#it be stressful out here

[sesamestreep]

damned to pining through the windowpanes

(read on AO3)

(read the whole series here)

SUMMARY: Foggy and Matt have a rare chance to catch up while Foggy's in New York for work. Unfortunately, this also means they have to talk about what happened at Rosslyn... [ AKA - The West Wing AU circa season 2 ] A/N: It's time for part 3 of The West Wing AU, baby! This time we're dealing with the aftermath of 'In the Shadow of Two Gunmen' and 'Noel' (though "dealing with" is putting it a bit strong...), which means there's a little angst and the slightest hint of hurt/comfort (??) ahead. But mostly it's just banter and ambiguously reciprocated flirting. I continue my trend of only letting romantic things happen in the rain. Foggy does math in his head and pretends to be Cary Grant. Matt gives his professional opinion and refuses to whistle. Other stuff also happens. Please enjoy. [Full content warnings and tags can be found on AO3 as always!]

The bar that Matt chose for them is not precisely what Foggy imagined it would be. It’s a mildly swanky Midtown bar with leather chairs and couches everywhere and iron light fixtures drenching everything in an amber light that manages to be warm in name only. He doesn’t know Matt that well, but this still doesn’t feel like his vibe. It feels like a place you take a client, impressive but ultimately impersonal, which is not insulting exactly, but somewhat surprising. It’s not a business meeting after all. At least, Foggy didn’t think so when they arranged it.

Matt is there when he arrives, looking simultaneously like he doesn’t belong and like he owns the damn place. That, he realizes, is Matt’s vibe; he always sticks out in a crowd but in a good way. He’s impossible to miss.

Foggy calls out before he gets to him, on the assumption that Matt, like all people, appreciates a heads up more than a surprise arrival but doesn’t always get one, on account of being blind. He's gratified in this choice when Matt surges to his feet with a wide, delighted smile in response and wraps Foggy in a hug once he’s within range. It had been raining outside, just lightly, but Matt is warm and dry in his arms. Foggy has to remind himself to pull back before it gets weird.

“Matt,” he says, too eagerly, but he can’t stop himself. He is happy to seem him, after all. “You look great.”

“Thank you,” he replies, sincerely. “I’m sure you do too.”

Foggy laughs. “Yes, my full Gandalf beard is coming in nicely.”

Matt’s hand immediately comes up to caress his chin and investigate this claim, making Foggy’s breath hitch in a way that is probably obvious to the bartender across the room, let alone Matt himself.

“Liar,” Matt says, feigning disappointment. “Are my hands cold?”

“A little,” Foggy lies. Matt is always so warm. 

“Sorry,” he says, rubbing his palms on his thighs. “Let’s sit,” he adds, gesturing to the other chair across from his.

“Yes, of course. Nice place.”

“Oh, thanks. I’ve honestly never been here before. A client recommended it, when I said I needed to meet a friend in the neighborhood.”

“Oh,” Foggy says, over his heart attempting to beat straight out of his chest. He’d just called them ‘friends’ for God’s sake. It’s not a marriage proposal. “Well, thanks for arranging everything.”

“It’s no trouble,” Matt says, waving a hand to dismiss the praise. “I always look forward to seeing you when you’re in town.”

“Yeah, it’s been a minute, huh?”

“A long minute,” Matt replies, pointedly mild in a way that Foggy recognizes immediately. “In your case.”

“Right,” Foggy says, awkwardly. He’s spared from having to come up with an intelligent response by a waitress appearing with a glass of water for him and asking if they’re ready to order. Foggy asks about their beer selection, as a stalling tactic, even though this is a fancy enough place that he should order something more grown-up. He chooses a Guinness anyway, and is so nervous he doesn’t hear Matt’s order. 

Once she departs, Matt tips his head in Foggy’s direction. “So, how are you holding up?” he asks, as neutrally as possible.

“Oh, you know,” he replies, even though Matt doesn’t. He wouldn’t have asked otherwise. “I’m doing alright.”

He leaves out the part where he goes to therapy twice a week now and the fact that he’s got someone from ATVA on speed dial and so does Karen. He can feel his pulse racing in his palm, where he cut his hand putting it through a window around Christmas after having what was later identified for him as a panic attack fueled by his PTSD from being shot. His hand is fully healed now but there’s a scar that he touches instinctively with the fingers of his opposite hand the moment he thinks of it. As if Matt will notice that and know he’s lying somehow. Matt probably doesn’t want to talk about that, or his astronomical medical bills, right now, though.

Matt nods profusely, and Foggy gets the distinct impression that he’s both disappointed and not surprised to be getting the smoothed out, small talk version of Foggy’s answer to that question. He’d feel worse about it, but Foggy’s had some iteration of this conversation about 80 million times in the last ten months. Nobody wants him to just word vomit about the stress of getting shot for twenty minutes, he’s found. He doesn’t even want that.

“I meant to call,” Matt says suddenly, with more force than Foggy suspects it warrants. It sounds like he only just managed to get the words out against their will. “I’m sure you’ve gotten that a lot lately, but I did. I wanted to reach out sooner.”

“That’s fine—”

“It isn’t,” Matt interjects, looking truly miserable, like he's the one who shot Foggy or something. “When I saw it on the news, I almost called. But there was so much going on, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to reach you directly because—well, you know.”

“Yes. I do.”

“And I thought of calling Karen, but I figured she was probably busy with…everything. And honestly, the news didn’t mention her but I worried she was hurt too.”

“Karen wasn’t at the event,” Foggy says, gently. “She stayed late at the White House to meet with someone for me, and I told her to take the night off when she was finished. It’s just about the only smart thing I’ve ever done in my life, and she absolutely read me the riot act for it when I woke up from surgery.”

“Good,” Matt says, with feeling, though Foggy’s not sure which part he's addressing. “And she’s okay?”

“She’s a pain in the ass, as always, but yeah. She’s good.”

Their waitress appears with their drinks at this stunningly awkward moment, which is a mild relief in its own way. She refers all her further questions hopefully in Matt’s direction, which is almost enough to make Foggy laugh but he manages to rein himself in. After she’s been pleasantly dismissed, they’re back to the stilted silence.

“I know it’s not the same as calling, or—I don’t know—sending something, but, for what it’s worth, I prayed for you,” Matt says, in the direction of the floor. Judging from his posture, he could be praying now.

No one has ever said that phrase to Foggy in a positive context before, so he doesn’t immediately know how to respond. “I appreciate that, Matt,” he eventually says, which is not something he’d ever say to the evangelicals who often claim they pray for him to change his mind on gay marriage, abortion, and school prayer.

“I don’t think you’re religious or anything like that, so maybe it doesn’t mean that much…”

“I’m not,” Foggy says carefully. He’s never seen Matt look this uncomfortable before, so he figures he should tread lightly. “But you are. That’s what makes it meaningful. Thank you for thinking of me.”

“I couldn’t stop,” he says, and it’s not the context in which Foggy wants to hear that a hot guy was thinking of him, but it still makes his heart race nonetheless. “I’m so glad you’re okay, Foggy.”

“You and the entire Democratic party, my friend.”

Matt laughs in a way that suggests he tried to fight it. “Glad to see your humility is still intact.”

“The neo-nazis are going to have to wake up much earlier if they want to take my oversized ego away,” Foggy says, lightly.

“And your sense of humor,” Matt says, wryly, which is as close as he’ll get to calling Foggy out for deflecting.

“Yes, you got me there. I’m obviously kidding. The DNC is actually terribly sad I survived. The President’s approval numbers would have skyrocketed while mourning a member of the senior staff.”

“Christ, Foggy. Don’t…talk like that. You’re not just some senior aide, you’re a full person. And you almost died.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so macabre, really. But you spend enough time in professional politics and you get very comfortable with your own replaceability.”

Matt looks like he wants to say something to that, if the way his mouth twists is any indication, but he just ends up glowering in the direction of his drink instead. Foggy fights the instinct to apologize for the way he’s chosen to cope. He’s working on healthier mechanisms in therapy but he’s also been instructed to not let other people’s expectations of how he should feel dictate how he does feel. He likes Matt a lot, but they’re nowhere near close enough that he owes him anything.

Still, he can’t help but add, “You gotta laugh at this kind of stuff. The only other alternative is to take it seriously and how can you? These morons took aim at the President because they felt the administration was too ‘diverse’ with too many women and minorities in positions of power and the only guy they really hurt was a WASP-y little nobody. Tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

“That He does,” Matt says, bleakly. “Though I imagine there’s quite a few things you stand for that the white supremacists could find it in their hearts to object to.”

Foggy feels his heart drop like a stone into his stomach, but he manages to keep his tone light in spite of it. “Ah, so the rumors have reached you.”

“I was speaking ideologically,” Matt replies, but doesn’t actually deny the thing Foggy accused him of.

“Yes, that’s true. Me and the neo-nazis are, blessedly, on opposite ends of the political spectrum. But even if we weren’t, shooting a queer man would probably still count as a victory to them.”

“You don’t think—?”

“No,” Foggy says, crossing his legs as effetely as possible for what he imagines is dramatic effect. “I think they would have been happy with anyone they hit. And, despite how careless I am with my reputation, I’m not out out, you know?”

Matt nods, again directing the gesture towards his drink. Foggy takes a long pull of his beer, and decides to do nothing to alleviate his discomfort. As much as he instinctively wants to, it’s not his job to make another grown man comfortable around him because he had the audacity to say the word 'queer' out loud. 

“I hope you don’t think so poorly of me that you’d imagine that’s how I would choose to broach the subject with you,” Matt says, eventually.

That certainly gives Foggy pause. “What do you mean?”

“If I wanted to ask if you were gay, I wouldn’t use ‘so, do you think you were the victim of a hate crime or just a regular crime?’ as my opener. I really hope you know that.”

Foggy laughs, unexpectedly. “You’re right. You are absolutely better than that. I apologize.”

“I don’t need an apology.”

“Well, too bad,” he says, amiably belligerent. He probably shouldn't find Matt's extremely careful handling of this topic so endearing and amusing, but he does. That probably says something about him, and likely it's nothing good, but this isn't therapy. He doesn't need to psychoanalyze himself to death about it right here and right now.

Matt spreads his hands out wide in a defensive gesture that Foggy also finds cute. “I'm serious. It's not—I wasn’t chastising you.”

“No, you were fishing for praise. And now you can have it: you’re far too nice to behave the way I implied you were behaving. I’m used to people wanting to speak in code on this subject, unfortunately, which is why I jumped to conclusions. Sorry about that.” Foggy exhales noisily, preparing himself, before he adds, “And, for what it’s worth, I’m not gay.”

Matt’s brow furrows in confusion. “You’re not?”

Foggy lets himself read way too much into Matt’s tone, as a little treat. It’s probably pure confusion, but since he’s treating himself to some delusion, he lets himself hear some disappointment in there too, in the moment before he corrects him. “I’m bisexual. It means I date people of the same gender and other genders too. I’ve had significant relationships with men and women and—”

“I know what bisexual means,” Matt interrupts, though he still appears to be thinking hard.

“Some people don’t,” he replies, casual. “They think it means ‘gay, but too precious to say so.’”

“That’s not what I think.”

“You don’t think I’m precious?” Foggy asks, faux offended.

“Oh, you’re precious alright,” Matt replies, with a stupidly sweet smile. “Adorable, even.”

Foggy blushes and thanks whatever deities he can remember that this extremely hot, straight guy that he can’t stop himself from flirting with is blind. “Good, I was worried for a second there.”

“Another toast to your deeply debilitating injury not having any negative effects on your ego.”

“Hear, hear!” Foggy says, and takes a long drink of his beer. Afterwards, he pauses and gathers his courage to say the thing that’s been on his mind all this time. “Listen, Matt, I don’t know what you had in mind when you invited me here tonight, but—”

Matt looks perplexed by this when he cuts him off. “I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression…”

“No! God, no!” Foggy has to laugh. For all it’s the first thing on his mind, he knows it’s the farthest thing from Matt’s. “Sorry, that was the wrong time for a conversational segue. I was not trying to implying that at all! I know you’re not hitting on me. Relax.”

“I am…? Relaxed, that is,” Matt says, though he doesn’t look it. He doesn’t look tense in a homophobic way, though, just a regular 'this is awkward' way, which, yes, there is a difference and Foggy is an expert in its discernment.

“I just meant, maybe you have some business to discuss, or maybe you just want to catch up, but I—I have something I want your advice on, I guess.”

“Okay.”

“It’s just that, you and I, we’re friends, but we don’t see each other all the time, and I need someone with a little distance, for the sake of perspective. You know?”

“Foggy,” Matt says, as he places his hand on Foggy's elbow gently, “did you hear the part where I already said ‘okay’?”

Foggy laughs, tension flooding out of him. “Right, yeah. I steamrolled right over that, didn’t I?”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Well, as you know, I was shot.”

“Yes.”

“Uh, by the KKK.”

“Yes, Foggy, I knew all this.”

“God, this all sounds so absurd,” Foggy says, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “How is this my life?”

“Politics,” Matt says, with a humorless smile.

“Yeah. Well, so the situation is this: Marci wants me to sue them.”

“She wants you to sue the Klan?”

“Well, her and the Southern Poverty Law Center want me to sue the Klan.”

“God, you weren’t kidding,” Matt says, looking a little green. “Your life is…unreal.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s the perfect way to describe it. Anyway, she thinks this is a good idea. Some people over there think we have a case. I…”

“You don’t?”

“Hey, I’m a lawyer by training, same as her, same as you, same as…well, everybody. I’m sure there’s a case there. They wouldn’t push me to do it if there was no chance. It’s just…she says it’s up to me, whatever I choose to do, but…”

“You don’t want to do this,” Matt says, without even having the good grace to pretend it’s a question. 

“I don’t,” Foggy admits for the first time out loud. “I really, really don’t. God, that makes me feel like a coward, but you’re right; I don’t.”

“You’re not a coward, Foggy. You took a bullet for the president.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” he says, nearly choking on his drink in his effort to not laugh—or cry—at that description. “I did no such thing. I was standing around, like a moron, when someone tried to shoot the president and missed. I didn’t dive in front of anyone. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Matt tips his head to the side, considering this. “You took a bullet while serving the president, then. Still not cowardly.”

“I don’t really know that much about your life, Matt, and I don’t want to assume, so here’s an insane question: have you ever been shot before?”

“Mercifully, no,” he says, gamely. “I’ve gotten into some scrapes in my life before, but that’s one I’ve never had to deal with.”

Foggy leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees, bracing himself to explain this thing—this huge, terrifying thing that's been living in his brain for months—to another person, and risk it meaning nothing to them. “Well, then I’ll let you in on a secret about taking a bullet: you don’t have to be brave to do it. It’s just a thing that happens to you or it doesn’t. And if it does, it’s a split second and then you’ve done it. If that bullet had been a few inches over in any direction, I might have died, or it would have hit someone else entirely. Nothing I did or did not do contributed to my survival at all. It’s just…a thing that happened.”

Matt takes this all in with an outward appearance of calm and looks thoughtfully into the middle distance. “I’m sorry,” he finally says, after a few moments, his voice decidedly not calm.

“I don’t want you to feel bad for me, Matt. And I don’t want you making me into a hero, when I’m not. I just—”

“You want to move on,” he says, nodding. “And a lawsuit wouldn’t allow you to do that. You’d have to live and relive that night over and over again, in court, in the press, everywhere. I imagine you'd also have to step down from your position at the White House in order to do this and I'm guessing you don’t want to do that either. None of that sounds like what you want to be doing, if that's not too presumptuous of me to say."

Foggy swallows with great effort, because his throat has gone completely dry at having someone read his mind like that. “Yes.”

"It is presumptuous?"

"No," he says, shaking his head. "I meant, yes, you're right. That's—none of that is what I want to do."

“Then, that’s okay.”

“Is it?” Foggy asks, suddenly aware that this is a crazy conversation to have in a bar. “I mean, what if this lawsuit could help people?”

“It doesn’t have to be you,” Matt replies, touching his arm again. “Not this time.”

He snorts. “And what if I never get shot by a white nationalist ever again, Matt? What then?”

“It’ll be too soon,” Matt says, smiling and squeezing his arm. 

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant, Foggy. Give me some credit.”

“I’m saying, what if this is one of those ‘make lemonades out of lemons’ type situations?”

“It’s your life, though," Matt replies, with a shrug. "Yes, it would be brave to do this. Important, even. But you work for the White House. Most of the stuff that crosses your desk is important. Most of it has the power to change people’s lives in some way or other. For some people, this would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a difference. That’s not true for you. And it’s okay to admit that you’re tired of this fight. You got shot. You survived. And then you did the truly brave thing of continuing to wake up in the morning. You kept going to work, even though that’s the thing that nearly killed you. You didn’t resign or back down. You’re still showing up. So, no, you don’t need to sue anybody to prove you’re brave. You did that already. You can say no. I’m giving you permission, if that’s what you need.”

It is, startlingly, exactly what Foggy needed. It's nothing he would have been able to ask for, because he certainly couldn't have put it into words even a minute ago, but it is somehow the precise thing he needed someone to say to him for days now. Something that’s been tightening and hardening in his chest for a long time finally loosens and he takes his first unrestricted, unencumbered deep breath in what might be months. He has to take a drink to hide how shaky he suddenly feels.

“I can put that in writing, if you’d like,” Matt adds, when Foggy doesn’t immediately say anything in response. “I’m not sure how you foresee breaking the news to Marci going, but if it would help...”

Foggy waves a hand, pretending to be more calm than he actually is. “Marci won’t give me grief about it,” he says. “I mean, she will, but no more than usual. She’s used to me disappointing her, being my ex and all.”

“Marci is your ex?!”

“Yeah, you didn’t know that?”

“No, how would I—" Matt looks utterly perplexed by this revelation, for whatever reason. "I—where was I supposed to get that information from?”

“That’s a good point,” Foggy allows. “It was when we were in law school, so it’s basically ancient history. She just makes a point of telling everyone I got to where I am because I slept my way to the top, which is why I assumed you knew.”

“That’s just—” Matt shakes his head. “So hard to imagine.”

“You did claim to understand what bisexuality was earlier…”

“Yeah, it’s not the woman part that’s throwing me,” he says, sarcastically. “It’s the Marci part.”

“Despite the reputation she cultivates, she really doesn’t bite,” Foggy says, amused, “unless you ask nicely.”

Matt pulls a face. “Thank you for that.”

“Speaking of too much information…”

“Oh, I don’t like the sound of that segue.”

“Can I ask you another insane, possibly impertinent question?”

“No,” Matt says, but then immediately continues with, “I wasn’t always blind.”

“God,” Foggy says, burying his face in his hand, “everyone asks, don’t they?”

He shrugs. “It’s a reasonable question.”

“I’m still sorry. I just—I don’t know if this makes it better—but we talked a lot about me tonight and I feel like you know me better now, and I wanted to…I don’t know, reciprocate somehow? Does that make sense?”

Matt cocks his head to the side, as if considering him. It’s a funny little gesture—cute, too—but Foggy definitely feels like he’s being evaluated. It’s strange to feel that way when he knows Matt can’t actually see him.

“It does, make sense and make it better,” he finally says. “There was an accident when I was a kid. A complete freak accident.”

“How old were you?”

He seems surprised by this question, of all things. “I was eight.”

“Is that a weird thing to ask?”

“Not really, no.”

“I just—you look confused…”

“Yeah,” Matt says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I guess it’s just not people’s usual first follow up question. They tend to ask me what happened.”

Foggy winces. His own recent medical issues should have cured him of this, but he remains stubbornly squeamish. He’s not sure he wants to hear about an eight year old getting into a horrifying accident, especially when that kid grew up to be this person he likes so much.

“Do you want to tell me about that?” he asks, hesitantly.

Matt's laugh is just a surprised huff, but it’s a comforting sound. “No, I actually don’t, if I’m being honest.”

“Then feel free to tell me anything else about yourself, instead.”

Matt takes this to heart and tells him instead about other parts of his childhood—growing up with a single dad who ran a boxing gym, splitting his time in school between the debate club and the wrestling team. Foggy controls himself enough during that portion of the conversation not to ask if all that wrestling didn’t make him even a little bi-curious, which he considers a major victory, and talks about doing high school theater himself (which did make him a little bi-curious, a fact he does mention, because once he’s out with someone, he’s out) and breaking his dad’s heart by never making the varsity hockey team.

“Ice hockey?” Matt asks.

“Yeah. I was just okay, so I’m not surprised it didn’t work out for me in high school,” Foggy says. “I always wished there was field hockey for boys. I feel like I would have crushed that.”

Matt seems delighted by this answer. The rest of their conversation for the evening revolves around how they both grew up in the city and somehow their lives never intersected until that meeting almost two years ago now in D.C. They both applied and got into Columbia, but Matt ended up at Fordham because they offered him better financial aid. Same with law school, where Foggy continued at Columbia but Matt went on to St. John’s in Queens. Matt’s dad taught classes at the same YMCA where Foggy and his siblings learned to swim when they were little. Foggy mentions the diner his aunt and uncle own in Hell’s Kitchen and Matt’s certain he and his dad got lunch there a few times. If he asked his mom, Foggy is certain she’d know somebody who knows somebody who knew Jack Murdock back in the day. 

“How long has he been gone?” Foggy asks gently, once he clocks the fact that Matt only refers to his dad in the past tense. “If you don’t mind me asking, that is. Which you’re allowed to, by the way. Mind, I mean. You don’t have to answer.”

Matt smiles. “Wait, I’m sorry, can you explain that more clearly? Do I have to answer, even if I don’t want to?”

“Okay. Dick.”

That just makes him laugh. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist,” he says, and he’s still somehow smiling when he continues. “My dad died when I was sixteen.”

“Man, that is rough.”

“Yeah.”

“You and multiples of eight just do not get along, do you?”

Matt actually throws his head back and laughs at that one, which just makes Foggy wish they knew each other when they were kids even more. Nobody laughed at his math jokes back then, either. “I guess not. Although, I graduated law school and passed the bar when I was 24. And 32 wasn’t half bad either, so maybe I’ve grown out of it.”

“You’re what, 34, now?”

“Yeah, 35 next month.”

“Hey, happy early birthday,” Foggy says, clinking the glass of his nearly-empty second drink against Matt’s where it’s sitting on the table, and definitely not trying to figure out if that means he’s an Aries or a Taurus. “We’ll have to check back in when you turn 40.”

“Somebody knows their times tables,” Matt says, appreciatively, and Foggy is for sure in love with two-drink Matt.

“I can do long division too,” he replies, way flirtier than that sentence warrants, but he can’t help himself.

“In your head?!”

“Sometimes, baby,” Foggy says, with a wink that Matt can’t appreciate. 

“And you’ve got a steady job?” Matt exclaims, finishing his drink. “How are you single?”

“I could ask you the same thing, my man. Wait, you still have a job, right?”

“Yeah, but I cannot do long division for the life of me.”

“Oh, yeah. That’ll do it.”

“So, what’s your excuse?”

“Well," Foggy says, gesturing with his glass, "I work at the White House, which means I basically live at the White House and even when I’m not at the White House, it’s all I talk about, so dating is not something I have a ton of time for or much success with, when I get around to, uh, doing it.”

Matt makes an unimpressed face at that. “We just spent the last, I don’t know, forty-five minutes talking about everything but the White House, Foggy, so I’m having trouble believing you.”

Foggy drains his glass, and tries to think of a response that isn’t just asking Matt on a date already, since they apparently have such an easy time talking to each other. “Maybe the eligible singles of Washington D.C. are just less interesting than you,” he says, which isn’t asking him out but it’s only barely better.

Matt clears his throat awkwardly. “Foggy, I—”

“Or they’re afraid of inheriting my mountain of medical bills when things get serious,” Foggy interrupts, trying to get them back on solid ground. He definitely put them to close to the sun with that last comment.

“Well, that’s…valid,” Matt replies, fixing his jacket's cuff in what might be a nervous gesture. “The healthcare system in our country—”

“Oh, do not get me started,” Foggy interjects. “Hey, there’s another reason I’m single!”

Matt laughs. “Well, we have that one in common, then.”

“You’re really not seeing anyone?”

“Oh, I mean, I meet people,” he says, in a way that implies he’s getting laid regularly. Foggy kind of hates him for a second before he gets a hold of himself. “But I’m not dating anyone.”

“Right,” Foggy says. He might actually be a little relieved they didn’t know each other when they were younger. At least Matt knows him now as Foggy-who-works-at-the-White-House. There’s at least some cache to that. Foggy-who-understudied-for-the-role-of-Tevye-in-Fiddler-on-the-Roof was maybe less impressive. “Well, unfortunately for you, my friend, this is where our magical evening together must end. I’ve got to catch the train back to D.C. out of Penn Station in—” he checks his watch—“an hour, so I’d better get going.”

Matt frowns. “You have to go back tonight?” 

Foggy tells himself he’s projecting an air of disappointment onto Matt in this moment, because it’s definitely not actually there. “Yeah, unfortunately. I’ll probably go straight from Union Station to the West Wing.”

“I guess working for the White House really does put a pretty serious damper on your personal life, huh?”

“Oh, god," Foggy laughs, "is this the first time you’ve had drinks with someone and they haven’t gone home with you afterwards? Is this a new experience for you, Matt?”

He ducks his head, looking thoroughly embarrassed. “You’re such a dick.”

“Hey,” Foggy says, putting his hand on Matt’s shoulder comfortingly, “it happens to the best of us. Don’t beat yourself up, champ!”

“Seriously, you’re the actual worst,” Matt says, laughing. “I’m glad you’re leaving.”

“Aw, don’t be like that!”

“Believe it or not, I was actually trying to imply it’d be nice if you could stick around so you could see your family, or maybe a Broadway show, or something.”

“Nah, I’m not allowed to have any fun until they vote us out of office.”

“Bite your tongue!" Matt objects. "I like having you guys in the Oval office!”

“We’ll see how long that lasts,” Foggy says, standing to put on his coat. “But I appreciate the concern for my social life, and I’m sure my mother would appreciate that someone out there is trying to get me to visit, since I can’t be trusted to do it myself.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly an unbiased observer here. I’ve got a horse in this race too.”

“You do?”

“Sure,” Matt says, using the arms of his chair to push himself up to standing, “I like it when you visit too.”

Foggy ignores the way that stupid, minor admission makes his heart thump in his chest like it wants to break free and land directly in Matt’s hands and stay there forever. “Keep talking like that and you’ll never be rid of me,” he quips, weakly.

“Oh, no,” Matt replies, without a hint of inflection. “What a terrible fate.”

“Alright, enough getting my hopes up,” Foggy grumbles, as he picks up his scarf from the chair and loops it around his neck. “I’m going to miss my train, so…”

“I’ll walk you out,” Matt says, nodding in the general vicinity of the door as he shrugs into his own coat. 

“You don’t have to!”

“I’m going home after this, so I'm headed in that direction myself,” he says, with a smile that suggests he thinks Foggy’s being unnecessarily demure about all this.

“Well, fine, then.”

There’s the typical cluster of people by the front door, waiting for the rest of their group to arrive or bothering the hostess about something, so Foggy needs to gently and politely push his way through the throng to get out. Somewhere in there, he angles his arm back until it makes contact with Matt’s, a sort of invitation that he can always plausibly deny later, but he feels Matt’s hand settle on his elbow after a second. Foggy offers a friendly apology to the person he nudges out of their way and pushes the paneled door to the outside world with his free hand, letting in a gust of damp air. He drags Matt after him and tows them to a protected corner of the entryway, where there’s enough of an overhang to shield them from the rain for a moment without putting them directly in the way of the door.

“I should hire you as a bodyguard,” Matt says, cheerfully, as they crowd together in the corner. “That was very smooth.”

“Spend enough time with Secret Service agents around and you start to get a knack for crowd control,” Foggy says, and then regrets it, because it brings the specter of the shooting back into the conversation. He tries to fob it off with a joke. “Besides, you couldn’t afford me.”

“True enough,” Matt replies, with a soft smile. He looks like he’s going to say something else, but the door behind him opens suddenly and swings wide, which he feels as quickly as Foggy sees it and he’s forced to step closer to Foggy to avoid it.

Foggy’s hand comes up protectively and almost settles on Matt’s neck before he gets a hold of himself and puts it on his shoulder instead. It looks, more or less, like they’re hugging goodbye, he imagines, but it���s still an awkward position and it forces him to reckon, once again, with how good and warm Matt feels in his arms. It’s functionally torture. A group of well-dressed, attractive women—getting drinks after work, if he had to guess—emerge from the bar and the first one out gets the brunt of Foggy’s glare and glares right back.

“You really shouldn’t stand there,” she says, probably more harshly than she meant to with the defensiveness of someone who narrowly avoided doing something wrong by a very slim margin. “It’s not safe.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Foggy replies, not particularly interested in getting into an argument here and now.

Matt steps away from him, then, and clears his throat like he’s going to say something but doesn’t actually follow it up with anything. He shifts enough that his face is no longer hidden from the light over the door and the woman sees him properly for the first time. Her face clears of some of its annoyance and the fight goes out of her immediately.

“Sorry about that,” she says, much more kindly, though her eyes land on Foggy’s hand, still clutching Matt’s shoulder, and her expression remains somewhat wary. Foggy takes his hand away guiltily.

“Don’t worry about it,” Matt says, politely but disinterestedly, as he adjusts his jacket. After the woman and her group have swanned off into night, he clears his throat and adds, just to Foggy, “At least she didn’t do the whole ‘What are you? Blind?’ routine. That always ends awkwardly for everyone.”

“Yeah, I imagine it would,” Foggy says, mildly, even though he's feeling what's likely a very inappropriate surge of protective feeling towards Matt right now. “You okay?”

Matt nods. “Fine. Yeah.”

“Do you think people generally feel worse in those situations because you’re blind and they almost injured you, or because they’ve clearly ruined their shot with someone so handsome?”

“Shut up, Foggy,” Matt says, but his thoughtful expression has been disrupted by his embarrassed smile.

“What? It really could go either way!”

“Don’t you have a train to catch?”

“Weren’t you just saying you like it when I visit?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” he says, smiling wider.

“Yeah, I figured that might happen,” Foggy mutters and then surveys the scene. The rain is coming down heavily now, and this is a busy street populated with bars and restaurants that are full of young professionals meeting clients or blowing off steam after work. Getting a cab is going to be a nightmare. “Alright, here goes nothing.”

He steps out onto the sidewalk from under the shelter of the overhang in front of the bar, and opens his umbrella. Matt steps forward with him, presumably recognizing the sound and knowing it means he’ll stay dry. Without thinking, Foggy hands off the umbrella to Matt, whom he realizes doesn’t have one of his own, and lifts his free hand to try to hail a taxi. As predicted, many of the cabs he can see further down the street are being claimed before they can get to him by other people as anxious to get out of the rain as he is. 

“You don’t know how to do that really loud whistle that people do in the movies to get cabs, by any chance?” Foggy asks, turning back towards Matt. 

Matt shrugs. “It doesn’t actually work in real life, I don’t think.”

“But you can do it?” he asks, impressed.

“It’s not going to get you a cab!”

Foggy shakes his head, disappointed. “Fine, deprive me of my movie moment. Taxi!”

Finally, after several more attempts, a taxi pulls to a stop in front of him and a few people get out, presumably to go to the bar they just left. Matt steps forward to hand over the umbrella.

“It was nice seeing you,” Matt says, as Foggy grabs the door.

“Yeah, you too,” Foggy says, before turning to the driver. “He’s going to Hell’s Kitchen. What’s your address?”

Matt looks at him like he’s grown a spare head. “I thought this was for you.”

“I’ll get another. It’s fine.”

“Foggy, your train…”

“I’ve got time and you haven’t got your own umbrella. That’s easy math to me, so get in the damn cab.”

“It’s fine. I don’t mind the rain. I can get my own cab, or walk. Really!”

“Or you could take this cab right here and stop arguing with me.”

“But you’ve got to get to Penn Station!”

Foggy sighs, feeling silly as he lingers by the door of the cab, having an argument with Matt while the cabbie eavesdrops and rain soaks through the sleeve of his jacket. “I grew up here, remember? It's not that far, and besides, I could get to 34th Street with my eyes closed.”

“So could I,” Matt points out, amused, which is fair.

“Just let me be a gentleman and take the cab, please,” Foggy says, exasperated. “I’ll feel a lot better knowing you got home safely.”

“You’re really…” Matt pauses, like he’s searching for the right word and can’t find it, which means Foggy is left there to consider what exactly Matt thinks he is while rain drops tap melodically on the fabric of the umbrella above their heads and the barrier gives the erroneous impression that they’re separate from the rest of the world for a moment. He gets a second to watch the amber and white lights of the city freckle across the bridge of Matt’s nose as he thinks too hard about whatever it is he’s trying to say, and Foggy gets his movie moment after all, because there’s a split second there where he feels like Carey Grant or something close, standing on one side of a rain soaked taxicab door with the object of his affections on the other, arguing about who should take the cab. He thinks about the end of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which doesn’t star Carey Grant but a similar type of handsome mid-century man, and wishes he didn’t have a five-hour train ride to a different city and a lonely trek back to the office ahead of him. He wishes very suddenly that he and Matt were headed to the same place, or maybe just that he’d never left New York and that he was only a quick cab ride away from home on a rainy night like this. It’s all foolishness, of course, but he wishes for it, nonetheless.

“In or out, gentlemen,” the cab driver calls from the front seat. 

Foggy’s about to say something to him, asking for another minute to finish this argument, when Matt surges forward to hug him. It’s awkward, of course, because there’s the matter of the car door between them, but his arms wrap around Foggy’s neck and they end up pressed cheek-to-cheek. It feels so stupidly nice that Foggy’s brain stops working momentarily. He can’t even imagine what anything more would feel like; it would probably kill him.

“I’ll see you around, Matt,” he says, awkwardly, after a moment. He even pats him on the back, like they're estranged cousins who only see each other at Christmas or something.

“Yeah,” Matt says, faintly, as he lets go of Foggy and steps back. “Don’t be a stranger.”

“Sure,” Foggy replies, trying to sound light and easy, but feeling every inch of distance between them like a personal affront right now. It’s like there’s an alternate universe breaking off from this one right here in this moment, one where he and Matt don’t go their separate ways at all, one where they share the cab with only one stop in mind, and he’s not too terrified of rejection to ask Matt a simple and inoffensive question once and for all. But he told Matt earlier tonight and he meant it: he’s not brave. The fiction of maybe someday in his mind is better than knowing for sure what he cannot have. He’ll take delusion over disappointment any day. 

“And don’t get shot again,” Matt says, interrupting his thoughts.

Foggy laughs, unwillingly. “Okay. I promise.”

“I’m serious,” Matt replies, with a smile that might even be fond. “If it happens again, I’ll come down there and kick your ass myself.”

“Well, now I’m going to get shot just to see you again!”

“You’re impossible,” Matt says, as he ducks into the cab. Foggy moves to shut the door behind him, but Matt stops it with a hand. “I’m serious, though. Take care of yourself, Foggy.”

“I will,” he says, feeling like Deborah Kerr or Audrey Hepburn or whoever now. “Just for you, I will. I promise.”

Matt laughs, which is a good sound to be left with until they see each other again. “Good. See you around.”

“Goodnight, Matt,” Foggy says, far too wistfully, and closes the door. He hears Matt give the driver his address as the car pulls away from the curb with the slushy noise of tires over wet pavement. He stands there, stupidly, watching the cab disappear down the street and around a corner, letting more rain soak into his jacket and drum against his umbrella for a long moment before he’s ready to return to reality and set about hailing another taxi for himself.

[hinamie]

long way home

[drlessy]

YAYAYAYAYAY

[liimonadas]

im actually obsessed with 2-4 phoenix he is tired of all this bullshit. i love how he does not say a word for like 5 minutes after edgeworth enters the room

[stuckinapril]

friend wanted to see my tumblr, and when i told him i can’t show it to him bc it’s basically my personal diary he went “oh so I can’t see it but a bunch of strangers on tumblr can??” he literally does not get me. no one will get me like the people in my phone get me

[bromantically]

im so fucking infuriated at the state of the world. is there no compassion left in anyones hearts. marcellus was murdered by the court for a crime he provably did not commit. so many people called in that they cut off the number, so many people signed, called in, faxed in, sent emails, and no one in this fucked up system even cared. im so angry and distraught. what a miserable fucking world.

[cinthgarden]

and what if something goes wrong during a mission? (au)

[mindiemakes]

TFW you’re a stress crier so you need hugs from your blorbo

[abd-illustrates]

Another pencil n’ paper doodle from earlier this week - I feel like I say this every time I draw any of the characters from Heartless sdgsj but this might be my fave Eira I’ve drawn to date 💙❄️

[DO NOT EDIT OR REPOST TO OTHER SITES / ACCOUNTS] ♻️reblogs are lovely tho!♻️

[cleolinda]

Have been dealing with my Anxiety Disorder™ lately, because [gestures at everything]. Normally it’s a real low level kind of thing, I’m on medication, I occasionally have therapy, but I think now we’re all just kind of In It for a while and that’s just something we gotta deal with.

I would strenuously encourage everyone reading this to find the things that keep you afloat, whether it’s a video game, a TV show, standup comedy, anime, a book series, your favorite YouTube channel, one song on loop for eight entire days, whatever it is. Just find something to climb into for a few hours and protect your peace, build up your reserves, for as long as you can.

I feel like I haven’t done much in 2024 except hang on by my fingernails, and sometimes you gotta call that good.

[terracottakore]

gem in the new life series please please please please plea-

[buttercupshands]

I started drawing this next day after I finished Act 6

13 or so days and it's finished!

Main things are traditional and Loop's body was edited digitally after

Unedited it looks like this

I've been torn on how to do Loop's body for the entirety of lining, also

A bit sad the main lines are visible only as a wip, most of this thing is literally just a ton of sharp lines

I think it's also my first day of drawing, Loop is just a sketch here (feat. my leg)

I even finished the beans before it so they were a moral support, because if you let me things like this take a year

[pangur-and-grim]

it’s hard for me to feed myself right now (just in terms of physical ability), so my mom drove me and the animals to her place. she carried the cats in first, because I had to butt-scoot up the front stairs, and once inside, Pangur got scared and ran. she’s tucked herself away somewhere, and nobody can find her. I probably could, and I could lure her out and make her feel safe again, except that I’m largely immobile. I keep falling on the crutches and fucking my leg up further, and the likeliest hiding spots are up or down a fleet of stairs. it’s been 4 hours, and it’s killing me not to look for her. I’m so tempted to crawl down the basement stairs, broken leg be damned.

[benevolenterrancy]

(Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett) I think Shang Qinghua and Ponder Stibbons should have tea and compare notes about somehow accumulating so much behind-the-scenes power by doing menial jobs no one else wants that they could basically run the show if they wanted...

meanwhile we have Shen "meh good enough" Qingqiu

[iilmunchkiin]

"WEEZER BLUE!!! 💙💙💙"

Just a normal weezer meme, there is nothing wrong.

[beannoss]

So I've been thinking about them:

Specifically I was wondering what the moment was (if there even was a specific moment) that cinched it for Twilight developing feelings for Yor.

[Spoiler warning: this post references manga chapters not yet animated]

I think for Yor it's pretty quick. Like, this moment here:

Not that Yor fell in love with Twilight then (ymmv) or that she's fully aware of her feelings, but it's explicit that she felt connected to him here and attached in meaningful ways.

But for Twilight, it wasn't so clear. For a while I'd kind of decided that it just came over him slowly (and I think there is something to that) and that there wasn't any singular moment which stood out. But that didn't feel quite right. The more I thought about it, the more I thought there were two stand-out moments, only one of which Twilight actually (semi-)clocks.

The first, which I think passes him by entirely, is this:

In my view, this laugh is an entirely authentic response. I think he is, despite himself, delighted by this woman who 1. just unexpectedly saved him from being stabbed, and 2. did it by sending the guy flying across an entire alleyway.

This is accentuated in the anime, I think, by the jaunty, puckish music that makes up the first part of their marriage theme song. I am dying for the reappearance of this music in some fashion, btw, it's so fun and cheeky and I'm hoping foreshadows their vibe after various revelations and particularly when they start working together as Agent Twilight and Thorn Princess:

The second moment for Twilight, I think, is more subtle for all it's more impactful. Or at least, the degree of its importance passed me by on initial read/watch, and I think it's deliberately downplayed by Twilight himself. Because he does actually clock it but if he looks more closely at it, well... then he might have to do something about it. And maybe that something won't comport with what the mission needs, and then what?

It happens when Twilight first bugs Yor, and then poses with Franky as SSS agents to test whether she knows Yuri is with the SSS.

It's clear in the lead up that Twilight recognises he has some feelings about/for Yor, and he doesn't want to spy on her; he doesn't want to mistrust her at all. He has to convince himself to take seriously that she may be a potential threat.

And even then, the convincing only sort of mostly works, because he hesitates again:

Which is, by the way, bananas. At this point, they've been a fake family for maybe a handful of weeks? Twilight is an experienced, accomplished spy with a finely honed and necessary sense of paranoia. Of course he should be suspicious. Her brother is an SSS agent! Canonically, the SSS are both Twilight- and SSS self-described as Twilight's greatest existential threat. It shouldn't be a question whether or not to verify Yor's knowledge here. And yet.

We all know how the rest plays out. He decides that listening in isn't enough, he needs to confront her insofar as he's able. I wrote previously about Twilight's relationship with Anya and the pivotal moment for him in how his view of his relationship with Anya changes based on Anya's (and Endo's) choices. I think a similar thing happens in this scene with Yor.

See, it would have been enough for Yor to continue to deny, continue to not call on Yuri's help, to prove she didn't know, and to put Twilight's mind at ease.

Endo takes it further.

Y'all: THIS IS ABSOLUTELY WILD. It borders on levels of impulsive foolhardiness that Twilight should actually take as a negative for the person playing his wife for Operation Strix. Yor even alludes later to the problems this could cause!

The SSS are indiscriminate; if Yor was facing down actual SSS agents, first assaulting and then threatening them would 100000% land her in custody. Were it not for Yuri, it may even get her disappeared, based on how casually and frequently Yuri references having people executed. It would absolutely put the Forgers at risk, in general and in the implicitly sexist Ostanian society, because if Mrs Forger behaves this way, how does Mr Forger behave? And why can't he control his wife? The Secret Police are not known for their leniency, their modesty, their discerning, their temperateness, their mercy. They are known for the exact opposite of those things. And due to being a spy, Twilight probably knows they're actually much worse than even their public reputation.

And here's Yor saying: you can question me but if you threaten my brother or my husband, I will fucking end you. Bodily.

Of course, it's entirely in keeping with her character, and it's an entirely revealing moment of who she is. And I think this is the moment for Twilight. He's already been trusting her bit by bit, as he says above, intuitively. I'd suggest that maybe even more than that though, Yor taps into something Twilight deeply wants: backup. Someone and somewhere safe. Maybe we could describe a person fulfilling that role in an adult relationship as a partner...?

It's because he doubts his intuition (his wants, his feelings, things he shouldn't be countenancing) that we get to this point where he (overzealously) tests her.

She blows his test right out of the water.

The SSS are basically the group he fears most; this is reiterated throughout the story. He doesn't trust them specifically because of who he is and also just generally. He doesn't trust their judgment. He doesn't share their values or their priorities. He doesn't like them around. He doesn't like them looking. He doesn't like being anywhere near them. (Also, he's right.)

And here's Yor. Not only standing up to them on his behalf but actually going on active defence on his behalf.

(I pause here to note 'on his behalf' is a bit, mm, tricky, since it's actually technically on Loid's behalf and I have Thoughts and Feelings about Twilight & Identity. But for the sake of the impact of this moment on Twilight, we'll take it as writ that in this moment there's no appreciable difference between Twilight and Loid.)

I think from here on out, it's incredibly difficult for Twilight to ever doubt or distrust Yor. He perceives her as firmly in his corner, that if the chips are down — if his worst enemy and his worst fear come knocking — she'll be on his team, unflinchingly. He may not think there will be much she can do (heh.) or much she can offer given the power of the SSS and her civilian status (I reiterate: heh.), but it matters that he believes that she'll be by his side.

And you know what? He's right. She will be.

That isn't something he's had since he was a little boy. Even WISE doesn't seem to offer that to its agents, given Nightfall's thought here:

Twilight's had to rely on himself for decades and now here's this astonishing woman who will threaten the Secret Police for his sake. Of course he trusts Yor. Of course this moment widens the cracks in his barriers. And further: of course those cracks start to reach into those walls deep, deep inside that protect his heart. This is all before getting to other moments, like when he reflects on how Yor is creating a better world in ways he (thinks he) can never aspire to do himself. That she loves Anya openly, freely, with such dedication, to the point of sacrificing her own needs. That she just never gives up, she persists and persists and persists, always doing her best. That she reminds him it's okay to accept peace and to rest. That she wants and tries to take care of him... On and on and on.

Of course we get to this point:

I'm particularly taken with his body language a little later in the scene. He manages to get himself to sitting but he's still sprawled, open, even as he can't wrap his mind around what exactly is happening or why, and he's feeling vulnerable for all that. But at the same time, this is Yor. And she's safe.

In my view, if the Mole Arc hadn't happened immediately between this moment and the earlier where Yor declares herself unhappy, it would have been clearer how much stress he felt specifically due to Yor's apparent sudden unhappiness with their arrangement. The stress got subsumed (conveniently, ahem, Endo) into the stress and violence of the Mole Arc, but I think it rattled him pretty profoundly. It's also additionally why her warm greeting hit him as hard as it did: relief across multiple lines, such that he had to remind himself not to relax, despite Yor's apparent return to normal.

And there may be added layers to Twilight's reactions to Yor's bad moods due to his familial history, as pointed out by @unhappy-sometimes in this post; the inverse, of course, is that Yor's general good-naturedness would add layers to Twilight's sense of security with her. And the apparent loss of that, all the more devastating.

Rounding out the original moment though, I think this in many ways demonstrates the point:

Twilight throws away the bug. That is also wild. It isn't like that bug could only be used on Yor; it wasn't somehow modified to only respond to her person. It was a device that could be used and reused on different targets, on people who actually are worthy of being bugged, etc. But instead of pocketing it for later use, Twilight throws it away.

Actually: he not only throws it away, he crushes it first. Perhaps because he couldn't stand to have that particular device around, the device he used when he doubted Yor?

Seems kind of irrational, Twilight.

Seems kind of telling.

I mentioned my last Twilight meta about his relationship with Anya: in that, I suggest Twilight recognised entering into a compact with Anya, which subtly modifies, for him, the motivations around Strix. I think something like that happens here, too. If Yor is willing to go to such apparent extremes to protect him, he'll do his utmost to protect her.

I've had this meta in my drafts for a while, but I'm chuffed by this panel from the most recent chapter, as it kind of underscores all this by Yor's positioning of herself:

(Of course the point is there isn't a dichotomy: they'll protect each other, as indicated by Yor's if I had to choose: she won't have to choose.)

Back to Twilight, at this point, he can still justify all this as being within mission parameters. Of course he should protect Yor: she is an innocent civilian and if anything happens to her it would threaten Strix. But if/when this line is tested, if/when there comes a point where protecting Yor is actually the option that may put Strix at risk or put him somehow in opposition to WISE, then we'll see.

And more importantly, Twilight will see, too.