncle Timmy, Theo, and Foggy all piled into the family car — taking Matt along with them, who was reluctant to squeeze in the middle of the backseat between Theo and Foggy — to track down a suitable Christmas tree.

Matt couldn't remember ever having had a real tree, a big one. He and his dad had only ever had a plastic tabletop tree that stood about a foot tall. The tree that Ed and Uncle Timmy finally approved towered over him and smelled amazing, like real pine, earth, snow, and Christmas.

Matt was almost moved to tears on the drive back to the house. He'd never had a Christmas like this, with a real tree and a real family, all singing the same Christmas song in the car, with Matt reluctantly joining in at Foggy's insistence that he sing 'Feliz Navidad' with all the requisite gusto and Christmas spirit.

He spent the afternoon helping the Nelson family decorate the tree. Nobody tried to stop him or pointed out that he was blind and that he couldn't even see the decorations he was hanging, which was probably going to ruin the whole aesthetic of the tree.

No objections came, only encouragement and good humor and as Foggy pointed out to him when Matt was at first reluctant to hang decorations, certain that he'd do it wrong, there was no way to hang baubles upside down anyway, so he might as well go for it.

Go for it, he did. And it wasn't the sad, hollow object that he'd always thought it would be if he was ever fortunate enough to have a real tree. Sure, he couldn't see it, but he could feel it, feel the warmth of the fairy lights and the sharp coarseness of the pine needles and supporting branches, feel the joy and the love that had gone into it and he could smell it.

The pine was heavenly, paired with peppermint candy canes and sugar cookies baked by Anna and Candace. Matt didn't even want a present for himself when Christmas finally came, just this tree and the memory of what it felt like to be included in the decoration of it.

"Hey, Ma!" Foggy called from beside him as he and Theo finished winding a long string of popcorn around the tree. "We're about ready for tinsel now."

"It looks fabulous," Anna cooed approvingly.

"I'll take your word for it," Matt muttered under his breath and Theo let out a hearty — and loud — guffaw.

But then he stopped abruptly. "It's cool to laugh, right?" he asked, his tone tense, anxious.

Matt allowed himself a small smile and said agreeably, "Yeah, it's… it's cool."

Theo let out a sigh of relief and Matt's smile only widened. He didn't want Foggy's family to treat him like he was made of glass — and they didn't — so he let himself relax slightly, something that was made easier by hours of good company and concentrated time with the best Christmas tree he'd ever had.

"Okay, tinsel, let me see here," Anna mumbled distractedly, rummaging through one of the boxes that she and Candace had brought down from the attic earlier. "Yes, I remembered to bring the box down, Candy, don't even start. Ah, here! We've got magenta, yellow, and cyan, of course."

"Magenta?" Matt repeated with a slight frown.

"Pink," Candace supplied. "And cyan is like a light blue. I assume you're familiar with yellow?"

"Yes," Matt replied as Foggy snorted. "Why those colors?"

"Tradition," Theo answered quickly.

"Pride," Anna added, her tone warm.

"Yeah, that," Foggy agreed.

Some unspoken signal seemed to have passed between the Nelson siblings and their mother and Matt hesitated, sensing some special meaning or secret that he wasn't privy to. He wanted to ask to satisfy his own curiosity, but he also didn't want to cause offense, not when the Nelson's had gone to such lengths to make him feel included and welcome.

But his puzzlement persisted and he ventured hesitantly, "I thought… traditional colors for Christmas are red and green."

"Foggy," Anna murmured gently, taking him aside. "I should have thought of this. Is it okay if I —"

"Yeah, he knows. I told him," Foggy quickly assured his mother, who seemed relieved.

She returned to the small group and announced, "Magenta, yellow, and cyan are the colors of the pansexual flag, Matt. We like to show Foggy our support and love in every way we can, on Christmas Day and every other day we celebrate together."

"They're my colors," Foggy added, his tone unusually pensive. "You've got pink or magenta for attraction to women. yellow for attraction to non-binary people, and cyan — light blue — for —"

"Attraction to men," Matt finished, his throat constricting. "Can I —"

"Yeah. Yeah, go right ahead. Here," Foggy said, depositing a bundle of scratchy tinsel in Matt's hands.

He held it almost reverently for a moment, unable to see the precise shade of cyan blue that he held, but able to feel its significance to Foggy… and to him. He swallowed hard against the painful lump that had risen, unbidden, in his throat, and slowly, carefully began to wind the tinsel around the tree.

When he was finished, he stood back and commented, "I like that color. Light blue like… the sky."

"I like that color too," Foggy admitted, gently squeezing his shoulder.

Matt nodded, feeling tears well in his eyes. It was so easy with Foggy's family. They told people Foggy trusted about his sexual orientation proudly, with acceptance and love and not shame. They didn't condemn Foggy or say that he was broken or intrinsically disordered. He was just Foggy: loved, fully accepted, and embraced, their son, their brother. Could he ever be like that? Just Matt? Accepted and loved as he was?

He hadn't let himself touch another boy in nearly six months. Truth be told, he hadn't touched anyone in that period of time, and they hadn't touched him, wanting to avoid the taint of the queer boy, he supposed.

It was a new level of isolation that he hadn't experienced before, not to be touched. He felt that he had a good idea how some of the lepers felt in Biblical times, to be isolated and cut off from everyone. No hugs, no hand to hold, no arm to guide… no lips to kiss.

That was something he missed, kissing. Soft, warm, thrilling, tender, tempting, sensual, so so sensual… but no more, no longer a part of his life, never a part of his life again, unless it was with a girl. Matt couldn't imagine that. He'd tried to, but even in his head, kissing girls felt weird — wrong — wouldn't Father Lantom be horrified to hear that? Even his imagination was disordered.

He sighed and returned to his current lesson, a study of Proverbs 31. A wife of noble character, who can find? he read, his fingers skimming over Braille cells with hesitation and a little revulsion. It wasn't something he ever wanted, a wife. He was supposed to want that, of course, but everything in him recoiled at the thought.

His mind returned sometimes to Song of Songs and the words that echoed the desires of his heart. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth; for your love is more delightful than wine. Of course, those were the words of the female lover in that chapter, but they were at least something that Matt could imagine and draw comfort and connection from: the thought of his kisses.

Take me away with you — let us hurry, he thought, sighing at the promise of escaping into the arms of a man that seemed so far distant if not impossible. It wasn't for him: escape, love, either unconditional or of the kind that he dreamed about and longed for: the love of men. It wasn't for him, only this: All day long I have been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments.

He'd been back at Columbia for a few weeks now and Foggy still hadn't brought it up: the almost-kiss on New Year's Eve. It shouldn't have happened. It had come at the end of two wonderful weeks with the Nelson family. Matt had been so enchanted by them, bewitched by their kindness, entranced by their love for one another.

It was a very different love from the kind he'd experienced during his adolescence at St Agnes. That had been love by word only. The Nelsons were the embodiment of love by deed. By action. By generosity. By unconditional acceptance. Love no matter what. Love regardless of whether you agreed with them or not, whether you were heterosexual or not, whether you barracked for the Boston Bolts or not.

Love. It was a kind of love that Matt had never known in his life. Freeing. Magnetic. He'd been drawn to Foggy before. From the very beginning. The night the fireworks exploded over New York City was the night he realized that he didn't want to fight that pull (if he even could) and simultaneously reached the conclusion that he was entirely unworthy of Foggy.

The distant bangs, pops, and piercing whistles of fireworks assaulted his ear-drums and he didn't — couldn't — hear the words that left Foggy's lips in a whisper of breath that brushed, warm and inviting, against Matt's cheek. He turned and that was the moment when their mouths almost touched, by accident or perhaps by the will of whatever homosexual demon Father Lantom had always been unable to banish from Matt.

He was still thinking about it weeks later, but not with regret for temptation narrowly averted, with longing, with a deep, throbbing ache for an opportunity narrowly missed. He loathed himself for it. Not for his attraction to him, but for being Matt Murdock: damaged, prejudiced, hypocritical. Foggy, by contrast, was warm, accepting, and loving, a gift in all the wonderful ways that Foggy declared queer individuals to be.

Matt was unworthy of him. He knew it and he trembled every time that Foggy was near him, everything inside him quaking with the knowledge that he was attracted to him, that Foggy was amazing, irresistible, the sun in the sky, giving life, warmth, and light, the blazing miracle around which Matt orbited, the smallest and lowest of planets, content to be within touching distance of the sun, but remaining ever distant from him, unworthy to be smiled upon by Foggy's golden countenance.

He loved everything that Foggy was, but he knew that he'd never measure up to him, never be able to give him all the love that Foggy deserved. He'd never tell him, he decided that night, he'd never burden Foggy with his feelings. He'd never offer up his pathetic heart to him or dare to think that he was deserving of his affections. No. Foggy could never know.

He shifted uncomfortably as Foggy leaned over him, reading his tablet — and the lecture notes displayed on the screen — over his shoulder. "Hey, Fog, do you mind?"

"Sorry," Foggy apologized, drawing back. "My laptop died. I just wanted to check the citation on the last case that Waters said we had to put in our paper or we'd fail. It's kind of important."

"It kind of is. Here," Matt said, disconnecting his Braille display and handing his tablet to Foggy. "You can find the case and I'll make coffee. I need a break anyway."

"Cool. Thanks, Matt," Foggy mumbled gratefully as Matt stood, rolling his shoulders.

He tossed his roommate a small smile. "No problem."

He caught a whiff of him as he passed him on his way to the tiny kitchenette to make coffee. The sun smelled like cafeteria chocolate cake and sweet, flowery perfume today, like a coffee date with Marci Stahl. Matt sighed, deciding that he was going to text Frank. That was what he deserved: repression, shame, and if he was really lucky, an STD.

He hated it at St Agnes. He hated it. But even something hated was familiar. Known. Comforting in consistency. It wasn't home. It was an anchor. Sometimes it felt like a bad thing, like the anchor that was St Agnes was dragging him deeper into a sea of misery and despair. Other times, that anchor felt like the only thing keeping him from being swept into uncertainty and terror.

He didn't want to go to the group home. Sister Maggie had been pushing the orphanage powers that be to consider approving transferring him to the care of Clinton Browning and his wife Marina for several months now. He didn't know what he'd done to make Sister Maggie want to get rid of him so badly.

Well, so okay, he knew. He was gay and that hadn't changed despite many attempts on the part of Father Lantom and Sister Maggie to put him on the straight and narrow path, emphasis on straight. For that, he was to be ripped away from a place that was familiar, but hated, so, so hated.

"This is temporary, Matthew," they tried to assure him.

"It's just for the summer. Purely on a trial basis." But their heartbeats betrayed them; they wanted it to be permanent, Sister Maggie in particular.

"Try to think of it as an opportunity."

"The Lord moves in mysterious ways," they agreed.

There was nothing mysterious about it in Matt's opinion. Clinton Browning was well known at St Agnes. He'd been where Matt was now, only twenty years ago. He was a so-called ex-gay, and he and his wife ran a conversion ministry for straight Catholic orphans and foster children struggling with same-sex attraction.

Matt had met Clinton four times and Marina only once. They were pleasant enough, but he didn't know what they'd treat him like away from the scant protections of St Agnes. In their own home, they could enforce their own rules and inflict whatever treatment they deemed necessary to cure him of his homosexuality.

He was worried about it, but Sister Maggie only interpreted his concerns as resistance to turning away from his sinful, disordered nature, and less than a fortnight later, she got her way. The paperwork for a temporary transfer to the group home was filed and approved.

Matt knew that his fears had been well founded within the first hour of being placed with the Brownings. They went through the bag he'd brought from St Agnes within about the first five minutes, confiscating any property that they deemed 'too feminine' and thus dangerously homosexual in nature, things like his grandmother's crucifix necklace, his small bottle of conditioner… and his glasses; he wasn't to be permitted to hide behind them.

He had his own room with a door that locked (from the outside) and a window that didn't open at all. For the month that he stayed with the Brownings, he was interrogated night and day about every homosexual thought that entered his head.

He was quizzed about previous crushes, previous partners, and previous traumas. Matt obstinately refused to speak about what happened to his father and they punished him, although not with violence like Stick, with deprivation: no contact with any other person, no freedom to move outside his room, no TV, Braille materials or audio-books to relieve the boredom… and no cane. No independence or assistance except for what they were willing to provide by privilege rather than right.

Matt hated every single minute of it. The worst part was that whenever Father Lantom called and asked how he was adjusting, they wouldn't allow Matt to speak to him or to have contact with anyone from Clinton Church or St Agnes. He was alone, imprisoned by someone who should have understood him and shown him compassion and didn't.

It was late on a Friday night when Matt finally made a break for it, shattering the second-story window of his bedroom, sliding down the drainpipe and then tumbling from the gutter into the garden below. But he was out. Bruised and winded, but out. He was free. He ran directly to St Agnes and Father Lantom, rousing the priest from sleep and falling at his feet, bleeding, bruised, and desperate.

"I'll do whatever you tell me, I swear. I'll… I'll try to be straight. I'll do anything. Just don't make me go back there. Please!"

A gentle hand rested on his head as Matt knelt sobbing and wretched at Father Lantom's feet. Prayers for discernment and obedience were prayed over him and Matt clung to the hope the priest offered, the hope of safety in the Lord's House, if he could only learn to be straight and earn a place among God's people.

The bar was packed and noisy. Matt hated it, but it was Frank's preference. He liked it, the cover of noise and sweaty bodies. Matt understood it. He was bolder under the shield the chaos provided, more likely to ask for what he wanted than he was if he was presented with a list of services in the intimacy of a private hotel room. This was much better.

He picked his way slowly across the room, able to pick up the sharpness of Frank's aftershave from among the stink of perfumes and deodorants that clouded the air in the room. He hadn't yet decided what he wanted to do with Frank tonight.

Forgetting how he felt about Foggy was an impossibility now (if it had ever been in the cards to begin with) but that didn't mean that he couldn't satisfy himself in other respects. That thought settled any lingering indecisiveness and he pushed through the crowd of people milling about, approaching the table where Frank sat alone.

"Back again, huh?" Frank said, his tone almost affectionate as Matt took the seat directly across from him.

He smiled as he folded his cane, remarking playfully, "I can't seem to stay away."

"That's cute," Frank replied, something cool in his tone setting alarm bells ringing in Matt's head. "You know, if I was a different kind of guy, I'd wonder why you keep coming back —"

"Wow," Matt interrupted with a half-laugh. "You don't think much of yourself, do you?"

"I meant," Frank persisted, undeterred by Matt's attempt at a humorous brush-off, "a good-looking young guy like you… I figure you've got better offers."

"Offers?" Matt repeated with distaste.

"Prospects," Frank said brusquely, the air between them shifting as he waved a hand impatiently. "People you'd rather be with."

Matt froze, some half-buried instinct telling him to be careful if not downright wary. Frank was in some kind of mood tonight. He could pick up that much from his tone alone… or maybe he genuinely cared about Matt's happiness and well being. No, he told himself, dismissing the thought immediately. Frank was here to do a job. That was all. Matt's personal life wasn't his business.

"You're wrong about that, Frank. There's no one," he lied, feeling his face grow hot under Frank's intense scrutiny.

"Really?" Frank remarked, his tone heavy with doubt and skepticism. "What's his name? Come on. Who am I gonna tell, Red?"

Matt hesitated. "He's not… it's not gonna happen."

"Oh, I know that look," Frank declared, irritating him. "Married or straight?"

"Neither, just better than I deserve. Than I'll ever deserve," Matt mumbled under his breath.

He shook his head and sighed, uncomfortable with the knowledge that Frank had met Foggy when he'd returned his wallet to the Student Services Office that one time. Surely he remembered him. Did they have a conversation? Did Foggy tell Frank that he was his roommate? He probably did. Was that how Frank knew that there was someone in his life that he was too cowardly and too unworthy to offer himself to?

When he next spoke, Frank's tone was five or six degrees warmer than it had been. "Now who doesn't think much of themselves?" he asked with a soft, sad laugh. "Go get him, Red."

Matt shook his head. "I can't do that."

"Why not?" Frank asked gently.

"Because once I do, I won't wanna stop, and I can't drag him down to Hell with me," Matt declared, his resolve strengthening even as his voice wavered and broke.

A gentle hand was laid across his. "Let me tell you a secret, Red. Hell is what you're doing right here. Denying yourself the one person you know will make you happy."

Matt swallowed hard, fighting the tears that were desperate to escape. He almost leaned into it, into the warmth and the gentle pressure of Frank's hand. His touch was comforting, but it wasn't comfort that Matt wanted tonight, and it wasn't comfort that would last anyway. No, there was only debauchery and destruction ahead for him. But Frank didn't need to know that.

"Denying yourself is just part of Catholicism," Matt remarked casually, trying to steer the conversation away from Foggy. "If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross —"

"— and follow me," Frank finished with an unimpressed air. "Yeah, yeah. I went to seminary school. Don't look so surprised." Then he paused. "Is he your cross, Red?"

"Him?" Matt said, shaking his head. "No."

"Same-sex attraction then?" Frank guessed, withdrawing his hand and his comfort. "That's not a cross, Red. That's a fucking gift. Trust me on this. Go home to your guy."

"No. Please. Sir," Matt added with sudden inspiration, but Frank wouldn't be moved.

"You think that's what I wanna hear, huh?" he muttered, sighing to himself. "Red, it ain't no secret that I enjoy what I do, but I like to do it with people who wanna try something new or spice things up in their sex life, or maybe live out a fantasy that they've always thought about… no regrets, you know? But this is not — it's self-destructive what you're doing and I can't be part of it anymore."

He pushed his chair back and stood up, while Matt sat there, stunned. "What?" he said in shock. "Frank —"

"I have a conscience, you know. I'm a person too," Frank reminded him, his tone soft, tinged with regret. "I'm not gonna be the one adding more scars, up here," he murmured, his fingers touching Matt's forehead for the last time. "Or here," he added, laying two warm fingers over Matt's scarred wrist. "Go home, sweetheart. Tell him that you're a bit fucked up and that you need him to love you anyway. He'll respect that."

"Yeah," Matt mumbled as Frank departed without another word, "Right."

He listened to Frank's heartbeat growing more distant as he left the bar and stepped out onto the street. It was kind of a new low to get rejected by a sex worker, but Frank was right. He was a person with feelings, thoughts, and complexities of his own, and Matt couldn't keep using him to hide how Foggy made him feel. Frank wouldn't let him.

They didn't trust him. Not with other boys, not with obedience to God or to Father Lantom, and not with his own body. So Matt stopped trying to convince them to. He accepted it, the constant supervision, the suspicion, the mistrust.

Sometimes, and this was one of those thoughts that the Sisters were trying to cleanse him of, he thought about just doing it anyway, just following the impulses that occurred to him, letting his hand wander and taking just one moment of pleasure in what was becoming a rather miserable existence at St Agnes.

The other boys did it too. They touched themselves in the quiet and the privacy of their own rooms and nobody called them unnatural and disordered for it. Possibly because no one else knew about it, just Matt and his stupidly sensitive ears.

It seemed unfair that they were just as bad as him, just as tempted, just as much enslaved by their bodily impulses, and yet, the only one who was condemned and constantly supervised was Matt. He grew weary of it and he longed for the day when he would escape St Agnes, even though he knew that there would be no escape from the holy laws of his God.

He knew what was coming. He'd heard Father Lantom talking to the Sisters about him, about compelling him to take a vow of celibacy on his eighteenth birthday, a vow never to live in sin, never to love another man or to take one into his bed the way Matt sometimes dreamed of.

It would keep him on the narrow path. It would keep him from deceiving a woman about his true nature and it would keep him from corrupting another man. Either way, Matt would be kept, preserved for God's purposes and not those of his sinful, disordered heart.

But there was a reason that sin was associated with temptation. There was a reason that it appealed to him more than being kept forever, unholy and unhappy, God's worst soldier. He'd confess it later, he promised himself. He'd tell Father Lantom everything and confirm all of his worst fears about him.

They say 'The Lord does not see; the God of Jacob pays no heed.' Matt ignored the words that rose in his mind, pushing them down at the same time and with the same determination as he pushed down his pajama pants, taking his dick and his desire in his hand. He didn't care and even if he did, even if the guilt and remorse rose instantaneously, it wasn't going to stop him this time.

It was quiet in the dorm, Foggy's soft breaths highlighting the quiet rather than breaking it. Matt would almost have called it relaxing, a pleasant way to spend a Thursday afternoon, both of them avoiding venturing out to the library in the frigid February air.

Things had felt strange between them since the night that Frank had left Matt sitting alone in a bar. It wasn't that he'd even confided that experience in Foggy, but the mere thought of Frank's certainty that Foggy would love and accept him increased his tension around him and made him nervous in a way that he'd rarely been around Foggy before.

He eased his chair back from his desk and slipped his headphones off, deciding that he'd switch from his screen reader to his refreshable Braille display after he'd made a fresh cup of coffee. His ears felt hot and irritated after nearly two hours of the relentless droning voice in his ears anyway.

He'd stood up and was just starting to massage a particularly irritating knot out of his shoulder when Foggy called across the room to him, "Hey, what are you doing tonight?"

Matt frowned and paused. "Uh… working on that paper for Competition and Consumer Law."

"— which isn't due for over a month," Foggy reminded him.

Matt shrugged. "Well, if I get a head start on it now, I won't have to worry about it later on."

"What if Lang changes the essay question again and you've wasted all this time writing something that you can't use?" Foggy asked, the question so transparently Machiavellian that Matt snorted and shook his head, amused.

"Well, then I'd be very annoyed," he remarked, smiling to himself.

He moved the short distance to the kitchenette, retrieving the jar of instant coffee and his mug from its usual spot. He longed to purchase a proper coffee maker and he had already promised himself that he would over summer break, assuming that he passed all of his exams with distinction.

He was too focused on measuring out coffee grounds to immediately notice that Foggy had followed him until his roommate pleaded suddenly, "Come out with me tonight."

Matt froze with his teaspoon halfway to his coffee mug and then said, "No."

"It's Valentine's Day!" Foggy implored him.

"— which is relevant to you and I… how?" Matt retorted, dropping the spoon and the accompanying coffee into his mug.

"Come on," Foggy persisted as Matt turned away, setting the cheap kettle boiling. "There's gonna be a Valentine's party tonight."

Matt scoffed. "— which means people drinking and finding excuses to jump into bed together."

"Well, yeah," Foggy conceded, raising his voice to be heard over the noisy, hissing boil of the kettle. "But —"

"Pass," Matt declared, refusing to even entertain the idea.

The thought of going to a Valentine's party of which the theme was socially acceptable heterosexual coupling and romance did not appeal to him in the slightest. It was sure to increase his bitterness when it came to that shame-filled aspect of his life and he balked at the idea of subjecting himself to it, even to make Foggy happy. It was a bad idea.

He poured hot water into his coffee mug as Foggy said a little petulantly, "Since when are you opposed to drunk frat boys?"

Matt stirred his coffee moodily and admitted, "I'm opposed to being a third wheel at a party that is an excuse for you to ask Marci Stahl out."

"Are you high?" Foggy exclaimed in a tone of utter disbelief. "Marci?"

"You like her, Foggy," Matt insisted, sighing as he returned to his desk, coffee in hand, radiating jealousy and defensiveness, to his chagrin.

"Yes," Foggy cried exasperatedly. "As a study buddy and trial prep partner for Moot Court, not — Oh my God! That's why you've been acting so weird. No! I promise, I just wanna get drunk, do a couple of stupid things, and have a good time tonight."

Matt sighed, slightly mollified, and said quietly, "Why do you need me for that?"

"Because if you're here studying, I'll feel obligated to be… sensible," Foggy admitted, sounding so ashamed that Matt felt a small smile tug at his lips.

"Well, we can't have that," he said lightly, blowing on the surface of his coffee to cool it slightly.

"Obviously not!" Foggy declared so emphatically that Matt surrendered.

"Fine, just this once," he said ungraciously, reluctant to leave the warmth and relative comfort of the dorm in order to attend a party that he wasn't sure he wanted to go to anyway.

However, four or five drinks of indeterminate strength consumed with Foggy soon had him singing a different tune, and he wound up wandering around campus with his increasingly giggly roommate at one a.m. He didn't feel cold then. He wasn't sure that it was possible with so much liquor warming his insides.

He wound up collapsing onto a set of stone steps right beside Foggy, who had taken custody of his cane when Matt kept leaning it in corners or setting it on tables and chairs and then forgetting where he'd left it. He hummed contentedly and leaned against Foggy, beckoned by his warmth and the sweet richness of rum and soda that lingered around his mouth.

"I'm spinning," Foggy declared with a laugh.

Matt grinned. "Me too."

"You spin?" Foggy mumbled, his tone curious as he tapped the cane against the bottom-most step. "Even with the… you know? Being blind and stuff."

"Yeah, I spin," Matt admitted with a snort.

He tipped his head back, embracing the cold that he'd been so reluctant to step into before. Now it was a relief against his heated skin, grounding him, a counter to the feelings of delicious lightheadedness that swept over him in repeated waves of very enjoyable dizziness.

"Hey, Matt?" Foggy murmured after a while. "Thanks for coming out tonight."

Matt smiled. "Thank Saint Valentine."

"Ha, yeah. Saint Valentine…" Foggy repeated thoughtfully, the sudden longing infusing his tone making Matt's breath hitch.

The air was suddenly electric between them and Matt was startled to realize that the heat of Foggy's skin and the rapid beating of his heart pointed to something more meaningful than over-indulgence with cheap spirits. Foggy dragged his tongue over his lips, moistening them and swallowing nervously. Matt wasn't nervous in that moment. What he felt when Foggy leaned in so close that he could feel his breath whisper against his face was an abundance of fear.

"Foggy —" he said, months of mistakes and increasing desperation compelling him to speak. "Wait… unless you're sure, because I… I really like you."

"I'm sure, Matt," Foggy whispered a mere three inches from his lips.

He kissed him then, cupping Matt's cheek with his hand and pressing a firm, tender kiss to his mouth. Foggy's lips were soft and warm and Matt clung to him, fisting a hand in Foggy's coat and drowning in the feel of him, sweet, addictive, and wonderful, everything that he'd been craving his entire life.

He trembled as Foggy deepened the kiss, his tongue sliding against Matt's lips, which parted for him, a desperate sound of pure ecstasy escaping him as Foggy licked into his mouth and let Matt taste him at long last. There was no going back to their friendship of before now. Whatever happened next with Foggy: whether salvation or destruction, Matt was in too deep to possibly turn back.

Few things in Matt's fifteen years of life experience came close to equaling the discomfort and embarrassment of a sex talk with Father Lantom. He'd known that it was coming. He'd known that Sister Lavinia would never in a million years consider keeping it to herself.

He'd known that she was on her way. He'd heard her steps marching up the corridor, going door to door, turning off light switches with muted clicks, scolding the ones who were still up talking in defiance of the curfew rules. He'd known that he should stop, that she would walk into his dorm and catch him with his dick in his hand.

It was just… he was so close, too close to care. 'So what?' his more Hedonistic demons whispered, egging him on, urging him toward completion and ecstasy. He came about ten seconds before the door opened. That was when she caught him, when he was hurriedly cleaning up his come with tissues and trying to shove his dick back inside his pajama pants before the door opened… to no avail, as it turned out.

She could smell it, without a doubt. Had he cried out? Did she hear him? He honestly couldn't remember. He was still coming down from the high; the rush of the secrecy and the fear of being caught in the act only added to his enjoyment.

But Matt was no longer thinking 'So what?' when he was marched in to speak with Father Lantom the next morning, escorted by Sister Lavinia and Sister Miriam. There was no taking it back. No pretending it hadn't happened. No pretending it hadn't been entirely intentional.

"Thank you, Sisters," Father Lantom said, his tone grave as the women left the library, shutting the door behind them with an ominous BANG that made Matt twitch and clutch his cane a little closer. "Matthew." Here, Father Lantom sighed. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

Matt shook his head. "No."

"Why?" Father Lantom wanted to know. "Why would you do that?"

Matt shrugged and said rather flippantly, "I hear that it's good for your health."

Father Lantom was not amused and he said sternly, "Not for your spiritual health. Matthew, God designed sexual expression to exist between a man and a woma—"

Matt tipped his head back and groaned, "Do I really have to hear this again?"

"Yes," the priest said sternly "Clearly, it hasn't sunk into your consciousness that what you've done is a gravely and intrinsically disordered action."

Matt sighed heavily, allowing his shoulders to slump. He was tired. Tired of constant condemnation without relief, tired of the weaknesses of his own mind, body, and spirit, and tired because he'd hardly slept after being caught red-handed by Sister Lavinia. He'd been dreading this conversation, for good reason.

"I can't stop," he admitted when the tense silence threatened to stretch into minutes.

"Is that the truth?" Father Lantom asked, his tone doubtful.

"No," Matt conceded, hanging his head. "It … it feels good."

"Sin always does," Father Lantom informed him. "That's part of the lie: the appeal of evil. The consequences, however, do not feel good. Let me assure you of this. Matthew, it is crucial that you understand that this is a mortal sin for which you must repent and seek forgiveness and reconciliation."

"And if I can't?" Matt asked numbly.

"Do you remember the words of Romans 8:5-8? Let me remind you," Father Lantom said when Matt hesitated. "Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God."

Matt frowned. "That doesn't exactly answer my question."

He leaned wearily on his cane. He supposed that he'd been threatened with eternal consequences so many times that the threat had lost some of its power. The consequences he was concerned about were much more human: loss of privileges, public shaming, increased isolation and punishments until such time as he repented.

"If you persist in focusing on the things of the flesh… I will be forced to consider discipline of the same nature to set you back on the straight and narrow path. Don't push me to that, Matthew. Repent here and now," Father Lantom ordered, but Matt only sighed and shook his head.

"It would be a lie if I told you that I'd repented," he admitted, his voice strained, fear making his throat constrict, even as his conscience bade him be truthful.

"Very well. Please step outside and ask Sister Miriam to bring me a leather strap," Father Lantom requested; Matt had turned to go when he called after him, his tone almost pleading,"One last chance, Matthew. Consider carefully."

Matt swallowed hard. "I can't repent of a sin that I can't turn away from or that I'm not willing to turn away from. I don't know which it is yet."

Father Lantom sighed. "Then I pray that the Lord brings you clarity and restored purity. Fetch Sister Miriam and have her bring me what I've asked for."

Matt's dread of the punishment rendered him mute, but he obeyed, trembling internally. The leather strap was retrieved and Matt was commanded to kneel before Father Lantom. He offered his right hand to the priest, holding it out like a supplicant, hoping to be spared the punishment and yet knowing all the while that he wouldn't be.

He bore the first sharp snap of the leather strap across his palm unflinchingly. Seven times the leather strap whipped through the air and found its mark: leaving him with a large welt and a throbbing, tender palm that would remind him more than words could of the price of iniquity.

It had been a month, a wonderful, perfect month since the night when Foggy had kissed him for the very first time. Matt found himself constantly caught between bliss and terror. On the one hand, he felt happier than he could remember feeling in years, if not ever. Being with Foggy, holding his hand, kissing him, touching him, thinking about a future with him… it was amazing. Foggy was Nirvana.

On the other hand, Matt was constantly on edge, terrified of making a mistake, of saying or doing something that would make his amazing, happy little world shatter at his feet. He forgot about that for short periods, in those moments when he had Foggy holding him, kissing him, and murmuring all the tender assurances and praises that Matt had been starved of for years.

On Wednesday night, after a shared dinner of microwaved meatloaf, mashed potato, and broccoli (leftover from a family dinner at the Nelson's), Matt found himself entering into a familiar routine that had become commonplace of late and was as comforting as Anna Nelson's good home cooking: joining Foggy on his bed for a session of studying and cuddling, interspersed with kisses and customary snack breaks.

"Hey, Matt?" Foggy mumbled when Matt was part way through listening to a recording of Monday's lecture.

"Hmm?" he hummed, pausing the lecture he had playing on his tablet and removing his earbuds.

"I wanna talk to you about something," Foggy said, his tone so serious that Matt almost froze.

He stifled a groan and said anxiously, "What did I do?"

"Hey, no. We're okay," Foggy said quickly, seeming to have read Matt's immediate distress on his face. "It's nothing bad. I just… I'm wondering why…"

"What is it?" Matt asked, his tension not abating in the face of Foggy's awkward, fumbling explanation.

Foggy sighed. "Lately… Every time I make a move, you pull away."

"Not every time!" Matt protested, annoyance and panic competing for dominance inside him, in part because Foggy was right.

He paused and took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. This was fixable, right? Foggy wasn't going to end things over sex, surely? He was just impatient. He could explain and everything would be fine. "Tell him that you're a bit fucked up and that you need him to love you anyway," echoed through his head and Matt huffed. Damn Frank Castle.

"Matt," Foggy said gently as Matt shook himself clear of his anxious thoughts. "If you don't want to or you're not ready to go that far with me, it's fine. I just wanted to make sure it's not… me."

"It's not. It's…" Matt sighed and reluctantly admitted, "I don't want to wreck it."

"Trust me, that is not how sex works," Foggy muttered, his tone so incredulous that Matt smiled.

He gave a humorless laugh and reached for Foggy's hand, "I just mean… okay, don't judge me —"

"I probably still will," Foggy said teasingly, taking Matt's hand in his, his touch reassuring.

"Fine," Matt said briskly. "But I… in the past, I've had a lot of… one night stands," he mumbled shamefacedly. "I've been… doing that since I was seventeen. I… I'm good at picking someone up, but keeping them in my life, dating them, actually being a… a partner or a boyfriend," he added, almost grimacing at the sound of the unfamiliar word rolling off his tongue. "I'm completely lost. Well, not completely, but I'm just… there's this thought in my head that if we have sex, it'll be over between us… and I don't want it to be."

He stopped speaking then and exhaled slowly, feeling as if he'd said entirely too much, but also that he'd articulated a lot of the things that he felt Foggy should know about him. His eyes burned and he almost reached for the glasses he'd left on Foggy's bedside table, but his roommate's hand in his prevented him from doing so, from hiding his insecurities behind dark lenses and distance.

"Matt, it won't be like that. It won't be over," Foggy assured him, squeezing his hand. "For one thing, I'm a cuddler. I snuggle. I will not let you go until I've had all the closeness I need. Yeah, not want, need. I can be clingy as all hell, consider yourself warned. Oh, and another thing, do you want to know how to be a good partner to me?"

"I do," Matt said desperately, his throat constricting.

"Trust me," Foggy said simply. "Tell me when you're feeling… I don't wanna say insecure, but —"

Matt shook his head, refusing to excuse himself. "I am. I'm insecure. I know a lot about sex and I'm good at it, but… love or making a relationship work? I don't."

Foggy sighed and drew Matt into a gentle embrace. "I'm sorry," he said, his tone clearly indicating that he wasn't. "But that's like the cutest thing ever and I kinda want to kiss you and tell you that you're pretty."

Matt's cheeks warmed and he mumbled, "Okay."

Foggy kissed him — his forehead, his nose, both cheeks — making Matt's skin heat and a self-conscious smile stretch his lips, before Foggy pressed a kiss there too, soft and tentative, tender and sweet, making Matt lean into him with longing, aching to be held and accepted in all the wonderful ways that Foggy promised.

Foggy pulled back and murmured, "You're pretty," pressing a sweet, chaste kiss to his lips.

Matt felt his blush deepen and spread across his cheeks and over the tips of his ears. "Thanks," he mumbled, ducking his head.

But then a gentle hand cupped his cheek. "Let me show you," Foggy murmured pleadingly. "Let me prove to you that I'm a good partner and that this is something you'll figure out how to get comfortable with in time, how to… how to feel like you're a good partner too. Just let me prove to you how much I want to be with you, not just for one night, not just for sex, but for you, Matt, physically, emotionally… I want to be there for you for a long time, hell, maybe even forever. Let me check my crystal ball, real quick."

Matt half laughed and then said breathlessly, "Okay. Show me."

Foggy never even hesitated. In a way, that was what made him perfect. His confidence in the face of Matt's uncertainty and insecurity was a welcome change and he melted into the firm, warm press of Foggy's lips on his mouth. He brought a hand up to cup the side of Foggy's neck, needing to feel his pulse thrum beneath his fingertips and resting his other hand on Foggy's hip, feeling warmth and softness beneath his palm as he kissed Foggy deeply.

Foggy allowed it, the depth, the desperation, the need he felt to express physically what he'd rarely been able to express in words without risking condemnation. He wanted him. He craved him. He loved him. He gasped into Foggy's mouth when a hand closed around the chain of his cross necklace and pulled hard, dragging him into a deep, desperate, filthy kiss that tasted of desire.

A moan slipped from Matt's lips and he climbed into Foggy's lap, wrapping his arms around him as he continued to kiss him, a jolt of desire throbbing through him when he felt the first stirrings of an erection: Foggy's. It was addictive and head spinning.

He ground against him instinctively, encouraged by Foggy's hands slipping to encircle his waist, locking around his lower back and pulling him flush against him, not shaming Matt for his desire but feeding it. Matt broke the kiss and tugged impatiently at the hem of Foggy's t-shirt, needing to feel his bare skin beneath his hands.

Foggy withdrew his arms from around him and allowed Matt to pull his shirt over his head, to spread his hands over his chest and smooth them over his shoulders and his back. He trailed kisses over Foggy's bare skin, basking in warmth and softness. It was so different from anything that he'd had before, so unhurried, so tender, and all consuming.

He clung to him, locking his legs around Foggy's waist, rocking and grinding against him, knowing that he could come just like this, with the swell of Foggy's erection rubbing against his own and the beckoning warmth of his body taking him into dizzying heights of addictive pleasure.

Foggy tugged insistently at the hem of Matt's shirt and he broke away from his lips, panting. "Wait."

"Sorry. Too fast?" Foggy mumbled, but Matt shook his head, struggling to remember how to articulate a sentence that was more than one word in length.

"No," he said, hesitating for a moment. "Can we — on my bed? I…"

"You can tell me," Foggy murmured encouragingly, gently trailing his fingers through his hair.

"I…" Matt paused and then threw caution to the wind. "I like it when it smells like you."

"You are honestly the cutest ever," Foggy declared, pressing a tender, approving kiss to his lips. "Come on, scoot over."

Matt got up reluctantly and moved over to his bed, tearing his shirt over his head as he went and tossing it carelessly aside. The mattress dipped as Foggy flopped on it and Matt wasted no time covering Foggy's body with his own, skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat, desires matching in perfect, delicious symphony.

He tangled a hand in Foggy's long hair and tugged hard, making him moan, covering his mouth with his lips as he straddled him, grinding desperately against him. Foggy's arms wrapped around him, radiating heat and firmness, reassuring him with his touch as Matt let desire take over.

He cupped the back of Foggy's neck with his hand, continuing to kiss and caress, bliss, and need making his heart race and his soul sing. The first brush of Foggy's tongue against his lips brought new heights of ecstasy and Matt parted his lips for him, welcoming the slide of Foggy's tongue against his own.

He moved his hands, sliding them over Foggy's shoulders and down his chest, cupping his pecs, massaging, squeezing, his ego rising when Foggy leaned into his touch. He ground against him, desire throbbing through him as Foggy slid a hand over his neck and cupped the back of his head, deepening the kiss and driving Matt wild.

Foggy's hands slid over his shoulders and down his sides, coming to rest at his waist, deft fingers unfastening the button of his jeans and sliding the zipper down. Matt's breath caught and he gasped, finding himself unable to resist leaning into Foggy's touch, bucking against his hand as warm, thick fingers slipped beneath the waistband of his briefs, touching his dick for the very first time.

He whimpered and gasped, welcoming the warmth of Foggy's grip as he pushed down his briefs and drew out his cock, exposing him. The vulnerability he felt was fleeting as Foggy kissed him and slid the palm of his hand against his erection, measuring him from base to tip and back again and for the first time in Matt's life, finding him sufficient, wanted, desirable, perfect just as he was, uncut and untamed, bucking wildly into Foggy's hand, craving friction.

Foggy allowed it. He let Matt use his hand to chase his own pleasure, never demanding that his own should come first. No, Foggy stroked his length, sliding, gently squeezing, cupping his balls, then stroking him again, before returning to rub against his perineum, stroking him again, then circling his entrance, caressing his rim, and driving Matt wild. Foggy was relentless in his pursuit of Matt's pleasure.

Matt wrapped his arms around him and clung to him, finding clarity in the addictiveness of his touch. This, with Foggy touching him, finding all the secret spots that gave him the most pleasure, learning them, memorizing them, prioritizing that intimacy over his own need for pleasure and release, that wasn't just sex. That was what people called making love, and Matt had never before experienced it, never been so important and so precious to his partner that his needs surpassed the importance of theirs in the heat of the moment.

That was when he knew that he wanted forever with Foggy, a lifetime of learning each other and loving each other, despite every hateful thing that Matt had ever been taught. Foggy Nelson had ruined him for all time and Matt gloried in the wreckage of it all, in coming so hard that he made all manner of unholy sounds, coating Foggy's hand and his stomach in wetness and warmth.

He clung to him and cried, utterly wrecked by Foggy's tenderness and his promises of closeness, even as Foggy murmured reassurances and told him that he was something that Matt had never been, that he was good. Foggy stroked his hair, gentle, kind, and deeply loving. That was what Matt wanted from him, what he needed: Foggy forever, close, kind, and more addictive than anyone Matt had ever met. He was never going to be able to give him up, even if it damned him for all time.

Clinton Church always felt different in his dreams. It contained wisps of memory and echoes of realness. The very air had stale prayers and pleas smeared upon it; desperate entreaties of generations of saints and sinners alike. As a place, he found it more constraining and inescapable in dreams than in waking hours.

Even when he told himself that it was just a dream and that nothing could hurt him here, he retained an itch, a scratching at the back of his neck and a tingling at the base of his scalp, the instinctive prickling that all prey knew to listen to, lest a predator catch and devour them, singling them out for destruction.

Matt had been singled out for a long time now. He felt the stares of the other parishioners as he sat stiff and uncomfortable in one of the front-most pews. The gazes upon him felt unfriendly, like spit on his face and knives in his back.

He wanted to get up and walk out, but Father Lantom was speaking, giving his Divine Liturgy. It would be rude to simply get up and leave. People would notice. They would want to know why.

They might even try to stop him and make the whole scene more dramatic and humiliating than sitting here enduring this was: what was held out as Divine teachings on marriage, but was really the perfect platform for the priest to continue to push his heteronormative agenda, condemning everyone like Matt. He wasn't alone in his condemned state as much as Sister Maggie wanted him to believe that he was, the sole queer in all of Christendom.

"There are some among us who have longed for marriage, but circumstances simply haven't permitted it," Father Lantom was saying as Matt sat there battling bitterness.

He almost wanted to laugh at the priest's delicate phrasing. "Circumstances." How subtle. Maybe he really did believe that, that Matt's homosexuality was a phase, something temporary that would pass in time.

That particular delusion carried such combinations of amusement, annoyance, and hurt with it that Matt didn't know which he felt at that moment, somewhere between amused by the foolishness of that delusion and frustrated that because of it, he'd never know acceptance and validation within these walls.

"Let us look at the first marriage to discover what marriage was intended by God to be," Father Lantom said instructively; there was a rustle of pages as those around Matt flicked through their Bibles to Genesis, but Matt ignored them, contempt rising inside him.

How arrogant of you to assume that you know the mind of God, he thought, to assume that marriage between a man and a woman is the only definition of loving connection, rather than merely one example of what a loving relationship can be. He felt only scorn then, which was at least an improvement on the fear and self-loathing of his teen years, even if it wasn't quite the peace and forgiveness which he privately felt that God would have wanted him to extend to the congregation of Clinton Church. He wasn't there yet.

"At the beginning of all things, he made them male and female," Father Lantom's voice droned on.

At his beginning, Matt wondered, did God design him to be in a male and female partnership? He doubted it. Then did He intend for him to be paired male and male? He almost shivered with the thrill that thought brought: queer by design, by purpose, by intent, by love, created to be just as he was…

"—what God has joined together, let no one separate," Father Lantom interrupted, breaking into Matt's thoughts.

He actually liked that verse, even out of context, mostly because he wanted it to apply to his life, to Foggy. He hadn't told him yet that he loved him. He did, of course. He had from the very beginning or close to it. When attraction first developed into feelings and deep love, he didn't know.

He just knew that it did, that it felt like he'd loved him for a long time and would forever. He half wished to wake up then, to murmur the words into Foggy's ear, not to tell him necessarily, but to say them aloud and discover how it felt to offer love without fear.

But Father Lantom hadn't finished speaking. "So we can see God's ideal for marriage in the very first marriage. Anything outside of this is ruled out. Anything different from this is a deviation, a perversion of divine intent."

And there it is, Matt thought with a sigh. There was the sticking point, the rub, the thing that people like Father Lantom seemed not to be able to get past, this narrow definition of love. There was only one way to be partnered, only one way to experience attraction, only one way to love someone.

He thought of Foggy, of his open affection and love toward anyone, men, women, and non-binary people, of his admiration for trans people, who were some of the most beautiful beings in all of creation if you asked Foggy about them.

It was such a stark contrast to the kind of love that Matt had been taught was the only kind of love, the kind of love that excluded, that set limits and narrow definitions and hated anyone who fell outside of it. That wasn't love, Matt thought. That was emotional manipulation holding itself out as true love. It was a lie and he despised it.

"Marriage is intended by God—" Father Lantom said with such conviction that Matt almost tuned out what he said next. "—to be a place of safety, to be a place where you reveal everything that you are and find arms that hold you."

Matt's heart ached with longing. Could he ever have that? Was it possible that he had that now? Someone to see all of his most secret (and most condemned) desires and love him anyway? Or to love him because of those desires? Because they shared those desires for their same sex and didn't find shame in it but beauty and blessing? Because they were every bit his safe place, his equal partner in all things?

Matt woke with a start and slipped his new earbuds out, deciding that he'd earned a break from studying since he was falling asleep at his desk anyway. He'd been working on his research paper for the better part of five hours without taking many breaks from the screen or the relentless drone of his screen reader.

His eyes burned and he removed his glasses, rubbing at his eyelids tiredly. It wasn't that he could even focus on the screen like someone sighted could, but the prolonged exposure to light alone (even with no perception of it) seemed to make his eyes ache.

It was nice in a weird way. Normal. Almost like being the same as every other college student consuming excessive amounts of Red Bull and coffee in order to finish their assessments on time. He was just like everybody else. He hadn't felt that way in a long time, like he belonged.

Lately, things had been easy with Foggy, so wonderful. He basked in Foggy's acceptance of him. It was something that he'd rarely known at St Agnes, and something that he prized for the unexpected gift that it was. His tiny, shared, dorm room felt like the first safe haven he'd had in a long time, a lot like that old, rundown apartment building that he'd shared with his dad.

He hadn't thought about him in a while, at least not in a positive way, and a half-fond, nostalgic smile curved his lips as gentle hands settled on his shoulders and a kiss was dropped on the top of his head. Matt leaned back in his chair, settling easily into Foggy's familiar embrace and the arms that curled around his chest, wrapping him in warmth.

"Time to put the laptop away," Foggy murmured against his cheek, pressing a kiss there too. "We're going out tonight."

Matt hummed with amusement and said quite firmly, "No, we're not. This paper is due on Monday. I do not have time to nurse a hangover tomorrow."

"It's Friday night!" Foggy protested, stepping back and spinning Matt in his chair, making him laugh and reach out frantically for support, finding Foggy's hand and grasping it. "All of the cool people are going out and doing stuff!" Foggy insisted in a petulant tone.

Matt smiled to himself and said, "Well, I'm not cool, so I guess I'm off the hook."

"Come on. Please?" Foggy whined, pulling Matt to his feet and into his arms. "We missed our one month anniversary last week! We need to make it special!"

Our what? Matt thought with a frown, gently detaching himself from Foggy, who was, as he'd said to him right before the first time the two of them had gotten sexually intimate, 'clingy.' He wasn't lying about that or trying to make Matt feel better about being insecure and closed off as he'd thought at the time.

Foggy was clingy, not emotionally, but physically more tactile than Matt, which was really saying something. So Foggy wasn't, it transpired, perfect in every way, which was a source of reassurance to Matt, who was painfully aware of his own flaws and shortcomings. Foggy's little quirks and flaws gave him confidence and led to a healthy give and take between them.

"First of all," Matt said in the smug, I-know-what-I'm-talking-about-Your-Honor tone that he usually reserved for Moot Court. "Foggy: getting drunk is not special. It's pretty par for the course actually."

Foggy snorted. "Well, we are studying for the bar."

"That's not funny and I'm not finished," Matt retorted, his tone stern enough to quell even Foggy's snickering. "Second of all, let's review the meaning of the word 'anniversary.' It comes from the Latin ''anniversarius' which means 'returning yearly.' It is not a month by month celebration."

"Okay, one, that was like stupidly sexy," Foggy admitted, his tone so full of admiration that it made Matt's cheeks heat. "And, two, fine. Monthiversary. But we are going out tonight. I was talking to this totally cool Greek girl who's majoring in political science and anyway, she bar tends for these super awesome embassy parties and I said that we'd stop by tonight and check it out. So come on. Put on your dancing shoes and get ready to paint the town red."

"Ugh. Fine," Matt grumbled, conceding defeat. "But no more than two drinks. I want to finish this paper tomorrow."

"Fine," Foggy agreed before immediately resorting to last minute negotiations. "Two drinks each, right? And they can be strong ones?"

Matt shrugged. "Fine."

"You will not regret this!" Foggy declared, hugging him again. "Come on, let's go be young and cool for a night!"

Matt shook his head, deciding not to tell him that he'd never been anyone's definition of cool. Religious, disabled kids with no friends and no pretty sisters or football-playing older brothers to elevate their status weren't considered cool by anyone.

But he found that it didn't matter as he dressed in his nicest suit and let Foggy help him with his tie before heading out to the embassy party. He didn't feel as much like a misfit around Foggy, who didn't measure coolness by something so superficial as looks, but was into people who had "souls," which Matt supposed meant principles and standards that aligned with Foggy's own, since technically everyone had a soul.

The Embassy party was sophisticated in a word, complete with ballroom, string quartet, and an open bar. Foggy made a beeline right for it, sweeping Matt along with him, and introducing him to the bar tender/political science major, Elektra, who Matt hadn't crossed paths with before.

"What'll it be tonight, boys?" Elektra asked smoothly, once the introductions were out of the way.

"Cocktails!" Foggy cried excitedly, evidently eager to take advantage of the fact that he didn't have to pay for any of the drinks he consumed. "I'm thinking margaritas for two? Or four? Matt?"

"Fine. Just go easy on the tequila," Matt muttered under his breath and Elektra laughed.

"A couple of shots of mescal and you'll be singing a different tune, darling," she promised and Matt shook his head.

He listened to her open several bottles, pouring sharp, sweet liquids into a shaker, ice rattling in his ears before the smooth slosh of liquid hitting cocktail glasses reached him. It was quite the enjoyable performance to observe, even just with his ears, and he caught himself smiling as a drink was set in his hand by Foggy.

"Happy Monthiversary," he whispered to him so that Elektra wouldn't hear, mindful as always of Matt's sensitivity around having his sexual orientation made public.

"You too," Matt replied with a warm smile, taking a sip of his margarita, which was delightfully sweet, sour, and salty.

"Ooh, canapes!" Foggy cried with delight, setting his drink back on the bar with a clink. "Or are they Hors d'oevres? I'll be right back! Do you want some, Matt?"

"I'm fine, thanks. You go ahead, Fog," Matt said graciously, giving his boyfriend's arm a lazy pet.

He found that he was quite enjoying the pace of the party. He was too accustomed to noisy bars and nightclubs that were standing room only, packed with sweaty, writhing bodies, and pumped full of cold air and music that had only one volume: deafening. This party with its spacious ballroom and smooth string music was a refreshing change of pace.

He sipped his drink quite at his leisure, tracking Foggy's heartbeat across the ballroom while his… date? Partner? Boyfriend? He didn't know what Foggy was or if it was too soon to apply the latter two terms to him. What Foggy was, was hungry if the dogged way he was stalking trays of appetizers was any indication and Matt stifled a laugh as he set his empty glass back on the bar.

"Can I make you another drink, Matthew?" Elektra asked and he turned, realizing that he'd been ignoring her and probably focusing entirely too much on Foggy and the smell of chicken and leek pies and the buttery smell of delicate, flaky pastries.

"Sure. Yeah. One can't hurt," he answered Elektra with a small smile.

Elektra laughed, already mixing another drink and sliding a fresh glass across the bar to him, nudging his hand. "Well, this makes two, but I agree, Matthew."

Matt raised the glass and sipped with a frown. "This one tastes different," he observed critically. "What's in this?"

"Gin, vermouth, bitters…" Elektra reeled off, her heartbeat fluttering oddly, almost as if she was nervous.

Matt brushed the nagging concern aside and shrugged. "Bitters. That must be it."

He sipped steadily, still picking up that odd bitterness on his tongue every time he swallowed. He wasn't a fan, he decided, wrinkling his nose as he moved to put the now-empty glass back on the counter and missed. The glass shattered and Matt staggered, shocked and off balance, his head seeming to spin as the breaking glass reverberated across his senses.

Warm arms steadied him and Foggy muttered, "Shit, how many drinks did you have while I was gone?"

"Two," Matt mumbled, struggling to articulate even that small word, his throat feeling thick and his tongue fuzzy, or was it the other way around?

He wasn't sure anymore and Elektra certainly wasn't helping. "He's such a lightweight, isn't he?" she observed with such a guilty and telling laugh that Matt's suspicions immediately fell on her… too late.

"Yeah, he's not usually this much of a lightweight though. Matt, do you want me to take you home?" Foggy asked with concern. "You… you don't look great."

"Um… I…" Matt stammered, struggling to make his mouth formulate the words his brain told him that he needed to say.

"Yes! Let's get out of here now! I don't know what her game is, but we need to go!" His brain didn't communicate any of this to his mouth. Confusion and dizziness overtook him and he swayed, feeling faint. He was certain that he would have collapsed in a heap if not for Foggy's arms supporting him and he struggled to intimate without words that the two of them needed to get away from Elektra now.

"He just needs some fresh air and a little water, I think," Elektra said in a tone of well-rehearsed concern, stepping out from behind the bar, the quick clip of her advancing heels making Matt recoil internally. "I'll just take him outside for a minute."

Foggy hesitated. "Do you want me to help you? He might prefer—"

"Don't be silly," Elektra said, yanking Matt painfully upright, her fingernails digging into his arm. "Enjoy the party. We'll be back in no time. The drinks were a little on the strong side, perhaps, my apologies."

"Don't worry about it," Foggy replied as Matt came to the sickening realization that to keep Foggy safe from Elektra, he couldn't raise the alarm, not yet. "I'll see you in a minute, Matt. Feel better."

"Yeah… a… a minu…te," Matt slurred helplessly, allowing Elektra to escort him across the ballroom, away from Foggy.

She was stronger than Matt had predicted and he winced as she dragged him along. "Come on, darling. Let's get you outside," she cooed with faux sweetness.

Matt stumbled along, his sense of disorientation not helped when Elektra led him, not out through the main exit, but down four flights of steps to a basement level parking garage. He was at her mercy now, alone, with no one to help him, too incapacitated by whatever she'd put in his drink to offer any resistance as he was dragged and dumped unceremoniously into the passenger seat of a car.

Panic set in as Elektra climbed into the drivers seat, shutting her door and locking Matt's with a dull click. "What's… where are… you… wh…"

"Honestly," Elektra said in a tone of disgust as the engine rumbled to life, sending a fresh wave of terror crashing over Matt: he was being taken. "I can't believe Stick thought that you'd be difficult to take."

That name only intensified the already overwhelming sense of fear that he felt and he struggled to speak past the bile rising in his throat. "St… S-s-stick? You…"

"I'm with the Chaste, darling," Elektra informed him, this information not reassuring Matt in the least, especially when it was followed by, "Soon you will be too. Try to relax. It'll be out of your system soon. By then… well, it'll be the least of your worries."

Matt's head spun and his heart raced as the car sped out of the parking lot and along the streets of New York City, carrying him far away from anyone who could help him. Dread rose inside him and he felt cold all of a sudden, attempting to close the air conditioning vents with numb fingers, only to realize that he couldn't move or even get any air into his chest.

He gasped but no oxygen came, only emptiness. "Can't… breathe."

"That's called panic. It'll pass," Elektra said coolly as Matt slumped, starved of oxygen, seconds away from passing out. "Honestly, do you think I'm going to fall for that, Matthew? It's cute, but I can tell when you're faking…" But then something seemed to falter in her smug tone. "Matthew? Matthew. Matthew! No, no, no, no, no —"

Matt didn't hear any more. Everything was quiet and still. Too still, maybe. It nagged at him like something important he'd forgotten, a feeling of wrongness persisting even as he lay quiescent, too faint and far away to possibly fight off the hands that shook him with such increasing urgency.

He could hear his blood in his ears like a hollow drumming of wings. Softer and fainter now. It wouldn't be much longer. Maybe. He didn't know. It was different to last time. The adrenaline was fading now, a bloody tide going out that wouldn't come back in.

It soaked the floor around him as he called a Scripture verse he'd memorized a long time ago to mind. Though your sins are scarlet, they will be white as snow. If they are red as crimson, they will become like wool. There was so much red. So many stains on his soul covered in blood now. Forgiven. It was finished… almost.

The slamming of a fist against the bathroom door make his heartbeat skitter; fear flickered over him like a crow's shadow and he shivered on the tiled floor, where blood lay slick and steadily cooling, a growing pool seeping out of his veins and into the grout between the tiles.

The doorknob rattled and he ignored it, zeroing in on his heartbeat, listening to it turn faint and fast, like footsteps fleeing into silence. A voice shouted from the other side of the door and he didn't comprehend the bellowed words, if there were any. Soon it wouldn't matter.

The broken towel rail that he'd used to barricade the door, scraped over the tiles as the door burst open. Matt knew true fear then, when the door bounced off the wall and Clinton Browning entered the bathroom, stomping as giantly as his size six feet would allow.

Fear rested against Matt's chest like a medal he'd earned, making him shiver as rough hands closed over his clammy forearms and the deep wounds they bore, squeezing hard, hurting him, keeping him awake, keeping him alive.

"No," Matt protested weakly, trying to escape Mr. Browning's iron grip, longing for peace, for emptiness that was emptier than empty, for an abyss to swallow him whole, devouring everything that he was, every stain that comprised his being, and emanating nothing, but it wasn't to be; he'd lost too much blood and strength and Mr. Browning possessed both, in addition to a heart full of spite.

"MARINA!" he shouted as he pinned a weak and writhing Matt to the floor with both hands. "MARINA! CALL 9-1-1! NOW!"

"No, please," Matt begged, denial of that deep, dark abyss making his heart quiver within him.

"You're the Devil, boy," Mr. Browning told him with venom and spite.

"Let me go then!" Matt pleaded, his head spinning as he neared the brink of unconsciousness, only to be yanked back again by a particularly painful squeeze. "Why won't you just let me die?!" he demanded hopelessly.

"Because, you little demon," came the cold reply. "The Lord isn't finished with you yet."

He felt heavy, he realized upon waking. Although whether or not this could be called waking was debatable. It was more like slowly returning awareness. Like that feeling you get when you're sinking into a hot bath, sleep fuzzing the edges of your mind, and you know that you should get out, but you don't really want to, and so you stay and sleepily soak until the water turns cold.

With the beeping of a heart monitor, the sharp, sterile smell of hospital grade disinfectant, and the unfamiliar intrusion of an I.V drip feeding into his arm, Matt's water turned cold. He woke properly this time, painful awareness sinking in. Hospital, his mind screamed, panicking. Something was wrong with him, but he didn't know what yet.

Wisps of memory tugged at him and he batted them away, swatting them like flies. He didn't want to know, he decided, squeezing his eyes shut more tightly. That was cowardly, but if he thought about last night too much, he'd panic and he couldn't do that. Panic was uncontrolled fear. It was weakness. He had to contain it like an oil spill, lest it contaminate everything around him.

A warm hand took hold of his and Matt's eyelids fluttered, familiar smells almost tempting him to choose the waking world. "Hey, gorgeous," a soft voice cooed and Matt cracked an eye open (a lot of good that did him). "Hey, hey, hey, no. Don't go back to sleep. Stay awake and talk to me."

Matt smiled weakly and half-slurred, "Foggy."

"Yeah," Foggy confirmed, squeezing his hand. "Just FYI, there's a couple of cops outside the door waiting to talk to you. Apparently, your tox screen wasn't exactly clean."

Matt's eyes snapped open and he jerked upright. "What?" he cried, alarmed.

"Don't worry, Matt. People don't usually take roofies for fun. You're not in any trouble. It's a… well, the drug they found in your system is commonly used in, uh, date rape type situations," Foggy said in a would-be casual tone that did nothing to reassure Matt.

"Date…" he repeated numbly. "She… I knew I tasted something… Bitter."

"Bitch, you mean," Foggy muttered under his breath.

"That too," Matt agreed, jagged edges of memories tearing into his head, reminding him of experiences that he'd rather forget.

Foggy seemed to sense his distress, because he cupped his other hand on top of Matt's, clasping his trembling hand between both of his, encasing him in warmth and comfort. Matt took a deep breath and released it slowly, remembering several terrifying minutes in Elektra's company that he wished he didn't.

"Matt, what happened last night?" Foggy asked with concern. "The paramedics found you unconscious in a car in some pretty serious respiratory distress, after someone called 9-1-1 and sent them to you. Given that you were, you know, unconscious, I'm thinking that it wasn't you who made the call and you didn't drive yourself out there either, obviously."

"She tried to abduct me," Matt whispered in horror, not meaning for Foggy to hear him, but he did.

"That's a bit dramatic," he declared and Matt bit his lip, wondering whether to tell him anything more about Elektra. "I'm sure that it was some kind of prank that just went too—"

"No," Matt said firmly. "She works for him or she was acting under his instructions."

"Him, who?" Foggy asked perplexedly, but Matt hesitated, feeling torn. "Okay. You work on a name while I Google whether paranoia is a delightful and not at all concerning side effect."

Foggy withdrew from him, taking his touch and his comfort and Matt sighed, examining the long-kept secret of Stick's true association with him like a wooden puzzle box, testing every angle and possible move that he could make from here. Which was more important? Maintaining Stick's anonymity or keeping Foggy's trust? The answer was easy, but articulating it wasn't going to be.

"His name's Stick," he said at long last. "He… I knew him when I was in the orphanage. He works for a cult. He's pretty high ranking. I thought he'd given up on me years ago."

Silence descended like storm clouds, heavy and foreboding, and then Foggy broke it, his shocked voice cracking like lightning. "Wait… what?" he exclaimed. "When you were a kid, this Stick guy —"

"—trained me," Matt said, his voice turning hoarse. "He prepared me for a war that he believes is his to fight. It was… I was going to be initiated. But he left before I could be."

Foggy exhaled, noisy and prolonged. "And Elektra?"

"She works for him. She told me so," Matt added quickly. "She was proud of how easy it was to get to me."

Foggy scoffed at that so-called achievement. "Well… you're blind, so… actually that is a point! What does this cult want with a blind guy? Surely, there's plenty of sighted people they'd rather abduct."

Matt shook his head. "Not like me."

"What do you mean?" Foggy asked confusedly.

Matt hesitated once again. His secrets were like dominoes. Boxed up, they were quite unremarkable little pieces of his past. But lined up like they were now, one secret fell and another would follow it. There was no way to stop it, not without alerting Foggy to the fact that other secrets were waiting to topple down.

"This'll sound crazy," he hedged, but Foggy only huffed and got up to pace the floor, his footsteps shuffling, each one a whisper of distrust in Matt's ears.

"Matt," he said impatiently. "We are literally talking about cult members abducting people. The crazy writes itself."

Matt took a deep breath and prepared himself to knock down the biggest domino. "The chemicals that—"

"—burned out your peepers?" Foggy supplied, interrupting him and almost making Matt lose his nerve, although he had come too far now to possibly turn back.

"That's insensitive," he pointed out, tossing him an unimpressed look and missing by inches if Foggy's soft, penitent sigh was any indication.

"Sorry," he said quickly. "Go on."

"The chemicals cost me my vision. Yes," Matt stated emphatically, needing Foggy to understand this, to understand how much it would hurt if the man he cared so deeply about dismissed or invalidated his vision loss. "But when they hit my eyes, all the blood vessels absorbed them. They got into my blood, into all my cells and all my senses. I… I know it sounds like stereotypical blind bullshit, but —"

"You have heightened senses?" Foggy said like it was the most normal thing in the world.

"I do," Matt confirmed with a heavy sigh.

Foggy came and perched on the edge of his bed. "How heightened are we talking?"

Matt smiled at the innocent curiosity in his tone. "I can hear your heartbeat. I can smell the sugar in your coffee and your breath —" It was at this point that Foggy clapped a hand over his own mouth and made a mortified sound that almost drew a laugh from Matt. "I can taste the BLT you had while you were waiting for me to come to… And I can fight. Like… brutally."

"Okay," Foggy said briskly as if that clarified a few things and not like it raised more questions than it answered. "How much of that are you going to tell the cops? ‘None of it’ is not gonna fly with them. They have questions about what happened last night and whether Elektra should be criminally charged."

Matt gave a weary sigh. "I'll tell them about the abduction, but everything else…"

"Stays between us," Foggy said as if he'd fully expected to be sworn to secrecy.

Matt grimaced and mumbled, "Yeah, if that's—"

"It's fine, Matt," Foggy said quickly. "I… I figured as much."

It didn't sound fine though. On the contrary, it sounded like Foggy didn't quite know what to do with himself. He got up, disturbing Matt's bed linens, walked two steps to the door as if to check that the cops were still waiting outside in the corridor, then sat back down, fidgeting anxiously, rubbing his hands together, then scratching at his hair, then jiggling his leg, a blur of constant apprehensive motion.

"Foggy," Matt said gently, reaching out and touching his hand. "What does this mean for you and me?"

"No more drinking at parties where the bartender has questionable character. That's for sure," Foggy mumbled, but Matt didn't find much to laugh about in the comment.

"Seriously," he insisted, a painful lump rising in his throat, uncertainty making him feel suddenly cold.

"Oh, that was serious. Matt," Foggy said, taking his hand in a grip that was firm and warm. "I don't care about some heightened senses. I wouldn't even care if you told me that you could fly or turn invisible and not be able to be seen by the naked eye… which now that I think about it would be kind of ironic all things considered."

Matt snorted, unable to help himself. "Foggy," he chided him half-heartedly.

But Foggy ignored him and kept going, his tone turning stupidly tender. "I care about you being safe, Matt. I… I like you. I think you're hot and sweet and smart in a totally bad ass, sexy way and, yeah, you've got some issues, but I do too, and none of that would make me wanna walk away, okay? I… I know that you're still figuring out how to be okay with who you are and I do get that. I'm sticking around. I think you're kind of amazing and I like being with you. Okay?"

Matt nodded. "Okay. Could you say all of that again? It was quite a speech. Sweet, romantic, succinct, I think you made some good points."

"Hilarious," Foggy muttered and Matt just knew that he was rolling his eyes at him. "Hey, Matt? What do my kisses taste like?"

And yeah, that wasn't at all the innocent question it probably sounded like. Matt couldn't say that he cared what Foggy's kisses tasted like. It was what they felt like that had him clinging to Foggy and mouthing kiss after kiss to his lips.

Kissing Foggy felt like an explosion of comfort that started at Matt's mouth and then traveled through his whole body. Foggy Nelson was nuclear and Matt was never going to love anyone else quite like he loved him. He knew that for a fact.

"Attention seeking… selfish… manipulative… weak…damaged…" Sister Maggie's words reverberated in his skull, tolling like the endless clanging echo of a bell. It had been four days since he'd tried to take his life on the floor of the Browning's bathroom. The hospital staff still wouldn't let the Sister talk to him, not until the psychologist that Social Services sent had cleared him to receive visitors.

Weakened as he was by his extensive blood loss and fresh trauma, Matt couldn't help but take a little savage pleasure from Sister Maggie being denied access to him. "HE'S MY SON!" she'd shouted at a nurse in the hallway yesterday.

Maybe she really felt that way, that the orphans of St Agnes were her children to guide and protect. If so, she'd failed to be any kind of spiritual mother or help to him, and he knew that had to rankle a little bit. Thinking about her helped; it was a good alternative to thinking about those protracted moments on the bathroom floor back at the Browning's.

Maybe the Browning's were right and he was mentally ill. He wasn't sure. He hadn't felt like himself. He'd been scared and desperate, sure. He'd wanted so badly for it to be over, for all of his torment to be at an end. It wasn't, and he didn't feel relieved or grateful or even like he'd done something wrong.

He felt like there hadn't been any other choice, that he'd been at the very end of his endurance and he'd sought a way out. For that, Sister Maggie stormed and raged and raised angry prayers to Heaven. Matt couldn't bring himself to pray. What was there to say at this point?

A gentle knock came at the door, but Matt didn't answer. He didn't even call out. He knew that it wasn't Sister Maggie or Father Lantom. He could hear them downstairs in the hospital chapel, the priest offering hollow words of comfort to the incensed Sister, who had been barred yet again from visiting him. Matt didn't want to talk to her anyway, to any of them, to anyone.

"Matthew, it's Max from Social Services," a friendly, male voice called from the other side of the closed door. "Can we talk?"

"I…" Matt hesitated, having refused to tell the people from Social Services anything the last few times they'd come by. "Fine."

The door clicked open and the shuffle of soft-soled shoes reached Matt's ears as Max stepped inside the room. "How are you feeling today?" he asked, shutting the door behind him and moving to sit in the chair next to Matt's bed.

"Fine," Matt mumbled, feeling wary.

"Do you know why I'm here, Matthew?" Max asked, his tone suitably serious.

Matt sighed. "I prefer Matt."

"Okay, Matt," Max said agreeably.

Papers rustled and Matt bit his lip, wondering what was in the pages of notes Max held. Was it his file? What did it say? Did Max know what was going to happen to him? Did he get to decide? Should Matt tell him about the Browning's and beg to be placed somewhere else while he had the chance? Would Max even listen to him or care about what he wanted?

He swallowed hard, struggling to rein the more fearsome of his thoughts in as he said dully, "You're here because it's your job to find out why I did it, so that you can make sure that I don't do it again…" There was a beat of silence that Matt interpreted as surprise on Max's part, and he continued somewhat bitterly. "I'm blind, not stupid, you know."

"I don't think that you're stupid, Matt," Max said quietly.

Matt huffed. "They think that I'm evil, the Devil."

"Who, Matt?" Max asked with almost superhuman calm.

It was only then that Matt realized what Max must be thinking. Oh God. He thought that he heard voices or something. That almost made him laugh. He was gay, not insane. He was quite tempted to tell him so. Of course, for people like Clinton and Marina Browning, there was no difference between homosexuality and mental illness and he knew it.

"The Browning's," he explained with a very flat air.

"Your foster-parents?" Max clarified, his tone cautious.

Matt scowled. "They're not my parents."

"Okay," came the steady reply. "Why don't you walk me through what happened the other night? What were you feeling in the lead up to it?"

"Tired," Matt admitted, deciding that he didn't care enough to conceal what he thought and felt. "Like I'd had enough and I wanted it to stop, to be over."

"Wanted what to stop, Matt?" Max asked, concern lacing his tone. "What was happening that made you feel that way?"

Nothing, Matt wanted to tell him. Everything. Everything and nothing at the same time. The Browning's were hard and cruel, absolute in their convictions and in their enforcement of the rules they lived by. Matt was gay. They couldn't allow that to stand. It was his fault. All of it. If he was straight, they wouldn't treat him like… it was his fault. His fault.

"They hate me," he croaked tearfully.

"I don't think that they do," Max said gently "They seem pretty concerned for your welfare."

Matt huffed and wiped his eyes, annoyed. "Yeah, that's all anyone ever cares about, isn't it? My welfare. Physical. Spiritual. As long as they fix me… whatever the cost."

"Fix you?" Max repeated, his tone suddenly sharp, like the teeth of a steel trap that are about to close over a rabbit's foot. "Fix what? What about you needs fixing, Matt?"

"Besides the obvious?" Matt muttered, raising his bandaged forearms.

"Besides the obvious," Max repeated calmly, not letting Matt deflect, at least not fully.

Matt slowly lowered his arms, letting them rest against the coverlet and hating the way his fingers trembled even after that small exertion. What he'd done had weakened him. How Stick would have hated that. Not his death, but him being weak when he'd gone to such lengths to make him strong.

But he didn't feel strong when he lay in that hospital bed and uttered two words that had brought him nothing but hate and violence, physical and spiritual. "I'm gay."

"Okay. So? " Max said, like it changed nothing.

Matt frowned, taken off guard by Max's non-response. "So… they don't want me to be. God hates it. So they keep telling me."

Max sighed. "I'm not very religious, Matt, and I'm not even gonna pretend to be, but if we follow that premise that God created everything, that everything He created was good, and that God is Love: how can He possibly hate you?"

"I'm sure that He'd find a way," Matt mumbled bitterly. "They all do. They tried to change me, to make me… straight. I wanted them to stop."

A painful lump rose in his throat and he waited to be dismissed and invalidated, for Max to tell him that the Browning's only wanted what was best for him, that he should be grateful to have two strangers who owed him nothing care so much about him, but Max didn't say any of that.

"Matt," he said instead. "You can't force a gay person to be straight any more than you can try to force a cat to be a dog and be disappointed that it doesn't bark. Some people are made to feel love and attraction in a way that's outside heterosexual norms or not to experience it at all, and they're wonderful and perfect in their own right. It'd be like hating a fish because it doesn't fly and it isn't meant to."

Matt sniffled wetly and pointed out, "There are flying fish."

"There are," Max agreed. "There are also rainbow fish."

Matt frowned. "Like the children's book?"

"Sure, but also like the Murray River kind. They have them in Australia, I think," Max said thoughtfully. "I never thought much of the book, to tell you the truth."

"Why not?" Matt asked, wondering vaguely why he even cared.

"Well, when you think about it, it's about a beautiful fish with these sparkling rainbow scales," Max said slowly and Matt nodded, being familiar with the story. "He's so beautiful that everyone is jealous of him. Only when he harms himself and sheds his scales and gives them away, and makes himself ugly to match the jealous spirits of his fish friends will they accept him. That's not a sweet story, harming yourself and throwing away the things that make you special and beautiful because of what other people think."

"Yeah," Matt mumbled, his fingers skating over his bandaged left arm.

He frowned thoughtfully, considering Max's words and his analysis of what had been held out to him for years as a very harmless children's story. He'd lost count of the number of times he'd taken a blade to his own scales, to his body, mind, and heart, in response to the opinions and beliefs of others. Times beyond count.

"You're a rainbow fish, Matt," Max said gently. "Don't rip off any more scales for anyone, okay? They're not worth that."

Matt nodded tearfully and raised his head. "Okay. Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah," Max said, his tone warm, amused. "I'm a rainbow fish too and I've been around enough sharks that I know my worth. The only way to have peace with the world and with God or whatever deity holds significance for you, is to be at peace with yourself and who you are. Okay?"

"Okay," Matt said quietly as Max pushed his chair back with a scrape and stood.

"I'm gonna come back to see you again tomorrow if you're cool with that," Max said, shuffling his papers together. "We can talk some more and see about getting some supports in place that are gonna help you. Alright?"

Matt nodded and gave a forced, half-smile as Max left, thinking about rainbow fish and the scales that he'd already torn off for acceptance that he'd never have, acceptance that, if Max was to be believed, should always have been offered freely, rather than earned through attempts to conform. Whatever happened next, he had a lot to think about.

He woke up with his boyfriend's name on his lips. He wasn't sure, but he thought he might have even said it aloud, whispering it like a prayer or a wish. He sighed and slowly sat up, his fingers skating carefully over his bedside table and picking up his watch, dancing across the tactile face to determine the time: 5:10 a.m.

He set it carefully back down, his brain still screaming like a smoke alarm, old prejudices and hates circling, interspersed with new perspectives, some that came from Foggy, and some from LGBTQ+ friendly spaces on the internet that he'd started to visit lately, and many more that came from quiet reflection and difficult conversations with a counselor on campus.

He could hear Foggy's heartbeat like the drumming of wings in the still dorm room, fast and fluttering; he knew from that quickness of beats alone that Foggy wasn't sleeping. Matt didn't speak though. He didn't move at all, not knowing yet whether he wanted to tell Foggy about all the prejudiced thoughts that swirled around his head like a vortex, sucking all happiness inside it. or whether to avoid discussing it and go have a hot shower, purging his skin, if not his mind, of the more harmful thoughts that tore into it with all the sharpness of a razor.

He felt conflicted about approaching conversations with Foggy regarding this. He wasn't sure to what extent Foggy's request that he "don't say any of that shit to me again" covered the views of Clinton Church, Father Lantom and Sister Maggie in particular, whose disapproval had been a constant shadow in Matt's teen years and continued to haunt him now, though to a lesser extent than it had at one time.

It made it hard to ask Foggy questions. But it also forced Matt to seek the answers himself, not to rely solely on Foggy's views or those of Father Lantom, but to form his own perspectives and perceptions. That was harder than simply being told which way was right or wrong, but it also granted him a sense of self-belief that he hadn't had before.

"Hey," Foggy murmured, gently touching his arm. "Are you okay?"

Matt hesitated. "Eventually, I hope I will be."

"Is there anything I can do?" Foggy asked, his voice warm, comforting in a way that Matt needed it to be.

Still, he shook his head. "No."

He got up then, shrugging off Foggy's comforting hand. His skin itched, like the words he'd heard in his dream had been scribbled inside old scars that still twinged. He was upset by the dream, conflicted and confused in a way that had him wanting to reach for the razor at the bottom of his toiletries bag.

He considered it. He stood in the middle of the tiny bathroom for a long time before he retrieved a washcloth and his bottle of moisturizer instead. He ran the cloth under hot water before applying it to his skin, finding the heat soothing and the coolness of the moisturizer even more so.

It was a choice, an old compulsion that he still warred with at times. He was trying to choose healing, to choose acceptance and even self-love over hatred and loathing. He smoothed moisturizer over old scars, feeling the unevenness of pebbled, previously torn skin beneath his fingertips and feeling not shame this time, but relief and calm.

He draped the washcloth over the small sink when he was done and returned the cap to the bottle of moisturizer. The dream still niggled at him, scratching at a corner of his mind and consciousness that had been undergoing radical change since Foggy had come out to him only a few short months ago.

He returned to his bed, or rather their bed, Foggy having decided to push the twin beds together last week to make one big bed with a pillow stuffed divider and comforters that didn't reach across, but were warm and soft nonetheless. He snuggled deep into Foggy's arms, basking in warmth and closeness for some moments before he spoke.

"Hey, Foggy?" he mumbled into his chest.

"Hmm?" his boyfriend hummed sleepily.

Matt hesitated. "Do you ever… have bad dreams?"

"Sometimes," Foggy admitted, his tone thoughtful. "Not often."

Matt sighed. "I have them… often."

A gentle kiss was pressed to his forehead and Foggy murmured, "I'm sorry. What helps?"

Matt gave a soft, self-deprecating laugh. "Waking up."

"Besides that," Foggy mumbled, his tone managing to strike the right side of affectionate irritation.

Matt stayed silent for close to half a minute, gathering his courage before he managed to say, "Not being alone," in the smallest of small voices.

"Do you wanna… tell me about it?" Foggy asked tentatively, clearly anticipating an emotional outpouring that Matt didn't feel like having at that moment.

"Not yet. Okay?" he added uncertainly.

"Okay, Matt," Foggy said agreeably.

He didn't say anything more, just holding him, his body throwing off so much heat that the pre-dawn chill was more of a distant thought than any kind of factor in the way Matt sought his closeness. Foggy's warm breath whispered through his hair; he felt like summer, Matt realized, having struggled to find an apt descriptor even to himself of what Foggy's warmth and easy cheer reminded him of, but then Foggy spoke, a laugh bubbling somewhere beneath his words.

"Did you…" Foggy made a stifled sound of pure amusement. "Did you dream that you forgot to put on moisturizer before bed?"

"What? No!" Matt exclaimed, frowning at him.

Foggy only laughed and stroked his arm. "Your skin is, like, silky smooth, babe, and I can smell… is that Aloe Vera?"

"Vitamin E cream," Matt corrected him, his tone and manner stiff. "Maybe leave the super sleuthing to me."

"Okay, okay," Foggy conceded with good humor. "It smells nice, whatever it is."

Matt didn't reply, although he felt a faint blush steal across his cheeks at the small compliment. Kind words seemed to come so easily to Foggy, like waves to a broad, sandy shore; effortless. Waves and words came less easily to Matt, who had been shut down and shut out more times than he could count. Nevertheless, he dug deep for the courage to tell Foggy of the dread that lay over his heart, thick and dark, like an oil stain that was only recently starting to thin and disperse.

"I dreamed that I was alone," he confided in Foggy, and only him. "There was nowhere safe, and no arms to hold me and… and no one who would have me just as I am."

Matt's voice broke and tears burned his eyes as Foggy's arms encircled him even more tightly, drawing him close, closer than anyone had ever wanted him to be. Matt's tears were wet against his cheek and Foggy kissed them away, leaving Matt's heart filled with tenderness and affection where only hurt and shame had permeated for so many years.

Sneaking out of St Agnes was never very difficult. Matt liked to think that whenever Sister Maggie complained about his disappearances and compared him to Houdini that she meant it as a compliment. She didn't, but that was fine as long as he was out. Free… for a few hours anyway.

The first few times he left the orphanage on his own, he just wandered around and visited a few old haunts that he hadn't been back to in years. A time or two after that, he visited a pawn shop on 8th Avenue and exchanged some things that had been donated to St Agnes for a little cash.

He meant 'a little.' It wasn't much money and he couldn't do it too often without raising suspicions both at the orphanage and with the pawnbroker, who would suspect him of stealing the items if he came back too often. It wasn't stealing, he reasoned. The donated items were intended to benefit the St Agnes orphans, and benefit him, they did.

He spent his first few dollars on ice cream. He hadn't had any in years, not since Stick. He didn't keep the paper this time. He didn't make it into anything except for a scrunched up ball that he dropped in a trash can. He wasn't fourteen anymore and he relished that knowledge as he made his way to West 10th Street.

Number one hundred and fifty nine on that street was, as anyone could have told him, the location of one of the city's oldest gay bars. Matt had been curious about it for years. On the occasional day trip, the orphans would always be ushered past the bar with hushed, scandalized tones that didn't make Matt less curious about it but more.

There was no Sister Alice to hurry him along this time, no one to pull him to the other side of the street, no one to discourage him from approaching the patrons entering the bar, no one to stop him at all. Matt savored that knowledge; it gave him pleasure as he stepped across the threshold for the very first time.

Stepping inside felt like crossing a line that could not afterwards be uncrossed. The thought thrilled some deep part of him that wouldn't hush, new freedom awakening nerves that had lain long dormant, quashed by the Sisters and Father Lantom… but no more.

"Are you lost?" a voice called and Matt froze, afraid that he was about to be evicted and told to come back when he was of legal drinking age. "The bar's about twenty feet from you, dead ahead. How about I buy you a drink?"

Matt breathed a sigh of relief as a second, deeper and louder voice called, "Tell him that he can sit with us, Rene. There's plenty of room."

"What's your name, sweetheart?" a gentle voice murmured in his ear, Rene's, presumably.

Matt smiled and switched his cane to his non-dominant hand, offering Rene a warm smile. "Matt."

"It's nice to meet you, Matt," Rene said, his tone warm as he took Matt's hand and shook it. "I don't know if you caught that, but my friend Hal says —"

"I heard," Matt said with a grin. "I have… very good hearing."

"Is that so?" came the soft reply, tinged with amusement. "My name's Rene."

"Rene, it's a pleasure," Matt said and he really meant it.

That first night in the bar, he didn't hook up with anyone. The only kisses he got were of the Hershey's variety that one of Hal's friends had sneaked in. He didn't do any of the sexually immoral things that the people of Clinton Church and St Agnes feared.

He talked to people who were like him, who weren't straight and who were despised for it, by churches, by employers, by families, by government bodies that legislated to legalize the removal of their rights and continued to abuse them in the name of protection of 'normal people.' Matt swore to himself that if he ever got the chance to get away from Clinton Church permanently, he was never going back.

The dorm room still smelled like hot cross buns, like cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg, interspersed with the heavenly sweetness of raisins, and the richness of butter. Matt must have eaten six or seven buns in the last two days alone. Foggy just kept bringing fresh batches into the dorm, obtained from a friend of his dad's who ran a bakery not far from Columbia and gave them to Ed Nelson's son for nothing.

Matt was sick of them… literally. He was certain that he'd never felt so grossly over-full and bloated as he did right now, after two days of gorging himself on carbs. He struggled with the button of his slacks for a full thirty seconds before he managed to get it fastened, deciding to forego the belt tonight.

There was no need to add extra discomfort to an evening that was already likely to be a little uncomfortable. He shook his head and stepped out of the bathroom. He'd just stand at the back, he told himself. No one would even know that he was there.

He picked up the suit jacket which he'd tossed on his bed and slipped his arms through the sleeves, trying not to think about the last time he wore it: that near disaster of a party with Foggy and Elektra. He set his jaw. He'd put it behind him, just like everything else. He'd moved on. He was fine.

He'd just reached for the cane that he'd left, folded, on his side of the bed, when Foggy said, "Where are you going dressed in your Sunday bes—" There was a protracted exhale and then Foggy muttered in a tone of resignation and dread, "Mass?"

Matt lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug. "Easter Saturday vigil, but…" He paused, feeling Foggy's sudden silence like an icy draft. "You don't like it."

"Did you get all of that from my heartbeat?" Foggy asked with another sigh.

"No," Matt replied, turning away from him. "You sighed twice in under ten seconds."

"Yeah, well," Foggy mumbled, heaving yet another sigh.

That one sounded like disappointment and Matt stood stock still, feeling suddenly empty, like he'd just had a pint of blood taken from him. He fidgeted with the folded cane in his hands, not knowing what to do or say. The tension between them was heavy, like a sudden snow fall and about as warm.

"Me going to church bothers you?" Matt ventured at last, his tone tentative.

Foggy huffed. "I don't know, Matt."

"Yes, you do," Matt said with the air of a man who was spoiling for a fight, turning to face him, his cane clenched tightly in his hand.

"Look — shut up," Foggy added when Matt snorted. "I'm trying to tell you something serious here. I was bullied in school for being …myself. It got… pretty bad for a while in my junior year. I just can't imagine ever going back to the same kids and inviting them to tear me to shreds again. There are some perils from which a man must flee, you know."

A mixture of feelings churned in Matt's gut and his immediate instinct was to deflect those feelings, and deflect, he did. "Quoting the Lord of the Rings, really?"

"Why not? You quote Thurgood Marshall," Foggy pointed out.

Matt scoffed. "Thurgood Marshall was real."

"So was Tolkien," Foggy insisted, his voice strained, like the playful banter was costing him much more effort than usual.

Matt didn't know what to say to him. He half wanted to collapse on the bed and cry. Foggy's family had been so positive, so supportive of Foggy's sexual orientation that it hadn't occurred to him that other people in Foggy's life hadn't been. He wanted to tell him that he understood, that he empathized, but he was too afraid of saying something that would upset Foggy even more.

"Are we going to have a fight about this?" he asked when he couldn't take the huffy silence anymore.

Foggy sighed. "No. It's your life. I can't —"

"Foggy, it's Easter!" Matt cried in a tone of utter disbelief.

"Matt, it's homophobia," his roommate countered calmly and a lot more sternly than Matt could have expected. "It's anti-gay rhetoric and hate speech. You told me about that church before and I didn't say anything, but now…" He paused and took a deep breath. "I'm all for religious freedom, right up until the point people start using it to hate on other people, to use it as an excuse to target, to bully, to verbally and psychologically and physically abuse them—"

Matt flushed and then paled quite as quickly. "I never said —"

"Let me finish, okay?" Foggy said so firmly that Matt merely clutched his cane and nodded, too taken aback to argue. "Jesus was a compassionate guy. Don't make that face. I went to Sunday School too. I know things. I know that he was all about love and forgiveness and praying for your enemies, even when they murdered him. I just don't believe that he would tell people it's right to hate LGBT people, no matter how much they try to hide it behind ''hate the sin, love the sinner' and all that religious peppiness."

Matt shook his head, feeling suddenly weary. "Foggy —"

"They hate who I am," Foggy continued, his voice rising: a match for Matt's emotions. "They hate who you are and I just don't understand why you'd willingly subject yourself to more of that."

Matt felt suspended in a diver's ringing silence, even the most heightened of his senses muting, drowned out by the crushing weight of Foggy's words, which carried the ring of painful authenticity and truth with them. Matt sank onto the bed, his cane slipping from his hand and hitting the floor with a clatter that sounded distantly in Matt's ears.

"I guess I thought that I'd moved past it," he said numbly, feeling shattered and not knowing quite how to express it. "But that doesn't mean that they have."

"Matt, I'm sorry," Foggy murmured, moving to sit beside him with a sigh. "If you want to go, then go. I just… don't get hurting yourself over and over and over."

"I used to, you know, back in the orphanage… and once a few months ago," Matt confessed, waiting with bated breath for Foggy's response.

When it came, it wasn't at all what he expected. "I know."

Matt exhaled and brushed wetness from his cheeks with a trembling hand. "You've seen the scars... You never asked about them."

"I never needed to," Foggy said gently. "I've got my own."

Matt's tears fell in earnest then. Foggy: sweet, kind, open-hearted, loyal, protective, a million times too good for him, had scars like him, had pain like him, had been hated and ostracized just like him for, as Foggy put it, 'being himself.' It wasn't right. Matt hated it and he let Foggy hold him as he cried anyway.

After some minutes, he sat up with a wet sniffle and declared, "I'm not going."

"Because of me?" Foggy said with a groan. "Matt —"

"Because you're right," Matt admitted, swallowing hard. "I don't know what I was thinking."

Foggy pressed the softest of kisses to his cheek, replacing hurt and tears with tender empathy. "You were thinking that there are some good memories that you'd wanna hold onto… it's just, the bad ones are bad enough that I don't wanna see you relive it or make new, awful ones."

"Yeah," Matt mumbled, shrugging out of his suit jacket and standing up.

He paused then, not knowing what to do with himself. The toe of his shoe nudged what he knew to be his cane and he picked it up, moving to set it on his desk. He didn't know what he needed at that moment. He felt justifiably hurt and upset, but also like Foggy was undeniably right about Clinton Church and nothing that Matt tried to tell himself to sweep away years of trauma would make any difference.

"Did I cross a line?" Foggy asked anxiously.

Matt shook his head and said quietly, "No. You care. I respect that. It's just going to take some time for me to… it's what I know, you know? It was my home even when I hated it. I still do hate it and I wish it was different."

"For what it's worth, so do I," Foggy murmured, getting up and winding his arms around Matt's middle, drawing him into a gentle embrace. "Do you… want a distraction? I could put a movie on or something."

"Sure. That'd be nice," Matt replied, giving him a small, grateful smile.

He was grateful to him for keeping him from making a mistake and tearing open old wounds. It hurt. There was no denying that, gentle as Foggy had tried to be about it. But when Matt curled up beside him in bed with an old Rom-com accompanied by audio descriptions, he couldn't help but feel that this was a better way to spend his evening, being held and comforted, rather than hated and condemned.

He'd sneaked out to four different bars in the past month. All of them had one thing in common: they were LGBT inclusive and no other space in Matt's life was. He was tired of all the hate and all the threats, of "You need to be straight or else…" The people he met in bars had a markedly different attitude: "I'm gay, so what?"

So what, Matt thought with a small smile as he sat alone at the bar, sipping a cheap beer. He didn't feel so alone here. The place had a living pulse and Matt leaned into it like an attentive dog, lapping up conversations like they were life giving water, melting, not into pools of desire, but into spirals of longing.

He felt a desperate need to live the lives of those around him, who didn't just tolerate or even accept their queerness: they talked about it like it was normal, like it wasn't a curse or even a blessing, but merely a part of their makeup as created beings.

He rubbed the scars on his forearms where the ER doctors had sutured deep wounds only a few months ago. He'd almost met his Creator then. What would He have had to say? 'Matthew, I'm disappointed in you? Matthew, you should be ashamed, throwing away your gifts, despising your talents, all to slake an unnatural lust?' He doubted it.

And yeah, maybe that was the way it started, with attraction or maybe it didn't. Maybe it was genetic. Or maybe it started before he even knew what it was, with admiration for the men around him, with respect, and affection, and a desire to be protected, to be held, to be considered an equal by members of his own sex, who saw him all too often as an object to be pitied, the poor, abandoned, blind boy.

Maybe it didn't even matter how it started. Maybe it just was. Maybe it was something that couldn't be discerned or fully understood by anyone except God. Maybe Matt was okay with that, with not putting himself under the microscope over and over, scrutinized like an insect that was about to be pinned to a cork board and defined by others.

He didn't care anymore. Or maybe he did and he was tired of it. He'd come close to death and nothing had changed except that now everyone thought he was fragile, like they hadn't thought that already. He wasn't made of glass, he told them again and again. It didn't matter anymore.

Sometimes he wanted nothing more than to be taken roughly by a man, to lose himself in mindless ecstasy and fulfillment of long denied desires. He'd turned down the three or four offers he'd had, mostly out of fear, but that was becoming less. One of these nights, he might actually say yes and let himself be kissed senseless and fucked hard in a bathroom stall like the unholy whore they all thought that he wanted to be anyway.

The slightly stale aroma of cheap beer tasted like bitterness on his tongue and he pulled a face, reminding himself that he'd come out tonight to get out of his own head, not to tangle himself even more in conflicting thoughts that stuck to him like so many spider's webs. He drained the bottle and that was when he smelled it. He sensed it like a tracker dog sniffed a shirt: desire; he'd caught someone's attention.

It was hard not to swivel in his seat, not to follow the shuffle of approaching footsteps and inhale the smell of nervous sweat that even deodorant couldn't quite mask. He felt their attention on him like a fly or a mosquito buzzing around his head, making him twitch with anticipation rather than annoyance.

"Hi," a pleasant male voice murmured in his ear.

Matt smiled, unable to help that curving of his lips that came with being sought out and wanted. "Hi."

"I'm Damon," the man announced, air currents shifting in front of Matt as a hand was extended and then withdrawn in mortification, nearly making him grin.

"Matt," he said, offering his hand instead.

Damon grasped it with something like relief, assuming his small faux pas remained undetected, to Matt's continuing amusement, as his acquaintance released him and declared, "It's a pleasure, Matt. What are you drinking tonight?"

Matt shrugged. "Beer."

"Yeah, no. You want to try a Tia-Maria," Damon said, sounding appalled by Matt's choice of beverage, but it had been that or wine; he didn't have a lot of knowledge around the varieties of alcoholic drinks available. "Trust me on this."

Matt paused, considering for only a moment, knowing that he had no intention of ordering another stale tasting beer. "I've known you for less than two minutes, but what the hell?"

Damon laughed. "That's the spirit!"

He seemed so genuinely lighthearted, so natural in the way that he laughed and in the casual way that he approached him that Matt allowed him to buy him a Tia-Maria. He sipped it thoughtfully as Damon sat beside him at the bar, leaning oh-so-casually against him, making small talk that went nowhere.

The Tia-Maria tasted rich and sweet, carrying the slight acidity of roasted coffee that was complimented nicely by the caramel undertones of vanilla. Damon's lips tasted similar, like coffee and rum, like something new and different that Matt wanted more than just a little taste of.

Damon drew back after some minutes of tentative kisses that were quickly turning heated and beyond what was acceptable decorum for a bar, nudging Matt's empty cocktail glass as he said breathlessly, "So… another drink or… dessert?"

Matt smirked and said lightly, "Or I say good night to you right here."

Damon groaned. "That would be cruel."

"It would," Matt agreed, leaning in and brushing his lips against Damon's mouth, feather light, barely there; whether he was taunting him or tempting him, he wasn't sure; a little of both, he supposed (how many years had it been since those few secret kisses with Nicholas?)

"Are you feeling cruel or kind tonight, Matt?" Damon asked and Matt almost laughed, trailing his fingers teasingly over Damon's arm; touching him felt good, better than anything had felt in a very long time.

"One more drink and I might just tell you," he said flirtatiously.

"Another round coming right up," Damon promised so quickly that Matt did laugh then.

He chased down the second Tia-Maria with more kisses, such intense, passionate ones that the two of them were asked to leave. That was fine. Damon had an apartment. It wasn't far and Matt didn't want to stop anyway. When he was kissing Damon he didn't feel like he was broken in a way that needed fixing. He felt like he was flying.

That feeling crashed dead into the pavement when a familiar voice called to him, stern and shrill, "Matthew! You! Step away from that boy right now!"

Sister Maggie's shoes rapped the pavement as she strode over to the pair and Matt turned to her with a scowl. "I'm not a child!"

"Yes, you are, Matthew!" she cried, attracting the attention of bystanders, who muttered among themselves, making comments that only fueled Matt's sense of humiliation. "You're seventeen! You're not even old enough to drink, let alone make decisions with eternal consequences! Unless you want me to call the police on this establishment and this fiend, you'll come with me this instant!"

Damon stepped away, putting distance between them and making something inside Matt splinter, a tiny sliver piercing Matt's heart as Damon mumbled uncomfortably, "I didn't know."

"Don't —" Matt pleaded, but Damon only retreated further from his side.

"Goodnight, Matt," he said in a tone of regret. "Ma'am."

Matt quivered with anger as Damon's heartbeat faded with distance, his footsteps fleeing into silence and safety from condemnation. Matt was afforded no such luxury and he stalked back to St Agnes, seething, burning with humiliation and with the bitter knowledge that Sister Maggie was only half right.

The legal age of consent was seventeen in New York City. She'd had no right to humiliate him in that fashion or to interfere. Next time, she wouldn't, he resolved. When he turned eighteen and left St Agnes, he was never coming back.

Few things in the world could make Matt feel as vulnerable as this, kneeling, bowing on cotton sheets, his knees trembling under him, a match for his quivering arms that were barely managing to hold him up, while another man's hands slid up his thighs and cupped his ass, prising his cheeks apart, warm breath on his skin making him tingle, followed by the itchy tickle of long hair brushing against his hips and lower back, before a tongue — warm, wet, slippery, firm — flicked out to taste his hole.

Matt squirmed. He might have even shrieked a little. He wasn't sure if the breathless squeal of ecstasy and surprise came from his own lips or from the discovery of new nerves in a place that had never been touched, or at least, never touched like that, never with someone's mouth on him, with their breath whispering against that most vulnerable place, with the scruff that Foggy called a 'dashing goatee' rubbing against tender flesh — itching, stinging, burning — in some blissful new high that was pure Nirvana.

Matt whined as Foggy's tongue pressed against his hole and circled his rim, slipping inside him and licking over the same spot over and over, tracing a path of ecstasy that took on the shape of a zero or a hurricane, swirling, spinning in endless pleasure, sweeping him along, helpless against the delicious push and slide of Foggy's tongue.

He whimpered and gave a breathless whine, over-stimulation and loss entwining in pulsing, aching need when Foggy withdrew to breathe. Matt shivered when Foggy touched him again, his hands squeezing the rounded globes of his ass before he dove in again.

His hot tongue pressed inside again and Matt's nerves screamed, making him squirm away from the slippery press of Foggy's tongue. Firm hands anchored him, holding him in place, making Matt shudder and whine. His over-stimulated nerves bid him beg Foggy to stop, to tell him that it was too much, but his throbbing cock and aching balls countered this with a plea for more that left Matt's lips in a shout.

"MORE! Agh, Foggy. Foggy!"

He dissolved into helpless, shuddering half-sobs when Foggy again withdrew, intense pleasure raising the hammers of Matt's heart, making it pound until he thought that its vibrations would shatter him into pieces. There was a moment's relief, like rubbing a cramp, and then Foggy's tongue pressed in again.

It moved like a cat beneath the covers, unpredictable, unable to be stopped or anticipated, flicking against nerves inside Matt that made him scrunch cotton sheets in his hands and sob in ecstasy. His cock jumped and pulsed as he came with Foggy's tongue inside him and he trembled as Foggy slowly withdrew and coaxed him onto his side, where Matt lay trembling and over-stimulated, his thoughts scattered and only the warm hand cupping his cheek and the tender lips kissing his forehead grounding him.

Coming down from the high was slow and he was still half-spun out when he reached between himself and the man opposite him, taking Foggy's cock in his hand. He stroked him as though hypnotized, not having any conscious thought but one: he wanted Foggy to feel pleasure, to feel even a fraction of what he made him feel.

Foggy rocked into his fist, cut off exhales and bitten back whimpers telling Matt when his pleasure spiked and which movement of his hand made his nerves spark. He cupped Foggy's balls almost reverently — stroking, teasing, exploring — swallowing the moan that escaped Foggy's lips with a fierce kiss, detecting the very moment that his boyfriend reached the heights of ecstasy and came, warmth and wetness exploding between them in a pulsing smattering of heat that was shared between their stomachs.

Matt held him for a long time, savoring every ragged breath and every flutter of Foggy's heart. It had never been like this with anyone else. His previous hook-up's had been fast — shameful — soon over moments that he tried not to let himself think about. What he had with Foggy was entirely new — different and wonderful — in the best of ways.

He had slipped into a blissful doze when Foggy's voice came to him in a low half-asleep mumble, "Babe," he protested, his face still pillowed into Matt's chest. "Your phone keeps pinging."

"Ugh," Matt groaned, recognizing the 'ping' that sounded again about four seconds later. "It's the damn dating site. I keep meaning to delete it."

"Dating site?" Foggy repeated and Matt winced at his reproachful tone. "Uh, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I thought you were dating me."

"I am," Matt insisted, scrabbling for the phone that he'd shoved under a pillow, "I haven't used it in months, I swear. Not since Frank. Here," he added, snagging the phone and setting it in Foggy's hand. "All unread messages. Never opened. I want you, Foggy. Nobody else."

Foggy sighed with relief and then exclaimed, "How do you have that many messages?"

"Hey, do you wanna fix it? Go into my profile settings and find the one that says delete account," Matt suggested, listening to the screen reader echo Foggy's steps as he moved through the audio cues to the settings tab.

"Are you sure?" Foggy asked and the screen reader echoed him, 'delete account?'

"Are you serious?" Matt muttered, shaking his head. "Delete it. You have my blessing."

He felt strange when Foggy followed through on the part-dare, part-request and actually deleted the account. He'd chosen now, something real with Foggy over shallow, shame filled hook-ups. It was a little terrifying if he was honest with himself, but it was also more amazing than anything he'd ever dared to let himself hope for. He was committed to Foggy, no matter what that meant.

"So…" Foggy said hesitantly, setting the now silent phone back in Matt's hand. "What did happen with Frank? You never said."

Matt hesitated, and then said cautiously, "He… figured out how I felt about you and —"

"He broke it off?" Foggy guessed and Matt paused, wondering how damaging the truth of his 'relationship' with Frank would be if it were revealed and deciding that Foggy deserved the truth anyway and had deserved it quite some time ago.

"Frank and I weren't dating," he said quietly, shame making his cheeks heat. "It was a… he's a professional… sex worker, a pro-dom."

"Oh my God!" Foggy exclaimed, sounding equal parts horrified and fascinated. "Tell me you used protection."

"Always, and I get myself tested regularly as a matter of good health. I'm clean, Foggy," Matt promised, relieved when Foggy didn't pull away or indicate that he was disgusted with him in any obvious way.

"Good," was all he said, calmly and quietly, his tone so level that Matt immediately felt reassured and forgiven. "So what did Frank say to you when he called it off? Don't make that face. I know that he was the one who did."

A half-smile curved Matt's lips at Foggy's entirely mild rebuke. Foggy saw him so clearly sometimes, more clearly than he felt that anyone had ever seen him before. Foggy found something to adore in all of his flawed brokenness and that, Matt felt, put him on a level with God Himself; Foggy was someone to be loved and treated with honesty and the greatest of honor and respect at all times, including now.

He sighed. "I think his exact words were 'tell him you're a bit fucked up and you need him to…' that I should be with you anyway," he amended, deciding against using the L-word so soon.

Foggy only laughed. "Remind me to send him a thank you note."

"You're not funny," Matt grumbled, a pout puckering his lips.

But then Foggy's tone gentled and he said quite sweetly and sincerely, "For what it's worth, I'm glad that you listened to him."

"Me too," Matt admitted, his frown fading, a small smile taking its place.

The rejection had stung at the time, but what he had with Foggy now was infinitely better and more meaningful than anything he'd known before. He accepted the kiss that Foggy pressed to his forehead with gratitude and deep love.

So much had changed, and he felt sometimes that he wanted an even more drastic change, to give up hiding in the darkness of the closet and step into a sunny era of openness and acceptance with Foggy by his side. The question for him was no longer if but when he would choose bravery and boldness over secrets and shame. He felt closer to that than he ever had before.

Sister Maggie gave him five days to reflect and repent after the humiliation outside the bar. Matt took that time, choosing isolation and brooding over any kind of prayerful penitence. Sister Maggie had wounded his pride. She'd belittled and disgraced him publicly, and that, Matt couldn't forgive, not in five days anyway.

Part of him wanted to go back to the bar just to spite Sister Maggie. Or if not that same bar, which may refuse him service now, depending on how many people had heard the Sister's cutting words outside, then another, any bar that was LGBT inclusive.

Shunned and despised that community might be by Clinton Church, but Matt found comfort in it, even in what he deemed damned company. At least they were in the same boat, not an ark by any means, perhaps a Titanic, doomed to the depths of Hell for all eternity for being gay.

Matt no longer cared. Sister Maggie, unfortunately, seemed to pick up on that. The very next time he joined the other orphans for a meal in the dining hall and ate the few limp pieces of bread and sliced lunch meat that at St Agnes passed for roast beef sandwiches, she confronted him.

"Where are you off to, Matthew?" she demanded when he stood at the conclusion of the meal, attempting to escape before he could be forced into doing all the washing up. "Not another gay bar, I hope."

A ringing silence fell, like the harsh quiet that settles over a room when a plate shatters. The reply he'd intended to give: "the library," got stuck in his throat as horror and shame rose inside him, making it impossible to speak in his own defense, if any defense were possible.

He felt the judgmental looks of those within earshot and he shrank inwardly, recoiling from the stares that felt like many hundreds of feet trampling him into dust. He stalked out of the dining hall without another word (and without clearing the table), seeking safety and solace in isolation.

He couldn't help but feel that Sister Maggie had done that on purpose, waiting for the perfect moment to shame him publicly. That was her punishment, he supposed, for his failure to go to Father Lantom or to her personally and beg for forgiveness for sneaking out at night, for drinking with Damon, for kissing him, for having sexually immoral thoughts about him.

He fumed in his solitude, knowing that it was but a brief reprieve. Within forty-eight hours, word had spread through St Agnes and the people that had treated him like he was made of glass turned and sought to shatter him like the fragile, unnatural glass they thought he was.

Slurs flew and fists did too. Matt was slammed repeatedly into walls when he walked down corridors. He was hit, kicked, spit on, called unnatural, perverse, evil, an abomination, a demon… he bore it all without complaint this time, shedding many private tears and opening his veins with a razor more than once.

He was desperate for relief and escape, but not for forgiveness, not anymore. He was beyond saving and he gloried in despair, finding that darkness and isolation suited him more than he could have ever dared to hope.

He turned the letter over and over in his mind, walking through the possibilities in the same way that he'd once walked a nickel through his fingers. It had arrived a week ago and he still hadn't opened it. He was tempted to throw it away unopened and leave the mystery of its contents forever unsolved.

In another life, he would have been tempted to re-purpose it as a bookmark or placeholder for his textbooks, but all of his study materials were in audio files and electronic Braille this semester. He had no need for a bookmark, and certainly not one that came from the cold corridors of Clinton Church.

That was as far as he'd investigated, the return address. Some bitter part of him wanted to write 'return to sender' on it and hand it back to the U.S Postal Service. What Father Lantom would have to say about that small rebellion, Matt didn't like to think.

The mere fact that he was bothered by the priest's potential for a negative reaction to anything that he did told him that his opinion still mattered to him and Matt hated that. He sighed, listening to the mass shuffle around him as books and laptops were shoved into bags and students made their noisy way out of the lecture hall.

He hadn't listened to half of what was said. He'd been too focused on the unopened letter. That was fine. The lectures were recorded and he'd be able to access it online and listen to it again tonight, properly this time. He sighed again and reached for the cane that sat folded on the desk in front of him, but a gentle hand touched his arm before his fingers had even closed over the familiar rubber handle.

"Hey," Foggy murmured in his ear. "Are you okay?"

Matt stiffened in his seat. "Why?"

"Because Professor Krause made a tasteless joke about blind witnesses and you didn't even flinch," Foggy observed and Matt allowed himself a small smile.

"Maybe I'm developing thicker skin," he suggested with a half shrug.

"Maybe," Foggy agreed, his anxious tone cluing Matt in to the fact that Foggy was unlikely to let his obvious distraction slide.

The lecture hall slowly emptied around them and Foggy made no move to collect his books and laptop. He just sat there, waiting, endlessly patient, like an owl that senses the scurrying of small prey and yet waits for the opportune moment, knowing that what it seeks in the darkness will reveal itself if it only stands by long enough.

"I think that my priest knows about us," Matt admitted, keeping his voice low so that no one but Foggy would hear him. "He sent me a letter."

"Have you read it?" Foggy asked immediately and Matt shook his head.

"No," he mumbled numbly.

Foggy paused, seeming to have expected Matt's cowardice in this regard. "Then how do you know that it's from him?" he asked perplexedly.

"I ran the envelope through my program that converts images to text. The return address is my old church," Matt explained, swallowing hard against the painful lump that rose, unbidden, in his throat, attempting to choke him.

"Maybe he just wants to see how you are. It's been a while," Foggy said so tentatively that Matt knew his boyfriend didn't believe a single word that had left his mouth.

"Foggy," he said, shaking his head at him.

"Okay, let's try a bright side for once, rather than automatically assuming the worst," Foggy suggested in what Matt considered to be an unnecessarily patronizing tone. "Are you gonna read it?"

Matt hesitated, knowing that the defensive feelings that rose inside him were prompted by fear, not by Foggy. That knowledge helped bring him clarity and he reached slowly for the pocket of the case that held his tablet and refreshable Braille display, in which the letter he so dreaded had been shoved, crumpled and forgotten about (if only).

He slowly drew it out and set it on the desk in front of him, smoothing out the creases that he could feel in the envelope as he admitted, "I'm too afraid of what it says to read it."

"Do you want me to read it?" Foggy selflessly offered and Matt bit his lip.

"Foggy," he said quietly as the door shut behind the last of the departing law students. "If he does know about you and me, it'll be loaded with homophobic vitriol. You don't want to read that."

I don't want you to read that, he meant and Foggy seemed to know it because he said quickly, "I'll be fine. Are we doing this together?"

Matt exhaled shakily but agreed, sliding the envelope over to Foggy with trembling fingers as he said, "Yeah. Together."

He waited with bated breath as Foggy tore into the envelope, the sound of ripping paper not soothing Matt's fears at all. They tore into his mind like jagged shards of glass, exposing memories that he'd long buried, memories of cruel words and harsh taunts, of homophobia and anti-LGBT sentiment expressed as the interpreted words of a Holy God who the parishioners of Clinton Church wholeheartedly believed despised the unnatural deviants among them like Matt and so they despised him too, better to hate than to risk loving a homosexual demon.

"Okay, here we go. Deep breath," Foggy said gently, laying his hand over Matt's and gently squeezing. "Dear Matthew, I am writing to you with a heart full of sorrow." Here he paused. "Maybe someone died?"

"Maybe," Matt mumbled doubtfully as Foggy continued to read.

"As a member of our parish, you are a valued part of our faith community and your long absence has been felt most keenly. He misses you!" Foggy cried triumphantly, but Matt wasn't convinced.

"Foggy, don't count your chickens," he cautioned him with a weary shake of his head.

"Boy, you're a pessimist," Foggy declared with such characteristic good humor that Matt almost smiled. "As a person who struggles with same-sex attraction—" Foggy gave a disappointed sigh and mumbled, "Okay. I take it back. You face unique challenges and it saddens my heart to learn that your faith has so diminished of late… That's pretty judgmental and presumptuous. Do you want me to stop?"

"No. I need to know," Matt said quietly.

He felt the familiar burn of hot tears forming and he sniffed, trying to force the stronger of his emotions back down, rather like shoving a Jack-in-a-box back down and dreading the moment the emotions would spring free when he least expected it.

Foggy cleared his throat before he continued to read the damning words, "An acquaintance of mine recently brought the troubling news that you are in a homosexual relationship with another young man at Columbia University…Shit."

"Oh God," Matt said despairingly, burying his head in his hands, his glasses digging into his cheek.

Foggy patted his back sympathetically as Matt's brain screamed like a smoke alarm, detecting danger in the words Foggy hurried to read through, getting the worst over with. "As much as it grieves my heart to write this, I cannot condone a parishioner of Clinton Church living in sin with such blatant disregard for the teachings of our God and Father. Do you want me to stop?" Foggy asked worriedly, but Matt shook his head and after a moment Foggy continued, "I have sought a meeting with the Archbishop of the diocese and I invite you to attend the meeting with me. I will let you know when a day and time is set. You don't have to go," Foggy immediately declared. "You have a choice, okay? And you definitely don't have to go alone. And by 'don't have to,' I mean that you shouldn't."

"Okay," Matt said in the smallest of small voices, struggling to hold back tears of hurt and anger.

"There's only a couple of lines left. Hang on," Foggy said bracingly. "Until I have received the Archbishop's counsel in this matter, I'm afraid that I cannot allow you to participate fully in the life of our parish, most particularly in the sacraments. Please contact me urgently to discuss this matter. Yours in Christ, Paul Lantom. Okay, I officially hate him," Foggy declared, letting the letter fall; it fluttered to the desk and lay mournful and heavy in the tense silence that followed, like a toxic butterfly that had done its damage and now lay dead on the desk. "Matt, are you okay?" Foggy asked when nearly a minute passed without him saying a single word.

He raised his head, tears streaming down his cheeks that even the lenses of his glasses couldn't successfully hide. He took them off and set them on the desk, drawing a ragged breath as warm, comforting arms encircled him, wrapping him in comfort, with the solidarity of one who was equally as despised as him.

"I'm sorry," Foggy murmured, pressing a tender kiss to his forehead.

Matt drew back, swallowing hard and resolving not to give in to self loathing and despair. "I'm okay," he said, startled to find that he actually meant it. "I knew that this would happen. I thought that it would happen sooner, to be honest. I … I did not make a secret of it. I've been going into gay bars and hooking up with guys since I was seventeen. I guess that's the difference. Those were… I was drunk and… I always did my penance after… well, when they made me. With you… he's right. I'm unrepentant in every sense of that. I'm not sorry."

"I am," Foggy said with a sigh. "That's the only home you've had since your dad died. I'm sorry that it's been taken away from you. You don't deserve that."

"It was never a happy home for me," Matt admitted, letting Foggy hold him in the lecture hall that was thankfully empty of peers, enabling openness and honesty between them. "That helps. And it's not the only… that dorm with you… that's a home to me. Meeting your family, staying with them for winter break… that was the happiest, the most wonderful, the most like a family that I've ever had."

His voice cracked and Foggy only held him tighter, whispering, "Matt," in a tone that indicated how touched he was to hear what meeting his family meant to him.

"This—" Matt reached for the letter and balled it up in his fist "— this is all they can do. That's the totality of their power, banning me from the sacraments, banning me from a church that hates me for who I am anyway. You were right about that. I… I'm not saying that I'm fine with it, I'm not. But that's their whole power, power over who can and can't enter a building, not power over who can and can't pray or read their Bible or find a way to understand and know God in their own way. He doesn't hate me. They do. This is —" He laughed, wet and hollow. "What can man do to me?"

He really meant that. He felt it, the words of the Psalmist resonating within him. David, after all, had known what it was to be hated and despised for what he was: Israel's future king, something he'd never asked to be, but had been chosen for, in the same way as Matt's God chose to create him to love other men. The degree of choice was no more than David had when he was anointed by the prophet Samuel or when he became 'one in spirit' with the son of his enemy and 'loved him as his own soul.' So much for free will.

"Hey, can I tell you something?" Foggy asked after a little while, when Matt's tears had subsided and he was starting to feel calm again.

"Sure," he said, dropping the ball of paper on the desk.

"When I first came out to my parents," Foggy started and Matt stopped breathing, never having heard how exactly Foggy had done that or what the response had been. "We had a church. We were there every Sunday."

Matt's breath left him in a whoosh filled with dread. "Wait. Don't tell me. I don't think I wanna know."

"You might," Foggy hedged, his tone tentative. "The minister was kind of a massive homophobe and a dick. He probably still is. My mom would hold my hand in church and cry."

"Foggy," Matt whispered, horror and heartbreak rising within him.

"I figured… you know what those kinds of sermons are like," Foggy said tentatively and Matt nodded.

"All too well," he muttered, his tone grim. "So what happened?"

"We left," Foggy said quickly. "My mom and dad sounded out local churches and found one that was LGBT affirming. I didn't want to go at first. But eventually I got curious and my first Sunday there, I met this youth pastor and he didn't know that I'm pan or anything, but there were other LGBT kids at the youth service who he did know and he just kept on and on about what a gift LGBT people are, what a blessing, and how God doesn't make mistakes and nothing can separate us from the love of God."

"That's… wow," Matt mumbled, almost rendered speechless by the stark contrast between the Nelson's affirming church and the hate speech and homophobic attitudes he'd been exposed to at Clinton Church.

"I do have a point, by the way, just in case you wondered," Foggy said quickly. "I don't go to church much, mostly just on Christmas Eve or if my mom wants us all to go on Mother's Day, but if this thing with Clinton Church is irretrievable… I know how important this is to you, and I do know a church where you wouldn't just be welcomed, you'd be affirmed and… and told how loved and special you are. I want you to know that the option's there if you ever wanted… you know, to go."

Foggy rambled into silence and Matt drew him into a tight embrace. "Thank you," he whispered as he clung to him.

It didn't seem like enough to cover the depths of hope and comfort that Foggy offered in the face of devastation and rejection. His account of his experience with homophobia in the church only increased Matt's appreciation for Anna Nelson, who hadn't let her son stay in an environment where he was judged and despised, but who had found a spiritual home where Foggy was welcomed and treasured: a child of God who was treated as equal and worthy of love. How he wished he could have had a mother like her.

Father Lantom wouldn't let it go. He was persistent in his belief that Matt's homosexuality was 'just a feeling' that he could choose not to act on, and thus avoid bringing sin and judgment down on his head. The trouble was that his sexual experiences with other men were rather like that first taste of chocolate after Lent was over: addictive and impossible to resist.

He didn't want to stop. That was the prevailing opinion of Father Lantom and Sister Maggie. For once, they were entirely correct. He didn't want to stop. Divine wrath and judgment were no longer the deterrents that they had been when he was younger and more impressionable.

At seventeen, he was on the cusp of adulthood, close enough to know what he wanted and to go after it. 'It was wrong. He was a child still. He was under their protection. He was a disgrace. He was whoring himself out like some kind of homosexual slut.' So they said. He didn't care.

Well, he did. He did care that they thought so little of him, but he'd started to accept that he'd never gain their approval. The young men he met in clubs and bars were very approving of him, so much so that he was starting to develop something of an addiction to their praise every time he did something that he wasn't supposed to.

Father Lantom kept calling it 'acting out' like Matt was some kind of misbehaving child who was seeking attention, and who would settle down eventually. As far as Matt was concerned, that wasn't likely to happen. Oh, he tried. He didn't want to stop, but he tried.

The problem was that the allure of members of his same sex was too strong to allow him to remain forever closeted and shut away within the walls of St Agnes, forever condemned, alone in his novenas, in his petitions and prayers to be transformed by the renewing of [his] mind.

He'd already been transformed. That was the problem. It had started when he was young, before he'd even realized it was happening. Father Lantom could blame his dad or his exposure to strong, violent men all he liked, but it remained a fact. At some point, he'd changed into a homosexual and he couldn't undo it with devotion or even deprivation.

The alternative was that he was, like so many of the men he spoke to and did indecent things to, 'born this way.' If that was true, that he was homosexual by Divine design, then kissing men in bars wasn't wrong at all, not even under the laws of New York, for which consenting sexual activities were permitted for anyone aged seventeen and up.

He didn't let himself believe that though, that he was made this way on purpose, with his good in mind. He could just imagine what Father Lantom would have to say to that. He'd call it heresy before Matt had even gotten all the words out of his mouth.

No. Some things you couldn't argue or fight your way out of and this was one of them. He committed his sins and enjoyed them. Any penance was halfhearted, condemning him all the more for the lip service he paid to his God, while his heart rebelled at the constraints placed upon him.

For him, the boundary lines had not fallen in pleasant places and he stepped across those lines with increasing self-loathing and internal condemnation, in full, painful awareness of the fact that he wouldn't resist the adversary and the devil wouldn't flee. He'd made himself quite at home in Matt's desires and he wasn't leaving anytime soon.

He felt heavy before he was even properly awake, like there was an elephant sitting on his chest. It wasn't an unfamiliar feeling. In fact, he'd grown quite accustomed to it in his teen years. He'd even found a way to alleviate the crushing heaviness he sometimes felt...

No.

He couldn't do that anymore. Well, he could, but he wouldn't. It wasn't a good way to cope. In fact, it was a very bad one. No, the razor blade needed to stay at the bottom of his toiletries bag… or to be disposed of so that he wasn't even tempted by it.

He'd do that later, he decided, shifting onto his side and coughing. God, he felt like he could hardly breathe. He rasped out a breath, dragging another one painfully in and hearing it rattle in his chest. Something was wrong, something more than the dark cloud that hung over him sometimes and made it hard to get out of bed or to want to do anything at all that wasn't drowning alone in unending misery and self-loathing.

"Hey, Sunshine," a warm voice cooed. "Are you getting up sometime today?"

"Mmm," Matt half-groaned, coughing and wheezing, his throat feeling like it was on fire, along with the rest of him.

"You don't sound good," Foggy observed, concern making his tone sound unnaturally pensive.

"It's just a cold," Matt mumbled, adjusting his pillow with a wet (and thoroughly disgusting sounding) sniffle.

"Maybe," Foggy said, not seeming convinced and resting a gentle hand against Matt's forehead. "You've definitely got a temperature. Do you have any other symptoms you wanna tell me about besides that cough and a bad case of the sniffles?"

Matt huffed and tugged the blankets up to his chin as he said stubbornly, "No, thank you, Doctor Nelson. I just need an aspirin and some water and I'll be fine."

A collected mass of phlegm chose that moment to declare that it was unhappy where it was and Matt nearly choked, hacking and coughing it up. It was gross and he'd never wished so simultaneously for Foggy's absence to spare his dignity and yet for the comfort of his presence.

"Yeah, no," Foggy said, setting a box of Kleenex in Matt's hands when there was a break in all the coughing and gagging. "I'm recommending bed rest. In fact, I insist on it."

"You insist?" Matt repeated with a weary kind of amusement, evacuating the vile concoction of spit and sputum that had collected in his mouth into a tissue.

"I do," Foggy replied, sounding sympathetic rather than disgusted, which was nice. "Here. Let me just —"

Matt half sat up as Foggy piled pillows behind him, propping him up so that he could breathe a little more easily. He relaxed against the nest of pillows as Foggy adjusted the comforter and did everything humanly possible to make Matt a little more comfortable.

"You're not wearing your necklace," he observed suddenly and Matt sighed.

"I'm not," he agreed.

"Did you lose it?" Foggy asked worriedly. "I'll help you find—"

"I put it away," Matt said calmly.

Foggy paused and then asked cautiously, "Are you… okay?"

"I… I met with Father Lantom and the Archbishop yesterday," Matt admitted reluctantly.

"Matt." Foggy sighed. "What did they say to you?"

That was it? Matt thought with a slight frown. No chewing him out for going alone despite Foggy's advice? No accusations of having done so behind his back? Just 'tell me how badly they hurt you so that I can help.' He choked back tears (and it must be said, phlegm), moved by the depths of care and empathy Foggy possessed.

"They told me not to come back until I've repented," he admitted, listening to Foggy's heartbeat quicken, beating like a hollow drumming of wings inside him; he was nervous, Matt realized — afraid.

"Are you going to? Repent?" Foggy blurted out, sounding heartrendingly anxious.

Matt sighed. "Repent of what?" he asked with a small, sad smile. "Loving someone too much? Thinking that he's the most amazing human being I've ever met? Wanting to be near him as much as I can? To kiss him, to hold him, to have amazing sex with him and share my dreams and hopes for the future with him? I confess, Foggy… and I repent of nothing."

"You are the most stubborn man in all of existence," Foggy declared, with something akin to relief showing in his tone. "I'm going to get you some soup from the cafeteria."

Matt hesitated. "Was it too soon to use the L word? I've never said it before. Well, except to my dad, but this is … I meant it in a different way to that."

"God, I hope so," Foggy said with a laugh, although he quickly sobered. "Are you gonna be okay if I don't say it yet? Not that I don't want to. I just want it to be special, not… expected and not when you're feeling like crap, okay?"

"I'll be okay," Matt strove to reassure him.

"You're sure?" Foggy pressed and Matt's lips curled into a smirk. "Oh my God! You can hear it in—"

" —your heartbeat. Yes," Matt confirmed with a self conscious laugh that almost made another coughing fit worth it.

"That's cheating, Brat," Foggy huffed with feigned annoyance.

"Soup," Matt requested, closing his eyes with a smile.

"On it. Jerk," Foggy muttered, retreating from the bed.

Matt listened to him hunt for shoes and zip up his jacket, a sinking feeling filling him. Foggy was going to leave him alone in the dorm room with this dark cloud hanging over him (as much as he'd tried to hide it). That was dangerous. He couldn't go with him when he was sick like this. Foggy would never allow it. That left him with two choices: stay here and hope and pray that he was strong enough to resist… or tell Foggy everything.

The door knob turned in Foggy's hand before Matt found his courage. "Wait!" he cried desperately, relieved and terrified when Foggy did as he asked and paused. "Foggy, before you go, I… I need you to do something for me. Please."

"Sure. Anything," Foggy murmured, shutting the door again with a soft click.

"Take my toiletries bag," Matt requested, cursing the tremor in his voice as he forced himself to say the words that he needed to say. "There's a disposable razor at the bottom. I need you to get rid of it. Now."

"Okay," Foggy said slowly. "Do you… I mean, we could talk about it if you want."

Matt didn't want to. Not at all. Talking about it went against everything he'd told himself for a long time. Talking about it would make people leave. Talking about it would make people realize how broken he was, how damaged. No. Talking about it would keep him safer than secrets and shame would. Talking about it would scare the hell out of him anyway.

"I just feel… heavy sometimes. Low. Really low. Like now," Matt croaked, swallowing hard. "I don't regret — okay, I regret meeting with Father Lantom and the Archbishop, but it's also like closure in a way. I'm not hiding and they know it. They hate it — me — but I always knew that. I'll get past it, but right now it hurts like hell and I need to not make it feel better with… that razor. Okay?"

He waited for Foggy to leave and he didn't; he hugged him instead and murmured, "Okay. Hey, thanks for telling me. I… I know it can't have been easy for you."

"It's not," Matt admitted with a wheeze. "But it's getting… easier the more… the more secrets I quit keeping. It… some of the… the —" He battled with himself, but said the word that brought him so much insecurity. "The shame goes away the more I…"

His words trailed off and Foggy pressed a kiss to his forehead. "Hey," he murmured, his tone tender. "Proud of you."

'Love you,' Matt knew that he meant when he went into the bathroom and rummaged through Matt's toiletries bag to find the razor blade that he took with him when he went in search of soup a couple of minutes later. Matt settled back against his pillows to rest and to wait. He was slowly starting to believe that he was worthy of Foggy, if only he could keep trusting him with his past and give him all the happiness he deserved in the future.

Hot water and soap weren't enough this time. Even mouthwash only helped to a certain degree. He could still taste him on his tongue and feel him in the soreness of his lips, in the ache of his jaw, in the burning of his throat two days after sucking off a random guy in a nightclub.

Matt didn't even remember his name. Maybe that was a good thing. If he didn't know, then it was at least half-true when he told Sister Maggie that he didn't remember where he'd been on Friday night, who he'd been with, or if he'd been with anyone at all. Okay, that last part was a lie. He knew that he'd been with someone, without a doubt, his body was happy to fill in the gaps in his memory with a lingering ache deep in his throat.

He'd fucked his mouth so good, whatever his name was. Loren? Louis? Lloyd? It must have been Lloyd, he thought, nodding to himself as he stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around his waist. And yeah, okay, he was only seventeen and he shouldn't have been in that nightclub at all, but he needed to find out what this was, why he felt this burning attraction to other men.

Quashing those desires wasn't working. He'd been trying to do that since he was thirteen and the closest he'd come to success was pretending to be cured of his unnatural perversion. That charade had lasted two months and earned him his longest ever punishment from Sister Maggie for deceiving her.

He shook his head at the memory and started to dress, pulling on ill-fitting second-hand jeans and a button-down shirt that he thought might have been flannel. It was at least soft. He'd shampooed his scalp three times to try to soothe the complaints of sections of his hair that protested being grabbed, pulled, and twisted the other night. It had been rough as hell and he'd liked it.

The idea of running a comb through his damp, still-fragile hair didn't appeal to him and he settled for gently smoothing the strands into place, hanging up his towel before he left the bathroom and began to hunt for his shoes and fresh socks. He was running out of those lately and the Sisters wouldn't buy more, not with Thanksgiving so close, when they were expecting an influx of donations.

He retrieved a clean pair of socks from a drawer in his bedside table, sighing as he pulled them on. The socks were wearing thin in the heel and his old sneakers pinched his feet when he pulled them on. They were getting too small for him, but if St Agnes wouldn't supply new socks, asking for shoes that fit him properly was a lost cause.

He'd just finished tugging them onto his feet when he heard a knock at the door of his dormitory. A heavy sigh escaped him as he got up to answer it. He'd missed Mass this morning, not intentionally, mostly because he was still catching up on lost sleep from Friday night than for any deliberate defiance.

He pulled the door open and restrained a grimace when Father Lantom addressed him, "Good afternoon, Matthew. Do you have a minute?"

Matt huffed irritably. "I don't feel like talking."

"Please," the priest requested so gently that Matt felt it would be rude to refuse. "Just step into the courtyard with me for a moment."

Matt took a deep breath and let it out slowly, knowing that if he refused, it would be Sister Maggie knocking on his door next. He gritted his teeth and retrieved his cane and glasses, slipping them on less because he cared whether it was sunny or not and more because they felt like a shield against people he wasn't sure that he trusted.

The last person he'd taken his glasses off for was his dad. It had been years since he'd felt safe or accepted, and it was with great reluctance that he followed Father Lantom out into the courtyard, refusing to take the guiding arm the priest offered and marking out his irritation with him with every tap and aggressive sweep of his cane.

"Let me ask you something, Matthew," Father Lantom ventured when it seemed to become apparent to him that Matt's moodiness was unlikely to abate anytime soon.

"That doesn't feel like a request," Matt observed warily.

"Nonetheless, it is one, a very small one," Father Lantom said beseechingly. "I beg you to indulge me this once."

Matt scoffed. "You always say that — this once. I'd say yes if it really was just once."

Father Lantom made an annoyed sound that was more than half a groan to Matt's sensitive ears. He didn't know what the priest expected, for him to be pleased about having his every thought, word, and action analyzed and judged? No. He wasn't pleased about it and he was actively searching for ways to bring the conversation to a swift end, even after only five minutes in the priest's company.

"You are obstinate," Father Lantom complained and what little patience Matt possessed immediately abandoned him.

"So I'm told. Fine," he snapped, deciding to bare all. "Yes, I left St Agnes the other night. Yes, I went to a nightclub. Yes, I drank alcohol. Yes, I performed oral sex on a man in a restroom stall. Yes, I liked it. Yes, I lied to Sister Maggie about where I went and what I did. Happy?"

"Not especially," Father Lantom remarked, his tone grave, "and that wasn't at all what I was going to ask you about, although I appreciate your candor if not your impenitence."

Matt sighed. "What do you want to know, Father?"

He halted mid-step and turned to the priest with a feeling of growing irritation. He was so tired of this, of years spent trying to force his desires to submit and change, only to be completely frustrated and alone. He couldn't do it anymore. He didn't want to do it anymore. It was impossible even for the Lord.

"Do you consider yourself a homosexual, Matthew?" Father Lantom asked, his tone one of mild interest.

Matt frowned and tightened his grip on his cane. "You know that I do."

"And why is that?" Father Lantom persisted, making Matt's sense of confusion deepen.

"What do you mean?" he asked, shaking his head slightly; surely his sexual orientation wasn't in doubt after all these years, and certainly not after the other night.

"I wonder if you've given any consideration as to what makes one a homosexual," Father Lantom said quietly and Matt snorted, wondering if Father Lantom had given any consideration to the fact that Matt had given much more thought to homosexual things than the priest would have liked.

"I think it's obvious and simple," he declared with a slight frown. "Same-sex attraction."

"A feeling then," Father Lantom surmised and Matt shrugged.

"Yes," he said simply, his puzzlement persisting.

He had no idea where Father Lantom was going with this or even what conclusions his mind had drawn from their short conversation. He'd expected much more condemnation and judgment after freely confessing to his activities of the other night. But when he next spoke, Father Lantom's tone was thoughtful rather than particularly accusatory.

"I rather think that it's our actions that define us, sinner or saint," he mused. "I sin, therefore, I am a sinner. You engage in homosexual acts, therefore…"

"I'm a homosexual," Matt concluded, finding that he didn't despise the word like he once had; it was just a fact; he was a homosexual.

"But what if you didn't?" Father Lantom asked quickly, almost eagerly. "What if you weren't? What if you didn't follow where these feelings and thoughts led? If your actions were heterosexual, wouldn't you be considered as such?"

Matt felt doubt creep over him and he asked dubiously, "By man or by God?"

"By man and by grace," Father Lantom said gently. "Think about it. Pray about it."

Matt hadn't spent the last two years being told that he was disordered by nature to dismiss homosexuality as an action alone. He nodded though, mostly to satisfy the priest, who left him standing there, contemplating the straight-acting the priest had suggested.

Wasn't that just deceit though? And didn't the thoughts and workings of his mind and heart make him what he was? Homosexual down to his core? Or was it only if he followed those thoughts and acted on them? He didn't know and he wasn't convinced that it could be this simple: to not be gay by acting like a heterosexual. That was crazy, right?

Matt woke alone in a tangle of sweaty sheets that smelled like fear. Foggy wasn't beside him and the absence of his warmth and comfort raised the hammers of Matt's heart, setting it racing before he was even fully upright or awake. He kicked himself free of cotton sheets, writhing violently and freezing when a gentle hand settled on his arm: Foggy.

Matt went limp at his touch, flopping back against pillows that had nightmares woven into them in trails of sweat that even Foggy's sweet smelling shampoo couldn't cover. Foggy helped free Matt's legs of the tangled sheets, his breath hitching more than once, sniffling as he straightened.

It was then that Matt realized that Foggy, sweet, wonderful Foggy, was fighting tears. Salt lay like sea spray on his cheeks and Matt sat up, feeling unbalanced and afraid. His throat felt suddenly dry and he swallowed hard, forcing down the painful lump that had risen, unbidden.

"Foggy," he said anxiously. "Are you okay?"

Foggy sighed. "That depends on how much you remember from last night."

Goose flesh rippled over Matt's skin at Foggy's words and he stammered quickly, "I… I don’t really. I remember feeling scared and I can hear how scared you are. That tells me a lot."

"You were screaming, Matt," Foggy informed him, his tone one of devastation. "I don’t know what you were dreaming about, but…"

His words trailed off into fearful silence as Matt drew his knees up to his chest and locked his arms around them, thinking hard. He remembered… something: feelings more than clear dream sequences: desperation, fear, and numbness among them. None of those feelings were easy to articulate to Foggy, who stood quiet and anxious beside the bed.

"What else?" Matt asked in a tone of dread. "There’s something… What did I do, Foggy? I didn't hurt…"

"No," Foggy quickly assured him, his high, frightened tone feeling like a cold draft on Matt's neck, raising hairs and sending a chill down his spine as Foggy continued. "You said… you… you begged me to let you die, Matt."

"Oh, God," Matt breathed, hiding his face in his hands for a moment. Then he raised his head. "Foggy, I’m sorry —"

"No." Foggy said firmly.

Matt frowned. "Maybe we should take a break —"

"No," Foggy said even more firmly.

"I’m too broken for you —" Matt started, only for Foggy to cut him off a third time.

"No," he said, his tone hard now, like steel.

Matt sighed, frustrated with the brick wall that passed for his boyfriend. "What would get a yes at this point?"

"You tell me, Matt," Foggy replied, stubborn to the end. "I figure that it has to be pretty bad when you try to break up with me over a nightmare." Then his tone softened. "You may not remember it, but you know something, don’t you?

Matt couldn't answer him. He felt suspended in a diver's ringing silence, his past pressing in on all sides, crushing him like so many tonnes of ocean water. He couldn't tell him. Telling him would… well, he didn't know what effect telling Foggy would have, but he doubted that it would lead to anything good. The truth, however, demanded to be free; it scratched at his conscience and stabbed like a knife.

Matt released a shaky exhale and said quietly, "I… I remember saying that to the people who… I… I wanted them to let me… I’m gonna just start at the beginning of the story," he said as Foggy nudged him gently and moved to sit beside him on the bed, taking Matt's hand in his. "When I was, I don't know, fifteen maybe, St Agnes sent me to a group home where they practiced… conversion therapy."

"I'm gonna be sick," Foggy said faintly, his hand trembling in Matt's.

Matt took a deep breath and continued, "They…anyway, I left the first time. I ran away in the middle of the night. I begged my priest to let me stay at the orphanage. I made certain promises that I didn’t keep, promises to be… heterosexual. The second time they sent me there… I was seventeen."

He stopped speaking, only realizing that he was crying when he tasted salt on his lips and heard Foggy murmur, "You don't have to tell me if it's too awful to talk about."

"I want to," Matt insisted, the croak in his voice betraying him. "The second time they sent me there, I knew… I couldn’t… being back there and being subjected to… I tried to take my… to end it. The hospital had me committed to psychiatric care for… a while… and the… the group home was investigated but nothing ever came of it."

"God, Matt," Foggy breathed, his tone one of horror.

He didn't withdraw from him though. He didn't pull away or tell Matt that he was weak and selfish or any of the things that he'd believed about himself for a long time. He turned his face away from Foggy like a swimmer turns their head away to breathe, finding himself empty of oxygen in the face of so much tender empathy.

He cleared his throat, fighting tears and nausea in a bid to finish telling Foggy everything, "I finished out my time at St Agnes by going into bars and being dicked down by any big, strong man who would… I… I wanted a protector or an escape or some kind of guarantee that they could never put me through that again. Eventually, I got offered a scholarship and… I got out. I did Criminal Justice for a while and then I met…"

"Me," Foggy guessed, sighing to himself. "Am I an escape, Matt?"

Matt shook his head. "No. College was my escape. Frank was my escape. You’re a future. A future that I never dreamed I could have and one that I really want."

"I really want that too," Foggy said, his voice thick with emotion. "But I also want you to be okay."

Matt tensed, knowing what 'okay' meant to Foggy, 'with reliable mental health supports in place.' Getting help in other words. "Help," Stick's sneering voice snarled in his mind. "Help is for pussies, Matty. That and sniveling wimps. I thought you were better than that, boy."

Matt bit his lip. "I already talk to a student counselor."

"Who you can talk about heavy stuff with?" Foggy asked doubtfully, seeming to read the truth in Matt's restless silence. "I thought not. Matt, I don’t wanna push you into something that makes you uncomfortable, but —"

"I know that," Matt mumbled, dreading having a therapist take hold of his past trauma, shaking his failures in his face like a dead rat. "I just… I’ve kept it all buried because I was ashamed of who I was and all of the things I did."

"You don’t have to be," Foggy said so gently that Matt relented.

"I know that now," he replied, offering him a small smile. "I don’t want you to worry about me, so if finding someone professional to talk to to start processing and dealing with all of that is going to help you and me, well, both of us… I’ll try."

"Thank you," Foggy whispered gratefully, pressing a tender kiss to his cheek.

Matt leaned against him with a heavy sigh, wondering how much talk therapy would change things, if anything. People had talked at him for years. It had given him something of a complex and a tendency to agree with the bigots who despised him in vain attempts to gain their approval.

His hand went to his neck and he thought with regret of the cross he'd stowed at the bottom of his father's trunk. Clinton Church couldn't change who he was and he couldn't help but doubt that a therapist could change the trauma that continued to surface no matter how far away he got from years of physical and spiritual violence.

It was over. His time at St Agnes was finally coming to an end. Happy birthday, he couldn't help but think. Tomorrow was the start of his new life, the start of his scholarship, the first step in his academic journey. First, an undergrad in criminal justice and then law school.

The first degree would prepare him for the second. He'd learn about law enforcement, courts, and corrections and get a head start on every other student who'd chosen economics or political science instead. Not that there wasn't value in those disciplines, but for a start in criminal law, Matt couldn't have hoped for a better one.

Nothing could burst the balloon of hope rising in his chest. None of it was going to matter anymore, not the persecutions of his peers or the judgment of his elders. He was going to escape into the real world at long last and he didn't plan on coming back here to St Agnes or even to Clinton Church.

That was hedonistic if ever an idea had been and he didn't care. Even the prospect of packing up his dormitory couldn't depress him, not after forcing the handover of his father's effects from Sister Maggie this morning. She'd kept it hidden away in the bowels of the church for eight long years, but no longer. He was eighteen now and she couldn't keep his rightful property from him.

He didn't even know why he wanted it. To prove a point, he supposed. They couldn't control his life anymore. His issues with his father were his to figure out and if he didn't want to shut the trunk away and have the contents donated as Sister Maggie had suggested, he didn't have to.

Control felt good. Walking through those gates for the last time tomorrow was going to feel even better. He caught himself smiling as he bundled up clothes and the few precious items that he possessed, stowing them carefully in the trunk beside his dad's old boxing robe.

The silky, satin material brushed against his fingers, a bittersweet memory tugging at him at the same time. Perhaps fortunately, a knock came at the door of his dormitory before he could give in to the memory and start thinking fondly of his late father. God forbid. He stepped carefully around the sharp corners of the trunk and moved the four steps to the door, pulling it open with a feeling of great reluctance.

"Matthew, may I have a word with you?" Father Lantom inquired and Matt's lips tightened. No. He wanted to say no.

"Unless that word is 'happy' followed by 'birthday,' I don't want to hear it," he declared, his tone irritable.

"Stubborn as ever, I see," the priest observed with a sigh of disappointment.

"I don't. See, that is," Matt reminded him with a trace of a smirk.

Father Lantom groaned and stepped inside the small dormitory anyway. "Matthew," he said sternly. "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times. Calling attention to your …"

"Vision loss? Blindness? Eyes?" Matt supplied with increasing amusement, shutting the door behind him.

"It's in poor taste," Father Lantom complained but Matt only smiled.

"I think it depends on your sense of humor," he remarked, adding under his breath, "and whether or not you have one."

Father Lantom made no reply. He stood there awkwardly for some moments and Matt allowed silence to descend between them. Any compulsion he'd once felt to tell all to his priest had long since faded in the wake of repeated attempts to turn him as straight as all the rest. He was as much of a perversion to Clinton Church as he always had been and nothing Father Lantom had come to say would change that.

"You are as impossible to reach as you've ever been," the priest declared, something like regret lacing his tone as he seated himself on Matt's bed with a soft flump.

"Well, at least I'm consistent," Matt commented, refusing to be talked down to.

Father Lantom sighed again. "Matthew, you're leaving us tomorrow —"

"Well, I won't cry if you don't," Matt interjected with a grin.

"Your departure has some people … concerned," Father Lantom informed him and Matt had to avert his face from the priest to hide the amusement he could feel tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"If you mean Sister Maggie, just say so," he said sharply, pleased when Father Lantom gave an indignant huff, clearly annoyed to have his motives exposed so quickly. "I'm blind, not stupid. I know that she asked you to try to persuade me one more time. My answer hasn't changed: no. No celibacy vow."

He folded his arms over his chest and stood his ground. The fact that his father's trunk was positioned between him and the priest didn't help matters. It felt rather like all of the years of issues and trauma were sitting between them, waiting to be lifted free and examined one last time.

"Matthew, we're trying to protect you," Father Lantom said so placatingly that Matt scowled.

"You're trying to isolate me," he retorted, his tone fierce. "I spent my childhood alone. I spent my years here alone. I will not spend my life that way."

"Do you think that I'm trying to trick you into making a vow that you'll only break?" Father Lantom asked incredulously.

Matt smirked. "Is it that obvious?"

Father Lantom made a noise of frustration and said pleadingly, "Matthew, if you don't trust me, then my ability to help in any spiritual capacity is going to be limited if not entirely useless."

"Careful, Father, you'll get a big head if you keep talking yourself up like that," Matt remarked sarcastically.

He moved and casually closed the lid of the trunk, moving to perch on the edge of it, drawing his legs up and sitting cross-legged atop it like a child and not a mature young man of eighteen. He was determined not to waver or show any sign of uncertainty that Father Lantom would capitalize on before Matt escaped into a whole new life of college classes and choices that he'd never had at St Agnes.

The priest sighed and stood, his knees creaking painfully. "I can see that you've made up your mind to behave contrarily on your last night here."

"Oh, it's not that," Matt declared, grinning. "I just find that the prospect of freedom agrees with me."

"That is how you would see it," Father Lantom muttered, his shuffling footsteps heading toward the door.

Matt only laughed. "How I would what?"

The priest groaned and halted. "Sin is not freedom, Matthew," he announced. "That path will not bring you happiness, only pain and destruction."

Matt shook his head. "This is about me sneaking out to all of those bars and hooking up with people, isn't it? Hooking up with men? You think that I'm going to go out and run into the arms of the next man who will have me."

"Don't be cavalier, Matthew. This is your soul we're talking about," Father Lantom reminded him and Matt sobered.

"My apologies," he said contritely. "I suppose I'm just tired of everyone assuming the worst of me. It gets a bit wearing."

The words sounded more true and more bitter than he meant them to and he felt rather as if the happy balloon that had been rising inside him earlier had deflated slightly. He slumped forward, cradling his chin in his hand and wishing for an end to it all: the depression, the fear, the constant guilt and condemnation.

When Father Lantom next spoke, his tone was more gentle. "If you don't plan to engage in more homosexual experiments, then why are you so resistant to the idea of celibacy?"

Matt shrugged. "You'd have to go back to the beginning. Creation, I mean. 'It is not good for man to be alone.'"

Father Lantom sighed. "I'm less worried about you being alone than I am about unsavory companions tempting you down a path that leads to destruction."

"Again," Matt said patiently. "I never said that I planned to keep doing that. I just don't want to close all doors to personal connection or happiness out of fear."

"Is that something you want?" Father Lantom asked quietly. "Personal connection? With a woman, I mean, obviously."

"I haven't ruled it out," Matt replied.

He cursed himself as soon as the lie left his lips. It was only once it did, when the words hung in the air between himself and his priest that he recognized them as falsehood. He lied to himself sometimes. He told himself that he could decide who and which gender he was attracted to. He knew that he was deluding himself. It was only when he deluded Father Lantom too that he felt guilty for it.

"That is a weight off my mind, Matthew," the priest declared and that was when Matt knew that he could never take the words back; he'd known so little approval in the last eight years.

"Is it?" Matt asked even as his conscience condemned him for not immediately correcting the lie.

"Yes!" the priest said emphatically. "That has been my prayer for you for some years now."

"Oh, I know," Matt muttered under his breath, but Father Lantom ignored him and prattled on.

"That you would meet a godly young woman, grow a friendship with her, feel safe enough to open up your heart and your life to her…" he enthused, his hopeful little delusion only feeding Matt's guilt. "God knows the desires of your heart, Matthew, even the most sinful ones that you've retained from childhood. But you don't have to be attracted to all women. Just one, Matthew. It only takes one! The right one. Just leave yourself open to that. That's all I ask."

"Fine," Matt forced out, not wanting to double down on his deceit. "I need to finish packing, so …"

"I'll be praying for you, Matthew. We all will," Father Lantom declared, clasping his hands warmly before he turned and let himself out of the dormitory.

"Yeah, okay," Matt mumbled moodily as the door shut behind Father Lantom.

It was the first time that someone at St Agnes had touched him (gently) in some years and he felt compelled to run his hands under cold water, to banish the feeling of approval and even affection gained by deception. He was confused about a lot of things, but not that. He would never love a woman the way Father Lantom wanted him to and for that he'd damned himself to hell.

One thing that he loved about Foggy, Matt reflected as he tucked an arm under his head and spread his legs wide just because Foggy said that it made him look sexy as hell, wasn't just that he knew Foggy meant it, but that Foggy had the ability to make him feel that way: sexy as hell.

In ordinary circumstances, this position would have made him feel vulnerable, and there was an element of that, but there was also an environment of safety, of full acceptance, gentleness, and love that removed any hesitation he had about resting the back of his right calf on Foggy's broad shoulder and relaxing into the firm, tantalizing press of his partner's cock against his hole.

Foggy pressed in deeper and Matt bit back a moan, wrapping his free hand around his cock because oh God he could come just like this, in full, wonderful awareness of the fact that his body craved and ached for Foggy with an intensity that rivaled that of Matt's heart.

He allowed his eyes to close, basking in the feeling of aching fullness that Foggy's cock was able to provide, embracing every twitching nerve that leaped and sparked as Foggy pressed in deeper, until his balls rested hot and heavy against Matt's ass, his full length buried inside him.

Matt gave a half whimper, half hum as Foggy's hand gently stroked his thigh, smoothing over his skin and making everything inside him coil tightly with anticipation. Foggy ground against him, his balls pressing firmly against his ass, making Matt gasp. God, he wanted him. More than he'd ever wanted anyone.

His lips parted in a silent scream of ecstasy as Foggy drew back and then started to move, beginning with slow, steady — deep, fuck, so deep — thrusts that made Matt's insides quiver and turn to jelly. He mimicked Foggy's movements without conscious thought, sliding his hand against his cock in time with Foggy's thrusts.

His pleasure spiked and he let himself drown in it, not caring if he made funny sounds or faces, only that this, with Foggy's cock moving inside him, was heaven, blissful, rapturous heaven. Foggy moved, pinning Matt's other leg flat to the mattress with his palm pressing on his thigh and Matt gasped and then moaned at the fresh hedonistic ecstasy of the new angle.

He knew that he was making faces then, when Foggy pulled out and then slammed back in, driving his cock home like he belonged inside him, like Matt was his to take and use with his full, enthusiastic consent, and he was. He trusted Foggy with every fiber of his being. Never was that more true than when he was able to surrender not just his body, but the full scope of his past horrors to him as he had done in recent weeks.

He had no secrets from Foggy, no hidden shame or guilt laden desires. With Foggy he was free, free to touch, and feel, and love, in a way that had been denied him before. Foggy gave a particularly deep thrust, snapping his hips so savagely that Matt melted into the mattress, awash in pleasure.

He was so close, and he stroked himself desperately, craving release, his lips parting as he wondered what he tasted like, if Foggy could fuck him hard enough that his come spurted over his chin and his lips, allowing him a taste. Perverted, they would have called that at Clinton Church. Vile. Self indulgent. Matt no longer cared. He was able to push thoughts of them aside and focus only on this, on being taken apart so perfectly by the most beautiful man in all of creation.

Foggy's hands slid over Matt's stomach and up his chest, coming to rest on his shoulders, giving Matt all sorts of delicious ideas about those thick, warm fingers sliding through his come instead. Foggy continued thrusting, his fingers squeezing Matt's shoulders on every thrust. Oh, God, let it leave a mark, Matt thought desperately, wishing for the heat of collected blood pooling and cooling under his skin that would remind him for days of this moment.

He released his cock, sighing at the loss of degrees of pleasure even momentarily as he seized Foggy's wrists, shifting his hands so that they cupped his throat instead. Foggy lightly squeezed, seeming uncertain, and Matt gave a groan of unmistakable ecstasy.

It seemed to be all the encouragement that Foggy needed to give Matt the head spinning rush of desire that he craved, and he felt heat pool in the pit of his stomach as Foggy squeezed his throat as he pressed in, releasing his grip on his airway when he drew back, and repeating the movement over and over, winding Matt's pleasure higher than it had ever been.

He returned to stroking his cock, lazily now, taking most of his pleasure from Foggy, from the driving ecstasy of his cock moving inside him, brushing against his walls and making his nerves sing, and the feeling of his hands on his neck, feeding Matt's inner masochist in a way that wasn't harmful, but was deeply satisfying.

Foggy increased his pace, fucking him fast and hard and Matt let his head fall back, feeling a throbbing, gradual building of pleasure that would crest into a wave of release all too soon. He felt his balls tighten in anticipation and he knew that he was going to come.

He leaned into the sensations building in his belly, craving the rush of endorphins and flowing seed, but then Foggy pulled out, denying him the fullness he craved. Matt whined in protest and his partner pushed back in, just the tip, before pulling back again, denying him.

Matt gave a desperate whimper as Foggy teased him, pressing his cock against his hole, then pulling back again… and again… and again… Matt's hand fell away from his cock and he almost resorted to sobbing and sulking, needing his release more than he needed air… but then Foggy slammed back in, his fingers clenching around his throat at the same time.

Matt convulsed wildly, his cock spurting and pulsing, come hitting his stomach and his chest in stripes and pools of delicious heat. He moaned and slumped, boneless, against the mattress as Foggy fucked him to his finish, his cock twitching inside him as he filled the condom with his release.

Matt panted and then gasped as a warm wet tongue slid over his abdomen, tasting his come, making him squirm and writhe at the sensual, erotic touch. He reached out a hand and cupped Foggy's cheek, drawing him into a filthy kiss that tasted divine: like salt and sweat and sex.

Foggy pulled back to breathe, panting, his breaths coming fast and hard, his heart racing, fluttering like many wings in Matt's ears. It was then that Foggy seemed to notice something, seizing Matt's wrist, not ungently, and drawing it level with his face, soft puffs of expelled air whispering against his skin.

"Hey," Foggy mumbled uncertainly. "Is that a tattoo?"

"Careful," Matt cautioned him. "It's new, still healing."

"When did you get a tattoo?" Foggy exclaimed as Matt withdrew his wrist, his cheeks coloring. "Why did you get a tattoo?"

Matt hesitated. "Do you like it?"

"Yeah, it's gorgeous!" Foggy said admiringly.

"I got it after that nightmare the other week," Matt explained, ducking his head shyly, although there was nowhere to hide from Foggy's loving touch as he angled Matt's arm, the better to appreciate his tattoo.

"You got it to keep the nightmares away?" Foggy said, his tone so funny and tentative that Matt snorted. "I mean, if it works…"

"No," Matt said, laughing and then quickly sobering. "After I tried to… you know… end it, I had this therapist in the hospital and we talked about the Rainbow Fish. Did you ever read that as a kid?"

"Yeah," Foggy mumbled thoughtfully. "Yeah, I vaguely remember it."

Matt gave a half-smile, allowing his thumb to trace the slightly raised outline of six tattooed scales that marked the inside of his wrist: painting it red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. The orange scale, he knew, was the largest, central in the design and in his life; the color was representative of healing.

Matt was only partway there, like his tattoo, which was raised in rough partial scabbing in need of moisturizer. But he liked it best this way, when he could trace the outline and really visualize it. He hoped that by the time it had healed properly, he would have it committed to memory.

"Well," he said as Foggy waited with remarkable patience for him to speak. "In the story, the rainbow fish has these beautiful scales, but the other fish are really jealous and they won't have anything to do with him, so he starts to feel like the loneliest fish in the ocean. Then to please all of the fish that hate him for who he is, he rips off scale after scale… and then they accept him, but only when he's ugly like them."

There was a beat of silence and then Foggy said, "I think I remember it being a bit cuter than that when I was a kid."

Matt only sighed. "Foggy, what happens to a fish that loses a lot of scales?"

"I don't know. My major is law, not marine science. I guess it'd get infections or injuries more easily and… and die." Foggy gave a long, drawn out exhale and his voice wobbled as he said, "You're the Rainbow Fish, aren't you?"

"Foggy," Matt said gently, detecting rising salt and moisture in the air between them. "You’re crying."

"I’m crying because I love you and because they almost destroyed you over and over and I might never have met you if they had!" Foggy exclaimed, dissolving into fresh tears.

Matt pulled him down on top of him, stroking Foggy's long, soft hair with trembling fingers. He wanted to tell him that he'd gotten the tattoo as a reminder that his 'scales' and his sexual orientation were a gift not to be despised, but to be valued as a precious part of himself that he was learning to prize. But Foggy trembled with so much emotion that the explanation died on his lips.

"You… Foggy, could you say that again?" Matt asked as Foggy slowly raised his head from where it had been buried in Matt's shoulder.

Foggy sniffed. "I might never have met you if —"

Matt shook his head. "No, the part where you said —"

"I love you?" Foggy said hesitantly. "I do. I love you more than anything, Matt."

Tears burned Matt's eyes and he wrapped his arms around Foggy, homing in on the steady beats of his heart. He let the tears fall then, not counting them as weakness but as proof of the depth of his feelings for Foggy, who was the first in many years to tell him that he loved him and to mean it.

He couldn't sleep. Matt sighed and slowly sat up, pushing the covers off himself and shivering in the drafty room. Guilt plagued him as it often did. But he'd given up confessing it. It was mere lip service if he prayed "Father, forgive me…" and then repeated the action anyway.

He was leaving tomorrow. It wasn't going to matter anymore… except that it did. He'd lied to Father Lantom and let him believe that he could change, that he could be in a heterosexual relationship, but he knew the truth in his bones: he couldn't.

Despite increasingly harmful attempts to remake him, to reshape a homosexual into a heterosexual, Paul Lantom couldn't do it for one simple reason: he didn't make him to begin with. His Heavenly Father did… and his other father. He sighed at the thought of him.

If he didn't come back to Clinton Church, which he didn't plan to, he'd never be close enough to visit his father's grave again, to talk to him, to say the things that he never had a chance to say when Jack Murdock was alive: things like "Goodbye" and "I forgive you" and "I'm gay and I hope you'll accept me as I am anyway."

He climbed out of bed and quickly dressed. Now that the thought of speaking to his dad one last time was in his head, he couldn't very well ignore it. The thought itched and stung like a leech. It must be followed out into the quiet and cold of the cemetery, fed and satisfied, swollen with blood and pain, before it could be removed.

He picked up his cane out of habit and held it loosely in his hand as he made his way out into the cold night air, picking his way along an old gravel path, small stones crunching under his shoes as he followed the line of the fence to the tree and the grave that was positioned near the end, tucked away as if it ought to be as ashamed of itself as Matt had been taught that he should be ashamed of his father.

The problem he realized he had as he approached the grave was that someone else had been struck by the same thought he had. Her heartbeat thrummed amidst the quiet whispers of the wind and Matt sighed with disappointment, recognizing the smell of rose scented rosary beads and disapproval: Sister Maggie.

"Oh." was all Matt found to say, the murmured expression of disappointment intended more for himself than because he wanted Maggie to hear or respond at all.

"Matthew. It's past curfew," Sister Maggie declared, her tone stern as it always was.

Matt scowled and tightened his grip on his cane. "I'm not a child anymore… as of sixteen hours ago. And I came out here to be alone, so…" 'so go away,' he thought, stopping just short of saying it.

"You came out here to talk to Jack. I was doing the same thing," Sister Maggie admitted, her tone gentling as if she thought that she understood him; she didn't.

"Great," was all that Matt found to say when the silence started to border on tense and uncomfortable.

Things had been strained between himself and the Sister in the last few months, with him having refused to let her in when he was in the hospital following his second suicide attempt and her increasing efforts to stop Matt from 'whoring himself out to every homosexual demon in Hell's Kitchen.' Something that she hadn't been successful in and that had brought Matt a little amusement when she tried to follow him and lost him every single time. Stick had taught him a little too well.

"You don't approve of me talking to your father," Maggie observed, making Matt's annoyance flicker.

He straightened, drawing himself up to his full height as he said coolly, "I thought that we weren't supposed to talk to the dead, that we are to commune with God and Him alone."

"Do you?" Maggie asked quietly. "Commune with God?"

"That's between me and Him," Matt retorted bitterly. "And so is this, so…"

It was the second time in so many minutes that he'd tried to subtly indicate to her that he didn't want to talk to her and that he wanted to be alone with the grave of Jack Murdock. Either she failed to grasp that or she enjoyed denying him. Matt was fairly certain that he knew which it was, and it did not improve his mood.

"You came to say goodbye, didn't you?" Maggie guessed and Matt's patience, what little of it there was, fled into the night.

"I never did say goodbye to him. I never got the chance," he stated, his tone coming out hard and flat.

"Not to him. To this place. To the church," Maggie replied, her disappointment a perfect match for Matt's bitterness. "You don't plan to come back, do you, Matthew?"

Matt hesitated, feeling something vindictive and wonderful stir in him as he quoted from the book of Proverbs, "Many are the plans of a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails."

Maggie huffed, clearly irritated. "That's not an answer, Matthew."

"It is," Matt said calmly. "I don't owe you more than that. That's all I've gotten from you for years, meaningless Scriptural platitudes that are no help to anyone."

"If you truly believe that, then you really are a —" Here, Maggie paused, checking her tongue as suddenly as a horse that has just been brought up short by its bridle.

"A what? You can say it," Matt said, daring her to, taunting her with it. "Have the last word. It makes no difference to me."

It hadn't been a lie when he told Father Lantom that he was looking forward to freedom. He knew the constraints of Clinton Church like a shark knew sand banks. He'd thrown himself against the banks and beached himself more than once in an attempt to escape, but the ocean was wide open now; he could taste freedom and he knew that it burned them to realize that as a fact. Time had set him free, not truth or even sin.

"You're lost, Matthew," Maggie said quietly and disappointedly. "He'll find you."

Matt frowned. "God?"

"No. Good night, Matthew," Maggie said coolly, leaving him for the devil to find and perhaps hoping for it as well.

Matt waited until she had gone before he crouched in the cold, twitching aside the rosemary that Maggie had left on his father's grave. "Hey," he whispered, tracing the weathered stone marker with sadness and affection. "I'm still mad at you for… for not choosing me, but hey, I'm not staying here for you either, right? We've just… gone our separate ways." He hesitated, lingering a moment more before he uttered the words that he'd come to say as Maggie so rightly guessed. "Bye, Dad."

The heaviness was back. Matt woke up one morning and it just was. He thought that it was maybe the second time he'd experienced it since starting a course of anti-depressants last year. Things had gotten more manageable for him when the therapist he'd been talking to had recommended that he talk to his GP about the episodes of depression that he experienced from time to time (and had for some years).

His GP had referred him to a psychiatrist for evaluation and Matt told himself that he only went because it was covered by his insurance anyway. The diagnosis of clinical depression didn't help in any way. Explaining it didn't lift the heaviness. The prescribed six month course of anti depressants did… until now.

The effectiveness of the drugs these last six months confirmed, at least to Matt, that the cause of his heaviness lay at least in part in his brain chemistry. Prior to his diagnosis, he'd never been able to understand how he could feel so low when everything was fine. He knew better now.

He also knew that he'd run out of medication almost three weeks ago. He'd put off going back to the GP or the psychiatrist. He told himself that it was because he was too busy studying for exams. And sure, maybe that was part of it. But what was also part of it was the confirmation of something that he'd suspected all along.

If he got to the end of the course of anti-depressants and felt better, it meant that it was temporary, just an episode of depression that he could put behind him. With how he was feeling now, even with the wonderfulness that was Foggy in his life, he suspected that the psychiatrist was right, and what he experienced was symptomatic of major depressive disorder, for which his doctor wanted to prescribe long term management through medication and therapy aimed at addressing and treating his trauma.

He'd resisted that diagnosis of a more long-term form of depression, and so he'd resisted going back to have it confirmed. It was stupid, he knew that. Going back to his doctor meant getting help. It meant being okay. He wanted to be okay, not just for himself, but for Foggy too. Foggy deserved to have a partner who was okay, who could offer support and not be the one who needed it all the time.

He rolled onto his back, staring into the endless night that comprised his vision, knowing what he needed to do, the calls he needed to make, the conversations he needed to have, and yet, not finding that he had the energy to even begin to go about taking responsibility for his own mental health.

Maybe the Sisters were right and he was selfish. Maybe they were wrong and he was human, a human in need of a little extra help and understanding, and a lot more love than they'd been prepared to give him during those long years he'd spent at St Agnes being judged and despised for who he was.

He felt tears well in his eyes as a warm hand pressed gently against his forehead. "Matt? Babe, are you sick again?" Foggy asked worriedly.

"No," Matt said quietly, shame making his throat constrict.

"Are you getting up? I mean, we can do the whole 'breakfast in bed' thing if you —"

"No," Matt repeated, cutting Foggy off, finding even his well intentioned care to be too much in the face of crushing heaviness.

"What's wrong?" Foggy asked, hurt and concern mingling in his tone.

"Nothing. I… I don't know. I think it's just me. I feel flat sometimes, low. I… It'll pass, I promise," Matt quickly lied.

He wanted to tell him. He knew that he should tell him, that isolation and misery wouldn't help him or shield Foggy. It was just hard to force the words past his lips. Part of it was pride in the face of potential stigma. People already treated him like he was fragile because he was blind. If they knew that he was depressed too, they'd think that he really couldn't cope with anything at all.

But 'people' didn't quite account for Foggy Nelson, who asked almost immediately, "What helps?"

"Anti-depressants.. I've been so stressed over exams that I haven't been taking them regularly — at all — I… I ran out. I need to go back to my GP. I know and I will," Matt said quickly, excuses tumbling down like dominoes, making the silence echo. "I… I almost wish —"

"Okay, that changes right now," Foggy said firmly. "Health over grades, Matt. Making a doctor's appointment is not optional." Then he paused. "And you almost wish, what?"

"Nothing," Matt mumbled, feeling too self conscious to blurt out one more thing.

"Come on," Foggy said coaxingly, taking a seat on the edge of the bed and taking Matt's hand, offering comfort and empathy in the gentle squeeze of his fingers.

Matt sighed. "I wish that I still had my depression cat."

"Your what?" Foggy asked with just a hint of amusement.

Matt slowly sat up, Foggy's hand still clasped in his. Any temptation he'd had to try to conceal this from Foggy, to retreat into isolation, into a fog of misery and hopelessness diminished as he sat with him. Foggy didn't necessarily understand the heaviness that Matt felt and he didn't want him to, but just to have him close by, to not be alone or to be misjudged as weak and selfish made a difference and gave him someone to hold onto, someone who wouldn't walk away and leave him to drown in despair.

"In my first year of college," he started to explain, reassured and strengthened by the steady drumming of Foggy's heartbeat. "I… I had a few bad days — okay, months — where I wouldn’t get out of bed and this stray cat kept getting in the dorm. I think he lived underneath one of the dumpsters (he smelled like he did), but anyway, I wouldn’t want to get up and he’d be meowing at my window. I’d ignore him. He’d just meow louder. I’d still ignore him and he’d hook a claw under the edge of the window and pull it, making it bang against the frame over and over and over, all while he’s screeching at me."

Foggy laughed and curled an arm around his shoulders. "Oh my God."

"But he became my buddy after a while," Matt admitted with a tired smile. "When I was having a rough day or a rough year, he’d be around, making sure that I had something to focus on and he… he helped a little bit. And by 'helped,' I mean that he was so annoying he just wouldn't let me… give up and stay down no… no matter how much I wanted to or how many bad days I had."

"What was his name?" Foggy asked curiously.

Matt shrugged. "That Damn Cat."

"Come on," Foggy pleaded, half-laughing. "I know that you named him."

"Marshall," Matt murmured, thinking fondly of the four legged menace that had made his first year at college bearable.

"As in Thurgood Marshall?" Foggy exclaimed in disbelief. "You are so adorable."

Matt hummed in acknowledgment but didn't reply. He allowed his head to drop on Foggy's shoulder, not wanting to move or speak much. The heaviness felt so very physical, so draining that all he wanted to do was go back to bed and wait for it to pass. Everything else felt too hard, too out of reach.

"Hey," Foggy said after a while, giving him a gentle nudge. "What happened to Marshall, Matt?"

"Oh," Matt said wearily. "He got scared off by the cleaning lady one day and he just never came back. I tried to find him. I’d leave out food, but the only things that ate it were ants."

"I’m sorry," Foggy murmured sympathetically. "Hey, here's a crazy thought: how about we call your doctor and try to get an appointment today?"

"That's not crazy," Matt observed with a frown. "But you know I probably won't be able to get an appointment until next week. They're always so busy."

Foggy sighed and said gently, "That's not a reason not to call them, Matt."

"You're right about that," Matt muttered under his breath, not knowing how to tell him that he lacked the mental energy to make a single phone call today.

"Hey, if you're not feeling up to it today, would it be okay if I called them for you and made the appointment?" Foggy asked as Matt nodded numbly, surprised. "I just want you to be okay, Matt, and hey, maybe afterwards we could go to the animal shelter to meet some cats if you feel like you wanna get out of the dorm and take your mind off things."

"We’re not allowed to keep pets in the dorm even if Marshall was there. Odds are, he got hit by a car when he ran off," Matt stated dully. "And… and I need medication anyway, not a cat, Foggy."

"We will get you medication as soon as we can, but in the meantime..." Foggy wheedled him, giving Matt a future glimpse into the persuasive lawyer that he would become. "Come on, for me? Just a few cat cuddles? Hell, for them. Show the kitties some love."

"Yeah, okay," Matt reluctantly agreed.

At Foggy's coaxing, he pulled on an over-sized hoodie and picked at a slice of toast topped with avocado while Foggy made the necessary calls to the doctor's clinic and to the animal shelter. As Matt had suspected, he couldn't get an appointment until next Wednesday with his doctor, and he shook his head at Foggy, knowing that he didn't have the emotional energy to expend waiting around an urgent care clinic.

The appointment was made for the following week and Matt sighed, able to discern Foggy's disappointment beneath all of the nuanced politeness of his tone. He had a little more luck with the animal shelter, who were perfectly happy for the two of them to come and meet the assortment of cats and kittens in need of a good home.

Matt didn't want to go. He also didn't want to choose isolation and a deepening kind of unmedicated misery over time with his boyfriend, so against his better judgment, he went. Upon meeting the animal attendant, Mindy, who was chatty and excitable, his misgivings only deepened.

He settled in the middle of the floor of the cat run like Mindy suggested, setting his folded cane on the floor and letting the kittens come to him. There were a number of older cats working out a disagreement in the run next door and Mindy went to sort them out, leaving Matt alone with the kittens and Foggy.

His boyfriend cooed at the kittens, but Matt's mind was elsewhere. He was too tired, his thoughts too distant to focus on the balls of fur gamboling at his feet or even batting at his cane with tiny paws. It was a nice idea on Foggy's part, but it wasn't helping, not when all Matt wanted to do was retreat from everyone and everything for a while.

A loud 'YOWL' from next door broke into his thoughts and he shook himself as his boyfriend laughed softly, the realization that Foggy was having the time of his life dispiriting in an odd kind of way, in part because Matt couldn't match him for energy and joy, and he knew it. His energy matched that of the protesting cat next door, whose voice only rose in volume and pitch as he made his demands heard.

'YOWL! YOWL! YOWL!' he called over and over again, making Matt grimace.

"Oh my God! Shush, you old terror!" Foggy said with a laugh.

There was the sound of claws on metal and Matt nearly jumped as the irascible old cat hooked his claws under the gate separating the enclosures, pulling it back and then releasing it, making a thunderous BANG that made every feline in the vicinity twitch and hiss, one human with heightened senses included.

'YOWL!' the old cat bellowed at the top of his lungs. BANG! 'YOWL!' BANG! BANG! BANG! 'YOWL! YOWL!'

Recognition broke over Matt and a true smile pierced through the heaviness, like winter sunlight through clouds. "Oh my God," he breathed, getting carefully to his feet. "Foggy, I think that’s him."

"Are you sure?" Foggy asked, raising his voice to be heard over the still complaining cat.

"That it’s the same pain in the ass, mangy old cat that wouldn’t let me alone?" Matt said, starting toward the barrier of mesh and wire that separated the two cat runs. "Marshall?"

He crouched down, holding his folded cane in one hand and resting the other against the mesh. Soft fur brushed against his palm and a rumbling purr issued from the grumpy old beast of a cat, who rubbed against Matt's hand through the mesh, seeming suddenly satisfied.

I missed you too, Matt thought, feeling tears slide silently down his cheeks. He knew without a doubt that it was the same cat. He sounded the same, he felt the same, he even smelled the same, earthy and overly sweet, like he'd been rolling in garbage and he liked it.

He and Foggy adopted Marshall on the spot. The ease of the adoption was, Matt suspected, due to the animal attendants being eager to foist the old terror off on whichever unsuspecting people got attached to him. That was fine by him. He slept peacefully that night, held by Foggy, with Marshall lying across the backs of his knees, giving him pins and needles and a familiar kind of comfort.

Of course, he and Foggy couldn't keep Marshall in the tiny dorm, at least not without attracting complaints. After a fortnight, he and Foggy agreed that Marshall should stay with Foggy's parents, who were more than happy to take him in until Matt and Foggy graduated and found an apartment where Marshall would be happier.

Matt wasn't sure that the old cat was ever that: happy. Smug, maybe. Marshall took to Anna quickly, getting under her feet with such practiced persistence that Matt was asked to pitch in with dinner prep while Anna found a suitable distraction for Marshall involving a plastic ball with a bell inside it.

Matt caught himself smiling as he stood shoulder to shoulder with Foggy at the kitchen counter, slicing pizza ingredients on a chopping board. He could sense Foggy watching him closely and he cocked his head at him, amusement flaring to life inside him. The medication was working. He'd noticed the difference in the last day or so and the relief was enough to lessen his fear of stigma around his diagnosis, at least for now.

"Foggy," he said sternly as he pulled a bell pepper toward himself. "I can feel your concern. Stop it. I’ve been evaluated by an occupational therapist and I'm fine to do this on my own."

"Uh, one, you were nine at the time," Foggy argued, making Matt grin guiltily, “and two, I'm pretty sure that you terrified her.”

"I impressed her," Matt declared, thinking back to the afternoon he'd spent being taught cooking skills in the tiny apartment that he'd shared with his dad.

"Yeah, no. I love you, babe, but no. Just watching you do that… you are terrifying," Foggy muttered as Matt sliced the bell pepper deftly in two.

Matt nudged him playfully. "You love it."

"I do," Foggy agreed, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek.

He added no caveats to that declaration. There was no I love you when you're happy or I love you when you're coping on your own or I love you when you're being all sexy and charming and only then. No. Matt knew that Foggy loved him without conditions, that he loved him in the highs and in the lows, that he'd made a decision to love the entirety of the roiling, complicated sea that was Matt Murdock, and he hoped for the patience and compassion to be able to love Foggy in exactly the same way.

Getting away from St Agnes and Clinton Church was supposed to help, to make him happy, with the lifting of constraints on his freedom to make his own decisions. It had been a little over a month and Matt didn't feel free like he had on the day he left. He felt lost and sometimes… sometimes he just felt really heavy.

Nothing needed to happen for him to feel that way. Everything on the surface would appear fine. He was getting good grades in Criminal Justice, great grades even. He had other students who were kind to him and even seemed interested in what he had to say about the various discussion topics that were presented to the class. He was eating properly and taking care of himself.

Boxing brought on some conflicting feelings but he liked it as an outlet and he'd found a good coach who was affordable for him thanks to the extra money he was getting from tutoring a few struggling students, and that was also going well. He found that teaching and actually helping people who struggled meant something to him.

Nothing was wrong. Just Matt. It was only him that felt this crushing heaviness that made it hard to breathe or even think, that made him want to stay in bed all day with his face turned to the wall, with misery for company. He didn't know what was wrong with him or even if anything was, or if Father Lantom was right and his affinity toward members of his same sex was destined to lead only to unhappiness and destruction.

This wasn't about that though. Matt hadn't been with anyone in weeks. He hadn't ventured out to any bars or formed romantic attachments to anyone on campus. This heaviness he felt seemed completely unrelated to that, almost like a separate struggle all of its own.

It wasn't new either. He'd experienced it often as a teenager. Only, back then, he'd had the Sisters calling him lazy, selfish, self pitying, attention seeking… they'd compelled him to leave his bed, to do chores or study or attend Mass, using insults and criticism as motivation for self improvement.

Matt didn't have that here. He had a dorm room on the ground floor, one of only a handful reserved for students with accessibility requirements. Really, Matt could have managed the stairs with his cane, but the accessible dorms were single student dorms, which meant that he had no roommate to bother him or make him get out of bed on days when that heaviness was so crushing and overwhelming that it —

'YOWL!'

Matt groaned, the screeching echo ringing in his ears, breaking into his thoughts. The damn cat was back again. He wasn't getting up, he decided. He was going to stay here until that heavy feeling went away, along with the cat at his window. It belonged to no one. It was a stray and not even a lovable one.

'YOWL! YOWL! YOWL!' it called again and again and Matt gritted his teeth.

"Pain in the ass," he grumbled under his breath, rolling over and tugging his comforter up to his chin.

He had a moment's peace and then — BANG! —

Matt didn't move, knowing what the damn cat was doing, hooking a claw under the window (which didn't seal properly), pulling it and then releasing it, making it bang against the frame. The sound irritated him, but he was stubborn.

And the cat was relentless. 'YOWL!' BANG! BANG! BANG! 'YOWL! YOWL!'

Matt flung the covers off himself and stomped over to the window, yanking it open in hopes of startling the damn cat, which only purred like the menace it was and leaped past his outstretched hand, landing on the carpet with a soft flump.

"No," Matt groaned, listening to the cat purr contentedly, his heartbeat soft and steady like he was perfectly pleased with himself. "Hey, Cat." He attempted to shoo it back to the window, hissing all the while, "I can't have pets in here. You have to go. Go! Shoo!"

The cat headbutted his hand and purred, ignoring Matt's hissing and grumbling and acting as if there was no place that he'd rather be than in this room, pissing him off. Matt sighed and moved back to the bed, collapsing on it; he did not have the energy for that damn cat today and he groaned as the cat leaped lightly onto his chest and settled there, kneading him with his paws and purring.

Matt wrinkled his nose and mumbled, "Damn cat," receiving only one response from the creature: 'purr, purr, purr.' He smiled in spite of himself as he set a hand on the cat's soft head and stroked him. He was an asshole. He was also Matt's first real friend in years and some of the heavy weight that had been crushing him lifted with that furry menace's company.

He could hear the music and the bright thunder of thousands of hearts when he and Foggy were still two blocks away from the Pride parade. He cocked his head like an attentive dog, zeroing in on the happy ruckus of a crowd who were eager to be underway, to march through New York City with one simple message: Love always won; it had brought them here and they were proud to be who they were and to march together, demanding the same rights that everybody else had: to marry the ones they loved, to have security in jobs and housing, to be free to be their authentic selves with whatever sexual orientation and gender identity felt right and true to them.

Matt was still working on that, celebrating who he was and embracing the freedom to be unashamedly so: one hundred percent Matt Murdock — gay, a survivor — not a victim — of religious trauma and homophobia, a survivor who had his issues and was proud to stand alongside the man he loved, who told him with absolute delight that he was sporting a pansexu-WHALE t-shirt and a feather boa today.

Foggy had helped choose Matt's outfit for the parade too, and by helped, he meant that he'd been completely flummoxed by all the choices and let Foggy talk him into a black t-shirt with a big, bright rainbow on it, paired with jeans, and a rainbow flag knotted around his neck that he wore as a cape.

"Do I look alright?" Matt asked, adjusting his grip on his cane, which had streamers wound around it, courtesy of an enthusiastic Foggy Nelson.

"You look gorgeous as always, babe. Why?" Foggy asked casually.

"I feel ridiculous," Matt confessed, tugging at the flag knotted at his throat.

Foggy huffed. "I think you mispronounced 'nervous' just then."

Matt bit his lip. "Foggy, maybe we should —"

"Do you wanna add self conscious to the list?" Foggy muttered under his breath as the two of them joined an excited group of parade-goers.

"I… I'm just not sure it's my thing," Matt said, feeling every bit as self conscious as Foggy accused him of being.

"Matt, Pride is everyone's thing!" Foggy declared passionately. "That's what makes it great. It's all inclusive and everyone feels safe enough to be themselves… don't deprive yourself of your first Pride over a few nerves."

He curled an arm around Matt's waist as they walked together and Matt leaned into his touch, comfort exploding through his middle, radiating from Foggy's touch. He exhaled and tried to make himself relax, to tune out the threat of sensory overload promised by such a large crowd, and to focus solely on having an enjoyable Pride march with Foggy and the rest of the LGBTQ+ community who would be marching with them in solidarity today.

"It… it's not my first time, Foggy," he mumbled, turning his head away from him so that Foggy wouldn't see the shame reflected in his face. "I came to Pride once before."

"When?" Foggy asked in surprise. "Actually, I wanna change my question. With who?"

"My church," Matt answered, regret making his cheeks burn in the hot June sun.

"Enough said," Foggy said comfortingly, only tightening his arm around Matt's middle. "Also, babe? Protesting or whatever the hell they had you doing — I don't even wanna know unless it involved a parade float and a lot of glitter — that doesn't count. This is your first Pride and I'm gonna make sure it's a great one."

Matt smiled gratefully at him, wondering if he'd ever stop being surprised by Foggy's remarkable capacity for grace and understanding, a capacity that Matt had grown up in the absence of. He pushed the thought of St Agnes from his mind as he and Foggy got swept along with the waves of people flooding the streets of New York City for Pride.

Excitement flickered across him every time he heard the rumble of a car or parade float passing by. Music and cheering filled his ears as he walked with Foggy, his rainbow flag-cape fluttering behind him like the wings of a bird that was about to soar for the very first time.

His nervousness grew less with every step until he couldn't even hear the hateful diatribe he'd grown up with and it faded away for the moment, like footsteps fleeing into silence, running away from the unrestrained joy and deafening din that was a Pride celebration in full swing.

Foggy was right. It was definitely his thing. Painful memories sank out of reach of conscious thought, covered by a rainbow parade and a very public outpouring of acceptance and love. He listened eagerly to the couple marching ahead of him and Foggy, who told anyone who asked that they were marching in support of their son.

Matt wondered then if Foggy's family were here marching today. Surely, they were. Anna never missed an opportunity to show her loving support for her son. Every day was Pride when it came to the Nelson family and Matt felt his heart swell at the thought of them.

He nearly tripped over his own feet when Foggy jerked to a halt, something to the side of the parade seeming to have caught his attention. Matt paused, listening to Foggy's heart practically shiver with excitement, heat blooming from him, primarily across his face and neck: Foggy was blushing, and Matt cocked his head at him, curious to find out why.

"That's Tony Stark!" Foggy exclaimed in an awestruck whisper.

"Seriously?" Matt muttered, tipping his head curiously, like an over-eager puppy.

"Seriously! Would I joke about this?" Foggy exclaimed, jittery with excitement. "Oh my God!"

Matt almost laughed. "Foggy, your celebrity crush is showing."

"Shh," Foggy hissed in apparent mortification. "What if he hears you? And no, my celebrity crush is Captain freaking America. Come on. Let's get closer!"

"So you can get an autograph?" Matt muttered incredulously.

"So I can hear what he's saying to that CNN reporter!" Foggy insisted as Matt smirked, but took his boyfriend's elbow, allowing himself to be led over to Tony Stark and the reporter so that Foggy could eavesdrop.

Foggy halted and Matt jerked to a stop too, now within about ten feet of the famous billionaire/philanthropist. He smelled him before he heard him. Tony Stark smelled like expensive cologne mingled with something earthy, like sawdust drying in the sun: cedar-wood shampoo, he realized after a moment, edging nearer instinctively.

"Mr. Stark," the male reporter was saying. "There are people marching today who have been fired for being LGBT or else evicted or made the victims of hate crimes and transphobia. What do you have to say to them?"

"Uh, here's what I have to say to them," Tony Stark replied. "I'm with you."

The reporter laughed. "You're the head of a multi billion dollar corporation, Mr. Stark. I seriously doubt that you're at risk of losing your job."

"Maybe not," Stark agreed, his natural charisma shining through even on the noisy parade route. "But I'll tell you this, when I came out as bisexual when I was eleven, my old man packed me off to boarding school within forty eight hours. I suspect he would've disowned me if my mother hadn't had something to say about it, and if he didn't need me for his public image. You look at me and see a rich, successful guy, and I am, but I also know what it is not to have people accept you for who you are."

Matt swallowed hard, moved by Stark's candor as the reporter paused and changed tack. "Would you say that Stark Industries is a safe workplace for people who identify as LGBT?"

"I'd say that I'm trying to make it one," Stark answered, his tone so genuine that Matt almost smiled. "I'd also say that I've seen a hell of a lot of companies sporting rainbow logos this month without making any real change. It's all very easy to stand here and point fingers, I know, but I put it to them: what are you doing for LGBT people in your organizations to protect their rights and to stand with them? I'm not here today to promote Stark Industries, but I am here as an out and proud bisexual, and I'm prepared to challenge the big wigs: come meet me up here, get on my level."

Stark walked away, the sparks of his words lingering in the air like fireflies as the reporter said faintly, "Well, there you have it —"

Matt shook his head, finding himself quite as stunned and impressed by Stark as the reporter no doubt was. Foggy moved beside him, guiding him around the stream of marching feet that he gathered belonged to a dancing troupe. He and Foggy followed behind them as the rubbery smell of balloons bounced overhead and flags flapped and fluttered in the hot summer air, making their own music to compete with that of the myriad Pride floats.

Foggy commented on each one that went by, describing the people that accompanied them of every age, race, and sexual orientation. The sound of car horns honking excitedly ahead added to the cacophony of sound as a community that was much larger and louder than Matt could ever have imagined celebrated Pride together.

It all came to a screeching halt for him less than ten minutes later when a band of protesters attempted to block the parade's progress. That was so like them, Matt thought bitterly, the enemies of progress. The religious overtones of the words they shouted from their picket-line were all too familiar, and Matt almost ducked behind the nearest parade float to evade the stinging barbs.

The presence of the vibrant community of LGBTQ+ people and their proud allies gave him the strength to hold his ground, and there was a moment's relief, like rubbing a cramp, when the police started attempting to move the protesters off to the side, clearing the way for the parade to continue.

Still they shouted, even as they were shepherded away. "IT'S OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO DEMONSTRATE OUR BELIEFS! WE WILL NOT BE —"

What the protesters refused to be, Matt never found out, because Foggy chose to tug him behind a parade float at that moment, kissing him fiercely in full view of the crowd, silencing the hate and trauma that rose like ugly, noxious daffodils in Matt's mind.

He gasped for breath as Foggy broke the kiss, his head still spinning as his boyfriend said gently, "It's their right to be allowed to hate someone, Matt. We can't stop them. But it's our right to ignore the people who are literally raining on our parade. Come on."

Foggy's hand clasped his and Matt allowed himself to be led past the line of protesters with his head held high, tempting as it was to accidentally swing his cane into a shin or two as he passed. More violence and hate would change nothing, however. Only love could do that and he clung to Foggy's hand like a lifeline as he walked through the thickets of fear and bigotry and into the joyous world of rainbow flags fluttering in the breeze on the other side of it.

New York City smelled like a spent firework the day after Pride. Gone was the joyous marching crowd of the day before, and gone were the protesters, and the police, and all the reporters from CNN. The streets were empty of parade floats and they felt strange to Matt as he walked in step with his cane, making his way to the affirming church that Foggy's family attended.

Foggy himself was still in bed, nursing a vicious hangover after attending one too many Pride after-parties. He didn't regret it though. He'd been quick to assure Matt of that, even as he'd burrowed deeper under the covers and bemoaned the existence of the sun.

Matt had patted the top of his head, left him water and a couple of painkillers, and gone to church. He hadn't been to a service in what felt like a long time now, and he almost turned around and went back to the dorm half a dozen times.

He didn't know what he was hoping for at the Nelson's church. Closure in a sense, he supposed. But also acceptance, affirmation, and inclusion: all things that he'd been denied at Clinton Church since coming out to Father Lantom as a teenager.

He'd pondered how to address what he now recognized as years of sustained trauma. Confronting Father Lantom and Sister Maggie would achieve nothing, and would in fact only serve to make him angry and to deepen hurts that already existed.

Writing a letter to the Archbishop was something that he'd considered, but any Scriptural basis for positive same-sex relationships that he'd found in the pages of his Braille Bible would be overridden and doused quickly in homophobia and 'clobber verses,' no matter how much Matt adored the words of David, who said about Jonathan: "Your love for me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women."

That was how he felt about Foggy: that his love surpassed every kind of love that Matt had ever known. They weren't going to agree with him or accept him, not the Archbishop, not Father Lantom, and not Sister Maggie. So he let them go and focused on gaining the restoration and acceptance of One who he'd been told despised and condemned him, but who he'd known through others' interpretations and prejudices, not through his own connection to Him: God Himself.

Anna Nelson met him on the steps of the church, just as Matt was coming up them with his cane. He recognized Anna's perfume and her warmth even before she'd wrapped her arms around him in a motherly embrace. His dread of entering a religious establishment again lessened then, shrinking to the size and weight of an egg that he could let fall and shatter on the pavement so easily, much more easily than he'd thought.

"Matt!" Anna exclaimed in a tone of delight, stepping back. "It's so nice of you to join us this morning!"

"Oh," Matt said, rarely having been welcomed with such enthusiasm. "Well, Foggy mentioned a while ago that this church is… um, pretty different to my old church… in… in a good way."

"I know what you mean," Anna said gently. "You don't have to worry. They don't target LGBT people from the pulpit, not here."

"Yeah, Foggy told me about that," Matt mumbled awkwardly, as the people clustered around the door started to move inside with much shuffling of their feet.

Matt took Anna's arm, holding his cane loosely in his other hand as he followed her inside, nervousness resting against his chest, cold like the cross necklace he used to wear, making him shiver as he clutched Anna's arm, tolerating the greetings that were directed Anna's way and acknowledging them with nods and smiles.

"I notice that Foggy didn't come with you this morning," Anna murmured to him and Matt ducked his head guiltily.

"He needed to sleep," he admitted, trying to school his expression to one of appropriate concern rather than amusement at his boyfriend's disheveled state.

"I take it that Foggy partied well into the night?" Anna said with a soft laugh.

"Uh, yeah," Matt confessed with a grin.

"We didn't manage to catch up with him yesterday, but we were on one of the street corners giving out proud mom and dad hugs to anyone who wanted them," Anna informed him, her tone warm as she added, "Just here, Matt. You can sit with me," guiding him into a pew and then pausing when he did. "What's wrong?"

"Nobody's ever… I don't think I've sat with anyone in church since my dad… I'm just gonna… sit," Matt mumbled awkwardly, gesturing with his cane and sinking into a seat.

Anna didn't allow his sense of embarrassment to linger, immediately moving to sit beside him and patting his hand in a comforting kind of way. Matt focused on folding his cane as people trickled into the church, exchanging greetings in low murmurs before the service officially began.

Matt got through the mundane announcements by expending barely a modicum of attention. He hadn't come to hear how much money the church had gotten at their fundraiser last week. He hadn't even come for the worship music, which was more contemporary in style than he was accustomed to. It was only when one of the ministry volunteers read out the Scripture passage for the service that he started to really pay attention.

"This morning's Bible reading comes from Galatians 3:28—29," the female volunteer said, pausing as pages rustled quickly in the pews. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise."

She stepped down a moment later and Matt nodded thoughtfully, thinking of how Foggy would interpret that verse. 'There is neither heterosexual, nor homosexual, there is neither transgender nor cisgender, you all are equally valued, God's creations, made to be loved.'

The minister approached the pulpit and began to speak, drowning out Foggy's imagined words and putting new ones in their place. "The words we just read and the teachings of Jesus do not justify exclusion. There are no categories here. We've just read that. We are all equal in value no matter who we are, or who other people might say or think that we are."

Matt's breath caught in his throat and his heart thundered in his chest. He found his years at St Agnes encapsulated in the minister's words, in the questioning of his worth and the validity of his faith as a homosexual person, unable to be considered loved and forgiven by God, at least in the eyes of Clinton Church.

Tears welled in Matt's eyes and he gripped his cane tightly, clutching the cold aluminum like an anchor, needing something to steady him. Because this, this was everything that Matt had ever wanted or needed to hear. His whole identity was being reshaped in this pew. It was painful and beautiful and he couldn't hold back the tears that trickled silently down his cheeks.

"No one has the right to feel more worthy than anyone else. It is our love of Christ that defines us as Christians, not our sexual orientation, gender identity, romantic attachment or even past mistakes that we might've made along the way."

Matt had never been told that before, that his sexual orientation wasn't a barrier to God or a sin to be overcome. It just was. If he as a created being, had faith in God and chose to live out his faith by adhering to principles Jesus taught, like loving his neighbor as himself and praying for his enemies, then no one got to say that he wasn't allowed to do so or that his faith was less worthy than theirs. He was an equal.

"If others make you question your value, look to Jesus," the minister advised. "He has the final say over who you are, not them. A lot of people like to quote the Bible when they're pointing out what they see as flaws in others. Bear in mind that the Pharisees loved doing that too, back in Jesus' time. The law didn't save them. All the rules in the world couldn't do that. Only Jesus could. Only perfect grace."

They'd missed the point, Matt realized. At Clinton Church, rigid adherence to the law was everything. It was what made you right with God, according to Sister Maggie. He realized then that his homosexuality had never made him 'wrong' with God. It was only the bigoted views and interpretation of others that had made him feel that way. He'd always stood in grace, and he would always stand in grace, no matter what anyone said.

"That grace is without condition," the minister said, echoing Matt's thoughts. "So when anyone tells you that you're not worthy to call yourself a Christian, know this: they don't speak for God, even if they claim to. When they judge you for how you practice your faith, who you love, or how you identify yourself, remember that Jesus loves you unconditionally. Take the chance to remind them of grace."

That was quite a challenge in itself, Matt thought, returning legalism and judgment with grace and all encompassing forgiveness. But then he remembered what Foggy had said to him at Pride, about ignoring the hate, not confronting them in anger, but moving past them in joy, leaving hate and hurt behind… that was a different kind of grace, the kind that could choose not to acknowledge those who spoke in fear and prejudice until they chose love and acceptance and met him on his level as Tony Stark had said.

"None of us are perfect, not me, not you," the minister declared as Matt nodded in agreement, remembering many mistakes. "We've all fallen short and tempting as it is sometimes to lash out in anger when people target us, remember the servant of the high priest who came with the soldiers to arrest Jesus. Jesus' disciple attacked him, but Jesus healed him. He healed his enemy. We are called as his followers to heal, not to wound."

Matt was suddenly glad that he hadn't sought closure in confronting Father Lantom or Sister Maggie. It would change nothing, only causing more hurt to himself and to them, and possibly confirming their worst thoughts about him. No, he chose healing, he decided, for himself first and foremost, so that he could love Foggy, free of bitterness and rage.

"Treat the world with loving kindness," was the minister's advice. "Maybe they'll learn something from watching you, from seeing His light and His love in you, in whatever form it comes. Let's pray."

Matt bowed his head and let a fresh wave of tears fall as he sat there, justified and free, chosen, not hated by God, not cast aside, loved unfailingly, with unending grace that no one could ever take from him. He felt Anna take his hand as she'd taken Foggy's in the homophobic church of Foggy's teen years, promising that she would be by his side and that things would get better. Finally, finally, Matt knew that it was true.

Epilogue:

It was the first Thanksgiving that Matt could remember celebrating with family in a very long time. Foggy's family, but his family too now. He hadn't realized at first that choosing Foggy meant choosing his family too, but of course it did. The Nelson's had never treated him as anything less than family.

The moment that Matt stepped through the front door with Foggy, he was enveloped in hugs and excitement. Each Nelson hugged him at least twice. Anna managed twice as many hugs as all the rest before Foggy managed to rescue him from the affectionate hoard of family members.

A familiar bump against his shin and a demanding 'YOWL' alerted him to the fact that Marshall was trying to get his attention. Matt only laughed, passing his cane to Foggy and leaning down to scoop up the ball of fluff, who he was convinced had gained a couple of pounds under the excellent care and shameless spoiling of the Nelson's.

The cat nuzzled his head under Matt's chin and purred loudly as he straightened up. Matt smiled to himself when Marshall allowed Foggy to pet him too, his rumbling purrs only growing louder. Matt moved to sit in an armchair in the living room with him, the cat snuggling deep into his arms.

Foggy perched on the arm of his chair, curling an arm around his shoulders, seeming content to sit with him and Marshall while the rest of the family flitted between the kitchen and living room in a haze of endless chatter that Matt didn't care to engage in, not yet.

The reprieve was brief. Scarcely fifteen minutes had passed before Candace started summoning everyone to the table for dinner. Matt sighed as he set Marshall reluctantly on the floor, allowing Foggy to guide him to the bathroom to wash his hands.

By the time the two of them returned to the dining room for dinner, everyone else was already seated and the wine had been opened. The delicious smells of dark, spiced fruits mingled invitingly with the aroma of turkey, roasted vegetables, and the earthiness of mushroom gravy.

Matt's mouth fairly watered as he took his seat beside Foggy, with Theo on his other side, bowing his head for grace, and then allowing Foggy to pile his plate high with delicious food. Conversations only grew in volume as the meal progressed, laughter ringing out often across the table, making Matt smile.

By the time Foggy got up to help Anna bring out dessert, Matt could hardly move, let alone finish the generous slice of apple pie he received. He managed a few bites as he leaned against Foggy, content just to be, to listen and smile and brush his fingertips against Marshall's soft head, the cat having decided to position himself underneath Theo's chair for the meal, largely, Matt suspected, because Theo kept sneaking him bits of turkey.

The conversation dwindled down to a pleasant hum after a while and Matt basked in the feeling of being warm and overfed, two things he hadn't experienced in Thanksgiving's celebrated at St Agnes. The thought rose, sharp and jagged, threatening to open old wounds, and Matt shook his head, resolving to let it go and remain in the present.

"I'll start clearing some of these dishes away, Ma," Theo volunteered as Matt pushed his half eaten dessert away, unable to eat another bite. .

"Not yet," Anna demurred. "We haven't gone around the table yet and said what we're thankful for."

Candace groaned. "Ma —"

"It's a tradition," Anna reminded her in a tone that suggested she fully intended to uphold it.

"It's embarrassing," Candace muttered under her breath as Theo hummed in agreement.

"Humor me," Anna insisted, her children acquiescing with loud sighs. "Who wants to go first? Ed?"

Matt fidgeted nervously as Ed Nelson cleared his throat, seeming to give the question some thought. Nervousness brushed the walls of his chest, making everything inside him flutter like a bat trapped in a house. He felt Foggy's presence beside him as warm comfort and he breathed again. There was no wrong answer when it came to being thankful for things. It was only his deeply ingrained need for approval that made him feel so tense.

"I'm thankful for being able to have all the family here," Ed answered after a few moments of deliberation.

"That's a good one," Anna said approvingly. "Theo?"

"Oh, I don't know," Theo muttered, playing with his dessert spoon, making it clink against his bowl. "Friends, I guess. Work? I like working with Pa. What about you, Matt?"

Matt didn't even hesitate. "Foggy," he said warmly. "I'm thankful for Foggy."

"Ugh," Candace and Theo complained simultaneously, but Foggy only laughed and patted Matt's cheek, leaving a tender kiss there that made Matt smile.

He relaxed in his seat as the rest of the family gave expected answers to the question. They were thankful for family, friends, health, all things that got taken for granted most of the time. But something that Matt never took for granted was the man whose hand clasped his, who had so generously offered to share his family for the holiday.

It was a strange feeling, sharing Foggy's childhood bedroom with him, even just overnight. The room was small and warm, cozy in a word. The shelves Matt's fingers had brushed over upon entering were lined with plenty of books and soft toys. There was such richness in this room, such love.

Matt, by contrast, had been raised in an environment in which there were few treasures and many hungers. He took pleasure in satisfying one hunger in particular, seating himself on Foggy's cock with a barely stifled sound of deep pleasure.

It wouldn't do to make too much noise, not with Theo occupying the room just down the hall, and Foggy's parents being within earshot in the living room not even twenty feet from Foggy's bedroom door. He concentrated on anchoring his hands on Foggy's outstretched calves and rocking back onto his boyfriend's cock instead of worrying about being overheard.

He loved taking him like this, letting Foggy ogle his ass as much as he liked while Matt got to set the pace and control the depth, taking Foggy as fast and deep as he wanted to, following the cues and desires of his own body instead of surrendering control to Foggy, which he often did simply for the fact that he trusted him with every part of himself.

His thoughts wandered somewhere else, desire drowning out everything around him as he bounced shamelessly on Foggy's cock, giving in entirely to pleasure, his hand wrapping around his own dick. He stroked himself quickly, needing to come less than he needed to think about anything that wasn't this.

He drew in ragged, panting breaths, fighting for control of his impulses as he slowed his frantic bouncing, slowing to gentle, gyrating motions of his hips that had Foggy gasping and whining beneath him, his hands reaching out to touch Matt's ass, gripping, squeezing, demanding.

Matt loved it, driving Foggy wild, making him desperate, making him want him this way. He leaned forward, making Foggy sigh blissfully as he was treated to the sight of his cock buried inside him. Matt could only imagine how that appeared and he rotated his hips with exaggerated slowness, purely for Foggy's pleasure.

He paused and clenched all of a sudden, feeling his desire rise to its peak. He gripped his cock in his hand, resisting the beckoning desire that would have had him coming already. Foggy just made it so easy for him, so easy to feel wanted, desired, and safe, so easy to want to let go and collapse against him, a beautiful mess, content to stay all night with Foggy buried inside him.

But no. Not yet. His desperate need for release lessened, slowly, painfully, and he could breathe again. He slowly released his cock and leaned forward, lying prone on Foggy's thick, wonderful thighs that he'd imagined wrapped around him more than once.

The new angle gave Foggy ample opportunity to enjoy looking at his tight hole stretched around his cock and Matt whined as his boyfriend's fingers circled his rim in a trail of admiration and ecstasy that made him twitch with want. He slowly straightened up, rocking back against Foggy.

He wasn't prepared for it when Foggy thrust upward, pushing his cock deeper inside him, making Matt gasp and grip his thighs to steady himself. Foggy's hands gripped his hips as he took over, thrusting inside him fast and hard, making Matt whine and pant.

He went rigid attempting to restrain himself as Foggy fucked him desperately, making Matt bounce on his cock, sending him into new heights of ecstasy. He came hard, pleasure flashing through him in an explosion of dizzying bliss that had his cock pulsing, spurting hot, wet, sticky come over his skin.

Everything in Matt went limp and boneless and he struggled to maintain some kind of rhythm for Foggy, whose hands rested on his hips, guiding him, rocking into him with slow, practiced motions that prolonged Matt's pleasure, making him sleepy, stupid, and slow, spun out on pleasure, drunk on bliss.

He rocked his hips, following the movements of Foggy's hands, letting himself be directed wherever Foggy needed him to be for him to find his release too. Foggy's hands slid to his ass, his boyfriend pushing him off his cock, almost slipping from him, and then dragging him back down, impaling him with his thick, throbbing length over and over.

Matt swallowed a groan, close to being over-stimulated and yet too full of dizzying pleasure to ever stop. Foggy maintained his achingly slow pace, making Matt's nerves hum. His lips parted in breathless ecstasy, his back arching and his limbs trembling with exertion.

Foggy's cock twitched inside him and Matt trembled and clenched, holding him through the delicious pulsing and throbbing as his boyfriend filled the condom with heat. Matt slumped a little, utterly spent, as he slowly moved, Foggy's cock slipping from him as he did so.

He moved to flop next to his boyfriend, who puffed and panted with exertion, pressing breathless, tender kisses to Matt's cheeks, his forehead, and his mouth, the warmth of his body inviting Matt to snuggle deeply into his arms, sweaty and sticky with come as he was.

"You're ridiculous… and amazing," Foggy declared, cursing under his breath and making Matt laugh.

"I like sex," he admitted with a sleepy, half-smile.

"What did you tell me right before our first time together?" Foggy wondered aloud. "I know a lot about sex and I'm good at it."

Matt felt his face redden. "I don't think that I ever said — not in those words exactly— "

"You did. Or it was implied," Foggy added thoughtfully. "I can't remember now. But hey, you were not wrong, Mr. I-Like-Sex-Now."

"I always liked it, it's just… now I don't hate myself for it," Matt admitted a little self-consciously.

"Ah, personal growth," Foggy said lightly.

The teasing comment was exactly what Matt needed at that moment and he found himself smiling as he lay beside him, his head pillowed on Foggy's arm, his boyfriend's long hair tickling his torso, the smell of sex and salt hanging heavily between them. Foggy was as always, incredibly addictive and Matt was content to bask in the warmth and the smell of him, and most particularly the sound of him, Foggy's heartbeat slowly returning to a more normal rate now.

"Hey," Foggy murmured sleepily. "Were you serious before?"

Matt grinned. "About liking se—"

"No!" Foggy laughed. "When your thing that you were thankful for was…"

"You?" Matt supplied with a tender smile. "I was serious. I am serious."

"Are you sure that the thing you're thankful for isn't sex?" Foggy asked teasingly. "Because I might make that my thing next time."

"Your mother would send you away from the table," Matt declared with a grin.

"True," Foggy agreed with an amused hum.

Silence fell between them, warm, comfortable, like the softest of blankets that draped itself around Matt's shoulders, making him feel content and safe. The old worm gnawed at his insides, the worm that had chewed him up for years, the one that made him agree with people to gain their approval. He'd never had to do that with Foggy and he wasn't going to start taking steps backward now.

"That isn't what I meant — sex," he admitted, keeping his voice low. "I'm thankful for you because… you saved me. I was… well, I never could've been happy if you hadn't helped me… understand things differently and realize what the truth is."

"And what's that?" Foggy asked curiously, but with a hint of smugness to his tone.

"Love is never wrong, only human's perception of it," Matt declared, his voice quiet but firm.

"And it always wins?" Foggy murmured, nuzzling his cheek.

"Always," Matt agreed wholeheartedly, pressing the tenderest of kisses to Foggy's lips.

People had dripped poison into his heart and mind for a very long time before Foggy Nelson got him a much needed antidote: helping him to find healing through love and true acceptance, enabling him to find peace with God by being at peace with himself. He was finally free.