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Matt moves through the kwoon, appreciating the smoothness of aged wood under his bare feet and the crisp, dry scent of sunlight that filters through high windows. The glass is Coke-bottle thick, wavy, hand-blown–old-fashioned enough to come with its own vintage vocabulary; the metal strips between 'lites' are called 'muntin bars'. Matt knows this because he has studied the history of the building.
He reads. A lot.
He reads everything he can get his hands on, not just case law. Books are portals to places beyond his reach; they let him touch the untouchable.
Speaking of untouchable, there’s a woman nearby who is afraid to approach him, even though Matt can feel her interest. He knows a lot about her already—height, weight, body chemistry, and the fact that she ate congee for breakfast. He knows, too, that she’s attracted to him. Her pheromones can’t lie. But he’s also making her nervous.
If Foggy were here, he’d start narrating her inner dialogue: how the hell do I say “hi” to the hot blind guy? Do I say “hi” to the hot blind guy or just lurk awkwardly? Oh God. He’s coming over. Shit. What do I do now??
She's unaware that he's also deaf and doesn’t speak. Discovering these things will only make her more nervous. There’s a good chance she’ll vanish soon. Most Sightedhearing, if not helped, will flee from him as fast as they can. Matt thinks of them as being like birds about to fly away.
Still, he’ll approach her.
It’s the fear that bothers him the most—the sense that he’s a freak or worse, somehow dangerous. For his own sake, more so than theirs, in situations like this, Matt reaches for one of the communication cards he carries.
He wants to participate in defining himself. There are several laminated cards in his wallet that range in register from formal for business settings, to casual, for situations like this.
Acting on instinct, Matt goes for the one that says: “Greetings from Planet DeafBlind”. It explains that while being unable to see, hear, or speak does make him seem like an alien from Mars, at least he's a friendly one.
If she actually reads the card—not a given—she’ll find out his name and learn that it’s possible to converse by writing in block letters on each other's palms.
Her heart rate spikes as he gets closer.
It’s early morning, and the easterly sun drapes a sash of heat over them both in a way that feels nourishing. Since she hasn’t yet bolted and is letting him get close, Matt hands over the card, bemused by the delicate way she takes it from him.
Her body chemistry changes as she (presumably) reads.
Perhaps it’s the Close Encounters of the Third Kind style joke that’s making her relax, or maybe it’s just the act of reading itself, but her pulse rate slows down. Things get even better when he offers his hand, palm up, and she writes: “HI”.
He writes “HI” back.
There. Connection made.
He doesn’t intend to talk long. He came here to train, and she likely did, too, but now, at least, they can proceed without distancism. She tells him that her name is Katy and she’s a friend of Shang-chi’s visiting from California. When she writes: NICE TO MEET YOU, Matt smiles.
The air changes, then, as Shang-chi bursts into the room. He’s wonderfully unsubtle. Matt appreciates his trackability and his consistent scent profile; he can be counted on to smell like bao and milk tea. He cuts straight across the room toward Matt, who, turning, steps into the hug he knows is coming. Shang-chi has embraced DeafBlind cultural norms. Literally. Their hug is strong, and they touch without any of the barriers that usually keep Matt shut out.
Give me ten minutes to change clothes, and I’ll be ready to spar.
I'll give you twenty so you can preen in the mirror.
Ha-ha. Very funny.
Shang-chi signs “funny” against Matt’s nose instead of his own.
Have you met my bestie, Katy?
We’ve had our close encounter, yes.
Matt feels Shang-chi shift his stance, subconsciously centering, rooting to the floor.
Hey, you’re not an alien. You're my brother-from-another-mother.
Matt is about to reply to this when he gets a strange feeling. Is there a fan in the corner? Ocilating? Something is putting a sway in the air and—
A hand on his arm redirects his attention.
You alright?
Yes.
No.
Matt is getting a memory that is like a soft, ominous mist. It has settled on his skin without shape. He has begun to feel the condensation of dread.
Okay, be back soon, Shang-chi tells him before walking away. Katy leaves, too. When Matt is alone, he tries to understand the memory; it’s vague, yet potent, not attached to a single event. But there, existing inside him like overoxygenated blood. The room is wide, open, familiar; he has spent countless hours here.
So, why does he suddenly feel exposed? Is it the fan? Something about the sway in the air?
A touch on his arm makes Matt flinch.
Shang-chi is back, standing close, holding his arm, tightening his grip. Normally, he’d joke—or they both would. Normally, they'd proceed. Their plan for the morning is to warm up with push-hands before sparring. But the mist on Matt’s skin has become breathable. He gets another squeeze from Shang-chi, then a brief touch on his cheek.
He has ducked his head.
What's wrong?
This sign is the same sign twice (wrong-wrong), very accurate to the moment.
I have… a bad feeling, Matt admits.
What kind of feeling?
Matt doesn't reply for a long moment. He draws in a breath and lets it out slowly. He has learned from Ying Li to let his feelings pass through him like qi, to flow. A slight sway in the air is nothing. He can yield to it. He doesn't have to give it meaning.
Nothing. Never mind. Let's spar.
Are you sure?
Yes.
He is sure. Matt doesn't like the sway in the air or the way it is trying to pull a bad memory forward, but movement redirects the mind, and sticking to his routine is important. Shang-chi guides him to their usual mat and, with deliberation, they begin.
When their hands meet, the rest of the world falls away. There is only this contact—skin, pressure, direction. Matt feels intention before it becomes force in the slight firming of muscle, the shift of weight, the quiet change in breath, and he answers it, not by resisting, but by letting gravity and alignment take it. His structure softens and reorganizes so the push completes itself somewhere else, because meeting it head-on would drown out what matters; balance is a living exchange where fullness invites emptiness and emptiness invites return, where openings appear as places where pressure disappears, and force has nowhere to go.
Rooting becomes something he feels through Shang-chi's body as much as in himself, a continuous line that either carries the incoming current into the ground or collapses under it. There’s no clean edge between attack and defense, only continuation, contact changing, and being changed. This is really, more than anything, a dialogue. An appeal to peace. Any attempt to impose, to force an outcome, shows instantly in the disruption of the shared field. He doesn’t dominate, he listens—through his hands, through his body—and responds with the smallest necessary shift, because in this space, the only way to stay inside the exchange is to remain open enough to feel it as it unfolds.
—then something interferes.
Shang-chi is still legible—pressure, direction, the clean honesty of structure moving through structure—but the air beyond them shifts. There's a slow lateral drift that brushes across Matt’s skin and then withdraws, only to return again from the opposite direction. Back and forth.
It shouldn’t matter. It’s nothing. Just the fan in the corner, turning its head, stirring the room in gentle intervals.
But the rhythm lies over the exchange, just slightly out of sync with the cadence of their movement. Contact says one thing. The air says another and a second pattern starts to assert itself—cool, warm, cool again—crossing his face, his throat.
Matt tries to stay inside the dialogue. He has it. He has it. Shang-chi shifts; Matt yields, redirects, returns. The line holds. The structure holds. But the sweep comes again. Back. And again. Forth. Something in him answers it before he can stop it. A recognition that doesn’t arrive as memory but as tension—his body bracing. The clean field of contact begins to blur. Information is still there, but it’s harder to hold onto. The timing slips a fraction. The smallest delay creeps in between what he feels and how he responds.
Air moves, the rhythm is wrong, and suddenly the space isn’t just the kwoon anymore.
There’s something layered over it that taught his body to track this pattern long before he understood what it meant. It presses at him now, insistent, trying to resolve into form.
Matt loses a fraction more of the exchange.
The dialogue falters as the other thing starts to surface.
Hey, Shang-chi signs, shifting his weight and stopping the flow of push hands. Something's off. Need to take a break?
The phrasing is loose, easy, like they’ve just paused between rounds, like nothing important is happening, but he doesn’t push Matt back into the pattern.
I'll follow your lead.
The words are simple, the kind of thing you say when you’re spotting someone, when you’re right there and not going anywhere.
The memory presses closer.
Shang-chi’s grip tightens, giving him a reminder of where he is and who he’s with.
What do you need?
I think…I think I need to leave.
OK. Sure. That's fine. Let me help you.
Matt is already turning. His heart has begun to feel confined, making him aware of the inner walls of his chest. He needs to find where he put his cane and satchel, but the room has been wiped from his mind.
I need…shoes. I need… Matt's signing is sluggish. There's a delay between thought and action, a painful thickness…The wall, he finally manages.
OK. Come on.
Shang-chi imposes the sighted-guide position, being respectful, proper. Slow. Matt can feel the way he has eased the timing between them, already helping, aware, adjusting. They walk. As Matt's body cuts across the air-sway, it becomes harder to breathe. Why? He's dazed when Shang-chi hands him his shoes, dry-mouthed, contending with the wildness of his heartbeat. It's so hard to think. Shang-chi begins to help him in ways he shouldn't need, guiding him sideways, spelling "bench", pushing on his shoulders.
But Matt can't focus. A memory is close to forming in his mind. It's like a crouching beast about to spring.
Let me walk you home.
What?
I'm going to walk you home.
OK.
When they step outside, coherence shatters, bursting, atomizing. Sunheat falls on him in a way that makes him flinch. There's an ache in his throat. He doesn't know where he is. They start to walk. The beast stays crouched. Time. Movement. Layered scents. Passing vibrations. Matt has felt like this before. He has hovered on the brink of something horrible. There are certain memories. He thinks of the crouching beast, yes, but also fish in deep water. They brush up against him. He feels their cold gentleness, their awful grace. Terror lives inside them. He has no choice but to endure what happens when they come.
Here. Porch steps. Step up, Shang-chi finally tells him. Almost home.
Foggy?
Coming. I called him.
You did?
Yes.
Matt's shoulder brushes a doorframe. He smells "home". The air stills, growing denser.
He says you've dissociated, and I should tell you you're safe. He says you're very afraid right now.
Yes.
He says you can get under the weighted blanket.
Yes.
Good. I'll help you get there. I'll stay with you.
Thank you.
They traverse, weaving through the house. Matt's heartbeat is fast, high, making him dizzy. He trips over nothing, and Shang-chi catches him. Getting caught, he has a bad moment, beginning to make a vibration. Sound. He's making noise. He hates making noise. Everything in him clamps down.
No. No. It's okay. Everything's fine. You're safe, Shang-chi tells him. I'm with you.
Not long ago, Ben guided him to bed. Now, here, again, he is being made to sit and is getting more help with his shoes. Matt presses a hand to his mouth. It was just a fan. It was nothing.
Where's Foggy?
Coming. Want the blanket?
No. I'm okay.
He's not. He's trying to be.
I can give you compression. Would that be okay?
Shang-chi moves behind him on the bed and carefully encourages Matt to cross his arms over his chest, palms flat. The embrace that follows is gentle at first, then stronger. Stronger. Shang-chi breathes and compresses. It helps. They begin to breathe together, and Matt feels Shang-chi begin to give him the same energy flow they'd been using in the kwoon, allowing Matt to be yin to his yang. Soothing heat blooms between them.
Time slips away.
Then a shift, a scent he knows, and hands. Foggy has come.
Matt understands that he needs to come back to himself, but it's hard after being away. Shang-chi moves, gingerly letting go, extracting his warmth. Matt hates to feel him go, wants him to stay, can't express himself. At least Foggy's hands are on his face. All Matt can do is swallow. It's not right that he's been so incapacitated by an oscillating floor fan. Less than forty-eight hours ago, he won a high-profile court case. Why does he keep needing help with his shoes?
Foggy kisses him, and Matt starts thinking of a poem he read recently called "A Kind of Darkness". In it, yellow butterflies were the sailboats of the insect world. They seemed to be like a person's best thoughts rising up with joy…that is, until they were seen feeding with their frail velcro mouths feeding on the carcass of a rabbit. It makes no sense for him to be thinking about this now. Foggy signs: come back.
Matt tries. He is trying. He wants to say that there is a kind of darkness that comes from almost remembering something horrible, from a sickening sway in the air, from yellow butterflies not being what they seem. His chest hurts. His heart is caught in a barbed wire fence.
He thinks Shang-chi has left until fingers curl around his and hold on tightly. This grip brings a flood of relief.
Shower? Foggy asks, knowing that pounding water has helped before—first lukewarm, then hot—the change of temperature coaxing him back into his body. Matt doesn't say yes, but he also doesn't say no.
The bathroom smells of warm flesh and toothpaste. Foggy would have gotten ready recently, and evidence of his morning ritual lingers. Now, Matt is being helped to undress. Moisture blooms. There is a thrum through the floor, a mist, and then hands guiding him into the shower. He's lost track of whose hands. Someone eases him under the spray. At first, Matt barely feels the water. His body is made of clay.
Then, gradually, some vividness returns. He feels Foggy's palm on his chest. A clean, herbal scent cuts through the fog. He wants to draw in a deep breath, but instead, experiences a moment of throat-locked suffocation.
I almost remembered, he tells Foggy, confessing this horrifying near-miss. Shell-shocked by it. The true depth of his fear that he will one day fully remember what Stick did to him is inexpressible.
The hand on his chest moves to his neck, clasping, containing.
Matt bands his arms around Foggy, making him stagger a little, trying to catch his balance. The water pelts Matt's shoulders with stinging force. They sway precariously until Matt braces a palm against the wall, feeling the complete square of a tile under his hand, surrounded by grout.
He's back now, forced to surface. A sense of shock lingers. Butterflies guzzle death.
Toweling off, later, Matt asks if Shang-chi is gone.
Yes.
Foggy has put on sweatpants instead of slacks, abandoning the rest of his morning schedule. Matt can smell the cotton blends. This scent might as well be called 'lingering worry'.
They're standing close together in the small room, within elbow-bumping range. Matt wants to say I'm okay and be telling the truth. Instead, he'll crawl naked into bed, hoping to be crushed by the blanket—perhaps like a yellow butterfly that has become a specimen, kept as a symbol of contradiction.
He bends to dry his legs, and when he stands up, Foggy's fingers toy with his, gently, as he steps closer. Suddenly, they're breathing the same air. Matt lets the towel drop to the floor.
With care, he sets his fingertips on Foggy's forehead at the hairline. Just because. Vaguely, he wishes that they'd kiss. He waits for warmth to grow between them. His heart has been freed from its trap, but its chambers are sore.
It's Foggy who moves to claim a kiss, keeping it light, invitational. Their hands meet, a question is asked: Bed?
Matt no longer wants the weighted blanket. Now he just wants Foggy to be with him in a way that is like the blanket, but better. Matt doesn't want to either hide or be exposed. Right now, he feels his body in a small room, surrounded by hard surfaces. He wants to be led out, by the hand, crossing through blunt, dry air until…yes.
It's happening. They're lying down on top of the blanket. Foggy strokes Matt's hair, making him feel the cool dampness of it, then tilts his face for a deep, slow kiss. The bed jostles as Foggy moves, pressing a hand hard onto the pillow next to Matt's head, levering himself up. The next kiss comes down from above, and Matt reaches up to clasp Foggy's hips. This position is protective and strong. Foggy arranges himself over Matt, feathering his face with hair that smells like his own shampoo. Another kiss comes with patient, building passion. Not an ounce of hurry in the movement. This is the kind of savoring that can heal a heart's puncture wounds.
Matt can't ask for more with his eyes or his voice. He can't hear his own breath shudder, but he feels seismic yearnings and, surely, they show. Surely Foggy can feel his wordless plea. More kisses come, and then a flood of pleasure from his center that is like a sweet hive of bees making honey. He's saturated and moving. He loses track of the process of lovemaking. There is no process. Only touch. All he knows is that it's a slow dance that pulls him farther out of darkness—that—kind.
Foggy's word, "dissociation," comes from psychology, but Matt's understanding of it comes from poetry. It's the shipwrecked color yellow.
In the end, with a sigh, Matt wraps his arms around Foggy and breathes in the truth that he is loved and safe. There are scars on his body, but so far, he doesn't remember how he got them. He's on top of the weighted blanket, not under it. For now.
Drawing back, Matt smooths Foggy's hair and then frames his face. He's clean-shaven, warm, steady, breathing heavily because their passion just peaked, and their connection went deep this time. Turning his face, Foggy kisses Matt's palm and breathes the shapes of "I love you" against his skin. Matt knows these shapes, wherever they touch him.
The sunheat is still easterly. Matt has no idea how much time has passed since the kwoon, but the angle tells him that it felt far longer than it actually was. He wants to apologize for being so easily derailed—taken down by nothing more than subtle shifts in the air.
"I love you," Foggy repeats in the same way as before, except that this time, he moves to sit up. Distantly, the church bell begins to ring. Matt can feel its pulses. He counts nine of them in the time it takes for Foggy to gather both of his hands and offer reassurances.
You don't have to talk. I don't have to leave. There's no rush.
Maria's conference—
—Has been rescheduled.
The Lopez mediation—
Will happen tomorrow.
Matt ducks his head and feels Foggy's thumb brush his cheek.
It's fine. Everything's fine. Don't worry about today.
Matt feels his eyes heat up, so he closes them.
You come first, Foggy signs. Always.
They can just…be here. They can stay until nine bells become ten, and there are few things better, as far as Matt is concerned, than a slow, untracked hour. Still, Matt is afraid that memory might live in the cracks between minutes.
Want to read? Foggy asks, knowing how much Matt loves the silk-lined pocket of a book where the gems of poems gleam as a collected treasure.
Will you spell them? The Helen Keller way?
For reasons he can't explain, Matt loves it when Foggy transforms tedium into a handmade gift, turning poems spelled word-by-word and hand-to-hand into a custom knitted scarf made of the best fingering yarn.
All day long, Foggy says with total contentment. What should we start with?
Anything, Matt says, not caring because even a poem called A Kind of Darkness is still a source of light.