#peter pool

March. Somewhere in New Jersey.

They say when one door closes, another opens.

Wade Wilson, however, was living proof that sometimes that door doesn’t open—it creaks ajar just enough to let you squeeze through with a bruised ego and a dream stapled to your skull.

Literally.

The mirror in the locker room was cracked in the corner, smeared with the greasy fingerprints of salesmen long broken by commission quotas and coffee breath. Wade stared into it like it owed him money. His reflection was something out of a fever dream: a slightly melted face that looked like it had tried to French kiss a waffle iron, deadpan eyes full of mischief and the kind of hope only found in people with absolutely *nothing* to lose.

With a loud SHUNK, the staple gun punched a fresh metal kiss into the edge of his scalp, locking the third corner of a chestnut-colored toupee into place. The thing was ugly as sin—like roadkill from a Broadway casting call—but it sat with pride atop Wade’s head, lopsided but dignified.

He winced but didn’t stop, anchoring the last bit of synthetic hair with another SHUNK. His fingers, calloused and half-gloved, gave the toupee a final fluff. He stared into the mirror again, face twitching into a smirk.

“Oh, you handsome bastard,” he muttered to himself. “You look like an off-brand Tom Cruise who sells timeshares to demons.”

With the confidence of someone who had just committed a war crime against fashion, Wade reached for the final touch: a laminated name tag that simply read “WADE” in bold Helvetica, affixed over his chest with a crooked stab. He buttoned the cuffs of his off-white, too-starched dress shirt, yanking the sleeves taut like he was trying to squeeze his entire identity into a Macy’s clearance bin.

The camera would have caught the full ensemble: a khaki belt tight around his hips like it owed him rent money, a pair of knockoff slacks with suspicious stains on the thighs, and the pièce de résistance—black Skechers Shape-Ups. They were orthopedic. They were hideous. They were power. He stomped once, feeling the artificial boost of height and shame.

Lastly, he licked a thumb and smoothed the false eyebrows he had glued on earlier with spirit gum and desperation. Thick, wavy brows that screamed "I'm normal" with the subtle undertone of "absolutely not."

It was the rebirth of Wade Wilson: Sales Associate. Car Lot Jesus.

“Let’s go sling some certified pre-owned bullshit,” he whispered to the mirror. “Let’s go change lives.”

—

Now: a hard cut to reality.

Wade sat scrunched in the rear bench seat of a Kia Carnival minivan, knees folded awkwardly up toward his chest, crammed between two sugar-hyped boys—one jabbing him with a plastic dinosaur, the other licking a lollipop with the slow intensity of a child who knew this was his moment.

The parents, the Chipmans, sat in the front. Mr. Chipman held the wheel like a man trying to steer his way out of a midlife crisis. Mrs. Chipman—Tammy, apparently—glanced at the dashboard and side mirror with practiced calm, though one eye occasionally twitched in Wade’s direction, just to make sure he hadn’t combusted or done something unspeakable to the upholstery.

Wade leaned forward, face glowing in the rearview mirror. He looked like the devil trying to pitch an MLM scheme.

“Technically,” he started, his voice pitched low and sultry like he was narrating a perfume commercial, “the Carnival is not a minivan.”

He paused, letting the silence build, the tension rise.

“It’s an MPV. Multi. Purpose. Vehicle.” He said it with reverence. “So everybody gets to keep their testicles.”

There was a beat.

Mr. Chipman’s hands clenched the steering wheel a little tighter. Mrs. Chipman’s lips pursed into the shape of a woman who had just realized she might have accidentally brought a feral animal into her family’s enclosed space.

“How does the Kia compare to the Honda Odyssey?” she asked, trying her best to maintain professionalism.

Wade clicked his tongue and turned with the smuggest salesman grin this side of a used mattress warehouse.

“Great question, Tammy. It doesn’t fucking suck.”

There was a sharp inhale from the front seat.

“Language,” Tammy snapped, shooting a warning glance at the boys through the rearview.

“Oh. Right. Sorry, Tammy.” Wade placed a theatrical hand over his chest, eyes wide like he was the real victim here. “I forgot this was a family show. I don’t have kids. Not that I haven’t dreamt of it, of course. But, well…” He paused, gaze growing uncomfortably wistful. “I don’t have a lot of vaginal sex.”

The 8-year-old burst into laughter. The 11-year-old followed suit, shrieking like they’d just heard the best joke of their lives. Mr. Chipman groaned, thudding his forehead gently against the steering wheel as the Kia rolled to a stop at a red light.

Tammy slowly turned around in her seat, fixing Wade with the quiet, simmering rage only mothers possess—the kind that could disassemble a grown man at twenty paces.

Wade just smiled. The toupee glistened beneath the sunroof’s filtered light.

He was already envisioning his next sale.

Or, at the very least, the disciplinary meeting that was bound to follow.

Either way?

Another day in paradise.

---

The DriveMax locker room smelled faintly of burnt coffee, dryer sheets, and the stale disappointment of commission checks that didn’t quite clear minimum wage. Fluorescent lighting buzzed overhead, casting a sickly pallor over the metal lockers, dented from years of frustration and neglect. The kind of place where ambition came to take a nap.

Wade Wilson stood in front of his open locker, yanking his polo over his head with a dramatic grunt. The neon green of the DriveMax logo twisted on the fabric like it was trying to escape with him. His torso—scarred, uneven, a topographical map of trauma—reflected dully in the narrow strip of mirror bolted to the inside of the locker door. He ran a towel across his chest in a distracted motion, jaw clenched just tight enough to betray something unspoken.

Behind him came a voice. Familiar. Light-hearted. Gentle, with that signature sprinkle of awkward timing that only one man could deliver.

“You’ll get ‘em next time.”

Wade paused mid-wipe. His head tilted slightly to the side, processing the words, the voice, and—sure enough—when he turned, there he was.

Peter. Moustache and all.

Peter W., Wade’s one-man support system and walking Hallmark card in khakis, stood across the row of lockers with a smile that could talk an orphan out of a tree. He looked exactly as he always had—precisely pressed DriveMax polo, wrinkle-resistant khakis, a laminated name tag that somehow glimmered like it was proud of itself. His presence was comfort food for Wade’s fractured mind.

Peter reached into his own locker and pulled out his Members Only jacket with a flourish. He swung it over his shoulder and looked at Wade with a tilt of the head, one that radiated brotherly love and infinite patience.

“And look,” Peter continued, sliding the jacket over his arms, “you can always go back to superheroing. I mean, I know I’d like to see you back in the suit. I don’t keep it in my locker just to wear it.”

There was a breath of laughter in his voice, but beneath it lingered something else—something wistful. A longing not for the violence, but for the purpose. For the weight of knowing you were someone people counted on.

Peter turned back toward his locker, and with the kind of reverence one usually reserves for national flags or wedding dresses, he opened the bottom half.

Inside, hanging from a cheap, bent plastic hanger, was a symbol.

The Deadpool suit.

Blood-red and matte black. The fabric hung heavy with memory. It was wrinkled, folded at the knees, and yet it still radiated something unmistakable. Power. Loss. Legend. It was just fabric, just gear—but it carried the weight of everything Wade used to be.

Peter didn’t need to say anything else. The suit spoke for itself. Wade stared at it for a long moment, eyes unmoving, lips pressed into a flat line. It was strange—how something could feel both like armor and a shroud.

Then his voice cut through the silence.

“Hey. Hey hey. What is that doing in there?” he asked, stepping closer, tone sharp but defensive—not hostile, just wary. “No, no. I’m done. Okay? I’m done. And I’m fine with being done.”

He turned back to Peter, gesturing toward himself with a sort of broken enthusiasm, like a man trying to sell a used car to his own reflection.

“Look, is sales the best match? Probably not. Am I setting records for outstanding performance? Not unless the record is for most customer complaints in a single shift. Is this the life I always imagined for myself—shoving minivans down suburban throats while wearing shape-up sneakers and stapling roadkill to my head?” He let the question hang in the air for a second, then answered it with a soft, bitter chuckle. “Fuck no.”

But then something changed in his voice. Softer. Calmer. Like he was convincing himself more than anyone else.

“But this? This life?” He motioned to the locker room, to the ugly uniform, to the air that stank of mediocrity and off-brand cologne. “It’s the right fit for me, Sugar Bear. It is.”

Peter gave a small, warm nod. He didn’t argue. He didn’t need to. He saw Wade. Saw all of him—the jagged edges and the scared little boy underneath. That was the thing about Peter: he didn’t need to fix Wade. He just stood beside him, even when Wade was determined to aim low and pretend it felt good.

“Okay, Mr. Wilson,” Peter said softly, closing his locker with a quiet click.

Wade let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. His eyes flicked to the suit one last time—still, silent, waiting. But he didn’t reach for it.

“Aim for the middle,” he muttered, half to Peter, half to the locker door. “And you’ll never miss.”

He shut his locker.

And that was that.

For now.

---

The sky above the city had melted into a dusky lavender, streaked with the golden veins of a dying sun. The street was bathed in the kind of light that made even cracked sidewalks and overflowing trash bins look momentarily cinematic. Traffic moved at a lazy pace, engines humming and horns held back, for once, as if the whole world had taken a breath.

Two bicycles rolled in from the corner, their clunky tires bouncing over seams in the pavement. The first bike was far too small for the grown man pedaling it, his knees rising awkwardly with every turn of the crank, like a circus bear trying to blend in at a triathlon. Wade Wilson wore his usual assortment of day-end exhaustion, disillusionment, and one very stubborn toupee, which tilted slightly in the evening breeze. The second bike, more appropriately sized and gliding smoothly behind him, belonged to Peter.

Peter rode like someone who had taken an online course in “Urban Bicycling for Gentle Souls,” helmet strapped on tightly and reflector tape on every possible surface of his body. A high-visibility orange flag waved from the back of his seat, unnecessary but somehow so Peter it hurt.

As they rolled side by side, Peter's voice carried softly over the rhythmic whir of tires on pavement.

“I’m just saying,” he began, the tone of a man who had clearly been saying it for the last few blocks, “once a month. One little mission. You know, something small. Like... uh... saving a kidnapped cat, or liberating a hot dog stand from organized crime. Nothing major. We’re human beings, Wade. We crave purpose.”

Wade didn’t look at him. He kept pedaling, eyes fixed forward like he was trying to out-bike the conversation.

Peter’s voice softened. “After all... we’re Deadpool.”

That did it. Wade’s hands tightened on the handlebars, jaw twitching.

“Please,” he muttered. “Stop saying that.”

“But we are—”

“No. We’re not.” Wade shot him a sideways glance, the words heavier than he meant them to be. “I’m not even Deadpool anymore. That guy? That guy died somewhere between the last Chimichanga binge and the fourth time I got blown up on a Tuesday. I sell minivans now, Peter. Badly.”

Peter, ever the optimist, just gave a little shrug, feet still moving in tandem with the pedal strokes. “Well, if you’re gonna have a midlife crisis, might as well go big,” he said with a grin. “A few years ago, a friend of mine got his nipples pierced with a titanium chain that connected all the way down to his... uh... Van-Johnson.”

Wade blinked. “Van-Johnson?”

“You know. His... downtown disco stick.” Peter made a vague downward motion. “Anyway, it got caught in a revolving door. It was a whole thing.”

Wade grimaced. “Peter, for the love of God, don’t finish that story.”

They reached the building. A squat, graffitied structure with rusted balconies and crooked mailboxes. As they dismounted, Peter bent to lock both bikes to the street sign just outside. His fingers worked calmly, looping the cable through the frame, secure and practiced. Wade stood still, distracted.

He was staring across the street.

Something had shifted in the air—not in a sudden way, but subtle. Like a note in a symphony falling out of tune. The sounds of the city—barking dogs, the clatter of a nearby takeout container being kicked underfoot—seemed to blur, flatten. He narrowed his eyes, feeling it before he saw it.

Movement.

Down the block, at a subway entrance, a group of construction workers busied themselves. They were outfitted in reflective gear, neon vests and hard hats. But something about them—the way they moved—felt... rehearsed. Too choreographed. Not the kind of lazy efficiency you usually saw near quitting time.

They didn’t look up. Didn’t interact. Just worked.

A chill threaded its way down Wade’s spine, slow and crawling.

Behind him, Peter’s voice chimed again, oblivious. “Are you feeling all Grumplestiltskin because it’s your birthday?”

Wade didn’t answer right away. His eyes scanned the construction site one more time. One of the workers adjusted a cone that didn’t need adjusting. Another hoisted a jackhammer that wasn’t on.

His brows furrowed.

“What?... No,” he replied slowly, but the words came out distracted, distant.

Peter had already finished with the lock, oblivious to Wade’s sudden shift in posture, the way his shoulders had squared, like some muscle memory was beginning to wake up in him despite his best efforts to suppress it.

Wade turned away from the scene, giving it one last glance over his shoulder, and followed Peter up the stairs and into the building.

—

The hallway of Wade’s apartment was dim and uninspired. The overhead light flickered with the frequency of a dying firefly, and the walls were that industrial beige that managed to be both soul-crushing and forgettable. The kind of color that said no one has ever been happy here.

Wade reached into his pocket and fished out his keys, fingers still slightly twitching from that feeling. He tried to shake it off, but it clung to him like static. Peter, still babbling behind him about obscure gift ideas for emotionally constipated men, didn’t seem to notice.

The keys jingled as Wade found the right one, sliding it into the lock.

Still, that sensation remained.

The kind of instinct honed by years of being hunted, haunted, and hated.

Something was off.

But when he pushed the door open and stepped inside...