Chapter Text
To care was to be unconditional, to give up every material belonging, every sense of self to come home in one piece - to stay alive. It was a natural empathy to care. To expect that he would stumble back home despite every bone in his body broken apart in what felt like a cauterizing wound, his skin knitting back together in an inhuman depth that he urged despite the gnawing hunger in his stomach pleading that he was not a god; he was superhuman, he could not challenge his injuries like they never happened.
But he would grit his teeth, crawl back through his window and stumble back in the deep end of the night that he knew Aunt May would return home by; her long, nightly shifts in the hospital keeping her out at night. She would insist he take the time to eat without her, and he would insist that he would wait for her. That is how it has always been, and for Peter, maybe that's enough. Or maybe the turbulent uncertainty in his line of work has driven him to seek this out as the only form of security he's able to give her.
Peter knows he's down on his luck. He had problems over problems that seemed to stack up regardless of how much he tried to mend it. He couldn't fully mend his own relationships, couldn't hold the sense of responsibility that Ben always tried to instill in him, at least not enough to save him when it mattered. He lived with the weight of lives strapped to his shoulder, tracking mud and blood through a willing meadow that hoped he could accept that he wasn't able to fix all of it. It was more comfortable, to heave and run away until the small moments come where grief catches up to him and shocks him in the middle of the night, in the middle of the worst times.
Having to drag his feet through an alleyway, trekking his injuries through the taste of garbage and sewage with the rain pouring. Biting through his teeth, tasting the air and hearing what he could barely remember of Ben's voice in his head, assessing what he had come to be, imagining the shake of his head and falling to his knees in remorse that he still wasn't enough.
Still, he crawls back through his window on the worst of days. Feels his weight heavy against the windowsill, back creaking as he stumbles inside. He crawls like he can't stand the weight of his knees, falling onto his back to feel that impact hitting his lungs just to remind him where he was. The traditional ways to ground himself hardly worked, not like this. Not when it all came crashing down and his head was too wide to push it out of his head. It dragged him through a whirlwind that returned back to the same blame. He was deficient - not enough to actually ever make a difference. He couldn't encapsulate it, couldn't explain exactly where he'd gone wrong or where he wasn't enough but it was a simple repetition in his head as he stripped himself bare of the suit.
Peter wasn't enough. Not when it mattered. Not when he needed to matter. He wasn't enough as a puny teenager for everyone else to see him as a person. And he wasn’t enough even at the hand of someone's unconditional love.
He wanted to be enough. He wanted to be enough, just enough. Just enough to be alive, as long as he comes home to the only person that continues to love him.
The last piece of his torn gloves find their way onto the basket he'd hidden away under his bed. The cabinet opened slowly, avoiding the creak it would inevitably create if he was more indelicate. His ears picked up on the shuffle down the front door, May’s shoes being stowed away to their small cubby by the door, the tip of her umbrella tapping to shake off the rain.
Peter breathed, willing the shaking, willing the way his body ached and his wounds stitched back together. And he grit his teeth, rifling through his clothes to find the ones that would cover his body the most. He kept himself quiet, keeping an ear out for May in case she would come to his room.
His back continued to ache like an open wound opened again simply with that movement. He cradled his broken arm, his non-dominant hand shaking as he looked through the makeup he'd stored away in his drawer. Stationary clacked against the other, old pictures and trinkets dumped along with everything that he couldn't seem to throw away.
A knock came to the door just as he began to smudge out the peach over his black eye, jolting up in surprise even if he could hear May's quiet steps from a mile away. Her feet came to a careful trudge over the worn, wooden flooring, deliberately careful in the cyclical hope that Peter would follow her instructions for once and actually go to sleep without waiting for her.
Had her steps always sounded so heavy? Or had every day that passed continued to weigh on her, the routine sound creating the illusion that it had always sounded that way. Peter felt a clack in his throat with his whirring thoughts reminding him of a fact he hated to admit. May was getting older, this kind of life they led was tiring - Peter was tiring. Disappearing, worrying her, keeping this constant secret and…
This is getting old.
Peter breathed, curling into himself as he ignored the second round of the knocking. He straightened, pressing the sponge a bit more harshly than he needed to against the bruise, uncapping the concealer that he was quickly running out of.
This is just an off day.
He couldn't be selfish enough to think of anything further. He just had to do better. No use crying over spilled milk, right? Just keep going.
Keep going, Peter .
You can do it, Spider-Man. You can always keep going .
“I'm awake. I'll join you in a second.” Peter grimaced, his voice coming out scratchy. Thumbing at the edge of the mirror on his desk, he bit his lip at the sight of the purple-ish bruise over his neck. Being grasped by the throat never seemed to be as fun as the internet made it out to be. He hoped May would just think he'd woken up.
He could hear his aunt's imperceptible sigh through the door, her fingers grasping at the doorknob for a moment and letting go. “Peter… you didn't have to wait for me.”
“I had some leftover work to finish, it's alright.” Peter’s voice came to a softer tone, doing his best to soothe her.
A pause. “I'll wait.” The steps left in a heavier trudge, mutterings that Peter chose to ignore, swiping some concealer back over to his eye.
The mirror swivelled as he pushed at the stand, staring into his eyes. The dark in his room hardly helped to stop him from distinguishing the emptiness in his pupils. It felt foreign to look at himself, the mask always mussed with his hair, his face looked more gaunt than he could even remember in his teenage years. Baby faced, he could see that in the way he never seemed to grow out of being carded for a beer; in the pitying looks Bethany at work always gave him whenever he was more clumsy than he intended, or when Jonah would yell at him (he always looks so small when that happens, she had said once in gossip, his ears never betraying him from overhearing).
His glasses were haphazardly placed on his desk, next to the worn textbooks that were quickly gaining more dust the more he convinced himself he'd look over them another time. One of the hinges were put together with little more than tape and hope, a surprising durability considering how many times he's thrown them into his backpack to change when he was needed.
His eyes strayed over the tape, looking back to his reflection and feeling so… foreign. His features stayed the same, yet they were marred with the textured remnant of the makeup he painstakingly taught himself as a teenager, his neck marked with violence, and Peter had never felt so old. It wasn't like he was old. He was barely old, despite the grimacing effect that media seems to have on age, he was still a young adult, in the perfect age for opportunity, the poster child of a struggling yet genius student in the path for a PhD.
It was a disconnect. Like he'd lived through decades, been awake for every moment that came with it, felt the drag of age weigh on him, only to come to face the fact that he was only a few years past the age to legally drink. It was in the ache in his bones, in the knitting of the gruesome gash on his rib, in the creaking generation of his bones becoming background noise in his head. Everything inside him was screaming that he was tired, that all of this wasn't worth the pain anymore - this is enough, he's done enough, he wants the constant pain to stop.
A sob crackled through him.
He breathed deeply, stopping himself. This is just an off day. Just one of those days. Aunt May is waiting. He can't - he can't sit still.
He hurried through the motions, clumsily smudging the green makeup over his neck only to throw it back in the drawer, picking up a turtleneck. The fabric irritated his neck, adjusting it as much as he could stand before walking out his room.
Sheepish, he sat himself at their small dining table, keeping his neck down. “How was work?”
The chair creaked, steps slower in head as he blinked through the motions of what was normal for an actual person to hear. He started to cut into his food, peeking up to May's unapproving eyes. Guiltily, he stared back down to his plate, his knee bouncing as he tapped his heel on the floor, his neck itching.
"It was fine." May paused, placing down her utensils. She sighed, "You can't keep doing this, Peter."
Peter blinked. He allowed it to pass through him, hid the way his neck craned lower in a subsequent shame, clicked at his fingernails along the fine wood of the table, pushing the pea on his plate a little further away from him. "I'm... I don't mind it."
"I mind it. Every time I see you, you just get more and more... pallid. You need to rest, you don't have to wait for me every single time ." May sat back, her hands hidden away to her lap as if she was stopping herself from speaking further. "I notice, Peter. I do."
Peter tugged at his collar, adjusting the fabric as he tried to keep his head where he was. He couldn't bear numbing it out when his aunt sounded so genuine. "But I don't mind-"
"Peter." May's voice hardened, slowing to a breathy sigh. "I notice. You can't keep doing this. Get some rest. You don't have to wait for me."
"Your hours are getting later." Peter interrupted, grasping at his pajamas. "I just, I don't want you coming home. Alone ."
"I take the longer hours for you."
He stopped his mouth from opening, swallowing back his saliva as his throat clogged with his throat still mending itself back together. Shame curled in his gut. He knew his aunt wasn't feeble, but that disturbing fear he had as a child when he wouldn't be able to see her for hours on end after the time he thought he thought she'd return still came to haunt him. May was healthy, she was good at her job and she valued being able to work in a job that she valued.
She had never been feeble. Never weak. Not even when she was left a widow, having to bury her own husband with a teenager that could barely understand himself. She had always been a strong woman, and Peter was not going to start acting like all the sacrifices and all the effort she's made into what stability they had now was somehow not enough. But she was getting along in age. She would complain about her feet more often, the slow stand she had to do every time she got up from picking up something from the floor was only one of the few reminders of that fact. His aunt was getting older, and he just seemed to never be catching up in the same way.
Peter hated how young he'd been when they took him in. May deplored leaving a young child without parents and it was by their ultimate kindness that he didn’t end up in the convoluted system. But it was always a thought that came in his head in the middle of the night, staring at the dark ceiling, counting to himself just how much older they were, counting how old he'd be when they'd be a certain age, counting it all down until he'd come to the age where he'd probably lose them - it was haunting. To know that there was a near 40 year old difference between them, that he'd have to age into a time when he'd lose her. Guilt always ate at him, having to see her grow older.
He looked down, fiddling with his thumbs. "I know. You don't have to." He swallowed, taking a moment to admit it to himself. "I wish you didn't have to."
May set down her hands, sighing. "I like what I do. I like being able to help people. I’m not that old yet, Peter. I can still help.“
“I know.” Peter’s tone comes out harsher than he intended it to be, gulping back his voice as he cages into himself, curling his arms around his waist. “I know… I know, and I don’t want to keep that away from you. But I wish you didn’t have to.”
“Peter…”
“I… I still think about it. How we probably could’ve been more stable if… if…”
“Peter. Ben wouldn’t want you thinking that. We’re fine.”
“We’re not, we’re,” Peter stammered, “May, please. Let me help more. I can, I can help more. You don’t have to take on so much for me, you don’t have to treat me like I don’t know about what we’re struggling with. I can help. I can, I can…”
May came to a solemn silence as he stammered out more of his breath, unable to genuinely formulate anything as he came to a sudden burst of tears. He tried to think of anything, to sacrifice more of himself that he already hadn’t, willing to drag through another sliver of what made him whole just to give. May stood, indelicately pushing her chair back as she came to hug him from behind. She carefully brushed through his curls, her arms around him uncomfortably familiar. He tried to shake it off, his heart racing as she only continued to hold him tighter.
“I’m sorry, Peter. You shouldn’t have to feel that way. I’m the adult here, you don’t have to worry about anything, I’m supposed to take care of you. Any extra shift isn’t anything for you to feel obligated about.”
Peter, wiped at his eyes, pushing his glasses up to his brows as a sob trembled through him. “I don’t, May, please… I’m an adult too, I’m old enough and I’m not stupid. I get it, I really do. I just, I don’t… I still feel like it shouldn’t be this way.” he tugged at her arm, feeling her tight grip as he wilted. “I miss Uncle Ben.”
Grief hit. It hit at the worst days. It hit him at the worst of times, at the slightest thought and at the slightest reminder and it made him realize how much he never truly got over anything. Grief is a breeze; a slight current in the wind that turns into a whirlwind that never seems to leave as long as he breathes it in.
“I miss him too.” May said after a moment, holding him close, running her hand through his hair like she would when he was younger. “But I have you now. And I’ll continue missing him while taking care of you. I always will, Peter.”
Grief never leaves.
Grief never leaves even in the worst of times. Hugging his aunt, sobbing into her shoulder like a child even if she was no longer taller than him, even if she no longer had to kneel to come to his level. Grief was being cradled in her hold, like she would disappear along with who he missed. It was a cruel intake of air, the suffocating crackle at his lungs.
He wished death would stop coming to him; taking and taking from him, never taking a piece of his skin but rather his heart. Carving into what was a part of him until he was regressing back to a child unaware of any other way to express his feelings other than to cry.
Dying never felt the same. Which is, a little odd to think about considering that people only really tend to do it once. A real once in a lifetime experience, to meet death and feel that last thread of life leave you. There are different ways to die. Plenty, a myriad of ways (myriad, nice! Heathers reference). Dumb ways, peaceful ways, even DIYs. People are creative like that, and Wade was the happy little accident that just so happened to commit to every single one of those ways. Sure he hasn't gotten to the dying of old age yet, but that's always reserved for a later date, and he's probably done it before in another universe, so it was neither here nor there.
Plenty of ways to die, and they never really felt the same as you'd assume they would the first time. The first time he blew his head out was like taking his first shot of vodka as a kid. Which was when he was five and his father beat him with a bottle of it. A clear difference to the first time he actually took a first shot (it was disgusting, he never liked the forty or nothing crap when he was younger). See? Plenty of ways to experience these once in a lifetime experiences, and Wade was good at it. He mixed it up plenty. Never one to keep himself bored if he couldn't help it. Even if the effect of it hardly ever hit anymore, like a limp dick too deep into erectile dysfunction, he would still down a bottle until he started choking on it, covered in the alcoholic scent, letting his head limp back over the bathtub before his finger would pull the trigger through his head.
It shut him up. It shut everything out. Shot everything out. And that was good enough for when it mattered - it was the better mercy out of dying. Being in one body has always been boring, even to Death. She never quite saw the physical attachment to be... comfortable. Restricting - trapping, she would call it. Maybe that's why she was so apathetic to the deaths around her. It was a greater mercy than being alive could ever provide.
He could agree to that. Being on one of those worser days, his skin scratching and peeling more often than it usually would, the sores feeling more like a burning flame than a physical wound. It was all irritable, his mouth running with random narwhal facts he found on an incredibly credible source (Tumblr and Google, which is good enough for him), getting shot with yet another bullet through his rib as he slashes his katana through the grime and the bone. He cracked his back, dramatically almost falling over in the process as he kept rambling. Rambling to just get rid of that itch in his head, that curdle of blood bubbling underneath his lungs that was quickly being patched through with his generation.
Healing itched. It itched like a bitch, the rapid healing was never as amazing as most people tend to see it to be, not when he felt every sinew of muscle and bone stitching itself back together like a torn blanket being patched together with fabric just similar enough yet still unfamiliar in contrast. His skin never felt like it was his own sometimes - sometimes he wanted to crawl out of it all, drag whatever was left of his heart and slither his way through anything close to an afterlife.
A bleeding heart, Logan would call him sometimes on those odd moments that the asshole would actually stick around after a mission. He would laugh, making a joke about how that was obvious considering how many times he's had his body make him another heart - probably more than the amount of times he's had to regrow his head, since some people started to think that hitting him at a certain point would make sure he was down for good for once. Never worked. But it was a nice sentiment, they thought about him in detail, how sweet.
It felt better when he could just think of it as some kind of party trick. Treat himself as a clown of his own show when limb after limb gets chopped off. Pretty neat, even if Logan always looked like he was near vomit when he'd show off the baby hands. It was better to just think of it as an extension, an addition rather than stewing in the debilitating thought that maybe not a single part of him was his own anymore. But that's lamesies and he's got another goon to goon down.
Ha, get it? Cause - Nevermind. Out of bullets.
Wade cracked his right shoulder, punching through it to force it back into its socket. It was a gnarly trick, if he said so himself, saw it on a cool MMA fight back in the 90's when shit was actually unscripted and before the US outlawed it and called it human cockfighting (he'd show them real cockfighting-). Sure, he still appreciated the scripted stuff, of course. That one move with that little Japanese girl literally twirling in the air and calling it her whirling candy signature attack? Cool. As. Fuck.
"Well, clean-up time, daddy's got a date with a bathtub in about..." he raised his wrist, looking over his broken Adventure Time watch. His eyes narrowed, "Ten minutes. Totally did not just make that up. Ten minutes."
Being able to get back from just about anything was gnarly, but only being able to do that and having to rely on his own shit sometimes was a pain. Quite literally. With his katana coming down to take another kill, he was ready for that little ping in his head with Yellow calling out for a pentakill until he felt his knee give out, giving in to the taste of a bullet between his kneecaps. It hardly stopped him, hearing Yellow drown out whatever bullshit White wanted to spout until he felt that telltale drag of metal over the leather of his mask and -
Fuck.
Fuckity fuck fuck.
Fuck, shit, balls.
Why couldn't they give him Spidey-senses. First they turn his sexy visage into this ugly mug, play Pacman with whatever was left of his life and they couldn't even bother giving him something cool with his DNA. They're too unfair with him. It's so mean. He'll cry about it and wipe his tears with some Benjamins when he catches the asshole that just shot his neck. He stuck his tongue out slightly, pouting at the residue that his thumb left over his clavicle when he spread the blood. He turned his back to catch the fucker and raised his katanas, not as happy with the underhanded trick. He was the only one allowed to be an asshole with cheap tricks, damn it.
Wade's body dropped the moment he turned around, crashing into the cement with a painful grunt. He groaned, feeling his head open. Quite literally open, as his brain stopped working, his fingers twitched uncontrollably, vision blanking as he was pushed to lay down with his face up rather than disgracefully shoved into the cement. Everything buzzed, his healing dragged over his head. It was the worst part of having to regenerate his brain. Like a cheap, free lobotomy. Not being able to actually know which part was growing first and which part was going to be completely fucked over until the next time he gets shot in the head again comes. He couldn't see, but his head was still swimming enough for him to remember his name. His fingers were going stiff, unable to muster thinking of any other movement.
His ears were jumping in between sounds, he could guess that he heard his name, but it wasn't all that clear. He felt the tell-tale sound of a gun being cocked, his head smacked back down onto the cement. And it was all gone. No sound, no thought, no awareness.
Dying is kind.
Better than being strapped down to an experiment table, better than having to live through the bad days (that he had plenty of). Dying is kind in every way that living can never be.
After what felt like forever and no time at all, Wade came back with his skull clicking itself back together. The rain was pattering over the white lens of his mask, something gross squelching with the burn of his skin through the leather. It stuck together like an odd mismatch. His head still felt muddled, the rain somewhat muffled the way his skull was knitting itself back together, his mask suddenly more suffocating than he could remember it being. It itched. Everything itched, he didn't feel like he was in his own body, watching as his fingers flexed above him, reaching for drops of rain that only dribbled down his wrist. He stared down at the indent between his thumb and his forefinger, stretching out the skin-tight leather as if he was trying to prove to himself that this was his own hand.
[you really think you're real?]
{ha. he's just about as real as we are}
"Fuckkkk offffff..." Wade's voice was slow, the same tone he'd make whenever Ellie would make a joke that would go too far. Entirely uninterested and monotone, using the same intonation he would when he'd make an exaggeration. He barely felt his own voice, heard it in a disconnected muffle from his own throat. Did he get shot there too? The skin felt new, not like the first time someone's ever shot him there. Something about him never shutting the fuck up. Which, really, is entirely false. He's no chatterbox. Chatter, chatter, chatter, of course he can stop talking. And yes, he does watch Peppa Pig. All British children sound like Peppa Pig. It's funny.
[just like a smoker insisting they can quit any time]
"I sooo can stop talking."
{chatter, chatter, chatter}
"You never stop talking." Wade repeats in a shitty accented attempt at sounding like a British child, feeling his blood flow return to his head, his skull finally completely stitching itself back together. It didn't stop the itching. He tugged at his mask, throwing it out to the side as he just laid prone on the cement, feeling his lung return to force a gulp of breath into him. Fuck. He didn't even realize he got shot there too. Probably happened while he was out cold.
He lays with his arms spread out, feeling no motivation to get up off his ass, call it a day finished and wallow in his misery in his own apartment. No, all he could do was sigh against the puddle of his own blood mixing with the petrichor of the rain. He could taste the blood in his gums, smacking his lips as he licked over his teeth. It was metallic, tangy in his tongue as it dampened with the rain growing stronger.
{you're pathetic}
"Thanks." he felt it. Tasting his own blood, wet to the bone with the rain and prone to a puddle of his own pathetic little life. The stench of sewage, backdoor trash and the mixed outload of drunk vomit mixing into the trickling petrichor. He hated the pain, he hated coming to from that moment of silence to no one but his own damn head chattering like a buzz of flies. Wade hated dying. It was cool as fuck, sure. To continually surprise people with the fact he could come back from anything - they never could really get it through their thick skulls that he couldn't stay dead.
Well, ironically, maybe he was just as stubborn. He couldn't really accept it at times either, shooting another bullet under his chin to his brain as if for once he'd stay dead. Only Logan, the bastard, could really understand the feeling. The asshole never had any qualms with shoving his knives for hands through his chest, absolutely no care to whether he lived or died. Maybe that's what being with an equally immortal being meant. He barely gave any thought for life and death because to him it was all the same. Logan was older than him by a long shot. Museum levels of ancient. Probably older than America's been a country for. Logan didn't seem to care about any of it anymore. It was just, what it was.
How enviable.
If Wade could just stop...
Stop living?
Stop dying?
He had no idea what he was talking about. His head hurt.
He gets up. He brushes off the blood, cracks his neck, ignores the incessant prattling inside his head, ignores the way images start to appear in the corner of his eyes. He spits onto the sidewalk, his tongue rolling over his canines as he tries to find a part of himself that remains the same. The rain continues, rolling down his neck to his clavicle, wetting his suit.
He hums a song to himself as he walks, rifling through one of his pouches, digging through random receipts that probably date back longer towards '09 that he never bothered to throw away, throwing a naked mint out onto the sidewalk before finding some spare ammo.
Now, Wade never chose favorites when it came to his guns (he definitely did). He was a good, honest man (he isn't) that loved all his guns equality (he has a favorite, his sweet twin Desert Eagles). But shit gets messy sometimes, and his apartment was enough of a mess on its own with the amount of shit he just throws in there after coming back from a job (his favorite collectible were those cute little train stamps you could get in every station in Japan that formed a picture - uber cute).
Needless to say, Wade didn't have the energy or care to wipe down his mattress on the rare occasion he had tried a shotgun. Not fun - mind blowing; but not fun to clean up at all. Worse than a hard sesh with those cute twunk vids he had saved in his Chrome bookmarks. He knew that was a slight security risk, since Google's a scummy company and they probably monitor the amount of time he's wanked it to those videos to direct him towards a profitable addiction. But damn it all, Wade had neither shame nor dignity. Everything's monitored, they can look at his porn history for all he cared.
He didn't want either mess at the moment, though. There wasn't an ounce of energy left when his leg still hurt like a bitch and he was seeing colors in the corner of his eyes that seemed to run around his ankles. Fucking ankle biters.
{boo, you're crazy}
"Happy Halloween." Wade murmured, dragging his ass back to his apartment. He dug around his bedroom cabinet, rolling onto his back and settling himself back on the sheets. He rolled his neck back, enjoyed that slight moment where his aches and pains went away for a moment at the crack and let go of the trigger.
Back to his happy place.