Heavy Healing

11 Peter

"What did you do to get him to do that?" Wade asked, marveling at the sample image Peter pulled up from the email that he'd sent to the paper.

"Nothing," he stammered, not sure how to answer that question. It was weird talking about himself like he was a different person. He wasn't close enough to anyone to have conversations like this. And even if he did, the likelihood of Spider-Man coming up in conversation was low unless work got brought up.

Wade beamed and shook his head. "People are going to get a load out of that. You can still use it for your own sales if you're licensing it, right? You need to get these prints and a website up before the paper uses that."

"Yeah, I think so. But I don't really have the know-how for website maintenance or the money to get the product." Peter said, taking his phone back to shove it in his pocket. "It's wishful thinking though, maybe in another life."

"Do presales. Seriously, I think you're really missing out Peter, you scrape by making rent on what you earn, but you could be living the dream. You do understand how large of a fan base Spider-Man has, don't you?"

"Um," he smiled nervously. He'd seen one weird drawing once when he was younger and that had been the end of his search for his fans. He didn't touch that. "No?"

Wade shook his head in disbelief, blue eyes particularly striking at the moment. "Crazy."

Peter shrugged and turned to his food, digging into his untouched softshell, relishing the flavor in the meat and sauce. Flavor was a luxury when you lived off ramen and bread. He could probably inhale all that they had brought home with them, the feat would be far from a challenge for his metabolism. When he was younger and Aunt May cooked meals for them, he felt sated. But since moving out and fending for himself it felt like he was never really full. He wasn't sure if it was just a result of his power continuing to develop and making greater demands, or if he was just genuinely not doing so hot for himself. Probably both. "We'll see how the Licensing deal does first."

"I think it's going to go great."

Peter just laughed "If only you'd met the man who's daily decisions dictate my financial fate."

* * *

Hours passed and Wade went home after a long drawn-out conversation that had taken them well past he was sure either of them had intended to spend together. Regardless he'd promised himself he'd patrol tonight, and patrol he did.

"Hey, your grandma called, she wants her hair back." He shook his head disapprovingly and the man sitting in front of him, whimpering over their tail bone. His hair was grey. And the guy wasn't old, Peter should have prefaced that first. He knew silver hair was in, but normally he saw it on girls. This guy had clearly attempted the trend and failed miserably, getting aged grey rather than silver. And to make it better his hair was that same shirt and curly every old woman around.

He bent over and grabbed the purse he'd seen the guy take off with, tempted to beat him with it. It was a little purse with ponies on it. And a quick glance inside revealed that there were at most four dollars in change and a few plastic cards inside.

"You did not steal a kid's purse, did you?" He scowled in disbelief.

All he received was a jumbled grumble and whine he couldn't discern.

"Hey!" He snapped, stepping forward to get into the guy's space. He wanted him to look up and meet his eye. "Where did you get this?"

"Fuck off, man."

That rubbed him the wrong way, the image of an adult man shoving some little kid around for a purpose with nothing in it enough to make his blood boil. If he hurt a child over this kind of shit, he'd skin him himself, morals be damned. He knelt down, setting the stolen possession aside to crawl up into the man's space, taking advantage of how he knew his movement could come off as disturbing in some cases as he pushed himself well beyond his own bubble to he was nearly nose to nose with the asshole. "Tell me where it came from." He demanded quietly. It wasn't a friendly quietness. It was tense and threatening. A final warning. Would Peter hurt the guy? Probably not. But he wasn't above scaring the shit out of someone over the abuse of a child.