"A real poster boy for your neighborhood," Lonán acknowledges. "It's a damn good thing you grew up to be so cute. Imagine if you'd turned into some kind of gremlin instead. They'd have a harder time pulling you back out and touting you around." There's an unapologetic grin that tinges his words and he says all of it with the same even keel, from the compliment to the more crass insinuation. Lonán doesn't think it's worth saying whether or not he knows any of this already; he doesn't want to give Matt any reason to think he wouldn't want to hear it all from his perspective. There's no story about him that comes anywhere near the one he tells regarding himself.
As the journey continues Lonán lets himself slip into a more comfortable pace at Matt's elbow. He's looking around as they pass the buildings so he's the first to spot the deep spalled joint in the concrete just up ahead before the end of the other man's cane can dip into it. Forgetting for a moment that this is Matt's neighborhood and the man probably knows it like the back of his own hand, Lonán stops in place and sets his palm at the other man's back. "Here, come over on my side. There's a big chip in the sidewalk just in front of you." He lets Matt pass by the obstacle in front of him before following along and moving back in pace when he gets the chance.
"What about your mom?" he asks quietly when he's caught up again. "You've mentioned your dad was a boxer and you grew up in a gym, but you haven't said anything about her." Which perhaps should be a flashing caution sign not to lead things down this conversational path, but Lonán just can't help himself.
The compliment sparks a faint smile in return. "I wouldn't be all that much use if that was the case," he agrees. The stop and the detour at the crack prompts him to say, "I know," without thinking about it when it comes to the crack in the sidewalk. He can appreciate the attempt at help even if it's unnecessary for all the reasons that Lonán will never know. The sounds of the city map the world around him and he's aware of the ants crawling in the crack, let alone its presence in marring the sidewalk.
The topic of his mother is less of an emotional minefield than it might have been years ago. He's had time to come to terms with things and while forgiveness is maybe not absolute, he's given as much as he can in a situation that he's certain that some might offer none at all. It's still not particularly easy to discuss, but in the interest of some attempt at honesty, he shrugs and answers.
"She left, when I was a baby. She had post-partum depression and was a danger to me and to herself. I didn't know what happened to her until later in life," he answers, not missing a beat with the rhythmic tapping of the cane on the concrete. Nothing gives away any suggestion that the story is particularly difficult now, even if it is in its own way. "She'd been preparing to become a nun when she met my dad and when I was born and when she got sick, she thought it was God punishing her for betraying the faith. She took her holy orders and served God in the way that she knew how. At St. Agnes. I didn't know she was my mother when I was growing up. Just thought she was one of the nuns. I thought I was alone in the world and I found out later that she'd been there and hadn't said a word…it's a long story. I was angry and maybe some part of me always will be, but it's better now. I am capable of something akin to forgiveness. As we forgive those who trespass against us and all of that."
"Course you do. I'm sorry." He thinks nothing more of it than that; there's no reason why Matthew wouldn't know all the quirks and pitfalls of the neighborhood he's called home for his entire life. For the duration of the journey Lonán keeps his hands to himself.
Conversely, Matt hardly needs to say outright that a story of his mother's abandonment of the family might be a bitter pill for him to swallow, and an even more difficult thing to regurgitate for the consumption of someone he's wary of. If he'd known anything about this based on prior research, he does a good job of concealing that now. It's not clear to Lonán how much of himself he's already telegraphing to the other man through completely unconscious tells in his biology. So there's no way to say for sure how the sudden burst of empathy might impact his respiration or his heart rate or whatever pheromones he's putting into the atmosphere, but there's something changed about him as he listens to the other man's recounting.
"So in a way, she still got the opportunity to raise you." He can't imagine how he might have felt if he'd experienced similar, but it lends more perspective to the ferocity with which Matt had taken his own concealment of information. Lonán had known he was playing with fire; he'd had no idea whatsoever that he was tap dancing across an emotional minefield.
"Is your mother the woman you were speaking to tonight?"
"Nothing to apologize for," he answers, and he does mean that. He does appreciate the attempt and if it was anyone else who didn't hold the kind of gifts that Matt Murdock does, it would likely have been a necessary bit of assistance. He can leverage the idea that he knows these streets so well that he's memorized the cracks but the truth is a more complicated one.
The change in heartbeat isn't a surprise; it's the kind of story that drops the pulse sometimes in that sinking feeling that people get associated with empathy and hearing something like that. Breathing shifts, the heart slows or quickens depending on the emotion sparked, and it all recovers in moments without anyone but Matt to know the change occurred at all. The nearly imperceptible changes don't mean much, except it does suggest a matter of some surprise so either Lonán didn't dig far enough or the records don't include an absentee mother.
"She did. She was there for me to a point but I wasn't her only charge. There were other kids who needed her more than I did as I got older and there came a point when I just shut down. I wasn't an easy kid after my dad died and probably not any easier as a man." Forgiveness probably wouldn't have come if it hadn't been a price paid in blood, but that's not a story he's comfortable telling. "What, you didn't see a family resemblance?" he asks with a wry smile.
Curiosity is not just a matter of professional necessity for Lonán; it's the ethos with which he conducts himself both on and off the clock. Friendly conversation requires a different skillset altogether, and the man has trouble sometimes flexing from one back into the next. He doesn't mean to hold Matt's feet to the idiomatic fire, so when the opportunity comes up he decides it's worth a little casual unveiling himself.
"I have three brothers and sisters. Have I told you this?" He can't recall that it came up during their last meeting, but the fact he knows more about the other man than what's been shared feels like it blurs the lines. Lonán feels quite a bit closer than he deserves to. "They're all in public service: firefighter, first responder, emergency dispatcher. My father was a beat cop for 30 years. I honestly never felt like I fit into our family dynamic, despite being the firstborn." If it's unclear why he's telling this story, he still sees parallels everywhere. Between the other children who had a greater need for a parent like the ones they had, and between the feeling of being the wrong kind of difficult for the situation they found themselves in.
"Sometimes I think the best thing was losing that sense of parent-child dynamic with them and letting the relationship become something else entirely. Do you get along with your mother now?"
Conversations are always a minefield that he has to carefully walk to avoid disclosures that would lead to places that he can't allow anyone to go. The nature of such secrets as the ones that he carries with him, written in scars across his body and in the mental wounds that are heavier, means that every word is a lie in some way. Obfuscation more than anything, but as he's already noted, that's a lie all its own. Every conversation about his life that does not end in a pronouncement of who he really is, under the suit and tie, is a fiction all its own.
He shakes his head at the question; no, he didn't know, because Lonán has offered little of his background in their conversations. "Rookie Catholic family numbers," he remarks with a little bit of a grin but he lets him continue to explain since it does take some stretching for him to recognize where the connection comes from. It settles into place as an outsider in a family the way that he can probably imagine that Matt was once.
"It's alright. It's never going to be a normal mother-son relationship and I think we both accepted that a long time ago. She frets after me a lot. Not because I'm blind but the business I'm in and the people I interact with." Specifically the kind that's conducted under a mask at night but he leaves the comment to allude to his career. Given that the reason that Matt Murdock ended up on the other man's radar at all is due to his association with vigilantes and the relationship that was apparent in the first downfall of Wilson Fisk, that should give any mother reason to stay awake at night worrying.
Matt comes to a stop in front of an apartment building that, unlike his old one, is part of the gentrified portion of the neighborhood. He's moved up in the world but he also recognizes the cost of that and why he made such a change from loss and necessity instead of a desire for better. "This one."
"Oh trust me, she wanted more," Lonán laughs good-naturedly. "She still doesn't let my father forget it, either. But I think it took more out of her every time." Recognizing that it's not his story to tell doesn't make him any less nostalgic for what he's been told about it, especially when the man himself feels like the disappointing start from which everything else terminated. "She was on bedrest most of the time she was pregnant with me. That's how I got my name: it's a diminutive of blackbird in Gaeilge. She swore there was this one little bird that visited her every day. Always the same bird; said she knew it, that she could tell. She swore it had blue eyes that stayed blue the entire time it visited. So when I opened my eyes, she knew she had a name for me."
He shrugs as he moves to a halt in front of the building that's Matt's paused before. "All right." Lonán pats his hands on his knees with an audible swat of fabric. "I went to Mass, God. Did you see that? Ought to be good enough for some positive karma with the elevator, right?" He gestures needlessly without touching the other man. "After you."
"Did she come up with outlandish stories for all of your siblings too?" he asks with a chuckle, because he's pretty sure Lonán's mother was laying it on a little thick with that one in the way that apocryphal family stories are told and passed down until they turn into fact on every retelling.
Matt leads the way inside and, whether through divine intervention or because Matt happens to live in a pretty good building, the elevator is working as expected. It takes them up to the top floor where Matt's apartment is located and he guides them down the hallway that goes to his door. He's quick to unlock it and hold it open for Lonán to come inside. He reaches for the switch on the wall to turn on the lights that he would otherwise neglect and tosses his keys into the tray by the door.
It's an upgrade from his last place made affordable only by the neon shining through his windows at all hours and some examples of the progress that he's professionally made when he rerouted his life in the wake of the loss of his best friend. It's a nice place but if he's honest with himself, the upgrades feel hollow, except for the easier roof access when he's partaking in nocturnal activities.
"Nah, I'm the only one who was treated to that degree of mythos," Lonán reports. He may feel at odds with his family more often than not, but one does not need to have Matt's level of ability to hear the fondness that creeps into his voice when he's discussing them. The man feels affection for his family to a grade they do not seem capable of returning for him. "You an only child? I think it's the same concept as childhood photo albums. You know, the first kid gets thousands of pictures taken of them, but by the time a family's on its fourth they're lucky if they even remember to pull out the camera for christenings and birthdays."
Inside the apartment Lonán proceeds respectfully, but as Matt dumps his keys he pushes up for a better view out the angled windows and onto the city skyline. He spares a few moments to just gaze at the setting sun and the skyscrapers that remain visible from his low vantage point and the gradient of the panes, then peers into the living area until the question brings him around again.
Lonán doesn't answer immediately, but there's a sound of rustling and then something being unzipped from a leather backpack slung from the push handles at the back of his chair. "Promised I'd bring something, didn't I?" He sloshes the full bottle of wine from side to side, liquid giving the faintest splash against the sides of the glass. Did Lonán actually come to Mass with a full bottle of red stashed on him? It would seem so.
"It's a Syrah blend. You can consider it a host gift if you've got something else in mind. I'll drink whatever you're serving."
"Yeah. After my mom left, my dad didn't date anyone else. It was just him and me until he died," he answers. While some might count some kind of found family within the orphanage if they were fortunate enough to forge those kinds of relationships, Matt didn't. He hadn't really connected with anyone until he met Foggy on the first day of college but he's not really eager to discuss any of that. He has no point of reference to be anything but that only child and his father's primary focus for the years that he was alive. It's a wholly different family dynamic than what Lonán is talking about and things he never experienced for himself.
Once inside, he takes off his jacket and loosens the tie that he wore to church in a way that reminds him of the time immediately after Mass when, as a kid, he would immediately shed his Sunday best in favor of something more comfortable. These days, he's more accustomed to suits and button-ups.
Much of Matt's life is spent pretending not to notice things, like the way he could hear the sloshing of the bottle in the backpack for the duration of their trek back. When it's offered, he smiles and steps forward to take the bottle placed into his hand. "This works, thank you." He takes it back to the open concept kitchen and opens the drawer by the refrigerator to retrieve the corkscrew that he has.
Lonán hands off the wine bottle and takes the long way around the coffee table to trail Matt to the far side of his kitchen counter. He takes in the apartment as he moves through it, naturally trying to imagine the other man's daily routine while he does. Whether he spares time for an actual breakfast at that little nook, or whether he takes his coffee up the short set of stairs to sit out on the balcony and listen to the ever-changing sounds of the city at its different hours.
"I like your place," he comments idly as he watches Matt uncork the bottle of contraband. He doesn't snoop around the bookshelves, but the lingering gaze he casts in their direction might be sign enough he's planning to take the first available opportunity to give a more thorough examination to the things the other man has left out and available for visual perusal. "How long have you lived here?"
"About a year now. I moved not long after I started the new firm. I wanted a clean break from old memories and I'd been in my last apartment for a long time. I got a deal on the last place because it had, what I'm told, was a blinding neon sign shining directly into the windows so I'm still suffering a bit of sticker-shock on a regular apartment." He's not sure if the break from all ties to his old life made much of a difference in the way of his mental health or the continuation of living beyond all of the things he lost, but if he can fool himself into thinking it is, that seems to be good enough for now.
He finishes pouring the glasses and steps around the island and extends his hand to offer Lonán one. "I know it's very stereotypical of me to complain about rent in Manhattan," he adds. He does expect that Lonán is looking around his apartment, presumably looking for clues to the man himself within it. He won't find it in decor, given that Matt hired someone for that when he moved. There's the bookshelf and other shelf composed almost entirely of records that offer something personal but any attempt at wall art or the little impersonal items meant to make a space feel more fashionable were outside influence.
"Got it, thanks." Lonán grips the wine glass and signals to Matt it's safe to let go. He allows ideas of the other man's reasons for the move to wash over him as he swirls the liquid in the glass and gives it a testing sniff. What he knows about the other man's history from his research and the things Matt has told him, and what else might have prompted the effort of a complete transformation of his environment. "Did it help?" he asks after a long moment. Something about the quality of his voice makes it clear that Lonán has already drawn his own conclusions, but he smiles anyway and clarifies. "Did you get the clean break from your memories that you were after?"
This time, at least, he catches himself not long after. It's not the man's intent to probe too enthusiastically at too many of Matt's sore areas. At least not until they've gotten a few glasses in them and the mood feels right for a little bit of reflection. Idled around the kitchen counter is hardly the appropriate venue, he thinks. So Lonán wedges the glass of wine between his thighs and draws back on his pushrims, backing up until he's parallel with the bookshelf.
"All right, enough stalling. I can see some of where my generous payout has gone. Now let me hear some of it."
If he's being honest with himself? "Not as much as I would have liked," he answers, maybe a little more truthfully than he should, given the present company and the way that he still feels that it's important to have walls in place here and there to guard against some of the more potentially cutting personal parts. He has mentioned his best friend's death and presumably, Lonán was already aware of that in the research he might have done on Matt prior to their first meeting, especially because Daredevil's involvement in the apprehension of Benjamin Poindexter by throwing him off the rooftop was well documented by various eye witnesses who saw him put a stop to the rampage. That doesn't mean he's interested in bleeding his broken heart all over his new apartment.
He takes a sip of the wine and despite his ability to taste everything, he doesn't know if he'd consider his taste to be particularly good but he likes it well enough. The discussion of the entire point of this whole venture, or at least on its surface, is recalibrated and Matt crosses the room with the glass in his hand toward his record player. He's kept the stack out from his recent purchase, initially because he hadn't yet put them away properly and now for the convenience of having them there. It's also a sizable stack so Lonán knows his money went to good use. "I still have to label them," he shrugs, "So I'm not really sure which is which until I play it."
"Grief is a nonlinear beast of a thing. People cite Kübler-Ross as if she meant the five stages to function as a direct road map for healing. They never seem to get around to mentioning the importance of the change curve." Lonán is pretty sure he's the last person Matt would ever call upon for emotional support, but he offers his commentary freely and simply in the hopes the man might begin to look at this more as a conversation and less as an interrogation. He's painfully aware that he's asked virtually every question that's been posited between the two of them, but he tries not to latch onto that as a mental worry stone and polish it up as evidence the man would sooner have not invited him over at all.
Finally now, Lonán stops himself from commenting any further with a sip of wine. It coats his tongue and the flavors bloom, and he tries to relax and stop overthinking. There's a better chance of getting the earth to stop rotating on its axis, but Lonán reminds himself of the same thing he'd like Matt to know: that this is all just conversation with no ulterior motive.
"Great, then it'll be like a mystery grab bag." He stows the glass between his knees but keeps his position by the bookcase rather than crowding Matt behind the couch. "Just choose one at random and let fate decide."
"Sounds like you have some experience. At least enough to have read about that enough to internalize the thought process. Though I'm not sure I ever bought so much into the whole five stages thing anyway. I'm better at the repression side of it." It's probably a survival tactic, more than anything, in a life that has been so utterly marred with loss that there's just the voice in the back of Matt's head telling him to get back up and keep going. Sometimes it sounds like Stick more than he would like, and usually when he's the hardest on himself, but it keeps him on his feet instead of in a ball of grief so it seems to work well enough.
It is difficult to feel like this has the qualities of a normal conversation and maybe that's on Matt for still being stuck on the instinct to be watching what he says. In that vein, he does recognize that he'd probably be better off by redirecting the questions back around instead of spilling his own proverbial guts about things. He's interested, but he's felt a little bit like he's still on his back foot in the whole interaction. Maybe there is some hesitance in connection anyway; he's kept everyone at arm's length, at best, since Foggy died and opening up his life to someone and having them do the same still feels awkward.
He reaches down and thumbs through the stack to choose something at random. His movements are easy and practiced, confident and sure. Maybe he should fumble more but inside his own home, the act tends to fall away. "I'll await your judgment," he adds while he removes the vinyl. Stick used to tell him that he could tell the record by the grooves but Matt elects no attempt at that and decides to let sound tell the story.
"Well, I've had a lot of time to myself to think." Lonán counts himself as truly fortunate that most of the people who have defined his existence are still actively a part of it, in one way or another. He can't honestly say that he's dealt with what could even amount to his fair share of loss of loved ones. But the scales balance in other ways, he thinks. Death is not the only vehicle for grief.
He smirks at the suggestion of Matt acquiescing his own personal tastes to the judgment of a virtual stranger. "I'm sure I won't be disappointed." He wasn't lying when he mentioned that his own tastes are eclectic, but Lonán is more than curious to discover the kind of music the other man gravitates to and the story it might tell about him. He doesn't try to steal a peek as the other man removes the album from the sleeve and fits it onto the turntable; instead he just waits for the first notes to fill the space between them.
While he does, he deposits his wine glass at the edge of the coffee and glances at the few scattered objects already occupying the space. "Is this a board game?" Lonán asks, not specifying what he's looking at with more than the direction of his voice and Matt's knowledge of his own possessions.
The answer suggests that it's more of an intellectual exercise than the kind of experience with loss that Matt has had. He's not upset to hear it, because he doesn't wish any of the sort of monumental and affecting tragedies that he's had in his life on anyone, but it does feel like it's unlikely that they'll find a bridge to shared experience here.
He runs his fingers along the edge of the turntable to the arm and needle until music comes from the expensive speakers that he has connected. Matt Murdock is far from a snob about most things in his life, even at the cost of some comfort with his senses, but he doesn't cheap out when it comes to the way that he listens to music. He has no use for tinny speakers that distort and cool the warm gaps that the vinyl produces when it's perfectly transformed. Once he has the record on, he sets the sleeve aside on a stand that's intended to hold it for easy retrieval and picks up his wine again.
He walks to the sofa to sit down on the end closest to where Lonán has located himself in the living room. "Hm? Oh, it's a chess set. They make tactile ones and with pegs to hold the pieces so they aren't knocked over in the course of mapping the board by touch. I've had it since I was a kid."
The monumental and affecting tragedy of Lonán's existence has always felt inescapably plain. He can't hide it beneath a mask or conceal it under a pseudonym. No matter what he does, he fears he'll never outpace the story of his life that his body tells before he ever gets the chance to open his mouth. That Matt does not enjoy the direct sightline to it as others is a thing that has not fully occurred to Lonán. Distance from their interaction has not allowed him to properly consider the sheer number of missed cues or the need to either speak plainly or let himself enjoy one of the immensely rare opportunities he may ever be granted to have himself over-estimated.
Without the benefit of a conversational pathway, the bridge ahead will remain undiscovered.
Lonán hardly minds, as he finds himself settling into the first notes of guitar strings and the robust voice that follows. He's unfamiliar, but immediately taken by the earnest sound of the vocals and the weight of the words. He tips his head, letting it wash over him as Matt makes a place for himself on the near edge of the sofa. When he answers, it's with closed eyes. "I haven't played chess in ages. You'd think with three siblings there'd always be someone to rope into something, but they all hated board games."
Several moments of silence follow before he declares, "I like this song. Reminds me a little bit of Dylan. Doesn't sound like he's performing it; sounds like he's living it."
Matt tends to measure life's tragedies in the losses of people and love instead of by any other definition. It's probably because of the sheer number that have stacked up over the years that has left him with too many ghosts in his head. He listens too closely to the voices they carry in his imagination and in his worst moments and he sometimes envies those who have had simpler lives than his, even if he knows that many of those choices were his own. Ultimately, Stick might have made him a weapon but he chose to wield it and everything that has come as a direct result is on his shoulders. Sometimes it's a heavy burden to carry and made more so by the way that it now exists in the secret spaces between conversations. His confidants are gone.
"I can pull the board off the shelf if you want to play." It seems like a better lubricant for conversation than nothing at all. He hasn't played in a long time either, but his spare time is sacrosanct, to say the least, and it doesn't leave much time for board games even if he had someone worth playing.
"Yeah, he's good. Sometimes I like the simple stuff the most, depending on my mood." Maybe more often than not, these sad songs fill the air.
"I'm a little concerned I won't make a very worthy opponent for you," Lonán laughs, voice full of self-effacement. A beat passes, the music swells, and with no further encouragement needed he finds himself groaning with amusement. "Yeah, all right. Let's do it. I'm just going to be smart enough not to wager any stakes on the outcome. I think you've gotten enough of my hard-earned cash. For this week, at least."
He turns his attention to Matt as the man fetches the board off the shelf, giving him the space to pass. As they're settling into the arrangement Lonán pitches another casual request. "What would you say if we both played from the couch? My tailbone's about to go to war and I don't want my reach to spill any wine." It means trading in the opportunity for a quick escape, but Lonán hopes to do his part to keep this night from ending with either one of them wanting to storm out anyhow.
"I haven't played in a long time either, to be honest. There aren't enough hours in the day to add leisure on top of it. But don't worry, I don't tend to gamble so you're safe. I'd have to add to the list of sins at confession if I swindled you out of your money. The last time I earned it." He rises from his spot on the sofa and goes to the shelf in order to retrieve the box. It's placed on the coffee table and he starts to sort through the pieces and set them up on the board. They have a different appearance than the usual pieces to allow for the tactile differences but still lending to the fundamentals, he expects that Lonán will have no problems.
Admittedly, the thought didn't occur to him and he does feel like a moderately bad host as a result. "Sure. What do you need from me?" he asks. He can offer as much or as little assistance as is necessary but he doesn't want to make any assumptions either.
"Oh!" Lonán exclaims at that, raising his voice like he's talking to someone who's standing in the kitchen instead of right there in the room with them. "He thinks he's a wise guy, huh? He thinks he's got tricks? We'll see about that."
It does not escape the man's subconscious acknowledgement that Matt referred to a potential win on his part as a swindling. Lonán, of course, has no way of knowing what in either of their physiologies might lend itself to giving him the leading edge, but something in his spirit has picked up on the idea that his host, at least, thinks there is perhaps something, and he can't let it pass without comment.
The offer of assistance gives him momentary pause, but Lonán swipes his wine glass from the table and nudges the back of his holding grasp against Matt's palm. "Here's my wine. Will you put it somewhere over there that'll be out of your way? If I can have the right side of the couch that'd help my reach. I'll push my chair out of the way when I'm settled."
He angles himself with the free spot on the couch and sets his wheel lock to transfer from his chair onto the cushion. Lonán grips the back of the couch and comes to his feet briefly. He doesn't get entirely upright to his full 6'2", but Matt can no doubt get the sense that he's almost standing with the support of the couch. He settles down with a heavier sigh than he means to and unlocks the chair to angle it behind the couch and out of the way of everything but the record player.
"Fuck, okay. Sorry." He clears his throat and lets his breathing settle, returning mostly to himself save a few quiet winces he doesn't assume the other man can hear. "So, let me know how this works. Do you want me to call my moves?"
"You're the one who said you weren't going to be a worthy opponent," he points out when apparently it's taken as more of a challenge than initially intended. That's more than fine. By nature of being a lawyer who loves the courtroom, Matt is competitive by nature when he has reason to be and now he's just found that. If nothing else, it provides a backbone enough for whatever conversation might happen while they're playing that might allow for the avoidance of verbal minefields.
Matt takes the glass as asked and holds onto it while Lonán maneuvers and gets settled on the couch. Once he's seated on it, Matt extends his hand so he can take the glass back and place it where he sees fit. From there, Matt arranges the board between them in Lonán's new position and turns it so he's playing as black in order to grant his guest the first move. "That would be appreciated. It saves some time. I do have to touch the board for more than just the movement of my piece so it does take a little bit longer. Vision is a split second, touch not so much. So I can promise it's not cheating because you know I want to get into heaven," he says the last part with a crooked grin. Other than that, it's the same rules and all of that."
"I flunked out of occupational therapy more than twenty years ago. I could use the extra time myself." It's an admonishment of himself more than it is the process that Lonán speaks of it now in these less-than-adequate terms. Each time they'd brought him in to inform him they were discontinuing another service they'd presented it as a milestone — a graduation, even. If the vantage point on his progress takes into account where he'd started from, it is indeed cause for celebration. But if the measure of such things is full recovery, he considers himself a C- student at best.
He sets his glass on the edge of the coffee table and pulls his left knee onto the couch cushion so he can sit sideways and face his opponent with the board between them. "Okay," Lonán scans the pieces and his memory before pinching the bulb of his chosen pawn between his thumb and middle finger. The peg clatters a little across the board before there's the sound of it being fed into the small hole designed to catch it. "That was my D2 pawn to D4."
And since the mention of Heaven is right there on the table, Lonán puts his shoulder into the couch cushion and hunkers down, assuming a more casual posture. "Did you have a lot to confess before the service tonight? In this perfect moment, is your soul squeaky-clean, Matthew?" His voice is pure teasing amusement.
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As the journey continues Lonán lets himself slip into a more comfortable pace at Matt's elbow. He's looking around as they pass the buildings so he's the first to spot the deep spalled joint in the concrete just up ahead before the end of the other man's cane can dip into it. Forgetting for a moment that this is Matt's neighborhood and the man probably knows it like the back of his own hand, Lonán stops in place and sets his palm at the other man's back. "Here, come over on my side. There's a big chip in the sidewalk just in front of you." He lets Matt pass by the obstacle in front of him before following along and moving back in pace when he gets the chance.
"What about your mom?" he asks quietly when he's caught up again. "You've mentioned your dad was a boxer and you grew up in a gym, but you haven't said anything about her." Which perhaps should be a flashing caution sign not to lead things down this conversational path, but Lonán just can't help himself.
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The topic of his mother is less of an emotional minefield than it might have been years ago. He's had time to come to terms with things and while forgiveness is maybe not absolute, he's given as much as he can in a situation that he's certain that some might offer none at all. It's still not particularly easy to discuss, but in the interest of some attempt at honesty, he shrugs and answers.
"She left, when I was a baby. She had post-partum depression and was a danger to me and to herself. I didn't know what happened to her until later in life," he answers, not missing a beat with the rhythmic tapping of the cane on the concrete. Nothing gives away any suggestion that the story is particularly difficult now, even if it is in its own way. "She'd been preparing to become a nun when she met my dad and when I was born and when she got sick, she thought it was God punishing her for betraying the faith. She took her holy orders and served God in the way that she knew how. At St. Agnes. I didn't know she was my mother when I was growing up. Just thought she was one of the nuns. I thought I was alone in the world and I found out later that she'd been there and hadn't said a word…it's a long story. I was angry and maybe some part of me always will be, but it's better now. I am capable of something akin to forgiveness. As we forgive those who trespass against us and all of that."
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Conversely, Matt hardly needs to say outright that a story of his mother's abandonment of the family might be a bitter pill for him to swallow, and an even more difficult thing to regurgitate for the consumption of someone he's wary of. If he'd known anything about this based on prior research, he does a good job of concealing that now. It's not clear to Lonán how much of himself he's already telegraphing to the other man through completely unconscious tells in his biology. So there's no way to say for sure how the sudden burst of empathy might impact his respiration or his heart rate or whatever pheromones he's putting into the atmosphere, but there's something changed about him as he listens to the other man's recounting.
"So in a way, she still got the opportunity to raise you." He can't imagine how he might have felt if he'd experienced similar, but it lends more perspective to the ferocity with which Matt had taken his own concealment of information. Lonán had known he was playing with fire; he'd had no idea whatsoever that he was tap dancing across an emotional minefield.
"Is your mother the woman you were speaking to tonight?"
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The change in heartbeat isn't a surprise; it's the kind of story that drops the pulse sometimes in that sinking feeling that people get associated with empathy and hearing something like that. Breathing shifts, the heart slows or quickens depending on the emotion sparked, and it all recovers in moments without anyone but Matt to know the change occurred at all. The nearly imperceptible changes don't mean much, except it does suggest a matter of some surprise so either Lonán didn't dig far enough or the records don't include an absentee mother.
"She did. She was there for me to a point but I wasn't her only charge. There were other kids who needed her more than I did as I got older and there came a point when I just shut down. I wasn't an easy kid after my dad died and probably not any easier as a man." Forgiveness probably wouldn't have come if it hadn't been a price paid in blood, but that's not a story he's comfortable telling. "What, you didn't see a family resemblance?" he asks with a wry smile.
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"I have three brothers and sisters. Have I told you this?" He can't recall that it came up during their last meeting, but the fact he knows more about the other man than what's been shared feels like it blurs the lines. Lonán feels quite a bit closer than he deserves to. "They're all in public service: firefighter, first responder, emergency dispatcher. My father was a beat cop for 30 years. I honestly never felt like I fit into our family dynamic, despite being the firstborn." If it's unclear why he's telling this story, he still sees parallels everywhere. Between the other children who had a greater need for a parent like the ones they had, and between the feeling of being the wrong kind of difficult for the situation they found themselves in.
"Sometimes I think the best thing was losing that sense of parent-child dynamic with them and letting the relationship become something else entirely. Do you get along with your mother now?"
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He shakes his head at the question; no, he didn't know, because Lonán has offered little of his background in their conversations. "Rookie Catholic family numbers," he remarks with a little bit of a grin but he lets him continue to explain since it does take some stretching for him to recognize where the connection comes from. It settles into place as an outsider in a family the way that he can probably imagine that Matt was once.
"It's alright. It's never going to be a normal mother-son relationship and I think we both accepted that a long time ago. She frets after me a lot. Not because I'm blind but the business I'm in and the people I interact with." Specifically the kind that's conducted under a mask at night but he leaves the comment to allude to his career. Given that the reason that Matt Murdock ended up on the other man's radar at all is due to his association with vigilantes and the relationship that was apparent in the first downfall of Wilson Fisk, that should give any mother reason to stay awake at night worrying.
Matt comes to a stop in front of an apartment building that, unlike his old one, is part of the gentrified portion of the neighborhood. He's moved up in the world but he also recognizes the cost of that and why he made such a change from loss and necessity instead of a desire for better. "This one."
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He shrugs as he moves to a halt in front of the building that's Matt's paused before. "All right." Lonán pats his hands on his knees with an audible swat of fabric. "I went to Mass, God. Did you see that? Ought to be good enough for some positive karma with the elevator, right?" He gestures needlessly without touching the other man. "After you."
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Matt leads the way inside and, whether through divine intervention or because Matt happens to live in a pretty good building, the elevator is working as expected. It takes them up to the top floor where Matt's apartment is located and he guides them down the hallway that goes to his door. He's quick to unlock it and hold it open for Lonán to come inside. He reaches for the switch on the wall to turn on the lights that he would otherwise neglect and tosses his keys into the tray by the door.
It's an upgrade from his last place made affordable only by the neon shining through his windows at all hours and some examples of the progress that he's professionally made when he rerouted his life in the wake of the loss of his best friend. It's a nice place but if he's honest with himself, the upgrades feel hollow, except for the easier roof access when he's partaking in nocturnal activities.
"Grab you anything?" he offers.
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Inside the apartment Lonán proceeds respectfully, but as Matt dumps his keys he pushes up for a better view out the angled windows and onto the city skyline. He spares a few moments to just gaze at the setting sun and the skyscrapers that remain visible from his low vantage point and the gradient of the panes, then peers into the living area until the question brings him around again.
Lonán doesn't answer immediately, but there's a sound of rustling and then something being unzipped from a leather backpack slung from the push handles at the back of his chair. "Promised I'd bring something, didn't I?" He sloshes the full bottle of wine from side to side, liquid giving the faintest splash against the sides of the glass. Did Lonán actually come to Mass with a full bottle of red stashed on him? It would seem so.
"It's a Syrah blend. You can consider it a host gift if you've got something else in mind. I'll drink whatever you're serving."
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Once inside, he takes off his jacket and loosens the tie that he wore to church in a way that reminds him of the time immediately after Mass when, as a kid, he would immediately shed his Sunday best in favor of something more comfortable. These days, he's more accustomed to suits and button-ups.
Much of Matt's life is spent pretending not to notice things, like the way he could hear the sloshing of the bottle in the backpack for the duration of their trek back. When it's offered, he smiles and steps forward to take the bottle placed into his hand. "This works, thank you." He takes it back to the open concept kitchen and opens the drawer by the refrigerator to retrieve the corkscrew that he has.
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"I like your place," he comments idly as he watches Matt uncork the bottle of contraband. He doesn't snoop around the bookshelves, but the lingering gaze he casts in their direction might be sign enough he's planning to take the first available opportunity to give a more thorough examination to the things the other man has left out and available for visual perusal. "How long have you lived here?"
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He finishes pouring the glasses and steps around the island and extends his hand to offer Lonán one. "I know it's very stereotypical of me to complain about rent in Manhattan," he adds. He does expect that Lonán is looking around his apartment, presumably looking for clues to the man himself within it. He won't find it in decor, given that Matt hired someone for that when he moved. There's the bookshelf and other shelf composed almost entirely of records that offer something personal but any attempt at wall art or the little impersonal items meant to make a space feel more fashionable were outside influence.
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This time, at least, he catches himself not long after. It's not the man's intent to probe too enthusiastically at too many of Matt's sore areas. At least not until they've gotten a few glasses in them and the mood feels right for a little bit of reflection. Idled around the kitchen counter is hardly the appropriate venue, he thinks. So Lonán wedges the glass of wine between his thighs and draws back on his pushrims, backing up until he's parallel with the bookshelf.
"All right, enough stalling. I can see some of where my generous payout has gone. Now let me hear some of it."
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He takes a sip of the wine and despite his ability to taste everything, he doesn't know if he'd consider his taste to be particularly good but he likes it well enough. The discussion of the entire point of this whole venture, or at least on its surface, is recalibrated and Matt crosses the room with the glass in his hand toward his record player. He's kept the stack out from his recent purchase, initially because he hadn't yet put them away properly and now for the convenience of having them there. It's also a sizable stack so Lonán knows his money went to good use. "I still have to label them," he shrugs, "So I'm not really sure which is which until I play it."
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Finally now, Lonán stops himself from commenting any further with a sip of wine. It coats his tongue and the flavors bloom, and he tries to relax and stop overthinking. There's a better chance of getting the earth to stop rotating on its axis, but Lonán reminds himself of the same thing he'd like Matt to know: that this is all just conversation with no ulterior motive.
"Great, then it'll be like a mystery grab bag." He stows the glass between his knees but keeps his position by the bookcase rather than crowding Matt behind the couch. "Just choose one at random and let fate decide."
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It is difficult to feel like this has the qualities of a normal conversation and maybe that's on Matt for still being stuck on the instinct to be watching what he says. In that vein, he does recognize that he'd probably be better off by redirecting the questions back around instead of spilling his own proverbial guts about things. He's interested, but he's felt a little bit like he's still on his back foot in the whole interaction. Maybe there is some hesitance in connection anyway; he's kept everyone at arm's length, at best, since Foggy died and opening up his life to someone and having them do the same still feels awkward.
He reaches down and thumbs through the stack to choose something at random. His movements are easy and practiced, confident and sure. Maybe he should fumble more but inside his own home, the act tends to fall away. "I'll await your judgment," he adds while he removes the vinyl. Stick used to tell him that he could tell the record by the grooves but Matt elects no attempt at that and decides to let sound tell the story.
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He smirks at the suggestion of Matt acquiescing his own personal tastes to the judgment of a virtual stranger. "I'm sure I won't be disappointed." He wasn't lying when he mentioned that his own tastes are eclectic, but Lonán is more than curious to discover the kind of music the other man gravitates to and the story it might tell about him. He doesn't try to steal a peek as the other man removes the album from the sleeve and fits it onto the turntable; instead he just waits for the first notes to fill the space between them.
While he does, he deposits his wine glass at the edge of the coffee and glances at the few scattered objects already occupying the space. "Is this a board game?" Lonán asks, not specifying what he's looking at with more than the direction of his voice and Matt's knowledge of his own possessions.
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He runs his fingers along the edge of the turntable to the arm and needle until music comes from the expensive speakers that he has connected. Matt Murdock is far from a snob about most things in his life, even at the cost of some comfort with his senses, but he doesn't cheap out when it comes to the way that he listens to music. He has no use for tinny speakers that distort and cool the warm gaps that the vinyl produces when it's perfectly transformed. Once he has the record on, he sets the sleeve aside on a stand that's intended to hold it for easy retrieval and picks up his wine again.
He walks to the sofa to sit down on the end closest to where Lonán has located himself in the living room. "Hm? Oh, it's a chess set. They make tactile ones and with pegs to hold the pieces so they aren't knocked over in the course of mapping the board by touch. I've had it since I was a kid."
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Without the benefit of a conversational pathway, the bridge ahead will remain undiscovered.
Lonán hardly minds, as he finds himself settling into the first notes of guitar strings and the robust voice that follows. He's unfamiliar, but immediately taken by the earnest sound of the vocals and the weight of the words. He tips his head, letting it wash over him as Matt makes a place for himself on the near edge of the sofa. When he answers, it's with closed eyes. "I haven't played chess in ages. You'd think with three siblings there'd always be someone to rope into something, but they all hated board games."
Several moments of silence follow before he declares, "I like this song. Reminds me a little bit of Dylan. Doesn't sound like he's performing it; sounds like he's living it."
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"I can pull the board off the shelf if you want to play." It seems like a better lubricant for conversation than nothing at all. He hasn't played in a long time either, but his spare time is sacrosanct, to say the least, and it doesn't leave much time for board games even if he had someone worth playing.
"Yeah, he's good. Sometimes I like the simple stuff the most, depending on my mood." Maybe more often than not, these sad songs fill the air.
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He turns his attention to Matt as the man fetches the board off the shelf, giving him the space to pass. As they're settling into the arrangement Lonán pitches another casual request. "What would you say if we both played from the couch? My tailbone's about to go to war and I don't want my reach to spill any wine." It means trading in the opportunity for a quick escape, but Lonán hopes to do his part to keep this night from ending with either one of them wanting to storm out anyhow.
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Admittedly, the thought didn't occur to him and he does feel like a moderately bad host as a result. "Sure. What do you need from me?" he asks. He can offer as much or as little assistance as is necessary but he doesn't want to make any assumptions either.
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It does not escape the man's subconscious acknowledgement that Matt referred to a potential win on his part as a swindling. Lonán, of course, has no way of knowing what in either of their physiologies might lend itself to giving him the leading edge, but something in his spirit has picked up on the idea that his host, at least, thinks there is perhaps something, and he can't let it pass without comment.
The offer of assistance gives him momentary pause, but Lonán swipes his wine glass from the table and nudges the back of his holding grasp against Matt's palm. "Here's my wine. Will you put it somewhere over there that'll be out of your way? If I can have the right side of the couch that'd help my reach. I'll push my chair out of the way when I'm settled."
He angles himself with the free spot on the couch and sets his wheel lock to transfer from his chair onto the cushion. Lonán grips the back of the couch and comes to his feet briefly. He doesn't get entirely upright to his full 6'2", but Matt can no doubt get the sense that he's almost standing with the support of the couch. He settles down with a heavier sigh than he means to and unlocks the chair to angle it behind the couch and out of the way of everything but the record player.
"Fuck, okay. Sorry." He clears his throat and lets his breathing settle, returning mostly to himself save a few quiet winces he doesn't assume the other man can hear. "So, let me know how this works. Do you want me to call my moves?"
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Matt takes the glass as asked and holds onto it while Lonán maneuvers and gets settled on the couch. Once he's seated on it, Matt extends his hand so he can take the glass back and place it where he sees fit. From there, Matt arranges the board between them in Lonán's new position and turns it so he's playing as black in order to grant his guest the first move. "That would be appreciated. It saves some time. I do have to touch the board for more than just the movement of my piece so it does take a little bit longer. Vision is a split second, touch not so much. So I can promise it's not cheating because you know I want to get into heaven," he says the last part with a crooked grin. Other than that, it's the same rules and all of that."
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He sets his glass on the edge of the coffee table and pulls his left knee onto the couch cushion so he can sit sideways and face his opponent with the board between them. "Okay," Lonán scans the pieces and his memory before pinching the bulb of his chosen pawn between his thumb and middle finger. The peg clatters a little across the board before there's the sound of it being fed into the small hole designed to catch it. "That was my D2 pawn to D4."
And since the mention of Heaven is right there on the table, Lonán puts his shoulder into the couch cushion and hunkers down, assuming a more casual posture. "Did you have a lot to confess before the service tonight? In this perfect moment, is your soul squeaky-clean, Matthew?" His voice is pure teasing amusement.
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