Chapter Text
“Look, I’m sorry, Peter. You’re a good kid-” Peter wants to argue that he’s an adult- “You’re smart, I know you’ve got a lot on your plate and you do your best but-”
“Wait, Mr. Gregg, please-” Peter is seconds away from literally begging on his knees, he cannot lose this job.
“But-” Mr. Gregg, the rotund manager of the janky pizza place that Peter’s been working as a delivery driver for, presses on, “There’s just been one too many complaints about your deliveries. They arrive absurdly late, or cold, or on a few occasions, basically mangled.”
Like it’s Peter’s fault that Spider-man’s enemies have an uncanny knack for causing problems while he’s in the middle of working. What’s he supposed to do, just let them wreak havoc on the city for the sake of hot pizza in a timely manner?
“I don’t know what it is you’re doing that your deliveries keep ending up in such a bad way but, clearly pizza delivery just isn’t your calling, kid.” Mr. Gregg, for his part, does sound like he wishes this weren’t the case.
Peter sighs, shoulders slumping. It’s not like he can actually explain, and he’s never been a good liar. “Please, I- I really need this job.” If Peter still had any dignity left in him, he might be embarrassed at how desperate he sounds at the prospect of losing a job that pays thirteen whole cents above minimum wage.
The apologetic look he gets in response is telling. “I know, and I’m sorry. I really am.” The hand Mr. Gregg pats on Peter’s shoulder is a shallow comfort. “I just can’t keep giving out so many refunds, Peter.”
With a thick swallow, Peter nods, “Yeah. Yeah, I understand.” He keeps nodding, stupidly.
“You can come get your last paycheck on Friday.”
All Peter can do is nod dumbly some more in response, his throat feeling like cotton and his brain simultaneously buzzing and numb.
Now what the fuck is he gonna do? He’s barely been making his rent as it is between this job and selling his own selfies to the Bugle, and he skimps on meals more often than not already. Now, even if he spends absolutely zero dollars and zero cents on food this month, he’s still going to be severely short. Delivering pizza isn’t the most glamorous of jobs by any means, but it’s been enough to get by.
At least he’s still got a few bucks on his card for the subway so he doesn’t have to either walk home, or attempt to swing there while feeling like his mind and body are not currently occupying the same space.
Since the rest of his morning and early afternoon are now apparently free, once Peter gets back to his pathetic excuse of an apartment, he figures he might as well bite the bullet and brush up his resume. His ancient laptop whirs a bit louder than he’d like when he boots it up, but he can’t exactly be thinking about how badly he needs to replace it right now if he doesn’t want to push himself closer to a panic attack. When the elderly device finally opens up the document, he sits down and takes a look at it.
It looks like shit.
Peter is immediately distraught. There’s no way he’s gonna get a new job in time to pay his rent in two weeks, not with his sparse work history. Not to mention, he somehow doubts Mr. Gregg would agree to be a reference for him. Too bad he can’t exactly put down his decade of being a Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man under ‘volunteer work’.
He scrubs a tired hand over his face and pushes away from his rickety coffee table. He leans back into his worn and lumpy couch and digs into his pocket for his phone. Looking at the cracked screen, he briefly considers calling Aunt May, but immediately dismisses the idea. He’s 26, he can’t keep bothering her with his problems, all it’ll do is make her worry even more about him, and she has enough on her plate as it is. Still, he stares at the scratched up screen, and wills his thumb over to the browser icon as quickly as possible to keep him from dialing her number anyway.
He can work on sprucing up his resume to something that might be more hireable later, but for now, he just needs to find something that’ll earn him enough to make his rent. There’s always a number of people looking to get odd jobs done or whatever, and sure, a lot of the online postings are beyond too weird, or pay like shit, but right now, this seems like Peter’s best — if not only — option.
The internet he steals — uh, borrows — from his neighbor isn’t fast by any means, but beggars can’t exactly be choosers and right now Peter will take whatever he can get to avoid one more monthly bill he can’t afford. Once Craigslist loads, he scrolls down the job types and clicks on ‘labor gigs’, figuring that’s probably his best shot at finding something on short notice. Plus, there might even be something that pays half-decent if there’s some kind of physically demanding labor. Obviously he doesn’t look as strong as he is, which could be a deterrent, but maybe if he gets a chance to show a little strength, he could get some kind of gig with a moving company or something.
Despite his day barely having started, Peter feels exhaustion seeping into his bones as he scrolls through listing after listing. There are a few people needing movers, but so far they’re all looking for someone who comes with their own truck or van. A sign flipping job that promises to pay weekly catches his eye, but it’s only for two days a week with not enough pay to be enough by itself to make up what he’s missing. He keeps it open in another tab just in case he either can’t find something else, or something comes along that he could do in addition to that.
He’s about to click on yet another request for lawn service that he knows either he won't be qualified for or won’t offer much money, when a listing just below it piques his interest. It’s for a house cleaning job, which he’s seen a couple of already, but ignored as a last resort (he knows his strengths, and his cleaning skills are not among them) but what makes him pause is the title of the listing.
House cleaner wanted! Must be willing to accommodate unique request! EXPERIENCE NOT NECESSARY!!!
It’s not the weirdest thing Peter’s seen by far, but it’s also just confusing and vague enough to make him read it over more than once before finally shrugging and clicking on it. As with all the others, before he even reads the needed qualifications, he scrolls down to look at the pay to see if it’s even worth it. Upon reading the number, his eyes nearly bug out of his skull. Surely it’s a typo, or he’s misreading it, because there’s no way, but sure enough, there right at the bottom-
Compensation: $500/hr. willing to offer more
He knows, he knows there’s no way this isn’t some sketch ass shit, even before reading the description. $500 an hour, no experience necessary, “unique request”: it all adds up to suspicious as hell. And yet, after staring at that number for several long seconds, Peter can’t help himself, and he scrolls back up to read the whole listing.
looking for someone to clean my condo 2 days a week 2 hrs/day. cleaning job does not need to be thorough or even good, and will not affect pay. as it says in th title, this is a unique and probably weird request that requires explaining, so pls reply for more info! will not discriminate based on gender.
pls do not contact if u don’t have a strong stomach
must be kind and open-minded!!!!!
Peter reads it. And rereads it. And then reads it one more time for good measure.
It’s gotta be a sex thing.
The description itself isn’t much to go on, but he’s not sure what other conclusion to draw. Sure, most people looking for that kind of thing would use the ‘connections’ sections. Or like, some other site that’s not Craigslist, considering Peter’s pretty sure that’s like, illegal. Or at least against their terms of service or something. True, there’s nothing specific in it that screams “written by a pervert!”, its just fucking weird. Not to mention the lack of capitalization and the casual ‘grammar’ makes it read as much less than professional. But then again, he supposes it is more of a personal work request, not like something from a business, so maybe that’s not so odd.
When Peter realizes he’s been staring at and rereading this stupid thing for almost fifteen minutes, way over thinking something that he for sure shouldn’t even consider replying to, he groans and locks his phone, throwing it beside him on the ratty couch. He’s only spent about an hour combing through the jobs for possibilities, but he feels worn out and drained already.
With a heavy sigh, he rakes a hand through his unruly hair and picks his phone back up. He navigates back to the tab with the sign spinning gig and hits the ‘apply now’ link and starts that process. It’s garbage pay for a dumb job that won't get him out of the hole, but at least he won’t have to worry about whether or not it’s a sex thing.
By the time he finishes with that, it’s been another half hour and his stomach is complaining to him about his lack of breakfast. He decides to call it quits for now and shuffles his way to the part of his tiny studio apartment that considers itself some form of kitchen. His dilapidated mini fridge bares little offerings in the way of edible food, mostly just stocked with various half empty condiment bottles (including three bottles of ketchup that he bought because the store was having a three-for-one deal that he simply couldn’t pass up. It’s too many ketchups), as well as a jar of pickles that he can’t remember when he bought, and a suspicious takeout container that he’s sure is inedible and he should just toss. He closes the fridge.
The cupboard he uses as a pantry doesn’t provide much more; some half crushed instant ramen packages, an open box of crackers that are definitely stale, a handful of loose popcorn kernels, and a meager assortment of seasonings that Aunt May had sent him off with when he first moved out. He considers the ramen, but then he looks at his sink full of dishes and realizes he doesn’t have a clean pot to cook it on the stove, and the microwave is still busted because his landlord hasn’t bothered to send anyone to look at it since it broke four months ago.
There’s no way he’s doing any dishes right now.
He closes the cupboard and trudges over to the corner of the room where his bed is pushed and falls face-first into it. Looks like it’s a ‘nap for lunch’ kind of day.
—
Jameson yells at Peter about his photos being shit, like he always does, and only buys two of them, refusing to pay more than $50 each. That isn’t all that out of the ordinary but it’s just the cherry on top of his financial situation that started that morning. Peter tries very hard once again not to dwell too hard lest he start to spiral and fall into a serious panic.
He can’t even bring himself to actually check the balance of his MetroCard before he goes home, knowing that if he sees how low his balance actually is, it’ll just make everything worse. When he gets back to his place, he finally gives in and cleans his stupid singular pot in order to make some ramen. If he goes out on patrol without eating all day, that’s just asking for disaster, and he’s not quite that desperate, yet. He’s only been out of the job for a day, after all, no need to result to such dire measures quite so soon.
The ramen tastes kind of stale, which Peter didn’t even realize was possible for instant ramen, but he eats every bite while sitting on his couch and staring at his resume open on his laptop. He does not end up actually editing said resume or even adding the pizza job to it. He’s not even sure the effort would be worth it anyway.
His stomach full of cheap tasting beef broth, he switches his attention to his phone. The weird-ass suspicious “cleaning” listing is still open right there in his browser, and so he reads it again. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why, but he can’t stop thinking about it. It’s maybe the sketchiest thing he’s ever seen that isn’t outright soliciting sex, while still being just innocuous enough that Peter is desperately curious about it. His fingers practically itch to click the reply button and ask, if just to get some answers, to know. It feels almost the way his Spidey sense does. It’s uncanny.
Something he notices about the listing that he hadn’t when he first came across it, is that it’s not a super new posting. In fact, it’s over three months old, but it’s still up. Maybe it’s already been filled and the poster just forgot to delete the request. With how much pay is being offered, it seems impossible that plenty of people haven’t already inquired on it in the time it’s been up. Or maybe the “unique” requirements are just that bizarre or specific that this person actually hasn’t found someone to do it.
Everything about it just adds up to making absolutely zero sense.
He’s so focused on attempting to scrute it, that when his phone buzzes in his hand, he nearly ends up on the ceiling.
It’s a text from Deadpool, who Peter has only recently started to willingly tolerate enough to agree to going on planned patrols with. He probably shouldn’t have given the mercenary his actual real human phone number, but, for starters, it’s not like he can afford a second phone just for Spider-man duties - even a burner one. And Deadpool had promised and sworn up and down not to take advantage of it and pester him constantly, and in the week that he’s had it, he’s done a pretty good job of keeping to that.
DP: patrl 2nit bby????
Peter rolls his eyes at Deadpool’s way of texting, but it’s also ridiculous enough to grant him a distraction from his current predicament. He sends a simple thumbs up in response and knows that the merc will find him shortly after he goes out, in that uncanny way that he always does. He’s still got a couple hours to kill before it’ll be time for him to go out, but thinking about being Spider-man serves to help calm him from the whirlwind of the day, enough to think a little more clearly.
He decides to put the desperate job hunt aside for the rest of the day, recognizing that waiting until tomorrow to come back to it with less of a frantic mindset will be more beneficial than panicking and overthinking it today. So he closes his laptop, pockets his phone and decides to spend his time before patrol being productive in other ways.
He does the rest of his dishes, washing them and then using the broken dishwasher as a drying rack to store them. He also gives the rest of his apartment a simple once over, so that at least one part of his Peter Parker life doesn’t have to be in complete disarray. By the time he’s taken his trash out to the shoot at the end of the hall, given his tiny bathroom a basic wipe down, quickly swept his floor, and even made his bed, he feels a modicum more settled as he dons his costume and prepares to leave.
Setting out for patrol feels like a desperately needed breath of fresh air in a way that it hasn’t in a very long time. It reminds him all over again of when he was first coming into his powers in high school; when he was brand new at being Spider-man, and his senses would all be too much and he couldn’t think until he was out in the air, swinging between buildings. Or when finals weeks in college would overwhelm him to the point where he couldn’t even read the words on a page to study, and he just had to get out and do something else. He always felt better when he got back, even when it ate into his precious sleep time.
At least as Spider-man, he’s doing something productive. Even if he can’t get paid for it, he always feels best like this, like all his Peter Parker problems disappear for just a little while, and he can focus on other people’s problems; focus on helping them. So that’s what he does.
Like clockwork, Peter’s been out for less than an hour, now perched on the edge of a roof and listening to the sounds of the city for where he might be needed next, when his Spidey sense tingles vaguely at the base of his skull, and he hears the clamoring of someone climbing up a fire escape and a cheerful, “Hiya, baby boy!” as Deadpool’s masked head pops up to his left. Peter rolls his eyes beneath his mask, as he finds himself doing so often in response to Deadpool, as the man climbs his way onto the roof and makes his way over, plopping gracelessly down on the ledge next to Peter.
“I told you not to call me that,” he mutters, but as usual, Deadpool seems to ignore him.
“Fancy meeting you here, Spidey,” He chirps, legs swinging like a child over the side of the roof. His head is tipped forward and turned to face Peter, the stretch of his grin evident even under his mask, and with his hands on the ledge on either side of his thighs, he really does resemble an over-eager kid.
A kid who’s a six-foot-three-inch wall of pure muscle, honed into a precise and deadly killing machine.
Peter’s only been semi-officially allowing Deadpool to patrol with him for a couple of months, and only after Deadpool promised to strictly adhere to Spider-man’s No Killing rule — even outside of patrol. So far though, he seems to be keeping to his word. In the beginning he’d still gotten a tad more violent than Peter thought necessary, but he’s since toned that down after seeing Spider-man’s clear disapproval. Also, he doesn’t seem to have taken any new (deadly) mercenary jobs since they started. At least not in New York — and maybe that’s all Peter can ask.
He knows Deadpool is somewhat unstable, that he talks to himself (or at least to someone no one else can hear) and that he has a more than unsavory past and reprehensible reputation. He’s not an idiot, and he’s not blindly trusting. He watches the man carefully every time they go out, but he earnestly seems to want to be better, to do good and help people. Whatever his motives for that, are none of Peter’s business, as far as he’s concerned. Even his Spidey sense doesn’t make his brain buzz nearly as bad now as it did the first time they met.
Basically, Peter is aware of the extent of the possible danger that Deadpool presents. But he figures, if they’re together, and something goes bad, well. He’s Spider-man. If anyone can handle it, it’s him.
And it helps that Deadpool seems to idolize Spider-man, just a bit.
“We agreed to meet up, you knew you were going to see me,” Peter says, still listening for sounds of crisis in the city.
Peter can hear the pout in Deadpool’s voice. “Aw, you act like you’re not happy to hang out with me.”
A siren several blocks away catches Peter’s attention. “We’re not ‘hanging out’, Pool, we’re patrolling,” he says in response before shooting out a web and swinging towards the sound, knowing the mercenary will follow him just fine.
By the end of the night, in addition to a handful of mugging attempts, a minor domestic dispute, and a cat stuck in a tree, they help stop an armed bank robbery, and Peter feels like it’s been a productive evening. Deadpool seems to agree, if the way he skips along beside Peter is any indication.
”Sooo,” the mercenary trails, drawing out the word, and Peter knows what’s coming next. “Wanna get tacos?” Peter finds himself rolling his eyes before the words are fully out of Deadpool’s mouth. He asks after every patrol they go on together, and Peter always turns him down. They’re not friends. Coworkers maybe? Honestly, if anything Peter often feels more like Deadpool’s babysitter.
This time though, Peter pauses, remembering his bare cupboards and empty fridge. Apparently Deadpool takes the pause as an excuse to press further, since Peter usually denies him immediately.
“C’mon, baby boy. My treat! I know all the best taco joints in the city, I swear!”
Peter sighs, tilts his head to the side, considering, and once again thinking of his lack of food at home. After a brief pause, he nods, relenting. “Alright. If you’re paying, I guess, sure. Why not?”
Beside him, Deadpool whoops loud enough to make Peter wince slightly, and actually jumps up and down, clapping his hands. It’s shit like this that makes Peter momentarily forget just how dangerous this man-child is.
“Yes! Okay! There’s a taco truck just a few blocks from here that’s gonna blow your cute little mind, Spidey! You are not gonna regret this!”
Peter kind of already regrets it, but a free meal is a free meal. And sometimes, Deadpool’s exuberance can be a bit infectious, so he just follows after the merc, looking forward to the promise of some killer tacos.
—
When Peter gets back to his apartment, he showers, throws on his comfiest sweats and pulls open his phone once more. The patrol has helped not only clear his mind, but also given him a touch of insight into what he can do. He’s decided to take the Deadpool approach with the strange job listing. If it’s dangerous, if something bad happens, well, at the end of the day, he’s Spider-man. He can handle himself. And the pay is good enough for him to risk it.
He reads the post once more, takes a breath, and hits reply.