The Best Antidote To A Bad Guy With A Sword Is A Chaotic Good Guy With Two Swords - Corvid_Knight (2024)

Chapter 1: Dave: Hello Asshole

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People don't just knock on the door. Like, that's not a normal thing that happens; Bro sure as hell doesn't knock at the door to his own f*cking apartment, and who else is gonna come when he's not here? Nobody. Literally nobody.

But yeah, you're the only one home right now. And despite all the evidence that it shouldn't happen, somebody just knocked on the f*cking door.

You're not very good at reacting to unusual stimuli, so for a moment you just stare at the source of the offending noise from your upside-down spot on the futon. That did not just happen. Nope. No one's out there. Wait, sh*t, this is probably some kind of test Bro's setting up for you. Of course it is.

Well, what the f*ck would he want you to do, if this is a goddamn test?

Answer the door, probably, you decide when whoever the f*ck's there knocks again. The fact that this time it's seven knocks in a distinct five-and-two pattern just confirms that this is some kind of joke thing.

(Just because you know it's either a joke or a test or both doesn't stop you from locating the nearest sword, leaning it up against the wall by the door where it's within easy reach. Better safe than sorry.)

The fact that the guy standing there with his hand up to knock again is dressed head-to-toe in black and red leather with not one inch of skin showing kind of throws you for a loop.The upside is that you seem to throw him for just as much of a loop, though; he just stands there for a second, tilting his head to one side and just staring down at you.

You give him a reasonable amount of time to start the script that Bro must've given him, then decide that he's not gonna do that. Actually, going by that getup, you guess you might've been wrong about what's going on. "Dude, if you're here to f*ck my bro, you kinda f*cked up your dates."

"Ooh, if he's the guy I think he is, he's hot in a f*cked-up way, but no." The guy's tone really doesn't match the full-face hood at all; he sounds flippant, sarcastic, amused, literally anything other than the stoic-ass dom voice that you really expected. He shakes his head slightly, digs around in a pocket that you also didn't expect to exist in that outfit, and comes up with a crumpled piece of paper, holding it out to you. "This guy, right?"

You take the paper even though you can already see that it's definitely Bro's picture on it, black and white and with the low quality of an old-ass printer that needs either a serious overhaul or just plain old retirement. God, he looks pissed in this pic. You're not really sure why he'd send this one to a potential hookup...

"So am I at the right place or not?" the guy asks, before you can ponder that question a bit longer.

"I mean, I guess, but your timing's sh*t. He's not here." And hasn't been for like a week. (Nine days. You always keep track of how long he's gone.)

"I'm fine with waiting." And the arrogant son of a bitch steps forward, and your dumb ass steps back because he's tall, okay, he's closer to Bro's size than yours and he moves like he knows you'll get out of his way. It's a f*cking intimidation thing, you can't prevent your reaction to it even if you should be able to, and two seconds later he's in the apartment and shutting the door behind him without even f*cking asking if he can come in.

If this is a test, you're pretty sure you just failed it. "Dude, what the f*ck?"

"Hey, don't swear at me, kid—you're like ten, shouldn't you be in school right now?"

"I'm thirteen and I'm f*cking homeschooled, asshole." He's already headed further into the apartment; you dart in between him and the door and cross your arms, blocking his path to the kitchen with a level of efficiency that can be called minor at best. "Who the hell are you, anyway?"

Despite your expectations, he doesn't immediately shove you out of his way. What he does do is huff, mirror your irritated posture, and move his head in that tiny unconscious way people do when they're rolling their eyes. "Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously! I don't give a f*ck if you're Bro's new f*ckbuddy—"

"Which I'm not—"

"—you can't just come in here and expect me to let you do whatever the f*ck you want!" The next thing you're gonna bring up is gonna be the fact that you have a sword. It's gonna sound stupid as sh*t, but you're perfectly capable of proving that it's not an empty threat if need be. "Who. The f*ck. Are you?"

The guy laughs. "Oh my god."

"What?"

"You've got to be like the only thirteen year old in America who doesn't know who Deadpool is."

Oh hell no. Oh hell no. Oh hell f*cking no. There is no f*cking way that this dude's Deadpool, this is one hundred percent one of Bro's weird setups. This is a f*cking joke. This is not f*cking happening.

The idiot who thinks he's Deadpool takes this opportunity to gently nudge you out of the doorway and slip into the kitchen. Not exactly a place you want him to be. (Honestly, though, this whole f*cking apartment is a place you don't want him to be.)

"Hey—you get the f*ck back in here!"

"Nope." He scoops up a smuppet that you thought you banished to one of the cabinets, examining the thing's vacuous face for a second before poking curiously at the plush rump. "...is this what I think it is?"

"It's a smuppet."

"So...a weird sex toy." He flicks at the smuppet's bulbous nose, feeling the material it's made out of. "A really weird sex toy."

You're so not dignifying that with an answer. You don't think about what your bro uses the smuppets for, other than hurling at you and leaving in prominent places around the apartment. Nope. Not thinking about that at all. Not one bit. You will, however, comment on him trying to stuff it into one of his pockets.

"Dude. It's not gonna fit."

"Hey, I specialize in making things fit places they shouldn't. What's your name, anyway? I only got the last name from the lady who hired me; can't exactly just call you Strider, can I?"

"f*ck you."

"Hi there, f*ck You, I'm Deadpool!" He switches the smuppet from his right hand to his left and holds his hand out to you like he expects you to shake it. Yeah, you're not doing that. After a minute he seems to realize that you're not gonna cooperate, shrugging and going back to poking at various bits of the smuppet's anatomy. "Okay, fine, I get that you're not all that into touching. Cool, whatever."

"You do know nobody can tell if you're sulking under the mask, right?" (That's a lie. You can totally tell that he's sulking.)

"I'm not sulking." Finally, the guy gives up on forcing the smuppet down into his pocket and drops it back on the counter. You take this opportunity to grab the damn thing by one spindly arm, shove it into the cabinet under the counter with the rest of its plush brethren, and force the door shut again.

When you look up, the weird Deadpool cosplayer's standing in front of the fridge with one hand on the handle. Even through your instinctive spike of alarm, some part of your brain takes note of the fact that he's even got the dual katanas strapped to his back. Maybe the thought process of damn, he's pretty accurate with this getup is what takes up the time that you should be spending warning him about what he's about to do, because you open your mouth and know you're too late to stop him opening that f*cking fridge.

He pulls the door open and everything inside (swords, knives, a couple shuriken because why the hell not) tumble right the f*ck out. It's ungodly loud, and you can't help but flinch down, shut your eyes for just a second, and then flinch again because you flinched in the first place even though you really don't need to, Bro ain't here, it's fine.

So yeah, you kind of don't see the exact impact, but you look up and the guy's staring down at the knife in his arm. Like, you know that one, it's a sh*tty ornamental dagger that Bro ordered off some cheap website, spent a week sharpening until it could cut through meat like butter. You know that knife, how long it is, and at least four inches of it are buried in this guy's forearm.

Oh, god. You f*cking freeze.

"Well," the guy says, in an utterly unperturbed tone, "that sucks."

When he reaches up for it, your voice comes back. "Wait, sh*t, don't do that—"

Too f*cking late. He jerks the knife out, and blood sprays across everything in front of him.

It's a good thing that your brain will, given enough of a problem, just kind of turn off. This amount of blood counts as a f*cking problem, which means that you almost pass out, but then things in your head get weird and calm and you kind of take a mental step back while your body yanks a drawer open, grabs a dishtowel that's already got your bloodstains on it from a strife cleanup sometime in the past, and pulls the stupid f*cker's wrist down so you can reach his arm to wrap the towel around the cut. He's still gonna bleed, nothing you can do is gonna really stop that, he needs to go to the f*cking hospital—

"Ow."

"Yeah, ow, why the f*ck would you—"

"Just let go, kid, I'm fine."

You open your mouth to protest that he is the exact f*cking opposite of fine, that this is called going into f*cking shock, and close it again as he peels your hands off his arm like you're not putting as much pressure on the wound as you possibly can. He's f*cking strong.

He's also not bleeding anymore.

This is the moment when you accept that yeah, this ain't a cosplayer or some weird crazy dude. This is Deadpool.

You accept that, and at the exact same time you drop the towel and bolt for your room.

Chapter 2: Wade: Smuppets, Shades, and Kids With Swords

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Well, that didn't go well.

The kid's noped out of being in the same room with you, which you kind of understand; it's not the first time it's happened, after all. You're actually kind of surprised that it took this long, that he stayed through the bleeding and only ran when he saw that it stopped.

Honestly, it's actually good that he's out of here. You're here to kill his brother; he probably doesn't need to see that. Plus he'd probably get in the way, one way or another...but on the other hand, you do have a sneaking suspicion that he's the guy you're really here for; you'll have to keep track of him if you want to get paid. The mysterious Miss Lalonde might have a substantial hatred for the elder Strider, but her concern for the younger is the real reason why you're here.

Which is f*cked, really. You're not a babysitter.

...well, actually, that's a lie. You're pretty damn willing to be anything, if somebody's paying you enough. Which means that yes, your current job is to extricate a piece of cord from one of your pockets and use it to secure the knife you just pulled out of your arm to the harness that keeps your main swords in place, and then to start hunting down the kid that you're pretty sure is Dave Strider.

(What? It's your knife now. If it stabs you, it's yours. That's just how things are.)

The kid isn't in the main room; the first room you check is probably your mark's, going by the number of those creepy little sex toys scattered over the floor. The idea of checking out the impressive computer setup that takes up most of one wall is tempting, to say the least, but finding the kid comes first. Close to first. Snagging one of the finger-sized muppet things off the desk comes first. Finding out that you can't keep it in your pocket because it starts vibrating when squeezed comes second. Realizing you can clip it to one of the straps on your harness comes third.

This little guy's name is...can you name him Lil' Smut Man? Probably. Wait, sh*t, there's a kid in this fic with you, you probably shouldn't name your new friend that. Junior. Deadpool Junior. Doohickey Deadpool Junior. Okay you should maybe stop before his name gets any longer.

You clip Doohickey to one of your harness straps, check that he's not vibrating, and retreat from the room before you can get curious enough to start really poking around. That can wait until you've sorted out the issue at hand.

What was the issue at hand, exactly?

Oh yeah, the kid. Probably-Dave. Well, there's a couple possible doors to check.

Door one is the bathroom! He's not in there. Of course he isn't; what kind of kid hides in a bathroom? Actually, that could be something that kids normally do. You don't really know a lot about kids. You wouldn't do it, but then again you were kind of a f*cked up kid.

Then again...you kind of suspect that this kid's also f*cked up. Just a suspicion. Something about the fact that you're being paid to kill his guardian by someone who's obviously worried about him, something about the sex toys and the weapons in the fridge and just. Yeah. You can kill people that you don't have any specific opinion on, but you're already disliking this Strider character.

Anyway.

The second door is just a flight of stairs, despite the fact that this is the top floor. What, does this go up to the roof? He's probably not through there. Isn't the roof usually off-limits for tenants?

Door number three it is.

Okay, this one's his room. It's not so much the posters on the walls or the elaborate turntable setup in the one corner that tips you off, as it is the fact that he's crouched in the middle of the space in a more than passable combat stance, complete with drawn sword.

Ooh. Sword. You're guessing that it's the mate to the one still displayed on the wall; the hilts match, even if you can only see the blade on the one that the kid seems ready to fillet you with. It doesn't look all that fancy, but it does look plenty sharp enough to slice a couple chunks off you. He seems to be ready to use it to slice those chunks off, too.

You're still not going to draw your own swords, though. Instead you stop in the door, lean against the frame, and tell him, "Relax, Dave. I'm not here for you. Well, I kind of am, but not in the death and mutilation way."

"Do you think you're being reassuring right now? Like is that the vibe you're going for?"

"I don't do reassuring very well. Something about people not trusting the guy with a mask on."

"Good point. Take it the f*ck off."

Well, sh*t. "You're not going to like that."

This kid has the elusive expression of gee, you f*cking think? down to an absolute science. You feel honored to be on the receiving end of this. "Yeah, and I'm just loving the rest of this sh*t. Mask off."

"Shades off, then. Who wears shades in the house, anyway?"

"f*ck you."

"Uncalled for." You might as well give him what he wants, though. Where's he going to go, out the window? "Keep in mind that I'm going to be upset if you stab me, kid..."

Interesting. That's what gets him to lower the sword just a tad, relax a smidge. Would that be because what you said could come across as a veiled threat, or because he just figured out that there's not a lot of point to cutting someone who heals more or less immediately? Eh, either way you're happy with this result. It's definitely enough of a concession for you to reach up and find the bottom edge of your hood, pull it up enough to expose your face. Most of your face. Almost all of your face. Enough of your face that Dave's face twists up in what starts as disgust and ends up as...

Curiousity? That definitely looks like curiousity. This kid is seriously weird.

"Are you satisfied?"

"Nope. Leave it off." There goes the curiousity, to be replaced by pure obstinance. You're really beginning to like this kid. "What the f*ck do you mean, you're not here for me but you are here for me?"

Oh, he's not going to like this. Should you lie to him? Probably. Are you going to lie to him? Yeah, no. He's thirteen, not an idiot. Being thirteen probably makes him an idiot by default, but not the kind that's going to buy any of the halfassed lies you could come up with as explanations.

So you shrug, and you tell him the truth.

"I'm being paid a frankly obscene amount of money to kill your brother—"

Dave instantly falls back into that defensive stance, sword coming back up like he's expecting you to start the assassinations with him, in the absence of your actual target. "Like f*ck you are—you're going through me first—"

"Whoa there, cowboy. I don't get paid more than expenses unless I bring you to the lady who hired me. I mean, she's been pretty generous with those expenses, but still."

"No f*ckin' way am I going anywhere with you!"

Damn. You sigh, rub at your forehead, remember that leather gloves plus tender scarred skin equals a substantial amount of pain, and stop doing that. "Lalonde could have told me you were going to be this stubborn."

"...Lalonde." The sword goes down again, as Dave's face goes blank with what you're going to guess is shock. "Rose? Rose is doing this sh*t? Why the f*ck—"

"No clue! Asking for motivations isn't what I get paid for. In fact, digging too far into sh*t tends to get me not paid." You decide that Dave might be just distracted enough to make taking a step further into the room safe. And it kind of is; he doesn't actually stab you. "It might be your Rose, might not. You could check yourself. Maybe do it somewhere else, if Strider Senior is going to be home any time soon."

"I don't have a f*cking clue when he'll come back," Dave says. Of course, as soon as that's out of his mouth you hear the door to the apartment open.

"sh*t." The two of you say it in near-perfect unison; his is low and breathless, yours comes out as almost a hiss. He looks up at you and opens his mouth again, but you're next to him and muzzling him with one hand before he can make another sound. Your other hand's occupied with twisting the sword away from him; this also means you end up cutting open your glove and your palm. This job is turning out to be pretty hard on your gear.

"Is there a fire escape out that window?" You keep your voice low, just enough for Dave to understand you, and you don't let him go even when he makes a muffled sound in response to your question. "Nod or shake, kid."

It's a nod.

"Get out on it. Does it go up to the roof?"

Nod.

"Get up there, stay up there. I'll come get you." When he shakes his head, you take your hand off his mouth.

"He's gonna kill you," Dave whispers as soon as you let go. He flinches again, at the sound of another door opening and shutting; at least it's not the door to this room, thank god. You actually left the door to this room open. If he looks in here, you're going to have a serious problem. "You're the one who needs to get the hell out, he's gonna—"

You muzzle him again. "I'm the main character here, kid. I have plot immunity, you don't, now move, okay? Vamoose. Shoo."

The noise he makes behind your hand suggests that he doesn't believe you. Still, when you turn him loose, he only hesitates for a second before he slips out the open window.

It's perfect timing, too; you have just enough time to pull the mask back down and turn around before a roughly irritated voice with an edge of a southern drawl that's just pronounced enough to sound douchey asks, "Who the f*ck're you supposed to be?"

He can't see it, but you still grin as you reach over your shoulders to grab both of your swords. "Do none of you know about me? Never heard of Deadpool? What's your problem, exactly?"

You're not really sure where he grabs a sword from, but he's got one in his hand even before you finish talking. Which is something you're one hundred percent fine with.

Time to start earning that obscene amount of money.

Chapter 3: Dave: Text Messages/Beatdown

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You go. You scramble up those f*cking stairs like Bro's waiting for you at the top, even though it's the exact f*cking opposite, and somehow the knowledge that you're running away from a strife is worse than knowing that he's waiting up here to kick your ass could ever be.

Maybe it's because he would f*cking kill you for running from him. Maybe it's because you know that he's gonna kill someone else because you ran.

God, you're going to be the one to get Deadpool killed. You're going to get the Deadpool wasted, because you couldn't shut this sh*t down and get rid of him before Bro got back. f*ck, you can even go further back and say that this is your fault because something you said tipped Rose off that you've been lying to her for years, that you don't really go to school and Bro's gone a hell of a lot more than you tell her and when he's here life is f*cking hell—

sh*t. sh*t.

You pull yourself up over the last gap of bare concrete where whoever built the fire escape didn't bother to connect it to the roof itself, just lay there on your side gasping in panic more than exertion, and try to connect your scattered thoughts.

It doesn't work all that well. You can't think when you're scared, and you're pretty damn scared right now. One thought does stand out, though, and it seems logical enough: you need to contact Rose. Like, now.

So you force yourself to your feet, stagger over to the AC unit so you can have at least the illusion of cover, and dig your phone out of your pocket.

Goddamnit. Your hands are shaking.

TG: turntechGodhead [TG] started pestering TT: tentacleTherapist!

TG: rose
TG: rose you need to answer me right now
TG: god what the f*ck did you do
TG: why the hell would you do this rose
TG: you sent this guy here and hes gonna get f*cking killed you know that right
TG: why the f*ck would you do this when you know i can handle bro

TT: Dave.

TG: no
TG: dont you f*cking say my name like you think im being f*ckin unreasonable
TG: theres a guy downstairs who says hes gonna kill bro and we both know hes not
TG: he cant
TG: nobody can kill bro rose you dont get it
TG: you havent seen him fight

TT: Dave, I've seen him fight. I've seen him fight you, specifically.
TT: Dirk and Hal hacked into his cameras six months ago. We've been watching him and trying to decide what to do about it.

TG: who the f*ck is hal why would you bring someone into strider sh*t
TG: you didnt f*cking need to do anything

TT: Dirk's made some...choices, in the last year. Let's just say that he has a brother now.

TG: what the f*ck are you talking about
TG: nevermind i dont f*cking care
TG: call your hitman off

TT: No.

TG: goddamnit rose
TG: please
TG: bros gonna kill him

TT: Dave, the entire reason that Hal and Roxy spent the time and effort to acquire enough money to tempt this specific individual to accept this job is that he can't be killed, so far as anyone can find out.
TT: And plenty of people have tried, trust me.

TG: you brought roxy into this

TT: She's family, Dave.

TG: bros my f*cking family and youre f*cking killing him

TT: He doesn't deserve to be your family. He hurts you, Dave. He comes very f*cking close to killing you, too regularly for any of us to be comfortable with.
TT: Do I need to start sending you the footage that Hal saved in case we get caught? Because I can prove that this is completely justifiable, in defense of you.

TG: i f*cking know that rose i know its my fault

TT: What?
TT: Why would this be your fault?

Your fingers freeze over the screen as you try to think how to answer that. You don't know how to answer it—you just know that it's your fault, it is, it always is, you f*ck up and the consequences fall on you like they always do, like they should, except this time they're on Bro and that's not something that can ever logically happen. It's not going to happen. Can't. Bro won't die. You don't know what'll happen, but you know that he won't die, and that you're probably going to bleed for this.

There's no way to tell Rose that that won't make everything worse. And you can't f*cking think of a lie that'll work. Maybe if you had time you could, but you don't have that time. Any time that you might've had evaporates when the door that leads to the stairs down to the apartment slams open.

Oh, sh*t. Your first instinct is to just cringe down into the hard angle that metal makes with concrete, try to melt into nothingness so he won't see you. Which is stupid; he knows exactly where you are already, he just...he can't see you yet.

You can't escape this sh*t. Not by hiding.

You lay your phone down, inhale cool air and exhale some infintesimal fraction of the dread in your chest, and stand up.

"What the f*ck, lil' man?" Bro's standing in the doorway to the stairs, leaning on the doorframe like he needs to support to keep from collapsing. Your stomach twists as you look at him; he's hurt worse than you've been in any but the worst kind of strifes, shirt torn across his chest to show bleeding slashes underneath. It's not just his chest, either; both his arms are marked with red, and he's holding his katana left-handed because there's very f*cking obviously something wrong with his right arm. Like, the blood starts at his shoulder and covers his arm like a wet red sleeve. "Who the hell was that asshole?"

Was.

You knew this was going to happen. You knew it.

Knowing doesn't equal being ready for it. You should be ready for the news that your bro killed Deadpool, but he says that and your stupid f*cking eyes fill up with enough tears to blur him into a red-and-white mess.

This is your f*cking fault.

"Lil' man. What the hell's going on?" His tone's going rougher, more irritated under the pain that he's only half-managing to hide. You need to answer him, even if it's just to lie and say that you don't know, but for once in your life you can't manage to say a f*cking word. "f*cking talk to me, kid, we both know you ain't hurt. Dave!"

He takes a step forward and you take a step back and hit the AC unit at your back and f*ck, he's got his sword and yours is still on the floor in your room where Deadpool made you drop it, this is one of your nightmares playing out in midmorning daylight, you can't—

Bro drops his sword and grabs your arm. His hand's wet, and thinking about what that wetness is sends you into complete vaporlock. Like, you stop hearing him, you don't feel how his fingers dig into your biceps even though that's gonna leave bruises and ache for days, you don't feel how much it hurts when he shoves you back into the hard surface behind you.

You close your eyes when he lets you go. You could've done it sooner—he can't see your eyes behind your shades—but some part of you wants to know when the blow's coming.

Closing your eyes means that you don't see him pull back to hit you, though. At least you're still too out of it for it to hurt right away.

It's gonna make him angrier, but you let yourself fall and curl up on the concrete surface of the roof, rather than open your eyes and face him. What's he gonna do, kill you too?

Maybe. f*ckin' maybe. At least then you wouldn't have to explain what happened to Rose. At least then you wouldn't have to deal with next time...nah, he'd never let you out of this sh*t like that. He is gonna hurt you, though, you know that, so you just lay there and wait for whatever comes next.

Nothing comes.

Some too-long measure of time later, metal clangs on the concrete, and there's a heavy thud. It's not a combination of sounds that you can make any sense out of, but you don't want to get up. Curiousity can't override whatever the f*ck you've got going right now.

Hands on your shoulders make you curl up tighter, but after a second you realize that they're gentle, more like he's checking you for injuries than trying to make you get up. He's saying something, too, but you can't...there's no way you can force yourself to really listen.

Either you're gonna be hurt, or you're not. There's nothing you can do either way. Not for another couple minutes, at least.

Chapter 4: Wade: Speedster's Demise

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Holy f*ck that bastard's fast. Fast enough to take you down, which is definitely saying something. If you weren't the kind of guy who doesn't stay down from anything short of—eh, actually you've never found anything that can put you down for more than an hour or so. And this isn't going to break that streak, either.

Strider's chop job has you down and out of commission for all of ten minutes, though. It's pretty damn impressive, if you wanted to be impressed by a guy like this. Which you don't. He's finished the job you started, of ruining this outfit; you're so taking the cost to replace it out of whatever funds he's got around, once you finish taking it out of his hide.

Which you're going to do, just as soon as your lungs finish regenerating so you have enough oxygen to sustain movement. God, this is your literal least favorite thing to have to heal. Except maybe your dick. That sh*t stings like hell. Wait, there you go, you can breathe again without feeling air come out where it's not supposed to. Thank you, healing factor.

You roll up to your feet, testing to check that everything's functioning properly (it is) and glancing aroung to see if you can spot the bitch that you just failed to kill (you can't.) Wherever he's gone, he's taken one of your swords with him; he apparently couldn't get his own blade out of the wall. You're proud of your ability to guess where a wall stud is and embed a sword into it. It's like your superpower.

It's not too deep for you to wrench it out of the wall, though. Damn, this one's kind of a piece of sh*t, now that you look at it, but it'll work well enough. Your other sword's on the floor; you scoop it up, wipe the blood off on your sleeve—one of the few relatively undamaged patches of cloth on your upper body—and sheath it back in its proper place.

Poor thing's probably lonely back there all alone.

"We'll have your sister back in a minute, sweetie. Doohickey'll keep you company until we kill the bad man and rescue the fair damsel."

(Yes, you talk to your swords. Why not? f*ck off.)

Now, to get to the killing of the aforementioned bad man. He hasn't left many clues as to his whereabouts, other than the one big obvious one that you see as soon as you step out of Dave's room—the second door, the one that you assumed goes up to the roof, is half-open, a smear of blood left across it like a nice clear signpost screaming I'm a bastard and I went this way, please come stick several sharp things into various parts of my anatomy!

Well, who are you to disobey that kind of order?

The stairs are steep as hell, because of course they are. You're actually kind of surprised Strider decided to make his way up here, injured as you know you left him. The obvious explanation is that he wants to check on his kid as soon as humanly possible.

Somehow, that seems like a bad thing to you. It shouldn't, but it does. And when you get all the way up the stairs, even before your eyes adjust to the brighter sunlight up here, your suspicious mind's vindicated by the way Strider's standing over Dave, the way the kid's curled on the ground, the look on that bastard's face.

He's holding his sword, too. Got it half-raised already. What the f*ck is he planning to do with it? You don't intend to find out.

"Hey! Pick on someone your own size, maybe?"

His expression when he hears your voice is priceless. What it changes to when you bury the sword you pulled out of the wall in his throat is somehow even better.

Strider opens his mouth and blood comes out. He drops your sword, reaches up with his good hand to grope at the blade sticking out of his throat. He can't quite reach far enough to get the hilt, which is a good sign. Means he's dying faster instead of slower.

He's not going down fast enough for you, though, so you speed up that process a little by stepping close enough to punch that stupid face as hard as you can. (That's pretty damn hard, for anyone who's wondering. Plenty hard enough to knock him down and out, where he can finish drowning in his own blood somewhere out of your way.)

Okay, now to deal with your main concern. The kid. Dave, who hasn't moved at all despite the fact that you just killed his brother three feet away from him. f*ck, that bastard hurt him, didn't he?

"Dave? Hey, kiddo, can you look at me?" He doesn't move at all, but when you kneel next to him and go to turn him over so you can get a look at him you get the reaction of a slight but obvious shudder, and him cringing down and away from you. "Okay, yep, you can't, I get it, but I'm still going to need to take a look at you..."

If he makes one move to try to get away, you'll back off. He doesn't, though, and you're worried about him above and beyond the whole issue of not getting paid if you don't get him to Lalonde in one piece.

(No. You're not going soft. You like kids, okay? f*ck, if she'd given you the deets on this whole sh*tshow, you probably would've came down and got him for just travel expenses. Maybe not even that; the way Dave's just shut down suggests that the bastard who's currently making sick gurgling sounds somewhere behind you is significantly worse than you actually thought.)

He's not badly hurt, at least. Not hurt at all, beyond a bruise rising across one side of his face.

"Oh, thank god. Here, come on, kid..."

When you pull Dave halfway up to a proper sitting position, his eyes finally snap open, staring up at you with what starts as fear and almost immediately moves on to pure confusion. sh*t, his brother's still dying or dead behind you—

"What the f*ck..." Dave doesn't actually resist when you wrap one arm around him and shift him slightly to put yourself between him and the not-quite-corpse. All he does is close those surprisingly red eyes again, hold himself stiff like he thinks he's not allowed to lean against you even the slightest bit. "Bro—he said he—"

"Killed me? Yeah, that never sticks." You have no idea if he knows what you mean. He sure doesn't answer. "You okay?"

Again, you don't get an answer, per se, but you do get a response in the form of something that approximates a question, in a very quiet voice that suggest he already knows what you're going to say. "Bro?"

Ooh, sh*t. Yeah. "Uh." That's very good, Wade. Don't give him any reassurance at all, but also don't answer his question. "...I almost feel like I should say I'm sorry, but I'm really not." Goddamnit, Wade, that's actually worse. Congratulations.

And the kid takes it about as well as can be expected, which is to say that he mumbles, "Oh, my god," and shifts to wrap his arms around himself. He doesn't actually pull away from you, but rather seems to shrink down into himself, like he's trying not to touch anyone or anything. "Dude, I...f*ck."

You've suceeded in traumatizing a kid. Good f*cking job, Wade.

Okay. f*ck what you're being paid for, your new job is to make sure he's going to be okay. Somehow.

"C'mon. Come here." Again, he doesn't move, but at least he doesn't pull away when you shift to scoop him up in your arms and rise to your feet. You put one hand over his eyes when he tries to look over at the dead body, though. "Nope. You don't want to see that, trust me on this."

"He's my f*cking brother." Still quiet. Shaky, now. That's probably not great.

"It's a dead body. He was a motherf*cker that I would've killed for free, if anyone bothered to tell me what the f*ck was going on here." Like seriously, what the f*ck's wrong with Lalonde? Did she not research you at all? Does no one here know who you are? sh*t, you sound like a soccer mom throwing a fit at Target. "Don't look."

"You won't f*cking let me, asshole." Damn, he gets even quieter when he calls you that, like he thinks you're going to retaliate. Which you're not. You are an asshole. "Put me down."

"In a minute." The door to the stairs is still half-open. You nudge it the rest of the way open and head down, careful where you put your feet because if you fall now, he'll be hurt, and that's not f*cking acceptable. Not to you.

...you've got a feeling that you're only going to get more attatched to this kid, and somehow you're much less worried about that than you probably should be.

Chapter 5: Dave: Hands Off? Yeah, Maybe Not So Much

Chapter Text

You should be making more of a f*cking effort to get away from this f*cking murderer, but...you can't think. You can't breathe. You can't do anything, not even raise your arms to push his hand away from your eyes so you can see.

Bro's dead. Bro's dead, you didn't see the body but you don't need to. You do need to, but you can't. You can't, because the guy who's carrying you oh-so-carefully down the stairs that you've gone down in about every varying and violent way possible won't f*cking let you. At least, you think he won't let you, because you still can't manage to force yourself into any kind of action.

Because Bro's dead. Because you keep running up against that in any train of thought you start. God, what are you going to do?

"Oh, sh*t," Deadpool mumbles, and finally takes his hand away from your eyes. (Not that it matters. You closed them almost before he went to block your sight. "Hey. Dave. Hey."

Nope. You're not answering. You're done answering anything, you've made up your mind about that. But you do open your eyes when he sets you down gently, out of concern for where the hell you are.

Bro's room. Bro's f*cking desk chair. This isn't optimal.

"Dave," Deadpool says again, kneeling down in front of the chair so he has to look up at you instead of the other way around, "look, this isn't my specialty, okay? If it was up to me I'd be handing you off to someone who actually f*cking knows how to handle this level of sh*t—"

CPS, your brain whispers through the weird half-calm curtain it's shoved down over the panic that's trying to rise into existence, and okay, that's a bad thought. If you weren't shaking before, you are now, and hey, you can get at least one word out, apparently.

"No. No, no—"

"Okay, okay, jesus!" You just managed to startle Deadpool, apparently. God, you wish you could see his face, and maybe he picks up on that because the next thing he does is to push his mask up again, meeting your eyes.

Oh, f*ck. Your shades. Bro knocked them off. f*ck. You can't even think about going up there to get them right now.

"I'm not going to dump you with anyone." It doesn't sound like a lie. A lot of things don't sound like lies, though. "Hell, I don't really know what we're doing, but that's not on the table, I swear...sit tight for a bit, alright?"

Like you could do anything else. Deadpool waits for a response for a couple seconds, then nods, rising to his feet again and stepping over to Bro's dresser.

You should probably stop him from going through that sh*t. Or at least warn him that there's a nonzero chance that the sh*t's booby-trapped...but no. Can't. All you can really do is watch as he starts methodically taking everything out of each drawer and dropping it onto the floor.

"Everything" is mostly smuppets and pieces of smuppets, in this drawer. You're gonna just...close your eyes again. And keep them closed for as long as you can get away with, which is longer than you expected but not as long as you'd really like to deny the existance of the universe. You keep your eyes closed, until the little noises of probably-not-breakable things hitting the floor stop and Deadpool says, "sh*t," in a mildly surprised tone.

Which means that you really have to check and see what exactly he's surprised at. Did he get down to the third drawer, find Bro's actual stash of non-plush smut supplies?

The answer is no. He's got—oh, f*ck. The sight of the loop of black-and-chrome metal in his hands is enough to make you instinctively push the chair you're in back, duck your head down to protect your neck from having that f*cking collar clasped around it again; it's almost enough to make you want to stand up and abscond right the f*ck out the door—

You must make some small noise doing all this, because Deadpool looks up at you and raises an eyebrow, waggling the collar at you. "You know what this is, right?"

Of course you know what that f*cking thing is. "I—yeah. 's a f*ckin' shock collar. Or something. Hurts like hell."

"...what?" Of all the reactions you expected from him, complete bafflement wasn't one of them. "That's not...huh. Hmm."

When he undoes the clasp at the back and reaches up to hook the collar around his own neck, you're on your feet before you really think what you're doing through. It's the memory of the sick throbbing pain in the back of your head that's really driving you, the way that you couldn't think straight for hours after Bro called an end to the strife and took the f*cking thing off you.

This guy killed your bro, but he doesn't f*cking deserve to go through that.

You're too slow to stop him from putting it on, but thankfully he's already pulling it back off before you really finish getting to your feet, his face twisting up in a grimace that you can't quite read the emotion behind. Not pure pain, anyway. Maybe disgust. "Yeah, that's not just a shock collar. He put that on you?"

"It was a f*cking test." You have to defend Bro. You have to. "He—it's a test, he just—he wanted to see if I could—if I could still fight, it's not—"

"You fought with this on?" Deadpool flips the collar into the air and catches it again, frowning when you flinch. "Hey, I'm not going to put it on you."

"I know, just—" God, you're so f*cking stupid. "Put it back."

"Nah, I think this one's coming with us." At least he tosses it over onto the bed instead of holding onto it, though. "Military-grade suppression collars are pretty f*cking valuable; it'd be a waste to just torch it with everything else."

Wait, what? "Suppression collar."

"Yep." He's already digging around in the next drawer. "The tech's usually kept under pretty tight wraps, I know some people who—"

"It's not a f*cking suppression collar."

"...no, it definitely is, kid, I know what having my healing factor put on pause feels like."

"Those don't do anything if you're normal."

"Yeah, so? You're related to a speedster; this stuff runs in the family."

Are you panicking? You're panicking. "I'm not a f*cking mutant—"

"Collars don't f*ck with normies." How the f*ck can he sound so nonchalant? Doesn't he f*cking know what it'd mean if you're not normal? It means your life's f*cking over, Bro won't—

Wait.

The pure fear of being something that he hates as much as he hates mutants crashes into that goddamn elusive knowledge that he's lying dead up on the roof, and holy sh*t that physically hurts, something sharp and immobile settling into your throat as your breath hitches once and twice and god, you can't do this. You can't cry, you're not f*cking allowed to do that, you can't—

"f*ck." Deadpool sums up a lot of your current mental state with that one word. You close your eyes when he actually turns toward you, even though that means you lose any lil' bit of plausible denial that you're not crying because it forces tears out of your eyes, down your face, holy sh*t you f*cking hate this. You hate this. You hate you.

Again, the exact last thing that you actually expect happens. Like, this is something that doesn't f*cking happen, period, even more than someone knocking at the door.

Deadpool wraps his arms around you, pulls you gently closer until you give up and let yourself lean against him. Gently really is the key word here; it's not so much the hug that's f*cking you up as it is how goddamn cautious he's being. Like you're gonna break, like you deserve to not be broken.

God. You don't get it. You don't understand one f*cking thing that's happened today, and maybe part of that's just because your brain's being a dumb bitch that wants to keep you from falling apart even more than you are now (if that's even possible) but you're f*cking done. If Deadpool's gonna put himself this close in this specific way, damn right you're going to latch onto him, bury your face in leather that doesn't soak up liquid like cloth should, and cry like a f*cking baby.

Chapter 6: Wade: Kids These Days

Chapter Text

You realize that you've pushed too hard right before the kid closes his eyes. Of course you did—subtley hasn't ever been your forte, and it's not like you can change that on command. Especially when no one bothered to give you the command. You could have maybe given yourself the command, but that didn't happen.

So now you're standing here. Just...holding onto him, wondering what the f*ck to do. Like you told him before, you don't usually stick around for this point: you slice 'n dice the abuser, yoink the kids out of the aftermath, and hand them over to someone qualified before they lose their sh*t over the scary red man who just caused major f*cking mayhem in their immediate vicinity. You might have to keep the kids calm for a couple minutes until you get them somewhere safe, but really getting them through the horrible sh*t?

It's not something you have experience with. You honestly don't know what to do for Dave, other than hold onto him and wait to see if he's going to stop sobbing against your chest.

Eventually, he does. Or at least, it tapers off to little broken sniffles, and he pulls away to stumble back over to the chair you put him in at first, almost fall down and start rubbing at his eyes.

The poor kid looks even younger now than you assumed he was at first. God damn it.

"Dave—"

"You say sh*t about bein' sorry 'n I'm gonna stab you."

"Oh. Okay then." (You still seriously consider saying it. Just because. Maybe stabbing you would actually make him feel better...yeah, no, this kid isn't quite as much of a weirdo as you are.) "Uh...you know we're going to have to go soon, right?"

"Yeah. I guess."

"There's not going to be anything to come back to—"

"I need to get my stuff, I know that, okay, I—"

"Hey, all you need to do is tell me what you want, Dave." You don't really want him going back in his room; you kind of left a disturbing amount of blood on the floor. "Give me a list, I'll gather it up for you."

Dave's had both hands over his face since he sat down. Now he pulls one away for the sole purpose of flipping you off. You're not entirely sure that you deserved that.

You're about to tell him as much, when the main monitor in the fancy-ass setup on the opposite wall lights up and makes a startup sound that you're pretty sure hasn't been in use on any model made in the last ten years.

Ooh. What's this?

Dave...will probably be fine for a minute. It's not like you're going anywhere; just stepping over to the computer and checking out what exactly is onscreen.

It's a chat client. Not one that you've seen before, which isn't all that surprising since your main social media pastime is getting in fights that can't exceed a couple hundred letters per side at a time. This is text-based, color-coded, and hey, you're already signed in on someone else's profile. Probably Strider's.

The red text onscreen leaves no doubt about the person on the other end's knowlege of who they're talking to, though.

AI: Hello, Wade.

...hm.

TT: Sorry, no Wade here. Want me to take a message?

AI: That's a weak attempt at subterfuge. And "weak" is being generous.
AI: Miss Lalonde sends her regards. She says to tell you that you need to remember to retrieve Dave's phone, and his shades.
AI: They're important to him, and he's lost enough today.

TT: Hey, if that's a dig on me completing the job YOU gave me, f*ck off.

AI: No. You're doing better than we expected.
AI: Well, other than letting your mark reach your charge. That was a bit less impressive than we expected.

TT: You shorted me on info, hot stuff. Strider's a f*cking speedster.
TT: Oh, excuse me. WAS a f*cking speedster.

AI: What?

TT: Oh my god.
TT: Do none of you know anything about anything? This is standard mutant terminology. Like I'm pretty sure the assholes in the government knows what a f*cking speedster is.

AI: I lived on the internet, douchebag, I know what a speedster is.
AI: Bro isn't a mutant.

TT: The twenty punctures that just finished healing in my lungs beg to differ.

AI: He's not a f*cking mutant.

TT: How are you doing that? Do you have any idea how much I want that added dramatic emphasis? It's kind of my thing.
TT: Anyway. He was a speedster, trust me on this one. Normal humans don't move that fast.

(You actually give your next sentence some thought. In the end, the fact that you need to find out whether or not you need to just take Dave and disappear where Lalonde and the guy you're talking to can't find either of you wins over your need to keep at least a couple cards close to your chest.)

TT: It runs in this family, too. The kid's some kind of mutant, even if he doesn't know what it is.

AI: ....sh*t.
AI: Are you serious? Are you sure?

TT: Again with the italics? You're kind of a douche, aren't you?

AI: Shut the f*ck up and answer my question.

TT: Pushy, pushy.

AI: I have the right to be pushy!

TT: Nah.

AI: You piece of sh*t.

artificialIntellect disconnected!

Uh, what?

TT: timausTestified [TT] started pestering tartareanTycoon!

TT: Hello.

TT: ...how many of you are there, exactly? Because I assumed Lalonde was Strider's angry ex or something when I took this job, and this is starting to look more complicated than I signed up for.

TT: There's enough of us to do what we need to do.

TT: I am f*cking surrounded by melodramatic teenagers.

TT: I'm not a teenager.
TT: Why would you say that? You don't even know who I am.

...holy sh*t. You didn't mean that whoever's on the other end of this was literally a teenager, but is there any other reason for them to get this defensive? No, no there is not.

Holy f*cking sh*t.

TT: Why the f*ck does Lalonde have a kid talking to me, exactly?

TT: You're delusional.

TT: I mean, yeah, that's not exactly a secret.

AI: You should probably check on Dave in the next five minutes.

Wait, didn't that guy disconnect? Wait. Why do you need to check on Dave.

"Uh-oh." Yeah, that becomes very f*cking apparent when you turn your head. The kid's gone from the spot he was in last time you looked, not in the room at all. sh*t, you lost him. You actually lost him.

The computer beeps at you, which is weird because it hasn't made a sound since those old-fashioned startup chimes. When you look back, there's more orange text.

TT: Don't panic. He's okay.

AI: I highly doubt that, Dirk.

(Oh hey. A name.)

TT: Fine. He's not okay. But he's in his room, packing.
TT: Leave him alone for another couple minutes.

TT: What if I don't feel like taking orders from a couple of kids?

AI: Dude, this is hard enough already. Let him pack his stuff and cry in private.

...oh.

AI: Anyway. You need to pick up a couple more things, and you're never going to find them by yourself.

TT: Again with the italics? Come on, gimme those.

AI: And you're calling us out for being childish?

TT: Yep!

TT: Hal, would you just give him what he f*cking wants?

AI: ...
AI: Fine. Enclose what you want in italics in forward slashes. I've added the necessary coding to Bro's profile.

TT: Oh?
TT: Oh?
TT: Hell yes.

AI: I am beginning to seriously wonder about Rose's decision to have you bring Dave home to us instead of getting him here some other way.
AI: It can't be helped now, though. So, you need to listen to me and cooperate, and this will be much easier for everyone involved.

Hm.

Okay, fine. You'll cooperate, for once in your life. But only because red text dude (Hal? Dirk called him Hal) is probably right about making this easier, and if it's easier for you it'll be easier for Dave. The kid deserves that much.

Chapter 7: Dave: "Goodbye" In Corvid

Chapter Text

You're fine. Like. Yeah, you could probably be making a better use of your time than just sitting here and watching the little loading symbol go around on your computer, but f*ck it. You need your music programs, okay? Them, and the comics even if they're super f*cking sh*tty, the literal thousands of selfies and the baby pics of the crows—

Oh, god. The crows. The f*cking crows.

It's not like you ever really stopped crying after you started back in Bro's room, but you'd gotten it down to something that was basically just your eyes leaking out a steady stream of tears onto your face. The realization that you're gonna have to walk away from the crows—most of whom you've watched go from eggs to ugly-cute featherless hatchlings to screaming reckless fledglings to black-feathered birds that named you with a caw that rises to almost match the tone you use when you talk to yourself in the damn empty apartment—all that starts you really crying again. Like, really crying. Like, you sob twice and try to muffle the sound and remember that you don't need to muffle it for anyone other than Deadpool, and you just...curl into yourself around the pain that shouldn't be there.

So yeah. Maybe you're not fine. Maybe you're on your knees with your head pressed against the concrete blocks that hold your desk up, sobbing so hard you can't breathe.

And of f*cking course, now is when the goddamn mutant steps into the doorway and says your name.

"Dave—aw, sh*t."

Fun fact: a lot of the time, you're kind of sh*t at reading tone. You never know what Bro's thinking, can't even kind of tell if he's about to call a strife or just shrug and go back to ignoring you. Somehow, though, Deadpool ain't like that; even with your forehead pressed against the concrete and your eyes closed, you can tell that he'd rather be doing anything else other than interacting with your dumb ass.

And you still hear him take a step further into the room. What the f*ck is wrong with this guy?

"Out." It comes out croaky, like you're the one imitating the crows for once. God, that doesn't really help at all. "I—"

Okay. Stop. Take a breath, reach up and wipe your eyes as subtly as you can, straighten your shoulders and don't think about Will Smith and Crowbar and Cawrack Obama—look, what part of don't do you not understand? f*cking stop it!

(You can't. You can't stop it, you can't stop crying.)

All right, you can't stop. After like ten seconds you accept that, and look up at Deadpool anyway.

The fact that he's got f*cking Cal draped over his shoulders manages to succeed where your own willpower failed, though; it actually doesn't just make you stop crying, it makes you stop breathing. Fear wins out over grief and frustration, apparently.

When your heart starts back up, you shake your head and scramble across the floor to snag the sword that's still lying on your bed, raise it up to as much of a defensive pose as you can when you're still on your knees.

Deadpool blinks, and glances over his shoulder like he thinks there's something there. The little movement brings you eye to eye with that f*cking puppet for a second, and like you always do you drop your eyes, stop looking at him, concede the staring contest because you can't win against something that doesn't blink.

You don't let your guard down, though. Not now, not when Deadpool comes to the obvious conclusion that you and him are the only living things in the building and looks back at you, co*cking his head to one side and spreading his hands like he needs to prove that he's not holding a weapon.

"What? I told you I'm not going to hurt you, kid—"

"Cal." From the look on his face, that one word isn't enough to explain sh*t, so you take a shaky breath and gesture at him and at the thing on his back. "The—it's Bro's puppet, okay, he—"

How the f*ck can you tell him that the thing seems alive half the time? That it moves by itself, that it f*cking watches you and lets Bro know when you're in a prime position to be ambushed? How the f*ck can you explain why you're so f*cking scared of it without sounding like you're crazy?

"It's Bro's," you say again, and maybe Deadpool doesn't get why you're terrified but he does seem to understand that you are, because he nods and unwraps the long floppy arms from around his neck and tosses Cal back into the other room.

"Okay, no creepy puppet. Got it." Despite the fact that you've still got the sword out in front of you, Deadpool takes a step forward and holds out his hand. "Need some help?"

"No." You still take his hand and let him pull you to your feet, though. It's the one with the ripped glove; you can feel warm skin through the tear in the leather. God, you hate letting go. "I got it."

"Uh-huh. Did you actually get anything packed yet?"

sh*t. "...not really." Well, you got the important contents of your computer downloaded onto a couple flash drives, but other than that. "I—f*ck. No."

Instead of the scowl you expect, that just gets a shrug from him, and he steps over to examine your closet. "Seems fair. Grab the breakable sh*t you want to keep and head down; I'll handle the clothes and stuff, meet you outside in a few."

You can't think of anything to say to that. He probably doesn't want an answer, anyway; he just wants you to do what you're told.

So you nod, and you head over to the closet.to find some kind of container to put your collection of dead sh*t in.

Fifteen minutes later, you've been standing under the fire escape for five minutes, waiting for Deadpool to get his ass down here. Which is a stupid thing to do; you know what cars park here everyday and which don't, and the only new one is the beater van that's got evidence of at least six paint jobs and Arkansas licence plates.

Of course, logic doesn't trump the little voice in your head that asks what if it's not his? So yeah, you're standing here hugging a cardboard box to your chest, with the strap to your laptop bag digging into your shoulder, trying to ignore the three crows perched on the lowest level of the fire escape above your head. Ignoring them is really f*cking hard; they keep cawing out the specific sound that means you as much as your name does.

You're not still crying. You definitely didn't close your eyes because you're sick of your vision being blurry. No, that's because you left your shades on the roof. It's because it's too bright out here.

Not because you're crying, because you're not.

Having your eyes closed is a good thing no matter what your motive is, because it means you don't actually see Deadpool hit the pavement in front of you from a nine-story freefall. No, you hear the muffled thud of a duffle bag full of clothes hitting the ground, and then a much louder impact that's equal parts thump and crunch, and by the time you work up enough nerve to open your eyes he's already bouncing back up to his feet, holding out your shades in one hand and your phone in the other.

"Come on, kid, we've got like five minutes to get out of here before it goes up," he says when you don't take them right away.

You grab your stuff away from him even before he's finished the sentence, shoving your shades into place and your phone into your pocket. "Until what goes—"

Something explodes, far above you.

You flinch.

Deadpool just rolls his eyes and pulls his mask back down, then leans down to grab the bag he tossed out of the apartment window. "Well, I can't count. Come on, time to go."

You nod, and look up because you want to say goodbye to the crows even if it's for your own benefit and not theirs, but they're gone. Scared off by the noise, properly.

It shouldn't hurt this much. It shouldn't.

You push the pain down and follow Deadpool to the van.

Chapter 8: Wade: Calling In A Favor

Chapter Text

Dave gets in the van, buckles the seatbelt, and scoots as close to the door (as far away from you) as he can get, leaning his head against the window. He doesn't actually need to say that he doesn't want to interact with you for it to be pretty f*cking obvious.

Which is understandable. And you can totally deal with that; you're not fighting the urge to at least talk to yourself if the kid doesn't want to talk to you. You're totally cool with sitting here in silence other than engine noise and the sound of cars passing—okay you're not fooling anyone, least of all yourself, Wade. Literally everyone can tell that the act of being silent is about to drive you batsh*t. The kid can probably tell, and he hasn't looked at you for the past half hour of driving.

Why are you like this, exactly?

Ooh, that's a complicated question. You'd love to answer it, you really would, but before you can even start your phone buzzes twice and starts playing the theme song of a certain guy who really needs to lighten up about the whole superhero thing.

Now how does he already know you've got yourself into trouble again?

Dave tenses when you snatch the phone out of the console; you make a mental note to curb the quick movements around him, for a while at least. You should probably make an actual physical note of it, but that'd take two hands, and you've got exactly none free right now.

Phone. Answer the phone.

"Hi there, you've reached the voicemail of the infamous Deadpool, leave your name, message and number at the sound of the tone—"

"You know that's literally never fooled me, right?"

"—beep!" Of course he knows it's you and not a recording. Probably because you've never in your life had your voicemail set up. "I'm driving."

"No sh*t, Wade. What are you even doing in Houston?"

"I'm not in Houston?" Yeah, he's totally going to buy that. You're the master of subterfuge. Definitely.

"Three separate people sent me video of you taking a dive off a building."

"Well, you see—"

"Which promptly blew up."

"...okay, so I was in Houston. I'm fine, by the way. Thanks for asking. You can tell Stark that nobody got hurt other than the guy I got paid for, if that'll shut down his freakout—"

"Oh my god. Stop talking."

You guess that you probably should do that, yeah. But then again... "I shut up for no one."

"One day you're going to say that while you're in webbing range and I'm so going to prove you wrong."

"Yep, and it's not gonna be fun or sexy at all. Wink wink."

"...I'm going to kill you."

"Ooh, fun!" Frustrating Peter is literally always the high point of your day, but at this point he's off track and probably won't get back on it unless you help out. Which is what you need to do, because you should probably get off the phone before you get pulled over for it. "Weren't you chewing me out for taking a hit in Texas?"

"Yes! I was!" There's the hilarious exasperation. For a second, anyway, before he goes dead serious. "You need to change vehicles."

"sh*t." Okay, so you got spotted. Or the guy you acquired the van from decided to report it stolen even though you paid him for it. Dick.

"Hey, Tony would set you up with something that was actually legal if I asked him—"

"Do it." You absolutely cannot do the f*ck-the-cops sh*t with Dave in tow. Too messy, too likely to get him hurt, too (you can't believe you're saying this) risky. "Where's the nearest pickup point to, uh—wherever the hell we are right now, I don't f*cking know—"

"Wait, you're actually letting him help you this time?"

Okay, he doesn't need to sound that skeptical. Just because you don't really like (you really hate) owing that douche favors doesn't mean you never take sh*t that's offered. Well...maybe it does. "Yep."

"Who are you and what did you do with Wade?"

"Wow, rude?" But accurate! "I'm taking a break."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"What is there to understand here? I'm going undercover. Or something. For a while."

"If I didn't know you, I'd think you were having some kind of mental crisis here." Pause. "Holy sh*t, are you? More than usual, I mean?"

"Oh my f*cking god—that's not—" Ahh, he's about to freak out on you if you say this. You're going to just say it anyway. "There's a kid."

"A kid."

"Yeah, I kind of killed his brother. Or like, maybe his dad. I'm not really sure what's going on there."

"...and you turned this kid over to somebody who's capable of taking care of him, like you always do?"

"Uh...no."

"Oh."

"I'm taking him to New York. Probably. It kind of depends on whether the lady who hired me is a bigoted bitch or not. She might not be."

(Dave mumbles something that sounds a lot like stop talking sh*t about Rose. It's the first thing he's said since he got in the car.)

"She's probably not, but like. Just in case. It's a backup plan."

"What's a backup plan? You didn't tell me any plan."

Oh yeah, you should probably actually think about what you're going to do if you decide that Lalonde isn't someone Dave is going to be safe with. Or you can not do that. "Don't worry about it."

"...you have no plan. You're just going to keep this kid until you come to your—"

He's going to point out that what you're doing right now is batsh*t insane for you specifically. Time to cut him off. "I have no plan. Do you have a plan for me to get a car that doesn't have an APB out on it?"

There's silence again for a minute, long enough that you start to think he's going to just walk away from this particular clusterf*ck. Then you hear him sigh.

"Keep driving, and I'll get Tony to have a car for you wherever you stop for the night. Don't turn your phone off."

"Got it. Tell him thanks for me." You never thought you'd be saying that unironically. "Bye-bye."

"Talk to you later."

Damn, you meant to hang up before he could say that. Now you just know you'll be sitting through an interrogation tonight. Fun.

Eh, it'll be fine. You drop your phone in the cupholder, and look over at Dave. "You good, kid?"

It's absolutely amazing how much this kid can convey with facial expressions, especially since he's got those shades on. For example, right now there's no doubt that he thinks you're a f*cking idiot.

"Okay, stupid question, I get it." He's not good right now. Nope. Well, you might as well ask another stupid question. "How do you feel about McDonald's?"

Chapter 9: Dave: Superheroes Have Names?

Chapter Text

Thank f*cking god Deadpool takes you through a drivethrough instead of actually into the McDonald's itself. People are a no right now. Talking is also a no; you just nod when he asks you if you want a specific meal and that's good enough, he orders and passes you the bag when he gets it and you fish out your burger and fries and pass it back without ever looking at him.

Which is...yeah, rude as hell. But he doesn't call you out on it, not at all. In fact, as soon as you're finished with your food he reaches over and drops his thing of fries in your lap.

"C'mon, I know you're hungry. I'm gonna have to go shopping when we get where we're going anyway, skipping the fries isn't going to hurt me."

"...uh." Okay, so you gotta look up at him. For a sec at least. "You sure, dude?"

"Of course I'm sure." Ah, sh*t, you wish he wouldn't look away from the road to roll his eyes and grin at you. "We can always stop for more."

Oh. Yeah. Okay.

You probably eat the fries too fast, but he's right: you're still hungry.

The soda Deadpool got for you is caffeinated, and you still pass the f*ck out after maybe an hour. It's not all that deep or all that restful, but even the in-and-out unconsciousness that breaks every time the van hits any kind of bump is a hell of a lot better than being awake.

Rose would say you're in shock. You wish you were further into it; you can't stop thinking about sh*t. Hurts. It hurts. Even when you're barely awake it hurts.

Maybe that's why, when you sense the engine turning off, you make the almost-conscious choice to tuck your head down and squeeze your eyes shut harder, desperately trying to chase the darkness down until it'll give up and take you back.

"Hey...Dave?" Deadpool says softly. When you don't react at all, he sighs, and a second later the door opens and slams shut again.

Okay. Okay. God, why the f*ck is your heartbeat going nuts? Just...keep breathing slow and even, play dead. Play dead. Don't count out your heartbeats beyond the five for a breath in or a breath out, don't f*cking think about time. He'll come back and wake you up or he won't, and you're not f*cking moving until he makes you.

Eventually, the door on your side opens, and you feel Deadpool's hand on your shoulder. Even through your shirt you can tell he's ditched the gloves; somehow that feels like a good thing. No f*cking clue why.

You're not gonna move until he shakes you.

He doesn't shake you. Instead, he reaches across and unhooks the seatbelt, gathering you up in his arms to pull you out of the car. Which—yeah, okay, you panic, you manage to stay limp but your f*cking breath catches in your throat and your hands tighten up until your nails are digging into your palms. He's gotta know you're awake, your head's leaned up against his chest and his hands're the only thing holding you up and he has to know you think you're fooling him—

"Put me down." You hear yourself say it like it's not you at all. f*ck, your throat hurts. "Dude, I—put me down—"

"Okay, okay, keep your shirt on." Deadpool shifts his grip, does exactly what you wanted him to do, and apparently you forgot how to f*cking stand up, because your feet hit the pavement and you know you're gonna fall. And it's gonna hurt.

...or not. Deadpool's put you down but not let go of you; his arm around you steadies you, pulls you to lean against him when you almost wipe out.

"Hey." Leather brushes against the side of your forehead, and you don't really do a great job of not flinching. "You planning on walking with your eyes closed under those sunglasses?"

"f*ck off." You miss his hand when you swat at it, either cause he's too fast or you're too slow. (Or maybe because you only open your eyes halfway through the motion.) "What are you, Michael Jackson? Where the hell are we?"

"Michael Ja—I am wounded." Deadpool lets go of you to take a step back and put his bare hand on his chest, giving you a very f*cking fake offended look. "I'm way cooler than that prick ever dreamed of being."

"Yeah, sure you are." He's a f*cking dork. Your bro got killed by a f*cking dork. sh*t, there's that thought again, that he's dead...you cut it off, run one hand through your hair to try and get it a little less f*cked up, and look around. Great, now you know you're in a parking lot that could be anywhere even slightly north of where you started out. "Where the hell are we?"

"Louisiana."

"...Louisiana." Okay, well at least now you can say you've been in more than one state in your god damn life. Too bad this place looks like any cheap single-story hotel anywhere. Well, other than the chipping red paint job on every f*cking building here. Almost matches what you can still see of Deadpool's outfit, under the hoodie he's put on over the ripped-up leather shirt.

You kind of wonder what the guy who he had to have paid for the room thought of his face. Actually, no, you don't give a sh*t. There's better things to worry about right now.

"Dude, why the hell are we in Louisiana?"

"Hey, don't ask me, ask Google maps." Deadpool shrugs, and tosses you something small and jingly. A key, you find out when you instinctively catch it. "How about you go nap in the room instead of the car? I've got some phone calls to make. Maybe some shopping to do too...you want anything out of the van?"

"I—" f*ck, you just barely managing to process any of this. "My laptop."

"Awesome, hang on." He nods and steps away from you to open the side door, digging around for a second until he finds the right bag and then holding it out to you. "Want me to come with you to the room?"

"No." It's kind of hard to take the step forward to grab the bag out of his hands. "Where—f*ck." Asking him where makes it sound like you have a f*cking say in where he's going. "When—I mean. You're coming back, right?"

Ouch. You sound f*cking desperate. Scared that he wouldn't.

Deadpool blinks, twice, his expression shifting completely both times. He starts confused, goes to amused, and finishes off with what you think might be pity. "Yep, I'm coming back. Uh—let me see your phone for a sec?"

It's a command. Like, your brain registers it as one, which means you've got your phone out of your pocket and in his hand before you think this sh*t through. Which is stupid; what if he doesn't give it back? You need that, you need to be able to answer if Bro—

Ah, f*ck.

Before you can really finish swallowing the tears that really wanna come out, Deadpool's finished doing something to your phone. Making a new contact named Wade, you see when he hands it back.

"You—your name's Wade?" It's something to focus on. Something vaguely baffling, actually. Somehow the idea of Deadpool having, like, an actual f*cking name never occurred to you.

"Wade Wilson, here to kick ass and take names. We kind of already did the kicking ass part."

Oh. This is him introducing himself to you. Like an idiot, you hear yourself say, "You know I'm Dave already, dude."

"Mm-hm! And see, I'd love to get further into the getting to know each other sh*t, but I really want some clothes that aren't all sticky. Plus Peter will kick my f*cking ass if I'm dressed worse than him when he shows up." Deadpool (Wade? No, Deadpool) punctuates that statement with another eye-roll, which ends with him studying you too carefully again. "You okay with hanging out in the room for like an hour? You could come with me—"

"No." f*ck no. You don't want to have people look at you, know that they're wondering what the f*ck's wrong with you. "I'm good, I'm fine, it's—it's all good."

Does he believe you? The look on his face says no. But he shrugs and nods and lets it go, for whatever reason. "You want anything specific to eat?"

"Uh..." sh*t, this offer shouldn't make your brain go blank, what the f*ck. "Food?"

That actually earns you a laugh. "Oh, that I can do. See you in a bit, kiddo."

There's two beds in the room. You drag all the blankets and pillows off one of them, pile them on the bathroom floor and lock the door. Won't stop anyone who's any kind of determined to get to you, but hey, the illusion of safety makes you feel just a lil' better.

Plus, you'd never be curled up in a pile of blankets on the bathroom floor back at the apartment. It wouldn't happen, it couldn't happen, and you're hoping that'll soften the pure cognitive dissonance that keeps hitting you every time you start thinking about where you are and what's happening.

Hopefully.

Anyway. You mean to open pesterchum and grill Rose about what the hell she thought she was doing here, but what really happens is that you open the app, see four separate sets of icons with maxed-out message numbers, and close it again before you can really process who's trying to reach you.

You...yeah. You can't do that right now. Time for something nice and soothing, as close to mindless as you can get right now.

You're gonna build a f*cking dirt house.

Actually, you build a house, and then a cellar, which turns into a tunnel system that becomes a vast underground cavern system occasionally popping back up to add a mansion in the surface. The others must see you're online, because for a while your pesterchum keeps pinging with new messages, but eventually they all either give up or accept that you're not gonna answer them.

Not yet. Later. Not really sure how much later, but at some point.

You're very careful to not watch the clock, so you honestly don't have any idea how long it is until you hear voices outside. One's Deadpool, you think, and the other...well, the other guy sounds pissed.

sh*t.

You shut your laptop and yank open the cabinet under the sink, tucking it in there as carefully as you can. The blankets get stuffed in on top of it with a lot less care and a lot more desperation; they barely fit but you make them fit, and you've got the door to the main room unlocked and open before the door to outside opens.

The guy who opens it is...kind of the last thing you were expecting. He's maybe your bro's age, looks like he forgot to shave or brush his dark hair before he left the house this morning, dressed like he picked out his clothes from a pile in the dark. Like, for some reason the second thing you notice (after the purely shocked look on his face) is the fact that not only are the sweatpants he's wearing like three inches too short, he's got on one neon yellow sock and one red plaid one.

Deadpool, who's immediately behind him, definitely is dressed better. Jeans and a band t-shirt, and the same grey hoodie from before. And a Taco Bell bag. Which reminds you that you're hungry.

The new guy stares at you for another second, then turns on Deadpool with what you're gonna read as pure fury. "You didn't tell me he's an actual kid!"

"I did too! I said—"

"Wade, you can't just—"

"Hey Dave? Catch." Holy sh*t why does he think you can catch a thrown bag of food. Like, you can and you do, but why the f*ck does he think that's a good idea. "Be right back."

Before you can say a goddamn word, Deadpool grabs the new guy's collar and yanks him back out the door, slamming it shut.

"f*ck." That comes out too loud; you cringe a little bit. You guess you might as well sort out whatever food he brought you. Sure as f*ck can't eat it with your stomach twisting up in anxious knots over what they're saying out there. Maybe you can stash it...

Nah, you can't do anything other than take the packaged burritos out and lay them on the coffee table, count them and push them around and watch your hands shake.

After maybe five minutes of that, the door opens again. And of course it's just the new guy that steps inside.

"Where's De—" Wait. No. "Wade. Where's Wade?"

"Outside, healing a broken nose." The guy huffs and steps over to the bed that you didn't strip, plopping down and crossing his arms. He doesn't take his eyes off you, which actually kicks the fear you're feeling right now up another notch. "Relax. He's fine. I don't know if you noticed, but he's pretty resilient."

"...saw him jump off a building, so yeah." If he thinks you're gonna sit down, he's got another think coming. You cross your arms and look almost-not-quite at him; it's not like he can tell where you're looking behind the shades. "Who the f*ck're you?"

You don't know what you expect. For him to tell you to watch your mouth, maybe, or to watch your manners. Something like that.

Not, "My name's Peter. I'm, uh...his emergency contact." He sighs and rubs at his eyes for a second, lowering his hand just enough to give you a wry look. "This is kind of a new kind of emergency."

"This ain't an emergency." When in doubt, lie through your goddamn teeth. "My bro hired him, he's just taking me up to—" sh*t, what's the town Rose lives in? You can't f*cking remember. "—New York." Dammit.

Peter isn't buying this. You can tell. What you don't really expect, though, is for him to raise an eyebrow and ask very f*cking calmly, "Did he kidnap you?"

"What—no!"

"Because he's giving me exactly zero info on what's going on, but he seems to think you can't go home—"

"I can't—" Well, you just torched your own story before you even started building it. Plus you're about to f*cking cry again.

Peter keeps talking. "And if you really think you'll be better off where you started, I know people who can check that you're right about that and take you home. Or if your dad's as much of a douche as Wade says, there's people who'll—"

"Stop f*cking t-talking." Oh, yeah, there's the tears, there's no way he's gonna miss the tracks on your face. sh*t. "Back the f*ck off, he killed Bro and I can't go home, okay, he's gonna—he's gonna take me to Rose, she—this was her idea, she didn't even tell me—"

"Holy sh*t." You closed your eyes like, when you told him to back off, so the only warning that you get that Peter's gonna touch you is when he does it. He pulls back when you flinch away from his hand on your shoulder, but a second later he takes your hand, pulls you over to sit down next to him on the bed, wraps an arm around you.

You don't even know this guy. You should sit up straight and stop f*cking crying, not take a damn thing from him until you figure out what he wants.

You slump against him and sob. God, you want to go home so f*cking bad right now. Bro's sh*t's better than not knowing what's coming. You wanna go home, you want for none of this to have happened, you wanna wake up because this sh*t's all a bad dream and there's a crow on your chest pecking at your face to check you're still awake, you want this to not be real.

This keeps on being real, and eventually you either get control of yourself or tire yourself out, you can't tell which. Either way, you're sitting here with a guy who looks kind of like he might be homeless mumbling entirely unhelpful words in an attempt to comfort you, sniffling like a dumbass.

"Can't go home," you tell him.

"I believe you."

"Deadpool—f*ck, Wade—"

"Either works."

"Not his fault."

"So he killed your...brother?" He pauses for input from you, and you just nod. Close enough. "He killed your brother, and it's not his fault."

f*ck. You can't do this right now. Explaining this sh*t to him means you gotta think about it.

You still gotta do it. "My fault."

"...your fault."

Jesus f*ck, this guy ain't gonna let you off easy. You sniffle again, pull away from him, and push your shades back up on your nose. "I shoulda talked him into leaving. Told him he was in the wrong place."

"You obviously don't know him too well, if you think that would've worked." Peter's voice is colored by amusem*nt again, when he says that; it fades away with his next question. "Was he actually in the wrong place?"

"I—" f*ck, for a second you want to tell him that yeah, Deadpool f*cked up, Bro was just—collateral damage or some sh*t. But you're not doing great with lying today. "No. Somebody I know, she—hired him to kill Bro."

"...ookay." You can't really look up at Peter right now, but you can hear the skepticism there. Or maybe the confusion. "Any idea why?"

"Because of me."

"...kid, how old are you?"

Not sure what that has to do with anything, but you answer the question anyway. "Thirteen."

"What the heck do you think you did to make someone kill your brother? Because from how Wade tells it, he killed a guy who was planning to beat the hell out of his kid—"

"Shut the f*ck up!" If this was the apartment, you'd hurt him. Like, really hurt him. Since it's not, you settle for pushing yourself up to your feet and taking a swing at him.

He just...catches your fist in his hand. Like, you know how to throw a punch, but this guy ain't even moving, just holding you still and looking at you like he expects you to admit something.

Which you won't. "Let go."

Amazingly, he does. You immediately use that freedom to cross your arms and retreat to the far side of the room. Too bad Peter can't take a f*cking hint.

"Was he wrong? Because if he messed up, we kind of need to—"

sh*t. "No, he didn't f*ck up, he did exactly what Rose f*cking hired him to, will you just—will you just f*cking leave!"

Okay, so that comes out loud enough that Deadpool opens the door and pokes his head in. (There's blood on his face.) He groans when he gets a good look at you, coming in to smack the back of Peter's head.

"Ow!"

"What the actual f*ck do you not get about don't f*cking scare him, Spidey!"

Peter probably says something else in return to that, but you kind of tune out for a second. Spidey. Spider. Spider-Man.

Okay you're done with this whole situation as of now, thanks. Deadpool's just a bit too slow to grab your arm as you bolt for the bathroom; if he wants to break the door he can, but otherwise you're so not coming out.

Chapter 10: Wade: Chill The f*ck Out, Spidey

Chapter Text

Oh, sh*t. Okay.

You probably should just let the kid go, but you automatically grab for him anyway. It doesn't really matter; Dave may not be a speedster like the elder Strider was, but he's fast as f*ck anyway. You don't even get near touching him before the door to the bathroom slams shut and locks.

Peter opens his mouth, and you smack him upside the head again. It's a hell of a lot harder to soften the blow enough to not actually hurt him this time; you're f*cking pissed. Not pissed enough to forget to keep your voice low, though.

"Did I f*cking stutter, Parker? I told you he was f*cked up, I f*cking told you not to push him, and what do you do? What do you f*cking do?"

(You probably could be handling this better. Or in any way that didn't involve you looming over him so he can't stand up without pushing you out of the way. Maybe you should let him stand up.)

(Nah. Let him wonder if you're going to use the swords strapped to your back. Let him be scared for one f*cking minute, even though it's never going to match up to how it feels to be thirteen and have a god damn world made of fragile illusory safety and constant f*cking pain collapse around you.)

(Wow, Wade, project much? Also stop f*cking thinking in parentheses, you dick.)

Peter, having apparently decided that he might as well do something, raises one hand in what you're going to guess would be an attempt to push you away. It goes absolutely nowhere, because you grab his wrist and bear down until he winces.

"He didn't panic until you came in, Wade," he points out, and the implication is almost enough to flip your anger back into shame. Because yeah, it'd make sense for Dave to be afraid of you; he knows exactly who you are and what you're capable of.

But.

"Right, because you didn't have him shouting loud enough for me to hear him ten feet away and out-f*cking-side!" And not in a good way. Like, the kid could do with letting out some frustration on something, but from what you caught of the tail end of Peter's talk with him, all Spidey managed to do is add some more frustration to what was already there. "What the f*ck did you say to him?"

"Wade—"

"What the f*ck did you say!"

"—back off, okay?"

"How about no?" But you let go of his wrist when he twists away, and you let him push you a step back, just enough that he can stand up and take a step to the side so you can't shove him back down and trap him again. Not that you'd do that. "I'm this close to throwing you the f*ck out, Parker."

He looks over at you and rolls his eyes. "Well, your fingers are touching. And you can't even use the 'oh, they're not touching, I'm wearing gloves' thing because you're, you know. Not."

Oh, yeah. You ditched your ripped-up gloves in a trash can in the mall cafeteria, and haven't acquired another pair because the only leather gloves you could find were fingerless. Not that it really matters, because— "You're dodging the question. Are you dodging the f*cking question?"

"Yeah, now you know how the rest of us feel when we have to deal with you doing it." Peter folds his arms, watching you as you splutter through at least five possible responses and give up on all of them, opting instead to glare at him. "Huh. I can't believe it. I got you to shut the f*ck up."

"Out."

"What?"

"Get the f*ck out." You don't stop glaring at him, but you do point at the door. "I am not being the only f*cking serious one here."

You can almost see the shift as he realizes that you are, in fact, being serious. That he's not going to be able to trade jabs back and forth and end up taking Dave back with him to somebody safe and normal and suitable to take care of kids. That no, you really didn't tell him you wanted help just so you could pass this kid off, you're seriously trying to go undercover enough to stay out of trouble at least long enough to get the kid to Lalonde.

Maybe longer. Somehow, you don't know if you trust this woman, and you're not leaving Dave with anyone unless you know he'll be safe with them.

"Okay," Peter says, after that thirty-second period of recalibration, raising his hands in surrender and letting himself collapse back down to sit on the bed again, "you're serious. I'm serious, we're all serious, can you turn down the murder factor a little?"

"Did I say anything about murdering you yet?"

"Not yet, no, but you look like you're getting there."

"That'd be because I am."

Peter just states at you for a moment. Then he sighs, rubbing at his forehead with one hand. "I asked the kid if you kidnapped him."

...huh. You're not really sure why that'd set him off this badly, but okay.

"Also if he thought you f*cked up on who you were trying to murder."

"Why the f*ck would you ask him that!"

"It's a valid question with you!"

He has a point. But. "I didn't f*ck up. Lalonde hired me to kill Strider and take Dave up to New York, and I did one and I'm working on the other. Trying to work on the other like you would want me to, actually. As in legally. Shocking, I know."

"Wade, you killed a man."

"He deserved it, so it's self defense."

"...that's really not how that works."

"I don't f*cking care. You didn't see this sh*t, Peter; you would have done the exact same thing I did." Hm. Well. "Okay, maybe not the exact thing. Killed him with web instead of a sword."

"How would I even—" Peter cuts himself off, shaking his head. "Never mind, I don't want to know."

"He had a f*cking sword. He was going to use it on his own f*cking kid. You know that Dave knows how to use blades, right? Because that f*cking piece of sh*t made him learn how to?"

"Wade—"

"The f*cker had the fridge rigged to spill swords everywhere if you opened it, do you f*cking understand that? And I'm telling you, the kid's gotten caught by it before, he knew how to handle a stab wound—"

"Wade."

"—he's a f*cking kid! Like who the f*ck does that to a kid, who the f*ck lets somebody do that to their—"

"Wade!"

"What!" You know exactly what. You're totally monologuing and you're not even kind of sorry. Distressed and vaguely furious, yes; sorry, no.

"You did the right thing." He shrugs, raises his hands up like he's weighing the things you could've done and the things you didn't, and drops them to the bed again. "Happy? You killed the right guy."

"Not sure why you telling me what I already f*cking know would would make me happy, but okay."

"Are you happy enough to stop pacing."

"Not really, no." But you do stop, anyway, stepping over to lean back against the counter and frown at him. Why the hell did you think taking the mask off was a good idea, exactly? "What about you? Satisfied I'm not going to do unspeakable things to the kid?"

It's a joke, and Peter snorts out a laugh in answer to it. "You? Really? That kid's probably the safest he's ever been."

"Yeah, well, that's not saying much. Are you planning on babysitting us all the way to New York, or are you going to let me have the car and try to deal with this myself?"

"I dunno." He tilts his head, considering you with that ridiculous thoughtful look that you usually see when he's trying to figure out if your innuendo is accidental or purposeful. "Do you want me to leave?"

"Kind of, yes. That would be nice." Sorry, but Spidey's doing the exact opposite of a good job at helping the kid get through sh*t.

"Can you actually handle this by yourself?"

"You do know he's not literally a baby, right? Thirteen is like, almost at the point where you can let them be free range and just step in when they're about to get themselves killed."

Peter is looking at you like he knows exactly what percentage of what you just said is pure bullsh*tting to avoid answering the question. Guess you have to actually answer the question.

"Yes, I can f*cking handle it. No dumping him anywhere, no traumatizing him worse than his bastard parent already did, make sure he eats—"

"Okay, okay, I believe you, calm down." Peter rolls his eyes and gets to his feet, grabbing the collar of the hoodie you stole from a car in the parking lot and pulling until you give up and lean down. He could just kiss your cheek instead of your forehead, but no. "You better call me."

"Yeah, yeah." Damn, having the mask off means you have to make an effort to not grin like a dumbass at him. "Thanks for the backup, Spidey."

"You owe me one, Wade."

"So now we're counting? What about the time I—"

The door shuts behind him.

"...you dick."

Chapter 11: Dave: Conversations Through A Hotel Bathroom Door

Chapter Text

You don't have your f*cking headphones; they're in the laptop bag, which is like. Not in here with you. f*ck, why didn't you bring your sh*t in here the second you decided that this was gonna be the safe place? Why the hell are you so f*cking stupid?

Because. You just are. You're stupid, you just tried to punch f*cking Spiderman, you're huddled in a f*cking hotel bathtub with a blanket over your head and your hands over your ears, trying not to really hear the low voices in the next room because they're talking about you, deciding how bad you f*cked up or what's gonna happen to you, and you just. You can't think of any way that this isn't gonna suck.

You want to go home. To the empty f*cking apartment and the crows outside croaking at you to open the god damn window already and let them in, to the knowledge that yeah, everything's been sh*tty before and it's going to be sh*tty again as soon as Bro comes home but right this second you're fine, there's enough food for another couple days if you're careful and you got your own music playing over Bro's speakers loud enough to drown out the fear that never goes away—you'll have to turn that sh*t off before he comes home but until then this is good, this is okay, you're okay—

A soft double knock is all that it takes to snap you out of...whatever that was. Wishful thinking?

Yeah. That's all. You totally didn't just tune out of reality for long enough that the muscles in your back cramp up when you try to straighten up a little under the blanket. Nope. You're not f*cking crazy.

"Dave? Hey." Another two knocks, and you yank the blanket down off your head because it's f*cking suicidal to willingly blind yourself when somebody's coming.

Not that the door opens. Deadpool doesn't even try the knob, just waits a couple more seconds and then knocks again. When you don't answer this time either, you can hear a muffled sigh from the other side of the door.

"You're in there, right? Can I get some confirmation on that at least?"

He's gonna break the door if you don't give him what he wants. "...yeah. 'm here." sh*t, you sound more like one of the crows than like yourself; your throat hurts.

Now he's gonna ask you what the f*ck is wrong with you.

"Can you come out here, maybe?"

sh*t. sh*t. sh*t sh*t sh*t. Is that actually a question, or is he telling you to get your ass out of the goddamn bathroom? If it was Bro saying it, you might know, but all you can tell with Deadpool is that he's not almost-laughing at something like he has been most of the time.

But you don't know what that means, and f*ck but you don't want to go out there. Like, it's stupid, you can't even hear anything that'd make you think (your brain tries to think Peter and shies away from that because you should have known he wasn't just some guy, you should have f*cking known somehow) you can't hear anything that'd make you think Spiderman's still out there, but still. What if he is? What if he's pissed? What if he's got more questions about your bro?

What if, what if, what f*cking if, and hey, shouldn't you be breathing? Shouldn't that be a thing? Because it sure f*cking isn't right now.

You gasp in a breath and immediately slap both hands up over your mouth. Too f*cking loud. sh*t.

On the other side of the door, Deadpool sighs again, and you hear muffled quiet sounds like he's moving sh*t around right up next to the door. Your brain won't even try to make sense of the sounds right now. "Will you come out if I'm not in here?"

"What?" Why the f*ck would you do that?

"Come on, kid, there's food out here for you. You've got to be hungry—"

"No." Is he f*cking stupid? It's not like you haven't eaten at all today; you might want one of the dumb burritos off the coffee table, you might be kicking yourself for not grabbing one, but you don't need one. Not badly enough to leave this room. Not yet. "Dude, 'm fine."

He f*cking laughs. Which sends an unreasonable spark of anger up into your chest.

"Kid, if you're fine then I'm about to be elected the sexiest man alive." Pause. "Actually, forget that comparison, I totally am the sexiest man alive. But my point stands; you're not even kind of fine."

Yeah, he's right. "f*ck you."

"You're way too young to even think about that, so no." There's more soft sounds of movement; how the f*ck is he this loud? He's a goddamn assassin, he should be at least as good at stealth as you are, and you know you could be quieter than this. If nothing else, you can keep your footsteps silent, and he's not even close to doing that. Like, you do have to get out of the tub to be able to track him, but once you do you can hear him move from this side of the room to the other, rustle the bag you left empty on the coffee table for a minute, and come back to the bathroom door.

You retreat back from the door like Deadpool's a magnet driving you away. Which is the wrong f*cking move, because this time he does try the door, and guess f*cking what?

You didn't lock it. The f*cking lock didn't catch. sh*t.

The knob turns, the door opens just a crack, and Deadpool nudges the bag of burritos into the room with you and pulls it shut again.

This has got to be some kind of setup.

"It's not a setup," Deadpool says. "Just food."

"What the f*ck? You're a mindreader too?"

From the other side of the door, there's a soft chuckle and a slightly louder thud, more like he just let his head thump against the door than like he's knocking again. "Nope. Now there's a fun power, though; can you imagine how much I could irritate people if I knew what they were thinking?"

"How the f*ck did you know—"

"What you were thinking? Hey, you're not the only one who got raised by someone sh*tty. I get it; this sh*t's too good to be true, you think I'm a bastard too, you f*cked up and I'm about to make you pay, right?"

"...yeah." Hearing him say that sh*t makes your heart just f*cking sink, like the bottom just dropped out of your ribcage. "I—"

"Nope! Wrong! One hundred f*cking percent wrong." That sounds almost aggressively cheery; Wade's voice goes both more serious and more gentle for the next sentence. "You know what my job is, kid?"

"I—yeah." Of course you do. You were there when he did it.

"Okay, what is it?"

"Kill Bro." You have to force the words out.

"I mean, yeah, but that's already done."

f*ck, that wasn't what he wanted? Wait, he said Rose wanted him to bring you to her, right? "...take me to New York?"

"Eh, close enough. My job, right now and for the near future, is to protect you. Not hurt you. Get it?"

Protect you.

f*ck.

That's what Bro does. Did. Protect you (from what?) teach you to protect yourself (from who?) made sure you could patch yourself up when you got hurt (by him?) take care of you.

"Dave?"

And you let him get killed for that. And you're f*cking—you're here, with the guy who killed him, you're getting down on your knees to pick up food that your bro's murderer bought for you, and you don't see anything wrong with that?

Do you?

"Hey, Dave?"

God, does he never give up? "I'm gonna eat your f*cking burritos, happy?"

"Excuse you, those are tacos."

"This one is literally labeled as a burrito, dumbass."

"So it's labeled wrong!"

"Tastes like a burrito."

"It's not a f*cking burrito!"

"Sure, cause you totally know what a burrito is."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"You're from like, New York—"

"I am from Saskatchewan," he corrects you, like that's somehow closer to the source of tacos slash burritos, and for some reason that's so f*cking funny to you. Like, you drop the half-eaten burrito into your lap, cover your mouth with both hands because you're laughing despite the food in your mouth. sh*t, you can't really be quiet or you'll choke, so you give up on being quiet and just f*cking laugh at the pure ridiculousness of that statement.

Maybe for a sec there's fear under your laughter, but then you hear that he's laughing too.

Chapter 12: Wade: This Is Not A Ransom Note

Chapter Text

You ask Dave twice more if he's coming out of the bathroom; both times he doesn't say no outright, but shies away from the question. The door's between you and him, but you can just imagine the look on his face, the same weird look as when you passed him your fries in the car: a little confused, a little scared, a little unreadable because he's trying to be f*cking unreadable and someone's taught him how to do that pretty f*cking well.

God, this is going to be a whole process. One that's definitely going to take more than the week or whatever that delivering the kid to Lalonde will.

(You could just tell yourself that it's not your job to sort him out.)

(Or you could admit that yeah, it is your job now. He is.)

Now is not the time to do either of those things, though. Nope. You're not obsessing over the near future; you're turning your phone off and stretching out on the bed that the kid didn't strip, flipping through the available channels on the TV that's mounted high enough on the wall that you'd be majorly inconvenienced if you lost the remote. sh*t, everything on kind of sucks. Is it Tuesday?

It must be Tuesday. Eh, you just need something to zone out to, anyway; an infomercial about a new and improved type of hose works just fine.

You kind of wonder what was wrong with the old and unimproved hose, though. Maybe a couple hours of this will give you a clue.

...this may be one of the rare occasions when you do, in fact, fall asleep watching TV. There's a definite disconnect between the point where you stop being even mildly aware of the guy onscreen shouting about all the free sh*t you could get if you bought his overpriced product, and the point where Dave jerks the door open, takes two steps into the main room, and just stops dead.

You have to be honest here; the sudden movement means that you jerk upright and grab for the swords that should be on the bed next to you. (They're not there. You put them out of immediate grabbing range, over on the counter where you can still get to them in three seconds or less.) And of course, that movement draws Dave's attention back to you.

That's probably why he freezes, really. It's definitely the source of the confusion that fills his face.

You don't move, after that instinctive grab for the weapons that aren't there. Instead, you meet those wide red eyes and make a decent attempt to get your brain awake enough to sort this sh*t out. "Hey. Dave? You awake, kiddo?"

Okay, so that sounds like a really f*cking stupid question, but the kid seems to give it some actual thought, hesitating for a good half-minute. When he does answer, it's by way of a frustrated shake of his head.

"Bad dreams?" It's an obvious guess, and the fact that he responds to that by shaking his head again doesn't really mean you're wrong. "Your bro?"

"What the f*ck?" Okay, well, you've gotten rid of his frustration for a moment at least. Now he's looking at you like...hm. Like he'd really like to throw something sharp at you, actually. "You piece of—you told me you weren't a goddamn mindreader, what the—f*cking sh*t..."

"Still not a mindreader; I've just been there done that already." Ah, f*ck. That feels like a manipulative thing to say, like you're trying to get him to trust you by drawing parallels between the sh*t he's been through and how you grew up.

Dave is still staring at you.

"C'mere," you tell him, and you pat the bed next to you, scooting over just slightly.

"f*ck you," he answers, but he's already moving, coming over to first sit down on the edge of the bed and then flop back like a marionette with its strings cut, giving you an upside-down glare through half-closed eyes. "Read my mind again."

"You have zero chill, Dave." Hm. Might as well guess, though. It's not like he's all that much of a mystery right now. "You're thinking...that you want to smack me."

"Good idea, but no." Dave exhales slowly, letting his eyes close. He doesn't relax, though; if anything he gets more tense. "Thinkin' something stupid."

"Oh?"

"Mhm."

"Are you going to elaborate, or just leave me hanging?"

The kid's face twists up into a grimace that makes you think he's going to start crying rather than answering your question. After a second, though, he proves you wrong.

"Thinking that I wanna be home right now." While you're still stuck trying to figure out how the f*ck you can even answer that, Dave takes a deep breaths and keeps talking. "It's—this sh*t can't be happening. I can't go live with Rose, okay? I just can't. She's gotta be planning on moving me in with Dirk 'n D, but they're...D, he's gonna..."

That's fear, in his voice if not on his face—he's managed to wipe almost all expression off his face—and honestly? You understand that. Maybe. Unless you've got this whole situation misjudged. "D's related to you somehow, right?"

Dave doesn't open his eyes, but he just barely nods. "Bro's—he was D's brother."

"So D would be your brother too."

"Uncle. Dirk's my cousin." He shrugs; it's a very small and extraordinarily uncomfortable gesture. "D always called him Bro when me 'n Dirk were lil' kids, right? And like. He didn't wanna be a dad, I guess. Being a big bro, that he could do..."

"He sucked at it." Oh, you probably shouldn't have said that.

Dave opens his eyes just a sliver, and shifts to raise one hand to flip you the bird again. What he doesn't do is argue that point, which...kind of says something about this clusterf*ck. You're not even going to try to articulate what.

"So..." Change the subject, Wade. "What about Hal?"

"Dunno." Another tiny shrug, as he closes his eyes and pulls his legs up onto the bed, rolling to face away from you. "Rose said he was Dirk's bro, but Dirk doesn't f*cking have a brother. D said he wasn't gonna have more kids..."

"...huh." Well. When in doubt, consult the great oracle, Google. "D and Dirk Strider, right?"

When Dave nods, you snag your phone off the table by the bed and start researching. Well, searching. Research implies effort beyond typing out a couple names and pushing a button.

D Strider. He's important enough to have his own Wikipedia page, apparently; that gives you the helpful info that he has two kids, Dirk and Hal, and the very f*cking weird info that Dirk's birthdate is listed as fourteen years ago, while Hal's is just last year.

You find a picture of D with the two of them, when you scroll down a bit. They look like twins, identical if Hal didn't have hair even whiter than Dave's platinum blonde rather than the pale gold of Dirk's, and you would bet however much money you can get out of the credit cards you took from Strider's apartment that at least one of those kids is a mutant.

Which makes the way they reacted to the fact that Dave and his bro are both mutants that much more confusing. It's a relief to know that you're not delivering the kid to people who're going to flip the f*ck out over whatever powers he might have, though.

...actually, D Strider is the exact opposite of that kind of bigot, apparently. There's a whole f*cking section on how he's an activist for human and metahuman rights; even if you still think that's a stupid word for what you and other mutants are, you can't deny that all of this points to this being a good guy.

Maybe a stupid guy, though, if he didn't know about the kind of sh*t that his own brother was doing to Dave. Stupid, or in denial.

You guess you understand that.

When you look over to ask Dave to tell you more about his uncle, you realize that he's passed the f*ck out again. Good, because you're going to do something that he emphatically wouldn't approve of.

Well, you're going to do it if any of your acquaintances who can dig up contact info for you are awake, anyway. And if you can figure out where the hell the sign-up button for pesterchum is.

deadPool [DP] started pestering technicolorGladiator [TG]!

DP: ...hello?
DP: Hey there. I'm pretty sure you're looking at this message, trying to make up your mind whether to block me.
DP: I'd suggest you don't do that.

TG: i mean cmon dude, its the smart thing to do here
TG: like bots and scammers are kinda fun if theyre persistent and ridiculous enough but im pretty sure youre not gonna say anything that interesting

DP: Yeah, you're about to change your mind on that.

TG: am i now

DP: Yep!
DP: Actually, let's make sure you have the groundwork for me to blow your mind first. You know who I am, right?

TG: no f*cking clue dude

DP: What the f*ck.
DP: None of you know Deadpool? Not any of you? I mean, your kids must, because hiring me was their idea, but you and Dave're both clueless?

TG: nah i know who deadpool is
TG: doesnt mean i know who YOU are
TG: actually i have an idea but lets cross our fingers im wrong since id really like to think that bro wouldnt start playing this kinda game at like eleven o clock at night

DP: Wow, I thought I was immune to being called sh*t and here we go just finding insults that offend me.
DP: I'm not your brother. I really am Deadpool.

TG: sure you are
TG: remind me again why i havent blocked you yet?

DP: You're curious.

TG: i am
TG: lil bit anyway
TG: enough to listen to what you want

DP: To give you some bad news.
DP: Well, kind of bad. You're going to think it's bad. I think it's very f*cking good, but that makes me a bad person. Not as bad as your brother though.

TG: bro if the whole point of this game is to get me to defend you then you got another think coming

DP: Still not your brother!
DP: That's who I contacted you about, though.

TG: yeah yeah of course you did

DP: He's dead.

TG: what
TG: okay this ain't funny and you can f*ck right off

DP: I wasn't really aiming for funny.
DP: Your brother's dead.

TG: what the f*cks wrong with you
TG: who the hell are you
TG: oh god dave

DP: Now, there I do have some good news, actually. Dave's fine.
DP: Kind of.

TG: what the hell do you mean kind of
TG: what the f*ck did you do to him
TG: if you hurt that kid i swear to god ill f*cking kill you asshole

DP: Ooh, does that extend to anyone who hurt him? Because if it does, then you should have killed your own f*cking brother years ago.
DP: Like how the f*ck did you never notice this sh*t? Did you just never f*cking look at this kid? Because if you did, it would have been obvious as hell that sh*t was f*cked up.

TG: what the f*ck are you talking about

DP: Your "Bro?" He's got this kid traumatized as f*ck.
DP: Your kids knew. They hired me to take care of this.

TG: jesus

DP: Yep, that about covers this sh*t.

TG: i uh
TG: daves with you?

DP: Right next to me, probably asleep. I'm pretty sure he's asleep.
DP: If you make the conscious decision that you need to text him now and wake him up, you're probably going to be my next job. Just a thought.

TG: okay okay im not waking him up f*cking chill
TG: i can have somebody in houston to pick him up in
TG: ten hours maybe? f*ck man i dont f*cking know
TG: under a day anyway i swear

DP: Nope.

TG: what the f*ck do you mean no
TG: is this a f*cking ransom thing

DP: Oh god no.

TG: because if you just want money i will f*cking give it to you for that kid okay

DP: Your kids and Miss Lalonde already did. Plus your brother had a sh*tton of money on credit cards that Hal swears are totally untraceable.
DP: Had, as in I now have it.

TG: then what the f*ck do you want

DP: Eh. To feel some sh*t out, mostly.
DP: Your kids seemed kinda upset about the whole Dave's-a-mutant thing.

TG: oh sh*t no
TG: are you serious
TG: youre serious jesus f*cking christ

DP: See, that's exactly what I'm talking about. The whole air of stunned horror. Not really a good sign.
DP: Honestly I expected at least a little better from a ""metahuman activist,"" but I guess I should expect to be disappointed at this point.

TG: im horrified because i know my f*cking brother dumbass
TG: oh my god if id known about this sh*t i wouldve blackmailed him into giving me custody of dave years ago
TG: sh*t
TG: bigoted f*cking bitch, no wonder he cut us off

DP: ...oh.
DP: Okay, well I'm an idiot.

TG: look, i can come pick him up

DP: Again: nope!
DP: I'm getting paid to get him to Lalonde safe and sound. Or possibly to get him to you, safe and sound. I'm not really sure what the end goal is here.
DP: Definitely having him safe and sound. The details are a bit up in the air right now.

TG: yeah definitely thats the big goal
TG: look dude i need to figure out what the f*ck im going to ask my kids about this
TG: dont f*cking lose my contact info

DP: Oh, don't worry. You're the only one in my recents list. Until your kids start flipping the f*ck out at me, anyway.
DP: I'll be in touch.

TG: gonna hold you to that

technicolorGladiator disconnected!

Chapter 13: Dave: Breakfast and Nietzsche

Chapter Text

You only kind of wake up at first. Like, just enough to be aware that you exist, form a couple half-coherent thoughts, one at a time.

First thought: Damn, I'm not in the bathtub.

Second thought: Why the actual f*ck would I be in the bathtub?

Third thought: sh*t sh*t sh*t—

Honestly, that last one is less a thought and more an almost tangible wave of alarm that's got you gasping for breath and trying to scramble at least kinda upright. Which is a lot more difficult than you expected, on both counts—your chest is too f*cking tight and you're tangled up in the blankets. Why the f*ck are there even blankets? You pulled those off, took them into the bathroom, which means—

"Dave, hey—whoops!"

Deadpool steps over and grabs your shirt in the exact moment that you overbalance, pulling you back onto the bed. Which is great, you don't really need yet another concussion, but the feeling of fabric tightening around your neck ain't really doing any favors to your mental state.

Then again, it's a nice trigger for your ability to cram all that panic down into a tight little box in the center of your chest and lock the f*cker shut. That still means you can't quite breathe, but you can manage to get yourself untangled from the blanket, and in another half a minute or so you can speak.

"Hey."

"Morning." Deadpool—wait, no, his name's Wade, you should use his name—Wade pauses and blinks, glancing over at the microwave. "Yeah, I can say that, it's still morning."

"If you say it when it's not morning, it's ironic." God, where the hell did you leave your shades? Is he going to say anything if you get up and start hunting for 'em? Might as well find out. And maybe keep talking. That's definitely a good idea. "Like, you gotta admit there's something to be said for totally f*ckin' disregarding actual linear time, just pick one and keep using it? Good morning, oh it's nine o'clock at night? Too f*cking bad, it's morning now. Have some eggs."

"I mean, I have most of a Waffle House breakfast for you. Does that count?"

"Seriously?" Okay, you have to put your very important search on hold for long enough to give Wade a dirty look. "C'mon, Rose's been telling me about how she's been trying to summon the ghost of H.P. Lovecraft or some sh*t in Waffle Houses for like, years."

Deadpool raises an eyebrow. Just one. You're kinda impressed; you've been trying for years and you still haven't managed to get enough specific muscular control to do that. "So you don't want the possibly cursed food."

"Are you kidding? Of course I want it." Wait, your shades are gonna be in the bathroom. Of course. And hey, Wade doesn't actually follow you when you head in there, just plops down on the bed and kinda watches you until he can't quite see through the doorway.

Makes it easier to talk to him, actually. "So...I kicked you out of bed last night?"

"Nah, I needed to get up and move. You just motivated me." f*ck, he sounds so calm about it. Like, really calm, not just quiet about being annoyed. (You think.) "You seemed to sleep better there than in the tub, anyway. No more obvious dreams."

"Dreams?" Okay, apparently you stashed your shades in the drawer under the sink. Like, you remember doing that, it's just a weird feeling to still find them there. "I don't dream, dude."

"Hey, you're the one who came out of there ready to fight me off, kiddo. You yourself said it was a nightmare."

...huh. No, you don't remember any of that.

..You frown, shove your shades into place, and grab your laptop. The blankets in the tub can wait for later; right now you step back out of the bathroom, stuff the computer back into the bag, and look over at Wade.

"Didn't you say you had some maybe-cursed breakfast?"

He does, and after you eat you gather up the couple things you actually brought in last night and head out to stash them in the van. Well, not in the van. The guy last night (whose actual f*cking identity you've decided to just not think about right now because, well, Spiderman) dropped off a different vehicle.

It's the only car in the parking lot, and you still just stare at it and then look around for something else. No way did he bring something that shiny.

"Nope, you had it right the first time." Wade laughs, ruffling your hair as he steps around you. "Kind of wonder if he called in some of his favors with Stark for that, or some of mine?"

"Uh, both?" Like, you seriously think that the black four-by-four is roughly equal in value to a nice-ish house. "What the f*ck?"

"Hey, I know people that know people." He shrugs and pulls the door open, turning to give you a look that's easily translatable as are you coming or not?

You guess you are.

Your bag'll fit by your feet, you think, but only if you slide the seat all the way back. That takes a bit of fiddling with the set of switches on the side; you end up hunched over next to the car, with your head down and the whine of the lil' motors that move the thing back and forth in your ears...so you nearly don't hear the first cracked caw.

Nearly. You nearly don't hear it, which means you do hear it. You hear that caw—your name—and you gasp and straighten up so fast that behind you Wade hisses the f*ck word under his breath and grabs for one of the katanas still strapped to his back.

"No!" Grabbing his wrist is possibly the dumbest thing you can do; number one he's stronger than you, and number two he could totally grab the weapon with his other hand, cut you and handle whatever he sees as a threat after. You don't give a f*ck. "Don't you f*cking touch him—"

"Okay, okay, chill?" Wade shrugs, raising both hands a bit. The fact that your deathgrip on him doesn't seem to phase him even a little bit is kinda terrifying. "Who am I not touching, exactly?"

"I...f*ck." You let him go and turn around, looking for whichever crow called for you. f*ck, maybe you heard wrong. Maybe it's just a common crow-sound, maybe they never actually gave you a name—

Then a very f*cking familiar black bird dives down off you don't even know where, and yeah Deadpool tenses because it looks like she's gonna attack but he doesn't move, doesn't give her any reason to not land on your shoulder. Her talons dig into your skin a bit as she steadies herself, but it's worth it.

"Holy sh*t. Neet..." How far is it from here to Houston? How the f*ck did she even get this far?

"I feel like 'neat' is an understatement here." Wade's staring at the bird on your shoulder with utter fascination; when he holds out his hand, she instantly pecks at his fingers.

"Neet, quit—no, dude, it's her name. Neet. Nietzsche." You thought she was a boy when you asked Rose for suggestions; crow babies are just screaming balls of feathers and skin, it's not like you could tell. By the time she built a nest literally right outside your windowsill and laid four eggs in it, it was kinda too late to change her name. "She f*cking—she followed me, dude..."

Neet caws and takes off as you lean against the car and reach up to push your shades up enough to wipe at your eyes. f*ck, you shouldn't have moved that fast...

When you get your sight cleared enough to look up again, Wade's got his arm out like he's a goddamn falconer, and Neet's perched comfortably on his wrist. From the soft crooning sounds she's making, he just got adopted.

Thank f*ck. If she'd decided that he was an enemy... "C'mere, Neet. Right here."

As the crow hops from his wrist to your shoulder, Wade digs in his pocket and comes up with a still-wrapped but hella crushed pastry. It looks like it was probably one of those cookies that come in packets of one or two; when he rips the plastic open and dumps the contents into his palm, Neet seems pretty pleased with how they taste.

"Uh...she's gonna peck you if you feed her like that," you have to point out. Actually you probably shouldn't be putting that in future tense; she's totally already packing him, just trying to get as much of the crumbs into her beak as she can. That's gotta hurt.

"Eh, it's fine." Wade shrugs, shaking the crumbs that're left together into the center of his palm so Neet can get the last of them. "Will she ride in the car? I mean I can probably steal a cage from somewhere if being in a moving vehicle freaks her out, but—"

"Wait, we're taking her?" f*ck, you thought you'd need to bargain and maybe beg to make sure she was brought along. But even before you finish asking, Wade's nodding.

(You might be about to cry again.)

"We're definitely not leaving her, so yeah, we're taking her. Speaking of which, you ready to go?"

"Yeah." Thank f*ck for binary questions, so you don't have to manage more than one word. Also thank f*ck for the fact that Deadpool goes around the back of the car instead of the front; that gives you time to give your eyes another hasty swipe, as you coax Neet onto your wrist instead of your shoulder, and from there onto the center console so you can get in and get your seatbelt on.

She's hopped onto your lap before Wade's got into the driver's seat, co*cking her head to give you a birdy glare that suggests that you'll lose fingers if you try to ditch her again.

Honestly, you're just fine with that. No f*cking way is she getting out of your sight, ever.

Chapter 14: Chatlog: We Need To f*cking Talk

Chapter Text

turntechGodhead [TG] created the memo "we need to f*cking talk"!

turntechGodhead added timaeusTestified, tentacleTherapist, tipsyGnostalgic, and technicolorGladiator to the memo!

AI: Wait a sec.

artificialIntellect kicked technicolorGladiator from the memo!

TG: f*cking excuse me who the f*ck are you and who gave you admin powers you pompous f*cking douchebag piece of f*cking sh*t

turntechGodhead added technicolorGladiator to the memo!

artificialIntellect kicked technicolorGladiator from the memo!

turntechGodhead added technicolorGladiator to the memo!

turntechGodhead kicked artificialIntellect from the memo!

TT: That doesn't actually work on him.

AI: It does not.

artificialIntellect kicked technicolorGladiator from the memo!

TG: what the f*ck
TG: stop messing with my sh*t
TG: im in a car with a guy ive known for less than twenty four hours because you f*ckers decided that you just had to flip my f*cking life all turnways and this is the only f*cking thing i expect to control okay
TG: leave it alone

TT: Psychologically speaking, he's right. Even the illusion of safety and control in at least one area is invaluable.

TG: yeah but see davey d has no f*ckin clue what we pulled and we kinda think its safer to keep it that way until we have u safe n sound with us
TG: well with hal n dork anyway

TG: back the f*ck up and tell me who hal is

AI: That would be me.

TG: yeah but who the hell are you smartass

TT: ...okay, so.
TT: About a year ago I had an...accident. Let's call it an accident. With some experimental tech that I definitely shouldn't have been able to get from one of D's exes, right?

AI: In his defense, no one should be careless enough with a suppression collar that a fifteen year old should be able to get his greasy little hands on it.

TT: Exactly. She left it right out in the open, in the bag of sh*t she was packing while she was having that last fight with D. What was I supposed to do, leave it for someone else to take? Someone with fewer morals?
TT: Besides, what the f*ck was she doing with it?

TG: dont know dont care
TG: get to the point dirk

TT: Right. The point.
TT: D had me tested for sleep disorders a while back, right? Did we ever tell you about that?

TG: no

TT: Right. Well, he did.
TT: The tests didn't turn up an actual neurological defect that'd cause chronic insomnia, but it did turn up a bunch of weird sh*t. As in mutant weird.

TG: youre a mutant
TG: are you serious

TT: Yes, but I'm not quite done.
TT: At the point that I got ahold of the Amazing Wonder Bigot's collar, we had no actual clue what my powers were, or if I even really had any. Just that my brain structure was significantly different than what's usually considered the human norm.
TT: I figured I could reverse the effect of the damping field and amplify it, get a read on what I might be able to do that way.

TG: is that actually possible

TT: Theoretically, yes.

TG: nope

AI: It's really not.
AI: He caused the collar to discharge roughly the amount of electricity used by a hundred uses of the electric chair.

TT: You really don't have to put it that way.

AI: And you didn't have to hook it up to the house's power lines, but we all make bad decisions, right?
AI: Anyway, that's how dearest Dirk figured out that his body processes electricity in a way that a normal human's doesn't. Also that if he gives himself a big enough shock it'll basically clone him, except the clone is markedly cooler, can talk to computers, is less depressed and superior in every way.

TG: so youre not a mutant
TG: youre two mutants and one of thems named hal

TT: Yes.

TG: if this car was moving i would open the door and take a nice dive onto asphalt at sixty miles per hour just so i didnt have to process all of this ridiculous bullsh*t

TG: whys the car not moving tho

TG: wades getting food and neet needed to fly around a lil bit

TT: Neet? Nietzsche?
TT: As in, you brought a crow with you?

TG: no
TG: i didnt f*cking bring her she brought herself
TG: i dont even know how she did it but im not leaving her behind okay
TG: she wants to stay with me and i left her behind with the others once already and even if they didnt make it to me she did and i
TG: i f*cking need her

TT: Calm down, Dave. No one's taking your crow.

TG: i mean yall took everything else right
TG: bro and home and all that sh*t

AI: Low blow. Especially when you know we're worried about you.

TG: dude there is literally no way you specifically know enough about me to give a sh*t one way or the other

AI: Dave. You're my brother.

TG: cousin
TG: if that

TT: Hey, being horrible at specifics of close familial relations is what Striders do best. You're our brother.

TG: same here davey
TG: if that rat bastard can get u to call him bro im gonna be your big sis

TT: Which would make me your sibling as well.

TG: ...
TG: okay
TG: i guess
TG: thanks
TG: gimme a sec neets freaking the f*ck out

TT: She's the one who gets upset when you have a panic attack, isn't she.

TG: yeah but im not
TG: spiderman aint here everythings chill theres absolutely no reason id be flipping out im fine

AI: ....Spider-Man.

TG: yeah spiderman
TG: look yall hired deadpool to come whack bro why is spiderman a surprise here

AI: Good point.
AI: Just out of curiosity, does Deadpool have any kind of ETA on when you'll make it here

TG: uh
TG: okay so i asked him and he says were stopping in chicago

TT: You're stopping where now?
TT: That's not even kind of on the way.

TG: hey you take it up with him if you want to cause im so not arguing with him okay

TT: Has he given you a reason to be afraid of crossing him, Dave?

TG: what
TG: is the fact that he is who he is not enough to do that

TT: Perhaps. But he's currently under contract to bring you home to us safely. Hurting you would be a breach of that.

AI: The kind that I'm pretty damn ready to answer by making some of his sh*t explode.
AI: If he hurts you or gives you reason to believe he would hurt you, tell one of us. We'll handle it.

TG: how about you dont do that
TG: dirk you can keep him from doing that right

TT: Yeah, of course.

AI: No he can't.

TG: lol he totally cant
TG: i can tho! pretty much anyway lmao
TG: no wrecking deadpools sh*t unless dave tells us to kk?

AI: Agreed.

TG: see dirky its that easy

TT: It's not my fault he likes you best.

AI: Oh, it so is.

TT: Play nice in Dave's memo, you two.
TT: Can you leave this memo open, Dave? I suspect that you're about at your limit for responding to it at the moment, but it'd be useful to be able to have a forum for further discussion.

TG: yeah i can leave it open
TG: yall need to clue d in on this sh*t though
TG: its not f*cking fair to him otherwise

TT: We're going to.

AI: Eventually.

TG: see that eventually thing? thats f*cked up
TG: but yeah im so not arguing right now
TG: talk to yall later
TG: actually no yknow what
TG: talk to yall quote eventually unquote

turntechGodhead left the memo!

Chapter 15: Wade: Amateur Psychiatry

Chapter Text

In the twenty minutes since you stopped to get food (like actually went in and bought sh*t, instead of the drive-through this time. There were two guys having a fistfight by the mic to order; you figured this would be a hell of a lot simpler aaaand you've lost the original sentence here, great)

Anyway, it's been twenty minutes and probably close to twenty miles since you pulled the car out of the parking lot, and not only has Dave not touched the food you set on the center console, he hasn't even looked up from his phone. From the glances you keep sneaking at him between actually watching the road and feeding sweet Neet scraps of lettuce from your burger, the attention he's paying to whatever he's doing isn't quite a good thing.

That assumption gets even more likely when the kid finally drops his phone in his lap, making a wordless sound that manages to convey a kind of unbelievable amount of frustration. The crow answers that with a weird caw that pitches up at the end, but when she goes to hop onto his shoulder Dave leans the other way, ducking his head and hunching down against the window.

Ooh, that's not good. "You okay?"

"f*ck you."

So no. Actually that was a really stupid question. Way to go, Wade. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"f*ck. You." This time the words are accompanied by a raised middle finger; Neet immediately headbutts the hand it's attached to. (You've never actually seen a bird do something like that before. Weird.) He still doesn't look at you.

"Do you want me to pull over so you can get out and sucker punch me?"

"...what the f*ck?" Oh hey, you got Dave to look at you. Also you've definitely confused him enough for that to be the dominant expression on his face. sh*t, you should probably be watching the road, not your kid.

The kid. Slip of the tongue. Even though you didn't say anything.

Ah, f*ck. Focus, Wade. What were you doing...ah yes, confusing Dave with the offer of sanctioned violence. "Hey, I'm running out of ideas here? You're f*cked up over something, maybe you're pissed; I feel like hitting things helps with that. Sometimes."

"Oh my god." Is he rolling his eyes behind those shades? Probably. "No. I'm not doing that sh*t, dumbass, I'm not..."

"...you're not him." Oh. sh*t. "Right? That's where you're going with that?"

This time when you look over at Dave, he looks back at you for a full three seconds, before huffing and looking down at the crow in his lap. "Watch the f*cking road."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm not planning on killing us both." That's probably not the point he's trying to make, but it's got to hurt less if you let him think it is. "What happened, though?"

Dave just shrugs and leans away again, fingers working into the ruff of feathers at the base of Neet's neck like he's petting a cat. The assumption that he's not going to answer seems pretty damn reasonable, but after a minute or so he does.

"Dirk's a mutant. Like...he f*ckin' cloned himself or something, right? The new guy...his name's Hal." He mumbles something you honestly can't even decipher under his breath, like he's testing out words before he says them. "I didn't f*cking know, dude. I mean—look, I know the f*cking difference between how Roxy talks around people she just met 'n people she's been around awhile; she knows Hal. They all do."

"And that f*cks you up."

"I'm not f*cked up."

"Well, since we've royally f*cked up your entire life in the last day or so, I'm going to say that that's a problem, Dave." (You may be smiling. You should probably stop doing that before he looks over at you and thinks that you're making fun of him. f*cking inappropriate emotional responses.)

"f*ck you." Out of the corner of your eye, you see him shift, taking his hand off the crow's back and tucking both hands under his elbows, minimizing himself as much as he possibly can. "Look, I know Dirk, alright? I think the first thing I remember is being like...four years old and hanging onto his teddy bear, watchin' Bro show him how to sew up this lil' shirt for it."

"Teddy bears wear shirts?"

"Dirk's did—Bro had some scraps of this specialty trans pride fabric he ordered to make something for D's birthday, 'n Dirk wanted his bear to be just like D. He was five, it made sense then."

Okay, you're not taking your eyes off the road for right now, but you're pretty sure Dave's actually looking at you again, which is good. You think. "Eh, with the extra info it makes sense now."

"Yeah, maybe. But like...I know Dirk, I know Rose and Rox maybe not as well as I know him but better than anybody else...and then there's Hal."

"Who you don't know."

"I feel like I should. Talking to him, it almost feels like talking to Dirk when he's about to crash off a caffeine high, right? Except...not. And every-f*cking-body else is used to this sh*t, like it's f*ckin' normal, and it's not f*ckin' normal!"

That last comes out loud enough that Neet caws in answer to him. Dave flinches at the harsh sound, like he forgot she was here at all. If he had anything else to say, he's not going to say it now.

Damn. Now you actually have to figure out what the right thing to say is. This is why you do not and should not be left in charge of kids.

(Except you are in charge of this specific kid, and you have less of a problem with it than you strictly should.)

"It's not normal," you say finally, mostly because agreeing with him is the easiest way to go. Also because it's true. "Dude, we're mutants. Normal applies to literally nothing at this point."

He snorts, unfolding himself enough to start petting Neet again. "I'm so f*cking glad you didn't use the washing machine metaphor."

"It's a useless setting, that's why. Either it shreds your delicates or leaves bloodstains in everything."

"That kinda makes it sound like you're washing lingerie and the sh*t you wore when you murdered somebody."

"Not usually at the same time." That does remind you of something else important, though. "We need to stop somewhere and buy you warmer clothes before we get too much further north."

"I have warm sh*t in my bag."

"You've never been in snow, have you?"

"It snows in Houston." Oh, that's defensive. Wow. "Sometimes."

"That barely counts, and this'll be colder. Just trust me here, Dave."

The kid's laugh takes you by surprise. From how fast he silences himself, it surprises him too.

"I kinda wish I didn't trust you," he says, after maybe half a minute. You're not sure how the hell you can answer that, and for once in your life you take the halfway intelligent course of action, and don't answer at all.

Chapter 16: Dave: Snow Ain't Friends With Texans

Chapter Text

Wade's right. You don't have a f*cking clue what cold really is.

A couple words come to mind, over the next couple days. "Awful" is the main one. Like, really awful. It got cold in Houston, yeah—below freezing some days, like not often but it did happen, right? And you f*cking prayed for it to get chilly because Bro hates (hated) having to strife on the roof in the cold, hated it enough that he'd go for less dangerous ways of f*cking with your head in retaliation for whatever you did this time—but even as you were hoping for the mercury to drop like a hella beat you always knew you'd f*ckin' hate it when it did.

You don't do well in the cold. Not even Houston cold. And this ain't Texas winter, this is inches-of-snow weather, this is honest to god frostbite weather. This is cold enough that Neet only lasts maybe five minutes outside of the car at a time before she dives down and tries to worm her way into the space between the heavy coat Wade picked out for you (red, hella thick, sheds slowly melting droplets of snow like blood off the Teflon of a nonstick pan, cost enough that you seriously worried about the credit card he paid for it with) and makes small sad poor-lil-cold-me sounds until you unzip and let her nestle in the hood next to your head. You knew there was a decent argument for getting a size too big.

He thinks it's cute. Wade. Maybe you should be offended about that sh*t, but y'know what? He's right, Neet's cute, who gives a f*ck if your urge to take pics and document every single thing she does is stupid. Obviously not him. Hell, of the couple hundred pictures you've added to the camera roll on your phone since you left Texas, he's taken at least ten of them.

A lot of them are of snow.

You're really starting to hate snow. It's cool and all, but no one ever told you that this sh*t hurts this bad.

At least it's mostly just your arm. The right one, specifically; you know exactly why, too. The way the ache twists from your wrist up to the socket of your shoulder reminds you that this is completely your own fault; you're the stupid one who keeps using that arm to catch yourself with in strifes, even after the first and the second time you broke it, the repeated sprains and that one horrible morning you managed to pop your shoulder out of the socket.

It's funny—that's like the only time you actually scared Bro, you think. Like. You read up on dislocations, afterward, struggling to read random sh*t you pulled off the internet through the weird shifting haze that the pain pills he gave you dropped over your brain. If you weren't that scared of what might be wrong with you, you probably would've just left it for later—but Bro was scared, in the moment before he tossed his sword down and painted irritation on his face and dropped to one knee to do something to your arm that hurt so bad you blacked out for a second. He was scared, and he couldn't keep you from seeing, and you seriously thought you were gonna die.

Or that your arm was gonna fall off. You were eleven, it seemed like a possibility. But yeah, Wikipedia and the great god Google confirmed that dislocation ain't even close to deadly, and all that left you with is a headful of memories and an inability to lean over against the cold car window and go to sleep without being in more pain than you already are.

You wonder if Wade notices.

f*ck, you hope he doesn't. He probably doesn't; you don't really think you've been showing your discomfort, and the f*cked-up road conditions mean he's got more of his attention on driving and less left over to keep sneaking peeks over at you, especially now that you're actually in a city and not out on open highway.

Oh yeah, that reminds you. "Why're we in Chicago, exactly?"

"To see a couple guys. One guy. He's kind of two guys. It's complicated."

"Dude, don't tell me you got another guy like Dirk." It'd make sense if he did. Somehow. You're not really sure how.

"Nope." Wade shrugs and lookz over at you. Thank god he's stopped at a red light right now; the idea of having his attention off the slippery f*cking road when the car's moving makes your stomach do a lazy flip. "Pretty much the exact opposite, so don't freak out."

"I'm not freaking out." Neet pecks at your fingers as you say that, like she totally knows you're lying.

"You're definitely freaking out," Deadpool confirms.

"f*ck off." Why did you think this line of questioning was a good idea. Why. "Green light. If he's not like Dirk, why are we taking this detour?"

"Curiosity."

For f*ck's sake, is he completely incapable of giving you one goddamn answer? "Curiosity about what?"

This time when he glances at you, the car's moving, and even though there's literally no wiggle to your current forward motion you still tense up, clench your hands into fists hidden in the too-long sleeves of your shirt and holy sh*t your bad arm doesn't like that strain at all. Feels like something white-hot twisting around in the center of your arm, a wire wrapped around the bone and muscle trying to pull itself straight.

The fact that you can't keep the grimace off your face is an asset right now, apparently, because Wade immediately drops the half-teasing thing he's got going and answers you straight. "He's a guy who can ID powers, Dave, that's it."

"A scientist or something?"

"Nah, that's a waste of time. Plus they always want to take me apart and see how I tick, and that's more of a commitment than I feel like making."

"So he's a mutant?" Hm. How exactly do you feel about that? More okay than Bro would want you to be, that's for sure. Then again, that's probably a good thing.

But Wade's shaking his head, without taking his eyes off the road this time. "Not quite. Less mutant, more...alien."

"He's an alien." There is absolutely no way you heard that right.

"He's kind of some percentage alien."

"What the f*ck?" Aliens ain't a thing. Like, seriously. You're not John, you have some level of critical thinking and common sense and there is no f*cking way that aliens have descended from the goddamn heavens and had weird alien/human hybrid babies. You're so missing something here.

"Hey, you can ask him about it." Wade shrugs, mutters f*ck under his breath as he struggles to get the car eased into the parking spot he's angling for, and then shrugs and puts it in park anyway, turning the key off and looking over at you again. "After he takes a look at what you are. I'm excited to find out."

"Prepare to be disappointed," you suggest. Wade just laughs and opens the door to hop out, and since you really don't want to sit out here alone you scoop Neet up and tuck her inside your coat so you can follow.

Okay, the main constant in Wade's friends is that they look like f*cking homeless guys. The guy who answers the door is, if anything, more scruffy than Peter was, and he's dressed like he just got up.

Actually, maybe he did just get up. You have no clue what time it is. Or what timezone you're in. You feel like you're still in the same one you started in, but honestly it's anyone's guess.

"Eddie, hey!" Wade's got his mask back on, more for the protection against cold than disguise this time; he pulls it up enough to give Scruffy Confused Dude a bright grin. "Did I not text you?"

"You texted me." The guy—Eddie—is staring at you. One one hand, that sh*t's starting to make you worry. On the other, that gives you an excuse to not be low-key about staring back. "That's an actual kid."

"Well yeah, I told you Dave was a kid."

"Usually that means a college kid when it's coming from you." Eddie tilts his head, somehow making himself look even more baffled. "...what the f*ck's in your hood, Dave?"

Next to your head, Neet makes a soft and entirely smug crooning sound, like she's proud of herself for getting noticed like this. You resist the urge to stuff her further down into your coat. "A crow."

Okay, how the f*ck does he manage to look relieved and disappointed at the same time? More to the point, why the f*ck does he look relieved and disappointed, and not just more confused?

"A crow. Nice. Come on in." (Honestly you'd probably just freeze up if left to your own devices, but when Eddie steps back and you fail to move Wade puts one hand on your back and pushes gently until you get your sh*t together and step inside. Thank f*ck for Wade.) "So you're a mutant?"

"No," you answer without even hesitating.

"Yes he is." Okay, so now you feel less thankful for Wade's existence. "No clue what he can do, but he reacts to suppression collars."

"f*ck, we hate those." Eddie makes a disgusted face, one hand going up to rake through his hair and f*ck it up even worse than it is already. When he brings it down again, there's something fluid and black slithering between his fingers and curling around his wrist. Something, as in you don't know what the f*ck it is—it moves like it's alive, but there's no features to the thing, no head or legs. Just...slime.

Neet caws and wriggles out of where she was nestled, hopping off your shoulder and flapping her wings twice to get up to Wade's. Apparently she doesn't like the idea of being trapped around the lil' slime thing. You, on the other hand, aren't anywhere near that smart, and when Eddie holds out his hand you reach up and let the black slime flow from him to you.

It's warm. You kinda didn't expect that. It's warm, and has some weight to it that surprises you even more than the temperature. When it thins itself out to cover your hand like a glove, you let it. Why not?

Then it somehow sinks into your skin and you kind of start to panic. "Wade—"

"That's normal." Eddie's the one who says it, but Wade's hand comes down on your shoulder, and it's that pressure that convinces you to put your freakout on hold. "Give them...uh, maybe a minute? Two minutes. Not that long."

You nod, but even as you nod the thing speaks in your head.

Pain? it says, in kind of the roughly sibilant voice you'd expect from a freaky bodyhopping alien horror, and yes you've been doing just fine with not losing your sh*t but that's completely over now. You feel that thing in your head, you hear it speak, and everything that isn't pure unfiltered fear just f*cking disappears.

Chapter 17: Wade: Jesus f*cking Christ, Venom.

Chapter Text

You're not going to say that Dave goes from zero to one hundred in under a second, but that's only because you haven't actually seen him at zero yet. The kid's always at some level of worry, like he doesn't quite know how to dial it down from about ten percent combat readiness; even when he's asleep he's not really fully relaxed.

But yeah, this escalates really f*cking fast. Like one second Dave's a little bit freaked out, just enough that you reach over to touch his shoulder and Eddie says, "That's normal—" and starts to say something else, and literally before you finish processing his sentence Dave just f*cking falls apart.

Okay, maybe falling apart is the wrong word. He stiffens under your hand, is what happens, goes perfectly still for an instant that's so brief you can't measure it. Then he's moving, fast enough that you immediately confirm that yeah, he's inherited the same mutation that the asshole you killed had—which is going to be a whole can of worms later probably—shrugging your hand off and ducking past you to get to the door.

Before he can get it open (or you can grab him and keep him from ending up outside, since it's cold as sh*t and you really don't feel like chasing him down) Dave stops again, shakes his head frantically and too f*cking fast, and makes a wet choking sound. If you didn't know he had a symbiote in him, that'd be cause for concern. As it is, it's kind of a relief.

Dave gags, and the fist-sized ball of goo drips out of his mouth and hits the floor with a soft splat. The kid goes to stomp on it, you haul him off his feet even though it's already moving fast enough to avoid him, and he instantly snaps his head back to slam his head into your face.

Holy f*ck does that hurt; something definitely just broke. Again. The pain, plus being immediately blinded from the impact, plus the way that Dave twists in your arms— that all adds up to you swearing, spitting out blood and letting go of him.

The decision to step in between Eddie and Dave when you're mildly incapacitated isn't really one of your better ones. But hey, the fact that you need to be able to see what the f*ck's going on means that you have motivation to shake off the possible concussion faster!

Unfortunately, you're just fast enough that you get to see the symbiote flow up Eddie's fuzzy pants like oil, except faster and going the wrong way. It makes it to bare skin, thins itself out enough to soak into him, and—

sh*t.

He changes. They change; you've had it pounded into your head on more than one occasion that Venom will absolutely kick your ass if you try to assume they're just Eddie, or just the symbiote.

They're both. They're also big, furious, and okay no you're not going to say hot. No.

(You still think it.)

You do not think that. Mostly because you don't have time to think anything, before Venom snarls out a hissing screech and swings one big arm in an arc that intersects neatly with your chest. Which sends you flying a good five feet back into the wall.

Now, you're not sure which impact it is that snaps your rib. Maybe it's when they smack you, maybe it's when you hit the wall—hey, it could even be when you hit the floor. Bones are weird on when they decide to break, okay? And at least two, maybe three of yours just did. For this being kind of a off week from work, this is turning out to be rougher than it really needs to be.

Okay, Wade, whine later, get the f*ck up now. Preferably before Venom makes Dave lose his sh*t even more than he is already.

Too late for that, by the time you push yourself up off the floor. But not in the way you kind of expected.

"Dave." Eddie's already back to being just Eddie again, kneeling on the floor a few feet from Dave. "We're sorry, alright? We didn't know."

The kid doesn't seem to realize that Eddie's serious about that. Actually, you're not sure he's really hearing any of this; he's making a decent attempt to shove himself right through the wall, as far away from Eddie as he can, breathing fast enough that you honestly have no idea how he's not passed out from hyperventilation yet.

...okay, time for you to step in and put this sh*t to a stop. Hopefully you're healed enough to wrestle an alien if you need to.

Eddie hisses out another snarl when you grab his arm and drag him back from Dave, but he doesn't change again. He does try to bite at your hand, but hey, human teeth. Wouldn't even leave a mark through leather.

"f*ck!" You're not wearing leather right now, because you are an idiot. "Okay, you kinky f*cker, give him some space. Dave, you okay?"

"No—f*ck no, that thing—" Dave runs across the downside of how fast he's been breathing: not enough air in his lungs to finish a sentence. He gasps, coughs, and buries his face in his hands.

One hand comes down when Neet hops over next to him, though, automatically stroking her back, and you make the executive decision that she can handle this a hell of a lot better than you can. The fact that Eddie doesn't even kind of resist when you drag him towards the closest door is a nice surprise.

It's the door into the kitchen instead of, say, outside, which is also nice. As soon as you turn him loose to shut the door behind you, Eddie growls and smacks you upside the head.

There's some of Venom's strength in it. It actually hurts.

"Hey? Ow?"

"Why the f*ck would you not tell us he's that afraid of people getting in his head?" He emphasizes that with another smack. Still hurts. "We were in his head, he trusts you, how the hell could you not know—"

On the fifth smack you decide you've had enough, and grab his wrist before the blow actually lands. Again, this is a mistake. Or maybe not, because hey, you've never been this up close and personal to him when he let the symbiote alter his body before. It's actually kind of cool to see his skin change as black flows over it, and you finally get to confirm that yes, the texture is just as slimy as it looks.

Then Venom twists their wrist out of your grip and slams you against the door hard enough to make both the frame and your teeth rattle, and it becomes uncool again. Again, the impact knocks all of the air out of your lungs, and it takes you a second to get any in with them still pinning you like this.

"Now normally I'd be very, very into this, but right now I have things to do, cutie." What? You're a little bit high on whatever the f*ck it is that the brain releases to cope with injury. Of course you're going to flirt. "Also places to be. Can I get a raincheck on—"

"Ssshut up." Technically, you probably shouldn't be able to read much emotion into Venom's almost completely inhuman voice. However, frustration pretty much transcends language. "We're not doing that, dumbassss."

"No? I feel snubbed." You grin at them, and they hiss at you, showing that ridiculous xeno nightmare of a mouth. So many teeth. Long tongue. Slimy....

No, really, stop. Now is most definitely not the f*cking time.

Venom drops you when you're still mentally arguing with yourself over whether or not now is, in fact, the time. You realize that they actually had you off the ground when your feet hit it again.

Ow. But it's a small ow. The kind that you bounce right back up off the floor from, quick enough to catch the symbiote receding back into Eddie.

There's multiple downsides here, but the one you're going to focus on is the look of frustrated fury on his face. Maybe you should defuse this before you get torn apart and end up having to explain that to Dave.

Fun. Diplomacy.

Eddie points at you as you open your mouth, bopping your nose with that one outstretched finger. "No," he says firmly.

It's the kind of tone that's meant to convince you not to argue. So what do you do? You argue. "No?"

"No. Nope. Shut the f*ck up."

"I don't do that—"

"—unless we break your jaw. Trust us, we know." He lets out a growling sigh, the symbiote twined around and showing through even that small noise, and leans back against the wall, closing his eyes for a second. "That was upsetting."

"I can actually tell." Mildly worrying was what it was, and if you're worried then sh*t must be extremely f*cked. "Did you get what I wanted in there, or did other sh*t get in the way? Because I think this was kind of a 'one shot' kind of thing."

Eddie shrugs, opening one eye and almost focusing on you. "Healing factor. Weaker than yours."

"And he's a speedster." You don't make it a question, but he shakes his head anyway. "Oh come on, did you not see—"

"He bends time, Wade. Changes how he moves through it, makes everything seem slow...or something."

"Or something. Very scientific."

Eddie opens both eyes for the specific purpose of rolling them at you. "Do we look like a scientist?"

"You look like a hobo who stole someone else's PJ's, if I have to be honest with you."

He considers that for a second. Then he flips you off.

"Awww, thank you. That means a lot coming from you." You smile like you're trying out for a beauty pageant and blow him a kiss. Then you flip him off, because he f*cking deserves it. "I'm going to go check on the kid."

"Good plan."

Chapter 18: Dave: Literally No One Here Is Sane And Frankly That's Concerning As f*ck

Chapter Text

It gets easier to breathe when Wade pulls Eddie into the other room and shuts the door, but not by much. Part of the issue might be that you almost don't want to breathe; breathing means sound, sound that you made, rough and raspy in your own ears and so f*cking loud that even if he couldn't hear your thoughts he'd still know right where you were—

Something thuds into something else, in the other room, and Neet caws and flaps her wings twice. The first sound makes you flinch, the second one reminds you that yeah, she wants attention. You need to give her attention. You can't think about other sh*t right now.

Focus on the bird.

After some length of time spent carefully grooming her, smoothing down each feather and scratching the spots that make her narrow her eyes down to almost nothing and co*ck her head into your hand, you finally manage to get your breathing under control. Now your hands are shaking, but hey, you can work around that. Probably. As long as you don't have to hold a sword.

f*ck, you wish you hadn't thought that.

Neet croons and pecks at your arm as you take your hand off her so you can press both palms into your eyes, hard enough that the darkness of having them closed goes white and starry and almost painful. You need to pull yourself together, you need to not think about Cal, you need to focus on something outside of yourself right now. Except now that you got your hands up, you can't exactly lower them again; takes sight as a usable sense off the table. What else is there? Touch? All you can concentrate on that you feel is the persistent ache in your arm, that sh*t ain't gonna help. Smell? No. Hearing?

You hear your heartbeat, which also doesn't help. Wade and Eddie talking, incomprehensible through the wall between them and you. A ticking that's too slow to be a clock, and too evenly spaced to be anything else.

That last one is what you end up latching onto, counting the ticks and the heartbeats in between them, measuring out your breathing by the too-long seconds once you get a little less shaky. Three heartbeats between ticks, two ticks to an inhale and two to an exhale and one space in between; as long as you can hear the clock, nothing's gonna happen, because if you can hear it then you're not in the apartment, Bro only had digital clocks in the apartment and most of them were wrong anyway. This one's probably wrong, but at least it's steady.

"Dave?"

Gentle as it is, Wade's voice jacks your heartrate right back up into overclock mode again. You jerk your hands away from your face, but for a second after you open your eyes everything's still blurry as f*ck from the pressure you've been putting on them—god, why are you such a f*cking idiot? And why is Eddie crouched on the floor in front of you, only a lil' further away than Wade? Like. You can handle Wade being this close, it's almost a f*cking comfort, but, uh...

You look straight at Eddie and think, I can get Deadpool's sword before he can stop me. I can hurt you before you can stop me. Do you f*ckin' hear me?

If he does, he doesn't react. Then again, Bro wouldn't've reacted either, if he could've read your mind.

"Hey. Dave." Wade taps your shoulder with two fingers, a quick light touch that's not quite quick enough to avoid Neet's attempt to grab a beakful of his sleeve. Instead of pulling back and maybe dragging her along, he just leaves his hand there for the moment; even that lil' point of contact is something to focus on that ain't completely contained in you. "You okay?"

"Yeah. f*ckin' p-peachy." Do not f*cking break down. Don't look at Eddie, either. sh*t, you can't not look at Eddie. "Where the f*ck is it?"

Wade just looks confused for a sec, but Eddie very obviously knows just what you mean. He touches his own chest, palm flat over his heart, and says way too calmly, "They're in me."

sh*t. "So you're in my head. You can read my mind, you—you—" There goes your cool, there goes your ability to breathe, there goes Neet because she's just put her corvid ability to deduce cause and effect to use and took off, feathers almost brushing the ceiling as she climbs and then dives at him.

Eddie yelps and throws his arms over his head. That probably saves him from a nasty gouged-out eye, but it doesn't stop Neet from ripping a gash across the back of one of his hands.

He's gonna hurt her for that. He's gonna hurt her, and you're too fixated on the f*cking inconsequential detail that his shirt's rode up with that movement, that he's not even kind of trying to guard that exposed strip of skin, that Wade's distracted and half-turned away from you and you can see the hilt of one katana and worse than that, in your head you can see what you could do—

Eddie yelps again, as Neet caws and makes another pass. This time, it goes from a panicked cry to something deep and wetly rasping, the kind of sound you've never heard come out of a human before.

And he...he changes. There's gotta be a word for this, how something dark and wet wraps around every inch of him like black ice melting in reverse. The process takes maybe two seconds, and when it's over there's something huge and black and not human standing there.

Neet has a different opinion on this thing than she had on Eddie, apparently. You wish it was fear, but no, she caws out the same sound you've heard the crows make at the chick back home who puts out tiny fancy pastries for them, and the moment that he lowers his hands she lands on his shoulder, perching there like it's not attached to a huge f*cking alien.

You make a sound, when she does that. You're not really sure what it is. A whimper, maybe. Something pathetic enough that all of Wade's attention is immediately on you.

"Kid, it's okay—"

"Neet!" None of this is okay, is what you want to say, but her name's all that's gonna come out right now. The guy's moving, he's raising his hand and your crow's not gonna move even though he could catch her and crush her with one hand—

Neet less out a soft, satisfied crooning caw, as the thing that may or may not be Eddie oh-so-carefully strokes from her head to her back with one clawed finger.

Right, you're checking out of this whole f*cking situation right now. Nope. You're done.

Well, you would be if your f*cking legs worked. What actually happens is that you push yourself up off the ground in that smooth motion that Bro drilled into you a couple thousand times over the course of years, you get on your feet and half turned around before both your legs fill with pins and needles so bad that it feels like you stepped on a live wire. How f*cking long were you sitting there, anyway?

Doesn't matter. You f*cked up.

Wade catches you before you can actually wipe out, though. Thank f*cking god; you're fast, you would've been able to get your arms underneath yourself and broken your fall that way, but it would've hurt. Maybe a lot. Wade catches you, scoops you up like he's gonna carry you across a nonexistent threshold, and instead deposits you in a chair that looks like hungry wolverines have been using it for a chew toy.

You immediately curl into as tight a ball as you can manage and close your eyes. You're done.

"Dave." Except he won't let you be done, apparently. f*ck. "They're not planning on ripping you apart or anything, okay? They—"

"Sssomehow we think you're doing more hhharm than good hhhere, Wade."

Something about that roughly hissing voice has you uncurling. Just a little. Just enough to look at the guy who's talking. f*ck, somehow you kind of assumed he wouldn't be able to talk with that thing on him. In him.

"Stay over there." There's absolutely no way you can make sure he does that. "Don't touch me. Neet, come here."

She caws your crow name, and doesn't f*cking budge.

"Neet. Nietzsche." f*ck, you know she's hearing you, but she isn't f*cking moving off that thing's shoulder. "Neet, c'mon...please."

Even with your best effort to keep your voice level, that last word comes out as pretty damn close to a sob. You see Wade wince, and then you just f*cking close your eyes before you have to see whatever the rest of his reaction is gonna be.

"Venom. Give him the bird."

"Hhhe'ss ssscared of usss." Okay, why the f*ck can you get this good of a read on his—no, their—emotions? Like you shouldn't be this sure that they're at least a lil' bit guilty right now. "Ssshe ssseemsss to like usss, we can't help that...what do you sssuggessst hhhere, Wade?"

"Oh my f*cking god. Lean down."

Since neither of them seem to be showing that much interest in you right now, you risk opening your eyes, just in time to catch Venom dropping down to a crouch that really reminds you of a frog for some reason. Neet spreads her wings in alarm at the sudden motion, but she still doesn't actually move from her spot. Well, not until Wade steps over and grabs her with both hands, pinning her wings to her body so he can pick her up.

Oh, she's so gonna f*ck with him for that later. You can tell she's furious, it's obvious in the way her throat feathers are fluffing up around his hands...he needs to be careful putting her down. You should warn him.

You can't.

Wade sets Neet in your lap with all the care of a guy balancing crystal on china, and she immediately retaliates by hopping around as soon as she's got her feet on your leg, making a dangerous hissing sound and just pecking the sh*t out of him. The only reason she only does it once is that you grab her and stuff her down into your coat before she can do anything worse.

So. Wade's bleeding and staring at the blood like it's absolutely fascinating, Eddie's...not quite Eddie, and you have an angry crow in your shirt. This is going just great.

At least Neet's not pecking or scratching at your skin. She's mad, but she's gently mad, like you pulled her out of another crow's nest. Actually, wait. That makes sense.

"She." C'mon, Dave, you can't just shut down. Talking is good. Talking to the alien is good. Start that sentence again from the top, don't freeze up this time. "She thinks you're a crow, dude. A...big, weird crow."

They consider that for a second, waggling that weird, slimy, technically eyeless (because there's no f*cking way those white patches function as normal eyes) head in a way that makes you think of the calming repetitive motion of drumming your fingers against the table. "We've never been a crow before."

"Uh."

"We won't bond with yoursss, Dave." Yeah, that's amusem*nt, you have no f*cking clue how you can tell but you still can. "We won't bond with you either. We ssswear."

"...yeah. Good. Awesome. You can't see what I'm thinking right now, right?"

Venom shakes their head. "We only read our own mind."

"What the f*ck does that mean—"

"The symbiote can bond with any sapient being," Wade breaks in.

Before he can continue, Venom interrupts him right back. "Not quite any, but clossse."

"Great, are you going to explain your own biology this time?"

"We refussse."

"Bitch." He rolls his eyes and flips them off with both hands, then looks back at you. "It absorbs the genetic component of mutation-based powers, right? Which was the whole point of having it bond with you for a second; I have no clue why the f*cker decided it needed to chat with you and scare you out of your mind—"

"He wasss in pain." Venom hesitates for a second, grumbling something completely unintelligible under their breath, and then edges slightly closer. "We didn't expect that."

Oookay, too close. "Don't touch me," you warn again.

"Touch, or bond with?" God, they're big. You're in a chair, they're crouched on the floor, and still they don't even have to tilt their head in order to look you in the eye. "We promisssed, we'd ssstay out of your hhhead."

f*ck. How can you keep insisting you don't want them touching you when it really is the second thing you're terrified of? Can you actually tell them that you expect to be lied to here? Because you do. No matter what anybody tells you, nothing is gonna shake your wholehearted belief that if you touch any inch of Venom's black skin, you're going to have that same horrible guest in your head. He'll see everything, he'll know everything, and even if he's not Cal you're still gonna f*cking die.

But. They're not moving. Just staying crouched there like a ridiculous melanistic frog, waiting patiently for any kind of reaction.

"Don't touch me." Hey, you can't back down from that now. Too f*ckin' scared. "And f*ck off, dumbass; I'm not in pain. You got some crossed signals in there or some sh*t, I don't know whose vibes you picked up but—"

"Your arm'sss been broken. Your powersss didn't ssset it quite ssstraight."

"Bro set my arm just fine, shut the f*ck up."

"No. He sssucksss." Their mouth curls up in an expression that could be a smile or could be a threatening grimace, way too many teeth showing white against black. "Sssucked."

"Shut the f*ck up." Why are you f*cking angry now? It's not like they're wrong. Plus you can't be angry, that'll get your ass kicked. "You don't know what the hell you're talking about."

Venom makes a weirdly gurgling growling sound. Neet answers it with a muffled caw.

"Okay, you need to make it more apparent that that's a laugh, Venom." Wade rolls his eyes, settling himself on the arm of the chair you're in. You have no idea how he manages to balance there without touching you. "I mean, I know it's not you getting ready to pounce, and it's still terrifying."

"You mammalsss have ssso many prey triggersss."

"Uh, hello? Hate to tell you this, but right now you're a mammal too." When Venom makes that weird growling laugh again, Wade pokes at him with one foot, glancing down at you. "You ready to go, kiddo?"

sh*t, he's not gonna make you ask for it? Thank f*ck. "Yeah. Definitely."

"Cool." You completely fail to react to the car keys being dropped in your lap; if Neet weren't safely hidden away she'd be stealing them right about now. "Go start the car for me? I'll be out in...eh, five minutes."

Is there a reason you're immediately uneasy at that statement? Probably not, but it doesn't matter; you're f*cking uneasy. Not that that matters either.

You nod, scoop up the keys out of your lap, and head for the door. If you go a couple feet out of your way to avoid getting too near Venom, who could really blame you?

Chapter 19: Wade: Cluing The Family In

Chapter Text

You miss Eddie pulling the symbiote back under his skin for the simple reason that he does it in that small window where Dave's slipping out the door; by the time you look back at him he's normal again, just a guy who needs to get dressed and maybe brush his hair crouched on the floor in front of you, head down and one hand absently combing through that messy hair. When you slide down off the chair to sit criss-cross-applesauce on the floor next to him, you see that he's got his eyes closed, with that telltale REM flicker that means he's gone deep in his own head, talking to his symbiote.

This time, you bite your tongue (not literally. Okay, maybe a little literally) and just wait for him to get done. It only takes a couple seconds this time, anyway. Barely enough time for you to get bored enough to even want to interrupt.

Then Eddie raises his head and blinks like he only kind of remembers where he is, focusing on you after maybe a second. "sh*t."

"sh*t?"

"We f*cked that up. Like, we really f*cked that up, Wade." The hand that's combing through Eddie's hair tightens down, tugging enough that he tips his head to that side a bit. Does he realize he's doing that? You doubt it. "Start to f*cking finish, we're so sorry, that poor kid—"

"Eddie? Hello, earth to Eddie. Come in, Eddie. Or should that be come in, Venom? I'm thinking it's Venom. The whole we thing, that usually means you're not totally—"

"Earth to Wade, you're going to just keep talking unless we make you stop." He rolls his eyes and rolls back, just barely missing kicking you in the face as he rearranges from crouching to laying flat on his back on the floor. "I'm not totally sure I should make you stop."

"You need some background noise, huh?" Leaning over to touch him could totally get you clawed open, if his mind's still as welded to the symbiote's as it was a couple minutes ago. That goo knows exactly how much of a threat you can be to it and its host, and it reacts accordingly—as in, if you make a move toward Eddie when he's in a certain mindset, he literally can't help but knock you across the room. You know this, and you lean over and put one hand on his shoulder anyway.

Hey, like you told him: you're bulletproof and probably Venom-proof, by virtue of accelerated healing. He's not going to kill you. Probably. There's like a point zero zero zero one percent chance that his first automatic smack would do the job. You're really bad at math, but those sound like okay odds, right?

The point's moot, anyway. Eddie just huffs out a breath and closes his eyes, relaxing under your hand. "You shouldn't leave your kid out in the car alone."

"He's thirteen and he knows how to start the car, I think he's okay, Eddie." Wait, there was something in there you should contest. "Also he's not my kid."

"Really."

"Really." Eddie makes that f*cking noncommittal but dubious sound that doesn't need words to be maddening, and you sit back from him and cross your arms. He's still got his eyes closed, but you bet he can feel the death glare you're treating him to right now. "He's not! I killed his brother. His dad. Whatever the f*ck, I killed the guy and I'm taking him to his uncle."

"Where you'll just drop the kid on his doorstep and go home."

"...no."

Eddie opens one eye, giving you a loopy smile that suggests the symbiote's gotten concerned enough about the aftermath of a Dave-sparked panic attack to trip his endorphin switches. "He's your kid."

Can you really argue? No. No you cannot. "He's my kid."
"Go get your kid, you dumb f*ck."

Again, can't really argue. You nod, give him one more reassuring pat on the center of his chest, and hop back up to your feet.

Dave has, in fact, started the car, so he's not sitting out here freezing to death. What he is doing is still concerning as f*ck, though; there's not really any way that you can spin the way that he's sitting in the passenger seat and shaking like he's just about to hit hypothermia as anything other than a bad thing. The fact that he's staring at his (turned-off) phone just makes it worse.

"Kid?" You should really shut the door before you get any further. f*ck, that makes him flinch but not look up at you, at least not that you can tell behind his shades. "Hey. Dave. You okay, kiddo?"

From the way his teeth sink into his lower lip, you're going to guess that that was another stupid question. He still answers it, with a smaller tremor in his voice than you really expected.

"Great. I'm f-f*cking great." The kid takes a fast, deep breath, crosses his arms carefully over his chest—oh, Neet's still in his coat, he's being gentle for her—and adds, "I think I'm f*cking dying."

sh*t? "Okay...can I get a little more info there, Dave."

"Can't breathe, can't think, my heartrate's over four hundred bpm—"

"Wait wait wait." There is absolutely no way that's right. "How exactly are you getting that number?"

Dave shrugs and hits the button to wake his phone up, tilting the screen so you can see that he's got it open to a health site, complete with a handy heart rate calculator. With a stopwatch that's almost certainly linked to a satellite or a server or something out of the probably-tiny range of Dave's timebending.

"Okay," you tell him, "you're not dying."

He co*cks his head just enough to give you a dirty look over the top of his shades. "You know I can count, right? Just 'cause I'm f*ckin' homeschooled doesn't make me an idiot."

"Oh, you can definitely count. The problem here is that there's more than one minute in a minute for you."

"What. What the actual f*ck does that mean?"

"Remember why we came here in the first place?" Dave just looks blank at that question, so you keep rolling without giving him a space to try and answer. "The whole point of having the symbiote do a quick bond with you—which was a horrible idea actually, zero out of ten would not recommend for you again—the point was to let them absorb info about your powers—"

"Don't have any."

"Are we still on this? Really? After an actual alien popped into your head and definitely confirmed that you have a weak healing factor and some weird time-bending sh*t as a defense mechanism? Look, this explains why you and your sh*thead brother never realized he was a speedster; he went fast, you got scared and altered your passage through time without realizing it, everything cancelled itself out. Mostly."

"I don't have f*cking time sh*t."

"Explain the numbers you got when you tried to check your heartrate then." You're being an ass. You know you're being an ass, but you seriously can't think of another way to get this through the kid's head. But you do make an effort to drop the flippancy for your next sentence, though. "It's not a bad thing, Dave."

"Yeah it is." He hunches down a bit more, then flinches and starts fumbling for the zipper as Neet lets out a muffled caw from somewhere in his coat. "I didn't ask for this sh*t, okay? Don't tell me it's not bad, it's f*ckin' awful."

...he's not going to budge on this, is he. God, do you want to smack your own head against the steering wheel right now.

That would be a really stupid thing to do, though. You'll leave it as a possible option for later.

"Okay."

"Okay? Okay what?" Dave gives you a purely exasperated look, which is somewhat mitigated by the fact that Neet hops out of his unzipped coat and onto his lap.

"Okay, I'm not going to tell you that again."

"...damn, I can't believe I shut you up."

"Oh, you didn't." You put the car back in drive and very carefully pull back out onto the road. "Well, you did. But for maybe...twenty minutes. I figure I can find us somewhere to sit and eat and talk this over with the rest of your family by then, right?"

deadPool [DP] created the memo "What the f*ck do you mean title?" !

deadPool added turntechGodhead, technicolorGladiator, artificialIntellect, and timaeusTestified to the memo!

TT: ...not sure what this is about, but you probably need Roxy and Rose here too. tipsyGnostalgic and tentacleTherapist.

AI: I got it.

artificialIntellect added tentacleTherapist and tipsyGnostalgic to the memo!

AI: Also.

artificialIntellect renamed the memo "Something to do with Dave, probably" !

DP: (is he actually allowed to do that??)

TT: No.

TG: no

TG: lol nope

AI: By the rules of pesterchum programming? No. But we all just saw me do it.

DP: Good point!

deadPool renamed the memo "Yes, this is about Dave. Also you're a smartass." !

artificialIntellect renamed the memo "I'm a smartass? f*ck you?" !

deadPool renamed the memo "Yeah, you're a smartass!" !

tipsyGnostalgic renamed the memo "neither of you get to touch the f*ckcing title anymore" !

tipsyGnostalgic locked the memo title!

DP: Ooh. Does that actually work?

TG: it does when i do it!!

TG: yo rox fist bump

TG: *hella fist bump* :)

TG: okay now that literally the only non gremlin child here shut the gremlins down
TG: is this like a "oh look something's f*cked and we need to panic" memo or

TT: sh*t. Hal?

artificialIntellect kicked technicolorGladiator from the memo!

DP: Really? I didn't call in two favors to get D Strider's contact info and explain everything to him just so you could kick him off my memo. Rude.

TT: You didn't what?

deadPool added technicolorGladiator to the memo!

TG: hal for the love of f*ck stop kicking me out of convos
TG: im aware you think i dont know about you n dirk hiring a hitman to kill your uncle but i totally do at this point okay

TG: me and rosie helped out with the hiring part too btw

TG: great. just great.
TG: your non gremlin status is revoked and youre all grounded once i figure out what the f*ck that means for yall

AI: That's fair.

TT: I'll take the penalty, so long as Dave gets here.

TG: yeah me too and rose will too once she gets back online

TG: whys rose offline

TG: shes f*ckin with one of moms girlfriends
TG: give her twenty minutes and shell be satisfied enough with her ""psychological warfare"" to check her messages

TG: ...oh my god please stop doing this

TG: gotta talk to rosie not me!
TG: hey didnt this memo have like a purpose tho
TG: like before we kinda derailed it lol

DP: Oh yeah. That.

TG: wade i dunno what youre typing out that takes that long but youre f*cking killing me
TG: he just had me tested

: TT: Tested. Tested for what?

TG: uh
TG: if im a mutant

AI: Didn't we already agree that you were? You kind of have to be, if suppression collars affect you.

TG: wait f*ck hold the f*cking train
TG: thats how you found out? bro slapped a f*cking collar on you at some point?

TG: ...kind of

TG: im gonna f*cking strangle him with my bare hands

DP: I think I beat you to it, but it's the thought that counts.
DP: We did just have Dave tested for the specific way that his mutation manifests.

TT: There isn't a test for that.

DP: Technically you're right, but "I called in a favor and had a friend's alien husband crawl into Dave's brain and take a look at how he works" is a lot harder to say than "we had him tested."

TG: holy sh*t, u know an ALIEN?
TG: dave dave dave
TG: tell me about the alien

TG: you know the kind of slime that you can kind of hold but if you stop squishing it it just kind of drips through your fingers
TG: imagine that sh*t but black and also really f*cking fast
TG: oh and it can get in your f*cking brain

TG: O_o
TG: cool!

TG: no

DP: Roxy, right? Yeah, stop typing. He's going to have another panic attack if we keep talking about the alien, and Waffle House is /not/ the place for that, thanks.
DP: Hey, f*ck? I want my italics back.

AI: Oh my god.
AI: Done.

DP: Thank you.
DP: Anyway, the entire point of this little chat was to share the results of the "test."
DP: A, Dave has a healing factor, which brings the total number of mutants I know who have that specific power up to like, twenty. Like seriously, that's the most common one. It must raise the probability of not just dying or something.
DP: B, he warps time when he's scared! Or maybe he just changes his own passage through time. There's definitely a time factor in there. Idk, I'm not a theoretical physicist. You can go find one and ask them later.
DP: C, we're never putting Dave in a position to get his mind read again.

TG: that sounds worrying

TG: its not

DP: Eh, it kind of is, but we can get into that later.
DP: (He just threw part of a pancake at me.)

TG: why did u order pancakes
TG: the whole point of waffle house is to eat waffles and also to summon demons in the restroom

DP: I thought that was Denny's.

AI: Oh, it's both. Waffle House is more likely to contain preexisting portals, whereas Denny's requires that you open your own portal, but is more likely to produce tractable hellspawn and extradimensional entities.

TG: hal i love you but what the f*ck are you talking about

turntechGodhead left the memo!

DP: Oop, I think he's done for now.
DP: Anyway, we should be there within a week. Probably. It depends on whether I get lost purposefully, or on accident.
DP: Later!

deadPool left the memo!

Chapter 20: Dave: Bro Was His Brother Too

Chapter Text

...okay, so you probably could have given everybody just a lil' more warning before you closed pesterchum and dropped your phone on the table. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that you should have, because you just...you couldn't stay in that chat. Not really.

Dirk and Hal, Rose and Roxy, they're all gonna be in deep sh*t. Because of you. D literally just said they were going to be in trouble very f*cking soon, and they just f*cking accepted it. f*ck, Hal just casually changed the subject to something irrelevant—like this sh*t doesn't f*ck with him even a lil' bit.

It f*cks with you enough that you spend the whole day not checking your phone hardly at all. Like, it takes a good hour of f*cking around in John's minecraft server before you can get up the f*cking courage to open another chat.

Wade's out of the hotel room right now—he snagged the trash bag you've been stuffing all the sh*t that you can't bring yourself to wear another day in, made sure you had his phone number before he left—so you manage to convince yourself not to retreat into any lockable room, at least. You settle on the floor next to the bed, your laptop on your knees, and type with one hand because you need to tap your fingers against bare floor like you're the world's lamest air piano player.

At least Neet seems entertained with your stupid nervous habit. Then again, the way that she's huddled down into a ball of black feathers just out of grabbing range could totally mean she's gonna attack your hand in a couple minutes.

Eh, that's future Dave's problem. You need to focus on the ones you have now.

turntechGodhead [TG] started pestering technicolorGladiator [TG]!

TG: uh
TG: hey d
TG: sh*t youre not online huh
TG: yeah thats what i f*cking get for not checking the activity thingy
TG: yes sir the defendant is one hundred percent guilty of not knowing the difference between a red dot and a green one
TG: he pleads guilty by reason of stupidity and probably colorblindness

TG: since when are you colorblind?

TG: oh sh*t
TG: hey why the f*ck is your activity for still red if you're online

TG: you do know the only time its automatically a color is when youre offline right?
TG: like red is either "i lost my phone again" or "i set this sh*t to red so yall dont talk to me"

TG: are you serious

TG: one hundred percent kiddo but that sh*t doesnt apply to you
TG: you get a fast track to attention anytime i promise

TG: great
TG: awesome
TG: i regret this so much

TG: ouch
TG: didnt think i was THAT bad at making conversation
TG: whats up? deadpool giving you problems n sh*t? because i can have somebody be there to pick you up in like three hours if you need out

TG: no hes fine lets not call in the cavalry oh my f*cking god
TG: i kinda wanted to talk to you is all
TG: ask you some sh*t

TG: cool
TG: go for it
TG: ...
TG: you still there dave?

There's like, six good ways to phrase the question. All you need to know is how he's gonna punish Rose and the others; it's simple as f*ck. Instead of, y'know, doing that, you're still sitting here with one hand resting on the keys, tapping the fingers of your other hand hard enough against the floor that your fingertips are already going numb. D's going to give up and actually disconnect at this rate.

You take a (kind of)deep breath and type something (the wrong thing) out into the message box.

TG: are you like pissed at me

Stupid, selfish piece of sh*t.

TG: what
TG: sh*t dude whatd i say that made you think that
TG: whatever it was im sorry i swear
TG: im not pissed at you
TG: god why would i be pissed at you

TG: lets think this through for like half a second d
TG: i got him killed

TG: ...bro.

TG: yes f*ck bro
TG: jesus f*cking christ on a kabob that came out wrong i didnt mean it like that
TG: the one f*ckcing time i need commas

TG: f*ck bro
TG: and i DO mean it that way
TG: i wish wed both stayed in f*cking california instead of him f*cking off back to texas and me coming up to wrangle reaux
TG: dirk never woulda thought of hiring f*cking deadpool and do you know why?

TG: is that like a rhetorical question
TG: because i have no f*cking clue why

TG: the f*cking second he put a collar on you i wouldve killed him and buried the body in the goddamn desert
TG: maybe idve done it before that
TG: the twins wont tell me a whole bunch of sh*t about what that f*cker did and im pretty sure that means its pretty f*cking bad
TG: but like. thats the one thing you admitted and i feel like you dont feel like its the worst thing and im telling you that that one thing would have been enough for me to take you away from him
TG: that make sense?

TG: yeah
TG: why

TG: why what?

TG: why me instead of him
TG: you gotta see the choice youre saying youd make here d

TG: f*ck dave its barely even a choice
TG: he made a f*cking choice and that choice was to be a piece of sh*t to his goddamn kid
TG: i love you okay? like i have no f*cking clue if you remember when you were little and bro and me lived together because neither of us were actually with your and dirks other parents and we were individually sh*t at keeping track of toddlers
TG: but until he decided to f*ck off back to texas you were as much my kid as dirk is
TG: you still are as much my kid as Dirk is
TG: that never stopped being a thing

Neet takes two steps forward and hops up to perch on your wrist, basically pinning you down so you have to stop tapping. That's a bit unfortunate, because it means you have to take your other hand off the keyboard to rub your eyes clear.

Well, try to rub your eyes clear. Doesn't really work too well at first; you have to just sit there and keep wiping and listen to the way your breath hitches every couple inhales.

Maybe you could put some words to why you're crying, if you really tried, but that's too f*ckin' hard right now.

TG: still not gonna call you dad

TG: oh god please dont call me that
TG: my own f*cking kids dont call me that
TG: thats weird

Oh look. Just the opening you needed. Now to slide this into the topic you want, hopefully without letting him realize you're trying to change the subject...

TG: oh yeah speaking of your own kids
TG: how much sh*t are they in for this

TG: family therapy again
TG: with somebody who knows how rose is so we dont end up getting kicked out
TG: and no electronics that hal n dirk can zone out in
TG: roxy is literally the only one whos gonna go along with this quietly so you KNOW this is as much a punishment for me as anybody

TG: is that it

TG: thats it
TG: wait sh*t and they have to rearrange whatever funds they already played connect four with so we dont get arrested somewhere down the road
TG: kinda think they already did that though
TG: bro had a sh*tton of money and im pretty sure hal wouldve been smart enough to use that to patch any gaps he made

TG: okay cool
TG: thanks d

TG: no problem
TG: tell deadpool to hurry his ass up and get the hell up here before i get bored and come find you myself
TG: i miss you and im worried about you and i want you home

TG: yeah man ill tell him

D might have more sh*t to say, but this is the point where you carefully lift the computer off your lap with one hand and set it gently on the floor, just as carefully shoo Neet off the artist of your other hand, and pull both legs up to your chest so you can press your face into your knees. Bro would be f*ckin' pissed that you're giving up on the struggle to keep your cool this easy, but honestly? He's a f*cking asshole. You're gonna just cry for a minute here.

More than a minute.

More than a couple minutes. Probably more, anyway; if Wade's right about what you can do, linear time just kinda takes a vacation when you get upset, and this...whatever this is counts as upset.

Doesn't count as bad, though. You don't know what it counts as, but something about that last message D sent puts you into a sobbing tailspin, and you stay in that tailspin until something acts to pull you out.

"Something," in this case, is the door opening. That's enough to shut you up, at least; even though you know it's just Wade coming back from the laundromat, you still instinctively freeze, stop making any noise, stop breathing because you can't let him know.

(Which is stupid, yeah. You admit it.)

"Dave?" There's other sounds going on right now, mostly what you're gonna guess is him stripping off the too-f*cking-many outer layers that humans need to survive outside for more than like five seconds in this weather. "Dave? Hellooo?"

Pause. Then, a lot more quietly, "sh*t."

Wait, is he seriously worried right now? Is that what that tone is? That possibility throws you for another loop on top of the tailspin you're already in, which means that even though on some level you hear his footsteps coming around to the side of the bed you're leaning against, you somehow don't connect that to any possible consequence.

To be fair, though, him saying "sh*t!" significantly louder than the first time and just scooping you up off the floor and onto the bed like you don't weigh a damn thing wasn't going to be on the list of possible consequences anyway. It's startling enough that instead of curling into a tighter ball you actually relax, raise your head and look at him...

And immediately burst into a second round of gross sobbing at the look of mixed relief and concern on his face. Wade's reaction to that is to just wrap you up in the tightest f*ckin' hug you can imagine, and you give that right back; you hook your arms over his shoulders and just...cling. Leaves you with your face pressed up against his collarbone, which is somehow more than okay.

"What happened?" he asks, once you get quieter, and damn, there's that worry again. That's got to be what that tone is. "Who do I need to challenge to a nice old-fashioned duel?"

For some godforsaken reason, that makes you choke out a laugh. Neet echoes it with a cackling caw from somewhere behind you. "Dude...somehow I think Rose might—might dock your pay for that or some sh*t..."

Wade snorts and shifts enough that he can ruffle your hair with one hand. "Like I'm here for the money. I'm not stupid; I transferred enough from a couple of Strider's accounts to make sure I can take care of you as long as I need to."

"So...like another week?"

"Technically yes. Or for like ten years. I like Option B better, personally."

...holy sh*t? Pulling away from his is the last thing you wanna do, but you do it anyway. Your vision's still fifty-seven varieties of f*cked up from the tears in your eyes, but you still make a decent attempt at eye contact with him.

"Are you f*cking serious."

"I'd say as serious as cancer, but I've been informed that's in poor taste." Wade rolls his eyes at his own joke, flashing you that quick grin. "What, you still haven't figured out that dropping you off and calling it good isn't on the agenda?"

You take a minute to process that. Like, a literal minute for you. Less for Wade. Definitely less for him.

He probably doesn't really get why you sob again and latch onto him like a crow on a chunk of broken mirror, but that doesn't mean he tries to make you get off.

Chapter 21: Wade: Does It Count As Taking Him Home If This Is The First Time He's Been Here?

Chapter Text

Do you know what to do with a sobbing kid? Not really, no! But just holding onto Dave seems to at least not make anything worse, so that's the course of action you settle on—just holding him, not trying to jerk away from his stranglehold around your neck.

(Well not literally a stranglehold. You can breathe, there's not even a little pressure on your throat. It's fine. It'd be fine even if he was actually choking you.)

He still hasn't told you what triggered this, though, and you do kind of want to know. Problem is, you're fairly sure he won't be offering up any info. Which means...it's time for very careful guesswork and questioning.

Or it will be, once Dave quiets down a bit more. You give it about three minutes, and then ask, "Is this about Venom?"

"...what." The kid tips his head back until he can actually look at you, finally loosening his grip on your neck. You're not sure if it's because crying wore him out enough that the stoic mask he tries to wear slipped, or if you're just getting better at reading him, but either way the outcome's the same; you can read the tired confusion on his face.

Actually, the fact that his shades are AWOL is probably helping too. Definitely lets you see that he's not getting enough sleep, going by the dark smudges under his eyes. Even taking the tear-induced puffiness into account, that's not great.

Wait, you were having a conversation here.

"The goo. Was that a factor in, in..." Ah, what to call the current meltdown. Not a meltdown, that's for sure. You settle for taking one hand off Dave's back and gesturing vaguely at him, the laptop on the floor, Neet. (Neet is currently pecking industriously at the pattern on one of the pillows. You really hope she doesn't actually manage to peck that off.) "In...this? Because I swear, it's not in you anymore; they can't bond with more than one person at a time, and they're not going to leave Eddie. You're good. Nobody in there but you."

Dave makes a stifled noise when you finish that statement off by ruffling his hair; you're reasonably confident that it's a positive sound. Although you're not so sure whether his shifting off your lap to sit next to you, just far away enough to not touch is good or bad. He lets his hands drop into his lap instead of immediately reaching for Neet, though, so you're going to give it a tentative neutral ranking.

"It's not the f*ckin' goo," he says, after long enough that you're seriously considering offering up more possibilities. "I texted D, is all."

Ooh. Fury. That's such a fun little emotion to have. "And he f*cked your head up, huh?" You're going to kill that prick. Well, no, not kill him, you wouldn't actually do that to his kids, but maybe stab him a little.

Dave shakes his head, though, and—oh, sh*t, he's rubbing at his eyes. It's a one-handed gesture, the heel of his hand swiping slowly up from one side and then the other, close to a subconscious thing. Or maybe not, because he doesn't look at you as he does it.

You wait. You're not very good at it, but hey, that doesn't mean you can't manage.

"He said I'm his kid." That comes out very f*cking softly, and the next sentence has a couple hitches in the middle; he's pretty damn close to losing his fragile hold on the waterworks here. "He—he said he missed me, dude, he wa—wants me home, stupid f*ckin' mushy sh*t, he loves me—"

Yeah, the hopeless hopeful confusion in those last three words kind of breaks you. Rationally, you're aware that the kid probably doesn't want to just be yoinked up for another hug without any kind of warning, but realistically?

He needs it. And thankfully, Dave seems to agree with that, because all he does is fold up against you, close his eyes and start to sob again.

Somehow you're not even a little surprised that after the half hour or so that he spends that close and vulnerable, Dave spends the next four days pretending it never happened. He probably could have gone longer pretending it never happened, but thanks to your new and improved take on just how badly he wants to join back up with members of his family, four days is all it takes to make it to the address that Lalonde texts you to deliver him to.

(If she still thinks this is a delivery, she's delusional.)

Dave doesn't move when you turn the key in the ignition. Just stares out the window, stroking the crow in his lap. "f*ck."

"Care to elaborate on that?" You have a cup of coffee in the cupholder, still full because Dave goes stiff every time you take your hand off the wheel and still hot because insulated cups are amazing. Now seems like a good time to make it a little less full.

"How deep is that snow, exactly?"

That's not the question he wants to ask. You answer it like you don't know that it isn't. "Ten miles from here it was nine inches, if you believe the weatherman on the TV this morning. Usually that's a good move. They have scientific tape measures they use for this kind of thing."

"Great, so you could hide a f*ckin' fully erect p*rnstar under there," Dave mutters. Then he has the nerve to look surprised that you just choked on a mouthful of coffee. "Dude."

"You're the one who heard 'nine inches' and immediately thought 'dick,' shut up." There's coffee all over the steering wheel. You consider it for a moment, then shrug and lean over to pop the glove compartment, retrieving your mask from where you stashed it. "Are you ready to go in?"

It's not even kind of a surprise when Dave shakes his head, hunching down inside that oversized coat like he expects retaliation for the wrong answer. Sad, but not unexpected. "No."

"Okay. Dave. Hey." When he looks at you, you ask him, "Are you ever going to be ready? Like I'm not saying you have to go or you don't have to go—this is totally your choice."

"Rose hired you to—"

"Eh, f*ck that. f*ck the job, f*ck the money, f*ck Rose, this is about you."

Dave's face goes as blank as if he's been struck, at that sentence. This is one of those infrequent moments when even all your knowledge of the nature of the situation you're in gives you absolutely no insight on what's about to happen; for once, all you can do is wait.

Then he nods, scoops up Neet and tucks her into his hood, and opens the car door. You pull your mask on and hop out right behind him.

Time to meet the Striders.

Chapter 22: Dave: Not Quite Dirk, Definitely Family

Chapter Text

So yeah, you wade through snow that's ankle-deep even where it's been shoveled, get up to the lil' covered porch, and then you kind of just...stall out. Which is stupid, standing here staring at the door and listening to Neet make displeased bird sounds next to your ear is stupid, but can you help that?

No. You can't. You can't do sh*t.

Wade's hand comes down on your shoulder, and you just barely manage not to jump. "Want me to do it?" he asks, instead of asking what the f*ck's wrong with you, and holy f*ck but you're glad to just nod, even if the movement makes Neet croak out a tiny caw and dig her beak into your neck.

The fact that he doesn't take his hand off your shoulder to hit the button is a relief too. Gives you something to concentrate on other than your own cowardly desire to pull up inside your coat like a god damn turtle and refuse to come out again, like, ever. That's a good plan, though. A great plan.

f*ck, you're scared.

Somehow, you don't flinch when the door opens, even though the guy who opens it is somebody you can't quite recognize. Like...your first thought is he's Dirk. He has to be Dirk; Dirk's the only one dumb enough to hook a pair of sharp anime shades into the neckline of his shirt when he knows there's an eighty percent chance that he'll forget they're there and move in a way that ends up with his neck scratched open by a point again. It's Dirk's face and Dirk's carefully spiked-up hair, but the look of excitement ain't one that Dirk would show this easy, and the hair's as white as yours.

His eyes are the same color as yours too, you realize when you bring yourself to look up and meet them. Or the same color as artificialIntellect's text on pesterchum.

"Hal." Ah, sh*t, you sound like you're about to f*cking break. Taking a deep breath and closing your eyes probably isn't going to help, but you figure you might as well try. "Uh—hey—"

"Holysh*tDave," Hal says, all one word with emphasis on your name, and hey, he sounds like Dirk too. Of f*cking course he does, why would you think he wouldn't, he's—

You lose the thread of that thought when Hal laughs and grabs your wrists, pulling you two steps forward and into the house. There's a second of panic there when Wade's hand leaves your shoulder—sh*t, he actually is gonna leave you here, you won't have any way out if you need it—but then the door shuts behind you, despite the fact that Hal's still got both hands on your shoulders.

He's not leaving you. God, you need to f*cking chill.

"Holy f*cking sh*t, you were supposed to tell us when you got close—Dave, can I hug you?" Okay, the way that Hal comes straight at that question f*cks you up again, a little bit; Dirk would ask too, but he'd come at it more sideways, like it's a theoretical question. This sh*t's gonna take some getting used to.

"Yeah, I can do the hug," you tell him, and he instantly wraps his arms around you and pulls you in. This is like Dirk, at least.

You should probably hug him back.

Or not. Not is good. Not is just fine, if it means you don't panic. You're totally not panicking.

Neet croons and pecks your earlobe, almost gently, and you say, "Ow, sh*t," even though it barely even hurts, jerking away from Hal so you can pull the hood down and let her hop out onto your shoulder...where she stays for about two seconds before cawing disapprovingly at Hal, taking flight to swoop at his head (he ducks) before making a surprisingly sharp turn and flapping back to perch on Wade's outstretched arm.

sh*t, now Hal's paying attention to him. And Hal's f*cking smiling, the kind of grin you've seen on Bro's face right before he calls for a strife. Dangerous.

You should either get out of the way, or step between them, and the fact that you can't decide which freezes you right the f*ck up.

"Deadpool," Hal says, that grin still in place as his head tilts ever so slightly. "Wade Wilson."

"Right on both counts." At least Wade's keeping his tone friendly. Smart. Maybe. "Hal Strider."

"Did you remember that yourself, or did you just cheat off Dave?" Hal rolls his eyes, crossing his arms. (You can't help but tense up for a second; the beginning of that motion looks a hell of a lot like reaching for blades.)

"Hey, I looked you up on Wikipedia. You're shorter than I expected, but that's about all that doesn't match up." Wade shrugs, coaxing the crow onto his wrist so he can transfer her onto his shoulder. "Aren't there two of you?"

"Dirk's in the shower. If you'd texted me—"

"Nope."

"Advance warning was part of the deal."

"Nope!" (Wade's one hundred percent grinning under the mask. You know he is.)

Hal is not grinning. He scowls up at Wade, then wipes that off his face too, shrugging and turning away. "Come on, Dave. I'll get him out of the shower."

He literally told you to move, and you still can't. Well, not until Wade steps up and wraps an arm around your shoulders, steering you in the direction you should be going.

Huh. Everything seems to be moving slowly again. Maybe you should be worried about that.

...or not.

Okay, so maybe the reason that you're not worried about the whole time sh*t thing is that your current reaction to all of this is to just, like, not mentally be here at all. You're not really sure where your mind actually goes—maybe nowhere? It feels like nowhere. Feels like everything just kind of goes away, until you blink and realize that you're not moving and Hal just said your name.

"Are you all right, Dave?" he asks, and sh*t he said your name more than once already, didn't he.

You f*cked up, okay; can you cover it up? "Yeah. I'm fine, 's all good—c'mere, Neet." She hops down onto your wrist when you reach up to Wade's shoulder; her weight and the pressure of her claws through your shirt helps a bit. "Zoned out for a sec."

Now why does the look of understanding that flickers across Hal's face send a spike of something hella uncomfortable up through your chest? More importantly, can he tell?

Apparently not, because all he says is, "Want to see something cool?" When you nod (half out of curiosity, half out of the knowledge that whatever he's going to do is gonna happen anyway) Hal puts one hand on the door in front of him, takes a deep breath, and...

sh*t, you're not really sure how to explain this. It kind of looks like a high-quality animation; the change starts at his hand, bright electrical sparks arcing out at his contact with the metal of the doorknob. Then there's nothing but sparks at that contact, like he's melting into crackling reddish current.

It's like nothing you've ever seen before, and it seems to take a long f*cking time for Hal to go from someone who looks like a normal f*cking person to a shifting thing of electricity. Once he's changed, though, he just...melts through the metal doorknob.

"Damn, that's awesome," Wade mutters.

"That's, uh. Yeah. That's a word for it." Neet caws in irritation as you take a step back, claws tightening down on your arm. Wait, you didn't think you were moving fast enough to give her trouble balancing... "Uh...how long did that take, exactly?"

"A couple seconds, maybe?"

"f*ck."

"It seemed like more to you, huh?" He sighs, stepping close enough that he can wrap his arm around your shoulders instead of just having that hand rest on one. "It's okay."

"Yeah." No. It's really not.

"It feels like it's not?"

"Dude, quit reading my mind."

"Ooh, since you're not freaking out I'm going to assume that's a joke."

"Yeah, you th—"

You don't actually get to finish your sentence, because Dirk yelps from the other side of the door. You know that it's Dirk and not Hal, because even as Dirk yelps Hal slams the door open, jumps through and slams it shut again just in time for whatever Dirk threw at him to hit the door as it closes.

Okay, so that dangerous smile means something entirely different on Hal than it does on Bro, because he's smiling like that again. Maybe it's got something to do with the probability that he's gonna get his ass kicked?

"Give him a minute," Hal suggests, and then laughs as something much heavier than a bottle of shampoo—as in, Dirk himself—slams against the door, not quite knocking him off. "Okay, maybe two minutes."

"Hal, you f*ck—"

"I'm not letting you out until you have pants on, brother dearest—"

Dirk swears, muffled through the door, and shoves against it again. Hal just grins at you.

And yeah, you smile back. For a second. Until you hear a door open and shut, somewhere down the stairs that you don't actually remember coming up.

"sh*t, that'll be D—" Hal starts, and you know you should probably just wait for an okay to go down there but nope, not doing that, all of a sudden you can't f*cking wait to get this sh*t over with.

Neet's talons leave your shoulder as you do a half-spin to get free of Wade's arm, you get one more quick look at the surprise on Hal's face and know you're moving too fast but f*ck it, it's not like you know how you do it so you can't stop. Well, maybe you could, but you're not going to.

By the time you get to the bottom of the stairs, Wade and Hal still haven't moved, and D's still standing by the door. f*ck, he hasn't even had time to turn around from closing it yet, that's how little real time that took.

This time, you feel the tiny change as your personal version of time synchs up with actual time again. Or not so much that you feel it for the first time, as you recognize what the f*ck that feeling of disconnect means.

The realization kind of feels like being kicked in the chest. It makes it just as hard to breathe as that would, stops you cold so you don't f*cking react as D mumbles something about bastards stealing his parking spot, switches the bright pink insulated cup he's holding from one hand to another and turns around.

He's wearing his shades, but they're pushed up on his head because they're fogged up from the temperature difference. Means you get a perfect view of how his face goes from irritated to confused to something so relieved and happy that you can't f*cking process it, can't imagine that that's for you. He drops the pink cup, and you almost flinch when it hits the floor and bounces but he doesn't seem to give a f*ck because he's closed the five feet between you and him even before it rolls to a stop, he wraps his arms around you and scoops you right off your f*cking feet, and yeah D's saying something and Hal's saying something somewhere closer than the top of the stairs and Neet's cawing like she wants your attention too, but...

They can wait a sec. All you can do right now is hug D and (maybe) not cry on him.

Chapter 23: Wade: Confrontation, Conversation, Understanding

Chapter Text

So.

You're standing here at the top of the stairs, watching D Strider hug his nephew up to his chest, heading him spill out a rambling litany of apologies and rhetorical questions and above all love, and you are totally not even a little bit jealous. That's ridiculous. This is exactly what you wanted to see; the guy obviously cares about Dave, you're still planning on sticking around just in case but this is an excellent start to him getting the kind of life that he deserves...

Yeah, you're jealous. Or something. Look, just because you're capable of having a mental conversation with yourself about your feelings doesn't mean that you automatically get a definitive answer on what the f*ck those are. There's a lot of relief going on right now, and a little negative sh*t seeping in through the edges. Maybe more than a little, you can't tell.

Hey, you're not a good person. That's not even you putting yourself down, that's just a widely recognized fact accepted by just about everyone who's ever met you.

"The crow is on me," Hal announces in a very small voice. You look over and see that yes, she definitely is on him; Neet's settled on his spiky white-blond hair as a nice perch, which doesn't make a lot of sense to you. From the expression on Hal's face, his change in tone is less about fear that she's going to peck him, and more about the worry that he might scare her away; the kid looks delighted.

"...I'm going to get her off you for juuust a second." That can't be a great perch, if for no other reason than that she will lose her balance if he moves; you step up closer to him, bring your hand up behind Neet's feet so she steps up onto your hand like Dave showed you, and transfer her onto his shoulder instead. His shirt might not be thick enough to protect him from her claws, but they shouldn't draw blood or anything, and it's better than having talon dents on his head.

"Pretty little death omen," Hal croons at the bird, reaching up to scratch under her beak. "Rose is going to love you, beauty, she's been trying to figure out how to befriend a murder for years..."

"Rose Lalonde?" That's the one who actually hired you. "She's got a thing for birds too, huh?"

"If they're known for being harbingers of doom? Hell yeah she does." Hal looks up at you and gives you a surprisingly creepy grin. You're impressed. His attention shifts away again when Dirk shoves at the door; this time he steps forward enough to let his brother escape.

"Dick." Dirk, who looks a hell of a lot like the bastard you killed back in Texas but even more like the boy with the crow on his shoulder, raises his hand like he's going to punch Hal in the arm, then changes trajectory and intent halfway through the motion, stroking Neet's back instead. (This brat is getting so much attention today.) He doesn't turn his head towards you, but you've got a feeling that you're getting sized up from behind those pointy shades.

Bit worrisome, when you think about the last guy who had sunglasses like those. Then again, this one's like fourteen and probably won't try to kill you.

"Dirk Strider, right? Hi there. You're the people person, right? The one I need to talk to about my Yelp review? Because I could really use some good ones. I feel like this assassination was totally worth five stars." Yes, this is definitely how you introduce yourself to a teenager you've never met before! This is how it's done.

Well, it did get his attention fully on you. Dirk just stares for about thirty seconds, then shakes his head and slips past you to start down the stairs, with Hal right behind him.

You give them a second, and then follow. As you detour a couple steps to snag the pink thermos that D dropped, you realize that his attention's shifted off Dave and onto you. Do you know what to expect from this development? No.

"Come on, D, share him with the rest of us," Dirk suggests, and the man does exactly that, letting go of the kid as the twins cluster up to pick up any slack D leaves in the affection department. He steps back and holds out his hand, and after a second you remember that you're holding his drink.

"I think we might need to talk," he says as you hand the pink container over. Damn, he's got red eyes too, a bit darker than Dave's but still obviously not normal human issue. How did anyone in this family assume they were normal, exactly? "Kitchen?"

He doesn't touch you, but everything about his body language as he turns away says you don't actually have a choice here. A lot of that has to be deliberate; people don't have that much confidence in their bearing unless they're a little bit crazy or actors. It's entirely possible he's both, actually...

Well, you're pretty confident he's not going to stab you as soon as you're out of the kids' sight, so you might as well follow. Actually, wait—Dave's gone tense, staring at you over Dirk's shoulder.

"One sec." Dave pulls back and Dirk lets him, as you take a step towards them; from the look on Hal's face he's about an inch away from defending them with some really painful action directed at you. You choose to ignore that possibility. "Are you okay for a couple minutes?"

Dave nods, but the look on his face says no even as he says, "Yeah, as long as you don't pick a f*ckin' fight."

"I mean, so far I'm two for two on getting punched, but have I really started anything?" Ooh, that's not really making him less worried. "I'm not going to hurt him. Pinky promise."

He just snorts and shakes his head. "You're a dumbass."

"Love you too, kid. Yell if you need me."

D's retreated to a different room by the time you leave Dave in the (maybe) capable hands of Hal and Dirk; you try three doors before you find the one that goes to the kitchen. (Yes, that's mostly because you're nosy. Plus if you find anything like the fridge full of swords back at the apartment in Houston, you're taking Dave the f*ck out of here.)

Somehow, you feel like the way you find him perched on the kitchen counter, sipping his drink, isn't supposed to be intimidating. It almost is anyway, which is weird because you don't really get intimidated except under very specific circ*mstances and no nope you're not doing that right now. Nope. This is a guy you need to figure out, not one you need to hit on. Shut up.

"So." D shifts to set his drink down, crossing his arms as you shut the door and turn back to face him. "Deadpool."

"Let's go with 'Wade.' I feel like that's a lot less awkward at this point. Or you can stick with the scary version if you want."

"I dunno dude, should I be scared?" Something in the guy's face suggests that he won't be. "You planning on chewing me out for not noticing sh*t again?"

Ooh. Defensive and aggressive. Neat! "Should I?"

"Maybe!" D exhales, one short sharp huff, and hops down off the counter, taking one step towards you before changing his mind and starting to pace back and forth instead, not even glancing up at you. "You'd have a f*cking point—I didn't notice sh*t, did I? Had six f*cking years to notice Dave was a meta, my whole f*cking life to realize Bro was one—"

"If it helps, that bitch probably didn't present until adulthood." Wow, he's upset. "Stress does it sometimes, triggers the abilities kicking in."

D stops pacing for just long enough to give you a confused look; you're obviously not performing as expected, by defending him. (Hey, you're a rebel.) "Cool, so all I missed was the fact he hurt Dave. Just f*cking great."

"Who left first?"

"What?"

"Dave told me about when he was a kid, how he and Dirk grew up together."

"Yeah." He nods, stopping again to lean against the counter and pick up his drink, eyes trained on you like he can read something through a layer of red and black leather. "Out in California. I had Dirk like a year before he brought Dave home; we lived in the same house for like...f*ck, five or six years."

"And..."

"We both left."

"Because..."

D opens his mouth, closes it again, and shakes his head. "Family sh*t."

For f*ck's sake. "Have you not figured out yet that I'm on your side here? Or at least not on that f*cker's side. Wait, no, I'm specifically on Dave's side. What shape are we even talking about again?"

"No clue." He gives you yet another baffled look, then sighs, shoulders slumping. "You know Rose?"

"She hired me, so I'm going to say yes."

"It was about her mom. Bro and my sister. We got a call, I went north and he went south." D reaches up, rubbing at his eyes with the same absent one-handed gesture you've seen from Dave a couple times. "Look, the people who called us told us Roxanne said some sh*t that meant she was either crazy or meta—"

"Meta like mutant?"

"Metahuman, yeah. Either way I figured he had the f*ckin' right to admit he couldn't deal with it." D laughs, short and almost completely devoid of amusem*nt. "Which didn't. Just canceled his 'n Dave's tickets to New York, got himself some to Texas instead."

"....and you let it go."

This time the look he gives you is equal parts angry and guilty. Kind of a dangerous combination there. "I made the f*ckin' choice to wrangle Roxanne 'n handle our kids. Assumed he'd take care of Dave. Then we figured out rehab wasn't gonna fix her like she needed, she took off without her kid, Dirk tested out as a meta—"

"Zappy boy."

"You're making it really difficult to take this sh*t seriously."

"I tend to have that effect. So you had your hands full here, is that what you're saying?"

"I—" D stops, for a good ten seconds, just leaning against the counter and rubbing at his eyes with his head down. "Yeah. That, and I figured I was f*cking lucky he didn't just pack up and disappear, okay? He f*cking hated metas, like y'all weren't f*ckin' human—f*ck, when we found out about Roxanne's telepathy I pretty much expected for him to drop off the face of the earth then, right? But he didn't just cut us off, Dirk 'n Rose 'n Roxy still talked to Dave, they were still there, I figured...I figured sh*t was okay." He raises his head, and wow does he look upset. With himself specifically. "And that was f*cking stupid, obviously."

"Nah." It could have been handled better, but are you going to tell him that? Hell no. "So, we've worked out that I don't have a problem with you; how about the flip side of things?" When he just looks blank, you roll your eyes behind the mask. "I did kill your brother here."

"You saved my brother." D says it like any other take on the situation would be ridiculous.

"...okay then, everything's cleared up then." That...was easy. "Great talk, let's go check on that brother before either me or him gets nervous."

Chapter 24: Dave: Electrostimulation Therapy and Both The Lalondes

Chapter Text

Okay, so you were wrong. Getting hugged by Dirk doesn't feel exactly like being hugged by Hal; god, you can't believe you've been away from him for long enough that you forgot how cautious he is with every-f*cking-thing, how hugging him feels a hell of a lot like the process of holding a crow that barely knows you well enough to trust you. It's been so f*cking long.

Pulling away from him to make sure Wade's gonna come back from his lil' talk with D is—it's almost scary. What if you turn back to Dirk and he just doesn't want to touch you anymore? Like on some level that's a stupid thought, he's not gonna withdraw just because you were the one to jerk back from him first, but what if he does, what if he thinks you're pulling away because you blame him or you want to punish him or—

"Dave," Dirk says, one hand coming down on your shoulder to gently pull you around as Wade slips out of the room, letting you see the rare unguarded happiness on his face. "f*ck, Dave."

"Yeah, man, me—" Oh god you sound like a f*cking idiot, but the look on Dirk's face is highkey f*cking you up. He probably doesn't hug you again just to shut you up, but it works that way anyway. You're actually kind of relieved that you can escape having to come up with words by just letting your cousin wrap his arms around you and hang on tight.

(And yeah, you're hugging him back. Of f*cking course you are.)

"Hal." You almost pull back again when Dirk says that, just 'cause it feels like you're gonna be in the way if he's talking to his brother, but he doesn't loosen up even a lil' bit. "You're going to text Roxy to bring Rose over, right?"

"sh*t, I should probably do that. Our room?"

"Yeah, you go get them. We might as well not freak Dave out any more than he already is—"

"Hey." Okay, now you pull back. Enough to give Dirk a kind of blurry glare, anyway. "I'm right here, dumbass."

And he just gives you one of those uncertain grins back, like you're not halfheartedly trying to murder him with your eyes right now. "We're trying to spring sh*t on you slowly, bro."

"You didn't do so well finding out Dirk and I were mutants, after all." Hal points this out the same way that you've heard Bro's hookups point out sh*t like there's a knife stuck in the door, babe. Or maybe your blender has a puppet in it, hot stuff. Like, something resembling that level of mildly incredulity that the person he's addressing hasn't noticed the sh*t he's pointing out.

Of course, the only f*cking reason you haven't noticed some sh*t is because A) you just got here and B) no one tells you anything. Probably because they know you'll somehow end up letting Bro know.

You would end up letting him know.

Not will. Would.

Great, now you're feeling hella displaced and it's definitely not because you're manipulating your passage through time. To distract yourself from the mental whiplash sh*t, you shake your head and ask, "Are you saying Rose and Roxy're f*ckin' mutants too?"

"Roxy is," Hal agrees.

Dirk picks up from there. "Rose isn't. Neither is Reaux, or D—everyone else in our family shows signs of mutation."

"Sixty-three percent positive still suggests that the gene was present in our grandparents rather than random mutation or each of us being individually exposed to a mutagenic factor, though." Hal grins, glancing up from his phone for a second. "I mean, your grandparents. I think D's technically my grandpa, depending on your definition of that sh*t."

Dirk groans and completely lets go of you so he can facepalm, shoving his shades up enough that he doesn't end up poking himself with one of the corners. "Hal. No."

"No? As in, don't call you father?"

"No."

"How about spawner? Dad? Daddy?"

"I'm going to end you, Hal."

"I'd like to see you try, puss*." You almost flinch when Dirk responds to that taunt by following through on his threat with a lunge; Hal just sidesteps and switches his phone from one hand to the other so he can give Dirk a shove that adds to his momentum and nearly sends him into the wall. His tone doesn't change a bit with his next sentence. "Come on, Dave. You might as well see what she can do now instead of later."

There's two beds in the room Dirk and Hal share; the first thing Dirk does is shove one of them (his, you're guessing; the blanket's orange, and that always was his favorite color) up next to the other one (black sheets with green numbers covering like the whole area; you didn't know they made Matrix bedding.) He spends a couple seconds scooting the two beds back and forth by inches, apparently checking their position against a sparkly duct tape X on the ceiling, then looks over at Hal for confirmation.

Hal, who's put his shades back on and is staring intensely at that X, gives him a thumb's-up. At that, Dirk retreats to where you're standing, halfway through the doorway.

"You okay?" he asks under his breath, keeping his eyes on Hal instead of you.

Wow, that's a question with a messy f*cking answer. "I don't have a goddamn clue what the f*ck's going on, Dirk."

"Do you want me to—"

"No."

"Do you want Hal to—"

"Dude, the problem is with the fact that if you tell me sh*t, I have to process it. Not with who's doing the talking. And no offense, but there's no f*cking way you're gonna be able to talk fast enough to clear up all the sh*t I have a problem wi—holy f*ck!"

Dirk inhales sharply as you grab his arm; you're probably hurting him at least a lil' bit. You can't help it, though—in the center of the glittery X on the ceiling, a dot the size of a quarter and the color of a bruise just faded into existence, seeming to hesitate for a moment before rapidly getting both bigger and darker. Two seconds—probably less if you looked at a watch, honestly, but it seems like two seconds to you—and it's deeply, impossibly black, perfectly circular and maybe four feet across. There's no trace of the duct tape. Or of the ceiling. The circle might as well be a hole into the f*cking void.

"Dave," Dirk murmurs, and reaches up to gingerly try to pry your fingers off his bicep. "It's Roxy. Just Roxy. It's okay. It's okay, Dave. Breathe."

Oh, sh*t. Breathing. You're not doing that right now, huh.
You force the hand that's clamped down around Dirk's arm to relax. You take a deep breath, hold it for a couple heartbeats, and then let it out so you can get in another. You don't take your eyes off that f*cking hole.

Which is good, because that means you see your cousin fall through it. Roxy plummets the six feet or so straight down, lands on the bed and gets her feet under her on the first bounce. Somehow, she doesn't get tangled up in the long pink scarf she's got wrapped around her neck, and neither do the wireless cat-ear headphones on her head come off during this process. In all fairness, though, the headphones have been pretty heavily modified; you kind of think that the extra bits are supposed to look like the power scouter from one of the animes Bro left playing sometimes, except, like...pink. And attached to f*cking cat-ear headphones.

You're really stuck on those headphones and the transparent pink plastic panel covering one of Roxy's eyes. Like, what the f*ck? What the f*ck? Did she fall out of a goddamn anime? Did you fall into a goddamn anime? What the f*ck?

Roxy looks up into the utter darkness that she's just fallen out of, and tosses what looks like a completely normal tennis ball up into it. While you're still trying to figure out what the purpose of that lil' action was, she jumps down off the bed and basically tackles you.

Like, really. It knocks you two steps back, almost takes you down; she's a head taller than you, maybe half again your size if you go by mass. At least her hug doesn't pin your arms, because you would lose your sh*t if that happened.

"Davey!"

"Holy sh*t, Rox—" You mean to ask her when the f*ck she learned how to do that, but she forestalls your question by tightening her grip around you and lifting you right the f*ck off the ground, swinging you around twice and dragging you back into Dirk and Hal's room.

The second that she lets you have your feet back on the ground, the other Lalonde tackles you. This time you don't actually stagger, since Roxy hasn't actually let go. Rox's support is the only thing that keeps you on your feet, though; Rose somehow manages to have just as much kinetic energy despite being a hell of a lot closer to your size than Rox's.

She also manages to apply all of it squarely on your right side. Your right arm, specifically, or at least it feels like that. Something about the angle that Rose's body pins that arm at strains the bone or muscle or nerves or whatever the f*ck is messed up. Whatever it is, it hurts to the point where you lose your memory of how to move or talk or breathe.

"Give him some space," Hal snaps. As soon as the words are out of his mouth both of the girls take a step back, and you figure out that removing the pressure actually makes things worse. The only reason you don't just end up on the floor is that the wall is close enough to just step over to and lean on. "Dave? What happened?"

"Nothing." Okay, so you do actually remember how to talk. Dammit, trying to hold your bad arm steady with your good hand only works if you're not shaking. You're really not doing great with playing it cool right now.

"David, I know what 'nothing' looks like, and this really isn't it." Hal touches your shoulder (the left one, thank god) then, when you don't even twitch away from him, gets ahold of your good arm and guides you over to sit down on the bed. His bed. "Physical or mental?"

"I—I don't know what the f*ck you're talking about." Right, because playing dumb is always a good idea.

He stays patient, though. "What kind of distress you're in. 'Both' is an acceptable answer. You look like it's both."

In that case, yes, you're in physical and mental f*cking distress right now. Are you going to admit that? Hell f*cking no. "I twisted my arm, is all, it's something I—"

Don't you f*cking dare lie to them. Rose is just gonna correct you anyway, if you finish that sentence.

"...it's something Bro did. A while ago." You take a shaky breath and force yourself to let go of your bad arm, drop your left hand back into your lap, stretch your right arm out and make a fist. Oh, god, that hurts. "It's fine, see? No big deal—"

Neet chooses this moment to flap down from wherever the f*ck she was using as a perch and land on the far superior perch that you're obviously offering just for her—as in, your bad arm. All the willpower in the world can't keep you from gasping and flinching down away from her.

"Yeah, no. Scoot, Hal." Dirk shoves his brother to one side when that command doesn't get the desired effect, plopping down next to you and frowning as he coaxes Neet off your lap and onto the bed. You're pretty sure that the only reason that works is because she's interested in the neon-green-on-black pattern. "Can I roll up your sleeve?"

"f*ck no." That comes out before you can apply a filter; you can see Rose opening her mouth out of the corner of her eye, and you immediately focus all your powers of the evil eye on her.

You don't have any powers. That has absolutely no effect. "Dave, I promise you that what Dirk has in mind will be beneficial to—"

"Who the f*ck says beneficial?" Dirk's hands on your wrist are making you hella nervous; maybe you can channel that into irritation at Rose? "Are we saying I'm scared? Is that what we're doing here? Assuming I'm worried about whatever the f*ck y'all have in mind for me? Like, I know it's not gonna be worse than an alien in my head, right? Because I'm gonna be honest here, if y'all have one of those too I swear to f*ck I'm gone. Wade can get us both tickets to like, Disneyland or some sh*t, maybe a f*ckin' museum, I don't f*cking know. Something nice and fun and totally not about f*cking mutants and aliens and goddamn Spider-Man—"

"You're kinda stuck on him, huh?"

"Yes, Roxy, I'm stuck on the one f*cking mutant that Bro didn't hate being the one I tried to coldco*ck, thanks! Dirk, what the f*ck are you doing?"

"Things." He doesn't even glance up at you; at some point during your monologue, he pushed your sleeve up to just last your elbow, put one hand on your wrist and one on your bicep, and apparently focused completely on the pale scarred skin between them.

"No, seriously, what are you doing?" You kind of want to pull away from the gently tingling feeling in that whole arm, but...it doesn't feel bad, exactly. Kind of like that sweet spot right before your entire limb dissolves into pins and needles; you're scared that if you move it'll either do that or start hurting like before. "Is this a mutant thing?"

"That tone suggests you'd have a problem with it if it were," Rose notes, climbing up on the bed and crawling past Dirk to flop down on the other side of you, wrinkling her nose as Neet takes that as an invitation to hop up onto her leg. "Hello, Nietzsche."

"She doesn't know that's her name, Rose."

"She hears the part of it that sounds like her name, doesn't she? My sweet, smart little death omen. Dave needs another one of your siblings, doesn't he? Two for joy?"

"I think that's magpies," Hal points out, reaching over to scratch under Neet's chin. "Let's get him six more, for luck."

"It's supposed to be seven swans, not crows." Roxy rolls her eyes and pulls her headphones off, jamming them down onto Hal's head over his shades; when he goes to take them off she picks up where he left off on the crow-petting front. Neet seems okay with this. "Why not get him thirteen? Like, for the irony?"

"First of all, we only need to get him twelve; he already has one—"

"Hal, you're waaaay too into details."

"Which is why my projects don't explode."

"That was one time! Two times."

"Five times."

"Whatever! Close enough!"

They're so f*cking comfortable with each other. There's no malice in any of the sniping going on; like, you know what it sounds like when there's any chance whatsoever of an argument going bad, and there's just not here. It's good, it's awesome, it's making you dizzy for reasons that you can't really define right now.

"You okay?" Dirk murmurs as you close your eyes. "Your pulse is going crazy."

Oh, yeah, he's still got one hand loosely around your wrist. Makes sense he'd notice. "Yeah. 'm fine."

"You sure?"

Say it. Explain. "Time sh*t." Okay, that's a start.

And he seems content with that explanation, for the moment. He doesn't ask you any more questions, at least; just goes silent and lets you zone out to the sound of Roxy and Hal playfully bickering with each other.

Chapter 25: Wade: Kids These Days (Are f*cking Batsh*t)

Chapter Text

Dave isn't where you left him. That's a problem.

Well, it would be if D showed any surprise at all at the fact that his kids are missing. He doesn't even react at the absence of who you expected, just heads up the stairs without even looking back to make sure you're following.

(You are.)

The kids—yours, his, and two more that they've apparently picked up somewhere—are collectively splayed out on two beds pushed together. Dave's in the middle, lying on his back and blinking slowly through some kind of enhanced headphones with...cat ears. Okay. Neet's nestled on his chest, with all four of the other kids reaching over to pet her every few seconds. Dirk's stretched out face down on the bed, apparently fine with the fact that the taller girl's using his back to rest her head on as she watches whatever Hal's doing on his phone, on the other side of Dave.

The second, smaller girl is the only one who looks up when D opens the door. She's around Dave's height and probably about the same age, you decide when she sits up, right in that teenager goth phase that you fully support in any kid who goes through it. This one seems to have the art of black lipstick under control, though. No need to offer help there.

"Hello, Deadpool," she says through a surprisingly honest smile. "You've officially earned your money."

"C'mon, Rose." Dave sits up and pulls the headphones off, careful not to mess up the little screen that goes over one eye, and hands them off to the taller girl. "Be nice to him, maybe? Like, he's a good dude."

She sniffs and makes a face at that statement, crossing her arms. "Who's the psychoanalyst here, Dave?"

"So you actually got a license from that place that freaked out when they found out you were twelve?"

"...no."

"Then it's not you." Dave grins and scoops up Neet, transferring her to Rose's lap so he can get to his feet and step close enough to wave his hand in front of your face. "Wade? Hello? Yo, earth to Deadpool, you're making me kinda nervous here."

He says it like it's a joke, but it's really not. Dave shows tension in a couple ways that you've already got the hang of picking up; he really is worried at you shutting the f*ck up. Which you totally understand, but at the same time you really can't help it because you're processing the fact that that girl, right there, the thirteen year old goth in black lipstick and purple jeans—that is Rose. As in Rose Lalonde. As in the Miss Lalonde who f*cking hired you.

What the f*ck. You were literally hired and paid for by teenagers. This job was entirely conceived of, planned by, and implemented by teenagers. None of these kids can legally drink, let alone hire a god damn assassin.

Wait, that'd be illegal anyway. Oh.

"Wade?" Dave asks again, actually touching your mask with just the tips of his fingers. He probably isn't about to try to pull it off, but your instant and automatic reaction is to take a step back. And bump into D.

Goddamnit.

"I'll be right back," you tell him, sidestepping the man's attempt to steady you. "Five minutes."

Ooh, wrong thing to say. The kid's eyes go wide and anxious and why does this keep happening. Why. "What the f*ck you you mean, five minutes—"

"Okay, let me rephrase." Technically, you could make it outside and be unfollowed for at least a couple minutes—Dave's shed his coat somewhere, and there's no way D's going to let him outside in the snow without it—but that's really a dick move. "I'm going to go outside. I'm going to say some very bad words, maybe pile up some snow and stab it a couple times. Actually no, just lying on the ground and rethinking my life might be a better way to handle this."

"Dude, you're gonna f*cking freeze to death."

"I don't actually work like that, don't worry."

"Why?" This is not a question about your specific internal workings; the look on Dave's face has absolutely nothing to do with curiosity. "What the f*ck's going on—you promised you wouldn't ditch me, I—"

Oh, sh*t. Apparently he doesn't totally trust your word yet. Which makes sense. You're not one hundred percent trustworthy, by any sense of the word.

"Dave." When he focuses on you, instead of having his attention flicking from D to you to the other kids like he's trying to beg them to step in and fix this sh*t, you keep talking. "What do you want me to swear on that I'll be back in under ten minutes?"

"You said five before." That may or may not be a joke. You can't tell.

"Look, I just got outsmarted by four highschoolers, I need ten. I'm coming right back, I promise."

After a second, Dave nods. You're not totally sure that he really believes you, but that's going to have to be good enough.

Laying face down in nine inches of snow is vastly underrated. Even with a layer of leather and another layer of cloth between your skin and the tiny frozen water particles, you can't feel your face. You can't really feel anything, actually, and you're pretty sure that nobody can hear your ongoing string of f*ck words and their relatives.

You're really not done with this, but after just long enough that melting snow is starting to soak past your technically-insufficient layers of clothes, someone starts poking your back. It starts out as a gentle patting, then a more insistent prodding.

When they switch from using hands to something much smaller and less yielding, you roll over. Might as well see who's considering stabbing you.

To no one's surprise, it's the twins. Dirk and Hal are standing over you, the former holding one of your katanas (which should be locked safely in the car) and the latter grinning like he's never been prouder of himself. The only positive point here is that the blade's still safely sheathed.

That, and that they both took the time to pull on coats before they came out here. That's a positive point too.

Okay, now is not the time to get protective over someone else's kids. Especially since those kids have a weapon.

"Do it, I dare you." It's difficult to make yourself seem more vulnerable when you're already on your back in a growing puddle of slowly melting snow, but you make the effort by spreading your arms, pretty much inviting Dirk to skewer you wherever he wants. "It'll be completely useless, but you can tell yourself you made an effort to get rid of the big bad assassin, right? Warned him off your precious, innocent cousin? Brother? Whatever the f*ck?"

"Dirk, give me the sword so I can take him up on that," Hal suggests. Dirk just shakes his head and dodges his brother's attempt to get ahold of the weapon, hopping over you to end up in the non-shoveled snow.

The look on his face when he ends up knee-deep in the stuff is hilarious. Hey, the katana is within your reach and he's distracted; should you go for it?

Nah.

Not that your decision matters, because a second later Dirk just drops the sword on your chest, still sheathed. Huh.

"Yeah, we're not out here to put holes in you." Hal crouches down next to you, reaching over to brush snow off your mask. "You are still conscious, right? It's hard to tell right now, what with the mask and the attempt to freeze yourself."

"Excuse you, I'm attempting to not teach you kids new swear words." He can't see you roll your eyes; you do it anyway. Then you move the sword off your chest and sit up. "Why are you out here, exactly?"

Hal and Dirk exchange a look that says a hell of a lot more than you can pick up on. Dirk's the one who answers. "Keeping an eye on you."

"Ooh, so you don't want me slipping off?" Not that you would. You promised Dave. "I would've thought you two would be ready to get rid of me—"

"Dave's not." Dirk crosses his arms for a second, then rethinks that move and uncrosses them, offering you a hand up instead. "He needs you, it's been ten minutes, you can get up and help us carry his things in now."

"You can always come back out and put yourself on ice again after you take at least one bag in," Hal adds, rising to his feet as you take his brother's hand and let yourself be pulled up. Damn, Dirk's strong. "We're more than capable of covering for you."

"Oh, I believe it. But I think I'll pass." Might as well stick close to Dave just in case, right?

That's a good decision, because it's very obvious that Dave wants to keep you in sight, once you come back in the house. It's subtle—you're not even sure that he knows that he's moving to stay between you and the door out of the room that both the twins and the two girls immediately and consistently refer to as his—but you can see it. Maybe Dirk and Hal do too, because they don't say anything about bringing in the rest of Dave's stuff from the car.

Even with the things you bought coming up here, it only takes them two trips. Ouch.

D ends up talking Hal into taking Roxy and Rose home—which apparently has more to do with mutant powers than anything expected; you don't know why that's mildly surprising to you—which leaves you and Dirk to help Dave unpack his stuff and stash it away. Dirk takes one look at your attempt to fold a shirt and instantly takes the bag of clothes away from you.

Understandable!

Anyway, you flop down on the bed and watch Dirk's method of folding to see exactly where you went wrong. The answer seems to be "everywhere." At least Neet still loves you enough to use you as a perch.

She's the one who tips you off that Dave needs someone to step in, actually. You'd rather that she didn't do it with a harsh caw and a hard peck to the hand you're using to stroke her feathers, but hey, nothing's perfect.

Dirk looks over at Dave at the same moment you do; as you sit up and nudge the crow off you, he steps over almost fast enough to make you wonder if he's ended up with something like his uncle's abilities. Dave doesn't move at all as Dirk dips his hand into the bag and comes out with that goddamn suppression collar that you forgot you stashed in there, doesn't even react until Dirk pushes him a step back and slips in between him and the bag, looping the collar around his wrist and putting both hands on Dave's shoulders.

"Dave. Hey."

"I'm fine."

"I didn't ask yet, bro. I'm pretty sure I don't need to—you're so lying." Dirk takes one hand off Dave's shoulder, shaking the collar around his wrist. "This is the one he put on you?"

sh*t. Dave flinches at that question. He nods, though, and that movement doesn't seem faster than it should be. "...yeah. That's it."

"Do you me to get rid of it?"

You really don't want him to get rid of it, but Dave's already nodding again, and it's not like you're going to go against that. (Not while you're in the same room as him, at least.) Instead, you wait for Dirk to nod and step away, then scoop the crow up and hand her over to Dave before following Dirk out into the hall.

He's literally right outside the door; when you step through it he pulls it shut, holding the collar up. "Are you about to tell me to hand this over, or else?"

"Actually I was going to say please, but yeah, you get the idea."

"No."

"Come on, it's not like I'm going to slap it back on anybody—" Well, maybe in self defense. Those things are amazing for dissuading a certain kind of person from trying to kill you.

Dirk shakes his head and takes a step back, looking down at the loop of metal in his hands. "No. We don't have one like this yet; I'll give you one of the ones the CoH uses."

What.

"...why do you have a Church of Humanity suppression collar, exactly?" There's a couple explanations that you can think of—those bigoted idiots having approached D seems almost likely, but then again he wouldn't have actually taken them up on the offer they make to around eighty percent of parents of mutant children, and they probably already hate him for other reasons.

"Because."

"Not good enough, kid."

Dirk hesitates, spinning the collar on one finger as he thinks this through. After a couple seconds he shrugs, his free hand coming up to adjust those dangerous-looking shades. "Are you still on our payroll?"

"Maybe? I mean, if you're offering to buy my silence I think you need to rethink your tactics. I'm never silent. About literally anything."

He actually smiles at that one, a small, almost unconscious expression. "Just don't tell D."

"Hoo boy, I feel like you're about to tell me something that I absolutely need to tell your dad. Who'd you kill?"

"Bro, obviously." That comes out in an impressive deadpan, and he keeps the same tone for the next sentence. "But we've faked six deaths, three kidnappings, and one marriage."

That was definitely not at all what you expected. "You've done what now?"

"Look, it's the easiest way to make sure the people we take collars off don't just get a new one put on them as soon as they go home. If they don't exist, they don't have to go home."

"What?" What the f*ck? "You're saying you, the thirteen year old—"

"Fourteen."

"Whatever! You're singlehandedly responsible for making forcefully collared mutants disappear? As in, plural mutants. More than ten."

Again, you get that tiny flash of a smile. "Way more than ten. Not singlehandedly, though."

"Oh, good."

"Hal and the Lalondes are in on it."

"Oh my god." Are all kids like this? Please, please let all kids not be like this. Please let this one be an outlier. You're starting to think you need to be intimidated by anyone under eighteen.

"Some other friends too."

"More teenagers?"

"More teenagers." Yeah, you need to be intimidated.

"Oh my f*cking god." You sublimate the urge to bang your head against the wall until you make a perfectly Wade-shaped hole, and lower one finger at the kid who's still spinning a f*cking suppression collar on one finger like it's some kind of fidget toy. sh*t, his fingers are actually sparking. Cool. "You're not doing any more of that—"

"f*ck you."

"—without getting my number for backup."

"Wait. What?" There you go, you got him to stop playing with the damn thing.

"You heard me. Somebody has to be the responsible adult around here." Did you just call yourself a responsible adult? Yes. Yes you did.

You wait a minute to see if lightning is really going to strike from nowhere and fry you where you stand. When it doesn't, you shrug and turn away to open Dave's door again, leaving Dirk standing outside in the hall as you step inside to finish helping unpack.

Chapter 26: Wade: Good Night To Bad Dreams

Chapter Text

The fact that Dirk and Hal had a room ready and waiting for Dave isn't really surprising at all—hey, they orchestrated everything else, of course they'd make sure he had a place waiting for him when he got here. The fact that there's a room for you? That's a bit more unexpected. Granted, it's obviously the room that's usually used for Rose and Roxy (the lovingly crafted elder god plushie with a tiny cat ear hat gives it away) but still. You were seriously expecting to spend the night out in the car.

Well, maybe not in the car. It's f*cking cold. But somewhere that's...not here. Some people get weird about the idea of having a guy who spends a lot of his time killing people for money in their house for longer than necessary. Many people get really weird about it when it's their family member that you killed.

Then again, Striders hired you for that job. Maybe it all cancels out.

Eh, you don't feel like thinking about that. More productive to shed your mask in favor of all the blankets off both beds, wrap yourself up in a nice fluffy pink cocoon and just go to sleep like a normal person.

As normal as you get, anyway.

There's a lot of reasons why you leave the door open when you sleep. Most of them have to do with quick exits and weapons. Dave's probably got a whole different set of reasons, but evidently he doesn't close his door at night either, because at some point between cocooning yourself in blankets and whenever the proper point to rejoin the land of the living would be, Neet swoops through the gap of your half-open door, perches on the headboard of the bed, and starts cawing bloody murder.

Now, you haven't really heard crows caw up close and personal. Neet's a talker, but the noises she uses are less stereotypical corvid-sounds and more of a quiet bird-language, with a couple caws thrown in here and there. Even then they've been quiet-ish, even pleasant if you don't mind that little bit of a harsh note.

This, however, is like somebody decided to make a bird call out of a rotary saw and a blender full of nails. And she just doesn't stop—when you pop up and make a half-awake grab for her, she just flaps off the headboard and towards the door, still making those ungodly awful noises.

"For the love of—come here, you goddamn noisy featherduster—"

Neet doesn't come here, despite the fact that she's proven several times that she knows what that means. She does, however, lower her volume a bit once you're upright and headed for the door, which gives your sleep-addled brain the hint that maybe, just maybe, she's trying to get you to go somewhere.

You're currently in limited command of your brain cells, but it's not like there's a lot of things Neet would lead you to; Dave's room is the next logical step. Actually it's several steps. Not very many though. And no stairs.

"Dave?" You keep your voice low as you stop just outside the barely-open door, despite the fact that you couldn't be as loud as Neet if you tried. "Your bird's losing her sh*t, kiddo..."

Maybe it's the complete silence that convinces you to push the door open enough to step inside. Maybe it's the fact that the crow only really gets rowdy when she wants to be fed or when Dave's close to a breakdown, and you know he didn't forget to feed her. Maybe it's just a good old-fashioned gut feeling that tells you to open the god damn door.

Anyway, you slip into Dave's room just in time to see him overbalance from leaning over the edge of the bed to grope blindly for something underneath. You're not really sure how you manage to move fast enough to end up on the floor under him to break his fall (ow, but at least your stomach's marginally softer than carpeted wood) but you feel like it probably would have looked impressive.

It still knocks the air out of your lungs for a second. In that second Dave struggles up to his knees, still tangled up in the blankets he was sleeping with. He probably would have gotten all the way to his feet and wiped out again, but you grab his wrist before he can get any further.

You don't pull him down. At least, that's not what you mean to do; you just want to keep him from hurting himself, maybe figure out what's going on, if he's awake or still in that half-conscious state you saw him in the first night after you killed his bro. All you mean to do is hold him.

As soon as your fingers close around his wrist, Dave gasps and collapses, curling into a loose heap. He stays limp when you push yourself up off the floor and drag him into your lap; if it weren't for his wide red eyes you'd think he'd slipped back under.

"Dave. Hey." And he shudders when you go to smooth his hair back from his face, even with you being as gentle as you can. "Dave? You in there, buddy?"

All that question gets you is him squeezing his eyes shut, like a little kid pretending to be asleep. Is that what he wants? To have you leave him alone, let him go back to sleep?

Okay. If that's what he needs, you can just put him back up on the bed and leave.

The only problem with that theory is that as soon as you let go of his wrist so you can shift your grip on him to something suitable for lifting, Dave grabs onto the sleeve of the sweatshirt you stole back in Louisiana. He still doesn't open his eyes, or move other than that small desperate motion, but he's definitely not letting go, and his breathing's sped up just that little bit.

Hm. You're not sure if that's a time-warp thing, or an anxiety one. Neither is good.

"Okay. Okay, Dave, I'm not going to leave you, come on..." It's just barely possible to coax him into easing up on your sleeve without hurting him, as long as you do it with the hand attached to the arm that's wrapped around his shoulders and holding him up to your chest. "You're not even kind of awake, huh? Definitely worse than back in the hotel after Peter left..."

"What the hell." D's voice is soft; it still makes Dave shudder and latch onto you again. At least this time he goes with just grabbing a double handful of your shirt and twisting his fists up in it; you'd rather have him rip that sh*t up than keep you from having your hands free.

"It's not what it looks like." Oh that is the worst thing to say. You know that even before you look up and see D's expression run the gamut from concerned to confused, angry to baffled, flash amused for just a brief second before he settles back on worry and steps further in to kneel down next to you. The twins are right behind them, but Hal grabs Dirk's arm before he can step through the door, murmuring something you can't quite hear to him as he pulls him back into the hall and out of sight.

"Not sure what it looks like." D's eyes flick up to your face even as he reaches over to touch Dave's shoulder. (The kid flinches, and starts shaking again. That doesn't stop even when D draws back.) "What happened to him?"

"Your brother." Why the f*ck does he keep looking at you like that? Oh, wait, the mask. As in you're not wearing it. f*ck, you meant to go a little bit longer before owning up to the fact that you look a hell of a lot like someone who got into the Horrible Burn Victim makeup for a budget horror movie. Actually, the real question here is why he thinks it's a good idea to sleep without a shirt. You don't care how proud of his top surgery D is, it's too f*cking cold for that sh*t. Wait, he probably wanted more of an answer than you gave him.

Look, it's hard to stay focused when Dave's shivering and gasping against your chest. Lizard brain says kill something and rational brain kind of agrees with it, but you already killed the bastard who's to blame for this. Plus your swords are back under the bed you were sleeping in.

sh*t. Under the bed. As in where Dave was trying to get to.

"There's no one here who'd hurt you," you tell the kid clinging to your shirt. "Do you know where you are right now? Who you're with?"

He shakes his head and tightens his grip like he thinks you're going to try to pry him off and make him face you, but after a second he does answer, in a whisper that's actually softer than his breathing is. "...Wade. Deadpool."

"I actually meant D, but you're not wrong...want him to take you for a minute?" You glance over at D as you make that offer, just in case he isn't up for it, but he's already got his arms out, reaching for Dave as you try to shift him off your lap and onto his uncle's.

The effort doesn't get too far. Dave loosened up a little bit when you confirmed who he was with, but as soon as you try to move him away he swear under his breath, breathless and panicked and nearly silent, and almost claws at you in his desperation to find something he can hold on to. He's still got his eyes closed as tightly as he can get them, which means that he smacks you in the chin hard enough that you almost bite through your tongue.

"sh*t!" D's the one who says what you're thinking. He scoots forward a couple inches, obviously trying to angle himself so he can get a look at Dave's face. (Good luck. The kid's smooshing his nose into your shoulder hard enough that you're just a bit worried that he won't be able to breathe. "f*ck, Dave, I'm sorry, okay? Not gonna make you let him go."

"Good luck making me do anything..."

Apparently you don't keep that quiet enough, because D actually laughs. It's a good thing, though, because Dave eases up a little at the sound, almost lets go as he turns his head to look at D.

The way the man smiles is something that you kind of really want to take a picture of and save for when you really feel like sh*t. Yeah, this is where the kid belongs, with people who love him this much.

"Hey." This time Dave doesn't flinch away when D reaches over for him, either because he's a little closer to calm or because he can actually see D coming this time. "You got dreams trying to kick your ass, huh?"

"I don't dream," the kid mumbles, and you almost laugh.

"You just don't remember it," you tell him. "I don't think you even wake up for this sh*t, do you?"

"He looks awake to me, dude."

"This happened before. The first night after I, erm..." You probably shouldn't mention the fact you killed the bastard Strider. "...the first night after we left Texas, he had a dream. It wasn't this bad, but still."

"I don't f*ckin' dream." Dave punctuates that with another shiver, leaning into you just a bit harder. Everything about his body language right now says that last sentence is a lie.

Are you going to call him out on that? No. "Yep, you've told me that." You're also not going to check and see if D's giving you the evil eye. "You ready to get back on the bed?"

"No."

"Dave—"

" No."

"Okay, no bed. Got it." Damn. Now is the time to look up and see if D has any ideas.

He doesn't seem to.

His kids, however?

"Dirk's putting a movie on downstairs." Hal's back in the doorway, eyes fixed on Dave and face carefully neutral. Or maybe not carefully; you're starting to suspect that Striders are just like that. "You're a mutant, you can carry him, right?"

"For f*ck's sake." You realize just a little too late that the mask isn't there to cover up the fact that you just rolled your eyes at the sheer stupidity of that question. "You're a mutant; can you carry him?"

"Maybe."

"If I thought I could get Dave off me without causing a meltdown, I'd let you try. And fail." You can barely get him to ease up enough for you to get to your feet, so that's off the table right now. "Neither of us are that kind of mutant, kiddo."

D makes a softly disgruntled sound as he stands up, ducking as Neet swoops at him. (It doesn't stop her from coming in for a landing on his shoulder.) "Meta."

"What?"

"Metahuman." Oh, there's that defensive-ready-to-get-aggressive set to his shoulders again, the way he won't even look anywhere near you. You'd bet money he's got his fists clenched. "Don't call my kids mutants. They're still human."

"...you and your therapist really need to have a talk about that reaction."

"Oh, f*ck you—"

Dave stops whatever else D's going to say by letting out a muffled whimper and curling against you as you start navigating the stairs. You guess you should be paying attention, anyway.

Dirk's nowhere to be seen by the time D leads you into the living room, but it's obvious he was here a couple minutes ago. The lights are still out, but the room's not quite dark; the TV's running through the previews on whatever movie he put in, giving you plenty of light to avoid bumping into the folded-out couch.

As dual-purpose beds go, this looks like a good one. The sheer volume of blankets added to it sways your opinion even further in its favor. Add a big enough pile of those, and anything becomes a decent sleeping surface.

"God, I love my kids," D mumbles. He flops down, actually sinking into the pile of blankets for a second until he sits up and holds out his arms, meeting your eyes for a moment. "Lemme have him. Least until you get comfy in here."

"Ooh, I don't know if he's going to go for that." If Dave doesn't want to let you go, you're so not forcing him. But when you lean over to try and set the kid on the sofabed, he does let go. Slowly.

You're guessing that you have maybe two minutes before he goes back into panic mode, but you only need like half of that to get around to the other side of the bed and dig yourself into the blanket pile. By the time you get situated, D's managed to tuck Dave under there next to you, curling up on the other side so the kid's safely in between the two of you.

Whether he feels safe where he is right now is a question you can't answer, and you don't think you should ask. You deal with your desire to do just that by wrapping one arm around Dave's shoulders (bumping against D as he does exactly the same thing) and asking him instead, "Planning on going back to sleep now?"

He actually seems to think that over, taking a shaky breath and watching Neet hop around on the blankets for a moment before uttering a dismissive croak and flapping over to perch on the TV just as the words written and directed by the strider brothers pop up onscreen in deep magenta comic sans. Then he shakes his head. "...no."

"You good with this movie?" D asks gently.

That one doesn't require thought to answer; Dave nods instantly. "Yeah."

"You know it's got him in it."

"Yeah. 's the one he put on when sh*t was okay. Safe." The kid takes a deep breath and holds it for what seems like a really long time; when he lets it out some of the tension seems to go with it, because he relaxes between you and D. "Only one of your movies he had a credit on."

"Nah, just the only one he had a major credit on." D shrugs a bit, settling back against the pillows Dirk's piled up. "He ran interference for me the whole f*ckin' time. I think he knew I wasn't gonna be able to direct a movie when I was pregnant before I did, honestly—he f*ckin' hated the idea of playing director for any of my other movies, y'know? Like, this was the fourth one I tried to get him to help me out with, and all the other ones he just ended up doing post-production or costuming or special effects, sh*t behind the scenes like the pretentious puppeteer he always wanted to be, but this one...I asked and he shrugged and went sure, not like I have anything better to do. Like I didn't use that same line on him trying to get him to direct the other ones.

"He still wouldn't let me put his name on there. Ended up with 'The Strider Brothers.'" D laughs softly, shaking his head. "Bastard waited two f*cking days after the premiere—which we both missed because I was in the goddamn hospital—to call me out for copying the f*ckin' Wachowski sisters. He always knew me too f*ckin' well."

He stops for a second. Looks at you, looks down at Dave, smiles that unbelievably loving smile again, which makes you look down at the kid and realize something surprising.

"...he's asleep."

"Yeah. I always used to talk him to sleep. Dirk too. Bro sang; I couldn't."

"I don't think you really needed to. Too bad it doesn't work on me."

D glances up and catches your eye again, and this time there's a devilish spark to his grin. "I mean. You're two minutes into the director's commentary here; I bet you can't make it fifteen."

Ooh. You always have been a sucker for a bet, and honestly? There's no way your insomniac ass can lose. "You're on."

You lose the bet, but you're more than okay with that.