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Wade’s entire body pulsed along with his heart, wild and frantic, as he watched Peter on the bed. His own lungs felt near to bursting, and he wanted to reach out and touch, but he held himself back with an effort that left him trembling. Wade’s teeth sank into his lower lip, heedless of the blood that welled up. He swiped it away with his tongue absently and balled his hands into fists at his sides. He desperately wanted to reach out and press his palms against Peter’s chest, feel his heart beating beneath his fingertips.
Peter arched off the bed soundlessly and Wade held his breath, his own heart stuttering at the pulse that ripped through Peter.
Peter collapsed back against the sheets. A loud whine split the air and then –
“Clear.”
Peter jerked and went still.
Another whine.
“Clear.”
No.
Wade dragged his eyes from Peter to stare blankly at the monitor beside the bed. He blinked harshly, scrubbed the tears from his eyes, but the line remained.
“Time of death 2:58 PM,” the doctor said.
“My god.”
“He was too young.”
“Wade?”
“Wade?”
Wade turned away and shoved the blue privacy curtain out of his way as he walked out of the SHIELD emergency room, oblivious to the Avengers calling his name.
“Please, you know you want to do it.” Wade was on his knees, begging, a position he would deny ever having been in to hell and back in any other circumstance.
The tent was smoky. Incense rose from glowing braziers to curl around the support poles and tickle the tasseled edges of the cushion upon which the sorcerer sat, legs folded carefully beneath him.
“I will not deny that I find this outcome favorable to me, but I do not understand why you wish this. Surely, this cannot benefit you in any way.”
Wade swallowed and looked imploringly at the sorcerer. “I want this. I lost …someone that I can’t live without. I don’t want to go on.” I can’t.
“You loved them?”
Wade nodded. “With all my heart.”
The sorcerer snorted. “That can’t be very much then. At least your loved one is at peace now – from you, at least.” But he unfolded his legs and rose from the cushion. His head nearly brushed the roof of the tent when he strode toward a heavy chest in one corner.
Wade stared at the ground and suddenly felt very small. “I figured you’d help me,” he said from his knees.
“And why is that?” The sorcerer asked, genuinely curious. He flicked his wrist and the circular lock on the trunk sprang out and turned in a series of clicks before the lid opened. Wade took in the movement automatically, but didn’t bother to memorize the combination.
He watched the sorcerer open another box and withdraw a small flask of purple liquid. Hope lit his face and he replied, “Because we’re enemies. You’ll do the job right. I can’t trust my friends to keep me down the same way.”
“Take it then and be gone.”
The sorcerer let go of the flask and Wade lunged forward to catch it, sprawling across the floor of the tent. He quickly tucked it away into one of the pouches on his belt and scrambled to his feet. No one would take this from him.
“Thank you,” he said, voice scratchy.
“No,” the sorcerer said, settling back down on his cushion and closing his eyes in a dismissive gesture. “I rather think I should be thanking you. You have been a thorn in my side for far longer than I have liked.”
Wade smirked and patted the potion at his side. “I’ll be out of your hair for good then.”
“Thank goodness for small mercies.” The sorcerer chuckled, cracking an eye open. “Sleep well.”
Wade settled into his armchair when he returned to his apartment in New York. He pulled the potion out of his belt and eyed it, watching the liquid slosh around. It was pretty. In the faint sunlight, the contents of the flask shifted between wild violet and royal purple.
He didn’t know what kind of funeral arrangements were being made for Peter and he didn’t want to know. Peter belonged in the skies, swinging on his webs, not in the ground. He belonged with Wade.
Wade’s phone chimed with another missed call, but he ignored it. He didn’t want to talk to anyone now.
A part of him knew that Peter would disapprove of his actions, would tell him to keep living for his sake, to be a hero and find love again.
Like that would ever happen, Wade scoffed. He knew he’d never get that lucky again. Peter was it for him, his single brilliant star in a crowded, dark universe. His one shot at true happiness.
What was left for him now?
“Bottoms up,” he said. He uncapped the flask and tipped it down his throat before Peter’s voice could talk him down.
“Why won’t he wake up?” Peter crouched on the dirty floor beside the bloodstained armchair. He shook Wade, but the mercenary didn’t respond.
Bruce laid a hand on Peter’s shoulder. “I don’t know. We weren’t able to find anything when we analyzed whatever he took. Tony thinks it’s magic. We’ll call in Doctor Strange and see what he has to say.”
Peter nodded roughly and rose to his feet. Wade’s chest rose and fell rhythmically. He looked peaceful and that tore at Peter’s heart. Wade had never looked so content before in all the time they’d spent together except in rare moments of closeness when Peter would wrap him in his arms, just the two of them. They would lie together, Peter’s heartbeat firm and strong against Wade’s back with Wade’s heartbeat matching his own, beating beneath Peter’s hand as though it sought his touch.
Peter leaned down and scooped Wade into his arms. “I’ll take him back to my place,” he said. “I’ll watch over him until he wakes up.”
Bruce nodded and held the door open for them.
It was a funny thing to die and come back. Peter stood in his kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil.
Simple things like making tea or washing a dirty dish, for one thing -- Peter never thought he’d miss those mundane tasks, but now that he was here, alive again somehow, the whistle of the kettle and the sight of the steam billowing into the air were all fresh and new and yet still utterly forgettable.
Peter wasn’t comfortable knowing that his death had prompted Wade to seek his own – or an approximation. But he also wasn’t surprised.
Peter sipped his tea.
He still felt unbearably empty inside. He’d lost something in those moments his heart had stopped. He didn’t know what it was, but now there was a hole inside him that he couldn’t locate, its size and shape unknown, the edges blurry and frayed, yet razor sharp when he sought them out.
Doctor Strange said it was a powerful sleeping draught. Those who took it never woke up, just wasted away in their sleep. It was painless, he said.
Peter cared for Wade. He told him about his days at work and his patrols at night. He washed him gently with a soft cloth and spread lotion on his skin to sooth the shifting scars.
When it grew late, Peter curled against Wade’s side, head pillowed on his shoulder and hand on his chest to feel his steady heartbeat. Wade was just sleeping. Peter would sleep too.
He could pretend that nothing had changed.
Peter died three more times before he sat himself down on the floor by the bed and cried. He pulled Wade’s hand off the bed toward him and pressed his cheek against it.
The hole inside him grew and he began to feel very thin as the edges of the hole pushed against his skin in retaliation at being held back. By this point he knew that he would stay dead if he wished it. But Wade was still alive, so Peter let the hole keep growing.