Chapter Text
Foggy Nelson is not a morning person. He tends to dislike mornings with the burning passion of the sun—but he still gets up before said sun rises over Hell’s Kitchen. When asked about this particular habit, Foggy likes to remark that he is a stubborn, contrary son of a bitch and that he only wakes up early because Matt doesn’t and he likes making spiteful phone calls.
Karen Page, on the other hand, is definitely a morning person, even if her coffee-making skills are subpar (and both Matt and Foggy agree that there is no point to having an assistant if said assistant’s coffee is shit).
But whatever the circumstances, Matt walks into the office on a Thursday morning to find Karen and Foggy huddling around something. He knows what it is, of course—he’d heard Karen and Foggy talking about it before he'd made his way through the door—but he pretends to feign nonchalance just to make Foggy a little irritated because this particular subject is something that Foggy is incredibly interested in.
“Matt,” Karen says, and her voice is filled with happiness. Matt is glad for her. “Have you heard the news?”
He has. “No, I haven’t.”
Foggy waves something around—a newspaper, Matt assumes. “Those kids who have been working with the Avengers have a message for somebody.” Matt can practically hear his eyebrow wiggle. “Let’s see. ‘This photo was snapped last night when Spider-Man’s new team of superheroes stopped by the docks.’ The photo is of the boys—the one they call Ripcurrent’s holding a newspaper.”
Matt groans internally. He suspects that he knows which newspaper Ripcurrent’s holding—that newspaper, the one that called him Daredevil and went on to explain his habit of beating up Russians in dark alleys.
“At their feet is painted the word Daredevil in bright red.”
Matt’s eyes close behind his glasses. Shit. He hates it when he’s right.
“You can’t seriously think about going after these kids,” Foggy whispers as soon as Karen leaves the room.
“I’m not going to go after them, Foggy,” Matt says. “Going after people is reserved for beating the crap out of them. I’m going to talk to them calmly and hopefully nobody will get hurt.”
Foggy takes on that incredulous tone that he always gets when Matt mentions his adventures as Hell’s Kitchen’s resident superhero. “Uh-huh.”
Matt rolls his head in Foggy’s direction. “Come on, Foggy,” he says, and his voice takes on the slightest wheedling tone. “Aren’t you just a little bit curious about what they have to say? Also, I’m gonna meet Spider-Man.”
“Shit, I forgot about that,” Foggy says. “Tell me what happens when you come back, okay? I wanna know every—”
Karen walks in. “What?”
“Nothing,” Foggy and Matt say at the same time.
Matt suits up that night, like he always does. But he doesn’t bother looking for trouble tonight—that can wait for a couple hours, right?
Instead, he makes his way to the docks.
Six heartbeats greet him as he scans the area. One is loud and fast (Matt has a weird thought of Captain America, but Cap’s heartbeat had been slower); one is faster than Matt’s ever heard before; three are normal; the last one doesn’t belong to a human at all. And one of the people is freezing cold—by all rights they shouldn’t be alive at all.
He listens in, because hey, why the heck not.
“He’s here somewhere,” one of the ones with the normal heartbeat says. “I dunno where. Toothless?”
The last, non-human heartbeat is masked, briefly, by a low growl that sets Matt’s teeth on edge. Leathery sounds make themselves clear to him and one of the other normal-heartbeats shifts, metal clinking.
“We know you’re there,” the metal-clinking one says. Matt sniffs the air and it smells like saltwater, sharp enough to make him recoil. “We just want to talk.”
Matt figures that it’s a good of a time as any to make himself known to these kids, and steps out of the shadows.
“Why are you here?” he asks, in the low voice he reserves for Daredevil. “What do you want?”
“Who’s gonna break the bad news to him?” the coldest one says. Matt recalls what Foggy’d told him about these kids, and pieces what he knows about them together.
Cold-but-normal-heart—the winter spirit, Jack Frost.
The fastest, flightiest heartbeat that sounded like feet thrumming one has to be Quicksilver.
Metal-clink (like armor?) and saltwater equates to Ripcurrent, the one that controls water.
The mutant’s the last normal remaining one, because he’s standing next to the non-human heartbeat—Night Fury and his dragon. (Toothless? What a stupid name for a dragon.)
Which left—Captain America-esque heartbeat—Spider-Man.
“Bad news?” he grumbles. Bad news was not good. Bad news was—bad news, really, what the fuck was he thinking.
“We need a place to stay?” Quicksilver says. His voice has a faint Russian accent, which makes the hairs on the back of Matt’s neck stand up. His past experience with Russians—well, they weren’t pleasant. “Ah, if you don’t mind?”
“That means revealing my identity to you,” Matt points out, and he hears them hesitate.
Unsurprisingly, Spider-Man speaks up. (According to Foggy—and the news—Spider-Man never shut up, and never revealed his identity. Ever.) “Fine,” he says. “We’ll do a one-for-one—or is it a one-for-five? Besides, uh, this is kinda important. We got kicked out of the tower and we need to lay low for a week or two.”
This does not really surprise him. He rolls his shoulders and sticks his batons back in their place. If he’s going to reveal his identity, it may as well be to the baby-Avengers, as Karen calls them. He knows thinks that they won’t tell anybody. Hopefully.
“What did you do?” he asks, because he’s genuinely curious; the baby-Avengers usually stayed at the Avengers Tower at night, but here they were in Hell’s Kitchen, claiming they’d been kicked out. And honestly, he’s mostly just wondering what pissed Captain America off.
That guy is patient. Matt knows this from experience.
“Dick glitter,” Ripcurrent mutters. “We may have gone a little bit overboard.”
“You think?” Night Fury retorts. His voice is muffled—a helmet? “You do realize that this was your fault.”
“Guys, you’re both the prettiest,” Jack Frost interrupts. “So… can we stay the night, as a favor from a fellow hero?”
Matt’s mind had been made up long ago. “Fine. But you’ll have to deal with sleeping on the floor.”
“Not the worst place I’ve slept,” Ripcurrent mentions offhandedly.
“Where’s the worst place you’ve slept?”
“In the back of an illegal animal transport truck that smelled like zebra crap, with an albino lion breathing down my neck and a sack of turnips under my head.”
“Huh.” Frost sounds knowing, but not confused. “I like to sleep under snowbanks.”
“Not surprising, Frosty,” Spider-Man says. “I got knocked out in the sewers once. I dunno if that counts.”
“Nope.”
“Are you guys coming or not?” Matt crosses his arms over his chest. “Or are we going to stay out here, in the open, like perfect targets for supervillains?”
“Good point,” Ripcurrent concedes, then whistles, and another non-human heartbeat approaches from the sky, neighing softly—a horse with wings. “Let’s get going, guys—Spidey, you’re with Hiccup; Pietro, you’re with me. Jack?”
“I can fly myself,” Frost says. “We’ll follow you from the sky, Daredevil. Just lead the way.”
Matt just hopes that their costumes and rides are black. He’d rather conceal his position from mobsters, thanks.
They make it back to Matt’s apartment with fairly little fanfare. The horse departs before they enter the building.
Matt has already changed into his civilian clothes—he has at least ten different clothes stashes behind various dumpsters around Hell’s Kitchen—but the boys are still in their hero wear.
“I hope you brought civvies,” he says. “I’d rather not scare the neighbors.”
“What neighbors?” Night Fury deadpans. “Nobody’s here.”
Matt smiles, a tight line. “Good point. Welcome to my humble abode.”
“It’s huge,” is the first thing that Ripcurrent says. “Nice. Better than my old apartment.” He pauses. “We promised you identities, didn’t we?”
“I’m Matt Murdock,” he ventures.
“Percy Jackson. Nice to meet you.”
Matt briefly pauses. “Like the kid who blew up the St. Louis Arch a couple of years ago.”
“Every fucking person brings that up,” Percy grumbles. “But yes. Like the kid who blew up the St. Louis Arch a couple of years ago.”
“Hiccup Haddock,” Night Fury volunteers.
“Pietro Maximoff.”
“Peter Parker.”
“…Jack Frost.”
Matt’s brow wrinkles.
“You do realize that that was entirely anticlimactic,” Percy whispers.
Jack seems put out. “Yep.”
“I’m going to take you to the office tomorrow,” Matt says as they’re eating dinner (most of it is take-out Chinese that Pietro had snagged from the place Peter liked), and it’s probably the worst decision he’s ever made. “I’m a lawyer. Foggy’d probably like to meet you.”
“A lawyer.” Jack snorts. “You do realize that seems really, uh, contradictory, considering your whole moonlighting-as-a-vigilante thing?”
“Yes.” Matt pauses over his lo mein. “Yes, I do. Foggy tells me that constantly.” He pauses. “It’s probably a good idea to wear regular and take your, uh, gear with you, if you even have regular clothes with you.”
“Hiccup’s the only one that doesn’t,” Peter says. “I have an extra set in my backpack, but no shoes.”
“My boots will be fine,” Hiccup says dismissively.
“Dude, they’re Uggs.”
Matt sighs and figures that he’ll have his hands full for at least a couple of days.
He forgets, somehow, that Karen Page works for him.