Chapter Text
Waking up is always an unusual experience for Matt. When waking up from a natural sleep, his senses accommodate rousing slowly so that he isn't overwhelmed. They piece together bit by bit in a steadily expanding circle. It gives him time to pull up his defenses and prepare himself as consciousness slowly creeps back in.
When he wakes up from passing out, it's the opposite. Awareness doesn't come back to him all at once, but his senses do, and the sudden overload is debilitating. Sounds, smells, and textures that he isn't awake enough to comprehend all assault his brain and send him into panic mode.
This is what happens now, and Matt frantically tries to process the sensory overload: a hard surface against his back ( bare back - where are my clothes ), the smell of iron and copper and chemicals, the thump of heartbeats ( too many heartbeats - why are there so many people ), all rolled up beneath a low-frequency humming he feels vibrate in his bones. A painful sensation creeps along his torso, like insects made of glass splinters crawling around beneath his skin. He wants to move, to get away from the pain, but his muscles all feel weak and tender, and his head spins with sickening waves of vertigo.
"Whoa, whoa, easy there." A low tenor voice looms over him, and a weight presses down on Matt's shoulders, keeping him in place despite his attempts to thrash away. "Hey, it's just me. Clint. You're safe."
Barton, a voice in the back of Matt's head supplies, and some of his panic diminishes. Only when he hears a hum of confirmation does he realize he must've said it aloud, too. Matt brings one hand up to touch his face, and he lets out a breath of relief when he finds his mask still in place. The deep exhale sends another spasm of pain through his stomach, and he hisses through his teeth. Matt reaches to probe the wound, but a hand catches his wrist. "Don't touch it," Barton warns. "That makes it worse, trust me."
"What - where?"
"You're at the Tower," Barton explains. "You took a couple slugs to the gut. Do you remember what happened?"
Matt takes a steadying breath, searching back through the fog of pain in his head. "Weapons dealers, Puerto Rican, a new group trying to set up shop in the Kitchen," he says.
Barton snorts. "You caught one of my arrows out of the air, but these street punks got you? And not just once, but three times ?"
Matt winces. "I screwed up, got cocky." Another wave of needle-sharp pain crawls across his torso, and he flinches. "What is that?"
"The Cradle," Barton says, like that's an answer. "Well, technically, this one's The Cradle Two-Point-Oh. It's the machine that's keeping you alive. Regenerates skin and muscle cells. It doesn't exactly feel great, but it gets the job done."
"What happened to healing the old-fashioned way?" Matt asks with a smirk.
Clint huffs. "So I might've exaggerated a little. Besides, not like it doesn't still hurt the same."
Matt can't argue that, cringing as the pain rolls through him again. He focuses on his breathing, getting his senses back under control. The symphony of heartbeats he'd heard when he woke up solidifies into only three separate from his own: Clint's and two others, one average but a further distance away, and one alarmingly calm and steady behind Clint. He recognizes the slower one from the brief moments before he lost consciousness and scrabbles for a name. "Natasha, right? And you are - ?"
"That's Dr. Cho," Barton chips in. "She's the one in charge of the Cradle. She keeps us all on our feet. Don't worry, she can't hear anything on that side of the glass, though. I told you, everything you say and do here will be confidential."
Matt nods, letting out another breath. He hadn't even sensed the glass Barton is talking about. Matt assumes most of the place is made of glass because he can't get a good sense of the room, the sounds echoing strangely across the too-smooth surfaces. Giving that up, he turns his attention to the heartbeats instead. Matt can at least track the people if he can't sense the location.
"You know, you are one lucky bastard," says Barton. "You almost didn't make it. And if Tash hadn't been here at the Tower when you called, you probably wouldn't have. I might've had to send Tony, and then you really would've been screwed."
"I didn't even mean to call you," Matt admits with a breathless laugh. "I was trying to call my friend who usually patches me up. I hit the wrong button."
The woman, Natasha - and it occurs to Matt now that she's probably Natasha Romanov, as in the Black Widow - makes an amused noise. "Then you're even luckier than we thought," she says. "Unless your friend is a magic healer, you never would've survived."
"And guessing by this rather extensive collection of scars you've got, she's no magician," Clint intones. "I mean, you've got more scars than me, and I've been doing this a lot longer. Did you miss the class where they teach you how to dodge?"
Matt huffs a laugh, although he immediately regrets it as pain lances through his stomach again. "Yeah, I must've slept through that one."
Clint snorts inelegantly. "Clearly. This one though," he taps Matt's right side, where Matt knows the knotted scar from Nobu stands out against his flesh, "looks like it's got a wicked story behind it."
"Ninja," Matt says succinctly.
"Ah, man, see, Nat? He gets ninjas ," Clint moans dramatically. "We haven't had ninjas in ages. Not since, what, Montreal?"
"Canada?" Matt asks in surprise. "Canadian ninjas?"
Clint snorts. "Politest ass-kicking I've ever gotten. I don't think I'd ever had someone apologize for having to kill me before."
"Probably because after a few minutes of listening to you talk most of them were looking forward to it," Matt points out.
Natasha laughs, a soft, genuine sound. "I like this guy," she says, ignoring Clint's squawk of protest.
Matt is distracted from Clint's mutterings about betrayal when the low-frequency humming suddenly stops. The sharp, needle-point stabs in his side are replaced with a dull, disjointed sensation, like local anesthesia that hasn't quite worn off yet. His skin feels oddly numb, but beneath that, his muscles burn and ache like the worst kind of over-exertion.
Eager to get home to meditate and recover in peace, Matt hauls himself into a sitting position, and the world tilts dangerously on its axis. Immediately, a heavy arm settles across his shoulders, and as much as he loathes to admit it, the feeling steadies his spinning head. "Easy there," Clint says, his voice tinged with amusement. "You lost a serious amount of blood, and the Cradle doesn't fix that, so unless you were really looking forward to some face-time with the floor, I'd give it a minute."
"You're incredibly irritating. Has anyone ever told you that?" Matt grunts out between his teeth as he tries to focus on stabilizing his senses.
"That'll be the third time already today, and it's not even sun-up," Clint responds cheerfully. "Tash, I think I'm headed for a new high score."
Not bothering to respond to his comment, Natasha says, "You'll want to call in at your day job."
Matt smirks. "What makes you think I have a day job?"
"Because I know for a fact that vigilantism doesn't pay well," she says dryly. "And you're not the Tony Stark type, because no one who has the money to live elsewhere chooses to stay in Hell's Kitchen."
"I feel like I should be offended on behalf of my neighborhood," Matt says, his tone flat.
Matt sees Natasha shrug in the slightly distorted blur of red that comes from her body. "Probably, but you're not because even you know it's true." He doesn't waste his breath arguing against her very valid point. "So unless your day job involves lying around and looking like a corpse, you should probably call in, or people are going to ask questions you don't want to answer."
Bracing himself, Matt slides off the table and is grateful that his legs support him. Mind controls the body, barks the gruff voice in the back of his head. It's too bad his mind is swimming too much to control even itself, let alone his body. "I should get going," he says. "Long way back to the Kitchen, and the sun will be coming up soon."
"I'll drive you," Natasha offers. Matt instinctively makes to argue, but she silences him with a firm hand on his bicep. "We're not forcing you to surrender your identity. You can give me an address further into the city, and I won't follow you. But you'll never make it from Midtown to the Kitchen before the sun comes up in your condition, and I doubt you want to be out in public like that."
Matt silently deliberates, weighing his options as he pulls the top half of his armor back on with Clint's help. He can sense Clint tensing in preparation for a fight through the arm still around his shoulders. As a direct contrast, Natasha hasn't reacted in the least, remaining as relaxed and nonchalant as always, her heart still beating far too slowly for a natural person. It isn't that she doesn't expect him to put up a fight; it's that she anticipates it and knows she will still win. He hates to admit it, but her casual confidence is daunting, both terrifying and exhilarating.
Matt took a stats class as an undergrad, and he's pretty good at calculating chances. He could take Clint at this close range, even in this room of chrome and glass where he is functionally blind. The Black Widow, however, earned her reputation as the world's most lethal assassin. No one would be stupid enough to bet on him in that fight.
"Lead the way," he says with a tip of his head.
Clint's muscles relax beside him, and Matt briefly wonders how a spy can be so easy to read. As Natasha crosses the room, her boots clicking in a perfectly measured tread, Clint tightens his arm around Matt's shoulders, and Matt lets him. Usually, he would shrug off such overt support, but with the strange echoes off the glass, he can't find his way out. At least with Clint leading him like this, Matt won't give himself away by running into a wall.
They move through several large, open-planned rooms that smell of hospital before going into a wide corridor that appears to be made entirely of flat steel. No one speaks as they approach what seems to be a dead-end, but the whir and grind of coiled cable behind the wall tells Matt it's an elevator. The three of them wait expectantly until a soft ching indicates the lift's arrival. The doors glide open, and-
"Really, Barton? You threw a party and didn't even think to invite me? I'm hurt."
"Stark," Natasha greets, her tone exasperated.
"No, really, it's fine," Stark says with an over-affected nonchalance. "I'm okay. But I will remember this come Christmas, you can be sure of that." Barton snorts. "Anyway, I really just wanted to catch up with Horn Head before he disappears into the night again. Got a present for you."
Matt barely gets his hand up in time to catch the object that Tony tosses at him. It's slim and rectangular, but he can't do more than hazard a vague guess with his gloves on. He's spared from possibly making an idiot of himself when Tony speaks up again. "To replace that dinosaur you're using."
"You shouldn't have," Matt says, smirking. A new burner phone, then.
"Yeah, well, as the leading expert in basically every form of technology on the planet, your glorified paperweight was offensive to my soul," Tony says. "This one's top of the line and sturdy as hell. Everything's voice-activated, synced up to your vocal patterns so no one else can use it. Already got all of our numbers pre-programmed along with the direct line to the Tower, but you can add whoever else you want to it."
Barton's hand closes around Matt's wrist, twisting his hand so he can get a better look at the phone. "Tony, it doesn't have a screen."
Tony snorts. "He wouldn't need one, would he?" Matt stiffens as Clint makes a confused noise. Matt experiences a prolonged moment of panic, sure that Tony is about to spill his secret in front of them all, even though Matt can't fathom how he knows. Then the older man says, "It's not like he can text in those gloves. Besides, screens crack. Good luck breaking that phone. It's a solid reinforced steel alloy, the same stuff I use in my suits. It can take a repulsor without leaving a scratch, tested it myself."
"Nice," Clint says appreciatively, and Matt's shoulders uncoil in relief. The archer moves over to talk to Tony, leaving Matt to stand unsteadily in the middle of the hall. He tucks the new phone into an inner pocket of his uniform next to the old one; he'll have to get Claire or Foggy to help him transfer their numbers into the new phone later.
Natasha moves so quietly that he barely hears her approach, bringing the faint scent of leather, ozone, and something metallic with her. "Don't worry," she says, voice pitched so low he can barely hear it beneath Tony and Clint's energetic conversation. "He won't tell anyone unless you give him the okay."
Matt frowns, aiming to look perplexed even as he tenses. "What do you mean?"
Natasha's hand alights feather-light on his arm, the pressure barely noticeable through his armored sleeve. "We all know how it feels to be compromised in some way," she says. Her tone is still flat and no-nonsense, but there's a hint of something more underneath it; honesty or compassion or sympathy, he can't tell which. "All of us, even Stark. Your secrets are yours to keep, but you should know this is a safe place. We understand, perhaps better than anyone else ever will."
Matt's heart pounds, and he has difficulty reining in his emotions. Mind controls the body, boy, Stick's voice reminds him, sneering, but it's not helping for once. Desperate not to show his inner turmoil, Matt searches for a change of subject. His attention lands on the conversation between Clint and Tony, which has gotten louder and sounds considerably more like an argument now. "What are they fighting about?"
To his great relief, Natasha accepts the topic change without question. "Apparently," she says, the tone of fond exasperation back, "these two durakóv have had a running bet about who could make friends with the Devil of Hell's Kitchen."
"That explains the sudden interest," Matt says, nodding thoughtfully. "I was wondering what I'd done to get on the Avengers' radar."
"Well, this doesn't qualify as official Avengers business," Natasha says. "This is just what happens when we're stupid enough to leave those two without adult supervision." After a soft pause, "But what you've done in Hell's Kitchen - not everyone might agree, but I think you've done a good thing."
"Oi, Horn Head," Stark shouts suddenly, cutting off any response Matt might've had to her comment. "Would you tell Legolas to stop being an ass and pay up?"
"Oh, please," Clint says, huffing. "He called me . I'm the reason he's here. Which means you owe me another hundred. Stop being such a pussy and just give it up already."
Matt smirks. "Actually, if you want to get technical, Natasha is the one who brought me to the Tower," he points out. "If you ask me, I think that means she is the one who gets the money." Both men immediately revolt against the idea, yelling over the top of each other as they launch their counterarguments, but beneath it, he hears Natasha's surprised laugh.
An hour later, Matt is dropped off six blocks from his apartment by Natasha, now the proud owner of both Stark and Barton's hundred-dollar bills. He takes a long, circuitous route back to his building - he figures the odds are that at least one of the Avengers already knows his identity, but he's not taking any chances, just in case - and finally collapses into bed just as the sun begins to rise.
Before he can nod off, Matt reaches over and finds his smartphone, which he left on the nightstand the night before. Clicking the voice command button, he says, "Call Foggy," then drops it on the pillow beside him as the call connects. After three rings, there's a click, some shuffled noises, and finally a sleepy, "Matty?"
"Hey, Fog," Matt replies, exhaustion heavy in his voice now that the night's adrenaline has worn off and he's comfortably sprawled on his familiar silk sheets. "I just wanted to let you know I'm not gonna make it into the office today."
The sound of movement through the speaker and then Foggy's voice again, more alert than before. "Matt, are you okay? Do I need to call Hottie McBurnerPhone?"
Matt chuckles, finally dragging his arm up to lift the phone to his ear. "No, relax, I'm fine," he says. On the other end of the line, there's a gusty exhale as Foggy lets out an anxious breath. "And you know Claire hates it when you call her that."
"Yeah, well, she never would've known if you hadn't put me on speaker," Foggy reminds him. "I'm still claiming, for the record, that it is all your fault she glares at me. I could sue you for the emotional damage it's caused me. You're lucky you can't see her angry face. It hurts. Like physically , in my soul ." Matt bites back another grin. "Seriously though, Matt. You're good?"
"I'm good," Matt agrees. "Really, I promise. Just had a long night. You should come by after work though, I've got a great story to tell you. You are never going to believe where I was last night."