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the day peter tries to leave is a thursday.
thursday’s, as wade obsessively pointed out every week without fail, were the exact colour of the number eight, or smelt the way autumn did. it was the same with monday, which smelt like wet dog, and sunday, which was a cooling winter. peter always said he understood, but he didn’t.
he’d seen the way wade got when someone disagreed with him. it wasn’t his fault, really. most of the disagreements were with himself anyway, arguments lost countered in his mind. peter only heard wade’s side, and if he was lucky, one or two of the voices.
they didn’t have names, at least not to peter’s knowledge. wade hadn’t wanted him to acknowledge them, and he’d gratefully agreed; although it was sometimes hard when he woke up with a pressure on his chest from wade leaning over him, still sleeping, but awake inside his mind enough to try and choke peter out.
and he wasn’t stupid. wade was super human in a way he wasn’t familiar with. he kept him out of the mercenary life, shielding him from the albeit thinning line between deadpool and wade wilson.
and that’s how peter knew he had to go. watching wade come home every night with bullet wounds in his legs, his chest, his throat, his arms, had forced him to the toilet to throw up all the anxiety more times than he could count. he didn’t want to keep sitting at home on a wednesday (which was blue) alone, chewing his fingers raw because he was so afraid of wade coming back incapacitated, wade coming back too injured to heal, wade not coming back at all.
he was too reckless. peter had told him countless times, but he’d never listened. he’d cried and sobbed his heart out until he couldn’t have produced anymore tears, but it didn’t change anything. wade was wade and the person he was wasn’t going to change no matter how much peter begged.
so he packs his bags and takes a last look at their little apartment, trembling in an oversized t-shirt and sweatpants because wade had started locking the doors and he was fucked if he couldn’t remember where he kept the keys. he’d memorised it every night, waiting for the right moment, because his partner was so obsessive and paranoid that he wouldn’t sleep without locking the doors seven times.
he tells himself that it’s not permanent as he passes a picture wade had taken of him on valentines, a polaroid style photo of him in bed, hands covering his face. he’d been naked, but wade had had enough sense to throw the sheets over his waist, doing little to quench the shame burning over peter’s body.
he swallows and falters back in the hallway. the shower’s still running, and peter can hear wade talking to himself under the water. his heart convulses and he half debates running into the bathroom and throwing himself into the shower fully clothed, crying and crying and crying because there’s no way he can leave wade, he’s not sure either of them will survive.
but sometimes he needs to protect himself first. he couldn’t ignore the rising anxiety of a villain following wade home, and the older man knew it in his heart too. things were getting more dangerous; it’d be a lot easier if they lived apart.
wade had trouble living alone, sure, but he’d be okay. peter’d call everyday and explain that he just needed some time and space, that there was nothing to worry about and it wasn’t personal. he’d explain that soon he’d be back and all would be okay.
that would be, if he could find the goddamn key.
he waves his hand under the broken cabinet on the left, breaths quickening as he realises the spare key isn’t under there. wade always puts the spare key there - why is today any different?
he looks in the next best place, the doorway, and then the sofa, and then the cupboards and then the shower’s stopping and he’s stood in the middle of their kitchen about to burst into tears because he really needs to leave.
he throws the small bag he’s stuffed full of clothes, just enough to get him by but not enough that wade thinks he’s never coming back, behind the plant pot in the doorway and paints a calm aura as he approaches the door.
“baby, there’s the cutest little- where you headed?” wade says, and peter winces. damn nicknames.
“just out.” he says, trying to keep his voice steady. “gonna get some snacks.”
“we have plenty.” wade replies, and his tone’s harder. it’s the kind of tone he gets when he’s about to start arguing, and the thought makes peter’s body go stiff.
he reaches a hand to the doorknob, pulling it even though he knows it’s locked. he can feel wade closing in behind him, gentle steps that don’t feel gentle when he can practically feel the breath on his neck.
“wade, i need to go.” he says, dropping his voice now that they’re closer. wade’s lips are on his neck, soft at first but almost angry as he tightens his grip on peter’s waist. he tries to hold in a gasp as wade expertly nips at the skin underneath him, too harsh for it to be loving. “where are the keys?”
“you have everything you want right here.” he murmurs, and okay, they’re not talking about the snacks anymore.
peter flips around, not liking the way wade towers over him, at least four inches taller and a gazillion wider, so intimidating that he’s blocking peter against the front door with his arms and his eyes all in one. he swallows again, trying to dislodge the lump stuck in his throat. it doesn’t work, because it’s at that moment wade’s smile drops from his face and all that’s left is a blank expression that hurts more than anger would.
“you’re trying to leave us.” he says, and it’s not a question.
peter doesn’t know what triggered the shift. wade never referred to him and the voices as us unless they were telling him bad things and he was listening. he’d never used the pronoun around peter, only when on the phone or facing a villain. it makes his skin tingle, itching with the burn to get away.
he breaks the piercing eye contact and throws himself against the door, knowing it will do no good but happy to look at something other than wade’s dark expression. he pounds his fists on the door, screaming even though he knows no one will come to help him.
“why would you want to leave?” wade asks, voice too calm, too gentle. his arms are tight around peter’s chest, squeezing and pulling him backwards and off the floor until the smaller man’s kicking and screaming at the locked door.
“let me go!” he screams, hoping that the neighbours he and wade always hear fucking can hear him now. “i need to go!”
“you don’t need to go anywhere.” wade murmurs, and peter wouldn’t be able to hear it over the screaming had his partners lips not been so tauntingly close to his ear. he’s nipping at it, kissing gently down his jawline like this is just another round of foreplay.
wade’s strong, but peter’s slight, and he manages to slither downwards out of the tight grasp until he’s in a small heap on the floor. he throws himself forward, crawling rapidly along the wooden floor, but wade just laughs, low and harsh, and pulls his ankles in the air to stop him from crawling any further.
“let go!” he screams, kicking and crying, so hysterical that he doesn’t even notice wade tying his ankles together with a piece of rope peter hadn’t noticed earlier.
and then it hits him.
the key, the convenient shower even though wade never took showers at four pm because they felt too much like his old childhood home, the rope, the duffel bag peter had thought he’d hidden two weeks ago, everything.
“you knew!” he cries, scratching at the floor underneath him as wade pulls him towards the bathroom. his heart’s pounding too fast, too erratic for him to splutter our coherent sentences, but wade knows what he means. “you knew you fucking - you knew!”
“of course we knew.” wade says with a laugh that isn’t one peter’s heard before. “you’re not good at hiding things, baby boy.”
peter shivers, too nauseous to speak as wade bends over him and rolls him over so his shoulders are pressed against the floor, holding his wrists above his head with one hand easily.
“you know,” he muses, another piece of rope in his godforsaken hands. “if you weren’t trying to leave me, this would be a great start to a semi decent porno.”
that sounds more like wade, and it just makes it irrevocably more terrifying.
peter starts squirming again, wriggling this way and that until wade’s face twists into something unreadable and he moves his hands from trying to tie peter’s wrists together to wrapping around his throat.
he doesn’t start off slowly. he squeezes, so tight that peter can’t breathe, his hands so large that his entire throat is covered and there’s no way any air is getting in or out of his lungs. his eyes are bugging from where peter’s staring at him, vision going dark as wade leans in closer to him.
“you’re not leaving.” he murmurs, lips moving against his jaw, teeth nipping at the skin between his neck and his ear. “not now. not ever.”
peter just chokes back, not even able to cry. he reaches a hand out to wade’s face, feebly slapping at his cheek, but it just earns him a teasing laugh.
he squeezes one more time so peter wheezes out all the air in his lungs, and gets back to tying his wrists, which is a much easier feat now that peter’s too air starved to fight.
“wade.” peter says, crying softly now. he can feel his partners eyes on him as he trembles, barely fighting as he drags him by his sore ankles to the bathroom. the steam is pouring from the door when he opens it, clouding the mirrors and creating such a fog that peter can hardly see.
the bathtub is full of water, so full it’s spilling out from the sides, soaking the rug underneath it. he pulls peter to his feet, holding him up by his armpits; he’s so calm that it’s terrifying in a way anger never will be.
he pulls peter’s legs from under him, not that he could stand anyway, and gently lowers him into the bath. it would’ve been loving, had the water not be boiling hot and his body hiccuping with sobs.
“wade please.” he cries, voice too hoarse to string coherent sentences. “stop.”
it doesn’t get his attention, but it’s worth a try.
he leaves peter to grab something underneath the cabinet. he really should be watching, but his eyes are too blurred with tears to notice until there’s a bone breaking weight on his wrists.
he blinks away the dizziness from the steam and the tears, eyes focusing on the large block wrapped around his wrists. it rests on the bottom of the bathtub, keeping his wrists trapped there as he pulls until it feels like he’s going to rub the skin off raw.
“please don’t hurt yourself, sweetie. you won’t heal well.”
there’s something hidden behind his words that makes peter cry harder, but wade doesn’t care. he’s sat on top of the toilet next to the bathtub, flipping through a tattered journal.
he’s humming softly, and peter tries to calm his cries enough to hear what he’s trying to piece together as words. he’s reading under his breath, only raising it with a wiggle of his eyebrows at an interesting part.
peter jerks as the heat of the water suddenly sinks in, his arm going numb from the sheer pain of boiling water covering it. wade doesn’t seem too bothered, like he knows it’s hot and he doesn’t even care.
“interesting.” he says and leans over to the sink. he’s so tall that grabbing the towel to the side of the toothbrush holder is easy. shushing peter’s wailing, he wraps it around his head until it’s covering his mouth and his nose and he can’t get it off because he can’t get his goddamn wrists free.
using a small jug they usually use for measuring milk in cupcakes, wade leans into the bathtub, batting away the wet fabric of peter’s oversized shirt, and fills the it to the brim.
“they told me this would keep you here.” he says honestly and pulls at peter’s curly brown hair until his head’s snapped back. he barely has time to take a breath before wade’s pouring the water on the towel, water boarding his boyfriend like it’s second nature to him.
“‘he may contain the urge to run away.’” wade muses, not minding the fact the fact the peter’s spluttering under the water, lungs burning with every second that the wet towel is held over his mouth and nose. “but hold him down with soggy clothes & breeze blocks. good advice, don’t you think?”
peter just wheezes, mind absolutely screaming at him to flight flight flight because there’s no way in hell he’d take wade on in a fight. his visions going spotty, mind spinning as the water keeps coming, soaking his hair and the towel and his face until he feels like he’s drowning in open water even though he’s not technically submerged.
“is that it, baby boy?” wade says and at the nickname peter chokes harder on the water, thrashing against the anchor holding his wrists down and against his boyfriends unrelenting fingers tangled in his hair. “have you been wanting to go away for a while?”
yes! peter wants to scream but he can’t even breathe so he stares up at wade with his best puppy dog eyes, all glassy and hazel and finds himself glad there’s still enough left of the man he loves that he lets him up without refilling the jug.
immediately he goes to unwrap the towel, but he just ends up rubbing his wrists on rope and screams through the bubbling water because he still can’t breathe and he’s still gonna pass out and if he passes out then it’s over because wade can do whatever he wants and peter’ll be none the wiser.
“you shouldn’t have stayed for two years if you were gonna leave.” he says, grumbling as he unties the towel and lets peter lurch forward and heave into the bath. he’s gonna be sick, his stomach and lungs so full of water that his body can’t take it.
he tries to breathe through his nose, but even that hurts. he’s so focussed on trying to steady his breathing that he doesn’t notice wade beginning to lift the block, and peter, from the water.
he starts squirming and crying again almost immediately, terror paralysing his body into moving however it wants him to even though he’s so exhausted it hurts every inch of his body to breathe and move. he strikes out with both his feet, lying almost flat in wade’s arms, but he doesn’t seem too bothered.
“you can’t leave.” he says again, and his tone is so loving that it almost makes peter sick. “i love you.”
he’s dripping on the floor as they cross the hallway, creating a wet mess that he’s sure wouldn’t be cleaned up till it soaked in. peter was the one who cleaned on the days wade’s trauma got the better of him, or the voices got so loud he would only sit in their bedroom and scream until he had no voice left. at least when he came to see peter after that, he was exhausted, and wouldn’t try arguing with either of them.
pictures of the two of them are hung on either side of the wall, and peter shuts his eyes as they pass them. he doesn’t want to be reminded of the fact that he’s spent two years with a man who didn’t think twice before threatening to drown him.
“i don’t know who we is, wade.” peter stutters out, cursing the way his voice trembles. he wonders whether the paralysing fear of his boyfriend had been there from the start, or if it’s the adrenaline talking.
wade doesn’t answer, like it’s really none of peter’s business who’s he’s talking to right now. it’s like they’ve all merged together but it’s the very worst of each, the anger and the obsession and the recklessness and the nicknames. it’s mind numbingly terrifying, because peter knows full well wade would be able to hold him back with the points of his fingers even if he was using all his strength to leave.
he settles him down on the bed sheets, pulling the duvet down so it’s lying crumpled at the bottom. peter doesn’t think he’d have the energy to move if he tried, but wade ties the block, and subsequently peter’s wrists, to the headboard anyway. it falls flat against the wood until his arm’s are almost level with his head, his body stretched until every bit of his clothing is sticking to a different piece of flesh.
“i’ll just eat you up, how’s that sound?” wade says with a grin too wide for his face. it splits the flesh, looking like it’ll swallow him if he’s not careful. his teeth look more angrily bared and irrevocably animal like than they ever have before.
he shakes his head and slaps himself in the face. peter flinches, but wade doesn’t seem to mind the red hand print now painted on his skin.
he’s still got that stupid book tucked in his waist band, which he pulls out to flick through while he sits at the edge of the bed as if it’s a normal thursday evening (cinnamon spice). peter doesn’t even want to know who wrote it or where it’s from or how long wade’s had it, because he might go crazy thinking about the past.
“the wild things.” he hums, fingers ghosting over the pave. he rests his right hand on peter’s bound ankles, and doesn’t miss the violent flinch it gets him. “come along and snatch your honey right from under you.”
“is it that quentin bitch?” he says suddenly, jolting peter from his hyperventilating.
“wha- no? who?”
“because i swear i’ll kill him. i’ll cut his legs off and smash his face into the floor and pull out every one of his teeth while he’s still awake. did he fuck you, peter?”
peter shivers. wade never called him peter unless there was trouble, like the time he got too drunk at the club and wandered home by himself at three in the morning. he hadn’t called him peter in upwards of a year.
“cause if he fucked you, i swear i’ll chop his stupid dick off and sew it inside you so you can pretend he’s fucking you every second of every day till you drop dead in our bed.”
he’s seething, face red and blotchy, spit flying from his bared teeth, but his voice hasn’t raised to a shout once. peter flinches back into the pillows, his arms still stretched above his head, and tries to hide by turning to the side. it doesn’t work, because he can still feel wade’s gaze even when he’s not looking at him, can feel the vulnerability seeping from his veins and into the open.
one of wade’s favourite things to do in bed was to tie peter to the headboard and keep him there for as long as he wanted (or until he said his safe word, whichever came first.) he doesn’t even want to think about what’s running through wade’s mind right now.
“wade, i-” he starts, too dumbfounded that he’s even trying to reason with him when he’s just tried to drown him in their bathtub. “i don’t even know who that is.”
wade scoffs. he knows in his heart that there’s an approximately 0.472 percent chance that peter and quentin would have ever crossed paths, let alone know each other, but the voices have never been wrong before.
“slut.” he mutters under his breath, snapping the book shut. he doesn’t miss the way peter’s breath hitches, and he crawls back over him as the guilt washes through his veins.
peter’s crying intensifies, squirming and twisting his head to the side like he’d be able to escape if he gets dizzy enough. wade stops him with a thumb and forefinger holding his chin in place, gently leaning down to kiss his perfect pretty lips.
“you’re the best we’ll ever have.” he says, and it’s true. the voices had never been so in agreement with each other about anything before in his long life.
peter’s still crying, hiccuping and heaving because he’s cried more in the last ten minutes than in a whole year with wade. the thought pains his heart, but he rubs peter’s cheek softly and tries to calm him down with small shushes.
the crying’s going to tire him out, so wade leans over to a pre placed cup on the bedside table, gently dropping a small sedative in it. it fizzes out and dissolves, but peter’s too busy crying and begging to notice.
“here,” wade says, pouring the cup gently to peter’s mouth. he presses on his throat gently until his mouth pops open in a gasp, not minding the liquid that sloshes down his chin and soaks into the pillows. “drink this, baby, there you go.”
he swallows half of it easily, and it’s made to calm a mercenary, so he knows it’ll be lights out very soon. he strokes peter’s cheekbone in the meantime, murmuring sweet nothings while the younger boy cries under him.
“wade, please let me g-go.” he stutters, overcome with a sudden wave of exhaustion. it’s too tiring to speak, let alone cry, and the tears eventually dry so his eyes are slitted and swollen.
“there you go, baby boy, there you go.” he says, slightly amused by the feeble kicks peter produces as the sedative works its way into his body. he’s so tiny, so human, that he wouldn’t be able to leave if he tried - but it’s cute letting him think he has the power to overthrow someone who’d crush his collarbones with the slightest pressure of his thumbs.
“wade,” peter mumbles, eyes slipping closed as his legs stop the baby kicking. “i gotta go.”
wade doesn’t even bother replying. peter’s words are slurred, stringing together until he’s just mumbling incoherent sentences into their shared breathing space. he looks a mess, his curly brown hair wet and dripping on the pillows, his lips bitten with dried blood making a track down the middle of his chin. he looks so utterly wrecked and wanton that wade wonders why they never did this before.
“gotta...go.”
“the wild things, baby.” wade says, watching as the last of peter’s consciousness drains from his tired body. his breathing’s slow, slow enough that it just looks like he’s sleeping. he’s beautiful.
“you’re not going anywhere.”