Matt has a motherfucking bone to pick with Tony Stark.
It ain’t a pretty thing, either. No bleach-white, dried out rods of calcium in the fragmented fuckin’ picture.
No, Matt’s bone is as big as a humerus and uglier than the stuff of the compound fractures he so loves to gift child rapists. It’s been out in the air for some time but there are all manner of muscle fibers and tendons still hanging on. The thing reeks and it’s been festering in Matt’s subconscious for the better part of the six months he’s been working with Peter.
The bone’s a disgusting stain and it’s tainted Matt’s life for too long. It has Peter’s name etched into its length and Stark’s got another thing coming if he thinks it’s not headed in his direction soon.
Matt says as such into the blissful afterglow of late-night early-morning sex. Wade is passed out beside him; he’s only talking to the ceiling and himself.
Doesn’t make what’s coming out of his mouth any less true. He voices this to the slow rotating fan as an afterthought. Wade snuffles into the sheets beside him.
Matt forgets about the bone amidst the work rush of the holidays and a terrifying surprise invasion of his home by Sister Maggie, who whacks him with his own bible when she finds the suit strewn haphazardly about the living room after inviting herself in.
Wade watches her tiny form bumbling around the sparse apartment from the safety of the bedroom doorway. Matt can feel the hysteria and fear wafting off of him. Sister Maggie takes notice of him only after every piece of furniture in the room is perfectly perpendicular to its neighbors adjacent. She taps her heels over to him in all of her holy glory and squares up to his torso.
Wade takes a step back.
Matt’s mother matches him in stride.
Wade lets out a soft “Nice to meet you.”
Maggie glares over at Matt, who is crumpled into his chest by the hall.
She returns her attention to the petrified Wade and sticks her arm out. Her deft hands adjust the strings of his sweatshirt and pull until they are no longer uneven. When she’s done, she leans back and squints, inspecting her handiwork.
She whips back to Matt and crosses to him in the span of a second. She cuffs him around the ear and whispers into his trapezius, “Keep your head on straight and you just might keep this one, boy.”
Matt pulls back, mortified. Wade doesn’t move. Maggie shifts her weight back, then forward, then announces that she’ll be eating dinner with the both of them for Christmas.
She’s gone as fast as she came in.
Wade unfreezes. Glances down, fingers the strings on his hoodie. He addresses them when he says, “That was the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Matt can’t help but laugh. It hurts coming up.
Peter has to work on Christmas because his aunt decided that Christmas and Hanukkah were financially incompatible this year and left the fate of the holidays up to the flip of a coin. Matt respects this decision, but it means that the kid’s on his own for patrol.
It’s not like the kid doesn’t work solo, but he’s brand-spanking-new to the underbelly of crime. Specifically, he’s just starting to test the waters of the trafficking scene. Queens is damn full up with human traffickers of every colorful variety. Wade makes sure to coerce him into promising that he won’t get in over his head on a job while they aren’t available.
As if that’s going to stop the kid is Matt’s two cents on the subject, but he lets Wade be paranoid because there doesn’t seem to be a way to keep him from doing it.
The dinner with his mother goes off without a hitch, which is the only bit of good luck that Matt’s had in who knows how long. Wade’s awkwardness dissolves after he discovers Maggie’s dry-as-all-hell humor.
The two of them get along a little too well. Matt has to remind himself a couple of times that it’s okay for people to enjoy one another’s company without any sort of ulterior motive inhibiting trust. Even if one of those people is Wade.
Wade gets a call just as Matt is foisting off pounds of leftovers onto his tiny mother and sending her on her way.
By the time he has the door closed, Wade’s barking an order into the phone and switching hands to extricate the medkit from under the sink.
Something’s wrong.
Matt kicks it into high gear and removes his burner from the wrinkled pocket of his suit. He has a missed call.
Wade books it into the bedroom and Matt sets to work consolidating a go-bag. He can hear Wade’s measured breaths combatting his rising adrenaline. The other side of the line is staticy and punctuated by gunshots and screams.
Wade returns to the kitchen with a laptop, phone hung up. Matt stands up from lacing his boots and hoists the go-bag onto his shoulder.
“Where?”
“Wasn’t clear. North Queens, he said. Sounded like a big space. Echoed. Kid got fucking shot while I was on the line. Trying to trace it now.”
Matt starts praying. “Want me to get over there?”
Wade snorts air out through his nose and gives a sharp nod. Matt yanks his mask out of the bag and sets off.
Wade ends up finding the warehouse before Matt does. He directs him there over the phone, but it’s in vain because Matt can tell that it’s empty before he’s two blocks away. The only thing left of the fight are the ghosts of blood splatters and the specters of gunpowder.
There’s a lot of Peter’s blood in there.
It carves a path north. Matt follows it.
Wade yells at him when he goes to hang up, but it’s no help to the kid if he’s only got one ear on the lookout.
There’s a boot a mile away and several hundred feet up. It’s perched on a ledge about halfway up a building. Matt takes it in his hands and the thing is drenched in water and blood and snow slush. It’s cold. There’s a hole torn in it up near the top.
Been there a while.
He picks up on a taste of iron and the burnt friction of web ejected from above. Matt climbs.
And finds nothing. He descends, following the feel of the currents in the air and the shadows of webbed arcs.
He finds the impression of a handprint on a porous brick wall that scrapes off towards the Bronx.
Matt goes to the Bronx.
Peter’s strung out along the edge of the back step of a store surrounded by waste and the smells of filth. He’s cold. He’s unconscious. Matt runs his hands along his body, finds holes in the frozen, throbbing, naked calf and just above the kid’s hip bone.
His suit, bless its robotic heart, has been trying to call Stark for ten minutes. Matt can hear Pete’s AI listing out vitals and injuries and breaches of security. He calls Wade.
Peter’s faint breathing begins to falter. The kid’s in shock. Matt’s worried that he might start seizing if he doesn’t get help. He gets to work, whispers to Peter that he’s there, that he’s gonna lay him out so he’s safer. Wade crosses the boundary of the Kitchen on the other side of the line.
Peter doesn’t react when he shifts the kid’s upper body. The bullet in his side doesn’t move. It doesn’t smell septic. The metal is staunching the flow of blood for the moment. Not Matt’s biggest priority.
When Matt goes to straighten Peter’s legs, it’s not a pretty picture. Pete screams awake, contorts so that he wrests his injured calf out of Matt’s grip. The bullet makes a sickening grind against the bone when he throws it down. A pitiful sob tears its way out of his throat. His unconscious hands scrabble at his leg. Wade curses on the other end of the line.
Matt gets to work stabilizing Peter, prepping him for transport. He takes Peter’s burner and calls the first contact.
It rings out. The voicemail indicates that Tony Stark’s inbox is at full capacity. Matt swears into the speaker for a second before trying the next contact.
That, too, yields no results. Someone young named Ned tells him to leave a message after the beep. Wade hears his grunt of anger and supplies an ETA of four minutes. Peter’s adrenaline dips low and his heart follows suit.
Matt switches tactics, pulls the shock blanket off of where it had been laying across Peter and stretches it out next to his prone form. He apologizes as he situates his arms underneath a hitching torso and icy knees, prays for forgiveness as Peter cries out when he lifts him onto the fabric. He takes up a place at Peter’s side with arms full of bandages in an attempt to slow the blood loss.
He tries the next contact. It’s May, the aunt. She picks up on the fourth ring, voice all stone and steel rods as she asks, “Peter, you there? How bad?”
Matt grimaces. “May. It’s Daredevil. I just found him on--”
“How. bad.”
Matt scans Peter’s body. His energy has depleted even more. He’s no longer shivering. His chest rattles like it’s full of shards of glass--shattered ribs.
“Do you have Stark’s number?”
May blows all of the air out of her lungs. She pulls away from the line and returns to say, “Calling now. Where are you?”
Wade crashes onto the step and immediately takes Matt’s place staunching the blood. He has Matt cradle Peter’s head as he wraps his body up and works on picking him up. Matt tells May to meet them at Stark’s.
Somehow, May gets ahold of the man of the hour. They lift the Peter bundle and Matt hoists the bag up. She hangs up after overhearing some of Peter’s screams. Before they get moving, Peter wakes again and reaches for Matt’s face. His hand falls away after he goes back under. Matt’s cheek smells like blood. It dries tacky with the stuff.
Peter’s whisked off by what must be twenty medical staff as soon as they step foot into the tower. Wade snarls at them until they let him up with them. Matt stays to intercept May.
She comes hurtling through the door not a minute later. Sees Matt sitting, tapping his foot which is covered in Peter’s blood against the sterile tiles of the lobby. He’s got Peter’s stray boot in his lap.
Matt indicates with his head the direction in which the rest of the party disappeared. May’s off in a heartbeat. He hears her run into Rhodes a couple of floors up. He takes her from there. Stark has yet to make an appearance.
Matt’s alone with the towering glass and the drip of his blood-soaked laces and the sounds of Peter dying a hundred floors up.
The desk attendant asks him timidly if he’d like some water.
Stark doesn’t bother to show his face until Pete’s stabilized around six the next morning.
Matt’s allowed to come up several hours before then. He finds Wade and May tucked into opposite corners of a barren waiting room. His legs pull him into a seat next to Wade, who glances furtively in May’s direction.
His discretion doesn’t go unnoticed. May picks up on his flighty looks and takes up residence on a couch much closer to the two of them. Matt removes his mask to wipe at his brow before his exhausted brain can think it through.
May stiffens when she notices the movement and recognizes the face. She doesn’t acknowledge it further.
Christ, he’s getting sloppy. Fine, then. The mask stays off. He’ll figure that shitstorm out at a later time. He angles his face away from her.
Wade produces from his hoodie pocket a pair of glasses. Matt takes them gratefully.
May’s gaze comes to rest somewhere between the two of them and the wall. Matt can feel its weight. He struggles not to crumble under it.
They wait.
A nurse slips into the room about three hours later, brandishing a tray and three cups of coffee. He pulls up a chair next to May. Matt nudges Wade awake from where he’d fallen asleep on his shoulder. They go to sit with the others.
The nurse explains that Peter’s stable and that they took so long getting him there because halfway through surgery his ribs decided to collapse his lung. Matt’s diaphragm twists in sympathy.
The nurse elaborates that the kid sustained a myriad of broken bones and contusions and a significant concussion. His leg is fucked from the bullet’s path. He’d been hypothermic and bleeding out when they brought him in. Someone had shot him and beaten him with the butt of their gun after he was down. Then for good measure they’d shot him again, point-blank.
Matt’s blood boils. Wade pops his knuckles and each one sounds like a gunshot, tastes like the unshakeable stench of loss that permeates Matt’s nostrils.
May thanks the nurse, asks if she can see Peter. She’s allowed in, but Matt and Wade aren’t allowed to see him until he wakes up.
May follows the nurse through the door from which he came and as soon as the door closes behind her the dam breaks.
Matt buries his face into Wade’s chest to drown it out.
Stark shows his face a good hour later. He has the audacity to behave amicably, to ask how Matt and Wade are doing, whether they’d like some more coffee.
They wouldn’t, thank you very much.
Stark drops the rapport after he notices Matt’s bare feet and the blood-stained plastic bag sat beside him which contains his boots. “You all want to see him? Kid’s been awake for about five minutes.”
Matt can’t bring himself to speak. He ticks his jaw and sets his neck straight ahead. Wade supplies an affirmative for both of them and roughly manhandles Matt into a standing position. Under his breath, he whispers, “Cut the shit. Not the time.”
Well, when the fuck is the time, huh?
Stark walks with them down the hall and into the nearly empty med bay. May is there, face hot, tracing Peter’s limp fingers. The kid is obscured by bandages and gauze and sheets. There are stitches and glue all over his surface and littering his insides. The bullet in his side is still there. His leg is bullet-free but a hot mess on top of a mountain of pillows.
Peter sees them and smiles wide enough for Matt to notice, because he’s the sunniest person in the goddamned world and because Matt’s going to Hell for not finding him sooner. He croaks out a hoarse little “hey” through his traumatized windpipe.
Wade takes a seat on the other side of Peter. Stark pulls one up a little back from May. Matt stands. He can’t sit down anymore.
Stark breaks the silence with a voice crack. “Kid. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I wasn’t there for you.”
Peter tilts his head and two bruised, lidded eyes at him and offers up a heavily medicated, “S’okay.”
Wade jerks back in his chair like those words cut into him. He’s all smoke and charcoal. He says, “It’s not fucking okay, Pete. We’re gonna find out who did this.”
Peter looks confused. “Wasn’ anyone’s fault? Jus’ me?”
Matt chuckles and glares at God through the ceiling. He responds, “Don’t follow my example. It’s not your fault someone else tried to kill you.”
This seems to assuage Peter’s bemusement, but it may also be the next round of pain meds flooding his system. He nods blearily once and goes back under. May scoots closer to his bedside and rests her head next to his.
Wade follows Matt out. Tony’s thirty seconds behind them.
As soon as they’re out of earshot, Matt rounds on Stark. He stands in the middle of the corridor, obstructing his path. “Why weren’t you there the second that boy called?”
Stark’s ego is apparently larger than his instinct for self-preservation because he replies, “I’m not always going to be available for him.”
Bullshit.
“It was one in the morning on Christmas Eve! I was in a fucking meeting!”
Bull. Shit. “The alarm on the kid’s suit tried to contact you seven times in ten minutes.”
Stark squares his posture. The reactor in his chest hums at a higher frequency for half a second. “I was in a security-sensitive meeting with some highly secretive government operatives, shithead. Get off your high fucking horse. You brought him here, didn’t you?”
“Because you’re the one who gave him the fucking suit! You’re the one he relies on for access to resources and safety nets and you let him go out there with no training and expect him not to get hurt! Like! That!” Matt points violently in the direction of the med bay.
Stark gets in his face. He glares Matt down and retorts, “I’m not responsible for what he does when I haven’t given him permission to use the suit. I’m not his fucking parent!”
“Are you sure about that? You’re the first point of contact in his fucking phone!”
Wade lays a heavy hand on Matt’s shoulder. He says, “Both of you need to settle the fuck down. I can’t believe I’m the only one being rational right now, and it pains me to say this, but quit it with the petty catfight. The kid got hurt. His first emergency contact didn’t work out, but his second one did, if slower than desired. Chill the fuck out.”
Stark leans into the set of his shoulders and asks, “How do you know I’m his first line of defense? Kid hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with personal information as of late.”
Matt forces himself to step back. He lets Wade explain the details of the phone call and what followed. He shoves the hand off of his shoulder. His bare feet ache with the tremors of the building. His cheek is still smeared with blood. The stuff is under his fingernails and the air is full of it. It’s cloying like some sickening perfume.
Stark pauses in his conversation with Wade to offer Matt an olive branch in the form of a borrowed pair of shoes. He accepts and the conversation from before is swept under the rug.
Bloodied water under the bridge. Mutilated calves and collapsed lungs ignored. Put on the back burner. Buried under piles of stained money like Elektra at the bottom of Midland Circle.
Peter spends another two weeks at the tower and a month after that in physical therapy with a rotating cast of vigilante- and hero-type trainers. Despite Stark’s apparent refusal to accept responsibility, their talk seems to have knocked some sense into him. He offers to add fight training to the kid’s lab work at his internship.
Peter tells Matt during a PT session that he turned Stark down. When Matt pesters him about why, he evades the question, citing exhaustion and the need for a break.
Yeah, right, Mr. I-grew-a-whole-new-calf-in-four-weeks.
What Matt would give for a healing factor like that, fuck.
He lets Peter rest and get water when he needs it and before he knows it the kid is back to pinning him flat in less than three weeks.
Almost as if positive reinforcement and measured goals improve performance, huh, Stick?
Learn something new every day.
Wade’s getting real distant.
Matt hadn’t noticed it at first with all of the shit happening with Peter, but it becomes apparent all at once when Wade’s shit is absent from his apartment on a day he gets home from court late. Matt calls him a couple of times, even sends two texts which Wade knows are a pain in the ass.
Radio silence.
Matt figures that if he were giving his committed significant other (when did that happen?) the same treatment, there’d have to be something seriously wrong. But Wade sometimes gets like that. He’s got a lot of trauma and he never really expresses it. Sometimes it gets to be too much and he can’t safely be around other people.
It’s probably best to go and check on him regardless.
Matt treks over to the other side of Manhattan to see if Wade’s at his usual apartment.
The thing is still standing, which is good news. Wade’s blown more than one place apart in his eternal search for death.
Matt knocks softly at the door. This warrants no response. He knocks louder and louder for a couple of minutes until he caves and uses the key; Wade prefers to be warned when someone is coming into his space.
The coffee pot is brewing, which is another good sign. He calls Wade’s name out a few times before he hears him on the fire escape.
Matt knocks on the window before opening it. Wade’s muttering to himself, but he doesn’t startle when Matt slides a hand under the frame and lifts. He feels his way out onto the platform and sits as comfortably far away from Wade as he can get.
Wade continues muttering under his breath. It’s too quiet and muffled for even Matt to comprehend. Wade reaches out a scarred hand and places it between the two of them. Matt bridges the gap.
They sit like that in the cold for about an hour. Wade’s muttering gets worse and he starts rocking and he squeezes Matt’s hand like it’s his only lifeline, which it is.
Eventually the rocking subsides and Wade sits. He breathes in crisp, frigid air for a couple of minutes. Matt flexes his numb fingers in Wade’s grip.
Wade turns his head to look at Matt. He turns his head away before saying, “You’re not gonna fucking attack Stark.”
“No.”
“You know that his piece of shit suit could kill you a hundred ways to Sunday.”
“Yes.”
Wade scrunches up his face and lets go of Matt’s hand. “Then why do you insist on going through the morality-vigilante-responsibility bullshit every time you two have a face to face encounter?”
“It’s not... It’s--it’s the fact that he has so many resources at his disposal and he used none of them to help the kid until we intervened.”
Wade pops the joints in his right arm, starting with his fingers and working his way up. Matt flinches with each pop. Wade creaks out, “He could kill you.”
“He won’t. Guy’s got an image to uphold.”
“Let me fight him if it comes to it.”
“I don’t need you fighting my battles for me.”
“Damnit, Matt! I don’t know what to do! I’ve only ever had to feel scared for myself! How the fuck am I gonna find room to be scared for you, too?”
Wade.
“I never asked you to be scared for me.”
“I never fucking asked for it either. It fucking sucks. I can’t control what you do, so how in the hell am I supposed to not be scared for you?”
Matt sits. The city on this side of town is so different from the Kitchen. The lines are less hard. Everything is rounded edges and billowing sounds. As if someone put a pair of noise-canceling headphones over an entire section of the city. It sets Matt’s teeth on edge. He grits out, “I don’t know.”
Wade smashes his head against the wall. “Great. Fucking incredible. You know what happened last time I was scared for someone?”
“Wade.”
“No, listen to me. She died in my goddamn arms and now I’ll never see her again. I don’t want to be alone in the end.”
“When I die, you know I’ll be swinging on my way down. It’s going to happen at some point, whether that’s tomorrow or in forty years. You can’t distance yourself from everyone just because you’re afraid to get hurt. If you do that, you’ll always be alone.”
Wade closes the distance between them. His shoulder brushes against Matt’s. Their knees touch. They lapse into tense silence.
The coffee’s cold in the pot inside.
Matt hangs his legs over the edge of the fire escape. His city is so far away. “You know, if we move in together, you have no choice but to relocate to Hell’s Kitchen.”
Wade sneers at him. “Fuck off.”
Fine. But Matt gets to take the coffee on the trip home.
It tastes like shit personified.
Matt knows that Peter’s back up and running because the idiot wakes him up two months later at three in the morning by breaking into his fucking apartment with a giant lizard hot on his ass.
He’s yelling his head off, talking smack at the thing from the rafters while it trashes Matt’s place in search of a way up there.
Matt stumbles out of his bedroom, bewildered.
Peter doesn’t notice him. All of his energy is focused on his reptilian antagonizer. He rips a hanging lamp from its anchor and whacks the thing on the head with it. It goes down, and Peter takes advantage of its disorientation to cocoon it in webbing.
Matt edges along the wall. He nearly takes himself out on the edge of an overturned bookcase.
Peter’s working on suspending the lizard upside down from the ceiling when he hears Matt grumbling curses as he navigates the room.
His suit lenses whir as they widen. He turns around on his perch and looks down. “Oh, shit. Mr. Murdock!”
Kid must feel real bad. He never gives Matt an honorific. Matt tilts his head up and replies, “Spider-Man.”
“I am so sorry! I totally did not realize this was your place. Oh my god, I’m so so sorry. I swear to you I’ll pay for damages. That guy--” He points to the impromptu web chandelier, “--has been stalking me for like a week. He was fucking around in the sewers over here and I ended up baiting him into chasing me. I picked your place to crash land because the windows were so big, I’m really really sorry.”
Peter pauses for a breath. Matt crosses his arms and waits. The kid swings down to stand face to face. When he lands, the scar tissue in his calf traces a map of trauma up his leg. The bone creaks.
Matt asks, “You being careful with that leg?”
Peter scoffs. “Of course, man. It’s been months. I’m fine.”
Matt nods and turns towards the kitchen. He works on getting some coffee going while Peter sets to shifting furniture around. He pulls a ruined canvas off the wall and winces. “Uh, you don’t happen to be super attached to this blue painting, do you?”
“Kid, I don’t even know which blue painting you’re talking about. I think Foggy made me buy that. Pretty sure it’s part of a set from Home Depot.”
Peter deflates. “Oh, thank fuck. I do not have the money to replace a nice piece of art. God knows I don’t have the talent to restore one, either.”
That earns him a laugh. Matt feels his way through the broken glass on the counter. He throws an offer for coffee over his shoulder.
“Oh fuck no. You and Wade both have shit tastes in coffee.”
“If there’s more sugar than caffeine in it, you’re not allowed to call it coffee.”
“That’s not what Starbucks says.”
Starbucks is full of snakes. Chauvinist, hyper-capitalist, power-hungry snakes.
“You’re a weirdo.”
‘Kay, kiddo. More for Matt, then.
The lizard in the web ball shrieks in agreement.
Peter gasps halfway through lifting a bookcase full of books and almost crushes himself with it. He whips his phone out and cries, “I forgot to call the police! Holy shit, I’m so stupid!”
Matt pours his coffee into a pint glass because all three of his mugs are in shattered bits on the ground around him. He hoists himself up to sit on the only bare spot on the counter and listens as Peter chats up the operator on the other end of the line.
He seems to be doing alright. The only evidence of the Christmas incident is the bullet floating around in his side. He’s lost all of the atrophy in his calf. His blood’s running hotter than the early spring chill should allow, but hell, the kid just fought a sewer-dwelling reptile.
Matt’s phone announces from beside his bed that he’s being called by Wade. He sets his coffee down and picks his way over there. The call ends before he can make it, but it rings again immediately. He picks it up.
“--the hell is your fucking window smashed in? Do I need to come over?”
Matt reaches down to grab a pair of shoes. “Everything’s fine. Spidey gave me a surprise visit. How do you know my window’s broken?”
“‘Cause I’m a few blocks west and I saw it happen from here. Peter’s there?”
“Yeah, he and his weird fucking lizard adversary. Don’t come over, police are on their way.”
Matt can hear Wade’s scowl through the phone. He says, “I want to meet a lizard adversary.”
From the hissing and yelling happening in the living room, Matt’s sure Wade will get his chance at some point in the near future. That thing’s not going to stay locked up for long.
Wade says goodbye and Matt tells him to be safe. Wade snorts before he hangs up. Peter pads to the doorway and asks after a push broom.
The lizard laughs like it’s a fucking person and Matt despairs.
Wade asks Matt to move in together the week after the police finish their removal of the lizard-man-monstrosity from his cozy silken prison in Matt’s living room.
Matt asks why.
“I want to be there to help if something happens again.”
Matt sighs into the space where Wade’s face is not. He says, “I know you’re paranoid.”
It’s a huge understatement. They both know this. Every person alive and dead knows this.
They’re sat up on an ancient rooftop, leaned against a moldering smokestack. Wade’s eating a chalupa from the Mexican place a few blocks south. He drops a hunk of lettuce. Matt tosses it in a perfect arc against the wind. It lands, teetering dangerously on the edge of the roof.
Wade crunches into his meal and Matt says, “Think it’d be easier? It’ll draw attention to us.”
“We’ve got different work schedules, ‘snot like we’re gonna be leaving the building every morning arm in arm. Besides, all your neighbors know we’re sleeping together.”
Fair fuckin’ point. The couple downstairs are snoops and Wade has poor volume control.
Matt grabs a cucumber slice from the top of the pile of food. “Fuck it, let’s do it.” Wade pumps the air with his fist. Matt holds a finger up in warning and adds, “Two conditions.”
Wade crosses one leg over the other and says, “Shoot.”
“No cats and no meth in the apartment. The smell makes me gag.”
Wade wipes his fingers on the rough brickwork of the smokestack and extends his hand. “Mr. Murdock, you have yourself a deal.”
They shake. It’s done.
Peter yells at them in young person nonsense when he wheedles it out of them.
Matt has no idea what slang the kid is using or when he himself became such an old, crotchety asshole. Wade snaps a picture of Pete, fully suited, with suit eyes narrowed to slits and an accusatory finger directed at Matt’s roped arms crossed against his torso.
It’s time for the kid to shut his trap. Matt sweeps his feet out from under him and his ass hits the ground.
He puts Peter’s head into a complicated lock and basks in the experience of him scrambling to break out of it. “I thought we were taking this time for training, Spider-Man. Leave the water cooler talk for after we’re done.”
Peter figures out the physics of the move and thrusts Matt’s arms apart with perhaps a little more force than necessary. He wheels around to face Wade and squares up.
Wade twirls the stick in his hands and mirrors Peter’s stance.
The kid wins the fight with his webs. Those are confiscated. He wins again without them.
He loses to Matt with no webs. It’s a nice ego check for the kid. Not so nice for Matt’s shoulders.
Wade teases him about being old when they finish up for the night. He’s a huge fucking hypocrite. Matt asserts this several times before they go to bed.
His alarm goes off an hour and a half later. He shoves the covers and Wade’s heavy arms to the other side of the bed and pads around the room, running through his morning routine as quickly as possible. He has court today and Foggy and Karen are supposed to meet him at the office early to do a last run-through of witness testimony and closing statements.
Peter got roped into helping Karen out with research for this case, so he’ll be there as well. He makes an impressive paralegal when he isn’t bored out of his mind.
Matt wants to make a pit stop after they’re dismissed, so he asks for a rain check on celebratory drinks. He taps away from Foggy’s annoyance and Karen’s enthusiasm in the direction of the Stark tower. He’s got a bone to lay bare.
The woman at the front desk is the same one from the night they brought Peter in. She must work some odd hours; it’s four in the afternoon and she seems exhausted. Matt charms her with his smile and she squeezes him in to meet with the big man between whatever other meetings he has that day.
Matt gets annoyed with the AI in the elevator, which refuses to tell him why there are several buttons that have no braille label attached to them. When he asks which button to press, the voice tells him, “There is no need for concern. I know your destination.”
Thanks a lot. Real helpful.
The elevator brings him to the top quarter of the building and tells him to have a nice day as he steps off. The man behind the desk introduces himself as Stark’s administrative assistant and tells him that there are seats ten feet to his nine o’clock. He sits.
Stark’s office is behind three doors and separated by a couple of hallways. Matt can hear him and his wife talking shop with an assortment of corporate asshats. He twiddles his thumbs.
The administrative assistant buzzes him in about fifteen minutes later. Matt walks down the wide hall, steps punctuated by the tapping of keys and rancid printer ink from behind closed doors.
Stark’s door is made of glass. It slides open upon his approach. Stark is the only presence in the room. There is some sort of hidden door in the corner that leads off into a cavernous space cluttered with junk. A very slow, very powerful heartbeat is shifting test tubes around and swiping around on a touch screen in there. Must be a workshop or lab of some kind; that person could only be the Hulk in human form.
Stark stands and says, “Matthew Murdock. What brings you here?”
Matt feels his way to the edge of the desk and extends his arm for a handshake. “I wanted to discuss a topic in which you and I have a mutually vested interest.”
Stark takes the offered hand. His palm is calloused and his nails are so short that they dig into their beds. “I think that’s something we’ve been needing to talk about for a while.”
Matt lets go and leans back. He replies, “I agree. Our last interaction ended rather unfavorably. I’ve been wanting to clear the air.” He quirks the corners of his mouth up.
Stark sits. “I offered to have Peter train here with the Avengers. He refused. I tried to talk him out of it, but he dug his heels in. That kid’s stubborn as hell .”
Matt lets out a breath of laughter. He braces his cane against his arm and puts his hands in his pockets. He says, “I’m well acquainted with that aspect of his personality. I have an idea that I think may compel him to agree: you go out with him on his patrols--”
Stark makes a disbelieving noise. “I don’t have that kind of time.”
“Just--just listen. Not every one of them. Say one every couple of weeks. If that won’t work, once a month. Make an effort to involve yourself in the smaller jobs that he does.”
Stark balances his chair back on two wheels. He asks, “How is this supposed to train him?”
“The area in which Peter needs the most improvement is strategy. He’s getting better at fighting. He’s insanely good at puzzling things out. The thing Deadpool and I have been trying to get him to understand is how to make a plan and stick to it. From what I hear, you’re damn good at managing plans.”
Tony lets the chair return to the floor. “You want me to immerse myself in the culture of vigilantism so that I can teach Pete how to make plans?”
Matt nods. He pushes his glasses back with his free hand. The other one removes itself from his pocket in favor of resting on the top of his cane.
Stark hesitates before conceding. “Fuck it. If it’ll make the kid happy, I’ll find time to do it. But only if he agrees to this.”
Matt grins. “I’m sure he will. Especially if you’re willing to participate on his home turf.”
“You vigilante types are so fucking territorial. You’re like a bunch of douchebag stray tomcats.”
“What can I say? I know my city. Peter knows his.”
“Only thing that’s my turf in this city is my lab and my suit.”
Matt bites back a retort. He says goodbye and winds back through the superfluous corporate hallways. The AI pisses him off on the way down, which only fuels his contempt.
Stark has less self-awareness than anyone Matt’s ever met, which is a pretty impressive achievement considering he works with Danny Rand on a regular basis. If he has to interact with the guy more than twice yearly he might cease to exist.
As long as the kid’s learning how not to kill himself. That’s the important part.