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First there was Elektra, and then for a long time there was no one.
Matt prefers it that way, really. Daredevil isn’t much of a joiner: though he won’t turn down a spot of help if someone happens to be passing by while he’s getting his ass kicked, teams involve a level of coordination and planning that he just can’t be assed to find the time for. Between his caseload and the “night job”, Matt can hardly find time to get his pants on in the morning.
And then, for a very intense couple of months, there was Natasha, who was objectively perfect in every way – beautiful, deadly efficient, dry and hilarious – except for the ways in which she was inarguably even more of a wild card than Matt. Somehow. Incredibly.
Which is why, when Foggy first reads him the headline the day she finally shacks up with the Avengers, Matt chokes on his coffee.
Natasha, letting someone else tell her what to do?
Who to hurt?
There’s a fucking laugh.
Half a minute of undignified snorting passes before Foggy breaks and starts laughing, too. His hearty guffaws ricochet around the tiny room they call their office and make Matt’s teeth start to ache, a bit, but in a good way. Because it’s familiar-loud. Because it’s Foggy -loud.
“Looks like your woman’s traded up,” Foggy teases. “Got a whole team of buff men in spandex now.” Matt picks his pen up and throws it unerringly across the room, smirking at the yelp Foggy gives when it lands straight in his coffee cup.
From the frantic sounds of his dabbing at the table, Matt’s reasonably certain he’s managed to get a good splash in. Good. That’s what he gets.
He catches the stress ball Foggy lobs at his head in revenge without even noticing. Squishes it between his fingers for a moment before slowly rising from his seat and lobbing it straight back. It’s a good thing Karen’s out to lunch. In the chaos of flying objects that ensues, he nearly forgets his apprehension.
Foggy’s good for that.
“Tasha knows what she’s doing,” he tells Foggy when they’ve calmed down and are left standing in midst of all the godforsaken case files. “If she’s with them, they’re okay.”
“If you say so,” Foggy sighs. “But hey, maybe this could be your hookup? A reference, if you’re ever, y’know, networking. Do you spandex types network? Or are you exempt from the horrors of late stage capitalism?”
Matt starts to laugh all over again. Foggy is good for that , as well.
“If I ever find that loophole, I’ll let you know.”
“You’d better.” Foggy waves in his direction, presumably pointing a finger. Matt refocuses on the Braille sheets he’d left scattered across his desk during the scuffle and doesn’t bother straining to articulate the mental image. If Foggy really wants him to know he’s being flipped off, he’ll say so. “If she tries to drag you in with her, do me a favor and let her, okay? I’m sick of going dumpster diving every time you don’t show up to work on time.”
“I thought manholes were your go-to.”
“Manholes for Murdock, dumpsters for Daredevil. I’m putting it on a t-shirt. I’m ordering it as we speak.”
“You are not.”
They squabble about it all morning. Foggy orders the shirt in three different colors. One for each of them. Matt pretends his heart doesn’t throb weirdly in his throat at the thought.
Natasha never does call him, and Matt feels guilty for not being all that disappointed.
He doesn’t need a team. He likes what he’s got.
It occurs to him belatedly that it’s not just Natasha he needs to worry about.
How did Foggy put it? They’ve got an Avenger for everything. Including...
“How’re you holding up, handsome?” the Wasp asks, chirpy as ever, as she comes to crouch down beside Daredevil where he’s checking a man’s pulse on the wet pavement. Matt schools his expression back into a scowl and tries to pretend he’s not winded.
The man is unconscious, but it just won’t do to break character after such a brutal fight.
“He’s alive.” He straightens out of his crouch with all the litheness of a prowling cat, hears the air between them stir as she does the same, and offers a hand to help her up. She takes it gracefully. Her hands are tiny, delicate, buttery smooth; Matt wonders when she took her gloves off. The Wasp normally wears gloves, doesn’t she? He’ll have to ask Foggy what her costume actually looks like, sometime. Hopefully not the obnoxious bright yellow that the part of his brain storing his childhood memories keeps insisting. “Thanks for the, uh. Assist.”
“Anytime. It’s what we do.” He can hear the smile in her voice, and feels the knot of anxiety living in his gut twinge faintly with dread. He’d thought it was strange for the Wasp to have been just conveniently flitting around the Kitchen, but at the time, there’d been several very large men waving their guns around in his face; he wasn’t about to stop for small talk. But of course, Ms. Van Dyne has no reason to be slumming it on a Friday evening.
An Avenger for everything, he realizes, including luring in surly vigilantes.
Sure enough, she doesn’t beat around the bush: “You know, we always have a couple of empty slots on our roster…”
Matt lets out a frustrated gust of breath.
A near-imperceptible humming from somewhere in the vicinity of the Wasp’s hip has been putting him on edge for the last twenty minutes, since she showed up and started laying Zemo’s henchmen out with her sting. It’s not a weapon, it’s worse – a communicator. One of those pesky Avengers ID cards, most likely, though Matt can’t make out the shape of something so thin and behind a layer of God-knows-what sort of specialized, made-in-a-lab material.
“I’m sure you’re not lacking for applicants,” he says, instead of please leave me alone, because that seems a bit ungrateful. He can practically feel the withering stares of the nuns at St. Agnes as he thinks it. “Plenty of mutants and child prodigies in your neck of the woods.”
Not, he wants to stress, in mine. Manhattan is Avengers territory; Hell’s Kitchen belongs to Daredevil, and he cares about every person in it. Even, perhaps especially, the criminals. Matt might spend his nights beating the pulp out of people with bad intentions, but come morning, he’s going to be seeing half of them in court – and he believes in that process. He can’t have the Avengers barging in here all the time with their flashy weapons and cheesy one-liners, destroying the delicate equilibrium that Matt’s worked so hard to establish.
The Wasp tilts her head, and Matt imagines a coy smile onto her face. Considers what she’ll do it he just leaves her there with the unconscious man and no number to reach him at.
Then, by some miracle, a familiar heartbeat starts racing less than a block away.
“Not untrue! But sometimes you’ve got to rely on someone with actual field experience,” the Wasp starts, reaching into her pocket, just as Foggy breaks into a run.
“Daredevil!” he gasps, hamming it up drastically. Matt bites furiously down on the urge to grin, folding his arms in front of his chest. He may or may not look constipated, so it’s a good thing all of the Wasp’s startled attention seems to be on Foggy, who comes to a stop bent over and gasping a few feet away. “Daredevil, oh my God!”
“It’s alright!” the Wasp soothes in what Matt suspects is her designated comforting-civilians voice. “We got him, everything is going to be fine.”
“That man tried to kill me!” Foggy gulps. He all but falls to his knees and grovels on the pavement; internally, Matt is tempted to give him a cheeky nudge with his foot, maybe a pat on the head, but that might just give the game away. “He’s been following me, I swear to God! I never thought I’d get away from him!”
“That’s – a serious accusation,” Matt manages, gruffly as he can manage to be when he’s dying inside. “The Wasp here was just about to take this man down to the precinct, if you’d like to follow her and make a statement.”
“No, no,” Foggy blusters, clearly getting into the role now. Matt’s a little impressed with the way he manages to blanch so audibly. “I – I couldn’t. I just – would you walk me home?” He hugs his briefcase to his chest for good measure, and Matt so desperately wants a description of his expression that he nearly forgets himself and asks. “I don’t know if there are more of them, and I don’t wanna find out!”
The Wasp has gotten out her communicator, but Matt can feel her eyes on him, watching. He gives a very slow, deliberate nod, as if Foggy were one of their clients. “Not a problem,” he says after a quick glance in the Wasp’s direction, for show. She puts up a thumb reluctantly. “Lead the way, Mister – uh.”
“Murdock,” Foggy says, purely to antagonize him. “Oh, thank you so much. You’re my hero.”
“I don’t like that word,” Daredevil says. They amble down the street together. Matt manages to restrain himself for two blocks before they turn a corner, out of sight; he leans into Foggy’s side and mutters, “That was obnoxious, but I owe you a drink.”
“You owe me so many drinks,” Foggy corrects cheerfully, and slings an arm around his shoulders. “Come on, let’s get you back in your big boy clothes and get trashed.”
Heartwarming solidarity, Matt thinks fondly. This is what he loves the most about Foggy.
Maybe he ought to stop teasing him about the improv classes.
Less than a week later, Matt gets another friendly “assist”, this time in the middle of the night. It’s harder to pretend this time that he doesn’t know what’s going on.
Mostly because this time it’s Iron Man.
It’s less that Matt is antisocial, more that he knows – even if he won’t admit – that his style of confrontation can be (in Foggy’s words) “borderline suicidal.”
Not always . (Not nearly as often as Foggy makes it out to be.) And it’s not like he wants to get himself killed. (Though he’s been accused of it with alarming regularity.) But if the choice is between strategy and letting an innocent person potentially die while he twiddles his thumbs? That’s not going to happen.
So, there’s a good reason that Matt keeps to himself. Hell’s Kitchen is more than big enough for Matt to be trying to micromanage on his own; the Avengers can have the rest of the city, as far as he’s concerned.
Stark, clearly, has either not gotten this memo or just crumpled it up and thrown it straight in the trash.
“You don’t have to give us any personal information,” came Stark’s coaxing voice through the speakers of his armor. Matt can’t, obviously, see the gleam of the metal, but he can hear every mechanism inside as it clicks and whirs and, at the center, throbs with ominously restrained power. He continues his silent slink across the rooftops, though it seems moot to attempt stealth with a Transformer on his ass. Suppressing his irritation also seems moot; Stark clearly doesn’t care, because he’s still going. “But, honestly, I’m going to be a little insulted if you think that my servers aren’t secure enough to keep your secrets –“
Matt grits his teeth and contemplates exactly how long he’s going to have to pretend he’s still patrolling before Stark gets bored and zooms off back to his superhero clubhouse.
Foggy is not going to be amused if he falls asleep in court tomorrow. Again.
“Listen,” he cuts in, several paragraphs into Stark’s impassioned recruitment speech. The street’s gone completely silent, except for the excited whispering of civilians peeking through their curtains to get a glimpse of Iron Man as he passes by their window. It would be comforting if Matt didn’t know about the dozen other, more private venues that the usual crime has probably migrated to for the night. “I don’t have time for a debrief. I don’t do debriefs. I’m not much of a team player in general.”
Evidently this is the wrong thing to say, because it just makes Stark more earnest.
“I used to say the same thing,” he confesses, as if this will be news to Matt. It’s not. Iron Man’s ups and downs always make newspapers, especially since Stark blew the whole secret identity thing out of the water. Sometimes, Matt does envy him that; right now, he just wants him to stop talking and get the hell out of Hell’s Kitchen. “It’s a difficult adjustment, believe me, I know. I’ve been there. But working with a team has its advantages. For example, body armor?” Iron Man flexes a gauntlet before him and Matt is glad that his face is covered enough that he doesn’t have to act suitably impressed. Or like the details are at all discernible to him. “I can design something ten times more durable than the glorified catsuit you’ve got on right now. No offense.”
Full offense, but okay. “I’ll consider commissioning you,” Matt deadpans. He lingers on the edge of a rooftop, rocking back on his heels as he ‘looks’ out over the city. Wonders if Stark can tell with all of his fancy sensors that he’s not actually looking at anything. “Still not interested in being on call. There’s a reason I didn’t go to med school.”
“No one is on call all the time,” Stark is quick to cut in. Lord, Matt wishes he’d taken the time to put the Wasp off properly – maybe she could have told her sometimes-boss to reel it in. Or is she the boss, right now? Matt can’t keep up with the headlines these days. Might as well have their own section in the paper. Foggy already clips all of the articles about him, about Daredevil, and keeps them in his drawer at work to pull out and read aloud from when he wants to make Matt squirm. “Seriously, just think about it. We’ve got a whole roster of inactive members, reserve members – you’ve been on the prospects list for a good number of years now, you know?”
“I don’t know. And I’m flattered, but with all due respect – I’m going to have to pass.”
“Is this about the secret identity thing still?” Stark says, sounding rather like he might be pouting inside his tin can. “I’ve been there, too. We can help you with –“
They’re approaching Foggy’s apartment building, and Matt is starting to feel a little desperate, so he swerves towards the familiar balcony and bites out, “I’ve got a partner waiting for me to check in, actually, so if you don’t mind granting a little of that discretion we were just talking about –”
Stark seems genuinely taken aback for a moment, then a bit more delighted than Matt thinks is warranted. There’s a knowing lilt to his voice when he speaks again. “ Gotcha ,” he says, making a point to turn his head in the opposite direction, away from the building Matt is obviously veering toward. “Sorry, didn’t realize how late it was. You probably have a life to get back to, huh? Day job.”
It’s so obviously bait that Matt wants to throttle him, just a little. It’s becoming clearer and clearer why this man practically lives in an impenetrable metal shell.
It’s a wonder that his secretary hasn’t killed him yet.
“Send Captain America next time,” he advises as he slips through Foggy’s living room window. “That’s the only way you’re getting my attention.” It’s not entirely a lie; Cap is good people, level-headed and fair. If he really thinks Matt ought to join… Well, if you can trust anything, it’s Steve Rogers’ sincerity.
But until then…
“Can do!” Stark calls after him cheerfully. The fact that he’s dropping the subject so easily is going to give Matt an ulcer, but the paranoia gives way to unspeakable irritation half a second later as Stark continues, “Hey -- tell your boyfriend I said hi.”
Matt trips facefirst into the coffee table just as Foggy emerges from his bedroom groggily, baseball bat dragging on the hardwood.
“You didn’t see that.” Matt just lies on the floor for a moment, listening to Stark’s modulated laugh as he flies away. He’s probably already far enough that it’s safe for them to talk. Foggy drops the bat carelessly and raises a hand to cover his mouth as he yawns.
“Well I definitely heard something about your boyfriend. Something you wanna get off your chest, Matty?”
Matt presses his hands over his face.
“I’m sleeping over,” he informs him from the floor. The fight is long forgotten; this level of exhaustion can only be the product of nosy state-sanctioned superheroes poking into his business. “ Please tell me you washed my hoodie.”
“Scent-free detergent,” Foggy confirms, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s in my dresser. You want some pants, too?”
“I love you,” Matt groans. Moments later, Foggy dumps the lot directly onto his face.
“I’m letting them kidnap you next time,” he warns, “because you’re a disaster, and you deserve it.” Then dramatically groans and covers his eyes as Matt wriggles gratefully out of the suit right there in front of the open window.
“I don’t believe you,” Matt murmurs.
Alright. This is the third time in as many weeks, and Matt is starting to get annoyed . He is allowed to be a little catty.
“Pretty sure I requested Captain America.”
“Hey,” Clint says defensively, raising both hands in what Matt assumes is supposed to be surrender. It’s got to be awkward when he’s still holding his bow. “I totally respect that, but dude – this is my fire escape.”
“… Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Matt turns his head and takes a surreptitious sniff, which – yes, alright. Under the powerful stink of dog and the acidic tang of the coffee grounds piled weeks-old in the trash, there’s Hawkeye’s scent: cheap lilac-scented body wash and expensive wax, the type used to keep bow strings in meticulously supple condition. He considers it a personal victory that he doesn’t search for traces of Natasha’s perfume. For all he knows, she’s wearing something different nowadays, anyway.
Clint shifts awkwardly in place. After a moment’s hesitation, he props his bow against the brick and rocks backwards on his heels; the sound of his palms rasping against his arm hair when he crosses them over his chest, presumably to protect himself from the chill of the night air up this high, makes Matt want to copy the motion. He’s wearing leather, though. Fairly sweaty leather.
Hawkeye, on the other hand, is in what Matt can only assume are a pair of holey pajamas. Standing in the middle of the debris which used to be a sliding glass door in his bare feet. His heartbeat is remarkably steady for someone who would definitely have been assassinated just now without Matt’s timely intervention.
“Well... You’re welcome,” Matt says after an excruciatingly long silence. He’s not great with tense social situations; he hooks a thumb over his shoulder, then remembers to make sure it’s not another wall (it is not. Thank God.). “I’ll just be going, then.”
“Wait!” Clint reaches after him, perspiration breaking out along the lines of his back as he reaches to catch him. “Wait, wait, you’ve gotta at least let me give you the spiel!”
“… Stark’s spiel.”
“I mean – not just his. The Avengers aren’t just Iron Man and his sidekicks, y’know.”
The last of the attackers is just exiting Matt’s range, headed north and west, ready to hole up and lick their wounds. It’s taking every ounce of his admittedly tiny reserve of self-restraint not to go flipping off after them; he has an awful feeling that Hawkeye will try to tag along, and it’s a miracle he hasn’t stepped on any of the glass littering the patio already. Or… maybe it’s not. Matt’s not sure. Maybe these sorts of things are obvious to people who can catch a gleam of light. But the weapons they’d had were… unfamiliar. And that in itself is alarming.
“Is that supposed to be a selling point?” He doesn’t mean to be irritable, but the way that the line of Clint’s shoulders bunches back into a pair of tense knots makes him suspect he’s doing a poor job of it. “I don’t want to be Iron Man’s not- sidekick, either.”
“It’s not like that,” Clint argues, swaying toward him like he’s thinking of grabbing Matt by the arm, and he’s intensely grateful when he doesn’t. He’s had a long night. And the suit sometimes gets a little bunched up and… just, deeply unpleasant to wear, when he’s been out for too long without pausing to shower. “Believe me, Tony’s great and all but he’s just one of the Avengers. There’s a whole clown car fulla us.”
“I know that,” Matt says as patiently as he knows how. As he so often is, he’s glad that no one can see his eye twitching when he’s in the mask. “I’ve been around the block at least as many times as you have. And I’m older than you.”
“Pshhh,” Clint huffs, “Spare me! I’m immune to respect-your-elders lectures, I’ve been putting up with Steve almost since they fished him out of the Atlantic.”
That’s a fair point, and Matt wants to say so; before he can mentally map himself a road out of this conversation, his phone starts blaring Foggy’s name from his pocket and he nearly jumps straight out of his skin. Wait, that’s not right. The burner is supposed to be silent . Which means he’s managed to grab the wrong one –
Foggy. Foggy.
“… Aren’t you going to get that?” Clint’s voice lilts upwards in slow confusion. Matt mutters a sharp curse under his breath, knows Clint probably doesn’t even hear it – no telltale squeak hovering on either side of his head to indicate that he’d managed to stick his hearing aids in before he grabbed for a weapon – and strips off one of his gloves in order to shove his hand into the offending pocket. Foggy. Foggy. Foggy –
“It’s not even damp,” Clint says with a frown in his voice, swiveling his head around like maybe the weather will be different to his left. Matt jumps up onto the railing and then to the roof, ignoring the archer’s startled protests, and lifts the phone to his ear.
“Hey,” Foggy says through a mouthful of something, sounding delighted in a way that never fails to put a wriggle of guilt into Matt’s gut. “I’m surprised you’re not out. It’s only nine thirty!”
“I am out,” he grumbles, letting his feet carry him diagonally across the roof. There’s a smattering of deck chairs, a small grill left out overnight that still smells of charcoal, and… really far too much dog hair. He wonders vaguely if the Avengers don’t have a space like this, just for relaxing. Why a man on Stark’s dime wouldn’t be spending his time somewhere more luxurious than this run-down corner of Bed-Stuy. “Probably going to head in early, though.”
“I know that voice.” Foggy sighs, and there’s the muffled thump of him putting something aside, a dish. Matt imagines him settling into the overstuffed armchair he prefers, curled around the phone as they speak, and feels a helpless smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Got away?”
“Got away,” he confirms grimly. “I don’t think it’s Kitchen business, but I still don’t like it.”
The roof access door creaks open behind him. Matt ignores it. Let him listen, he thinks exhaustedly. At least it’s not Stark. Foggy hums thoughtfully down the line. “Where were you slinking around, then? Doing some recon on your new best buddies?”
“I don’t need any other buddies. I’ve got you.”
“If only I could backflip off the Empire State Building for you, that would be enough,” Foggy says solemnly. The footsteps behind Matt pause when he laughs. “Seriously, though.”
“Seriously,” Matt mocks him. He knows that by virtue of the fact that he wants Foggy to let this go, he won’t. But a guy can dream. “I’m going to see if I can pick up the trail, but… a shower sounds really good right now.” And some takeout. His stomach growls, and Foggy apparently reads his mind, because he makes another thoughtful noise and then,
“Let me know and I’ll pick up some Thai on the way over. Be careful?”
“Only for you,” Matt says, “I’m crossing my heart.” And he does. Clint makes a choked little noise that probably would have been a laugh as he hangs up, and Matt swivels to face him, mentally braced as much as he can be for another wave of clumsy propaganda.
“Something else you need, Hawkeye?”
“No, no,” Clint says, moves his hand up to copy Matt’s motion with one finger. “Just didn’t realize you were married. Jeez. I really am out of the loop.”
He doesn’t dignify that with a response.
Stupidly, to the same degree that he had expected it from Natasha, Matt wasn't expecting Peter to get involved in the shenanigans until he’s sat across from him outside a little pizzeria in Queens, plainclothes and all, listening to him pitch like an honest to God infomercial salesman.
It’s silly that it hadn’t occurred to him to be wary. But it’s Peter. Peter, who just a few years ago was a gangly fifteen-year-old doing a piss poor job of concealing the fact that his voice was still cracking while he put C-list criminals through walls by accident. Peter, whose heartbeat Matt had identified immediately when he’d stated tripping around the city with that camera of his; and Peter who couldn’t help knowing who Matt was right back. The only person, aside from Foggy and Karen, that Matt had ever given permission to call him anytime of day and no matter which suit he was wearing.
So it feels a bit like betrayal, when he shows up for pizza and gets Stark’s spiel 3.0 and peppered with Peter’s millennialisms. Not enough to get up and walk out on the kid, but –
There’s a superstition amongst vigilantes, about what happens when two people with powers go out to eat in public. Matt supposes that’s two things he should have been wary of today. Three, if he counts the men he'd given up on tracking from Hawkeye's apartment a week ago.
One moment he’s lunging over the table to knock the kid out of the way of something that whistles through the air like it wants to take both of their heads clean off and the next, everything is loud .
"Easy," Foggy says, very close to his ear as Matt lurches painfully back into consciousness. " Deep breaths."
Injuries have always been a bit complicated for Matt. On one hand, he's got a decent well of masochism to draw on, so pain itself is hardly the issue; on the other, pain is almost never a singular sensation. This particular pain feels like it exists in at least four dimensions, beginning with the excruciating cacophony of what feels like several thousand human voices all nattering at once, high and fast and alarmed, the blaring sound of stopped traffic, of angry shouting and horns screeching. His hands fly automatically to cover his ears as the sound drills steadily into his skull and vibrates down through his teeth until he thinks they might crack.
His head aches – his jaw aches – every one of his joints feels like it’s screaming at him to get away –
"What did I just say," Foggy sighs, and Matt pries one hand loose from the side of his head to grab Foggy's like a lifeline. He can feel himself shaking and he hates it. "Come on, Matty, you're okay. You're okay." Despite his carefully calm, measured tone, there's a lingering reeks of sharp, anxious sweat that makes Matt want to grind his nose off of his face. The coppery tang of his own blood in his mouth doesn’t quite cover it up. He can’t tell where he is, or was, bleeding from. Feels like it could be everywhere. Feels like it did when that building collapsed on top of him, which was so long ago but suddenly feels like it was just yesterday, like maybe he never really made it out from under all the –
“I’ve got a dose handy, if you wanna sedate him,” comes another voice. Matt recoils, snarls, ready to bolt even as nausea climbs his throat at the movement; Foggy gives him a gentle, chiding swat to the head.
“Remember how you agreed that you owed me one? Remember that?” Foggy mutters. “Cashing it in now, buddy. Stay still.”
“Already bought you that drink,” Matt grits out. Is he slurring? He might be slurring. Everything feels like it’s happening too fast, like he’s lagging somehow.
A familiar pulse jumps in silent laughter as he grits his teeth and obediently let’s his head loll back into Foggy’s lap.
".... Natasha?" he croaks, a disjointed thought tumbling out of his mouth before he can really think it through. He’s fuzzy on the details of how everyone got here, himself included. "Did- You call him?"
She shifts just slightly where she’s stood between him and the street, too minute for him to track with his senses jangling around in his head like loose piano keys. Shaking her head, probably. “No. Stark got here first.”
"You said, and I quote, 'I want my lawyer' ," someone - Stark - says defensively in the background - and Matt realizes with yet another unpleasant lurch that he hasn’t even attempted to identify the little group of heat signatures huddled in a wall around him. "Then you tried to punch me in the face, almost broke your hand, lost your balance and passed out before I could ask you for a number. I could’ve cracked your passcode in my sleep, by the way, you should get on that."
“How did you know -“
There’s a sheepish little throat-noise, and Peter - beside him, kneeling, the scrape of denim on concrete that makes Matt shudder involuntarily - mumbles, “I might’ve told him. He- might’ve extrapolated from there. I mean, to be fair, me and-“
Matt sincerely doesn't care to hear the end of that sentence, stuck on the rising horror that his cover has been blown to bits in the space of a single afternoon. God, Stark is going to be insufferable. “You’re telling me- Iron Man showed up and I took a swing at him.”
“Sure sounds like you,” Foggy hums without inflection. He’s just being a bastard now. Matt considers turning around and biting his hand, but that’s probably not polite to do in company. He should… pretend to be civilized, at least. Should.
Natasha snorts out loud this time, as if she can hear his thoughts.
“No harm no foul!” Stark says airily. The fact that his voice isn’t making Matt want to claw his own ears off must mean he’s got the faceplate up. “Think you might have scared a couple of civilians with all of the violence, though. And not even in costume. Area man assaults lauded hero-“
“Peter?” Matt mutters belatedly, squinting uselessly in the direction he last heard him speak in. He’s just now remembering who that smack to the head was really meant for, and that he should probably be more concerned. Concussions are such a bitch. “You’re-?”
"You took the worst of it," Foggy assures him, and does the most wonderful thing in the world: he presses his fingers to the back of Matt’s neck and, expertly, squeezes the nerve that makes his muscles go utterly limp for a moment. "Like a dumbass , by the way. Kid's made of tougher stuff than you, remember?"
It's not the first time that Matt has forgotten about Peter's healing factor but it is the first time he's had to listen to the damned Avengers be amused about it in the background. He frowns, and Foggy releases his neck to push his fingers into the overgrown nest that is Matt’s hair, murmuring lower than anyone else can likely hear. “Came as fast as I could, but your buddies beat me to the punch.”
“We’re not,” Matt starts automatically, then cuts himself off as Foggy gives his hair a little tug and sends his skin prickling unpleasantly again. “Ugh.”
"An-y-way," Stark is saying brightly. "Since I’ve already blasted out of a very important meeting to be here with you all - not complaining, just saying - I think it’s worth mentioning that this is exactly what I meant when I said -“
“I’m not interested.” Making another aborted attempt to sit up properly just results in two sets of hands on his shoulders, pinning him back down, and no matter how hard Matt wrenches against Peter’s grip he knows he’s not going to get anywhere.
“No, let him talk,” Foggy says, entirely ignoring the murderous glare Matt’s attempting to give him upside down in his lap. “Mr. Stark, I would love to hear your proposal
"Finally!" Stark locks onto Foggy in an instant, the sound of his boots on the concrete enough to make Matt feel a little like vomiting. "Somebody with sense . Tell your partner here to get with the program. Look at him." He makes some emphatic gesture that Matt doesn't really want to expend the effort of parsing. “This is a win-win kind of situation, alright? Avengers take care of each other. Imagine if any time he needed an emergency pickup, all he had to do was push a button.” The more he’s allowed to speak, the more riled up he gets, until he’s pacing back and forth in front of the shop. “I personally will make sure that he’s got the equipment he needs, a place to stay if he wants it, and dental. Scout’s honor. All I'm asking is for a little backup when the alarm goes off -"
"So, every ten minutes?" Foggy says drily. " That sounds like a lot of lonely court dates in my future.”
Before Matt can even begin to smirk, he continues thoughtfully, “But body armor… keep talking.”
“Hang on,” Matt frowns. “I’m right here, don’t talk about me like you’re my handler .”
“I don’t know where you’ve been, Matt, but I’ve been handling this shit for you longer than Spidey’s been heroing.”
Peter doesn’t even seem offended. Matt wonders if he looks that awful, to warrant the solemnity, or if everyone just loves Foggy as much as he does. If they don’t, they should.
He recognizes the edges of his thoughts going fuzzy as his concussion throbs and threatens to drag more bile up his throat. He really should sit up. Maybe… maybe have a glass of water, or something. Some quiet time. Definitely get off the street.
As if to punctuate that thought, someone slams on their horn a block away, and Foggy immediately covers his ears. It does virtually nothing. The sirens are so close now that his sternum has started to ache.
“Let’s take this elsewhere, shall we? It’s about to get crowded” he hears Stark say distantly. Peter, still beside them, rises to his feet, and Natasha glides over in her usual eerie-silent way. For a moment there’s too many hands, and Matt still hasn’t quite gotten his bearings enough to know where to hold on, but between the three of them he makes it to his feet with minimal trauma, Foggy’s arm slung around his shoulders where it belongs. Matt sinks gratefully into it. Whatever they’d hit him with, they’d hit him hard to put him this far out of commission. The Avengers tighten ranks around him, blocking out some of the heat and noise of the crowds around the damaged building.
“Don’t do this to me,” he mutters half-heartedly into Foggy’s neck. One last, pitiful attempt to preserve his freedom. It’s useless, he knows; if Foggy’s made up his mind, nothing Matt does will stop him from his networking . Foggy has always been better at that side of things than him, anyway. “I’ll be good. I’ll stick to the curfew. I’ll buy you one of those horrible cheesecakes.”
“While you are always welcome to buy me horrible cheesecake, Matt, this is way overdue.” Both Peter and Natasha make noises of agreement. Traitors, Matt mouths sourly. In front of them, Stark is using his big mouth to clear the sidewalk for them, which seems to be creating more of a commotion than it’s solving. “You can’t keep up the lone ranger act forever.”
Matt does not have to concede that point. He could argue. He probably will, later, and they’ll throw things at each other across the office some more.
But right now he’s surrounded by people he trusts, people who know him. People who would do anything to protect him. Maybe it’s the concussion, but Matt’s feeling sort of... soft about it.
“... Right,” he sighs, “You’re right.” Because sometimes Foggy deserves to hear it.
It’s okay, he realizes. It’s okay to concede control for a bit. Okay to just feel like shit, and let someone else take care of it. For all of their ups and downs, Foggy’s always there for him at the end of the day, making things okay again.
Also -- his head is fucking killing him, and resistance seems futile.
“Damn straight,” Foggy sniffs, tightening his hold and speeding up to match Stark’s clunky strides. Matt stumbles and huffs a tiny grin when four hands reach out to catch him. Alright. Maybe he could get used to this. “So! Let’s talk shop. Here’s how this is going to work…”