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It’s a Saturday. Karen has never been more pleased. “Hurry up, Claire,” she begs, waiting by the door with her bag on one arm and Claire’s on the other.
“You said to dress nice,” Claire calls, rolling her eyes from the bathroom as she uncaps her lip gloss, “that takes time, Karen.”
“We don’t have time!” Karen sounds something akin to a petulant teenager. Foggy would be proud. On Saturdays, it’s the I Know Daredevil, IKD, drinking group, where Matt is nowhere to be seen. And this particular Saturdays is one of the one’s where Daredevil is off galivanting with the Norse God of Thunder. That means Jessica is going to be drinking with them tonight, and Karen has so many questions. Not just for Jessica. It’s just something that’s happened recently that’s been on Karen’s mind. “I mean, we do have time, we have all night. I just need to make the most of it.”
Claire snorts, coming into the hall, looking as fabulous in her dress as ever, “so much for date night.”
“Claire, I love you,” Karen says, “but it’s a Saturday. We both know it was date night yesterday.”
“What if I wanted two?”
“We schedule; we have a heard of vigilantes to account for, and right now, there’s one particularly unlucky one on my mind.” They both know it’s true. There’re at least three vigilantes who come to them bleeding, and whenever Luke turns up, they know it’s serious. Claire takes her bag from Karen’s outreached arm, and they head towards the bar.
Much to Karen’s dismay, they’re not the first ones there, but Claire unhelpfully points out they’re not the last, either. “Karen, hey!” Foggy waves her over; Karen pecks Claire on the cheek and leaves her side for Foggy’s, and Claire takes the empty seat between Coulson and the lawyer, Marci, who is now apparently a member of the club. “How have you been?”
“In the one day I haven’t seen you,” Karen says, “amazing. I would ask how you are, but I know you’re fine, so I’m just going to go ahead and voice my topic of discussion for the evening before anyone else approaches it from any other direction, because this thought has been with me for a while. It’s something I need to address. I need the tea, people.”
Foggy laughs, edging on tipsy apparently, and passes her a beer. “What’s on your mind, Karen?” Frank grunts, cheering her drink from across the table. Loki arrives at the bar, and pulls up a seat between Danny and Luke, causing an emission of grumbles from the Iron Fist.
The IKD drinking group consists of the following:
Claire
Luke
Danny
Jessica, every other week, even though she is outwardly opposed against the idea.
Foggy
Marci
Frank
Elektra, because apparently she’s not dead yet. They haven’t told Matt, but Karen’s sure he knows. He always does.
Hot ass creepy dude.
Peter (Parker, Matt always makes sure to clarify because sometimes the raccoon turns up and then they get confused with Peters, and that leads Karen onto:)
Rocket, when he’s around.
Agent Coulson
Loki
And Karen herself.
Karen is sure there are plenty of stories to be discussed tonight.
“At Easter, before your hunt, Matt was… frustrated,”
“Nice word,” Foggy interrupts, and Karen flashes him a smile, they drink.
“And uh, he growled at Foggy, who proceeded to say he wasn’t scared.”
“Bullshit,” Jessica calls, slamming down her whisky, “everyone’s fucking scared of that growl. I’m scared of that growl.” There’s a lot of agreement here, except Elektra who seems awfully quiet and has the same look on her face that Claire does when they… Karen looks away quickly, though knowing Matt used his Daredevil Voice TM in the bedroom with Elektra is kind of amusing.
Foggy shakes his head, “I’ve known the dude forever, he has a shit ton of anger problems, and the voice came out a lot in college. I was scared at first, but like, after a lot of conversations, I learnt that however Matt would lash out, he would never hurt Me.”
Karen nods, “that’s not my point. My point is, when Foggy wasn’t scared, Matt claimed to know seventeen different ways to kill Foggy with a spatula. That’s pretty terrifying if you think about it.”
“Sweet Christmas.”
Elektra hums, “I could think of twelve, but Matthew’s senses are a lot more helpful in that area. More exact and precise, a quicker and less painful death, unless he was going for torture. Then he would know exactly how to hurt you the most.” Foggy suddenly looks a lot more scared. “You don’t want to be tortured by Matthew; Stick warned me about this interest of his.”
Before anyone can get in another word, Karen jumps back in: “this is my point! When I met Matthew Murdock, he was a well-mannered lawyer with a fuck ton of charm and a dry sense of humour, which unfortunately extended to Foggy’s puns. Sure, he was fierce in court, the prosecutors should be scared, but he wasn’t scary. I wasn’t scared of him, he was so… kind and welcoming, and potentially flirty… it’s hard to tell when you’re a murder suspect. You guys must have some stories of when Matt’s been honest to God scary, right?”
By the petrified looks on their faces, they do. Karen grins.
“Ok,” Foggy says slowly, “I’ll start. I met Matt before all of you, and back then he masked… everything a whole lot more. But, after the first year, he started to trust me enough that sometimes he slipped. So, I have a Lot of stories.”
“Just start with one, Foggy Bear,” Marci interlocks one of her hands with his, and Foggy begins his story.
...
Foggy had had a long day. His Civil Procedure lecturer had been late, his Torts class had been cancelled, and he’d been kicked out from his study group for studying too much, and Foggy really didn’t feel like admitting that his ‘I will do everything alone or die trying’ roommate was right, that study groups are never as beneficial as they sound like they’re going to be. So, returning to his dorm room, with Matt out doing whatever, a box of ‘spicy’ brownies, (“no, Peter, I swear they were just made with chilli. I’ve never even heard of weed”) and the Johnny Depp version of Charlie and the Chocolate factory seemed like a good idea.
What Foggy hadn’t accounted for was that Matt might have changed his schedule, because he never changed his routine, and be pacing their dorm whilst yelling down the phone in Russian. “Hey, buddy,” Foggy said, just to make sure his presence was recognised. It wasn’t.
“I can speak French too, asshole,” Matt had said, in French, his voice laced in enough venom to send a shiver down Foggy’s spine. Foggy had wished that he hadn’t been able to translate it. Matt then switched back to English. “Do you know what a thumbscrew is, Jonah?” He seemed to wait for a response, and then proceeded to explain what it was, “it’s an early modern torture device designed to crush thumbs, it’s fairly simple to use. If you touch, or leer, or so much as breath on Maisy, I will know. I won’t have to step foot out of Columbia, and I will know. The thumbscrew is right here under my bed, Jonah. This is your final warning.” He hung up the phone.
Foggy had kept incredibly still and incredibly silent for the next minute whilst Matt had stood in the centre of the room, clenching and unclenching his fists, with a curled-up lip. His phone clattered to the floor. “Hey,” Foggy had all but squeaked.
...
“And then,” Foggy says, taking a swig of his beer, “he had the audacity to be all ‘oh! Hey Fogs, how long have you been there?’ complete with lawyer composure, wounded duck smile, and charmful innocence. I’m not sure what was more terrifying at the time: the threat, or the ability to change persona so quickly.”
Peter clears his throat, but his voice is still a little high, “the thumbscrew thing. Definitely the thumbscrew thing. Does Jonah still have thumbs?” Foggy shrugs, unable to clarify on the status of Jonah’s thumbs. All he knows about Jonah is that he was the same age as Matt and staying at St Agnes, and Maisy was five years younger than them.
“So,” Loki says, and Karen hates the turned-on expression on his face, “did you look for it?”
“Obviously I didn’t look for it!”
Elektra chuckles, “I can confirm that Matthew did have early modern torture instruments under his bed,”
“Plural?!”
“As well as a couple of medieval ones,” she continues, “torture was a part of our training with Stick, and sometimes if we did well in that class, he would let us keep them for later to use ourselves. As a kid, it’s a sweet idea to be on the giving end of it. Student becoming the master and all,” she smiles, “or we were just incredibly horny. Some of them are great for,”
“Ok!” Luke interrupts, gesturing to Peter slightly, “children around.”
“I’m nineteen!” Peter says, annoyed.
“I was pointing at Danny,” Luke says. Karen thinks that makes more sense, but she wouldn’t be comfortable discussing that in front of either of them. “Also, I think this puts you in a similar category to Matt; it’s these passing comments that make you just as scary, Elektra.”
She chuckles, “oh, I’m nowhere near as scary as Matthew can be. I have a story.”
...
“Matthew,” Elektra purred, “you know we’re nearing that awful gym you like.”
Matthew hadn’t slowed in his walking, but the regular rhythm of his cane was becoming sloppy. Some of the time he started dragging it across the concrete instead of its careful sweeping motion. Elektra had learnt from Stick that despite his skillset, the old man was in fact still blind, and some of the time, a little extra guidance or narration could help. Could keep him on top of his game. She had figured this would apply to Matthew as well, assuming their radars were similar.
She took his arm and placed it on her elbow, then put her hand on his to walk as a couple should, and she closed the distance completely. “We really can afford to detour to the gym, Matthew. Your buddy won’t be back for another couple of hours, I’m sure he and Marci are having a magnificent time.”
(“Hey!” Foggy exclaims, and Elektra just offers him a charming smile, confusion behind her eyes. Karen snickers, and watches with intent as Marci leans in to whisper something to Claire. Claire looks between Foggy and Marci, and laughs, her cheeks tinted a slightly rosier shade than usual. “What did you say, Marci? What did you… Claire what did she say?”)
Matthew still didn’t answer, and Elektra was refusing to admit she was worried, even to herself. Being worried isn’t quite on brand for her. (“No shit,” Jessica mutters.) “Three hostages,” Matt said, voice deep, “three live bombs, strapped to their chests. Cops are dirty, guns all loaded, someone turned the trainee officer’s safety off; he doesn’t know.”
“Oh,” Elektra said, raising her eyebrows, “is it a date Matthew?”
He turned to face her and grinned, “the gang’s dealing in illegal arms, they have three crates, with one unaccounted for. I don’t think they’ll miss it.” Elektra grins, and suddenly Matt was scaling a side of a building, super senses finding the perfect grooves for his fingers and toes to dig into, and they were leaping across buildings to the docs where they picked up the final crate, taking it back to Fogwell’s Gym. Matthew left an anonymous phone call with information on corrupt cops to the precinct.
“Let me check Fogwell’s office,” Elektra has said, “I’m sure he’s got some pliers or something we can open the crate with.”
Matthew took of his glasses and threw them nonchalantly across the room, his eyes glinted with excitement as he simply said, “no need,” and clasped his fingers around the nailed-down crate and pried the lid off with his bare hands. (“This was with no super serum,” Elektra explains, “no super strength. Just his own brute force.”) The weapon on top was a machete, and the silver metal glinted in the flickering light of the gym. He paced closer to Elektra, and placed the tip of the knife on her lower lip, “I never got around to playing with knives,” he leaned in and kissed her so that the knife had moved to lay flat against the skin of their cheeks, “when is a better time to learn?” And Matt had spun around so fast, throwing the knife into the air so it smashed a bulb, taking out the light, and by the sound of it, landed in a boxing bag, sending sand spilling onto the floor.
In the dark, Matthew always had an advantage over Elektra, but in this case she was not prepared to be slammed against any wall, especially with a gun pressed to her head. “Perhaps I never got around to knives, but guns are a different matter. There’s a lot of skill in marksmanship, but this close, I don’t think I’d need worry.”
“Matthew, what…?”
“If this gym doesn’t live up to your satisfaction, Elektra,” he growled, “then perhaps our fun is over.” He clicked the safety off.
...
Karen sits with her posture ramrod straight, holding her glass in her hands with too much anticipation to take a drink. “I don’t scare easily,” Elektra says, “but in that one minute, I thought I had accomplished what Stick had sent me to do. I thought I was going to die. There was this look in his eyes,” she turns to face Frank, “the one you have of wild anger a split second before pressing the trigger.”
“W-what,” Peter trips over his words, “what happened?”
“We had sex, clearly.”
“In no way was that clear,” Claire says, “if anything, that should have ended in at least a breakup.”
Elektra waves her off, “I kill people all the time,” she says, “it was nothing.”
“You know I’m a SHIELD Agent, right?” Coulson asks, “I am legally required to arrest you.”
“Try, and I’ll kill you.”
“I’ve already been killed, that’s not much of a threat.”
“Then you know you’re all out of second chances.” Karen clears her throat in order to end that argument before it proceeds to far… Coulson may be a high-ranking agent or whatever, but Karen doesn’t think that could hold up against a ninja assassin such as Elektra.
Peter puts down his J2O and speaks up. “I have a story,” he says, “I mean, meeting Matt as my lawyer was perfectly chill and respectable, Aunt May loves him. But seriously, meeting Daredevil was one of the scariest and most exciting times ever!”
...
Peter actually met Deadpool before he met Daredevil, which seemed to be down to Double D’s uncanny skill of avoiding Spider-Man at all costs. However, although Deadpool shared Peter’s want to get to know the Devil, a fellow red-armour wearing mutate (probably, they weren’t entirely sure at this point, but they were hopeful), he didn’t share Peter’s adherence to boundaries.
After stalking Red for a hot minute, Deadpool broke into Double-D’s flat.
A lot.
And Deadpool told Peter that he shouldn’t break his morals by breaking into Double D’s flat too, which kinda sucked, because Peter really wanted to join in. (“Peter,” Foggy interrupts, “you really didn’t want to join in.” Blood rushes to Peter’s cheeks.)
After the third week, Deadpool decided he had annoyed Daredevil enough that he possibly wouldn’t beat them both to a pulp on sight if they turned up to say hi one evening. So, the masked duo walked into Hell’s Kitchen, keeping an eye out for any back-alley violence. They came across Daredevil behind the Rand Enterprises building, blood staining his teeth and dripping down his chin, with three ninjas unconscious on the ground and five still standing.
“Should we help him?” Peter had asked, and Wade had snickered.
“Nah, let’s just enjoy the show, Spidey.” So, they did. And Peter had never been more terrified. Sure, Peter has his super-strength and mutation stuff, but he has never had any training like that, and Daredevil had all the ninjas incapacitated in under two minutes. (“I get that,” Luke says, and Loki nods along.) “Hey Red, look! I bought the Spiderling! The random masked kid from Queens!”
“I’m not a kid,” Peter may have lowered his voice, just a little. Daredevil had stalked over to the pair of them, getting close up in Peter’s space (and on reflection, Peter understands that the deathly intimidating pause was just Double D identifying him as Peter Parker from that custody case), and had growled:
“Get out of my city.”
He left before either of them could get in another word.
...
“I know that’s what scares a lot of the Avengers,” Coulson says, pointing at Peter, “his territorial behaviour. When Banner or Thor enter the city, Daredevil meets them like he’s a criminal escort.”
“Or the grim reaper?” Foggy tries, earning himself a couple of groans from the group.
“Ok,” Jessica calls, silencing everyone, “territorial behaviour is nothing. Matt’s just possessive over his home because that’s the only thing that hasn’t left him. It’s sad as fuck. Now enjoy my story.”
...
Just to be clear, Jessica had been meeting the well-mannered lawyer Matthew Murdock for some work on a shared case. “Miss Jones,” he had met her with a welcoming smile and a firm handshake, despite having been firm friends for a while. This wasn’t much out of character for the man, so Jessica didn’t think anything of it, deciding he was just being professional.
“Murdock,” she said, and walked past him into his flat. Usually, Matt’s as tidy as anything, something about concentration and it’s where he lives, but that day, the flat was looking worse than her own.
Clothes thrown anywhere and everywhere, empty takeout boxes were in a similar state, the dirty dishes not even in a pile to do later, half washed dishes abandoned in a now cold bowl of water, blood was dried over the kitchen counter and still relatively wet over the couch, and his law work was everywhere. Papers were all over the floor, spread out all over the coffee table, through his open bedroom door, she could see braille documents taking all the space over the bed.
Because Jessica’s an asshole, she didn’t ask. “You gonna help me look over the evidence I found?”
“Sure,” he said, and led her through to his bedroom. He stood there clicking his tongue for a minute before taking a pile of documents from the left side of the bed. They sat on the floor, leaning against the foot of his bed. Matt, unfortunately, due to the prominent proportion of braille documents, wasn’t much help and Jessica ended up spending her time translating letter by letter with the help of Google. Matt didn’t much seem interested in the evidence she had dug up either.
“Ok Murdock,” she spat out, annoyed. “I worked long and hard on this case, least you could do is pretend to seem interested.” And he did. That, also unfortunately, was the moment Jessica realised she cared for the asshole. “Murdock, I can come back another day. You obviously have some shit you need to deal with, and this isn’t exactly urgent.”
It’s dumb how being kind can break a man so easily.
(“Jessica, I thought this was meant to be a scary Matt story,” Claire says.
“I’m getting to it, just wait a minute.”)
“Jess, are you sure? I’m sorry I,” Matt stopped talking, “get away from the door.”
“What?”
“Get away from the krutacking door,” he growled. Jessica wasn’t that close to the door, she was only one person closer to it than Murdock, but she wasn’t going to argue with that voice. Not in that moment. She followed behind Matt silently, at least to herself, hanging back as he went to answer the door moments before someone knocked.
She peered around the corner to look at the door, “pizza for Matty?” (Foggy mumbles something under his breath which to Karen sounds something a little like ‘oh shit, buddy’, but Karen doesn’t dare interrupt Jessica’s story to find out.)
“Who sent you?” He growled, grabbing the pizza delivery guy by the collar, and pinning him to the wall.
“No one, man! You just ordered a pizza!”
“Don’t lie to me!”
“Seriously, dude, maybe it’s just for the apartment across the hall.”
Jessica had taken that moment to walk up and intervene, putting on a sickly-sweet voice, hoping to calm down the delivery guy, “Matt honey,” she said, putting a hand on his arm and flashing the delivery guy the most comforting smile she could without it looking like she was just as scared as pizza guy, “it’s just a pizza. Let’s pay the kind man and let him on his way.”
“Tell me who ordered the fucking pizza!”
The guy gulped, “You did,” his voice broke, and he cleared his throat, “if you’re called Matty, it’s addressed to you. One pepperoni pizza.”
“I love pepperoni!” Matt slammed his fist into the wall. “I need the phone number of who rang you to order this.”
“Dude, it was ordered on the app.”
Eventually, Jessica got the pizza guy out of the flat, and them both back in Matt’s room with the pizza. “What the hell, Murdock?”
“Someone’s been sending poisoned takeout all week. Curry, tacos, Thai, sushi, and now pizza. All addressed to ‘Matty’.” He finessed his name with an award worthy growl.
“Woah, chill. At least you can smell it. What does poison even smell of anyway?”
“Sometimes it makes things sweeter, sometimes it smells kinda like chlorine,” he shrugs, “but whoever’s sending these knows about my senses. It’s covered in lye and that’s basically undetectable, only by taste. And then it’s too late: you swallow that, it’ll burn up your whole oesophagus and you’ll die a slow and painful death.” Jessica was distracted by her thoughts for a moment, thinking that if it were Daredevil explaining that on the street, she wouldn’t have batted an eye. But here’s supposed to be put together Matt Murdock, and somehow the worlds just shouldn’t cross. She was distracted enough to let Matt pick up the pizza.
“Matt!”
He swallowed a giant mouthful of pizza.
(“What the fuck?!” Foggy exclaims, slamming down his beer.
“He did what?!” Claire’s just as outraged as Foggy, and sat besides Jessica, Frank is fuming. “He could have died!”
“Are you sure it was lye?” Coulson asks. “When was this?” Turns out it wasn’t long after Matt came back from the dead, which doesn’t help in the grand scheme of things. Jessica jumps in to continue with the story.)
Jessica grabbed the pizza from his hands, turns out the lye was drizzled across it like some kind of excess spicy oil. She dropped the slice, burns appearing on her skin. “Shit, Murdock!” He picked up another slice from the box.
“I’ve got some vinegar, come on.” He led her into the kitchen and poured vinegar over the burns, which stung like hell but is apparently some kind of lye antidote for surface burns, then he dug into the second slice. He must have felt Jessica watching him because he said, “I’m not gonna let good food go to waste, Jessica.”
“That shit’s fuckin’ poisoned, Murdock,” she said, and he flashed her the Devil’s grin.
“I know.”
...
“Sweet Christmas,” Luke says, dragging a hand across his face, “that pizza guy must’ve been scared out of his wits.”
“Oh, he was,” Jessica nods, “it’s kind of funny now, but at the time, I was scared for him. Do Not tell that to Murdock.”
Karen clears her throat, not following the story, “so Matt just ate a completely poisoned pizza which should have killed him and he’s completely fine?” Jessica just drinks her whisky, and Karen nods, conceding, “that is pretty scary.” She briefly thinks about the empty takeout boxes Jessica mentioned at the start of the story but decides not to think too hard about that. Looks like Foggy is trying to do the same thing.
“You had similar training to Matt, Danny,” Foggy says, “is there anything he’s done or said that’s scared you?”
Danny hums, then he nods. “In K’un-Lun, the elders were insistent on us managing our anger in order to control our chi,” he says, “I guess I didn’t notice it so much the first time we fought together because we were angry at each other, and then I was kidnapped, et cetera. But when we teamed up after Matt came back from the dead,” Danny shivers, “Daredevil’s anger is unguarded and raw. It doesn’t hold him back, and his chi works in perfect harmony along with it. The way he fought against those rapists… I’m just glad I wasn’t them.”
“I remember that,” Luke says, “we did nothing. Matt took them all down basically alone. I think Jessica threw a punch, that was it.” Jessica sips her drink, shares a look with Marci which Karen makes a note to ask about later, and listens to Luke continue. “When we met Matt, it was unbelievable, you know? Blind ninja, and I was even further behind Danny with the whole magic cult thing. But when the laughable shit’s not funny anymore… well, Danny’s right. It was terrifying.”
“Two of them are still in comas,” Jessica says, “three are in prison, two of which still can’t handle solid foods. And the final one is in rehab; he won’t be able to walk again.”
“Holy shit,” Foggy says.
“He let them off lightly,” Jessica grunts and nobody comments on it any further.
“You should ask him out,” Elektra breaks the silence, and Karen follows her gaze to Frank opposite her. Frank stares at Karen for a long minute before looking at the woman, “he’d probably say yes. You’re hot, dangerous, and smell nice. Definitely his type,” she says, “in college, we’d probably have invited you.”
Frank shakes his head, “Red’s got a good thing going,” he says, “he’s happy.”
“He is happy,” Elektra says, “but you love him, I can see it in your eyes.” Frank grunts noncommittally, and Karen doesn’t quite know what to make of this conversation. She turns to face Foggy, who just shrugs helplessly.
“Matt’s always had a thing for assassins.”
“He had a thing for me,” Karen says, “and Claire. And I’m pretty sure Matt’s crushing on Luke, he keeps talking about your skin,” she says to the man.
Jessica snorts, “that’s not new. Remember the farm in my body?” Karen raises an eyebrow, but Claire bursts out laughing, closely followed by Frank who keeps his laugh contained to a chuckle, but it’s enough.
“Ok,” he says, “but Nelson, Karen’s right. I don’t think Murdock has a thing for assassins.”
“He does,” Coulson says, “Clint confirmed it.”
So many people slam down their fists. All conversation halts. “You know Clint!” Foggy exclaims. “You’ve got to tell us who it is. It’s killing us!”
Coulson downs his drink, “is that a yellow car?” He points to the side, and Karen, ashamedly, falls for the trick. They're not even near a window. Coulson, Loki, and Peter all take the time to scram.
“What’s this about ‘Clint’?” Elektra asks, and chaos ensues.
Karen catches Frank’s eye across the table. She nods her head, offering him a smile, before joining in the conversation once more, unhelpfully yelling details to add to the patchwork explanation of the man named Clint.