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"I think I can quantum tunnel," is what he said. "I think it might kill me, but I could theoretically do it once."
It's what a highschooler comes up with after learning there's an infinitesimal chance your hand can pass through a table. But Peter means it the way a physicist does when they tell that highschooler about the phenomenon.
If we assume the way he sticks to walls on an interatomic level- take out the magnetic field or the static electricity and just focus on the fact he is changing his atoms to attach to a wall, then what is stopping him from making them pass each other?
If he can run into, say a wall, fast enough and align his atoms the right way then he just might end up on the other side.
And Wade's sitting on the sidelines, waiting for Peter to crack his skull against the wall because he is a scientist. Scientist test hypotheses. So, he does it. He puts all of his focus on not making contact with the wall when he comes to it.
It's like swimming. You know the edge of the pool is coming up, and you know that you must flip turn. You see the end and suddenly all your focus is centered on that flip, and for that you are rewarded with just that second of disorientation. That moment where, as you feel your body turn and the water clouds your vision, you just trust you did it right. That a moment before you were so close, but now you're so far. Now you're back to swimming.
And yes, Peter has to work so much faster than that, he should not feel that moment of turning because it's about ending up on the other side.
He saw the wall coming. And he is so close. The only option now is through. Reaching the wall, and for a moment-
When Peter was younger, he used to imagine an alternate reality in which he died. In which he was shot instead of Uncle Ben.
He'd see himself lying on the floor. He's dressed in that white button shirt, tie, slacks, and glasses combo that Aunt May said made him look smart. Except the shirt doesn't stay white the more it soaks the blood coming out of him. Sometimes they're outside and it's raining. The water droplets collect on the lenses of his glasses, obscuring the fact that his eyes are still open. Other times, none of that was the case and someone would feel compelled to close his eyes. The person would mutter that Peter was no older than his own son.
And then he'll wake up because it was a Wednesday and Peter had fallen asleep in his math class. Maybe it was because he stayed up too late last night, but maybe it was just something about the room and his teacher's voice always seemed to lull him. He knew all the concepts anyways. He would fall asleep and still have the highest grade in that class, so the teacher might've let him sleep.
He did need sleep, just not as much as you would expect. Maybe sleep was the wrong word. He just needed some designated lay down time to rest. The actually laying down part wasn't required either. And he'd know he didn't get it when his hands stop sticking to things.
Peter crawled to Wade's body on the floor. It's wearing what Peter knows Wade to consider his "old face."
"That's not you," Peter always argued.
He liked sitting on Wade's chest when they talked, as if it's not the same image they use to depict demons and sleep paralysis. Wade's the one who told him that. He also said it takes nearly double Peter's weight to kill a person like this and "what's a cracked sternum anyways?"
Peter didn't wish to cause Wade harm, he's just not careful enough to avoid it completely. He's just become so comfortable with Wade's comfort that one day he knows they'll go too far. But he'll cross that bridge when he gets there.
"Why can't I be pretty, huh P?" Wade'll argue back with an overexaggerated pout to hide the fact his feelings might actually be hurt.
"Cuz it's not you."
"I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and like what I see. I want to be able to see me."
Maybe Peter's not using the right words when he says that the blonde-haired blue-eyed man is not Wade. It is, just not the one Peter knows. And Peter doesn't like change.
When Wade's hands cup Peter's face, his instinct is to move back. But he didn't.
"I don't understand what you think is wrong with your face."
Wade's looking at every feature, his eyes moving along an invisible golden ratio.
"You're very pretty," he added.
"It's not me."
When he mutated, Peter lost 2 teeth. He spat them out one by one into the bathroom sink, with new top canines pushing their way out of his gums. They were sharper than his old ones. Longer, thinner.
They've been shaved down now to a more innocuous appearance. The night that happened he laid down in bed, running his tongue along the teeth repeatedly. A voice that wasn't his own and sounded too loud to be just in his head asked, "What did you do?"
Peter didn't like the changes that came with mutation. It affected every one of his senses from sticking to things he didn't mean to stick to, to hearing more than ever before. He stopped identifying with his appearance in the mirror. It didn't fit the idea of himself he knew was true.
It wasn't just the teeth, it was everything. It was his hair being too dark and his eyes being too dark and his skin–he wanted to dig the freckles out his face when he looked at them. More than that, it didn't even feel right, like there was something crawling around inside him making changes at it saw fit.
His Aunt and Uncle's reactions were to write everything off to puberty. "Recessive genes," they called it, but that wasn't it. Peter had lost half of what made him related to his parents. When he was the only living proof of their existence- a continuation of their bloodline, their genes, and Peter had the audacity to taint it with impurity.
And it's not so much that he remembered what he used to look like—what he's supposed to look like—it's that he knows it's not this. He hated taking showers because it meant stripping down and looking at himself for what he'd become. But the worst part was how human he looked compared to how inhuman he felt, and the mirror tricked him into believing he wasn't half as mutated as he knew himself to be.
"I was dissatisfied with my body," he explained while they lay on top of the Brooklyn Bridge, trying to catch a glimpse of that night's meteor shower.
"What?" Wade spurred. "You wanted 6 more eyes?"
"No, I wasn't missing things. I wanted less human things."
"In surgical terms: top or bottom?"
Wade pretended to hold a microphone towards Peter.
"I was suddenly, irrevocably disgusted by my toes."
"Wait what?"
"I understood their purpose, but I didn't want them anymore. I no longer wished to see them on myself."
"Well, who's to say spiders don't have 6 arms instead of 6 legs?"
"Spiders have paws, actually."
"So spiders are cats, gotcha. And if I've ever said otherwise no I didn't."
The last person he dated–or tried to date–was Black Cat, and she was the first one in a while too.
He had sworn off dating after Gwen's death. It didn't matter if someone liked him or if he liked someone, it mattered that what happened to Gwen would happen again. And he couldn't do that to someone else.
Now and again, Peter's moved on to dreaming about what it would be like to be married and have kids, but it's such a wholly selfish act that he can't see himself actually doing it.
The obsession with a nuclear family–the idea you can't be happy without a spouse and kids seemed stupid to him. Not that he wouldn't be happy because maybe he would, he's not exactly sure, but his happiness was definitely not contingent on the stages in life he was supposed to hit: go to college, marry a nice girl by 24, buy a house, have 2.5 kids, grow old, die. And he wasn't just saying that because he wasn't as far in life as that plan would want him to be, he's saying it because…
He's not here to quantify happiness. He's here because he wanted to know where Wade fits into puzzle.
"Hey Spides," Wade started to say, "we're never gonna date."
"No, Wade, of course not."
"No, I mean that's not us. That type of label isn't made for us."
"I can't make room for you."
"You're not who I want you to be and it's your fault."
Peter had this dream where he dies. In which he doesn't get up.
He'd see himself lying on the floor. He's dress in his Spider-Man suit because if you kill Peter Parker, Spider-Man lives on, but if you kill Spider-Man, Peter Parker goes with him.
There's this degree of separation, mentally, seeing the blood on his suit and staining the fingertips of his gloves, but not feeling it. It's like the suit is the mutation, not affecting the fleshy, human body underneath. Maybe that's just remnants of the symbiote.
"Why don't you wear the suit as much anymore?" Wade had asked. "The one made from unstable molecules? It doesn't get dirty or rip and it comes off with a thought."
Wade's sitting in front of Peter, fiddling with the fabric that he wasn't currently sewing.
"I know. But it reminds me of being bonded with Venom."
Something about the way all he had to do was think tripped him up a bit. The only difference being Venom was maybe a bit faster. He was his own entity at the end of the day.
His influence stayed with Peter, attaching itself to things like the Future Foundation Costume and even to his non-sentient black suit that's little more than his "I'm pissed and will murder someone" suit. He shouldn't even have something like that in his closet, yet he does and he uses it.
"I need to put something on," Peter continued. "It helps me feel like I'm still me underneath the suit and not just… Spider-Man." He shook his head. "You wouldn't get it."
"Try me."
"We were perfect together, Wade. I didn't even know he could talk, that's how in unison we were together. And I think that's part of what scared me.
"I don't know if he actually made me more aggressive. I guess I was just tired, you know? I wasn't sleeping right. I shouldn't have freaked out, but I was so tired." And so, so hungry. "I didn't mean it. But what was I supposed to do?"
"Well, the answer was not to go Victor Frankenstein. Didn't you read the book?"
"There's no winning."
The blood on Peter's suit was staining his gloves' fingertips because he felt the need to touch the wound. He always worried that one day he would look down and see that his blood has turned the blue of a spider's. But his blood is just radioactive. It's hard to tell when radiation is completely invisible.
"I don't want to die," Peter's muttering into Wade's shoulder.
Wade's holding him and Peter thought that's how it'll be when it happens. In every dream he's alone, but someone has to hold him. Right?
Not if he gets back up. Because that's what he does, Peter gets back up. He always gets back up- he needs to get back up and he doesn't know what he'd do with himself if he couldn't. Every time he's Peter—every time he loses his powers he's scared.
The moment you're born, death is coming. The minute you have a win rate, you are bound to lose. It is math, it is science. It's what makes the world turn. And fear is the result of your amygdala sending signals to the autonomic nervous system. It's a survival mechanism ingrained in all living things.
"I can't do that," Peter added.
He'll die without the strength to hug back.
"Keep your eyes open," Wade muttered. "Don't fall asleep on the couch."
Peter looked up and across his shoulder from his curled-up corner to match eyes with Wade.
"I'm not going to fall asleep," he argued back.
"You did last time."
"Did not."
"Did too."
"I'm not doing this with you."
"Boo."
"Boo you."
Wade turned to an imaginary person.
"As you can clearly see your honor: he started it."
"You're so childish."
"Nuh-uh. You just lost your sense of whimsy. Look at you."
"Maybe it's your fault the world has become so negative."
"Ouch."
He meant he wanted more people to be like Wade and they're not. He is living in a hopeless place.
Green is hope, Aunt May had told him once, so we are hopeful for a bright future for everyone.
"Maybe I can't keep doing this Wade."
"Falling asleep on the couch?"
This suit isn't as blue as it's supposed to be. It is wet and sticky with blood.
The blood. It's supposed to- the blood needs to stay inside of him.
"What if Spider-Man doesn't come back?"
"There will be others. Spider people is essentially a race. And even without them, you're an inspiration."
"There's a lot of those out there now," Peter muttered. "You know, I would have died for you when. Back when we first became friends."
"Yeah? Why didn't you?"
"I realized you thought I was better off alive."
"You are. Don't close your eyes Petey."
But they feel so heavy.
Peter hugged Wade, but he hugged his head. He doesn't understand anything that isn't a bear hug.
"I think I fall in love with all my friends," Peter spoke, the side of his mouth pressed against Wade's head.
"Yeah?"
"I don't think it's a good thing."
"Why not?"
"Because it's intense and unfair for the people close to me. I start wanting a certain level of, I don't know, attention? I think the problem with my dating life is I don't have any special attention to give. I wouldn't treat you any better because I won't treat anyone any worse."
Wade hummed.
"What does love feel like to you?" he asked.
"What's it feel like to you?" Peter deflected back.
"The butterflies you get when someone remembers your birthday. And shame. The minute before a nosebleed and swallowing blood. Wanting– needing to be more than you are."
"Hunger."
Peter has this constant hunger, but it's more than just that physical manifestation, it is this mental need to consume.
Can you blame him for liking the attention? He never really got over that part of his childhood. Or any part really. He's never gotten over anything.
It's the burden of consciousness, of knowing.
He wondered if that's how Wade must feel, to have such an intimate relationship with mortality.
So perhaps it's not a hug unless it's a straddle. Unless he's willing to give himself up completely to the embrace.
Wade's hands are locked around Peter's midsection. When he looked up, as he was, his chin rested in-between Peter's ribs.
"Why do you feel the need to trap me?" Peter asked, looking down.
His arms are free enough to have his hands pushing down on Wade's shoulders. To tell the truth, if he really wanted to he could get out of this embrace without a sweat, but instead he just leant back.
Wade stretched and placed a cartoonish kiss on Peter's cheek.
"You're so gross," Peter said, rubbing the wetness off.
Why's it wet?
"I love you too Spideybabe."
"I know."
"Peter, heartmate of my life, say it back."
"You're always going to be in love with someone else more than me, aren't you?"
There's no Spider-Sense, no warning, just wetness seeping into his suit and he's cold. It doesn't even hurt, it's just uncomfortable. He wants it to stop. To stop being so wet and so cold and he could feel the blood smear on his skin.
He can hear his heart pumping too fast and that's bad because more blood will get pushed outside of him and he needs it to stay inside so he can heal. He wanted to calm down, but he felt tight, and he hated feeling tight, he needed to be able to move unrestricted- why's it so hard?
Newton's Third Law stated that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
She came up behind him, she knew what she was doing. His Spider-Sense was going off, he thought it was Wolverine. He was weakened, but the punch was still too strong.
Peter saw her fall in silence. Suicide at his hands. It's not fair, it wasn't right. It was that sick feeling of being manipulated and the guilt of taking a life. A guilt he will have to live with while she gets exactly what she wanted?
He hugged his midsection.
His stomach hurt.
"I don't like being on the ground."
He wants the glitz with none of the glam.
"There's nothing but pigeons up there."
He's alone.
Wade was dead, always dead. Peter couldn't stand it. He needed Wade to wake up or he'd cry, and he hated crying. It's selfish, he knew, but he couldn't help it.
He couldn't give Wade what he wanted, he can't change.
"You change," Peter wanted to yell. "You change for me. Show me it's not scary, hold my hand so I don't have to do this alone."
Tears pricked his eyes, but he's not someone who cries. He's not someone to get on his knees and beg. He's someone who fights. Who kicks and screams and bites.
You don't want that one, it bites. Don't put your hand too close, it bites. Don't try to pet it because it sees that as an act of aggression, and it bites.
On the top of some building or in some grimy alley they stand face to face and Peter takes off his mask. Dragging it across his features like he's pulling his face off with it. He is, in a way. Peter strips an entire identity off himself when he pulls the mask off.
Wade looked at him- looked at him.
Spider-Man, Peter, the mushy part inside of the thing he exists in—he's the third thing. Not Peter, not Spider-Man, just something wearing them. A beating heart without a home. A collective consciousness with all the memories but no birthright.
The face change is so quick and he's looking down the end of a barrel. A shot between the eyes is all it takes at the end of the day.
But the gunshot has already sounded and he's still standing.
Wade was arguing, yelling and waving his gun around with his finger on the trigger but Peter wasn't listening. He can't hear a word because of the incessant ringing sound.
It's piercing. He covered his ears, but the sound didn't dull in any way. It reverberated inside of him.
He hated guns. He hated guns, he hated them. Peter hated guns so fucking much.
And Peter's sitting like a normal person, but Wade had wrapped his arms around Peter's waist and placed his head in Peter's lap, not unlike a dog that stuffs it's nose in someone's crotch.
"You're so bothersome," Peter said, he had his hand on Wade's head. "Killing you is just a matter of being creative enough."
"Go on."
"All I have to do is keep you in a perpetual state of dying. I'll place a pole right through your cervical spine and keep it there. You'll be paralyzed, unable to heal the vertebrae back together properly or move yourself in order to fix that. Maybe I'll do that and chain you to the bottom of the ocean and suddenly you exist only to drown continuously."
"I love that you think about me."
"I get curious."
It's what fucked him over. His obsession with himself, what it means to be mutated. Where did the spider go?
He does not want to think about the 6 arms. That the cure to that didn't revert him to normal, it just made what he did to himself dormant. How the bite was not his fault but everything he did next was because the bite made him a mutate, but he made himself a monster.
"You're everything to me," Wade mused.
"And you… smell nice."
It's not as comfortable when Peter folds himself over, resting his head on Wade's.
"It's the farnesyl acetate and hexadecyl acetate in my lotion that attracts spiders."
Wade sounded proud of himself.
"Why aren't you smart more often?" Peter asked, his cheeked pressed against Wade.
"Because that's your job. Though if you ask nicely, I'll whisper different blood loss injuries to you in bed."
"I can tell you how much counterforce you need to not kill someone when using webs."
Wade lifted his head, so Peter did as well. Hands go on either side of his face, and Peter let it happen.
He's soft. Malleable. Weak.
"You have problems, my love."
"And what? You're just along for the ride until we Thelma & Louise?"
"I'm a passenger princess at heart."
"And I can't drive."
He has to claw himself out. Out of the cold earth of a grave, a cocoon, a warm body. He'll break through to the surface gasping for breath, pleading not to be put through it again but he will.
When the world tells him he's done, Peter will rip his nails off scratching his way back. He never wanted to be a monster so he declawed himself time and time again and yet it's the only thing that can save him. He has doubled down on a mistake, but he is a Parker and Parker's are stubborn.
They're sitting face to face and Peter's angry.
"I don't think you understand," he had been telling Wade. "I don't just hear when your bones snap. I can hear your heartbeat and the sound of your blood pumping. I can hear when it stops. I can hear your muscles flex, and your joints rub together. I can hear the fucking white noise of your braincells."
"Baby, you need to calm down."
Peter is acutely aware of the fact he's breathing too fast and too shallow. He's acutely aware of the fact he's 14 and everything hurt.
He was a crybaby who didn't understand what was happening to him, so at anything he would panic and cry and shut down. He hated it.
He figured the way to stop being sensitive was to be mean. He already thought he was better than everyone else- he was a brat. Uncle Ben was this guy he was always trying to be like because he was tough and just a rock. And his aunt was so focused on wrapping him in bubble wrap to keep me safe from imaginary dangers that it just built up his need to prove himself to be someone.
He was in so much pain.
It's not growing pains, he wanted to say. He's mutating, changing before everyone's very eyes- why couldn't they see what was happening to him? Why couldn't they care?
He thought of the way Harry used to look, head cradled in his hands.
Mutating is a splitting headache. Burrowing under the covers in search of complete darkness. It's clawing at yourself and tears streaming down your face. It's wanting to die.
It is dying.
Peter is laying on his back, body throbbing. Wade's laughing somewhere around him.
"Dude," Wade's saying, "you almost brained yourself. Scientist my ass."
Peter laughed too. And he found himself laughing even harder, his voice melting into Wade's.
He's laughing until he started coughing and he couldn't breath when his lungs wheezed like that and his eyes have blurred enough that he can barely see Wade's face looking down at him.
"Don't you understand?" Wade's voice was full of air as he pleaded. "I saved you. Don't you see I saved you?"
A monologue he's heard before on the top of a bridge.
She was dead. He killed her. She was dead before he could do anything about it. He killed her in an instant.
God what did they do?
Why was his suit so wet?
He can't move. There's something behind him acting like a hard surface, but it felt more like floating. A fly caught in a web.
He's not religious, but something out there wants him to be. It wants to be let in.
A spider, too big for its on good, crawls up his body. He feels it—everything shaking around him with every step—hears it. The head comes into view before his.
The words come without a mouth.
You're dying.
I'm dying, Peter thought.
You have led us to starve.
Wade's on top of him and Peter feels the panic in his chest that he channels into flipping their positions. His fight sense is flaring but he's weak. Wade makes him weak, and they flip positions again.
They are rolling around of the floor trying to get the upper hand on each other and Peter realized they were attempting different things. Wade is on the defensive, it's Peter that keeps going for the throat.
He stopped fighting.
"What's wrong with you?" Peter borderline yelled.
"What's wrong with you? What's wrong with me!"
"That's what I said–"
"I realize that!"
Peter's breathing heavier than Wade is. Only the latter had infinite endurance at the end of the day.
He let himself, willed himself, to stay trapped underneath Wade. He felt vulnerable. He felt his mask bunched up at his nose, and the feeling of dried something along his mouth.
"You need to stop," is all Wade said.
Strong and serious and… scared.
Peter scared him.
Their hands match on different sides of glass. Peter is pulled into himself, leaning completely against the wall. Wade stands in front of him.
A cup over the spider that terrifies you.
He stared at their hands for so long that his eyes have stopped focusing.
"Spides." Wade had never sounded so weak before. "I don't know what to do."
The statement comes from just behind him.
When Peter looked up, he's staring at a reflection of himself.
They are stranded before a glass box, a tube taller than either of them with Peter inside. He put his hand on the glass.
The words come without promoting. Like they originated in his mouth instead of his brain.
"He's just kid," Peter muttered back.
Not Peter now, Peter then.
But then Peter is suddenly aware he's watching himself.
There're variations of him all collected in this room. Big, small, deformed—on the table there is a failed clone that is more wires than body—but the perfect ones, they existed in droves.
All his feelings of "that's not me" were suddenly given the ability to stare him back in the face and respond.
No one told him this was what he signed up for. Clones upon clones. No one warned him that it wasn't enough to be okay with your inevitable death, you have to watch yourself die as well. Questioning who is the clone up until the very end, when your own beaten and bloodied body turned to dust in front of you.
Maybe he liked being the clone. To point to something to explain why the person running around in his same skin seemed more comfortable in it than him.
He felt a pain bloom somewhere on his torso. When Peter looked down, the blood was seeping through his suit too fast, like it was trying to take him over.
At the site, Peter suddenly couldn't support his own weight. His knees buckled and someone—Wade, it had to be Wade—caught him.
You can still tell when there's blood on red suits. The color doesn't do a good job at hiding it. Blood is too shiny. It makes you look wet.
He was laying somewhere soft. A bed. Curled up in the middle of it. He felt it dip from the weight of someone else.
Wade's face came into view, parallel to Peter's.
"How will you know I deserve it?" Wade asked.
"I won't," Peter answered, reaching his hand out to initiate contact and landing squarely on Wade's cheek. "You'll figure it out. You'll tie my hands behind my back and make me tell you. If I chose it, it wouldn't end well."
"Are you superstitious?"
"I'm a scientist. I'm primed on pattern recognition."
"You're primed on anxiety."
Peter shifted, lying on his back. The bed dips more, taking on more of Wade's weight. He settled beside Peter, still opting to stare at the face no longer looking at him. They've never done this before. Wade always got weird about sharing a bed. In the same vein, Peter used to act the same with Johnny, but he 1) never asked and 2) slept naked.
Wade probably sleeps naked too.
"Are you saying you can't figure it out?" Peter asked.
"I care about you too much to do that. And the more you care about me, the further you get from telling me."
"Like a bell curve."
"I think you missed your stop."
He got this pang, this hole in his chest, this feeling that nothing is going to get better and yet it could always get worse until he's dying on a dirty floor to an unforgiving God.
It's a warehouse. Empty and white and full of corpses that look like Peter. More than he can count. Each with their own pool of blood.
It's Wade, and Peter, and the bodies.
"What are you trying to accomplish?" Peter asked.
He realized his arm is bleeding. Dripping onto the floor and making his own pool of blood. He's on his way to being just another one of them.
"You're going to die, why fight it?" Wade asked. "You don't stand a chance."
Peter realized it's not really Wade. Someone, or something, is just using him as a mouthpiece.
"Aren't you tired?" Wade asked.
Of course he's tired. When he has to pry every coming year out of life's closed fist, only to have to do it again. He's always fighting. Always yearning for when he won't have to anymore. But it's too late for him. This is what he knows now.
"I don't know how much longer I can go." A bitter huff of laughter escaped Peter's lips. "There's nothing you know?" he continued. "There's fucking nothing left here. We can't keep doing this forever."
"I know," Wade muttered. "You're going to die. Can you bear to face your own mortality?"
"Yes. It's you who can't."
Peter doesn't remember being on his knees. Doesn't remember Wade standing tall before him.
"And I have to be punished for that?" Wade asked.
"I'm going to die."
Lying down. He says it lying down.
The image, presence, of Wade next to him never faltering.
When Peter opened his eyes, Wade was there in front of him.
"Spider-Man," Wade said, "I'm going to kill you."