The Luck of a Dumpster
Matt liked to work alone. He liked being the only one to handle things. But he also liked helping Clint. Clint liked pushing people away. Not really liked as much as needed because a past riddled with scars and abuse kept him practically unable to form close connections. Despite this, he did like the way Matt didn’t like to be mad at him. Most days he seemed like the only person in the world who wasn’t mad at him. Clint knew that though Matt was blind, he could see in a different way.
Once, Matt was fighting what he had originally thought were low-level thugs. There were many of them and they were all very well-trained martial artists. Matt kinda won and well actually he kinda lost and somehow ended up in a dumpster. His senses were a little fuzzy so he wasn’t very aware of his surroundings. That same night Clint somehow ended up in Hell’s Kitchen on a roof in hand-to-hand combat with some ninja. His bow was who knows where. The fight… well it looked bad. He was out of tricks and out of luck. He was tired and slow. The ninja kicked him in the chest and then he was falling. Apparently his luck wasn’t completely out because he landed in a dumpster.
“Who’s there?” Matt demanded, having heard and felt Clint hit the trash. Clint had closed his eyes, partially so that he wouldn’t see himself hit the pavement and die and partially because he was so tired. Also, at some point while fighting the ninja both hearing aides had fallen out. Basically, he had no idea where the hell he was. Matt grabbed him by the collar of his tee shirt and shoved him against the cool metal of the dumpster.
“Wha-”
“Who are you?” Matt asked again.
“What? I’m deaf and it’s too dark to read lips. Do you know ASL?”
“What? No, I don’t know ASL, I’m blind.”
“What did you say?” The confusing conversation didn’t last much longer because very quickly Matt passed out from his injuries and Clint passed out from exhaustion, though neither succumbed to sleep without putting up an honorable fight, both being the stubborn bastards that they are.
The sun was just starting to come up when Matt awoke with a start. It took him a minute to realise where he was, why, and who this young guy was. His senses were still not the best because he had lost a very large amount of blood. He tried to pull himself out of the dumpster with no avail. Then he turned to the other guy.
Matt shook Clint’s shoulder and just narrowly dodged his fist when he swung at him. Clint sat up groggily and blinked a few times, trying to remember what the hell he was doing.
“Hey, we need to get out of here,” Matt said. Clint could read lips now that it was light out so he nodded.
“Yeah. You don’t look so good.”
“That’s why I woke you. Come on, get up.”
Matt wrapped his arm around Clint’s shoulder and allowed himself to be pulled up. Clint was having trouble standing between the uneven and constantly shifting trash under his feet and the hundreds of pounds of straight up muscle putting pretty much all of his weight on him. Clint didn’t really know what to do so he kinda just pushed Matt over the edge of the dumpster. Matt obviously didn’t land it.
“Hey, stay there for a minute. I need to go find my hearing aides or Tony’ll kill me for losing another pair,” Clint told Matt.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
It took Clint a minute to get up to the roof and then another minute to find them. By the time he returned, Matt had passed out again. He really lost a lot of blood, and some wounds were still trickling. Clint pulled him up yet again managed to get him in consciousness.
“Where do you live?” Clint asked. It took a moment for Matt to be able to fully reply. Luckily, his apartment was close by. That was where Cint’s luck completely ran out. The other- and very heavy- man was completely useless. Clint was literally dragging him. Then the elevator was out of service so they had to take the stairs. It took the better part of an hour to go less than a block. Then Matt didn’t have a key and the door was locked so Clint had to hope no neighbor came out of their apartment to see their blind neighbor passed out and bleeding on the floor outside the door to his apartment while Clint broke in through the roof.
It was quite a process to get Matt into the apartment and then on the couch and then get his suit off so that Clint could patch him up. It probably didn’t help that Clint was still so very tired and didn’t see a coffee pot in the kitchen. He needed caffeine and was starting to feel the toll it took on him without any.
Matt’s body was covered with scars. Clint had never seen anyone who could rival him there. He saw a first aid kit next to one of the chairs and pulled it over to him. First thing’s first, the stitches. There was a stab wound on his thigh. Clint had gotten pretty good at stitching himself up, but on someone else it was harder. At one point Clint wondered why he was stitching up some blind dude instead of taking him to the hospital. Nonetheless, he proceeded.
Second, glue the cuts. He didn’t need to dig through the kit, glue was right on top next to the surgical needle. There were a few cuts to glue. Last, butterfly band-aids. He usually taped himself up but he didn’t think this guy would want to look like a mummy.
It wasn’t until he was done that he realized he had forgotten to clean the large stab wound. Matt groaned in his sleep and Clint decided to hurry with the cleaning so he wouldn’t have to do it while he was awake. He grabbed a bottle of alcohol from his kitchen. It wasn’t hard to find one. He dumped a good portion onto Matt’s thigh. He woke up yelling. Clint startled but it ended as quickly as it started.
Matt stared intently at his thigh, his teeth gritted to stifle any sound. He breathed sharply and quickly as the pain slowly subsided. Finally he fully realized that the guy was sitting back on his feet on the ground next to him.
“I did the best I could. Who are you?” Clint asked.
“Matt. Matt Murdock.”
“Hm. Never heard of you. How did a blind guy become a vigilante?”
“I have other ways to see. How did a deaf guy become an Avenger?”
“How do you know I’m an Avenger?”
It was the start of a wonderful friendship.