Work Text:
“Betrayal!” Danny yells as he topples off the edge of the pier and into the water. He lands with a loud splash that sprays Luke too.
Jessica bursts into laughter; Matt grins.
Danny bobs up in the water, his hair plastered to his head. He spits out a mouthful of pond weed. “You’re horrible.”
Luke grins down at him and offers him a hand up. Danny resolutely ignores it and heaves himself up onto the pier.
“You wanted to cool off,” Luke says, chuckling. “That you were too hot.”
“I didn’t say I wanted you to shove me off the pier.” Danny shakes himself off, hear flicking back and forth.
A trio of tourists on their way to the boating hut stare at the four of them, giving a wide berth.
Once they’re past, they clump together, heads moving together. The corners of Matt’s mouth twitch up.
“What are they saying?” Luke asks.
Danny yanks his dripping t-shirt over his head to try and squeeze it out, revealing the expansive dragon tattoo on his chest.
Jessica snorts. “It’s not hard to guess.”
“Just that we make a rather strange group,” Matt tells him serenely.
“You don’t say.”
Luke glances around the lake. The bright sun is glinting off the water, and a gentle breeze is ruffling the reeds and rustling the leaves of the green trees dotted around the edge.
“We should go in now,” Matt tells them all. “The queue’s gone, but there’s a large group moving in from over there.” He points a single finger towards the shore, keeping the gesture close to his body.
Luke follows the gesture. Sure enough, a crowd of kids in either their late teens or very early twenties are heading for the pier.
“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea,” he agrees quickly.
Matt continues down the pier. For once, his cane is scraping along the pier itself, feeling for the edge to make sure he doesn’t go off. The rest of them follow him.
“Twenty bucks for the hour,” the bored boathouse attendant tells Luke. “Five for each extra fifteen minutes.” He looks at him expectantly.
“Give me a second,” Luke says. “I’m not paying for it – he is.” He turns to search for Danny. He finds him by the paddle boat mooring, whacking a laughing Jessica with his wet shirt. The scared tourists from before are settling into their own rowing boat as fast as they can, hurrying to get away. “Danny!” Luke calls across the dock.
Danny’s head shoots up. This gives Jessica the opportunity to catch him off guard and steal his t-shirt and toss it in the lake. Danny realises this a second too late and yelps. “Jess!”
“Get your rich ass over here,” Luke tells him. He turns back to the now-wide-eyed attendant. “Give me a second.”
A grin stretches across Matt’s face beneath his glasses. In the bright sunlight of the summery day, they’re glowing red, making it very clear to anyone looking that he’s blind. “Danny will be over in a moment.”
“Um…”
Danny starts over, muttering insults and threats under his breath (not quietly enough if the attendant’s paling face is anything to go by) and presents his debit card. “You’re lucky this wasn’t in my shirt,” he tells Jessica, who’s followed him over.
“You mean your t-shirt that doesn’t have any pockets,” Jessica replies flatly. “Oh, no. Such a close one. I can’t believe I took such a risk.”
Luke snorts.
It takes them a while to get a handle of the boat, but eventually they arrive at the middle of the lake with Luke and Jessica on the pedals. Then Danny jumps onto his feet, sending the boat rocking.
“Jesus—” Jessica swears.
“Language,” Matt says.
“My t-shirt!” Danny cries. He steps up onto the thin rim for the boat, then walks along it, following the slow, meandering path of t-shirt. Only his ninja training keeps him from falling off.
Luckily, it’s acid shade of green means the top is easy to spot, and Danny gets onto his knees and stretches out over the side of the boat as far as he can, trying to reach his t-shirt. He’s on Matt’s side of the boat, right in front of him.
Luke watches as Matt considers his position before gently lifting his knee and then shoves it, hard, into Danny’s foot. His sandals – ‘old white man sandals’, according to Jessica – slip on the already wet plastic, and then Danny goes tumbling into the lake. Again.
Once a dripping Danny, now reunited with his t-shirt at least, swims back to the boat, he tries and slips at getting up in.
Luke, taking pity on him, offers a hand again to help pull Danny up. This time, Danny takes it.
This time, Danny pulls him down into the lake with him.
Luke crashes in with a massive splash, headfirst. By the time he manages to tell up from down and gets to the surface again, the boat is gone.
A cackling Matt and Jessica are docking the boat.
Leaving Luke and Danny stranded in the middle of the lake.
“I hate them,” Luke decides once he’s finally pulled out of the water by a struggling boat attendant. The guy’s old, and his stern look is comfortable on his face.
“You boys know that the water’s pretty shallow in parts,” the guy says. “Doing what you did can be pretty dangerous.”
“We can handle a little danger,” Danny assures the man.
Luke, in the process of stripping off his hoodie, barks a laugh. “You don’t say.”
The guy’s eyes narrow. He takes a step back to avoid getting dripped on. “People getting hurt is bad for business.”
“Don’t worry,” Luke says. “It’ll take more than a lake to hurt us.”
Jessica is bent double, laughing, when Luke and Danny drip over to where she and Matt are waiting.
“Your faces! Those kids’ faces when we took the boat back.”
“They were worried,” Matt says.
“That’s understandable.” Luke narrows his eyes at them. “You abandoned us in the middle of the lake.”
“Oh no, did we?” Matt asks mildly, pretending he isn’t grinning like fiend.
Danny bristles. “You…you…you dick.”
Jessica inhales sharply. “Oof, harsh language from Mr Rand over there.”
“He pushed me in!” Danny cries, gesturing wildly at Matt.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Matt laughs.
Danny pulls his once again soaking shirt off and tosses it at Matt, who recoils, dropping it.
“Risky move,” Luke tells Danny, “considering that last time you did that, your shirt ended up in the lake.” Jessica grins at the memory.
“I don’t even care anymore,” Danny says. He picks his shirt up again to thwack Jessica with it. She jumps back, shrieking, but Danny follows her and then the two of them are tearing across the park, scaring the ducks and the people.
Foggy gives Luke a strange look when he and Matt join the others at the café they agreed to meet at. “You fell in the lake, too?”
“I didn’t fall,” Danny splutters. “I was pushed! By your boyfriend!”
“Oh, that doesn’t sound like me,” Matt says. He moves over to Foggy, letting himself be pulled into a brief kiss.
Once they’ve pulled back, Foggy smiles at him and says, “That sounds exactly like you, Matty.”
Matt makes a protesting noise.
“You can be a bit of a dick.”
Luke steps over to a grumpy looking Jessica. Her grey-blue top has wet marks all over it, where Danny got her with his t-shirt. The hot day means she’s missing her usual leather jacket, leaving her arms bare. “He got you, huh.”
She rolls her eyes. “Barely.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
It’s only when Jessica pulls her phone from her jeans pocket – even on a day like this, she adamantly refuses to wear shorts – that Luke remembers his own.
“Shit.”
Danny offers to buy Luke a new burner to replace the one he did, technically, destroy by pulling Luke into the lake.
“No, man, I destroyed your phone too.”
Shrugging, Danny just says, “I can afford it.”
The others all turn up in the next half hour or so – Jess’ friends, Trish and Malcolm, then Karen, then Colleen and Misty, and finally Claire on her rare day off.
“Eleven of us,” Foggy says. “Woah.”
“Cool it, Foggy,” Karen says, laughter in her voice, patting his shoulder.
“That’s five v. six people.” Foggy shakes his head. “That’s awesome!” He unzips the large bag slung over his shoulder. “A proper baseball game.”
Misty sidles over to Luke. “Do I even want to know why you’re dripping water and pond weed?”
“Probably not,” Luke says. Then: “Wait, pondweed?”
“Can Matt even play baseball?” Danny asks, his face scrunching up.
Matt gives him a Look. “What do you think?”
“No, I mean—like, it’ll be pretty clear you’re not blind if you’re, like, running around with the rest of us.”
“Well, I won’t be carrying my cane with me, if that’s what you’re asking. And the likelihood of a stranger realising I’m blind, then realising that I shouldn’t be able to do the things I can, then actually telling someone about it…” Matt shrugs. “I’ll take my chances. Besides…” His expression softens. “Foggy loves baseball.”
The first rule of their baseball is that any balls hit out of the area – determined by a line of trees a fair distance away – must be fetched by the person who sent them that far. This is directed at the four vigilantes among them.
“Is it cheating to play this with super strength?” Malcolm wonders aloud. He’s the second baseman, even though their second base is Luke’s drying hoodie. Luke isn’t far away, as a nebulous right field-slash-first baseman. Malcolm seems to realise this a second later and turns to Luke. “No offense, man.”
Luke shakes his head. “None taken. And I wouldn’t say so – it’s just…an extra natural ability some of us have.”
Jessica steps up to the batting square, swinging Foggy’s bat experimentally through the air.
“…Maybe you should move back a bit,” Malcolm suggests.
“Yeah,” Luke agrees. He goes back a hundred yards.
Jessica hits the ball into the lake.
To onlookers’ horror and Danny, Luke and Matt’s utter delight, she pulls her boots and socks off then goes wading into the lake, swearing up a storm all the while.
“I’m never playing fucking baseball ever again.”