“Matty, are you hungry?” Jack asked the corner of the window sill. He probably should have thought this through; he didn’t exactly fit in the sink, but the only window where he could see the mailbox was in the kitchen.
Matt looked behind him and shook his head, before continuing to try to open the mailbox with the wrong key.
“I fucking knew it.”
“Listen, I know this sounds crazy--.”
“You know what’s crazy? Telling me that something sounds crazy eight times,” Rudy told him from the other side of the line, “Just get it out, man. It cannot possibly be worse than the shit Bert comes up with when he’s high.”
Jack twisted the phone cord. It was pulled almost taut since he’d taken the phone around the corner into the kitchen where he could pace and wring his hands somewhat privately. He needed to clean the kitchen, when was the last time he cleaned the kitchen? Should he put the knives in the cupboards? What if Matty came in and knocked the block off the counter? Yeah, he needed to move the knives.
“JACK,” Rudy snapped. “You’re doing it again. You’re--”
“Obsessing. I know. Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, I’m trying, I just—anyways. Sorry. Okay, hear me out.”
“I have been trying to for the last ten minutes.”
If he moved the cans up a shelf, then he could definitely fit the knives in the first cabinet. But then where would he put the flour? Those containers didn’t fit on any other shelf in the kitchen.
“JACK.”
“I think Matty has superpowers,” he blurted out.
Silence answered him. Perfect. Rudy thought he was crazy; crazier than Bert crazy. He was gonna call the cops; they were gonna call social services, and they were gonna take Matty away and—
“Dude, calm the fuck down. Breathe.” Rudy’s voice was tinny, but he didn’t sound like he was gonna call the cops. He sounded like a guy trying to do the hair of three little girls for dance practice.
He breathed. Took in three big breaths and let them out shakily.
“Why do you think—uh. Why do you think that?” Rudy asked diplomatically; Jack appreciated him trying to be discreet, even though the only people around him were his daughters. One was whining for a purple scrunchy.
“I dunno, man.” He sighed.
“Yes, you do.”
He groaned into the receiver. Put his head against the wall. Rubbed at his neck.
“Yeah, I do. Listen, can you just come over? Later, after dance? You aren’t gonna believe me unless you see it.”
“Man, I am going to regret this.”
“Will you come?”
“Ugh, yeah, alright.”
Superpowers hadn’t been his first thought; no that had been ‘possessed.’
But Matty wasn’t possessed. Demons didn’t make blind kids hear through walls and catch balls thrown their way. Demons sure as fuck didn’t make kids suddenly stupid picky eaters and suddenly really bad at focusing.
If anyone thought Matty had demons in him they were deluded (or possibly his mama).
Besides, Jack might have already surreptitiously asked their priest about demonic possession and been reliably informed that Matty was acting nothing like a possessed person. Or the devil. Which, you know, was more comforting than it should have been.
His second thought, put into his head by Bert of all people, was that maybe Matty was a little autistic and the car accident and blindness had brought some of his behaviors into clearer focus.
Matt had seemed perpetually overwhelmed since the accident, so Jack couldn’t help wondering if maybe there was something to that. But he wasn’t sure if it was autism or Matt’s blindness forcing him to use his senses in ways which he hadn’t had to before. Just to be sure, he asked the pediatrician about it at Matty’s last check-up; she told him she didn’t think that Matt was autistic.
His third (of many, so many) thoughts was that maybe Matty had inherited his anxiety and it was just now manifesting itself. That he was terrified of because the last thing he wanted for his kid was for him to sit up night after night panicking over every could-have and should-have and it’s-your-fault scenario imaginable.
But again, when Matt crawled into his bed in the middle of the night, he was usually upset or overwhelmed because ‘it’s really loud,’ in his room, not because of an imminent panic attack. Jack wasn’t ashamed to admit that he sometimes used over-exuberant cuddling as a way of checking on Matty’s heartbeat and breathing when he did wander into Jack’s room at night. Sometimes you just gotta be paranoid and take an elbow or two to the face for the greater good.
So. Not demon possession, not autism, and not anxiety. The other options were that Matt had tinnitus, or some kind of synesthesia, or (as Jack’s anxiety helpfully offered at 2 am every night) some variant of cancer.
The pediatrician asked Jack if he’d ever considered counseling for his anxiety. He wanted to ask her if he looked like the kind of guy who could afford regular medical treatment, but bit his tongue because she was very patient and explained everything away as clearly as she could.
The only option he was left with was the most outrageous one. Even though he tried to convince himself that it was exactly as crazy as it seemed, it sure explained every one of Matty’s weird behaviors nice and neatly.
Hearing through walls? Super-hearing. Sudden hatred of hot dogs? Super-taste. Constant scratching and sneezing? Obviously super-touch and super-smell versus the new fabric softener.
He’d started to question his priorities upon realizing that demonic possession was somehow a more likely option in his brain than super-powers, but was interrupted by said demon child peeking his head into the room and announcing,
“Daddy, I don’t feel good.”
Which was the precursor to 1. Vomiting. 2. Sobbing. Or 3. An exciting combination of both. So Jack had to table all of the thoughts to go handle that.
Matty was the cutest, most laid-back kid in the fucking world 75% of the time. Jack was only a little biased in this. The remaining 25% was split 60/40 between ‘enormous, dramatic pain in the ass,’ and ‘breaking my fucking heart.’
That afternoon was a ‘breaking my fucking heart’ day. Matt had scratched deep enough to draw blood up and down his arms and legs, and he kept sneezing and coughing. There were welts underneath the scratches, which looked like an allergic reaction. Jack’s solution was to throw him in the bath, dig out a bar of unscented soap, and give him a thorough scrubbing, which surprisingly seemed to help a lot. It also left him with the realization that, yeah, anything that fabric softener touched as a no-go. He’d have to re-wash everything without it.
Once he’d gotten Matty tucked into a towel, he left to dig out a t-shirt from the very bottom of his drawer, which he knew was not tainted by the new softener.
“Why can’t I wear my clothes?” Matt asked him as he pulled it over his head. He wasn’t sure how Matt knew they weren’t his clothes without having gotten them on yet.
“Because I think you’re allergic to the soap, baby,” he told him. Matt mulled this over.
“Allergic like Ellie Michaels and peanuts?”
“No, not really, that’s a different kind of allergy. If Ellie eats peanuts her throat swells up so she can’t breathe. This kind of allergy means that you get red spots that hurt or itch and your face gets all swollen.” Matt hummed and touched his eyes, trying to feel for swelling.
“It smells like ammonia,” he told Jack helpfully, “And the stuff they put in the pool.”
“What does? The clothes?”
Matt shrugged, playing with the t-shirt at his neck. Yeah, no, he wasn’t getting a better answer than that. The redness on Matty’s arms and legs didn’t look like it was letting up, either. He sighed and started collecting laundry.
“Can I help?” Matt asked, leaning his head on the back of the couch.
“No way, I don’t want you touching any more of this.”
He looked disappointed.
“Rudy is coming over later,” Jack told him to cheer him up. It worked, marginally.
“Are Tina and Angie coming?”
“Tina, Angie, and Penelope.” The four of them were building a Lego-monstrosity in Matt’s bedroom. Tina was unfazed by Matt’s original declaration that he couldn’t play Legos anymore; she told him that Legos were about ‘structural integrity” not prettiness before delegating jobs among the four of them while Jack and Rudy tried not to die of cuteness in the kitchen. It turned out Rudy’s girls watched home-improvement shows with him when Mom was at work.
Matt made a pleased noise and curled up against the arm of the couch. When Jack came back from putting in the first load of clothes, he was dozing.
Convincing Matt that naps were not just for babies was a monumental task which required more time and energy than Jack could spare. So he scrubbed a hand through Matt’s hair, turned on the ballgame, and left him to (hopefully) nod off while he rearranged the kitchen cabinets so that the knife-block could fit.
Matt hadn’t woken up by the time the girls got there, but that didn’t last. Rudy raised an eyebrow at his giant shirt.
“Contagious?” He asked by way of greeting.
“Allergies,” Jack told him, also by way of greeting.
Matt was unhappy to be woken up, and even more unhappy to be so indecently dressed in the presence of his friends. Jack fished out a mostly-dry t-shirt and jeans for him and sent the girls off to the Legos to give him time to change. He knew when Matt rejoined the group because Tina got bossier and Penelope whined louder.
“So,” Rudy said, casually leaning against the counter, picking at the label of his beer, “Super-powers.”
“I am not crazy.”
“Arguable, but continue.”
Jack sighed. He pulled Rudy with him over to the sink and leaned into the corner of the window sill.
“Matt, c’mere,” he murmured, just loud enough that Rudy could hear him. Rudy gave him a ‘what the fuck’ look.
“Dude, if you try to tell me that whispering to furniture is not crazy, I dunno what I’m supposed to tell you. If this is some kinda of breakdown thing, I’m here for you man, just—”
“What is it?” Matt’s voice interrupted, fingers trailing across the side of the kitchen doorframe.
“I want you to have some water,” Jack told him, dropping a few ice cubes in a glass and filling it with water from the tap.
“Not thirsty,” Matt groused, displeased at being dragged back from Legos for water.
“Tough, you lost a whole lotta water through all that drooling you were doing earlier on the sofa,” Jack countered, bumping the glass against Matt’s hand. He took it, but not without a mutinous squint towards Jack’s ear.
“Drink at least half of it,” Jack called after him as he grumbled his way back to his room.
Rudy’s concerned eyebrows were vindicating.
“There is no way he heard that,” Rudy said. Jack offered him high eyebrows in return.
“Matty,” he said, just loud enough to vibrate his vocal cords.
“What?” Came the shouted reply from two rooms over.
“Half of it,” he said softly.
“I am,” Matt called back irritably.
Rudy blinked several times incredulously and then leaned back against the counter. He held his beer loosely.
“Okay,” he brought the bottle up and rested it against his bottom lip, “So superpowers.”
Matt was tired all the time. He was developing some pretty impressive dark circles. Jack tried to be firmer with bedtimes, but wavered in the face of his kid scrambling up to nuzzle into his stomach when he came home at 1 or 2 in the morning.
He’d crept in to find him sleeping at the table a few times. It was a lost cause to try to keep him asleep. If he didn’t startle awake from the door opening, Matt always woke up when Jack tried to carry him to bed, and then he’d only go back to sleep after a given amount of cuddling and feeling Jack’s face.
It would be cute if he wasn’t feeling for injuries. It would be cute if Jack didn’t know he stayed up to meet him because he was lonely and scared that one day Jack wouldn’t come home.
But that didn’t solve the immediate problem, which was that Matt was starting to look a little bit like someone punched him in the eye.
Rudy had suggested that Matt might be struggling because his super-hearing made the neighborhood extra loud. Tina was sensitive to night noise like that, he said, his wife played CDs of waterfall sounds for her to block out some of it. He told Jack to try leaving a fan on Matt’s room, which he did.
Matt hated it. As soon as he left the room, he heard Matt turn it off. He turned it back on after he thought Matt had fallen asleep, but minutes later he heard it turn off. He turned it on just before he went to sleep himself, but it was off in the morning. Matt had unplugged it and thrown a blanket over it.
He tried leaving the radio on in the kitchen the next night, thinking that maybe the fan had been too loud, but Matt groggily wandered out his room to turn it off too.
That Monday, Matt stumbled out of his room to turn off the TV, which Jack was watching the game on, on mute. He didn’t know what to say, just stared wide-eyed after him as Matt grumbled unintelligibly back to his room. It definitely confirmed the super-hearing; if muted TVs were too loud to him it was no damn wonder he wasn’t sleeping.
Jack had already spent a hell of a lot of time thinking about this (it was between ‘Matty has cancer’ and ‘do we have enough for rent’ in his anxiety’s nightly check-lists), but when the teacher brought it up at Matt’s parent-teacher conference, he was pretty sure he was going to die of shame at the table.
“Is Matt getting enough sleep at home?” She asked far too evenly. “We’ve noticed that he seems very tired during class; sometimes he falls asleep during reading time.”
He falls asleep during reading time because you can’t be assed to give him books at his reading level, Jack wanted to tell her, but his anxiety decided to make his brain play ‘It’s your fault it’s your fault it’s your fault’ on a loop instead.
“Uh,” he said eloquently, “I try to get him to bed by ten, but I’m not always home to.”
Was that an intrigued or a judgmental eyebrow? It was hard to tell.
“Ten o’clock is kind of late for a fourth-grader, don’t you think?”
“No, not really? I mean, if I’m home he’s in bed by ten; when I’m at work, sometimes he stays up waiting for me.”
“He stays up. When do you usually get home, Mr. Murdock?”
Shit shit shit
“Uh. Around 1 or 2.”
“In the morning.”
Should he have just lied?
“Mr. Murdock, tiredness really has an impact on academic performance. I understand that this is—”
“He knows his bedtime, Ms. Roberts. I have to be out the door by seven, I can’t just tell him to go to bed when I leave. I don’t have any control over him staying up if I’m not there.”
“He’s a child, Mr. Murdock, he doesn’t understand why he needs to sleep at that time. Maybe you should have your sitter be a bit stricter with him.”
As if he could afford a sitter.
“Right,” he said calmly. Just fucking agree with everything, he told himself, if you seem like you’ll take everything on board, she probably won’t file any reports.
“I’ve also noticed that Matt seems to be very distracted these last few months. He has a hard time staying focused on his work. I’ve had to put him in the pod several times this week for him to finish his assignments. Have you noticed this type of behavior at home?”
“When he’s doing homework?” he clarified.
“Sure, with homework or maybe other activities like reading or coloring.”
Coloring. Yeah, because his blind child was sitting at the dinner table with coloring books. It was a shame Matt’s support aid couldn’t come to the meeting. Her toddler was sick, and Jack had emphatically told her that it was totally fine for her not to attend, which he only slightly regretted now since she was usually quick to mediate some of this bullshit.
“Matty has a hard time writing sometimes, but he focuses fine; he does all his homework at the gym with me.”
“The gym, okay. That must be a pretty loud space. Is there a quiet place at home where Matt could do his homework?” Honey, if I’m right there is no such thing as a quiet place in Matty’s world.
“We live in Hell’s Kitchen, ma’am.”
“Right. Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Mr. Murdock, I understand that these last few months have been very hard for you and Matt. But I’m wondering how we can make things easier for Matt while he’s here at school, and I think that establishing certain expectations and routines at home would go a long way in improving his academic performance. Does that make sense?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he gritted out.
“Do you think that maybe you can make sure Matt gets some more sleep? Maybe establishing a stricter bed time routine? Playing some games that require him to focus for extended periods of time also might help him concentrate in class. Chess, for example. Or, um.”
“With all due respect, ma’am,” he said because he was physically incapable of self-restraint, “Matty’s never had a problem focusing on school before and he does all his homework just fine. As far as I’m aware, his grades are coming back up. So, I’m just not sure how much of a problem this is. Is there maybe something you can do in the classroom to better support him?”
The teacher looked like he’d spat in her coffee.
“I’m positive we are doing everything we can, Mr. Murdock.”
“Sure. Okay. Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?”
Matt’s superpowers must have included a sixth sense or something because when Jack came home from the conference, he hesitated before creeping out of the kitchen to greet him.
“Dad? Are you mad?” he asked uneasily, as though he was 100% ready to apologize for something he didn’t even do. God, talk about weaponized guilt; maybe they needed a little less church.
“Not at you, baby,” he assured Matt, trying to deflate as he shrugged off his coat and went to the fridge for a beer. Matt hovered in the kitchen doorway, the pads of his fingers pressed against the wooden frame. He tilted his face towards the floor and pursed his lips tightly.
“What’s wrong, bud?” he asked when Matt didn’t follow him out to the living room like he usually did. Matt shook his head and then went back to the table to collect his homework. He gave Jack a wide berth as he retreated to his bedroom.
It wasn’t a great sign. Jack dropped his head against the top of the couch and took a deep breath. As much as his gut wanted to write off Ms. Roberts’s wheedling, she was right. Matty needed more sleep and he needed a quiet place. Jack just didn’t know how to give him either of them. Maybe he really did need to invest in some of those bigass headphones Bert swore by. He gave himself about five minutes to chill out and shake off the tension in his neck before trying to talk to Matt.
When he did make it to Matt’s bedroom, he found him tucked up against the foot of the bed, in the corner where the mattress met the wall. He’d hidden his face in his knees and was picking at the rubber trim peeling off one of his sneakers. Jack knew within seconds that there were tears somewhere in there.
“Are you having a hard time paying attention in class, bud?” he asked, leaning against the doorway. Matt shifted his head against his knees in a nod. Jack sighed and stepped into the room. He sat down next to Matt on the floor and leaned over to try to look into his face, but only got a good view of one ear.
“I’m not mad, baby. Just worried. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Matt shook his head, probably smearing snot all over his jeans.
“You’re not in trouble, Matty. What’s going on in school, huh?”
He had a pretty good idea of what was going on in school, but he wanted to hear Matt say it. Matt didn’t seem to want to say anything though, so all he got was some trembling and a few hiccups. He tried to sigh very quietly.
“Can I touch you, honey?” Matt shook his head furiously and pulled away further into the corner. “Please? I’m not mad, I promise.”
No movement.
“C’mon, Matty. I’m dying over here. I ain’t got a single hug today. What I am gonna do? I gotta go to work tonight and the other guys are gonna know, bud. They always know. Then they start moaning ‘bout how useless I am without the right amount of attention.”
Matt’s trembling steadied a little and he’d stopped hiccupping. Jack hunkered down and whispered towards the space just behind Matt’s ear.
“What if Robbie tries to cheer me up in front of all those people again? You know how much he likes the chicken dance, Matty. Don’t do that to me, I’m too pretty to go out like that.”
Matt giggled and loosened up a bit. Jack saw his opening and snagged an arm under his knees and around his back and hauled him into his lap, yelping. Jack didn’t give him much chance to think before employing the tickle monster. He got a few elbow jabs for his trouble, but Matt eventually stuffed his face into the crook of his neck comfortably. Jack let him settle there for a few beats, rubbing his back slowly and trying to chase away thoughts of the day when Matt would get to big to fit in his arms.
“Why’s school hard, baby?” he asked gently. He could feel some more tears and a hiccup at that.
“S’loud,” Matt managed to choke out.
“The classroom?” Jack clarified.
“E’rything,” Matt told him. “S’loud.”
He rubbed wide circled across the middle of Matt’s back.
“Loud at home, too?” he asked. Matt sniffed and nodded into his neck.
“Scratchy too, huh?” he tried, wondering how far he could take this. Matt made a noise of affirmation.
“Are the sweaters the most scratchy?” he asked. Matt shook his head. “No? What’s the most scratchy?”
“Sheets,” Matt mumbled. It took Jack a second to make it out.
“The sheets? On your bed?”
“Mm.”
Jack looked at the bed behind them. Well fuck. That explained a lot. Christ, the universe did not want this kid to sleep.
“Okay,” he said, smoothing some of Matt’s hair back, “Okay, that’s okay. What do you think is gonna make this easier? Anything I can do to help make it easier?”
Matt shrugged, and Jack could feel him getting upset again. He shushed him and rocked a little, at a loss but trying to appear calm.
“Daddy, I’m tired,” Matt sobbed into his neck. Jack felt twenty years old and like he’d just been told he was having a baby again; he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t make the noise stop and he couldn’t make the sheets softer. He swallowed hard.
“Me too, baby.”
The only sure way to put Matt asleep sometimes was to let him cry himself out, which he hated doing. But it was necessary, and Matt fell asleep within minutes of settling down. Jack still didn’t know what to do with him now that he knew about the bed and the noise. But he was also rapidly realizing that Matt didn’t know what the fuck was happening either, and at least one of them needed to get their shit together.
He scooped Matt up and laid him in his own bed (not that it was any more comfortable, but it probably smelled like him and Matt would probably find that comforting) and went into the kitchen to take a shot and then call Rudy.
“Man, fucking superpowers, though. That’s some Captain America shit.”
Jack cradled his head in his hands over a cup of iced coffee. They didn’t usually do cafes, but he needed a bit more peace than a greasy spoon.
“It’s not, though. Captain America didn’t have like, super-touch or whatever. What the fuck am I supposed to do, Rudy? I let him sleep on the couch last night ‘cause his bed is so uncomfortable for him. I can’t have him sleep on the couch every night. I can’t have him struggling in class ‘cause of this shit, either, he’s already got so much other stuff going on.”
“I mean, you can try asking his doctor?”
Jack gave him what he hoped was the most scathing look his face was capable of.
“Right, because a guy raving about his blind kid’s superpowers isn’t asking for a CPS report. And what if they do do some tests and find something? What if they take him away for some kind of lab experiments? I don’t want my kid to be the next superhero, Rudy. I don’t want him to die from some underground government conspiracy shit. I just want him to have the chance to be normal, you know? Be happy; be stable. Whatever the fuck that is for him.”
Rudy, to his credit, nodded and then gave the original question some serious thought.
“Okay, hear me out. This is gonna sound like, super basic or whatever, but I don’t know if a doc could even help you with this anyways; they probably don’t cover superpowers in med school. But you know those fleece blankets? The ones they’re always selling at the flea market? Maybe put one of them on his bed instead of sheets? It’ll be a bitch in the summer, but that’ll solve the sheets thing in the now. And those headphones Bert’s got—they’re actually really good man, I don’t know if you’ve tried ‘em. Or some of those ear muffs you use at gun ranges. Maybe he can wear those at night or something. Is he real bad about the smell-thing or?”
“He said the soap smelled like ammonia.”
“The hell is in soap that makes it smell? Some kinda oil or something? There’s gotta be soap out there with no coloring or oil in it. That unscented shit is usually cheaper in the long run, anyways.”
Jack sighed.
“Dude,” Rudy told him gently, but earnestly, “It’s not impossible. It’s pretty fucking terrible, but like, there are hundreds of kids all over the country who’ve got allergies to everything in existence, and there’s millions of kids out there with like, multiple disabilities. But they’re all getting on alright. You’ve just gotta channel your inner hippy-mom and obsess over organic fruit and chemicals in everything, and you and Matty’ll be fine. I mean, let’s be honest, you’d love that shit. Ain’t no one in the fucking world who likes to panic over everything more than you.”
Jack huffed a laugh and finally took a sip of coffee.
“I guess you’re right. I’ll just—should I tell him, though? Am I just supposed to sit him down and say ‘Matty, you have superpowers?’ What if it’s not superpowers? What if it’s just, I don’t know, blind people things?”
“Dude, hearing through walls is not blind people things.”
“But how do you know?”
“Because blind people are just people, man. We can’t hear through walls, so why the fuck should blind people? No one’s hearing is that good.”
Jack sighed and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes.
“Okay,” he mumbled, “Okay, I can do this. Get the blanket, change the soaps. Headphones.”
“That’s it, man. Baby steps,” Rudy told him cheerfully.
Matty was a smart little bastard and usually Jack was proud of that, but trying to keep the whole superpowers deal under wraps from the owner of said superpowers was a different pain in the ass from the kinds he was used to. He didn’t want to outright tell Matty he had superpowers because Matty might tell other people and that would be a shit-show for both of them. Not to mention, Matty wanted to be normal; he’d told Jack this repeatedly since the accident. Surprise superpowers would definitely not help that.
So Jack tried to do things on the down low. He changed all the soaps in the house, including the shampoos. He’d attracted the attention of many salespeople by standing in aisles, reading every label of every product on the shelves. It took two gals nearly an hour to help him find unscented everything in the last store he went to. He told them he’d just found out his kid was allergic to the stuff in scented products. He was surprised to find that they accepted it easily and were more than happy to help him hunt down even the most obscure products; they also had lots of home-made recipes for shit he’d always thought came out of a bottle (baking-soda, apparently, was the end all, be all of household hygiene).
When he got home, he re-washed every scrap of fabric in the house. While the laundry was on, he scrubbed the kitchen and bathroom with his new friends’ potions.
“Dad, everything smells different,” Matt told Jack as he hustled him home from the gym before he, himself ran back out for a match. He dug around the fridge to reheat some leftovers for the two of them.
“Good different or bad different?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Different different,” Matt told him stubbornly.
Jack came home with a black eye and sore ribs that night and found Matt knocked out on the couch (not at the table though, so still an improvement). He woke up groggily when Jack set his bag down to go wash his face and muzzily got up and followed him for a hug. Jack let him cling a little while he washed his face and wondered if the bathroom lights were unusually bright or if he’d just managed to scrub years of grime off the walls in his frenzy. The latter felt more validating so he decided to stick with that one. He managed to coax Matt back to the couch before letting him feel his now clean face for bumps and cuts. Matt drifted off twice in this process but was pissed when Jack pried his hands away and dropped him back down onto the cushions. He was sufficiently grumpy to shove at Jack’s face when he tried to kiss him goodnight, but he seemed a lot more relaxed than Jack had seen him for a long time, so apparently there was something to cutting back on the chemicals.
In the morning, he sent Matt to school and went out on the hunt (a careful hunt with taped ribs) for the softest blanket he could find, only to realize that if he’d brought Matt along to feel them, the whole thing would have been way easier. He ended up standing at a stall in the flea-market asking to open every plastic wrapped blanket they had. They all felt kind of the same to Jack’s fingers, but he just knew there was something not quite right about them.
The guy manning the stall seemed put out by his many requests, so he panicked and made up the excuse that his kid had recently gotten a bad burn and everything seemed too rough on his skin. At that, the man relaxed and told him that his baby girl had pulled a pan of boiling water on herself a few years ago, so he understood completely. He dug out several stupidly soft baby blankets from under the table and they settled on two light purple ones to cover Matt’s twin bed completely. The guy gave him a discount on a light blue one for Matty to just have around the house.
He got home and stripped Matt’s bed and found where he’d been hoarding all the braille books he borrowed from the library. There were at least twenty there, buried in the sheets and stacked up against the wall, and Jack realized that Matt probably read himself to sleep most nights.
He took a few moments to swallow down the lump of emotion in his throat.
He also found a fuckload of errant Legos scattered around the room, which he dutifully stepped on and swore at.
He washed the sheets and duvet and remade the bed with the new blankets on top of the sheets. He laid the blue blanket across the foot of the bed. It was softer than anything Matt had had as a baby, with the possible exception of Bubbles the bunny, who Matt had rapidly reduced to matted misery by chewing and drooling all over her.
He had flashbacks to prying Bubbles out of Matty’s tiny hands while he napped and praying he wouldn’t notice the bunny’s absence before she was done in the dryer.
Matt got home from school and wanted to go to the gym. Jack wanted him to stay home and sleep that night. They negotiated. And by negotiated, he meant he told Matt he was not coming with to the gym and Matt pouted about it. Matt, the drama queen that he was, took his moping to the living room floor first, and after Jack nearly tripped over him for the second time, to his room.
Jack waited, leaning against the sink in the kitchen.
A tiny blanket wrapped nun hurried through the doorway and latched onto his waist.
He scrubbed at the top of Matt’s blanket-covered head.
“So you found the new covers, huh?”
“Mm!” Matt happily grunted into his stomach.
“Good?”
“Mm!”
“You’re welcome,” he said, trying to hide his smile behind his coffee mug.
“Thank you!” Matt chirped up at him. Then bounced off right back from whence he came.
“So,” Rudy said in the tone of his mom, Maria, who always knew the answer to every question before she asked it, “How are things?”
Jack raised an eyebrow as he watched the new guy go down flat in the ring. The guy needed dire help; if you couldn’t last a minute against Bert, there was no way in hell you were going pro.
“Ms. Roberts sent me a very nice apology saying that she didn’t mean to be condescending during our parent-teacher conference,” he offered.
“She wants to fuck,” Rudy told him sagely.
“No, she doesn’t want me to tell the principal,” he countered, “But Matty’s doing much better.”
He glanced over to the corner of the gym where Matt had spread his homework out over a card table. Jack had gotten some second-hand shooting earmuffs from Lenny’s dad. Matt hated them about as much as he hated the fan, but he and Jack had struck a bargain. He gets to come with Jack to the gym if he wears the earmuffs while he does his homework.
“Sleeping?”
“Mostly. Still waits up for me.”
“You gotta admit that’s fucking cute, man.”
“It’s a little cute.”
“If my girls did that, everyone would know about it. I’d tell my damn grandkids. And then their kids. Hell, I’d write it into their wedding speeches.”
Jack snorted.
“You are going to be the most embarrassing piece of shit.”
“Excuse you, asshole. I am already there. I am beyond you; passed your dumbass by before Matty was even born.”
“Matty is five months older than Tina.”
“Sorry, did you hear something? Sounded like loser-talk.”
He laughed and watched Matt tracing his fingers over his braille assignments. It had been two weeks and the dark circles were mostly gone, and Matt had stopped climbing into bed with him in the middle of the night. The letter his teacher sent said that Matt had told her that it was hard for him to concentrate with the other kids chatting and being rowdy during work and reading time; she apologized for implying that he was a shit dad (not in those words obviously). Matt brought home straight As and Jack put the report card on the fridge even though Matt couldn’t see it.
They weren’t even close to stable. Everyday it seemed like there was something new to be frustrated or anxious over. They barely made rent last week. People shouted slow sentences at his 100% not-deaf son more often than either of them expected. Matt went on a field trip to the zoo and got so overwhelmed Jack had to leave training early to go get him. He’d decided that monkeys were the scourge of the planet and only relented somewhat when Jack convinced him that humans were monkeys too.
Matt also seemed to be getting increasingly weird about smells and tastes. Jack couldn’t figure out the pattern. The latest thing he’d decided he didn’t like was mustard (“You love mustard.” “It’s sour.” “That’s half the point of mustard.” “Too sour.”), but not two days after this declaration, he’d brought home a tamarind candy from school and informed Jack that it was his new favorite food (“Why? It taste good?” “Smells good.” “Isn’t it sour?” “Smells good.” “…kay.”).
He still didn’t know how to talk to Matt about his superpowers. He decided that he’d put it off for another year or so, the same way he was putting off the puberty talk (Jesus Christ, what if they got worse—or better? What scale was he supposed to work with here?—from puberty?). By then he’d probably have figured them out more and Matt would probably be better able to process all of it.
They just had to take the next year one day at a time.