Much as it hurt when Foggy woke up that morning, she was relieved when she realized she’d gotten her period on schedule. It wasn’t like even her uterus could hurt as much as her heart did now, and it gave her the perfect excuse, after putting a pad on and gulping down her painkiller in the bathroom, to crawl back under the covers in her sleeping shirt and let herself be totally miserable there. She didn’t even care about changing the bedclothes; it really could wait.
It was still kind of surprising it hadn’t hit early this time. After all, within the past week, first Ash Blarflood had tried to rape her, and he would’ve succeeded had Matt not heard him putting the pill in her drink, and then when after Matt had thrown the glass to the floor hard enough to smash it to pieces, he hadn’t even tried to deny it. And then when he’d yelled at Foggy that a girl as ugly as her ought to be thankful anyone was willing to fuck her Matt’s fist had found the square of his nose right on the first punch, and yeah, by the time that fight had been over, Ash Blarflood had been covered with cuts on his back because Matt had pushed him down and deliberately into the shards of glass, and she wasn’t sure if anyone else had been watching his movements close enough to realize it but there was no way any blind person could be able to do all of what he’d clearly done on purpose, and anyway at that point she was more scared of her best friend than of the would-be rapist.
And then when she’d dragged him out of the party(and she’d needed all her developing lawyering skills to keep Blarflood or his friends from saying anything to anyone), and back to his and Pietro’s room, he’d confessed he’d been lying to her the entire two years they’d been best friends. There was a level on which Foggy kind of understood that, since it was true if he’d gone telling people he had senses so ridiculously heightened it had allowed him to foil and beat up Blarflood the way he had even without actually being able to see him, they probably wouldn’t have reacted well. But when he had always known whenever she’d lied to him, and not always needed the help she’d sometimes really gone out of her way to provide him with, and been the friend she would’ve told anything to, well, when she’d gotten him to admit he probably would have never told her if it hadn’t been for this, she didn’t even know what to say.
But she’d known what to say when she’d learned that not only had he had a pretty good idea about how she felt about him, but, contrary to all her assumptions, he’d been attracted back, but had apparently decided for her own good not only was he going to keep his distance from her, he was going to go to ridiculous lengths to keep her in the dark and make all the decisions about their relationship without her even knowing they were being made. Was anything ever real with us?! she’d yelled at him, as before her eyes he’d transformed into the worst kind of condescending man, the kind that thought she needed protecting and to be taken care of, and he hadn’t even asked.
After she’d finally stormed out of his dorm room, neither of them had made any attempt to contact the other. Matt had apparently told Pietro it was his fault, which he’d passed on to Wanda. Foggy had told her he was right, but refused to talk about it further.
Anyway, the twins had their own problems right now, had for months. They weren’t talking about them to their roommates either, but Matt had said he’d overheard talk about money(and now she was getting a much clearer idea of how he’d overheard it), and he was worried they might not be able to afford to stay at Columbia, even with their scholarships. Over the last two weeks they’d been having conversations just outside their dorm rooms in the middle of the night, been on the phone with who knew who a lot during the day, and Foggy was getting the feeling things were coming to a head.
So it wasn’t surprising when, fifteen minutes after she’d laid herself down as an aching, bleeding, heartbroken lump under the covers, Pietro came in with Matt and said, “Matt, Foggy, listen. Wanda and I have something to tell you, but I think this will be easier if you two are made up first.”
Foggy groaned for more than one reason, and then Matt was half-kneeling by her side, knees in such a weird position it could only be that he was struggling to hold himself back. “Are you okay, Foggy? Do you need anything?”
“Got it covered,” she managed. “You know, maybe you should tell me later, when my stomach’s not acting as if I had a bunch of knives for dinner last night.” And it hurt even more to be near Matt, to want to just throw her arms around him and beg to be allowed to forget everything she’d said to him, even though she knew she couldn’t do that.
“In half an hour then, both of you,” said Wanda. “We will be back.” Then the twins stepped out, and Foggy heard them lock the door behind them.
She could get her key, of course, to let Matt out. He also said, “I could get out through the window, actually. It’s early enough maybe no one will see.”
“You are crazy,” said Foggy simply. “But then, I already knew that.” She reached out and pressed very gently on his arm, and he folded down to his knees easily. He looked far too dazed. “Do you know what the two of them…”
“They’re dropping out,” said Matt. “Returning home, probably. From what I heard Pietro say, it sounded like they think there’s something they can do there by which they’d accomplish more than they might by becoming lawyers, although he didn’t say what. Kind of weird, actually, because it sounded like he was avoiding saying what…”
Which meant the two of them were about to lose their best friends besides each other. Foggy wasn’t even sure Matt had any real friends outside the three of them. It made perfect sense the twins would want to be sure their roommates still had each other before they broke the news to them.
“I…I suppose,” Matt stammered. “I shouldn’t have…have…”
“You’ve done a lot of things you shouldn’t have done,” said Foggy.
“I know,” he said. “I know. I’ve been think…thinking about it since, and you were right. I shouldn’t have…have…I suppose it doesn’t matter now, though. With our roommates leaving at least you won’t have to deal at all with me once they’re gone.”
“I…” and now, on top of everything else, Foggy wanted to cry, and she needed to respond to that, and she didn’t know how to. “I don’t…I don’t want to not see you anymore,” finally came out.
“But you don’t want to see me either?”
“No…I mean, no, it’s not…” She couldn’t stand this, she just couldn’t. “I’m lying here in ten different kinds of pain, and you’re so close, and I both want and don’t want you to go away, and I’m hopelessly in love with you, and right now I’m close to hating you too, and all I can think right now is how much I want to find a way back to where we were, and I don’t know if we can.”
“No, we can’t,” he said, and oh damn it, he still could break her heart harder. Until a moment later, when he said, sounding a little terrified, “And you don’t want that anyway, because I’ve been thinking it over and you’re right; that’s not the way we should be. But maybe we can find a way to move forward, Foggy.”
It was an offer Foggy wasn’t going to refuse, not if she could help it. “We need to have a lot of discussion, then,” she said. “When I’m in less pain. But for now, before we go any further, if we have any chance of having any kind of relationship, I want you to understand immediately: you don’t make my decisions for me behind my back. You think I should do this or that, you tell me so; maybe that’ll make me actually do it, you know.” In fact, she was aware it probably would more than it ought to. But still, she thought, it would be her making the choice to take his advice, and that was a crucial difference she hoped he could understand. “You think our relationship should be this or that, you tell me that too.
Of course if…” And she really couldn’t delay talking about it, not when the realization was starting to take hold and she couldn’t help but want, “If you really don’t want to date me for stupid self-sacrificing reasons, I guess I have to yell at you for being an idiot and then leave it at that. But…”
“Foggy,” and she didn’t expect that, the tension in his voice, as he said, “do you really still want to…shouldn’t you be too angry at me?”
“Yes, I should,” she replied, matter of factly. “And I would definitely want to take it slow. But…” Did she even have to say anything more? Surely he could figure plenty of it out from the way her heart was hammering it was making her chest burn even worse than her uterus. She reached her hand out. What had he said about it earlier? That he could hear it moving through the air. Also sense the warmth radiating off it. She liked that second idea more.
His hand was not warm; it was sweaty as Brett’s had been when they’d been fourteen and had experimented with holding hands. But he laced their fingers together, and it felt like moving forward.
They were still holding hands, talking quietly, when Wanda and Pietro came back in, which helped ease the pain of the conversation that ensued.