#the title is also from tng s5e17 lol

[antique-traveler]

snips and snails

alright this gave me way more trouble than i thought it would but here's the tdov ficlet that @shen-hongzi-backup requested! (of course the trek episode they're watching is s5e17 "The Outcast", what else would it be?) also this blog believes in he/him foggy x he/they matt supremacy

Something something Matt being wholesome to Foggy about their dysphoria. Bonus if Matt is nonbinary because what the heck is gender i can't see it anyway

1.5k, G, mattfoggy (ftm!foggy, nonbinary!matt) on ao3

“New guy at the barbershop today was an asshole. I’m gonna call it an early night. Love you.” The text-to-speech voice from Matt’s phone was robotic and clinical as it read Foggy’s text from across the room. Matt paused, halfway into his Daredevil suit, and strode over to his bed to pick up his phone.

“Call Foggy,” he said, setting down his gloves and furrowing his brow.

“Hey, Matty,” Foggy’s voice through the receiver was timid and dejected, obviously not in the mood for any kind of bright greeting.

“Hey, I got your text,” Matt said cautiously. “What happened?”

Foggy sighed and the sound of creaking leather clued Matt in that Foggy had just fallen onto his leather armchair. “I went in for a haircut today, I just needed to trim off some split ends and shit, but there was a barber there I hadn’t seen before. Some old guy who looked like he used to give guys buzz cuts before they shipped off to Vietnam. Anyway, he went on this whole rant about how my hair was ‘too girly’ and ‘made my face look so feminine’. He ended up cutting, like, two inches off my hair and it just… the whole thing sucks and I just wanna forget it happened.”

Matt swallowed and curled his free hand into a fist “Shit, Fogs, I’m sorry that happened. Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” Foggy said, trailing off slightly. “Feel pretty shitty at the moment, but I probably just need to sleep it off, you know?” There was a heavy silence between them before Foggy continued, “You going out tonight?”

Matt bit his lip and thought for a moment. Focusing his senses, he could hear the entire neighborhood. The Kitchen was quiet tonight, peaceful. Across the street, a baby just said his first word, a few blocks away, a woman just proposed to her girlfriend, and further than that, someone just made it through the piano piece they were learning without making a single mistake. Daredevil could take a night off, he needed to be with Foggy tonight. Matt cleared his throat, “No, no, the city’s pretty quiet tonight. How about I come over? We can put on some Trek and order a pizza.”

“Matty, you don’t have to–”

“Fogs, I want to. You had a bad day, and I wanna be here for you. Isn’t that, like, the whole point of being your boyfriend?” Matt felt childish to admit it even to himself, but saying the word “boyfriend” still gave him butterflies sometimes, even after however many months he and Foggy had been together.

Foggy’s sigh had a little bit of a laugh in it, and Matt knew he had won. “You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Murdock. You want Deep Space 9 or The Next Generation?”

“Dealer’s choice,” Matt said, starting to unzip the Daredevil suit. “See you in five. I love you.”

“Love you, too,” Foggy echoed, before hanging up the phone with a click.

Matt had known that Foggy was transgender since a few days after they met. He’d bumped into the sharps container for the needles that Foggy used for his testosterone injections, and Foggy had laid it all out for him the second Matt asked about it. He had been matter-of-fact, clinical in describing it at first, as if the slightest emotion in his voice might send Matt on a bigoted tirade. He supposed that Foggy had been justified in his wariness of how Matt might react, Matt would be the first to admit he’d led a pretty sheltered life in some regards, and he didn’t think he’d ever consciously met another transgender person before Foggy. All that being said, though, Matt still read the news. He still knew what it meant to be transgender, and he wasn’t about to ask for a room change just because he’s roommate’s body was a little different than his.

Since then, Matt had been through it all with Foggy. He stood up to relatives who still called Foggy “she” at Christmas, he taught him how to shave, he stayed with Foggy through his entire recovery after his top surgery. It had been amazing, watching Foggy slowly become more and more himself with each year they shared together. Foggy’s face still heated up whenever Matt called him his boyfriend, and Matt loved the feeling of Foggy’s perfect parallel scars beneath his fingers.

Matt knocked on Foggy’s door with his left hand, while his right held his cane and a sweatshirt of his for Foggy to borrow. Foggy always loved wearing Matt’s clothes, especially when he was in a bad mood, so Matt figured he’d just go ahead and bring something with him before Foggy got a chance to steal the shirt off his back.

Foggy quietly opened the door and Matt flashed him a sympathetic smile. “Hey, handsome,” he said, leaning in for a quick kiss.

Foggy chuckled lightly as he let Matt in, “You know, that might’ve cheered me up a little if you could actually see me.”

“I’m pretty sure it did cheer you up, actually,” Matt said, noting the slightest acceleration in Foggy’s heartbeat.

Foggy scoffed, “Yeah, yeah, heartbeat bullshit, whatever. You go sit down, I’m gonna get a pizza.”

Before turning towards the couch, Matt extended the sweatshirt in his hand towards Foggy. “Here,” he said, “for you.”

Foggy took it from Matt’s hand and was quiet for a second before letting out a small “thank you.” Matt leaned forward for another light kiss, then folded up his cane and made himself comfortable on the couch.

The next half hour was slow and easy. Foggy was tucked into Matt’s side wrapped in his sweatshirt, and the heavy weight of the pizza in Matt’s stomach combined with the quiet dialogue of the Star Trek episode on Foggy’s TV made him feel lethargic and content.

“You are male,” said one of the aliens on the screen. “Tell me about males. What is it that makes you different from females?”

Foggy hummed contentedly from below Matt’s chin. They’d rewatched this show so many times that Matt practically had all of Foggy’s narrations memorized, so Matt had just told him to take it easy tonight and not worry about narrating. Matt chewed on his lip and let himself get lost in thought. A couple of months prior, Foggy had managed to convince Matt to go to Pride, after weeks of hounding and bargaining and pleading. They had gone early in the morning, when there were sure to be thinner crowds and at least slightly less noise. Foggy had been shirtless, proudly showing off his top surgery scars, and Matt had a single rubber bracelet around his wrist in pink, purple, and blue.

They had met so many people there from every corner of the community, and Matt had left with a small collection of every braille pamphlet he came across, just to show the people who had bothered to print them that it was worth it. Among the pamphlets on intersectionality and drag history and lesbian art, there was one that Matt found himself rereading for weeks: Beyond Ones and Zeros: Decoding the Myth of the Gender Binary. It was overly verbose and used objectively too many coding puns, but Matt couldn’t stop thinking about it. He’d always known to some extent that he had trouble connecting with other men most of the time. He found that he just… didn’t quite understand how they operated. Sure, he’d never been particularly interested in sports or cars, but he also didn’t understand what put him in the category of “man”, beyond his chromosomes and whatnot.

Meeting Foggy had been what clued him in to that disconnect, but that pamphlet had been what really sent him spiraling. It talked about the origins of the modern day gender binary, its fallacies and double standards, the existence of life outside of just “man” or “woman”, and Matt felt himself relax a little bit into its words. Matt felt Foggy’s weight next to him on the couch, and heard the crew of the Enterprise discuss the genderless society they were working with, and made a decision.

“Hey, Foggy?” he said, squeezing Foggy’s arm a little bit to get his attention. Foggy made a quizzical little noise and Matt took a deep breath. “What would you think about using they/them pronouns for me, just sometimes?”

There was silence for a moment before Foggy shifted to look at Matt, and the sound of lips sliding against his teeth said that he was smiling brightly. “I’d love to, Matty. Thank you for telling me.”

Matt shrugged. “I haven’t really told you anything,” they deflected. “Just trying something out.” Their heart was pounding in their chest, and they knew that they were blushing, but they couldn’t quite find it in themself to be embarrassed.

“Well,” Foggy countered, “thank you for ‘trying it out’, then. I’m proud of you.”

Matt smiled, warmth filling their whole body, and they leaned in for a kiss. Foggy met them with a smile, cradling Matt’s head in his hands and humming into their mouth. If this was what it took to make Foggy feel better, then Matt was willing to do it every damn time they came over.