The next morning Peter was awoken by blinding beams of late morning sun flooding into the room through an uncurtained window and an intense pain in his lower back. He'd spent the night at his apartment, and although it was only one night, it was enough to make him wonder how he'd managed to survive sleeping on a $120 piece of e-commerce crap mattress for as long as he had. He had been tortured in the past, more than once, and couldn't help but think that they'd have gotten a lot further with it if they'd just made him sleep in that awful bed. Eventually he manage to escape the memory foam torture rack, maneuver himself into a standing position, and shuffle into the bathroom where he took care of the morning rituals that all people had to practice. Feeling somewhat refreshed and incredibly achy he walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge.
Empty, of course.
He had long ago chucked the sad head of cabbage and the ancient TV dinner and now was left with a refrigerator as barren as Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard. The reserve of chips and cookies he kept in the cabinet above the sink was equally devoid of sustenance, the victim of one too many post-heroing snacking raids. He eyed the garbage bin as he navigated a very complicated internal struggle before shaking his head and turning away. Sure, they were wrapped in plastic and the bin was empty save for some discarded junk mail, but he still had his pride.
Fifteen minutes later he was slicing cheese to place on his crackers as he chewed on cured sausage. Yeah, sure, he still had his pride. It was important. But dammit he loved that fancy jam and he damned well deserved it.
Breakfast taken care of, he settled into the thirdhand couch in the living room and flicked on the TV, groaning as his sore ribs moved in a way he wished they wouldn't have. As a talkshow host blathered on endlessly about Ben Grimm's new book, 'Ain't Full of Schist', Peter reflected on yesterday's events.
How, exactly, had he come to be comrades in arms with Doc Ock? It wasn't the first time he'd had to team up with a bad guy to take down a worse guy. Being a superhero could make for some pretty strange bedfellows. Bedfellow triggered a memory he wished it hadn't and he shuddered as he remembered a very niche short story he'd come across online a few years ago, for some reason the writer was very intent on pointing out just how… Sweaty Otto could get sometimes. This was different though, the main thing going through his head at the hotel hadn't been taking care of Carlyle, certainly not once he'd torn the supports out and made good his escape. It had been keeping Otto safe.
He was always about keeping people safe even at the risk of his own wellbeing, it was kind of his schtick, but the level of concern he'd felt for an old man who had tried to murder him on more than one occasion was a little bit disconcerting. He supposed that when you 'worked' with someone often enough it was inevitable that you would come to respect them at the very least, it didn't hurt that Otto was a brilliant man in spite of the things he had done. And honestly, when it came to his villains, Otto was skewed a bit more towards the 'Not A Murderous Psychopath' end of the spectrum. Yes his actions had resulted in the injury of more than one person, which was something he couldn't stand, but he'd also never killed an innocent.
Not in this timeline anyway, that Liv… She seemed a lot more unhinged.
In the end Peter chalked it up to a synchronized softening of the both of them, he had ended up a lot more forgiving as his hair had gotten greyer and Otto had grown much less violent in his old age. He hoped Ock would retire for good this time, it would certainly make Peter a lot less trepidatious about letting him go.
What had happened had happened, there was no use being all mopey about what he'd done. Better to be prepared for the consequences.
Having dealt with his crisis of conscience he decided he should probably start figuring out his day. He pulled his 'Spider-Phone' out of the faraday cage where he kept it and powered it on, connecting it to wifi automatically through a VPN routed through somewhere in Mumbai. He'd set up a hardware toggle for both the cellular connection and the GPS, but it still never hurt to be careful hence the Faraday cage and the VPN. He'd made a lot of stupid mistakes over the years. In addition to apparently making him a real softie when it came to his attempted murderers, it had also made him incredibly paranoid about being tracked down.
Unsurprisingly, he found that there was already an email from Devereaux very enthusiastically informing him that the film-rights contract had already been drawn up last night along with an attached copy, if he had time he'd have to swing by to sign things over. With his identity being unknown, he wondered if it would work the same way the restaurant had. That had been… Complicated. Very complicated.
He fired off a reply telling Bo he'd try to 'swing' by that afternoon and powered down the phone and put it back in it's signal-blocking pouch then picked up his 'Peter-Phone', already powered up of course, because Peter Parker was just a normal person. Honestly.
Mostly.
Sometimes.
There was a text from Joey.
Haven't heard anything about a buyer from Craig, but something weird's going on. One of his friends is just gone. Was saying he couldn't come up with money from what he'd sold two weeks in a row and then… Gone. His mom reported him missing to the cops yesterday.
Great, now kids were disappearing. If the guy had been knocked off for not paying up then it meant that whoever was behind this wasn't afraid to murder someone, it added a ticking clock element to the situation. The longer I take the more people are going to die.
He didn't like people dying when he was involved, it felt irresponsible.
As he mulled over the situation and possible ways to deal with it, the phone let out a loud, high-pitched ding and buzzed in his hand, a text from Mary Jane.
Hey, Tiger. What do you think of your big, bad archnemesis?
Along with the message was a photo of the costume test, A skintight leather catsuit that looked too tight to be comfortable but in all the right places, she wore a platinum blonde wig, and was wearing subtle metallic green eye makeup and lipstick. On most people it would have looked ridiculous, but she managed to pull it off without even trying.
Looks like you stepped out of one of your high end fashion ads from the early 2000s.
Oh nooo. In a good way or bad way? Maybe it's the lighting. I promise it will look different on film. We are still playing around with makeup.
Even though he was married to someone in the business, he didn't know much about production timeframes, but if they'd already started with wardrobe they must have been moving fast. Guess MJ had been right, they really were just swapping him for the weirdo dressed as a lobster. It wouldn't exactly be a biopic, but maybe that was for the best.
He suddenly hoped that they had very good screenwriters working on things.
I think you look great. Can all of my enemies look as good as you do? Who are you supposed to be and where are your freckles?
He added a frowning emoji then tapped the send icon figuring that was that, but he received a reply almost instantly. Another photo, this one of an actor she'd worked with on her show. Mark, he hadn't exactly gone camping with the guy but the few times he'd met him he'd seemed alright.
Wow that's almost a perfect replica of my suit! What's Mark doing there? What happened to the music kid?
This time he actually had time to take a breath before her reply came in. That woman had fingers made of lightning or something.
There's a 20 minute origin sequence, they decided he'd take that role. Originally the character was aged down by about 15 years, but with how long you've been around the writer decided nobody wanted to see a movie about a younger version of you. BTW your real name is apparently Aaron Spencer, thought you'd like to know. They figured your name's more memorable if it has 2 vowels.
More memorable? His name was already alliterative, it was plenty memorable!
What about you? You don't look like an Osborn.
If they were doing some kind of origin then someone analogous to the Goblin since getting the rights to his supervillain alter-ego from the deadman's estate would probably be a little contentious. He didn't know if he cared for that.
It's a secret. Can't go leaking the whole script now. Got something to take care of call you later.
There was also a heart emoji at the end of the text. It was stupid, but he liked getting those from her.
Talk to you later, you tease. Miss you.
Anybody reading their texts would probably see them as obnoxious, but that was the hypothetical reader's problem not theirs. MJ having gone back to whatever Hollywood magician was working with her on wardrobe, Peter switched back to Joey's text. Classes would be starting again in a few days and he didn't want to lose his window. Once his nose was back to the grindstone for education, he'd be limited in how long he could spend swinging from webs. Whether it was the right moral choice or not, he had to eat and in order to do that he had to be able to hold down a job.
As he considered how he was going to handle the situation before him he noticed a tickling sensation across his left hand, resting on the arm of the couch. Looking down he saw a small spider making its way lazily across his fingers, its long legs navigating across the crevices between them. If he wasn't mistaken it was an orb weaver spider, the same species that had almost given his sister-in-law a heart attack when they'd skittered en masse across the kitchen counters.
"You again? I don't remember sending out any invites, go home. I'm busy." Orb weavers weren't dangerous to humans and great little exterminators in their own right, he didn't want to hurt the little guy. Or girl. Whatever, it was a spider and he didn't want to squish the thing. He looked around the living room, trying to see if it had a web somewhere he could drop him off. He could start a new arachnid rideshare program: Parkr, delivering you straight to your… Web, he guessed. To his surprise though the spider decided then that it was time to go making its way rapidly from his hand, to the arm of the couch, and over the side where it disappeared. He leaned over to see where it had gone, but it was as though the spider had just vanished into thin air.
"Hey, buddy? Where'd you go? I'd have given you a lift." Shockingly, the orb weaver reappeared from around the back of the couch that it had scuttled to, and made its way back over to his hand as Peter stared in awe. It sat there for a moment, then stared up at him with it's many, many eyes, almost as though it were asking him where they were going.
Was he… Was he communicating with a spider? He'd made his share of jokes about it, even gotten a gunman to release his hostages by bluffing that he could summon them, but this? This was something entirely new. He was still a scientist, and as a scientist he would have to test out whether or not this theory of his held any water.
"Do me a favor pal, could you scoot a bit over to the side?" He knew he was being crazy, he could not talk to spiders, talking to animals was stupid. But no, the spider responded by shuffling its way over almost to the tip of his pinky.
Jeez, Pal. You didn't have to go that far, could've left yourself a little room.
He hadn't so much as uttered a word, but still the spider took a few steps forward on its arched, stalklike legs, stepping away from the edge.
Okay. Alright. Okay.
So.
So, he could apparently not only talk to spiders, but he could talk telepathically to spiders.
Wow.
Pym was going to be so pissed when he found out his schtick had been stolen. Also, oh yeah, he could talk to freakin' spiders!
What?!
When had this happened?! He thought back to the previous day, Gayle's conniption as a parade of arachnids had marched their way across the counters, an odd sight to be fair, but odder still was that they had politely let themselves out when he'd asked them to. That was the first time he could recall anything even remotely similar happening, and it coincided neatly with his spider-sense going on the fritz. Were the two connected? They had to be.
His powers were changing, he didn't know if the ability to talk to spiders was a fair trade for a quasi-psychic preemptive danger warning, but it was what he had to deal with.
"If only you were a better conversationalist." The tiny orb weaver's only response was to lift its forelegs high in the air and wiggle them at him. He supposed that the poor guy was at least making an effort. He lifted his hand to a nearby window he'd cracked for some airflow the previous night, and before he could even utter a word the spider silently tiptoed off his hand, onto the sill, and out into the sunlight. "Go spin your webs, little buddy, you deserve it."
Now alone with his thoughts and not so much as a spider to talk to, Peter decided he had to do something to take his mind off of worrying. Yes, his powers had changed but maybe they had settled down, sitting and ruminating on what was going to come next… It just wasn't very Spider-Man, was it? He stood up, maybe he couldn't know what the future was going to bring but he could at least put his food away. He might be able to talk to spiders, but roaches were a totally different species, he somehow felt they wouldn't be interested in what he had to say.
As he stood in the kitchen wrapping the cheese and crackers in cling film, he went to move the basket aside, jostling loose the notecard he'd read last night. Enjoy the food, P. -Zekes. Zekes? Who called themselves Zekes? That was a terrible nickname. He peered closer at the hand-printed card and realized that there was a tiny space between the 'e' and the 's', he wasn't calling himself 'Zekes', it was 'Zeke S'. Although to be honest, Zeke wasn't really a massive improvement in the nickname department. Sure he'd called him that first, but owning it? He wasn't sure if that was a power-move or just embarrassing.
Maybe the guy who'd started off trying to call himself 'The Human Spider' shouldn't be too judgemental though. Glass houses and all that.
He pulled his thoughts away from his embarrassing early days and back to the present. Ezekiel was on the older side of things, but Peter didn't think that was a name that had topped the charts since colonial times. He'd obviously not been hurting for money given the clothes he'd been jumping around in, he couldn't be too hard to find. Right?
Right it turned out.
He might not have a high-tech crime computer, but he did have Google. He'd only typed the name and first initial when autocomplete did its job unbidden: Ezekiel Sims. A little bit more hunting and pecking on the keyboard and he'd managed to turn up a business, 'Sims Holdings', complete with an address right in Manhattan. This was easy, it never sat well with him when things were easy. That was always when things started sliding downhill.
Extra searching around didn't turn up any additional information though, this was what he had to go on. Feeling trepidatious, he went to get dressed. At least he'd be able to kill two birds with one stone, Sims Tower wasn't far from the address that Bo Devereux had given him.
It was time for Spider-Man to sign his life away.
On the way to Manhattan he'd noticed he was driving right past Joey's neighborhood, being the fan of condensing work down where he could he decided that before Sims Tower, before Devereux's office, he'd stop in with Joey. This was his real work, not signing movie deals or chasing down rich old men messing with him.
Helping people.
He did find himself reflecting on the fact that he really did spend a lot of time chasing down rich old men. They tended to wear sillier getups than Ezekiel had though.
There was a rapid pounding towards the door and he heard a muffled shout from inside. "I'll get it!" A moment later the door was flung open by Jenny, Joey's very enthusiastic younger sister. Yes, enthusiastic, that wasn't too mean a way to put it. When she saw the strange older man standing on the doorstep she showed no sign of fear, just the endless curiosity of the young.
"Who are you?" She was much less interested in Peter than she had been in Spider-Man.
"Hi, I'm Peter Parker, one of Joey's teachers. Is he home?"
She ran back into the house, "Joey! Some weird old guy's here for you!" Okay, that one had hurt. He straightened his brown blazer and made sure he hadn't spilled anything on his white dress shirt. Maybe he looked a bit lawyerly, but he wouldn't say he looked weird. And he refused to even acknowledge that he could have looked that old. Kids these days.
Oh no, that was how it started wasn't it?
Joey rounded the corner, looking a little bit nervous but relaxing once he saw who the 'weird old guy' at the door was. "Oh man, it's just you, Mr. Parker. When Jenny mentioned a weird guy, well, I was a little worried with Craig and all." He jerked a thumb back to where she'd sprinted with all the power a sugary breakfast could put into someone, "Sorry about her."
Peter shrugged, "Ah, no big deal. Kids these days, am I right?" He laughed more at himself for continuing to fulfill the old person stereotype no matter how much he told himself to just stop. It was a horrific self fulfilling prophecy that no adult could escape. Apparently. His laugh sounded brittle.
"Do you want to- Holy crap, are you okay, Mr. P?!" Joey went rigid in the process of inviting Peter in and it suddenly dawned on him that he probably looked like hell. He reached a probing hand to his face, its tenderness to touch confirmed that yes, he was sporting a number of bruises.
"Oh this? Yeah, I'm fine. Made the mistake of trying to move my stuff into my girlfriend's place and things didn't go quite to plan."
"Mr. Parker…" Joey looked uncomfortable as he struggled to find the right words for what he was trying to say. "Look, I know I'm the last person who should be giving anyone advice right now, but if she would do something like that to you then the last thing you should do is move in with her."
Peter was confused. What had she- Oh. His eyes went wide.
Oh no.
Peter waved his hands wildly in the air, denying through motion alone Joey's implication "Nonono! That's not what I- That's not what happened. I was just clumsy, dropped a few things here, lost my balance there. It was all me, I swear."
"Well…" His student eyed him suspiciously, unsure how honest he was being. "If you're sure that's the case. Just know that there are a lot of resources out there if things were, you know, bad at home." Mr. Parker, relatively new college professor and full-time superhero wasn't quite certain how he felt about this role reversal. He was supposed to be the one trying to keep people safe, but it was nice to know he'd made the right choice when he decided to help Joey. He really was a good kid in a bad situation. They sat in awkward silence for a few moments, both inspecting various parts of the scenery around them as they waited for the other to speak first.
It was Joey who broke the silence first, "Sorry, I've just had some friends end up in tough situations and my mom… she didn't really have the best taste in boyfriends. I guess I'm just on a bit of a hair trigger about that stuff."
Peter waved a hand dismissively, "Don't worry about it, I appreciate the concern if anything. And believe me when I tell you that you're not the first person to tell me I need to escape my abusive relationship." Dammit, here we go again. "Which, believe me, is anything but abusive, I am just incredibly clumsy sometimes and bruise easy. Real easy." Joey really wasn't the first one to think he had a troublesome homelife, going all the way back to when he'd first started spending his free time being punched in the face he'd had a number of well-meaning friends, coworkers, and teachers stage interventions. Whether they thought he was being abused or that he was in some kind of underground fight club for science geeks seemed to change from time to time, but they all thought he'd landed himself in a bad situation.
To their credit, he did that a lot.
"Yeah, I've seen you in class, you are pretty clumsy sometimes." Peter let that pass without comment. "Anyway, did you want to come in? Sorry to bother you about this but I don't have any way to get in touch with you-know-who and I figured if I let you know you could pass it on or something."
Peter accepted the invite and they crossed over into the house. It was surprisingly well maintained for someplace inhabited by two people he couldn't help but think of as still children. They were definitely doing a better job of upkeep than he had with his first place. His last place too, come to think of it. He shuddered as he recalled the mountain of greasy empty pizza boxes he'd managed to construct in the corner of his living room while he was in the throes of his depression after he and Mary Jane had first split. There had been days that he had simply lay on the floor, willing that mountain to crumble and collapse, engulfing him in an endless sea of cheese-scented cardboard and nothingness.
The young man almost seemed to read his thoughts, answering his unasked question. "We try our best to keep things from getting too out of hand down here, I take care of most of the nitty-gritty dusting and moving stuff around, Jenny does the bigger easier stuff like vacuuming. I wish it were the other way around but my sister does not have the attention span to get rid of the cobwebs behind the TV." He swept a hand out, encouraging his teacher to take in the splendor. "When my mom first went away things were bad, like bad bad. It took so long to get this place not looking like a flophouse we decided we wouldn't let it get like that again."
Peter nodded, doing his best to show that he really was impressed, "I wish I'd had you as a roommate in college, calling my first apartment a flophouse would probably have been a compliment." He clapped a hand on Joey's shoulder, "You're doing a good job here, especially with your sister. You should be proud."
Clearly not used to taking compliments, Joey smiled somewhat uncomfortably and squirmed a little, prompting Peter to drop his hand. Okay, maybe he was being a little bit too familiar here, fair enough. "Sorry, it's just you're in a tough spot and you're doing a good job. I'm just seriously impressed."
Joey relaxed and let out a small laugh, "It's fine, that's a 'me' thing. I'm not used to having people talk about me, nevermind saying something nice."
He led them into a kitchen where he offered Peter a seat in a well-worn chair at the small, scarred dining table then went to pour two glasses of store-brand cola. The loose legs of the chair protested squeakily as Peter slid into it, but seemed sturdy enough as long as he didn't try to treat it as a rocking chair. Joey deposited the two bubbling glasses of carbonated sugar and sat down across from him.
"So. Uh, I might have forgotten to mention some mildly important things to Spider-Man when he was here. Things that he probably ought to know about. It's just with Jenny begging him to sign stuff and him being… Intimidating, it just got lost in the shuffle."
That earned an arched eyebrow, "Intimidating? I'll have to tell him that, he'll get a kick out of it."
Joey looked down at his lap, silent for a moment. "I mean, I'm a-" He looked leaned back and peeked into the hallway to make sure his sister wasn't around to overhear the conversation. Judging by the pumping bassline coming from upstairs some 'weird old guy' was a lot less interesting than their Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. "I'm a drug dealer. I'm the bad guy, guys like me don't really get a lot of conversation out of him, just a knockout punch and a trip upstate."
That was fair, as Spider-Man he tried his best to make sure that the right people got the right help, to make sure things turned out the best for everyone, but he had to admit that he'd sent more than one desperate person trying to eak out a living to the pokey.
"Okay, Joey, let's get something straight." Peter leaned in, steepling his hands as he rested his elbows on the table, trying to look knowledgeable. "I've known Spidey for a long time, and one thing I know about him for sure is that he doesn't enforce the law, he tries to make sure that justice gets done. He knows that people get into bad situations and sometimes end up doing bad things because of it, but when people are trying to turn their lives around he actually tries his best to be understanding, especially when they're doing their best not to hurt anyone else." He smiled. "I'm pretty confident you're trying your best not to interfere with anyone else's lives, and I'm sure Spider-Man believes that too."
"You think so?" Joey took a sip of his drink, staring thoughtfully into the middle distance. "I never figured I'd get tied up in something like this. I went through all the D.A.R.E. programs in school, I saw what happened with my mom, and then I ended up doing this."
Peter understood that the kid was facing an internal battle, trying to rationalize the fact that he'd made poor decisions against the responsibilities he'd been forced to shoulder. "Look, I know." Joey snapped back to the moment and looked at his professor. "Lack of money, people relying on you to provide... It'll get to you. It'll get to anyone. I've made bad decisions, I've had to own up to them, and I've had to face their repercussions. And I've done it enough times to know that it doesn't matter what you did, it can't be changed." He'd seen the result of that in Miles' dimension when Fisk tried to yank his family from another dimension. You can't change the past. "What matters is what you do afterwards."
"Really, Mr. Parker?" His pupil's face was blank, expressionless, but Peter was pretty sure he saw the beginnings of tears in his eyes. "You ever sell drugs that are so new that you don't even know what they do? Ever have to meet someone behind the 7-11 that was so hungry for a fix that you know they'd do anything to anyone to get the money for it?"
"No." He took a deep breath and paused for a moment as he assessed his student, saw the almost imperceptible tremble of his lips, the suddenly excruciatingly measured breathing. He saw a young man, emphasis on young, doing his level best to keep himself together. "I haven't done that. But…" Am I doing this? "I'm the reason the man I looked up to as a father was murdered in the street." God that hurt to say. All these years later and he still didn't know if he'd fully come to grips with that, but if it could help Joey to understand that he really did know where he was coming from then so be it. "I had the chance to stop the man who went on to shoot him, it would have been so easy and I didn't. All because I was angry at someone else. So believe me when I tell you that I know what it is to have made the wrong decision."
Silence had crept back into the kitchen. Joey was back to staring off into space as he wrestled with his guilt and Peter decided it would be better to let him for a bit, let him get his emotions back under control, save him some unneeded embarrassment.
People didn't like to cry in front of others even when it was justified.
He pulled his phone from his jacket pocket and groaned, "Look, let me take this," He made certain not to let him see that the screen was blank, "When I come back we can talk about this game of telephone you and Spider-Man are playing."
"Telephone?"
"Yeah. Telephone. You know, you tell me something, I tell the next person and so on until it gets back to you and it's totally wrong. Except that's not what's going to happen because I'm just going to tell him and… You know what, forget it, I'm just gonna answer this. Be right back."
He scooted his chair back to stand and left the kitchen, leaving Joey alone with his thoughts as he stepped back onto the front porch for his make-believe phone call. Kids really were a huge pain, weren't they? Who didn't know what a game of telephone was?
When he came back in Joey was pouring another glass of cola, his face was a bit damp, probably rinsed in the kitchen sink as he tried to get himself back together. Sometimes that was all that you could do. Peter plopped himself down in the chair again, yep it was still squeaky, and waited until Joey had taken a sip before he started.
"Sorry about all that, I know you're having trouble dealing with this stuff, I get it. Right now though you said you had information that Spider-Man needed, so lay it on me."
The younger man took a deep breath, apparently over his crisis of conscience for the moment. "So someone went missing recently, another seller. He's an old friend of Craig's, but he owed him money for a lot longer than I have. Craig went a bit easier on him than me, I at least paid what I could when I could, Steve just kept blowing money on cars and stuff. I heard he was getting high on his own supply too, so I guess Craig's boss didn't appreciate that. Even though the two of them spent time in the same juvie center I guess the big man cut Craig out and took care of Steve on his own."
That might be useful, "You said they were in juvie? Do you know if they had the same youth officer?"
Craig thought about it for a bit, "Yeah, I think so. At least they would both mention the same guy: LaMont. I think his first name was William, they always called him Willy though."
Okay, he could work with this. He slid his phone out of his pocket and opened his notes app: William LaMont. "Anything else you can tell me about him? Rank, precinct he worked out of, anything?"
"If I know the area he would usually go to I think it was probably the 14th precinct."
He made an addendum to his notes. "How do you know he went missing? Are you close with any of them?"
Joey laughed, "No. God, no. I am definitely not close with any of them, we'd just have, well, business meetings sometimes. Craig was freaking out Saturday night though, he blew up my phone and apparently everyone else's asking if we'd seen him." He slid his unlocked phone across the table to Peter, who picked it up and scrolled through the long series of messages. Craig definitely was freaking out judging by his texts. It looked like Steve had gone silent Friday night.
"Was this Steve there when I saw you the other night?"
"Yeah, he was there, at the table with Craig."
"Does he live alone or with family?"
Joey shrugged, "I don't really know. Like I said, I'm not exactly on great terms with anyone in 'The Crew'. No, wait…" He drummed his fingers on the table, thinking. "That's right, I remember something! He was saying he had to get back home because his mom got nervous alone late at night, I guess he lives with his mom? Yeah, that's right, I think Craig mentioned in his texts that she reported him missing to the cops."
Peter scrolled through the texts. Yep, there it was. Great detective work, Sherlock. He was about to ask more questions when they were interrupted by a voice from the doorway.
"Tell him about Susie's boyfriend." Jenny stood in the doorway eyeing Peter suspiciously. She walked over to the cupboard and got herself a glass for her own drink, it didn't look like the soda bottle was going to make it much longer. Peter wondered how long she'd been standing there listening to them, the music upstairs hadn't stopped pumping, had she snuck down here purposefully to eavesdrop?
Joey's only answer was to sigh. Although he wasn't so sure a youngster like her had any business being part of a conversation about missing persons and drug pushing Peter was intrigued. He'd also been a kid once, he knew they weren't stupid and he knew that even if she didn't have all the details she probably had some inkling of what was going on.
"What happened to your friend?"
"Well…" She looked at her brother, hesitant to start telling her story to this strange man in their kitchen. He nodded. "Susie's a few years older than me, she started going to high school two years ago but we still hang out. She had this boyfriend, Davon, they met while living on Rosedell. That's where all the homeless kids kind of end up." She tugged nervously at her hair, afraid of ending up there herself maybe? "Anyway, they broke up over, I dunno, something stupid probably. Davon was nice, even if he got really angry and shouted a lot sometimes. Then he just disappeared, just like that. No mom to report him missing, Susie tried to report it but since they didn't have a home address for him they figured he just moved on or something. Not like they take people on the streets very seriously anyway, Susie has told me some crazy stories about what goes on over there sometimes."
This was all making Peter uncomfortable, "You say this is where all the homeless kids end up? Are there a lot? Kids I mean." Was there really some 'Lord of the Flies' style homeless camp? How had he not heard about this?
"Yeah, there's a lot of people over there, they're mostly nice people, most of the time anyway. They just had to… Leave home, I guess. Like Susie, her dad used to hit her a lot, even broke her arm once. Then he got angry at her for having a broken arm and almost broke the other one. She's actually a lot younger than most people there, most of them are like my brother's age."
Peter didn't like hearing any of this, he knew the city had a homeless problem. Most did. It was different hearing about an individual rather than a statistic though. "I mean, it's true what the police said. If someone's a drifter it's pretty hard to prove they're missing, and with how many people are reported missing every day, well… The homeless don't usually make it to the top of the priority list." He stroked his chin, noting that his stubble had grown far beyond a 5 O'Clock shadow, more of a midnight shadow now: Very, very dark. "Going by what you told me though I'm definitely going to have to get someone to look into this, it doesn't sit right with me. Does anyone else know about this community?"
"Know? Yeah, lots of people know it's full of crazy junkies pushing shopping carts around. Care though? Not really." She wrung her hands together. "I know Davon was… He was trying to get clean, had a job lined up and everything. He was trying to get out of there, wanted to bring Susie with him. Then he disappeared. Susie said a lot of people have been disappearing the last few months, it's not like there're bodies turning up or anything, so maybe… You know, maybe he's still okay."
Peter was angry, he rubbed hard at his temples trying to drive away an encroaching tension headache. How many times had he glanced over some news story about homeless people disappearing and just ignored it? That was the easy thing to do, wasn't it? Just ignore it as the media flooded your brain with other things to be upset about, all more important than a couple of missing homeless people. When had that become acceptable to him?
"You said she's gone to the police, has anyone else?"
She snorted, "Obviously. Everyone gets the same answer. Nobody cares, it's not like they have a huge social media presence to signal boost it or anything. Nobody's gonna get a bunch of likes asking about a missing hobo." She was a lot smarter than she appeared, knew more about how the world worked than he expected a 14-year old girl to know. He didn't like seeing how fast she'd had to grow up. "I wanted you to know though, you might not even care but you know Spider-Man. He cares. He doesn't charge like the other supers do either."
Excuse me?
"Superheroes charge? Since when?" Peter didn't really keep up with the super-trends. Had free-market vigilantism become a thing?
Jenny skewered him with a stare that accused him of being the most out of touch person to ever sully the earth with his presence without uttering a single syllable. "Uh, yeah…? Most of them started investigation companies like Heroes For Hire or The Fantastic Four. They don't even bother dealing with the little people anymore, they're all about big endorsements and PR management and stuff. Where have you been?"
"Jenny, be nice." Joey looked like he was ready to get up and chase his sister out of the room but Peter held up a hand and shook his head. This was an interesting, if disheartening, revelation for him. Although yes, he did wish she would be a little nicer to him. He'd forgotten how mean teenage girls could be.
"Surely they do some pro-bono work though." Peter reasoned and clarified when the girl looked confused by the unfamiliar word. "They do work for free sometimes, right?"
She shrugged. "I dunno, if they do they're not advertising it that way. They charge depending on how much you weigh or something."
Once again: Excuse me? "How much you what now?"
"Yeah, something about a scale." She said.
"Oh, they work on a sliding scale." It was some good news that his 'coworkers' hadn't gone full mercenary, but he still felt uncomfortable about it. Charging for what he did… It wouldn't sit right with him.
"Yeah, that's what I said."
"No, that's not what a… Okay look, sliding scale means that they decide what to charge you based on how much money you make. So someone like me would get charged a lot less than someone like Tony Stark."
"Oh. That makes sense." She thought about it a minute. "But like, what if you can't even pay your water bill or something?" From the corner of his eye Peter saw her brother tense up, there was a mild flush of embarrassment showing in his face and Peter did his best to ignore it. He'd been there, and he knew it was never fun to have your struggles aired to relative strangers.
"Well, I can't say what they would do in that situation. But hey, no worries, right? Spidey's on the case after all."
She nodded, grinning broadly the way he'd hope someone that age would. "That's right, and he's way cooler than that Daredevil guy. He still does his thing for free but he's, I dunno, kinda weird."
You have no idea. The thought stayed strictly internal though, with his luck Matt would be passing by outside and hear him. He had to admit that his alter ego was a lot less scary than someone like Daredevil though. The big eyes and bright colors conveyed friendliness much better than dark red leather and a mask that covered the eyes. The costume he'd designed as a teenager was comparatively lacking in 'cool' factor though. Now he was stuck looking like, as one anonymous internet commenter had put it, 'A big, cuddly bug'. As flattering as it was to hear a middle-schooler talk about how great he was, there were more pressing matters at hand.
"Well look, don't expect a miracle or anything but I'll pass it along, I'm sure Spider-Man will do his best to find out what's going on. I'll try and make a few calls to social services and see what I can dig up too. Is your friend still living on Rosedell?"
"Yeah." Jenny leaned forward and reached into her back pocket, pulling out her phone. "I can text her right now."
Peter looked at his own phone and shook his head. "Not right now, I actually have to get going. I'll have Joey ask you when I need your help though." Jenny tried to keep the disaffected youth look that remained so popular across generations but was obviously beaming with pride that she'd be able to help with something that Spider-Man was tertiarily related to and nodded before getting up and heading back to her room. "Walk outside with me, Joey."
Joey nodded and together they made their way to the door, stepping out into the surprisingly cold and windy April air. The younger man pulled his hoodie up over his head and crossed his arms over his chest, trying to retain what heat he could.
"Joey, what exactly is this GR-27 stuff? I don't really have much in the way of underworld connection but I have a lot of experience with Google, and I haven't found a single mention of it." Peter had found a ceiling fan with that model number, but he was pretty confident it wasn't related to the situation.
Joey shrugged, "I only handed that stuff off once when Craig was busy, he's usually the one who deals with it. Me and the other guys mostly just sell normal pills: Painkillers, uppers, stuff like that. This GR-27 stuff… I dunno, he gets it from that guy calling himself The Shade. Craig had a few drinks too many once, started talking about how the guy raids some pharma company and he gets away with it since something about it is a government no-no. Apparently it was supposed to be a cancer drug but it ended up not only being some kind of really effective steroid, but also killing it's users after prolonged exposure."
"You mentioned him before, The Shade, I've never heard the name. What can you tell me about him?"
"Not much, honestly. The way Craig talks him up you'd think he was some kind of mythical being like the chupacabra or something. All I know is that he warned us that if we messed up or stepped out of line The Shade would make us disappear without a trace, just like Steve did."
Steve had in fact disappeared without a trace, things weren't looking good for him. "Look Joey, I'm going to level with you, after-school special style: You need to get out of this business. Like yesterday." Peter ran a hand through his hair in an attempt to straighten it, look more professional, like a real-life adult instead of the pretender he felt like so often. It was ineffective, they returned to their usual slightly tousled position.
"Yeah, I know… I scrimped everything I could together and paid Craig back most of what I owe him, haven't asked for any new product either. If I have any say in the matter then I'm definitely out." He was quiet for a moment. "I've been picking up more shifts at the bar too, it's just- Holy hell how is anyone supposed to find a decent job when your resume consists entirely of 'waiter' and 'dealer'?"
They were at the sidewalk now, right in front of Mary Jane's little white Miata, Peter fumbled around in the pocket of his jacket looking for the keys. "Look kid, I'm happy to hear that, it's a great start. I'll see if I can find someone looking for help with office work or something but I can't make any promises, it won't buy you a retirement in Rio or anything but it's a step up, might open some new opportunities for you." He stuck his hand out to his student for a shake but saw him freeze up when he did so. Slowly he turned the outstretched hand into a thumbs-up which he shook for added emphasis with additional awkwardness thrown in for free. "Okay. Cool. I'll see you in class."
Joey took him by surprise when he reached forward and made an unfortunate attempt to turn Peter's thumbs-up into a handshake after all and, when that failed, grasped and shook his clenched fist. He felt a certain kind of kinship with him in that moment. It was apparent that Joey hadn't had a lot of positive influence in his life. He remembered being this awkward and much more a very long time ago and even though he'd left the world too soon at least Peter had had his Uncle Ben. It occurred to him that, had he lacked his uncle's guiding presence in his early years, he might have found himself in a tenuous situation similar to Joey's.
"You want to look someone in the eye for a second when you do that." He knew he couldn't be the kind of presence in Joey's life that he needed, but he could help where he could. "And stand up straight, big guy. You feign a bit of confidence and trust me, you can take on the world."
He stuck his hand out again, leaving it there for a few moments as Joey struggled to raise his eyes to meet Peter's. Joey grasped it and gave it a firm shake.
"Thanks, Mr. Parker." He released his grip and took a step back so Peter could open the car door. "Appreciate it."
"Whoa there, Tex! Where's the rodeo?"
Peter froze in the act of opening the front door and slowly turned to see his Uncle standing on the stairs leading to the second floor.
"Uncle Ben! I figured you'd be out in the garage, but you're uh- You're here."
The older man smiled, lifting his hand and shaking the pair of gold-rimmed spectacles he was holding. "I was, had to run upstairs for these bad boys. I'll tell you, I'd forget my head if it wasn't bolted to my neck." He squinted his eyes a moment, thinking. "Hope I don't take that as a challenge or you're gonna see this old-timer stumbling around like some kind of movie monster one of these days."
"Ha. Yeah. Well we don't want that, do we?" He pulled the door the rest of the way open and made to leave. "Okay then, I've gotta get going now, have a-"
"Hold on now, youngster…" Peter stiffly closed the door and turned to face the older man thump-thump-thumping his way down the stairs and into the living room. "It's only 7 o'clock, you don't usually hit the sidewalk to school for another half hour. What's with the rush?"
Peter laughed involuntarily, an ugly, abrupt little thing that he was cursing as soon as it left his mouth. "Oh, you know what they say: Early to rise, early to school."
His uncle looked down at him questioningly a moment before crouching, coming to eye level with his nephew. "Pete," He placed a large, calloused hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. "Nobody says that. And you and I both know you'd rather be just about anywhere other than waiting for the school bus. Heck, anyone your age would." He dropped both hands to his knees and gave a warm smile. "So why don't you tell me what's really got you in such a rush this morning?"
That was that, Uncle Ben knew something was going on and Peter knew that he was going to keep digging until he found out what it was. He wouldn't yell or shout or make demands, he'd just keep up with the probing questions, always conveniently be around when Peter was leaving in the morning, always there just earnestly wanting to know. The man was tenacious in his patience, and if he wanted to know something he eventually would. Peter closed the door, turned, and walked over to the couch. He looked at Uncle Ben hoping he'd let him off the hook but his kind eyes remained full of that fearsome patience. Resigning himself to his fate he flopped down with the force of a teenaged unspoken 'fine I guess' and started talking.
"There's a new girl at my school, I met her at the bus stop yesterday."
Uncle Ben walked over and lowered himself gently onto the cushion next to Peter. "Are you trying to get there early? Make the most of your time with her?"
"No. I was trying to make sure I got on an earlier bus so I wouldn't have to see her."
Concern washed across the old man's craggy face like a flood through the depths of a canyon. "Is she being mean to you? Did she say something to make you feel bad?"
"No! No… It's not like that." Peter was hesitant, not entirely sure how to express how he was feeling, not even entirely sure how he was feeling. "She's actually really nice, I'm just…"
And just like that any concern he'd been showing was washed away, replaced by a gentle, understanding smile. "You just don't know how to talk to her, do you?"
Against all known laws of the universe Peter slumped down even further than he already was, letting his chin rest against his skinny chest. The boy looked so world weary and tired that Ben would have sworn he'd just made his way home from a long, strenuous day in the coal mines. "Yeah."
He slapped the boy on the knee, "Pete, I'm going to teach you something that I should have taught you a long time ago." Peter looked over questioningly. "It's a magic trick, the best one in the world."
Peter's look of curiosity quickly transformed into an eyeroll. "Uncle Ben, I'm thirteen already, I know magic isn't real."
"Hey now, of course magic is real, you just have to understand what it really is: Magic is the art of tricking people so well that they love you for it. And this baby is such a good one that it even ends up working on yourself. Now go ahead and stand up." When Peter didn't move he nudged him on with a playful push. "Go on, Tex. It's time to start shootin."
Begrudgingly his nephew lifted himself to his feet, turned around, and shrugged. "There. I'm standing up."
That statement was questionable at best. His narrow shoulders slumped forward, his back hunched over, his hands hung loosely at his side and his feet were close enough together that if he were a bit more top heavy he'd be considered a fall risk. He was up on his own two legs, but there was a ways to go before he was properly standing.
"Okay, we're going to take baby steps here. First step: straighten that back out."
It went on that way for a few minutes until eventually his back was straighter, his shoulders pulled further back, his arms less slack and held more purposefully, and his feet weren't positioned like those of a particularly constipated duck.
"Uncle Ben, this is really uncomfortable." He rotated his shoulder in it's socket as he tried to stretch a muscle that was pulled tauter than it usually was.
"Yep, I'll bet it is, most new things are for a little while. We're not done yet though so stay in that saddle, okay?" Peter grimaced as his uncle stood as well, grasped him gently by the shoulders, and rotated him so they were face to face with each other. "Now here comes the really hard part: Shake my hand." He stuck out his hand and left it there.
Peter sighed and limply grasped the older man's hand with all the firmness of an over-boiled potato.
"Nope, that's not gonna do the trick here. A handshake is an important tool for a man, a woman too these days. A handshake is going to tell you lots of things about the person you just met, and Peter, if I didn't know what kind of person you were already then that handshake right there wouldn't have told me much good about you."
All at once the slump was back like it had never left. "There isn't."
"Alright now, I'm not gonna have any of that, straighten those shoulders back up." His nephew made a half-hearted attempt before giving up and staring intently at his shoes. "Pete." There was no response aside from a gentle shake in his shoulders. "Hey now, look at me, buddy." His voice was soft, gentle, and above all else understanding. Peter looked up, his eyes watery. "Listen, maybe I moved too quick there, pushed you a little bit too hard. I'm sorry." He pulled his nephew into a tight hug, filling his nostrils with the scent of Old Spice and engine grease. "It's okay if it takes you a bit of time to get there, you go ahead and take all the time you need, okay? I just want you to understand that if there's anything that's going to stop you from doing what you want it's gonna be that lack of confidence of yours." Still tight in the embrace Peter gave a jolt. Ben could feel a bit of warm dampness seep into his shirt where Pete's head rested against his chest but said nothing. If the boy wanted to let it loose he would, if he wanted to keep his pride he'd let him.
"The thing you've got to understand is this: You don't get to choose what's good about you, you live it, you try to change some things if you don't like 'em, but in the end it's how you treat the rest of the world that decides what's good about you." Ben Parker stood there for a while, letting his Nephew decide when the embrace was over. When it was he could see Peter surreptitiously wiping at his face and again said nothing, if the boy wanted to have his pride then he was entitled to it. He needed more of it if anything, that wasn't something Ben saw in a lot of folks.
"Now look, I'm gonna ask you to shake my hand again, I'll walk you through it, and if you don't want to then that's alright too."
Peter knew that the old man's perseverance would lead to it happening again anyway, but he also knew that this wasn't something his uncle was doing for his own best interest. This really was for him. Still looking down at the ground, he nodded.
"Okay, Buddy, we're gonna take this slow, alright? First thing I want you to do is go ahead and look me in the eye." He did so, fighting the natural urge to let his eyes wander anywhere else like they wanted to. "Okay, good first step. I'd say 'There, that ain't hard now, is it?' But I'll tell you the truth: Sometimes it's the hardest part." Peter didn't know what was coming next but it certainly felt like it could indeed be. "Okay, next is the shake itself." Slowly, hesitantly Peter extended his hand and shook his uncle's hand. His grip was loose, the shake barely anything more than the pull of a fishing line on an empty lake. "Okay, now that's the basics, but I know you can do better. You want me to give you a few pointers?"
His eyes safely looking straight ahead once more, Peter thought about it for a moment and then shook his head yes.
"Alright, now the first thing is you wanna be firm, not overpowering, just firm. If you give somebody a weak handshake then that tells them that you're a weak person. There's a lot of folks out there who won't hesitate to take advantage of a weak person if they can get away with it."
"But I'm not…" Peter raised his arms and looked at them, barely a hint of muscle. "I mean…"
"Okay, okay, I understand. That's why sometimes you've got to pretend."
"Pretend that I'm strong? But I'm… I mean..." He wordlessly extended his skinny arms to his uncle and gestured emphatically his point was made.
"That isn't what's important. Strength doesn't have to be physical, Pete. If you pretend, even just long enough for a handshake, well… That's enough, isn't it? I'm not asking you to pick a car up or anything, just a quick squeeze and a shake." He gave Peter an encouraging slap on the shoulder with a thick hand. "You think you can try it?"
Peter nodded again, raised his eyes to meet Ben's, extended his hand and gave his uncle's hand a shake, focusing every bit of might his small body could muster into it.
Ben laughed, "Now that is a step in the right direction, but let's try it again. This time without trying to break my hand. Remember: You're not trying to show how much stronger you are, just that you're strong enough. Try to be firm, but not hard."
They spent a number of minutes doing this bizarre exchange of repeated handshakes. Each time Ben gave a small pointer, a tip, a nudge in the right direction. Even once he'd felt that Peter had gotten it down pat he kept it going. At one point May had stuck her head in from the kitchen where she had sat clipping coupons for this month's shopping trip but Ben motioned her away with a shake of his head. She smiled, sighed, and left her husband to do his thing. If he was doing it then there was a fair chance he knew what he was doing.
When they were done it was almost time for Peter to leave for school, at his usual hour this time. He slung his bag over his back and headed towards the door, his back a little straighter, his steps a little more confident. As he turned to wave goodbye to his uncle a thought occurred to him.
"You said you were going to teach me a magic trick."
Ben smiled, "Tell me, Pete: Are you a confident kind of guy?" His nephew slowly shook his head. "Well when you were shaking my hand I'll tell you this much: I couldn't tell the difference. But here's the real kicker did you feel confident?"
His nephew was silent, but Ben already knew the answer. "And that. Is. The magic. And it gets even better. You feign a bit of confidence just like that and believe you me, you can take on the world. Now go on, Champ, you go get 'em."
—-
As Peter pulled away from Joey's house he smiled at the memory. He'd actually tried to shake Betty Brant's hand that morning at the school bus stop some 26 years ago. In retrospect, it had not been one of his prouder moments, but Betty had sure gotten a kick out of it. Enough so that they'd started talking more and more, becoming good enough friends that even now they still kept in touch, even if only at holidays and birthdays.
Miss you, old man.