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Weasel regrets not shooting the kid in the face when he had the chance.
Granted, it’s only in his most pissed off or just pissed drunk moments that Weasel thinks he actually ever had a chance in hell of hitting the mark in the first place because anyone with access to a TV or an internet connection knows that Spider-Man is no stranger to having guns pointed at his face and clearly he’s batting a thousand at dodging the bullets that come out of them if him still being alive and functioning enough to haunt Weasel’s place like a – well, like a spider in a particularly high corner of the ceiling that the end of a mop and Weasel’s reach can’t get close enough to to squish would.
But Weasel likes to dream.
Likes to pretend that he could’ve succeeded where all the other dirtbags failed and been the luck iest dirtbag of all to take the trophy made of mud for taking Spider-Man out.
Likes to pretend that he could have done it not just in terms of pull trigger a and watch bullet fly into subject b logistics but as a choice he would have been willing to make.
Likes to pointedly ignore the fact that he could win a lifetime supply of adult diapers and hard butterscotch candy at any nursing home in the world’s weekly bingo game if the boxes on the cards were all filled with the names of all the crimes a guy could commit and yet when faced with the crime of shooting the most inconvenient soulmate in the world right in the goddamn face and saving himself a potential lifetime of hassle he’d balked like a nun being asked to lay back on the bed at a Super 8, spread ‘em and think of Jesus.
The thing that pisses Weasel off the most is that in a perfect world, he wouldn’t have a soulmate at all. He’d have been born with a blank, timer-free wrist and that would be that. Leave all that bullshit to the losers who cry over The Notebook every Saturday night for fun and think tattooing the name of your first college fuck on your face is a good idea and leave him out of it.
And then in an imperfect but still fair world where Weasel had to have a soulmate, out of anyone he’d probably have someone average looking enough to make fucking them a not entirely repulsive weekly chore with a happy ending guaranteed and who was either morally lax enough to not care what he did for a living or insecure enough to not ask questions about it in the first place because they were just happy to have a soulmate at all.
One of those would be the best he could ask for and then the other wouldn’t be ideal but it would still be acceptable . Either of those scenarios Weasel could live with and not want to bash his head against a wall until his skull oozed brain out all over the bricks . Either of those would fit, if the real world worked by romcom rules and all the morally pristine and pretty people that exist had matching timers and could fuck off into the sunset together while guys like Weasel were left alone in the background to conduct their shady business without something as disgusting as timer mandated romance getting in the way.
But Weasel didn’t live in either of those worlds.
That would be way too good for him, too easy, and anyone who had ever lived in reality knew that the real world was never easy and rarely good except for a very tiny, tiny few.
No, see, the world Weasel lived in was hell and in hell, Weasel got born with a timer that counted down for thirty-eight years and some change and at the end of that hourglass’ last gritty grain of sand what he got for a soulmate was a seventeen year old with superpowers who used them to fight the kind of crime that Weasel himself would never take part in – not because he was morally opposed, of course, but because most of what Spider-Man got in the news for fighting seemed to be either
a) small time petty bullshit (which Weasel was well graduated from by the time he was seventeen, thank you very much, and even before that he’d never resorted to anything as idiotic as snatching purses or robbing liquor stores like most of the assholes getting webbed up like flies on the news seemed to be guilty of)
or
b) big time super-powered bullshit (which mostly seemed to also fall under the category of crime that was stupid and/or psychotic, which Weasel wouldn’t get involved with even if he had the super powers necessary to do so considering that he was neither incompetent or crazy – except, maybe, for the super-powered bullshit Deadpool occasionally dragged him into which was frequentl y both stupid and psychotic but which Weasel didn’t count as a mark against himself personally since he tried to stay mostly non-involved and only got involved as much as he did because one, it made him a fuckton of money most of the time and two, he wasn’t exactly sure that Wade wouldn’t kill him someday if he refused. They were friends, sure, kindasorta, but people killed friends all the time in their line of work. Weasel had killed friends. Weasel wasn’t exactly sure that he wouldn’t have killed Wade himself a long time ago if the guy could actually die for reals instead of coming back covered in blood and gore and a chip on one shoulder with an ax to grind into Weasel for killing him on the other. ).
Which all somehow led to the thing that pissed Weasel off even more than the thing that pissed him off the most.
Because Weasel had already accepted that the world wasn’t perfect, but if it were a perfect world and he still had to have Spider-Man of all people as a soulmate and he pretended very hard that that wasn’t an oxymoron right there, then that little observation would mean that Weasel would be safe from Spider-Man’s notice.
Weasel was not a purse snatcher targeting the elderly women of New York , he was not a mad scientist hell-bent on reducing the world to a pile of planetary goo with some comic book science bullshit machine that r an on microwaves and a prayer and fucking honeybees or whatever , and he was not a n evil CEO who escaped an episode of Scooby-Doo in order to put on a Halloween costume and fly a hoverboard on the way to rob a bank.
Weasel was just a guy who wanted to make a shitload of money in the privacy of his own hideout without drawing unwanted attention to himself, super-powered or otherwise, and was lucky enough to be born with the brains and without the ethics necessary to do just that.
He’s a criminal, sure, but he’s not Spider-Man’s kind of criminal because Spider-Man’s kind of criminals were almost always some combination of stupid, flashy, and certifiably insane and Weasel was very firmly none of the above .
He’s the kind of criminal who gets nabbed by the FBI or shot up by the Punisher or choked to death by another criminal in a dark alley from behind with a belt where he would then lay in the morgue for a year because no one he knew was willing to walk into a police station to identify his corpse.
He’s not the kind who got regular face to spandex-covered face meetings with Spider-Man in his place asking leading questions about his life in between sips of Strawberry Fanta like he seriously thought Weasel couldn’t pick up on the fact that he’s being interrogated.
Spider-Man’s kind of criminal, Weasel was starting to worry, was apparently whatever kind of criminal happen ed to be around. Weasel might actually respect the opportunism in that if it led to a profit other than the kind of moral satisfaction that was only considered a currency by superheroes and if he wasn’t the one who had just so happened to get caught in Spider-Man’s web for no other reason than because he got tossed there by whatever the hell caused soulmates to be a thing in the first place .
Fate. Biology. God.
Hell. The opposite of God.
Hell as in hell is other people and other people had pretty lips that Weasel had to down half a bottle of something hard and nasty off the top shelf because of, because the second the kid hesitantly rolled his mask up enough to to take a drink Weasel had some impulsive thoughts that were slightly less than kosher about the way his lips wrapped around the tip of the straw peeking out of the can.
Weasel was already trying to come to terms with the whole my soulmate is a superhero thing and figuring out how to use it to his advantage without landing himself in a jail cell, okay, he didn’t need to add a sexuality crisis and figuring out how to use Spider-Man’s mouth to his advantage without landing himself in a jail cell and on the sex offender registry for taking that advantage on top of it.
And yet.
Spider-Man sipped his soda at the bar while Weasel pointedly didn’t look at his exposed mouth and pointedly thought to himself he’s only seventeen like it was a mantra, like if he thought it enough that eventually he’d actually care and somehow evolve into someone who puts he’s a minor higher on the list of reasons why it would be a bad idea to fuck someone than he’s a superhero and he’s a dude and his costume reminds me of Deadpool’s and that’s just fucking gross were currently placed on Weasel’s list of reasons why even entertaining the barest hint of an idea about fucking his soulmate would be a bad step to take.
Weasel had never once in his life wished he was a better person.
Now he only found himself wishing for reasons that only a bad person would have.
Fucking typical.
The quiet sipping of artificial fruit flavor through a straw cut off into the metallic scraping gurgle familiar to soda drinkers everywhere and Weasel felt, of all things, relieved at the noise.
Relieved like a guy on death row whose execution got stayed at the last possible minute. A relief that’s mixed in with a little bit of dread, a little tiny paranoid thought that whispered in the ear what if they kill me anyway, and a little bit of the macabre that sank into the bones of anyone in that situation, the kind of shit that made you disappointed not to be dying after you’d spent so long learning to accept that there’s nothing but a needle full of rat poison in your future and gotten all your crying and screaming over it out of the way and left you thinking what a goddamn waste and what the fuck do I do now when it turned out plans have changed.
These little drop-ins of Spider-Man’s over the last month had fallen into a routine, was the thing.
A couple times a week, the kid came by after closing. Weasel gave him a soda, he gave him some snark, and then he went about his usual after-hours chores of fixing the things all his customers fucked up while Spider-Man ignored the drink in front of him and alternated between quietly looking as bored as someone can in head-to-toe costume that hid all sense of expression other than body language and asking questions that ranged from the mundane what’s your favorite color that Weasel sometimes answered honestly to the all too suspicious is that a blood stain on the wall that Weasel answered with lies more outrageously and obviously full of shit than the last.
And then at some point, Weasel would get done with all the shit he needed to do and he’d go back behind the bar and give Spider-Man a pointed look, some snark that’s a little more sharp than the kind he greeted him with, and Spider-Man – to his credit – always took the hint.
He’d push the soda back towards Weasel and Weasel would put it back into the carton on the floor with eleven more cans just like it. Spider-Man would wish Weasel a soft goodnight and Weasel would give him a shark-toothed smile and tell him not to come again but then a night or two or three later Spider-Man would show up and the whole process would repeat and that would be that.
And see, that was the part where Weasel momentarily lapsed into being the kind of criminal that he absolutely wasn’t.
That was the part where Weasel got a little stupid.
Because Weasel was in a business where one had to constantly expect the unexpected in order to stay alive because the unexpected was rarely ever something simple and was very often something like a knife to the back or a gun to the head or, if you pissed off someone particularly vindictive, a bomb in the toilet tank set to go off the second your shit hit the bowl.
Weasel knew better than to trust in routine.
Routine was the accomplice to most of the crimes Weasel helped facilitate.
Routine was how the thief knew to hit your house when you were on your annual vacation to Cape Cod, it was how the sniper knew the easiest time to put a bullet in your brain was when you were stuck in traffic on your way to work like you were every morning, it was how the poisoner knew that the best thing to slip a little aconite into was the cranberry juice in your fridge rather than the orange juice or the milk if they wanted you dead but not your wife and kids and little shelter-rescued Pomeranian too.
Routine was what got you fucked over nine times out of ten and Weasel knew from the start that this little routine with Spider-Man couldn’t be trusted because it couldn’t possibly last without him getting fucked over by it in the end.
But still, Weasel had trusted in one thing – he’d trusted that he’d have more time.
Not that the routine would last forever, but that it would last long enough. Spider-Man clearly hadn’t wanted to rock the boat too soon and Weasel thought he could use that in order to come up with a plan, some kind of end game, some kind of way to maybe not win this situation but to maneuver himself into a position where he was safe (and not in prison) and Spider-Man was not a threat to him (who would put him in prison).
Weasel estimated he’d have four months, bare minimum, but he was confident he could stretch it out to six – hell, to a year maybe – if he played his cards right and that he’d have a workable play by then.
Except that tonight, the routine had changed much earlier than Weasel expected.
Tonight Spider-Man had taken his drink and rather than ignoring it, he’d opened it with a pop of the lid being pressed down followed by the hissing sound of carbon bubbles fizzing into the air. He’d brought his hand up to his neck and hesitated for a fraction of a second before pushing his mask up over his neck, his chin, his fucking pretty cock-sucking mouth, stopping just under his nose, and he’d quirked a shy smile at Weasel and asked if he had a straw and Weasel had been so goddamn surprised he’d done nothing but reach to give him one without a word about it.
And then Spider-Man’s lips had wrapped around the straw and all of Weasel’s blood rushed to his dick and Weasel figured the best way to handle that little shock was to just pretend the routine hadn’t been totally obliterated months ahead of schedule.
He’d done his post-closing check list of chores while mentally freaking the fuck out, answered the questions Spider-Man asked that were safe to answer (you seriously think LG makes better phones than Apple? seriously?) and bullshitted the ones that weren’t (no, really, is that a bloodstain? It seems like – uh, a lot if it came from one person) while mentally freaking the fuck out, and sent a prayer to every god he could remember the name of but didn’t believe in anyway so who gave a fuck that the maximum number of surprises allowed for one night had already been reached and there were no more in his future (also, unsurprisingly, while freaking the fuck out).
Meanwhile, Spider-Man drank his drink like it wasn’t piss-warm from sitting on the floor all day and whatever he was feeling about that little change in routine wasn’t discernible from his mouth (which Weasel was not looking at) much less his chin or any of the rest of him that was still clothed.
And now that drink was gone and Weasel found himself standing across from his seated soulmate with nothing but the wooden bar and the empty pink can on top of it between them.
Spider-Man pushed the can forward with two fingers and it made a light scraping sound, the less annoying cousin to nails on a chalkboard, as it went.
Weasel looked down at the can then up at where Spider-Man’s eyes were on his costume. Nothing to see there. He looked back down to the can and he picked it up, crunching it in his hand before tossing it carelessly into the trash can behind the bar that he just emptied minutes before with a thunk.
His eyes swept back up to Spider-Man (ignoring, ignoring, igfuckingnoring his mouth as they went) and he gave him a wide, shit-eating grin and swore to himself that if the rest of that mask got pulled off tonight and he saw whatever else was under there, he’d pull the gun out from under the bar and deepthroat it like there was no tomorrow because there was only so much anyone could expect him to take.
“I know you’re all hopped up on sugar now, but I’m pretty sure it’s past your bedtime,” Weasel said. “Time to get home and leave me to my own beauty sleep, not that I need it.”
Weasel was afraid for half a second about how else the routine might change then but Spider-Man, to Weasel’s immediate relief, did stand up.
And then to Weasel’s immediate dread, he hesitated on getting to the usual saying-goodbye-and-going part of the night.
“You know, it’s been like a month already,” Spider-Man said, and Weasel noticed the nervous line of his mouth even though wasn’t not supposed to be looking at it. The way it wobbled a little before evening out, an I’m anxious but I’m not letting it stop me movement that Weasel wouldn’t have thought a superhero would have.
The seventeen year old under the costume, though? Fuck only knew about him.
Weasel laughed. It sounded shrill in a way that would be embarrassing if he wasn’t so fucking anxious himself. “Sure, a month of late nights. Even more reason to get home and get some sleep.”
“Yeah, I’m used to staying up late, thanks,” Spider-Man brushed it off. “But – I’m saying, it’s been a month, isn’t it about time that –“
“You vamoose? Skedaddle? Crawl back into the web and eat the moths you’ve got bundled up there?”
“-- you told me your actual name,” Spider-Man finished like he was never interrupted, dropping it like a bomb. “First name, at least. You can’t expect me to believe it’s actually Weasel. No one’s parents hate them that much.”
Weasel stared at him like he was a bomb.
A bomb wrapped up in garish packaging with only a little bit of what was really inside peeking out and, okay, fine, Weasel was looking at his fucking mouth again and the smooth skin under it that led down to a slender neck –
And then the metaphorical light bulb went off above Weasel’s head, a marked difference to what was happening below his belt, and let it never be said that Weasel wasn’t quick.
He put two and two together and what he came up with was four and four was that Spider-Man wanted a tit for a tat.
He showed half a face, got Weasel off-guard, and then asked for half of Weasel’s actual, on-the-birth-certificate name in return.
It was sneaky, really.
Almost manipulative, almost devious, but the kid looked and sounded so damn earnest about it, he probably didn’t even realize. Hell, he’d probably be offended if Weasel called the trick what it was.
Weasel turned around to grab a bottle of whiskey just to give himself a second to hide the actual smile threatening to twist across his face and bury the urge to laugh with startled delight.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” he said as he poured a glass. He was smirking, not smiling, when he turned back around. “Some parents still name their kids Adolf. Then you’ve got hose parents in Norway who tried to name their kids ‘cunt’ awhile back. I bet little Cunt Hitler Jr. would kill to have his name be Weasel instead.”
Weasel almost wanted him to push the issue, to demand what he wanted just so Weasel could shoot him down.
Spider-Man didn’t demand anything, though.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” he said airily, like he didn’t even really care. But Weasel could tell he did. He could tell it from every line in the kid’s body, covered or not. “I saw a news story about parents who wanted to name their kid after a bar code. No letters, just numbers and lines.”
“See? Sick fucks everywhere,” Weasel shot back. He refused to admit that he was a little impressed. Out loud, at least. “Weasel’s not so far out of the realm of possibilities and it’s not always so bad to have a name that’s unique. Much better than,” he raises his glass with a grin. “Henry, for instance. Or Steve or Jack. A million Jacks in the world and all of them jackasses, right?”
Spider-Man laughed. “And a million more Daniels on top of that.”
“And Jims,” Weasel threw out.
“Bills.”
“Bobs.”
“Mikes.”
“Chrises.”
“Peters,” Spider-Man said.
“Johns.”
Spider-Man opened his mouth, then closed it. Paused before he said, “Isn’t John just another name for Jack?”
Weasel hummed and drank his whiskey. “Sure, whatever. You win this round of Family Feud. But seriously, dude, some of us actually sleep at night.”
Spider-Man raised his hands palms up in defeat, then clasped them together as he took a step back. “Okay, okay, you’re right. It’s late and I really should get home to –“
He stopped himself short and stood there, awkwardly and suspiciously still like a video stopping to buffer or a little kid whose mommy caught him with his hands down his pants.
Weasel raised a brow. Waited.
“-- to, uh, my bed,” Spider-Man finished. He brought a hand up to rub at the back of his neck. “To my bed. We’ll try this again...tomorrow, maybe?”
Weasel could call him on it, really. Could press. Could ask who are you getting home to and probably even get an answer, but still – he was trying not to prolong this.
It was probably just his parents, anyway. Mom or dad being the word that tripped him up, and there was nothing exciting there. Everyone had parents, even superheroes. Especially when those superheroes were only seventeen.
And really, the less Weasel thought about his soulmate’s age, the better.
“You’re asking like I have a choice?” Weasel asked instead.
Spider-Man stilled. His hand was still on his neck, too, frozen there. “Well – yeah. I mean, I don’t...I don’t have to keep showing up if you really hate it. You can just tell me to like, fuck off and I’ll...”
He trailed off and Weasel couldn’t see his eyes but he felt like he was being stared at expectantly anyway.
That was the out he needed, he realized. The exit plan. There was no guarantee Spider-Man would actually fuck off never to be seen again, but Weasel got the feeling the kid meant it. He could tell him to fuck off right now and he would. He wouldn’t show up again. He would cease to be Weasel’s problem.
Weasel could just say it. Two little words. Maybe three. Fuck off, then. Easy as that.
“Fuck off?” Weasel said, but it came out more like a question than a demand despite himself. “My, my, what kind of language are we learning in the public school system these days?”
Okay, so Weasel officially hated himself.
He hated himself so much.
He also refused to acknowledge the way Spider-Man relaxed at that or the way he finally lowered his hand from his neck and left it to flutter nervously a bit at his side.
“You don’t know that I go to public school,” Spider-Man said.
Weasel snorted. “If you could afford private, you’d have a better costume.”
“Scholarship?” Spider-Man ventured.
“Didn’t think the Arachnophliacs Society of America threw their money at school children but sure, I’ll pretend I believe it.”
Spider-Man laughed and nodded and his hand raised up half an inch in an aborted wave. “Alright, then. I’ll, um, see you tomorrow. Goodnight...Henry?”
Weasel made a sound like a buzzer going off. “Bzzt! Oh, wrong answer! But thanks for playing, Daniel.”
Spider-Man tsked and shook his head. “Well, I’m guessing that scoreboard up there isn’t for bar trivia, because you kinda suck at it.”
Weasel waved the comment off at the same time that he bit down on the inside of his cheek hard enough to sting just so he wouldn’t fucking smile like an idiot. He hated himself. He did. Fucking hated –
“The bartender doesn’t have to answer the questions, he just has to pour the shots and keep the score. Something you’d know if you were, you know, actually legal.”
“Nice deflect,” Spider-Man said but there was nothing biting or accusatory about it. Spider-Man, Weasel noted, had no problem smiling himself. “But I’m going to just---” he gestured at the door. “---before the sun actually comes up again and I don’t get any sleep at all.”
“Alright then,” Weasel said, and he was already turning around again to pour himself another drink. He told himself it wasn’t not a deflect. It was just a...defuse. Something to turn down whatever the hell kind of mood he was feeling right now. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Last thing I need is a knocked out mask on the sidewalk, huh?”
He heard a short laugh behind him. “Okay, sure. ‘Night, Weasel.”
Weasel said nothing back. A few seconds later he heard the sound of the front door opening – and then closing again – and he gave it another few seconds before he turned around to look and found the room empty.
Weasel looked up at the ceiling to check too, just to be safe, and then sighed and felt stupid about doing it all when he saw nothing up there but the lights.
He held his glass of whiskey up to eye level and looked at it like a bug under a microscope.
Or maybe like a spider under a magnifying glass.
“A million Jacks in the world and every one of them a jackass,” he said to himself and then couldn’t stop the laugh that came out after it.
He downed the whiskey and slammed the empty glass back to the bar with force loud enough to bang like a gavel.
“When’d you turn into a such a sentimental pussy, Jack?” Weasel asked out loud, already pouring himself another. “How about that for a safe question to answer?”
The whiskey, unsurprisingly, gave no answer back.