Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Life was hard as Peter Parker.

After everything.

Not as Spider-Man. No, the arachnid themed hero hadn’t even been out there since the fiasco, not even once.

No, life was hard as Peter Parker.

The rent, the food, the two jobs he was trying to balance, the distant dream of a college he had once had, the homelessness that he was getting quite close to experiencing once again in his life if he couldn’t pay up until next week, the photos he always carried in his wallet…

The cemetery that had become a dilemma. Whether to visit their graves and cry until he passed out, or to stop torturing himself by forgetting their existence.

Both options sounded pretty shitty to him.

Keep grieving, or start moving on.

Keep feeling pain, or start forgetting.

Life was hard as Peter Parker.

It was.

***

475 dollars per week. What a load of bullshit. How was he supposed to get by, and not die on the streets from cold or starvation with 1900 dollars per month? Even with his second job, it wouldn’t add up to much, and Peter would often be left to be unable to make the ends meet.

But it was take it or leave it, and leaving it wasn’t really an option for Peter.

He took the bundle of money from the hands of the sweaty man in front of him, and got out of the room quickly; and from there, out of the crappy diner he worked the weekdays at. Honestly, he had no idea why people even came to that dirty place; but the salary was needed and the tips did help so he was careful to never voice those thoughts. He couldn’t get fired.

He couldn’t waste money on a cab, so he had to walk home. Only half-way there did he remember that he needed some new clothes and blankets, and changed his track to the thrift store a couple streets ahead.

He should’ve just gone straight to home.

His spider-senses picked up on the danger nearby, and his hackles rose; before Peter could even get a whisper of the screams. He ran.

Stephen Strange stood in all of his glory, trying to wrestle an other-worldly-looking-monster-thingy into submitting to him.

His spells sneaked up from behind, and he managed to find an opening to tie down the thing onto the road beneath them. With one hand busy making sure the spells holding down the monster were secured; he turned his back to it to open up a portal.

Unfortunately, the spells hadn’t been secure enough.

One of the tentacles of the monster broke free and charged at the sorcerer from behind. Before Peter could even yell out at him to look out, the Bleecker Street Magician was being tossed across the street. And along with him, unfortunately, went the portal he had been trying to open.

Peter had witnessed first-hand how dangerous it could be to interrupt or impact Strange when he was casting a spell; and even he didn’t have longer than a milli-second to process what had happened, and go oh fuck, before everything went to shit.

The monster broke out of the rest of its bounds and charged at Strange with full speed, ignoring the results of the sorcerer’s cut off spell. The results being a dozen of portals opening up and closing back down anywhere and everywhere at their will. Yeah, they were too little to be of any concern to the monster, of course it would ignore them.

But not the civilians around.

Peter’s head snapped to his right when he heard a sharp scream; and he saw a woman falling into one of the stray portals after she lost her balance on her high-heels, the portal closing up immediately after her.

That sprung him into action. He might’ve not been the Spider-Man, might’ve not had the suit on right now, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t try to help people. He pulled on his hood.

Peter let his senses guide him through the crowd; pulling or pushing people to safety as stray portals opened up where they had been standing mere seconds ago.

A portal ten feet from him appeared where a little girl was, and she tripped and fell into it. Well, almost. Because Peter was faster, and he had managed to leap across those ten feet, grab the girl, and pull her back before the portal could close up on her.

He saw her mother running up at them and pushed the girl into her awaiting arms as soon as possible, turning away immediately to grab a teenager’s hood to pull him away from another awaiting portal.

He kept going on like that for a while; grabbing an old lady, pushing away a middle-aged man, pulling a pregnant woman, shoving a business man…

And then there was a woman; brunette, straight hair, thirty-something, glasses. She looked like May. Too much like May. And that distracted Peter.

He pounced to grab her arm and push her away just as she was getting sucked into a portal, saving her efficiently. But he couldn’t take his eyes off of her as she ran away, and almost missed the sharp alert his spider-senses gave.

He instantly went to duck; but this time, he was too slow. And the next thing he knew, there was a stop sign in his face. Yes, literally in his face, because the impact was so hard, Peter was sure that no doctor would ever be able to get the thing off.

He went flying with the coup, falling through a portal and vision going black. He didn’t even register the hard, dirty concrete he fell onto. The last thing he saw before passing out, was the orange sparks dying down and disappearing as the portal closed up.

***

DAY 1: Friday

Peter woke up with a groan; bones aching and muscles trembling. He looked around through his blurry vision, and didn’t panic too badly when he failed to recognize where he was. He gasped when his spider-senses started alarming him fiercely though.

He checked his pockets as his head pounded and his senses caused him unnecessary anxiety. His wallet, salary, keys, and phone were all there still; nothing had fallen off or gotten lost. Just as he was getting up from the ground, his inner spider gave another sharp alert.

Being a vigilante, he was used to waking up injured and hurt, in unfamiliar places that he did not remember how he had gotten to. But never before, had it felt so wrong. His spider senses were causing him a headache, chanting wrong-wrong-not-home-go-back-home-NOT-HOME-different-different-foreign-FOREIGN-wrong.

Peter didn’t get it.

Never before, had they reacted so strongly in a situation like that. Never before, had they made his hackles rise so terribly, preparing for a threat that wasn’t there. Never before had they felt so wrong. He didn’t understand.

Then snippets of the fight between Strange and the other-worldly-looking-monster-thingy started coming to the front of his mind, as the answer to his unasked question; and Peter lost his footing.

His salary.

The thrift store.

Screams.

Strange.

Monster.

Oh fuck.

Portals.

Civilians.

May-

No, someone who looked like May.

Stop sign.

Falling through a-

Portal.

Shit.

That explained why his inner spider was panicking so much. Yep. Fuck. Alright, Peter needed to get a grip. He needed to assess his situation.

First, was there any immediate, life-threatening danger around?

Peter focused on his instincts and spider-senses, and came up short, other than a low-buzzing that he was pretty used to feeling since he was living in Queens. Just to be on the safe side; he also looked around, listened carefully, and scented the air for odd smells too. No dangers so far.

Secondly, did he have any fatal injuries?

Not really, just some bruised ribs from when he shoved away that guy with his body, not considering that there could be hard and heavy material in his backpack; and some cuts on his side from where he had fallen onto those broken glass pieces. And, of course, the massive fuck-off bruise on his face.

He looked at his reflection through his obviously-not-working-anymore-smart-phone, and almost dropped it when he saw the boy looking back. Yeah, his face looked really bad. Almost unrecognizable actually.

And considering the situation, that was his t-shirt with blood droplets on the sides, and his disheveled state; he probably looked like a total mess. Like, CPS-would-pick-me-up-on-the-spot-and-arrest-my-parents-immediately-without-a-single-question, kind of mess. But overall, no deathly wounds.

Thirdly where was he, and how could he go back home, or at least to someplace safe?

Now, he had no idea.

But nothing a quick brainstorm couldn’t solve, right?

Strange usually used his portals to travel from point A to B. Peter knew that the magician had the time stone, which probably gave him the ability to play with time as he pleased, in certain situations too. And Peter knew himself that the guy could open up portals to other dimensions.

So, Strange could’ve sent him through three things, to keep it basic.

1) Space, which basically meant teleportation so it shouldn’t be too hard to go back home if that was the case. He would only have a problem with affording transportation probably, but that could be taken care of the easiest, compared to the other possibilities.

2) Time, which would suck because Peter wasn’t sure how to handle that. Though it wouldn’t be that hard, he supposed. He hadn’t been alive when they had built the time machine; but he was sure that if Tony had managed to do it, then he could too. He could follow in his footsteps. The only problem would be to how, again, afford such a thing. And where, or rather when, he was right now, if that was the case. The past? Or the future?

3) Dimensions, which was the worst option ever because even with the time-travel, Peter was fairly sure he could find his way back home. Not with dimension-travel though, no.

It would be game over.

Now, how to find out?

Hmm…

It took little to no time for Peter to have the Light Bulb Moment^TM; the public libraries falling into his mind easily, coming from one of the many conversations May had given him when he was a child, under the name of If You Ever Get Lost in The City. Those talks sure did help.

Peter walked around aimlessly, afraid to ask people for help because of how his spider-senses kept buzzing louder and louder whenever he tried to reach to someone; as he looked for a library.

At last, he decided that enough was enough, and ducked into a food court. It was good luck that some other people were also in there, sitting and eating; in case the cashier Peter was going to ask directions for, tried to do something.

What? Walking around in a place where he could smell gunpowder from almost everyone, and even small children buzzed up his spider-senses; Peter was feeling like anyone he came across might end up trying something.

“Hey.” He said as he approached the register, and the twenty-something-year-old blonde guy looked up from his phone with a bored expression.

“What do you want?”

“Uh… I’m not here to order, I just need to ask directions. Do you know where I can find a public library?” Ever the kind kid, Peter spoke nicely. Though in a place like where he was, being rude would’ve probably worked out better for him.

The guy lifted an eyebrow and looked him up and down. “Ten-minute walk from here. Follow this street for five minutes, then turn left and walk for three more minutes. You will reach an intersection. Go down the middle alley, and walk for another two minutes. You’ll see the library by the third one. If you don’t, then that means you’ve fucked up.”

“Thank you, sir.” With that, Peter left the food court; trying to memorize the directions he had been told. Five minutes on the street he already was in, turn left and walk three more minutes, go down the middle alley for two more minutes and voila. He really hoped that he wouldn’t fuck up, finding someone else to ask again might not be an option.

 Just as the Food Court Guy had said, in under ten minutes he was standing in front of the massive doors of the public library.

Peter listened into the building and counted the heartbeats before entering. About twenty people were inside, at least one or two of them an employee. He decided he would act nonchalant, and try not to be seen by many people.

He saw a redheaded lady sitting at the front desk and tapping away on her laptop. He sneaked past her easily, and went ahead to find some PCs. Luckily, not many people saw him, and not many of them cared much about him when they did. And he didn’t run into any other employees.

After reaching the heartbreakingly old and beat down computers, he was met with his third obstacle of the journey; coming right up after “Being Lost” and “People”. The computers had passwords.

Of course they did, it must’ve been to monitor that nothing illegal was being done from them. Or to simply make sure that everyone who used the computers also had a library card or something. Lots of the public libraries had passwords on their public computers for similar, or exactly those reasons.

Peter gave a sigh before sitting down quietly and beginning to tap away. He hated having to do that, but he had to get information somehow. He needed to know where he was. Hacking into the computer’s security systems, and de-activating them wasn’t hard at all.

It was to be expected from a public library to not have the best cyber defenses; but seriously, it hadn’t even taken two minutes! And he was nowhere as good as Ned; his best friend could’ve done what he had, in his sleep. Peter would’ve honestly expected better, even from a public library.

He anxiously awaited the three minutes it took for the computer to open fully, and almost gave a shout of triumph when it did. He entered the search engine quickly, and- Promptly froze up.

First strike. Google wasn’t the app that had opened. It had the colors, and the design mostly; but the name was not something Peter had ever heard of before.

He was about to search where he was, when his eyes fell onto the date. Second Strike. It was five years earlier than the one he had woken up to yesterday. (Was it yesterday? Or had he been passed out for a while now?)

Instead of typing “Where am I?”, his fingers moved automatically to work on writing Tony Stark on the search engine, without his permission. Peter hit it without much thought. And then felt the breath getting punched out from him when all that came up was three Facebook accounts, none of them his Tony’s.

That was the third strike.

Peter didn’t need to search for Captain America, or Hulk, or Thor, or Hawkeye, or Black Widow, or Happy, or May, or himself. He didn’t need to search for organizations like SHIELD, or the superhero team the Avengers. He didn’t need to search for the NY Invasion, or The Blip.

He didn’t need to search any of it to realize that he was in a different universe. To verify that fact. Three strikes were enough.

But the extra time he spent by the computer doing just that; helped his breathing get ragged, and his palms sweaty; so that was something, I guess.

Peter realized distinctly that he was having a panic attack (which was not a good idea), and shot up from his seat. His chair fell down with a loud thump behind him; and the redhead by the front desk startled, turning to him with wide eyes.

Some shushes came from around him, people grumbling about him making noise; but Peter didn’t hear them, or see the woman starting to wheel towards him. He didn’t hear or see anything, only felt the sheer panic in his chest. And his too-fast heartbeat in his ears.

He ran.

He pushed himself against the bathroom door after closing and locking it, using his body weight to barricade it. One hand flied up to his chest, clawing at the skin there; as if that would help him slow down his breathing. He tried to hold his breath, hoping that maybe that could help stop his hyperventilating. It didn’t.

That left only one option. And he hated that option, because Tony had hated that option. Granted, he had only done it once in front of him, and only thrice before that; but it had been enough, apparently.

You see, Peter used to try to use pain to anchor himself through panic attacks in the past, as a last resort if he couldn’t calm down and he really needed to calm down. And Tony had caught him breaking a finger for this reason once, and it hadn’t been nice. His finger was all healed up and ready to go before Tony was even halfway into his rant (thanks super-healing!), but the iron super hero had been relentless.

Afterwards, Peter had been absolutely forbidden from ever repeating that action again. And Peter had promised to do so, before Tony sat him down and taught him other ways and techniques to anchor himself through panic or anxiety attacks, with the help of FRIDAY and JARVIS.

Though he wasn’t remembering any of them right now.

Peter tried to dig his nails into his palms and bite his tongue, starting off with small bits. As he had expected, they didn’t really work, so he was going to have to up his game. He moved onto his injuries.

He pushed and poked at his bruises, and scratched at his cuts, making them bleed. In no time, he was left breathless and in pain on the half-clean bathroom floor of the public library, his sides bleeding again, and his ribs aching. He gasped through the pangs of pain.

When his senses finally started coming back, and his head got a little clearer; Peter heard the insistent knocking on the door, and saw the doorknob hastily moving up and down above his head. He froze. The librarian. Right.

He opened the door in fear, hoping his hood and sweatshirt was covering his injuries enough. Though there was nothing to be done about the enormous bruise on his face. Honestly, he was just happy that it wasn’t affecting his sight too terribly, only making it hard to blink a bit for his left eye, which would probably resolve by itself in the next couple days.

The librarian had a scared expression on her face, and Peter immediately looked down in shame. But instead of starting to shout like he was expecting her to, she simply reached out slowly and held his shoulder gently to get his attention. “Kid.” She said quietly. “Are you okay?”

“Y-Yeah.” Peter stammered out, realizing that she was probably worried about him because she saw him run into the bathroom and heard him wheezing and crying, through the door; rather than figuring out that he had hacked into the computers and getting mad at him. “I-I’m sorry. For the trouble, I mean. I just had a moment. Didn’t mean to give you a scare.”

“It’s okay, I’m not mad, just worried. Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah, I was just researching something, and, uhm… I guess I shouldn’t have chosen a subject so likely to trigger my PTSD.” Didn’t exactly sound sane, but less maniac at least.

“And may I ask why did you run away?”

“Oh- Uhm… Because I don’t have a library card?” Gosh, please let that work.

“Kid, you didn’t have to run because of that, we could’ve ordered you one. Or I could’ve turned a blind eye if you don’t have money to spare on a library card right now, it’s alright.”

“Right.” Peter said awkwardly, and began shuffling in place. A sigh from the redhead made him look up and he saw her extending a hand.

“Let’s start from the top. My name is Barbara, you can call me Babs if you want. I’m one of the librarians in this library.”

“My name is Peter, pleased to meet you.”

“You too Peter.” She smiled at him; they shook hands.

“And how much did you say that library card was, Miss Barbara?”

From then on, things were less weird. Peter used a couple dollars to buy a card, and even got some papers and a pen from Barbara, to note down anything important. He then returned to the computer he had hacked into earlier, and re-started his research. The situation was dire, very dire, but he needed to give his head to the game.

He needed to gather information.

He scribbled down the basics: where he was (Some city called Gotham, in New Jersey); the district names (there was a lot of them); the rogues (also a lot of them); the hero and vigilantes (again, a lot of them); the Justice League (this universe’s Avengers); the crime rates (boy, were they bad); the police force (boy, were they corrupted); the city alarms (too many of them) and so on and on.

(And seriously, Gotham? What kind of a city name was that? Did some weirdo just upped and went and found the most deranged land piece to create a town for gothic freaks of theater kids?)

He came to some conclusions;

1) The Bats, or the Bat-Family, must be a bunch of dorks, dressing up as bats and birds to fight crime for the hell of it, as it seemed, since they didn’t have any superpowers.

2) The rogues were complete ridicules. Bullied-in-high-school theater kids, probably. Condiment Man? Mr. Freeze? Calendar Man? Cluemaster? Man-Bat? Seriously? Man, where was the creativity, the originalism? 

3) Gotham was a shithole.

4) There was a shit ton of dirty cops in the GPD.

5) The city had an alarming number of alarms; for different, very concerning reasons and scenarios; which all, apparently, had happened, at least once at some point.

6) Most shelters, motels, and clinics –especially the orphanages– were fronts for traffickers.

7) There was a No-Meta-Human rule in Gotham, put in place by Batman himself. The only exception seemed to be Signal; yet another vigilante, considered one of the bats.

Peter was also going to need documents like a birth certificate and an id and school records and whatnot. But those were going to have to wait for another day, because- “It’s closing time.” And because he had more pressing issues at the moment, like finding shelter.

Right. He had had so many survival lessons from Tony, and Rhodey, and Sam, and Dr. Bruce, and Natasha. He knew the Threes Rule. One can only survive three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water, and three weeks without food. So, when you’re stuck in an unfamiliar place, first thing you look for is breathable air, then acceptable shelter, after that clean water, and lastly edible food.

But Peter had gone ahead and looked for the only thing that was not on the list; information. Like he hadn’t even messed up the arrangement, he had ignored it completely.

Information is important. He tried to argue in his head. Not if you’re freezing to death Peter! A voice, sounding like Tony’s, snapped back.

Peter didn’t make a peep as Barbara closed down the library. He actually helped her a bit; just to be on the vicinity of someone else and away from the dark, eerie streets for a couple more minutes.

As they were coming to the end of the clean-up, Peter caught the redhead staring at him, with a strange look in her eyes. His spider-senses gave a weird buzz for a second before returning to normal. If he hadn’t been so distracted, he could’ve heard the snap of a phone camera.

“Peter.” Barbara called to him. “Do you have anywhere to go?”

It was a trick question. Peter knew it was a trick question. It was supposed to be able to cover for other questions like where are your parents, and do you have a home, and do you need help and the likelihood. Pater wasn’t going to fall for that.

“Of course.”

“Really? Where do you live then?”

Peter smiled kindly, and a bit smugly; the satisfaction of knowing the conversation being about to end, and to his favor too, shining in his eyes. “Come on, it’s one of the oldest rules in the book, don’t give your address to strangers. We only met today, Miss Barbara.”

She bit her lip. “Okay. Then just tell me the district name, or the street name.”

Shit. Okay, that was logical. What should he say, what should he say, what should he- “Park Row.”

“Park Row? Do you mean Crime Alley?”

Shoot. Right, the un-official names. Remember that next time, asshat. “Right, that was what people called it. Sorry, I just recently moved here I’m still getting used to it. Plus, I don’t like it very much either, it feels like calling for trouble, you know.”

Barbara gave a strained smile, and nodded a bit too quickly; but Peter was too tried to try to analyze it.

They parted their ways shortly after, Barbara going home, and Peter going to find an abandoned building to crash the night at with only a quick break at a convenient store, for some food, water and maybe some cloth if he was lucky. (He was going to freeze to death if he didn’t at least find a cardigan or a shawl or some shit, let alone a blanket.)

It was going to be a long, long night. But Peter would hold his own. He always did.

***

DAY 1: Friday

THE BAT-CHAT

Barbara: Hey guys.

Barbara: Some kid came to the library today.

Barbara: His name is Peter.

Barbara: I think he might be in danger.

Barbara: Like, danger-danger.

Barbara: *one attachment sent*

Barbara: This is what he looks like.

Bruce: Elaborate.

***

DAY 2: Saturday

The sun shined through the small transom window, falling onto his face and waking him up. Peter gave a half-hearted groan at the awful taste in his mouth, and the need to relieve himself. Luckily, he had checked last night before going to sleep, whether the abandoned stationary he was going to bunker in, had running water or not. It had.

After the bathroom break, and using the cheap toothbrush and tooth paste he had bought last night; he sat on the couch he had slept on, and pulled out a protein bar.

His stomach rumbled unhappily after he was done eating and it was clear that no more food was entering him, but there wasn’t much to do about that. Peter didn’t have much money, he needed to be careful with how he spent it. And he needed to save food and water.

With the breakfast, he finally managed to get the sleep out of his eyes; and dragged his aching body through the stationary to investigate the building better. He hadn’t been able to do that so much last night; after all, he had been ready to collapse from exhaustion.

There was water, though not hot; and no electricity. The front doors were all locked up and sealed off, clearly people weren’t wanted in the building.

There were some cracks in the walls, and some of the windows were broken. The building wasn’t collapsing anytime soon, really it was in good conditions; but those cracks and the broken windows could cause lots of other safety issues too. From cold to unwanted guests. He would need to fix this place up a bit, if he was going to stick around.

And to be honest, he probably was, seeing as the stationary had been the seventh building he had had to enter last night while looking for a place to bunker in. It had also been the one in the best conditions, by far. So, Peter knew not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The front doors were locked and sealed, but the back door where he had sneaked in last night, was not. And it was also pretty hidable thanks to the big-ass garbage bin there, and easily barricaded. That helped lowering the safety hazards.

And the rest-room at the back, for the workers; was a pretty good addition too. It had a pretty nice couch, and some drawers and shit. It wasn’t perfect, but it would work. It would actually make a great bedroom, considering his situation and possible other options, which were disastrous and none.

The lack of electricity would be a problem though, he needed to take a look at the circuit breakers and whatnot, hopefully he would be able to fix the problem. But even if he couldn’t, the stationary was still the best shelter he could find. He probably wasn’t leaving.

He would deal with being unable to light the lamps, later though; first he needed to check how much he had left after the shopping trip of last night.

432 dollars and 53 cents. Peter had spent more than he had originally planned; but buying a crappy backpack, a first aid kit, a tape, a toothbrush and a tooth paste, some napkins and wet wipes, along with the water and the food; had seemed like a good idea at the dead of the night. Plus, he would need those things, he hadn’t exactly wasted money.

He had gotten a pen and a book too. Not a notebook, a sketch-book. For what he wasn’t very sure; but he had seen it and the pattern on it had looked cute, so he had taken it with him. It really wasn’t the time for impulse shopping, but… It had happened.

He had imagined May’s and Tony’s faces on its pages, and decided that 8 dollars was a reasonable price. The only pictures he had of them and Ben anymore, were the headshots he always carried in his wallet after all, and they were bound to get old. And he had some decent drawing skills thanks to MJ and her insistence on teaching him some of what she knew.

He also needed some clothes. And blankets.

The chances of stumbling across a thrift store weren’t very high; but he would hope to get lucky, instead of asking around for directions in such a neighborhood. And hopefully his spider-senses would lend a hand too, and lead him a little.

***

DAY 2: Saturday

It was two hours later when Peter returned, clutching his crappy-backpack and another plastic bag in his arms. He was probably pretty lucky to not get mugged in a place called the Crime Alley while carrying two bags filled with clothes, but he really hadn’t had any other choice than to just walk back to the stationary and hope for the best.

Reckless yes, but desperate too.

So, he had chosen to stick to the broad daylight, and be extra careful listening to his senses. Fortunately, this time things had worked out a bit, fate had taken pity on him, and Peter had returned without losing his new clothes to strangers.

Two thick blankets (it was fucking cold in Gotham), a jumper, two sweatpants, a cardigan, a pair of trousers, two t-shirts and a coat. And 411 dollars and 32 cents left. Not bad. Though he would need to spend money on the laundromat sometime soon too, because some of those clothes smelled really weird, to his oversensitive nose. Damn you super smelling. Though he wouldn’t have worn them without washing them either way.

But the laundromat duty was going to be have to be left for another day, unfortunately, as Peter had more pressing issues. Like the electricity problem. And the fix-up the stationary needed. But first came lunch. It had to, since his stomach was not shutting up, and it was nearing 1 pm.

He had to be satisfied with a cold sandwich, and get back to ignoring his still-grumbling stomach before returning to his chores unfortunately; but he really didn’t have better options. Food costed a lot; and Peter didn’t have a lot, nor a continuing income. He had to suck it up a bit until he could find a job or something.

It wasn’t the first time the money had been a little tight, and he had had to go a bit hungry for a while; May and him had had hard times too. He wasn’t not used to getting by with limited facility, he could handle it.

He had to.

Back to his to-do list, Peter first went to look around the building to look for the circuit brakers and taking a look at them. Finding them was fairly easy, and tinkering around the cables until light shined through the back door that was in his line of sight, was even easier. One problem solved.

Then he went inside the stationary to prod around to look for any useful items that might’ve been left behind when the old owners or the workers left. An old tool box, a half-used fire extinguisher, and ten dollars at the register were unfortunately all he got out of his looting. Though not very useful, still worthwhile.

With the stuff he found around in the stationary, he began working on the windows first. None of them were broken completely, but they still held real safety risk. Even the solid ones, actually. If he wanted them secure, he might have to seal them all shut. Hmm. For now, taping them closed would have to work.

After some other adjustments around the place, and a little bit of cleaning, the stationary began looking actually livable; and Peter felt good enough about it all to perch up on the rest-room couch and pick up his sketch book for a little free time.

The pen froze above the paper for a moment, Peter thought of what to draw. Then his hand began moving without his permission, and a head appeared on the delicate paper. And eyes, and a nose, and glasses. And an all too familiar smile.

It hurt. God, of course it hurt. It hurt like it had never hurt before. But Peter kept drawing. Even when his vision got blurry, and his hands began to tremble ever so slightly; he kept drawing.

 He didn’t care how realistic it was, or whether he got the shading right or not; he just drew. He finished the sketching at one go, and only allowed the tears to fall when May’s smiling face was staring back at him through the pages.

Peter gently closed up the sketch-book, and put it down. Then he lay down again, he was feeling tired. His eyes fell closed at once, and his breathing evened out slowly.

Being away from home didn’t hurt so much, being away from his universe. Peter didn’t think it had ever wanted him actually.

From the moment his parents’ plane had crashed, to the moment he fell through that stray portal; his universe had been trying to get rid of him. Or, at least, it felt like it.

No, being away from home wasn’t what was hurting Peter; that place, that apartment, that city, that universe; hadn’t felt like home in quite some time now. Not since her death. Not since any of their deaths, not really.

It was the fact that he would never be able to visit May’s grave ever again, that was hurting him. Or Ben’s. Or Tony’s. Or MJ at the café she worked at, and Ned when he was visiting her; even though they didn’t even remember who he was.

He would never see them again. Any of them. It was hopeless, there was no way back home. And even if, by some miracle he made it back there, there was no one waiting for him. No one looking for him. No one wondering about him.

No one knowing him.

No one loving him.

And wasn’t that a bitter truth. Oh, the irony. Because it was his fault. His fault. Both being stuck in an unfamiliar dimension; and not having a single person, friend or family, in his life.

Parker Luck at its finest, am I right?

Or maybe it was just Peter’s own stupidity.

Who knew?

Chapter Text

DAY 7: Thursday

The kid didn’t return to the library until next Thursday, and Barbara worried.

He had had a panic attack in the bathroom of her library, and then apologized for inconveniencing her. There had been a massive bruise on his face, and blood splinters on the sides of his shirt. And his moves had been limited; like it hurt to stretch too much, so definitely some other injuries too.

Was he being abused? Had he been beaten by a gang? Was he still in danger? Did he need help? The questions kept coming without her permission, and Barbara couldn’t help but worry about the hazel-eyed boy for the whole week; looking forward to the day he would come to pick up his library card. Hoping that he would. 

He managed to startle her once again, when he did.

“Hey Miss Barbara!” Peter chirped from the doorway, smiling at her. She would’ve probably melted on the spot from his cuteness; if she hadn’t almost jumped out of her skin hearing his voice, not being used to people sneaking up on her.

“Hey Peter, you scared me for a second. How are you doing?”

“Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. I’m fine, how about you?”

Ever the gentleman, Alfred would love him. “Peachy. Just dealing with some very boring files over here. You’re here for your library card, right? It came the day after we ordered it.”

“Yeah, that too; but I’m also here for some research.”

That gave her a pause. Research. Yeah. It hadn’t gone so smoothly last time, had it? Peter also clearly noticed her thoughts on the matter, and immediately began reassuring her.

“It’s alright, it’s a different subject this time. Less trigger-y. I’ll be fine Miss Barbara, promise!”

She gave him a small smile. “If you say so kid.” Then she extended the library card, and watched on as the kid reach the computers in record time. He opened them up easily, and began tapping away; buzzing with excitement.

While watching him in an only-kind-of-creepy way, Barbara realized just how skinny Peter looked. Possibly neglected, definitely malnourished. Did the kid not have any guardians looking after him? Or was it them that was responsible for the kid’s wounds and lightness?

Though the bruise on his face did look a lot better, by far. It wasn’t very possible for the wound she had seen last Friday, to become the wound she was seeing right now, in less than a week. She wasn’t sure what to think about that.

Gosh, he really was thin.

The redhead watched on for a few more short moments, with her brows furrowed and lips drawn to a pout, before pulling out her phone and opening up the food delivery websites. The kid needed food; she would get him food.

***

DAY 7: Thursday

“Peter!” Barbara called out to him, and Peter looked up at once. “I ordered some food, come eat with me.”

“Uhm…” Normally, Peter would refuse such an invitation. He wasn’t anyone’s charity case; he could take care of himself. But, currently… He was kind of having trouble doing that.

Gotham nights were freezing cold, and he wasn’t used to that, so he had been having trouble sleeping; not to mention how being in a foreign place was causing him anxiety. He had a killer headache because of the sleep deprivation, and he hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday’s lunch.

So, he did the logical thing for once. “A-Alright. Are you sure though?”

Barbara only smiled at him. “Yes. You got any allergies?”

“Some, but not to anything in a burger.” He pulled up a chair next to the redhead, and devoured the food that was put in front of him, in minutes.

He would feel bad about taking the food Barbara had bought with her hard-earned money later; but for now, he allowed it to feel like a small prize. For finishing creating himself an identity in this universe.

That’s right, Peter had finished forging every needed document; in less than three hours too! That was a big achievement, he was finally existing legally.

The birth certificate, had been the easiest one to create. After that, had come the school records and other education related achievements; though they had been much more challenging. Because he had needed to also create a copy of his records in whichever school he had “graduated” from or “attended” to.

He couldn’t have let his lies be that easy to uncover, now, could he?

And since technology was fairly behind from how it was in his original universe, that had eliminated lots of possible schools, since they didn’t have virtual records. Thank God that Midtown did. Choosing a familiar school to lie about transferring from, was a smart decision; and what he was going to do. 

The biggest nuisance though, had been with who his guardian was going to be. He couldn’t have been known as an orphan, he would’ve been on the CPS’s list then, and that would have not been good. Not only because orphanages were fronts for child-traffickers apparently, but also because Peter hated them with a passion.

There had been a little while after his parents’ death, before he had started living with Ben and May, that he had had to live in an orphanage. Because the CPS had decided that the Parkers weren’t financially stable enough to take Peter in.

Which had been total bullshit, because Ben had had a job, and even if it didn’t pay much, he had still been supporting his family. And May had also been looking for jobs.

It had taken four months for them to get a six-year-old Peter Parker back under their roof. It had been the worst five months of Peter’s life.

So, all in all, Peter could not have been known as an orphan and take the risk with the CPS; he had had to have a legal guardian. Now, writing a random name there and calling it a day after creating that name an identity as well; would’ve been an easy solution, the easiest one. 

But Peter couldn’t have done that.

May had been the first person to come to his mind.

But he had retreated on that decision quickly after thinking it over. He would not have been able to talk about her as if she wasn’t dead, buried six feet under; and just off at work earning money. (He had also thought that that would be very unhealthy.)

No. May couldn’t be his legal guardian. The wound was too fresh, too raw.

But Tony could.

For at least once, he would.

Peter hadn’t been sure how Tony had seen him, when he was alive. How his feelings for him had been, the day he had died. If he had been closer to being a son of Tony Stark, than a sidekick of Iron Man.

Peter hadn’t been sure, but in his wildest fantasies, in his most painful dreams; Tony was there. He was always there, calling him son. A lot of other people were there too, a lot of people he had lost.

But Tony was there, calling him son.

And Peter had wanted to be his son, for once in his life.

For once.

So, he had written the name Tony Stark, as his legal guardian.

He had had to create a story of moving to Gotham from NY, to live with Tony, who was a family friend, after their house had burned down, and May had died in the fire. Tony was an engineer, currently having trouble finding a job. He was a recovered alcoholic, lived alone before Peter came into the picture, and used to be good friends with both May and Ben.

Yeah, that was a good story. Peter liked that story. He wished it could’ve been real.

“So, what school are you going to? You had said that you had just moved here, yes? Are you transferring?”

Oh yeah, there was also that. Repeating the senior year. How fun. But even though it wasn’t fun, it was definitely smart, as Peter had realized after a bit of thinking.

The school had benefits like one hot meal a day, five days a week; a warm and safe place for thirty-five hours a week in total; socializing; and the needed chemicals for his websho-

Not going there.

It wasn’t like he would’ve needed to listen to any of the lessons or the lectures either, he had taken them all last year, and had graduated with flying marks. He hadn’t forgotten the material; he would be fine even if he slept through every single lesson other than the exams and quizzes.

Also, he had started a year early when he was little, and skipped a grade at the sixth grade, so he was already only 17 years old, a couple months from 18. He could pass for a highschooler. And technically speaking, he was at the age of a highschooler.

And getting a diploma in this universe, would’ve been nice too. Earning it, not just forging it. Even if he had already earned it back in his home universe too.

So, he had decided that repeating the senior year, was smart; and had already hacked into a school’s records to add his name. If the entrance exam hadn’t been done already, he would’ve taken it fair and square. But unfortunately, it was pretty much the middle of the semester, and so there was no such luck.

Lying about being transferred though, and choosing the scholarship option even though he hadn’t taken the exam –because he would’ve aced it anyways– had all the luck and all the ability of happening; so, Peter had stuck with that option.

“Gotham Prep, and yeah, transferred.”

Barbara’s brows rose. “Really?”

“Yep.”

“But I thought you said that you were being transferred. How are you affording Gotham Prep, if you hadn’t paid for it?”

“I am being transferred, and I took a scholarship test.”

“But, it’s the middle of the semester.”

“My situation was… a bit complicated. I guess Mr. Wayne took pity on me and gave me a chance.”

That was a fat lie, one that Barbara could catch up to very fast, if the too-little information Peter had on Bruce “Brucie” Wayne from all of his research from last week; was just paparazzi exaggerating things.

“Really? Well, not the weirdest thing Brucie has done, that’s for sure. Good for you then kid. Never heard of such a thing happening before, but I’m happy that it is.” The redhead gave him a grin and a side hug, before gathering up their trash and leaving to throw them away. “So, what grade are you on?”

“I’m a senior.”

“Hmm, studying for colleges then, huh?”

“Not really.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“I can’t really afford college right now. Maybe if I can get a sponsor or something, I can go. But the chances aren’t much. I don’t know.”

“I’m sure things will work out. Hey. Kid, you’re very smart. You doing anything short of a job suited for a genius, would be a waste. You could be a surgeon. Or a prosecutor.”

“An engineer.” Peter mumbled.

“Yeah,” Barbara agreed enthusiastically. “An engineer. What was your last name again?”

“Parker.”

“Engineer Peter Parker. I think that sounds perfect.” Her green eyes were soft and full of warmth as she said that. It warmed Peter too.

“Thanks Miss Barbara.”

“I think it’s time that we drop the Miss. Seriously kiddo, you’re making me feel old. Just call me Barbara, or even better, Babs. Everyone calls me Babs. My friend Jason, calls me Barbie when he wants to annoy me. And his overly-formal brother calls me by my last name, Gordon.” She chuckled and he laughed with her.

“Alright then, Babs.” Calling her Babs felt weird, but he would do it, if she wanted him to. “I’ll return to the computers now, if you don’t need anything.”

“Oh, no, not at all. Have fun Little Duck.”

The nickname was ridiculous –he didn’t look like a duck– but it still brought him a bit of joy. He went back to the computers; but instead of re-opening it and beginning to tap away on the keyboard, he opened up his backpack and pulled out his sketch book. He started doodling.

***

DAY 7: Thursday

THE BAT-CHAT

Barbara: Hey guys.

Barbara: Peter came to the library again today.

Barbara: I managed to snatch a last name.

Barbara: Peter Parker.

Barbara: He lives in the Crime Alley right now, and he’s transferred to Gotham Prep.

Barbara: I asked how he was affording it.

Barbara: He said something about taking a test for scholarship, even though it was the middle of semester, because his “situation” was a bit complicated and Mr. Wayne had taken pity on him and gave him a chance.

Bruce: That did not happen.

Barbara: I thought so too.

Barbara: I will look into it, maybe he just lied to me to not get CPS called.

Barbara: Not that I would have, but you know how it is.

Barbara: Tim, don’t stalk the kid, I can handle information gathering myself.

Barbara: Dick, can you check if anyone has reported a missing Peter Parker lately?

Barbara: I’ll text Harper to ask around at the shelters she volunteers at.

Barbara: And Jason, can you go and check up on him sometime this week, as Red Hood?

Barbara: See if you can get something about his home life from him.

Dick: Got it Babs.

Jason: K.

Barbara: Tim?

Barbara: I’m serious Tim.

Barbara: I have good blackmail material on you.

Barbara: You know I do.

Tim: Fine.

***

DAY 9: Saturday

Peter was on his way to the stationary, from the laundromat, when his spider senses gave an alarm; someone was following him. Someone dangerous to some people and at sometimes, but not to him right now. What…?

The guy (Peter thought it was guy), was not on the ground level. His very-impressingly-too-quiet footsteps were sounding too high for that, he was probably on the roofs.

So, Peter apparently had a stalker who was following him around, from the rooftops. Gosh, it hadn’t even been two weeks in this dimension, he couldn’t have annoyed someone so bad that they would hire an assassin for him, right? Right?

Or, as a better guess, he was probably one of the vigilantes. But the question was, why was he following him? He was following him, right? Peter wasn’t making that up? He didn’t think so, but you never knew… Maybe he was just being paranoid.

Peter changed his route anyways though, just in case, and turned left where he should’ve gone right; deciding that starting to draw circles would be a very efficient way of a) making sure that his new stalker wouldn’t know where he lived, and b) he would be bored to death; if he was following him. Let’s see how long the guy’s patience would go.

The answer turned out to be fifteen minutes, and three loops. (And yeah, he was following him.) On the start of the fourth circle, Peter heard footsteps. Not with his enhanced hearing, with his normal one.

And considering that the guy had been almost unable to be heard at all, even when Peter had strained his ears to hear him after his senses had alerted him; it was obvious that he wanted Peter to know that he was there.

Peter turned around to be looking at a bulky, 6’5 guy with a leather jacket, guns and knives strapped everywhere, and a red helmet on his head. Peter took a step back. He did a mental count of the city’s vigilantes and villains; and came to the conclusion that he was currently staring at the Red Hood. The crime lord one.

“Who are you?” Peter asked for good measure, his New York accent thick and audible for the guy’s ears. On purpose too, to let him know that he was new in Gotham; in case he had unknowingly broken one of his so called “rules”.

Crime Alley was Red Hood’s territory after all. And Hood ran it with little mercy.

“I’m Red Hood.” The guy said, his voice cracking harshly through the voice modulator.

“I read about you.” And Peter remembered what he had read about him. Eight heads in a duffel bag. The Joker’s old moniker. Drug dealing. Beating up the Batman. Murdering people in cold blood.

But he also remembered the dead bodies belonging to child molesters, or human traffickers, or rapists, or pedophiles. He also remembered the no-harming-the-kids and no-selling-to-the-kids and no-harassing-the-working-girls rules the guy had put upon Crime Alley. He also remembered Hood having a personal agenda with the psychotic clown, and wanting him dead. He also remembered the crime lord in front of him working with the bats more often than not, and being more of a hero than a villain.

If anything, he was an anti-hero; a morally-grey one.

Peter did not agree his methods, but couldn’t argue with his results either. Crime Alley had changed a lot since Hood had appeared, supposedly; crime rates lowering, homelessness decreasing, children beginning to play out on the streets without having to worry about kidnapping.

“What do you want with me?” Peter asked; visibly wary, but not defensive.

“Just curious if you’re alright. Crime Alley is my territory, and I look after the people here.” His body language was relaxed, nonchalant. He wasn’t in a fighting stance, and his hands were away from his weapons. As if he had caught Peter eying his guns, and working his jaw as he did so; and was actively trying not to make him feel threatened.

The voice modulator made it hard to understand his tone and intentions, the helmet hiding his expression as well; but Peter wanted to believe that the guy had seen a kid with a large bruise on his face, and was just checking up on him.

“I’m alright.”

“That’s a nasty bruise.” Hood said in lieu of an answer. “Where did you get it?”

“I ran into a stop sign.” If anything, it looked like someone had taken a swing at him with a stop sign though, and Peter knew that.

Yes, it had been a week almost; and he had enhanced healing so it was already healing a lot faster than usual; but he wasn’t eating and resting well enough, and there were more pressing wounds that were taking the priority. So, even though the swelling was gone by now, the bruise still looked very bad. And it definitely didn’t look like an accident.

“You don’t say?” Red Hood’s tone was painfully dry, despite not being able to have a tone. “Mind showing me that stop sign?” Peter, unfortunately, couldn’t. A majority of his problems would have been inexistent if he could. The guy sighed. “Look kid, I just want to help. Who did that to you? Are things rough at home?”

“No.” Even Peter was surprised with how cold and harsh his voice had come out. But the idea of someone, anyone, thinking of May or Tony in that way; as if they she would ever lay a hand on him, as if they she would ever harm him; was just so enraging.

Too enraging, he needed to calm down.

He took a deep breath, and let it out a beat later. Hood was just worried after all; he deserved an explanation-of-sorts. (And he needed to remember to stick to his story, in case the guy fact-checked it or something. Talk of Tony, not May.)

“Tony has never, would never, and will never hurt me. Not physically, not mentally, not emotionally, not financially. Barring the times where he yells at me to go to bed and eat my damn lunch. I understand why you’re checking up on me, and why you are thinking what you do; but he would never harm me. And I take personal offence when someone initiates that, because Tony is very important to me.”

“Who is Tony?”

“My guardian, a family friend.”

Hood debated for a moment. Then, “Is it someone on the streets then? A gang? Maybe a classmate? A teacher?” He was relentless.

“No. Look it really was an accident, that was more my fault then anyone else’s; even though it doesn’t look like it. Trust me, I know it doesn’t look like it. But I’m not lying, no one tried to knock me out or something.” Stop signs didn’t have brains, thoughts or targets after all. “Can I go now? It’s getting late, and it’s cold outside.”

“How did you know?” Hood asked a moment later.

“Know what?”

“That I was watching.”

“I have a good gut feeling.” Peter said dryly. “When the hairs on the back of my neck rise up, I know something is wrong.” Hey, it wasn’t a lie.

Hood stared at him for a moment more before starting to stalk closer. Peter needed to actively try not to inch away, and stay put. He took out a small, crimson knife from somewhere in his gear; and a red bandana with an emblem printed on it.

“These are what I give out to the kids of Crime Alley, for protection. The bandana is to remind people what can happen to them if they dare to touch a kid in my territory. And the knife is for you to use if the former doesn’t do the job. Careful with it, it’s very sharp. And try to not stab anyone on the body, only on the arms and the legs. That’s how you kill someone on accident at the age of fifteen.”

“I’m seventeen.” Peter mumbled automatically, still in shock. Hood was giving him a knife? And an institutionalized bandana that was meant as a personal “Back the fuck up!” from the Red Hood?

“You seem new around here, have at it.”

“Yeah, I just moved to Gotham.” He took the bandana and the knife. The latter went straight to his back pocket, and the former was tied around his left wrist securely.

“I give out some clothes too sometimes, when it gets colder; jackets mostly, but other shit too. And food. You need something, you come and find me, alright kid?”

Red Hood suddenly felt similar to him, a lot similar. Like what Peter could’ve become, if he had chosen even a slightly darker path to follow.

If he had murdered Ben’s murderer.

“Alright, I will. Thanks.” He forced a smile.

Hood nodded at him, and then grappled away. Peter stayed where he was for a little while more, until the vigilante was out of the ear shot for sure.

Then he took the knife back out, and started inspecting it. Ah, an easy found. Peter pulled out the tiny tracker, and looked it over with a winning smile.

Now only where to leave it…?

He had an idea.

On the way to the stationary, he bought a pack of post-it notes; and kept walking around until he saw a shelter. He walked around to the back of it when he found one, and placed the tracker down; scribbling a short message on one of the notes, and sticking it down next to it.

He debated putting a small smile at the end of his note, and decided that he should, so the crime lord would know that he wasn’t angry or grudging.

Then he hurried down the street, he needed to get back to the stationary before the sun set after all. He needed to have some dinner, and then go to sleep. He needed to wake up early tomorrow, eat breakfast, and go find an open thrift store to buy his school uniform from. And also, lots of school equipment from an actually open and selling stationary too.

He had loads to do.

And if he had gotten the Red Hood to chuckle at the “Better luck next time, old man :)”, that was scribbled down as a chicken scrawl onto a pink neon sticky note, then that was his business and success only.

***

DAY 9: Saturday

THE BAT-CHAT

Barbara: Guys, I have looked into Peter.

Barbara: The documents are forgeries.

Barbara: All of them.

Barbara: Even his birth certificate.

Barbara: And it’s good too.

Barbara: Anyone else, and they would’ve been fooled.

Barbara: I might have to allow Tim to investigate.

Jason: Do not.

Jason: We all know how Baby Bird is about these types of things.

Jason: He’ll start stalking the kid and scare him off.

Tim: Fuck off.

Tim: Don’t meddle.

Steph: Tim?

Steph: Scaring off the homeless, defensive teenager that we’re trying with our everything to help?

Steph: No way!

Tim: Sod off, purple addict!

Steph: It’s eggplant.

Barbara: Jason, anything on your end?

Jason: I tried to follow him home today.

Jason: But he somehow knew I was there and started drawing circles, avoiding going home.

Jason: Then I tried to talk to him and he was very wary.

Jason: I asked about the bruise, and he said that it wasn’t what I was thinking.

Jason: Said that it was an accident, and that he had just ran into a stop sign.

Barbara: I have seen those bruises.

Barbara: He couldn’t have just simply ran into a stop sign.

Jason: I didn’t believe him either.

Jason: I asked about his home life, and he got very defensive.

Jason: Gritted out a harsh no.

Jason: Then seemed to get a hold of himself and took a deep breath.

Jason: He explained in a calmer manner after, said that it really was an accident and not what I was thinking.

Jason: That Tony has never, would never, and will never hurt him.

Jason: Tony’s his guardian, apparently, btw.

Jason: But he didn’t detail the supposed “accident” at all.

Jason: He actually avoided it, strongly.

Barbara: Yes, there was a Tony, in the records.

Barbara: Anthony Stark.

Barbara: He’s Peter’s legal guardian, supposedly a family friend who took him in after his aunt’s death.

Barbara: May Parker.

Barbara: She and her husband Benjamin Parker took Peter in after his parents’ death.

Barbara: Ben Parker died a couple years ago, during a mugging.

Barbara: And May Parker died a couple weeks ago.

Barbara: The problem is, every piece of document that I can find on these people –which aren’t much mind you, like only birth certificates, not even diplomas– are also forgeries.

Barbara: It’s like someone created all of these from the scratch at one go.

Barbara: You know what that could mean.

Dick: You think he’s being trafficked or smthng?

Dick: Or maybe a very thought-through kidnapping?

Dick: And he managed to escape?

Barbara: Possibly.

Dick: Maybe this Tony dude got into some messy situation, and created Peter a new identity to keep him safe?

Dick: Or maybe Tony isn’t even real and someone else created Peter a new identity to keep him safe?

Tim: Or maybe Tony is the asshole the kid is running from after he killed his aunt or something, and the whole adoption and guardianship and family friend thing is bullshit.

Steph: In which case the cutie pie will probably become a new brother, because we all know how B gets when there is a new orphan in the city.

Bruce: Hn.

Barbara: That’s a possibility Tim.

Barbara: Jason?

Barbara: Anything else that has happened?

Barbara: Anything important that we need to know?

Jason: Not really.

Jason: Nothing else worthwhile.

Jason: Well, there was one more thing, I guess.

Barbara: Go on.

Jason: I gave him one of my Red Hood bandanas

Jason: And one of the knives I hand out.

Jason: There was a tracker on the knife.

Jason: Later, when I was checking in the evening, I saw the tracker at a shelter.

Jason: The one where the Bowery ends and the East End starts.

Tim: That’s not one of the safe shelters.

Jason: Yes.

Jason: Which is why I went to check.

Jason: And when I got there, I found the tracker at the back, put down on the ground with a post-it note next to it.

Jason: It read, “Better luck next time, old man :)”

Dick: Oh my God.

Dick: You cannot be serious.

Tim: skjgnklfk

Steph: sfjlfnfkg

Duke: sldjglsdf

Damian: I do not understand what those random lineups of letters are.

Steph: Those are randoms Dami.

Steph: They mean that we’re laughing.

Damian: What a foolish and idiotic thing to do.

Tim: Of course you’d think that.

Tim: Might as well be a millennial.

Dick: Can we get back to the topic?

Dick: We’re getting side-tracked.

Dick: Jay, the kid not only knew that you were there; but also found the tracker you placed, placed it somewhere else to fool you, and even left you a sticky note?

Dick: kglfşwmfljnfşmşmg

Damian: Tt.

Dick: You must be losing your touch Jaybird.

Jason: Fuck you Dickwing.

Tim: Babs?

Tim: Did you get anything from Harper?

Barbara: No, nothing.

Tim: Do I get to investigate now, or what?

Duke: You mean stalk.

Barbara: Not yet Tim.

Barbara: Wait until after Nightwing has had a small chat with him too.

Dick: I get to?

Barbara: Yes.

Dick: Yay!

Tim: Fine.

Chapter Text

DAY 11: Monday

Peter knew that repeating a year was going to be boring, but he had never thought that it would be this boring. School had always been a dull place; but like that, in a school filled with rich brats, dated bullies, annoying teachers, and lessons about the stuff he already knew? It was almost unbearable.

Almost only though, because Peter only sat at the back of the classes and drew in his sketch-book; and did nothing else. He didn’t listen to half of the lectures, he didn’t care what the teachers thought about him, he didn’t try to suck up to anyone. He just sat at the back and drew.

And if some teacher asked him something about the material suddenly, all smug and smirking because she thought that she had gotten him, and was all wide eyed and shocked when he answered her just right, and with much more knowledge than she had been teaching her students with; then that was his business, and his satisfaction.

Honestly, it was the first day, and already the teachers were trying to test just what kind the new kid was. Well, if they tried to embarrass him or goad him to see his material –and because he was a scholarship kid– he would answer in kind, not afraid to embarrass them back, or be disrespectful.

And it wasn’t like this whole school thing was only to get five free meals a week.

Peter Parker was a respectful person. But he didn’t give respect to the people who didn’t deserve it. And if you’re the kind of person to try to start shit with a high-schooler, as an adult working teacher; and try to use the power imbalance to your advantage; then Peter didn’t consider you someone who deserved respect; so, he didn’t give you any respect. And no one else should either, in his very humble opinion.

Prejudiced private school teachers, honestly. Eww.

The students were almost as bad. Peter had met the school’s resident bullies right after first period, Zac Miller and his crew. And let him say this, he was missing Flash. Honestly, the guy had been a pain in the ass; but at least he had been original. Creative. Worth-while. Not a fucking idiot, not fully at least.

Zac Miller, was the guy that you were sure had a plastic duck in his head instead of a brain; but had no way of proving it or convincing anyone. His friends were no better. They were just the type of people to not have enough wits to understand when they were taking a fight too far, until someone died or got seriously injured.

Which was why Peter decided to just steer clear from them and ignore their insults. Not because he was afraid of them or anything, but because he had better things to do than feeding a seventeen-year-old man-baby’s ego with his misery. Miller could yell after him throughout corridors all he wanted, Peter wasn’t going to turn around and even look at him.

Despite all of these issues though, and the general tedium of school; Peter’s first day hadn’t been too awful. He had eaten lunch, drawn in the lessons, ignored and annoyed some bullies, and trekked to the library after school to see Barbara.

“Hey Mi- Babs.” Dammit.

Barbara gave a chuckle. “Hey Peter. You haven’t let it go yet; I see.”

“I’m trying. I really am.”

“I believe you. Hey, are you hungry? Because if you are; I made some sandwiches for myself this morning, in case I got hungry at work, but I feel pretty full and don’t want to eat them. Do you want them?”

“Are you sure?” Peter peered over the front desk to look at the lunch box Barbara was gesturing at. Two perfectly nice sandwiches laid motionless inside, smelling heavenly. Barbara sure was a good cook.

“Yeah, I’m not hungry at all. Actually, my stomach is a bit weird today, so I probably shouldn’t eat anything at all for a little while; might aggravate whatever’s going wrong down there. So, do you want them?”

Peter looked down at the food, and felt his heartbeat in his ears. He felt excited. Because this was a first. A first, of a while. This would be the first day in this dimension, where he got to eat three whole meals a day. Alright, sandwiches didn’t really count as dinner so maybe not three whole meals; but they counted as food and if you were a semi-homeless kid, it counted enough.

“Alright.” He reached over and took the pink lunch box from Babs with half-trembling fingers, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

“Just check the ingredients before eating, I remember you telling me that you had some allergies.”

“Don’t worry, they are usually the weirdest stuff ever. Like eucalyptus. And essential oils.”

“Oh man, seriously?” The redhead laughed loud and bright. “Yeah, those are some pretty weird stuffs to have an allergy to. I expected, like, chocolate, or strawberries. More cliché ones.”

“If I ever gain an allergy to those two, I’ll probably kill myself, I’m telling you. I love chocolate, and strawberries.”

She ruffled his hair. “Don’t joke about death, Duckie, it’s not nice. Go eat your food.”

“Alright, alright. But you’re the librarian, aren’t you? Shouldn’t you be stopping kids from eating stuff inside? Like, because it’s not allowed?”

“Just stay away from the computers and clean-up after you finish eating. It’s cold outside, I don’t want to send you out for sandwiches. I’ll turn a blind eye to it.”

Peter chuckled. “Alright then. I’ll be over the romance section, eating.” He gave a salute.

“And I’ll be over here, working.” She returned it.

***

DAY 12: Tuesday

Peter was perched up at the edge of a very nice building with a very nice view; drawing the scenery, and de-charging after the tiring day he had had.

He had finished drawing Ben yesterday evening, after coming to the stationary from the library; and was desperate for doodling some stupid doodles and mindless landscapes. Drawing a dead loved-one sure did take a toll on him. Shocker, am I right?

He was almost done with his drawing and was wondering what he should do next, when his spider-senses pinged lowly. Someone was there. Someone was hiding. Someone was watching him. Someone in the shadows.

His senses weren’t actively alarming him, and his instincts weren’t running past alert and landing on fight, flight or freeze; so, Peter took that as a good sign. There was only a low concerned murmur from them; which originally meant that the person could be dangerous when they wanted to, but weren’t planning to harm Peter right now. Good enough, he supposed.

He closed his sketch-book, throwing one last withering look at his yet-unfinished view drawing, and subtly looked around. Nothing caught his eye, and doing it again would be suspicious; so, he couldn’t.

Alright, this was fine. A bit of brainstorming would solve the issue, right? It always did. It would at least stop Peter from panicking, or rushing into things.

He made a count of the city’s vigilantes in his head; because this whole situation was just too much like how it had been with the Red Hood. Batman, Robin, Red Robin, Batwing, Black Bat, Huntress, Signal, Spoiler… There were just too many of them, no way could he remember them all. But still, he tried to remember the descriptions of the ones he could name.

He tried to not tense and make it obvious for his new stalker that he knew he –or she– was there. He kept his body relaxed and nice, his breathing even and calm. He gazed at the sunset, seemingly mindlessly; as his mind whirled with questions and alerts, trying to understand what the guy’s deal was.

He didn’t like having to play the clueless civilian role, but he would if he had to.

The Bats must have been crossing information, that’s what you did if you were a part of a successful hero team. So, after his little chat with the Red Hood the other day, he must’ve told the others of their interaction.

Probably. Possibly. At least Peter thought so. He wasn’t sure if he counted important enough for the red-helmeted guy to mention to the rest of his team of; but he supposed that a street kid sensing a vigilante, who was stalking him from the rooftops, counted as interesting at the very least.

He hadn’t given away too much to Hood, just that he had good instincts. It could’ve been thought as good luck still. And it was also known that the Alley kids had good gut feelings and tended to know when something was wrong or someone was following them.

So, he hadn’t really exposed himself. It was very possible that the bats didn’t suspect any super-humanely abilities from him. And maybe this person had also seen a kid with a bruise on his face and just wanted to check up on them.

So, he would play the clueless civilian role, whether he liked it or not. He had to. Because he couldn’t risk it.

Peter knew that meta humans weren’t treated too differently in this universe; than how mutants had been treated back in his home universe. And not to mention the No-Meta-Human rule of Gotham, put in place by Batman of all people. No, Peter couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk what might happen to him if it went out. Couldn’t risk what the bats might do to him.

Assuming that it was a bat that was watching him right now, of course; and not some rogue or some weirdo.

He kept still and casual, not making a peep and not giving anything away. He was trained for this, a good actor and a patient guy. He would make Black Widow proud, and make sure the few lessons he had gotten from the Avenger wouldn’t be all for nothing.

He had abilities, good abilities –taught to him by an ex-KGB agent, who was also an assassin-turned-hero– and he would use them well. He never forgot a single one of their training sessions with Natasha. He knew how to not be easy prey; she had taught him.

After a minute or so, he heard the faint footsteps; but chose to remain oblivious.

“You okay there, kid?” A kind, male voice asked. It had the perfect tone for making awful puns and stupid jokes, in his opinion.

Peter turned around and saw a big, blue bird on a broad chest. Nightwing then, must be visiting from Blüdhaven. “Yeah.” He said slowly, not really understanding what exactly the vigilante was asking. He wasn’t crying, wasn’t bleeding; he looked completely fine.

Okay, not completely fine; but it was one of his finest days since coming to this dimension. He looked at least remotely alright.

“Really? Great! Then how about you come over here, and then we can chat for a bit?” Nightwing’s voice was strained, a false cheer in it; his eyes kept darting to Peter’s dangling legs.

Oh. Peter suddenly realized that he looked like a bantered and beaten-up homeless kid, sitting at the very edge of a very high building and nonchalantly drawing shit. Yeah, it wasn’t the best picture; he would’ve probably done the same thing, if he ever stumbled upon a similar situation as Spider-Man.

He got up and took a step towards the vigilante. “I’m not going to jump or anything; I was just drawing things. You know, because it’s quiet up here and… peaceful, I guess.”

“Got it.” Though Nightwing was still looking like he was a single second from grabbing him and yanking him away, or jumping right after him; so, Peter took pity on the guy, packed up his sketch-book and pen, and toddled up to him. The guy’s shoulders slowly lost their tension as Peter came closer.

“Did you need something from me?” He asked kindly. “You’re Nightwing right? One of the bats and the birds?”

“Yeah, I am. And I was just here to make sure that you were alright, not because I needed anything. You sure you’re okay, kid? You looked kind of lost in thought.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. And kind of impossible, I came up here to not think for a little while.”

“Well, it looked like you were doing an awful lot of it for someone who wasn’t doing any of it.” Nightwing said with a teasing little smile, and just stared at him.

It took Peter a little while to understand that he was probably eying the bruises on his face. He suddenly felt the need to get away from the guy and hide his wounds from him, for no apparent reason other than… Actually, that was about right; for no apparent reason. At all.

“I should probably go home.”

“Do you need me to accompany you?”

“No thanks.” Peter chirped and gave a little smile, turning tail to get to the fire escape he had climbed up to the roof from. He wanted to go back to the stationary as soon as possible, Nightwing was making him nervous. Surprisingly, Red Hood had been friendlier; Peter thought so at least.

“Wait, kid!” Came the reply.

He stopped and turned, staring warily.

“No uber services, I got it, that’s okay. But can I at least buy you some food? You look too skinny for your age, and… Helping people is kind of my job description, you know?”

Peter mulled it over in his head.

On one hand, he didn’t want to live off of anyone’s pity. And could he really trust this strange man in a spandex suit and a bird theme to not try something? Like follow him home? Or put on a tracker, like Hood? Or something more sinister maybe even? Yes, he was a vigilante; but who knew? Who ever knew those things for sure?

On the other hand, he was hungry; and he had missed the lunch at school, because vinegar was apparently able to be used in the cafeteria food. He was starving, after having a protein bar for breakfast and not eating anything else for the rest of the day.

What he was eating wasn’t even enough for a normal human to function fully with, and he had an enhanced metabolism too, on top of that. He knew that it couldn’t go on like that, with that little food entering his stomach. He wouldn’t see the next month if it did, he had to sacrifice his pride if he wanted to survive.

“Okay.”

A sunny smile appeared on Nightwing’s face and he extended a hand.

Peter took it hesitatingly.

Nightwing pulled him closer, and held him gently and carefully; his arms strong and firm around his waist. Peter felt weird being that close to the guy, but not overly uncomfortable so he didn’t break free, allowed the vigilante to grapple them away. It felt nice to be in the air like that again.

They went to a close by Bat-Burger.

Nightwing had the sense to say that they should probably go back to a rooftop to eat the food, and that eating in the shop wouldn’t really be a good idea with him there as a live target- I mean as a bat.

They ate in silence, other than the small talk the vigilante tried to make, and the awful puns he added to their conversation. Peter had been right about that. He wished that he hadn’t.

He got a Batman figurine from the menu he was eating. The Dark Knight was covered in a cowl from head to toe, looking like a vampire more than a hero with its slim appearance, and pale skin where his chin was showed. Peter eyed it unhappily and stuffed the figurine into his pocket.

Nightwing chuckled upon that. “Not a fan of the B-man, I’m guessing?”

“I’m new to the city, and a guy wearing a bat costume and fighting crime illegally just sounds… weird, at its nicest, and mental at its bluntest.”

Nightwing laughed, loud and bright and unashamed. “Yeah, you’re right. But also, ouch; I do the same thing, you know, just have a bird theme.”

“Yeah, but… you’re at least kinder. And nicer.” The New Yorkers had talked of Spider-Man with awe and happiness and care, other than some people who he kept messing up the evil plans of, and a small population who was just assholes. They would tell their children that Spider-Man would come and save them if something ever happened to them.

The Gothamites told their kids to be good, or the Batman would come and take them away.

“Oh? Is he scary? Are you scared of him?” N was just teasing.

But he wasn’t wrong either.

Peter didn’t know what the Batman would do to him if he learned that he was enhanced; he was scared. Would he send him away? Kick him out of the city? Lock him up in some facility? Experiment on him? Something worse? Peter didn’t know. And he wanted to never find out.

Unfortunately, one of the greatest detectives in the world was sat next to him, watching him; and was reading his body language perfectly, coming to that conclusion also. His easy smile fell off. “Hey. Kid. You don’t need to be scared of the big guy. He doesn’t hurt innocent people, and he sure as shit doesn’t hurt kids.”

“Got it.” Peter said; too fast, too quickly. They both knew that he was lying.

Nightwing quieted down for a little while after that, putting aside his burger. Then, “Who did that to you?” he asked, in a quiet tone.

“Did what?”

“Those bruises. And your ribs.”

“My ribs?” Peter’s heart skipped a beat, how did he know?

“You move weirdly, like something hurts when you do certain movements. I took a shot. So, it is your ribs, right?”

“… Yeah.”

“What happened?” Peter could almost feel Nightwing’s eyes squinting at him through his white lenses, as if he was a puzzle to be solved.

“Nothing like what you or Red Hood are thinking, I promise.” It was too big of a coincidence for the guy to come up to talk to him only days after his conversation with the red vigilante. “And… Tony isn’t hurting me. Really.” Tony can’t hurt me. Tony is dead.

“Tony?” Nightwing feigned confusion; but Peter could see through his lie, could hear his heartbeat. Nevertheless, he played along.

“My guardian. He was a family friend; he took me in after my aunt died. I live in the Crime Alley with him now.”

He stuck to his story, even though it hurt him to talk about them like that; creating them a new life story where they could never truly be the people that they had been when they were alive.

But he couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk someone fact-checking his words and discovering that he was lying.

“He would never lay a hand on me like that. He does wrestle me into going to bed when I try to stay up all night in the lab, or force food down my throat when I refuse to take a lunch break, or throw a water bottle at my head every two hours because I’m just that bad at staying hydrated. But he isn’t abusing me.” He continued.

Remembering those memories, talking about them, and not using the past tense he had forced himself into adapting months ago; broke something in Peter. But at least now, no one was going to dare to think of Tony in that way.

Not his Tony.

Not his dad.

“Then what happened?” Nightwing seemed like he believed him about Tony, now just wanting to know what was the real reason behind his injuries.

“… I can’t really explain it.” But Peter didn’t have a story to explain them away, he hadn’t thought that anyone would care about them so much, would ask questions.

“Did someone hurt you and Tony? Is someone keeping him hostage or something? Are you on the run from them?”

“No, no! Nothing like that either.” Peter grimaced, this was getting out of control, he needed the conversation to be over.

“Then why can’t you tell me what happened?”

“B-Because-” He looked down.

Because he didn’t know how the bats would react when he told them, if they would take it good or bad. If they would even believe him. He couldn’t risk it with how little knowledge he had of them.

And it wasn’t like he needed help returning home either; he knew he wasn’t going to. Ever. And he knew there was nothing or no one back there; missing him, waiting on him, or looking for him; so, it wasn’t hurting as bad as it probably should’ve either.

Or Peter was just too emotionally numb to feel the pain.

“Can we not talk about this? Please?” He asked pathetically.

Nightwing took a long look at the teary boy in front of him. And he crumbled. The vigilante suddenly pulled him in, and gave him a quick hug.

When he pulled back a second later, Peter was very still and wide eyed; staring at the guy with big brown eyes. He saw Nightwing wince just slightly, opening his mouth and closing it again, seemingly trying to figure out how to apologize.

But Peter didn’t let him start to rant about how sorry he was for hugging him without permission. He sniffled a bit and looked down before nudging him quickly in thanks. He had missed getting hugs. It had been a long while since anyone had touched him, barring the accidental bumps from strangers, or nudges and hand brushes from his colleagues.

It had been months.

Peter wrapped up his trash and stuffed it in his pocket to throw it away later, and chirped a quiet “Goodnight.” to the vigilante. Then he went to the fire escape and climbed down, wanting to go back to the stationary and just sleep.

His stomach was blessingly full.

***

DAY 12: Tuesday

THE BAT-CHAT

Dick: He knew I was there too.

Dick: Peter.

Dick: Practically sensed me.

Dick: He didn’t show any outward signs or even slight tenseness, but he wasn’t surprised the slightest bit when he heard my voice out of nowhere.

Dick: Not even a flinch.

Dick: He knew I was there, and he was waiting for me to reveal myself.

Dick: He was also sitting at the very edge of the roof and dangling his legs, which gave me a small heart attack, but he said he was just drawing.

Dick: He then right-guessed who I was, after only fifteen seconds of seeing me.

Dick: He’s smart and observant.

Dick: He tried to escape when I asked him if he was alright.

Dick: But I managed to get him to agree letting me buy him a burger.

Dick: He’s afraid of Batman.

Dick: I don’t know why, but he’s afraid.

Dick: I told him that he would never hurt him, never hurt a child, and he said “Got it.”, but it was obvious he didn’t believe me.

Dick: Then I asked him about the bruises again.

Dick: This time instead of avoiding or escaping; he said that it wasn’t like what me and Red Hood were thinking.

Dick: I didn’t say anything about Hood.

Dick: He came to that conclusion himself.

Dick: Then we talked of Tony a bit.

Dick: Guys, I don’t think Tony is the bad guy here.

Dick: The kid talks of him like he is a hero.

Dick: Like he is his hero.

Dick: Like he is his father.

Dick: And after hearing what Peter said about him, and how he said it, I don’t think Tony is hurting him.

Dick: And lastly, I gave him a quick side-hug before leaving; because after that talk he was left a bit teary-eyed and I couldn’t stop myself.

Dick: He felt very small, and scared.

Dick: He then nudged me in thanks.

Dick: Guys.

Dick: We really need to help him.

Damian: He sounds like a possible threat to me, with all the points Richard has made about how observant and smart he is.

Duke: No way.

Steph: The kid sounds like he’s a total sweetheart!

Barbara: He is.

Tim: You’re just jealous.

Cass: Good kid.

Cass: No hurt him, Baby Brother.

Jason: Don’t you dare, Demon Spawn.

Dick: Damian.

Dick: No.

Damian: Tt.

Bruce: We should gather more information on him.

Barbara: Alright then.

Barbara: Tim.

Barbara: Investigate.

Steph: You mean stalk.

Duke: lgjhajlsdjfl

Tim: Fuck off!

***

DAY 13: Wednesday

“Hey Babs!” Peter chirped as he closed the library door behind himself. He shook his body a little, like a cat, as he tried to get his damp clothes free from the droplets; Gotham rains were the worst. “How are you?”

“I’m doing good Peter, how ’bout you?”

“Meh. You know how school is. Boring.” He took off his coat and hang it on a nearby chair, hoping that it would dry up before it was time to leave.

“Yeah, I remember you telling me. You got any homework today?”

“Not anything new, but I do need to finish the assignment that was given yesterday. I’m going to need the computers.”

“You know where they are Little Duck. And, uhm, I was going to order some food, do you want anything?”

He paused for a second, hesitating before answering. “No, thank you, I’m not hungry. Plus, I don’t want to burden you.”

Peter went over to the computers to start working on his utterly useless and pointless assignment on chemistry, and missed how Barbara was giving him a squinting look. She gave him a once over before raising a carefully crafted eyebrow, and pulling her mouth to a distasteful shape. She returned to her phone shortly after, running through uber and food apps quite aggressively.

“The food is here.” She said to him, about two and a half hours later. Usually, delivery only took about one hour, but the rain outside was really one of the crazy ones of the year; she understood the delay completely.

“Bon Appetit.” Peter gave her a smile and turned back to the mess of papers in front of him. Like he wasn’t going to eat as well. Like he actually had a choice in the matter.

“You’re eating too kid, come here.” She began wheeling away.

“But-”

“I don’t care what, I ordered you food too. You look like a shrunk fourteen-year-old wearing clothes twice his size, come here and drink the darned soup.”

Peter gaped for a moment, before finally standing up and following her. He sat down and took the plastic bowl from the redhead, beginning eating.

The moment the smell of the soup had hit his nose, Peter had started to salivate; it had smelled delicious. He was grateful that the librarian had ordered him a bowl too. His stomach rumbled unhappily, almost as if whining at the reminder of being so hungry; and Peter shushed it in his head, consoling it that the food was about to enter him.

He was done with his soup before Barbara was even halfway through hers, as usual. Peter flushed a bit as he gathered up his trash and went to throw it away; every time the same thing would happen, and every time Peter would try to note it down on his brain to eat slower the next time.

And every time, he would forget.

“Peter. Is the money tight nowadays? At home?” Barbara asked before he could go back to his homework, her tone strained.

“Y-Yeah…” Peter stuttered, sitting back down next to her; only a little uncomfortable and guilty about the lies he was about to tell. But better that than being rude to such an angelic person who was helping him so much, right? “You could say that.”

“Your parents, are they not taking care of you?”

“I don’t have parents, just a guardian. Tony, he’s a family friend.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry. Tony.” A small pause as she chewed on her lips. “Is he not… taking care of you? Does he not have the money for it?” She asked, trying to soften the blow as she fished for neglect and abuse signs. But Peter could see right through her gentle words, and into her mind games.

Though he didn’t suspect anything hostile from her, his spider-senses were quiet as well. She was probably just concerned about him; any sane adult would be. Which meant that he needed to be careful with what he said, and how he said it.

“He got fired a while ago, because his boss was an asshole. It wasn’t his fault. And he’s still jobless, but he’s looking. He takes care of me as much as he can with what he has. He’s a good man.” Lies, lies, and lies. The only truth was the last part.

“Takes care of you, hm?” He could tell that she wanted to know just how he took care of him.

“Yes.”

“Can I ask how? Like, what does he do for you, can you tell me?” She winced a bit as she asked, knowing that she sounded too prying even to her own ears.

“Will you call the CPS if I don’t?” The question was quiet and solemn, needing a moment to process through Barbara’s head. When it did, she exploded into movement.

“No! No, of course not. Peter, I’m a born and raised Gothamite, my father is one of the few not-dirty cops left in the city; I know that the orphanages and the system is front for traffickers. I would never call them on any child, are you kidding me? Let alone one I know personally. And… I’m not threatening you kid, I’m just asking.”

“But why?”

“Because I want to help. If you don’t feel safe at home, or if you just need some financial help, I can help. Other people can too, like Batman. Red Hood looks after the Crime Alley; if Tony went to him, he could help him find a job. A legal one, I mean. And help you guys while you got back your feet. I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you, or make you feel threatened.” She looked like she wished she had never said anything.

It was silent for a moment before Peter opened his mouth to explain, he needed to elaborate at least a little bit. He didn’t like Barbara worrying for him, nor did he like leaving her feeling guilty and in the dark.

He would have to wind up a ton of lies about why his dead father figure/mentor supposedly-legal-guardian, was not taking good enough care of him; but he would do it if it would ease up the tenseness on Babs’ shoulders.

The woman had taken care of him, had fed him and hugged him, had helped him so much since stepping foot into that dimension; lying a bit to ease her worries was no task. Even if he would feel guilty about those lies later, when he laid in bed awake at night.

“Things used to be much better, when Aunt May was still alive and Tony hadn’t lost his job. He had a lab in his house, in the garage. He’s an engineer, he taught me everything I know, from everything he knew. He’s why I want to become an engineer. I loved spending time in the lab, putting together stuff and working with him.

“We had projects that we did together; toys, coffee machines, radios. We would buy the stuff we needed, and lock ourselves into the lab until May called us for dinner and forced us out of there.” A bitter chuckle. “Nowadays if we want to build anything we have to go dumpster diving, and use the crooked, old kitchen table.”

Tony had had a lab, and they had built things in there; just more complex than toys or radios. And his conditions of engineering stuff had changed drastically; just that the lab hadn’t been the only thing he had lost, Tony as well.

The redhead didn’t need to know any of those though.

Peter made sure to let everything he said –every one of his lies– have just a bit of truth in them; he didn’t want to create a new Tony Stark in his head for this dimension, who was nothing like the one he had known in his own. He wanted to be truthful enough to not change him, just the conditions.

“What happened?”

“Tony is a recovered alcoholic. A nosy coworker learned that, and… she got him fired; even though he hadn’t touched a bottle in years. Since then, he had been looking for jobs; but hadn’t had the luck to actually find one.

“He had to change his apartment, sell his car, downgrade his everything. And then May died in a fire, and he couldn’t just leave me in an orphanage. He took me in. We’ve been struggling since then, but… it’s better than any alternative foster home or step parents I could’ve been sent to live with.”

Tony had been a recovered alcoholic when he was alive, even though Peter was talking out of his ass about the rest of his job and financial situations. He had also been filthy rich since he was born, probably richer than Bruce Wayne of this universe.

But the last part had a bit of truth in it too, at least Peter liked to think so. If May had died before Tony, Tony would’ve taken him in. Or at least help him get to his feet in a nice apartment; rather than leaving him to a cold orphanage.

Tony cared about him that much.

At least… Peter liked to think so.

“He sounds like a good man.”

He was.

He had been.

“He is.” Peter said. “He isn’t a bad person; we just don’t have money to buy the food or pay the bills.” He hoped that the explanation helped, at least a bit.

Man, he had talked too much, he would need to write these down as “Lies to Remember” as soon as possible, before he forgot.

Barbara was quiet, for a moment, before asking. “Peter, would you want to work here at the weekends?”

What. That had not been what Peter was expecting.

“Is the public library even open on weekends?”

“Yeah, between 9 am and 5 pm, Saturdays and Sundays. You would need come one hour early and leave one hour late, ten hours a day. We can pay you twenty dollars an hour. You can work here part-time, and Tony can pick-up whatever job Red Hood would help him find. What do you say?”

400 dollars per week, 1600 dollars per month. Not much, but considering Peter had about 43 dollars and 47 cents left already, after only 12 days in this dimension, (don’t judge him; he had had to buy things like towels, an old rug, a garbage bin, garbage bags, a deodorant, and lots of other things too, to be able to actually live in the stationary; not just food and water) it was an amazing development.

Too good to be true actually, but Peter wasn’t going to question any aspect of it. Life was expensive, he needed that money. And he would probably need to pick up another job anyways.

“Okay. But I don’t know much about being a librarian.” He said slowly, as if warning Babs.

“That’s alright, I can show you.”

“You’ll train me?”

“Yep. And you can meet my coworkers too, you’ll love them. Do you have the time today?”

“Uhm, I think so.”

“Alright then. Come along, Little Duckling, I shall teach you the proper ways of becoming a librarian.” She said in a cryptic manner.

Peter giggled.

DAY 13: Wednesday

THE BAT-CHAT

Barbara: I hired Peter.

Dick: You did what now?

Barbara: He needs the money.

Barbara: He was at the library today.

Barbara: I asked if the money was tight at home nowadays, after he finished his bowl of soup too fast.

Barbara: If Tony was not taking care of him, or didn’t have the money to do so.

Barbara: I was fishing for abuse or neglect signs.

Barbara: He said that Tony took care of him.

Barbara: I asked him to explain how.

Barbara: He did, without revealing much.

Barbara: He didn’t really explain how or how much Tony took care of him.

Barbara: But the things he did say were aimed at soothing me that the man wasn’t unfit to become a guardian.

Barbara: Turns out, he used to be a successful engineer.

Barbara: But then a nosy coworker learned that he was a recovered alcoholic, and snitched on him to the bosses.

Barbara: She got him fired.

Barbara: From there, it had been downhill.

Barbara: But he still took Peter in when his aunt died.

Barbara: Peter said that Tony was better than any alternative foster family or step parents he could’ve been sent to live with, in his opinion.

Barbara: The kid talked of him very fondly.

Barbara: Now I understand what Dick meant.

Barbara: I won’t go as far as to vouch for the guy.

Barbara: But… I don’t believe he’s hurting him.

Barbara: Nothing too drastic, at least.

Jason: But?

Barbara: What but?

Jason: I know you Barbie, there is a “but” there.

Barbara: …

Barbara: But.

Barbara: It doesn’t add up.

Barbara: If Tony was struggling so much; why would the NY’s CPS give Peter to him.

Barbara: They aren’t like Gotham CPS; they are at least a bit competent.

Barbara: And I can’t find any Tony Starks who is an engineer.

Barbara: And the Tony Stark from the kid’s forgery documents didn’t even have a diploma.

Barbara: Something is up.

Tim: Hmm.

Steph: Ugh!

Steph: You guys talk about this supposedly very cute very small seventeen-year-old possible brother and the mystery that he is.

Steph: All the time!

Steph: I want to meet him too.

Duke: Yes!

Duke: Doesn’t he go to Gotham Prep?

Duke: Supposedly?

Duke: We’ve never seen him.

Barbara: The truth of that statement is unclear as well.

Barbara: Bruce didn’t allow him to take a scholarship exam in the middle of the semester, because of his 'condition'.

Barbara: He didn’t even know that there would be a transfer student.

Barbara: But his name is definitely in the records.

Tim: We can check if you want.

Tim: Look around for him at school.

Steph: Tim.

Steph: No.

Steph: We aren’t stalking the kid in school.

Barbara: I mean.

Barbara: Maybe you could…

Steph: Oof.

Steph: It’s that bad huh?

Barbara: Yeah…

Barbara: Just.

Barbara: Keep an eye out for him, and maybe introduce yourselves if you happen to end up in the same classroom or something.

Barbara: Nothing more, nothing less, K?

Barbara: He’s usually pretty silent, manages to sneak around me all the time, you could’ve missed him.

Steph: Really?

Barbara: Yeah.

Jason: Can we get back to the part where you said you hired him?

Dick: Yeah, I want that too.

Barbara: Sure.

Barbara: I offered to let him work part-time, on Saturdays and Sundays.

Barbara: 8am-6pm.

Cass: 👍

Barbara: ❤️

Bruce: And how much are you paying him?

Barbara: 20 dollars an hour, 400 per week.

Duke: Isn’t that too little?

Barbara: It is, but I can barely get him to even eat the food I’m offering to him.

Barbara: I don’t think he would take more than that.

Bruce: Will you be able to pay that money?

Barbara: Yes, Bruce, I got it.

Bruce: Do ask for help if you need it.

Bruce: I am a billionaire after all, and you’re as good as my niece Barbara.

Barbara: Thanks :)

Jason: Isn’t Peter supposed to have a 'very involved and amazing' guardian?

Jason: What the fuck is Tony doing while Peter works?

Barbara: Looking for jobs as the kid says.

Barbara: I told him that the Red Hood can help Tony find a job, that he takes care of the Crime Alley and its people.

Barbara: Hopefully, he’ll take the advice and come and find you.

Barbara: But I don’t know if he will.

Jason: What, because he has a degree, he can’t do anything other than engineering?

Jason: There are plenty of other jobs too!

Jason: Waiter, cleaner, babysitter, etc.

Barbara: I don’t know, Jason.

Barbara: I don’t know.

Chapter Text

DAY 14: Thursday

Peter was in his chemistry classroom; not even pretending to be listening to Mr. Rendall, to the lectures about a subject he already knew by heart. Instead, he was sketching Happy into his sketch-book. He didn’t have his picture in his wallet.

By then his sketch-book was pretty full with lots of drawings. Not even halfway used yet, but still; pretty full. He had some mindless doodles and scenery drawings; but mostly portraits of his loved ones.

Of May, Ben and Tony, now Happy too; and doodles of Mrs. Pots and little Morgan because Tony deserved to have them by his side no matter what, even on Peter’s pages –despite Peter not knowing their faces well enough for portraits, so they were just there as doodles–; the drawing of the Avengers logo; and unfinished sketches of MJ and Ned, because he couldn’t seem to keep the pages dry when he was drawing them.

Peter was almost done with his drawing when he first felt it, the weight of a calculating gaze at the back of his head. He got goosebumps all over his body, and immediately focused on the feeling. Someone was watching him, that much was obvious, but why? And who? Peter didn’t get it.

But that didn’t mean that this was any reason to be stupid or amateurish about this; he immediately relaxed his muscles back into their earlier stance, hoping that his stalker hadn’t caught the difference, and slowed down his heartbeat, to keep himself calm and in case whoever watching him had enhanced hearing abilities.

He tried to think about why someone would be watching him in class, but came up empty-handed. He wasn’t an interesting or popular person; or handsome, or even a jerk. He didn’t have any reason to get stared at.

He tried to shrug it off.

But then the feeling didn’t disappear after he left the chemistry classroom. When he sat down at algebra, the weight of the gaze re-appeared. It followed him around; leaving him alone in the bathrooms and the locker rooms, but picking up at everywhere else.

Oddly enough, it didn’t ring alarm bells in his head, it didn’t feel dangerous. Despite the persistent stalking. It was only curious, and a bit frustrated if anything. Peter didn’t get it.

He didn’t have much time to mull it over either, it was PE now, and it was softball time. Which meant he had to see and deal with Miller. Honestly, he was missing Flash.

He tried to forget about the feeling for the rest of the day, it was no use trying to investigate. And in all honesty, it was probably just an overly-curious kid wondering about the bruise on his face or something. Wondering about this obviously poor transfer student. It would probably go away in a couple days, right?

Right?

***

DAY 16: Saturday

Today was the day. His first shift as a librarian. And Peter was excited.

Barbara had taught him how the computer systems and the book organization worked; and had introduced him to the staff as well.

Mia was a college student, trying to pay her tuition with the little money her mother could send her, and her salary from her job as a librarian. She had light brown, short hair and a baby face; as well as a pair of doe eyes to go with it. She was a small human, so her appearance usually made people think she was fifteen, while in reality she was twenty-two.

And Carlos was a bulky guy, lifter. He was in a better place then Mia, financially speaking. He went to the gym, and had some other jobs as well, also having some help from his parents. He had curly, dark hair; and dark skin.

Barbara had explained how their schedules worked, how they all accommodated for each other happily. Barbara chose to have evening shifts because she was busy with other things in the morning, Mia had her classes, and Carlos had his other jobs.  

Basically, two employees were required per shift, and there were two shifts per day. And three employees covered that nicely. Peter was going to fill the four shifts of the weekend, with Barbara; and the three full-time employees were going to split the week shifts between themselves as normal.

“Hey Pete.” Barbara greeted him when he entered the building. “How’s it going?”

“Hey Babs, I’m alright, just a bit nervous. How about you?”

“I’m fine, thank you. And nervous? Why?”

Peter shrugged; he didn’t know it either.

“Oh, Duckling; no need to be nervous. Think of it as any other day, okay? We’re just hanging out together, you just can’t leave before 6 pm.”

“Okay.”

“Now come, we have things to do.”

Barbara led him to a small hill of boxes. About five, dusty boxes were sitting together nicely; waiting for them.

“Alright. I’ve had these boxes waiting to be unpacked for a while. They are donations, and we need to place them to the shelves. There are about thirty books per one box, and five boxes; so, 150 books in total. It shouldn’t take longer than a couple hours, and then we can have a lunch break, hm?”

“That sounds amazing. Alright, let’s get to work then.” Peter said, and reached for a box.

It did take them hours, as Barbara had said it would. Three and a half to be exact, and Peter was pretty much starving by the time they were done.

The redhead sorted through the boxes and told Peter which pile to take which isle at, and the spider mutant made sure to be as fast as possible without running and bumping into someone.  

“What do you want to eat?” She asked when they were done.

Peter turned to her with a cute little “Hm?”

“Food. What do you want to eat, Little Duck?”

“Oh, uhm… I don’t know.” He said, trying to swallow down the it’s okay, I’m not hungry that came to the tip of his tongue. He had learned by then that arguing with Babs was not a very wise or logical choice, especially when she was trying to feed him.

“Alright then.” She made a thinking face. “What about pizza?”

“Pepperoni and cheese?”

“One pepperoni and cheese coming right up. And drinks?”

“Juice, or water is fine.” He smiled at her and began collecting the empty boxes lying around. Barbara went back to the front desk after she was done ordering the food, and opened up her laptop.

“Uhm… Do you want me to do something after I’m done with these boxes?”

“Nah, you’re good. I’ll tell you if I want you to do something; and if I don’t, and if someone doesn’t call you over for some help, assume you’re free.”

“Alright then.”

Her phone dinged with a notification and she frowned after reading the text. She bit her lip and turned to him.

“Kiddo, I have a little something that I need to take care of, it’s, uhm… personal business. I’ll be at the back room, I’m leaving twenty dollars here, to pay the delivery guy when he comes, alright? Don’t come and get me if I’m still back there when the food arrives, just eat and save me a slice or two.”

“Oh, okay. Is everything alright?”

Barbara’s eyes softened at the sight of his worry and fidgeting, and she smiled at him. “Yeah, everything’s fine. It’s just that, one of my cousins is having a bit of trouble right now, and he needs me to be at the other end of the phone for a little while. It probably won’t take too long.”

“Alright then. If you say so.”

Barbara picked up her laptop, and wheeled her way into the back room, and closed the door behind herself. Peter didn’t miss the quiet click of the door locking afterwards, and frowned upon hearing that. He wondered what that was about, he wouldn’t have barged into the room if Babs didn’t want him there, why was she locking the door?

He sat down at the front desk, waiting for the delivery guy.

He didn’t like admitting to it, but he was pretty hungry. He had eaten the last of his protein bars yesterday, and school wasn’t on Saturdays; so, he hadn’t had anything to eat the whole day. And considering that it was almost dinner time, Peter was pretty freaking thankful for Barbara’s existence, really.

Yes, he didn’t enjoy taking her food, or the food she bought with her own money; but there were times where people just didn’t have the luxury of refusing help, and Peter was at one of those times. So, until he picked up a second job, and started making more than 400 dollars a week; he didn’t really have a choice in the matter.

Maybe he could start working at a delivery job at a food court, or as a waiter at some café, on the week days at the evening shift. Or maybe he could ask Barbara if he could work after school too, not just weekends. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea.

And if he could save up some money to buy himself a crappy camera too…

Taking vigilante photos when he wasn’t taking his own, planned, pseudo-photos; and the actual photos of actual other vigilantes –who were also secrecy freaks–, without their permission, probably also against their permission; wouldn’t be very smart, or easy.

But.

The bats didn’t have many photos online or on newspapers, that were actually at least a bit clear and not full of blurry vague outlines of bulky guys, little kids, or badass women. A clear shot of Robin or Nightwing or Huntress should be worthing a pretty penny if the media really had nothing but stupid and inaccurate descriptions of the vigilantes.

Maybe he could even ask one of them for a photo, if he got really desperate for money. And maybe they would allow him one shot, just one. Red Hood and Nightwing seemed insistent enough on helping him, he could ask for them to help in that way, if the worst came to the worst. 

“Hello? Delivery for Barbara Gordon?”

“Yeah, over here.” Peter called out to the guy. “She’s busy right now, I’ll take the food. Here’s the money, and your tip.” He gave him an eight-dollar tip from his own money, hoping that it was enough for the guy. It seemed so, since the guy looked shocked at the tip offered to him and gave him a smile while taking it. Nobody ever tipped people around here, I guess.

“Thanks kid, have a nice one!”

Peter contemplated knocking on the door to call for Barbara, at least to let her know that the food had arrived; but decided that that was probably why she had locked the door. Because she knew that he would likely bother her otherwise.

And she had said to just leave her a couple slices and eat if she wasn’t done by the time pizzas arrived; instead of coming and getting her, so… Peter opened one of the boxes and took out a big slice.

It was almost 7 pm when Barbara came out. She looked around tiredly, and startled the smallest bit when her eyes landed on him. “You’re still here?” She asked, astonishment in her voice. Then she face-palmed. “Of course you’re still here, you’re waiting for your salary. Right! So sorry kid.”

Peter flushed. “No, no, that’s not why I waited. I mean… You told me to not bother you, so I didn’t. And to save food for you, so I did. But I couldn’t have just left with the door open for anyone to wander in and do whatever they wanted while you were locked away in there. And I couldn’t have just locked you inside and left, so… That’s why I waited; I figured you couldn’t take too long in there.” He shrugged. “I could’ve gotten my salary tomorrow or after school on Monday or whatever.”

“Oh, Little Duck.” She cooed. “Can I give you a hug?”

He got his salary, exactly two hundred dollars; and a kiss and a hug as well, as tip for his cuteness and kindness as Babs called it. He waved at her as he was leaving the building, after they had shut the shutters, and began whistling on his way to the stationary.

All in all, it was probably his joyful mood that attracted the trouble. Or he was just allergic to happiness and even the tiniest bit of stability. Take your pick.

He was walking in a relaxed stance, thinking about the day’s events and how far he could stretch his one hundred dollars for food and water, when his spider-senses gave the sharp alarm. And because he was so distracted with thinking if he could sneak out food from the cafeteria, that he realized the danger just a second too late.

Rough hands grabbed him by the neck, and pulled him into an alley; pushing him against the hard, brick wall. Before he could even yelp properly, a knife pressed against his throat, and a wide hand grabbed his chin. “Quiet.” A voice growled, and Peter squinted in the dim alley to look at his three muggers.

“Where’s your money?”

“I don’t have money on me.” Peter forced out, mindful to keep his words quiet and short, to not get cut accidentally by the idiot of a man who was holding him at knife point.

“Don’t play games with us kid,” A second voice chided. “You’ve gotta have some money on ya. Ya better give it to us, cause if we find it, ya won’t like what we will do to ya.”

“Yeah, we don’t like liars.” The third guy hissed and smirked, thinking that they had managed to intimidate him.

Well. Unfortunately for them, they hadn’t. Peter had dealt with all kinds of criminals back at Queens in his home universe, he had seen these types of muggers the most out of everyone else, probably. Whether they were actually willing to go with their threat or not, Peter didn’t really care. He wasn’t about to let three two-bit thugs steal his hard-earned money.

(Well, not that hard earned, but at least he was working to get money, instead of stealing from poor, innocent people. So, there was that.)

“You don’t like liars? As muggers? Now that’s a funny story. Really, you’re real funny. Acting like you’re not a criminal, and have any right to judge a kid who could or could not be lying to not get mugged by three idiots who didn’t even bother to cover and hide their faces. Seriously, isn’t this the funniest thing you’ve ever heard this week?”

No. No it wasn’t.

But Peter forced out a laugh anyways, to get a rise out of the guys. It probably wasn’t a very wise move, being a smartass when there was a knife to his throat, but… Peter had never claimed to be very smart, just a total nerd.

The three thugs stopped smiling, their easy stance fading away and tenseness seeping in. “What the hell kid, do ya want to die?” The second voice asked. “Because we will. Kill ya, I mean. If ya don’t give us some money. So, ya- ya better hope that ya have something on ya!” The other two murmured their agreement.

Peter actually, honestly felt pity for them. “Aww… The lines you guys practiced in front of a mirror for the past three hours ain’t cutting it for me? All of your hard work and confidence is going down the drain? I’m not anything like how I look, which would be a scared, scrawny, homeless kid? Yeah, I know. Sucks to suck, I know that guys. But… Unfortunately for you, I am nothing like how I look. And you won’t be mugging me today.”

He said it with such certainty too.

Maybe that was what ticked the muggers off; he should’ve gone with indifferent, not self-righteous.

He could admit it when he had fucked up, and that was the exact moment he fucked up that one. He knew that the second the knife-guy’s face drew to an angry pout.

“Give us the money, twerp, or I’ll make sure that ya will regret it.” Okay, the other two were amateurs; but this on looked like he had done this before too, and actually wasn’t afraid to use the knife. Well, unfortunately for him, neither was Peter. Afraid of him using the knife, I mean.

“Yeah, no. I’d rather get run over by a mini-van, and bleed out in the middle of the street.”

“We can arrange that.”

“Can you?”

He was openly working on his suicide now, he knew that. But he couldn’t shut up; somehow, he felt like the only way out of what was going on, would be with more sass. He was probably wrong.

“He literally has a knife to your neck kid. Just give us some money and we’ll let ya go.” The third guy said.

“Yeah, man. I don’t wanna murder a toddler in an alley, just some easy buck.” The second guy added.

“I’m not a toddler, and I’m not afraid of knives and the alike.” Peter answered, wishing that he could tug his hands free and reach into his back pocket to pull out the pocket knife Red Hood had given him. (Honestly, fuck him for forgetting to wear the bandana.)

But unfortunately, the thugs’ grip was unforgiving; and he couldn’t try to use his strength while there was a sharp object right up to his neck. It could end up moving him, and even the smallest mistake in his calculation could cause blood pouring down his throat and onto his front with alarming speed and thickness.

“Really?” The knife-guy growled out. “Well, how’bout we test that theory?” He asked menacingly, and brought the knife up to Peter’s cheek; pressing it in just enough to draw blood, and then sliding it fast across the smooth skin, leaving a red line in its wake. Blood dripped down his face.

Peter hissed.

“What is it tough guy, I thought ya could take it?” He was smirking.

And Peter could, he actually could.

But, honestly, giving the money now, and then kicking their asses afterwards, as soon as they took the knife off of his neck; was going to be a much better plan. So, he decided to go with that.

“My back pocket.” He rasped out.

One of the two bits, who were pressing his arms to the wall, dug a hand to his back pocket and greedily looked for the money. He pulled them out as soon as his hands hit the banknotes. He stared at the four fifties with shock and delight.

“Oi! This kid got some money!”

“Is that a whole-ass two hundred dollars?! Fuck, yeah!”

“Keep holding him!” The knife-guy barked at his two dumbass friends. “Ya carry a two hundred on ya? Anything else that ya might be carrying?”

“No.”

“Really?” He asked disbelieving.

“Yes. I’m not rich, that two hundred dollars was just my salary, and I got it today. I live in the Crime Alley; I have no other money on me right now.”

“Ya just got your salary?” The knife-guy asked, mockingly empathetic. “That’s too bad. Well, ya will just have to learn how to be more careful with your money then.” He smirked at him, and took a step back, taking the knife with him. His friends’ hands fell from Peter’s body as well.

Big mistake.

Not thanks to Peter though.

No, he was just a moment too late to get on moving. In between one blink and the other, there was a loud zapping sound and the knife-guy was on the ground after a pained scream, muscles spasming and breathing ragged.

Electricity. Escrima sticks. Nightwing.

A dash of black and blue pounced at the two bits, and Peter finally got a move on. He would’ve stepped in to help; but the vigilante was already done and zipping up the guys until he was out of his initial shock. His eyes fell onto the fifties on the ground, and he bent over to pick them up.

When he got back up, Nightwing was staring at him, and at the money in his hands. He murmured something to someone called O (Oracle?) through his comms, about their location and calling the cops; and then picked Peter up without even looking. Peter yelped when he was manhandled into the vigilante’s grip, and held onto him when he heard the whine of the grapple.

Nightwing took them up to a roof, and then turned to Peter with an expression he was all too familiar with, after putting him down.

“Are you crazy?!” He yelled out his worry. “Why were you mouthing off at the guy who was holding a knife to your neck?” He looked like he felt he couldn’t stress it enough.

 “What was I supposed to do? Let them take my money?!” Peter snapped back; adrenaline still high in his body. “That wasn’t much of a better option, you know; I’d have starved or frozen to death if I did that!”

“I thought you had a guardian.” Nightwing’s voice was eerily calm when he said that. Like he had caught something. Like he knew that he had caught something.

And he had. Peter had fucked up, and slipped up. He gulped, the anger giving way to panic. “I do.”

“I thought he looked after you, and took care of you.”

“He did! He does! He’s just-” Peter groaned in frustration and turned around sharply to just leave. He was in no state of dealing with any of this, and he didn’t want to do so either.

Honestly, what did it even matter if the vigilantes knew whether he was an orphan or not? Clearly, they weren’t going to report him to the CPS or some shit! At least he thought so. So, what was the fucking point?

Seriously, why did he even bother lying to them?

“Hey, kid, wait. I’m sorry, just- stop.” Nightwing still sounded pretty agitated, but mostly resigned. Peter imagined that tone was usually reserved for the younger bats on their team. “Your cheek, it needs medical attention.”

“It’s fine, it’s just a cut, I don’t care.” He kept walking away.

“Peter wait, I’m sorry, please. It needs stitches, let me take you to a clinic. A free and safe one. I go to that one too, when I need to get patched up. The others do as well.”

Peter stopped. Wing walked up to him, and gently turned him around. He looked down at him with a regretful expression and sighed. “Sorry.” He murmured again, and Peter shrugged in lieu of an answer.

Then the guy brushed his thumb over the cut on his cheek, and a hiss escaped him. He winced. When he looked back up at Nightwing, the guy was looking like a kicked puppy; all doe-eyed and sorry and about to start begging for forgiveness.

“It’s okay,” Peter started, before the guy can start an apology rant. “I have bandages at home. I don’t need to go to a clinic. I can handle myself.”

“Are you sure?” The vigilante looked deeply unsure, insultingly so.

“I’m fine. I’ve had worse.” Then he froze.

Oh fuck. Fucking perfect. The cherry on top, honestly. “I used to skate.” He tried to gather up, but he knew that Nightwing knew he was lying.

“Let me drop you off.” The vigilante asked.

“It’s fine, I can walk. The cut is on my cheek, you know; not my legs.”

“Kid, you just almost got mugged, your legs are still trembling.”

“It’s just the adrenaline.” He murmured.

“Let me take you home. Or at least let me take you to the Crime Alley and drop you off at some random roof, if you don’t want me to learn where you live. Please.”

“…Fine.”

***

DAY 16: Saturday

THE BAT-CHAT

Tim: All I can find on this guy goes back to fifteen days ago only.

Tim: And that’s it.

Tim: I can’t find anything about him before that.

Tim: Not in the system, not on the internet, not even on a single camera footage.

Tim: And Babs is right, all of the documents are forgery.

Tim: And it is good.

Tim: This is so frustrating!

Tim: Why can’t I find anything?!

Jason: I warned you, didn’t I?

Jason: He’s gonna lose his mind over this, and kidnap the kid to ask him personally.

Tim: Not a bad idea actually…

Barbara: Tim.

Tim: Fine, fine, I won’t do anything.

Duke: How can this even be?

Duke: How can he not have anything to his being before the past fifteen days?

Tim: I don’t know.

Tim: It’s like he didn’t exist before that.

Steph: Ooh.

Steph: What a nice mystery.

Bruce: Interesting.

Steph: Oh no.

Steph: Bruce found it interesting.

Steph: That’s never good.

Tim: He had a shift today, correct?

Tim: How was it, Babs?

Barbara: Well, it was fine for the most part.

Barbara: We sorted through some new boxes that had arrived last month.

Barbara: He’s really hard-working, all about earning his keep.

Barbara: I love his determination and diligence.

Barbara: But then there was this robbery, and Signal needed my help.

Barbara: So, I ordered some food for him, and locked myself into the back room to be his comm.

Barbara: And then Hood needed me too.

Barbara: And RR needed help following a lead.

Barbara: And it was already 7 pm when I got out.

Steph: Oof.

Steph: You missed the rest of his shift?

Barbara: Yes, but get this.

Barbara: He hadn’t left.

Duke: What do you mean?

Barbara: He hadn’t left.

Barbara: And not because he was waiting for his salary either.

Barbara: Because he didn’t want to leave me alone in the library after the closing hours with the doors unlocked, and couldn’t have locked me inside either.

Barbara: He waited out of kindness.

Damian: Tt.

Damian: Sounds suspicious to me.

Jason: Shut it, Demon Brat.

Jason: Anything else Babs?

Barbara: No, nothing.

Barbara: The day went pretty smoothly.

Dick: Guys, Peter almost got mugged and stabbed today.

Duke: Or not.

Jason: What.

Steph: Excuse me.

Tim: Huh?

Cass: ?

Barbara: Explain.

Barbara: Now.

***

DAY 17: Sunday

Peter was already halfway to the convenient store when he heard the near-silent footsteps, following him around.

Honestly, why did people keep doing that? Did he really look like that much of a lost puppy? Was he just that muggable? Or was it the alternative universe aura that was calling for trouble?

It was probably just the Parker Luck.

This person alerted his spider-senses in a different way than the Red Hood and the Nightwing had, so not them; but similar enough that Peter was inclined to think that he (she?) was also a vigilante. Plus, the more solid cues; like the feather-light footsteps, the controlled breathing, and the weight of an assessing gaze.

It felt familiar too, the gaze I mean. Too familiar, in fact, like he had been stalked by this person before; though he didn’t have the slightest idea about where or when that might’ve been. But he was almost sure he had felt this same exact weight of a gaze on his person before at some point.

Peter kept his posture relaxed and aloof as he entered the store, and bought what he had come to buy. He didn’t give a peep about being aware he was being watched; he felt this time an interaction wasn’t intended, and he wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to ignore annoying, worried vigilantes asking him where his parents were.

He got the cheap school stuff he needed, and moved onto the more pressing needs. A second towel, for example, was urgently needed.

He had realized so yesterday, when he had gotten out of shower; and couldn’t dry himself since the one towel he had had, was dirty and in the laundry bag. It had been a cold experience.

Toilet papers, more garbage bags, a flashlight, a duster, and some cleaning supplies also got added to his shopping cart; and Peter hoped that the food he had picked up earlier (water bottles, protein bars, and cold sandwiches) would be enough to last him the week, until Saturday, since he was spending a pretty good portion of his salary of 320 dollars today.

He also needed to find a hardware store sometime; the stationary was needing some more fixing up than what he had been able to do with some tape and his willpower. It was slowly starting to sink in; the fact that the bantered-up building was the closest thing he had to a home now. And he needed to take care of it better.

The gaze had been following him since he was halfway to the store, so the guy probably didn’t know where he lived. Peter wasn’t going to change that. It looked like he was going to have to have dinner on a roof, outside in the Gotham cold.

He hoped he wouldn’t get the flu or something.

He found a four-story building with a somewhat nice view and a fire escape on the side for easy access, and started climbing the stairs. He pulled his coat tighter around himself once he settled down, and picked up a sandwich.

The weight of the gaze was pretty determined, and overly insistent. Persistent, and heavy. He’s here, Peter realized with startling clarity, he’s on the roof as well. He stilled for a moment only before forcing his muscles to relax, he couldn’t fuck this up.

So far, the guy hadn’t tried to hurt him; but Peter didn’t know his intentions. And he hadn’t tried to approach him like how Nightwing and Red Hood had done either, so there had to be some other thing at play here. Some other purpose.

He sat there eating his food, forcibly nonchalant, until his hearing picked up on a clicking sound. A very familiar clicking sound. He knew that clicking sound by heart. Someone was taking his photos.

Well. Peter wasn’t going to let that happen. Stalking, he could excuse. But as long as it was only watching, taking photos was a step out of his comfort zone.

He put down his food and turned around suddenly, unfortunately not spotting anyone. But his spider-senses were always happy to help him out at hard situations, and so he knew that the culprit was hiding behind the generator.

“I know you’re there.” He called out. “It’s not nice to take other people’s photos without their permission, you know. And I don’t remember giving you mine.”

A domino-masked guy with a black cape and red spandex came out from behind the giant device.

Was it… Red Robin? The descriptions Peter had read was matching, mostly; but he could never be sure with how many vigilantes the city had, and how many of them liked red and black. “Who are you?” He asked to be sure.

“I’m Red Robin.” The guy took a pause. “How did you know that I was there?”

“And taking my pictures?” Peter smirked at the vigilante’s obvious bewilderment. “You weren’t being very quiet.”

He lied, because he didn’t want to admit to having enhanced abilities; the so smart, so detective-y heroes could figure that out for themselves if they were as amazing as everyone always said they were; Peter wasn’t going to help them discover his biggest and most dangerous secret.

The one thing that could hurt him a great deal if it got out. 

“I wasn’t?!” Red asked, incredulous.

“No, you weren’t.” Peter smiled a small smile despite his wariness and the situation. Red Robin’s reaction was just too funny.

“But- but-” The guy looked like he was questioning his life choices; tended to happen to the people Peter was interacting with.

The rest of Peter’s hostility towards the restaurant named vigilante bled out slowly, he picked up a kinder tone. “Yeah, man. Don’t worry about it too much, it happens sometimes; you can’t always be at the top of your game.” He paused. “Now, can we get back to why you were taking my pictures?”

“I- I just- I was-” He took a breath. “Some other vigilante friends of mine and I… think that you might be in danger. So, we are investigating the situation and… Yeah.”

“Investigating wouldn’t warrant my photos.”

Red just shrugged. “It does, I can’t help you if I don’t know what you look like, right?”

Peter rose an eyebrow. “Taking pictures without consent is illegal, you know.”

“Being a vigilante is illegal too, but you don’t see that stopping me. Or the seventeen other heroes of this city. Plus, I’m not taking your pictures for the stalking-sake of it; I’m trying to help you.”

“Hm.” That was fair. But… “I have told Nightwing and Red Hood a thousand times, I’m fine. I don’t need help.”

“Your wounds do look better.” Red squinted. “Almost healed up fully.”

“Yeah. I bruise easy, I heal fast; that’s how it’s always been.” Peter said, rolling his eyes. What was going to take for the idiot bats of Gotham to realize that he wasn’t being abused by his dead guardian? “I’m alright.”

“Your forged documents would beg to differ, Peter Parker.”

And all the annoyance drained out of Peter’s body at once, his blood turning to ice. So, they were laying their cards open, huh? Okay. He could do that.

“Well, if you were trying to avoid being sent into the foster system to not get kidnapped by child traffickers, wouldn’t you do the same thing?”

He had already figured that, whether the bats knew he was an orphan or not, they weren’t going to call the authorities on him; that CPS wasn’t going to be a problem he was supposed to look out for.

There really wasn’t that much of a reason for him to hide the fact that he was all alone, from the vigilantes. Not as much as he had thought there was, when he had first arrived in this universe, and crafted himself an identity.

RR stilled. “Tony Stark is dead?”

Now.

Peter needed to play this right.

He needed to thread carefully.

He knew he couldn’t go back from saying Tony was real; he had talked of the guy too much and with too many emotions for that. He couldn’t undo it; the damage was done.

But. He could say, “He died a little while ago, after he took me in. He had heart issues.” Not really a lie. Not at all, Tony had had issues with his heart, an arc reactor in the middle of his chest. “He collapsed one day, at the dinner table.”

Peter tried extra hard to push emotions into his voice. Luckily, it turned out to be pretty easy for him, even though he was making up the whole thing, since he had been there for Tony’s real death as well.

Just remembering the moment, was enough to bring tears to his eyes, and sobs to get stuck in his throat.

 “He was very close with my aunt. Her death affected him very much, more than his heart could handle.” Also, not really a lie. Tony had been close with May, her death would’ve affected him very badly, if she had died before him. “He was already jobless and couldn’t buy his meds regularly, and… He died.”

He turned around and sat back down to keep his face out of the view, picking up his sandwich. After a moment of pause, “I knew that if the CPS was on my tail, if I was taken to an orphanage… It wouldn’t end well for me. So, I did what I had to, what I could, to protect myself. And I can hack decently, so…”

A stretching moment of silence. Then, “Decently?” Red scoffed. “Oracle and I almost didn’t realize that they were forgeries, kid; you’re better than decent.”

Peter frowned. “Kid? You’re calling me kid? How old are you then, grandpa?”

“I’m e- No, wait, you don’t get to know my age, I’m a vigilante.”

“Glad that you remembered you were in the mask and the suit before you slipped something important.” He gave a smirk.

Red Robin glared.

“Want some?” Peter raised his sandwich.

“No. It wouldn’t be very heroic to accept food from a homeless teenager, now, would it? I should bring you some food instead, actually.”

“Uhm… No thanks.”

“What?”

“I appreciate the concern, I really do, from your fellow bats too; but I can take care of myself. I’m not homeless, I’m bunkering at a secure place with electricity and water, just not hot water, and not very legal. I go to gyms for showering, public libraries for when I’m too cold, and I go to school too, so five free meals a week.

“I also have a job, so a continuing income, even though not too much. I work part-time at a library, on the Saturdays. My boss is awesome, real nice and kind. She keeps insisting on feeding me and looking after me, and doesn’t want anything in return; so, practically an angel. So, yeah… Not very much, I know, but I’m alright. There are certainly people who are in a lot worse situations than me in this city. Maybe focus on them.”

Red was silent for a moment, thinking. “How about,” He started. “I go and buy you some food; and then in exchange you give me a bit of your time, and we can chat a bit? And we help those other people too, as the bats. You aren’t getting any special treatment, don’t worry.”

“Buying information about my life out of me Red Robin? Using the essentials I need to survive?” Peter teased. “Fine. Just a little chat.” But, yeah, if one lousy conversation could win him some more food, he wasn’t going to turn it away.

If Red Robin wanted to spend his money like that, Peter wasn’t going to stop him. Hey, as long as he got something in return, it wasn’t charity, it was a trade.

RR couldn’t tell if he was lying or not either, so if there was anything too invasive, he could just jungle with the words for a bit and be done with it.

Red nodded and took off; and Peter got back to eating. The vigilante came back shortly after, with a bag full of easily containable food. Canned and junk food mostly, but there were some fruits and vegetables as well; like some apples and carrots. Only a few though, thankfully, like one or two.

“Thank God you didn’t buy anything that would need a fridge awfully. I don’t have that.”

“Yeah, I figured.” He sat down next to him. “So, Peter Parker, is that your real name?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re 16?”

“Almost 17 now, two months away.”

“What school are you going to?”

“Gotham Prep.”

“Do you like it there?”

That kind of surprised Peter. Red Robin wasn’t trying to uncover the mystery that was Peter Parker right now, he realized, he really was just chatting. “Yeah. It’s fun.”

“How did you enroll?”

“I just added my name into the system and selected scholarship option. No one really questioned me about “being transferred” from another school in the middle of the semester, and being a scholarship student.”

Red frowned. “But that’s not a very strong lie. Do you have, like, a failsafe or something?”

“No.” Peter shrugged. “I already told you pal; I do my best with what I have, and I didn’t have anything other than faking some e-mails to the teachers from Brucie Wayne’s e-mail address. I couldn’t have hacked the guy’s bank account and paid him with his own money, now, could I?”

“I believe that would’ve been the better option, yes. Plus, I don’t think Wayne would’ve realized; or even cared that much if he had, maybe laughed a bit. He is richer than God.”

Peter shrugged again.

“You got a favorite lesson?”

“Chemistry. I like all of science actually, but chemistry mostly. After that; Algebra, and PE.”

“Good choices. How about art? Nightwing says that you draw?”

“I do, I have a sketch-book. But I draw for myself.”

They kept chatting like that for a while, before Peter got a promise from Red Robin to not follow him home, and then went off to his way.

Red Robin did not follow him.

***

DAY 17: Sunday

Tim: Guys, Tony Stark is dead.

Tim: Peter forged those documents himself, to keep CPS from trying to take him, because he knew that the orphanages were fronts for traffickers.

Barbara: He did that himself?

Barbara: Damn.

Dick: The documents are that good, huh?

Barbara: Dick.

Barbara: You have no idea.

Bruce: Tony Stark is dead?

Steph: Yes B, the kid really is an orphan.

Steph: Woohoo, right?

Steph: It’s not even Christmas or anything yet, but I guess Santa Claus just loves you so much, he brings you kids- I mean gifts even if it’s the middle of October.

Duke: gşknadklsnflskf

Duke: Good one.

Steph: Thanks, I try.

Tim: Yes, Tony Stark is dead.

Jason: And how do you know that?

Tim: …

Tim: I talked with him.

Barbara: Talked with who?

Tim: Peter.

Barbara: You stalked him and talked to him?

Barbara: In costume?

Bruce: Tim.

Tim: In my defense, he was not supposed to see me.

Tim: Or even know that I was there.

Tim: I just wanted some pictures of him because there are literally none on the internet, and I needed to have an example of what he looked like.

Tim: I was kind of hoping to find out where he lived too, not gonna lie.

Tim: But he called me out.

Tim: Said that I wasn’t being very quiet.

Tim: But I was!

Tim: Anyways.

Tim: The point is, I followed him around and then we chatted a bit.

Tim: Casually, not interrogation-wise.

Tim: He lives alone in a probably-abandoned-building, in the Crime Alley, with no adult supervision, or any kind of supervision.

Tim: His living conditions sounded good enough.

Tim: At least not too bad.

Tim: He’s using gyms, public libraries and the school for things like showers, warmth and free meals.

Tim: And now that he has a job, he has some income.

Tim: He said that his boss was very nice and kind, btw.

Tim: Amazing person, practically an angel.

Barbara: My Little Duckling.

Steph: dfnklsdflsşdlf

Cass: Help him.

Jason: Yes Cass, we need to help him.

***

DAY 17: Sunday

NEW CHAT CREATED

THE PETER THEORY

Jason: ?

Jason: Tim?

Barbara: What’s going on?

Jason: Why did you create this chat?

Tim: I think I’m kind of onto something.

Tim: But I’m not very sure.

Tim: So, I decided to explain to you two first.

THREE PHOTOS SENT TO THE GROUPCHAT

Tim: Can you please imagine Dick and Peter next to each other, both grinning like idiots, and tell me that I’m not losing my mind thinking that they look a bit too alike?

Jason: …

Jason: No fucking way.

Barbara: I’m not sure.

ONE PHOTO SENT TO THE GROUPCHAT

Tim: Don’t they look alike?

Tim: A bit too much?

Barbara: …

Barbara: They do.

Tim: Because I wasn’t very sure and I wanted to get your opinions on this before sending these to the Bat-Chat or something.

Barbara: They really do.

Tim: Should I tell Bruce?

Barbara: How did we not see this?

Tim: Should I tell Dick?

Barbara: How the hell did we not see this?!

Tim: Should I tell anyone at all?

Barbara: Oh my Gosh!

Tim: Jason?

Jason: …

Jason: Dick has a son.

Tim: It could a clone or a cousin or something, too.

Jason: Dick has a son.

Jason: Dick has a son we knew nothing about, and it took us almost 2 weeks to realize the similarities!

Jason: What the fuck.

Jason: some fucking detectives we are.

Tim: His face was covered in bruises.

Tim: And even Dick didn’t realize how alike they looked, even after spending and entirety of three hours with the kid.

Tim: It’s fine.

Tim: But what do we DO?

Jason: Don’t tell B.

Jason: Don’t tell Dick.

Jason: Don’t tell anyone until we have more information and can confirm this for real.

Jason: Keep calm, and just.

Jason: Try to not be too weird so we don’t scare him off.

Barbara: Alright, that’s a plan.

Barbara: We can do that.

Tim: Sir, yes, sir!

Tim: Does this mean we may get to keep him??

Tim: Guys?

Chapter Text

DAY 20: Monday

Jason swung through the streets and ran across the rooftops; looking for a patch of the familiar wavy brown hair, or the red fluffy cardigan. The kid was surprisingly not that hard to find when you looked for him; always outside and walking somewhere, doing something.

He found Peter at last, after thirty minutes of searching; perched up on a roof as usual, with his sketch-book and cold sandwich. He seemed to enjoy eating dinner out in the Gotham evening, somewhere where he could have a view.

“Hey kid.” He greeted when he landed.

Peter turned around as soon as he did, putting down his sketch-book; no ounce of surprise or shock in his body language as Jason had expected. Something was up with that, he knew; something enhanced, probably. But he wasn’t going to be the one to investigate that. Tim, Barbara, or Bruce could; if they really wanted to, but Jason wasn’t going to.

His eyes roamed over the kid, taking in his appearance and filing away information. Now that the bruises were almost fully gone, he could see the resemblance Tim had been talking about earlier; Peter really did look a lot like Dick.

The eye shape was almost the exact same, though the color obviously differed. Dick had crystal blue eyes; Peter’s were warm and honey brown, almost hazel. The same went for the hair; familiar curls decorating his head, only in brown instead of in black. His face shape was also different from Dick’s, but Jason found that he had the same lips and nose as his older brother.

He was pleased to note that the Red Hood bandana was now tied tightly around his wrist.

“Hey, Hood.”

“I brought you food. We can eat and chat?”

“Red Robin talked to you?” The kid gave a little smile. “He suggested that this method works?”

“We had a conversation.” Jason let the smirk be visible in his voice. “He advised that bribing wild children with food, to get a better look at them and buy a conversation out of them, was a good tactic. Yes, or no?”

Peter thought it over.

Long.

Jason frowned under the helmet.

He looked so thin, so small. So obviously hungry. He shouldn’t have been thinking that long about accepting food. It angered Jason that something in this world had made a kid as small and vulnerable as Peter, think twice and thrice and sometimes four times before accepting someone’s help.

Was it the payment issue? The kid didn’t like being in debt? Had someone used such a thing against him before? Or was it the fear of being dependent on someone, after surviving by himself for so long, and inevitably starting to count on that person? And beginning to fear, one more time, of their departure? Or maybe it was the survivor’s guilt? Feeling bad for surviving and getting help, after being unable to do anything for his loved ones?

Jason knew it had been a mixture of the above for him.

“Fine.” The kid’s voice was resigned; like he wouldn’t have been saying yes if he didn’t absolutely have to. Jason noted down to visit him again with some more food containers when he had the chance.

The kid went and settled down onto the edge of the roof, patting onto the space next to him. Jason, personally, didn’t like that he was sitting there, but… He literally had no leg to stand on if he wanted to lecture Peter about it.

He sat down next to him and extended the chili dogs. The kid took a huge bite.

“So, uhm, you’re new in Gotham, yes?” He took off his helmet to also eat.

“Yeah.” The kid answered between his chews.

“How new?”

“Around three weeks now.”

“Oh, so, you don’t know much about the rogues of the city, I take it? Or the alarm system?”

Peter shook his head adorably. “I read some things in the library, but… Yeah, no.”

“Alright, well, I guess I’m the only one who could teach you.”

“Oh, you don’t have to-”

“Shut it, pipsqueak, I already decided that I would.” He huffed; ignoring Peter’s startled little laughter, and hiding his smile into his chili dog. “Mind you there are an awful lot of the alarms; for lots of different, very concerning reasons and situations; all of which have happened before, at least once. You might need a paper and pen.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You’ll probably want to move away by the time I’m done.” Jason gave a laugh, but Peter didn’t.

“I don’t really have anywhere to go, though.” He mumbled, and the words were too quiet to be for Jason’s ears; but he heard them nonetheless. “I can note down on my sketch-book.” Peter said a second later; in a cheerier, faker tone.

“Okay, so, first thing’s first, you need a list of the actually dangerous rogues. There is; Bane, Scarecrow, Killer Croc, Clayface, Mr. Freeze, Penguin, Mad Hatter, Riddler, Two-Face, Black Mask, Firefly, and Man-Bat. Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy are quieter these days. Reluctant allies, if you will; though they still commit felonies frequently. And you don’t need to worry about Catwoman as long as you don’t cross her or something, but even then, she probably won’t hurt you.”

Peter snorted a laugh. “Sorry, I’m not laughing at you. It’s just that… if you’re going to become a super-villain, at least have a cool name. I mean, seriously, Man Bat? Mr. Freeze? I heard something about a Condiment Man.”

Jason couldn’t help but give a chuckle. “You’re not entirely wrong kid. But still, keep in mind that all of those people are very capable and willing to cause harm; regardless of how funny or not original their name is. Except for the Condiment Man.” They laughed. “For example, Scarecrow. Do you know anything about the fear toxin?”

Peter frowned. “Yeah, I’ve heard of it. It makes you hallucinate your worst fears, correct?” He put aside his chili dog and picked up his pen and sketch-book.

“Yeah, but it is much more than simple hallucinations. You don’t only see it, watching from afar how your worst fear plays out. No, you can hear the hallucination. And smell, and taste, and touch it. You live it.

“The toxin is so powerful; it can fool all of your senses; and you may even forget that you were exposed to it in the first place. It can be an endless loop of nightmares, until your body burns through it; without the antidote, and the enough dosage.”

“You don’t say?”

Jason jerked at Peter’s emotionless tone and turned to find the kid staring off at the horizon with a weird look in his eyes; a chicken scrawled, short explanation of the Scarecrow and the fear toxin written on his sketch-book.

“Peter? Are you okay?”

That jerked him out. “Huh? Yeah, I’m fine. Totally fine. So, uhm, what else is there? About this toxin, I mean.”

“Well, it has an acidic scent and taste to it. It looks like a green fog to the eye, almost like smog. Small doses usually end up causing anxiety, fear, and nightmares; as well as minor hallucinations. Only large doses actually cause real damage. After-effects are anxiety, nightmares, nausea, headaches, sickness, etc.”

Peter scribbled them all down, noting down important at the top of the page, and underlining it. “And, how to avoid it?”

“You’d need a rebreather.”

The kid cut off. “A rebreather? Where- Where can I buy one? And how much is it, if you know?” There was real panic in his eyes when he looked up at Hood, real fear.

Something had happened there; Jason could see it. Something was causing Peter to put down his chili dog when he was hungry, and furiously start taking notes when Red Hood was talking about the fear toxin.

It irked him.

Had he been exposed to a similar substance before? Did he have a past with lies and manipulations and getting his mind tricked? Was it the hallucination part that was getting to him? Was he schizophrenic? Or had he already lived his worst fear, and the toxin would just be a painful and extremely triggering repetition of it?

Jason couldn’t figure it out.

But if the kid thought that Red Hood was going to just allow him to try and buy a rebreather, work his ass off to get his hands onto one probably, as a semi-homeless street kid of Crime Alley; then he had another thing coming at him.

“Well, the closest place you can get a rebreather is right here, and it’s free too.”

“What?” Peter tipped his head to the side; Jason resisted the urge to smile at the puppy-like move. Gosh, he was adorable.

“I have a couple on me, I’ll give you one.” That wasn’t entirely true. He only had one back up rebreather other than his helmet; but he could give it to the kid, and then replace it when he got back to his safe-house after patrol, it would be fine.

It wasn’t like Crane would break out of Arkham and attack him viciously the one night Jason wasn’t going to be prepared for it, right?

Right?

That actually sounded scarily and annoyingly plausible, considering the track record and timing of his luck.

…

Nah, he’d be fine.

“I can’t accept that.” Peter murmured, looking away.

“Kid,” Jason started. “I’m literally handing them out. To everyone who will come up to me to ask for some, not just you specifically. And it is for people’s safety. It’s fine, I get it, you don’t like feeling like a charity case, and you want to be able to take care of yourself by yourself; but… There are times where it’s very important to accept other people’s help too. Where it’s crucial.”

Peter still looked unsure.

“You can pay me back later, if you want? In the form of a favor?”

“Like what?” He rose an eyebrow, the smallest bit of wary.

“Nothing dangerous or something. Like… Helping me hand out things, like clothes or food. Or those bandanas and knives, that I gave you last time. I usually have enough people to do it with, but an extra pair of hands is always useful.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And I can even pay you for it, if you’d be open to the idea. It’s not really easy work, you know; carrying around boxes and handing out things to the in-need people.”

“Do you pay other people who help you?”

“They are usually men who work for me, so it’s already in their job description. So, I don’t pay them for it specifically, but, yeah. They do, technically, get paid for it.”

Peter bit his lip as he looked down and thought the offer through. “O-Okay?” It came out shakier than intended, of that Jason was sure. He laughed.

“Alright then. The first one will be a freebie, since I’m giving you the rebreather for free; but every time after that one, will earn you thirty bucks. How’s that sound?”

“Good. Really good. How many times a month will you need me?”

“Hmm… About three or four times. Good enough for you?”

“Y-Yeah, perfect!”

Jason bit down his smile and reached to his belt to pull out the rebreather. He gave it to Peter and showed him how to put it on securely.

“And that’s Scarecrow done. Now, let’s move onto the others.”

They ate and chatted; Jason explaining the rogues and their “things” to Peter between bites, as the kid noted down his words dutifully. Then the different alarms and the safe shelters.

“Doctor Leslie Thompkins’ clinic is free; if you get hurt, you go there, and she’ll patch you up. She won’t ask questions, or call people. She’ll just help you, and let you go afterwards. We go to her to get medical attention too, as the city’s vigilantes, when we can’t handle it ourselves.”

“Understood. Anything else?” The sun had set a while ago, the kid was probably tired.

“One more thing. If you see something that you feel like you need to report to someone, and you can’t get a hold of me or any other vigilante; Commissioner Gordon from the GCPD is the go-to guy. He’s one of the few clean cops around here, and is actually trustworthy. He won’t do anything to put you in danger and will help you to the best of his abilities. The worst-case scenario, he’ll contact us.”

Peter nodded. “Alright. The rogue gallery and their dangers, the alarms of the city, the safe shelters, Dr. Thompkins, and Commissioner Gordon. All noted down for future reference. Anything else?”

Jason bit his lip as he thought, tilting his head to the side. Was there anything else? Of course there was, it was Gotham, there was always something else. But he currently couldn’t come up with anything.

“No, I don’t think so. You’re good for now.”

“Alright then.” Peter gave a cheeky smile. “Thank you for all the information and the job opportunity, Red Hood, and good night.” He picked up his sketch-book, pen and trash; giving Jason a small wave and turning to leave.

“Wait, kid!”

“Yeah?”

“I was really worried when I heard from Nightwing that you had almost been mugged. I actually also came over today to check up on you. You seem fine but… are you?”

“Yeah, I’m alright.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. You wear that bandana from now on, got it?”

“Yep.” He popped the “p”.

“And you carry the knife?”

“I had it when I was getting mugged too, I just couldn’t reach it before Nightwing dropped from his hiding space. If I had been faster, I’d have had those guys.”

Jason chuckled. “Really?”

“Yeah! I know I don’t look like much, but I’m strong. I can look after myself. I know some moves too.”

“Really now? Care to show?” Jason smirked under the helmet, though his voice probably carried it over if the way Peter’s eyes narrowed against his blatant mockery was anything to go by.

And between one blink and the other, Peter had set down what was in his arms, and was running at him. Jason barely had enough time to yelp as the kid ducked down, hooked his legs around Jason’s, and pulled.

And Jason fell.

“It also helps when my opponents underestimate me, and are careless.” Peter snickered. “This good enough for you, Hood?”

Jason couldn’t help but stare back, shocked. The kid had taken him down. The kid had taken him down. For real. Fuck. Color him fucking impressed.

“Hood?”

“Hm? Yeah. Yeah, no. Impressive, yes; but you’ll need more than just this one move.” He said, willing his brain to kick back online.

“I know, and don’t worry, I’ve got more moves where this came from.” The kid said, getting back up. “I can take care of myself.”

You really can, can’t you? Jason thought. “Alright then kiddo. This was fun, but I really need to leave now. And you probably need to go to sleep, since tomorrow is a school day.”

“Yeah, I probably do.” He gave a smile.

“See you later Peter.” With that, he grappled off the roof, the wind barely carrying over the kid’s reply.

***

DAY 20: Monday

THE PETER THEORY

Jason: Guys.

Jason: I visited Peter today.

Jason: Brought him some food.

Jason: We ate together.

Jason: Then we chatted.

Jason: I told him about the rogues of the city.

Jason: He was especially interested in the Scarecrow and the fear toxin, in a PTSD kind of way.

Jason: I also talked about the safe shelters, the alarm system, Leslie’s clinic, and told him to go to Gordon if he ever needed a cop.

Jason: And guys.

Jason: I know it will sound kind of stupid.

Jason: But…

Jason: He smiles like Dick.

Jason: I really think we need a DNA test.

Jason: Like, seriously.

Tim: And they look alike.

Jason: Fine, yes Baby Bird, they do look alike.

Jason: You were right, you told us so.

Jason: Is that what you want to hear?

Tim: Yes.

Barbara: I’ll try to get a sample when he’s in the library next time.

Barbara: You guys stay clear and don’t try anything.

Tim: But that could take days!

Barbara: Too bad.

Barbara: How long would the test last?

Tim: Not too long.

Barbara: K.

***

DAY 21: Thursday

Zac Miller was starting to become a nuisance. Seriously.

Another paper ball hit the back of his head, and Peter sighed loudly, fighting to keep his patience; but refused to give any other outside reactions. The teacher that was ignoring the entire situation, was Mrs. Abbot. She kept her lectures going without so much as a glance at Peter and the 26 paper balls all around his table.

He didn’t know what it was; his poor street boy appearance, his complete indifference of the classes, or the fact that he was a transfer student; that was making the teachers treat him the way they did. But it was seriously an issue. No one took him seriously, and everyone ignored any kind of problem he was having.

Maybe it was the fact that he was a scholarship student who enrolled in the middle of the semester. Maybe the teachers suspected something fishy was going on; which, was the case, actually. So… Points to them, if they’d figured it all out with minimal to no evidence, with nothing else but gut feeling. But still, it was frustrating.

Another paper ball hit the back of his head. Peter took in a deep breath. He gripped his pen tightly as he exhaled through his nose slowly, and then forced his body to relax into his seat. He refocused on the open page of his sketch-book, where Doctor Strange’s face was starting to appear.

He still couldn’t finish Ned and MJ’s drawings, got too emotional about it all while drawing them; but he wanted to keep drawing the people he loved and cared about, before he forgot their faces, even though he had unfinished sketches. And Stephen Strange was one of them.

He was missing the Bleeker Street Magician.

There was a knock on the classroom door, and Miss Ramirez, the algebra teacher, popped in her head and asked Mrs. Abbot’s help on something. Mrs. Abbot left with her easily, after a moment of conversing.

Just as the twenty eighth paper ball hit the back of Peter’s head. He still refused to give a reaction.

Then a sharp alert came from his spider-senses; the same time some kid yelled “Look out!”. And Peter turned around, almost inhumanly fast, just in time to catch the glass bottle that had been thrown at him.

The quiet chattering of his classmates died down; everyone fell silent. Peter looked at the bottle in his hands with wide eyes, appalled by the action.

That bottle could’ve done real damage to a normal person –which Miller thought he was– if it hit them. It could’ve caused a lot of injuries; from a simple bump on the head, to a fatal concussion. It could’ve hurt him really badly.

Peter’s shock slowly gave way to anger.

He breathed through his nose and got up from his seat. He held the bottle so hard; he was afraid he would break it. He stopped for a moment in front of Miller’s desk, to give a hearty glare at him, and then resumed his route to the trash bin. He threw away the bottle hotly, and returned to his seat without another glance at Miller.

He threw open his sketch-book, still very much agitated, and began an Iron Man doodle; using the familiar hero to calm himself down. The last thing he needed was to blow up and hurt people in a no-metas city, in the private STEM school he had enrolled in illegally.

Mrs. Abbot came back shortly after.

After class, when he was packing up his things to get to his next lesson, two boys came up to him. A dark skinned brunette and a sleep deprived raven. The raven had dark circles under his eyes; and the brunette was moving weirdly, like there was something wrong with his ribs.

The raven was eying him weirdly; Peter felt like the crystal blue eyes were staring into his soul. The weight of his gaze felt familiar, almost the same with the one he had been feeling for the past week.

It was the guy who had been stalking him around for the past week!

“Are you okay?” The brunette asked, Peter realized him as the guy who had yelled “Look out!” when Miller had thrown that bottle.

“I’m fine.” He answered with an easy smile.

“You sure? I mean I know Miller is a total asshole, but I couldn’t have ever guessed that he would go that far.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. The bottle didn’t hit me, did it?”

“Yeah, it didn’t. How did you do that by the way?”

The blue eyes watching his every move narrowed the slightest bit. Peter caught the movement.

“Fast reflexes.”

“Impressive.” The raven spoke up. He plastered on a smile and the squinting gaze looked almost gone. Almost. “I’m Tim, Tim Drake, I’m a senior. This is Duke, one of my best friends. What about you?”

“My name is Peter, I’m a senior too.” He glanced at his watch. “Look, it’s nice to meet you two; but I really need to go, I have Maths now.” With those words, he left the classroom quickly.

He didn’t know what it was about those two that made him feel so irked, so cautious; but he would be damned if he wasn’t going to listen to his gut feeling. (Not that it worked to his favor often, not about people; but better be safe than sorry I guess, right?)

***

DAY 21: Thursday

THE BAT-CHAT

Tim: I think Peter is a meta.

Duke: What?

Duke: We just talked to the guy.

Duke: Together.

Duke: How can you come to that conclusion.

Duke: I don’t even have a snippet of that thought process?

Bruce: Explain.

Dick: You’re not kicking him out of the city even if he is a meta, Bruce.

Bruce: Hn.

Dick: I’m serious.

Bruce: Wasn’t planning on it.

Jason: Are you serious right now Tim?

Tim: I’m not joking.

Cass: How?

Bruce: Tim.

Bruce: Explain.

Tim: Ok, so.

Tim: We were in class together.

Tim: He’s in our Physics class.

Tim: And, there is this kid, right?

Tim: This obnoxious, rich-bitch asshole.

Tim: He kept throwing paper balls at Peter.

Tim: Peter just ignored him.

Tim: And since Zac Miller is rich and his father frequently donates a shit ton of money to the school, the teacher ignored him too.

Tim: Then Miss. Ramirez came and asked for Mrs. Abbot’s help with something.

Tim: Mrs. Abbot left.

Tim: Then Miller threw something else at Peter.

Tim: A motherfucking bottle.

Tim: Glass.

Barbara: Oh my gosh!

Barbara: Is Peter okay?!

Tim: That’s the thing.

Tim: It didn’t hit him.

Tim: He caught it.

Tim: He turned around, a whole second before Duke yelled at him to look out by the way, and caught the bottle.

Tim: He was so fast.

Tim: Inhumanly almost.

Tim: It was insane.

Tim: Then he got up from his seat and threw away the bottle.

Tim: And while he was up and away, my eyes fell onto his desk.

Tim: His pen was bent.

Tim: There was the printing of a tight grip of a hand on it.

Tim: He’s faster and stronger than an average human.

Jason: Seriously Tim?

Tim: What?

Jason: I just.

Jason: I mean, it sounds crazy

Jason: The kid is a pipsqueak, and you’re telling me he has superpowers?

Steph: I agree with Jason on that one.

Steph: I think you’re getting a little too paranoid Boy Wonder.

Damian: You’re being preposterous Drake.

Tim: I have proof!

Steph: Yeah.

Steph: Proof.

Steph: That Peter is fast.

Steph: And that he probably had a rage rush or something.

Steph: Maybe he has anger issues.

Steph: Honestly, there are so many more plausible and possible possibilities.

Steph: And you straight up jumped to the craziest theory.

Tim: Are you guys serious right now?

Barbara: I’m sorry Tim, but they’re kind of right.

Barbara: I mean you don’t have any valid proof that you can show us.

Barbara: And even if you brought the bent pen here, Steph’s right.

Barbara: It could’ve been a rage or adrenaline rush or something.

Barbara: The pen could’ve already been bent.

Barbara: There are just so many other and more believable possibilities.

Tim: Duke saw it too!

Tim: Right Duke?

Duke: I mean…

Tim: Come on!

Duke: I don’t know what to tell you man, I wasn’t looking at his desk when he walked away.

Duke: And I wasn’t really interested in the speed he turned around either, just thankful that he didn’t get hit in the head with a giant glass bottle.

Jason: Just give up Tim, you probably mis-saw anyways.

Tim: What if I get more proof?

Jason: No.

Jason: Are you kidding me?

Dick: Tim, no.

Dick: No stalking the kid.

Jason: You’re gonna creep him out.

Steph: Don’t be creepy Tim.

Barbara: Tim, please, don’t.

Cass: No.

Tim: Bruce?

Bruce: I think you shouldn’t try to get any more evidence until you’ve witnessed any other odd behavior.

Bruce: We can’t just watch every person in this city who can bend a pencil out of anger.

Tim: Fine.

DAY 24: Sunday

“I wanted to apologize for the assumptions I made about Tony. I didn’t mean to be insensitive or upset you, I was just trying to help.”

“So, Red Robin talked to you about my dead guardian, huh?”

Nightwing winced. “Yes. I’m sorry; but learning something that major, he had to tell the rest of us, and-”

“It’s okay, I don’t care.” Peter shrugged.

“You- You don’t?”

He actually did, a lot. He hated it when people talked about him behind his back; but in this case, it wasn’t such a bad thing he supposed.

The vigilantes seemed mostly friendly and nice; and Peter would’ve done the same thing had he been in Red’s shoes, in possession of a critical information about a semi-homeless teenager’s supposed guardian.

“Not really.”

“Alright…? So, uhm… what’cha doing?”

“Trying to find a hardware store. I need to buy some things to secure up my living place a bit more. Can you help me find one?” Peter turned to face the vigilante with a hopeful look.

Nightwing gave him a smile. “Sure, I can.”

The blue vigilante told him that the hardware store was only a couple streets ahead, and Peter agreed that walking instead of grappling would be better. Once they got to the shop, Nightwing didn’t leave; he helped him pick out what he needed, and he paid for his things despite Peter’s glare. But Peter kept quiet other than that.

Red Hood was right after all.

“Can I drop you off as well?”

“I guess.”

This time, they chose flying over walking, and Peter couldn’t keep his glee in as they broke through the air; he whooped. Nightwing giggled at his antics.

They landed on a random roof, and Peter didn’t forget to say his thank yous to the guy for helping him so much.

“Not a problem kiddo.” He gave him a cheeky smile.

He waved after the guy as the blue vigilante grappled away, doing a hoop in the air as he went. Peter watched him go for a moment, enchanted with his moves. With that capability, he would put money on the guy being a gymnast or the alike, he was so good. The movements were so fluid, it was captivating.

***

DAY 27: Wednesday

Peter had the worst luck. Seriously.

Of course, it had been the store that he was in, that the robbers had dashed into. Of fucking course. Because the universe hated him. And it wasn’t even his own universe, it was a total stranger; and it was still giving him shit!

Peter stumbled forward and almost collapsed with the man in front of him when one of the asswipe burglars poked him with his gun. He turned to throw a quick, nasty glance at him; and just kept walking, keeping his grumbling internal.

This was not much more than a minor inconvenience for him; really, he could handle four burglars with guns. If only there wasn’t so many civilians around. Or if his web-shooters were at least half full. Or if he was Spider-Man.

But unfortunately, he wasn’t. And his web-shooters were completely empty, and there were seven civilians in the small store, including him. So, he couldn’t do anything.

He got poked from behind one more time, and the burglar behind him grabbed his arm and pushed him down onto a sitting position next to a little girl and her father. “Don’ move, an’ keep your mouth shut; or Imma shoot you!” He said, before moving away.

The little girl whined. Peter’s heart ached; she couldn’t have been older than six. “Hey, it’s okay.” He whispered to her. “Don’t be afraid, it’ll be fine.”

“Yeah?” She asked, also whispering.

“Yeah!”

“Hey! Didn’ I tell ya to shut the fuck up?”

Peter glared at the asswipe. “She’s just a little girl, and she’s scared. I’m just trying to calm her down. Can’t you just let her go? I doubt she would have anything that you’d want.”

“Which goddamn JL member ya think ya are, asshole? When a guy with a gun tells ya to shut up, ya shut the fuck up!” With that, the asswipe swiped his gun and smacked him across the face. Peter hissed as blood dripped down his nose. “Clear?” The asswipe asked, all smug and smirking.

“Crystal.” Peter hissed back.

The girl’s father pulled her against his side, putting a small distance between them. Peter understood of course, what he had done was extremely dangerous. Not only could he have gotten hurt, he could’ve gotten the little girl hurt as well, while trying to console her. So, he chose the path of shutting up. (For now.)

Thankfully, before he could say or do anything else that would’ve resulted with more of his blood spilling; help came.

The lights cut out suddenly, and everything went black. The hairs at the back of Peter’s neck stood up straight, but he didn’t move from his place. Not until the girl whimpered and her father hugged her close, trying to shield her from anything that could harm her. Peter moved his body in front of them as much as he could in pitch black.

He heard commotion, and gunshots rang in the shop. When the lights came back on a couple moments later, Signal stood over the knocked-out burglars with a scowl.

The girl was now crying. “Shh, it’s okay Lila, we’re alright love.” Her father was furiously whispering at her, trying to calm her down; but she wasn’t even listening. Peter turned around to see her completely pale, and trembling. The gunshots, he thought to himself, the gunshots must’ve scared her.

“Hey, Lila, is it? It’s alright sweetie, everything’s under control. Signal’s here, and he’s dealt with the burglars already. What’s your favorite color, hm? Is it pink?” He asked, eying her pink overall, and trying to distract her from her fear.

Lila sniffed. “N-No.” She said, turning to him. “It’s purple. But I like pink as well.”

“Mm, yeah, purple is very nice. But I prefer red and blue. Did you know that when you mix red and blue, it makes purple?”

“No way.” Lila gasped, still trembling but no longer crying. Her father gave him a grateful smile.

“Yeah!” Peter said, nodding enthusiastically. “You should try doing it at home, with your markers. You’ll see that I’m right. What other colors do you like?”

“Uhm… Green?”

“Yeah, green is very beautiful as well. You can make green by mixing blue and yellow.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Hey, are you guys okay?” Signal asked, having finished checking over the other civilians and coming over to check up on them.

“Yeah, we’re fine.” Peter said, smiling up at the hero.

Signal gasped. “Your nose is broken; you need to get to a clinic.”

“Uhm, yeah, sure, I’ll do that. But really, I’m fine. That was some very good skills there by the way, I read that you have light abilities?”

Signal stared for a moment, and Peter feared that he had offended the guy. “Oh, sorry, was that a weird question? It was weird and rude, wasn’t it? I’m so sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I just hadn’t met anyone who didn’t know who I was and what my shtick was since the first few weeks I’d started out, that’s all.”

“Oh, I’m new in town.” Peter replied sheepishly, trying to wipe off the now-drying blood with the sleeve of his plaid shirt.

“Yeah, that’s for sure.” Lila’s father replied. “I’m Tom, and I have to say kid, I admire your courage and kindness. But if you continue to act like this, you’ll get yourself or someone else killed one day. Or something worse. This is Gotham, nice people don’t survive here.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence I guess,” He mumbled. “But I think I’ll be fine; I have thick skin.”

Tom chuckled. “I don’t doubt that. Come Lila, let’s get off of the floor.”

“You guys sure you’re alright?” Signal asked the father and daughter one more time, and Peter felt a sudden alarm wash over him as the vigilante turned his back to talk to the moving pair. He barely had enough time to turn around and see that one of the asswipes had gotten up and was raising his gun, before yelling out a “Look out!”.

Unfortunately, the guy had good aim. And also unfortunately, Peter had known both that; and the fact that Signal wasn’t going to be fast enough to dodge the bullet. Which was why he had pounced forward as well.

He felt a sharp pain in his left shoulder.

Lila screamed. Tom shielded her with his body. Signal immediately jumped ahead. Peter almost did as well, before remembering that he wasn’t Spider-Man right now; he was just a civilian who had just been shot. Who was probably supposed to be panicking about there being a hole in his arm.

But really, he was just upset that Lila was scared, he didn’t really care that much about a stupid bullet scrape.

But when he looked down, he realized that it was more than just a scrape, and that he was probably in shock because otherwise he would’ve been feeling that shit. The bullet had hit his shoulder right in the middle, and luckily, had went through; as Peter understood by the way blood was dripping down from the back of his arm as well.

Signal was currently busy zipping up the re-knocked-out asswipes, something he had forgotten to do before when he had first knocked them out. Lila was still crying and pointing at him. Tom was seemingly torn between trying to calm her down and looking back at him with wide eyes. Everyone else was just whispering among themselves and trying to take shield in case something similar happened again.

Peter was stuck looking down at his shoulder, and thinking of what he probably should’ve been doing; like putting pressure on the wound, and stopping the bleeding and whatnot.

But he couldn’t move, only stare dumbly.

Signal looked up; and Peter’s eyes moved to the yellow vigilante just in time to see him realize the bullet wound on his shoulder, and immediately jump into the panic mode.

Maybe it was the look he managed to give him, even through his helmet and white-lensed domino mask, that got Peter to act; or maybe it was the pain that was starting to make an appearance, as the adrenaline faded away and the shock started to wear off. But for whatever reason, he suddenly jumped into action.

He ran to the bathroom of the store, and locked the door behind himself.

His luck was seriously the worst.

Currently standing in the middle of a store bathroom, with an arm drenched in blood, and a panicked meta-human vigilante pounding on the door; Peter would fucking stand by that through nine rings of hell.

Honestly, how even was this his life?  

Deep breaths. In for five, hold for four, out for six. Calm down Peter, you got this.

He breathed through his nose to calm himself down, as he listened to Signal talk to the Oracle. The yellow vigilante asked her to call the cops, and to send back-up to his location; the burglars were dealt with, but one of the civilians were shot. Oracle said that she would call an ambulance.

And what reaction did the idea of a hospital got out of Peter?

Oh, hell nah.

He did quick work of his limited time, washing away the blood on his arm and using the tissue paper to make a make-shift bandage. He stuffed some of it into the wound as well, to stop the bleeding as much as he could.

He wrapped his belt around the bandage, over the joint of his shoulder; and then somehow climbed through the tiny bathroom window. The “bandage” was honestly not good, and barely holding on. But it was better than nothing, he supposed.

There was nothing to do for the bloody mess of white tiles that he was leaving behind.  And to be honest, he didn’t really care that much about it anyways; he had bigger problems. Like getting back to the stationary and wrapping his arm up more properly.

He was lucky that the bullet had gone through his arm and wasn’t still inside his body. That would’ve been a real problem, he’d hate to have to take it out himself. Sticking in his fingers, or anything else, into the bullet wound to take out the small metal piece; would’ve been a total nightmare. And a cause for many as well.   

He ran through the streets as fast as he could without jostling his arm too much, and got back to the stationary in record time.

He had a wound to take care of after all.

***

DAY 27: Wednesday

THE BAT-CHAT

Duke: Guys.

Duke: Peter was at the burglary today.

Duke: He’s the one who got shot.

Duke: And then he ran away.

Dick: What.

Tim: Excuse me?

Jason: Are you fucking serious right now?!

Duke: Yes…

Duke: I’m so sorry you guys.

Duke: I had knocked out the guys, and was checking over the civilians.

Duke: I forgot to tie them up, thinking that they wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon anyways.

Duke: Peter was busy trying to calm down a little girl himself.

Duke: I got to them at last.

Duke: I was talking to the girl’s father when he yelled out “Look out!”

Duke: One of the guys had gotten up and was about to shoot at me.

Duke: And the self-sacrificial idiot jumped in front of me immediately.

Duke: He got shot.

Duke: Then he locked himself into the bathroom, and somehow left through the window.

Duke: I don’t know where he is, or even if he’s alright.

Barbara: It’s alright Duke, it wasn’t your fault.

Damian: It sounds like it was.

Dick: Damian!

Damian: Tt.

Dick: When was this?

Duke: 20 to 25 minutes ago.

Jason: He couldn’t have gotten far.

Jason: I’ll patrol the Crime Alley, try to find the kid.

Jason: You guys patrol the other close districts, maybe he never made it back here.

Tim: Got it.

Steph: Suiting up.

Dick: You need me over there?

Jason: I think we’ve got enough men right now Dickie.

Duke: I’m really sorry guys.

Duke: Do you need my help?

Barbara: I think you should sit this one out Duke.

Barbara: Get some rest and everything.

Barbara: Ok?

Duke: Yeah, sure.

Bruce: Jason has got the Crime Alley and East End.

Bruce: Tim, you go over the Bowery with Damian.

Bruce: Steph, you’re with Cass; patrol the Chinatown.

Bruce: I’ll look at the Theater District.

Bruce: Report back to me in two hours.

Bruce: If we can’t find the kid in Somerset, we’ll look in a wider area.

Tim: Got it.

Steph: KK.

Damian: Yes father.

Cass: 👍

Chapter Text

DAY 28: Thursday

Peter woke up with the biggest headache ever.

Or maybe the pain he was feeling was the ache of his shot shoulder, and it was reflecting to his head; he wasn’t sure. It was probably the latter. Anyways, he woke up drenched in sweat, and drowning in pain; and that was the important part.

Groaning in agony, he pulled himself up and out of the bed. He stared at his god-awful reflection on the bathroom mirror for a good five minutes before accepting that no amount of staring and internal begging was going to magically fix the problem of how shitty and half-dead he looked.

A shower wasn’t a good idea at the moment, while the bullet wound was not fully closed yet; so, a washcloth was going to have to do. He wiped down his body, and got lost of the disgusting stickiness all the sweat had brought upon.

His left arm hurt like a bitch, refusing to cooperate with him throughout the process; but he managed to put on his school uniform after ten painful minutes of fighting with the long sleeves.

He made sure to tie the Red Hood bandana around his wrist; the red fabric tight and visible on his arm. He slipped on his backpack, pocketed his rebreather and pocket knife, put on his shoes; and was officially ready for school.

Even though he had to take a break to sit down and just breathe, after all the moving around. Man, he had forgotten how much it hurt and exhausted his body to get shot. He would have to remember it this time, so that he would try to avoid it more actively next time he was in a gun-involved situation.

The walk to school was eventless, thankfully. Peter really wasn’t sure if he’d be able to deal with any muggers or gangers in his current state; injured and hungry. So, it was pretty good luck that the streets were mostly empty; other than people who were going to their jobs, and some street kids.

He arrived at the school, ignored Zac Miller’s usual commentary, and just got to his classes. In all of them he was only half-awake; but the teachers ignored him and the whole of his existence as usual, so he didn’t get scolded or anything. Small miracles.

He could’ve cried from happiness when the lunch-time finally came.

“Oi! Peter!”

Peter looked around the cafeteria and tried to locate where the call had come from; holding his tray tightly and hoping that he wouldn’t faint from exhaustion or something, until he found a table.

He saw Duke waving at him from a nearby bench.

For some reason, the guy felt pretty off at Peter. Not like, dangerous and stay away kind of off. More like… Anxious? And worried, maybe?

“Come eat with us!” Duke gestured at the table he was sitting at with Tim, and a blonde girl. They felt the same way too; and Peter could see the pinched expressions on their faces when he looked carefully, almost… Nervous? And maybe disbelieving?

What? Why?

He debated for a second; but then felt an immediate need to sit down, before he fell over or fainted, and began walking up to them. Seriously, what was the worst that could happen to him, by sitting at a table with three relatively weird possible friends?

…

He was jinxing it, wasn’t he?

“Hey.” He greeted the trio, before turning to the blondie. “I’m Peter.”

“I’m Stephanie, but I go by Steph.”

“Nice to meet you Steph.” They shook hands.

“What happened to your arm?” Tim asked after, frowning. Peter couldn’t be sure if the concern was fake or not; but the ignorance definitely was. It made him frown internally. There was just something about this guy, right under the surface, that screamed be cautious to him. “And your face?”

The way he always had something to hide, and did it almost perfectly; the way he always seemed to know stuff, without needing to be told… It just didn’t help with all the trust issues Peter had; when a guy had so many qualities that would make him a very capable and downright terrifying villain to have, and wasn’t being very honest.

“Uhm…” What should he say, what should he say? Hmm… Let’s go with the truth, and modify it just a little so that no one would call the 911, or the CPS. “I was at a robbery yesterday. Signal saved the day, but I got injured slightly. It’s nothing, really; just, a little strain and a bruise.”

“Just a little strain?” Tim looked a bit incredulous.

Peter frowned, what was his deal? Did he… Did he know something? It felt like he knew something. He acted like he knew something. “Yep. Nothing more.”

“You must be hating Signal now, if he let you get hurt.” Duke said, changing the topic. (Tim seemed a bit annoyed about it.) He was gripping his fork tightly, and glaring at his food.

Peter suddenly disliked the dude.

“Why would I, it was my fault? He did everything by the book, just didn’t count on one of the goons waking up; which is not usually something you should be looking out for if you think you’ve hit them hard enough.”

“Yeah, but he failed to protect you, didn’t he? He-”

“No. He didn’t. He did everything right. He’s an amazing vigilante; has very cool and high-potential powers, and is very nice. I don’t know why don’t seem to like him, Duke; but really, he did an amazing job last night. No one got hurt, other than me, and that was my own fault.”

Duke was gaping. “But-”

“Is this about him being a meta? Is that it, you don’t like metas?” Even Peter was surprised by the sheer amount of venom in his voice; but honestly, he shouldn’t have been. He had always hated mutants being discriminated against and hated on; just for having powers, for being different.

And now he was in a whole different universe, and it was happening here too. Seriously.

It was just so fucking annoying that out of everything in the whole world, racism was one of the universal constants. (Or, at least, one of the similarities between his home universe, and this universe.)

Duke’s eyes widened comically. “I- what?! No!”

“If that’s it, then maybe I should leave.” He didn’t even care about all of the previous exhaustion anymore, he just wanted to get away. 

“No! Peter, no, that’s not it at all, seriously, I promise. I don’t have a problem with anyone being a meta, really. Honest. S-Sorry, I guess I’m just a bit agitated and- and stressed. Things are a bit weird at home nowadays.” He finished lamely, wincing and looking down.

“Oh.” Peter debated for a moment. Duke wasn’t lying about being stressed, but his last sentence did ping his spider-senses. So, he was stressed; but not because of something happening at home. Hm… Curious.

But, alas, he didn’t have to tell Peter everything –or anything, really– he was entitled to his secrets. “Sorry to hear that.” Peter said, and sat back down awkwardly.

Tim and Steph had been completely silent throughout the whole conversation, watching the situation with amusement. Peter personally didn’t understand what was so funny, but decided that not asking would be the best course of action.

“Want some painkillers?” Steph asked eventually. “For your shoulder, I mean.”

“Oh. Uhm… Sure.” Peter mumbled, extending his hand with the slightest hint of a grimace. Steph raised an eyebrow, clearly noticing it; but gave him the painkiller without comments.

He looked down at the painkiller, resigned; and put it in his mouth and swallowed it. He turned back to his food with half-heartedly hidden frustration.

Getting hungry a lot more, and processing food a lot easier; was a really annoying aspect of his fast metabolism. But having medicine not work on him, or just work on him really, really fast; was honestly the worst of it.

Sure, the fast-healing was very cool; but if he couldn’t take a Tylenol or two to dim the pain while his body was stitching itself back together, did it really do much good?

Yeah, yeah; Peter knew that it did.

It still sucked balls though, and was annoying as shit. 

The others shared a look but didn’t comment. Peter ignored them in favor of glaring at his spaghetti.

“So…” Tim started after a while. “You’re a Signal fan?”

***

DAY 28: Thursday

THE BAT-CHAT

Tim: Guys.

Tim: Peter came to school today.

Dick: What.

Barbara: Are you serious?

Cass: ??

Tim: Yes.

Jason: Fucking how?

Damian: I agree with Todd, how?

Damian: Had Thomas failed at identifying who the causality had been yesterday?

Duke: No, it was him alright.

Duke: And his shoulder was bandaged up, and his nose was bruised up the same way as yesterday.

Barbara: Are you sure??

Duke: I mean, I didn’t really see much from the blood; since one of those motherfuckers had decided to pistol-whip the kid in the face.

Duke: But I feel like that is also a proof itself?

Jason: How was he?

Tim: He looked and acted fine, like nothing was wrong.

Tim: Just another Tuesday for him, you know.

Damian: It is Thursday, you imbecile.

Tim: It is an idiom, you dumbass.

Duke: Stop getting side-tracked.

Duke: When we asked him; he said that he had been in a robbery yesterday, and that it was just a strain and a bruise, nothing important really.

Steph: Yeah, and when Duke asked Peter if he hated the Signal now for “failing at protecting him”, because he’s an idiot with a huge guilt-complex, and thinks everything ever is his fault; Peter defended him.

Steph: Like, fiercely.

Steph: He defended Signal to Duke.

Steph: He defended him to himself.

Steph: It was so funny.

Steph: He also thought that Duke was criticizing Signal because he was a meta.

Steph: He almost left our table.

Steph: He got so mad; it was amazing.

Steph: Which is also why Tim is about to re-start his whole rampage about him being a meta.

Tim: He must be!

Tim: It would explain why he got so defensive, and why he could come to school with a bullet wound.

Tim: All the evidence says so.

Tim: You all are just living in ignorance.

***

DAY 29: Friday

It was raining.

It was always raining in Gotham, so that wasn’t a surprise; but rain meant that he couldn’t perch up on top of a rooftop like he usually did; so, Peter chose to lounge at a random fire-escape, as he doodled Strange tripping over his own cape.

He hadn’t thought that he would be seeing any of the vigilantes for a couple of days at least; because they seemed to give it a bit of time after each meetup, before interacting with him again (probably for reasons of not overwhelming him or something).

So, it was a complete surprise when his spider-senses pinged and let him know that someone was watching him.

Peter immediately placed the familiar feeling as the same one he had gotten when Red Hood had first followed him through Gotham; and turned up to look at where the guy was standing on the first few steps of the fire-escape, soaked to the bone.

He stared at him.

Hood stared back.

He rose an eyebrow.

Hood began walking down.

The guy towered over him where he was sitting at; all 200 pounds of menace and death –supposedly–, and just kept staring. “You little shit.” He finally said, after a long moment.

“Uhm, why am I a little shit exactly?” Peter asked, frowning slightly. He genuinely didn’t know what he had done to piss off the red vigilante.

“You got shot.” Hood reminded.

He winced, right. Peter had forgotten about that tidbit problem. “And that was my fault?” He tried.

“Yes! Signal tells us that you jumped in front of a bullet aimed at him; and then we go all around the city, trying to find the civilian that got shot and ran away; and not a single sign of you!

“Do I need to remind you that Signal is a vigilante? Hm? That he has Kevlar in his suit to protect him? And that even if he didn’t, he had signed up for getting hurt when he decided to wear spandex and run around the city, and it shouldn’t be a fifteen-year-old kid’s job to look after him?!”

“I’m seventeen!”

“Whatever. Or should I lecture you about not running away from help while fatally hurt? Was it because of the CPS or something? We would’ve covered for you Peter, you should know that, we’re vigilantes. We’d have helped, why did you run away? You scared us, scared me.” The hurt was visible in his voice, even through the modulator. And so was the anger.

Peter gulped, looking down guiltily. “I’m sorry.” He whispered, trying to not tense under the heavy gaze. He wondered what the crimson vigilante saw when he looked at him. A homeless, defenseless kid? An annoyance? A spoiled little brat? An idiot?

It was silent for a stretching moment, and then Red Hood gave a weary sigh. “Come here.” He said in a tried voice, opening his arms.

Peter looked up at him for a moment; before getting up and stepping into the hug.

It was quick, and kind of awkward; but no less nice. Peter could tell that Hood was thanking his lucky starts for his survival; and it made something in him churn, in a good way.

Then he noticed the bags he had.

“Whatcha got there?” He piped up.

“Some medical supplies, and food. Fresh and home-cooked, decided to bring you some when I realized I had over-cooked.”

Peter rose his eyebrows, a snort escaping him. “The Red Hood, infamous vigilante and the Damned Prince of Gotham; stress-cooks?” He gave into the chuckle bubbling up in him.

“Shut up.” Hood murmured, looking away quickly. Oh. Oh. So, he was right? Red Hood had stress-cooked? Because of him? “Where did you even hear that ‘Damned Prince of Gotham’ bullshit?”

He gave a cheeky smile. “Internet. I go to the library a lot, you know.”

“Yeah, I bet you do.” Hood took off his helmet and put it onto the steps where Peter had been sitting a couple minutes ago. “Now,” His voice was much younger and gentler without the helmet, but it had the same Gotham drawl that even the voice modulator couldn’t hide. “Let’s make a deal.”

“What deal?”

“You let me take a look at your wound, and I give you the food I stress-cooked for you, how about that?”

And with that simple sentence, the warm atmosphere disappeared at once.

Peter froze. Peter turned ice. No. No. No, he couldn’t. He couldn’t do that, he couldn’t let him see; he would know.

His wound wasn’t anywhere near healed up yet, still had at least a full month with how little he was eating. But it definitely didn’t look like a two-day-old bullet wound. It looked older. At least a week, maybe two.

There was no way Hood wouldn’t realize it immediately, no way he wouldn’t know. And Peter couldn’t let him.

“Peter?” Hood asked. “Is everything okay?” He put a hand on his good shoulder.

“N-No.” Peter flinched away from the touch; Hood’s hand fell away immediately. “I mean- I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. Y-You’ll just have to keep the food.” He quickly began packing up his little of belongings after pushing that out.

But Hood stopped him.

“Woah, woah, woah; okay, hold up, wait. What’s going on, we were just fine? Did I say something wrong?”

Peter stared at the red helmet, his heart beating in his ears. “I-I-” Should he tell him? Could he trust him? “N-No, you didn’t say anything wrong, I-I just want to leave.” No, he shouldn’t and he couldn’t.

People he trusted usually ended up stabbing Peter in the back. It was a universal knowledge, and probably a universal constant too; so, he wasn’t going to take that risk.

Especially with and ex-crime-boss-turned-vigilante who helped another vigilante enforce the rule of no-meta-humans in their city.

He tried to pull back his hand; he wanted to get away.

But Hood wasn’t letting go.

“Right, and I’m Batman.” He scoffed. “Kid, just tell me what I did wrong, okay? So, I can explain to you there is no need to be afraid or uncomfortable or whatever.”

“No, thanks.” He said snippily.

“Is this about me asking to see your wound? Did I cross a line or something?”

“I-I just- I just don’t like it… when other people… prod around my injuries.” Peter winced; gosh, he was going to need a miracle for that one to work. “I have had a… bad experience before. W-With a doctor.” He finished lamely, looking away. Fat fucking lie. And no way Hood wasn’t going to be able to tell that.  

Fuck, there was no way this was going to work.

Red Hood went completely still, not moving a muscle. “You don’t say.” His voice was drained of any emotion, cracking harshly through the modulator. “Here in Gotham?”

“N-No. Back in NY. I just don’t like it when other people touch my wounds and…” He struggled with his words for a moment before giving up and sagging. It was probably already obvious anyways, no need to dig himself a bigger hole.

Red Hood was strangely silent; taking it in, and probably seeing right through his pathetic excuse of a lie. Honestly, he hadn’t even made a good job of selling it, he had just said it out-loud –while wincing, too– and hoped for the best.

The vigilante let go of his arm. “I’m sorry.” Wait, what? “I didn’t mean to trigger you.” Oh my god, no way. “I was just worried.” Fuck yes, it worked!

“It’s fine.” Peter said quickly. “I’m just not comfortable with anyone touching me like that.”

Hood was silent for a moment. “Then we need to compromise somehow, because as much as I don’t want to make you uncomfortable; you have been shot, and I don’t think you went to a hospital or something.”

“No, I didn’t; but I’m fine. The bullet didn’t hit anything important, like the organs or the bones. And it went right through, isn’t stuck in my shoulder right now. Yes, I bled a little; but it stopped quickly enough and I didn’t lose too much blood. And I know I bandaged it up well. I’m alright, for real.”

Hood’s eyes burned into his shoulder; Peter couldn’t see where he was looking through the helmet, but he just knew it.

“Okay, fine. I’ll let it go for now. But only if you let me see the bandages at least, I want to make sure you did it right.”

“Alright.” Peter accepted easily enough. “But no touching.”

The vigilante nodded.

Peter took off his coat, ignoring the cold, and rolled his sleeve up to his shoulder. Hood looked at his bandages from a few feet afar and nodded to himself, mumbling under his breath. “Gosh, I can’t believe I’m doing this right now, being so irresponsible. A kid has literally been shot and I have been convinced to let it go with this little inspection.”

Peter held in his chuckle.

“You did a good job with that.” Hood said, gesturing at his wound.

“Thanks.” Peter slipped back on his coat. “So, uhm, food?”

Hood took out two plastic boxes from his bag, and some plastic cutlery.

The container smelled heavenly; and Peter wasted no time in digging in. Honestly, it had been too long since the last time he had eaten a home cooked, decent meal; and not a stupid cold sandwich or canned food. And something as simple as meatloaf or not; Peter could’ve sold his soul to the devil for the meal he was eating.

He loved Red Hood.

They sat next to one another on the steps of the fire escape, and were just eating the absolutely delicious food the crime lord had conjured up. They were silent, just listening to the rain; until, “And do you need anything? Food? Water? Blankets? Anything?”

“You’re already bringing me food; you and your friends keep feeding me. And honestly, thanks to you guys, I can’t find even a shrivel of my pride anywhere these days.”

“I mean it kid, answer me for real.” The vigilante said, after giving a small snort.

“Fine.” Peter looked down, biting his lip as he thought. “I guess…”

“Go ahead, tell me.” Hood coaxed.

“Maybe some pain killers would be nice?”

“I bet they would.” He gave a humorless snort. “How much do you need?”

Peter couldn’t possibly say the real amount he would need (spoiler: he needed about four times the normal dose); but if he could just make Hood believe that whatever he would be giving him was for, like, a whole week or two; then maybe he would have enough amount of drugs at hand, to last him a whole night of sleep or two.

And boy, was he missing those. Granted, it had only been two nights; but being unable to fall asleep because of the pain, was literally the worst. Being tired enough to faint at any given moment, but failing to fall unconscious no matter how much he tried.

So, he thought that it was only fair that he bitched about it a bit.

“One bottle of Vicodin should be enough, I think. For a whole week, I mean.”

Red Hood’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “You said it was fine.”

“It is!” Peter consistently didn’t meet his eyes. “It- just- hurts.” He finished lamely. “I’m not going to sell it or something. And I don’t have a drug problem either, I just- It hurts, and I can’t sleep at night. I will take two pills a day, one in the morning and one before bed. It will probably last about ten days at most.”

No way was it going to last ten whole days; it probably wasn’t even going to cover three full days, if he took two doses each day. Four times the dose, remember? There were twenty pills in one bottle of Vicodin, back in his universe. Guessing that it was the same for this one as well, he was probably going to be able to relieve his pain on five different occasions only.

Which meant that all he was going to get out of a whole bottle of Vicodin was five good nights’ sleep, probably; and no type of pain relieving whatsoever during the day. If he had enough self-restraint.

Hood huffed. “Okay. Fine. I’ll find you some drugs.”

Peter gave a grin at the masked man, thankful around the edges. He returned it, and ruffled his hair. The kid battled away the rough hands with a chuckle.

“Eat your food before it gets cold, pipsqueak.”

“Hey! I’m not a pipsqueak.” He said in a fake offended tone, and picked up his fork again.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. By the way, the Big Blue Bird is coming soon, he’s visiting again. He’ll pop by you too, probably; just letting you know.”

“Thanks, I was starting to miss him, I guess.”

“You guess?”

Peter shrugged.

Hood laughed.

Peter smiled.

They kept eating.

***

DAY 30: Saturday

Peter winced as he slid off his coat and hanged it on the sling, the movement jostling his shoulder. A hiss escaped him, and he leaned on to the wall beside; letting out a long breath. It was still the first few days of his wound; so, pangs of pain hitting his arm at the smallest movements was normal. But it still sucked.

He sighed; he couldn’t believe he was seriously going to have to wait a whole month to heal. Normally, it didn’t take longer than two weeks; with enough food, rest and medication. But since Peter wasn’t in the position to afford any of those things to the degree he really needed right now, it was going to take him twice the time it normally did to heal a bullet wound.

And not to mention that his body was already tired from having to heal all of his previous injuries on nothing but one or two meals a day, a couple hours of sleep a night, and spite and willpower.

“Peter, are you okay?” Barbara asked, wheeling up to him. “What happened to your arm? And your face?”

Peter forced a smile for her sake. “Yeah, I’m okay. I just strained it, and got pistol-whipped during a robbery; everything’s fine.”

“Strained it?” The redhead looked a bit incredulous.

“Yeah, the bandages are just to keep it still to keep it from getting worse.”

She was silent for a moment, just staring at him with an open mouth; before, “Alright.”

“Come on, let’s get to work.” He said, pulling her along.

“Are you sure… you’re good to work?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. The floors look like they need a bit of mopping, should I get to it?”

“Uhm, sure? Only if you’re a hundred percent sure you can handle it though.”

“Sure, I can.” With that, Peter went on to cleaning duties.

He mopped around for at least half an hour before deciding that the floor looked clean enough. After, he continued with dusting around the shelves for a bit. Barbara helped him too, and by the opening time, the library looked pristine as always.

“Good job, Little Duck.”

“Thanks.” Peter gave her a smile, ignoring the pain.

“How do you feel?”

“Amazing. Do you need anything else?”

“Nope! Go sit at the front desk, and rest for a bit. If you need my help with a costumer, or need to ask me something; don’t hesitate to call out. I’ll just be doing some boring paper-work things, in the back room; I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Alright.” Peter accepted easily, and went to do as he was told; sinking into the chair with a long sigh. He managed to hold back any pained groans until the redhead was out of earshot.

Barbara didn’t need him for much else the rest of his shift, and Peter had a hunch she was doing it on purpose, to give him a break because of his injury. But since he so desperately needed that break, he didn’t call her out on it or something. The next seven hours were spent on the front desk, checking out books and answering questions.

When 5 pm came, Barbara kindly asked any remaining costumers to leave, as they were shutting down, and then came up to him.

“It’s time for clean-up.” Peter said, but she cut him off.

“No, I think you should leave early today. I’ll still pay you 200 dollars, no problem there; but I don’t want you working while hurt, and aggravating the injury.”

“But I’m alright.” Peter said, frowning. “I can work, Babs, seriously I’m fine. If you don’t want me to clean around, fine I won’t. But I can still help with tidying up around here.”

“I don’t know.” She bit her lip, looking away.

“Are you prepared to drag me out on my ass?” He asked bluntly, deciding that it was the fastest route to win the, frankly ridiculous argument. She was paying him to do work, and telling him to not.

The redhead looked up in surprise.

“No? Alright, then you don’t have that much of a choice anyways.” With that, he got to work.

He stayed away from any cleaning supplies, as he had promised Barbara; but picked up any straying books he saw lying around, and threw away the trash some teenagers had left.

It was the last eight minutes of his shift, when he came across it.

He was in the children’s section, looking around for anything that didn’t belong, when his eyes fell onto it; Charlotte’s Web. His childhood favorite.

The reason why he liked it the best, wasn’t only because he had loved the story, or because May liked to imitate the different voices every time she read it to him. It was because the book he had had, had been the copy his parents had bought.

That’s right, the worn out story book had been the one thing he had had of his parents after the plane crush; other than some old photos, and fuzzy memories.

And he had lost it when he was thirteen, when they were moving.

Peter didn’t realize he was crying until Barbara was touching his shoulder. “Peter?”

He flinched back from her touch, dropping the book. When had he even picked it up? “I-I’m so-sorry.” He gasped out; frantically trying to blink away the tears, and gulping big breaths to just calm down. Seriously, what was he, five? Why was he crying over a stupid book?

“Peter, what happened? Are you hurt?”

“N-No, nothing happened.” He wiped off his cheeks with his sleeves harshly. “I’m sorry.” Not that it helped stopping the oncoming ones. “I-I didn’t mean to- to damage the book, or- or scare you. I-I- I just-” He cut off with a sob.

“It’s okay, I’m not mad. Peter, you need to breathe, can you breathe for me?”

Peter wanted to nod, to do as he was told; but he could only gasp, his lungs burning, and his chest aching. He wasn’t getting enough oxygen, he needed more. He needed to breathe more.

A distant part of his mind reminded him that he was hyperventilating. That it wasn’t an issue of not enough oxygen, it was too much of it.

A hand touched his chest, a palm pressing flat against his sternum. “Slower.” Barbara’s insistent voice came through all the gasping. “Hold it.” She instructed, and Peter tried. “Good. Now let it out, slowly; and wait for a moment before breathing in again. Good boy, you’re doing so good Peter. Now let’s do it again.”

Barbara talked him out of his meltdown; and helped him calm down with her soothing tone and clear instructions. His stuttering breaths slowed down, his lungs finally complying with what the redhead was saying. He slid down the bookshelf, sitting flat on the wooden floor and leaning his head back onto the bookshelf.

“Peter?” Barbara touched his shoulder again, though a lot more hesitatingly. “What happened?”

Peter screwed up his face, hugging his legs. He reached out and grabbed the children’s book from where it had fallen; smoothing out the pages, and then hugging it close to his chest.

“I-I miss her.” He babbled. “I miss them.” The waterworks started again. “All of them.” With that, he broke down in sobs; hugging a kid’s book, and babbling useless words like a baby.

Barbara pulled him forward until his head was resting on her knees. “It’s alright Little Duck. Everything will be okay.” She said, starting to run her fingers through his hair, smoothing out the locks and massaging his scalp. She began humming a quiet tune, turning him into a sleepy puddle against her.

“Everything will be alright.”

***

DAY 30: Saturday

THE PETER THEORY

Barbara: I’ve got the DNA sample.

***

DAY 31: Sunday

Peter jumped up from his sitting position at once, when the blue vigilante jumped over to the roof he was hanging out on, with an aerial cartwheel none the less. Perfect jump, perfect landing; Peter was impressed.

He had always been interested in gymnastics; especially after he realized that his bones had severed after the spider bite, and he had become more flexible. Much more flexible than what a normal human was capable of.

He knew perfect form when he saw one.

And Nightwing was just that.

“Hiya Nightwing!” He greeted cheerily. “That was a pretty cool move.”

Nightwing took a moment to look him over with the smallest frown, and assess his appearance before answering. “Hi Pete, thanks for the compliment, I try. How’s it going?”

Peter shrugged, giving a small smile. “It’s going fine, nothing major.”

He saw the blue bird coming up short. “Nothing major?” He asked incredulously. “Didn’t you get shot? Like, four days ago?”

He shrugged again; what was there to say to that? “What’s that?” He asked, gesturing at the bag the vigilante was carrying, and changing the subject swiftly.

Nightwing gave a resigned sigh; oops, not so swiftly then. But he decided to let it go, as he allowed the topic change. “I brought you some things.” He opened the bag and pulled out five plastic boxes similar to the ones Hood had had last time they saw each other. And a blue bird plushie.

Peter couldn’t keep in his snort. “What is that thing?”

“Why, it’s a gift of course. And food.” He pushed one of the containers into his hands. “Let’s have dinner together, I want to chat a bit with you.”

“Alright.” Peter accepted easily enough; he was starting to enjoy being friends with these guys. ‘These guys’ being a series of deeply traumatized, weird, and savior complexed vigilante individuals; living their family fights in their masked lives, and seemingly refusing to go to family counseling to fix any of the stuff that was wrong with them. Like Nightwing's Oldest Sister Syndrome, or Red Robin's stalkerism problem.

They went and sat where Peter had been sitting before Nightwing came over. He took the blue bird plushie from the vigilante and stuffed it into his crappy backpack.

“So, Mister Nothing-Major-Is-Going-On-In-My-Life-Even-Though-I-Have-Been-Shot-This-Week, what about the more mundane things? School? Job? Got any friends? Any bullies?”

“Just how thoroughly did Red Robin stalk me?”

They shared a laugh.

“I wouldn’t have asked if I already knew.”

“Yeah, no, I know. I’m fine, school’s alright I guess, just boring. A lot. I work at a library on the weekends, and it can get pretty hectic without getting too exhausting; and the pay is nice too, so it’s pretty great.”

“Do you enjoy working there?”

“Yeah, a lot. Barbara, my boss, is amazing. She’s so nice and kind, and just… I can’t even explain it with words.”

Nightwing bit back a smile at the words. “And friends and such?”

“Got a few from both school and work. Tim, Steph, and Duke from school; and the library staff from work.”

“Aren’t they a bit older than you? Like, a couple years?”

Peter shrugged. “We’re still friends. And there are some bullies, at school, but I don’t really care for them.”

“Friends are good. Bullies, not so much. Do you want me to pay them a visit or something?” His voice lowered a few tones at the last sentence, taking a threatening edge.

Peter startled. “W-What? No! No, don’t do that. Seriously Nightwing, it’s fine, nothing major ever happens, just some stupid name calling. And even if it was more than that, you shouldn’t just go and kick a couple of teenagers’ asses, just because they’re being mean.”

“A little? Is it a little?”

“A little, a lot; doesn’t matter. You’re a vigilante, you should be focusing on bigger things. Not some high-school drama.”

High-school drama was exactly the type of thing Spider-Man dealt with, Friendly Neighborhood Avenger.

“Hm.”

Nightwing didn’t look convinced, but Peter didn’t have enough energy to argue with him any further. (Plus, the guy didn’t have names or anything, so what difference did it make whether he was convinced or not?)

He chose to follow his lead and end the subject, picking up the plastic cutlery to begin eating. But the second he opened the container given to him by the vigilante, his spider-senses slammed into him like a truck.

He threw away the box at once, jumping up and staggering back.

“What is it? Is there a bug in it or something?” The blue bird asked worriedly.

“Sm’lls like vin’gar.” Peter slurred his words, barely containing the hiss trapped in his throat. “Is there vin’gar in th’t th’ng?”

“Yes?”

“I’m allergic to vin’gar.”

“Allergic?”

“Yes. Lethally.” He clenched his teeth, doing everything in his power to not give the reaction his inner spider was giving. He shuddered and winced, his stomach twisting in nots and churning up.

“Oh my God.” Nightwing gave a grimace. “I am so sorry; I had no idea. I didn’t mean to- to do this, to hurt you.”

“Hm, I know. But please, never again. And please, get that thing away from me.”

“Right away.” Nightwing packed up their stuff immediately; and picked him up by his waist, like a teddy bear. “I’ll swing by later to clean up the mess.” He said, in lieu of an answer to Peter’s surprised squawk. “For now, let’s just get away.”

They jumped over a couple roofs, not bothering to slow down until Peter shouted up at the blue vigilante that they could stop now. The guy set him down carefully, and backed up a couple feet; seemingly completely unaffected by the impromptu exercise.

Guilt was Nightwing’s greatest fuel, it seemed.

“Nightwing?”

“Hm?” He looked up from his zoning. “Peter, I am so sorry-”

“It’s alright.” Peter cut off his rambling before it could even start; nib the problem in the bud, right? “It’s okay, I’m not mad, and I’m not hurt. No harm, no foul. Just calm down, okay?” He could almost see the guy’s guilt, coming off of him in waves; he needed him to calm down.

“I hope the other containers have some different food?” He tried to joke. It managed to draw a chuckle from the anxious vigilante.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it, we have varieties. I actually didn't have time to cook these myself, so I asked my grandfather for for it, and he made some different dishes.”

“Your grandfather cooked these?”

“Yeah, he did.” He pulled out another container, this one for himself. “The other three are different dishes, probably no vinegar in them; so, you don’t need to worry about that.”

“Alright.”

They sat down at a relatively clean spot, and began eating.

“Why so many containers? Are you visiting other people after me?” Peter asked, after he was done with his food; curiosity poking at him.

“No. I actually thought that you could keep the extra ones. Like, to eat later.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s so sweet.” He tried to give a smile; it looked more like a grimace. “But I don’t have a fridge to keep them cool, and I don’t have a microwave or something to warm them up later either.”

“Hm.” Nightwing frowned. “Yeah, that would be a problem.”

“I guess they wouldn’t go bad until tomorrow, and I can eat them cold.” Peter tried to compromise, when he saw the guy’s truly defeated and frustrated expression. He understood how it felt when you tried to do good and be kind, and it blew up on your face at every aspect and step of the way.

“No, we can’t have that. I guess I can swing by tomorrow as well, to drop off the food; unless you’d prefer some space?”

“Oh, no, it’s totally fine. I enjoy your company.” Peter grinned up at Nightwing. Nightwing grinned back down, his frown finally disappearing.

“Really?”

“Yep.” He popped the ‘p’.

“Alright then, I’ll find you.”

“And I’ll be waiting.” Peter picked up his backpack and went over to the fire escape. “And thanks for the plushie.” He called out to the vigilante before starting to climb down the stairs.

Nightwing’s laugh reached his ears over the wind.

It made him smile.

***

DAY 31: Sunday

THE BAT-CHAT

Dick: The kid is allergic to vinegar.

Dick: And guess who tried to feed him a vinegar dish this evening, while trying to hang out with him and get to know him better.

Step: Dick, I swear to God, if you have killed him, I’m gonna be very mad.

Dick: He’s fine, he didn’t even eat it.

Dick: He threw the container away as soon as he opened it.

Dick: It was kind of weird actually.

Dick: Low-key reminded me of the Beast Boy that time when Vic gifted him that cheese he hated, on his birthday, as a prank.

Dick: The only thing missing was a growl.

Tim: Maybe he’s, like, a half-animal meta.

Tim: Like a half-cat or a half-dog or something.

Tim: Like Croc.

Steph: Quiet down Tim.

Barbara: What did you do afterwards Dick?

Dick: Apologized and tried to give him the other plates of food Alfred had cooked, obviously.

Dick: Thankfully, they were vinegar-free.

Jason: Only you could’ve almost killed him while trying to feed him.

Jason: Only you Dickiebird.

Steph: Wait.

Steph: Tried?

Dick: Yeah…

Jason: Oh God, what else happened?

Dick: I kind of forgot that he probably didn’t have a fridge, or anything, to store that food in.

Dick: Peter reminded me gently.

Steph: sdjfkffegjı

Barbara: Oh, Dick…

Tim: Seriously?

Jason: Oh, my God.

Jason: My brother is an idiot.

Dick: Hey!

Dick: Don’t call me an idiot.

Jason: Am I wrong though?

Damian: That was poor planning on your part Richard.

Jason: Even the Demon Brat agrees!

Damian: Tt.

Tim: dlfmsdi

Duke: dfadsiidi

Dick: Yeah, yeah, laugh all you want.

Steph: Come on Dick, don’t sulk.

Steph: You had it coming.

Dick: Anyways; I’ll drop by tomorrow evening too; to give him the rest of food, after warming it up at home.

Dick: He really liked it; and I want him to have it, Alfred cooked it for him after all.

Jason: It’s Alfred’s cooking, of course he loved it.

Jason: What sane person wouldn’t?

Dick: True.

Steph: Amen.

Tim: Absolutely.

Duke: Yeah!

Barbara: Definitely.

Damian: I agree.

Cass: Yes.

Bruce: He is the best cook I know.

Bruce: Though you come in as a close second, Jay.

Jason: Really?

Bruce: Of course.

Tim: Favorite Child Alert!

Steph: I thought you didn’t have favorites, Bruce.

Dick: I thought you loved us all, Bruce.

Duke: I thought we all ranked the same in your heart, Bruce.

Tim: This wounds us, Bruce.

Bruce: Shut up, the lot of you.

Dick: rgaskgikaif

***

DAY 31: Sunday

THE PETER THEORY

Barbara: Tim?

Barbara: The DNA test?

Barbara: It’s been thirty-two hours.

Tim: Guys, I don’t know what’s happening.

Tim: Seriously.

Tim: I have no idea.

Tim: Like, not even a theory.

Jason: Tim?

Jason: Baby Bird, what’s wrong?

Tim: I’ve run the test three times.

Tim: It’s always the same.

Barbara: What are the results?

Barbara: Are they not related?

Barbara: Is that why you’re freaking out?

Tim: No, they are related.

Tim: %99.99

Jason: Then what’s wrong?

Tim: Peter doesn’t have the meta gene.

Tim: He’s not a meta.

Tim: But he is different.

Tim: His DNA is different.

Tim: It’s mutated.

Tim: And radioactive.

Tim: Way, way more than a normal human.

Tim: I-I don’t get it.

Tim: I’m so confused right now.

Tim: And kind of freaked out, to be honest.

Barbara: Okay, let’s go from what we know.

Barbara: Peter is %99.99 Dick’s son.

Barbara: He’s not a meta; but he’s got abilities (?), and his DNA is different.

Barbara: And he’s radioactive.

Tim: Pretty much, yeah.

Tim: And stop doubting me, he does have abilities.

Jason: Is it possible that he’s a lab experiment, maybe?

Tim: What?

Barbara: How?

Jason: Someone stole Nightwing’s DNA and made Peter, or maybe even actually spent a night with Dick or something; and then experimented on the kid in a lab, playing with his DNA, trying to make a weapon out of him.

Tim: Not as far-fetched as I’d like it to be; possible.

Barbara: That can also explain why the kid was so wary of all of us at first.

Tim: Yeah, that too.

Barbara: I don’t like this picture.

Jason: I hate this picture.

Tim: So, what do we do now?

Barbara: Alright, forget about the weird DNA situation.

Barbara: We’ll come back to that later.

Barbara: Firstly,

Barbara: We need to tell Dick.

Barbara: We can’t keep this from him.

Jason: I’ll talk to him.

Tim: What about the others?

Jason: They all probably have their own theories and whatnot.

Jason: You aren’t the only detective in the family you know, and they all have two eyes and a brain too.

Tim: ಠ⁠︵⁠ಠ

Barbara: We should still probably sit them down and explain calmly after you’re done with Dick though.

Jason: Got it.

Jason: I’ll let you know.

***

DAY 31: Sunday

Jason: Hey.

Jason: Where you at?

Jason: I’ve been looking for you; you’re not in the manor, not in the cave, not out patrolling?

Dick: An emergency came up; going back to Blüdhaven.

Dick: Fuck, I can’t believe I’m ditching on the kid.

Dick: But this is really important.

Dick: Can you maybe bring him the food Alfie has cooked, instead of me?

Jason: Shit.

Dick: Jason?

Jason: We gotta talk.

Jason: It’s important.

Dick: Did someone get hurt?

Jason: No, no one got hurt.

Jason: It’s about Peter.

Dick: What happened?

Dick: Jason, you’re worrying me.

Jason: Just, visit as soon as you can, and come see me when you do.

Jason: I should really tell this to you as soon as possible; but it’s really not a conversation to be had over text.

Jason: It’s not a bad thing.

Jason: Actually, I think you’ll be pretty happy with the news.

Jason: Or at least, neutral?

Jason: But still.

Jason: It’s gotta be face-to-face

Dick: Fine.

Dick: Be like that.

Dick: I’ll be there next weekend.

Jason: K.

Chapter Text

DAY 32: Monday

Peter allowed Steph to pull him through the cafeteria crowd, and to their established table. To be honest, he kind of needed the help the blonde was giving. He had had yet another sleepless night last night, and was currently at the point of passing out from exhaustion after five days of almost no sleep. Hood had still not gotten back to him about those painkillers.

He fell onto his chair with a loud thud.

Tim looked up with a frown. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He answered. “Just tired, couldn’t really sleep last night.”

“There, there.” Steph crooned at him; he groaned back in response.

Tim was still frowning. “Are you sure you’re alright? You look half-dead, this feels like more than a simple insomnia problem.”

“Gee, thanks.” Peter sassed. “But seriously, I’m fine.” He picked up his utensils and turned his attention back onto the food. Truly, he didn’t feel like taking even a single bite from the chicken in gravy –the nausea was too potent for doing any kind of eating– but he had to.

He needed the protein, and the nutrients; and he needed to not starve to death. He couldn’t just let a whole meal go to waste just because he wasn’t feeling like chicken right now. (Even though the issue was not him being a picky eater, not at all.)

So, he forced himself to take a bite, even though the meat tasted like paper against his tongue, and felt heavy in his stomach. He kept eating until there was only scraps left in the plate; and felt kind of proud of himself, for managing to brave the nausea his irregular meal schedule had been bringing onto him for a while now. He felt good, other than his aching stomach.

But then he made the mistake of putting his head down onto the table, after he was done eating, to get a moment of shut eye.

He shouldn’t have dropped his guard.

Ice cold water poured over him, and Peter woke up from his sleepy daze with a jump and a gasp. He turned around in a flash to be staring at Zac Miller’s smirking face, his heart beating in his ears. Jesus Christ. This guy just didn’t know when to give up, did he?

He saw Duke getting up from the corner of his eye, but motioned him to sit back down; he didn’t want a commotion.

“What do you want now, Miller?” He asked tiredly.

“For you to know your place, obviously.”

“Which is?”

“Under my shoe, Crime Alley scum.”

Peter barely stopped himself from groaning at the two-hundred-and-twenty-second-hand insult, rolling his eyes at the basic bitch-ness. Honestly, what even was the point of being the ‘bad guy’ if you weren’t going to be your own bad guy, if you weren’t going to be original? There was nothing special about using dated insults, and shouting half-baked comebacks.

Yeah, he didn’t really care for the over-used insult; almost gave a yawn to it actually.

But apparently, his new friends did.

“Fucking excuse you?!” Steph jumped up from her seat with a shout. “What did you just call him?”

“I think you heard me, you Crime Alley scum.” Miller said, and an understanding downed on Peter. Oh. So, Steph was also from Crime Alley. “This school is getting worse and worse every day, getting filled with people like you. Scholarship was the dumbest idea Wayne had ever had, and now classy people like myself has to pay for it.”

“Classy?” Tim scoffed, getting up as well, with Duke in tow. He pulled Steph back, getting in between her and Miller. “I could spend hours, explaining to you how money doesn’t buy class; but you wouldn’t get it. So, I’ll go down to your level.” And Peter watched in fascination as Tim’s expression change completely; turning cold, turning ice, turning dangerous. He straightened up his spine, and towered over the backseat-bully.

“You think you’re classy? No. Classy looks like me. Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne; the owner of the Drake Industries and the heir to the Drake fortune, the CEO of the Wayne Enterprises and one of the heirs of Bruce Wayne, top marks on all of my classes, a nineteen-year-old billionaire. The only reason I’m back in this school, dealing with dogs like you in the first place; is because I had to drop out two years ago, to help my father take care of the said companies; and he wanted to enroll me back in after the crises were over, because he cares about my education.

“I am classy. But you? Don’t make me laugh. You are not classy; you are nothing, compared to me. You call my friends the scum under your shoe? You’re the scum under my shoe.”

Oh.

My.

God.

Well. One upside was that, maybe for the first time in his life, Peter could now actually say ‘I knew it!’; because he had. He had known that Tim could be dangerous, that he needed to be cautious around him. He had known it.

Wait a damn minute…

Wayne?!

Miller tried to give a scoff, but it was obvious as the day just how intimidated he was. “Shut it, nerd. A billionaire? Right. You’re over-estimating yourself.”

Tim had one answer. “No, I’m not.”

Him and Miller got into a staring contest, willing the other to back down. Miller’s gang of high-school peaks were standing close, almost circling them; and watching on how the situation would unfold.

Peter only then realized that Steph and Duke were standing on his each side, both only slightly in front of him, glaring at the assholes. Almost as if… protecting him from them.

“Whatever.” Miller sneered. “Your precious little friend won’t be here for long anyways. No scholarship low-life enrolls in the middle of the semester. Special condition my ass, something fishy is going on here, and even the teachers know it. A dozen of people are trying to reach your daddy dearest to fix whatever the hell had happened, and get that punk in a jail cell. Why don’t you be the messenger, hm?”

Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck his luck; out of everyone in the school, he had gone and made friends with the one kid who was the son of the man he was scamming by simply being in the building. Oh fuck. And now he knew. Now Tim knew, and-

And he was giving Miller one of the smuggest smirks Peter had ever seen. “What makes you think he doesn’t know it already?” He whispered after getting into Miller’s face. “What makes you think that he didn’t realize it immediately, seen all the e-mails and everything; and just chose to ignore it, allowed it, because he was impressed by Peter? What makes you think, that Peter doesn’t deserve to be here, and much more than you ever could too?”

What.

The.

Fuck.

With that Tim slid past the boy he had broken, and began walking away with a victorious grin. Steph and Duke followed after him dutifully, the latter pulling Peter along as well. They only stopped when they reached a bathroom.

“You need to change your shirt. It’s 42 degrees outside, you’ll get sick.” Tim said, turning to him. “You go ahead and take it off, dry yourself with the paper towels. I’ll find you a new shirt, and Duke and Steph can wait here, to make sure no one walks in on you or something.”

Before Peter could say ‘Yes, sir.’ And do as he was told –by the surprisingly authoritarian voice of his peer– Steph cut him off.

“What about his bandages? They are soaking, he needs to change them as well.”

“That’s right.” Duke agreed. “He can’t go around with wet bandages.”

“Alright then. Me and Steph will go and smuggle out some bandages from the infirmary, you go and find him a shirt. And Peter, wait for us in one of the stalls, alright? We won’t take ten minutes.”

Peter nodded dumbly, and the trio left after seeing him into the bathroom. He stared up at his reflection on the bathroom mirror, in complete shock; his brain still trying to process what had happened.

His very new friends were weirdly overprotective of him.

Tim was a Wayne.

Tim knew he was scamming his father.

His father, apparently, also knew he was scamming him; and was letting him.

…

What.

Peter shook his head to try to get rid of the headache inducing thoughts; he didn’t have the capacity to deal with them right now.

He went into one of the many stalls, to take off his wet shirt and bandages. He threw away the ruined medical supply, and dried himself off with the toilet paper, as much as he could. He inspected his wound too, for only a moment; before dismissing it and beginning to anxiously wait for his friends.

***

DAY 32: Monday

THE BETTER ROBINS

Tim: Okay we don’t have much time; we have to be fast.

Tim: Peter will have to take off his shirt, and unwrap his bandages.

Tim: After he’s done getting dressed, I’ll somehow get him away.

Tim: You two, stay behind.

Tim: Duke, I want you to use your powers to see a few moments ago.

Tim: And Steph, I want you to take a photo or a video as Peter takes off his bandages.

Tim: I need to see how that wound looks.

Steph: Tim, are you fucking kidding me right now?

Tim: What?

Steph: What?!

Steph: Are you seriously asking me to record the light-hologram of a half-naked seventeen-year-old boy right now?

Tim: Cut with that crap.

Tim: I’m not being a pervert here.

Tim: The recording is to have proof.

Steph: So, you’re gonna show it to others?

Steph: What the hell Tim!

Duke: Steph’s right.

Duke: I don’t want to spy on him like this.

Tim: Don’t act like you’re not dying with curiosity too.

Duke: Yes, I am.

Duke: But that doesn’t mean I’m going to disrespect Peter’s privacy like this.

Duke: Plus, I only recently managed to expand my photokinetic vision to the outside eye.

Duke: I don’t even know if I can do this.

Tim: You and I both know that you can handle doing it for a couple seconds; long enough for a short video or a quick photo.

Duke: I still don’t want to.

Tim: Then you leave me no choice.

Tim: No Questions Asked, you both owe me one.

Tim: Use Duke’s abilities to get a clear shot of Peter’s wound.

Steph: Are you serious right now?!

Duke: You’re really going to use those debts here?

Tim: Yes.

Duke: Fine.

Duke: I’ll do it.

Steph: Fine, whatever.

Steph: But I swear to God, Boy Wonder.

Steph: If you’re wrong…

Tim: I’m not.

***

DAY 32: Monday

They came back in less than ten minutes, as Tim had said they would. He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, when they did.

“Peter?” Duke called out.

“In here.” Peter answered, opening the stall door the slightest bit to pop out his head. He made sure to keep his shoulder out of the trio’s line of sight, when he extended his arm. Steph gave him the dry t-shirt, and the new bandages. Peter closed the door again to get dressed.

“You don’t need a pair of pants as well, right? They didn’t get wet?” She asked.

“No, don’t worry, they’re okay.”

“Alright then.”

“By the way,” Tim started after Steph. “I need to talk to you about something after this. In private. It’s kind of important.” And Peter stilled.

“W-What?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad. But… important.”

“Okay.” Peter said nonchalantly, feeling like anything but. He threw on the short-sleeved t-shirt, and got out; the chill causing goosebumps across his arms.

“Sorry.” Duke said, once he saw his shudder. “I didn’t have any other spare clothes, just this one t-shirt.”

“It’s okay, I don’t really mind the cold.” Peter said, forcing a smile for his friend’s sake. He actually did, a lot. Especially because he couldn’t thermoregulate. But he was barely even feeling it because of the nerves anyways, so why bother getting sulky? “You had something to talk to me?”

“Yeah.” Tim answered. “But in private. Come on.” He grabbed his good arm and pulled him along, but Steph stopped them.

“Wait, take my jacket; you’ll freeze to death otherwise.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m wearing a long-sleeved shirt under this, it’s alright. Take it.”

“Okay.”

He put on the brown jacket, and allowed Tim to pull him out. They walked through the empty halls –God, the break had ended, they were missing their classes– and went outside to the yard. The raven sat him down on a bench, sitting across from him and drawing in a huge breath.

Peter’s nerves were completely fried by that point. “I’m so sorry for scamming your dad!” He shouted before Tim could open his mouth.

Tim stared at him. “… What?”

“I’m so sorry. I hacked into the school system and put down my name, faking some e-mails and forging some documents. I never meant to commit a crime, or scam a billionaire thousands of dollars. I just needed food, and school was the easiest free option.

“I was new in Gotham, so I didn’t know which shelters were safe; and I didn’t want to risk it. This felt like the best bet. I’m so, so sorry Tim.” He looked down, not wanting to see the disgust or the anger on his friend’s face.

“Peter, look at me?”

But Tim wasn’t mad. When Peter looked up, all he saw was a small smile on the raven’s lips, his eyes shining with something akin to amusement.

“I’m not mad, I promise I’m not. I’m actually impressed. Do you know I helped improve the cyber defenses the school system has? How did you even break through the walls?”

Peter only shrugged.

“Well, it’s pretty fucking cool that you managed to do that, if nothing else. And Bruce had the same idea when he first found out. I think he wants to come talk to you himself, but I’m not really sure. Not for a bad thing though; like, to get you arrested, or kick you out. Just to talk.”

“About what?”

“I’m not exactly sure, but I know it’s nothing bad.” Tim tried to reassure him as much as he could. “Trust me, I’d know if it was.” After a moment, “Let’s go back inside, it’s too cold to be out with jackets this thin.”

Peter followed after him dutifully, and felt himself relax against his will when Tim’s arm found its way around his shoulders. Safe. His inner spider whispered, and Peter couldn’t argue with that fact.

He did fight against the instinct of leaning in to the pseudo-hug though.

***

DAY 32: Monday

THE BAT-CHAT

Duke: Guys.

Duke: I think Peter is a meta.

Steph: Me too.

ONE VIDEO SENT TO THE CHAT

Tim: I TOLD YOU.

DAY 32: Monday

Jason found the kid at one of his usual spots, sitting cross-legged on a roof and drawing in his sketch-book. He stalked up to him, not bothering to be quiet, and gave a wave when the pipsqueak looked up with excitement. He grinned under his helmet.

“Hey kid, how’s it going?”

“It’s going well.” Peter smiled up at him. “How about you?”

“I’m doing good as well, thank you for asking.”

“Any particular reason for your visiting?”

Jason gave a laugh. “You really want those painkillers, don’t you kid?”

“I can’t sleep at night.” Peter whined. “Of course I do.”

“Hm. Well, then you’ll be happy to know that I finally got my hands onto some. Here.” He extended the small pocket he was carrying, inside three bottles of Vicodin. 60 pills in total. A couple hours ago him, would’ve thought that he had gone crazy, to hand a kid that much drugs.

A couple hours ago him, didn’t know about the meta-human situation.

Jason wasn’t dumb, he had met enough metas and befriended enough nerds to know how enhanced healing worked. More than 90 precent of the time, it meant that your metabolism was also enhanced. Which also meant that almost everything else in your body worked faster too, not just your cell reproduction ability.

It meant that Peter was going to burn through those pills so fast; if the way the bullet wound looked almost three weeks old, after only five days, meant anything.

So, he had gotten him three bottles, instead of one; and hoped that it was at least close to the real amount of drugs the kid needed.

Peter opened the pocket to take a peek inside, and promptly froze upon the sight awaiting him. His muscles locked up completely –shoulders hunching in– and he looked up with big brown eyes, filled with fear. Jason suddenly felt so out of his depth.

“Kid?” He asked, and Peter gave the smallest flinch when he reached out.

“Why did you bring me three bottles?” He asked, voice shaky. “I don’t need three bottles Just one is enough; one is more than enough. Sixty pills are too much, for me, for anyone. Why did you- Why-” He cut off with a gasp.

Jason caught him from his shoulders when he swayed on his feet. “Woah, Peter, calm down.” He peeled off his helmet and threw it away; kneeling in front of the kid to hand him the power of position. He grabbed the small, sweaty palms tightly; and only let go for a moment, to take off the white lenses of his domino mask.

His green eyes bore into Peter’s hazel ones, and it managed to startle the kid out of his beginning panic attack. “Breathe.” Jason said insistently, and Peter listened.

“Why- Why did you-” He tried to talk again, but Jason didn’t let him.

“Stop, Peter, you’re spiraling. I need you to calm down and be quiet. You trust me, right? At least a little bit? Then trust me when I say that whatever you’re scared of, is unimportant. That whatever you’re scared of right now, you don’t need to be. Okay?”

Peter looked up with glassy eyes and Jason felt something in him break. “O-Okay.” He answered; voice beyond broken and wet, no sort of belief to be found in the words he was saying.

“Alright, how about we sit down and keep taking in deep breaths until our heart rate is slower, hm?”

Peter nodded his head, his hear tousling on his head cutely. Jason showed down the thought, and helped the kid sit down; not letting go of his hands even for a moment. “Deep breaths.” He reminded, and breathed alongside Peter when he inhaled slowly.

“Now,” He started after the kid’s heart rate and anxiety levels were acceptable by his standards. “How about you tell me what freaked you out, and I explain to you that there is no reason to be afraid at all?”

Peter broke the eye contact and looked away.

Jason waited for him patiently.

“You brought me three bottles.” The kid waited a moment, to see if he would but in. He continued when all Jason had offered was a simple ‘yes’. “Why.”

And the realization downed on him. The question wasn’t phrased like a question, it was obvious Peter already knew the answer.

And that was what he was afraid of; them knowing.

“I think you know why.” Jason said slowly. “Now how about you tell me why?” Upon seeing Peter’s confused expression, “Why are you scared of us knowing?”

The kid’s expression screwed up further. “Because I’m breaking Batman’s rule?”

And Jason’s brain short-circuited. What. What rule? Which rule? Had the kid killed someone? Committed a crime for reasons other than survival? What was he talking about? What did he mea-

“The No-Meta-Human rule.” Jason breathed out. “You’re scared because of that?”

Peter nodded hesitatingly, frowning at his shock.

“Kid. That rule was put in place nearly twenty years ago, after one too many super-powered individuals had stabbed Batman in the back. Back then, there were only a handful of enhanced people all around the world; and almost all of them were either a hero or a villain.

“The rule was to keep meddling heroes, and more villains from entering the city; not because Batman hated meta-humans. Signal is a meta-human, I have some non-human abilities, B’s two best friends and Superman and Wonder Woman. Back then, it wasn’t a stupid idea; it was quite smart actually. And it wasn’t racist; it was proactive.

“And nowadays, he just uses it as a gag-answer for anyone who tries to operate in his city without his permission. ‘Do you want us to come and help out in Gotham?’ ‘No meta-humans are allowed in my city.’ ‘This criminal is hiding in Gotham, can we come catch him?’ ‘No meta-humans in my city. I’ll catch them.’ ‘How would you like us dropping by unannounced and for no real reason at all, to come say hi, and get hurt or see shit that we aren’t supposed to?’ ‘No metas in my city.’

“Yes, it’s possessive, and kind of unfair maybe even; but the man has spent more than half of his life into fixing this city up. I feel like it’s only fair that he doesn’t want other hero teams appearing out of blue, and fucking shit up. This city is his baby, and he wants it safe; that’s all.

“There are plenty of metas in here, and he doesn’t hurt them or kick them out. He has no problems with them. He just wants annoying heroes to stop bothering him about wanting to ‘help’, when it’s almost one hundred percent sure that they won’t be able to handle Gotham and fuck up. Which, in our line of work, means innocent people dying.

“He doesn’t hate metas, none of us do. You have no reason to be scared Peter.”

“R-Really? I’m not in trouble?”

You won’t hurt me? The kid didn’t say, but Jason heard it anyways.

“No Peter, you’re not. You’re not getting beaten up, or kicked out, or locked up. Ever. If anyone tries to lay even a single finger on you, I’ll break their fucking hands.”

Peter’s eyes widened comically, upon hearing his words, and he threw himself into Jason’s arms. Jason caught the kid with ease; pulling him in, and wrapping around him. Muffled sobs reached his ears, and he felt the immediate urge to punch something. Preferably Batman in his stupid face. The idiot. Jason kept telling him that the stupid rule scared people, but he wouldn’t listen.

Instead, Jason decided to run his fingers through the brown locks, and brush out the knots in there; until the kid was a sleepy poodle against his side, his muffled sobs having shifted into soft noises of contentment.

Jason pulled back a bit, after a while. “Are you better?”

“Yeah.” Peter answered slowly; taking a step back, and exiting his personal space. “It just- It has been… uhm… a fear of mine, since the day one. So…”

“It’s okay, I get it. You don’t need to explain.” A small pause, then, “So, are you hungry?”

Peter gave a wet chuckle. “Yeah, I can eat.”

“Alright then, I’ll be right back. Please don’t run off or something while I’m gone.”

“I won’t.” He said with a smile.

And Jason didn’t return to an empty roof.

***

DAY 34: Wednesday

The library door closed behind him quietly; and Peter almost bent over by the force his spider-senses slammed into him, with the need to leave. He didn’t know what, but something about the place was incredibly off right now; it made his skin crawl.

Barbara was wheeling up to him with a smile.

His spider-senses acted up, growing insistent, upon her getting closer.

“Hello Peter!” She greeted him in a low tone; but all of Peter’s energy was currently being used to prevent himself from jumping up to the ceiling, and hissing at the redhead before running off; so, he couldn’t greet her back.

“Is your perfume lavender?” He asked through clenched teeth, completely forgetting to whisper. A couple of ‘shh’s rose from around them; but Peter didn’t have it in himself to wince in guilt, too caught up in his inner spider.

“Yes?” Barbara had a worried, but mostly confused frown on her face.

Peter couldn’t even feel bad for that.

“I’m allergic to lavender. It’s very bad, I shouldn’t even inhale it.” It came out harsher than intended, but it wasn’t like he had much control over his actions at the moment; so, he didn’t feel too awful about it.

“Really?” The redhead asked, visibly upset. There was a frown on her lips, and her brows were drawn together. “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. And I’m so sorry for this too, I didn’t know.”

“I know, and it’s fine! You didn’t know, a lot of people doesn’t know. But I should really leave now.” With that, Peter ran out the door; forgetting to even say ‘bye’.

It looked like he would have to do his homework and drawing at the stationary, on the ground. Meh, he’d manage.

He wrapped his coat tighter around himself as he walked through the streets. It was getting colder and colder every day; the winter was coming.

Peter hoped he would survive it.

***

DAY 34: Wednesday

THE BAT-CHAT

Barbara: Guys, Peter’s also allergic to lavender.

Barbara: And guess who was wearing lavender perfume when he came to the library today.

Dick: No way!

Dick: sfjsskdf

Jason: Seriously?

Steph: skjfeksjsjsl

Steph: This kid has the weirdest allergies; I swear to God.

Steph: First vinegar, now lavender?

Cass: Curious.

Tim: Yes Cass, you are correct.

Tim: Very curious, indeed.

Tim: I am very curious as well.

Tim: Do you think this is related to his meta-abilities?

Tim: Because of them maybe?

Tim: Or do you think he just has some weird allergies.

Tim: Because I, personally, don’t think it’s a coincidence that he has multiple abilities –which we haven’t been able to pin as a specific known enhancement yet– and multiple weird allergies to go with it.

Steph: Ugh, are you starting with that half-animal crap again?

Tim: It isn’t crap!

Steph: Jesus Tim.

Steph: You can’t just make shit up just because you can’t figure out what exactly are the kid’s abilities and enhancement.

Tim: I’m not making shit up!

Tim: Animalistic metas are totally a thing.

Tim: Look at Croc!

Barbara: We actually don’t know for sure if Killer Croc has the meta-gene.

Barbara: We never tested it.

Tim: It’s a given!

Steph: No palpable proof, Boy Wonder.

Tim: Okay, then look at Vixen.

Duke: I mean, technically she uses the Tantu Totem to channel animal powers; and isn’t a meta.

Tim: Cheetah, Man-Bat, Beast Boy.

Dick: No meta-gene.

Dick: No meta-gene.

Dick: And the Beast Boy can turn into more than one animal.

Dick: It doesn’t match with the specific theory you’re explaining here; Garfield isn’t half-animal.

Dick: If anything, he’s a shape-shifter.

Dick: An animal-shifter, but still; not half-animal.

Jason: Just accept the defeat Baby Bird.

Jason: This isn’t going anywhere.

Damian: Todd is correct; you are embarrassing yourself Drake.

Tim: Oh my gosh.

Tim: You lot are unbelievable.

Tim: I literally cannot believe you.

Tim: Why are you all acting like a half-animal enhanced person is the craziest thing we have ever heard of.

Tim: Whether they have the meta-gene or not, we have met lots of animal themed heroes and villains.

Tim: Plus, we don’t even have real proof if Peter is a real meta or not; maybe he just has some abilities, but not the meta-gene.

Tim: Maybe he lied to us about being a meta because what he actually is, is very rare.

Tim: Or maybe he doesn’t even know he’s not actually a meta.

Tim: Either way, I can still be right, and it wouldn’t even be all that surprising.

Tim: So, why are you all keep shutting me down about this?

Steph: It’s not that it’s a crazy thing to think about.

Steph: It’s just that you don’t have any real proof; other than some half-baked thoughts and theories, a board of crazy with too many red strings, and a paranoia the size of Mt. Everest.

Steph: So, excuse us for not believing you.

Steph: It’s not that your theory is crazy,

Steph: It’s just that…

Steph: You are.

Tim: Oh, fuck you.

Tim: You know I’m right.

Steph: I have no thoughts on the matter, and I refuse to take a side until I see SOLID PROOF.

Barbara: I mean…

Steph: Seriously?!

Barbara: He does have a point, about it not being all that unbelievable.

Barbara: Even though he doesn’t have much proof.

Tim: Yes!

Steph: No!

Barbara: Sorry Steph.

Steph: No, I refuse to believe that Peter is a furry.

Tim: You don’t seem to have a problem with Bruce.

Duke: sljdkajskdjk

Dick: sdssdljsdk

Jason: asdjaskd

Steph: dnlsdfadf

Barbara: fndfasdfa

Cass: 🤣

Damian: Tt.

Bruce: Hn.

***

DAY 34: Wednesday

THE PETER THEORY

Tim: I’d like to remind you two that I was right about Peter being Dick’s son too.

Jason: Okay Tim, we get it.

Jason: Peter is probably enhanced with animal abilities.

Jason: Gotcha.

Tim: Exactly.

Jason: Are you happy now?

Tim: Yep.

Barbara: We will look into it.

Barbara: for now, let’s close the subject.

Tim: Fine.

Tim: Jason, have you talked with Dick yet?

Jason: Not yet.

Jason: I’ll talk to him this weekend, when he comes to visit.

Tim: But that is ages away!

Jason: ¯⁠\⁠⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠⁠/⁠¯

***

DAY 34: Wednesday

THE BETTER ROBINS

Steph: Don’t think I haven’t realized it Boy Wonder.

Steph: You’re hiding something.

Steph: You know things that we don’t.

Steph: And it shows.

Tim: That is literally my “thing” Steph.

Tim: Knowing things that others don’t.

Steph: Hmm…

Duke: Even us?

Tim: This is kind of a sensitive subject.

Tim: Believe me when I say that I want to share it with you two too.

Tim: That I want to discuss it with you, and compare and contrast theories and ideas.

Tim: But I can’t do that.

Tim: Yet.

Steph: Then when?

Tim: This weekend, I think.

Tim: If things go by the plan.

Tim: There is a conversation to be had about this specific subject, before I can start tattling about it to others.

Steph: Fine.

Duke: We’ll wait.

Steph: But just tell me this.

Steph: Is it about Peter looking suspiciously like Dick?

Tim: …

Tim: Yes…

Duke: Really?!

Steph: Oh my Gosh!

Duke: What is it?

Duke: Clone?

Duke: Relative?

Duke: Long lost son?

Tim: Guys, guys, I just said that I can’t tattle about it; and you said alright.

Duke: Fineeeee.

Steph: You’re such a party pooper.

***

DAY 35: Thursday

Bruce knocked on the wooden door, and didn’t wait for the ‘come in!’ before opening it and strutting in.

“Mr. Wayne!” Principle Hammer jumped out of his chair upon seeing him. “What brings you here, sir?”

“I have received some concerning e-mails from the school staff, including you, and I wanted to come set things straight; so that there were no more misunderstandings. If you can just call Mr. Peter Parker here?”

“Of course, sir. Would you like me to call the police as well?”

Bruce glared at the man, and watched in satisfaction as he blanched. “No kind of law enforcement will be needed Mr. Hammer, just call Mr. Parker here.”

“Yes, sir.”

It took the boy exactly four minutes and thirty-two seconds to come up to the principal’s office, Bruce counted. When the door opened and his eyes fell onto him, Peter froze up. But Bruce didn’t give him enough time to blow his cover.

No failsaves, or not; the kid had found an objectively good lie for his ‘scholarship’ situation. And Bruce wanted to keep using that lie for as long as possible.

Not only because exposing him as a criminal and then revealing he was impressed enough to not press charges and allow it to happen for real, would’ve been a terrible move; but also, because he just felt too lazy to find any other reason for it. There already was one, why waste it? Just legalize it.

“Peter, hello. It’s been a while since we last saw each other, hasn’t it?” Bruce got up from his seat quickly, and extended a hand to the frozen boy with a smile. Peter shook it without a word, still in shock.

“Hi?”

Bruce smiled. “Mr. Hammer, I need to speak with Mr. Parker alone. It won’t take more than a couple minutes; and we will be in the yard, getting some air.”

“O-Of course, si-”

Bruce closed the door to his face before he could finish his sentence, having tugged the kid outside. “Let’s walk for a bit.” He said to the brunette, not unkindly, and pulled him along through the halls.

Originally, Bruce would’ve preferred to sit down for a conversation like that; but he didn’t think Peter would’ve wanted that. Looking people in the eyes while having delicate conversations could be deteriorating and jarring; Bruce knew that.

And avoiding eye contact could be helpful to avoid any accidental confrontation, and to encourage vulnerability. He wanted that with his grandson (he was almost a hundred percent sure of that); not misunderstandings and tears, so he walked past the benches and just kept walking around the yard aimlessly, Peter following him.

“So, what happens now?” The kid asked when their pace slowed down to a slow walk, and before Bruce could figure out where to start.

“What?”

“What happens now? Am I getting kicked out? Are you calling the cops? The CPS?” The kid’s voice wasn’t panicked, or teary; it was resigned. Like he was used to the rug being pulled from beneath his feet suddenly, and having his entire world turn upside-down, as he lost everything.

Bruce hated it.

“No.” He answered simply. No good would mind games or implications would do; he needed to be explicit. If raising about seven and a half teenagers had taught him anything, it was to always be explicit while speaking to your kids; especially if the situation was delicate and could not handle any misunderstandings. “I’m actually quite happy with the arrangement so far.”

Peter looked up fast. “W-What?”

Bruce smiled, and walked a couple more steps as he put his thoughts and words in order. “I have known that you had put your name in the system since the day one, that you had hacked your way into the school records. And let me tell you this, impressive; not many people have the skills to do that. I have also heard lots of good stuff about you, from my children.”

“Plural?” The kid squeaked.

“Tim and Duke. And Stephanie counts too, I guess, with how much she comes over.”

He suppressed a grin at the kid blue-screening upon hearing his words. He took pity on him, and explained. “Tim is my adopted son; I am fostering Duke; and Stephanie just stays over an awful lot, and eats my food. She’s a really good friend of the boys, and like a daughter to me. Wormed her way into my heart and refuses to leave.”

“Gotcha.” Peter looked like he was questioning his life choices. Bruce bit back another grin; yeah, he usually had that effect on people.

“The point is,” He gently led them back to the main subject. “I know that you are a very capable, kind and nice young man. And the Wayne Scholarship is to support kids with those, and similar attributes.”

“Y-You’re not… mad or something?” The kid asked, voice hesitant.

“No, not really.” He said, frowning. “I thought Tim had had a talk with you about that?” He knew that Tim had, that was why he was there in the first place.

His son had revealed to him what was going on, regarding Peter; and asked him to come to the school to ‘clear the air’. Aka, lie out of his ass about Peter not scamming him; and actually, legally, being a student of the school under the scholarship program.

“He had, but-”

“You didn’t believe him?”

“It was a hard concept to grasp; the guy I was scamming thousands of dollars, not having a problem with it.”

Bruce gave a laugh. “Yeah, I can understand that. But it is the truth.”

“You really don’t have a problem with this? With people hacking and lying their way into your school?”

“Not if they’re like you; diligent, kindhearted and deserving of things like a good education. My children’s words, not mine.” He smiled at the redness spreading on Peter’s cheeks.

“I didn’t become friends with them to have them put in a good word for me, or something. I didn’t even know that any of them were even remotely related to you.”

“Yeah, I figured. I mean, if you had known, the smart move wouldn’t have been to make friends with them, it would’ve been to steer clear of them.”

“Yes, exactly.” The kid let out a relieved sigh.

Bruce stopped. “Peter. Please understand that I am not mad, or upset about this; only happy, to have a hand in your education. I already know that you will do great things, when you grow up. And I am simply joyful to be able to help you with that, in any way. Even as small as your senior year of high-school. Something tells me we will have a similar conversation to this, at the end of the year; when it’s time to choose colleges and get sponsors.”

Peter’s eyes widened comically. “Are you serious right now?”

“Yes, I am.”

“You’re seriously offering to sponsor me for my college education? I’m not understanding this wrong?”

“No, you aren’t.” Bruce gave a smile. “Though you better start picking up your head, and opening up your books in your classes; I’d imagine you’d need a lot of credits to enter and Ivy League school. Or very good grades, or whatever. It has been a while since I’ve last been in a high-school; I might be wrong about some things.” A small pause, then, “Also, I don’t think your teachers will ignore you anymore after this talk, and no good would detentions do for your applications.”

“Yeah, probably not.” Peter mumbled. “So, uhm… Again, what happens now?”

Excitement and giddiness, instead of dread and resignment. More like it. Bruce gave a smile.

“Now; I will get your school record legalized, and get one of my angrier secretaries to answer to all of those e-mails that have piled in my inbox. I don’t think Marianne will be very happy with dealing with a bunch of adult-bullies, who picked a bone with a seventeen-year-old boy, and tried to get him expelled from his school. Which, in exchange, will make them very unhappy for sending them in the first place. Don’t worry, I’ll tell her to go easy on the kinder ones.”

That drew a chuckle from the kid.

“Thank you, Mr. Wayne. Really.”

“No problem, Peter. Can’t wait to see the things you’ll do.” With that last sentence, they stepped back into the school building; Bruce’s arm around Peter’s shoulders securely for anyone to see. Especially the nosy students and the pestering teachers.

***

DAY 35: Thursday

THE BAT-CHAT

Bruce: I have talked with Peter.

Bruce: And a lot of students and teachers saw us together, since I walked him to his next class before I left.

Tim: Excellent.

Jason: What.

Barbara: Talked about what?

Dick: What’s going on?

Cass: ?

Duke: Bruce?

Steph: Tim?

Bruce: Tim has all the information.

Tim: Way to throw me under the bus, B.

Jason: Tim, what’s going on?

Tim: It’s nothing important.

Tim: A small encounter with a dated-high-school bully from a couple days ago, made me realize that a conversation between Bruce and Peter was going to help the students and the teachers both, to treat him better.

Tim: Everybody either ignores his existence completely, or tries to make his life miserable; and I wanted to stop it.

Tim: So, I did.

Barbara: And how does a conversation between Peter and Bruce help exactly?

Tim: Everybody thought that a scholarship student enrolling in the middle of the semester was suspicious; and that Peter had somehow forced his way in, rather than getting Bruce to agree to let him take a different scholarship exam because of whatever special circumstances he had been in.

Tim: Which was exactly what had happened, actually; but whatever.

Tim: So, if they saw Bruce and Peter together, having a civil conversation,

Tim: And if Bruce acted fond of the kid, and as if they had met before; in front of our nosy as fuck principal,  

Tim: I figured people would stop with those stupid-ass thoughts.

Tim: I really think it will work.

Tim: For the most part, at least.

Barbara: Well…

Barbara: Better than what I’d thought.

Dick: Good job, Baby Bird!

Jason: One universal constant of high-school is the bullies, isn’t it?

Jason: Good luck to that poor kid.

Steph: You know what…

Steph: Good job, Boy Wonder.

Steph: I approve.

Duke: 😶

Duke: What.

Duke: You, Stephanie Brown, approve of something Tim Drake did?

Duke: No way.

Duke: There is no way.

Duke: Who are you, and what did you do to my sparkly purple best friend?

Steph: sapdkasjkd

Tim: Unfortunately, I can’t even tell him to go fuck himself.

Tim: Because he’s right.

Steph: Yeah, well.

Steph: It is just too much fun to disagree with you at every turn.

Steph: You’re just that fun to poke at.

Steph: ¯⁠\⁠⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠⁠/⁠¯

Tim: Go fuck yourself.

Steph: sdajahjsdhakd

***

DAY 37: Saturday

Zoning out while walking somewhere in Gotham, was a dangerous thing to do. A stupid thing too, so it was completely on Peter for not paying attention to his surroundings. His spider-senses had alerted him; but a second too late. And he had been too slow to react against the sudden threat properly.

Barely more than a full month in this city, in this world; and he was already at the point where his reaction time was getting compromised? No. No, this wasn’t good. He needed more food in him, and more sleep and rest too. He needed to be healthier, if he wanted to survive.

But for now, let’s focus on the immediate life-threatening danger; and leave everything else to be dealt with later.

Five men, two women. All armed with either knives, similar sharp objects, or batons. One of them had a gun. All of their faces were painted in clown fashion. The Joker’s gang; or, as a dorkier way to put it, the Jokerz.

Two of the big ones were holding him against the wall, as one of the women went through his pockets. She came up empty-handed other than ten bucks. It was good luck that Peter had remembered to leave his salary back at the stationary before leaving for the convenient store for a cold-sandwich-dinner.

“This was a waste of time.” She spitted out, when she couldn’t find anything else other than a spider keychain.

Peter felt a sudden rush of rage when she threw it away in anger; it had been a gift from MJ. She had drawn what she wanted to get him for his birthday, and a friend of hers had designed it properly before taking it to someone who could make it; when it became obvious that she would not be finding something like it in a store.

It had cost almost fifty bucks; but it was designed and a very thoughtful gift, so totally worth it. Peter had cherished the small spider like no other, even before he had learned that it was customary. He still did.

“Not completely.” The ‘leader’ answered, and he looked Peter up and down. The stare sent a shudder up his spine.

Peter didn’t like that stare. Peter wanted to get away from that stare. Peter hated that stare. It made him feel like prey, weak and defenseless; and made his spider-senses act up. It made goosebumps appear all over his body, and the hair on the back of his neck to stand up. It made him feel dirty, that damned smirk did.

The guy stalked closer; each step raising the sound of the alarm in Peter’s head, that had gone off a long time ago. “Kathy, make sure he stays still. I like my boys compliant; I don’t like brats.” The other clown woman pulled out the gun Peter had smelled the gunpowder of earlier, and put it against his head.

The guy stopped in front of him, and reached for the front of his sweatpants.

Peter fell completely still, not only because of the gun.

No. No. No, this couldn’t be. He- He couldn’t get out of this. He was nowhere near his %100; he couldn’t shake off the guys holding him before the gun shot off, he couldn’t be fast enough.

He couldn’t be strong and fast enough, at the same time. Not with how tired he already was; from a whole day of working, and eating and resting as little as he was. From being in Gotham for almost 40 days now, trying every day to live to see the next one.

He couldn’t escape from this. Not without risking dying, or a probable bullet wound to the head. Not without guaranteeing either being dead, or being shot and getting r-

No. No. Why, God, why? If he had just accepted Barbara’s food offer this lunch, or slept a bit more this morning. If he had just been doing that for a couple days now; not even weeks, just a few days. If he had just been accepting the help almost every single person he knew in this universe, was so desperately offering him; he wouldn’t have been in this situation.

Fuck, why hadn’t he used the school’s chemicals to fill up his web shooters? Why, why?!

Because he had been too emotional about being Spider-Man after the Fiasco? Because he couldn’t pick up his mask without starting to cry? Because he was afraid of fucking up again, and causing innocent people’s deaths?

Well.

How nice of him to be so weak, that he couldn’t even put on the one fucking thing that would make him stronger and immediately safer. Good job Parker, good fucking job.

If he had just had his web-shooters- If he had just filled them up- If he had just not zoned out while walking around- If he had just reacted fast enough- If he had just not allowed the Jokerz to try to mug him because he was afraid of losing control of his spider powers and accidentally killing one of them- If he had just- If he had- If he- If-

If he had just walked away when he had seen Strange, like any other sane person was doing.

The knot in front of his sweats untied with a simple tug, and Peter felt like screaming. He couldn’t stop looking at the dangling drawstrings, at how easily they had given way. The only ‘protection’ he had right now, and they had been pushed out of the way in half a second.

Wait- Protection!

“I’m an Alley Kid!” He blurted out; his voice shaky and wet, his eyes glassy and blurry.

“What?” One of the others asked.

“I’m an Alley Kid. A Crime Alley kid. From Red Hood’s territory, and he doesn’t take it kindly when people mess with his kids. I have his bandana around my left wrist to prove it.” He said quickly, hoping that his voice wasn’t trembling as much as he was hearing it to.

“So what?” The guy asked after eying the red fabric, and oh my god, were they living under a rock?

“So what? If he finds out, he’ll kill you all, that’s what!” Peter shouted, desperate to just get away.

But the guy only laughed. “Kid, you must be new around here. The big red guy hasn’t killed anyone in months. Some says he’s gotten soft; some says he’s gotten some mercy. Either way, he’s not gonna kill us. And especially not for putting a brat like yourself in his place. And, even if he was going to; how could he, without anyone to tell him what happened? Without you walking away alive?”

Oh fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. No. No. Peter writhed in the arms holding him, and the bitch named Kathy showed the gun to his mouth. “Quit moving around brat, or I’ll show you just how deadly my aim can be.”

The guy reached back down to his sweats, and the tears finally came when they made contact. Peter couldn’t move; Peter couldn’t escape; Peter couldn’t do anything other than stand there and take it, and be unable to even float back into the nicer thoughts, because of how hard the gun was pressing into his mouth. It was making him gag.

His tears fell freely, only making the Jokerz laugh. His body tensed up as the waistband of his sweats were grabbed, only causing a coaxing and disgusting “Relax, sweetheart.” from the guy. His eyes clenched shut, to at least not see what was going to happen; if he couldn’t even dissociate out of this nightmare of an evening.

BANG . BANG.

The hands on his waistband and the gun in his mouth both disappeared, the thuds of two bodies hitting the ground reaching his ears. Peter vaguely realized the small splinters of blood on his face, splashed from… whatever. The two holding him up, and the other three all drew their weapons; and Peter was finally free.  

Trembling, and bloody, and in shock; but still, free to run away.

But he wasn’t. He couldn’t. He couldn’t move.

Not until Red Hood emerged from the shadows of the Alley, and a harsh “Move.” rasped out from his voice modulator, aimed at him.

Peter didn’t make him repeat himself, he pounced.

His eyes fell onto his spider keychain as he was exiting the alley, now covered in blood splinters. He returned to grab it.

He ran until the sounds of commotion behind him disappeared. He ran until the gunshots stopped. He ran until his lungs started burning. He ran until he couldn’t anymore, and he didn’t stop then.

He kept running until he reached his stationary, and locked down every door and window as best to his abilities and resources.

He needed better locks; he needed better security. If he had just had his web-shooters, he could’ve done better job of locking the building down. He could’ve lined every entrance with his webs, they could hold hundreds of pounds if used rightly.

He could’ve- He could’ve- Fuck. He had never felt so utterly helpless before, so completely scared. He wanted to- to scream- to run- to cry- to puke- to- to- He wanted to-

No, no time now, still not safe enough. His senses were going haywire, saying; close, and following, and watching. Peter knew not to make the mistake of making those warnings fall on deaf ears. He ran into the back-room, and closed the door. Not one thing, not one piece of furniture to barricade with. Not one thing to lock with. Not one thing to secure with. He had nothing.

Before he could go outside and look around for anything that could help him lock the door, he heard a glass shattering. The windows. No.

Without thinking, he jumped up to the ceiling, and crawled over to the corner above the door. Not a good hiding place, not a hiding place at all. But if someone came through, he could at least jump on them, or attack them from behind, or lock them in or something.

It was at least better than the middle of the room.

The thump of a body, and then footsteps. One person. Heavy.

Peter took a defensive stance, ready to attack his attacker.

But who entered the room was not a rogue, or a clown. It was the Red Hood.

The red vigilante looked around the room, from where he was standing in the doorway. And then, for some reason –maybe gut feeling– he looked up as well. That was when he saw Peter. And flinched a whole meter back, into the room.

Peter jumped down from where he was crouching at; and Hood’s hand went to the closest holster at lighting speed, faltering his steps.

Peter stared at the gun, and his eyes got glassy.

He took a slow step back, hoping he wouldn’t get shot for moving, and slid down against the wall when his back hit it, the tears falling freely again. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck; he had known this would happen. He had known this would happen. Fuck what Red Hood had said; Peter was different, and that changed things.

It always did; and rarely in a good way.

He was still shaking, trembling, and he couldn’t stop.

Red Hood discarded his jacket, and then his guns. “Hey, kid.” He took off his helmet. “I’m so sorry for that, it was reflexive. I didn’t mean to do that, okay? I’m not going to hurt you. Peter, are you alright? Are you physically hurt?”

Peter shook his head but didn’t dare to speak, looking down immediately after a moment of eye contact. White lenses or not, he couldn’t look the guy in the eyes right now.

Hood sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Then he slowly started coming closer. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to react that way. It really was just a reflexive move; I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Peter didn’t inch away, but he did tense a bit as the distance between them melted away. Hood sat next to him by the wall, and kept silent.

They stayed like that for a long while, half an hour, a whole hour, maybe more, Peter didn't know, he didn't keep count. They stayed like that until he could start believing that the guy wasn’t disgusted or horrified by him. That he wasn’t going to suddenly shoot him. That he wasn’t going to abruptly change his mind about this meta- mutate boy in front of him, and decide to kick him out of the city.

“I was bitten by a radioactive spider during a field trip a couple years ago.” He spoke up, his voice a whisper; feeling an irrepressible urge to explain. “It gave me some spider abilities. I’m not a meta-human exactly, but my DNA is different. I’m a mutate.”

“Vinegar allergy.” Hood said. “Spiders don’t like vinegar. That’s why you’re allergic?”

“Yeah. I’m actually not really allergic, technically. I just can’t stand it, and I don’t think it would be good for me to consume it. But I guess that means pretty much the same thing as an allergy. Some others things too. I like corners and vents, and I like to sit on the ceiling, when I’m upset or scared. I have enhanced metabolism and strength.”

“So, Superman but spider wise?”

Peter tried to give a weak smile, he succeeded only mostly. “Yeah. Spider-Man.” The name felt weird in his mouth, after all these months.

“Spider-Man? Really? Dude, so cliché.” There was a heavy undertone to Hood’s words, and a desperate need to cheer him up; despite his words being so playful and lighthearted.

“Is not.” He played along.

“Is so.”

“Is not.”

“Is so.”

They shared the smallest chuckle chuckle.

“Thank you.” Peter mumbled after, looking down. His voice suddenly lost any and all joy and playfulness from it; turning dreadful, and shaky. Not that it had much joy beforehand anyways, but still. “For- For saving me from them.”

“Of course.” And Hood said it with such an emotion and feeling.

Peter couldn’t help but throw himself at him.

For a moment he was scared he would push him away or pull him off with a disgusted expression, but it didn’t happen. The red vigilante simply hugged him back and cradled his head. It was the best hug he has gotten in months, topping the other ones he had gotten from Hood easily, because of how emotional he was right now.

It was awkward; and kind of gross, because of all the blood. He was still trembling with the nerves, and there was a pile of an impressive amount of guns less than ten feet from them. But it was the best hug Peter had gotten in months.

“Want me to grab some wet towels or something for you? You kinda look like Freddie Krueger.”

Peter couldn’t help but laugh, despite the situation. He sent Hood to the general direction of the bathroom, telling him to just get some paper towels to not make the normal towels all bloody.

The web-shooters gleamed at him from where they were on his ‘nightstand’ –which was a small cartoon box, put upside down–, and he made a note in his mind.

Later.

Definitely.

He never wanted to be that helpless ever again. Trauma be damned. 

***

DAY 37: Saturday

THE BAT-CHAT

Jason: Guys.

Jason: Something happened with Peter today.

Jason: It’s bad.

Barbara: What is it?

Dick: What happened?

Jason: Some clown gang had him cornered.

Jason: They were mugging him.

Jason: And when they couldn’t find more than 10 bucks on the kid, they tried something else.

Jason: Though I was faster, don’t worry.

Jason: The guy was holding the waistband of Peter’s sweats, but he was a bloody mess on the ground before he could even pull it down.

Jason: I told Peter to run and he did.

Jason: After I was done with the shit-stains, I went after him, and I found him entering an abandoned stationary from the back door.

Jason: Turns out that’s where he lives.

Dick: Someone tried to rape him?

Jason: Yes.

Jason: But couldn’t.

Bruce: Because you killed them.

Jason: No.

Jason: Don’t worry old man, I didn’t kill the pedophilic assholes who tried to rape a teenager after failing at mugging him; only shot at them and called Gordon.

Jason: Even if one of them so blatantly said that they didn’t care whether Peter was an Alley kid or not, and that the Crime Alley was my territory; because, and I quote ‘The big red guy hasn’t killed anyone in months. Some says he’s gotten soft; some says he’s gotten some mercy. Either way, he’s not gonna kill us. And especially not for putting a brat like yourself in his place.’

Jason: Don’t worry, those scum of earth are alive and well.

Jason: So, maybe a ‘congratulations’ and an ‘I’m proud of you’ are in order.

Jason: Oh wait.

Jason: No, no need.

Jason: I just remembered that I don’t give a shit what you think about me, or my ways.

Dick: Good job Jaybird.

Dick: Good job.

Dick: Though dead would’ve been nice too, in my opinion.

Bruce: Dick.

Dick: Just saying.

Duke: Oh my gosh.

Tim: How is Peter?

Jason: Not alright, that’s for sure.

Jason: Nothing really happened, so not hurt physically.

Jason: But a rape attempt has got to scar you a bit.

Jason: I don’t think he’ll be back to his usual self for at least a couple weeks, if not months.

Jason: He was completely horrified.

Steph: Oh, of course he was

Steph: That poor baby.

Cass: He is good?

Jason: As good as someone in his position can be, Cass.

Jason: But there is more to it.

Barbara: What else happened?

Jason: I entered the stationary, and began looking for him.

Jason: Found him at the back room.

Jason: Crouched down.

Jason: On the ceiling.

Jason: Turns out, Peter isn’t exactly a meta.

Jason: The Baby Bird was right.

Jason: He was bitten by a radioactive spider at a field trip a while back.

Jason: A mutate, as he says.

Jason: He has spider-traits; like sticking to the walls and the ceiling, and an “allergy” for the likes of vinegar and lavender and other anti-spider things.

Jason: And some more.

Jason: So… yeah.

Cass: Baby Nephew is spider.

Cass: I like spiders.

Dick: Nephew?

Barbara: Spider or not, we’re too invested.

Barbara: We’re not turning our back to him now. 

Steph: Yeah, I wouldn’t back off even if he was a god-damned cockroach.

Tim: A spider.

Tim: That makes so much sense.

Tim: With his allergies and all.

Tim: And radioactive you said?

Tim: Fascinating.

Dick: Cass, nephew?

Duke: I wonder if he has like, extra legs or something.

Steph: Eww.

Damian: I agree with Brown.

Damian: Plus, I think we would’ve been able to spot such a thing from outside perspective.

Duke: You never know, Dami.

Bruce: How is his living situation?

Jason: Good enough.

Jason: Certainly seen better, but certainly seen worse too.

Bruce: Good.

Dick: Did no one else realize Cass calling Peter her “Baby Nephew”?

Dick: Are we all just going to ignore that like this?

Bruce: Do you think we can bring him to the Manor anytime soon?

Barbara: You wanna take him in?

Bruce: You said it yourself; we’re too invested now.

Jason: Maybe.

Jason: If we thread carefully.

Jason: But I swear to God Bruce, if I see that kid wearing spandex and running on the rooftops with the rest of this crazy family, I’m kidnapping him and raising him myself.

Jason: Should’ve done that with Tim and everyone who came afterwards too actually.

Tim: Oh, Jay, you care!

Bruce: Deal.

Dick: Why are you all ignoring me?!

Dick: Hello?!!

Dick: !!!

***

DAY 38: Sunday

Dick climbed up to the side of the building, taking extra care to stay silent. He disarmed the three traps on the windowsill and frowned when he couldn’t find any more. There tended to be at least five on each window every time he came over. Nevertheless, he slithered into the apartment.

The flat looked as clean as ever, obviously tidied up shortly before his emergence. There were photos, papers and an envelope on the coffee table; seemingly the only messy part of the living room, and probably the house too. Intentional then.

A man sat on the armchair in front of him, his back turned. A cup of tea in his left a hand, a book in his right. A gun poking out of his waistband.

“Hello Dickiebird, what brings you by?”

The cup and the book were discarded onto the coffee table, the man turning around with a vicious smirk. The unnaturally green eyes glowed in the dimly lit room, the familiar white patch of hair falling onto his forehead. He didn’t draw his gun as usual though.

Lesser traps than the usual amount, a pristine flat, and no threats on life? Wow, okay, this was going to be an emotional talk then.

“You must be getting old, Jaybird. Did you forget that it was you who wanted to talk to me?”

Jason only hummed, his smirk losing its edge. “Let’s sit down.”

…

Oh, this was going to be a really emotional talk.

“Tea?”

“No, thanks. Let’s stop beating around the bush, and get to the point. What’s going on?”

Jason fell onto the couch with a sigh. He extended a wet towel, and Dick knew without having to ask that it had solvent on. He rubbed his mask with it and took off the black piece soon enough, discarding it and the towel both to the floor. Jason didn’t lecture him about it like usual either.  

“I need to tell you something, but I don’t know how.”

“Are you dating my ex, or something?” Dick joked, trying to lighten the mood.

“Dick.” But Jason wasn’t having it.

“Wow, okay, sorry.” He unfolded in front of the glare, sitting down as well. “You had said that it was something about Peter?” 

“Yeah.”

“And that it wasn’t anything bad, just important?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then just tell me. Break it down and tell me piece by piece; rip off the bandage at once; I don’t care, just tell me.”

“Actually,” Jason said slowly, reaching for the paper stack on the coffee table. “I think it’d be better if I just showed you.”

He was handed the photos first. His owns, strapped next to Peter’s, some parts circled in red. Then came the notes; things like physical similarities, and can’t find any documents that aren’t fakes, and appeared out of the blue about a month ago written and underlined.

Seemingly proofs to make a point.

But Dick didn’t understand what the point was supposed to be.

Not until the envelope was given to him.

It was opened already, whatever inside had been looked at. But he didn’t doubt the validity of the document inside; not when it was being given to him by Jason, and things were as serious as they were.

He pulled out the piece of paper inside; and fell still upon reading the bold words. A DNA test. He looked up to see Jason watching him with a worried frown. Oh fuck. Yeah, no, he wasn’t getting that wrong, then.

He kept reading.

99 percent.

99.99 percent.

Peter Parker was 99.99 percent his child.

Dick was 99.99 percent his father.

He was his-

He was-

He-

“Dick?”

“I didn’t recognize my son.” He whispered in the quiet room. “He was my son, and I didn’t recognize him. He looks like a carbon copy of me, and I didn’t recognize him. All the clues were there, and I didn’t recognize him.” His voice got wetter and wetter as he talked, and by the end of his sentence, the first tears were falling.

Jason put a hand on his shoulder, pulling him in.

“Sometimes, we just can’t see what’s right in front of our eyes. Sometimes, we just miss the most obvious things.”

“You realized it.” Dick said wetly; face buried in his shoulder, and voice coming out muffled.

“Actually, it was Tim. And you know how it is, he’s the best detective in the world. I doubt it would be fair to compare you with him, while it had been Tim who had awakened the rest of us.”

“The rest of you? The others know it too? They all knew before me? Tim told them?”

“No! No, no! That didn’t happen. Tim only told me and Barbara, because he panicked; not knowing what to do with the information.” A dreadful pause as Dick gave a sigh and looked away miserably. “But I think the others have their own theories too.” Jason finished, wincing.

“What?! So, everyone realized but me! And without even Tim’s help.” Dick wailed, not seeing Jason’s grimace since he was bawling his eyes out.

“You only visit during the weekends, and have interacted with the kid a grand total of three or four times. Everyone else has been around him for weeks now, it’s alright, more than expectable.”

“But not acceptable.” He cried.

Jason rocked them back and forth, petting his hair and stroking his back. He comforted his big brother through his meltdown, holding him oh so carefully. Dick drank up the comfort being offered to him, having missed his brother’s hugs.

“It’s alright Dickie, it’s alright. I’ve got you now.”

“I want to sleep.” Dick groaned out after a while, after finally managing to calm down. “My head hurts.”

“Alright, let’s sleep then.”

“But I’m supposed to be driving back to Blüdhaven right now.” He whined.

“Oh, hell no. If you think I’m letting you drive an entire hour, to another fucking city, while you’re drunk on your own tears and exhausted out of your mind; then you’ve got another thing coming at you. You’re taking tomorrow off, and staying here tonight. BPD can do without you for one fucking day.”

A wet chuckle. “I haven’t been a cop in years, Jason.”

“Then whatever it is you do these days; they can last a day without you.”

“… Okay.” Dick said quietly, closing his eyes. It felt safe to be in Jason’s arms. Safe, and soft, and warm, and soothing. He could sleep there.

He gave a loud squawk when Jason picked him up like he was paperweight.

“Jason, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like, Dickface? I have a perfectly fine, and perfectly big bed that we can share. We’re not taking the couch over it. Take off the suit; you’ve got some sweats underneath, yes?”

“Leggings, yeah.”

“Okay, tell me if you want real PJs. If not, shut the hell up and go the fuck to sleep.” Jay said, departing him onto the bed, and going around it to his own side.

Despite the harsh words, Jason latched onto him as soon as it was physically possible to do so; and refused to let go. Not that Dick was requesting to be let go anyway, he loved getting hugs and cuddles.

“Good night, Little Wing.”

“Good night, Big Bird.”

With that, Dick closed his eyes; sinking into his brother’s arms, and letting his mind drift away.

Thoughts of Peter tried to enter, but he didn’t let them; now was sleeping time. He would have all the time in the world to worry about apparently having a son, later, when he didn’t feel half-dead with exhaustion. For now, he just wanted to sleep.  

So, he did.

***

DAY 39: Monday

THE BAT-CHAT

Dick: So, did everyone know that Peter was my son, or what?

Cass: Yes.

Barbara: Yeah…

Steph: Yepp.

Duke: Kind of…

Damian: Tt, it was obvious.

Tim: Pretty much.

Bruce: Agreed.

Dick: I hate this family.

Chapter Text

DAY 39: Monday

Peter used to love cinnamon. Half the stuff he ate, used to have cinnamon in them. His hot chocolate, his cinnamon buns, his cookies, his Salep, his birthday cakes; everything even remotely sweet. He used to love it.

May used to say that he had gotten the cinnamon addiction from his mother. “Mary couldn’t go a day without cinnamon too, and the pregnancy had only amplified that. Ninety percent of you was cinnamon when you were getting baked in your mommy’s tummy.”

Peter used to laugh at the exaggeration, and bury his head back at whatever cinnamoned treat he was having.

That used to happen before the bite.

And it never did again afterwards.

Spiders didn’t like cinnamon after all.

Peter’s biggest beef with his powers, was the impromptu cinnamon allergy they had brought along. Not even his thermoregulation problem –or rather, the lack of it– and the possibility of uncontrolled hibernation angered him that much. It was the cinnamon allergy. He couldn’t even get a whiff of the brown pixie dust without breaking down in a coughing fit anymore.

Which was exactly why he couldn’t eat his lunch right now.

Turns out, cinnamon rolls were something that could be served in the Gotham Academy cafeteria. And guess what did that mean for Peter, who couldn’t even handle the scent of cinnamon? That he couldn’t even enter the cafeteria, let alone eating the lunch in there.

So, he was out at the yard; sitting in one of the benches, and sulking. His stomach kept growling, but unfortunately, this time it wasn’t in Peter’s hands. He couldn’t do anything about it, he would just have to brave the hunger.

Even though the concept of not eating enough food was giving him anxiety now, after what had almost happened a couple days ago.

“Hey Pete.” Steph said, as she slid next to him. Peter blinked at her.

“Hey Steph. What’s going on?”

“We brought you food.” Duke answered for the blonde, sitting across from him with Tim. “We don’t know what happened, why you aren’t in the cafeteria right now, but you shouldn’t skip meals. It’s not healthy. So, we brought you something to eat.”

“Oh. Thanks, you guys, really. But, uhm… Nothing happened. I’m not eating because I’m allergic to cinnamon and I don’t want to inhale, smell, or even see it. And they were being handed out right next to the rest of the food stands, so I didn’t want to risk it. I don’t like skipping meals either, but I don’t really have much of a choice right now, do I?” He gave a tight smile. But it didn’t waver Duke’s.

“Well, then you’re lucky that we got you a pocketed sandwich from the vending machine. It has not been exposed to any cinnamon.”

“From the vending machine?”

“Yeah.” Steph said. “We aren’t allowed to get your food for you at the cafeteria, so we couldn’t; but we weren’t about to let you go hungry, so we got this.”

“Those things cost, like, thirty bucks! For no reason at all, it’s just cheese and salami.”

“My adoptive father is a billionaire, Peter. Hell, I’m a billionaire. Thirty bucks is nothing.”

“But- But-”

“Just eat it, Pete. Come on.” Duke pushed the sandwich into his hands.

“What about you three?”

“What about us?”

“What are you guys eating?”

“Oh, we already ate inside. What, did you think that it took us a whole twenty minutes to buy one sandwich from a vending machine?” Tim smirked. “Nah. We were stuffing our faces as fast as humanely possible, so that we could come and look for you. Now, eat.”

With that, Peter finally opened the plastic wrapper, and munched in.

The others, thankfully, didn’t watch on as he ate; they chatted with each other and filled the silence, making sure to add him into the conversation every here and there as well.

“We should hang out some time.” Steph said after a while, playing innocently with her necklace. “Outside of school too, I mean.” Her tone was odd; slightly off in a way Peter couldn’t pinpoint.

“That’s a great idea!” Duke answered quickly, turning to him. “What do you think, Peter?”

“I mean, you two live in the same house, don’t you?” He gestured at Tim and Duke. “And you come over a lot? I’m sure you guys can hang out as much as you want to.” He shrugged, not really understanding the question.

“We meant with you, dumbass.” Tim said, smirking.

“O-Oh. With me?” Peter was ashamed to admit that his question was more of a squeak.

“Yes. Want to come over some time?”

“I-I- Uhm…” He stuttered. Because the offer looked innocent enough; but the slight tug from his spider-senses, and the carefully hidden glint in the raven’s icy blue eyes proved that it was anything but.

Granted, it was only a tug; and if anyone of the trio was actually a dangerous person, his senses wouldn’t have let him almost fall asleep next to them last week. So, he didn’t think there was anything malicious, or hurtful going on.

Maybe they were planning a prank or something? Yeah, that could be it. Or maybe the tug was because of something else about the offer, like, maybe someone that would be in the house; rather than his friends themselves.

Either way, Peter felt like one tug was one tug too many to say ‘yes’ to the offer.

“Actually, I don’t think that that will be possible. Sorry.”

“What? Why?” Steph asked quickly, whining. But her adorable pout did nothing to hide the frown on her face; and the other two were not trying at all. Yeah, something was definitely up.

“I don’t think Mr. Wayne would want me as a guest. And even if he was okay with it, I don’t really like going to friends’ houses.” Big fat lie; he loved spending time at his friends’ houses, in their rooms. Getting to see the place they lived at; and getting an irreplicable insight on just what kind of a person they actually were away from all the prying judging eyes, in their safe spaces.

But it wasn’t like the trio was going to be able to tell it.

“What if we went bowling or something? Or to a movie? We don’t have to hang out at our place if you’re not really comfortable coming over yet.” Duke said then, a kind smile on his lips. Peter smiled back.

No tugs or anything from his senses. Alright then. “Fine, that works, I guess. But I’m warning you here, I’m not exactly the fun type.” More like, I don’t really have the budget to be fun; but whatever.

“That’s okay.” Steph assured quickly. “Don’t even worry about it, you can’t be more boring than Tim anyways.”

There was a collective chuckle from around the table, and a squawk from Tim; but Peter could feel the weight of those icy blue eyes when he looked away.

He wondered what he had just dodged.

***

DAY 39: Monday

THE BAT-CHAT

Tim: It didn’t work.

Jason: What didn’t work?

Tim: We tried to lure Peter into the manor.

Tim: And it didn’t work.

Jason: What.

Tim: We offered to hang out outside of the school.

Tim: He looked like he was going to say yes until I mentioned coming over to ours.

Tim: Then he refused.

Tim: But he’s okay with meeting up somewhere else.

Tim: And I have a theory about that.

Jason: Oh boy, here we go again.

Tim: Fuck you, every time you say that, I turn out right.

Barbara: What is it, Tim?

Tim: You know how spiders have some sort of a sixth sense?

Tim: I think Peter does too.

Jason: What.

Barbara: Tim…

Steph: Oh my gosh…

Duke: Are you serious right now?

Duke: You aren’t joking or something??

Tim: No, I’m not.

Tim: And just hear me out!

Tim: Peter always knew we were there, when we were following him.

Tim: Even when he was in a crowded street or something, where he wouldn’t be able to perceive our very light footsteps on the rooftops, following him around; because of all of the other noises around.

Tim: I think that’s because he has a sixth sense, and it tells him when someone’s there, watching.

Tim: And how he reacts to danger proves it too, especially that time he caught that glass bottle in the class.

Tim: I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but…

Barbara: Yeah, enhanced hearing can kind of explain those times Peter just knew we were there.

Barbara: Especially if he had some practice with it, which we’re assuming he did because it has been a couple years since the spider bite, according to what the kid had said to Jason.

Barbara: And maybe the bottle incident was pure luck, or you mis-saw.

Barbara: But…

Barbara: It isn’t that crazy.

Jason: Are you serious right now?

Steph: Come on Babs.

Damian: You should not encourage Drake’s crazy tendencies, Gordon.

Dick: Babs?

Barbara: I work with him, you guys.

Barbara: Too many times he caught something before it even began falling.

Duke: Really?

Tim: Yes!

Barbara: Yeah.

Barbara: Tim has validity here.

Bruce: You tried to invite him over?

Duke: Yep.

Duke: We were hoping he would be too tried to walk back by the end of the evening, and just stay over.

Duke: Or that he would start coming over regularly and that would happen at some point.

Duke: But he refused.

Steph: He said that he wasn’t sure if ‘Mr. Wayne’ would want him as a guest.

Steph: I swear to God, I almost said ‘He wants you as more than a guest, dumbass.’

Steph: ‘You’re his grandchild.’

Jason: dbhjadf

Duke: asdhas

Tim: adgka

Cass: 🤣

Steph: He also said something about not liking going to friends’ houses, but that was probably just a gag reason.

Steph: I’ve seen the kid, alright?

Steph: And I call bullshit on that god-awful lie.

Dick: Wait, you guys hoped that he would stay over?

Dick: What did I say about trying to adopt my child, you guys?

Steph: Finders keepers, Dickie.

Steph: You want to get him, come back to the city first.

Bruce: Did he accept meeting up somewhere else?

Tim: Yeah, he’s okay with that.

Tim: We didn’t discuss the time or the place yet, though.

Bruce: Okay.

Bruce: Do hang out with him outside of school.

Bruce: It would make him trust you three more.

Dick: Bruce!

Bruce: I’m sorry chum; but every day he has to spend sleeping on the couch in the back-room of a stationery, is a day too many.

Dick: I know…

Dick: That doesn’t mean I’ll like it if you try to print any adoption papers though.

Jason: afjdfnlsdf

Tim: aljsfblfffgjn

Steph: ajbffnlkf

Duke: dsgjbaldgn

Barbara: safhdgadg

Damian: Tt.

Cass: 🤣

Bruce: Understood.

***

DAY 42: Thursday

His spider-senses gave a pinch, at the same time the sounds of commotion reached his ears. Peter fell still in the middle of his step –his laundry night interrupted– and turned towards the noises coming from the next street.

He extended his hearing further and listened, counting nine heartbeats. Their grunts and muffled curses helped him place eight of them as men, and the last one as a woman. He decided to take a look.

He took a quick peek from around the corner, and saw eight goons getting their asses kicked by a badass lady in purple spandex. Spoiler then. Cool!

Peter couldn’t help but keep watching, couldn’t take his eyes off of the fluid movements. Spoiler was destroying them, and she looked like she wasn’t even trying that hard. Her heartrate wasn’t even that high, and he could see the outline of her smirk.

These must be some real low-level thugs if even nine of them wasn’t enough to get the vigilante break a sweat; like, the Condiment King’s goons or something. Because, wow, they were bad. Like, bad-bad. May would probably also be able to beat these guys up with her purse, even all of them at once. And she had no training whatsoever, just her rage and Italian heritage.

Something behind Spoiler caught his eyes.

A man was approaching from behind; a barbed baseball bat in his hands, raised up high. Spoiler was busy taking down three others at once, and making sure that the rest four goons were staying down. She wasn’t going to see him.

Before he knew it, he was moving; dropping his bags onto the pavement carelessly

“Behind you!”

He dashed by the ongoing fight, hearing a surprised gasp from the girl; and caught the raised bat before the man could take the swing. Twirling the arm behind the guy, and hooking a leg under his; he threw him down.

But he didn’t stop there.

Turning back to the fight, he realized two of the men Spoiler had already taken down, were getting back up. He decided to keep them down. A careful punch here, a nice kick there; he made sure they wouldn’t be getting up soon.

He turned around when he was done; and yelped when he came directly face to face with the purple vigilante. “Oh my gosh, are you okay?!”

Peter staggered back a step, taken aback. “I’m… I’m fine. Nothing happened.”

“Nothing happened? You just completely kicked those guys’ asses, and one of them had a bat. A barbed bat. And you say nothing happened?!” She stressed. “Did you get hurt?”

“No, I’m- I’m alright. I didn’t get hurt.”

“Are you sure?” She grabbed his arm, turning him around to check if there was any blood anywhere. When she couldn’t find any red on his coat or pants, she ran her hands over his head, checking for bumps. She was left empty handed, and quite relieved.

“Yes, I’m sure. They didn’t even get in any hits.”

“They didn’t?”

“No. I know a thing or two about protecting myself, you know; and those were some pretty average-level thugs, weren’t they?”

“I mean, yeah, but… still. It’s pretty impressive.”

“Thanks.”

“I didn’t know you could fight.” He could feel her squinting gaze, even through her mask. He shrugged. “Peter, right?”

“Yeah. And you’re Spoiler?”

“Yep.” She popped the ‘p’.

He had understood a while ago that it was a thing that the bats did, a tradition of sorts. The bats other than Batman, that is.

They liked to pop the ‘p’ at the word ‘yep’, and be cheeky about it too. RR did it the best, in Peter’s opinion. The red little bastard did it in such a way that was both condescending and cute. It got under his skin and made the guy look endearing at the same time.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Spoiler stared. “It is?”

“Yeah.”

“… Thanks.” She sounded like she didn’t believe it. Peter felt bad. He thought that no one should feel useless or unimportant; everyone had reasons to be here, to be alive, and people who cared about them, and would cry day and night after their death. Especially vigilantes who busted their asses to protect others. He wanted to give the girl a hug and thousands of reassurances.

“Of course.” He said instead, giving a little smile.

“So, what are you doing right now?”

“Uhm, I was going to the laundromat before I heard you.”

“Need a hand?”

“… What?” He didn’t think he had heard her right.

“Want me to help? I can grapple you to the laundromat if you want, you got held up because of me after all. And we can chat a bit, and eat some cookies while we wait for the washing machine.”

“Won’t people need you?”

“Almost everyone else is also out patrolling right now, save for Signal and Nightwing; because one has the day shift, and the other only visits during the weekends these days. Gotham can last a night without me. So, what do you say Pete?”

“Alright.” He went and picked up his bags.

She extended a hand to him, giving him a warm look. “Hold on tight then.”

***

DAY 42: Thursday

THE BAT-CHAT

Steph: I am keeping this damn kid.

Steph: I swear to God, the second we manage to get him into the manor, I am latching on and never letting go.

Duke: What happened?

Steph: He saw me fighting some goons today.

Steph: And one of them was coming at me from the back.

Steph: He yelled “Behind you!” and charged at the guy.

Steph: The guy had a barbed bat.

Steph: But Peter kicked his ass you guys, I’m telling you.

Steph: And two others.

Steph: But, most importantly, he said that it was a pleasure to meet me.

Steph: That it was a pleasure to meet the Spoiler.

Steph: Then he gave me a cute little smile, and I almost cooed at him.

Steph: I almost melted at the spot; it was so adorable.

Steph: I love his sunny, innocent, little smile.

Bruce: Are you alright?

Steph: I’m fine B.

Steph: Those were the Kite Man’s goons.

Steph: I guess he’s trying to learn team-work.

Steph: Either way, they were fucking idiots, and I don’t think we need to worry about them at all.

Steph: And even Peter kicked their asses.

Steph: … It was kind of weird actually, despite their unprofessionalism and stupidity.

Steph: He took out three of them in under thirty seconds.

Steph: It was like he had been trained, or something.

Tim: Is this a bad time to mention the ‘Peter Being Experimented On’ theory of Jason’s?

Dick: !!?

Dick: What.

Dick: The.

Dick: Fuck.

Dick: Tim.

Dick: Jason.

Dick: Explain.

Dick: Now.

Tim: Uhm…

Jason: Dumbass.

Dick: Jason.

Jason: Fine.

Jason: When we first started thinking that Peter looked too much like you, we came up with some theories.

Jason: You know; long missing relative, accident baby you never knew of, clone, whatever.

Jason: And after the DNA test, we thought that maybe he was grown in a lab or something; because of his meta-ish abilities and different DNA.

Jason: Or experimented on, at some point in his life.

Jason: Plus, when I found Peter after he got shot, and asked him to show me his wound; he got very defensive, and almost ran away.

Jason: Said that he had had a bad experience with a ‘doctor’ before.

Tim: That’s why you grilled us like that when we sent that video.

Tim: Of Peter’s wound.

Jason: Yes, Baby Bird.

Jason: That’s why I was so mad.

Jason: Not that you have the right to do such a thing to anyone though, past trauma or not.

Jason: But whatever.

Dick: Oh, my God.

Jason: It could’ve been a lie to keep me from finding out about his enhanced healing abilities, I don’t know.

Jason: It’s just a theory Dick.

Jason: We don’t have any solid proof, just some pieces that fit together.

Steph: But didn’t Peter say that he got his abilities from a radioactive spider bite during a field trip?

Tim: We didn’t know that when Jay made that theory.

Tim: Not that we know for sure if it’s true or not either.

Tim: We don’t have proof of that, it could be a lie.

Tim: Maybe he’s an accident baby Dick never knew of, from one of his many teenage hook-ups, and got taken away from his home because of his abilities or something.

Tim: Maybe he was created in a lab, from Nightwing’s DNA; like Kon and Clark.

Tim: Maybe he lied to us about the field trip thing, and where he got his powers from; because he’s uncomfortable discussing these things, or still doesn’t trust us enough.

Jason: Or maybe I’m wrong.

Jason: It’s just a theory.

Tim: It would explain why I can’t find anything about him online.

Tim: If he was created in a lab from scratch.

Tim: Or just got everything about him deleted after being kidnapped –because he had some special abilities or was physiologically available to have those abilities put in him– to be experimented on as a lab rat, and trained as a weapon.

Tim: That would explain why he doesn’t exist.

Tim: Maybe he got away very recently.

Tim: Or maybe he has been hiding for a while now; and thinks it isn’t unsafe to be seen anymore, or doesn’t need to hide from people anymore.

Jason: Again guys, it’s just a theory.

Dick: A theory, about my child being a lab kid, Jason.

Dick: The child that I never even knew existed.

Dick: The child that I almost killed less than two weeks ago, trying to feed vinegar to him.

Dick: Oh my gosh, I’m gonna cry.

Dick: Or scream.

Dick: Or vomit or something.

Bruce: Calm down Dick, we will solve this mystery.

Bruce: And we will find a way to help Peter, preferably under one of our roofs.

Bruce: Take a breath.

Dick: We will, won’t we?

Bruce: Of course, chum.

Dick: Thank you, dad.

Tim: Favorite Child Alert!

Duke:  I thought you didn’t have favorites, Bruce.

Jason:  I thought you loved us all, Bruce.

Tim:  I thought we all ranked the same in your heart, Bruce.

Steph:  This wounds us, Bruce.

Tim: What, no answer?

Tim: Ignoring us now?

Tim: That’s rude.

Tim: So rude, Bruce.

***

DAY 43: Friday

His skin was burning.

He was so, so cold; yet his skin was burning. There was a gaping hole in his chest; a void, that craved something so badly. What that was, Peter had no idea. He only knew that he was hurting.

Despite the burning of his skin, there was a deep coldness in his bones. His muscles were heavy, and numb; feeling like they didn’t belong to him. His blood was ice in his veins, making him feel like he was freezing from inside out.

His body was shaking like a leaf; his head was dizzy. His vision was blurry; his eyes teary. He didn’t know how long he would manage staying upright; but he was going to do his best to stretch that time as much as possible. He had to. He couldn’t pass out.

He pressed his back further into the concrete wall behind him and drew in a breath; arms tight around his torso in a useless attempt to dull the pain.

“What’s happening to me?” He gritted out through clenched teeth, and looked up at the two vigilantes in agony.

Nightwing and Red Hood stood in front of him.

“You were hit by the Cuddle Pollen.” The red one answered.

“C-Cuddle Pollen?”

“Yes.”

“W-What- W-What do-does it-”

“It makes you crave physical touch. Like hugs, for example! Yeah, hugs are great. They’re the best in my opinion.” Nightwing rambled, making Peter frown. He was the one who had gotten the hit, why the hell was this guy nervous?

“Can we hug you, kiddo?” Hood asked after a facepalm and a suffering sigh. “I promise we’ll be very gentle and only hug you. Nothing else.” He said carefully.

Oh. So, that was what the duo was anxious about. Yeah, it made sense. Peter could definitely see how the Cuddle Pollen would cause that kind of problems and situations for people, resulting in a bad reputation. And his near-past of what had happened just a few days ago… Yeah, it checked out.

But. He wasn’t scared.

“I-I’m n-not- scared. I-I t-trust you t-two.”

“So, we can hug you?”

“Yes.”

Nightwing pulled him in right away.

The effect was immediate, even through the Kevlar. The burning of his skin stopped at once, the cold in his muscles receding. The void in his chest began growing smaller, and the pain began to fade. Peter lost his footing with relief, and Nightwing gave a yelp when he swayed on his feet, holding him more properly.

“Peter?” He asked worriedly.

“Mhm.” Peter groaned in lieu of an answer, burrowing further into the vigilante’s arms. “Warm.” He managed to push out.

A tinkling laugh. “Yeah, I know. I’ve been hit with this stuff a dozen times; I know exactly how it feels.”

“How long’ll this las’?” He slurred, feeling unnaturally tired. He shook his head, trying to shake off the exhaustion that came out of nowhere.

“Well, a normal human would probably feel the effects for at least three days; with the dosage you got exposed to, without the antidote.” Hood said. “But considering the fact that this is essentially a drug, and your body burns through these types of things at light speed; I’m willing to bet that it isn’t going to take that long.”

“Do you know exactly what chemicals ‘r in it?” Peter asked from Nightwing’s embrace. “I might be able to give you an estimate if I know.”

“Sorry, I have no idea.”

“It’s alright. I can’t give you a specific length of time without that info, but you are probably right. I don’t think it’ll take longer than ten to fifteen hours.”

“We can ask RR to drop off an antidote.” The red vigilante offered.

Peter shook his head; wincing when the movement shook his brain. Jesus, what the hell was this pollen? “No. I mean, I can say yes, and we can wait for Red Robin to drop off an antidote, assuming he’s got enough for me and my enhanced metabolism. But most drugs don’t even work on me at all, and I just ‘burn through’, as you put it, the ones that do. Same thing with medicine. Vicodin and Morphine are some of the few painkillers that I can take. I can’t guarantee that the antidote’s going to work.”

“Shit.” Hood cursed. “What do we do then?”

“We can wait it out. Honestly, I’m pretty sure that the worst of it is right now. It should only get better from here. I know I must be inconveniencing you guys a lot right now, but if you can just keep hugging me for about an hour or two, I’ll be good enough to leave. I think.”

“…What.” Nightwing stilled completely. “No.”

“N-No?” Peter cursed his inability to pull back and give the vigilante a confused look, what did he mean no?

“Yeah; no. This thing can hurt really badly Peter, you have to receive touch until at least 80 percent of it is out of your system. Otherwise, it’s practically torture. We can’t just leave after one hour.”

“O-Oh. You meant- Okay. Yeah, sure, fine. Whatever.” He was suddenly very happy to have his face buried in a broad chest; it was helping hide his blush along with the dark.

“Did you think I was saying that I wouldn’t hug you?” Nightwing asked, voice strained. Peter stayed silent. “Peter. Of course I would. I mean, the whole Cuddle Pollen thing aside, I love hugging you buddy. Why would I refuse?”

“Because you’re busy or something?” Peter mumbled.

Nightwing just shook his head. “No. Never too busy for you. Especially not when you’re hurting and need me.”

There was something in his tone, and in the words; something heavy. A meaning, behind them. But Peter didn’t know what, and he was too tired to try to decipher it; so, when Red Hood so blatantly and obviously shut the subject and interrupted whatever ‘moment’ they had been in, he allowed him.

“Alright you two,” The man started. “We can finish this chat later. Right now, we need to get you two to someplace safe to ride this out. And before Peter passes out from exhaustion too.”

“I’m not passing out.” Peter protested weakly, despite feeling the tiredness in his bones.

“Kid. The Pollen tires you out. A lot. Trust me, I know; I’ve been hit with that stuff a bunch of times. Even if you aren’t passing out right now, you will very soon. Not to mention that you aren’t even getting all that much touch from the Big Bird thanks to the spandex either. We need to get Wing in some sweats, and you two in a bed. I have a safe-house that we can use, a couple blocks east from here.”

“Alright.” Nightwing accepted easily; picking Peter up, and ignoring the squawk he made at being manhandled. “Lead the way.”

It took them fifteen minutes to get to the safe-house. It was the longest fifteen minutes of Peter’s life.

“Alright. Now, I just need to take off my suit and then we can cuddle all night.” Said the blue vigilante, and went to put him down after Hood took off his gloves to be able to give Peter at least a little bit of skin-to-skin contact while Nightwing changed his clothes in lightning speed.

But when he failed at doing so, Peter realized just why he hadn’t at all shook around in his arms on the way there.

“Oh my Gosh, I have stuck to you.” He whispered, mortified.

“… What?”

“H-Hood has told you that I can stick to the walls and the ceiling, right?”

“Yeah…?”

“Well, those two aren’t the only things that I can stick to.” He admitted shamefully, not meeting the two heroes’ eyes.

“… Excuse me?!” Nightwing asked, voice incredulous.

“Yeah.” Peter answered sheepishly. “I think it’s an instinctual thing right now. You know, because hugging you is keeping the pain away, so my spider instincts are insisting on making sure that I keep hugging you.” He gave shrug, as much as he was able to, in the vigilante’s wide arms. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, it’s alright.” It was almost reflexive, the way Nightwing answered him immediately. “It’s just- It’s- But I’m trying to put you down to change out of my suit, so that I can hug you better.” He stressed, as if logic could out-done instincts.

“Yeah, I know. But try telling that to the spider in me. All it knows is that it hurts like hell, when you let go.”

Nightwing held him a bit tighter upon hearing that. “What will we do then? This isn’t going to do much if I keep hugging you over my suit.”

“Can we try to trade Wing for a better option, maybe?” Hood suggested. “Would that work?”

Peter squinted. “Like what?”

“Like, me? I can change into some sweats, and hold you while Nightwing gets changed. I would feel warmer because of the less layers; and it would only feel right to latch onto me instead of him, right?”

Peter thought about it for a couple moments, a bit longer than what he would normally need to; because he had to actively fight to keep his eyes open. Honestly, what the hell? He hadn’t felt this tired since getting knocked down from the sky, mid-swing, in Germany.

“I mean, I guess it would work. In theory at least. Let’s try it.”

Hood went to go change, and came back in a white t-shirt and a pair of red sweats. His mask was still on, and one of his guns was poking out of his waistband; but the rest of his gear was taken off. “I’m here for the pick-up of an Itsy-Bitsy Spider.” He announced as he opened his arms.

Nightwing gave a snort as he went to deposit Peter. It turned into an awkward three-way hug when it became obvious that the exchange would take a little while; Peter’s inner spider was being a bitch. After a couple of minutes, and the spider in Peter finally choosing a new beacon of warmth to latch onto; Nightwing was off to go change.

He came back in a blue t-shirt and black leggings. “Hood’s sweats don’t fit me, they fall off.” He explained, and opened his arms for the sleepy spider. Peter easily latched onto him as well, and they began waiting.

The problem though, was that he couldn’t let go of Hood still even after ten minutes.

“Uhm… I don’t think it’s a warmth issue anymore.”

“Then why aren’t you letting me go?” Hood asked, not unkindly.

But the words still panicked Peter. “I-I don’t know. I’m sorry, I know you’re probably very uncomfortable right now, I didn’t mean to trap you in a hug like this.” He looked up anxiously, waiting for someone to get angry and start yelling; approximately Hood, because he was annoyed or mad.

But that didn’t happen.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. I’m not mad.” The red vigilante answered his nervous ramble with a soothing tone and an open body language; not only telling, but also showing Peter that he was not angry. “It’s alright, Peter.”

“Maybe you want to hug both of us?” Nightwing suggested, after a moment; fixing his grip on him to support his weight better. “Because warmth from both of us is definitely better than warmth from one of us?”

“I-I guess? I mean, this has never happened before, I don’t know. It could be.”

“Okay, the why doesn’t matter.” Hood said. “We’re here, we’re out of our suits, we’re hugging the kid; the rest is unimportant. The bed is big enough for all three of us, let’s just go to sleep; and if we’re still stuck together tomorrow, we’ll find a solution. Alright?”

“That sounds perfect, Little Wing.”

With that, they awkwardly maneuvered into the bedroom, and onto the bed; barely managing to pull on the covers because of their limbs being all tangled and locked around each other. Peter sank in in between the two men, and sagged in relief and exhaustion; it had been a long night.

Nightwing and Red Hood both wrapped around him and pressed themselves close; keeping him warm and sated, making him feel mellow and cozy. Oh, they were good at this; at cuddling and hugging people. It felt different than the other times Peter had experienced physical affection from them, this one felt better. It was probably because of the Pollen, but still. It felt so soft and soothing. Warm and refreshing.

Safe.

Purr .

There was a collective flinch and freezing-up from the occupants of the bed; the two vigilantes from shock; and the teenager from embarrassment and a small twinge of anxiety. He was no longer sleepy.

The purring stopped promptly.

“Uhm…” Peter tried to start, but he didn’t even know where from.

“What.” Nightwing took the mic when he took too long to say something. “The hell was that?”

Peter winced, and tried to shrink in on himself. “That- That was- Uhm… I was- I was purring. Spiders can purr, sometimes. Or rather, make sounds like purring. So, I can too. Sometimes. Not very often. Rarely, if ever.” He rambled, nervous beyond words.

His more animalistic traits were always the ones that disturbed people. Sticking to walls and the buildings should’ve been scarier than him being able to purr; but people didn’t like seeing him act so blatantly like an animal, purring and growling and hissing.

It scared them more than the fact that he could kill people with a single punch, or that he was strong enough to hold up buildings.

Nightwing pulled back the smallest bit to stare at him.

Then he cooed. “Oh my Gosh, can you be any cuter?! You’re so freaking adorable, Peter! Oh, my fucking God.” He crooned squeezing him tighter, and pressing a kiss to his head. Peter blinked.

“Language, dickhead.” Hood said, before ruffling Peter’s hair. “He’s right though, you are adorable.”

“I-I am?” Peter stammered. “You don’t think it’s weird? That I’m- that I’m a freak?”

“No!” Wing denied immediately. “Why would we think that, kiddo?”

“No, we don’t. We never would.” Hood said. “Did people call you a freak in the past, because of this? Friends? Relatives, maybe?”

Peter gave a mirthless chuckle. “Yeah, you could say that.” Try almost half of the world. That one week Peter had had his identity leaked, had been the worst week of his life. He knew that he wouldn’t have survived it if things had gone on like that.

He was blissfully unaware of the look that was shared over his head.

“Well, we are not like that.” Nightwing stated confidently. “We do not care whether you’re a mutate, or not, or whatever; neither do we think you’re a freak for your abilities. We don’t look at you and go, ‘Oh, the spider-mutate-boy’. We look at you and go ‘Oh, hey, it’s Peter. The incredible kid that we all love.’”

“Yeah, what he said.” Hood agreed. “Now. Everybody shut up and go to sleep. It’s bedtime for little spiders, and I only had five hours of sleep last night and am currently on the verge of passing out. And by the way, you can purr all you want Peter; you don’t need to tamp it down around us. If anything, it sounds soothing.”

“Alright.”

Peter closed his eyes again after that, letting the two strong heartbeats and the soft hair-strokes lull him to sleep. His purring started up again soon, and this time he didn’t try to stop it. Why would he; when instead of disgusted scoffs or angry sneers, it drew quiet coos and soft smiles from the men beside him.

“Goodnight Peter.”

“Sweet dreams, Itsy-Bitsy.”

Peter tried to answer them, but all that came out was a sleepy hum; he was far too gone for real words. The arms around him tightened for a moment upon that, before relaxing again; and Peter’s mind slowly drifted away to oblivion with only one thought. Paternal.

What a shame he wasn’t going to remember it tomorrow, right?

***

DAY 44: Saturday

THE BAT-CHAT

Dick: Guys.

Dick: Peter can purr.

Damian: What?

Damian: What are you talking about Richard?

Jason: Peter was hit with the Cuddle Pollen last night.

Jason: Ivy had a fight with Harley, I guess.

Jason: Relationship problems.

Jason: Anyways.

Jason: Wing and I took care of it.

Jason: He was kind of sandwiched between us the whole of last night and this morning.

Jason: He purred the entire time.

Tim: You sure it was purring and not some other thing?

Dick: Yes, we asked him.

Dick: He said that he was purring.

Dick: I didn’t know spiders could purr, but.

Dick: Guess they can.

Dick: Or maybe it was a Peter-Special kind of thing.

Dick: We’re not sure.

Barbara: I’m guessing he isn’t coming in today?

Dick: No, he’s way too tired.

Dick: He almost fell asleep into the waffles Jay had made.

Dick: Three times.

Dick: He’s in no state to work.

Steph: You had waffles without me?!

Steph: Betrayal!

Steph: Betrayal of the highest accounts!

Jason: The kid was hungry and I cooked what I could with what we had in hand Steph.

Steph: How will I ever forgive you?

Jason: How about so that you can eat more of those amazing waffles in the future as well.

Jason: You know I don’t cook for ungrateful brats.

Tim: You cook for Damian.

Jason: Shut it, Replacement.

Damian: Tt.

Steph: Fine, fine, whatever.

Steph: Forgiven, I guess.

Steph: But did you guys take any photos or videos of Pete??

Jason: You mean when he was stuffing his face, or when he was sleeping?

Jason: Do I look like Tim to you, Steph?

Jason: Or like a fucking creep?

Steph: Dick?

Dick: …

Dick: I’ve got three photos and one voice recording of his purring.

Jason: Dick!

Jason: What the fuck!

Dick: You can’t get mad at me!

Dick: He’s so cute.

Dick: Adorable.

Dick: He’s perfect, Jay.

Dick: And…

Dick: And I wanted a photo of him from when he was sleeping in my arms and purring for it.

Dick: He’s my son.

Dick: And I didn’t even know he existed until last week.

Steph: Jeez, you’re morbid.

Steph: Just send the photos here.

Steph: I want to see.

***

DAY 47: Tuesday

“Alright kids. Today, we will be doing the climbing wall. Warm up for fifteen minutes, and then line up in front of the wall. Don’t push each other, don’t fall on your faces, and don’t die on my watch. Got it? Good. Scatter!”

“Is this guy for real?” Peter whispered at Duke, after the man exited the earshot.

Duke just gave a rueful smile. “Yeah, Coach Edwards is like that, kinda mad. But he’s one of the better teachers we have here at Gotham Academy; both in the teaching department, and the personality department.”

“Really?” Peter eyed the man who was yelling into his phone at the distance.

“Yeah. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but he’s a really good guy.”

“I think you guys are getting ripped-off by the school then.” He answered, after Coach Edwards ended the call by throwing his phone to the ground. “Paying that much money, and for people like this to be considered one of the ‘better’ teachers.”

Steph gave a bright laugh. “Me and Duke are both scholarship students who will make more profit from the name of this school than the education it gives us; and Tim is the nepo baby adopted child of the owner. If anything, we’re ripping them off.”

Peter joined in on the chuckle.

“Alright squirts, enough warming up. Line-up!”

Steph and Tim ended up being the third pair in line, and Peter and Duke the seventh. Peter didn’t like that two of Miller’s friends were right behind them in line, but tried to ignore his discomfort to the best of his abilities. It was probably just nerves anyway. Plus, he was Spider-Man. He wasn’t going to fuck up at the climbing wall.

Him and Duke got to climbing quickly once their turn came. They were pretty fast, and reached the top in short time. The wall wasn’t all that high, so you could jump down from the top too; but most people preferred to climb down from the other side of it.

Which was why Peter and Duke needed to wait until the previous pair was done climbing down, before starting themselves; to prevent the ‘slipping up and falling on someone’ thing that could happen.

Granted, it probably wasn’t going to take longer than half a minute for the previous pair to be done getting off; but half a minute was more than enough time for the next pair to reach the top as well.

The next pair being Miller’s dearest friends; Jacob Myers and Brian Whitlock.

Peter’s spider-senses buzzed.

Duke stepped in front of him. “You should shout down for them to stop sending people up, it’s getting crowded here.” He said levelly, addressing the boys.

Myers turned to do that, but Whitlock kept staring at them, a nasty look on his face. Peter understood what was about to happen. He pushed Duke aside gently, turning around and getting ready; he’d rather jump down, than get pushed off. It wasn’t even that high, even for Peter Parker; and a piece of cake for Spider-Man.

But before he could, there was a shove against his back. “Oops, sorry!” Whitlock yelled out; drowning out Duke’s shout, and drawing in the attention of the other students.

Peter felt himself rocking forward and losing his balance; the wind getting knocked out of him as his spider-senses gave a sharp alarm. He tilted forward, and lost his footing; managing to catch only a glimpse of the girl he was about to fall onto and drag down with himself.

Everything seemed to have slowed down; all of his senses amplified completely. He was falling. Falling, falling, falling, and falling. There was a terrified scream from beneath him; two frantic shouts of his name from his friends; the sound of the coach’s whistle, coming out panicked despite not having a tone; and a low, disgusting chuckle from among the students on the ground, Miller’s. And Peter was falling.

He was falling, and-

And he was stilling in air, with a sudden jerk.

It took him a moment to realize what was going on; but when he did, he let out a strangled yelp of pain. He turned to look at the arm that was grabbing the climbing wall with all the willpower an arm might have. The arm that had the bullet wound on it; tight bandages wrapped securely around the shoulder. The one that was currently burning like all hell.

He screamed.

By now, the two beneath him had already climbed off the wall; so, Peter deemed it safe enough to let go and jump down from where he was hanging on by a thread at the middle of the climbing wall. Unfortunately, he had overestimated his strength for the movement though. He couldn’t manage to land –because of the pain–, instead crushing onto his knees and falling over.

Tim and Steph were immediately in his space, turning him over and urging him to breathe. They pulled him away from under the climbing wall carefully, and started checking for injuries.

Tim ran his fingers through his hair, looking for any bumps or blood; and Steph prodded around his knees, ensuring that nothing was broken.

Coach Edwards arrived at the scene between one blink and the next. “Parker, are you alright?” He asked anxiously. Peter could now see why Duke liked this guy; he actually gave a shit about his students.

“Y-Yes, sir. S-Sorry for falling on my f-face.” He stuttered out through pained gasps, trying for a smile. He was successful as well as a piece of paper, drenched in gasoline; at not lighting up in flames and burning down to all hell.

Coach Edwards gave an unhappy look. Meh, his choice. Peter was only trying to light up the mood.

“He didn’t fall, he was pushed off.” Duke piped up, having climbed down as fast as he could. “By Brian Whitlock and Jacob Myers.”

“It was an accident!”

“I didn’t even touch him!”

Whitlock and Myers yelled out at the same time.

Peter looked away.

Coach Edwards squinted.

“Sir?” He spoked up a moment later. “May I be excused? My arm was previously strained, and I think I aggravated the injury.”

“Why were you even on the wall if your arm was injured?” Myers asked sassily.

“None of your damn business.” Tim snapped.

“Enough!” Coach Edwards yelled. “You three,” Gesturing at Tim, Steph and Duke. “Take him to the school nurse. You two,” Pointing at Whitlock and Myers. “I’ll see you in my office.”

Peter didn’t listen to anything any further, just leaned onto his friends and allowed himself to be pulled away by them. But he didn’t let them take him to the nurse; insisting that he was fine, and ducking into the locker-room. “I’m fine, it just hurts a bit.”

He knew none of them believed him.

“At least take something for the pain then, if you won’t go see the nurse.” Steph said, a begging look in her eyes and a medicine bottle in her hands.

“I have Vicodin at home.” Granted, the last four pills, but still.

“But it’s only the sixth period. You have two more ahead of you. Please, Peter, just take some pills.”

She was right of course; he wasn’t going to be able to hang in there until the evening. But he didn’t think he could handle taking some low-level painkillers that would probably be no good at all to him, and having to fake being better for the rest of the day. That was even worse than the pain; he didn’t want to have to smile through it.

But when his eyes fell onto the name of the bottle, he perked up. Codeine. Codeine was no Vicodin, but it was still a pretty strong painkiller. And it was also one of the few drugs that could affect him.

He didn’t want to ask why Steph carried a half-full bottle.

He could probably only take one, maybe two pills, without raising suspicion; and two pills would at least work for a whole hour. It was better than nothing. Much better than nothing.

“Okay.” He accepted, opening up his palm. “Can I have two pills?”

“Oh, it hurts that bad, huh? I gotcha Pete.” Steph dumped the pills into his palm and put the medicine bottle onto the bench behind her. “Do you have any water?”

“Yeah.” He shook his half-filled bottle, showing it to her.

“We should get you a new bottle, you need more than just that. We’ll be right back.” And with that, the blondie yanked the other two boys out of the locker-room; before Peter could point out that buying some water wasn’t really a three-people-job. He was now alone in the locker-room.

The pill bottle was put on the bench tauntingly.

He turned away at once; no. He would not be stealing from his friend.

The pills still sat there tauntingly.

…

He could take a couple more. Two or three. It wouldn’t help much in the long run, but as long as he could get back to the stationery in the next two hours, and get his hands on his Vicodin; it didn’t need to be a long-term solution.

Just two or three more pills, and he would be pleasantly painless for enough time to get back to his own painkillers. Plus, how would Steph even realize? He didn’t think she counted these pills.

And even if she did, and her and the other two started thinking that he was a drug seller or drug addict or something; he could always just tell them, at the worst-case scenario.

Duke had already said that he didn’t have a problem with metas, Tim was a Signal fan, and Steph always said that she only judged people by their personalities and music taste. They weren’t going to hate him for being enhanced. They wouldn’t. He was hurting like hell, it was worth the risk.

Plus, his spider-senses were surprisingly okay with him taking the meds –as if Steph had left them there purposefully to make him take them– so it should be fine.

He took three more out of the bottle, and swallowed them down; just as his friends’ footsteps started echoing in the corridor. The trio came back into the locker-room just after Peter sat the medicine bottle back down and sat back into his seat.

“Here’s your water. And we bought a sandwich too, in case you’re hungry or something.” Steph said as she pushed the water bottle and the sandwich into his hands and sat down across from him. She picked up the Codeine and threw it into her bag without so much as a glance at it.

He gave the trio a grateful smile in thanks and bit into the cheddar cheese with a happy hum, blissfully unaware of the look the they were sharing over his head.

***

DAY 47: Tuesday

THE BAT-CHAT

Tim: Guys.

Tim: There was an accident during PE today.

Tim: Peter fell from the climbing wall.

Dick: !!!

Dick: What?!

Dick: Is he okay???

Jason: How the fuck did he manage to do that?

Jason: He’s half-spider, and sticky as hell.

Barbara: Did he get hurt?

Cass: Worried.

Tim: He managed to catch himself on the wall before he plummeted down.

Dick: Oh, thank God.

Tim: But with his injured arm.

Dick: ?!?!?!

Tim: His wound got aggravated.

Tim: It was a very harsh catch.

Duke: By the way, he didn’t fall off.

Duke: He was pushed off.

Dick: Excuse me.

Duke: Yes.

Duke: By two rich bitches who are walking away.

Duke: Because they’re rich bitches.

Jason: You?

Jason: Duke Thomas?

Jason: Swearing?

Jason: Wow, you must be really angry.

Duke: Hell yeah, I am.

Duke: I am just so fucking sick of these types of idiots getting to walk away.

Duke: Fucking rich privilege.

Duke: We get it, money can buy anything.

Duke: But it shouldn’t buy your way out of the consequences of your bad choices and awful actions.

Jason: Alright.

Jason: You’re pissed-pissed.

Steph: Yeah, and he isn’t the only one.

Steph: I am one step from recreating the French Revolution.

Duke: Eat the rich!

Duke: Eat the rich!

Duke: Eat the rich!

Jason: Your best friend and your pseudo-father are both billionaires though.

Duke: EAT THE RICH!

Bruce: Please settle down Duke, Stephanie.

Bruce: I will have a chat with the principle about this.

Bruce: And my lawyers.

Bruce: This could’ve caused some real damage to Peter.

Bruce: It could even be seen as an attempted murder, in the right light.

Duke: It’s not going to accomplish anything.

Duke: Those kids have been harassing Peter for weeks.

Duke: No one ever does anything.

Bruce: Oh, don’t worry.

Bruce: I will personally make sure that the consequences meet their successors.

Dick: How is Peter?

Steph: Not that bad.

Steph: Didn’t cry or anything; though it was a pretty rough injury and must’ve hurt like hell.

Steph: I offered him some painkillers.

Steph: He took two.

Steph: I, knowing that two pills of Codeine weren’t going to do shit for someone with his enhanced healing and metabolism, found an excuse and yanked the boys outside.

Steph: To leave him alone in the locker room with the pills, hoping that he would take some more.

Steph: He did.

Steph: I think he took, like, three more?

Steph: I’m not sure.

Barbara: Five pills of Codeine is a lot.

Barbara: But considering that Jason of all people gave the kid three bottles of Vicodin two weeks ago, I am inclined to believe that he can handle it.

Tim: We believe so, yes.

Bruce: Still.

Bruce: Jason, can you make sure he gets home safely after school?

Bruce: Follow him home as Hood.

Bruce: Make sure he’s safe.

Duke: Isn’t that a bit much?

Bruce: Don’t forget that Crane had just escaped prison three hours ago.

Bruce: And that he’s believed to be in Somerset.

Duke: Yeah, okay, totally follow him home Jay.

Jason: Consider it done.

Jason: I’ll make sure that the Itsy-Bitsy makes it home safely.

Bruce: Thank you, Jay-Lad.

Dick: Thanks a lot, Jay.

Dick: Please don’t forget to update.

Jason: Yeah, yeah, whatever.

Chapter Text

DAY 49: Thursday

Peter was on his way to his stationery when the bats’ inability to catch Scarecrow earlier that week, caused him some problems.

He was taking the bus for a change –because he had felt too tired to walk all the way back to the Crime Alley from school– when the Parker Luck reminded him that he couldn’t have anything nice or easy.

He felt his senses buzzing insistently before the bus turned into the alley, and he knew that danger was ahead. But, unfortunately, saying something to try to stop the vehicle wouldn’t have accomplished anything, so he kept quiet. What bus driver would listen a random high-schooler about how to drive after all?

The barricade soon coming into view made him regret that decision immediately. He should’ve said something; gotten off the bus at the very fucking least.

Scarecrow masked henchmen stood in front of the barricade, their friends parking a truck at the entrance of the alley to trap-in the bus. Their boss was nowhere to be seen, but that did not comfort Peter in any way.

Hood’s words about the guy from weeks ago echoed in his mind, and Peter’s hands numbly dived into his pockets to get out the rebreather he had given him. He slipped it on at once; breathing in an anxious breath through its filter.

Wiping his sweaty palms on his pants when they got too wet for his liking; he tried to calm himself down, breathing in slowly. He could recognize the symptoms of a building panic attack.  

It was okay, Beck was not here, he was not being toyed with, and the only green fog he would be seeing today would belong to a professor of psychology who had gone off the rail a long time ago, and was probably not coming back anytime soon.

Calm down Peter, calm down. Stay focused and calm.

The henchmen got out their guns, and the bus driver didn’t get a choice in opening the doors. They entered, and Peter almost startled when the girl next to him pulled off his rebreather suddenly. Her and her friend’s were off too. Actually, he was the only one who had been wearing one.

“What the hell?” He couldn’t help but hiss at her, as the goons begin cuffing up the passengers and leading them outside one by one.

“If they see it, they’ll take and break it. Don’t wear it until you see the green fog coming your way. What is this, your first time?” She scoffed, handing him back his rebreather, and moving away. Peter reluctantly put it back in his pocket.

“Yes, actually. Sorry. Thank you.”

She gave a silent nod.

They were taken outside and chained together; lined in a circle around some sort of an automatic pump. Peter wondered about what it could be doing, for all of three seconds; before the machine let out a short hiss, and then a small puff of green.

He shuddered at the sight of it, and the acidic scent he could taste in the air. The fear gas. Thankfully, the dosage released was too low to do any damage. Yet. 

He looked around, but his fellow captives were still not putting on their rebreathers. They were only glaring at the goons and holding their coats or cardigans over their mouths and noses, but making no moves to take out the masks. He followed their example and ducked his lower face under his collar.

“Batman.” A greeting came from ahead of them, and Peter whipped around to be looking at a guy who looked like the human manifestation of shadows, an angry child with a sword, and a guy in a dumb scarecrow costume. “How nice of you to join us.”

“Crane.” Batman addressed.

Peter felt the guy’s eyes raking over the hostages; and getting stuck on him once it as his turn. Shit. Batman recognized him. Batman knew who Peter Parker was, and he knew him enough to recognize him. Peter wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. He leaned on the ‘not’ side.

“What do you want?” Asked the gravely voice, after a moment.

Crane gave a sick grin. “Come on Batsy, you already know by now.”

Another pump of the green gas distracted Peter from the conversation, and he turned his attention back to the pump. Fuck, it was timed. One pump every two minutes, he would guess. And Batman and Crane looked like they would be conversing for a while.

The fear gas wasn’t exactly light; it didn’t get swept away with a simple breeze, or dissolved into the atmosphere in mere minutes. It was heavy, and it was thick; it was staying where it was. Peter needed to do something, before the gas in the air reached dangerous levels for those nearby. The hostages and himself, in this scenario.

He could break the chains and try to stop the pump, maybe? But, no, there were too many goons around for him to actually manage to stop the device in a timely manner before they saw and stopped him. He would have to be extremely fast, and most definitely make a mistake. And there were too many civilians nearby.

The risk was too big, he couldn’t take it.

He could grab the thing and run away, after breaking the chains? But, no; again, too many henchmen. They would catch him before he could take three steps, and then who knows what would happen.

Too low of a success rate, he needed a better plan.

Come on, Peter, think!

What would Tony do? How would the Iron Man save the day?

Peter looked around anxiously; begging to any and all deities he had ever heard of, for a sliver of an idea.

Then he stopped.

They hadn’t saved Strange thanks to Tony and his big brain, had they? It hadn’t been thanks to a nerdy high-schooler either; the plan had belonged to the flippy arachnid vigilante, the Spider-Man.

What would Tony do? What should Peter do? They weren’t the ones needed right now; the real question was, what was Spider-Man going to do?

It had been a long while since Peter had last picker up the vigilante persona, since he had last put on the mask. He hadn’t wanted to do so. He couldn’t have borne to do so.

But the situation wasn’t a want-or-not type of situation; or a manage-or-fail. The situation wasn’t up for discussion, people were in danger, and he had the power to help them. So, he was going to.

Yes, it had been a long while since Peter had last been the Spider-Man.

But luckily, he didn’t need to put in a lot of effort to step into the personality of the vigilante; it was as easy as flipping on a switch.

Peter took in a deep breath, closed his eyes, let it out, and opened them as a hero.

He looked around again.

Yes, the goons were holding off the escape routes, in case one of the hostages managed to get out of the cuffs and tried to run away. But the track to the bus was clear. And the doors of it was open. And the engine was still on.

A plan began to form in Peter’s mind. He got ready.

The pump was directly in his line of both sight and fire. He held his breath, aimed his web-shooter carefully, and shot. Bullseye! Peter smirked to himself; pump successfully clogged.

Feeling the weight of a curious gaze on himself, he looked around to see which of the hostages had caught the action. But they were all staring at Batman and Crane; and the goons too. Upon seeing that, Peter turned his attention back to the ongoing conversation/negotiation; but Batman and Scarecrow had their attention on each other as well.

Just a step to their left though, stood Robin; eerie white lenses trained on Peter, and the smallest crease of a frown on his mask.

Peter almost shuddered. He shook his head to get lost of the unease.

Turning back to what he was doing a moment ago; Peter carefully bent one of hoops of the cuffs holding his wrists together, and broke it. Trying to hide that he was now free, he got ready to pounce.

You see, clogging the pump had been a momentary solution only, because the pressure building in it could and would cause an explosion. A small one, but still; it could hurt people, and even if it didn’t, there was still the factor of the fear gas.

So, clogging the pump had been a momentary solution only. In order to actually do something useful, in order to actually help, he was going to need to do more. Much more.

Good thing he had a plan.

Peter gave a quick sweep of his surroundings for the last time; and then pounced. He grabbed the pump, and ran towards the bus; dodging a goon and kicking another one. He was aware of everyone’s, especially Batman’s eyes on him; but he didn’t pay it any mind.

He threw himself inside the bus, and punched the big red button, slamming the doors. He wasted no time webbing them up afterwards, and also the windows too. His spider senses started buzzing insistently, and Peter knew his time was almost over.

He put down the pump and slid it across the floor; putting on his rebreather as quickly as he could, and kneeling down to shelter himself from the explosion.

5.

He wrapped his arms around his neck.

4.

His eyes clenched shut.

3.

He hoped his rebreather wouldn’t fall off.

2.

His senses gave a shriek, but unfortunately, he had nowhere to go.

1.

Boom.

He had been right; the explosion was pretty mild. It didn’t even cause a hole on the bus’s floor. But it was still deteriorating. It took Peter a moment to bear his surroundings, and an even longer one to tamp down his panic at being engulfed in a green fog.

This wasn’t Beck’s illusions; he wasn’t being deceived. Granted, what the gas did to you was similar enough; but still. It wasn’t Beck, it couldn’t be Beck. Beck was dead and buried in a different universe. He couldn’t hurt him.

He took in a deep breath through his rebreather, and let it out slowly; getting a hold of himself.

He could hear commotion from outside, and went to the closest window to squint out at the fight going on. Batman and Robin had begun kicking Scarecrow’s and his henchmen’s asses. The hostages had finally put on their rebreathers, and were just waiting for the masked crusaders to be done with now. Most of them looked like they just wanted to get home and get a drink.

The fight ended when Robin gave Scarecrow a swift cut across his calf, and Batman knocked him out cold with a strong punch. He then told Robin to go and release the hostages after zipping up Crane and his goons; and began approaching the bus quickly.

His body language seemed to read as worried, and anxious; but Peter couldn’t be sure.

For one thing; the bus was completely filled with the green gas, and it was blocking his vision pretty well. For another thing; why would the Batman be worried about him? The guy didn’t even know him.

Peter gave a wave to try to get the guy’s attention when he thought that the vigilante was close enough to see him, despite the layer of green fog between them. Seriously, why was this stuff so thick? Peter was standing right by the window, and he thought that there was a pretty real chance that Batman still wouldn’t be able to see him.

Luckily though, the caped crusader had great eye-sight, and caught Peter’s wave at his second try. Yay! Small miracles.

Peter felt an anxious-analytic-worried gaze sweep over him and saw the guy’s shoulders losing a bit of their tension. Huh. I guess Batman was worried about him. Peter didn’t know what to do with that information.

“Father.” He heard Robin announce as the kid came up to the man. “Crane and his henchmen are neutralized, and the hostages are freed. Oracle says that police will be here in fifteen minutes. What are we going to-” He cut off once he saw Peter peering at him through the green layer and the window.

“Hi.” Peter signed. “I’m Peter.”

Batman and Robin stared at him for a whole moment before Batman finally recovered from his shock. He began signing something, but Peter was quick to stop him.

“Stop. You talk, I will hear. I hear good.”

The black vigilante blinked at him before what Peter hoped he had managed to say clicked in his mind, and he gave a nod. “Peter. Don’t worry, we will get you out in no time. You’re alright, just keep your rebreather on and stay where you are. Robin,” He turned to the katana wielding ten-year-old. “Go around the bus and break a window a safe distance from Peter, and get him out.”

“Yes, Batman.”

Robin disappeared from his line of sight, and a moment later, Peter heard a glass breaking. A small hand clasped around his wrist, and he allowed the kid to drag him out.

As soon as he was on solid ground, he turned around to web-up the window Robin had broken to enter the bus. His webs were going to dissolve in three to four hours; but maybe until then, Batman could find a way to filter the toxic air inside.

“What is that substance?” Robin asked. “Does it come out of you?” His tone wasn’t disgusted; only a bit disturbed. But Peter understood it. Antman and Wasp had weirded him out too, and he was an arachnid.

“These are my webs. And, no, they don’t come out of me, they come out of my web-shooters. Here,” He showed Robin the bracelet looking cuffs around his wrists, and then shot at a nearby street-lamp. “They are modified; I make them myself, with chemicals.”

“Impressive.” Batman said from behind, and Peter quickly turned around.

“Thanks.” He answered, keeping a small distance between them.

“Though I don’t know why you would need them as a normal citizen.”

Peter couldn’t see it, but he knew there was a frown on the guy’s face under the cowl right now. He was wondering if Peter was truly a normal citizen, and he was dangerously close to figuring out that he wasn’t.

Peter gave an internal smirk, what if he messed with the guy a bit?

“What if I’m not?”

“Not?”

“A normal citizen. What if I’m not a normal citizen?”

“Then I would wonder what you are, if not a normal citizen.”

“Well, I guess that is for me to know, and for you to go mad wondering about.” This time, he couldn’t tamp down his smirk.

Batman was opening his mouth to retort when he got cut off by a familiar voice. “Peter!”

Peter was immediately hit with a thrum of safe-safe-paternal-content-happy-safe, before he even recognized the owner of the voice. The feeling only intensified when he did.

Nightwing engulfed him in a bear hug, and quite literally swept him off his feet. Peter couldn’t help the giggle that escaped him, and hugged back the blue vigilante equally fiercely.

“Oh, my Gosh! Are you okay?! Are you hurt?! Do you need an antidote??” Wing rambled anxiously.

Peter gave him a sunny smile. “I’m fine, I had a rebreather. Hood gave it to me a couple weeks ago.”

“Fuck, thank God for him and his paranoias. Are you sure you’re okay though, Hon? That must’ve been very scary.”

“I’m okay, Mom, you can stop fretting. Why are you even here? It’s Thursday, aren’t you supposed to be at Blüdhaven?”

Nightwing gave a shrug. “I’ve been trying to visit more often for a while now, during some week-days too. And you got lucky; I was both in the city, and round the area. Oracle contacted me, and I came as soon as I can.” A small pause, then, a murmured, “Wanted to make sure you were okay.”

It was too low for a normal person to hear, but Peter, of course, caught it with his enhanced hearing. He pretended not to though. Yet another thing he didn’t know what to do with.

“Hey, what’s that?” Wing asked, gesturing at Peter’s webs.

“Those are Parker’s cobwebs.” Robin answered for him.

Nightwing blinked. “Peter’s what.”

“How about you take him home, and he explains on the way there. Me and Robin can deal with the arrests.” Batman said.

“Are you sure? I can stay and help.”

“Yes.”

They shared a look. Peter didn’t understand how they managed it through the white lenses of the domino masks, but they did. He supposed if he worked with someone for over ten years, he would get good at reading them too.

“Okay then. Come on, kiddo, let’s take you home.”

Peter climbed onto Nightwing’s back easily, and the vigilante grappled them away. He shouted how he made his webs into the guy’s ears through the wind the whole way, and giggled when the science part of it flew right over the guy’s head without a single delay.

Once inside the stationery, Nightwing gave him a quick check-up and then went out to get some food. They devoured the pizza in mere minutes, and began chatting. Only after a little while, did the blue vigilante shot up with a glint in his eyes, and turned to Peter excitedly.

“You were interested in gymnastics, right?”

Peter shared the glint. “Yes?”

“Wanna see something cool?”

“Yes!”

***

DAY 49: Thursday

THE BAT-CHAT

Damian: Parker was in an accident with the Crane today.

Damian: Gordon has the details.

Jason: What.

Duke: Is he okay?

Tim: Did he get gassed??

Steph: What happened???

Damian: Parker is fine.

Damian: You may get the details from Gordon.

Jason: Barbara??

Barbara: Baby Bat is correct; the kid is fine.

Barbara: He had the rebreather you gave him.

Jason: Oh, thank God.

Barbara: He still jumped head-first into danger though, as usual.

Jason: Oh, fuck.

Jason: What did he do now?

Tim: Yeah, what happened?

Tim: How did Peter even end up in a half-baked Scarecrow scheme.

Barbara: Crane barricaded an alley and took a whole bus as hostages.

Barbara: Peter was on the bus.

Barbara: His henchmen chained them around an automatic pump, filled with the fear gas.

Barbara: Batman and Robin arrived at the scene soon enough, and they began negotiating.

Barbara: You know, the usual, I want to know what your biggest fear is, Batman.

Barbara: I want to see your face, Batman.

Barbara: Show me your fears, Batman.

Barbara: Whatever.

Barbara: While these were happening, the pump was continuing to pump fear gas into the air, and it was going to actually get dangerous real soon.

Barbara: That was when Peter got into action.

Barbara: He broke his chains, grabbed the thing, and ran.

Barbara: He ran into the bus, and closed the doors behind himself; locking himself in along with the pump.

Barbara: I don’t know how what happened next came to happen exactly, but the pump blew up.

Barbara: It was a mild explosion, the bus didn’t even get that much damage, and the kid is completely fine.

Barbara: But yeah.

Barbara: After that, Batman and Robin neutralized Crane and his henchmen; and then they went to free Peter from the bus he had locked himself in.

Jason: He had his rebreather on the whole time, right?

Jason: He didn’t get dosed at all?

Barbara: No Jason, he didn’t.

Barbara: He’s completely fine.

Barbara: No doses, no nightmarish hallucinations for the Little Spider.

Barbara: There is more to talk about though.

Tim: Jesus, what else?

Barbara: The modified webs Peter makes, and the web-shooters he has on his wrist.

Steph: The what and the what?

Barbara: His handmade cobwebs.

Duke: He does what now.

Damian: Cobwebs Thomas, cobwebs.

Damian: I do not understand why this is so hard to understand.

Jason: He has cobwebs??

Jason: Why does he have cobwebs?!

Damian: Father asked a similar question, why he would be needing them as a normal citizen.

Damian: Parker implied that he wasn’t.

Damian: A normal citizen, that is.

Jason: ??

Jason: Excuse me??

Tim: Oh, he has so been experimented on.

Tim: I knew it.

Tim: I fucking knew it.

Steph: Gosh, I hate that you might be right.

Steph: And not only because you’ll be insufferable about it.

Tim: Gee, thanks.

Jason: What else, Baby Bat?

Damian: Unfortunately, father couldn’t ask any further questions as Richard arrived at that moment.

Bruce: Dick took Peter to the stationery.

Bruce: I would imagine he bought him some food and stayed with him for a while afterwards as well.

Bruce: He must’ve wanted to make sure he was alright.

Jason: Got it, we should go and pester him about what’s going on.

Jason: 👍

***

DAY 50: Friday

Jason landed on the roof, and took off his helmet; beginning to wait for the Itsy-Bitsy Spider. It was a weird way of letting him know they were there and waiting; but with there not being a bell at the back door of the stationery, this was the fastest and the most efficient way they had.

Peter’s spider senses alerted him when someone was waiting for him on the roof; which made for a safe and kind of fun way of knocking. He had begun spending less and less time outside, sitting on random rooftops to eat dinner or draw, because of the upcoming winter cold; and this had been the best idea the kid had come up with when asked.

So, Jason was waiting.

And Peter didn’t tend to make him wait for long.

“Hey Hood!” He chirped as he excitedly opened the door to the rooftop; drawing his blanket cape tighter around his shoulders. “Come on in.”

Jason ignored the kid’s shudder for he would be taking care of it soon enough, and wasted no time doing as he was told. “Hey, Pete.”

They walked down the stairs alongside, and Jason could see the faint tremors in the spidey’s frame. He resisted the urge to frown, for it would be seen since he wasn’t wearing his helmet; why was the kid so cold? Why did it affect him so much? It wasn’t that cold.

Yes, it was definitely cold enough to freeze a guy’s balls off outside right now, but that wasn’t the point. The kid was still acting way too sensitive to it than he should be. I mean, sure, Jason knew he was from NY and not a Gothamite; but still. He would’ve expected better from a Queens resident New Yorker.

Maybe it was his spider part that was sensitive to the cold?

…

He was going to need to look into that.

“Whatcha doing here?” The kid asked, as he led him into the back-room.

“Got a job for you.”

“A job?” Peter frowned adorably, pulling the blanket cape onto his legs after he sat down. “What job?”

“Remember that talk we’ve had on the first few weeks we’ve known each other? When I told you that I’d get back at you about paying you for handing out things?”

Recognition flared up in the kid’s eyes, after only a moment of recalling. “Yes. You finally have something to hand out?”

“Yeah. Sorry for not getting back at you on that one for a while, but it wasn’t because of ignorance or forgetfulness; I just didn’t really have things to hand out lately.”

“It’s okay, I get it. So, what are you handing out this time?”

“Coats and boots, for the winter. Every year, I hand them out before the first snow of the year; and it looks like it’ll snow this weekend. So, tonight it is.”

“That’s really nice of you.”

Jason was happy to note that there was no surprise in the kid’s soft murmur; he didn’t think Red Hood was below such a gesture. It was a nice realization.

“So, what do you say?”

“I don’t get paid for the first time, right? As payment for the rebreather?”

“Yeah… But if you’re short on money right now, we can do that some other time. I have plenty of time for you to payback.”

“No, no. It’s alright. I can totally handle doing this right now. It would be good actually, I’m kind of getting bored, holed up here all evening. And finally getting that debt out of my system will help me sleep better at night.”

“If you say so.”

“Yeah. So, what do I do?”

“I’ll pair you with four others, trustworthy people. They’ve done this before too, so they’ll know which shelters to visit and which streets to go to. You guys will have eight boxes in total; forty coats and twenty pairs. Shouldn’t take more than two to three hours to finish them all up.”

“Alright. Tonight, right?”

“Yes. One more thing. If you find a coat or a pair of boots that will fit you, slip them on. We’re giving them to the people in need, and you are obviously in need.”

“What? No, I-”

“Kid, don’t even start. Your coat is way too thin; and your sneakers are not suitable for Gotham winter. Do as I say, I don’t want to find you frozen to death in a ditch.”

Peter bit his lip and looked away. There seemed to be a battle going on in his mind. Jason kept quiet and watched on, as he decided what to do. After a moment, the kid gave a sigh and deflated. “Alright, I will. You’re probably right about the cold thing anyways.”

There seemed to be more to it, more to his reasoning; but Jason didn’t want to push, so he didn’t. The last thing he wanted to do, was to spook Peter out with his meddling. He understood it; how it felt when someone suddenly started caring about you a lot, after a very long time of no one caring for you. He remembered it. So, he let it go.

“Hey. Have you eaten dinner yet?”

Peter looked up at him with wide eyes and an unhappy pout. He shook his head reluctantly.

“Do you like nachos?”

***

DAY 52: Sunday

Red Hood had been right, it was snowing.

The first snow of the year had hit around 3 am that morning, and now Peter was thankful to the red vigilante for forcing a coat and a pair of boots into his possession. It was fucking cold. Peter was sure he was beyond feeling it right now; he could see, hear, and taste the absolute lack of any kind of warmth.

And he was supposed to clock in in an hour.

He had slept in, and missed his breakfast opportunity; so, now he was hurrying into a clean outfit with a sandwich in his mouth, and no time to eat it other than while running to the library.

He cursed when he slipped outside and fell on his ass; ice and concrete making a terrible duo. He got up quickly and continued his steps though; he was not going to let some frozen water make him late for his job for a literal angel of a boss.

The whimpering meow was probably the only thing that could’ve stopped him.

The cat was orange, with some white threads on her paws and tail. The one eye she had, was a warm honey-brown color; and it was squinted tightly, in a useless attempt to shield from the cutting wind. The animal was trembling from the cold.

She looked up at him through her half-lidded eye, and gave another heart-wrenching meow.

Peter immediately grabbed her and doubled back to the stationery.

The kitty didn’t fight his hold; even clung onto him and tried to enter in his coat. He let her, and she began purring.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t stay with her and warm her up, he had a job to get to; so, he just put her onto his bed/couch at the back-room and ran back outside after giving her a bit of food from last night’s leftovers.

He was only two minutes late when he made it.

“Hey Pete.” Babs greeted him at the door, her smile straining up upon seeing him out of breath. “Is everything okay?”

“Y-Yes.” Peter gasped out. “Just ran. To make it. In time.” He said breathlessly.

Understanding downed on her kind face, and she gave a snicker. “It’s okay, kid. You didn’t have to run. I wouldn’t have minded you being a little late.”

“No, I can’t. You’re already very understanding and generous, way more than I could’ve ever hoped my boss to be. Like, you do so much for me; the least I can do is be on time for my job. Anything less would be abusing your kindness.”

Peter wasn’t looking directly at her face, but he could still sense her raised eyebrows and soft smile. She wasn’t exactly shocked, per se; but pleasantly surprised. And impressed. Peter counted it as a win.

“Okay then.” She said. “If you say so. Now let’s start the clean-up.”

Working, thankfully, helped warm him up, because of all the moving around; and Peter’s still-going-micro-shivers ceased. The small heater Barbara had under the front desk also helped with the matter.

His shift passed by in a blur and soon enough Peter was staring out at the falling snow as Babs got ready to close the shutters. He suppressed the shudder he got upon seeing the dark, snowy streets; dreading having to try to make it back to the stationery.

“Do you want me to call a cab for you?”

“Hm?” He turned back to the redhead waiting for his answer. “A cab?”

“Yeah. Because it’s snowing a lot. It shouldn’t take more than fifty bucks, but I can help you out if it’s still not in your budget.”

“Oh, no, no need. I-I can afford it.” Yeah, technically he could. He would just need to ask Red Hood or Nightwing or someone for food and other needs the next time he saw them. For the next or so, probably. “But, uhm… I don’t think it’s necessary.” But he didn’t want to do that.

His encounter with the Jokerz a little while ago had proved to him that he needed to screw his pride and accept help more, if he wanted to survive. And he was doing that; trying to, at least. He had been allowing the vigilantes to buy him food and gift him things, take care of him and look after him, since the incident.

It was just that, it was hard for him to ask them for things; he wasn’t at that level of it yet. But they were always offering to help him anyways; so, he just needed to let them. And he was! But asking them for things because he had wasted his money on a cab when it was too cold to walk home for his tastes? Yeah, no, he couldn’t do that.

Cold or no, he would just have to suck it up; he was in no position to waste money on anything but essentials. And a cab on a cold day, was not exactly an essential. Plus, he had on the coat and the boots Hood had given him the other day. He would be fine.

“Are you sure, Little Duck?”

The nickname drew a smile from him. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll be fine.”

“If you say so.”

“Goodnight, Babs. I’ll see you next week.”

“Alright then. Goodnight Peter, I’ll be looking forward to the weekend.”

It didn’t take him that long to make it back to be stationery, but it was a very tiring journey. So tiring that he didn’t even have the energy to eat once he got inside, only took off his heavy clothes before falling into his bed-couch. The orange cat from earlier that day, jumped in as well and laid next to him under the covers. She felt warm.

“I thinkk I’mma call ya… Maple.” Peter slurred as he hugged the animal close and shut his eyes. He didn’t know why he was so tired all of a sudden, but didn’t even have it in himself to wonder it. All he knew was, that he wanted to sleep. Surely a nap couldn’t hurt, right?

…

But it could.

***

DAY 54: Tuesday

THE BAT-CHAT

Tim: Guys, anyone knows where Peter is?

Tim: He didn’t come to school yesterday and he’s absent today too.

Tim: He never missed school before, not even when he was shot.

Tim: It’s concerning.

Jason: Haven’t seen him in a week.

Dick: I left Sunday morning.

Dick: Last saw him Thursday evening, after the Scarecrow accident.

Barbara: He came to the library for his shift on the weekend.

Barbara: He seemed a bit off, but I assumed it was the cold weather.

Barbara: I offered to call him a cab, and even said that I would help him pay for it if he didn’t have the budget right now; but he said that he could pay, just didn’t think it necessary.

Barbara: He left.

Steph: In that snow?

Steph: I wonder if he even made it home.

Barbara: He must have.

Barbara: He should have.

Barbara: Isn’t he supposed to be very strong and durable or something?

Barbara: Surely, he must’ve handled a bit of snow?

Damian: Tt, spiders are sensitive to extreme cold.

Damian: I’m surprised you didn’t think of this Gordon, I would’ve expected better from you.

Barbara: I should’ve forced him to take the damn cab.

Barbara: Or texted one of you to check up on him and make sure he made it home.

Barbara: Fuck.

Dick: It’s alright.

Dick: It’s not your fault.

Dick: And we’ll find him.

Dick: Jason, can you check the stationery?

Jason: I’m out of town right now, Dickie.

Jason: An Outlaws thing.

Jason: Tim, Duke?

Jason: Can you guys skip school?

Tim: Sure.

Duke: Yeah man, it’s okay.

Steph: What about me?

Tim: Weren’t you stabbed, like, a week ago?

Steph: That was a whole week ago, I’m fine.

Bruce: You’re still on bed-rest Stephanie, and it doesn’t end for the next few days.

Bruce: You will stay at home.

Steph: Ugh.

Steph: You’re not my father, you don’t tell me what to do.

Bruce: I’ll tell Alfred.

Steph: I’ll sit on my bed and eat my vegetables like a good little girl.

Bruce: Good.

Bruce: Tim, Duke?

Bruce: Your doctor notes are ready.

Bruce: Leave.

Tim: K.

Duke: On our way.

Damian: Do you need my assistance?

Steph: Oh, Dami, you care!

Damian: Nonsense.

Damian: I simply do not wish to deal with what a crybaby Richard will be if something was to happen to Parker, is all.

Steph: Whatever you say, you secret softie.

Damian: Tt.

Duke: No thanks Damian.

Duke: I think we’ll be good.

Tim: Yeah.

Cass: Careful.

Tim: We’re always careful Cass.

Cass: No.

Cass: Careful for Spider Nephew.

Cass: Smol Baby.

Cass: Must Protect.

Steph: 🤣

Tim: Got it Cass.

Tim: Thanks for the sisterly concern.

Cass: 👍

***

DAY 54: Tuesday

There was a pair of hands on his shoulders, shaking him awake; a familiar voice urging him to the land of the living. He gave a groan at that; he didn’t want to wake up. He wanted to keep sleeping, stay warm and sated under the covers. But the voice sounded very urgent, and Peter didn’t like it when his friends were distressed.

He pried open his eyes to be looking at a very panicked Red Robin.

“Wha’?”

“Peter!” RR shouted, giving the most relieved sigh Peter had ever seen in his life. “Thank fuck you woke up.”

Signal’s head popped up in his line of sight. He put an anxious hand on his forehead. “Fuck, he feels cold. He feels very cold. Why does he feel so cold, it’s not cold enough in the room for him to be this cold?! His lips are literally purple, what the fuck!”

“Whyy’re ya here?” Peter forced out, his words slurring together. He didn’t understand what was going on.

“You were missing and we got worried.”

“Missin’?” What?

“Yes, Peter, it’s Tuesday. We haven’t seen you anywhere since Sunday, and we know that you don’t miss school, and we got worried.”

“Tuesday? Oh no.” And the light bulb above his head, finally lit.

Gotham’s infamous winter cold. The exhaustion he had felt on Sunday evening. The ice cube of a body he had right now. And the fact that he had gone to nap a bit and slept through two whole days.

He had been hibernating.

He actually still was, with how close to falling back asleep he was right now.

And that was such an awful idea.

Hibernation was one of his more useless and actually dangerous abilities; he couldn’t control it at all, and didn’t have enough experience to anticipate it. It also made him weak and vulnerable against threats, because he couldn’t wake up in his own accord. Moreover, Peter was no longer as cold resilient as he used to be, as a normal human. He could drop during the temperatures other people could function normally. And that, specifically, sucked.

“Yeah. Wish you had told us you were sick, buddy, we would’ve helped you.”

“I really don’t think this is sickness, my dude.” Signal stressed. “The flu doesn’t really turn you into an ice cube, you know. Not to mention his enhanced healing abilities. How would he even get sick?”

“Signal’s righ’. I’m not ssick. Jus’ hibernatin’.”

“… You doing what now.”

Peter didn’t get the memo that the question was rhetorical. “Hi-ber-na-ting.” He put extra care to pronounce it fully. “Spiders… They can’t th-thermoreg’late.”

“What does that even mean?!”

Peter would explain if he didn’t need to pry open his eyes every time he blinked.

Red Robin, being the observant and the calm cold-blooded one out of the duo, luckily caught up on that. “How can we help?”

“Warmth… I n-need… Warmth…”

Usually, animals needed specific hormones to wake up from hibernation. But being only half spider and still mostly human, Peter hadn’t picked up too much of a spider-like manner about the cold. He didn’t need as much warmth as the spiders did, to secrete those hormones and wake up. And it happened a hell of a lot faster.

Essentially, it was mostly like a switch. Too little warmth caused him to drop and sleep, and increasing the temperature fixed it. It was just that the ‘fixing’ part usually took a while; and it could end pretty badly for him if it didn’t happen for a long time.

He wasn’t fully a spider, as established earlier; he couldn’t hibernate as long as they could, without dying from malnourishment.

“Signal… L-Light… Warmf…”

The two vigilantes got the message and RR transformed him to Signal’s awaiting arms quickly. “I don’t know if this will work how you’re wanting it to Peter; I do, after all, only have light powers, not warmth. But I’ll do my best.”

“K-Kay…”

“Wait.” Red cut them off, just as Signal was about to start. “Aren’t spiders sensitive to light as well? Some species at least? Are you sensitive to light?”

“Mhm.” An affirmative.

“Then what are we-”

“Blindfold… I got a sh-shawl… In the bag…”

“A shawl?”

“B-Black.”

Red went over and dug out the shawl Peter was talking about, from his bag of clothes; and tied it over the hazel eyes carefully. He brushed back his hair afterwards, and tucked him further info the yellow vigilante’s side with blankets. “There you go.”

Peter gave a groan in thanks. “Mhm.”

“Now, let’s try this thing.” With that; Signal took in a deep breath, and began pulling at the lights in the room.

And Peter was immediately very thankful for having the shawl over his eyes. He could literally feel the shift in the room; even see the lights heading towards them, through his blindfold and eyelids. And he could definitely feel the light erupting around him.

The bubble of sunshine wrapped around his body, sinking under the blankets and sticking to him like a second skin; and Peter gasped at the feeling. It felt amazing. He was completely engulfed in warmth, wrapped up in it like a cocoon, and laying on a soft surface that was also his masked friend.

Purr.

He heard his friends’ breaths hitch upon the sound he let out, but couldn’t find it in himself to care for it since the warmth around his body didn’t disappear or stutter. He was too tired and gone to panic about RR and Signal’s reaction to his purring.

“Oh. My. God.”

“Holy shit. Fuck me, he’s cute. Fuck me, he’s so cute.”

“I understand it now. I totally understand why Nightwing would want a recording of this sound now. Dude, this is better than cats.”

“I know.”

“Meow!” Maple added her bit to the conversation from where she was laying under the bed, startling the boys. Peter would’ve been very sad if he knew he had missed the boys’ matching expressions of total shock upon seeing the one-eyed orange cat.

The rest of their conversation flied over his head; he was feeling too sleepy to keep listening. He fell into the blissful daze between awake and asleep, and basked in the light Signal was casting around him. His purring only intensified.

It took them almost three hours at mediocre light powers and thick blankets to bring Peter back to the coherent world. Signal got pretty worn out and needed five-minute breaks throughout the process, but they managed. Maple gave them lots of kisses and cuddles for helping Peter.

In the end, Peter woke up at the two hours and forty-seven minutes mark; to two distressed vigilantes, and one happy cat.

“Mhm.” He groaned as he stretched, after pulling off the covers and taking off the blindfold. “Morning, you guys. How are you two doing?”

“How are we doing? How are we doing?!” Red shouted incredulously. “We’re going crazy with worry of course, that’s how we’re doing! How could you not tell us that this was a possibility, Peter? How could you hide having such an ability? How could you not ask for help or at least let us know you were going to start hibernating? What if you had died?!”

“Wow, okay, calm down Stalker Bird; you’re spiraling right now. First of all, I didn’t hide being able to hibernate from you guys; I just forgot to tell you. It’s a normal occurrence, people can forget stuff. And it’s not like this happens often either; I’ve only hibernated once before in my life, and that was the time I discovered that I had this ability.

“Secondly; I couldn’t have just asked you guys for help, or let you know, because I didn’t know that I was going to hibernate either, it just happened. I thought I was just taking a nap, but now it’s Tuesday noon and I have slept through the past thirty-six hours or so. But that wasn’t my choice or irresponsibility. I don’t know the symptoms of this thing, I never tested it, I didn’t want to. I had no way of knowing I was going to hibernate, with only one experience of the occurrence below my belt.

“And thirdly; yeah, probably. You’re right. About the dying part, I mean. Theoretically. But I didn’t.” Maple meowed from behind them, and Peter immediately turned around to make some not-very-humanly crooning sounds at her. He called her over, and she jumped onto his lap at once; purring and snuggling at him.

Signal and Red Robin needed a second to processes his words before blowing up.

“You forgot?!”

“You can’t control or foresee this?!”

“How long can you sleep for?!”

“Died?! Like, for real, you could’ve?!”

Peter answered calmly. “Yes, yes, no idea, and maybe.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

***

DAY 54: Tuesday

THE BAT-CHAT

Dick: Guys, I get that you sent notice with Babs.

Dick: But seriously, how much longer are we going to wait until you give a real explanation of what’s going on?

Dick: Because the only two sentences Babs passed along to us were, ‘We found him.’ And ‘He isn’t actively dying.’ which were both very un-satisfying.

Dick: I am very un-satisfied right now.

Tim: Okay, so…

Tim: Peter’s fine.

Tim: We found him at the stationery; he was asleep.

Tim: At first, we thought he was just sick.

Tim: But then we realized that he wasn’t.

Tim: It took us a couple tries to manage to wake him up.

Tim: And we only found out what was actually going on, when he did; and then explained.

Tim: Turns out, our spider-mutate friend can hibernate sometimes.

Tim: Because spiders can’t thermoregulate.

Tim: Which basically means that he passes out and stays unconscious during too low temperatures, until it gets warmer; I guess.

Tim: He’s okay now though.

Tim: We woke him up and Duke warmed him with his light abilities.

Tim: And then we ate some soup.

Duke: Also, small addition, he can’t control and can’t foresee his hibernation abilities.

Duke: He says he thought he was just going to nap a bit, on Sunday, when he went to sleep.

Duke: And on another note; hibernation, by proxy extreme cold, can maybe possibly kill him.

Duke: Peter’s not sure, he never tested this ability before.  

Duke: So,

Duke: Yeah…

Barbara: Are you fucking serious right now.

Jason: What the fuck?

Steph: Excuse me.

Cass: ???

Dick: What.

Dick: He hibernates??

Dick: He has been hibernating for the past two days???

Dick: He can die from it?!

Dick: And he can’t even control or predict it?!

Tim: Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

Dick: Oh, my fucking God.

Tim: Don’t worry, Dick; he’s alright now.

Tim: Awake and functioning, not drowsy at all.

Duke: Yes, and to ensure that it wouldn’t happen again, we got him some things.

Duke: To help him stay warm.

Duke: A small electric heater, some weighted blankets, hot beverages like tea and cocos, and a kettle to go with them.

Tim: He looked like he was gonna protest, so I opened the window to let him see just how cold it was outside and that shut his mouth quickly.

Duke: Yeah.

Duke: He also has a cat now, apparently.

Duke: She’s orange and only has one eye and he named her Maple.

Duke: The guy can’t buy himself food regularly, but he adopts a stray and spoils it to no end.

Damian: Do not call an animal ‘it’ in my vicinity Thomas, lest I be forced to cut out your tongue in your sleep.

Duke: …

Tim: Just say okay.

Duke: Alright Damian, whatever you say.

Tim: He also webbed up the cracks on the walls and the broken windows.

Tim: So, that’s proactive too.

Tim: The place thoroughly looked like a spider nest when we were leaving, with how much cobwebs there were everywhere.

Tim: But whatever keeps him alive, I guess.

Cass: Spider Nephew smart and capable.

Tim: Yes, he is Cass.

Steph: B, we gotta kidnap him to the manor before the cold or the muggers or the starvation gets to him first.

Steph: Seriously, for a guy as smart and strong and capable and durable as he is; Peter’s surely not putting much effort into surviving.

Bruce: I think he is putting in effort.

Bruce: And I think him being as smart and strong and capable and durable as he is the only reason he’s managing to survive in the first place.

Bruce: I can’t see a child like him getting by in Gotham with as little as Peter has; without super powers and constant help from vigilantes.

Jason: Unfortunately, that is very true.

Jason: Despite my very best efforts.

Bruce: But you’re still right, Stephanie.

Bruce: It can’t keep going on like this.

Dick: Bruce.

Dick: Bruce.

Dick: No.

Dick: If anyone’s bringing him to the manor, it’s gonna be me.

Dick: If anyone’s adopting my son, that’ll be me, Bruce.

Bruce: I’m not trying to steal your son chum.

Bruce: I’m trying to ask you when you’re going to take him in.

Bruce: Do you have a plan in mind, about what to do?