*

It isn’t long before he travels again. Things have been so quiet for so long now, he’d almost forgotten what it was like to have his life interrupted like this. It’s frustrating, but it’s nothing he can’t handle. This is his life, after all.

He is surprised when he realizes he’s ended up behind the bushes not far from where he and Foggy shared a dorm room all those years ago.

It’s funny being back here now. He knows it was a long time ago, and he can feel the weight of the intervening years on his body and in his soul, but it feels fresh in his memory still. He almost can’t believe how long it’s been.

He’s changed so much since he was that awkward college kid; he’s grown so much that he suspects he’s a completely different person now.

No, not a different person. Just someone who has grown more into himself. He’s probably still not there yet; probably still has a lot of growing left to do.

He doesn’t really know.

What he does know is how desperately he needs to find cover and get out of the pouring rain.

He tries warming himself by vigorously rubbing his arms and hands, and thinks back to his time here. He’s pretty sure there was a window somewhere nearby that he’d used to use to slip into the building; it leads into one of the administration offices, if he remembered correctly. Then from there he would only have a few hallways and a flight of stairs to contend with.

Sure enough, when he gets to the window, he finds it open a crack, and he’s able to pry it open without much effort. He lands on his injured foot wrong, it bends and rolls awkwardly and his already swollen ankle screams in protest.

He swears under his breath and pushes aside the brief explosion of pain to take in his surroundings. No suspiciously convenient bags of clothes left lying around for him this time around. Which is probably for the best. That’s a puzzle he still hasn’t managed to crack.

Once he’s out in the hallway, he keeps low to the wall, ducking into doorways and hiding around corners whenever he hears anyone approaching.

Thankfully he’s gotten pretty good at being stealthy in his old age, and he makes it to his former dorm room without incident. Well, without much incident. He does manage step wrong on his injured foot, and he ends up colliding into the wall outside the dorm room with a loud thud. Great. Now they both know he’s out here. He steels himself for the mess he’s about to step in and slowly opens the door. It creaks on its hinges and Foggy, feeling put out by the intrusion says, “hey, pal. You’ve got the wrong,” and he trails off when he takes in the full view of a soaking wet Matt slamming the door behind him and pressing his body firmly against it. “Room,” he finishes helplessly.

Matt probably looks like a drown rat, and his ankle is throbbing, and his present self is holding a folded set of clothes out for him.

“I am so sorry,” Matt says as he grabs the proffered clothing, because he would have avoided this whole thing if he could have. But. He pulls the shirt down over his head, and it sticks uncomfortably to his wet body. “I’m cold and wet and--” he’s about to mention his swollen ankle too, when present Matt interrupts him.

“Let me guess. Behind the bushes?”

“Yeah,” he says with a huff through the nose. “Every damn time.”

“What the hell was in that beer,” Foggy mutters. He shakes the empty can around in his hand as if he’ll find the answer floating around in there. Poor Foggy. He sounds absolutely shell shocked.

“You aren’t hallucinating,” Matt says. He’s trying to shimmy into a pair of his old jeans, but he’s having a tough time of it; they bunch up at the thighs and when he finally does manage to pull them over his hips, he can’t seem to zip up the fly. He makes a face because he loved these jeans when he was in school. He practically lived in them. Now it seems he’s outgrown them.

“So how should we do this,” Present Matt says, just as Foggy’s freaking out about the fact that the two Matts sound exactly the same.

“You can do it next time,” he deadpans, slapping his younger self on the arm. You know, when you’re me.

Foggy lets himself fall onto his bed and very slowly says, “you never told me you had a brother.” He’s so desperate for a rational explanation for all this, and Matt feels like a complete asshole. He remembers how hard this was on Foggy. How scared Foggy was of him.

Even recently Foggy had referred to this moment as ‘weird and traumatic.’ Clearly the memory of seeing Matt vanish into thin air that first time never really left him.

His younger self is curled in over himself, bracing himself against the pain right before he travels. It’s gotten better as he’s gotten older, easier. The pain less intense, but he still vividly remembers how awful this was.

“Jesus, now?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” And he really, truly is.

Present Matt is writhing on the floor, trying to hold it together. He’s just making it worse for himself, but he knows he won’t listen to anything he has to say. Matt was a stubborn asshole back then. Still is, if he’s honest with himself.

He isn’t just making it worse for himself, he’s making it worse for Foggy, too. He’s panicking badly and screaming Matt’s name. Over and over and over.

“What the fuck is happening! Matt! Maaaatt!!”

“I am not going anywhere, Foggy, you have to believe me. Just. Let me explain everything, okay? Will you let me do that?” And he’s groaning and sobbing from the pain of it, and Matt wants to say to him, ‘stop talking, you idiot. Just let go. It’s going to be fine.’

“Oh my God, Matt!!” And Foggy’s crying, and both Matts are crying, and then there’s a loud sucking noise like all the air has been let out of the room. A person-shaped arrangement of clothes lies perfectly flat against the floor, as if Matt’s body had been beamed right out of them by some unknown alien force.

Foggy’s down on the carpet in an instant, gathering up Matt’s clothes and holding them tight against his body. “What the fuck did you do to him!”

Foggy radiates nothing but pure anger and fear and overwhelming grief. He jerks his arm back and chucks the clothes at Matt like an angry, pointed accusation. Matt doesn’t try to catch them or otherwise move out of the way. He just stands there, letting them hit him square in the chest. Like an admission of guilt. They slide gracelessly off his body and pool loosely at his bare feet. Matt takes a small step forward, and now both he and the pile of clothes inhabit the space his younger self had just vacated.

Matt puts his hands up, placating. “Foggy,” he tries.

“NO!” Foggy shouts. His voice breaks and his face is worryingly warm and he’s crying so hard he’s hiccuping after every word. “Don’t you dare come near me! You. You killed my friend!”

In another context this might even be funny.

“I didn’t--” He pauses so he can take in a deep breath. So he can ground himself.

“Listen, Foggy. I know watching that was…” he can’t help the sad smile that forms at his lips. “Upsetting. You’ve told me it was, and I didn’t take you seriously enough. I am really sorry for that.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Never mind. Don’t worry about it, I--”

“What happened to Matt?” Foggy’s gulping in breaths again, but at least he’s trying to calm himself. Trying to make sense of the weirdness happening right now in his dorm room.

“I’m. I’m uh. I’m right here. I’m not trying to be funny with you, Foggy. You really did watch me vanish, but. I’m… also here.”

Foggy’s quiet for a long time, but his heart beat is steady, and his breathing has mostly evened out. He’s coming around, Matt thinks.

“You’re staring at me right now, aren’t you.”

“You’re blind,” Foggy blurts out, like he’s just now realizing it.

And Matt can’t help but to laugh at that. “The lack of eye contact gives it away. Or so I’ve been told.”

“You’re really Matt?” Foggy says, just as Matt’s saying, “I’m going to sit down now. My bed’s still over there, right?” He gestures toward his old bed, knowing perfectly well how it’s situated within the room. Though it seems smaller than he remembers. Everything in here does. Not only that, but the walls and the furniture and everything inside the room feels pressed closer together than he would have guessed if he had to go by memory alone. “It has been a long time since I’ve been here.” He feels his way over to his old bed, and Foggy takes that as his cue to do the same.

Foggy feels very far away; there is a wide gulf between the two them, between the two beds.

“So,” he starts. His legs hang over the edge of the bed, and he’s leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’m a time traveler? I’m from... the future. I know that sounds dramatic, and kind of ridiculous, but it’s also the truth.”

Foggy’s breathing goes shallow and panicky again. Tripping all over his words, he says, “Holy shit. Holy shit. The fu-- For real? So Matt is… he really is--? And I just witnessed a paradox?! Because the same atoms can’t exist in the same space at the same time, or whatever, so that’s what caused him to--!”

“No, no,” Matt interrupts. “Foggy, breath. It’s nothing like that, okay? I didn’t… I didn’t annihilate myself. If it worked that way, I would think both versions of me would have been destroyed, don’t you think?”

“Oh my God, that can happen?”

“I don’t think it can? I’ve never actually given it that much thought.”

“You don’t know?”

He shrugs, his shoulders going high around his ears. “I’m a lawyer, Fog, not a theoretical physicist.”

Foggy barks out a high, deranged sounding laugh at that. Like he thinks he’s losing his mind.

“Wait, you actually are a--. No, never mind that. We need to talk about what the hell happened to Matt. I mean, you touched him. You touched him, Dude-Who-Looks-Like-a-Slightly-Older-Matt. Then he was writhing in agony on the friggen floor and then he just evaporated right in front of me!”

“Yeah, but. It’s not because I touched…” Matt coughs. He’s trying not to confuse Foggy with here with his usual pronoun usage. “I can exist in the same space more than once. And I do have my own thoughts on how that’s possible, but. That’s a conversation for another time.

“Just. I am real sorry it played out this way, Foggy. I really am, but it was just… it was just spectacularly bad timing. A coincidence. That’s all.”

“‘Bad timing’? I’m supposed to believe that?”

He wants to throw his hands up and say ‘believe what you want. I don’t care.’ But that wouldn’t be very helpful here. He needs to tread carefully; he has to remind himself that while Foggy is listening calmly as Matt explains the weirdness of the situation, he is still upset. And scared about what might have happened to his friend. His well being. Matt just needs to get through this delicate situation by stepping on as few landmines as he can possibly manage.

“I can tell you about where I went,” he says, gesturing at the pile of clothes on the floor. “If you want.”

“You can do that? That’s not gonna… do anything bad?”

“You watch too many movies, Fog.”

“Hey.”

“No, It’s fine. I can. I tell you stuff all the time, actually.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. You know how I told you I’m a lawyer? Well, we both are actually, and we--”

“No, stop!” Foggy says. He sounds panicky suddenly. Scared of what Matt might reveal. “I actually don’t want to know.”

“Okay,” he says. “Yeah, no I get it. That’s… Yeah.” He stands and says, “are my glasses still on the floor?”

“Uh. yeah. Hold a sec.” Foggy goes over to Matt’s pile of clothes and picks up the pair of glasses left behind there. He hesitates before bringing them over to Matt.

“Here you go,” he says, placing them in Matt’s palm. He had grabbed Matt’s wrist before setting them there, and the significance of that is not lost on him.

“Thanks, Fog,” he says as he slips them on. “I’m just. I’m gonna go and get out of your hair.”

“You’re really gonna take Matt’s glasses?”

“Well, they are mine.” He pats at the nightstand next to his bed. Grabs his wallet. Leaves the phone where it is.

“I’m not sure that isn’t theft,” Foggy says.

“Can’t steal from yourself,” he says. Then he walks over to the door to collect his cane. “Right where I left it,” he deadpans.

“Hey, dude,” Foggy says as Matt opens the door. He huffs out a small laugh because Foggy still can’t bring himself to call him by his name. “If you really are Matt, then how did you get so shredded?”

He really does laugh at that. “I’ll talk to you soon, Fog.” And shuts the door behind him.

After that, he decides to head to the library. Maybe if it isn’t too busy, he can put his head down for a little while before he’s sent back to the present.

A young woman behind the check-out desk greets him with a warm hello. Then apologetically she says, “I know you requested a couple books in Braille, but they aren't in yet. Sorry.”

“Oh. No, that’s okay. I'm not looking for them today. Um, maybe you can tell me if there are any seats available?”

“Yeah, of course. There’s a row of empty carrels along the wall to your left. About ten o’clock?”

“Great,” he says. “Thanks.”

He finds a spot easily enough, and folds up his cane before setting it on the table. He pulls the chair out, and the front legs drag something across the thin carpet. He reaches down to the floor and is surprised when his hand lands on soft, cool fabric. He lifts it up to his nose. He doesn’t recognize the perfume, which light and fragrant. It’s a woman’s blouse. Under the desk he also finds a long silk skirt and a pair of high heels. He doesn’t know anything about women’s clothing, but if he had to guess, he would say these were expensive, fashionable pieces. They feel well made and of high-quality material. The shoes especially. They feel stiff. Brand new. Worn once or twice, but no more than that.

Why would anyone…

This is a quiet part of the library, and what other students get up to is none of his business. He gathers up the clothes and heads back to the front desk.

“Lost and Found,” he says to the woman still at the desk.

“Oh,” she says. “A whole outfit. Okay.” Then she’s writing something down on an index card. Probably cataloging the items. “You found these all together?” He nods, so she starts placing the clothes into a stiff paper grocery bag.

Surprised, Matt asks, “what’s with the bag? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“To prevent the spread of bedbugs,” she says with a shrug. “Apparently there was a big outbreak a few years ago, so now we keep any Lost and Found items in bags instead of leaving them all piled in a box somewhere. Makes sense, I guess.”

“Yeah,” he says absently. Then to the woman, “thanks.”

“Sure, no problem,” she says at Matt makes his way back to his carrel, where he rests his head until he gets brought back home.

*