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“Excuse me, is this room three-twelve?”
“Yeah,” the man in the room responded. Between his heartbeat and the clacking of his fingers across a keyboard, Matt had a fair idea of where he was without trying too hard. “Who are you looking for?” Since Matt didn’t have a direct answer to that – Residential Life hadn’t given him any information in braille – he paused, and the man responded, “Oh, sorry.”
Matt stepped forward. “What for?” He tried to sound amused by it, but he wasn’t eager for this exchange. He reached out to find the furniture that was in front of him, probably a bed.
“You’re blind, right?”
“Uh, so they tell me.” He had rehearsed this. And this was hardly his first roommate, but it was the first normal one, and he would have to put an extra effort into getting along with him. Switching rooms if the guy found him to be a hassle would be so complicated. “I hope that won’t be a problem.”
“Why would it?” the man responded. “Oh, you’re – you’re my roomie!”
He left his hand out in front, bracing for impact. “Matt Murdock.”
“Foggy Nelson.” His roommate – Foggy – raced to shake his hand. His pulse was humming with excitement and he smelled like clothing that needed a run in the laundry, and if he noticed when Matt flinched, he didn’t say anything about it.
And then Foggy recognized him. From the accident, at least. And he referred to Matt’s eyes as “peepers,” which Matt had to find genuinely amusing. Matt was his hero.
Matt hadn’t been called a hero since he was nine, so it felt nice.
He didn’t have a lot of things, not in comparison to Foggy. His whole life could more or less be shoved into a duffle bag. His braille books, if they arrived in time for classes at all, would probably take up the rest of the room, so that was a good thing. Foggy offered to take him out to dinner. Matt lied and said that he wasn’t hungry, and told the truth when he said he was exhausted. Foggy sounded crestfallen but finally left.
It wasn’t that Matt didn’t find him friendly enough. He just was really tired, after an exhausting special orientation by a patronizing tour guide, and when he got tired things got too loud and too fast. He preferred the chemical-laden taste of a milk chocolate Ensure to the grease of the campus pizza that he could smell from his window. He shut the window, wrapped himself in his new silk sheets, and buried himself under pillows until he could tune out the sounds of excited voices of new arrivals on campus, music playing in celebration, and the regular sounds of the city, slightly muted by Columbia’s stone architecture and walls. He remained on the edge of sleep, unable to find it, until Foggy returned, and when that happened he faked it until Foggy was asleep, and therefore no longer talkative, and Matt found enough comfort in that relief to drift off himself.
#
Foggy knew his roommate was, well, kind of a weirdo.
That wasn’t the right term to use, but he really didn’t have a better one. It had nothing to do with being blind. Matt got around okay on his own – better than Foggy would have guessed – once he knew where everything was, and he never, ever asked for help. Foggy watched girls (and a couple boys) offer it over the first weeks of class, and Matt’s mouth would form a polite smile that fooled people because they were too embarrassed to stare at a blind guy with threatening red shades, but otherwise clearly meant, ‘Go the fuck away.’ But it wasn’t because he had a chip on his shoulder about his disability, as far as Foggy could tell. He just wanted to be treated like anyone else, Foggy guessed.
No, it was all the other things. Matt was always conveniently not hungry when it was mealtime, but he had a stash of Ensure and Boost in his dresser. He slept with earplugs and noise-cancelling headphones, the expensive kind that couldn’t have been that comfortable to actually curl up in. He did laundry with his worn, stretched-out clothing every few days even though he had enough to last longer, which explained why all the colors were so faded – not that it would have mattered to Matt. (Foggy really, really wanted to ask Matt if he knew he had both a Yankees and a Mets shirt, and he felt he deserved super friend points for not saying anything) He avoided coming into physical contact with anyone, which was impressive considering how much effort that must have taken him, especially when he was running between classes. He didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, and barely socialized beyond the necessities. He owned one nice shirt and a tie that was a little too long for him, and he used that when he went to Mass on Sundays, the only thing he did go to. And there were times when he would be lost in his own world, listening to his screen reader, and he would suddenly flinch or make a pained noise out of nowhere, like a dog (and that was an awful comparison, Foggy knew) responding to something only he could hear.
There was at least one day a week where Matt could not get out of bed. Foggy asked him if he wanted to go to Student Health Services, and Matt just responded that he was tired, in a tone that begged Foggy to stop asking, so he did. Foggy wanted to be accommodating. He wanted to be more than accommodating – he wanted to be friends with the guy he lived with. They were roomies. They were supposed to get along or hate each other, not this thing in the middle where they barely knew each other.
Foggy felt guilty about it, but he started doing some research on Matt. There were all the easy-to-google articles about the accident, and he even read the boring stuff about the lawsuit with the Rand Corporation, which disappeared into a backwater of new regulations and out-of-court settlements. Then he started in on Matt’s father, Jack Murdock, the semi-pro boxer with a good reputation but a losing record, and his unsolved murder, less than a year after Matt lost his sight. There were some depressing articles about that, but nothing about what happened to Matt. Jack wasn’t “survived by” anyone but Matt, and the trail for Matt’s mother went cold before it started. Foggy also calculated two years between when Matt should have graduated high school and his start at Columbia. It wasn’t a big deal, taking a gap year or two, if you were a rich kid who needed some maturity, or maybe he was just working a job to save up money. It wasn’t that interesting a question, but Foggy was picking at crumbs.
His big break came two months into the semester, when Matt stood in the doorway, fumbling with his cane, which meant he wanted to say something. Foggy waited patiently. Matt would flinch when preempted.
“I, um, need to go to the East Side, for a doctor’s appointment,” Matt said. “The person from Res Life who offered to take me is kind of, um, a jerk. So if it’s not a big deal – “
“No, it’s not a big deal,” Foggy said. “Do you need to go now?”
Matt shook his head. “Tuesday. I could do it in a cab, but I have to be sedated, so – they want someone to come with me.”
“Oh. Yeah, sure, no biggie.” He knew he had to grab this opening. “What’s the procedure? I had to have my tonsils out as a kid and it sucked.”
Matt opened his mouth and closed it. He still hadn’t moved from the doorway, like it protected him somehow. “I have to have a CATscan. It’s for – well, when I was blinded, it was with chemicals, so my brain development has been, um, different.”
“Uh huh.” He didn’t know what to say to that. Matt didn’t seem like a dummy (again, Foggy, not cool). He studied all the time and he was sailing through the two classes they shared. And he hadn’t gotten into Columbia with a serious impairment beyond the visible ones. “Are you okay? Or is it like, tumor different?” He added, “G-d, okay, that was a really shitty question to ask. You don’t have to answer it.”
But Matt smiled. It was so rare, like a shooting star, because it looked genuine. “They don’t know. So far, it hasn’t been anything that’s needed to be treated. My visual cortex has atrophied, so the other parts have expanded into it – you don’t want to know all this.”
“I do,” Foggy. “I’ve lived with you for months and I know almost nothing about you, except that you don’t like asking for help.”
“I don’t want you to feel bad for me.”
“It’s kind of a reflex,” he admitted. “Look, just – you can tell me, if you need something, or if something’s bothering you. I’ll try to stop.”
“It’s not you,” Matt said, though he had to be lying at least a little bit. “It’s everything, it’s – “ He sighed. “It’s called Sensory Defensive Disorder. When you process stimuli differently than people are supposed to. Since I lost my sight, my other senses have always been ... I don’t want to say heightened, but that’s probably the best word, even if it doesn’t describe it.”
“So sounds, smells – “
“Everything’s loud. All the time.” Matt swallowed. Foggy wondered how many people Matt had admitted this to who weren’t in the medical profession. Matt continued, “Usually I can handle it. There are good days and bad days.”
“I figured that out,” Foggy replied, and certainly not triumphantly. “I’m glad that you told me, okay? I don’t want to say that you need help, but maybe I can – I don’t know, help somehow.”
Matt bowed his head. “Thank you.” He looked ready to sink into the floor if only it would open up and swallow him.
“Hey, buddy, it’s fine. Friends are supposed to do things for each other.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Matt said quietly, and Foggy realized that they might actually be friends.
#
Matt hated having his head checked. He hated that he had to go to a special office where the waiting room was always too warm and the testing room too cold, and they would only let him have the scratchiest blanket in the world to put over the gown. He hated that they’d known him since he was a kid, so they still treated him like one, and even though he’d only freaked out that one time, sedation was still the recommended option. He hated the feeling of the cold dyes in his vein.
Still, he knew what would happen if he didn’t go. His case would get flagged and sent to the health department. It might even end up at SHIELD again, and that agency hadn’t handled him with kiddie gloves. They had used terms like ‘enhanced’ and ‘target resource’ and only the nuns who were still taking care of him kept them at this point in time at bay.
So he went through it. It was to his benefit, because he was in a high risk category for brain cancer. The Rand Corporation paid for all of it, and now that he was an adult, he had the power to block their access to the findings, even if it meant he had to dodge some calls. His case was a legal quagmire, an argument between the corporation, the city, and the state, but it was slightly less complicated now that he was no longer a ward of the state or collecting SSI payments. He’d tried to figure it out for himself at one point, but there were too many agencies that shuffled paperwork around, none of which he could read and all of which he had to jump through hoops to access, so mostly he let it be.
Having Foggy there wasn’t so embarrassing. Matt was NPO, so Foggy was without his usual coffee, and he read Matt all of the forms that Matt usually signed without question. Foggy didn’t complain about how early it was, or how he was just the littlest bit hungover. He didn’t complain at all. He was polite, helpful, and eager to please, and he got along just great with the receptionist, and no one got along with the receptionist, so that itself was impressive.
Matt didn’t mind the local anesthetic. It never put him completely out, just made him numb to whatever samples they wanted (and some of it was non-standard MRI stuff), with little memory of it until he was standing in the hallway, dressed and woozy. He just didn’t like that he had to do it, and when he did he was exposed and helpless.
“You’re looking a little pale,” Foggy told him and made the nurse give him apple juice. It was overly sweet but it helped his head stop spinning so much. “Come on. Is there anywhere you want to stop to eat? Wait, that was a stupid question. You don’t eat.” And then he said, “You should eat, man. Unless that’s the thing with your stomach.”
“My stomach’s fine,” he said. “I just – flavor is really intense. People don’t realize what’s in their food. I’m better with things that are simple and familiar.”
“I can’t imagine Ensure actually tastes good.”
Ah, so Foggy had noticed that. Maybe he deserved more credit, Matt thought. “We could get ice cream. Ice cream’s okay.” He didn’t know why he was running his mouth off or holding Foggy’s shoulder. Probably leftovers from the anesthetic. “I like vanilla. It’s plain.”
“You are saving a fortune on cafeteria food,” Foggy said, “but it’s not healthy, man.”
“Ensure is technically very healthy. It’s the ideal diet.”
“Whatever. I can see your ribs, man, when you’re strutting around our apartment after a shower, thinking I’m not there.”
“I know you’re there, I just – “ He realized he couldn’t finish that sentence without admitting that he could hear heartbeats. “I’m not used to privacy.”
They found a diner that had ice cream they claimed was homemade, but wasn’t. It was edible, at least, not like the pop-up frozen yogurt places all over the city. They sat at a booth and Foggy waited a long time to ask, “Where did you go, after your dad died?”
“To an orphanage. And then – “ The ice cream was too cold. It hurt his teeth. It was too long since he’d had any. “ – it doesn’t matter.”
“Okay.” Foggy did not sound like he believed him that it was okay, but he didn’t press harder, and Matt was grateful. He liked Foggy. He didn’t want to lose him now.
#
Things were okay for a while.
Foggy did some more internet research and even read a book called Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight: What to Do If You Are Sensory Defensive in an Overstimulating World, which provided some useful insights. He told Matt he read it, because if Matt was going to open up to him, then he was going to open up to Matt, and that was that. Matt was a little surprised and evasive for the next few days but they were on an upward slope.
Then Foggy asked him where he was going to for the holidays, and it all came down when Matt said he didn’t know, and Foggy pried the story out of him with threats of siccing his loving family on poor Matt. They would mean well but it would be difficult, so Matt eventually broke down and told him.
Matt was homeless.
He hadn’t stayed in the orphanage. After his diagnosis of Sensory Defensive Disorder, he was sent to an institution. He hated it (obviously) and he ran away. It was three months before anyone caught a thirteen-year-old on the streets of New York City, and he begged the orphanage to take him back, because he knew it was a step up, and it was his only hope of getting an education. They did, but he was still hospitalized for periods of time against his will. But the nuns did their best, and he got his GRE before he aged out, and ended up in a halfway home, living on SSI and applying for scholarships. His father left him an inheritance but he didn’t have access to it until he was 18, and then he didn’t know what to do with it without wasting it, and the halfway house was state-funded. It was miserable but it was easier than trying to live alone, where he always spiraled into despair. The scholarship to Columbia was the only thing that got him out of there.
Matt was deeply ashamed that he’d never been on his own for very long, but he felt that the five weeks that the dorms were closed was long enough for him to manage in shelters. Foggy quickly backtracked on the threats and insisted on taking him home, with all kinds of promises about how his family would lay off, and because he told them to, not because he would tell them Matt’s sob story (as Matt put it). Because Jesus Christ, his best friend was not spending Christmas sleeping on a cot in a church basement, hoping he wasn’t mugged in his sleep.
(Matt explained the best shelter he knew was actually in a synagogue, which was sad and amusing at the same time.)
Slowly but surely, Foggy wore down his defenses, and Matt agreed to it on certain terms, which were negotiated in detail. Only Foggy’s parents would really know what was up with Matt, who would stay in Foggy’s room and have “a touch of the flu” for most of his time there, particularly when the Nelson house was swamped with relatives. Of course Foggy’s parents understood – they weren’t terrible people – and they made every accommodation for Matt, who was sweet and polite (he could be charming when he wanted to be) and a very nice guest who managed to be a little bit social when it was just them and Foggy’s sister Candace, but was otherwise in Foggy’s room, sleeping or listening to music, or whatever Matt did with all of his time.
Then Rosalind showed up and, of course, things went to shit.
They stuck to their plan of not even telling Rosalind about Matt and hoping she didn’t stay long. “Hoping she didn’t stay long” was Foggy’s regular way of dealing with his birth mother on her annual visit, when she ignored her former husband and laid into his adoptive mother on anything and everything, and they would not have put up with a minute of it if she wasn’t paying for Foggy’s education. Rosalind Sharpe and Anna Nelson would have the butcher vs. lawyer argument that would start with a passive-aggressive comment and ignite into full-blown war, and Edward Nelson would disappear from the kitchen because, well, he wasn’t stupid. Candace threw some gasoline on the fire by choosing to announce at that moment that she was a lesbian (news to everyone who remembered her One Direction crush the previous year), and since Foggy felt he was now old enough to pour himself a drink, he did. Scotch was different from beer, he didn’t handle it well, and the rest of the night was a blur until he stumbled into his room and passed out on his bed, having temporarily forgotten that he was sharing it with Matt.
“Sorry,” Foggy slurred. He was eager for this day to be over, but he was still too riled up to sleep. At least Rosalind was gone and his mom wasn’t crying, so that made it a pretty good year. “Did you hear all that?”
Matt was curled up on his side of the bed, facing away from Foggy with his headphones on, but he said, “Yeah.”
“That was my birth mother, if it wasn’t obvious,” Foggy said. “I probably should have told you about her, but to be honest, I try not to think about her when she’s not here.”
“But she seems so nice.”
It was a joke so unlike Matt it made Foggy burst out laughing. “Fuck you.”
“No, really, she does. I think you guys just need a fresh start.”
“G-d damnit, Matt.”
“Don’t take the L-rd’s name in vain,” Matt said. “Christmas Eve is tomorrow.”
“Yeah, Santa’s bringing me a whole lot of coal this year.” He kicked Matt, who didn’t respond by fleeing from the bed, so it was definitely an improvement.
#
“Hey, you’re Jack Murdock’s kid.”
Matt rose to leave. He would have fled after Midnight Mass earlier, but it was too crowded, and he knew how cold it was outside, so he hadn’t worked himself up to it yet. He should have guessed he’d be recognized. “Yeah.” He stood up and hugged his cane in front of him, but the priest was standing in his way.
“I’m Father Lantom. Do you remember me? It’s fine if you don’t. You were just a little kid last time I saw you.”
This was his first time back in Hell’s Kitchen since he’d left for St. Agnes, and while Matt didn’t want to be reminded of that, he was happy to be home. Or at least what had been his home church, however unenthusiastic he had been at the time, stuffed into a starchy suit and a clip-on tie by his dad. “Yeah, I would have been less than nine. Sorry, I don’t remember you.”
“I wasn’t the regular priest here. I was doing pastoral work but I was in from time to time. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I went to a couple of your dad’s fights.”
“Did you have to do penance for that?”
“I didn’t put money on the fight,” Lantom said. “I just watched. But maybe it wasn’t the most priestly thing I’ve ever done.”
“He wouldn’t let me watch,” Matt said, “but I snuck in a couple times. He never said anything, but I think he knew.”
“He was a good man,” Lantom said. “How are you? I haven’t seen you around in a long time.”
“I’m in college. My roommate’s family lives down the street and I’m staying with them for the holidays.”
“That sounds nice.”
“Yeah, it is.” It sounded practically storybook, so unlike how his life had actually gone. And that was the way he preferred that the priest think of him. “Merry Christmas, Father.”
“Merry Christmas, Matthew.”
Confession could wait.
#
Foggy’s second year of college, Marci entered his life like a whirlwind, destroying everything in its path, mostly in a good way. She was smart, sexy, and apparently as blind as Matt was, because she was willing to go out with him without a single fat joke, though she did admit she wasn’t a huge fan of his goatee/soul patch, and because she was painfully, brutally honest, he believed her. She was also pre-Law, so they shared a lot of classes, and her single question about Matt was restricted to, “Oh, he’s your roommate?” All the other girls (well, women) Foggy had spoken to had a lot more follow-up questions, ranging from the normal questions about being blind that they assumed Foggy, a sighted person, would have the answer to, to whether he was gay and/or available. Foggy wasn’t a huge fan of either type of question, so he was relieved.
They were going out – as much as having crazy, awesome sex in her dorm room could be considered ‘going out’ – for a month before she asked another question about Matt. “Do you think he’s okay?”
He wondered if the question could have been more loaded. “How do you mean?”
“He seems, I don’t know, lonely,” she said, which was not quite what he expected. It sounded way too sensitive for Marci. “Like a sad duckling.”
“You’re lucky he can’t hear that.” And he only said it because Marci’s dorm was a solid two blocks from his own. “And I don’t care for you referring to my roommate as ‘sad’ or any kind of water fowl.”
“Oh, don’t be so serious.” She tugged at Foggy’s long hair, winding it around her finger. “I mean, he’s hot, and I have at least three friends who have tried to talk to him, and he looks like he’s going to bite their head off.”
“You think he’s hot?” He preferred that she had not said this when she was laying on top of him.
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t get distracted. He’s objectively hot, and you know it. The point is, he’s hard to talk to.”
“Did they come up and ask if he needed help getting somewhere? Because that’s super patronizing.”
“No, they’re not that stupid,” she said, then corrected herself. “Okay, one of them is that stupid. So she doesn’t deserve him. But the rest of them weren’t.”
“Are you asking me out of genuine but weirdly-misplaced concern for the sex life of my best friend, or for your friends? Because I’m confused.”
“Um, does it matter?” Marci sounded annoyed. “I’m allowed to have feelings. I was just asking, jeez.”
Foggy let it drop. She clearly wasn’t trying to pry any secrets out of Foggy, not that she would have trouble if she really wanted to. She didn’t have any other questions about Matt, and treated him in a completely ordinary (and therefore dismissive) fashion when they had some reason to speak in passing, and Foggy wondered how long the center would hold.
That was, until they did E together, and she said, “I think we should fuck Matt.”
“What?” He felt so happy and free that it came to him more as a surprising but gentle suggestion, even though it was Marci saying it, and she was never gentle. She must have been really high.
“You. Me. Matt.” She pointed in his general direction, then at herself on the couch. “It would be awesome.”
“Have you been sleeping with me to get to Matt?”
“No,” she said, but giggled. “I don’t sleep with guys I don’t want to sleep with. I’m saying, it’d be fun. We’d enjoy it.”
“Uh...”
“If you tell me you haven’t thought about it, you’ll be lying. And you shouldn’t lie to me. I’ll know.”
Foggy looked at the ceiling of Marci’s room and wondered how he had so many people in his life who knew when he was lying, because Matt always seemed to know, too. He was just less rude about it. “Yeah, of course I’ve thought about it. But he’s my roommate. And like, super Catholic.”
“Yeah, you can totally tell he’s a virgin.”
“Um, you can?” Not that he had been guessing. His concerns about Matt did not extend to his sex life. They were far more immediate, and considering how close-lipped Matt was about anything in his past, present, or presumed future, Foggy never dreamed of asking him. “Girls can tell? This isn’t a real thing, is it?”
“Look, just believe me, okay? Not about everyone. Just about Matt.” She had a smug grin on her face. “We’ll be doing him a favor.”
“I don’t think he’ll see it that way.”
“You can’t assume. Look, if he says no, fine. We won’t press the issue. But if he’s curious, I want you to know, I’d be up for it. Like, more than up for it.” She pointed at Foggy. “But not as a regular thing. He can be a self-righteous prick sometimes.”
“Look who’s talking.”
She giggled. “I never said I was righteous.”
#
Matt heard about Elektra before he saw her. She was Greek, she was rich, and she was exclusive. This was information he picked up when he couldn’t tune out gossip at the gym, where he relieved tension by knocking on the punching bag until his knuckles were bruised and bleeding. No one would spar with him, and so he didn’t bother asking.
He forgot about it until he smelled Elektra. She smelled like roses and the sea and other things he couldn’t identify. Unlike a lot of women people talked about, she didn’t wear too much makeup. He was embarrassed to ask someone else in class her name, then promptly tried to forget it. She sounded ... intense.
She was also a fan of the gym, particularly on off hours, when the gymnastics equipment was available. He couldn’t precisely follow every movement, but when her hands caught the bars, the sound waves would give him a clearer picture, if only for a few seconds, and in those few seconds, he was entranced.
She noticed, of course. “I want to say you are staring at me.”
He blushed. “I’m not.” He reached for his glasses, in case it wasn’t obvious, which were set on the bench beside him, next to his even more obvious cane. “I just ... I’m not used to anyone being in here with me.”
“Do you know how to do anything but hit a bag?”
Matt managed a smile. “No one’s going to teach a blind kid how to fight.”
“But you like it.”
“My father was a boxer. I used to watch him train before I lost my sight.” He didn’t know why he was being so talkative to someone he didn’t really know. Was it because they were alone and he was trapped? He didn’t feel trapped. The gym was massive. He could hear the height when they talked. He could hear other things too, the stuff he was always working to filter out, but now he had someone to hold his interest.
Elektra made things easier, lighter. In a similar way that Foggy did, but not the same. He trusted Foggy. He was comforting and safe. Elektra was icy and dangerous. Her heart didn’t race around him but he thought he could feel her blood get hot, or maybe it was just that way all the time. He didn’t think “hot-blooded” was supposed to be so literal.
They made it back to her apartment off campus, more luxurious than any Columbia dorm. He wanted to keep talking to her. He was more than a little lost in her scent, and the soothing voice that drew him in, and he wasn’t exactly a eunuch. But it was too much, too fast. He was ashamed to admit it, so he accepted a drink from her, and then another. She was licking his ear and giving him the good kind of shivers and then it was suddenly morning, with jackhammering one avenue over and a blanket over his body, lying face down on her leather couch.
“Sorry,” he said when he could manage words. She gave him water. She was harder to read when he was hungover. “I, um ...” Between the new smells and the jackhammering, he could barely get anything out, and he was in too much pain to be embarrassed.
It took two more non-dates to admit that it wasn’t working out. Elektra didn’t say it because she wasn’t cruel, but it was his fault. He wasn’t used to that kind of stimulation, and it was always too fast and he would lose all sense of himself and the room around him, and get lost in that, and his focus (and stamina) would be wiped out, and then he would get scared, because he wasn’t sure where he was or who was in the room. He felt like maybe this was what it would have been like if he was a normal kid in high school, dating way out of his league, but instead it was college, and his problems were his own.
“Get your shit together, Matthew,” Elektra told him as she stroked his chin. Then she left him on the sidewalk outside her apartment, for the shamiest walk of shame in college history, as far as he was concerned, because he was fully dressed and all he needed was a change of pants.
“So it’s over with Elektra?” Foggy asked after a suitable one-day waiting period that Matt spent entirely silent.
“Just didn’t work out,” was all he said.
“She did seem a little ... batshit. In general. You know that, right?”
“She smelled nice.”
“Sometimes you gotta go on more than that, buddy. What do I smell like?”
“Ranch Doritos and Marci’s perfume.”
“That’s creepy and I did not want to know that.”
Matt grinned involuntarily. “You asked.”
“Ha!” Foggy was probably pointing. “I knew I could make you smile.” He got up and opened the mini-fridge. “I know you won’t go out for a drink, but I got something here. Let’s drink away our sorrows, roomie.”
Matt usually said no. Alcohol played a number on his senses, but it also muted his emotions, and at the moment, one was worse than the other. “Yeah, okay.”
Part of the attraction of alcohol (which always tasted bitter, like cough syrup) was that he hadn’t been allowed any in the halfway house, where a lot of people were drying out. Before college, his entire experience in the matter was limited to hip flasks owned by other people. In college it was readily available at parties in every form, but he didn’t go to parties. He learned more than enough about them from overhearing the dorms he walked past.
But this wasn’t a party. This was his room, the one he shared with Foggy, who was safe. Foggy, who knew about his history and had never rejected him for it. Foggy, who was helpful without being obnoxious about it. So he accepted one drink, and then another, and because it was just beer he made it to three before his tongue came loose and he said exactly what had happened with Elektra, in painful detail.
“So you’ve never ...?”
Matt shook his head. “People have tried.”
“What does that mean?”
He didn’t want Foggy to get mad. “A lot of things go on in these institutions. The staff, they have power over you, and they know it. But I’m not as helpless as I look. My dad didn’t want me to fight, but it’s good that I saw him when I could, okay?” He finished his beer and tossed it into the hoop pinned to the wall above the recycling bin. “They figured out I wasn’t just a helpless blind guy pretty fast.”
“Dude, that sucks.”
He didn’t want Foggy to feel worse for him than he already did. “It was okay.”
“No, it’s not okay!” Foggy wasn’t nearly as drunk as he was, but Foggy had more experience with alcohol. “And then Elektra goes and pulls this shit with you – have you had one positive sexual experience?”
“Um.” He swallowed. “No. It’s – it’s hard.”
“Dude, do you know how many people on campus would be willing to punch your V-card? You’re a stud. No wonder you have to wait until everyone else has left before you go to the gym. There might be some kind of angry mob.”
He wasn’t used to Foggy talking like this, but it didn’t sound strange, either. “Yeah, I can tell.”
“Really? Is it smell? I bet it’s smell.”
“It’s smell.” He held out his hand and Foggy tossed him another bottle. “And other things. Mostly smell though.”
“And here I just thought you weren’t getting around because you were like, super Catholic.”
“Trust me, that’s never stopped anyone else who also goes to services,” Matt said. “I just – I like the service. I used to go with my dad. Even when I was in the, uh – “ He gestured vaguely to mean the mental institution, “we had someone come say Mass for us once a week.”
“Um, cool.” Foggy was always hesitant around this topic because he was eager to say the right thing, but there wasn’t always a right thing to say. “So you’re not super Catholic about, um, sex stuff?”
Matt shrugged. “Nah. It’s just, other stuff makes it hard.”
“Yeah,” Foggy said. “Yeah, I hear you.”
Matt wasn’t used to people listening to him. He liked it.
#
Foggy definitely needed to get Matt laid. This was his quest. It would require grit, determination, and sacrifice, but it was a noble quest indeed. It was less about Matt wanting it than Matt thinking he wasn’t capable of having it, and Matt was capable of incredible things, so Foggy felt this deserved to be on the list.
“Told you,” Marci said when he casually brought up the subject, leaving out any specifics as to why. “And I told you I’m up for it.”
“I’m getting a little jealous.”
“Whatever. Do you want my help or not?”
The thing was, he did. Marci thought Foggy was pretty talented at sex (which was a nice thing to know), but his entire history with men could be summed up in a couple rushed kisses under the bleachers in high school and one awkward handjob from a classmate who was definitely, absolutely not gay, and he wanted Foggy to be really clear on that. And Matt was hot – Marci was right about that – but he was also his best friend and roommate, and Matt’s life was complicated enough without being in a relationship with someone he couldn’t get any distance from. Foggy had had to work almost two years to get Matt to this point, and he didn’t want to blow it.
“This is a solid we’re doing him,” Foggy said, “And not pity sex.”
“Please, Foggy-bear. I don’t do pity sex.” Marci was an amazing and amazingly frustrating woman at the same time.
Talking Matt into it was a whole different matter. After all, it had to be something he wanted to do of his own free will, and it would have been intimidating with just one person. But Matt liked Foggy, and he was less withdrawn around Marci as he was with almost everyone else on campus.
Foggy suspected Matt knew something was up from the start. Marci never came over to hang, even if she had pre-gamed with a bag of molly, making her more social than ever. Foggy did it too, but he only asked Matt in passing, and didn’t push when Matt refused. Living in a halfway house could give anyone a strong aversion to illegal drugs, since half the population were recovering addicts. Matt could be talked into beer, and he told the story of his father giving him his first drink before having him sew up his face, which was fucked up, but Matt just smiled contently at the memory and sunk deeper into the couch.
“I know you’re – you want something,” he said, but he didn’t sound entirely irritated.
“How?” Foggy giggled. “Can you smell it?”
Matt shook his head. “Marci doesn’t ‘hang.’”
“I ‘hang,’ Marci said as she sat down next to him on the couch. He flinched, but he didn’t move away. “I’m hanging right now.”
“You’re high.”
“And you’re hot. You know that, right?”
“I ... might have drawn some conclusions,” Matt said. “But I don’t know for sure.”
Marci leaned in and kissed him. Matt fought it for the first second, then relaxed. Marci was a pretty damned good kisser. She only pulled back when Matt’s expression had changed to confused but somewhat smitten, at least with what was happening in the exact moment.
“Are you – what are you – “ But the train didn’t really leave the station on that one. “Do you know I – “
“Yeah. And we can stop,” she said in a gentler voice than Foggy ever expected to hear from her. “Do you want to stop?”
Matt pointed his head in Foggy’s direction in an open beg for assistance.
“Matt, buddy, we’re not going to do anything you don’t want to do,” Foggy said. “And we’re not going to do much of anything anyway because E totally kills your sex drive. But I thought – “
“ – we thought,” Marci said pointedly.
“ – that it might be, you know, fun for you. We love you, dude.”
“You’re high.”
“The sentiment stands. We want to make you happy.”
Matt fiddled with the fabric of the armrest.
“You didn’t say you wanted to stop,” Marci said. “Just tell us if you do, okay?”
Matt nodded weakly, but he also didn’t tell her to stop. He didn’t tell Foggy to go away when he joined them, all of them squished together on the ratty dorm furniture couch in a cuddle party. And that was all it was – a little kissing, a lot of cuddling, and eventually Matt uttering, “Stop.”
On command they pulled away and Foggy got up to get him some water. Matt’s whole body was shaking when he spoke. “I-I’m sorry, I liked it, I just – “
“I know, it’s a lot,” Foggy said and Matt took the glass from him, more to have something to do with his hands and mouth. “It’s a lot at once. But you liked it?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not just saying that to make me happy?”
“No. I’m just not used to – I – no one’s ever touched me like that.”
Trust Matt to bring the mood down. Foggy soldiered on. “Cool. Maybe we can do it again sometime.”
“Okay.” But Matt’s smile betrayed him.
They waited a few weeks for the next serious try. In between there was some cuddling, but nothing of a romantic nature. Matt liked to be touched, as he was only just learning. He needed it; he craved it. Foggy curled up with him on his twin bed, where there was barely enough room to keep them both from falling over the edge, and only because Matt was so slim and Foggy could fit into the thin curves of Matt’s body.
“Why are you doing this?” When Matt asked, he sounded merely curious. “Do you want to – I don’t know, start going out?”
“I don’t really want that. I don’t think you want it either,” Foggy answered, and he could feel Matt shaking his head. “You shouldn’t have to go your whole life without someone to hold. When was the last time – “
“My dad,” Matt said.
“Okay.” That was a long time. Way too long.
“I killed him,” Matt said. He said it like he was just stating a fact. “He wanted to prove himself to me. He wanted me to hear him win. He was supposed to throw a match, and he didn’t. So they killed him, because of me. Because I wanted him to win.”
“That’s seriously fucked up, Matt,” Foggy said, breathing into his ear. “What you just said is really fucked up. Did you tell anyone else you feel this way?”
Matt tried to shrug but there wasn’t a lot of room to do it. “They said it was part of the grieving process.”
“It’s still fucked up. Like, massively. Your dad was an adult. He made his own choices.” They were shitty choices, in Foggy’s opinion. Jack Murdock, putting his life on the line when he was the single parent to a disabled son? Fuckin’ stupid. But he didn’t say that. “But you know that, don’t you? Someone already told you all this.”
Again, Matt just nodded.
It was fucked up. What would Matt’s life have been like if his father still lived? He would have gotten the help he needed, probably much earlier, and he would have had his dad there to support him through the bad times. And he certainly wouldn’t have been on the streets at thirteen. But he also might have had a totally different path in his education, and gone to college on time, at a different place, and they never would have met. Matt was a gift in Foggy’s life, and he wasn’t going to forget that.
“It’s okay,” Foggy said to Matt, who was crying silently. “I mean, I know it’s not. But maybe it will be.”
It was hard to tell if Matt believed him.
Foggy read up on pediatric institutions and halfway houses for the disabled. The stories were not easy to get through. If Matt’s life was anything like the many, many patient stories, he had no freedom over what happened to him or to his body for over half his life now. He’d lost his autonomy to the mental health system. He was only starting to get it back, all while being surrounded by people who would look at his glasses and cane and assume that he couldn’t manage on his own. But he did pretty well, actually, better than some of the other students. He went to class, he studied, he got top grades, and he went to church. A boring life maybe, but one of his own choosing. He needed to be able to have that choice and know how to use it.
It was three tries in total before they got anywhere near Matt’s pants. It was awkward and messy, with constant breaks as Matt got his senses back under control. And despite what he said earlier, he was a bit of prude – how could he not be, with his upbringing – and he didn’t want to go “all the way.” Foggy tried not to burst out laughing when he said it, but Marci handled the situation with her natural grace and charm, and Matt lost one type of virginity that night, and seemed to have some grasp on what he’d been missing.
In the morning, Foggy dragged him to a safe-sex seminar, because the nuns had really dropped the ball on that one.
#
Matt didn’t know what he’d done to have Foggy in his life, but he offered his gratitude to G-d every time he had a chance.
Their third year of undergrad, they got an apartment off-campus, so they could have their own rooms and a kitchen. Matt’s abilities with handling food expanded out slowly, but they were helped along by being able to cook his own food. He was okay with simple foods, provided he washed them thoroughly, trying to get the smell of the grocer’s hands off the lettuce. Boiling things removed a lot of that, and Foggy would even eat with him, but only after putting a ton of salt and sriracha on whatever Matt made.
It was the first time he really had his own space, with his use of it dictated not by Columbia’s class schedule but the ability to pay rent. It was still cramped, but he had never lived anywhere that wasn’t cramped, and where he couldn’t hear all of the things going on in the building, which amused Foggy to no end. More importantly, it was his space, and no one could enter it when he closed the door. If he couldn’t shut the sounds and smells of the world, he could at least make sure they weren’t physically around. It grounded him more than he thought it would, and there were fewer bad days when the world was too loud for him to get out of bed. They had a bathtub in the apartment. It was too small for him to lay down in, but if he filled it up he could submerge his torso and have legs sticking out over the edge, and if he stayed with his ears just below the surface but his nose and mouth above, he could find a new kind of silence, where the sounds were filtered and muffled. That became his ‘bad day’ strategy.
As much as Foggy was there for him, he tried to be there for Foggy. He was there to pick up the pieces when Marci dumped him in her usual cruel fashion of dealing with things, something Matt might have seen coming, but what could he do? He even went to parties with Foggy to try to help him meet new people, where people asked him all the irritating questions about being blind, but he discovered that people really believed in that face-touching nonsense, particularly girls, who had soft skin and giggled a lot and could be really annoying, but also could be very awesome for ten or twenty minutes. If he didn’t drink excessively, it was actually kind of fun.
The time seemed to fly by as they descended into LSAT prep misery. Matt didn’t need to tell Foggy that being a lawyer, a regular person with a regular job, had been a dream almost abandoned entirely for many years. Making ends meet for law school would be difficult, and take most of his father’s money, but it was going to happen, and there were times when he couldn’t believe it.
Then two SHIELD agents knocked on his door and threatened everything.
They said they were from the health department, and presumably had the paperwork to prove it, which they waved in front of Foggy in the tiny kitchen that was their only shared space.
“Just go,” he told Foggy. “I’ll be fine.” But sensing something was wrong, Foggy didn’t leave. He went into his room, which was only a few feet away. Matt waited until he shut the door before continuing. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re very pleased at your progress, Mr. Murdock,” one of the agents said to him. The guy on the left. Matt tried to remember if they had talked before, but realized he didn’t care. “Though you’re behind on your check-ups.”
“You’re not supposed to have access to those,” Matt said. “HIPPA exists, in case you didn’t notice.”
“Yes, your social worker has reminded us several times.”
“And you shouldn’t be talking to her anymore,” Matt reminded them. “How can I work with her if she just reports to you? I could report that, by the way. It’s illegal and we all know it.”
“Yes, you could report her and maybe even get her fired,” the other agent said. “But that wouldn’t change anything, would it? Aside from ruining her life. She’s got kids to support.”
Matt bit his lip. He liked his social worker. She didn’t deserve any of this. “What do you want?”
“You’re applying to different law schools, all of which are very expensive,” the first agent said. What was his name? Coulson? Probably Coulson. “We could help you with that.”
“With strings attached.”
“We’re not running a charity,” Coulson said, “and I don’t think you want to be someone who takes money sent out of pity, anyway.”
That was true. “Thank you for your generous offer. You probably won’t be surprised when I pass.”
Coulson put something on the table. Matt didn’t pick it up or even move towards it. “If you change your mind.” And then left before Matt lost his cool entirely.
“That wasn’t the health department,” Foggy said as he emerged from his room.
“No.” Matt ran his fingers over the paper. It was their contact information, in braille, which was why it took up a whole page instead of a business card. He balled it up and tossed it in the trash can. “They’re from SHIELD.”
“SHIELD?”
“Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division,” Matt explained. “I think they’re a secret wing of the US army, but I’ve never really been sure. When I was first getting tested after my senses got out of control, they showed up out of nowhere with their own equipment and made a file on me. I was just a kid, so they couldn’t recruit me. I wasn’t supposed to hear that, but you know - “ He gestured to his ears. “My hearing. They came back when I was eighteen, offered to get me out of the halfway home.”
“And you took the halfway home over them.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly how sketchy they are,” Matt said. “They give me a bad feeling, whenever they’re around. And they don’t give a shit about privacy.”
“But why would they want you for homeland security? I mean no offense, but – “
“It has nothing to do with homeland security. They do special stuff, and they’re interested in special people. They call me,” and he made air quotes, “’enhanced.’”
“‘Enhanced?’”
He nodded. “I’m special.”
“That’s not a good word for this. It sounds like they want to use you.”
“That’s probably not a bad assessment of the situation,” Matt said. “And I think they could, if they wanted to. They don’t seem to have much trouble with the law.”
Foggy stomped his feet on the wooden floor. “That’s bullshit. Even the conversation you just had – the things they said – that’s an invasion of privacy. It’s harassment. It was practically a threat – “
“I know what it was, Foggy.”
Foggy sighed. “We need to be lawyers, so we can build a case against them.”
He knew Foggy was frustrated, but Matt didn’t want to spend too much of his energy on something that was out of his hands. “That is the plan.”
#
It was not hard to transition from undergrad to law school. It was a different culture, more serious and concentrated, which meant fewer distracting parties and socialization that Matt had to avoid. He worked part-time as a barback for Josie to help with the bills because despite anti-discrimination laws, it was pretty hard to get hired as a blind guy. It wasn’t a terrible job, and he had missed Hell’s Kitchen despite how much it had changed since he was a kid.
His second year, Jennifer Walters came into his life. She was a transfer from Harvard Law and nothing like Elektra, the only woman he’d tried to have some kind of relationship with. Both of them were confident and brassy, but Jen had a softer side to her and unlike Elektra, she was mature and patient with him. He’d been with a few girls as an undergrad but it had never gone far. He was much better at touching other people than being touched, but at least he was able to make that distinction. Jen made the hair on his neck stand on end when she held him (she was really strong, said it ran in the family), but in a good kind of way.
It was the first time Matt kicked Foggy out of the apartment.
He told her a little bit about his senses, and how he got them. Not all the stuff in between, but the initial incident was a matter of public record.
“So you can tell that I’ve been naked this entire time?”
“You have not been naked this entire time,” he said. “Don’t tease me like that. And you use too much fabric softener. You’re going to ruin your clothes that way.”
She pulled off her sweatshirt and threw it in his face.
They both wanted to be defense attorneys, so there was a lot of crossover in their class material, and it helped that she got along with Foggy. Of the three of them, she was definitely the best at mock trial, followed by Matt, to his own surprise.
“Your glasses are intimidating,” she told him.
When he’d been in an institution, he hadn’t been allowed glasses because he couldn’t have anything that could be made into a sharp edge, and the staff felt he didn’t “need” them anyway. They said his eyes looked fine, but from the way people paused upon his approach when he wasn’t wearing them, he knew that wasn’t true.
“You could pass for sighted,” Jen told him. Foggy had said this, too. “They have to be looking very carefully.”
“There used to be scar tissue,” he said, “but it’s faded.”
“Take your glasses off, and you’ll destroy people in cross,” Foggy said. “If we’re gonna be trial lawyers, we’re going to have to have a bit of showmanship. Look at Johnny Cochran.”
“I really wish he wasn’t your personal idol.”
“He’s not,” Foggy had lied. “He was just a very talented defense attorney who outwitted the prosecution, who thought they could get away with a weak case. That’s what a trial is about, right? The prosecution’s case has to be strong enough that the defense can’t poke a ton of holes in it?”
“But he did it.”
“And you know that’s not the point.”
“It’s not the kind of lawyer I want to be.”
“I don’t either. But respect where respect is due to good lawyering.”
Jen laughed and shook her head.
She was a year ahead of them, and she graduated and moved to a more affordable part of the city to focus on studying for the bar. They both knew their relationship was not strong enough to survive the distance. The parting was painful but it was mutual.
“Sorry, bud,” Foggy said, and took him out for drinks.
Matt didn’t even think about how he was now well enough to drink in public, at a crowded bar, after a long day. It just came naturally to him.
#
Foggy wanted to thank some kind of deity he didn’t spend much time believing in him for sending him Matt. Other people viewed Matt as a burden or a project, but really, Matt was a friend. The best kind of friend. The kind who made sure he got home when he was plastered, and even tucked him into bed. The kind who stayed up studying with him even though Matt had obviously already mastered the material.
The kind who followed him to a shitty, evil law firm called Landman and Zack.
It was a very prestigious internship. They were both lucky to get it. Matt figured he was the disability hire and Foggy suspected Rosalind was in the background, pulling strings for him. It helped that most of the higher ups and both partners were Columbia grads, but it was still a difficult position to land, with decent pay and their own office, even if it was in a closet.
Matt hated it from the start. Foggy could tell.
It wasn’t the dismissive way they were treated as interns. It wasn’t the obvious sexism or racism about how the company treated potential clients and hires. It was how much they lied about it. Matt had, over his law school years, gotten uncommonly good at detecting lies. He said it had something to do with the way a heartbeat would spike a certain way when someone was telling a lie, and yes, he would try his best not to do it to Foggy. It required a lot of focus, and Foggy even thought he could tell Matt was doing it when Matt would sit uncommonly quietly, his fingers paused over his keyboard, focused on nothing.
“So? What’s the latest?” Foggy peered over the cubical wall they had put between their desks.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Come on. They have to take a little break from being cruel behind people’s backs.”
It got a little smile out of Matt. “In Dominic black?”
“Uh, yeah.” This was something that Matt really could not tell, heightened senses and all.
“Is he gay?”
“Don’t know. Why? Did you just find out?”
“No, but that junior associate from the fourth floor is, and he likes him. Do you think I should warn Dom?”
“In a roundabout, lawyerly fashion. Unless you really think it is none of your business.”
Matt already didn’t like how the higher ups regarded interns. He also didn’t like the way they discussed him behind his back. HR knew about everything – the hospitalizations, the halfway home, the social worker. Things they weren’t supposed to know but had found out one way or another. And they talked about it. It made Matt want to punch a wall, and Foggy talked him down to punching a wall in a different building, where they were less likely to get fired.
“Look at it this way,” Foggy said over another rushed takeout dinner at the only place open by the time they got home. “They took you despite all that stuff. You got in on your grades and your application, and nothing else. You should be proud of that.”
“If Rosalind Sharpe had anything to do with you getting hired, I haven’t heard a word about it,” Matt said. “So, same for you.”
“I’m sure you’re going to hear awful gossip at any law firm that would have taken us,” Foggy did his best to point out. “We do this year, we get hired – well, it’s not straight on ‘til partner, but you know what I mean.”
“I know,” Matt said in his reserved way, something was settled but not settled. So eight months later, when they were a day from a job offer and Matt wanted to bolt over the case where they represented Roxxon against a dying man, Foggy went with him.
Nelson and Murdock. Two great tastes that went better together.
(Matt refused to put that on the promotional material for their new firm)
#
Both of them wanted to go back to Hell’s Kitchen, to serve the community they grew up in, so that part was settled. Matt even liked the office, as most of the other offices were similarly vacant, which was better for him than the occasionally crowded nature of a busy firm like Landman and Zack. He liked working late, when the city got quiet except for the sound of sirens and the bells of delivery guys’ bicycles. He liked the familiar smells of Josie’s, and of Fogwell’s Gym, and the church where he was third generation. There were moments where he could stop and focus on that smell, and for brief moments in time, it was like his dad was there. Would he be proud? Matt had grown up to be a man who fought with his brains rather than his fists, however much he liked the punching bag. And he liked the new priest, Father Lantom. He even went to Confession for the first time since leaving the orphanage, though most of his sins involved eavesdropping and premarital sex. Even when his senses were completely out of whack, prayer could center him. He could fall into the rhythms of Mass, focusing on the words spoken by the priest, waiting for his moment for the formulaic responses he knew would come out even if he wasn’t thinking of them. It was as easy as breathing sometimes.
He went to Father Lantom when he was troubled by a case. His first case, as it turned out. A woman named Karen Paige, a whistleblower-turned-murder suspect, arrested and then attacked again in her home when she snuck out of Matt’s apartment, where he’d offered to let her stay because her own home was a crime scene. She might have been killed if Matt hadn’t followed her, hadn’t called the police before there was even a sign of trouble and reported a noise disturbance in her apartment. The police arrived before her attackers could finish her off and they were arrested, but confessions about whom they worked for were not forthcoming.
“I feel like I could have done more,” Matt explained, “to protect her.”
“You offered your client shelter and she chose not to take it,” Lantom said. “She’s allowed to make her own decisions. That’s not on you. And if you hadn’t heard her leaving or guessed where she was going, she might be dead, right?”
“It’s still not enough.” His hand gripped the metal pole of his cane in a fist. “I should have done more, I should have – I don’t know. I just wish I could have.”
“Is she going to be all right?”
“Her condition is stable and there’s a police guard on her room, but ... I’m worried.”
“You took her case without any promise of payment. You welcomed her into your home and fed and clothed her. You saved her life by calling the police. What more could possibly be asked of you? You’re not a saint.”
“You know what my grandmother used to say? ‘Watch out for the Murdock boys. They’ve got the devil in them.’” Matt told Father Lantom that famous story, the one people had repeated to him many times, about his dad as a boxer.
“I wasn’t a sophisticated enough boxing fan to notice anything particularly satanic about your father’s fighting style,” Lantom said. “I spent most of the fights cringing and hoping it would be over soon. It really wasn’t my type of thing.”
“Then why did you go?”
Lantom shrugged. Matt could tell, now that it was quiet in the church and he was so focused. “The first time it was curiosity. I’d seen Jack in church and people talked about the fights after services. But I was also at that age where I was new, and I wanted to be accepted and trusted by the community, so I had to seem more worldly than I actually am.”
“Did you have a band, too? With a bunch of other priests?”
“That’s youth ministry, and no, thank goodness. I wouldn’t trust myself with a tambourine.”
#
Karen did get out of the hospital, with a broken arm and cracked rib, and she went into witness protection. There was more to the Union Allied business than she could produce on a single drive, and the FBI got involved, at which point Matt and Foggy lost contact with Karen and recused themselves from the case for their own safety. It was disappointing to both of them that they couldn’t see it through, but Karen was in a safer place, where she could rest and recover. The city didn’t seem to be very kind to her.
Their second client was a Mrs. Cardenas, whom Foggy liked very much because she seemed to think he ran the firm, even though Matt was the only one of them who could actually speak enough Spanish to talk to her. Her case was against an absentee landlord and a corporation connected to Union Allied that was trying to buy out the people who owned their own apartments, and when that failed, they neglected the building until it was barely habitable or even worked to help it along, not an unknown tactic for smoking out tenants in rent-controlled buildings.
The two of them paid a visit to her apartment. It smelled of rotting furniture and drugs. The building had a mold problem that was going untreated; Matt could tell. Foggy said there was construction damage to the walls and the landlord refused to send repairmen. Also, he somehow employed the legal services of Landman and Zack.
They arbitrated, threatening a lawsuit, and got a much higher offer of reimbursement for moving costs and a down payment on a new place closer to her relatives, and told Mrs. Cardenas she should settle. Neither of them were thrilled about it, but there was too much weight thrown on this one building for them to expect her to hold out and wait for law enforcement to catch up with Tully the landlord. They had to be reasonable; they didn’t have the resources to go up against L&Z. Foggy’s cousins physically helped her move, which saved her even more money, and she sent them a card saying she liked her new place, and another one at Christmas. It eased the guilt a little bit.
Clients trickled in. Most of them were in similar tenement cases, throughout Hell’s Kitchen, and when they heard what Mrs. Cardenas had got, they wanted to settle as fast as possible. The process was smoother, and with each final holdout the price was higher. Someone was buying up Hell’s Kitchen, probably to sell it to foreign billionaires who needed overpriced condos to hide their money, but would never actually see them in person. But they couldn’t move everybody. This was New York, where people were tough and loyal to their particular blocks and avenues, and they won a few cases outright and forced a different landlord to repair the place and pay for damages due to neglect. Aside from a pass from Brett Mahoney of someone in jail on trumped up charges, they were rarely in court.
The case against Union Allied stalled, and Karen came back to the city. Now that they had her deposition on file, they didn’t need her in a case that might never get to court. Matt and Foggy were genuinely surprised that she still wanted to pay them back for helping her, and less surprised that she needed a job, so they gave her one. Their clients’ files couldn’t stay stacked in a corner and Matt needed a note-taker. She wasn’t completely over her two near-death experiences (and being framed for murder), but she was a good worker and a very sweet person.
Neither of them asked her out. They both wanted to, for different reasons, but she was an employee, and they were her bosses. It wasn’t appropriate. She took night classes; she wanted to become a paralegal. They let her off early from work to encourage her. She was smart enough that she didn’t need to spend the rest of her life answering phones and making coffee.
Matt got a deal on an apartment with a light problem and lived on his own for the first time in his life, and he still made it to work almost every day, and when he didn’t show without leaving a message, Foggy came over at lunch to check on him. He didn’t need to ask what was wrong.
Not every day was a good day. But most days were.
#
Matt didn’t hear of Jennifer Walters again until she made headlines, and not the good kind, like you wanted. Not only was she related to Bruce Banner, sometimes Avenger and sometimes city-destroying Hulk, she was a Hulk, through a story that didn’t really make sense when reported on in the news. Actually, she was called “She-Hulk.”
“That’s offensive,” Foggy said, refolding the paper on his desk.
“Yeah, I’m sure she’s thrilled about it.”
“You should see the picture of her. She’s like seven feet tall. And she’s green.”
“That’s a Hulk thing, right? If you’re a Hulk, you’re green?” He didn’t bother asking what shade of green. He no longer thought of colors in shades. He only knew about the first Hulk’s color because the papers were pretty meticulous on reporting on the people/things that had saved New York City from an alien invasion. “Why is that? Why are they green?”
“Uh, whatever the hell gamma radiation is, it must have something to do with that. Why don’t you ask her?”
Matt felt himself blush. “We haven’t spoken in years. Besides, she probably has enough on her plate.”
“Yeah, she’s got adoring fans and people calling her a monster. She doesn’t have an ex-boyfriend and legal colleague who literally can’t see her skin color. Which is green all the time for some reason.”
“The He-Hulk isn’t?”
“Naw, he turns back into a normal guy. Totally unfair.” Foggy nudged him with his shoe under the conference table. “Shoot her an email. She can always ignore it. Just don’t put in the subject line that you were wondering if she can crush you with her ... lady regions.”
“Foggy – “
“Okay, that’s fair, that was inappropriate. But if you want to find out how big she is, you’ll have to do it in person.”
Matt needed a few days to work up the courage to do it, but he did send Jen an email, which she was free to ignore if she pleased. She responded back surprisingly quickly; Foggy was probably right about wanting someone to talk to her who was more neutral, even if Matt couldn’t truly be called that.
They met at Josie’s, because no one would give a shit, and if they did, Josie would give them hell for it. Jen was early, but he was able to find her.
“How different do I seem to you?” She wasn’t one to beat around the bush.
Matt hadn’t even sat down yet. “You’re taller.” He leaned his ear in, trying to get more information from the room. “Your heart beat is louder.” He pulled out the chair across from her. “That’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes,” he said, setting his cane against the wall. “That’s it.”
He knew that wasn’t it. She reached out and put a hand over his. It was twice the size, and she could engulf his hand in hers without making skin contact.
“I guess there’s a third thing,” he said with a smile. “But no. You’re still Jen.”
She leaned back. It made more noise than a regular person would, sitting in Josie’s old wooden chairs, weakened by time. “My cousin Bruce can turn back into a human.”
“You’re still human,” he said. “I mean, I guess. You seem human to me.”
“And you are very perceptive.”
“Sometimes.”
She relaxed a little. He could hear her shoulders slump without trying. They ordered drinks. The waiter’s heart was threatening to burst out of his chest, but he kept his cool, and neither of them said anything to him as he barely struggled to get the glasses on the table without dropping them.
“How’s the practice?”
Matt shrugged. “It’s okay. Going well, all things considered. Neither of us have had to completely abandon our personal ethics to keep guilty people free. And at this rate, we should be able to pay off our student debts before we retire.”
“I heard about your exit from Landman and Zack,” she said. “It took a lot of courage to walk out on them.”
“Foggy regrets it sometimes. I think he misses having an expense account. Or a working copy machine. But those are little things. They don’t matter to him as much as he says they do.”
“But you don’t regret it.”
“Never.” He didn’t regret any of it. But he didn’t need to explain why to her. “How’s your practice? You’ve been making a name for yourself.”
“I was making a name of myself,” she said. “The practice is on hold while I try to figure out how to screen my clients better. You know, SHIELD offered me a job.”
“Didn’t SHIELD turn out to be a Nazi organization called Octopus?” Listening to the sounds of explosions over the TV as Foggy described Captain America blowing up their facilities in DC had given him a strange sense of satisfaction.
“Hydra. They have a file on you?”
“When my senses started developing, I was in the orphanage, and I was hearing voices, so the nuns brought in an exorcist,” he explained. “He was also a trained psychologist, and he took me to Cornell to get a work-up. And then SHIELD showed up, offered ... something or other. It wasn’t clear.”
“But he refused?”
Matt nodded. “According to my father’s will, if my mother couldn’t be found, St. Agnes had to take care of me, and they wanted to keep their promise. The priest said I wasn’t possessed and sent me back. He protected me from SHIELD. And when I got older, I learned to protect myself. They offered to get me out of the shelter system and pay for my education. They offered to train me to ... use my abilities somehow. I always had a bad feeling about them, so I refused.”
“Good instincts,” Jen said as she sipped her beer. He wondered if her metabolism was different, too. “They say they’re different now. Have Captain America’s seal of approval or whatever. They even offered me legal work, the same way Bruce gets to play around with their scientific equipment when they’re not sending him off to destroy some HYDRA base. Or, that’s what he says he does. We don’t talk much.”
“I suppose you don’t need my advice on this one.”
“No, but thanks for offering,” she said. “I just don’t know if my practice can recover. Even if people get past the initial shock, who wants Jolly the Green Giantess for a lawyer?”
“People who want someone who can intimidate in cross,” he replied. “People are smart.”
“People are dumb.”
“Look, it’s not like I’m not regularly questioned about my qualifications,” Matt said. “Mostly by clients. I have to make light of it in front of the jury because otherwise they’re going to be stuck on a blind lawyer and how he’s going to get across the room to speak to the judge. But I’m managing. And we win cases, and that’s all people really care about, when they’re looking to hire you. Your record. And I looked yours up, and it’s fantastic.” He knew she wasn’t satisfied by that. “Look, why don’t we work on some cases together? You have more experience and Foggy’s always trying to start a company softball team, so he’ll be thrilled.” He put his hand over hers. It was very big, but otherwise it felt exactly the same as it used to. “This is a real offer.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“No, usually I just wait for them to ask if they want me to touch their face.”
“Do you want to touch my face?”
“No,” he replied. “I have a pretty good idea of what you look like.”
She kissed him across the bar, and they didn’t stop until they were back in his apartment. In the morning, she took him up on his other offer, and Foggy was thrilled.
It was a very good day.
The End