It's not even dark, at least, Matt assumes that it's not. Foggy is beside him on the couch, narrating a movie Matt had stopped paying attention to a while ago. He tilts his head, Foggy says it's like a dog, listening to the sounds of the city. Sirens, crowds, people fighting, people laughing and-and something else.
"Just go,"
The words pull Matt's attention back to the confines of his own apartment. Foggy, at least, doesn't sound mad. Resigned, maybe, but not mad and that's a big step up from where they had been at this point last year.
Matt is listening to what he's pretty sure is Queens' own vigilante, for some reason, just inside the boarder of Hell's Kitchen.
Still, Matt stalls until the other pushes, nudging him up from where he was leaning against Foggy's shoulder a bit, "Seriously, go."
It doesn't take him long to figure out where the Spider-Man is or what he's been doing, but it does take him a while to actually get there.
When he finally reaches the edge of Hell's Kitchen the combination of the many sirens below and the heat from the fire are enough to momentarily overload his senses (the remaining ones, at least). The fire started on the lower levels of the building, which means that there are people stuck in the upper levels.
Or, there were, but it seems like Spider-Man has been making quick work of getting people out. It only takes a tiny bit of extra concentration to find the other vigilante in the chaos. He one of the only two people left in the building, the other is an extremely pregnant woman who seems to be struggling to make it down whatever web-based contraption Spider-Man had crafted.
So, of course, Matt climbs it.
Well, no, Daredevil climbs it.
He gets high enough to where he assumes that the woman (and likely the Spider) can see him and reaches out for her, "Come on, I've got you, come on."
Matt can hear the moment that the crowd below them catches sight of him as well because there's a lot of muffled gasps and calls of "Thats Daredevil!"
The woman is crying, understandably scared, but Matt can hear the foundation of the building creaking and knows, without a doubt, that they do not have time for this. He grabs out for the woman's ankle and pulls hard, hoping she doesn't spook and try to turn away because that would have her pregnancy belly against the webbing that he's standing on.
She doesn't, Daredevil catches her by the shoulders to soften her landing on her own feet before he sweeps them out from under her and uses the webbing as a pole to slide down. The building creaks, now audible to the bystanders below.
Daredevil lands with the woman as the floor of one of the mid levels gives out somewhere. Matt can hear it fall into the level below. He can also hear the mumble of first responders and civilains alike telling him that Spider-Man did not swing out of the window after them, as Matt had assumed he would.
Damnit
Matt scales the building again.
Whatever the Spider-Man uses as his vigilante suit is decisively not fire proof and is, in fact, melting off onto the vigilante's skin. Matt can smell not only the suit burning but the Spider-Man's skin starting to get a bit crispy.
Spider-Man is breathing, coughing roughly. When Matt reaches him, he can tell that the mask portion of what had to be a full body suit was burning a few feet to their left. He stomps out the flame and rips the mask until he has something he can wrap around the other vigilante's mouth and nose.
Daredevil has noted, of course (how could he miss it), that Spider-Man is probably not a man at all. Which couldn't matter less in the moment but it the deciding factor that pushes Matt to cover the kids face when he drags him from the burning building. It takes extra - precious - seconds for Matt to arrange them in a way that ensures Matt's body obscures Spider-Man's face from the, no doubt, plentiful cameras below.
The spider kid is completely out, unconscious likely from the pain, face wedged somewhere between Matt's shoulder and his chin.
Matt entertains, briefly, the idea of taking the kid into the hospital. Thats before he thinks of all the reasons he himself chooses not to. He also thinks of calling Claire, but it seems like Spider-Man has some sort of healing factor and he knows that the identity thing would be a sore subject.
Instead of the hospital (or Claire's) Daredevil picks a rather secluded - very high - roof to sit on with the spider kid.
It's a roof Matt frequents and therefore has stashed some supplies, not least of which is a pack of water bottles. He downs one himself and uses another to pour water out onto the worst of the burns on Spider-Man.
Which, of course, wakes the kid who shoves up and away from Matt. "Whoa, whoa, careful kid. You've got some pretty bad burns-"
"What? Who are... You're Daredevil!"
Matt shrugs, noncommittally, "Do you have somewhere I can take you? Someone to look after you?"
"I can-" Spider-Kid starts but then seems to realize the lack of fabric against his mouth. His hands slap up to his own cheeks, searching for his mask. "No, no,"
Matt squats down to be level with the other vigilante that's propped up against the wall, grabs his hands to stop their abuse to fresh burns, "Hey, no, you'll agitate those burns, kid."
"You can't- you've seen my face! You know who I am! I have to change my name and move to Alaska, oh my god."
"Don't worry about it," Matt says, doesn't joke that he technically hasn't seen Spider-Man's face because that fact is irrelevant given that he could probably pick him out of a crowd just based on heartbeat alone.
"Oh god," the kid is still mumbling, "oh, Aunt May is going to kill me,"
And, ok, he does have to ask, simple to sate his own curiosity, "Yeah, about that, how old are you, Spider-Man?"
That stops the panic and brings in a moment of hesitation, "Uhm," the kid starts and Matt can already hear the lie in his heartbeat before the words even leave his lips, "Twenty-three?" He even says it as a question, like he's asking Daredevil if he could pass as twenty-three.
Matt doesn't react and Spider-man takes that as the disbelief that it absolutely is, "Twenty-? Eighteen."
His claim of being 'eighteen' is much more solid, less hesitant, but Matt can still hear the lie and so he shakes his head no at the kid.
"Okay, I'm sixteen but-"
"No, you're not."
"I will be! Like, super soon. It's basically the same thing."
"Basically sixteen is fifteen, you're fifteen." and then Matt realizes, "You're fifteen?!"
"Almost sixteen!"
"You're fifteen risking your life running into burning buildings?" At spider-child's accusing, "uhm," Matt relents that, "Yes, I realize how hypocritical that sounds, I'm not fifteen." and then, "Would telling you to stop do anything?"
Spider-Man probably shakes his head no, "Not really, Mr. Daredevil."
"Right, no, of course not. Hospital? Also a no right?"
Spider-Man (most likely) nods - nodding 'yes' and shaking 'no' are actually pretty hard to differentiate between, but Spider-Man also says, "I heal,"
"Of course you do," Matt's slightly exasperated, slightly annoyed and unfortunately now understanding how Foggy (and Karen and Claire) must feel every time Daredevil goes out. "Okay, fine, okay. Where's home, kid?"
"What, no, I can't go home like this! My Aunt will flip out!"
So, that's how Matt Murdock ended up leading a fifteen year old vigilante through the window of his own apartment at 12:48 in the morning. Spider-Man or Peter, as he introduces himself, rambles worse than Foggy ever has (and Foggy is definitely a rambler).
Matt does feel a little bit bad about Peter giving his name because he's ninety percent sure the kid only does it because he believes he'd already given his identity away when the Spider-Man mask burnt. He doesn't feel too bad about it because he decides in the next breath that he's taking the kid to the apartment that he lives in with his partner. His partner... who is home.
His partner who doesn't even flinch when the window in the living room opens from the outside. Foggy doesn't even turn to see if it's actually Matt crawling into the apartment. It is, but Matt is still going to give him the hyper-vigilance speech again because, what if it wasn't Matt.
In fact, it's not just Matt this time. Which Foggy obviously does not know as he doesn't look up from his laptop when he says, "So, what was it this time? No, don't tell me, I don't want to know. You need stitches? Should I call Claire?"
Spider-Kid is standing awkwardly in his half-burn suit, Matt sticks his head in through the window to call, "No Claire!"
"Stitches? Alcohol?" Foggy reiterates, finally turning to see Daredevil with one leg in the room and Spider-Man slowly sinking in on himself, "Uhm, M-Daredevil?"
"No stitches, yes alcohol. None for Peter, he's fifteen."
"Am I suppose to apologize for that?" Peter asks haughtily. ( "Yes!")
Foggy takes a deep 'don't kill Mathew Murdock' breath, runs his hands through his hair, messing up the bun it's in. "Spider-Mans fifteen. Yeah, no, that tracks."
Matt pulls the Daredevil mask (and horns) off, which Foggy takes as the okay to then say, "Mathew, a word?"
Matt does his best to bring forward what Foggy calls his 'wounded duck' face without actually knowing what it looks like. "I mean, I think he could probably hear us, even if we do the whole, 'parents arguing in the other room' thing."
Spider-Child nods, "Yeah, I could." He confirms.
"Uhm, Mr. Daredevil?" Peter hesitates after an extended amount of time where Foggy just stares angrily at Matt and Matt does his best impression of an innocent.
Daredevil - sans horns - turns to face Peter. Giving the mutant kid a chance to pick up on the unfocused eyes, Matt corrects, "Matt. Murdock. Just a second, Peter, I'll grab you some clothes and take you home,"
"Oh, I can just swing home, Mr. Murdock, it's fine!"
"Yeah, no. By the way, Foggy, this is Peter. Peter, this is Foggy, my partner."
"Can I ask a question?"
"No, I wasn't born blind," Matt answers the expected question, moving toward the bedroom to find something that the kid can wear that won't give his guardian a heart attack. "And the answer to the next question is, chemical spill when I was nine."
"Chemical- uh, no. I was gonna ask, when you say 'partner'..?"
Peter is following quietly and awkwardly behind Matt, like he's scared of Foggy but not of Daredevil.
"Oh, people usually want to know- anyways, Foggy is my partner in that we share a law office and he's my boyfriend."
"Cool," Peter says, then quietly, so low that Matt know's he wasn't suppose to hear it, "Queer superheros for the win!"
Matt pretends he doesn't hear it and also that he doesn't sense the little, pleased shake of Peters fist.
Peter uses the bathroom to change from his lightly scorched spider suit into the comfy clothes that Matt has no intentions of ever seeing - metaphorically - again. Matt, at the same time, uses the bedroom to change out of his Daredevil armor.
He's overly pleased with himself when Foggy and Peter both muffle laughs into their hands when he goes back to the living area. "What?"
Foggy huffs a laugh, presses two pills into one of Matt's hands and a glass of water into the other, "You're wearing a hot pink shirt that reads, 'I am not Daredevil' in black letters," Foggy explains even though he's sure Matt knows.
Matt absolutely knows because Peter is wearing the same thing in a baby blue color.
Dropping Peter off at the apartment he shares with his aunt is not the last that Matt (metaphorically) sees of the young vigilante. He keeps an ear out, he can't not and that's not only because Peter is just a kid doing an adults job. When he does join in on Spider-Man's patrols, he makes a concious effort to be a better mentor than his own.
Then, Peter meets Tony Stark.
He rambles excitably about it for an entire night, sitting atop a high building. He tells Matt how he doesn't know how to tell Mr. Stark that he wants to stay the 'friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man' and isn't ready to be an Avenger. He really wants the actual internship at Stark Industries that Stark wants him to use as a cover for Spider-Man helping the Avengers around the same time that Peter Parker starts showing.
He wants to meet Steve Rogers and talk science with Bruce Banner.
Matt doesn't know what to say about any of that but Peter rambles on until they find a criminal to thwart and then the conversation is forgotten for the night.
Since Peter was introduced to the Avengers, though, Matt has seen (heard, whatever) him out and about less often. They'd go two, three weeks without vigilante-ing together and then Peter would show up ready to work on learning his super senses, since they'd realized that Peter's senses were almost as good as Matt's.
When Daredevil meets Hawkeye, it's through their (so-called) apprentices.
Matt can hear Peter arguing with the girl. They're both tied to their chairs and to each other, back to back. They both, apparently, have conflicting plans about how they are going to get out of this situation.
Both plans become useless when Matt simply walks through the door, knocking out the four men discussing their exit plan for the bank robbery that Spider-Man and Hawkeye (the younger) had interrupted.
He unties the girl first because it feels right and because he's going to give Peter hell for getting caught so easily.
Noting the breathing patterns and heartbeats of the bad guys to be sure that they are and stay unconscious, Daredevil unties little Hawkeye and then steps away from the still captive Spider-Man.
"Awh, c'mon, Red! They surprised me with those stun-guns, I woulda had them."
Matt hopes that the kid can read the unimpressed look he's getting through the Daredevil mask.
There's very little - which is to say, still enough for Matt - noise to indicate that someone is in the ceiling above them. He drops down, weapon ready, like he's a one man rescue team.
"Oh, awesome, kiddo, you got out all by yourself," He mock celebrates when he notices little Hawkeye standing free from the restraints.
Daredevil can't help a knowing little chuckle, "She did not," he says.
"Tattle-tale," the girl probably sticks her tongue out at him. She seems young and immature enough. (She did, Peter thought about narrating it but that would probably be too telling)
"Daredevil, right?" Hawkeye, the original Hawkeye, says. Matt has no doubt that Stark has been monitoring his actions as Daredevil. He's actually pretty sure that Hawk-kid and Spider-kid were not immediately rescued so that there could be a meeting between the Avengers and the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. "Spider-Man," Hawkeye acknowledges the mutant.
Peter huffs, pulling at the ties, "Double D," he whines, because he's fifteen and now a little embarrassed.
Daredevil shrugs in a 'what are you gonna do' motion, lets Peter wiggle around a little longer. HawkGuy still digging for information, trying to talk and get Matt to talk back.
Hawkeye (the first) asks something to the effect of Matt's reasoning for leaving the Kitchen tonight, since it isn't something Daredevil often does.
"Lean left," Daredevil finally says, giving Spider-Man a hint to the restraints around his chest.
Peter does and gives a little, "Oh," when he feels the material loosen a bit.
Matt nods towards Peter as a way of silently answering HawkGuy's question. He always keeps an ear out for how Spider-Man is fairing in his hero-ing. He usually stays close by, in the shadows, when the situation sounds a little too dangerous for the teen to take on alone.
Hawkeye doesn't take that as an efficient answer, "He doesn't need you babysitting him, you know, he's a big boy. And besides, he's got the team." She seems confident in that.
Matt bites back a laugh. Little Hawkeye herself is barely grown. She obviously doesn't know Peter's identity, Matt wonders if any of them - sans Stark - know who Peter is, how old he is (they don't, Peter tells him later).
"Red's a little overprotective," Spider-Man explains, finally wiggling out of the restraints the way Matt knew he could, "He knows me IRL. Says he's afraid my a-uh-family would hurt him or, like, release his identity if he let me, you know, die. I think that's a lot of words for 'I care about you' but-"
"I-R-L?"
"In real life, god you are old, Red."
Thus starts the beginning of Daredevil teaming up with the Avengers.
Granted, it's rare. Usually, Matt only shows up when Peter is involved and only if it sounds like a fight is going poorly for the Spider-Kid. Maybe he's coddling the kid - is that coddling? Peter had called him over protective - but he has committed to being a better role model for Peter than Stick was for him.
A few times, Daredevil had been invited to Avengers movies night at Starks tower. He'd told them that movies weren't really his thing, Peter didn't say anything incriminating, which was a pleasant surprise. They'd invited him to game night, he declined every time.
Until he was eventually dragged into it.
It was a movie night, which, yeah not great for the blind guy, but better than a game night where he couldn't even read his own cards. Peter sometimes stayed for game or movie nights but never took the mask off. Stark was still the only one who knew who Spider-Man really was. Matt was surprised - and grateful - that Tony had kept Peter's identity secret. That didn't mean he was going to be giving up his own identity.
Peter had bailed on that movie night. Matt had tried but had accidentally mentioned earlier in the night that he was alone in the house for the weekend. He'd told Peter but of course the Avengers had overheard. So, there went his excuse.
Movies are hard to keep up with, even with Foggy narrating them, so Matt settled in for two hours of listening to New York sounds and laughing when the others did.
"Hope you don't mind the subtitles," Clint - the original Hawkeye - says. Matt's not surprised, he can hear the buzz of Clint's hearing aids.
Actually, he kind of enjoys working with another disabled person. Especailly with jobs like theirs, where people are expected to t=be the definition of physical (and mental) perfection even though they rarely are.
"Subtitles don't bother me," Which is completely true. "What are we watching?"
Matt feels the Avengers settling in on the couches and chairs (and floor) around him. He's picked a spot on the couch that has a little table directly to the left, where he sets his glass down.
Stark takes a seat by himself, immediately he shoves as far over as he can for Pepper Potts to wiggle in beside of him. James Rhodes wheels his chair into a spot that's probably blocking a lot of peoples view, the falcon grabs the chair immediately, threatening to move the man himself but he never actually does it, they bicker harmlessly until Rhodes finally moves like it was his plan all along. Maria Hill is on the other side of the room from Stark in a love seat by herself. Roger's sits against the opposite arm rest in the same couch as Matt.
The Black Widow - Natasha - sits between Daredevil and Captain Rogers on the couch. She answers as Tony Stark flips through movie options, "Movie criteria is; No death of an animal, Tony doesn't want anyone to see him cry. No war settings, Steve gets twitchy. No bad gore, Bucky picks apart the blood splatter patterns. No sappy romances."
"So, Disney Animations," The falcon, Sam, condenses.
"Or Horror," Barnes says from his spot on the floor, leaning against Rogers' legs. "Just, only the good ones,"
"You hate all of them, Buck." "They're not realistic!"
Matt doesn't make it a habit to stay for movie nights, even after Tony Stark cries over Finding Dory that first night. He still flat out refuses game nights, mostly because there's no way to hide blindness during a card game.
It's not that he's even hiding that he's blind to hide that he's blind. That's not what it is, its just - well, way easier to find out his civilian identity when looking only at blind people. Not to mention Peter let the lawyer thing slip and really, there are only so many blind lawyers in Hell's Kitchen.
Still, he frequents Stark Avengers Tower often enough that it's not weird to show up one random Tuesday, after Clint had pulled him aside after a mission gone sideways.
"Hey, DD," Clint had called as they dispersed after the fight. His hearing aids had been knocked out at some point during hand-to-hand fighting, so he was pulling a backup pair from his tack belt and putting them in. "Man, I hate to ask but would you mind to work on some basic signs? We can just, at the tower or whenever. Just incase something like that happens again. I hadn't even thought about it until now, because the rest of the team knows the basics."
Matt blinked hard under the mask to keep himself from making a face but he still said, "That's why you were waving your hands around," as he realizes.
It can't be that hard right? Matt does pretty well sensing arm and/or hand motion, so he should be able to pick up the signs decently well. Right?
Wrong.
Matt cannot pick up the signs. Like, at all.
He can do them decently. Clint or Natasha will teach him a set of words. Usually fairly simple, yes, no, left, right, stay, go. Simple movements and words easily used in combat. When Matt inevitably struggles with specific hand shapes and motions he'll go home and have Foggy google the sign. Foggy can manually make Matt do the sign a couple of times, which is usually enough to allow Matt make mostly translatable words.
Matt cannot see the signs. Read them? He doesn't actually know the correct wording for the fact that he can't connect the movement of someone else's hand into English words.
He fakes it as well as he can. It helps that when they teach, they are mostly showing him how to actually preform the motions and not how to decipher them. They eventually deem him literate (again, is that the verbiage? Matt doesn't know and he hates not knowing (it's not, Foggy googled it)) enough that Natasha sends him home with a video of all the words they had 'taught' him.
The whole situation has him debating the whole secrete identity thing. Because of course he realizes how dangerous it could be if they get into a situation where the signs are needed.
But, he reasons, he can preform the signs well enough that he's sure Clint could at least figure out what he's trying to say, and anything that he needs to know, well, he can't see for shit but his hearing is fantastic, they can just whisper to him.
Except that's not what happens.
Because when do things ever go right for the vigilantes? Never, that's when.
It happens when the majority of the Avengers are out of the country. Daredevil, Spider-Man and both of the Hawkeye's are no more than a block from Matt's apartment, fighting off the worker bees of a particularly angry mob boss.
Kate - little Hawkeye - is shooting people down from her spot, safely in the rafters of the building. Peter is three rooms over from the action, stealing back an artifact that had been taken from the Avengers archives. Matt's not sure what it is or what it does except that they absolutely cannot have it getting into the hands of the unsavory. It's some old piece of metal Tony had experimented with may years ago, which means its very expensive and probably explosive.
Clint is tied to one of those little rides for children, the simple, bouncy rides that were usually shaped like horses or motorcycles (at least, that's what Matt's been told).
Matt knows, by the lack of buzzing surrounding Clint, that Clint's aids are gone. He also knows that Clint is trying to sign to him, but with Clint's arms tied at his back, there's no room for the large motions that Matt needs to make even the wildest guess at what's being communicated.
The problem is that Kate has obviously picked up whatever Clint is saying. Which means that Matt is the only one flying blind - ha, fucking, ha - and if he makes the wrong move it it doubly dangerous for all three of them.
Matt shouldn't just jump in with whatever he's going to do when the Hawkeyes clearly have a plan. Except, he has no clue what that plan is and no time to figure it out because there's a gun to Clint's head and the man holding it is not bluffing when he says, "I'll fucking kill you, man."
Daredevil lunges, running out of time to waste hoping that Kate will mumble something useful. He takes a knife to the abdomen, brushing off of his armor. He knows he's fucked up whatever plan they'd had because he can hear both of the archers cursing.
Doesn't matter because the next thing he registers is loud. And then it's too loud.
And, ouch, yeah, This has happened before but it doesn't make it any less awful.
Matt's hands fly to his ears, the sound of the bullet hitting the Daredevil mask is too much. The vibrations of the hit are worse.
He doesn't remember hitting his knees on the concrete but since he's there he does a quick spin that he knows will kick the legs out from under anyone who's gotten too close.
Matt thinks he probably passes out for a minute. The next thing he's actually aware of is the hands on his face where the mask is not.
Clint thinks he's dead, definitely, this is where he dies.
Then he thinks, no, Daredevil is dead.
Neither of those things turn out to be true, which he is eternally grateful for but-
"I told him to go fucking right!" Clint says, Spider-Man is crouched down, trying to get Daredevil to respond to any kind of stimulant after being literally shot in the head. "Didn't I? I thought I did."
Kate nods, Hawkeye had in fact signed 'right', "I saw it," she says after Clint slips in his extra hearing aids.
"Okay, we have to get him out of here," Spidey says, already webbing Red up so that he can carry the man out.
Clint nods, helping, or trying to help Spidey lift Daredevil, even though it doesn't seem like he needs the help. "We can get medical as soon as we can get back to the tower,"
Spidey shakes his head no, "I know somewhere closer," he says, already moving, "are you guys coming or-" he stops talking (but not walking, both Hawkeyes trailing behind), "Did you say you saw Clint say something?"
Clint waits for Spidey to glance backwards at him before he signs as he talks, "Yes. Lost my aids, told him to go right,"
"Why the [redacted] would you sign at Daredevil?" Spidey says, like the Hawkeyes are the bad guys that they had just fought. "Obviously he didn't know what you wanted!"
Spidey continues venomous rambling, walking down the streets of Hell's Kitchen. They get no warning before he's scaling a random building, the Hawkeyes follow via fire escapes.
They end up in a fairly normal looking New York apartment. There's not much to it but too much for it to be a safe house.
Spider-Man drops Daredevil onto the couch and is immediately banging on the closed door. Daredevil is awake, patting around at the couch but he doesn't respond when Kate calls, "Double D?"
"Foggy, get the [badword] up!" Spidey all but screams in the little apartment. He opens the door to what has to be a bedroom and strolls right in, still complaining about Clint being an absolute... well, Spider-Man is PG, so-
Daredevil is still on the couch, the mask is cracked and crumbling on the left side of his face, cracks forming just at his temple where the bullet had landed. He's stopped patted around the couch and as gone back to holding onto his ears, rocking a bit now.
A man comes stumbling out of the room Spidey had torn through. He's obviously been sleeping, in just a t-shirt and underwear. His hair is a messy blond bun at the base of his neck. And he's at Daredevil's side instantly.
It takes the man (Foggy, really?) exactly 0.02 second to clock the damage to the mask. He reaches out to gently pull Daredevil's hands from his ears, "Jesus, Matty,"
Spider-Man follows Foggy out of the room, now sans mask, and Clint gets why DD is so protective of the arachnid because Spider-Man should be called Spider-Baby. "I'll- I'm gonna call Claire," Spidey says to no one in particular.
"Foggy?" The devil is slightly more alert, reaching out to the man, specifically reaching for his face.
"Yeah, buddy. Matty, it's-"
"I can't- Foggy? Fog, I can't hear. I can't hear you. I can't hear."
Clint and Kate haven't left the general vicinity of the open window, watching everything play out like a movie scene. A horror movie, because Clint remember waking up one day and suddenly realizing he couldn't hear as well as he use to. He remembers all of it, everything he used to know - hear - easily just slipping that much further out of reach everyday.
Daredevil's hands are on Foggy's face, Foggy just keeps repeating, "Okay, it's okay," and moving to take the cracked mask off of Daredevil's - 'Matty' apparently - face.
"Claire's coming, I called Aunt May too," Spidey says, bringing a rather large first aid kit over and plopping it down on the coffee table behind Foggy.
"What happened?"
"Gun- gunshot. Really close, I think, I wasn't-"
Foggy nods, pulls Daredevil into him, huffs a fake, forced laugh, "Not the first time." He says, "You okay, Pete?"
"I'm- I should've-" "Don't, don't do that."
The kid, Spidey shakes, he shakes his head no but also just, shakes. "No, I should have and- and-" He turns, rounding to face the Hawkeyes, pointing in Clint's face from halfway across the room, "You- Why would you sign at him?"
"Uhm, not to victim blame, but why didn't he just do what Clint signed?"
Spider-'Pete' reacts like Kate had just asked him to strip and do the chicken dance in Times Square.
"I know he's new to it but they really weren't hard signs," She continues like Spider-Man isn't about to lose his PG rating in favor of skinning her alive.
Kate goes as far as to recreate the sequence of signs that Clint had done earlier, to demonstrate. And, okay, they really aren't hard, just a simple motion, changes in hand shape.
"Seriously?" Spidey isn't even loud, just completely shocked and horrified, "That's what you did? That's so small of course he couldn't tell what you wanted!"
"We've been doing them for months." Kate says, still defending Clint. "He has a the video of all the combat signs."
Spidey blinks. Foggy blinks.
Daredevil does not blink but he does come out of Foggy's neck to fumble around and put a hand back at Foggy's face, still randomly mumbling different combinations of "can't hear," and "Foggy".
Clint thinks he finally seeing the issue with-
"You gave a [don't tell May] video to a [please, don't tell May] blind guy?!"
Claire and May turn out to both be very beautiful, very competent nurses who manage to get (blind) Matt Murdock back to his normal state of being, which is barely together but not mumbling about losing one of his remaining senses.
Peter, who is May's nephew, who is Spider-Man, who is fifteen, is still ear-steaming mad about the whole thing. He calms down considerably when Murdock - Daredevil - can hear to argue back and forth with him again.
Matt promises that he doesn't blame Clint for any of the events that happened that night. It was, unfortunately, Matt's fault for not communicating better with the team. Clint still feels awful about it.
Matt doesn't leave his spot of practically-glued-to-Foggy at all that night.
Clint tries not to think about any of it when he's trying to sleep. (That doesn't work, obviously.)
Matt hears Clint splash into the water, a few missions later. Hears the Captain call, "Hawkeye's ears are out," to the team.
Daredevil isn't the one to fist Hawkeye out of the water but he does get stuck in the same section while they're sweeping the ship. He tilts his head, listening to the crew, three men on the level below their feet. Matt flaps one hand in Clint's direction, sloppily signs the information. He can't see the smile but he can hear it in Clint's voice when he says, barely a whisper,
"Go right,"
The next movie night is completely lacking in masks but makes up for that in the presence of subtitles and audio descriptions.