oedipisms

It’s decided to be a bad day today. Wade discovers this only after he opens the front door of the apartment to rush to a meeting he’s late for and trips over a neat little row of painstakingly arranged tiny terracotta pots full of sprouts boasting a varied and ostentatious spectrum of green. His big toe catches the lip of the centermost pot and gravity gleefully and spitefully fucks him up.

The crash is spectacularly loud. It sends damp soil flying in every direction to grace the ceiling and walls of the landing. Wade lands on his hip and lower back, which is super fun because he’s really getting up there in years. Not even hyperfast regeneration saves him from the humiliating old man gasp that escapes his lungs.

Of fucking course the ruckus wakes Matt up. He appears in the doorway a couple of seconds before Wade has fully caught his breath and almost faceplants on top of him. Matt manages to catch himself in the nick of time and the full force of his panic-stricken inertia is stopped by the wooden door jamb, which cracks down the length of the side on which the hinges hang.

So that’s fun. Wade’s still misremembering how to inhale. Matt carefully shifts his weight off the doorway, eyes wide and full of cautious terror. The whole thing creaks and Wade’s miserable fucking life flashes before him as he imagines being crushed by the door Flat-Stanley style. The thing has the goddamn audacity to stay on its hinges.

Fucking tease.

Wade gives up on being civilized and groans like a ninety-year-old as he disentangles himself from the mess of plants and clay shards scattered around him. Matt squats down to scrutinize one of the few pots left intact. Wade tries to sit up, but his back decides for him that the floor is a more comfortable place to be at the moment, so he curses and props himself up on his elbows to watch the proceedings.

Matt turns his head to Wade in concern for a brief moment before he picks up the pot, puts it an inch below his sniffer, and inhales what is very probably every possible scent the poor plant has to offer. Wade’s left elbow twitches with strain and just a hint of annoyance.

Matt removes the plant from his face and scowls at it, squinting with his whole brow bone. He has a little streak of dirt on his chin.

Then he pitches his torso backwards and upwards and beams the fucking thing down the flight of stairs at the end of the hall. Wade watches its fast and furious trajectory until it disappears from sight. A meaty thump and then a squawk emanates from the stairwell instead of the expected inanimate crash.

Oh, of fucking course!

Perfect!

Who else could it be? Who else would bother to set up a tripwire made of actual, alive fucking plants at his doorstep? The kid is so dead. “Kid, you’re so fucking dead!”

Peter’s head pops into view immediately after Wade screams at it. His shit-eating grin is almost as infuriating as those mischievous eyebrows. His shirt surfaces a second later and Wade can almost die happy, vindicated by the sight of the massive brown dirt explosion displayed prominently on his chest.

Then a fucking earthworm wriggles between Wade’s toes and all bets are off.

Wade noogies Spidey to death and then he goes to the meeting he’s now seventeen minutes late for and then of course he apologizes about being late to his mobster client like a kiss-ass.

Wade negotiates a deal for an hour over acidic coffee and energy drinks and a couple of lines of coke that end up going untouched. Services are bargained, cash is promised, a written agreement is drawn up, and handshakes are exchanged.

Wade doesn’t really want to take the job but he also doesn’t really want to do much of anything else. He goes home and networks and fucks around in some government archives until he decides the dirt he’s looking for is too well buried for his skill set. He goes to Sister Margaret’s and pays Weasel way too much money to arrange yet another meeting.

The sun is down by the time he emerges from the underworld and he books it across town to be on time for the appointment he’s just made.

On the way over, he reminisces about a time he wasn’t a huge fucking sellout. Those were the days. He killed a hell of a lot more people back then. Spent a lot less money. Grovelled a lot less.

The goddamn subway gets delayed ten minutes. He barely makes the meeting, but still manages to get the dirt from the geeky, whiny computer whiz. He trudges back to the apartment.

Matt’s already gone out. It’s his turn to cover Hell’s Kitchen and work with Peter in Queens, which means an early start. There’s a half-empty bottle of Irish whiskey on the plywood bar and a clean glass sits right next to it. A pen rests sadly beside a post-it note stuck to the bottle that reads “pour one out for me” in Matt’s overlapping handwriting. A glass identical to the one next to the bottle sits damp on the drying rack. Must’ve been a bad day in court.

Wade foregoes the glass and grabs the bottle by the neck to go marinate on the roof. He’s still got two days to finish his hit. Doesn’t really feel like offing anyone right now.

The roof has some pills stashed discreetly in one corner, but what the fuck is the point.

Wade looks down at what’s visible of the street and takes a swig. He lies down and watches the polluted massive nothingness in the sky for a while. His brain takes advantage of the quiet to antagonize him. He tries and fails to keep his shit together and has a psychotic break for a few hours. By the time he thinks he’s safe to be around himself and other people, it’s three hours past midnight and Matt’s trying to sneak in through the roof access without alerting him.

He lets him go. There’s nothing Matt can say to make anything better.

That’s something Wade appreciates about him. He knows exactly where Wade can be reasoned with and where it’s a lost cause. He’s usually a persistent and tenacious motherfucker, but he’s as well acquainted with his own demons as Wade is with his. He knows Wade’s boundaries better than anyone. It makes for quite a pragmatic relationship. And a lot of built-up trauma, but that was there before, so what’s the harm in adding to the burn pile?

Wade gets up and stretches his back. He checks his phone, then calls Matt and tells him not to wait up. Matt asks for how long and Wade doesn’t really know how to respond. “Gimme a week.”

Matt reminds him that he loves him. Wade knows this. He repeats it back and hangs up and throws his phone as hard as he can at the alley into which he’s been staring. It makes a very satisfying crunch and he wanders off to go find a way to get his body to make the same crunch.

When all is said and done, Wade only spends four days tearing himself apart. He’s actually pretty proud of himself when he wakes up and searches around for a calendar and finds he’s below the estimate he’d given Matt. Granted, it’s also 4:30 in the morning on a Thursday, so it’ll technically be four and a half days by the time he gets back to the apartment.

He picks up what’s left of himself and starts on the journey home.

Matt is extremely unimpressed with him when he comes trudging through the front door. He tries to apologize, tries to convey how guilty he feels, but Matt just sits silent across from him and glares at the table until he finishes talking.

Wade gets the hint and shuts up eventually. Matt leans forward on his forearms and clasps his hands. He says, “The guy you were working a job for came by yesterday.”

Aw, fuck. “What the hell? How’d he know where I live?”

Matt unclasps his hands and turns his head to face the window. The shifting red and yellow lights make his expression unreadable. He says, “I don’t know. He showed up here in the middle of the night with a couple of his lackeys and made a big show of tearing up some document and trashing the living room.”

Wade averts his gaze and winds up staring at the stairs to the roof access. “I’m sorry, Matt. I have no fucking clue how he found out about this place.”

“No, Wade, not fucking good enough. I was still half suited up when they arrived. The mask was sitting on the goddamned counter.”

“Shit, did they catch on?”

Matt deadpans at his collarbone and responds, “No, dumbass, but I had to play helpless and terrified while they threatened me in my own home. We agreed that you’d keep the merc shit out of--” He gestures to himself and then to Wade “--whatever this is.”

Wade can’t seem to make his brain and mouth cooperate. Matt continues, “I get that you need to sort your shit out. Believe me, I understand. Just maybe don’t forget that you’re intricately and inextricably attached to me. And Peter, now that I’m thinking about it. What would have happened if Peter had been here?”

Matt leans hard into the back of the chair and waits. Wade scrambles for what to say, how to communicate his guilt, his sorrow, his anger, his aching terror. He follows a still-healing scar’s pinkish path through Matt’s blonde arm hair.

There aren’t words. He’s not a lawyer or a poet or a writer.

A weird noise escapes through his nose. Matt doesn’t acknowledge it. He sits there, patient. One of his legs starts to bounce under the table.

Wade tries again. “I’m not good with words like you or all the people you work with. I’m sorry that I left without figuring my shit out first. I’m sorry I ran off and didn’t tell you where I was--”

“You’re a grown ass man. I don’t care about that. You know that’s not why I’m pissed.”

“Will you let me fucking finish?”

Matt snorts but nods.

“I’m sorry for a lot of shit I’ve done to you and I know it’s useless and empty to try to apologize for it all. God, I’m shit at this. We talked about accountability before I moved in, and I know that’s what I need to work on. But fuck, Red, I don’t know what to do. If you’d seen me a couple days ago…”

“I know, Wade. It’s a hard fucking thing to balance.”

Wade pushes his chair back and stands slowly, hands braced on the tabletop. He lets his head drop. “Yeah. Hurts so fuckin’ bad.”

Matt tucks a socked foot up on the chair. He asks, “You takin’ your meds?”

Hah, meds. Hasn’t touched one of them fuckers in a solid two years.

“‘Kay, bud, let’s maybe start there. After sleep. And a shower, probably, Christ almighty, you smell like roadkill.”

Yeah, sounds about right.

The meds help some. They’re not a be-all-end-all, but what the hell is anymore. It’s been a couple weeks since he started taking them and his head’s thinking a lot more linearly than it was and that’s progress.

Tonight’s a cause for excitement because it’s the last Saturday of the month, which means that he and Matt get to chase Peter around the city for recon training. It’s really just a glorified game of hide and seek, but it’s good practice for Pete and it gives Matt a chance to work out some pent-up frustration on parkour instead of on criminals’ faces.

He’s pumped to catch the kid stuck halfway between a dumpster and a brick wall, or trapped upside-down in a smokestack, or better yet clinging for dear life to some kind of spindly antenna lookin’ thing at the top of a Manhattan skyscraper. All of these have happened before. Peter’s tiny and sticky and he makes for an entertaining manhunt.

He gets to the roof first. Matt arrives after running through the high points of his Kitchen patrol. Peter’s about five minutes behind him, webbing up from an impressively steep angle below them. He’s getting real good with those web-slingers.

Wade pulls his phone out and taps around until he finds the stopwatch setting on the clock app. “We ready?” Matt asks.

Wade stands at attention and salutes. “Sir, yes, sir!”

Matt glares him down through the mask. “Save it for the bedroom, freak. Spidey, tonight we’re doin’ a manhunt. I’m knocking your prep time down ten minutes from last time, but I’m gonna give myself a handicap.” Matt pulls out a pair of foam earplugs and uses them to gesture while he talks. Peter’s vibrating with nervous anticipation. Wade thinks he can hear him humming.

“Your goal is to evade us for three hours and meet us back here at the end of that time. Wade has rubber bullets which he is free--and I’m sure more than willing--to use. I’ve got the clubs and a bo. If we tag you, you’ve lost. If you get stuck, you’ve lost. Whole city’s fair game, but I’m repeating myself at this point; you know the rules. You’ve got 35 minutes. Starting now.”

Wade starts the stopwatch. Peter scrambles for approximately two seconds before disappearing hastily over the southern edge of the building. Wade yells after him, “If you make me go to Staten Island I’m gonna throw you in the ocean!”

Matt double checks his rope bindings and turns back towards Hell’s Kitchen. He must hear something, because he mutters, “Meet me here when it’s time to start hunting,” and then he sends the line between his clubs out to catch on the building across the road. He’s gone with a graceful, gratuitous flourish. Off to beat someone into a coma in a bar alley, probably. Good time management, that is.

Wade finds a shadow to melt into and pulls out his phone to play Candy Crush. The stopwatch is still pulled up; Pete’s got another 33 minutes of calm before the storm comes biting at his ankles.

Wade gets through four levels of Candy Crush by the time the stopwatch reads 00:34.03. Matt materializes on the other side of the roof and they exchange nods. Matt pulls his mask up a bit to insert the ear plugs. They stick out like hysterical little traffic cone Shrek ears and the effect only worsens when he slips the mask back down over them. Wade blows a raspberry at Matt-Shrek. Matt flashes his chompers and flips him off. They go their separate ways.

Peter’s a slippery little fucker, Wade will give him that. Wade doesn’t have the senses to streamline the tracking process like Matt does. He finds a length of web residue floating in the almost-still breeze and thinks hard about the physics of the swing from the spot to which it’s attached. Based on the direction and the angle, Wade hypothesizes that Peter headed south for a mile or so to throw them and then abandoned that strategy to book it east or west. Might have headed along Broadway to tire Matt out on all those tall buildings and touristy pedestrian smells.

It’s what Wade would do. He likes to think the kid’s imprinted on him. He heads to Times Square.

Matt’s beaten him there. He watches as that ass arcs over the throng of assorted locals and visitors. A couple of people pull their phones out to capture the moment for posterity. Matt alights on an overhang attached to some scaffolding and picks out Wade where he’s parting the crowd like Moses. He throws him a sassy little peace sign under those nasty, bloodied ropes and launches himself onwards and upwards.

Someone’s phone camera tracks the peace sign from the empty space of its originator to Wade’s face. Seems about time to move on; Peter’s clearly long gone.

Wade excuses himself from the mass of people growing around him and takes off down the sidewalk. A cop notices and calls out, “Hey--hey! Stop!”

Guy’s a stupid fucker. Wade’s in the wind.

Wade doesn’t cross paths with Matt again, which must mean that one of them is on the wrong scent. He’s betting it’s not the guy with the super-enhanced sense of smell.

Spidey stopped using the webs around five blocks ago. Wade’s got other methods to employ, though, so he hasn’t had too much trouble tracking him on foot. He’s way up in some suburb on the outskirts of the Bronx and is debating turning around or following the lead he’s on closer towards the edge of the city. Spidey’s usually too smart to corner himself like that.

But there’s a trash can knocked down in the middle of the road about 200 feet out.

It’s worth investigating. The stopwatch says he’s got about 45 minutes. Wade trusts the stopwatch; it wouldn’t lie to him. It’s a better ally and friend than either of his red leather teammates.

Trash can’s made of concrete, 600 pounds, and it’s been tipped over like someone hip-checked it a little hard in a hurry. Wade considers it with much melodrama and vitriol. Really, it’s terribly sloppy form. Gonna have to drill mistakes like that into Pete’s head. Trash can’ll getcha killed. Trash can ain’t trustworthy like the stopwatch app on your phone.

Very important lessons to be learned tonight. Wade steps around the trash can and aims his gaze skyward, into spider territory. Nothing of interest on the roof in the immediate vicinity. He scans the windows, doorsteps, cars parked in driveways, sidewalk clutter. A car slows to a crawl behind him and flashes its brights, so he steps out of the middle of the road to let it pass. His eyes are drawn to its retreating back bumper and the sewer access cover in its wake.

Bingo. Pete’s slimy adversaries spend a lot of time in them bitches. Would absolutely be somewhere with which that freaky kid would be familiar enough to hide in.

It’s plain nasty, though. Matt’s gonna have a bitchfit. Speaking of, where is he? He’s usually got Peter bagged an hour in.

Must be the earplugs. Wade checks the stopwatch; it reads 03:03:09.17. Half hour left. He hefts the sewer access aside. It’s not difficult or rusty at all, must have been recently moved. He climbs down.

Peter tries so hard to escape, but it’s only ten minutes until a misplaced footfall reveals his location and then another five of high-speed chasing before Wade manages to tag him with a bullet to the leg. Peter yelps and goes down, protecting the leg from impact. Wade screams, “I win!” and bellyflops all over him.

Wade sits up, straddling Peter and grinning down at him. “You owe me shitty Mexican takeout, bitch!”

Peter takes the mask off to pant hard. His eyes are watery and his face is all screwed up in pain. He says, “You didn’t have to use the bullets, man. Think you broke something.”

“You’ll walk it off. S’payback for makin’ me wallow around in the sewer,” Wade tells him. He shifts into a more comfortable position so that Peter’s hip bones aren’t digging into his ass.

Peter’s eyes roll back in his head and he taps out on Wade’s thigh. “Uuuugh, get off, you’re hurtin’ me.”

Wade stands and shines his phone light around the space. There's a ladder for another sewer access not too far from them. He points the light down at Peter’s squinting face. “Roll over and lemme check the leg. We need to wait a couple of minutes to see if Sergeant Lucifer shows up, anyway.”

Peter adjusts his position so that Wade can palpate the place where his lower thigh meets his knee. He flinches away violently when Wade’s fingers ghost over the site of the hit from the rubber bullet. Wade puts a bit of pressure on it and Peter jerks away, crying out with indignation. Wade shushes him and feels around for--yep. “Knocked a shard off your kneecap. Put your hand here--yeah, on top of mine, right there, gentle--feel that? Got yourself some nice pointy bone shrapnel.”

Peter glares at him through teary eyes and says, “I’m not gonna be able to walk, you fucking penis.”

“Woah, kiddo, check that filthy little rat mouth before I scrub it out with sewer water. It’ll be okay, you’ll be fine in a few days.”

“How am I gonna get out of here?”

Wade narrows his suit eyes at him. “You’re fucking joking. How many limbs do you have?”

“...Four.”

“How many of those are currently functional? How many are sticky? How many can shoot goddamn spider silk? How many are--”

“Okay, point taken, Christ. I’m not getting you any Mexican, though.”

Yeah, that’s understandable. “Kiddo, if you figure out how to get up the ladder without my help, I’ll buy you Mexican every day for a month.”

“Oh, you’re on, old man.”

Spidey makes it over to the ladder and up into the night with minimal complaint and way too much bravado, so now Wade owes him about $300 of Mexican takeout.

The kid’s all tuckered out after a couple of blocks of hobbling, so Wade scoops him up and calls Dopinder. He’s asleep. Wade uses way too much data to download the Uber app and orders one of those instead.

The driver side-eyes Wade the whole time he’s helping Spidey into the car. When Wade gets in and closes the door, the lady turns her head to look at the road and willfully ignores him while he nags at Peter to buckle his seatbelt. Wade feels obligated to apologize for the smell of sewage and the driver tells him not to worry about it in a dissociative monotone.

It’s awkward. He misses Dopinder. Peter falls asleep halfway there with his head on Wade’s lap. Wade tips the lady an extra $50 on the app thingy when they get out.

He ends up carrying Peter the whole way back to the rooftop because he doesn’t want to wake up all the way and because his leg won’t bear any of his weight. The kid’s had worse, but that doesn’t mean he’s not hurting right now. He’s allowed to wuss out tonight. Wade’s starting to worry about whether he might have done some more serious damage by the time they reach the roof.

Matt’s not there.

It’s not that late. They were supposed to meet back here to debrief and run through the highlights of the activity. Wade checks his stopwatch; he’d stopped it at 03:35:23.73. They’d spent an hour and a half making their way back. Matt isn’t the kind of person to flake on them.

Wade waits half an hour. He double checks his regular phone for messages or calls, then he does the same with his and Peter’s burners. He calls Matt’s burner three times and his smartphone twice. Radio fucking silence.

Peter wakes up and asks him what’s going on. Wade doesn’t know how to answer that. He has Peter let his aunt know that he’s staying the night and they go back to the apartment to regroup.

Wade knows something’s wrong as soon as they reach the front door of the building. The kitchen window light is on and visible. He knows they’d turned it off before going out because Matt had bitched at him about the annoying buzz and ranted about energy conservation for a solid minute. The light is on now and swaying behind the pane above the sink.

Taunting him.

He adjusts Peter carefully and puts his free hand on the holster at his side before hip-checking the door in and heading upstairs.

Someone’s broken in. The front door’s torn off its hinges along the fault line from the morning of the plant tripwire prank. Inside everything is torn to pieces. The peninsula in the kitchen has been ripped from its base. The breakfast table is missing three legs. Myriad clothes and several spare canes have been pulled from the bedroom and scattered precariously around the space.

The linen closet under the stairs is trashed. The trunk containing Matt’s gear is empty and has been artfully arranged on the coffee table so that its interior is visible. One of the canes leans against it, pointing to the inside, which is illuminated by the light over the kitchen sink. Spray painted on the bottom in neon orange marking paint are the words “SEE YOU NEVER”.

Matt’s gone.