Chapter Text
Foggy huffed.
"This blizzard announcement really fucks with our plans."
He'd been whining all day, checking up the weather every ten minutes. But he had stopped checking as the first snow flakes had started storming - yes, storming all at once - by the window.
Matt had warned him, a few minutes ahead.
It was like a white noise blanket was falling over New York, and it was fast.
No, not really white noise. It was like a noise that cancelled all the others. Not silence, but the antithesis of sound. A storm of cotton; a moving, formless wall that blocked his perceptions.
Needless to say, Foggy wasn't the only one whose plans were going south, with this happening. Matt tilted his head, checking that there was no client left in the next room, nor in the corridor, and went : "You're not the one who needs to run errands on rooftops tonight, Fogs."
He was putting a bunch of files in his case, ready to go home after their last meeting of the day. Go home, get some light food, kiss Karen, and get running.
"No one asks you to do this. In fact I forbid you to. With that weather…"
"We need that info tonight. I can't let it pass. I need to catch that guy -"
"Leblanche."
"Leblanc."
"Excuse me, mister I-dated-a-French-speaking-crazy-rich-girl-in-college. Leblanc. Fitting name right? Means white, right? How you gonna find anything white in a snowstorm?"
"I don't think the storm would be the problem here."
Matt grinned at their banter, but he was still unsure of how the evening was going to unfold. He was planning to trace Leblanc by the scent - gunpowder, bad cigarettes and some slight aniseed, like an afterthought - that had been left in his flat they had visited a day earlier. The man had fled, after dropping names to the police. But he had also given a wrong name - his and Foggy's client's. Matt needed to know at least why he'd done so.
But this storm wasn't going to make it easy for him.
Foggy had a last call to make, so Matt waved him goodbye, bracing himself before opening the front door.
He stepped out, and the world exploded to his senses. Icy wind rushed to his face, throwing an endless stream of snowflakes on his sensitive skin, that felt like a flight of freezing mosquito bites. The same wind howled to his ears, but the usual life sounds and noises of the city it should carry were muted, muffled, and distorted, as the snow, both already on the ground and in the air, absorbed and deflected them. It made it a nightmare to get an idea of his surroundings, and for now he only had to walk home. Later, it would be harder still.
Matt winced, and buried what he could of his face in his scarf. There was already almost too much snow on the ground for his cane to be effective - when he would have needed it, at least to help a little, for once.
Matt sighed. It was only a couple of blocks, and he could get there a lot faster if he didn't have to pretend. But he went on, his mood going from irritated to quite frustrated.
He could barely hear the snow crunching under his feet. There must be something like two inches of it already, and it had not snowed an hour.
He used to love that sound. He used to love snow.
"Dad ! Dad, look!"
A five or six years old Matt runs to Jack, taking his hand, his enormous hand, in his own soggy and cold mitten, and drags him towards a very sorry looking snowman.
"I made a snowman! Look. It's you."
He pulls on Jack's hand, Jack who's already laughing, to show him the back of the snowman, where Matt has carved "Battling Jack" in big letters.
Matt stops, a little offended by his dad's laugh. Jack notices, and tries to be serious.
"It's good, Matty."
"It's small." Matt is easily upset. He wants what he does to be great for his dad.
Jack's hand lands at the top of his head, ruffling his hair through his beanie.
"No, Matty, it's great, I love it. I just think you missed… something…" Jack crouches down in front of the snowman, his head now level with Matt's. He reaches for the pebble Matt has used to figure his nose and skews it a little. "That nose was a little too straight for a boxer, don't you think?"
Matt laughs, Jack grabs him by the arm -
"I'll help you cross the street, young man."
Coming to his senses, Matt realized he was at a crossroad, with a man who was not his father tugging on his left arm. With some concentration, he could make out his surroundings, and sighed in relief. His mind had wandered, but his feet had brought him home.
"Thanks, but I don't -
"Traffic is crazy here." The man tugged harder. "It's too dangerous, I won't let you -
"No, I mean I don't need to cross!"
"Come on, man, it's not -"
Calculating his move precisely so as to pull his arm with enough strength to get it back but not to harm the passerby, Matt stepped back. To the surprise of the other, he got his arm back, but not without "accidentally" smacking the man's face in the process. No real harm, though. But it was too tempting.
"Sorry. Uh. I live here. I don't need to cross. Good evening."
Matt turned on his heel and got to his building as fast as he could, both because he was fed up with the blizzard, and because the man was getting angry at him. Ugh, he hated these people.
As soon as he closed the front door behind him, the noise and wind faded, helping him relax in a bubble of relative calm. Another factor was the lingering flowery perfume in the staircase.
Karen was in his flat, and this was something he never wanted to get used to.