mlemon
“Mlemon,” Matt told Jack in the kitchen. He was very determined to be underfoot in there, despite all of Jack’s best efforts. For all that the guy could coral Foggy, Karen, and Frank into the living room, he remained bested by a three year-old.
Matty was hands down, the cutest three year-old ever, though, so Foggy didn’t exactly blame Jack for giving in as quickly as he did. It wasn’t going to last for long, so Foggy figured that they may as well make the most of it. Ever so slightly more entertaining than watching Matt was watching Frank watch Matt and try not to die. He wanted to hold Matt so bad. He was desperate to act on his dad instincts.
Desperate.
Jack tolerated him. Didn’t trust him. Tolerated him. Who he actually trusted was Maria, Frank’s wife and the final occupant of the living room. She had voiced her disappointment that Frank wasn’t the one toddler-i-fied earlier that evening and was still working through pouting about it.
Frank ignored this. He had dad instincts to fight.
“Mlemon!” Matty said again from, apparently, somewhere around Jack’s hip judging from the way he kept moving pans away from the edge of the stove.
Matty didn’t quite have a speech impediment, more like certain sounds were harder than others and needed some help getting up onto them. Jack had demonstrated this with the word ‘peach’ earlier. He gave Matt a peach and had him feel it and tell him what it was, to which Matt replied almost instantaneously, “Peesh!”
“Peach,” Jack corrected with just the slightest emphasis on the ‘ch.’
“Peesh!”
“Peach.”
“Peeeeee-sh!”
“Alright.”
Matt didn’t want to eat the peach, he wanted to fit it into Jack’s pocket and then go whack his head against every available surface in the apartment. Jack let him do this while rolling his eyes and begrudgingly following after. There was no real point in Matty-proofing the place since this wasn’t supposed to last more than a week or two, although Matt’s dedication to maiming himself kind of made Foggy want to do it anyways. Just to do be safe.
But anyways, first it was ‘peesh’ and now it was ‘mlemon,’ which Foggy couldn’t quite tell was supposed to be ‘lemon’ or ‘melon.’ Jack, bless his heart, seemed to know the difference right away. He reached over into the fruit bowl, snagged a lemon, and handed it down to his kid without even looking.
“Mlemon!” Matt informed him.
“Lemon,” Jack said back.
“Mmm…Mmm..”
“Lemon,” Jack repeated patiently.
“Mmmm….”
Foggy was going to die. Matt was trying so hard. Karen had laid herself out on half of the couch to shake silently with laughter.
“Mmm…MMMM.”
“Lemon, honey. Llll. Not Mmm.”
“MMMMM.”
Frank curled up in his wife’s lap, trying to contain himself. She petted his hair and shoulder fondly.
“Mmmmmmm—Peesh!”
Jack set down his wooden spoon to brace both hands on either side of the stove. He was insistent that he be allowed to cook dinner for them all as a thanks for looking after Matt the day before when he was at the hospital getting checked out. It was completely unnecessary, but Matt had learned insistence and persistence from the best, it turned out.
The unwritten rule of this gesture was, of course, that Jack would die for the second time if anyone went in there to help him. Even Maria, who he got on with extremely well. No, he was cooking for them and they were going to sit back, relax, and like it, goddamnit.
“No peaches, honey,” Jack said once he’d collected himself. He looked down and saw that a certain lemon was being shoved into his hip. “You don’t want it anymore?”
“Mlemon.”
“Okay, gimme. Baby, you gotta let go.”
“Mlemon!”
Matt could chatter at you and hold a fairly good conversation at this age, but there were apparently a lot of words he was just plain excited about. Context was unnecessary. It was fun enough to just say them.
“You want up? Is that what this is?” Jack asked his wayward child.
“No!”
No, of course not.
“Alright, fine.”
“No!”
“Yeah, I got that, pal.”
Matt hummed and Foggy watched as his pale munchkin hand slipped the lemon up onto the counter. It rolled away out of his reach and the moment he realized that he couldn’t feel the skin anymore, he was devastated.
“Daddy!!”
“Yes, monster?”
“Daddy!! Mlemon!!”
Jack snagged the lemon and handed it off. The cries were immediately sated. Foggy thought that this man deserved a goddamn medal for his service.
“Mmmmm,” Matt murmured from behind the counter. Jack glanced over to him and then his whole body jolted like he’d been shocked by electricity.
“No, no eating.”
Ah.
“No, no. Gimme.”
Maria started shaking in time with Frank’s shaking. They evidently had both trauma and humor associated with this very scene. Foggy imagined one of their kids had been a serial lemon-muncher as well.
“Matthew,” Jack said warningly. Foggy couldn’t see the face Matty was making back at him behind the counter, but he could only presume that it was doleful and involved lip wobbling. Jack held his hand expectantly down.
“Thank you,” he said eventually. And put the lemon, adorned with a few little bite marks, back on the counter. Matt made a supremely unhappy sound. Jack rolled his eyes and shook his head and went back to the pan. In the meantime, Matt’s little mop of orange finally, finally made it just over the counter. He couldn’t see shit even if he’d wanted to, but he had his pale little eyebrows hunkered down.
Boy was on a mission. A citrus mission.
Foggy had to bite his knuckles to keep from busting a gut on the couch.
Matt wasn’t quite tall enough to maintain his vantage point on his toes and so threw his arms up to the counter to pull himself up. One of them knocked against the lemon and he startled and fell back down. Horrified now, at having moved his target further away.
Attempt two involved more scrabbling. The lemon was about three inches out of reach. His fingers just couldn’t quite make it.
Karen started sobbing a little into a pillow. Matt dropped back down behind the counter, defeated again. He must have been able to smell the damn thing. That had to be why he was so irate and determined. Foggy almost wanted to encourage him to simply come to the other side of the counter, but no. That was not how Matt Murdock worked, not as an adult and certainly not as a child.
He popped up for the third time and Jack finally noticed him and grabbed him before he could stretch out an arm this time. He hiked Matty onto his hip and went back about his business while Matt whined the whine that came right before a tantrum.
Foggy’s heart squeezed a bit. He wasn’t sure he could take a crying, baby Matty. He could barely handle a crying, big Matty.
Jack, though, seemed to instinctually know the exact remedy for this He bounced Matt a bit and rocked slightly and the whining died down as Matt laid a cheek into the crook of his neck. He clenched and unclenched his fingers in Jack’s shirt and settled in for a good long pout.
Crisis averted. Irritable child acquired.
“Mlemon,” Matt mumbled grumpily into Jack’s neck, as though it was itself a curse word.
“Lemon,” Jack corrected.
“Mlemon.”
Jack snatched the lemon off the counter and gave it to Matt again without looking at him. Matt practically crowed in delight.
It was the little things, wasn’t it?
Matt immediately bit into it without a damn care in the world.
For a second there, Foggy was sure that he’d start crying all over again, but instead, he just squeezed his eyes shut and, to the living room’s dead horror, took another bite. Pith and all.
“Uh, Jack,” Maria said.
“Hmm?”
“Um.”
Jack addressed his kid and then just fucking sighed.
“That good?” he asked.
“Mmmm.”
Foggy honestly wondered if he’d ever seen Matt happier in his life.
“Okay, great. I’m happy for you,” Jack said.
“Mlemon.”
“Lemon.”
They could apparently go in circles like this all day long.
He stood up and offered his hands to Jack to remove Matt before he caused any more trouble. Matt sensed his arms and hunkered in closer to Jack’s chest, protecting what was left of his citrus. Jack extricated him and handed him off to Foggy easily. Matt made a noise like he’d been shot.
Jack shushed him and, betrayed, he dug his little hand into Foggy’s shirt with the saddest eyes ever.
All this drama. For a lemon.
Speaking of which. Foggy gently untangled the fruit from Matty’s grip and set it gingerly on the countertop, out of reach.
He really didn’t need the extra fiber or vitamin C. Really, Foggy was sure of it.
“No!”
Or he’d thought he was sure.
“Noooo!! Mlemon!”
As though it was the Rose to his Jack on the Titanic. Really now?
“Foggy!!”
Baby Matt said his name with the stress on the wrong syllable and it was so damn adorable that Foggy couldn’t bear to correct him.
“We’re gonna eat dinner soon, Matty,” he negotiated. “You’re not gonna be hungry if you have the mlemon now.”
Silence. Immediately. Matt stared up at him with empty, saucer eyes, then settled right the fuck down in his arms. Pressed his chubby l’il cheek against Foggy’s collar bone. Evidently, he liked it when they used his word for things.
“Kay,” he mumbled.
Foggy took him back to the couch and set him in his lap and tried to engage Maria in conversation like a grown-ass man. Matt allowed this for exactly two minutes before getting bored and wriggling out of Foggy’s lap to fall to the floor and scramble back up. He crawled up onto the couch with Karen and she grabbed him and blew raspberries into his neck.
He liked that too. But not as much as he liked Dad.
He squirmed out of Karen’s grip and in moments, was right back standing on Jack’s feet in the kitchen.
“Kiddo, you’re gonna be the second death of me, c’mere,” Jack sighed, hauling him up onto his hip again. This time, Matt went quietly and settled in, more or less well-behaved. He dropped his head onto Jack’s shoulder and stuffed a thumb in his mouth. Then proceeded to listen to whatever was going on in Jack’s neck with his eyes closed.
Foggy needed a fucking picture. He was but a man. He dug out his phone and took a few and then took a video of Jack swaying slightly with Matt in his arms, unaware of the camera.
Precious. 100% rainy day material.
“Mlemon,” Matt murmured softly.
“Uh-huh,” Jack said.
“Mlemon.”
“Where’d you learn that, anyways?”
“Peesh.”
“Oh, okay.”
Foggy was gonna cry.
Matt was hesitant with Sister Maggie, even though he looked more like her in his tiny form than he ever had. Jack jokingly called the Sister ‘mommy’ and Matt hated that. Sister Maggie hated it too, she gave Jack eyes like she’d find him and suffocate him in his sleep if he said it again.
She was strangely awkward with little Matt. Where with Matt in his normal state, she was happy to touch and bully and needle, with little Matt, she seemed much more inclined to clutch him to her chest and glare at anyone who tried to remove him.
It was seriously like looking at a smaller, angrier carbon copy of Matt holding one of Foggy’s baby nieces or nephews at Christmas.
Jack wasn’t surprised. He called this hereditary behavior. Jack had a lot of answers for all kinds of shit Foggy had wondered over the years, and he was blown away by the fact that, with at least one person in this crazy family, he could literally just ask a question and get an immediate answer. Sister Maggie talked in cryptic couplets and bible quotes. Matt spoke entirely in subtext.
Jack saw his kid whack his head against a corner and said simply ‘Wow, that musta hurt. Let’s not do that again.’ When asked why he refused to purchase one brand of something over the other, Jack looked you straight in the eye and said something perfectly reasonable like ‘same shit does the same job, that one’s just more expensive, ‘ or ‘I dunno man, I just always get the green one, never questioned it honestly.’
Which was to say that watching Matt and Sister Maggie interact under these circumstances was damn near painful. Matt refused to say more than two words to Sister Maggie and Sister Maggie was too preoccupied with protecting him from the universe to give him any real attention. They just. They just hadn’t been meant to be together at this point in Matt’s life. Foggy could absolutely see it now.
Maggie did, at one point, swipe a hand through Matt’s hair to smooth it down, but Foggy suspected this was more so that she could get as much of him as possible under her chin. Matt did not enjoy these enforced cuddles. He tolerated them for a few minutes before the whining started up.
“Daddy,” he grumbled, side-eyeing Jack as best as he could without being able to tell exactly where he was.
“No can do, champ,” Jack said, leaning a hip against a pew. “She’s got her rights.”
“Daddy.”
Matt was great at repeating words until they did something. Foggy was surprised at how little he could talk while still getting his way out of all of them over the last couple of days.
“Hush,” Sister Maggie said. And Matt made an unhappy noise into the hollow of her neck.
“Grace,” Jack finally said, taking pity on his kid, “You wanna ease up, there?”
“No.”
“Alright, good talk.”
These two did not deserve Jack Murdock. Karen pressed her own face into Foggy’s shoulder and shook with giggles.
“How about—” Jack started.
“Jonathan, I do not care; no.”
Wow. Marital bliss at its finest. Jack didn’t take the barbed jab to heart. He sighed.
“You’re scaring ‘im, sweetheart,” he said.
Foggy wasn’t sure Maggie was scaring Matt as much as she was just pissing him off, but sure. That seemed to get a reaction. Sister Maggie pulled Matt back to inspect his scrunched up face and, like a mama cat, she smoothed a hand over it a few times and then tucked him right back where she thought he belonged, despite Matt’s increasingly vocal protests.
“Daddy!”
Jack sighed.
“Alright, Grace, give him here,” he said. He sat down on the pew next to his tiny wife and held out his arms expectantly. Sister Maggie glared at him with nearly tangible mistrust. Jack shook his hands a bit with high eyebrows. She finally relented and released some of the tension in her arms to hand Matt back to his dad.
Matt wriggled out of her grip before the action could be completed and, instead of jumping into Jack’s arms, straight up bailed off of the pew and went to hide under on of the ones behind them. Jack let him go. Didn’t chase.
“Girl, you can’t be crushin’ him,” he said. “He don’t like that. He mighta liked it if he were smaller, but he’s too big for that right now. Here. Matty, c’mere, bud.”
Matt did not want to fucking go anywhere, but he had a hard time saying no to Jack. He glared over the top of the pew he’d selected and then ducked back down. When Jack stood up to retrieve him, he allowed himself to be picked up, but not without a whine and a half.
Jack sat him on the pew between himself and Sister Maggie.
“Okay, round two,” he said. “Let’s start with—AH.” He grabbed Matt by the arm before he made a break for it and resettled him down. “No,” he said firmly with a finger in Matt’s face. “That’s rude.” Matt looked like he wanted to bite it. He grabbed onto it instead. “Here, we’re gonna be friendly,” Jack said to his wife and child. “Let’s hold hands, yeah? Matty, let go. Grace, gimme.”
It was like watching someone forcibly drag two timid dogs towards each other. Jack connected the two hands he’d appropriated and then held them there before either party could snatch theirs away.
“Look how friendly we’re being,” he said. “Look how not hard this is.”
“Can’t see,” Matt helpfully supplied, just as Sister Maggie said, “How is this friendly?”
Foggy got the feeling that Jack was going to go visit Vanessa and drink heavily after this.
“Actually, let’s just pray, huh? Why don’t we pray? We like praying,” Jack tried a little desperately.
The other two were suspicious. They evidently did not see hand-holding as an important or desirable part of this praying business, but both relented. Matt even curled his little fingers around Sister Maggie’s first two in a gesture of goodwill. Probably for his dad more than anything else, but you know what? It still counted.
Sister Maggie led the little family in prayer. Foggy bowed his head respectfully and elbowed Karen to get her to do the same.
At the end of it, Foggy thought that the three on the pew seemed slightly more relaxed.
“See? Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Jack said with a smile.
Matt took the moment to have an emotion apparently too big for his little body and started wailing. He took his hand away from Maggie’s and held both out to Jack. That, evidently, made Sister Maggie feel like shit and she recoiled from both of them, which left poor Jack was worse off than when he started.
“Sometimes,” he gritted out, with Matt’s sobbing head tucked under his chin. “The Lord fucking tries me.”
Before they left the church, Matt managed to make himself hold onto Sister Maggie’s two fingers again for a brief moment. Again, it was almost certainly for his dad’s sake, but the gesture was sweet and so Foggy was sure to take a goddamn picture as unobtrusively as he could.
Baby Matt liked Frank far more than big Matt did, but Baby Matt was also frequently horrified to wake up from a nap to find that Frank was not his own father, but a pretender. This happened most often when Maria or Vanessa came by and kidnapped Jack for a break and a little peace and quiet.
Matt would be inconsolable for a few minutes pre-nap and Frank’s bulk apparently felt like Jack’s giant muscles and this was comforting to him, so he’d fall asleep in Frank’s arms easily enough before Frank put him down somewhere marginally safe for him to be.
Karen told Frank that he didn’t have to put Matt down, when he was out for the count, he was well gone. Wouldn’t wake up until he was damn ready. But Frank had strong feelings about his being allowed to touch delicate things. And he’d decided Matt was a delicate thing.
Matt was not a delicate thing. Matt had been tiny for one week and had merrily sliced up two fingers and one knee, given himself a minor concussion, and eaten two whole lemons when no one was looking. Tiny Matt was kind of hard core.
Frank didn’t see this, however. Frank saw a tiny person with breakable hands and feet, who made a whole lot of high-volume distressed noises any time something did not go his way. Frank decided that he was not allowed to touch this thing for too long for fear of triggering the distressed noises.
It was kind of sad. If Maria was with him, he was more inclined to act on his instincts to hold Matt for a little longer and cuddle him a little closer, almost as though he trusted Maria to tell him if he was fucking up more than he trusted himself. He didn’t seem to trust Karen with this task, and that was fair because Karen played with Matt like a Fun Aunt. She was more than happy to rough-house with him and tickle him until he was shrieking and Frank, Foggy now knew from Maria, operated under the ‘nurture ‘em only,’ principle with their own kids. He didn’t rough-house with his daughter or his son until they were something like six or seven years old. He was convinced he’d break them otherwise.
Matty, therefore, was in Frank’s opinion, too little for anything but gentle, gentle, fucking careful handling. Watching Jack throw Matt over his shoulder and then watching Karen shove him across the rug gave the guy indigestion.
Foggy decided to fuck with him a little while he could.
Matt was grumpy immediately post-nap and he was irritable that his dad was not at home, but Foggy now knew exactly what cheered Tiny Matt up every time without fail. Jack had shown him. It was far too easy.
When Matt annoyed Jack, he just threw a blanket over his head and Matt lost his shit. He’d scramble out of the blanket and come back to shove it in Jack’s hand or pocket or waistband, whatever was closest and then he’d hurry back and wait for the chase. Jack would ignore him for a few seconds and then throw himself after the kid. When he cornered Matt, he’d re-execute the blanket and then leave him there to find his way out and start the cycle all over.
Foggy scooped Matty up off the couch and dumped him in Frank’s surprised arms, and then executed the blanket.
Matt was stoked out of his little mind immediately.
He threw off the blanket and chased after Foggy. Foggy grabbed him and dumped him in Frank’s lap again and threw the blanket on him.
Matt wriggled around in it, giggling, trying to find his way out. Frank had gone stiff with concern. When Matt escaped this time, he shoved the blanket into Frank’s hand because it was closer than Foggy’s. Frank blinked. Matt vibrated. Frank looked at the thing in his hand. Matt nudged at it in excitement. Frank looked at Foggy and then gingerly tossed the thing over Matt’s head. Matt was delighted. He got out of it quick and shoved the balled up blanket back at Frank’s chest. This time, when Frank moved to throw it, Matt leapt out of his lap and took off for his bedroom.
Frank did not follow. Frank was confused.
“He wants you to chase him,” Foggy said.
Frank blinked at him. Then slowly stood up and walked towards Matt’s bedroom. Matt rushed off inside to go hide somewhere.
Foggy heard the shrieks following Frank’s finding him and then smirked as Frank booked it back into the living room to resume his floor sitting by the coffee table. Matt came out seconds later on his heels, hip-checked the side of the couch, took a tumble and rolled right back up to his feet to dump the blanket into Frank’s lap again.
Frank twitched at the sight of the grazed elbow but Matty was already ready to run off again. He didn’t even seem to notice it. Frank analyzed this and waited. And waited. Then threw himself up and Matt took off and Foggy slid down onto the couch, smug and satisfied with himself.
Matt’s affliction wore off in week two and he grimaced at anyone who mentioned it, including Jack who had found a point of embarrassment to press all his fingers into. Matt snipped at him and did not appreciate Jack wandering into rooms to lovingly press citrus fruit into his hands.
He threw them back with undue force and Jack laughed every time, clutching at his belly.
Frank casually tossed an afghan over Matt’s unsuspecting head as a joke and got a bruise the shape of a fist for it.
Matt got scolded for that one, out of Jack’s respect for Maria’s property more than anything else, and the resulting blanket throw-down and wrestle between father and son was absolutely worth filming. Matt had the benefit of expert MMA training, but Jack had the benefit of a professional boxing career, about forty pounds, and intimate knowledge of all Matt’s tickle spots.
It was kind of unfair. But it was extremely entertaining to watch Matt try.
“I could kill you,” he wheezed with his own dad’s thick neck trapped in his elbow. Jack leaned into Matt’s face and he recoiled to escape the onslaught but couldn’t go anywhere with his head on the floor like that. He made only sounds of disgust through the following overblown kissing noises.
“GET OFF GET OFF.”
“You give?” Jack asked and Foggy was suddenly slapped with several instances of Matt pinning he, himself down and then whipping out that very same tone. Aw. He’d learned it from the old man.
“NEVER.”
Hadn’t learned to pick his battles from him, though.
Jack went right back to the kissy noises. Matt threatened to punch him in the head.
Matt wouldn’t actually punch him in the head. He loved him too much. Also, his elbow was pinned. Jack threw him on his side and then curled an arm under his shoulder and that legitimately made him scream. And then, before Foggy realized what was happening, he got to watch Battlin’ Jack Murdock carry his grown-ass son—the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, the Man in the Mask, Daredevil, himself--kicking and screaming, to bed.
He dumped him there and legged it out to the kitchen with Matt right on his tail. It was the blanket game on a whole new level.
Frank watched Matt tackle his old man in stiff horror.
“This is just disrespect,” he murmured to Maria. Karen had her phone out to film the whole thing over the side of the couch.
“He’s half your size, Jackie, you can do better than that,” Maria called.
Karen decided for that, she’d cheer Matt on. As far as Foggy could see, there would be no losers here. Couldn’t be, not when the stake were, for once, low enough to laugh at.
It was adorable. He was making Matt a google photos album with audio descriptions of this whole two-week adventure so he’d never be able to truly escape it.