Sam was hiding something in his room and Matt had been trying to ignore it for the last week, but it was humming now and the sound refused to fade into the ballet mechanique that was Matt’s version of white noise.
He tried not to vibrate with it, but at least once every hour, he found himself throwing down whatever he had in his hands and storming over to the top of the stairs to rattle in fury down them.
He wouldn’t go into Sam’s room. There had to be boundaries. And as much as Sam was a part of the little pile of scraps that was their family, he was also a person himself. He was allowed to have his secrets. He was allowed to hide shit if he wanted to.
He reminded Matt of a gopher.
When he was home, he’d pop his head upstairs a couple of times, but the second anyone acknowledged him, he was gone—right back down the stairs into the netherland of his bedroom. Luring him out with food occasionally worked. Sending Tuesday down to rustle him out of bed got them a surprise appearance in the kitchen every so often on weekends. But mostly Sam was content to keep his distance from the upstairs portion of the house and to scrabble around downstairs with Clifton, the guy who rented out the master bedroom down there.
Cliff was very tolerant of Sam. He thought he was very sweet. He was always telling Foggy that he should be proud.
Foggy’s heartrate went nuts every time that happened. His body practically screamed for Matt to get the fuck downstairs and save him, goddamnit.
Matt sometimes left him there to socialize. It was good for him. People had to be their own heroes occasionally; it was helping no one for Matt to be doing all the saving all the time.
It was only logical.
Foggy disagreed. But alas, some differences could not be overcome.
For example, the humming. Foggy couldn’t hear it. Foggy told him he was ‘being weird again.’ And Foggy told him that neither of them needed to do any investigating—Sam’s sex life was his and his alone.
Matt disagreed—on the being weird thing. Not the other thing.
He knew what sex toys sounded like—had loads of practice figuring it out from old his next-door neighbor back at the loft in NYC. Whatever Sam was fucking around with, it was not a sex toy. It was trouble. Possibly a mechanical kind of trouble. Possibly a ‘Samuel, no’ kind of trouble—like the miniature hot air balloon which Sam had tormented the dogs with a couple weeks back.
And yet Matt could not make himself go down those stairs.
Oooooh.
Just you wait, he thought violently down them, I’ll figure you out sooner or later.
Matt wondered sometimes how Dad would have reacted to Sam.
It was weird to think of Dad these days because Matt had outlived him by a longshot now. He was forty and Dad hadn’t made it past thirty.
In some ways, it was a testament to his sacrifice that Matt found himself drinking coffee, ruminating on this. But in other ways, it was just fuckin’ sad, man.
Matt didn’t dwell on that, though. There was no point. Instead, Matt liked to imagine Dad as an old man. He liked to try to dredge up the face in his memory and paint it with wrinkles and jowls.
It wasn’t flattering, but it was warming.
He decided that Dad would have been at a complete loss for what to do with Sam. Bless him. It wouldn’t have been his fault; Matt could barely keep up with Sam’s brain and Dad had struggled to keep up with Matt’s, even when he’d been young and stupid.
Dad probably would have asked Matt why he couldn’t have gone out and found a nice baby instead. Dad had loved babies. They were non-threatening to him. He’d babied Matt along for ages and Matt had given up and given into it around age six when he’d finally realized that this was a battle he had no chance of winning. It had been embarrassing to play the tough, weird-but-charming kid at school and then come home to Dad scooping him up and cuddling him and kissing him all the time.
Embarrassing, man.
Matt was glad that Dad had been so embarrassing now, though. Because he could smile, thinking back on the hugs and tickling and carrying, knowing that the man had been doing his damnedest to channel as much love into Matt as humanly possible.
Yeah, Dad would have been absolutely baffled by Sam.
Maybe he’d have tried awkwardly to relate to him, offering to take him to the gym and teach him how to box. Maybe he’d have squeezed Sam’s shoulder and told him that he was proud of him.
When Matt did this, Sam always had a witty retort at the ready.
“Just doing my job, Elderly Citizen.”
“Aw, I’ve always wanted the neighborhood freak’s approval.”
“Are you sick?”
Just once, just once, Matt wanted this boy to appreciate the effort he was putting in here.
The only other means he had of relaying affection was laying on the kid until he cried ‘uncle,’ which was fun, but not quite satisfying enough.
Like, suffocating someone into submission didn’t really carry the same ‘I fucking love you’ message that a normal, reasonable hug did. A hug with some patting. Maybe a teeny bit of forceful squishing, but only because tight hugs were the optimal vehicles of expression.
Matt set down his coffee in horror in the realization that he had made the full journey at some point into becoming his father.
God, how embarrassing.
It had only taken an extra ten years. Damn.
He turned his head towards the humming and pursed his lips.
Dad, with his complete lack of interest in things like personal space, would have marched down those stairs by now.
“Hey, babes.”
He turned back to the sound of Foggy clinking mugs around in the cabinet.
“Brooding at the table, I see,” Foggy noted. “This is indeed an improvement from brooding on the roof.”
Matt picked his coffee back up and did not rise to the bait.
“It’s that goddamn noise again,” he said.
“The sex toys?”
It was not a sex toy.
“Whatever you say, darlin’,” Foggy chimed.
Matt hatched a plot. He called it ‘drag Sam upstairs for interrogation purposes.’ Foggy thought that there had to be a snappier name for it, but Matt was ignoring him right now because he was being a Debbie Downer.
He went out and bought wasabi peas and honey mustard pretzels and poured these into bowls on the kitchen table. He then went and located the dogs where they were playing tug of war over some foul, slimy piece of rope that they would inevitably drop into Matt’s lap.
He appropriated Tuesday. Sam responded less positively to Hazel. She liked to bark. Matt appreciated her barking. Foggy and Sam called her a ‘nuisance,’ but again, see the note about being Debbie Downers.
He gave Hazel the slimy rope as a consolation prize and riled Tuesday up with some energetic jumping around before directing her to go get Sam. Her command for finding Sam was ‘go get Sammy.’ Her command for finding Foggy was ‘go get Papa.’ Her command for finding Matt was ‘go get Daddy.’
It was all very familial.
Matt allowed this for Tuesday.
But only for Tuesday.
She shuddered down the stairs and Matt heard her scratch at Sam’s door and whine. The effect was immediate.
“Tuesdaaaaay,” Sam crooned, opening his door.
She danced for him and came scrambling back up the stairs. When Sam failed to follow, she stopped in the middle of them and did some complicated scrabbling and shuffling to go back down and make sad, beseeching noises at Sam until he said, “Up? You want me to go up?”
Yes, she wanted him to go up.
She danced around to express this and then barked once.
“Woah, okay, big girl, I gotchu,” Sam said. “Let’s go up.”
Tuesday barked again.
“Let’s go up!” Sam said with more enthusiasm.
Gotcha.
Hook, line, and sinker.
Sam was suspicious of the snacks. They were his favorites. Matt knew that they were his favorites. That’s why he’d bought them.
“Hello stranger,” he said.
Sam’s body radiated mistrust.
“What do you want from me?” he asked immediately.
Rude.
“To feed you,” Matt said, gesturing out over the table. “Come sit with me.”
Sam did not move.
“Is this a training thing?” he asked. “Is it a willpower thing?”
“No,” Matt said. “Just snacks. Sit.”
“Are you—”
“Sam.”
“I’m just checking.”
Sam picked his way carefully over to the other side of the table, but he did not sit. Matt imagined that he was on the receiving end of a sour face.
“Sit,” he encouraged.
Sam did not.
“What do you want from me?”
Aigh.
“Fine, don’t sit,” Matt huffed. Tuesday came over and stuffed her head into his lap. He petted her accordingly.
“Is this about—”
“The noise,” Matt said, flat out. “What is the noise? It is driving me to distraction.”
Sam’s posture loosened up like magic.
“Noise?” he asked. “Which one? The vacuum? Sorry, I went to the beach the other day. There was so much sand in my shoes. I didn’t even realize how much until I took off my socks, and I could have built a castle, I’m telling you.”
“Not the vacuum,” Matt said. “The humming. What are you humming? What is humming? Why?”
Sam’s heat moved as he cocked his head.
“Humming?” he asked.
Yes, yes, yes. What was challenging about this?
“I don’t hear any humming,” Sam said.
His heart did not skip.
Goddamnit.
“You okay, teach?”
Oooooooh.
The plot thickens.
Matt was aware that Sam was now following him around the house while he searched for the source of the humming. He was aware because Samuel kept fucking asking him if he was okay and if he’d taken his meds.
Yes, yes, yes, he’d taken his goddamn meds already. Fucking children.
Matt did not need reminders to take his medication. Foggy had already set three highly annoying alarms in his phone for this godforsaken purpose.
No.
He was going to find this humming. He knew it was real. And he knew it was coming from somewhere downstairs.
“Is it the fridge?” Sam asked him, right on his heels.
Matt spun around and chased him out of his bubble. Then went back to hunting.
“Is it the garage door, maybe? Does it start and stop? Or is it continuous?” Sam asked him, flagrantly ignoring personal space bubble boundaries.
“Not a door,” Matt huffed, checking through doorways and then hunting down a wall to press his ear against.
Nothing in the walls. Not rats, then. Maybe a wire?
Where the fuck was it? Matt knew it was here.
“Is it…oh! Is it my laptop? It makes a fan sound,” Sam offered him. “Here, I’ll go get it.”
He was gone before Matt could say no, it wasn’t a fan noise. He came back and held his PC aloft and Matt took a listen to appease him. It was not the laptop. Sam’s heat sagged in disappointment, then went to drop the thing back on his desk.
He let Matt come into his room and listen around and, infuriatingly, the noise was not in there.
Matt was going to lose his goddamn mind.
If it wasn’t in Sam’s room and it wasn’t in the downstairs living space, then where was it??
He growled.
This would not do.
“Foggy?” Matt heard Sam’s voice ask inside the house.
“Yes, dear?” Foggy answered.
“Is the bossman okay? He seems a little manic.”
Matt was not manic. Matt was just determined.
He would not let some noise outsmart him. Nor would he sleep until he found it.
“He’s okay. He’s just got a bug up his ass about a sex toy,” Foggy said amiably.
For the love of—it wasn’t a sex toy. Matt would prove it. And when he did, he would demand an apology.
Matt tracked the hum. Tracked it past the wall by the staircase, past Sam’s room, through the downstairs living room, around the side of the house and over to a box not far away from the front of the house that he could not, for the life of him, figure out how to open.
He was in need of a friend.
He went back upstairs, bypassed Sam in the kitchen, and located Foggy. Foggy went to go look at the box unwillingly.
“Matthew,” Foggy said.
“Yes?”
“This is a mailbox.”
Oh.
“They are not made to be—MATT.”
Mailmen had to get the mail out somehow, didn’t they? Surely there would be a—
“Nope. No, sir. That’s enough for you. you’re—hi, no, he’s okay. He’s just blind—coming inside.”
Matt could not give less than a shit what their neighbors thought of him. He would open this box, so help him God.
“Matthew, Matthew. Stop. Stop, Jesus Christ, stop. That is against the law.”
There was a keyhole on this thing. Matt needed a key, or something key-adjacent. A bobby pin or a sharp, thin needle of some sort would do.
“MATT. Inside. We’re going inside,” Foggy hissed. “We are not committing federal crimes and serving jailtime over a goddamn mailbox, yes?”
No one would even know.
“It’s daytime, you idiot. Inside. No. AH. No. Face front. In.”
The humming was 100% coming from the box. And now Foggy was hypervigilant just as Matt was. He refused to let Matt out in the horns. He refused to let Matt out in general actually because he knew how Matt’s brain worked.
This was patently unfair.
Matt promised he’d close it. He wouldn’t damage it. In the case that he did and was caught, he promised that he alone would take the blame and serve the time.
Foggy wouldn’t budge.
Matt threw himself into their bedroom and flopped down on the bed face-first in aggravation. Hazel came in and shoved her freezing cold nose into his foot, then when that got her scolded, she came over and shoved her nose into his armpit instead.
“Can you not see that I am brooding?” he growled at her.
She panted in his face.
Disgusting.
“Sensei?”
Matt slapped a hand over Sam’s mouth and returned him to his room. It was a good thing that he did, too, because the apprentice made an awful ruckus. He did not stay in his bed. He threw his door back open only seconds after Matt had closed it and they had to play this game a whole three times before Matt lodged a chair under the handle and went back about his business.
He’d dug out the lockpicking tools that Elektra had so kindly sent him for his 37th birthday. And he had a score to settle.
“Sensei.”
Matt was a little busy here.
“You cannot be serious.”
It had to be too dark for Sam to see what he was doing.
“Go back inside,” Matt hissed at him.
“No,” Sam huffed. He wasn’t wearing shoes. He was going to step on glass or something. Matt stood up and shooed him with his arms. Sam refused to give in to this gesture.
“You’re being weird,” Sam pouted. “Stop. Come back inside.”
Absolutely not.
The humming was actually a rattling. Matt could hear it against the belly of the box.
“Sensei, there’s nothing there. Come on.”
Sam pulled at his elbow.
“Boss.”
Matt was fifteen seconds off from jimmying the lock. He did not need this kid shaking his arm like this.
He scolded Sam into quiet stillness. He didn’t really mean to be so harsh about it, but Sam was nothing if not stubborn. He needed an extra little bit of oomph to be properly dissuaded from poor behavior sometimes.
Sam took the scolding and whined instead.
Matt ignored him.
The lock gave way. The metal made a horrific screech in his ears when he pulled the box that collected the mail out of it.
He stuck a hand into the box and felt around for a good minute or two until he found the damn thing. He couldn’t tell what it was, but it felt round and plastic-y.
“What is it?” Sam asked him.
“We’re about to find out,” Matt said.
Slight miscalculation.
Neither of them could see shit generally, and the only one that almost could, couldn't at night.
Goddamnit.
Foggy, once he was through tearing Matt a new asshole and then menacing Sam nearly to tears for enabling behavior, snapped at them both that the thing which Matt had dug out from the mailbox was nothing more than a wind-up toy that shook its feet. It rattled across the table.
“Some kid must have dropped it in,” Foggy said. “Or who knows, maybe this kid’s got a collection of them they’ve been trying to get rid of and they’ve been dumping ‘em slowly over the last week.”
That was pretty weird for a kid.
“Matt, you just wrenched open a perfectly innocent mailbox to dig out a fucking McDonald’s happy meal toy, you think you’re allowed any say on weird behavior right now?”
No.
“Damn straight. Anyways, the mystery is solved. You’ve both committed a federal crime. Congratulations. Bed. Now.”
Sam’s fingers tightened in the material covering Matt’s elbow. He’d taken cover behind Matt’s shoulder when Foggy had raised his voice. The toy rattled a couple of times sporadically across the wood of the table.
Matt sighed.
“Bed,” he agreed.
He guided Sam down the stairs and didn’t throw him in his room this time.
Matt didn’t think any more about the mailbox. The mystery had been solved, good work had been accomplished. And he was now on the hunt for something new. That evening, Foggy had announced he’d bought whole cardamom pods. He also said he’d hidden them because he didn’t want Matt crunching through all of them before muffins had been made. Unfortunately for him and the folks in his urban farming group, he was weak for Matt’s charming disposition and eventually relented and told Matt that he was allowed access to this jar, provided there were still enough pods left for muffin-making in the morning.
Matt always enjoyed raiding the spice cabinet. It was a brilliant way to spend his night off.
He’d just sorted through cinnamon, clove, and turmeric when he heard Sam’s soft step pause in the middle of the stairs.
“Yes?” he called over his shoulder.
Sam’s socked feet didn’t move.
Matt paused and set down his current jar. He came over to the top of the stairs. Sam’s form stood still, most likely facing him.
“Sensei,” Sam mumbled. “Can you—can you come listen to something for me?”
Of course.
Sam was antsy because he thought he’d heard something right outside his window. He’d stuck his head out, prepared to throw down with whatever it was out there but it was too dark for him to see anything. He’d given a couple of warnings to whatever was lurking out there, but as soon as he’d come back in, he’d had the feeling that he was being watched. He locked the window and pulled the curtains, but he was good and freaked out now.
Matt let him dig fingers into the crook of his elbow and listened.
He cocked his head the other way.
There was a lot going on outside. There always was. Buses rolling through the neighborhood. A handful of drunk people a couple blocks over. People’s keys shaking as they walked home. Waves of rustling leaves from the wind hitting the trees.
Matt brought the sound in close, so that he could focus on the sounds coming from inside the house. The sound of the pipes. The settling of old wood. The sound of one of the dogs upstairs getting up from her bed.
He let the field expand to encompass the whole of the house and the space immediately outside.
He tipped his head the other way. Then hummed.
“Go upstairs,” he said. Sam’s fingers jolted against his sleeve. “It’s okay,” he soothed. “Just go upstairs. I’ll take care of it.”
Sam’s fingers didn’t let up.
“Don’t hurt ‘em,” he said.
Mmmmmmm.
That depends on them.
“Sensei, don’t hurt ‘em. They don’t know. They’ve probably got something going on.”
Well, they could have that something going on in police custody, or, if necessary, at a hospital.
“Boss—”
“Go upstairs,” Matt said gentler this time. “I won’t hurt ‘em.”
“No,” Sam said. “I’ll—let me—I’ll—”
“Sammy,” Matt said with finality. “Go upstairs.”
Sam didn’t want to. He felt guilty now, Matt could tell. He was using that brain of his to find a way to make himself responsible for this other person’s behavior.
Matt gave him a few moments to decide if he was going upstairs on his own volition or by Matt’s, and eventually, Sam’s respect won out.
“Don’t hurt ‘em,” he said, stepping back and feeling for the wall.
“I won’t hurt ‘em,” Matt promised. He waited until he heard Sam’s socked feet hit the middle of the stairs. Then he swept up one of Sam’s t-shirts from the laundry basket on his bed and tied it over his face. He went over to the window and opened it, easy as you please.
He hopped out.
The heartbeat and breathing underneath the window had not expected this. Matt crouched down next to it.
“Nice night?” he asked.
The owner of the heartbeat seemed to be trying to decide if they wanted to have a heart attack or a stroke. They didn’t answer. Matt made contemplative sounds.
“You here for the tech?” he asked. “’Cause unfortunately, we don’t got a whole lot of it. We don’t get paid that much, I’m afraid.”
The would-be robber was shitting themselves. They still didn’t know what to say. Their breath hitched when Matt swiveled his face their way.
“You’re—you’re—” the person hiccupped.
“Aw, you know me,” Matt grinned. “And hey, you even found me. Not bad, friend, not bad. It’s not every day you run into the devil in his actual pajamas, you know.”
“Oh my god,” the guy whispered. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I’m—”
“Oh, don’t be sorry,” Matt said sweetly. “I’m impressed, really.”
“Please don’t hurt me,” the robber pleaded.
“Why would I hurt you?” Matt asked. “I only hurt people who’ve done something wrong, and you, pal, haven’t done anything wrong. Yet. Am I right?”
The body next to him shook like a leaf. Matt sharpened his smile in its direction.
“Hey, you wanna make a deal with the devil?” he asked.
“No—I’m sorry—”
“Shut up,” Matt snapped. Then softened again. “I said, do you wanna make a deal with the devil? See, you managed to give my apprentice there a bit of a fright, which is more than can be said for most. Kid breaks fingers without flinching these days, you know, but I’ve got no use for someone who can be snuck up on by some common burglar-wannabe. So what do you say? You wanna take his place?”
The man swore under his breath.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know he was your kid,” he said. “Please let me go. I won’t do it again, I swear.”
Matt took a long moment to breathe.
“Why’re you doing it in the first place?” he needled.
“My daughter.”
Ah.
Matt sighed and pushed himself up to standing.
“You better go home to her then,” he said.
He heard the man shuffle around, surprised.
“You’re not gonna hurt me?” he asked.
“Mm. My apprentice has asked me not to,” Matt said. “He seems to think that you’re probably just going through some shit, and I’m inclined to believe him. So let’s call this a warning, yeah? And hey, do me a favor and don’t go ‘round telling folks where this devil lives. It’d be real troubling for the neighbors, you know? House values would tank if they knew the likes of Hell’s Kitchen was among them.”
There was a pause. The body didn’t move.
“Thank you,” the man finally said.
Matt huffed.
“Go home to your kid,” he said. He hopped back into Sam’s window and closed it.
“You didn’t hurt ‘em, did you?” was the first thing Sam asked when Matt came back upstairs.
“Didn’t hurt him, no,” Matt said.
“Oh, thank god.”
“He’s fucked off. You can go back to sleep.”
Sam nodded, but seemed hesitant. Matt paused in the kitchen doorway.
“Or you can stay up here for the night,” he suggested. “Couch is always free. You know where the linens are.”
Sam didn’t answer him. Matt left him to go sneak back into bed without waking up Foggy. Hazel met him at the bedroom door, wagging her tail. He shushed her and sent her back to her cushion.
“Matt.”
Matt made a highly attractive noise. All his noises were attractive. This one no less than the others, if slightly less articulate than intended.
“Why’s Sam sleeping on the couch?”
“Huh?” Matt’s brain supplied. Then it threw the memory of the night before at him. “Oh,” he said. “Probably too paranoid to sleep downstairs.”
He adjusted the pillow only to find it suddenly gone. Foggy loomed over him.
“Why,” he asked without asking.
Matt patted at his face.
“Guy tried to break into his room,” he said. “I took care of it.”
Foggy’s heart stammered.
“And you didn’t tell me?” he asked.
“I’m telling you now,” Matt pointed out. “And I told you: I handled it. Guy fucked off, I made sure. Sammy’s probably just a little spooked. It’s fine. Can’t blame him. Let him sleep, Fogs.”
Foggy dropped the pillow on top of his face and grumbled his way out of the room.
Matt found wakefulness about an hour later and came out into the kitchen to find Foggy in a better mood, chatting to the dogs. He’d made coffee.
Blessed be.
He accepted Matt’s good morning kiss and went back to scrolling through the news on his phone and recounting his opinions on it to Hazel.
He’d explained to Matt that he did this because Tuesday had no interest in the news.
Matt had learned to pick his battles in this arena long ago.
He poured a cup of coffee and went out into the living room where Sam was knocked out still on the couch. His breathing was even. Kid was dead asleep, despite the noise in the kitchen. Matt smoothed a hand over his hair before returning to his husband and dogs.
Sam woke up around ten; Matt caught him mid-stretch.
“Morning,” he said.
Sam mumbled his way and flopped over to cover his head with his duvet. Matt smirked in his direction.
“Can’t sleep all day, kiddo,” he said. “Come on, we got training to do. If you’re good, I’ll let you have the whole afternoon to yourself.”
Sam groaned.
Matt resisted the urge to jab in him the side. Sam was too old for tickling. He would not appreciate it. He’d probably just punch Matt, and they were not at the punching portion of the day yet.
“Don’t wanna,” Sam finally said.
“Tough,” Matt said. “Up. You got half an hour, then we’re going to the gym.”
Sam whined dramatically as Matt left the room.
“Teach him how to chase off robbers,” Foggy told him when he came into the bedroom to put on shoes.
Matt chuckled.
“Will do,” he said.
“You can skip the locking picking, though,” Foggy added.
Matt stood up and leaned over to get a good bye kiss.
“Not a chance,” he said.