"Hey, Matt?" Claire said lightly, expression blank with a placid smile frozen on her lips, palm still on the door handle as she stood in front of the entrance.
Matt shifted slightly, distinctly uncomfortable. "Yes?" he answered, likely a bit too snappishly.
Claire's empty grin widened and her gaze slowly drifted back to the duo by his side.
Frank let out a huff and hiked Peter a bit further up in his arms, the teen stuck between scowling up at the man for still not having let him down and looking sheepish towards the nurse.
"Remember when you called saying you were bringing Spider-Man here?" Claire asked genially, eyes going back to boring holes into Matt that he could definitely feel despite not being able to see. He nodded once, pursing his lips. Claire remained stationary in her position, eyes a bit too wide to be natural. "Then why did you bring me a child?" she questioned with the same deceptive levity.
"Hey! - " Peter began to protest, but Matt cut him off.
"He's Spider-Man," he said tersely.
The mask dropped off Claire's face and she scowled, flinging the door wide open and stepping to the side to allow them entry. "I gathered," she snapped, bustling away to continue organizing her medical supplies. "Go ahead and lay him on the couch - I already set out some towels over it," she instructed Frank.
Matt closed the door behind himself and trailed after the others, standing somewhat awkwardly at the foot of the sofa. Peter snorted at him and settled onto the couch, thankful to finally be left to some measure of respectability after spending the past twenty minutes in a princess carry in the arms of a mass murderer.
Claire brought her kit over to where he was laying and pulled up a wooden chair beside him, sitting down and giving him an assessing once over. "So what's the issue?" she asked briskly, and Peter wordlessly lifted up his hoodie to reveal the still open wound in his torso.
"It's not that bad-" he began.
Frank snorted, and Claire heaved a heavy sigh. Muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, "there's another one," as she snapped on a pair of blue, medical gloves.
"I resent that," Peter said blandly, withholding a wince as Claire began prodding at his wound.
She shot him a look and scoffed, quickly recentering her attention on the puncture. "What? The truth?" she fired back.
Peter restrained from crossing his arms petulantly, seeing how that would probably not help with the procedure currently happening on his abdomen. Instead, he squinted his eyes and scowled up at Frank, who raised an eyebrow.
Matt shifted around again, head tilting in his usual bird-like manner, and then he subtly winced, swaying as if he couldn't decide whether to head towards the door or away from it.
It immediately alighted Peter's attention. "What happened?" he asked, moving to sit up and being shoved back down by Frank.
"It's… nothing," Matt said slowly, but he was still slightly turned towards the door, so Peter waited him out. Claire continued to work on the wound, having gotten the webs off of the slightly closed bullet hole, and she moved to grab a set of tweezers and forceps. Matt visibly gave in, shoulders slumping nearly imperceptibly as he let out a terse breath. "Foggy's coming," he admitted.
Peter stared at him blankly for a moment, and then a slow grin spread across his cheeks. "Oh?" he lilted.
Matt scowled at him, clearly having heard the sound of the younger's lips pulling back from his teeth. "Don't."
"Don't?" Peter echoed innocently, looking up at Frank as if in hopes of finding similar confusion and then letting out a hiss when Claire set to work on removing the bullet.
Frank took over for him, glancing between Matt and Peter with a faint glimmer of interest. "Don't what?" he asked, and Peter managed to pull up a rather pained smile back up after a moment, letting out a chortle that faded into a wheeze.
"Well-"
"Peter," Matt cut in warningly, crossing his arms and frowning in Peter's direction disapprovingly.
"No, no," Claire spoke up, slowly dragging the bullet out and setting it onto a metal tray with a clink and a relieved breath from Peter. She pulled off her bloodied gloves and reached for the bandages. "I wanna hear this too," she said, tone once more deceptively light.
Peter smiled sharkishly, snapping finger guns at Claire, who gave him a deadpan look in reply. The teen easily let it pass, flicking his gaze up to make sure Frank was listening as he began his tale. "Ok, so, it started on my patrol last night when I heard these guys - and girls - women - people - in this warehouse and they were talking about Matt. Not Daredevil but, like, actually Matt. And so anyways, they had this whole plan to go out and, like, assassinate Matt cause of the case he's working on, right?"
'Right?' Frank mouthed.
"So I looked for Matt but I couldn't find him anywhere and he wasn't answering his phone so I went back in the morning and talked to Foggy and then Matt called me and we talked and I told him and we were supposed to have a few hours before the whole thing, yeah? But apparently the goons" - 'goons' Frank wordlessly echoed - "didn't get the memo about sticking to plans so we had to run away and so Matt took the lead and took us over to this really awesome Porsche that belongs to his friend Danny Rand -"
"Wait what?" Claire interrupted.
"I know, right?!" Peter exclaimed, flailing his arms up and barely missing whacking Claire in the chin from where she was taping down the last corner of the bandage, and she shot him a look that he completely missed, continuing on obliviously. "Danny Rand!" he emphasized. "Like, a legit billionaire! Matt has a billionaire friend - I wish I had a billionaire friend - that'd be super cool."
Claire huffed, halting his tangent. "I meant about the Porsche thing, kid. With Matt obviously not driving and you definitely not having a license yet," she said dryly.
Matt took a couple of inconspicuous steps back as Peter's eyes lit up with absolute manic delight. "You would think so, wouldn't you?" he questioned brightly.
"Yes…" Claire answered slowly, turning her head to glance over at Matt and narrowing her eyes when she realized he'd moved further away.
"You're right about me not having a license," the teen admitted glibly, shrugging his shoulders, "but you're sooooo not right about Matt," he said with a short burble of slightly hysterical laughter.
Frank's head snapped down toward Peter. "What."
Peter nodded quickly, head bobbing up and down like a freshly flicked bobble head. "Yup!" he exclaimed. "Matt is a terrible driver," he noted with vindictive glee.
The two remaining sensible - at least comparatively - adults both slowly turned to look at the perpetrator, a bead of sweat forming on the latter's back. "I can explain-" he started.
Peter cut him off, throwing his arms back up and crowing, "He can 'see in other ways!'"
"What." Frank repeated, slightly more menacingly.
"Mhm," Peter hummed. "Matt dro - Matt did something that only a verifiably insane person would refer to as driving - for a good way too long while, and I had front seats from the passenger side!" Peter exclaimed.
"You what." Frank growled at Matt, who looked like he was in between raising his hands placatingly and crossing them stubbornly. He settled for somewhere in the middle, tucking his hands under his pits and scowling.
Peter quickly waved Frank off, sitting up a bit, which, of course, made Frank step right back and shove Peter down again. "It's fine," Peter admitted readily, gesturing to himself as if to make the sentiment obvious. It lost a bit of validity at the fact that he had a literal fresh bullet hole in his abdomen. "I'm fine, I mean. Physically, at least - from that. My sanity may have taken a minor blow," he acknowledged.
"That's probably the blood loss," Matt muttered, and Peter opened his mouth indignantly, paused, then shrugged.
"But seriously, it's good," Peter continued. "Like, the Porsche was almost bullet proof or something, and there were a whole ton of bad guys, so it was probably the safest thing."
Frank blinked at him slowly. Then let out a long, likely steadying breath. "The safest thing," he echoed, then continued on as if to clarify, "was for a blind man with no self preservation skills to drive you into incoming traffic."
"He only did that maneuver, like, twice," Peter pointed out, and Matt grimaced as he felt the weight of two glares rest heavily upon him once more.
"Listen-" Matt tried, but he was cut off again.
"Matt." Claire uttered with such bone deep weariness it made the others actually feel exhausted themselves just hearing it. She sighed, scrubbed a hand over her face. She pushed the loose hairs that'd fallen out of her ponytail back. "Why are you like this," she finally said, sighing.
Matt winced. "I can realize now that I may not've taken the best course of action-"
Frank snorted.
Matt carried resolutely on. "And I realize that what I've done may constitute as reckless endangerment-"
"Ya think," Frank muttered, Claire humming in agreement.
"But-"
"But what?" Claire questioned pointedly.
Matt opened his mouth, then closed it, looking rather helpless. His head twitched towards the door again. "I tried?" he went with, wincing at his own reply.
"Ya did good, buddy," Peter called from the couch, shooting the man a thumbs up he couldn't see but Peter assumed he'd probably appreciate anyways. He didn't appear to, oddly enough, grimace deepening.
There was a sharp rapping on the door, and all their heads jerked towards the sound, Matt's expression looking particularly dreading yet resigned.
"Don't tell Foggy," he entreated, subtly inching away from the door.
Claire raised an unpromising eyebrow, and Peter's expression turned guileless once more.
Frank chuckled darkly, arms crossing as his chin raised in blatant defiance. "If the kid doesn't, I sure as hell will."