“Okay, Egg, here we go. Are you ready?”
Egg settled back on her haunches and started to sit back in anticipation of outsmarting Peter in what was becoming her usual favorite way.
It was looking cute.
Peter was a fucking sap.
“Shake,” he said, holding out a hand.
Egg looked at it, then looked up at him.
“Come on, you did it yesterday. Shake!”
Peter held out his palm flat. Egg Salad stared at him with huge, empty eyes. She gazed upon his soul.
“Shake,” Peter tried again hopefully.
Egg tentatively stretched out a paw with splayed toe beans to reach Peter’s fingers. She tapped at them a couple of times, then retracted the paw and meowed.
“You are brilliant,” Peter whispered to her. “Many treats. All of the treats.”
MJ caught him on the third one.
MJ said that Peter was a chronic child-spoiler and an incorrigible pet-spoiler and so his contact with both ought to be limited or supervised.
Unfortunately, MJ could not be assed to limit or supervise him and he refused to be stopped in his crusade of making babies laugh on trains—no matter how much it annoyed other commuters—so the world at large was just going to have to suffer.
Miles took the brunt of it these days. Between him and Egg, Peter was plenty distracted.
Miles took the cooing with far less grace than the train-babies.
“It is Silent Spidey time,” Miles snapped at him when the two of them were presented with a field full of rabbits and one very harried-looking park keeper.
But there were bunnies.
“But nothing,” Miles said. “Where did they even come from? How did they get here?”
The park keeper didn’t know. As far as he was aware, none of these fluffy white beasties were native to his neck of the woods, and they certainly hadn’t been there the night previous.
“This looks like a job for—” Peter started.
“Silent Spidey,” Miles interrupted.
Peter pouted. Miles ignored him as though he was a wet, empty bag of Doritos on the pavement.
In retaliation for such callousness, Peter began scheming up an attention-seeking plan which could not be ignored and left Miles to chat with the park keeper while he sought out inspiration. The rabbits might be fun. He could steal them and load them up into an attic and then have them all somehow collapse on top of Miles tribble-style.
But would Miles get the joke?
Did kids these days even know what tribbles were?
Had the golden days of Star Trek passed them all by?
Hm.
Well, it might be funny anyways.
His attention caught onto the shape of a man dressed in black, frozen on the edge of the park, staring out into it. His companion in a blue suit pushed him, but the black suit was stuck to the pavement in awe.
Or what Peter was pretty sure was awe; it was hard to tell with Matt Murdock if he was amazed at your apparently bottomless stupidity or if he wanted whatever it was you were presently holding. From a distance, though, Peter was going to go ahead and say that in this case, he wanted a bunny.
Not to eat. Murdock wasn’t the kind of guy to be going around eating dead doves or goats or chickens--whatever it was that people left out for the devil occasionally. As far as Peter was aware, anyways. Things might have changed in the last month or so since Nelson came back into the picture.
Nelson over there by the sidewalk, bless him, gave Murdock another gentle nudge in the direction of the street, emphatically away from the rabbits.
Murdock made harsh, flailing gestures at him and Nelson threw up defensive hands and even though Peter was a ways away, he could hear the conversation of ‘NO’ and ‘Jesus, okay, okay’ crystal clear in his head.
Abbott and Costello those two could be, if only they managed not to break up their act every other year.
Oh.
Now there was a vengeance idea.
Wade was a party pooper.
Usually, he was not, but when it came to Murdock, he thought the guy too stoic and volatile for his liking. Or, in other words “he’s too messy, Pete. He looks like he’d lick his fingers after breakin’ a guy’s nose—that just ain’t sanitary.”
Ever since Wade had been confronted with having to chase a small version of himself around his apartment, he’d become obsessed with what was and what was not sanitary.
Mostly this occurred because baby Ellie had been hellbent on putting everything Wade owned into her mouth. Now, five years after the threat of baby Ellie had passed, Wade just had the habit ingrained into him.
But as much as Peter respected Wade’s friendly, sage, and fatherly advice, he wasn’t convinced that Murdock’s personality and self-enforced solitude were insurmountable.
He had tempted Murdock before with Egg. And he was starting to see a pattern here with the rabbit-induced behavior from earlier.
“Yeah, okay, the guy likes soft fluffies. But how do you know he ain’t gonna turn around and eat somethin’ while you’re not lookin’? He just looks hungry all the time, Pete. Who’s to say he ain’t just out lookin’ for a snack. Guy probably shits owl pellets,” Wade asked his back.
“You can’t shit owl pellets if you’re not an owl,” Peter reminded him.
“Says you.”
Miles caught him. The damn kid. He was so sharp. Annoyingly sharp.
He was worse than baby Miles. At least with baby Miles, Peter had other-worldly authority. With his own Miles, he had no defense but age and Miles was 100% willing to attribute every dumbass thing he did to senility, which was just insulting.
Peter knew what he was doing. He just couldn’t be assed to wear the serious-hero face the way other people did.
“You can’t just lure Daredevil around with rabbits,” Miles scolded him. “I know all those other multiverse folks have DDs on their Team Reds or whatever, but it has to be Daredevil’s decision whether or not he wants to join our team. Otherwise he’ll just come and go as he chooses and that’s not exactly team spirit, Spidey.”
Team spirit might be a little beyond Murdock’s capabilities, Peter did not say.
“Daredevil would be a good ally to have,” Peter said instead. “I’ve worked with him before.”
“I know, I remember the papers.”
“He does important work.”
“I noticed you’re avoiding the word ‘good’ here,” Miles jabbed.
“It’s not bad,” Peter argued. “It’s just—”
“Extreme.”
“—a little—”
“Chaotic?”
“—over the top. I’m sure he’s got a lot of personal issues he’s dealing with,” Peter said.
Miles gave him an acidic look.
“We all have personal issues we’re dealing with,” he pointed out, “But we don’t go around putting people in comas or leaving bloodtrails to warehouses.”
Fair.
“Maybe if he had a support network, he’d be a little less inclined to do that,” Peter tried.
Miles’s expression was dropping on the pH scale like the temperature in November.
“Spidey,” he warned.
“Just go with it,” Peter said, grinning. “I feel like I’m making progress with the guy.”
“Spidey.”
“It’s either this or a tribble bomb, Morales. Have your pick.”
“What the fuck’s a tribble?” Miles spat.
See? This is why you go with your intuition.
Murdock and Nelson had remounted their sign outside the office that one of them always seemed to maintain. It was like they had a joint custody agreement in their divorce with the thing.
You knew when Murdock had it for the time being because the place devolved into a library of paperwork stacked with military-like precision. When Nelson had it, it was organized by a lovely secretary into a more or less cozy rat’s nest. When they both had it, it was shitshow. An entertaining one, though. Peter knew vigilantes who sometimes went to the place just to watch the clash of personalities.
Allegedly—Peter had not witnessed it, but he’d heard many a story—Nelson would do something normal and human like eat a bag of chips in his office, and Murdock’s Zero Tolerance for Happiness Policy would propel him out of his office, down the hall with balled fists, and into Nelson’s humble workspace to eliminate all fun and joy from his immediate vicinity.
Nelson, after years of putting up with this, Danny Rand had explained to Peter, generally just agreed with whatever Murdock said, and as soon as he left the office (in a frazzled huff), he’d carry on doing whatever he had been before so that Murdock would turn purple with rage.
Nobody understood those two’s relationship.
It was hard to tell if they loved each other or hated each other beyond all possible measures.
Rand thought that it was the other way around. He thought that they loved each other more than anything in the world but hated that they did and so had determined ages ago to make each other miserable so that they’d suffer equally for the duration of their mortal partnership.
Peter thought that Nelson possibly had a caretaker impulse and an unfortunate side-case of stubbornness, the combination of which was lethal in the face of human disaster Matthew Murdock.
Normally, he’d feel compelled to remove Nelson from that sticky situation, but given that Nelson had, could, and did tell Murdock to go fuck himself on a semi-regular basis, Peter was left with the impression that he enjoyed whatever mess they had going on with each other.
And that worked out fine because without Nelson, Murdock was veritably untamable. Once Peter got Nelson on his side, then that was it. Murdock would be putty in his hands.
Bitey putty. Putty in desperate need of an attitude adjustment.
But putty no less.
“Mr. Parker!” Nelson greeted, “Come on in, come on in. It’s been ages, kid. How are you?”
“Devious, and yourself?”
Nelson laughed and the sound made Peter grin.
“You two back together or is this a month’s trial?” Peter asked, flopping down into one of the chairs across from Nelson’s own behind his desk.
Nelson hummed.
“We are back together,” he confirmed. Then paused. “For now,” he added.
Nelson was a great lawyer.
He promised you nothing and kept your expectations at baseline, so you couldn’t be mad at him when shit didn’t pan out. At the same time, he was very good at preventing shit from not panning out. He held his cards close to his chest, Nelson did, even when he knew he was winning.
“He in?” Peter asked, tipping his head towards Murdock’s office.
“No, not yet,” Nelson said, interested. “Why do you ask?”
Peter sat up and leaned forward across the desk. He gestured for Nelson to sit and, with a cheeky smile, the man did.
“Go on, then,” Nelson said.
“I am here on SM business,” Peter explained.
“Oh, are you now? I wouldn’t have guessed.”
Peter grinned wider.
“I have recently come to the conclusion that we can help each other, Nelson,” he said.
Nelson folded his fingers together.
“Go on,” he directed.
“I want Murdock,” Peter said out flat. “I want him for a team I’m making. I have an idea on how to lure him over to my side, but I need more info and an assist from the inside.”
“Matt doesn’t do teams,” Nelson said lightly.
“No, but don’t you think that a team would be good for him?” Peter pointed out. “I’m sure you do a lot of emotional labor for the two of you. Wouldn’t it be better on both you and him if he had a wider network of support?”
Nelson smiled pleasantly.
“Matt would rather stab himself in the leg with a pair of scissors than join another team,” he said.
Another?
Nelson’s smile barely flickered at the slip-up.
“Who are the others?” Peter asked.
“Clients. Attorneys. We work together, Mr. Parker, you’ve been there, you know this.”
Nice try, pal. Peter wasn’t falling for it. This was just a distraction.
“I want Red,” he repeated.
“We have this in common,” Nelson noted.
“I want to bring him down to a controllable level.”
“No one can do that.”
“That’s not true,” Peter said. “He’s got that gal of his.”
Nelson’s smile slipped completely this time.
“Oh, Peter,” he said. “Did no one tell you? Karen died.”
What?
“Yeah, two years back.”
Holy shit.
“Yeah.”
No fucking wonder Murdock had been in a burning tailspin for the last two years. Holy fucking shit.
“Yeah,” Nelson sighed. “It’s been rough for all of us, but really bad for Matt. He thinks he’s coping, but he knows things are getting out of hand. He asked me to come back. He asked me for help. Do you know what it takes for us to get to that point? Because I was convinced that new pyramids would be built before we did.”
Jesus.
“I’m so sorry, Foggy. This is super insensitive now,” Peter said, standing up. Nelson held up a hand and pulled it and Peter back down.
“He’s fixating,” he said. “And guilting himself left, right, and center, and he doesn’t really have coping skills, Peter. We are where we are because he’s finally taken a step in the right direction for the first time in his life and I, for one, would like to see him take a couple more.” He paused and surveyed Peter in silence for a beat. “You’re a good man, Peter,” he said. “And a hopeful one. And while Matt does already have people he works with, I’m not sure that they’ve got the kind of energy that he needs right now. So I agree with you. I think being on this team of yours would be good for him. But I don’t know how you’re going to convince him of that.”
Ah.
See, there was an easy answer to that.
“No problem,” Peter said. “I just won’t.”
Nelson was willing to give Murdock a couple of strategic pushes and shoves Peter’s way which was perfect. That was all Peter needed.
“Spidey,” Miles said in a flat tone.
“I can’t hear you,” Peter sang.
“Spidey,” Miles warned.
“Man, I’m so old, I gotta be going deaf or something.”
“Spidey, you can’t do this.”
See, that was where Miles was wrong.
Peter could do this. And he was doing it, so there wasn’t really much else to be said here.
He scooped up the puppy closest to him for inspection. The mama dog didn’t seem too bothered, besieged as she was with her roly-poly offspring.
“I’ll bring her back to you in three days,” he promised Stacy, the mama’s owner.
“For sure,” Stacy said. “Go out and tempt humanity. There’s seven more where that came from.”
“Spidey!”
Nope. Peter was hearing no nay-saying.
“Spidey!”
“Miles,” he said, spinning around with bundle of joy in hand. “I’m gonna need you to chill out and trust me. Can you do that?”
Miles stopped and furrowed his brow up at him. Then he dropped his eyes and his face.
“Yes,” he said quieter.
Peter eased the tension in his shoulders.
“I know it seems invasive, kiddo,” he said. “And I know all them sociology books got you thinkin’ about best practices and the like—but honey, you and me and the rest of people like us? We don’t fit in your books, okay? Sometimes, you just gotta take the leap and see what happens for yourself.”
Miles sucked in a breath, then dropped his shoulders nodding.
Peter felt bad.
“Here,” he said, “Hold Madeline.”
It was one thing giving Miles the puppy to hold, it was another thing entirely getting him to give it back so that Peter could then send it tottering along right into Murdock’s path.
He managed, but only by promising Miles that he could play with the thing on the way back.
They camped out about a block from the gym that Nelson had persuaded Murdock to go to, to burn off some steam. They waited until they heard the clack of his cane before releasing the beast and its little pink toe beans into the middle of the pavement. Then they got the fuck out of there so as not to set off Murdock’s radar sense.
From higher up, they saw the edge of Murdock’s cane whack right into the puppy. The sound resulting sound was devastating, although Murdock’s panicked freezing was exactly what Peter was looking for.
The pup was too little to understand that when something bops you, you run away from it. It opted for going still and awkward and crying in the middle of the pavement.
Murdock very clearly didn’t know what the fuck to do.
He swiveled his head around, searching for another body with his ears and nose, but, coming up with nothing at street level, he readdressed the dog.
He knelt down. The pup dragged its little nails against the ground in protest when he scooped it up for inspection.
He seemed to be talking to it, probably demanding to know what its business was in Hell’s Kitchen, when the precious creature wriggled at him and licked his chin.
Cue another freeze-frame.
If Peter could caption this image it would be with ‘Oh no. It’s cute.’
Murdock stood up, puppy in custody, and searched around again, this time a little more frantically. The pup cuddled into his neck to escape the cold.
Peter waited.
Murdock felt along the pup for a collar and found one.
He then found the tag Peter had had made with a little message on it.
“This is low, Parker,” Murdock pointed out, notably without relinquishing the pooch.
Peter hummed.
“She’s a very good girl,” he said. “She just wants a friend.”
Murdock scowled at him.
“If you don’t like her, give her back,” Peter said, holding out a hand.
Murdock clutched the dog closer to his chest.
Uh-huh. That’s what Peter thought.
“What if I told you that there were more of them?” he nudged. He got narrowed eyes and semi-bared teeth in response.
“We won’t tell anyone, Red,” he promised.
“You broke him,” Miles whispered.
Murdock was indeed running on an incomplete circuit, but not because he was broken. More because he had too much data all around him.
Stacy snickered at all the puppies’ desperation to be in his lap. They yapped and nipped at each other. Murdock settled these fights with attention and petting. But all in silence.
“I’d say they’d be good guide dogs, but they wouldn’t,” Stacy said.
Murdock did not care.
“What are they?” he asked.
“French bulldogs,” Stacy said.
“They’re very sweet.”
“Ehn. They’re something. They’re all yours if you want ‘em.”
“I can’t,” Murdock said, uncharacteristically tolerant of the tugging going on with his sleeves.
“You know anyone who can?”
Murdock considered it.
“Do you have a flier?” he asked.
Miles didn’t understand how this interaction was valuable. As far as he could tell, nothing had been achieved with it.
“Patience, Padawan,” Peter told him. “All things will become clear with time.”
Miles glared at him.
Wade came in the next night and sat on Peter’s chest, which scared the shit out of him.
MJ freaked out on the other side of the bed for .02 seconds before realizing that she too, could contribute to Peter’s suffering if she climbed into Wade’s lap.
They were getting a little too close for comfort, those two, Peter thought when he had removed both wife and boyfriend.
He didn’t like it.
They were starting to gang up on him.
Nelson sent Peter a letter. An actual letter with an actual stamp and sometimes Peter forgot that old-fashioned folks like Nelson and Murdock existed.
Or maybe just lawyers. Sometimes Peter forgot lawyers existed.
Regardless, Nelson wrote “I have heard tell of puppies and our friend has been listening to videos of them on his breaks. Thank you for the ammunition, but please do not encourage this further. He does not need a dog.”
Peter begged to differ, but he understood why Nelson said these things.
Murdock didn’t need a dog or a girlfriend or anything like that. He didn’t need more commitment.
What he needed was a distraction.
Miles looked very sad indeed when he was informed that he was the next sacrifice to the devil’s altar.
“I didn’t even do anything yet,” he said as Peter walked him with hands on his shoulders up the stairs to Murdock’s den of horrors. Nelson had handed off the address. He was a stellar friend like that.
“And you’re not going to,” Peter said. “All you’re going to do is tell him you’re new, you’re mine, and I’m a shit teacher. That’s it.”
“But you’re not a shit teacher, you’re just an asshole teacher,” Miles said.
Aw.
It almost warmed Peter’s heart.
“I’m a shit teacher today,” he said with one final shove. “Go. Don’t embarrass us.”
Miles slung pitiful eyebrows at him as he spun around and hiked back down the stairs.
When Miles did not reappear after two minutes, Peter was pleased. Even if Murdock threw him out now, he would do so having had non-hostile human interaction for the day. That was probably a plus in Murdock-land.
When Miles did not reappear after five minutes, Peter couldn’t stop his grin because he knew.
He knew.
They’d got him.
“He gave me an abuse hotline flier,” Miles said half an hour later, holding said flier out to Peter as though he wanted it. “And then he made me sit and list out every one of the reasons why I want to be Spiderman and then he told me that if I wanted him to slug you, he would, I just had to say the word.”
Perhaps Peter had called this race just a second too soon.
“But did he like you, Miles?” Peter asked.
Miles shrugged.
“I couldn’t tell,” he said.
Goddamnit, Red.
“I think he likes you,” Peter said, cupping his chin and frowning. “Why else would he not punt you off a roof?”
Miles blinked.
“Was that a risk I just took?” he asked.
“Absolutely not,” Wade said an hour later, standing in his apartment doorway with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Wade,” Peter whined with hands pressed together in front of him. “Come on, please? For me?”
“Owl. Pellets,” Wade maintained.
“Owl pellets?” Miles asked.
Peter ignored him.
“I will trade favors for sex,” he said.
“Dude,” Miles said. “We’re in public and I’m right here.”
Peter continued to ignore him.
Wade considered this. Then went rigid.
“I ain’t fucking Murdock,” he said.
“I ain’t asking you to fuck Murdock,” Peter said.
“You ain’t fucking Murdock either,” Wade said. “I’m a jealous bitch all of a sudden.”
This man was useless. Peter didn’t know why he put up with him and let him into his house and bed.
“Neither of us is fucking Murdock,” he said. “You, however, could possibly fuck me, if someone goes and takes the edge off our mutual pal.”
Wade was not moved.
“He ain’t our pal,” he said.
“He will be,” Peter argued.
“Not if I don’t want it.”
“Wade.”
“I hear what you’re sayin’, sweet cheeks, I just ain’t interested. We don’t need a Red. I dunno how many times I gotta say it. We don’t need a Red.”
Peter glared hard. Wade had half the resolve that MJ did, despite all his bleating and blustering and knives.
The problem was that Wade knew that Peter knew that he had this weakness and he puffed himself up to try to defend the remnants of his honor.
Peter glared harder.
“Fine,” he said. “I guess I’ll just have to go do it myself.”
And lo, how the walls fall down.
Wade was a thinker. A good ol’ fashioned thinker and he could sit and rattle away for hours, just thinking, not going anywhere or doing anything.
So it was Wade who came up with the decision to send Nelson for this task.
And that would have been fine, except for one thing.
“Nelson’s straight,” Peter said. “Straighter than sin. Straighter than a ruler. Straight as—”
“A fucking curly straw,” Wade said without humor. “What the fuck about that man screams straight to you? He wears a bowtie, Parker.”
Peter was offended on straight peoples’ behalf. There was no reason a straight person couldn’t wear a bowtie. Bowties were very old-fashioned and sweet. Peter loved a good bowtie.
“Because you’re not straight, boo-bear,” Wade sighed.
Miles snickered and got a warning to cease and desist before he suffered violence at the hands of his teacher.
“Think about it, Pete,” Wade said. “Who is always, always there for Murdock, thick or thin, huh? Who does he always go back to? Who does he tolerate more than anyone else?”
Well, Nelson. But they were firm partners.
“Red’s probably no-homo-ing himself away that the whole situation,” Wade sniffed. “He’s probably hyphenating their names all over the place and burning it on his pyre with his pellets.”
“Wade, he does not make pellets.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“And Nelson’s his best friend. That doesn’t make them gay.”
“I ain’t say they were gay,” Wade jabbed. “I said Murdock’s into Nelson and that whatever straight is, Nelson’s headed west from it.”
This argument was becoming circular. That wasn’t unusual for Wade, but Peter had tasks that he wanted to get done here and a timeline he was working on. He didn’t have weeks to devote to this process. He needed Red to start softening now.
“If they’re into each other, they’ve been dancing around it for decades,” Peter said.
“I mean, yeah, it’s a real slow-burn,” Wade said.
“We need lighter fluid,” Peter said. “Gimme lighter fluid.”
Wade perked up at that and wriggled in his seat. Miles edged away from him ever so slightly.
“Okay, here’s what we do,” Wade said, “We buy Nelson skanky lingerie. We arrange a covert dinner date at an Italian restaurant. Murdock picks the wine. There is a show afterwards followed by a walk home it is—”
“It’s gonna piss rain this week,” Miles pointed out.
Wade scowled at him.
“Did I ask you?” he demanded.
“No, I just speak when I want,” Miles said.
Peter let them squabble. He had an idea.
The person who knew Murdock best really was Nelson. And if Wade was (horror of horrors) right in his assumptions, then Peter wanted to know that. But if Wade was wrong (and Peter was putting money on this one) then Nelson would know if Murdock was interested in anyone.
Peter tried calling Nelson, but he didn’t pick up and the office was closed by the time Peter got to Manhattan. He knew where Murdock lived now, and he was pretty sure that Nelson was nearby. It didn’t take much; people knew Nelson and could point Peter a couple blocks over. They didn’t know what floor or apartment Nelson lived in specifically, so it was a good thing Peter had shit boundaries and sticky hands, wasn’t it?
It was apartment 677.
Nelson opened the door in much surprise.
“No, no, I told you, Pete. Matt’s still mourning,” Nelson said.
Peter noted that he wore a bathrobe like a dad in the 80s. He wanted a bathrobe now. He made a note not to mention that to MJ or else she’d exploit it for evil.
“I get that, but we’re talking Murdock here,” Peter said. “You know how he is with the ladies.”
Nelson rolled his eyes.
He knew perhaps better than anyone else.
“Or even the guys?” Peter added off-handedly.
Nelson snorted.
“Matt? No, friend, you’re barking up the wrong tree there,” he said.
Peter smiled.
“I guess you’re right,” he said. “I just thought that a little edge of a crush might bring him out of depression-ville. It’s moved mountains for me.”
Nelson considered this.
“Well now that you mention it,” he said, “I think Matt might be seeing someone. He’s been really secretive about it—which is nothing new.”
Oh, was he now?
“Yeah, he’s had a couple dates lately.”
With a bottle?
“God, I hope not,” Nelson sighed. “That’s the last thing he needs. No, I don’t think it’s anything like that. He keeps calling this gal a ‘wonder of nature.’”
God, Murdock, you’re so fucking embarrassing.
Was this what women wanted from him? Did they like the constant historical re-enaction of the 1930s?
“I dunno, man,” Foggy said. “He’s the one with the luck.”
Uh-huh.
They’d see about that.
It was a fucking cat.
Peter should have known.
He should have known.
But no one would believe him if he said that he’d stolen some binoculars and parked himself on a building nearly half a mile away to start at Murdock’s fire-escape for an hour, and the man had finally snuck out onto the thing to make what had to be kissy-noises at the huge, white Persian cat lounging on his upstairs neighbor’s balcony.
Matt, honey, get therapy.
You will not find yourself in the bosom of a cat.
Whatever. It wasn’t Peter’s place to judge. He’d found solace in the arms of a woman who thought model pigs were the height of comedy and a man who’s idea of fixing technology was beating it with a shoe, then shooting it.
He had not even a toe to stand on. And he was starting to think that this was the way of their people.
Murdock leaned off his balcony for a full fifteen minutes cooing up at this beast before leaving it a can of wet food on his own. He returned back into his loft to sulk and brood.
Peter went home and called it a day.
Nelson was skeptical that Murdock’s lady was a cat.
“Matt doesn’t even like cats,” he told Peter.
Yeah, and Peter’s name was Thomas Jefferson.
“Pete,” Nelson said a little desperately, “He can’t like them. He’s allergic.”
Peter failed to see how those things correlated at all, but he did now have an opening.
“Is that wise?” Peter asked Murdock when he thought he was alone, 100% making kissy noises at the cat.
Peter almost died from blunt force trauma for his trouble, but he did finally end up inside Murdock’s apartment. Holding a paper towel to the bleeding on his head, but still inside.
Baby steps.
“You know, you can just get a cat of your own,” Peter groused while Murdock rattled in dark rage at him on the other side of the sparse room.
“I don’t want one, I don’t need one, I don’t have time for one,” Murdock snapped.
Peter raised an eyebrow that Murdock couldn’t see.
“So you’re harassing other peoples’?” he asked.
Murdock bared his teeth at him, but Peter could detect just a lick of self-consciousness there. He sighed.
“I’m sorry about Karen, Matt, I really am,” he finally said.
Murdock’s shoulders snapped into place so hard the rest of his body jerked.
“Get out,” he said.
“I thought I lost MJ, and it hurt so bad, I thought I couldn’t breathe,” Peter continued.
“Get out.”
“But I got her back. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like—what it must be like for you. You loved her so much, man, anyone could have seen it. And she was so happy with you.”
“Get out.”
Murdock’s voice shook on the last syllable. Peter had never heard it do that before. It made his own throat tight.
“You don’t got shit in your house,” he said, “You’re tryin’ to feed the neighbor’s cat. You’ve moved back in with your roommate at work, man. Trust me, I get it. I’ve been there. It’s okay to be lonely as fuck.”
“Parker,” Murdock warned. “This has nothing to do with you. It’s none of your fucking business. So get scarce before I make you.”
Peter hummed and stood up.
“Do you think this is how Karen would have wanted you to remember her?” he asked. “As a ghost? As the only thing holding you back from living your life like a decent, happy person, Red?”
Murdock forced himself to take in and let out a breath that was just as shaky as his voice from before.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Spidey,” he said tiredly and slipping back into a drawl that Peter hadn’t heard him use before either. “Just go, would ya?”
Peter nodded.
“I will,” he said, “But do me a favor, huh? Talk to Nelson. Talk to someone. Don’t just talk to the cat, alright?”
Murdock didn’t answer. Peter closed the door behind him.
Murdock wasn’t unhinged. He was grieving and depressed. Painfully, probably clinically depressed and trying to keep his head above water while keeping old and new enemies at bay with his teeth.
Peter had been there. Many a time over many a year.
The answer was not being left alone.
The answer was stepping out.
But it was so hard to do that when everything, everywhere, and everyone was suffocating and bleeding into each other like streetlights through a wet car window.
“Murdock needs more help,” he told Nelson, settled in on his window sill the next afternoon.
“I thought so,” Nelson said.
“We’re not close enough for me to do anything,” Peter said.
He watched Nelson put away a box of manila folders.
“I’ll talk to him,” Nelson said.
“It’s not all on you, Foggy.”
Nelson thought about it.
“No,” he said, “But Matt’s my best friend and he doesn’t have anyone else right now. So I’ll take as much of it as I can bear.”
Peter felt like this was just gearing up for an argument, but again. It wasn’t his battle to fight.
“He really wants a cat,” he said. “I dunno if it means anything, but he might feel better about talking if he’s got one to play with. I just got a kitten; he met her a while back. You can borrow her for a night if it would help?”
“A kitten?” Nelson asked, turning to look at Peter over his shoulder.
“Her name’s Egg,” Peter said with a shrug. “She can almost shake.”
“You’re gonna give him Egg?” Miles asked, heartbroken.
“I’m lending him Egg,” Peter said.
Wade tsked and shook his head sadly.
“Kitty bones in owl pellets,” he said.
Peter didn’t feel bad about the dead arm. He didn’t apologize either.
MJ was loathe to part with her daughter, even if it was for a good cause. She eventually relented and she and Peter both tried to comfort their child as she made unhappy noises in her new crate.
Nelson was not sold on cats, Peter thought. He winced at Egg’s crying and was awkward about picking up her crate.
“I will bring her back unharmed,” he promised.
“Protect your bowtie,” MJ warned him.
Peter didn’t know what Nelson and Murdock talked about. All he knew was that Egg came back in the morning and sprinted out into the living room. She was unharmed, and she puffed up upon recognizing her nemesis, MJ’s left bunny slipper. She was lost to the ordeal shortly after that.
Nelson said thank you. He seemed a little pensive.
“Good talk?” Peter nudged.
Nelson sighed.
“Talk,” he offered instead.
Right.
“I’m sorry, man,” Peter said.
“Hm? Oh, no. Sorry, that sounded really negative, I guess. No, it was a good talk,” Nelson clarified. “Just—just a lot of things we haven’t been saying I guess. Thank you, Peter.”
Hm.
“Anytime,” Peter told him. “See you around.”
“They’re fuckin’,” Wade said sagely.
“Dude,” Miles said. “Talking does not mean fucking.”
“’Things we ain’t said’ means romance, pipsqueak,” Wade told him.
Miles was not convinced.
“I’m sure that they’re just sad over their friend,” he said. “You gotta talk grief out sometimes.”
“They’re fucking,” Wade declared.
Peter thought that they’d have to wait to really know.
A whole month he waited. A whole goddamn month. He was just about to give in when he got an email.
“Thanks” was all it said.
It made Peter’s grin spread in time with the warmth across his chest.
He tracked down Nelson and only scared him a little when he tapped him on the shoulder.
“Things going well?” he asked.
“Th-Things? What things?” Nelson repeated.
Peter cocked his head.
“Things,” he said. “With you and Murdock.”
He got a flat stare.
“With me and Matt,” Nelson repeated tonelessly. “What’s going on between me and Matt now?”
Peter could barely contain his surprise.
“Sorry, are you guys off again?” he asked.
Nelson’s brain worked to fill in the gaps.
“Oh, you mean me and Matt,” he clarified. “Oh yeah. Much better, thanks for your help?”
That was.
Er.
Fishy.
“Y’all are okay, then?” Peter needled.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Nelson said, waving, “I mean, besides the war on Cheetos. I must say, that’s pretty unfortunate, but what can you do? Cheetos is a brand in the end. There are snacks to be had of the same variety outside these parameters.”
Right, so Nelson had successfully repositioned himself on Murdock’s last nerve. Good to know.
Peter smiled.
“Any traction on the team thing?” he asked.
Nelson paused and tapped a few fingers against his lips.
“I’m working on it,” he said.
“They. Are. Fuck. Ing,” Wade sounded out for the billionth time while he stabbed hole after hole in the pipe that they collectively found in a highly inconvenient place leading into a local basement.
It sure looked like it was being used for illicit purposes involving a non-accidental gasleak, which might or might not have been planned to occur in the next twenty-four hours.
Peter kept Miles on his shoulders while he disabled the fan at the mouth of it.
“They’re not fucking,” Peter told him. “They’re talking. In this situation, that’s better than fucking.”
“Soon as Red drags his angry, pert little ass out this way, I’ll have my proof and you’ll be sorry,” Wade sniffed.
Peter paused.
“As soon as?” he repeated over Miles’s frustrated, echoing grunts. “Not ‘if’ anymore, Wade?”
Wade scowled.
“I didn’t say that,” he said.
Peter smirked.
Miles and Wade’s relationship was taking on new antagonistic tones knee-deep in sludge barely days later; Peter had half a mind to trip both of them so they’d finally stop arguing about whether cereal was soup. He did not care about this crisis of soup. He had lost children to find in this maze of this sewer.
He heard the whistle and turned before the other two to see a figure leaning against the doorway that they’d just come through.
“Bold of you to come to these parts at night, Spidey,” an all-too familiar voice said.
Murdock sounded almost teasing in the dark.
“Ain’t here by choice, friend,” Peter said back. “Looking for some babies and hopefully not some bones. You hear anything useful, Balto?”
Murdock’s horns caught what little light spilled in through the electric lamps mounted on the wall.
“They’re outside on the surface,” he said. “Pulled ‘em up a while ago. They came running right to me saying they heard a lot of scary voices fighting, coming their way. Thank god Daredevil was here, or else those bad men woulda got ‘em.”
There was a pause where the other two’s bickering finally died off.
“You got ‘em, then?” Peter asked.
“I got ‘em,” Murdock snickered. “Some team, you guys are. Scaring civilians left and right.”
Was that a note of humor Peter was hearing there in that statement?
“We weren’t exactly going for stealth,” he admitted. “But we could use a guy who knows a thing or two about it.”
Murdock’s smirk faded a bit and things quieted down so that the only sound in the place was that of the water sluicing over the sludge that Murdock had carefully not stepped down into.
“I’ve already got a team,” he said.
“What, Jones?” Wade called back their way. “Jones and—what’s his name? Fisty boy? And Powerman?”
Peter could barely make out Murdock’s lip twitching in the dark. Hope bloomed high in his chest.
“They call me ‘Gary,’” Murdock admitted. “I suppose it ain’t glamorous.”
“Hell no, it ain’t,” Wade snapped. “We’re over here calling ourselves the Red Team. Much more glamorous. Team color’s in the name. We picked it ‘cause red don’t show as much—”
“Blood,” Murdock finished for him. “My old man used to say the same thing back in the day.”
The sound of water settled in around them all again.
Peter held his breath for a second.
“Are you in, Red?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Murdock said. “Yeah, alright. Why not? I can hear y’all bitchin’ from a mile away, anyways. Might as well be shit-talked in front of my face for once.”
Miles blinked in shock and then turned towards Peter in awe. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to, Wade was already laying into Red with insults that he took with a huff and a “look who’s talking and standin’ in shit.”
The kids were gone by the time their new four-man troop emerged from the city’s bowels, and Red shook himself out and twisted his head around in all directions for a moment.
“They made it to the station,” he said. “It’s not far from here. I’ll be—”
“AH. Nice try, dickhead,” Wade said. “Phone.”
Murdock’s usually severe mouth dropped into a soft confused shape.
“Phone?” he asked.
“So we can contact you, shit for brains,” Wade spelled out for him. “Phone. Gimme.”
Murdock deferred to Peter. It was strange.
“I mean, it would help to have your number. Coordination and all that,” he said.
Red cocked his head the other way.
“I don’t—I’ll just hear you,” he said.
“What, halfway across the city?” Wade said. “No. Nice try, not even you’re that spectacular. Phone.”
“I don’t have one,” Murdock admitted to sudden silence.
“You? Don’t have a phone?” Miles clarified.
“Not one of them square things,” Murdock said. “I’ve got a real phone in my office. One in my house. Fogs got me one of them flip things for emergencies or something, but I can’t keep track of it. Too much trouble.”
There was another long pause that could have stretched for hours if Peter didn’t get himself together first.
“Red, what century are you living in, man?” he said. “We gotta get you a real phone.”
Murdock scoffed.
“I don’t need real phone,” he said. “That’s just what everyone thinks they gotta have.”
“No,” Peter said, starting now to realize what the fuck he’d gotten himself into. “Just no. You—do you have a computer?”
Murdock’s lip curled in offense.
“Of course I’ve got a computer,” he said. “Fogs nagged me for long enough for that one, too. It’s new even. From 2009 or something.”
Good.
GOD.
Wade stared at Peter pointedly.
“You did this to us,” he said. “This was a you-decision.”
Miles sheepishly looked the other way.
Yikes.
“Okay,” Peter said. “Okay, we can work with this. This is fine. Alright, Red. Friend. We’re gonna have a tech day, yeah? You and me. Gonna sort through some tech for you and get you sorted out and in the meantime, uh. Here, I’m gonna write—wait. Uh.”
He had made a huge mistake here. A huge fucking mistake and now he didn’t even know how to get out of it.
Red seemed to know exactly what cavern he was waffling over.
“Write it down,” he said. “Just write hard.”
Oh, thank God.
Numbers exchanged, he could finally call it a night. Wade left them for an early morning job and then Red dipped his head once and rushed off to finish out his night of pain and suffering. That left Peter and Miles standing there, coated to the knees in nasty sewer sludge.
Miles turned and looked right up into Peter’s face.
“You did it,” he said.
Peter lifted a shoulder.
“Looks like I did,” he said.
“You actually did it.”
Peter tried not to preen.
“I am Spiderman, kid,” he said. “’It’ is what I do.”
“He’s going to be painful to have with us. He’s gonna be asking how to send text messages and then signing ‘em like emails.”
Peter laughed.
“Yeah, well. I get the feeling that he’s naturally a little curmudgeon-y. But mostly, I think he’s just been alone for a while with no reason to move forward,” he said. “That’s the power of kittens, though. Can’t be sad round a kitten.”
Miles chewed on that, then sighed down at the state of his suit.
“The devil’s better than the sewer,” he said.
And ain’t that the truth?