Invisible Man

Chapter 8: Ghost Hunting

Hey guys, sorry for such a long wait. We're catching up to what I have written for this fic, so I need to buckle down and get the last chapters written out so I don't hit a funk. But anyway, here's this! Wade's POV

Adrenaline made Wade feel like he was on a high, and what an addicting feeling that was.

Drugs didn't work on him anymore (thanks healing factor) so he had to get his euphoria elsewhere, and that came in the forms of jobs, being elbow-deep in a mission, or coming across a battle that was his particular brand of chaos. He never felt calmer and more in control than when he was pulling the trigger of a gun. It was arguably one of the few times he felt peace at all.

See, there's a lot of messed-up shit crammed inside his body; his head, his thoughts. Stuffed in every nook and cranny until he's pulling at the seams to keep it all in. When his skin wasn't burning him alive like a Salem witch on trial, his head was a never-ending roller coaster of loops, neck-snapping turns, dizzying highs, and stomach-rolling lows on an unfinished track where seat belts didn't exist. Sometimes his thoughts didn't feel like his own. His brain was a congress of monkeys banging gavels and shooting guns, screeching for a new job, for money, for pain, for sex, for someone to please shut the noise up because he can't think and he can't feel and nothing makes sense, and everything is moving too fast, and it hurts.

But when he has his finger on the trigger, or a katana in his hand, all of that screaming, and screeching, and banging, and sobbing, and agony narrow into a laser-focus that clears his head and leaves it to operate like the well-oiled machine it was cultivated to be. He took jobs for silence of mind as much as he took them for money.

So, you can imagine his surprise when he found a similar relief in Peter Parker.

Yeah, Wade always had an obsession with Spider-Man, the hero and mascot of NYC, who stopped buses with his bare hands and swung around buildings like the world's most attractive spider-monkey. But it was with Peter Parker that Wade found stillness of mind. There were mornings when he woke and Peter would be there, sleeping next to him, breathing deeply and expression peaceful, and in the silence, as Wade committed that face to memory because hell and heaven knows that he might not get another chance, his brain settles. A lake of rippling water becoming a sheet of glass, or a tornado of leaves coming apart and drifting softly to the ground. Talking with Peter kept him focused. Playing games and teasing each other distracted him from the pressure building in his head. Peter even helped his scars by rubbing baby lotion over the dry areas when it got bad and Wade couldn't reach.

Spider-Man was his hero, but Peter Parker was his anchor. Tying him down in one position so he wasn't in danger of floating into a million other directions. The eye of his storm, you could say. The stitch to his wound. A warm blanket on a cold day.

Now that he was gone - no, taken. Now that he'd been taken, Wade could feel those stitches starting to unravel, seeping, bleeding. Pieces of him crumbling, like a worn statue wearing down from weather and abuse.

He tapped his finger on the picture laying over the counter, tracing the lines of Peter's face with his eyes and searing every detail into his brain. One leg bounced with pent-up energy, but otherwise, he was frozen. His laptop was perched on the table with multiple tabs open, but his gaze kept snapping between it and the photo, trying to draw lines from Peter's face to the map of New York like he was weaving a homing beacon between his Spidey and his location.

His phone dinged, pulling him out of his mental threading, and he swiped open a message from Aunt May detailing the break-in to her house. He shot a quick thank-you and a kissy-face and read it through, several times, while matching it to his memories of the Parker household.