Genetic Hunger

Jogging up the stairwell in his apartment, Peter shoves through the door once he reaches level four, swiftly striding down the hall to his apartment. He fumbles with the key for a second, unable to fit it in his hurried state, before successfully unlocking it and tumbling inside. Moving as quick as he can, Peter tosses the medkit carelessly into the bathroom, ignoring its sharp clatter against the tiles. Passing off the probably-broken kit, he sticks the flat of his hand to the loose floorboard under his bed, lifting it up and snatching up his suit before replacing the tile. 

Shoving his legs into the suit, he pulls it up, over his arms and shoulders before hitting the spider on his chest, a weight lifting from his shoulders at the familiar, comforting compression of his spider suit. Slipping his phone into the hidden pocket in his suit leg, Peter hops over to the window, sliding it up smoothly, satisfied at the sight of the darkened streets. 

In the dark, he feels safer, more camouflaged and unknown. And here, in the great city of New York, the unknown is best avoided. Thus, the knowledge that someone—someone of unknown origin, unknown identity, unknown intention—is out there tends to be enough to curb half of the lingering ideas that people let convince them to take part in illegal acts, especially in the territory of Daredevil or Spider-Man, the two most well known to be especially protective over their people, their citizens.

Sliding onto the wall adjacent to his window, Peter quietly slides it closed once more, leaving it unlocked for when he returns later that night. Leaping from the side of the wall to the roof of the neighboring building, he checks his webshooters, satisfied at the condition but he can tell that he’ll have to retune them at some point soon to ensure they keep up prime performance.

Done with his quick checkup, Peter leaps. Webbing building to building, he sets his course, beelining towards the border of Hell’s Kitchen. Flying through the nighttime sky, he gives himself a moment to breathe, a moment to feel. The pulling of gravity transitioning to weightlessness lulls him into a sort of trance, letting muscle memory do the work until he lands on a building just inside the border to Hell’s Kitchen.

Ordinarily, any vigilante entering the territory of another’s turf would wait at the cusp of their borough until the other inevitably arrived to discuss the reason for disrupting someone else’s ground. It’s a show of respect and a general courtesy, and there’s normally no issue as long as the collateral damage stays minimal, but it’s still a normality. However, the older vigilantes, notably Daredevil and the Punisher (Deadpool would be included, but he doesn’t exactly have territory of his own), have begun letting Peter into their respective territories, trusting that he wouldn’t leave his own without proper reason and understanding that he has one of the lowest damage rate of all vigilantes in the city… ignoring the time he’d set fire to a chain of Fisk’s buildings before he got the message to keep his shit on his own side of the city for the Devil to deal with.

He didn’t have to hone in on his senses long until he heard a steady heartbeat accompanied with fluttering, feather-light footsteps making their way in his exact direction. Daredevil knows he’s here.

“Spider-Man. Good to see you again. How’s the arm?” His arm. The reason he’d had to restock his medkit so much earlier than expected after raiding a trafficking ring that turned out to have had more guys than expected. They’d known before entering the building, but didn’t have much they could do to prepare, as that night was the last night before the ring planned to get the hell out of dodge. 

“All good now, man. It healed within the night but I’d gotten swamped with doing citizen reconnaissance work last night so I ran out of time to head out in the suit.” Daredevil nodded, giving no response and evidently waiting for Spider-Man to say more. He took the cue.

“I was restocking my medkit earlier today and overheard some rather concerning information that I figured we should all look out for.” The man nods again insistently, urging him to continue. “There’s an auction going down soon. Like, an illegal, power-stealing, human-centric auction. As in, they’re selling enhanced people and illegal weapons in one giant auction sometime relatively soon.” 

Silence settles over the rooftop, only interrupted by the distant ambience of the city life and the wind howling between alleyways. Daredevil digests this new, very concerning information before replying. “Is this all you know?” Spider-Man shakes his head, quickly spilling all he’d overheard from both the alleyway and the warehouse.

Coming to an end of the explanation, he emphasizes, “Double D, they’re planning to take people. The only reason we have so much time is because they don’t have as much stock as what was promised, so they’ve resorted to mass-kidnappings, taking anyone they know to be enhanced. They’re also especially targeting mutants in a form of bigoted nonsense.”

Silence falls once more before Spider-Man ties off the end of his information. “This is huge, dude. This is more than just me or you. We need everyone involved, it spans the entire city,” he says, dread tinting his words as if he’s accepted the likely defeat. Daredevil just nods, pulling out his burner phone.

“I’ll send out a text to Deadpool and Jessica, they’ll spread it to the others on their own. Let me know if anything changes, alright?” Spider-Man nods, thanking him for spreading the word and backing up towards the edge of the roof, leaning onto his toes to leap into his routine of webslinging before the Devil calls once more.

“Stay safe, kid.” Hesitating, Spider-Man just nods, refusing to mentally acknowledge the lump in his throat before following through with his aborted movements, leaping off the roof and launching through the sky, web after web as he backtracks into Queens.

Making his way back into the heart of his borough, Peter hears a struggle happening relatively close by, urging him to quickly pivot his direction to speed towards the murmured threats and fearful screaming, muffled by what was likely to be someone’s hand or something wrapped around the victim’s face.

Launching himself onto the rooftop above the tussle, he abruptly realizes there no longer is one. All sound is gone, all involved individuals have disappeared aside from tire marks and the remaining scent of burnt rubber. Cursing, Peter closes his eyes, stretching his hearing out farther and farther before locking in on a van, speeding through the thankfully near-empty streets, taking turns far too sharply and causing the rear tires to lose traction nearly every time. 

Like a hound dog, Peter gives chase, leaping and swinging and doing whatever possible to catch up. However fast the van is, it’s no match for Peter. His speed comes from the utilization of gravity and the ability to cut corners, launching over anything in the way and not having to follow the grid of streets. Because of this, Spider-Man catches them soon enough, flipping through the bitingly cold air before landing with a thump on the roof of the flailing van, sticking to it to avoid being thrown right off.

Rearing back, Spider-Man hurls a fist through the metal layers of the van’s roof, grabbing onto the edge of their new ventilation system and tearing it open in a clear display of monstrous animosity. Using the space he has, he quickly locates one of the men as he fumbles with his gun, hands shaking too much to remove the safety before Spider-Man webs the gun from his grasp before securing it with webs once more to the roof he’s perched on. It doesn’t take long for the other two men to take action, firing off bullets in any which way in hopes at least one lands. Honestly, not the best strategy when you’re in close proximity to two of your buddies and one person you probably have to take back alive and intact.

One of the bullets is a lucky shot and grazes Spider-Man’s shoulder as he nearly falls off in an attempt to avoid the gunfire. He could have dodged that last one, but had he done so he likely would have been thrown from his perch and landed in the street. Securing himself back in his previous spot during a lull in the shots, he grips the edges of the opening in the van’s roof before nearly tearing the entire thing in half, length wise. Now, he can finally lay eyes on the victim, a young girl shackled like a dog in power-suppressing cuffs.

Focusing back on the now-unarmed man from before, Spider-Man sprays a generous layer of webbing to secure him to the wall that separates the back of the van from the front cab. Another session of gunfire echoes into the night as he dodges again, waiting for another pause before leaping into the van entirely, engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a man wielding some sort of gauntlets that presumably enhance his strength, as his first punch nearly knocks Spider-Man off his feet.

Suddenly hearing a click, Spider-Man sees the third, now re-armed man bringing his gun back up to eye level, aiming at him before a sharp turn knocks him off balance, sending the gun and, by extent, the bullet askew. As the shot is fired off, Spider-Man identifies its trajectory and his breath is stolen from him in a sudden, shocking realization.

If he doesn’t move now, the girl will never see her family again.

And so, Spider-Man leaps into the path of the bullet, keeling over at the blinding pain as it tears into his thigh, embedding itself into the muscle. Well, shit. The momentary pause is apparently enough for the man he was fist fighting, as a fist suddenly connects with his chest in a solid, mind-stalling punch that causes him to go sailing straight through the back of the van. 

The impact is hard enough to cause Spider-Man’s body to literally blast through the layers of metal and plastic before tumbling into the street, hitting his head on the asphalt before rolling to a stop as the van continues to speed off.

The collision of his head on the ground is hard enough to momentarily knock him out, if the sudden lack of a speeding van in his vicinity is enough to tell. He sits up, painstakingly climbing to his feet and resolutely ignoring the severe vertigo as he elevates his head. His heart leaps at the realization that he can no longer hear the car or the people, and he uses the momentary adrenaline to scale the tallest visible building at record speeds, pausing at the top to regain his balance and take in his surroundings.

Listening for any disruption into the otherwise tranquil, ordinary city ambient noise, he stills. Nothing stands out.

Peter yells (somewhere across the city, a Devil perks up, his heart rate spiking), shouting into the sky obscenities that May would have never known him capable of saying.

(The thought is nauseating, and Peter stumbles to the corner of the vacant roof, lifting his mask to his nose and losing anything he’d eaten that day).

Tidying himself back up, he resigns himself to keep looking, deciding the best course of action is to follow the same street they’d been going down in hopes they may end up back within hearing range. 

Peter sprints to the edge of the roof, launching as far as he can and waiting until the latest possible second to let out a web, arching back into the air in a deadly, adrenaline-spiking dance unachievable to any other person in the world. Setting a deadly pace, he tracks like a canine (lots of dog comparisons today), flying down the single resolute path in a hurried, haggard pace. He does this for ten minutes.

Losing his grip on a web, he’s launched straight into the gravel atop one building’s roof. He rolls, a cruel repetition of what had happened at the van earlier that night. Stopping against the low wall that borders the edge of the roof, he just- lays there. He stays there, thinking and breathing, catching his mind up to the night he’s been having.

Peter only moves at the telltale clanging of boots on a fire escape, sitting up and leaning himself against the concrete wall. He’d known Daredevil was on his way, he'd been tracking him for the past block once it was obvious he was making his way to the Spider’s position. 

Seeing a blur of red heave itself over the wall directly across the way from Spider-Man, he begins to push himself to his feet, leaning his entire body weight on the arm he propped on the concrete before attempting to straighten his posture. The figure across the roof mirrors him, facing Spider-Man rigidly and taking a second to listen for his wounds. Spider-Man gives him the moment, letting the Devil speak first.

“Spider-Man. Is everything alright?” The man opens up his posture, softening his voice and features as if approaching a wild, wounded animal. In this state, he thinks, he might as well be.

“Yeah,” the vigilante clears his throat, “yeah, I’m alright.” Well if that isn’t an outright lie. Daredevil can smell the pungent iron of fresh blood all over the kid’s right leg and right shoulder. Besides, he isn’t trying very hard to hide his hitching breaths and guarded, instinctively protective stance.

“You need to get patched up, Spidey. Come with me, I can help you,” he responded. The words’ deeper meaning wasn’t acknowledged. It’s been known that vigilantes are… emotionally stunted, for lack of better word. And so, since they can’t go to the civilians in their personal lives with nighttime matters or worries, they tend to go to each other. 

Grudges and vendettas are put aside for the moment as they allow themselves a rare show of vulnerability. Unfortunately, it takes a while for such a comfort to really land for some of the vigilantes, and it generally ends in some sort of explosion—figuratively (or literally, in Deadpool’s case)—before they really understand the concept. Similarly, Spider-Man is one of the cases that have yet to break down their mental walls in front of virtually anyone in what must be years. Even Daredevil had his moment in front of Frank Castle, of all people, after they’d been investigating some kidnapping cases and the end result had been less than desirable.

“No, no, Daredevil. I can’t. I can’t right now, okay?” Something squeezes in his gut at the utterly wrecked tone the Spider fails to mask. He wants nothing more than to just grab him and take him home to Foggy, to collaborate with him to fix this man, who he’s always suspected was just a kid (the recent evidence has been especially damning). Just as Spider-Man goes to take a step, his bleeding leg buckles, and Daredevil bounds forward to catch him by the shoulders, entirely ignoring the kid’s halfhearted assurances that he’s fine.

Daredevil understands from firsthand experience just how stubborn vigilantes can be, so he knows that what the Spider doesn’t want to do just won’t happen. Once making sure he’s steady on his feet, Daredevil slowly removes his hands from Spider-Man, though he stays ready in case he collapses again. “Just get home, kid. Get yourself patched up and please get some sleep.”

Wordlessly, Spider-Man nods, taking his words as the opportunity they are and begins thwipping away. Daredevil fishes his phone from his pocket, commanding it to open up his messenger app.

Unlocking the door with the key they’d hidden in a loose piece of the sidewalk, Peter steps into the safe house he shares with Deadpool specifically for matters like this; when Peter’s injured and happens to be too far to make it back to his place soon enough. Deadpool also uses it if a stakeout is irritatingly far from his own place, but it’s less common. This gives Peter the comfort to not care of the noise he makes as he lets the door slam behind him.

Slipping down the hallway to his immediate right, Peter flicks on the lights to the bathroom, not necessarily needing the light with his enhanced vision, but deciding that he’d rather be secure in his movements than accidentally push the bullet deeper. 

Opening the cupboards below the sink, Peter brushes the few guns he finds aside to reach the materials he needs; tweezers, scissors, antiseptic pads, gauze, and a bowl he then fills with rubbing alcohol. Settling onto the closed toilet lid, Peter props his leg on the low towel rack on the wall opposite him. Using the scissors—baby pink with a Hello Kitty design on the handles—Peter cuts a circle out of his suit around the bullet wound in his leg to grant himself space to work. Tossing the fabric aside, he takes a moment to mourn the money he’ll have to spend for a replacement suit from that guy that Deadpool had recommended him.

Grabbing a small towel from the very rack his foot is resting on, Peter rolls it up and places it in his mouth, between his teeth, before grabbing the awaiting tweezers, using his free hand to slightly spread the wound. Clamping his jaw on the towel, Peter refrains from vocalizing his pain as he plunges in with the tweezers, searching for the bullet he knows is in there, buried among meat and muscle. 

It takes a long, painstaking moment before he can feel the scissors clamping down on something solid. Slowly and carefully extracting it with no small amount of painful grunts, Peter plops the bit of metal into the bowl of rubbing alcohol, watching for a moment as the liquid inside begins turning red. 

Leaning back against the nice, cold porcelain once he tosses the towel to the floor, Peter gives himself a moment to breathe, to simply exist in the small world of pain he’s currently in. It’s then that the figure in the doorway makes itself known, and Spider-Man minutely flinches, having not heard his approach during his struggle with the bullet.

Deadpool has a crease in his brow, and something in the back of Spider-Man’s mind says it must be sourced from worry. He shuts that down immediately; they don’t care about him. (They do. He knows they do). Deadpool swallows a lump in his throat when he processes the entirely resigned body language his friend currently sports.

Glancing between the bloody bowl and Spidey’s leg, Deadpool speaks up. “Did you do that yourself, Spidey?” He’d only just arrived, then. He hadn’t seen that humiliating struggle. 

Taking the chance to deflect, Spider-Man resorts to his most common tactic; sarcasm. “What, the bullet hole? No, that’s from another dude.” There was a hint of guarded hostility in his tone that neither man missed. Deadpool didn’t laugh, just stepped forward, snatching the antiseptic wipes from the counter before crouching down in front of the man’s leg. At his glance, Spidey braces as the wipe makes contact with his sluggishly bleeding wound, shutting his eyes at the stinging bolts that reverberate through his thigh.

In the back of his mind, Spidey can hear Deadpool promise that it’ll be over soon.

It is.

When Deadpool deems it clean enough, Spidey grabs one of the gauze wrappers, gently pressing it to his wound and wrapping it securely. Deadpool, still not entirely understanding the extent of his powers, inquires, “no stitches?”

“No, I’d just heal over them.” Silence falls. Spidey stares expectantly at the other man. Wade sighs before standing up, stretching out his back before answering the unasked question.

“Red had given me the heads up that you were going this way. Assumed that, since Queens is in the direct opposite way, you must be stopping somewhere around here,” he paused, mulling over his words. “Said that you aren’t exactly very chatty right now.”

Spidey didn’t respond, only hesitating a moment before beginning to clean up the counter space, stepping around Wade to reach the cabinets. He’s stopped by a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Let me do that, you go to the kitchen to grab some food,” he says, keeping the hand firm but gentle to enforce the seriousness in his words. Spidey immediately shook his head.

“This is my mess, ‘Pool. Let me deal with it.” Deadpool got the idea that the statement wasn’t primarily about the medical supplies.

“No, Spidey. Go eat, let me help you.” Let us help you. 

Spider-Man yielded, sighing and dropping his tense shoulders before quietly plodding out of the bathroom. Deadpool begins washing the tweezers and putting them away with the scissors, pausing to dump out the bullet bowl to put some fresh rubbing alcohol inside with the bullet. Spidey probably wants to take it to Jess later to run some P.I. work to find its source.

He takes the bowllet (ha) with him as he turns off the buzzing lights of the bathroom and heads towards the still-dark kitchen, finding Spider-Man standing and staring straight at the flickering microwave which, according to the box on the counter, was reheating the week-old pizza they’d shared two Fridays ago. Good choice.

Deadpool places the bowl on the counter, snapping the Spider out of his momentary trance.

“Red also told me about the auction you overheard about. Is what happened to your leg related?” Spidey nods, removing the pizza from the beeping microwave and pulling the pieces apart, giving an ample portion to Wade. Wade gives half of his own piece back to Spidey, God knows he needs it.

“They aren’t the same guys as earlier today, but I can assume they were acting on the same reason.” ‘Pool gestures for him to continue. “They were kidnapping an enhanced kid.” Spidey swallows past the lump in his throat, resolutely ignoring the shake in his voice, “she was a child, Wade, and they were taking her. She was a kid.” He takes a shaky breath as he leans his head down, leaning his hands on the counter.

“Is she dead?” Same old Deadpool. Same old blunt, straight-to-the-point Deadpool.

“No.”

“Then stop saying she ‘was’ anything, kid. She isn’t dead, don’t do that to yourself.” Spidey shook his head.

“She might as well be!” He shouts. “I had the perfect chance to grab her, and instead I go and get myself shot and thrown out of a fucking van because I was too distracted with fighting someone who should’ve been a run-of-the-mill bogey.” Wade furrows his brows.

“They weren’t?”

“He had some sort of gauntlets that enhanced his strength. A pain in the ass that was. I was stronger regardless, and I still didn’t beat him.” Wade knew that breaking through the kid’s thick skull was a task out of anyone’s reach, but he might as well try.

Wade sighs. Guess now’s as good of a time as ever. “This isn’t your fault, Spidey.” Spidey’s struck with the thought of Good Will Hunting. Great movie.

“It is, though. And even if it wasn’t, it has to be someone’s, and right now I’m the only identifiable party, so by extension, the blame is mine.” Holy shit, this kid is the stupidest genius he’s ever spoken to. And maybe the only genius he’s ever spoken to.

He’ll save this talk for later. Maybe he can push it onto Red’s plate so he isn’t alone with the monumental task. For now, though, he elects to just change the subject. “Where are you sleeping tonight?” There’s a pause. “Not in the creepy way.”

Spidey ponders for a moment. “I’ll go back to my place. I still need to put some groceries away, anyway.” Technically, the only groceries were the medkit supplies, but it isn’t necessarily a lie. Just an excuse.

Considering for a moment, Deadpool scans over Spidey’s form to gauge his physical and mental state to determine if the man truly is fit enough to get home safely. “Alright. But send me a text when you get home,” he decides. Wade begins digging through one of the kitchen drawers, tossing various concerning weapons aside (“Seriously, Wade, do we really need a modernized bayonet?”) until he triumphantly holds up a small black device—a burner phone.

“It’s fine, Wade, you don’t have to give me something you might need later on,” Spidey really did not need a reason to get even closer with his vigilante acquaintances, and if Deadpool can reach him so easily as to have the ability to just text him on the fly, it was bound to happen. After what went down last time, Spider-Man isn’t exactly itching to get too close to anyone else when he finally has another chance to keep people safe.

“Nonsense, Spidey-Boy!” Spider-Man sours at the nickname. “I have tons with my number programmed into them for situations like this. I even saved this one just for you!” Wade goes on, oblivious to Spidey’s mental struggle. At the words, Spider-Man had to swallow down a lump in his throat. After a moment of deliberation, he accepts the device, slipping it into one of his hidden suit pockets next to his personal phone.

“Thank you, Wade.” The words meant more than what was said. Wade understood regardless.

Clapping him on the shoulder, Wade steered him to the door, grabbing the bullet from its spot on the counter and shoving it into the kid’s hands. “Go on home, Spidey, it’s getting late and you need to sleep so you can heal nice and quickly. Again, text me when you’re back, after tonight I’m sure everyone’s a bit on edge.”

Peter nodded, ensuring his webshooters are still engaged; he’d hate to have a rerun of the time he’d tried to swing when they were damaged and his natural webs, without the shooters to help, had only been able to shoot around twenty feet.

Walking through the door into the chilled night, Spider-Man turns to Deadpool one last time, tucking the bullet now in his hands to store it somewhere in his suit. He has an excessive amount of pockets, Deadpool absently notes.

Hesitating for just a moment, Spidey launches himself at the man, embracing him tightly for just a moment. Deadpool, surprised, freezes at first, before wrapping his arms around the smaller form in a vice grip. “You promise you’re okay, kid?” Spider-Man doesn’t answer, he just pulls back. 

Saying a quick thanks, Spidey does a 180 before slinging off into the night. The cold chilled Peter to the bone as he swung through the frigid air, the harsh winds stinging his skin through the thin spandex. Making his way back into Queens, Peter beelines it for his apartment; most criminals go back home by this hour, anyway. Right now, his only concern is getting back so he can take a warm shower and dive into bed, snuggled deep into his numerous blankets.

Landing lithely on the wall just above his window, upside down, Peter reaches down, sticking one hand to the window, pulling it up and open before slinking in, closing the window and curtains the moment his feet touch the floor.

Slipping the phone from his pocket, Peter opens it, finding the contacts page and seeing just two numbers labeled, “Your Fav Merc” and, “Emo Blind Man.” Peter huffs a laugh at the names for a moment before sobering up, clicking the first contact and shooting a quick message.

SM: hey, wade, i just got back to my place. safe and sound!

It didn’t take long for a reply.

Your Fav Merc: That’s good. Go to sleep, you menace. You’re a nightmare when you’re cranky.

Peter simply responds with a middle finger emoji before turning the phone off and tossing it on the nightstand, pulling out his personal phone and the bullet to place them next to it. He hits the spider on his chest, immediately loosening the suit, which gives him the chance to rip off his mask, running his hands through his hair and sighing in relief, his persistent headache ebbing slightly.

Once the suit is off, Peter peels the gauze on his leg back a bit to check on his leg, grimacing as the dried blood pulls at the wound. Finally loose, he tosses the bloodied gauze in the trash can in the corner. Leaning down to inspect the wound, he slightly spreads the wound, hissing in pain. All in all, not the worst rate it’s been; it’s already almost healed a third of the way and should be fine and dandy by morning.

Tossing his suit on his bed, planning to repair the new hole in it in the morning, Peter steps into the bathroom. Turning on the shower, he turns the knob as hot as it can go, letting the steaming water numb his mind and sting his skin.