As usual, Matt wakes up to blackness and the comforting sound of Foggy snoring away like it's his life's mission to be the loudest sleeper to ever exist.
Usually it's fine; sometimes the rhythm of it even lulls Matt to sleep. Sometimes though, it's a pain in the ass; too loud and tapering off with a sort of whistle that slowly gets more and more irritating.
Unlike most mornings however, Matt can tell it's earlier then it should be. It's partially a feeling but it's mostly because his alarm hasn't started beeping yet from beside him. 'So it's before 6:30,' his sleepy mind provides and he groans lowly, rubbing at his unseeing eyes – crusted with sleep and uncomfortable with being open.
He listens once more, past the snoring to what could've woken him up and instead of the expected chirping of asshole baby birds, he is startled by the most attractive voice he has ever heard. It's gruff and heavily accented and…
"Anatoly, is not pretty couch."
Matt blinks and wonders what the hell an 'Anatoly' is. Another voice replies harshly to the first but it's not quite on the correct side of the sexy sort of gruff and it has a sort of grating tone that makes him wince,
"When bed is here, no more sleeping on couch. Until then…" he trails off and finishes the sentence with a shrug? Matt guesses and strains to hear more but nothing else is said, there's just some shuffling and then nothing; silence.
He rolls back over and goes back to sleep, making a note to investigate in the morning.
At exactly 6:30, Matt's phone alarm goes off. It beeps and vibrates its way across the table and away from Matt's outstretched arm. He blindly slaps the table and reaches out further toward the buzzing sound tapping as he goes. He reaches the other end of the table moments after his phone does and the vibrating eases for a half second as the phone falls through the air and thunks into the carpet below. "It is 6:30am," the phone informs him happily before falling silent.
The noise wakes Foggy, who can normally manage to sleep through Matt's alarm and Matt trying to wake him and sometimes all his classes. He groans and rolls over, trying to block the day out with his blanket.
"Wha – tie," he mutters into his blanket and Matt raises his head from his pillow to smile warmly at his roommate.
"It's 6:30."
Foggy groans harder and burrows even further into his blankets.
"Why ache?" he asks.
"Phone fell and the noise woke you," Matt replies.
"No kay," Foggy tells him and Matt nods.
"Yeah, I know it's not okay."
It's 8 by the time Foggy has gotten up and is singing ABBA in the shower. Matt as usual, has finished his run, had a shower and gotten dressed and is, as usual, waiting for Foggy.
When Foggy does emerge from the bathroom, dripping on the floor and wrapped in a towel (Matt hopes) he sits on his own bed and holds out something crackling to Matt.
"Wan sum," he asks around a mouthful of whatever it is.
"What is that?" Matt asks back, skeptical.
"Umm," Foggy starts and there's the sounds of him turning the packet around to check what he actually is eating, "says it's peanut and pretzel chocolate."
"And this is your breakfast?"
"Yeah," Foggy replies and Matt shakes his head, both in exasperation and rejection.
"You wan' come to Karen's later? She said she's got a whole lot of vodka," Foggy asks, head buried in what sounds like a t-shirt.
"No, you know I don't really…" he trails off and turns to look at Foggy, who makes a squeaking sound and jumps.
"Matt! I told you not to look at me when I'm half naked. I know you're blind but lord, that is freaking me out."
Matt looks back to the opposite wall, through which he can hear someone brushing their teeth, "Sorry. It's just - do you know about any Russians moving in?" he asks.
"Not a thing Matt. Why?" Foggy answers, pulling a sock on.
"I just thought I heard some."
When leaving the dorm, Matt listens past the door across the hall and hears nothing. No breathing, no footsteps, nothing. It's empty.
During his first lecture of the day, Matt finds himself excessively bored. It's one of those times that the professor forgets about him being blind and continues to gesture to the whiteboard and say things like 'so here we can see that, if this (and then there's a tap of her pointing stick against the projector) were to do this – tap – then this – tap – would be the eventual outcome.'
So until the teacher finally realizes how entirely useless she's being, Matt finds himself thinking of other things; his future in law, his dad and then the husky voice from the room across from his.
He tries to picture a person that voice would belong to but doesn't come up with much besides 'big'. Possibly taller then him, definitely muscles. That voice he heard belongs to someone who could protect themselves, someone who couldn't even fit in a single bed.
Matt isn't sure exactly how he feels about that but from the half-hardness he's been sporting since this train of thought began, he supposes he finds the entire idea kind of attractive.
'If there even actually was a voice,' he thinks bitterly to himself, 'maybe I imagined it.'
Seated in his last class of the day, Matt finds the usually empty spot beside him occupied. It's a guy, he theorises, if the body wash is anything to go by.
It's a spicy sort of smell, not overpowering like half the men in the class, but nice. He contemplates asking where the guy got it from but aside from the odd shift and corresponding clink of belt, the guy has been eerily silent and Matt finds himself unreasonably intimidated. So he doesn't ask and keeps most of his focus on the professor up front who keeps apologizing every time she accidentally doesn't say what something is out loud and Matt doesn't know what's worse; his first lecture or this one.
When the torturous lecture finally finishes, Matt waits for Foggy to gather all his notes together and hears the clinking from beside him get further and further away until Foggy leans over and whispers to him, "that guy looked about ready to pull out a rifle and shoot us all. I don't even think it would phase him."
Matt laughs at him and fiddles with his folded up cane, "if he's such a psychopath, why is he in ethics?"
"I don't know Matt. That makes it even creepier though."
When they leave the classroom, Matt hears the clinking belt of the supposed psychopath in the distance.
'At least he's far away,' Matt thinks, 'Foggy wont have a heart attack quite yet.'
But as they're leaving the courtyard to walk back to the dorms, he catches the voice he heard early this morning and swivels to hear it better.
"You take class without me?"
It's at interlude with the clinking of that belt and it sounds as angry as Foggy had described. ('The hot voice from this morning was sitting beside me!' his mind fan girls)
The other voice from last night answers, grating on his ears yet again, "it's America. No more assholes out to hurt you."
It sounds like it's supposed to be comforting but the other doesn't seem very comforted,
"I don't like it."
"I know," grating voice said as the clinking faded away and Foggy's voice filtered in.
"Matt. Come on Matt. Sometimes you do really weird things and this is one of them. Matt!"
He feels dazed as he answers, "I think that psychopath from class moved in next door."
"Next door?"
"In the room across from us."
"Wait… who?"
"The killer from ethics."
"The one from the mob?" Foggy yells at him.
"I think he's Russian," Matt says instead of answering.
"Fine! The one from the Russian mob?"
"Yeah."
Foggy starts pacing around the courtyard in the same way he does when his assessments are due in the next day. Matt stands and half listens, thinking about ways to introduce himself to the Russian mobsters.
"We're gonna die," Foggy finally chokes out before laughing hysterically.
"What?"
"Look at us, I'm scared of all confrontation and you're blind! They're totally gonna set up an illegal meth operation in our room after they murder us and send the bodies back to my mum." Foggy babbles between broken bouts of laughter.
"Foggy, that wont happen. Not only is postage around here super expensive but if we actually were murdered, our room would be given away too fast to become a meth lab," Matt jokes and gets a solid punch in the arm for his effort.
"You know Matt, that doesn't really help!"
Later on, Matt contemplates the shuffling and accented voices from next door. He doesn't know much about them, other then they don't have a bed and are very Russian. And maybe the one with the attractive voice was bullied back in Russia.
Matt remembers his own bullying only too well. Bullying for having a deadbeat for a dad, one that never won anything. Then the bullying for being a 'freak' which always hurt the most because he'd never expected to be punched in face for being blind but it'd happened whether he'd expected it or not.
Once he got to the age where being blind was finally okay and people weren't dicks about it, he'd instead made the mistake of being honest and a little bit too sassy.
"Hey Matt, your voice is kind of hoarse today. You okay?"
"Oh yeah, you know. Just sucking too much dick," he'd joked, though it wasn't actually a joke, which he was partially ashamed of but mostly not because… he'd wanted to and apparently there was something erotic about a blind guy sucking you off. Matt was okay with that, he liked it (still likes it). But that kind of humor doesn't get you many friends it seems.
So then he was bullied for being gay, which he probably should've expected.
'What was he bullied for,' Matt thinks as he stares at the door of the room, 'It makes sense for it to be homosexuality, considering it's Russia.'
Eventually Matt decides to make them cookies, for two reasons (three).
One: They're neighbours and neighbours should meet each other. What if he needs to borrow some toilet paper one day?
Two: If he proves to Foggy they aren't Russian mobsters, then Foggy wont wear a hole in the floor in worry.
(Three: He really wants to hear that voice again. Of course he'd prefer dirty talk but even just simple stuff like, "thanks for the cookies. My roommate is out and we have no bed but… you wanna fuck?" would do.)
So Matt spends the next half hour in the kitchen, sneakily pilfering sugar and flour and milk and eggs and chocolate chips from the pantry because him and Foggy aren't really into baking and have none of what he needs to make cookies.
He's just happy that sweet, misguided girl from down the hall, with the massive crush on him, got him a braille recipe book.
And while Matt likes to think his stealing of ingredients was sneaky, he also knows that if he didn't have Karen sitting at the bench and telling him where everything was, he would've been screwed.
When they're done and he's back in his room trying to pluck up the courage to go next door, Foggy walks in and almost right into Matt, which isn't surprising considering he's just standing there, a metre from the door.
"Woah Matt. What did I say about weird things?" Foggy questions as he maneuvers around Matt and disappears into the bathroom.
Matt doesn't answer; instead he squares his shoulders, gathers his courage and opens the door.
Before he even takes one step forward however, Foggy's head pops back around the bathroom door to peer at him suspiciously,
"Where are you going Matt? Are those cookies? Where are you taking those cookies?"
"Next door?"
"You're taking cookies to the Russian mob?" Foggy yells and Matt is pretty sure he hears one of the Russians says "what the fuck" from next door.
He thinks about explaining the cookies or the Russian mob obsession but in the end just says "yes."
"Wait! Matt!" Foggy yells but Matt is already out the door, plate of cookies in hand.
Matt knocks on the wall beside the door opposite theirs. It results in a dull thudding like someone stomping their foot against carpet and inside the room he hears the hot Russian voice halt in whatever it had been saying to move onto, "Anatoly, did you hear something?"
"No," the gruff voice replies and Matt finds himself far too happy at knowing the name of one of the two neighbours (even if it isn't the one he wants it to be).
He molests the wall for a second more before finding the actual door and knocks again.
He hears footsteps, something muttered in Russian and then the door is flung open by one of the two Russians but he isn't sure which.
The clinking that he heard before in class is silent now and the one that opened the door doesn't say anything. At all. Not even a 'who the fuck are you?'
His breathing gives Matt an idea of where to look though so he stares into what he hopes are the guys eyes, which is actually further down then he expected and holds out his free hand in greeting.
"Hi, I'm Matt. I live across the hall and wanted to welcome you to the building. I would've brought my room mate but he's convinced you're part of the Russian mob so…" he trails off and plasters an amused smile on his face, expecting the other to laugh at Foggy's ridiculous paranoia. He doesn't.
He says nothing at all and Matt gets the uncomfortable feeling that he's being stared at.
He retracts his hand from where it wasn't shaken and laughs awkwardly, setting his eyes back on the floor because he isn't even sure that it's actually the guys face he's looking at – his breathing had pretty much stopped after the Russian mob joke.
"Sorry, that was a joke," he clarifies to the blackness before him.
"You brought food?" hot Russian voice questions and he nods, looking up again briefly before deciding the floor was probably better.
"Cookies," he clarifies and cringes inwardly, now horribly aware that it's the hot voice he's talking to and of how much he's screwed this up.
Rough warm skin brushes his own hand as the plate is taken from him and he jumps a little at the contact.
"Thank you," the Russian murmurs, about as softly as Matt suspects his gruff voice can actually go.
"It's no problem really," he smiles back and withdraws from the hallway, back across to his own room. "Nice meeting you."
"You too," the other murmured once more, sounding obviously confused but perhaps a little charmed, Matt thinks as he bashes into his door and blindly clutches for the door handle ('left and down,' he tells his hand).
As they both close their doors to the hallway, he hears footsteps and the other Russian voice sounds, "what was that? Cookies?" and the devastatingly attractive voice from the doorway answers, sounding a little dazed, "Yes. Odd man. He wore sunglasses inside."
"Yes. I think he sat beside in ethics."
Next ethics lecture, Matt's less excited then he thought he would be. Before last night he had assumed the Russian that had sat beside him beside him was the one with the hot voice, the one he still didn't know the name of but the conversation he overheard from the other room proved to him that it was not 'Sexy husky voice guy' that he sat beside but rather 'Anatoly' who he had yet to talk to.
He walks into the lecture as he always does, cane-less (because he's memorized most of the school and Foggy helps him anyway) and dressed in his most comfortable clothes which aren't exactly attractive and probably don't colour coordinate but he's not trying to impress Anatoly, he's trying to impress the other one.
Immediately he regrets his decision, as he hears not just one Russian accent but two… conversing.
"What do you do in ethics?" hottest voice ever says and grating voice growls at him, "Why did you have to come with me brother?"
Matt stops dead in the doorway because shit! The hot one is here and crap! They're brothers?
"Matt! You're doing the weird thing again!" Foggy yells in his ear and he hears clinking, as no doubt the brothers turn to see what the disturbance is.
He knows he's bright red as he leaves the doorway and pushes through the crowd to get away from his embarrassment because goddamn! He doesn't have to have it together all the time.
He slides down a wall to the floor a couple of hallways away from ethics and buries his head in his hands. Footsteps come around the corner and he forces a laugh so Foggy wont worry.
"I'm fine Foggy. Don't worry. You can go back to class."
Fabric rustles as Foggy crouches down in front of him and warm rough (NOT FOGGY'S) hands are pulling his own away from his face.
"I do not know this 'Foggy', but I do worry," hot Russian voice tells him and Matt stares up unseeingly in the direction it came from.
The Russian lets go of his hands and Matt feels disappointed for a second before the hands are touching his face and he freezes in shock as they gently remove his sunglasses and set them down on the ground.
The hands return to his face and brush over the tops of his cheeks, spreading warmth through his whole being.
"Blind," the voice murmurs and Matt sighs, "yeah."
"You brought cookies."
"I did," Matt agrees.
"Why?"
"What?"
"I thought you like me," the Russian starts and Matt blushes hot under the rough fingertips, "but you do not see."
"I – uh – yeah. I like you," Matt confirms awkwardly, unsure about how him not seeing affected this at all.
"But you do not see and we do not talk before. So why?"
Matt jolts as realization grabs him and shakes him for being an idiot.
"You – why do I like you? If we haven't met and I can't see you?" Matt clarifies and the Russian nods, then realises and, "yes."
Matt goes to answer and instead the words that come out are something different to the ones he plans.
"Do you like me?"
The Russian's hands tighten on his face and for a brief second, Matt worries that his face is going to be crushed into pieces like Oberyn from Game of Thrones but then warm, slightly chapped lips are pressed gently to his, like the Russian mobster is worried about hurting him. Matt isn't worried at all however as he wraps his whole body around the one before him and kisses back enthusiastically, opening his mouth to let his tongue slide along the other's bottom lip.
The Russian pulls back rather then opening his mouth and chuckles, gravelly and deep, which is a whole new level of hot for Matt, "do I answer question?" he asks and Matt has to really concentrate to remember what they were even talking about before.
"You like me?" he asks and the Russian laughs again.
"Yes. Very attractive," he murmurs, "why do you?"
"I heard you when you moved in," Matt explains, "You have the hottest voice I have ever heard. Like it doesn't even matter if you are the ugliest man alive, your voice is perfect."
"Not ugly," the Russian laughs, "want to feel?"
Matt feels as though he was never been more aroused in his life as his hands are guided to the other's face.
He drifts his hands along cropped hair as the Russian mutters, "Blonde" under his breath, down to a furrowed brow and here he pauses and looks questioningly at the other, "angry?" he asks and the Russian shakes his head, "Naturally like that."
Matt's fingers continue down a straight nose and along his cheeks until his left hand encounters a long scar, travelling right down till it's level with his mouth and back up to where it bisects his eyebrow. He wants to ask but figures the other will tell him when they maybe knew each other a little better. Like…
"What's your name even?" Matt asks, embarrassed and the Russian chuckles.
"I was very rude before," he says, "Vladimir."
"Vladimir," Matt tries and the other leans in and kisses him again, not gentle like last time but deep and passionate. Their mouths hot and open again each other's, lips moving in perfect time.
That's how they are still, three minutes later when Foggy walks around the corner.
"Matt! Oh my god! I don't know if I can fight him Matt! I'll get help!"
Foggy hasn't turned at all when Matt reluctantly pulls away from Vladimir and turns to face his friend's direction.
"No Foggy. I'm fine… I'm good. I'm really good," Matt tells him and Foggy stares at him, wide eyed.
"Really Matt!" He yells, "the Russian mobster? Really?"
Matt smiles back, "his name is Vladimir."
"That doesn't make this better!" Foggy yells.
AN: There's a second (DIRTY!) part to this that I will add if anyone wants...