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“Who’s Peter?”
Matt pauses. He hears the cars on the street, the thud, thud, thud of rubber over a pothole a block away. Pedestrians walking, talking, breathing. The office smells like Foggy, like Matt, sometimes like Karen, and coffee. Lots of coffee. Ink, too. Sharp and biting.
Can I borrow your phone for a second? Foggy had asked. Innocent intent, no raised heartbeat. I want to change your wallpaper.
It’s something that’s occurred more than once. For Foggy’s amusement.
“I didn’t really mean to pry,” Foggy continues. Again, his heart is steady. Not a lie. Matt isn’t sure why he’s looking for one. “But he’s sent you a lot of texts.”
“A friend.” Of sorts. One he’s kissed. Unfortunately not a foreign happenstance — he’s kissed many friends. Like he told Peter, he’s a good kisser.
Foggy hums. The muscles in his face creak and stretch. He’s making a face. A huff leaves his lungs. “Is this is a friend, or a friend.”
“What do you mean by that? He’s just a friend.”
But his response is too quick, because Foggy only digs his teeth in deeper. Interested now, like a shark smelling blood in the water. He steps closer and puts Matt’s phone on his desk with a faint clack. Matt feels the slight vibration under his fingertips.
Hears the tick, tick, tick of Foggy’s heart and blood singing with anticipation.
“…I meant the hero kind, buddy. But you’re doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The ‘ I’m hiding something from my bestest friend ever’ thing. It’s written all over your face. Written in an extra-large font for old people.”
Matt sits back, the chair creaking underneath him. There is a tangle in his head, lead in his chest. It feels a little like guilt, but he has nothing to be guilty of. He has no sin to repent for, despite the nauseous feeling deep in his gut.
Father, who art in Heaven…
Even the mention of Peter sits oddly in his ears. Between his teeth it feels like a secret — more than before, when it had only been an identity to guard and not…
“You know I can’t tell you,” he murmurs.
Foggy shrugs. “Alright, so he’s a friend.”
“Of course.”
“…a good friend.”
“Foggy,” Matt sighs.
“What! There’s only space in Matt Murdock’s life for one bestest friend! If I need to defend my spot, I will. I’m mean.” A pause. Foggy shifts; bones, muscle, floorboards. “Well, I could be.”
“Trust me, no one comes close to you. Your number one spot won’t be challenged anytime soon.”
“Hm. Is he cute?”
Matt forces himself not to react. Regulates his breathing, the steady thrum of his heart. He thinks of the way Peter’s mouth tastes — mint toothpaste, takeout, salt, iron — he thinks Peter’s name tastes like that, too, and a mouthful of alley grit.
He laughs, “How would I know?”
“Dunno. With your super creep sense, maybe? However you’re able to tell which person in a crowd is the hottest or craziest.”
“Foggy, he’s a man.”
Another shrug. Foggy fiddles with his shirtsleeves, short nails clacking against cufflinks. Cheap ones. Another exhale brings a stronger scent of coffee. Black. Arabica beans. Probably from the shop down the street. More expensive than the tar they have in the office.
“Please, who was your college roommate? I was there for the million women and three men you brought around for premarital hanky-panky. Men aren’t your preference, but you can’t tell me it doesn’t ever happen.”
When Peter asked Matt if he liked men, he didn’t lie when he replied with a half-hearted ‘ I don’t know.’ The only truth he clung to was his love for women, for their softer bodies and scents and curves. College was a time of experimentation, when the church was a little farther away and a thousand new lifestyles were being thrust under his nose at once.
Men were okay. He wasn’t repulsed, but there was a…much fainter interest when compared to the desires that rose to meet a woman. So rare was it that he took a second ‘look’ at a man, that it was easy enough to forget. To shove far under his skin, trapped by bone and sinew and the whispered words of churchgoers condemning others to hell for who their heart sought.
Matt is Catholic, but he isn’t that kind of Catholic. He doesn’t see love as an act against God. Hell’s Kitchen was a messy childhood with streets that ran red with blood, with smudged lipstick left behind by hookers. He heard things no child should, and also things more adults should learn. Stomach churns, heart soars, laughter rings, tears fall — growing up with his abilities had been as tumultuous as a frothing sea.
Peter, Peter, Peter.
It’s almost infuriating. An unnamed emotion wells under his skin, simmering. Hammering away. Maybe he’s only like this because of what Peter revealed. In half-sentences, in hints, in an unfinished thought. Matt heard it all the same, just as he does everything else — from a cry across the city to the ring of a familiar heart.
Someone molested Peter as a child and that filth is walking the streets right now. A free man.
Yes, that has to be it. That has to be the source of his agonized limbo. The righteousness of the Devil surges up; the violence, the vengeance, the need to protect.
The need to make Peter feel better, feel safe.
He can do that.
He can make sure that man can never touch anything again. Crushing someone’s hands isn’t lethal, if treated on time… A man can live without a penis.
“I really don’t know,” he finally settles on.
He knows the shape of Peter’s body. The weight of him. The way the spider’s lungs contract and expand, how his muscles bunch and coil and creak – denser, flexible, inhuman. Peter’s smell, his heartbeat, his voice. The bits and pieces that paint an unseen picture. It’s all Matt has, and all he ever will have.
They are rarely around each other in spaces where Peter can freely remove his mask. Or rather, there are very rarely other people present, as both their lists of secret-keepers are sparse. Matt needs other people to see for him. He reads their heart rates, their sweat accumulation, their breath catching in their throat – their arousal, that instinctive flare of interest. Matt doesn’t have the slightest clue as to what Peter Parker looks like to other people.
And he’s not sure why he’s curious.
“Well, can I meet him?” Foggy asks. “Or see a picture, at least?”
“You’re too curious.”
His oldest friend hums, shifts, smiles. “I have a good feeling, I guess.”
The thing is – days, weeks, months pass. He falls into bed with Elektra. He falls into bed with a lot of women after, to fill the void she always leaves behind. He fights and nearly dies and crawls on his knees to pray at an altar of blood and stained glass. Matt Murdock is busy in a never-ending feud with Kingpin, with being a lawyer and a martyr and a man of God.
Matt Murdock barely sleeps between work and the violence and the call. He doesn’t have time for thoughts about a single moment during a single night.
A kiss he’s forgetting the taste of.
Spider-man slips in and out of Hell’s Kitchen, lines blurred for the up-and-coming hero of all heroes. They fight together, they laugh together, they bleed together. Spider-man is beyond human nature, a whirlwind, a force, a gift. There’s something dark inside him, something enticing. It makes everyone he meets react; whether that be with fear or with reverence. Matt isn’t sure which side he falls on.
There’s no doubt Spider-man is a predator. There’s no doubt Spider-man has the strength of God in his fists – could pop a man like grape and yet makes the conscious decision not to. Matt hears the way Spider-man’s muscles clench. The way the Spider is like steel that breathes, diamond that bleeds.
There’s no doubt Spider-man is a hero. There’s no doubt Spider-man is adored by the universe – given a willpower that exceeds all others to the point of ridicule. There’s just something about him that people fear, adore, admire, crave, hate. When all else falls, Spider-man stands.
He doesn’t need to see a face, doesn’t need to peer beyond what he’s given. This right here, this side of Spider-man that lounges in Matt’s apartment with a bullet hole in his gut and a smile on his lips – the side of Spider-man that pisses Daredevil off one moment and pulls a laugh like an aching tooth from his mouth in the next – it’s just theirs . And it doesn’t have to be anything more.
Matt doesn’t think about Peter Parker very much at all.
“PETER. PETER. PETER. PETER.”
Matt’s phone screams in his pocket, the vibration seeping through his clothes to rattle his skin. In the ambiance of the bar, the sound is muddled – or it should be. There are twenty-seven other heartbeats nearby. The clinking of glasses, forks, ceramics. Laughter and casual speech blur when he doesn’t pay avid attention, and the vibrations of movement, of air and the echoes of sound – they paint a picture. A hazy picture made of emptiness and red. The concept of space, unoccupied and occupied, rather than simple vision.
He has half a mind to ignore the call, especially because Foggy is sitting right beside him. The very moment his traitorous phone began belting out Peter’s name, the other man had tensed – his muscles rolling like cracking thunder through the clouds. Foggy sat up, weight and heat pressing closer, the barstool creaking at the shift. His sleeve brushes against Matt’s own.
Very loudly, and very on purpose, and very much with a few drinks in him, Foggy immediately says: “Is that him?”
Just as Matt accepts the call.
“Matthew speaking,” he mutters, choosing to ignore Foggy burning a hole in his side.
“Who was that? Are you talking about me?”
See, Matt wanted to go out and relax for the night, as much as a man who can sense every person in the bar’s bowel movements can relax, and now there’s a telltale headache blooming behind his unseeing eyes. His palms feel a little sweaty, his chest a little odd.
“No.”
“You know I hate when people talk about me. I need to know what people think about me at all times or I go crazy.”
“Peter,” Matt sighs, “what do you want?”
“It’s Peter!” Foggy says loudly. “Hello, Peter!”
“Hey, random dude! Wait, is that Foggy? Tell me that’s Foggy. Are you guys having a bro-ment? Sounds busy wherever you are. Date night, then? Party? Bender?”
“I assume you’re not dying.” Nothing in Peter’s voice relays tension, or pain. There’s no wobble, though voices through the phone can be hard to decipher. There’s always static, always a flatness that infects the sound and makes it tinny.
“No, not physically. Mentally? Always. Anyway, I know this is kinda abrupt and maybe a bit out of left field – but I finally came out to the last of my friends the other day. Or was it a week ago? I dunno. Time is a human construct meant to support capitalism.”
Matt is so accustomed to Peter’s chatter that he filters out the bits that don’t matter within seconds – sometimes it’s a talent, really, to pick out what the Spider is really trying to convey. “You…came out to your friends? That’s great, Peter.”
“Yeah, it went pretty okay. I mean, I think Ha– I think one of them was expecting it, really. I guess like knows like, or something. I dunno. Listen, I – I know that hearing my voice is probably the highlight of your day, Magoo, but I kinda…”
“Had something else to say,” Matt finishes. “Yeah, I think I’m getting that. So say it.”
“One of them didn’t react well.”
There’s that wobble. Cracking over the speakers. Matt had already let the sounds of the bar fade away to focus on Peter’s voice, on his words, on the slightest chance of hearing anything else from that impossible creature. There’s confusion and distress, and anger, and –
“But I get it, I think. I mean, I feel like shit. Haaah, you probably don’t want to hear about all this but I felt like telling you because it did kinda start because of us swappin’ spit.”
“No, it started because Black C–”
“Okay, okay, okay! You’re definitely in a public place and I definitely don’t want that public place and that poor man sitting next to you singing Def Leppard to hear about my ass-capades!”
“Ass-capades?”
“What?” Foggy asks, pausing in his Pour Some Sugar On Me solo.
“I hate you.”
“It’s Johnny Storm, isn’t it?”
Peter is quiet on the other end. Eerily so. It makes Matt’s skin crawl.
“Your senses don’t actually let you read minds, do they? ‘Cause I feel like that’s an invasion of privacy and you haven’t even asked me to dinner yet.”
“I don’t read minds Peter, you’re just easy to read.”
A laugh. Static.
“You really know me too well. Eerie. Dunno if I like it.”
Matt smiles at nothing. The bar is grainy under the fingertips of his free hand. He hears Foggy’s heartbeat at his side. Thump, thump, thump. Smells the alcohol filtering through the air from every exhale – the sugar, the sweat. Peter’s humming voice, a higher pitch than his own, slight rasp and nasal tone. The Spider is right, Matt does like the sound of his voice.
(The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.)
“Peter!” Foggy calls, slouching against Matt’s shoulder. His hand grips, wrinkles Matt’s shirt, the heat of his palm felt through the thin fabric. “Peter, are you pretty? Send a photo!”
“Foggy, come on–” Matt flexes his arm, nudging his tipsy friend. The sharp tang of alcohol clouds the air before them. It mixes with Foggy’s sweat, his laundry detergent, his aftershave.
“Sure,” Peter replies, and he’s laughing too. It’s a deeper sound than his normal voice. The kind he makes when he’s just making noise to make noise. “I’ll send one! Lemme know if I live up to your lofty expectations!”
Matt wishes he could stand next to him. Hear the man’s heart, the way his breath catches. The woodsy deodorant mixed with irish spring, the cheap shampoo, the lies and the laughs that are real. Is he smiling right now? Or is he pretending?
“No, Pete,” he tries to say, because a photo is useless and feels like too much. They aren’t like that. They’re Daredevil and Spider-man. It’s the masks that matter, the kind of men they are on the streets and in the waste. Matt Murdock doesn’t want anything to do with Peter Parker. “Don’t bother with him, he’s drunk. Tell me about Johnny. Why’d you call me?”
Foggy groans. “Matt! Don’t be a buzzkill!”
“Why’d you call me?” Matt repeats.
“Because the only other person that knows all of me – that accepts all of me – is you. The F4 aren’t gonna help me right now. I don’t wanna see them and put them between me and Johnny. So I just have you. Just. Just you, Matty. I can’t talk to everyone else and explain why I’m hanging out with the Human Torch without coming up with an excuse and I’m – I dunno. This is a lot. Okay? Is that what you want me to say?”
“Breathe, Peter.”
“I’m breathing! Breathing and panicking. I multi-task.”
Matt stands up. He steps away from the bar, floorboards squeaking under the heel of his dress shoes. Fingers curl around the familiar shape of his cane.
“Matt, where ya goin’ buddy?” Foggy calls. He turns in his seat but doesn’t get up. Fingers tap against his beer glass. Cheap stuff. Condensation drips on the counter.
“Just give me a moment, I’ll be back.”
Over the phone Peter breathes and babbles, and Matt walks to somewhere a little quieter. Somewhere a little less in the crowd of a slightly seedy bar. This isn’t something they do often. Heart to hearts between men without masks. But if Matthew is anything it’s a good listener. The Devil to pour your agonies to, who will overhear your secrets whether he wishes to or not. Between his lips are a thousand terrible things to say, the histories of those who walk, talk, live, and breathe in the homes around him.
Matthew Murdock, unwilling participant within a confessional not contained by four walls.
“Why is he mad? Well, no, he’s not exactly mad. But he didn’t seem – happy. Comfortable. I can’t explain it. I feel like I have a good read on him, ya know? He’s one of my best friends, he knows sides of me I don’t show other people. Aside from you, I guess. I just don’t get it. Johnny is the farthest thing from – from homophobic!”
Matt sighs. It’s not a frustrated sound; instead it’s one of reluctance, of exhaustion. Matt Murdock and Peter Parker have not been in the same room often, or at all, with other people and no masks between them. He doesn’t know what Peter looks like to others. But that never mattered. Johnny Storm knew the Spider and the man underneath, joining them hand in hand as a single person.
It never mattered if Spider-man, if Peter, was wearing the mask or not.
So Matthew heard it, the Devil in the corner. That heartbeat, that voice, that exuberance that never put a dent in Peter Parker’s trauma-built wall of obliviousness. Cut down before it could ever begin. Stopped from ever starting.
Peter has always belonged to someone else, to some woman bursting with good looks and confidence – always the same type, really, and yet they never seemed to stick. (Except for…honey-lavender shampoo, peach lip gloss, Mary Jane Watson.)
“It’s because he–” Matt stops. Is this his secret to tell? What good will it do, to butt his head into someone else’s business? Nothing will change.
Peter will always go back to Mary Jane. He will always belong to someone else.
As the Lord says: Thou shalt not covet–
“What? Because he what? Again, with the not knowing! It’s giving me hives. I’m allergic to secrets about me.”
Matt doesn’t know where it comes from. A bit too much of the Devil tonight, maybe. A few too many sips of throat-burning alcohol. The crimson daze, the scent of cigarette smoke, sweaty bodies and grease and seven different kinds of laundry detergents and a hell of a lot of fabrics that need washing.
The memory. The taste of Peter’s blood in his mouth.
“I could be wrong,” he says, and he’s not wrong because he always knows these things whether he wants to or not, “but I think he really liked you, Peter.”
Not a single sound comes from the other end of the phone. Not a laugh, not a sigh, not Peter’s rambles and jokes about the situation – No, Matt, you’re just mistaken. Except he’s not. Because Johnny Storm jumps out of his skin when Peter Parker, when Spider-man, when whoever the fuck is wearing that skin, those bones, those too-sharp teeth – whenever, whoever, man or beast, walks up to him. Around him. Fights beside him or talks or makes a stupid quip.
Johnny’s heart beats, his lungs swell, his palms get sweaty.
Six years, Matt thinks to himself, is a long time to be in love with someone who you thought was out of reach.
“Ah.” Is all that Peter gets out. Then there’s the sound of static, followed by a soft beep. He’s hung up.
Matt pulls his phone away from his ear and holds it limply. Sourness twists in his chest, like bile. Maybe he did drink too much. The sounds of the bar rush back in like the tide, swelling for a moment before settling. He inhales. Exhales. Tap, tap, tap’s his way back to Foggy.
“Everything alright?”
Matt forces a nod, a faint smile. “Oh, yeah. It’s nothing serious.”
Not a moment later his phone vibrates, still caught between his scarred fingers. The metallic voice of the limited AI chimes out: “TEXT RECEIVED. PETER. PETER. TEXT RECEIVED.”
He swallows. Tries to open it.
“UNABLE TO READ. IMAGE FILE.”
Foggy nudges against his shoulder again, more purposeful this time. He doesn’t even ask before Matt is tilting the phone in his direction.
“Oh, wow!” Foggy plucks the device from Matt’s hand without warning, sitting up straight and scooting his stool closer to the bar. It scratches along the wood floor. The vibrations bounce out. The jukebox plays a new song. Someone’s chewing through a pack of gum in the booth to their left. “He sent a photo!”
Matt puts his hands on the counter, pretending to search for his drink. He feels the grainy wood, the napkin, the cool glass damp with condensation. His fingers curl around it but don’t lift, content to hold. It’s something to focus on. Grounding. A shock that pushes him out of whatever strange haze that had come over him.
Still, a heavy sensation grips him. Like hands upon his shoulders, sinking in past the flesh and bone to grip at his soul. It doesn’t feel like the watchful eyes of God, it feels a lot like the weight of his own sin.
“What’s he look like?” he asks, soft and low and reluctant.
“Pretty,” Foggy replies, heart thumping in truth. He’s never been attracted to men but he’s never really needed to be – just knows what’s nice to look at and what isn’t, no matter the specifics. “Kinda got that boy’s-next-door, classically handsome look. Dark brows, heavy brows. I-mean-business-brows. Thin mouth – but those teeth. Wow. Is he a vampire or what? ‘S kinda cute, though. Snaggletooth. Some freckles and moles, fluffy hair. Brown, by the way – not as dark as those killer brows, though. I mean – he’s just. Nice to look at? Nothin’ super crazy but definitely up there on the cute-scale. Maybe a little nerdy lookin’.”
Foggy pauses, seemingly unaware that Matt has paused, has been listening so closely and wishing he could remember how to fit faces and features in a way that made sense.
“I might be too drunk for this. Really, really, drunk. ‘Cause Matt, I think he’s got some of the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen. Is my heart beating fast? Feels like it is. I think I’m swooning.”
Matt huffs. Shakes his head. Tries to laugh – but it’s strangled and turns into a cough. Foggy’s candor is obvious, truth hitting home even if there’s no telltale signs of attraction. It’s just a pure, honest opinion and that almost feels worse.
God, have mercy.
What the hell is wrong with him?
“Gold,” Foggy murmurs. “Looks like gold. Or whiskey. Can’t be real.”
“But he is,” Matt says. He tosses back his drink, feels the burn all the way down. Tries to remember what the color gold was like. How fitting for the hero of heroes.
(Three weeks later he doesn’t think about it. Tells himself he doesn’t think about it. Wonders why he wants to think about it.)
Elektra comes, goes, comes back. They sleep together, fight, and nearly die. She goes again. He entangles himself with the Black Widow. Spiders, again. Always Spiders.
He thinks he remembers the color of whiskey, the kind his father used to drink when he thought Matt wasn’t looking. The kind he brought out when Matt was a little older and blinded and patching up a face he couldn’t see. Matt thinks he remembers whiskey gold.
Karen makes a sound. It shakes in her chest. “Oh wow, who’s that?”
“Sorry, are you asking me?”
She laughs, completely lacking the discomfort that used to exist at the start – back when she danced around his blindness. It’s one of his favorite pastimes…messing with people and making blind jokes.
“Your lock screen? He’s cute.”
Matt makes a sound like an aborted laugh. His hands twitch, but there’s nothing to grab. Of course, he thinks. Of course.
He’s going to kill Foggy.