Matt groaned as the obnoxious blaring of the alarm next to his bed woke him with an unpleasant start, the sound ricocheting around in his head and making his ears ring. He reached over to grope for the snooze button.
"Seven o'clock AM", said the robotic voice. The noise died away and slowly Matt came back to awareness, the familiar sounds of Hell's Kitchen flooding in comfortingly. He could hear his neighbor clamoring to get her children out the door and to the bus on time. They'd missed it already twice this week so far, Matt knew. All around him there were dogs barking, and eggs and bacon sizzling, buses stopping and newspapers being read. Matt took a moment to center himself by reflecting on the familiar sounds of the early morning.
Today, however, was not just any other morning. As Matt opened himself up to the universe around him, he was hit by a powerful odor of flowers, roses mostly, mixed with chocolate, and water-based lubricants, and perfume. It reminded Matt that it was Valentine's Day. It was almost enough to make Matt roll over and ignore the day in bed, but he knew that the office was calling to him. He would have to get up and face the day.
Thankfully, Karen and Foggy seemed to also be pretending it wasn't February 14th, which helped the situation. While the world outside the office engaged in it's annual celebration of all things romantic, the three of them closed the blinds and hunkered down with their newest case, defending an unlucky burglar who had accidentally stumbled upon a bloody corpse during his lesser crime and was now facing a murder charge. The work was difficult, and involved, and so Valentine's Day was forgotten about. Until, that is, they all went to leave for the night.
"Hey, buddy," Foggy asked casually once Karen had left, as they were packing up. "You going out tonight?"
Matt assumed he meant patrolling in his costume, and so he answered "I was thinking about it. Things have been quiet on the streets lately though, so I might just stay at home and wait to see if I hear anything."
"Oh, yeah," said Foggy. "Right. The whole vigilante thing. I thought you might be calling on your nurse friend tonight. For a less emergent than usual, Valentine's Day-related reason, maybe?"
"It's not like that, Foggy," Matt said. "I told you, Claire and I are just friends. And I'm not doing anything for Valentine's Day."
"Good," said Foggy, clapping his hands together enthusiastically, "Then you can come out with me for once! The Red Door is having a Valentine's Day speed dating night! That could be fun, right?"
Matt scowled at the thought. "Seriously? Speed dating? Foggy, since when is that your idea of fun?"
Foggy sighed. "Since my mom spent twenty minutes hassling me this morning about my love life, Karen gently let me down for a third time about going on a proper date, and I realized that I have no romantic prospects right now."
"What? Foggy, that's ridiculous," Matt said. "You'll meet someone. But dating a bunch of strangers on a timer? That sounds terrible."
"C'mon, man. Please?" Foggy said, "It's Valentine's Day! You're supposed to spend it with someone you love, which means you qualify even if the night's a bust. Besides, how else am I going to meet someone? At this point I'm starting to feel like there is a very strong possibility that I might die alone covered in a blanket made of cats."
Matt laughed. "You're not going to die alone, Foggy. Also, please don't get cats. I hate cats. They shed everywhere, get underfoot, and they smell awful. I could never visit you if you got cats. And given the choices I've made, I will probably also be alone if I'm around by that point, so you can take me in like a stray instead. We'll keep each other company in our old age."
"Nice," said Foggy, "If you wanted to depress me more, you have succeeded. And made me feel like I need to rescue you from that sad fate as much as myself. You're coming with me, Murdock! That is the final word on the subject. I am not taking no for an answer."
Matt gave an affectionate sigh and extended his elbow as a familiar invitation to lead the way, and Foggy took it. Together, they headed out the door towards what they both knew would be an interesting, if awful, evening of talking to desperately lonely strangers.
When they reached the Red Door, a cramped hole in the wall with low lighting and wood-paneled walls, a sign pointed them towards the speed dating on the second floor where events were normally held. They ascended the stairs and Matt's nostrils were immediately hit with the smell of several dozen bad perfumes and colognes, his ears assaulted by the buzz and hum of a large crowd of people gathered around waiting for the event to begin. He rushed as quickly as he could towards the bar and gestured to get the bartender's attention, not sure if he was noticed, as Foggy followed to join him.
"This has got to be a fire code violation," Matt yelled over the noise of the crowd. "We should leave." The bartender was too busy taking other orders. Matt hoped he got a drink soon. He suspected he was really going to need it. "I don't understand why you even wanted to do this," he told Foggy.
"Sorry," Foggy said, sincerely. "It just occurred to me that this has gotta be a little rough for you with your whole... thing. Is it bad?" He struggled with how to reference Matt's heightened senses.
"Really bad," replied Matt. "There's a lot of people here. Loud people, in a very small space, who are only going to get drunker."
"But you can focus, right? You can sense each one of them, if you wanted?" Foggy asked.
"Yeah," said Matt, realizing where his friend's line of questioning was leading. "Wait... is that why you brought me here?"
"Not entirely," said Foggy. "It's more fun to do this with you here," he said. "And I do worry about you being alone too, you know. But yeah, I may have had ulterior motives in asking you to come out with me to this. I figured I'd give you a chance to make up for all the time I've traded my friend in for Daredevil lately. Plus, I wanted to see your cool superpowers in action in a non-danger filled way. A way that gets me laid."
"Foggy..." Matt said, interrupted by the bartender making a surprise appearance. Matt ordered two beers and slid one over to Foggy while fishing the right bills out of his wallet to pay.
"Matt, please? Can you just give me this one night? Maverick and Goose, remember?" Foggy pleaded.
"You know, I still think that's a terrible comparison to make," Matt said, smiling despite himself. He sighed, but held his beer up towards Foggy in a toast. "Maverick and Goose," he agreed. They clinked their mugs together
Moments later, a woman screamed above the din of people's conversations, laying out the rules of the evening. Tables were lined up across from one another in rows with small tables in between. Everyone would choose a chair, men in one row and women in the other. They would talk to the person across from them for five minutes, before all of the men would be instructed to move one chair down the line. At the end of the night, everyone could mingle and potentially seek out any of the other speed daters who interested them.
Matt took a seat at the opposite end of the line of chairs from Foggy at his friend's insistence. "Having you next to me will just distract me," Foggy explained. "I need to focus on my game. I just want you to do whatever it is that you do and get me as much info as you can on these ladies and what's going on with them." He put his hands on Matt's shoulders and Matt could tell that Foggy was looking him in the eyes despite his lack of sight. "My future wife could be in this group of women, Matt. The future mother of your future godchildren. Choose wisely for me, buddy."
And with that, the evening really began.
Despite Foggy's insistence that Matt not listen in on his dates, Matt couldn't help himself. He figured that the best piece of information he could give his friend about the women they were meeting was which ones were actually attracted to him. He kept his senses attuned to each woman's response to his friend, tracking their heartbeats, sweat, hormones, body heat, and general behavior. Once he determined how Foggy's date was going, he turned his attention back to the person in front of him each time, introducing himself with a smile and turning on the charm.
His own dates very quickly revealed themselves to him without his heightened senses even being necessary. Matt knew whether or not they were worth his time the moment that they realized he was blind.
Some women were immediately not interested. Matt didn't blame them. He knew that it was a lot to ask of someone to take care of someone with a disability or who had special needs, even if he knew that he didn't personally need that level of attention and devotion. The women in front of him didn't know that, after all. It made him sad, but he understood.
Some women were repulsed by his blindness. The moment that they sat down in front of Matt, they wanted to be anywhere else because he made them uncomfortable. Those ones, he did blame. He was rude and short with them, wrote them off as ableists with no empathy, and crossed them off of Foggy's list of candidates as well.
Some women were attracted to him because of his blindness. This bothered Matt. It always had. It meant that the woman likely wanted the attention and sympathy that came with having a blind boyfriend, or that they had some romanticized notion of what a world without sight was really like. He disliked women who got excited at the thought of him touching their face to determine their beauty or who were looking for someone to take care of. He found these women to be ultimately ignorant, and altogether too full of pity for him. He was polite with these women, but they weren't what he was looking for even if they were the ones who fell the hardest for him.
Eliminating all of the women who had immediate reactions to Matt's lack of sight left him with only a few real prospects from the long line of people he met. These were the women who cracked self-deprecating jokes about their own beauty because they knew that Matt wouldn't care. Who said what was on their mind and asked forthright questions to Matt about what his life was like if they were curious. And who didn't try to help him without his permission, and respected his independence. Matt made a note of these women and resolved to seek them out later and get to know them better.
Throughout each date, he made sure to ask pointed questions geared towards gathering the most information possible about each woman, especially relative to what he knew were Foggy's interests and needs. What was their favourite movie? Did they read the latest news story about global warming or gay marriage? What was their favourite restaurant in the city? He paid attention to their responses and tried to get a read on each one.
Finally, the line reached its starting point again and the speed dating portion of the evening ended.
Matt made his way over to a back booth where Foggy was waiting for him, and slid in across from his friends, beers in hand.
"Alright, Matt," Foggy said. "Let's compare notes! You first. Any women you're interested in? Any women you're thinking I should be interested in?"
Matt laughed. "Well, who I'm interested in doesn't matter, because I'm only really here for you. So, give me some names and I'll tell you what I thought of them."
"Okay," said Foggy. "Angela?" he asked. "She's a model. She's clearly got money and is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen."
Matt reflected on the fact that many of Foggy's problems with women stemmed from the fact that he was always attracted to the wrong ones. "She says she's a model, but she's not a successful one," Matt said. "She lied as she described her career in a way that suggested that she's probably five minutes away from getting on a bus back to her hometown or ending up in pornography. The desperation rolled off of her in waves. Her dress and perfume were expensive, but she was nursing a glass of what I can only assume is the cheapest alcohol on the menu and wearing shoes that I could tell were super-glued recently, which tells me that she's probably broke and someone else probably paid for the expensive items she wore. Conclusion: she's probably a gold-digger who was only into you because you told her you were a lawyer. Sorry, buddy."
"Wow," said Foggy. "Impressive, and also extraordinarily valuable to me to know. Let's see... Leslie? She's a pediatrician, which means she's smart and good with kids."
"It's a good thing she is," said Matt, "because she's also pregnant right now. It made it awkward when I tried to get her drink away from her without telling her."
"Are you serious?" Foggy asked.
"Yes," Matt replied. "I could smell the altered hormones and sense the second heartbeat."
Foggy didn't say anything in response to that, and Matt wasn't sure whether that fact should unnerve him or not. "Jane," Foggy finally asked. "She's into good music, and I'm into the whole goth look."
"She's also not into you at all, unfortunately," Matt said as gently as he could. "Or me. Maybe not men, even. The only person I sensed her get aroused or excited by was Angela from across the room."
"Wow," said Foggy again. "I mean... just wow, Matt." Matt wasn't sure how to take that.
"Do you want my opinion?" asked Matt.
"You know I do. It's why I brought you here," Foggy said.
Matt thought for a moment on all the women he had met. "Ellie," he finally said. "The doctoral student who snorts when she laughs."
"Huh," said Foggy, thinking about it. "Really?"
"You didn't like her?" asked Matt. "She really liked you."
"She did?" Foggy said. "I don't know. I mean, she's wearing a knitted hat with an image of a bird on it. She brought a huge messenger bag full of school books with her to the bar. Covered in buttons with political slogans. She's a little intense, don't you think?"
"Maybe," Matt said, "I couldn't see any of the things you just described. But I do know that she was a great conversationalist. She was passionate and intelligent. She wasn't wearing too much make-up or perfume like a lot of the other women here, which means that she isn't afraid to be herself. And she reminded me of you in a lot of ways."
"How?" Foggy asked, curious.
"She was genuine," Matt said, "Everything she said was the truth, even if it meant that sometimes she came across as bold or blunt. Her favourite food is Indian, just like you. She loves Star Wars, and collects vinyl records the same obsessive way you collect fantasy novels."
"No offense, Matt," Foggy said, "But it sounds like maybe you like her."
"I do," said Matt, "But mostly because she immediately fell for you and wasn't into me at all. Just think about it."
"I will," Foggy said, seeking Ellie out at the other end of the bar and observing her through new eyes. "How do you do it?" he asked Matt.
"Do what?" Matt asked, surprised by the question.
"Walk around knowing all of that stuff about everyone you meet within minutes of meeting them," Foggy said. "You figured out stuff about these women that they may not even know about themselves. Without even trying. That's insanity."
Matt shrugged. "You asked me to do what I do," he said.
"Well yeah," Foggy said, "But you made it sound like it was just heartbeats and lying, or like you had to really focus to do it. But it's your life. It's all the time. And there are so many people in this city."
"There are," Matt said. "It's why I put the suit on, Foggy. There are millions of people in this city, each living in their own little secret world. People being born, people falling in love, people dying. Everyone has their own doubts and hopes and fears and dreams. Hell's Kitchen alone teems with life. It's happening every day, all around us. I can't escape it. So I protect it. Someone has to."
"Who looks out for you, though?" Foggy asked. "Who knows your secret world?"
"You do," said Matt. "Why do you think I'm here?"
The pair sat for a moment, lost in thought and finishing their beers. Finally, Foggy stood up. "Well," he said, placing his empty beer mug on the table. "Time to go meet your possible future friend-in-law," he said.