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"Shit."
Keith is minding his own business when he hears the squeaky little mutter, and he snaps upright like a meerkat from where he’s sweeping.
Matty’s over in the corner with his little laptop, looking pissy. He leans out of his chair and paws at the ground- takes him a few tries to locate the glass he knocked over. It’s sitting in a puddle under his chair.
Keith locks onto the nearest target, which is Marty.
“Oh, nice goin’, numbnuts,” he says. “You taught the kid how to swear.”
Marty stops jabbing at the bag so he can show his palms innocently.
“ I taught him how to swear!” he cries. “ You just called me numbnuts!”
“Numbnuts isn’t a swear word.”
“Yes it is,” Robbie yells sternly, already striding across the gym. He grabs Keith threateningly by the back of his coat, like he’s a poorly behaved kitten, and Keith motions helplessly to the child in the corner, who seems a little too amused by all this to put a word in edgewise. “What are you two numbnuts arguing about?”
“Matty said a cuss word.”
“No, I didn’t,” he chirps, the lying little bastard.
"Don't blame Matty for your foul mouth," Robbie says, kinda shaking him by the jacket.
"Oh, come on!" Keith pleads. He's stuck between taking the fall for the kid, and teaching him a quick lesson by selling his little lying ass out. "Marty, he said 'shit,' didn't he?"
And Marty- Marty, the conniving bastard, he gets the twitch of a shit-eating grin on his face. Shrugs innocently. And yeah, Keith tried to pin this on him, but that’s because he’s been good. Kept his mouth clean the whole month, only swears under his breath in the locker room.
Marty doesn’t appreciate that sacrifice. It probably is his fault, and he just won’t own up to it, and now he’s gonna sell him out to Robbie out of spite.
"I didn't hear him," he says, the traitor.
"There," Robbie says, and lets go of his scruff while he's glaring daggers into Marty's beady little eyes. "Matty, don't swear, the nuns won't like it."
It's a subtle way to put it. Keith straightens his coat back out.
He doesn't wanna know what it takes for the folks down at Saint Agnes to decide Matty's picking up bad habits. Nobody does.
He also doesn't wanna hike up his skirt and curtsy for them at their every whim. Feels obnoxious- like they're paid babysitters, instead of an extension of his family.
They're still on thin ice, it feels like. In a cruel, unforeseen twist, the court decided the ladies get to keep him down at the orphanage. And because Niel was just so damn likable, the Abess said he can still come around. So Saint Agnes lets Matty spend his time here, but he lives there with the other kids, and they've got full control over who he gets to talk to, and when. This whole setup is balanced on the pole of Sister Elaine's limited grace.
Nobody wants to be the reason Matty can't come around anymore.
Vick's having a hard time with it. He already thinks it's his fault, somehow, cus his apartments about as big as his paycheck, and for some reason he's expecting every authority figure to slap him across the face for making eye contact.
And it's not his fault. Keith is fully willing to blame the orphanage for this one. Sure, Niel's a regular silvertongue: could flatter a fish out of the water, but he only talked to one of them, and maybe another nun changed their mind about it. Keith smacked a cigarette out of his shaking hand three days ago and smushed it under his boot, and he was pretty sure he watched Vick think about killing someone for the first time in his whole, innocent life. He just stood there with his fists trembling at his sides until Niel rested his hand on his back and asked if he was okay.
And Vick choked back an awful noise, and said "It's my fault."
So it’s Saint Agnes’s fault.
Or maybe it's just the court, but he'd rather believe his theory, because he can't find anything so wrong with the guys that they couldn't be trusted with a kid. Hell, you put all of them together and you've nearly got a responsible, grown man.
Robbie looks away, starts walking towards Matt, and Keith shoves Marty towards the supply closet to go grab a mop for turning his back on him like that. Marty snaps his teeth like he's gonna bite him, but walks away obediently.
That means it's Keith's problem to go get him another glass of water. Robbie says it's important (and Joe nodded wisely along) to stay hydrated if you're gonna do a bunch of thinking. Keeps the brain working, he says. Niel asks if Keith's been drinking enough water, and Keith tells him where he can shove his glass. And then Vick says that's homophobic, but he's mostly taking the piss, and Niel jumps right on board with that, tells Keith he's being a bad ally, and he's gonna let everybody know on the messaging board tonight.
Keith's pretty sure he's joking about that. Asks Vick about it later, just to be sure, cus maybe there is like, a forum or something he oughta know about if it's important to Niel, and Vick laughs his ass off. Tells him no, there isn’t, but he’d check for him, just in case.
Keith thinks they’re both a couple of assholes, and he’s right, because everyone in here’s kind of an asshole. That’s why he loves them.
He walks back to Matty’s little table after Rob’s mopped up the mess, ruffled Matt’s hair, and walked off. He sets the glass down like a peace treaty- he’s gonna get his answer.
“Whatcha workin on?” he asks, squatting down so the table’s at eye-level.
“Reading,” Matty says. Got that cranky ass tone again.
Keith’s still waiting. It’ll come, someday, and he shouldn’t rush it. Won’t rush it. The kid will be mad at Jack when he’s good and ready, and Keith’s gonna be there to help him punch it out. Today’s not the day.
Gotta take the punches. Try to redirect them. And yeah, he’s being an asshole by interrupting him, but Matty’s been sitting silently in this corner for easily four hours, and he’s got to be getting bored by now, right?
“Readin’ what?” he pushes.
“History,” he says. He stops like he’s waiting for Keith to walk away, now that he’s got an answer, and he doesn’t.
Keith remembers what Jack would say. “Out of my wheelhouse,” he’d claim. Maybe listen to a few lines, and then tell him that he’s a lot dumber than Matty is, and he can’t keep up.
Keith kinda wants to see if he’s on that level. Wonders if he remembers a damn thing from grade school. So he stays, and Matty takes his continued presence as an invitation.
He sighs like he thinks it’s annoying, but once he starts talking, he doesn’t stop. Kid’s like a tiny college professor.
“There’s a whole bunch of American history where they say stuff like it’s good, but it’s not. Like Christopher Columbus killed a whole bunch of people, and they said that was an accident, but then they just… kept building America?”
Keith blinks at him. Really racks his brain about it, trying to remember something, because Matty’s acting like he’s supposed to know this.
“They were… trying to get away from something, I think?”
“Yeah, religious persecution,” Matty says. And he says the word “persecution” like it’s come out of his mouth a million times before. That’s too many syllables for a squeaky little voice. “But you’re not supposed to kill people. Isn’t it kind of selfish to go all that way into the country, when they had what they needed in the first thirteen colonies?”
He genuinely doesn’t know. He’s waiting for Keith to pull something out of his pocket with a “well, no, because.” Keith doesn’t have a “because.” Keith doesn’t remember this.
“I, uh. Maybe?” he tries.
Matty digests that for a second. Looks kind of blank, and then he pops his earbud out, sets it on the table, and pouts.
“Thanks for being honest,” he mutters. “Miss Brian made me take it back. She said it was unpatriotic.”
Keith scratches his chin.
“I mean. It is. That ain’t always a bad thing.”
And that makes the kid act like he’s been slapped across the face. Does a double-take by cocking his head one way, and then the other, like an owl.
“Really? Are schools allowed to lie about that? Isn’t that propaganda?”
Fuck. Keith doesn’t know anything about politics. He’s out of his wheelhouse. Jack was right. At least he knows exactly who’s responsible for teaching him that word.
“Niel!” he cries. “Quit makin’ him smart!”
Niel, who is training somebody with boxing pads on his forearms, doesn’t miss a damn beat.
“It’s my responsibility as one of his guardians to make sure the United States school system doesn’t brainwash him into believing we’re the lord’s fuckin’ answer to the world’s prayers.”
Seriously, does he workshop this shit? Practice it in front of a mirror in the morning? Keith flashes his hands at Matty.
“Ain’t he kind of young to be puttin’ that on his shoulders?” he asks.
Niel blocks a jab to his diaphragm.
“The school system started even younger,” he points out, viciously.
And Keith- Keith can’t fuckin’ think about all that. He gets into real conversations with Niel, and feels exactly like he does when he’s trying to talk to Matty about fuckin’ fourth grade social studies, because apparently, he doesn’t know jack shit about anything. He thinks he’s so fuckin’ smart, because he knows one or two laws that Marty told him loopholes to, and then Niel starts blabbing about how those laws got passed, and who exactly they fuck over.
And they always fuck someone over.
He looks back to Matty, feeling a little desperate for an out.
“Look, you’ve been at this a while. You wanna take a break?” he tries. “Go get some fuckin’ ice cream, or somethin’? Tell me who taught you that dirty word?”
“I promised I wouldn’t tell,” Matt sulks. He must sense something about Keith’s desperation though, because he kind of tilts his head down towards his feet. “I won’t do it at Saint Agnes.”
Something about little kids looking all guilty and sad like that just- just kills him. Feels like he’s sick to his stomach. He just wants to scoop him up and make it better. Doesn’t quite know how.
“Alright, Matty. You don’t have to tell me nothin’.”
The kid worries his lip for a second.
“They’re gonna take me away, right?” Neil’s heart drops right into his stomach. “If they think you guys taught me how to swear?”
“No,” he says, and he thinks- he thinks it’s the truth. Because that’d be a real stupid reason to take a kid away from someone, even in his book. They’re all just a bunch of cowards, shying away from any threat at all.
The anger’s short-lived, though, because- because Jack’s still dead, and that’s not gonna change any time soon. Somebody shot him to death, and this is what they got, right? This is their deal. They had to give up Jack, and they’re all fucking terrified of having to give up his kid. They’ve already lost him to the church, a little bit, and everybody’s got their claws sunk in as deep as they’ll go, begging the world not to take him all the way.
They got twelve hands between them, and it doesn’t feel like enough to keep him close.
“No,” Keith repeats, a little firmer. “Matty, nobody’s takin’ you anywhere you don’t wanna go, okay? Anyone who tries can bite my ass.”
It earns a little twitch of a smirk.
“You’re not supposed to say that. I’m ten.”
“Who’s gonna stop me?” he asks.
It’s brazen. It’s a real big promise, but he means it with all his heart, just as much as he did when they raised drinks to Jack’s name around the card table. Matty’s glasses are off, so he can see the way his eyes get kind of glossy. He wipes at them with the backs of his hands, puts his glasses on to try and hide them like some grown-ass man, and sniffs it all back.
“Can we still get ice cream?” he croaks.
Keith ruffles his hair on instinct. He has to. You gotta ruffle kids’ hair every now and again when they cry, or else they turn out like little turds.
“Yeah. We’re gettin’ ice cream.”