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The world deteriorates quickly into cycles.
Matt memorises the names of the drugs they have Foggy on as an inpatient. Etoposide. Adriamycin. Vincristine. Ifosfamide and mesna. He reads up everything he can find on expected side-effects, alternative treatments and clinical trials, and interrogates doctors and nurses with a bullish intensity into explaining in detail the step-by-step process of Foggy’s treatment. He tells himself that if he knows enough, if he’s prepared enough, then they can be ready for anything.
Foggy has reached the end of his first chemo cycle, and there had been talk of maybe calling Karen and the three of them going out somewhere together in celebration. Best intentions aside, he’s quickly yielded to exhaustion, kicking off his shoes with a feckless thump, not even the sound of a chafed whisper to indicate he’s unknotted his laces. Matt helps him with the fiddly buttons on his shirt while Foggy shucks off his trousers, and then settles him under the covers, drawing the duvet up to his chin.
“When I wake up,” Foggy promises sleepily, “we will be having passionate congratulatory sex of the marathon sort.” He’s mumbling, sounding like his face is half mushed into the pillow. “Everything at least once, the whole shebang. There will be noise complaints from the neighbours. There will also be compliments and not a small amount of awe when we pass them in the corridor. Maybe even a high-five.”
They both know he will be too tired.
“Promises, promises,” Matt chides instead. He runs his finger over the bumpy plaster on Foggy’s upper arm that marks out where they inserted the IV.
Ifosfamide, he thinks to himself. Adriamycin, etoposide.
He feels out for the light-switch on his way out of the room. The buzz of current fades away. Foggy breathes slowly, deeply, already half asleep. The mattress dips as his weight shifts, getting comfortable.
Matt makes some phone calls to Foggy’s health insurance company, and cites the fine-print clauses of their contract agreements with a bite-sharp clarity, as only a lawyer can. He then slumps into Foggy’s weather-beaten sofa that probably smelt like chip grease and treated wood even before he bought it at the flea market, setting up his laptop and his braille reader to review some of their recent case files.
He drops off skimming through the finer preliminary evidence in the Marlowe case, and wakes up hours later, momentarily disorientated, to the sound of Foggy dry-heaving into the toilet, bringing up the nothing that’s in his stomach. He’s retching so hard it hurts him, and when he gets enough air back in his lungs to weakly ask for water, his throat sounds scraped raw. Matt kneels down next to him, knees cool on the tile floor and holds strands of hair back from his face, rubbing small concentric circles into his back, feeling the convulsions shuddering through his skin.
“This is still better than that time you got me drunk after the Tort Law exam,” Foggy lies, his moan echoing against the ceramic, and Matt pretends to believe him.
Two weeks later, and they’re starting the cycle all over again.
**
His hair has already begun to thin by the time it starts to come out in patches one night, and come morning, Foggy immediately takes a razor and shaves it all off.
“It’s a crying shame you can’t see this, man,” he calls out to Matt from the bathroom over the drone of the razor. “Like, I look stunning. Fan-fucking-tastic. I’m like a young Patrick Stewart. Cancer-chic Jason Statham. You’re lucky you’ve got me already Murdock, the ladies would eat me alive if they saw this. God I look good.” A pause as he hums to himself, the razor crackling over the last remaining strands. “Man, I am going to buy so many hats.”
Matt smirks from where he’s sitting at the kitchen table finishing off his breakfast.
“Don’t tell Karen that,” he warns as the razor clicks off. “She’ll take it as a challenge.”
Karen doesn’t take long to find out. True to form, she quickly buys a tacky felt pirate hat from the children’s section of some large department store. Foggy of course is delighted. Matt is long-suffering.
By the end of his second cycle, he’s built up an entire collection of novelty hats, and the three of them waste a whole Sunday after Matt’s back from Mass with Karen’s scuffed up camera taking photo after photo of each of them wearing the offending articles. Matt tries to get out of it, but Karen and Foggy gang up on him, and he gives an unflattering squawk as they jam what appears to be a plush chicken on his head, the legs dangling down by his ears. Matt sniffs and accuses them of conspiring again the blind guy; Foggy cackles and giggles like he’s drunk. By the end of the day, Matt’s cheeks hurt from laughing, and Foggy hasn’t thrown up once, and Karen is making plans to come round another day for a visit if Foggy’s up for it.
His partner twines their hands together fondly after Karen’s left, and Matt thinks maybe, maybe this will be alright after all.
**
Foggy is having to spend whole days in bed by the end of the third cycle. Matt will bring case-files and notes back from the office for Foggy to keep himself busy, and Foggy will be tired but still have a good go at cheerily ripping holes in Matt's opening statements and half-drafted defence as he reads them, propped up in bed with a pillow stuffed behind his back. Matt will have made him a sandwich with the crusts trimmed down, and Foggy will try and eat it, more for Matt’s sake than his own. It’s an uphill struggle having him keep anything down at the moment. He’s dosed up on anti-emetics and prescription painkillers for the constant ache in his hip and upper leg, but it still hurts him to walk more often than not. Matt learns to recognise the slow shuffle-limp of Foggy’s footsteps as he trudges around the apartment but refuses to get used to it. It won’t always be this way, he will tell himself often and stubbornly. Just till Foggy beats this.
**
They argue more than they used to these days. Over the thousands of dollars this is costing that they can barely afford, over the way that, now Matt’s basically moved into Foggy’s apartment, he’s taken this as an invitation to try and do everything for him until Foggy’s fidgety under the skin and irritable and just wants to make his own fucking coffee without Matt hovering over him.
It doesn’t help that his live-wire moods are beginning to skitter from fine to teary to punch-a-wall furious. He snaps at Matt for stupid things, little things he’s never cared about before, and every time he apologises, sounding guilty and miserable once his mood has trickled into something less strung-up.
“I’m sorry cancer made me an asshole,” he says sadly, the faint smell of vomit on his breath that he’s tried to disguise with toothpaste. He leans his head listlessly on Matt’s shoulder, and Matt forgives him. Of course he forgives him.
“Please. You were always an asshole,” he jokes back, and Foggy sniffs out a laugh and play-punches his shoulder.
**
Matt can feel Foggy getting thinner under his hands. There is not so much of a swell around his stomach, flatter curves over his hips, and there is the constant rustle and swish of excess fabric as his clothes start to hang looser. Matt does not say this. Instead, he promises that they’ll go clothes shopping at some point, and they’ll let Karen pick out the most slimline and skin-hugging shirts she can find and Foggy will take this like a man and suffer as a human mannequin for a whole day. Foggy teases, and says that he won’t be able to keep these hypothetical new clothes on for long, not with how handsy Matt’s been lately. He says if he knew he was going to be getting this much sex he would have dropped a couple of pounds years ago.
Matt has never wanted Foggy to lose weight. His skin feels different, tighter around him, stretched over bones Matt hasn’t been able to feel before. Matt is having to readjust to this new body Foggy’s living in, its creaking limp, its slower motions. He does not say this.
Sometimes he thinks that he’ll go mad with all the things he isn’t saying.
**
The mood swings fade out after a couple of months into two clearly delineated extremes. Matt starts categorising each day as Good and Bad in his head.
Good days are when Foggy is almost, almost like he was before. He jokes and plays put-upon, groans and burrows his face in the pillow when he hears Matt’s alarm go off, and still uses up all the hot water belting out showtunes in the shower. He’ll steal bits of Matt’s breakfast, and will insist on escorting Matt to the office. While they walk, Foggy will lean on Matt rather than the other way round, and narrate the city for him. Matt will reel off all the things that his partner can’t see – the man with the lavender shampoo, the whiff of Old Spice, someone popping open a soda can a block away – and Foggy will call him a show-off but sound fond, and Matt will try not to preen too visibly.
Bad days come with an unshifting lethargy and a nausea coating the back of his throat and Foggy making himself sick with all the worries pent up inside of his skin that he keeps trying to smother by smiling. He’ll say little, or open his mouth to speak and then close it and murmur instead sorry buddy, just a bit tired, that’s all, and he’ll lie for hours watching television without really seeing it. Matt will go on patrol, and he’ll come back and he’ll know that Foggy hasn’t moved from that spot, hasn’t touched the glass of water or the cheese sandwich Matt’s put on the coffee table for him.
“And after all the effort I went to making that sandwich,” Matt will try and engage with him, and Foggy’s reply will be sluggish and lacklustre.
“’m just not hungry Matty. I’ll have it later.” He won’t.
On bad days, Foggy’s already losing half the battle. He’ll try, God he’ll try, but he’ll be weighed down by the dragging hope of improvement that’s too slow in coming, the pick-and-mix of chemicals corroding the inside of him, swaddled in a numbness, everything around him filtered through on a delay as though his ears are blocked with water. He can only concentrate on getting through the next day. Everything else charging on ahead, and he is puffing three steps behind, trying to get out the words to ask the world to slow down. He’ll say without quite saying that he’s not sure he can do this, even when his mouth is saying sorry, Matt. I’ll feel better later.
And Matt will think stop apologising Foggy, for God’s sake stop apologising because that means that Matt will have to think about how helpless he is, how there is nothing, nothing he can do, the anger fizzling bright spark under his skin. The urge to punch something hard enough to draw blood is enough to make him almost scream.
**
Nelson and Murdock stops taking on cases by the sixth cycle. They close up their current case-load and direct people to other lawyers. Matt locks the office door with a quiet solemnity, and tells Karen that he doesn’t mind if she goes looking for another job. To pay the bills in the meantime. Just until Foggy’s well again.
**
The doctor is cautiously optimistic during Foggy’s seventh in-patient period that any potential spread from the sarcoma in Foggy’s hip has been halted, the tumour shrinking the more aggressively the chemo takes hold, but recommends a few more x-rays to be sure. Matt knows it’s unreasonable of him to hope, that it’s not confirmed, that Foggy’s still got so much ground to crawl back over until it’s back to being only him in residence in his own body, but he slowly starts to unfurl himself now. Unclenching his hands and allowing himself to think about the future.
“This is good, Matty,” Foggy says, and Matt can hear how hard he’s grinning. “This, this is great. I’ll be back at the practice before you know it.”
And Matt can’t begrudge either of them this hope fluttering at the centre of them.
They visit Foggy’s family all afternoon, which even then takes up only a small portion of the extended network of cousins and nieces and nephews that makes up the Nelson clan. Foggy’s decided not to tell them until he knows for certain, but Matt still sits through five cups of coffee, none of them made how he likes it, and sips slowly as he listens to the animated plans being made for the future that goes on around him. There’s talk of upcoming weddings, christenings, a confirmation ceremony and a bat mitzvah. Foggy’s mum promises to knit a new hat for Foggy to keep his head warm, and then rounds on them both with cake, meaning that they will inevitably be going home with full stomachs and ribs aching from laughing and from the bone-crushing hug that is the Nelson staple.
Matt suddenly feels wordlessly ashamed, listening to this unwavering belief that of course our Franklin’s going to beat this, this unquestioned faith in the future, knowing that more than once he’s lain there at night listening to Foggy snuffling in his sleep and imagined the space beside him empty.
Later on, Karen comes over from finishing up at work, laden with takeaway bags, the bottom of the containers already tacky with grease, and Foggy breaks out a bottle of vodka from God knows where, and they all end up slotted together on the battered sofa in front of the television, taking the piss out of the shopping channel. This reconstructed family of theirs, Foggy squished between the two of them, Karen’s stockinged feet propped up on his knees and Matt leaning back into Foggy’s side. Foggy puts on a pitch-perfect impression that has Karen snorting vodka-coke up her nose, and Matt’s breath is hitching with silent laughter, tears in his eyes and trying to swat at his boyfriend to get him to stop as Foggy mercilessly carries on talking.
Karen leaves a little before midnight after they’ve called her a cab to see her safely home, and as the door clinks shut, Foggy wastes no time in straddling Matt on the sofa, sucking a love-bit into his neck and scraping his teeth over it with an intensity that has Matt whimper at the back of his throat.
“You need to be up early tomorrow,” he says half-heartedly, meaning we, already planting his hands on Foggy’s sides, feeling the ridges of bone curved under his skin. They haven’t done this, not in a while. Foggy’s been too achy and tired to even consider it.
“C’mon man,” Foggy whispers teasingly, grinding his hips uncomfortably slow against Matt. “You gonna refuse the guy with cancer?”
And Matt wants to chastise him suddenly, because Foggy shouldn’t, shouldn’t be talking about this intruder in his body eating away at him like it’s normal, shouldn’t let it be something he’s just accepted and jokes about because it isn’t funny, isn’t fair, but then Foggy angles his hips in a certain way, his hands already beginning to unbutton Matt’s shirt, and all the heart goes out of his upset.
“You’ve got the x-ray tomorrow,” Matt reminds him without any real conviction. “You need to get some sleep.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Foggy says, bringing one hand up to tangle into Matt’s hair and push their lips together, and that argument dies the quick and sudden death it was always going to.
Today was a good day, Matt thinks as Foggy snores against his chest afterwards. Foggy was happy and Matt was happy, and he’d forgotten how much he had missed the easiness of knowing that.
Maybe tomorrow will be a good day too.
He falls asleep with that thought on his mind.
**
Matt is sitting the doctor’s office trying to tune out the sickly whirr of a tired fan and the plasticky creak of the cheap chairs as Foggy shifts his weight nervously.
He catches the doctor’s heartbeat. His mind goes blank.
The doctor tells them that they found a new growth, this time bloating just under Foggy’s ribcage. That it’s not as big as the first, which is something (how can it, how can that be anything? ) but that it’s metastasised. Moved from its primary site to another part of the body. It’s spread to Foggy’s lungs, they tell them, hands sweaty and heartbeat like a war drum, and that any other action at this point would be simply prolonging the inevitable. They use words like inoperable and end of life care.
They say sorry, and Matt doesn’t think that’s good enough.
There does not seem to be enough air in the room. Matt feels gouged out, drained. He hears a hundred different sounds and wonders why they haven’t all stopped.
Foggy’s voice is steady as he asks how long? The answer is ugly. Foggy nods, and shakes the doctor’s hand, and murmurs come on Matt when he doesn’t start to move to leave. Matt wonders if Foggy’s even understood a word of this. If it’s hit him yet, because he has no idea how he’s being so calm about this.
Foggy waits until they get back home, and the door’s barely shut behind them before he breaks down, sobbing without sound into Matt’s shoulder. Matt wraps his arms around him, feels his best friend come unravelled beneath him.
There is nothing he can say.
**
Matt does not go to Mass that Sunday. He’s so angry, with God, with this city, with the doctors for making him hope, for making him believe that this could have been ok. That this could have worked out any other way other than this one. He’s maybe even a little bit mad at Foggy too. The man’s response has been a kind of a practical grief, and he keeps trying to talk to Matt about what will happen when he’s gone, about his will and the practice and his funeral arrangements, and Matt wants to scream, because he doesn’t want to hear this. Foggy’s just accepted this, like he’s given up, as though this is inevitable, as though he should just lie down and take it because this isn’t anything he can fight. It makes Matt want to smash things beneath his hands. Listen to something else become irreparable.
“When we going to talk about this, Matty?” Foggy says quietly, approaching him with a dragging shuffle-limp. Matt’s holed up in the living room, case-work and thick printed paper stuffed into manila folders patchworking over the coffee table and floor, and Foggy has to move the Chang vs. Roxxon Oil witness statements to sit down on the sofa. The space between them painfully obvious.
“Later,” Matt replies shortly, putting down one page and finding another, feeling sick to his stomach, irritable from worry. The pervading smell of sickness, of rot has him almost gagging. “Just, later Foggy.”
Matt keeps snifflng, and Foggy worries he’s coming down with something. Foggy’s dying and he’s worried Matt’s got a cold, because then that means that Matt shouldn’t be around him anymore. Increased risk of infection. Lower white blood cell count. I need you around, man, Foggy had said. Don’t go getting sick on me, yeah?
Dear God, but Foggy can’t smell the cancer decaying him from the inside.
“That doesn’t mean what it used to anymore,” Foggy carries on, carefully insistent. He fiddles with the edging on the sofa, picks at a loose thread. “There isn’t going to be many more laters, and I’d like to sort this now while I still …”
Matt slams his hand down onto the arm of the sofa. Foggy jumps.
“Don’t you think I don’t know that?” he snarls, and he pushes himself standing before he really knows what he’s doing. There is the harried flap of papers knocked to the floor. “What do you want me to say, huh? What the hell am I supposed to say? Because you’re dying Foggy, and nothing that I say or do or whether we sort out the flowers for the fucking wreath now or later, nothing, nothing is going to change that. So what do you want me to say?”
He can’t stay here. Foggy needs him, but he can’t stay here.
The smell is unbearable. He can’t stand it, he can’t bear it.
“I’m going out,” he says, grabbing his cane. Foggy doesn’t move, doesn’t get up, but calls after him, sounding far away, desperate, plaintive, but Matt keeps on walking, resolutely ignoring him as he shuts the door behind him. It’s harder than he thought it would be.
If he doesn’t leave now, he’s going to throw up.
Father Lantom finds him hours later sat on a bench outside the church. He tells the Father all of this, about Foggy, about everything, how he just can’t stand the smell any more, as the priest makes him a mocha in the brand new machine he’s got in the back rooms. Lantom claims that he wants to try out a new brand of coffee the Bishop had recommended, and listens without interruption to Matt’s confession. The coffee itself goes cold as Matt wipes away tears angrily with his sleeve, hating how weak he feels, how lost he suddenly is, hating the fact that the man he was going to do everything with suddenly doesn’t have that many days left.
He hates how he’s let Foggy down. That Foggy’s having to be brave while Matt is here, running away.
“Go home, Matthew,” Father Lantom says firmly. “You need each other right now. I know it’s hard, but go be with him.”
Matt goes back to the apartment. He straightens his tie and pushes his glasses further up his nose, before he knocks shamefaced on the door. He changes his mind after a second, and pockets his glasses instead. There is a scuffling, and then Foggy’s there as the door’s yanked open, thin arms wrapping round his neck, breathing out a “Thank God. I wasn’t – wasn’t sure if you’d come back”. That just makes Matt feel worse.
Matt can’t do this.
He has to do this.
“I’m sorry,” Matt says, “God, Foggy I just… I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok, buddy,” Foggy says, and it’s not, it’s not. “You came back, didn’t you?”
“I shouldn’t have gotten mad,” Matt says. “I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”
“You’re right,” Foggy returns. He doesn’t sound angry. “You shouldn’t have. But I shouldn’t have pushed you, so I guess we’re square, yeah?”
Matt tightens his arms around Foggy and says “Yeah”.
“I know you’re angry,” Foggy carries on after a moment. “I can’t help you with that, and I’m sorry, but I don’t… I don’t need that now. I need you to be with me on this.” Foggy presses his face closer, breathing into the crook of Matt’s neck. “I need you on my side. I’m – I’m trying to be brave, I’m trying, but I can’t – I can’t do this on my own.”
“You don’t have to,” Matt replies, crushing Foggy to him. They stand unsteady, like their bodies are trying to each holding the other up. “I’m on your side. Me and Karen. We’re here. You won’t be alone. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here.”
Even at the end, he does not say.
**
They’re lying in bed together, too hot under the covers, Matt’s fingers tracing the impressions of Foggy’s ribs, when his friend shifts next to him and murmurs, “You awake?”
“Hmm.” Matt listens to the lazy thump of Foggy’s heartbeat. Grounds himself with that.
He feels Foggy ever so gently take his hand, and stroke the skin at the bottom of his ring finger with his thumb.
“You know, I was going to ask you to marry me when all this was over,” Foggy says quietly. “I was going to wear my best suit, and fuss over my favourite tie, and of course, the entire effect of such a divinely turned out example of humanity would have been lost on you. I was going to surprise you, maybe on our anniversary over dinner, maybe out the courtroom after a case and then dinner after, I dunno, I hadn’t quite decided. I was going to get down on one knee, and press the ring into your hand, and you would have cried, and I would have cried, but in a sort of really manly stoic way. We would have squabbled over whether Karen was your best man or mine. I would have probably let you win. There was going to be scented candles and artfully folded napkins, and the whole thing was going to be pretty damn perfect.”
Foggy moves so their hands are palm to palm before he interlaces their fingers together. His touch is dry, careful. He does everything carefully these days. Like he’s trying to memorize how it feels on his skin.
“But I realised that right now? I don’t need the fancy get-up or a reservation at a posh restaurant with tiny foods and a wine menu written in French. Because you’re here. Despite everything. And I love you with everything that’s still left of me, and that’s all we need.”
Foggy moves again, and Matt swallows the lump that’s forming in his throat.
“I adore you, Matt,” Foggy says. “I adore you, and I don’t need a nice ring to know I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” He holds Matt’s hand securely in his own. “That sound ok with you?”
“Foggy…” Matt begins before he pulls Foggy’s face towards him, kissing him because he doesn’t know how to articulate the sensation of feeling overwhelmed.
Of course, his kisses say. Of course, of course.
He does not think about how Foggy’s grown gaunt under his touch. How his breathing is rough, like it takes more effort than it used to. How Foggy will be spending the rest of his life with Matt, but Matt will not, cannot, spend the rest of his with Foggy.
Christ, it’s not fair. It’s not fair.
Foggy is here, next to him. Breathing. Smiling under Matt’s lips. That’s all he’s got. This is all he needs.
“So that’s a yes, huh?” Foggy grins against Matt’s skin. Matt kisses Foggy softly, repeatedly, reaching down and finding Foggy’s hand, rubbing the space on his finger where a ring could have been if things had worked out differently.
Matt knows with a quiet unflinching knowledge that there will never be a ring on his own finger. Not anymore.
**
Foggy collapses one morning as he’s reaching into the top kitchen cupboard to grab some cereal. Matt spends twenty terrified minutes waiting for the ambulance to get there, listening to the shallow rasp of Foggy trying desperately to breathe, and thinking that this must be it.
Come on, Foggy, he begs, please, breathe for me, ok, just keep breathing.
Foggy clings too hard to Matt’s hand, and gasps like he’s choking. He keeps breathing.
They hook him up to an oxygen machine when they reach the hospital. Foggy tries to tell Matt he’s fine, but his words are slurred. Matt calls Karen, and hears her drop something on the other end of the phone as she rushes to grab her house keys.
It’s just too soon, he thinks. He feels cheated. They should have had more time.
He isn’t prepared to lose this. Not yet. Not yet.
**
The next few days are a thrum of visitors drifting in and out of Foggy’s room. Mostly his family, all with a shell-shocked numbness to their motions, words stumbling out of their throats, a finality to their goodbyes. Awkward hugs last too long, hold on too tight. No one knows what to say any more. Foggy’s parents visit daily, and Matt almost loses it completely when he hears Foggy’s father break down weeping in the hallway, staggering down with the squeak of one of the chairs along the walls and bawling, the sound muffled either by his hands or his wife’s shoulder. There seems no end to his grief. Matt knows how he feels.
Karen brings one of Foggy’s hats to keep his head warm. She takes along food for Matt to eat, and tells Foggy a meaningless story about what happened when she went to get her coffee this morning, and Matt’s so grateful she’s filling the silences. She excuses herself to the bathroom at irregular intervals, and when she comes back, Matt knows she’s been crying. Her voice doesn’t waver though. Doesn’t betray a thing.
She’s being strong enough for the three of them, and Matt’s not sure he would be able to shoulder that burden.
Matt does not let go of Foggy’s hand, to the point where he forgets that it is not an extension of his own. He strokes the skin at the base of Foggy’s ring finger almost absentmindedly.
He doesn’t leave. He needs to be here, for as long as necessary. Sometimes Karen stays too, and she’ll drape a soft blanket over Matt, presses a kiss to Foggy’s forehead and tugs up his covers as she tells him she’ll see him in the morning. She sleeps lightly, and starts awake at any change in Foggy’s heartrate. Matt knows this because he does this too.
“Take care of him for me?” Matt hears Foggy ask her one afternoon, stopping to listen outside the door as he’s coming back from the toilet. “He’s going to need you, for when… for after. He won’t want your help, and he’ll say he’s fine but… Make sure he’s… he looks after himself.”
“Sure, Foggy,” Karen says, throat too tight but her voice unshaken.
Matt spends a couple of minutes composing himself before he can come back into the room.
**
Foggy’s body is shutting down with a startling efficiency. He’s worn out by the effort of staying alive. His days are spent slipping in and out of sleep, with the periods of lucidness he does have shortening by the hour.
Foggy spends the time he’s awake trying to talk. There’s suddenly so much he wants to say.
“Matty,” he’ll croak, almost indistinctive. “Promise me that the next person you date will be really hot. Like, supermodel hot. You’re allowed to mourn me, that’s fine. I expect really nice flowers and the sort of eulogy that will get me canonized. Just… You’re allowed to move on. I want you to be happy.”
Matt promises with a fleeting not-smile, and tries not to think of what it’ll be like when the other side of the bed has long gone cold.
“Matty,” he says later, the ventilator not doing much to make him sound less out of breath. “Be careful. I know you think that whole Daredevil thing is what this city needs, but don’t let it consume you, ok? Don’t die for this city, Matt. It doesn’t deserve you.”
“Matty,” he says after the longest period of unconsciousness yet, when Matt was praying fervently, his hands clasped before him, convinced Foggy wasn’t waking up this time. “I love you. I have always loved you.” It takes Matt a moment to translate the thickness in his tone, and realise Foggy’s voice is choking up. “God, we were going to grow old together, Matt.”
“Matty,” he says in the early hours of the morning when he thinks Matt is asleep. “I’m so frightened. And I’m so sorry.” Foggy’s crying quietly, a hand over his mouth, trying to swallow down the sobs shaking up the centre of his chest. “I never wanted to leave you to do this alone.”
In the morning, while Foggy struggles for air, Matt clutches his hand firmly and listens to the strain of his body failing him. He wants this to stop, but not to be over, and he’s never felt more selfish in his life.
“Stay with me?” Foggy asks, his voice impossibly small.
“Of course,” Matt replies.
He slides onto the bed, and manoeuvres them both so that Foggy’s resting his head against Matt’s chest, Matt’s arms encompassing Foggy’s whole body.
Matt tells him old stories of their college years, little meandering tales that start do you remember the time that… that has Foggy wheezing out a laugh. He tells him of the imaginary future they’re going to have, that they should have had, in a huge apartment with glass windows and chairs they don’t know how to sit in, flowers growing on their balcony. How they’re going to bicker every day they’re married, and finally get a dog even though it will shed all over the carpet, and how they’ll still be stupidly in love even when they’re ninety.
Matt knows Foggy’s looking right at him down, rasping down the breathing tube, forcing himself awake. Matt cups a hand to Foggy’s face. He says that Foggy’s the most wonderful thing that could ever have happened to him. That Matt is so so lucky to have had seven years with his best friend, that he wouldn’t have traded that for anything.
That he will be here for Foggy right up until the end, how he will love him even beyond that.
Matt tells he loves him repeatedly. He cannot say it enough. He speaks until it hurts and then carries on. He feels untethered, shattered, but he won’t cry now. He doesn’t want his tears to be the last thing Foggy sees.
Foggy drops into unconsciousness not long after that. Matt hears his eyelids flutter closed. His breathing soften. He keeps his arms wrapped around Foggy, pressing little kisses to his scalp, murmuring softly.
With no fanfare, no sudden shift, the world goes deafeningly quiet.
Matt stops talking because there is nothing else he can say.