Holding Back - 3. Chapter 3

Spider-Man doesn’t like us.

He didn’t want tacos.

Exactly. Who doesn’t want tacos? He hates us, just like everybody else does.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Wade groans, ‘will you quit it with the angsty emo bullshit already? It doesn’t matter! I don’t expect him to like me.’

The chair Wade is sitting in was salvaged from a junkyard, one of the few pieces of furniture in his apartment. It’s full of mystery stains, and all the febreeze in the world couldn’t make it not smell like ass, but it’s comfortable enough. Less so when his mind refuses to leave him alone, though.

Face it Wilson. No matter how much we want to be a hero, no one will ever accept us as one.

Wade sighs exasperatedly. ‘Seriously, do I have to blow my own brains out to get some peace and quiet around here?’

Probably.

‘Fine!’ Wade stands up from his chair abruptly and stalks over to his weapons locker, next to the mattress he (sometimes) sleeps on. He pulls out the shiny new handgun he lifted from that crate in the trafficking ring’s warehouse, releases the safety, and presses the barrel to the underside of his chin.

Really? We’re actually doing this?

‘Half an hour of blissful silence while my brain grows back? Worth it.’ He pulls the trigger.

* * *

His first conscious thought is that it’s going to be a total bitch to clean the brain matter off the ceiling. The second is that the soreness in his jaw where the bone is resetting feels kind of good. The third is the realisation that it’s light outside, which means he’s been out for a couple of hours. The equivalent of a good night’s sleep for him. He feels strangely rejuvenated as he sits up from where he fell on the floor.

Wade feels the back of his head. It’s a little squishy still, but otherwise healed. He gets to his feet with a groan and a stretch and walks to the bathroom. He glances at himself in the grimy mirror, just long enough to see that his jaw and neck are splattered with dried blood. A shower, then.

He listens while he gets undressed, listens to his mind. It’s quiet. Wade opens the cabinet above the sink, more to not have to see his own reflection than anything else. He finds a rusted razor blade on a shelf inside.

‘Is it still self-harm if you don’t actually take any harm from it?’ he wonders out loud, picking up the razor blade. There’s no reply. ‘So, my brain’s giving me the silent treatment, is that it?’ He cuts a gash across his chest with the razor and watches it heal over flawlessly, leaving the same scarred and blotchy skin behind. It seems like an oxymoron that his healing factor can heal any new wound he gets without leaving a mark, but can’t put his skin back the way it used to be.

Wade gets in the shower. The water shifts between boiling and freezing. Old shitty pipes in an old shitty building. Still, the changes in temperature are oddly stimulating. He cleans off the blood and grime, until the water pooling in the bottom of the tub is rust coloured and opaque.

With no one to talk to and no interruptions, Wade’s mind wanders and eventually ends up in the only logical place: thinking about Spider-Man. Wade has seen the lower part of his face exposed, so he knows him to have fair skin and pink, soft-looking lips. He’s even felt that smooth skin under his fingertips, when he changed their costumes around last year. It’s more than enough to work with, and he takes himself in hand.

It’s been a while, so it doesn’t take very long, not when he’s imagining Spidey’s pink lips on his body, and he comes with a gasp.

Fuck yeah, Spidey, suck my hard cock, bitch!

‘Knew it was too good to be true,’ Wade mutters, cleaning the cum off his hand in the shower stream. ‘And don’t talk about Spider-Man that way, okay? He’s nobody’s bitch.’

Dat ass, though.

Dat ass!

‘Dat ass,’ Wade agrees wistfully.

He turns off the water and gets out of the shower. If he stays in his apartment all day he’ll just end up blowing his own brains out again, in all its futility, so he dresses in civvies—jeans and a Captain America hoodie to cover as much of his face as possible without his mask—and steps outside into the brisk, autumnal New York morning. Breakfast is definitely the way to go. Preferably pancakes.

* * *

So, we get off on violence, we get off on the adrenaline high of a good fight. That’s old news. But pain?

Dude, pain sucks!

‘Hey, don’t ask me to explain it,’ Wade mutters to himself as he strolls through the streets of Manhattan. ‘I’m not a shrink.’ A few people look at him curiously. (Probably tourists—real New Yorkers are damn near pathological about minding their own business.) In this day and age of bluetooth, you’d think people would be used to other people seemingly talking to themselves.

A need to feel, perhaps? A way to battle the boring numbness and repetitiveness of invulnerability.

We’re not invulnerable, doofus, we just heal real fast.

Wade stops in front of a news stand. The Bugle has a way too good picture of Spider-Man on the front page, under some headline about masked vigilantes and how they’re bad for New York.

But giving ourselves pain isn’t really enough, is it? Logical next step: wanting someone else to give us pain. Hence goading Spider-Man into that punch last night.

He picks up the paper and scans the front page without really reading. ’A gamble. Either I’d have gotten that kiss, which would have been awesome, or he would have punched me, which, also pretty awesome.’ Wade sighs and puts the paper back, resuming his aimless ramble. ‘Man, I’d like to spar with him . . . If you know what I mean.’

Ooh, we should do that next time we see him!

It’s better if it’s natural, though. If we piss him off first so he doesn’t hold back.

‘He’ll always hold back. Hero, remember?’

He stops at a hotdog stand. It hasn’t been long since breakfast, but then again, hotdogs. No other reason needed, really. Setting off again he munches the hotdog happily. Nothing like meat in his mouth to cheer him up.

So, if we’re into pain . . . Does that mean when we get turned on after a fight, it’s really the pain that turns us on?

Fighting turns us on whether we get injured or not.

True enough.

Wade ignores his boxes and instead focuses on savouring the taste of cheap yellow mustard. The mustard’s his favourite part. If he adds enough it makes his nose tingle.

He takes the subway. Not because he wants to go anywhere in particular, but because it feels like the thing to do. Days are boring. Days usually involve watching TV, but his new place doesn’t have one yet.

‘Maybe I should buy a TV.’

Buy a TV? You mean, spend money on one? Why?

Because heroes don’t steal. Duh. Heroes pay for stuff.

Seems like a waste of money . . .

Wade’s thoughts are interrupted when he hears a scuffle towards the back of the subway car. Three tall, burly teenage boys are surrounding a third, smaller one. One of them shoves the kid backwards into a seat while another cracks his knuckles menacingly at him. By the looks of them, they should all be in high school. Cutting class, no doubt.

Wade stands up and saunters over to the group, listening in on their conversation.

‘You either pay up or we take it out in blood, shrimp!’ the closest one growls.

‘B-but,’ the smaller kid stutters, ‘I haven’t got any money! Y-you took it all last week, and I won’t get any more until—’

‘Shut up!’ the one who shoved him snaps, and lands a punch in the kid’s stomach. The victim lets out an ‘Oof!’ as the air is knocked out of him, and screws up his brown eyes, a few tears streaming down his cheeks. He swats them away with a brown hand.

‘Aww, widdle baby!’ the third of his tormentors taunts.

‘Hey!’ says Wade cheerfully, clapping his hand down on the shoulder of the closest bully. ‘Just a suggestion, but I really think you guys should leave the kid alone.’

‘Oh yeah?’ The largest of the bullies squares his shoulders. ‘And who’s gonna make us?’

‘I am!’ says Wade, smiling.

‘You and whose army?’ one of the others asks.

Wade drops his hood. Two of the bullies recoil in horror as his bald, scarred head is revealed, but the third, the largest, stands his ground.

‘Motherfucker!’ he exclaims. ‘Did you get hit by the ugly train, or what?’

‘Oh,’ says Wade, unfazed, ‘you wanna know how I got like this? Let me show you!’ He reaches down the back of his jeans and pulls out his handgun. Without blinking, he releases the safety and presses the barrel to the bully’s forehead.

The change is instantaneous. Every hint of bravado vanishes from his face. His blue eyes go wide and scared, and he starts trembling.

‘No! God, please, no, I don’t wanna die!’

‘Apologise,’ says Wade calmly.

‘All right! I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Please don’t kill me!’ the boy sobs, real tears streaming down his face. Judging by the smell, he’s already shit himself. The subway train slows, pulling into a station.

Wade lifts his gun and says, ‘Get the fuck out of here!’ As the bullies run off the train like bats out of hell, Wade calmly puts the safety back on and returns the gun to its make-shift holster. The subway doors close and the train starts moving again, and Wade looks down at the kid on the floor.

The boy looks up at him with wide chocolate eyes. He looks scared.

‘Don’t worry. I wasn’t really gonna shoot him,’ says Wade, pulling his hood back up and returning his face to shadow. ‘I don’t kill kids, even if they deserve it. That’s just not me.’

He turns away and starts walking back towards his seat. By the looks of the handful of passengers who witnessed the scene, though, he should probably get off at the first opportunity, before someone thinks to call the cops.

‘Hey,’ says a quavery voice behind him. ‘H-hey, mister!’

Wade stops and turns his head to look at the kid, who’s now picked himself up off the floor and is dusting himself off.

‘Th-thanks,’ the kid stutters, and a blush creeps into his cheeks.

Wade is so surprised by this it takes him a moment to find his voice. Once he does, he says, ‘No problem, kid. You, uh . . . You stay in school, okay?’

The train pulls into the next station, and Wade gets off quickly, disappearing into the crowd of commuters.