He hadn't been paying attention, honestly. He'd gotten stuck, helping Spiderman pull people out of a collapsed subway car; sure, he'd heard the reporters, the high, tooth-ache whine of expensive cameras, but they hadn't had time to focus on the looky-loos. The kid - and Matt had to stop thinking of Spiderman as the kid, because if he ever said it out loud, the punch in the nose would be expected and deserved - but the kid had grabbed a body, tried to pull it out, before Matt had negated the idea.
("How do you know," Spiderman had said, tense, ready and willing to fight, because fighting would've been better than the exhausting slog of hauling half-conscious New Yorkers out of the subway car.
"Don't worry about it," Matt had said, listening to a man's heart give out a hundred feet away.)
He hadn't been paying attention.
If he had, he would've remembered that Fisk was due to be released that weekend. Looking back, Matt didn't know if that would've mattered, appreciably. He might've changed his security, or he might've spent the night at someone else's house, but there was no universe where he left Spiderman to pull dead or half-dead bodies out of the subway car on his own, so even in his dreams, events remained approximately the same.
Still.
By the time he got back to his own apartment, he felt half-sick with exhaustion. His stomach howled; he didn't even feel hungry, just - empty, inside, surprisingly hollow. The inside of his head was also hollow, which was a relief: he didn't want to think about the dead or dying tonight, he wanted to get into his apartment, crawl into bed, sleep for eighteen or nineteen hours, and make sure that he and Foggy were still putting money into the monthly nest egg they'd set up for Spiderman. He'd have to go to college soon: he deserved to get through it without aching for money.
Matt stumbled down the stairs, pulling the cowl off his face and yanking at his gauntlets. He was twenty-three feet from his own bed when he realized that he wasn't alone in the apartment.
"Don't trouble yourself," Fisk said, deep and even.
It wasn't a conscious choice, to press himself against the wall, to calculate the time it would take to get back up the stairs, vault across the gap between his building and the neighboring office block.
There were two heartbeats, though, strange and unfamiliar, a syncopated rhythm like something from a dream: "don't be dramatic," Vanessa Fisk murmured. "You're too old to keep nothing but beer and takeout in your fridge, Matthew."
He hadn't heard her voice in years; he wanted to cry, he wanted to flee, he wanted -
"get out of my fridge," he said, because he had to say something, and making small talk while dressed in a stylized leather-and-kevlar bodysuit was somehow exponentially more difficult than doing it in people clothes.
"You're filthy," Fisk said. Matt had developed the ability to judge men's heartbeats in seconds, over the last few years, and he was very infrequently wrong. This had to be one of those times. Fisk's heartbeat was steady, unperturbed, and he stayed still, away from the exits, as if all he wanted was to invade Matt's space and then mind his manners. "Come on, then."
Re: fisk/matt/vanessa, undercover!matt au NOT A FILL 3
("How do you know," Spiderman had said, tense, ready and willing to fight, because fighting would've been better than the exhausting slog of hauling half-conscious New Yorkers out of the subway car.
"Don't worry about it," Matt had said, listening to a man's heart give out a hundred feet away.)
He hadn't been paying attention.
If he had, he would've remembered that Fisk was due to be released that weekend. Looking back, Matt didn't know if that would've mattered, appreciably. He might've changed his security, or he might've spent the night at someone else's house, but there was no universe where he left Spiderman to pull dead or half-dead bodies out of the subway car on his own, so even in his dreams, events remained approximately the same.
Still.
By the time he got back to his own apartment, he felt half-sick with exhaustion. His stomach howled; he didn't even feel hungry, just - empty, inside, surprisingly hollow. The inside of his head was also hollow, which was a relief: he didn't want to think about the dead or dying tonight, he wanted to get into his apartment, crawl into bed, sleep for eighteen or nineteen hours, and make sure that he and Foggy were still putting money into the monthly nest egg they'd set up for Spiderman. He'd have to go to college soon: he deserved to get through it without aching for money.
Matt stumbled down the stairs, pulling the cowl off his face and yanking at his gauntlets. He was twenty-three feet from his own bed when he realized that he wasn't alone in the apartment.
"Don't trouble yourself," Fisk said, deep and even.
It wasn't a conscious choice, to press himself against the wall, to calculate the time it would take to get back up the stairs, vault across the gap between his building and the neighboring office block.
There were two heartbeats, though, strange and unfamiliar, a syncopated rhythm like something from a dream: "don't be dramatic," Vanessa Fisk murmured. "You're too old to keep nothing but beer and takeout in your fridge, Matthew."
He hadn't heard her voice in years; he wanted to cry, he wanted to flee, he wanted -
"get out of my fridge," he said, because he had to say something, and making small talk while dressed in a stylized leather-and-kevlar bodysuit was somehow exponentially more difficult than doing it in people clothes.
"You're filthy," Fisk said. Matt had developed the ability to judge men's heartbeats in seconds, over the last few years, and he was very infrequently wrong. This had to be one of those times. Fisk's heartbeat was steady, unperturbed, and he stayed still, away from the exits, as if all he wanted was to invade Matt's space and then mind his manners. "Come on, then."