the Sprawl

Jack might have been a little dead for a few years here, now, and so his grip on reality was maybe not so good. But there were a couple of things which were trapped in his head, forever etched onto the inner shell of his skull, which even decomposition couldn’t eliminate.

The first was, of course, that he was madly in love with—to a fault if he was truthful with himself and God—Grace and always would be.

Even if she had kind of left him and Matty out in the cold in the early days there. And yeah, even though she sometimes had the emotional range of a wet mop.

He thought it was kind of cute. Like how people thought them huge fluffy, Aristo-Cats-looking cats were kind of cute.

The second thing not even hellfire could make him forget was that he was still not talking to his fucking family and until they got their shit together and apologized first—something which would happen only when a bottle of liquor or a pack of smokes needed to be bummed and something which would only happen seriously when the earth was eventually swallowed into the sun—he was damn sure retaining that status quo. Dead or undead.

The third and most important thing that he kept at the back of his brain at all times was the fact that Matty was the light of his life. Truly the best thing that had ever happened to him, absolutely the most important and precious thing he’d ever had the chance—the opportunity—to touch and hold, even though he was possibly the biggest drama queen in the history of the United States itself.

He told himself this, surveying Matt’s lifeless, sprawled limbs on the living room floor, and tried to work out from a distance whether this was a Suffering Sprawl or a Too Exhausted by the World to Breathe Sprawl.

Usually if you waited a few seconds, it would become more or less clear.

This time, though, he seemed well and truly in deep.

His palms were up, though, so that had to be a sign of something.

Foggy told Jack reliably that he’d stopped trying to identify Matt’s nonsense in the vain hope that ignoring him would teach him how to express emotions in words. Jack thought that was very optimistic of him. He’d tried that in the early years there, when Matty had taken up this habit, sometime around three probably, and had found that all that did was encourage him to mope and drape for hours, days, and on one memorable instance, weeks, at a time.

But then, at that point Matty had been only marginally smarter than a particularly well-trained dog.

Now, he was brilliant and fast-talking and smooth-talking and handsome and polite. Everything Jack had ever wanted him to grow up to be.

But in the category of ‘feelings,’ it was pretty clear that this wasn’t so much a case of willful refusal to change behavior so much as it was a fucking dazzling display of Grace’s indomitable genes. Jack should have known. He should have recognized it from the start.

What was incredible about this whole situation was that Grace tolerated exactly none of it, and when Matt even toed the line of drama around her, as Jack had witnessed a few times in the last month or so, she gnashed her teeth and herded him back a safe distance from her territory.

Matt would then squint and sneer and grumble in begrudging defeat and would go find somewhere else to have his feelings, away from the judgment of his mama’s gaze.

Jack was pretty sure that in his final phone call, he’d conveyed to Grace that the teeth-gnashing was no longer appropriate in their circumstances. But alas, after he’d heard what had gone down in his absence, specifically around Grace and Matty finally connecting as mama and baby after nearly twenty years of strained silence and, for Matty, horrendously confusing herding, he couldn’t say he was too surprised.

Foggy asked him why he’d had to die on a semi-regular basis in a tone that suggested to Jack that Matty had been tormenting him with his nonsense for far longer than he’d anticipated putting up with it.

Yeah, he got that.

Kid was stunningly easy to fall for and then you woke up to this kind of shit and wondered why you hadn’t just left him in the Salvation Army that one time when he was two.

“Gimme a hint, baby boy,” he finally said, putting the bags of groceries on the counter.

Matt didn’t deign to move.

Jack gave him five seconds before shrugging and starting to put the stuff away according to Matt’s precise organizing system.

Precise was the joke.

Matt, for all his meticulousness, eschewed labels like it was his job. He’d very carefully had little metal tags with braille on them set under the shelves in his kitchen and had then proceeded to ignore everything they stood for. Jack couldn’t read braille like Matty could, but he knew how to spell ‘bread’ and that there, sitting in bread’s place was 100% not bread. It was a can of chickpeas. Sitting all on its lonesome there because Matt had forgotten to label it and needed to pick it up every few days and go find someone to ask what it was, before nodding, resolutely not labelling it, and sticking it right back where it came from so that he could do the whole thing again that Friday.

Jack was so happy that he’d retained so much of his personality.

“Daaaaad.”

Ah. There we go.

“’Sup, champ?” he said.

“Can you stop, like, doing things?”

Hm. Probably. But no.

“Noisy?”

“Mm.”

“That’s tough.”

“Ugh, why.”

Because you refuse to buy food like a normal person, Matthew. If you did, then you wouldn’t have to listen to all the bag rustling and restocking all at once. You could drag it out through the week, like you did with your drama.

“Dad.”

“Yes, dear?” He could do this all day.

“Stop.”

“Ah, I see.” Seriously. All day. “Why don’t you get up, there, kiddo?”

Matt covered his face with his hands and grumbled.

Jack paused in stuffing produce in the fridge drawers.

“Hey, weren’t you and Foggy going out tonight?” he asked.

Matt grumbled harder. Jack snorted.

“I see,” he said.

“I don’t.”

He was so cute, trying to be funny over there.

“Baby, get up. You’re making yourself feel worse.”

No. Over his dead body apparently. Alright, well. He asked for it.

“You know how much you remind me of your mama when you do that?”

The deep-seated fear of Grace bursting through the door and witnessing this behavior propelled Matt up faster than anything Jack had ever tried. He was kind of jealous. Grace hadn’t even been in the mom-role for two years of Matty’s life and she still got the mom guilt-trip reaction more than he did.

Unfair.

Still though, Matt was off the floor finally. He pouted his way over to the counter to sulk on that instead. Jack ruffled his hair after he washed his hands and reveled in the resulting noise of disgust. He leaned on the other side of the counter.

“Matty,” he said.

“Daddy.”

It still made his heart clench when Matt did that. That was playing dirty.

“Matty, have you considered perhaps apologizing to Fogs for being a grumpy idiot?”

Matt sunk lower into the countertop. Yeah, right on the money.

“No,” he mumbled.

“Kay, well. Are you considering it, now?” Jack needled. Matt flipped his face so that his other cheek rested on the counter and huffed.

It was a type of yes, so that counted.

Jack watched him for a minute and then stood back up to resume his pots banging and Matt groaned and covered his head with his arms.

“Fine.”

Ah. Good choice. Jack would leave the kettle as it was then. He’d scrub the fuck out of it once Matt had gone for the evening.