Chapter Text
Matt's house is almost exactly the same as the last time Peter had made his way down to Alabama to visit him. The only noticeable difference is that there's a new painting on the wall. It's of Foggy Nelson, with a small fluffy dog in his hands. The impasto on the painting is shimmering and easy to see, even in the darkness of the house. Peter doesn't bother announcing that he's here, Matt knows.
“Pete?” Matt calls from somewhere further into the house—if he had to guess, Peter would say the kitchen, though it's hard to tell if he’s there or in a room further beyond the kitchen. Nonetheless, Peter calming steps through the foyer and into the hallway that leads to the kitchen, with his bag slung over one shoulder. And there, sitting on the ground in pajamas, is Matt Murdock. There's a young golden retriever next to him, her face in his lap.
“Hey there, Missy,” Peter says, not bothering to greet Matt. He squats, and Missy sits up, pressing her wet nose into the palm of his hand.
Matt exhales, then inhales. “There's dinner in the fridge, if you want it. It's just some leftover spaghetti from earlier tonight.”
Peter stands back up, taking three steps towards the fridge and opening it to retrieve the glass containers Matt keeps his leftovers in.
“Did you make it?” He asks.
“Yeah.”
“That's good.”
That night, Peter crawls into bed next to Matt, with Missy sleeping happily at their feet. Neither man says a word.
⸺ ⚶ ⸺
It's bright in the room, the very next day, and Peter groans at the lack of curtains.
“How long have your curtains been drawn?” He asks, rolling over to hide his eyes in Matt's back, though it barely works.
“I don't know. I think Elektra must have opened them when she popped in a few months ago,” Matt replies, turning over so that he can face Peter as he speaks.
“What is she up to these days?” He yawns. “I mean, I haven't seen her around New York in, like, three years.”
Matt shrugs, “Nothing for her in the city without me, I guess.”
Not much for anyone in the city, without you, Peter thinks.
They lay like that for a while longer, content to simply breathe each other in and relax. It’s been a few years since they’ve had this kind of opportunity.
⸺ ⚶ ⸺
A few hours later, they and Missy take the long walk down the mountain into the town. It's calming, being surrounded by nothing but forests and the crackle of rocks underfoot. They could have driven— Peter had driven up the mountain, and his rental still sits in Matt’s driveway— but the hike is neither too much of a chore for each other nor boring.
They don’t talk for most of it. The point of the trip is never about talking for them, they’ve known everything they could need about each other for years. The point of the trip is to re-acclimate to the other, to set their steps and breathing in sync—their heartbeats. For Peter and Matt, the world is loud though empty, even this far out into the mountains. It’s like nothing that can ever be explained, to go from the city into the deep of the mountains. To walk down those roads with no one with you but the one man you could kill for.
“Thank you for inviting me,” Peter says, as the town comes into view finally.
“Thank you for coming,” Matt replies.
The people in town know Matt as that crazy teacher and little else. It’s true, they do know of his exploits in New York, in California, that time he went to the Supreme Court, that time he was mayor, but most importantly, they know he’s Professor Murdock, the best law teacher in the entire state (if you ask anyone at his university), and the man who will give you the worst relationship advice when you don’t ask for it and everyone says that five minutes ago he was across the town buying fresh pumpkins from Mrs. McKenrick.
It is endlessly funny to Peter that here, in this Appalachian town, Matt has still made a name for himself as some sort of extravagant freak. He deserves a laugh, even after retirement.
They pass through mostly silent, Missy happily doing her job and the occasional town goer smiling and shouting a, “Hello Mr. Murdock and strange friend!” at the two of them. And that’s another thing that Peter has noticed about this town: he’s always Matt’s strange friend. Not a single person has ever asked his name, and the one time that he and Kirstin came down at the same time, they were greeted as strange friends of Matt by the town.
Regardless, both men always wave back.
It takes them only a little longer to get to the Winn Dixie from there.
The supermarket is quiet in the same fashion it has been every other time he and Matt have stepped inside of it together. As if the whole place may be holding its breath to see what the two of them do.
The company radio crackles with age as it plays a Billboard top 40.
“Which way to the cakes?” Peter asks, taking Matt’s hand now.
“Aisle… 13, I believe,” he replies, his voice solemn. The two of them make their way through the aisles until they near the refrigerator chest of premade cakes.
Matt exhales, then inhales. As he pulls his hand from Peter’s and reaches towards the handle, Peter notices the way it shakes. He tears his gaze upwards, looking at Matt’s face and furrowing his eyebrows.
“Are you okay?” He asks. Peter has never seen him like this, not really. He’s seen him frustrated, angry, tired, bitter. The full spectrum of emotions, except for this one. Matt’s face is drawn up in a way that on any other man would be easy to read as fear, but on Matt it reads only as foreign.
Matt hesitates, and takes his hand back from the door of the chest, putting it in his pocket. On his other side, he grips the handle of Missy’s harness a little harder.
“I’m… scared, I think?” Matt says. “It’s been fifteen years and—”
The two of them stand there for a while longer, letting the silence drag out. Somewhere across the store, Peter can barely hear someone choosing a bag of chips.
Finally, he begins to speak again: “Foggy, Kirstin, Karen, Elektra. Jean, Gwen, Harry, Curt. Ben Urich,” Matt pauses, sucking in a breath. Missy sits down, pressing her side into his leg. “We kill people, Peter.”
“You’re retired,” Peter says back, almost indignant, as though that was the most obvious response.
“So?”
“You didn’t— you weren’t partial to the death of those people.” Peter knows this to be the truth. He’s had to tell this to himself many times before, to explain how he wasn’t at fault for any of it. Hearing the names of the people he’s lost spit back at him like that makes him mad, almost.
“Who was?” Matt asks, and as Peter stares at the slice of space between Matt’s glasses and his face. He can see him squinting hard, as though if he doesn’t, he may cry.
“Daredevil was. You’re not Daredevil. You’re Matthew Murdock. You like the smell of carrot cake and pomegranates, you used to practice law but you find it too painful to stand in front of a courtroom nowadays. You teach law for kids. You live in Alabama and you love sitting on your porch with a nice glass of lemonade and listening to the owls at night,” he wraps a hand around Matt’s bicep as he speaks, holding on tight. “Matt, you’re not afraid of anything, except that one day you think the Avengers are going to call you and say, ‘We need help, Daredevil,’ and you’re going to have to tell them ‘Daredevil’s gone out for a walk. You’ve only missed him by a minute. I’ll call you when he’s back.’” He knows it’s what Matt needs to hear, because he’s had to tell himself a similar story before.
“But I am Daredevil, on some level. And Daredevil, he killed those people.” Matt turns his face away, but Peter catches the way he grits his teeth as he does so. He doesn’t bother to hide the way he lurches his shoulders upwards either, as if he needs protection from something—the truth, perhaps.
“Is an unknowing parent at fault for their spouse’s abuse of their child?”
“No,” he says it like it’s the most obvious answer in the world.
“Then how is it your fault?”
“Because,” he hesitates, “Because I want to die.” He believes this too, Peter can tell. By the way he talks, the melancholy tone he takes on as he says it: sadder than anything he’s heard out of the man in the past years.
“No. Daredevil wanted to die. Matt Murdock dragged one of his oldest friends to Winn Dixie’s so they could get a cake. A cake in honor of him giving up his license to practice law,” Peter says. “Would Daredevil have done that, Matt?”
There is a long silence. Peter opens the chest to retrieve a cake. It’s lemon. He has to remove his right hand from Matt’s arm to get it out.
“I just wish I could have spoken to him one last time,” Matt finally says, still not facing Peter.
“Who?”
“I don’t- I don’t know, Pete. Mike? Sam? Ben? My dad?”
“You mean Daredevil,” Peter says, sure of it.
“How do you know?”
The silence drags on for a while more, then Peter finally says it, with a big inhale of air and the cheeriest voice he can manage. “Your examples. You didn’t say Foggy.”
⸺ ⚶ ⸺
“That’s the secret of it,” Peter says that night, leaning into Matt until their foreheads touch.
“What a wonderful secret,” Matt replies, his voice syrupy sweet. He lifts a hand and brushes it against Peter’s face. “You’ve been shaving again, huh?” He can tell that Matt wanted to check if he was crying—a fail-safe, just to make sure.
Peter nods, then sits straight up again, staring through the dark canopy of the trees up at the bright full moon that hangs heavy in the sky above. Missy stretches again, rolling a little in the dirt. He’s not happy. In fact, he’s far from it. But here with Matt, he knows he’s doing something right. He knows he’s meant to be here, for some reason.