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Derek punches the doughy-faced man in the Friends of Humanity sleeveless tee in the face one more time (for luck, or something) before picking him up by the back of his pants and throwing him against the dumpster. He snarls, fists clenching, hunched over to tamp down the rage to kill, as the other man scrambles helplessly against the garbage container.
“Next time you wanna pick on a goddamn kid-”
But the man has managed to sit somewhat upright and has plastered himself against the dirty steel of the dumpster. Maybe because his back is protected, maybe because he’s just that stupid, the FOH dough-boy sneers in impotent contempt. “What,” he spits out, blood and saliva flying everywhere, “you gonna take on the whole FOH? You and what army?”
Derek grins, feral and manic. “An army of one, bub. And these.” He shoves a fist under dough-boy’s chin and two metallic claws slide out with a snikt, the wicked blades scraping against the man’s suddenly ashen cheeks. “Wanna try me?”
“Mutie!” But the FOH goon’s shout sounds more like a breathless gasp than a hateful accusation. A stench fills the air just then, and Derek doesn’t even bother trying to hide rolling his eyes. The man had pissed himself.
“Sticks and stones don’t do shit to me. You think words’ll hurt more? Who’s gonna win this one, me or you?” Derek grimaces in disgust as tears run down dough-boy’s face. “Get outta here. Don’t ever let me see your ugly face again, or you’re gonna find yourself pissing outta more than one hole.”
Derek straightens up as dough-boy runs away, stinking of pee and terror. He shakes his head and turns to head out of the dead-end alley, getting his bearings to find the nearest subway station. Hopefully Leech had made his way back with his people in the sewers by now, safe and sound, but Derek wants to make sure.
That’s when he hears it, a soft whump, a sound like something soft landing on concrete.
He whirls back to face the alley, claws out, stance low. He growls, scanning the growing darkness, but sees no one.
He smells someone, though. Young, if the overwhelming scent of Axe deodorant is any indication. Hair gel, too. “Come on out, kid,” he barks out, “before I make you.”
“Wow, rude.”
Derek snaps his head up toward the first landing of a fire escape closest to him and finds it empty. Next to the fire escape, though, apparently clinging to the brick wall, is a tall, lanky man. In a suit. A skintight, body hugging, red and blue suit. Fully hooded, with creepy, blank white eyes where his real eyes should be, and a black stylized spider on his chest and black webs all over his legs and arms. Very nice legs and arms. He’s also upside down, head outstretched, looking like some bizarre squirrel. With an amazing ass. Derek blinks, because for all the weird shit he’s seen and experienced, a seemingly hot guy in a red and blue spider suit, who can cling to a wall and not fall off, is a new one.
“Oh, fuck,” he says, after a beat. “You’re that spiderman.”
“Uh, no,” hot spider guy replies. “I’m Spider-Man.”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
Spider guy shakes his head. “You said spiderman. I distinctly heard “spiderman.” No capitals, no hyphens. I have both. Spider-Man. Say it with me: Spider-”
“Okay yeah. I get it.” Derek huffs in amusement and pulls out a fresh stogie, clipping off the end with a casual swipe of a claw. He’s getting a book of matches out of an inner jacket pocket next when he sees movement above his head. Spider-Man gracefully flips over and lands gently onto the floor of the alleyway, arms crossing in disapproval.
“Did you know Placido Domingo used to smoke cigars?” he asks. As Derek stares at him in silence, Spider-Man takes that as a sign to continue. “He didn’t inhale so he thought it was safe. For his vocal chords. Because he’s an opera singer?”
Derek stares at him for a few more beats before giving him that eyebrow. “I’m not an opera singer.”
Spider-Man explodes in a flurry of flailing hands. “Not the point! There’s such a thing as mouth cancer, you know! It’s still smoking! Second-hand smoke can kill you just as-”
“Hey, whoa!” Derek finally, sort of, sees what the spider kid was leading up to. He slips the stogie back into its case. “I won’t light it, alright?”
But Spider-Man still looks mulish, even through his hood. “All right,” he sniffs. “I mean, not that I particularly care, it’s just that I was swinging by and I saw you beating up that Friends of Humanity asshole and I saw your freaking amazing claws and it was totally hot and I wouldn’t want you to get cancer-”
“You think I’m hot?” Derek smiles, sly and knowing.
“Your claws!” Spider-Man yelps. “I mean yes, you’re hot- stop fishing for compliments! I’m sure you’ve seen yourself, unless your mutant power means that you have claws but can’t see yourself in a mirror like a vampire- wait, you’re not a vampire with claws, right?”
Derek’s smile grows into a full-blown grin, not feral like with the FOH asshole, but in crazy, amused happiness. Who the hell is this Spider-Man? “You don’t know who I am, kid?”
Spider-Man edges closer, head slanted up like a curious corgi. Derek realizes just then that he’s completely fucked, because this boy (and with his mannerisms and voice and deodorant he’s still clearly, painfully young) is adorable. “I know you’re a mutant,” Spider-Man says slowly. “And that means you’re probably one of the X-Men, because I know their headquarters are just north of here. Wait!” he adds quickly, as he gauges the quickly darkening scowl on Derek’s face, “I know about the X-Men because I wo- I have friends who work for the Daily Bugle. They have a mutant blogger for the online edition.”
Derek relaxes. “You know Banshee?”
Spider-Man scrunches his nose, which, again, is somehow visible even through his hood and should not be as cute as it is. “Banshee? Oh, Lydia. Yeah, I know her. Do you-” he halts, eyes squinting. Wow, that mask is far more expressive than any mask has a right to be. “Are you going to try to figure out who I am?”
“Uh.” Derek tries not to look embarrassed, since it totally ruins his tough guy cred. He doesn’t think he succeeds. “Maybe? I mean no? Look,” he continues, holding up his hands in an attempt to look as placating and as harmless as possible, which means he automatically fails at that too, because Spider-Man had just said that he’d seen the claws of death that come out of those knuckles. “Look,” he tries again, “my name is Derek. Derek Hale. I go by Wolverine. I know Lydia too. She can vouch for me.” He vainly tries to recollect if he’d pissed her off recently; he doesn’t think so. “You don’t have to unmask or tell me your name. I know that hiding your identity means you’re also protecting the people you love.”
“Yeah. Exactly.” Spider-Man instantly relaxes, and Derek comes to the uncomfortable realization that he hadn’t been relaxed before. “Okay, so you get it. And you know Lydia. Banshee. Whatever. She can vouch for me too… um. If she knew who I was. Yeah.” Spider-Man hangs his head and Derek barely hears the forlorn Way to go dummy that was smooth and is charmed all over again.
Seriously, this is ridiculous. Spider-Man is quickly becoming one of Derek’s favorite people (although truth be told, it’s not a long list to begin with), but he can be anybody. He can be a jerk. He can be a troll. Not that trolls are actually bad people, but, still. Derek didn’t think trolls had asses like the one currently covered up by the spider suit, though. “Right.” Derek nods vigorously as he struggles to stop thinking about a certain spider’s butt. “So… see you ‘round?”
Spider-Man’s grin is evident. “Oh yeah! Sure thing! I hang out in the city all the time! Get it? “Hang” out? Because I have these web-”
“Oh my god,” Derek groans. “Please stop talking.”
“No talking, got it.” Spider-Man mimes a zipper across where his mouth would be under his hooded mask. “But can I- shit, duck!”
To his credit, more specifically to the credit of a multiple lifetimes of combat training, Derek hits the ground as Spider-Man hurtles upward. Derek hears a thwipt as Spider-Man’s webbing (the Daily Bugle’s Op/Ed section had a field day with his webbing, calling them an “environmental hazard” and “unsightly blight on our fair city,” among other things) hits the wall of the building he’d been clinging to before. The shot rings out not even a millisecond later, and Derek wonders how the hell Spider-Man knew that danger was coming.
He doesn’t wonder too long, though, as the danger finally presents itself: the peeing dough-boy, who’d come back (yeah, stupid) with more Friends of Humanity goons.
“Try this army, you mutie freak!” dough-boy shrieks, waving something dark and metallic in the air.
Derek groans inwardly. He hopes Spider-Man is long gone by now because idiots with guns consequently means that someone is going to get hurt. He has his healing power but he doubts that Spider-Man has the same ability. Most likely it’s just as he suspected and there’s a human kid in that suit. A fearless, reckless one who possesses an extraordinary formula that creates a material that acts like spider webbing, but a human kid nonetheless. Fuck.
Before he can act, however, he hears two more thwipts hit the side of the dumpster where he’d thrown the FOH guy, and a deep, rending groan fills the air. The dumpster is moving, sliding across the alley floor. Then the dumpster is flying.
“Catch, asswipes!”
He can’t see the main action because of the huge metallic object in the air but Derek hears another bang! of a gun going off. He crouches, ready to leap over the dumpster, when a series of thwipt thwipt thwipts and howls of anger tells Derek that Spider-Man has taken care of whatever weapons the FOH goons had on them. Then he hears the horrible crashing noise of a dumpster falling from a not-inconsiderable distance and the angry yells morph to screams as the goons turn tail and flee.
Derek turns as Spider-Man lands neatly beside him. “If I ever see your ugly mugs again, I’ll web up the holes you need to pee out of! Or… something like that! Fuck yeah!” the boy shouts after the FOH men, his fists punching the sky in victory. He faces Derek, grinning, practically vibrating in joy and triumph. “Did you see that?! Dude, I’ve never picked up a freaking dumpster with my webs before! I mean I know they’re strong but I’ve never tested the tensile strength like that- ”
“You are something else, Spider-Man,” Derek says, awed. He smiles when the boy hangs his head shyly.
“Aw. You used capitals and the hyphen and everything,” Spider-Man says, smiling back.