It started with a shitty day.
To be fair, Matt's day was far, far shittier. Peter had gotten the call after the initial incident, and instead was employed as restraints. Claire had always been simply and straightforwards, and that Sunday night was no different.
"Keep his shoulders on the floor." she ordered, before she started her rows of stitches. Matt hissed and spat and cursed through the entire ordeal while trying to find Foggy with his eyes. Foggy stood nearby, torn between sympathy and frustration at Matt's inability to just ask for some fucking help once in a blue moon.
Peter had been dealing with this shit for two years now, and as long as Matt was fighting and breathing, was generally okay with the state of things. Claire always slapped them back together, in the end. It was when Wade or Matt got quiet that things started to get scary.
So yeah, Matt was on guarded bedrest.
Guarded being the two angels on earth, Foggy Nelson and Claire Temple, looming over him on either side of his bed, daring him to put a toe out of line.
Matt took this enforced bedrest with little grace and hunkered under the duvet to growl every five minutes or so. Just to remind them he was still pissed. Just in case they forgot.
So yeah. Matt's shitty day trumped Peter's.
But a shitty day turned into two shitty days, when Peter arrived to English class to the crushing realization that he'd forgotten about a quiz on sonnets. He hated sonnets.
Science made sense. There were formulas and definitive answers. When left to his own devices, Peter's mind tended to wander. He'd always had some difficulties focusing in school, but the spider bite twisted everything and made it ten times worse. Now, the minute his teacher said "Shakespeare" he tapped out. No thanks, sir. No disrespect to Shakespeare but he was hella boring. That was Michelle's thing.
Two shitty days turned into three, and by then, Peter had resigned himself to a shitty week. Wade was gone on a job, and Peter knew better than to call him unless there was an actual emergency. Matt's injuries had been more extensive than Peter realized, and was still on enforced bedrest by Friday, though he assured Peter over the phone he had a foolproof plan to escape. A foolproof plan that was immediately shot down when Claire Temple opened the bedroom door for a check up.
The nights without "Team Red" were okay, once in a while. But a whole week without Matt or Wade fighting or chattering or complaining got too quiet. It was... lonely, Peter realized, and he was half tempted to call Ned to fill some silence on Friday until he realized it was two in the morning, and actually, technically Saturday, now.
So Peter headed home, begrudging the fact that a shitty week was probably gonna turn into a shitty weekend.
The grating, mechanical laugh had never been more annoying.
For real, what psycho attacked the city at eight am on a Saturday? Shit was just rude.
The breath left him in a punch as Peter caught himself on the side of a building, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath.
In a fit of anxiety, Peter had gotten home from patrol to blast through all of his homework for the weekend and had only crashed out in bed nearing six. He was too tired for this shit, man. He wanted to go home. He wanted to collapse on the couch with his head in May's lap and listen to one of her movies. He wanted to take a fucking nap.
Too late, he saw the sphere of metal flying at him. All he could do was let go of the stone.
He plummeted, twisting and gasping when he hit the top of a dumpster and rolled off to the dirty, slightly damp ground below. Laid there for a minute, staring at the strip of sky he could see and regretting every single one of his life choices when a shadow blocked his view.
There was a teenager above him. Maybe around his age, maybe a little younger. Bright blonde ponytail with an eye-searingly pink jacket. Peter wanted to know where she got that jacket. That was some nice fabric dye, man, and the patches-
"Spidey? Are you okay?"
Oh, she was talking to him.
Instead of answering, he gave her a thumbs up.
The girl pursed her lips. She did not, for a second, believe him.
Her expression was enough like Aunt May's that it made him shiver.
"Guys!" she straightened, waving towards a scattering of civilians at the mouth of the alley. Some in suits, a couple of hipsters. Maybe a couple of tourists. "We gotta cover him." she explained as she stepped lightly over Peter's prone body, ignoring his scrabbling as he struggled to get words out.
Hey, hey no girl. That is not what you do with a super villain! Bad things will happen!
"Shut up, we're doing this."
The street vendors had been fucking waiting for something like this to happen, apparently, because within ten minutes of searching the streets, Green Goblin found Spider-Man.
Actually, he found hundreds of Spider-Men. Lining the streets, hanging off of fire escapes, staring out of windows. The mask was everywhere, advancing advancing advancing on the Green Goblin, heedless of his hover board or of his weapons or of his obvious insanity.
And Peter was at. A fucking. Loss.
He didn't know any of these people. These people didn't even know him- not really. They knew Spider-Man, sure, but they didn't know Peter Parker. They seemed to give zero fucks about marching towards a psycho hellbent on dragging that mask off of his face.
Green Goblin didn't seem to know what to do with this display, either. It was so bizarre, so out of the ordinary that he twisted in the air, thinking, for once, of his next move.
"Yooo! We playin' Spider-Man?"
Peter's knees nearly hit the ground in his relief, his shoulders sagging. He wanted to sob.
Wade was here, huge and broad and wearing Peter's mask while spinning a sword. But there was no disguising his bulk or his voice. People know exactly who the fuck was behind that mask.
Green Goblin knew it, too.
Green Goblin high tailed it the fuck outta there the minute he saw Deadpool.
Wade let him go, instead turning to another Spider in the crowd wearing a neon pink jacket. "You know where the real one is, honey?"
"Saw him that way."
"I got it from here."
"Okay!"
And then pink jacket was turning, ponytail swinging and disappearing into the crowd.
"Bad day, baby boy?" Those huge hands were familiar on him now. They'd dragged him out of danger and back from the brink of unconsciousness and occasionally tossed him at a group of baddies. He trusted these hands. Wade would get him home.
"Fucking- understatement of the year."