Chapter Text
**
It was hot, so Matt stood under the shade of Columbia University’s oldest tree, an enormous Sycamore in front of the Mathematics building near Low Plaza. He felt like a kid wearing picture-day clothes. He hated the stiff collars and cuffs of his dress shirts, but he was gonna have to get used to them. At the courthouse, later, he’d put on the strangulating tie he had rolled up in his suit jacket. Foggy was coming to help him get to Foley Square for his summer clerkship. Matt had studied a Braille map, but this would be his first time navigating the route. They were in for a 45-minute subway ride.
He touched his watch to check the time and then angled his body toward the trunk of the tree, smiling a little as leaf shadows delicately embroidered the sunheat above him; it was a beautiful sensation. He’d give anything to be able to see the sky one more time, sure, but his world was still vivid in its own way. He smelled the spice of the soil beneath the tree. That scent was called ‘geosmin’. Inside it, another scent, alive with streptomyces, added to the spice. Was he seriously enjoying the aroma of bacteria?
Yes. Yes, he was.
Stick—gaslighting asshole that he was—had, nonetheless, taught Matt how to go deep, to interpret—and thereby appreciate—his world. For better or worse, he’d weaponized Matt’s “brokenness” before deciding to bail. A car horn honked nearby. Matt didn’t hear it. Instead, he felt a unique combination of electrical currents, magnetic pulses, and mechanical vibrations that burst like soft fireworks against his left cheek. He knew it was a sound because of its velocity and the way it echoed in his sinuses.
A group of people walked by in front of him, syncopating the air with their heartbeats and footsteps. Their VOCs were sharp and multilayered: perfume, cologne, shampoo, hair gel, deodorant, laundry detergent, hand lotion…. Matt much preferred plain old-fashioned human stink. He’d take B.O., garlic breath, sweat, skin oils and even menstrual blood over all the synthetic shit that burned the grain of his nose. He held his breath for a moment and turned his face away like he’d been doing since he was nine years old. That’s when his sensory landscape changed from “normal” to “nuanced” —very, very nuanced.
Technically, he was both blind and deaf, and while he did walk around in silent darkness (and really missed hearing the sound of a well-hit home run at Yankee Stadium…not to mention Bruce Springsteen belting out the chorus of ‘Born to Run’), he could still listen to the world in his own way. He also possessed a kind of tactile echolocation that turned the air into a tapestry that was arguably just as vivid as sight, if not more so.
Problems arose, however, when he wanted to stop being a human spider web, resonating with every single vibration that erupted around him. While he could distinguish the difference between someone saying “hello” and a gale of laughter, it took concentration to interpret layers of sound. No amount of meditating would be enough, Stick decided. The mind-body connection only went so far. “It’s your deafness—and your crybaby emotions—that are gonna get you killed. I can’t train you anymore.”
On a normal day, it was true that two people, speaking at once, created an incomprehensible shape-language that he couldn’t decipher. And if he happened to also catch a whiff of cooking meat at the same time, his world momentarily consisted of nothing but hot dogs for a while.
“Hey, Matty.”
Ah, Foggy had arrived and was speaking to him, placing words near his ear, which was such a Hearing Guy thing to do. Matt didn’t hear with his ears. Listening was a full-body experience. A touch on his arm oriented his attention away from the sidewalk and the sycamore tree, and Foggy etched himself against Matt’s skin. His warmth was different from the sun. His pulses were familiar. Heart rate was up. Breathing was gusty. Clearly, he’d eaten a meatball sub for lunch.
“Hey, Foggy,” Matt said out loud, liking the way his own voice vibrations mixed with Foggy’s. The human body was constantly in motion. It quaked and quivered and hummed even when a person was standing supposedly ‘still’. People had ‘movement ions’. The brain and nerves communicated using electrical impulses called ‘action potentials’. If Matt dug deep enough, he could sense these. And get lost in them.
Several people cut through the walkway behind Foggy, bringing a tangle of words and another wave of mingled fragrances. Foggy touched his wrist, so Matt lifted his hand.
“Ready?” Foggy signed against his palm. This form of ASL was called ‘Pro-tactile’, and it was what they used to talk when they weren’t at home. In the cultivated stillness of their off-campus apartment, Foggy could simply speak, but there were far too many conflicting vibrations out here on the street.
“Yeah,” Matt said, switching his cane from one hand to the other so he could take Foggy’s guide-arm, something else he often did in public. Could he navigate without his cane? Yeah, but it took more focus than he wanted to expend right now. He needed to conserve his energy.
“I’ve got taxi money. Wanna cab it?” Foggy signed.
“I need to learn the route.”
“You can do that next time. Let’s splurge. You look wiped already.”
“And here I was trying to look like a go-getter ready to take SDNY by storm.”
“You will. After you take your migraine meds.”
“Fine.”
“Fine? I’m gonna ferry you like royalty to Lower Manhattan and all I get is fine ?”
“What I mean to say is thank you, Foggy.”
Speaking wasn’t difficult for Matt; it had long since stopped being strange. In fact, he liked the way his voice pushed back against the crowded air, asserting a small amount of control over the space around him.
It took several long minutes for Foggy to hail a cab. Matt just waited.
“Take a pill?”
Foggy spoke without signing once they were in the backseat of the taxi. His voice misted in the way that meant he was speaking quietly. The word ‘pill’ had the trajectory of a question.
“I don’t need one. I’m okay.”
Foggy sighed. The cab smelled like aged vinyl, three different brands of cigarettes, an artificial pine tree, fish curry, and more. God, so much more. Matt stopped himself from cataloging everything. If he let himself, he’d go insane noticing the pheromones of dust mites or whatever the hell.
Foggy gave the back of his neck a squeeze before handing him a small plastic bottle. Pain meds. The words “just chill” bloomed near his ear. Matt unscrewed the cap of the bottle and dry-swallowed a pill, shuddering against its bitter taste. He experienced flavors in a system-wide way; one bite of a perfectly ripe peach could be a religious experience, yet the grassiness of organic milk might make him gag.
OK? Foggy spelled into his hand.
“I’m fine,” Matt said, then contradicted himself by starting to rock a little. In his head, he heard Stick calling him weak for stemming. Foggy’s hand moved from the back of his neck to his shoulder, starting a massage. Deep pressure sometimes helped ground him, so he didn’t go down to the dust-mite level of taxi cabs. Matt inhaled to the count of eight, strangely comforted by Foggy’s meatball breath, grateful when Foggy’s hands gave his upper arms a hard squeeze.
“Thanks.”
He was ready to meet Judge Elena Sandoval, a sharp-minded civil rights heavyweight with a reputation for grilling her clerks as hard as she grilled the government. She grew up in the Bronx and was the daughter of Mexican immigrants. She’d clawed her way up from a working-class background. She didn’t tolerate laziness, privilege, or shortcuts, and Matt respected that. Landing a clerkship in her chambers wasn’t just an honor; it was proof that someone like him belonged in the fight.
But the level of concentration today would take (and tomorrow, and the next day…). That was gonna be huge. Matt knew from experience that he’d enter a flow state, adrenaline would kick in. His senses would work exquisitely well together. He’d “see” and “hear” like the most gifted of savants and extract knowledge from places no one else could. Then, when it was all over, he’d crash. Hard. He’d go from feeling pulse rates and smelling moods, to needing help buckling his seatbelt. Foggy was going to have to pour him into bed and cover him with a weighted blanket later. It’d get better. He’d acclimate. But this first week would be brutal.
None of this was new for Foggy. They’d been living together as more than roommates for almost a year now. Sure, Foggy was co-dependent as hell, and Matt matched that dysfunction perfectly by having intense needs, but at least they were both equally afraid of abandonment, so that made it fair, right?
The cab lurched, took a right turn, then slowed way down. The competing scents of food trucks marked the entrance to the courthouse, and for a moment, Matt’s awareness got completely smothered by a patchwork quilt of spices from what had to be—judging from the cumin to cayenne ratio— ‘Guac and Roll’. Foggy started pulling on his arm because, oh right, they needed to get out of the taxi. The heat of the sun fell tightly over him before a westerly breeze loosened it up some. The stone steps of the courthouse formed against him like a finely crafted sculpture. Not every building ‘gave back’ in this way, but a Progressive Era courthouse in Manhattan, even one dwarfed by skyscrapers, was something to appreciate.
Foggy handed him his cane, and Matt took hold of his arm. Soon, they were heading up the steps. Inside, Matt snapped into high gear, opening himself, becoming a canvas upon which masterpieces formed. He got the contours of every hallway, every room. People became palpable. Sounds popped and tapped against him like softly shot arrows, rubber darts. Some of them bloomed, unfurling, flower-like. He deciphered them all. Holding a seamless conversation with Leroy, the security guard, he masqueraded as only blind. At this point in his life, no one but Foggy knew that his ears didn’t work. He was passing beautifully.
Then he stepped through the metal detector and had to fight to stay upright because a pulsing, invasive pressure nearly sent him to his knees. The world went fluid around him. If he were the superhero Stick wanted him to be, this kind of thing would be his kryptonite. But he wasn’t. And some days—especially now—he was relieved by that. Stick had walked away because Matt was too much of a risk. That had cut him to the quick once, but now it felt like freedom. He wasn’t trying to save the world. He was just trying to get through his day. Who the hell had the energy—or the massive ego—required to moonlight as a masked vigilante anyway? He managed one step, two, then felt Foggy grip his arm. The pressure lifted, and he took a breath.
Then he had to rely entirely on Foggy’s guide-arm for the next few minutes as the walls (along with everything else) slowly reformed around him. Foggy said something when they were alone in an elevator that Matt didn’t catch because he was fumbling with his tie, then he felt a hand on his cheek.
“There’s probably a camera,” he murmured.
“So? You’re allowed to be my boyfriend,” Foggy signed under Matt’s palm, one-handed.
“It’s not professional—”
“To need a minute? What happened back there?”
“Nothing.”
“Right. I believe you.”
Foggy took over fixing Matt’s tie, and, since he wasn’t finished by the time the door opened, Matt got tugged along by the neck for a few steps like a dog on a leash.
“Jesus. Stop,” Matt said just before the knot tightened sharply. He coughed, stepped back, and collided with a plastic Ficus that nearly fell over.
Foggy’s laughter felt like moth wings, and he must have been ticklish because, reluctantly, he smiled.