Chapter Text
Look, Peter knew he wasn’t exactly a perfect candidate, but in a city as big as New York, he had expected someone desperate enough to hire him.
I mean, sure, maybe the lack of a high school diploma, Social Security number, or proof of his existence at all would be a slight problem… but he had assumed his enthusiastic attitude and stellar work ethic would make them overlook those minor issues.
And he had even invested in a crisp but admittedly cheap white button-down shirt to look the part. Even learnt how to iron it! What more could they possibly want!
He'd tried anything. And here was his last shot.
The gas station sat right at the edge of Queens Boulevard, and looked just the right amount of shady to hire him.
The only motion in the practically abandoned street was the flickering of the station's dimly lit sign and the moths that darted around it. The red sign must have once been bright and neon, but over time half the letters burned out and were worn down; now only leaving: “__AS & __O”. Whatever it used to say, nobody had bothered to fix it.
“Come on, Parker, you've got this”, he mumbles to himself as he steps through the door with all the confidence he could muster, the bell giving an unenthusiastic tingle.
The smell of stale coffee and hot dog water hangs over the store, making his already nervous stomach churn as he tries to make his face look as professional as possible. He slowly crosses the only lightly sticky tile floor to the counter, giving the bored-looking worker a bright smile.
“Hi, my name's Peter Parker”, he says in a very fake chipper voice, earning himself nothing but a mildly raised eyebrow “I uh, saw the help wanted sign outside?”
He carefully slid the resume under the bulletproof glass, the same blind, automatic hopefulness that he had felt in the last 6 jobs he applied for simmering in his chest.
Maybe this job would be different, he wonders.
Maybe this time someone would look past the empty employment history, the missing graduation date, and the suspicious lack of government-issued identification.
From behind the glass, the clerk reads it slowly. He's around Peter’s age, lanky with a dark mop of black hair. A second passes before the guy begins to… laugh?
“Ah, come on mannnnn”, the guy chuckled, dragging out his words in a particularly aggravating way “This is your actual resume”
Peter feels his whole body deflate, any hope he has dying.
“What's wrong with it?” he questioned, squinting at the man due to the harsh, fluorescent light from above. “I thought it was decent!”
“I think that my 12-year-old sister has more experience than you” The cashier dragged with an obnoxious wide grin that had only been charming on Tony, clearly enjoying putting Peter down.
He slides the resume back under the glass, where it this time got caught in a puddle of spilt Slurpee “At this stage, just lie, dude”
Peter opened his mouth to argue, but then thought better of it.
"Right," he said instead, peeling his resume off the counter. The whole section he had dtatedhis amazing work ethic was now a bright blue and ink-black smear. "Thanks. Really. So helpful."
"Anytime, man." The cashier was now back to being engrossed in his phone, the whole interaction seemingly forgotten before Peter even reached the door.
As he walked back onto the quiet street, he folded the destroyed resume into his back pocket, Slurpee stain and all. Six jobs down. He wasn't sure how many were left in Queens that he hadn't already humiliated himself in front of.
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His apartment greeted him in its usual state of dreariness: a stack of physics textbooks and GED prep books doubling as a side table, a half-eaten box of noodles he was fairly sure had been last Tuesday's dinner, and a corkboard covered in newspaper clippings, a mix of villain sightings and job listings that would strike any visitor as deeply strange, if he ever had visitors. Luckily, aside from the Thai food guy, he didn't.
He drops the soaked and now blue raspberry flavoured resume beside the noodles, deciding that having to make the trek to the library to print another one would be tomorrow's problem.
He looked up at the bare walls, his eyes eventually landing on the crooked Star Wars poster he'd pinned up in a halfhearted attempt at decoration.
“Who needs a stupid ass highschool diploma anyway?” he calls out to the empty room, almost like he was speaking to the photographed Luke Skywalker himself.
Luke, predictably, had no comment.
The suit was where it always was: shoved into a duffel bag under a loose floorboard by his bed. He slips it on with great ease, the worn give of material that had been patched and re-patched more times than he could count slightly calming him.
Even the state of his apartment looked slightly less depressing through the lenses; his cheap ones blurred the cracks in the wall and the speckles of mould on the ceiling instead of sharpening them like the Iron-Spider suit once had, allowing him to live in oblivious denial.
If only this job came full-time, he thought as he launched himself out the window of his 7th-floor apartment.
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“You do know you're meant to dodge the punches, right? Peter's questions were in his usual purposely annoying Spider-Man voice, earning him a harsh nudge from the horned man beside him, who currently had an ice pack to his nose.
"Hey! Let's not forget who bought you that ice pack!" Peter grinned, feet dangling off the ledge of Hell's Kitchen's tallest building.
Daredevil grins through his bloody nose at that “Didn't that old bodega woman give it to you for free?”
He gave a theatrical gasp, "I'll have you know that Mrs Chen insisted."
“She really is the sweetest, isn't she? Peter continued, “Not to brag but her sons a major fan of mine”
“Like your head was big enough…” The devil of Hell's Kitchen comments slightly distracted as he holds his head, tipping to try to stop the bleeding.
Peter tutted, crossing his arms “What a grump…is that just your old age, or have you spent too much time around Frank?”
DD snorted, immediately regretting it as pain shot through his nose.
"You know," he muttered, pinching the bridge of it, "for someone who's supposed to be funny..."
Peter's head whipped around. “Someone told you I'm funny?" He nudged Daredevil's shoulders with exaggerated excitement.
"It was Kate, wasn't it?"
When the man didn't confirm or deny, Peter continued to anyway.
"You know," Peter rambled, "ever since we took down that Russian mob gang last month, we've been getting on like a house on fire."
“Who the hell is Kate?” The older man questioned.
“Oh, come on! Like Hawkeye but funnier? Wears a lot of purple?” When the other shows no sign of recognition, he sighs, “You need to get more vigilante buddies. I know me and Deadpool are the gold standard, but it's getting kind of sad”
“First of all, I don't need vigilante “buddies”; it's not high school.” Daredevil smirks, “And secondly, you and Deadpool are far from the gold standard”
But the man was not waiting for a response anymore, as gives a long, dramatic groan “Oh god”.
Peter looks around suspiciously. He'd never quite mastered focusing his enhanced hearing the way Daredevil had. He could hear more than an ordinary person, definetly, but filtering out the city's constant barrage of sirens, traffic, conversations, and construction was another matter entirely.
"What do you-”
“AND I BROUGHT DINNER!!” Comes the sound of a voice that somehow managed to sound more annoying than Spider-Man himself.
Deadpool climbed over the final railing of the fire escape as though he owned the building.
Twin katanas were crossed over his back, and somehow, despite scaling six flights of rusted stairs, he still had three foil-wrapped chimichangas balanced expertly in one hand.
“Gentlemen.”
“Hi DP!” Peter smiles at seeing the masked man but also furrows his brows slightly “You do know you don't need to come with food every time we hang out” he gives a slight shrug “Don't want you spending to much on us”
Deadpool's white sockets widen, clearly amused “Aw, Spidey, that's so adorable” He places a hand on his heart “You think I actually pay for these!”
“Counterpoint. It doesn'matter if he stole them or not because” Daredevil interrupts, “They’re gross”
“Well jeez knock off Batman, this is why your never getting another solo movie” Deadpool chimes, hand Peter the warm Mexican food “You just hate exploring flavours”
Ignoring the other, nonsensical comment, Peter laughs, “Pretty ironic for a guy from a place called Hell's KITCHEN…”
“Just get me a burrito!” Daredevil complains, “Chimchangas are so unhealthy!”
“What a gym bro…” Peter groans, but really, inside, he's feeling lighter than he has all week. These two didn't really know Peter Parker, nor did Kate or Frank, or Natasha's super scary but also very cool younger sister who had insisted on them being allys, but they were all the closest to true friends he had right now, So he'll take what he can get.
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"A law firm?" Mr Anderson repeated, sounding so astonished you'd think Peter had just announced he'd been accepted into NASA.
"You?"
Peter bit back a sigh.
Of course, he'd been cornered.
The elderly man from the apartment upstairs had an uncanny ability to materialise in the hallway whenever Peter was leaving for something important. Peter had long suspected Mr Anderson couldn't give a rat's ass about what Peter was up to, just like to spread the gossip around the other elderly residents of the building.
Apparently, “the young man from apartment 410 and his several job interviews” had been a recurring topic of conversation.
“Yes”, Peter said, his voice laced with sarcasm as he adjusted the strap of his worn backpack. “Me”
“It's only an assistant position," he added before the man could ask any more questions. "You know, making coffee, organising files, scanning documents...yknow assistant stuff."
If he was being honest, he didn't think he had any real chance at the job; it was unusual for a law firm to advertise on the awful job listing websites he used that he had found last night, and he doubted any lawyers would want someone who had just been rejected by a gas station working by their side. Still, he kept trying. Every new possibility, no matter how tiny, felt like one step closer to something better a job, a fresh start, do well on his GED maybe a way to prove himself outside the mask for once. If Aunt May had taught him anything, it was that sometimes, showing up was half the battle. Even if that did mean getting roasted by a gas station cashierier.
Mr Anderson looked him up and down.
His gaze lingered on Peter's battered sneakers, their once-dark blue now a sort of washed-out grey and just barely held together by a clumsy knot.
"I suppose that makes more sense." The much older man nodded slowly.
The fake smile was starting to hurt his jaw "Glad we've adjusted our expectations."
"Good luck then, son."
He gave Peter a distracted pat on the shoulder before shuffling down the hallway, undoubtedly on his way to tell Mrs Rodriguez in 505 that the unemployed kid on the 4th floor was going to yet another interview, this time with a law firm, what a wonder!
God," he muttered to the empty hallway, dragging a hand down his face, "I love this building."
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Turns out, when you're not swinging through the city, getting to Hell's Kitchen is actually pretty tedious.
The subway screeched around another corner, the car lurching hard enough to send everyone swaying in unison. Peter tightened his grip on the overhead rail, already regretting his nicest shirt.
A baby sitting across from him had spent the last three stops in full, uninterrupted scream, the wail bouncing off the steel-grey walls with nowhere better to go. Beside him, an old man had claimed his shoulder as a pillow without so much as asking, and somewhere on the car, someone had clearly eaten a deeply, aggressively onion-based meal before boarding, and the stench was like no other.
Normally, none of this would faze him. The subway had been a daily routine back in high school, and he'd long since gotten used to the particular cast of characters you meet underground at any given hour. But today, felt like an entirely different story, the day he needed to look as presentable as possible.
By the time he finally climbed the station stairs into Hell's Kitchen, he'd been travelling for almost an hour and a half. His shirt was somehow more wrinkled than it had been that morning. His hair, which he'd actually taken the time to style, was back to his usual untidy style. And he'd nearly lost his resume. twice.
He glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes to spare, if he sprinted the last four blocks…
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Peter stared at the frosted glass door, a slightly crooked sheet of printer paper blu-tacked to it like it was an afterthought.
NELSON & MURDOCK
Attorneys at Law
The letters were written in thick black Sharpie, uneven and squashed together. It didn't exactly look like a law firm. In fact, it didn't look like any establishment at all! This building was only one step up from his own apartment building, and that bar is in hell!
Just as he was considering the prospect of this being some money laundering schemes he'd accidentally come across, the door swings open and a woman with pale, honeyed blonde hair and expressive grey-blue eyes looks at him with great interest.
She smiled, turning toward the unseen office beyond the door.
“Foggy, Matt, someone actually came for the job!”