Chapter 34: Under control

After it became obvious the fight between them was going nowhere fast, Jason stormed off without a word. Peter wondered if he should follow him. He was still a bit shocked by the fact the shady guy who had driven him to work turned out to be one of the richest men in this world and a local celebrity.

He picked his things off the ground and walked into the restaurant, earning himself a very unimpressed look from his boss. Their shift was supposed to start a full ten minutes before they had started arguing and the man's twitching eyebrows made it clear he wasn't very pleased about them being so late. Unfortunately, he would have to wait for a bit longer. He couldn't leave his current vigilante partner to wander into Gotham in that state of mind. With him being that angry, he could end up doing something bad, something they would both regret.

"Just one second, I'll be right back."

"Do your thing." Marco shrugged, pouring himself a glass of something cloudy and dark.

He smiled awkwardly and set the sodden bag down on the nearest chair. The fabric was covered in mud and he could only pray the books inside fared a tiny bit better. He felt bad about disappointing Barbara but a small, treacherous part of his mind was worrying about having to spend money to pay her back. Hopefully he would get some good tips that evening. Depending on how the next few hours went, he might have to figure out how to make his next suit alone, and he had already given the materials he bought to Jason. That had been a mistake.

He had a tendency to make those. He hoped May wasn't too ashamed of him, from wherever she was.

Marco rolled his eyes but didn't stop him when he headed back out. He had lit himself a cigarette as soon as the fight between his employees had started but hadn't intervened. Of course, it wouldn't be very smart for an injured civilian to try and get in the way of a metahuman and the person foolish enough to fight him. 

The poor guy couldn't be having an easy time of keeping his business running, with how often his two delivery guys caused trouble. It was a wonder he hadn't fired them yet.

And if he does... then what?

Peter bit his lip and closed the front door of the restaurant slowly. He had thought things were somewhat stable now that he had a place to sleep, a semi-decent job and a way to get supplies. He had been wrong. The misadventures he kept getting himself into were affecting his civilian life and his odds of keeping a roof over his head were looking grim. There was no guarantee he would still be living in his apartment a week from now. He wanted to scream in frustration. Almost one month in another world and he still had not managed to put his life back on track.

He could try to find another job, somewhere that didn't care about ID or his past experience. However, everyone and their mother now knew he was a metahuman. As long as he stayed in the northern half of the city, he wouldn't be escaping his reputation and, if he tried to go to the richer southern side, he would likely have to go through stricter hiring processes. He could always try to rely on Jason and his seemingly endless supply of funds and hideouts but he had only known the other teen for a short period of time and, although he liked him and respected him, he was not fully sure he could trust him with something so important as shelter and food. 

Oh, and they also just had a fist fight. 

He could always leave town, but that meant giving up on his promise to have Red Hood and Spider-Man team up for one month. He couldn't do that, they were only a couple days into their deal, and he hadn't even really started trying to help him. He had to figure out the source of the anger issues Nightwing had mentioned and he had to try to get Red Hood back on the right path. Vigilantism wasn't the most legal occupation but it was a lot better than whatever he had been up to during his crime lord days.

Peter shook his head and looked down, trying to spot the freshest footsteps on the thin layer of snow. Jason couldn't have gone far, he hadn't taken his motorcycle with him. He found some tracks that looked more defined than the others muddying up the sidewalk and started following them. At least that was one thing Gotham's horrible weather was good for. 

His mind kept wandering back to the same question, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it.

Am I still going to have a job when I get back to Marco's?

If he didn't, maybe he could pick up a camera, get some good shots of a hero in a back alley.

That would be a fun way of getting back at the Bats for trying to drug him. He wondered how much the newspapers here would pay for a decent picture of the local vigilante leader. According to the Internet, the man had started his career as a sort of urban legend and it had only been after he teamed up with and helped found the Justice League that he had started to become well known outside of the city. Even then, there were barely more than ten good photos of him. Everything else was some level of blurry, ridiculously dark or obviously altered. He knew he could do better than that.

It would be nice to annoy them a bit, yes, but he couldn't really do that to a fellow vigilante. He didn't particularly care about being seen and being filmed or photographed as Spider-Man, but he had a very different approach to vigilantism. He sighed. Even if he didn't care about the morality behind selling pictures of the Bats, there was also the risk of anything he did towards them being taken as provocation. The only one who had been even remotely civil was Nightwing, who was surprisingly nice, despite the little shovel talk he had given him earlier that afternoon.

Why couldn't every Bat be like him? That would make things so much easier.

He kept on following Jason's path outside of the pizzeria and further along into the streets outside. He was getting closer and thought he could hear him one or two blocks away. For the first time, he took a second to stop and listen. He felt cold. Since the spider bite, he had always had enhanced senses, had always been able to hear, see and smell better than regular humans. He, however, wasn't sure of when he had started being able to identify someone's heartbeats from several streets away.

Peter looked down at his hands, frowning. He had been finishing up his growth spurt lately. Was he becoming stronger due to growing older, or was there another reason behind it? He flexed his fingers. He would have to experiment. Later. When he had time. If he ever had time.

Jason's heart was beating too fast. He was still angry. Not good.

Getting closer to the one dark and cramped alleyway the rogue had chosen to hide out in, Peter started to slow down his pace. He was not afraid. He was confident he could easily beat most baseline humans in a straight fight, no matter how experienced they were, but he didn't know how he was supposed to act. Oh, he had seen a lot of things in his life, helped a lot of people, but the kind of broken relationships Jason seemed to have with about half of Gotham's vigilante scene was a new challenge. Ignoring bullies and other unfortunate high school related incidents, he never had that much issue getting along with people, especially after he developed his powers.

He turned into the tiny street, silently checking for signs of life other than him and the other vigilante. He could hear some people talking inside a nearby apartment, a lady cooking meat on the last floor, a couple that had just gotten home. Nobody was paying attention to them and all of the sounds were muffled by windows or walls. Gotham wasn't the best city to leave an open window unattended anyway. Even now he could hear a few gunshots, off into the distance.

"Hey." He waved at a shadow in the back of the alleyway, which smelled and sounded like Jason. "I came to check in on you."

The Jason-shaped shadow shifted. No insult, no rushing towards him. That was good, that was progress. He tried to project an air of calm that he wasn't feeling and pushed everything else out of his mind. He had to focus on this. 

"I didn't know you and Wayne have history." He said, after some hesitation. "Honestly, I met him by accident and I didn't think much of it. I kind of get why you don't like me being in his car, though, he's pretty creepy."

And his preteen son had been even creepier. The radio shows he sometimes listened to always pictured Brucie as an adequate but airheaded businessman, whose main virtues were a decent business sense and a lifelong passion for charity work. The worse thing that had ever been said about him was that he had womanizing tendencies and a history of reckless behavior. Nothing out of the ordinary for a billionaire, he figured. He should have expected a rich guy from Gotham would have some sort of hidden dark side but he had other things to worry about than this universe's rich and famous.

Maybe he was just naive. He wanted to grit his teeth but held back, careful to maintain a relaxed posture and neutral expression. Unlike Jason, he was still close to the larger street and the lights that bordered it. Some of them were broken but there were enough for his face to be clear.

"It wasn't an accident." 

A whisper, soft and almost entirely covered by the wind. He heard it, of course. For some reason, his coworker knew Wayne well enough that he sounded perfectly confident saying their meeting at the library was no coincidence. Why would he think that? Maybe they had worked together on some kind of criminal project and had a fallout. It was the simplest explanation but it didn't seem to fully fit. His instincts told him the truth was more complicated. Nothing could ever be simple around him, he hated it sometime. 

"You think? He did hit me as suspicious." He replied, hoping he was hiding his confusion well enough.

The shadow blurred, becoming taller, larger. More anger filled the air, Peter felt an urge to shift his feet around to get ready for an attack. He crossed his arms, leaning back on his heels. He had to be careful. Wayne was obviously a very sensitive subject. He couldn't see why. The more he figured out about his coworker, the more mysteries seemed to pop up. He had just started to wonder about him having been part of the Bats' vigilante team before he went off to become a rogue, but that theory in no way included the man having feuds with billionaires or his intense and unnatural bursts of rage.

"You thought he was suspicious?" The shape in the dark stilled but the smell of fury didn't lessen. "As if. You were in his car. You showed him where you work."

Peter shrugged, still pretending he was calm, still acting like he had everything under control.

"He didn't start acting weird until the car ride, actually. He was pretty nice before. That was an act, I think."

"It is." Jason hissed, stepping forward slightly. "This fucker only cares about his own ass. Almost everything he does is an act."

The metahuman frowned, surprised at the intensity of that statement. He had heard that sort of thing from his coworker before but that had been directed at someone else. Two someone. His foster father and Batman were the usual targets, and often the cause, of his outbursts. Sometimes, he complained about some other vigilantes but those two always came back and always caused the same kind of extreme anger, bitterness and sadness he was emitting now. How strange. Either he had a tendency to get into massive drama with older guys or...

Or...

Peter's eyes widened as a stupid, idiotic theory suddenly popped into his mind. It had no proof, nothing backing it up, but it fit. Jason hated three men more than anyone else. The first was the vigilante Batman, who Peter suspected had been his mentor as a vigilante. The second was his foster father, who was a high ranking employee of Wayne Tech. The third was, apparently, Bruce Wayne, the owner of that company and of the entire Wayne conglomerate. There was nothing indicating a connection between those three strangers, yet...

He filed the possibility away. He would have to come back to it later, after the current emergency was dealt with. He couldn't get distracted.

Not yet.

Besides, thinking about it was no help for his current situation. Jason had noticed his reaction and was practically growling at him, his body shaking, making him stand out among the other still shadows. The street was cramped but it was still full of odd shapes and smells. Garbage mostly, but also some furniture, abandoned off to the sides, under rusted metallic stairways and next to battered doors that had definitely seen better days. In between those still shapes, the teenager was easy to spot. He had started to pace.

"That surprised? What, did you buy into the Brucie act, too? I thought you were smart!"

Cruel words but that was to be expected. Peter shook his head.

"Honestly," he replied with another shrug, "I didn't really know much about the guy. I don't really read the news."

It was a lie, in a way, but it was also partly true. He had gotten out of that habit after every newspaper in New York had shifted to investigating his life, his family and his friends. He had, of course, made use of his radio to catch up on the news in this world and often listened to videos online while he worked on dismantling the Iron Spider but a few weeks of learning was nowhere near enough to make up for a lifetime in an alternate version of the United States. 

"I don't really want anything to do with him now, though. He gave me a bad vibe." He added, seeing his first answer had done nothing to calm his partner down.

A bad vibe was a poor way to explain his Spider sense to someone who didn't know about it but he felt like keeping that particular card close to his chest for the time being. Most of his combat instincts could be interpreted as him having enhanced reflexes and that bit of misinformation could be useful in the long run. After one month, if he could still trust Jason, if he managed to make him give up his aspirations to be a rogue and fully transition to a vigilante, he would let him know. He felt like that wouldn't be a weird thing to keep quiet in Gotham. 

"He did?" Jason sounded more surprised than angry now, but there was still an undercurrent of rage in the way he moved. "The bastard is usually a perfect liar. That's his best talent. He lied to me, you know?"

He sounded lost in thoughts, maybe in memories. Peter shook his head. Thinking back on it, Bruce had not said or done anything odd during the car ride. The way he acted could be interpreted as being a bit overbearing, maybe, but he had been polite. Without Damian there, he wouldn't have been able to tell anything was off, at least until they met Jason outside of the pizzeria. The billionaire's attitude had changed there, and there were those warnings from his Spider sense...

"He sounded like a nice guy but I'm pretty sure he tried to do something to me a few times. I can't tell what, though."

The first half of his sentence caused the figure in the shadows to tense, and the rest of it wasn't much better. Jason swore and kicked at a nearby wall. The sound was oddly metallic and much louder than it should have been. It rung through the alley and some of the voices inside the nearby apartments quieted, turning into frightened whispers.

"Asshole put a bug on you." The furious rogue spoke slowly. His voice sounded harsh, furious. "This is exactly why you don't get into this fucker's car!" He finished his sentence with another kick to the unfortunate building he had decided to take his anger out on.

"I don't think he did." 

He remembered the car ride perfectly and at no point had he let himself be touched after his Spider sense lit up. He still planned to look over his clothes once he got home but that was mostly due to the fact spy bugs were expensive and, if a billionaire just decided to gift him one, he wasn't about to throw it away. He could do a lot with one of those bad boys. Jason, however, didn't share his positive outlook and was still wailing on the furniture around them. Better that than have him start a fight with someone else, honestly.

"If he wanted to put a bug on you, he did it." More anger, more kicking. Peter uncrossed his arms, wondering if he should try to stop the outburst before his partner got too hurt. Hitting that kind of building, made of old, rough stones, couldn't be healthy for his feet. Punching the tables and chairs littering the ground wasn't much better, splinters were nothing to laugh at, they could get infected.

"You can check if you want." He said instead. "Would be kinda weird but if you're worried I don't mind."

"Shut up!" Jason wasn't quite yelling yet but it was close. This whole calming him down thing was not going too well but hey, at least they weren't fighting anymore. "Why the fuck are you even there? I made it clear I don't want to talk to you right now."

By that he meant he had tried to punch him a good dozen time while they were wrestling in front of Marco's. He did manage to hit him a few times but it hadn't been very painful. Peter had tough skin and, without some kind of armor or weapon to make the hits more potent, regular humans generally had a very hard time hurting him. The rogue had been vicious of course, but he had the advantage of already being in the middle of restraining him when the fight had started and, although that had stopped him from dodging everything that was thrown at him as he usually would, it still made it a lot easier to stop his maybe-friend from doing anything dangerous.

"Well," He spoke slowly, kicking some of the snow on the ground, "honestly, I like working with you. I don't want you to lose the job."

And I promised I'd help you become a vigilante. He didn't speak that last thought. It was generally a bad idea to talk about heroics in public and, if he had indeed been bugged, that could wait until he was done checking his clothes for spyware.

 Jason seemed so surprised by his reply that he didn't speak for close to a minute. When he did, he sounded noticeably shocked, which was very out of character for him. Peter, who was used to his neighbor hiding his emotions and acting outwardly calm and collected, found it a bit disturbing. The anger was bad enough, now he had to deal with the fact it was apparently an incredible surprise for the other vigilante that someone wanted to spend time with him.

"Are you serious? You're worried about me losing my job?"

Maybe he thought it was laughable Peter would be so serious about a part time pizza delivery job. That was also an option and it wouldn't even be too far fetched. Unlike him, the former rogue had money and resources and probably didn't worry too much about having to find shelter if he ever got fired. It was hard to remember that, despite acting like a confident but rebellious teenager, Jason was also filthy rich from dipping into all kinds of unsavory business. 

He tried not to let it get to him. It wasn't like he had told him he came from another universe and had absolutely nothing and no one to rely on. Plus, if being nice kept the anger away, then he just had to go on being disgustingly sweet and pray that would be enough. That was a better plan than giving into his annoyance and starting another wrestling match.

He nodded. "I think you're pretty chill to be around. Most of the time." 

"You think I'm chill. Me."

Peter tilted his head, wondering how relaxed he should pretend to be. He didn't want to be so carefree it looped back around to being annoying.

In the end, he opted to shrug and repeated, simply. "Most of the time."

Truth was, when he wasn't obsessing over the Bats. talking about his criminal past or shooting people, Jason was pretty nice to be around. He was never annoyed when he had to explain something or help out and, until he decided he needed to follow him to his latest arena fight, he had treated him like an equal. He had also bought him food, which was a sure way to any teenager's heart, especially when said teenager was a metahuman with an enhanced metabolism and needed to eat more than the regular human to function.

Jason laughed and, for the first time, he sounded more amused than furious. Distracting him from the source of his anger might be helping, or maybe the thing affecting his emotions was starting to wear off. Nightwing hadn't been very clear on what exactly was causing the outbursts and the irrational anger. Maybe he had wanted to protect his former teammate's privacy but, right now, Peter was finding his secrecy very frustrating. How was he supposed to fix the problem if he didn't have a clue of how it had been caused or of how it usually manifested?

"You're the first person to ever say that about me." The older teen informed him. "You're way too nice, kid."

Another fight breaking out was becoming less and less likely. He fought the urge to sigh in relief and smiled instead. "I'm not being nice. You're pretty alright."

The shadows shifted again and, this time, parted. Jason stepped away from the end of alley, looking incredibly tense but not nearly as angry as he had been a few minutes earlier. This was a rather extreme mood swing, and an important detail. Once he got back to his room, he would have to write down how long that episode had lasted. He still had one unused notebook he could use for this new investigation. There had to be a way to make the unnatural anger stop or to lessen its intensity somehow. If he could help cure his alternate selves' enemies, if he could redesign the Iron Spider and make his own tools, he was able to do this.

The best possible way to start looking into it would be to run physical tests. Unfortunately, he had none of the equipment needed for that and he wouldn't be able to put money towards it for a little bit. He was already planning to order web making supplies with this night's pay. With that done, and hopefully with Jason still willing to help on the sewing side of costume making, Spider-Man should be able to patrol Gotham sooner than he had expected.

"You're a terrible judge of character." Red Hood informed him seriously, standing in front of him, arms crossed. "You really thought Wayne was suspicious?"

For a guy who seemed to hate the billionaire, he was oddly amused at the idea of someone else finding him weird. He was still angry, it was obvious, but his lips were quirking up and he appeared genuinely happy to have been told he wasn't the absolute worse person to be around.

He nodded. "Yeah, and his son was creepy too. I'm pretty sure he tried to stab me."

"Never go into this guy's car again." Jason told him, frowning. "You might have gotten lucky this time but he's extremely dangerous."

Peter nodded again then looked down, deep in thought.

It was incredibly weird how Red Hood was now acting perfectly normal when he had been angry enough to hit walls less than five minutes earlier. Definitely unnatural. He wondered what would have happened if he had not intervened. Would he have stayed in that state? It was clear talking to him didn't break him out of it earlier, not when Wayne had been there and not right after. Was this how the symptoms usually manifested? Did the anger fluctuate in how long it lasted? He itched to put his thoughts down in writing. 

He wished he still had access to the lab equipment he and his other selves had used, that and a sample of blood would have been a great step towards untangling this mess. Maybe he could try to track Nightwing down and ask him for more details? The man did say he wanted them to work together.

They were allies.

Sort of.

"Hey." Jason snapped abruptly, waving a hand in front of his eyes. "I thought you wanted to keep your job. Let's go."

Peter blinked and, once more, realized just how tired he felt.

"Sorry." He mumbled, falling into steps behind his coworker. 

Marco was so surprised to see them walk into the pizzeria together he choked on whatever alcohol he had decided to drink that night. Whisky, maybe, although it was hard to identify the smell. Peter didn't have a lot of experience with liquor, being Spider-Man didn't leave him a lot of time to party. His boss glared at him for a few seconds, apparently not stunned enough that he had forgotten about him wrestling with his coworker right in front of his business. For a moment, it seemed as if they shouldn't have bothered coming back and would be getting fired anyway.

"You two are late." Was the only thing their employer ended up saying, shaking his head and looking disappointed in the both of them.

Jason, being Jason, threw him a dirty look. Considering the revelations Peter was beginning to have about who had raised his maybe-friend, he was starting to understand why he didn't like bowing down to authority figures. He, however, really wanted to keep his apartment so he stepped in before any insult was thrown. He must have done a relatively good job at apologizing since they both ended up being given their usual gear and being shooed away to start on their evening route.

"I can't believe I'm doing this." His coworker told him as they stepped outside, both of them wearing their bulky delivery bag on their back. "You brought fucking Bruce Wayne here and you still convinced me to come deliver pizza with you."

"Not with me." Peter pointed out. "We're splitting, remember?"

"This talk is not over." Jason insisted as he began to free his motorcycle from its habitual layer of chains and locks. "You have to tell me everything he said."

"And I will, tomorrow."

And while they were at it, they could set down a few guidelines, such as 'No shooting other vigilantes'. He didn't think this one simple rule would have to be repeated so much but Parker men attracted trouble wherever they went so, really, he should have expected it.

After watching the bike speed away, he smiled and waved at his boss through one of the front windows and got a very rude hand gesture in reply. Gothamites were such an angry bunch, it would have been endearing if they didn't all insist on carrying a small arsenal with them wherever they went. He just had to deal with it though, at least until his one month was over. Maybe, after that time was done, he would feel ready to go back to New York City. 

Maybe.

He sighed, looked up at the sky.

It had been almost a month, yet he still missed them. 

Well, at least he had avoided getting dragged into another fight. His pizza run shouldn't be too stressful, considering a lot of high ranked gang members had been arrested recently.

It was only when he stepped in front of the GCPD headquarters that he realized he had managed to jinx himself. 

Yeah, Parker luck was definitely still a thing even in an alternate universe.

Notes:

the boys need so much therapy istg

Two things!

First , I made a tumblr since some people have asked me about it. I haven't been back on this website in forever so my page looks like trash and idk how much I will use it. You can send me questions here. I probably will not reply to DMs due to being asocial so I would prefer asks. If you try to contact me I only ask that you are polite about it and also don't be surprised if I don't reply immediately, I really am not good with social media.

www.tumblr.com/irisenwrites

Second, I am doing pseudo NaNoWriMo with my friend and have decided for my project to be finishing this fic. We'll see how that holds up! I can't promise anything but do expect more updates this month.