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Daredevil wasn’t a member of the Avengers. For the moment, anyway.
There was a multitude of reasons for this. One, he tended to focus more on street-level crime, such as taking down gangs. The Avengers didn’t show up to every cult meeting or robbery or mugging. Daredevil focused on the people, and the Avengers focused on larger catastrophes.
Two, none of the Avengers had secret identities, and Daredevil did. He was carefully guarded around them, and even super-spies such as Natasha Romanoff knew almost nothing about Daredevil. The only thing Natasha could confidently say was that he probably had some sort of boxing history, based on his unusual style of fighting. Tony Stark’s tech had come up with moot. It was sort of hard to become close to a person when you knew nothing about them.
Three, the Avengers were all low-key terrified of Daredevil.
The Avengers had participated in multiple team-ups with Daredevil when their interests alined, such as when a rogue HYDRA cell caused destruction in Hell’s Kitchen or when a large army of Doombots invaded New York. But these interactions caused the Avengers to become more wary of Daredevil, not more comfortable.
Natasha and Clint found that they could not track or tail Daredevil without him finding out. The pair of them had been trained for decades in stealth tracking, and they were quite simply the best spies in the world. But somehow, Daredevil always knew when they were around. Nat tried to not let it rattle her, but it had. Her lack of intelligence around him terrified her.
This unnerved Tony Stark too. He’d used the smallest, stealthiest drone he had to try and track Daredevil’s movements - one that had reflective panelling that no man, not even sharp-eyed Clint could see - but somehow Daredevil spotted it. Every. Single. Time. Tony wasted hours, even days and weeks, trying to perfect his design, making it undetectable so that Daredevil wouldn’t notice it, but he still failed. Daredevil was an enigma, and Tony didn’t like it.
Then there was the matter of the freaky, intimate knowledge that Daredevil seemed to have.
After a battle, Daredevil would tell them the exact injuries each of them had so that they could get quick medical attention. Some things you could tell just by looking - a broken leg, for instance - but Daredevil had impossible knowledge. At a distance of twenty feet away, he might say that Steve’s blood pressure was too high, or he might correctly determine the exact location of someone’s internal bleeding without even standing next to them. And when Bruce did the scans back at the Avengers Tower to verify, he would confirm that Daredevil was correct right to the minute detail. Bruce knew appearances could be deceiving - almost everyone was terrified of his alter-ego the Hulk, after all - but he had to admit that Daredevil unsettled him a bit.
In addition to all of this, Steve was amazed when he watched Daredevil fight. Daredevil fought effortlessly in the shadows, as if it were the same as daytime. Even though fighters such as Steve knew how to fight in the dark, they still preferred to fight in the light, but Daredevil didn’t even seem to care. In addition, while Daredevil still got injured when he was overwhelmed in a fight, he was never, ever surprised by a punch or any other motion, even when it occurred outside his line of sight. Did Daredevil have eyes on the back of his head?
Then there was just the weird things that unnerved all of them. Daredevil somehow knew intimate details about their lives. He somehow knew Clint and Natasha were dating, even though they knew how to be extremely strict professionals in the field and nobody outside the Avengers knew about it. Daredevil always knew when one of them was hungry and somehow knew all of their favorite foods. Actions like that didn’t humanize him, it made them a little freaked out.
Not to mention the fact that Daredevil always remained gruff and was directly to the point. No social niceties, or anything else to put them at ease. He was like Batman, in a way. But not the campy, Adam West version. More like the terrifying, heart-stopping Christian Bale version. After every attempt to uncover the man beneath the devil mask (not literally pull off his mask, just ask questions) Daredevil threatened their lives and took off. He wasn’t the most welcoming guy.
The only person who didn’t seem to be scared of Daredevil was Thor. He said it was because with a man like Loki for a brother, you get used to the impossible happening. Thor said that just because Daredevil’s abilities were confusing and unnerving to some of them, didn’t mean that it was justification for fear.
They knew Daredevil was a good person. They had seen him rescuing so many civilians and take down enough bad guys. Yet, their hearts still pounded wildly upon seeing Daredevil. They just couldn’t help it.
***
Daredevil, also known as Matt Murdock, had known that the Avengers were scared of him. It was hard not to. It was impossible to miss the wild flutter of heartbeats whenever he appeared in their presence. Part of that was because Matt liked to slip out of the shadows mere feet away from them and startle them. Foggy called him a drama queen when he did that. But Matt also recognized the underlying fear underneath that surprise. After a few team-ups, he had heard the Avengers talking in their comms after Daredevil had seemingly “left”, remarking how terrifying Matt was.
Foggy found it absolutely hilarious when Matt told him. If he was being honest, Matt did too. Matt wondered how long he would be able to keep the Avengers in the threshold of fear. It was quite satisfying and entertaining to have the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes afraid of little old Matt Murdock, blind Attorney at Law.
Matt was able to keep up this persona, until a battle with Crossbones and some HYDRA goons ended up in the mass detonations of bombs. Matt had been close enough to one of the explosions that he was severely burned on his side, but the force of the bomb left some of his senses knocked out. Matt was disoriented, in extreme pain, and the last thing he heard before falling unconscious was the concerned voice of Captain America.
***
When Matt came to, he didn’t twitch or do anything to indicate that he was conscious. He did what he usually did when waking up in completely unfamiliar locations: he laid completely still, letting his senses reach out and grasp where he was. While the glass and steel structure confused him, he was able to easily figure out his location based on the people around him. Next to him, Matt recognized the forced calm and slow heartbeat of Bruce Banner. In the room next to this one, Matt recognized the more frantic heartbeats of the other five Avengers, not to mention their voices.
“I still think bringing him here was a terrible idea,” Tony was saying. “He’s already inferred a lot about us and our habits than anyone should know, and that was without bringing him into the Tower itself.”
“He is a fellow warrior, like the rest of you, who was injured in battle,” Thor argued. “He deserves a place here, and I do not believe this Daredevil wishes you any harm.”
“How about this: here’s already here, so just let him stay until he wakes up. Then he’ll leave. Sound good?” Steve said. Tony made a small noise of displeasure. “I know, I’m a little unnerved as well Tony, but I’m not just going to dump him unconscious in some alleyway.”
At last, they seemed to come to this agreement, and Matt grinned in satisfaction. Before he was kicked out, he was going to enjoy scaring the hell out of Tony Stark.
“He’s awake,” Bruce said softly over an intercom, and Matt mentally berated himself for letting the emotive expression play across his face. He’d forgotten Bruce was watching him.
The door to Matt’s room (some sort of infirmary), popped open. There it was: the slightly elevated heartbeats of all the Avengers. At last, they were all gathered around his bed.
“How are you feeling?” Bruce asked.
“Alright,” Daredevil said, feeling his side for the first time. The burns were still throbbing with pain, but Bruce had done one hell of a job patching him up. “My mask is still on,” Matt noted. He’d have thought that taking it off would be the first thing they would do.
“I value my life,” Tony blurted out.
“Good to know, I’ll keep that in mind,” Matt said dryly. He didn’t think the Avengers could recognize his sense of humor. When nothing but terrified silence followed, Matt continued, “I believe Stark negotiated for my early departure. I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”
Clint softly whispered to Natasha, “Is he psychic?” It was at such a low volume that only super-spies would be able to hear the whisper. But even though a normal person would not be able to hear it inches away, Matt heard it across the entire room.
“No,” Matt responded shortly. Clint let out a sharp intake of breath. Matt was pleased to have rattled him.
Matt gingerly placed his feet on the floor and cautiously stood up. But when he placed a foot forward, he stumbled, landing in a surprised Bruce Banner’s arms.
“Crap,” Tony said. “You can’t get out of here on your own.” Matt sat back down on the bed, realizing that Stark was right, but he wasn’t about to admit it.
“Let the man stay, Tony, until he fully recovers,” Thor suggested.
“No,” Matt said. “You don’t want me here, but more importantly, I don’t want to be here.” Matt was representing someone in court in a few days and he needed to be home making his case, not here dilly dallying with the Avengers.
“You still can’t get home by yourself. I take it you’re not going to let us know where you live,” Steve said. “And if I know you, you’re not going to trust some random taxi driver.”
“No,” Matt admitted. “If you get me to Hell’s Kitchen, my associate could pick me up.” It was the best he could do. He’d have to make sure the Avengers left before Foggy arrived, but while Matt couldn’t walk quite yet, he could certainly lean against the wall and stand for a bit.
“I suppose that might work,” Tony said thoughtfully. “How are you going to contact your associate?”
Matt felt the side of his costume for his burner phone. But all he felt was bandages and torn fabric. His phone must have fallen out when he’d been blown up. He let out a grimace. He would have to borrow one of their phones, and they all knew it.
Bruce fumbled around his pocket and pulled out a sleek small device. “It’s a Starkphone,” Bruce said. “My personal one too. Make any call you want on there.” Matt hesitated. It was smooth with few buttons. It was a touch screen. Of course. He couldn’t call Foggy on there, he had no idea how to navigate a touch screen without accessibility features. And there was no way to hell that he was going to tell the Avengers that he was blind.
Even though Matt wanted to maintain his mysterious I-can-do-anything persona, he couldn’t let them know he was blind. So he played up his injuries, allowing a slight tremor to enter his hands. Matt’s hands shook as he struggled to seemingly press buttons in the phone.
“Oh give it here,” Tony said, and Matt passed the phone to Stark. “I’ll type it in for you, just tell me the number.” Matt rattled off Foggy’s number, relieved that he had made Foggy get a burner phone. Foggy thought he was insane when Matt suggested it, but Matt insisted that if anyone ever got ahold of Daredevil’s phone and saw that he was making a lot of calls to some lawyer, Foggy would be in danger. Tony Stark would have no luck tracking down the owner of this phone.
“If you’re making me do this, I’m putting this baby on speaker. Is your buddy some scary-ass vigilante too?” Tony said.
Everyone in the room heard the phone ring twice, until someone picked it up. “Hey M-”
“Hello!” Matt shouted loudly, making sure that Foggy didn’t accidentally unveil his name to the Avengers. “This is Daredevil and the Avengers are on speakerphone, so don’t say anything that could compromise either of our identities.”
“Oh my god you’re with the Avengers?” Foggy said, his voice going very high. “All of them? Is Captain America there?”
“Yes,” Matt replied. He felt the atmosphere in the room beginning to shift. He had quite forgotten that Foggy could be, well… beautiful, ordinary, fanboying Foggy. Daredevil was about to lose his entire reputation in front of the Avengers because of his friend.
“Hello mister,” Steve said politely, but shyly.
“Oh my god Captain America talked to me, Captain America talked to me, I’m going to die. Buddy, I’m gonna die. I always thought I was going to die because you would do some stupid Daredevil-y thing, but I right now I just died and went to heaven. I’m so happy. I’m content with life now,” Foggy said. As the Avengers began to crack smiles around him, Daredevil knew his whole tough reputation was now down the drain. Goddammit, Foggy. “Could you get me Captain America’s autograph?” Foggy asked.
“No, this isn’t autograph time,” Matt snapped.
“Oooh, somebody got out of the wrong side of bed this morning,” Foggy sassed, and Matt found himself sinking deeper into the covers. He felt all eyes on him, and he just wanted this hell to end. “And dude, don’t act like you’re not secretly excited to be with Captain America. The day we met you literally showed me all the Captain America comics you collected when you were a kid. It’s how we became friends. Don’t you still have them in your closet somewhere?”
Matt’s cheeks were burning, and unfortunately his mask didn’t cover that up. He heard Black Widow let out a soft snicker.
“Please stop,” Matt begged, his voice losing the gravely tone he used while in the Daredevil costume. He tried to salvage the remainder of the conversation. “Anyway, I’m at Avengers Tower and too injured to get home, so I was hoping-”
“You’re in Avengers Tower?” Foggy squeaked out. “Oh my god, that’s amazing. Anyway, continue. Wait, you’re injured? What did I tell you when you called me half-dead last time, stumbling around bleeding in the dark?”
“I can’t just not be a vigilante,” Matt said, desperately hoping that Foggy wasn’t about to say what he thought he was going to say.
“Dude, I made you repeat this whole phrase so you wouldn’t have anyone to blame except your own sorry self when you nearly get killed. It sounds so cool. Remember: Don’t Do Dumb Daring Daredevil Deeds. Repeat it after me, and maybe I’ll be able to pick you up.”
“Don’t Do Dumb Daring Daredevil Deeds,” Matt muttered under his breath, visibly pouting.
“That’s right,” Foggy said, sounding like he was reprimanding a child. Tony Stark barked out a laugh. Matt ignored it.
“It’s a completely ridiculous phrase and doesn’t actually do anything,” Matt protested. “You’re not going to do some weird psychology shit to make me stop leaping off buildings. It’s what I do.”
“One can dream, right? I keep hoping that someday you’ll get your head out of your ass and you’ll correct your self-destructive behavior. I still can’t believe my best friend is a complete idiot.”
“You’re the one who puts up with me,” Matt pointed out.
“Yeah. Unfortunately you’ve always been an idiot, even before the Daredevil thing. After since that day that you got so drunk that you choked on an eel and then threw up on that lady’s blouse in that stupid party we snuck into, I knew you were a goner. You nearly got us arrested.” All of the Avengers were laughing now, and Matt didn’t like it. Not one bit.
“You could stop, you know,” Matt pointed out.
“Come on, that’s no fun. How about I tell all of them Avengers about the time that you were so sleep-deprived from being Daredevil for several nights that you accidentally walked out of your apartment that morning with no pants on, not even underwear, and scared the living daylights out of the little old lady down the hall?” Matt made a mad swipe for the phone in Stark’s hand, hoping to end the call before Foggy could do any more damage, but Stark jerked it away just in time. All of the Avengers were doubled over laughing at Foggy’s statement, but Matt just wanted to disappear and never come back.
“Is that true?” Clint asked, gasping out the question through his laughter and - was that tears? It was definitely tears.
“Unfortunately,” Matt grumbled, knowing that he would never be able to get a lie past Romanoff. The Avengers started laughing even louder, and Matt dramatically face-planted his head into the pillow.
“Hey, Daredevil’s friend, what else you got?” Tony asked, smirking.
Matt sat upright once more. “I swear to God I will strangle Stark until he hangs up on you-” Matt began, but Foggy interrupted him.
“-But you know that I’m like your only friend, so I am the only one who can rescue you from the clutch of the Avengers,” Foggy finished. Damn the lawyer in his friend. He always had a good point.
“Stark, please, have mercy,” Matt begged.
“No can do,” Tony said, tossing the phone to Natasha. She caught it gracefully, and Matt groaned at the smirk on her smug face. If there phone was being guarded by the freaking Black Widow, there was no way that Matt could get it.
“Why are you doing this, buddy?” Matt asked, exasperated, trying to make it clear that he was talking to Foggy and not the Avengers.
A gleeful cackle came from the direction of the phone. “Because, when you were telling me several months ago that the Avengers were utterly terrified of you, I thought it was the funniest thing ever.”
“You laughed for like five minutes and humiliated the name of Daredevil,” Matt said.
“Wait, you knew? You knew we were...” Tony said, catching up to Foggy’s previous comment.
“Of course I knew you were scared of me,” Matt said, rolling his eyes, though the Avengers obviously couldn’t see that motion. “Your heartbeats spiked whenever I entered a room, and I overheard you guys talking on the comms a few times. It was fairly obvious. It was impossible not to know.”
“Ever since he realized that you guys were scared of him, he made sure to always sneak up on you when he entered a room and see how bad he could scare you. We laughed about it later,” Foggy butted in. “He’s just a really big drama queen.”
“I am to have any secrets left?” Matt groaned.
“Hey! Your secret identity is perfectly intact, thank you very much,” Foggy retorted.
“So how did you know everything you knew about us, and all sorts of weird things no normal person does? I was beginning to think that you were some omniscient being,” Steve said.
“Daredevil’s his own special weird brand of weird. Unfortunately the details of that gets into the secret identity part of it,” Foggy said, before Matt could respond.
“Fair enough, I respect that,” Steve said.
Foggy finally, finally seemed to be done embarrassing Matt, so they finally hashed out the details of how Matt was to get back home. Matt gave Stark an address of a rooftop in Hell’s Kitchen. He knew that it was secluded enough that nobody would notice him on that rooftop in his Daredevil suit in broad daylight, and he also knew that there were no CCTV cameras anywhere in the area. After the Avengers were gone, Foggy would come, give him his civilian clothes, and Matt would head back with Foggy’s assistance.
“If you have Romanoff spy on me, or put one of your little supposedly invisible drones out to try and find me, or a plant a tracker anywhere, you know that I will know. I always know,” Matt warned Stark.
“Yeah yeah, I remember,” Tony said. Matt was disappointed that Tony no longer seemed to be afraid of Matt’s threats.
With that, they finally hung up on Foggy (though Matt’s pretty sure all the Avengers discreetly saved his number, despite that number technically being Foggy’s burner) and after a few minutes discussion (Matt was still thoroughly embarrassed by the whole deal), they took off. They didn’t bring the Quinjet so they could avoid attention, although Matt thought Iron Man and Thor flying through the air attracted attention quite well. Matt said goodbye to Bruce, Clint, and Natasha back at the Tower, pretty sure his cheeks were still thoroughly red. Tony took off flying while holding Steve, and Thor took Matt. It was quite strange being held one-handed by the God of Thunder, while the other hand guided Mjolnir.
The four of them landed on the rooftop, and Matt leaned against the edge. He still was having difficulty walking, the explosion from earlier having left him too disoriented.
“You are a good man, Daredevil,” Thor told him. “You remind me of my brother, but only the positive aspects of him.”
“Thanks,” Matt said, truly grateful. He was pretty sure Thor was his favorite Avenger at the moment, as Thor was the only one who hadn’t been afraid of Daredevil and had advocated for him long before Foggy’s call. In addition, he didn’t humiliate Matt during the phone call. Matt could see himself becoming Thor’s friend.
“Nice meeting you properly this time,” Steve said, shaking Matt’s hand, and Matt knew what he meant. Steve and the rest of the Avengers got to see the actual Matt, not just the persona he wanted to present. “Do you want those Captain America comic books signed?”
“Uh-” Matt said, his mind at a total blank, but then Matt noticed the smirk on Steve’s face and realized that Steve was messing with him. Who could have guessed that the epitome of truth, justice and the American way would do that to him?
“See you around. My offer for autographs still stands,” Steve said, and he backed off to let Tony say his goodbyes.
“We’ll make an Avenger of you yet, mark my words,” Tony said.
“What happened to wanting to kick me out of the building the second I woke up?” Matt asked, grinning. “And I don’t want to be an Avenger.”
Tony snorted. “Sure you don’t,” he said.
“See you around,” Matt said, relieved that he could still make blind jokes in peace. Foggy at least didn’t reveal that he was blind.
“If we need you, I’ll call up your friend,” Tony said. “I expect we’ll see quite a lot of each other.” With that, the three Avengers took off into the sky.
It only took another ten minutes for Foggy to show up.
“I’m going to kill you,” Matt said as a way of greeting.
“Hello to you too,” Foggy said happily. “You an Avenger yet?”
“No, I’m never going to be able to look any of them in the eye again,” Matt said. “Not after what you did.”
“What I did was get you into the Avenger’s good graces,” Foggy said. “You’re welcome. Now let’s get off this dirty rooftop.” Foggy tossed a bag at his head, and Matt quickly changed into ordinary civilian clothes. The pair of them headed down the stairs, with Matt leaning heavily on Foggy for balance.
“Thanks for this, but I still hate you,” Matt said.
“No problem,” Foggy said, and Matt groaned at his cheerful tone.
But a few days later, when Foggy tossed Matt the phone saying “it’s for you” and Matt heard Tony Stark’s voice on the line asking for help with some space aliens, Matt found he couldn’t be too mad. He began going on mission after mission with the Avengers, all because Foggy was instrumental in breaking the ice. After a few months Matt found himself in the Tower all the time, “watching” movies with the Avengers and eating popcorn. A few more months, and he was ready to properly join them.
It was nice being an Avenger.