Chapter Text
Though he wouldn’t be caught dead admitting it, Wade found himself disappointed when his eighteenth birthday came and went without anything miraculous. He’d fallen asleep on the couch and woke up with his face still buried in the cushions. He couldn’t even go out for a drink–the damn age of legality had changed a few months prior. He was frustrated and tired and before he realized what was happening, he’d hopped on a bus to NY and enlisted.
He’d never been out of the country, but if television taught him one thing: the US Army was violent, and violence was something he craved more than getting wasted in the backseat of his mom’s truck. More than waking up on his birthday in somebody else's body. That’s what he told himself, at least. Year after year, country after country, kill after kill. Every night he fell asleep and every morning he woke up in the same place.
It was nearly fifteen years later when he realized why. When he woke up in a body that didn’t look his own familiar self, but was nonetheless. Pretty blonde hair gone, the color in his eyes a few shades dimmer. Scars crawling across every inch of his body, digging down to the bone along his hips, blistering and peeling across his arms.
It made sense. How could somebody like him have a Soulmate? Imagine waking up in his body, he thought. Looking in the mirror expecting the love of your life and seeing that creature staring back with hollow apathy. It made perfect sense.
-
Peter didn’t get his hopes up–he didn’t expect anything. He didn’t need anybody. He led a dangerous life and knew all too well the pain of losing somebody. Every day he jumped out his bedroom window and soared straight down to the Devil’s doorstep. Swan-dived off sky-scrapers and webbed his way into situations no kid should ever see.
He didn’t really have friends anymore. He’d learned his lesson about two and a half relationships ago; how much it hurt. So, he stopped with the whole social life thing. College started this next week and he planned to keep it that way. Alone.
He went to bed on that warm November night nursing a pair of black eyes and bruised ribs he hoped would heal in his sleep and was awoken three hours later by the sun glaring against his face through the open blinds.
But Peter’s bedroom window did not face his bed.
-
The first thing Wade noticed was the blanket. An unfamiliar blue thing of thick wool, heavy and warm; comfortable. That wasn’t right.
He sat up. Cleared his throat. Looked around, bewildered. His bare thighs should have been irritated halfway to no return thanks to the flannel bedspread beneath him, but for the first time in what seemed like centuries, Wade felt fine. That wasn’t right.
He ran his hand across the thigh that was indeed attached to his body but very much was not his own. It was suntanned and prickly in that few-days-post-shave way. Cracking his knuckles, he rolled off the mattress and nearly collapsed as a bolt of pain shot through his spine. He leaned heavily against the wall, breath shallow, hand pressed hard against his stomach in a feeble attempt at grounding himself as he tried not to panic.
The walls were covered in photographs and newspaper clippings. Textbooks and trinkets scattered across the floor. The light peeking beneath the curtains twisting as the walls began caving. His hands trembled as he reached for the doorknob.
-
Peter’s shins knocked painfully against the headboard as he flung his legs backwards. His face met a pile of pillows as he slipped forward, neck bent at an awful angle. He twisted, jutting his arm back to catch the wall but his hand slid sadly down the plaster unperturbed.
He froze. Jumped to his feet, back pressed against a poster-strewn wall, eyes whirring. A studio apartment. Busted AC unit hanging precariously from a windowsill; kitchen counter covered so thoroughly with papers that the tile wasn’t visible; numerous black holsters hanging from a clothing rod in the open sliding-door closet. What looked like a sheathed sword resting atop a haphazardly assembled IKEA dresser.
Heart beating out of his chest, it took a solid two minutes of standing stock-still and staring into nothingness before it clicked: Peter was eighteen today. This was his Soulmate’s body.
Whatever relief this realization should have triggered was stifled beneath the whirl of fight-or-flight in his stomach. He’d nearly forgotten all about his birthday and what that particular number suggested, despite May’s non-stop pestering. He hadn’t cleaned his room or even showered off–he probably looked a right mess.
As the thought occurred, he spied a door that must lead to a bathroom. He shoved it open with a bit of effort given the hinges were in desperate need of a good oiling. It knocked against a trash can resting precariously on top of an overflowing hamper. He shut his eyes tight for a long moment before looking towards the above-sink mirror.