Out in the living area, he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. There were nights where it contented him to just sit and listen to the sounds of the city, where he could find and focus in on the good ones, rather than the bad ones that had always stirred him in his youth. But there were others ones where he couldn’t, where he even now felt guilty that he wasn’t out there anymore, even though intellectually he knew he’d made the right decision, four years ago, when he’d finally retired, even handing over his sticks and club to a younger vigilante he’d fought alongside a couple of times. He listened for that man too, sometimes.
The fridge was starting to smell, not to the point that the other members of the household would notice, but it was quick to irritate him. It was the fish. He really needed to start accompanying Foggy to the fish market more to keep him from getting stuff that went this quickly, and he was not having his son eat that. He could probably get the spoilt fish thrown out-taken out of the apartment as well-without waking anyone up.
He really thought he’d done so, as he stepped back into the apartment five minutes later. It had been nice, being able to move about the building without trying to fake anything. His being able to easily make his way around without his cane wasn’t suspicious anymore anyway; they’d now lived here more than long enough. He opened and closed the door so quietly even he could barely hear it.
But it was too late, because Jack was awake, and sitting on the couch, waiting for him. A lot of times all three of them had wondered if Matt’s eight year old son had maybe inherited just a bit of his enhanced hearing.
They’d woken him up a lot in the middle of the night, ironically mostly after Matt had hung up the Daredevil suit. Some nights stood out, like the one where Foggy came to the door, his second marriage having officially gone up in flames, asking to borrow their couch until he could find somewhere else-though thankfully Jack had not woken up the night, months later, that Matt and Karen had finally taken him off that couch and into their bed. Or the one where Karen had received the call she’d always known would come one day, and they’d all tried to console her best they could, even though little Jack had had no idea what was going on.
“Throwing the fish out again, dad? Uncle Foggy is going to be mad this time. He had plans for those fish. He told me.”
“I didn’t throw all of it out,” Matt protested, because he hadn’t. Then he thought of how he should react in this situation as a father, and asked, “and what you are doing up? It’s not morning yet. I can tell.”
“I heard you,” he said. “I don’t meant I heard you leave the apartment. I just heard you get up, that’s all. And I thought…I don’t know, I just got scared.”
He sounded more embarrassed than anything else, which Matt felt was worse even than him still being scared. “Hey,” he said, “it’s okay to get scared sometimes. I remember when I was your age, I used to wake up in the night scared sometimes.”
“Yeah, but grandad was a boxer who fought at night, right? And, I mean…”
Matt carefully kept himself from reacting externally to those words, saying instead, “Sometimes I woke up when my dad was home and sleeping soundly, and I still got scared. Especially after my accident, but even before, a little.”
“And afterwards, you could always hear him sleeping, right?” Jack asked, and his voice sounded brighter.
“That’s right,” said Matt. “What time is it, by the way? I couldn’t get the clock to tell me without waking your mother and Foggy.”
“It’s nearly five. Can we…can we just sit for a little while?”
Probably neither of them were going to fall asleep immediately anyway, and they didn’t have anything scheduled that Saturday until tea with Maggie in the afternoon. So Matt said, “All right, Jack. Just for half an hour. And you will need to tell me the truth about the time.”
“I know,” Jack said, and headed for the couch.
Matt went to join him, but then he heard a whisper in the air outside, and said, “I think it’s starting to snow.” He went to the window and drew the curtain open. “You want to tell me what it looks like?”
“It’s beautiful, dad,” Jack told him. “The flakes are pretty small right now, but there are a lot of them. “You can see them against the windows of the building next to ours. Is there anyone out in the streets right now?”
Matt listened as he saw down next to his son, put an arm around him as he leaned in. “No one just below us,” he answered. Then he heard a meow. “Well, except the stray cat.”
“There’s a cat out there in the cold?” Jack asked, dismayed. “Can’t she find someplace warm?”
“She’s looking hard. She just hit the street.” He spent the next few minutes telling Jack where the cat was, but she was near the edge of his range, and then she went out of it. When he said that, his son promptly began barraging him with questions about how far away he could hear. It had been a few months, now, since they’d told Jack about the senses, and he still asked about a lot of things.
They had not yet told him that his father had once been the Daredevil that his friends’ parents sometimes still talked about. That would wait until he was older, though Matt wasn’t sure how he would do it even then. Though at least they could know he’d keep the secret. He’d shown himself to be good at keeping them from the time he realized that Uncle Foggy wasn’t sleeping on the couch anymore, and they’d had to ask he not say he was sharing the bed now, telling him people would fuss over that. Jack had thought it silly of them to care if three people slept in a bed that was big enough for all of them, but he’d forgotten about that when Foggy had explained that he was safeguarding privileged information, and that meant he was like a lawyer now.
At first they both tried to keep their voices down, but Jack forgot as time went on. The first time, he quieted down when Matt reminded him, and Foggy, and Karen remained asleep, but the second time, he heard Karen stir before he could, and sighed, “You woke your mother up, and she’s going to wake Foggy now.”
When the two people in question emerged in their bathrobes two minutes later, Jack gave out a sheepish, “Sorry I woke you.”
“Is that what you’re sorry for?” Foggy asked, his tone teasing. “Looks more to me like you should be sorry you held a hugging party and didn’t invite us. But I think that’s your dad’s fault; it was his job to wake us up.”
“I’m sorry, then,” said Matt, and he couldn’t stop himself from smiling, even more so when his wife and their lover settled onto the couch on either side of them. Foggy was on Matt’s, and he was big and warm and smelled of pine. “You’re still going back to bed in ten minutes,” he was sure to add. “You two, too. We may have a quiet weekend, but we’ve got a very busy week coming up, remember. Five cases to deal with, and don’t you have a Christmas piece to submit, Karen?” She’d taken to doing freelance writing during her pregnancy, and she still did a little, in between her investigative work.
“Plus Christmas shopping,” Foggy added. “Don’t forget about that. We’ll actually be able to do it, once the money from Velma Baker’s settlement comes through.”
“What are we going to get, Uncle Foggy?” Jack asked, now excited. “Can we get the new Star Wars?”
The final ten minutes of their impromptu cuddle party were spent throwing around gift ideas. Foggy and Karen were both full of them. Not all of which they would be able to afford, and Jack knew that, but he just laughed, and maybe let himself dream a little.
Matt remembered, now, what he had dreamed of at that age. It amazed him how much of those dreams had come true. He had his mother, and he had the legal career he’d truly wanted, had been able to take down the people who menaced his city by more than one method, and he had a family sitting here with him at home. He’d suffered some terrible losses on the way, and a few things had definitely happened differently than he would have thought, but after all that, here he sat, Matthew Murdock, happier and more loved than he’d once thought he could be.
“Okay, that’s it, Jack,” Karen said. “Back to bed with you. If you stay there until seven, there should be scrambled eggs with a lot of butter when you get up.” She said this last part a little pointedly at the men, since they were the ones who would end up making them. She probably wanted them herself.
The promise of scrambled eggs kept Jack from protesting, but as he got up, he said, “Okay, okay, but you should know, there’s going to be less fish. Dad threw some of it out.”
“Oh, my goodness, Matt, I’m so wounded,” Foggy said, loudly thumping a hand against his chest. “First you don’t invite me to your hugging party, and now this.”
“I didn’t throw all of it out,” Matt repeated his protest as the three of them followed Jack back to bed.