Foggy is right about the migraine. He tosses and turns all night, trying to find a position that doesn't make him want to die, but when his alarm goes off at seven the next morning, he practically gags with pain as the sound screams in his ears. He texts Karen that he won't be in to work until maybe later in the day, if at all; she answers, but he knows he's not coherent enough to read it or even find the button to make his phone read it aloud to him, so he just leaves it. He rolls over, covers his head with his comforter, and waits to pass out.
It's around noon when the headache finally recedes enough to fall asleep; unfortunately, after what feels like about thirty seconds of unconsciousness, a loud rapping at his front door jerks him awake again. Wincing at the sound, he buries his head further into his pillow, hoping that whoever it is will give up and go away, but then the knocking comes again, louder than before, and along with it Matt's voice, calling for him.
Foggy still can't really open his eyes without wanting to scream--everything is a horrible mixture of bright fuzzy light and dim shadows. So he keeps his eyes closed and trails his fingers along the walls as he heads toward the door, silently counting the steps. He only trips once, over an umbrella that had gotten knocked over, and he smiles a little, proud of himself. He keeps his eyes shut when he opens the door for Matt; Matt won't have any idea anyway.
"Morning, sunshine," Matt says.
"Ha ha," Foggy says dryly, then bites back a moan at the volume of his own voice. "Hilarious. What are you doing here?"
"Karen said you were sick, and you weren't answering our texts," Matt explains. "I wanted to come by and give you the file on a new case we just got this morning."
"You sure you didn't just miss the sultry sound of my voice?" Foggy jokes weakly.
"That may have been a factor," Matt tosses back.
"I knew it. What's the case?"
Matt takes a deep breath that's not quite steady. "You'd find out if you took the file I've been holding out for you for the past thirty seconds."
Foggy suddenly, intimately understands the meaning of the phrase "ice chips skittering up the spine." He breathes in sharply, then cracks his eyes open. Matt is a dark blur in front of him; it takes a moment, but Foggy squints and Matt's hand, holding out a bland file folder, swims into what passes for focus these days. He takes the folder from Matt, and before he even has a chance to open it, Matt continues, "You wanna tell me why Karen printed out this file in both ink and Braille for you?"
Foggy drags in a deep breath. It's more than a little shivery, and not just from the migraine still pounding away in his temple. "I was going to tell you today anyway. You might as well come in."
Matt does. He moves around Foggy's living room almost easier than Foggy does, smoothly sidestepping the umbrella Foggy tripped over, and sits tensely on Foggy's couch. Holding back a groan of pain, Foggy lowers himself into the chair opposite Matt.
There's a taut silence, which Foggy ends up breaking. "I don't really know how to start."
"Are you blind, Foggy?" Matt asks bluntly.
Foggy blinks. "That's one way to start," he mumbles to himself. Runs his fingers through his hair. "Not yet," he says after a moment's thought. "But... Soon. I will be. It's a degenerative disease, probably genetic, super rare. Like rare enough that it doesn't have a name yet. Hey, maybe they'll name it after me," he jokes, but Matt very pointedly does not laugh. Foggy sobers up quickly. "Sorry. They found it a few months ago, when I went to get my vision tested. Things were going kind of blurry and dark around the edges, but I thought it was just normal. Getting older, you know, you need glasses. But they found this instead. I just gestured to my eyes, by the way. It causes vision loss and migraines, which I had the pleasure of experiencing this morning. Eventually I'll be completely blind. Like you but without the extra cool stuff."
"There aren't any treatments?" Matt sounds confused, almost incredulous.
"A couple," Foggy replies, dragging his hand through his hair again. It's greasy, tangled. He needs a shower and about forty-eight hours of sleep. "They don't always work even under the best of circumstances, and they caught mine pretty late in its progression. I'm allergic to the only FDA-approved medication. And the surgery--" He shrugs helplessly. "Every doctor I've talked to and every source I can find says it only works about 25-30% of the time at this stage. And even if it does work, all it does is halt the degeneration. It doesn't give me any vision back that I've already lost." He pauses, then adds, "Plus, money, you know. It's a thing I don't have."
"So--" Through Foggy's hazy vision, Matt's frame looks even more tense than before. "So what, you're just--resigning yourself to this?"
"No," Foggy starts. He thinks he sees where this is going, and he's so tired.
Matt cuts him off, stands up and starts pacing without seeming to realize he's doing it. "This isn't like getting your tonsils taken out or losing the tip of your pinky or something, Foggy, this is--this is forever, this changes everything! How you move, how you work, how people treat you--this--this isn't a blindfold you can just take off when you're done. It's permanent. Once your eyes are gone, they're gone. And you're telling me there's nothing that can be done to fix it?" His voice is getting more and more agitated, his footsteps louder, turning into something closer to stomping than pacing. "Have you called your insurance company about this?" he asks, almost vicious in his zealousness. "Gotten a second opinion? Anything?"
Foggy waits for a moment, drawing out the silence, hoping that it'll make Matt calm down a little. "You done?" he asks finally, through gritted teeth.
Matt's breathing is still a little heavy, like he just went three rounds with a punching bag, but he quiets after a minute and sits back down.
Foggy starts talking without really knowing where he's going. He feels like he's ripping open his chest cavity and baring his entire soul. "Yes, to your first and second questions. I have, in fact, called my insurance company so many times that I've memorized their entire automated menu system. Did you know it takes a minimum of seven different menus before you get an actual human to talk to? And yeah, I've gotten a second opinion. And a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, when I couldn't even afford the first one. They all say the same thing: it's late stage, it's incurable, better buy your cane now, good thing you already know Braille, right, haha, I'm a funny doctor."
He takes a long breath and lets it out slow, to calm himself. "I know," he says, quiet again, "how this must seem to you. It seems like an insult. Like I'm just letting it happen, whereas you had no choice in the matter, no warning. But this isn't about you. I love you, Matty, but you have this tendency to--to think pretty exclusively about how stuff relates to you, and I get that, that's normal human behavior, but this is a completely separate situation. And I promise you, I have done everything--" His voice wavers, and he stops for a moment, lets himself breathe before continuing. "I have done everything I can think of to make this stop. And nothing has worked. So I'm dealing with it. I've already been through the there-has-to-be-something-we-can-do stage and I've moved on to the let's-accept-this-for-what-it-is-and-roll-with-it stage. But...I'm still fucking terrified, you know?" His voice wavers again, but this time he doesn't stop. "It's so gradual, it's like you almost don't notice it's happening, until one day you open up a book you've read a million times and you can't see the words, no matter how much you squint. And you start missing things in conversation, little gestures that people make in the periphery that you should be able to see.
"What I'm trying to say is, I need you to be with me on this. You and Karen. I've been doing this alone so far, but I can't anymore. I don't want to."
Matt is silent and still, so still it almost seems like he's holding his breath. Then he bows his head, removes his glasses and runs his fingers through his hair, mirroring Foggy. "I'm sorry, Foggy, he says. "I didn't mean to--"
"I know," Foggy interrupts with a tired, forced smile. "Let's start over. Good afternoon, Matt. How's your day?"
Matt chuckles and plays along. "Pretty slow and uneventful. "How was yours?"
"Not so good, my friend. See, I found out a couple of months ago that I'm going blind and I decided to tell my best friend about it today, except he confronted me about it first."
"Oh, how did that go?" Matt's still humoring him, which Foggy is grateful for.
"Terrible," Foggy fake-confesses. "So far, anyway. But I think we can turn it around."
Even with his shit eyes and a lingering migraine, he can sense Matt's smile faltering. Matt leans forward again, earnest and sincere. "I am sorry, Foggy," he says seriously. "I shouldn't have gone off like that. You're right, this isn't about me."
"It's fine," Foggy says, heart racing. He doesn't want this to go any deeper than it already has or he might actually cry, and he's only just got the headache down to a manageable level of pain. "No harm done."
But Matt's frame stays tense. His uncovered eyes make his face look bare, stripped almost naked. It makes Foggy's throat tight, that he gets to see this, no matter how blurry. "I'm still going to call your insurance company. I'll make an appointment with my own doctor. He specializes in working with blind people. I know you've done everything you can, but I don't believe there's nothing at all that can be done. As for all the...other stuff...I don't know how much help I'm going to be," Matt admits. "But I can try. I'll do--whatever you need. What do you need me to do?"
Don't give up on me, Foggy thinks, but says instead, "You could start narrating your expressions, maybe."
Matt jerks back, badly startled. "It is that far along already?" he asks, and Foggy knows he's beating himself up for not noticing it sooner.
Foggy says truthfully, "There are good days and bad days. Today's bad because of the migraine. It'll help to get into the habit before you really need to."
"I can do that," Matt agrees.
"You did learn from the best."
"That I did."
(A/N: I'm thinking maybe one or two more parts after this? Not totally sure where I want to go with it but I have some ideas. Hope you enjoy!)
Fill: Foggy is going blind, 5/?
It's around noon when the headache finally recedes enough to fall asleep; unfortunately, after what feels like about thirty seconds of unconsciousness, a loud rapping at his front door jerks him awake again. Wincing at the sound, he buries his head further into his pillow, hoping that whoever it is will give up and go away, but then the knocking comes again, louder than before, and along with it Matt's voice, calling for him.
Foggy still can't really open his eyes without wanting to scream--everything is a horrible mixture of bright fuzzy light and dim shadows. So he keeps his eyes closed and trails his fingers along the walls as he heads toward the door, silently counting the steps. He only trips once, over an umbrella that had gotten knocked over, and he smiles a little, proud of himself. He keeps his eyes shut when he opens the door for Matt; Matt won't have any idea anyway.
"Morning, sunshine," Matt says.
"Ha ha," Foggy says dryly, then bites back a moan at the volume of his own voice. "Hilarious. What are you doing here?"
"Karen said you were sick, and you weren't answering our texts," Matt explains. "I wanted to come by and give you the file on a new case we just got this morning."
"You sure you didn't just miss the sultry sound of my voice?" Foggy jokes weakly.
"That may have been a factor," Matt tosses back.
"I knew it. What's the case?"
Matt takes a deep breath that's not quite steady. "You'd find out if you took the file I've been holding out for you for the past thirty seconds."
Foggy suddenly, intimately understands the meaning of the phrase "ice chips skittering up the spine." He breathes in sharply, then cracks his eyes open. Matt is a dark blur in front of him; it takes a moment, but Foggy squints and Matt's hand, holding out a bland file folder, swims into what passes for focus these days. He takes the folder from Matt, and before he even has a chance to open it, Matt continues, "You wanna tell me why Karen printed out this file in both ink and Braille for you?"
Foggy drags in a deep breath. It's more than a little shivery, and not just from the migraine still pounding away in his temple. "I was going to tell you today anyway. You might as well come in."
Matt does. He moves around Foggy's living room almost easier than Foggy does, smoothly sidestepping the umbrella Foggy tripped over, and sits tensely on Foggy's couch. Holding back a groan of pain, Foggy lowers himself into the chair opposite Matt.
There's a taut silence, which Foggy ends up breaking. "I don't really know how to start."
"Are you blind, Foggy?" Matt asks bluntly.
Foggy blinks. "That's one way to start," he mumbles to himself. Runs his fingers through his hair. "Not yet," he says after a moment's thought. "But... Soon. I will be. It's a degenerative disease, probably genetic, super rare. Like rare enough that it doesn't have a name yet. Hey, maybe they'll name it after me," he jokes, but Matt very pointedly does not laugh. Foggy sobers up quickly. "Sorry. They found it a few months ago, when I went to get my vision tested. Things were going kind of blurry and dark around the edges, but I thought it was just normal. Getting older, you know, you need glasses. But they found this instead. I just gestured to my eyes, by the way. It causes vision loss and migraines, which I had the pleasure of experiencing this morning. Eventually I'll be completely blind. Like you but without the extra cool stuff."
"There aren't any treatments?" Matt sounds confused, almost incredulous.
"A couple," Foggy replies, dragging his hand through his hair again. It's greasy, tangled. He needs a shower and about forty-eight hours of sleep. "They don't always work even under the best of circumstances, and they caught mine pretty late in its progression. I'm allergic to the only FDA-approved medication. And the surgery--" He shrugs helplessly. "Every doctor I've talked to and every source I can find says it only works about 25-30% of the time at this stage. And even if it does work, all it does is halt the degeneration. It doesn't give me any vision back that I've already lost." He pauses, then adds, "Plus, money, you know. It's a thing I don't have."
"So--" Through Foggy's hazy vision, Matt's frame looks even more tense than before. "So what, you're just--resigning yourself to this?"
"No," Foggy starts. He thinks he sees where this is going, and he's so tired.
Matt cuts him off, stands up and starts pacing without seeming to realize he's doing it. "This isn't like getting your tonsils taken out or losing the tip of your pinky or something, Foggy, this is--this is forever, this changes everything! How you move, how you work, how people treat you--this--this isn't a blindfold you can just take off when you're done. It's permanent. Once your eyes are gone, they're gone. And you're telling me there's nothing that can be done to fix it?" His voice is getting more and more agitated, his footsteps louder, turning into something closer to stomping than pacing. "Have you called your insurance company about this?" he asks, almost vicious in his zealousness. "Gotten a second opinion? Anything?"
Foggy waits for a moment, drawing out the silence, hoping that it'll make Matt calm down a little. "You done?" he asks finally, through gritted teeth.
Matt's breathing is still a little heavy, like he just went three rounds with a punching bag, but he quiets after a minute and sits back down.
Foggy starts talking without really knowing where he's going. He feels like he's ripping open his chest cavity and baring his entire soul. "Yes, to your first and second questions. I have, in fact, called my insurance company so many times that I've memorized their entire automated menu system. Did you know it takes a minimum of seven different menus before you get an actual human to talk to? And yeah, I've gotten a second opinion. And a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, when I couldn't even afford the first one. They all say the same thing: it's late stage, it's incurable, better buy your cane now, good thing you already know Braille, right, haha, I'm a funny doctor."
He takes a long breath and lets it out slow, to calm himself. "I know," he says, quiet again, "how this must seem to you. It seems like an insult. Like I'm just letting it happen, whereas you had no choice in the matter, no warning. But this isn't about you. I love you, Matty, but you have this tendency to--to think pretty exclusively about how stuff relates to you, and I get that, that's normal human behavior, but this is a completely separate situation. And I promise you, I have done everything--" His voice wavers, and he stops for a moment, lets himself breathe before continuing. "I have done everything I can think of to make this stop. And nothing has worked. So I'm dealing with it. I've already been through the there-has-to-be-something-we-can-do stage and I've moved on to the let's-accept-this-for-what-it-is-and-roll-with-it stage. But...I'm still fucking terrified, you know?" His voice wavers again, but this time he doesn't stop. "It's so gradual, it's like you almost don't notice it's happening, until one day you open up a book you've read a million times and you can't see the words, no matter how much you squint. And you start missing things in conversation, little gestures that people make in the periphery that you should be able to see.
"What I'm trying to say is, I need you to be with me on this. You and Karen. I've been doing this alone so far, but I can't anymore. I don't want to."
Matt is silent and still, so still it almost seems like he's holding his breath. Then he bows his head, removes his glasses and runs his fingers through his hair, mirroring Foggy. "I'm sorry, Foggy, he says. "I didn't mean to--"
"I know," Foggy interrupts with a tired, forced smile. "Let's start over. Good afternoon, Matt. How's your day?"
Matt chuckles and plays along. "Pretty slow and uneventful. "How was yours?"
"Not so good, my friend. See, I found out a couple of months ago that I'm going blind and I decided to tell my best friend about it today, except he confronted me about it first."
"Oh, how did that go?" Matt's still humoring him, which Foggy is grateful for.
"Terrible," Foggy fake-confesses. "So far, anyway. But I think we can turn it around."
Even with his shit eyes and a lingering migraine, he can sense Matt's smile faltering. Matt leans forward again, earnest and sincere. "I am sorry, Foggy," he says seriously. "I shouldn't have gone off like that. You're right, this isn't about me."
"It's fine," Foggy says, heart racing. He doesn't want this to go any deeper than it already has or he might actually cry, and he's only just got the headache down to a manageable level of pain. "No harm done."
But Matt's frame stays tense. His uncovered eyes make his face look bare, stripped almost naked. It makes Foggy's throat tight, that he gets to see this, no matter how blurry. "I'm still going to call your insurance company. I'll make an appointment with my own doctor. He specializes in working with blind people. I know you've done everything you can, but I don't believe there's nothing at all that can be done. As for all the...other stuff...I don't know how much help I'm going to be," Matt admits. "But I can try. I'll do--whatever you need. What do you need me to do?"
Don't give up on me, Foggy thinks, but says instead, "You could start narrating your expressions, maybe."
Matt jerks back, badly startled. "It is that far along already?" he asks, and Foggy knows he's beating himself up for not noticing it sooner.
Foggy says truthfully, "There are good days and bad days. Today's bad because of the migraine. It'll help to get into the habit before you really need to."
"I can do that," Matt agrees.
"You did learn from the best."
"That I did."
(A/N: I'm thinking maybe one or two more parts after this? Not totally sure where I want to go with it but I have some ideas. Hope you enjoy!)