“Stop it- Stop saying that! Stop saying you’re sorry. I don’t want you to be sorry; I want you to stop all of this! You know, I almost thought you were getting better, after we left Landman and Zack. It was so long since the last time you just shut down and wouldn’t talk to me – and I thought, maybe you were finally happy, maybe I don’t have to worry that Matt’s gonna hurt himself because Foggy Nelson didn’t see the signs in time, maybe I don’t have to constantly worry that I’m going to lose my best friend and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Are you trying to kill yourself, Matt? Is that what this is? Do you want to die?”

Matt’s face crumples and he swallows hard, fighting the heated tears welling in his useless eyes. When he speaks, it comes out higher, breathier than he means it to. “No. No, Foggy. That’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to help people- trying to make them safe. That’s all.”

Foggy sniffs, coughs wetly. The taste of his tears lingers in the air. “You didn’t answer the last one.”

Matt hesitates far too long, and Foggy coughs again. “It’s okay. You can’t help it- It’s your brain chemistry or whatever fucking you over, and you’ve had more than your fair share of traumatic life experiences to work through, but you have to know how much I’d miss you.”

“I’d never leave you on purpose.” Matt uses the arm of the couch to leverage himself to his feet, and Foggy whimpers.

“Oh no, no, no. No!” Foggy waves his arm about wildly, pointing at Matt, most likely. “No standing, young man!”

Matt ignores him, limping closer, wrapping his arms around the warm figure high-lighted in fire by the echoes of their voices and the pounding of an erratic, agitated heart that Matt knows to be Foggy Nelson. “Not on purpose. You have to know that.”

“What does that matter? What does it matter when some thug gets lucky or you get caught or you go too far that it wasn’t on purpose? In any case, you’re gone, and I’m down one best friend!” Foggy tries to push him away, and in the ensuing struggle between them – one trying to hug, the other fighting desperately not to be hugged – they end up landing hard on the floor, Foggy on top, Matt winded.

Foggy squeaks and quickly shifts his weight off of Matt’s solar plexus, straddling him instead. “Oh- Oh no, Matt, are you okay? No rough housing while injured, rule number one!”

“I’m fine, really.” Matt wheezes.

“Oh, fuck off-” Foggy leans down and kisses him.

It’s strange being kissed by Foggy – not off-putting, not exciting, just strange – familiar to every other kiss he’s ever had in the sense that lips are meeting lips and most lips and therefore most kisses share a certain level of similarity, but the harsh brush of even a bare male face, the concoction of masculine hormones in his nose and what is undoubtedly Foggy Nelson’s saliva in his mouth alter the experience somewhat – and he’s frozen, having spent far too long freaking out, and Foggy freezes too.

Foggy lurches back, one hand going to what is probably his own mouth. “I- I should probably go-”

And Matt- well, Matt panics, reaches out and grabs the front of Foggy’s shirt. “Please don’t. Please don’t go.”

Foggy stills, barely breathing, his heart thundering in his chest, and Matt wishes he could see Foggy’s expression, because he has no idea what that means, then Foggy leans down and presses their lips together again.

And before he’s conscious of what he’s doing, of making the decision, Matt just sort of… goes with it, opens his mouth and kisses Foggy back. It’s slow and sweet, open-mouthed and wet – pleasant, if still in a very strange way. It’s not shocking that Foggy’s a good kisser, largely because Matt never put enough thought into it to have an expectation either way.

It stops, as suddenly as it started, with Foggy sitting up again. A string of spit links their mouths for five seconds, which is exactly five seconds too long, before breaking. Foggy is very still, but breathing this time, a rapid inhale-exhale through his nose. Matt assumes this means that Foggy is staring at him and stares back at his best estimation of where Foggy’s face should be.

“Matt, I… What?” Foggy sounds terribly lost and out of his depth, a feeling with which Matt commiserates entirely. He tries to answer, tries to explain, but the words refuse to leave his throat and he ends up gaping like a fish.

Foggy snorts. “Attractive.”

“You don’t seem to mind all that much, but I’ll readily admit it hasn’t been my best day.”

“No kidding.” Foggy’s smiling. Matt can hear it in the way he forms the words, and he finds himself smiling too, because it feels so right – bantering back and forth like they always have. They stay in that moment for a while, smiling at each other like doofuses, Foggy still straddling his hips in the most compromising position known to mankind as well as likely several species of alien, then Foggy whispers, as if afraid to be heard, as if suddenly shy, “Can I kiss you again?”

And Matt would really rather prefer that Foggy did not, in fact, kiss him again, but he also wants Foggy to stay, not to regret the kisses that came before. He wants never to hear the dejection in Foggy’s voice, the unshed tears, the stutter of his heartbeat at an explicit rejection, wants to say yes, even as he wants to say no. Wishes that he wanted Foggy in the same way that Foggy wants him.

So he nods.

Foggy surges forward to kiss him once more, this time with an assurance and intent previously absent. It’s still weird, despite being his third kiss with a man, his third kiss with Foggy. First, Foggy is much heavier than anyone else who’s managed to get him in this position in the past – softer, too, when Matt grabs his hips to steady him from upending in his enthusiasm, and it’s oddly nice, oddly comforting that Foggy even feels like Foggy, gentle and welcoming and generous physically as well as emotionally. Second, that familiar scent of masculine arousal, Foggy’s arousal, but far stronger, far more potent, fills his nose, cloying and pungent, until it’s all he can smell. Third, something which becomes more and more evident as the kiss goes on and on, culminating in an aborted thrust against his hip which results in a noise in the back of Matt’s throat not unlike an elephant stepping on a mouse.
Foggy pulls back, he turns his hot face into Matt’s shoulder and giggles. “Sorry! Sorry! See? Now I’m doing it.” He lays three kisses up the column of Matt’s neck and whispers so, so soft against the shell of his ear. “I thought you were straight, Matty.”

And now, now Matt should say something, but instead he reaches up and draws his hand along Foggy’s jaw, daring what he hasn’t since college and mapping his best friend’s face for the first time in years.

“Handsome as you remember?”

And Matt doesn’t know how to answer that. Matt considers Foggy handsome insofar as the way that certain men and women dismiss him outright, even after getting to know him, has always seemed unfounded and unfair, and normally he would say so – the faux flirting that usually comes so easily seems somehow more inappropriate in its intended context, too sincere by half for what he means to say.

Foggy nips his ear, apropos of nothing, and Matt chokes. Foggy then licks him, and he squawks and squirms, perhaps too vigorously, because Foggy moans, low and deep with their chests flush against each other, so that the slow waves of vibration feels like they’re reverberating against Matt’s entire being at an atomic level, bouncing off of his molecules like pinballs.

He flushes, a mixture of embarrassment and reflexive arousal, and Foggy gasps, “Oh. My. God.”

Matt tuts almost involuntarily, and Foggy laughs. “Sorry for bringing the Big Guy into this, but you haven’t done this before, have you? Like, not at all, ever, like with a guy? …Is that why you didn’t tell me?” The last question is less flippant, less gleeful, more curious. “Guess I can’t get mad at you for keeping secrets then, huh?”

Matt flinches and turns his face away.

“Hey, hey! No! Matt, no. Look: yeah, I was mad about that. I’m still pretty mad about that. But this isn’t that, yeah? On the grand scale of shit you somehow forgot to mention during our star-crossed bromance, this is not running around punching crime in the face dressed like an 80s martial arts film extra or being able to hear an ant fart at two hundred paces. Not everybody is comfortable talking about sexuality – and that probably goes twice for Catholic ninjas. I would never have judged, you know, but we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want-”
Foggy’s babbling makes him smile, despite the circumstances, despite feeling emotionally strung out and confused and panicked, even despite the taste of Foggy’s spit and the baffling low-level sexual arousal directly related to Foggy’s thumb kneading slow circles very, very high up his inner thigh.

“-in any case, I’m sorry about earlier. I know you’re trying to protect me, I just wish you wouldn’t. I hate it when you’re hurt, but what I hate even more is wondering if you’re hurt and knowing that you wouldn’t tell me if you were.” He lightly kisses the very tip of Matt’s nose, then moves down to his lips.

“Sorry” is the word murmured between their mouths, but Matt feels far less apologetic when the hand on his thigh wanders and starts rubbing the front of his pants. He jerks and flushes – it’s honestly not a situation he ever imagined himself in, and the hot embarrassment pooling in his gut is not near enough to change the fact that this feels really, really good.

Foggy’s heartbeat drowns out the world, thundering like the hooves of a galloping mustang, so good odds he’s enjoying this too. “Mmm, hello there, baby bear.”

“What?”

“Oh, you know: not too big, not too small, just right.”

“Jesus, Foggy.”

“Oi, do you kiss your priest with that mouth? Don’t answer that. Seriously though, real talk? Anything over eight inches is unnecessary and kind of intimidating. I hooked up once with a guy who had like a pet python in his pants. His apartment was on the second floor, and I seriously considering making a break for the window. Probably would have died – we can’t all be ninjas. The average penis is only around five inches erect, which is a perfectly nice length for a penis, a good mouthful – speaking of which, can I go down on you?”
Matt chokes and shakes his head.

“A bit fast for a first date? I guess not, then. Le sigh. I’ve thought about it, you know. A lot. Usually in the shower. In any case, mutual masturbation it is.” Foggy deftly unbuckles and unzips Matt’s slacks and purrs and, oh, he has good hands. Matt clenches his own hands, fingers digging into the flesh of Foggy’s shoulders. “Glad you like it. Could be a little more mutual, though…”

Matt nods, swallows, and nods again. Shuddering with every stroke of Foggy’s hand, he reaches down, drawing his fingers along Foggy’s chest, stomach, (Foggy, of course, giggles) before fumbling with Foggy’s buckling and slipping in. The angle is weird – completely foreign and unbelievably weird – but Foggy doesn’t seem to mind all that much. He hisses and groans and bites Matt’s lip, which in turn makes Matt’s hips jerk.

“Oops, sorry – wait, did you like that? Kinky, I can work with that.” Foggy tightens his grip, just a little, and Matt is gasping. He nips Matt’s neck a few times, testing, then bites in, hard, and it’s a flash of pain and teeth and Foggy – instigating what is officially the weirdest orgasm in Mathew Michael Murdock’s young life. “Okidoki, you really liked that.”

Matt wheezes, still seeing metaphorical stars. “Maybe a little.”

“You’re so full of it, Murdock.” Foggy kisses him once, twice, and murmurs. “Little faster for me, huh, Mathew?”

Matt acquiesces, a little hazy, a little dazed, and more than a little bemused, engulfed in Foggy’s heat, Foggy’s heartbeat, Foggy’s scent. He puts some finesse into the motion of his hand and Foggy makes unambiguously approving sounds.

After, they lay there for a while, gasping together. When he can finally focus on anything else, Matt wrinkles his nose at the heavy smell of sex and semen. Foggy, misinterpreting the face he makes, asks if wants to get off the floor. When Matt shakes his head, Foggy shrugs, then rolls them over so Matt’s on top, head cushioned against Foggy’s chest. “You’re injured. You should at least be comfy, and I have reliable sources that say I make a pretty darn good pillow.”

Matt is a strange, undefinable mixture of confusion, happiness, exhaustion, and guilty fear. Foggy can’t know, can’t figure out that they just had sex because Matt didn’t want him to leave. He nuzzles into Foggy’s ribcage, like he can wrap himself around Foggy’s heart if he could just get close enough. He hears it – and there’s no way he couldn’t this close, no matter who he was – Foggy whispering into the crown of his head, “I love you so much,” and his heart pounds true, true, true.

Matt blinks rapidly and swallows hard, glad that Foggy can’t see his face from this angle. “I love you, too.”