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i.
Dust hangs in the air around them. Matt can feel it caked in the creases of the suit and can taste it thick on his tongue. He exhales, breathes out a long, slow sigh, and feels the particles swirling about his lips.
The Avengers stand a few metres from where Matt's sitting on a cracked, now horizontal concrete pillar. They're discussing the group they'd been fighting - something HYDRA related, and way out of Matt's usual range. He'd only shown up to the fight because it was in Hell's Kitchen, and he didn't trust the Avengers not to level half of his part of the city.
He's beginning to consider getting up and heading home when the group breaks apart from their debrief circle, and three people walk towards him. One Matt easily recognises as Tony Stark, the hum and buzz of electronics noticeable even without the Iron Man suit. Another is Bruce Banner, his heartbeat carefully slow. The third is harder to pick out, but Matt is almost entirely sure it's Clint Barton. Hawkeye. His heart beats faster as he approaches. He's nervous.
“Daredevil, right?” Stark asks, as Matt stands to meet them.
“Apparently, yes.” He replies, pitching his voice low and grinning. Barton steps back slightly.
“Are you injured at all?” Banner moves forward, elbowing Stark to the side. He stops just short of actually touching Matt, but the movement of his arms betrays how he is used to being able to reach out and touch his teammates.
“No.” Matt says, a little too fast. Banner frowns at him. “Yes, but they're just minor. A few scrapes and bruises. A cut that might need stitches. I've had much worse.”
“I don't doubt that, but you still need patching up.”
“I have someone who can help me with that. I don't need you to do it.”
Stark laughs, and Barton's face shifts, as if he might be smiling. “Stubborn.” He says, fingertips trailing up the broken shaft of an arrow he's picked up from the rubble. “You'd fit right in.”
“You're welcome to come back to Avengers Tower with us for a bit. Get patched up, have some pizza. You were very helpful fighting these asshats, and I've heard about how you helped take down Fisk.” Stark says.
Matt shakes his head, biting back a dozen retorts on how Stark didn't help at all with Fisk, and how throwing his money at random organisations just adds to the problem. “Thanks, but I'd best be off. It was nice, uh, meeting you guys.”
He turns to leave, but Barton speaks up, hand stilling on the splintered arrow. “Take care of yourself, okay?”
Banner huffs a soft laugh, and Stark smiles.
It’s oddly nice.
“Okay.” Matt murmurs, and makes his way through the rubble in the direction that he's pretty sure leads to the closest undamaged street.
"He's like real-life Batman." Stark says with a snort, and Barton giggles. Matt is sure they don't mean for him to hear, but really, he can't help it.
"I'm glad he has someone, though. He's not a complete loner." Banner's voice is slightly muffled as he turns back towards the rest of the Avengers.
"A significant other, do you think?" Stark asks, also turning back. "She'd have to have a hell of a lot of patience. I've seen the reports about that guy, he's out almost every night, for hours. And he's always getting hurt. She'd need to be an actual saint."
"Maybe he's secretly with Pepper." Barton laughs, and is rewarded with a light slap from Stark's metal-encased hand. "What! She's the only person I know who could put up with that. She's put up with you for years."
Stark grumbles something inaudible, even to him. Matt leaps up onto a fire escape, eager to get home.
ii.
“Race you to that very phallic-looking building.” Clint says, pointing.
Matt can’t quite follow his arm but he’s pretty sure he knows the building Clint is referring to – it had been built post-Incident, and Foggy had nearly cried laughing when it was completed, frantically trying to describe its shape to Matt. He nods.
“Alright. You’re on.”
It’s the fourth time he’s met up with Clint since the HYDRA fight, and the first time they haven’t had an abundance of crime to deal with. It’s a quiet night. They’d eaten pizza sitting on the edge of a rooftop and debated about vigilante laws, and Matt is starting to think of Clint as a friend. It’s surprisingly nice.
Matt beats Clint, of course – knowing the area incredibly well and having senses like his are strong advantages in rooftop parkour competitions. Matt’s barely out of breath when the two of them sit down on the dusty rooftop; Clint is puffing like the steam engine his Dad had taken him to see when he was six.
“Fuck you.” Clint says, and Matt grins at him.
“It was your idea.”
Clint groans and flops backwards so he’s lying flat on his back, staring up at the sky above. Matt doesn’t join him – it’s an incredibly vulnerable position, and while he’s happy at the show of Clint’s trust, Matt isn’t quite at that point yet. Even if they maybe are friends. “Stop combating my grumpiness with facts and logic.”
Well, he wants to say, I am a lawyer.
He doesn’t say it.
The silence stretches between them, and Matt’s senses drift outwards, catching information from his surroundings. There’s an ambulance a few blocks away, sirens on, but there’s no notable incidents nearby. Several drunk college students stumble down the street below him, but they’re sober enough to call a taxi. A child screams in a nearby apartment building, but their mother comforts them a minute later and tells them it was just a nightmare. Nothing he can help with.
“How do you do this?” Clint asks.
He pauses. Turns his head towards Clint out of more habit than need. “What do you mean?” He asks.
“How do you come out here every night? How do you get any sleep? You said you had a day job, right? How do you manage doing what you do? Physically and emotionally?”
“I –” Matt begins, and stops. “It’s complicated?”
Clint starts, pushing himself up off the concrete. “You don’t – you don’t have to explain, not if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s okay.” Matt says, and the tension drains out of Clint’s body. “I didn’t manage at first, not at all. And then I got a bit better, and then I got worse, and then I told myself I’d stop, completely, and then some shit happened that I don’t even want to get into, and I got thrown back into it all again. There was a period where I wasn’t working a day job, and for some of it I didn’t wear civilian clothes for days at a time. I barely slept, I barely ate, I didn’t talk to anyone except for threatening criminals.”
“Yikes.” Clint murmurs.
“But I – I had to learn to get better at it. Not just for me, for… yeah. I had to learn how to take nights off, to let myself heal, to leave things to other people sometimes. To actually talk to someone about what was going in inside my head, to let other people help me. I’m not… I’m nowhere near perfect at it all, but I’m getting better. My… my partner is a big part of all that.”
“She sounds like a pretty amazing person.”
Matt can’t help but laugh at that, and Clint seems startled. He figures it’s because he hasn’t laughed around Clint yet, not properly – even after the time they’ve been spending together, Clint still only knows the Devil. He doesn’t know Matt Murdock.
“Oh, yeah. Pretty amazing.” He agrees, and makes a mental note to tell Foggy all about this in the morning.
He’ll find it absolutely hilarious.
iii.
"You're dating Jessica Jones!" Tony says triumphantly, as he blasts a slime creature across the room.
“I’m what?” Matt turns to him, incredulous, and barely manages to dodge another one of the creatures rushing towards him. He aims a kick at where its face should be, and then sinks his fists into the cool, sticky body until it stops wriggling.
Stark waves a hand vaguely in the direction of where Clint and Natasha are fighting back-to-back, and then blasts another creature.
“We have a betting pool.” Clint explains, sounding slightly guilty and not at all excited to be the one telling Matt this. “Tony gets way too involved in people’s personal lives. He scoured the news for people you’d been seen interacting with, and Jessica Jones is the one he’s decided you’re dating.”
“What?” Matt says again. “Jessica?”
“I’m betting on someone from your, y’know, normal person life. Tasha thinks it’s Luke Cage. Everyone else has jumped on board the Jessica Jones ship because Tony bribed them with copious amounts of alcohol, poptarts, and themed coffee mugs.”
“So?” Tony asks, and manages to blast his way through the writhing mass off slime creatures pouring out of the doorway to get to where Matt is standing on the other side. “Who is it?”
“You really think – Jessica?” Matt says, because Jessica. What the fuck. Out of all people, Stark had chosen her?
“Uh. Yeah?” Stark stills momentarily.
“Oh god, you actually think I’m dating Jess.” His ribs hurt too much from a patrol two days ago to properly laugh, but he manages to wheeze a little. It gets the point across, he thinks.
“Hah.” Natasha says. She shoves her foot through one of the slime creatures. “I told you it wasn’t Jones.”
“Wait,” Stark says, sounding genuinely confused, “let me get this straight – you’re not dating Jessica Jones?”
“She’s like the sister I never wanted.” Matt replies. Stark blasts a creature that’s latched onto Matt’s thigh. He nods in thanks.
“So who is it, then?” Stark asks.
“Tony, for the love of god, don’t bug him about it.” Clint groans. “You don’t need to know everything.”
Stark makes a hmph noise.
“For the record,” Matt says, “it’s not Luke Cage, either.”
“Fuck.” Natasha grumbles, and throws the last moving slime creature across the room. It hits the wall with an awful squelch and slides slowly downwards. All four of them cringe at the noise and let out a breath of relief when it doesn’t get back up again.
iv.
Matt isn’t sure when he loses consciousness. One moment, he’s leaping towards one of the terrorists, a man gripping a little girl’s arm too tightly in one hand and gun in the other. The next, Clint’s voice is sounding anxious somewhere above him.
It takes a few moments for his senses to come back online entirely, but when they do he’s greeted with the overwhelming scent of blood and the unsettling silence that descends in the few minutes after an Avengers-level battle.
“Hey, man, hey… oh, thank fuck you’re awake –” Clint says, and places his hand on Matt’s left shoulder, just enough to keep him on the ground.
Matt struggles against the force, trying to get up, and a sudden burst of pain sears through his right side. Clint tentatively puts his other hand on Matt’s right shoulder, pushing to apply pressure. It burns in a way Matt still hasn’t gotten used to, and doesn’t expect he ever will. “Oh god, fuck –”
“Yeah, don’t try to get up, it’s okay –”
“What happened?” He asks through gritted teeth, but the pieces are already starting the fall together inside his mind. The girl’s scream, him shoving her out of the way as the man turned, the barrel of a gun pressed up against his shoulder, the shock of pain before he could manage to disarm him, the slow, painful fight that followed, stumbling under the eaves of an empty storefront to get away from the rest of the battle –
Clint’s talking, but Matt’s focusing on the area around them, his senses skimming over cracked concrete and burnt plastic. The whine of ambulances increases in volume. The children are huddled off to one side with their teacher, the Captain and Thor watching over them. All the terrorists are unconscious and zip tied, their weapons laid out for whoever appears to confiscate them.
He lets himself relax, slumping back into the rough press of concrete. Clint makes a concerned noise, but he’s interrupted from speaking by the appearance of Banner, who winces noticeably at the sight of Matt. He falls into a crouch and cracks open a large first-aid kit, ripping several plastic packets open and throwing a handful of something to Clint.
“Pack the wound.” He says, and begins unrolling bandages. “We need to keep him from losing too much blood. Steve or Thor can carry him to the quinjet, Nat’s bringing it around right now.”
Clint nods and Matt braces himself against the pain of gauze being shoved into his shoulder.
“Where are you taking me?” He asks. “I can’t – I can’t go to hospital.”
Banner sighs. “Yeah, I figured. We have a medbay in Avengers tower, we’re taking you there.”
“Will you –”
“We won’t force you to tell us your identity. We won’t have the tower’s AI figure out who you are. Any footage that shows your identity will be wiped from our systems. We work with other people who need to keep their identities secret – we have protocols in place.”
Matt isn’t entirely reassured by all that, but he’s way too goddamn tired to argue any of it.
“Yeah, okay.” He says.
Everything blurs together for a while. Clint and Banner pack and bandage the gunshot wound in Matt’s shoulder. Clint chats absent-mindedly about everything from his dog to US politics. Various emergency service vehicles and a group from what is most likely SHIELD show up. Captain America himself picks Matt up and carries him onto the quinjet that Natasha lands in the middle of the empty street.
Foggy would go wild at the chance to meet Captain America and – oh. Foggy.
The thought of Foggy sitting back in their apartment, checking his phone compulsively and worrying over the absence of a reply manages to snap Matt out of his dazed, slightly removed state. He’s on a stretcher on the floor of the jet, and the Avengers are seated on either side of him. He’s still in his Daredevil gear – they’d ripped apart the thinner part of his suit a little further from where it’d already been torn by the bullet, but it’s still on. The cowl, too, hasn’t been removed. He can feel his burner phone in one of his pockets.
Banner must notice his sudden increase in movement, because he leans forwards. “We’ll be there soon – I didn’t want to take off your helmet while you weren’t aware enough to protest, but I really do need to know whether you have a concussion or head wound of any sort.”
“I – I don’t have either.” He murmurs. “My –”
Banner interrupts. “I’d still like to check your pupils and feel around your skull, just to –”
“No.” Matt says, more firmly. “Can you – can someone grab my phone? It’s in my left pocket.”
Clint slips down to grab it, and hands it up to Matt. “I got you, man.” He says. Matt tries to nod in reply, but it hurts too much.
Foggy is the first contact in his burner, so Matt doesn’t have to search around for it like an idiot while the entirety of the Avengers listen in while pretending not to be listening in. It dials and barely rings before it’s picked up.
“Oh, thank god, I was getting worried –”
“Hey. Sorry.” Matt murmurs. Foggy breathes in sharply.
“Are you okay? Matty, what –”
“I’m with the Avengers.”
“Yeah, yeah, I saw on the news, armed terrorists, school bus, they’re all okay – but are you hurt? Do I need to come get you?”
“I’m – uh…”
“Spit it out, Matty.”
“I got shot. In the shoulder. It’s bandaged and everything, I’ll be fine.”
“Oh my god, you dumbass. Are you actually going to be okay or are you just saying that? Do I need to call Claire?”
“Claire’s busy. And yeah, it’s not too bad. Not as bad as, y’know, Nobu, or –”
Foggy groans. “Don’t remind me.”
“I’m still with the Avengers, they’re taking me to the tower.”
“That massive eyesore – wait, oh my god, is Captain America there?”
“Yeah, Fogs, Captain America is here.”
“Holy shit, that’s so cool. So like – do you need me to pick you up from the tower?” Foggy sounds way too eager, and Matt laughs a little at that.
“No, I can catch a taxi home.”
“You got shot.”
“You’re pretty easy to connect to non-Daredevil me.”
Foggy hums thoughtfully. “But really, would that be so bad? You’re fighting with the Avengers more and more, you and Hawkeye are best bros. They’re all gonna find out sooner or later.”
“I’d prefer it to be later.”
“Suit yourself.” Foggy says. “Call me when you’re on your way home, okay?”
“Yeah, I will.”
“I love you.”
“Love you too.” Matt murmurs, and there’s a moment of silence before Foggy speaks up again.
“Stay safe, asshole.”
“I will. I promise.”
“Okay, bye for real now. Hanging up.”
Matt lets his head drop back down, energy leaving his body all at once. Part of him regrets not asking Foggy to come, not having him here right now, the warmth of his body and the smell of his shampoo grounding him.
He sighs, placing the phone on the floor beside him, and suddenly becomes aware that everyone in the quinjet (besides Natasha) is looking at him.
“Awww.” Clint coos.
v.
It’s Thursday evening, and Matt has just helped the Avengers take down a warehouse of human traffickers. He’s half listening to Steve try to explain the situation to the local police, half focused on pulling bits of glass out of his suit when Clint sidles up to him, Natasha trailing behind him.
“Hey.” Clint says.
Matt raises a gloved hand in a half-hearted wave. Clint offers him a bottle of water, which he gratefully accepts.
“So, it’s Thursday.” He begins, and Matt groans.
“I tell you every single week that I’m not a movie guy.”
“And I tell you every single week that you should come anyway.”
“I have better things to do.”
“Do you though?” Clint taps Matt’s horns. “Do you really? You know, you can bring your girlfriend along if you want. There will be snacks and plenty of dumb commentary.”
“I don’t have –” Matt begins, and stops when he catches Natasha tilt her head slightly, probably picking up whatever information is showing on the unobscured half of his face. “Look. I don’t have anything else on tonight, but I do have a day job. I have things on tomorrow. I can’t come to your movie night.”
“Oh please.” Clint says. “You stay out way later pretty much every night on patrol. And you can sleep at the tower, we have plenty of spare beds.”
“You may as well come,” Natasha murmurs, laughter in her voice, “or Clint will continue bugging you until you do. Unless, of course, you’d prefer to go home to your… partner.”
“Uh.” Matt says, and sighs. “My partner is… at a family thing tonight. I’ll – yeah, yeah okay. Fine. I’ll come. What’s the movie?”
“Legally Blonde.” Clint grins.
Avengers tower is a lot easier to figure out when he’s not bleeding from a bullet wound, Matt discovers.
He follows the team into what must be a living area, wide and spacious with a bar and enough couches and chairs to fit three times the number of people in the room.
Clint tells him to wait on one of the chairs while he fetches Matt some spare clothes. He perches on the arm, letting his senses wander through the room and further into the building. One by one the other avengers disappear and then reappear cleaner, in clothes that sound a hell of a lot more comfortable than whatever they’d been wearing to fight, fabric swishing softly around limbs, damp hair brushing against skin.
It’s a completely different way to experience the group of people around him. They’re all still easily recognisable by their heartbeats, but they’re so much softer, so much less threatening, so much more vulnerable.
“Hey.” Clint murmurs from right beside him, and Matt startles, his previously wandering senses snapping back to his immediate surroundings. “Here’s your clothes – they’re some spare things of mine, we’re about the same height and build – you can wash up and change in the bathroom just over there, we’re gonna make popcorn, and then you can pick a couch.”
“Thanks.” Matt says, and takes the clothes. They’re soft.
“Oh, and. Uh.” Clint begins, fidgeting. “Look, you can keep the Daredevil helmet on if you want to, but if you do take it off – we won’t tell anyone outside this room, or find out anything about you that you don’t want to tell us. You’re safe here, with us. You can trust us. But we won’t be angry if you leave it on. It’s all up to you.”
Matt nods to him and heads to what he’s mostly sure is the bathroom Clint has been pointing at, narrowly missing a collision with a shin-high table on the way.
He showers quickly and efficiently, tempted to take the advantage of the perfect water pressure and temperature but ultimately anxious about taking up too much of anyone else’s time. The clothes are really as soft as they’d felt earlier, the sweatpants a little tight but the hoodie surprisingly large.
He lingers for a while, Daredevil helmet in his hands. The smooth, cool material is comforting under his fingertips and he imagines the added layer of safety, of privacy, of protection. But he trusts the Avengers, trusts Clint in particular, and he’s going to have to do this sooner or later.
Matt folds up the Daredevil suit, gently places the helmet on top, picks the bundle up and leaves the bathroom.
He regrets it immediately, the attention of everyone in the room pinning him down, analysing him, dissecting him. But he keeps walking, towards where Clint is sitting, and lays the suit and helmet beside the couch before sitting down.
Clint hands him a bowl of warm, buttery popcorn, and just like that, everything is okay again.
“My name is Matt Murdock.” He says.
Clint’s face shifts into a wide smile.
“Oh my god.” Stark whispers, and then – “Wait. Wait – you’re blind?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
Tony begins to say something else, but Clint interrupts. “Dude, that’s so fucking cool. I’m deaf.”
The slight humming that always accompanies Clint suddenly makes sense, and Matt smiles back at him.
“In Asgard,” Thor says, his voice softer than Matt has heard it before, “the Bifrost is guarded by Heimdall. He does not see in the same way many others of us see – he is able to observe souls all across the nine realms. Do you have similar powers, Matthew?”
“Kinda of. I… have incredibly enhanced senses, apart from sight. They all come together to form a sort of… impressionistic painting of what’s around me. I’m still blind, but I’m able to… see, in my own way.”
“That’s so interesting.” Banner says. “How did you become enhanced? Experiment? Accident? Mutation?”
“I pushed a man out of the way of a truck when I was nine, it crashed and some sort of… radioactive liquid got splashed in my eyes. Blinded me, but enhanced all my other senses.”
Banner makes an interested noise. “Radiation. Huh.”
“Damn.” Clint says. “That’s an impressive backstory.”
“Oy.” Natasha suddenly snaps, and the rest of the group turns to stare at Stark. “No research.”
Stark puts his hands in the air, phone left on his lap. The Captain snatches it from him and throws it across to Natasha, who catches it easily and slips it behind a cushion.
“That’s rude, and also cheating.” She says. “The betting pool is still open.”
“Yeah.” Clint turns back to Matt. “Speaking of, what’s that around your neck?”
Matt tilts his head, confused, and – “Oh, shit.”
“Is that a ring?” Stark leans forward so far he almost falls off the couch. “Oh my god, you’re married?”
It is, in fact, a ring. A wedding ring, to be precise. Nothing particularly fancy, but Matt loves it. He wears it on his finger most of the time, but slips it on the chain around his neck with Maggie’s crucifix when he’s out as Daredevil. He’d forgotten to put it on last time he’d teamed up with the Avengers – hence why none of them had seen it while treating the gunshot wound in his shoulder.
“Impressive.” The Captain says, laughter in his voice. “…And a crucifix? The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is Catholic?”
“Uh.” He says.
“Looking up marriage records is still cheating.” Natasha warns. Stark groans.
Clint pokes Matt in the shoulder. “Come on, man, are you married or what?”
“…Yeah.” He admits, and almost covers his ears against the barrage of guesses that are thrown his way, mainly from Natasha, Clint and Stark.
“Luke Cage? Come on, he’s hot –”
“He already said he wasn’t –”
“Deadpool? Oh god, I hope not. That would be –”
“Are you sure it’s not Jessica Jones?”
“That Iron Fist guy? Hah, fist –”
“The Punisher? Frank Castle?”
“Stilt-Man?”
“She-Hulk? What’s her name, y’know –”
“Strange? Nah, he would’ve mentioned it…”
“…Luke Cage, come on –”
“No, no, I bet it’s someone from his real-person life.”
“Ooh, yeah, I can –”
“No researching!”
“For god's sake, leave Matt alone.” The Captain butts in, and thankfully everyone shuts up. “Now, are we watching a movie or not?”
+ i.
Foggy goes out to get lunch and doesn’t come back.
Foggy goes out to get lunch and doesn’t come back and Matt panics. Karen tries to calm him down, to convince him to just try Foggy’s mobile one more time, but it’s half-hearted. After everything they’ve been through, they’ve all become more paranoid and more protective of one another. She lets him go.
He runs.
He follows Foggy’s scent down the steps, out of the building. Across the road and around the corner and between the tables of the fruit store and across the road again and –
There’s the slightest hint of blood from the alleyway a block away from the Thai place Foggy had been heading to. The slightest hint of blood, the scent of two (maybe three?) men, Foggy, the rubber of car tyres, then nothing.
Matt stops. Takes a deep breath. Lets his senses flow out through the surrounding blocks.
A kid wails inside an apartment.
A phone rings.
A door slams.
A woman yells.
He can’t hear Foggy’s heartbeat. He can’t hear Foggy anywhere.
Frank is out of town. He doesn’t want to put Karen in danger. The cops would take too long. He can’t –
Clint. The Avengers.
Matt pats down his pockets for his phone, but it’s not there. He must have left it back in the office. He’s got his cane, at least, so he attempts to straighten his suit and walks out of the alleyway. There’s a taxi rank a few blocks away, and he heads towards it, attempting to keep down the panic that threatens to well up inside of him. He twists the ring on his finger.
Avengers tower is ridiculously busy. There’s people everywhere, so much noise, so many people bumping into him – part of Matt just wants to cover his ears and get back outside. But he presses onwards, swiping his cane back and forth into people’s toes until they make way for him. He manages to get to a receptionist desk, and the man there takes his time checking for something on the computer before directing Matt to an elevator.
Matt grips his cane tight as the elevator ascends. He tries, yet again, to let his senses roam, in an attempt to catch the barest hint of Foggy’s voice or heartbeat – but the noise and structure of the tower forces him to pull back in, to focus on his immediate surroundings lest he end up too overwhelmed. Instead, he focuses on the room the elevator slows to a stop in front of – it’s the same living area he’d been to for movie night, and thankfully it appears that the majority of the Avengers are sitting around eating lunch – Clint, Stark, Natasha, the Captain. The smell of sushi makes Matt realise how hungry he is, but also makes him feel a little sick. If only he’d gone to get lunch, or had gone with Foggy, or had –
The elevator dings. Matt startles, panic once again threatening to overtake him, and steps out.
Half the table is standing in an instant, and at least one person (Natasha?) pulls out a gun. Matt stumbles forward, and they all noticeably relax.
“Matt?” Clint says, putting down his chopsticks. “What – what are you doing here?”
“Somebody –” he says and it comes out in a whisper, like all the air has left his lungs. “Somebody took Foggy. Somebody took Foggy. Oh god –”
“Foggy?” Stark says. “Who the hell is Foggy?”
“Oh my god.” Clint says, running forwards to grab Matt’s arm. It grounds him, and he tries to smile a thank you to Clint. It comes out as more of a grimace. “The dude you lawyer with. Nelson. He’s – you’re married to him.”
The Captain crosses his arms.
“What? I looked him up. They’re pretty easy to find. They put Fisk away.”
“Dammit.” Natasha says. “It was someone from your normal person life.”
“Guys. Enough. Matt needs our help.” The Captain’s tone is commanding, and the other three snap back into focus.
“Uh. Matt.” Stark begins, pulling out what Matt assumes is a phone. “Give us the run down. I have access to CCTV all over the city, I can get Friday to track down your man.”
It takes Stark half an hour to track Foggy down to a warehouse in Queens. An entire half an hour that Matt spends pacing up and down the living area, twisting the ring on his finger and trying to catch the barest traces of Foggy anywhere his senses can reach. Clint attempts to get him to eat some sushi, but eventually gives up and instead gets him a scarf to use as a temporary mask and cloth to wrap his hands.
“Got him.” Stark announces, and Matt rushes to his side.
“Is – is he okay?”
“We don’t have CCTV inside the building, but he was unconscious when they carried him in. There’s at least ten people in there – most, if not all, are armed. I assume they’re after Daredevil.”
Matt runs his fingers through his hair, then ties the scarf around his face. “And they’ll get him.”
“But,” Clint begins, as the five of them head towards the quinjet, “they’re expecting you’ll be alone. And you’re not. Not this time.”
Matt can hear Foggy.
Oh god. He can hear Foggy.
His heartbeat is fast and terrified, and his breaths are sharp and pained. His ribs creak like old wood-panelled floors – at least two are broken. His captors circle him like birds of prey.
Matt strains against the urge to throw himself out of the jet, to sit still and quiet and wait until it’s landed on a neighbouring rooftop. He twists the ring back and forth, back and forth, and waits.
And waits.
And waits.
And leaps.
As soon as the quinjet comes to a rest and the rear door rasps open, Matt is off like a gunshot, flinging himself down the side of the building and barrelling across the street and through the unlocked doors of the warehouse. He’s on the first man so fast that he doesn’t even turn around to face Matt, and onto the next before the first has even dropped to the concrete, unconscious. He manages to take out three or so before the Avengers arrive in all their glory (or as much glory as an under-prepared team missing several members can manage).
Clint shoves Matt off the unconscious body of a woman and towards where Foggy is zip-tied to a cold metal chair, his hair in his face and a gag in his mouth. He takes the hint and scrambles desperately towards Foggy. The scent of blood stains his mouth and he’s struggling, trying to get free.
“Foggy, Foggy, Foggy, Foggy.” Matt murmurs, pushing his long hair back and removing the gag and setting to work on the zip-ties with a folding pocketknife, shielding Foggy from the fighting with his own body. “Oh god, Foggy –”
“Matty, Matty, I’m safe, it’s okay –”
“Foggy, god – I was – I was so scared…”
“It’s okay, I’m okay, Matty, you’re here –”
Matt finishes off the last of the zip-ties, pocketing the knife, and lets Foggy slump off the chair onto him. They sit on the hard concrete floor, legs tangled and faces buried into shoulders, as the sounds of fighting quietens. Matt listens to Foggy’s heart slow, his breathing settle, his stomach grumble, his bones creak. He breathes him in, blood and dirt and sweat and coconut shampoo and home.
“You’re hurt.” Matt says, eventually, his hand on Foggy’s jaw, fingers trembling beneath their bloody wrappings.
“Oh, it’s nothing. Just from when they cornered me in the alleyway. I split my lip, too, but I’m sure you can smell that.”
“It’s not nothing, Foggy, I know you’re in pain.”
“I’ll be fine. Just – ouch – a little aspirin, and I’ll be okay.”
“Foggy.”
“Matthew Michael Murdock. Stop fussing, I’ll be okay. You got here in time. And… you brought company?”
“Uh.” Matt begins.
“Mr and Mr Daredevil!” Stark butts in, and Matt carefully pulls Foggy to his feet before turning to face him.
“Thanks for… yeah.” He waves the arm that’s not supporting Foggy in a vague gesture, and Stark snorts.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re welcome, anything to meet the fabled partner –”
Natasha laughs, and Clint steps forward, offering his hand to Foggy. Foggy shakes it, wincing slightly as his ribs are jostled. “Nice to finally meet you, Nelson.”
“Likewise.” Foggy says, and then – “Oh my god, Captain America.”
The Captain also offers his hand. “We’ve heard a lot about you. Glad that you’re safe.”
“All good things, I hope.” Foggy’s voice is carefully calm, but Matt can hear the way his heart thumps in excitement.
“Only the best.” The Captain says, and then busies himself with calling 911.
Clint starts heading towards the warehouse door, a warm square of open air across the room. Matt follows, Foggy shuffling along beside him, connected at the shoulder and the hip. Natasha and Stark trail behind.
“Can’t believe you thought it was Jessica Jones, Stark.”
“Can’t believe you thought it was Luke Cage, Romanoff.”
When it’s all over – they’ve said goodbye, caught a taxi back to Hell’s Kitchen, called Karen to let her know everything’s okay – it’s just the two of them. Just Matt and Foggy, curled up together on the couch in front of shitty daytime TV, holding each other close, two halves of a whole.
“So, the Avengers, huh?” Foggy murmurs, and Matt can feel his grin.