Chapter Text
Peter had lived in Hell’s Kitchen before, when he was little, back when his parents were alive and happy and safe. He doesn’t remember much of it, except that it only had one bedroom and he had a high chair at the table, and his dad would feed him food and call him a King because he was higher up than his parents when they sat in their own chairs.
That was back when it was considered a special treat to go visit May and Ben in Queens; back when Queens was his version of high society and Hell’s Kitchen was home. His mom would take him to synagogue sometimes and they would have Shabbat dinners on the Friday’s that they could afford meat, and some Sunday’s Peter’s dad would go to the church down the street and on others he would read textbooks instead.
That’s really all he remembers of them, in the end. Their religions and a vague layout of the apartment and the low timber of his dad’s voice. He never tells people that, though. Never even really talked about it with May. When people asked him what he remembered, he told them the green of his dad’s eyes or the brown curls of his mom’s hair - details he only knew because of pictures that hung on his wall. And then even those faded as he grew up in Queens, as he became Ben and May’s nephew instead of Richard and Mary’s son.
He’s back in Hell’s Kitchen, now, but he’s no one’s son this time. He is no one at all.
His apartment reflects that. A barren and rickety place, with wind that sneaks in through the walls and the windows and mice that scurry somewhere below. He’s got nothing hanging on the walls, nor a TV or anything else of vanity. There’s a couch he found on the side of the road and a coffee table that he’d bought for 5 bucks at Goodwill and the bed and mattress that were already there when he moved in.
He’s got clothes, at least, and a hell of a pile of blankets. Things he had gotten by creeping back into his and May’s apartment in the dead of the night. Had filled one of her old chests with stupid, sentimental things he couldn’t find in his heart to leave behind - photo albums, her engagement ring, Ben’s camera, Tony’s glasses - and then stuffed it in the back of the closet in his apartment, to be opened at a much later date.
He’d also grabbed their squirrel fund of money hidden under the floorboards in the kitchen. Six thousand dollars and some change. Peter had tried his best to stretch it out, but it was getting close, now. He had to pay rent and buy a new first aid kit; enough food for his metabolism; cheap online college classes; an identity. He had picked up odd jobs, ones that paid too much for work that seemed too simple, and tried not to listen in to what he was helping with. It wasn’t easy, becoming a cog in the crime machine. But then he went out as Spider-Man after and tried to get justice for himself.
And then he was three months into his exile, eating a sandwich on the roof of his apartment building. November, and the heat inside wasn’t working, but it was far from the coldest he’d ever been, and so he was managing. There was food in the pantry and new sheets on his bed and he’d even went out and bought some cleaning spray for the couch, so now it only smelled like bleach and his blood and not all that plus cats, too.
He was still putting off going back inside, though, because for all that there was now something like comfort there was also a hell of a lot of loss, and Peter was getting so exhausted of his routine, the homework and wrapping himself in a mountain of blankets and the general loneliness that came with it. And anyways, his suit had a heater but even Tony couldn’t make it soundless, and the quiet buzz of the air made his senses go haywire, so he only used it if he was high on some building, hiding away from civilization (like now). Until those moments, he suffered through by wearing two pairs of thermal underwear and by taking a couple shots of whiskey, which really did nothing for him with his metabolism but did warm him up.
Ah, alcohol. If only Tony could see him now.
This is all to truly explain how Peter came to this point; mask rolled up to his nose, a half eaten and smushed sandwich in his hand, heaters loud against his ears, sitting at the edge of a rooftop in the depths of Hell’s Kitchen - Daredevil scaring the shit out of him in a moment so ridiculous it felt like a movie scene.
“Spider-Man,” a deep voice says, and it takes a minute to register (damn you, suit heaters) and then Peter actually, genuinely screams.
He will never admit it. He will also never admit that he threw his hands up and his sandwich goes flying, lost to the sky. He feels more emotions watching a pigeon snatch it out of the air than he has about anything else in months, which is probably why he actually scowls at Daredevil.
“Dude,” Peter says, “My sandwich.”
Daredevil is a tall guy, with ropes wrapped tightly around his arms and knuckles. The red leather get up is a little much, but then Peter can’t really talk - the devil horned helmet kind of completes the look, just like Peter knows the way the eyes move around in his mask freaks people out too. He’s muscular, too, more muscular than Peter himself, but then Peter is definitely younger than this guy and half-starving most of the time, so that’s kind of an unfair comparison.
Peter sees all this and comprehends it but is really, really stuck on the sandwich. Sue him. He’s hungry and he’s been patrolling in the cold for going on five hours now and Delmar had given him his sub for free and he’d swung it all the way back here from Queens, man, from Queens. That’s a trek and a half. And some fucking nocturnal pigeon just steals it? Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.
Peter doesn’t say any of this, obviously, because he’s not an idiot. He knows people around Queens talk about how young he seems (his shitty interrogation from when he was 15 actually haunts him) and he’s not trying to add more fuel to that fire. He’s already heard about twenty million speeches about how he’s too young to be doing what he’s doing and none of them have worked yet, so he’s a little tired of hearing them, and Daredevil, as cool as he is, is known for having a pretty strong moral compass (no killing, only near-death maiming, which, what?) and Peter’s pretty sure he wouldn’t support a minor as a vigilante.
“You’re in my territory,” Daredevil basically growls, stalking closer to Peter’s side of the roof.
Peter does not bother moving away. Daredevil can try to push him off the rooftop if he wants, but Peter will just stick to it. “I live here,” Peter says all slow, the way Flash used to talk to him when he found out Peter’s first language was Hebrew and not English. He feels like an asshole, but… the guy hasn’t apologized for scaring Peter into dropping his sandwich, so fair game, he thinks.
“You live in Queens,” Daredevil says, and it’s more like a sneer than anything, like Queens isn’t basically a gold-plated kingdom compared to the absolute disaster that is Hell’s Kitchen.
Peter can’t help but roll his eyes under his mask. “I used to, but now I just patrol there. I live here. In Hell’s Kitchen. Like you.”
Daredevil stops the slow prowling he was doing, mouth twisting. “You can’t live here.”
Okay, now Peter’s hungry and exasperated and just plain annoyed. He pulls his mask back over his nose. “Unless you can find me an apartment in Queens for less than a grand, I’m stuck here, man. Sorry to break the news or whatever.”
Daredevil’s whole stance seems to change; less like he’s about to fight and more loose, his hands falling from fists at his side. “A grand?” He asks, incredulous, “In New York? Are you living in a closet?”
Fair question, actually. Peter thinks about saying No, my building just has so many code violations that it’s probably on the verge of collapse and it’s so obvious that my landlord has to advertise cheap, under the table rent or else he wouldn’t have any tenants at all.
He does not say this, mostly because Daredevil would probably find this against his morals or whatever and beat up Peter’s landlord, who, unfortunately, although a sleazeball, accepted Peter’s expired ID with barely a glance and pays the water bill himself. It’s a terrible deal and also too good to let go of, so Peter just shrugs.
“Basically,” Peter confirms, “So I can’t leave, but I really do only patrol in Queens. Honest. I’m not, like,” he makes quotation symbols with his fingers, but seriously Daredevil’s eyes are so well covered with that mask it’s a wonder he can see at all, “Taking over your territory.”
He has the distinct feeling that the man is judging him. “You think you could take over what’s mine?”
Peter throws his hands up. “Is this game of thrones?”
Daredevil tilts his head. “I don’t know that game.”
“Man, what-“ Peter cuts himself off and makes himself take a long, deep breath, the way Ned used to tell him too. “I’ll keep fighting bad guys in Queens, and this can be my resting place, alright? My spiderweb, if you will,” Peter cringes at that as he says it, Jesus Christ, what is wrong with him, “Or whatever, just ignore me.”
“I can do that,” Daredevil says, and then takes a running leap and jumps off the roof and onto the next and so on, until he becomes a speck in the distance before disappearing from view entirely.
“I can do that,” Peter mocks under his breath, and then, still mourning the loss of his sandwich, goes inside to burrow under his blankets and eat a protein bar.
──────⊱⁜⊰──────
It turns out that Daredevil could not, in fact, ignore Peter, although Peter is self aware enough to admit that this time it may actually be Peter’s own fault.
He is in a dumpster.
How Peter got to be in this dumpster is a story that is both incredibly heroic and terribly embarrassing. To make a long story short; he’d overheard intel about the 109 street gang staging a weapons deal on the border of Queens, and how the weapons were crazy expensive and also just crazy in general. Obviously, he’d gone after them. What was another arms deal after that disaster with Toomes back in high school?
Big mistake, buddy. Massive. He’d underestimated his opponents, had taken his time beating up a few of them and missed the magic gun they had been hiding behind their back. They’d gotten a clear shot on him and he’d been able to turn before it hit his entire back, but it did hit most of his left arm and neck, and it genuinely felt like his actual soul was on fire.
He could smell his flesh burning. It was incredibly unpleasant. And then one of them shoved a knife into his thigh, which - thank you, random gangster! - brought him back into focus and gave him enough energy to web up the remaining men, take the magic gun and crush it between his good hand and the brick wall, and swing back one handed to his apartment.
Except he had not managed that last part, actually. Which was why he was bleeding and burnt in a dumpster. And why Daredevil was peeking over the lid at him, looking somehow supremely disappointed even with most of his face covered.
“Hi,” Peter says, because he’s polite, “I’m just resting.”
“You smell like blood and dumpster oil,” Daredevil responds, and then jumps in said dumpster to help him out of it.
It’s painful, but he’s had worse, so he sucks it up and lets himself be dragged down streets without much complaining. His vision goes spotty for a minute and when it comes back they’re standing in front of a familiar door; Daredevil pulls a tiny knife out of a pocket from his ankle and jiggles with the doorknob until it unlocks.
“Oh great,” Peter says, a little delusional from the bleed leaking out of his thigh and the burns that blister against the cold air, “I’ve always wanted to do some casual breaking and entering.”
“It’s not breaking and entering if it’s your own apartment,” Daredevil’s voice isn’t its usual growl, sounds more amused than anything. He dumps Peter on a couch that Peter recognizes vaguely as his own.
“Of course you know where I live,” Peter mutters, and rolls more on his right side, trying not to aggravate the burns, “And how to get into my apartment. Even though we’ve met once.”
Daredevil sniffs. “Basic lock picking.” He does not mention how he knows where Peter lives. “Where’s your first aid kit?”
“Under the sink,” Peter sighs, and is grateful to his past self for not leaving out anything of importance. No pictures, no items, only a grocery list taped to the fridge and a couple biochemistry research papers on his coffee table. Nothing identifiable. Not that it matters anyway. There’s nothing to identify; he doesn’t exist. Not really.
Daredevil sets the first aid kit right on top of the research papers and then crouches down beside him, stays completely still for a long moment, and then flips open the first aid box.
“I can do that,” Peter says, awkwardly and a little unsure, “This really isn’t bad enough for you to be here. Not that I don’t appreciate it! Just, uh-“
“Relax, kid,” Daredevil says, and damn, he still sounds amused, even as if he flips through the box, grabbing bandaids and creams alike, “I’m here. Need a breather before I go out again.”
It is the lamest excuse in the history of excuses, and yet Peter lets him get away with it. Maybe because he hasn’t really spoken to anyone since his confession to Rhodey on the compound roof three months ago; maybe because he hasn’t been touched gently since he was held between MJ and Ned four months ago. A lifetime ago, it feels like.
Daredevil takes his gloves off, the leather peeling. “They, uh, have other blood on them already. Wouldn’t want to mix yours up with that.” His hands are as pale as his face, nails clean and knuckles permanently bruised. They look like Tony’s had.
He’s pathetic. A vigilante that beats people up so badly they beg for death is stitching his leg closed and Peter feels like he’s about to cry. This is life. Really, Peter thinks, thanks mom and dad. This is what really makes it.
He closes his eyes and leans his head back and tries very hard to not think about the needle going through his skin. It doesn’t even hurt, not really, isn’t comparable to half of the injuries he’s suffered, but Daredevil is gentle as he threads the needle through flesh, pausing between each stitch to ensure that they’re even. He’s giving Peter more care than Peter gives himself; Peter’s usually too tired to bother with stitches, usually just holds the skin together while he wraps it with gauze and deals with the ugly scar in the morning - if it’s bad enough that he needs stitches, he’s always rough with it. It’s hard to give yourself them, especially with all the blood. There’s no time to be pretty with that sort of thing, he’d always thought, but then here was Daredevil, stitching him up with the precision of a plastic surgeon, hands steady and stained with blood.
“Where’d you learn to fight?” Daredevil asks, casual as anything as he pulls the thread tight.
Peter hands him the scissors to cut the end off. “I didn’t. Self taught.” He thinks about Natasha, and the way she had called On your toes! across the airport at him, and Ben, who used to hold up his palms and say one two-two one, Pete. “Mostly.”
Daredevil pauses in his act of putting supplies back into the kit. “Didn’t you work with Stark?” Peter hears the question unasked; why didn’t he train you?
“He was busy,” Peter says a little evasively, a little defensively. The loss of Tony feels fresh still, more than a year later, an open wound gaping for the world to see.
Daredevil just hums, pulling out cream and gesturing to him. “You’re gonna have to pull your suit down a little.”
Peter hesitates. He doesn’t know why. As annoying and mysterious as the guy is, he’s still a hero. Sort of. And not like he was asking Peter to take his mask off or anything. For the stitches on his leg, the man had just pulled apart the cut on his suit so he wouldn’t have to expose himself, which didn’t give any sign of being a creep.
“At least let me help with your neck,” Daredevil says, all patient. “You can do your arm yourself, but twisting around to get to your neck will just make it worse.”
“Alright,” Peter agrees reluctantly, and pulls up his mask to his nose, letting out a soft hiss as it pulls at the smoldering skin under his ear.
There’s silence as Daredevil applies the cream to his neck, his touch feather light. Peter blinks hard and tries not to think about May’s bloody, shaking hands holding his face in her last moments.
“You’re young,” Daredevil says, in that abrupt way of his.
Peter thinks about denying it, then decides that’s too much work. “I guess. Younger than you.” That was probably rude. Whatever. His neck hurt.
Daredevil’s lower face doesn’t change. “High school?”
“No,” Peter says, shifting against the couch. He thinks he got more blood on it. Damn. He’d just used his new cleaner on it the other day. “I’m in college. Live alone, work. All that.”
It’s not even a lie, which makes Peter sad. He can’t believe he actually misses having a curfew and his aunt on the other side of the wall and analyzing The Great Gatsby in AP Lit, but he does. The college classes he takes online are boring. His job is boring. Living alone is boring. Being a 17 year old adult is boring, boring, boring.
“What about you?” Peter asks, just to even the playing field, even though he doesn’t really care. Ned would be freaking out about this, though, and Peter from two years ago would be too. “You got a day job?”
“Something like that,” Daredevil tells him, still so mysterious and annoying, and Peter rolls his eyes under his mask. Then the man gets up and washes his hands in the sink, and it looks ridiculous, the devil pulling back on his still-bloody gloves next to a couch with a bunch of yellow daisies patterned over it that it takes everything in Peter not to laugh. He doesn’t get how the man’s so serious all the time.
“Look,” Daredevil says, and his mouth twitches, like that’s the funniest thing that’s been said all night, “I know you’re not a kid. But you need training.”
And now Peter is stuck between saying fuck no, he’s not making friends (look how well that did him last time) and also agreeing because yeah, he does need the training, he knows that. He’s been… okay so far, and honestly that’s a small miracle, probably more thanks to his Spidey sense and webs than anything else. He knows how to throw a punch and his flexibility makes it hard for people to hold him, but really it’s only a matter of time. Bad things happen to him. Parker Luck, Ben used to say. May used to tell him he just a pessimist, and Ben would always put his hands up, say, well, you’re the witch here.
“I don’t have money to hire a trainer,” is all Peter says, which is true.
Daredevil throws the burn cream at him, which Peter catches before he’s even properly comprehended that it was flying at his face at all. “I’ll train you,” says Daredevil, his voice low again. “No money. Just a promise you’ll put effort into it. That you’ll… be safe.”
There’s got to be a catch. But then, so what? Peter’s got nothing to lose, not anymore. Only himself, and he won’t be around for long enough to do that if he keeps almost dying in weapons deals. “I can promise to try.”
Daredevil acknowledges this with a nod. “Wednesdays, at 11? There’s a gym not far from here. Called Fogwell’s. No one will be there then.”
“I know Fogwell’s,” Peter says in agreement. And he does. His family’s old apartment had been right across from it. He remembers how loud it was on weekends, when they would host tourneys. The way the lights flickered all the time and his mom’s black boots by the door.
Daredevil pauses at his response, then shrugs. “Alright,” he says, and then goes to the window by the couch and climbs out of it, and then he’s just gone.
“So weird,” Peter mutters to himself. He presses the symbol in his chest to loose his suit and begins the slow process of spreading the salve across his arm. He doubts it’ll scar - burn marks never really do on him, for some reason - and his neck is already feeling better, especially once he gathers the strength to wobble over and stuff his face with a couple frozen waffles.
He climbs into bed in nothing but boxers and prays his stitches don’t pop in the night and stain his new sheets. He can see streaks of lavender starting to show in the sky, evidence of morning coming, and closes his eyes. It’s Sunday. That’s the day of rest, he thinks his dad told him once. And he really, really needs it.
──────⊱⁜⊰──────
Daredevil is already at Fogwell’s when Peter gets there, sitting cross legged in the middle of the ring in the darkness, hands curled on his knees.
“It’s like you’re trying to be a cliche,” Peter says, and means it even more when he sees that the guy is dressed in his old costume - the all black ninja-esq ensemble, his hands wrapped in white tape.
Daredevil doesn’t move from his position, just half nods at the spot across from him. Peter sighs and then sits, trying to mimic the weird hand pose the other guy’s doing.
“We’re going to meditate first,” Daredevil tells him, and Peter makes a face under his mask. He feels too antsy to sit still any longer - for today’s job, he had been given an all black suit, a gun and holster to put on his waist, and a door to stand silently and dead still in front of for seven hours - and he hasn’t meditated since… since May was alive. Four months, then. Nearly five.
But Daredevil doesn’t say anymore so Peter doesn’t seem to have much of a choice. He closes his eyes and tries not to think. It’s next to impossible.
Some guy in a pizza shop down the block just burned his hand on the stove. A cat scavenges for food in the alleyway over. There’s a couple having sex in his old apartment building and a kid wailing from a nightmare on the floor below. He tries to tune it all out and focus on something else. The sound the pigeons make as they scuffle on the roof. But then that just makes him mad about the pigeon who stole his sandwich, so he gives up on that too.
If May was here… well. If May was here, Peter probably wouldn’t be in this gym at all. He’d be patrolling in Queens, would make it home to their apartment by midnight because it was a school night. Maybe he would call Happy, or text MJ, or play Call of Duty with Ned. He would have May check over his anatomy homework. Fall asleep to the sound of Real Housewives playing in the living room, because May never worked on Thursdays so she would stay up and fall asleep on the couch, and Peter would throw a blanket over her before he left for school in the morning.
Peter peeks open an eye. Daredevil hasn’t moved. He sighs and closes them again.
He’s glad, at least, that he’d been done with his shift by 7pm. He had no clue what exactly he was guarding behind that door, but with how much he got paid to stand there he would guess it was nothing good. They never gave him details for why he did the things that he did. It was mostly muscle work, anyways, just standing somewhere and look threatening enough that no one would try anything, but it was unnerving to do regardless.
He’d gotten the job by accident. Some panhandler on the street had said anyone who could beat him in a pull up contest would win twenty bucks. And hey, twenty bucks is twenty bucks, and Peter’s strong, and he looks like it too (especially with how bruised up his face and knuckles had been that day), when he’s eating enough. So he’d beaten the guy easy, and another guy from the crowd asked if he needed a job, and Peter, who has either lost all survival instincts or was just altogether desperate to a point of insanity, said yes.
They asked if he could shoot a gun, and he said yes. Ben had taught him the basics of it when he was a kid, took him to the range once every couple weeks after that. Better safe than sorry, he used to tell May, but all that practice couldn’t stop someone else’s bullet from bleeding him out on the pavement.
Peter shakes his head, hard.
Anyway. So he had what Ben taught him and also that time he went on the one singular mission with Natasha and had to use her gun (a .38, tiny thing, but when he’d shot it, it’d blown a hole straight through his targets knee, bone fragments all over the place), and that seemed like enough. They asked if he had a gun and he said no, so they gave him one. They asked if he had a suit and he said no, so they gave him one of those too.
It wasn’t a bad gig; he didn’t have to talk to anyone, didn’t have to pretend like he wanted friends. He hadn’t had to shoot anyone (yet), and he was only hired as muscle half the time. The other half they just made him unload boxes and other heavy things that didn’t even make his muscles strain, just felt like a nice warm up before patrol.
He was probably like the lowest level in some gang or something. Probably. Peter wasn’t stupid, but what choice did he have? It had landed right in his lap like a gift from God or whoever was up there, and Peter wasn’t one to be ungrateful, so he took it. He made money and he survived. Well, he survived financially. The other part - mentally, physically - was harder to do.
Speaking of, he was getting really tired of this meditation. This was not going to help him survive physically. Mentally maybe, if he did it right, but… he didn’t, so it was useless.
He peaked open an eye and yelped. Daredevil had inched so close to him that their knees were almost touching.
“Dude!” Peter exclaims, scooting back.
“You need to be more perceptive with your senses,” Daredevil tells him, perfectly calm.
Oh. Well, that made more sense. The way Daredevil tries to teach him things is so creepy, though. But he is a devil, not a professor. Well, he could be actually, as his day job, but after this experience Peter very much doubts that.
“I tried,” Peter counters, ignoring how it comes out sounding like a whine, “But it’s too much to hear everything all the time. I would’ve if I knew you were going to do that!”
“You need to always be prepared,” Daredevil says, standing up. “How much can you hear?”
He thinks about lying, but throws that to the side pretty quickly. People online used to say that Daredevil’s hearing was what made him so powerful. That if you needed help he would come running before the first scream was even fully out of your mouth.
“A lot,” Peter admits helplessly, clambering to his feet too. “I haven’t really tested it. But I can hear that woman screaming five blocks from here. And the apartment on the upper left across the street is watching Star Wars.”
“Listen again,” Daredevil tells him. “To the woman.”
He does. She isn’t screaming anymore, just panting. There’s the sound of a fist meeting a face or some other part of a body and the guy who had been trapping her against the wall flops to the ground like a puppet with his strings cut. Another woman is talking to her; she’s wearing a leather jacket, Peter can hear the way it crinkles, the same sound that Ben’s used to make.
“I have a friend watching over Hell’s Kitchen for us tonight,” Daredevil tells him. “She’ll keep it safe for the next few hours.”
“Another vigilante?” Peter asks. For a second, he’s a kid again. He’s not alone.
“Jessica Jones,” Daredevil confirms, “Don’t call her a vigilante in front of her though. Not her type of thing.”
Well, if Peter had his own private investigator firm and people only called him a vigilante he would be annoyed too. He knew Jessica Jones through the papers, remembered Kilgrave haunting New York and the petrified look on May’s face. Ben had brought her to the gun range nearly every other day until the news broke that Jessica had killed Kilgrave, and May had looked up at the TV from her crossword and said Good riddance.
“Why didn’t he just get arrested?” Peter had asked Ben, and he’d been young still, maybe barely ten and already world weary after the loss of his parents five years before.
Ben had said, “Some people are bigger than the law,” which was probably not the best thing to tell a ten year old, especially as a cop, but Ben had always been heartbreakingly honest, “Sometimes the nicest thing you can do is put ‘em down.”
Peter hasn’t met anyone he’s had to put down, yet. Hasn’t run into anyone like Kilgrave. He hits the rapists extra hard though, goes for their faces and sometimes if he’s feeling particularly vicious he’ll aim for their groins, but for the most part he tries to stay calm. He used to dream about killing Skip, when he was younger, but that was a long time ago, and the pain from it feels distant and cold. Had almost killed Green Goblin for May; probably would’ve if it hadn’t been for the other Peters.
“Is she killing people tonight? Jessica?” Peter clarifies, not really finding it within himself to care much either way. He can still hear that girl crying in the alley. She’s scraped her knees, he thinks.
Daredevil pauses. “No. She doesn’t… she tries not to. No killing in my neighborhood.” Then he throws Peter tape and tells him to take his gloves off and wrap his hands.
Peter does, follows Daredevil’s instructions with half an ear and instinct as he folds the tape over his knuckles, but mostly he’s thinking that the rumors are true. Daredevil really doesn’t kill people, which is weird cause, well, he’s the devil, but also, Peter thinks, pulling from his knowledge of Catholicism from Ben, the devil is supposed to torture the people in hell, right? Can’t kill them twice, or something.
What’s he know, though, really. Peter’s the worst Jew ever (expected, since his mom died so young, and he’d had no one else to teach him) and Ben and his dad had been Catholic and May had been spiritual, which drove Ben up the wall and then some. Peter wonders if Daredevil is religious. Maybe he’s actually the devil.
Peter would not be surprised. The guy is freaky. Just appearing all the time out of nowhere, like a ghost.
Okay now he’s scared. Daredevil is staring at him silently, his head tilted like it always is. Great. Great. Peter got into his own head and freaked himself out, what’s new? Teenage anxiety literally just transformed itself into his Spidey sense, which isn’t going off, he reminds himself, he’s safe. And Daredevil is not an actual devil.
Probably.
“Okay,” Daredevil says, and his voice is gentler, not as growl-y. “Let’s start with stance.”
So they go over how to stand for thirty minutes. Peter was expecting to be bored but it’s actually kind of fun, especially when they switch to learning how to fall. Peter didn’t know you were supposed to fall a certain way, but now that he knows, it’s turned into a game in his head to figure out which way is the best way to get hurt the least.
“Good,” Daredevil tells Peter as Peter slams into the floor, hip first. Peter laughs, because of course he’s good at falling.
“Tell me if you’re hurting,” Daredevil demands, but it sounds more worried than like an order. “The minute it hurts, we stop.”
“I’m fine, Double D,” Peter says, bouncing back up, and he is. He feels like he’s learning again, back in a classroom - his favorite place to be.
The devil’s lips twitch at the nickname. “You can call me Red. I know Daredevil is a mouthful.”
Then he throws Peter to the ground a couple more times.
“So is Spider-Man,” Peter agrees, only panting a little, “Some people say Spidey, I guess. That’s not as cool as Red, though.”
“We’ll work on it,” Red says, with the seriousness of someone who thinks that finding a good nickname is as important as the training they’re doing.
Red spends the rest of their time going back over stances. The best way to stand for each punch, how to not lose balance when you’re kicking, which way to lean into a punch for it to do the least damage. It’s cool. Peter didn’t know there was so much science behind fighting, but then he really hadn’t known much about fighting in general, so that makes sense.
At around one, they finally stop, and Peter’s surprised to find himself out of breath. He hadn’t realized how much he relied on his webs to move around before he wasn’t using them anymore.
Daredevil passes him a water bottle. “Drink,” he orders, and Peter, absolutely parched, downs the whole thing in one go. “Your burns are gone.”
Peter squints. “I’m not going to ask how you know that. But yes.”
“If they were still there, you wouldn’t be here,” Red says, like it’s obvious. Peter doesn’t buy it. There’s gotta be some other, devil-voodoo way he knows. “You heal fast too?”
“Yeah,” Peter confirms, because he’s pretty sure everyone can guess that one with how quickly he bounces back. “You can’t?”
“Unfortunately not,” Red says, all dry, like it’s something he really does mourn. “Would make my life helluva lot easier.”
“It’s a blessing,” Peter agrees, rolls his mask up to his nose for fresh air, “My suit doesn’t have Kevlar, or anything. Basically just spandex. If I didn’t heal fast I’d probably be dead because of it.”
Red taps his foot against the floor. It reminds Peter of when he was in band and they had to find some hidden pattern to base their beat off of and they all sounded terrible for a minute before they collectively decided to just go with the same beat the drummer was on. And God. Peter had been in band, Jesus Christ. That felt even less real than lying on the floor of an empty gym with Daredevil.
“My suit is thick,” Red gives, “One time I got shot in the head, point blank, and I’m still here.”
Dude. Red is actually the devil. Who the hell survives a gunshot to the head? Peter scoots a little farther away. He is not ready to be taken down to the fiery pits just yet.
“What happens when you get stabbed?” Red asks, like he isn’t a deeply disturbing individual.
The question does change Peter’s focus though. “I know how to sew.”
“What if you had a suit that had protection built into it?” Red rolls his head to the side, so he’s facing Peter’s own. He looks human like that, all lazy and loose. “No more sewing. No more stab wounds.”
“Let’s focus on fighting first,” Peter tells him, mostly because he already owes the Devil a favor for the training and he has very little interest in giving the guy his soul for a new suit, as nice as not being stabbed would be. “Are you patrolling tonight?”
Red doesn’t move his head from staring at Peter. It’s only slightly unnerving. It kind of reminds him of Natasha. “No. It’s quiet. I think word got around that Jess was out.”
Peter lets his eyes fall shut. The sounds of Hell’s Kitchen wash over him. No one is screaming. He hears a pigeon land on the roof and doesn’t even get mad. If this is meditation, it works a lot better after he’s sweated things out than before.
“You’ll sleep well tonight,” Red says surely, like he can see the future of Peter’s good rest or something. “Go home.”
I have no home, Peter thinks. He says, “Next Wednesday?”
“11, sharp,” Red says, which is a good dismissal, so Peter slips out the side door and climbs the wall of the gym so he has a higher area to jump off of. Then he’s swinging, and it feels like flying a little bit instead of the falling it has been.
He has an acquaintance. It’s perfect. And he’s learning how to not die (slightly less perfect, for reasons he doesn’t want to think about). On the other hand - he’s learning how to keep people alive! That’s good, he knows that much, even with Ben’s voice echoing in his ears.
He’s in such a good mood that he opens his computer and turns on Star Trek when he gets back. If he closes his eyes hard enough, he can almost pretend like he’s in Stark Tower, nodding off on the common room couch with the movie playing and Tony’s laptop keys clicking in the background.
──────⊱⁜⊰──────
Friday rolls around, and Peter, bored to tears at work - hired muscle this time, standing menacingly in front of a door with his gun at the front of his waist - decides to break his own rule and listen to what’s happening inside the room he was guarding.
Which led him to dressing up as Spider-Man that night and having to beat up the very people he worked for, because he could hear them discussing moving up from the weapons dealing to human trafficking.
And look. Peter’s morals had shifted with time and experience and, in the matter of complete honesty, the need for a decent paycheck. He hadn’t known what or who he was working for and convinced himself that ignore was bliss and it couldn’t be that bad because the streets weren’t any worse than usual, but then he was an idiot, so that was on him. And weapons dealing was bad, of course it was, but… well, that’s what the vigilantes of New York were supposed to stop anyways, and weapons would be around regardless, so he thought it was just a necessary evil.
Human trafficking, though. That was out of the question. That wasn’t even in the realm of possibility of things he would ever be able to defend. The minute he heard the words come out of a mouth, his ears sharp, Peter had closed his eyes, had leaned his head back against the door and breathed.
Goodbye, money, Peter mourned. Goodbye slight job stability and being able to work weird hours and still afford his rent and a decent amount of groceries and not having to do taxes.
So he beat up his employers and kicked them pretty hard because really? Seriously? He didn’t even make jokes the whole fight, he was that mad.
“Goodbye, name brand cereal,” he said at the end of it, webbing the last guy to a wall.
“Weird outro,” the guy slurred, and Peter gave him grace, because he had hit his head pretty hard.
Then Peter rooted around the warehouse and took some cash before he called the cops. Blood money, but money all the same, and Peter couldn’t afford to be picky, not anymore.
At least with everyone arrested, he got to keep the suit and gun. He added them to his treasure chest of hidden things in his closet the next day, and then he got to work submitting applications.
It was… humbling. Fast food places didn’t want him; most retail stores or nice restaurants were a train ride away, and Peter didn’t want to spend money on a metro pass or waste the webs he would need to swing across the city everyday. He did it the old fashioned way after a day of online rejections; printed out his resume for a dollar at the local library (with all his previous experience completely falsified, every reference put down just a fake number), and went into every place he could along ten blocks to try and hand it to a worker.
A guy at bodega said he would hand it along to the owner; a girl at an apothecary nodded approvingly at him. He took these as good signs. But it wasn’t until the sun had begun to set that he had any real luck.
A bar, of all places, which Peter only even attempted out of pure desperation. He still existed on paper; his ID put him at a fresh 21, the age he would be if he hadn’t been blipped out of existence. He didn’t look quite as young as he used too, either. The past few months had hardened him to someone rough around the edges, with a five o’clock shadow and messy hair, because he couldn’t be bothered paying to get it cut. He had grown a few inches and the food he had been able to buy had filled him out decently, although he was still skinnier than he ought to be.
The place was near empty, but it was a Monday and early evening, so he wasn’t surprised. The bartender looked up when the bell rang at the door, and then went back to wiping down the bar.
“You look a little young,” she said to him without looking up as he came closer, and yeah, fair, because even with all his new roughness he was still only 17.
Peter, prepared, pulled his ID from his wallet. “Young but legal.”
She shrugged at him and didn’t even bother looking. “It don’t matter here, kid. What can I get you?”
“A job interview?” Peter asked, and that was surprising enough she glanced up, brows raised. “If you’re hiring.”
“Hell,” she sighed, and tucked a graying piece of her hair behind her ear. “You been a bartender before?”
“I’m a fast learner,” Peter responded, leaning against the bar, and passed over his resume.
She snorted. “Paper ain’t mean shit. What happened to your face?”
Peter flinched. He’d forgotten about the cut above his eyebrow, held together by butterfly tape, that he had gotten in the early hours of the morning stopping a mugging. Wasn’t very professional of him. “I ran into a door.”
She looked unimpressed. Glanced down at where his knuckles rested against the bar; bruised and cracked to shit. “Sure,” she drawled, and Peter flushed, tucked them into his pockets. “Alright.”
“Alright?” Peter echoed.
“My name’s Josie,” she told him, rolling the sleeves of her flannel up her arms to reveal skin covered in tattoos. “I can teach you to bartend, if you’re as quick as you say. My daughter’s pregnant, I’m gonna need someone to cover me soon.”
“I am,” Peter nodded, hardly believing his luck, “Quick, that is.”
“So you make drinks, you take orders, and,” she gave him a look, “You break up fights before they destroy my bar.”
“I can do that,” Peter confirmed.
“Go wash your hands,” she told him, “And then let me show you how to pour shots.” Then she took his resume off the tabletop and crumpled it, throwing it in the trash can, and pointed him toward the sink.
So Peter had a job again, and again, he thanked whatever the hell was up there that practically threw the thing in his damn lap.
It wasn’t as easy as standing in place for ten hours, but Peter certainly enjoyed it more. Mixing drinks reminded him of chemistry, and the formulas for them stayed in his mind just as easily. He finished his training quickly with reluctant praise from Josie and got his schedule, which she warned him was subject to change at any time. Peter didn’t care, not when he was making a steady wage and decent tips from the people who came in.
Josie threw a black collared shirt at him on Monday, and he was officially in it then. No one said anything about his age, nor did they question the marks that never really left his face, and as long as he didn’t come in with actively bleeding knuckles Josie didn’t bother asking questions.
This all leads up to him being late for his weekly meeting with Daredevil, who he’s still scared of but now slightly more scared of Josie, so he can’t find it in him to feel to guilty about making the man wait for fifteen minutes.
He’s meditating again when Peter gets there, once again in complete darkness and so still he looks like a statue. Peter creeps down beside him and copies the pose, closing his eyes and trying to empty out his mind.
It’s been a good week, all things considered. Lost a job and then gained one, and Josie’s paying him under the table too, so still no taxes, and she hadn’t even asked for his last name. He stopped a human trafficking ring before they could even start, threw some pieces of human garbage in jail, and rescued three kittens out of trees, which he needed after all the darkness and uncertainty. He’s more tired after the full shift he’d just worked, but still too jittery to really be able to meditate, and Daredevil puts him out of his misery after only another ten minutes, standing up in a smooth motion.
“You smell like alcohol,” Red tells him, and Peter’s sure his nose is wrinkled under the mask.
“Yeah, sorry,” Peter stands up too, twisting his back with a crack, “I had the closing shift at the bar I work at tonight, couldn’t leave early.”
Red just hums. “Let’s see what you remember.”
They go through stances and falling again, although much quicker. Peter has to actively remember not to let his feet stick to the ground so that he can actually fall, because Red isn’t quite the level of strong that could keel Peter over without the element of surprise.
“Good,” Red nods, “Let’s move to blocking.”
Peter appreciates this lesson even more than the last. He’s been letting the bad guys through his defenses much easier recently, with his instincts going to protect sensitive areas like his stomach and back instead of his face, which leads him looking rough the next day. With Red’s help, he learns to instinctually raise his arms a certain way to block different hits with a minimal amount of pain, fists open and then closed. They mix in the blocking with stances, and Peter’s surprised with how noticeably it helps him adjust to his center of gravity and levels of defense.
“People aim for the soft parts of you,” Red explains, moving Peter’s arms into formation with a gentle grip, “Your stomach, your face. Usually you can only protect one area at a time, so they go for the places that are open.”
“I haven’t been shot or stabbed all week,” Peter says proudly, lifting his chin.
Red shakes his head, but the twist of his mouth looks amused. “I can smell the blood on your face, though.”
Peter can too. The spandex just sticks to it, makes him smell like straight iron, but that’s nothing a shower, some food and his suit in the laundry won’t fix. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“Head injuries can be even more dangerous than stomach or other organ ones,” Red warns, and aims a harsh jab with his elbow at Peter’s face, which Peter blocks with the meat of his forearm, wincing heavily. “They can be permanent, long lasting.”
Peter knows that, he’s not stupid. But. Well, he hasn’t really been thinking about that recently. A couple black eyes or a bad headache from blunt force wouldn’t impact him as heavily as a knife to the stomach would, at least not in short term. Peter couldn’t afford to miss work because he caught a stray blade to the gut instead of a concussion, which took a hell of a time to heal.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Red stops his assault, letting his fists fall to his sides, “I get it. How about we try to protect all of you, instead of focusing on just one thing?”
“Man, I only have two hands,” Peter sighs, but then follows as Red puts him through the wringer for the next hour, running him through drills that make his teeth hurt and ribs smart. Red doesn’t want to hurt him, but he also doesn’t want him to get hurt, so there’s a tough middle ground that gives Peter bruises instead of cracked ribs. Peter doesn’t really care about the pain, doesn’t complain about it at all, but Red’s real strict about it, says his one rule is that Peter’s got to tell him when it hurts.
So when Peter let’s out a little, “Ouch,” when Red hits the same spot on his upper ribs three times, the man stops instantly, hands Peter a water bottle and gestures for them to both sit down.
“You did good today,” Red tells him, voice warmer than usual, “Next week we can start on the actual hitting part, since you’ve got most of the basics down. Your left leg is a little weak, though.”
Peter grins. “Thanks. I, uh,” for a moment, he remembers the apartment crumbling, his legs crushed under stone, May in his arms and tears in his eyes and the way he hadn’t even noticed he was limping until his doppelgängers were pulling him away from Green Goblin, “I hurt it a while ago. Just phantom pain, I’m pretty sure.”
“It doesn’t sound broken,” Red agrees, and Peter decides not to ask how the fuck he can hear Peter’s actual bones. Peter’s hearing is good, but not that good, and he’s grateful. What he already has is overstimulating on good days and unbearable on bad ones; he doesn’t know how Daredevil can stand that and worse.
“So,” Red says conversationally, “You work at a bar.”
Peter gives him the side eye from under his mask. “Yes,” he draws out carefully, “Please don’t stalk me to my workplace.”
At that, Red actually lets out a chuckle. “Finding your apartment was an accident, Spider-Man, not a normal occurrence. I promise. I truly know nothing about you otherwise.”
“How did you do that?” Peter asks, curious, and rolls over on his side to stare at the man. “Find me, I mean.”
Red hesitates.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Peter adds hastily, and then, “But, like… just so I know, so that bad guys don’t follow me home too.”
“Bad guys,” Red repeats, deadpan, and then admits, “There’s a woman who lives on the floor below you. She used to date a man who liked to take his anger out on her. I put him in the hospital and he went to jail for a while, but he’s out on parole now. I stop by and check on her once a week, just listen in. And I heard your heartbeat. Recognized it pretty easily. Your heart, it, uh, beats real fast. Faster than anyone’s I’ve ever heard.”
Peter lets out a breath. That’s reassuring; he had been worried that his Spidey sense wasn’t working, that it hadn’t told him that Daredevil had followed him home. “I’m a mutate. Everything about me runs faster than normal people. Heartbeat, healing, all that.”
“I assumed,” Red shrugs against the ground. “It didn’t sound like you had a heart murmur or anything concerning, just familiar. But I don’t actively try to listen for you. So no dropping by your bar, don’t worry.”
Peter closes his eyes. “Thanks.” He can hear heartbeats, too, if he really tries. If he focuses hard enough. He’d heard Tony’s, the day it stopped, loud as a jackhammer even through his Iron Man suit and surrounded by other heroes. Heard it fade away.
After, whenever he was particularly anxious, he would listen to May’s heartbeat. It was always steady, healthy and strong. She ate organically and she was young, all signs for a long life. It had reassured Peter, then. When she had died, he hadn’t been able to bear to open his senses and listen to the sound of it fade. He placed his fingers against the pulse in her neck instead, but he’d still heard it stop regardless, like time had frozen over.
He hadn’t listened for heartbeats since. Didn’t think he could. It felt like a curse, at this point, but his whole life did, so what’s it really matter.
Peter shook the thought away. No point in it. Drowning in his grief wouldn’t make it go away or solve any of his countless problems. There was nothing he could do to change it; he let himself feel the pain, for one second, two, then stopped the process altogether.
Red is staring at him again, anyways, that creepy head tilt and no other movement. Peter is reminded of being dragged down to hell and has to stop himself from inching away.
“I work too,” Red says abruptly, words too loud.
“I mean yeah,” Peter says, clueless, “Vigilantism doesn’t really pay well, right?”
Red clears his throat. “I meant, I, uh,” he pauses, brings a hand to rub at his forehead over the mask, “I work in criminal justice.”
Oh, Peter thinks. Oh. This is Daredevil, trying to even the scale. He knows something so Peter deserves to know something too. How moral of him; how stupid.
Then he laughs. “Ironic.”
Daredevil sighs. “I’ve been made aware.” It’s a stark reminder that this man lives a real life, one where he probably has family and friends and people who know who he is under his mask, a secret identity that isn’t secret with the people he trusts. It makes Peter shut his eyes tight before he can open them again, hit by a sudden wave of grief for the people who knew Peter and Spider-Man as one entity, people who are long gone, now.
“Well,” Peter injects cheer into his voice, makes sure to sound teasing, “You deal with bad guys in daylight and at night. That’s like a double full time job. Put it on your resume.”
“I have a CV, thank you,” Red says loftily, like Peter has any idea what the difference is, “Unfortunately, I don’t think putting rapists in hospitals would get me hired anywhere worthwhile.”
“Hire yourself,” Peter suggests, and is surprised when he lets out a genuine laugh, “You can have a vigilante business. Make your own hours, pay your own check-“
“Take donations from victims?” Red interrupts dryly, “Steal money from the corporations I take down?”
Peter’s heart thumps painfully. He imagines it skipping a beat; remembers the way he had rooted around in the warehouse that week before and counted out a pile of bills to tuck in his suit. Then he remembers the piercing pains of starvation and how his wounds refused to heal from it, and he feels a little less guilty. All he wanted was to survive. He’d thought that he would have to live off the stolen funds from the warehouse for weeks before he would find a job - finding a place at Josie’s was a fluke of luck so far-fetched that Peter never could have imagined it.
He’s been quiet a minute too long, but Red doesn’t say anything. “Yeah,” Peter says after another beat. “Maybe a necessary evil.”
It’s honest of him. Maybe too honest. His morals are - bad, now. Or not bad, but all mixed up. Not the straight shot they used to be, and admitting that he thinks it’s okay to steal feels absurdly wrong, and hypocritical too, especially when he goes after thieves in alleyways, but. Well. He’s got bigger things to worry about, probably.
“If it’s necessary,” Red says, voice even, “And it’s not hurting anyone, then I don’t see an issue.”
Peter feels a rush of gratitude at the gentle reassurance. It blocks his throat and makes his eyes sting from the force of it, and he swallows it down. Life’s been so heavy recently. He just wants the weightlessness of being a teenager back.
“That’s why we’re starting with the basics,” Red says a little gruffly, “Blocking, dodging and perfecting your stance are all things that make it so you don’t get hurt as easily.”
Peter’s always hurting. His body hasn’t stopped aching since he was fourteen and waking up from a spider bite, shaking and sweating and raw. It’s chronic now, set deep in his muscles and flowing through his blood and eating him whole.
But Red says he doesn’t have any heart defects, so maybe it’s all in his head. And that just means it’s another thing he can’t let himself think about. Something he had to let go before it consumes him.
“Thanks,” Peter tells him, and he means it genuinely, but it comes out so empty. He’s so empty, and he doesn’t want to be, and there’s someone in front of him who’s kind of like a reluctant mentor, and he’s scared. He knows what happened to the last one, but Daredevil is different, he thinks. Red’s been around longer than anyone, survived impossible things and still standing tall. He doesn’t seem human, not in the same way Tony had, with his bad heart and near-death experiences every other year.
He’s reluctant. But.
He wants to keep learning. And Red’s a good teacher, and that’s enough. It has to be.
“Get some rest, Spider-Man,” Red tells him, and Peter’s trying to be good at listening, so he does.
──────⊱⁜⊰──────
Sunday comes, rare rays of sunlight bursting through the December cold, so Peter dons the suit and swings around for awhile. He stops a couple muggings, but doesn’t call the cops for most of them. Living in the sort of poverty he does now has softened him up - he directs the minor criminals to FEAST, or sometimes a church. Some guy leaves a bodega without paying for his sandwich, so Peter just forks over $4 of his own money to pay for it instead. He even helps a cat down from a tree.
It’s a slow day.
He heads back to Hell’s Kitchen when the sun starts to set, the sky glowing orange as he swings by it. Thinks about eating dinner - ramen, probably - and then maybe finishing up the essay he’s been putting off for his English class. Go to bed early; he’s got a 10am shift in the morning, instructions to wear his new shirt and try not to look to bruised up this time, Parker, fuck, at least tell the other guy to avoid your face.
That would literally get him laughed off the streets, but fine, whatever. He’s patrolled long enough today, he’s hungry, he’s ready to sit on his newly cleaned couch -
Daredevil is sitting on his roof with some lady next to him.
Peter sighs.
“I still have three more days before I’m supposed to see your ugly mug again, Red,” he says, swinging down to land lightly between them.
Red doesn’t twitch, but the lady next to him flinches so hard she nearly pitches forward. Red grabs her by the back of her leather jacket, ignoring when she hisses at him in protest.
“We need your help,” Red admits, turning to look at him. “You probably know more about super soldier serum than we do.” It sounds like it pains him to admit it.
“Must be serious if you’re out in daylight,” Peter jokes, fiddling with the web shooters on his wrists, “I thought you light on fire in the sun or something.”
“Probably know more about HYDRA than us, too,” the lady adds, sparing an amused snort at Peter’s quip. She’s thin and her short black hair makes her look even more pale than she probably is, and the scent of whiskey is strong as she sticks a hand out toward him. Her grip is firm, unyielding. “Jessica Jones.”
“Nice to meet you,” Peter says, still confused. “Spider-Man.”
“We’re working on a nickname,” Red says with a wave of his hand, like that’s the important thing happening.
Jessica rolls her eyes. “Can you help us, Spider-Man?”
Peter crosses his arms. “I need a couple more details-”
Red tilts his head and holds a hand up. Peter would be more offended if he wasn’t now aware of Red’s super hearing.
“We’ll tell you when we get there,” Red’s all matter of fact when he says it, and then he’s off, jumping from rooftop to rooftop before Peter can protest. Jessica shrugs at him, then, with a running leap, follows behind. It’s like she’s flying, but not staying up for long.
Peter follows them, but only because Red still has a lot of fighting to teach him. He can’t get out of it by dying over some mysterious mission, it won’t be that easy.
They stop by the docks, because it’s always the docks, and crouch down behind a massive pile of wood. “Okay,” Peter whispers, “Now can I know?”
“That gun that burned you two weeks ago, it had some sort of power source in it, right?” Red waits for Peter to verbally respond before he continues, “We’ve been hearing chatter about some… groups wanting to put that source into living beings.”
“We don’t know if it succeeded or not, but better safe than sorry,” Jessica adds, making a face at her own words, “And you were in Germany, I remember. You were on Stark’s side, fought a bunch of super soldiers? You guys won.”
Nobody had won in Germany. That had been a shitshow from the moment Tony had appeared in his apartment and was properly fucked by the time Peter was dropped back off three days later. All their hands were stained red from it. Rhodey, falling and falling and colliding with the ground; Wanda’s scream of pain from Vision’s sound waves; the weight of the cargo on Peter’s back, threatening to crush him whole. The Accords and the Iron Man suit in Tony’s lab with a gash through the heart the same size of Steve’s shield.
“No super soldier is the same,” is all Peter says after a long moment, struggling to climb out of his memories. “I think it depends on who makes ‘em.”
Like JB, whose metal arm is cool and all, but his real strength is with guns and precision. Or Natasha, who was all agile and twisty and sharp, the sort of danger that can blend in. Or Steve, who was just Steve, because really, how do you describe the literal Captain America?
“You both have powers, don’t you?” Peter asks, more rhetorical than anything. Red’s basically admitted to the super hearing (and jury’s out on whether or not he’s the real devil) and there’s no way Jessica’s weird flying-jumping thing is anything less than supernatural.
“Abilities,” Jessica and Red correct at the same time.
“And I didn’t get mine from HYDRA, kid,” Jessica says darkly.
“Me neither,” Red agrees, his head tilting again.
“Mine aren’t from HYDRA, but they aren’t from anything good either,” Peter tells them, because it’s the truth and he doubts they really care. “I got them from A.I.M.”
“Stark’s rival company?” Jessica snorts, which is a better reaction than he was hoping for.
“He never knew,” Peter says honestly. He never asked, and Peter never offered, and it was another one of their secrets they didn’t talk about. “Where’d you get yours from?”
But Red interrupts before Jessica can do more than give him a considering look. “Tragic backstories later, rescuing possible innocent adults and children now, please.”
“Children?” Peter asks, his heart speeding up.
“Two,” Red says, pulling the battons out of his waist band, “One adult. She’s enhanced, I’m not sure about the kids.”
“The kids will be less likely to be scared of me,” Jessica points out, which, yeah, fair. She’s not wearing any sort of costume or armor or mask, just a jacket and a scarf. “If they’re enhanced and scared, though, I’ll need help.”
There’s not enough time to plan out anything else, Peter guesses, because Red starts sprinting toward a warehouse. Peter climbs up the side of it, onto the roof until he reaches the window on the ceiling. He waits.
Then Red kicks the door in, so he guesses that’s a signal, and promptly jumps on the window and falls through it. There’s no one under him, though, and he makes it look graceful (he hopes) as he lands on all fours. There’s a kid, standing alone, in a corner, and the other kid is sitting behind the adult in another corner.
“Hey,” Red says, and his voice is real gentle, his hands out stretched, “Let us help you guys, alright?”
There is a long silence. Jessica is slowly inching to the child who stands alone.
The enhanced adult is dressed in all black. Her eyes dart side to side. It looks like she’s on drugs; she’s sweating something bad, and her whole body is shaking. “No one can help us,” she says finally, Russian accent strong.
And then she is kicking at Red, leg flying. For a moment, Peter is captivated by the sight of their fighting. It looks like a dance, ebbing and flowing to soundless music. It looks like the way Clint and Natasha had fought at the airport. In tune and so far apart.
“Spidey!” Jessica barks, and Peter snaps back, rushes forward to try and slip behind the Russian woman to get to the child she’s still half-shielding behind her. The woman shrieks at this, a loud, desperate sound that grates at Peters’s ears, and pauses beating up Red long enough to kick Peter hard in the ribs.
“Triple count of child endangerment,” Peter tries to quip, but it comes out more like a groan. She’s definitely enhanced; that kick had been powerful enough to crack a rib, if not break one completely. Peters had enough of them to know the feeling intimately.
“You are no child,” the woman growls at him, dodging a rough punch from Daredevil. Jessica is slowly leading the child across the room outside, as quietly as possible. Peter catches only a glimpse before Jessica lifts the kid up on her hip; a little boy, dressed in the same black clothes, his eyes confused and scared.
It’s this fact that makes Peter dart forward and sweep at her legs, rough and mean in a way that he tries not to be. The woman falls hard without a sound of pain, and the child behind her - this one a little girl, with blonde hair in a bun at the base of her neck - runs forward, diving at Peter’s own shins.
“Hey!” Peter exclaims, more out of instinct than anything, and stumbles back. “It’s okay, it’s alright-“
He hasn’t fallen on his ass yet, so this child isn’t enhanced, just protective and terrified. She doesn’t even seem to be hearing him.
He crouches down, catches her wrists in the gentlest grip he possibly can, stumbles through saying, “Vse normal’no,” It’s okay, “Spokoystviye, pozhaluysta.” Calm, please.
He hasn’t spoken Russian in years. Not since he was 16 and following in Natasha’s shadow, her teaching him the basics as they staked out their mission. He’d butchered the pronunciation then and he’s sure he’s butchered it now, but hopefully the message was understandable regardless.
The woman, seemingly shocked by Peter speaking her language, doesn’t notice when Red throws a baton at the wall behind her, which rebounds off and hits her hard in the back of the head. She seems to shake for a long moment before collapsing down against the floor, legs twitching and head pointed toward him still, her gaze unwavering even in pain.
The little girl still seems absolutely petrified of him. It’s the mask, Peter thinks, and curses himself for choosing a fucking spider as his costume. The giant eyes blinking at her probably seem like something out of a nightmare. He needs Jessica back in here, but she’s still outside with the boy from what he can hear, and it seems like the girl is more skittish anyway.
Cursing under his breath, Peter says, “Red, would you mind turning away for a moment?” He shoots webs at the adult’s feet and hands, securing her to the ground.
“Spidey,” Red says, and it sounds like a warning, like he knows what Peter is unsure of himself.
But Peter doesn’t have time for warnings, not when he can hear sirens coming closer and this kid might bolt. “Red,” he says again, and now he’s giving the orders.
Red sighs, but turns toward the wall all the same.
“Privet,” Peter greets, and then lifts a hand up and peels off his mask with a singular fast motion. “Pozvol’te mne,” he hesitates, grasping for the last word, “Pomoch’.” Let me help.
Peter lets go of her wrists and lets her stare at him for a long moment. Her eyes don’t glimmer; there’s no visible emotion. Then her little face relaxes, her shoulders lowering and fists unclenching. She’s got a cut above her eye that bleeds down her face, bathing her in red. She’s so young.
“Da,” she whispers at him, glancing anxiously at the woman on the ground behind her, “Pomoshch’.” Yes. Help.
But the woman isn’t even looking at the girl anymore; she’s staring at Peter, her eyes as wide as tennis balls, pupils dilated. She looks as if she has seen a ghost; as if she has seen something holy. Peter is… perhaps, worryingly unconcerned. She’s obviously dangerous, obviously some sort of enhanced Russian, obviously an enemy, and yet.
What could she do? Escape, and then tell her Russian friends that Spider-Man was a pale boy with curly brown hair and a cut across the bridge of his nose? That was probably half of New York. Peter didn’t exist, not anymore. He had no one left to protect. He had taken off his mask to help this little girl, and the multiverse hadn’t exploded. There was no giant rip above his head letting in the monsters that kept him up at night, no (visible) blood on his hands or doppelgängers at his shoulder.
And then the woman speaks, and his opinion changes so quickly he stumbles back.
She says, voice shaking, “Petyr.”