Chapter Text
“I have a question for you, Murdock,” Foggy says, slamming into Matt’s room. He could hear her flats tapping angrily on the linoleum floors in the hallways from the second she stepped into the building three floors down.
“Yes?” he asks, turning towards her as she toes off her shoes at the door, feet padding softly on the carpet.
“Do you think I would get expelled,” she asks, boosting herself up onto the desk next to Matt’s laptop, “if I punched out the next trust fund having, J. Crew wearing, future Republican senator doucheface who refers to us as the ‘the chubby lesbian and the blind guy?’ Because, first of all, that’s not even accurate, I’m bi as hell—and, second of all, we have names.”
“I think they probably wouldn’t admit to being punched out by a girl,” he says, smiling at her. She’s shaking a little, enough that he can feel it where his hands are resting on the desk. She must be really pissed.
“Or a blind guy,” Foggy says, a little fiercely. “Hey, we could punch them together. It would be an excellent bonding experience, really cement our friendship.”
“There’s, uh, something of a visual element to punching that alludes me,” Matt says, smirking even as his brain sings softly: lie, lie, lie.
“How about kicking?” Foggy asks. “Just a little kicking? Like in the ribs. . .or maybe balls? I’m waggling my eyebrows at you.”
“How about we kick their asses in partnered mock trials next week instead?” Matt offers, brushing his knuckles against her knee. “Which, by the way, we were going to do anyway.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem as satisfying as physically harming them,” she says, breezily, “but I guess it’ll have to do.”
Matt can hear the smile in her voice now, the way it makes her words lilt up a little. His fingers itch to touch it, run over the corners of her mouth where they’re turned up, but he’s used to that. It’s easy to tamp down, most days.
*
Foggy’s heart went crazy the first time she met Matt, at freshman orientation in undergrad. They got paired together for some lame ice breaker activity. After reluctantly talking about their spirit animals for a couple of minutes, Foggy cracks a joke that makes Matt choke on a laugh, and then she says, “Alright, handsome, let’s sneak out of here before we have to talk about our childhoods. I’ll show you where this place keeps both their best coffee and their hottest girls.”
“Are you going to describe them to me?” Matt asks.
“Absolutely, I’ve got a way with words and I’m a stellar wingman,” Foggy replies, as they leave out the back while people are starting to hold hands in a circle to do something that is probably terrible. Matt’s grateful, and he’s even more grateful when he feels her fingers brush against his arm, a wordless question. He’s been grabbed and tugged by a lot of campus tour guides in the past year.
Foggy makes a small pleased noise when he offers his arm for her to take, small hand closing gently on his elbow as she steers them out of the building.
*
They drift closer to each other for a couple of months, running into each other a few time before they exchange numbers and Foggy starts leaving him funny voicemails until he agrees to, in her words, stop being a hermit and at least come study with her, if he’s going to be such a nerd.
Foggy’s roommate immediately found a boyfriend during orientation and is never in their room, so it’s always quiet except for Foggy’s voice, bright and pleasant. Matt, who has maybe actually never felt comfortable a day in his entire life, doesn’t even want to leave the first time he comes over to study. There’s something about Foggy that makes him feel warm and okay.
After that, they’re pretty inseparable.
It’s after finals week their freshman year that they get way too drunk, tequila drunk, and Matt asks to touch Foggy’s face so he can actually know what she looks like. After she spent the first day they met colorfully describing girls in the coffee shop for him, he’d asked her to describe herself and she’d laughed, said, “I’m okay. Nothing compared to 90s Britney Spears in the corner over there, wow, hit me, baby, one more time,” and never picked it up again.
Now, she says, “Uhm, yeah, okay,” and sits cross-legged in front of him on her bed. Her heart’s racing. It hasn’t been doing that as much, lately, around him, but it picks up the pace when his fingers brush over her cheeks. They’re soft and warm where she’s blushing, a gentle slope of cheekbones down to where he can feel her lips push up and open in a quiet, nervous laugh.
“Is this how you get all those ridiculously pretty girls into bed?” she asks. “Because I don’t see the appeal.”
Matt ignores her to smooth his fingers over her eyebrows, gently under her eyes, fingertips brushing her eyelashes. She’s not wearing mascara. He can smell makeup on her most of the time, but she doesn’t always wear it when it’s just them.
When his fingers brush over her jaw, then the soft skin curving underneath, she jerks away.
“Sorry,” she says. “Too weird.”
“Sorry,” he echoes, dropping his hands.
“No, no, it’s not you,” she says. “I’m just too drunk to deal with whatever you might be thinking about my face. Even if it’s nice things. Too drunk even for compliments, which is pretty drunk, because I love a good compliment. I’m just going to go throw up in my own room now.”
And then she’s gone, before Matt gets a chance to say anything or drunkenly kiss her, which is what he really wanted to do. It’s a good line. He thought maybe it would actually work.
The next morning, they get brunch and Foggy says, “Guess who wants to sexually experiment! And it’s not me, because been there, done that.”
“Marci? Is it Marci?” Matt asks. “Could it be Marci?”
He’s been hearing about nothing but Marci Stahl and how smart and funny and well-endowed she is for weeks at this point.
“You’re correct,” she says, happily.
“I’m very happy for you,” Matt says, which is mostly a lie, but he’s good at those.
“Thank you,” Foggy replies. “You know, I think I’m going to lead off by asking if I can touch her face. I’ve heard that works on all the girls.”
“Not you,” Matt says, and Foggy laughs.
“I’m immune to your wiles, Murdock,” she says, into her coffee.
That one was a lie.
*
By the time Matt knows that he’s got feelings for Foggy that aren’t going away, sorted everything out in his fucked up head to finally deal with it, they’re already best friends and her heart barely does anything noticeable around him. He listens enough that it would be weird, if anybody else knew.
It’s better if they’re friends, anyway. Neither of them can seem to keep a real relationship, and he can’t imagine losing Foggy at this point.
They get an apartment together for law school, separate rooms so Foggy doesn’t think anything about bringing people home. He stops trying to block the sounds she makes while Marci’s eating her out or she’s getting fucked by one of the guys in her study group who leaves before the sun comes up but wakes her up to say goodbye (Foggy says, “You’re real cute but never talk to me before 7:00 AM again,” and Matt huffs out a laugh, two rooms over).
They always call Foggy beautiful, gorgeous, and she lets them. Matt wishes that he could, too.
Instead, he just tries to be the best friend that he can be, because at least he has that.
*
The friends thing works out fine until Matt punches a guy in the face in front of Foggy. Which was really inevitable, because they’re together a lot and people are terrible and Matt really likes to punch things. He’s a big fan.
They’re at a party in Marci’s building when Foggy gets in an argument with one of their classmates, some guy named Ted whose dad owns the entire Midwest or something. She says something biting, and he replies, “That means a lot coming from some bitch who can only get a blind guy to fuck her,” and then Matt punches him in the face.
Kind of a lot.
Somebody pulls them apart, and Matt feels Foggy’s hand on his arm, tugging him out of the apartment and into the hallway.
“What,” she says, “the ever living hell, Murdock.”
“He was an asshole,” Matt says, still breathing heavily. He’s got blood on his knuckles.
“Yeah,” Foggy says, taking his hand to check it for damage. “People are assholes. It’s what they do. That doesn’t mean we go around actually punching them in the face—weren’t you the one who told me that?”
“People shouldn’t say things like that about you,” Matt says, ignoring her question.
“No, they shouldn’t,” Foggy says. “I’m great, but that’s kind of what I get for just being kind of cute and throwing my lot in with a dude who has a face that would make an angel weep.”
“You’re beautiful, Foggy,” he says, because, god, he’s wanted to say it and he means it, no lie, heartbeat steady. He’s got multiple references that he can never tell her about without informing her that he’s a creep with super-powered senses, and he knows her—the soft curves of her body against his when she falls asleep next to him in the middle of the movie she was describing, the sweep of her hair over her shoulders, her laugh.
“You, too, buddy,” she says. “Now let’s get your drunk ass out of here before Ted calls his daddy on you for ruining his pretty face.”
“No, no, Foggy,” he says, sliding a hand against her face. Foggy goes still and quiet, shaky under his hand. Heartbeat a frantic thud thud thud. He leans in to kiss her, but Foggy turns away, so his lips brush her hair.
“Don’t do this because you feel sorry for me,” she says, hoarsely. “I can’t take that, Matt.”
“I’ve wanted to do this for years,” Matt says, into her hair. It smells like vanilla and cheap beer and it’s the best thing he’s ever smelled.
“Years?” she asks.
Matt nods.
“. . .then why the hell didn’t you, dumbass,” Foggy deadpans, then laughs when Matt kisses her in reply, wrapping her up in his arms.