Chapter Text
Sam has been really damn tired and really damn busy. And now, he finally has the perfect excuse to lie flat on his back, have the TV on a dumb channel, and no one will tell him to get off his lazy ass and do something productive.
So the situation isn’t all that bad, really.
“Fuck, man,” Adam says as he lumbers into his hospital room with a helium balloon bouncing after him. “Scared the heebie-jeebies out of us.” He is leaving muddy footprints. Tori is right behind, notepad in hand. They are both still in uniform. The balloon is pink and says ‘it’s a girl!’ and Sam says “you better be visiting an old friend in the maternity ward right after this because—”
Adam grins and tugs at the string. “Grabbed the first thing I saw, but I think it suits you.”
They stand at the foot of the bed, both of them, and they are blocking his TV with their stupid big police coats. Tori is already flipping through her notepad with her usual sharp motions. She perfunctorily asks him about his head and then follows up with: “So do you remember all the details from last night?”
“Sorry,” Sam says, “is this a friendly visit or detectives on the case?”
Her eyes flash. “I’m gonna catch the asshole who stabbed you, and that’s as friendly as you’ll ever get me.”
“I remember the details,” Sam says. He had been called to the scene by a colleague who was surveying a clogged up intersection. She had spotted a possible fake license plate on one of the cars. When Sam knocked against the window, the driver had thrown the door open and taken off on foot. Sam pursued him into an underground parking lot where the damn guy got the jump on him: stabbed him in the upper arm, smashed his head into a concrete pillar.
Tori hums at his story. “Spider-Man was at the scene.”
“Yeah, he was around. Somewhere overhead.”
“Huh,” she says and Sam knows that look on her face.
“He didn’t stab me, chief. It was the driver.”
“Spider-Man was standing right over you when we arrived at the scene. And you said you didn’t get a good look at your attacker.”
“No, but I think I would have noticed if he was half my size and dressed in red and blue! Have you ever seen Spider-Man running around with a knife?”
“It’s not on profile, no,” Tori agrees. “But for all we know, he could be part of their criminal network.”
“Could be,” Sam says, supremely unconvinced. “You two are blocking my program. How am I supposed to have a swift recovery without my shot of Tyra Banks?”
Adam steps aside. Tori does not. “I’ll keep you up to date on the case,” she says. “Hope to see you back at work soon.”
She leaves.
“She’s full of shit,” Adam says as he pulls up a chair. “I mean brimming with shit. I ran in ahead of her. I saw Spider-Man. He was one hundred percent first aid responder-mode, putting pressure on the wound, man, trying to help you. Took off once we got closer, but that doesn’t mean anything: dude is just camera-shy. But you know Tori. She’d rather let criminals walk free than catch them with the help of an enhanced. And she’d probably rather let our sorry asses bleed out than let us be saved by an enhanced.”
Or a ‘renegade’, as Tori prefers to call them. Sam gives a lopsided grin as he massages his heavily bandaged upper arm. “She’s a good cop. Good chief.”
“Terrible person. Stole my cigarettes last week.”
“You wanted to quit.”
“Stole my blueberry muffins, too. And I sure as hell don’t want to lose weight. Dad bod is all the rage.” He leans back in his chair and pats both hands against his belly.
“It’s hilarious how scared you are of her.”
“I know,” Adam agrees. “If I ran out of gas in the middle of a no-go zone, I’d rather ask a street gang to help me siphon some gas than call Tori and explain my mistake. I’d never hear the end of it.”
Sam’s head thuds against his pillow as he laughs. “Man. Just give me that damn balloon,” he says.
-
“They must have given me the really good drugs,” Sam says when he wakes up again and Iron Man and Captain America are at his bedside.
“Oh,” Captain America says and hooks his thumbs around the back of his chair, ridiculously large muscles stretching under his shirt. “Are you— Is he on painkillers? Because we do need him lucid for this conversation.”
“Really? I always get my business partners high before I make them sign anything,” Iron Man says. “He’ll be fine, I’m sure.” He tips his sunglasses down and looks at Sam. “No introductions required, I’m sure?”
“Just an explanation would be good.”
“Let’s not pussyfoot around then,” Iron Man says. “We have a business proposal.” He’s in an expensive suit. Or he’s in a suit, and Sam assumes it’s expensive. Either way, it looks ridiculous next to Captain America who is just sitting there in jeans and a t-shirt. Someone is overcompensating.
Captain America clears his throat. “We’ve been working on operation ‘clean sweep’, monitoring the newest enhanced activity in the city. If they’re a threat, we help SHIELD to bring them in. If they have potential, we recruit them for the team.”
“You here about Spider-Man, then?”
Captain America scrunches up his face into a look of innocent confusion. Iron Man is the one who speaks up. “Why that assumption?”
“Oh. My chief thinks he’s a menace who put me in the hospital.”
Two sets of eyebrows raise simultaneously.
“Which he didn’t. So cross him of your potential threat lists. What’s this about then?”
“You.” Iron Man says, and projects a photo against the far wall with a tap at his watch. “You were pararescue before this, correct?”
Sam squints at the picture, then looks away. “I’m not enhanced.”
“Neither am I,” Iron Man taps again to make the picture disappear. “All natural, baby. But. You can fly that thing. Right?”
“There’s a reason I walked away from all that.”
“I’m sure there is,” Captain America says. “But maybe we can give you a reason to walk back in. A team. One that steps up when the world needs them most. You could make a difference in a lot of people’s life. And you seem like the kind of guy who would be on board for that.”
The work he does now doesn’t make a difference, is that the underpinning message? The Avengers are used to thinking large scale, of course. Alien invasions, interdimensional wars. They don’t need to keep tabs of the confused old lady who sometimes wanders the streets in her pajamas, or the overworked mother with four young children whose husband he arrested last week, or the teenage boy who can’t always sleep at home for reasons he refuses to go into.
Frankly, he has always found the Avengers a bit… weird. Living together in that big tower, like a super-hero kibbutz. Don’t any of these people want families? Something that resembles a normal life? “What sort of things would I be getting myself into? What’s the big case right now?”
“Alchemax,” Steve Rogers says. “You might be aware of the accusations against their CEO, Tiberius Stone.”
“I have colleagues investigating them right now.”
“That’s cute,” Tony Stark says derisively. “Maybe they can redirect the traffic while SHIELD and the Avengers actually take down the big bad guy.”
“If you have such a low opinion of cops, why are you talking to me?”
“You’re a cop with wings. That bumps you up from mundane to reasonably entertaining.”
“You know what I think is cute? That the Avengers, led by Tony Stark, are apparently investigating a direct competitor of Stark industries. Doesn’t sound like a conflict of interests at all.”
“Tony is not in charge,” Steve Rogers says in a steady voice. “I am. He doesn’t decide which cases we take. I do. And I could use someone like you on the team.”
Sam sighs and leans his head back against the pillows, and wonders if he should let the doctors check again for that concussion. Because he is actually considering the offer. Getting on board with this band of nutcases. “Can I think it over? As a heads up, if you ask me to decide now, the answer is no.”
“In that case,” Captain America says, “think as long as you want. Can I leave my phone number with you?”
And that one, Sam can’t possibly say no to.
-
“Holy shit, dude,” Adam says around a mouthful of noodles. “Like, holy shit. You sure you weren’t hallucinating?”
Sam turns the piece of paper with Captain America’s phone number towards him.
“Could have hallucinated that too,” Adam says, doubtfully poking at the piece of paper as if expecting it to evaporate into thin air. “Like, you wrote down a number from your subconscious memory. You’ll call the number and it’ll be an old ex. Whatsersomething. Tamara. You should call her, she was nice. And you can’t turn down the Avengers.”
“You’re spitting noodles all over my bed sheets, dude.”
“Meh. You’re out of here today, so they’re gonna wash them anyways.”
Sam still feels like crap; head and left arm throbbing in sync. But the hospital is giving him cabin fever. So even though his insurance covers a few more days of inpatient care, he is checking out this afternoon. Going back to his flat to sort things out. Make a decision. “If I’m gonna do this, I need a favor from you.”
Adam grins. “I’ll add it to your tab.”
“I’ll need you to look out for the Parker kid. I’ve mentioned him before, right?”
“I think so. What’s the deal again?”
“His home life is… In a nutshell, it’s bad, but not bad enough that CPS can take immediate action.”
“He that kid whose uncle died in the carjacking last summer?”
It had been a warm June afternoon, a quiet day that felt like it would turn into a quiet evening. Instead, it turned into Sam’s first time on the job where he had to watch someone die in front of him; bleed out on the pavement as sirens wailed in the distance.
Ben Parker was a firefighter. A life saver. Sam hadn’t met him before, but he almost felt like he had. Almost felt like he had lost another brother in arms. He’d gotten out of pararescue to avoid exactly that, but it seems to be something he can’t truly walk away from.
“Who’s he living with?” Adam scrapes the bottom of the take-away container with his chopsticks. “The kid, who’s he living with?”
“Uncle number two. Guy named Shane. A significantly less… capable guardian. It’s mostly fine, I think. But sometimes they have a falling out and then Pete needs a place to crash for the night. It’s maybe once a month. Can you do that? I mean— Trish won’t throw a fit? I’d give him your address. And please give CPS a heads-up if you feel like the situation is getting worse. They have his file.”
“Yeah, I can do it. And Trish, half the time she doesn’t even notice I’m there.”
“The kid talks a lot. Rambles, in fact. And half of what he says makes absolutely no sense. You want to poke your eardrums out at first but it becomes endearing eventually, I promise you.”
“I got it, Sam,” Adam says.
Seems he has no excuses left.
-
He gets home and the meat he left out of the freezer that one morning before going into work is looking all sorts of interesting shades of purple-green, like something Lady Gaga would make a dress out of. But everything else is as it should be.
Until the knock on his window.
Sam yanks the curtain aside and stares straight into the face of Spider-Man, who is so close to the window his nose is almost pressed up against it.
First Iron Man and Captain America, now this. “They open out,” he says with a hand motion, and Spider-Man moves to the side.
Sam pushes the window open. Not too far, and with his hand still on the handle. Just in case Tori was right all along and this guy is here to finish the job.
“Saw the lights on,” Spider-Man’s voice is low and raspy, in a way that sounds forced, like he is putting on a fake voice. He probably is. “So. Glad you’re okay. Daily Bugle is saying I got you stabbed but I didn’t. Get you stabbed. Just wanted to clarify.”
Sam plants his other hand against the window sill. “How did you get my address?”
That receives no immediate response. Behind the mask, Spider-Man could be wearing all sorts of expressions right now, from calculating to caught-out.
“Okay, feel better soon, bye,” the vigilante then says, voice slightly more squeaky, and he swings away.
Sam shakes his head and shuts the window.
-
Spider-Man is elusive, doesn’t have a daily routine. He’ll pull an all-nighter on a school night, then disappear for days, only to be spotted swinging around the city at the ass crack of dawn on a Sunday.
Tony had half a mind of just knocking at his front door to confront the kid. He has an address. A Name. A birthdate. But then FRIDAY alerts him to live footage of Spider-Man directing traffic at a busy intersection where the lights are flashing yellow, so Tony suits up and goes.
By the time he gets to the intersection, a traffic warden has taken over. Another police car is parked on the sidewalk, sirens flashing. Spider-Man is still sat on the roof of a nearby low-rise apartment building, legs dangling over the edge.
“I got out of their way,” Spider-Man says as Tony lands next to him. He points at the flashing sirens. “They found a stolen car. I would have helped, but some cops don’t like me right now, because of what the papers say. It’s not their fault. The cops, I mean. It’s maybe a little bit the papers’ fault. They’re slandering me. They’re Slenderman. Do you know Slenderman? I can show you pictures. Or is that, like, ageist, to assume you don’t know him because you’re old? Um. Older. In a really respectful way.”
Ten seconds into their first meeting and this kid is already exactly how Tony had imagined him. “Hey,” he steps out of his suit. “You skipped the part where you say what an honor it is to meet me. And that’s always my favorite part of any conversation.”
“Oh, yes. Of course, Mister Iron Man. Nice to meet you.”
“And any press is good press.” If the kid wants to be a superhero so badly, he’ll have to get used to the whimsies of the media. “Aren’t you freezing in that ridiculous onesie?” It is a sunny day, but the chilling November wind bites his cheeks. And the costume Spider-Man fashioned himself is frankly laughable; there’s no way that thing keeps him warm.
“I’m superbly comfortable. I’m the most comfortable in the world. Like, I’m so happy I’m me, because if I wasn’t me, I’d be totally jealous of me.” The kid turns, pulling up his legs so he can face Tony. “Are you— Can I assist you in anything, Mr. Stark?”
“We’ve been working operation ‘clean sweep’. Monitoring new enhanced activity in the city to bring some order in the growing chaos. If they’re a threat, we bring them in. If they have potential, we recruit them for the team.”
“I hope I’m neither, because both of those sound like I really would not want to do them at all, no offense, with all due respect. I would be a terrible team member. People say there’s no ‘I’ in team, but I spell ‘team’ with four i’s. It’s just i-i-i-i. I got kicked out of the boy scouts once for poor tent-pitching skills.”
“Story for another time,” Tony says. “I shoved in a clause where we don’t include the underage enhanced in our project. Which is nice in theory, but you’d still have to prove that you are underage, which admittedly isn’t easy if you want to keep your identity a secret.”
“I’m not underage.”
“Really? Have you told your vocal chords, squeaky?”
“I’m an adult. Full on adult. Uh. Bills. Flossing. Grilled cheese. R-rated movies. Annual health care appointments. Paying the morgue. All sorts of adult stuff. Haven’t you already sussed out my identity anyways, Mr. Iron Man, sir? With the online data collection and the billion dollar tech gadgets and the—”
“You’d be the first to know,” Tony says. Which is true. He hasn’t even told Steve that Spider-Man is in fact a barely-fifteen-year-old kid from Queens. If he were ever going to share with anyone that he knows about Peter Parker, it would be Peter Parker himself.
For now, though, he is happy to feign ignorance. He’d much prefer it if the kid revealed his identity on his own volition. “And I think you meant paying the mortgage.”
“You’re not really gonna make me join your team, are you, sir?”
“Moot point. No one will let you join the team once they know you’re a minor.”
Peter doesn’t protest the word this time. “But I don’t want to tell them my age, because that would mean telling them who I am! And that’s like superhero 101, keeping your identity a secret. Um. No offense, Mr. Stark, I know you only managed to keep yours a secret for about ten seconds.”
“I’m not offended,” Tony says. “Because I know you’re too wet behind the ears to really know what you’re talking about. How about just telling me who you are? I’ll keep it from the rest of the team, but I’ll still vouch for you.”
The kid draws his shoulders a little closer to his ears. “I don’t know…”
This rookie is in desperate need of a chaperone. And Tony doesn’t want to do it, but he’ll bear the burden as gracefully as he always does. “Let’s go grab some coffee. My treat.”
The kid perks up.
Tony raps his knuckles against the chest plate of his Iron-Man suit. “Back home you go. Tell Happy to send Jason to pick me up.” He watches the suit jet into the sky, then moves towards the fire escape. Spider-Man follows, awkwardly swinging his arms around.
“You can just swing down Spider-Man style, kid.”
“No, I’ll walk with you. I don’t want to be rude. Is Jason an Avenger?”
“He’s my security guy.”
“Ah. Uhuh,” Peter says as he hops from step to step. “And you wonder why I want to keep my identity a secret.”
“I have security because I am a billionaire with an IQ of 186. Iron Man isn’t the only thing that makes me awesome, and I’ll thank you to remember that.”
Peter leads the way once they get down to street level, and points out a street vendor a few blocks away, with green paper cups stacked up below a large, faded umbrella. “Does that look okay, Mr. Stark?”
“No. But I can adapt to the low-brow taste of common folk.”
He buys them both coffee. “Hey, Spider-Man,” the vendor says, offering the boy a brownie wrapped in a napkin. “That’s for helping my buddy the other day when someone stole his tip jar.”
“Oh my gosh, THANK you, sir,” Peter breathes, holding the brownie like it is the most precious thing in the world.
They find a low stone wall where they can catch a little sunlight. It is a quieter street. That doesn’t stop people from staring at them, but Tony glares enough that they don’t approach. Peter rolls his mask up past his mouth. He lays the brownie down in his knee, cradling the warm coffee cup in his free hand. “Do you want to share?” he asks, though he sounds almost reluctant about it.
“I’m fine. Do your parents not feed you enough?”
“Oh, yes,” the boy says as he breaks off a piece of brownie. “If anything they feed me too much. They have a catering company, and I always have to eat the leftovers. I’ve seen so many cucumber sandwiches, Mr. Stark, they haunt me in my sleep. An army of cucumber sandwiches, chasing me around the city. Talk about an Avengers level threat. Plus, my mom makes brownies all the time. From scratch. She underbakes them, but that’s how I like them. Gooey and awkwardly shaped. Just like me. That could be the title of my autobiography.”
Tony watches as Peter licks the crumbs off his gloved fingers, and remembers how Howard would chastise him for doing something so uncivilized with his food. “He gave you a napkin, you know,” he says before he can stop himself.
“Yeah,” Peter replies and adds, clearly not getting the hint: “That was really nice of him. Canadian nice. Free food is the best perk of being a superhero. For me, at least. People probably don’t give you free food, because you’re a billionaire. But you knew that. Judging by the fact that, you know, you’ve mentioned it about three times in the last ten minutes. Do you have an autobiography? An automatic biography?”
Cute how the kid calls himself a superhero when all he did today was direct traffic. He has a ways to go, but Tony will admit there’s potential here. “You’re in dire need of a mentor, Underoos. My first act as mentor will be to get you to stop talking so damn much.”
Peter smiles, pulling up one knee and tilting his head forward to rest on it. “Good luck,” he says. “Good. Luck. Better men than you have tried.”
“There are no better men than me.”
The kid wisely doesn’t contradict him, just lifts his head again to take a long sip of the coffee. “If you’re my mentor now, can you come to my next PTA meeting with Mr. Harrington?” he then asks. “He’ll be so stoked to meet you, he’ll forget to complain about my terrible lack of focus, and my penchant to lose literally everything I get my hands on, and that thing the other day with that pigeon. I mean, I didn’t ask that pigeon to fly in, Mr. Stark, and I was just trying to help it get out. Excuse me if it didn’t go smoothly, but I don’t speak pigeon. Not even pigeon Latin.”
“I will definitely come to your PTA meetings, if and when a terrible accident causes irreversible brain damage.”
“Shame. Worth a try, though.”
“Do your parents know you are Spider-Man?”
“Yes,” the kid says, smacking his lips. “Yup. They found out a few months ago. Worst thing that ever happened to me. Because now they go to Spider-Man-support parties, and yell at the news when it spreads lies about me, and bake red-and-blue cupcakes. You know, it would be cool if I did speak pigeon. Like, a whole superpower in and of itself. Eyes everywhere. They would help me solve crimes.” He shivers when a cloud passes in front of the sun.
“I knew you had to be cold in that onesie.”
“It’s just from the coffee,” the kid says. “Caffeine passes through my system like a freight train. First my stomach is like WHAT’S HAPPENING, and then all my blood vessels go WHAT’S GOING ON, and then my brain jumps in on the party. But please don’t let that stop you from buying me more coffee, Mr. Stark.”
Like with every teenager, free food seems to be the way to Peter’s heart.
-
He meets with Sam Wilson again, in his office on the twenty-second floor of the tower.
“I’ve been here for almost twenty minutes,” the man says irritably as he rises from his seat in the hallway.
“Lucky for you, I’m well worth the wait.”
Sam shakes the offered hand, but doesn’t immediately release it. “If I’m gonna join the team, let’s get one thing straight. I speak my mind, straight up, I tell people what I think. And I think you’re a pretty big asshole. If that is a problem for you to hear, this is not going to work.”
“Welcome aboard,” Tony says.
-
Sam hums as he cracks another egg into the frying pan. He wonders if the Avengers do normal human stuff in the morning, like have eggs for breakfast and stare at the sugar pot while contemplating the meaning of life.
Some of them probably chug the eggs raw, those maniacs.
“Hey,” he says, and Peter glances up from his plate. “I’m moving, kid. And quitting my work at the precinct. I got an offer elsewhere.”
“Oh,” Peter fiddles with his fork and scuffs his feet against the floor. “Oh. That’s okay. Good. Just fine. Peachy. You— Congratulations on the new job. I assume you’re happy with it, at least, because you wouldn’t have taken it otherwise, I guess. These eggs are really good, are they like happy-chicken-eggs? Free range rover eggs? You can taste the fresh air. Febreze eggs.”
“It all happened really fast. While I was in the hospital, in fact. That’s why I didn’t tell you sooner.”
“Good, good. Fine. I'm not upset or anything. I was, I kinda thought maybe…” he breathes in, “Okay, I don’t want you to leave, but I always knew you probably would at some point. People move. Liz moved away too.”
Sam doesn’t know who that is, but he has learned not to ask. “I asked a friend of mine at the station to look out for you a little. You can go there if you need a place to crash. His name is Adam and he’s a fine dude, all right? I’ll write down his address for you. His bathroom is a freaking mess, but he has a very nice couch. And if you really need me, you can always call. I’m keeping my number.”
“You know, things are actually fine with Uncle Shane. We’re like two peas in a pod, lately.”
“That why you showed up on my doorstep last night?” Sam asks wryly.
Peter twirls his fork through his eggs. “We discovered this quiz show that we both enjoy, so we can bond over that. He gets all the answers wrong, but that’s part of the fun. He thought Aerosmith was a European capital. And Aerosmith is, like, from his generation, so that’s completely outrageous. And I just came here last night to make sure you were okay, you know, because Mrs. Holly said you were in hospital. This is a courtesy call.”
“Very courteous,” Sam says. Half the things that come out of this boy’s mouth are complete fabrications. But Sam has long learned to recognize that as a defense mechanism. A way to keep up the walls. A few months ago, maybe he would have tried to catch the kid out. Oh yeah, what’s the name of this quiz show? But he has learned by now that trying to get Peter to stop inventing stories is just flogging a dead horse.
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” Peter says earnestly, “because, you know, people die of stabbing,” and Sam realizes with a fresh pang of compassion that his little hospital stint may have been impactful to Peter for more than one reason.
“I’m joining the Avengers,” he shares, because he suddenly feels like he owes this kid more of an explanation. And it won’t be kept a secret much longer anyways.
Peter freezes in his seat, fork lifted halfway to his mouth. “The Avengers?” he repeats as a piece of scrambled egg falls back onto his plate. “Why-“ he abruptly shuts his mouth again, teeth clicking together.
Sam allows an amused grin to spread across his face. “You want to ask why a random-ass New York cop gets recruited onto a team of superheroes?”
Peter colors. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“Suffice to say I used to do other crap before I did this crap. And apparently, they think some of that crap is useful.”
“Are you enhanced?”
“Nah, my chief would never have hired me.” He’ll have to talk to Tori today, about quitting, he suddenly realizes. Quitting to join the Avengers. She won’t approve.
“Are you gonna move into the tower?”
“Yeah.” Sam pulls a face. “Feel like I’m entering a convent.” He sighs and claps his hands together. “Finish your eggs, kid, you have school.”
Peter lifts his plate and uses his fork to shove the remainder of the eggs into his mouth.
He needs a new backpack, Sam notices as he walks the kid to the front door. A new coat, too. Maybe he can convince Adam to buy him one. And… “You don’t have a scarf? It’s cold out.”
“I do,” Peter says with the usual everything-is-fine-smile. “A really nice one with stripes, but it’s in the washing machine because I spilled coffee on it. Uncle Shane and I got some coffee and brownies from a street vendor the other day, and I had a full coffee-mageddon. We were laughing so hard it came out of our noses.”
Sam yanks his own scarf from the hat stand; the brown one with the white, zigzagging stripes. “Have my old one.” He wraps it around Peter’s neck, and gently tucks in the ends. “All right,” he ruffles Peter’s hair. “Get your ass out of here, you Muppet. Take care of yourself. And you know it: call me when you need me.”
“Thank you, Sam,” the boy says, looking up at him with wide, earnest eyes as he burrows his hands into the scarf, “for everything.” And Sam thinks about the day he met this kid, the day his uncle died. How hardened the boy must be to parental figures waltzing in and out of his life.
Shit, becoming part of the Avengers had better be worth it.