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The first time Peter met him, it was an accident. Or, rather, Peter dumped his school bag in a random dumpster as he suited up, and managed to overshoot his landing and smack face first into a steel container with a quarter of a ton of junk inside it.
“You alright?”
Peter raised his head groggily from where he was lying. “Unnh,” he managed, before collapsing back down.
“I guess that’s your bag that you left in my dumpster.”
Peter rolled over, feeling the pounding in his head start to subside. “What bag?” he managed. “I wouldn’t leave my bag lying around where just anyone could find it. No, that would be dumb.”
“Because someone might look inside and then find out who Spider-Man is?”
“I’m not Spider-Man.”
The man laughed. “I think you’re definitely concussed.”
Peter flushed, glad the onesie hid his face. “I mean I’m not–”
“Peter Benjamin Parker. Midtown.”
“Yeah. Him.”
“Well, if you’re not him, then you won’t mind if I hold onto his bag.”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t want to give it to just any stranger.”
“But my Spanish homework is–” Peter trailed off, realising what he’d just said. Then he folded his arms and glared at the man standing on the back step of what he had dismissed as a seedy bar. “You can’t tell anyone.”
“How are you going to stop me?” asked the man, somewhat amused. “I could pick up the phone and ring your mum right now.”
“My mum’s dead.”
“May Parker isn’t related to you? She’s got an entirely different Peter Benjamin Parker living with her?”
“She’s not my mum.”
“Grandmother? Aunt? Sister?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“You don’t,” the man said, tossing him the bag. “But you might want to find a better extracurricular to take before you get hurt.”
“If I don’t do this then who will? With great power comes–”
“–absolutely nothing,” said the older man, cutting him off smoothly. “You don’t owe anyone anything, least of all your life. Not now, not then, not ever. The world will move on without you, Peter Benjamin Parker, and whatever effect you have here and now is only a small part of the puzzle.”
“But I can make a difference now.”
“And what if you get shot tomorrow?”
“I’ll heal.”
His instincts screamed at him to duck. They were slow enough that the gun was already pointing at his head by the time he realised the man had one. “How fast would you heal if I shot you in the head right now?”
Peter swallowed, and held his hands up. “Whoa Mister, there’s no need for that. I’m just your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. Why don’t we put the gun down and–”
“I’m just making a point.”
The gun vanished as fast as it had appeared.
Peter took a step back, eyeing the man with some trepidation. “Can I go now?”
“Do me a favour first.”
“What’s that?”
“Tell me that someone knows.”
“No one can know that–”
The man sighed, and ran a hand down his face. “You get hurt, you get shot, you come here.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I’ve been shot before, without anyone around to help. It sucks.”
“I don’t even know your name.”
“John.”
That was a lie. Peter knew it was. He shook his head. “Nu uh. No it isn’t.”
“John is what I go by now.”
That was true. Kind of. Peter’s eyes narrowed. “And who are you hiding from?”
The man smiled sadly. “The kind of people that made sure I knew how to stitch up my own bullet wounds by the time I was your age.”
They stared each other down for a minute, and then the man vanished back inside his property, leaving Peter to get changed. It started raining halfway through. Typical, he thought.
He stuck to Queens after that, and probably wouldn’t have thought anything more of the interaction had he not got caught by Mr Stark a few months later and taken to Germany. It was less than two weeks into having the new suit that he next crashed into the same dumpster, face first again.
John, if that was his name, had been throwing a couple of bags of rubbish into it and didn’t even blink twice when a teenager in high-tech gear slammed into the metal with a loud clang.
“Hello Peter,” he said, as if this happened on a regular basis. “How have you been?”
“Unhhh,” replied Peter, his head hurting again. “Did you move your dumpsters?”
“Nope,” the man said. “Though I might consider padding them, if you’re going to keep meeting me like this..”
“They hurt.”
“They are a large lump of steel, which you hit at great speeds. I’d be concerned if it didn’t hurt.”
Peter flopped over again and squinted at the man.
“New suit,” he said. “From Stark?”
“You know Tony Stark?”
“By reputation, mostly. Though he sometimes comes for a drink.”
“He comes for a drink here?”
“My establishment is very reputable, thank you.”
“I thought it was a dive bar.”
That got an eyebrow raise. “No,” he said, “It is not a dive bar. Also, stop dodging the question. Is that new suit from Stark?”
“What’s it to you?”
“You’re fourteen.”
“Nearly fifteen.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“The suit doesn’t–”
“Him giving you the suit does mean something,” the man pointed out. “When did he do that?”
Peter pushed himself back to his feet. “Just before he took me to Germany.”
John, if that was really his name, froze midstep. “Sorry?”
“I’m like an Avenger. Kind of. Well, an Avenger in training. Or worked with them. Until the others are back, or whatever, or maybe not, because it would be really cool if I got to work with Captain America rather than just fight against him and–”
“Stop talking.”
Peter’s mouth snapped shut.
“Stark gave you a suit.”
“That’s right. And it’s really cool–
”John held up his hand, cutting Peter off before he could start rambling again. “Yes or no question. Stark took you to Germany.”
Peter nodded.
“He asked you to fight Captain America.”
Peter nodded again.
“And you’re now part of the Avengers.”
Peter hesitated.
“Are you or are you not?” asked John.
“I don’t know.”
John sighed, and sat down on the bottom step leading up to his back door. “You don’t know.”
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s complicated.”
“It is, okay?”
“Did you tell your aunt about this yet?”
Peter winced.
“She’s a nurse, isn’t she? In the emergency department.”
Peter froze. “How do you know that?”
“I looked her up.”
“Why?”
“So that when I find you dead in my dumpster, I know where to find her.”
“I’m too young to die.”
“You’re never too young to die, Peter Benjamin Parker. Take it from a man who knows.”
Peter glared. “What do you know about it?”
“More than I should, sadly.”
Peter didn’t get it. Was he suggesting that he had done something like Peter had? ‘Cus if he had done something like this, then surely he got it? Though, of course, now he just seemed to run a bar.
“I’m not going to give up,” Peter said, meaning more than just being a teenage superhero, “Queens needs me. New York needs me. Mr Stark needs me.”
“And what do you need, Peter?”
Peter pushed himself back to his feet, annoyed. “I need you to get off my back.”
And then he webbed his way out, straight up, leaving behind the hypocrite and his problems.
The third time he met ‘John’, he crashed into the dumpster face first. From the roof. Where he had been trying to get back to Stark Tower, in the hopes that Mr Stark might be able to help him.
Because someone had just shot him. With a gun bigger than Peter had ever seen in anything but a movie. Peter tingle or not, he’d barely managed to whip a web up to get him out fast enough to take it in his chest rather than his head.
“Ah fuck, kid.”
Peter felt hands yank him out of the dumpster. He whimpered as it aggravated what he was pretty sure was a hole in his side and three broken ribs.
“I got you, I got you, I got you.”
Where was he? It was warmer inside, wherever it was, and the faint hint of alcohol told him that, wherever this was, they served booze. Lots of booze.
“I need you to remove this suit.”
“Secret.”
“I know who you are Peter. You can remove the suit.”
They knew who he was? Peter tried not to panic. Gave up. Then hit the button, the suit falling off.
“Shit.”
The next ten minutes were a bit of a blur, and Peter felt himself drifting more than once, only kept in the moment by the soft voice talking to him. A British voice. Who did he know that was British? Peter didn’t think he knew anyone that was British. He would have remembered if he met someone British, right?
Then he was gone, falling into the black.
It could have been fifteen minutes. It could have been thirty minutes. Peter wasn’t sure. However long it had been, it was still dark outside, and there was a cannula in his arm.
“Peter, I need you to stay calm, okay?”
He blinked, his vision still blurry. “Who are you?”
“It’s John. You crashed into my dumpster. Again.”
There was a lie there. Peter could sense it. “You’re not John.”
“We’ve had this conversation before. John is the name I go by now.” The man hesitated. “My real name is Alex.”
Truth.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in my bar. You’ve been here about thirty minutes. Tony Stark will be here soon.”
“You rang Mr Stark?”
“You got shot.”
“I’ll heal.”
“You’ve had six units of blood.”
“Six units?”
"Six.”
Peter’s eyes widened. He was pretty sure that the human body only held, like, ten.
“And you’re chewing through the anaesthetics like they’re nothing. I put you out, but–”
“Yeah, my body does that.”
The world was slowly coming back into focus around him. Peter could just about make out the face of the man who had, probably, saved his life. It was the man with the dumpsters. The dumpsters that hated him. The dumpsters that might have been his final resting place, if not for this man.
“Who are you?” Peter asked. “And why are you doing this?”
“You’re never too young to die,” Alex said. “I learnt that the hard way.” He pulled up his t-shirt, and showed a scar that ran across his chest “I was the same age as you when I took a bullet to the chest. No powers. No super healing. No fancy suit. Just an assassin who took their shot.”
Peter looked down at chest, seeing the bandages wrapped around them, feeling the soreness everywhere in his chest. “How bad is it?”
“I’d recommend at least a month off.”
“A month!?”
“I don’t know how fast you heal, but something like this would normally take months to recover from. A year, maybe. Depending on how much physio they did.”
“I can’t take a month off.”
“Yeah, you can.”
“But–”
“And then we’re going to talk about this properly.”
“You can’t tell me what to do.”
“When I was your age, my country conscripted me into military intelligence in order to hunt down the man who killed my father.”
Peter froze. He’d got into this to hunt down the man who killed his uncle. That was how it all started, really. Till he learnt better.
“Between my fourteenth and fifteenth birthday, I spent over two months in different hospitals, visited a dozen countries, went to space, died on operating tables twice, lost the closest thing I had to a sister, and fell out of touch with all of the people I might have been able to call a friend.”
The man’s eyes weren’t quite sad. Weren’t quite angry. The facts were the facts, Peter realised, and this man had come to accept them. Come to accept the choices he had made. Or, at least, the choices that had been made for him.
“I have been where you are, Peter. I have sat on this table, bleeding out, and wondered why I did it. Why those prices were taken from me.”
“I’m not wondering why I do this. This is worth it. I know it is.”
“No, you’re not. And that worries me.”
“I’ve got to do this. That’s why I got my powers.”
“Really?”
Peter tried to glare at him, but it came out quite half-hearted.
“And who is training you?”
“What?”
“I can see Tony gave you a suit. Is he providing you with intel too? Supporting your missions? Stitching you up when you get shot?”
“I’ve got a man in the chair,” Peter protested. “I’m not by myself.”
“And where is he?”
Peter looked away, ashamed. He hadn’t gone back to Ned because he hadn’t wanted Ned to see him like this. Hadn’t wanted Ned to see what happened when things went wrong. Hadn’t wanted Ned to see him die.
Because Peter had been worried about that.
That’s why he had been on his way to Stark Tower, in the hopes that Mr Stark might be awake enough to fix him.
“What about a partner in the field? Who you got watching your back?”
“I’ve got powers!”
“And are your powers going to get you home when something goes wrong?”
The man didn’t need to say what had happened tonight.
There was enough reminder of that staining the table underneath him. The floor around him.
“So,” Alex continued, “when you’re better from this, we’re going to talk.”
“I’m not stopping.”
“No,” Alex agreed, “you aren’t. That’s why we’re going to talk.”
And then he turned around, and started tidying up some of the mess around them. Peter didn’t say anything for a long time. He just lay there, feeling his body throb. Watching the stars float through the air before his eyes. Slowly work toward something better than what he’d been. It was times like this that he thought he could really feel his healing factor kicking in.
Tony Stark walked in through the back door with an attitude that Peter thought he might deserve for once. Then he saw Alex, wiping down a surface, and he wilted like day old flowers.
“Tony.”
“Alex.”
“Hear you gave him a suit.”
“What would you have done?”
Alex snorted. “Not given him a suit.”
“He was going to get involved in this anyway.”
“And so you took him to Germany. To fight the Avengers.”
“Who else could I have asked?”
“You have my number.”
“If I wanted them dead, I could do that myself.”
Peter listened to the back and forth in confusion. “Mr Stark, you know him?”
“Hey Pete.”
Alex stepped up next to him at the same time as Mr Stark. “Shotgun to the chest. Four broken ribs. Six units of blood. I gave him some ketamine whilst I dealt with it, but he burnt through it before I was done. Enhanced, I guess?”
“High metabolism will do that,” Mr Stark said, without flinching. “You’d need something stronger than that.”
“Well I didn’t have it. I stitched him up, gave him some bandages. He needs a hospital, but I figure he isn’t getting one. Not if you’re here.”
“I could take him to one,” Mr Stark said reluctantly, “but–”
Peter’s eyes widened. “No hospitals,” he said. “You promised, Mr Stark.”
Alex gave them both a disapproving look. “I see.”
“What does he need that isn’t a hospital?”
“Someone that is more qualified than me to make sure he isn’t dying.”
“You’ve had training.”
“Enough to keep me alive. He’s a fourteen-year-old kid who is out of his depth.”
“That’s not fair,” Peter objected. “I know what–”
“If I’d been ten minutes later throwing out my garbage, you’d be dead.”
The lights hummed in the silence left after that statement.
Alex sighed. “Give him my number. Bring him back next month.”
“I thought you were staying out of this.”
“Then you recruited a kid.”
Peter saw something pass between the two of them as they made eye contact. Then Mr Stark looked away, guilt scrawled across his face. “It’s not my choice.”
“Right.”
“He’s the one who–”
"Consider yourself lucky, Tony, and take the olive branch. Then get the fuck out of my bar. Take the kid with you, and spend some time thinking about what you’ve done on the drive back to his house, or wherever the fuck you’re taking him.”
Alex tossed the bloody rag into the bin, and then vanished into one of the other rooms, clearly done with both of them.
Mr Stark let him go without looking up from where his eyes were on the floor. Then he smiled down at Peter.
“You ready to go Pete?”
“I think so.”
“Come on then.”
Peter was half-carried to the car outside, where Mr Stark lay him across the backseats.
“We’re gonna talk to your aunt, okay?”
Peter groaned. “Aunt May is gonna kill me.”
“I think she might be more interested in killing me,” joked Mr Stark.
It fell flat. Peter was pretty sure that it was true, and that was something he didn’t want to think about yet.
“How do you know him?” Peter asked eventually.
“Alex?” Mr Stark asked. “He’s one of Fury’s projects.”
“Nicolas Fury? Like SHIELD?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s a SHIELD agent?”
“He’s who I should have called in instead of you.”
“You mean for Germany?”
“Yeah.”
Peter frowned. “I thought you said I was your only choice.”
“You were.”
“But–”
Mr Stark’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Alex is one of the most dangerous people you will ever meet. If I’d taken him to Germany, then most of them would be dead. Barton, Rogers, Wilson, for sure. Maximoff too probably.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve seen that man put a bullet through a bullet hole, six times in a row.”
Peter thought about it as he watched the streetlamps pass by outside. “He seemed nice.”
“Yeah,” Tony agreed. “He always seems nice.”
“He told me to go back to him.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think I should?”
It was hard to see Mr Stark’s face in this light, but from what Peter could see, he wasn’t sure.
“Mr Stark?”
“You’ve got good instincts, Peter. Trust them.”
“What if–”
“And get some rest. It’s a bit of a drive to the compound.”
“We’re going to the compound? I thought it was–”
“You need somewhere to recover that has medical staff on-hand.”
“What about my aunt?”
“She’s on her way.”
“Oh,” said Peter. “I see.”
“Sleep.”
And, as Peter drifted off, he decided that he might go back and see the man behind the bar. If nothing else, just to find out more about him.
Why was Mr Stark so cautious?
Why was the man so annoyed at them both?
Why–
Darkness and the road took him.
Those were questions for another day.