Snow Ain't Friends With Texans
Wade's right. You don't have a fucking 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 fucking 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 fucking 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 fuckin' 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 shit, but y'know what? He's right, Neet's cute, who gives a fuck 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 shit 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 shit 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.
Fuck, you hope he doesn't. He probably doesn't; you don't really think you've been showing your discomfort, and the fucked-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 fucking 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.
"Fuck 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 fuck'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 shit 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 fuck?" 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 fucking 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 fuck 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 fucking 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 shit'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 fuck'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 fuck does he manage to look relieved and disappointed at the same time? More to the point, why the fuck 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 shit together and step inside. Thank fuck 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."
"Fuck, we hate those." Eddie makes a disgusted face, one hand going up to rake through his hair and fuck 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 fuck 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 shit 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 fucking disappears.