One month on Earth G and Peter felt like he'd lost all confidence in the suit.
He was perched on the precipice of the apartment rooftop, shifting on his heels, nervous but toasty warm in his still functioning heating system (thank God). His stomach was an uncharacteristic mess of knots as he stared down at the sparse traffic and people below.
Was it the change in abilities? The scenery? Had time out of the suit seriously fooled him into feeling like his first jump would result in a Peter Pancake?
What it was, was stupid. Peter's instincts were impeccable, thank-you very much. His conscious choices… less so. But he was self-aware enough to acknowledge that Spider-Man's proficiency came almost exclusively from those instincts… and a few calculated risks and buckets of stubbornness thrown in for good measure. With only an incredibly sparse training history under his belt — barely enough to even make a teen movie montage — Peter's continued survival was almost completely down to blind faith in his ill-gotten talents, not any learnt skills he'd gained from what little time he'd had with Mr Stark and Happy.
And yet… despite that faith, Peter's stupid brain left him hesitating.
He'd forgotten the feeling over the years, but Peter imagined the churning sensation in his guts was what he'd felt the first time he'd tested his web-shooters. Anxious. Unsure. Unconvinced it was the right decision.
It had been.
The right decision, that was. For all the tragedy that had struck, Peter didn't regret being Spider-Man. Maybe he'd not made the world better, but he knew he'd made a material improvement on some people, and that was enough. It was what kept him going. After Ben. After Mr Toomes and Beck. After his aunt… After the Erasure…
The belief was a necessity. After all, what would be the point of all that loss if Spider-Man wasn't worth it?
"You're being dumb," Peter told himself as a car honked below. "Stupid."
So what if this was the Red Hood's territory? So what if he (reportedly) didn't like people encroaching on his turf? Peter literally had the ability to sense when people were watching him! And sure, there were still cameras to content with, but he was reasonably certain he could steer clear of them now.
That morning, after waking late but blessedly migraine-free, Peter had been startled to realise that the faint tingle he sensed when he got too close to his window was actually him sensing the presence of cameras. They were all directed outside, thankfully, but Jason must be… abnormally concerned with security, even for a Gotham security guard (presuming it was Jason who'd set them up). It was not helping Peter's mobster theory. For a time, Peter had been confused about the discovery: cameras were inanimate and shouldn't have triggered the Web. Then he'd realised that it wasn't their attention he noticed but the presence of electricity[1].
It was an exciting revelation. One Peter unfortunately had little time to explore: after a brisk jog with Dog, he'd rushed off to work, where he was pleasantly surprised to see that Sandra had taken a day off (with Sandra out of the picture Conrado was blessedly more tolerable, too).
Undeveloped or not, what it all meant was Peter could — in theory — pop in and out of NRE with the Red Hood none-the-wiser. Case in point: Peter knew there were a few cameras on his rooftop, and he was pretty sure he was standing in their blind spots.
Plus, Peter figured he was simply doing the Red Hood a solid. What better way to endear himself to the territorial vigilante than to introduce himself with intel about a company that was not only fencing stolen electronics (he strongly suspected), but was — more importantly — stealing data from every single device that was sent in for repairs or sale?
Because that's what Peter had discovered while studying their 'diagnostic program'. Sure, it wasrunning a diagnostic, but as he'd suspected, it was simultaneously breaking through encryptions and downloading reams of personal data, all the while leaving some super fun spyware on the device for future access. For 2016 Earth G, it was surprisingly sophisticated stuff.
And Peter could take a solid punt at why they were collecting that kind of data: fraud and identity theft being the chief reasons. Bread and butter to organised crime in the modern world. The question that Peter needed answers to — the question that had him finally putting back on the suit after hours at his computer — was this: was NRE a straight up front for the mob? Or had some enterprising employee/s decided they could make themselves a special commission?
If it was the former, Peter's follow up question was: how many other repair shops in Gotham did the same? If the latter (his preferred outcome), how high up was the guilty party, and could Peter take them out of the equation without toppling NRE in the process? He didn't want to lose his job, but he especially didn't want people like Kyla getting thrown out in the cold. The Red Hood had a bloody reputation, but by all accounts, he cared about Park Row and the neighbouring districts.
And if he didn't help? Then Peter was determined to find some other way…
Peter shook himself, resolved. The heating elements fused to his suit — carefully designed and adapted to account for damages — kept his core at a comfortable temperature but traces of the cold still seeped in at the places where the suit overlapped: waist, ankles, wrists, neck. He needed to start moving if he wanted to remain stable in the chilly night.
"Showtime," he whispered, struck by the feeling this was the start of something momentous. "Gotham, say hello to Spider-Man."
As if in answer, a gunshot rang out to the east.
Peter laughed. The feeling eased away. "Okay, fair enough."
He jumped.
The exhilaration was immediate, blood suddenly a flashflood of adrenaline as he dropped through the humid air. Before he could ruin the momentum of the swing, he shot out a web and couldn't resist the exhilarated whoop! as he was hauled out of freefall and all his former nerves fell away like leaves on the wind.
Fuck, he'd missed this.
— + —
For all their security, Peter was pretty sure breaking into NRE was going to be a cinch. Sure, there were a boatload of cameras, and whoever set them up was competent, but they had not accounted for someone who could stick to walls and hang from the ceiling. With that in mind, he'd found a blindspot that would be perfect for infiltration behind the air-conditioning units stuck to the back of the building. They shielded a single window from view: the bathroom window, small and awkward enough that they probably hadn't thought it worth anyone's time.
If Peter could jimmy it open and crawl through—
Behind! To your right!
Peter froze where he clung to the wall. His connection was pinging relentlessly with low-level alarm. No harm imminent, but whoever had their eyes on him certainly had the capacity to create it.
With a sense of impending doom, Peter turned his head towards his watcher—
And saw the Red Hood, squatting on the flat roofing of the building opposite. When he saw that he'd caught Peter's attention, he lifted red gloved hand and beckoned.
"Ahhh crap," Peter groaned.
All hopes of finding the Red Hood after he'd confirmed his suspicions with concrete evidence slipped away. Now it probably just looked like he was a wannabe burglar in a fancy suit.
He could run… but fleeing the scene would look even worse. Not to mention it would put Red Hood on alert and then goodbye neutrality! Getting shot on sight by the part crimelord, part vigilante wasn't what Peter hoped for when he'd made his Gotham debut.
Resigned, Peter climbed back up to the rooftop, then made the easy jump across the street — with a web. He didn't want to clue the Red Hood into the full extent of his strength just yet.
At Peter's entrance, the Red Hood hopped off his ledge and straightened up. He oozed menace, strength imbued into every square inch of his presence. And there was a hell of a lot of square inches to the man.
But Peter wasn't intimidated. He bet his left buttcheek he was still stronger…
… Okay.
Maybe he was a little intimidated.
Those dull red eyes seemed a lot worse alone on a rooftop than they did at street level with the skittles Robin watching over him. Peter held himself a little taller and tried to quell the churning discomfort of his senses. Red Hood was holding a gun. Even if it was currently pointed at the ground and his finger was off the trigger — Happy would have commended his gun etiquette — Peter doubted he could run faster than Hood could shoot.
"You're a new face," the Red Hood rumbled. Tonight, his modulated felt very gravel-forward, the sound scraping across Peter's back like road rash.
He breathed in deep to compose himself and wash the feeling away.
"Sup!" he chirped, then winced. "Uh. I mean, hey, I've got a pressing question: is it the Red Hood, or just Red Hood? 'Cause no one can agree and it's been bugging me."
Whatever Red Hood expression was, was obscured by his muzzled and domino. The weight of his stare was oppressive. "Lemme ask you a question first." he said eventually. "You friend or foe?"
"Friend! Definitely, definitely friend!" Peter was still eyeing that gun. He did not enjoy getting shot…
On a scale of one to ten, how mad would the Red Hood be if Peter webbed it out of his hand?
At least a thirteen.
"Friend, huh. Don't know a lotta friends who'd try to breakin' into the only electronic store in Park Row."
Peter held back another wince. "I'm… on recon."
"Oh? And what kinda recon does a little spider need to do?"
"… It's Spider-Man."
"That's what I said."
Peter grimaced beneath his mask and the Red Hood radiated amusement.
This was not going the way Peter had hoped.
"What're you doin' in Gotham, little spider? This city ain't kind to outsiders."
"Didn't have much choice," Peter shrugged and the Red Hood titled his head in question. "If it's any consolation, it should only be temporary."
"Yeah? You a mercenary? Here to make a quick buck?"
"Oh hell." Peter laughed despite the danger still thrumming under his skin. "I wish I got paid for this stuff." He tapped his foot on the roof to try and dispel some of that nervous energy. "All you need to know is that my help is available for a limited time only."
Probably. Hopefully.
"Your help," the Red Hood repeated, entirely unimpressed. "The fuck makes you think I need your help?"
"We—ell," he trailed off. Was he worried Red Hood would shoot him, or that he just wouldn't believe Peter? "I — uh — I've got a — friend. They tipped me off — whistleblower style, y'know? — that there's something dodgy going down there."
Somehow, Red Hood grew even taller. Did he have hidden lifts in his boots? "Dodgy, how?"
Peter narrowed his eyes. He knew if he played all his cards at once, Red Hood would simply chase him off. He'd be all, 'thanks for the intel, now buzz off bug boy, let the pros handle this'. It was exactly what Mr Stark attempted to do and look how badly thatturned out. And call it curiosity or professional pride or whatever, but Peter didn't want to just wash his hands of NRE. Not to mention, he'd hate to be blindsided by his job suddenly falling apart due to events no longer in his control.
"I'd… rather not say until I've confirmed," he hedged.
Red Hood's laughter was ugly and unnerving. "The only thing you'da confirmed tonight is that they've a working alarm."
Peter's stomach dropped.
Shiiiiiit. He was an idiot!
Of course NRE would have an alarm!
This was what he got for never watching any of those spy movies his aunt liked so much. Spider-Man was more a stop-a-mugging or carry-a-tired-mom's-groceries kind of hero. Maybe the odd dip into organised crime. But the events surrounding the Erasure sent Peter directly back to friendly neighbourhood territory. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Do not think about the body you left behind in ruins of an apartment lobby.
Of course he'd think about the cameras and forget the rest of the security system! Idiot!
This is why you stick to the friendly neighbourhood stuff.
Though Peter doubted he'd projected his realisation, the Red Hood laughed that grating laugh again. "What?" he mocked. "Is this baby's first break in?"
"It's not!"
"Are you sure? 'Cause I can smell the green comin' off ya."
"I've definitely, totally broken into places before!" Peter winced as he remembered who-slash-what he was talking to. "In like, a crime-fighting way."
"Oh, so you're a crime-fighter, little spider? Then I'll ask you again, and this time, you better answer me, or I'll start shooting, in a crime-fighter sorta way. What's 'dodgy' about the only electronics store in my territory?"
Peter was losing control of the situation. "I'll tell you. But only if you promise to keep me in the loop."
The Red Hood finally raised his pistol and danger thrummed like a soft purr across his skin. "I don't make promises. Especially not to greenies."
"I am not green!"
"That really the part you wanna focus on right now, spiderling?"
Peter wanted to defend himself: he'd been Spider-Man since he was fourteen. He'd battled the Mad Titan — in space. He'd been an Avenger. He'd fought with the rest of them when he blipped back. Was there to hear Mr Stark's pulse stutter and fall quiet. Forced to listen to the same thing with—
He breathed in slowly. Clenched his fists to keep the tremble at bay. The Red Hood did have a bit of a point.
And a gun.
You are not allowed to break it. You're trying to make yourself an ally.
"Okay," he said eventually, and was grateful it came out smooth and even. "So. First off… pretty sure this place has been selling stolen goods—"
"Wow," the Red Hood drawled, unimpressed. "Colour me surprised."
Crime lord. He's a crime lord, Peter reminded himself. Dumbass. Of course he wouldn't care about that. In fact, it might even be him who was profiting off the sales… though most accounts of the Red Hood were convinced he was investing back in the wellbeing of the people in his territory. There were whole forums dedicated to tracing the money.
Still… there went one of his bargaining chips. Peter really wasn't used to working with people like this.
"And?" Red Hood prompted. "You said 'first off'. What's the second off?"
Peter sighed. "Okay. So, the fencing's not a surprise. But did you know they've been collecting data from every device that passes through their doors?"
The gun lowered slightly. "What kind of data?"
"The sensitive kind." Peter rattled of the Cliff Notes version of what he'd found from his successfulsnooping. The gun returned to its previous position.
"You here to help yourself to that shit, then? Not very crime-fighterly of you."
"No!" Peter cried, outraged. "I promise you!"
Hood laughed. "If I had a nickel for every asshole who tried to promise me something, I'd have a bonanza at the Dollar Tree."
"Look, I know you'll have never heard of me, but where I'm from? I'm a pretty big name." Unfortunately. "Spider-Man is a good guy!" Not that the Bugle would ever admit it. "I'm not here to steal that data for myself. I'm here to investigate."
And then use his findings to attempt to bribe his way into the Red Hood's good graces. Which was going swimmingly.
"That's swell," the Red Hood drawled. "Just grand. But now you've passed the message on, you can let the professionals take it from—"
"No."
"No?" Red Hood repeated, as though he'd never been refused anything in his life.
Peter set his jaw, pulse thrumming with anxiety and defiance. "No. My whilstlebower, they're — uh — worried about their job. They don't know if this is just a bad actor or a system-wide issue. They're trusting me to deal with this in a sensitive manner."
"Yeah, 'cause nothing says sensitive like a screaming alarm at two in the morning."
He winced. Yeah… Peter deserved that.
"So I'm new to espionage," he admitted. "But I made a promise, so here I am. And I won't let you run me off."
The Red Hood's silence was telling. Peter soldiered on.
"I have to find out who installed the mining program and where they're storing the stolen data."
"And the stolen tech?"
"I'm guessing there's a second book of accounts, or a file keeping track of shipments. My contact says things are pretty orderly. The owner runs a tight ship."
"Not tight enough, obviously."
"In theory, no…" He shifted on the balls of his feet. "So, are you up for a team up or not?"
The Red Hood was silent for a long time and Peter fought hard not to fidget nervously as he awaited judgement. An age passed before the Red Hood laughed suddenly and the pistol dropped down. He shook his head in what Peter thought was exasperation.
"Jesus, you're gonna be a stubborn one, aren't ya?"
Peter grinned with relief. "Mama said it's my best quality."
"Somehow, I doubt that." Hood whipped something small through the air and Peter caught it effortlessly.
"What's this?" He turned the thing over in his hand. It was a disk, roughly palm-sized and vaguely flexible.
"Disruptor. Slap it on a camera and it'll break into the security system and cut off any alarms until its removed."
That was… pretty damn cool, actually. Peter itched to pry apart the layers and see how it worked, but he doubted the Red Hood would appreciate it. Maybe he could steal it after?
No… that probably wouldn't go down well. You're trying to win him over, Parker. Don't be an idiot.
Maybe he could work out how to replicate it for himself…. Such a device would undoubtedly be useful.
Peter slipped the device into the hidden pocket on his chest. "Be back in a mo!" he chirped, then shot a web across the chasm between buildings and leapt back, landing light-footed on the rooftop to NRE.
Conscious of his audience now, Peter slunk down the wall to reach the camera he'd already pinged as suitable. The device momentarily threw him — how did it stick? — but he quickly realised there was a protective layer of plastic on one side to cover an adhesive. Discovery made, it was a breeze to connect it to the camera and crawl back up.
And if he showed off a little by letting go of the wall to do so? Well, that was between him and whatever constituted for a god in this hellscape of a city.
By the time he reached the ledge, the Red Hood was landing just as softly as Peter had onto the roof. Peter watched him, hanging half off the brickwork, as the other man retracted a goddamn grappling hook and set it back into his belt.
Guess that explained how the Bats got around town.
"You good?" Red Hood said when Peter made no move to join him.
"Uh. Yup." With a little thrust of his feet against the wall, Peter flipped through the air to land in a squat on the ledge.
The theatrics had him grinning. He had missed this. Peter wasn't made for an existence where his feet were trapped firm on the ground.
He wasn't even disappointed when the Red Hood remained unimpressed.
(Okay, maybe he was a little.)
"Those webs natural?" the vigilante asked instead.
Peter straightened out of his crouch and hopped down onto the rubber roofing. "Sure," he lied. Showing off or not, he wasn't about to hand over all his secrets. "Doesn't even come outta my ass, how about that?"
"A mercy for all of us," Hood drawled. He spun on the heel of his boot and stalked across the rooftop. There was a single entry point via a locked trapdoor that Peter had originally avoided because of the cameras. He hung back but must have made some kind of noise when the Red Hood began picking the lock.
"What?" Hood growled (was he even capable of anything else with that modulator? Actually, that was a good point… was his modulator adaptive? If Peter built up enough of a rapport with Hood, would he let Peter reverse engineer one to incorporate something similar into the Spider-suit? Peter was beginning to feel FOMO, stuck with only the rudimentary mask he'd whipped up for the night).
Hood was staring at him. Why way he—?
Oh. Yeah.
Peter shrugged. "I just thought lock-picking was a bit more subtle than your usual MO."
"Oh yeah?" Red Hood turned back to the door. "And what's my MO?"
"Well, according to the forums, there's usually a whole lot more shooting and explosions."
"I do like a good explosion," Hood acknowledged, tone oddly conversational. "But it pays to be a man who can be both."
Between one breath and the next, Hood had unlocked the door and swung it open to reveal a set of collapsible stairs. From where Peter stood, he could see boxes piled high in the dark room. The stink of dust and stale air wafted up to them.
Peter was impressed. While Peter could pick locks (MJ had taught him one lazy Sunday afternoon), he struggled to maintain the focus required for anything more complicated than a padlock. For all his agility and stickiness — abilities that lent themselves to stealth — Peter was well aware that he tended to wield Spider-Man like a blunt instrument. If he was to ever grow as a hero, keep more people safe, he badly needed to learn some finesse of his own.
Maybe he should make himself a list?
Red Hood shoved the stairs and they opened out. He turned to Peter. "Babies first."
"First off, rude," Peter said, but wove around Hood to peer curiously into the musty dark. He'd known there was an attic above the workshop but hadn't had the opportunity to explore. All in all, it was pretty disappointing: just a bunch of boxes and broken furniture. There went his hopes that their ne'er-do-weller was working up here. "Secondly, who's saying I'm a baby? For all you know, I could be in my forties and living out my mid-life-crisis by swinging through the streets like a hoodlum after a recent brush with a radioactive spider."
"Please," Red Hood scoffed, but there was a momentary hitch in his voice that had Peter glancing back curiously. No use trying to read him though: the muzzle and mask combo did too good a job. "If you're in your forties I'll eat my favourite gun."
"Well, I'd hate to give you indigestion…" Peter trailed off suggestively, but left it there, turning back. He avoided the stairs to instead crawl in via the ceiling. Once he was clear of the stepladder he flipped and landed silently the right side up.
"Yeah," he caught Hood muttering. "That's not fucking weird at all."
"Say," Peter said as the Red Hood entered the more conventional route, closing the trapdoor on the way. "I've a question."
"I might have an answer."
Did the Red Hood sound wary? He totally did. Peter found a secret delight in the realisation.
"Is it, like, the Red Hood, emphasis on the 'the', or just Red Hood, 'the' is optional? It's been killing me for weeks now."
"… Yes."
"Yes, what? Is it The Red Hood, or just Red Hood?"
"Yes."
Peter had the distinct impression he was being made fun of. "Fine. But full disclosure, you've now been downgraded to 'Hood' in my internal monologue."
"Ooo heavens! How shall I cope?" Hood said dryly. It was… really something, coming through that modulator.
Hood swept through the storage room, but Peter was unconcerned. Tapping into the web revealed only the two of them and a mildly concerning number of rats and roaches in the building. Thanks to Sandra's chattiness, he knew NRE employed a security guard that would intermittently check in throughout the night, but Peter was equally sure he'd be able to sense their approach and get him and Hood out of there before the guard even pulled out his keys.
"So, how you planning on finding this data?" Hood asked once satisfied they were in fact alone. He had immediately kneeled to pick the door out of the storage room.
"Start with the boss' office. Upstairs, repairs have a couple of laptops — at least one of them has the mining software on it, so I want to see if I can find out who uploaded it. If that's not fruitful, then the upstairs manager's computer and desk merits an investigation, too."
"Why?" Hood had finished picking the lock and the door swung inwards with a loud creak. The stairwell was dimly lit in eerie green by the emergency exit signs.
Peter thought of Sandra's attempts to reassure him that NRE didn't sell any stolen property. She'd been suspiciously defensive. "Bad vibes," he said at length. "At least, according to my contact."
"… I see." Hood gestured for Peter to go down first again and he did so without complaint, though he balanced on the balustrades rather than the steps. A garbled snort was the only acknowledgement he got for the action.
"We should do the boss' office first," Peter recommended. "If the security guard turns up, I'd rather be interrupted there."
"How good are you with computers?"
"Fantastic," Peter said without hesitation. No point in false modesty here. He didn't want to be here any longer than needed. To prove his point, he pulled out a flash drive from the pocket hidden on his chest, then tucked it back inside. "I wrote a program to do most of the job for me. It'll break their encryptions — though my contact passed on the manager's password already — and then it'll do its own data mining."
No need to tell Hood he'd lifted parts of Karen's code to do so. What Peter managed to preserve of her was barely a shadow of what she once was, but her neural networks were still useable.
"And you say you weren't collecting data…"
That was… probably meant to be phrased as a question. But the doubt in Hood's voice made it more like a statement.
"I've no interest in any of the personal stuff. If I could do it without raising suspicions, I'd delete it all. But the goober will insert an additional line of code on the metadata of anything sensitive. Kinda like making them an NFT."
"NFT?"
Peter winced. 2016. Right. NFTs weren't a thing yet. "Not important," he said evasively. "What matters is the unique digital identifiers will mean that any sold or copied personal data could be traced."
Hood paused on the stairs. "Clever."
Peter laughed nervously. His stomach had done a funny little twist at the compliment and he wasn't sure how to deal with it. "Please. With things like that disruptor, you must have tons of stuff like mine at your disposal."
"I might." Hood jumped the final three steps to the ground floor and started on the new locked door. "But I'm assuming you're working by yourself."
"Oh no," Peter said mildly. "I've got a whole army at my disposal. Granted, they're only two inches tall, but it's amazing what you can get done with eight legs."
Red Hood was silent for a long, weighted minute. Then: "You're aware if that's not a joke I'll hunt down your crew and introduce them to the fun end of a flame-thrower."
"Please," Peter scoffed. "As if you could catch them."
"I can see why you don't have a team."
"Rude."
They slipped into the sales floor. Inside wasn't completely dark: dim light seeped in from the street through heavy duty shutters and the emergency lighting lined the rest with sickly green. The misshapen figures of shelves and locked cabinets loomed around them and the silence had a distinctly ominous feeling. Peter figured he was just projecting his anxieties. After all, he was doing something that could get him arrested (or worse, fired).
Hood pulled out a small flashlight and Peter led him to O'Brien's office and the fourth locked door of the evening. This one was the fastest of the lot, which probably wasn't promising.
The office was a windowless room — practically just a converted storage room — so Hood flipped a switch as soon as Peter shut the door. Watery yellow light flooded the space, which was as neat and clean as usual, with a large bookshelf, a wall of filing cabinets and a desk equipped with a fairly upmarket PC. For all his nervous temperament, O'Brien was an exacting man. Apparently, he had a business partner who was less so, but Peter was yet to meet them. Sandra had mentioned he had his fingers in a lot of businesses through north Gotham.
"You take the computers, I'll look analog," Hood ordered. Peter tipped him a mocking salute. He dropped into the desk chair — it was exceedingly comfortable. Maybe Peter could petition for something like that upstairs? Theirs were awful, with razor thin padding and joints that squeaked with every movement.
Whatever. Peter pulled out the goober, plugged it in and booted up the PC. He glanced over at Hood while he waited for the goober to do its thing. Hood was studying the bookshelves carefully, and Peter realised there was an opportunity for information here. He wasn't going to squander it.
"Say…"
"Say what." And. Yep. Hood was definitely sounding exasperated now.
Peter grinned in celebration. Guess he'd found his mojo again. He swung left to right in the office chair. "You know the Waynes, right?"
Hood tilted his head towards Peter. His red eyes were narrowed. "They're the Kardashians of Gotham, of course I know them."
"No no. I mean, like, in a personal capacity."
"Why the fuck would I know a Kardashian?"
Peter frowned and wished he'd had the time to modulate the eyes on his mask like he had with his old one. Soon. He'd get around to it soon. "No… don't you think they're kinda suss?"
"Suss."
"Like, dodgy."
"They're rich as hell. Of course they're kinda dodgy."
"Yeah, but… are they part of the mob or something?"
"The mob?" Hood echoed, incredulous. "Shit, I thought you were just thinking about 'em being tax dodgers or somethin'. No, they ain't in the fucking mob."
"Are you sure?"
"Pal, I'm the fucking mob. I'm sure." Hood snorted. "Fuck me, trying to imagine Brucie Wayne going toe to toe against the likes of Black Mask or the Falcones… You gotta be kidding me."
Peter thought of the Bruce Wayne he'd met and his extensive knowledge of the ins and outs of his company, himbo reputation notwithstanding. He thought of Mr Wayne's troubled relationship with Jason and whatever had gone down between them that led to Jason unwilling to mend those bridges.
He wasn't convinced, but whatever he might have said was derailed by the goober breaking in. Peter went hunting once he'd started it on the next task, though things went slowly: the capacity of Earth-G CPUs weren't leagues away from what Peter remembered was available in 2016, but they were enough that the wait was annoying.
"Gotcha," Hood suddenly crowed, and Peter paused mid-way through his investigation of Justin O'Brien's browser history (it was so far, very mundane). Hood was holding aloft a small ledger, the drawer of one of the filing cabinets hauled out. "Secret compartment in the drawer above," Hood explained, and flicked through.
"Is it—?"
"An account of the last three months of stolen goods they've received? Yup." Hood placed the ledger on the desk and took photos of every page. Peter's attention was caught on the writing.
"Can I?" He held out his hand and Hood took note of the page before passing it over. Peter frowned. He glanced at the post-it stuck to the monitor. Holding the ledger against it, he could quickly spot the difference. "This isn't O'Brien's handwriting. The Bs and H's are wrong."
"It's in his office."
"He's got a business partner — I don't know their name. I bet they have access, too." Peter handed the book back and Hood finished documenting the pages for future reference. He studied the Red Hood carefully. "If I give you my number, will you share those with me?"
"… I s'pose it depends."
"On?"
"On what else you're good for."
Peter probably should have been offended, but that kind of mercenary attitude was what he'd expected from the vigilante anyway. If Hood was hoping to insult — and by the challenging drawl, he had — he was going to be sorely disappointed.
Instead, Peter smirked, though it went unseen beneath his mask. "Let's not forget, I'm the one with access to the stolen data, here. Seems both of us have something the other person wants."
"Oh yeah?" Hood took a threatening step towards Peter, impossibly tall with Peter still seated. "And what's stopping me from simply stealing that off you?"
Peter laughed. He couldn't stop himself, humourless as the sound was. "You can try. I doubt it'd end well, though."
Even trapped in the mundanity of O'Brien's insipidly lit office, the Red Hood seemed like something out of an 80s horror movie. Peter met masked stare for masked stare. He wouldn't allow himself to be intimidated by someone he could literally throw through a wall (even if he'd never actually do that! That was how you killed people).
Eventually, Red Hood huffed and backed off. Feeling smug, Peter returned his attentions to the PC but so far, the goober hadn't picked up anything. He wasn't too surprised: if they were keeping their accounts of received stolen goods separate, it stood to reason they'd do the same with the mined data. And it didn't make much sense having it stored on the boss' PC when it was the air-gapped laptops upstairs that ran the program in the first place.
He wrapped things up but left a backdoor hidden for himself on the PC, just in case. Hood let him leave first, but left the door unlocked before they headed upstairs.
A fifth lock picked and then they were in the workshop. This time, they didn't risk turning the lights on: the windows had security screens but they weren't the blackout kind installed below. It didn't matter: Peter's excellent spacial awareness and familiarity with NRE (he'd worked there for four weeks, he was startled to realise) meant he moved through the dark with ease. The air-gapped laptops were kept in a locked cupboard, but Peter had already stolen the spare key from O'Brien's desk drawer. O'Brien had fetched it for Peter and Conrado just that morning when Sandra called in sick.
"You seem to know your way around here," Hood noted. Peter forced himself not to pause as he unlocked the cupboard.
"My contact gave very clear instructions," he lied.
Hood hummed: a neutral sound Peter couldn't pin down. Acknowledgement? Or doubt? Checking on the web was equally opaque: all he could sense was Hood's attention. It seemed that moment at the zoo, where he thought he could differentiate feelings, had been a fluke.
Wary but determined to finish the job, Peter took out the laptops and set them on Sandra's desk. He plugged the goober into one — should've made two, damn — and turned both on. While the goober did its thing on the first laptop, Peter typed Sandra's password into the second. She'd been careless enough to use it in front of him weeks ago, though at the time Peter had memorised it for purely innocent reasons, not because of any suspicions he had about her or the business.
Hood loomed behind him, watching as Peter worked. He blazed with heat and Peter was reminded abruptly of Jason. Guilt abruptly washed over him as he remembered he was doing all of this behind the back of the man generous enough to secure Peter a job in the first place. And then just as abruptly, Peter remembered that Jason knew the Red Hood. Technically, Jason worked for him.
He huffed a laugh.
"What?"
Peter shook his head. "Nothing. Just. Remembered how small the world can be, sometimes."
The Red Hood rumbled an affirmation and the sound travelled deep through Peter. He shook off the shivers and got to work, pulling up the program's code and trawled through. He didn't know if it would be possible, but he was hoping he might be able to find the IP address of whoever originally wrote the program and trace them from there. If this was some home-grown conspiracy, chances were Peter could track down the connection between the writer and their contact in NRE.
It was beyond much of what Peter had been doing the last six months, but his blood fizzed with excitement at the thought of breaking down a new puzzle.
Hood left him to his work and poked around the workshop, on the lookout for anywhere they might have stored the stolen data once it had been copied. Peter was giving him pointers on where to search when he found what he'd been looking for. He couldn't stop the victorious cackle that erupted.
"You good?" Hood asked, mildly alarmed.
"I'm just great," Peter crowed. He switched to the goobered laptop and made sure it was picking up the same IP; it did. So they had probably been uploaded at the same time.
The goober had finished adding Peter's own code to the data mining program, so he switched laptops, then joined Hood in their search for the missing piece of the puzzle. But it was fruitless: whoever was lifting the stolen data from the laptops obviously had the sense not to leave a smoking gun lying around, and it wasn't as if they were just going to stumble across a server farm at NRE. Peter suspected they could search for hours to no avail and neither were interested in sticking around any longer than they had to. At least Peter had the new sub-routine added to the data miners and re-written the stolen data that had been copied over the last few days. The next time someone collected the personal information and put it up for sale, he'd have a decent chance at tracking it.
It was just as well they called it quits when they did: just as Peter was putting the cabinet keys back where they'd come from, laptops safely returned upstairs, he heard a car slow down on the street.
"Security's here," he announced. Hood hustled him out (as if Peter had any interest in getting caught) and locked the doors along the way. They were up and back out on the roof before the guard even reached the back entry. Peter peered over the ledge to see them go inside, then crept down and stripped the disruptor off the camera.
To his dismay, Hood was holding his hand out expectantly when he came back up.
"Can't I keep it?" he tried.
"No."
"Not even like, on loan?"
"No."
Peter huffed but handed it over. "You're no fun."
"I am not," Hood agreed as he slipped it back into a pocket inside his hood. Then he pulled out his phone and the expectant air returned. Peter rattled off the number of the burner phone he'd purchased just that morning on his walk with Dog.
"I'll be in touch," Hood promised. Or at least Peter interpreted it as a promise. His comment didn't seem like it was just a dismissal, at any rate.
"Vigilante business hours only," Peter said. The idea of being called in the middle of the day had him cringing.
"I'll call you when I call you."
Now Peter took that as a dismissal. He hopped onto the ledge. "It's been swell—"
"Spider-Man." Peter was stopped by a heavy hand on his forearm and was abruptly hit by the vague scent of fragrant wood, gunpowder and beneath it all, something ambiguously floral. It twigged something, but the recognition was a fuzzy and indistinct thing he couldn't pin down.
"Red Hood?" he replied, storing the memory away for later.
"Don't make this a habit. I don't wanna see you 'round here again. You're needed for intel only."
"Mm. No."
"No?"
Funny. Hood's voice rumbled with danger, but Peter's senses didn't so much as stir.
He shrugged. "Seems to me this city needs another friendly face swinging around, don't you think?"
"Whatever you're used to ain't Gotham, pal. She'll swallow you for breakfast."
"There was an old lady who swallowed a spider…" Peter murmured absently. He was still twigging out on that scent!
"Huh?"
Peter shook off the strange sensation, dislodging Hood's grip in the process. "I just mean… whatever Gotham throws at me? I can weather it. I'll catch you around, Hood."
And with that, Peter shot out a web and threw himself into the angry Gotham air.
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READ TEXT ONLY [HERE]
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To Peter's surprise, when he stumbled out of his room the next morning, Jason was already up. That was not to say that Jason looked like he was awake; if anything, he looked five blinks away from falling back to sleep — a look that was only compounded by Dog's juxtaposing enthusiasm. But he was, technically, up.
"Morning," Peter said in between a cracking yawn, scratching Dog's head in greeting when she bounded over. He'd become used to six to seven hours of sleep a night. It was surprising just how tired he felt after the four hours he eventually got. His blood throbbed audibly, and his eyes burned with fatigue. It was, quite frankly, embarrassing.
"Mmph," Jason grunted. He stood, zombie-like, staring at the coffee machine as it cheerfully gurgled away, blissfully unaware of the two men watching it with a mix of bewilderment and envy.
Peter, who despite the fatigue, was at least used to waking up while the morning hours were still in single digits, took pity on the other man and ushered him over to one of the stools neatly tucked into the breakfast bar.
"It hurts to look at you," he said when Jason attempted to resist. "Sit. I'll make you coffee."
Even the word itself appeared to rouse zombie-Jason. He blinked in surprise.
"When'd you get here?" he half-spoke, half-mumbled.
"Literally hours ago," Peter lied with a grin that had Jason sucking his teeth in disgust. He tugged Jason's chair out with his foot and forced him to sit. "Why the hell are you up, anyway?"
Jason grimaced and shut his eyes. Peter was abruptly reminded that he was only a handful of years older than him. Absent of its usual wax, Jason's hair flopped in loose, messy curls over his forehead. There was something painfully vulnerable about the downwards trajectory of his mouth.
Peter stepped away, hands falling from Jason's broad shoulders. It didn't take much to guess what had chased him out of bed and into the warm domesticity of the kitchen.
Concerned now, he busied himself with a mug for Jason. For himself, he poured one of the premade protein shakes he'd recently discovered. They were an unholy blend of pulverised cardboard, sugar and cocoa, but they were a simple way of hitting his caloric intake if paired with a real meal. And if Peter was going to be going out as Spider-Man on the regular again, it was in his best interests to ensure he wasn't working on a calorie deficit. Call him vain, but he liked not being able to see his ribs.
Jason practically fell upon the coffee Peter set down before him. However, Peter didn't miss the faint tremble in Jason's hands before he picked up the mug. The realisation that Jason might have demons of his own was discomfiting. For all they'd spoken of triggers after Peter's nightmare (fortunately, he'd not had another one so violent since then), Peter hadn't really thought of them as anything more than an abstract concept. Jason just seemed to have his shit together; strained family relations or not.
He was ashamed. It felt a bit like that time he'd seen his third-grade teacher Ms Fairbridge at the bodega buying herself a frozen pizza, chocolate and cigarettes, and an eight-year-old Peter suddenly realised that his teacher did in fact have a life that existed outside the confines of elementary school.
Crap. Had he really had his head so far up his ass he'd not even seen Jason as a real person?
It was a mortifying revelation.
In the hopes of escaping the swelling guilt, Peter focused on whipping up a quick breakfast for the pair of them: scrambled eggs on toast — a deviation from his usual sunnysides. By the time he was setting out the plates on the counter, Jason was a great deal more coherent and he'd drained his coffee. With only a small amount of resentment (he'd reached the 'acceptance' stage of his coffee grief about a week ago), Peter poured him another cup. This time, it summoned a smile from Jason.
"Welcome to the land of the living," Peter said, but frowned when Jason's smile turned strained. "You okay?"
"I'm fine."
Peter was inclined to disagree: Jason's breathing had hitched at Peter's joke (if it could even be called that). But it would be pretty hypocritical of him to call Jason out for lying. If Jason didn't want to share, Peter was in no position to push.
He slid the plate of eggs on toast over, along with cutlery and hot sauce. With movements that bordered on mechanical, Jason cut into the toast and began eating.
Not content with being left out, Dog whined and pawed at Peter's leg. His own breakfast in one hand, Peter fed her with the other: he'd become adept at the task thanks to his ill-placed laziness (though sticky fingers certainly helped). Why waste time on two jobs when he could multi-task?
Once Dog was happily inhaling her food, Peter stood at the counter and focused on eating, scarfing down his eggs and toast with his hands; it felt pointless to bother dirtying cutlery, even if Jason preferred them. By the time Peter finished and was rinsing out the dogfood tin and his plate, Jason had only just finished his first slice of toast but was looking far more present.
He was studying Peter, head tilted in a way that had Peter's subconscious pinging. "What?" he asked, self-conscious.
"Nothing," Jason said, turning back to his breakfast. "I just thought… you look tired."
Peter quirked a brow and stared pointedly back. Jason rolled his eyes.
"I'm not the one willingly conscious at a 'normal hour'."
"Willingly, he says." Peter grinned. "You might have a rich has hell daddy, but surely you know that this is like, a late morning for most."
"Ugh." Jason shuddered. "Say the D word again and I'm evicting you."
"Liar. Who'd walk Dog without me around?"
"Pete, how do you think we were doing things before you turned up?"
"I think you were attempting to recruit a pre-teen into starting a dog-sitting business."
Jason chuckled. "Touché."
"You know child labour is illegal, right?"
"Only if you get caught."
Jason's crooked smile was infectious. Peter grinned back without thought. "The children: they yearn for the mines."
Jason barked with startled laughter and Peter suddenly became aware that the meme hadn't even come into existence here. He was caught on that thought as Jason, still chuckling, stood and brushed past Peter to drop his plate into sink and—
Oh.
Peter finally recognised that scent.
[1] There is some evidence that spiders can detect weak electric fields. From a 2018 study by the University of Bristol:
"Arachnids have mechanosensory hairs known as trichobothria… Much is known about their mechanical and neural response to medium flows (air and water); they are exquisitely sensitive, detecting air motion close to thermal noise, they detect sound, and they are omnidirectional. Early studies using electrostatic actuation as a tool to investigate trichobothria mechanics indicate that they may also be sensitive to e-fields…. Notably, the different types of mechanical response generated by air movement and e-fields suggest that wind and electric field detection can be differentiated despite sharing a common peripheral receptor." Source: cell.com
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Messages with Rude-Robin. Time reads 3:27AM, Thursday October 27th
2:12AM Rude Robin: Hey, B wants 2 talk. Swing by the cave when ur done
3:03AM Red Hoodlum: can he not just send an email. Kinda busy.
3:04AM Rude Robin: fungi
3:04AM Rude Robin: its about Hatter
3:23AM Red Hoodlum: UGHHHHHHHHHHHH
3:24AM Red Hoodlum: If there's not concrete info, hands will be thrown. And they won't be mine
3:26AM Rude Robin: …
3:26AM Rude Robin: I'd bettr get sum hands ready than