you're gonna go far

By the time Peter crawled through his window, he was more than exhausted. It felt like his whole body was one giant bruise; and although the actual car thieves themselves didn’t get a hit on him, he did manage to swing face-first into the truck ahead of them.

God, he hoped Twitter didn’t get a hold of that one. He’d never live it down. 

He slid the window shut behind him, gingerly pulling off his mask and running a hand through his sweat-soaked hair. A soft, warm weight pressed against his shins, and he glanced down to see Karen slink past him. 

“Hey, girl,” he greeted quietly, half-heartedly leaning down to brush his gloved fingers behind her ear. “How was your day?”

He ignored the following and expected silence as he made his way further into the apartment, refilling her water and opening another can of food. It was her favorite, tuna fish soaked in olive oil. It was also a great compromise when it came to purchasing food–he could eat the same food as her, provided he added mayonnaise and occasionally some pasta and veggies. Karen let out a pleased murp and bumped her head against his leg. 

Peter set the bowl down on her little mat, scratching her briefly behind the ears. He stripped out of his suit on autopilot, leaving it crumpled in the hall. Whatever, Karen liked to sleep on clothes anyway. 

He gingerly rubbed a hand over his quickly healing broken nose (which after so many beatings had become permanently crooked) and dragged it down to his purpled side. No broken ribs. Hopefully, the pain was just bruising.  

Peter stepped into the shower, cranking up the heat as far as he would allow himself to. The water bill was a problem for future Peter. Future Peter was older and wiser and probably had more money than current Peter. His muscles instantly loosened, and his whole body began to relax. Steam fogged up the room, casting a glowy haze when it combined with the sunset shining in the tiny rectangular window above the shower. 

He couldn’t believe he’d finally actually talked to her; that he’d told her what happened. He had watched her face shift from doubt to a little bit of fear then to this bewildering confusion that had her head tilted and lips pursed as she stared long and hard at him like she was trying to unravel his thoughts. 

He couldn’t believe that she believed him. Maybe this could work. Maybe he could get everyone back. (Not everyone. Not May, or Mr. Stark, or other dead people. Or Happy, or any of the Avengers.) But maybe he could get Ned and MJ back. Maybe it would all be okay.

(Maybe it was a horrible idea. Maybe he’d get them killed or they’d forget him all over again.)

He tilted his head back, letting the water wash over his sweaty, salty face. At this point, he couldn’t tell what of the liquid was tears and what was the shower stream. He hiccuped, wiping his eyes and inhaling to calm himself down.

By the time he finally stepped out of the shower, he felt marginally better. But mostly exhausted. He changed into something softer and warmer; a worn-in sweatsuit he’d picked up from the local op shop. He liked them better than anything he’d bought new before: partly because of the price tag, but mainly because the clothes felt lived in. It was nice to imagine the people who’d worn the sweats before him. Made him feel less lonely.

Karen brushed against his legs again, and he sighed. His head hurt. His whole body hurt. 

Maybe he would take a nap, just for a little while.

–

Peter woke to the sound of blaring rap music.

The default Starkphone alarm tone had been his greatest enemy for the first years of high school. But when he realized he could change it to a song he liked? That had been a game changer. What he didn’t foresee, though, was coming to hate his custom alarm just as much. 

He could hardly listen to Metro Boomin anymore without going into a blind panic. 

He reached out blindly, fumbling with his phone for a minute before tapping at his screen to get it to shut up. It silenced.

Peter blinked, shifting around. Karen let out a displeased meowl from her place next to him at the movement. He halfheartedly petted her, blinking as he tried to figure out why his phone was going off. As he glanced over at the screen he realized it wasn’t MJ, and his chest fell a little. But if it wasn’t her, then why…?

Patrol.

He shot up, slightly panicked, and pulled himself out of bed, ignoring the loss of Karen's warmth and the now lack of cozy bed. Tugging his suit on and zipping up the back (mask held in his teeth) he ran to the window. Peter hurriedly yanked it open and swung himself across the dimly-lit street. 

It took barely any time to get their unofficially designated roof. The route to this current meeting place was so firmly in his muscle memory he swore he could do it with his eyes closed.

A familiar hum echoed across the rooftops, followed by an awful falsetto that might have permanently damaged Peter’s eardrums. “Can anybody find meeeee…”

“Somebody to love?” Peter said, holding back a grin and turning to face Wade.

“You guessed it! Yet another reason I keep you around, Spider-Babe.” He clapped his gloved hands together, before sitting down and resting his head on Peter’s shoulder. “I am seriously asking, though. I’m lonely and single and… foreshadowing.”

“Huh?”

Deadpool raised his head, seemingly not speaking to Peter anymore. “There’s going to be some seriously gratuitous cameos.”

Peter rolled his eyes and settled beside him before the smell of food caught his attention, drawing his eyes to a brown paper bag next to Deadpool. The man without hesitating passed it over to him.

“It’s Taco T-Thursday,” he said with a shrug as he dug out his own enchilada.

“They’re not even tacos,” Peter muttered jokingly as he pulled out a wrapped quesadilla and rolled up his mask. “And Thursday already starts with a t.”

“No, Spidey, it starts with a thuh. Obviously.” Deadpool scarfed down the enchilada in three large bites and pulled his mask back down. “So you know how I’m an expert bird trainer?”

Peter almost choked on his quesadilla. “A what?”

“Bird trainer,” he said matter-of-factly, clasping his hands on his lap. “Yeah, I didn’t know either. My original idea was to train crows to attack people, but they’re too smart so it felt like a weird power dynamic, you know?”

“No. I do not know.”

Deadpool nodded contemplatively, ignoring Peter’s response. “You get it. So I wanted to get a bird that was more on my level, and while I was thinking about that I saw this pigeon. It was really fat, so it was obviously smart enough to get the good food. That or it was on anti-depressants, but I’m not sure pigeons have that… Anyway, I started training her. Her name is Clarisse.”

Peter gave a passive mm-hm and took a long drink from his Diet Pepsi. If he could go to sleep on Deadpool’s lap right now, he would. He felt like he’d been hit by a bus (which, to be fair, he had.)

“It turns out that crows are in fact much smarter than street pigeons, but I’m not giving up. One guy ate out of my hand today, and there’s a little colony on a roof nearby, and soon there’ll be babies and-” He stopped, waving his hand in front of Peter’s face. “You’re not paying attention to my pigeon story!”

Peter pushed his hand away. “I’m paying attention. Tell me more about Clarissa the fat pigeon and her disciples.”

“It’s Clarisse,” he said. “Wait, you look funny. What’s wrong, Webs?”

“I’m wearing my mask!” Peter shot back, “I look the same as usual!”

Deadpool scoffed. “Nah, your aura is different,” he said, a hand coming up to rest under his chin as he looked Peter over. “You have the vibe of a drowned rat. Is this because of…?”

Peter let out a miserable moan, covering his masked face with his hand. “It was a horrible, awful idea. Why did you let me do that?”

“Did she not believe you?” Deadpool asked, his light tone fading into a somber one, already catching on to what he was talking about. How could he not? Peter had been bitching and moaning and biting his nails over it all week. 

“She did believe me,” Peter said miserably. “That's the problem.”

“Huh.” Deadpool made a flat noise. “Wait, what?”

“I didn’t tell her about Spider-Man. I don’t want to put her through that again. I would rather her know me as Peter… at least for now.”

“Great, your body your choice,” said Deadpool, blowing the paper off of a straw and into Peter’s lap. “I’m not seeing the problem here, Spidey.” 

“What if I fucked with the spell, Wade?” Peter asked, anxiously reaching for another cheese quesadilla. “If they start to actually remember me, there’s a chance the multiverse will implode again. I mean, nobody is telling me I just tore the fabric of time and space and space-time, but nobody is telling me otherwise, either.” 

Deadpool scoffed, balling up some of the paper wrappings and throwing it at his head. Peter ignored his reflexes, letting it smack him in the face. “Fuck it, you deserve something good in your life. I’m definitely not going to be that something, so you might as well take the risk for the girl.” He wrapped an arm around Peter, his voice taking on a sing-songy affect. “Besides, if the multiverse implodes, you can just go to the sexy Dr. Wizard Guy…”

Peter turned to him, gaping. “Dr. Strange?” he asked incredulously. Deadpool grinned back at him before taking another bite of his food.

“Yeah,” he said around a mouthful of burrito, “him.”

“You've never even met him!” Peter shot back. “How did you know he’s sexy?”

Deadpool’s voice dropped an octave or so. Peter was sure Wade was wiggling his eyebrows under the mask. “So you admit he's sexy…”

“Shut up,” Peter scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Whatever, can we actually start that raid now? I need something to take my mind off of this.”

“Way ahead of you, baby,” Deadpool said, rolling out his shoulders. “I’ve already done the fun stakeout part. Just figured I’d get some food in you before we left. And not like one of the baby pigeons I’ve been feeding. Wish I could chew up and spit out some Fritos in your mouth.”

Peter’s mouth opened and closed at the statement, trying to come up with a clever response– nay, anything he could say. Unable to come up with something off the top of his head, he rolled his mask back down and tossed the rubbish into the bag. “Well, the food’s eaten. It’s definitely the place?”

Although Peter couldn’t see his face, he could feel Deadpool’s expression harden. The man’s posture straightened, his muscles tensing a little. “It’s definitely the place,” Pool muttered. “You’re lucky I waited for you. These are some real scumbags, Spidey.”

Said scumbags were connected to a string of armed robberies and a much bigger, much scarier ring of organized crime - although Peter hadn’t yet been able to prove that ring existed. But it wasn’t often that schemes this big stopped at petty crimes and low-level drug deals.

Peter just had an all-around bad feeling. Deadpool did too, by the look of it.

The building was a couple of blocks away, a darkened and sketchy-looking nightclub. “There’s a back door,” Deadpool said.

“You did your homework,” Peter replied, a little impressed, as he was led through an almost unnoticeable side alley. 

“You know it,” Deadpool turned, and Peter assumed that the man was shooting him a smile underneath the mask. 

The pair paused at the sight of the dingy back door. Slowly, Deadpool pushed the door open. Peter silently thanked whatever gods were watching that the door’s rusty hinges didn’t immediately announce their presence.

The backroom they’d walked into was everything Peter had expected: dim, smoky, and reeking of beer that had seeped into the floorboards. They weren’t in the main section of the club, which at least gave them a while to figure out where to move from here. 

Deadpool leaned over, his voice low. "They're in the back, down the stairs. Real cozy, huh? Assholes love their hidey-holes." He snorted, and Peter glanced up at him questioningly as they tiptoed around the tables. “Hey, that rhymed. I’m a poet, and I didn’t even-”

“-know it,” Peter said, smugly cutting him off. Deadpool groaned. 

“You ruined the moment. You’re awful. A scoundrel. A scumbag. A-”

“A pain in the ass,” Peter muttered, stepping in front of him to get a better look at the room down the stairs. “And you rhymed holes with holes.”

“You are!” Deadpool agreed. “And I don’t even care. You think Shakespeare rhymed everything perfectly all the time?”  

Peter wasn’t listening. His gaze drifted to a partially curtained-off area of the basement. There were four of them: grizzled, rough, and obviously packing heat. His stomach tightened. This wasn’t going to be easy.

“Ready to tango?” Deadpool asked, already reaching for his swords.

“Not that kind of place,” Peter hissed, grabbing his arm. “We do this quietly.”

“Quietly,” Deadpool echoed, eyes crinkling in mock sincerity. “Got it. Super stealthy. Silent as the grave.”

Peter shot him a glare but moved ahead, slipping down the rotting wooden railing and weaving toward the back. Deadpool followed, surprisingly quiet for a guy who seemed to have an endless supply of jokes and weapons.

They were almost there when one of the men turned, his eyes narrowing. “Hey- who the hell-”

Peter didn’t wait for the rest. A quick shot of web silenced the man, and chaos erupted. Guns came up, and Peter leapt, yanking one weapon out of reach while Deadpool vaulted over a case of liquor, drawing his katanas with a move that Peter was sure he’d been practicing.

“Guess we’re not being quiet anymore!” Deadpool called, bending the barrel of a shotgun backward.

Bullets ricocheted off the walls, and Peter twisted midair, webbing one guy’s feet and yanking him off balance. A second thug took a swing, but Peter ducked, landing a solid kick to his gut. 

“Behind you!” Deadpool shouted. Peter turned just in time to see a man leveling a pistol at him. His heart skipped - too late to dodge - but Deadpool was already moving. A throwing knife embedded itself in the man’s hand, forcing him to drop the weapon with a yelp. “Careful, Spidey,” Deadpool said, grinning as he slammed the guy’s head into the nearest table.

Within minutes, the room was quiet and the men were sprawled across the ground in varying states of awareness.

“Talk,” Deadpool growled, grabbing the most conscious-looking man by the scruff of the neck. The guy was bleeding from a split lip but looked more terrified than dangerous.

“I-I don’t know anything!” the thug stammered, holding up his hands. “I just get paid to unload shipments. I swear on my, uh, my…”

Peter crouched beside him, voice firm. “Shipments of what?”

“Guns. Big ones. Military-grade stuff. Look, I’m just a guy! I needed the money, man! I don’t know who’s behind it– I’ve never even met ‘em!”

Deadpool pressed the tip of his katana against the man’s throat. The latter paled, as a thin white line formed on one of the folds in his neck. “Wrong answer. Try again.”

“Deadpool!” Peter yanked him back by the collar, scolding him the way a preschool teacher might gently parent a troublesome four-year-old. “We don’t do that.”

Deadpool sighed dramatically, stepping away. “You’re no fun.”

The man let out a breath as the blade came away from his throat, his eyes darting between them. “Okay, okay! There’s an exchange happening tomorrow night! Warehouse on 167th Street in the Bronx. Midnight. That’s all I know.” 

There was a moment of hesitant silence as Peter exchanged a glance with Deadpool, trying to decide if that was all the info they could get. The man made a panicked sound as Deadpool moved forward, backing him up the wall. “I’m telling you, man, I don’t know any more than that! I just got hired to do this, I never got to talk to the big boss…”

“And who is that?” Deadpool asked, holding him a little higher. 

“I don’t know!” he squeaked. “I told you, they don’t tell me jack shit. I just needed the money, and–”

Deadpool dropped the man with a thud. Peter webbed his hands together, before webbing his whole body to the wall. “Thanks for your cooperation, but, you know… You’re still going to jail.” 

Deadpool lingered, tapping a finger against his katana thoughtfully. “You know,” he mused, “it wouldn’t be that bad to just-”

“Pool,” Peter snapped, exasperated. 

Deadpool raised his hands in mock surrender. “Fine, fine. You’re the boss. For now.” 

Peter rolled his eyes, but couldn’t help the small grin that tugged at his lips as he dialed the emergency number from one of the men’s phones. 

This was progress. They had a name and a location – and while they still didn’t know the ringleader's name, they would get there.

Eventually.