Peter shook one leg restlessly under the lunch table as he stared down at his untouched food. His eyes kept trailing to his hands on either side of the tray, now his normal skin color and he had to think, was he just really, really tired last night?

The blue creeps like a river. It isn't all at once, it doesn't swell. It starts from the tips of his fingers and tendrils up his palms past his wrists following the veins raising hard lines in a mirrored pattern across knuckles and forearms.

Peter squeezes his eyes shut. Opens them. Fuzzes, re-focuses. Still there.

He looks up at the frozen metal street lamp. Just regular metal. Just iced over.

His eyes drag back to his watch.

3:13 am.

School starts in a few hours.

"Peter? You okay?"

He blinked and Ned's face materialized right in front of him, a crease between his brows and his own food half-eaten. He must've looked like a complete lunatic in the same hoodie he worked in the night before with the bags he knew were under his eyes from all the hours he hadn't slept, sitting on his bed and staring at his hands until the color receded the same way they came, slowly, flowing back down to fingertips before the last wisps of blue faded into nothing.

"I got back kinda late from my shift at the House," he said, because that's what he'll call it if anyone ever asked where he worked. Ned only knew the 'House' was less than ideal, but it was more than May who thought he'd gotten a job at some hole-in-the-wall pub that Granny was sweet enough to fake a call for. "Sorry, uh, what were you saying?"

"I asked if you wanted to play some Resident Evil after decathlon practice." Ned's concerned gaze lingered for a few moments before he picked up a tangerine to peel. "But you should catch up on sleep, dude. Get a few hours in after, you know..." He trailed off, making some weird hand motions like he's at a rave but doesn't know what to do with his arms. "Thwip thwip."

Peter snorted and kicked his shin under the table. "I don't look like that!"

"Ow! And yeah, you do! Look, I've got about a few dozen YouTube videos to prove it."

Peter was in the middle of shoving some cold pizza into his mouth as Ned scrolled through YouTube to prove his point when his own phone vibrated.

boss-man: i no u dont have a shift tonite [11:43am]

boss-man: but can u com in [11:43am]

boss-man: got new stock i need ur brain [11:43am]

boss-man: silverwear, peenuts, menus [11:44am]

boss-man: the ushe [11:44am]

Peter's thumb tapped against the side of his phone.

Silverware, peanuts, menus.

Weapons, ammunition, new merc job postings.

Within the first few days of the job, Weasel hadn't sugarcoated any part of what it meant to work in Sister Margaret's and made sure he knew exactly what it meant to be a server/dish boy for them.

An hour before the bar opens, Weasel holds up three fingers. Peter stares as the man drops one. "Arms dealing." The second finger comes down. "Information broking." The third. "Dirty job dispatches."

Then an index finger points directly at Peter's face.

"If you can't handle the fact that this is what we do, I will literally escort you back to whichever Chuck E. Cheese you wandered from and we can forget this whole thing ever happened."

Peter truly considers what that means. 1) Super illegal. 2) That info probably wasn't like, exam answers, so super illegal. 3) So Illegal that the 'I' needed to be capitalized.

All three of those were things Spider-Man would immediately take a dive for, webbing up anyone associated without asking questions and leaving a note for the NYPD. Because this was all wrong, wasn't it? Bottom line, no ifs, ands, or buts.

And if anything, this was also something completely out of Spider-Man's element. He handled robbers and muggers, the odd cat stuck in a tree, and the last time he jumped into the deep-end he'd wrestled a criminal with metal wings, crashed an aircraft, and set an entire beach on fire.

"Your job listing was a night shift with no work experience necessary. No background checks, paid in cash." Peter presses his lips together and never breaks eye contact. His palms start to sweat. "I'm not an idiot. I know what I'm getting into—I managed to find the ad for this place, didn't I?"

Which had been dredged up by a job searching program he coded to search for something, anything that was willing to hire a literal fifteen year old who only had 'extra-curricular activities' filled out in his resume and paid enough for him to help May out.

"Yeah, you did, didn't you?" Weasel frowns. He's quiet for another beat before he turns and groans, muttering something that sounded like 'I'm gonna get so much shit for this'. "Fine. FINE. You get a two week trial period and if I think you can't handle it, your Kidz Bop lookin' ass is gone."

"And if I can handle it?"

"Then you stay. Easy."

...

"God, you're like the poster child that dermatologists hate except they went overboard on the photoshop and made you look like a nine year old. Are you even old enough to drink?"

"Uh, um, technically I'm not old enough to vote?"

"Jesus fucking Christ."

boss-man: oh my god ur in clas rnt u [11:45am]

boss-man: fuck uh [11:45am]

boss-man: pay atension [11:45am]

boss-man: or sumthing [11:45am]

Me: i'm at lunch rn so [11:46am]

Me: i can come in tho [11:46am]

Me: what time do u need me in? [11:47am]

boss-man: halefuckingluyah [11:47am]

boss-man: wats ur earliest avail [11:47am]

Me: 4:30ish [11:48am]

boss-man: done [11:48am]

boss-man: ull get ovrtiem [11:48am]

Overtime pay meant as much as a three hundred in hand, same day.

"Sorry, Ned. Can't catch up on sleep tonight," he said. Ned paused the video and looked up. "Boss needs me in right after decathlon for inventory stuff. He probably won't need me for the usual shift but he'll pay me overtime so—"

"You... sure that's a good idea? You look really, really tired and your boss probably has other people he can call in, right?"

For stuff like that? Yeah, maybe he'd call in Wade or Domino or one of the higher classed mercs, but one time when the bar computer system went down for the night and Peter subbed himself in as a replacement calculator/tab keeper/bill maker that worked just as effectively, Weasel started pulling him further into Sister Margaret's business. With a pay raise. Which was nice.

Peter shrugged and dipped his too-hard pizza crust into a ranch cup and munched, trying not to feel guiltily at the unabashed worry in his friend's face. "He knows I'm good at math and sometimes he has me look over payments and stuff," he replied, and this time it wasn't a lie. Sometimes he kept track of who ordered which weapon, how much they owed, when they needed it by, and to make sure the Gold Card system kept its flow. "I'm good, man. Really."

He was pretty sure Ned didn't believe him.

::

Around 4:40 pm he made it to Sister Margaret's graffitied front door. At the same time, he got a text.

boss-man: Don't come in until I say so. [4:40pm]

Capitalization, punctuation, no misspelled words, the warning—

And his spidey sense screamed.

Peter was around the building and at the back door before he finished sliding his phone back into his pocket. He flicked both wrists and a pressure pad from each web-shooter flipped onto his palms and quickly, quietly scaled up the wall and up to the window to Weasel's apartment just above the bar.

The latch was quick to snap under his strength and he opened it just enough to slither through and got down on his hands and toes, silently letting the window fall closed with his foot as the buffer.

The conversation downstairs immediately sharpened into clarity.

"You must be new in town 'cause you're being a huge dick right now—"

"Shut the fuck up," a whole new voice snarled. Peter crawled along the kitchen ceiling and landed in the living room. Mugs and used paper plates litter the coffee table and he was careful not to step on any of the papers and books strewn across the ground as he sets his winter jacket and backpack on the couch. "I don't care if you're one of the top brokers out there, I'm not about to get cheaped out by some stoner-lookin' college dropout!"

"... Okay first of all, I have feelings. Second, I didn't drop out of—"

"Shut. UP!"

The stairs that lead down to the bar were metal and clunky, definitely not great for sneaking around. He stuck to the walls and ceiling and for once was grateful that sunlight didn't get the chance to stream into the Hellhouse. He took his scarf out of his hoodie pocket and tied it around his lower face and tugged his hood over his head and knotted the strings under his chin to keep it from falling.

The man holding a handgun to Weasel's forehead didn't notice the shadow that crept above him, hidden from the dim lighting and hovering just overhead. Neither do the other two standing near the pool tables.

"I'll give you 'til the count of three to agree to my terms or you'll get some scrap in your brain," the stranger growled. Weasel swallowed. "One." The safety was off. "Two."

"Why's it always to three?"

The stranger looked up just as the shadow dropped down. Legs hooked around his neck and threw him onto the floor, the gun sliding underneath one of the chairs. Just as the other two whipped out their own guns, webs stuck to the barrel and yanked them into Peter's waiting hands. He clicked the magazine releases, let the magazines fall, and tossed the empty guns behind him and over the bar.

"No, really, is it 'cause three's a good number? Ten's too long? Oh, maybe it's like Goldilocks and the Three Acceptable Numbers for Intimidating Countdowns."

He leaned back and grabbed Cronie #1's leg mid-kick, webbed the incoming fist to their chest, and spun to slam them through a nearby table. Cronie #2 tried to land a punch. Another. Another. But it was blocked. Duck. Dodge. And then Peter caught their face with a web followed by an elbow to the nose. #2 fell and his hands and ankles get bound.

"Personally I think five's a pretty good number. It's got that appeal of being even when it's not—"

His spidey sense spiked.

BANG.

He moved. A bullet grazed his bicep.

Fingers curled around the leg of the stool that got chucked across the room. It shattered against the man's chest and he slumped back against the wall, blood dribbling down his chin. Peter webs that gun into his hand too. Just in case.

"Um." Peter slowly turned to Weasel, who had both hands on his head and his jaw on the floor from his position half-crouched behind the bar. His wide-eyed stare didn't stray from the only person left standing in the room. "I-I'll pay for the stool."

Peter glanced at the wall.

"And. Uh. I'll clean up the blood?"

The rest of the table Cronie #1 crashed through collapsed into a heap of splintered wood, and Peter was acutely aware that his hoodie still had chalk dust on the sleeves and the scarf around his face was the one with the lopsided snowman, one that Weasel joked about every time he saw it.

So. Well.

"... Please don't fire me."

::

"I'm just—let's rewind the tape for a minute. Retrace our steps. Starting with that text I sent you that said something like, I dunno, Don't Come In Until I Say So."

Peter sat on an unbroken bar stool with his head cowed and his hands balled in his lap. His scarf was tucked back in his pockets and his hood was pulled back to expose his pink cheeks and pinched lips in all their glory as his boss paces and does some weird breathing exercises.

"That guy over there? Kairo Green. New blood on the Gold Card, came in from out west, and probably from what you've seen total douche-nozzle. Scary as fuck too. I literally almost shit myself when he took out his gun and started goin' off about 'product quality' when it's his fault he made the order. But—But I'm getting off track. The second I saw Green walk up in here like he owned the damn building I think, 'I should text Ferret not to come in so he doesn't get his face blown off', 'cause I'm nice like that." Weasel breathed out. Breathed in. Screamed with his mouth closed.

"Then you fucking dropped from the ceiling like a fucking horror movie monster and then proceeded to kick the collective asses of everyone in this room. As Spider-Man."

"M-Mr. Weasel—"

"As SPIDER-MAN."

Peter's mouth clamped shut and he hunched his shoulders to his ears. It wasn't like he was happy about his secret identity getting exposed either because, well, secret, but no one's life was worth the anonymity. Especially not Weasel, who always treated him well and never saw him as just one more stupid kid.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Weasel," he murmured. "I didn't think you'd get this mad about it."

"Mad?" Weasel repeated. He groaned and rubbed his hands all over his face. "I'm not—Kid, you scared the shit out of me. Almost literally. Do you know how close I was to actually laying a fat one in my pants? So close. That Conjuring shit made me age twenty years and had my balls shrivel up like prunes." He drew in another deep breath, ignoring the disgusted scrunch of Peter's face. "All I'm saying is give a guy a warning next time, okay? Shit."

The teen straightened up. "So you're not... mad?"

"Why the hell would I be mad? You saved my life, thanks by the way, and promised to pay for all the shit you broke."

"Uh, normally the Spider-Man thing doesn't really fly with people the first time they find out. Since I'm only fifteen and all," Peter admitted. Weasel's face fell back into his hands, a strangled 'fifteen? Oh my god,' falling from his lips. "Um. Last time someone found out, they ranted for like thirty minutes about how dangerous this shit was and that I wasn't allowed to go out on patrol anymore." Then, May had almost stormed Stark Industries as a one-woman army to lay into Tony Stark himself for taking him all the way out to Germany to fight the Rogue Avengers at fourteen. "So I kinda expected... more yelling? A lecture on how I'm too young? That this is a huge responsibility that I'm not experienced enough to understand? That I'm supposed to be better?"

By the last hypothetical he tasted his own bitterness on his tongue and quickly dipped his lips again, cheeks flaming red and eyes falling towards the un-mopped floor.

Okay fine, so what if he was still upset about the speeches he'd gotten from Mr. Stark and May, and yeah, he knew they meant well and he knew he had so much more to learn, but what else was he supposed to do with these powers? This opportunity? Let those robbers rob that cashier blind when he was passing just to get a gallon of milk? Let some muggers get away with a tourist's backpack when they thought no one was looking? Let a bunch of bullies beat up a kid in a parking lot just in the security cameras' blind spots? Let a gang run a shoot out with innocents in the streets and no one to stop them? Let some unarmed kid get shot by the police because he was the wrong race at the wrong time?

Peter just wanted to be good. Do good. For others who needed it.

Was that so wrong?

Weasel sighed and rubbed his face one more time before he clapped his hands on the teen's shoulders. "Look. Spider-Kid. Ferret. I'll be straight with you and say that it's kinda sorta fucked up that a fifteen year old is swinging around Queens," he started. Peter deflated. "But you know what else is sorta fucked up? Running a merc dispatch from an old Catholic boarding school and keeping the same name. Costs money to change shit like that." He took a step back and pushed up his glasses. "What I'm saying is—Jesus, I shouldn't be allowed to give talks like this, uh, your whole superhero vigilante thing? Pretty fucking cool. Just—Just fucking let a guy know when you're gonna rain down from the skies, fuck."

He walked back behind the bar to start picking up the shattered pieces of glass from when Green slammed the duffel bag full of firearms down when he wasn't happy with what he'd seen, leaving the pep-talk at that. It took a few seconds for Peter to digest that no, he wasn't in trouble, then scrambled up to help pick up the glass pieces too, careful not to cut his fingers on the edges.

He cleared his throat.

"Uh, Mr. Weasel, whenever I-I go out in the suit I try not to interfere with any of the Gold Card jobs," he piped up. The man's expression went dumbfounded and might very well be his second whiplash of the day—and it wasn't even Happy Hour. "Or the ones I know about, at least. I know everyone here's got a job to do and, well, I just look out for the little guy." All the glass Peter collected was tossed into the trash under the bar. "And, uh. I'm not a superhero," he shrugged. "I'm just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man."

::

Weasel was used to the prime grime of society. The low-lifes, the morally questionable, Wade—anything the New York sewage system could spit out and dump into his bar. Some he welcomed and some he didn't because he could have standards sometimes, but for the most part? He didn't deal with good people and he was fine with that. He'd never had a crisis about it, he never really gave a shit. It was what it was.

But the first time he ever asked himself if what he was doing was too much was when some doe-eyed, Disney child star wannabe wandered into his bar asking about the job that had only been posted and hidden just enough so that normal job hunters wouldn't find it. He knew his way around computers and codes well enough to make sure it stayed that way, and the fact that this preschooler dug it up himself? Completely fucking ridiculous. Either the kid was insanely lucky or was desperate enough to hook himself up with the proper network to find it.

But Weasel took him on anyways for two reasons: pity, and the fact that he was sure the Gerber Baby lookalike wasn't going to make it a week. Two weeks, if he wanted to be optimistic.

Then after two weeks, Ferret was still there. Three Weeks. Four Weeks. Two months. Three. Ferret was a constant, joking with Granny Sal in the back, cracking jokes with some of the mercs on the floor, throwing assholes into walls, listening to Wade's stupid stories, always making sure Domino's chicken wings came out slightly charred just the way she liked them.

Weasel didn't want to like him. Didn't want to get attached. Didn't want to bring him down into the underbelly of knives and bullets and blood money.

Because—Because Ferret was such a good kid, you know? So bright and cheery even after learning that he served killers their bar snacks or helped inventory weapons of every and all variety. He was this smart brat that smiled and laughed even as he climbed the demon ladder to change the dead pool.

So he decided to give in, be selfish, keep the kid around. He liked him. He got attached. He brought him into the underbelly of knives and bullets and blood money anyway, and sometimes it was hard to see how quickly the kid picked things up and how good he was getting at being in this business.

And if the kid ended up getting shot or killed working the job? He'd take the blame and live with the crippling guilt the rest of his miserable life, no sweat.

Then, Ferret turned out to be fucking Spider-Man.

Then, Spider-Man turned out to be fucking fifteen years old.

"Uh, Mr. Weasel, whenever I-I go out as Spider-man I try not to interfere with any of the Gold Card jobs," Ferret piped up, and Weasel just about lost his goddamn mind. "Or the ones I know about, at least. I know everyone here's got a job to do here and, well, I just look out for the little guy." This kid was honest-to-god so genuine it made his teeth rot. "And, uh. I'm not a superhero. I'm just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man."

Gold Cards: practically more equivalent to actual gold than the spray-painted metal they were made from. Client comes in, pays for one of the "Gold Cards", said Gold Card gets handed to the merc best-suited for the business, Gold Card gets turned back in once all loose ends are tied up.

Spider-Man should've stopped all those transactions, but Ferret chose not to.

Weasel wanted to stab himself. Repeatedly. With a spoon.

"Am... Am I fired?"

God.

"No, Ferret." A long, long suffering sigh. "You're not fired."

If anything, this might deserve a pay raise.

After they finished cleaning up the rest of the glass and the duffel was safely stored beneath the floorboards under the trash can, they turned towards the bodies still strewn about the room.

"I didn't kill any of them," Ferret said, because of course he didn't. He walked up to one body and hoisted them over his shoulder and picked up another to tuck under his arm, which would've been a combined weight of at least three hundred pounds. Carried. Like. NOTHING. "So where do you want...?"

Weasel shook his disbelief from his head. "I'm banning them from the Hellhouse. Once word gets out about it, they'll probably get blacklisted from a shit ton of other brokers. I'll call a few people to get them outta our hands. For now though, you think you can, like, super tie them up with your webs and toss them in the back?"

"Oh, yeah! No biggie, Mr. Weasel!"

Ferret's head suddenly whipped towards the door so fast that Weasel swore his neck was in danger of snapping.

"Um. Wade's here."

"What? What do you mean Wade's—"

"You cocksucking dickwad!" Wade shouted as he kicked the front door open with the bottom of his heavy military boots. "The job you gave me was a damn bust! See, I get to the place, right? Cute little set-up where couples probably Lady and the Tramp some spaghetti you don't regretti before sucking face like a fucking Dyson..."

His tromping slowed to a stop beside Kairo Green's body. Wade, dressed in black jeans, a gray zip up, a beaten brown leather jacket, and his ever-present Deadpool mask, takes in the scene before his gaze lands on Weasel. Then Ferret. Then Weasel again. Then Ferret for the last time.

He gasped.

"Sweetheart! Darling!" he exclaimed. He rushed Ferret so fast that the two bodies thumped back onto the floor as he smushed the teen's face into his chest. "Wease! What the fuck did I say about exposing our sweet summer child to extensive violence? I knew I should've turned parental controls on."

"W-Wade—"

"Hush, young one. Mommy and Daddy are fighting as our impending divorce slowly rises on the horizon and we'll try to hide it from you as long as we can until we force your underdeveloped, impressionable mind to choose who you like the best so the favorite can have the upper-hand when vying for primary custody."

"It wasn't my fault," Weasel sputtered. "I was supposed to have an easy transaction lined up before Ferret came in to help with inventory—how was I supposed to know the fucker was gonna be a grade A dick?"

"We're mercs," Wade stressed. "We're all grade A dicks."

"Not all dicks try to kill me!"

"Only on good days."

"Gooch-face."

"Moose-knuckle."

"Guys!" Ferret squirmed out of his friend's hold and waved his hands to the bodies he just dropped and the other body still bleeding out against the wall. "Come on, we gotta bring them in the back because I don't know when they'll wake up and they still have to get tied up and stuff and—"

Wade blinked as he spotted black circles on Ferret's palms that lead from the black bracelets he always wore.

He took one of the kid's wrists mid-ramble, pushed down—

"Wade, no!"

—and webbed himself in the face.