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Daredevil might know Peter better than anyone else in the world right now. The thought catches him off guard one morning when he’s trying to decide whether he wants to go through the weird torture of stalking MJ at work today. He starts to wonder if anyone would notice if he just up and died one day, just poof, disappeared. And then he thinks that’s silly, because obviously people would notice, if Spider-Man disappeared the whole city would notice. So then he wonders if anyone would worry if he disappeared, and he comes up pretty empty. Except, he thinks… Daredevil might, a little.
The thing about Daredevil is, he asked how old Peter was. That was the first thing he asked.
People… people don’t assume Peter’s a kid, didn’t assume it, even when he was first starting out. It’s the muscles that do it, Peter figures. Peter’s not a big guy, but the skin-tight spidey-suit makes it clear that he is super muscular. Peter’s pretty sure that normal teenagers are, like physically incapable of being as visibly ripped as Peter is, not unless they’re on all the steroids.
But Daredevil knew, he didn’t even assume, it seemed like, he just knew. Peter’s pretty sure that Daredevil knows, like, what grade he’s in and everything. It probably has something to do with the mysterious powers that no one’s even sure he has. Peter’s guess is some sort of limited clairvoyance/precognition deal, like advanced Spidey-sense.
Daredevil’s kind of an asshole, actually. All, “Get off my lawn!” old-man-like, even though he’s not even that old . But he’s a weirdly consistent asshole. Daredevil is not impressed by Spider-Man, not even a little bit, which Peter should probably be offended by, and he is a little, or was. But also, even before, it was sort of reassuring, the way Daredevil growled at him, like he was just any ordinary kid who’d inexplicably popped up at a crime scene. “Stay in school, kid!” Like a reminder, an inside joke but not.
And that means that since what Peter has dubbed “Peter Parker’s Magical Screw Up”, Daredevil’s the only one on earth who sees him that way, as a kid, a human being. Because all the people who really knew Spider-Man knew Peter Parker too. To them, his friends, even Happy, Peter Parker was the real boy, Spider-Man was just a mask. And now that Peter Parker is forgotten, all that’s left is the mask.
So, like, Daredevil has probably said five sentences to Peter in one interaction at most. Daredevil is this borderline urban legend who fights the mob and punches people into comas sometimes. But Daredevil is also the only one who looks at Peter and doesn’t just see a mask, almost like he doesn’t see the mask at all.
So, if Peter died, Daredevil would worry, he thinks. Or at least, he would feel about it the way you’d feel about hearing about the death of a seven-teen-year-old, not the way you’d feel about hearing about a superhero disappearing.
Daredevil knows Peter better than anyone else on earth, and Peter knows almost no things about Daredevil, so it’s really stupid to get all hung up on him. But Peter’s really glad that he’s made a habit these past few years, of annoying Daredevil. It’s nice to know that there’s someone out there who knows that he’s in high school, or should be, that his favorite subject is chemistry, that he made his own web shooters and his own webbing. Peter knows almost no things about Daredevil, except that if Peter crosses the border into Hell’s Kitchen, Daredevil always finds him within minutes, and that whatever else Daredevil is he’s human and easily annoyed by Peter’s shenanigans, and that despite that Peter’s never once been afraid that the Devil will hurt him, and not because Peter thinks he couldn’t , and strangest of all, that despite all the growliness and grumpiness and general hostility, Daredevil actually listens and remembers what Peter says when he prattles on.
Peter knows this last thing because one time Daredevil announced himself by saying, “The hell are you doing out here at this time of night? I thought you said you had a big physics test tomorrow.”
Daredevil is weirdly dad-like, especially about school. It’s sort of funny, because Peter’s pretty sure Daredevil’s too young to be his dad, especially pre-blip. And it’s not like Tony, who tried really hard to dad Peter in a way that was honestly kind of painful to watch, let alone participate in, given that Tony clearly had no idea how real dads behaved. No, with Daredevil, it’s like it just sort of happens without his meaning to, not a big deal or anything. So maybe that’s another thing Peter knows about Daredevil? At some point he had a dad-figure who was a lot better than Howard Stark, and he’s inherited the dad-vibes.
Which is why Peter hasn’t set foot in Hell’s Kitchen since the Magical Screw Up. Because Aunt May’s dead now, and Uncle Ben’s dead still, and if Daredevil told him to stay in school now that his whole school has forgotten about his very existence, Peter’s pretty sure he’d cry.
But it’s one of the things Peter can’t stop thinking about, among all the countless things Peter can’t stop thinking about. So he keeps circling it, literally, he patrols in circles around Hell’s Kitchen. It’s kind of a good patrol route actually, because there’s a lot of criminals who get scared out of Hell’s Kitchen by the Devil and set up shop right outside.
He screws it up once, crosses over without realizing.
“Spider-Man,” Daredevil says, “I was almost starting to think you finally listened.”
And Peter just. He can’t listen to the rest of it. Can’t try to banter and bluff his way through like he has every time before. So he just leaves. Turns and swings away before Daredevil’s even finished talking. He looks back. Sees Daredevil staring after him, surprise and, would you look at that, worry on his face.
Peter’s planning to leave it at that. Just go on with his life, whatever that’s supposed to mean these days. Maybe look longingly towards Hell’s Kitchen a few times, possibly, but not, like, talk to Daredevil or anything. It’s not like Daredevil would give him the opportunity to talk anyway.
And you’d think that’d be the end of it, right? Because the thing about Daredevil is he’s super consistent. He stays in Hell’s Kitchen, he doesn’t let anyone else into Hell’s Kitchen, especially not Peter. Maybe you’ll hear about him popping up somewhere else in New York with the Defenders once in a blue moon, but that’s it.
It’s always been sort of comforting, honestly, the way Daredevil never changes, sticks uncompromisingly to the script. When Peter came back after the blip everything was different, places torn down, new buildings built in their place. So many businesses were gone, either because the people who ran them had blipped or because they hadn’t had enough customers in the new post snap world. Kids that Peter remembered going to school with were in college, people he remembered being little kids were his age. He’d looked up Daredevil, saw he wasn’t blipped, had been active all five years. That first night back on patrol, Peter’d gone straight to Hell’s Kitchen, and the Devil found him in less than a minute.
“Thought I told you to stay the hell out of my city,” Daredevil had growled, and he was exactly the same as always, maybe just a little older, maybe just a bare hint of a smile teasing at the edge of his mouth, but Peter was probably imagining that last part.
“Sure thing double D,” Peter had said with a salute, and swung away.
“Stay in school, kid!” Daredevil had called after him, and Peter had laughed.
So it’s comforting to think about Daredevil being just out of reach, just a few streets over, same as always. That if Peter just took those few steps, if he crossed the border, it could be like nothing’s changed, just for a moment.
Except that’s not what happens. Because one night Daredevil up and abandons his normal behavioral patterns completely. He brings Peter cookies.
Apparently Peter underestimated the worrying.
Daredevil comes up behind him when he’s definitely holed up in devil-free territory and greets him in this calm, soft voice that doesn’t sound Daredevilish at all. There’s a split second where he thinks it’s Mr. Murdock, and like, wow, he must really be desperate for parental figures these days if he’s imagining his freaking lawyer coming to comfort him.
A whole lot of really surreal shit has happened to Peter in the past few years, but Daredevil? being nice? to him? Well, it’s definitely up there. Daredevil sits sort of awkwardly on the fire escape next to Peter and shares cookies with him. Bizarre.
Also, they talk. Like a full-on conversation with two whole participants, and no growling like a feral tiger.
And then Daredevil drops this bomb: “So that whole staying in school thing, guess it didn’t pan out.”
Like that’s just. A normal thing to say. Could happen to anyone.
Daredevil tells him that he knows, has probably known since Peter wandered into the Kitchen that one time. He knows that he’s not going to school and he’s not living with his parent or guardian.
It’s that last bit that breaks him. “Parent or guardian.”
Here’s the thing. People don’t know Peter’s a kid, right? But they know he’s young. They know he’s young enough that he probably has parents still in the picture somewhere. So like, it comes up sometimes, kind of a lot actually. Either, like, really basic taunts, “Go cry to your mommy,” that sort of thing, or else people who like him bring it up. “You’re too skinny, young man,” an old lady told him just a week ago, “Your mother should feed you better.”
But like, that’s always how it is. Your mom, your dad, your parents. Those are all just theoretical concepts, they’re not personal, they don’t exist. People talking about his “mother” didn’t put that cold sick feeling in Peter’s stomach that came with every reminder that May was dead, because she wasn’t his mother, she was May .
In Peter’s experience, both in and out of the suit, people generally just assume that you have parents of some kind or other. Except Daredevil doesn’t assume. It’s the way he said it. “Parent or guardian,” like the way he said, “guess it didn’t pan out,” and “shit happens,” like having a guardian instead of a parent is perfectly ordinary, expected even. Like, Daredevil knew what he knew, and he knew what he didn’t, and he wasn’t asking for more information, and he wasn’t making any leaps here.
And it was so dumb, that this is the thing that cracks him open, tears out some barrier in him until all the lost feelings spill out. “Your parent or guardian,” like some school form or something, it should be so completely impersonal. Except that Daredevil is talking about Aunt May, really and actually. “Parent or guardian” means Aunt May, not some hypothetical, nonexistent mother, but May . Daredevil knows what she smelled like. He knows and he knows that Peter is hers , that Peter should be hers, and it’s all just. Real.
Aunt May had an obituary. It talked about Feast and it talked about Uncle Ben and it never once mentioned Peter. There is no one on earth who knows that May Parker was Peter Parker’s aunt. That May Parker died and left one dependent, seventeen years old. No one in the world knows that now except Peter. Except Daredevil knows what Aunt May smells like, and he knows that Spider-Man was her kid.
And so Peter can’t help telling Daredevil what happened. Because Daredevil knows him better than anyone else in the world. So it almost feels natural, when somehow Daredevil is right there, and Peter is leaning into him, and Daredevil’s arm is around his shoulders, warm and solid and real. And Peter is letting all his broken, lost feelings out, and he’s crying. And Daredevil is listening, he’s just listening, really listening and not saying anything (and Daredevil always listens, even when he’s pretending not to, Peter’s known that for a while) and Daredevil gets it, somehow he really, actually does.
It’s A Lot.
And it just hits Peter again, all at once, that Daredevil doesn’t owe Peter anything. Peter doesn’t even know the guy, like, at all, and here he is, sobbing into his shoulder like a baby, and this whole situation is just super out of character.
Except Daredevil just says, “Yeah, well, sounds like I’m what you’ve got,” and, “I don’t have anywhere to be, do you?”
And like, okay, yeah. Yeah.
Turns out that under all the snarling, Daredevil is just a really, really good guy. Also, really, surprisingly good at this whole hugging, comforting thing, like wow. He’s warm and gentle and solid, and he’s rubbing Peter’s arm up and down in a slow, soothing rhythm, and it’s just so nice , it makes Peter want to cry, except that he’s all cried out at this point, but all his muscles are relaxing for the first time since Aunt May died. This whole being touched thing is just… wild. It makes him feel human.
He feels like this is the part where he’d usually fall asleep, like every time he’s done this with Uncle Ben or Aunt May (and it’s so familiar and it makes him miss them both so much and it hurts) this would be the point where he’d fall asleep. And he’s tired, he’s so, so tired, he could fall asleep right here on this fire escape easily. But he doesn’t want to. Because right here in this moment he feels content, calm, good, and he doesn’t want it to be a dream, and he doesn’t want to miss a second of it. So he just sits there, and Daredevil just holds him and doesn’t say a word. Peter leans with his head against Daredevil’s chest and just listens to him breathe, in and out in a steady, constant rhythm, and just basks in how peaceful it feels, how safe. Peter doesn’t know how long they sit like that. It feels like an eternity, and it’s not nearly long enough.
But with no warning that Peter can perceive, Daredevil startles out of his perfectly even breathing and says, “Shit,” under his breath.
Because all good things must come to an end, and that includes tonight. Apparently Daredevil has a real person job in, like, an office or something, which is incredibly weird, but also, obviously he does, because people need those to, like, eat and keep a roof over their heads, and Daredevil is, in fact, a person.
A person who has Peter put his number in his phone and tells him to call any time (and Peter should probably drink something, because he’s pretty sure the only thing keeping him from crying at this point is the dehydration) and then gives him the card for his lawyer, of all things.
The universe can be a real dramatic bitch sometimes.
Peter has really good night vision, the ambient city light is more than sufficient for Peter to read a business card. But just to be dramatic about it, just to underline the point, the rosy dawn creeps above the horizon just as Peter looks down at the card, illuminating it in a soft red glow.
It’s Mr. Murdock’s business card, the same one he gave to Peter and Aunt May over a month ago.
Daredevil just gave him Mathew Freaking Murdock’s business card.
Peter wasn’t imagining things when Daredevil first talked to him in his not-scary voice.
Daredevil is Peter’s freaking. Lawyer.
Peter looks up from his epiphany to find that Mr. Daredevil Murdock has done a Batman and disappeared into the not-quite-night.
What. The. Fuck.