Absolutely Not

Peter stared at the half-filled whiteboard in the back of his classroom like it was a grocery list he’d forgotten to write down. The equation he’d been scribbling all morning—E=mc² with a stray “+7” in the corner—felt like a personal insult. He’d marked the same thirty-something worksheets a hundred times and still found himself wondering whether the ink would ever dry on the last one. Between the students who asked for “the part where the atom splits” and the cafeteria lady who reminded him that his lunchbox still smelled like burnt toast, his brain had settled into a low-grade hum that made his eyelids feel like shutters in a hurricane.

He tried to remember why he’d agreed to a “special assignment” from the Avengers liaison, a thinly veiled threat that sounded like a request for a favor. “If you’re not in the field by 9 a.m., we’ll just have you grade papers for the rest of your life,” the voice had said. He’d almost laughed, but his laugh had been a wheeze that sounded like a dying cough. So he was now standing in the parking lot, a backpack full of lab equipment slung over one shoulder, a half-eaten granola bar in his other hand, and a thin vein of dread pulsing behind his eyes.

The metal doors of the old warehouse on Seventh and 9th opened with a sigh that matched his own. He stepped inside, the fluorescent lights flickering on like a tired audience waiting for a show that never started. The smell of oil and rust was thick, and the echo of his own footsteps sounded like a metronome marking time for a race he didn’t want to run.

He turned a corner and stopped dead when a figure vaulted over a stack of crates, landing with a graceless thump that sent a spray of bolts and bolts of laughter scattering across the concrete. The man was a blur of red and black, his mask half-tucked under a mess of hair that seemed to have its own agenda. Wade Wilson, or whatever name the government paperwork used, was waving a pair of pistols like a child with new toys, shouting something that drowned in a chorus of clattering metal.

“Hey, you! I’m supposed to be the one with the bad jokes!” Wade shouted, his voice a blend of manic energy and a bass line that could have been a bomb ticking under the floor. He lifted a pistol, pointed it at a crate, and fired a shot that ricocheted off the metal and skittered into a pile of explosives with a tiny pop that sounded like a soda can opening.

Peter’s brain, still stuck in teacher mode, calculated the probability of an explosion. The odds were “not good,” but the teacher in him wanted to give a lesson on how not to handle firearms. He raised a hand, the way he’d raise a hand to quiet a class, and said, “Excuse me, sir, but could we perhaps avoid the…explosive theatrics?”

Wade turned, his eyes bright with something that might have been mischief or a warning sign. “You’re the science guy, right? The one who can’t even keep his own lab coat on straight?” he asked, tossing a rubber chicken onto the floor as if it were a microphone. “I’m Wade. Wade Wilson. And if you think I’m here to teach you how to label test tubes, you’re more wrong than a chemistry experiment that’s been left out of the fridge for a week.”

Peter felt the fatigue in his shoulders tighten into something that resembled resolve. “I’m Peter. Peter Parker. And I’m here because the Avengers think we can… cooperate.” He gestured toward the stack of crates. “Those contain the arms shipment we’re supposed to intercept. I’m trying to—”

“—stop you from turning the whole thing into a science fair!” Wade interrupted, kicking the rubber chicken with a foot that seemed to vibrate with adrenaline. “Look, I’m not here to be your lab partner. I’m here because the big guys decided you’re the one who can keep a schedule and I’m the one who can keep a gun loaded.”

Peter rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling the familiar ache that marked a night without sleep. “We have different definitions of ‘keeping a gun loaded.’ My definition includes a lot of paperwork, safety protocols, and a strict no-lethal-force policy. Your definition… seems to involve a lot of ‘boom, boom, whoop-whoop.’”

Wade laughed, a sound that echoed off the concrete like a child who’d just discovered a secret stash of candy. “Boom, boom, whoop-whoop, sure. Look, Spidey, I’ve been on enough missions where the bad guys are armed to the teeth that I’ve learned the only thing that stops them is a bullet that hits the spot. You can’t just… you know, take a note and hand it to a kid with a marker. The world doesn’t work that way.”

Peter’s mouth formed a half-smile, the sort you get when you’re about to correct a student who’s just asked a question you already know the answer to. “I’m not asking for a marker, Wade. I’m asking for a plan that doesn’t involve blowing up half the city because you think a big explosion is a ‘plan.’”

The air seemed to vibrate with the tension between them, a low-frequency hum that made Peter’s ears pop. He could almost hear the sound of his own heartbeat, a metronome that had been ticking since high school biology. He wondered, absurdly, whether any of his students had ever imagined their teacher would stand in a warehouse, negotiating with a mercenary about lethal force. And then, in the middle of a joke that was supposed to be a joke, a feeling slipped through the sarcasm, a flicker of something that wasn’t quite admiration and wasn’t quite annoyance.

“Look,” Wade said, lowering his pistols in a gesture that was half-gesture, half-surrender. “I’m not here to kill innocent people. The guys we’re after— they’re the ones who’re loading the crates. I just… happen to like the sound of a good bang. It’s therapeutic, you know?”

Peter’s brain, trained to parse out the factual from the emotional, found itself stuck on the word “therapeutic.” He thought of the night he’d stayed up grading papers until his eyes felt like sandpaper, of the time he’d missed a date because a test had to be re-written, of the way his Aunt May had told him to “take a break” when he tried to do everything at once. He felt a pang of something that went beyond the exhaustion—a small, reluctant respect for a man who could admit that his coping mechanism was as violent as the world he tried to protect.

“Fine,” Peter said, his voice low enough that only the concrete seemed to hear. “We’ll split up. You’ll take the crates that are marked ‘high-risk.’ I’ll handle the intel and the… non-explosive stuff. No shooting unless we have a clear line of sight and no collateral. Understood?”

Wade raised an eyebrow, the kind of eyebrows that looked like they’d been drawn by a cartoonist with a mischievous grin. “You mean, you want me to actually follow the rules? That’s… adorable.” He flicked a finger at the stack of crates. “Alright, Mr. Precise. Let’s see if your ‘no-lethal-force’ policy can keep up with my ‘boom.’”

Peter felt the weight of the backpack shift as he moved, the lab equipment inside shifting like the thoughts in his head. He grabbed a tablet from his pocket, the one he used to track chemical compositions, and opened the schematics of the arms shipment. The lines were crisp, the data precise. He could see the routes, the cargo manifests, the security patterns. He read them aloud, his voice steady, his tone a monotone that could have been a metronome for a classroom lecture. “We have three entry points: north, east, and the main dock. Security is light on the east side, heavy on the north. I’ll handle the east. You… you take north. We meet at the dock in fifteen minutes. No—”

“—no fireworks?” Wade finished, grinning like a kid who’d just found a secret stash of chocolate.

Peter’s eyes flicked to the cracked tile floor, where the rubber chicken lay like a discarded joke. He felt the absurdity of the situation settle into something like a rhythm, a beat he could follow even if his eyes were half-closed. “No fireworks,” he repeated, the word feeling like a promise he was trying to keep to himself as much as to the world. “Just… you, me, and a very, very specific set of instructions.”

Wade clapped him on the back with a force that made Peter’s lab coat flinch. “Alright, teach. Let’s see if your boring old rules can keep up with my chaotic genius.” He turned, pistols still in hand, and sprinted toward the north entrance, the sound of his boots echoing like a drumbeat.

Peter watched him go, his mind racing through the lesson plans he’d left on his desk, the syllabus for the next unit on thermodynamics. He felt the weight of his own fatigue pressing down, but also a spark of something else— a thin thread of curiosity, maybe, or the faintest hint that even a man who could turn a battlefield into a punchline could still be a partner in something larger.

He turned toward the east side, the air cooler there, the shadows longer. He pulled his tablet out of his bag, the screen glowing like a tiny beacon of order in a sea of chaos. He took a deep breath, the kind of breath that tasted like stale coffee and desperation, and stepped into the dim hallway, ready to do the only thing he knew how to do: keep the world from blowing up, one precise calculation at a time.