Frostbite

Taco Buddies

It was five o'clock on a chilly winter afternoon, three hours before Sister Margaret's opened, when Peter planted his hands on the table and asked,

"Okay, so hypothetically, if you found out your dead mom wasn't really your mom and your actual mom is out there but no one's seen her in like fourteen years, but you have the chance to meet her would you take it? Hypothetically."

Beer dribbled from Wade's unmasked lips and back into the pint and Weasel took one long look at him before raising his hands over his head and walking over to the other side of the empty bar.

"Aren't you a little young to be having a family crisis that could potentially alter your development into a healthy, functioning adult?"

"Uh." Peter sipped at the Arnold Palmer drink that started to pop up in the mini-fridge in the 'break room', which was nothing more than a desktop set-up, a broken coffee machine, and a couch that looked like it was bought off a retirement home. "Yes?"

"Fuck. Alright, let Mama Wade impart his unbiased nuggets of wisdom—"

Weasel groaned from his spot tweezing bullets out of one of the pool tables. "Your last nugget of 'wisdom' was explaining how burritos were just squishy tacos—"

"You walked away from this conversation, you keep your nose out of my asshole!" Wade shouted. He flashed a grin back at Peter, the scarred skin on the exposed half of his face stretching in a way that looked like it hurt. "Okay, picture it. Sicily, 1922."

"These goddamn Golden Girls references in my goddamn bar—"

"BEA ARTHUR IS A GEM AND ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE HAS AN AGENDA. As I was saying, this is what you do, right?"

"Hypothetically," Peter reminded him.

"Yeah. Sure. Hypothetically. Drink your drink, Super-Boy. Hydration is important." Wade clapped his gloved hands together. "So you tell your actual mom to meet you at a cafe that serves cheesecake and crepes. The cheesecakes are a must, but the crepes? Croissants are a good substitute, but if you can't find any, store bought is fine. Then you talk about your feelings and once you tell her she wasn't there on your sweet sixteenth, she'll be burdened with the knowledge she missed such a milestone in your young, young life that she'll feel so bad that she'll go on a whole monologue on why she left, if she's staying, and fill you with empty promises." He looked at Peter's hands. "Why aren't you writing any of this down? Do you need a pen?"

Peter popped a nacho chip in his mouth from the plate they shared. He's not as good of a cook as Granny, but dang did this fake cheese taste like heaven. "I think I can remember the important parts, but can we swap the sweet sixteenth out for something else? Like, I don't know, my first day of school?"

"Not as big of an impact. Why? Was your sixteenth birthday a tragedy? Did you end up at the hospital? Oh! Oh! Oh! You drank until you blacked out and somehow ended up on the roof of your ex's house in nothing but a gatorade yellow speedo and ended up cuddling the keg stand you stole from that bastard Gavin?!"

"No, it's just—I won't have my sixteenth birthday until August."

And the beer kinda... waterfalled out of Wade's mouth. Again. All over the table and his pants, and Peter dragged the nachos to safety because he worked really hard on those and he wasn't going to waste it by making it into mouth beer nacho soup.

"You hired—" The pint slammed down so hard a spider crack shot up to the lip of the glass and Wade reached for the gun at his waist mid-lunge at Weasel— "A FIFTEEN YEAR OLD TO WORK AT SISTER FUCKING MARGARET'S?!"

He took two gaping strides at the man crouched behind a pool table when Peter jumped on his back and tackled him onto the grimy floor.

"Wait, d-don't kill Mr. Weasel!"