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Spider-Man stops a car crashing into a truck on a busy road. It’s all very heroic and will no doubt result in some killer photos for the Bugle. So he’s not all that surprised when he hears some cheering and clapping.
Flattered? Yes. But, surprised? No.
Spider-Man wipes his hands on his thighs; that car needs a wash. There’s one bystander in particular who’s clapping louder and for longer than the rest. He steps forward, parting the crowd effortlessly.
“Wow. I mean, pfft, that was Awesome , capital A, Spider-Man. Real cinematic shit right there. Did you see that?” he asks a crowd member. “Did you see that?”
Peter stops in his tracks, “Deadpool?”
And of course it is.
The situation isn’t ideal because Deadpool doesn’t do well with crowds. Correction: Deadpool doesn’t do well with crowds you want to keep alive. Peter has been unfortunate enough to witness just how well Deadpool handles crowds, and he never wants to see that shit again.
Peter covertly grabs his camera and tucks it away. “Let’s talk somewhere private,” he says.
They end up on the outskirts of a small park by a pond. Right next to a children’s playground. Peter’s not sure he could’ve found a worse location to bring Deadpool if he tried.
“I could watch that a hundred and one times,” Deadpool says. “I was on the edge of my metaphorical seat. No one even got hurt!”
It wasn’t that impressive.
“What do you want?” Peter asks.
“What I want…” Deadpool echoes. “What I want is my Mr Right, my north star. A Jiminy Cricket. If you will.”
One of those is not like the others. Peter shakes his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Deadpool starts rifling through his pockets. Peter tenses; there are children right there.
Deadpool eventually finds what he’s looking for in his left boot. He unfolds it and hands it to Peter.
A passport-sized picture of a little girl with messy curls smiling at the camera. She’s missing both her front teeth.
“That’s my Ellie,” Deadpool says, staring at Peter intently.
“Who?”
“My daughter.”
Peter’s immediate thought is: Poor girl. But instead he says, “What does that have to do with me?”
Deadpool looks pained. “I need to clean up my act, Spidey. I need to be the dad she deserves.”
Peter understands the sentiment.
He doesn’t relate, but he understands.
Peter hands the photo back. “I think you’d be better off following Captain America around or something.”
Deadpool carefully folds the picture, crouches and gently tucks it back into his boot. Then he stands up and faces Peter with a massive grin, “Great! Where do we start?”
Peter groans. He’s not going to let go of this, is he?
Deadpool will realise himself sooner or later. Peter is no role model. Spider-Man is no paragon saint.
The spring breeze picks up. A goose honks. Peter can hear the sound of children playing close by. He starts walking in the opposite direction, towards the main road. Anywhere with fewer innocent bystanders.
Deadpool skips along with him. “So, what amazing cool thing are we going to do first?” he asks.
A car makes an illegal turn onto the road. “No!” Peter yells. He shoots a web uselessly. The SUV ploughs right over the goose that was in the middle of the road.
Peter kneels over it. Dead.
Deadpool stands over him. “What do we do? Do we catch the guy? Put him in his place?” he mimes punching.
Peter shakes his head, swallowing. “No, we… We should bury it.” He stands up.
“You are so, so right,” Deadpool says. He mutters something to himself, then, without further ado, scoops the goose up and crosses back towards the greenery.
Peter runs after him. He tries to avoid looking at the stain on the road.
Deadpool is wading through the tall grass beside the pond. “Is this a nice spot?” he asks Peter, pointing. He takes two steps. “What about this?”
“We don’t have shovels,” Peter says.
They end up throwing the goose into the pond.
It’s their natural habitat anyway. Geese like ponds. Deadpool stands beside Peter as they watch the goose sink to the bottom.
As soon as it’s out of sight, Deadpool walks away, twigs cracking under his heavy boots. he pauses.“Whoa. Spidey, I think you should check this out,” he says.
Peter turns around. Deadpool’s standing a few feet away in waist-high grass.
“What is it?” Peter asks, walking towards him. He pauses next to Deadpool and looks down.
A nest. With eggs.
Peter is too tired for this.
Deadpool crouches and peers at the twelve eggs with fascination. “Do we take them?” he asks.
Eggs need incubating and… whatever else they need. Then they hatch into a dozen fluffy little goslings.
Absolutely not.
“What are the chances,” Peter says, “that this nest belongs to the goose we just… got rid of? There’s probably a million geese running around here.”
Deadpool picks up an egg to inspect it. “They look like orphans to me,” he says slowly. “But if you think—”
“We should leave them,” Peter says, pacing. “There’s probably a fox that would enjoy them. Food chains and all that.”
Deadpool puts the egg down. “Are you sure?” he asks sceptically.
“No! Yes! Ughh.” Peter runs a hand down his face. “Fine. Finee.” He points at Deadpool accusingly. He wants to be a better dad? “Then empty your pockets.”
Deadpool empties his pockets. He unearths a pistol, a Swiss Army knife, a stack of Russian rubles and leftover Mexican food that smells disgusting. They throw everything into the pond because Peter doesn’t care about the environment, because he’s a terrible, terrible person.
Then they carefully place the massive goose eggs in Deadpool’s empty pockets.
“You should, uh, probably take those to a wildlife conservation centre or something.”
Deadpool nods.
Peter watches him slowly waddle away with bulging pockets. It’d be endearingly funny seeing him be so damn careful if it wasn’t Deadpool.
When he gets home, Peter takes a look at his photos from today. Just as he’d thought, they’re killer. Amazingly cool. Blurry. Blurry. This one’s clear.
Peter inspects the photo closer. You can see the crowd in the background. That’s nice; Spider-Man’s adoring fans witness heroic feat. Something like that.
But something stands out among the crowd. Is that? Peter flicks through the rest of the pictures. It is.
He thumps his head against his desk.
Deadpool just photobombed his paycheck.
*
A couple of days later, Spider-Man is fishing trash out of a local pond when Deadpool grabs him. “You need to come. Right now! You really super-duper need to!” he says, pulling Peter out by the arm.
They end up in an apartment building. Deadpool storms right inside.
“What the fuck, Pool?” Peter is staring at an incubator. With eggs. Gosling eggs.
“They’re hatching.” Deadpool whispers.
“Why didn’t you take them to animal rescue?” Peter hisses.
“I couldn’t,” Deadpool says. “They were too cute. I’m attached, Spidey. I really couldn’t bear to let go.”
Several of the eggs are cracked. One of them is shaking. Peter is slightly impressed Deadpool even managed to keep them alive. He shakes his head. “Do you have a towel? I’m going to dry off some of this pond.” Pond water stinks.
Peter finds Deadpool's bathroom fully intending to excuse himself for as long as possible. Suddenly, the shower looks very enticing. He gets in, still wearing the suit. This might actually beat using the washing machine.
Then the warm water runs out, so he steps out and sits on the closed toilet, shivering. Frantically googling baby gosling care.
Once he’s read as much as he can bear, he puts his phone away. Then he paces the cramped bathroom a few times before finally leaving.
Peter knows a lot of goose facts now.
“You look even wetter than before,” Deadpool says, confused.
The goslings have made startling progress. One is completely hatched and is now basking in the warmth. The eleven others are close behind.
The hatched one is fluffy and has a bright orange beak. It’s cheeping and running around its siblings clumsily.
A group of geese on land are called a gaggle. But on water, they’re called a plump, and in the air, they’re called a skein.
“They need water, right? This hatching business looks like tough work. They’re thirsty. Do you think they’re thirsty?” Deadpool asks.
Without waiting for Peter’s reply, Deadpool gets up, fills a saucer with water and places it in the incubator. “That’s better,” he says.
The hatched gosling does not seem interested. It tracks Deadpool as he walks across the apartment and chases his hand when he gets closer but maintains a safe distance from the water. The rest are caught up by prior affairs.
They probably don’t need water yet.
But Deadpool is thinking along the right lines, “We should buy food. As a preemptive measure,” Peter says.
Deadpool nods. “That makes sense.” He walks away. Every step he takes, the cheeping from the incubator gets louder.
Deadpool turns around and scoops the gosling into his arms. The cheeping instantly quietens down. “I think she wants to come,” he says.
Peter watches the gosling peeking out of Deadpool’s hands suspiciously. “They better not all be like that.”
Baby goslings are very loud. She cheeps nonstop the entire way to the pet shop, the entire time they’re inside and then the entire time they leave. And then they have to do everything all over again because they didn’t have the right food in the first shop, and she cheeps through all of that as well.
Peter spends the entire time walking ahead of Deadpool and the gosling because he’s a terrible, terrible person and doesn’t care about being rude as long as he can stay away from the noise.
Which is why he pays for the food. It’s also why he’s the first one inside the apartment when they get back.
Which is a big, big mistake.
Peter finds himself face to face with six fluffy, yellow, fully-hatched baby goslings.
Lorenz (1935) studied imprinting behaviour in goslings. He hatched half a clutch of eggs in an incubator, and they all imprinted on him. Him. For the rest of their feathery, honking lives.
Spider-Man will not be a goose mother.
Absolutely not.
Deadpool pushes past him. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. This is so darn cute!” he tries to scoop up another gosling, but they all scatter and cheep indignantly.
Weirdly, Deadpool remains unfazed, seemingly content to admire the birds from a distance. He even tries to let the first gosling back in with her siblings, but she refuses.
Just as Lorenz foretold.
Peter does not have a good feeling about this.
He stays back while Deadpool video-calls Ellie to show her the latest advancements. She names all of the hatched goslings.
“Abby, Babby, Cabby, Dabby, um, Fabby and Zabby,” she announces. “And the one you’re holding is called Meleanor, Wade.”
Deadpool’s kid actually exists.
Deadpool spins around and pokes his crappy phone in Peter’s face.
The girl squeals, and the screen shakes. Peter is given an impromptu tour of the ceiling. “Hi Spider-Man!”
Peter waves awkwardly, “Hi Ellie. Your dad told me all about you,” he says.
Ellie pops back on the camera. “You mean Wade?” she frowns.
“Uh, yeah. You like geese?”
Eventually, after lots of squealing, Ellie hangs up.
“Why doesn’t she call you dad?” Peter asks before he can stop himself.
Wade busies himself with his gosling. “Because I haven’t been much of a father to her yet,” he says. “But that’s going to change.”
Maybe if he leaves quickly, the goslings will forget about him and adopt Wade instead? Peter quickly lectures him about the basics of goosekeeping and dips the fuck out—
The goslings screetch.
“Um, Spidey?” Wade asks.
Peter runs a hand down his face. “Fine. Finee.” He points at Deadpool accusingly. You’re giving me that duffel bag though.
Spider-Man doesn’t do pockets.
He grabs the duffel bag and empties it out. A wooden bat, three golf clubs and a dozen... blow darts? fall out.
Peter collects the goslings and dumps them in. Food in one hand and duffel bag in the other. He doesn’t zip the duffel bag up. If they want to jump out and run away, they are more than welcome. These guys are six times louder than Meleanor.
He can’t swing with a gaggle of geese, so Spider-Man takes the subway.
Babies’ first subway ride.
Goddamit.
Peter gets to his apartment and dumps the duffel bag on the floor, letting the goslings tumble out. There goes Abby, Babby, Cabby, Dabby, Fabby and Zabby.
They stumble after Peter through the kitchen to his living room, to his bedroom and back to his kitchen in a clumsy line. Peter sighs.
He might as well get comfortable. He takes his mask off—
The goslings skawk and scatter. Hiding under his dining table and behind chairs.
What?
Peter looks around for the threat.
Then he catches his reflection. Fuuck.
Guiton (1966) managed to get his chickens to imprint on a yellow rubber glove. A glove. Sure, Guiton was the one who wore the glove, but the chicks couldn’t care less about him.
Peter puts the mask back on, and the baby goslings come out of hiding, sounding quite relieved.
The goslings have imprinted on Spider-Man.
Peter lifts the mask to his nose. The goslings step back. Unsure. But they eventually make peace with it and go back to bumping into his ankles and running over his feet.
Peter lifts his mask to his forehead. The goslings step back, then scatter. Back under the dining table and behind the chairs.
Peter huffs and pulls the mask back down. He makes himself a sandwich, being very careful of where he steps. He eats it at the table while the goslings run around his chair. And then he goes to bed. Wearing his mask.
He tries to ignore the goslings’ cheeping and skawking and crying because he’s a terrible, terrible person.
He can’t sleep like this. Peter scoops them up and puts them on his bed. Couldn’t they get their own? The goslings explore a little before nestling next to him. Digging into the crook of his neck and into the palms of his hands. Have they not heard of SIDs?
Peter doesn’t get a second of sleep.
He watches the sunlight creep across his room in the quiet hours of the morning, when an idea born from sleep-deprived delirium pops into his mind.
Guiton (1966) deconditioned his chicks by introducing them to an adoptive mother. As long as an attachment is made during the critical period… The critical period lasts for twelve to thirty-six hours after hatching.
Peter needs to be fast.
He sits up and reaches blindly for his phone, ignoring how the goslings jump awake and run around his pillows and over his lap. Deadpool’s already sent him hundreds of pictures. Deadpool holding a gosling up to his cheek. Deadpool and the goslings covered in glitter; that can’t be safe. Deadpool tucking six sparkly goslings into bed. The last picture was sent only two hours ago; he’s going to mess up their circadian rhythms.
Peter tells Deadpool to meet him in the park.
*
There’s probably a million geese running around here. Peter just needs to find one.
Deadpool goes down a slide; his gaggle follows him down one by one. They wait their turn in a wobbly little line.
Goslings are very polite creatures.
A little boy runs up to Deadpool. Peter tenses and steps forward.
“Can I pet one?” the boy asks politely.
Maybe all children are polite.
Deadpool nods enthusiastically and yammers on about geese while the boy runs a tentative finger across one of the gosling’s backs.
A couple more children run up to Deadpool, chattering excitedly. He seems completely at ease.
He does well with children. Deadpool gets on the swings with the other kids. His goslings run back and forth underfoot, chasing him. Probably because he is one.
Peter turns away and sticks his head into a bush. Where are all the geese?
It’s already been twelve hours. He thinks despondently, looking over the pond. Peter is really, really not ready to be a goose mother.
There’s a duck swimming in leisurely circles. Not a goose but close enough. Peter came prepared for this. He takes out a loaf of bread.
Four whole slices of bread later (because Peter is a terrible, terrible person who ignores the ‘Don’t feed the ducks’ sign), the duck is close enough for Peter to hold up one of his goslings for her to inspect.
The duck has mottled brown feathers, a brown beak and brown eyes. Very monochrome, besides a splash of blue on the tips of her wings. Peter’s gosling cheeps. She turns her head and swims away with refined refusal.
Peter sets the gosling down in defeat.
The others have been grazing on the grass for a while now. They look extra energised. No.
Peter runs a few laps around the park; the baby geese stumble after him, wings flapping as they try to keep up. This will tire them out.
*
Two weeks later, Peter’s apartment floor is lined with kitchen roll, he averages four hours of sleep a night, and his water bill has probably tripled from the amount of bathtubs he’s filling for these spoilt goslings; it’s the only time they’ll let him get away. He is still wearing his mask.
Deadpool rings him.
“Spidey, spidey spidey! Please just hear me out—”
Peter hangs up.
Deadpool calls again. And again. And again. Peter answers.
“Listen, Pool. I’ve already done you a favour. Six of them.” Peter holds the phone over the chirping goslings as they splash about in his bath.
“It’s Ellie’s birthday soon, and you’re her favouritest superhero. Just come to her party for a bit. Pleasee, Spidey, she knows we’re friends, and there’s nothing else that girl wants.” Deadpool says all of this in one frantic breath.
Peter runs a hand down his face. “Fine.” He says. “Finee.” He hangs up again. Why can’t her favourite superhero be Captain America or something? Spider-Man is hardly a good role model; Deadpool should do something about that.
*
Peter turns up at the address Deadpool gave him. It’s a neat suburb. Very white picket fence. The front porch is decorated with colourful streamers, and the open front door is framed in balloons. Abby & Co chirp curiously from the duffel bag.
The actual house is neat but deserted. The backyard is where the party is at. Literally. Peter can count at least twenty kids and one adult.
Not including Deadpool. Peter’s not sure which category to put him in. Everyone is wearing a sparkly party hat, and someone’s flipping burgers at the barbecue.
Deadpool spots him and runs over. He’s wearing his mask, but instead of his regular costume, Deadpool’s wearing a light coloured polo and trousers. Maybe he ran into the same problem as Peter. “Spider-Man! Thank god you’re here. Ellie’s first birthday with me. I couldn’t show up empty-handed. Want a hat?” He holds up a shiny orange party hat.
Crap, should Peter have brought a gift? Yes. He definitely should’ve.
“Nah, I need to look recognisable,” Peter says, pushing the hat away. He holds the duffel bag up. “Where can I put these guys?”
Deadpool directs him towards a kiddie pool, already occupied by his own plump of baby geese. When Peter tips his gaggle in, the two plumps squawk at each other and immediately migrate to opposite sides. They do not get along.
A little girl crashes into his leg and gives Peter a tight hug.
“Happy birthday, Ellie,” Deadpool says, as if he’d handed Peter over to her, wrapped up with a bow on top.
Ellie drags Peter through the bouncy castle twice and then the entire garden, introducing him personally to each guest. “This is Spider-Man! The actual real one! I’ll prove it; shoot a web, Spidey.” Does she not know how expensive web fluid is?
“Aw, come on, Webs, that was trash; shoot another,” Wade says.
No DNA test needed.
Eventually, a friendly, no-nonsense woman presses a burger into his hands. “Emily Prescott,” she introduces herself. Ellie’s adoptive mother.
She convinces Ellie to try some roasted veggies and yells at some kids for roughhousing on the bouncy castle, all the while making sure the hot dogs don’t burn. Peter likes her. “Big fan of what you’ve done around here,” he says. This is exactly the type of person needed to cut through Deadpool’s nonsense.
She sits Wade at the kids’ table next to Ellie, which pretty much says which category she thinks he’s in.
“I’m just glad Wade is so serious about being a stable presence in Ellie’s life,” she says.
*
When Lorenz (1935) got those baby goslings to imprint on him, he’d realised pretty quickly he had to step up. He had to provide these birds with everything they needed to be happy. And, yes, maybe a landlocked human wasn’t the best guy for the job, but there comes a point in everybody’s lives where you’ve got to make do with what you’ve got.
Peter runs up a small hill in the park flapping his arms. When he reaches the summit, he shoots a web at a nearby tree and leaps into the air. They’ve got to migrate to the South for fall.
The goslings have quadrupled in size. They’ve dropped their yellow feathers in favour of sleek, white plumes. They chase after Peter, flapping their wings, but do not take flight.
Peter sighs. This is going to be a long afternoon. He shoots another web. Do they not know how expensive web fluid is?
Peter’s phone chimes. Wade’s already sent him hundreds of pictures. Wade and Ellie, cheeks pressed together, holding a goose between them. Wade and Ellie covered in glitter. Wade reading Ellie a storybook. In that last one, Prescott can be seen in the background, arms crossed. Must be past bedtime.
Peter takes out his own camera and sticks it to a tree with a glob of webbing. He never made back the money from those pictures Deadpool photobombed. Spider-Man adopts adorable skein of geese. Yeah, yeah, something like that.
It’s not an awesome car crash, but you’ve gotta make do.