six.
Peter wasn't zoned in all of the way. He was aware of the weight on his shoulders from his books in Wade's backpack. He could hear the cars passing on the street. He could feel Wade's grip on his arm as he led them through the concrete jungle.
But he was also aware of nothing at the same time. He missed the way people were looking at him, how they were looking at Wade. He missed how worried Wade looked. He missed it for a solid two minutes when Wade pulled them into another alleyway and pressed him up against a dumpster.
When Peter zoned back in, Wade was leaning against the wall opposite him. He wasn't trying to talk (which for Wade is a first) to Peter at all. He was just watching him. Checking on him. Some part of Peter's mind made note that Wade was taking better care of him right now than Tony ever had. Peter mentally scolded himself because Tony'd taken such good care of him. He moved him onto the base, made his suits, gave him a place to train... But it was also Tony's fault he'd almost died in that warehouse.
Peter shook all thoughts from his mind. The last thing he needed to think about was Tony fucking Stark. He doubted Tony was actually looking for him, to begin with. He probably had Friday running all the scenarios and diagnostics and statistics on everything. Friday was probably pinging his cell and calculating the percentage of Peter coming home safely. It was likely that all Tony was doing is telling Friday to look for Peter.
Tony was probably wasting his time jerking off while the other parents worried about Peter. Natasha was probably running statistics of her own while she drove around to find him. Peter didn't doubt that she was the one to come and get him from school.
The problem with that is simple: Wade and Peter were way ahead of whoever came to get him. It was pretty early in the morning when the fight broke out, and it's a two-hour drive from the base to the school. Peter had been waking up at 4:30 in the mornings that he slept so he could go to school and be there.
Regardless of who'd been coming to collect him, they were obviously too late.
"Where are we?"
Wade looked around. "It'd take the world's greatest detective to find us. And I don't see Bruce Wayne around anywhere, so I'd say we're good for a while."
"Bruce Wayne never would have given us the chance to leave the school."
Wade pointed at Peter in agreement. "You got me there."
Peter slipped Wade's bag off of his shoulders and sat down on it when it landed on the ground. Wade didn't even look phased by this.
Then again, if he'd been phased, he wasn't going to say anything anyways. With Peter in this state, the last thing Wade wanted to do was put the kid farther off, and scolding him would do just that.
Wade knows what it's like, living with something traumatic like that. He'd had a habit of pushing it away and pretending it never happened, but Peter was just a kid. When kids go through trauma, especially like nearly being crushed to death, it sticks with them. It's not something they push away, and certainly not this early. It's been four months. Which means four months of learning to deal with newly-developed claustrophobia and having night-terrors out the ass.
Wade didn't mind saying the kid had it bad. And if Wade is saying it, then it has to mean something. Sure, it wasn't the end of the world, but Wade knew it might feel like that to Peter right now. This was all the kid knew now. He knew how to be a genius in school and how to be Spider-Man and now he knew how to be terrified of himself. He knew how to be put down by the adults that didn't find him capable of doing more than just being a kid.
Wade knew that Tony'd put the kid down more than once over something like this, even if he didn't mean to. He knew that Peter was fucking terrified of Tony Stark. Wade just didn't know why. He'd understand if Peter was afraid of the little redhead or even the dude with the badass metal arm, or even Captain fucking America because Christ, his muscles are threatening.
But Tony Stark? All Tony Stark had was brains and money. What was so scary about that? Sure, Stark could buy Peter's whole block in Queens in under five minutes, and his tech was out of this fucking world, but Tony Stark wasn't scary. Not to anybody. No, Tony Stark was rude and arrogant and irrational. Wade began seriously wondering what Tony Stark had done to scare Peter.
Now, Wade didn't have any facts that Peter was even afraid of Stark at all, but he had his suspicions. The voices wondered if maybe Stark had knocked the kid around before. Wade shot that idea down immediately because he knew well enough from just watching Peter interact with the others that if Tony Stark ever laid so much as a finger on Peter Parker's head, everyone on that base would gladly rip him to shreds without a second thought.
All of Wade's deductions were being made based on when he saw them all for the first time, not just while allowing himself to be captured, but once they returned to base. He saw how easily the adults glided past Peter. Wade understood. They thought he'd use Peter as leverage against them. Find a way to endanger him and they'd have to back down to keep him safe.
But right now, all Wade's mind was focused on was keeping Peter safe anyways. The voices agreed, Peter needed him right now. He wasn't used to being needed, so it was strange to sit and know someone was relying on him to be the sane one for the moment.
Wade knelt down to be eye-level with Peter. "What do you like?"
Peter looked confused. "What?"
Wade rolled his eyes like it should have been obvious. "Cards, music, video games, what calms you down when you get like this?"
Peter took a moment to think, what DID he do when he got like this? There'd only been a handful of moments where he'd had to deal with this alone. Once he moved onto the base, he'd only been alone for a couple of days before Bucky took to taking care of him. After that, Peter was rarely dealing by himself. There was always someone. But what had he done before?
"Music, I guess. But you turned my phone off."
Wade reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pink iPod. "Give me your headphones."
Peter passed them over without hesitation and Wade plugged them in. Wade put the iPod into Peter's hands and told him he could listen to whatever he wanted.
There wasn't any shortage of anything to listen to, as the list ranged from The Cranberries to Wham! and everything in-between.
Peter just played the first song that looked moderately appealing. He knew he'd zone out several more times, therefore wouldn't hear the music anyways. He trusted Wade to look after him while he was in this state. Not many people had the misfortune of watching Peter like this, as he usually sat alone in his bedroom.
"Stark needs to pay more attention to this kid." Wade sighs as he scratches the place his eyebrows once grew.
'Stark doesn't care about the kid. He only cares about what the kid can do.' He thinks. 'Stark is looking at this kid like a science experiment.'
He felt himself getting angry at the thought of someone thinking of Peter like an experiment. He remembers what it's like to be looked at like that. Like some weird creature of science. Like some school project you make in your basement. He knows what it's like to be at the hands of 'scientists' that think they can fix you. He remembers what it's like to suffer the torture of being 'fixed' and sometimes he regrets allowing himself to go through that. Most days he thinks he should have just let himself die.
Plenty of people would be better off without him, he thinks. Except now he isn't sure. If he had died, who'd be here for Peter right now?
He looked down at the little spider and suddenly wanted to protect him with everything he had, even if it meant his life.