Columbia put them together because they weren't quite sure what else to do with them. They were in a girls' building, but the bathroom was just theirs. The other room that would have had people sharing it was empty.

Foggy had been terrified about living in a shared dorm room. He didn't know if it would be worse if he were stuck with a girl or a boy. Either way, he hadn't known what the hell he'd do at night. There was no way he would go without anything binding his chest at all in front of a stranger, and he knew perfectly well that he couldn't just keep binding while he slept. He had wild thoughts about staying up every night until his roommate was asleep to take his binding off and then waking up at 5AM to put it back on. Which would be way too long to bind at a time, sleep aside.

And, well, he'd just have to hope to heaven that whoever he ended up with was really, really good with trans people. He could end up anywhere from getting yelled at to molested to murdered in his sleep. He had nightmares about it, the last year or so of high school, that still lasted part of the way into college.

He'd been emailing back and forth with a person who worked at campus housing for weeks when he got the message - "I think I may have found something for you."

He'd never actually talked to Matt before they met that first day in their room. He couldn't believe how gorgeous Matt was. Not on T yet, but no one would ever get him wrong, see him as anything other than the playgirl model he was, with that face and body that would continue to draw everyone to him, well, forever. Foggy, on the other hand, still had his ridiculous beard that he'd grown just because he could, and the long hair that he had for, well, basically the same reason. Getting read right no matter what length his hair was was still a new and awesome thing then.

Matt's voice was carefully trained down low. It was soft, and Foggy's never been quite sure if that was to make it harder for people to tell how hard he was working to keep it on pitch or because he naturally spoke that way. It made him feel safe, anyway, that voice, soft and gentle. It stayed the same, even after Matt's voice broke on testosterone, and again he doesn't know if that was just a habit that stuck or a natural personality thing.

He's always kind of liked that Matt couldn't see him. Matt's only ever heard his voice - only after it was already male-deep. He's never seen Foggy's chest, or his hips, or any of the other dozen things that Foggy worried about every day, and sometimes still does. Felt them, because they've always been pretty touchy, Matt started holding his arm after only a couple days, but somehow that doesn't seem the same.

Matt got top surgery a year before Foggy did with money that Foggy never quite learned the provenance of, though he now has vague suspicions involving back alley fighting. It was over the summer break between their second and third years so he wouldn't miss weeks of class.

The physical restrictions were worse for him than they later were for Foggy. He couldn't use his stick at all for a couple weeks; too much arm movement. So he stayed at Foggy's house, with his parents, and yes Foggy still spent his breaks at his parents' house because there's no point wasting money that could be going toward your education or your own surgery when there's a perfectly good house right there.

Foggy kept Matt in bed for a week, brought him everything, only let him up to go to the bathroom. He led him around for two more weeks, even though his arms worked well enough to use his cane after one, and didn't let him out of his sight for another week after that. Matt had a habit of finding the darndest ways to get himself hurt, and he didn't need to be allowed a new excuse to do it.

The first time Matt got into bed across the room from him and his pyjamas lay completely flat at the front, Foggy's pretty sure he was just as happy as Matt was. He went to sleep with a wide grin on his face matching Matt's, and he knew even then that Matt could tell.