Part Two: Planting the Shrubbery
x
The strangest thing about the Winter Soldier is the quiet, but what hits Peter harder is the way everyone's lives seem to twist and center on the man.
If he is a man. Maybe he's some other kind of entity by now. Peter doesn't know and, frankly, he doesn't care. It's official Avengers' business and he's been repeatedly informed, with increasing vehemence, that he should keep his mandibles out of is.
He doesn't have mandibles, but considering that the Black Widow was standing behind Tony and looking too stern for even Peter's most extreme teenage strict librarian fantasies (he's a nerd, it's not like this was in any way out of norm), he's ceased and desisted and left the real superheroes to deal with their convoluted problem that apparently originated during World War Two.
It's a little before Peter's time, anyway.
Or so it seems, until Wade's gone almost twenty-four hours and suddenly there's all sorts of activity in the Tower that very emphatically does not include the Spider-Man.
"That's the thing about manic depression!" Tony expounds, dancing his way across the communal space toward the landing pad. "The way to avoid being depressed is to be manic all the time!"
The quinjet glints in the setting sun, sleek and elegant, ramp lowered as it waits for the rest of its crew.
Natasha glares, gesturing the men to hurry up and get in, and disappears inside to start the pre-flight checks.
Clint, in full Hawkeye get-up, slaps Tony's shoulder and chuckles. "So it's either booze or speed for you?" He mock-worriedly shakes his head. "I bet your liver loves you, man."
"It's made of gold-titanium alloy," interjects Colonel Rhodes, who apparently has been invited to the mission on the basis of… being around.
No, Peter's not bitter. Well, not much. He's still on sick-leave, and the idea of patrolling makes him want to vomit, so it's not as if he could even make any sort of valid argument for his inclusion.
He's just feeling a little abandoned when the three men laugh and stride off into the sunset together.
Wait, no, he doesn't mean it like that… ugh.
"Hydra again?" Peter inquires of JARVIS once the glass door to the pad is closed. He watches the team file in and the ramp pull up.
"Technically," JARVIS confirms. "The Avengers have been attempting to apprehend the Winter Soldier for the past three months. He is proving to be exceptionally adept at evasion."
Peter nods to himself. Yeah, they don't need him around to muck up their operations. Plus, he's not kidding himself – both Tony and Bruce would be furious if he messed up his education. They're really like ersatz parents, as far as science is concerned.
Very neglectful ersatz parents. Honestly, they're hardly ever around.
Maybe Peter just feels this way because his parents died before he started school?
"They got new leads from the group we fought," Peter deduces. Makes sense. He hopes this works – a depressed Steve is getting the whole team down.
Peter hasn't even seen Tony since Wade made pancakes in the Tower's communal kitchen. Well, until now. If those twenty seconds count.
"In a manner of speaking," JARVIS allows. "The shooter who hit you has been tentatively identified as the Winter Soldier. While SHIELD does not seem to have any leads on his location, Deadpool has apparently somehow managed to track him down. The Avengers are currently tracking Deadpool in the hope of preventing him from – I quote – filleting Kai's permafrost nads."
That sounds authentic enough to Peter.
At this point a rational human being would be worried. He isn't – not really. If Wade gets his head blown off, Peter won't have to see it, probably won't even find out about it, unless Wade trips over an unpleasant association while on a completely unrelated mental track.
"Thanks for telling me," Peter says. He appreciates that there is still someone around, and that this person is willing to talk to him.
It makes him feel a little better about being left behind (again) without even a 'see ya'.
x
The next day Peter feels fine to walk – if not actually well enough to swing yet – so he makes the trip to Queens to see Aunt May.
By Subway.
He hasn't quite forgotten what it's like, but the ride (with all the yelling and cussing-riddled prattle, with barely checked aggression that keeps triggering the spider senses, with the stink of a crowd of nervous, sweating people that doesn't entirely cover the fact that someone vomited under the seats last night) still reminds him that he definitely prefers swinging.
The street is the same as ever, with the couple opposite yelling at one another (even though everyone knows by now it's their form of foreplay, and it just makes people uncomfortable to hear) and the dog from two doors down barking at the cat from three doors down, and the kids just getting back from school in the afternoon, chattering interspersed with profanity just to show to their peers how 'cool' they are. The drabness of it all inexplicably cheers Peter up, and although he's not exactly hundred percent fit, he manages a sort of a spring to his step as he walks past the flower beds. He unlocks the door and lets himself in.
Aunt May comes home about an hour and half later, and by that time the take-out Peter ordered has been delivered, plated, and got darn near cold. Luckily, Aunt May has a brand new microwave oven to re-heat it in.
He smiles, thinking of Wade. Obviously, he's transparent as a pane of glass, because Aunt May pauses in sipping her sherry, put her glass aside and her hands on her hips.
"I do hope that Wade knows I am not mad at him?"
Peter shakes his head. "He knows." Or at least, he darn well better should. But even if he doesn't, he's not a coward, and he wouldn't skip out on visiting Aunt May just because he was afraid of getting yelled at.
"He's gone," Peter says, and promptly curses himself from being about as intelligible as the average flat-Earther's Facebook status. "I mean, he's gone out of country, not gone gone. We're okay, I promise, Aunt May. He just – he knows who hurt me. And he doesn't let that sort of thing go."
"Oh." His Aunt reaches for her glass of sherry and, finding it almost empty, refills it. She stares at the sweet poison for a while and then she just says: "Okay."
"Okay?" Peter repeats, slightly discombobulated. That isn't exactly the reaction he has expected. Frankly, he hasn't intended to say so much about Wade's current occupation, but he's stumbled over his own words and, anyway, he knows that every attempt to lie to Aunt May is doomed from the start.
"Yes, Peter," she assures him. "Wade loves you. And being who he is, of course he…" she trails off.
Peter has no idea what she's thinking. She tries so hard to not be judgmental – the acceptance has been doing wonders for Wade – but it is obvious that sometimes she has to try very, very hard.
Aunt May dislikes Spider-Man. She has not been reticent about it until she found out that Peter was Spider-Man, and since then she remains neutral on the subject with the professionalism of a Vulcan. She has strong feelings about vigilantism – and probably a tangle of unresolved issues about murder, even though she has not breathed a word about the topic since Uncle Ben's funeral – and yet she keeps treating Wade with genuine affability.
Maybe it's a family thing. Maybe they get a sort of amnesty in her eyes simply for being loved by her.
Peter hasn't really ever considered what it might be costing her.
He comes back to the present when Aunt May stands and puts her hand on top of Peter's shoulder. "I don't know what I would do if you lost you, Peter," she says.
Peter can't breathe. He looks up, meeting her gaze.
"So if what Wade is doing… if it helps keep you here… keep you al-live…" She pulls her hand away from Peter's collar, presses it to her mouth for a moment – not like a kiss, but to hide the downturn of her lips, as if the horror wasn't clearly visible in her eyes.
She practically runs out of the room.
Peter waits half an hour. When she doesn't come back, he slinks off back to the Stark Tower.
x
School does not stop for any amount of personal crisis, so Peter goes to his lessons and to his labs, turns in assignments done on far too little sleep, and tries to convince himself that burying himself in schoolwork deep enough will keep him from feeling like the lowest heel that has ever disappointed a family member.
He hides behind his computer and his headphones.
The penthouse is unusually quiet.
Then Avengers come back – disappointed, because Wade gave them the slip – and the penthouse is still quiet. Steve seems at least as depressed as Peter, and ten times as listless, seeing as he has no studying to do to keep himself from getting chucked out of Uni. He goes through phases of apathy and pointless frantic motion.
Tony hides in his workshop, venturing outside only when Bruce makes him. In fact, Tony is coming in right now; Bruce follows a step behind him, literally prodding him with something that looks uncannily like a sonic screwdriver.
"I knew this would lure you out of your lair," Clint mutters, putting a tray with a mountainous pile of waffles onto the coffee table.
Natasha follows him, balancing six different dishes on her arms like it's a challenge. She delivers them all unharmed, of course. There's fruit and whipped cream and sugar and syrup-
"I miss Wade," Peter muses.
It doesn't occur to him that he has spoken out loud until Tony shudders and grumbles: "Yeah, that's the part most of us get stuck on."
Peter rolls his eyes, although the effect is lost due to the mirror lenses. Why would they try to understand if they don't have to? They have their legends and their billions of dollars and their fancy intelligence agency at their backs. They have the team, and it looks like they can rely on one another, which, great for them.
Peter knows he's lucky that Tony invited him here where he would be relatively safe, gave him the room and board (and even feeds him without giving it a thought) for free, but none of this makes Peter belong.
He knows where he belongs, and if his romantic relationship looks like an avalanche of suspect humor and Mexican food to the outsiders… he's not going to talk about the pancakes made from scratch or the home-sewn plushy. It's none of the Avengers' business.
"I have a tendency to take myself too seriously," Peter offers instead, dry and just a little mocking (Clint snorts, because he actually does have a sense of humor). "And Wade's this… this avatar of insouciance."
"Of insanity, maybe. On account of him being more cuckoo than a Grandfather clock. Loco like O'Neill by the end of Window of Opportunity. Cracked as the eggs Haldir put into these waffles. Insane!" Tony dramatically finishes, gesticulating with his fork vehemently enough to assault Bruce with what should have been a mouthful of waffle, cream and blueberries.
This doesn't quite start a foodfight, since the victim isn't Clint (or a real fight, since it's not Natasha either).
Bruce stares at Tony as if he's seeing a really, really black pot getting onto a kettle's case.
Well, Tony still does occasionally have JARVIS play It's Not Easy Being Green, because he has yet to tire of the joke. Bruce doesn't even get exasperated anymore – which suggests that Tony's reached an advanced level of insanity.
Peter shrugs, nabbing a couple of waffles, a scoop of whipped cream and a handful of strawberries. "That's not exactly news. Everyone's noticed by now. But how does that matter?"
"How- how does- no, kid. Just no."
"He has a point, Tony," Bruce muses. "How has sanity ever helped anything?"
"Deadpool is whacked," the jittery billionaire philanthropist insists, casting a nervous look at Steve, who is pretending he's somewhere else. "You can't tell me you believe he's mentally stable enough not to happily murder someone in their sleep-"
"It's easier in their sleep than when they're awake," points out the Black Widow.
This takes the wind from Tony's sails. He gapes at the woman for a while, ignoring Clint's snickers. Then he turns to Peter. "At your age, I was getting drunk – sometimes high – and passing out in strange places. Fucking a lot of people I didn't know the first thing about. Designing weapons and selling them to – whoever had the money, I guess."
Peter shakes his head. "I didn't think you were judging me." He honestly hasn't. He is fairly sure that Tony has odd, uncomfortable parental-ish feelings about him, and it's just awkward all around.
"Okay," says Tony. "That's good. 'cause I'm not. I want to, this is really hard, but I'm trying here."
Steve finally admits that he's present, and sighs. "Tony, could you for a minute stop making this be about you?"
Tony rounds at him, spreads his arms wide to windmill them to a greater effect (the other Avengers keep watching the fork, just to make sure nobody loses an eye), and demands: "What were you doing at eighteen, Cap?"
"Twenty," Peter corrects him.
"Really?" Tony asks, surprised. Then he returns to the point. "At his age, what were you doing – aside from being wholesome and patriotic?"
"How does it matter?" demands Bruce from his strategic position behind the sofa. He can duck and cover at the slightest hint of danger, e. g. Tony's not at all coordinated agitated gesticulation. "Are we seriously going to compare ourselves to one another? To what end? If you want to give Pe- Spider-Man advice, do it. But he's not obligated to listen to it, much less heed it. He's his own person – and I believe he has proven more than sufficiently that he can make his own decisions."
"Hear, hear," crows Clint.
"I was just saying," grumbles Tony. He flops down onto the couch, crosses his arms in front of his chest and pouts. "But, fine, don't listen to me. What do I know about batshit whackos seducing you and then stabbing you in the back? Nothing, surely. When she fleeces you for every cent you own, don't come crying to me."
"Hey, I'm in the black this month," Peter says with faux-surprise and faux-amazement. "I've got… wow, that's almost twenty-four dollars!" He knows that Wade puts money into his wallet – and admires it for the level of skill involved, because in between Peter's instincts and speed, pick-pocketing him should be as good as impossible. Nevertheless, after the two occasions when Peter walked out of the building, and thus won their argument in the single most passive-aggressive way available, Wade has learnt not to reverse-steal more than fifty bucks at a time.
Peter figures a fifty isn't worth the argument.
Wade is crafty, so the individual fifties stack up, but they've got this down to an art now, and Peter figures that there's no point to messing with a system that sort-of works.
He likes not going hungry. As a motivator, that's the best one he's ever encountered (bar sheer survival). He's not a sugar baby. No, really, he's not. He just knows that Wade has the money, and doesn't have anything better to spend it on, and that makes it mostly okay – Peter still never expects to be financially supported, and that's what matters.
Just like how all the Avengers accept the Iron Man's hospitality, because he can afford it and offers it freely.
Peter suddenly becomes aware that Tony is staring at him. He looks up, raising his eyebrows in a mute question that remains mute metaphorically as well because – you guessed it – the mask. It really does get in the way of social interaction.
"I'm gonna have a drink," Tony announces. "You… uh… have Jarvis order you some food or something. Clothes, maybe. Do you need help with your rent? Or you can just move in indefini-"
"I'm fine," Peter cuts him off. "Thank you. But, really, I'm okay."
And he is. Even if Wade is not here, slipping fifty after fifty into his wallet, Peter will make do. He's managed before Wade crashed into his life, and he's not nearly so dependent that he can't take care of himself.
x
The alarm rings.
It's not the Avengers Assemble! Alarm, so it takes Peter a moment to identify what is going on, and once again JARVIS is invaluable.
"A suspect delivery to the reception in the lobby, sir," says the A.I. as Peter agonizes over his sartorial options. "Personnel evacuation has been initiated. Forty percent completeness at the moment."
Peter pulls on the Spider-Man suit. That seems like the safest bet.
Also, the second safest bet would be that the elevators are both busy, so he swings down to street level and gets in through the public entrance.
"Seventy-eight point five percent completeness," JARVIS reports.
The Avengers are mostly on the scene, but Peter isn't paying them any attention. The delivery is spread over the reception counter. Five bulky packages, at a glance shapeless, all wrapped in the same manner, in the same paper, tied with the same kind of hemp rope. One is half-open.
They trigger the spider senses, but they're not bombs. They're not chemical weapons, either.
An argument could be made for biological contaminant, but somewhere in between his sense of smell, his intuition and his capability of putting two and two together…
Peter tries to pretend to himself that he doesn't know what he's looking at, but while his 'socially acceptable' self struggles with the idea and tries to figure out what would be the appropriate outwards reaction in his position, the fairly intelligent consciousness underneath already knows.
He folds in half and vomits his guts out, just barely in time to pull his mask up. He can't.
He just-
No.
Just… just no.
There are hands on his shoulders. Someone's talking to him. They can just as well spare the effort. Peter's not in the state to listen, much less respond.
He straightens up. His body attempts to dry-heave, several times, but he breathes through the spasms and holds himself upright by a grip on the counter. Distantly, he's aware of shouting and the security shepherding people away. There aren't many – it's late in the evening.
Steve's staring at the delivery note as if it was announcing the impending end of the world. He somehow manages to ignore the sawed-off leg that keeps bleeding, still, after however long it took to get it here from wherever it was dismembered – out of country, Peter remembers – and that means it's still regenerating.
Dying and reanimating and trying to reintegrate with the rest of Wade, but failing.
With a fairly good idea of what he'll see, Peter reaches out and opens the second parcel. His hands are shaking. His vision is all blurry. He blinks away the tears, but there's another wave of them already, and-
"Deed wibers," he mutters, and drags his spandex sleeve across his face.
The Black Widow reaches around him and cuts the rope inches from where a stubborn knot refuses to yield to Peter's fingers. She leaves the knife on the counter, in case it is needed again, and steps away, turning her attention to Steve, who has gone ashen and looks about as shaky as Peter feels.
"If it really is Yasha," says the Widow to Steve, "he's asking for help. This is bad-"
Ya think?! Peter transmits in her direction, ripping away the wrapping and the plastic underneath to uncover the entirety of Wade's arm with a floppy chunk of the chest. Stripes of flesh and rubber-ducky-yellow fat hang off of it. A mobile piece of collarbone sticks out grotesquely.
"-Yasha never asks for help," she finishes. "I thought his programming wouldn't allow it at all."
"Programming?!" bellows Steve. "What? What – this is not one of Tony's robots! I am talking about a human being, Natasha!"
There's a crash and a roar. Peter's spider senses go insane. Another crash, and the wall gives. Bruce is through before he's even fully green. He disappears.
Tony takes off after him.
Natasha grips both Steve's wrists and stares up into his face, jaw squared, eyes shining. "You think that just because you've seen a couple of Hydra warehouses from the inside, you have the first clue about how evil humans can be to one another?" Her chest heaves, exactly once, and then she packs all of that cataclysmic emotion under her icy exterior.
When she speaks again, Peter's not watching anymore.
"What they did to me undid me completely, but it pales next to what they did to him. Whatever he is now – and make no mistake, Steve, it's what, not who – is all their programming."
Peter's unpacking the other arm, because he's a coward. The extremity twitches. The hand spastically fists, and a moment later attempts to grip Peter.
Peter evades.
Clint's suddenly there, holding the limb down. He twists, grabs, pulls, and then he's holding both arms down, together.
Peter's body tries to upchuck again. The reflex is nearly permanently activated, though, and as he grows weaker through the exertion and as his shaking becomes more pronounced, the only effect left is that it's hard to breathe.
"But…" Steve sounds choked. "…you said he – it – it couldn't ask for help. So, if… there must be someone left, Natasha-"
"You're deluding yourself. His strategies are planned by his handlers, and obviously we are dealing with one that is at the same time very clever, very creative, and very stupid."
"Stupid?"
Peter cuts through the ropes tying up the second leg. No, not the. Wade's leg. Wade's left leg, with the sinews hanging out through the ragged remains of the red and black suit. It's been broken.
And Peter is most definitely a coward, but he can't face the torso. He's leaving it up for last, and the parcel is so bulky and shapeless he's crud-scared Wade's head won't be there.
He wipes his eyes and can't breathe. Sod it, he thinks, and wipes his nose.
He hasn't wiped off snot into clothing since he was five and the crying jags – after Uncle Ben haltingly explained that Mommy and Daddy won't ever come back – had tapered off. There's tears and snivel and vomit all mixed together. Peter's the most disgusting thing he's ever encountered – and he's piecing together his quartered boyfriend whose dismembered corpse is oozing all over everything, so that's saying something.
"Stupid," Natasha explains, "because they didn't realize that you will never let this go. You will hunt them down until there is no one left to keep you from him."
Peter's hand momentarily tightens around Wade's twitching knee.
Never let go.
Okay. He's not making any promises, but he's stronger than this. He's stronger than someone taking a chainsaw to his lover and sending him hacked up, bleeding pieces that vainly keep trying to regenerate.
(No, he's not stronger. But he'll try. What the heck else is left?)
"Avengers, Director Hill orders you to stand down," JARVIS says from above the chaos, both literally and figuratively. "A containment and clean-up unit has been dispatched. ETA is eleven minutes."
"Oh," replies Steve. Then, more vehemently: "Oh."
Natasha takes a step back, releasing her grip. "Steve, don't do anything you'd re-"
"Very well," Steve replies with the sort of fake nonchalance no one with two brain-cells to rub together ever falls for. "Let's go."
He turns and walks away.
Peter incredulously watches his back, and thinks his own oh.
So, team. The Avengers. Seems like, if you're not part of the core group, your membership is situational. He knew, sure, but he thought it's been better lately – Wade made it better – apparently, that was just an illusion.
Peter throws himself forward, slashing the rope with Natasha's knife while the blade's owner chases after Captain My-Interests-First, snapping out something about the delivery note and withholding vital evidence.
More power to him, Peter thinks acidly.
"C'mon," Clint cajoles him. "You can leave off. SHIELD'll put him back together for you-"
Peter shakes his head. Wade is his. His to mourn, his to suffer with, his to mother-hugging puzzle back together when he arrives through the post jigsawed like a horror-cliché threat, except that it's maybe a plea for help instead.
How? What is the logic behind that one? Peter doesn't see it, and he's used to Deadpool's logic.
His hands automatically slow down as he finds the corner of the wrapping paper. Will Wade be conscious?
Please, don't let him be conscious.
Please.
He'd pray, except he doesn't believe enough for it to work even as a placebo.
"Hey, kid. Please. Please – don't do this to yourself-"
Peter spins and webs Clint to the wall.
He has to know.
"Eight minutes, forty seconds," JARVIS warns him.
Peter blinks, wipes his eyes, wipes his nose, and gets to work.
Wade regains consciousness as soon as Peter takes off the garrote. He lets out a high, wheezing sound; then he coughs himself to death. He wakes up again after Peter's held his right arm to the caved-in destruction left of his shoulder. The flesh bubbles and spits out tiny farts; bones and sinews shift under it.
It slowly starts resembling a shoulder again-
The hand grips Peter's throat and squeezes, hard.
Peter chokes. He can't talk – can't tell Wade 'it's me, I'm trying to help, please let go'.
He's not going to let Wade kill him, though.
He grabs and twists – unintentionally half-pulling the not fully grown in arm from the 'socket' – and lets go when Wade screams.
He mumbles apologies, hoarsely and incomprehensibly, and he already knows that Wade isn't hearing him. Wade isn't seeing him, either. His head is there – thank all that may conceivably be holy! – but there's a blindfold tied over his eyes.
"Urwh-uangh! Urw-ungeargh!" Wade screeches.
Peter webs him down. He hates doing it, but he can't not, can't not and have him back, can't not and have him not taken away by SHIELD and done who knows what to. So, he can't.
He's shaky and on the verge of dropping down from exhaustion and pain and he thinks he'll do what Churchill said and keep going until there's a light at the end of this tunnel. Not that he'll care if it's a speeding train at that point. Just…
…anything.
Just anything.
He places the limbs where they belong and watches the mutated, cancerous flesh reach out with multitudes of tiny tentacle-y creepers and connect and grow together and try and reestablish the connections that used to be there.
It's perfectly grotesque and perfectly demented and Peter is perfectly aware that loving someone means basically 'up until you I used to have a self-preservation instinct'. It's not entirely true in his case, but his own break from rationality is a bit of a separate issue.
"I love you," he whispers. His voice doesn't sound like his voice, what with the recent strangling. His healing factor's not quite that fast. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I- Wade…"
He chokes on a new wave of tears.
"One minute, Spider-Man!" JARVIS warns him emphatically.
There's no time for hesitation.
Peter mummifies Wade using what's left of his webbing fluid, and with unprecedented difficulties throws him over his shoulder. He's supposed to be too strong to even feel the weight of a grown man. He's always been.
"I'm sorry, Clint," he mutters.
Clint doesn't say anything, and if he reacts, Peter can't quite focus his eyes enough to tell. There's blood everywhere around. Wade's blood. On the floor. Caution: Wet Floor. Ha ha. Wade's trying to struggle against the mummification, and it's not helping. At all.
Peter just feels sick and tired.
His trainers slip in the blood. He goes to his knees. Pain stabs up from his patellae, but he grits his teeth and stands up again.
He drags himself to the elevator and stares at the buttons.
The door closes and the elevator moves by itself. A security camera overhead changes its angle ever-so-slightly.
"You are welcome, Mr Parker," JARVIS says. "As long as neither you nor Mr Wilson make me regret it."
Peter would happily make the promise. But…
But Wade.
x
"Tank you," says Wade, coming out of the gurgling lights-on-but-nobody-home phase.
Peter stares out of the window. It's night outside.
No. He frowns. Glances at his watch. He's not wearing it. He glances at Wade's watch, because Hello Kitty made it through failed assassination and dismemberment and post and the subsequent crud-show.
It's half past eleven in the morning. Almost noon.
But Stark Tower and JARVIS have the technology and wherewithal to adjust the A/C, engage reflecting panels, and apparently project the vista of nightly New York, all in the effort to calm Peter down enough for him to hopefully sleep.
He hasn't. He's too scared to ever fall asleep again.
"I am Thor," Wade continues along the vein he had opened. Not literally. No more vein-opening.
Peter wonders if it's possible to throw up long after there's nothing inside you. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
"Yeah, that's my biceps."
"I see your Kung Fury and raise you the Holy Grail," Peter whispers despite his still painful bruise necklace. "Twas just a flesh wound, right?"
He thinks they talked about it before. Laughed about it. How if that happened to Wade, it really would just be a flesh wound. Peter's known his sense of humor sucked since he was nine and nobody at his school (including the teachers) got his then-favorite physics joke, but he's never had a clue of the true depths of its suckery. How could this ever have seemed funny?
"You gotta laugh, Debbie Downer," Wade tells him, only somewhat struggling to sit up. "It's the first rule of the Cool Club. You gotta laugh."
Peter feels tears trickling down the back of his throat, down his cheeks, and despite serious effort fails to muster the energy to swallow them away, wipe them off. He sits on the floor next to the bed, curled up as small as he can get, and stares at the night cityscape that's not actually there.
He maybe needs help.
Except, he's probably beyond help now.
"Ňy?" suggests Wade.
Peter slowly, haltingly shakes his head.
His lips are cracking dry; his throat is parched. He's not sure he could speak again if he tried. He wants to try anyway. He can't seem to force himself to.
He'll never forget a second of those twenty minutes. Just twenty minutes. Everything feels like ashes. It's not gone, but it might as well not be there. Another tear breaks away and slides down his face; this time only from the right eye.
"Would it be easier if I died forever?" asks Wade.
"No!"
Oh. Apparently Peter can talk. And move.
He has twisted at the waist to watch Wade get up from the bed and stagger in his direction, eyes on the prize, like there's nothing more important in the world than getting to Peter.
Peter gets it. For a while today – no, yesterday – there was nothing more important in the world than putting Wade back together. And doing it himself. He doesn't understand why. He feels a lot more rational now, and remembers all the reasonable arguments he could have given if anyone but Clint had even noticed his existence amidst all the uproar and upset. Those arguments would have been valid.
And only incidental.
"No dying," Wade promises easily. "Cross my heart, hope to die. Fuck. Not die. You know what I mean. I'm sorry, Aspirin, today sucked."
Aspirin? Peter wonders.
"It's what I really, really want," Wade explains. "Aspirin and you."
Peter lets gravity take him and more or less falls over to his side. The carpet's soft enough that he doesn't think he'll have any additional bruises. He'd like to fall asleep now. He's too tired to manage it, but he'd like it.
"Oi, Señor en paredes, do we have drugs here?"
"In the bathroom, Mr Wilson," replies JARVIS.
If there are further instructions Peter doesn't hear them. He obediently takes whatever Wade brings him, with the full awareness that there's about a sixty percent chance it would kill a human adult. It won't kill Peter if it came from a bathroom cabinet.
Still, while he knows he would regret dying in hindsight, at this very moment he doesn't give a single darn.
x
"I done fucked up, I know," Wade chatters, playing a solitaire variation of ping-pong against the wall. "I went in like he's a bad guy, but he's not a bad guy, Spidey; he's not a guy at all so that sucks because he's got no weakness. Dough, rep, pride, secrets, family… I've used it all to get at the mark. You find their soft spot, you're in, baby boy."
So far the damages amount to a painting that Peter didn't really like (selected by an interior designer, apparently), a vase even Aunt May would have put on the very corner of the mantelpiece in the hope that it would get 'accidentally' broken, and some sort of rural ceramic plate with flower ornaments. Either Tony employs blind designers, or he's trolling his guests.
Peter knows which one he considers more likely.
Thwack-tock, goes the ping-pong ball. Thwack-tock. Thwack-tock.
Peter sits, unmoving; his eyes track the little white ball of their own volition.
"This one time I was going after a guy. He was a guy – I think so, at least – and he was bad, in that way good people get when they get better and better and better and then come back full circle from the other side. Old Luce. Or Yagami Light. Or Michael Jackson!"
Thwack, goes the ball. Pop goes the ball, hitting the cracked Plexiglas.
Pop does not go the weasel – the Weasel is Wade's friend. For a value of friendship. But it's not like Peter can talk.
Thwack. Tock.
"So this guy, he wasn't like inviting kids to Neverland bad, he was like let's make sure everyone's the same race and people stop killing each other over being racist pricks by turning everyone blue bad. Could pay pretty penny, too. Even offered perks – not Sally-Anne, the other kind of perks. I rocked blue, Petey. Blue is totes my color. I still unalived him, 'cause non-con genetic manipulation is nasty."
Wade has just enough money that he doesn't care. He's well off enough financially that he's unlikely to ever feel any strain, but not so rich that amassing money would become his chief objective in life. The things that scare him are many, but he reacts to fear with violence. If he has secrets, he doesn't remember them, and probably would appreciate being reminded.
The only way of blackmailing Wade that Peter can imagine (and he can only imagine it because there's something very wrong with his brain) is threatening children…
"It's the circle of life, Baby-cakes, and it moves us all, except not me – and not Wolvie – so in the end it just moves you all. Moves you away. From me."
…and maybe Peter.
Oh. Peter is suddenly Deadpool's greatest and most visible weakness.
"'s what I thought waiting in the mail. Bastard didn't even spring for one of those boxes with the 'this way up' sticker that always gets co-medically delivered upside down. So there I was, beside myself, and all the while I kept thinking I wanna see you again, and ask you to marry me for realz this time, only you weren't going to be there when I arrived in Hell and I sure as Hell – heh, Hell – ain't gonna make a trip upstairs, which is where you'll be lounging all naked except for a loincloth made of a baby-blue cloud – not babies, you shouldn't make loincloths of babies, there's something pedophiliac about it ewww – but a cloud, all snug 'round your willy, and a harp – Petey, you gotta get a harp or there's something wrong with the canon. Imagine an arachnid with a trumpet. That's worse than a Chaplin sketch."
Thwack-tock. Thwack-tock.
"So you'll be sitting in Heaven and playing your harp and not thinking hard about me, 'cause they don't allow X-rated thoughts in the Big Shiny Web Beyond, and there'll be me, cooking in a humongous lead pot of Satan's cancer soup – his favorite – thinking 'bout you in your nebulous skivvies all day long, 'cause X-rated thinking's the most popular downstairs."
Wade misses a backhand.
The ball hits the table top, then the side of the cabinet, and from there curves downward to plop almost silently into the carpet.
"I was never gonna see you again, gorgeous." Wade sounds desolate. "I don't mind cooking. Or getting cooked. I don't really mind the skewering part either. I mind never getting to put my eyes on your beautiful face and my hands on you beautiful hiney."
Peter blinks. A wave of I-want-to-smile rises inside him, but doesn't quite break the dam of the terrible grey lethargy. I love you, he thinks. "God help me, I do," he whispers.
Wade is sitting on his haunches in front of Peter. He doesn't know what to do with his hands. He puts them on Peter, then takes them away, then puts them back in other places. "It's like that time with the guy throwing himself 'round the neck of the whipped horse. God is dead, Spidey. You can't rely on that dude for shit."
Peter closes his eyes.
Wade touches him, pulls back, touches him again, scared but trying so mother-hugging hard that it would be the single most unfair thing in the universe to let him think it's not appreciated.
"Unicorn," Peter whispers.
Ten seconds later, he's somehow hugging the ugly plushy, while Wade is hugging him from behind as if Peter was a plushy. Wade blabbers on about existentialism and angels as Norse mythology, and Peter lets himself drift, uninterested in the sound yet feeling for the vibrations of the chest he's leaning against.
x
"I have procured a doctor's note for you," JARVIS says, interrupting Peter's silent but furious bargaining with himself.
On one hand, he knows he has to eat. On the other hand, he viscerally doesn't want to eat. Every bite of cold pizza is a concession won and lost at the same time.
He eats slowly, methodically, with tiny bites and thorough chewing and glad that this particular slice of cold pizza mostly tastes like nothing at all.
"It is, of course, counterfeit in spirit, but technically genuine," JARVIS continues, "and explains that you have suffered a bout of gastroenteritis. It seemed like the prudent alternative to informing your professors that you were otherwise occupied with 'confidential superhero business'."
So, Peter muses, this is another facet of the bright side to being loosely affiliated with a team. They may be a bunch of self-important drama queens, but they won't let him rack up unexplained absences that could threaten his education.
Sun shines through the windows of the guest apartment Peter's living in, and he's pretty sure it's the real sun shown in real time for a change. Another day has dawned, and Peter's managed to achieve a sort of equilibrium after Wade's finally tired himself into unconsciousness.
"Thank you, Jarvis," Peter says. It's progress.
"My pleasure," the A.I. assures him, and then gives him back the illusion of privacy.
"Mine," Wade mumbles into a pillow, protesting some imagined claim on Peter. His hand blindly gropes for another body he expects to find lying next to him. When he only touches cold blankets, he opens his eyes to squint at the room. "Boo."
The corner of Peter's mouth twitches. He's pretty sure that is a nickname, but it also works as an expression of disappointment or a dorky attempt to scare innocent by-standers.
Except that Peter's hardly innocent, and he's become inured to the sight of his lover's face. It's a face like anatomy blew chunks all over itself after a high school party with too much cheap alcohol, but it's really just a skin condition. Wade's eyes are human eyes, and his mouth sounds – and feels, and tastes – perfectly fine.
Excepting instances when an injury results in Wade drinking his own blood, when Wade's been eating industrial mac'n'cheese (Aunt May makes mac'n'cheese from scratch – Peter can't stand the orange goop) and… well, morning breath.
"Did you kill the Winter Soldier," Peter asks. He's not feeling up to much inflection yet, so it comes out flat. Luckily, he's still a whole lot of emotion short of accusatory.
"No, Petey-pie," Wade rumbles, rolling to his side. He rubs at his eyes, then lets his hand flop down and effects what on a non-scarred face would have amounted to a rueful smile. "He kinda you-know-what me."
"Are you going to." Again, Peter means to make it a question.
Wade understands nonetheless and, anyway, it's not like he ever needs to be invited to talk. "Lost my taste for it. I would, if he actually was shooting at you – that's right, no quarter for Spidey-snipers – but he wasn't, and he sucks. And not in a positive-"
"-life-affirming way," Peter finishes. He sounds bland to himself, and fails to smile to acknowledge the reference, but he tries. He is still locked in his own riff on the 'maximum effort' mode, and right now all that effort is being channeled into not falling apart entirely.
What would Wade even do with him if Peter turned into complete vegetable?
"Cheeseburger," he answers himself.
"Very life-affirming. I prefer tacos-"
"-and chimichangas-"
"-but cheeseburger is the original superhero food. Or, no, 'cause the original superhero is Captain America, so the original superhero food is probably Campbell's canned soup, but it's really the marketing that makes history, and let's face it, Tony Stark put the cheeseburger in the superhero."
"Many cheeseburgers in many superheroes," Peter agrees and, whoops, he's getting off topic of his off-topic. The original off-topic was that Wade keeps comparing himself to ground beef, so if Peter is vegetable and together they're cheesy, then all they need is a bun.
In the oven.
Oh, wow. Peter can feel himself descending into madness step by step, but so long as he isn't walking the path alone, it's not an entirely unhappy direction.