Disclaimer; I do not own the Cal Leandros rights nor the Avengers'. No money is being made out of this story. This is purely for entertainment and the characters are simply borrowed. WARNING(for the whole story, so keep them in mind even if they don't show up right now) Slash, Het, Violence, Nudity, Swearing and Cliffhangers.

CAL

For some off reason, when the whole 'New York Under Attack by Aliens' happened, we weren't involved. I mean, it's not as if people being attacked by flying machines and being shot by aliens spears light shows was easy to miss, but it all happened so fast that we seriously didn't get the chance to do anything.

Not that I'm complaining, but Nik… he felt slightly guilty we couldn't be of more help when it was something 'out of this world' on such a large scale. But he got over it fast enough, actual super heroes having come to the rescue!

I mean, seriously? Superheroes? Of all the shit that's been going down, an alien invasion is what drags them out? Clearly they haven't been looking close enough to home to fight the supernatural.

Nik says I'm being too quick to judge, but come on! While the general population doesn't care to look at the shady side of the news, shouldn't someone doing proper research have connected the dots yet?

I'll admit Samuel and his buddies do a great job of picking up the messes, but some things simply can't be overlooked. In any case, it left us with little to do during the city's clean up except for making sure some of the rowdier crowds didn't think to take advantage of the situation.

This left me behind the Ninth Circle's countertop, cleaning a glass with a less than clean rag and having a glaring contest with some of the Wolves who still dared to come within my presence.

After all, my ex had made it clear none of the Kin was allowed close to me unless their intention was to bring my head back on a silver plateau to her. Our separation was mutual, after all.

Serving a couple of drinks to a few visiting Peri, I then turned to look at the new arrival, the bells above the door having been rustled.

And I found myself quite baffled.

A normal, if slightly taller than average, guy had just stepped in wearing clothes meant to be casual, but way too fancy for my place of employment.

Dark grey slacks, a white button up, fancy black over coat with a very soft, expensive green scarf to top it all. The man's smooth black hair fell to his shoulders, his green eyes speckled with golden hues peering above fashionable sunglasses.

To conclude it in one; he gives a Puck a run for his money in the looks department.

"Bit lost, sir?" I found myself asking, knowing this man wasn't a posh vamp since he wasn't that overly covered and the sun was still considerable out.

"I think not," replied the new customer, smiling in a devious way as he moved to the bar.

With him being so much closer, I could now smell him over the rest of the pests in this building. How the Hell do you define the scent of craziness? Because I found myself smelling it way too often in these last recent years. Oh, and from the iciness of that crazy smell, I could deduce he is not human, even if I don't know what exactly he is after all.

"What can I get ya?"

"Red wine, the best you have in stock, if you please."

I thought for a second and then shrugged. Why not? I hope Ishiah didn't care too much about the stash he ordered specifically for Robin, because this was clearly a good paying customer. And Robin sure wasn't going to pay if he was coming to drink here.

Giving this green eyed customer a wine glass, I placed the now open bottle under the bar in front of him, having been generous at topping the glass.

What started as a calm end of afternoon ended up as being a calm evening which, I must admit, surprised me greatly. Calm isn't usually what I'm used to, even if people know better than to fuck with this bar. As I've said before, and shall keep on saying, the Peri can pretend all they want but I still believe they'll one day reveal their true identities and smite us as God's little angels!

Close to the end of my shift - seriously I'm not staying here all night – I finished serving the bottle of red wine to my unknown customer.

"So… no offence or anything, but why's a guy like you in a place like this? I mean, there are better clubs and high society and stuff," I found myself unusually talkative.

The man hummed as he looked deep in his wine and then smiled at me, as if finding the whole situation ridiculous.

"I simply enjoy exploring all fields of life. You never know what you may find. Take you for instance; you seem human, but you work in a place such as this, with clearly non-human clientele. How fascinating."

I tensed at his words, but he didn't show any signs of doing more than drinking his poison of choice. Not that it reassured me any. Niko could go from totally relaxed to killing machine in zero second.

"A friend of mine knows the owner and got me the job," I answered to the unasked question.

The stranger nodded and I had to go serve the gang of Wolves some more mugs of beer, them chugging it like it was only water. When I came back, he'd finished his glass and was looking through his wallet.

Before I could say anything, which I'd only opened my mouth to start but hadn't decided what was to come out; he asked a question.

"Have you ever believed something to be so right that when you try to act on it, everything goes absolutely wrong?"

As he put bills on the counter and left, I could only wonder as to what kind of trouble he'd gotten himself into that he'd need to seemingly search for the meaning of life in the world's ditches and gutters.

A/N; Thank you for reading.