#don't love that the cover is matte (those of us with clammy hands are Not Good For This) but!! excited to read it!!

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2023. HAPPY STORIES, MOSTLY by Norman Erikson Pasaribu (translated by Tiffany Tsao).

So one of my go-to indie bookstores in Columbus told me about the new Cercador Prize, which is for lit fic in translation, and that's just. Supremely up my alley. This one is a finalist this year! It and A SHINING by Jon Fosse most grabbed my attention when I went to peruse, so I snagged both of them and am excited to read.

[pluckyredhead]

Hi there! Fic for a Cause - awesome! I donated to the Hispanic Federation, but idk how to get the receipt to you... Email? (my real name's on it so I don't want to post it on tumblr) (could do w name redacted?) -- Prompt, feel free to modify: post-Defenders angsty porn, Foggy getting wasted and grievingly jerking off about Matt in middle of the night, someone moves his hand away and blows him. He wakes up not knowing if it was a hallucination or dream or what, but his window's open...

Oh my goodness I am SO SORRY I have been sitting on this forever but I finished it!!! Finally!!! You are a Good Soul.

(Note to RAICES donors: I am going to fill my remaining prompts sooner, WHOOPS.)

CW: grieving, death, dubcon. Basically what you see in the prompt.

There were days that Foggy almost forgot about it. Not that he ever forgot, not really, but he could get through a ten or twelve hour stretch sometimes and feel almost okay. Still like a vital organ had abruptly gone missing, or a key color had dropped out of the world - but in a way where he’d grown so used to it he’d stopped wondering why his lungs didn’t fill the way they used to, or why nothing was red anymore.

There were days that grief walked hand in hand with Foggy like an old, companionable acquaintance - no one Foggy would have gone out of his way to befriend, but so familiar it hardly seemed worth protesting that he’d never invited them in the first place.

And then there were the days where every breath he took in a world without Matt felt like the one that would shatter him.

This had been one of the bad days.

The grief was with him when he woke, sitting on his chest like a hateful cat that was desperate to be fed. It stayed there as he showered and shaved and dressed, as he rode the overcrowded subway downtown and sleepwalked his way through an endless series of meetings. He kept his office door closed and sent his calls to voicemail, and when he was late meeting Marci for lunch she was good enough not to say anything about his red-rimmed eyes or faltering conversation.

Dinner was some undifferentiated mass of microwave burrito and definitely more whiskey than was good for him. He wanted to forget, but each sip seemed to bring a memory with it instead - Matt’s eyes and his lips and his voice and his laugh. Blood on his floor. A mask cracked down the center.

It would have been bearable, Foggy thought, if he only remembered the good times. But for every graduation day or gleaming new Nelson & Murdock sign there was a fight or a lie or an ugly secret. Staring at Matt’s empty seat in the courtroom. Sitting in a hospital bed pretending he wasn’t wishing Matt was there.

It would have been easier to have loved and lost if he’d been sure Matt loved him back, even a little bit.

When the floor started heaving like a ship in a storm Foggy decided he’d better make it to bed while he still could. He left one of his good new suits crumpled in a heap on his bedroom floor and crawled into bed, window shut tight against the autumn chill.

Usually drinking helped him to pass out faster, but tonight sleep was dancing just out of reach. The bed rolling beneath him was a little too much like his old twin in the dorm, coming back wasted from a party on Frat Row or the West End. The way Matt would wriggle in between him and the wall, so skinny back then, barely out of boyhood.

“You’re slutty when you’re drunk,” Foggy told him once.

Matt sniffed, mock-offended. “I’m slutty all the time.”

They’d never put a label on what they did when they were drunk or stressed out or just bored, and it had faded out somewhere in law school. Matt never mentioned it, had seemed generally gaily unconcerned by his experimental past, and so it was Foggy who was the mug still hung up on his college roommate and some casual blowjobs nearly a decade ago.

But those nights - and mornings, and not-infrequent afternoons - with Matt laughing in bed with him, sweet and open and all his, were barricaded somewhere deep in Foggy’s heart, somewhere even finding Matt bleeding out on his floor couldn’t breach.

And - shit, just like that Foggy was horny. And wasn’t that fucked up, that thinking about sex he’d had ten years ago with his best friend - dead best friend - dead ex-best friend - could turn him on?

But no one had been like Matt. Marci had been thrillingly voracious and Larry had given more technically proficient blowjobs and what’s her name, Debbie, oh god Debbie had been rapture…

But nothing had ever shaken the memory of Matt’s mouth on him, his hair flopping into his eyes, the red curve of his mouth and the way his hands would sweep over every inch of Foggy they could reach, reading him like Braille that he wanted to learn by heart.

Foggy tried to push the thought away, but he was too tired, too sad, too drunk. And what did it matter if he did something shameful, anyway? There was no longer anyone around who cared about whether Foggy did things he was ashamed of.

He pushed his boxers out of the way and started to slowly stroke himself from half-hard up to full mast. He let himself give in and think about Matt as he did, imagining it was Matt's hand on him, Matt leaning over him, warm and laughing and alive.

"Fuck," he mouthed, a soundless plea, and shut his eyes tight. It was dark in his room, just a gleam of light from the buildings across the alley peeking in through his curtains, but he didn't want to see what he could of his own blank ceiling, his own blank walls, his own blank home. Just for tonight, drunk and maudlin, he wanted to pretend he wasn't alone.

"I missed you," Matt had said once, cheek resting on Foggy's thigh.

"I was only away for a weekend," Foggy laughed, even though he'd felt the same, trapped at his family reunion in Ohio without his best friend.

"I still missed you," Matt said, and put his mouth on Foggy again.

Now as Foggy stroked himself he remembered the softness of Matt's lips, the slick pressure of his tongue, the way his breathing went all uneven and eager. He burrowed himself deeper under the covers as a gust of wind blew cold air across the room, and pushed up into his own fist.

In his fantasy, Matt knelt between his legs, stilled Foggy's hand, and looked up at him with a face full of love and contrition. "I'm sorry, Foggy," he murmured, and Foggy must have known his voice well to be able to recreate it so perfectly in his mind.

Then Matt moved Foggy's hand away and bent over him and oh, his mouth was just as sweet as it had been ten years ago. Foggy tangled his fingers in the soft tumbleweed hair he missed so much and twitched up, up, shaking increments closer until he couldn't hold back any longer and Matt took all of him. Matt was there. Matt wouldn't leave him again.

He felt - no, he imagined - a kiss on his forehead.

"I'm so sorry."

Foggy slept.

-

In the morning, Foggy woke shivering, his boxers caught around his thighs and his bedcovers a clammy, tangled mess. He pulled his boxers back up, shrugged into a semi-clean hoodie that had been living on his floor, and stood up to open the window. His head pounded. How drunk had he been to leave it open last night? It was November, for cripes' sake.

Wait. Foggy blinked and tried to push a thought through his hangover. He'd closed the window last night. He remembered closing the window last night.

But the window was open.

Foggy pushed it all the way up and leaned out. There'd been a fine frost last night, and it lay like crystal on the slats of his fire escape. The landings and steps sparkled like a stairway to another world.

And there, directly beneath the window, was a clear set of footprints.