Chapter Text
On the first day of class after orientation, Foggy Nelson elbowed the door to the Contracts A lecture hall with his hip, two iced coffees sweating down his fingers, and attempted a polite smile that came out more like a grimace. The professor tested a microphone by breathing into it like Darth Vader. Half the room flinched. The other half took notes on it.
In the front row, a guy with a white cane didn’t flinch at all.
Foggy clocked him the way you clock a fire alarm or a good escape route: automatically, like 'this guy will matter'. There he was with his ironed shirt, straight tie, and hair that actually behaved when it was combed. He wasn't quite seated yet, and his cane tip traced the aisle with neat arcs. Weirdly, when the mic squealed, he didn’t even twitch. No head tilt toward the speakers on the wall. Okay. Stoic.
Foggy set one coffee cup down on his desk and the other under his seat, promptly kicking it, and baptizing his shoe in mocha. Beautiful. Syllabus week, and he’d already invented the world’s first caffeinated sock. Nice move.
“Welcome to Contracts A,” Darth Vader said, the mic catching only every third word. “Let’s… obligations…consideration… To start things off, I'll call on...Mr. Murdock.”
The guy with the cane, having sat down next to Foggy, stowed his satchel and folded up his cane, lifted his head. And Foggy's heart stopped...because...that face was a work of art.
Mr. Murdock turned toward the voice. The hall was a reverb nightmare; Foggy could barely tell where sound ended, and ego began, but Murdock's aim was spot on. His chin tipped, interested. Then he answered.
Clean, precise, he spoke with If-then clarity even. He mapped out offer, acceptance, and the part where everyone lies to themselves about intent, and Foggy felt something unclench in his chest, like he could trust civilization again.
When the applause-that-wasn’t-applause (law student shuffling) died down, Foggy leaned over. “Wow. Mr. Murdock. That was—uh—ridiculously good. I ended up with two coffees this morning because they messed up my order. Do you maybe want the non-soggy one that I haven’t destroyed yet?”
Murdock turned his face toward him, close enough now that Foggy caught freckles and a tiny scar at the jaw.
“Sure. Why not? Thanks,” he said with a shrug and a smile. It was a really, really great smile, and Foggy blushed, glad—was that bad? —that the hot guy couldn’t see it. Murdock reached out, and Foggy quickly passed the coffee over far enough to meet his fingers.
“Thanks,” he said again. “I’m Matt. What’s your name?”
“Foggy,” Foggy said. “And before you ask, no, that’s not my real name, it’s just that Franklin hits wrong unless I’m wearing a bowtie, which would clash with my hoodie collection and, well, so I’m Foggy Nelson.”
The smile widened, like Matt was filing that information away somewhere important. He touched the iced cup, seemed to consider it, and then left it where it was. Objectively, a wise choice. “Nice to meet you, Foggy.”
The mic boomed back to life; three people hissed. Matt didn’t. He faced forward, and Foggy realized he wasn’t taking notes and didn’t even have a notebook in front of him. Which, duh. Blind guys don’t need paper and pen
Foggy took notes loud enough for both of them.
After class, the hallway turned into a salmon run. Every upperclassman named "Kyle" or "Chad" emerged from the walls to sell outlines from “a clerk who totally used these,” and Foggy, generous by both nature and mistake, tried to block one such advance with his best fake smile.
“No, hey, we’re good, thanks,” he said, angling half in front of Matt. “We believe in studying the old-fashioned way. With equal parts desperation and panic.”
Chad did not, in fact, go gently. “Buddy—first semester is where GPAs go to die. I can—”
Matt tilted his head and said, real pleasant, “That's right, and, anyway, I can’t read them.” It wasn’t a bid for sympathy; it was a weather report. And, yeah, Chad left to hunt easier prey after that.
Foggy exhaled. “Good move. Be glad you’re not spending $200 bucks on a PDF of Comic Sans, color-coding, and despair.”
“Lucky me,” Matt said with suppressed laughter in his voice. He tapped his cane tip once against the tile. “Hey, by any chance, do you happen to know where the dining hall is?”
“Yeah it’s—” Foggy started to point down the corridor before remembering that pointing was stupid. “To the left,” he corrected, then, “I'd be happy to show you. Sorry—uh—do you want an elbow or…I don’t know your—”
“Sure,” Matt said. “An elbow is always nice in a crowd. Just walk normally, but maybe try to remember that we’re two-people-wide when you get to doorways.”
“Right. Two-people-wide. Got it.”
Matt’s hand found the back of Foggy’s arm, just above the elbow, with the ease of someone who’d done this a thousand times before. And, somehow, that made Foggy feel like he hadn’t screwed anything up yet, miraculously.
They navigated a tide of tote bags and ambition. In the cafeteria, sound ricocheted off cinderblocks and cutlery. The fluorescents hummed like they were holding back tears. Acting on instinct, Foggy placed Matt’s hand on the back of a chair and watched to make sure that worked. It did. Matt sat down and started folding up his cane.
“Want me to go get coffee? The hot kind?”
Matt just kinda smiled politely and didn’t answer. Oookay. No coffee. Scrambling for what to say next, Foggy launched into a joke about the professor’s impression of a respirator. Matt nodded at the wrong time, and the rest of Foggy’s internal monologue tripped and face-planted.
Right. Okay. Foggy felt heat climb up his neck. Matt wasn’t vibing with him. That was fine. Totally survivable. He’d get over this sick little feeling in his gut. Not like he wasn’t used to rejection.
“Yeah, sorry,” he blurted. “I talk when I’m nervous. Which is…always, apparently. This place is loud and—”
A siren screamed.
Not a siren. The fire alarm. The lights hiccupped. Somewhere, a ballast stuttered, and the room’s hum pitched into a headache needle. People groaned; chairs shrieked; a security guard waved everyone toward the doors with the air of a man who’d rather be anywhere else.
Beside him, Matt went very still. Still like he’d been unplugged. His grip on his folded-up cane loosened so much that he dropped it. Foggy didn’t really track it because every camera inside him swung to Matt.
“Hey,” Foggy said, and the word felt wrong, like throwing a paper airplane into a hurricane. He tried again, softer, “Matt?”
Nothing. Not a flinch. Matt’s breathing had gone fast and shallow.
“I can’t—too much—Foggy?”
“Yeah.” Foggy stood, moved to block the flow, and then swallowed. He did the least-law-student thing he’d done all day: he reached out and pressed his palm flat to Matt’s sternum, hoping that was okay.
“Here.” He guided Matt’s hand back to his arm. It was a signal and, somehow, also a promise. Matt rose, legs finding the floor one decision at a time. Foggy steered them outside.
“Sorry,” Matt said finally, when they were standing on the sidewalk in the shade of a big tree. Matt’s voice sounded raw. He’d stuck his cane into his back pocket and was using his free hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “The alarm, the lights—it’s complicated.”
“That’s okay,” Foggy said, and meant it. He kept still and watched Matt closely. He was in pain now. That was clear. And really pale. “How do I… help? Do you want quiet? A joke that’s a B-minus at best?”
“Just. Gimme a minute. Sorry,” Matt said again.
“Hey, you don’t need to apologize. Half the school was ready to riot over that alarm. You just got there faster than the rest of us.”
That pulled the faintest flicker of a smile out of Matt, but it faded quick. His hand slipped down, hovered like he was about to ask something, and hated himself for it. “Would you…walk me to my dorm?”
“Of course,” Foggy said, fast. Relief hit him. It felt good to be asked, even though this was definitely more necessity than trust.
“I’ve gotta go to the dorm office anyway. Housing screwed up my assignment, so I’m supposed to beg forgiveness or bribe somebody with cafeteria cookies. Opps. Forgot to get those. But, anyway, two birds, one awkward stone.”
Matt gave a small nod and rescued his grip on Foggy’s elbow again. Together they wove through the stream of students headed to the quad. By the time they got to the dorm building, Foggy was pretty sure he’d babbled through at least three entire topics—pizza quality, subway delays, the existential terror of student loans—and Matt had politely endured all of it.
At the desk, the RA on duty flipped through a folder with the enthusiasm of a DMV clerk. “Nelson? Right. You’re in 314 now.” He handed over a key.
“Cool,” Foggy said, turning to Matt. “What about you?”
Matt lifted his own key, already hooked to a plain metal ring. “Um. Well. I’m in 314.”
Foggy blinked. Then blinked again. “Wait. What?”
Matt’s mouth tugged into a quiet smile, and he shrugged.
“Looks like we’re roommates now?”
For a beat, Foggy just stared. His brain short-circuited, fizzing with a bolt of pure, ridiculous elation. Roommates. With the hot guy. The brilliant, calm, unfairly good-smiling hot guy. He felt the laugh crawl up his throat before he could stop it—too loud, too Foggy, the kind of sound that made strangers scowl in coffee shops. But he couldn’t choke it down. It broke out of him anyway.
“You’re kidding. Uh-oh. Is this a cosmic joke?”
Matt shrugged again, “Could be worse.”
Foggy’s grin spread helplessly as he hitched his bag higher on his shoulder. His chest was fizzing like he’d just gotten away with something he wasn’t supposed to want. “Yeah. Could be Chad with the Comic Sans outlines.”
Matt’s smile deepened like he was in on it now. Almost conspiratorial.
Foggy’s stomach did a full-on backflip. He scrambled to sound casual, like this wasn’t already the highlight of his semester, maybe his whole year.
“Alright then,” he said, forcing his voice steady, trying not to let all the stupid happiness show. “Guess you’re stuck with me, roomie.”
Inside, though, his pulse hammered out the truth: he was already in too deep. He wasn’t good enough, he never was, and he was going to fuck this up somehow, sooner rather than later. But for now—just for now—he got to walk beside Matt Murdock and pretend it might not all fall apart.