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It was just after midnight when the most disheartening sound reached Daredevil’s ears. Coming from a rooftop some blocks away, the voice was almost mumbling, probably barely audible to himself. But to Matt’s ears, each word was crystal clear. “Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday, Spider-Man. Happy birthday to me.” It was followed by a deep sigh and a soft sniffle.
Matt didn’t hesitate one second. He’d had suspicions for a while that Spider-Man was in a bad situation these days. Usually, he was full of snark and witty replies. But the last few months he’d seemed subdued, almost sullen. Matt guessed that he’d lost someone. It was not that different from how he himself had behaved the months after he’d lost Elektra.
But at least he’d still had Foggy and Karen. Even if he’d tried to push them away at the time, they had still been there for him. From the sound of it, if Spider-Man was celebrating his birthday alone on a rooftop, he didn’t have anyone.
He was already in the suit, since he’d been about to go out and patrol the city. But he quickly grabbed a few dollars from a jar on the counter. Foggy had sorted them out for him, so he could carry some money with him for emergencies and at least know how much he was spending. Then he was out the door and speeding over the rooftops to his destination.
His first destination was at ground level, so he descended a fire escape a few blocks over. Sometimes he wondered if the people of New York ever looked out their window to see a vigilante using their fire escape. Would they approve if they knew, or usher him away? Would they remove the occasional obstacle, maybe, or just shrug and leave them to their business? He reached the street and entered a little pizza place on the corner.
“I’m sorry, we're about to close–” the guy at the register told him. “Wait, Daredevil?”
“Do you have anything left before you close?" Matt asked, using his low Daredevil voice.
"Y-You want pizza?” The guy stammered.
“Yes," Matt confirmed.
“Alright. Erm… Which one do you want?” Based on the air movement, the guy just gestured at the display on the counter. Matt felt the heat coming off it, keeping the pizza warm, along with a mixture of smells. There was not much left, but the slices were so close together that it was impossible to tell the toppings by smell. And even if he had been able to tell, he had no idea which pizza Spider-Man preferred.
“Anything will do. Can you just make sure to tape the box shut?” He threw some bills on the counter that should more than cover the price.
A few minutes later he was climbing the fire escape again, the hot pizza box in his hand. He paused on the roof, listening. Spider-Man was moving, based on the thwips that sounded through Hell’s Kitchen. So Matt started the pursuit while carefully keeping the pizza box balanced.
Spider-Man was fast, but he was aimless. And Matt knew these rooftops way better than anyone else. It didn’t take long for him to gain on his target, especially when the other came to a halt on a rooftop and settled against a wall.
Matt landed a few minutes later on the same roof. He had developed a habit of making his landings as quiet as possible to his own sensitive ears, just to see if he could. It was a skill that always came in handy when he didn’t want to announce his presence right away, and sometimes he did it more out of habit than because he was actually trying to be quiet. The sound of his boots landing on this rooftop was not his quietest landing, but a normal human would not have been able to pick it out of the random city sounds around them.
Spider-Man was not a normal human, apparently. He immediately snapped up his head, ready to jump into action. After a heartbeat, he relaxed against the wall again. “Daredevil?” he questioned.
“Spider-Man,” Matt greeted him. He nodded to the floor right beside him. “Can I join you?”
“Sure.” He tried to hide his mood, but he sounded way less energetic than the other occasions where they had crossed paths. Old Spider-Man would have babbled on and on about how cool it was that Daredevil was seeking him out, what he was doing here, how nice the weather was tonight and how amazing the view was and how cool that they knew each other and if they could be best buddies some day. Present day Spider-Man just gave him a single word and looked away.
Still, he moved over and Matt sat against the wall beside him.
Matt held out the pizza box in front of Spider-Man, making sure that his mask was pointing in the direction of Spider-Man’s face so it looked like he was making eye contact. “Happy birthday,” he said, softly but sincerely.
“Wh-what? H-how do you know that?”
Matt shrugged, failing to keep a smirk on his face. “Super senses.”
“You can sense people’s birthdays? Like every person you meet, you just know their birthday? That’s… a weird superpower.”
Now Matt couldn’t help but chuckle. “No,” he corrected, wondering how much more he could say without giving too much away. He considered for a second, then added, “you sing off-key by the way.”
“Oh,” Spider-Man breathed, realising. “Oh no.”
“Come on, open your present before it gets cold.”
“Why is it taped shut?” Spider-Man complained, while tearing tape off every side of the box.
“Hey, I had to chase you across the city holding a pizza box in one hand. I already lost a pizza to a rooftop once, I’m not doing that again.”
This got a small huff of amusement out of Spider-Man. Progress.
He finally got all the tape off the box and opened it. There was a second of silence. “It’s… green?”
Green? What kind of pizza had they given him? Now that the box was open, Matt inhaled to identify the toppings. “They put spinach on it?” he asked, confused.
“Wait, you didn’t even know what kind of pizza you got me?”
“They were closing up, I just asked for leftovers,” Matt said, raising his hands in a shrug.
Spider-Man snorted. “So you got the one that no one bought during the day. Because who wants spinach on their pizza? Do you realise what you’ve done now, though?” His voice was filled with amusement now. “Daredevil bought this pizza, so he vouches for it now. It’s the only one they’re gonna bake from now on. They’ll be out of business in no time.”
Matt tried to suppress a smile. “If you’re gonna be like that, you can give it back.” He tried to get hold of the box but Spider-Man immediately held it out of reach.
“Hey, no, that’s my present!” He fumbled with his mask, probably pulling it up a bit, and then took a huge bite out of the pizza. “See, I’m eating it,” he said around a mouthful. “It’s actually surprisingly good. You wanna try it?”
“No thanks, I’m not hungry. And I got it for you.” Matt had already eaten a complete dinner a few hours earlier. And judging by the sounds Spider-Man’s stomach was making, it had been a while since he had. He was not going to take away a hungry man’s food.
Spider-Man proved his point by practically inhaling the pizza. He took such huge bites that Matt almost worried he was going to unhinge his jaw at some point. Matt should have brought a second pizza. Or dessert.
“Thank you, by the way,” Spider-Man said, still chewing, breaking the short silence that had settled over them while he ate. “I hadn’t thanked you yet. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. So tell me, how old did you get?” A few years ago, when he ran into Spider-Man, he would have estimated him at 15 or 16, based on his voice and heartbeat. Even if he hadn’t blipped, he couldn’t be much older than 20 right now.
“You promise you won’t judge?” Spider-Man asked softly.
“I promise.”
Spider-Man took a deep breath. “I turned 18 today.”
He must have blipped then. And he was right about the age Matt guessed, so he was not really surprised. He had asked not to judge him though, which meant he probably got a lot of that. As soon as people found out his age, they probably called him a kid, told him to stop being a vigilante, that he was too young for it. That sounded awfully familiar to Matt, as soon as people found out he was blind, they started assuming the things he could and could not do. One of the best things about being Daredevil was that no one knew he was blind and thus didn't treat him differently because of it. So if Spider-Man felt like being a vigilante at 18, if he had super powers that allowed him to help people and he wanted to do that, Matt would not judge him for it.
“Welcome to adult life then,” Matt said instead.
Spider-Man snorted. “I thought it would be… I thought adults had everything figured out or something.”
“Yeah, no, we only pretend we do. Reaching adulthood is realising that in fact, no one has their shit together.”
“You seem like you have it all figured out though.”
Matt smiled. “My friends would disagree with you.”
“Do they know? About you, I mean,” Spider-Man asked after a moment.
“They do. I tried to keep it from them at first. But then my best friend found out by accident. And my other friend, I told her because we were trying to date and she deserved to know before anything really started.”
Spider-Man inhaled sharply at that, making Matt wonder if his description had hit something close to home. Why was he alone, on a rooftop, celebrating his 18th birthday all by himself, before Matt had found him? Where were his friends?
“Do your friends know about you?” Matt asked carefully.
The silence stretched for almost a minute. It was so out of character for Spider-Man that Matt was on the verge of checking if he was still breathing,
“I don’t have any friends,” he said finally. The pain in his voice made it clear that he had them at some point, but had lost them.
“What happened?” Matt pressed softly.
“They moved on. It’s… it’s better this way, really.”
And suddenly Matt understood all too well. He had done exactly the same when he was recovering at the orphanage. He had tried to leave Foggy and Karen behind, to cut them out of his life entirely, because he had thought it was better for them. He had believed that his sole purpose in life was to be Daredevil, to keep this city safe. From what he gathered, Spider-Man had also been cutting ties to his civilian life.
“I’ve been in the same position, I think. My friends thought I was dead, and I let them believe that so they would move on without being involved in my messy double life. It… hurt. All of us, in the long run. In the end, I realised that they needed me as much as I needed them. That we complete each other. And that staying away from them was not only my decision to make.”
Spider-Man sniffled quietly. If his hearing wasn’t enhanced, he probably would have missed it.
“I’m just saying, if you are able to, reach out to them. Some day, you will lose them for good and curse yourself for all the time you wasted.” His thoughts circled back to Elektra as he said it.
“Maybe,” Spider-Man conceded after a moment. “I’ll think about it.”
But Matt knew how that would end. The guilt would take over again, and he would reason himself out of it. “Do it today,” he suggested. “As a birthday gift to yourself.”
“What if I mess it up entirely? Again.”
“Then you come back to Hell’s Kitchen, say my name and I’ll find you. And you’ll tell me about it.”
Spider-Man thought it over. “Deal,” he said finally. “And thank you. Also for coming to my pity party.”
Matt smirked. “Not the best birthday party I’ve been to, but not the worst either. Now go home, get some sleep. You have an important thing to do in the morning. I’ll watch the city tonight.”
They left the rooftop in different directions, but Matt spent most of his way home listening to Spider-Man’s webs in the distance. He really hoped he’d given him a nudge in the right direction. And tomorrow he was going to buy Foggy and Karen coffee, just to show them how much he appreciated having them both in his life again.
Spider-Man left Hell’s Kitchen, but he still lingered a long time in Matt’s thoughts.