Peter left the impromptu meeting with Daredevil feeling light and happy. After DD had asked a few more questions about Danny's wellbeing he'd abruptly asked if Peter would like to have some formal combat training. At first Peter had been apprehensive. As far as Peter could tell, DD's only superpower was enhanced senses, and Peter had super strength. What if something went wrong and he seriously injured the man? He'd voiced these concerns to DD, who had hummed thoughtfully, and then said that he'd figure something out. And then Peter had watched as DD's head tilted to the side, and the man had run off without another word.
It was close to dawn for the third day in a row before Peter crawled in through the window. May had been on night shift tonight, and had been for the past week, so all Peter had to do was get home before her. Once Peter set his feet on the floor he did a sweep of the darkened room. He had learned after the Ned thing, after all. Danny was still asleep, face half buried in the pillows and facing away from the wall. Peter turned away and quickly scrambled into his pajamas. He balled his suit up and shoved it in a box on the top shelf of his closet.
Danny was still asleep after Peter was done, so he headed out to the living room, suppressing a yawn and ignoring the headache fuzzing his brain. He set the kettle to boil and dumped a packet of instant coffee in a mug, and then he pulled the carton of eggs out of the fridge. He turned around to go grab a bowl and nearly jumped to the ceiling. Danny was standing at the edge of the island, eyes watching him intently.
"Dude, what the heck?" Peter said, placing a hand on his chest to calm the frantic beating. How had Danny snuck up on him? Usually he could tell when someone was watching him!
"What's for breakfast?" Danny asked, instead of responding to Peter. There was a tiny uptick at the corners of his mouth.
"Oh, uh. I'm going to make scrambled eggs. How are you so quiet?" Peter grabbed the bowl that he needed, and then a fork to whisk the eggs with. The entire time he could see Danny watching him, but not a peep from his spider-sense to indicate it. Weird. How had he not noticed that his spider-sense didn't react to Danny before now? Danny shrugged.
"Must be because I'm a ghost." Peter laughed a little. Man, Danny's sense of humor was way weird. Danny hummed. "Can you show me where the towels are? I'd like to go take a shower." Peter paused with an egg still held above the bowl.
"Um, sure. Finally got tired of being greasy?" He asked, stepping around the island. He immediately wanted to punch himself when Danny's eye's got dark and he frowned.
"I figured that if I'm going to be here for years I might as well bathe every once in a while." Peter stopped halfway around the island.
"Years?" He asked tentatively. "I'm sure it won't take that long."
"My parents spent their lives building a portal, they'd worked on it since college." Danny said solemnly. "They finally got a working version when I was fourteen."
"Oh." was all Peter could say before he led Danny to the hall closet and handed him a towel. "Enjoy your shower."
"Thanks." the bathroom door clicked shut and Peter went back to the kitchen, where he made his coffee before he continued on the eggs. His mind was still stuck on what Danny had said.
Years. Danny expected to be stuck here for years because of how difficult portals were to build. But Hydra has a working portal. Peter almost dropped the bowl on the floor instead of the counter when the thought occurred to him. Hydra has a working portal. He shifted the eggs in the pan so they wouldn't burn. Had Mr. Stark thought about stealing the portal plans from Hydra? No, Peter knew how stubborn Mr. Stark was, he would want to prove he could build his own from scratch. And who's to say that Mr. Stark couldn't? Maybe Mr. Stark would be better at building a portal than Danny's parents, who were, in Danny's own words, Paranormal scientists.
Peter was pulled from his thoughts when the front door unlocked. "Good morning, Aunt May!" he called. She looked up from taking her shoes off.
"Oh, Peter, good morning. That smells wonderful." Peter smiled.
"How was work?" he asked. Aunt May sighed.
"Oh, exhausting." She sat down at the table as she spoke. "You know, I love this work, but the night shift always brings in the weirdos." Peter laughed, and went to scrape some eggs onto a plate for her. They stuck to the bottom of the pan and he remembered that he hadn't greased it before putting the eggs in the pan.
Danny would admit that he maybe should have taken May up on her offer for a shower his first night here, because the water running off of him was half brown. On the other hand, being able to see the large, raised, pink scar running the entire length of his torso made him feel… restless wasn't quite the right word, but it was the closest he could get. Jittery, maybe?
It was large and ugly and there was no way anyone would miss it if they saw him with his shirt off. The scar left from the GIW had also been raised, but it had been thin and mostly healed by the time he'd gotten home. It probably would have disappeared just like the rest of his injuries from ghost fighting. He would have been able to take his shirt off without anyone asking what had happened. This… there was no way he could think of that would hide it.
Danny absently scratched at it as he tilted his head back so that he didn't have to look at it. The water was cold and hot in turns, and if he fiddled with the knobs on the shower it just made it worse. He tried to focus on how uncomfortable the shower made him, and not what his chest looked like. He'd avoided looking at it during dressing changes for a reason. A sharp pain drew his attention back to his chest where his absent scratching had ripped open a half healed scab. He pulled his hand away from his chest and instead looked for soap or shampoo to wash his hair with. He grabbed the bottle of 2-in-1.
He showered as quickly as he could after he'd scratched his chest open, wanting to cover it again as soon as possible. He was drying off when he heard the front door open, followed by May's voice. He dressed quickly in a T-shirt that rubbed his chest annoyingly and a pair of jeans that were just a touch too loose. The smell of burnt eggs hit him when he walked into the kitchen.
Peter handed him a plate when he saw him, and they both sat down at the table with May, who looked exhausted. Peter looked equally exhausted, but Danny knew this was because he kept running around in his Spider-Man costume instead of sleeping. Danny wanted to ask him about it, but he didn't know if May knew or not, although, he wouldn't be surprised if she did, considering that Peter changed out of his Spider-Man costume in the same room as Danny without actually making sure that he was asleep.
They ate eggs in relative silence, Danny being the only non-tired person in the room, and then May went to bed. Danny stared at Peter as the other teen raised a mug of coffee to his mouth and practically inhaled it. Danny wanted to smack the mug out of Peters hands and tell him to go take a nap. He didn't, but he really wanted to. Instead, he opened his mouth to ask Peter about the Spider-Man thing, and abruptly closed it when he remembered what Jazz had said about wanting him to tell her that he was Phantom for himself. Peter looked at him.
"Were you going to say something?" Peter asked, and Danny scrambled to think of something that he could say.
"Umm, I haven't seen the city yet." and that is not what he wanted to say. Honestly, he'd rather stay here and mope, but too late now. "Would you be willing to, uh, show me around today?" Peter perked up in his seat, though, so Danny guessed it was a good option.
"Sure! I can show you all my favourite places!" Peter sounded super excited. "Oh! I should call Ned, he's my best friend, I'm sure you'll love him. We can show you around together!" Danny decided that Peter was kind of adorable when he was excited. Like a golden retriever.
Logan flashed a smile at the woman across the bar as she accepted the drink. She smiled back, said something to her friends, and then made her way over to where Logan sat.
"Hello, beautiful." Logan greeted her as she sat delicately on the stool next to him. Man was Logan ever glad for summer break. She giggled.
"Hello yourself, handsome," she replied. "What's a strong man like you doing at a place like this when he could be home with his girlfriend?" Logan grimaced.
"Ah, mourning her untimely death." he said bluntly. She reeled back.
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry!"
"Ah, you didn't know. All in the past anyway, eh?" Logan smiled sheepishly at her. He could recover this interaction and still take her to bed, he was sure of it. Her red lips parted to reply, her eyes briefly flickering over his shoulder. Her jaw dropped and her face paled. Logan frowned. "What's-" A heavy arm dropped across his shoulder.
"Hey Logan, long time no see!" An overly cheerful, painfully familiar voice chirped in his ear. The woman screamed as she ran away. "Rude." Logan turned his head.
"Wade." he said through gritted teeth. "Get your arm off my shoulder before I rip it off and shove it up your ass."
"Ooh, kinky." Wade said, dropping his arm as he spoke and holding his hands up non-threateningly. A smile was stretched across the cock-blocking bastards ground beef face. "So what have you been up to lately?" Logan resigned himself to dealing with his sort of not really friend.
"I've been on vacation. Which I was enjoying before you so rudely crashed it." He sniffed the air. Something about Wade's scent was off. His eyes narrowed. "What are you doing in Canada, anyway? I thought you and that Weasel guy were setting up shop in America." Wade laughed awkwardly and tugged the hoodie lower over his face.
"Oh, uh. Haha. so, you know Weapon X, right?" Logan felt his shoulders immediately tense.
"Should we be talking about this in a bar?" He interrupted before Wade could really get into a spiel.
"Uh, maybe not? Anyway, so, Weapon X, right?-"
"Wade, not here." Logan slapped a handful of twenties on the bar top, before he stood up and dragged Wade out of the bar by his sleeve.
"So Weapon X," Wade continued talking the minute the door closed, and Logan resisted the urge to stab him. "They were working with Hydra, right?"
"What?!" Logan paused in his speed walking towards his hotel to stare at Wade.
"I know, right? And I had to practically drag the information out of Wease! Anyway, Weapon X is working with Hydra, right? And obviously I can't let that go on! Shut up, I'm trying to talk!" Logan grabbed Wades arm again and continued to drag him to his hotel while trying to listen to what Wade was saying. If Weapon X was really working with Hydra, then they had a problem. Should he be contacting the professor? "So anyway, I tracked them down through the Hydra branches, and there they are! Dead center of New York City!" Logan clicked his hotel room door shut behind them and gave Wade his full attention.
"So, Hydra's hiding in this shooting range, right? Genius, really. Gunshots wouldn't be odd from one of those, wish I'd thought of it. I'm getting to that! Anyway, shooting range. So I get in, and I take out their guards, and there's this deafening scream! Like… uh. What that guys name? The one that screams real loud?"
"Sean?" Logan supplied.
"Sean? Sean?! Really, that's the guys name? Wow, sucks to be him. Anyway, I recover fairly fast, healing factor for the win! And I clear the facility. Like, everyone who wasn't dead was deaf, or just bleeding from their ears. It was carnage man, carnage! It was great." Logan wrinkled his nose. "So, we find the source of the scream, right?"
"We?" Logan interrupted.
"So get this: It's a kid!" Wade continued, completely ignoring that Logan spoke. "A kid, Logan! Anyway, weapon x is taken out again and Weasels not giving me any jobs so I thought I'd come bug you." Logan's eye twitched.
"Wade." He said.
"Yeah?"
"Was there a point to that story, or were you just wasting my time?" Wade's eyes widened and he shifted from foot to foot. Logan clenched his teeth.
"Uh… there might have been a point?" Logan rubbed his temples and took a deep breath. God, Wade stunk.
"Okay, what is the relevance of the kid?" he asked. It was odd. Wade didn't usually need this much prompting to speak.
"Oh, so DD and Spider-Man, Spider-Kid really, they helped me get the kid out of there, and then Ironman shows up at my safe house, and they're all telling me to get the kid medical attention. Uh, his chest was um… like, bleeding, everywhere. They cut him open! Like some sort of sick science frog!" Logan felt a little sick at the thought. They dissected a kid? He knew Weapon X was low, but not that low. "And the voices are all like 'Yeah, he's going to die because you're an incompetant idiot!' so I agree, and Stark takes us to his lab, and the kid's doing okay, I think. I don't know, really, 'cause Stark comes up to me when the kids asleep and he's all 'You can't stay here, I know you're a murderer!' and like, obviously you can't have a murderer around kids, right? But you guys let me around the students all the time, so I don't know what Starks deal is. Anyway, I left. Told him I'd kill him if he let the kid get hurt again."
That was… a lot to take in. Obviously Wade was somewhat on edge because he was worried about the kid, and hearing what had happened to the poor boy, Logan was worried too. But why was Wade bugging him about it? Usually the man would have disregarded whatever anyone else said and done what he wanted to anyway, and he clearly wanted to be around this kid.
"Hey Wade?" he said.
"Yeah?"
"If you're here, who's making sure that no one hurts the kid?" If Wade was going to seek a reason to follow a kid around, then Logan would provide one. After all, the only other option would be to let Wade crash his vacation, and that just wasn't right.
