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Spider-Man is screaming and Daredevil doesn’t think it’s because of the bullet in his side.
To be fair, Matt just ran a red light.
Here’s how it happened: Foggy and Matt were drinking in Josie’s Bar after a long day.
“You can tell the D.A. that I will personally arrange for all the law-abiding protesters to receive an exemplary defense.” Matt suggests.
Foggy looks at Matt in disbelief. “Matt, I am looking at you in disbelief. Do you plan on getting us any paying customers? We do have to keep the lights on.”
“I think we’ll be ok.” Matt’s lips curl up deviously.
“Yeah, well, you don’t need the lights.” His friend complains.
“Hey, Kid, get out.” Josie shouts at a potential customer.
Matt and Foggy stop their debate to turn their attention to the door. Matt’s ears pick up on the youthful tune of Peter’s heart. “Josie, it’s alright, he won’t be drinking.”
“Hmm.” The bartender hums with displeasure.
“You know him?” Foggy whispers as Peter bounds over to them with fast-paced footsteps, out of uniform.
“Matt!” Peter hugs Matt from behind, startling the man and almost making him spill his glass of whiskey.
“You know him.” Foggy determines, moving the glass away.
“Peter, you know I have a phone.” Matt points out. “Is something wrong?”
It becomes apparent why Peter is hugging him when Peter leans in to whisper in his ear. “Hey, Red. Need a little Dare-help. Not to put you on the spot but is now good?”
Matt finds a pen in his pocket and grabs the napkin from under Foggy’s pint of beer.
“Sign.” He hands both to Peter, who obeys.
“What’s that for?” Peter asks, confusion clear in his voice as Matt feels the napkin. There it was: Peter Parker – Spider-Man.
He turns his head to Foggy and makes an apologetic face. “I have to go.”
“But Matt, you promised—What is this?” Foggy asks as Matt gives him the napkin.
Matt follows Peter across the room, hearing Foggy squealing even as they rush into the street.
It… didn’t exactly go as planned.
“There’s a bomb?” Peter asks after Matt calls his burner, truly screwed.
“I don’t work with bombs!” Matt hisses. His chest is beginning to throb as he realizes that this really isn’t his day.
“You know how to diffuse one?” Peter asks uneasily. “’Cut the red wire’ and all that jazz?”
Matt gives Peter exactly two seconds to figure out why that wouldn’t work on his own, distracting himself by searching momentarily for any leftover hostages.
“Oh.” Peter says into the phone.
“It has a digital timer.” Matt points out.
“Get out of there!” Peter cries, at a loss for what to do. “Team Red evacuate!”
“Next time, I get the civilians.” Daredevil grumbles as he runs out of the room as fast as his legs will carry him – after all, the bomb’s detonation time is unknown.
“Shit! Guns!” Peter’s cry hits him through a wall to his left so Daredevil finds the nearest door and promptly collides with Spider-Man.
They don’t waste time, running along the corridor as bullets fly past them. Matt tugs Peter in different directions if the bullets get too close but, alas, they get trapped at a dead end.
“This way!” Matt drags Peter through another door, throws his billy club at the only target in the room, then closes the door, pushing along the old deadbolt. He collects his club slowly, unsteady on his feet after all the commotion.
Matt’s ears ache when gunshots cut through the door in their direction.
“Window.” Spider-Man insists and Matt doubles over when the glass shatters. He feels a shift in the air currents, the slightest of breezes against his left side, and runs towards the window, where Peter steadies him on the ledge.
“You ok?” Peter asks, lungs expanding and collapsing in needy gasps.
“Fine.” Matt grins out, focusing on the ledge below. Peter, who has no issue, is crawling across the wall with ease. Matt follows the thin ledge to the corner of the building, where they move onto the west face.
A gunshot makes Peter squeal. “Ok, there may be guns.”
Daredevil grunts as Peter grabs his arm, hauling the man up another floor to stand at a distance from the shooters.
“The building is about to explode!” Matt exclaims, the air becoming thicker with each breath. “We want to get off of it!”
“We can swing?” Peter suggests. “By the way, where do you get your suits from? The material looks well enforced.”
“Not the time!” Matt growls. “Bomb, Peter, bomb.”
“We should’ve invited Wade.” Peter sighs, aiming his webs as best as he can at the gunmen below but there’s a herd of them, now.
Can this day get any worse?
Peter lets out a scream that makes Matt’s blood curdle as a bullet finds its way into his waist. The second his body slips from the face of the wall, Matt leaps after him and his billy club catches a fire escape opposite them, allowing Matt to grab Peter and swing themselves to safety.
Safety is an exaggeration.
The gunmen, unsurprisingly, climb the stairs, so Matt half-carries and half-drags Peter up to the roof of the building. He leaps off the first gap, taking his chance with a dumpster many stories below.
“Are we dead?” Peter chokes out, his voice strangled. There’s no sign of blood in his lungs, though, so Matt counts that as a win.
However, the minute he climbs out of the dumpster, he vomits harshly onto the path.
“Eugh.” Peter comments, climbing out himself.
Matt growls to himself, grabs Peter, and drags him into the street.
He hears a woman paying for a taxi as she climbs out and Matt takes the opportunity.
“Get out.” He roars in his ‘Devil’ voice. He hears the taxi driver clamber out of the driver’s side and he essentially lifts Peter into the back seat.
Daredevil holds his stomach at the stench of blood combined with the rancid smell of the cab, but climbs in regardless.
“Seatbelt.”
So he ran the red light.
In his defense, he didn’t know it was red when he sped past it. Peter’s still screaming and it’s making it difficult for Matt to think properly. He’s considering that he might have hit his head on the fall.
Behind him, a van is also speeding. He can’t miss the scent of gunpowder.
“MATT!” Peter screams, no time for aliases or nicknames. “You’re blind!”
“I know!” Matt screams back. “Put on your seatbelt!”
Daredevil flicks the radio over to a different channel because the background elevator music is bothering him.
Everything’s going wrong and he can’t seem to improve the situation he’s in. If not for him, at least for Peter.
“In other news, Daredevil has hijacked a taxi and is speeding—” A news reporter recites.
Peter is still screaming so Daredevil changes it again, this time to a children’s audio book.
He shrugs, figuring it can’t stress Peter out more.
“Call Stark.” He dictates to his burner, who responds. “Calling Tony Stark.”
When the man in question finally responds, Matt is swerving around a corner, trying to hurry to the Avengers Tower so Peter doesn’t lose too much blood. It’s becoming increasingly difficult, seeing as Matt’s starting to hear a lot more car horns. In fact, he hears the shrieking tear of metal as he scrapes against another, which makes him whimper in pain.
“Tony.” Matt addresses the man, who is yammering on about the news. “Peter was shot. I’m driving over.”
“You’re driving?” Tony asks incredulously. “I know we were dicks about the whole archery thing but are you sure driving is safe?”
Peter is not ashamed to say that driving with Daredevil was, frankly, terrifying.
He wakes up in a white bed, tense and aching all over.
“Peter, you’re ok.” Stark hushes him when he bolts into an upright position. “The wound is healing quickly.”
Peter looks down and, sure enough, there’s a hole but it’s threading together on its own.
“Mr Stark.” He says weakly, flopping backwards onto the bed.
“I heard you ran into some unforeseen challenges.” Tony says with the slightest smirk.
“We didn’t know there was a—Daredevil! I-Is he ok? He—” Peter exclaims, but Tony makes a shushing noise. “Mild concussion. He’s fine, Brucey checked him out.”
The mention of Bruce makes him happy, they hit it off really well when Mr Stark introduced them, but Peter blanches when he realizes that his mask is gone.
“Your modesty is intact.” Tony hands him his mask. “Only Bruce and I have seen you.”
Peter pulls on the mask hurriedly and struggles to his feet. The pain is minor but, admittedly, he is dizzy.
A scream grabs his attention.
“He won’t like it here, Mr Stark.” Peter insists. “He doesn’t like hospitals.”
“Tony.” He corrects. “Let’s go visit him, then.”
Blindness.
The wind against his windows, long gusts whipping the side of the building with vengeance. The footsteps of kitchen staff bustling from room to room below. In the hotel across the street, a female resident turns off the tap of her bathtub. She steps out and there’s the scuffle of her bare feet on the mat before the water molds around her body. She sighs in relaxation. In the outside gale, a bird glides with the current, long feathers barely shifting in the strong waves of air. The churning of stomach acid in his gut. His heart hammering in his chest.
His head aches as the world moves too quickly for him. Spinning, spinning, spinning. Stop the world, he wants to get off.
Peter’s blood.
“Daredevil?” The boy asks in his ear.
Everything dies away.
He listens to the thrum of heartbeats in the undergrowth of the city, irritated by its foreign scents and sounds.
Matthew Murdock, the ‘Man Without Fear’, cries on a sandpaper bed in front of Peter Parker, your friendly, teenage Spider-Man. He would groan if he could stop shaking.
His head aches and he keeps screaming to block out some of the looming sensations.
The cold floor. Downstairs’ heating. The cold wind. Hot bodies writhing around like parasites in the building. His chest with anxiety. His mouth and throat with disgust. His arms and legs grow colder as the blood drains from him.
“Red, it’s ok.” Peter tries to comfort him by wrapping his arm around the other man’s shoulders but Matt flinches sharply, pulling back in fear.
“Hey, Kid, why don’t you go and find Bruce?” Tony attempts at speaking softly but it doesn’t change how much his words hurt Matt’s ears.
How had today been such a complete and utter fail?
“Matt, Peter’s safe. You saved his life.” Tony tells the trembling man. “Even if the gig didn’t work out, you done your best, right?”
“The bomb.” Matt grunts, trying his hardest to push air into his lungs but they just seemed so stubborn.
“Peter told me what happened. You can’t see, Matt. You can do a lot of amazing things, but you have limitations. You’re only human.” Tony explains and, wow, did Stark always make this much sense?
“Great job, Buddy.” Tony adds light-heartedly.
Daredevil’s heart flutters in his chest. Could he have done anything differently? He doesn’t know.
For now, Tony’s lying him down in the bed and, suddenly, sandpaper doesn’t feel so uncomfortable.
“Thanks, Stark.”
“Yeah, yeah, go to sleep.”