Chapter Text
Let’s catch up, shall we?
Who am I? You sure you wanna know? The story of my life isn’t for the faint of heart. If somebody said it was a happy little tale... if somebody told you I was just your average ordinary guy, not a care in the world... somebody lied. But let me assure you: This, like any story worth telling, is all about romance. With that boy. The boy next door. Peter Parker. The man I’ve loved since before I even know I could love someone, and I don’t even love myself…
Let’s cut this crap!
It all started when I landed a date with Peter Parker. Yeah, I know. I shot for the stars and got shot right back between the fucking eyes. He got bitten by a radioactive spider and became Spider-Man. No big deal. And all I did was get cancer… That’s enough to ruin the romance of the century. We had a good time together. Until we didn’t.
Love is a beautiful thing. When you find it, the whole world tastes like Daffodil Daydream. So you gotta hold onto love... tight! And never let go. Don’t do what I did, folks. And do not try any of this at home!
Wade actually would say that he reached his lowest of lows a little earlier than all of the Weapon X program stuff. Though that took quite the cake too. That was a story for a later tale. Not too late, though. Wouldn’t wanna make you wait…
Peter had been out for about half an hour to Harry’s big excessive mansion by then. And the thunderstorm had taken about the same amount of time to cut the apartment’s electricity out, leaving Wade in the dark with an incurable sense of restlessness added to the cancers seemingly eating away at him any time he dared to take a breath. Wade found his way outside pretty early after that first flicker and then seemingly endless plunge into darkness. His hood could barely protect his face from the rain, propelled by a nasty wind, coming directly into his direction to make life all the more unbearable already.
Maybe he was just being a bit of a downer, but wasn’t the whole thunderstorm before a cataclysmal event in a story overkill at this point? All of this for that fucking Agent Smith? Really?
“Answer your fucking phone!” Weasel exclaimed. Wade had only been sitting on one of the bar stools for three minutes by then, methodically ignoring his ringing phone, flat on the counter, for a staring contest with his own face, staring back at him in a polaroid, stuck at the corner of the bar’s pointless mirror. “If I have to hear Enrique Iglesias singing about being somebody’s hero one more time, I swear I’m gonna kill myself!” With raised eyebrows, shifty eyes, and an increasingly redder face, Weasel pointed the cell phone’s screen saver out, which showed a perfect angle of Peter’s naked behind. “Does Peter know that’s his contact photo?”
“Nope. That was an hour ago.”
“Ah… Looks like you need a blowjob and a shower. Courtesy calls for the later first.”
“You volunteering?” Wade replied. Needless to say that he was blissfully unaware that he was about two hours away from giving Peter the last blowjob he seemingly would ever get before shoving his crotch right into Peter’s face in a red suit about a year later. “How about three shots of strong.”
“Or… How about Triticum aestivum wheatgrass,” Weasel offered while holding up what looked like a good handful of long green grass taken freshly from somebody’s lawn. Where the hell had he been hiding that? “Excellent for the immune system.”
“Jesus Christ, you sound like Peter’s seventy-years old aunt,” Wade sighed in return. His throat felt like sandpaper. There was a permanent fire in there, and alcohol seemed like the best of cure. Fight fire with fire, right? “You should see the apartment. Our floor looks straight out from the dark web. Who knew how sexy a brain tumor could look like? I bet there’s some weirdos out there that’d like to fuck that.”
“Look how happy you look here.” Weasel showed the same picture Wade had been staring at since he first got there. “I’m gonna keep this up on the wall to remember when you look alive. And to prove that I used to know someone that knew Spider-Man.” Wade flashed the bartender a smile with full-on teeth and everything. Weasel really decided to believe his words when he was permanently a couple of seconds away from crashing dead on top of his appallingly-maintained countertop, huh? Still satisfying, though. Almost worth it. Almost. It was worth wondering how long Weasel would leave his rotting carcass in the same spot… Granting, Wade wouldn’t be the first to depart their mortal coil on that thing.
“I’m finally gonna win the dead pool now that you’re gonna die tragically of cancer.”
“I got it.” Wade nodded with an even broader, knowing smirk. “Thanks.”
“Almost forgot…” Weasel trailed off and reached into his red, blue, and white plaid shirt’s front pocket before sliding Wade a distinctive black business card across the countertop, only displaying the numbers 555.0199 in plain white. A phone number then, and nothing else. Looked promising. “Guy came in asking for you. Real Grim Reaper type.”
Following Weasel’s gaze, Wade looked over his right shoulder. His weary eyes landed on the back of a man’s head, sitting implausibly still for someone hanging out in that kind of place. The one in question, surely. The lightbulb above the mysterious stranger emitted a menacing glow over the table and the lone pale drink by his left side, shining a blinding dot into Wade’s eyes like it was out of a video game. It led Wade to believe that he might have been about to be poisoned or something. Or better, it might have been the powerful antidote that could magically get rid of his illnesses. If so, what would he have been willing to give in return?
Looking back, he hadn’t been so far off.
“I don’t know,” Weasel added. “Might further the plot.”
And further the plot, it did spectacularly. Fucking Weasel.
Out of mystic obligation—and boredom because their apartment still had no electricity, remember?—Wade made his slow progression toward the back of the bar where the nameless man had yet to make any movements that would suggest he wasn’t some kind of alien or vampire or anything that wasn’t resolutely human. His black suit looked impeccable and straight out of those store catalogs before they became more or less obsolete. Although, Wade doubted they would have chosen that type of man to flaunt their pages. While clean-shaven and a haircut like an accountant, there was something sinister about the way the lightbulb above their head was casting shadows on his blank face that would soon make Wade’s back sink deeper into the cushion and his sore fingers stay clenched on top of his thighs. The strong shot he got from that regular on his way there only helped his nerves slightly.
“Mr. Wilson,” the melodious voice greeted him.
“How can I help you?” Wade asked as he sat on the vacant bench. The fact that the man hadn’t chosen to take that seat should have been a dead giveaway as to all the following suffering his present had later brought. Anybody that picked the uncomfortable chair over the cushioned booth in any public space had to be a complete psycho. “Besides luring children into a panel van.”
“I understand you’ve recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer.”
“Stalker alert.”
“It’s my job,” the man leaned a bit into his chair, moving for the first time since Wade became aware of his presence, “recruitment. I’m sorry you’ve had such a tough go, but you’re a fighter. Special Forces. Forty-one confirmed kills.”
“Well, one every seven weeks. Same rate most folks get a haircut.” Wade’s hand was reaching out for the drink that had been on the table before he arrived before he could consider again the thought he had before about the poison, which there was none, only a tremendously pleasant burning aftertaste. “It’s to wash the taste down, so it’s tough to forget being so impressive,” he added once the liquid had gotten to his chest and create a lovely warmth down there.
“Now, you spend your days sticking up for the little people.”
“Well, people change. Seen the news these days? Hard not to feel something when there Spidey around saving kittens from trees like the good ol’ days. What do you want?” Wade said in one stride. He was already getting impatient. What happened to the whole ‘getting-to-the-point’ thing? Villains used to be so direct about their evil plans.
“I represent an organization that may be able to help. What if I told you we can cure your cancer? And what’s more, give you abilities most men only dream of?”
Been to Oscorp’s not-so-secret, not-so-underground labs lately? “I’d say you sound like an infomercial. And not a good infomercial, like Slap Chop. More Shake-Weighty,” Wade replied without missing a beat and lifted his hand an inch away from his face to make a motion that would have turned Aunt May’s face red.
“The world needs extraordinary soldiers. We won’t just make you better. We’ll make you better than better. A superhero. Like your dear friend Spider-Man.”
Wade’s train of thoughts had been quite simple. If they could turn him into this superhero like the guy said, didn’t that meant following Spider-Man on his dangerous patrols and covering his back? Especially at this time, with those literal ‘shit flies’ following him around anytime he set a foot outside. Little did Wade know at the time that one of those shit flies was sitting right in front of him and that he might have been the very one that recruited some of them. Nonetheless, Wade had been aware of the risks. There was indeed a high chance that he could turn into a giant lizard monster like that Dr. Connors guy in the process. On the other hand, if there was a slight chance he could stay alive and be there to protect Peter from similar monsters, that meant he had to try.
This was the perfect opportunity, one Wade could have only dreamed of. Enough to prompt him to believe that maybe the universe didn’t hold that big of a grudge on him as it had repeatedly shown him before…
You could say he walked directly into the wolf’s mouth if you will.
All of those nature metaphors are starting to give me the itch.
“Look… Agent Smith… What if I’m not a superhero? What if I’m… the bad guy?” Wade replied, giving himself a deep, sultry voice that didn’t impress his drinking buddy in the slightest. In fact, he showed no emotions whatsoever, not even a hint of incomprehension. “Oh, you’re not from Twilight? Alright. Could’ve fooled me.”
“You could be a hero like him. That’s something you’ve always wanted, right?”
“I’m done with the stalker shit, dude.”
“Spider-Man has been having recurrent trouble with,” the ‘recruiter’ stopped to choose his word carefully, “special enemies lately, hasn’t he? Don’t you want to help remedy that?”
“Whoa, how the fuck do you know about that?” Everybody and their grandma must have seen Spidey’s latest run-in with that wolf guy, weird tentacle-monster-thing, and that giant lady (still deliberating what I should call those guys… Who’s making that shit up?). But what nobody knew was how often those run-ins were. Until very recently, Wade hadn’t known himself. So, what was this guy on about? “Got something to do with it, pedo-stalker?”
“You want to stop them. You’re not the only one. We want more people like Spider-Man, protecting the street without outside corruption becoming involved.”
“Would you say you’re putting together a team? Bringing together a group of remarkable people or some shit like that?”
“You could say that.”
You could say reason ran over my love and got gutted; that’s a metaphor I can’t get behind!
Why did we have to trust this weird dude, Agent Smith, Volturi-looking ass bitch?
Heart over reason, truly.
Wade’s left butt-cheek had barely grazed the seat in front of Weasel again when the bartender made the most ludicrous claim the merc had ever heard, “isn’t that your jailbait?”
Was it possible for a heart to stop beating and yet feel like it was about to beat out of someone’s chest at the same time? Wade’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull as his eyes landed on a familiar figure, about five foot ten, brown hair, brown eyes so wide and deep you could drown in them… Luckily, Wade’s extensive past army training had prepared him for that exact situation—hiding from his worry-sick boyfriend, who just braved a shitty downpour to find him, of course. “I’m not here, okay!” Wade whispered rapidly at Weasel, whose expression probably rivaled with Wade’s for an entirely different. He should really stop acting like it’s the first time a client jumped over his counter to hide between his legs. “You haven’t seen me in weeks!”
“I know so much shit about you, I could throw up,” Weasel uttered as Peter’s footsteps rapidly approached the counter. Most of Wade’s limbs went to wrap themselves around Weasel’s legs like a codependent cat aggressively cuddling up to its owner. So, there it is. The lowest point I ever got. I bet you had been wondering, huh? “I don’t serve underage kid, ‘kay? Well, I could serve you, I don’t care, but Wade would murder me.”
To Wade’s dismay, only Weasel’s voice was immune to a muffled fate. The others—Peter’s more importantly—were stifled by the wood crushing his right side and above his head and Wade’s heartbeats, reverberating in his ears like a fast hammer that had gone out of control. There was no chance in hell that Peter wouldn’t hear it or his breathing, which had gone into complete overdrive since Peter chose to show up without an invite. So, Wade did the next best thing and covered his mouth with both of his hands and decided to only take small intakes of breath at various intervals just to be sure. That was what he deserved for being the biggest scumbag that ever lived anyway. He felt like one of those cheating husbands, forcing their mistress to hide in the closet until their wife left the house. Doesn’t that make me the mistress, Weasel the husband, and Peter the wife? Ew, fuck that.
“And I thought you might be a product of his imagination,” Peter replied. The corners of Wade’s mouth moved against his palms despite his best effort. What an icon. “Look… Weasel, is it?” The bartender nodded, and Wade was disappointed though so shocked to witness the many glances he kept sending his way. The right amount to make Peter suspicious, no doubt. “Have you seen Wade around recently? Do you know where he might be? He’s not answering his phone or anything, and uh, he said he was gonna stay home all day, but… apparently not.”
“All cancer and no play make Wade a dull boy. Pretty rough what’s happening to him, huh?”
“Yeah, yeah…” Peter’s tone betrayed his frustration, not that Weasel knew him nor care enough to notice that. “Have you seen him?”
“Nah, it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve seen the fucker.” Weasel’s shark-like smile might have been too excessive to send the desired effect. Fucking idiot. “Never felt better! The guys are no longer scared of talking shit about Spider-Man or, like, fuckin’ breath in the dude’s direction. They can’t really do that, anyway! How the fuck can you get close to that dude without getting thrown in jail? He’s, like, enemy number one to guys like us, y’know? Wade should be shitting on him too! The snake…”
Peter didn’t respond for the longest time, and Wade’s back could only cover itself with hot sweat as he waited and ran over in his head what might be happening in that clever mind of his. Had he already realized Weasel’s lies underneath all of Weasel’s nonsense? Was he about to catch Wade by the collar and drag him out of his pathetic hiding place like he was Marty McFly’s pathetic son? Or had he rather chose to storm off to their place and empty the apartment before he came back to make the message clear? Instead, Peter simply uttered, so quietly to Wade’s ears that it might have been something completely different, “huh-huh. I, err, I bet.”
“Nobody thinks they actually have a fuckin’ chance! But Wade’s all like, ‘you do that, and you lose your fucking hands! I’ll throw the feet as a plus!’ and almost did a few times! He doesn’t get any fuckin’ jokes anymore.”
“Hope I didn’t straighten him too much,” Peter said when they all knew it might have been the truth. “So, you must be happy then that you’ll get your prize.”
“Huh…” Weasel sounded and looked genuinely contrite when Wade took a look up at his chin again. Peter Parker usually manages to bring empathy out of anybody. Might be the puppy eyes… It’s probably why no villains wanna hear Spidey out until he takes that mask off. “I know it looks really shitty now! Poor taste, I know—I just thought I would leave it for the memories, y’know?”
“Yeah…” After a couple more agonizing silent seconds, Peter remarked about something Wade couldn’t contemplate himself. “I love that picture.”
“Oh, he gave it to me as ‘proof.’ I thought I would hang it here, so we’ve got something to remember his annoying ass when he’s gone. Hey, I gotta ask,” Weasel’s elbows leaned on the counter, “does he really know Spider-Man? He’s making all that shit up, right?” Using only his left foot, Wade used most of his strength to hit the sensitive spot right behind Weasel’s shin. Worth it. Weasel replied with a similar kick to Wade’s stomach, causing a dull, questionably loud thud. Wade’s teeth dug into the side of his palm as not to let out the groan that threatened to come out just then. NOT worth it.
“No! Not at all! I met him too, and he’s uh, he’s a really great guy! He, uh…” There was evident hesitation in Peter’s voice, one that made Wade fear for another secret to be revealed, though to Weasel’s dumb ass this time. “He admires him a lot. Wade, I mean. Wade does.”
Peter Benjamin Parker, you shut your damn mouth! Wade wanted to reprimand loud and clear so any prying ears could witness the record being set straight. The only thing Wade found himself capable of doing was to cover both of his cheeks as they turned boiling hot and a ferocious crimson color, which, if you were to ask him even to this day, had been solely due to the lack of oxygen and agonizing pain in his abdomen.
“Yeah, I got that, alright.”
“I think he wishes he was more like him sometimes,” Peter remarked with that overly sweet sincerity of his. Why did he have to spit all of that shit out to Weasel of all people? Peter knew Wade was hiding under there. That was the only explanation. This was a tactic to force him out of his shame cocoon and make him admit how much of an asshole he was. “He’s like a kid that wishes he had superpowers, but it’s, like, so he can play with his friend that has them.”
“You don’t find that a little weird?”
“What do you mean? Everyone wishes they had superpowers, don’t they? Must be worse when you know someone who does.” Mmh, Petey, you fucking bastard. How could he have known about Wade’s conversation with that recruiter, who so happened to be listening right now—if there was a way he could hear from the back of the bar? Either that or Peter and I are mentally or so spiritually linked that he somehow guessed what just happened just from being in the same room, or this is a work of fiction. I personally couldn’t guess.
“No, about the… Y’know… It’s the way he talks about him all the fucking time! It’s like he’s a fucked-up groupie, like, they’re already fucking or some shit like they’re got something goin’ on, but err… But you know how Wade is: He blows up everything outta fucking proportion! Once he spotted Justin Timberlake in front of a fuckin’ Starbucks as if they had a fucking Frappuccino date—he couldn’t shut up about it for months! With that Spider-Man guy, it’s like, uh…” Weasel hesitated, which Wade found to be remarkably hilarious, “it’s like he’s in love with the guy or something! It might just be his Canadian side, though. I heard they’re really fuckin’ friendly over there, like, the men kiss each other hello all the time or some crazy shit like that!”
What Peter chose to respond went way beyond Wade’s deepest contentment, “You think Wade’s cheating on me with Spider-Man?” Wade would have given thousands of real dollars for a picture of Weasel’s face right now. “It’s not like I’ve no clue what’s going on. We actually have a lot of fun together, us three if, err, ya catch my drift?” Holy shit. How could Peter manage to work him the fuck up while he hopefully had no clue they were even in the same vicinity? Wade truly could never understand the logic of science (or magic, who fucking knows) of that. “Happened once or twice. He never takes his mask off, of course—part of the fun. I don’t know if I’m supposed to talk about this. He didn’t make me sign one of those non-disclosure agreements, though!”
Why did he never say we share the same fantasy? He had never felt closer to Peter than he was now, tucked like a pretzel under Weasel’s bartop, jeans stuck to an unidentified puddle which might have been on the floor for longer than Weasel had been walking on this earth.
“Huh-uh.”
“I’m not gonna tell you how big Spider-Man is, by the way, so don’t even try. Okay, I could put it in one word: Huge. But I could hook you guys up? I don’t think you’re his type, though. No offense… But you could always try!”
“No, no, I was, uh… just, err…”
“Think about it, buddy!” Peter slapped the counter and stood up, judging solely from the piercing, metallic squeak his stool emitted against the floor. “I gotta go. You sure you haven’t seen him at all today?” Weasel shook his head, apparently no longer able to muster any words or sounds. “If you see him or manage to reach him, could you tell him to come home, please? And tell him…” he hesitated. Wade thought he could have started crying right then and then, which only happened a few seconds off. “Don’t forget to call him an idiot.”
“Alright,” Weasel croaked out. “Understood. Noted. I mean… I’ll…” The moment Wade understood that Peter had gone back out the front door was when Weasel stepped away and said directly at Wade, “you owe me big.”
Salty tears had long begun to soak Wade’s cheeks and fingers and prickled his eyes and the area around it, and Weasel didn’t look in any rush to make a huge deal out of it. Maybe that was one of those friend things, but Wade wouldn’t dig too much into it because, at the moment, he was quite preoccupied with the shame of hiding from and spying on the love of his life when it would have been so easy to tell him the truth. If only he had done that instead… It was hard to imagine how things would have gone differently if he acted like an adult with decent emotional stability and confronted Peter right when he entered and told him about what the recruiter divulged to him…
But then you’d probably already be dead or even closer to it, wouldn’t you?
“Alright. Your name’s getting on the will.”
“He looked like shit. Are you sure he’s not the one with cancer?
Weasel’s face momentarily contorted into a sort of grimace as though the instant realization that he might have gone too far with that one had settled in. Wade simply replied, “positive. That would be the cherry on top of the shit-sundae.”
“So, err… You, Peter and Spider-Man, huh?” Weasel said in a totally different tone, cheery even. A blatant attempt to lighten the mood. Although, if he had to guess, Wade wouldn’t blame him for being all intrigued and acting like a pervy creep about that one. Though, to be fair, Peter gave him some good ammunitions there.
“That one time, they blew me at the same time,” Wade said and snorted the longest, nastiest snot he ever had since ninth grade before loudly scratching his aching throat. “Didn’t know spiders could do that? Now ya know.”
“Right. Wow,” Weasel uttered, still bewildered. He watched blankly as Wade nearly coughed the soul out of his body. Wasn’t he a sight for sore eyes: snort leaking out of his right nostril, wet face, wet bloodshot eyes, and the popped blue and purple veins on his forehead. He looked like he just walked straight out of The Walking Dead set. “So, which unexpected character appearance did you like better?” Weasel asked. “The pedophile or jailbait? Quite the irony, huh? It’s like God made a joke.”
It just went downhill from there. And unfortunately, it wasn’t such a nice view.