Ladies And Gentlemen, Listen Up Please: Matt (22/29)
Title: Ladies And Gentlemen, Listen Up Please: Matt (22/29)
Pairing: Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray, Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce, minor Artie Abrams/Tina Cohen-Chang
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: AU
Summary: “Sometimes, people are born a little different.”
Sometimes, Matt Rutherford just likes to walk. It sums up his personality pretty well: that of a simple dude, generally speaking. He doesn’t need a lot by way of friends, family, or possessions. He doesn’t obsess over TV, or put energy into CD collections, or place bets on card games. He is eighteen years old, and he just…likes to walk.
There’s something about New York that he has always liked-something most people don’t necessarily see. People come to New York for a huge variety of reasons: jobs,boredom, basic street cred. It’s all legit enough, but nothing Matt’s too interested in.
It sounds lame, but Matt prefers the art of the city.
The architecture, the skyline, even the people themselves are priceless. As he moves seamlessly through the crowds, twisting his body this way and that to avoid rogue elbows and haphazardly-swung backpacks, he tilts his head back, eyes lingering on each tier of the buildings he passes. It fills him with a strange sense of accomplishment, as though-despite having nothing to do with the design, construction, or even the career paths going on inside-he is somehow indirectly responsible for each façade and window pane.
Stupid, maybe, but he prefers to take the little pleasures in life. It’s a hell of a lot better than other guys his age, who spend their time kicking around clubs, trashing what little cash burns in their pockets on beer and blow.
Trapped between the notion of chatting up a chick who might-well be a prostitute (in this part of town, it can be hard to judge) and the possibility of being called a lame douche by some asshole who just got done doing exactly that, Matt has no problem taking the insult hit.
Work was easy tonight-it’s always easy; he putters around in a combo hardcover/vinyl shop, straightening signs and alphabetizing whatever gets mucked up by preteens toting Mom’s credit card-and his stomach is pleasantly full of cheesy pizza goodness.
Everything feels pretty damn okay.
Work was easy, but not exactly fulfilling in the strongest sense. He probably should have gone to college; he likes reading, and he’s good at math, and he can even say, with some unsteadiness, that he’s got a vague Life Plan in mind. Not for this exact moment, maybe (there’s just that minor detail of cash flow standing in the way), but someday. He thinks that, somewhere down the line, he would make a damn good accountant; sure, it’s not high-octane in the least, but it’s a valid career path. He would be helping people. He likes that idea.
Someday, he tells himself, hoisting the collar of his jacket up against the light evening chill. Someday, he’ll go out there and do something real.
He’s a simple guy. He doesn’t need big dreams, or big cars, or a big life. Just something to make him happy, keep him grounded. When you live on your own, possessing more skill than preference, that’s the best you can ask for.
Hands in his pockets, eyes tilted skyward, he picks up the pace a little. This isn’t the greatest of neighborhoods, and though Matt is a decently-built guy (broad shoulders, good height, and he has to be honest: in an area as fine as this, being black really doesn’t hurt), he figures it isn’t necessary to press his luck. His mother and father don’t ask for much by way of communication, being less than exemplary parental figures in just about every way, but even they would be a little miffed if their only son got himself shanked on a city street corner.
The pavement is pleasantly solid beneath his Reeboks, the streetlights sharp against his eyes. Home is still a few blocks away, but if he cuts through a construction site which will someday, wonder of wonders, bear yet another McDonalds, he can narrow the trek.
Normally, he wouldn’t bother, half the fun being in the walk anyway, but it’s getting brisk and a couple of jerkoffs keep shouting obscenities behind him. That’s never a good sign. The last time he ignored something like that, he wound up limping home with one less shoe than he’d left the apartment with that morning.
Bending his head, he speeds up, the swish of his jacket rebounding solidly off of perked ears. Footsteps echo twenty or so feet back; not close enough to spark genuine concern, not yet. It’s been a good few weeks, with no one trying to snatch the shirt off his back or the wallet out of his pocket. He’s not stupid enough to let his guard down, but it’s not like being senselessly nervous makes anybody happy either. Just a few more steps into the construction site, and he’ll be just fine.
In a rare display of allegedly-maternal affection, his mother once questioned his desire to leave their comfortable, albeit not quite glorious, suburban lifestyle in favor of an urban sprawl that seemed too large and too violent to suit her baby boy. He remembers all too well the way she lifted an eyebrow at his half-packed suitcase, complete with train ticket, and bit her lip.
“Matthew. New York? Really?”
He only shrugged, uncertain as to whether or not she actually wanted an answer. A woman who has rarely met a drink she didn’t like, Jessica Rutherford was (is, he reminds himself halfheartedly, knowing as he does that it doesn’t matter; he’ll probably never see her again anyway) her own unique brand of stubborn. A my-way-or-my-belt childhood rearing method has long cemented Matt’s disinterest in sharing his thoughts with the woman responsible for his birth.
“The ghetto is no place for a son of mine,” he recalls her warning through pursed lips. “Smack and strip clubs are all you’ll find in a land like that, mark my words.”
And mark them he had-as just another reason to go.
He would never in a million years stoop to admitting his mother had a point that afternoon, but sometimes he can’t resist flashing back on her petty advice. New York is not in the remotest sense the den of sin and inequity conceptualized by a woman whose own list of moral indiscretions strains the most compassionate benefit-of-the-doubt proponents, it’s true. Neither, however, is it the charming, bustling burg present in so many Christmas movies. It straddles that line between light and dark, as all cities inevitably will, and Matt respects that.
Respects it, and in some cases, fears it as the situation beckons.
He does everything in his power to keep his head down and his nose clean and all of those other weird catchphrases his grandmother used to adore. He goes to work. He comes home. He washes his dishes, does his laundry, and tosses a football around while debating buying a vacuum cleaner someday. He reads. He listens to his neighbors shout and bicker while dogs yip and babies cry. He is, for all intents and purposes, loitering in the middle-ground of his life.
Sometimes, it feels like purgatory. Sometimes, he feels like Switzerland. Ever neutral, ever floating. He wonders if Chicago would’ve been easier to navigate where building a real future is concerned. Or maybe Canada. He hears good things about the French language.
Someday, he reminds himself again. Someday, he’ll move on. For now, he can foot his rent without problem, and he sleeps in on Sundays, and there is the magnificent skyline to look forward to each morning. He loves the skyline.
No reason to push for more. Not now.
A bottle smashes behind him, wrenching his mind back to the present so forcefully, his hands tremble a little in agitated response.
The keening laughter of some punk (Matt imagines him in a scuffed leather jacket and decimated Levis, though the odds of such a character in this part of town are pretty shoddy; this is reality, not some half-baked West Side Story interlude) sends a chill straight down the back of his t-shirt.
Home sounds like a great idea right about now.
He turns a corner and is met with the familiar chain-link fence. Leaping with admirable grace (the primary reason he toted a couple of varsity letters in high school; no big deal, just something to do), he hooks his fingers in and hauls himself up and over, feet scrabbling against rattling metal.
Dropping to the ground on the other side, he stays in a crouch for a long, heart-slamming moment, listening. If the silence prevails, he has nothing to worry about. He can walk home at a leisurely pace, dreaming up constellations in a light-polluted sky, humming under his breath the whole way. If the silence prevails, the night will be fine.
Footfalls scuff and skid on the other side of the fence. Matt chews the inside of his cheek, heart pounding against his ribs.
So much for silence.
The head start he’s got isn’t much, but it’s better than loitering with a come-hither grin. Jolting upright, he sprints off into the shadows, praying that they won’t track him this time. The site is crowded with equipment and raw materials, unlit as far as he can see. He should be safe. If he can just run a bit faster, a bit farther-
It’s times like these he sort of wishes he could stand living with his parents.
He can hear them back there, muffled whoops and banging sounds that he assumes is the result of one asshole pushing another into a stack of pipes. They sound drunk, and happy, and neither of those things bode extremely well from where he’s standing. Drunk on some people translates to sloppy, but not gangs like these. For this breed of young man, intoxication is a way of life. Every run-in he’s ever had with them has been under circumstances just like this one.
He can’t figure out why they always seem to harass him. He doesn’t exactly put energy into appearing threatening. Physically, he looks like he can take care of himself, but he doesn’t exude vibes-he thinks-of violence. He just likes being left alone.
Which is, apparently, a crime around here.
It’s hard to run when you can’t see where you’re going, and no matter how many times he’s swung through here, he wouldn’t dare put money on the maze of trucks and two-by-fours staying put in any one location. He tries to feel each step out ahead of time without losing much speed in the process, which is kind of ludicrous-but really, if he goes plummeting down a yawning gap in the ground, it isn’t going to help his case. His best hope is to be as careful as possible and to keep praying the whole damn while.
He really has to find a better way home on late nights.
It’s pretty lucky, he thinks as he slinks around a corner, eyes fixed firmly ahead, that he’s always been good at silence. It isn’t that he’s overly shy or anything, he just…doesn’t care to run his mouth all the damn time. Too many people-his obnoxious pursuers included-seem to feel validated only while speaking, like their relevance on earth is directly proportional to how many bad jokes and little white lies they tell. He doesn’t get that. It’s not that he can’t speak, or that he won’t. He just doesn’t see a real purpose to doing so unless he’s got something to say.
Silence where speech is concerned turns out to be really helpful when the people who want to beat your ass and steal your sneakers (he’s not sure why; it’s not like he’s wearing anything particularly fashionable or expensive. They just really seem to like shoes.); silence in step is ten times better. If there’s one thing Matt Rutherford takes pride in, it’s his ninja-like grace. Moving smoothly and stealthily in high school always served him well during the football and basketball seasons, making him, if never quite a heroic leader, at least a valuable asset. Moving smoothly and stealthily in the real world serves him all the more marvelously: it keeps him alive.
He can already hear their hollers petering off into the night; thank God, they’re losing interest. Shaking his head, he creeps quickly through the shadows, adrenaline continuing to skate through his veins at an uncomfortable pace. Running sucks-it completely harshes the mellow he pointedly crafts every day, leaving his chest tight and his legs heavy. It makes him feel kind of cowardly too, to a point, but no matter how much the running drives him insane, fighting is always worse.
He supposes some men are made for battle, but that’s never appealed much to him. Fighting, like talking, feels pointless. And so, as sweaty and weak as it makes him feel, he runs.
At least he doesn’t have to anymore tonight, he reasons. The odds of them finding him now are low, since they so clearly are distracted by their own inanity and the hazardous materials strewn throughout the construction site. He’s far enough away to be secure now, entitled to a steady stroll with his eyes tilted skyward. A clean getaway-quick, simple. Not such a bad night.
“Get the fuck out of the way!”
Or not. Sighing, Matt presses a palm against his forehead and tries to decide exactly how worth it looking around will be. Sure, if he gets shot because he’s too annoyed with himself to pay attention, it would really suck, but on the other hand…
Can he be blamed for being irritated? Sure, okay, it’s New York, but who walks into two separate gangs in five minutes?
“Nimrod! Move your fucking ass!” a guy sporting a rumpled mohawk gripes, shouldering him sideways and making a jerking motion towards the ground with both hands. Gang jerkoff or not, Matt is two seconds from calling the asshole out-
Until he sees the flames engulfing broad palms. That changes the game a little.
It’s not like he’s never heard of folks like this; everyone has. These people-mutants, or heroes, or vigilantes, depending on who you listen to-are the worst-kept secret in America. Probably the world at large, actually.
Hearing isn’t quite the same as seeing, though, and when an ape of a dark-haired, bulldog-faced guy shimmers for a second and then vanishes completely, all the stories in the world couldn’t stop Matt from jerking backwards and gaping.
There are two sides to this madness, he notices now. To his left stand an array of men in their late twenties, all sporting identical uniforms and tensed jaws; to his right are a ragtag gang of young people, men and women about his own age. It’s definitely weird-more than just typical city-weird. He thinks he might prefer the shoe-obsessed assholes from before.
Certainly, standing in the middle of whatever this is seems like the least attractive idea on the planet. He moves blindly, completely bereft of the grace from earlier, stumbling pathetically backwards into the young kids’ territory like a newborn colt. A pretty Asian girl fires him a bold glare, nudging him fairly gently to one side before hurling what looks suspiciously like a bolt of purple lightning from her fingertips.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” a bespectacled young man in a wheelchair comments wearily, “but now might not be the best time to be…y’know. Here.”
He, at least, seems nice and normal-right until Matt spots three identical copies, right down to the scratches on the wheel rims, scattered nearby. He staggers away, bumping directly into a large, dark lion. Which-so much better, clearly, than a patrol of paraplegic nerds.
How does he get into this shit?
Thankfully, the lion doesn’t roar-he thinks he would just about piss his pants if it did-but chooses to give him what looks bizarrely like a withering head shake before bounding off to stand guardedly between a beautiful blonde woman and a man wearing a particularly muddy uniform.
He’s not sure how he can tell, but Matt is instantly sure that the uniform-and all of the men sporting them-is bad news. The other people, the ones who keep shouting for him to get out of the way, they seem worn out, and bloody, and a little insane.
All of that aside, they seem decidedly less likely to murder him in cold blood for stepping into this ill-conceived war scene. If side-picking becomes necessity, he’s going with the pissy lion and Fire Boy.
A girl with brown hair and smudged cheeks catches his eye, and for a moment, time feels frozen. She’s beautiful, in a slightly surprising way, and tiny, but clearly stronger than he would ever like to mess with. Her gaze is steady and warm, and he feels utterly certain that this side is the right one.
“Down!” a gruff African-American woman barks, pushing him aside just in time to avoid taking a long, thin blade in the chest.
Stumbling, Matt turns his eyes back towards the uniformed side of the battlefield just in time to watch one gray-eyed man pluck a second knife from the skin of his forearm and chuck it towards the leggy blonde.
Now the lion roars, a horrible, vengeful sound that wells up from deep within its belly as it leaps to beat the blade by bare seconds. Matt resists the urge to clamp both hands over his ears as the world around him explodes into action. Powers surge from both sides, volatile and much louder than he expects. Flames collide with flames, plant tendrils snaking up to wrap around tender ankles, and for no reason at all, one of the uniforms turns on his heel and suddenly grasps one of his fellows by the throat.
Forget the adrenaline rush from running; his body can’t take this. He’s humming all over, his fingertips trembling, his knees locked. This is insane, a true firefight, something he never wanted to witness-and, honestly, never saw a reason why he should expect to. This stuff doesn’t just happen, not to people like him. He’s quiet, and simple, and enjoys walks. He should not be watching a girl several inches shorter than himself heft a concrete block like a pillow and whip it in the direction of a grown man.This is ridiculous.
But very real, he thinks, more than a little alarmed. He can smell the acrid stench of singed arm hair from here, where the graceful Asian boy failed to twirl clear of a red-hot wave of energy. He can see the air ripple as a sturdy-set black kid pulls the empty space around him tight like a blanket around his shoulders, just in time to rebound a blast of frigid wind back on the man who has blown it.
All too clearly, he can hear the screams and curses from both sides as people drop to their knees and climb, less steady than before, back up again.
It’s too damn much, and he just wishes it all would stop.
And then, just like that-
“The fuck is this shit?” Mohawk snaps, twitching his wrist to no avail. Beside him, a huge, gangly kid falls from two feet up, having just popped out of nowhere. Where the lion once stood is a gorgeous, angry Latina in tight clothes, nursing a bleeding arm.
“I don’t understand,” the boy in glasses mumbles-just one of him now, Matt observes as the Asian girl comes to grasp the handles of his chair reassuringly. “Why can’t I replicate?”
“I’ve got nothin’ too,” the black girl grunts, flexing her arms uneasily. “The hell?”
Across the way, the uniforms are wearing similar expressions of bewilderment. Scowls of concern give way quickly enough to what looks strangely like fear; one points his finger angrily at the petite brunette.
“Don’t think this ends here. He’ll find you. He’ll wear you all down. Rayne always gets what he wants.”
Matt half-expects the girl to retaliate with a tried-and-true cliché, but she only tightens her jaw and smiles thinly. The uniforms backpedal, and all Matt can think is, That’s it?
“Explain,” the lion-cum-Latina snarls, mirroring the angry man’s pointing gesture with a very different finger. “Berry. Now.”
“We appear to have located our neutralizing force,” the girl called Berry replies, eyeing Matt warily. “Hello.”
“Yo,” Matt manages shakily, kicking himself when the black girl’s eyebrows shoot up.
“This street-ass punk?”
“I’m from Rhode Island,” he replies, annoyed despite himself. Mohawk barks out a laugh.
“Great. Can we be done pickin’ up scraps from here, there, and everywhere now? We’re runnin’ out of room for these fuckers.”
“Kurt?” Berry calls over her shoulder, ignoring him. “Thoughts?”
A skinny boy in tight jeans crawls out from beneath a low scaffolding, brushing himself off daintily. “He’ll be useful. Especially if he can ever figure out how to shut them up while keeping us at full strength. Muting the bad guys can only help.”
“I agree wholeheartedly.” She smiles, a real smile this time, stunning and a little prideful. Matt isn’t sure he likes it.
“I don’t understand…” He trails off, looking around for sympathy. The Asian kid gives him a calm nod, arms crossed over his chest. He’s not sure why that should make him feel better, but it sort of does.
“Sure as hell beats me following you losers around, buildin’ shields and shit,” the sturdy young man sneers. The teleporter elbows him.
“Shut up, Azimo, we don’t ask you for much.”
“Just my precious time, Frankenteen,” the man growls back. “Not to mention my boy Karofsky’s. We got shit to do that don’t involve your ugly mugs.”
The dog-faced kid claps him on the shoulder, silent. The Latina rolls her eyes.
“You bitches done whining? I want food. And some healin’, if you get my drift, babe.” She shoots a meaningful look at the blonde, who wraps an arm around her waist without missing a beat.
“You mean sex?”
“That too.”
“I think this is good,” the brunette says slowly, circling him like a vulture in a sweater-vest. Uneasy, Matt swivels with her, eyes wide.
“Yes. This is very good. Certainly, we must give him time to adjust to his gift, and it might be wise for the rest of us to take pains to learn new strategies for battle in case that proves especially difficult, but…”
“New strategies like what?” the Asian girl asks curiously. Mohawk smirks.
“Streetfighting would be the bomb.”
“Martial arts seem prudent,” the brunette agrees mildly. “And perhaps weapons training. We shouldn’t be relying on brute power alone, that’s sloppy and a touch arrogant. After all, Rayne expects that…”
Matt shakes his head, overwhelmed. Weapons? Rayne? Battle? Too many words, too many thoughts cycle through his brain, stepping on one another until all he can say is, “What. Just. What?”
The Asian guy smiles, clapping him on the shoulder. “We’ll explain on the way.”
Somehow, Matt gets the feeling his life just became a whole lot less simple.
Pairing: Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray, Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce, minor Artie Abrams/Tina Cohen-Chang
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: AU
Summary: “Sometimes, people are born a little different.”
Sometimes, Matt Rutherford just likes to walk. It sums up his personality pretty well: that of a simple dude, generally speaking. He doesn’t need a lot by way of friends, family, or possessions. He doesn’t obsess over TV, or put energy into CD collections, or place bets on card games. He is eighteen years old, and he just…likes to walk.
There’s something about New York that he has always liked-something most people don’t necessarily see. People come to New York for a huge variety of reasons: jobs,boredom, basic street cred. It’s all legit enough, but nothing Matt’s too interested in.
It sounds lame, but Matt prefers the art of the city.
The architecture, the skyline, even the people themselves are priceless. As he moves seamlessly through the crowds, twisting his body this way and that to avoid rogue elbows and haphazardly-swung backpacks, he tilts his head back, eyes lingering on each tier of the buildings he passes. It fills him with a strange sense of accomplishment, as though-despite having nothing to do with the design, construction, or even the career paths going on inside-he is somehow indirectly responsible for each façade and window pane.
Stupid, maybe, but he prefers to take the little pleasures in life. It’s a hell of a lot better than other guys his age, who spend their time kicking around clubs, trashing what little cash burns in their pockets on beer and blow.
Trapped between the notion of chatting up a chick who might-well be a prostitute (in this part of town, it can be hard to judge) and the possibility of being called a lame douche by some asshole who just got done doing exactly that, Matt has no problem taking the insult hit.
Work was easy tonight-it’s always easy; he putters around in a combo hardcover/vinyl shop, straightening signs and alphabetizing whatever gets mucked up by preteens toting Mom’s credit card-and his stomach is pleasantly full of cheesy pizza goodness.
Everything feels pretty damn okay.
Work was easy, but not exactly fulfilling in the strongest sense. He probably should have gone to college; he likes reading, and he’s good at math, and he can even say, with some unsteadiness, that he’s got a vague Life Plan in mind. Not for this exact moment, maybe (there’s just that minor detail of cash flow standing in the way), but someday. He thinks that, somewhere down the line, he would make a damn good accountant; sure, it’s not high-octane in the least, but it’s a valid career path. He would be helping people. He likes that idea.
Someday, he tells himself, hoisting the collar of his jacket up against the light evening chill. Someday, he’ll go out there and do something real.
He’s a simple guy. He doesn’t need big dreams, or big cars, or a big life. Just something to make him happy, keep him grounded. When you live on your own, possessing more skill than preference, that’s the best you can ask for.
Hands in his pockets, eyes tilted skyward, he picks up the pace a little. This isn’t the greatest of neighborhoods, and though Matt is a decently-built guy (broad shoulders, good height, and he has to be honest: in an area as fine as this, being black really doesn’t hurt), he figures it isn’t necessary to press his luck. His mother and father don’t ask for much by way of communication, being less than exemplary parental figures in just about every way, but even they would be a little miffed if their only son got himself shanked on a city street corner.
The pavement is pleasantly solid beneath his Reeboks, the streetlights sharp against his eyes. Home is still a few blocks away, but if he cuts through a construction site which will someday, wonder of wonders, bear yet another McDonalds, he can narrow the trek.
Normally, he wouldn’t bother, half the fun being in the walk anyway, but it’s getting brisk and a couple of jerkoffs keep shouting obscenities behind him. That’s never a good sign. The last time he ignored something like that, he wound up limping home with one less shoe than he’d left the apartment with that morning.
Bending his head, he speeds up, the swish of his jacket rebounding solidly off of perked ears. Footsteps echo twenty or so feet back; not close enough to spark genuine concern, not yet. It’s been a good few weeks, with no one trying to snatch the shirt off his back or the wallet out of his pocket. He’s not stupid enough to let his guard down, but it’s not like being senselessly nervous makes anybody happy either. Just a few more steps into the construction site, and he’ll be just fine.
In a rare display of allegedly-maternal affection, his mother once questioned his desire to leave their comfortable, albeit not quite glorious, suburban lifestyle in favor of an urban sprawl that seemed too large and too violent to suit her baby boy. He remembers all too well the way she lifted an eyebrow at his half-packed suitcase, complete with train ticket, and bit her lip.
“Matthew. New York? Really?”
He only shrugged, uncertain as to whether or not she actually wanted an answer. A woman who has rarely met a drink she didn’t like, Jessica Rutherford was (is, he reminds himself halfheartedly, knowing as he does that it doesn’t matter; he’ll probably never see her again anyway) her own unique brand of stubborn. A my-way-or-my-belt childhood rearing method has long cemented Matt’s disinterest in sharing his thoughts with the woman responsible for his birth.
“The ghetto is no place for a son of mine,” he recalls her warning through pursed lips. “Smack and strip clubs are all you’ll find in a land like that, mark my words.”
And mark them he had-as just another reason to go.
He would never in a million years stoop to admitting his mother had a point that afternoon, but sometimes he can’t resist flashing back on her petty advice. New York is not in the remotest sense the den of sin and inequity conceptualized by a woman whose own list of moral indiscretions strains the most compassionate benefit-of-the-doubt proponents, it’s true. Neither, however, is it the charming, bustling burg present in so many Christmas movies. It straddles that line between light and dark, as all cities inevitably will, and Matt respects that.
Respects it, and in some cases, fears it as the situation beckons.
He does everything in his power to keep his head down and his nose clean and all of those other weird catchphrases his grandmother used to adore. He goes to work. He comes home. He washes his dishes, does his laundry, and tosses a football around while debating buying a vacuum cleaner someday. He reads. He listens to his neighbors shout and bicker while dogs yip and babies cry. He is, for all intents and purposes, loitering in the middle-ground of his life.
Sometimes, it feels like purgatory. Sometimes, he feels like Switzerland. Ever neutral, ever floating. He wonders if Chicago would’ve been easier to navigate where building a real future is concerned. Or maybe Canada. He hears good things about the French language.
Someday, he reminds himself again. Someday, he’ll move on. For now, he can foot his rent without problem, and he sleeps in on Sundays, and there is the magnificent skyline to look forward to each morning. He loves the skyline.
No reason to push for more. Not now.
A bottle smashes behind him, wrenching his mind back to the present so forcefully, his hands tremble a little in agitated response.
The keening laughter of some punk (Matt imagines him in a scuffed leather jacket and decimated Levis, though the odds of such a character in this part of town are pretty shoddy; this is reality, not some half-baked West Side Story interlude) sends a chill straight down the back of his t-shirt.
Home sounds like a great idea right about now.
He turns a corner and is met with the familiar chain-link fence. Leaping with admirable grace (the primary reason he toted a couple of varsity letters in high school; no big deal, just something to do), he hooks his fingers in and hauls himself up and over, feet scrabbling against rattling metal.
Dropping to the ground on the other side, he stays in a crouch for a long, heart-slamming moment, listening. If the silence prevails, he has nothing to worry about. He can walk home at a leisurely pace, dreaming up constellations in a light-polluted sky, humming under his breath the whole way. If the silence prevails, the night will be fine.
Footfalls scuff and skid on the other side of the fence. Matt chews the inside of his cheek, heart pounding against his ribs.
So much for silence.
The head start he’s got isn’t much, but it’s better than loitering with a come-hither grin. Jolting upright, he sprints off into the shadows, praying that they won’t track him this time. The site is crowded with equipment and raw materials, unlit as far as he can see. He should be safe. If he can just run a bit faster, a bit farther-
It’s times like these he sort of wishes he could stand living with his parents.
He can hear them back there, muffled whoops and banging sounds that he assumes is the result of one asshole pushing another into a stack of pipes. They sound drunk, and happy, and neither of those things bode extremely well from where he’s standing. Drunk on some people translates to sloppy, but not gangs like these. For this breed of young man, intoxication is a way of life. Every run-in he’s ever had with them has been under circumstances just like this one.
He can’t figure out why they always seem to harass him. He doesn’t exactly put energy into appearing threatening. Physically, he looks like he can take care of himself, but he doesn’t exude vibes-he thinks-of violence. He just likes being left alone.
Which is, apparently, a crime around here.
It’s hard to run when you can’t see where you’re going, and no matter how many times he’s swung through here, he wouldn’t dare put money on the maze of trucks and two-by-fours staying put in any one location. He tries to feel each step out ahead of time without losing much speed in the process, which is kind of ludicrous-but really, if he goes plummeting down a yawning gap in the ground, it isn’t going to help his case. His best hope is to be as careful as possible and to keep praying the whole damn while.
He really has to find a better way home on late nights.
It’s pretty lucky, he thinks as he slinks around a corner, eyes fixed firmly ahead, that he’s always been good at silence. It isn’t that he’s overly shy or anything, he just…doesn’t care to run his mouth all the damn time. Too many people-his obnoxious pursuers included-seem to feel validated only while speaking, like their relevance on earth is directly proportional to how many bad jokes and little white lies they tell. He doesn’t get that. It’s not that he can’t speak, or that he won’t. He just doesn’t see a real purpose to doing so unless he’s got something to say.
Silence where speech is concerned turns out to be really helpful when the people who want to beat your ass and steal your sneakers (he’s not sure why; it’s not like he’s wearing anything particularly fashionable or expensive. They just really seem to like shoes.); silence in step is ten times better. If there’s one thing Matt Rutherford takes pride in, it’s his ninja-like grace. Moving smoothly and stealthily in high school always served him well during the football and basketball seasons, making him, if never quite a heroic leader, at least a valuable asset. Moving smoothly and stealthily in the real world serves him all the more marvelously: it keeps him alive.
He can already hear their hollers petering off into the night; thank God, they’re losing interest. Shaking his head, he creeps quickly through the shadows, adrenaline continuing to skate through his veins at an uncomfortable pace. Running sucks-it completely harshes the mellow he pointedly crafts every day, leaving his chest tight and his legs heavy. It makes him feel kind of cowardly too, to a point, but no matter how much the running drives him insane, fighting is always worse.
He supposes some men are made for battle, but that’s never appealed much to him. Fighting, like talking, feels pointless. And so, as sweaty and weak as it makes him feel, he runs.
At least he doesn’t have to anymore tonight, he reasons. The odds of them finding him now are low, since they so clearly are distracted by their own inanity and the hazardous materials strewn throughout the construction site. He’s far enough away to be secure now, entitled to a steady stroll with his eyes tilted skyward. A clean getaway-quick, simple. Not such a bad night.
“Get the fuck out of the way!”
Or not. Sighing, Matt presses a palm against his forehead and tries to decide exactly how worth it looking around will be. Sure, if he gets shot because he’s too annoyed with himself to pay attention, it would really suck, but on the other hand…
Can he be blamed for being irritated? Sure, okay, it’s New York, but who walks into two separate gangs in five minutes?
“Nimrod! Move your fucking ass!” a guy sporting a rumpled mohawk gripes, shouldering him sideways and making a jerking motion towards the ground with both hands. Gang jerkoff or not, Matt is two seconds from calling the asshole out-
Until he sees the flames engulfing broad palms. That changes the game a little.
It’s not like he’s never heard of folks like this; everyone has. These people-mutants, or heroes, or vigilantes, depending on who you listen to-are the worst-kept secret in America. Probably the world at large, actually.
Hearing isn’t quite the same as seeing, though, and when an ape of a dark-haired, bulldog-faced guy shimmers for a second and then vanishes completely, all the stories in the world couldn’t stop Matt from jerking backwards and gaping.
There are two sides to this madness, he notices now. To his left stand an array of men in their late twenties, all sporting identical uniforms and tensed jaws; to his right are a ragtag gang of young people, men and women about his own age. It’s definitely weird-more than just typical city-weird. He thinks he might prefer the shoe-obsessed assholes from before.
Certainly, standing in the middle of whatever this is seems like the least attractive idea on the planet. He moves blindly, completely bereft of the grace from earlier, stumbling pathetically backwards into the young kids’ territory like a newborn colt. A pretty Asian girl fires him a bold glare, nudging him fairly gently to one side before hurling what looks suspiciously like a bolt of purple lightning from her fingertips.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” a bespectacled young man in a wheelchair comments wearily, “but now might not be the best time to be…y’know. Here.”
He, at least, seems nice and normal-right until Matt spots three identical copies, right down to the scratches on the wheel rims, scattered nearby. He staggers away, bumping directly into a large, dark lion. Which-so much better, clearly, than a patrol of paraplegic nerds.
How does he get into this shit?
Thankfully, the lion doesn’t roar-he thinks he would just about piss his pants if it did-but chooses to give him what looks bizarrely like a withering head shake before bounding off to stand guardedly between a beautiful blonde woman and a man wearing a particularly muddy uniform.
He’s not sure how he can tell, but Matt is instantly sure that the uniform-and all of the men sporting them-is bad news. The other people, the ones who keep shouting for him to get out of the way, they seem worn out, and bloody, and a little insane.
All of that aside, they seem decidedly less likely to murder him in cold blood for stepping into this ill-conceived war scene. If side-picking becomes necessity, he’s going with the pissy lion and Fire Boy.
A girl with brown hair and smudged cheeks catches his eye, and for a moment, time feels frozen. She’s beautiful, in a slightly surprising way, and tiny, but clearly stronger than he would ever like to mess with. Her gaze is steady and warm, and he feels utterly certain that this side is the right one.
“Down!” a gruff African-American woman barks, pushing him aside just in time to avoid taking a long, thin blade in the chest.
Stumbling, Matt turns his eyes back towards the uniformed side of the battlefield just in time to watch one gray-eyed man pluck a second knife from the skin of his forearm and chuck it towards the leggy blonde.
Now the lion roars, a horrible, vengeful sound that wells up from deep within its belly as it leaps to beat the blade by bare seconds. Matt resists the urge to clamp both hands over his ears as the world around him explodes into action. Powers surge from both sides, volatile and much louder than he expects. Flames collide with flames, plant tendrils snaking up to wrap around tender ankles, and for no reason at all, one of the uniforms turns on his heel and suddenly grasps one of his fellows by the throat.
Forget the adrenaline rush from running; his body can’t take this. He’s humming all over, his fingertips trembling, his knees locked. This is insane, a true firefight, something he never wanted to witness-and, honestly, never saw a reason why he should expect to. This stuff doesn’t just happen, not to people like him. He’s quiet, and simple, and enjoys walks. He should not be watching a girl several inches shorter than himself heft a concrete block like a pillow and whip it in the direction of a grown man.This is ridiculous.
But very real, he thinks, more than a little alarmed. He can smell the acrid stench of singed arm hair from here, where the graceful Asian boy failed to twirl clear of a red-hot wave of energy. He can see the air ripple as a sturdy-set black kid pulls the empty space around him tight like a blanket around his shoulders, just in time to rebound a blast of frigid wind back on the man who has blown it.
All too clearly, he can hear the screams and curses from both sides as people drop to their knees and climb, less steady than before, back up again.
It’s too damn much, and he just wishes it all would stop.
And then, just like that-
“The fuck is this shit?” Mohawk snaps, twitching his wrist to no avail. Beside him, a huge, gangly kid falls from two feet up, having just popped out of nowhere. Where the lion once stood is a gorgeous, angry Latina in tight clothes, nursing a bleeding arm.
“I don’t understand,” the boy in glasses mumbles-just one of him now, Matt observes as the Asian girl comes to grasp the handles of his chair reassuringly. “Why can’t I replicate?”
“I’ve got nothin’ too,” the black girl grunts, flexing her arms uneasily. “The hell?”
Across the way, the uniforms are wearing similar expressions of bewilderment. Scowls of concern give way quickly enough to what looks strangely like fear; one points his finger angrily at the petite brunette.
“Don’t think this ends here. He’ll find you. He’ll wear you all down. Rayne always gets what he wants.”
Matt half-expects the girl to retaliate with a tried-and-true cliché, but she only tightens her jaw and smiles thinly. The uniforms backpedal, and all Matt can think is, That’s it?
“Explain,” the lion-cum-Latina snarls, mirroring the angry man’s pointing gesture with a very different finger. “Berry. Now.”
“We appear to have located our neutralizing force,” the girl called Berry replies, eyeing Matt warily. “Hello.”
“Yo,” Matt manages shakily, kicking himself when the black girl’s eyebrows shoot up.
“This street-ass punk?”
“I’m from Rhode Island,” he replies, annoyed despite himself. Mohawk barks out a laugh.
“Great. Can we be done pickin’ up scraps from here, there, and everywhere now? We’re runnin’ out of room for these fuckers.”
“Kurt?” Berry calls over her shoulder, ignoring him. “Thoughts?”
A skinny boy in tight jeans crawls out from beneath a low scaffolding, brushing himself off daintily. “He’ll be useful. Especially if he can ever figure out how to shut them up while keeping us at full strength. Muting the bad guys can only help.”
“I agree wholeheartedly.” She smiles, a real smile this time, stunning and a little prideful. Matt isn’t sure he likes it.
“I don’t understand…” He trails off, looking around for sympathy. The Asian kid gives him a calm nod, arms crossed over his chest. He’s not sure why that should make him feel better, but it sort of does.
“Sure as hell beats me following you losers around, buildin’ shields and shit,” the sturdy young man sneers. The teleporter elbows him.
“Shut up, Azimo, we don’t ask you for much.”
“Just my precious time, Frankenteen,” the man growls back. “Not to mention my boy Karofsky’s. We got shit to do that don’t involve your ugly mugs.”
The dog-faced kid claps him on the shoulder, silent. The Latina rolls her eyes.
“You bitches done whining? I want food. And some healin’, if you get my drift, babe.” She shoots a meaningful look at the blonde, who wraps an arm around her waist without missing a beat.
“You mean sex?”
“That too.”
“I think this is good,” the brunette says slowly, circling him like a vulture in a sweater-vest. Uneasy, Matt swivels with her, eyes wide.
“Yes. This is very good. Certainly, we must give him time to adjust to his gift, and it might be wise for the rest of us to take pains to learn new strategies for battle in case that proves especially difficult, but…”
“New strategies like what?” the Asian girl asks curiously. Mohawk smirks.
“Streetfighting would be the bomb.”
“Martial arts seem prudent,” the brunette agrees mildly. “And perhaps weapons training. We shouldn’t be relying on brute power alone, that’s sloppy and a touch arrogant. After all, Rayne expects that…”
Matt shakes his head, overwhelmed. Weapons? Rayne? Battle? Too many words, too many thoughts cycle through his brain, stepping on one another until all he can say is, “What. Just. What?”
The Asian guy smiles, clapping him on the shoulder. “We’ll explain on the way.”
Somehow, Matt gets the feeling his life just became a whole lot less simple.