Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tony is most definitely, and without a doubt, an insanely curious man. He’s a man who can be shown a problem and will need to make seven solutions for himself before he can even think of doing anything else. It just takes over his head like nothing else can, and then nothing can really matter until he’s seen it all the way through.

Today, that problem happens to be Daredevil or — as he’s otherwise known as — the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Truly not a very flattering name, but by God (no pun intended), it fits.

The man is like a ghost and a demon all mixed into one. He can beat up twelve men all on his own one second and disappear into the dark like he was never even there the next. A feat like that in red fetish gear is shocking.

Still, the man had never really been on Tony’s radar until a few days ago when Clint had to stakeout Hell’s Kitchen for a mission they were doing. A simple, solo stakeout mission that ended up with him dancing with the devil as they took down a group of child traffickers he had accidentally run into. Looking at the footage from Clint’s body cam, Tony couldn’t help his brain from latching on to every little movement the man made. Every strike that made its mark, every dodge that shouldn’t have been humanly possible. Someone shot a bullet at him from behind, and he ducked without a single qualm and then went back to fighting without even glancing at where it was coming from.

He seemed to pick up on every little thing Clint said, and even when they were separated by multiple people, he could shout back replies no matter what volume Clint spoke at. It was honestly quite terrifying. Which only made it all the more interesting for him.

It had been fourty eight hours of non-stop research for Tony when Clint and Natasha came in to stop him. In that time, he’s realised that Daredevil had to be enhanced in some way, — if he isn’t just an actual demon — that he’s got a rocky relationship with other vigilantes in the area, that he’s taken down criminals like Wilson fisk (twice) as well as many other various mobs and that he’s never once killed anybody. That last one makes him feel better about not looking into the guy before. Sure, he dabbles in torture from time to time, but it’s only on people who are heinous criminals themselves, so Tony couldn’t exactly be talking.

“Found anything else out?” Natasha asks, just like she had an hour ago when she and Katniss had stumbled into his workspace. This time, they don’t just linger by the door, however. Now they seem committed to getting him to take a break — something his mind just isn’t prepared to do yet.

“No, Mister Target dominatrix here is strangely good at avoiding cameras.” Tony rubs his goatee as he scrolls through different files of video footage Jarvis had scrounged up from anywhere he could get it. Probably not completely legal, but oh well. He’s an Avenger and a billionaire, so he’ll be fine.

“He hides in the shadows. It was creepy.” Clint shudders as he sits up on the part of his desk that Tony has just picked his coffee cup from. Then he refused to even look in Tony’s direction, so his normal scowling didn’t even work. The two of them stare, calculating, as Tony puts on the video from Clint’s body camera again.

Clint was getting overwhelmed, bad guys on all sides, that he’s ready to fight off like a one-man army when R rated Little Red Riding Hood dropped from the ceiling and just started beating them up. Words are exchanged, but the camera doesn’t even face the man again except for tiny glimpses as Clint beats up the people in his way, Daredevil dealing with the rest. Clint then introduces himself and only gets a gruff, stay out of my city in return before the devil is just gone. Like he just molded into the shadows, except according to Jarvis there’s the quiet sound of footsteps as he assumably runs out of the warehouse.

“He must’ve been trained by somebody.” Natasha mumbles, rewinding and replaying the small amount of footage there is of the man actually fighting. There are definitely some professional fighting styles in there. According to Jarvis, there’s many. From Muay Thai to basic street fighting. She sighs and pauses the videos, turning back to Tony with a no nonsense look in her eye. “I doubt you’re going to find anything else running on zero sleep, Tony.”

“Few more minutes, Sunshine.” He waves her off, asking Jarvis to pull up the grainy footage of Daredevil fighting three traffickers by the docks. There’s no audio and the video quality is lackluster — that seems to be a pattern in poorer neighbourhoods — but Daredevil beats the guys. Oh, he beats the guys.

“You said that an hour ago.” Clint stops the video again, not giving in no matter how much he scowls at the man. Each time he turns the video on, it’s turned off in a manner of seconds by one of the two of them. Nat is just too damn fast.

“I just want to find something on R rated little red! Like look!” Tony sighs, running his hand through his hair before he pulls back up another video. In this one, Daredevil leaps from a wall, starts to fight off five people and then — out of nowhere — a sixth one appears who throws a knife right at his back. Then he catches it and keeps on fighting. “Boom, didn’t even care! If we had someone like him on the team, then maybe we could properly anticipate attacks.”

“That’s assuming he’s actually psychic.” Clint mentions and he holds back the urge to throw his — now cold — coffee cup at the man. Daredevil was psychic in some shape or form. He knew that for almost certain.

Sure, the devil is doing good work in Hell’s Kitchen with Wilson Fisk and the like, but he could do so much good if he worked with the Avengers. He could psychically tell when attacks were coming, maybe even what people were thinking if his powers worked like that. He could save hundreds of lives. Tony just had to convince him.

“If we promise to go look for him, will you go to sleep?” Natasha compromises, a hand on his shoulder that he doubts would go away unless he agreed to go to bed.

“Fine!” Tony announces, telling Jarvis to close his work for the night (day? He can see the sun out of his blinds, so likely day) and getting up. “But only because I’m edging towards the limit of getting Pepper.”

He goes to bed that night(day?) with his head full of too many thoughts to properly categorise, but he knows one thing: the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is going to work with the Avengers whether he likes it or not. From the “stay out of my city” comment, he guesses it will be a not situation.

Church is a sensitive topic for Steve. Has been since he was a scrawny kid from Brooklyn who’d sit in the back and pray to God that he’d be able to do something with his life. Be able to help someone — save someone.

Then he was a bigger kid from Brooklyn, too busy being shuffled across the country and beyond, too busy actually fighting people to actually go to church. When he dropped into the ice, all he’d prayed for was that Peggy would be okay without him. He’d gotten his wish even if he never expected to be shoved into the time after she’d already lived.

God, Peggy had lived a full, meaningful life, and he just wasn’t there. Stuck under ice for far too long.

He’s gone to church a handful of times after getting out of the ice. Mostly for occasions like Christmas or Easter. Captain America isn’t the kind of guy who can wander into a church during Mass unnoticed. It hurts more than he likes to admit that he can’t go every Sunday but between missions and general business, he’s barely even gone this year.

When he does try to go to church one Sunday night, long after Mass and when he should be left alone, he doesn’t tell anyone about it. So Steve Rogers walks into a mostly empty church and then just collapses onto a pew with his head in his hands. The walls of the place seem to fall in on him. Squeezing his lungs and reminding him of all the times he wasn’t here.

The man in the pew in front of him tilts his head to the side as if listening to something. He doesn’t turn, however. He stays facing forward, ready to leave the man to wallow in his own emotions in the one place he can do that — an empty church.

It’s silent in there. Real silence that Steve hasn’t been privy to in a long time due to constantly having people living with him. His hearing got enhanced by the serum after all, and quite a few people in the tower snore. The silence feels strange. There’s no hushed conversations, no sounds of footsteps, no shuffling papers. Only two men breathing, and the sound of rain pattering against the windows.

“Not that many people are at church this late.” The other man breaks through the silence, his head still tilted but not turned around. Steve doesn’t even know if he’s realised he’s Captain America yet.

“I could say the same to you.” Steve lets himself smile. For a moment, there’s just no weight hovering on his shoulders. No need to be the strongest man in the room or be the hero everyone expects him to be. He’s not just Captain America here — he’s Steve Rogers, an Irish Catholic with a lot of guilt.

“Yes—well, I suppose you could.” He laughs, a full chested laugh that would sound a bit like a scoff if it weren’t for the smile coming through in his words.

“I’ve been told talking about it helps.” The man suggests after the silence draws on too long.

“I thought you came here to talk to the lord.” Steve looks up at the ceiling. The church is truly beautiful. He’s gone to one in a poorer neighbourhood, Hell’s Kitchen, because he thought there’s less of a chance of him getting recognised. Even in a less well off neighbourhood, the place is breathtaking. There are lanterns hanging over the arches and stained glass windows meeting the cross at the front. Someone had taken the time to make this place beautiful, and it worked.

“He made people social beings for a reason.” The man points out. The sound of something plastic-like that must be his foot tapping against the ground echoes around the church.

“I just have a lot of pressure, that’s all.” He looks at the other man, almost studying him for any signs of a threat. A habit he’s unsure how to drop when he’s not being Captain America. His hair is brown and well kept. He seems to be wearing some kind of glasses and a suit and tie that don’t cover the bruise that’s climbed up on the back of his neck. “Feels like I haven’t been in a church in years, and now I’m here, it’s just…”

“Overwhelming?” Steve nods at the other man’s addition and slumps further in the pew he’s sitting in.

“I’m Matt Murdock” The man — Matt — shrugs, his head still turned away from Steve.

“Steve.”

“I grew up here, in the orphanage. Trust me, even when you’re here every week, it can feel suffocating.” Matt says, with a twinge of pain in his words that Steve feels the need to apologise for, even if he hasn’t done anything.

“You’ll be seeing me next Sunday if I can get the time.” Steve isn’t very good at making friends. Normally, it’s just team-building exercises that grow into actual friendships, and before then it was just Bucky. He wants to be friends with Matt though, friends where he doesn’t have to be anyone but the guy from church.

Matt laughs and then turns around. He picks up his stick as he does so and stares off in Steve’s general direction with crimson red sunglasses over his eyes. “I don’t think I’ll ever be seeing you, Steve.”

Oh shit. “I’m so sorry—” Steve straightens up, his hands in front of him in a gesture that Matt cannot see as he tries to apologise.

Then the guy starts laughing even harder. “No, no, it’s fine. I like joking about it.”

Steve laughs with him. Of course he hasn’t realised he’s Captain America — he hasn’t even seen him. Besides, who would jump to the conclusion of someone sounding vaguely like Captain America to someone being Captain America?

“Will I be hearing you again, Steve?” Matt asks, stepping out of the pew into the alleyway in between. His hand grasps the side of the pew to find his way. It takes a lot out of Steve to not jump up to help him out, but surely he can take care of himself.

“I’ll be sure to find you.”

“Have a nice night, Steve.” Matt pats Steve’s shoulder as he walks by. The sound of plastic hitting the ground starts when he’s out of the range of the pews entirely. Steve can’t help but stare back at the man until he’s fully out of the church. Staring at the bruise that’s still there, even with his attempt to hide it with his collar.

How does a blind man get a bruise like that? Except for clumsiness or just the daily woes of not being able to see but the bruise almost looks like a hand. Like fingers had wrapped around it and squeezed.

Steve has just met Matt Murdock, and he already wants to dig into his personal life.

“Daredevil is a force to be reckoned with.” are all the words Matt has to pick up before he’s running in the opposite direction of where he thinks two of the literal Avengers are. Buzzing in his ears, short hair, a bow hooked on his back — likely Hawkeye. The woman next to him doesn’t really have a scent. Each step she takes is light, and each breath is controlled. Her heartbeat and the ruffling of the gun inside her jacket are the only things that give her away. Black Widow and Hawkeye are looking for him.

He groans as he has to take another long route to where he’s meeting Frank because the two of them are always getting in his way. His steps get caught up by two heroes going in circles and still finding ways to inconvenience him.

Matt doesn’t even know why they’re here for him. The few conversations between the two weren’t of any interest to him, full of code words and inside jokes that didn’t make any sense as he beat up people while also hiding from two of the literal Avengers.

This couldn’t be about Steve, could it? Yes, Matt knew he had talked to Captain America in church the other day, but he had expected that to be the end of it. Until the man came back, fully with the intent of the two of them becoming friends. Matt from church couldn’t be linked back to Daredevil. Or at least he hopes he couldn’t. Matt puts a lot of work into his secret identity, and he doesn’t want it taken away because he’s nice to a superhero pretending not to be a superhero at church.

“Don’t move.” Matt warns Frank through the phone and hears his muscles tense from the rooftop above him as he hears it. The Punisher stands with his back to two Avengers only about three rooftops away. It’s a miracle they haven’t seen him already, considering how unsubtle Frank can be when he wants to.

He’s never subtle around Daredevil. The two of them have been getting along quite nicely for the last few months, with no more headshots or stab wounds shared between the two of them, and throughout that time he’s been more in his face than he expected. Gruff words that carry all the bluntness he can muster. Point being, Matt needs to find a way to get the Avengers off his back, Frank out of here without being arrested and for the two of them to actually go scout out some potential new traffickers down by the docks.

Punisher had gotten a tip the other day about new people taking over the trafficking game after Daredevil and he had run so many of the others out. He just had to promise to use rubber bullets, and Matt promised to be there to check it out with him.

The Avengers ruin his plans.

“Avengers are following me, Black Widow and Hawkeye. They’re only a few rooftops away from you.” Matt whispers down his phone and can hear as Frank’s heartbeat speeds up at his words. The man isn’t happy, and he can’t really blame him.

“Can’t you tell them to piss off?”

“Didn’t want to talk to them, but appears they’re persistent.”

The two of them are sitting on the edge of the rooftop, eating some kind of sandwiches and conversing through signs that are incredibly hard to pick up. He doesn’t know what they’re saying, and it’s annoying him like hell. They aren’t looking at Frank though, and they haven’t noticed Daredevil underneath, so for now he’s safe. They’re safe.

“I’m gonna go see to these scumbags whether you come or not, Red,” Frank threatens, his foot tapping against the roof he’s standing on. Matt bites back a sigh. There’s only two ways out of this and only one that doesn’t include literally fighting the Avengers and getting himself put on some watchlist.

“Ten minutes?”

“Five, then I’m fucking off.” Frank hangs up on him, and he can hear as the man sits down on the rooftop, methodically fidgeting with his gun as he waits.

It doesn’t take long for Daredevil to get onto the roof. Black Widow must’ve noticed something was off as her heart rate increased ever so slightly as he got to the top. Hawkeye seemed completely in the dark as he kept on eating without a worry. “Why are you in my city?” He might have timed his words with when Hawkeye was in the middle of a bite to get back at him for stalking him, but he can neither confirm nor deny.

“Daredevil, nice of you to finally show your face.” As Hawkeye coughs on the bite of food he’s choking on, Widow turns around to actually converse with him. Her legs spin around and tap against the roof as they drop with a surprisingly meagre amount of sound. A normal person probably couldn’t have even heard it.

“I have been avoiding you.” He needs to get this over with, quick. Frank isn’t known to be patient when people are hurting.

“Now that’s just rude, Red.” Hawkeye smiles, his sandwich — chicken, his nose tells him — left on the side of the roof in its container.

“Don’t call me that.” He snaps, an annoyance he didn’t really understand flowing through his veins.

“Double D?”

“I don’t care. Now answer my question.” Matt takes a step forward, his hand tightening around his billy clubs. He’s taller and bigger than her, but he’s not a fool to think he’d be able to take the literal Black Widow in a fight, especially since she has backup and he has a Frank. But the threat is still there. He has something to do, and time is running out.

“We wanted to thank you for having Clint’s back.” Widow takes a step towards him. Her hair shifts against her leather jacket as she moves. “And offer you a hand of diplomacy.”

“Diplomacy?” There’s a hand in front of him. He hears her leather sleeve ruffle against her chest as she uncrosses her arms to offer it to him. It’s there, but that doesn’t mean he has to shake it.

Hawkeye sighs as he stands there motionless. “You’re protective of your city, and we are protective of most of the world.”

“Except the parts you destroy.”

“Choosing to ignore that—it will just be easier all around if we are willing to work together.” Hawkeye continues speaking, the words becoming less important as he focuses on the sound of shuffling from Frank’s rooftop. Frank is fucking getting up, and it hadn’t even been two minutes. He’s going to beat that man if he leaves without him. The talk with the Avengers better not be for nothing.

“It will make my life a lot easier if you all get out—”

“Oi Red! We doing this or what?” Frank shouts from a rooftop closer than he was before. The scent of gunpowder lingers on him even with what better be rubber bullets in his gun. Hawkeye’s heartbeat has a mini attack when he whips his head around and sees the Punisher; Widow’s barely skips a beat before she huffs out a breath.

“So he can call you Red?” Widow asks, a grin on her face at the same time that Hawkeye shouts. “Is that the Punisher?”

“He’s a frie—we work together.” Matt cuts himself off — the complexities of his and Frank’s relationship are far too much to sum up in a few words. They trust each other enough to risk their lives. They have both attacked each other. Matt fundamentally disapproves of most of his methods. Yet they’re still here, working together and trying to get the Avengers off his back. “Now I have a job to do.”

He gets to the edge of the roof, ready to jump off, before Hawkeye shouts again. “We can help!” Him and Widow divulge into what he guesses is arguing with more hand signals he can’t decipher. His focus is on Frank, though, who’s only getting closer to them with every heavy step he takes. “Come on, Nat, what’s the worst that’ll happen?”

“Frank snaps both your necks.”

Frank lets out what can only be described as a cackle as he finally jumps next to Matt, a gun swinging by his side that brushes past his hand. “I hope that’s not Red insinuating he’d let me kill someone.”

“Never, Frank.” He spits out, putting away his billy clubs to walk off the edge of the roof again.

“Altar boy,” Frank mumbles under his breath as he moves to follow him.

The Avengers are still there, coming with whether he likes it or not. They may be assholes, but they’re definitely pushy assholes who can help save some people if it comes down to it. Frank is decidedly not happy with this outcome but waves for them to come with as they jump between rooftops anyway.

Matt just about whispers his plans to Frank as they keep on walking, every step and every breath coming with the added baggage of the injuries he’d sustained only a few days ago acting up again. He’d gotten cocky, and someone had gotten the jump on him. Now there are massive bruises on his neck shaped like hands, according to Foggy, that are hard fuckers to hide. Not to mention how his shoulders can’t hunch or they pull something in his neck determined to make him scream with how much it hurts. His breathing isn’t too obstructed, so he’s still out here. Hiding back a wheeze every time he gets punched.

Hawkeye, not liking being left out for once, pipes up as they stop on a rooftop only a few miles from the docks. From here, they’d have to walk on the ground, but that’s a different issue. “Who are we chasing exactly?”

“Supposed human traffickers down at the docks.” Frank’s disgust leaks through his voice in a way he’s come to expect by now.

“Scoping it out, fighting if we have to.” Matt continues on, getting his billy clubs back out from their pockets. There’s people here, multiple people. Some are tied up in what sounds like chains every time they rustle. A kid’s crying. A man shouts at him with a gun in his hands, and then the kid is crying silently. His grip tightens around the clubs, probably turning his knuckles white from how tight he’s holding them. They’re all inside a warehouse near the docks. Two entrances and no windows in the entire thing. The doors aren’t locked, but there are guards both inside and outside.

Matt doesn’t even notice he’s perched himself on the edge of a rooftop, head tilted, until Hawkeye whispers to Frank, “What is he doing?”

“Just wait.” Frank whispers back. He’s used to his tactics by now.

“Twenty people, eight tied up, ten with guns and extra rifles on the ground. Four outside, two by each entrance—they all have guns—and another two by each entrance on the inside.” Matt explains, pointing over to the warehouse He can hear them all in.

“They’re prepared.” Frank grumbles and cocks his gun, his heart rate increasing at the confirmation.

“I’m sorry, how did he just do that?” Widow asks, the sound of her leather jacket starting to scratch against his ears now.

“Red’s just like that.” He chooses to ignore Frank’s words and focuses on the two stowaways. If they’re going to be here, then they’re bloody well going to help save people. Avenger’s may be more fixated on alien threats and the like, but people still need help in cases like this.

“Widow, you and I go through the back. Frank and Hawkeye go through the front. Corner them in and get the hostages out, okay?”

Widow nods — she’s become his favourite of the two — while Hawkeye seems to be content on complaining, “What do I have to do to get name privileges?”

“You gotta be up close and personal with Red for that.” Frank teases, trying to throw his arm around Matt’s shoulder, which he sidesteps with ease.

“Watch it, Frank.” Matt jumps down to the fire escape beneath with ease. He doesn’t wait for the others to catch up, but soon enough, Widow is following behind him and he can hear Hawkeye and Frank’s heartbeats moving behind a dumpster at the front entrance.

He and Frank don’t have comms or anything like the Avengers do, no Frank will just whisper that he’s going and trust Matt to follow him in because that’s what they always do. The added problem of the two said Avengers makes it harder but not impossible for them to use their normal strategy. Widow vaguely asks a few times about how his comm fits into his mask that he chooses not to answer, listening out for Frank and Hawkeye’s conversation — or lack thereof. Then, when Frank gives the order, he’s up on his feet and telling Widow to move with him. To her credit, she does follow without a single complaint, and from what he can hear, so does Hawkeye.

Even if the Avengers were annoying as fuck, at least they do their jobs well. He and Widow make quick work of the two guards on the outside of the door before they could even get to their radios to tell the others. He kicks in the door despite Widow asking again what the plan is, as Frank had done the same thing moments prior. Maybe they should get some way to communicate because reacting to all of Frank’s moves is becoming exhausting.

There’s a lot of gunfire in there. He can track some it back to Frank’s guns, but most of it is from the enemy, barreling straight towards him and not smelling like rubber. Widow took cover behind a metal box carrying guns to shoot her own shots back, while Matt ran forward, wanting to get them down quickly enough that no one got shot. He flips over one onslaught of bullets before knocking the shooter in the next with his stick, then he has to duck and roll to stop another one before he’s able to sweep the man’s legs out from under him. A man tries to come after him with a gun that’s empty of bullets. The weapon is lifted in the air like he wants to smash it against his head. Before he can knock out his legs, however, the man gets shot in the back by an onslaught of — rubber! — bullets and falls to the ground where he can knock him in the head with his billy club to keep him down.

“Thanks,” he calls out to Frank, closer than he was before as they move into the centre of the warehouse.

“Always got your back, Red,” Frank shouts back. His speech is cut off by the sound of shooting, and then they’re back to work like nothing had even happened.

There are arrows flying through the air. Sent by Hawkeye himself, who’s sticking to the edges of the room while Frank blasts himself through despite all the punches he takes. Matt barely even has to dodge the arrows. They only get near his head when he moves after the arrow has already been shot. Apart from that, they always hit their target — decidedly not him.

He stops fighting when there’s only about two criminals left. They’re both cornered by Widow and Frank, so he has a straightforward path to getting the hostages out. In his walk over to the tied up people, the cocking of a gun aimed directly at the group assaults his ears. The actual shot even more so. It’s more of a reflex to shove himself into the bullet’s path than anything. The heartbeat of a terrified child is in his ears, so he takes the bullet without a complaint. It grazes over his shoulder, and Frank knocks the shooter out before he can shoot another one.

“Hey, you’re gonna be okay.” He comforts the kid as much as he can, the sounds of fighting still close behind him but far away enough that he doesn’t have to focus on it. There’s blood still gushing out of his shoulder. Thankfully, the bullet had an exit wound as well, so he didn’t have to go fishing for it but it still hurt like hell. The blood drips onto the ground as he makes work of untying the people. Every time he stops, the blood coming out of his shoulder begins to form a puddle at his feet.

The chains feel familiar under his fingertips. Like he’s wrapped his hand around this kind of high grade metal before. They’re chains, not ropes which hostages are usually tied up in. Someone has put effort into this kidnapping, and he needs to know why.

Widow meets him and starts helping with the chains, Hawkeye and Frank not too far behind. “Get the people out and call the police.” He tells her when they get the last two out of their restraints. With no other focus, his hand flies to squeeze his arm’s injury. Now he really won’t be able to move it for a while.

“Frank?” He kneels down and helps put pressure on his arm without even being asked. It’s basically second nature to the two of them now. “Where do you get stuff like this? It’s the same kind of chains you used to tie me up.” It’s a small lead, but right now he just needs any. Whoever sells chains like this in Hell’s Kitchen is going to get a visit from the Devil. His attention is grabbed by the stifled laugh from Hawkeye and the skip in his heartbeat at Matt’s words. Does he know something?

How wrong his words may have sounded to Hawkeye doesn’t dawn on him until much later that night.

“I’ll talk to my guy, see what I can get.”

Frank takes away the chains, grunting that he’ll text Daredevil if he finds something before he’s gone. Matt stays listening to his heartbeat as he walks away just in case. He needs to be going soon too. His arm will probably need stitches, and letting it bleed out a river won’t help him in the long run. Widow is calming down some hostages while on the phone to the recognisable sound of Tony Stark. She and Hawkeye should have this managed. Except Hawkeye hasn’t moved from right in front of him.

“So…”

“What?” Matt snaps. The buzzing in Hawkeye’s ears is much more noticeable when he’s this close up. At least that would give him the upper hand if he ever has to fight the guy.

“Are you and Frank like—you know?” Hawkeye is making gestures with his hands that he doubts are sign language as he figures out what to say.

“We work together.”

“You sure you aren’t dating, because I saw sparks?” Matt has to stop his jaw from slacking. How on earth did he get to a conclusion that bloody wrong? It’s wrong — incredibly wrong. He and Frank are on better terms now, but not killing each other is the best the two of them can hope for, really. Besides, if Frank Castle swings anywhere near his way, then he will actually be shocked for once.

“I’m leaving.” Matt turns around and walks as fast as he can out of the door without running. He focuses on getting back home — that is what matters. That is all he should be focusing on.

That still doesn’t stop his head from eavesdropping on their conversation entirely.

“Nat, I think they’re in love.”

“They’re definitely close, but Daredevil seems annoyed at the guy. Also, it was used to tie me up, not use.”

“Daredevil was all prickly when I asked about him and Frank—you think they might be exes or something?”

“Messy breakups, man.”

Oh, he is not excited about where this mess is going to go.

Chapter Text

Matt has come to expect Steve’s calming heartbeat every time he walks into the church building he’s known since he was a child. It’s like a homing beacon with how loud it is. Not shocking considering how big Steve actually is, but the thing should come with some kind of sound warning.

Steve notices his entering too and helps him into the seat next to him once he gets close enough. They’re the only ones there this late into the night. He likes it that way. Normally he’d run off to give confession and then go out as Daredevil and get his anger off that way, but now he’s able to just take a minute and breathe. Surrounded by the wooden walls and familiar smell of the church grounds, he can actually relax for once. If he ignored the glaring issue of Steve being literally Captain America — then it was just a simple rest from everything else in Matt’s life.

Of course, he knew Steve Rogers was Captain America. There aren’t many men of his size, and there are even less with the voice of Steve Rogers. But he also knows that a man like Steve Rogers didn’t come to church as downtrodden as he is wanting to be recognised, so he simply didn’t. He let the man pray and for an hour or two, just be Steve — no labels attached.

If he took any and all opportunities to sway Steve away from the idea that the Avengers should be anywhere near Hell’s Kitchen, then who could really blame him?

“Surely this Daredevil fellow could work better with the help of an organisation, like the Avengers.” Steve argued, a tried-and-true topic between the two that they’d run back to almost twelve times already. Captain America just wants Daredevil to help more people. From what he’s found out about the Captain, he isn’t actually a fan of authority figures. Matt can’t just join the Avengers, however. He sticks to his city, and he lives his life — he doesn’t want fame or fortune, he only wants to help.

“From what I could tell, Daredevil is a more solitary man. He just wants to take care of Hell’s Kitchen and is sure he can do it alone.” Matt has a very thin line he has to tightrope across whenever he’s talking to Steve about Daredevil. Strike a balance between making Daredevil scary enough to get the Avengers away but also not too scary that it will entice Steve even more. It’s an incredibly tough line considering how absolutely curious Steve is and his impressive lack of self preservation. Not like he can talk.

“You met him before, Matt?” Steve is opening up a door. He likely already knows of Matt Murdock’s interaction with Daredevil because of the Fisk fiasco, but he’s asking him instead of just running with assumptions.

“My law firm was the one he went to with the evidence of Fisk’s corruption.”

“So he trusts you then?” Matthew and Daredevil need to be as far away as possible in Steve’s mind. Even further away than Matt being blind puts him. He’s got to deal with the Avengers as Daredevil as he really doesn’t want to have to deal with them outside of Steve at church as Matthew.

“Trust maybe, but I severely doubt he likes me.” Is the best excuse his mind can come up with.

“You’re lovely Matt, how could he not?” Steve gasps, his back scratches against the wood behind him as he sits up. His voice coming from much higher than Matt’s own head once again.

“Oh, you flatter me! No, it’s not a bad thing, just Daredevil hasn’t taken a liking to me is all.” He tries to laugh it off. Steve always seems to find ways to blindside him over and over again. He’s a good man with enough empathy to fill up a truck and a need to help people that rivals his own. His annoyance for the Avengers leaving people like those in Hell’s kitchen in the lurch after the battle of New York still stands but Steve, he’s okay.

Also, a brief look into the Boy Scout and he’s broken enough laws to fill up multiple trucks.

“Well then, I won’t like him either.” Steve almost sounds like he’s pouting as his arms cross across his chest.

Well, that might cause him a lot of problems.

“That’s not necessary Steve—”

“Too bad my mind’s made up.” He gets shut down before he can even try to salvage his other persona’s reputation. Matt sighs, running his hand up and down his cane. He’ll most likely get asked about this next time he goes out, then he’ll be in some big mess that Foggy and Karen will get a massive kick out of because how is he stupid enough to get himself into this mess?

Frank will find this hilarious.

After that unhelpful thought, he turns back to Steve. “You live here, Steve? In Hell’s Kitchen.” He knows the answer, but as far as Steve thinks he knows, Steve is a random man he met in church. Nothing more to it.

“No, I’m from Brooklyn. It’s always just a bit too dark here, you know?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Steve’s heartbeat skips again before he lets himself laugh. “Oh—yeah.” He’s gotten better at it over the weeks — laughing at Matt’s blind jokes. Took him long enough considering how funny Matt finds them.

“Well, I love New York, and as someone born and raised here in the Kitchen, I can say that Daredevil has done us a world of good.” He somewhat salvages it. Better than it was before, anyway.

“Even if he doesn’t like you?”

“Even if he doesn’t like me.” One of his trademarked grins that Foggy says can make anyone in the general area swoon uncontrollably is on his face before he even realises it. A lackluster attempt to make Steve not completely hate Daredevil.

“What about the Punisher?” Steve asks out of the blue and shakes the grin on Matt’s face before he can control himself. He can feel himself on shaky waters. Matt is the Punisher’s former lawyer. He is also likely under the impression that Frank Castle is dead. His own deep, confusing and contradictory feelings towards the Punisher aside, Matt Murdock is publicly on his side.

“He was a good man with misguided morals.”

“Opinions are pretty split on the guy.” Steve’s heartbeat is normal — for him anyway — it beats on, unaware of the mental gymnastics Matt is going through. Yes, Matt is fond of Frank and wants him to be a good person, and maybe sometimes he finds the man’s voice incredibly calming, but he couldn’t exactly blurt all that out here. Church is supposed to be relaxing, yet here he is anyway. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone and spoken to Captain fucking America.

“Well, they always will when someone does something bad for good reasons.” He says, his grip on his cane only getting tighter. Frank will always be a strange subject to him. Matt cares about the man and wants nothing more than for him to be happy, but he’s also a murderer. Criminals, yes, but still murder. He lets him go out each night as a necessity and with a flimsy promise between the two of them to keep the murder to a minimum. Yet he also can’t think of going out for a night with the thought of Frank not being there anymore. Frank is one of the most constant things in his life, and he can’t help himself from flocking towards him like a moth to a flame. “I represented him in court. I can definitely say that he was a good man doing awful things, and I only wish his life could’ve been fixed before he lost everything.”

He keeps close tabs on Steve’s heartbeat. On each rustle of his clothes when he moves and each shift in the air when he moves his head to look at Matt when he thinks he can’t notice. People are always less careful around him. They expect to get away with more because of his lack of sight, and he uses it to his advantage as much as he can.

Steve sighs, his hands grasp the edge of the pew next to his legs, and he pushes himself onto his feet. “I’m going to go to confession and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

“I’ll see you next week then, Steve?”

“Matt?” He stops in his tracks. His heart rate increases, and his hands clench into fists. Matt looks up at him, his face as blank as he can manage. “How did you get that bruise?” Steve points at his neck. Which wouldn’t be very helpful except that people aren’t supposed to have multiple bruises for him to point at. His arm and legs beg to differ.

It was a simple hit. He was taking down a smaller drug cartel when one goon got a good smack onto his collarbone with their gun before he knocked them out. Foggy had said it was a nasty bruise, which is why he’s supposed to be covering up with his shirt collar. A shirt collar, which has fallen down slightly and exposed it to the man with impeccable eyesight.

Matt doesn’t know how to brush this off except saying he fell down the stairs. Which is the excuse he used last time. Well. He knows one excuse.

He puts a dopey grin on his face, which he’s used to get himself out of many situations before. A quick adjustment of his collar and the bruise was gone again. “A late night rendezvous, I’m sorry he said that was covered when I left this morning.” He laughs before covering his face to try to hide the lack of a noticeable blush.

“Well, I hope you and your boyfriend had fun, Matthew.” Matt arches his eyebrow, realises he said “he” and then laughs again to brush it off. He might’ve actually gotten himself out of that one.

“Oh, we did.” His cane echoes as it hits against the edges of the pews. He makes his way out without that much of a problem, and the chilly night air hits against face. The smell of Chinese food a few blocks down and the Thai food a block away are at him in seconds. There were two choices to make here: eavesdrop on whatever Steve will mention in confession, or run off to be Daredevil and help people who need it.

Matt sighs and speed walks his way back to his apartment, pointedly blocking out the sound of words from the confession booth. He is a Catholic, after all.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” The smell of wood is stronger than he expected. There’s minimal light, like in all confessional booths. The window to where the priest sits is obscured. He feels calm here. Like each breath is of pure air. Steve is definitely coming back here. “I’ve been omitting the truth from someone.”

“Are you scared of how they’ll react if you tell them?” His voice comes almost muffled through the glass. He’s an older gentleman, the same priest who does mass on the few Sundays Steve can get himself to.

“It’s more that I just want some tiny part of my life to be normal.” He sighs, his back slumped against the wooden seat. Steve is a soldier, has been for a long time and wanted to be for even longer, but in his race to just help people, he never really looked at where he was. Right in the present. Matt and church are something normal in his life that he can hold on to. That’s why he hasn’t told Matt he’s the literal Captain America. He doesn’t want to be treated differently just because of a title.

“Well, normally, people who like keeping secrets don’t come to confession.” He can see the man shuffle in his seat through the glass. The silhouette of the man moves as he does so. A small laugh falls out of his chest. “Now, it seems like keeping this is almost eating you from the inside, which lying normally does. You don’t seem like the type for lying, son.”

Steve has to hold back a laugh at that one. “I’ve done a lot of lying in my day.” You don’t illegally register to enlist multiple times without a bit of lying. Or the other menagerie of crimes he’s commited without much more than a side glance over the years.

“But not to people you care about.” His team knows he’s here, at a church over in Hell’s kitchen trying to get a piece of his life back he basically lost when he got the serum. They’re supportive even if they're not a fan of having an Avenger at the same place, defenceless, on the same day every week. Especially in such a crime-ridden place like Hell’s Kitchen.

Steve is most definitely not going to look for Daredevil for Tony — that’s not why he’s here. Asking Matt about him was out of pure curiosity.

Why would a vigilante not like a perfectly clean (Tony checked) blind lawyer? The most trouble the guy had gotten into was being falsely accused by a mob boss, who he then put behind bars. The man seems almost like a saint, really. He helped the poor and did so many pro bono cases that Tony was wondering how their practice stayed afloat as long as it had.

Was the vigilante just homophobic? Well, no, that didn’t make sense. Clint said that he thought Daredevil and Punisher were exes. Then why would he not like Matt?

Matthew has injuries occasionally when he comes into church. Little ones like bruises around his neck or scratches around his wrists, that he brushes off with practiced ease. Steve doesn’t want to look too far into it, but truly, it worries him. He’s blind, and if he is getting hurt regularly, then he’d have fewer ways to defend himself. Steve has told Bucky all about his worries, and he just said he’d look into it. That the best thing Steve can do is to be a friend that can listen to him, and he’s doing that, but with every bruise Matt gets, his heart just gets more worried. Why is Matt always injured?

His mind is full of questions he simply can’t get answers to just sitting here. He’s not got anything else to confess about today, and his friends at the tower will get worried if he’s gone much longer.

“Thank you, Father.” Steve nods, then takes his leave out of the dimly lit church. It’s dark outside, and loud. People fighting, shouting, living their lives knowing they can because there’s a devil watching over them. Keeping them safe.

He takes a taxi back to the tower. An extra fifty is handed over for him as he gets out, Tony’s money, and then he’s walking up the stairs to the Avengers building again. It’s a lot quieter in this part of town. Close enough to Avengers Tower that people only make crime known if it’s meant to be known. Flashy shit from people who really want their attention. None of the stuff that Daredevil or the Punisher deals with.

Tony is still looking for Daredevil. All five of the Avengers are either laying on the couch or, in Thor’s case, making a mess of the kitchen. It would be a cute image of domesticity if it didn’t have Tony in the middle of it all watching looped videos of a vigilante beating up criminals without remorse. He could give the Daredevil this: he’s effective. Every punch hit its target, and every dodge was perfectly timed. He doesn’t waste time with the flashy nonsense, and he always stops just before he goes too far. Daredevil protects the innocent, and he doesn’t kill. As far as their standards of a “good” vigilante go, he isn’t too bad.

Yet he still hates Matt Murdock, and that’s the puzzle piece that doesn’t fit.

“Are you still looking for Daredevil?” Steve’s voice cuts through the sounds of grunts and screams of pain that Daredevil leaves in his wake. Tony doesn’t even turn around as he sends him a thumbs up, his eyes stuck to the screen. A dislocated shoulder on one guy with a kick, and a kneecap out of place with another, a second or two after one another.

“I don’t think he’s spent a single second not looking for that man.” Clint rolls his eyes, him Natasha and Bruce are sat together on the couch, watching something on Bruce’s phone as Tony has commandeered the actually TV for Devil watching.

“He’s the devil, Barton!” Tony swings around on his chair, his eyes frantic and his hair sticking up in so many directions that Steve had to hold back his laughter. He looks exhausted, and yet he doubts that’s going to stop him from working. The man slept last night, and they’d be lucky if they got him back to sleep before he figured out everything there is to know about Daredevil.

“Well, I highly doubt that.” Bruce mumbles under his breath, then shovels a handful of popcorn into his mouth when Tony moves his glare over to him.

“Look!” Tony pulls up another video, grainy and low resolution, but there are multiple criminals standing over two tied up people. His finger goes to point at an empty section in the rafters, complete darkness, until about halfway in when two red horns appear without any noise. “Boom, there he is! It’s like magic.”

“Maybe he’s just really sneaky, Jarvis says there’s sounds of footsteps.” Clint offers, his eyes having moved right back to whatever is playing on Steve’s phone. Of all the Avengers, Clint seems the most willing to just leave the guy alone. Both times he’s run into Daredevil, the vigilante has been helpful and somewhat threatening. Constantly stalking him without a proper reason will just make him distrust the Avengers more.

Tony didn’t listen to a part of it.

“Oh yeah, Steve, you’re on his turf a lot. Got anything on our mister fetish gear?” Tony finally turns his attention to Steve, his eyes trying to bore into his soul with each second he doesn’t speak up. The third time Tony has tried to interrogate him since he mentioned his weekly visits to the Hell’s Kitchen church. Like he’s looking for a vigilante while praying.

“Matt thinks he’s doing good.” He shrugs, taking a seat next to Bruce.

Tony frowns, his face set into a scowl and his mouth ready to run with whatever comes first to his head. “Oh yes, the goody two shoes lawyer likes him, everyone lets just let him beat people up because Matt likes him!” He throws his arms up in the air, his chair spinning from side to side as he speaks.

“That wasn’t what I meant, Tony.” Steve groans. Tony gets all the more pissy when he’s tired, even more so when he’s annoyed. Not knowing enough about Daredevil is pissing him off beyond belief.

Natasha, the saint she is, sits up properly and asks Jarvis to rewind the video. Which she watches with her eyes glued, examining every movement he makes like she does during training. “He’s definitely been trained by someone, and for a while. He’s made his own fighting style, which implies he’s been doing this for years, if not decades.”

“He doesn’t look that old,” Clint adds.

“Frank Castle is in his thirties. If they really have dated, then we can bench him around there.” Bruce shrugs, and Tony sighs very loudly at the prospect of just how little they have about the guy. He’s a vigilante. He doesn’t kill, he’s trained, and he has a close, tension filled relationship and might be exes with the Punisher. That’s not enough for them to find out who he is. A fact which only adds to the dark circles under Tony’s eyes.

“Muscle man, what’s your opinion?” Abruptly, Tony turns towards Thor, who’s stopped his constant movement around the kitchen to listen to their conversation as intently as he can.

“This devil of the dares appears to be a great warrior. Let’s invite him here!” Thor shouts, his arms in the air and a grin on his face. Then, he picks back up his hammer from the kitchen countertop and starts using it to pound what appears to be dough into a circle shape on a tray. Steve doesn’t even want to ask.

“If only it were that easy.” He replies, then godforsaken pouts. It’s cute really, and god it makes him look pathetic.

The words fall out of his mouth before he can think them through. “Matt likes the Punisher as well, and he doesn’t think that Daredevil likes him. Didn’t really elaborate but—”

“It’s something.” He grins, his fingers working as fast as they can for the small file he already has made on Matt. That minor fact is likely to be his new obsession of the hour before he finds something else to move onto or gets so bored he’s stuck in his upset little cycle again.

“Hey Steve, how upset would you be if I accidentally dragged something awful up about your friend?” Tony shouts, not even turning around and sending Steve’s heart into a frenzy anyway.

“Have you?”

“No, but precautions.” Tony shrugs, his eyes still not moving away from the blue light of a computer his brain knows far too well. Steve swallows, thinking through his words. A habit he’s picked up because of the amount of times his words have been run in the completely wrong direction when Tony has gotten this sleep-deprived before.

“I believe in justice.” Is what he lands on. Matt Murdock is a good person. He’s sure of it. The pastor loves him, the nuns love him whenever they see him — if they make a few remarks at him — he does good work in Hell’s Kitchen. Matt is a good guy.

“That’s code for he’d start bawling.” Natasha adds, and Steve can’t find it in him to give her the patented Captain America glare.

“Well then, I have a plan!” Tony jumps onto his feet, sways a little and then keeps walking towards the door with a determined grin on his face. He wants to follow him, but Tony’s going to pull a Tony no matter what they all did. It’s just a fact of life, really.

“Is it something dumb?” Bruce asks, straightening up when Tony jumped to his feet.

“It’s me. What else could it be?”

“Don’t die.” Clint chimes in as he waves towards the retreating man.

“No promises, dear!” Tony blows him a kiss, then swings around the corner and presumably stumbles from the echoes of swear words that come afterwards.

“What am I, a housewife?” Clint mumbles under his breath before Bruce tells Jarvis to keep an eye on Tony’s vitals and to alert them if he goes unconscious. Truly, from then on, it’s just a waiting game to see whatever Tony manages to find out.

Steve is anything but excited.

Tony doesn’t even get to fully get out of his landed suit before Daredevil and the Punisher (seriously, how much do these dudes hang out?) are in front of him. Now, Tony can’t really talk that much about exes (he barely did more than one night stands before Pepper), but he knows that most don’t hang out together every night unless they still care about each other.

From the way Punisher is standing behind Daredevil, Tony can guess he still cares about him. His hands are grasping the trigger of his gun so hard that his knuckles are going white. He may be incredibly sleep-deprived, but not even that can make him an idiot. There’s something there. Something he’s eager to get to the bottom of.

“I thought I told you people to stay out of my city.” Daredevil’s voice comes out as gruff as it had in the body cam footage he’s gotten from Clint and Natasha. It seems like he’s almost putting on a Batman voice, a fact that almost sends Tony’s sleep deprived head into a laughing frenzy.

“That’s red speak for fuck off, shitheads.” Frank, oh so helpfully, supplies while cocking his gun. Until Daredevil sends him a side glance, and the big bad Punisher puts his safety back on without a second thought. Have these two ever heard of a second chance romance because this is adorable?

“You two know each other that well?” He teases, the familiar tone flowing off his tongue like butter.

“Getting off topic, Stark.”

Tony puts his hands up in surrender and pretends not to notice how Punisher gets ready to shoot at him again at the movement. “I’m here unsanctioned and without backup, just to ask you some questions.”

Kinky little red cocks his head to the side like he’s considering his words. Maybe doing his weird mind magic to read his brain or something. Just in case, he scrubs his head of anything important and thinks solely on how he’s not here for a fight. “What kind of questions?” The devil finally replies.

“None that you need a lawyer for, relax, but the Punisher can stay if he really wants. I wasn’t really planning on him.”

Big bad wolf with a gun shuffles on his feet, then mumbles near Daredevil’s ear something he can barely even hear. “We ain’t got time for this, Red. Traffickers dock in a few hours.”

“It won’t take that long. I can even go to the docks with you if you want.” Tony hasn’t got much time before Pepper realises he’s gone. Then again, he might not get another shot like this considering how done with their shit Little Red with a club is getting.

“Be quick. If I hear someone who needs my help, I won’t hesitate to leave you in the dust.”

“I can keep up.”

“Not as exhausted as you are, you can’t.” Now that sells Tony on the psychic thing because he’s playing off the sleep deprived bit quite well, thank you.

If he ignores how he’s still swaying with every step, how heavy his head feels and how all his limbs want to do is to succumb to gravity.

Punisher and Daredevil glare at each other for about a minute, and each second Tony is holding back from googling whether Frank Castle is a psychic too because they seem to go through an entire conversation without a single word coming out.

Then Frank huffs, dragging his feet to the edge of the rooftop before slumping down. He unassembles and then gets back to work reassembling it all the while muttering under his breath about “Fucking shithead—Red staying for assholes. Fuck’s sake.”

“He’s pissy.” Tony supplies after the gun is well enough apart that he won’t get shot on the spot for it.

“That’s just Frank.”

“You know him well?” He repeats and looks at the small part of Daredevil’s face not covered to try to read his emotions.

“Is that one of your questions?” Daredevil has a strangely pretty smile. Tony makes sure to get Jarvis to write that down in his file despite the AI’s confusion on if that fact is strictly necessary, or even useful in the slightest.

“What is your relationship with Matt Murdock?” Tony pretends to take a pen in his hand fully for the bit, which Frank scoffs at again from his spot on the edge of the roof. Tough crowd.

“He’s a good lawyer.”

“But you don’t like him?”

“It’s a personal grudge.” Daredevil shrugs, his face not giving much away.

Frank, on the other hand, starts laughing his arse off. “Damn Red, didn’t pin you as that kind of guy!” The “Red” in question (write that down Jarvis!) gives him a glare — he thinks it’s a glare, how does he see through those — which does nothing to tamper down his laughter.

“Do you like Matt Murdock, Bulkier John Wick?” Tony turns towards the Punisher. He wants to be able to catch the guy’s facial expressions to have this all properly on camera to look back on later.

“Oh yeah, I love the guy. Great silk sheets.” The next few moments are a blur, but Frank definitely gives Tony a thumbs up, Daredevil throws his billy club at Punisher, which is narrowly caught by the man, and Tony is stuck there quite bewildered. Did Punisher, Frank Castle, mass murderer, technically a dead man, just insinuate that he’s fucking Steve’s goody little two-shoes lawyer friend? Oh, Clint will have a field day. Tony’s having a field day!

The Punisher and a lawyer, who would’ve guessed? Then, Daredevil doesn’t like Matt Murdock because he’s dating his ex that he’s — pretty obviously if you ask Tony — still in love with! Maybe they should try out a throuple. That might fix a few of their problems. Little Red in bondage might even learn how to share!

“Frank, I swear—”

“If you two can keep the domestic disputes to a minimum while I’m here, that would be appreciated. I am on a time crunch here.” Tony interrupts them, with too many questions to ask and too little time. According to Jarvis, Pepper has already noticed he’s gone, and while he’s already gotten the information of the century, Tony is a very greedy man.

Daredevil rolls his whole head — because rolling just your eyes isn’t enough when your eyes are fully covered, he guesses — and turns back towards Tony with a very sour note in his demeanour, while Frank just seems more joyful than ever.

“How did you two become friends?”

“It’s easier to work together than against one another. He promises to lay off the murder while he’s with me, and I don’t question who he has murdered.” Daredevil shrugs, holding his hand out towards Frank, presumably to get his club back, which is still sitting in his hands. “Mutually beneficial.”

“I didn’t want to shoot him in the head again.” Frank laughs — Tony ignores how many alarm bells that rings in his head because that sounds incredibly toxic — and then throws the club back to Daredevil. Tony watches like a kid on Christmas day as Daredevil catches it without even looking towards it.

So the videos are real!

He is so incredibly happy he is recording right now. This will probably make a lot more sense when his eyes aren’t begging for sleep and his thoughts aren’t sluggish as hell, but for now, the conclusions he’s gotten to are amazing.

Tony should’ve looked into Daredevil much sooner because this could be a reality show at this point!

With a shake of his head, Tony is ready to try to weasel his way into more information. In times like this, he can even understand the press. “Daredevil, how would you feel about joining the Avengers—” He barely gets his words out before Daredevil leans his head to the side and then bounds off the side of the roof like a man on a mission.

“End of the questionnaire, sorry Stark, Red has sniffed some shit.” Punisher takes the safety off his gun, cocks it, then jumps off the edge of the roof to run after his ex boyfriend. Tony argues with the thought of running after them for about a minute before he sighs and realises he’s waited too long.

Let them do their jobs. He’s gotten what he wanted.

“Jarvis, can you set up a betting pool?” Tony asks as he gets the suit back into the air. He looks at the multiple texts and missed calls from Pepper and sends a quick “coming back” with a kissing emoji as he flies as fast as possible.

“For what, Mister Stark?”

“Matt x Frank or Daredevil x Frank.”

Tony has strongly put himself in the Daredevil x Frank column as he is a believer in those twos chemistry from his one meeting and hours of scouring grainy footage. Steve will give him a speech about not interfering in relationships and the like, but when has he ever not interfered in something?

It’ll be fine. No, it’ll be better than fine — it’ll be funny.

There are two people inside his room when he lands. Pepper is sitting in the bar of their penthouse, sipping from a glass of what he thinks is water and looking wholly unimpressed while Bruce stands next to her talking away at something without a single care in the world. What a traitor.

“Now, where do you think you’ve been?” Pepper shouts the second he leans his face around the corner. He turns his head around to glare at Bruce, who averts his gaze down to his glass before speaking.

“I tried, Tony, sorry—”

“I think Steve’s friend is fucking the Punisher.” Tony interrupts him, the adrenaline of flying still not worn off as his head seems more awake than it should be. He feels almost jittery, actually, and he looks between the two of them with a grin that must look quite manic as they just look at each other with worry plastered on their faces.

“You mean having sex with him? Because I think Matt Murdock and Frank Castle are pretty different people,” Bruce says with the look on his face he gets whenever he’s stuck on a problem.

“Yes! I was asking Frank about it, and then he said that he loved Matt.” Tony is basically shouting as he walks over to the two of them, pointedly ignoring how he’s admitting to talking to the literal Punisher.

“He could’ve been making a joke.” Pepper points out.

“Then he complimented his silk bedsheets.”

“Okay, yeah, they’re fucking.” She shrugs, downing her drink that Tony is starting to think is definitely not water now that he’s this close to it.

“Steve did mention that Matt has a boyfriend.” Bruce sighs, rubbing his face with his hand and pushing his glasses up as he does so. He looks on the verge of pacing around the room, so Tony takes the opportunity from him and does it before him. “Oh, how are we gonna tell Steve?”

“I want more proof first.” Now Tony is pretty convinced himself of this the devil being jealous of the lawyer because he’s fucking his ex who is the Punisher business, — even if it ruins his Daredevil being the devil idea — but he’s not so sure Steve or the others will be just because of a throwaway line from Frank. Especially if Matt denies it, which considering he’s not only a Catholic in a gay relationship but a Catholic in a gay relationship with the Punisher, that seems pretty likely. So he needs Matt Murdock here to answer questions himself. Body language can tell a lot, probably true for a blind man as well. “Pepper, do we have some kind of problem at Stark Industries that would need two lawyers from Hell’s Kitchen?”

“I can have them here in the next week or so for our outreach programme.” Pepper shrugs, looking down at her cup with that smug little grin he loves. Her hands move the glass back and forth despite it being empty, presumably just to taunt him.

“Have I mentioned how much I love you?” Tony sighs, finally stopping his movement. She smiles, looks up at him and then gestures for him to come forward with her finger. A command he is more than happy to follow through on.

“Okay, princess, get out. I wanna have some alone time.” Tony shoos away Bruce, who takes the dismissal with a sigh.

“Have fun, you two. Get him to sleep, use protection.”

“Don’t tell anyone about the Matt dating the Punisher problem!” he shouts back at the man as he leaves, then turns back to Pepper with a grin.

“Now where were we?” Her lips are on his and for a moment his exhaustion doesn’t even matter.

He does ask her which side of the betting pool she is on before they go to sleep, however.

Frank x Daredevil - Tony

Frank x Matt - Pepper, Bruce

Chapter Text

Matthew is a Catholic. He might not always be the best one, but he always is one. God is the all-mighty father and the only God.

So when he does meet Thor, Matt glares at him stronger than he does the other Avengers, even though he can’t see it. Principle of the thing. The guy isn’t even really that bad. He hasn’t shouted about him being a god once in their little unplanned meeting and is actually driving the conversation away from Matt himself, which is he always thankful for.

It had been a week since his and Frank’s run in with Tony Stark. He’s been almost happy to forget about the Avenger business altogether so he can focus on the traffickers who think that they can use Hell’s Kitchen for whatever they want. At first, it was just a few novices kidnapping people for their own gain, then Frank found them with some weird alien technology, and then the Avengers were very unfortunately needed.

Getting Frank to drop Chitauri tech off on the door of Avengers Tower with a post it note may have been the highlight of his week.

“So what exactly do you know about these guys?” Hawkeye seems much more focused on the case than Thor is. He’s just tossing his hammer up into the air repeatedly.

“They’re American and very into trafficking people and now alien tech. Same guys you helped with.” Matt hasn't heard them speak in anything but English, so at least it wasn’t some foreign mob trying to get into Hell’s Kitchen again. He’s pushed organised crime out before and will do it again. The insanely powerful alien technology only makes that slightly more difficult.

Frank is looking into another lead as we speak. Some of the traffickers are having a meeting with a biker group tonight while the rest of the group are moving a shipment in. They decided to split up to cover more ground, and Matt made Frank crash the meeting since they all had information that they needed the people alive to get.

The other traffickers, not so much. So Matt decided to go there alone until, of course, the Avengers showed up asking a hell of a lot of questions about the stuff they dropped onto their doorstep.

“Do you know where they are or when their next shipment will be?”

“There’s a couple of them down the docks. I was gonna hit them for information before you all showed up.” They’re still there, thankfully, or Matt would’ve run away from these two already and not dealt with their interrogation. Well, interrogation is a strong word, and unless they’re doing good cop, lazy cop, then they aren’t good at this.

“We might want to be careful about this, especially if they have Chitauri tech.” Hawkeye is pacing around the rooftop, his boot scuffing on the ground with each step. Whatever alien tech the traffickers are getting their hands on — it’s powerful. Matt can hear it buzzing from miles away, and when he actually gets close to the things, he has to try to block out the sound so he can focus on the people he is fighting.

“I can handle them,” he shrugs. Now Matt definitely needs the Avengers help with getting rid of the alien tech considering they’re some of the only people with the proper means to destroy it, but that doesn’t mean that he has to let them think they can just get chummy in Hell’s kitchen whenever they like. Hawkeye seems like a nice guy, but if he makes an exception for one, then it might turn into an exception for all. He doesn’t want Hell’s Kitchen turned to rubble again.

“We can handle them, Mister Devil of the Dares!” Thor finally joins back in the conversation as he slaps his — inhumanely strong — hand onto Matt’s back. He stumbles ever so slightly at the impact, and that’s with him preparing for it.

“It’s Daredevil,” he corrects — where on earth did he get Devil of the Dares from?

“Leave him. That’s just Thor.” Hawkeye pats his shoulder before moving over to the edge of the roof. Right towards where the docks are. So they have been studying Hell’s Kitchen.

“Yeah, I can see that.” He holds back a laugh and smiles as he guides the two to where he can hear that incessant buzzing. Even if they weren’t kidnapping people and causing mass destruction, Matt might’ve driven these people out of his city just because of the noise they make. It covers up most things in the area. He has to focus to hear the sound of a couple laughing a few blocks away as they drunkenly stumble back to their apartment or the sound of a kid staying up past his bedtime on video games. Someone could’ve been getting assaulted or mugged, and Matt might not have picked it up because of this buzzing.

So the assholes needed out of his city.

“So, what’s the plan?” Thor whispers in his ear. Matt holds back his want to move away from the too loud sound too close to his ears and replies.

“My plan was to beat them up, steal their tech and drop it off on your doorstep.”

“Good plan, but we’re here now. I think we can get more information out of these guys.” are the words he thinks came out of Hawkeye’s mouth.

The smell of wood and metal hits his nose as he hears the clink of an arrow leaving Hawkeye’s quiver. The buzz in Hawkeye’s ears stands out against the buzzing of the warehouse, a lot quieter but also at a completely different frequency. If he focuses on Hawkeye’s buzzing and Hawkeye’s heartbeat, then he can block out the alien buzzing for just a minute.

From what he found out when he and Frank had to deal with this stuff, conversations are hard to have when there’s an incredibly loud buzzing trying to nestle its way into his ears.

“I could’ve done that without you, Hawkeye.”

“Clint.” Hawkeye — Clint — says. A short word that Matt can put together through the buzzing, anyway. After he spends too long not replying, Clint makes some movement with his shoulder and says something along the lines of, “Come on, what’s the harm?”

He nods, and then with every single bit of concentration he has, tries to focus on the heartbeats and the slight movements going on inside the warehouse. Past the sound of Clint’s bow being strung, or Thor and his obnoxiously loud heartbeat and swoosh of his hammer as he throws it in the air. There’s multiple people in there, guns, weapons, no hostages though, and they aren’t even guarding the buzzing containers. Four of the containers have a buzz. One of them is eerily silent. There’s something in there, and even if most of it is empty space, it’s still a box. Metallic most likely, but he needs to be closer to confirm it.

“Alright then, Clint, there’s about twelve guys in there and about five containers, only four with Chitauri tech, I think.”

“You think?” Clint and Thor move their heads, likely giving each other some kind of concerned side glance. Matt holds back a sigh.

“Alien stuff messes with it.” He refuses to elaborate on what “it” is and instead gets his billy clubs out and gets on the edge of the roof, ready to jump. “You go through the back with Thor. I’ll go in through the front.”

Matt lands on a ledge near the front entrance of the warehouse. There’s one guy guarding the door, who he knocks out with his billy clubs and then leaves unconscious in a bush. He’s almost tempted to put earplugs in with how strong the buzzing has gotten. The sound of Thor bursting into the back of the warehouse is almost swamped out by the sound of it all. Thor’s already knocked out quite a few people with his hammer by the time Daredevil makes his entrance and gets into a fight with three of the traffickers.

He kicks one in the head before getting punched in the face by another, who he grabs the arm of and dislocates it before knocking his head into the ground. The third guy is more cautious as he swings at him before bouncing back, always staying just out of his range. It takes about four hits to get him down, and by then he’s already punched Matt in the face about six times. He blames it on the buzzing not letting him hear the shifts in the air as he moves.

Speaking of the buzzing, Clint is jumping between each container, taking a look inside, and then saying something to the people in his comms that he’s frankly too close to the bastard noise for Matt to pick up. He hates it. It makes him feel absolutely useless as Thor plows through everyone who dares to come near him and Clint can get actually near the things without his eardrums exploding.

If he had come here alone, then this could’ve ended in such a mess.

He brushes away those thoughts and moves over to the one container that isn’t buzzing. Most of the traffickers are down anyway, and it’s Clint’s job to deal with the alien stuff.

The door has a padlock, that should be his first sign to turn away and be more careful about this, but he can focus on the clicks of the lock well enough now that the buzz is on the other side of the warehouse and he has it open in seconds.

The container is well and truly empty. There’s dust accumulated on the ground, but apart from that, it’s just the small metallic — definitely metallic — box at the end. It has wires sticking out of it, and it isn’t that heavy when he goes to pick it up. He takes a deep breath and then focuses on the box. On the metal casing that takes over his nose and the lack of empty space inside of the box, too full of wires for anything else.

When he hears the familiar tick of a bomb inside, it’s too late for him to do anything but run to the door of the container and let the fire hit him.

The bang is louder than the buzzing could’ve wished to have been, and the momentum throws him to the other side of the warehouse as the smell of fire takes over everything. His head hits against the metal wall and the last thing he hears is “DAREDEVIL!” before two hands make their way to his shoulders and his brain taps out. Unconsciousness can’t even stop the buzzing.

When Matt does wake up, it’s somewhere a lot colder than the burning warehouse had been. Slowly, as always, his senses come back to him one by one. He can taste smoke in the air, then he can smell chemicals and fire in almost every direction. The sound of sirens and water coming out of hoses as the fire dies down is followed by the sound of murmuring by the two heartbeats stood by him.

Then the feeling of pain comes back. He’s got a few broken ribs, and fresh burns around his neck and wrists. His gloves are almost fully burnt off, but thankfully most of his costume — and his mask — is intact. Bruises are definitely forming all over his back, and the feeling of his eye swelling up is one he knows well. He’s going to look like he’s gotten beat up in the morning, but he can just hide in his office and brush it off with a clumsy old blind me excuse until it goes away. Foggy and Karen will fret over him, but as long as he promises to take it easy, they’ll be fine.

“What happened?” He mumbles the words out past his dry throat, and he knows the two men above him hears them as they whip their heads around to face him. The buzz is still in Clint’s ear, and the whoosh of Thor’s hammer as it moves through the air is still present, so Thor and Clint are still there.

Both of their heartbeats are fast, probably worried as he had just been a few feet away from a bomb. Matt has been through worse though, and he’s a Murdock, he’ll just get back up.

Clint rushes to kneel by his side as he forces himself to sit up, ignoring the shooting pain in his side at the movement. “The container you were in blew up. Thor got you out.” Thor stands beside him, his hammer swaying with each movement as he holds it by the strap.

“Thank you.”

“No thanks needed. Are you alright?” The beast of a man kneels down next to him as well, his heartbeat even louder as he gets closer.

“I’ll be fine.” Nothing’s externally bleeding, and he can’t even hear any internal bleeding, so he’ll just need to apply some burn cream and take it easy until his ribs fix themselves up. He won’t even need to call Claire.

That doesn’t stop his legs from trying to collapse under him when he stands up.

“That doesn’t look fine to me, Daredevil.” Clint’s laugh vibrates over his chest as the man loops one of his arms over his shoulder to keep him upright.

“Mike.” Matt corrects before he can stop himself. Listen, he could be dead right now if it weren’t for the Avengers, and it’s not like he knows how to get rid of tonnes of alien technology that hurts his ears to even be near. He doesn’t want the Avengers in his city, but being civil with a few of them for the good of Hell’s Kitchen is something he can deal with. “It’s not my name, but you can call me Mike.”

“All I had to do to get that was to let you blow yourself up, huh?”

“Let’s not make this a habit, alright?”

Thor must’ve found his joke funny as he hits Matt on his back while laughing, and he’s pretty sure breaks another one of his ribs in the process. While Clint is shouting at him for it, Matt takes the opportunity to stumble his way back to the edge of the roof with the fire escape below him.

When Clint notices him, he waves him away with a sigh. “I can handle getting what’s left of the tech out. The police are already here.”

Brett Mahoney’s voice is filling his ears as he gets annoyed about the alien shit already.

“Got it.”

“Rest up, Mister Devil of the Dares.”

“You got it Thor.” He waves at Thor, then jumps off the edge of the roof to the fire escape before scrambling away to get back to his apartment, Clint calling him a “dramatic piece of shit,” makes its way to his ears even as Thor continues to laugh and the sirens continue to scream around him.

The warehouse is still on fire, but just for a bit. He can rest knowing it’s being taken care of.

“Rise and shine, sleepyhead!” Foggy’s voice wakes him up at an ungodly — eight am — hour and pulls his curtains open. Which does absolutely nothing to Matt Murdock, who’s hidden pretty effectively under his duvet and wouldn’t be able to see the light, anyway.

“Hello Foggy!” He can hear the man’s heartbeat, however. Can hear the shifts in the air as he moves and can hear the sound of the city flood into his ears as he wakes up. Matt can also definitely feel the mass amount of pain he’s in, and that he definitely needs some ibuprofen if he wants to get up in the next century. The burns around his neck and arms are better with the salve he put on overnight, but they’re still definitely noticeable as Foggy’s heart speeds up when Matt crawls out from under the covers, careful not to jostle his still broken ribs.

“Oh, what happened to you?” Foggy’s tone is full of the usual worry as he grabs the bottle of ibuprofen off the counter.

“Bombs and, well, there’s some alien stuff in Hell’s Kitchen.” He’s definitely got a black eye and most likely a few hairline fractures from how his head is throbbing. Frank was worried beyond belief last night when he called him, but eventually relented in telling him what happened on his side. Apparently, the traffickers were trying to sell alien tech to the bikers at an extortionate cost, and the two groups began to fight before Frank stepped in. He’s dropped off the little tech he got his hands on at Micro’s house to see if he can do anything with it, and the traffickers are in police custody, injured but still fully alive. Just how Matt likes them, as Frank said.

He’s not thrilled to say the least that these assholes think they can just go around selling the stuff that messes with his hearing, but if he and Frank can drive them out quick enough and hand them off to the Avengers, then hopefully he won’t have to deal with this alien tech ever again. Daredevil beats up organised crime and muggers, not aliens falling out of the sky.

“Well, leave your Daredevil problems behind, my friend, because we have a Nelson, Murdock and Page problem to deal with.” He can feel the bed dip as Foggy sits down on it and hands him a glass of water and a few painkillers.

“My Daredevil problems are pretty big, Foggy.” He can’t even get his sentence out before Foggy covers his mouth with his hand.

“Shush—we have a very expensive new client Matt, lets not ruin this for a day.” Matt sends him a thumbs up. They’ve been needing new clients recently. With the new setup of Nelson, Murdock and Page, a few of their old clients have come back, but for the most part they’ve had to start from scratch. They manage, but having a rich client could help them manage a lot easier.

“Who is it?” He asks, taking a few of his painkillers to stop the ache in his back.

“Tony Stark.”

Matt has to cover his mouth with his hand to stop the water from going all over his bed. He almost coughs on the painkillers as they go down his throat. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I know, I was surprised too, but apparently he wants to help build up Hell’s Kitchen’s resources and thought calling in a Hell’s Kitchen based legal firm to help with the legal side would be good.” Foggy’s heartbeat gets even faster as he looks at Matt. Matt who is currently weighing up which situation is worse — him getting brought there for Steve at church related problems or Daredevil related problems. “Oh no, what’s that face for?”

“I know the Avengers have been up your ass as Daredevil, but they can’t have tied it to Matt Murdock, right?” No, they couldn’t have. Logically, there is a very slim chance that the Avengers have figured out he’s Daredevil. The most likely reason was the Avengers being pushy arseholes who needed to see Steve’s new church friend as quick as possible. That only made this interaction slightly less annoying.

“Listen, I may have made a friend at church who may or may not be Steve Roger’s,”

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” Foggy sounds more exhausted than he did in third year of law school.

“He’s a nice guy, Foggy! Besides, I’m blind how could I have noticed it’s him?”

“He has a very recognisable voice, Matt!” Foggy’s heart is racing as he stands back up. The sound of his pacing grates on Matt’s ears with each step. “You think this is why they called us in?”

“I think there's a chance.” Matt also thinks there’s an incredibly low chance that Tony just so happened to pick the firm that he owns for a project he’s barely even shown an ounce of interest in before. He isn’t stupid enough to believe this is a coincidence, so he’ll just have to wing his way through without them noticing how banged up he is. It’ll go fine.

Steve is already getting worried about the various bruises that peek out occasionally at church. He doesn’t need anymore worry with the literal burns that are over his neck and arms. Not the mention the black eye that he’s sure his glasses don’t fully cover.

Foggy’s heartbeat slows, going back to normal as he takes a deep breath before swinging himself back onto his feet with a new-found vigour. “Well, there’s money to be made anyway, Mister Murdock, so get up!” he practically shouts.

“You wanna mess with them, don’t you?” Matt laughs.

“I think this can be nice payback for being up your arse and still letting you get blown up.” He holds back a retort that Matt can get himself blown up all on his own and lets Foggy reside his anger with the Avengers. At least then he won’t get another speech about the dangers of being Daredevil that he already knows front to back. “Karen is going to want to get this entire story when we get down there.”

“Oh, Karen will be ecstatic about this.”

Karen is not, in fact, ecstatic about any of it.

He’s put on a long suit jacket to hide his arms and done up his collar as high as he can to try to hide his neck but from Foggy’s elevated heart rate as they walk down the street and the jumps of people’s heart when he passes by he guesses he hasn’t done a good job. In fact, he barely gets a few steps into his own law firm before Karen takes a look at him, her heart jumps, and she says with the fury of a thousand suns, “Oh hell no.” She rushes towards him, tilting his head up to look at both the burns and his face before asking “Why did you let this happen?”

“I didn’t mean to get blown up, Karen!” Matt laughs, trying to get Karen’s heart rate to decrease. He can hear her head turn towards Foggy, who lifts his shoulders in a shrug at her stare. A traitor, truly.

“Here, take my scarf. The burns on your neck are bad, Matt.” She takes her scarf from around her neck and wraps it around his, the cotton texture of it making him want to scratch at his neck, which already doesn’t like the pressure for other reasons. Truly, the thing is a sensory nightmare, but it is better than having the Avengers think that someone had burnt Matt Murdock’s neck. Or worse, Clint or Thor connecting it to the burns that Daredevil had gotten the night prior.

It’s a lose/lose situation no matter what he does.

“This has to do with the Avengers being in Hell’s Kitchen last night, doesn’t it?” Karen asks, the detective tone back in her voice as she shoves a newspaper back into her bag. Has it already got into the news that they were there?

“Just Thor and Clint.”

“Oh, it’s Clint now?” Foggy laughs.

“Hawkeye.” Matt corrects as he glares at his friend as strongly as he can. “Besides, I just needed them to get Chitauri tech out of here. The buzzing it lets out messes with my hearing.” The tech does a lot more than just mess with his hearing, and as long as the tech is here, he has a weakness. But they don’t need to know the extent of it. Foggy and Karen get stressed out enough with him just going out, nevermind if he’s going out while something is out there that can incapacitate him. So he dials down the severity.

If it goes really badly, then he’ll have Frank or Jessica or someone to pick up the slack. It’ll be fine.

“Is that how you didn’t notice a bomb?” Karen asks.

“Exactly how I didn’t notice a bomb.”

“Why would they even have a bomb?” The sound of Foggy getting a message on his phone reminds his ears of the buzzing too closely for comfort.

“To blow the tech up if it went sideways?” He shrugs.

“That would blow up the people too.” Karen tilts her head to the side like she does when she’s thinking. “Unless it was a suicide mission.”

Well, that opens a whole new can of worms. If the people selling this alien tech were willing to go along with suicide missions, then how deep did this organisation really go? Even if the traffickers themselves didn’t know it was a bomb, the people who gave them the tech did. Someone didn’t want that tech getting out so badly they were willing to kill people for it. If he’s opened up another ancient cult, Matt will get pissed. “I’ll get Frank to look into it. I’ve been told we have a Tony Stark who wants our assistance.”

The only thing he really can do right now is brush it off. Maybe Daredevil can try to get the other Avengers involved in the investigation, and Frank and Micro can look for how deep it really goes.

“Yes, we do. I’ll brief you in the cab.” Karen picks up her bag and helps him to the door in seconds, the previous conversation still likely roaming around in her head. She and Matt are alike in that. Once they latch onto something, they just can’t let it go, no matter how detrimental it is to their health.

“Oh, and Matt.” Foggy puts his hand onto his shoulder, then Matt adjusts the hold to be him holding his arm. He is the blind one here. “You got into a mugging, alright?”

“Oh, what great friends I have, lying about a blind man’s injuries.” He laughs and gets a light tap on his shoulder for it. It would’ve been more if Foggy wasn’t so worried about his injuries. After this meeting, he’s lying low — at least as Matt Murdock — until the burns are gone. Burns are so annoying.

He pays as much attention to Karen’s debrief as he can as they get driven to Avengers Tower, his thoughts preoccupied with the traffickers for stuff like this. The complete brief seems quite vague. Legal help for his construction work in Hell’s Kitchen? If it weren’t Ironman they were talking about, Matt might’ve felt compelled to look into it for money laundering or something. The whole thing just convinces him that this is just some scheme for the unrelenting Avengers to meet Steve’s church friend without pissing Steve off. If the not telling him he’s Captain America thing tells him anything — it’s that Steve doesn’t want that attention at church.

Matt gets that. He’s dealt with the whispers before, especially after he went blind and then after his dad died. Which will only make him more annoyed at the Avengers if this is why the three of them are there.

Avengers Tower is massive. He can hear people hundreds of feet up in the air working away. There’s a lot of glass as well and he can only imagine how much of it get’s broken on a weekly if not daily basis by the Avengers. It all seems kind of extreme. Matt works out of his apartment, and Frank just has a few safe houses. It all just seems too much.

The three of them barely make it two steps into the building before an assistant runs up to them. Her heartbeat is strangely calm as she moves like she’s just had seven cups of coffee. “You’re Nelson, Murdock and Page, correct?” She asks, shuffling around some files in her arms before they even have the chance to speak.

“Yes, we are—” Foggy starts.

“Great, I have your files here! This one is in braille for mister Murdock.” She hands the files off to them. The words “Hell’s Kitchen Outreach Programme.” are written in Braille on the front.

“Thank you.” Matt doesn’t even have time to read the front page before she’s shuffling the three of them to an elevator.

“If you would follow me?” It’s more of a command than a question, and Matt grabs onto Foggy’s arm so he doesn’t have to use his cane in what he knows from the amount of heartbeats is a crowded lobby.

“Your meeting will be with Mister Stark and Miss Potts, but other people may step in occasionally.” She says a command in the elevator, and it begins moving without a button even needing to be pressed. From what he can feel and hear, he doubts the elevators even have buttons, which isn’t very ADA compliant, he wants to add. “Best to just stay on topic,” she laughs.

“It will just be those two?” Karen asks, finally given the opportunity to flick through the file.

“Mister Stark is head of the outreach programme, and Miss Potts likes to look over his meetings.”

If Matt wasn’t sure before that Tony is mostly only inviting them over to meet Steve’s friend, then the sound of arguing from above solidifies it. Steve’s voice and Black Widow’s voice are asking why the lawyers need to come up to their floor, while Tony’s just saying to leave it to him. He expands his senses to the whole room, and he can’t hear Clint’s nor Thor’s heartbeats up there, so he might be able to get away even if they do notice the burns. Black Widow is in there, along with Steve, Tony Stark, Pepper Potts he presumes, and one other man he can’t put his finger on but based on the radiation he can sense off of him, most likely Bruce Banner.

“You’re here!” Tony breaks through the hushed arguing once the elevator opens. He rushes forward and starts talking to Foggy and Karen as Matt focuses on the sound of Steve’s heartbeat. More importantly, on how it jumps when he sees Matt’s face, whether that’s for the badly hidden black eye or just because he’s here, he’s not sure.

“Matt?” Steve’s voice echoes around the room, Karen tilts her head towards him — he realises far too late that they hadn’t told her about it — and Foggy’s heart jumps as he waits for Matt to charm his way out of this. They should’ve planned this more.

Sadly, that realisation comes far too late, so he can only tilt his head to the side like he’s listening to something, smack on his most charming grin and say “Steve?” with the same tone of voice that lets him sneak into places he really shouldn’t be in. Luckily, Steve falls for it as he turns his head to Tony and changes his face into what he can only guess is a strong glare.

Matt feels bad for the assistant as she looks around the room in confusion. The air feels tense enough to get cut with a butter knife. No one’s heartbeat is running at a normal pace, and the sound of Tony’s arc reactor in his chest is not helping.

“Matthew, how long have you known Steve Rogers and not told me?” Karen leans in next to him, the real question stuck at the back of her throat. Is this a Daredevil thing?

“I didn’t know it was Steve Rogers.” He shakes his head, trying to silently convey how this has nothing to do with Daredevil and, based on the jump in her heart, not doing a very good job at it.

“You can recognise the Punisher’s voice but not him?” Both Matt and Foggy turn to glare at her as soon as she says it. Just about every heart in the room jumps at that, and the assistant very eagerly takes her leave. From what he can hear from Tony’s heart, the man is excited, which does not help his situation at all. He prays to God that the man didn’t take Frank’s silk sheets comment to heart, but from how fast his heart went after Karen’s comment, he guesses he did.

Sorry, Lord, but oh shit.

Before Matt can stumble out some words about Attorney client privilege and the like, Miss Potts notices the bruises under his eye. “Are you alright, Mister Murdock?”

He turns his head towards her voice, then lifts his hand up to his eye before laughing. “Oh yes, I got mugged the other day. It’s fine now though.” The practice of hiding and brushing off his injuries he got before he told Karen and Foggy about Daredevil is helpful in times like this.

“I had to go scrounging around back alleys for a cane.” Foggy adds. Laughing to try to calm down his heart likely. He never was the best at lying.

“A job I thank you immensely for Foggy.” Matt pats Foggy’s arm, laughing away with him to try to calm down the worry he can still feel from the Avengers in the room.

A blind guy got mugged. Sad story that is bound to happen when he lives somewhere like Hell’s Kitchen. Although, since he lives in Hell’s Kitchen, Daredevil is likely to get some flack for this because of Matt’s comment about Daredevil not liking him. With every word that comes out of his throat, he can feel himself falling down a bigger web with the Avengers running with every little hint that drags them towards the conclusion they like.

His plan to bring Daredevil and Matt apart in Steve’s head so he won’t have to deal with the Avengers as Matt has completely failed. Utterly and completely.

Black Widow walks up to him, her heartbeat calm and steady just as it always seems to be. “I can take your scarf if you want, Murdock.” Her hand reaches out to grab it, but the second she touches the scarf, he moves away. Reaches his own hand up to swat it away and realises far too late that it causes his sleeve to run down. Her heart doesn’t jump, barely even skips, but it does do something when she notices the burns, and then he knows he’s fucked. Damn, Widow, you’re good at this.

“No, that’s fine, thank you.” He laughs again — God, he’s laughing a lot — and takes Foggy’s arm. A silent plea to just get them out of here.

“Well then, if we could get this meeting started.” Thankfully, he listens to it, and then the three of them are following Potts and Stark into what he guesses is a conference room. The glass wall shines the sun onto him. He would enjoy it if it didn’t make him even warmer under the scarf and long sleeves. The price of vigilantism, he guesses.

Miss Potts — Pepper, she insists — is actually incredibly professional once the meeting starts. A direct contrast to the practically buzzing Tony Stark, sat next to her. She asks questions, Foggy or Karen answers, and then they ask questions, and either she or Stark answers. It’s a normal, professional meeting. Except the Avengers are right next door, whispering words that he can hear every part of.

For a moment, he lets himself zone out of the actual meeting he’s in and focus on the conversation outside. At least until his name is said.

Big man, metal arm, long hair, walks into the room with another man, shorter, with some kind of metal on his back that might fold out like wings, and asks. “Where’s Tony?”

Matt can hear Clint’s heartbeat enter the elevator downstairs and come up to join the three of them bickering in the other room.

“In a meeting with lawyers.” Bruce says, his hands fidgeting with some tablet.

“What did he do this time?” Wing man laughs. His heart rate is normal. He’s calm as he grabs what smells like a beer from the fridge.

“One of them is Steve’s church friend.” Black Widow replies, and gets a glare from Steve as he whips his head around.

“He injured again?” Metal arm asks, his heart picking up out of what he can guess is worry.

Yet again, sorry Lord, but oh shit. So Steve has been talking about him. Matt taps his finger against the table as quietly as he can to deal with his own heartbeat getting faster. His thoughts come in faster as the stress settles in, but he tries to wipe it away like Stick taught him to. Think logically.

Steve talks about his injuries to Metal Arm. Steve notices his injuries regularly enough to bring it up with someone. Yet he still doesn’t assume that he’s Daredevil — that is a pretty enormous leap to make there. He still has a chance to swerve out of this. If he can make up an excuse, of course.

Matt sighs. The meeting is still being carried by Foggy and Karen, and apart from Tony’s occasional glance towards him, his absence isn’t fully noticed. So he can keep on stalking. It’ll be fine.

“Wait, what?” Bruce’s head shoots up from the tablet, looking at Metal Arm man in disbelief.

“He’s come into church injured a few times.” Steve shrugs and takes a beer from Wings without a complaint. The air seems just as tense as it was when Matt was in the room. A silent agreement that there’s something wrong with him.

The complete opposite thought of what he wanted. Oh, how had he gotten into this mess?

“And now he’s limping with fresh burns on his arms and a scarf that he refuses to take off,” Black Widow says, her heart still as calm as ever. A habit that’s really starting to annoy him. He hears Metal Arm’s hand tense into a fist, his heart picking up at the news of his apparent injuries.

“And the black eye.” Bruce mumbles, too lost in thought to notice as Metal Arm gets more worked up. His heart is even faster, a sign of erratic and compulsive behaviour.

“Bucky, where are you going?” Steve asks as Metal Arm — Bucky — walks towards the conference room the five of them are in. His heartbeat gets even louder as his footsteps become audible even to Tony, who looks towards the door with a frown.

When he swings the door open, Matt has to pretend to be shocked by his presence as much as he acts shocked at theirs. So this was how he’s playing it, huh?

“Who’s this?” Bucky turns towards Tony, pretending like he hadn’t just had this conversation with the rest of them minutes ago. Matt sits up properly now that they’re here, his back straight and his hands clasped on the table. He wants to look professional, strong, like someone who can get mugged and then be fine to get working afterwards because he’s sticking to that mugging story.

Changing it would just be suspicious.

“Steve’s church friend and maybe our new future lawyers.” Tony is laid back in his seat, arms crossed and trying to seem as calm as could be. Something which his rapidly beating heart is giving away as an absolute lie.

“Oh yeah, he’s mentioned you.” Bucky turns to face him at that, his gaze almost soft as he takes the seat at the end of the table.

“Has he?” Matt tries his best to throw on the nicest smile he can. Even beyond how annoyed he’s getting at all the questioning from people who didn’t even know he existed a few weeks ago. It took a while for Matt to be okay with his friends knowing his identity, nevermind these random heroes who thought he could steamroll into his life like this.

“Yeah, nice guy, blind, keeps coming in with bruises.” Foggy hits his shoe against Matt’s, a silent urge to figure out how to fix this.

They never should’ve come here.

“Clumsiness and blindness tend to go together, mister?”

“Bucky Barnes,” he speaks softly, like he’s talking to a bloody wild animal. “A friend of Steve is a friend to all of ours. We really don’t like it when people are hurting our friends.”

If Matt could see, he’d glare this guy down with the power of a thousand suns.

Foggy doesn’t give him a chance to bite back as he jumps up onto his feet and grabs his files. “Well then, we will look over this contract and be back to you in a few days.” He laughs, Karen quickly following his lead. “If that is all?”

Pepper nods quickly, recovering from whatever kind of intervention Bucky was planning, and she holds out her hand for Foggy to shake. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

He grabs onto Foggy’s arm and lets himself be guided out of that stuffy conference room. Away from the racing heartbeats of those three people and towards the racing heartbeats of even more people. Could everyone’s hearts just calm down for a second!

Matt is already mentally running through the few excuses he can use for Steve on Sunday — he’s not missing church because the Avengers want to be all up in his business — but for the rest of them, he can just leave and never see them again. They might show up again as Daredevil, but he can just keep those separate. He’ll promise to keep an eye on Matt Murdock and keep them out of his business.

Frank is going to find all of this hilarious.

Steve practically runs over to him the second he sees him. “Matt, I am so sorry about not telling you.” He sounds actually apologetic, upset almost. No matter how pissed he is at the guy for telling the Avengers about his injuries, can he really blame the guy? It has to look bad when he comes in each week with something wrong all the time.

“It’s fine, Steve really. I get it. You wanted an escape without being the big man with the shield.” He puts his hand on Steve’s shoulder, holding back a wince at the movement because that will only make this so much worse.

“I’m still sorry, Matt.”

“We’re catholics Steve, we’ll always be sorry.” Matt taps Steve’s shoulder before grabbing back onto Foggy’s arm. His smile is hanging on by a thread at this point.

The three of them barely make it a few steps before Tony breaks out of his whispered argument with Pepper and practically runs up to Matt. “Murdock!” he shouts, grabbing onto Matt’s shoulder, and he really has to work to hold back a wince at that. “One last question.”

“Leave him alone, Tony,” Steve says, gritting his teeth loud enough to grate on Matt’s ears.

“Are you fucking the Punisher?” Tony ignores Steve’s warning and then barrels his way even further down this mess.

“I’m sorry—what?” Of course he fucking went there. Matt is definitely not blushing at what Tony is implying. It’s just that his head is getting so stressed out he’s overheating. Oh, Frank is going to find this even more hilarious than he found the “Daredevil not liking Matt Murdock” fiasco, and he was laughing at that one for five minutes straight!

“Okay, we are leaving now.” Karen drags the two of them into the elevator, and Matt tries to ignore how he can feel the stares of every Avenger in that room boring into his skin. This had truly stumbled way too far.

So not only did the Avengers think that Frank and Daredevil were exes, but they also thought that Matt was with Frank! All that, and Frank doesn’t even like him like that!

He tried to ignore how that thought made his heart ache.

Steve’s pissed. That’s the biggest thing Tony’s brain could lock onto as he goes on what feels like his third rant about how stupid they all had been. Clint and Nat are sitting off to the side with Sam, pointedly being freed from the “Captain America is disappointed in you” glare that Bucky, Tony and Bruce were getting. Pepper had gone to her office the second the lawyers had left, pretty much leaving him to the wolves of Steve’s anger alone.

He isn’t even that mad at Bruce. The man is just letting himself get shouted at because he feels bad, and his anger towards Bucky quickly subsides with a sad look and an “I wanted to make sure he was okay.”

Tony is all on his own.

At least his hypothesis is correct. Matt is definitely with the Punisher. He saw how the man stumbled over his words and went as red as a fire when he asked him. Except Matt is also covered in injuries that can’t all be chalked up to a mugging. Once sure, but almost every week?

At least his incessant nagging might lead to something helpful for once.

“I know you’re mad at me.” Tony puts his hands up in a surrender gesture.

“I’m beyond mad, Tony.”

“Listen, Matt was the closest lead I had to Daredevil. I went to talk to Mister Fetish Gear the other day, and he said that his dislike for Matt was personal,” he explains as quickly as he can, trying to get his words out before Mister Truth and Justice cuts him off again.

“And how did that bring you to his dating the Punisher?” Steve asks as he crosses his arms, looking down at him like this is an interrogation.

“He complimented his silk bedsheets and said that he loved him!” Well, at least that got a reaction out of Steve. He tilts his head before rubbing at his eyes, a sigh dragging itself out of his throat as he does so.

Bruce, his saviour, comes to his rescue as he speaks up to stop Steve’s show of disappointment from going on any longer. “Steve, I know you’re mad, but maybe just hear the guy out.”

Steve looks down at him, sighs again, and then gestures for them to continue speaking about his friend’s possible abusive relationship with a mass murderer. Oh, this is his life now.

“So Matt is with the Punisher, and just so happens to get a black eye, and bruises that look like he’s been strangled?” Bucky provides them with that bit of information after five minutes of prodding about what exact injuries Matt had been showing up to Sunday school in. Who strangles a blind guy? Matter of fact, who beats a blind guy to begin with?

“We’d have to look closer, but…” Steve honestly looks conflicted. He wants to make sure his friend isn’t in an abusive relationship, but he also doesn’t want to shove himself into his friend’s private life. Something about safety and the right to privacy.

“There were burns on his wrists too, and he was limping.” Nat is angry. She hides it well, but they’ve seen her enough to notice when she’s pissed. Tight lip, slightly furrowed brow, suspiciously straight posture — all signs the black widow is mad. Honestly, Tony is pissed too. Sure, he knows that people seriously mistreat their partners, but this is a blind man who is coming to church each week beaten beyond belief, and he can’t even seem to go a day without getting burns. Burns, for God’s sake!

You don’t get burns from a mugging.

Do his law partners know? They seemed so eager to shove him out of the Avengers Tower the second someone started questioning the injuries. Like they knew he couldn’t explain them without implicating himself in knowing the Punisher. Were they just letting it happen?

“Why would Daredevil be jealous of that?” Tony mumbles, almost to himself as he types away on his computer to find his file on Nelson, Murdock and Page. They’d brought down Fisk twice and seemed to have a strong moral compass with cases. They didn’t seem like the type to let a blind guy get beaten without a word of complaint.

“He’s jealous of Matt?” Clint asks, leaning over his shoulder to read through the file. He knows Daredevil the best honestly — wouldn’t stop bragging that he got a name out of the guy, even if it wasn’t his actual one — and would be best if they need to ask Daredevil any kind of questions about this domestic abuse problem they’ve stumbled upon.

“Punisher said that he didn’t pin Daredevil for that kind of guy when he found out Daredevil didn’t like Matt. My best guess is jealousy.” Tony shrugs. His file on the Punisher comes up when he clicks on it. The mug shot of the man staring right back at him as he does so. “Although Daredevil and Punisher’s relationship was probably quite toxic too. Punisher did say he shot Daredevil in the head.” He’d give it to Little Red, that is a pretty good sign to break up with someone.

“Daredevil can leave the Punisher. He can protect himself and can leave him behind if he’s toxic. Matthew can’t.” Nat, oh so nicely, drops that horrifying bomb as he scrolls through the Punisher’s almost endless list of crimes.

“He couldn’t even tell the police because Punisher is a fugitive that he’d been harbouring.” Bucky continues, his eyes looking more glassy than they had this morning.

The air in the room is so tense Tony is tempted to try to crack a joke to break it. They’re all worried about this guy they’ve just met (apart from Steve) because Steve talks about him so goddamn much. Not to mention how much the two brainwashed assassins in particular hate people taking advantage of others.

“I’ll talk to him, tell him that we can protect him if he is hurting him.” Steve just looks tired, dejected even.

“I can go talk to Daredevil, see if he knows anything. The guy may be mad now because of the whole exes situation, but I doubt he’d let domestic abuse slide.” Clint offers his leg, jumping up and down once he finally sits himself down in a chair.

“I’ll come with you.” Bucky sits up and stares pointedly at Sam, who’d been completely silent up to this point.

Sam stares back with an unimpressed look on his face before he loudly groans and throws his hands up in the air. “Fine then, we can dance with the Devil!”

Steve gives his friend a sort of side hug as a thank you, and Bucky hugs him back. A gesture he would only ever take from Steve — maybe possibly Sam on a good day.

The mood in the tower doesn’t really go back to normal for the rest of the day. Each one of them is stressed and on edge, but for the minute none of them can do anything about it. Tony spends his hours researching, and Steve spends his hitting a punching bag until it falls off its hinges.

Mad is an understatement of how they feel about Frank fucking Castle.

Chapter Text

Steve is scared. He doesn’t like to admit it, but the thought that his friend might be in an abusive relationship is one that terrifies him beyond belief. Every time he came in with a minor bruise or a slight limp that he let be brushed off by clumsiness could’ve been someone beating his friend, and he’d just never known. Never pushed. If Tony hadn’t pushed in his quest to find Daredevil, then he might not have known until Matt was in a body bag.

Just his and Bucky’s brushed off suspicions until he couldn’t brush them off anymore because Matt would be dead.

He wouldn’t let that happen, so he went to church every night the next week, waiting for Matt to show up. Bruised and battered but alive. Please God, let him be alive.

It’s the sixth night, a Saturday night, when he’s stressed beyond belief that Matt finally shows up. His foot could’ve made a dent in the floor from bouncing it so much, and his neck hurts from how tense it is. His eyes were searching every corner of the church for some kind of movement that meant Matt had come and only seeing the occasional sympathetic nun or priest. Until Matt does come through the door, his face bruise free and his neck still covered by the scarf. A different scarf, though. This one seems softer than his old one, and it looks like it was actually wrapped around his neck with some thought behind it this time.

“Matt.” Steve practically jumps up onto his feet as soon as he sees him, his pure relief soaking through his words as his friend walks closer to him completely limp free.

“Hey, Steve,” Matt replies, with no hint of fear or even anger in his voice as he sits down on the pew next to him. The echo of an empty church brings his voice back to him over and over again.

“Are you okay?” He looks okay, so much more okay than he was when he came to the tower. Whatever had happened to get him so beat up had happened recently, and then had healed enough to be almost unnoticeable a week later. Almost. There are still the marks of a yellowing bruise around his eye. He has to look closely to see them, but they are there. The scarf and the long sleeves are still there. Almost every bit of Matt’s skin is still being hidden, and while he didn’t think too much about it before, his skin is always hidden.

“Okay as a blind man can be,” he laughs, folding up his cane without a care in the world. For a blind man, Matt always has a way of moving with such confidence it’s almost like he does know where everything is.

His throat feels dryer with every second he doesn’t say something else. Doesn’t get Matt to tell him everything wrong in his life and help him fix it. He just doesn’t know how to push it without ruining it all. If he goes too far, and Matt pushes him away, then that would just be a win for whoever is giving him burns in the first place. “We’re friends, aren’t we?” His vocal cords crack around the words, pushing them out despite the uncertainty still lingering in his chest.

Better uncertain and questioning than comfortable and idle.

“I’d like to believe we are. Even if I wasn’t aware that you were Captain America until a week ago.” Matt pushes the conversation onto him with ease, changing the subject in a way that’s almost rehearsed.

“I am sorry about that.”

“I’m really not bothered, Steve.” He waves Steve away, tilting his head to the side in the weird way he does whenever he feels the need to listen closely to something. What exactly he’s listening to is a mystery, but at least he’s listening. Nat gave him an hour long talk about how to stop Matt from shutting down and kicking Steve out of his life — a common enough trait from the victim in abusive relationships.

He’ll be honest, the fact that Matt is a man threw him off the abusive relationship trail for a bit. Good ol’ 1940s thinking patterns coming back to bite him. But he adjusts, he listens to Nat and Clint and Google and changes how he thinks. Men can be abused, disabled or not, but disabilities bring the chances up so much higher. That terrifies him, among many other things.

“You’d tell me if someone was hurting you, right?”

Matt nods, all too smoothly for it to be natural. “Well, no one is. Unless you count when I got mugged but—”

“You have burn marks on your wrists. Did you get that from a mugging?” Steve interrupts him before he even realises what he’s doing. Matt is tense, small things really, but he’s never been really calm when Steve’s around. It’s like he’s always trying to predict someone’s next move and figure out what to do. It’s what he used to do on a battlefield. His friend shouldn’t have to do it just to have a bastardly conversation. “What about when you come in with bruises around your neck that look like someone held you down and strangled you or every other time you come in here after you fall or bump into a wall?”

“Steve, how about you calm down?” Matt holds his hand up, his voice level and calm.

Steve takes a few breaths before whispering, “I just worry about you, Matt.” He’s getting stressed, he knows that. He can hear his own heartbeat for Pete’s sake, Steve can tell when he’s getting stressed. That still can’t seem to stop it.

“Well, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m not being abused, Steve. Trust me, Foggy and Karen would’ve dragged me out of there kicking and screaming already if I was.” Matt laughs, like this is just something he can brush off and ignore. “I got the burn marks at the office, actually. Tried to pour myself some coffee and got it on my wrist, went to the ER and it’s just a superficial burn.”

“Okay, I believe you.” Steve sighs, lying through his teeth. Tony checked his ER records after he left despite all their shouting to let him have a private life. Matt hasn’t been to the ER in years. Hasn’t even been to a doctor in years.

He thinks Matt knows that he’s not fooled. His hand is still gripping his cane like a lifeline after all.

“Are you dating Frank Castle?” Despite all his watching very low quality cameras, Tony cannot find much evidence beyond Frank’s words and Matt’s flustered expression when he was asked that Matt is actually dating the Punisher.

“No, we have seen each other a few times since I was his lawyer, but that is the extent of it. Really, we’re barely even friends.” He’s speaking like a lawyer really, rattling on about semantics like the blush on his face isn’t loud and clear. Or the way his voice rattles when he says they’re barely even friends doesn’t scream of something more between the two.

“Matthew, I want to believe so badly that you’re not getting hurt, but.” Steve rubs one hand over the other, trying to calm down his racing heartbeat so it would stop pounding in his own ear. “I just don’t want to be wrong and see you die.”

“I’m not going to die, Steve.” Matt’s smile has never seemed more forced on.

“If Frank can hit you, then he can kill you.”

Even if he had thought that Matt’s grip on his cane couldn’t get any tighter, it did.

“He’d never kill me,” he says through gritted teeth. His face pointed directly at Steve instead of vaguely in his direction, making it seem all the more threatening.

“So he’s hitting you then?” Steve asks, his hand almost begging to just reach out and shake his friend to just tell him what’s wrong. Matt must’ve noticed his trap too late, as his smile falters and his white knuckles only get paler. He doesn’t give him a chance to respond, however. “Strangulation is an almost guaranteed precursor to murder, Matthew. I don’t want to lose you, and neither do any of your friends.”

He can hear as Matt starts to calm himself, taking deep breaths over and over to loosen the grip on his cane that seems to be the only thing stopping him from breaking something. “I’m going to need you to listen to me very closely, Steve.” Matt speaks slowly, slipping back into his lawyer tone that makes Steve’s heart want to freeze again. “I want to be friends with you — you seem like you desperately need a few — but come in here and accuse one of my friends of beating me again and I will never speak to you again. I’m not some weak, blind man. Understood?”

“Matt, please.”

“Goodbye, Steve.” He gets up, his resolve clear as ever as he doesn’t even bother to hold on to the pews as he walks over. Muscle memory must’ve come in handy as he gets up without even walking into anything.

“Matt—” Steve tries to follow him, but gets hit in the chest by his cane.

“If you see me tomorrow at mass and have decided to believe me, then you can talk to me.” Matt speaks with a certainty that just screams in his face how much he’s fucked up. Oh, he’s pushed him away, hasn’t he? “If not, then leave me alone.”

Steve can only watch with a slack jaw as Matt leaves the church, off into the night to go home somewhere where he gets burns and can’t even get help for them. Somewhere Steve pushed him too because he couldn’t just mind his own business. It’s raining outside. He can hear the patter but can’t bring himself to even leave.

He’d come here to help Matt, but failed spectacularly in every meaning of the word.

With a sigh, he turns back around to go wallow in self pity in an empty church yet agin, only to find a nun in his line of sight staring longingly at the door. The door that Matt had just went through. He mentioned being raised here, didn’t he?

“He always was a stubborn one.” she almost laughs before she gets a hold of herself and takes a seat in the front pew. The lady looks stressed, almost upset. Well, at least she did know who Matt was. Steve takes his luck and goes to sit next to her. He almost feels bad for trying to get information out of a nun, but it isn’t like he’s interrogating her — just a friendly chat, is all.

“I just wish he’d tell me why he’s always so hurt.” Steve laments, his hands clasped together in his lap and his mind teetering on the edge of a prayer. Please God, just help Matt.

“I think we all wish Matthew would stop getting himself hurt.” She smiles, like she’d had this conversation millions of times and is willing to have it a million more. How many people had questioned Matt about his injuries before? How many had he brushed off and gone right back into whoever did it’s hands? “I’m Sister Maggie, son.”

She holds her hand out in front of him to shake, and he takes it as softly as he can. “Steve.”

Sister Maggie looks up at him like she already knows exactly who he is — it wouldn’t even surprise him. He’s not even wearing a hat or sunglasses, for Pete’s sake. “Stay here as long as you need, alright son.” She taps his shoulder, a weary smile on her face that reminded him all too much of Peggy’s in that nursing home and then she’s gone again. Steve is left with only his mistakes and the sound of rain hitting against a silent church for company.

Maybe Matt is right. Catholics do always feel sorry.

Matt really needs to learn when his teasing goes overboard. Who would’ve thought a comment about Daredevil not liking him would turn into this? Avengers around every corner, questioning in both facets of his life, thinking that Daredevil’s ex and Matt Murdock’s boyfriend, Frank Castle — a man who’d never twice look his way — is abusive. Frank! Now, the Punisher is many things that he does not approve of, but the man is in no way, shape or form an abuser.

He murders abusers. Shoots them in the head and leaves their bodies out in his city. Frank plays God against abusers, and to think that he’d ever stoop to their level is horrific. Which is why he hasn’t told him yet. He will — he promised Karen he would — but for now he’s just waiting for the Avengers to take it too far. To give him a proper reason to tell him beyond the Avengers are gossiping and thinking they are together.

Really, he doesn’t want to hear as Frank laughs his arse off at the prospect of them dating.

He doesn’t like that Frank kills, yes, ofcourse, but he also cares about his opinion. As well, they do have to work together for the traffickers, and saving people always comes before this petty rivalry. That goes for the Avengers too. No matter how guilty he may feel towards Steve, his bleeding heart and his unhealthy levels of stress that surrounds Matt’s nonexistent situation.

Which is why he doesn’t run away when he hears Bucky, Clint and someone who sounds like they have metal strapped to their back which is folded out into wings walk into Hell’s Kitchen without a worry at all.

“How do you normally get this guy’s attention?” Bucky says after five minutes of the three of them wandering back alleys and empty paths in the night without any obvious purpose behind each step. His arm makes whirring noises whenever he moves it, which would be silent to someone normal. His heartbeat is loud as well, like Steve’s, so he has plenty of markers for the man’s movement should they have to fight.

“Well, he just kind of shows up.” Clint makes a movement he can only guess is a shrug. It’s harder to pick up smaller movements when he’s further away. About four rooftops away actually and slowly making his way closer without tipping any of them off that he’s here. Call it payback for the tower incident.

“Can he show up quicker? I was promised a dance.” Matt stifles a laugh at the wingman’s words, something that Bucky doesn’t do as he snorts and gets hit in the non-metal arm for it. “How did you get people to show up in the 1930s?”

“Ask them, send a letter, or you could call them if you had the money.”

“Anyone got a pigeon handy?”

“Daredevil, would be awfully nice of you to show up now!” Clint is still basically pacing around the same two blocks. Desperately looking around for Matt, who’s even more desperate not to be seen. Truly, it’s a symbiotic relationship. He decides to take pity on the man and leans over the edge of the rooftop to be visible to the lot of them. After they don’t notice him after three seconds, he decides his best course of action is to do what Daredevil does best and scare the shit out of people.

“Don’t know, I’m not much of a dancer.” He doesn’t even have to speak that loudly to get the lot of them to whip their heads up at him, likely staring from how he can hear Bucky’s eye squinting. It’s a slight movement, but Bucky’s body is a loud one.

Matt hears the three of them as they flinch, as their heartbeats get quicker and their breath quickens. Bucky’s is just louder.

“Daredevil! How have you been, man?” Clint is the first to shout up at him, his head moving side to side before it latches onto the fire escape that Matt uses to climb down to him. This conversation will be hard if he has to keep repeating himself.

“I’ve been okay. How’s interrogating lawyers been going?” The sound of three heartbeats jumping as he speaks is almost missed in the sound of his feet as he climbs down the fire escape. Despite all his attempts to block it out, the thing is as rickety as a newborn foal’s legs.

“You know about that?” Wingman crosses his arms and nudges against the wings behind his back. How do they expand? Is it a button or do they move with his arms?

“Nelson attached the thing to me and I got an earful.” Not completely a lie, Foggy did attach the whole thing directly to Daredevil and he most definitely got an earful. Many earfuls. Honestly, the earful of a century. He calmed down when he explained how extremely little he knew about them thinking he was getting beaten. Matt’s not shocked they came to that conclusion, but it’s still annoying as all hell.

“We had our reasons, man.” Bucky’s metal fist pulls into a fist. His heartbeat is still as worried as it was back in the tower when he spoke to him as Matt. He must really care about Steve a lot to get this worked up over one of his friends.

“Who are you again?” Matt says in the most tired voice he can. It’s not like Daredevil knows his name, and his “I know everything” shtick can only go so far.

“Bucky, this is Falcon.” He points over to wingman — Falcon — then stares at him in a way that makes him think he’s going to keep talking. Make Matt dig himself into a hole he can’t get out of like Steve did.

“Yes, well, whatever they are, they really aren’t my business.” He shrugs him off before he can manage it. Then he turns to Clint, his voice as intimidating as he can manage it. “Now, why are you here?”

“We just wanted to train with the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen himself.” Clint’s heart jumps — a lie. He’s a good liar — as expected from a shield agent — he’ll give him that.

“Yes, you can certainly learn a lot from the man without fear!” Falcon joins in, almost as fake enthusiastic as Clint was.

Matt moves his head between the two of them, pretending to look, then points towards Bucky. “He can’t punch me with the metal arm.” Foggy would kill him if that happened.

“No promises.”

“I come out here to help people Clint, not to talk to Avengers.” Matt’s only go so long out here tonight before he has to meet Frank. He’d called him on his burner phone, early in the morning when Daredevil had just went in for the night, and told him to meet at one of his old safehouses. No real explanation, just that he’d found something and needed Daredevil’s help. Matt’s got about three hours out beating criminals up tonight before he has to begrudgingly drag himself to Frank’s safehouse thats a tad too close to the ruined building of Midland circle for comfort.

“We can do both. We’re multi-faceted.” Clint sounds confident, and it’s not even like he’s lying.

Besides, this could be an opportunity to get the Avengers fully off of Matt’s back before he has to go spill how much of an idiot he is to Frank. This is his last chance considering that in their meeting tonight he would have no reason for him not to tell him unless he has already fixed it. He can do this. Even if none of his plans have worked up to this point. “Come on, then.” He waves for them to come with as he climbs his way back to the rooftop. This is going to be a long night.

Against popular belief, Hell’s Kitchen is just as loud at night as it is during day. There’s still the sounds of joy and laughter crashing against the sounds of misery as people do what they do. Murder, assault, bribery, extortion, kidnapping — the lot of it went on every night. He could hear people suffering, crying and begging for someone to save them. How is he supposed to ignore all that?

The three Avengers follow his path quite well, trying to make small talk with him as he runs from scream to scream. Scared heartbeat to scared heartbeat. With each one, they try to help all they can, and while he’s thankful for that, he does get a lot more people with racing heartbeats than he normally does.

People are used to the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen springing into action and beating people who deserve it into the pavement. Three Avengers, not so much.

Sam has wrapped Bucky into telling him a very long-winded story about his time in the forties — and that’s where he knows him, the Winter Soldier trials — when Matt catches it. A cry. Quiet and withdrawn as the man above him keeps on kicking him. A boy, a teenager, around fifteen. He’s running before the three can even take a breath.

They shout after him, but he only stops when he’s on the rooftop before it. The window into the apartment where the sound is coming from is just metres in front of his face. The kid’s crying is withdrawn, and occasionally he’ll beg the man to stop to no avail.

“What was that!” Clint shouts, pointedly not out of breath after all that running. Matt shushes him before pointing towards the window, just in time for them to see the man come into view with his hands grasping the crying kid’s hair. “Oh shit,” he sighs, kneeling down next to him at the edge of the rooftop.

“How did he know that?” Sam whispers to Bucky, too far away for Clint to hear.

The sound is lost to the wind as Bucky doesn’t even bother replying to it before he says, “What’s the plan?”

“We go through the door.” Surprisingly, three Avengers and a Daredevil don’t get stopped as they walk across to the front door of the apartment building and just go up the stairs. None of the few residents actually out at this hour even tilt their heads towards them. Eye movements are harder to track, but their heartbeats only spike for a moment before their walking gets quicker.

Well, this is Hell’s Kitchen, and Daredevil has a pretty good reputation with the locals. If he’s beating someone up, they deserve it.

Bucky seems ready to punch and/or kick down the door the second Matt confirms which one they’re in. He decides to knock on the door a few times, and when he’s shouted at to get lost, then he kicks down the door. At least then he tried to be less destructive about it.

The man goes down easy. His punches are weak and uncentered. In fact, Matt can tell the guy is drunk from the way he sways on his feet and slurs his words. Not to mention how much the whole apartment reeks of alcohol. He’s used to beating up a kid, so a good few punches and he’s disorientated enough that Matt can throw the guy to Bucky and let him deal with him. “Don’t kill him!”

He’s scared. The kid — really should a teenager be that tiny? — is shaking like a leaf as he leans against the bed behind him. Matt works off the limited knowledge from Claire on what to do if people are in shock, and he grabs a blanket to cover the kid up. He’s bruised and has got so many broken bones that Matt can hear the blood rushing around the injuries and the cuts around his arms. “You’re okay” Matt lets himself drop the devil voice for a moment. Speaking softly for a kid who needs it. “Come on, let’s get you outside, okay?”

It takes a few more minutes of coaxing for the kid to calm his heart enough to get onto his feet. The man — his father, as the kid had informed him — had fucked up his legs so Matt had to wrap one arm over his shoulder to help him walk. He moves him as quickly as he can through the living room, only taking a second to take stock of the broken, but still alive, man crumpled on the floor and to tell Clint to “Call the police.”

“You got it Devil.”

Matt tries to keep talking when he and the kid get outside. The blanket is still wrapped around the kid as tightly as can be considering how thin his actual clothes are and how cold it is outside. He keeps on talking about dumb stories in an attempt to keep the kid’s mind off everything that just happened. It may not work well, but he can try.

When he can hear the sirens nearing in, he tells the kid to tell the police everything. Including him and the other three Avengers. Cases like this need all the evidence they can get.

Then he jumps back onto the roof where the three Avengers had congregated. The smell of blood on knuckles is one shared amongst the three of them, Bucky’s with a bit more metal mixed in.

When he hears Brett Mahoney’s heartbeat, Matt almost does grin like a devil. He sits on the edge of the roof, in clear sight despite Sam’s warnings. A man has to mess with someone, right?

“You with them?” Brett shouts, his hands on his hips, from the ground. The three in question are hovering over his shoulder like they’re waiting for the cop to start attacking for no reason.

“They won’t leave me alone, Mahoney.”

“Now you know how I feel.” After the snort Clint lets out at that, he waves the detective goodbye and gets back to his jumping. There’s always more people to save, after all.

“You really do all this every night?” Sam asks, despite how he’s been using his wings to help get between each rooftop and has the least right to complain.

“Normally I do more when I’m not being followed.” He’s only got about an hour left out here. They’ve already spent two hours going from rooftop to rooftop, saving anyone who comes into his hearing range. If he’s going to say something, he’s got to do it now. It’s either that or tell Frank.

“Break please, my good demon sir.” Clint asks, taking a seat on the edge of a rooftop before he can even reply. Matt sighs; it’s as good of an opportunity as ever. He sits next to him and listens to each of their heartbeats. The irregularities, the strangeness of each one when compared with another — it’s fascinating, really.

Clint’s head is facing towards him every few seconds, his heart jumping with it. “Just ask your questions, Clint.” Matt spits out. “I’m not an idiot. You’re practically squirming.”

“What are you and Frank, actually?” Clint stumbles around his own words, figuring out the best way to ask the question he’s had since the first day they met. A question Matt has no idea how he’s come to the conclusion of.

“We work together. He’s an arsehole, but he’s reliable when I need him to be.” That is the truth, really. Whatever deluded thinking Matt lets himself fall into on frosty nights or the unfounded ramblings of the Avengers, who seem so sure to find a fire when there isn’t even proper kindling, doesn’t matter.

“Dude, my ears may be fucked, but I do have working eyes. There’s something more between you two.” Clint pushes on anyway, his shoulder nudging against Matt’s in what he guesses is a friendly gesture. Falcon and Bucky are sitting to the side of him, quietly bickering amongst themselves for a moment before focusing back in on their conversation. They’re really focused on this, aren’t they? No matter what he does, they won’t let up. Unless.

Matt lets himself slouch more. His hands holding on the edge of the roof tighten their hold, and his voice cracks slightly as it comes out. “He doesn’t like me like that. Not anymore, probably never will.” He tilts his head away from them and focuses on their heartbeats. Luckily for him, they’re moved by his little fake display of emotion. Emotion he definitely does not feel.

He can’t feel that way about Frank. Forgetting about the few lingering touches and jumps in heart rate that he clings onto, Frank just will never see him like that. He shouldn’t be thinking of him like that anyway.

“I get that, man.” Bucky pats his shoulder, a touch of longing in his voice that beats his display tenfold.

The air feels different after that. He can’t place it on any one feature, but the three Avengers just seem more nervous. Twitchy even, as he waits for them to keep on talking. Matt’s not dumb enough to think his other self won’t come up somehow in this mess. Clint might’ve dropped this whole thing if it weren’t for Stark and his dragging Matt Murdock to his apartment because of Frank’s dumb little comment.

Dumb little comments have been what’s been getting him into a lot of these messes.

“Does he like Matt Murdock?” Clint asks, finally breaking the ice.

“No.”

“I don’t believe that.” Falcon snorts, getting a jab in the shoulder by Bucky for it. “I saw Matt’s face when Stark asked him. That man has feelings for him if anything.” Matt has to hold himself back from screaming that he does not in fact have feelings for Frank. Not only because he doesn’t, but because that would either reveal his identity and put his friends at risk, or paint him even more than a crazy jealous ex.

Never thought he’d be a crazy ex to a man he’s never even dated, but a first time for everything.

“Why do you all care about mine and the lawyer’s love lives so much?”

“Because the lawyer is getting hurt. A lot. Partner that with the fact that he’s with a man who’s very happy-go-lucky with murder—” Bucky chimes in. His heartbeat picks up quickly enough that he can barely catch the man’s outburst until it’s already started.

“Frank would never hit his partner. He does have morals.” Matt interrupts him, trying to gain some semblance of control over the conversation again.

“You never think someone can be an abuser until they are.”

“Frank never hit me.” A weak argument, and he knows it.

“Are you a blind lawyer?” Clint shouts, his voice frantic and his tone full of worry.

The man is anxious beyond belief, trying desperately to help who he thinks is a man in an abusive relationship with a murderer. But, by God, it takes all the strength Matt has not to burst out laughing at that. His face is held neutral by the grace of God and the pain in his hand as he grips the side of the roof as hard as he can.

He’s not getting anywhere with this. It was a last ditch attempt to get out of his responsibility, really. Those always do end in disaster, so this may be the best time he’s got to just come clean to Frank and get his help out of this mess.

“You’re all on such a wrong track it’s pathetic.” Matt spits out, playing off the crack in his voice when his laughter tries to crawl out of his throat. “I need your help with this Chitauri tech situation, but after that I want you out of my city. Permanently.” He puts on his best devil grin and slips off into the night before he lets Clint even reply. The conversation between the three Avengers isn’t that eventful afterwards. They’re all convinced that Daredevil is unaware of the abuse and is refusing to look into it because he loves Frank. So they not only still think he’s being abused, and now they think his alter ego is complicit in it.

Great job, Matt, you made it worse.

Midland Circle still smells of blood. That’s what hits him first as he drags himself to Frank’s safe house, shoulders hunched, head dropped and mind racing for some way to spin this and not get Frank pissed with him. He has to ignore the smell of rotting corpses, disinfectant and bones as he takes the longest path to Frank’s safe house just to be as far away from Midland Circle as possible.

Frank doesn’t know more than the barebones of what happened in Midland Circle. Matt got some friends, fought some immortal ninjas, blew the building up, and got badly injured for the next few months. That’s all he needs to know. The building falling on top of him and the girl he’d wanted another chance at living a life with is something he can keep to himself.

The safe house is barebones. Really just the necessities, as many guns as you could fit in a box and enough beer to rival Matt’s apartment. The tables are sticky, like the ones in the bars he and Foggy frequented in college. Despite any attempt to keep the place as sterile as possible, there’s a sense of homeliness there that he can’t quite place to just one thing. The couch is soft. Different from the ones Frank used to have in his old safe houses, the ones that Matt used to complain about for being too rough for his liking.

Despite Frank complaining about his being a “princess,” he’s actually taken his comments on board.

“Well, you’re living in luxury, aren’t you?” He laughs as he closes the window behind him and sits next to Frank on the couch. There’s a strange amount of stuff on top of the table. He can smell the gun oil, the metal of the bullets, the paper sprawled across the surface and the iron of Chitauri tech he’s gotten to know quite well recently.

“Good one, Red.”

Matt leans forward and picks the metal up. There are grooves and imperfections that must be too small for the human eye to see carved into the side. It’s cold, so if it does shoot anything, then it must’ve run out of power. “What’s this?”

“Some of the trafficker’s alien tech I swiped.” Frank almost sounds triumphant as he takes back the contraption. With a few button presses, it slips out into an even bigger metal contraption. His hands instinctively flinch up to his ears as the thing starts to buzz, but this thing’s whirring isn’t as invasive as the rest of them. In fact, it isn’t even loud enough to throw him off. Like the tick of a clock that he learns to zone out, it doesn’t infect his ears like all the others do.

“It isn’t buzzing like the others.” Matt leans closer to it, paying attention to how it’s buzzing now he knows it won’t rupture his ears. It’s faint, and it comes in and out almost like Morse code except they don’t make any words he can figure out.

“Because this one doesn’t attack, it carries messages, so it’s got less energy than the others.” Frank tells him, pushing it back into itself to stop the buzzing and shoving it back onto the table, making many papers fly off in the process that he can’t be bothered to pick up. “I had Micro hack into it. They’re getting a big shipment in a week and a half. Big enough to blow up half of New York.”

These people can never do things in small doses, can they? No, it has to be all or nothing.

“We’re stopping them,” he says like an indisputable fact. How they’ll do that, he has no idea, but he’s sure he can figure it out with the backdrop of the Avengers being up his arse.

They’ll help. It’ll be a pissy, very annoying mission, but the Avengers wouldn’t let their personal grudge with Frank and maybe Daredevil — if they really think he’s letting abuse slide — get in the way of saving millions of people. They will get everyone to safety, get rid of all the tech, and then Matt will have to hide Frank away before Black Widow and Steve can get him stuck in a corner and he ends up either dead or back in prison.

For now at least, Matt wouldn’t like Frank back in prison. He’s a lot more help out here when he’s abstaining from murder sprees.

“We’ll need some of your Avengers friends to help.” Frank points out, like the annoying person he is. Matt focuses on his heartbeat. It’s steady, more elevated than normal, but he did find out that people might be trying to destroy New York in a week’s time. He’s allowed to be stressed.

“Do we?” Matt tries, his devil grin back on his face. A last ditch attempt to squirm himself out of this conversation.

“With the stuff messing with your hearing and our overall inability to get rid of the stuff, I’d say they’re definitely needed.” It fails. Fails miserably. Frank notices how his face changes, however, and that makes his heart jump. “What’s wrong, Altar boy?” His voice is low, almost gravelly, as he speaks. Like he knows exactly what’s wrong and wants to drag it out of him anyway.

“I need you to promise to hear me out completely.”

“Swear to God, Red.” Frank’s heart speeds up, his muscles tense, and his hand rubs at his face before he takes such a large swig of beer that he nearly empties the bottle in one.

“Watch yourself.” Matt takes the other beer on the table and gets a glare in return.

“I’ll put a dollar in the blasphemy jar.” Frank says, all without stopping his staring. Matt suddenly feels the room get warmer as the silence drags on.

“You remember when Tony Stark came around asking questions about me.”

“When he asked if you hated yourself and you said you did? Yeah, I do remember that.”

Honestly, he doubts he’d ever forget that night. Tony wasn’t even out of hearing distance when Frank burst into laughter. If the guy were a little more alert, then he would’ve noticed Matt shouting at Frank to shut up not even minutes after he’d left. He honestly wishes he’d just told Tony to fuck off, or maybe he should’ve just told Black Widow and Clint to fuck off. For once in Matt’s life, pushing people away would’ve actually made the situation better.

A voice in his head that sounds all too much like Foggy says that Clint was one of the few reasons he survived that bomb, so maybe Clint is good to have close. The rest of them can fuck off. Though Thor is okay too.

Maybe if they just kept out of his life as Matt Murdock, then he could’ve liked the bastards.

“Well, by then the Avengers sort of thought we were exes.” Matt hadn’t taken it seriously when he first heard it, then after Tony dropped in, Frank was too busy laughing at him for him to get the suspicion out. Now that he’s finally told them, Frank lets out a snort loud enough for him to hear it on the other side of Hell’s Kitchen.

“Seriously? You and me? The goody two shoes altar boy and the guy that shot him in the head?” Frank shoves his shoulder before sitting back, all the while giggling over himself.

“They think I’m your jealous ex.” Matt takes another swig as Frank continues to laugh.

Then, he puts a few pieces together. “Wait if they think you hate Matt, and you're my jealous ex.” Frank puts down his empty beer bottle onto the table. The sound of the clink against it rings out in his ear. “Red, please don’t tell me Earth’s mightiest heroes think I’m dating Matt Murdock and am exes with Daredevil.”

“It was your silk sheets comment that made it worse.” Matt finishes his own beer and gets the two of them another one. The sound of Frank’s death by laughter fades into the background. They’ve got a week before the tech comes in, and Matt doesn’t have work tomorrow, so the two of them can get drunk as fuck to deal with this shitty ass situation. That’s never gone wrong for him before.

“Are you done?” Matt snaps after Frank’s laughter carries on too long and the beer he’s holding for him gets too cold in his hand.

“Gimme a minute!”

“There are more important things, Frank.”

“Yes, like the Avengers’ lack of common sense, apparently!” he snorts, taking the beer off him with a grin.

“Frank, Steve Rogers has been going to my church lately and picking up on my frequent bruises.” Well, at least that sobers him up.

“Ah, shit.” Frank puts his beer down, banging it against the gun that’s placed there. Sometimes Matt wonders how he and Frank got here. From two vigilantes with completely different ideas of justice fighting each other to whatever they are now. Friends? Work partners? He can’t deny the way he drifts towards Frank whenever they are near each other, the way he feels the need to defend him even when he isn’t there.

Matt is feeling things he shouldn’t be feeling for a murderer. Except that never stopped him with Elektra either.

“Then Tony invited me to the tower the day after I got blown up by a bomb.” Matt says, wanting to down every beer in Frank’s fridge because his luck couldn’t be any more shitty, could it?

“They think I’m being a piece of shit to you, don’t they?” Frank sounds almost broken as he speaks. It must hurt for someone to think he could abuse someone. Someone he’s supposed to love even more. Frank loved his wife more than anything — still does — and while Matt doubts he could ever move on, if he did, no matter what he was like as the Punisher, that would get dropped at the door.

He knows Frank doesn’t think he’s capable of loving and being the Punisher. So, to hear other people think that too must be crushing.

“I’ve told them everyway I can, you’re not.” Matt tries. He knows Frank, knows how he acts around victims, around people he reluctantly cares about. His beer joins Frank’s on the table. He places it lighter to not jolt the gun. A sideways attempt to ignore its presence.

“They won’t listen to you—hell, they shouldn’t. Blind guy comes in every week full of bruises, no matter who their partner is. You gotta look into the scumbag.”

“But you wouldn’t do that,” he argues.

“Of course I wouldn’t. Your face is too pretty for that.” Frank’s heart doesn’t jump at his jab, and Matt tries to ignore the fact that his does. Honestly, he gets too worked up over Frank’s jokes. That’s all they are, of course. No matter what he does, that won’t change. It will never change. “But I have murdered people. I don’t blame them for taking the leap.”

Matt blames them.

“I don’t know what to do Frank, I’ve gone at this situation every way I can think of, and it only makes it worse.” He tugs off his cowl, the feel of it crushing on his face becoming too much to bear. Mind controls the body, he repeats over and over again in his head. His heart is getting faster. He can hear it pound in his own ears. For a second, he feels like that little kid in the orphanage again.

“Hey, take a breath, Red.” Frank places his hand on his shoulder, and it grounds him back in the moment. With the mask in his hands and the smell of gun oil around him. “We can figure this out. Besides, they have no proof we are even dating, so just deny, deny, deny.”

“I’m supposed to be the lawyer here,” he scoffs. His shoulder feels colder once Frank’s hand leaves it.

“Well, then again, you do have the Avengers thinking we were dating and exes at the same time, so.” Frank picks the beers back up. The bottles feel more room temperature by now, but he truly doesn’t care.

“Actually, they think you’re a whore in love with Daredevil and Matt Murdock at the same time.”

“Damn, I thought they came as a packaged deal.”

“I thought you were going to be pissed at me.” He sighs, taking a drink from the beer. Matt can already feel the alcohol getting into his system, but he truly doesn’t care. Despite all odds, he does trust Frank.

“I made it worse too, Red, even if your silk sheets are great. Can’t take all the blame yourself, no matter how Catholic you are.”

After a couple more beers, Matt can hear Hell’s Kitchen start to transition from its nighttime awakeness to its morning time awakeness. Fewer whispers in back alleys and the smell of gun oil or alcohol down each street. There’s coffee being made by tired, underpaid baristas and given to more tired workers just trying to get through the morning. People are hiding less, and the sun is starting to peek through the badly drawn curtain.

Yet Matt is still at Frank’s apartment. Neither of them has slept, and talking has gone on for far too long for him to just leave. He doesn’t even want to leave. The smell of guns and bullets and even grenades has just mixed into one in his head.

“You want to stay the night? It’s dark out there, and it’s not like you have work tomorrow,” Frank says, despite the fact that it’s basically morning already.

“I would, but—” Matt has church in the morning. It would be good to get a few hours in before he takes a few ibuprofen and tries to ignore the fact that he’s hungover and is being watched by an Avenger who thinks he’s being abused.

“No, it’s fine. You’re Daredevil. You can deal with the streets at night.” Frank interrupts him, his heartbeat running fast. Probably because of the alcohol. No, definitely because of the alcohol.

“Bye Frank,” Matt says, dragging himself up onto his feet.

“Bye, Red,” Frank mumbles, a touch of longing in his voice that Matt convinces himself he drunkenly made up. “Don’t make anyone else think we’re in love, alright!” He shouts after him as he climbs out the window, the Daredevil mask shoved back onto his face.

“With the way things are going, no promises.”

Matt stumbles his way back to his apartment and chalks up the sound of Frank berating himself to drunk hallucinations. He’s got to get himself under control. He’s got a Steve Rogers to convince that he isn’t being abused after all.

Chapter Text

The Avengers never do follow orders to leave him alone. He thinks you have to sign a contract to be as annoying as possible to even join the damn team. Black Widow and Bucky will be prowling around his city, following him as Matt Murdock, while Tony or Clint or even Thor will try to tag along with him as Daredevil. Luckily, none of them have tried to go after Frank, or they would have gotten a face full of either lead or rubber bullets depending on how he feels that day.

Matt only gets more pissed off with every day that passes. He can’t even do his work in the office without hearing the sound of a metal arm whirring and two heartbeats constantly watching him. As Daredevil, he can handle it, but he has been trying to put as much effort into his Matt Murdock life as he does his Daredevil life, and it is hard with the constant reminder right behind his head.

He’s started pulling his blinds shut in his office at night and just not bothering to pull them open. It’s not like a blind guy can enjoy the view, so it isn’t even suspicious to the two that he’s done it. Karen doesn’t find it suspicious either, so she only comes by to open them back up on his second day of trying this.

“Don’t,” Matt catches her hand the second it tries to pull on the blind. Karen’s heart speeds up, she turns her head around for any signs of immediate danger, and then finally turns to him in what he can guess is the most unimpressed facial expression known to man.

“Matthew, why exactly can’t I pull your blinds open?”

“Because there’s two Avengers watching me on the other side.” They haven’t bugged his office yet, thankfully, so he can say whatever he likes. Karen must’ve noticed that from his free use of speech as she grabs out her phone and asks which ones it is, which he gives.

“Is this because they think you’re dating Frank?” She asks, her words overlapping with the sound of her clicking on her phone. He’ll have to make sure she doesn’t try to sneak around Avengers Tower to find out a way to get them to back off. Yet everything he knows about Karen says that it wouldn’t work anyway.

“They’re trying to find evidence of us meeting up. It’s just annoying because they’re always around.”

“I could just happen to notice them and flip them off.”

“They already think you’re complacent in my abuse, Karen,” Matt laughs. Karen laughs with him, her chest sounding a bit more hollow.

“I thought you were being abused when I first started working here.” She admits as her phone is left forgotten on her desk. The worst part is how sincere she sounds, like this was a genuine fear she had for what, a year? A genuine fear that the Avengers now have.

“Seriously?”

“Either that or really bad luck.”

Matt has a problem of not noticing how bad his situations can seem from the outside. To most people, he’s a smart blind guy who just needs help with things. A lot of things. Most of his childhood was spent trying to convince people he could be more than just the weak, blind kid. But unless he tells people his identity, and what exactly he can do, then Matt is stuck as the blind guy with enough bruises and a scary enough — not even his real — partner to be considered a possible abuse case.

“I don’t know how to get out of this, Karen.” He groans, rubbing at his eyes and pushing his glasses off. Then wincing when he forgot about the black eye hidden just underneath. If the Avengers saw that, then they’d get pissed.

“The only way I can think of is telling them you’re Daredevil, or convincing them you’re not dating Frank, but that would just get them off his back and not yours.” Karen sighs, leaning against his desk. Well, one of those options would leave to him never getting left alone, and the other seems physically impossible.

“They’re pretty adamant we’re dating, Karen.”

“Well, for good reason.” Karen shrugs, speaking with the calmest tone known to man before getting back to her researching.

Wait, what?

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Matt asks, sitting back in his chair. What could she have possibly meant by that except, well, that? He’s not dating Frank, could never date Frank, and why does everyone think he’s dating Frank!

Karen only laughs, tilting her head towards him before speaking in a quite bewildered tone. “Come on, Matt, I know you’re blind, but really?”

Matt can only shrug, refusing to believe Karen, one of his closest friends and loved ones, actually believes that. She can’t believe that.

“I’m not dealing with this.” She laughs, full chest laughs, before getting up and walking to the door. “Use your super senses and sense what is in front of you, Murdock, or so God help me.” Her heart is perfectly calm as she goes back to her office while Matt’s pounds in his ears.

This is bad. He thought he was hiding that pull towards Frank well, for Christ’s (sorry, Lord) sake! Frank doesn’t like him. He’s accepted that, now if everyone could stop trying to foolishly convince him he has a chance, that would be insanely helpful so he could keep accepting that.

It’s only a few seconds after Karen left that Foggy’s heartbeat comes around the corner. “What did you do to piss Karen off, man?” He says, shaking his head before walking into his office. Directly to the blinds.

“Don’t open the blinds, Foggy,” Matt warns the second he takes a step towards them, not eager to repeat this conversation.

“What are you light-phobic now?” Foggy laughs before getting into serious mode to ask if he’s okay.

Oh, this is going to be a long day.

The Avengers kept to his requests with the mission. He’d told Clint everything. People’s safety came before his own personal drama with the Avengers, and thankfully, they’ve decided to not all come into his bloody city like he told them to. It’s only Clint and Black Widow. Black Widow is the best for a stealth mission, and out of all of them he trusts Clint the most. Tony is a rich asshole, Steve is a good guy, but he’s overbearing, Thor is actually pretty great but just very loud and this mission requires stealth, he actually hasn’t met the Hulk yet, — Neither does he think the guy who’s known for smashing things will be very helpful with this — Bucky would get too pissed off seeing Frank and he’s attached to the hip with Sam.

This was the best option.

“Why is he here?” Widow sounds like she’s holding back a decade long rivalry worth of malice in her voice when they drop onto the rooftop they agreed to meet on. Turns out all the Avengers get pissed off seeing Frank these days — which he’s only feeling worse about by the day — as Clint immediately drags him aside so Widow can whisper shout at him out of Frank’s hearing range.

“Because he’s helpful, now if we can leave our petty squabbles at the door until we deal with this shit. Please?” Nat’s heart rate doesn’t necessarily get quicker — she’s good at holding it down — but her breathing definitely gets heavier. Clint’s heart does get faster, and now he’s praying to God that these two don’t let their false ideas get in the way of actually helping people.

“I don’t consider abuse a petty squabble, Daredevil.” Widow says through gritted teeth, her body shifting into a more offensive stance almost naturally.

“Nat,” Clint warns. They stare at each other, their hands moving in what he can decipher as sign language — what they’re saying is a different story — before Clint sighs. “I don’t like it either, but come on, you can beat him up later.”

Before Matt can argue that they definitely cannot beat up Frank later, said man shouts at them to hurry themselves up while cocking his gun for what must be the fifth time. He’s getting impatient, the Avengers are getting pissed off, Matt’s hearing is getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of noise down by the docks and he can already tell that this isn’t going to end well.

They’re down by the docks. There’s about thirty to fourty men spattered about — their heartbeats can fade into the buzz if they get too close — and too much tech to count. Containers after containers. Bombs on top of bombs. Weapons piled on top of more weapons in some kind of sadistic game of Jenga.

He can’t even stop his hand when they reach up to rub against his temples as he tries to focus, the cowl getting in the way. He can hear Frank’s footsteps as he kneels next to him, a hand on his shoulder as he speaks.

“You alright, Red?”

“Yeah, just a lot.” Matt brushes him off, his head trying to wade through the amount of noise going through his ears at once. Mind controls the body, mind controls the body. Stick’s voice is in the centre of his head, telling him to find what’s important, to pick it out. All he can seem to find is buzzing.

“The tech interferes with your—psychic thing, doesn’t it?” Clint cuts himself halfway through the question. So psychic is what they’re running with now? Well, anything that keeps them further away from the truth is the best option, really.

“You could say that.” He shrugs, keeping the laugher from bubbling over in his throat.

“Can you tell how much of it there is?” Black Widow is tapping away at something — some kind of screen — as she speaks. After all this time, the Avengers must have some way of tracking Chitauri tech beyond just listening to it. It’s dangerous and volatile after all, and that’s why he wants it out of his city.

“At least twelve crates that have it in, a few with scrap metal or regular old bombs depending on how they’re feeling. There’s about five guys meeting in the stern there.” He knows there’s five heartbeats. He can hear them speaking, the shifts of their clothing, the sound of the guns in their coats hitting against their chests whenever they move. The rest of it is a bit fuzzy. Too close to the tech for him to read it properly, and the smell of gun oil can only get him so far.

“Can you not tell?” Frank sounds almost alarmed as he speaks. Matt can always pinpoint things down, figure out exactly where people are from miles away, but with this stupid tech he just can’t differentiate it all. It takes too much of his strength to just separate the sounds of heartbeats from the sounds of drumming to the sound of a phone ringing.

“Well, me and Devil can go straight to where the people are, Clint and Frank can work on getting all the tech rounded up.” Widow stands up, as calm as ever, and begins making her way into the dragon’s den. Matt hesitates, taking a second to let his ears actually hear something normal for a minute before the buzzing takes over.

“Frank.” He mumbles, grabbing the man’s arm to bring him closer. The gun oil, the thump of his heart, the feel of his leather jacket — it’s familiar in a way that he needs. “Don’t kill anyone, alright?”

“Got rubber bullets all for you, Red.” Frank pats his gun before following Clint off the rooftop. At least it’s Clint. If Matt trusts any of the Avengers not to go crazy on Frank, then it’s him.

The ship is — in one word — overstimulating. Beyond the constant ear-grating buzz that covers every corner of every corridor, there’s the smell of disinfectant, of bleach and of metal that drags into his nose with every step. He can barely even hear Frank’s heartbeat as he moves silently on the surface. If they are even having a conversation, it’s lost to the wind as Matt is far too focused on ensuring their wellbeing, paying attention to the five men still in the stern and pushing out the buzz from overtaking everything to get a single word of it. Even his costume starts to grate on his skin at a certain point.

That’s when Widow decides to start talking. A light whisper that he has to really focus on to even hear. “Why do you like that man?”

“Frank is reliable.” He infers she’s referring to him. A guess, really. Most of what he’s doing is guesswork when surrounded by so much sound.

“Reliability doesn’t make someone bat their eyelashes.”

“Hey—” Matt’s attempts at a retort are squashed when Widow puts her hand over his mouth and shoves the two of them against a wall. Footsteps, connected to a heartbeat which he sorely missed, come trotting by just moments later, and he has to stop himself from kicking himself. He can do that afterwards.

“We don’t have time to get into your romantic issues, alright?” Widow whispers once the man is finally out of range. Matt nods — despite her being the one who brought it up, thank you — and gets out his billy clubs. The buzzing is still there, but something in his hands helps. He can’t help but yearn for Frank’s jacket at times like this.

His thoughts are quickly brushed away, his focus sharp on five men still conversing on deals and sales and whatever scumbags like them talk about while carting around explosives. They aren’t ranting about imminent destruction, so guesses they’re more the let’s make money kind of arseholes than the love of the game kind of arsehole. Those kinds are easier to deal with. They’re more predictable in their moves.

No one is guarding the door, and the fact that it’s locked does nothing to deter the Widow. He can hear her picking the lock. The sound of metal clicking is barely registered past the buzzing. It all falls quickly into pure ringing. They don’t have any of the tech on them, only plain old guns, so his ears should be able to function. She nods up at him, and he drags his head up and down back. Here goes nothing.

“Devil!” is shouted above the sounds of muffled breaths and rushed heartbeats. It takes his attention for a second, and one of them gets a good punch in his face. He reacts, knocking their head against the wall a few times before they’re out cold, and then he’s onto the next one. Knives slit past his face, and guns bash against his ribs. All he can do is react. The buzzing takes away so much of his planning that he can only hear the shift in the air as they go for a punch or, if he’s lucky, the rustling of their clothes as they get closer to him. A few aren’t smart enough to cover up their footsteps, but that doesn’t last too long.

His plan fails miserably when he doesn’t duck out of the way in time for the bullet careening straight for his head. He knows it’s there, can hear the slight rush of air as it’s shot. But he can’t stop it.

For a second, the buzzing leaves him. He can hear Frank’s voice, muffled and a whole ship away, but right now it sounds clear as day. He’s speaking softly, calmly. Not angry like he was on that rooftop or the Punisher voice he uses when beating people up, no it’s Frank’s voice. The voice he uses when Matt’s injured or he thinks he’s asleep. It’s pretty, he wants Frank to use it more, but the words can never seem to get themselves out of his throat.

His dreaming is cut off by Widow’s hands on his shoulder, jolting him awake.

“You better not die on me, Devil.” She mutters, the only awake heartbeat in a room of bodies on the ground. The buzzing is back. It always comes fucking back.

“I’m alive,” he mumbles back. The taste of blood all over his mouth. Blood is everywhere, really. Buzzing and blood — that’s all his brain can focus on. He tries to focus further than this. On Frank’s voice and on Clint’s movements. They’re still fighting, there are gunshots everywhere, and Frank’s voice is far more angry than it was in his dream.

Then there are the voices of men watching through cameras. They take one look at the destruction and then can only sigh.

“Blow up the ship.”

“Sir?”

“Do it now!”

Matt sits up, the ringing and the dizziness grasping onto his head and not letting go. Widow tells him to take it easy, but he can’t exactly stop now.

“He’s going to blow up the ship.” Matt’s words come out slurred. He can’t really think properly just buzzing and Frank and danger one after the other in rapid succession. Nothing else can even dream of mattering.

“Where’s the bomb?” She follows him, arm out behind him likely in case he falls.

“The hull.” he listens to the buzzing and the ticking. Then he whispers “That’s where Frank is.” before speeding up his walking to a speed his body cannot keep up with for long. He doesn’t stop until Frank’s heartbeat is close enough that it can scream out past the buzzing.

“Frank!” Matt shouts, throwing his arms onto Frank’s shoulders to stop his legs from screaming. He has a concussion — he’s not dumb enough to not know that — but he would like to deal with that in a silent apartment when he’s not at risk of blowing up.

“Hey, Red,” Frank’s voice softens, and he sounds almost like his dream again. But then his grip tightens, the arm wrapped around his back, keeping him upright, is tightened against his aching rib. “What’s going on?”

Widow isn’t dumb enough to stop moving, he gives her a point to where he can hear the ticking and she finds it in seconds. “Bomb is in here.” She announces, which spikes the heartbeat of Clint and the chest he’s leaning against with all his strength.

“Wait what bomb?” Clint jumps his way over the pure amount of bodies and tech and things sprawled out across the floor. Well, they’ve been busy.

“They want to blow up the whole ship.” Matt says, probably far too loud from the way Frank jumps but the buzzing is so loud in his ears that he can barely even hear himself. It’s too much. The flimsy wrapping around the containers does nothing to stop the noise that normal people couldn’t even hear.

“Well, that’s pretty dumb.” Clint shrugs before joining Widow in her bomb defusing work. Every second that goes by without combustion, fire and destruction adds to his want to ask her how to defuse bombs. Later, when he’s not concussed and holding onto Frank like he’ll evaporate if he doesn’t.

“Well, for once it seems this happened with minimal damage.” Frank laughs, the vibrations shoot through his head, and he holds back the want to hiss at him.

“Daredevil got shot in the head.” Widow points out, because she’s a traitor.

“Red—”

“I’m fine.” His words get ignored as Frank practically carries him to a chair on the edge of the ship. He has to hold on to the side to stop his head from turning or spinning or whatever it’s really doing. Then Frank is away again, speaking to people who hate him all because of what Matt did. Because Matt couldn’t hide it better.

His knuckles dig into the edge of the ship. It’s rough, with small imperfections and grooves on the wood. They must’ve cheaped out on this boat. The buzzing is so much that he’s almost happy for it. There’s none of the forced perfections or the feel of wet paint sprawled out across it. He can focus on it without wanting to claw his hands off.

He focuses on it. Letting the sounds of conversing behind him fade with the sounds of the sea beneath him and the buzzing all around him. It’s simple. It’s dangerous.

Matt doesn’t notice as the guy gets up. A small fry, nothing more than extra weight to carry things around. He doesn’t notice when he grabs his gun and aims it right at his back.

The buzzing takes away every noise but the sound of Frank screaming “Red!”

It hits him in the shoulder — a bad shot, really. The feeling of pain fails to register as it knocks him right over the side and he goes tumbling into the water. Still surrounded by noise.

Having Daredevil in his tower is a lot less of a win for Tony when Frank Castle is directly behind him and refusing to leave. Nat and Clint had dragged him in the middle of the night, soaking, on the verge of hypothermia and with enough wounds to kill an immortal. But Daredevil was still breathing, and thank the Lord for that.

He’d been so stressed with getting the doctors up that early and keeping Daredevil stable that he’d hardly even noticed the Punisher stood in the corner of the room. Staring silently, tapping his foot against the floor and glaring at anyone who dared to look his way with enough venom to level a building. If looks could kill, then Tony would be dead twice over.

Because Punisher was still in the building by the time morning came, and not a single soul in the tower was happy about that. Daredevil might’ve argued, but then he shouldn’t have gotten himself shot, should he?

“Tony, I swear to fuck if you don’t have him arrested before he leaves here.” Steve grits his teeth, hands curled into fists ready to punch at Castle if he sees the man. Bucky, Sam and Nat are not far behind. Bruce is focusing on a starkpad that monitors Daredevil’s vitals — he was originally in the man’s room but he got scared that being near the Punisher would set off the Hulk. It was a valid fear. That man was really pissing them all off.

“I will, but come on Steve, this is our chance to get Daredevil on the team.” He’s still holding on to that dream. They’ve seen the man work with their own eyes now, and he’s almost like magic. Clint even said that he basically confirmed he’s psychic last night. Tony has looked through the records of people brought in by Daredevil, and he hates abusers, actively despises them. It wouldn’t make sense for him to let Frank get away with it if he knew.

“You’d let a blind man get abused for your gain?” Bucky spits out, eyes full with rage that calms when Sam puts his hand on his shoulder.

“We’ll show Daredevil the videos of Matt’s injuries, and he’ll surely agree to bring him in. If not, then we can arrest Punisher no problem.” Tony reasoned. He didn’t want to break the little trust they had with the Devil, but if it came down to it, then he would gladly. “Just give me this chance, Steve.”

Steve stood up straight, glaring down at him in a way that shouldn’t be scary considering the man was wearing slippers. “I don’t want my friend’s fucking abuser in this building, Tony.”

Before he could reply, Bruce looked down in horror at his starkpad, jumped up onto his feet and said, “Shit,” so many times under his breath that Tony was scared his skin was going to start to turn green.

“Mister Stark, it appears that Daredevil has left his bed and is walking straight to the common room.”

Daredevil shouldn’t be awake right now, nevermind up and moving. Tony’s seen that man’s vitals, he’s running on hopes, prayers and enough pain meds to knock out a bull. Yet when the man comes stumbling into the common room, heaving on his own breathe and holding onto the walls around him, he seems way too conscious all things considered. The bruises are still on his face on the parts that aren’t covered by his cowl — Castle refused to let him take it off — and the bandages still wrap around his arms and shoulder.

Really, they wanted to check for a concussion once he woke up because he got bloody shot in the head, but it seems the man’s stubbornness to stay alive outweighs anything else.

Tony holds up his hands to get the Devil to calm down. He’s moving around frantically, has ripped out his IV and likely doesn’t know where he is. Honestly, the situation is salvageable. Or at least was until Frank Castle came barreling in behind him.

“Red, I swear to God if you don’t get back here.” Castle shouts, his voice more gruff than before — something Tony didn’t think possible — as he grabs onto Daredevil’s shoulder to yank him back. The shoulder that didn’t get shot, at least, but Devil still winces at the touch and stumbles forward as Frank yanks his hand back. Something like remorse apparent on his face.

“Matt Murdock isn’t being abused by Frank Castle,” Daredevil announced, his words a lot more breathy than normal. He seems serious, convinced of what he’s saying despite the evidence to the contrary.

The room goes still. Bruce and Tony’s eyes meet for a second before Nat bites out, “Have you seen how fucking injured he is all the time?”

Then Daredevil basically signs his own death certificate when he smiles like a maniac at that. He fucking smiles at a blind man being hurt. Tony is practically kissing his dreams of having a psychic like him on the team when he shrugs — and winces — “Not exactly.”

His hand goes up to his cowl, fingers curled under the edges at the back as he begins to shove it up. Shoves it off. Tony never expected the Devil to look so normal. Or familiar. Or have such unfocused eyes or look like the blind lawyer that they were all convinced was being abused. The little shit tilts his head up to Steve with a shit eating grin still plastered on his face. “Hi Steve.”

Before Tony can even manage to pick up his jaw off the ground, Clint shouts, “WHAT THE FUCKING HELL!” He’s on his feet, eyes wide and jaw slacked — not unlike everyone else in the room. “This whole fucking time! But I thought you were dating Matt! How are you exes and dating a man at the same time!”

A more important question had never been asked. What on earth was going on? Matthew Murdock, the soft spoken, secretive — maybe a little creepy — blind lawyer with too many injuries to count, was the fucking Devil? Well, Daredevil, but his point still stands.

“We aren’t even dating.” Frank laughs from his spot by the door. Oh, shit. Frank the totally not an abuser that they’d all been accusing him of being. He was already planning how big of a check he was going to write this man.

“And never have dated, mind you!” Daredevil — Matthew bloody Murdock — adds, the grin on his face far too wide considering the amount of pain he should be in.

“Seriously? Not even a little?” Sam asks, bringing up the important questions in Tony’s opinion. Well, he’ll be spending tonight scrubbing his betting pool off of Jarvis’ mainframe. They’re all accurate at least, considering that Tony was making up a love triangle with only two points disguising as three.

Steve stepped towards Matthew. His hands outstretched like he was scared the Devil would collapse at any second, a valid fear all things considered. “Is it bad I wanna hug you right now?”

“I do have like seven broken ribs.” Matt laughs, or at least attempts to, as he falls into a coughing fit soon after.

“I’m just really glad you aren’t getting abused, man.” Steve settles on dropping his hands onto the Devil’s shoulders. A look of pure relief on his face that turns more into remorse as he turns to look towards Bucky not too far behind him. Natasha’s is a mix. A very diluted mix considering how impossible her face can be to read sometimes. “We still church buddies?”

Matt nods to him, but can’t even get a word out before Bruce is up in his face, swinging his tablet for that. “If you stay alive long enough for that—get back to your hospital bed.”

The argument of the century breaks out, and Tony is considering grabbing himself a load of popcorn and reconsidering everything he knew about blind people and lawyers when he sees Bucky walk over to none other than the Punisher himself. A man who Bucky was on the verge of breaking the bones of only minutes ago. “Castle.” He nods, voice gruff. Natasha is not too far behind him. “Sorry for accusing you of things—”

“None needed, It’s not like I blame you.” Castle cuts him off, the man looks strangely calming when he’s not wearing his jacket and doesn’t have so many guns on him that he’s basically a human firearm store. He’s still intimidating, but he’s just a man. A man who — despite everything — still stares lovingly at Matt Murdock/Daredevil whenever he gets the chance.

“You don’t?” Natasha chimes in.

“With the amount of injuries Red gets, if he were a normal blind guy, then it would be signs of abuse.” He explains, throwing his hand around as he speaks. “And that asshole would deserve their brain bashed in,” he grunts. That is the only way he can explain how man speaks.

“Oh yeah—how do you do all this?” Tony shouts, his confusion finally spewing out of his mouth. “I checked all your medical records, you are most definitely legally and completely blind!” He did that through completely non-legal means as well, but he does not mention that because Daredevil is a fucking lawyer. It’s always the lawyers, man.

“I found other ways to see.” Daredevil shrugs, the grin back on his bruised and battered face as it tilts to the side. Listening. Holy shit, he’s listening.

“He can feel the shit in the air now come on I’m getting you back to your bed.” Frank joins in on Bruce’s failed arguing — never argue with a lawyer- and grabs onto his uninjured arm to try to drag him back to the hospital wing.

“Frank, come on.”

“Shush, or I will princess carry you.”

“Is that a threat?” Daredevil laughs. Then Frank stops walking and slips his arm under Daredevil’s knees before picking him up like he were made of air. “Frank!” Matt shouts, not even trying to fake a struggle beyond his words as he’s carted back off to the hospital wing with Bruce not too far behind them.

“So I don’t know about you guys, but I still think they’re in love.” Clint says after Matt and Frank’s voices get far enough away to be little more than echoes.

“Oh, definitely.” Tony nods, a sentiment shared by the room at large. So Daredevil is blind. Maybe that’s why he can’t tell when someone’s in love with him.

“Mister Daredevil would like me to tell you all that he can still hear you.”

Despite all his shouting that he can in fact just walk home, Matt’s own body repulses at the idea. He’s lying on the Avengers infirmary bed, ignoring the sharp pains in his shoulder and the shivers wracking through his body every so often. Frank sat in the uncomfortable hospital chair next to his bed, read a book he pulled out of Matt doesn’t even know where and refused to leave him alone no matter what.

“Frank, you don’t need to stay here.” He repeats for the seventh time.

“I’m taking care of you, Red, and that’s it.” Frank grunts the same words he’s said every other time. “I let this happen, it’s the least I can do.” Matt was going to start arguing with him — something his pain-riddled brain could latch onto with not much strain — when his phone rings obnoxiously in his pocket. His burner phone he uses as Daredevil, so as he pulls it out he has no idea who it is on the other end.

“Who is it?” Matt holds his phone up for Frank to see.

He leans in closer, his arm brushing against Matt’s, before saying, “Foggy,” and dropping right back onto his chair. Mumbles present under his breath about how uncomfortable the chair is.

“Mind if I?” He is supposed to be at work today, sitting in his chair complaining about how annoying the Avengers are with bruises all over him. Instead, he’s in Avengers tower, healing, but Foggy doesn’t know that. The second he takes this call, he’s going to get an earful. Matt’s accepted that. It’s the payoff for being Daredevil at all, but he doesn’t want Frank here to see it all.

“I’m gonna go take Widow up on her offer to spar.” He sighs, getting himself back onto his feet with a croak from his back.

“Don’t get beat up if you’re gonna keep being my nurse.” Matt shouts after him.

“No promises. That woman is terrifying!”

He can barely hold back his own laughter as Frank leaves the room. Honestly, he never thought he’d get this. The Avengers are still annoying fuckers who he wants out of his city, but if it came down to it, then he might need them. They weren’t all that bad when they weren’t accusing his friend of beating him up as a civilian and being in love with him as a vigilante.

Matt sighs, then picks up the phone — a few inches from his ears, just in case. “Hey Fog—”

“Matt! Oh thank God—sorry—you’re okay! Fuck, I’ve been worried sick, you know? You weren’t at your apartment and you weren’t picking up your phone and apparently you got shot and fell into a river!” Foggy’s tone quickly sinks from worry to anger back to worry again and he has to take the phone even further away from his ear to stop his head from pounding. It’s lucky he hasn’t lost his hearing like he did the last time he got shot in the head. He doesn’t want to ruin that luck.

“Hey—I’m alright. Just had a fight go wrong. I’m at Avengers Tower now with Frank.”

“The same Avengers who think you’re being abused by Frank?”

“No, the other ones,” Matt jokes, stifling a laugh in his throat as Foggy gives him a fake laugh for his work. “I sort of—told them my identity.”

Foggy goes silent after that, and Matt can’t exactly hear a heartbeat down a phone call, so he’s at a loss for what he’s thinking. Telling the Avengers his identity could go horribly wrong, but letting that whole situation run its course would’ve ended with this, anyway. He couldn’t have held off the Avengers forever, so as long as they keep their mouths shut, it should be fine. Matt just has to hope the Avengers are capable of that.

“Well, that’s one way to fix this mess.”

“I just—I couldn’t deal with them saying all that about Frank. I just got so angry about it, and then the cowl was off.” Matt sighs. He honestly wasn’t thinking. Emotion clouded all his judgement like it has so many times before. “Stick would be ashamed of me.”

“Stick was an asshole who tried and failed to make a child soldier because he couldn’t deal with the actual responsibilities of having a child, Matt. You deserved so much better than him.” Foggy cuts in, like he’s rehearsed this very speech over and over, as soon as Matt gets the words out. He can’t help but smile. No matter how many times Foggy says it, it gets better every time.

“Is it bad I just needed to hear you say that again?”

“I’ll say it as many times as you need, Matt.” God, he loves his best friend. He has since they met in that college dorm room. Which is probably why the next few words spew out of his mouth before he can stop them.

“Foggy, I umm—I think. Well, I have an inkling of an idea that maybe I have some sort of feelings towards Frank.” Matt stumbles over his words. He hasn’t admitted this to anyone. Kept the ball of mush that tries to take over his nerves whenever he sees Frank as far down in his chest as he can get it. If he ignores it enough, then maybe eventually, it’ll go away. Everything else with it.

It never went away. Despite how Frank is and the fact that he could never like him like that, it never goes away.

“Are you just now figuring this out?”

“Foggy!” Matt shouts down the phone, and he can hear the sound of his friend’s laughter like he’s right next to him.

“Okay, okay, calm down, buddy. So you got feelings for a murderer—those seem to be your type by the way—but I can tell you I think he likes you back.” he ignores that pointed mention of Electra and focuses on the impossibility of the rest of his words.

“You can’t mean that.”

“I’ve seen how he looks at you.”

“Are you really okay with this?” Foggy barely likes him being Daredevil, and they’d stick together through thick and thin, but this? Being with the literal Punisher just seems too far.

“Oh, I’m going to give him the shovel talk of his life and you two are definitely going to have to improve your communication issues but if anyone is going to be in a loving relationship with the Punisher it will be Matthew Murdock.” Matt can’t help but laugh at the thought. His best friend shouting at the Punisher to treat him well. The worst part is that Frank would just take it, nod along and agree because if he really did love him, then he wouldn’t want to hurt him either.

“Thanks, Foggy.”

“You got it, buddy. And tell me when you’re coming in because scheduling back all these appointments is getting tiring!” Matt ends the call after Foggy finally gives up his complaining, feeling lighter than he had in a while. He’s still in pain and he’s still in the fucking Avengers tower, but he’ll be okay.

There’s been a heartbeat outside of his room for the past few minutes of the call. He shouldn’t have heard anything important, but Matt still listens to his heartbeat to try to figure out who he is. Short hair, shorter guy, radiation flowing through his blood. The Hulk, or Bruce Banner, or the overbearing nurse. A man of many titles.

“How much of that did you hear?” Matt asks as soon as Bruce gives up his spying to open the door. His heartbeat is quite tame all the time, really. Despite his getting caught, his heartbeat barely takes a jump before it’s calm again, like nothing even happened. A habit he’s probably had to pick up with the whole Hulk issue.

“I was watching through the cameras.” he laughs, and Matt swears under his breath. Bruce puts his tablet down on the table to the side. He’s been watching the thing since he got into this damn tower, and according to Frank it shows all his vitals, all the time. As if that isn’t terrifying enough, he sounds almost giddy as he sits down on the edge of his bed. “So, you do love Frank. Huh?”

“I didn’t think of you to be so invested, Banner?” Tony and Clint, definitely, Steve, probably. But Bruce Banner being interested in his love life isn’t something he expected to have to deal with today.

“People tend to underestimate me.”

“Oh yes, weren’t you on the run from the government for several years?” Matt and Foggy have done their fair share of research into the Avengers over this total fiasco and even before when they were bored. What they found is that an Avenger, nine times out of ten, has had some long-standing conflict with the very government that recruited them. The Hulk himself very much included.

“All the best people are!” Bruce shrugs, what he guesses is a smile playing on his face. His headache — concussion — is messing with all his senses, really. His hands go up to rub at his temples before he can even stop them, and he’s got an urge to ask for even more painkillers.

“I say, go for it, man.” Bruce whispers, like he’s sharing some incredible secret.

“Banner—” he tries to say something, what exactly would’ve flown out of his mouth, he doesn’t know. Matt wants to go after it — he does — but the last time he confessed his love to someone they died in front of him. Twice. He does care so deeply for Frank and he just can’t lose him.

“Listen, I may not have your crazy super senses or frankly frightening degree of stubbornness, but I do know how to read people.” Bruce points out. “I know you’re in love, Murdock, and I know that he loves you too.”

Matt can’t help but groan. He lies down fully in the stupid infirmary bed and wishes it would just swallow him entirely so he wouldn’t have to deal with this conversation or any other conversation surrounding Frank Castle again. “I’m a mess.”

“Someone wise once told me that even messes deserve love.”

“Who was that—your partner?” He snarks, badgering for some kind of response. Sadly, he only gets a shrug.

“I had money on Frank and Murdock, by the way.” Bruce mentions when he finally stands back up, apparently looking over his vitals.

“You had a betting pool?” Matt laughs. Of fucking course, Tony Stark had a betting pool on his love life. Was he that obvious that even Tony Stark could figure it out? He thought they were all just being nosy idiots, but a pattern is a fucking pattern.

“Tony was Daredevil and Frank.”

“Oh, how scandalous.”

“Second chance romance, I think he called it.”

He doesn’t know how they’d do it, or if Frank would even look twice his way. But Matt does know that he loves him, and that isn’t changing anytime soon.

His luck didn’t last long enough. It’s the second day in the tower when it happens. He’s wandering with Frank, refusing to leave his side as a compromise for him not even supposed to be out of bed yet when it goes. His hearing just starts to wane. He snaps in his ears and bangs on the wall, but soon even the sound of Frank’s worried voice melts into nothing but a memory. Matthew is plunged back into pure darkness in a place he barely even knows, and he’s terrified.

He falls to the side, grasping onto anything he can feel to get himself fluctuated. It’ll pass. It has to pass. It’s always gone away before, and this won’t be an exception. Except there’s always that nagging fear. That this would be the one to take it, to remove his hearing entirely and never give him the chance to get it back.

This could be the end of it all, and he wouldn’t have even known. He wouldn’t ever let go of the hope that the next day would be better. Matt Murdock would pray to God to give his hearing back every day until he was down under, and then he’d never get to even hear anyone he cares about again.

A miserable existence of nothingness.

“Frank!” Matt shouts until his throat runs raw. He was here before. The last thing he heard was the man’s steady heartbeat. Worried with every step he took. Frank had to still be here. “Frank—please. I… I can’t hear anything. Please, I can’t.”

There are hands on his arms. He can feel them grasping onto him. Vibrations go through his skin. The person — oh please be Frank — is speaking, but he can’t understand a word of it. So he just leans into the touch, presses his head onto the chest that’s holding him and tries to feel the heartbeat as it jumps. It’s fast, worried. It’s Franks.

“Frank…” He lifts his hands up to the man’s face for nothing more than personal indulgence. It can be brushed off as making sure later after all, and when else will he get the chance to feel over Frank’s face in his hands. To memorise each dent, cut, dimple, hair perfectly to make a picture in his head.

The hands take him somewhere else. Other hands touch his shoulder, and he swipes them away without a second thought. He doesn’t know where exactly he is, but he’s lying down on something soft — likely a couch — with Frank next to him. Frank lets him grasp his arm or shoulder or chest and never let go for hours on end. He’s reading a book. Matt puts that together when Frank puts the papers in his hand and lets him feel them over. It’s a printed book, so reading it is almost impossible, but it’s the thought that counts.

Hours go by, Matt guesses. Counting the seconds and minutes gets tedious after a while, but wallowing in the horror of the silence is even scarier than the monotony. Even before he went blind, Matt loved listening to things. Radio, his father telling over the top stories, the sounds of sirens night after that, those were his bedtime stories. Then, when he lost his sight, he relied on them even more to get through the day.

Even before Stick, when it would all get too much sometimes and he’d want to scream and cry and punch whatever he could to make it all quiet down, he would take solace in the fact that he could still hear people. Hear his dad’s voice down the hall, or the nuns whispering in the dead of night. He couldn’t see people, but he could connect with them from miles away by just listening.

The thought of losing it all terrifies him. In the church, when he was half deaf and injured beyond belief, Matt thought of himself as broken. As much as he doesn’t want to think that, the fear of being useless is still there.

How many more people would get hurt because the Devil was too deaf to hear their cries for help?

He’s lying on the couch, eyes closed and hand grasped onto Frank’s arm for any sense of normalcy when his ears decide to work again. It comes in slowly. Vibrations of sounds above his head, footsteps, the sound of a door opening in the room he’s lounging in. Then the words begin to make sense. Frank’s muffled voice flutters in his ears as he lies against him.

“You’re alright Red, I got you, sweetheart.” It feels almost like he’s underwater. Like the words are on the tips of his fingers, just too far to grasp with his hand. He must be hearing things wrong, but he settles in the thought that maybe, just maybe, it is what Frank’s saying. “Hey, I got you.”

“He can’t hear you—” Another voice, Clint, cuts in. He’s walking closer to them, the sound of his heartbeat echoed with each beat. It hurt to focus on, but it’s there. Close, but not as close as Frank’s.

“Shut it, Birdie.” Frank snaps, the vibrations in his chest getting stronger.

“Are you two seriously not anything?”

“We work together.” Frank sighs. He sounds upset. Matt should get up, inform everyone that his hearing is coming back and calm himself down. Frank was already blaming himself for what happened before this fiasco. “He couldn’t like me like that. Shouldn’t like me like that.”

Matt stays as still as he can. He must’ve misheard that. His hearing broke again. He was delirious and hallucinating it all. Anything that meant he hasn’t just heard that. Frank didn’t shut it down. He even sounded upset.

There’s just such a stark difference between someone else confirming it and Frank confirming it, no matter how off the point it is.

Frank didn’t deny it. Matt has to work incredibly hard to keep the smile from erupting on his face.

“I don’t want to alarm you, man, but Sleeping Beauty over there said the same thing about you.” Clint says, giving away his secrets like it’s nothing. He can hear as Frank’s heart rate gets quicker even through the fog. As his breath hitches in his throat against his will. Sorry, Lord, but oh shit.

“Frank…” Matt mumbles, pushing himself up before Clint can divulge anything more.

“Guess true love’s kiss worked.” Clint mumbles, loud enough for Frank to hear, yet the man doesn’t even react as he grasps Matt’s shoulder with his heart pounding.

“Can you hear me, Red?”

“Yeah, it’s just muffled.”

“Is that gonna happen every time you get shot in the head?” he laughs. It’s a pretty sound even when muffled.

“Seems to.” he laughs as well, then regrets it as his ribs remind him of how broken they are. Matt drops his head back onto Frank’s shoulder, and he wraps his arms around in a hug without any need for prompting. Clint gets the message and speed walks out of the room with a giggle in his throat. He can hear when he lets it out down the hallway.

Matt chooses to ignore the man laughing at him and focuses on how his hearing is coming back.

“I’m so sorry, Red.” Frank’s grip is easy to break out of. It could be because of his ribs, but Matt couldn’t care less about them when he just wants to melt into Frank’s arms and never get out.

“Frank—”

“No, listen, you can argue all you like about what happened on that boat, but I shot you last time.” He can hear as Frank gets upset. As the emotion claws at his voice and runs it raw. “I made this happen last time. I hurt you.”

“It was bound to happen eventually. I don’t blame you.” Matt has long since gotten over that night, and the other night he spent tied up on a rooftop. He couldn’t find a way to care in him if he tried. Frank had apologised. Night after night, Matt has started trusting him more than his heart knows what to do with. He goes out some nights hoping to hear his voice or lingers near his safe houses to hear his heartbeat just a little longer.

“How can you not blame me?” Frank speaks with that dumb mouth of his that he just wants to make shut up. “I’m a fucking mess Red, you run around half-measuring people in the dead of night and think yourself unworthy while I run around finishing them off without a single care. How can you not—” Matt shuts him up by jamming his mouth against his.

It’s not pretty, nor planned, but the passion makes up for it. Frank wraps his arms around Matt’s waist and pulls him in within seconds. For a moment, it feels like nothing else even matters. Not his broken bones, or his burning head, none of it even registers because Frank is in his arms and his lips are against his. The smell of gun oil even becomes addictive this close up.

“I care.” Matt mumbles when they finally break apart. Their foreheads leaning against one another as he gets his breath back, panting with his hands grasping onto Frank’s face. “I can care for the both of us alright.”

“Whatever you want so we can do that again, Altar boy.” Frank sounds almost desperate as he pushes Matt back down onto the couch, their lips meeting again. He can only hope that none of the Avengers decided to look into the cameras or even walk into the room because his senses are much too focused to pay much attention to anything else. It would be a disservice to Frank after all.

They may be a mess, but at least they’re a mess together.