Chapter Text
Foggy’s legs were still tingling from sitting too long on cold tile. He rose gingerly without taking his eyes off his roommate. Matt had finally gotten onto the bed, sitting hunched in on himself, arms tight across his chest it looked like he was trying to hold the whole world in. The room was quiet except for the faint hum of the overhead light and Matt’s still-uneven breathing.
Sitting on the bed across from Matt, Foggy rubbed his palms on his jeans, damp and useless. He’d handled it — kind of. Got Matt through…whatever that was. A flashback? A panic attack? Both? Whatever the diagnosis, Nelson Industries had officially launched a new division: Emergency Roommate Services. He should probably order business cards.
His chest still hurt because seeing Matt like that—locked up so tight, fists shaking—had rattled him worse than he wanted to admit.
He liked it way better when Matt was the guy who had it together and nailed every answer in Civ Pro. Who walked the quad with that steady cane-tap like he owned the place. Intimidating as hell. Untouchable.
Not the guy who’d just…folded. Right into Foggy’s arms, like the floor had vanished.
Foggy shifted, watching Matt rock forward just slightly, barely moving yet clearly trying to bleed his tension out in tiny, invisible doses. It reminded him too much of Blake back in high school, trying so damn hard to mask when he was overloaded. Pretending everything was fine when it obviously wasn’t. That was the kind of pretending that ate you alive.
Foggy’s instinct was to tell him — You don’t have to do that, you don’t have to pretend with me — but the words got stuck. So he sat with Matt and did his best to project an aura of quiet acceptance.
The truth was, he did accept all this. He didn’t mind it. Being the guy Matt leaned on felt weirdly…good. Was that terrible? What did it mean that he was okay with—all this?
He leaned back, let out a shaky laugh that wasn’t really funny, and muttered, “Roommate orientation did not cover this. Pretty sure we were just supposed to buy matching shower caddies. Guess I’ve launched a start-up: Sarcasm & Support, LLC. You’re my first client.”
Matt’s head shifted a fraction at the sound, and Foggy felt that pull in his chest again. God, he wished Matt would smile, just a little. Instead, he clamped his hands under his armpits and shifted forward—the picture of pent-up stress.
It occurred to Foggy that the biggest favor he might do for Matt right now was to leave the room, give him space, so he could stim or rock or do whatever without an audience. He started to rise.
But then Matt’s head snapped up. His hand twitched out, not toward his cane, but vaguely in Foggy’s direction—hesitant, like he wasn’t even sure he wanted to make the gesture.
“Stay,” he rasped, voice low, worn thin.
Foggy froze halfway standing and something tight unwound in his chest. Okay. Okay, so he wasn’t just intruding. Matt wanted him here.
“Alright,” Foggy said, lowering himself back onto the bed with as much casualness as he could fake. “Lucky you, full package deal. Sarcasm & Support, LLC also offers the premium sit-here-and-shut-up option.”
For a long moment, the only sound was Matt’s breathing hitching in and out. Then he rocked forward again, slightly, shoulders curling.
“Hey,” Foggy said softly, leaning forward just enough so that (hopefully) Matt would know he had his full attention. “You don’t have to lock down on my account. Don’t mask. Whatever you need to do to get through this—move, rock, shake it off, whatever—it’s fine with me. Or if you’d rather I look the other way, I can do that, too. No judgment.”
Matt’s shoulders tightened at Foggy’s words, like he couldn’t quite believe them. His hands stayed clamped under his arms, elbows digging in, every inch of him broadcasting tension.
“People don’t usually…say that,” he muttered, wary, like the words might turn back on him.
Foggy shrugged, trying for light. “Yeah, well, people suck. Present company excluded.”
Matt tilted his head, like he was listening for the hidden snicker, the sharp correction he’d learned to expect. None came.
With a sound close to a scoff, he suddenly pushed to his feet. For a second, he swayed, then squared his stance like a fighter setting himself in the ring. His arms came loose from their stranglehold, shaking out with sharp, clipped motions. He rolled one shoulder, then the other, hard and deliberate, exhaling through his nose like he could purge the tension that way. His neck cracked when he tipped it side to side.
Foggy stayed put on the bed, doing nothing but watching.
Matt paced a short line across the tile, hands flexing open and closed. He exhaled again—forceful, audible, the kind of move that said stay in the fight, get your head back in the game.
Matt gave one more shoulder roll, slower this time, and let his arms drop loose at his sides. He didn’t look relaxed, but something had shifted.
“Thanks,” Matt rasped, “for…what you did.”
“No big,” Foggy said softly.
Matt nodded once, shoulders still taut but better. The silence stretched, teetering toward awkward and Foggy’s brain, ever the opportunist, seized on the first halfway-safe topic it could grab.
“Speaking of big…” he started, then winced. Terrible segue. “So, uh, in Civ Pro today? When Jacobs went on about personal jurisdiction? None of it stuck with me I think my brain bailed halfway through and went to buy hot dogs instead.”
That got him the faintest turn of Matt’s head.
“You didn’t get minimum contacts?” Matt asked, voice still rough but steadier.
“Sounds like a discount phone plan. ‘Sign up now and get free texting in Delaware.’”
Matt’s lips curved just a little. “I guess…if you want…I can walk you through it.”
Foggy blinked, then grinned. “Really?”
“Yeah. Really.” Matt’s jaw worked once, like he was bracing himself, then he added, quieter: “Least I could do. Plus, it helps me too. Focusing on the material.”
“Right. Okay. Cool.”
Foggy scrubbed at the back of his neck, suddenly warm despite the draft from the window. “Great. Yeah. It’s a study date, then. I mean—not a date-date, just—” he shut his mouth before it got worse. “You know what I mean.”
Matt let the silence linger just long enough for Foggy to want to sink through the mattress, then he gave another of those small, enigmatic smiles. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”
“How should we do this? Should I get my book? Are we doing this now or—”
Matt didn’t seem to be listening anymore—at least not to Foggy’s voice. He ducked his head, rubbed one shoulder, and just kinda…zoned out for about half a minute. Foggy trailed off, watching him closely again. The moment passed, and Matt came back to himself.
“Um. Sorry. What?”
“Should I get my book?”
Matt turned all the way toward Foggy.
“Oh. Your book. Sure. Yeah. Get it.”
Still watching him, Foggy reached for the book, which required halfway standing up.
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep my riveting doodles in the margins to a minimum. I know you don’t need a stick-figure flow chart of Pennoyer v. Neff.”
Matt huffed—an almost-laugh—and reached for his satchel at the foot of his bed. What he pulled out wasn’t a casebook at all but a slim black device, about the size of a paperback. He flipped a switch, and Foggy caught the faintest mechanical click as a line of little pins shifted across the surface.
“What’s that?” Foggy asked before his brain could tell his mouth to maybe, just maybe, shut up.
Matt angled it slightly. “This baby is a Brailliant BI 20X. It’s a braille notetaker, and it lets me keep up with lectures and pull up cases without lugging a ton of volumes around.”
“Sweet.” Foggy leaned in a little like he was getting a look at an alien artifact. “So you can…what, read the cases on that thing?”
“Yep. It syncs with my laptop and case files. I can type notes or read off the braille display here.” His hands demonstrated with the kind of fluidity that only came from hours of practice. “Not flashy, but it works.”
“Not flashy? Dude, my notebook is literally a spiral with a half-detached cover. That thing looks like it could launch a satellite.”
That earned the tiniest curve of Matt’s mouth. “Pretty sure Columbia would revoke my scholarship if I tried.”
Without ceremony, Matt crossed the short gap between their beds and sat down right beside Foggy. Their knees bumped, and then Matt’s hand touched Foggy’s thigh—just a brush, quick, like he was just confirming exactly where Foggy was. An orientation move.
But Foggy felt it like a spark.
Oh. Oh, no.
He tried to glue his attention back to the book in his lap, to the lines of case law that had made zero sense an hour ago. His ears went hot. Play it cool, Nelson. It’s totally normal to be sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with the ridiculously hot, secretly complicated guy you just peeled off the tile floor. Totally normal.
Matt didn’t seem to notice the meltdown brewing two inches away from him. He angled toward Foggy, posture loose now, fingers moving across the braille display with a surety that made Foggy’s throat tighten for reasons that had nothing to do with Civ Pro.
“So,” Matt said, voice low but steady, “minimum contacts. Think of it like…footprints. If a company leaves enough footprints in a state—employees, offices, ads—they’ve walked themselves into that state’s jurisdiction.”
“Okay, yeah,” Foggy said, suddenly really glad that Matt couldn’t see his face, which might as well have been a neon sign spelling out the word LUST.
“Yeah. Footprints. Got it.” His voice cracked just slightly, which he covered with an overly casual cough. “Like Hansel and Gretel but with subpoenas.”
Matt let out a genuine laugh, a sound that made Foggy’s heart…and elsewhere….swell.
After a while, a rhythm asserted itself—Matt’s calm explanations, Foggy’s dumb metaphors, their shoulders brushing now and then like it was no big deal. And Foggy told himself he was just learning about minimum contacts…not daydreaming about maximum ones…or calculating how many shoulder-bumps counted as precedent…or secretly trying to invent a new doctrine called ‘proximity jurisdiction’…