Backlogged from wayback: Matt & Layla

[x-daredevil.livejournal.com]

Late night, February 23, Matt and Layla hang out, eat, discuss college and generally get along. It's a first for them.



It took Matt longer than it most likely should have to get to the kitchen, get food, and get to Layla's room, but he finally made it there. He also had his book with him, just because. Knocking lightly on the door by kicking it, he waited for her to get it since his hands were full. He had gotten a plate and filled it with some fruit, lunch meat, cheese and bread, because those were reasonably tasty and blander things. Well, not all the cheese, but whatever. He hadn't gotten any stinky cheeses.

Layla rolled off the couch where she had been camped out since the last time she had showered which was...at some point before now. Only instead of her foot catching her so she could stand she actually hit the floor and a groan preceded a muttered, "Ow." A pause, then, "Coming...eventually." She sort of crawled for a little bit, then eventually got up on her feet - slowly so she didn't get dizzy or throw up - and shuffled very slowly over to the door. Hand on the door knob she asked, "Is it Matt?" If it was Matt she could just open the door and hide behind it with her eyes squeezed shut so she didn't go blind in the darkness from the light in the hallway. If it wasn't Matt...well, they would probably need light and she was fucked.

"It's Matt," he agreed, calling quietly through the door. It opened a moment later and then slammed behind him almost immediately. If the room was dark or not, he had no idea, but he casually clicked his tongue to try to get a sonar lay of the furniture. Usually he would do something more overt, but he didn't want to disturb Layla too much if he could avoid it. Turning towards her heartbeat, Matt offered her the plate, "I brought food." He was wearing his pajamas, a pair of loose pajama pants and a white undershirt. The undershirt was out of politeness towards Layla. His feet were bare.

Layla was leaning heavily against the door, wincing at the sound it had made when her weight had pushed it shut faster than she'd meant for it to. "Awesome...um..gimme a sec." Now could she get like over to a table or something with a plate without dropping it? Uh...maybe not. "If I lead you can you carry the plate? Might end up in pieces with me. I swear there's nothing on the floor but carpet and like legit furniture."

"Yeah," Matt agreed. He hadn't really meant for her to carry the plate so much as just to see what was there. "I think I've got it actually," their voices were making enough sound that he wasn't in any immediate danger of hitting something. "I can put it down, then come back for you?" he suggested. Layla was tall, as tall as him, but he was pretty sure he could carry her at least that far.

"I can probably make it." 'Probably' being the operative word there. With some effort and a groan she pushed off from the door and began to shuffle her way toward the couch. And, despite Matt's assurance that he could make it there on his own, she reached behind her and grabbed his shirt right near his navel and used the loose grip to trail him along behind her. Her shuffling got steadily slower and she literally fell over onto the couch and then didn't move. "Chair's to your...right. Table's like right in front of your knee. Your right knee. Sorta diagonal to it. Like...two o'clock."

One thing that Matt hated was people just grabbing him and propelling him in a direction, but he tolerated it right now firstly because Layla was so slow about it and secondly because he wasn't sure if she would fall over if she didn't do that. Taking a seat slowly and carefully, Matt was grateful when his bottom touched seat and not air. That would be awkward if he tried to sit on nothing. "Eat," he suggested, handing her a piece of sliced roast beef. He'd gotten a selection of things, unsure what she might like. Leaning forward, he put the plate down with much less difficulty than sitting involved.

Layla's hand sort of flailed around a bit. Not because she was having trouble finding Matt's hand but because she was having trouble getting her arm raised up high enough to grab the damn meat. Eventually she managed and took the slice of roast beef as delicately as possible, but her arm sort of flopped down so it seemed more like a snatch. "Sorry...moving, totally an issue after getting to the door," she apologized in a barely there whisper. Getting her hand to her mouth once she got on her back was way easier, but it left her winded. "Thanks for bringing food. People've been making deliveries but, you know, not as much as I actually need it all the time. 'Cause I'm sort of starving non-stop. I think they think I'm like I was last time and I'm...not."

"Ah," Matt got up and sat on the floor near Layla. Close enough so they could breath on each other if they wanted to. "Here," he handed her a slice of apple. "Yeah, there were deliveries to me too. Not that I wanted to eat. Migraines are about the only time I don't want to eat actually. And they won't let me take anything for them. Sadists."

"Thanks." Given how well they didn't get along usually Layla was sort of glad it was dark and he was blind so he couldn't see that she actually gave a weak smile when she took the apple. Unless he could get facial expressions even with migraine sonar. That would be cheating, though. "Can't they, like, not give you stuff for the migraine because of...issues and shit?" She bit into the piece of apple as slowly as possible to minimize the crunch for both their sakes. "Doesn't anything help? Like, I knew someone who'd like like super hot showers because it helped? Or one person who would like suffer through it until their body like got sick of it and made them throw up and then he was fine. Which seems like bullshit but he seemed genuine or whatever when he told me about it."

"Well, yeah, I can try that stuff," Matt agreed, resting his head against the cushions as he took a piece of meat for himself, "but I'm an addict so they can't give me pain meds. That's what I was addicted to. Been a year now since I was arrested and went to rehab, so....better not to chance it. Mostly laying somewhere warm and quiet helps...with a trashcan nearby," because he did throw up when he had migraines, but it didn't make him feel better.

"I've got...three? of those." Layla's arm fell down, the rest of her roast beef in her mouth, and she very slightly nudged the closest one so Matt would know where it was. She'd made sure they were clean because even she could smell old vomit. Not moving for days had advantages, like not throwing up. "You should get like a heating pad for your head. It doesn't run outta hot like showers do. Well, in theory. Dunno if they do 'round here. And wow...we're like...pathetic. You know that?"

"Yep," Matt didn't nod as that would be a bad idea. He had been feeling better until his foray into town for Ash Wednesday. Now he felt like crap again. "That might work. Showers are loud. Anyways, I don't think this place ever runs out of hot water. It's not like my old apartment building where it never had hot water after 6am, pretty much ever. I bet the pipes actually work here."

"No point in bein' a rich dude if you don't have hot water and like a snazzy pipe job or whatever. That's like against the Rich Dude Rules.." Layla's hand went searching around her stomach and chest but it turned up nothing. Apparently she'd eaten her apple and roast beef slice. When did that happen? Her arm reached out, hand brushing over Matt's shoulder by accident as it did, and her hand tried vainly to grab...something off the plate.

Holding the plate so she could get something off it, Matt decided that he liked Rich Dude Rules. "Trufax. He might get kicked out of the country club or whatever sort of stuff rich people do," he paused, "You ever think about what you wanna do after high school or whatever?"
Layla managed to grab some sort of meat, something she thought was a chunk of cheese and another apple slice before deciding keeping her arm up was way more effort than she had. It all went to hang out on her stomach while she worked up the energy to actually feed herself. "Not really. Guess it depends where I am when I graduate, you know? It's not like anyone's gonna adopt me or whatever so I'll figure it out like in a year depending where I am. I know I could go to college because, y'know, there's money for us to do that and shit. But I am not college material. What're you gonna do? College probably?"

"Probably," Matt agreed understanding where she was coming from, "My dad really wanted me to go to college. He didn't finish high school, you know? So...that was always his thing. Didn't have to be Harvard or anything like that, just...anything that was a college. With everything though, I never thought it'd actually happen, but now...I dunno. I don't graduate for a while, but it could," that was actually sort of daunting to realize. Matt shoved a piece of roast beef in his mouth.

"But what would you go to college for?" She bit into her apple slowly while she let him consider that point. "I mean, people go to college all the time without knowing why they're going. Isn't that sorta pointless? Like, why waste all that money if you're not even really gonna figure out what you wanna do until like your junior year? Or after you graduate even? People are stupid that way, though. They just do stuff because it's like what you're supposed to do not what they actually really want to do and then they waste it. Not you, just people in general, y'know?"

That was a good question. "Dunno," Matt replied honestly, "Maybe...I dunno. I guess I'd have to look and see. Maybe be a lawyer since I can't be a doctor. That'd be rich, huh? The blind lawyer from Hell's Kitchen? My dad would like that though."

Layla nearly snorted part of her chewed up apple right up her nose. "Ow," she muttered and sniffed. Laughing and swallowing so didn't go together. "That could be cool. People couldn't accuse you of being like racist or um class...ist? Is that a word for like hating on poor people or whatever? Or snobby, let's go with snobby. But why a lawyer? I mean, I guess that's cool it just seems really...boring. To me. But I've got like the attention span of a gnat in class and you...don't."

Matt liked school and reading. He was sort of a nerd like that, but then most of what seemed to entertain people, video games, TV and the internet, wasn't entirely accessible to him either. Books (either through Wade the book-fairy or the library), were. "My dad wanted me to go to college. He always wanted me to be a doctor, but then after my accident he just went with 'go to college,' you know? And I dunno how many majors I could do realistically, you know? But anyone can be a lawyer if they got a brain. And it ain't like I don't got enough experience with it on the other side."

"I think they make you stop sayin' shit like 'ain't,' though. Like it's part of your graduation requirements," she joked, laughing quietly because anything more enthusiastic hurt. "But that's cool. What kinda law? Like criminal law or like really boring shit like contracts or entertainment law or...I think those are real. I dunno. TV said so so I sorta half believe it or something. Maybe I'll like get Lorna to teach me to cook for real and just like feed people forever."

"I dunno," Matt shrugged and gave Layla another apple slice with cheese, "I got time to figure it out. Anyways, can you just like...go to school for that? And money. Ugh. College is complicated. And expensive. There's a reason kids like us don't usually go, you know? I was banking on scholarships and stuff, but...I dunno with the whole arrest record thing." Matt tried not to sound disappointed, like he had screwed it all up.

She uttered a thanks for the food hand over and bit off a corner of the cheese to go with a bit of apple. "I could but me and school are, like, not really simpatico or whatever. I probably used that word wrong but whatever. Anyway, like I'm cool with like history and English when it's not boring but like math and science and shit? Naaah. And I know there's a lot of that in like going to school for it. But I like Lorna and Sharon and I'd actually, y'know, pay attention and shit if other people teach me shit directly. Like one on one. Like how it was in classes before they had all those virtual students and shit that got added in? I fucking haaaaate that. But anyway, you can get scholarships for being a foster kid and being an orphan, actually. And like, broke and poor and fucked up but fixing yourself. Mister Haller or someone probably knows how to find all that shit."

"Simpatico is right," Matt nodded. Spanish wasn't his best subject, but he did alright in it. "Math sucks, yeah. Science is interesting until you get to the math part. Then it sucks too. I still get one on one tutoring for a lot of stuff, like math, because I have to have extra instruction with being blind and stuff. And extra test time and things. I kinda like the virtual classrooms though for discussion," he paused, thinking about the scholarships and things, "And blind. I get money automatically for being blind."

"I think you get bank for being blind, actually. I might be making it up but it feels way more true than that so I'm pretty sure I'm not." She chewed on another bite of apple and cheese while she mulled that over. Was she making it up? No, she was almost totally sure she wasn't...Layla just had no fucking clue why she would know that.

"Do I?" the surprise was clear in his voice, "Huh. I'll have to check that out. That could be cool," yawning, Matt ate another apple slice. The plate was almost empty now, "You're smart enough for college. You just gotta find something that you want to study. You know, that you don't hate."

"I don't like school, though." She bit the rest of her apple slice in half sharply and cringed when it crunched more loudly than she'd thought it would. It wasn't too loud for her but it might've been for Matt and his headache. She muttered an apology before continuing on. "Like that's the thing isn't it? I don't wanna go to college. I don't wanna go to school longer than I've gotta. Me and school are not simpatico, remember?"

"Yeah, yeah," it still confused him how she didn't like school though. It wasn't all that great, but it wasn't nearly so bad as how Layla made it out. The apple crunch was loud, but no louder really than the others and he tried to ignore it. "I know. Just trying to be helpful, I guess," he saw not going to college as relating directly to not being able to afford to live and ending up working for the mob in Hell's Kitchen like his dad had. That wasn't what he wanted to do.

"I know you are." She actually reached out and patted him on the head like he was a good puppy or something. Mostly it was like all the movement she could manage and since he couldn't see facial expressions and words were loud it was like all the option she had. "And like thanks for trying to be helpful. It's just, like, not for me."


Matt wasn't sure what was up with the head patting thing, but he wasn't against it either. He was a tactile person, "I try," he replied. "Maybe something else'll come up. Who knows?"