Chapter Text
The hum of the apartment’s ancient refrigerator was a low, vibrating drone that usually irritated Matt’s ears, but today, it was almost grounding. It anchored the small, cramped kitchen of their safehouse, cutting through the heavy, suffocating silence that tended to settle over the rooms whenever the sun started to dip below the horizon.
For a rare couple of hours, the apartment was quiet. There was no sound of tearing fabric, no reloading of firearms, and no frantic scrubbing of blood out of the bathroom rug. But to Matt, the quiet was never truly empty.
He sat at the worn laminate kitchen table, his fingers lightly tracing the edge of a coffee mug he’d long since emptied. His focus wasn't on the porcelain. It was tuned entirely to the living room couch, where Peter was curled up into a ball so tight his knees were practically pressed against his chest.
Matt listened to the erratic, fragile rhythm of the kid's heart. Ever since the world had forgotten who Peter Parker was, that heart had beaten with the rapid, terrified cadence of a trapped bird. It was a constant, fluttering panic that never truly subsided, even when Peter was asleep. Right now, Peter’s pulse was spiking in shallow, uneven waves—the telltale sign that his mind was slipping back into the dark, empty spaces left behind by everyone he had ever loved.
Across the room, the heavy, wet sound of a knife cutting through a raw potato broke the silence.
Wade was standing at the counter, his red suit unzipped to the waist and dangling around his hips, exposing a threadbare grey t-shirt. His heartbeat was a chaotic, unpredictable thudding—scar tissue regenerating, cells misfiring, a body constantly rebuilding itself from the inside out. But beneath that physical noise, Wade’s attention was locked entirely on the kid on the couch.
Wade set the knife down with a deliberate, soft thud against the cutting board. He wiped his hands on a dish towel and crossed the small living room space, his footsteps unusually light for a man of his size.
He didn't stop until he sank onto the opposite end of the couch, the cushions groaning under his weight. He didn't crowd Peter, but he extended one long leg until his shin pressed firmly against Peter's ankles, offering a solid, unyielding line of physical contact.
"Hey, Spider-Baby," Wade said, his voice dropping into a rare, quiet register that lacked his usual theatrical edge. "Earth to Baby Boy. You're doing that thing again where you forget to breathe, and honestly? It's messing with my zen. I'm trying to prep a highly sophisticated meal of burned hashbrowns over here."
Peter didn't move for a long moment, his eyes staring blankly at the peeling wallpaper. But at the sound of the nickname, his shoulders gave a tiny, involuntary twitch. He let out a shaky, shuddering breath, his chest finally expanding fully as he anchored himself to the warmth of Wade's leg against his own.
"I'm breathing," Peter muttered, his voice thick and exhausted, sounding every bit like a nineteen-year-old who had carried the weight of the universe on his back for far too long.
"Barely," Matt chimed in from the kitchen, his smooth baritone carrying across the room without him needing to raise his voice. He turned his head slightly toward the couch, his red-tinted glasses catching the dim evening light. "Your heart rate is hovering at one-ten, Peter. You're running a marathon while sitting perfectly still."
Peter pulled his knees a little closer to his chest, burying his face in the collar of his oversized hoodie. "It's just... quiet. That's all."
Wade let out a dramatic, rolling sigh, leaning his head back against the cushions. "See, Matty? This is what happens when we don't have a schedule. The kid gets the existential dreads. We need a chore chart. Or a whiteboard. I look great holding a dry-erase marker, very professional, very authoritative."
But even as Wade joked, Matt could hear the underlying tension in the mercenary's pulse. Wade’s hand was resting on the back of the couch, twitching slightly, a phantom reflex of a man who spent every second on high alert, waiting to see which of his roommates was going to try and break themselves next.
The sun was officially setting now, casting long, stark shadows across the floorboards. The night was coming, and with it, the inevitable, unspoken dread of who was going to leave the apartment first, and who was going to be left behind to count the seconds until they came back.
The silence that followed Wade’s banter wasn't the peaceful kind; it was the heavy, suffocating weight of three people waiting for the other shoe to drop. Matt adjusted his glasses, his ears tracking the subtle shift of fabric as Peter shifted on the couch. The kid's heartbeat hadn't slowed down, not really. It had just settled into a dull, persistent hum of exhaustion.
"Nobody is leaving tonight," Matt said softly, breaking the quiet before it could swallow them whole. He stood up from the table, the legs of his chair scraping lightly against the linoleum. "Patrol can wait. The city isn't going to fall apart if Daredevil and Spider-Man take one night off."
Peter peeked out from the oversized collar of his hoodie, his brown eyes wide and slightly bloodshot. "Matt, I can go out. I'm fine. The neighborhood—"
"The neighborhood has Wade's left-over chimichanga traps from Tuesday, Spider-Baby, it’s completely secure," Wade interrupted, waving a hand dismissively. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his maskless face showing a rare flash of serious, intense focus. "Matty’s right. For once. Don't tell him I said that, it'll go straight to his Catholic ego. We are staying inside. We are consuming starchy, unhealthily fried root vegetables, and we are going to watch whatever terrible infomercial is playing on that ancient box TV until our brains turn to mush."
Matt walked into the living room, navigating the familiar clutter of discarded boots and stray medical supplies with practiced ease. He didn't sit on the couch—there wasn't room anyway with Wade’s massive frame taking up half of it—but he leaned against the doorframe close enough that Peter could easily reach out and touch him if he needed to.
"Wade," Matt murmured, his head tilting slightly toward the kitchen. "The potatoes."
"Right! The sophisticated culinary masterpiece awaits," Wade bounced off the couch with a sudden burst of energy that made the floorboards creak, though he made sure to give Peter’s shoulder a firm, grounding squeeze before he left.
As Wade shuffled back to the stove, the clatter of the knife against the cutting board resumed, a loud, rhythmic comfort. Peter let his forehead rest against his knees, his breathing finally stabilizing into a normal pattern. The phantom weight of the world forgetting him was still there, pressing down on his chest, but the solid reality of Matt’s steady breathing nearby and Wade’s chaotic presence in the kitchen kept him from drifting away entirely.
Wade stood at the counter, flipping the chopped potatoes into a sputtering skillet. The oil popped loudly, sizzling in the quiet apartment. He looked over his shoulder, watching Matt gently talking down Peter’s lingering panic, watching the way Peter’s fingers tightly gripped the sleeve of his hoodie just to keep his hands from shaking.
Wade’s eyes flicked slightly upward, staring directly past the peeling wallpaper, past the ceiling, and right out into the empty air, narrowing his gaze at a space only he could see.
"Man, the angst in here is so thick you could cut it with a katana," Wade muttered under his breath, his voice barely carrying over the sound of the frying potatoes. He gave a small, knowing smirk, leaning closer to the imaginary space. "And honestly? The author is running on pure caffeine and vibes right now to get through chapter one. Cut us some slack, readers, we're doing our best with these depressed boys. If I don't get a comforting mutant Canadian in here by chapter two, I'm going to start striking."
"Wade," Matt called out from the living room, his brow furrowing in deep, utter confusion. "Who exactly are you talking to? There's no one else in the building."
Wade just cackled, shaking the skillet with a dramatic flourish. "Don't worry about it, Murdock! Just talking to the benefactors of our collective trauma. Now, who wants ketchup on their burned breakfast-for-dinner?"
The tension in the room didn't disappear completely—trauma like theirs didn't just vanish because of a plate of hashbrowns—but as the smell of grease filled the small apartment, the suffocating darkness outside the window didn't feel quite as terrifying. They were broken, reckless, and entirely too clingy, but for tonight, the safety net was holding.