in technicolor - deniigiq - Multifandom [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Brett got to the station and was met with the goddamned cast of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

There was no Joseph in sight, but there was a younger, carbon copy of Senator Jim Morita standing in one corner raising hell in a small sea of eye-searing yellow while the leader of the sticky-plastic blue crew on the other side of the pen shouted at an officer and pointed violently at him. Brett didn’t quite have time to figure out what that was all about before Maynard was grabbing his arm and dragging him through a veritable ocean of painfully colored blazers into the Captain’s office. The door closed and Brett found himself in a circle of crossed arms and heavy brows.

“Debate teams?” he found himself asking. Everyone looked at him piteously.

“Academic Decathlon,” Ellen corrected. “The best and the brightest of this very fine city.”

The sarcasm was strong in this one.

Several people started to yell outside and were met by a series of bellowing officers to put that sh*t down.

“I need more context,” Brett said.

“All those nerd-children out there are lucky to be alive,” the captain informed him and the group at large, “It is my understanding that some college board members came along to watch their competition today. And someone, who is now sitting in Interrogation Room 5, decided that he was still unhappy that his kid didn’t get into Columbia as planned. Decided that he was going to set that record straight with a hired team of gunmen to help Mr. Coleman from Columbia’s board of admissions reconsider.”

f*cking rich kid parents, yo.

Brett’s mom had been so happy he’d graduated highschool she’d cried for weeks. When Fogs had gotten into Columbia, his family had been thrilled, but he’d had to pop around the corner to grab Brett and bring him over to help him explain to the Nelsons why the f*ck their kid was doing College 2.0. They just weren’t getting it. What the hell is grad school? Is it like a certification thing? Why do you need that? Columbia is very good, yes?

“Thankfully,” the captain said, tearing Brett away from fond (were they though?) memories. “Our friendly neighborhood Spiderman just so happened to be present at this gig and just so happened to disarm five gunmen and set off a fire-alarm before our guys even got the call.”

“Weird place for Spiderman to be,” Brett noted out loud.

The pitying looks came back.

Oh, no.

The captain bowed his head.

Oh, f*ck.

“He’s in room 3,” the captain said, “And his principal has more political connections than everyone in this entire building combined and he—and I cannot emphasize this enough—is a minor. So the next few hours are going to proceed with absolutely zero leaks. This boy, God help our souls, did our job for us and we need him to give a statement and we are going to do everything in our power not to f*ck up this kid’s life because he’s better at our jobs than we are, do you all understand?”

A chorus of bobbing heads, followed by Ellen timidly raising a hand. The captain stared at her coldly.

“Sir, are we not charging him with executing vigilante justice?”

The captain continued to stare at her coldly.

“If he was two years older, Detective Hernandez, then yes. We would. But, things as they are, I am hesitant to arrest a sixteen-year-old child when there is a greater opportunity that we can talk him out of this before he gets in too deep. Any other questions?”

Brett had one.

“Is he sixteen, or sixteen-adjacent?”

“Sixteen and two months, Lord help us. You may proceed without parental presence. Mahoney, you got a way with kids, you’re on point with Spidey. Brewer, you’ve got our other friend.”

Brett opened the door and immediately regretted every decision that had ever led up to this point in his life. He valiantly did not slam it closed and pass the buck. He walked in and closed the door behind him and tried very hard not to respond to the fierce f*cking look the second tiniest teenager in the world was giving him.

He had one of those eye-searing blazers on over his suit. His suit had seen better days, now that Brett was up close enough to tell.

He opened his mouth and the kid snarled at him.

In any other circ*mstances, the floppy hair and big brown eyes might have been sweet. Right now, they told the story of a kid learning how to cut a bitch.

Brett sat down and leaned back in the chair. The kid pressed himself flat against the wall. He was no dumby, this one. One of the “best and the brightest” in his class after all. Brett looked him over and thought that what he really could use was an extra meal or two.

“Are you hungry?” he asked. “Thirsty? I can get you a co*ke or a water or something?”

The boy didn’t let up on his snarl. It seemed kind of familiar, now that Brett was tuned into it.

Oh dear god, say it ain’t so.

“Maybe coffee?” he offered.

“Cut the sh*t. Read me my rights. I want a lawyer.”

Someone had briefed this child on exactly what to do in this situation. And Brett had a sneaking suspicion he knew exactly who that horn head was.

Brett sighed and looked down at the folder in his hand.

“Your name is Peter, right?”

“Lawyer.”

“Peter, we haven’t even started talking. Let’s just take a minute to ease up.”

“Lawyer.”

“Bud, we haven’t charged you with a crime. This is just talking.”

“Law. Yer.”

Goddamn.

“You want us to call your mom, Peter? Would that make you feel better?”

The kid extracted himself from the wall and leaned both his elbows on the table. The right one was just skin and scabs. The material of the blazer had been completely ripped through, as had the material of the suit. The mask had been confiscated.

“You know what would make me feel better, sir?” Peter asked, low and dangerous.

Brett was pretty sure he knew.

“A lawyer?”

“Ding ding ding. I’ll wait.”

Brett sighed and left the room. Maybe this one needed to sit for a little while before they tried to do anything with him.

“Brett, you sh*thead, he doesn’t have a mom,” Ellen scolded in the hallway.

Ah. Good to know. Would have been even better to know before he went in there and insulted the f*ck out of the goddamned Spiderman.

“What’s he got then? And who’s his lawyer? I get the feeling we ain’t getting through this one without the guy being on speed dial.”

“He’s got an aunt.”

“Got an uncle, then?”

Maybe this was one of those man-to-man conversations teenage boys seemed to respond to.

“Uh. Had an uncle. Guy was murdered a year and a half ago.”

sh*t. sh*t.

“Aunt’s name?”

“May Parker. Her husband was Peter’s biological uncle. Kid’s parents up and vanished. Suspected deceased around ten years ago.”

Motherf*cker. Did they all have to have tragic backstories? Was that a pre-req to vigilantism? When would they get a simple ole violent asshole, high on brain smashing?

“Call the Aunt and get the lawyer’s number. None of this sh*t is going to be easy.”

Two hours in and Peter wasn’t budging. He’d tucked himself into the wall again and had apparently had a nap in Brett’s absence. At least it looked like a nap from the cameras. He’d wrapped his arms around his knees in the chair and hadn’t moved a muscle. He didn’t move when Brett walked in with a can of Pepsi.

He set it on the table and pushed it the kid’s way.

No response.

“You feeling chatty, yet, kid?”

No response.

Very uncharacteristic of the friendly neighborhood Spiderman. Emphasis on the “friendly.” According to the principal and his bevy of ducklings, Peter was a mishmash of too nice and too dumb and too honest and too nerdy to have been involved with any of this. They all insisted that there had to be some mistake, Peter wasn’t Spiderman, and even if he was, he’d saved their lives. Where was the crime in that?

It was very hard to make a f*ckload of kids understand that Peter wasn’t in trouble even though the police were trying to question him.

They all heard “we just need to take his statement” as “we’re going to waterboard him until he gives up the ghost” and freaked out all over again and, despite their principal’s best efforts, refused to leave the station until their compatriot was able to leave with them.

Talk about solidarity, damn. Brett’s highschool classmates would have left him to die in an alligator pit if they could have. Hell, they’d have stuck around to watch.

“You’ve got some really good friends, Peter,” he noted. “They’re staging a sit-in on your behalf.”

Peter showed no emotion at this.

“Lawyer,” he said instead, muffled by his knees. “Matt Murdock or Franklin Nelson. I’ve got their numbers memorized.”

Ah.

Because of course.

“Franklin’s a friend of mine,” Brett tried. The kid lifted his head to stare at him harshly over his knees. Didn’t believe him for a second.

“Good. Call him.”

Brett almost laughed.

“We’ve been neighbors since we were six years old, believe it or not. He used to have even stupider hair.”

“Mr. Nelson’s hair isn’t stupid. Take it back. And call him.”

Oh. Touched a nerve there. Interesting.

“Nah, I’ve seen every iteration of his hair, trust me. It’s pretty stupid.”

Peter’s brow lowered and Brett could tell he was clenching his jaw.

“I’ll stop talking sh*t if you start talking to me, Peter,” he offered.

“You call my mom?”

Ouch. Nasty. Fair, but nasty.

Brett cleared his throat.

“We called you aunt to get your lawyer’s number.”

“You got it?”

“Well, yes. She’s freaking out, Peter. Obviously—”

“It’s fine. She’s used to it. Call my lawyer.”

Brett co*cked his head at this little ball of fury. The Peter the ducklings out front had described very much did not jive with this Peter and this Peter very much did not jive with Spiderman.

“Why’d you do it, man? Could have waited for the police.”

“Y’all are pigs. Lawyer.”

“Is that what they say in Queens, Peter? Or did you hear that from one of your buddies?”

Peter shoved his knees off the chair and sat, spine straight, rigid.

“That’s what they said at my neighbor’s f*cking funeral, after one of your guys unloaded six bullets into his chest, detective. He was fourteen. Smoking some pot. Apparently, that’s a death sentence for a black kid these days. So you’ll understand why I’m not hot on chatting with you. Maybe stop murdering my friends first. Lawyer. I’m not talking to you anymore.”

Well. It wasn’t like he was wrong.

Peter’s aunt was pissed and she was making that very clear to Ellen in the bullpen. Fogs wasn’t happy either. He, however, remained dead calm and tipped his chin up at Brett as they made eye contact across the room. He touched May’s elbow and strode forward to meet him.

“Giving you a hard time, Brett?” he asked once they were face to face.

“Boy’s a daydream wrapped in a nightmare, Nelson. You teach him that?”

“Peter has a right to representation.”

“Peter hasn’t been charged with a crime.”

“Great. Let him go then.”

“Unless he talks, Peter may be charged with a very big crime, Fogs.”

They had reached a stalemate.

“Brett, it’s either me or Matt and you know how Matt likes to get loud when there’s drama to be had. You really want your department to end up in the news for violating the rights of a minor?”

f*ck, no. And the farther Matthew Murdock stayed from this station, the better. Brett did not growl at Foggy, but it was a close thing.

“Aunt can’t come in.”

“She won’t.”

Foggy entered the room and it was like all the tension fell out of the kid’s body. The door closed and Brett thought that he heard muffled crying.

He felt pretty solidly like sh*t.

While Foggy talked to Peter, Brett went over to go deal with the shrieking nutjob in Room 5. Dude was working himself up and throwing sh*t at the interviewer. Brett wasn’t surprised. Anyone with the money and audacity to shoot up a school function because his entitled son didn’t get into the school he wanted was bound to think that he was the one being inconvenienced here.

Angry Suburban Dad didn’t understand why the f*ck they weren’t charging Spiderman for, well, existing mostly. He wanted Spiderman charged for everything under the sun, including assault on his own person. When asked how exactly, Spiderman assaulted him, he made up a pretty fantastic story about the kid trying to choke him out.

Peter, two rooms over, wasn’t tall enough to choke this guy out the way he was describing. He’d have had to shove the guy onto the ground to do it the way Angry Dad claimed he had, but Angry Suburban dad didn’t know or care how garottes or choking worked, nor did he want to hear that the red marks on his neck were a result of his angry flushing.

He’d just launched into a fascinating story about how it was really Spiderman who’s hired all those guys when Foggy stepped out and signaled to Brett that they were ready to talk.

Brett sat down and read through Peter’s rights and the kid didn’t look up at him once. Foggy had to prompt him gently for him to give a verbal confirmation that he’d had his rights read to him.

“Pete, just before we get started, you wouldn’t happen to have twelve grand at your disposal, would you?” Brett asked.

That got the kid to look up at him.

“What?”

“We got all these gunmen saying they were promised twelve grand. Guy next door is claiming that was you who promised them that. Is that a possibility I need to look into, big guy?”

Peter didn’t know he was being won over, bless his heart, but the look he gave Brett was just about comical.

“Uh, I’m a scholarship student?”

“So that’s a ‘no,’ then?”

“Yes, sir.”

Brett raised an eyebrow and looked at Foggy who shrugged lightly. All respect, now, huh Mr. Parker? Lawyers were amazing.

He leaned forward on the table.

“Alright, let’s revisit my earlier question, then. Why did you jump into that mess, Pete? Why not wait for the cops?”

Peter leaned slightly against Foggy. He didn’t want to make eye contact again.

“It would take too long,” he said.

“How do you know that?”

“I call the cops all the time. Wait for them to get there most of it. It takes a long time.”

That? Was entirely true. Spiderman put in calls to stations all over the city, like he said, all the time. After most confrontations. If he waited there until they got there, yeah. He’d have a pretty damn good idea about how long it actually took for the officers to show up.

“Did you think these guys were going to start shooting soon, then?”

A flat look.

“They started shooting as soon as they came in.”

Brett blinked.

“And you were already ready to go? What, you wear that thing under your clothes every day?”

The flat look remained. Peter wasn’t playing that game. Foggy didn’t try to coach him either. Brett sucked in a breath.

“Okay, pal, here’s what we’re going to do. You give me a play-by-play of everything that happened over the last couple hours, and then you have a talk with my captain about this whole vigilante thing you’ve got going on, and then you go home. Easy as that. No charges if you’re happy to suffer through quietly. What do you think?”

Peter leaned closer to Foggy and looked up to him for the answer. Foggy leaned over and whispered to him. Peter studied the table and chewed his lip for a second before nodding.

“My client will agree to your terms,” Foggy said for him.

Thank Jesus.

“Alright, bud. Let’s start with the morning. When did y’all leave for the competition?”

Once you got past all the briefing and animosity, Peter was a sweet kid. A really good kid. An infuriatingly good kid.

He was f*cking sharp, too, with a killer memory. He could tell Brett everything from the size of the door entrances to the auditorium, to the color of the pants each shooter was wearing. He remembered exactly how he’d taken down four of the five guys, the last one he said he thought maybe had caught sh*t from one of his AcaDec compadres with a chair. He remembered the man screaming in Room 5 because he wore a hideous tie and a mint green collared shirt, and Pete and his buddies had been making jokes about it.

He knew exactly f*ck all about guns, though, which Brett was trying not to find endearing. It was hard because his descriptions of them were like how someone would describe a dog.

“Like this big,” Peter said, gesturing with his hands, “And kinda gray. Not black, like gray. Really noisy.”

“Do you remember if it was semi-automatic? Or did these guys seem like they had ammunition with them?”

Peter stared at him owlishly, then up to Foggy, then back at him.

“What makes it semi?”

Bless him, he didn’t know what the f*ck gun was shooting at him, just that it was shooting.

“Have you ever shot a gun, Peter?”

The kid lit up at a question he had an answer to.

“Wade took me to a range once, but he said I’m never allowed to go back, ever again.”

“Wade?”

Foggy intervened and said that Wade was a family friend.

“Wade is good with guns then?”

“Yeah, he was in the army. In Canada.”

Canada.

Brett looked at Foggy. He shrugged again.

“Guy’s Canadian, man, what else you want? Peter’s a sh*t shot, is the point he doesn’t know he’s making.”

The kid was honestly insulted and hurt.

“I’m not that bad.” Foggy patted him sympathetically.

If that was Foggy’s response, and Foggy’s ability to use a gun was in the negatives on this scale they were using, than Peter must be allowed near firearms never.

Peter’s reason to Spiderman out was pretty straightforward: they were shooting at me and my friends and all those important VIP folks in the corner, and y’all take an age and a half to get on the scene, so I just dealt with it.

Technically, he’d been acting in self defense as he was, in fact, one of the be-blazered minors there for a nerd competition. The fact that he’d brought his suit with him was also kind of miracle, because he admitted that he’d considered shoving it in his locker before he left for the bus. But, he said, Mr. Stark and him had had a talk about treating very expensive, advanced equipment with respect, and Peter did not want to have a repeat of this talk, as, according to him, it had taken eons.

Then the guy in Room 5 started screaming loud enough that they all could hear it through the walls, and Peter’s trust in Brett started to crumble a little bit.

Because, suit and enhancements aside, Peter was sixteen years old and the man in that room was threatening to kill him and anyone related to him, which, importantly, were some of the people sitting in the bull pen. Foggy pulled the kid closer to him and assured him softly that the guy was bluffing. Talking big to puff himself up. Peter nodded, but Brett could see that he wasn’t convinced.

He glanced at the door and leaned forward a little bit.

“That guy is going to jail for a very long time,” he promised Peter. “He might not get out before he’s a very old man. He’s trying to make himself feel better right now. In a few hours here, he’s not gonna have the time or the resources to lay a finger anywhere near you or anyone else out there ever again, okay?”

He got wide eyes and a little nod. Brett waited until the shrieking guy was escorted to a different room, out of earshot of their own and the bullpen before he stood up.

“I think we’re done here, Mr. Parker. Thanks for your cooperation. What’s going to happen next is—”

“Can I see my aunt?”

Uh. Will the aunt refuse to let him talk to the captain?

“Let me check on that.”

“Can you tell her I’m okay, at least? She says I give her ulcers.”

Yeah, he could do that.

Brett then stood through the most awkward meeting in his life as the captain tried to turn his “don’t do drugs” speech into a “don’t fight crime” one.

Besides all the other issues with this situation, the “don’t do drugs” speech was intended for eight-year-olds, not sixteen-year-olds, and the captain could not, for the life of him, figure out why Peter was not laughing at his corny Disney jokes and comparisons.

All he got was a dead-eyed stare.

“Captain America told me that nine out of ten cops are incompetent sh*theads.”

Uh-huh. Because of course he did. Captain, what exactly is your rousing comeback to that?

“Well, maybe in Captain America’s time—”

“And Mr. Stark and Double D and Cap never agree on anything, by they all agree on that.”

Uh-huh, say more, child. The captain was faltering and Brett needed to store this memory, full and complete, in his heart for the next time he got dressed down for some petty sh*t.

“Well, Stark and Daredevil aren’t exactly pillars of the community, Peter.”

“So, I’m supposed to ignore Captain America telling me I’m doing a good job because you told me to? He doesn’t lock me in rooms for a million hours, sir. He tells me bad jokes without all this other stuff. “

“Peter, you are young, and I understand that you want to make a difference—”

“I am making a difference.”

“Right. I’m not saying you aren’t. I’m just saying that there is a system in place for—”

“I call you guys when I’m done making a difference, almost every time too. Wade always tells me not to, but I do it anyways.”

The captain paled.

“Wade, as in Wade Wilson?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

Brett found that he had two expressions to describe this situation and they were “sweating bullets” and “sh*tting bricks.” He hadn’t realized that family friend Wade was f*cking Deadpool, but somehow, the kid’s lack of concern was feeding into his own.

Wade Wilson had tried to teach this boy how to use a gun and had been so horrified with the results that he’d banned the kid from using them for life. That, in Brett’s new f*cked up perspective, was a good thing.

“Peter,” the captain said, clinging to the vestiges of the role of Good Cop, “If you’re going to do this crazy thing, then you at least have the right to choose who you’re going to do it with. And Deadpool? Son, that man’s trouble. He’s—”

“My friend.”

“No, he’s just making you think he’s your friend, Peter. He’s using you.”

“For what?”

“For—”

“It’s a trick question, I know what. It’s friendship.”

“He tell you that?”

The captain was almost panting in his desperation to steer this conversation somewhere productive at this point. Peter hummed.

“No, he didn’t tell me that. But sometimes he shakes me really hard and says if I ever do that again, he’ll kill me himself. That means he’s worried. Because we’re friends and my aunt says I give him ulcers, too. Are we done here? I want to go home. I’ve got homework and Mr. Stark has to yell at me for half an hour and there’s only so many hours in a night, sir.”

Foggy was smug and Brett was ignoring him and the non-sh*tty coffee he was holding out to him.

The station was the quietest it had been in days with its new lack of blazers.

“C’mon, Mahoney, it’s coffee. I have not poisoned it. It is not a bribe.”

Fat chance, Nelson.

“I just wanted to thank you for treating my client with such respect and sensitivity.”

You client is causing my captain to endure an identity crisis as we speak.

“Brett.”

Ugh.

He took the coffee and his coat and followed Foggy’s gleeful grin outside into the freezing air. Fogs was beyond pleased with himself and with Brett. Peter had gone home. There had been zero coercion. Zero violence. Not even a hint of media presence. The kid only had to deal with his buddies now, and apparently, he had already convinced them that he’d stolen the Spiderman suit during his internship and it had done all the work for him. No, he didn’t think the real Spiderman would mind.

“He’s a good kid,” Foggy said.

“He’s a f*cking stupid kid,” Brett countered.

“I think he likes you, Brett. Pete’s a good ally to have. He’s even funny once you get to know him.”

“He thinks Deadpool’s his friend, Fogs. That’s trouble.”

Foggy laughed.

“Well, if you ever saw them together man, you’d know that Wade would kill an army for Peter. He does try to keep some distance there, if it helps with the heartburn.”

Brett blew out a cloud of air.

“Take care of him, Fogs.”

“Will do, detective.”

Chapter 2: who you gonna call

Chapter Text

“No one say a f*cking word,” Brett threatened the other detectives in his car with him.

The silence didn’t last long.

“I think,” Willows started.

“This is,” Maynard added in with a grin.

“A job for Spiderman,” Ellen finished off.

Aw, f*ck. Here we go.

When you’ve got a violent heist situation with some crazy enhanced person running up buildings, who you gonna call?

Foggy f*cking Nelson.

First anyways.

“Brett, this is my living room.”

“Foggy, this is detective Maynard, Willows, and Hernandez. We are, unfortunately, in need of your services as an intermediary.”

“At one in the morning?”

“It’s kind of time-sensitive.”

“Does your mom know you go around knocking up the neighborhood at one in the morning?”

“Don’t you dare call her and phrase it that way.”

Foggy tried Peter’s cell phone but didn’t get anything. He tapped his lip.

“Oh, actually. You know who he’s probably with?”

Don’t say Deadpool.

“Daredevil.”

That’s worse, actually. Go back.

Foggy had Daredevil’s number too. He turned the phone on speaker.

“Hi, dying right now. Call you back?” Daredevil answered to the tune of rustling clothing and fists meeting flesh.

“I guess,” Foggy huffed.

They waited five minutes. Maynard asked Fogs where he’d gotten his couch and he wrote down the website for her. They debated the merits of suede. The phone rang again.

“You’re on speaker. Are you still dying?” Foggy asked. There was heavy breathing on the other side.

“30%?” was the uncertain answer.

“Closer to 20 or 40?”

“20.”

“Alright you’ll do. Is Spidey with you?”

“Huh?”

“Detective Mahoney and friends are in my living room. Is Spidey with you?”

“At one in the morning? Nah, he’s out on his own tonight, is it dire? I can track him down?”

Foggy looked at Brett with a raised eyebrow. Brett cleared his throat.

“It’s a little dire, Daredevil. We’d appreciate it if you’d do that. Where can we meet you?”

“Uhhhh,” Daredevil drawled, evidently trying to figure out where the f*ck he was. “Let’s go with Bryant’s Park? Don’t think he’s that far away, let’s say half an hour?”

This was Brett’s life now. Setting up dates with vigilantes.

“Roger that.”

Brett needed the chanting in his car to quiet the f*ck down because he was not excited to meet Daredevil and he didn’t need these bozos fattening the guy’s head even more.

Willows called him a stick in the mud and informed him that he was going to get it printed on mickey mouse ears for his monitor in the station. He found that he had no f*cks to give about this.

They were at a disadvantage here and Foggy and Daredevil knew it. Brett’s team had to trust all these underworld punks if they were going to find their underworld punk, and Brett wasn’t even going to pretend to be happy about it.

Nevertheless, they got to Bryant’s park and were shortly thrown into cardiac arrest by the Devil crashing through the bushes behind them.

He’d done that sh*t on purpose, the asshole. He wouldn’t stop f*cking laughing. He loved having the upper hand for once.

“Double D, that’s not nice,” their miniature asshole observed above them. He hopped down smoothly from the tree to pout at his buddy.

Double D did not give a sh*t, he was leaning against the tree trying to catch his breath.

“Dude,” Spidey scolded. “You’re absorbing Wade’s energy again.”

That earned him, not one, but two busted middle fingers. Spidey remained unimpressed and leaned out Brett’s way.

“You rang, detective?”

f*ck. Yes, he had.

Now that he knew the face under that mask, Brett had located a hidden well of anxiety within himself for the kid flinging himself off buildings in pursuit of a highly volatile, extremely dangerous adversary.

Daredevil watched him go in interest, then turned to Brett.

“They a fighter?”

“Who? Our perp?” Brett asked. Daredevil waited patiently for him to get past the dumb question.

“Yeah, she’s good at hand to hand. Blew through the museum guards like they were nothing.”

A horrible smirk stretched slowly across the Devil’s face.

“Sounds like fun,” he pointed out like a monster.

The other detectives decided that he was devastatingly handsome.

“Uh-uh. No. We don’t need two vigilantes,” Brett warned, “I’m already catching sh*t for going to one of y’all. I don’t need any more of your—”

“Kid’s sh*t at hand-to-hand. I mean, not hopeless, but you know. Could be better.”

Lord, Jesus above, how did he know that? No. Brett knew exactly how he knew that.

“He’s a good kid, DD. You leave him the f*ck alone.”

All those pretty teeth and not an innocent bone among them. How the hell did he keep all of them in his head?

“Too late, Detective. Me and Wade have been corrupting him for nearly a year now. The current task is getting him to say ‘f*ck’ in front of other people.”

That poor, innocent child. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve Tony Stark to begin with, and he sure as hell didn’t deserve Daredevil on top of that.

“Don’t you got Castle or someone to piss off tonight?” he asked to redirect the guy’s interest.

Daredevil jerked in his direction like an excited hunting dog.

“He around? You seen him? Which way?”

It was like holding a tennis ball.

“Sighting up around Harlem. Go play.”

And just like that, Double D went crashing through the bushes once again.

Brett endured exactly one hour of his fellows fawning over Daredevil’s sexiness before Spidey caught them following up on a lead in the Upper West Side.

He held out a handful of material and a black backpack.

Some of the material of his own suit was missing and there was a perfect circle of teeth on his inner forearm. Brett looked at the evidence, then looked up at Spidey.

“You have all your shots, Pete?” he asked.

Peter’s wide, white suit eyes gave nothing away.

“Can people give each other rabies?” he asked. “I tried to google it but Karen’s being glitchy tonight.”

Karen…Page?

“No, the Karen—she’s my, uh. Nevermind. Here, take this.”

The second the bag left Peter’s hand, it was snatched and a speeding ball of red went hurtling off down the street with it to get hit by a car. The resulting crash and shattering of glass was deafening.

Peter shouted in frustration and grabbed at his head.

“Wade, no,” he cried. “Why would you even do that?”

“’Cause it’s a fake,” Daredevil’s voice interrupted from behind him. Peter whipped around and punched him right in the side of the head without thinking and, upon realizing when he’d done, started apologizing immediately. Daredevil stopped swearing long enough to check for blood, then shook himself upright.

“That was a good one,” he hummed approvingly, licking at a newly bitten lip. Spidey was not soothed by this. He offered to go get bandages, then got stuck between dealing with that or the now-burning car in the street.

Daredevil grabbed a fist full of the back of his suit before he freaked out entirely.

“No one’s hurt,” he said, “No burning flesh, no screaming.”

“But what about Wade?” the kid whined.

Brett thought it was a little unnecessary to point out that Wade Wilson could not die, that was kind of his thing. DD, however, conveyed most of the same message through a shrug. He licked at his lip again and started dragging Spidey off the opposite direction, ignoring the kid’s protests.

“Shush,” he finally snapped after a few yards, “All’s not lost. Wade’s dumb ass is fine. He’s stop-drop-and-rolling for the neighborhood kids. Gimme your arm.”

This was a wild statement in itself, but of all the possible statements to follow this up, Brett could not have expected, “don’t lick it” to be one of them.

He asked Maynard to punch him so he could make sure he was on the right planet still. She did. He was.

Daredevil promised Peter he wouldn’t lick the bite, he was just going to smell it.

“That’s still weird, Double D.”

“You want your jewel thief or no?”

“Fine. Don’t lick it, though, for real. I think it’s rabies.”

There was a thoughtful pause over in that corner of insanity, followed abruptly by a betrayed squawk and then a full volume cry for “WADE.”

This? This was every reason why Brett didn’t work with vigilantes. Every single reason, including the ones he’d never thought of before. The other detectives were charmed right out of their minds, like children on a fieldtrip.

Wade Wilson appeared as the fiery blaze around the corner was put out. He was bagless. He was huge. And he stopped dead in his tracks to follow a path with a wider berth around Brett and his troop of detectives.

His means of handling the immaturity going on just a little further down the alley was to toss little Peter over his shoulder and put a finger in Daredevil’s face.

Peter struggled to be put down while explaining the rabies situation. Daredevil bit Deadpool’s finger in the meantime and earned himself a headlock.

“We are all very annoying today,” Deadpool sang, wrenching poor Double D’s head back and forth and he swayed all three of them. Peter hammered at his back and told him that they didn’t have time for this, there was an angry jewel thief lady getting away.

Deadpool did not see how this was their problem. He informed Spidey that that was fine, but they had all agreed that the next team target was some Fisk associate, which made Daredevil stop struggling and remember why he’d gone out that night to begin with. He joined Spidey in trying to escape Deadpool’s grasp.

Brett’s sister would have called everything happening right then a ‘hot mess.’ So he decided he was going to condemn it a ‘hot mess’ too. He decided he’d had it with vigilantes for the night.

He’d barely gotten two steps back in the direction of the car, when he found himself being yanked back by the back of his coat. He grabbed for his gun but found himself staring up at the guy who could not die. Deadpool wasn’t looking back at him. He had zeroed in on something across the street. The other two menaces had done the same. All three of them, suddenly still as statues.

“Engaging Plan B,” Deadpool announced. “Red, you got a job to do, take her home and keep her there.”

He released the demon and the Devil was leaping through traffic not a breath of air later.

“Spidey, find the bag,” Deadpool instructed.

“Roger that.” The kid was gone before Brett blinked. Deadpool turned on their quad of badges and coats.

“Y’all are gonna want to distance yourself for a little while,” he told them calmly, “Go for a walk. Grab a cup of coffee. Your gal will be in the green off 12^th avenue in about an hour.”

Brett was almost scared to ask why the sudden interest and organization, but Deadpool made his suit eyes wink at them before he sauntered off, whistling, in the direction the Devil had gone.

“This is so exciting,” Ellen chirped as they all closed the car doors again. “We should all just become vigilantes.”

The idea was appreciated but vetoed. They headed to 12^th avenue to wait.

They got there and found nothing but didn’t have to wait long before the excitement found them. Daredevil came screaming across the green, followed by their museum thief who was suddenly far less investing in getting away with her goods than she was hellbent on stabbing him to death. Daredevil, for his part, kept stopping every so often to goad her into stabbing him to death. They collided and tussled every twenty yards or so, and every time, Daredevil threw the gal back and took off again.

It was less fighting and more the deadliest game of tag ever.

Brett then nearly tumbled over, himself, with the application of a sudden weight in his arms.

Spidey caught him before he fell to the ground and gave him some space to recover his balance and his dignity. Brett found that he was now holding another black backpack, identical to the first one Spidey had tried to hand over to him. This one, however, looked and felt like it weighed a ton. He didn’t know how Spidey had managed to carry it with him up there on the web.

Spidey did not join the scuffle happening in the grass. When asked why not, he whispered simply, “she bites.”

Wade Wilson turned up as nonchalantly as he’d left and, just like he had with Spidey, plucked their thief right out of Daredevil’s grasp. The Devil tensed at first at the sudden intervention, then saw that it was just Wilson and let himself fall limp and dare Brett say it, almost bored. The gal redirected her attention to trying to slash Wilson’s everything.

Wilson let it happen and hummed in appreciation while she did this.

She started to lose confidence in the face of his indifference. Then she appeared to figure out exactly who he was and that she’d been had and she started shrieking and squirming.

Wilson asked Brett and company over his shoulder if they wanted her wet or alive, which Brett didn’t get until Spidey helpfully informed him that Wilson was offering to dunk her in the water to cool her off a bit.

No, no, that wasn’t necessary. Spidey related this information to Wilson in a way which he could understand. Wilson was evidently disappointed, but out of nowhere, he slammed the lady onto her back in the grass and asked her, in no uncertain terms, where they could find the guy she was working for.

To her credit, if Brett had been in her place, he would have f*cking talked, too.

Thus subdued, Wilson cheerfully handed her over to Brett and his fellows to be cuffed and taken with her bag to the station.

Brett wasn’t entirely sure how you thank a motley crew of vigilantes, so he followed his heart. Or rather, since his heart was out of ideas, he tried to follow Maynard’s heart. Unfortunately, Maynard’s heart was a Pinterest board and she thought that these f*ckheads (and Peter) might appreciate cute little jars of hot chocolate mix.

Ellen’s heart was a little better because she suggested that they ask his good old buddy Nelson what the f*ck vigilantes considered objects of thanks.

Nelson stared them dead in the eye and said, “Well, mostly two things: not being arrested or a very specific tennis ball. Although food also works in my experience.”

Nelson would not elaborate on the tennis ball. It couldn’t be just any tennis ball, if they didn’t have the tennis ball, it was going to come across as an insult. He strongly recommended edible goods. Said that Peter in particular had a crazy metabolism that burned through calories like no one’s business.

Brett did not tell his mother that he was baking for Daredevil because she was already Daredevil’s number one fan and she didn’t need to know she had a semi-direct line to the guy now. Instead, he told her he was baking for Spiderman and that was just as big of a mistake because she had opinions on the kid’s height and weight and their effect on the work he was trying to do.

He asked Nelson if he could hand off these goods to the guys the next time he saw them and he said, sure, he would probably see all three that week.

That Friday, he walked into the station and found a little thank you card on his desk. It didn’t have any signatures, but someone had dipped their thumb in a pool of blood and drawn a panda with a huge smile for him.

He let the other relevant detectives see it and then burned the thing as a sanitary violation.

Chapter 3: take him away boys

Chapter Text

Daredevil’s secret identity was Matt Murdock and all they had to do was prove it.

Or so the captain claimed.

His office felt stuffed full of silence at this information, as the detectives gathered all tried to process it without pointing out all the obvious flaws in the captain’s theory here.

Namely the glaring one that no one dared broach upon fear of swift death.

Brett took a stab at it because his nephew was sick and had played Pepper Pig all f*cking night long and he was no longer confident that there was a benevolent God after all.

“Sir, Matt Murdock works a nine to five job, on top of doing charity work for the National Federation of the Blind and Clinton Church. If he was Daredevil in addition to all that, the man would literally never sleep.”

Relief is a tangible thing in an office of high tension.

“Maybe that’s his superpower,” the captain postulated. All the heads which had lifted in hope once again redirected themselves towards their boots.

“We will find out for sure, once we find him. Bring him in.”

Brett had already done his service in the question-asking department. He waited for someone else to take up the call. Ellen lifted her head.

“Sir, on what charges are we supposed to bring him in on? Suspicion of being a vigilante?”

“Did I stutter?”

Ellen stared desperately at Maynard for backup. Maynard pursed her lips and shook her head.

Same, girl. Same.

“Mahoney, bring him in.”

Wait, what?

Matt Murdock was very confused at the three police officers standing outside his door and jerked his face between Brett and his officers and the family of six crowded inside his shoebox office.

“Uh? Detective, I get that you hear this a lot and it probably doesn’t mean anything, but—”

The matriarch of the family started sobbing.

“—Now is the opposite of the best time.”

The grandmother’s grandson tried to comfort her, but it was no use. The lady’s son blinked tears down his cheeks and laid a hand on his mother’s back.

Brett was many things, but he wasn’t cruel.

“We’ll wait,” he said.

Becky, Nelson, Murdock & Page’s office manager, made Brett and his officers sign in. He didn’t know what the f*ck to do with that, but the way she told him to do it suggested that there wasn’t actually a decision to be made here. He signed himself and his officers in and they waited in the little waiting area with a collection of highly judgmental clients.

Foggy had already tried to shoo Brett and his guys out of the office, but upon being informed that this wasn’t a joke and that failure to comply would have undesirable consequences, he’d settled for glaring at them furiously through his door. Brett could hear his purposeful typing halfway across the room. Probably submitting a complaint to the department or, hell, the f*cking state, as they sat.

Karen had similarly cracked her door. She stared icily and unblinking at Brett in her nest of paperwork like a pissed off barn owl waiting to strike.

Murdock finished up soothing the grandmother and sorting through whatever it was he had to in another half an hour. He emerged, speaking to the family in Spanish, to direct them to Becky’s capable clutches, but was soon caught up in trying to extricate his face from the grandmother’s grateful hands and affection.

Once her family had left the office entirely, he shook himself out and surreptitiously tried to scrub the lipstick off his face with his jacket sleeve. All that he managed to accomplish was smearing it all over his cheek but he seemed to think he’d done a good job, and told Brett that he’d just be a second, he needed to give all the files to Foggy, who had started typing, if possible, even louder and more pointedly.

Brett could not believe they were about to arrest a blind man who was defeated by a distraught abuelita’s lipstick.

Foggy had the decency to scrub his buddy’s face for him before reminding him to say jack sh*t.

And with that, they took Matt Murdock into custody.

Matt Murdock was very polite in custody, as he was in most all places except court. He asked Brett if he could know what he was being charged with and Brett decided that he was going to stay as far away from that impending catastrophe as possible.

“My captain, uh, wants to tell you himself,” he told him.

Murdock was understandably baffled by this.

“The…captain?”

Yeah, buddy. And it was only gonna get crazier.

He offered Matt a consolation coffee and Matt accepted on the grounds that he thought he was gonna need it. Brett told him that he wasn’t going to give it to him black for all their sakes.

He delivered the coffee and got one of Matt’s infuriatingly handsome smiles in gratitude and left him to wait for the captain.

Everyone shut the f*ck up as the captain strode in, tall and proud, clipboard of interview questions tucked into his armpit. Even the drunk and disorderly and assault case folks recognized that there was something bigger going on here and respected the sudden drop in mood.

The captain opened the door.

The captain closed the door.

Every detective on the floor started praying for Matt Murdock’s soul.

The calm lasted exactly twenty minutes until the slamming of sh*t in the interview room made everyone in the bull pen leap a foot in the air.

The roaring was muffled, but it wasn’t muffled enough that people couldn’t hear every dulcet tone of aggression and frustration. Matt’s voice didn’t join the captain’s, so evidently he was clinging to his calm the best he could.

You go, Murdock. You hold your ground, honey.

“He’s gonna die,” Maynard muttered out of the corner as her mouth as she passed Brett with a stack of files.

“No, we’re gonna die,” he corrected. The second Fogs got there, it was f*cking over.

The interrogation door slammed open hard enough that Brett got the view of a well-panicked Matt pressed all up against the wall. The captain’s face wasn’t quite the same level of freaked, but it was up there.

“You’re gonna sit,” the captain spat at Matt. “And when you’re ready, we’re gonna try again.”

He slammed the door closed.

Matt, surprisingly did not ask for a lawyer. Given that he was a lawyer, this was suspicious, although Brett figured that Fogs would tell him the same things he was telling himself. Brett went in to check on him and offer him a new coffee or a bathroom break—and importantly to make sure he wasn’t dying. Not that anyone had to know.

He seemed okay. Mostly. Pretty ruffled all the way through. Very bewildered.

“Coffee?” Brett asked.

“You think I could get a priest?” Matt replied shakily. “Maybe some last rites?”

“You’re doing great, man. He’s uh. Kinda fixated. But if he gets too out of line, pal, you don’t have to stand for that.” Brett knew that Matt knew this, but he hoped the reminder would help. Matt smiled at him a little bit and asked if he could use the bathroom.

Foggy was menacing half the station with his aura alone by the time Brett came back from a scene.

“Nelson,” he greeted.

“Don’t talk to me, I hate everyone right now.”

Ah. Excellent.

Brett led his 21 year old burglar to his desk and made him sit in the chair before settling in for a good hour’s worth of paperwork.

There was relative peace for a solid five minutes before they heard renewed shouting in the interrogation room. Matt had been in there for what, two? Three hours now?

Brett didn’t understand what the captain was trying to accomplish here. Even if Matt really was Daredevil, they were talking about a guy who would fight with a broken leg if he needed to. Daredevil wouldn’t crack under a few hours of questioning. He might start to get bored, actually. If he was going to crack, it was going to take possibly a nail gun and a vulnerable target, preferably a child, to make that happen.

“Y’all can’t hold him for more than 24,” Foggy grumbled.

They knew, Fogs. They knew. For once, they were all routing for Matt too.

Matt finally asked for Foggy, although Brett got the feeling it was more to cut down on the volume of the discussion than actual legal counsel. Fogs would be a witness to this abuse and would write that sh*t up in a heartbeat. When he went in, the kid at Brett’s desk dropped his voice and whispered,

“Is the guy in there okay?” Brett looked at the door and thought about it. No shouting from Foggy so far.

“I think he’s fine,” he told the kid.

“MAHONEY.”

Nope.

“GET IN HERE.”

I know the suspect personally, sir. Not a good idea.

“Get. In. Here.”

Matt was bored out of his mind. He was tired of being yelled at. Tired of being asked the same questions over and over. Was pressing his forehead into Foggy’s shoulder when Brett came in. Fogs wasn’t pleased. Brett wasn’t pleased either, but they’d already cycled through the whole team, and Brett was the only one left.

Honestly? He was damn impressed.

Lawyer or not, Matt had survived 8, going on nine hours of questioning by the whole station. Everyone had their own style and you would have thought that by then, someone’s would have worked. Hell, anyone else might have been pushed to make even a false confession at that point.

Matt was a tenacious son of a bitch, Brett would give him that.

“Matt, you need anything before we get started?” he asked.

Matt groaned into Foggy’s shoulder.

“To leave?” he tried.

Sorry, pal.

“Are you familiar with a person called Daredevil?”

“Yes.”

“What do you know about him?”

“He’s a f*cking asshole.”

“Oh? How do you know that?”

“He’s the reason I’ve been here for two million years.”

“Have you or anyone in your family ever trained in martial arts?”

“Ugh, Brett, why?”

“I’ve got to ask, man.”

“Uuuuuugh. Dad. Boxer. Me. Age two to nine. Boxing.”

“Anything after that?”

“Blind.”

“Is that a no?”

“The hell do you think?”

“I can’t write down ‘the hell do you think,’ Matt. You know this.”

“For f*ck’s sake.”

“What are your feelings on the police? Do you think they do a good job?”

“Right here? Right now?”

“Matt.” Ah. The counselor now counsels his counselor.

“Uugh. Yeah. They’re fine, most of the time they’re fine. Except when they accuse my clients without grounds.”

“How about other people? Do you think they do a good job protecting other people? Do you think your neighborhood is safe?”

“No.”

“Explain.”

“Dogs.”

Um?

“He’s got a thing with dogs,” Foggy explained in exhaustion.

“Care to elaborate?” Brett nudged.

“No.”

“Matt, do you know what parkour is?”

“I’m dying.”

“Okay, I’ll rephrase the question. Have you ever done parkour?”

“Brett. Brett, I cannot. I literally cannot do that.”

“Parkour?”

“Can you get an ophthalmologist in here?”

“Sorry? A—”

“An eye doctor. So that they can shine their lights and do whatever is it they do and just tell you all that I am so. f*cking. Blind.”

“So you can’t do parkour?”

“Well, right now, I’m willing to throw myself off a building to prove it, if that helps?”

“I’ll make a note of it.”

“I tried, sir,” Brett said with a shrug and his arms full of clipboard. The captain rested his head on clenched fists on his desk.

“I know it’s him,” he muttered. “I know it. Get an ophthalmologist.”

What.

“You heard me.”

At 10 at night?

“Mahoney, I’m not in a joking mood right now.”

Well, fine. It’s your funeral.

Dr. Mendez was awake only by the grace of God and she was only willing to come down to the station because she wanted to meet Daredevil. She went into the interview room with Matt and was in there with a flashlight and a handful of other sh*t for five minutes.

Just five.

The captain knew what that meant. Everyone knew what that meant.

They started to very, very quietly build barricades out of the sh*t on their desks.

“Dude, I’m surprised he has eyes still, the amount of damage he’s rockin’ in there. I mean, whatever got into them, man. It must have hurt like hell. I’m surprised he doesn’t have more facial scarring,” Dr. Mendez said.

Dr. Mendez was a little off-duty and a little sleep-deprived and her professionalism and human empathy might have taken a brief vacation. But they got the gist of it.

The captain sighed and pressed fingers into his own eyes. They all ducked down into their make-shift fortress, preparing for the explosion.

“One more time,” he said instead.

“Matthew Murdock. Are you the vigilante known to us as Daredevil?”

“No.”

“Are you the vigilante known as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen?”

“No.”

“Are you the vigilante known as the Man in the Mask?”

“Noooo.”

“Are you the vigilante known to some as just ‘Red?’”

“Jesus Christ, how many names does this f*cker have?”

“I’d remind you to watch your language, here, I’ll ask again—”

“NO.”

Matt told them that they could keep him all 24 hours, but he wasn’t going to change his answers, and to his credit, the only way they’d changed over the last 16 was that they got increasingly more profane.

“How the f*ck is he doing it?” The captain, who really, really needed a nap, mumbled to himself. He’d been pacing his office for the last half an hour, and the new shift of detectives were watching in silence, just as Brett and company had briefed them to. They were all getting off very soon and none of them were going to jeopardize another night of sleep by someone putting some new, dumbass idea into the guy’s head.

“How is he doing it?”

“Sir,” Brett said after far too many minutes of this, “He’s doing it by not lying. He isn’t Daredevil. He’s exactly who he says he is. He can’t do parkour. He can’t fight crime. He can’t do anything that Daredevil does. The only thing that connects them is Fogs.”

The captain snapped his head up so fast he almost cracked his neck.

“So, Franklin Nelson is Daredevil?” he breathed.

Silence.

If you laugh, you will get your ass beat.

If you laugh, you will get your ass beat.

If you—

Brett came into the station to serve his punishment of filing evidence just as Matt hit his 24 hours. He kind of stumbled out of the interrogation room and asked Fogs blearily if they had court today, was it today? What was today?

Fogs didn’t have an answer for him because he didn’t know anymore.

They needed a nap, both of them. They were probably going to go off somewhere and be sickening and take a nap together.

On the way out the door, Matt paused and reached over to gently wrap a hand around Brett’s wrist.

“Thank you, detective,” he said. “It’s good to know someone believes in me sometimes.”

And away he and Fogs went. Off to terrorize the world once again.

It was only when he got to the evidence locker that he realized that Matt had been in the interrogation room when he’d said all that sh*t in the office.

Chapter 4: sniffer dogs

Chapter Text

Sam Wilson, that Sam Wilson was waiting for Brett when he came in on Tuesday and Maynard and Ellen stared at him like sharks.

He did not need to meet Sam Wilson that badly.

That said, his nephew would lose his goddamn mind. And Brett might be able to steal back the “coolest uncle” title from his brother-in-law.

Might.

The question was: was it worth the blood?

He didn’t have a chance to give that question the focus it deserved because Sam Wilson was suddenly standing up and moving towards him, despite Maynard’s obvious mental commands for him to sit right the f*ck back down.

“Detective Mahoney?” Sam Wilson asked.

“Yes, Mr.--uh, Tech Sergeant--?” He tried. Sam Wilson smiled.

“Let’s go ahead and skip that,” he said amiably, “Turns out rank doesn’t matter when you’re chasing an idiot. The guys in Brooklyn said that you’re the point person on these kind of things.”

On--?

Oh, no.

“Please tell me Captain America isn’t missing,” Brett begged. He did not have the time or the resources to track down Captain America. His nephew might die if he had to track down Captain America. He really would die if Brett couldn’t find him.

Sam sighed and rubbed at his face.

“I wish that was my only goddamn idiot,” he finally said.

It wasn’t?

“He’s not missing,” Captain America hissed at Brett and his officers from the staircase. He refused to enter the room properly. He seemed more than happy to squint at them from behind the enormous houseplant framing the stairs. All Brett could see of him was one blue eye and the bottom of his jeans. It had taken Sam Wilson an inordinate amount of time to drag him even that close to them.

Brett found himself slapped with a flashback to Spidey telling the captain that Captain America didn’t trust cops for love or money. He hadn’t realized quite the extent of that animosity.

“Steve,” Wilson said, pressing his fingers into his temples, “He’s been gone a week.”

“So? He used to do that all the time.”

“Yeah, when y’all didn’t have phon—what the f*ck do you mean he did that all the time? He just? Up and gone? For a week, Steven? And you didn’t do anything?”

The one eye Brett could see squinted harder at them. How could one man contain that much suspicion? It was almost impressive.

“He always comes home. He’ll come home this time, too.”

Wilson sighed.

“Baby, just—just come here, alright? Ten minutes, no being weird for ten minutes, and then you can have as many delusions as you want.”

It was a f*cking trip to hear someone called Captain America ‘baby,’ but it was also kind of sweet. Especially since Cap was evidently unable to refuse such sweet-nothings. He edged out and proved himself half as threatening in a huge black sweatshirt and jeans. He smelled of cigarettes when he passed by to perch as little of his ass-cheek as humanly possible on the arm of the couch Wilson was occupying and Brett was confused.

As far as he knew, Cap didn’t smoke. Maybe it was a way to gain some rapport here.

“Wouldn’t have picked you out for a smoking habit, Captain,” he noted evenly.

“Still a free f*cking country, ain’t it?”

O-kay, so let’s just trash that one and start over.

Wilson wrapped an entirely indiscreet arm around Cap’s waist and gave him a none-so-gentle squeeze as if to say “I will murder you as soon as these nice men leave if you don’t behave,” but Cap remained as tense as ever. Damn. Okay, how the f*ck do you build rapport with a 100 year-old white guy?

He surveyed the house. One of these guys was trying to fill all the available wall space with foliage. There were vines snaking their merry way across the top of the walls, and someone had lovingly suspended little pots of soil in a few places so that they might have a place to put down some roots.

“Y’all into plants?” he asked. Wilson hummed.

“JB’ll bleach all your clothes if you so much as touch ‘em. They’re his children,” he said.

Cap did not stop glaring at Brett and his team. Brett could practically feel the other two squirming in discomfort. Man knew exactly what he was doing.

Brett decided that he wasn’t going to play that game.

“What’ve you got against cops, big guy?” he asked Steve. Think of him as Steve. He’s just a witness that way.

Steve said nothing. He didn’t want to chat. He wasn’t half as friendly as he pretended to be on TV.

“They tried to deport his mama, on uh, multiple occasions,” Sam explained patiently.

Ah.

Yeah, that would f*cking do it.

“Gotten any better since then?” he asked, looking Steve directly in the eye.

Steve pursed his lips and shook his head back and forth, slowly, purposefully.

Well, f*ck, alright. Rapport, what rapport? We don’t need rapport.

“When was the last time you saw Sergeant Barnes?” he asked.

“8 days ago, he went to work at something like 7:30, didn’t come back that afternoon,” Sam Wilson explained.

“He always come back?”

“Always. If he’s planning to be gone for more than a few days, he leaves a note.”

“Where does he work?”

“Couple places. There’s a shelter on—Steven, get your ass back here.”

Steve was done. He wasn’t having it, Brett could see it all over his everything.

“It’s alright,” he said, as the guy trekked up the stairs, “Let him go. We can talk later if we need to.”

Sam Wilson was pained by this, he looked after his guy and rubbed at his jaw.

“I’m sorry, he’s not usually so stubborn about this kind of thing. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

Huh. Interesting. Brett made a note of it.

“He doesn’t know where Sergeant Barnes is?”

“No,” Wilson sighed. He rubbed a hand over the outside of his thigh.

“That’s unusual?” Brett prodded.

Sam Wilson co*cked his head, thinking to himself. Brett hadn’t realized it was a complicated question, but what the f*ck did he know about superhero relationships.

“I guess it’s not that unusual. The length of time and lack of notification is mostly the issue here. Buck goes out a lot, especially at night. He’s got kind of a weird sleep schedule; he’ll go down at around four and get up at midnight and go out for a while.”

“Does Cap sleep with him?”

“No, not at four anyways. Steve’s about 2% less weird and sleeps like a normal person. JB’ll usually leave a note before he goes out so we usually have a vague idea where he’s gone.”

“Can I see the notes?”

The notes were in code, that’s the only way Brett could describe it. Barnes’s handwriting was the kind of loopy, early century sh*t that Brett hadn’t realized he despised until just now. And even when that layer of code was overcome, they said sh*t like “bread” and “pier” and “labels.” All just one-word suggestions.

Brett wondered if all spies transferred this level of cryptic messaging to their everyday lives or if Barnes was just permanently stuck in it.

He asked Wilson if he could see other parts of the house to see if Barnes had left any signs or reasons for his disappearance or if he had willfully disappeared. Chances were that if there were no signs of foul play, they’d have to just let the guy come back when he was going to come back. Wilson accepted this explanation and welcomed him to look wherever he wanted, but he also told him without batting an eye that he was going to need a lockpick or a saw to get into the guy’s room.

Comforting.

There was literally no reason to have that many deadbolts on his damn door, didn’t matter how paranoid you were. If the first six ain’t gonna do the job you need them to, the next 4 ain’t either.

And it wasn’t like there was even anything to hide, really. Barnes apparently didn’t do too much of his sleeping in the room, given that he allegedly needed to lay all over every inch of the bed and the floor in the shared bedroom in order to catch some ‘z’s.

There was a collection of sci-fi novels which were more post-it note than novel in one corner and a long table covered in precious seedlings across the window. The upside was that the plants really helped counteract the stench of a pack-a-day habit. Barnes had three ashtrays in his room and two had been emptied.

It dawned on Brett that Cap wasn’t a smoker himself, he’d just stolen one of his boo’s sweatshirts to make himself feel better.

It was kind of cute.

A little.

Okay, maybe a lot. The guy was worried sick and scared and, in his experience, cops weren’t exactly the good guys in this situation. Brett could understand that.

It was slightly strange house to be in, he couldn’t help but think. No TVs anywhere. No laptops out in view. Barnes had a pad of paper by his primary ashtray and his plants which was filled with more indecipherable loopy notes.

“Can you read any of this?” he asked Wilson. He shrugged hard.

“I can’t read anything JB writes, Steve’s the only one who can.”

Steve’s door closed abruptly across the hall.

Uh-huh. Yeah, that’s about what he figured.

“He’s really not about us,” he muttered quietly. Wilson was apologetic. It wasn’t really his fault, though, and Brett told him so.

“Alright, let’s take a couple pictures and we’ll get the paperwork sorted and let you know what the next steps are, that fair?” he said.

It was fair.

Fogs was falling asleep with his head smashed up against the wall adjacent to the courtroom door.

He was vulnerable.

He knew better than that.

It wasn’t Brett’s fault, he had to be punished.

One dead arm later, he remembered that Fogs was Barnes’s lawyer for most things.

“You heard your client’s up and disappeared?” he asked.

Foggy’s brain took a second to determine which missing client he was talking about.

“Ah. Yeah, JB,” he said. “He does that sometimes. Usually comes back within three or four days, though.”

Brett leaned against the wall with him.

“We’re looking at nine, going on ten. Cap’s not being very compliant with the investigation.”

“I’m not surprised. He plays nice for the cameras, but that grudge runs deep, man.”

“I take it Barnes ain’t hot on us either.”

Foggy hummed.

“You filing him as a missing person?” he asked.

“I don’t think we can. Not really enough to go on. Does seem kind of suspicious, though. Guy just vanishes out of the blue. Might be nothing. But he also might be having some kind of episode or something; we wouldn’t want him out in the cold doing that.”

Foggy pursed his lips and digested this for a moment.

“Got anything of his?” he asked.

What.

“You heard me.”

Well, yeah.

“Cool. Ask Daredevil to find him. Or have Sam do it.”

Sam Wilson stared at him in supreme suspicion when he asked if he would be alright with Brett taking a slightly unconventional approach to this case.

“What’s unconventional mean?” Wilson asked in the tone of a man who had been burned before.

“Well, there’s no easy way to say this,” he said.

“Jesus f*ck, not you again,” Wilson groaned as Daredevil leaned dangerously far out over them on a fire-escape.

Guy was grinning like it was Christmas.

“Awww,” he said sweetly, “And here I missed you.”

Wilson could not bear to look at that smirk. Brett empathized with his entire heart. He, too, would sleep better if Daredevil vanished permanently from the face of the earth.

DD was at least willing to give it a shot, although he clarified that he might not be as good at tracking outside of Hell’s Kitchen. He wouldn’t say why, but not two minutes after sending the guy off into Brooklyn, Brett watched as he literally clotheslined himself and learned a hard and fast lesson about gravity.

At first, Brett thought it was a fluke, and Wilson did too, but ten minutes later saw Wilson throwing himself into an alley to catch the man after a fumbled hold. Double D was startled to be caught, safe and sound in Sam Wilson’s arms, but once he’d recovered from the shock, he startled squirming like Sam’s grip burned him.

Wilson dropped him with a co*cked eyebrow, and he threw himself up and dusted himself off and scampered up and away from them, as high as possible.

Anyone else would have swooned if Sam Wilson had caught them like that. Brett would have f*cking swooned. That was movie sh*t.

But DD?

No, not interested. Masculinity vastly more important. Must retain dumbass, holier-than-thou reputation.

Unbelievable.

The thing about having DD track someone was that he was f*cking nuts about it. He had zero boundaries and no discernable method, although, apparently, judging by the way he was practically huffing the sweatshirt Wilson had offered him, he had an insane sense of smell.

He was like a human sniffer dog. A couple whiffs of the sweatshirt and he was off like a rocket. The first thing he did was break into poor Cap’s window and scare the sh*t out of him. By the time Brett and Wilson made it upstairs, back in the house, Steve had flattened himself against the open door and was observing Double D squirming himself into the closet like he needed a quick dip back into the shadows before he could do anything productive.

Steve was understandably freaked right the f*ck out and had a furiously whispered conversation with Wilson about just how f*cking invasive and unnecessary this sh*t was when Daredevil burst back out of the closet to scramble out onto the fire-escape and sniff around again. And then he was off, crashing down into the space between the brownstones and leaping over a backwall.

They all shared a dumbstruck moment of quiet.

And then Cap went rocketing right after the f*cker. Jumped right out the window and everything.

Wilson considered this with unsettling thoughtfulness.

“Well, that’s one way to get a guy invested,” he said.

What.

They found Cap before they found Daredevil. Found him panting with his hands on his knees outside a bodega.

Wilson was even more interested in this development.

“Met your match, there, buddy?” he asked. Steve stared at him in shock and concern and threw out a few vague gestures in what must have been the general direction Daredevil had run off in.

“’S f*cking fast,” Steve breathed. “I mean, like. I can do the flats, but the ups and downs—”

He startled backwards because DD had returned to steal back the sweater from Sam’s arms for another good sniff. He snapped his head up and around. Brett tamped down on the urge to ask “watcha hear, boy?”

Then Double D re-noticed Steve and got all up in his space to sniff him, too.

Weird?

Absolutely.

Brett wondered how the f*ck the guy was doing this sh*t. Maybe he was faking it? Like, maybe he saw this whole thing as a joke and was just yanking their chain.

“Man, I appreciate that you are letting the whole freak flag fly today,” he said, “I really do, but can you maybe give us a hint of what exactly the hell you’re doing?”

Daredevil wasn’t paying attention to him, though. He was deeply invested in something Southwest of them. He co*cked his head several different ways and then readdressed the three of their dumbstruck expressions before gesturing.

“Something over there,” he explained, taking Brett’s request in the completely wrong way.

He was off before he could be corrected, however, and Steve shook himself out and bounced off after him, refreshed from his short break. Sam watched them both go in amusem*nt now.

“You know, I might actually keep him if he can tire Steve out,” he told Brett. “Think Nelson’ll lend him to me twice a week?”

What the f*ck did Fogs have to do with any of this?

So, the way to find a superspy and ruin a secret spy operation was to throw an overexcited Devil at it, Brett now knew. Brett was now filing that sh*t away for the next drug ring he had to bust.

Barnes was six types of confused at the weird-ass burglar trying to get at his preppy sweater. He was evidently undercover, wearing huge chunky glasses and several fake piercings and he shoved Daredevil away, hissing at him to cut that sh*t out.

Daredevil hissed back and shoved right back at him until Barnes threw in the towel and threw up his arms to let him have whatever the f*ck it was he wanted. He did not expect that to be for the guy to sniff at the armpits and neck of his sweater. Although, to be fair, no one could have expected that.

By the time Barnes looked up in their direction, he was just a little too late, and ended with his arms full of Cap and his back full of gravel. DD was a little shocked that his chewtoy had so suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, but he rapidly lost interest and waited patiently for Brett and Wilson to catch up to the two on the ground.

When Brett got closer, he saw that what he thought had been slightly desperate hugging was, in fact, Cap threatening to suffocate Barnes with his bare f*cking hands if he ever pulled this stunt ever again. He’d graduated to growling at Barnes in some other language by the time Wilson got in there to separate the two of them.

DD was pleased at a job well done.

Brett kind of felt like he needed to reward him.

He did not know how to reward him. Food had been good last time, so maybe something sweet?

Sam Wilson, however, lived with every type of crazy under the sun, and seemed to know exactly how to reward this unusually helpful behavior.

“You want caffeine, liquor, or an IOU?” he asked the guy. DD perked up real quick and Brett filed that sh*t away, too. He needed a notebook or something.

DD wanted caffeine.

Brett could not say he’d seen that one coming. He personally did not think the guy needed any more caffeine, what with how awake he was already. Wilson told him that he could have any coffee he wanted, honey. He said they had a few bags at home that were kind of fancy if he wanted to have a sniff.

He did. Obviously.

The newly recovered and begrudgingly apologetic JB watched this guy huff through all the sh*t in their cabinet in awe.

“I could use you,” he thought out loud. Wilson sent him such a f*cking stormy look that Brett shuddered.

“You will not,” he ordered.

DD was, again, not interested. He asked Wilson if he could have half a pound of some obscure coffee from Ethiopia and both Barnes and Steve hummed as if they approved of this choice. Despite Wilson’s best efforts, Daredevil would not take the whole bag. He wanted a half a pound. That was all.

Wilson foisted the rest of the bag off on Brett.

Brett was not going to let Daredevil take the subway back to Hell’s Kitchen. It was his civic duty to spare everyone on that carriage the awkwardness of that ride. He wrangled the guy into his car and left him to break every road safety law in the backseat, all curled up around his bag of joe.

He released the demon back into the wild at the corner dividing Hell’s Kitchen’s from the Upper West Side and didn’t even get to say thanks before the guy was out and off in the wind once again.

He shook his head and went back to work to close Barnes’s half-finished missing person case.

The coffee was unfairly good.

Chapter 5: that's karma, son

Chapter Text

Brett had started a notebook. A notebook which his goddamn nephew had already dug out of his bag and drawn all over in crayon. But a notebook no less.

In it, he’d started keeping track of all the weird sh*t he was learning through his ever increasing exposure to the underbelly of the New York crime scene.

Daredevil’s overwhelming fondness for coffee had made it in there. So had Brett’s recent discovery that Spidey could be persuaded into doing some worryingly complex chemical tests if provided with a large enough vessel of resin.

Stark did not allow the boy to have resin. Brett thought that there was maybe a good reason for that, but it wasn’t his job to enforce lab safety. It was his job to catch serial rapists.

Jessica Jones, he’d also learned, would be two thousand percent more likely to cooperate with officers if she was not awoken before noon. Luke Cage, similarly, worked a night job and appreciated not having some asshole pounding down his door before 10am.

There were, in fact, two Hawkeyes and yes, they were both called Hawkeye and no, you should not even bother questioning that. Also, one of those Hawkeyes was deaf, but Fogs wouldn’t tell him which one, he said he’d figure it out on his own.

Brett had come to learn that Frank Castle was the human equivalent of Gollum and he could be coaxed forth from one of his many caves only through Karen Page.

Only.

Unless. You were extremely desperate, in which case you might be able to call Daredevil and alert him of the man’s presence in the city. DD would find the guy. You just had to be prepared to lay on him before he could pick a fight and ruin everyone’s day.

If you were desperately desperate too, Brett had learned, you could find Deadpool through Spidey. Little Peter seemed to know where he was at all times, even though he claimed he didn’t. In order to extract this information from Peter, however, you needed to present your case very, very thoroughly. If you didn’t make it exceedingly clear that this was beyond Spiderman’s abilities or that it involved something especially Peter-repellent, then Peter would lie to your face about contacting Deadpool and would meet you at your arranged place himself.

Brett had very few notes on how to work with Deadpool.

Mostly because reliability and logic didn’t seem to be his strong suit. He did things because he wanted to and he didn’t do them when he didn’t. It depended on the day. It depended on how he was feeling. It depended on who he’d just spent the last 72 hours with.

If it was the X-men, you weren’t going to find him. He wasn’t going to entertain anything you said.

If it was what he called his A-Team, there was absolutely no telling whether he’d be amenable to lending support or not.

If it was Team Red, as they called himself, the combination of DD and Spidey making pathetic “but Wade” sounds at him seemed to appeal to his ever wandering better nature.

The captain decided that he was pleased with all of Brett’s progress except on the Deadpool front and assigned him the task of collecting better intel.

Brett informed him that that was fine, but that it didn’t matter how hard the captain wished it, some of these guys weren’t going to give up their secrets or cooperate. They just weren’t. They weren’t interested in justice. They weren’t interested in the system as it was. They hated the police for a thousand different reasons. And many of them were simply not going to do it because they didn’t want to.

It was as easy as that.

Deadpool was one of those guys. He ran in an entirely different world from most of the other guys and he was very, very happy with that, and he was ambivalent at best at above-ground crime and justice.

The captain thought that the recent breakthrough in getting vigilantes to pitch in a little towards more legitimate crime-solving would sway Deadpool on this issue. He said that he believed there was some good in the guy and that if he was any decent kind of person, he’d want to help out.

Yeah, Brett though, maybe if one of his buddies is the target. But otherwise, no pal. You’re barking up the least productive tree in the goddamn forest.

The captain informed him that he was not an expert in this area and told him to provide one or follow orders.

Huh. Now there’s a thought.

Brett, as the up-and-coming vigilante-whisperer of his force (he f*cking hated this title and hated that everyone had decided that he was the one for this sh*tty f*cking job—you get two vigilantes to talk to you and all of the sudden you’re the f*cking point person for all the goddamn underground folks in the city), found himself in the unique position of reporting on Foggy’s relationship with one Matthew Murdock in exchange for Anna Nelson’s seemingly unfailing ability to make Foggy talk to him about this sh*t.

Fogs was displeased.

So.

So.

Displeased.

Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it, pal?

This put Brett in a very good position to knock on Foggy’s door and be let in, which he did. Because he legitimately needed to shift this burden from his shoulders.

Fogs opened the door and said that Brett could come in on the condition he helped him with something.

Brett did not like the sound of something.

He was correct.

“Dude, it’s infected,” he pronounced.

“You shut your whor* mouth,” Foggy snapped back.

Fogs had spent half of their teenage years begging his mom to let him get an industrial piercing. She’d allowed the ear piercings and had even let him test the waters with a single lip piercing, but she drew the line at the industrial. She could get the rings, but she could not understand why he wanted a bar stamped through his ear as well.

Something about law school—likely an in-depth, highly personalized conversation about professionalism—had made all the metal Fogs had once delighted in terrifying their classmates with fall out of his face. He’d come home to pick up some books three weeks into attending Columbia and Brett, in passing, had nearly punched him in the jaw, having mistaken him as someone trying to break into the Nelson’s family home.

It had taken him ages to see past Foggy’s lip piercing as a kid and now he was still blown away when it wasn’t there.

Fogs claimed that him being a partner at Nelson, Murdock & Page meant that he got to write his own damn dress code for once and his damn dress code included hair to your toes and goddamn industrial piercings.

Hence the present situation.

“It’s probably your f*cking hair that did it,” Brett thought out loud. Mostly just to see the scandalized look on Fog’s face.

It would never not be gratifying.

“I need saline,” Foggy decided miserably after bestowing this gift upon Brett. “Do I have saline?”

Fogs did indeed have saline in his absurd first aid kit. Seriously, there was no reason for this much gauze.

Whatever. It didn’t matter.

He commenced attempting to convince Fogs that the best way to soak his ear was to put his ear in a dish of saline rather than just dropping the saline onto the skin, so that he’d douse his face when Brett asked him what he needed to.

Foggy stared at him in disgust and then called his nurse friend to verify this information.

Goddamnit.

“Are there vigilante experts?” he finally asked Foggy and the towel-wrapped ice cube he was holding to his ear.

Fogs shrugged.

“I mean, it’s probably a field of study by this point,” he said. He moved the ice cube to the other hole.

“How do you know all this sh*t about these people then?”

Foggy shrugged again.

“I just talk to them, man. They come to me, enter my life, and refuse to leave it. Like herpes, I’m telling you. Honestly? I think we’re all friends at this point.”

Huh.

Okay.

Wait.

“You’re friends with the Punisher? That guy ruined your career.”

Foggy scoffed.

“He also fixed the fault in the office and keeps the sh*theads from our door, so, you know. I dunno if I’d go as far as friends for me and him. But he’s Karen’s friend, so what can I do?”

Not f*cking be friends.

This was not talk Foggy understood. He waved it off like it didn’t mean anything and returned to the earlier topic thoughtfully.

“I wonder how’d they’d study them, these experts,” he hummed, “Like, obviously a survey ain’t gonna do the trick here. So what, interviews? Let’s sit down the Spiderman and the Punisher and see what they think about life?”

Yeah, it sounded pretty nuts now that he thought about it.

“Hey, google it,” Fogs encouraged him. His ear only looked redder from the ice and the infection. Brett got out his phone and took a picture of it to send to Mrs. Nelson before complying over Foggy’s vocal irritation.

Google said that a joint team of scholars at CUNY and Columbia were actually trying to study NYC’s unusually large and active vigilante population as they spoke.

Their website was f*cking wild.

They had a counter of “encounters” which documented the exact issue he and Fogs had been throwing around earlier.

“Subject amenable to foodstuffs but not paperwork,” one student had logged in this box. “Accepted foodstuffs but then claimed that could not write with hands full. Researcher feels ‘duped.’”

“Subject agreed to speak, but only about The Shining,” wrote another poor soul.

“Subject appears to have hearing impairment. Repeatedly asked researcher to “sing us a song Mr. Piano Man.”

Brett and Foggy were dying by the end of it.

They were trying so hard.

“Maybe we should throw them a bone,” Foggy said.

Yeah, maybe they should.

Brett sent the group an email saying that he and his lawyer compatriot were currently working on cases which involved vigilantes and were interested in the research being done in the city. They were willing to provide some interviews of their experiences in exchange for being alerted of any significant findings.

Brett got an email back almost one hour later.

It was painfully formal and had obviously been written by a group of folks crowded around a computer bursting with anxiety and shifting commas like their lives depended on it.

He messaged Fogs about this develop and got back a “that was fast.”

They agreed to speak with the students the following week.

Four professors, two post-docs, and a bevy of grad students were dying to talk to him and Fogs that following Friday.

As soon as Foggy entered the room, they were freaking out, telling him how valuable his court cases had been to their research.

He was surprised. It took him a little while to remember all the sh*t in the public record that had his name on it.

Brett stayed out of this sh*t because he was still new to the game.

They gave what they thought were fair evaluations and answers to the questions posed.

Some of the stuff was pretty f*cking weird and esoteric.

“Has Daredevil ever exposed any religious leanings to you?” they asked. Foggy hummed and hawed and finally said,

“Well, he’s told me once that he believed himself to be possessed by a demon in the past.”

And one of the students clutched her heart, apparently unspeakably relieved that her analysis was still valid.

“Spiderman appears to be very lean, do you think there might be the possibility of an eating disorder there? Maybe some control issues? Has anything he’s ever done led you to believe either of those things might be true?” they asked Brett.

No. Pete would eat anything handed to him, provided it did not contain cilantro or celery. Brett had found this knowledge more useful than it had any right to be.

“No, I have bribed him with every food under the sun and he’s been more than happy to wolf it down,” he explained to furious note-taking. “Pretty sure he’s just like that because of his mutation. If you really want his attention, I recommend calorie-dense things. Ice cream. Hamburgers. That kind of thing.”

They asked Fogs if the Punisher had ever expressed any remorse for his actions and Foggy was so taken aback by the question, it took him several times to get out an answer.

“Frank is not a bad person,” he finally said. “He’s not a psychopath. He’s got a lot of trauma and he’s able to compartmentalize things which he does and things with happen to him better than the average person, maybe, but he’s not a monster. He doesn’t manipulate people or anything like that, and if you’re one of his people, he’ll do anything for you. I know it’s hard to reconcile that with that he’s done, but. He’s just. That’s just who he is.”

And so on and so on.

They were informed that this information, bizarre as it seemed, would be indescribably helpful to the study and that the two of them would be alerted of any findings as soon as possible.

They thanked the group and were thanked in return and left.

Six weeks later saw the captain trying to understand why the f*ck Deadpool had graffitied a massive, purple co*ck and balls on their station window (Brett knew exactly why and it had to do with the new detective Goldberg trying and failing to arrest Wilson spectacularly the night previous. His hubris was now being rewarded by antagonism. He’d learn.), when Brett got an email from the research group followed by a text from Foggy.

FN: k, I know what your thinking

FN: but fogs you jut got a piercing

FN: but consider, brett, how much improved my sex life would be with another tongue piercing

He had not, nor ever intended to consider this. He informed Fogs of this and received a frowny face.

FN: okay but srs question you think Matt would freak?

FN: I miss it brett

FN: I miss it so much I never told him I had one and i’m scared he’s gotta tap out

FN: BRETT I’M IN CRISIS WHAT IF HE DOESN’T LIKE IT

Okay, this sounded like a drink conversation.

They determined over several beers and a few shots that Matt was the same guy who’d f*cked his merry way through half the grad students at Columbia and at least a quarter of his undergrad department and so was probably into all kinds of kinky sh*t. Probably.

Brett honestly could not imagine Murdock as a kinky guy, but Fogs was concerned, so he went along with it for his peace of mind.

“It’s a piercing, Fogs,” he slurred, “Not BDSM. Oh. Also those students got back to us. Said that they’ve ‘employed some of the suggested techniques and found them far more fruitful.’ They wanted to say thanks again.”

“Wait ‘til they try to talk to Wade,” Foggy giggled.

“Dude, he went for like, veins and everything on the window.”

Fogs did not choke on his drink, but it was a near thing.

Maynard was judging him for all the cups of coffee on his desk and accusing him of colluding with the enemy when the captain came out and demanded that Brett tell him everything he knew about Wade Wilson.

Brett stared at him and opened his once gray, now tie-dye notebook (courtesy of Amos, thank you so much, honey. Uncle Brett loves rainbow) to read off his limited information on Deadpool. It had not changed since the last time the captain demanded this information.

“Call Spidey in then,” Captain griped.

A thud and a squeak attracted their attention and they looked up to see Wade Wilson himself reapplying an enormous, pink, inelegant dick to the window which the captain had personally power-washed the day before.

He froze upon noticing everyone in the office staring directly at him through the window and then flattened himself onto it to make an even lewder demonstration of himself.

Brett addressed the captain.

“You really want to work with that, sir?”

No?

Yeah, that’s what he f*cking thought.

No amount of expert opinion or applied theory was going to crack that one.

Chapter 6: just get it over with already

Chapter Text

It was Brett’s understanding that there was a conflict brewing in and among certain Teams of a certain color and that the interloper, according to Foggy, was the suggestion of a costume change.

Brett could not imagine anything he cared about less in his entire life.

Foggy had opinions on it, however, and they were currently locked in a stalemate because Fogs had snapped a photo of the state of Brett’s desk at the station and had threatened to send it to his mom if Brett sent Mrs. Nelson the picture of Foggy’s industrial piercing. This meant that Brett was gonna hear this sh*t whether he wanted to or not.

“Pete’s thinking about making a black suit, and Double D’s already switched to a black suit, and I think Wade’s going to have a breakdown.”

“The hell does the kid need a black suit for?”

“Stealth, so he claims.”

“Dude.”

Fogs shrugged hard.

“Rumor has it Stark has him training with the Black Widow.”

“Nah.”

“It’s true.”

“Nahhhh.”

Brett checked his phone to make sure none of his coworkers were messaging him. Foggy pouted and flicked the flat of his nail against the side of his glass. He’d been weird these last couple weeks, Fogs. Brett was suspicious. Suspicious in all the ways his relationship with his sister had taught him to be.

According to his Spidey Sense, Fogs was either gonna drop an “I’m pregnant” or throw a shoe at him in the imminent future.

Hey, he never claimed that his Spidey Sense was as good as the kid’s.

“Brett, can I tell you something?”

See? See???

Not as good, but pretty damn close.

“Sure.”

Foggy snagged Brett’s beer, ignoring his yelp over this, and squinted at him hard.

“Swear you’re not going to judge me.”

Psh.

As if there was anything left to judge the guy about. Brett already knew every embarrassing moment he’d ever had. He’d been there, suffering through the secondhand embarrassment with his hands slapped up against his jaw in anguish.

“Brett.”

“Okay, okay. I swear.”

“I mean it.”

He chuffed.

“Man, there is nothing you can tell me at this point which is crazier than the life I’m already out here livin’.”

Silence.

Extreme squinting. Brett restrained himself from squinting back. That would just be rude.

“Nevermind.”

What.

What the hell?

“Hey, I’ve got an early morning, I’m taking off,” Fogs said, pushing Brett’s beer back to him and standing up. He rummaged around for his bag.

Wait. No. What just happened?

“Hey, wait, wait, wait,” he called after Foggy. He didn’t turn around. Brett threw down a tip and tossed the strap of his own bag over his shoulder to follow Foggy out the doors.

He had to jog a little to catch up with the guy. It was cold and their breath made clouds. He fell into step next to Foggy and nudged him a bit with his shoulder.

“C’mon, man, don’t be like that. What’s up? You can tell me.”

“Leave it, man,” Foggy told him, edging out of the proximity a little.

It was so unlike him. Like, yeah. He and Brett had this little feud thing going on, but they both knew that that wasn’t the whole of their relationship. There was a reason why he’d stuck by this weird kid through all of elementary and middle and—f*ck basically their entire education. Maybe Fogs had gone off to law school for a bit and yeah, maybe Brett had gone to the academy and okay, so technically they were on opposite sides of the courtroom or whatever.

But Fogs was still Fogs and Brett was still Brett, and he’d do anything for the guy. Had Foggy forgotten that?

He didn’t say anything for a block or two and let Foggy have his space. He wasn’t quite sure where they were going because it wasn’t in the direction of either of their apartments.

The tension got a little too much for off-duty Brett to handle. He caught Foggy’s arm and Fogs pulled a little bit against it but seemed to have already resigned himself to having this interaction.

It was kind of a relief. They could drop the masks for a second in the cold.

“What is it?” Brett asked.

“I can’t tell you,” Foggy said, not looking at him.

“Can’t or don’t want to.”

“Can’t.”

“Client?”

“No.”

“Fogs—”

“I just can’t Brett, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Ouch.

It shouldn’t have stung, but it did. He let go of Foggy’s arm.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything,” Foggy sighed. “I’m gonna to talk to a friend of mine, sorry to leave you here, man.”

That just wasn’t right.

Something here wasn’t right.

“Yeah, no. It’s cool. Hey, take it easy, alright?” he said. He got a little nod in return and they parted ways. Brett headed back towards his place but the cold in the air got stuck in his lungs.

He was a f*cking detective. He’d get to the bottom of this.

He started with interrogating Murdock because if there was anything he’d learned in this godforsaken career it was that 90% of the time, the culprit was the partner.

Matt Murdock was puzzled to be in Brett’s presence for so long without hostility.

“Can I buy you a coffee, Matt?” Brett asked, hoping that first names would make his intentions apparent.

“Why, detective,” Murdock gasped, “I’ll have you know, sir, I’m a committed man.”

Yeah, sure whatever.

Brett knew more than this guy even knew he knew about his sex life.

Matthew Murdock, for example, was not half as suave or romantic as he was in public in the sack. He was apparently extraordinarily ticklish and did not respond well to surprise sexy-times butterfly kissing. Or sneakily placed hickeys. So Fogs had told Brett while gesturing to his fat lip. He’s bony, Foggy had added irritably.

Such knowledge as this made Brett immune to the guy’s charms in person.

You sir, are a dork. And a nerd. And no amount of hair wax or crow’s feet was going to get you out of it.

Murdock seemed to realize that his dashing nature was not having the desired effect and pouted a little, although he agreed to the coffee after he got out of court.

Matt Murdock was an emotional brick wall, Brett came to see.

He did a really good job of pretending to understand what was going on and an even better job of sympathizing with Brett’s concerns, but Brett didn’t feel like they were on the same page at all.

When Brett said, “Fogs has seemed kind of out of it lately. A little distant. Almost like he’s faking it.” Murdock’s immediate response was to stiffen a bit and then force himself to ease up and say, “That’s strange. I haven’t noticed anything different.”

“You haven’t noticed him acting any different?” Brett repeated because he couldn’t really believe that. Foggy was the most open of all open books. His pages were public domain and practically scattered to the wind.

“No, I don’t think so. He’s been spending more time with Jess and Claire lately, but besides that, nothing out of the ordinary.”

Jess and Claire. Brett made a mental note of the names.

“I’m worried about him,” he said.

Murdock walled right the f*ck off.

“I’ll talk to him,” he said sincerely. What he didn’t say is “and I’ll tell you exactly nothing, and I don’t want to discuss this further,” but Brett heard it all the same.

Murdock had problems, Brett knew that he had problems. No one lived the kind of life that Matt had and came out of it unscathed.

While Foggy and Brett had lived in Hell’s Kitchen and endured their working-class childhood the way most working-class kids did, Matt Murdock had grown up a few blocks over and down and that was. Well, there was no nice way to say it.

It was a sh*thole.

Matt was one of those kids who, when asked where he’d grown up would probably say simply “Hell’s Kitchen” or would throw out a few cross streets because he’d moved so much as a baby that he couldn’t remember having an address for more than maybe a year at a time. Foster care probably hadn’t helped that.

Matt Murdock, however, was one of those people who shut down their trauma, rather than dealing it in screams and violence.

He had problems, yeah he did.

Brett could only imagine what kind; maybe he and Fogs were trying to deal with some of them. Maybe Foggy was worried about Matt, was scared that he might do something to hurt himself or someone else.

90% of the time, it was the partner.

He had to trust his gut.

He “bumped” into Karen and offered to replace the drink she spilled all down her front. She told him he didn’t have to, but he did it anyways.

It gave him an excuse to talk. To bring up Fogs.

“No, I think he’s working through something,” Karen noted as they waited for her new drink to be made. “He’s been a little down lately, but I think he’s trying to hide it from Matt.”

Ah. So Murdock wasn’t the problem here? Doubtful. Continue, Ms. Page.

“I heard him and Matt talking yesterday, but they didn’t get very far. Fogs kept shutting him down.”

A snoop after Brett’s own heart. Do continue.

“I dunno, I thought they were fine, but whatever it is, it’s freaking Matt out a little. He’s doing his nervous thing.”

What nervous thing?

“He kind of fidgets like this.”

Karen showed him with her hand, she rubbed her thumb against the first knuckle of her middle finger on same hand.

“He does it when he thinks, but he also does it when he thinks someone is upset with him.”

Yes, because even though Matt Murdock hid his problems, he couldn’t shut them out completely.

“I’m just kind of worried about Fogs,” Brett told Karen. “I don’t like to see him upset. I get that that doesn’t come across much, but I really do give a sh*t about him.”

Karen evaluated him for the veracity of this statement and pursed her lips. In the time it took for her to retrieve her new drink, she’d made up her mind.

She walked towards the door of the café and turned her head over her shoulder.

“Walk with me,” she said.

Karen Page, if she wasn’t such a pain in the ass and had more professional training, would have made a great cop.

She was just the right level of brutal and honest and she squared up like no one Brett had seen before.

He thought she looked like she could kill a man if she needed to.

Probably had. But that’s neither here, nor there.

“Foggy keeps a lot of people’s secrets,” Karen explained as they walked.

Yeah, no sh*t.

“He’s keeping some of Matt’s, too.”

Of course he was.

“I’m sure Matt’s keeping some of Foggy’s secrets, too,” he told Karen. She gave him a strong look.

“Let’s stop pretending that Foggy has secrets,” she said. “We both know the only secrets he keeps are other peoples’.”

She was sharp, Ms. Page. Now, lady, why you gotta be such a pain in the ass?

Also, involved with Frank Castle? Why you gotta go do those things?

“What’s Matt done to Foggy?” he asked.

“It’s not what Matt’s doing to Foggy,” Karen volleyed back.

It’s what he’s doing to himself.

“Is he aware of what he’s doing?” he asked.

Karen stopped. She turned to him.

“Detective, just think for a minute, would you?” she said. “You know what’s going on, you’ve been here the whole time. Think about it some. I think you’ll figure it out, and then you’ll get it.”

She had a meeting. Brett let her go.

So it had to do with Matt. And it had to do with secrets. And it had to do with a timeline of events.

This was detective work. Brett was a detective.

Matt Murdock was five feet, ten inches tall. He was, if Brett had to guess, between 160 and 180 pounds. It was hard to tell since he always wore suits.

He was white, third or fourth generation Irish. Catholic. Athletic build.

He went to church like clockwork.

He’d lived a life in the foster care system.

He was blind.

If you watched him closer than usual, perhaps the teeniest bit like a stalker with a good cause, no really, then you might notice that he moved his head around jerkily when he walked. He seemed startled sometimes when there was nothing to be startled about.

Sometimes, he had a gym bag slung over his shoulder.

If you watched like the good, friendly, well-meaning stalker you were, just a little closer than was probably acceptable even by undercover standards, you might notice that Matt Murdock went to an ages-old gym.

Fogwell’s was an institution. It was constantly being renovated, yet no matter how much renovation went on, it always managed to look and smell like the 70s. Maybe the 80s.

Battlin’ Jack Murdock had been a product of Fogwell’s gym. It only made sense that his baby came to visit his ghost sometimes.

It didn’t make sense that said baby liked to go around eleven at night, when the place was shut up. A set of keys were left on the counter, waiting for him.

So he and Fogwell had an arrangement. Noted.

There was no way for even the most accomplished stalker to watch a man inside a building from street level, so Brett went for a walk. Waited around. Answered work emails on his phone.

Waited until 12:30, when Matthew Murdock decided he’d had enough of whatever he’d been doing inside.

It was 12:30am. And he’d gotten a little lax.

He left the building without his cane.

He left the building without his cane.

It was really, really hard to breathe through that. To watch what was happening in front of him and to understanding that it really was happening.

He knew what he had to do.

He got out of his car.

He didn’t try to walk softly.

Eventually, he found himself standing behind Matthew Murdock.

Murdock stopped walking.

Brett did, too.

“It’s real f*cked up, man,” Brett said to Murdock’s back. His breath made clouds in the air which he was now certain Matthew Murdock could see.

Matt tipped his head up to the sky and seemed to evaluate all his choices. He tipped it slowly the other way and, even though Brett couldn’t see him doing it, he knew he was smirking.

“You don’t even know the half of it, detective,” he said simply.

Anger pulsed hot in Brett’s neck and spread through his chest, through his lungs.

“Is this a game to you, Murdock?” he asked. “People believe you when you do your little act. I believed you.”

Matt said nothing, although he did balance his head out and tip it down.

“I’m insulted, detective,” he said.

“Yeah, so’m I,” Brett replied.

The air was cold and their breath made clouds, and although it might have been Brett’s imagination, Matt’s didn’t seem make as big of ones as he did. Probably all the anger.

“I’m insulted, detective,” Murdock repeated. “That it’s taken you this long.”

Sorry, what?

“What, to figure out you’re not blind, Matt?”

Silence.

A sigh.

“You’re all the same,” Murdock said, defeated. As if he was the victim here.

“I can’t arrest you for being a grade A piece of sh*t, but I can tell you to get your sh*t together for Fogs,” Brett said before he could hold back the words.

Matt turned around his way and strode purposefully towards him. He walked confident. Tall.

Squared up.

He got in Brett’s space.

“Mahoney,” he said softly, leaning forward like some kind of cat, “I’m bored of this game.”

This man was dangerous.

This man was so f*cking dangerous.

How had Brett been fooled by that—

“You called in your expert Brett, couple weeks back. Dr. Mendez? Is that right?”

Dr…Mendez? Yeah the—

“Ophthalmologist. That’s right. Remember what she told you? She said, and I quote, ‘I’m surprised he has eyes still.’ ‘It must have hurt like hell.’”

How could he know what she told them? He had been in the interrogation room.

“How do you—”

“So I think I’m done playing this f*cking game.”

Matt Murdock took off his glasses and couldn’t meet Brett’s eyes. His own were light and dark at the same time, hazel almost. They were empty.

Empty like a wooden bowl with nothing inside its hollow.

“I. Am. Blind.” He said. “And it’s none of your goddamn business how I live my life. And it’s none of your goddamn business what I do with my partner. Keep the f*ck out of it, detective. Or things won’t end nicely for you.”

Brett’s heart was pounding, every nerve in his body screaming danger. This man was danger.

Fogs couldn’t be with him. Brett couldn’t let Fogs be with him.

“Are you threatening me, Matt?” he asked as calmly as his pulse would allow.

“Are you scared?” Matt asked him with all those f*cking white teeth.

Yes. Absolutely. You’re a psychopath.

“Scared or mad, it’s hard to tell sometimes,” Matt continued. “Doesn’t matter, though. Can’t do anything, can you, detective? Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going home.”

He turned around carefully and left Brett standing in a cold street at 12:43am.

There were a thousand times in his life where Brett had kept himself from letting his work life bleed into his personal life, but this? No. Brett couldn’t stand by and let this sh*t happen to Foggy.

Foggy didn’t deserve to be with a man like Matt Murdock—no wait, that wasn’t right. Matt Murdock didn’t deserve to be a with a man like Foggy Nelson.

Maynard noticed his bouncing knee at his desk and commented on it, but he ignored her. He couldn’t focus on anything. He dug out his phone and texted Fogs to get a drink after work.

It took Foggy a few hours to get back to him, but he agreed.

He’d barely gotten his drink at the bar and dragged Foggy over to the table when he was talking.

“Foggy, I need to talk to you,” he said. Foggy glanced from at the hand on his arm and then back to Brett’s face with a frown that only deepened with each passing second.

Brett prayed to God that he already knew. That this was a secret he’d been keeping. That they could work something—anything—out of this.

“Yeah, evidently. What’s your problem, man?” Foggy snipped at him.

“It’s about Matt. I know what’s happening, I get it. I know he’s—”

Foggy jerked back and pulled his arm away in shock. He reached behind him and lowered himself slowly into the chair at the table. Brett followed suit, biting his lip.

“Oh my god, he told you?” Fogs gasped. “He’s never told anyone by his own volition, before. That’s—I don’t even know what that is.”

Brett swallowed hard. Didn’t even look at his drink.

“Well, I mean. He didn’t exactly. Not in so many words, at least. I more figured it out on my own but listen Fogs. I get it, he’s—”

“Oh my god. You saw him?”

“Yeah, and he’s dangerous Foggy. He’s—”

“No, I know, Daredevil.”

“Not…Blind…”

That.

Was Not.

What he’d meant.

“Oh sh*t,” Foggy swore upon recognizing the long pause for what it was.

“Holy sh*t.”

“Oh f*ck. Oh sh*t. No, I didn’t say that.”

“Oh my god,” Brett found himself whispering. It all made sense now. It all made so much f*cking sense; how the f*ck had he been so f*cking stupid.

“Oh my god, Brett. It’s uh—”

Fogs, this whole time, had been covering for that motherf*cker. Because that motherf*cker was Daredevil. He came to Brett, he trusted Brett because Foggy trusted Brett. He was at every Wilson Fisk scene because he’d made it to begin with.

“Oh my god, I f*cked up so bad, Jesus. Brett, please, please, don’t tell anyone.”

Fogs had tears in his eyes, he was choking down and sniffing back a breakdown and Brett couldn’t, he just couldn’t, leave him like that.

“Okay,” he gasped, practically heaving himself, “Okay, okay. This is fine. We’re fine. This is fine. Crazy. Dead f*cking crazy but fine.”

That lasted maybe a second.

“Fogs, this is not f*cking fine.”

“I know,” Foggy gasped miserably.

“Like, every kind of not f*cking fine on top of a huge pile of not f*cking fine, what the—”

“Brett, I know. I know, I swear to god, I know better than anyone.”

And he did. He had to. The back of Brett’s head made clicking noises and pieces slotted together.

“You’re worried about him?” he said slowly. Foggy wiped the unshed tears from his eyes and nodded soundlessly.

“You still love him,” Brett said.

More nodding.

“Despite all the--?”

“Yes,” Fogs said, like a man pressed in confession, “Despite and because. He’s a good person, Brett. You—you—I can’t explain it, you’ve seen it. You’ve worked with him, he’s sweet and dopey and excitable and he loves what he does and he helps people, Brett. He does, he spends every second of his life he can spare helping people.”

“He threatened me last night.”

Fogs stared heavenward and Brett hated that he felt a lump in his own throat at the guy’s distress.

“He only does that when he feels threatened.”

“He’s not blind, Foggy.”

Foggy’s brow creased like the words were physically painful. He swallowed hard.

“No,” he said, “He is blind. And that’s what makes this whole thing so much more surreal.”

He couldn’t be.

“Brett, he is, I swear to god. We lived together, we live together. I know.”

He’s lying.

“Not about this.”

The eye doctor, though. He can’t do parkour. He—

“He lied about that, but not about this.”

The silence that fell over their corner table was suffocating. The chatter of the rest of the bar seemed so distant.

“Brett, I’ve got to tell him. Come with me, he can explain. Give him a chance to explain.”

Well, what else was he supposed to do?

Matt’s apartment wasn’t too far away and rather than knocking, Foggy just said, “Matt, open the door,” when they were stood outside it.

It opened like he’d already been on the way to get it.

He wasn’t wearing gym clothes or lawyer clothes or Daredevil clothes. He wore jeans and an old sweatshirt, one that Brett recognized as Foggy’s. He tipped his head at Foggy in concern and then, a beat later, rounded on Brett.

All those teeth.

How had he not recognized that sneer?

They went inside in silence.

“Matty, I’m sorry.”

Matt said nothing, but hostility practically wafted off of him.

“I’m so sorry,” Foggy said, pulling at his hands. He managed to dislodged one of them from where Matt had crammed it against his ribs when he crossed his arms.

He was furious. Silently furious.

“I don’t know what else to say,” Foggy continued. Matt pulled his hand away and set his jaw.

“It’s fine,” he said, flat as a board.

It wasn’t. Brett was looking at a guy who could have killed every single person he’d touched over the last what, ten? Twenty years? How long did it take to build up that kind of skill? How long had he been hiding it?

Fogs bowed his head in Matt’s kitchen and tried to fight back the tears and upset and it made Brett’s diaphragm squeeze and twist. Matt watched Fogs for a moment (was it watching? Or was it something else) before he softened and leaned forward to wrap an arm around Foggy’s waist. He pulled him in close and let him bury his face into his neck.

“It’s fine,” Matt said, far kinder this time, “It’s not your fault. It was going to happen, we both knew it was going to happen.”

Foggy said something which was muffled, but which Brett knew from his head to his knees was “but it shouldn’t have been me.”

Brett didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to make this right. He had a responsibility to do something, but he didn’t know what the f*ck it even was anymore.

Matt stared at him over Foggy’s shoulder, cold, calm. Promising something which Brett couldn’t figure out. He gently pried Foggy out of his neck and thumbed away the tears. He pressed their foreheads together.

“It’s okay,” he said, “If the detective wants to know, then he gets to know. And then, we’ll let him decide how he’s going to handle it.”

Brett did not like the f*cking sound of that.

He did not like Matt’s hollow gaze finding his own somehow.

It wasn’t violence that look was promising, it was a challenge.

Brett had walked into a minefield. A f*cking minefield.

A field covered in goddamned mines, all of which were horrifying little bombs of information which could threaten the lives and wellbeing of every living soul in the city.

Matt Murdock told him patiently that yes, he was Daredevil. Yes, they’d worked together on multiple occasions, and yes, he took on much of the crime which the NYPD failed to catch in their nets in the Kitchen.

That much, Brett could understand, but then Murdock brought out the big guns. The f*cking scars on his body. His war with some kind of cult. His ongoing feud with Wilson Fisk. The associated drug rings, human traffickers, assassins, lawyers, gunmen, mobsters, gangs, all of it. You name it.

Daredevil had his thumb on the pulse of Hell’s Kitchen and he traced the webs backwards and forwards through the bodies and the drugs and the bullets. He ran interference, kept Fisk’s guys from their power, cut off mob communications and resources everywhere he could, put his body between people and the dregs of society, even when poverty and desperation made those dregs unusually familiar.

“If you take me out, detective,” Murdock—no, Daredevil said in his emotionless tone, “That’s your prerogative. But just know that there are only two of us in this city who can do what I can, and the other one is much stronger and less discerning than me. Once I’m gone, you and your team will need to step up. It’s either that or someone else will or no one else will, and I can tell you right now that both of those are some pretty sh*t options.”

Only two people like him. How did he know that?

“Because my sensei only trained two of us.”

Oh, a sensei now? Was this some kind of Karate Kid sh*t?

“My life isn’t a f*cking joke, Mahoney.”

Foggy hissed at Matt to be civil, which was, in itself, a validation of the truth in those words.

This was insanity. This could not be real. This didn’t happen to people.

“Yeah, I’m not people. I’ve been f*cked since day one. Make up your mind, detective. I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t fight you, but I’ll at least let you make your decision.”

He needed to think.

“If I don’t get time, then you don’t, either. Make up your mind.”

No, he needed to think. He needed to weigh everything on the table here. Foggy wouldn’t look at him. Could he do this to Fogs? Could he take away the man he loved, the guy keeping all the sh*t in the city at bay? Could he do that?

“I need time, Matt,” he said firmly. Because he did.

“Me f*cking too, pal,” Matt volleyed back.

Brett’s fingers and toes were freezing, and it wasn’t just because the room was cold. He took in a shuddering breath.

“I need to talk to one person,” he said.

“Who.”

Not a question.

He breathed out a shaky breath.

Amos was four years old and the light of Brett’s life. He didn’t have a wife or kids of his own, hadn’t really been interested in that kind of life for most of his time on the force. But the second Amos had been born, and Brett’s sister had laid him into Brett’s arms, he’d thought that maybe, actually, it might be nice one day.

Amos stayed at his mom’s on Friday and Wednesday nights so that his sister and her boyfriend could have a break. Date night, movie night, whatever. Brett tried to come by to spend time with him when he could so that his mom wouldn’t spoil the child rotten.

She was getting older, his mom, and Amos was getting bigger.

Amos had every Avenger action figure they could afford. He adored Captain America. He adored the Falcon. He’d wanted to be the Hulk for Halloween for two years in a row.

His new thing had become Spiderman lately and he agitated the f*ck out of Kelly as to why there wasn’t a Spiderman action figure yet, and when were they making one, and could he have one, please, please, please, mama?

But Amos was an unusually aware little kid and he liked to climb into Brett’s lap and ask him to tell him about his encounters with the superhero of their neighborhood. The man who Uncle Brett worked with, his co-hero, because Brett was a hero in this baby boy’s eyes.

Amos was groggy and grumpy at being awakened at 2am on a Friday, but once he saw who it was waking him up, he shook himself out of it and demanded affection.

Brett held him close and pressed a kiss to the side of his warm head.

“Amos, I need your help,” he said.

Amos pushed against him so that he could sit up.

“Kay?” he said.

“I met Daredevil just now,” Brett told him seriously, softly so his mom wouldn’t wake up. “And I’ve got to decide whether I do my policeman job and arrest him, or whether I let him go.”

Amos stared at him like he was being dense, which was exactly what Brett needed in that moment.

“You can’t arrest Daredevil. He’s a hero,” Amos said with a frown. “He protects mom and dad and grandma, and you, Uncle Brett.” He thought for a moment and then brightened up, “And me! He protects me, too.”

Oh, honey.

Yeah, he does, doesn’t he?

“I want you to f*cking know that I am not okay with this,” Brett told Matt in the doorway.

Matt co*cked his head abruptly, listening for whatever the hell it was he did, and blinked at him.

Then he grinned.

“Welcome to the underworld, detective,” he said.

Chapter 7: does it get better?

Chapter Text

Brett had thought that knowing that Matthew Murdock was a teeth-smashing f*ckhead would change his life dramatically and in some ways it did, but not in any of the ways that counted.

For example, he now had a f*ckload of unfounded and unwelcome anxiety when Daredevil was sighted limping away from a crime scene.

Even though Foggy straight up told him it wouldn’t do sh*t, he tried coaching the guy in how and when to use emergency services. Yet, no matter how many times they went through the drill, it always ended up like:

“Okay, so if a civilian gets hurt then you?”

“Call an ambulance.”

“Perfect. And when you get hurt you?”

“Assess the damage.”

“Uh, okay—”

“Fast right hook.”

“No--”

“Incapacitate the target.”

“Matt. Matt, no—”

“End the altercation. Pressure on the wound. Maybe take an ibuprofen.”

Brett had laid on this man in his living room, hissing and spitting, trying to impart the correct information the best he could, but the closest Matt got to ‘go to the hospital’ was ‘go see Sister Maggie.’ Which Foggy told Brett was as good as he was going to get.

So that was one kind of anxiety.

There were also the new concerns that came with the realization that Matt was, in fact, still very, very blind. Although he had alternate ways of navigating the world, these came with whole new set of their own problems. Colors, for example, still spelt trouble to the guy (“Listen, Matthew. If you encounter an explosive device, and there are wire-things, what do you do?” “Find a sighted friend or take it to Wade.” “What? No. Take it to the police.” “That what I said. Or Wade.” “Not Wade.” “Frank?” “No.”) so did screens. Not to mention that any distraction or detraction in his awareness, for so much as a second, meant that he could damn well just walk out into a street and get hit by a car. He didn’t do crowded spaces well. He didn’t do snow well. There were so many things which Brett was now suddenly hyperaware of when the captain asked him to deal with Daredevil on something or when the guy’s name came up in relation to one of those absurdist, gang ambush crimes.

And yeah, those new fears had changed his outlook on Daredevil dramatically, but then Matt went and did sh*t like teaching Spidey how to fight four people at once or stealing Frank Castle’s rifle in the middle of Midtown, and Brett was swiftly reminded that Matt was more than capable of being a functional violent idiot all on his own.

Most importantly to Brett’s work however, he was a bad f*cking influence.

Brett had received an extraordinarily polite letter from Colonel James Rhodes, and after he’d died a little at the honor of receiving any form of correspondence from Colonel James Rhodes, he’d opened it and found it formally asking him to stop giving Spidey resin in return for information or aerial support.

Why, you might ask?

Because he’d made resin knives.

Resin.

Knives.

Knives made out of resin.

And when he wasn’t satisfied with this, he’d gone out his adorable, doe-eyed little way to invent a new type of polymer from the acquired resin which made even sharper, even lighter not-quite-resin knives. These he took to Deadpool and DD and these, to Matt’s delight, could be slipped through metal detectors, including the ones at the courthouse.

In return for such gifts, someone had trained Spidey in the art of knife-throwing and he was getting far too good at it, Colonel Rhodes wrote. The kid was developing almost superhuman aim and had been causing chaos in Stark Industries’ labs in increasingly creative and concerning ways.

“We are pleased that Peter is learning how to work with the NYPD, but we would humbly request that all future rewards, bribes, etc. take the form of edible or otherwise age-appropriate goods.

Sincerely,

Colonel J. Rhodes.”

Brett respected this letter and what it stood for, but it meant he occasionally had to google teenage culture because he had no f*cking clue what was both age-appropriate and appealing to people Peter’s age anymore.

Peter did not like any of the google results half as much as he’d liked the resin. And that was an issue. He’d started to reject some of Brett’s jobs on the grounds of a lack of an equivalent exchange.

Brett had gone to Matt, because wow, look, finally a perk of knowing the asshole, and Matt had given him one of his confused, but ultimately disinterested looks.

“f*ck Rhodes, just give him what he asks for,” he said.

No. Nope. Wrong answer.

We do not disregard war heroes’ requests. That is very bad form, Matthew.

“What the hell do I care about form? What’s he done for me?”

Preserved your country?

“Doing what? Murdering children in the Middle East? No thanks, f*ck Colonel Rhodes. Pete’s in a sharpening-things phase. We’ve all been there. Let him have his fun.”

Have we? Is that really a thing we all go through?

Brett thought f*cking not.

Brett found himself spending the night following this bonkers conversation standing between two parties of screaming drunk people while trying to examine a body in the middle of the street. On the way back to the car to escape the noise, he noticed a little silver coin in the street. It was bloody and had an insignia on it he didn’t recognize.

He called forensics over and they took pictures and told him they’d send him their findings soon.

He got a blown-up image of the insignia the next day and had been frowning at it for a full minute when Ellen passed by and whistled.

“That a token?” she asked.

A token? Well, apparently.

“Yeah, I heard that the Irish started handing them out to people they want taken care of.”

Oh, no sh*t?

“No sh*t.”

He had to pass the case along, and didn’t really think much more of it until Fogs called him and asked him if he could collect a piece of evidence from an “anonymous tipper.”

There was a woman pinning Matt to his apartment floor and yelling at him when Brett arrived and he quickly saw why. The guy looked like a trainwreck. He was too tired and sad and pained to yell back for once, so the gal was taking the f*cking mick out of him while she could.

“What happened?” he asked Foggy as the lady, Claire her name was, pulled shards of glass out of Matt’s abused side.

“He won’t tell me,” Foggy groused, fuming in Matt’s direction.

Claire then did something which made Matt make a horrible little whining noise and Foggy’s irritation was replaced immediately with sympathy, and he abandoned Brett to go hold his boo’s hand, er. Head. The hand wasn’t allowed to be touched at the moment.

It took some coaxing (and some illegal morphine) but Matt finally revealed that he’d had the living sh*t kicked out of him by, guess who?

The Irish.

They’d left him to bleed out, but he said one of them had put something on his eyes before they’d left. He’d held onto them, because he’d never had anyone do that before and he wanted something to stuff down their throats when he got ahold of them in future. Foggy handed Brett two coins with a very familiar insignia on them.

He’d bagged them and thanked his anonymous tippers, then left Matt to sleep it, and the rage, off.

He didn’t have to wait long before he got a call from Anthony Goddamn Stark asking him if he would mind coming by Stark Industries like now.

You don’t exactly refuse a call from Tony Stark.

Ellen and f*cking Goldberg went with him.

The first thing Brett noticed about Tony Stark’s personal lab was that one of its automatic doors was shattered.

Shattered but still fully functional. Merrily scattering bits of plexiglass with its every move.

He decided that he was going to pretend that that had absolutely nothing to do with him giving Peter resin at all.

The inside of the lab was not a lab. It was a scrapyard. Brett’s mom’s worst nightmare. Colonel Rhodes, as he led them in, took the novel approach of screaming for his buddy, rather than trying to locate him like a normal human being.

And for good reason.

Once located (through mutual shouting), Stark was half inside something which reminded Brett of the Iron Giant’s head, cursing like his life depended on it. Peter was slumped over the table next to him, with no shirt on and a chest plastered over in bandages. His forearms and elbows were torn right the f*ck up and he didn’t wake up to greet Brett like he normally did.

Brett gut reaction was to gather the kid up and take him home. He needed to be home with that kind of damage, not in some cold ass lab.

He refrained for the sake of professionalism.

“Mr. Stark—” he started to say, but was interrupted by Colonel Rhodes snapping,

“Tony, what the hell are you doing? Cops. Here. Now.”

Which was, uh. One way to do it.

“Tony” must have smashed his head against something in that giant dome because the whole thing suddenly rang like a bell. He re-emerged, shorter than Brett had expected him to be, with his hands covered in a foul mixture of flaking blood and oil.

“Ah, detective. Nay, detectives. Which one of you is Mahoney?”

Brett grimaced and raised a hand.

“Oh, excellent. Here, this is for you.”

And Tony f*cking Stark put, in the middle of his palm, two pieces of metal which looked like they’d recently been coughed up by a dog.

Brett knew exactly what they were by then. He looked at Peter. Stark looked with him.

“Kid was choking on ‘em, when I got the alert,” Stark explained nonchalantly, like he hadn’t obviously crammed his fingers down Peter’s throat to save the poor boy’s life.

Oh god, he hadn’t meant it.

Someone take this child home.

And someone else get Brett some damn hand sanitizer.

“He’s going home after Dr. Cho looks him over one last time,” Stark assured him.

Thank f*ck there was at least one super person in the world who still believed in official medical intervention.

“It’s unusual of him to send me an alert,” Stark continued, reaching over to pet Peter’s hair. Colonel Rhodes caught his arm before he could and waved at it in disgust. Stark hummed and abandoned them to go scrub up in a nearby sink.

“I thought I’d seen that symbol somewhere,” he said over the water. “I was right. Some idiot left an indentation of it in that guy right there. Used to be down at the docks before I had it brought home for repairs. Some drunk idiot must have punched it with a ring or something.”

“That guy right there” was the Iron Giant’s head, which must have been some kind of SI device.

“It usually holds some of the control boxes for the weather station out there,” Colonel Rhodes explained.

Oh.

Good to know.

Brett and the others bagged the coins and asked if they could talk to Peter. Stark, with clean arms to the elbow, gave them a long look before approaching the kid and gently rolling him to the side. With surprising strength, he scooped the kid up and kicked a button at the bottom of panel next to the sink, which opened to reveal a beat to sh*t set of couches and a little kitchenette.

It must have been where Stark slept when he locked himself in his labs.

Peter started to wake up a little muzzily, when Stark went to set him carefully onto one of the sofas. He was just conscious enough to bitch at Stark he wasn’t that little. Stark ignored his protests. They were hoarse and slurred.

Peter managed to recognize Brett through the haze and was amendable to answering some questions when Stark and Colonel Rhodes left them alone.

“Peter, do you know what these are?” Brett asked him, holding up the bag of coins.

He shook his head with his eyes half open.

“Do you know who hurt you?” Brett asked next. Peter swayed his head from side to side again, as if looking for the guys in the room with them.

“There were a lot of them,” he croaked, “They were doing something to a lot of girls. Takin’ ‘em somewhere.”

Brett’s skin prickled.

“Where are the girls, Peter?”

“They ran away.”

Oh, thank f*ck.

“You distracted them, then?”

A sleepy nod.

“And they beat up on you?”

Another nod.

“They hurt you pretty bad, huh?”

Peter swallowed and was distracted and confused by Ellen and Goldberg. Brett had to call his name to get his attention back.

“Can you tell me what they did to you?”

Peter described something which sounded unsettlingly like what Matt had gone through.

“They said they were gonna make an ‘xample of me,” he concluded.

f*ck.

“We’re gonna get ‘em, Pete,” he assured him. “You don’t go after them, okay? We’re gonna handle this one.”

Peter was already dozing again. He didn’t nod or respond at all. Ellen stepped out to talk to Stark and Colonel Rhodes some more. Brett hunted around and found an ancient quilt which lived in the room, he tossed it over the kid, which got a reaction at least.

He whined and made himself into a Peter-burrito while grumbling that he was fine and why was everyone treating him like he was little today?

It was hard work not to laugh at him.

The final straw was when Frank Castle walked into the station, dragging a screaming, bloody man by the back of his jacket and said that he’d like to report a motherf*cking assault.

There was a piece missing from Frank Castle’s ear.

Horrifyingly, he said it wasn’t for him and gestured back to a group of timid young women crowded around the station entrance, all still dressed in club-going clothes, despite it being 8 in the morning.

Brett didn’t know what else to do and was about to offer Castle medical attention when the guy dropped his, uh, prey to the station floor and blurted out,

“The f*ck is my car?” before following the same trail of blood he brought in right back out the door.

Brett had two teams of officers with him on this case. They were going to bust the Irish for their recent attempts at human trafficking, but by the time they got to the warehouse their intel said the group was gathering, Wade Wilson was already there, sitting on an old crate, rocking back and forth and swearing at a dollar store crossword puzzle book.

He hauled one of the bodies by his feet up and held their face level with the book.

“Ten letter word for a cave dweller,” he said.

The guy dribbled blood down his front.

“No, I already tried ‘neckbeard,’ that’s only nine,” Wilson huffed.

The guy groaned.

“No, ‘cave-dweller’ is too obvious and there’s a hyphen. Keep going though, you’re doing good work.”

Okay.

So that was happening.

Wade Wilson took to harassing all the people trying to remove his victims from the scene. No one knew what to say, except Kayla, the EMT who, out of f*cking nowhere, shrieked “TROGLODYTE” in triumph and got a crow of delight and double high-five in return for her trouble.

Technically they needed to question Deadpool and, terrifyingly, he came along willingly.

Brett couldn’t decide if he was manic or having a schizophrenic episode or what as he stood outside the interview room with a handful of officers and the captain.

Wade was having a great time inside. He’d popped three of his fingers back into place and had made good progress on his crossword.

He kind of bopped along to whatever tune was in his head and Brett emphatically did not want to be the one to interview him.

The captain took pity upon him.

Ellen sat down and had barely opened her mouth when Wilson said,

“They touched my babies, ma’am, there was nothing else I could do.”

And Ellen didn’t know what the f*ck that meant, but Brett did and in some f*cked up kind of way, it was heart-warming.

Deadpool must have come to know what had happened to his, uh. Compatriots? Teammates? Babies. And set out to put an end to that nonsense.

A warehouse of gang members was, it was now apparent, a walk in the park for the guy.

He explained happily that he’d catfished them. All of them.

Separately.

And told them to meet little old Bella Wilson at this one place at the docks where nobody ever goes, tee hee.

“Uh, is Bella a real person? Should we be looking for her?” Ellen asked because the job made her.

Wilson paused and reflected on this and appeared to be struck by a devastating thought.

“f*ck, I think I made her into one,” he said.

They did not understand. Ellen tried to understand.

“No, no. It’s like. We, people, make other things into people, right?” Wade asked her. She nodded and made a high-pitched affirmative sound because leaving the room wasn’t an option.

“Right, so I, person, Wade Wilson, think that I, person, Wade Wilson, have made her, cat, Belladonna Don’t-eat-That Wilson, into a person.”

“So she’s a cat?” Ellen squeaked.

“Oh, yeah. I’m fattening her up for the winter.”

What.

Was.

Wrong with this man.

The next time Brett saw Deadpool was when he stopped by to make sure Matt was still alive a few days after his latest adventure. Foggy let him in and said Matt was in the bedroom.

Matt was fine.

In a sense of the word.

He was tucked up in bed with Wilson lounging next to him, reading to him from Edgar Allen Poe.

Brett had to have a good long think about this, trying to parse the limits of the definition of ‘fine.’

Matt was deeply invested in this sh*t, as someone like him obviously would be, and he kept interrupting to point out plotholes in this narrative until Wilson told him that he was going to shut the f*ck up, have nightmares, and like it.

Matt hunkered down, all pleased with himself. He told Wade to keep reading.

Brett needed a drink.

Maybe six.

Possibly ketamine.

He found Foggy in the kitchen and crowded him and whispered,

“Fogs, Fogs, Fogs.”

“They’re fine.”

“On what planet?”

“This one.”

“Franklin.”

Foggy co*cked a hip and gave him a scathing look.

“It’s this or GhostHunters, Brett. This at least has literary merit.”

What f*cking world did these people live in?

Maynard asked him what the f*ck he was doing when she came in from her break and he told her he was making a flow chart.

He wasn’t lying.

He needed to figure out exactly how to escape this vigilante prison he’d built himself into.

Chapter 8: like a crumb of illegality

Chapter Text

Brett was rewarded for two full weeks of vigilante-free police work with one week positively crammed full of them.

First he’d had to have a chat with Spidey about the knife situation and, like his asshole horned sibling, he was not interested in invocations of safety or the common good. He was a good f*cking actor though, because he told Brett with a sickly sweet smile that no, sir, he totally understood where he was coming from. And yes sir, he would definitely use discretion in making weapons in the future. And no, sir, he absolutely did not intend to start up any kind of market in concealable weaponry in the near future.

Lies.

On every count.

Brett almost believed him at first, you just couldn’t help it with the kid, but he caught himself. He had learned over the last few months to be paranoid and to read between the lines with these assholes. No means yes and yes means no and “I had nothing to do with it” was only the truth 20% of the time.

After he’d taught Spidey zero lessons whatsoever, Brett was called in by the Harlem crowd to speak with Luke Cage, who, he learned, had information and had requested to speak to him and only him.

Luke Cage told him that his smaller companion, Iron Fist, had gotten the sh*t kicked out of him by some vigilante who was new on the scene and had since disappeared. He explained that he wasn’t there looking for police intervention, rather he was looking to tell a trustworthy officer that one of their own was getting up to some trouble.

He did not file a missing person’s report, said he’d find his troublesome pal on his own.

He did not find his friend. Brett knew because Brett found his friend.

Iron Fist’s real people name was Daniel Thomas Rand and he was? Oddly kind and cooperative? Brett had some serious concerns about all these peoples’ two-facedness. His sister told him knowledgably that every one of them had to be Geminis. He didn’t exactly plan on taking a poll, but he might have asked Fogs when Matt’s birthday was. Just to check.

He was not even remotely a Gemini.

Mr. Rand wasn’t a Gemini either.

Rand was, however, very happy to be released from his watery, sewer prison and even happier to jab a finger at one Officer Tahler, who he then proceeded to get in the face of and try to fight, thereby proving that no walk of life would get between vigilantes and their shared personality traits.

Exhausting. They were all exhausting.

Rand went away and was replaced by Jessica Jones who needed to be questioned about her involvement with a missing person’s case. She slammed her door in their faces and told them to get a warrant or get f*cked.

Camping out outside her door did not yield any desired results whatsoever.

Jones disappeared and her case bled into Rand’s and he swore to someone or something Brett could not hope to understand that Officer Tahler was the one who had killed their mutual missing person.

When Brett sighed and mistakenly gave the guy the impression that he didn’t believe him, Rand threw out his arm and whipped out a f*cking knife and said he’d give his arm from the elbow if it wasn’t true and holy f*cking sh*t, no. Too cooperative, son. Far too cooperative.

Rand wouldn’t be talked out of it.

Brett was on the verge of having to put the guy on a psych hold when Jones reappeared to punch him in the shoulder and call him a f*cking idiot. She co*cked a hip at them all and told them she’d found their missing person. And he was good and dead.

“It was Tahler, wasn’t it?” Rand cried with determination.

Jones stared at him with pursed lips and lifeless eyes.

“It was Tahler,” she said.

Rand pumped his fist and celebrated by keeping his arm for yet another day.

Jones poured a metric sh*t ton of pictures and copies of receipts and footage and documents all over Brett’s desk, to the point where it started sliding off the sides of it and littered the floor around it. She evaluated him with cut eyes and told Brett that he wasn’t half bad.

Brett thought he’d done exactly nothing to earn such praise. He expressed this opinion and got squinted/glared at from that moment until Jones left the building with Rand in tow.

So that was fun. Just about as much fun as he was having right then, actually, where he had one of the Hawkeyes staring at him while he rattled the handcuff keeping him locked to Brett’s desk.

He’d been doing that sh*t for nearly half an hour.

Anytime Brett asked him to stop, he just said “HUH?” really loudly and kept right on rattling like a f*cking dick. Brett would ask him again and he’d frown at him and nod a little bit, like ‘cool, cool, cool’ and he would proceed to not. f*cking. Stop.

Brett couldn’t get anything out of this guy.

And he was going to murder him in the middle of all these officers if he had to sit here for one second longer.

He told the guy to wait there for a minute and stepped out to call Foggy so as to preserve both of their lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The guy watched him go with amazement.

“Brett, you f*cking moron, that’s the deaf one,” Foggy hissed at him.

Oh.

Well.

“This is why you gotta tell people sh*t,” Brett snapped back at him. Then floundered for a second, because had he just insulted the f*ck out of his kind-of sort-of perp?

“I can’t tell you everything, no one would ever trust me again.”

Fair. But not the f*cking point.

“What’s etiquette for working with deaf people?”

“Don’t cover your mouth and don’t shout at him.”

A pause.

“Brett, sometimes, I swear to f*cking god—”

“I’ll apologize, okay? Are you his lawyer? He’s punched a guy out on his doorstep.”

“His doorstep?”

“No, the other guy’s.”

“Clint, why.”

So it was habitual. Another one for the notebook: Hawkeye goes around punching folks in the face. That’s a fun thing he does. A l’il quirk, if you will.

“Fogs, come deal with this. We’re gonna have to charge him with assault unless someone says something magical in the next fifteen minutes. Should I get an interpreter?”

“I can’t, I’m in court. I’ll send Matt. I don’t think they’ve met, but they’ll work it out.”

“Thank you.”

“Ugh.”

No one in this party of brains had clearly thought these circ*mstances through. Matt walked in just as Brett was trying to get Hawkeye to sign a statement as to what had happened between him and his frenemy. Matt didn’t recognize his client, as was to be expected. His client, however, recognized the hell out of him.

“Holy sh*t, it’s you,” Hawkeye said, which were the first words besides “HUH?” Brett had managed to pry out of him. Matt stiffened from ass to neck, apparently recognizing Hawkeye’s voice.

“Oh god, it’s you,” he groaned.

So, a fine start all around.

“I’m not dealing with this,” Matt said, spinning around, but Hawkeye leapt up, only to slam his face into the corner of Brett’s desk when his arm didn’t come with him.

Perfect. Now they needed a medic, too.

A quick assessment from the nurse later, and Brett found himself watching Matt try and fail to give this man legal advice. He really did not like this guy and Brett could not figure out why.

Matt’s obvious disgust was compounded by his frustration. Hawkeye was, it turned out, not completely deaf but close to it. He didn’t, and Brett was baffled by this, seem to understand that Matt was blind. He signed while he spoke, when he finally spoke, and Matt was so f*cking confused why this guy was waving at him. He kept trying to look over his shoulders to figure out what he could be waving at.

Which could only mean that Matt didn’t know that Hawkeye was deaf. Fogs must not have told him.

Whoops.

The two of them were basically a comedy duo waiting to happen.

“What you doing?” Matt finally snapped when Brett asked Hawkeye to verify his statement.

Hawkeye, sensing the sensitivity of the situation, dropped his voice to a whisper and said, “Dude, I’m signing.”

Oh, god. Brett already knew what was going to happen next. It was going to be the highlight of his year.

“Signing what?”

“What?”

“You’re signing ‘what,’” Matt said sarcastically with a look which could peel paint.

“Oh. Words.”

Matt’s jaw twitched.

“I know how signing works, pal,” he growled. “I’m asking you what you’re signing. I need to know what you’re signing.”

Hawkeye squinted at him.

“What?” he asked, genuinely confused.

Matt started flushing red at that point and Brett was going to die.

“You’re signing what?” Matt tried to clarify again, about ready to throw himself out of the chair to strangle Hawkeye.

“I just f*cking told you, man.”

“You know what? Just—just don’t sign anything. Brett--”

“Dude, what the f*ck are you even saying right now?”

“I said don’t sign sh*t. Brett, can you--”

“Woah. I mean. That’s f*cked up. That’s real f*cked up.” Hawkeye crossed his arms and slouched low in his chair to demonstrate how heavy that statement truly was.

Matt was so confused.

And as much as he’d love for this Abbott and Costello act to go on for the rest of his life, Brett felt the need to do some clarifying for the sake of mankind here.

He cleared his throat.

“Mr. uh, Barton was it?”

“Huh?”

Ah, right.

“Matt, your client’s deaf.”

“WHAT.” Matt rounded on the guy in shock, “You’re deaf?”

“Oh, hey, there we go,” Hawkeye said happily, sitting up turning so that he could face him dead on. “Yeah. Did the signing not give it away or?”

“You’re deaf,” Matt repeated again.

“Yeah, and that’s perfect actually, stay just like that. Can’t see you very well when you’re all twisted up the other way.”

Matt did not stay just like that because he obviously had something he needed to work through. Possibly homicidal urges. More likely embarrassment. Or actually, Brett was delighted to realize, it was having to tell Hawkeye, who he must have met before as Daredevil, that no, he was actually blind. For realsies blind. The cane was not a prop.

And he was gonna have to do it in the worst possible environment and karma was really f*cking coming through for Brett over here.

“You need a minute, counselor? Or do you need me to help you interpret?” he asked.

Matt smashed a fist against his lips as he tried to work out how to make this happen without ruining all their lives forever.

He nodded mutely.

Brett made sure to get Hawkeye’s attention before explaining that he was going to step away for just a second. Hawkeye told him that that was no problem. He was a pretty amiable guy once he could figure out what you were saying, it turned out. Brett made a mental note to apologize when he got back.

He knew when it was safe to return because Hawkeye said, “NO f*ckING WAY,” loud enough that Brett heard it from where he was lingering around the captain’s office.

He soon found himself sitting between the most awkward humans on the face of the earth writing up a report while Matt occasionally grabbed at Hawkeye’s arm and tried to find his face to talk to him.

“Why did you hit the guy, Barton?” Brett asked.

“Oh,” Barton said, “He beat the sh*t out of Hawkeye.”

What.

“He beat the sh*t out of you,” Brett repeated.

“No, Hawkeye.”

Oh hell no, not this sh*t again.

“The…other Hawkeye then?”

Barton was pleased that Brett understood and nodded at him with a wide grin.

“The girl?” Matt asked him.

“Hm?”

Matt held his hand at about shoulder height.

“Oh, yeah. That’s her.”

Brett wrote this down on the amended statement.

“Can you describe her for me?”

“I mean, no.”

Brett blinked at the paper in front of him and then looked up to make sure he’d heard right. Matt was equally puzzled.

“Why not?” Brett asked for both of them.

“’Cause she’s a minor and I ain’t stupid.”

Jesus Christ. If it wasn’t one thing it was another. Brett couldn’t have two minors running around in spandex right now. He just—for the sake of his blood pressure, he couldn’t.

“Was she with you at the time of this altercation?” he asked, deciding to shelve those feelings for now.

“Uh, yeah. But I sent her home.”

Why, man, why would you send the primary witness home?

“Like I said, she’s a minor and I ain’t that f*cking dumb.”

“Is she related to you?” Brett asked.

“No.”

Of course not, it could never have been that easy.

“Were you under the impression that this man might do significant harm to your partner?” Matt asked in his ‘gotcha’ way because he was still a snake under all those fancy clothes.

“Well, yeah. I like my knuckles how they are, you know? They just f*ckin’ healed from my last job. This guy, though, he’s with the Russians—you know the Russians? C’mon, you know the Russians—anyways, he comes in here out of nowhere and starts whaling on the kid and my f*ckin’ dog in the middle of the goddamned street. So I had to get in there, you know? Well, no. That ain’t fair, coulda let K—Hawkeye sort it out herself, but you know young ‘uns. They never know when they’re in too deep. She’s all bruised up, by the way. He got her right here,” he thumped a fist into the middle of his chest, “And right here,” he thumped one side of his ribs, “And then that jackass put a boot into her and my damn dog. You seen my dog? sh*t, man, poor f*cker’s already lost an eye. He didn’t even see it coming, that piece of sh*t.”

100% agreed. Any man who beat up on animals was a piece of sh*t in Brett’s humble opinion.

Also, that was about everything he needed to hear, this was a self-defense case if he’d ever heard one. Hallelujah. Praise be.

“Alright, Mr. Barton. I think that’s what we need for now. Is there anything else you’d like to say? If not, I’m gonna need you to sign this statement and then I’m gonna talk to some witnesses and we’ll see where this needs to go from here, okay?” he said.

“Oh yeah, for sure. Whatever you want. Just one thing, can someone get me a hearing aid?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“Aw, that’s great. Thanks, man. You’re a doll.”

A doll.

That sounded awfully like a formerly missing, currently un-missing super spy Brett now knew.

God, imagine the two of those assholes together.

Or not. For the sake of his blood pressure.

Barton got to go home and Brett quickly decided that the munchkin girl with bandages on her face who tackled him and shocked the crap out of Matt as soon as they exited the door had to be Hawkeye the younger.

She was about shoulder height with black hair in a pony tail and so f*cking young, dear god. Where had all these children come from? Where did they think they were going?

He was interrupted from this programing by the horrible realization that this girl and Peter probably knew each other.

God.

What if there was a whole troop of them?

Oh f*ck, what if there was a whole troop of them??

“Peter,” he negotiated, trying not to let on too strongly that he was about to pump the kid for information.

Peter was smarter than that.

“No. I don’t know nothing.”

Damnit.

“Anything,” he corrected out of reflex. “But not the point, just one question—”

“No.”

“Nothing to do with whatever…whoever you’re hunting right now, I promise.”

Peter’s suit eyes squinted at him.

“No.”

Ugh. f*cking teenagers.

He sighed and dug his hands into his coat pockets and Peter stayed squinting at him for a few more seconds before returning to his city watching.

They all seemed to do this. Brett didn’t know what the f*ck vigilantes saw from up high that no one else did, but they all really seemed into getting up there. He thought maybe it had to do with some kind of god complex. Maybe they liked to imagine that they had control over the city if they were literally above everyone else in it.

He couldn’t think of any other reason why someone who was blind like Matt would do that kind of thing.

Peter’s whole body changed when he spotted something down below. What was it? Hard to say. Brett had seen Pete have the same reaction to seeing an especially good dog at a café from above.

He was gone.

Must not have been a dog then.

Clint Barton lived down south in Bed Stuy in a sh*tty, sh*tty, sh*tty condominium and he was literally holding the entire pot of coffee in his hand when he answered Brett’s knock on his door.

He wasn’t holding it like he was gonna pour anything anywhere.

Brett chose to let this man make whatever bad decisions he was going to.

“Mr. Barton, my name is detective Mahoney, we spoke at my station last week after—”

“Yeah, I remember you.”

Ah. Hearing aids in, then.

“I have a few questions I’d like to ask you if you don’t mind, sir,” he said.

Barton stared at him for another couple seconds, then shook himself and looked behind him, probably at the state of his home. He looked back at Brett with guilt written all over his face.

“So, there might be some slightly illegal weapons in here,” he said.

No. Brett did not want to know.

“I might be too distracted with our conversation to notice them,” Brett offered. Hawkeye sighed in relief.

“Thank Jesus, yeah. Come on in, uh. Careful of the dog, he’s grounded for eating people’s trash again.”

Clint Barton was the owner of this condominium. The owner. As in, the landlord. As in.

What.

“Yeah, I had an inheritance from my uh, relative, and I’m a dumb piece of sh*t and very bad at letting people tell me what to do.”

There were more questions than answers in that statement, sir.

There was a bow, the bow, hung on the wall. It was a much taller and, surprisingly plainer, version of the one Amos had begged his mom for for his last birthday. The bow was overshadowed by the sh*tload of guns scattered haphazardly all over the living room’s coffee table and floor.

Barton sheepishly piled the ones on the couch into a wooden crate as if that made them any less f*cking suspicious and invited Brett to have a seat.

“I’m sorry, man. I gotta ask,” Brett blurted out.

“They’re not mine,” Hawkeye blurted right back. “All of them anyways. JB—”

Brett f*cking knew it.

“—got a hold of some old sh*t and we’re trying to figure out if they’re salvageable.”

He. He needed not to pursue that line of inquiry right now. For his sanity, if nothing else.

Barton offered him a cup of coffee. He made sure to specify that it was sh*tty coffee, although he seemed to think that this was praise for the liquid in the pot.

Brett politely refused. Barton either didn’t notice or didn’t care and started opening his cabinets to make a new pot.

“Mr. Barton—”

“f*ck, no. Call me Clint.”

Uh. How about no.

“Mr. Barton, you’ll forgive me if I sound ignorant, but I’m a little concerned about your uh, partner?”

Barton poured water into the angry pot and pressed the button on the machine.

“Katie-Kate?” he asked without turning around. “Yeah, no worries. I’m worried about her, too. She’s out there getting ideas in her head.”

Oh? What kind of ideas?

“Ones where she thinks she’s invincible. Dumb sh*t like that.” Barton sighed and leaned his back against his counter. “Only a matter of time before she goes off on her own.”

Yeah, that was exactly what Brett was afraid of.

“How old is Kate?” he asked.

“Seventeen. Eighteen before you know it.”

sh*t.

One of the piles of guns by the radiator shifted at the gurgling of the coffee pot and a dog emerged from the wreckage to shake itself off and trot happily up to Barton. He stared down at it irritably. It wagged its shaggy tail.

“There’s not so many, detective,” Barton said, anticipating Brett’s next question and reaching down finally to pet the dog’s head. “Not as many as you think. I know all us super-vigilante-whatevers seem like f*ckheads, but a lot of that’s just for show. It’s easy to convince people you’re stupid and get away with it.”

Brett wasn’t entirely convinced, but it was exactly what he’d wanted to hear.

“Spiderman’s pretty young,” he noted. Barton scoffed.

“Yeah, f*ckin’ Stark’s over there, always calling me irresponsible, then turns around and picks up a f*cking baby. Rude as hell if you ask me.”

Barton had a bit of an accent. A mid-western kind of thing. Brett wondered if he was aware of it.

“What happens when Kate strikes out on her own?” he asked gently. Barton kept petting the dog and shrugged.

“She’ll do whatever the f*ck she wants to do, I guess. Can’t hold ‘em down once they get ideas in their heads. She’s been talking about going out west. She’ll all pretending to me it’s got nothing to do with her little girlfriend out there, which is horsesh*t to like, anybody with eyes. Or ears. Or hell, a functioning brain. But Spidey’ll be holy hell in a few years here, too, I guarantee you. Him and Stark are rocketing towards an ultimatum if you ask me.”

Brett hadn’t heard any of this before. Matt certainly hadn’t let on that there was conflict between Peter and Stark. You wouldn’t know it, watching the two of them interact.

“Yeah, no, man. Stark’s trying to get Spidey to join the Avengers and baby boy’s got a f*ckin’ head on his shoulders and knows better than the rest of us that that’s a suicide mission.”

No sh*t?

“No sh*t. I tried to call out a few times and you just get sucked back in, man. It’s a sinkhole like that. Steve’s been trying to give up his mantle for years now.”

This was news that Amos could not hear, ever, in his entire life, as far as Brett was concerned. He didn’t know how he felt now that he knew it.

“Like, for forever?” he pressed. Barton must have read the uncertainty on him because he backtracked.

“No, no,” he lied like a body in a gutter, “Not like that. It’s not like that. Cap loves being Cap. Obviously. He’s just, uh.”

“Tired,” Brett offered, remembering Cap’s tension in his own house. Barton sighed through his teeth.

“Broken,” he admitted. “We’re all f*cked up, but Cap’s just f*ckin’ done. Sam’s gonn—no. Sorry. Sorry, I can’t tell you anymore. Anyways, no, the kids are alright. They either outgrow the job and move on or they get to the point where they don’t need us old folks anymore.”

Did he just say what Brett thought he did?

Did he just—was Sam Wilson set to take over for Cap?

Barton was clearly trying to change the subject and Brett’s heart was really loud in his ears, so he decided to gently lay that news aside for now.

“How many more are there, do you know?” he asked.

Barton was relieved.

“No, I don’t. They pop up like daisies, go down like nails. You’re not gonna find them detective, and no one can protect ‘em the way we all wish we could. Here, I’ll introduce you to—”

The dog lost its damn mind.

“Kate,” Hawkeye said over the ruckus. The front door opened and the dog was immediately showered with affection by Hawkeye the younger with a similar bow to the one on the wall strapped over her shoulder with a backpack full of arrows.

She looked up and snapped to attention immediately upon seeing Brett on the couch.

“I know nothing,” she announced to the room.

Oh, good. The indoctrination started early.

“Kate, this is—” Barton started.

“I KNOW NOTHING.”

“—Detective Mahoney—”

“Haven’t seen anything.”

“He’s the cop Dare—”

“Haven’t heard anything.”

“—devil said is fine.”

“I’ve been at home all day, officer—wait, what?”

The bow slipped down over her shoulder. She was all in purple and had bandaids on her face like Barton. It kind of suited her.

“You’re the good detective?” she asked.

Aw.

That should not have been as heartwarming as it was.

“I try,” Brett told her. “We were just talking about you.”

Kate zipped right into a pout and stomped over to jab Hawkeye in the side with her fingers.

“You said don’t talk to cops,” she snapped. He poured two cups of coffee and handed one to Brett, ignoring her. She followed him from the counter to the couch, getting in his way the whole time.

“You said,” she repeated. Barton took a boiling sip from his mug and made no motion to indicate just how much it hurt him.

Kate wasn’t having it. She turned on Brett.

“Did Spidey rat me out?” she demanded.

Oh. Interesting.

“Don’t know. Why do you ask?” he asked.

She pouted at him.

“Because he’s a goody-two-shoes snitch.”

Alright. For the notebook: Hawkeye the younger does not get on with Spidey. Possibly does not get on with Hawkeye the elder.

“No,” Brett assured her, “Foggy Nelson told me about you. I just wanted to make sure you’re alright and that you’ve got someone to come to if you need it.”

The girl eased up. Didn’t ease up entirely, but gave enough that she wasn’t visibly prickly anymore.

“I like Mr. Nelson,” she informed him.

Yeah, no sh*t. They all did.

“Foggy and I go way back,” he said, standing. “If you ever need anything from the NYPD, you can come to me first and I’ll see what I can do. I’ve got to be leaving now, though. Got to get home. Thank you for the coffee, Mr. Barton.”

The honorific made Barton flinch and Kate light up like Christmas. The second Brett left he knew that there was going to be hell to pay.

“Thanks for stopping by, detective,” Barton managed to say, “And uh, ignoring all the uh, illegality.”

No problem, pal. You have bigger fish to fry.

Chapter 9: coffee and illict resin

Chapter Text

Peter was sleeping in the hollow space under an old metal staircase in the rain.

Brett didn’t like that. He especially didn’t like that the kid didn’t move when the flashlight hit him.

They hadn’t gone out looking for Spiderman, he and Ellen, they were looking for a body. One, not two.

Peter was all crunched up in there, facing away from them, had probably ducked under to escape the rain. It was really coming down. Brett hadn’t noticed him mind the rain before, but it wouldn’t have been surprising if he’d gotten frustrated with getting slapped in the face with wave after wave of water.

He must have ducked under and fallen asleep. That had to be it. He must have been really tired to lose track of time like that. It was nearly four in the morning. Peter generally didn’t stay out past two or three.

The closest part of the kid to Brett was an ankle, wrapped in red and in desperate need of feeding. He reached between the metal steps and gave it a little shake.

Peter didn’t respond.

He got another shake.

Then Ellen tried his knee, having smaller hands than Brett, which more easily slipped between the stairs.

And then panic set in because Peter didn’t move. Didn’t wake up. Didn’t so much as flinch or grumble. Whatever he was up to under those stairs, it wasn’t sleeping. Brett and Ellen exchanged looks and then set to trying to find how the kid got into his little hollow in order to expedite his imminent exit from it.

They had to shove past a load of trash and crates to find the beams holding the stairs up and only then did it become obvious that little Peter was bleeding. The arm he’d rested his head on was soaked through with blood dribbling from his mouth and nose. Something was wrong with the suit. It hung off him like a second skin, pooling around his body like it was too tired to stay up.

The flashlight didn’t do him any favors, bleaching the red fabric into white and the blood into black.

Once he squeezed through the beams, Brett knelt down and had to dig through the suit material to find the boy’s neck. It was ghostly pale at first, bleached out by the flashlight. Then, as Brett got in closer, he saw that it wasn’t all that pale.

It was red. Red from the top of his throat to the clavicle.

He was wheezing softly.

Brett was sorry because whatever had happened, he knew that neck was only the tip of the iceberg and he couldn’t leave Peter to sleep it off outside, healing factor or no. Ellen helped him roll the kid into his arms and navigate the beams on the way out.

Peter went to Queens. Brett didn’t know where he lived, but he knew it was Queens and he knew that Peter couldn’t be seen by anyone else before he got home. Ellen found his phone. They’d gotten lucky. Peter had it in one of his hands, any lighter of a grip and he’d have dropped it back at the stairs and they’d have had their hands full of kid with nowhere to go.

As it were, they now had a phone and Peter’s thumb and Ellen found herself immediately on the contact page.

Peter had a lot of contacts. It took some scrolling to find May Parker’s number. She answered on the third ring and her voice shook as she gave them her address.

Peter’s room was cozy. His home was cozy. The Parkers were nesters. May must have tidied a bit in her anxiety, as everything was stacked up neatly in the front room and Peter’s bed had a dark sheet thrown on top of the covers. May was a smart woman, an experienced gal. She knew this game. She knew there would be blood and who knew what else.

Peter didn’t wake up when Brett laid him on the bed. He didn’t wake up when May pulled his mask off the rest of the way and started checking for broken bones.

He woke up to vomit.

Then groan. Recognize his aunt through bleary, half-closed eyes, and start hiccupping a little bit, reaching for her.

She wiped his face and pulled him up into a hug to keep him out of the puke on the bed.

She held him there, shushing him, and balled the sheet up.

May Parker was a professional. She felt along her nephew’s head and had a trashcan at the ready the next time the kid puked. She tucked him close and told him that she wanted him to lay very, very still and help her get him out of the suit.

Brett and Ellen helped. It didn’t take much, the suit was still loose.

Peter’s chest looked okay, but his side was almost iridescent with purple and blue. He whined for his aunt and tucked his face into her neck when she came back to try to help him into a clean shirt. It was an old habit, Brett suspected. One learned from early childhood.

Peter didn’t debate going to the hospital like Brett expected him to. He couldn’t stand up without having vertigo. He couldn’t keep anything down. He was still wheezing through the swelling on his neck. In his throat.

May asked Brett if he thought she needed to call 911 or if she could just take him to the hospital herself. Brett didn’t think the Parkers had a car, and he didn’t know if uber was the best course of action for a kid with a concussion.

He put them in his car.

The story was that Peter had been assaulted. Mugged on his way home from messing around in Harlem. He didn’t have much to do with this story, given that it was taking all his focus to stay conscious. He didn’t seem to recognize Brett very well, only wanted his aunt. She held his hand and called all the nurses in the ER by first name.

She worked there in the ICU.

Peter’s doctor insisted that pictures were taken. He was concerned about Peter’s side, concerned about bruising and swelling in the muscle and possibly the organs. Peter was too far gone to answer his questions. He’d gotten quiet and pliant and obedient, which, in Brett’s experience, meant that he was either exhausted or scared.

He was learning from Matt how to turn pain into fury, but he wasn’t quite there yet.

If Matt knew what had happened, he’d be doing that just now.

May Parker thanked Brett and Ellen for finding her kid, then said that she was going to go with him to have some scans done now. She said that she didn’t know who might have done that to him, but as soon as he was awake and functional, she’d call them so that they could get the ball rolling on the case.

She didn’t call.

If Amos one day woke up and decided that he was going to go out and fight crime, Brett would have duct-taped him to a chair. Then he’d have gone out to find the bastard who put those ideas in the kid’s head and given them a piece of his mind.

But Brett was comforted by the knowledge that Amos wouldn’t do that. Amos was a good, quiet, shy kid who was, on a good day, terrified of everything.

He wasn’t about to go jumping off buildings or fighting bad guys. It wasn’t in his nature.

“That’s how Peter used to be,” May sighed, running fingers through the kid’s hair as he slept on the couch in their living room. “I don’t know when it changed. I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

She didn’t know who had done it. She said Peter wasn’t coherent enough to tell her yet. She said she’d called their friendly, family lawyer to look into it.

From a legal standpoint, obviously.

“Fisk,” Matt informed him. He’d taken Peter’s favorite perch over Queens. Had come all the way out of the Kitchen to hold the fort for the kid. Brett wondered if they ever traded suits.

“What’s he got to do with Peter?” he asked.

“Not sure. Gimme a few days to find out.”

And he would find out. Matt had a scarily extensive network of informants throughout the city. Even though he stayed in the Kitchen, he seemed to always know what was going on around town, block, and borough.

Matt held Peter’s fort for the two days it took for Pete to get back up on his feet. Then, like smoke, the two of them vanished off Brett’s radar again.

Hawkeye came all the way from Brooklyn with his arm in a cast to tell Brett to watch his f*cking back, man. Wilson Fisk was out on the prowl. He was looking to hire a guy and allegedly had an offer no one could refuse. Rather, an offer no one with a decent head on their shoulders would refuse.

Luckily for Brett, neither Pete nor Barton had a decent head on their shoulders.

“He’s trying to woo Daredevil,” Barton told him, cutting pancakes one-handedly in the greasy spoon he demanded Brett meet him at.

“Woo?” Brett repeated. “With what? Coffee? Long walks on the beach?”

Barton snorted.

“Not sure. Red’s mad about it, though. He’s been running around through the whole city as of late.”

Interesting. In a very bad way.

“Does Deadpool know about what happened to Peter?”

The chances of Wade standing for that sh*t were next to nothing. Barton shrugged, then winced as the movement sent pain down his arm.

“He probably does now. Folks are talkin’.”

“In what way?”

“They don’t like Fisk putting his hands on one of the little ones. Hell, if he’d done that to Katie-Kate, you bet your ass I’d mount his on my wall.”

“His…ass?”

“You heard me.”

Lovely.

Matt was uncomfortable, Brett realized. Foggy didn’t say anything—no one had to say anything because everyone else was saying it for them.

The power of talk would always astound him.

“Daredevil’s been getting chased out of the Kitchen lately,” Brett heard at the barber’s.

“Boy never runs scared. Must be something big chasing after him.”

“Maybe. My guy saw him the other night. Guy was f*ckin’ gunnin’ it, man. He must have been some kind of track star before all this.”

“Daredevil the track star.”

“Saw that guy take a bullet once, you know that? Didn’t move for a bullet, but he’s off running now? Doesn’t make sense.”

“Yeah, well,” a new voice chimed in from the center chair, “My girl says she knows that walk. Says it’s a ‘stranger danger’ walk, every gal knows that walk. She thinks someone’s trying to get in his pants.”

“Well, they’re gonna need some f*ckin’ Vaseline or something to get those things off him. Boy probably paints those clothes on at night.”

Wait.

Was Fisk literally trying to woo Matt?

Did he not know that Matt and Fogs were together? Or maybe he did? Maybe this was on purpose? Was he threatening Fogs?

There was a crash and a scuffle right outside Brett’s mama’s house at 11 o’clock at night. His mom called him and said whoever it was, was still scuffling around out there and she was worried someone was hurt.

Someone wasn’t hurt.

But it was a close thing.

The other guy beat it, his hands drenched in the blood from his nose, before Brett could get a good look at him. Matt slumped against the wall in front of him in relief. There was blood on his face, on his lip. He spat it out and pushed himself off the wall.

He apologized to Brett for scaring his mom, and then he jumped up to catch the edge of a fire escape.

His hands slipped. He tried again and slipped.

He was shaken. Matt was shaken. Scared. Whatever that guy had been doing, or trying to do, it was on Matt’s no-go list.

“Hey, let’s call it quits for the night,” Brett told him gently. “Let me take you home, pal.”

Matt spat again and crouched low. He caught the fire escape this time and pulled himself up for just long enough to take the leap to the next one. He didn’t look back. Didn’t answer either.

Brett could put those pieces together.

“Fogs, Fisk is hiring people to try to rape your boy,” Brett told him, having dragged him down the block and out of ear-shot of said boy the next day.

The lines in Foggy’s forehead deepened and the twitch of his lips said that he knew. He knew and he didn’t want to have this discussion with Brett.

“Man, this is not f*cking okay,” Brett snapped, “He tell you he could handle this? Because he cannot handle this. Not by himself anyways. Fogs, c’mon man. What can I do? How can we help?”

Foggy didn’t want to say, he stared at Brett from under his brow when he didn’t want to say.

“Foggy—”

“Brett, I f*cking know. I just don’t know what the f*ck to do, alright? He doesn’t know what to do--no one knows what to do. We’re not avoiding this, we just have no f*cking idea where to go from here, so if you have any helpful suggestions, I’m all ears, pal.”

Well, uh. Wait, no.

Or maybe.

Uh.

“See? See? It’s not that easy—it’s never that easy. No one’s gotten close enough to do anything yet, Matt can’t report it, he can’t describe them, and it’s a different guy every f*cking time. What are we supposed to do? Say that every night a different random guy tries to f*ck my partner while he’s out in the streets? What are you guys supposed to do with that, Brett?”

f*ck.

“Yeah.”

f*ck.

“Yeah.”

Wade Wilson took over one of Matt’s perches in Hell’s Kitchen. Brett still didn’t know where Peter was. Hell, at this point, he didn’t even know where Matt was. Hopefully somewhere safe. Hopefully with someone safe.

He wondered if he could get Matt drunk enough to be disorderly, so he could throw him in a cell for a little while and keep as many eyes on him as possible.

That relied on two premises, however. The first being that Matt was an angry drunk and the second being that he wasn’t a violent one. No one was moving Daredevil an inch if he didn’t allow it to happen.

Unless you were Wilson Fisk, apparently.

Wade Wilson inspired a different kind of vibe over the city. Some people who saw him up there thought Daredevil had come back, and wow, he’d really bulked out, hadn’t he? Others knew exactly who that was up there and hurried to get the f*ck out and stay the f*ck out of his sightlines.

He sat way up there over the old church and kicked his feet. Waiting patiently, infuriatingly patiently, for someone to try their luck. He stayed up there. Was up there every time Brett looked.

Hell’s Kitchen was damn near silent that night. Not a single call into the station about a violent crime. One call about a missing kid came in, in which the parent trailed off and suddenly announced that their kid was no longer missing.

Deadpool ruled with an iron fist. And even a place like Hell’s Kitchen had enough sense not to f*ck with that.

He’d be a good guy if he chose to be, Wade Wilson. And that only made him more terrifying.

Matt was guarding Queens, it turned out, because Peter was doing something complicated which Matt could not describe. He made several attempts to for Brett’s benefit, but got himself all caught up in the explanation, so that it wasn’t so much an explanation as much as it was a game of twenty questions.

“And I think there’s something science-y involved?”

Science-y.

“Yeah, I think. He said something that sounded like science and Wade agreed and I didn’t want to look like a liberal arts idiot, so I said sure, but now I’m not so sure I should have. Do you think I should have?”

What, agreed to something you don’t even understand, Matthew? You’re asking me if you should have agreed with that?

“See, when you say it like that, it seems so easy.”

Brett sighed.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Matt fidgeted for half a second, then shrugged casually, as if he had not been profoundly disturbed and distressed over the last few weeks.

“I’m fine, it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

Right, that’s why you traded with Wade Wilson.

“Wade said he wanted to watch for a few nights. I didn’t trade with him.”

Oh, buddy. Have you ever heard of kindness?

“He said things have been okay. So that’s good. That’s more than I can do right now with all these assholes chasing me around.”

“Matt, you’re allowed to be scared,” Brett told him, “This is scary. Really, really scary.”

Matt went still. Then melted.

“I’m not scared of him.”

“Fisk?”

“I’m not scared of him.”

“Who are you trying to convince, pal? Me or you?”

Matt’s face hardened and he twisted his body to exit this conversation.

“I’m not scared of him and he’s not going to make me.”

Brett had expanded his knowledge of vigilantes significantly over the last couple months, but what he had not expanded was his understanding or ability to predict what the f*ck these guys were about to do at any given time.

Peter, for example, he would not have pinned as an arsonist.

Although, now, thinking about it, it absolutely made sense.

Fisk wasn’t hurt, but his collection of documents and presumably, his alibis, had sure taken a hit.

Peter returned to Queens. Matt returned to Hell’s Kitchen. Wade returned to wherever the hell he went when he was pretending to be a person again.

Brett was pretty sure that that had been an act of war. He shuddered to think about what the next one might be.

It was breaking Peter’s limbs. Then it was siccing a huge gang of folks on Matt. Then it was trying to suffocate Peter with his own web.

And then, to Brett’s surprise, Matt and Peter came together to start hitting back. But not in the way Brett expected.

Peter showed up one day at the station and told him not to panic, but he’d gotten Fisk to hire him on as one of his lackeys, and oh, by the way, he needed to know some stuff about DNA, could Brett introduce him to one of the forensics people?

WHAT.

“Peter.” He needed to be calm otherwise Peter would remember that he was a genius monster-child and could learn that sh*t on his own if he really committed to it, “I am having strong negative emotions about what you’ve just told me because I’m concerned that it is going to put you in extreme danger.”

Peter blinked up at him.

“Kay, so is that a ‘no’ on the forensic expert, or?”

This f*cking kid.

“That is a no,” Brett snapped, “What in God’s name are you doing?”

Peter seemed to stop blinking.

“We’re gonna get Fisk to try to hurt Double D.”

What. The f*ck.

“Okay, so, with the full understanding that I, as a police officer, have heard and approve of none of this plan: why the hell are you doing that?”

“Because if Fisk hurts Double D when he’s not Double D, then he says he can do a lot more about it.”

How about no? How about let’s not put our lives in immediate danger? How about there has to be another way to do this?

“Well, Double D says that sometimes you’ve got to play the long con and he’s got a good idea for one that I don’t totally understand, but he’s pretty confident, so I’m going with it.”

Did these two know that neither of them made any sense to the other? Because it was sounding more and more to Brett like they all just ran on blind faith over there.

“Matt made this plan,” he clarified. Peter nodded. “Does Foggy know about this plan?” Peter shook his head. “What happens if Foggy knows about this plan?”

“He’s probably gonna freak.”

Uh-huh. That’s about what he expected.

“And now I’m sworn to secrecy?”

Peter lit up and gave him a huge smile.

Matt was teaching him how to use all them f*cking teeth. He was going to murder that man. Murder him and bury him in a graveyard so no one would ever find him.

“Detective, you’re getting so good at this.”

“Whatever. Move along, kid.”

Peter saluted him and bounced off.

They were both going to die. Brett needed to start writing condolence letters now.

Brett didn’t know what the hell Peter did, but Fisk charged Matt on the street with his bare hands at five in the evening three days later, and both of them fell right through a liquor store window. Fisk tried to stab Matt with a piece of glass he yanked out of the store front window he’d shattered.

Matt sat back and protected his face and neck the best he could for as long as he could. He played innocent blind man so well it made Brett’s teeth hurt. He let that f*cker stab him in the side, hard enough to nick his lung, although he did manage to do a number on Fisk’s nose and balls.

As the finishing touch, he pulled out some horrified crocodile tears for the witnesses and cops and paramedics when they got to the scene and allowed himself to be taken to the hospital by ambulance in the most un-Matthew Murdock-like move of the century.

Fisk was taken into custody and released shortly after because he was Wilson Fisk and there is no justice in the world.

But Fisk had f*cked up, Brett came to learn, when Peter wriggled under his arm while he was buying lunch and asked him if he knew anyone at social services.

Brett did not like or trust any of the questions that came out of Peter’s body anymore.

“I know no one and nothing,” he said.

Peter hummed and f*cked off just as fast as he’d appeared.

Brett called Foggy because he could no longer keep this sh*t to himself.

“Man, Matt’s up to something,” he said, “And I know he’s your boyfriend and sh*t, but Fogs he’s gonna get himself killed.”

Foggy sounded bored on the other side of the line.

“What else is new?”

What--

Who--

Why were all these people like this??

“He’s gonna—”

“Get himself killed? Wow. It’s almost as if he hasn’t already tried that this month. Actually, my bad, as if he doesn’t try that every day of the year, Brett. I’ve had it. I honestly don’t care anymore. All the worrying and fighting and ‘you’re wrong, I’m right’ sh*t is just giving me ulcers. Whatever he’s doing, he’s gonna do it. If he doesn’t want to tell me, he obviously already knows what I think about it.”

“How the f*ck are you so calm about this?”

“This is my life now, man. He’s gonna do what he’s gonna do. And if he thinks that that’s gonna get Fisk out of his life for the time being, then all power to him. Anyways, there’s nothing anyone else can do for him right now, may as well let him feel at least some control over the whole thing.”

Brett didn’t know what to say anymore, so he said ‘okay,’ and he said ‘bye’ and that was it.

Peter and Matt were brilliant little f*ckers who had no right being as f*cking reckless and stupid and brilliant as they were.

Peter convinced May to convince her friends in the ER to report Matt’s myriad of old injuries to social services. Matt got Foggy to do so as well. Then he asked Sister Maggie at church to do it.

Social services said that they were sending out a social worker to check on him.

Peter reported to Fisk that social services was sending someone out and maybe hinted that it would be a good opportunity to put an end to Matt Murdock once and for all. After all, once Matt was good and strangled, social services would be too embarrassed to admit one of their own had done the deed and so would do their best to cover everything up. That meant that Fisk’s hand in the ploy would go unnoticed, hidden away by the state itself.

Fisk, who was also a mastermind at these types of things, respected Peter’s ingenuity and put him in charge of swapping the state social worker for one of his own people. Peter took the job, then offered it up to the load of scumbags he was now in charge of. Two guys volunteered to do the old switcheroo, and after roughing up the first, sent the new ‘social worker’ on their merry way into Matt’s living room.

Matt played poor blind man again and let the gal into his house, where she attempted to put his lights out and he attempted to make as much noise and humanly possible. The neighbors called the police.

The police walked in on Fisk’s gal with her hands wrapped up in one of Matt’s belts, which in turn, was wrapped around his neck. The gal went to the station and had second thoughts about her employer once her lawyer arrived. She told Maynard who had paid her to do the job. She said that two guys had chased the real social worker away at gunpoint.

Brett found himself sitting stupefied as the gal basically admitted that Fisk had commissioned a murder and second degree assault by injuring a social worker to prevent her from carrying out her duties.

It was unbelievably well-thought out. Better thought-out than Brett had thought either Matt or Peter capable of.

He found himself sincerely glad that those two were technically on the same side as the police.

“Okay, I have something I need to say,” Brett said a week or so later to his now very pleased, temporarily Fisk-less acquaintances. He’d brought the two of them their favorites, coffee and illicit resin, and was in luck enough to find them both on the same perch at the very edge of Hell’s Kitchen, waiting for Wade Wilson to return from a job to join theirs.

Matt and Peter were well bored of him already. It was almost a useless endeavor to get either of them to focus on this point, what with Peter describing, in detail, Fisk’s face when he realized that it had been the two of them who’d engineered the whole thing from the start.

Peter’s Fisk-impression was stunningly awful. It made Matt laugh so hard he couldn’t breathe, his recent near-asphyxiation notwithstanding.

Matt followed this with an equally awful explanation of all the smells he’d encountered in the court room during the first hearing.

Brett cleared his throat and the two of them returned their attention to him.

“I just—I wanted to say apologize,” he said, “I’m sorry that we couldn’t do anything for you two, as civilians. I’m sorry that you suffered and we had no way of alleviating it. I’m sorry that I had no options for you. That’s my job, and I failed at it. And then I thought you two were insane in what you were trying to do and didn’t believe in you, and I. Well. I was wrong. You guys are amazing. Thanks for getting that guy put away, even if it’s just for a little bit.”

Silence.

Peter looked to Matt for guidance in how to deal with this and Brett got the feeling that this was a first for him. It must have been a first for Matt too because he shrugged with his hands.

“You’re welcome?” he tried. Peter bobbed his head enthusiastically in agreement.

You’re welcome. That’s what he had. Even after all those years talking professionally.

Well, f*ck it, alright, that was good enough. He nodded and turned to leave them to their dramatics.

“Hey, detective?”

He looked over his shoulder at Peter’s wide white suit eyes.

“Hm?”

“Thanks for caring.”

Aw.

“No, that’s a good point,” Matt agreed. “Thanks for giving enough of a sh*t to keep track of us. And for not telling anyone about anything.” He smirked. “You ought to be careful though, Mahoney, people are gonna start thinkin’ you like us.”

Dangerous territory indeed.

“Drink your damn coffee, Murdock. You both need an attitude adjustment.”

He could have sworn he heard Peter doing an impression of him as he left.

Chapter 10: lures on wires

Chapter Text

Since his latest run-in with Hawkeye and Hawkeye, Brett had been thinking up an experiment. Something to get a better feel for the practical capabilities of his latest assemblage of trouble-makers. They were all very different people, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he felt like there was a certain kind of method to their madness: they all had some things in common which made them good at what they did.

Knowing what made vigilantes good vigilantes, the captain thought, when Brett happened to mention this experiment in the break room, could be very useful in locating, working with, and potentially dissuading up and coming vigilantes from their current course of action.

He approved. He told Brett to report his findings.

Brett was pretty sure that in order to get any real kind of findings, he was going to need to recruit the science guys at CUNY and Columbia. As such, he said that he would promise no findings, only observations.

The captain laid into him with a look and told him to report his observations then.

He had more faith in Brett than Brett had in himself, but that was basically an order, so now he really had to go through with it.

He decided that, for the sake of this first trial, he’d test two big, overarching themes he’d picked up on. The first test was an attention span test.

He’d noticed a trend with his resident vigilantes and supers and that was a stunning inability to focus on one thing for more than twenty seconds at a time. Nearly every one of the guys he bumped into shared a cat-like spectrum of attention; they leapt and skittered from hyper-fixation and playful attention to complete and utter boredom, disinterest, and dismissal.

Fogs corroborated this supposedly shared disposition and called it ‘capricious bitch syndrome’ outside the company of those involved. He was, however, willing to submit his beloved to be Brett’s first subject.

Subject acquired, the next thing to do was to find a complicated task which could accommodate multiple types of thinking patterns and, most importantly, focused attention.

He was going to get a Rubik’s cube or something but ran into the whole issue of certain folks being blind. He wondered if he could put braille stickers on the cube to deal with this. Fogs gave him a flat look when he opened the floor up for suggestions.

“Brett,” he said after a long moment of judgment, “You cannot actually believe that these guys will follow any direction you give them.”

A fair and valid point.

“Alright, then, Mr. Expert, what do you propose I do instead?”

Fogs co*cked an eyebrow.

Fogs took him to a pet store and purchased a series of tennis balls. Fogs then took him home to the hardware store and spent an hour destroying those tennis balls with sandpaper and mulch. He cut them cleanly in half so their hollows were exposed.

He handed Brett a bunch of cracked microchips and box of empty plastic balls which usually came out of quarter machines.

“Water or glitter, it’s your choice,” he said.

Nothing made any f*cking sense, but Fogs acted like he knew what he was about, so Brett picked water.

The chips were incased neatly in hot glue and dropped into the empty plastic toy balls, which were themselves then filled with water and carefully sealed with duct tape. Fogs dropped these into the waiting halves of the tennis balls, then heated the plastic on the sides and sealed those all back together so that they kind of sloshed and rattled when shaken.

This new collection of overblown cat toys was then re-scrubbed with sand paper, burnt a little bit, and placed back in Brett’s hands along with instructions to go bury them beside a dumpster for a few hours.

“Fogs, what the f*ck did we just do?” he asked once the deed had been done.

“You’ll see,” Fogs told him solemnly.

Matt, when presented with one of the balls at the end of the day the next day as their office was closing up, just about lost his sh*t.

“I don’t think it’s that one, Matty,” Foggy clarified from where he was locking up one of the enormous filing cabinets behind their office manager’s desk.

Matt didn’t hear him. Matt was f*cking stoked about this piece of sh*t dumpster ball.

He shook it and listened hard. Shook it again. Stared at it with huge eyes like it held the answers to the universe.

“I’m doing some tests,” Brett read from the mental script Fogs had texted him the night before, “Trying to figure out which one of y’all has the best reasoning ability.”

He now had Matt’s complete and undivided attention. His head snapped up and his body went frozen solid.

“Who else is playing?” he asked, dead serious. He did not relinquish the ball.

Not the reaction Brett was expecting, but okay, sure.

“Whoever I can get to sit still long enough to do it,” Brett told him. “Probably you, Spidey, Castle, Jones, Cage, the usual suspects.”

Matt’s face said that he now fully intended to win this motherf*cking game, come hell or high water. He squeezed the tennis ball hard enough that his purple knuckles flexed.

“What are the rules?” he asked.

“Well, you’re going to tell me what’s in that,” Brett tapped a finger on the ball in his hand, “Without opening it. If you open it, you lose points.”

“You gonna time me?” Matt asked.

“Yes.”

“Fastest wins?”

“Yeah, you start with 600 points. You lose a point for every second you take. Minus 200 for opening the ball.”

“f*ck yes. Let’s go.”

Brett pulled out his timer and braced himself.

Matt wanted a count down. Brett thought that was reasonable.

3.

2.

1.

Go.

Matt pitched the damn thing at the wall hard enough that the plastic ball inside audibly cracked. The ball rocketed around the office, ricocheting off the walls until Matt leapt up and caught it in mid-air. Karen swore at him from her own office. He didn’t respond.

He shook the ball and listened hard, then glared at it. Rinse, wash, repeat. Two times.

Whatever he heard, he wasn’t satisfied with, so at 20 seconds he threw it again and nearly broke a window.

At 22 seconds he threw himself bodily under the frame of the mercifully unbroken glass after it.

At 03:05, Brett, Foggy, and an angry Karen relocated him in an alley a few blocks over hurling the poor thing harder and harder against a brick wall without giving it time to connect with any other object, which was f*cking eerie in itself. He caught the ball every time without fail, somehow knowing its exact trajectory—almost as though he could see it.

At 03:15 seconds, he paused to catch and shake the ball right next to his ear.

“Rubber, thin plastic—like an ornament, one of those Christmas bauble-things, the kind with the fake snow in them. Maybe a plastic snowglobe? Soft plastic, too. Not sure what that is. For sure something metal. Small, porous. Thin, not thicker than the bauble plastic—much thinner. Like an SD card or something. How am I doing? There’s another thing, but I don’t know what it is. Some kind of fabric? It cushions it.”

That sh*t was f*cking insane.

“You wanna try to guess what the fabric is?” Brett offered in a bit of awe.

Matt’s face said that he now considered this his make-it-or-break-it moment. He held the ball in cupped hands and bowed his head in stillness for a few long moments.

The timer ticked away.

04:07

04:08

“Is it some kind of tape?”

Damn.

04:10.

Still though, he was missing the obvious.

“Anything else you want to add? This is your last chance.”

Matt did a little distressed breathing and rattled the ball a little anxiously.

“Going once,” Brett said.

More rattling.

“Going twice.”

“Wait—wait. Is it? There’s—f*ck. What is it? What is it?”

C’mon, man. You can do it.

“WAIT NO HOLD ON—It’s the liquid! Water, some kind of water. Is it water?”

Brett cheered for him and it took Matt a second to realize what had happened before he joined in too. He then immediately wanted to know what his time was.

04:30.

Not bad at all. 330 points total. He was now the man to beat.

Peter was a little harder to find than usual because he was hiding from what he described as a ‘big f*cker with mutton chops.’

Brett was not illuminated. But he was in a good position now because Pete was hiding low rather than high as was his usual preference. That put them on a flat roof in the Upper West Side and gave him a wide open space to conduct his experiment.

He produced the ball.

Peter did not look at him once while he explained he object of this game. Brett held the ball up higher and was gratified to see Pete follow it with his chin. His pale hands twitched where they poked out of his sweater.

“Matt did it in four and a half minutes,” Brett told him. Peter said nothing. His fingers flexed.

“You think you can do it faster?” he asked.

He got the barest of nods, so focused was the kid on his hands.

He kindly put the ball into those twitching hands. Peter held it like it was precious. He didn’t look up through the count-down either.

“Ready?”

A silent nod.

“Go.”

Where Matt’s first instinct had been to shatter the noise-maker to pick apart its contents, Peter’s first inclination was to check for seams on the tennis ball itself. He found them, then jerked his chin up to Brett.

“I lose points for opening it,” he clarified.

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“200.”

“Out of how many?”

“600.”

“And Double D got?”

“330.”

Peter hummed.

“Kay,” he said absently.

Then ripped the thing right in half.

“Tennis ball, plastic globe, microchip, tape, some kind of—this saline or water?” he licked his fingers. “Water.” He picked up the microchip and peeled it out of its plastic prison. “Hot glue. What’s my time?”

45 seconds.

“Minus 200 for opening it,” Peter ruminated, doing the math. “That puts me at 355. So I win.”

Matt was going to have a f*cking breakdown.

“Yeah, I guess you do.”

Brett found himself all over the city over the next week or so, pissing off and delighting the resident wildlife with the task. He had to hand it to Fogs, the man really knew his clientele.

There was only one incident which didn’t make the cut and that was Danny Rand chucking his ball at the dock and subsequently sacrificing it to the ocean gods. He was devastated.

Replacement of the ball costed another 200 points.

Boy was in the negatives by the time he’d gotten it open.

“I hate this game,” he declared loudly, after Jessica Jones asked who made the ball, and, based off her knowledge of Foggy and his background, guessed at least half the materials from the get-go before having to stoop to make the crack.

This people were f*cking wild.

They scored along a huge spectrum, with some folks like Danny getting wrapped up in the excitement of the competition, and other folks, like Castle who asked no questions and smashed the thing from the start, purely to remove Brett from his doorstep.

Brett wasn’t entirely sure what he’d gotten from this test, but he could safely say now that if competition was involved, a good 80% of his new friends presented with keen, prolonged, and single-minded focus.

He found himself in the increasingly familiar dilemma of producing a list of results and a prize for the top three, however. The station was fascinated by these and suggested booze as the prize.

Peter had gotten second place to Castle’s first, however, and Brett was dead certain that booze would result in another polite (although probably much less polite) letter from Colonel Rhodes, so they had to think a little more creatively.

Castle was suspicious of receiving such a nice bottle of whiskey from a cop. He made Brett drink two fingers worth before he deemed it not poisoned and safe for consumption.

Peter received bragging rights and a small tub of something he was apparently not old enough to purchase on his own. Brett could not pronounce the chemical name taped on the tub’s exterior, but technically it wasn’t resin. So as far as he was aware, it was fine. Peter accepted it and stuffed it down the front of his suit in a hurry before demanding that Brett keep him informed of all future tests.

Jessica, who’d also received bragging rights and who had immediately called Matt to exercise them, also requested to be kept in this loop. She thanked him flatly for the booze and returned to her den with the clack of a closed door.

That was an improvement. She’d never not slammed the door on Brett before.

The other test was an agility thing, a teamwork thing. A tracking game, if you will.

It wasn’t Fogs who made this one up, rather it was Wade Wilson of all people who requested it.

“I,” he’d forcibly dictated to Brett, who found himself scrawling this nonsense out in his notebook for later distribution, “Wade Wilson, officially declare, once and for all, that y’all are f*cking weenies and no one is a better tracker than me.”

Brett didn’t even need to work for that one. He barely got through half the statement before every party spoken to was in uproar. He had to bring the captain and other detectives in on this one because Fogs said that he wasn’t touching it with a ten foot pole and most of the other people’s associates shared the sentiment.

The station decided that the best ‘trackee’ would someone who was already impossible for they themselves to track down.

Frank Castle agreed and said he’d like to see someone just f*cking try to catch him.

Brett made a note that they needed a whole team of psychologists to study this man.

The issue was now that Matt notoriously had a nose for Castle like no one else in the city. He would, without a doubt, find and try to maim Castle in twenty seconds or less and that would surely alert the others and give them the unfair advantage of just following him to the destination. They had to combat this.

“Okay,” Brett told his motley crew of over-excited, costumed sniffer dogs who had gathered for the occasion just outside Battery Park around sunset. “Who here has played Sardines?”

Every hand but two went up.

“Alright, well, for those of you who haven’t: unlike your usual game of tag or hide-and-seek, in Sardines, when you find your mark, you hide with them. Castle will record your time if you find him and when you do, it is your job to stay with him. So what are we going to do?”

There was a children’s chorus of ‘stay with him.’

“And what are we not gonna do?” he asked, wondering if he shouldn’t just hand in his badge now and apply for that position at the nursery around the corner from his mom’s.

“Murder him?” Matt’s voice piped up from the back.

“Intercept these other f*cks?” Wilson offered from somewhere back there too.

Mental note, those two needed to be separated.

“Can we work together?” Rand asked.

Rand was shoved out to the side of the group and was declared an idiot by a trial of his peers.

Brett reminded them all that this was not a contact sport and that no, they were not allowed to work together or fight Castle at the end of the line. Matt asked what the f*cking point was then and was shouted down like his compatriot.

Once they’d settled down a bit, it was dark enough to unleash the beasts.

Castle had hidden several hours earlier and had sent Brett a message from a random, probably highly secured, email account around six saying that he was in position and had no intention of being located any time soon, thanks.

Brett sent him a quick message on the spot and then stood back to the sidelines with the group of associates who had come along to watch the masses. He went to whistle, but Wilson got there first and fired a shot straight into the air and in a blink everyone was gone. Scattered to the winds.

Belatedly, Brett thought that maybe this was a bad idea.

The crowd of normals remaining migrated off towards the nearest subway station and then headed over to Karen’s apartment, where she had helpfully made Castle turn on his skype so that they could all witness the impending bombardment.

Castle was pretty blasé about this all. Wherever he was, it looked like a bunker and he waved to them all dismissively from his makeshift bed. Man had a highly suspicious collection of notebooks over there that Brett was 100% certain Homeland Security would be desperate to get their hands on.

Castle took the moment of quiet to glance their way and say,

“Gonna be a long wait, friends.”

It was.

Almost.

Fogs and Karen stopped their abysmal game of poker to cheer as the window above Castle on the screen jerked and shuddered open and Matt fell in, right into Castle’s lap.

It had only taken him an hour.

Brett had kind of anticipated that.

Castle shoved Matt off, but Matt, ever a stickler for not following the f*cking rules, pounced on him and agitated him until Castle lost his patience and damn near choked him out. Matt, like a juvenile puppy, saw this as a challenge and fought hard until Castle sighed and let him go. He shoved him off the edge of the bed and attempted to go back to his researching.

That lasted maybe a minute at most before Matt pounced again—now having completely forgotten about the game. It quickly, and naturally became a cycle.

Bucky Barnes skidded into the room twenty minutes later, failed to anticipate the drop through the window, and landed right on top of the other two.

Steve and Sam booed him from the back of Karen’s living room.

He proved to be a good distraction for Matt, at least, to Castle’s relief.

“Sit down and shut up,” Barnes swore at him, after yanking him off Castle for the third time in ten minutes. “Papa’s gonna tell us a f*cking story while the rest of these chumps get ready to f*cking lose.”

Bucky Barnes ignored the skype audience in order to tell Matt a story about a World War II campaign which was almost certainly made up.

It was something insane about a time when the Howling Commandos had all gone hunting for a cigar so that Sergeant Dugan could take a picture with a French gal they’d met while looking like Winston Churchill.

Matt, having been forcefully placed on the floor by Castle’s bed in a cross-legged position across from Barnes’s own, kept interrupting to ask questions which set Barnes back in his story. He’d be making good headway, talking about how him and his scraggly, future patriotic icons had once found a bathtub, a box of peaches, and a rubber duck when Matt would ask something like ‘but wasn’t it winter? How could you find peaches in winter?”

“Well, they were canned.”

“Then why were they in a box?”

“How else do you move cans, asshole?”

“So you found a whole crate of canned peaches? In the French countryside? In winter?”

“What part of this is hard for you to understand, pal? Yeah, there were f*cking canned peaches in the goddamned ice wasteland, alright? Anyways—”

“But wouldn’t they have been rationed? Was fruit rationed?”

“Listen, you—”

“He has a point,” Castle chimed in. “Sounds f*cking fake if you ask me.”

Barnes sneered at him and crossed his arms. The metal one glinted in the dim light on the screen.

“Fine, you wanna tell the story, big guy? You tell the f*ckin’ story.”

Castle, to Brett’s surprise, stopped chicken pecking at his tablet and co*cked an eyebrow back.

“I will,” he decided, then set the tablet aside and laid his chin into his palm. “I bet what really happened is that y’all went out at night to some bombed out inn and found a single can of peaches and a hunk of soap y’all decided looked kind of like a f*ckin’ duck. And I bet you didn’t find a single cigar, so y’all smashed together a couple of cigs just so your buddy could take the damned picture. That’s what I think.”

Barnes huffed.

“Man, if you can’t turn a hunk of f*ckin’ soap into a good story, I don’t know what to—”

Wilson crash-landed into home base and managed to miss Castle to take out Barnes with his momentum. Matt lit up.

“Wade, when you were a soldier, did you ever find a can of fruit?” he asked the writhing mass suffocating the most senior member of the troop.

Wilson, once extricated from Barnes and done being pissed off that he’d come in third place, hummed in thought, then lit up as well.

“Actually, now that you mention it, me and a couple buddies earned some lemons once.”

There was a long pause on the other side of the monitor. Castle leaned forward on his palm.

“Well, go on then,” he said, before waving dismissively at Barnes, “This guy’s trying to tell us he found a whole crate of peaches back in the good ole days.”

Wade addressed Barnes, gave him a good once-over and then said, “It was just one wasn’t it?”

Barnes threw his hands in the air.

“Y’all ain’t got no imagination, that’s what this is,” he declared.

There was a brief argument over the veracity of this statement which was ended by the swift arrival of Hawkeye the elder. He arrived only to the door of the little room with a disconcerting thud, but he did manage to lodge his whole hand under the door, so, technically he was in the room at the two hour mark, even though he was definitely stuck with no hope of savior. There was another brief, far too casual debate about whether or not to chop off his hand at the wrist.

Barnes relented eventually and opened the door into the guy’s face before congratulating him on attaining fourth place and dragging him in by the back of his shirt. He was dumped on the floor and the fruit question was posed to him as well.

“Nah man, I wasn’t around long enough to find any fruit,” Barton said, nursing his now-abused hand, “Found a whole lot of scrubbin’ though. Every officer in that place decided that what I needed was a good scrubbin’.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re a f*ckin’ scrub,” Barnes observed.

“You don’t even know what a f*ckin’ scrub is,” Barton snapped back.

Brett could not believe that this was the city’s first line of defense after hours.

“Do to.”

“Do not.”

“What’s a scrub?” Matt asked Wade and Castle who flinched back in shock.

“You not listen to music or something, Red?” Castle asked.

Matt made a gesture encompassing his entire being.

“Catholic school,” he said.

“I mean, yeah, but Catholics are allowed to listen to music, you know? I listened to music,” Castle pointed out.

“You’re Catholic in name only and anyways, I was like ten or something when that song came out.”

Silence in the auditorium. Followed by groaning and anguished writhing.

“Christ, I’m so f*cking old,” Wade moaned.

That carried on for long enough for Matt get good and annoyed and demand to know where the f*ck Danny or Kate or Peter was so he could be freed from this new burden of being the youngest person in the room.

His prayers were answered by Kate who cried out in triumph upon hearing their voices through the door and came into the room with her arms up for high-fives from her mentor. Barton celebrated with her and asked her to pardon the overflow of masculinity happening.

Jones was hot on her heels. And hot on her heels was a handful of others.

Most everyone was in and fiercely debating scrubs by the three hour mark and that was coincidentally the same time they all realized that the only missing body was Spiderman.

Things got quiet. The room on both sides of the skype call settled down and waited.

And waited.

And waited?

Wade and Matt got antsy for their lost team member around hour four and eventually it was decided that Peter was going to be in last place anyways, so it was fine to call him and give him a hint.

Peter didn’t need a hint. He needed an army, they were informed over speaker phone.

“I know we’re supposed to be like, playing this game, but there’s like forty guys over here trying to break the Brooklyn Bridge in half and I think I’m kind of shot?” Peter gritted through his teeth over the phone.

The place was abandoned far quicker than it had been filled.

Brett’s observations, which found their way to the captain written out on a piece of computer paper the following Monday morning, were thus:

1. Vigilantes have, on the whole, very strong reasoning and critical thinking skills. These skills are frequently augmented by their abilities and/or choice of career.
2. Vigilantes are, on the whole, extremely proficient at tracking (especially each other). They are capable of finding a person within hours, even if provided with an extremely limited set of information at the start.
3. Everything above may be magnified by the added element of competition.
4. The Howling Commandos had, in fact, found a wax peach in France at one point during World War II [information obtained from Steve Rogers, 2 hours post-Brooklyn Bridge incident.]
5. Bucky Barnes is a lying liar who lies and is currently being shunned by the greater vigilante community.

Chapter 11: go get you something nice

Chapter Text

It was prom season.

AKA Brett’s personal hell.

People could prattle on about young love and archaic courtship rituals and rites of passage all they wanted, Brett would not be swayed. If these were the purposes of prom, then Brett’s cousin Sasha lived in a constant state of it on Instagram. And if he saw one more picture of her squatting in an alley, he was going to initiate a frank, cousin-ly discussion with her about where lots of folks went to die at night.

She wasn’t gonna like it. And he was just going to add fuel to the ‘killjoy cousin’ fire he had going on in extended family circles. (“Brett, be nice to your cousins; they’re young.” “You know what else they are, mom? Stupid.”)

The first client in his personal hell showed up that Wednesday. Brett dropped the file he’d been working on onto his desk and leaned his elbows on the other folders piled up there so that the young man sitting across from him would pay attention.

“Son,” he said slowly, “Do I look like I have time for this?”

The kid squirmed in his too big, be-flowered suit and ultimately dropped his gaze to his lap.

“You see all these files?” Brett asked him.

The kid glanced up and away as quickly as possible.

“Yes, sir,” he said, which was a far cry from how he’d been talking to Brett’s officers five minutes ago.

“What do you think these files are for?” Brett pressed.

“I dunno, some, uh. Murder?”

Brett stared the kid down.

The kid had the appropriate reaction. Brett leaned back in his chair.

“You’re absolutely right,” he said. “Murdered. Each and every one of them is dead, dying, or working real hard to get there. So do you think me sitting here with you ‘cause you decided to raise a little hell to impress your buddies is a good use of my time?”

Silence.

He cleared his throat.

“No, sir.”

Damn, right.

“That’s what I hoped you’d say,” he said as controlled as he could, “So here are your options. You walk over there and apologize to my officers for being disruptive, we keep the skateboard, and you get to call your mama to come all the way down here from Queens. No harm, no foul. Or you sit for a minute in the cell with Big Billy over there.”

Big Billy let loose another string of slurred expletives right on cue and tried to punch the cell door again.

The kid pulled at his collar and bowtie.

“I’ll say sorry, sir,” he mumbled.

Uh-huh. Good choice.

One down, twenty million to go.

He had a wave of them, mostly from up north because while prom happened over a period of three weeks or so, the guys up north usually claimed the first week as their own. All the venues up there were booked solid. Kids every type of under- and over-dressed flocked the streets at night. Stations all over called requesting back up to help contain the veritable blanket of youth and painful color choices from upsetting the nocturnal law and order.

And upset it they did.

Brett got a call over the radio, screeching for him to get his happy ass over to Claremont because Frank Castle had been spotted by a group of highschools from Horace Mann up that way. Prom made highschoolers feel invincible in general, but these highschoolers in particular decided that their wild and crazy night would only be improved by a little vigilante justice.

I.e. Frank Castle had found himself in a stand off with thirty juniors and seniors in the Bronx and he was trying, bless his soul, to be gentle about ruining their night, but he really had a fellow terrorist to catch.

Shots were fired.

Brett knew Castle well enough by that point to know that they were fired in the air.

But still. Shots fired. Brett had to go.

Castle wasn’t the only vigilante mobbed by teenage dedication, although he was the only one who told them all to scram or suffer the consequences. Luke Cage was a bit more chill about all the kids trying to take pictures with him on his doorstep. And that was fine until the kids realized that that was the Immortal Iron Fist who had just returned to his place, complaining, from McDonald’s. Sasha posted a picture on Instagram of him hugging his McDonald’s bag to his chest and glaring down at her and her friends from the top of a telephone pole.

Brett didn’t know how to spread the message to all these kids that, just because they were allowed out past curfew for once did not mean that vigilantes had to accommodate or appreciate this.

Bafflingly, most of the kids in the city seemed to have decided that their local night goblins had hearts of gold deep down in there. Either that or kids were just afraid of nothing and no one anymore. First Castle, then Rand, now Jones. Rand’s picture was in the news by the next morning and that set off a city-wide competition among the youth as to who could get the most prom pictures with vigilantes and superheroes in one night.

Poor Cap.

He was so blonde. And so easy to find over all them heads in Brooklyn. The guy made the papers too, although his title was “Local Hero Flocked by Highschool Enthusiasts on Subway.”

Someone made a facebook page called “Leave Steve Rogers Alone,” with the thoughtful subscript: “seriously, the guy’s just trying to live his goddamn life,” which got thousands of followers overnight. Cap liked the page and then, apparently at the behest of his publicist, posted a short message on his twitter account saying that he was flattered by the enthusiasm, but would kindly request a little more discretion.

Barnes replied to the message with “He ain’t sh*t anyways, kids. me and @SWilson are here for all your picture-taking needs. We’re gonna be in Bryant Park on Wed. 9-11. Come say hey. We’ll wear matching suits.”

Anyone with eyes could tell that this was the result of Cap’s publicist making a phone call, but prom-goers didn’t appear to care too much. They demanded to know what color suits Wilson and Barnes would be wearing.

You know, the real important stuff.

Sasha asked Brett to ask his mom if she could spend the night in Hell’s Kitchen to be closer to this action. Sasha’s dad long-sufferingly apologized for his daughter in a separate text and said that she and her friends were just really into this whole superhero formalwear thing.

Yeah, no sh*t.

“You should dress DD up in a suit,” Brett told Foggy as they watched the news over the counter at Josie’s. “He could be the next internet sensation.”

Foggy raised an eyebrow at the series of red, webbed suits and dresses a group of kids in Queens had assembled for their big day. They were beyond proud to show off to the reporter. Brett hoped Peter was somewhere losing his precious little sh*t.

“He’d want a red one,” Fogs said.

“Probably a bow tie, too,” Brett agreed.

“Oh, no. Definitely a bow tie.”

“We could get him a red one to match.”

“Nah, man. We should get him a cravat. Send him out like a 18^th century French lord or something.”

Brett thought about that. The kids on tv all opened their dress shirts to reveal spandex Spidey suits underneath.

“Only if he wears the horns,” he decided.

Sasha informed Brett, as he taught Amos how to make Mickey Mouse pancakes, that she knew he knew Spiderman and, as her favorite cousin, he had a moral obligation to introduce them.

Brett stared at her. Then flipped the pancake. Amos cheered.

“This is your chance to be the cool cousin,” Sasha negotiated.

“Girl, you already had your prom, he’s probably off at his,” he snapped. Then removed Amos from the counter to fetch pancake toppings from the fridge.

He only noticed the silence when he looked up.

Sasha stared at him like he was a target.

“His prom?” she repeated.

Aw, f*ck.

“He has a prom? He goes to prom? He’s my age?”

Peter, buddy, I’m sorry. I am not to be trusted either.

He sighed. Amos tugged at his hand, having acquired maple syrup.

“Spiderman’s Sasha’s age?” he asked.

UGH. Children.

“I can neither confirm or deny—”

“OH MY GOD. I’m texting Naomi.”

Brett asked Foggy about it because he was honestly curious himself now and Foggy texted back an adorable picture of Peter trying to escape his aunt’s attempts to slick back his hair, taken apparently by his date.

“Volume is in,” Foggy wrote back.

Ah.

“Who’s he going with?” he asked.

“Our office assistant MJ. They’re best friends. She told him that they’re wearing yellow and that’s that. He’s been moping for weeks. She’s so proud of herself.”

Yellow was a pretty strong color, Brett didn’t blame him too much.

“IS THAT SPIDERMAN?”

He held the phone above his head so Sasha couldn’t see it. Amos thought this was the height of comedy and the two of them made enough racket that Brett’s mom came down to see what the fuss was about.

“I’m disowning you if you don’t introduce me to Spiderman,” Sasha threatened. Brett tried to appeal to his mother’s argument-ending sensibilities with his eyes.

“Let me see,” she said.

Brett held the groan back behind his teeth. He knew better. This would not end well. But still. His mama.

He made sure that she understood the ramifications of what he was about to show her and announced that he would only do it if the kitchen door was closed. The kitchen door was closed. Amos and Sasha whined outside it.

His mom laughed and smiled as he opened up the picture again to show her.

“Aw,” she said, laying her hand on her heart, “He’s just a baby isn’t he? Where’s his date?”

Brett showed her the following picture Fogs had sent of Peter with his arm around the waist of a sweet-looking light-skinned girl in a yellow dress. She was taller than him, and she didn’t appear to be wearing heels.

His mom was so charmed. The apples of her cheeks stood out in her face as she delicately handed the phone back.

“They’re a handsome couple,” she said. “He’s going to grow up big, that one. You can see it in his shoulders.”

Yeah. Yeah, he was. Brett could see it, too.

“Don’t show Sasha, lord knows she’s got enough boys to crush on.”

Roger that.

“I hate you,” Sasha announced when he and his mom reopened the kitchen door.

“Does Spiderman have a girlfriend?” Amos asked. Sasha scoffed at him.

“Only losers to go prom alone,” she said.

“Spiderman is going to prom with his best friend,” Brett told Amos. Amos beamed up at him. Sasha grumbled.

“Is she hot?” she asked. “Can I see the best friend? What color are they wearing?”

Again, obviously the most important question.

“Yellow,” he said. That was harmless.

“Ugh, yellow? Who wears yellow to prom? He should have worn red.”

“Maybe he’s tired of red,” Amos offered helpfully.

“Well if he was tired of it, he should just change his suit.”

Brett tried to imagine Peter in a yellow suit. He just looked like a power ranger. He muffled his snort and determined that it was time to eat.

“Brett.”

“Sasha, it’s not gonna happen.”

“Okay, but consider this: if Spiderman ditches his date, then I can seduce him and he can be part of this family and then you can bully him to your heart’s desire.”

Ah. Yes, tempting. He’d always wanted a tiny, violent second cousin with zero regard for the law.

“Pass.”

“Ugh, you’re useless to me.”

Foggy posted six horrifying pictures on his facebook wall of them in highschool with the bright cheery text “LOOK WHAT I FOUND” plastered over top of them.

The primary option was to find those pictures and burn them, but now that they’d been posted, there was no hope. The only other options were to murder Fogs or to come up with a scathing, brilliant comeback.

Which, naturally, he had at the tip of his tongue.

Coworkers had already started freaking out and oozing all over the pictures before he could submit the comment, but he was satisfied once the deed had been done.

“Damn, I forgot how much of a theatre kid you were,” he wrote.

“f*ck you,” Foggy wrote back.

“Did Matt go to prom?” Brett asked over tense, ceasefire drinks the next day. Foggy pouted at him.

“Matt says that prom is an ableist, patriarchal institution that he’ll have no part in propagating.”

Uh.

“Not 100% sold here.”

“Yeah, me neither. Broke him down. It’s not a nice story.”

“Oh?”

Foggy drew lines through the condensation on his drink.

“He was in on a suicide hold during his junior prom.”

f*ck.

“Yeah.”

Damn. Had Matt ever done anything wholesome in his life?

“Yeah, no. He said that he couldn’t do senior prom because he had a court date to get emancipated, but that didn’t pan out for him.”

Good god.

“Maybe we should have a prom,” Brett thought out loud.

Foggy paused in massaging his drink to stare at him. He beamed.

“Brett, you’re a genius sometimes,” he said.

“Noooooooooooo,” Brett had never heard someone so opposed to having fun in his life. Hell, half the station had been totally down without question, although a lot of that was borne of the desire to embarrass the ever-loving sh*t out of their children. Ellen had rushed off to get her old prom dress out of her mother’s attic for the sole purpose of seeing her twin girls cringe.

“Foggy, why? I am so happy being miserable,” Matt moaned into his desk, clutching the corners so he could not be removed from it.

Foggy huffed at him.

“We are going to take pictures. We are going to eat food. And we are going to go clubbing,” he said, “You like almost two-thirds of that agenda. You’re going to be fine.”

“But the misery? What will the misery do without me? Who will keep it safe?”

God.

Murdock must have been a theatre kid, too.

“f*ck you, I was an emo kid.”

Right, duly noted.

“How the hell can you be emo in Catholic School? Didn’t y’all have uniforms or something?” Brett asked.

He got a nasty expression in return.

“I don’t remember, I was highly medicated during the whole of it.”

Naturally.

“Dopamine is good for you,” Foggy barked. He dug his arms under Matt’s armpits and Matt clung harder to the desk and started kind of rumbling like a mad cat. “Up.”

Brett saw no less than four of his juvenile offenders on the way to the restaurant with Maynard’s arm in his. She’d gone out and purchased the most sparkly, low-backed dress she could find. It was navy blue and stunning. Her husband told her at the door that she looked like Audrey Hepburn.

It was probably the hairpiece that did it.

The kids didn’t want to make eye contact, but Brett had an example to set here, and so stared them down as he passed them. He wanted to be sure that they understood that it was, in fact, possible to wear fancy clothes and not make a fool of yourself all at the same time.

Karen looked like a model in peach waiting outside the restaurant with Jessica Jones’s sister, Trish Walker, who was apparently her date. Brett kind of got it. She couldn’t very well bring Castle, could she?

Two seconds in the presence of those two brought Brett to the intriguing conclusion that Trish Walker had a fat crush on Karen and she was doing a piss poor job of containing it. She couldn’t seem to decide where her hands were supposed to go in the gray suit she’d worn, nor could she remember not to stare open-mouthed at Karen’s profile.

C’mon, girl. At least, like, try to be cool about it.

Karen turned into an angry, flapping swan upon Foggy’s arrival. He’d wrangled Matt into a bowtie, and Matt looked like he’d rather be exploring a sewer. He held onto Foggy’s elbow less casually than usual, if only because he needed his hand to be free to help him exude pouting vibes from his entire body.

A handful of other attorneys and officers showed up to join what they had fondly called ‘The Ceasefire Event of the Year.’

It was pretty good. They had dinner. They had drinks. They traded horrible stories with attorneys, many of whom had equally horrible stories, and then they went out dancing and Brett got to witness Matt suffering in a restaurant, a bar, and a club.

It was a good night.

It was interrupted, of course, by a gang trying to shoot up a load of known officers and attorneys in the middle of the city. So that was fun.

Or panic. It was panic, too.

Mostly because a load of officers and attorneys weren’t stupid and Ellen had had her old prom dress tailored to include a pocket for her pistol. Ellen was always one step ahead of everyone, that way.

Matt finally, finally perked up once people started screaming. And Brett blinked and he was gone. Leaving Foggy in Karen’s loving protection. Fogs didn’t seem concerned.

And in the end there was no reason to be because at some point in the shouting, Matt bumbled his way right through the whole gang’s party and smashed like, three drinks in the process, which allowed him to apologize as loudly as he could. Turns out dumping a drink down someone’s ass is an excellent distraction from the task in front of them.

Ellen took the opportunity to draw her weapon and was followed by whoever else had one.

The standoff intensified.

Until Matt made his merry way back from the bar and ‘mistakenly’ wrapped his arm around someone who was very much not Foggy’s waist. He started flirting. The guy was stunned stupid. Matt asked him why everyone was standing all quiet and it really threw off the other side’s momentum when the guy in front of him turned back a little to explain that they were kind of trying to kill all these officers.

“Oh,” Matt said, “I see. I see. Well, okay. What happens if you kill them?”

A pause.

“They die?” One of the guys over there answered.

“Ah, right. And then what?”

Another pause.

“They—we—uh. Bury them?”

“Bury them?” Matt asked. “Aren’t they a load of cops—hold on, sorry—Are you guys a load of cops?”

What.

“Yeah, we’re half cops,” Foggy said for everyone. Maynard and Ellen gave Brett a firm look which translated to ‘silence your frenemy.’ He could only shrug helplessly at them. Neither Fogs nor Matt could be stopped when they got going.

“Oh, I see,” Matt said. “Right, so. Has any one over there already called for backup?”

Some civilian patron pressed up against the far wall coughed.

“Well, yeah,” Maynard said.

“Right, right,” Matt hummed. He turned to the guy next to him and elbowed him in the ribs, “Like, practically speaking, I don’t think you got time to bury these guys, man. I’m thinking a hit and run’s gonna be more up your alley right now.”

The people around him took a moment to stare at him.

“Either that or you could not shoot?” Matt tried. “Like, legally speaking, this is probably your best option. I mean, knick one of them bastards and you’re looking at a felony for aggravated assault and I’m pretty sure this place has a surveillance camera. But I’d need to confirm that, here, let me confirm—hey Fogs?”

“Yeah?”

“Is there a surveillance thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Any witnesses?”

“Oh, Imma say about thirty or so, not counting all of us.”

Matt sucked in a breath through his teeth and leaned onto his new friend’s shoulder to tell him out of the corner of his mouth, “So that’s not great.”

He patted at the guy’s shoulder cheerfully. “But it’s totally up to you, man. You do your thing, hey, but before you do that, you think you could give me a hand back over there? My boo’s the one with the blond hair. Purple—no blue—is it blue? I dunno—Fogs what color tie are you wearing?”

The guy didn’t know what the f*ck had happened, and to be fair, Brett wasn’t quite sure he had either, but, to his credit, the man did stiffly walk Matt back across the line into Foggy’s safe hands. Matt called him an upstanding gentlemen. And? He seemed? To blush?

Sirens sounded outside.

Matt’s evening had been improved by 2000%. He was all smiles from that moment out. At the dive bar they’d all given up and migrated to, he sat primly and happily in Foggy’s lap and beamed at his whiskey like the cat that got the cream.

Foggy even got a few public kisses, which was just about scandalous for Matt Murdock.

Public displays of affection? Open lap-sitting?

Damn. Boy was one drink away from the best night of his life.

“I’m calling it a successful prom,” Foggy declared the next day, having lured Brett outside on his break with a cup of coffee.

Yeah, surprisingly, it had been pretty good.

Notwithstanding the Mexican stand off. But even that seemed like it had somehow improved the evening. Very James Bond-y.

“We should post all the pictures side by side the old ones. It’ll be like a glow-up thing.”

What the hell words were leaving Foggy’s mouth now?

“Glow up, Brett. Are you serious?”

Yes. That sounded like something involving worms.

“No, you dinosaur. It’s like when us ugly ducklings turn into beautiful swans. You put the pictures side by side so folks can appreciate your transformation.”

Ah. Okay.

“Okay?”

Yeah.

“Perfect. I’m doing it now.”

Wait. Wait, no. That hadn’t been permission.

“Ah, no takes-backsies. Anyways, my breaks over, I’ll see you around, man.”

“Fogs, don’t you dare post more highschool pictures.”

“What? Sorry, can’t hear you. Break. Over. Gotta run. Bye, Brett, I love you!”

“FOGS.”

Chapter 12: take me to merch

Chapter Text

It started with a t-shirt.

It showed up on Amazon and Brett laughed for far too long before ignoring it and buying a new HDMI cable. His mom was insistent that the Nelsons would have one of these at the store, but Brett had once watched Fogs explain to his dad in four different ways what the difference between hardware and software was.

If Edward Nelson had purchased an HDMI cable for the store over the last month or so, it could only be by mistake.

He left the computer at that.

Sasha came to pound on his door wearing said shirt and demanding that he introduce her to f*cking Spiderman already. She’d brought friends this time, god. He was a cop, for crying out loud, these kids were supposed to be afraid of him. He went downstairs and snapped the door open between her knocks so fast that she screamed and leapt back. Then called him a jerk.

“Brett, you have to,” she informed him. The kids around her went awkward and refused to make eye contact. “We got his shirt. We’re basically friends now.”

Right, because that’s how that worked.

“No,” he told her. And slammed the door.

“BRETT,” she shrieked on the other side, “I’M TELLING NANA BESS.”

Fine. Tell her. See if he cared.

Goldberg walked into the station to drop off some paperwork and the whole place went quiet and still. Maynard’s mouth fell open and her grip on her thermos went dangerously slack. Ellen’s face over her current clipboard went drawn and tight. The Captain stopped talking to Brewer and started to turn purple.

Goldberg finally realized that no one was f*cking talking, including Brandy at reception across from him and looked around.

“What’d I do?” he asked, because by then it was basically a guarantee that he’d done something, it was just a matter of what.

“What the f*ck is that?” Maynard barked, jabbing a finger at his chest. At the abdomen of the spider stretching its legs up and down the guy’s front.

“Ah,” Brewer sighed, “My roommate got it for me as a joke and then broke our damn washer last night, so I had to take all my sh*t to the laundrymat. This is all I got that ain’t a uniform right now.”

Yeah.

A joke.

Real funny.

The Captain made a strangled noise behind his teeth and stormed off to slam his office door closed behind him. Besides the fact that that kind of sh*t was just going to encourage local vigilantes, the Captain and Peter had developed a…complex relationship. Brett might even go as far as to say that the Captain was jealous that Peter liked Brett and Maynard and flat out refused to work with, talk to, or accept bribes from anyone else. Including you-know-who.

It didn’t help that Peter had started to occasionally go out of his way to find Brett or Maynard these days to alert them of something going afoul in the city which he either didn’t want to deal with or didn’t have time to deal with. Naturally, he demanded payment for these tips. Which was how Brett discovered that tips could be purchased for lollipops. The Dum-Dum brand specifically. He tried tootsie roll pops once and had been met with disgust and betrayal, and more importantly, a drop-off in the number of tips being brought to his attention over the next two weeks. So, Dum-Dums it was; he had a whole bag of them in his car now because this was his f*cking life.

Although, that being said, they did come in handy for scared kids and for, oddly enough, getting Jessica Jones to cough up a few tidbits of info of her own.

He made a note in the notebook to investigate favorite foods and sweets among the night folk for the purposes of softening future interactions. Then the notebook was confiscated by the Captain for the time being so that all the information in it might be recorded in non-sh*tty handwriting. Brett wondered if he’d ever be getting it back at this rate.

Goldberg bared his teeth awkwardly and informed the room that he was just gonna go now.

It was the best thing for everyone.

It was fine—well, it was whatever—until a load of sh*t went down with Matt and then out of the blue, suddenly he had a shirt.

It read, in giant white block letters on a red background “I AM NOT DAREDEVIL.”

Matt had three printed for himself, one in red (of course), one in black with the words encased in a neat red rectangle, and an inverse of the red one, so that he could wear it unobtrusively under his white collared court shirts and bust it out, Superman-style, for any lingering paparazzi trying to get in his face on the way back to his office.

Matt was basically a model, what with his far too pretty face, far too toned abs and ass, and ridiculous hipster glasses. And his antics all essentially amounted to free advertising for Able’s Printmaking around the corner.

People in Hell’s Kitchen f*cking loved that shirt. Brett looked up one day and instead of all those damn “Supreme” logos, he was looking at the word “Daredevil” plastered across everyone’s chest. Including the kid sitting in front of him with a smashed nose and a missing tooth, trying to explain that he and his buddies weren’t trespassing, sir, they were just trying to practice their parkour.

Brett stared at the kid. Then stared at his shirt. Then back at the kid.

He eventually got it.

He was let off because they truly couldn’t find anything on him or any of his other buddies besides a load of dumbass. And dumbass was, thankfully, not a malicious or illegal substance at this stage of the game, otherwise, they’d have run out of holding cells at the station.

Brett drew the line at Wade’s sh*t, because that stuff was far, far to cute to represent all of Wade’s Wade-ness.

Some folks, however, thought the logo was adorable and made a Spidey version of it. Some other folks would swap one of the half-moon sides of Wade’s logo for half of a Spidey version and went along on their way, talking about how they just loved those two, weren’t they cute together?

No.

No, they weren’t.

Wade was the worst influence. He’d taught Peter how to open bottles with his teeth. His teeth for f*ck’s sake. That wasn’t even bad vigilante sh*t, that was just bad life sh*t. Kid had a chipped right canine now, but he was oh-so proud of himself. He did his new trick for Brett and smiled at him beatifically before handing Brett a beer he was way too young to have purchased.

Now where could he have gotten that from, huh?

Three guesses.

“May trusts them, man, what can I say?” Foggy sighed.

“You can say that underage drinking is a crime,” Brett pointed out reasonably. Fogs gave him a look flatter than Kansas.

“Dude.”

“Shut up, I don’t wanna hear it,” he countered.

“Dude, we drank so much.”

“That was before I got a badge,” Brett qualified.

“Yeah, and after you crammed a stick up your ass.”

Well, Fogs was in a mood. Probably had to do with the fact that his latest hobby including dragging his boyfriend out of fights with reporters.

“It’ll pass,” Brett tried to assure him. Foggy groaned and dropped his forehead onto the tile of his kitchen counter.

“Will it, though?” he lamented.

“It’ll pass.”

It didn’t.

Brett could not f*cking believe that he’d gotten his ass woken up in the middle of the goddamn night by his childhood neighbor to come break up a fight in the middle of the goddamn street.

When he got there, still in his pajamas since the journey of two blocks hardly warranted a dramatic costume change, he was met with, not Daredevil, but Battlin’ Jack’s f*cking kid laying the f*ck into a guy who was becoming increasingly hellbent on killing him.

It was hard to decide who to arrest. Especially because both of them were drunk as hell and screaming expletives at each other.

Brett couldn’t quite make out the whole situation because he was busy half-laying on Matt, trying to calm him down enough so that he would remember that he was not wearing one of his ninja get-ups and so needed to play poor, defenseless blind man, but what he rapidly became aware of, while waiting for backup to get the other guy under control, was that for once Matt hadn’t started it. His neighbor tried to explain over Matt’s uncoordinated jerking and squirming, that she’d heard someone shouting really loudly outside her window and had peeked out to see Matt tapping his way home, swaying a bit.

She’d called Brett when the other guy had grabbed ahold of the back of his shirt and started calling him names. Matt had, in his fairly intoxicated stupor, gotten a good hit into the guy’s jaw and tried to meander away from there, but the other guy was bigger and drunk and persistent and had gotten ahold of him again. That’s when the fight had really started.

Teesha was terrified for her neighbor. So was most of the crowd which had gathered by the time Willows and Brewer got there to lay on the other guy.

Brett tried to reason with Matt who had moved rapidly through being drunk and aggressive as f*ck to being drunk and sad and sick-looking. Brett knew, he just knew if he put him in the car he’d puke all over everything.

Willows asked him what was the hold up and he sighed and grabbed Matt’s shoulder. He startled and jerked as though to lash out again.

“Hey. It’s me, it’s Brett,” Brett said. Matt co*cked his head a bit and made a confused sound. Senses must have been all jumbled up from the head-smashing and liquor. “Easy, man. You’re drunk as hell. Some guy beat up on you. We gotta go to the station.”

Matt blinked at him. Glasses gone. Brett looked around but couldn’t find them, or the cane for that matter.

“Man, be cool,” he said, hoping that Matt understood. He guided him to the car and put a gentle hand on his head to keep him from smashing it against the roof.

Matt was really feeling them extra shots and was way off his game. The other guy in the altercation took his moment of weakness to call him a series of names unfit for polite or hell, public company. Matt lifted his head out of the trashcan to wipe his mouth and shout a few back at the guy.

Brett sighed.

Willows shook his head and carried on with the paperwork.

Matt grumbled something into the can, but Brett couldn’t make it out over the wretching. He figured that maybe once he finally got some of that liquor out, he’d be sober enough to make words happen in sentence.

In the meantime, he called Foggy.

The tragic irony of it all was that the screaming dickface informing the room of Matt’s alleged sexuality was wearing one of those Daredevil shirts. He obviously had missed their whole backstory. Or maybe he hadn’t? Maybe he’d seen Matt and gone up to him to talk about the shirt, but Matt had been at that fun point of intoxication where he didn’t want to talk to anyone, he just wanted to find and cuddle Fogs or Karen or honestly? Whoever and whatever the hell you put in his hands.

Matt was kind of a cute drunk, Brett could admit that much. Although it took a hell of a lot to get him there. Brett hoped that this other guy hadn’t been within reach at the time of meeting. That would make things complicated, even if it would certainly explain a lot.

Willows sarcastically asked the guy in the cell if he was wearing the Daredevil shirt for the irony and then the tables f*cking turned like Brett’s stomach.

“What the f*ck are you talking about?” the guy slurred, “I am Daredevil. And this—this—this f*cking poser’s all over here tryin’ to, tryin’ to get in on my good f*ckin’ name.”

What.

Seriously. What?

Matt made a curious sound and took a break in trying to pop his thumb out of its joint to escape the handcuffs Brett had had to put on him to keep him trapped to his desk. He didn’t want to put him in the cell as he was, without his cane and disoriented, but he also could not be trusted not to wander off on his own in that very same state.

“You’re Daredevil,” Willows repeated incredulously. “Is that a fact, man, or are you talking out your ass?”

“f*ckin’ yeah, I’m Daredevil” the belligerent sh*thead snarled, “What, you think some puny-ass motherf*cker like him’s got sh*t on me? C’mere motherf*cker, we’ll go. Let’s go. Can take your ass lying down.”

Brett thought that pointing out that taking a blind guy in a fight wasn’t exactly a show of physical prowess was not a move to be appreciated at the present time. Matt, though, bless his heart, took that one hard.

“The f*ck you saying?” he slurred in that guy’s direction. “Y’ain’t need eyes to catch your ugly mug, pal. ‘S a pretty wide f*ckin’ target.”

“C’mERE YOU LITTLE—”

Jesus Christ. This was all so unnecessary.

“I’m DAREDEVIL, YOU HEAR ME?” the guy roared, “ME. NOT YOU.”

“ALRIGHT, f*ckIN’ HAVE ‘IM, ASSHOLE. SEE IF I CARE,” Matt roared back.

There was a pause.

The guy in the cell frowned, evidently confused at having been given his way so easily. Matt scoffed at him and folded his arms across the edge of the desk. He dropped his head into them and scoffed again. Brett could have sworn he heard him mumbling something but decided not to engage. They had bigger problems on their hands.

Matt was asleep by the time Fogs got to the station to pick him up. And Brett and Willows were shaking their heads because by then the Captain had been there for fifteen minutes, too. He couldn’t exactly not be. They had a moron claiming that he was Daredevil in their custody and now they were going to have to investigate him at 3 o’clock in the damn morning.

This was madness.

Daredevil was right behind them, snoozing and drooling adorably on his arm while slowly slipping off the corner of Brett’s goddamn desk. Investigating this other guy could not be a greater waste of time or resources. The Captain knew this. The Captain was still beyond convinced that Snoozy over there was the real Daredevil, but he’d already bungled his chance to sort that out and so now he was faced with this sh*t.

Matt fell off the desk and wrung his hand right before Foggy got there.

The Captain sighed like he was staring into a bottomless well of hopelessness.

“Sir, we need you to really think about what you’re saying,” he tried to reason with their new angry friend. “This is a very serious allegation—”

“He—him—that guy over there. He thinks—he thinks he’s Daredevil, you know that?” Friend Andrews informed them. Brett had found Friend Andrews’s wallet which had bestowed upon them his good name and thirteen bucks in ones.

The Captain looked over his shoulder at Matt who Fogs had managed to wake up and was presently trying to talk some sense into. It wasn’t working. Matt had finally been reunited with the optimal hugging target. The only thing holding him back was the handcuff, but he wasn’t about to let that stop him.

He did not look very Daredevil-like.

“Sir, that was a story run by the press,” the Captain said carefully. “Mr. Murdock has denied these allegations; he does not claim to be—”

“ME. I’M DAREDEVIL. ME,” Friend Andrews informed them at max volume. “And Imma put ‘im—that guy, Imma put him down, lemme tell you that.”

God, way to find the exact wrong thing to say.

“Mr. Andrews, are you suggesting that you wish to cause Mr. Murdock bodily harm?” the Captain groaned, rubbing his eyes in exhaustion.

“Yeah, I f*ckin’ am,” Andrews said.

“Is that why you jumped him?” The Captain asked.

“No, no, you ain’t listenin’. I jumped ‘im ‘cause I’m Daredevil.”

Yep. Totally.

“Mr. Andrews, here’s what I need you to do, son,” the Captain negotiated, “For everyone’s benefit right now, I need you to drink that water over there and sit down for a minute, alright? You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“No, I do,” Andrews insisted. He yanked his shirt forward so that he, as well as the three officers in front of him, could read it. “Here. Says I’m Daredevil. Right here.”

Ah.

No. Nice try, though. There's a big “Not” you’re missing there, buddy.

“Alright, we’re gonna go ahead and call this one drunk and disorderly for now,” the Captain decided. “Mr. Murdock, are you--?”

No. Whatever the Captain thought he might have been, he wasn’t. Fogs had done his best, though, and gotten him more or less back into the chair.

“Witness says it was self-defense,” Brett told the Captain from his left side. Matt nuzzled into Foggy’s neck and made soft happy noises. Fogs tried to convince him that this would be easier if he unfolded the leg he’d twisted under himself.

No dice. Could not possibly compromise prolonged contact for comfort.

“He’s too drunk to be making decisions on his own right now,” Brett added. “Not to mention blind, sir. He didn’t know what was coming.”

The Captain sighed even harder.

“Just take him home, Mr. Nelson,” he said.

Brett prayed to every god that he could find a shrine to that that would be a one-off case. Clothes do not always make the man, he wanted to scream from the mountaintops. Wearing a Daredevil shirt or a Spidey beltbuckle or a Hawkeye undies does not make you that person. It just. Does. Not.

Brett understood inspiration. He understood admiration. He understood wearing a hat or a shirt to as some kind of statement or group solidarity thing.

But people, he could not stress enough, were so f*cking stupid. They struggled to distinguish between what it meant to look like a superperson and to actually be that superperson.

Case in point.

Someone had posted a video of Cap ripping a log in half with his bare hands on Instagram and now Brett was reading an article in The Times informing the city at large on behalf of Metro Gen that this was not an activity normal people should be attempting to perform for a myriad of reasons. Unsurprisingly, the folks trying this new challenge all strapped on their Captain America gear before turning on the camera.

Before this, there had been a brief trend of idiots trying to strangle each other with their thighs like the Black Widow. Brett didn’t know if it was a meme or a sex thing, but it had gotten to the point where he had a whole pile of battery claims sitting on his desk.

Exhausting.

The whole thing was exhausting.

And it only got worse.

Friday night saw three guys in the holding cells, fighting over who had the best Spidey shirt and pretending to shoot web at each other.

Saturday night saw a murder by a freak literally obsessed with Deadpool. He was taken into custody and argued that he had allegedly had a breakdown over his schizophrenia which had cause this whole chain of events.

He didn’t even have schizophrenia. That was what people thought Wilson had. And because Brett’s life was horrible, he actually had to go knock on Wade Wilson’s apartment door and ask him if he had an associate and maybe also schizophrenia?

Wilson, sans mask and draped with cat, blinked at him and then slammed the door.

“What the f*ck is wrong with the world?” Brett heard him ask the cat through the open window.

It took some serious pleading and promising to convince him that A. He did not have to pack up and move house now that the police knew where he lived and B. that all he had to do was say no to both allegations.

He said no. He demanded to know where Brett got his address. At gunpoint.

He then lamented the fact that he had gotten insurance for his new scooter before getting a damn ticket for parking it illegally. He didn’t even have it anymore, he told Brett. sh*t got totaled and he really didn’t want it anyways.

Brett left with his life at least, although he wasn’t convinced he left with the whole of his sanity.

Brett cupped his face in his hands and counted to ten so that he could deal with the gang of three sitting handcuffed on the curb in front of him.

They didn’t say anything, but they had the grace to look at each other a little sheepishly.

“Have you guys even seen Spiderman?” Brett finally breathed. The Spiderman in front of him lit up.

“Yeah, I look in the mirror every day,” he proclaimed.

Brett needed another ten count.

“Then you know,” he said slowly, “That Spiderman is approximately the size of an ant?”

Silence.

“Dude, are you calling me sho—”

“I’m saying you’re not Spiderman,” Brett snarled before the idiot could finish his sentence. “You are not Spiderman. You know how I know? Because I know Spiderman. He is this big, you see? This. Big. You, my friend. Are this big. Do you see this? This is at least a foot, here. Furthermore, I cannot catch Spiderman. I have tried to catch Spiderman. Spiderman has f*cking hugged me and I cannot catch Spiderman. It took me two minutes to catch you. Do you understand? Do you see this, man? This is how I know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that you are not Spiderman.”

Silence. The guy’s lip stuck out defiantly under the edge of the mask he’d pulled up to his nose.

“I got the suit,” he said firmly. “And you don’t know who's under the suit so—”

Brett yanked the mask off the rest of the way and leaned into the guy’s face. He swallowed anxiously. Brett raised an eyebrow at him.

“Looks like I do now,” he said.

He then rounded on the Daredevil and Deadpool squirming next to their buddy.

“You guys want to play ball or no?” he asked.

Funny how now they did.

Wade and Matt would be disgraced.

Peter showed up a few days later on the hunt for a Dum-Dum and willing to part with some information for it, but Brett needed him for something entirely different this time.

He placed his hands on the kid’s shoulders. Peter gazed up at him through the mask; it kept his face blank, but Brett knew him well enough by that point to recognize confusion on it.

“Peter,” he said, “I need you to do me a huge favor. I will give you the whole bag of Dum-Dums. And some gummy bears.”

Peter made a twitter account.

A f*ckload of other vigilante twitter accounts cropped up in his wake. Everyone’s usernames were just jumbles of letters, but they all had one thing in common and that was a crazy impossible selfie or video.

Peter posted a short, oddly artistic video which started out focused on the night city skyline. It was cut in half by the shadows of a rooftop, wet and lit by streetlights. Peter then lowered the camera to see his opposite hand. He flicked his suit-covered fingers and something sprayed out a line of web from his wrist. He raised the camera so it could see where the line had stuck, even though it looked like it just flown out over the city and disappeared.

And then he started running. Barreling towards the edge of the roof. His shadow showed him loping while holding his phone in his left hand.

He jumped.

The camera held remarkably steady as it tracked his descent, showing his little red feet flexing out over the blur of city lights. The lights blurred more and then went from going down, down, down, to moving up and up and up until Peter reached the crest of his arc. Then in a flash, the camera spun around so that it showed Peter’s mask.

He made one of the suit eyes wink and then threw out another line of web at the last possible second.

It was pretty damn terrifying to old people like Brett who f*cking hated rollercoasters. It was also pretty damn terrifying to half the station team who now knew intimately that Peter played games of fate with freefall every night he went out.

But.

Peter ended the video with a freeze frame and a bar at the bottom which read, “Stop trying this at home, please. People are getting hurt.”

And somehow, the whole video felt a whole lot gentler.

People on twitter went wild. They tried to figure out if it was green-screened or faked, but then Peter’s random assortment of letters started answering people back.

“No, I made it last Wed.” he wrote.

“I make the web myself. There is not a safe alternative on the market. You can try, but man, let me tell you, it’s gonna be a long fall.”

“Falling without knowing how to land can actually break your knees, and if you’re really not careful, can permanently paralyze you, friends. Please stop doing this. Even superpeople make fun of the ‘superhero’ landing.”

“It’s cool if you want to run around in a Spiderman onesie, just know that if you go around claiming to be me, you’ve got like 100+ counts of assault which people could hold against you. And trust me on this one, they WILL press charges ;0”

It was a beautiful, beautiful thing, Twitter was, when it was used as a force of good.

Or, uh. Something like that.

Wade posted a picture of himself chilling with his cat in his living room, surrounded by ammunition and bags of what was 100% cocaine. He captioned it, “Can y’all stop using me as an excuse to mutilate pets??? Deadpool is a friend of all animals and not your f*cking excuse to be a sociopath. #killpeoplenotpets”

Wade got thousands upon thousands of followers within mere hours.

Jessica Jones said that the next person who ran around pretending to be her was now responsible for her taxes. She reminded everyone that they were small business taxes and ergo Satan’s worst nightmare. Trish Walker retweeted the post with the cute little note “<3 love you girl, I told you we could just hire a guy.”

“I got a calculator and a bottle of Jack. I don’t need no man,” Jess wrote back.

Jessica Jones got several thousand followers as well.

And they kept cropping up. More and more of them. Other superfolks on twitter started retweeting their pithy little slogans. Barnes retweeted Peter and wrote “woah, talk about calling the cavalry. We got the night crew on twitter now, too?”

Peter replied with an image of Barnes smoking on his couch typing out the text on his phone.

“YOU LITTLE sh*t, IMMA FIND YOUR ASS SPIDEY,” Barnes replied.

And from there, it appeared that legitimacy was established. And more importantly, the city had been warned.

If people were going to scour the internet for the latest superhero merch, then it was only fair that their heroes showed them how f*cking insane they actually were. Would it prevent those who were really determined to be sh*theads? No. But it would discourage a lot of potential sh*theads before they even got started, or at least Brett hoped it would.

Chapter 13: sinkholes

Chapter Text

Brett’s usual problems paled in comparison to the case sitting on his desk in front of him. He didn’t love murder cases and he especially didn’t love the ones involving kids.

Naturally there was a lot of weirdness circulating around this particular family of once-living people. A number of neighbors reported loud disputes and one or two had even called the police to file noise complaints. One time, someone had called about suspected domestic violence, but when the officers had arrived to the scene, nothing seemed out of order.

Brett wanted to know what they were hiding. Brewer had his money on a family fortune left in a Nana’s will. Maynard had been watching too much Netflix again and was obsessed with the occult. Ellen saw her occult and raised her simply a cult.

Brett wasn’t so sure it was any of that. He didn’t want to jump to any one conclusion before he had more sh*t sitting on his desk.

What he did know, however, was that the Decland family had both money and financial problems. They had two kids, one boy, aged 14, one girl, aged 10 and they had a family dog. A white little monster which looked like one of those dogs on the fancy dog food cans and which had escaped the massacre of his owners by hiding in one of the kid’s rooms.

The boy had just started at Midtown Science and Tech, and Brett just happened to have some connections there.

“You guys can’t be showing up in front of my school,” Peter lectured him and Maynard. Brett wondered if his aunt ever just looked at the kid’s backpack and sighed. The thing was falling to bits, although lovingly stitched back together with highschool Home Ec skills.

“Nothing Spiderman related,” Maynard soothed.

Peter puffed up in even greater irritation.

If there was no Spiderman, he wasn’t interested. Brett pulled the picture of his schoolmate out of his binder and offered it to the kid.

“You know him?” he asked. Peter glared at him and then snatched the picture to look at it closer. His face gave nothing away.

“He dead?” he finally asked.

Brett could neither confirm or deny at this stage in the investigation. Peter rolled his eyes.

“He’s dead,” he said, handing the picture back. “I don’t recognize him. We don’t really mix with the freshmen.”

Made sense. Alright, onto step two.

BM: Fogs you heard of any folks called Decland?

FN: the ones in the news? That’s a f*cking tragedy man

BM: yeah those ones

BM: you or DD heard much of them?

FN: what

FN: oh

FN: this is detective Mahoney talking

BM: who else would it be??

FN: I dunno, santa? anyways I just experienced something incredible and now have an A-M-A-Z-I-N-G idea which your nephew will die for

BM: foggy

FN: first you gotta get one of them stuffed pikachus and then we’ll get it a hat and one of them little heart recorder things they have at Build A Bear.

BM: foggy

FN: Wade can do a f*cking spot on pikachu impression, man. Like. For real. He f*cked with Matt for like an hour last night. So we’ll get him to say a bunch of weird sh*t and then you and pikachu can be detective besties and Amos will DIE I promise you

BM: Foggy focus. Dead people. Ask DD for me?

FN: YOU ARE NO FUN ANYMORE

BM: ffs okay I will consider the pikachu

FN: THINK OF IT BRETT Y’ALL COULD PLAY POKEMON GO WITH THE PIKACHU

FN: youre thinking about it aren’t you?

FN: pretty good right?

FN: right???

BM: foggy I will pay you any amount of money to shut the f*ck up about pikachu right now

FN: f*ck

BM: what

FN: sorry gotta go the f*cking FUN POLICE are here

“I thought you guys were close,” Maynard remarked, watching Brett slam his forehead against his steering wheel.

He sat up and re-dug his phone out of his pocket.

FN: its f*cking low to text my mom brett

BM: four people have died franklin

FN: Matt’s busy pretending he’s not sleeping at his desk. KP says papa decland tried to hire her the other day.

BM: thank you

FN: text my mom back and tell her I’m being f*cking cooperative

BM: will do. Thank you. will also consider the pikachu

FN: if we do the pikachu I will absolve all your sins for this month

Like a damn dog with a bone, this guy was.

Karen Page was none too pleased for Brett and Company to be all up in her business. They entered the office and Karen immediately started shoving sh*t out of view. He tried to tell her that they weren’t interested in any of her other cases, but she’d already yanked a black table-cloth with festive purple sparkles dancing through it out of a drawer and thrown it over her whole desk.

It had the effect of making it appear as though a business casual séance was about to take place in there.

“Karen,” he said slowly.

“I don’t know sh*t,” she said.

“This is about the Declands,” he sighed.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Can we talk, you know, without the veil?”

There was a long pause as Karen considered it.

“No.”

What exactly had he expected?

Karen owned up to the fact that Levi Decland had in fact come by the week previous trying to acquire her services. He thought that someone was stalking himself and his family. Karen didn’t like the look of him or the story he was telling and demanded proof.

She gave the offices a few photocopied emails Decland claimed to have received from the family’s stalker. She also sent Brett a few of the audio files the guy had recorded when this alleged stalker had called up to their apartment.

Brett didn’t really blame her for turning him away. The audio files sounded pretty weird. Fairly obscure.

“Sounds like he was f*cking interrogating his delivery guy,” Karen said offhandedly.

Yeah, it kind of did.

“So you refused the case?” he asked her. “Did he leave or was he persistent about it?”

Karen sniffed and swept her hair over her shoulder.

“He was a real dick about it,” she said, “Tried to f*cking yell at me like this was my problem. I told him to get out of my office if he couldn’t control himself and he didn’t want to go so I had Matt escort him.”

Matt’s version of escorting involved dragging a body through their waiting room and throwing it out into the hall. He was a one-man security team for the office and no one questioned it. The whole thing was apparently great entertainment to all those chilling in the waiting room. Hell’s Kitchen inhabitants thrived on drama.

“You know where he went after that?” Maynard asked. Karen shrugged.

“I think Matt gave him a couple of cards,” she said. What she meant was that Matt threw the guy out and then chucked a handful of fliers after him as a gesture of goodwill before slamming the door.

They then went to poke at Matt who had already been caught sleeping at his desk once that day and, from the looks of it, hadn’t learned his lesson. Foggy came in and crouched down low next to his desk, then clapped his hands together next to his ear as hard as he could. The poor sap fell right out of his chair.

“You’re such a dick,” he slurred, self-consciously wiping at his mouth. A couple of kids in the waiting area giggled before re-hiding behind the bookshelf.

“Detective Asshole wants to know where you referred Italian Cologne last week,” Foggy said.

Matt seemed to know exactly who he was talking about. As in the cologne guy, not Detective Asshole. Although he probably knew who that referred to, too.

“Gave him the usual cards,” Matt said.

The usual cards consisted of two PIs, a guy who operated the floor below them and who thought Private Investigating mandated an office straight out of the fifties, and Jessica Jones’s card, the design of which had changed since Brett had last seen one. It was purple now. Someone must have owed her a favor.

“That guy? Nah, he was fakin’,” Jessica said with her usual flat affect from her doorway. She refused to let them into the room, so they had to chat in the hallway of her complex.

“How do you know?” Brett asked.

“You seen his sh*t? Staged as hell. Pretty sure he wrote those emails. f*cking tore the Amazon driver a new one for no damn reason. Guy was paranoid. Course, that’s what happens when you start planning a murder,” Jessica said.

Now those were some very brazen accusations, Miss Jones.

“Hey, you don’t wanna believe me, that’s your prerogative,” Jessica said.

“You got any other type of proof?” Maynard asked.

Jones thought about it. Then seemed to decide what the hell.

“Guy put me on edge. Didn’t like him. Kind of wanted to figure out who he had it out for, so started asking around. Rumor had it he tried to hire a hitman.”

Oh, now that was new. Go on.

“Yeah, so I asked the usual players in that field, if you know what I mean. They ain’t heard anything, so I talked to Deadpool to see if the guy had crossed through any of his wires. You know how many people just go straight to Deadpool, man? It’s crazy. He’s expensive as hell. f*ckin’ amateurs, I’m telling you.”

That was horrifying. Please continue.

“Deadpool said he had heard of this guy, but obviously, he’s out of this guy’s price range. Said the guy kept making a big fuss over the fact that he wanted Wilson for ‘protection’—you know, wink wink, nudge nudge.”

Highly suspicious.

“Yeah that’s what I’m saying. Wilson normally doesn’t give a sh*t about people’s motivations, but beyond there not being enough cash to be worth the effort, he said the job involved kids and he doesn’t f*ck with anything involving kids if he can help it.”

Wade’s morality was so chaotic, it was like trying to follow the damn stock market sometimes.

“You know who he went to next—Decland, that is?” Brett asked. Jones pursed her lips and then stretched them into a sardonic grin.

“Yeah, but you ain’t gonna like it,” she smirked.

Frank Castle was doing his best impression of a turtle and laying low and camouflaged somewhere in the depths of the city. Finding him when he didn’t want to be found was like trying to find a hay-colored needle in a pile of alfalfa.

“Why the f*ck would Decland try to hire Castle? Who does that?” Maynard demanded in the passenger’s seat. “Castle and Wilson—that’s top brass, big money. Decland couldn’t have had that kind of cash.”

Brett agreed, although he was now wondering if Decland’s civil servant position had given him some insight into the way politicians played ball in this city. He might have seen something he shouldn’t have in his boss’s office.

“You think he hired the hit?” Maynard asked.

On his own family? Seemed strange as hell.

“Yeah, that’s how I feel, too.”

Maynard didn’t know as much about vigilante identities as Brett did and so, with her at his side, he needed to be more careful of who he talked to and how. He couldn’t very well just walk back over to Nelson, Murdock & Page and ask Karen to give Castle a ring. And he couldn’t go to ask Matt to go chase the guy out of hiding either.

It made things complicated.

He had to go through Foggy, who was less sold on Castle than his compadres. Foggy rarely held a grudge, but when he did, boy, you better believe he was dying with it.

Frank Castle had yet to clear his name in Foggy’s black books.

Brett decided to circumvent all that by going to hunt down Deadpool first. This was always a f*cking challenge, given that the best way to Wade was via Peter and Peter wasn’t too interested in being helpful at the moment; Brett may have burned his chance back there at the school.

He didn’t have many options here though, and so had to try again anyways. Who knew? Maybe Pete and his occasional teenage goldfish memory had forgotten his ire by then.

Peter didn’t answer any texts and so Brett and Maynard had to go hunting for Spiderman, a task which required a keen eye, some good timing, and a bribe.

Peter had grown tired of the lollipops around the beginning of the month. Teenagers were exhausting. Keeping up with their interests was a full-time job of its own. Brett really felt for brand advertisers these days. On the upside, Pete was fairly reliably hungry for something at all times. It was mostly just a matter of figuring out what.

It was getting warm lately so Brett thought that a gift card to Baskin Robbins would probably go over well. Maynard thought otherwise and insisted that they get the kid a card to a bubble tea place instead. Bubble tea was popular among the youth, she claimed.

Brett yielded to her knowledge.

They eventually found Pete, but not at any of his usual perches. No, instead, they found him at war with Hawkeye the Younger behind the McDonald’s on Madison.

They were a f*cking mess, the two of them. Brett could not understand this antagonism. As far as he was concerned, they were the exact same person in slightly different circ*mstances and with slightly different team colors.

Hawkeye the Younger and Spidey did not see it that way, of course. The two of them were engaged in full-voice argument, drawing the occasional attention from college students wandering past, when Brett and Maynard arrived on the scene.

Hawkeye the Younger was making a particularly sharp point about Peter’s encyclopedic knowledge of vintage sci-fi films being a useless sinkhole of time which might be more productively spent in honing fighting skills. Peter’s retort to this involved some strong language focused around Kate’s abysmal lack of people-skills and alleged self-centered heroism.

“Well, sorry I’d rather save people than make them feel special,” Kate spat.

“People deserve to feel special,” Peter hurled back at her.

“No, you just want to feel special.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Yeah, it is.”

Dear god, these two were not old enough to be having this conversation. They should have been fighting over sneakers or something.

Brett cleared his throat and got the full-force of irritation from both of them.

“Wade’s busy,” Peter insisted.

“Yeah, being a f*cking murderer,” Kate added. Peter rounded on her with fury visible even through his mask.

“You don’t know what you’re even talking about ,” he said.

“No, you’re just blind to reality.”

“Wade doesn’t murder people all the time, Katherine.”

“No, you’re right. He’s got a good 30-70 split between Murder and Terrorism.”

Okay, did he need to like, separate them or?

“He’s not a terrorist, don’t talk sh*t about what you don’t know.”

“Prove to me he’s not a terrorist, go on, I’d like to see you try.”

Maynard gave Brett a strong look of confliction. Yeah, he wasn’t quite sure what to do here either.

“Prove to me that Hawkeye’s not a public menace and I’ll prove your dumbass terrorism sh*t.”

“Clint doesn’t hurt people.”

“He’s literally a professional spy.”

“Yeah, but the worst spy. And anyways, he doesn’t do that anymore.”

“What, so you’re training to be an even worse spy than him then?”

Hawkeye the younger went quiet and still. Peter stood his ground against the wall next to the fire-escape. Kate sneered at him.

“No, go on,” she said, “Keep on talking sh*t. I dare you.”

“I ain’t scared of you, Katey-Kate.”

“You sure? ‘Cause I’m noticing a lack of sh*t-talking, right now.”

Alright, that was enough. These two were going in circles.

“Peter, Kate. Four people have been murdered. I need to talk to either Wilson or Castle. Castle as the end goal here. How do I talk to Castle?” Brett interrupted in a firm voice. He finally had both kids’ attention. Peter glanced at Kate and then jutted his chin out.

“I’ll find him for you,” he said.

“Shut the f*ck up,” Kate snapped, “I’ll do it. This guy couldn’t track a guy leaving a trail of blood.”

“What the f*ck did you just say?”

Alright, well. It was a step forward.

Peter and Kate could not be outdone, either of them, and so both took the job. But they had very different methods of tracking. Peter’s way of tracking involved a lot of people skills. He had contacts and perches throughout the city which he used to pull information and then observe. Then pull more info and observe.

It was a little like his webslinging, his pace.

Kate, on the other hand, was just f*cking ruthless. She crashed through the city, banging into poor humans, threatening them where it hurt, whether it hurt somewhere soft or hard, and then rattled forward to the next mark like an angry pinball.

It made Brett fear for what Hawkeye must have been like in his prime.

Frequently (and hilariously for Brett and Maynard) the two collided on marks and the mark was forced to try to answer questions from two radically different approaches, with Spidey appealing to their better nature and Kate flat out dangling the consequences of not giving up info in front of their faces. In those moments, Brett and Maynard found themselves stepping in and calming the poor person, ensuring them that these two were working with the police in this moment and that no harm would actually come to their families or genitals. This worked to smooth the interaction over and put the person at ease to provide the clue for the next mark. And then off the kids went, leaving Brett and Maynard to soothe the informant and send them off home safely.

This worked until they started to get into darker territory, where the police were not welcome. Where Peter and Kate were among their people.

It was crazy how personalities changed according to context. Peter’s whole demeanor switched over from Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman to up and coming protégé of Deadpool and Daredevil, your worst f*cking nightmares. Kate went from slightly grumpy Teen Hawkeye to huntress.

Their marks got older and sharper and much less forthcoming with info. Peter slammed one guy into a brick wall and told him in a dead even voice, “Talk.” Kate stared at a man with an arrow twirling between her fingers. Her dark eyes even darker under the shadow of her brow.

They were dangerous f*cking kids under all that charm and teen drama. The reminder was profoundly uncomfortable.

Peter and Kate found Castle in double, maybe triple the amount of time it would have taken their mentors to locate him, but by god, they managed it and both were so proud of themselves. They hit the foot of the building he’d built his latest safehouse in and turned back to Brett and Maynard with twin grins and puffed out chests.

L’il baby vigilantes, tracking down serial killers all on their own.

Well.

Mostly on their own. They refused to acknowledge that the other had helped them in any way whatsoever.

Brett and Maynard pounded on Castle’s door and he was strongly displeased to see them. But perhaps, and surprisingly, even more displeased to see the damn kids.

“Scram,” he told them.

They did not.

Castle snarled at them.

Snarling, however, was a mode of affection, these two had learned from their elders. Then Peter noticed Castle’s dog and that made Kate notice Castle’s dog and somehow all was forgiven and forgotten between them in an instant.

“Please, Please, please,” they begged Castle with huge eyes. He looked to God for guidance and support.

“Please, please, please, Mr. Castle? We’ll leave right after. We promise. He just—he needs to know he’s a good boy.”

Castle tried to shoo them away again but made the mistake of moving about a foot too far out of the doorway. The kids wriggled past him and set upon the dog like they were, all three, touch-starved. Castle blinked at the lack of children before him and then spun around with clawed hands. His dog gave him a dumbass pit-bull grin in the center of the little room behind the door and wiggled his body from side to side as the kids lavished attention on him.

Brett glanced at Castle and saw that he’d given up his clawed fingers to pinch at the bridge of his nose.

“You are the worst f*cking dog, Max,” he murmured to himself. “The worst f*cking dog.”

Castle reluctantly allowed Brett and Maynard into his safehouse, provided they gave him their phones (inspected for bugs and recording devices and then dropped into a cardboard box by the foot of the door) and provided that they did not touch or ask questions about any of his sh*t. It was highly suspicious sh*t, besides the cot and other furniture that is. Castle’s computer was far too tricked out for it to be any kind of normal PC. He had stacks of notebooks with sticky notes in them. A box of meticulously organized manila folders with some office supplies inside it.

Frank Castle, if he chose not to be a mass murdering psychopath and endured court-sanctioned, mandatory trauma therapy, would probably have been the best office manager in the state of New York. No wonder he and Karen were so into each other. He probably loved to seduce her by organizing her unruly evidence collection. She probably returned the favor with his hit list notebooks.

Brett couldn’t decide if this was kinky or just plain weird. Either way, it became clear, watching Castle scold the dog while he stretched out into Peter’s lap to ensure maximum coverage in Kate’s belly-rubbing efforts, that for all his menacing, Castle had a soft spot for the kids.

He didn’t try to scare them out again and didn’t impose any rules on them like he had on Brett and Maynard.

Brett tried to break the ice by complimenting the state of the dog. Castle turned to him, supremely unimpressed, and said, “Sometimes I think he’s too stupid to live, but then he just keeps on doing it anyways.”

Right. Okay. Maybe let’s just focus on business.

“I’ve got a case involving multiple homicides right now. Involves a family called Decland,” he started.

“Decland? Oh, that f*cker. Nah, not any of my marks,” Castle said.

“So you had nothing to do with them?” Maynard clarified. The dog gave someone behind them a kiss and this was followed by a sound of disgust.

“Ehn, wouldn’t say that,” Castle said, “Guy started asking half the damn underground where the f*ck I was. Wilson showed up, warned me he was full of sh*t, but the f*cker just would not shut his damn trap and I’ve got to keep a low profile at the minute. Damn near shot him myself, but Wilson was of the opinion that that was not overly wise, if you know what I’m saying.”

Huh. So Wade had been suspicious of Decland’s story like Jones then.

“Yeah, first thing Wilson comes here saying is the guy’s money’s f*ckin’ weird; he don’t trust it. Also mentioned there were kids involved. I ain’t do kids.”

No one did kids, it would seem. That was a relief.

Their kids in the corner had both stretched out to imitate Max. He’d gotten excited about that and had scrambled up to sniff at their ears and walk all over them. The giggling was a little distracting and felt out of place given the state of the place.

“When you say the job involved kids, do you mean that Decland was asking for someone to kill his kids?” Maynard pressed.

Castle gave her an eyebrow.

“Well, I mean, as far as he said, the job was a terror gig.”

“Which Decland was asking for protection against?” Brett asked.

Castle’s eyebrow climbed a bit.

“Yeah. Protection,” he said flatly.

Yeah.

No. Not protection.

“f*ck,” Maynard swore softly so as not to corrupt the youth. Castle glanced from her to the kids and dog.

“They heard worse than that, detective,” he said. “Why’re y’all up in arms about this sh*t?”

Well.

“Two minors, shot dead at the scene. Boy, 14, girl, 10,” Brett said.

Castle’s stony face stayed smooth as a rock.

“Well, I guess you’d like the bastard who did it, then?” he said.

Brett hope to god that it wasn’t him.

“That’s right.”

Castle nodded and then sighed.

“I can’t give you that for sure,” he said, “But I imagine I might be able to get you a start. Max,” he snapped. The dog looked right at him and started wagging his tail-less butt. “Hold the fort, I’m going huntin.’”

See the thing about having Castle on your side was that it was, above anything and everything else, confusing. Comforting, because he was far less inclined to maim, shoot, or murder anyone on his side of things, but terrifying because his mere presence just set your teeth on edge. He said he could find Decland that night, which didn’t make sense because they already knew where Decland was. His cold and cooling corpse was in the morgue.

Castle scoffed at this and locked the door to his safehouse. He turned around to face Brett and Maynard, thankfully without the Punisher shirt and gear. He’d just grabbed a backpack and some street clothes.

Brett realized abruptly that he wasn’t looking at them. He was looking at the other two. Now sated with puppy-time, they weren’t snipping at each other, too busy sharing pictures and selfies taken with Maxwell the Stupid.

“Y’all are done, go home,” Castle told them. Peter and Kate paused in their tittering to stare at him owlishly over their phones.

“I don’t wanna,” Peter said. Kate bobbed her head in agreement.

“Don’t care. Get.”

Peter dropped his gaze, but Kate elbowed him in the ribs and stuck up her chin. Peter watched her do that, looked at Castle, and then half-heartedly followed suit.

Castle stared him down in full acknowledgement that he was the weakest link in this vigilante trio. He dropped his eyes again and nudged Kate again.

“Maybe we should go,” he whispered.

“No,” Kate snapped. “It’s our job now, too. We can’t just leave it after all that work. Gotta see it through, Clint said so. For better or worse.”

Barton, your next job is to teach this kid to pick her f*cking battles.

Brett glanced over at Castle and saw exactly what he thought of Barton on his face.

“This is your last chance,” he said. Peter got a little frightened and pulled at Kate’s elbow gently. She ripped it away.

“We’re coming,” she declared and Peter panicked, having not realized that they were now a team unit.

“We’re not coming,” he said over her, pulling harder. Kate whirled around and took his head with her and for a brief moment, the adults got to witness back of the debate and following scolding. When Kate turned them back around, she said “Coming,” and Peter looked miserable.

“I’m sorry” he mouthed to Castle.

Castle sighed and shook his head.

“Alright, whatever. But keep out of the way.”

Where the f*ck was Brett’s notebook? The tolerance for the young’uns in this community was off the f*cking charts.

Castle took them to a tunnel which led straight to hell. At the mouth of it, he forced Brett and Maynard to strip off their uniforms and hop into street clothes. He then leveled an expectant look at the little ones who scrambled off to do the same. Brett didn’t know where they found street clothes, but they came back looking exactly as youthful as they were. Castle slapped a palm over his face in exasperation and Brett and Maynard got to witness a quick-and-dirty vigilante lesson about making yourself not look f*cking twelve.

Peter’s blue sweatshirt was rolled up to the mid-arm and his collar tucked in so that it laid flat and didn’t show over the top of the sweater’s. Castle took off his own watch and strapped it on the kid. Kate’s hair was then let all the way down and Castle produced a well-worn army jacket from his backpack which became Kate’s overcoat. Its sleeves were adjusted like Peter’s. Castle f*cked up Peter’s hair and then stood back to give the two a once-over.

It wasn’t much, but they did now look more along the lines of 18 and 19 than 16 and 17.

Castle threw his hand at it and declared it good enough for now.

“You stick close,” he said firmly to both of them.

Brett got the feeling that the whole duckling thing was something they were both used to because they nodded enthusiastically, now all excited to be under the guidance of The Punisher himself. Castle just told Brett and Maynard to stop looking like narks.

Then into hell they descended.

Hell was a whole part of the city that seemed to appear at night and vanish in the morning. Kind of like a night market. It was dark, somehow wet, and paved with trash-filled streets full of people walking around with barely concealed weapons under their clothes. People from all sorts of backgrounds. Some seemed to dress alike, others stood out like sore thumbs in neon colors or fantastic outfits, looking for all intents and purposes like they were going to a rave. Folks walked by with tatts with more than personal meanings stamped all over their bodies.

Castle wove through these people casually, with the kids at his heel. Brett and Maynard had to swallow down the cop instincts to keep up.

Castle seemed to have a very specific place in mind for getting things moving. He headed north up the street. They passed a line of different bars and pubs, raucous with the night crowd. Even more rowdy than your typical NYC place, it would seem. But that might have just been Brett’s imagination.

Castle finally slowed his relentless pace and took a slight left in through the heavy door of a place with a plaque on the side declaring it once a school for girls.

Every single human being in this bar could have and should have been arrested. Every one of them. Brett recognized some of them from Wanted posters. To his surprise, Wade Wilson was at the bar. And even more to his surprise, Castle looked his way like he was the one he’d been searching for.

Wade was arguing with the guy behind the counter and his employee. He wasn’t wearing his mask and seemed perfectly at ease in the place despite that.

Peter recognized him immediately. Faster than Brett did.

Castle flinched and turned to stop the inevitable, but Peter had already lurched past him and latched onto Wade from the side. Everyone in the conversation over there panicked and then Wade whipped around and gave Castle the most furious look Brett had ever seen in his life. It promised death. Painful beyond imagination. Wade wrapped a protective arm around Peter and stood up from the bar without a word. The guys behind it bared their teeth at each other.

Wade approached Castle with Peter tucked securely under his arm.

“What the f*ck do you think you’re doing?” he hissed. “Bringing f*cking narks, bringing—” he noticed Kate. She beamed and waved. Wade looked back at Castle.

“They wouldn’t f*ck off, man, lay off. You’re the one teachin’ him to get attached,” Castle growled right back, unafraid of Deadpool’s wrath. Peter peeked up at Wade, confused at his face and also what appeared to be the increasing pressure Wade was inflicting on his shoulder.

Guy was pissed.

“Say that sh*t to my face, Francis, go on, do it,” he said, just barely audible over the din of patrons around them. Castle lifted his chin.

“The f*ck did Decland go?” he demanded.

“The f*ck you doing hanging ‘round the kids?” Wade shot back. He turned his gaze onto Kate. “Come here, honey,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

Peter pulled at him.

“Wade, no. We gotta see it through,” he insisted. Kate nodded hard and somehow, Wade understood what they were on about.

“Y’all can see sh*t through when you ain’t get carded anymore,” he said. “Outside. All of you.”

The guy at the bar gave Wade a questioning jerk of his chin on the way out, and he gave a responding jerk of his head, promising that he’d handle it.

Peter and Kate were vocal about their displeasure with Wade’s rules when they were outside at the back of the bar. They had veered soundly into whining territory and both wrapped themselves around Wade’s middle. They squeezed while he talked to Castle and Brett and Maynard like none of that was happening.

“Decland?” he said, “The one with the bad money?”

“Yeah.”

“Nah, he ain’t dead. I literally—I caught his ass here the other night lookin’ like a dick. Like you two,” he shot down at the kids. They insisted that they only looked like dicks because Castle made them. Wade ignored this.

“That’s what I thought,” Castle said. “His kids are dead.”

“What the f*ck?”

“I know.”

“What kind of bastard would buy a hit on his own f*ckin’ kids, man?”

“’pparently his kind. You know where he went? These guys are trying to bring him in.”

Wade frowned and then stood up straight like he’d just realized something.

“Dunno where he went, but guarantee you I can draw ‘im out,” he said. He gave Brett and Maynard a suspicious squint.

“Provided some people ain’t go ‘round talking about sh*t they ain’t seen.”

“If he’s out there, it doesn’t matter how he turns himself in, it just matters that he does,” Brett said. “Preferably in one piece.”

Wade evaluated him for his honesty and then made prolonged eye contact with Castle.

“Why the f*ck would you kill your f*ckin’ kids, man?” he said, and then started walking. The kids cheered as this apparently translated to begrudging acceptance of their presence.

In some ways, walking around the underground as a cop was stupendously delightful. You could actually see how exchanges for illicit goods and services took place. You recognized faces of folks known for trafficking rings, gang wars, armed robberies. Brett’s heart fluttered in his chest with each cluster of people they passed by in the alleys and streets they walked through.

It wasn’t a happy flutter, but more like a fascinated one. The kind you felt as a tourist, watching someone do an indigenous performance or a craft; just wanting to know more.

The other feeling he was having right then was a strong, tooth-souring, throat-clogging anxiety. Maynard kept clutching at his wrist. He didn’t blame her. Some guy walking against the current of bodies shoulder-checked Castle on purpose and Castle stopped in the middle of the street and stared after him. The man didn’t even look behind him before gunning it. People on both sides of the street watched this and folks starting giving Castle a wider berth. Castle returned to walking as though none of it had happened.

Wade, on the other hand, leading the troop, kept alternating between scolding the kids and getting distracted by people trying to talk to him on the pavements. Everyone knew Wade Wilson. Everyone seemed to want to either f*ck Wade Wilson or get him to do a job with or for them.

A couple folks even looked down at Peter and one asked Wade if he was his kid in a syrupy sweet way which Brett could see was a threat. Wade told him to try his luck and see what happens.

“Plenty of people in the world who can’t count to twenty, sugar tit*,” he told the guy. He dragged Peter with him, even closer after that. Brett was half-surprised he didn’t just scoop him up and toss him over his shoulder like a toddler. He himself wished he could do that with both him and Kate.

Kate appeared to have stricter boundaries on her mobility than Peter. Brett got the impression that she wasn’t allowed to go underground, period. Barton must have acknowledged and ruined every one of her earlier attempts to get through that archway, given how stoked she was to be there. Castle kept throwing out a hand and pulling her away from sh*t, telling her not to stare, for f*ck’s sake.

They were, according to Wade, really close to his contact, when they were stopped by someone crashing into Kate and attempting to kidnap her.

Good start. Brett almost shot the guy right there until he realized that that particular black hoodie and ripped pants ensemble belonged to none other than their favorite clinically depressed Archer, himself.

“What the f*ck?” Barton snarled with Kate smashed against his chest. He used both hands to muffle her protests. “What the f*ck? What the f*ck?"

Then he saw Brett. He mugged at Wade hard.

“What. The. f*ck.”

“Blame this guy,” Wade said, waving at hand at Castle. Castle shrugged.

“They gotta learn somehow, man,” he said.

“Are you f*cking—Katherine, you need to shut up right the f*ck now, I am not playing. Do you understand?” It was the most serious and articulate Brett had ever heard Barton speak. Kate went still and quiet immediately in his grip. She dropped her eyes. Barton didn’t acknowledge any of this, he was too busy trying to smash Castle’s head open with just his eyes. “She is seventeen goddamn years old, Frank. They don’t gotta learn sh*t until they can be guaranteed not to f*cking die from it.”

“Tell me about it,” Wade encouraged. Peter seemed to have realized the full extent of the trouble he and Kate were in by then; he had wrapped a few fingers around Wade’s un-suited wrist in apology. Wade didn’t look at him like Barton refused to look at Kate.

That sh*t was fascinating, if Brett was honest with himself. He wondered if that was some kind of way of teaching. If this was how vigilantes and people in the underground dealt with young people. Do not let them out of your sight. Or grip. Do not acknowledge them, do not let them speak. Do not let them stare.

It was a way of moving through the world with maximum efficiency and active blindness. A way of learning to look at only what was directly relevant to you.

“Up,” Barton hissed. “Now.”

“Can’t,” Wade said. “You heard of that quad-homicide up town?”

Barton frowned and finally looked back at Brett and Maynard.

“Oh for the love of—who are you going to—“

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Everyone in their corner of the street jumped. Everyone including the vigilantes, Brett noted, which was validating. Brett didn’t recognize this woman in her leather jacket for an embarrassing full minute of her snarling at Barton. Then it hit him like a load of bricks.

The Black Widow.

She was pissed. Then she looked at Peter and went through a full cycle of emotions, Brett was sure, even though not one of them crossed her terrifyingly smooth, terrifyingly flawless face.

“Tony is going to murder us,” she hissed at Barton. “With fire. Get them out of here.”

“I’m trying, Nat. But Wilson’s got—”

“I don’t give a sh*t what Wilson’s got. We’ve got loyalties to maintain—”

“And I am working on f*cking doing that—”

“Out. Now.”

“Nat, you need to chill out, alright?”

Nat was not freaking out in any capacity which was measurable by human means, as far as Brett could tell. But Barton proved himself to have a third eye or sixth sense or some sh*t because she brought her eyebrows down and set her jaw at him.

“I’m working on it,” Barton repeated. He turned back to Wade. “Where’s your man?”

“Gal. If I know her, about a block or so down.”

“How long is this gonna take?”

“Depends on how many drinks I need to buy her, you headed up?”

“Wasn’t, but am now. Here, I’ll take him. C’mere, Pete.”

“Y’all are making a fuss over sh*t that there ain’t no damn reason to fuss over. It’s drawing attention,” Castle interrupted. “The kids are fine. Anyone touches ‘em, I’ll handle it. More important right now is to finish the objective. Kids’ll be up top in no time and y’all can scream at ‘em to your heart’s content then.”

There was a pregnant pause while these many violent parties all communicated with their eyes. Maybe that was why Matt stayed above ground more than the others. It was an accessibility thing.

“Fine,” Barton finally said. Kate did not cheer; she didn’t lift her eyes from the ground either. “But Castle, so help me god. If even one person touches her—”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it. Go undermine Denmark’s election or whatever the hell it is you two are doing.”

Ah, yes. Right. How could Brett forget that, for all his casual nonchalance, Barton was literally a trained counterintelligence operative.

“Wilson,” The Black Widow said without inflection.

“I’ll take him home after,” he said.

The Widow then addressed Peter.

“Next year,” she promised, “We can practice coming here. Once you’re eighteen, you can do whatever suits you. Is this fair?”

He nodded silently. The Window ruffled his hair. Then stood up and held a hand out to Barton.

“Come. We have a princess to ruin,” she said.

“Kate, be bad, don’t look at anyone, don’t take anything anyone gives you,” Barton stipulated.

“You two are disgustingly attractive,” Wade noted, waving them both off with his hands. The Widow gave him a flirty smile and then whipped around with Barton on her heels. He followed dutifully, but kept glancing back furtively towards Kate.

The gal Wade led them to was his buddy and frequent teammate Domino. Peter saw her and lit right up again like he had when spotting Wade in the bar. She noticed him, then beamed and held her arms out for a hug.

“Look who’s finally made it downstairs,” she said warmly, rocking herself and Peter back and forth.

“He’s in trouble, don’t encourage him,” Wade grumbled. “Need a favor.”

“Why trouble?” Domino asked. She was very hard not to look at. Just an absolutely stunning woman. Big liquid amber eyes and a gorgeous smile and a bit of Vitiligo around one of her eyes. She was all wrapped up in black leather and radiating heat and welcome. Brett’s mom’s voice in his ear hissed that she was not the type of girl he should even dream about bringing home.

“Mr. Castle brought us because we bothered him,” Peter told her. “Do you know a guy named Decland?”

Domino smiled at him and then smiled at Wade, patient for more information. While Wade explained, Maynard whacked Brett’s arm and gave him a meaningful grimace. He set his jaw and averted his eyes.

It was so hard, though.

Domino agreed to draw Decland out and told Wade that he owed her precisely one thing. She then looked at Castle for a long time. Castle, for his part, got a little awkward and started looking around to see if she was really staring directly at him.

“He’s yours,” Wade said flippantly. She wriggled in delight. Frank grimaced. She smiled harder.

“You’re so pretty,” she told him.

Castle appeared to regret everything that led him to that moment.

“I’m--” he started.

“Yours,” Wade said over him. “Four hours. Dinner and a show this Friday; romance her, Francis. She likes gin.”

“I love gin,” she agreed.

Brett never thought he’d be jealous of Frank f*cking Castle, but there they were, he guessed.

Wade chased more than led them all back up to the surface. He promised that Decland would be delivered that following morning at the station. He warned Brett and Maynard to never show their faces around the underground ever again, so help him God.

Then he grabbed Peter and whistled so hard and so loud that Brett thought his eardrums had popped for a second. Within moments they were all joined by the Devil.

He dropped down specifically to start beating the sh*t out of Castle and once Wade removed him from that situation, he moved on to checking Peter all over for anything untoward. Every couple of seconds, he snarled at Castle.

Peter allowed this.

“He’s fine, Red. Ease off,” Castle groaned.

“He’s a child, Frank. I expected more from you.” Damn, look at Matt out here, shaming the f*cking Punisher. Matt’s head twitched and as quickly as he’d grabbed Peter, he snatched Kate over to inspect as well. She giggled while he did this, evidently less used to the procedure than Peter was.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Clint’s gonna tear me a new one later, but I’m okay.”

Matt huffed, satisfied with this.

“You two are lucky,” he said, “One wrong turn down there and you’d have run into the Hellhounds.”

Both Kate and Peter shut the f*ck up and stared at him. Castle smacked his forehead into his palm.

“Hellhounds?” Peter asked. “A gang?”

“No, kiddo. Think Max, but bigger.”

“Max is nice,” Peter pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s because Max is attended daily by someone who could have morals if he so f*cking desired.”

So the kids were good and traumatized now, operating under the impression that they’d just missed a man down there who sold huge, mutated dogs trained specifically to take down anyone who wasn’t their owner. Matt showed them a hideous scar in his side, which was most likely from some other traumatic mutilation of his body, but which did indeed look like a mean, healed-over bite.

Neither Wade nor Castle did anything to hinder Matt’s ghost-story-telling. They left the kids to panic quietly at first in the beginning and then loudly by the end.

They couldn’t decide if they needed to go back and save these poor puppies from their horrible vendor or to stay clear of the place just in case they weren’t so lucky to miss the stall the next time.

Once the horror was good and stuck inside their sweet little noggins, Matt took Kate and Wade took Peter and homeward bound they went. Castle then told Brett and Maynard that they f*cking owed him one, because now he was going to have to go entertain this lady who looked like she wanted to eat him alive.

But, he said. They probably had their man.

“Guy hated his wife,” he explained before they split off. It seemed like a trip through the underground without getting themselves caught or murdered was enough for him to feel more comfortable giving them the full story. “Asked me to do her in so he could get with his mistress. I asked him what he was gonna do with the kids and he said he’d pay me double to take care of them, too.”

Jesus.

“Yeah, Wilson could probably tell you more about where he got the funds. We’re talking ten to fifteen grand here.”

Jesus.

“Now, since I told him to get gone, I dunno who killed those kids and who you’ve got in the freezer at the morgue. But, if you need a hand leaning on him, go ahead and gimme a call. Can’t promise you he’ll be back in mint condition, but he’ll still be able to talk.”

No, thanks man. You’ve done plenty.

Decland turned up the very next morning, as promised. The station went into uproar. People all over asking why he’d just walked into the place. All he could say was that a higher power told him to.

Brett wondered if it was Domino or Wade.

That it might have been Domino was so painfully hot that he had to have Maynard slap him around the corner of the hallway where no one could see.

“You got problems, Mahoney,” she told him sadly.

Ah, didn’t he know it.

Chapter 14: many roads to rome

Chapter Text

Brett knew a little about the prison system; what he hadn’t heard much about was what the prison system did with enhanced people and this lovely presentation from the county office had not only been enlightening, but terrifying.

The presenter smiled in the station’s conference room as he ran through new procedures and best practice for handling enhanced people. For most stations, it was probably just a routine training course, but for their station and for several of the other larger hubs, it felt oddly pointed.

Brett felt more than a little singled out. Maynard too, he was sure, since she worked with him more these days on cases involving vigilantes.

He was a bit queasy.

The guy showed them all a new device which had been tested in the Ice Box, he explained. It was a type of collar thing. It had a digital lock on it and, as the guy demonstrated, it went around the neck of the enhanced person.

“Once it’s in place, you set the lock and voila,” the demonstrator said, waving at the bulky yellow strap in his hand, “It counters the enhancement. Then you can arrest your target as you would any other suspect.”

The strap looked to Brett to be nearly three inches in width. He sucked in a breath at the mental image of that thing strapped in tight around Peter’s pale throat.

No.

Take it away.

“Since vigilante activity is so rife in this sector and a couple neighboring ones, we’ve decided to give you guys, Station 40, and the team at Metro Gen the first official set of collars,” the presenter said, laying his hands on the sides of the box he had on the table next to his laptop. “You guys can use them as needed and we’ll make sure all is well before we roll them out to the other, smaller stations.”

Brett didn’t want to make eye contact with this guy.

“Any questions?”

The Captain tapped his lip with his middle and fore fingers, he’d been doing it through the whole presentation. Sitting with one leg crossed over the other and a slight jut to his bottom lip. He looked over his shoulder at the detectives and officers. Expectant. He wanted someone to ask a damn question.

Brewer took one for the team beside Brett. He raised his hand tentatively and when the demonstrator smiled at him in acknowledgement, said, “Are there really that many enhanced people running around that this is a problem?”

Brett flicked his eyes at the Captain and the Captain held his gaze for a long second or two before turning his gaze back to the presenter.

“Well, I don’t want to say that we expect this to become a normal part of your routine,” the presenter said, still with a damn smile. “But the number of enhanced people, or at least, identifiable enhanced people, has increased over the last decade. Now, obviously, there will be people who may not even be aware of their enhancements, so you might consider this a precautionary measure for anyone who appears to be showing signs of mutant behavior. Any other questions?” the presenter asked.

Maynard slid forward in her seat and put her hand up.

“Are these things painful? Do they cause pain?” she asked.

“Oh, no. They’re not painful in and of themselves, all they do is temporarily block the presentation of mutated bodily functions,” the presenter said. “Essentially, it’s like an off switch. So, let’s say you’ve got Spiderman and you get one of these guys on him, the collar isn’t going to hurt him. It’ll just make the laws of gravity reapply to him.”

Ellen’s hand shot up.

“What if,” she said, “We have someone like the Winter Soldier or Captain America? Would putting this thing on them like, reverse their enhancement?”

Oh.

Now that was a good question.

“Well, I doubt you guys would be arresting Captain America.” Sir, Brett thought, your confidence tells me that you have never in your life met Captain America. “But it wouldn’t reverse the enhancement, as in, undo his size or anything like that, but it would slow down his metabolism and it definitely would reduce his strength to that of a normal human’s.”

“But they’ve been tested?” Brett finally clarified. “And they for sure don’t hurt people?”

The guy smiled at him with confidence in the set of his chin.

“100% safe,” he promised.

Jessica Jones got into a bar fight that week and Brewer went to get her. He followed the new procedure and when Brett came into the Station, Jones was screaming nonstop in the interview room.

His hands went cold around his cup of late-night coffee.

“What’s happening in there?” he asked the nearest officer.

“We don’t know,” The gal told him. “She’s only been here for ten.”

Jones screamed like someone was punching her in the f*cking throat over and over.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, dropping the coffee on his desk and moving towards the interview room door with several other officers on his heels.

He slammed open the door and saw that no one else was in there with her. It was just Jones at the usual table, handcuffed in place and practically convulsing.

It was horrific.

Brett knew the second he saw a stripe of yellow peeking out between the loose black hair on her shoulders what the problem was. He crossed the room without remembering doing it and tried to get fingers between the collar and Jones’s neck, but that just made her flinch harder and struggle even more with the handcuffs. They bit into the skin around her wrists and hands hard enough that the skin went red and raw almost immediately.

f*ck.

“Jessica,” he said as calmly as he could, “I’m trying to help you, let me help you. I’m gonna take it off, but I need you to breathe, alright?”

Jessica, to his complete shock, attempted to take several gasping breaths at the order, but Brett realized she couldn’t seem to make her body do what it was supposed to. She could only wheezing noises low in her lungs.

“Make—stop,” she pleaded between them. “Make it stop. Can’t—can’t—”

“BREWER,” Brett roared, “CODE. NOW.”

Brewer was back in the room in an instant, rattling off a code which Brett’s fingers struggled to remember as he swept Jones’s hair off the collar and flicked open the box on the back of it. He inputted the code and the keys lit up green and then the collar’s latch unclicked and it fell loose around Jessica’s bony shoulders.

She coughed and gasped like someone had just stopped strangling her, and then she slowly laid herself out on the interview table and just breathed shakily. The tips of her fingers were nearly white. She shivered hard.

Didn’t say a damn word.

Brett touched her shoulder.

Still didn’t say a damn word. Didn’t shove him off. Just laid there with glazed over eyes, breathing.

Jessica Jones refused to be touched by anyone, for anything. Her acceptance of the pressure Brett put on her shoulder was proof enough that something was horribly wrong. He looked at Brewer.

“Get a f*cking doctor, now.”

Jessica fell asleep in the chair before the medical team got into the room. They stood over her and whispered frantically and then before anyone knew it, there was an ambulance being called and Jones was gently being shaken awake.

She woke up suddenly and went a little berserk.

Brett watched an entire medical team hold this tiny woman down as she screamed and then watched as a group of paramedics squirmed in to give her a shot of something that made her calm down enough to be transferred into the ambulance.

And then Jessica Jones was gone and all that was left of the whole interaction was the blood smeared across the table and its handcuffs and the yellow collar.

They got word later that morning that Jones was in medical distress from some kind of brutal incident; her body was wrecked and in the process of healing itself, so when the collar had turned off her mutation, she’d been slammed with the full brunt of a set of broken ribs and blunt force trauma to her back. When the mutation stabilized again, she signed herself out of the hospital and got the f*ck out of dodge.

She refused to open her apartment door to the police, even for an apology—formal or informal.

She screamed through the door that she heard nothing they said unless it came in the form of a warrant or through her attorney. If they didn’t f*cking leave her alone, she shouted, she would sue for police brutality and harassment.

Brett didn’t blame her. Not one bit.

Turning that mutation off must have felt like being right back in the car crash that had nearly taken her life as a teenager. You don’t come back easy from that. Most people don’t come back at all.

The Captain had everyone put the collars back in their box and to leave them there while he wrote up a memo outlining their concerns with their implementation. But it was too late. The word was out.

Brett couldn’t find a single person he’d spoken to before. Not Jones, not Spidey, not even Matt. No one was talking. Everyone was petrified. Maynard sighed after they returned from yet another unsuccessful hunt for some information from Peter.

“Can you blame them?” she asked as she fell heavily into her desk chair. “I mean, if one of my friends got f*ckin’ super-tazed by the police, then yeah, I wouldn’t be so hot on talking either.”

Brett reported the lack of information to the Captain and watched him place his hands on his hips in thought. He closed his eyes and appeared to bite some metaphysical bullet.

“Mahoney, come into my office.”

Ah, sh*t.

“I know you know their identities, Brett,” the Captain said.

Brett said nothing. He didn’t know where his loyalties lay anymore.

“And I get that you have to for them to trust you. I’m not looking to break that trust—lord knows that’s already been done for us. We need to get back into the black with these folks, Mahoney. We already got an uptick in unsolved cases and we were doing so damn well.” The Captain let out a big breath. “I’m giving you freedom. Clearance. Whatever you need. Talk to them. Reestablish trust. The last thing we need right now is for the vigilantes to go back to working against us.”

Yes, sir. He’d do his best, sir.

Foggy refused to speak to him. It was probably the biggest sign of any that the whole community knew what happened.

Brett had to find Karen. He spotted her at her usual coffee joint and felt bad as he waited outside to surprise her. It worked. She saw him and stopped dead in her tracks. Her blue eyes were ice.

“Don’t you talk to me,” she threatened with a shake in her voice that promised pain.

“I’m not here as a detective, Karen,” he said.

“No. We’re done. You guys had your chance,” she spat.

“Karen,” Brett started.

“I said no, Mahoney,” she snarled. “I said no. My friends—my everyone—they’re all having nightmares.”

“Karen—”

“Get out of my face. I don’t deal with pigs.”

He watched her stomp down the sidewalk, occasionally throwing fierce looks over her shoulder to see if he’d followed her. He didn’t.

There was something more going on here.

May Parker found him at the bullpen and stood outside it, staring at him until he noticed her. She ignored the officer trying to talk to her, trying to ask her what she was doing there, and kept her gaze locked on Brett.

“We trusted you,” she said in the alley behind the station.

“Mrs. Parker,” he said.

“No, you let me have my piece. We trusted you—all of you. This station. You know my face, you know my nephew’s face and we have had no choice but to trust you. But that was when I didn’t have to worry that someone was going to torture my f*cking child, detective.”

“Mrs. Parker,” he said as calmly as he could, “We were not aware of the damage—”

“Did you ask? Did anyone ask? Because Peter did, and you know who he had to ask, Brett? He had to ask Wade because Wade nearly died once and for all from wearing one of those damn things in the f*cking Ice Box, detective. He’s got stage four cancer, Brett. And this justice system put one of those things on him and left him to rot and you know what? I don’t know what would happen if someone put a collar on Peter. I don’t to know, but I can tell you right now that Pete has had broken bones and been hit and been shot by your people and I can tell you for damn sure that he’s got more scar tissue in him than a soldier right now. If the mutation goes away, he could have serious mobility issues.”

Jesus.

Jesus, Peter, what were you doing, kid?

“May,” he said, “We aren’t advocating for these collars. We’ve put them away, no one wants to touch ‘em. No one has touched them since we saw what happened to Jessica.”

“No,” May snapped through her tears, “Maybe you’ve stopped. But the station by our house hasn’t. And Metro Gen hasn’t.”

For f*ck’s sake.

“There’s a girl on my floor who didn’t even know she was enhanced until she got arrested for being drunk and disorderly,” May said, swallowing the tears in her throat and bringing it back out as fury. “She’s twenty years old and she screamed for two hours in ICU last night before we figured out what was wrong with her. Soon as the collar came off, her body took care of it. She’d escaped from a human trafficking ring, Brett. They did that to her and every day now, she’s going to be reminded of it. People don’t ask for these things to happen to them.”

He didn’t know what to say to it all. It just felt—not helpless, but more like no one knew anything about the experience. Like there wasn’t enough information floating around. Like there wasn’t anything that they could point to and say, here—this is proof that this is f*cked up, it’s not just my personal experience. There are others. This is a phenomenon.

“May, I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know how to help right now. I’m sorry Peter is scared, really. I am. But I—I don’t have control of the system. I can’t make them stop, we can—”

“This is the point,” May said, cutting him off. “This is the exact point. This is why Spiderman exists, don’t you see that?”

Well. Yeah, he did now.

“May, I don’t know what else to tell you,” he sighed. “I can talk to—”

“I want you to do whatever needs to be done to show people that this is unacceptable,” May said. “Talk to Wade and others who’ve worn those things. Try it yourself. Try it as a group. I don’t know, just—this is barbaric. All it’s doing is make our people and ourselves feel like there’s no point in working with the police. The stakes are too high. They’ll just work harder to take care of things themselves and someone’s going to get hurt. Someone will die because of this. And god help me, we don’t have luck to spare in our family, detective. I’ve already lost my husband. Peter’s already lost his parents.”

Okay.

Okay.

He didn’t know what to do, still, but he could promise that he’d try.

“Thank you.”

Save the thank yous for when something actually happened.

BM: foggy

BM: foggy please man, answer your phone

BM: may parker found me today and we talked and I get it, man. I do.

BM: I’m trying to help, but I don’t know how. I can’t just arrest people this time. could really use a second brain rn

FN: stop texting me

BM: fogs

FN: brett my partner had a collapsed lung ten minutes ago stop f*cking texting me

BM: oh my god is he okay

FN: no he’s not f*cking okay and he refuses to go to a hospital because he’s got it in his head that someone’s going to recognize what’s going on with him in a f*cking exam or in his goddamn labs and collar him

FN: things have seldom been worse actually

FN: getting this guy to admit that he needs to be admitted to an ER is a f*cking once in the lifetime opportunity and the one time he actually wants to go, he can’t.

BM: foggy no one is going to test him, take him to the ER.

FN: Matt can’t filter his input when he’s on drugs and he’s got more trauma to his body than a f*cking punching bag on top of the lung, brett. They will test him. And we don’t know where his mutation would make itself known. Literally nothing is safe. He’s so tired, man. I can’t leave him alone, he’s scared he’ll stop breathing.

BM: foggy take him to the ER please

FN: I can’t. I wish I could, I wish so badly that I could, but if they find out and turn off his senses, the shock will kill him. He hasn’t known any other reality for twenty f*cking years. If he has a panic attack on top of the lung, he won’t make it.

BM: take him to Stark then. The Avengers. There’s got to be someone who can help.

FN: I’ve called Sam Wilson. He’s on his way. There’s no one else I can think of right now.

BM: are you alone? Do you need someone to be there?

FN: no. KP is here and our friend Claire. We’ll be fine, we have to be. But just

FN: iim sorry man but I can’t talk to any cops right now I just can’t. I know you’re not like those other guys but I just can’t

BM: no I get it. I’m sorry fogs let me know if you guys need anything. Tell Matt that he’s going to be okay.

“Any progress?” the Captain asked him the next day when his hands were shaking from the stress and caffeine.

“No, sir.”

“And progress perhaps on the horizon?”

“No. Spidey is staying out of sight and mind. DD is avoiding medical attention to avoid the risk of the collar in the ER.”

“Jesus. Is he--?”

“No word. His people are refusing to talk to me.”

The captain rubbed a hand over his face.

“This is madness,” he said.

No, sir. Brett thought, things have just been brought into clearer focus.

That night, the news reported that a child had been refused entry into a school after being found to be enhanced after a hospitalization the day prior. The school argued that they had the right to suspend a student if they posed a threat to the others attending the facility.

The boy was six years old.

Brett watched the program in a bar over the tender’s head and thought, swirling his beer bottle, that Matt had made the right call for once.

SW: hi detective, this is sam Wilson. things are getting a little out of hand. can we talk?

BM: there is nothing I would like more than that

Matt looked like four different types of sh*t curled up on Captain America’s couch in Brooklyn. He was paler than Brett had ever seen him. Looked to be entering vampire territory on more than one count. Foggy glared at Brett with as much of his face as he could while Cap ducked past to adjust the blanket Matt was sleeping under when he thought no one was looking.

Sam persuaded Foggy that this was entirely a personal visit and that no one was saying jack to any cops. He then distracted him by calling JB down and sending the two of them out to go pick up lunch from this tiny hole in the wall a few blocks over. He gave JB a complicated order to follow and the guy appeared to let it all wash over him before nodding and heading out. Cap made to follow him, but Sam called him back and set him on Murdock sentry duty. He curled up behind Matt on the couch like a giant golden retriever and settled in to share his heat.

Matt didn’t wake up.

“He’s not the first,” Sam said, leaning a chin on his palm with his eyes in Matt’s direction. “He’s lucky though, his nurse friend is a-mazing. We coulda used a set of those kind of nerves on my unit.”

Steve watched the two of them from over the side of Matt’s head. Then he decided that the current amount of exposed skin on Matt’s face would not do and tugged the blanket up higher to cover the guy’s cheek.

“Our station’s ceased use of the things,” Brett sighed. “But the Queens guys say that they’re necessary and now the guys up north want to know why they don’t got ‘em.”

Sam hummed and watched Cap watch him.

“What do you think, big guy?” he asked. Steve squinted at him suspiciously.

“I think there ought to be a protest,” he said with a controlled tone, mindful of the guy he was laying next to.

“Say more, baby,” Sam said and Brett started to get the feeling that he’d orchestrated this meeting less for his benefit and more for Sam and Steve’s.

“Not much more to say. Need to convince people that these things are cruel and unusual punishment. Causing more harm than good. Hurting babies, hurting people. Hurting people indirectly, too.”

Sam hummed.

“So we should protest,” he said. “Like, hold a demonstration. Something to make some waves.”

“Yes,” Steve said with far more hesitancy than Brett thought the situation warranted. “We should protest.”

“How do you think we could it?” Sam pressed.

“Why’re you asking me? I barely got a highschool diploma,” Steve demanded.

“Babe.”

“I ain’t leading no protest.”

“Shall we count ‘em?”

“I’m not that kind of activist.”

“Let’s see, refusing orders to storm into Italy, that’s one.”

“And I ain’t wearing no damn collar, I can tell you that right now.”

“Systematically destroying SHIELD from the inside out, that’s two.”

“I ain’t doing it.”

“The Sokovian Accords. The Women’s March. The climate change march. That rally you and Buck got arrested at when you were kids. That other rally just you got arrested at when you were kids. The immigration demonstration last year. Where does that get us to? Like eight? I’m sure you got more in there than that.”

Steve practically flattened himself into what little bit of the couch cushions he’d allowed himself to lay on.

“I don’t wanna,” he said.

Sam crossed his arms patiently.

“Steve, if you wear a collar, people will lose their goddamn minds. They only think it’s fine right now because it’s happening to people they don’t know.”

“I will get polio.”

“You won’t get polio. We’ve got herd immunity with polio right now.”

“No, you don’t understand, Sam, I will get polio,” Steve insisted, “As soon as any of this,” he gestured to his body, “Turns off, me and polio or the f*ckin’ TB are gonna be best pals. Ten minutes, I’d give it.”

“Steven. You are not going to get TB.”

“I got a compromised immune system under all this, Sammy. I am the reason herd immunity is important. I’m definitely gonna get pneumonia—I hate pneumonia. You know how many times I’ve had pneumonia?”

Sam said nothing with pursed lips for a long thirty seconds. Steve pursed his lips right back and set his jaw. Then he cracked in like, record timing.

“Why can’t Tony do it?” he asked in a whine. “Why’s it always gotta be me?”

“Is Tony enhanced?”

“This is how I’m gonna die, Sam. Ask Buck. When he comes back you ask him and he’ll tell you.”

Sam said nothing. Steve grimaced at him. Sam still said nothing.

“Sam,” Steve whined.

“What would Captain America do?” Sam said, sitting back and crossing his arms.

“Write a strongly worded letter?”

“Steven.”

“Samuel.”

“Steve, the guy you’re laying next was half an hour from a wooden box last night. What if that was Pete, huh? Wanda? JB?”

Steve groaned like a guy who’d already made up his mind but needed to at least put some effort into pretending to hold his ground.

“I hate you,” he said.

“Thank you, Cap,” Sam said tightly.

“f*ck you, Cap,” Steve said right back.

Foggy came back to Steve laid out on the floor while Brett and Sam discussed the logistics of the demonstration about to be held at the Station. He stopped in the doorway, confused, and Barnes peeked over his shoulder with interest.

“Stevie, why you on the floor?” he asked.

“’Cause of polio,” Steve moaned.

Chapter 15: many roads to rome II

Chapter Text

“This is the worst f*ckin’ idea,” JB decided with his flesh hand on Matt’s neck to keep him upright. Matt wasn’t great at being awake at the minute. He was extremely lethargic. He didn’t say a single word to Brett or even Foggy when he tried to get him to eat. He reached for Foggy’s face and when Fogs took his hands, he just pressed his forehead against his heart.

Listening. He closed his eyes and fell asleep there.

“He’ll be fine,” Sam argued when JB shook the poor guy awake lightly. “Modern medicine is incredible. Anyways, we could finally get you vaccinated Steve, someone should probably do it.”

“No, it’s not that,” JB said. “I ain’t worried ‘bout polio or that so much as I’m worried about the asthma.”

Steve made a miserable sound on the floor as though the mere memory was painful.

“The scoliosis.”

Another sob.

“The food allergies, the heart palpitations. Anemia. Partial deafness.”

“I shoulda died when I was 25,” Steve lamented.

“You shoulda died when you were twelve,” JB corrected helpfully his way. “Not to mention the second he puts that thing on, every HYDRA agent that’s ever existed is gonna crawl outta the woodwork with a knife.”

“Well, we’ll just have to protect him then,” Sam said. “This is more than just Steve, JB, you see that, right? People see Steve up there suffering, they’ll probably think twice about this sh*t. It’ll get people talking if nothing else. Make a huge fuss out of everything.”

“I mean, yeah,” JB conceded, “But Steve’s been consensually enhanced. Loads of these people haven’t been. That’s gotta be complicated in people’s brains. No one wants to think about that.”

Sam gave him a perfectly arched eyebrow.

“You sayin’ you should wear one, too?” he asked.

JB fell quiet, then leaned over and patted Steve on the back of his shoulder.

“I’ll protect you, pal,” he said.

“f*ck you.”

“I’m sure I got the whole list of allergies in my head somewhere. Maybe we can trigger-word it out.”

“UGH.”

People were absolutely going try to murder Cap if he went through with this, which meant that he needed some security to at least scare off the lesser wannabes. The big guys, Barnes and Sam would take care of, but in the meantime, who better to serve as eye-candy police escorts than the rogue 15^th Precinct?

Brett took Sam’s idea to the Captain who stood, reading the hastily typed request in his office doorway. He flipped the page over to check the back for additional text when he was done and then blew out a breath.

“This is not what I was thinking,” he said.

Yeah, well. Brett didn’t know what else to do right now. May Parker was right. They needed someone bigger than the bureaucracy right now. Their station in particular owed it to the vigilantes, but more importantly, they, as a city, owed it to the knowing and unknowingly enhanced people among them.

“Bad publicity might slow the roll out,” Brett said.

“Cap could be in serious danger if he lets his guard down like this.”

“And that would make him no different from any of the other people getting collared,” Brett pointed out. “That’s exactly the point. If people see the enhancement as an integral part of a person, something they can’t help, then that’ll help humanize the victims.”

The Captain cupped his chin in a hand and then sighed and shook his head.

“Cap’s gonna do what Cap’s gonna do, I guess,” he said. “I’m not convinced it’ll work, but if it shames at least a couple of the bigger proponents, then I guess that’s at least something. Making it a controversy might make it a last resort or put it back into testing.”

“Is that a ‘yes,’ sir?” Brett asked.

A long pause.

“Yeah,” The Captain said, “Yes, I think it is. Mahoney, you got four officers. Make sure the poor sap doesn’t get shot.”

Roger that.

Tony Stark, Mr. Spectacle himself, leapt at the idea and arranged a whole publicity event around Cap getting collared.

Steve was not happy. Steve could not possibly be more unhappy. He didn’t even pretend to be happy for all the news cameras crammed around the bullpen. Instead, he was busy crushing Barnes’s hand in his grip and going through breathing exercises.

Steve was convinced that he was going to have an asthma attack the second the collar went on. JB hummed amicably as though this was, in fact, a distinct possibility. Sam shushed them both and said that he was prepared for this. The station had an albuterol inhaler on hand. To this, Steve said, ‘What’s that?’ And really, that was not a great start.

There were approximately two hundred bodies too many crammed around the bullpen when Goldberg stepped out from the back with shaky hands and asked Steve to please sit in the office chair provided. Steve balled his fists and sucked it up and sat as tall and proud as he could in his full Captain America suit. Goldberg carefully folded down his suit collar and the whole room lit up with flashes and people talking into microphones as he clipped the strap into place on Steve’s neck.

He moved back.

Steve lifted his head and rolled it around to feel the collar. He made a face like, ‘well, that wasn’t so bad,’ and then proceeded to have a f*cking seizure on live television.

“This is the worst,” Steve slurred about an hour later, staring up the roof of his shiny new hospital room. The good news was that he was already trending on twitter.

“The worst. It’s the worst. Hey, Sam?”

“Yes, dear?”

“It’s the worst.”

“Oh, good. Thanks. I didn’t catch that before.”

Steve’s body was confused as f*ck by the halted serum effects. It seemed torn between going into overdrive and trying to shrink everything back down. The doc now overseeing his case was freaking out. He kept scurrying in with his colleagues and asking Steve if he’d had a history of something and then scrambling off to go request yet another test.

Brett imagined that it was a lot of pressure making sure a national icon didn’t f*cking die in your care.

Steve didn’t make that very easy because about two hours in, he decided that he was done with hospitals and he was going to go out and live his life, as sh*tty and short as it apparently wanted to be. He signed out against medical advice and took the damn subway, security team and all, home.

People flocked around and stared at him, grumpily digging his fingers between his neck and the collar, and JB, discreetly trying to sanitize the handrail he held onto, for the whole ride.

Once they finally got off the train, Brett told Sam that they’d be camped out outside of the house for the night if anything happened, to which he gestured to JB with a wide arcing arm. JB watched the arm, puzzled. Brett decided that this meant that the other two felt pretty safe at the moment. He left the guys to sleep and texted Fogs.

BM: hey man, you doing okay? How’s matt?

FN: hey, we’re alright. He’s a little more awake today. Says he’s just drained is all.

BM: glad to hear it. You see the news by chance?

FN: yeah

FN: man I’m sorry I was an asshole. It’s not your fault that any of this happened, you don’t have to go through all this

BM: it’s not just for you guys Fogs. Sometimes, things are just wrong. And anyways, you can thank May Parker, she’s the one who really convinced me.

FN: aw, may.

FN: well thanks anyways man. Matty’s real emotional about it. Says he won’t let anyone f*ck with your car anymore

BM: sure thing

BM: WAIT

BM: HE KNOWS WHOS BEEN f*ckING WITH MY CAR???

FN: lol yeah

BM: goddamnit matt. I’ve been paying for that sh*t out of pocket

FN: <3 <3 <3

Brett was surprised to come back onto guard duty the next morning to find that Wade Wilson had stormed his way into the Cap residence and was very busily pacing and calling Cap every synonym for the word ‘idiot’ he could think of. When he ran out, he started in on variations of ‘f*cker.’

Wade was of the opinion that Cap was suicidal. He told him to take the collar off immediately.

“You’ve made your point,” he said, “Twitter is all about it. You got like, six elementary schools staging a walk out. But this is insane. This is me-levels of insane.”

That testimony should have been used in the publicity fliers. If Wade Wilson declared something unacceptable, it had to be up there with war crimes.

Peter snuck through the paparazzi outside Cap’s house a little later in the day and similarly pleaded with him to take it off.

“You’re gonna get sick,” he said. “What if you get bad-sick? What if you get hurt?”

Steve waved tiredly at JB and then at Sam.

“First line of defense,” he explained, “Paramedic.”

The other guys were fairly chill about it. Peter was not convinced.

“It would be better with group action,” he argued. “We could all wear them in solidarity.”

Wade reentered the house to pick Peter up and remove him from the situation entirely. That was how bad of an idea he thought the whole thing was. Brett kind of had to agree with him. It was enough of a production looking after Cap. Three people had already tried to break the house’s windows to end him and it wasn’t even lunch yet. JB had caught one of the arms when it came through and had gone out front to make an example out of him for the cameras.

There was no way the city could look after multiple known enhanced folks. Not to mention that Peter didn’t know what the collar felt like.

Steve seemed pretty f*cking miserable in it, although he was putting on a good face. He kept arching his back and clearing his throat. Every so often, he rested his head against JB’s shoulder and closed his eyes to take a few shuddery breaths.

Brett couldn’t imagine what Wade would feel like with one of those things around his neck. Then he didn’t have to.

“Cancer, Spidey. Stage Four. Can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t move, can’t sh*t. Everything hurts, sh*t you didn’t even know could hurt, hurts. Breathing is exhausting. Opening your eyes feels like death. Is that what you want to subject me to? In solidarity? What about Red, huh? Cut off everything for him? Can’t see sh*t, can’t recognize any sounds anymore? It’d be like he woke up on another f*ckin’ planet, kid. Think about what you’re askin’ for.”

Peter was appropriately cowed.

“I’ll wear one then,” he sniffed. “Just me. I’ll wear it in the suit. Take some pictures, post ‘em on social media.”

“You will not,” Sam snapped at him. Peter set his jaw.

“Why not?”

“We don’t know what your body’s doing right now, Peter. If you’re still healing from something, you’re gonna end up like Jones.”

“I’m not,” Peter argued. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t know that,” Wade said. Peter glared at him.

“I do.”

“Kid.”

“Pete, it’s fine,” Steve said with his eyes closed and forehead against Barnes’s metal arm. “It’s gotta be me.”

“Why? Why’s it gotta be you?” Peter demanded.

“’Cause I said so,” Steve said irritably. The backtracked. “’Cause more people know me than know you. And if you took it off and just went back to normal, that’s not gonna cause a sensation.”

Peter chewed on that furiously.

“So what? You’re gonna go out and get hit by a bus or something? Is that your plan here?” he asked.

“No,” Steve gritted out, “I’m gonna get f*cking pneumonia. You just wait.”

Steve didn’t get pneumonia, bless him. That would have been too kind too soon. Instead, Brett got to watch Sam execute an Epipen with terrifying precision and efficiency in the middle of Starbucks because it turned out that Cap had a peanut allergy which he was now furious about. There was an instant replay of this at a charity thing later that afternoon, when it was discovered that he had an almond allergy too. He then decided to forsake all tree nuts and told the universe to f*ck off, he was switching over to grains only.

He went out with JB and Sam to their usual running spot and resolved to take it slow with Sam for once. About one lap in, he started wheezing and gasping and clutching at his chest and everyone in the park (and their goddamn phones--so basically anyone with an internet connection) got to watch Steve look like he was having a heart attack while JB reverted back to 1930s Bucky Barnes in a matter of milliseconds. He threw his hands up over his head and kept saying, “Big arms, Stevie. Big arms.”

This, Brett learned later, was an entreaty to Steve to get his arms over his head to give his lungs more room to expand because the 1930s didn’t have albuterol. He only learned it later because Sam stood back after having attacked his man with an inhaler to watch JB herd Steve away from every stone, pebble, and minor inconvenience that he could while Steve threatened to maim him in the middle of the goddamn park.

Steve was happy to be miserable, but only on his terms. The second anyone else implied he was anything but perfectly capable and healthy, he spun around, fully determined to prove them wrong by doing exactly what would kill him.

“You know, Buck’s got these major anxiety triggers,” Sam said, watching JB physically drag Steve away from a weed nestled in the hedge which would allegedly make him break out in hives. “And I feel like I’ve finally found the root of it all.”

Steve eventually decided f*ck all this, he was gonna go jump off the pier. JB informed him at full-volume that he was not. Even after all these years, it seemed that JB hadn’t learned a damn thing. Steve froze in place and stared at him dead in the eye. And then made a break straight for the park fountain.

On the upside, there was now a load of people waving signs and chanting in front of a handful of police stations throughout the city.

Steve was determined to test the absolute limits of his regained fragility and every Avenger Brett had met and many he hadn’t were suddenly extremely involved in Steve’s life. Brett had never been privy to this higher level of super-people. Standing guard over Captain America in a room full of the most capable super-people the world had ever seen (and Barton) felt a little unnecessary. Still though, it allowed him to watch Steve get pissed off at something Stark was saying and reach over to grab a granola bar to just test his luck.

The Black Widow snatched it out of his hand before he could even get the packaging open. He mugged at her hard and she gave him a warning eye which Brett was pretty sure had resulted in the deaths of multiple human beings. Steve grumbled about it.

It was decided in this meeting that part of the team would go out to investigate a concerning operation happening just behind the border in Maine. The other part was waiting for Thor, since he’d called in at 4am to say he had something which he required support with. Steve lit up and said he was great at camping.

Everyone in the room looked at him flatly and then went back to their business. Barton gave Steve a sh*tty drawing of his dog as a consolation prize.

Steve threw it at him.

JB woke up at the following scuffle and sat up and sniffed. He effectively separated the two of them with this feat alone.

And then Thor finally showed up and everything went to sh*t.

Thor, Brett now knew, was the horrible big brother figure among the Avengers. He saw Cap and Cap saw him and they both beamed at each other.

Thor had not gotten the memo regarding Steve’s new hideous accessory. He thought it was charming. He asked where he could get one. He then told Steve he had a job which he was gonna love and everyone in the room went from far too relaxed to on high alert.

Thor told Steve that they were going to go fight a sea monster and Steve had never been happier in his goddamn life. He had a head full of sea-fantasies.

“My dad was a sailor,” he bubbled to Thor. “It’s in my blood.”

JB was horrified.

“We’re not doing any of that,” he announced stiffly. Thor blinked at him. Steve stared at him like he hated him. “Steve’s immune-compromised, big guy. He ain’t going near no toxic water or krakens or none of that sh*t. He sure as sh*t ain’t doing no submarine business.”

Steve’s jaw said ‘watch me.’

Brett decided then that Sam Wilson was the strongest, most patient man he knew; he had to be to put up with these two day in and day out.

“There are no submarines,” Thor said. Then to Steve he said, “This is fine. We will lure it ashore.”

Getting Captain America to not be Captain America in the face of a potential sea monster was like trying to turn a German shepherd into a corgi. It didn’t work. Sam told Steve that he was going take the shield for this one and Steve decided that that was cool, he’d take the stealth suit. Barnes told Steve that, bummer man, he was taking the Cap stealth suit, and Steve said, aight, I’ll borrow Nat’s.

Natasha Romanova was going to break Steve’s neck in the near future, Brett was sure of it. She said that he couldn’t borrow it, A. because it was still stretched out from the last time she let one of them giant bozos touch her things and B. because Barton was wearing it.

This was news to Barton. He gaped at her and then at Steve and then at Brett like he had anything to do with this situation. He pointed from himself to Nat while staring at Brett in his bullet proof vest, and all Brett could really do was shrug.

Steve said he saw what they were all doing and that was fine, he’d just go in a t-shirt and jeans and Thor celebrated this as optimal kraken-fighting attire.

Again. Thor?

Trouble.

Thor was above-ground Wade. Thor went into any situation and made it worse. But with great enthusiasm and unprecedented expertise. Tony Stark was the one who pulled sh*t back to base for a f*cking surprise by saying, “No. Rogers, you’re staying with Bruce. Your death will not make people drop the collars, it will just make them think you’re an idiot wearing one.”

Steve mugged at him, too. Stark gave him challenging hands.

“Where is the lie?” he demanded.

“The point,” Steve huffed, “Is to show how dangerous the collar is. What better way to do that then show how useless I am in battle with it on?”

Brett felt like this was a crazy argument. But he was not here to talk. He was here to guard.

“I got a better way,” Barnes said. “Let’s just wait two more days and when you get typhus, the job’ll be done for you.”

“Too hard to get typhus these days, Buck, I’m counting on measles,” Steve volleyed back nastily.

JB didn’t think he was funny. Barton did. The Black Widow punched him in the shoulder without looking at him and that made him stop laughing by making him clutch at his arm in pain.

“You’re not going, Rogers, I’m sorry. Go stand in traffic or something if you want to be grievously injured,” Stark said with a dismissive wave. “Everyone else, suit up.”

Brett was pretty sure that Amos would pass out if he knew that Brett had just witnessed an Avengers team break. But he couldn’t focus on that for too long because his target was moving and whispering into Thor’s ear. Thor whispered something back and Brett’s gut sank. Thor patted Cap on the back and nodded and Steve broke away from the others back towards the elevator. He looked expectantly back at Brett and the other guards.

“You coming?” he asked.

Oh god, oh no. Oh, god.

This guy was going to make himself bait for a sea monster.

“Cap, listen,” Brett negotiated on behalf of himself and the other three guards. “This is highly irresponsible.”

“Mahoney, you are talking to the wrong person if you think I have ever given a sh*t about being responsible.”

Brett was.

Brett was.

Brett couldn’t believe he was saying this, but he was gonna call Matt. He needed superpeople advice. Now.

“Matt,” he hissed into the phone a safe hundred or so yards away from the action, “Captain f*cking America is fishing for a f*cking kraken with his goddamn hands.”

There was a pause on the other side of the line.

“Doesn’t he have like, a heart condition?” Matt asked. He sounded much better than he had the other day.

“Probably,” Brett said, “But that’s not the main problem right now. How the f*ck do I move someone at this level of dumb-f*ck?”

Matt made a thoughtful noise and then called over his shoulder to bounce the question off Foggy. Foggy made highly concerned sounds in the background.

“Fogs thinks that you should tell Barnes exactly what he’s doing, but I think your main object here is distraction.”

Distraction? What did that mean?

“Well, he’s out to prove a point isn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, so let him prove it. Or suffer the consequences, I guess.”

“Matt, I need you to talk like a real life person instead of in secrets right now,” Brett hissed, glancing behind him to where Steve looked like he was getting ready to hop off the dock at any second. “Time is of the essence.”

“Okay, okay. Where are you?”

He rattled off the location.

“Alright. Okay. Uh. Okay, I’ll be there.”

Wait, what?

“Matthew, you are one week out from a collapsed lung, you’re not going anywhere. Just tell me what to do.”

“I’m gonna fight him?”

“WHAT.”

“I mean it’s me or my ex, so?”

“SEND YOUR EX.”

“Oh, no. She’ll just kill him. Oh. Wait, don’t worry, I got this.”

He hung up and Brett was left holding his phone wondering if he was seriously going to have to tackle Captain America.

He decided to try reasoning with him first.

“Steve, if the point here is to achieve peak suffering, then you at least need an audience,” he said while the other officers stared at him in horror.

Steve considered this with both hands on the edge of the dock. He shrugged.

“It’ll get to the papers in time, it always does,” he said.

“You know, if you’re the one instigating this, you’re not going to look like a martyr,” Brett tried next.

“No, I will. Trust me.”

“What do you think Sam thinks of this, huh?”

“Sam’s not f*cking me ‘cause I’m a genius. He’s only got himself to blame if he’s disappointed.”

God.

This f*cking guy. Who the hell chose him to be Captain-America-fied? What the hell had Erskine been thinking?

He heard the splash before he saw it, but when he did, he was surprised. That was Matt, not Steve, standing at the edge of the dock now. All wrapped up in his black pajamas, innocently peering down into the water. Cap broke the surface shortly after, sputtering. He swore and jolted when Matt grabbed the back of his shirt and dragged him in closer.

“The hell are you doing?” he coughed. “You’ve got a bum lung.”

Matt went still, then co*cked his head.

“And you’ve got two,” he said. Then half-hauled Cap up out of the water and shoved his face hard against the wood of the door. His fingers scrabbled at something behind Cap’s head and then Cap yelped and tried to grab him, but whatever it was they were fussing over, it was too late. Matt spun up into standing and gunned it down the dock. Cap threw himself out of the water and started to go charging after and it was only then that Brett realized what it was Matt had done.

He’s stolen the collar.

Sam couldn’t seem to decide if he was going to throttle Steve or congratulate him when this news was conveyed to the Avengers team who’d arrived on the scene to go investigate the kraken hunting business. Stark just started to bust a gut. Seemed like it was the funniest thing he’d heard in years.

Thor was delighted by his delight.

“The red horned one took it?” he clarified. Steve made a sad noise and mimed nothing being in his hands. JB started cackling. He had absolutely not taken the stealth suit.

“What does this mean?” Thor asked Steve who made an even sadder noise at the realization that this was now an even bigger problem than anticipated.

“I need that thing back,” he said, “I need it. Protests don’t work if people cross the f*cking picket line.”

“How’d he even get it off you?” Sam asked. “It needs a code.”

“He knew the code,” Steve said dolefully.

“How could he know the code? It’s a police code, right detective?”

Indeed it was. How had Matt known the code? And why steal the collar after telling Brett he was going to fight Cap? Was there an abrupt change of plans?

“Maybe DD figured it from the tv footage or something?” JB thought out loud. “If not him, then one of his associates.”

There was a sudden pause on the Avengers team, and then everyone looked right at Stark. His eyes widened like a cat’s in realization.

“He’s not my kid,” he suddenly said. “I am not responsible for him or any of his actions.”

Oh, no.

Peter.

Steve, once again at full functioning capacity, decided that he needed to catch Matt before he handed the collar off to some other vigilante. He ran off to go do that and JB looked around wildly for a moment at his departure, and then chased after, telling him that DD wasn’t that easily caught.

“Someone needs to go with those two or they’re gonna make a scene,” The Black Widow said evenly.

Sam sighed gustily.

“I’ll do it!” Barton announced, hand held high. “Me and Red are best friends now. He tried to maim my dog last week.”

Uh.

“Alright, bye,” Natasha said. Barton fist pumped and took off after the first two.

“Nat,” Sam said slowly, “Were we trying not to make a scene or?”

“Hmm? Oh, well if there’s three of them that’s fine then, isn’t it? If it’s just Steve and James, that’s one thing, but if Barton’s in there, people will assume it’s his incompetence that got them into this mess.”

Where those two friends? Brett thought they were friends. They’d seemed like friends and partners the other week, but maybe not? Maybe the Widow secretly hated Barton?

“Hey, are we still finding the fish or nah?” Stark asked. “Detective Mahoney can take those guys from here, can’t he?”

Well. Yeah. Brett guessed that he could.

Brett strongly doubted that Matt had thought far enough ahead to have any especially solid plan, although he had apparently thought far enough ahead to get Peter to somehow figure out the collar’s code.

That was one step, but Matt’s planning skills didn’t typically go too far beyond that, which meant that he’d probably—

“WHAT THE f*ck?”

Steve held clawed hands at face-level as Peter, in full Spidey suit, swung past them all in the street lightning-fast. He did not look back. Which meant—

Matt popped up at Brett’s shoulder and gave him a damn heart attack. Steve got hands on him within seconds and literally held him up to eye level.

“Get it back,” he ordered. Matt looked very small in his enormous hands.

“But you lost it,” Matt said innocently.

“I am trying to do something here, Double D,” Steve gritted out.

“Oh. Coincidence. So are we,” Matt said cheerfully, kind of swinging his feet.

“What could you possibly be doing?” Steve demanded.

Matt beamed at him like he hadn’t been actively dying on the guy’s couch the week before. He looked beyond silly in the black pajamas in daytime. People had started to gather around the pavement to see why Captain America was shaking the sh*t out of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen in the middle of the afternoon.

“Well,” Matt said good-naturedly, ignoring their audience, “The problem is that the thing is scary, right? So we figured that if we all got to handle it, it wouldn’t be so scary.”

JB started cackling again. Steve did not put Matt down. He just stared at him in disbelief.

“This does not solve the problem,” he said.

“No, and neither will you being a martyr,” Matt hummed. “If enhanced people are supposed to be treated as people, then it’s better to just sue and take it to trial. Get it in legal code rather than just in social etiquette. Social etiquette changes all the time. And until it’s made illegal, we’re just gonna see more and more of those devices popping up. The root,” he said with a finger in Steve’s face, “Is that we are not seen as people. That,” he pointed in the direction that Peter had swung in, “Is a symptom.”

Steve set him down.

“You’re kinda smart, you know that?” he said.

Matt wriggled in pleasure at the praise. Captain America praise no less. He was definitely going to lord that over Foggy.

“I have two degrees,” he said proudly.

“Yeah, I bet you do,” Steve said absently, looking off in the distance. “Where’s he taking it then?”

“Ah. To Iron Fist, I think.”

“To?”

“Touch.”

“Right. So do I get it back?”

“Dunno,” Matt said simply. “Jess might destroy it on contact. Same with Wade.”

“So, is this not my problem anymore?” Steve asked honestly. He sounded a little happy about it.

“Well, it is stolen police property now,” Matt admitted. “So if you care about that, you might go after it. Otherwise,” he gave Steve a sunny smile, “We can try to have it back to you by five?”

Steve considered this.

“Yeah, alright,” he said. “You know where I live.”

Brett had not been expecting this. Brett had been expecting a long, drawn out month’s worth of demonstrations filled with rioters and protestors and people condemning the dehumanization of enhanced persons. He expected to be dedicating several teams to demonstrations over the next few weeks or so.

And to be fair, they had some of that.

But what he was entirely unprepared for was for a load of vigilantes to steal the object of fear, crack it against a few rocks, figure out how it works, and then hand it back tenderly to the police. The act in itself said, without a doubt, that they’d not only figured out how the collars worked, but they’d figured out how to override them and break out of them.

Nice try, guys, but we ain’t scared of that anymore.

It was surprisingly straightforward. They literally just got ahead of the curve.

Someone (Peter, obviously) leaked the information online for how to disable the collars. And Peter then retweeted this information to his Spiderman twitter account and before long, half the damn city of the New York knew how to disable the damn things.

It made the device itself practically useless.

Brett couldn’t tell if what he was feeling was relief or awe or frustration at having spent weeks trying to grapple with the metaphysics of this problem, only for it to be solved by a couple of criminals with a few lab hours on their hands.

Cap wasn’t all that bothered about his failed protest. In fact, Cap was just happy that he no longer had to wear the damn thing. He explained to Brett later that sometimes this was just how things worked in activism. Sometimes you do something and it just doesn’t quite hit the mark. All the feeling is there, but when it comes to addressing the base of a problem, sometimes you really do have to yield to those who knew more about the subject at hand.

The vigilantes of the city knew more about street-level fear and fear mongering than Cap did. They spent every day of their lives trying to sort through their own insecurities and the insecurities of others and trying to figure out how to make both work to their benefit. This behavior was an extension of that. They had more practice than the people up top at doing it and they were the ones more likely to be affected by the collars, so it kind of made sense to sit back and let them handle this the way they were used to.

Steve then, was more than happy to hand off the burden. Although he did leave Brett to go have a word with Peter about being an angry reckless sh*thead which Brett now thought, having spent the last week or so in the guy’s company, he was absolutely the worst person for.

When he got back to the station that night to stow away the bullet proof vest, he saw that the box of collars which had sat on the table outside the Captain’s office were gone.

That was validating, if nothing else.

He then went home to take a shower to sluice the stress of the last two weeks down the drain.

Chapter 16: bring on the spirits

Chapter Text

Coming off the collar situation, Brett wasn’t surprised to find the night crew laying low over the next couple of weeks. Just because they’d out-smarted the developers of the thing didn’t mean that they weren’t still spooked by the whole series of events.

Or so Brett thought.

His assumption began to be amended when Foggy arrived to bodily drag him away from his desk in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, when both of them were supposed to be doing their damn jobs.

“Brett,” Foggy said seriously, in the eye-searing sunlight two blocks away from the station. “This sh*t has gone on long enough.”

Which sh*t? Brett had innumerable piles of sh*t around him at all times. He was gonna have to be more specific.

“The ghost sh*t,” Foggy said with his hands. “The f*cking ghost sh*t, man. Don’t get me wrong, I love me a good ghost hunt, but this? This is just getting out of hand.”

Woah. Okay. Back-track. What ghost sh*t?

Foggy stared at him emptily for three long beats. Then glared out into the street in abrupt cold fury. So cold he didn’t even seem to be sweating in his suit, despite the heat from the sun and the heat wafting up from the pavement.

“I’m going to commit homicide,” he decided out of nowhere.

“Alright, you go do that,” Brett said. “Don’t give them my name when they bring you in.”

“Nope, you’re now my accomplice,” Foggy said. “Come on. We’re going.”

“What? No, man. I’ve still got fours on my shift.”

Foggy’s eyes were almost grey in the piercing sunlight.

“You’re coming with me,” he said. Or rather, threatened.

Every summer of highschool, Brett had fallen prey to these very eyes and those very words. And because back then, he had had maybe half the backbone that he had presently, he’d given into the inevitable fairly easily, although not without the requisite moaning. In the absence of multiple bits of metal littered around Foggy’s face, Brett felt a little more courageous in the face of this new version of the inevitable.

“No,” he said. “I’m not going, Fogs. We did the ghost thing, we did years of ghost things. We’ve done enough ghost things for a lifetime.”

“This isn’t a just ghost thing, Mahoney. This is homicide,” Foggy said.

Oh, yes. How could he have forgotten?

“Man, who are you trying to kill?” Brett asked, hating the answer already.

“Karen.”

Unexpected. But okay.

“She’s your firm partner, Foggy. You cannot kill your firm partner, you will be the first suspect.”

“You don’t know that. We’ll make it look like Frank did it. Come on, I’m a lawyer, you’re a cop. We cannot fail.”

This was the start to a horrifically bad comedy.

“No,” Brett said. “We can fail. We can very much fail. Very badly. Look, obviously you’re upset about something, so why don’t we grab a beer and—”

“If you do not come with me right now, I’ll just murder her on my own and move to Georgia.”

This f*cking guy was always going on and on about how dramatic Matt was and yet here he was, threatening to destroy his own life for Brett’s goddamn attention. Fine. Whatever. He’d bite.

“What, pray tell, has Karen done which warrants her untimely demise?” Brett asked magnanimously.

“Ghost things,” Foggy said immediately.

“You know mud?” Brett asked him. “That’s how clear you’re being right now.”

“It’s doesn’t matter, man. Are you in or are you out?” Foggy demanded. And it was exactly like they were back in f*cking highschool, standing outside the school gates in converse sneakers.

Brett felt bullied. Peer-pressured.

He needed an adult.

UGH.

“We’re not committing homicide,” Brett said with a menacing finger.

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever, come on,” Foggy said.

Maynard and Ellen stared at him in silent shock when he came back into the station and said that he had to take a half day.

“We’re in the middle of a case,” Maynard said.

“And I understand that,” Brett said.

“But we got sh*t to do,” Foggy finished for him, flagrantly ignoring his promise to shut the f*ck up and let Brett handle this.

Maynard and Ellen stared at Brett with eyes that spoke of disappointment. ‘You continue to fraternize with the enemy’ that set of brown eyes said.

It’s not like he wanted to. It just—they’d never been on the opposite side of Foggy’s bullying, okay? He was a dick and a force of nature, and no one would ever believe Brett because Foggy looked, at his most furious, like an offended shih tzu. No one would ever understand.

When they were eight, Foggy had completely intentionally let Brett fall from the monkey bars and sprain his wrist because he refused to be ‘it’ in their game of tag. And then, when they were fifteen and Brett had gotten a crush on this girl Carrie in their class, Foggy had stared at him silently and pointedly every time he mentioned her. And most importantly in that particular scenario, even though he was friends with the girl, Fogs had specifically chosen not to tell Brett that Carrie couldn’t ever remember his f*cking name, despite the fact that they sat together in Spanish. So when Brett finally worked up the nerve to ask Carrie out, Fogs stood by and f*cking let her call him ‘Brandon,’ when she accepted.

It was bullying. It didn’t look like bullying. But it was bullying.

Psychological torture.

It was either that or admitting that he had maybe not been the most graceful social being as a child and Brett refused to suffer such insult.

“Brett, you are not taking a half day to go play cops and robbers with this guy,” Maynard said.

“It’s not a joy ride, it’s—” Brett started.

“Murder,” Foggy finished for him.

Their half of the bullpen went quiet. All eyes on them.

“I’m sorry, what?” Ellen squeaked.

“Homicide,” Foggy clarified for her. Brett closed his eyes. One time. He needed this guy to shut up this one time.

“BRETT,” Ellen barked in alarm.

“He’s being a dick,” Brett said. “We are not going to commit—”

“Potentially double homicide, we’ll know better when we get there,” Foggy said.

Their half of the station remained horrified.

“Foggy’s cousin’s in some sh*t,” Brett lied. And then before the f*ckhead could ruin it, he said “We’re going to go make sure she’s not hurt.”

The relief on everyone’s faces was gratifying. The heart clutching was, too.

“I’m going to strangle the guy who touched her with my bare hands,” Foggy assured Ellen and Maynard cheerfully; he always game to distort reality, so long as he wasn’t the one who’d be blamed for it when they got caught.

“Okay, uh. Well, maybe don’t do that,” Maynard said. “Hope she’s okay.”

Ah, she’d be fine. Brett? Not so much.

“Dude, you made me lie to my coworkers, what the actual f*ck is going on?” Brett demanded as Fogs dragged him down the street by his sleeve. He didn’t say. Was too determined to get them to the secondary location in his head.

Brett realized belatedly that they looked like a mobile kidnapping situation. He ripped his arm back and at Foggy’s exasperated whine, told him to chill the f*ck out and explain himself.

And then he had an aneurysm because fingers danced along his shoulders and he turned around and nearly decked Matt in the middle of the sidewalk. He did not, thank god. Because that would look not just bad, but horrendous for everyone involved.

“Ghosts,” Matt said when Brett threatened him like he’d threatened his partner.

“Ghosts,” Brett repeated, just to be sure he’d heard right.

“Ghosts,” Matt said again, and Brett realized that he was being extremely serious about this. And, actually, that wasn’t seriousness, that was…anxiety?

For real?

“Matt, there is no such thing as ghosts,” he said. Matt glared at him and slunk away to attach himself to Foggy’s arm. He said nothing. Foggy gave Brett flat eyebrows for both of them.

“We gotta kill Karen,” Foggy reiterated.

They did not need to kill Karen.

“The office is haunted,” Matt said tightly.

What, now?

“It’s haunted,” Matt insisted. “There are feet in there with no heartbeats.”

Woah.

Wait, no. Get yourself together, Mahoney. They’re f*cking with you.

“This isn’t funny, you two,” he snapped.

“I know,” Matt said. “My priest doesn’t believe me.”

“You told your priest?” Brett asked.

“Yes, but he keeps saying that even if they are real, they’re probably just lost souls, which is fine, but honestly? I don’t care what kind of souls they are, they need to f*cking go.”

Brett needed a second here. Matt sounded like he actually believed what he was saying right now. And he’d talked to his priest about this and that seemed to be going a little far, even for him.

“Why do we have to kill Karen, then?” Brett asked Foggy. Matt jerked and turned towards Fogs in shock. So he evidently hadn’t been in on that discussion or been listening the first time around.

“We’ve gotta kill Karen?” he repeated.

“Yeah,” Foggy said.

“Why?”

“’Cause she brought ‘em in.”

Matt didn’t like that. Didn’t want to believe that. His knuckles tensed around the handle of his cane.

“She didn’t—she wouldn’t—she said—”

“She lied, Matty. It wasn’t a boardgame, it was a Oija board, like I told you it was. I don’t know why you’re in denial of this.”

There was a pause between the two of them.

“Foggy, I don’t want to kill Karen,” Matt said delicately.

Foggy had no time for this nonsense.

“Tough,” he said in his bully voice.

It took some prodding and a whole lot of frustration on everyone’s part, but Brett eventually got the whole story here.

It was summer and summer reminded Karen of living in Bumf*ck Nowhere, Vermont and that reminded her of fireflies and camping and all that sh*t together reminded her that she was a sad*st with two captive victims at her disposal.

Karen was way into ghost hunting and the occult during the warmer months and she had been trying to sneak some of that sh*t into the offices of Nelson, Murdock & Page so as to ensure that she was not the only one experiencing whatever it was that she was conjuring. She had tried to get Castle to endure this sh*t with her, but Castle had the good, Catholic sense not to put up with that sh*t. He bailed early and was presently refusing to take Karen’s calls. Peter and his friends, it turned out, were usually game to feed Karen’s impulses because they were going through that fun teenage phase of seeking out reasons to be scared sh*tless, like Brett and Foggy had done all those years ago.

But whatever it was that Karen was messing with had gotten too much for the Spidey crew, because they bailed like Castle had and had complained to Matt that his bestie was making them all too afraid to sleep alone at night.

Matt had told Karen to tone down the ghost stories and she had, as she was wont, heard that as ‘ramp it up.’

There was a reason that she was Matt’s other best friend.

But Karen had apparently failed to consider the fact that the Devil was maybe a teensy-weensy bit terrified of the supernatural like his gun-toting, Catholic compatriot and so apparently had snuck a Ouija board into the office without Foggy or Matt’s intervention. She’d stayed late the last Friday and the other two had thought nothing of it, until Matt realized that he’d forgotten something at the office on Sunday and had stopped by after church to grab it, only to realize that people were inside the place. Given the fact that only three people had keys to the office and, as far as he knew, he was the only key-holder there, he prepared himself to handle a load of burglars. Only, when he opened the door, he found no burglars. No anyone, actually. Not a trace, not a smell. Nothing.

But he swore he’d heard voices and footsteps.

He’d written this off as a misplaced sound. He explained to Brett that sometimes, his hearing confused him because if he didn’t focus on it, he fell into the habit of just assuming that sounds which were loud to him were close by. That correlation didn’t always work in real life.

But then on Monday, Matt and Foggy had come in early and had heard the same sounds. Foggy had heard them, too, and so asked Matt to see if he could tell more about the people they were about to call the cops on. But Matt got confused because he couldn’t hear any heartbeats, even when he pressed his head against the door. With the number of feet moving around, he was adamant that he would have at least been able to catch a snippet of someone’s heart beating. And yet there was nothing. And by that point, Matt was freaking out so that he could only hear his own heartbeat, so they’d resolved to open the door and deal with a load of potential assailants.

But there was no one in the place.

Karen arrived afterwards and blew the whole thing off, but throughout the next couple of days, Fogs had felt his hair being f*cked with and Matt kept coming out and moving around people in the waiting room who he didn’t realize weren’t there. And apparently, that whole morning, the office had been cold enough to see your breath.

And Foggy was understandably f*cking done. And Matt was, for once, naively hopeful that it would pass if they just ignored it long enough. The role reversal was extremely entertaining. But more importantly, Brett wanted nothing to do with this sh*tshow.

Nothing.

Nope.

He did not f*ck with the supernatural. He had learned from his experiences in childhood that nothing good ever came of that.

But still, he wasn’t convinced that throttling Karen was the solution to this problem here. Maybe just getting her to admit what she’d done would be sufficient for them to find a way to undo it.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Foggy said.

No, sir. That’s what you’re saying now that you’ve put a mile between yourself and your haunted workplace. There had definitely been talk of homicide prior to this.

“Okay, so I overreacted, whatever,” Foggy admitted. “The point is that we can’t live like this for any longer, or I’m gonna explode.”

Evidently.

“Okay, so where is Karen?” Brett asked.

“She took the day,” Matt said.

Of course she did.

“Can you find Karen?” Brett tried. Matt didn’t seem to be in a Daredevil-like mood. In fact, he seemed very much to have laid that whole ‘man without fear’ thing aside for the moment, which was so uncharacteristic that Brett felt kind of sorry for him.

“Maybe,” Matt said. “But she’s not at home, I already checked there.”

“Maybe with Castle then?” Brett offered. Matt shrugged weakly.

“He’s really not into ghosts,” Brett murmured to Foggy as they set off to find Castle and maybe Karen.

“No, he grew up in a haunted orphanage,” Foggy muttered back. “And he has a hard time telling when things are real and fake with this stuff, ‘cause you know, he can’t just see that it’s nothing like we can.”

f*ck that. God, no. Brett really did for sorry for the guy now.

Castle was unusually patient with Matt when he finally nosed him out of hiding. He did not begin the conversation with the usual rain of insults or bullets.

“I told her not to mess with that sh*t,” Castle said, shaking his head. “I told her, but there’s so much sh*t online and you know how it is. Tell her not to do something and she’s guaranteed to do it out of spite.”

But Karen wasn’t with him and no, Castle hadn’t seen her since Friday last. He did confirm that he’d noticed her eyeing up Ouija boards online the week before. He’d confiscated the phone while she was with him, but obviously the masculine censoring didn’t go down well and so she’d left pretty pissed off.

Castle thought that there was a chance that she was off with her friend Patricia Walker, Jessica Jones’s adopted sister.

“That girl has got a crush on her that you can see from space,” Castle said, allowing Matt to wrap a rosary around his wrist before they left. “She’d do anything for Kare’s approval. Maybe she cajoled her into being her accomplice.”

Now that sounded pretty Karen-like. It was as good a lead as any.

Matt didn’t actually know Jessica Jones’s sister. Foggy had only met her once and briefly. But they both knew Jessica and Jessica answered the door with half her usual level of attitude for them. A little desperately, actually, now that Brett thought about it.

“Thank f*ck you’re here,” Jessica said. “Danny thinks the place is haunted and I need someone to get him out of my goddamn walls.”

Rand was not just insistent that the place was cursed, he was damn sure of it and he’d taken out the drywall next to a closet, to Jones’s associate Malcolm’s despair, and was now rooting around the space between the walls, trying to find what he seemed to think was the source of the evil.

He had with him a mixture of herbs and incense that was burning lightly and the whole place smelled strongly of ginseng.

Malcolm, bless him, appeared to have been bargaining with Rand for quite a while by the time they got there, trying to lure him back out of the dark with various promises.

“I called Colleen, but she says that it’s easier for her to just let him be weird sometimes,” Jones huffed. “Luke tried to pull him out before he left for work, but you can see how well that’s worked.”

“Do you think your place is haunted?” Brett asked her. She gave him a weird look.

“Duh?” she said. “I’m here.”

Uh. Was that supposed to be a joke?

A noise brought both of their attention back to the wall and they saw that Malcolm and Foggy were now both trying to call Matt back.

“Oh, perfect,” Jones said. “We’ll just flush one idiot out with the other, why didn’t I think of that?”

Were she and Matt friends? It was hard to tell.

There was a scrape at the wall near them and then a scuffle and a muffled scream which had to be Rand since Matt knew exactly who he was looking for.

“Dude, what the f*ck?” Matt’s muffled voice chided. “Put that sh*t out. That’s for sick folks.”

Brett looked at Foggy who shrugged.

“They are sick folks,” Rand’s muffled voice snipped back. “They’ve got a sick baby.”

“No,” Matt said, “They’ve got a sick no one and a dead everyone. Now put that out, it ain’t helping jack.”

Brett didn’t really understand until Jones asked him if he really didn’t know that Rand and Matt came from somewhat similar cultish upbringings . Then he had only more questions about the level of crossover that occurred between those respective cults and then he had questions about how the hell Matt and Danny were so drastically and emphatically not the same kind of cultish martial artists.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Jones said, “Danny’s from a monastery and Murdock’s from an army.”

When she put it like that, the difference became crystal clear.

Matt’s so-called-army training made him less invested in Danny’s religious cleansing ritual and so he manhandled the guy right back out of the hole which he’d crawled through to begin with. When they were both out, covered in plaster dust, Matt took Danny’s little metal bowl of herbs and trashed them right in front of the guy, immune to his anguished cries.

“This,” Matt said, shaking the empty bowl at Danny like he was a naughty puppy, “Is just gonna encourage them to stay.”

“But,” Danny said.

“No buts,” Matt snapped. “No more of this sh*t. We’re not trying to make friends. If you really give a sh*t about their souls, then you’ll encourage them to move on.”

Brett was struck by the realization that Matt was the senior soldier in that relationship. That was super strange to see.

Matt gave the metal bowl back to Danny and Danny hugged it close to his chest with distraught, downturned eyes and a wobbling lip.

“No one even asked you,” he muttered. Matt jerked his way and Danny flinched back with a defensive arm up before you could even say ‘uncle.’ Matt sniffed at him and bared his teeth a little, then dropped the menacing and wandered back over to Foggy, who grumbled and started dusting him off.

“You’re mean,” Danny accused. “And I don’t see why we shouldn’t try to help them.”

“Because—” Matt started.

“Because they aren’t real,” Jessica finished before he could. “And because you’re pissing off my neighbors.”

“Trish thinks they’re real,” Danny pointed out.

“Trish is very susceptible to bullsh*t,” Jessica sighed. Malcolm made a face that agreed that statement.

“Would Trish happen to be with Karen right now?” Foggy asked.

Jessica and Malcolm shared an exhausted but knowing look.

“If Trish was with Page then she would never shut up about it,” Jessica said.

“She’s obsessed,” Malcolm added. “It’s kind of sweet.”

“It’s horrible,” Jessica groaned.

“It’s very sweet,” Malcolm amended. “Little baby bird trying to get senpai to notice her.”

“I am going to puke,” Jessica announced.

“Hypothetically,” Foggy said, “If Karen was summoning demons with a Ouija board in our office, would Trish be likely to partake in that?”

There was a long silence in the room.

“Oh definitely,” Malcolm said.

“100%,” Jessica agreed. Then grimaced. “Why are you asking?”

“Our office is haunted,” Matt told her.

“You think everything’s haunted,” Jones reminded him.

“That’s because we walk on the graves of dead people everywhere we go,” Matt told her solemnly.

Brett decided that this was maybe something rooted a little deeper than religion for Matt.

“It’s New York, Murdock. The whole thing’s built on the backs of the dead and the dying,” Jessica said. “And anyways, if we’re all constantly haunted, then why aren’t you freaking out all the time, then?”

“Oh, I am,” Matt assured her.

“Hi, I’m sorry to butt in here,” Foggy said, “But we could really use someone calling Trish to see if she is with our troublemaker because I need to start planning my legal defense.”

Jessica chuckled.

“You couldn’t scare either of those two even if you tried, Nelson,” she said, “But sure, gimme a sec.”

She went to pick through all the sh*t on her desk to find her phone and then dialed.

They all waited.

And waited.

Trish didn’t pick up. Jessica didn’t leave a voicemail. She hung up and then tried again. And then again. Then she tried Karen. And when all of that didn’t work, she chewed her lip and looked up at Matt who, for obvious reasons, didn’t meet her gaze.

“Well alrighty then,” Jessica said. “Malcolm, get your boots.”

Brett had never been on Jessica’s good side and so had never seen her work on a team. She worked mostly by locking arms with Matt while both of them shunned Danny. It was kind of cruel. Danny wasn’t the worst kid. He had loads of merits. He just didn’t carry around the other twos’ burden of edginess; that wasn’t his fault.

Danny took it more or less well.

“Me and Luke work together more than I work with those two,” he explained.

It really didn’t bother him, then?

“Nah, what business do I want with a load of wet blankets?”

Danny stopped walking when he realized that Matt and Jess had both frozen dead ahead of them and were staring back at him in complete silence.

“That’s my cue,” Danny declared, and then gunned it the opposite direction.

“They are literal children,” Brett hissed at Foggy as they pressed forward and Matt hung Danny upside down from a tree while Jessica promised (emptily) to catch him if he fell. Malcolm laughed.

Jessica was damn sure that she knew where Trish would take someone she was trying to gain the approval of. They’d hung out in this place a couple of times when they were kids, she explained. It was a sheltered little alcove wedged between a church and an ancient, stuffy restaurant. It had a great view, that alcove, but you had to climb a chain-link fence to get there.

It was very teenager-appealing.

But when they got to this mysterious alcove, no one was there; it was just filled with beer cans and cigarette butts and so they had to try somewhere else.

After a few more unsuccessful attempts, Matt, Jess, and Danny decided that the solution to this was to roleplay.

Danny was given the role of Ghost #1, Matt played Karen and Jess played Trish. They all did a sh*t job. But somewhere in between Danny’s artful flailing, Jessica’s horrifying valley-girl impression, and Matt’s insistence that he was a strong, independent woman, the three of them came up with the idea that they were going about this the wrong way.

And they all hurried off to harass Luke Cage.

“You three are so annoying,” Luke said into his palms out back behind the bar he worked at. “So unbelievably annoying.”

“But also unbelievably charming, yes?” Matt asked him.

“You’re especially annoying.”

“Luke, if we were all former co*ke-addicts and adrenaline junkies with a strong need to prove ourselves to some omni-present force, where would we go?” Danny asked.

Luke surveyed him over the tops of his fingers and then rubbed at his face again.

“What? Oh, we meet at Heston’s for drinks sometimes,” Claire Temple said over Luke’s speaker phone.

Well, at least now Brett knew who balanced out all the madness on this team.

Heston’s was a dive bar which reminded Brett strongly of Josies’. Their two blonde co-conspirators were chatting at a table in the back. Karen had a notebook in front of her in addition to her phone, which she was busily scribbling in, while Trish watched with her chin rested between two palms. Trish saw the troop of them first and unsubtly panicked.

She freaked and, while Karen wasn’t looking, made large ‘go away’ gestures with her hands.

Jessica acted dumb and looked towards the door and then pointed at it. Trish nodded enthusiastically and then, upon noticing Karen looking up for a second, adopt the good old, tried and true, giggle-and-wave-dismissively technique. When Karen looked back down, Trish glared at Jessica and pointed sharply at her and then the door.

Jess pointed at herself and then the door.

Trish nodded.

Jessica pointed at herself and then the door again as though to really make sure.

Trish clenched her jaw and curled a fist, promising pain upon her sister with her face. Jessica whacked Malcolm in the side, pointed at Trish, then at herself, and then at the door and Malcolm made a wide ‘Oh!’ face and repeated the gestures and it was at that point that Brett came to understand that the two of them were taking the piss.

Jess was just here to embarrass her sister in front of her crush.

As a younger sibling who had done the exact same thing multiple times in the past, Brett could respect that.

Karen noticed Trish making an ‘I’m going f*cking to pound you when I get out of here,’ gesture with her hands before Trish did and looked over her shoulder to see the rest of them. Foggy put a hand on his hip.

Karen beamed like the goddamn sun.

“Foggy,” Karen cooed sweetly once everyone was sitting in the corner with her and Trish. Foggy’s face remained sour.

“Foggy-bear,” Karen said, reaching over and rubbing light circles into his wrist with her thumb.

“Why did you curse our office, Karen?” Foggy asked flatly.

“Because I love both of you and thought we could use a little summer fun,” Karen said without missing a beat.

“Our clients are terrified, Karen. Matt’s terrified—”

“I’m not,” Matt interrupted. Foggy ignored him.

“Matt is nonfunctional; you have rendered him useless.”

“I’m not, though,” Matt tried, but was resolutely ignored by the other two.

“That’s okay, he’s more of a mascot for the office than anything else,” Karen said.

Matt gawked in offense. Jessica took his hand and patted it delicately in sympathy. Danny did the same for the opposite shoulder.

“Un-curse the office,” Foggy demanded.

“I can’t,” Karen said, wriggling in her seat. “I tried.”

“What do you mean you tried?” Foggy demanded.

“I mean I tried, but the internet only cares about putting ghosts into places, not taking them out. Everyone just keeps saying we need to help them move on.”

Brett had taken a half day for this bullsh*t. And he wasn’t entirely sure now that he regretted it. Watching Matt slap a hand over Danny’s mouth and tell him that if he even thought about bringing up the healing herbs, he’d dump him in the river was far more entertaining than it had any right to be.

“UGH, I knew it,” Foggy groaned. “What are we supposed to do, Kare? We can’t work like this.”

“Uh. Well,” Trish said, “The folks online said that sometimes, you can put things in your house to scare the spirits away.”

Foggy glared at her and then glared at Karen. Karen held up her notebook with a huge list of things written under the underlined title ‘Ward off evil spirits.’

Foggy looked to Brett for strength and he almost laughed out loud.

“That’s fine, Karen, but what happens if the spirits aren’t evil?” Brett pointed out gently. “What if they’re good spirits and are just confused.”

“Then we heal them,” Danny burst out from around Matt’s hand.

“Oh, right. Danny, you’re a monk, right? Can you heal them?” Trish asked.

Danny said “what?” just as Matt and Jess said “No.”

“Danny’s not a monk, he just grew up around them,” Malcolm clarified for Trish.

“Maybe you can fist them instead?” Trish asked.

“Girl, what?” Danny repeated.

“Yeah, Danny, you gotta fist ‘em,” Jess snickered. Matt thought she was funny. Both their IQs dropped around the other. That was noteworthy.

Foggy groaned and rested his hand on his arms in despair.

“It’s fine,” Karen said, “I have an idea.”

Did she now?

“I told you, I’m not a witch,” Peter snipped at their ever-growing group. His friends on either side of him looked at him in surprise at the same time which outed that lie before it was even finished. Peter noticed this and shoved the guy at his right.

“I’m not,” he said. “My aunt’s a witch. It’s different.”

May Parker was highly entertained by all of them.

“Ouija boards are bad news if you don’t know how to use them,” she lectured Karen gently.

“Yes, ma’am,” Karen said, looking properly chastised.

“Well, there’s not much to do now but to learn to live with your new friends or to coax them along on their way,” May said.

“The latter,” Foggy emphasized, “We would love to do the latter.”

“Well, you can try—”

“An onion,” Peter interrupted. May patted at him and told him that that was very good remembering, which left everyone else nowhere closer to understanding anything than when they’d started.

“Most of the stuff that Peter and I do is preventative,” May explained. “Since you’ve already got spirits in your place, you might try putting salt in the corners of the room or pentagrams around your workspace.”

Pentagrams. This women was actually suggesting pentagrams right now.

“You can brush mint on the doors, too,” Peter offered.

“You could try that,” May said indulgently. “But since you used a Ouija board, I imagine that your best bet at this point might be a priest. You don’t know what kind of spirits you’ve got floating around.”

“I KNEW IT,” Matt roared from the back.

“Father, father, father, please.”

This man had to be a saint. No one could tolerate Matt’s agitation for as long as this guy had.

“Matthew, Matthew, Matthew, no,” Father Lantom said without missing a beat.

“But my clients!”

“Matt, this is just your imagination, son, we’ve already discussed this.”

“My clients, Father!”

“Your clients are just fine, you’re working this up into something bigger than it is.”

This was the kind of priest the world needed, Brett decided. Someone who recognized the line between superstition and anxiety.

“I’m not, though. Foggy, tell him,” Matt pleaded.

“Sir,” Danny piped up, “I have tried to heal these spirits, but they’re very stubborn.”

The priest paused and gave Danny a curious look as though trying to decide if he and Matt had the same affliction.

“Father,” Karen finally said, coming forward. “This is maybe my fault, I kind of got a little excited with a Ouija Board, so uh. Maybe you can make an exception just this one time?”

There was a long silence as Father Lantom assessed her.

He dropped his head and sighed.

Father Lantom fetched a Sister to come with him to bless the office (he refused flat out to perform any exorcisms whatsoever) and this tiny nun grabbed ahold of Matt’s ear without so much as a by your leave and yanked him down to whisper furiously at him.

“I didn’t do anything,” Matt whined like an eight-year-old.

The nun would hear none of it.

“I gave you a crucifix to put up on your wall,” she said. “Where is your crucifix?”

“I can’t put an impaled man on my wall, Sister,” Matt growled, trying to extract his ear from her grip, “I work in an office of Law. That’s basically a threat.”

“You can and you will,” the nun snapped. “You hear me?”

“Don’t have much choice,” Matt quipped back.

“Are you talking back now?”

“No, ma’am.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Now that right there was worth the whole day of ridiculousness.

The priest blessed the offices of Nelson, Murdock & Page. And then, for sh*ts and giggles, he blessed the office of Alias Investigations. The Sister confiscated Karen’s Ouija board and had a very quiet but harsh conversation with her outside in the hallway.

Brett felt a little silly saying it, but as Father Lantom made his way out of the building and back towards the church with Sister Maggie at his side, he could help but notice that the place felt lighter.

Karen appeared, pouting and rubbing at her jaw.

“No more Ouija boards,” she said dolefully.

“Thank you,” Foggy said.

“’Til next year.”

“KAREN.”

Brett came back to work the next day and had to come up with a spectacular lie about how Foggy’s cousin was fine, but there had been a whole lot of drama in getting her sorted out. He texted the story to Foggy in case of cross examination and got a thumbs up in return.

FN: Sister Maggie put a crucifix on the wall

FN: she really screwed it in there, Matt’s been trying for ages to get it off

BM: maybe tell him which way to turn the screwdriver?

FN: nah it’s more fun to watch him suffer

BM: foggy that’s your boyfriend

FN: I know and he wants to do it himself so I’m gonna let him do it himself.

FN: nevermind he’s making Karen help him. Karen is a better house husband than he’ll ever be.

BM: okay so date her

FN: NO

FN: I haven’t forgiven her for cursing this house of law

FN: oh by the way

FN: Peter and his aunt are making us charms to ward off evil. I dunno if you wanted one but I don’t think that matters they want to know if you’re allergic to any kind of herb

BM: they do not have to do that they literally do not

FN: I’m telling them you’re not allergic

BM: foggy don’t I have so much sh*t on my desk

FN: nah man. This last week has been proof that we need all the help we can get. You will take the baby witch’s weird herbs and you will like it

BM: oh my god fine

Peter put into one of his hands a little bundle of dried leaves and into the other a small collection of beads.

“Keep them with you at all times,” he said.

Mmmmm, sure. Whatever you want kid. Brett would put them in his glove box.

Chapter 17: chewing willow bark

Chapter Text

Brett had never once claimed to know a damn thing about the nitty-gritty details of mutants or mutations or anything like that, which was why he was surprised when the Captain called him over and asked him specifically if he knew if the night crew’s powers had changed at all since he’d started to get to know them.

The idea that mutations did and could change over time was like a slap to the face.

In hindsight, after the Captain had accepted his ‘I don’t actually know, sir’ and moved on, it made perfect sense that they would.

Bodies changed.

Bodies got older.

Hormones did all kind of mystical things. Same with skin. Eyes. Hair.

Why shouldn’t someone’s enhancements change too?

Foggy stared at him emptily for a good three beats over the top of his glass of cider at Josie’s that night before snapping out of it and saying,

“f*ck.”

He then stuffed everything he had into his leather bag and Brett had to chug his own pint before chasing after.

Matt stared about a hundred times more emptily more or less at both of them in his doorway before whispering “Oh my god” and grabbing a scarf to head down the road to Jessica Jones’s place.

“You’re a f*cking idiot,” Jones sniffed at Matt who, upon getting a good whiff of her ‘what the f*ck is the matter with you’ vibe, had stolen a swallow of her whiskey straight from the tumbler in her hand.

“Has yours not?” she asked Matt with a co*ck of her head.

“I don’t know,” Matt said. “I guess I haven’t thought about it. There’s always so much to like, process, and so many ways to do it, that it never occurred to me that I might be doing it differently from before.”

Huh.

“Has yours changed?” Brett asked.

Jones shrugged.

“In some ways,” she said. “Can’t drink as much as I used to.”

Uh?

She’d been drinking more before this?

“Yeah,” Jones said. “Way more. Now, it’s like two bottles and I’m ready for a nap. Used to put back three easy.”

Three??

Jesus Christ.

Matt made a contemplative noise and scratched at the scruff on his face.

“Maybe something has changed,” he mumbled.

“Oh no, definitely changed,” Danny said. “The force used to knock me back. Threw me into a pond once.”

His own hand?

“Oh, yeah,” Danny said cheerfully. “It’s a lot to have to contain. You gotta focus really hard. Really works out your neck. I’ve put on hella muscle since I got it.”

Huh.

Danny accepted the tumbler Jones dumped a couple of fingers of whiskey into and took a sip. He grimaced and licked his lips then discreetly passed it over to Matt.

Brett glanced over at Foggy who pouted his way in thought.

“Well, like, in the immediate sense, their bodies would have to compensate for whatever it is they’re carrying around, right?” Foggy said.

They’d dropped Matt off home to go ruminate on his life and its choices. He’d been quiet all evening, trying to feel himself through to figure out if anything felt different that it used to.

Jones wondered if the scar tissue and callouses that decorated the guy’s hands and knuckles had changed his ability to feel in any way and since then, Matt had been preoccupied with picking things up and doing his hyperfocus thing with his brows drawn low in the object’s general direction.

“I guess maybe any changes that happened after that would be kind of like changes to your eyesight,” Brett hypothesized. “Like, maybe they happen so slowly you don’t even notice them until you need to do something that specifically involves them.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Foggy said, looking out into the street. “Must be hard for kids. Hormonal changes and all that.”

Yeah.

Yeah, actually, it would be wouldn’t it?

Brett found Peter the next Thursday, unusually sans mask, sitting on the floor of Nelson, Murdock, & Page after hours, filing paperwork with his friends. He didn’t understand Brett’s question. Not even after Foggy tried to rephrase it in a couple of different ways.

“I guess sometimes I feel kind of sick,” Peter eventually offered.

“Sick?” Brett tried.

“Like,” Peter waved the folder he was holding at the space in front of him. “Things get all spinny.”

“The spins,” Matt agreed on his way out of his shoebox office.

“The spins,” Peter repeated sagely. “And I feel like I’m gonna puke and sometimes I do, but sometimes I don’t.”

“Some foods make me feel like that,” Matt said offhandedly as he dug through a pile of folders on the secretary’s desk.

“Which ones?” Peter’s friend Michelle asked.

Matt hummed.

“Edible flowers,” he said. “Bitter melon. Fava beans.”

“Chestnuts,” Peter offered.

Chestnuts?

“Yeah, they’re awful,” Peter huffed. “Just the smell of ‘em. Ugh.”

Huh. Why was that raising flags in Brett’s head?

“Hey Ma?” he asked that weekend. “You know anything about chestnuts making people sick?”

His mom and sister gave him twin looks of confusion.

“Sick?” Kelly repeated. “I mean, if you’re allergic to nuts, maybe?”

No, Peter wasn’t allergic to nuts. That was Cap. Cap’s serum helped him out in that department these days, but ever since the collar situation, the poor guy had been pretty scarred by his close calls with anaphylactic shock. Brett had seen a picture of him being highly suspicious of a piece of cake at a fancy gala thing in the news the other day.

“No, I just mean like, inducing nausea,” he said. “The Spiderkid told me the other day that chestnuts make him sick.”

“Well that’d make sense,” his mom said. “Chestnuts ward spiders away, you know?”

Did they?

“Yes, that’s why I’ve always kept some around in the winter, you never noticed?”

Well, no. Apparently not.

Peter was dumbfounded upon receiving this information and abandoned Brett and Foggy and their day drinking to go frantically google it and text his aunt.

He came skidding by the restaurant Brett and Foggy were judging harshly with his buddies in tow about an hour later with a horrified expression on his face.

“Am I gonna grow more legs?” he asked the two of them over the restaurant’s dumb little barricade. It was covered in herbs that had definitely been bought just that weekend from Home Depot.

“Probably,” Foggy said.

“Dude,” Brett scolded.

“Maybe some more eyes too,” Foggy continued nonchalantly as he picked through his drenched salad for salvageable croutons.

“Oh my god,” Peter whimpered, then tore off with his friends back from whence he’d come.

“Detective, what if I start to nest?” Peter asked him in the middle of a crime scene that week. Everyone at the scene, officers and forensic folk alike, stared at the kid hanging upside down in Brett’s face.

“I?” Brett stammered.

“What if I start to eat bugs?” Peter continued. “What if I start to eat birds, detective?”

“You already eat birds,” Brett pointed out as tactfully as he could.

The silence and stillness of the scene around them remained so as Peter processed this information.

“Good day, officer,” he finally said before vanishing.

His sister thought that this was a f*ckin’ hoot, but Brett’s mom was more sympathetic to Spidey’s anxiety.

“Must be hard for him,” she said, “No rules. No role models. He’s what, just sixteen?”

“It’s not that he’s got no role models; it’s just that everyone’s got different powers,” Brett told her. Kelly handed him another dish to dry. Amos and his friend screamed at the tv in the living room.

“That doesn’t help too much if you don’t know what’s happening to you,” his mom pointed out. “I mean, what if he gets sick with something that only he can get? What is he supposed to do then?”

Good point.

Hmm.

“Matt makes himself sick all the time,” Foggy told him later over the counter at Nelson’s Hardware. His folks were off on their yearly week-long vacation. Fogs and Candace usually took over the store in their absence, even though the handful of employees the Nelsons had could probably handle it just fine.

It soothed the parents, Foggy said, ergo it needed to be done.

“Right, from bitter melon,” Brett said. A toddler went by the counter dragging a saw and a frantic dad crashed out of aisle four to give chase.

“Mm, I mean, that’s him pretending not to be weird,” Foggy said. “I’ve caught him trying to eat dried bay leaves before.”

Dude.

“I know. Bergamot is another one. If he finds one at a market, he’ll try to eat it raw, every time,” Foggy sighed.

“The f*ck is Bergamot?” Brett asked.

“The sh*t that makes Earl Grey tea smell fancy. I dunno, man, he loves it.”

Ah.

Wait.

“Does he try to eat tea?”

“Wouldn’t put it past him.”

Weird.

“Yeah, I think it’s ‘cause his sense of smell and his sense of taste are even more wrapped up together than the rest of us,” Foggy hummed. “So like, he’s chill with drinking vanilla extract and munching on lavender while the rest of us err on the smelling side of that kind of thing. And I mean, if we’re talking just weird food behavior, Matt’ll eat whole lemons and raw onion without batting an eye. He hates rosemary, won’t touch it. Parsley, too. We’ve got a vendetta against parsley in the office right now, which is extra weird because this is the same guy who used to survive off super-green salad in law school, and I swear he used to stuff parsley in those things.”

“Cilantro,” Brett pointed out.

“No,” Foggy said. “Parsley.”

“Definitely cilantro.”

“What? You a chef now? A botanist? Botanist Brett with his big bags of bad ideas? No. It was parsley.”

Well, there was no need to get nasty, Mr. Nelson. Also, how much is this rake?

It came to Brett’s attention that Wade Wilson and Sam Wilson were locked in a battle of wills (son?).

He wasn’t sure why. Fogs knew f*ck all about it. Matt seemed to know what was going on, but he was playing dumb and dodging questions by picking at people’s clothes and trying to guess their colors again.

Karen was the one who’d brought it to Brett’s attention. She claimed that she’d heard from Castle that the feud was getting in the way of his work. She said it was some kind of counselor thing.

Sam Wilson, once he was on a healing warpath, apparently could not be stopped.

Funny how you only know one side of people.

Whatever it was that Sam wanted from Wade, he’d found that he could want it from Castle, too, and now both of them were bitching and moaning about that damn staff sergeant who wouldn’t leave them the f*ck alone.

Brett tried to ask Peter about it for the new and improved notebook that he’d been handed by the Captain for the fall, but Peter just asked him if he too, thought that mint was super off-putting sometimes. Like, even in toothpaste. Wasn’t it weird how 90% of toothpastes were mint-flavored? Wasn’t that strange, detective?

Suspicious even, sir?

Brett checked later and found that mint was also a natural spider-repellant.

He felt bad for awakening all these new anxieties in this poor boy.

Luke Cage told him a few days later at the scene of a break-in that he was trying to get in touch with Sam Wilson and he was willing to chat with Brett about this whole mutation-research that people said he was doing.

Brett didn’t know how he felt about the fact that his doings had become part of the rumor mill of the underground, but he figured, what the hell? Why not?

Cage was a pretty hard nut to crack when it came to cooperating with the police. He wasn’t as talkative as Danny or Jones, although you wouldn’t know it from the way that Danny nattered about their misadventures.

“Oh yeah, mine’s changed,” Cage said as Brett wrote. “Seem to get stronger all the time. It’s a little unnerving if I’m honest.”

No sh*t?

How long has that been going on, then?

“As long as I’ve had the enhancement,” Cage said. “Sometimes, I feel like being around others who are enhanced has some kind of effect on it, too. Like when the four of us—me, Jess, Danny and Murdock—are running around together, there’s just this feeling. I don’t know how to describe it. Might just be psychological, some kind of solidarity thing. Maybe feeling less self-conscious about not holding back. Who knows?”

Who knows, indeed?

That was fascinating, though.

What if enhancements did actually respond to each other? What if they fed off the ones around them? What if that’s why enhanced vigilantes were drawn towards each other and seemed to regularly form teams?

Hm.

Well, there was one person who Brett could ask about that.

Matt was being purposefully obtuse, Brett could pinpoint this now. He didn’t want to talk any more about his abilities and since an incident with a sh*tty cop in the Kitchen the week before, which had resulted in Matt nursing yet another bullet graze, he didn’t seem so hot on talking to any cop, even the one his partner was friends with.

His body language and question-deflecting all pointed to one thing and that was a neon sign reading ‘f*ck OFF.’

He tried to steal Brett’s notebook and then climbed up some fire-escapes and huddled in, up high, pouting down at Brett until he threw in the towel and accepted that he wasn’t getting anything productive out of Matt for the evening.

The next logical choice was Peter but Peter was…Peter.

Anxious.

Brett seriously felt like he’d unlocked a door or something in this kid’s head.

“I can’t see things so hot,” Peter informed him stiffly.

“In what way?” Brett forced himself to ask.

“Things up close,” Peter said. “I can’t see them. They’re all blurry.”

This sounded like a personal problem?

“But I can see far away super well,” Peter complained.

Well that explained a lot. The being up high thing, for example.

“You think I’m gonna grow more eyes?”

O-kay. Bedtime for you, little one.

“Will they grow on my face?” Peter asked.

Brett was not even attempting to entertain that Lovecraftian horror show. No thanks.

He remembered abruptly that Wade Wilson himself worked on multiple teams. Then he remembered that finding Wade was a pain in the ass and half.

God, why did this have to be so difficult?

He settled on asking Cap because he and Cap had a certain kind of rapport now.

Cap was a great resource when he was in the mood for sharing. And if you discounted the fact that he adamantly refused to share most of his life with anyone, up to and including his partners, that made him a pretty damn good option.

Cap was also interesting because really, he was the first guy who’d made it into this business as far as Brett understood it. Not the first mutant, but certainly the first enhanced person to survive the enhancement process and definitely one of the longest-living ones.

He went to see Cap out of academic and personal curiosity but found himself drawn into the Wilson v. Wilson feud.

“It’s okay,” JB consoled him, “It happens to all of us. Sammy’s got laser eyes for weakpoints.”

How the f*ck had he even gotten here?

“You want to help people, detective,” JB said smoothly. “Whatever that means. Doesn’t matter. Sam’s not interested in the method, he’s interested in the result.”

Sam Wilson was going to make a damn fine Captain America soon here if he kept that attitude up.

Sam tromped down the stairs in his full Falcon gear and pointed a confident finger at Brett.

“Wilson tolerates you,” he informed Brett.

“Tolerates is generous,” Brett said. “I just happen to be personally connected to two of his teammates.”

“Tolerates,” Sam insisted. “You’re going to help me.”

Well, yes. That had been Brett’s impression here.

“The man needs therapy.”

Yes, yes. That was pretty clear.

“He’s a US vet. He has earned the right for VA services.”

Oh, no sh*t?

“God help me, he will get those damn services.”

Uh.

So, counselor?

Pretty sure that’s not how seeking mental health support works.

“This is being proactive,” Sam said. “Wilson is a danger to himself and society in his current state. He needs medication and trauma counseling.”

Yes, yes. That was good and true and all that, but Wade also had a mighty need to eviscerate other humans so that he could continue to afford his daily bread, so?

“We’ll work on that,” Sam said. “Talk about life choices and professional development.”

Yeah, no.

Brett could totally see why Frank and Wade regarded Sam with barely concealed disgust.

But whatever. That wasn’t his damn problem.

“Okay?” he said. “Have you told this to Spidey?”

“Peter is a minor,” Sam said.

“Peter is one of two minors that Wade’s taken under his wing,” Brett informed him.

He got two highly quizzical and alarmed expressions at this fact.

“Two?” JB repeated.

“Yes. Peter and a young man named Russell,” Brett said. “He’s been sighted accompanying Wade and his other team on a few missions.

Sam was scandalized.

“This is a pattern,” he snapped at JB who threw up his hands to indicate where he stood on the matter. “This is unsafe behavior. For the kids, man. Think of the kids.”

Brett was. That was kind of the point.

“Wade’s gone far out of his way on multiple occasions to protect Peter,” Brett pointed out. “He cares a great deal about the kid, and I would be surprised if he didn’t feel similarly towards Russell. So if you’re talking strategy, Sam, your best bet might be to get the kids onto your side and let them pressure Wade into seeing your way of things.”

Sam said nothing, then turned around to bop back up the stairs. he cackled and disappeared back into the bedroom he’d come out of. Brett heard the distinct sound of Kevlar being chucked onto the floor.

“Well, now you’ve done it,” JB sighed.

Yikes.

“Right,” Brett said, valiantly ignoring the disaster which he’d just put into the making, “Is Steve around?”

JB sucked in a breath through his teeth.

“He is,” he said. “But I dunno if you’re gonna get very far with him.”

Steve had locked himself in his studio over the last couple of days and was busy furiously reading and rereading the works of Karl Marx.

He’d been arguing with his accountant for days, trying to break off all his royalty contracts.

“We’ve recently gotten word that we are, as Papa Marx would say, of the bourgeois classes these days, and so we’ve decided that now is the time to remember our socialist roots and the time our mama spent in the IRA,” JB explained diplomatically as he knocked on the studio door.

Ah.

No one answered.

JB leaned in towards the door and called, “Steven? A member of the surveillance state is here. Are you cool to engage?”

Nothing.

“Okay, well, can I, fellow class-traitor, come in?” JB asked.

A sound of anguish burst out from behind the door.

“It’s gonna be okay, honey,” JB said. “There are ways to use capital for the common good.”

The door unlocked and Steve glared out from the two inches of space he was willing to give Brett.

“I hate this society,” he said with zero affect.

“I hate it sometimes, too,” Brett told him. “Can I ask you some personal questions?”

Steve claimed that yeah, his enhancement did actually feel different with different people around him, now that he thought about it.

“Like, me and Nat? Good. Me, Buck, and Sam? Could take on the world. But me and Thor? It’s like you’re unstoppable. Everything is possible. He’s just so—I dunno what he radiates, but it just makes everything feel within reach. It’s like when we’re fighting together, I just feel like we’re approaching this peak, where my body can do anything I ask it to. I feel stronger and faster and just, in control,” Steve explained with his hands flailing around.

Huh.

“But is Thor technically enhanced?” Brett asked.

“Thor’s a demigod,” Steve told him. “He is as enhanced as you can get while being mortal.”

Damn. Okay.

“So would you say that your own enhancements have changed over time?” Brett asked.

Steve rubbed his knuckles under his chin while he thought about it.

“Maybe?” he said. “I dunno, sometimes I think that the serum’s wearing off. I’m just.” He deflated and shifted his shoulders so that they hung low and loose. “I get tired these days. I never used to feel tired. I used to have to sleep not even half as much as others. But these days.” Steve sighed.

“Sam says I’m depressed. He said that that’s what’s driving this kind of thing, and like. He’s right, but also I’ve got this gut feeling, detective. Like it’s all going to come crashing down on me. The longer it goes on, the more tired I feel. I’m not as old as you think, I wasn’t awake in the ice. I’m not even forty up here, you know.” He tapped at his temple. Then dropped his fingers and his eyes. “Bucky’s way older. He was awake. He’ll know better. He gets tired too these days. His healing factor isn’t what it used to be.”

Brett left the Cap residence with his notebook in hand, a bad taste in his mouth, and a weight in his belly.

If Cap was right, then what would happen to him when the serum finally wore off?

Would he die?

Or would he just suffer for the rest of however long it took him to reach old age?

The man had already been alive for a century, to force him to endure another in ill health seemed cruel. Cruel and unusual.

And that was just Cap. What would happen to the others? What if one day the mutations kept changing and transforming to the point where Peter’s worst nightmares actually came true.

Was this a slow process into making these people into the monsters they fought?

f*ck.

No wonder the boy was fixating.

There is nothing scarier than becoming the villain of your own story.

He found Wade accidentally. Or rather Wade found him. It was hard to care and he felt too heavy to ask any more questions that day.

“It keeps changing, detective,” Wade said.

The rumor mill of the underworld must have really been churning. Wade already knew his questions.

“So I’ve gathered,” Brett said.

He didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It was making him feel like sh*t and there was not a whole lot he could do here to help anyone.

Wade made a sound that Brett realized belatedly was a sigh. His armor rasped as he folded himself down to join Brett on the park bench.

It was dark.

Wade’s time of night.

The concrete path that wound through the little grassy space looked blue. Almost like a tiny, rushing river.

“It’s not anything special, Mahoney,” Wade said. “It’s not just mutations that change. People change. Every second of every day. We shed skin cells every minute. Change clothes. Change our brains—always deciding what’s wrong and what’s right, day by day. There’s always new sh*t that we’ve gotta be wrapping our minds around. How to be old, how to be sick, how to be healthy, how to talk to other people. Hey, you ever heard the saying that you never step into the same river twice?”

The person sitting next to him wasn’t Deadpool.

“I’ve heard it,” Brett said.

This man was a vet. A young man still, technically, who’d spent his youth bathed in trauma and his present days drenched in blood.

He’d seen and he’d taken more lives than even Brett, professional homicide detective, had and would ever, God willing.

“My old pal Lucky used to say that that was bullsh*t, there’s only so much water on earth. You’re gonna encounter the same water somewhere, at some point,” Wade said.

Brett chuffed a laugh.

“Was Lucky your dad?” he asked.

Wade snorted.

“Not the point. What I’m trying to say is that if you ain’t some forest asshole named Lucky, and you’re down with that hippie logic around rivers, then it only makes sense that you never meet the same person twice. Not even the folks you’ve grown up with or partnered yourself to. So gettin’ yourself all up and twisted over whether or not us poor mutated saps got it hard or harder than anyone else ain’t doing nothing for no one. The facts as they are, Mahoney, are that you shouldn’t be pityin’ all these folks because they’re gonna shrivel away with their mutations.”

Wade peeled off his mask and leaned his chin on his palm. His elbow on his knee.

“They’re gonna die young,” he said. “That’s what we really oughta be pityin’ ‘em for.”

Wade Wilson was a man who could never die.

He was more immortal that even Thor.

“How are you gonna die, Wade?” Brett asked.

Wade scoffed.

“Well, I ain’t,” he said. “Not ‘til my work here is done. So long as business is good, I got a reason to be here. But the second the killin’ and maimin’ ain’t fun anymore, well, you can count me out.”

Brett watched him.

“But how?” he asked.

Wade’s shoulders heaved.

“Can’t tell you, detective,” he said. “Or else I’d have to kill you.”

Yeah.

Yeah, because if anyone else knew, then Wade wouldn’t be the one in control anymore.

Brett leaned back against the bench. Wade stayed with him for another few minutes, then redonned his mask and stood up, Deadpool again.

“Sam f*ckin’ Wilson’s corruptin’ my kids,” Wade informed him. “You got anything to do with that?”

“He wants to help you,” Brett said.

“Yeah, I know,” Wade groused. “sh*t’s annoying as hell. And going through the kids? Man, that’s low.”

Ehn, not really.

“I’ll tell him to go through Red next time,” Brett said.

“Oh, hell no. Red’s soft as butter. The second Wilson realizes that, he’s a goner.”

Yeah, fair.

“Hey, tell him to go through Cable,” Wade decided. “Nate’ll love that.”

Brett chuckled.

He didn’t doubt it.

“Tell me,” Peter said, holding Matt’s face with just enough superstrength that he couldn’t escape no matter how hard he struggled.

Foggy bit his lip and looked over to Brett.

“You need something, detective?” he asked pleasantly. Happy to be back in the office and not standing at a till all day in a bright red apron, probably.

Technically, Brett needed one of these idiots to confirm his current suspect’s gang membership, but honestly? This was a much better use of his time.

“Tell me,” Peter insisted.

“Kid, you have two f*ckin’ eyes, no one knows this better than you,” Matt snarled.

“That’s not the question,” Peter snarled right back.

“You smell normal. You sound normal. You’re not turning into a goddamned spider, alright?”

“If I lay eggs at any point in the next year, this will be on you, you hear me?” Peter threatened. “I’ve asked. I’ve sought help. If it happens, it is not my fault and I will not hear a single egg-joke from either you or the abominable DP, are we clear?”

“Let go, for god’s sake, you tiny demon.”

“Are we clear, Devil?”

“For f*ck’s sake—yes. Yes, we’re clear. Get off already.”

Yeah, a much, much better use of his time.

Chapter 18: raising cain

Chapter Text

It started with a tweet from Peter’s little blurb of letters and numbers. Peter wrote:

“Hi everyone! Happy Halloween! In celebration of the best holiday of the year, I would like to hereby announce that this weekend, I will be Deadpool. Thank you and goodnight.”

Brett did not know what this tweet meant, but he decided that he hated it all the same.

A new account replied to Peter’s, or so Sasha screeched over Amos’s head in the living room. Brett and Kelly, in constant pursuit of putting order to their mother’s house, paused in their sheet-folding party in the back room to take cover.

Sasha slammed open the door as expected and demanded that Brett look, look, look.

Another jumble of letters had indeed responded to Peter’s. It said:

“dd here. seconding Spidey’s notion. I would like to announce that I will also be Deadpool this weekend. Thank you. please don’t message me I’m leaving twitter now forever goodbye.”

Brett felt the vein in his neck start pulsing.

“Daredevil got a twitter,” Sasha told him, beaming. “Daredevil got a twitter.”

No, sweet child. Daredevil had probably gone over to Spidey and said ‘I have a f*cking awful idea, will you help?’ and Spidey said ‘will it destroy Detective Brett Mahoney’s soul?” To which Matt must have replied, “yes and then some.” And so to that Peter could only say, “f*ck yes, hold on, lemme make you a twitter.”

This was not ‘getting a twitter.’ This was soul-cracking behavior and Brett would not stand for it.

He stood up. He grabbed his coat. And he went out on the prowl for Franklin Nelson.

“I have nothing to do with this,” Foggy said.

“Make him stop before I do,” Brett said back.

“Come on, man. Lighten up,” Foggy huffed. “They’re just having some fun. You are aware that you don’t have to be the fun police, right?”

Brett was not the fun police. Brett was the real police. And the real police had a problem with Deadpool—multiple problems in fact.

“They’re gonna cause mass hysteria,” Brett said. “Fogs, you can’t let him do this.”

“They have literally announced their shenanigans on twitter, Mahoney,” Foggy jabbed. “As far as I am concerned, that was a PSA. All is fair in love and Halloween, man. If you’ve got a problem, go talk to Matt.”

“If I can’t be Wade, then I’m dressing up as you,” Murdock sniffed over his paperwork. “It’s your choice, detective.”

f*ck this man and the horse he rode in on.

“No, I’ve gotta be Wade,” Peter said.

“Why?” Brett asked in what he liked to think was a calm voice.

“’Because last year, Wade dressed up as me and was a real ass about it,” Peter said. “This is war.”

You had to be kidding.

“f*ck off, detective, I ain’t tellin’ you.”

“You do know what Red and Spidey are planning don’t you?” Brett asked Wade’s retreating back. Wade’s shoulders stopped shifting for a long moment. Then he snickered. Then he cackled.

“Oho, trust me, I know,” he said.

Brett was at a loss. He’d tried, really he had. The only thing to do now was wait and mentally prepare for the worst, he supposed.

He was anticipating a load of copy cats, really. He’d filled his mental map of the weekend with an endless line of drunk and aggressive Spidermen and Deadpools, so when Friday came around and he found himself looking instead at lines upon lines of the usual vampires and zombies waiting outside the bars of 9^th avenue, he should have been relieved.

He was not.

He was paranoid.

“You’re gonna break your teeth grinding them like that,” Maynard pointed out next to him in her own patrol suit for the night. To get into the spirit, she’d put on a headband with a couple of bees bobbing around on wires attached.

“I can’t find them yet, but I know they’re here,” Brett told her with narrowed eyes.

“Brett—”

“If you call me the ‘fun police’ one more f*ckin’ time—”

“We oughta put a siren on you.”

Friday night came and went without a hitch. Then Saturday night.

But Sunday night?

Woho.

No.

“You guys might want to move back a couple of blocks,” Hawkeye the Younger, dressed suspiciously as Hawkeye the Elder, told Brett and Maynard with what was absolutely not her own bow in her hands.

“What are you scheming?” Brett asked her.

“I’m not scheming anything; I’m just here to shoot Clint in the ass,” Kate said, refreshingly straightforward about it.

“Why the warning then?” Maynard pressed.

Kate looked up at her with pity in her eyes.

“’Cause sh*t’s about to get real,” she said.

Brett had been mistaken in thinking that Matt and Peter would confine their activities to their respective home bases.

He had also been mistaken to think that they were the only two in on this Deadpool joke.

He looked up from his phone at 11pm and saw the folks lining each side of the street starting to stop, turn around and point. When he turned to see what they were pointing at up the road, he was met with not one, not two, but three Deadpools standing in a line.

Peter was the most easily recognizable of them because compared to f*cking Barnes, he was about the size and breadth of a penny. Matt stood in the middle of those two, a happy medium as usual.

People lost their goddamn minds. The crowd became a sea of cellphones held up high, recording what was no doubt going to be an event to remember.

“Wil-son,” Barnes sang. “Where are you, darlin’? Olly olly oxen free, you massive waste of space and humanity!”

Oh fun.

So they were feuding again, those two.

That explained so much.

Brett really had to give it to Barnes, he knew where to stab Wade where it hurt. The man had gone and taken Wade’s suit and his teammates.

If that was anything less than a declaration of war, Brett’s name wasn’t Mahoney.

“Well, well, well,” Wade’s voice called back from the other side of the street.

The phones all smoothly flew his way to capture two of the biggest, buffest Captain Americas the world had ever seen standing on the roofs of cars in the street; between them stood Wade’s pal Cable with his giant f*ck-off cyborg arm, dressed in JB’s characteristic taut, black, strappy leather vest.

“So we meet again, Sergeant Bane-of-Our-Existence,” Wade called.

It took Brett a moment to recognize the guy on the other car as Frank Castle, who must have finally had it with something that Matt had done and had signed on to destroy him through whatever means possible.

The message was pretty clear between these two teams: f*ck you and all your goddamn cows.

Barnes made a derisive noise.

“You don’t deserve to wear that suit,” he barked across the street.

“Well you do deserve to wear that one,” Wade called back sweetly. “Whaddya think of the back, huh? Sexy, no?”

Wade shouted out of nowhere following that remark and Brett tensed only to realize that that hadn’t been a bullet that had gone flying there; Peter had nabbed Wade in the face with a ball of web.

“Oh, good job. Nice hit,” Barnes praised him.

Peter preened.

Wade swore and got the web off his face, only for it to be stuck on his hand.

“You little—traitor!” he barked at Peter.

“Dickface!” Peter called back.

Wade gasped.

“Do you kiss your mother with that—”

He reeled back again at the second volley of web.

Peter dropped into in a hunch, prepared to gun it at whatever came next. Matt held a hand out to steady him, though.

“Easy,” he said. “We’ve got what someone wants.”

He reached back and painstakingly drew one of the swords out of the scabbard strapped across his back and Wade went from swearing to dead still across the way.

“Don’t you f*ckin’ dare, Red,” he threatened.

Matt jerked his elbow and sent the blade out straight with his arm, pointing down at that asphalt.

It was a moment before it dawned on Brett that he probably really did know how to use it.

“Don’t you f*cking dare,” Wade warned.

Matt held still but co*cked his head naughtily to the side.

“Oops,” he said, and dropped the thing.

The clang and rattle and grate of the sword against the asphalt did something to Wilson. His hands leapt to his face and clawed themselves into fists in horror. He seemed to be saying something, but he was too far away and talking too quietly for Brett to catch it.

“We moving now?” Peter asked the other two anxiously.

“Nope,” Matt said.

Peter shivered.

Wade pressed his palms against the sides of his forehead across the way. Barnes leaned over and stomped on the sword so that a second clang rang out.

Wade’s head snapped up; the black mask he’d pulled on under the Captain America cowl was unreadable.

“Now?” Peter repeated more urgently.

“Barnes?” Matt deferred with just a hint of detectable anxiety.

“Stand steady,” Barnes ordered.

“We’re gonna die, we’re gonna die,” Peter started to sing quietly to the amusem*nt of the crowd close enough to hear him.

Barnes stomped on the very end of the blade so that it rocketed up into the air; Matt caught it without needing to be told, then realized what he’d done and directed what was sure to be a suddenly horrified expression at his hand.

Peter had stopped singing. Everyone on both sides of the street was focused in on Matt.

“Now,” Barnes ordered.

And all hell broke loose.

Matt could have been an Olympic sprinter with the way that he’s spun around and gunned it down the street. Although, to be fair, if Brett had Wade Wilson that pissed off right behind him, he probably could have been an Olympic sprinter himself.

Apparently, the idea here was a keep-a-way type of situation, because as soon as Wade’s first heel hit Peter and Barnes’s held line, they each threw shoulders into him, shouting behind them at Matt to f*cking go, man.

Wade was a big guy, but even he couldn’t shake The Winter Soldier and Spiderman.

That’s what his new allies were for.

Castle swept in hard and fast from the left and caught Peter around the waist.

Peter was a strong motherf*cker, that was to be sure, but he had an Achilles heel and that was being maybe 115lbs soaking wet. Castle plucked him right up off his feet and dropped him down onto the asphalt before launching himself at Barnes. Barnes struggled to keep a hand on Wilson while fending off Castle’s shoving.

Peter got up just to be re-picked up and dropped into a nearby dumpster by Wade’s hulking pal Cable. Cable slammed the lid closed just as Peter’s fingers hit the edge and the shout of pain that resulted echoed metallically. Brett winced and felt a strong urge to go help the kid out, but he had his own hands full at the moment, trying to ward people and their goddamn phones back from the battle.

Cable flexed his metal fingers into a fist, but Barnes saw it coming and made a very wise and calculated move to get the hell out of the line of fire. He ducked low, sacrificing his grip on Wade. Wade broke through the group and took off after Matt.

“SPIDEY,” Barnes shouted, now preoccupied with trying to keep distance been him and Cable.

Peter punched the dumpster lid hard enough that it crashed back. He leapt out onto the lip and danced out of Castle’s sudden attention and reach. He nearly slipped backwards when he ran out of lip to stand on. The crowd gasped and shouted out, trying to warn him.

He caught himself with a spray of web onto the wall and then, realizing that Castle was severely lacking in sticky fingers, he jumped from the dumpster to the wall and scampered on up onto the roof. And then away he went, tearing back the way his usual teammates had gone.

Cable and Castle paused in their violence to assess the new situation; they made eye contact, then abandoned their stations to go give chase after Peter.

Barnes picked himself up from where he’d been crowded to the ground, swearing.

He finally, finally made eye contact with Brett.

“Is this strictly necessary?” Brett asked him as the group of girls in front of him shrieked encouragement at Barnes.

Barnes shrugged.

“No,” he said. “But it’s fun.”

Brett had to radio in to Harlem that they had a disaster headed their way. In some respects, he was grateful because that sh*t was now out of his assigned jurisdiction for the night. But on the other hand, there was no way Matt was going to keep that sword.

None.

Brett felt bad for Foggy’s first aid kit more than anyone else.

Things quieted down for a while once the vigilantes had cleared the area. Lots of folks were watching the battle continue on different social media livestreams on their phones.

It was Brett’s understanding that, as of half-past 11, Matt no longer had the sword. Barnes had it again and was truly enduring hell to keep it.

Brett wondered if Sam and Steve were watching the streams and if they were supportive of this behavior or if they’d gone back to their ‘yeah, just f*cking deck him’ attitude.

Maynard said that she could understand them; if she had a partner like Barnes, she too would want his ass occasionally handed back to him so as to keep him humble.

It was a good and fair point.

Around midnight, Brett got a call from Midtown that there was Hawkeye on Hawkeye violence headed their way.

He and Maynard prepared themselves for the onslaught.

Apparently, at some point in the night, folks had realized that they could drink, or they could chase one of the vigilante battles happening around town. And chasing the vigilante battle was essentially a costume parade with a show.

Brett kind of wished they’d just stayed back and drank.

Hawkeye the elder came to Hell’s Kitchen, crashing into walls with the discretion of an attack dog and tailed by no less than thirty dedicated fans. The fans took cover and filmed as Barton slammed into brick again and again and then seemed to disappear around these into the darkness with sudden and stunning efficiency. Kate rolled up about a hundred yards behind, bow co*cked and eyebrows set, clearing alley after alley. Hunting.

“Where are you?” she sang. Then made kissy noises. “Come on out, little birdie, don’t be shy,” she entreated.

Barton was an idiot, but he was no fool. He stayed dead still in that alley.

The folks on the side of the street around Brett had settled down and gone quiet; they all knew where he was hiding. And knowing that before Kate did made watching the two of them akin to watching a real-life horror movie.

Brett hadn’t realized that he was on Barton’s side until Kate went still, staring into the darkness of the right alley.

The whole street had gone still and quiet in anticipation.

Kate made kissy noises.

“I know you’re in there,” she sang softly.

Brett honestly didn’t know how Barton was going to get out of this one.

Kate held her position for several beats. Then took a step forward. As soon as she did, a leg swept out of the dark and sent her stumbling. She hit hands and knees and Barton stepped out of the alley while she moaned in pain. He picked up the bow and tsked.

“We’ve talked about this, Katie-Kate,” he said. “You gotta watch your legs.”

She slammed a fist into his shin.

The cry was immediate.

“Watch your own f*cking legs,” Kate snarled.

“You little sh*t—”

Kate shoved herself up and grabbed for the bow; Barton fell back away from her and almost stumbled. He seemed to melt back into the darkness of the alley.

“FIGHT ME,” Kate roared into the dark after him. There was nothing.

“FIGHT. ME,” Kate called again.

“No!”

They all looked up to see Barton cuddling his bow to his chest up high, almost to the roof.

“Ooooh, I’m gonna getcha,” Kate murmured to herself with balled fists at her sides. “Just you wait. I’m gonna crush you, you--”

The flick and clatter of something hard brought her attention back to the street. And to Brett’s horror and the newly formed crowd’s delight, there stood The Widow herself, wearing Kate’s purple costume and making it work for her.

“No way,” Kate breathed, dropping her fists.

“NAT, NO,” Barton shouted from the roof. “DON’T DO THIS. YOU DON’T WANT TO DO THIS.”

The Widow swayed her hips as she waltzed forward to Kate. She held out a bow. It looked much different from the one Kate had just been using.

“Make him beg,” The Widow commanded. Then smiled. “I’ve got your six, Hawkeye.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kate said. She grabbed the bow and whipped a grin up at Barton as he was clinging to a chimney. She held up the bow.

Brett couldn’t quite see the look on Barton’s face, but he knew it was one of betrayal.

The Hawkeyes and the Widow didn’t stay much longer than that. They had a town to paint red, or, in their case, purple. That meant that Brett and Maynard got a good twenty minutes of peace and drunk people before Brett stood back and bumped into someone. He turned around to see Peter standing there, staring up at him.

He held out a hand and wiggled his fingers.

Brett did not respond in kind.

Hell no.

He was not getting involved in this nightmare.

“Give it to her,” he said, pointing at Maynard.

Peter stared up at her through his much smaller, rounder Deadpool mask.

“I don’t want it,” Maynard told him politely.

Peter dropped his face and shoulders and looked sad.

The folks around them fell for it like chumps.

“Hey, little buddy, I’ll take it,” a man dressed as Tarzan, who Brett could only otherwise describe as a ‘bro’ said.

Peter lit up and stared up at him, then excitedly produced, not a sword, not a gun, but a cellphone.

He put it in this guy’s paw and squeezed it with both of his own in gratitude.

Tarzan frowned at the phone when Peter let go.

“Is this yours?” he asked.

Peter shook his head.

“Whose is it?”

Brett almost covered his face with secondhand embarrassment.

Man, Rule One: do not ask questions of vigilantes. Even the small, harmless-looking ones. You will hate the answer. There are no good answers.

“Mr. Castle’s,” Peter said simply.

Tarzan briefly reconsidered all his life choices.

“Here, I have a better idea,” he told Peter kindly. “Let’s give this to the barkeep, huh?”

“I can’t go in there,” Peter said completely honestly, pointing at the bar. “Will you do it for me?”

Tarzan realized now that he’d been taken. Had. Drawn in by the sad puppy face and twisted around into complicity.

“How about we give this to Mr. Officer here?” he said, shoving the phone into Brett’s unwilling hands. “Isn’t that great? That’s what police officers are for, right?”

Peter beamed at him and nodded.

He’d gotten his way in the end, this little sh*t.

“I’m calling Homeland,” Maynard announced.

“Yeah, call Metro Gen while you’re at it,” Brett told her miserably.

“I won’t let him hurt you,” Peter told him. “And besides. He’s wet. He can’t run as fast.”

Brett stared down at him.

“Tell me you did not just push the Punisher into the river,” he said.

“I can’t,” Peter whined. “Lying is a sin.”

Castle turned up right on time for Maynard to get off the phone with Homeland. He was not the least bit threatened by the apparent incoming action. He walked right up to Peter standing in front of Brett and, when the kid fanned himself out into defense mode, grabbed the front of his suit and held him up to eye level.

“I’m not playing anymore,” he said plainly.

Peter put his hands on top of Castle’s.

“Me either,” he said.

Castle went down from a surprise elbow from the side. He dropped Peter. Matt lurched over and snatched the phone out of Brett’s grip and went tearing off into the street, with Castle nearly on top of him.

He skidded to a halt at the end of the block and pitched the phone out over the rooftops like a left-fielder throwing for home.

Castle steadied. Matt steadied, too.

Castle patted at Matt’s shoulder. Once, twice—

Alright, police intervention now. A public strangling was about to take place.

Just when Brett’s heart lurched in realization that Castle might actually kill Matt in the next couple of seconds if he couldn’t get the guy’s hands off of him, a whistle sounded out and Castle froze.

Barnes, lit from below, held up the phone and kicked his feet on top of a telephone pole. Castle dropped Matt, who shook himself out and gasped. Brett kept a hand on him to make sure he was still breathing.

“Make a deal with me, Francis,” Barnes called down. “Your phone for a side-switch.”

Castle sneered up at him.

“I ain’t playing anymore,” he said.

“You want this?” Barnes sneered back, holding up the cell phone. “Then you’re playin’. If not, we’re seein’ what kinda fall this bad boy can withstand. Choice is all yours, bub.”

Barnes looked a little worse for wear, Deadpool suit notwithstanding. He’d yanked off the mask and his hair was all over the place; a lion’s mane, nearly.

Castle considered this offer over the ever-increasing presence of civilians and volume of sirens.

“Give it here,” he said.

Barnes chucked the phone down and Castle dipped forward to catch it. He checked it over and crammed it back into his pocket. Peter ducked under his arm and he jumped.

“Take that one,” Barnes ordered. “And disable your dear, angry robotic friend. There’s only room for one tin can in this streetfight and that’s me. Got it?”

Castle scowled at the phone-thief under his arm, but true to form, he didn’t try to hurt him.

“Take it again and you and me and that goddamn river are having a long, deep talk,” he threatened the kid. Peter pressed himself all up against Castle’s side in defiance.

Castle scoffed and reached back to yank his Cap cowl back on. Peter grabbed his hand and dragged him off to the end of the block. The two of them vanished around a corner.

Once the they were gone and the screech of Homeland Security’s tires filled the air, Brett turned very slowly to Matt who had since re-gotten his bearings.

“Does this make you happy?” he asked.

Matt snapped up straight and wriggled in delight.

Yeah, no.

Of course it did.

Matt and Barnes got the f*ck out of there just as Agent Dinah Madani threw open her car door and got up in Brett’s face.

He could only point in the direction Castle had gone and say, “he’s with Spiderman.”

Homeland took that for what it was and went a-chasing.

“Maybe,” Maynard said gently, “You should have told them that Spiderman is temporarily Deadpool.”

Yeah, maybe.

But if Brett’s life couldn’t be easy, then it wasn’t fair for theirs to be.

It was nearly 2am when the fight came to a close. It didn’t finish where it started. Well, the Red Team vs. the Faux-Caps anyways. The Hawkeye vs. Hawkeye showdown had started in Brooklyn and indeed it ended in Brooklyn, according to twitter.

Brett found himself oddly invested in the outcome of that one, although he had the feeling that any battle the Widow entered, she won. Still, she didn’t pick Barton to be her main partner for no reason. Maybe she’d finally driven him to breaking out some of that hyper-competence that he hid so well.

The Deadpools vs. Faux-Caps, as Brett understood it, ended somewhere down in the East Village. Homeland was that way, so Brett could only imagine that Castle had at least been present in the area. He presumed that Barnes had taken victory.

He was surprised to find out the next day that it had been a draw in the end.

Goldberg showed him a video of what looked like a standoff between Barnes and Wilson, Wilson holding a recaptured blade to the other’s neck and Barnes with a mean-looking knife hovering over—surprise, surprise, Peter’s chest.

Now that was one way to get what you want.

Wilson asked for a draw in the video. Barnes huffed and agreed and they pulled themselves off Pete who popped right up, unharmed; he didn’t seem to have considered himself in mortal danger, although that might just have been his faith in the older fellas sustaining him.

Brett noted a suspicious lack of Matt in this video.

“Oh, he’s fine. Just dumb as sh*t,” Foggy assured Brett at lunch that day.

“Guy almost got strangled last night,” Brett pointed out.

“He almost gets strangled every night,” Foggy said grumpily over the top of his coffee.

“Is Pete alright?”

“Are you kidding? He had so much fun. Kid doesn’t understand why everyone’s motherin’ him all of a sudden.”

Ah. So the older folks had read Barnes’s threat for what it really was. No doubt there was much fussing and checking and double-checking of the baby to do.

“That boy’s gonna grow up fearless,” Brett sighed.

“If he usurps Matt’s title, he’s gonna have to be,” Foggy hummed.

“Tell me this isn’t an annual thing,” Brett pleaded.

“No, it’s my understanding that this is more of a bi-annual feud.”

Oh, beautiful. Perfect. Just what Brett had always wanted.

Chapter 19: dining with wolves

Chapter Text

Brett drew his gun with full intention to shoot a f*cker in the alley, but all he got when he got his light on was a tangle of limbs and black clothes.

Then all he got was a punch to the head.

A visit to the ER.

A subsequent order to be off of work for a week.

And finally, his mom suffocating him in completely unnecessary distress.

When she went to the senior center two days into his house arrest, he grabbed a jacket and made his escape.

“You okay to be out and walkin’, detective?” Barnes asked him.

No. But that didn’t matter.

“I need you to find someone for me,” Brett said. Barnes stopped in his abandoned phone booth inspection to co*ck an eyebrow Brett’s way.

“You sayin’ you need the Winter Soldier, Mahoney?”

No.

He just needed someone better at tracking that he was. And he didn’t feel like asking an officer right now because he didn’t like what he suspected he was about to find.

Barnes told him to go home, he’d think about what they’d discussed. He was uncomfortable now, too. It just didn’t make any sense—none at all. There had to be something else—someone else.

But things as they were.

Matt was nowhere to be found.

Peter slipped out of the woodwork around 2:30 the following afternoon and came all the way to Hell’s Kitchen to watch Brett watch him down from the window of his apartment. How the kid knew where he lived was no great mystery. The boy was too smart for his own damn good and Foggy, try as he might, was bound to leave some personal device unlocked in the kid’s presence.

Brett closed the window blinds and made his way downstairs.

“This is beyond you, detective,” Peter said lowly. His breath made clouds and he kept his hands shoved in his coat pockets and he didn’t look Brett in the eye even once.

“I dunno, Pete. My head’s my business,” Brett noted.

“You don’t know what you’re putting your foot into,” Peter said, even and cold as could be.

“But you do?”

Peter pressed his lips together.

“It’s only going to upset you,” he said.

“And it doesn’t upset you?”

“It does,” Peter breathed.

“Peter.” Brett stopped walking. “Sweetheart, look at me.”

Peter glanced his way, but otherwise refused prolonged eye contact. Brett frowned. It had been ages since Peter had been this closed off with him.

“Peter,” he repeated.

Peter glanced up again. But that was all Brett was getting.

It was f*cking weird. Just strange.

“You’re sixteen years old, kid,” Brett said. “I’m nearly twice your age and I’ve got professional training in criminal activity. If you think I can’t handle something, you’re makin’ unfounded assumptions.”

Peter shrugged ever so slightly.

“If you say so, detective,” he said in a cloud of white smoke.

Then he turned and walked away. Alone.

Brett watched his back with the tips of his ears stinging with the cold.

JB: hey Mahoney

BM: what’s up

JB: listen man

JB: I don’t say this a lot

JB: but you need to drop this

BM: is there a reason for that?

JB: just f*cking drop it man it’s not worth it. take your concussion and go.

Hawkeye the elder must have heard from Barnes what Brett was looking for. He didn’t even open his door. Brett knew he was home. There were still-wet paw prints in the frost outside the door.

He didn’t want to take the next step. Really, he didn’t. But what choice did he have here? No one else was talking. Gates were being closed all over. Shields came up and suddenly the once-loud city seemed sluggish and quiet. And it wasn’t just the cold.

It was heavier than that.

“Detective Mahoney,” Wade greeted languidly at the predetermined bar. He drummed his fingers against his gnarled cheek. “Glad to see you’re learning to play the game. How might I be of assistance to you?”

Wade had never been this cordial.

But then again, Brett had never hired him before.

“Where’s Red?” he asked.

Wade grinned.

“Which one?” he asked.

Brett was not hallucinating. He was not. Wade would neither confirm or deny that he’d seen what Brett had.

But he definitely wasn’t denying it. And he was absolutely covering for Matt, wherever he was.

“Having a nap,” Wade said when Brett prodded him around the Matt Murdock question. But for the second, more nebulous question, he just smirked wider and wider like a shark.

“I don’t know if you can handle it, Mahoney,” he said, leering. “You tell me, where are your limits, sir?”

What did that mean?

“Whatever you think it means.”

Brett forced himself to keep his head up steady over his shoulders. He squeezed his fingers together across the sticky table from one of the bloodiest murderers New York had ever known.

“Hit me,” he said.

Wade laughed and for just a second there, he sounded like the devil himself.

Wade told Brett a story. Not an explanation. A story.

Once upon a time, he said, the world was never whole and nothing they’d ever known had ever been real or set in stone.

And one day, in a land far, far away, some people were born who were cursed to be extraordinary.

At the same time, in a land further away than that, people with the same faces as those others were born and were cursed to be ordinary.

And at the same time as that, in a land much closer than anyone wanted to believe, some people were born who were cursed to be born again and again and again in infinite ways in infinite dimensions.

And their names were—well.

You already know all their names.

“The question now is, detective, what are you willing to believe?” Wade asked with his own fingers folding together between their fellow’s gaps in an imitation of Brett’s.

“Do you believe in fairytales?”

It was colder the next day than it had been any previous. It was only the beginning of November and yet frost and ice had already started dusting the pavement and the leaves jutting out and hanging listlessly from the bushes arranged along the houses on Brett’s street and those which stood guard in front of the police station.

Brett was not allowed back in there yet, the police station. And that was fine with him.

JB: I heard you spoke with wilson

JB: Mahoney listen. Please. For your own sake stop this. drop it. it’s not worth it I promise you. it’s never been worth it. it just complicates things.

BM: why are you so afraid of it JB?

BM: is there something else I should know?

SW: hey brett it’s sam Wilson.

SW: Buck is really worried about you. Like, real people worried, not Winter Soldier worried.

BM: That’s kind of him, but unnecessary.

SW: alright let me just be real honest with you then.

BM: I’d love that.

SW: if you f*ck with this, you will get burnt.

BM: it’s really interesting to me how many of you all are saying this, Sam. And yet none of you are willing to be direct about exactly what the hell is going on. I’ve got DP telling me fairytales, my own childhood best friend ignoring my messages and someone who I have been building a relationship with for nearly a year now has gone missing. and yet no one is doing anything about that. Makes a guy really start to wonder what’s really going on behind the scene with you people, you know that?

SW: I understand that this might be frustrating. And I’m sorry no one is talking. But we have our reasons.

BM: which I presume involve keeping civilians safe and warm in their comfortable houses?

SW: you’re a cop, Mahoney. You aren’t what we are. Or rather, what they are. I was there. It doesn’t feel good, but trust me when I say that I wish I could go back all the time. Every day.

BM: So you’re all happy to scare the living sh*t out of teenager, but not willing to tell a man who got punched in the head by someone who looks EXACTLY like one of his informants what’s going on because I’m too human?

BM: is that how this works, Sam?

SW: Peter has no choice. He is a focal point. He carries this burden more than any of us do and there is nothing anyone can do about it that we know of. We are looking into the problem—not we, as in the Avengers, but we as in our community as a whole. But in the meantime, what we’ve got is Peter and when Peter tells us not to f*ck with it, we drop everything. We’re taking HIS cues, Brett. Not the other way around. I can’t tell you more than that, I’m sorry. That’s already too much.

That was fine, that was all Brett needed.

He found Peter sitting on a swing in an empty park lit by white streetlights. He wasn’t wearing a jacket and his breath puffed out through the suit.

He didn’t swing so much and sway back and forth on his heels, face down. Staring at his knees.

“It’s kind of cold out to be playing, isn’t it, Pete?” Brett asked from the short fence around the playground’s entrance.

Peter swayed. Back and forth, back and forth.

“I thought you’d come here,” he said.

“Did you, now?”

Peter nodded, still swaying.

“You’re angry,” he noted. Brett pursed his lips. He wasn’t wrong. Brett was angry.

“I’m not angry with you,” he clarified.

Peter shivered. It had to be in the thirties. Where was his coat?

“Do you believe Wade?” Peter asked.

Ah. Of course they’d talked.

Brett waited and watched as Peter flexed his knuckles on the chains holding the swing up to its beam.

“I don’t know what to believe,” Brett admitted.

“If you believe Wade, there’s no turning back,” Peter said. “Things only get more complicated from there. You don’t need to believe him. He’s got problems. He tells stories and lies all the time.”

“Sounds like you’re giving me a push here, kid,” Brett said.

Peter shut up and kicked off into a short swing this time. He caught the ground with his red toes and shivered again.

“Tell me what you believe, detective,” Peter whispered. “And I’ll tell you as much as I can.”

Do you believe in fairytales, detective?

“I believe that you wouldn’t lie to me, Peter,” Brett said. “And I believe that there are things which I will never understand about the universe. And I believe that there are extraordinary people in this world with all kinds of powers and stories to tell. Is that enough for you?”

Peter’s shoulders rose with the breath he sucked in.

“I’m not supposed to tell,” he whispered into a cloud of condensation.

“Did Stark tell you that?” Brett asked, stepping forward through the playground’s gate with care.

“Dr. Banner,” Peter said.

“Why you, Peter?”

“I don’t know.”

“You sure?”

Peter’s fingers curled tighter around the chains. His body and shoulders seemed to be lightly trembling.

“Peter?”

He rode out the chill and finally lifted his wide, white eyes to meet Brett’s.

“I’m not supposed to tell anyone,” he said.

“But you’ll tell me,” Brett finished for him, stepping in closer and settling down into the freezing swing next to Peter’s red and blues.

“They’ll know I told you,” Peter murmured.

“They already know I’m looking for answers.”

“Matt’s been hurt.”

“I gathered that.”

Peter took in a shuddering breath.

“We can’t talk here,” he said.

Peter changed into street clothes. He wore a jacket that was at least three sizes too big for him and had put all his clothes on, on top of his suit. His lips were nearly purple. They got paler and pinker in the light of the 24 hour diner he’d known the location of off the top of his head. He rubbed his fingers quietly over the top of a cup of tea.

Brett hadn’t seen anyone order tea at a diner in years. But this one had wanted chamomile and milk and sh*tty plastic packets of honey.

It was as though he was trying to comfort himself.

Brett held his own cup of coffee and let the warmth leech into his fingers.

“Go on,” he encouraged.

Peter shivered, even inside from the cold.

“A couple months back, I started hearing calls from people who I couldn’t see,” he said.

“What kind of calls? Like voices?” Brett asked.

“No. Calls. People screaming. Calling for help. There was one person screaming for help. And I tried calling back and I tried to reach them, but no matter where I went in the city, it was like he was just—just there, out of reach.”

He?

“He,” Peter confirmed. “Just him at first. But after a while, I shut up and listened. Listened as hard as I could and there were others. All calling back to him. We were all calling back to this same person. He was scared. He was lost. And everyone was calling back the same things. It was like—”

Peter sucked in a deep breath.

“It was like we were all the same person,” he said. “We all wanted to help. I’ve never heard so many people wanting to help. But it was the same thing, over and over. He screamed and people would call back, but he wouldn’t answer. And everyone would be calling over and over ‘where are you? I can’t find you. Where are you? I want to help you.’ But no one was getting anywhere and sometimes he’d scream louder and sometimes he’d get really quiet, like he was hurt and falling asleep. And I couldn’t find him, detective. I looked everywhere. Everywhere.”

Brett leaned his elbows on the table.

“He wasn’t real,” he said.

“I knew he was, though,” Peter said, stirring his tea. “I just knew it. In my gut. I started talking to him. Just comforting him when he started to get really upset. I didn’t know if he could hear me—it seemed like he couldn’t, but I couldn’t just not do anything. You can’t—he sounded like he was dying, detective. I couldn’t—anyways. I was talking to him in my head, but I didn’t realize I was talking to him out loud sometimes. He was so real. So, so real.” Peter’s eyes were pleading. Pleading for understanding. Pleading for Brett not to think he was going insane.

“Did it help at all?” Brett asked.

Peter dropped his eyes in relief.

“No,” he said. “Colonel Rhodes heard me. Then Mr. Stark. Then Dr. Banner. They thought something was wrong—with me. And that was fair. I must have seemed pretty sick. But still, they called my aunt and she came and Dr. Cho called Dr. Turner and she did a bunch of things with me and said that she didn’t think it was anything like what Wade has. ‘Cause the people—they were people. Not voices. They didn’t talk to me at all. So Dr. Banner took some blood and did some tests and found this weird something. It’s got to do with my mutation. It’s like.”

Peter frowned in trying to find the words.

“It’s like. I don’t—it’s like it was lighting up. Dr. Banner had never seen anything like it before, so he talked to Thor about it, ‘cause Thor knows all kinds of things about the world that he takes for granted and doesn’t tell anyone and he said, ‘oh, that’s funny, he’s been linked up.’ And so we were all like, ‘what’s linked up?’ And he said that I was linked up with a me in a different universe from us, which was nuts. Obviously. But he said it wasn’t. He said that it happened sometimes; that dimensions or universes are like soap bubbles, all bunched together and slipping and sliding against each other. There’s just an eensy, weensy bit of space in-between them, and someone—a me from somewhere, had managed to get himself wriggled in there somehow and was lighting all of the versions of himself up from there. The only way to make it stop happening was to get him out from there and to close up all the holes that had let him get there to begin with.”

That sounded…complicated.

“Yeah, even Mr. Stark wasn’t so sure how we’d make that happen,” Peter sighed. He’d still barely touched his tea.

“So what did you end up doing?” Brett asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Just one day, it—the screaming—it just stopped.”

Huh.

“And everything went back to normal, I presume?” Brett said.

Peter huffed a little.

“I met him,” he said.

“Sorry, what?”

“I met him, the one who got stuck in between all of the universes,” Peter said. “It was a mistake. He thought he had died. Everyone from his home thought he had died. Wilson Fisk—his Wilson Fisk, the one in his universe—had killed him with his—”

Peter gulped in air and shook his head.

“He killed him,” he said more simply. “But this Wilson Fisk was searching for his family, I guess they’d died. And he got it into his head he would get someone brilliant to make a machine for him which would let him get them back—it would take them from alternate universes and give them back to him. And the guy, the Peter Parker who got stuck, went to stop him ‘cause he knew that that couldn’t end well. He’s Spiderman, too. So he thought he’d go stop Fisk before anything got started, but it didn’t work. Fisk killed him. And then while he wasn’t looking, his brilliant scientist took that Peter’s body and did things to it to put him in a kind of stasis, half in and half out of the hole she’d made between the universes. So he couldn’t die all the way. He got better even, except he was scared, ‘cause his brain was trapped in a loop. He just kept dying and he was scared.”

Brett’s throat ached. He picked up his napkin and gave it to Peter to press to his welling and spilling eyes.

“But he’s okay now?” he asked gently.

Peter sniffed hard and swallowed.

“I met him,” he repeated.

Brett sighed.

“Is he nice?” he asked.

“There are thousands of them,” Peter hiccupped. “Millions. There are more Spidermen than you can imagine. More Captain Americas. Tony Starks. Wade Wilsons. Millions, billions—there are infinite universes, detective. And this one Wilson Fisk and his one scientist made hole just big enough for one line of connection between all of them to come through and it just happened to be made through a Spiderman. And now I’m connected to all of them—well. I’m like, significantly connected to a handful of Spidermen from a couple specific universes. But we’re all generally connected to each other. If we know someone, we can find them in our heads and reach out to them and if we try really, really hard, they can feel us and reach back and we can meet.”

Peter sighed and rubbed a thumb across the lip of his mug.

“We can help each other,” he said.

He lifted his eyes to Brett.

“Sometimes, we can bring people with us when we go to meet another Spiderman,” he said.

Brett frowned.

“When you ‘go meet’ another Spiderman?” he repeated. “What do you mean, you ‘go?’”

“I mean that if I reach out to a Spidey and they reach back to me, we can make our two soap bubbles touch each other like this.”

Peter curled his hands into circles and held them with the knuckles facing each other.

“And once they’re good and smooshed, we can open them up like this.”

He lifted the tips of his fingers so that he had a bridge between the two circles he’d made.

“And then we can move between them. To an extent, obviously. When you’re in someone else’s universe, it doesn’t always want you there, so you kinda glitch. All your cells freak out and start working really hard to cope. Because Spideys have a healing factor, we do okay in each others’ verse, but normal folks’ cells start to die faster than usual, so they can’t be in the verses for as long as we can and it takes them longer to recover afterwards.”

Brett breathed as evenly as he could. Peter was watching him. Peter was explaining something so strange and bizarre and impossible in such detail that calling bullsh*t seemed like it would crush him.

“What does this have to do with the man I saw?” he asked as calmly as he could.

Peter dropped his gaze and picked up his tea, finally.

“People can come with us into the verses,” he said. “But sometimes, they force their way through. The man you saw—he’s a Matt Murdock from a different universe. He doesn’t play well with others. The Spiderman of that universe is here right now in this one. She’s trying to get her hands on him and drag him back to their universe.”

“What’s he come here for?” Brett asked.

“Wilson Fisk,” Peter said.

Brett tipped his head and narrowed his eyes.

“To kill him?” he asked.

Peter pursed his lips and shook his head.

“To use him,” he said.

What now?

“As a bargaining chip. The Wilson Fisk in Gwen—Spiderwoman’s universe has just gotten out of jail. He wants his throne back. But Gwen’s Matt Murdock doesn’t want that.”

Well, at least all these Matt Murdocks had that in common.

The corner of Peter’s mouth twitched.

“He doesn’t want it,” he said, “Because he’s Kingpin.”

Brett’s breath froze in his chest. He slowly set down his coffee cup.

“He’s the Kingpin, this other Murdock,” he repeated. Peter nodded.

“He’s an assassin,” he said. “He was Fisk’s right-hand man until Fisk went to prison; Fisk had him run his crime circles for him in the meantime, but Murderdock took them over as his own. He doesn’t want to give them up now, he’s built them out bigger and better than Fisk had.”

Holy sh*t.

“And he wants our Fisk for what? To torture?” he asked.

“As an example,” Peter said. “Gwen won’t let that happen. She’s going to stop him. But she needs help. I want to help her, but Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner and Colonel Rhodes won’t let me.”

The tops of Peter’s knuckles turned white with the force he curled his hands with. Brett watched them and then set his own forearms down on the table.

“Since when did you listen to authority, Peter?” he asked.

Peter’s gaze snapped from his fork and knife to Brett’s face.

“If I want to be an Avenger, I have to learn,” he said spitefully.

“Do you want to be an Avenger?” Brett asked him.

Peter said nothing.

BM: hey foggy. Hope you’re alright. Talked to peter just now about some wild sh*t. He’s starting to sound like wade you know?

BM: hope matt’s okay. Tell him I appreciate him and have head trauma solidarity

He only had to wait fifteen minutes.

FN: I’m going to murder that motherf*cker brett.

BM: not very lawyerly of you.

FN: He nearly killed matt

BM: he sounds like the type

FN: Matt can usually handle himself. I don’t know what happened. He’s trained to be a weapon, brett. How do you out weapon a weapon?

BM: you find the second non-lethal one in the city.

FN: what did Peter tell you

BM: a lot. It’s very confusing. But I think I’ve got the important points of it.

BM: any idea why the avengers are pinning him down?

FN: probably because it was a spiderman who brought this f*ckhead into this universe, and so they don’t want anyone finding out that they could use pete to access another universe. Imagine what HYDRA or SHIELD would do to him if they knew.

That was more than fair.

BM: Peter’s angry

FN: wade said this

BM: he wants to help this girl named Gwen

FN: I want to help her, too. But I don’t know how. Matt’s evil twin just vanished. And he stabbed the f*ck out of the only guy in the city who could find him.

Man was clever.

BM: I think peter knows a way. But he’s not telling anyone. Kid’s brewing some rebellion. I dunno if he’s gonna wait for avenger approval.

FN: I’ll see if wade can talk to him

BM: thanks man. For real, give matt my regards.

FN: I will when he wakes up. Claire’s put him on some big drugs for now. Full sentences are challenging.

Matt was safe, then. That was good. If he was with Claire Temple, then Cage, Jones, and Rand were probably setting up a guard for him. In the meantime, though, Brett wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself.

He still had four days to kill.

He decided he’d go home and sleep for a bit. It was late.

SW: Mahoney have you see peter by chance?

BM: saw him last night in a park, someone needs to get that kid a coat. Why

SW: he’s not answering texts and hiding again. Freaking stark out, you know how it is.

Hm. Imagine that.

An hour later, his phone buzzed again.

JB: yo have you seen pete?

BM: I feel like I’ve already had this convo with one of your boys. Maybe ask them?

JB: right right sorry

As if Brett had never been interrogated before.

SR: cop.

BM: cap.

SR: cut the sh*t please.

BM: ???

SR: I am old and tired and frail. What the f*ck did you say to peter?

BM: I told him to get a coat and I bought him a drink, cap. Why are you all texting me? What’s happening?

SR: Mahoney I am an idiot 70% of the time, but the rest of it, I know my head from my ass. What did you say to peter?

BM: I don’t know what to tell you aside from the fact that it’s great that you’ve come to terms with your idiocy. Saves me a lot of trouble in the end.

SR: he trusts you

BM: ha

BM: no he does not. He trusts Franklin Nelson though, maybe try him.

He could say for certain that he’d never that he’d be standing toe to toe with Captain America.

Chapter 20: dining with wolves II

Chapter Text

MM: you are a good friend brett

Now that’s what he liked to hear.

BM: you alive?

MM: yes

BM: scared us for a minute there matt

MM: sorry

BM: is there a plan here that I know nothing about?

MM: yes

BM: glad to hear it. feel better soon yeah?

MM: 10^th & W 46^th Do you have dinner plans tomorrow?

Interesting.

BM: no I’m off duty

MM: Peter and co invite you to join them. Time is 11.

BM: kinda bold of them to make a reservation don’t you think?

MM: not as bold as you’d think. I’ll tell Peter you can make it.

BM: you coming?

MM: no I’m not allowed to drink so what the f*ck is the point

Brett couldn’t help but laugh.

He spent the next day camped out in bed, sneakily reading casefiles that he definitely, certainly hadn’t brought home with him.

Maynard texted him with a sixth sense for his activity levels and asked him where the f*ck the Mitchells' file was.

He then spent a fun hour checking his house for bugs. He found none. He did find a lot of dust, however, and, with all his books and dvds already out on the table and floor, he resigned himself to cleaning the bookshelf.

Which turned into cleaning the kitchen cabinets too, because why the f*ck not?

That in turn, turned into sweeping the floors, scrubbing the counters, bleaching every available surface in the bathroom, and, just when his workphone started screeching in the bedroom, vacuuming out the couch and the carpets.

He turned off the vacuum and went to the bedroom to answer his phone.

It was the Captain.

“Sir?” he said into the receiver.

“Mahoney. Turn on the news.”

Ha. As if Brett had cable. He went and opened his laptop and found a livestream on CNN, then proceeded to place his jaw on the table.

“Do you know anything about this, detective?” the Captain asked.

Forget that.

There were so many of them. There was a black and white Spiderman with blue slippers. And a black and white Spiderman wearing an honest-to-god trenchcoat, which buffeted as he pivoted around the corner of the block with a black and red Spiderman tossed haphazardly over his shoulder in one arm and the smaller black and white Spiderman in the other.

There were one, two, three, four, five blue and red Spidermen gunning it the f*ck away from a building, right on the heels of Mr. Trenchcoat And Goggles. And that speed was warranted apparently, as out from one of the freshly evacuated building’s boarded up doors smashed Wilson Fisk. The man himself, somehow out of Riker’s. Somehow back in a suit.

The Spideys were emphatically not f*cking with that.

One of the guys—not Peter, that was for sure, he was way, way too tall and lanky—took one look over his shoulder and broke out into a panic visible even to Brett’s eyes from his sh*tty laptop screen.

That must have been the Spiderman that Peter had told him about. The one who’d died at Wilson Fisk’s hands. The one who’d been left screaming out for hours and hours, days and days to the rest of them.

Yeah, if Brett turned around and saw the literal cause of his death staring him straight in the face, he’d kick up the speed a couple notches himself.

One of the shorter Spideys, who might have been Peter, but it was hard to tell when they were all wearing similar suits, seemed to sense his compatriot’s anxiety and stopped in the middle of the pavement. This kid whirled around and started running towards Fisk.

Brett covered his mouth.

“Oh my god,” he muttered.

“Yep,” the Captain said.

“I don’t—is this live?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Captain, someone should—”

“People are on it. Rikers is on lockdown. You’re on medical leave. I just need you to tell me one thing, Mahoney, that is it.”

Brett swallowed and watched as, from out of frame, the little black Spiderman came hurtling back onto the scene toward the small Spiderman who had braced himself for impact. He was preparing to be a distraction for the others.

“Yes, sir?” Brett murmured almost absentmindedly.

The red and blue crew came to a halt just before they managed to get out of frame themselves. They’d realized collectively that they were missing one of their guys. They turned back and put on an amazing show of gestures which said ‘WHAT THE f*ck ARE YOU DOING?’ loud and clear back towards the black Spidey and the rogue red and blue munchkin. They started freaking out even harder when the Spiderman with the blue slippers ducked right through their troop, too.

“Were you aware that there were multiple Spidermen, detective?” the Captain asked.

Not like this.

This, Brett could not have imagined in a thousand years.

“No, sir,” he said. “Peter told me that he was the one and only.”

The Captain made a thinking noise through the phone and then sighed.

“Well, I guess it can’t be helped. He must not have known about the others until—well, now, I suppose,” he said. “I guess the task now is figuring out which one is him.”

And a task it would be.

There were four pint-sized Spidermen. The one with the blue slippers was definitely a young girl. The kid in the black, who, between the girl and the brave little red and blue toaster beside him, had planted his feet wide in preparation for Fisk’s oncoming charge, Brett did not think was Peter. He seemed a little too spindly, even for Pete.

That said, another half-sized red and blue suit had just scrambled back to join the line-up and it was anyone’s guess whether or not he was Peter.

Brett couldn’t tell.

What he did know, however, was that that line of kids was about to get trashed.

His heart leapt to his throat and his breath froze in his chest and, at the last possible second, one of the taller Spideys threw out a hand and a line of web to the wall of one of the buildings on the kids’ left hand side. It created a clothesline of sorts right in Fisk’s path. One of the other taller Spiderman lunged low like a pitcher and hurled a ball of web towards the window of the building the troop had just escaped from.

The sh*t that followed happened so fast it was hard to track.

Fisk charged into the web. Trenchcoat appeared out of nowhere to lunge ahead of the line of minors. He met Fisk head on when the web broke.

Two of the tall Spidermen vanished from the frame. The guy who was left had been putting his back into pulling the web he’d thrown as taut as he could; he crashed to the ground when the line broke.

Fisk got two hands on Trenchcoat’s face and started to squeeze.

The minors sprang forward; the two red and blue suits went for Fisk’s hands. The young girl slid under Fisk’s legs and broke out in a run back the way he’d come.

The black Spiderman leapt over the broken web after her but stopped at Fisk’s back. He shouted something to the red and blues from behind Fisk’s massive bulk, and just when those two had gotten Fisk’s hands off of Trenchcoat, a flash of light broke out and Fisk dropped to his knees and started shuddering and jerking violently on the screen.

In the wake of this moment, everything seemed to go still. The black Spiderman took a step back. The last tall Spiderman got up and ran out to put himself between Fisk and this kid. He held firm when Fisk started to move again. When he started to shuffle and stand back up. He turned slowly to loom over the tall Spidey.

Brett couldn’t hear what they were saying but talking was surely happening. The tall Spiderman seemed to be negotiating. He made a lot of gestures with his hands.

Whatever he was saying, it was really getting to Fisk.

Maybe he was explaining the situation.

Maybe he was telling him that he was being used as a prop. Manipulated just the way that he did others.

Whatever it was, Fisk roared and started to throw meaty fists at the tall Spidey who side-stepped and dodged them while pushing the black Spiderman back with him.

“STOP,” the camera’s audio managed to catch from the distance. “STOP THIS. I DON’T WANT TO HURT YOU.”

Dude.

What?

Fisk was trying to kill this guy and he didn’t want to hurt Fisk?

The Spidey caught one of those hands with the side of his head and right on top of the beat following the impact, he slammed a right hook into the side of Fisk’s own head, and the man dropped right then, right there.

The other Spideys went still. The big guy held still a moment himself, as though he was shocked at what he’d done. He then crouched down and checked for a pulse.

There was a heart-stopping moment in between his stillness and the nod of his head that just about gave Brett heartburn.

The Spiderman stood up and made a gesture at the two identical mini Spideys, one of whom felt all over his suit and then yanked out a phone, and even though he was far away from the camera and half concealed, kneeling by what was sure to be a thoroughly-traumatized Trenchcoat, Brett made out the familiar flash of Peter’s highlighter yellow phone case.

Gotcha.

He was on Trenchcoat’s left. Which meant that the kid on the right was from another universe.

Police cars started to arrive on the scene. The bevy of officers that sprang out sent the troop of Spideys to gathering each other up and getting the hell out of dodge. Peter and his twin yanked Trenchcoat up and took him with them as they ran out of frame. The black Spiderman grabbed the big guy’s wrist and ran the other way.

Only then did Brett realize that he was still holding his phone to his ear.

The call had ended.

He put it down on the table and shakily took a seat.

MM: peter wants you have his personal number

Brett’s fingers jittered when he picked up the phone and carried on jittering as he tried to answer the text.

BM: is he okay?

MM: yeah

BM: is his friend with the coat okay?

MM: which one?

BM: trenchcoat

MM: sorry I don’t know that one.

MM: you can ask peter. Foggy will send you his number.

Brett received the text and was surprised to feel like he’d finally jumped a huge hurdle in his and Peter’s working relationship.

Pete had guarded his personal number closely so far.

BM: hey kid this is detective Mahoney. Matt said you wanted something?

PP: oh hey detective! Just wanted to know if we’re still on for dinner.

What the f*ck?

Was this some kind of joke?

BM: are you okay? Are you friends okay? What happened back there?

PP: we’re good. Benj’s goggles are wrecked and he’s sad and blind af atm, but everyone’s more or less in one piece.

Benj? That was Trenchcoat’s name?

Actually, scratch that.

BM: he’s blind????

PP: not like DD. He just can’t see for sh*t is all. He’ll be fine. So we have decided on take out, if that’s cool with you. No one’s got clothes for eating in. Do you like Ethiopian?

This sh*t was surreal.

He didn’t really know how to dress to meet a f*ckload of Spidermen, but he figured that the detective coat wasn’t it. He left it at home. Put on some walking shoes and the jacket his mom bought him three years back. He grabbed a scarf and headed out, feeling weirdly nervous.

Peter told him to come to the orange perch. He named all his perches by colors. This one was orange because of the traffic cones which lived permanently around the staircase up to the rooftop.

Brett brought a first aid kit, just on the off chance it would be needed.

It was freezing and dark on the staircase. He opened the door out onto the roof and nearly shat himself at the sudden rousing cheer that met him.

And there they were.

A f*ckload of Spidermen, gathered like butterflies all over the roof.

Peter, sans mask, stood up to meet him. He came over and beamed up at Brett, then turned back to the others and said, “This is my detective. The good one.”

The Spideys gave a more or less cheerful hello. They were, on the whole, battered and scratched up, but in good spirits. Trenchcoat (or Benj?) squinted Brett’s way and in doing so revealed literally white skin and black hair.

He looked young as f*ck. He turned and flicked the guy next to him in the shoulder, pointed and murmured something.

The Spiderman who responded to him looked exactly like Peter. Exactly like him, except a good ten years older, with wild hair and stubble. He pawed at his suit a bit and produced a glasses case which he offered Trenchcoat. Trenchcoat squinted at that, too.

Bless him.

“Let me introduce folks,” Peter said, tugging lightly at Brett’s sleeve.

“That’s Benj over there with the coat. He’s from 1933; he’s a private investigator.”

Benj put on the glasses the guy next to him offered and freaked out. He practically threw them off.

“That’s Tats,” Peter said, waving at the dude who had just barely saved his glasses from a tragic ending. Tats looked up and smiled and waved.

“He’s from a verse with like, a million copycat Spidermen in it. He’s harnessed their power for evil.”

Tats laughed.

“That’s Blondie,” Peter said, gesturing to a blond guy watching the proceedings with a hand on his chin, partially concealing a smile. He looked like Benj, except he actually had color in his face.

“He’s the multiverse Spiderman,” Peter explained. “He’s the one who was calling out to us all.”

Blondie flickered his fingers in a cutesy little wave without moving his palm from his chin.

“Next to him is Miles. He’s Spidey 2.0 in his and Blondie’s verse.”

Miles was the black-suited Spiderman. He was black boy with sweet cheeks full of baby-fat. He was laid half across the girl next to him’s lap as she held what looked to be a phone out of his reach.

“That’s Gwen,” Peter said, referring to the girl. “She’s Spiderwoman. The guy who decked you is her problem.”

“He’s been handled,” Gwen promised, stretching her arm farther as Miles leaned over harder for the phone. “Sorry about your head. I can give him a matching concussion if you want?”

“That’s cool, thanks though,” Brett told her stiffly.

She shrugged.

“That’s Peter B,” Peter continued, breezing happily through this offer of violence.

Peter B snapped awake at the sound of his name. He looked like Blondie and Benj, but brunet and much, much older than both of them.

“Wha’s happ’ning?” he slurred.

“We’re introducing people,” Gwen told him.

“To who?”

“That’s Shortstack’s detective. He’s the good cop.”

“There’s a good cop?” Peter B asked. “Where’s a good cop?”

The others snickered. Peter B looked around and finally found Brett.

“Oh sh*t,” he said. “Hello there, Officer. Did you need, uhhhhh registration or something?”

More giggling.

“B, you don’t have a car,” Miles pointed out.

“I don’t?”

“Or a license,” Gwen snickered.

“How do you know?” Peter B demanded. “I could drive a car. I’ve driven hella cars. Catch me out here not driving cars, I dare you.”

“He’s old,” Peter told Brett sagely.

“I’m not that old,” Peter B huffed.

“He’s like forty,” Peter stage-whispered. “And divorced.”

A scandalized gasp rang out among the Spideys and Brett realized belatedly that this was a joke.

“I’m not f*ckin’ divorced,” Peter B snapped back at them. “We talked about this. I am happily married.”

“He was divorced,” Peter told Brett.

Peter B’s jaw twitched in irritation.

“You’re the size of a rat,” he announced.

Peter jerked his face his way immediately.

“You wanna go, old man?” he demanded.

Peter B. threw a dismissive hand at him and grumbled something.

“Speak up if you wanna be heard,” Peter said.

Peter B threw louder, more grumbly and cantankerous muttering his way. Miles imitated him to Gwen and the two of them giggled. Peter B growled their way and they giggled harder.

Peter scowled, huffed, then decided to ignore Peter B in favor of waving over to the final Spiderman on the roof tucked up against Blondie’s shins, apparently absorbing his heat.

“That’s Funsize,” Peter said.

“Hi,” Funsize said.

He was Peter.

No, for real.

They were one and the same. Standing next to each other, they were completely indiscernible.

“Funsize is just like me, but his mutation isn’t as aggressive and he’s got, like, people skills or something,” Peter said.

Funsize smiled and laid his cheek back down onto Blondie’s knee. Blondie petted at his hair a little. He was not bitten, shoved, hissed at, or even squinted at for his trouble.

Damn. Yeah. People skills, Brett was making a note of that.

The Spidermen were tired from their ordeal. They were chill. And entirely too comedic to be real. Benj kept trying on people’s glasses if they had them and rejecting them all vehemently. When asked what the deal was with them, he announced that they made it so he could see individual lights out over the city and that sh*t wasn’t kosher.

It was then determined that what Benj actually needed in his verse was a new glasses prescription. He’d hear nothing of it. He claimed that he’d gotten along just fine with his old goggles, thanks. He just had to go get a new pair.

Tats offered to make some for him and the insult nearly got him shoved off the edge of the building. Peter B barked their way to settle down and to Brett’s surprise, teasing aside, the younger folks listened to him.

Once the youth were more peaceably chattering at each other again, Brett glanced over and noticed a huge bruise on Peter B’s knuckles. He came to logical conclusion that he was the one who had decked Fisk.

“You didn’t kill him,” he noted while the kids showed each other memes on their phones.

Peter B lifted an eyebrow his way, then shrugged.

“I don’t kill people,” he said.

“But you could have,” Brett said. “You pulled that punch.”

“Fisk is only my problem in as far as I let him be my problem,” Peter B said. Blondie came over and settled into his side. Peter B gave him a long-suffering look, then begrudgingly took off the khaki jacket he was wearing and handed it over. Blondie wrapped himself up in it happily.

Funsize came over shortly after and climbed into his lap and they both cuddled in the heat.

“I got better things to do than waste my time thinkin’ about the ethics of killing a kingpin. And I decided ages ago that that kind of thing wasn’t my call to make,” Peter B said, watching the other two. He shifted his gaze back to Brett and tipped his head to the side. “Unfortunately, though,” he said, “I don’t got the benefit of a good cop. Shortstack’s a lucky kid.”

Now that was going a little far.

“I’m nothing special. My captain assigned me the job,” Brett told him.

Peter B chuckled.

“Yeah, it’s ‘cause of your captain you’re out here fraternizing with a load of impossibilities,” he said.

Miles came over and, seeing Blondie and Funsize tucked together, wriggled his way into Peter B’s lap and thumped his head expectantly against his shoulder. When Peter B failed to respond, Miles helped him out by capturing one of his hands and pulling the arm around himself.

Peter B looked down at him.

“You cold, too?” he asked.

“Mm.”

“Wanna head back?”

“No.”

Peter B gave Brett another look of exhaustion. It graduated to a look of exasperation when Gwen shoved Miles over and pressed herself against the other side of Peter B’s chest.

“Why do you run warm?” she demanded. “Everyone else’s got the colds, and you’re all hot.”

“It’s all the handsome,” Peter B told her. The kids in his lap gave him matching flat expressions, then pressed back against him. Gwen blinked at Brett.

“My dad’s a cop,” she said.

No sh*t?

“Mine too,” Miles hummed.

Dude, seriously? Wasn’t that cutting it a little close?

“Yeah, but that’s kinda our lot,” Gwen said. She yawned.

“Are we done being cold yet?” Peter B asked the group, which, Brett realized, had generally migrated into a mass around him and Peter B. Peter was tucked up with Tats who hugged him to his chest. They were mutually rumbling at each other.

f*ckin’ weird, man.

“Hello? Hello? Am I talking to myself here?” Peter B fussed.

No one answered him still. He sighed.

The two in his lap sounded like they had started rumbling, too.

“I’m not doing this with y’all,” Peter B said. “We have done this enough. Benj is gonna drool. It’s gonna be embarrassing.”

Benj made a sharp noise of offense.

“What’s ‘this?’” Brett asked.

Peter B grumbled.

“Purring,” Blondie finally said. Brett looked at him in surprise.

“You’re purring?” he asked.

“Yes. Feel.”

Blondie took Brett’s hand and laid it on his chest. He was warm and his sternum was vibrating lightly.

Woah.

“You purr?” Brett asked Peter. Peter blinked at him from his happy home in Tat’s grip.

“Yes,” he said.

“Does Stark know?” Brett asked.

Peter smirked and pressed in closer to Tats; Tats, who was rumbling like an electric fan. Damn, that sure was a noise, wasn’t it?

“What does it mean?” Brett asked.

“Nice things are happening,” Miles said.

Huh.

Noted.

Brett looked at Peter B.

“Do you purr?” he asked.

“f*ck no.”

“He does,” Gwen said. “He’s just annoying about it. He’s doing it right now.”

“I’m not,” Peter B sniffed.

“He is,” Miles promised. “’Cause he likes us.”

Peter B stood up and dislodged the kids and the unity of the group.

“I’m going home,” he declared. “Y’all can be presumptuous on your own time. Blondie, jacket. Peace, y’all.”

Blondie was loathe to relinquish the coat, but he gave it all the same.

“That’s probably our cue. Miles? Shall we?” he said as Peter B stalked off, stepped over the side of the roof and seemed to vanish into thin air.

Miles made an unhappy sound.

“You guys can meet up again later,” Blondie said soothingly. He removed Funsize from his lap. Tats accepted him into his ever-louder embrace. He and his two mini-mes hunkered in close to each other.

Miles huffed and relented. He stood up and came over to stand with Blondie.

“Bye, everyone,” he said. “We’ll see you all around. Call us if you need anything.”

“Call me first,” Blondie said.

He and Miles swept off into the darkness on the far side of the roof, away from the floodlights. Their shadows disappeared with them.

Benj got up next and waved at Gwen to follow him. Then Tats hummed and swayed and announced to his minis that he had work in six hours and only two monsters left in his stash.

“This happy union must part,” he said, standing up. “But I’ll be seein’ y’all around yeah? Stay out of trouble. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

The remaining boys snickered.

And then there were two.

Funsize turned to Peter and offered a hand.

“Don’t tell them,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”

“They already know,” Peter said back to him. “Dr. Banner for sure.”

“That’s okay, Dr. Banner is neutral ground,” Funsize said. “But don’t let the others know. Not the full extent.”

“You think?” Peter asked.

“Tats and Blondie and B say that the Avengers don’t gotta know all our business,” Funsize hummed. “I think I’d like to keep a few secrets.”

Peter nodded.

“Peace, man,” he said, holding out a fist. “Thanks for the backup.”

Funsize met the gesture with his own knuckles.

“Thanks for not biting anyone this time,” he said.

He turned and walked away and, just like the others, seemed to melt into the air. That left just Brett and Peter. Peter’s ears were turning red.

Brett stood up and took off his jacket.

“That it?” he asked. “We done now?”

Peter accepted the jacket. The tips of his fingers barely made it out of the sleeves.

“Yeah,” he said. He looked out over the city. “They’re good people.”

Yeah. Yeah, it seemed like they really were.

FN: BRETT MAHONEY

FN: I HAVE BEEN INFORMED BY RELIABLE SOURCES THAT YOU GOT TO MEET PETER’S ASSOCIATES

BM: yeah they’re chill

FN: im jealous tell me everything matt says one of them is stupid handsome

BM: how could matt know that

FN: he does. He just. does. Which one is it? I need to know my enemy.

BM: fogs you cannot be jealous right now. These folks are literally from other dimensions

FN: MY JEALOUSY KNOWS NO BOUNDS

FN: for real tho. Are they cool? They seemed pretty amazing on tv. Matt says that he’s worked a job with a couple of them before. He said he likes the tall one. And the blond one.

BM: I could see that.

FN: which one is my nemesis

BM: foggy.

FN: jk jk jk

FN: oh! Also I have had every avenger and vigilante under the sun wandering around my office asking me loaded questions about you. Just so you know, you went out on a date tonight, yeah? You don’t want to talk about it. It ended badly.

BM: lol thanks fogs.

FN: Matt has additionally informed me that Peter’s special skill is a secret one and he “has no control over it.” Officially. If you catch my drift.

BM: I got it.

FN: perf. Anyways. Nemesis. Go.

Brett came back to the chaos of work. He endured the Captain’s orders for him to find out more about these Spiderpeople. He endured Maynard and Brewer and Goldberg’s overblown fussing over his f*cked up head.

He endured a surprise, double-teamed visit from Colonel Rhodes and Sam Wilson who dragged him out of the station for a “coffee break” at a café where they sat on the opposite side of the table from him with purposefully open and relaxed posture.

Brett laid his chin in a palm and surveyed this.

“I don’t know what y’all want from me,” he said.

Colonel Rhodes had seniority and diplomatic expertise. He leaned forward with folded fingers.

“Peter trusts you, detective. More, sometimes, than he trusts the rest of us. And we have concerns that he might be sharing information with you that he’s not comfortable sharing with the rest of the team—which is perfectly fine, by the way. Young people need confidants. But in this case, specifically, we just need to bridge the gap. You know, so the kid is as supported as he can be.”

Hm.

Well, it seemed to Brett from the conversation he’d witnessed between Pete and Funsize that there had already been some discussion among the Spiderfolks about whether or not the depth of their connections should be public knowledge.

Among the older ones, the implied answer appeared to be a resounding ‘go f*ck yourself, squares.’ The younger ones were still in the process of deciding.

“Knowing about the multiverse could put you in a precarious position, Brett,” Sam Wilson added gently. “We, as a team, don’t want you to get mixed up with this kind of thing or the people who want to know about it. For your own safety, detective.”

Okay?

And?

Sam and the colonel traded expressions.

“I don’t know if you’re understanding—” the colonel started.

“Sir, I understand where you’re coming from, but I’m a cop,” Brett interrupted. “I’m always in danger. But more than that, I’m just a cop. I go in, I do my job, I leave. The only reason I work with any of y’all is because it helps me do my job. You are making a huge mistake if you think that I give single sh*t about any alien thing or multiverse thing or what the f*ck ever else you’ve got going on in your day lives. As long as something happens outside my jurisdiction, I cannot emphasize enough to you how much I do not care about it. So, the kid talks to me, yeah. Okay? And? I am literally bribing him to talk to me. That’s the point. If he’s talkin’ to me, and not to you, I don’t see how that’s a me-problem. That sounds like a you-problem. Or an Avengers-problem.”

He paused to glare from one face to the other.

“Furthermore,” he continued acerbically, “If you think I’m going around natterin’ on about multiverse-this or vigilante-that in my personal life—man, you guys don’t know sh*t, if you’ll excuse my language. Colonel, Mr. Wilson, to be completely honest, I know more about you, as individuals and a whole, than you all know about me. And I like it that way. And I’d like to keep it that way. So I’ll keep your super-secrets or whatever, so long as you and your people respect the boundaries of the relationships I’ve set up here, alright? And this? This right here? Dragging me out of work to make sure I’m keeping your secrets? This is crossing that line. This is what makes cops dirty, you know that? It always starts with good intentions. Always.”

He waited, surprised at how irritated he suddenly felt about the whole thing.

Sam and the Colonel exchanged another set of expressions. Sam shook his head and sighed.

“I’m sorry, Brett,” he said. “You’re right. This is crossing the line. It does seem like we’ve misinterpreted a few things here. And I am personally sincerely sorry for that. I guess it’s easy to forget motivations when you spend so much time with someone.”

Damn right it was.

But that was not necessarily what was driving Brett at the moment. He swallowed back the bile that came up at the realization of what exactly that driving force was.

“Is that all, then?” he asked the men across from him.

Sam nodded.

“That’s all,” the Colonel said.

“Then I’ll be going. Thanks for the coffee,” Brett said.

He stood up. He grabbed his coat. And he walked out of the door and let its tinkling bell sound off after him.

Do you believe in fairytales, detective? Wade had asked him.

No.

He didn’t. He believed in people.

People believed in fairytales. And people were the ones who made reality, so as long as people believed in fairytales, they’d make them come true.

These vigilantes—these people he’d been chasing for nearly a year now.

They believed in fairytales.

They believed in worlds where there was good and evil and they believed in what they were doing. They believed that they were helping people.

They weren’t so complicated as folks made them out to be. They didn’t want to be. That’s why they forewent the official institutions. That’s why they ducked from the Avengers, the X-men, the law, and the police.

The people in those places believed in fairytales, too. But they liked to make them complicated. They wanted and needed to make them complicated.

And Brett respected that there were many reasons for that complexity. He did.

Complexity often serves a purpose.

But it also offers too many choices. Too many directions to go in. With that kind of thinking, fairytales all start melding and bleeding together until the whole thing was one dark, unknowable wood, a forest filled with wolves and ogres and giants.

After a while of wandering, the people who waded into that forest started to lose themselves to it. They started to become the wolves and ogres themselves, even without realizing it.

Brett had spent his whole career trying not to get sucked into the woods. Trying to walk the balance between complexity and simplicity.

It was hard.

It was grueling.

It had resulted in friendships and break ups and trust being broken and melded all over the damn place.

But if Brett was allowed to make his own fairytale, which he had decided he was, then it went like this:

One day, there was a cop who believed in making the world a better place for his family and friends and his community. He wanted to be a good person. He wanted to spend every day of his life helping the world become better than it was the day before, however big or small that looked.

The end.

There were no ‘buts.’

There were no ‘ifs.’

Sure, there were risks. And there were forests and woods and ogres and heroes.

But just because those things existed didn’t mean that he had to spend his life dilly-dallying in them and tumbling around, getting all torn up by teeth and thorns.

He was allowed to just walk through the woods. He was allowed to just talk to people to get what he needed, when he needed it. He was allowed to make friends and lose them and to make sacrifices that didn’t always work out.

Things were allowed to be that f*cking simple.

So Brett was allowed to decide, whenever he wanted, whether or not he believed in a sixteen-year-old kid and a whole lot of other kids and people, who had in mind for themselves a similar type of fairytale. And he was allowed to read their stories and carry their secrets if he so damn chose.

Chapter 21: the goose

Chapter Text

“Uncle Brett?”

Brett looked over his shoulder to see his sweet, sweet nephew standing there, back by his sour, sour cousin.

“What have you done?” he asked of Sasha. She gave him a smile full of glittering white teeth.

“You need to get on twitter,” she said.

There was a goose—or rather, geese. Creatures of mass destruction, agents of chaos, disciples of hatred itself. Pick your poison, the result was all the same—terrorizing people in Union Square. A handful appeared to have landed and taken to waddling around the greenery and street corners, claiming the place as their own.

Now, in Brett’s experience, New Yorkers were a hundred times more scared of their fellow subway occupants than they were of any non-human creature. Non-human creatures could be scowled at and scoffed at and called a ‘f*ckin’ moron’ without any repercussions.

The same could not be said of friends and neighbors.

That said, if there was one thing that New Yorkers physically could not cope with, it was the great outdoors and all the glory that came with it. They could not cope with trees (all that damn pollen—the nerve of these things, taking up all these parking spaces), they could not cope with birdsong (can’t a person get just a moment of f*ckin’ quiet around here?), they could not cope with rabbits or gophers or the bits of leaves that flew artfully into their coffee.

No. New Yorkers could only cope with those forms of local wildlife that resembled their own urbanite existences. There was a healthy respect in the city for rats, for example. And one-eared tom cats and dogs that barked and sneered at you from apartment windows all day long, not screaming out of maltreatment, but rather of paranoia and frustration with captivity and ennui.

“Is there not more to life than this?” these captive dogs asked with their teeth bared at all passersby. “Is there truly more to life than rampant distrust and waiting for that one special person to come home to make it all seem worth it?”

This was all to say that the geese were causing absolute bedlam in Union Square.

They were charging coffee drinkers at their café tables. Hissing and shrieking at old and well-meaning folks just trying to feed the city’s flying rat population. Several children had been bitten and had been captured by phones all around, sobbing and clutching at their parents’ horrified necks.

Union Square was no longer a square for people. It was Goose Headquarters South.

Someone, in a moment of clarity, had decided that there was only one man for this job and he was human-adjacent at best.

Peter had come out in the middle of the day on a Saturday to see what he could do about the geese.

Animals loved Peter for no good reason. None. Absolutely none.

The smaller they were, the more likely they were to come flying into Peter’s arms like he was their long-lost brother.

Brett had seen him more than once sitting up high, communing with pigeons. Cuddling them like they were cats. The damn things refused to sh*t on him like they did on the rest of the population. They had respect for Peter.

The same could be said of dogs. There was not a vicious dog in a neighborhood when Spiderman was loping through it. Half the dogs in the city had had personal and loving contact with Spiderman.

It was terrifying.

Brett had never been so intimidated by anything that Peter could do. Forget the web. Forget the interdimensional thing.

His ability to tame Juanita from two blocks over’s pitbull-lab mix?

That sh*t wasn’t kosher.

Peter’s Friend of All Animals schtick had gotten around in the city. People liked to take pictures of him up there on streetlamps cuddled in with the pigeons or playing with dogs and cats through high-rise windows. There had been more than a few images of Spiderman, just hanging out—just chilling, wandering around the streets of New York City with a f*ckin’ chicken or a rabbit in his arms, asking people if they knew its owner. Or as he called them, ‘their life partners.’

Peter didn’t believe that animals could be owned.

The images of him encountering the geese certainly validated that idea for everyone involved.

Someone had posted a series of five photos on twitter, all taken seconds apart, in which Peter strode towards one of the violent geese of Union Square. He held out hands to it in a gesture of peace. The goose noticed him.

The goose threw out its wings and chased him up the side of a building.

The bevy of images people posted in response to this set showed Peter getting down from the building and being immediately chased into the park park proper, up a bench, then a street lamp, then a trashcan, and finally up onto good old George Washington’s metal horse with him.

“Spidey’s stuck,” someone captioned this final image in delight.

Someone else posted a short a video clip of Peter hissing back at one of his assailants and digging out his phone to call for back up.

“Oooo he’s calling in the big guns,” this helpful human wrote.

Brett ruminated on the fact that Peter had finally found the point of New York City which all superpeople used as the basis of choosing where to live—by which Brett meant that they’d all looked at south Manhattan and gone, ‘ha, f*ck that, nah. I need to be at least two miles away from that bullsh*t.’

The closest person to him geographically was Matt. Matt evidently refused to come. Brett could imagine that phone conversation. It started with Peter saying ‘I’m being assaulted by a goose’ and Matt laughing, then hanging up.

DP quickly appeared in the pictures in Sasha’s news feed.

The goose chased him away from the base of Spidey’s claimed statue and flapped its huge wings at him when he tried to come in closer to grab it.

Wade was Canadian. You’d think these things would feel some kind of distant kinship with him.

But no.

Geese were stone f*cking cold, man.

Another goose came onto the scene to bite Wade’s ass just while he was wrangling the first one.

Wade grabbed this goose by its long goose neck and the first goose bit his hand the second he was distracted. And then both geese, in a moment of clarity, spotted Peter edging down from the statue and abandoned Wade to put the fear of God in him and drive him back up onto George Washington’s horse.

“We should go save him,” Amos told Brett with big eyes.

Ha.

As if Brett was going out to menace a goose on his day off. No thanks.

“Brett, Spidey’s your friend,” Sasha sang. “You’ve gotta to help him. It’s how you maintain trust.”

“If he really wanted to leave, he’d figure out a way,” Brett snapped. He stood up and handed the phone back to Sasha.

Amos dragged him back out to the living room about half an hour later in distress. He pointed to Sasha’s phone.

“He tried to web away, but a whole flock of them showed up!!” he cried.

The tweets coming in with Peter in them had started to take on a more concerned tone indeed. The kid was thinking in the most recent image. He’d swapped sides on the Washington statue because his previous place was now occupied by a mean motherf*cker. He had a few knuckles pressed to his bottom lip while he stared down at the three geese down at the statue’s base, hissing and flapping up at him.

There was no DP in sight in this picture. He must have had enough and told Peter to deal with it on his own.

Brett almost felt bad for him.

Almost.

It took the last image of Peter leaping from his perch, going for a tree that really did it for Brett.

He wouldn’t make that jump, try as he might.

Peter was a tiny kid. If Brett hadn’t himself seen how much food he put away in a day, he’d be worried that he was halfway to starving. But those branches weren’t gonna hold even that much weight.

And sure enough, the next picture was of Peter on the ground now, getting flocked by furious geese.

“They’re chasing Spidey out of the park!” someone captioned. “Who is our hero now??”

Brett managed to convince the kids that Spidey was just fine and off plotting his revenge. He was not hurt. The park would be fine when the geese finally realized that there was no goose-appropriate food there and left.

Then there was a knock at the door and Brett opened it to Foggy standing there with a dead flat expression.

“I need you,” he said without even a hint of amusem*nt, “To go tell my idiot and Frank Castle that their combined power is going to do nothing but antagonize these demons.”

Peter was not suffering this defeat lightly at all, now, was he? He’d gone to lick his wounds and collaborate.

Amos wriggled past Brett, screaming for the attention of his real favorite uncle. Foggy hugged him without taking his gaze off Brett’s face.

“Did your usual charm not work?” Brett asked him.

Sasha ducked under his arm to wave at Foggy, too.

“My usual charm pales in comparison to their disgusting masculine posturing,” Foggy said.

…right.

So it was a competition now, that’s what he was saying.

“Brett, if DP couldn’t handle it, neither of those lugs can.”

“Let me get my shoes,” Brett sighed.

Normally he would not take the kids with him, but they were insufferable and begging and Kelly did not approve of leaving Amos in only Sasha’s care yet, so Brett bit the bullet and told them to get their damn coats. Foggy didn’t seem to mind. He was pretty worked up. Brett was going to let that sleeping dog lie for now.

When they got to the scene of the crime, which was not Union Square, but rather Stuyvesant Square just a couple blocks over, Brett found himself watching the public watch a very indiscreet meeting of minds. Peter was the only one in full costume, Matt had opted for his black pajamas, topped off for once with a leather coat at least two sizes too big for him and a matching black scarf. He kept his hands stuffed in his pockets, while Castle hadn’t bothered with anything but his usual daytime khaki jacket. He’s acknowledged the weather only through his use of a beanie.

Peter had crammed himself into Matt’s jacket with him, and besides this slight bit of humor, the three were having a very deep and serious conversation, ignorant of all the camera phones broadcasting it for the rest of the city.

Foggy seethed quietly next to Brett.

They couldn’t very well go over there without implicating themselves in this bullsh*t, so they had to wait until a ‘team break’ gesture was made.

Amos and Sasha were nearly rigid with excitement. They were finally going to meet Spiderman up close and personal.

Or they thought they were.

Peter noticed Brett and Foggy first and, using that sixth sense of his, realized the trouble coming his way.

He snuck off and let Matt and Castle be confronted by Foggy’s unbridled ire.

Both of them had the decency to crunch together in its face and slink off out of view. Foggy watched the two of them go and rattled for as long as he could bear before turning around and following them. Brett sighed and tugged at Amos’s hand to follow Fogs before he got swept up in the dissipating crowd.

“You two are idiots. Brett, tell them they are idiots.”

Amos and Sasha were slightly disappointed that they were in the presence of Daredevil and the Punisher instead of Spiderman. But they were keeping high spirits thanks to Foggy’s admittedly entertaining rage.

“You’re idiots,” Brett said dutifully.

Foggy barely gave him time to finish before launching back in.

“There? You hear that? You hear it? It is not just me calling you two morons. You know why? Because you are patently stupid.”

“Take it down a notch, Nelson,” Castle said. “I’ve dealt with a goose or two in my time. Pretty sure I can—”

“If you shoot even a single bird in public, so help me god, I am doing everything in my power to have you arrested and your dog taken to the SPCA,” Foggy snapped.

Castle was offended.

“It’s a bird,” he said. “What do you want me to do, eat it? Would that be better on your conscious?”

Foggy vibrated with rage.

“We’re not eating it,” Matt told Castle. “The kid says he wants to release it into a ‘more suitable habitat.’ So we will release and/or lure the targets to somewhere more suitable. And anyways, with the likes of your aim, we’d be picking out shrapnel out of our teeth for days.”

Castle leveled him with a look that said he had an idea of a more suitable habitat for him and it looked like the nearest water feature.

“You wanna—”

“OR,” Foggy said. “We can not try to pick a fight with a bird, huh? Is this not the most suitable option here? Is it really worth either of your trouble and convenience to go out in the middle of the damn city and to do battle with a load of overstuffed chickens?”

Foggy had a point there which Matt missed by about a mile and a half.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s Saturday. What else is there to do?”

Sasha smashed her face against the back of Brett’s arm so that she didn’t scream-laugh in the presence of two known vigilantes.

Foggy turned around and scooped up Amos. Amos was surprised, but not less than Matt when Foggy shoved the kid into his arms.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You’re now busy. Amos, this is Double D. You love Double D, don’t you? He wants to babysit you and your cousin all. Day. Long. Isn’t that right, Brett?”

Errrrr.

Not what Brett had in mind, but he did kind of like Matt’s expression over there.

“Sure,” he said.

Amos gawked at him and then crowed in delight and threw his arms around Matt’s neck.

“I wanna meet Spiderman!” he said. “Can you help us meet Spiderman?”

Castle was confused at the presence of this kid. He jerked his face over to Brett and noted the secondary kid behind him.

“This a fuc—freakin’ daycare now, detective?” he demanded.

Brett kind of wanted to f*ck with him.

“It’s Saturday,” he said. “So yeah.”

There was a pause and Brett prepared to watch his life flash before his eyes as Frank Castle considered reaching for his gun.

“I have a proposal,” Matt decided. “What if we dispatched the geese—peaceably, Foggy, breathe—in a covert kind of way? With these rampscallions’ help? Would this not meet everyone’s needs?”

Amos, interested in Matt’s mask and very determined to get his cold fingers pressed against the seam between it and Matt’s cheekbones, co*cked his head.

“What’s a rampscallion?” he asked up at him.

“A public menace,” Matt told him. “What do you think, are you fit for the job?”

Amos lit up.

“I’m a menace!” he chirruped.

“Heck yeah, you are,” Matt told him. “Welcome to the team.”

Foggy held his face in his hands. Castle just sighed.

“Red, we aren’t a team,” he said.

Matt turned his eyeless mask towards Frank and set his lips into a flat line. He waited.

“Not a team?” Amos asked him.

Matt waited.

“I hate you and don’t know this kid from Adam,” Castle said. “I am here for geese and geese only.”

“I’m Amos,” Amos said.

“He’s Amos,” Matt echoed, “Not Adam, God Frank, get it together.”

Castle’s shoulders began a slow descent downwards.

“I don’t know why I even bother,” he finally grumbled. “Whatever. Whatever the case, we need to go grab Spidey before he finds his laundry hamper and pisses the things off.”

“I didn’t agree to public involvement,” Peter snapped when he was relocated with not one, but two plastic laundry hampers in hand. “And if you’re gonna deviate from the plan, then I don’t need any of youse. I’ll get Hawkeye to help me. He’ll do it in a heartbeat. Kate says he’s reached a state of apathy. He knows no fear.”

“Can Hawkeye talk to birds?” Amos asked, tugging at Peter while still holding Matt’s hand.

Peter scowled down at him and took in a breath before going rigid all over.

“Oh my god,” he said, to Brett and Foggy’s confusion. “What’s your name?”

Amos smiled hugely up at him.

“Amos!” he chirped.

Peter hauled him up to eyelevel without giving him any warning whatsoever.

“Amos,” he said seriously, “You’re brilliant.”

Peter wanted Matt and Castle to help him kidnap Sam Wilson. He seemed to believe that Sam Wilson could speak to birds and no one really knew how to break it to him that he’d been maliciously lied to.

Foggy tried to, as gently as he could, but Peter blazed past his attempted intervention and decided that a kidnapping would be no good. They had to lure Wilson out this way on his own volition so that he was calm in the face of the opposition.

And that was absurd, yes, but besides that, there was just one problem.

“Why does he have to live in Brooklyn??” Peter lamented, making circles of frustration around their group with Amos trailing after him. “Why does everyone live in Brooklyn?”

“Better rent,” Matt said sagely.

“More community,” Castle offered.

“You two are not helping,” Peter scowled. “You’re old, tedious, and useless to me. Begone with you.”

“Nah, I’m invested now,” Matt said.

“I want to see Wilson talk to a goose,” Castle agreed.

Peter mugged at them both through his mask.

“Useless,” he reiterated. “I have to do everything myself around here. Man. Just once, I’d like to be on the other side of—”

“Sam Wilson’s feeding pigeons two blocks north,” Matt announced for the group out of absolutely nowhere.

Everyone paused and looked at him.

“What?” he said. “I’m being useful. You want me to go get him or—”

“Nah, I got this,” Castle said. “Y’all stay here.”

Frank Castle was a smart guy when you got past the fact that he was as direct and hard-headed as they came. He knew that Sam Wilson had dedicated his life to one thing and one thing only and that was public service, with a specialty in supporting veterans.

Castle apparently had a friend who he described as ‘eerily similar’ to Sam Wilson. He knew this guy inside and out and so he knew that if there was one thing Sam Wilson could not resist, it was a vet asking for help.

Sam Wilson had been standing on Wade Wilson’s last goddamn nerve on this point for the last year. Castle decided to go play the victim for .02 seconds and he came back with his mark in record timing.

Only when he found himself in front of the group as a whole did Sam realized that he’d been played. He told Castle that just for that, he was adding him to his sh*tlist with Wade.

“Uh-huh, whatever you want, pal,” Castle said. “More importantly: geese.”

“Geese?” Sam repeated.

“Geese,” Peter told him with clawed fingers. Amos imitated him.

Sam stared down at them both.

“Oh,” he said. “So you finally got down. Buck was timing you.”

“Go tell them to f*ck off,” Peter directed, pointing furiously in the geese’s general direction.

Sam lifted an eyebrow at him.

“I can’t talk to birds,” he said.

“Red,” Peter said immediately.

“Lie,” Matt supplied just as quickly.

“Try again,” Peter said. “And go. Tell them. To get bent. Or I’m gonna make ‘em all into geese dumplings and leave ‘em for the birdcatcher.”

There was a pause.

“Peter, there is no birdcatch—”

“JUST GO ALREADY.”

“Your name is Peter?” Sasha asked Peter’s furious form once Sam had relented and said he would go coo at the geese just to appease him.

“My name is none of your business,” Peter snapped. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

“She’s my cousin, kid. Take it down a notch,” Brett warned.

Peter glared at him, too, too irritated with the world at large to care about his allegiances at the moment.

“Sam Wilson is encountering resistance with the geese,” Matt informed the group.

Foggy gave him a seriously concerned face which he couldn’t see.

“Define ‘resistance,’” Castle said.

“They’re making much noise,” Matt said, nodding in some kind of sympathy for the scene he was tuned into.

“Good noise? Bad noise?” Foggy asked him.

“Resistance,” Matt emphasized.

“Does he need saving?” Foggy asked.

Another pause while Matt listened.

“Promptly,” he decided.

“Horrible animals,” Sam snapped once Peter had martyred himself once again. He’d gone sprinting right at the flock of geese surround Sam and they’d cleared back in alarm. Now they were posturing in a circle at the rest of them. Peter had perched himself on Matt’s shoulders because Matt was the Man Without Fear.

This included geese.

He tipped his face down at the brave one that had stormed forward and started rapping its head against his belt. He hissed at it.

It hissed back.

Matt sniffed like he’d found the gesture wanting. The goose reared back and honked at him at maximum goose-volume. Foggy grabbed his arm and Peter contorted himself so that he was now kneeling on Matt’s shoulders.

Brett scooped Amos up before he caught any unwanted action.

“Shoo,” Sam said at another goose slowly encroaching on his space. “God, so rude, these things.”

“They’re evil,” Peter decided, leaning over Matt’s head to join him in scowling down at Matt’s offender.

“I still got a permanent solution,” Castle said. He jerked when one of the geese tried to stuff its head into his pocket alongside his hand.

He was ignored.

“Seems like they want something,” Sam said.

“Toes,” Peter said knowingly.

“Ritual sacrifice,” Matt offered up in the same vein.

Sam gave the two of them the flattest look he could muster.

Sam’s solution was a bunch of birdseed. People at the park were fascinated by him and took photos as he went around leaving little piles of seed in his wake and to Brett’s surprise, the birds started following him.

Sam pretended not to notice them.

“We’re going on a field trip,” he said over his shoulder at the others. “The rest of you now have a job and that job is to direct traffic.”

Amos was delighted.

“We’re gonna play policemen,” he told Brett.

“I ain’t playing no policeman,” Peter huffed as Matt let him down from his shoulders.

“Kay, you can be a traffic cone,” Castle said, already f*cking off after Wilson.

“I wanna be a cone,” Amos said after him.

Foggy caught him before he chased after the Punisher.

“No, honey, no one here’s a cone,” he said gently.

“f*ck that, I’m a cone,” Peter decided. “Red, come be a cone with me.”

Matt considered this.

“Do I get health insurance?” he asked.

“Not even a little. I’ll make you a yellow suit, though,” Peter tossed over his shoulder.

Matt considered this with much gravitas indeed.

“I like yellow,” he said. “Me and Danny could match.”

Brett caught ahold of Foggy’s arm before he had an aneurysm in public.

Sam was taking these birds to a different park with more space for them, it turned out. It was about a mile walk to Tompkin’s Square and Brett wasn’t 100% sure how or why, but at some point, Sam stopped putting down little piles of bird seed and all the damn geese carried on waddling after him anyways.

They did not bite or hiss much at all along the way.

It was nothing short of miraculous in Brett’s humble opinion.

Peter and Matt and Castle found themselves, as the most recognizable personalities available at the moment, going out and playing crossing guard (not traffic cones, to Matt’s enormous disappointment) between streets. Peter’s red and blue made this easy for him. Matt’s mask helped him out a bit.

Castle employed a Gandalf-esque approach and just slammed a fist against the hood of any vehicle that tried to pass him.

He evidently hadn’t been in the part of the army which taught you how to peacefully direct traffic. This came as no surprise to anyone whatsoever.

At some point, a load of pedestrians joined the walk and before Brett knew it, there was a whole protective wall of people on both sides of the line of geese. The mass of human bodies made cars more likely to stop and there were camera phones coming out in droves recording the whole thing. Brett couldn’t even see Sam Wilson at the front of the line anymore.

The mile came to an end when webbed feet hit fresh greenery . It took longer than it might otherwise have been because while a mile for one person wasn’t very far, a mile for an impromptu parade of people and birds made for a much longer journey.

The geese had disappeared from sight by the time Brett made it to the green, nephew in hand and cousin at his heels. He ushered Amos and Sasha in front of him and stood on his toes, looking for a familiar haircut. He caught sight of Foggy’s distinctive blond mop and herded the kids over to where Foggy and Matt were standing at the edge of the park. Matt had lost his mask and coat somewhere along the way and looked like a whole different person. His ginger hair looked like it had seen better days and he let his big scarf hang languidly over the shoulders of a familiar flannel overshirt that Brett swore he’d seen Foggy wear before.

Foggy was still peeved with him and was busily exercising his eyebrows his way.

Amos didn’t notice anything especially different or suspicious about this and went running over to give Matt a hug and to tell him all about his adventures with Spiderman.

Sasha, however, paused. Brett glanced back at her and raised an eyebrow.

“You okay?” he asked.

She wrinkled up her face.

“Wasn’t DD wearing boots like those?” she asked, pointing at Matt’s black, overly laced monstrosities.

Brett hummed.

“Mighta been,” he said. “I wasn’t looking.”

He left it at that. Didn’t say anything when Sasha’s fingers clenched on the back of his jacket arm.

“Yo.”

Those fingers jumped and Brett turned around to see Peter standing there, similarly sans suit. His hair was f*cked up and ruffled like Matt’s and his weekend clothes looked like an enormous red, white, and teal hoodie with just the slightest edge of red peeking out along the neckline. Over that, he wore a khaki lined jacket.

“I told you,” Peter said with a strong jaw.

Sasha gaped at him.

Brett laughed.

“You sure did,” he said.

“Bird whisperer,” Peter said. “Don’t you forget it. My weird is nothing compared to the Avengers’ weird.”

Brett lifted an eyebrow at him.

“You purr,” he said.

“I don’t,” Peter snapped back at him forcefully. “And even if I did, that’s normal compared to bird-whispering.”

Sasha was hyperventilating a little bit at Brett’s side. Brett tactfully ignored it and let her have her moment.

“Where’s the old guy?” Peter asked. “Not the usual one or the Wilson one, the one with the guns. I need to shove it in his face.”

“Think we lost him a while back, Pete. Sorry. You’ll have to gloat another time,” Brett said.

Peter glared back towards Union Square.

“You coward,” he murmured. Then he turned back to Brett. “I’ve had enough of birds for today. Everyone’s making fun of me. I’m going home.”

“Alright, kid, I hear you. Thanks for helping,” Brett said. “Maybe take Sunday off.”

“I’ll think about it,” Peter tossed over his shoulder before swinging around and stuffing his hands into his pockets.

As soon as he was gone, Brett looked down at Sasha, still clutching at his jacket.

“Can you keep a secret?” he asked her.

She jerked her face up to him in shock.

“That was Spiderman,” she whispered.

Brett shrugged high.

“Mighta been,” he said.

“He’s—Brett. He’s??”

“He’s?” Brett encouraged.

“He’s so grumpy???”

Brett laughed.

“He’s not usually in such a foul mood,” he promised her. “Maybe we’ll introduce you guys again when he’s on the up and up instead of surrounded by angry livestock.”

Or maybe not.

Brett got the feeling that Peter probably loved cows.

“Hey, we’re done here,” Foggy interrupted before Sasha could expound on her impression. He had Matt by the arm and Matt once again had Amos on his hip. “You gonna stay or are you headed home?”

Amos wanted to stay and he wanted Uncle Matt to stay with him. Matt politely declined and said that he had to go home because he’d promised to train with his boxing friends that evening. Amos decided that he wanted to box now.

Sasha said nothing.

Brett decided that they were going to lunch.

“Spiderman’s name is Peter,” Sasha debriefed in Brett’s living room as he watched Amos make patterns in ketchup with French fries.

“Yes,” Brett said.

“Peter what?”

“Do I look that stupid to you, Sash?”

She scowled.

“I saw his face. I could find him,” she said.

Brett couldn’t help his smirk.

“Height, weight, eye color, hair color,” he said. “List ‘em right now.”

Sasha puffed herself up and put down her chicken nugget to start ticking off fingers.

“Shorter than me, like, 100 pounds, brown, and---uh.”

Brett waited.

Sasha realized her mistake.

“If I saw him I could recognize him,” she maintained.

“Eye color,” Brett said.

“Bro—blue. They were blue,” Sasha sniffed. Then paused. “Green. Hazel.”

Brett took a long drink of co*ke.

“You’re a dick,” Sasha told him.

“You’re an unreliable witness,” Brett told her.

“I saw him. I’m gonna find him on facebook. Peter Spiderman. I’ll find him. Mark my words.”

“Sash, there’s a reason he chose to do that,” Brett said. “It’s ‘cause he knows that people will believe whatever they want to believe and honey, no one wants to believe that Spiderman is just some regular, bratty little kid running around in a red suit.”

Sasha paused and lowered her phone into her lap.

Brett couldn’t tell what she was thinking about.

“Introduce us again,” she said. “I want to be friends.”

Brett rolled his eyes.

“Listen, hon. I know I said that, but my job doesn’t mean I can just—”

“He seems like he’s a little lonely.”

Brett paused. Sasha didn’t look up at him.

“All the other super-people are a lot older than him and he kept saying how they’re all useless, so I just thought, maybe he could use some friends. I won’t tell anyone else.”

Brett was touched on Peter’s behalf. And he was proud of his cousin’s heartfelt interest.

“He’s really annoying,” he told her gently.

“You don’t know that,” she said.

“He’s really into sci-fi,” Brett told her. “And 80s music. He’s super petty too. He’s always breaking Tony Stark’s equipment and telling bad jokes to DD and Deadpool.”

Sasha smirked.

“Cool,” she said. “I like 80s music and being a jerk, too. We’re like human geese, both of us. We’ll get along great. Introduce us properly.”

Ahahaha.

Not in a thousand f*cking years.

Chapter 22: For the intro and outro

Chapter Text

These f*ckwits had started a podcast.

Brett could just about cry.

Sasha refused to let him have this moment in peace, though, too busy as she was, towering over him, holding her phone out like it was the key piece of evidence in a decades-old serial homicide case.

The tinny voices coming out of her phone tittered on about how they were planning to interview Spiderman about his life and general endeavors in an upcoming episode and how it was ‘not to be missed.’

Brett was 99% sure that Peter was going to break whatever microphone these idiots stuck in his face. And then, when they didn’t learn their lesson, either Hawkeye or Barnes was going to crush it, pull back, and pitch that sorry plastic mass as far out into the heart of Brooklyn as their strength would allow.

Stupid.

It was just. So. Stupid.

“They’re gonna interview you first, Brett,” Sasha said haughtily. “They said that rumor is that there’s a dedicated research community for superpeople and vigilantes, and by ‘research community’ they mean ‘one big dumb jerk in the NYPD.’”

Lies.

Brett, for all his pain and suffering, was largely protected by the folks in the NYPD. He appreciated them all trying to make sure his name didn’t get out there among the teeming masses of humanity. The Captain called it a danger to personnel when the higher ups asked about it. He argued that if people knew who Brett was and what he was doing, he’d become the next target on everyone’s local villains’ hit list.

The higher ups blessedly agreed for once. Which meant that Brett was doing no interviews with anyone outside the department. Period. End of story.

These podcasters were about to hit a wall before their cute little investigation even got underway.

Even still, if they went through with it despite all common sense and available information, the best case scenario was that Wade would stand over them and tell them all his opinions on chili cheese dogs while stomping on their recording equipment. The worst case scenario was that a load of civilians were going to get caught in a fire fight.

Aigh.

He took Sasha’s phone and stood up from the couch.

“I’m calling this in,” he declared over her squawking.

The Captain said that he’d take the interview with whoever came a-knocking—if they came a-knocking. He didn’t anticipate them even getting this far, but just in case, he told Brett and the other detectives, all questions were to go to him. He would do the honors of giving these podcasters the most elaborate run-around of their careers.

Brett kind of looked forward to it.

The podcasters made it into the station. They were two white guys of medium height and build. One of them wore a black blazer with a red Spiderman fan-made shirt underneath it like he was going to rip the blazer off Superman-style.

Brett tried to imagine Peter actually doing this. It was hard. Besides the fact that Brett had seen Steve Rogers himself cackle at the idea of Superman existing and doing anything meaningful in the world, he also knew that not a single one of the night crew (or hell, Rogers himself) was suave enough to pull that move off.

Even JB, who was the second coolest and most collected of them all (behind the Widow, obviously), had, on multiple occasions, gotten clothes stuck on his arms and shoulders trying to drama his way out of a situation.

Peter would probably rip straight through his suit if he tried it.

Brett tried not to snicker at the thought at his desk as he swiveled back to typing.

“Oh, right,” Officer Sara Spruell said at the bullpen entrance. “We’ve been expecting you guys. Yeah, let me just go get the Captain.”

The podcasters got visible excited by this.

Poor f*cks.

The Captain came out and towered stiffly over the podcasters at the bullpen entrance. He said nothing for a moment too long and all the detectives schooled the hell out of their faces when they looked over and stopped typing and shuffling papers.

The room went quiet.

The podcasters’ excitement took a turn into anxiety.

“Gentlemen,” the Captain said. “It is my understanding that you are interested in the activities of our local troublemakers.”

“Uh, yes? Sir?” the taller, darker-haired, glass-wearing of the two said. “We were hoping to—”

“I’m afraid that our resident expert is currently on a training course,” the Captain said. “Not to mention that each of these so-called vigilantes is part of an open investigation for disrupting the peace on top of all of their assaults charges. So I’m afraid that we cannot provide you with any information that might compromise those cases.”

Very profession, Captain. Very smooth.

Good job.

“Oh, we aren’t asking for anything like that,” the Spidey-Superman piped up. “We just wanted to know some general stuff—you know, when do these people come out at night. Maybe a couple of tips on personalities. You know, surface-level stuff. We’re a comedy podcast, sir. We’re not looking to rock the boat—or the Kitchen, if you know what I mean?”

He laughed a little. It died off quick when the room remained silent.

Brett stretched himself back as the other detectives did so that they could all level a collective, lightly-offended eyebrow at the interlopers.

The Captain pretended that he was unaware of the group intimidation tactics going on around him. He folded his hands behind his back.

“We at this station take great pride in serving the community of Hell’s Kitchen, Mr.?”

“Gaul.”

“Mr. Gaul and Mr.?”

“Broadhurst,” the taller guy said, staring straight at Brett, Maynard, and Ellen’s desk cluster.

“—and Mr. Broadhurst,” the Captain continued. “It is not only our duty, but our honor to serve the people on these streets and to most importantly protect them and yourselves. I must say, gentlemen, that while I’m sure that your program is entertaining, the likelihood of injury to yourselves in pursuit of these…characters…is high. These are dangerous people, Mr. Gaul, Mr. Broadhurst. Far more dangerous than you can understand.”

Gaul was lapping that sh*t up. Broadhurst, however, was having second thoughts. Brett could tell from his increasingly shiny forehead.

“Thanks so much for the heads up,” Gaul said, “And we will totally be sure to tell our audience that you warned us, but really. We know what we’re up against. So while your expert is away, do you think we could maybe have their email so that we can talk to them off the record? Or if you guys wanted to prepare a statement for our readers, that would be great! You can talk about how the police are working diligently to catch these folks, but in the meantime are cooperating because of…” he trailed off.

“Because of,” he started again and stumbled. He sheepishly looked up at the Captain.

“Why are you guys cooperating with these people anyways?” he asked.

The Captain lifted his nose a tenth of a degree higher and cleared his throat. The whole bullpen shifted back into motion.

“Our expert will be back in two days,” the Captain said. “His name is Jan Novak and his email is [emailprotected]. You may ask him what you will, but I cannot guarantee his response, nor can I condone it.”

Gaul lit up and started in with the gratitude. Broadhurst hadn’t taken his eyes off of Brett’s now-busy table. Brett was careful to catch his eye and narrow his own.

Broadhurst looked away first.

They left, with Spidey-superman bubbling away and Broadhurst checking over his shoulders.

Ah, Jan Novak.

He got an email that very afternoon, Jan did. It sent the IT staff into wailing, crying, sobbing laughter.

Jan’s emails always did.

He was just that kind of guy.

And by ‘guy,’ Brett meant crash-test dummy.

Well, he’d started as a crash-test dummy. And a target. And a training weight.

But now, he had a name and a thousand social media accounts.

Essentially, Jan was the IT department’s answer to everyone complaining that they needed to check on, get close to, or read the media of so-and-so on such-and-such website without wanting to log onto that site using their own account.

He was the product of those complaints and the IT department’s unrelenting and impenetrable sense of humor.

They’d made Jan a LinkedIn account purely to send him to clown school. His listed skills were:

Hostage negotiation

Public speaking

Community organizing

The flower (you know the one)

Balloon animals

The shoes (you know which)

Maintaining weapon safety

Evidence collection

And now, vigilante analysis and coordination.

He was a talented guy, Jan. He had a badge with his name on it, an Instagram account, a uniform, a Facebook, a Youtube channel (of his balloon-making, of course), and a myriad of dating app accounts which all indicated different levels of horniness.

The email the IT department received was so earnest and serious that the staff came scurrying out of their bunker to come plead with the Captain to be allowed to answer it. Usually, they weren’t. That would be leading people on, and sometimes, certain members of the community who emailed that account needed welfare checks and for their information to be passed on to other social services. Sometimes, that email was given to people who were undercover and who needed to pass on information without being linked to any particular person.

So as a rule, Jan was an email-eater. Not an email-sender.

The Captain predictably said ‘no’ but allowed the department to send an ‘automatic’ notification that Jan was at a two-day training course and would try to get back to the sender as soon as possible.

The whole team bustled off, all claiming the right to be the one to write this email and pick the font.

And that was that.

“Brett.”

He did not look up from his phone. Amos was cuddled up next to him, explaining that he wanted a Spiderman cup like his friends at pre-school, but he didn’t want the one that they had. He wanted the blue one.

“Brett,” Sasha repeated irritably.

He looked up this time and handed his phone off to Amos to scroll through.

“Dearest cousin?” he said.

She held up her phone and popped out the audio jack.

“—really got us good, I’ve gotta say,” Gaul’s tinny voice said from the speaker. “Hook, line, and sinker. Who knew cops had a sense of humor?”

“We searched the guy who they gave us the email of,” Broadhurst sighed to Gaul’s hoarse cackling. “And his Instagram is balloon animals and Ferris wheels, guys. Someone at the department spent government funds making balloon animals just to f*ck the likes of us up. I feel had.”

Ah, man. Classic Jan, that was.

“Brett,” Sasha said.

Yes, darling cousin?

“You’re all dicks,” she declared.

Brett listened to the full podcast on his way home. Why not? He was in the mood to hear more about Jan and his zany life choices and he wanted to know if the podcasters had found his twitter account and all its train-spotting glory yet.

They had not.

Too bad.

“—we shouldn’t have gotten our hopes up really,” Broadhurst said in Brett’s ear as he walked the few blocks to his apartment. “Obviously, we knew the police would want to keep mum on this. I mean, think of the layers of moral dubiousness that goes into cooperating with someone like Spiderman. Or even better, Daredevil?”

“Yeah, well. We had to try, didn’t we?” Gaul said. “Just to tick the box if nothing else. And yeah, maybe we got played by the cops—have to hand it to them, that was pretty good. They were all in on it too, they dead-eyed the f*ck out of us the whole time. Rob nearly shat himself.”

Broadhurst took a moment to clarify that he had not shat himself. He’d been reasonably intimidated. Then he moved onto talking about plan B.

“—so we’re just gonna walk up to Spiderman and be like, oh hey, Spidey. Tell us about your life goals and greatest fears?” he demanded of Gaul.

“Yeah, why not?” Gaul asked.

There was a pause.

“This, ladies and gents, is what I am up against,” Broadhurst said seriously.

“We’re just gonna walk up and say, ‘Hey Spidey. Just punch me in the face,’” Gaul said in the background.

“Alright, well I guess that’s us for now. Thanks to FreezeFrame for letting us use their song ‘weekend whispers’ as the outro of our show. We’ll be back next week, maybe even with a nose between us,” Broadhurst sighed.

Ahaha.

Oh, no.

Brett didn’t really know if he should warn Peter or any of the others on the night crew about the pending nonsense headed their way. On the one hand, it wasn’t his problem. These guys had already received their word of warning. But on the other hand, he really didn’t want JB or Wade or someone to get paranoid, uncomfortable, and violent.

These f*cks didn’t know how information worked among these people. If they had the sense to bring a bribe, it was most certainly gonna be something that wasn’t half as specific and strange enough to appease the selected beast.

That said, the result of any interaction there was more likely to be boring, if anything.

No bribe meant no chatting.

No chatting meant ignoring, evasion, or intimidation.

Brett decided that the likelihood of things going wrong leaned farther in that direction, and so, until he heard otherwise, he was staying out of this one.

Anyways, it was nice to not be the one chasing the likes of Matt and Barton for once. Really gave him some perspective into just how batsh*t his current assignment really was.

It was another whole week, but the podcasters managed to find Peter.

Brett had to admit that he was impressed when he saw that the new episode on Spotify was simply labeled “WE GOT HIM.”

Everyone at the station was shocked. Foggy was less surprised than they were when Brett stopped by after work to ask him if he’d listened to it yet.

“Have you met Peter?” Foggy asked, inspecting the neon pink soda he’d collected from the corner store. Brett was now trying it with him on the off-chance one of them was allergic to something in it and the other needed to call an ambulance.

“Pete’s one and half hairs on this side of feral,” Brett pointed out.

“Oh, but he loves attention, doesn’t he?” Foggy countered. He handed Brett a foamy glass of so-called prickly pear soda.

“Cheers,” he said.

Cheers.

No one died. They listened to the podcast.

The amount of panting recorded at the start of the interview was very familiar to Brett. As was the exasperated explanation Broadhurst and Gaul gave of their many and exhausting attempts to spot and chase Peter.

“He was pretty chill when we caught up to him, though,” Gaul said brightly. “And way short. I’d seen pictures of him next to some of the other big hitters, so we knew from the start that he was gonna be little, but we’re talkin’ like, barely up to Rob’s shoulder.”

“Surprisingly soft voice, too,” Broadhurst said. “He said he’d listened to the podcast!”

“Pretty surreal,” Gaul said.

“Yeah, until he asked us if we had real jobs,” Broadhurst said.

“He definitely asked us if we had real jobs,” Gaul confirmed. “Like taxes. He thought I was a tax-man.”

“He said he made under 10k a year so to get off his back already,” Broadhurst bemoaned. “I feel seen and it hurts.”

“The point is that we did get to talk to him,” Gaul said.

“But he f*cked with us,” Broadhurst said.

“Oh he definitely f*cked with us. Here’s just how badly he f*cked with us,” Gaul said.

They swapped over to a fuzzier bit of audio.

“Can you just state your name for the record?” Gaul’s panting voice asked.

“My name?” Peter’s higher, muffled voice clarified.

“Yeah.”

“What like ‘Spiderman?’”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Well. People call me ‘Spiderman.’”

“Do you like that?” Broadhurst asked.

There was a thoughtful pause and Foggy gave Brett a wide expression that echoed his own thought that that was actually kind of a good question to ask. He sure had never thought of it. He’d just taken for granted that Peter was Spiderman and Spiderman was Peter and that was the end of that.

“I guess?” Peter said.

“Sounds like you’re not so sure,” Broadhurst pointed out.

“Well, I guess sometimes it doesn’t matter what you think,” Peter said. “You know how like when you’re in middle school and you want everyone to call you ‘Taco’ but everyone just calls you Chelsea? It’s kind of like that. You don’t really get to make a nickname happen on your own.”

“Did you not call yourself Spiderman then?” Broadhurst asked.

“No, I did,” Peter said. “But I didn’t think people would stick with it. The Bugle’s got some better ones, honestly. They called me ‘accessory to murder’ a while back, which was pretty cool.”

There was a pause.

“Just so you know,” Gaul cut in, in much better audio, “He was like this the whole time.”

“The whole time,” Broadhurst agreed.

“Do you want to be an accessory to murder?” Broadhurst’s grainy audio cut back in.

“Depends. Do cops listen to this?” Peter asked.

Foggy choked on his drink.

“Uh? Maybe?” Broadhurst said.

“Then no. I am not an accessory to murder,” Peter said, suddenly much louder and clearer, evidently having confiscated the microphone.

There was another pause.

“What’s this?” Peter asked the guys.

They sounded confused and it was here that Brett could already tell sh*t was about to take an unexpected turn.

“That’s a microphone,” Gaul said. “Have you not seen one?”

“Not that. This,” Peter’s voice said through a torrent of weird rustling sounds.

“Oh, no, no. Don’t touch that. That’s called a blimp,” Gaul said.

This was followed by Peter clearly disobeying the order.

“I like it,” he decided over the sound of pleas to give it back. “Can I have it?”

Silence.

“The microphone?” Broadhurst clarified.

“The fluff” Peter said, determined and tapping away at the mic through its cover to make a whole lot of big rustling sounds.

“No, you can’t. Sorry.—WAIT WAIT, NO—oh thank god. It’s uh. It blocks the wind and makes the sound quality better,” Broadhurst negotiated.

Peter’s silence felt heavy.

“—he refused to talk to us if we didn’t give it to him,” Gaul’s clearer audio popped in.

“So we just let him hold it,” Broadhurst said.

“—is that good for you?” Broadhurst’s grainy, uneasy voice said next.

Peter made his happy purring sound. It sounded insane with the microphone so close to his chest.

“What’s that?” Gaul asked, alarmed.

The purring intensified.

“Are—are you making that sound?” Gaul asked in horror.

The sound dropped off a little.

“Uh. Spiderman? Spidey? Are you--?”

“Why are you doing this?” Peter asked out of left field.

“Why? Oh. Because we’re interested in you. And what you do. And what people like you do. It’s really admira—”

“I don’t pay taxes.”

“—eugh? No. We don’t do the taxes, remember? We’re the—”

“Do you pay taxes on this?”

“The microphone?”

Peter started purring again, evidently reminded that he was pleased by the mic’s texture. Foggy started cackling.

“Should we leave you two alone?” Gaul asked.

There was no answer.

“Spidey?” Gaul asked once the silence had veered into awkward territory. “Do you think we could ask you another question?”

“Mm.”

“Is that—are you making that sound?”

“Mm.”

“What—what is it?”

“I joined a cult.”

Aaaaaand here we go.

“WHAT.”

“Red’s the one who scouted me. He told me to bring along my greatest fear, but all I could find was a pigeon, so I brought that and he told me to get my life together.”

“Who—who’s Red?” Gaul asked in horror.

“Hm?”

“Red. Who’s Red?”

“Oh. DD.”

“As in, Daredevil?” Broadhurst asked.

“Mm.”

The purring intensified for a second, then dropped away entirely.

“I don’t want this anymore,” Peter declared.

“Daredevil brought you into a cult?” Gaul asked. “Did he—how old are you?”

“He said it would only hurt for like, a week,” Peter said. “But it always hurts.”

There was quiet again.

“What always hurts?” Broadhurst asked nervously.

“It’s ‘cause I brought a spider the next time,” Peter said sadly.

“Are-are you okay?” Gaul asked.

“I don’t want this anymore,” Peter said again, apparently holding the microphone back. “I’ve got things to do.”

“Wait, wait. Just a few more questions.”

“No, I’m busy,” Peter said.

“Just a couple more,” Broadhurst pleaded, flipping through what sounded like paper. “Like, uh. Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Being Spiderman.”

“Because I’m a spider. That’s why I went with Red. I just told you this.”

“Ahaha. Right. Um.”

“Also because someone murdered my dad and I want revenge.”

“UM.”

“Was it you?”

“N-No?”

“Was it you?”

Gaul choked out a negative.

Peter made a put-out sound.

“Why do I even bother then? You’re wasting my time,” he said. The scrabbling sound of a microphone being shoved into someone’s arms sounded out again. “Peace, tax-people,” he said. “I hope your overlord doesn’t fire you.”

“—and that was it,” Gaul said.

“That was actually it,” Broadhurst confirmed. “So tune in next time for—”

“—he can’t be part of a cult, right?” Gaul demanded.

Foggy hit the pause button on his phone.

“So that went well,” he said.

Why yes. Yes it did. Just swimmingly.

Foggy smirked.

Matt was just as much of a f*ckhead as Peter when he wasn’t busy slamming other people’s heads into pavement. It was why the two of them got on so well. Little did the podcasters know that Peter’s reference to his name in his ‘statement’ was not just that.

It was a declaration. And an invitation.

A non-negotiable one between the two of them.

“—people call me Daredevil,” Matt’s grainy, rumbling voice told the podcasters who were absolutely sh*tting themselves in his presence the following week.

“You’ve got a lot of names, actually,” Gaul stammered. “The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. The man in the mask. DD. Double D. Do you have a favorite? A preference maybe?”

Matt’s silence loomed large. It wasn’t like Peter’s awkward ones. It filled the space in rooms and make anyone listening shiver.

“No,” Matt finally said.

“Cool,” Gaul squeaked.

“We’ve got just some questions that people have been asking us to ask you from twitter,” Broadhurst said shakily. “Do you mind answering some of them?”

Matt stretched out another silence for nearly five whole seconds.

“Fine,” he said.

“O-kay!” Broadhurst said hurriedly, “So uh. Sunny_babe87 asks: “DD, where did you get your helmet? I’ve checked all the stores and places online—is it a custom job?”

“Yes,” Matt said. He made no further indication of following that up.

Foggy started laughing so hard, he spilled his newly attainted violently green drink all over his thigh.

“Cool. Uh. DDfan_666 asks, “Daredevil, what’s your actual deal? Why devil? You could have been anything and yet you picked the horns. What’s up with that?”

Matt leaned into his silence.

“They were given to me,” he said darkly.

“By who, if I might ask?” Broadhurst nudged.

“Your cult?” Gaul cut in.

Matt said nothing.

“Spidey said that you invited him to a cult,” Gaul said. “We think he’s just f*ckin’ with us but—”

Matt made a tiny, curt little huff like a laugh.

That shut the podcasters up instantly.

“My family is deeply religious,” Matt said. He left it at that.

“Are you religious?” Gaul asked quietly.

Matt said nothing.

“Good talk,” Broadhurst decided. “Minnie from Kansas asks: DD, if you could fight anyone in the world, who would it be and why?—P.S. What’s your leg routine? I want an ass like yours but the squats aren’t getting me even close.’”

Matt hummed, lighter this time, like he was actually thinking about answering the question properly.

“I don’t wish to fight people,” he decided. “If I want to fight someone, I just do. If they come into Hell’s Kitchen, then I have to. There’s no wanting involved.”

“You don’t have to,” Broadhurst pointed out. “No one’s making you.”

Matt laughed. It was a horrible, loud, slashing sound on the podcast, even though Brett knew he was more of a barker in person.

“No one’s making me,” Matt repeated, as though that was the funny part. “No one’s making me? Listen to yourselves.”

It was the podcasters’ turn to be quiet.

“Is someone making you?” Gaul whispered.

Matt’s snickering tapered off.

“Maybe,” he said, suddenly full of heartache. “Maybe they are. I wonder—” he cut himself off. “There’s work.”

“Work?”

“The Spiderkid says you have something he wants.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Gaul asked.

“He describes it as soft. Give it here.”

“The blimp? No man. Sorry, it’s part of the microphone. We can’t just—”

“Give. It. Here.”

“Okay,” Gaul squeaked. “Sure. Whatever you want.”

There was an obnoxious rustle and, sure enough, the sound quality got scratchier.

“Is that—is that better?” Broadhurst asked.

Matt hummed in approval.

Then, after a moment, said softly, “It will do. What is your fear?”

“My?—oh. No, no. We don’t—we don’t want in. To your cult that is. We’re totally good being normal,” Gaul said.

“I asked you a question,” Matt snarled, suddenly unbearable loud. Like a rottweiler. Like he was right in your ear. A drill sergeant with horns.

“Oh my god. It’s you now, man,” Gaul squeaked.

Matt settled down.

He sniffed.

“Fine,” he said. “Join us on the roof. Saturday at dusk. Don’t be late.”

“—I don’t know if we’re actually doing this, guys,” Broadhurst’s clear audio cut in. “We are veering out of comedy and into horror and I dunno about you, but I’m genre-shy.”

“Oh, no. We’re definitely doing it. I’m about to become a superhero, Rob. Don’t ruin this for me,” Gaul said.

There was a tap at the window and Brett looked over Foggy’s quaking body to wave at Matt on the other side of the glass. He did not look devilish at all. He looked sweaty. He’d probably stopped by after the gym to use Foggy’s shower.

“’Sup?” Brett asked him once he’d cracked the window to let Matt shimmy it the rest of the way up.

Matt co*cked his head at him, then turned his attention Foggy’s silent wailing/coughing on the couch. He tipped his face quizzically back to Brett.

“Podcast,” he said.

“Ah.”

“You gotta be nice, Matt,” Brett told him. “They’re just a couple of nerds.”

“We’re just a couple of nerds,” Matt told him. “And anyways, Wade’s the one who’s set this up. I’m just following his lead.”

Brett wasn’t surprised. This sounded exactly like the kind of thing Wade would orchestrate behind the scenes.

“What are y’all gonna do to ‘em?” he asked as Matt patted fondly at Foggy and asked if he could use the shower.

“No idea,” Matt said.

Wade took the podcasters hostage on Saturday.

Wade made these people beg for their lives.

Then he took their microphones and wandered along, interviewing every vigilante, superhero, and scum-resident he could get his hands on.

“Captain America, sir. Tell us about your pecs. What size are them titt*es?”

“I haven’t checked.”

“Do you want to? I can help?”

A pause.

“Wade, this is sexual harassment.”

“WILSON. HANDS. OFF.”

“Oh. Perfect. Ex-Sergeant, Ex-Winter, Ex-Soldier, what size are your boyfriend’s—”

“Barton.”

“Wilson. Hey what’s that? Woah. Yo. You got a l’il somethin’-somethin’ on your head there, pal.”

“I’m doing ASMR now. Bring me your pizza dog.”

“Oh, word. Wait, what’s ASMR?”

“Devil-child. Beloved favorite of mine. Dashing, charming, eloquent, clever man that you are.”

“You have my attention.”

“I need a favor.”

“Go on.”

“I need your teeth.”

Silence.

“What’s the matter with them?”

“I’m doing ASMR. Come here, I need you to bite this thing.”

“Is it a dick?”

“It’s not a dick.”

“I feel like it’s gonna be a dick.”

“It’s not a dick.”

“What’s ASMR?”

“You’ll know soon enough.”

“SMALL HUMAN.”

“TALL HUMAN.”

“Come here, child. I’ve brought you a gift.”

“Is it a bomb?”

“No bomb. Come, come.”

“Is it a—WADE.”

“Shhhhh. Shh. Too loud.”

“Baby. Hi, baby. What’s your name, kitty?”

“Shhhhh—indoor voice. No, no. Don’t neither of you start yet. I gotta—hold this. There you go. Nice.”

“f*cking Deadpool,” Gaul said into his microphone seriously, “Stole our mic to make ASMR recordings. He stole it. He lured us in with this bogus cult bullsh*t. To make ASMR videos.”

“I mean, we did get some cool audio from it,” Broadhurst pointed out. “And he did give it all back.”

“He stole our mic, Rob,” Gaul reminded his buddy.

“Yeah, but we actually have a semi-explicit candid recording of Captain America now. Who else can say they’ve got one of those, huh?”

“Our MIC. How did he know about this? Did he know from the start? How could he have known we were going to interview Spidey??”

“Well,” Broadhurst said reasonably, “We did say that we were going to interview Spidey in our podcast, Brian. You know. The one we air publicly? The one we advertise? That podcast?”

“Ah. Right.”

Brett was dying. Foggy didn’t even make any sound while he laughed anymore. He didn’t even wheeze.

“But how did he find us?” Gaul demanded. “Like, how could he have known who we were? We don’t—don’t get us wrong guys, most of y’all are chill, but a couple of you have no boundaries, so none of our personal info is up online—which makes me just even more confused.”

“He’s Deadpool, man,” Broadhurst said. “He’s the best in the business. If he wants to find you, he’ll just find you.”

“Exactly, he’s the best in the business. He could just buy his own mic and camera. He can just go murder some politician and buy way fancier sh*t than we could ever afford, and yet. And yet???”

Oh, blessed souls.

They had no idea how Deadpool’s brain worked.

Nobody had any clue how Deadpool’s brain worked.

But this one time, Brett thought he had an inkling as to what was up here and it was nothing short of absolutely delightful.

Foggy thought so, at least.

So one of Wade’s favorite pastimes was Jan.

Yeah. Uh-huh. That Jan.

Wade loved him. He loved everything about him.

Wade stalked Jan, fully aware of his true identity.

Knowing who Jan really was did not dissuade Wade in the least bit. If anything, it only encouraged him.

This had been going on for the last six months, ever since the Captain had tried to get Brett to get a read on Wade, who evidently didn’t appreciate the gesture.

When painting massive co*cks on police property lost its intrigue for him, he’d decided he’d get back at the Captain by spending a good chunk of his free time writing Jan love messages on every platform he existed on. They were elaborate. Some of them were graphic. Others were just reviews of Jan himself, with Wade reviewing this version of him and scoring him on out of ten points on his ‘would f*ck’ scale.

He kept hacking Jan’s many, varied accounts and emails in escalating efforts to make the Captain uncomfortable and to secure a promise from the man to stay in his lane.

The Captain refused to be intimidated in his own house.

And so Wade carried on making his life difficult in as many tiny, aggravating ways as possible and had become the IT department’s external nemesis.

He must have seen the podcaster’s email and decided to capitalize on the endeavor, as was his way.

He must have caught Peter and told him to take the interview and get these idiots interested.

Sasha was not amused when Brett explained this to his mom later. Mom thought it was very clever of Wade to have gone through all those hoops. Brett explained to her that it was indeed clever, but also, to anyone in the know, a very obvious intimidation tactic.

By leading these two podcasters on, then stealing and returning their equipment, Wade was saying to the police ‘look how much fun I could have if I choose to hack your cute little system.’ To others, especially challenging assassins, he was saying ‘This is what I will do to you if you try to f*ck with me, you little sh*ts.’ And to the public, he was saying ‘I am an unpredictable force of nature, so watch yourselves.’

It was funny. Up until it wasn’t.

That was Wade all over.

“You should have helped them, Brett,” Sasha said.

Ah, girl.

It wasn’t his job to save people from their own lack of common sense. Sometimes, people just had to learn sh*t the hard way. And that wasn’t always the worst thing.

Chapter 23: letters to no one

Chapter Text

Never, in his whole career, had Brett expected to be trying to write a thank you note to the f*cking Punisher.

The universe, he was pleased to say, concurred with his assumption and so had prepared him for this moment by making reminding him that all language was constructed and useless at conveying human emotion.

The alphabet was fuzzy. He was pretty sure that there was an ‘a’ at the beginning of it and ‘z’ at the end of it, but that wasn’t helpful given that the letters he was looking for were all spinning off and bumping into each other in the psychedelic dreamscape the right side of his brain was featuring for him.

He decided that maybe a word document wasn’t the right place to start.

Mom’s letter was entirely hand written.

‘Dear Frank Castle,’ it read.

I sincerely believed that you are a terrorist until this very moment. I realize now that I judged you before I knew you and the actions that you took in saving my son’s life have changed my opinion of you. I see now that you are a soldier who has been betrayed by the institution which recruited you and promised you stability. That very institution, and specifically its head members, not only put you repeatedly in danger, but also ultimately resulted in the tragic loss of your own wife and children.

I am sorry that the armed forces have refused to take responsibility for the trauma they have inflicted on you and your family, and while I don’t always agree with your tactics for bringing their misdeeds to light, I have a new respect for what you are trying to do.

Thank you sincerely for saving my son’s life. My debt to you is greater than words can convey.

Elizabeth Mahoney.

Mom had always been eloquent. Graceful. There wasn’t a body in the neighborhood that could argue against her command over the English language.

Brett felt like he was holding a red crayon and piece of brown paper now, though.

What the f*ck could he say to compare to that?

Hi, Frank.

Thanks for tearing that f*ckhead from the 1^st precinct off me and taking two bullets in the chest when he didn’t get the memo.

My favorite part was when you screamed at him ‘he’s one of yours, you colossal piece of sh*t.’ My next favorite part was when you said ‘that’s it, I warned you. It’s time for Time Out.’

The way you choked him out for a good twenty seconds in your giant elbow will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Anywho, I owe you one, buddy.

Your fave detective,

Brett

Yeah, no.

It would be better not to say anything at all.

Amos announced that he ‘stanned’ the Punisher that weekend and the whole house furrowed its brows in confusion until Sasha explained for everyone over twenty-five what ‘stanning’ was.

No, she said with endless, aggravated patience, Amos didn’t think Castle’s name was Stanning the Punisher. Amos was saying that he was a fan of the Punisher. God, y’all. Get with it.

Kelly laughed hysterically before strong-arming both Brett and Alicia, Sasha’s mom, into the kitchen with Mom so she could freak out and demand suggestions for how to handle this new development democratically.

Mom said that Amos was allowed to ‘stan’ the Punisher.

“He just saved your brother’s life” she said. “Why shouldn’t he stan?”

“Because the man’s Frank Castle, Mother,” Kelly snapped. “I can’t let him go to school stanning the Punisher.”

“He goes to preschool, relax. Kids stan all sorts of things,” Mom said.

“Can we please stop saying ‘stan?’” Brett asked, horrified somehow that this was more offensive to him than the idea of his nephew metaphysically latching onto the Punisher’s hip.

Frank wouldn’t hurt him.

Right?

Right.

God, how far they had come.

Kelly went out into the living room and took Amos into her lap and explained very firmly that he was allowed to stan Spiderman and the Falcon and Captain America, but he was not allowed to stan the Punisher for grown-up reasons.

Amos didn’t like that. He pointed out that Sasha got to stan whoever she wanted and Sasha told him that only sh*tty white boys stanned the Punisher.

That led to the words ‘well, then I’m sh*tty white boy’ being uttered under Bess Mahoney’s roof and that led to a supremely awkward conversation where Amos learned that he was, in fact, never going to be a sh*tty white boy and that was a-okay.

Saying the word ‘sh*tty’ however, was not a-okay. That was a grown-up, naughty word and it would never emerge from his mouth in Nana’s home ever again.

Brett needed to escape all this education. He had a letter to write.

Dear Frank,

Thanks for not being overtly racist on top of your terrorism.

Best of luck on your warpath. Please keep it out of HK.

Best,

Brett

Nope, that wasn’t it either.

Matt informed Brett that Frank had the IQ of a drunk guinea pig, so he needed to use small, small words to convey large, large ideas.

The one Matt thought that Brett ought to convey somehow was, ‘I see your stance on the intersection between race and the overuse of force by police and how that negatively impacts even members of the police themselves, and I appreciate that. But you’re still a raging f*ckhead and I will end your tyranny in the coming months.’

Brett told him that he should write his own letter.

Matt countered that with telling him that it was bold of him to assume that Matt could write.

Foggy confirmed for Brett after Matt had strode off in triumph that Matt could, in fact, write and that Brett was not being ableist for calling him on that particular line of bullsh*t.

“But for real,” Foggy said with eyebrows bent so deeply that they made parentheses between them. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

Mmmm.

“I’m thinking about quitting my job,” Brett told him, 100% honest.

Foggy’s eyebrows decided that he’d just seen a sojourning alligator tear off the grate on a storm drain and rear its head in the middle of daytime foot traffic.

“I’m—sorry—what?” he stuttered.

Brett shrugged.

“Only takes one bad apple to remind you that it doesn’t even matter if you’re wearing a badge in America if you’re black. You’re still a target to the police,” he said.

Foggy opened and closed his mouth of few times and then creaked out a raspy, “Okay?” like he’d thought that Brett was the kind of brick wall that never thought about these things.

Like, come on, man.

So he went to vocational school instead of college. That didn’t make him thick.

“Have you considered talking to your Captain?” Foggy asked.

“That’s on the list after this letter,” Brett told him matter-of-factly.

“Great,” Foggy wheezed. “You let—you let me know how that goes.”

Oh, he would.

Dear Frank,

Isn’t it kind of f*cked up how as an officer, I’m supposed to arrest you for being a f*cking terrorist and murdering military leaders when, as a black man in the United States of America, my life is threatened daily by both the police force, who I work for, and the military, who you used to?

Isn’t it kind of f*cked up how, as a police officer, I don’t and can’t approve of your methods. But as a black person, it’s really, really satisfying to see someone use their privilege to systematically take down the heads of an institution which lures young people of color in with promises of empowerment without telling them that the reason they feel disempowered to begin with is exactly because of that institution?

Isn’t that f*cked up, Frank?

Thanks for saving my life by the way. That was pretty cool of you. You’re still an enigma to me and I’m not sure I’d trust you with someone like Murdock’s life, but I think I’d trust you with my nephew’s. Even more now than I ever thought I would.

The world’s a disaster, Frank. Thanks for the reminder.

Brett.

No, that wasn’t quite it either. But it was way closer.

The Captain said that the 1^st precinct was to issue a formal apology to Brett, specifically, and to officers of color in the city in general and it was almost enough to make Brett laugh.

An apology.

Huh.

Yeah, sure. How kind of them. How benevolent.

“Sir,” he said. “With all due respect: tell them to eat sh*t and die.”

The Captain winced hard.

“Mahoney,” he said. “They’re trying.”

Haha. No. f*ck that.

“Trying isn’t good enough,” Brett said. “That man nearly killed me. My momma had to listen to that on the 11 o’ clock news, sir. And the only person who stepped up to stop it is a known terrorist. What does that say about this station, huh? This force? This field? You think I trust any of you, now? You think I feel comfortable going out into the world with a single officer here besides Maynard?”

The Captain’s lips were so thin, they were nearly a flat line.

“Brett,” he said. “I hear what you’re saying. And I understand. But—”

No. f*cking. Buts.

None.

Brett didn’t have time for this.

“I have a lot of thinking I need to do right now,” he said. “About my future career in this field. Sir. So if all you’ve got for me are apologies, that’s fine. That makes things clearer on my part.”

There was a long silence that unrolled itself like a heavy shag carpet across the Captain’s desk.

“I see,” the Captain said. “I—I’m—I see.”

Good.

Brett was glad that he did.

“I’m—why don’t you take some time off?” the Captain asked.

Oh, Brett intended to.

“Why don’t we start with a week?” the Captain offered.

Sure. Why not?

Mom told him that he was being dramatic and she was proud of him for it.

She brought out three different albums for him. He knew them well, but he still listened as she paged through them and pointed out aunties and cousins and friends and neighbors who Mom and Dad had protested with over the years.

Mom had never approved of the police job. But she’d seen what Brett had been trying to do. She’d thought that he’d been naïve to think that he could change things from the inside of the system, and in some ways, Brett thought she was right.

In other ways, he thought that working from within the system was just as important and working outside of it.

Mom told him that that sure explained why he got on with the night crew so well and—when she put it like that—it did make a hell of a lot of sense.

Dear Frank,

What brought you to the marines? Was it the money? Did you want power? Did you feel like you didn’t have it in your life? Was it the comfort of having a purpose and a routine? When did everything change for you?

Is it weird to walk into army surplus stores and be besieged by emblems of the power that made you, unmade you, and remade you into the man you are today?

I tell myself I joined the force to change things. To help make the police in Hell’s Kitchen look, talk, and listen more like the community around us. But I think, deep down, I joined for the power.

That’s f*cked up, don’t you think, Frank?

It’s like with all those army brats. I joined for the power and, even with my mama standing there next to me with twenty-odd years of activism under her belt, I spent all my time trying not to think about why I wanted that power.

The sh*t people say in the police academy, Frank. The hazing. The screaming. The slurs. The videos.

They make everything and everyone out to be some hostile force trying to kill you. They make out like your safety is the only thing that matters. And then they have the audacity to suggest that you’re a hero for mowing down a threat, when really, all it feels like is being rewarded for being scared.

I bet you got some of that, Frank. A lot of that, actually.

I tell myself I’m part of the problem, but I tell myself at the same time that if I wasn’t out in the damn coat with the damn badge, that we wouldn’t be finding bodies to bring home to parents and kids and sisters and brothers and all those other people who get caught up in our lives.

I don’t know how to reconcile that kind of work with the racism, man. The incarceration. The fact that more than half the people I grew up with have done jail time for dumbass, petty, little sh*t crimes that don’t even matter in the grand scheme of things.

I don’t know where the line is, or if there even is a line.

It’s all probably just one mangled-ass piece of fishing line, all wrapped up around itself so that it’s five, six, seven, eight times its original size.

I knew things would be awful. I watched them be awful. I’ve stood by as things were awful.

And it’s gotten to the point where I think I’m feeling a bit like you.

Tired.

Angry.

So f*cking angry I could laugh. Do you ever just laugh, Frank?

At the chaos of it all?

Anyways, thanks for saving my life, man. Apparently the only people I can count on out in the field are terrorists.

I mean, that’s what people call the Black Panthers, you know. So I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.

Brett

Foggy and Matt were the kind of white dudes that Brett thought the world could use more of.

Were they perfect?

Hell no. One of them was a vigilante with rage issues and the other one spent his time lamenting a healed tongue piercing and engaged in the futile pursuit of an inoffensive grape soda.

They weren’t perfect.

But Matt had learned Spanish to expand the population to whom he could offer his services and Foggy woke up routinely in the middle of the night to go sit in interrogation rooms with young black and Latino men who’s alternative prospects were years upon years in prison for bullsh*t offenses.

Foggy knew his privilege. Mom liked him because, when they were kids, he’d flipped through her albums and asked loads of questions which might have been offensive if they weren’t coming from the gap-toothed mouth of a seven-year old.

Mom liked Foggy because he was open to learning and one of his favorite things to do was listen to other people talking. It always had been, and it always would be.

Mom liked Matt, on the other hand, because Matt was the son of Jack Murdock who, Brett swore, hand to God, she’d had something of a crush on when he’d been alive and grinding his face into the mats of every boxing ring in New York City.

Kelly told him to get real and look at a picture of Jack Murdock, then to look her in the eye and tell her that people in the Kitchen weren’t at least allowed to dream.

And seeing as Brett couldn’t do that, he had to give some credence to Mom’s claim that she liked Matt because he’d been through so much sh*t in his life and he came from such a cesspool before that, that he actually, seriously understood what his clients were talking about when they laid out their troubles before him.

Mom told Brett that if sh*t blew up between him and the station, he was to call one of those two knobhea*ds immediately.

There weren’t many lawyers she trusted—the whole of them charged too much and were self-centered sharks—but she’d half-raised Foggy herself and he feared her wrath just as thoroughly as he feared his own mother’s, so she could be sure that he’d do everything in his power to keep Brett safe.

It was wild to think about how, if Mom could have gone back in the past to her young, pregnant self, she would have whispered to her to make sure that her son was friends with the neighbor’s boy.

That kid would be an important ally for her own in the future.

Wild. Absolutely wild.

But smart.

So f*cking smart.

Dear Frank,

I know you hate Matt, but sometimes I wonder if maybe he’s got the right idea about all this justice sh*t. I mean, it ain’t the same, racism and ableism, but I do wonder if maybe he gets that feeling of always being out of place, even when you’re in the place you made for yourself.

The only other black detective at my station is Maynard.

She asked me yesterday if I’m gonna quit.

She said she’d quit with me in solidarity.

She told me if we’re both out, we can set up a private investigating agency. We could join Jessica Jones in that crusade against bullsh*t.

The problem is, Frank, that you don’t have the same kind of power as a P.I. And we talked about this before.

The power is why I joined the force to begin with. And I bet that’s why you went into the marines.

But you know who’s figured out power?

Matt f*cking Murdock.

The guy’s a two-faced bastard who isn’t good enough for Foggy, don’t you think for a second that I don’t believe that, but you know what?

He’s really figured it out.

He’s gotten himself into power in the daytime and power in the nighttime and any time he starts feeling like he’s lagging in one or the other, he’s got himself covered. He can just lean on the sh*t he does on the other side of things to give him what he needs to keep going.

I dunno, Frank. You’re only on the one side these days, and I’m only on the other.

You think I should become a vigilante, Frank?

Please say no.

I don’t have the abs for any of y’all’s suits.

Brett

Getting closer each time.

The Captain procured what he called a ‘bullsh*t apology’ on Brett’s behalf and told him that even he could see that it was not good enough.

The self-awareness was a good new look on him.

He told Brett to take a few more days off.

Amos asked Brett if he had the Punisher’s phone number in his cellphone like he did Spiderman’s.

Brett did not. That was why he was writing a letter.

Amos asked him if Spiderman had the Punisher’s phone number by chance. He wanted to send him a cool picture.

Brett wondered if that might trigger a breakdown for dear, old Mr. Punisher and decided that no, Spiderman did not have the Punisher’s number in his phone, but if Amos left a snack out for Daredevil and maybe a note explaining why he was doing it, then Daredevil might be able to dig up that number for him.

Kelly waited until Amos bumbled off to go tell Mom this before locking Brett in the hall closet. She leaned hard against the door while he did the same on the other side and, through gritted teeth, told him that the last thing they needed was a devil hanging around the damn doorstep.

Brett disagreed.

Recent events had informed him that the last thing they needed hanging around the doorstep was a police officer.

Kelly pulled back from the door and let him fall out and onto his face.

“You’re still an officer, Brett,” she said. “Square the f*ck up already. You went in to change things, didn’t you? Now’s the time. You’ve got the leverage.”

Not on this floor, he didn’t.

Amos decided that Daredevil liked goldfish crackers best and nothing would dissuade him from this, so Brett and Kelly hid around the corner of the foyer, watching him rearrange them determinedly around his carefully crafted letter out on the front stoop.

Kelly had big plans to let all that sit out there for two hours until Amos was good and asleep.

Her big plans did not include giving the devil the opportunity to come in close enough to touch any of it Brett felt a particularly petulant urge to text Matt personally and tell him that there was some snacks waiting for him on the porch, but he quashed it.

Matt wouldn’t be happy when the ‘snacks’ were only that and were not coffee-related, and honestly? Brett wasn’t too sure about how he felt about Amos contacting Frank Castle.

It was oddly cathartic to write letters to the man, but it was something else to invite Frank Castle’s voice into his nephew’s head.

That was pushing it.

Not least because Frank sounded like he shoved his head in a trashcan heaving with cigarette smoke for an hour before he left his carefully-selected safe house of the night.

No one in the house was prepared to put Amos to bed and come downstairs to scratching going on outside the front door.

There was a moment of silent jumping heartrates which accompanied the fear that some neo-nazi f*ckhead had seen Brett’s name on the news and tracked down his mom’s house to try to commit arson, but another deep breath’s worth of time revealed the noise to be accompanied by quizzical ones.

“There’s no way,” Kelly swore.

Mom was very impressed.

“He must really like goldfish,” she said.

Brett volunteered himself to open the door and doing so revealed Matt flattening Amos’s note against the handrailing, trying to make sense of the crayon letters on it and having a hell of a time.

Brett felt for him in that moment.

Those letters were barely recognizable to the human eye. To the human finger?

Good luck.

Matt didn’t seem too bothered about being caught in the act. In fact, he seemed pleased at Brett’s presence.

“Gift,” he said, holding out the paper expectantly.

Brett purposefully did not look over his shoulder at Mom and Kelly.

“Nephew,” Brett said, taking the paper.

Matt took it back from him, offended.

“Gift,” he said. “For devils, no?”

That was indeed the clearest word on the sheet. He wasn’t wrong there.

“We’re indulging him,” Brett said.

“What does it say?” Matt asked.

“Nothing of import for devils,” Brett said. “Go find a goat somewhere else. The folks two doors down have chickens. You can start there.”

“Why, I never.”

Matt went ramrod straight.

Brett slowly looked over his shoulder this time.

“I’m handling it, Mom,” he said.

“Matthew,” Mom gasped. “What in god’s name’s gotten into you?”

Matt, to his credit, kept his face completely flat. Mom waited and, upon receiving no response, started to enter the Agitated Zone.

“I know you can hear me, son,” she said.

Matt co*cked his head like a bird.

“Someone’s calling,” he said. “Consider this conversation on pause.”

He shoved the paper against Brett’s chest until he took it awkwardly and then leapt up onto the railing and from there up to the roof. And then he was gone. The sound of his boots barely followed him for ten seconds.

Brett looked down from the roof into his mother’s eyes.

“Come inside,” she said.

“I cannot believe you didn’t tell me.”

“Can’t believe you didn’t tell her, Brett,” Kelly said.

“Matthew can’t be out there, doing all of these tricks. He’s a nice boy.”

“Such a nice boy,” Kelly said, stabbing accusatory eyes directly into Brett’s gut.

He mugged at her. She mugged back.

“Mom,” he sighed. “It’s not Matt, I told you—”

“I know that boy’s jaw,” Mom snapped. “Don’t you lie to me. There will be no gas-lighting in this house, do you hear me?”

Welp.

Sorry, Matt.

“Matty, you’re such a nice boy,” Mom nearly sobbed. “And this? All these lies? To the whole neighborhood? Jack would never.”

“He’s enhanced, Mom,” Brett said. “He’s not lying to anyone. He really is blind. I thought the same thing, but like—this?” he held up Amos’s now-crumpled paper. “He can’t read this. That’s why he was trying to give it to me.”

He got two frowning stares.

“Matt’s ability to ask for help as DD is a negative four out of a hundred,” he explained. “He just kind of paws at people and looks sad until he gets his way.”

The stares didn’t stop staring.

“He’s not not blind, guys,” he emphasized. “He’s enhanced.”

Mom straightened up a bit and sniffed.

“What kind of enhanced?” she asked.

Oof.

Well.

“Fogs explains it better, but—”

“WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?”

Oh sh*t oh sh*t oh sh*t

Sorry, Foggy.

“Franklin knows about this?” Mom demanded. Kelly pressed the tips of her fingers over her mouth in shock.

Uuuuuuh.

Maybe?

Just a—you know--like a lot?

“Where is that phone? Give me my phone.”

“Mom, no,” Brett said. “They can’t know that I told you.”

The fires of hell burned on Mom’s shoulders. Kelly edged away from her and all the heat that she was putting off.

“Why not?” Mom demanded.

“Because we have an understanding,” Brett said, treading carefully. “I don’t out him and he doesn’t make my life more difficult than it already is.”

Mom considered this with what appeared to be a sour taste in her mouth.

“Matthew’s a good man,” she eventually said. “And I don’t understand. But I appreciate what he’s doing for this community. So when he comes back, you bring him inside and we’re gonna talk.”

Ahahahaha.

Sucks to be you, Matt.

Sucks to be you.

“How could you?”

Matt flattened himself against the door and wrinkled his nose like he wanted to hiss. He did not hiss, though. He knew better.

“All this time, Matty. All this time. You could be killed out there,” Mom lectured, shaking Amos’s note as she did.

“I am more than aware,” Matt eventually said.

“Then why?” Mom snapped.

Matt flinched away from the words.

“Because,” he snapped back. “No one else is doing jack and we all deserve better.”

Mom’s sour squint remained, even as she straightened up and lifted her chin.

“Go on,” she said.

Matt twisted his head slightly. His suit was strange to see in yellow, indoor lighting. It lost a lot of its skin-like, threatening gleam. He looked completely out of place.

Matt licked at a crack in the center of his lip.

“I have no reason to defend myself to you,” he said.

“No,” Mom said. “But I am trying to understand. So help me understand.”

Matt was suspicious of that.

Mom held Amos’s note up to him.

“My grandson admires you,” she said. “He thinks you protect this neighborhood and he’s right. But I’ve watched you grow, Matt. From these windows. I know where you come from. You daddy did everything he had to to keep you from doing this. So give me a reason to understand why you’re standing against everything he taught you and all the sacrifices he made. He gave his life for you, Matty. His life.”

Matt’s hackles could not possibly go up any further.

“Mom,” Brett said gently. “This isn’t how to do this.”

Kelly stood up.

“He’s right,” she said. “Matt doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. He—you’ve been doing this for years, haven’t you?”

Those hackles started to settle ever so slightly until, to Brett’s surprise, they just dropped. Matt tipped his face forward and lifted his hands.

He took off the mask.

“You’re right,” he told Mom with his eyes settling over her head. He chuffed.

“You’re right,” he repeated. “He’d have hated it. All of it—Dad, that is. But do you know what me and him could have used the night Roscoe Sweeney took that gun to his head?”

Mom’s chin came down.

“Daredevil,” she said.

“I heard the shot,” Matt said. “When it happened. I heard it and I heard him fall.”

“He was blocks away from your apartment,” Mom said.

Matt huffed another little unhappy laugh.

“Bess, who comes running when folks scream on the other side of Hell’s Kitchen? You think a few blocks is a challenge for me?”

The room was tense.

“So you do it for Jack,” Mom said.

“No,” Matt said. “Well, maybe. At one point. But not anymore. Now, I do it for you. And Amos. And Foggy. And Karen and Kelly and Becky and Brett and everyone and anyone who screams at night and thinks for even half a second that no one cares and no one’s coming. I do it because I was tired, Bess, of feeling that way, all the time. Every day.”

“And you could,” Mom said.

“And I can,” Matt told her.

“How?”

“I’m sure Brett’s told you,” Matt said.

“He hasn’t,” Kelly intervened. “He just said that you’re—”

“Enhanced,” Brett said.

Matt swiveled his face his way and tilted it slightly. Trying to figure out if Brett was lying.

“Enhanced,” he repeated. “That what we call Jessica. That’s not what we call me.”

Brett was actually surprised to hear that.

“Are there other descriptions?” he asked.

“You on duty, detective?” Matt volleyed back.

The pause this time was ugly. Brett let himself relax first.

“Nope,” he said. “I’m sure you heard me talking to Foggy.”

“I did,” Matt said. “If you quit, I’m not talking to a damn soul at the station and no one else will either.”

“You’ll be sure of that?” Brett asked.

Matt let his lower lip hang a little loose. He didn’t answer; instead, he turned back to Mom.

“I lost my sight,” he said abruptly. “Got heightened senses as a consolation prize. You see through light, I take in information—heat, sound, taste, whatever—and from that, I can figure out where things are. I don’t see. I feel. And through feeling, I can know a lot about the world around me and I can figure out how to move through it. While you and everyone else was watching, a ‘behavioral specialist’ hired by St. Agnes’s trained me to be a warrior for his cult and when he left, I kept up the training. When he came back, I told him that he and his cult could go f*ck themselves. I fight for me, and I fight for this community. And I respect you, Bess, for what you did for me. I remember the clothes drives and the food drives and the books you found for me. I used to read them to go to sleep—the world was too loud; I needed a distraction.”

“So you do this now? To pay us back?” Mom asked.

“Not back,” Matt said. “Forward. The more people I handle, the fewer end up in police custody. I’m not Spidey. The only people I call the cops on are bastards like Fisk. Rapists. Murderers. It’s not perfect. But these are the options at my disposal. This and standing in court.”

“This is violence, Matthew. This is how your father died,” Mom said.

Matt sucked in a deep breath and sighed.

“I never said it was right,” he said. “I said it’s what I do. And I’ve tried not doing it. But Bess, you know why I can’t stop. People used to know better, but I’m the only one left and I’m just poor, puppy-faced, blind, Matthew.”

Mom closed her eyes and her forehead filled with lines.

“There is no devil in you, Matty,” she said. “That was domestic violence, baby.”

Matt smiled with sharp teeth.

“We all got different words,” he said. “But I’m not here to talk about me.” He leaned forward just enough to wrap his stiff, roped fingers around the top of Amos’s letter. “This is about granting a wish, no? Devil-fairy, at your service. Here to bring ya teeth. How many you want?”

Kelly and Mom failed to appreciate Matt’s humor and a scolding later followed by an actual hissing Matt being yanked back in from bad attempt to escape out the window saw Kelly relenting and reading Amos’s letter out to him.

He went from hostile to curious in an instant.

“This says nothing about teeth,” he told Brett.

“Why would it talk about teeth?” Brett asked.

Matt blinked.

“Tooth? Fairy?” he asked. “Don’t kids lose teeth?”

Oh no, friend. Wrong ballpark entirely.

“I was so ready, I went an’ got a coin and everything.” Matt said sadly to Kelly’s squawk of rapidly concealed laughter.

Mom asked to see the coin and Matt handed her an arcade token. It seemed to do the work in convincing her that he was, in fact, not playing games with the whole blind thing. She asked him what it was and he told her he had a strong feeling it was two quarters stuck together, which made it extra appealing for tooth-fairy purposes.

She looked directly at Brett.

“I never, not once, said any of them were smart,” he clarified.

“I’m very smart,” Matt said. “Summa cum Laude. Is it not a quarter?”

No, Matthew. It was not a quarter.

“Oh. Okay gimme, I’ll go put it back.”

No, no. That was unnecessary.

“Amos just wants to talk to Castle,” Brett said. “But he doesn’t have to. He will live if he doesn’t talk to Castle.”

“A sticky quarter’s better than Frank any day of the week,” Matt pouted. “Take it.”

“Do you have his number or not?” Brett asked. “Just saying: it’s more than okay if you don’t.”

Matt’s lips turned down in a pout.

“I have no numbers,” he said.

Amazing. That was perfect.

“Phone has them.”

Uh?

Okay?

“Lost the phone,” Matt said, sadder than ever.

“You lost your burner?” Brett translated. “Does Foggy know?”

Matt shook his head.

“And you’ve been going out anyways?” Brett asked.

Matt perked up and nodded.

“That’s bad,” Brett told him.

Matt edged away from him.

“I’m finding the phone,” he said. “Once I find the phone, I will have a number for Francis Condemned by Jesus Castle. I will give it to you once I have recovered it.”

…Brett wasn’t holding his breath.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Don’t find the phone for us, though. Find it for you.”

“Ehn.”

“Matt.”

“Ehn.”

“You need it. To call the ambulance, remember?”

Matt weighed this with his head.

“Nope,” he said. “Here, I’ll find Frank for you. That’s easier. Gimme ten—actually, thirty. Give me thirty.”

No, wait—

It was too late.

He was gone.

“I need to sit,” Kelly said.

“I need to pray,” Mom said.

Brett warned the other two that Matt, as Matt Murdock, was extremely focused and punctual, but Matt, as Daredevil, was less than reliable.

“Cross your fingers he finds a cat and gets caught up with that for a minute,” Brett told Mom.

“He’s allergic,” Mom said. “That’s a bad thing.”

Ah.

Right.

“Well, then cross your fingers he runs into Iron Fist and they have to run cult circles around each other again,” Brett said.

The gaze upon him did not lighten up.

“That boy’s gonna die,” Mom said. “Jack, honey. I’m sorry, I tried. Your boy’s more suicidal than my own.”

Oh. Wow.

Thanks, Mom. Just go ahead and say how you really feel why don’t you?

It took 45 minutes for Matt to remember his mission and it was nearly 2 in the morning when he came careening in through the window with a brilliant smile and a re-bloodied lip.

“Found him,” he said. “He says to f*ck off and die.”

Mom had been tired, but now she was horrified.

“But!” Matt said brightly. “I brought him the letter and he wrote one back. Here.”

Kelly took the folded piece of binder paper in shock.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Unfriendly neighborhood Devilguy,” Matt said. “But you can call me Red.”

He seemed to sense that he wasn’t doing himself any favors.

“So I have approximately 80 assault charges hanging over me,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you all kept the whole name, sex, location thing under wraps—especially from anyone who looks Fisk-related. Foggy says they ‘hulk,’ but not the green kind. I have no idea what he means, honestly. But that’s what I’ve got, so uh, please and thank you?”

Mom and Kelly just stared.

“I’m going now,” Matt said into the silence. “I told Foggy about this on the way over and he is now threatening to throw me off the office baseball team.”

“Matt,” Brett said.

“Yes, accomplice?” Matt asked him, beaming.

“You’re digging a hole,” Brett told him.

“Ah. Good to know. Good night civilians.”

And once again, he was off.

Mom put a hand to her cheek.

“Jack was a good man,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve this.”

“Mom, I think we need to focus on the living,” Kelly said. “Foggy doesn’t deserve this.”

Mom froze.

“Foggy,” she said, devastated.

Dear Amos,

I got your letter. Daredevil gave it to me. I don’t like him and I don’t usually open anything he gives me, but for you, I thought I would make an exception.

You don’t have to thank me for helping out your uncle, Amos. He’s a good guy. I think at one point we were similar people.

I’m sorry that you have to grow up in a world where people hurt folks like your uncle because his skin’s a different color from mine.

I’m sorry that you have to grow up in a place where people don’t look like you and your uncle wherever you go.

I’m just sorry, kid.

I’m part of the people who made the world like that. And I don’t think you should trust me. I’m not a good person.

There are good people out there, though. And I hope that you find some of them and I hope you become best friends and stand up for each other and what’s right.

The world is changing, Amos. And I can tell that its changing, inch by inch, for the better. People are working together inside and outside of all kinds of places to help it along.

I wish the best for you, little guy.

Frank

Kelly put her hand on the back of one of the table’s chairs for support.

“If Frank Castle can be a decent person, then what’s so hard for the rest of the goddamn country?” she asked the ceiling with glossy eyes.

Mom abandoned the letter to wrap her up in a hug. Brett held his breath for a moment, then gave in. He joined the two of them and laid an arm over each of their shoulders.

“So,” Foggy drawled the next morning, refusing for the first time in his and Brett’s adult lives to cross the threshold. “I heard you talked to Matt.”

Mom stared at him with dead eyes.

“In my defense,” Foggy said. “I found out about everything after it had been going on for like, a while, which I realize does not make this situation better, but I just thought you should know about that before bringing down the axe, so to speak.”

“Foggy,” Kelly said. “Why’s he like that?”

“You want the poverty spiel or?” Foggy asked.

Kelly’s dead eyes could rival Mom’s.

“Not like that,” Kelly said. “Like that.”

Foggy’s smiled slipped off his face.

“I honestly have no idea,” he said. “I think it’s like being drunk for him. He just kinda lets his freak flag fly and trust me when I say that containing it is a fulltime job.”

The silence was oppressive.

“So I’ll just be going,” Foggy said. “Byeeeeee.”

“Wait,” Brett said. “Let me get some shoes.”

Matt had collected very little information from Brett the night before but had decided, somehow, to start a rumor that Brett was quitting the force.

Every f*cking vigilante in the city was alarmed and up in arms over it.

Foggy had heard about it from Danny who’d heard from Jess who’d heard from the Black Widow who’d heard from Barnes who’d heard from Castle who’d heard from some red-headed idiot that Brett was writing his resignation letter.

Foggy was concerned. He’d come to verify with source himself because Matt was an unreliable narrator of events at the best of times and Foggy knew better than to trust him even as far as he could throw him.

“I’m not quitting,” Brett said. “Not yet, anyways.”

“Not yet?” Foggy asked him. “Yet?”

“Yet,” Brett said. “My Captain is trying. I’m going to wait and see how things change—if they change.”

“And if they don’t?” Foggy asked.

“Then I’ve got a friend who’s willing to dip out with me,” Brett said. “And I guess if or when that happens, we’ll join your side of things.”

Foggy stopped walking.

“Brett. Brett, do you even know how much I have longed for this day?”

“I said not yet,” Brett snapped.

Foggy hurried over and threw an arm around his shoulder.

“Think of it,” he said dramatically. “Nelson, Murdock & Page collaborates with Mahoney, Maynard & Jones to fight for justice in that great-grand little city within a city, Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Foggy,” Brett said.

“Yes, dear?”

“Your theatre kid is showing.”

“Oh sh*t. Oh f*ck. I take it back. Join me in thankless hell. We await your arrival with open, highly desperate, arms. You know—when you’re ready.”

That was much better.

Chapter 24: man the hatches

Chapter Text

“Mahoney?”

Brett wrenched his face off his desk and, after briefly being surprised at the fact that he was sitting at said desk, squinted up into Ellen’s eyes.

“Sup?” he slurred.

“Maynard,” she said simply.

“You’ve been here for going on sixty hours,” Maynard rattled off from behind the wall of binders stacked up on the intersections of their desk dividers. “You’re done, man. Go home. Captain’s orders.”

Bullsh*t. Brett could do this all day.

Ellen started to say something but a sudden bluster of whispering and rustling dragged her and Brett’s and Maynard’s attention away from each other and back towards the station door. A flurry of activity kicked up, and Brett’s fuzzy brain had just activated the muscles to make him frown when the Captain strode out from behind his office door.

Brett snapped up in his seat then.

“Hush,” the Captain ordered everyone. “Stand back, what does this look like, the zoo?”

The flurry by the door settled down and recoiled. Bodies returned to desk clusters; asses replanted themselves were they’d been before, and Brett died a little inside at what stood before him.

“Please tell me this is a dream,” he begged Maynard out of the corner of his mouth.

“You’re off the clock,” Maynard mumbled back. “Go. Go, while you still can, Simba.”

f*ck.

Okay, easy now. Maybe they were like pigeons—if Brett just moved slowly enough, he’d be invisible.

“You got this, Mahoney,” Ellen whispered.

Thanks, girl; also shut up, pigeons aren’t deaf.

He made it nearly to the door. So close. So, so close. But then the little one—it was always the goddamn little one—noticed him.

Brett nearly slammed his back into a cabinet, but it was too late. The damage had been done.

The little one’s eyes popped open and a finger came up, but, to Brett’s shock, just as the kid made the start of a vowel-sound, his sister reached back and wrapped a whole hand over his face. She jerked it forward.

Johnny Storm wriggled in her grip.

Brett felt so strongly for him in that moment, it was like he had heartburn.

Sisters, man. Brutal in every possible way.

“We came as soon as we heard there’d been another one,” Doctor Reed Richard’s rich baritone said at the front of the F4’s little formation. Susan Storm tipped her head in acknowledgement towards the Captain. Johnny Storm broke free of her grip just in time for it to be replaced by Ben Grimm’s.

Grimm’s hands were a restraint ten times more effective than Susan Storm’s sisterly gaze. Johnny Storm became immediately immobilized and pissed right off about it.

“Thank you for taking the time,” The Captain said as though no one was witnessing a child in distress before them. “I’m sure you have more important things to do.”

“No one is too big or small if they need help,” Reed Richards said.

Johnny Storm stomped on Ben Grimm’s foot and then went completely still.

The tension in Brett’s back was replace by a wave of pity. This poor little gremlin. Hadn’t thought that one through, had he?

“Come into my office,” the Captain said. “I’ll give you what we know. Mahoney, I see you. You’re out of here for the next eight hours minimum.”

Copy that, Captain.

“Get out.”

Brett was already gone.

Eight hours of sleep did wonders for a guy’s state of mind. The world was no longer vibrating when Brett returned to the station.

The hallucinations, unfortunately, were still present.

There was a little blue man sitting in his chair, violently spinning from side to side.

“Brett,” Maynard greeted.

The little blue man jerked to a halt.

Brett stared.

“This isn’t happening,” he said.

“Brett, be nice,” Ellen warned.

Hell no. Brett knew what was coming and he wanted at least time and a half for it.

“You’re Brett Mahoney,” the little blue man said. “I’ve heard about you.”

Johnny Storm. The Human Torch--more like matchstick, but okay sure, torch. Whatever they wanted.

He was real. Brett hadn’t dreamt him up yesterday.

“That’s my seat,” Brett said. “Did you need a coloring book or something?”

Johnny Storm co*cked his head at him.

“Sue said to stay here,” he said like that was the end all be all of this discussion.

Brett deferred to Maynard.

“Johnny’s sixteen,” Maynard said.

Ah.

“But not very kidnappable,” Johnny told her in a tone that clarified for Brett everything happening at the moment.

There were ten kids now, all vanished. The breadcrumbs suggested that they were stolen. They ranged from age 12 to 19. Johnny Storm, bless this boy’s fiery heart, had been benched.

Not tall enough to ride this ride, huh, slugger?

“So they left him for me?” Brett asked exhaustedly.

“This is your desk,” Johnny informed him. “I found your business cards. I fixed ‘em for you.”

Brett turned his gaze back upon him.

“Did you now?” he deadpanned.

They were blue, weren’t they?

Johnny held up a fanned array of them. Each had ‘detective’ scratched out and ‘vampire hunter’ written on top in bubbly handwriting.

Ellen made a soft keening noise into her file folder that ended with a choking sound.

Brett took the cards.

“That’s very helpful,” he said. “You’re fired.”

The Captain was not sympathetic.

“Brett, you work with vigilantes day in and day out,” he said.

“This is not a vigilante, sir. This is a state-sanctioned superhero,” Brett said. “Look what he’s done to my cards.”

The Captain took them and worked his jaw.

He was making fun of Brett now, was he? Was everyone?

“Mahoney, it’s not a slight against you,” the Captain tried to say. “You’re great with kids. Spidey loves you. Johnny is just Spidey with an official seal on him.”

Oh really? Because Brett had known Peter for a minute now and not once had the kid vandalized his personal property.

“He’s a sweet boy,” the Captain said. “And for his own safety, he’s been excluded from a family affair. Try to sympathize a bit.”

“There are ten children missing, sir,” Brett said. “This is my case.”

“Well, right now, it’s the Fantastic Four’s case. And until they are done, your case is making sure Torchy doesn’t go put himself out in a fountain. Whatever it takes, Brett. Take him for a walk. Take him for a ride. Just don’t let him out of your sight.”

Brett felt his teeth threatening to crack in his jaw.

Ellen was showing Johnny how to make a swan out of a napkin when Brett emerged from the Captain’s office with the man’s booming laughter plastered against his shoulders.

“You,” he said. “Up. I’ve got a job for you.”

Johnny launched himself out of Brett’s desk chair like an excited retriever puppy.

“Is it catching the bad guys?” he asked. “Because I’m amazing at catching the bad guys. They see me comin’, but I leave ‘em no chance, Mr. Vamp.”

Mr…

No. Hell no. f*ck no. Brett wasn’t putting up with this for a second longer.

“Detective,” he corrected forcefully. “My name is Brett Mahoney. To you that is Detective Mahoney. And no, your job is not to go catch anyone. You’re four years old and prime real estate for this serial kidnapper. No, your job, Mr. Storm, is right here. You see these?” Brett held up a stack of paper thicker than 80% of his college textbooks.

Johnny blinked at him.

“Yes?” he said.

“Good. You’re gonna go through these and take out all the staples,” Brett told him. “And when you’re done with that, you’re going to get that shredder over there and shred each and every one of these papers. And then you’re going to take the pile you end up with and you’re gonna put it in the bin at the end of the hall. And when you’re done with that, we can maybe think about branching out. Any questions?”

Johnny’s lips sulked more with every word.

“Yeah, one,” he said.

“Go on,” Brett allowed.

“What crawled up your ass and died?”

Children were a scourge on humanity, Brett decided. They should be raised underground until they passed all their exams and then, and only then, should they be allowed up onto the surface to roll around on the grass or whatever it was that pretty athletic white boys did with their time.

Johnny Storm wasn’t ripe yet. Brett was sure of it.

He tried to set the whole pile of papers alight the second Brett took his eyes off him. Then he upended the shredder and stuck his fingers into the teeth. Then he tried to take the whole thing apart with a pair of scissors.

It was worse than watching a newborn.

“No,” Brett said for what felt like the thousandth time. “Teeth under. Twist. Pull. Staple goes here. In this cup.”

Johnny lifted big boo-boo eyes up to him like Brett had slapped him and put him in a corner for an hour.

“I don’t want to,” he whined.

Brett could not emphasize how little he cared.

“Why can’t I go with the others?” Johnny asked him for the billionth time.

“Because you’re four,” Brett told him for the equally billionth time.

“I’m sixteen.”

Four.

“Sixteen isn’t four. It’s four squared.”

Four.

“Spidey’s allowed to do this kind of thing.”

Brett’s neck stiffened and he caught himself without a response for that. Johnny glared at him.

“If I was a vigilante, I wouldn’t even be here,” he argued. “I’d be out there with the others.”

This was not an untrue statement, and Brett got the feeling from the set of those pale eyebrows that it was an argument had many a time in the Fantastic Four’s household. He didn’t really know what to say to it, except that it he could not be forced by any god to wade into the F4’s personal affairs. A man had to have his limits.

“Are you a vigilante?” he asked instead.

“I could be,” Johnny told him.

“But are you?” Brett asked.

“No.”

“Wow, really? Great. Then I don’t have to barter with you. Sit. Staples.”

Johnny took the staple remover from Brett’s hand and proceeded immediately to jab its teeth into his arm.

“Brett,” the Captain said. “I realize that you have a method of working with the vigilantes. But it’s not working here.”

Clearly not.

That little sh*t was bleeding like a stuck pig that was furious about still getting called in for jury duty the next day.

“Perhaps try being nice,” the Captain said. “Johnny’s not like Spidey. He’s mainstream. He’ll respond to positive reinforcement.”

Bribes.

“No, not bribes.”

Fine, Brett would bribe him.

“Mahoney, you’re not listening. It’s about tone. The less included he feels, the more likely he is to make a break for it.”

If the Captain knew teenagers so well, what on earth was stopping him from taking charge of this one to begin with?

“I’m leaving. If he gets unruly, have Ellen handle it.”

Sure, whatever.

“And be nice. I know you’re capable of it.”

Brett wouldn’t make any promises.

Johnny made it 4 hours and 21 minutes before his attention span found its end and he tried to run out into traffic. The only thing that saved Brett’s sanity in that moment was the knowledge that Matt’s sixth sense for official superbodies in his territory would get ahold of the kid if nothing else did.

Still, it took Brett, Ellen, Maynard, and Willows to coax Johnny out of the dumpster he’d jumped into and to afterwards drag him back to the station. They tossed him in the back room for a shower that he violently refused to endure.

He said he wanted to go home.

Home was within sight, he argued. And again—he wasn’t wrong. If Brett went up four stories and squinted, he could see the Baxter Building’s outline in the distance. But it was the principle of the thing.

The Captain’s orders were to keep the minor in the building. That was the principle.

The common sense that wafted breezily around that principle also helpfully reminded Brett that there was absolutely nothing at the Baxter Building that would keep this dwarf star from tearing out of the place to follow his sister the moment someone blinked for too long.

But with all that said, Brett managed to calm the rage in his mind. He decided to, for just a moment, put himself in Johnny’s shoes.

This was a kid, he told himself through deep breathing, who’s daily grind consisted of regularly and professionally being slammed into asphalt and glass windows. This wasn’t Spidey or DD or Ironman or whoever, who had a life outside of getting the stuffing beaten out of them. Johnny’s whole existence revolved around being a hero, and sitting in a police station while everyone else ran off to do the work that he was normally allowed and encouraged to do probably felt like warming the bench at a highschool basketball game.

Brett could not blame this child for his ire and frustration.

The Captain was right. There had to be another way to come at this situation.

“Alright,” he said to Johnny’s bare back at the foot of the work showers. “Alright, let’s start over.”

Johnny turned back to him with suddenly bright eyes. He didn’t stop evaporating the water droplets around him before they even hit him. The sudden twist also brought Brett face to face with something that launched every red flag in his brain.

Johnny Storm’s chest was covered in scars.

He had a thick piece of gauze stuffed into the tendon between his right pec and shoulder. It was pink and darkened around the edges.

He wasn’t just benched for being sixteen. He was injured.

That changed everything. Brett’s mind threw all previous ideas up into the air as brain-confetti and then scrambled all over the floor, lifting tiles in desperation of finding something under there that he could apply to this situation.

He cleared his throat.

“You eaten lunch yet?” he asked.

Ellen lifted an eyebrow and then side-eyed Brett. Brett could not for the life of him help her here.

“Do you not like cilantro?” he eventually found it in his soul to say.

Johnny’s head snapped up to him from his intense burrito-dissection.

“It’s Satan’s vegetable,” he said without missing a beat.

Right.

“You could have asked for a different salsa?” Brett offered him.

“No. I like the tomatoes.”

Of course. Just not the onions. Or the cilantro. Or any other part of the salsa.

“I like tomatoes,” Johnny said firmly.

Brett was at a loss. This whole thing felt eerily familiar.

“You know who does the exact same thing that you’re doing right now?” Brett asked.

“Ben,” Johnny said without looking up. “He doesn’t like cucumbers. He says that they should be banned in raw form in every country.”

…close but not quite.

“Try Spiderman,” Brett said. “He doesn’t like cilantro either.”

Johnny huffed.

“I know,” he said. “But he’s a jerk and we aren’t talking.”

Say what now?

“You two know each other?” Ellen asked. Maynard moved her soda away from the edge of the table and her elbow and Brett subconsciously did the same thing for Johnny’s Sprite.

“Sort of,” Johnny said irritably. “I tried to make friends with him a while back and he just hissed at me and told me to get outta his city.”

Peter, no.

“It’s not even his city. Manhattan’s a whole borough.”

Peter, you are not Matt, you little sh*t. Stop being a sponge.

“I barely even said anything to him and he decided that he hates me,” Johnny said, gradually ceasing his picking. His shoulders looked a little defeated, even the swollen one.

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Maynard said diplomatically.

Brett thought that that was very optimistic of her, since Peter had recently watched a pack of feral raccoons duke it out on a fence and had decided to take notes. Brett had watched him sink his teeth into Wade Wilson’s fingers and nearly get suffocated in a truly toxic armpit for his trouble.

“I tried talking to Hawkeye the Younger, too,” Johnny said, “But she called me a ‘pretty boy amateur.’ And like, what am I supposed to say to that? ‘No, see, ma’am, you’re confused, I’m actually a pretty boy professional?’”

Bless. Brett would drink to that.

“They’re all wet blankets,” Johnny huffed. “No one wants to make a group chat or have memes with me.”

Aww.

Well, if that was what he wanted, then Brett had just the thing.

Sasha needed to calm down before she had an aneurysm and before Brett had one on her deathbed.

“You’re my favorite cousin the world,” Sasha told him seriously. “I would murder a thousand hens for you.”

Brett didn’t know what that meant.

“I tried to fight a goose once,” Johnny said brightly. “I lost.”

“ME TOO,” Sasha told him. “God, it’s like we’re twins.”

“We can be twins. I’ve always wanted a twin,” Johnny said.

Mom gave Brett eyebrows reaching for Daddy in Heaven. Her amusem*nt was badly hidden.

Brett got a text from the Captain at 11 o’clock at night asking him where the actual f*ck he had put Johnny Storm. His family was freaking out at the station.

Brett fired back a text explaining that the Captain hadn’t given him someone to hand the kid off to and, as a result, he was now eternally bonded with Brett’s cousin—separating them was going to be an extremely delicate and expensive operation that would require the expertise of at least four world-renowned specialists.

The Captain was not amused.

He said to bring Johnny back to the station now. Or else.

Sasha clung to her new-found brother when Brett relayed this news and Johnny clung right back to her. Amos adopted the role of ‘cherry on top’ when he sleepily scrambled into Johnny’s lap and said that Torchy couldn’t leave. He’d just gotten there.

Brett had to be the bad guy, but thankfully, Johnny didn’t seem to translate him as the party at fault here.

He put full and complete blame on his big sister, in true younger brother fashion.

“You’ve got my number,” he told Sasha at the door. “We can watch Titanic this weekend on stream. I think I’ve got Sunday off.”

“At 3?” Sasha nearly wept.

“On my life,” Johnny said.

Brett presented the youth to his family back at the station. Said family looked much less stiff and mechanical with a good layer of worry on top of them. Sue Storm’s hip jutted out dangerously enough to be a weapon.

“I asked for him to stay here,” she said tensely.

Brett shrugged.

“Kids are kids,” he said. “This one needs socializing.”

“I need socializing, Sue,” Johnny jabbed at her. “I found my twin.”

“You don’t have a twin. I ate him when you were two,” Sue Storm snapped.

“I knew it, you monster,” Johnny lamented.

“Thank you,” Reed Richards said to Brett sincerely. “Apologies for the brief panic. Last time we lost track of him, he, uh—”

“He buried himself,” Ben Grimm said, unbothered. “It was pretty good.”

“Bad,” Reed Richards correctly lightly.

“Dug a grave and everything,” Grimm hummed.

“Which was bad,” Richards reminded him.

“It was great,” Johnny chimed in. “Sue cried.”

He almost escaped the incoming face-grab. Almost.

Brett considered the group as a whole and nodded to himself.

Yeah. This was definitely a family. And he hoped that for their sake, Johnny grew up fast.

Chapter 25: monitor this pulse

Chapter Text

FN: brett

BM: it is 3am franklin

FN: I know I’m sorry.

BM: ? Fogs what’s up? You okay?

FN: yeah, yeah. Sorry it’s cool.

BM: dude what’s happening? It doesn’t sound cool.

FN: I mean no. you’re probably right. but there’s nothing anyone can do so. Yeah.

Brett’s heart pumped faster. He shoved himself up to his elbows in bed and his eyes adjusted to the light of his phone screen.

BM: is someone hurt? Are you hurt?

FN: maybe? I don’t know.

BM: foggy what’s happening? Is it Matt?

FN: I might have cancer.

It was like being punched in the chest. It was like his heart had just emptied. Like everything went still and quiet, then came back, not as a rush, but a scream.

Brett’s hands went cold with sweat. They started shaking and his pulse started rabbiting in his neck.

BM: why do you think that

FN: because the doc told me so.

Jesus. Jesus, no.

No, no, no.

FN: I told Matt. He told me he needed some air. He hasn’t been back for hours. Brett I’m so f*cking scared. I’ve never been this scared. Do you think he’s left? I can’t help it I don’t know how to fix it I don’t even know for sure yet. he wouldn’t do that right?

BM: no. No, Fogs. He’d never do that.

BM: hey I’ll come stay with you until he gets back okay?

FN: okay

FN: thank you

Brett had never prepared for the chance that Foggy wouldn’t be in his life. He’d never even considered it. It had just been a given that he and Fogs would become wrinkled old men, still locked in a perpetual battle of wits.

If anything, Brett was supposed to die before Foggy. Foggy was a lawyer. Foggy kept himself safe. Safe as houses--except everything Brett knew from experience told him that houses weren’t all that safe. Not really.

He knocked on Foggy’s apartment door and Foggy answered it pale with red, raw eyes. He seemed blonder than ever. His skin was nearly gray.

Brett had no words. He held his arms out and Foggy took a shuddering breath, then stepped into the hug. His breath caught against Brett’s shoulder, and in the end, there was nothing Brett could do but hold onto him.

He couldn’t out-smart this bad guy. Couldn’t track it or shoot it.

Matt couldn’t either.

Matt couldn’t bear to lose Foggy.

“You’re okay,” Brett said. “You’re okay. Come on, let’s go sit. We’re okay.”

Foggy let go of him and shook his head slowly, but he still closed the door after Brett and he still went to sit on the couch with him.

A month. A month Fogs had been having splitting headaches for no discernable reason. He’d gone to the doc, thinking it was a kind of migraine and now he was here with a folder full of paperwork.

He had a tumor in his head.

They didn’t know if it was cancerous yet.

“My doc says that they’re gonna have to biopsy it,” Foggy said, exhausted. “They’ll know better then. It’s small enough that they think they can just remove it. We caught it early enough. I think—they say the outlook is pretty good, so long as we keep a close eye on it. It’s just—it’s just so f*cking scary, Brett, I don’t know what else to think.”

Thank f*ck for silver linings was what Brett thought. Thank f*ck for Foggy’s common sense and anxiety. Thank f*ck this guy was nothing like the people he worked with, who considered conventional medicine a personal insult.

“You’re gonna be fine, Foggy,” Brett told him. “Totally fine.”

Foggy was too tired to smile at him. His cheekbones looked stretched thin.

“I don’t want to die,” he said quietly.

“You’re not going to die,” Brett assured him. “Your docs said so. Chances are good. You caught it in time.”

Foggy pursed his lips and nodded with something bordering on hollowness. He didn’t believe it. Brett couldn’t blame him at all. He could, however, blame Matt.

Where was he? He couldn’t be leaving Foggy alone like this. Not in this state. Not with this information.

Matt need to be here. It was nonnegotiable.

“People have left Matt his whole life,” Foggy breathed quietly. “I promised him I’d never leave. I—I would understand if he’s mad. I just—”

No. Brett wasn’t hearing that sh*t, not from Foggy. Not right now.

“Matt needs to get over himself,” he said. “sh*t isn’t always about him. He should be here. This is about you.”

Foggy hated that. He only liked things to be about him on his own terms.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

Foggy fell asleep eventually. Brett watched him sink into it and waited a few minutes before getting up and pulling him out of his awkward curled up ball at the other end of the couch. He got Fogs more or less laid out then went into the bathroom and braced his hands on either side of the sink.

He took deep, shaky breaths.

Where was Matt?

Seriously.

Where was Matt?

Brett couldn’t handle this by himself.

He washed his face with cold water and went back into the living room and there. There was Matt. Sat on the floor next to Fogs, stroking the side of his sleeping face.

Matt had gone out to hurt himself. His hair was f*cked up. His knuckles were a disaster. His face was bruised and lip bleeding. He wasn’t wearing his glasses and from afar, it was almost as though he was watching Foggy sleep.

He was. In his own way.

“I can’t fix this,” Matt said to Brett, still standing in the hallway. “I can’t fight this.”

No, but Foggy could. Matt could help Foggy fight.

Matt pressed his forehead to Foggy’s and closed his eyes.

“If it were me, it would be easier,” he said almost in a whisper. “He’s not good at fighting. I tried to teach him, but he’s hopeless.”

Brett sucked in a deep breath and came all the way out into the living room.

“He’s not hopeless,” he said. “And you can’t be either. They don’t even know if it’s cancer yet, Matt.”

Matt said nothing. Brett felt his heart skip.

“You can’t tell, can you?” he asked.

“No,” Matt said. “If I could—”

He stopped. Then shook his head and pulled it away from Foggy’s.

“If I could, it would be so much worse,” he said softly, trailing a couple fingers through Foggy’s hair.

He meant that he could feel people dying. Yeah, okay. Brett got it.

“Wade has cancer,” Matt said out of nowhere.

Brett blinked.

“Brain cancer?” he asked.

“Everywhere cancer,” Matt said calmly. “His mutation keeps it in check. Some days he’s sick until the mutation heals it. He smells like rotting meat.”

Brett swallowed hard.

“That won’t be Fogs,” he said.

“It could be,” Matt mused.

“Matt. You need to—”

“If Foggy dies, then I think I’d go with him.”

Woah, there. That was. That wasn’t.

“Matt—”

“I wouldn’t want him to go alone. It’d be scary. I’ve almost died a number of times. It’s pretty scary. Fogs doesn’t need that. I’d make sure he doesn’t feel scared.”

Brett didn’t even know where to start. There were just so many angles, too many angles.

“Foggy isn’t going to die,” Brett decided. “And you can’t think that way. You’re killing him before he’s even had a shot. For real. We need to have hope. The outlook is pretty good. Did Fogs tell you? Did you hear? He did the right thing. He did everything right and they caught it just in time.”

Matt hummed and pulled his hand away from Foggy’s face finally.

He continued to say nothing.

Brett could only let the silence sit.

He left around six, but he couldn’t make himself go to work. He went to his mom’s. He didn’t know who Foggy had told, if he’d told anyone. But he couldn’t bear this one by himself.

Mom sunk into a chair at the table and shook for a long time at the news.

“He’ll be okay,” she eventually decided when the shock wore off. “Franklin’s a tough cookie. He’ll be okay.”

Yeah.

Yeah, Brett knew.

“Does Anna know?”

Brett had no idea. Mom sighed.

“Horrible,” she said. “Just horrible.”

Brett wasn’t sure what Fogs was going through because he didn’t text for the next couple of days. Brett wanted to respect his space, but the feeling of emptiness when his body screamed at him to be doing something, anything was almost too much to bear.

Anna Nelson, his mom told him over the phone, was inconsolable. But more than her, Ed, Foggy’s dad, was nearly numb from the news.

It wasn’t a surprise. Ed was Foggy’s father for f*ck’s sake. He was a man of few words and lots of teasing. When he couldn’t bring himself to tease, he didn’t have a whole lot of words left.

Brett didn’t know where Matt stood on things anymore.

He’d seemed to be in a pretty dark place. Brett didn’t know him well enough to know how he coped with grief. All he knew was how he coped with rage.

He made his fists drip.

He made the world around him roar and beg for mercy.

It didn’t take a whole lot of guesswork to figure how he coped with any other emotion. Didn’t take a whole lot of guesswork at all.

Foggy texted him the next week and the message sent relief booming through Brett’s heart like soundwaves.

FN: so guess who’s got a non malignant tumor???

Thank.

GOD.

BM: Guess who is actually literally crying right now.

FN: Is it Matt? Because I’m pretty sure it is :D

BM: it’s me you f*ckhead jesus

FN: awwwww you do care! Amazing! Stupendous! An act worthy of Vegas, baby!

BM: I cannot deal with this bullsh*t right now. I’m so glad Fogs. What did they say? What are they gonna do?

FN: ooooooh you know. Brain surgery. Which is fun. Dude, quick question: when catholics pray over you, is that a pre-death ritual or?

Brett laughed so hard that Ellen and Maynard looked over the desk dividers at him.

He didn’t care.

“It’s not cancer,” he told them.

Ellen’s face went wide and she threw her folder up over her head in celebration. She sent paper rocketing everywhere and scared the sh*t out of the whole damn bullpen, but again:

Not important.

BM: not a pre-death thing always, no. Pretty sure matt’s just thanking his lucky stars

FN: oh yeah, he did a great job with that earlier. Told a nurse to piss off and everything. So grateful. An example to us all.

BM: I’m coming to see you. are you still at the hospital?

FN: yeah, for now. They’re running some tests and then scheduling me for another surgery (which I just LOVE) but yes please come my mom is on her way and I can’t bear for her and Matt to be fighting to cry over me. You know how it is, neither of them is good at sharing.

Brett could not contain his smile. He realized now that the Captain had come out to investigate the paper-throwing.

“Is everything alright?” he asked Brett a little nervously.

“Nelson’s tumor is benign,” Brett said. “Not cancer.”

The Captain touched a hand to his heart. Then blinked and cleared his throat.

“That’s excellent news, detective,” he said. “Nelson’s a damn fine attorney. A pain in our ass, but a damn fine attorney.”

f*ck Foggy being a damn fine attorney. He was a damn fine friend.

“Do you need to take off?” the Captain asked.

“In a minute,” Brett said. “I’ve been asked to run mother-interference.”

Ellen squeaked in delight and Maynard smiled over the top of the divider.

“Send him our love, alright?” she said.

Yes, ma’am, he would.

Brett was a little late for mom-interference at the hospital. Matt had been terrified out of his place at Foggy’s side by the sheer strength of Anna Nelson’s sobs. Matt looked a little raw, but ready to climb a wall to get away from the sound.

Foggy seemed fine, all laid up in white and blue. Still sickly pale, but fine and clearly suffering under his mom’s relief and attention. His sister was already in the room, next in line for her turn and blinking back tears in preparation. Fogs looked up enough to notice Brett, then waved lightly.

Matt edged away from the bed as carefully as he could and touched Brett’s shoulder.

“Have you seen Ed?” he asked.

Brett paused and looked around and indeed, there was no Mr. Nelson Senior to be found.

“No, I haven’t,” he said.

Matt nodded.

“I’m gonna—” he gestured to the wall. Brett realized he was going for the door. He was probably too shaky and jumbled to tell where it was.

“For sure,” Brett said. “Go grab a coffee, I’ll keep an eye on these guys.”

He lost track of time and soon found himself and the ladies being ushered from the room for the time being. He looked around and found neither Matt nor Ed around. Anna noticed that too.

She didn’t seem too concerned, though.

“It’s been hard on him,” she said. “I think he’s trying to collect himself for Foggy.”

Right. That made sense. Until Brett heard the tapping.

The three of them looked up expecting Matt’s cane, but what they got was not that. Instead it was a woman wearing high heels and a neat gray suit with a white and silver brooch on her lapel. She seemed very calm, but Brett noticed that Anna and Candace had gone stiff as boards next to him.

“Anna,” the woman greeted when she caught up to them.

“Rosalind,” Anna stuttered. “How—how are you? Did you come out all this way?”

“Ed called me,” Rosalind said.

She smelled like something expensive.

“Oh, well. Right, sorry, visiting hours are over,” Anna said, brushing strands of brown and gray hair out of her face. “I’m—maybe the nurses might be a little lenient, though?”

Rosalind smiled.

“I’m sure I can convince them,” she said.

And she continued on her way, clack-clacking down the hall. The ladies watched after her in mutual heart-shaking silence.

Matt and Ed were outside. Brett saw from a distance that Matt was making his ‘EMOTIONS. S-O-S’ expression. Anna and Candace noticed it, too.

“Wuh-oh, Dad’s probably busted out the waterworks,” Candace said.

Anna’s smile flickered. She didn’t say anything. Brett frowned down at her, but when she looked at him, she shook her head and tried harder to smile.

It was strange.

Weird.

Brett felt like he was missing something.

Matt did, too, judging by the fact that his panicking did not decrease at all when Anna and Candace got within his range of awareness. Ed’s watery blue eyes spoke volumes of where he was at.

He didn’t want to cry on Foggy. He didn’t want to upset him or his wife any more than he had.

Ed was a sweet guy from a time where masculinity was all about stoicism. He tried his best, but Brett was 100% sure that Foggy would want to see him, crying or not.

Still though, that was between Ed and Fogs.

Matt let Anna take his place next to Ed and stepped closer to Brett just as Anna whispered, “Why did you do that, Edward?” quietly enough that Brett almost missed it.

Ed shook his head and offered Matt and Brett a ride home. They politely declined and instead waved the Nelsons off to do their thing. The trio were nearly a minute gone when Matt turned towards Brett and said for the both of them,

“What the f*ck was that about?”

Brett almost laughed.

“No idea,” he said. “Some lady went in to see Fogs after we left though. I don’t know her. Do you?”

“No idea. What was she like?”

“Uh, low voice; tall-ish. About Candace’s height. Older--about Anna’s age. Heels. Dark eyes, salt and pepper hair?”

Matt shook his head.

“Don’t know anyone,” he said.

“Me neither,” Brett said.

“Trouble?” Matt asked him.

Brett was taken aback by the question.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Trouble,” Matt repeated. “Everyone’s hearts went all weird. Ed was talking to himself out here when I found him; he was saying he shouldn’t have done something.”

Oh. Okay. Trouble, indeed.

“I think this is a job for Mom,” Brett said.

Mom crowed in joy when she received the news of Foggy’s diagnosis, then spent her energy viciously attacking Matt with hands on his cheeks and chin, apparently having already forgiven him for being a neighborhood watchman in horns. Matt never liked this touching, but he allowed it for Mom, which Brett thought she was intimately aware of.

This was possibly her way of punishing him for keeping secrets.

Before she abandoned them to go make coffee, she forced Matt into a hug that sent Matt’s shoulders to shivering.

And Brett had to say, the one thing that he appreciated about Matt was that he never hid how profoundly uncomfortable he was with moms of all varieties. He did not discriminate between moms. He was as unhappy in Anna’s arms as he was in Mom’s and, after any interaction with such maternal affection, he always sought somewhere to hide.

Brett was mildly gratified that he was trusted enough at this point to become something to hide behind.

“She doesn’t bite, man,” he pointed out.

Matt wrinkled his nose at him then went back to the business of pretending he didn’t exist.

Mom returned and ignored this. She waved everyone to sit and implored them to tell her everything, which naturally they did.

Up to an including the encounter with the mysterious Rosalind.

Mom tipped her head at the name in a way Brett would never mistake.

Mom knew everything that went on in Hell’s Kitchen. Everything. When Brett had been a kid, an occasional police officer would come through the front door, asking to speak with her. She was never arrested, rarely a witness, but she always, always knew what the neighbors were up to.

The face she wore now said she knew this Rosalind lady.

“Oh dear,” she said. “I’m sure that was awkward for Anna.”

Brett thought about it.

“She did seem pretty uncomfortable, Candace too,” he said, completely aware that Mom was finagling more information out of him.

“Ed as well,” Matt added. “He seemed upset.”

“He would be, he would be,” Mom said sagely.

They waited.

She acted surprised like she didn’t know that the whole point of this conversation had been for her to tell them the dirt.

“Oh, well that’s Franklin’s birth mother, you know,” she said.

Brett hoped the silence that followed as tense for Matt as it was for him.

“Foggy’s adopted?” Matt blurted out.

Brett paused and now saw that he and Matt were equally uncomfortable for very different reasons.

It was no secret that Anna was Foggy’s step-mom in this part of Hell’s Kitchen. When Brett and Foggy had been especially small, Foggy had even still occasionally called her his step-mom. At some point that Brett couldn’t remember even if he tried, though, he’d switched completely over to calling her his mom-mom, and Anna fit in so well with the Nelsons that that had just seemed right. It was as though she was a lost piece of a puzzle finally found and slotted into place. She and Foggy had been close for as long as Brett had known them.

Brett, out of teenage curiosity, had asked Foggy once about his biological mom, but Foggy had just shrugged and said he didn’t remember her much.

Evidently, that had been a lie, seeing as Ed Nelson had called bio-mom to come see her not-dead, but almost-dead kid. But even then, it was out of character for Foggy to lie. He was bad at it. The worst.

“Did Fogs not tell you this?” Brett asked Matt, who had apparently had a different experience of this information.

Matt blinked.

“Uh? No?” he said. “Or maybe he did? Maybe I’m just—maybe I wasn’t listening right.”

Oh.

Now this was interesting indeed.

Foggy, what was going through that head of yours, keeping secrets like this?

“Anna is Franklin’s stepmother,” Mom told Matt gently. “She and Ed married in, oh, ‘92? ‘93?”

Matt processed that information long and hard.

“That tracks,” he finally decided.

Brett thought that he was taking it well. Either that or he was stuffing it into his box of things to repress for now and work out later while breaking other people’s bones.

“You wouldn’t have known, honey, you and Jackie were living on the other side of things,” Mom said, patting at Matt’s knee.

Matt put on an excellent show of not being creeped the f*ck out by Mom remembering his childhood whereabouts. It didn’t make a lick of difference to anyone, but it was certainly impressive. Brett himself was used to his mom’s borderline scarily precise memory, but for a while there, he and Kelly had been paranoid that they would do something so unfathomably stupid or embarrassing that their mom would use it as one of her mind-markers to help her remember sh*t.

And that was inescapable really, so the time Kelly had slammed Brett’s fingers in the front door in a sibling brawl was now a marker for Mom. As was the time that Brett had sobbed his way through his first haircut. And Kelly’s first period. And Brett’s first break-up.

Yeah. All of them. Markers now.

What fun times.

Kelly swore that if Mom ever got dementia and started just talking to people, there would be no dignity left in their household. They might as well just start publishing everything themselves to at least have control over the flow.

Brett knew that this was a hopeless endeavor. He knew this in his heart and he’d accepted it by the time he left the police academy that he was condemned to live in embarrassing-mother hell for the rest of his life.

But that was neither here, nor there.

What was here was the fact that that Rosalind lady was Foggy’s bio mom.

And that was just weird.

“She came across a little stiff,” he told Mom diplomatically.

“Like she had a stick up her ass?” Mom replied with a sniff.

Matt chose that of all things to be surprised by.

“Did she?” he asked Brett.

“I mean, I guess,” he said. “She said she could convince the hospital to let her see Fogs.”

“co*cky,” Mom said.

Dude. Come on, now. That was uncalled for.

“co*cky and stiff,” Mom maintained. “An intensely unpleasant woman, I must say. I couldn’t believe Ed married her to begin with. Nobody could see them together. But then of course Rosalind started showing and we all understood a bit more then.”

Oh, how scandalous.

Matt smiled a bit.

“I’m sure Foggy charmed her with all his natural optimism,” he said.

Mom settled in smugly, always more than happy to gossip about times past.

“We thought she’d brought home the wrong baby,” Mom said. “Cute as a button. Blond like his daddy used to be. But no, it was the right one. Rosalind just wasn’t interested—well, she was for a time. But you know, she’s always had her career. Never wanted to be a family woman. She had the baby and tolerated it and Ed for a while, then decided it wasn’t for her and went back to her lawyering.”

Alright, no.

Hold up a second there.

“Foggy’s mom is a lawyer?” Brett asked.

“Oh yes. A very good one. Very high class. Sharpe, her name is. She decided was too good for the likes of us in Hell’s Kitchen.”

Matt tipped his head slightly.

“She wouldn’t be the first,” he said. “I think I’ve heard that name.”

“She works down south,” Mom told him. “You might have crossed paths. I’m positive Foggy would try to avoid her, though.”

“Do they not get along?” Matt asked.

“I don’t know that,” Mom hummed. “But I do know that Rosalind only used to come see him once a year or so. I don’t know how long that lasted—especially after Anna came into the picture. Don’t think she liked the idea of someone taking her place even after she’d left it.”

Brett could not imagine the woman in the hallway wandering around Hell’s Kitchen and he certainly couldn’t imagine her as Foggy’s mother. Which was probably the point, now that he thought about it.

“Should we go back and rescue Fogs then?” he asked Mom.

Mom shifted in her seat.

“I imagine they’re civil after all this time,” she said. “I can see why Ed would call her, too. He’s a good man, Ed. He probably thought she ought to know what was happening to her child. And I suppose she can’t be completely soulless if she came up this way to see Foggy like this.”

This was a less-than-ringing endorsem*nt of the woman in Brett’s mind. But for whatever reason, Matt didn’t appear uncomfortable by that at all.

Mom noted this.

“What are you thinking, dear?” she asked him sweetly.

Matt smiled.

“I’m thinking that Fogs and I have more in common than I thought,” he said, standing up. “Thank you, Bess. I think I ought to be going. I’m sure Foggy and Ms. Rosalind will work out their differences.”

“I hope so, too,” Mom said politely. “Be careful on the way home, Matty. Nasty folks out at this time of night.”

Matt’s grin was toothy this time. He didn’t reply. Just left with his cane in hand.

The door closed and Brett started to get up. He had work the next day and needed to be heading home.

“Matty’s mother left him, too,” Mom said apropos of nothing.

Brett froze.

“Sorry?” he said.

Mom studied him coolly.

“I said, Matty’s mama left him, too,” she said. “She was never like Rosalind, though. Rosalind is stiff. Grace was always a fire cracker; couldn’t help herself. Didn’t live around here—more on the outskirts. She wasted no time and took no prisoners, that girl. She wasn’t ready for a baby, though, bless her. She and Jackie were both too young, really.”

Brett hadn’t heard this story before.

“Grace is a very Catholic name,” he pointed out, slowly sitting himself back down on the old creaky couch.

“Well, she is a very Catholic woman,” Mom countered, smug again. “I suppose she and Matty found each other through that in the end. I’m happy for them. Must have been hard.”

Oooooh.

See, this was how Mom got you. She threw out a line and reeled you in and there was nothing you could do but let her talk.

“Is a very Catholic woman?” Brett prodded.

“Is indeed,” Mom agreed.

And so began the standoff.

“Do I know this very Catholic woman?” Brett asked, taking the first shot.

“I believe you probably do,” Mom said, dodging swiftly.

“Have I known her long?”

“I don’t know your church habits, son.”

“A church? Why would I go to a Catholic ch—Mom.”

“Yes?” Mom asked, sweet as a peach in June.

Brett crossed his legs.

“That’s pretty scandalous, Ma,” he said.

“Oh, but it does make for a very romantic love story, doesn’t it?” Mom said. “A novice nun and a rising boxer. Certainly beats mine and your daddy’s story.”

“I mean, lotta imagery there, but Ma. Jack Murdock went out and defiled a nun? Kinda f*cked up,” Brett said.

Mom gave him a prissy look.

“Excuse you, Brett Mahoney,” she said, “Jack Murdock was a nice Catholic boy and I’ll hear no ill spoken of him in this household. All he did was look pretty and sad. The rest of that decision was Grace’s. She didn’t have to give up her veil and anyways, she went right back to it.”

Brett huffed.

“Are you allowed to do that?” he asked. “Seems shockingly un-nunly.”

Mom’s cheer seemed to droop a bit.

“Special circ*mstances, honey,” she said. “Like I said, both she and Jack were too young for a baby.”

“What happened to her?” Brett asked.

Mom sighed.

“You remember how Kelly was after Amos was born?” she asked.

Woof. Did he ever? He hadn’t recognized her. She’d been so happy until…well, really until she had Amos in her arms. Her boyfriend had come to Mom and Brett with palms open and eyes wide. He hadn’t understood, he’d thought she’d wanted the baby. Mom had, though. She told him to bring Kelly and Amos home.

Post partum depression was a real-ass thing. And Kelly claimed that she didn’t need to talk to anyone about it. She was fine, Mom. Everything was fine.

But it wasn’t.

In those early days, Brett and Mom had held baby Amos more than she had. It took a while. Months—maybe years--Kelly never spoke about it—for her to embrace her son without sobbing and feeling, in her words, like a failure.

“That’s rough,” Brett said.

“Folks didn’t know much about it back then,” Mom said. “And Grace—god help her, there was no way she was going to talk to anyone about it. Tried to work through it on her own. She’s a taskmaster, Brett, a real regimented sort of gal—probably that nun training, you know? But of course Jackie noticed; he came around here once, confused. Asked me real quietly what he ought to do. I told him to just hang in there; things would turn around. And he did—stupid boy, Brett. He was pretty and stupid. Didn’t even see her leavin’ him. Didn’t cross his blessed mind.”

Yikes.

Mom hummed.

“She left,” Brett said.

“Nearly drowned Matthew at six weeks,” Mom said. “Everyone who was anyone heard about it.”

Holy sh*t.

“Lashed out at Jack. Caught herself and then dashed off. Back to the church, back to the church, you know,” Mom said. “Folks ‘round here hated her; kept tellin’ Jackie ‘good riddance,’ but you know he was broken hearted. Maybe twenty years old, then. Barely out of babyhood themselves, the both of them.”

What the hell was Brett doing at twenty? Probably trying to buy whiskey with his cousin’s ID. Damn, man.

“You know more about Sharpe, too?” he asked. Mom shrugged.

“’Fraid not,” she said. “You’ll have to ask Foggy about that one.”

Foggy’s surgery was scheduled for a Thursday and in the meantime, Brett couldn’t help but follow him around like an undercover tail.

Matt approved. Matt took nights. Brett took days. Karen took all the times in-between.

It was a good system until Foggy sent out an none-too-pleased group message to the three of them to express how he felt about it. He used words that he’d never speak in court. Karen took Brett’s number from there and made a new group chat with out Fogs, in which she said that they had to be more subtle.

Peter saluted Brett and Karen and said he’d been practicing Stealth Mode for ages now. Matt nearly swallowed his fingers, he chewed them so violently. He suggested Jessica Jones as a replacement for the umpteenth time and Peter said over him that he was ready for liftoff, Houston.

He said that he’d scare the cancer right out of Foggy. Matt asked God for guidance. Brett asked Peter if he was aware that the tumor was non-cancerous and got a blank look. Peter decided that this meant that said tumor had potential but hadn’t passed its STAR tests.

Brett told him to aim for engineering in college, not biology. It wasn’t his strong suit.

Peter was not a good tail, which Matt emphasized over text about forty times before Brett had to give in to the facts before him. Foggy’s messages to the other chat were becoming increasingly violent. He’d started in with the guillotine talk. That was bad news for everyone, including Peter, who evidently thought ‘stealth’ was wearing a slightly darker suit. He failed to account for the fact that said suit did not do the job in broad daylight.

Wade was employed by unmentioned bodies to drag the kid off for a crash course in secret-keeping and not drawing the whole city’s attention to himself.

Wade also told Brett, Matt, and Karen that they were a ‘chicken coop of f*ckin’ hens. God, just let the man live his damn life.’

Matt could not. And Karen couldn’t either, what with Fogs meandering around their office, clutching at his head and moaning.

Matt gave Brett a long-lasting, slightly over-the-shoulder, owlish stare for a long time before Brett understood what he was being asked to do.

Foggy didn’t want to stay home. He had anxiety. He’d had anxiety his entire life and the way he coped with it was by moving around and making other peoples’ problems his own. Distraction was the name of the game, but obviously, he was in no condition to be reading briefs or trying to argue with other attorneys. He didn’t trust Matt to do both of their work in his absence. He was convinced that his beloved was going to deck someone in court.

Brett let him pace back and forth across his living room while he explained all of this about a thousand times, in nearly the same words but not quite.

Ellen asked Brett over text if he would be coming back to work.

He said no, he was on Nelson duty once again. Foggy was about ready to tear up the floorboards and hunker down there for warmth.

Ellen said that the Captain said ‘good luck.’ She also relayed Maynard’s success in fixing the perpetually broken copy machine. Allegedly, all it had taken was some ‘baby talking.’

Brett tried to imagine Maynard baby-talking a copy machine. Then he got up and blocked the front door when Fogs threw up his hands and claimed that he’d had enough.

Foggy had to fast for 12 hours before the surgery, but up until then, Brett decided that he was allowed to have whatever he wanted, so long as he stopped referring to it as ‘the last supper.’

They got sh*tty Chinese food. They sat on the rug by the couch. Foggy wasn’t hungry. Brett watched him pick through a box of noodles with next to no enthusiasm and finally bit the bullet.

“Is Rosalind going to be there?” he asked.

Foggy grimaced and thunked his takeout box down on to the floor.

“I hate her,” he said. “I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.”

Brett reached over and caught the box before it fell onto itself and spilled noodles and veg all over the floor. He set it on the plate next to it.

“You wanna say why?” he asked.

“She’s a bitch.”

Wow. Strong language coming from Foggy Nelson. This was uncharacteristic.

“She doesn’t actually care, Brett. She just came because Dad thought I was going to die. That’s the only reason. She talks to him like he’s trash.”

Oh, oof.

“She asked me why I settled for Matt.”

She what?

“Yeah. Said ‘sure he’s pretty and clever enough, but is that worth the inconvenience,’ Brett. She thinks I’d have gotten better grades if it wasn’t for him.”

Better—wait, in like, law school?

“Of course in law school,” Foggy snapped, “It’s always about law school. It’s always about internship. It’s always about work.”

“Wait, so you guys talk often?” Brett asked.

“No,” Foggy said, picking at the peeling edge of the takeout box closest to him. “Not really. It’s more like, she calls me anytime there’s an opening at her firm and tells me to think about my career.”

“She’s got a firm?” Brett asked.

“Of course she’s got a firm,” Foggy sighed. “She’s got everything. And none of it ever mattered, apparently, until Dad let slip that I got into Columbia.”

Now that was some f*cked up sh*t.

“I know,” Foggy said. He finally deflated. “I know.”

He didn’t lift his eyes. Brett chewed his lip.

“If you don’t want her there tomorrow, you can say that,” he said. “She makes your mom hella uncomfortable.”

“I know,” Foggy said again, quieter this time. “I tried. It didn’t work. She won’t let me get a word in edgewise. She was—she was so busy sh*t-talking the hospital and the nurses and—all that stuff.”

Amazing how kids could be so different from their parents. Brett lowered his own eyes.

“Mom said Matt’s mom left him, too,” he said.

Foggy’s shoulders tensed, then loosened.

“She didn’t,” he said. “Not the way people think. Not like Rosalind. They’re apples and oranges, Brett.”

“How so?” Brett asked. “Did Matt tell you?”

“Sort of. He found out and had a breakdown—as you would, you know, if you’d spent the last twenty years thinking that you were alone in the world. He told me afterwards.”

“You met her?” Brett nudged.

“Once,” Foggy said. “She’s—they’re—” he huffed a laugh and Brett felt the muscles in his chest start to relax. “They’re exactly the same.”

Brett grinned.

“Mom said she’s a nun,” he said.

“God, you have no idea. It makes no difference at all,” Foggy said, smiling now. “She’s like the size of a gopher. She worked at the home he grew up in—the children’s home. She’s more of a sister than a nun specifically, and she gave up all her rights to him when he was about four, I think? When his dad died, some of them were restored, so she’s the one who got all Matt’s school reports.”

Wild.

“I know. She still has them. She—she loves him a lot, Brett. Even if she bullies the hell out of him—she’s so sharp with him, man. Like, think an army of bayonets. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think they hated each other, but like, he trusts her. Despite everything. I don’t think they’re mom and kid, yet, I don’t know if they’ll ever be, but they’ve got this relationship. And it’s stupid to be jealous, you know? I have a mom. She’s great, she’s amazing, she’s—”

Nah, man. Brett got it.

Foggy lived outside of a storm with a firm that called him, buffeting winds against the tiles of his little shack, and intruded on the life he’d built away from it all. But he’d never not be tied to the storm, so long as she raged and lived.

“Rosalind broke your dad’s heart,” Brett said. “I get it. Living ghosts and all that.”

Foggy finally looked up and Brett saw just how tired and aching he was. His eyes were nearly gray.

“I don’t understand,” he admitted. “Why did she come back now?”

“Your dad,” Brett said.

“She never cared about him. He was just the first rung on a ladder.”

“You, then.”

Foggy’s lips pressed together so hard they nearly disappeared.

“Sister Maggie stayed away for nearly all of Matt’s life,” he said. “But she was watching him the whole time. They only ever interacted when he was nearing rock bottom.”

Mmm.

It did sound familiar, didn’t it?

“Good news, then Fogs,” Brett said. “When you get your sh*t together and propose, she’ll be your mom, too.”

There was a pause. Then a slow smirk made its way across Foggy’s face.

“You’re starting to sound like Bess,” he said.

“Y’all aren’t the only folks becoming your parents,” Brett said. He pushed himself up and felt the bones in his back pop.

Foggy had to be at the hospital at 7am. Brett offered to drive him and got waved off. Ed and Anna had already laid claim to transportation. Before he left the apartment, Foggy gave him a long hug. A real one, too tight and too close.

Maybe the last hug they’d ever have.

Brett hugged him back just as tight, just as close. He promised Foggy he’d be okay; if he could have moved mountains in that moment for him, he would have.

Foggy let go with misty eyes and asked him to swear that if anything happened--if anything went wrong, that Brett would look after Matt and Karen and Peter and Clint and Wade and Frank and—and—

Brett told him he got it. He understood. Nothing would go wrong, but in case they did, he’d swear.

He left the apartment with a broken ‘thank you’ echoing in his ears. It followed him home. It followed him into bed. Into a troubled sleep.

7:30am.

Brett called in and asked for the day off. He couldn’t make himself think about work at the moment. Maynard texted him, asking if he was okay. Ellen opened a group chat and told him that Foggy would be fine. Four or five other people chimed in with prayers and well-wishes.

Goldberg sent a Spiderman sticker.

Brett got up and got ready to make an exodus.

The waiting room was crammed full of bodies even at the asscrack of dawn. The hospital staff clearly had no idea what to do with them all; they seemed caught between calling security and hyperventilating over Captain America reading a book in one hand while holding Candace Nelson’s in the other. Candace had never been so awake in her life, Brett was sure. She stared at him when he entered with eyes the size of tea saucers and lifted Cap’s hand with hers slightly as if to say ‘do you f*cking see this?’

Cap turned the page. JB snorted himself awake against Sam Wilson’s shoulder and then shifted around to get even more of his semi-metal bulk in that tiny old chair. Barton and Kate were cozied together in a corner, playing a game on Barton’s phone.

In the row of seats closest to them, Jessica Jones was sprawled across the arm of a chair, half in Luke’s lap, while Danny held his chin and dipped and swayed as his girlfriend and Misty Knight watched on sleepily.

The whole room seemed to need its morning coffee.

“’Sup, Detective?” Peter asked from the floor, where he was laying presumably with Matt, who must have gotten overwhelmed with all the bodies and stress. Brett could only make out his stick on the ground, the rest of him was hidden in the dark under Luke and Jess and Danny’s chairs.

“Not much, kiddo,” Brett said. Anna reached out a hand for him as he came over to sit down next to her and Ed. “Not much room in the place, is there?” he asked her.

Her eyes were brimming with tears.

“There’s another shift coming at 10,” she said shakily.

Oh?

“More clients?” Brett asked.

She giggled a little hysterically. Brett smiled at her.

10am saw Cap stand up and tell JB to stand guard. He and Sam Wilson left. Barton shut his phone off and went and hauled Peter up off the ground. He dropped the kid in his abandoned chair. Peter melted into it and Kate took out her own phone for a new round of whatever she’d been playing with Barton.

Barton said he’d be back at 2. Misty stood up and left with him.

Their empty chairs were quickly filled by new bodies from the outside hallway: Marci Stahl, Karen Page, and a tall woman with green skin who could only be She-Hulk. A handful of folks from the neighborhood came in to fill some of the other gaps in the place.

Brett knew some of them from highschool. They nodded at him, he nodded back.

At noon JB traded guard with Wade Wilson. Candace gaped at them. Wade settled in and called Peter over to come scramble into his lap to doze instead of drooling on Kate’s shoulder. She’d had enough of him. She went and crawled under the chairs to tuck herself up against Matt in the absence of her own mentor.

Wade let Peter scramble up, around, and half-over his shoulders with uncharacteristic patience and quiet. He pulled out his phone and ignored the arms hanging loosely on each side of his neck.

Jessica and Luke told Matt they’d be back and left Danny to watch over him. Karen moved into Luke’s seat and told Matt that Foggy was going to be fine. There were only a few hours left.

More clients came in—people speaking all different languages settled in next to each other wherever they could find space. The floor, empty chairs, the space by the nurses’ station. Many of them came over to Anna and Ed to clasp their hands and tell them what their son had done for their families. They asked where Matt was and polite coughs directed folks’ attention to the shadow man under the chairs.

Anna simply said ‘he’s coping’ in the face of the newly concerned expressions.

Mom came with Kelly and Amos around 1:30. Brett held Amos in his lap and watched him peer at Wade and Peter with unbridled curiosity. He wriggled around and told Brett that they looked like a baby kitten sleeping silly on a big old cat.

Wade was charmed. He looked up from his phone and made his mask make all sorts of expressions at Amos.

Brett handed him over and moved to let Mom sit next to Anna. Amos asked Wade if he could wear his mask.

“What, this thing? You tryin’ to expose my identity, bub?” Wade asked, teasing.

Amos giggled.

“I think not. I won’t be outsmarted by the likes of you, earthling,” Wade warned him, shaking a finger in his face.

Amos asked him if he was an alien. Wade said he was from a planet called ‘Manitoba.’ A triumphant ‘aha!’ sounded out under the chairs, followed by a thud and a groan. Kate maintained that she’d called it.

At 2, Cap returned with Sam Wilson in tow. They had no JB. They brought coffee for the Nelsons instead, which was very sweet.

Steve even got down on the carpet and offered Matt a drink, which Karen took for him to hold until he was ready to come out.

Matt hadn’t said a single word in hours. Brett was starting to get worried. He found Mom’s eyes and she deferred to Anna who bared her teeth and shook her head.

Shortly after Cap had fished Kate out from under the chairs and Peter had woken up, fallen off Wade’s shoulders, and shuffled under to take her place like his life depended on it, Rosalind Sharpe entered the waiting room.

Her eyes blew wide open at the sight that met her.

There were barely two open seats in the place between all the clients and neighbors and family. Brett felt smug about it. He could tell Mom could too from the way that she refolded her hands neatly on her lap with Anna’s still tucked between them.

Brett watched Rosalind pick her way through the folks sitting on the ground, minding her tall slender heels, towards a seat between a re-dozing Danny and Mr. Ghosh with his littlest daughter. Mr. Ghosh moved his baby’s pink coat of the seat next to him. Rosalind’s lips twitched at him before she settled in and smoothed down the fabric of her beige suit.

Everyone else in the room was wearing street clothes. She stood out like a sore thumb.

Well, at least until the f*ckin’ nun entered.

The nun was the size of a floor lamp, truly, and slightly familiar somehow. Brett had to do a double-take when she appeared in her black and white, but the second that she entered the room proper, Mom stood up with Anna. Anna let go of Mom’s hand to press both of hers over her mouth with tears again in her eyes.

“Grace?” she asked.

The nun paused, then placed a hand on her hip—her hip. She co*cked it out and smiled.

“The one and only,” she said.

Brett’s jaw almost dropped as Anna reached forward and took the nun’s hands.

“It’s been so long,” she said.

“It really has,” Mom added. “Is it ‘Maggie’ now?”

“To most, but I’ll make an exception,” Sister Grace said. “How is our boy?”

Anna was full-on crying now.

“Soon,” she croaked. “He’ll be out soon.”

“And I’m sure he’s just fine,” Sister Grace said with complete confidence. Brett looked sharply at Kelly who was equally perplexed.

This was not what he had been expecting from a nun. Maybe it was just TV or something, but he’d expected someone a little more…meek?

“Thank you for making the time, it’s—I know you’re busy,” Anna said.

Sister Grace waved her off.

“Ed,” she snapped out of nowhere. “Stop sulking.”

Ed jerked up in surprise and started to mumble, but Sister Grace cut him off.

“You’re all a damn sight,” she said. “Come on, now. Have a little faith.”

The room seemed to freeze, as though everyone was waiting for a giant hand to crash in through the ceiling and send bolts of lightening down upon this swearing nun and her audience of sinners.

Nothing happened.

Cap looked up to heaven and crossed himself, and Sam Wilson burst into laughter, which made everyone relax. Sister Grace bounced her eyebrows at Cap.

“I’ve had practice, Captain,” she said.

“Thanks, you terrify me,” Steve shot back without reservation.

That chased the rest of the tension out of the room. Anna even cracked a smile.

“She terrifies all of us,” she said as Mom started grinning too. “Let’s find you a seat, oh, uh—”

“No, no. Sit. Sit. I’m fine—Anna. I’m fine,” Sister Grace said.

The day Anna Nelson stopped fussing over hospitality would be the day of the next nuclear disaster. Mom knew this better than anyone.

“Grace, he’s under there,” she redirected gently, pointing.

Sister Grace jerked immediately towards Matt’s shadow-spot. It was like she had a homing device on him. Her eyes narrowed.

“Look at your clothes. How long have you been under there?”

There was a certain kind of glee that came with a public scolding that made you forget all your troubles.

“Imagine what you’ve been breathing. Do you think these people get paid enough to clean under there? No, that’s not a question for you to answer.”

Even Amos had gone still in Kelly’s arms to watch this trainwreck.

“You’ve got allergies, did you forget? What’s this, now? You look like death warmed over. What’ve you eaten today—have you eaten today?”

Brett had never in his life pictured a nun with a Hell’s Kitchen accent of this strength. It was bringing out Matt’s own drawl and his temper, which was surely magnified by him being dragged out from his designated safe spot under the chairs.

“Sister,” he grated out, indeed covered in dust bunnies and the crumbs of old crackers and god knew what else that was living under the chairs. “I’m busy being hysterical. Just give me this one—”

“I’ll give you nothing. You’ll work for it and that’s that,” Sister Grace snapped. “Go clean your face. Give me that sweatshirt, it’s an abomination. You’ll terrify Franklin if he sees you like that. Imagine waking up from brain surgery and finding your partner lookin’ one shade shy of homeless vampire. You trying to make him guilty? Is that what you’re trying to do? Because it’s working.”

“Alright, alright. Christ, I’m goin’ already,” Matt grumbled, feeling around for his cane.

“Go faster,” Sister Grace said, “And drop the attitude. Time’s a tickin’. What’re you lookin’ at, sir? Did you have something to add?”

Peter snickered and shook his head. Sister Grace huffed at him.

“Then mind your business,” she said. “Or you’ll be next.”

Peter hunkered down between Wade’s shoulders, peeking over them in delight.

Incredible. Amazing. 10 out of 10 stars for the lady in the habit.

Cap was visibly hiding behind Sam Wilson now. Sister Grace noticed him and pointed at him warningly. He flinched. She waited a moment, then nodded curtly in approval.

“If you’ll excuse me,” She said. “I’ll be right back. Someone has a tendency to ‘get lost’ on purpose.’”

There was not a lick of pity in this woman. Brett loved it. She flounced right back out the way Matt had gone and when the door closed, Cap said “I’ve gotta get out of here.”

Sister Grace returned not ten minutes later with Matt’s arm looped through hers. His hoodie had been miraculously replaced with an oversized cardigan. Brett had never seen him this furious. Sister Grace, on the other hand, looked pleased as punch, and Cap still hadn’t returned from his extended coffee run, which was nearly as entertaining as Sister Grace bullying Matt into sitting on the ground next to Mom to sulk.

She told him he’d look a ‘treat’ if only he didn’t have that unfortunate scowl.

Mom hid a huge grin behind her hand.

Sister Grace settled in next to Matt and told him that he was now listening to a book on tape with her about God. Matt said that he hated God and all his disciples, and the Sister told him that he would like this one. There was a cat.

Matt lamented that he didn’t read books for cats anymore. He wasn’t 12. But the Sister wouldn’t hear it; she told him to hush and put in the earbud she’d put in his hand. The cat part was coming up.

Karen beamed at Brett across the little aisle between them and not smiling back at her nearly broke his jaw.

Rosalind Sharpe coughed in disapproval and Brett watched Sister Grace’s eyes flick her way.

The ladies held each other’s gaze, then Sister Grace tilted her chin up almost haughtily before returning her attention to Matt. She flicked at his fingers where they were fidgeting with the loop of his stick and produced a rosary which she pressed against his knuckles. Matt took it, then realized that he’d been duped and sagged in defeat.

It became clear over the next half hour that Rosalind Sharpe thought that Sister Maggie-Grace was nothing but a low-class broad who’d risen above her station in life and was dead set on making that everyone else’s problem.

She kept glancing over with increasingly narrowed eyes and a stronger and stronger jaw.

It was fascinating. Anna and Mom were clearly invested in that contentious relationship, and honestly? Brett got it now.

With Matt complaining about how he’d been listening to this book on tape for ages now and there were still no cats and Sister Grace assuring him (obviously lying, wow) that it was coming up very soon, it was hard for the ladies to keep tying knots in their bellies. Brett even found himself looking at the time and thinking ‘oh, Foggy’s almost done. He’s going to be fine.’

This was helped along even further by Sister Grace asking Steve when he came back into the room with coffee if he’d like to join the prayer circle.

Steve did f*cking not.

Steve was physically incapable of saying that to a nun, however. He sat down miserably next to her and when she told him that it wouldn’t start for a good hour yet, even he started to loosen up at the joke.

“You’re a wild nun,” he told her.

“I prefer ‘cantankerous,’ now that I’m old enough for it,” Sister Grace said. “But thank you.”

Rosalind Sharpe rolled her eyes and Sister Grace did not miss it.

“You can be too,” she said kindly. “I’m happy to share with all my sisters, holy or no.”

“You haven’t changed, Margaret,” Rosalind sighed.

Brett’s teeth went sour and he nearly balled himself up in his chair. Matt perked up and tried to figure out who Sister Grace was talking to. He seemed offended on her behalf.

“Sorry, did you hear something?” Sister Grace asked Mom and Anna. “I could have sworn I heard something.”

This lady was here to fight. Good God.

“I did not,” Mom said with grace.

“Must be these ears then,” Sister Grace said peacefully.

“That’s not very holy of you, sister,” Rosalind said more sternly this time. She crossed her legs the other way.

“There it was again,” Sister Grace said.

Anna whacked at her shoulder and mumbled something about keeping the peace, but Matt had clearly caught onto who was speaking now, and he tugged at Sister Grace’s sleeve until she leaned in and let him whisper something to her.

“Perhaps,” she told him.

Matt co*cked his head.

“No idea,” Sister Grace said. “Always seemed to me like a her-problem.”

Rosalind’s face was growing stormier by the second. She stood up abruptly and click-clacked her way through the double doors. Brett watched her go.

Steve peeked after her and leaned into the other two in the ‘prayer circle.’

“What bone has she got to pick?” he asked Sister Grace in a low voice on behalf of literally everyone else in the room.

Thanks, Cap.

“Not a clue,” Sister Grace said. “Hated me at school, too.”

At school? MOM. You were holding out, Mom.

“You went to school together?” Steve asked.

“Oh, yes,” Sister Grace said. “From elementary to highschool. It wasn’t until I met my late partner that I came over to this side of the neighborhood. Must’ve irked her to be followed from our earlier cesspit.”

Matt pawed for her in shock and she caught his hand indulgently and petted it.

“The world was a smaller place back then,” she said. “Some of us stayed, and some of us left. And some of us have yet to come to terms with our hypocrisy.”

Mom refused to pick up on the desperate telepathic waves Brett and Kelly began sending her way. Matt picked up on them instead.

“I imagine you told her that at some point,” he said.

“Some of us have since experienced growth in the area of self-control,” Sister Grace answered serenely.

“What’s it like?” Matt asked.

“I’m told it’s healthy,” Sister Grace said.

“Can’t relate,” Matt said.

Sister Grace hummed.

“You’ll get there,” she said.

A doctor came out of the double blue doors on the other side of the waiting room at 3pm and was startled at the sight of a packed full waiting room. He cleared his throat twice before asking who Foggy Nelson’s family was.

Folks made space for Anna and Ed and Candace to get to him. Brett noted that Rosalind did not stand up and join them.

The doc said something too softly for the rest of them to hear, but Anna suddenly pressed her hand to her heart. Ed wrapped an arm around her waist and Candace thanked God. Brett sighed in relief with the rest of the room.

Foggy had made it.

He was okay. He was going to be taken to recovery now until he woke the rest of the way up.

Someone started a cheer, Brett wasn’t sure who, but he hoped that Foggy, as woozy as he was, heard it on his way out of the operating theatre.

Visiting hours passed before Fogs was human enough to have company. The cheer team had to wait until the next day to visit. Brett arrived at 9 in the morning to half the team already crammed into Foggy’s tiny room. He was drowning in affection already, what with all the flowers and bears and cards and cousins on his bed. He smiled at Brett when he peeked in the door.

“Matt slept here,” Foggy said, when the tide of affection had finally flowed out his room and left him alone with Brett for a few minutes. “Went home, threw on the suit, and climbed in through the window. Got chased out by the staff at like, seven.”

Aww.

“Yeah, it was pretty cute. I guess Sister Maggie gave him the go ahead for once.”

Sister--? Oh right. Sister Grace.

“Grace?” Foggy repeated.

“That’s what Mom and your mom called her yesterday,” Brett said, pulling up a chair.

“She came to wait?” Foggy said. “No sh*t? I thought Matt went to church.”

Brett huffed.

“Well, her future son-in-law was sick, you know,” he teased.

Foggy blinked slowly at him like he was trying to burn him with his eyes. Brett snickered.

“Rosalind was there, too. Was civil even, sort of,” he said. “Here, we took pictures of all the shifts for you.”

He handed over his phone and watched Foggy swipe through the photos. He seemed at a loss for words. His hands started shaking. His lip threatened to wobble.

“They came—they came for me?” he asked.

“Of course they did. Who else would they come for?”

Foggy touched knuckles to his eye and handed back the phone.

“No one picked a fight?” he asked.

Brett realized belatedly that he meant the hoard of vigilante and superhero visitors.

“Nope, but not for lack of trying,” he said. “Hey, did you know that Rosalind hates Sister Grace?”

Yep, now that was the face that Brett was looking for.

“Get out,” Foggy said.

“They went to school together,” Brett said, unable to contain his growing smirk.

“Get. Out.”

“I know. The sister called Rosalind a hypocrite in front of God and everyone. I mean, not loudly, but still. I heard her for sure.”

“BRETT.”

“Shut up, you’re not supposed to raise your blood pressure.”

“Brett.”

“It was amazing,” Brett said. “Too bad you were busy.”

Foggy collapsed back onto his collection of pillows.

“Did she say anything?” he asked quietly.

“Who Rosalind? No. She left before Sister Grace said that. I don’t think she liked watching Sister Grace making Matt feel better. Might’ve been jealous.”

Foggy huffed.

“Incredible,” he sighed. “Just incredible. Whatever. I’ve decided I’m not going to care.”

Mm. Good plan.

“Is everyone else okay?”

f*ckin’ Fogs. Worried about other people even as he lay here, freshly no longer dying.

“Everyone’s fine,” Brett said. “Worried. Jittery. I think Cap’s convinced he’s being stalked by nuns. Amos made friends with DP. Mom got Jessica’s nail polish brand. She’s decided that Jessica needs to marry Luke, by the way. I guess that takes the heat off of you for now.”

Foggy moaned and pushed the heels of his palms into his eyes.

“Stop the world, I want to get off,” he said.

“I’ve got more,” Brett said.

“God, say it ain’t so.”

“God can’t help you now, bub. How long are you here?”

“Another two days.”

Brett leaned back in the sh*tty chair and crossed his arms.

“Perfect, that’s loads of time to hold you captive,” he said. “You’re going to help me figure out who the f*ck Sister Grace fought on a stoop when she was a teenager. I know she must have. I asked Matt about it, but he’s convinced that she’d never do such a thing.”

Foggy blinked, then surveyed the sheets covering his chest down to his toes. He thought about it.

“Yeah, alright,” he said. “I don’t have anything better to do. Bring on the yearbooks.”