Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It doesn’t take much to piss off Peter Parker, although the only ones who know — or knew — that aren’t really around to warn you. If you asked him why he doesn’t have many friends, he’d probably laugh awkwardly or flip you off, and in his head he’d tell himself that’s because he doesn’t want any. Or rather, shouldn’t have any, given his track record. But deep down, he actually worries that there might be another reason. That he’s too geeky, too awkward, too snarky, but worst of all… he worries that others will notice how quickly he snaps.

It’s not unreasonable. He could run a full blown analysis into how tense and high-strung he’s become after so many years of fighting crime and keeping a secret identity and loneliness (which is really a gift that keeps on giving, the cause of the problem is also the result of the problem and causes the problem even more, and so on) if he had the time. Or the energy. And because he’s spent so long suppressing himself in every way, his emotional constipation has led to some pretty bad anger issues, or perhaps in his case, irritation issues. 

The thing is, Peter spends his days in a constant cycle. A cycle that could be more accurately defined as a slow spiral, a steady descent into a most likely outcome of self destruction or death by casualty. The only things that aren’t constant are the criminal masterminds he runs into, although recently he’s even been seeing a lot of the same thugs fresh off bail. But none of this, no matter how sensible or logical of an explanation it is, can explain away the outcome: Peter is alone. He is tense, drained, tired, and alone. 

Until recently.

Something new happened last month. Something that’s finally woken him up, but irritates him more than ever. There’s a new mercenary in town, donning a red suit to boot. He first heard of it through word of mouth; people claiming they’d seen him in places he wasn’t, doing things he would never do. His reputation is bad enough with his own blunders, he really doesn’t need some clown carrying deathtraps dragging his name through the mud. This wasn’t just some criminal deciding to put on a suit in his neighbourhood, either. He found that out the hard way; through the relentless torture of one of Jameson’s rants. So, he put in a little effort and did some digging. 

Deadpool. 

Just the name had him frowning and wrinkling his nose. He pictured a pool filled with rotting corpses, it wasn’t pretty. Why would anyone call themselves that? He also learned that Deadpool isn’t some serial murderer edition copycat trying to bring down his resume, in fact, he’d been around longer than Spidey. Not that it matters. A new bout of murder in his sector wasn’t good no matter who was doing it or why. His background search did give him a lot of information though, way more than he expected. Apparently this guy doesn’t care very much about his privacy, Mr. Wade Wilson ex-soldier. 

None of it was particularly useful, nor would it trace back to anywhere without a seriously deep search and some hacking Peter wasn’t inclined to do just yet. A chill ran down his spine as he realized that this Deadpool guy probably killed anyone who learned anything important. Great, he mentally gripes, as if I really needed another indicator that this guy is dangerous.

But there was something weird about the stories he heard of Deadpool, all tied to mobs or criminal organizations or something disgusting like a long list of sexual assault charges. Every single one of these people was someone Spider-Man would wrap up and send to jail, no innocents even by most corporate standards. His methods were absolutely gruesome and Peter still couldn’t wipe some of the images from his brain, but he was starting to get the sense Deadpool’s motives aren’t as malicious as his reputation. He’s money driven for sure, and everything points Peter to the conclusion that he should not trust him one bit, but he’s getting a sense of underlying justice that isn’t described anywhere. That bothered him. But something else bothered him the most: why hadn’t he seen Deadpool at all yet?

~

Where is he? He thought to himself as he perched on the ledge of a skyscraper. He wanted to get a good look at this large intersection from above, and he didn’t really feel like being seen today. A higher vantage point was probably better if he was trying to spot someone anyway. Except I’m not here to look for anyone, I’m just here to patrol the neighbourhood and make sure everything is fine. Because that’s my job. Not hunting down mercenaries with mysteriously mixed elusive tendencies and public information. 

Whether he’d admit it to himself or not, he was definitely on the lookout. Tonight had been particularly slow, and Jameson had demanded a photo of Deadpool to put as an extra feature on the next newspaper. If Spider-Man couldn’t find him, there was no way Peter Parker was going to catch any pictures, let alone any half-decent ones.

He was soon to discover that he needn’t have worried about finding him at all, when two minutes later his spidey sense flared up, alerting him just as a grappling hook hurtled into the air and crashed aggressively into the rooftop, ripping up a foot of cement as it took hold. What the hell? How would you throw a grappling hook all the way up here?

“By a whole lot of grunt effort and the window on the 52nd floor!” A voice called out cheerily. Deadpool’s masked head, followed by the rest of his body, hauled itself up from the rope the hook was tied to. Peter freezes, first processing that Deadpool is finally here, in front of him, and then what he just said. 

“Wait, what? How did you- what?” Okay, maybe not the best first words to say to a ruthless mercenary that just joined you on top of a skyscraper, but Spider-Man never claimed to be the most socially adept, and everyone knows Peter can’t read a room. And besides, he’s sure he didn’t ask that out loud!

“Well, if you didn’t want me reading your thoughts, then maybe you shouldn’t have let them get written down. Ever think about that, huh? It’s not like the Author writes the whole catalogue of your thoughts with TL;DR footnotes, take a little responsibility. Now that I think about it, that would be really cool though…”

“Deadpool.” That was all he could think to say. What else was there to say? The man is standing right there!

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out! Actually, do wear it out. I’d love to see you walking around with me written all over that cute butt. It’s been a long time since someone said my name with so little contempt, too. Mind saying again for me? Nah, nevermind, that’s probably a second date thing. Where’d you learn my name, cutie?”

He talks so fast Peter could barely keep up, still kind of caught on the ‘speak of the devil, and he shall appear’ part of this interaction. 

“Nothing in your files says you can read minds,” he says, and oh, uh oh, that was probably the wrong thing to say. Telling someone who kills people for a living you did a background check on them is usually a terrible greeting.

“Oho, so you looked into me! I’m flattered, no really, that’s adorable. But alas, you’re right, I’m just regular-degular old Daddy Pool, cursed with the inability to die and blessed with nothing but your presence. And, okay, I was once blessed in some other areas too if you know what I mean, but now even my meat looks minced. It’s a real tragedy, I know, but don’t worry, it’s still kicking if I am!”

Peter wrinkles his nose at the insinuation, causing his mask to shift slightly. He’s adjusting to the speed, but he’s still unused to people talking with so much vulgarity in such a flowery tone. He wonders how anyone takes this guy seriously, let alone is afraid of him. Then his brain helpfully pulls up all the deadly training and jobs outlined in his files like a cold glass of water dumped over his thoughts. This guy is dangerous, he can’t forget that. Even the way he talks could be a strategic ploy to get people to lower their guard. Spider-Man has to know better than that. His spider-sense might not be going off right now, but Deadpool could probably flip a switch any second and he’d find himself in immediate danger if he wasn’t careful.

Deadpool seems to have understood his disgust from just the movement of his mask, somehow. “Yeeeeah, lemme tell ya, buddy, I felt the same when I first found out! Went from meet on Grindr to meat in grinder in a matter of days. Nobody likes rotten flesh, even zombies would be looking for fresher brains than mine. Bet it tastes like crippling depression and porn addiction. Huh, I wonder how many incels would be safe from the apocalypse just for being too gross?”

“Probably none of them. Even when food is gross, if it’s easy to get, people will go for it. If a virus like that starts to spread it’ll latch onto whatever it can to keep spreading. Homebodies with sludge for brains make excellent hosts.” Peter responds absent-mindedly, mentally slapping himself for talking so easily.

Deadpool looks shocked for a moment, but he recovers quickly. Maybe this is just how his brain works, too quickly for his opponents to keep up? I should be analyzing his behaviour carefully. Can't let my guard down. Spider-Man never lets his guard down.

“Ooh, nice! So the bug boy has a mouth on him, does he? Not sure about all that sciency mumbo-jumbo though, guess I'll just have to take your word for it. Kinda sad to think that after reading all those apocalypse manga the No Nut November losers'd be the first to go. Not me though, I mean c'mon, I always get that win. That's why my initials got more W's than the WWE.”

“Spiders are arachnids, not bugs, and I doubt most of what people read in fantasy manga become transferable skills. Now,” he nets Deadpool in a thick layer of webs, pushing him against the wall roughly and cocooning him to it before he gets the chance to move, “tell me, what are you doing in my city?”

Completely unphased aside from a small oomph at the contact, he appears to be no more intimidated than before. “Sure thing, Spideyboo, but I gotta say, I grew up reading comic books and you have to admit those skills seem to have transferred just fine,” he grins, as if they're still casually standing next to each other, then stage whispers salaciously, “I also read a lot of porn, and I'd like to think that transferred real well too, babe.”

Peter has to resist the urge to punch him in the face as Deadpool winks at him cartoonishly. He's not here to have a friendly chat (especially not one this “friendly”), he's here for answers. Since he's mostly adjusted to Deadpool's personality, he's not going to lose focus again. “Shut up. If you like talking so much, why not talk about something useful? Here, we'll start simple. Why did you come up here to me?”

Deadpool blinks at him. What the fuck? How does he do that with a mask on? Wait, what the hell, he winked at me earlier too. How did I not notice that? “Can't a guy get up on a random rooftop to enjoy the sunset, which just so happens to be the same place his good ol' pal Spidey chose?”

“It's like 11:00 pm right now. And I'm not your pal. I don't believe in coincidences when it comes to people like you.”

“What, you don't wanna be gal pals? Star-crossed lovers that make all the historians mad?” He pauses, and his train of thought seems to change direction to something darker like someone doing the trolley problem. “What do you mean, ‘people like me’?”

Peter feels a tingle at the back of his neck, like the faintest hint of danger his spidey sense has ever warned him about. Instead of trying to dispel it, he pushes. No one ever said Spider-Man was smart, okay? That's Peter's schtick. “What do you think I mean?”

“You're not a mutate hater, are you? Or is it the gay stuff. Are you a homophobe, Spider-Man? I might have to kill you if you are.” There's somehow more grit in his naturally gritty voice. He means it. Peter's heard a lot of Spider-Man hate over the years (*cough* Jameson *cough*), but he's never heard Spider-Man sound quite so much like a threat, spitting out the word like venom. He's caught off guard again, more by Deadpool's words than any tingle.

“What? No. Are you gay? Nevermind, doesn't matter, why would I care if you were gay?! And I don't hate mutates either, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm a mutate myself. That'd just be stupid.” He groans, wiping a hand down his mask, pulling at his face underneath. “Can you just answer the question for real this time? Why are you here?”

Deadpool weirdly has the decency to sound somewhat remorseful. “Okay, yeah. It's kind of hard to tell who's mutant and who's mutate, but I should've known the Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man was the work-your-way-to-the-top type. For the record, I'm pansexual, although I don't reeeaally do the whole labels thing, ya'know? It's just, I keep running into these asshole ‘heroes’ that are just as likely to beat their kids for turning out gay as the next guy, and I just wanna bash their heads in. I mean, there's NO way Captain America is-”

“That's enough. I didn't ask for your life story, I asked why you're here.”

“Right, right. For realsies. Well, I had a job, and then I finished the job, and then I saw you swinging through town and thought I'd get the low-down on the local hero situation around here. So I did a little bit of digging, and whole lotta beating up punks I found along the way. NYC really is the crime hub, huh, they just kept coming. Popping up in alleys and all that while I'm just walking the streets, not minding my own business. Anyways, I thought you sounded too good to be true, TBH, so I made sure to get a good number of opinions before making my first impression. Somehow, you STILL managed to sound like a goody two shoes who was only two so I decided I had to see for myself, and, well. Here I am!”

Peter decides to let go of the fact that he managed to slip away from him until he wanted to meet, and that he'd managed to track down Spider-Man's location before he even arrived. That was all stuff he was already concerned about when this conversation started. Now, he has a different question. “What was the job?”

“And here he goes again with the serious act. Ya'know, I heard a bit about you being a wisecracking webslinger, but so far between the two of us I think I'm a lot more fun. No offense! The tall, broody, Mr. Mysterious vibe works just as well for you, I'm sure. Kind of a whole ‘Choke me, Daddy’ appeal.”

Peter tries to ignore the unhelpful response. He still cringes, but he gives himself credit for not saying ew out loud. Instead of telling Deadpool not to say Daddy ever again, he repeats: “What. Was. The. Job.”

Deadpool pauses, seemingly debating how serious Spider-Man is at this moment. Or, how likely it is that he'll get punched in the face if he continues to be annoying. Apparently he settles on very likely, because he relents.

“Okey dokey. Spidey, look… I know you're not gonna like it, but I'm sure you know I dabble in a little stabby-stabby here and there. I'm not proud of it! Shut up, I'm not. Sometimes. Rarely. I mean, it's for a good cause! If there was a better way I'd totes do it, so like, whatever. Anywhatzit there was this very very bad dude getting in with the scoobiest of gangs and the pitchiest blacks of markets. I find out about it, bing bang bonzo long story short he's bleeding out on his not faux-fur white rug and his little girly is back under her momma's wing, how sweet.” He somehow manages to rip out of some of the webs and does a cutesy pose, clasping his hands together and tucking them to one side of his chin.

“Okay...” It's definitely not as much detail as he would like, but Peter got the gist of it and something tells him that asking for more detail would only get him way too much description, and a whole lot of zero information. Either way, Deadpool doesn't seem as ill-intentioned as the public has been led to believe. And, similarly, Spider-Man isn't as picky about violence as they're led to believe either. Sure, he tries to avoid killing and wants others to do the same, but that doesn't mean he just expects people not to. Kinda like veganism. If you push it, you'll probably only put people off of your opinion, no real change. 

“So your job is done, and you've met me. Now you have no reason to stick around. Except my webs, of course,” he finally gets a quip in there, re-webbing Deadpool's hands to the wall, “but after they're gone, you'll leave my city, right?”

“Your city? Possessive much? It's okay, I like that. But you can't exactly expect a guy to never visit the cultural hub that is New York, the city that never sleeps, The Big Apple that don't take no snake to make me take a bite,” his teeth clack together loudly as he chomps behind his mask, “nah, I'm just playing. If you want me out, I'm out, I guess. Wouldn't want to turn you into the Unfriendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man. I'll get out of your hair, er, webs soon enough.”

Peter regards him in silence for a moment, trying to decide if he trusts it enough to leave Deadpool alone. He eventually decides to let it go and swing home for some necessary sleep, but not without a warning. “Don't let me catch you breaking that promise.” He turns to walk away before Deadpool can have the chance to respond, although it didn't seem like he intended to anyway.

Just before Peter leaves, he remembers the pictures he has to get on Jameson's desk tomorrow morning. He swings around the sidewalk below, catching some pedestrian-perspective shots on the camera he installed into the chest of his spider suit. He had it woven in for post-fight footage just in case he ever needed a reference for a criminal's face, but he's happy to discover a secondary purpose for it.

Chapter Text

Two weeks go by and Peter nearly forgets about the whole Deadpool thing. He hasn't seen hide nor hair of him and he hasn't shown up in any recent news, just as it should be if he left as promised. Jameson's rants are back to normal, nobody is mistaking someone else as Spider-Man anymore, and he just nailed down a case for a major drug bust. Things are looking up.

Until he looks down.

Spider-Man has never been afraid of heights. Not ever. Sure, Peter felt queasy when he went up the CN tower that one time he visited Toronto as a kid, and maybe he felt some vertigo on the swings when he was thirteen, and yeah, he did kinda freak out about the idea of using his powers up high at the very start. But not as Spider-Man. Spider-Man frequents rooftops and travels by swinging through the air. Spider-Man free falls for fun and swan dives into danger. Spider-Man crawls on ceilings rather than floors and kisses people while hanging upside-down. Spider-Man practically lives in the skies!

So why is it that on some random Tuesday, while he's out for an early patrol, as he walks to the edge of a massive skyscraper ready to dive, he suddenly can't do it? He approaches the ledge, the toe of his boots over the edge, but as he looks down his vision swims. The street beneath him starts to curve, cars blending together. He feels dizzy. Woozy. Sick.

“What.. the fuck..?” He sways on his feet, nearly falling off the building. He hears the sound of something whipping through the air to his left, but he doesn't turn his head. His mind is overwhelmed, a constant pain ringing in the back of his skull that may or may not be partially his spidey sense. He's never had trouble discerning between the sense and a headache before. He's scared of falling any minute. Am I only feeling this way because of fear? He can't remember whether the fear or the dizziness came first, he can't think, his head just hurts, hurts, hurts.

He barely even registers a crunching sound. In reality it's the loud ripping of concrete and metal, but his hearing is muffled. His eyes dart a glance to the side, head still facing forward. A familiar grappling hook sits embedded in the concrete. He looks back down at the street. It's getting bendier and the corners of his vision start to fuzz. He hears someone call out, but it sounds near and distant all at once, like he's underwater. He sways again, eyes blinking slowly. Open, closed, open. He sways forward a final time, body lurching forward just as strong arms wrap around his torso. His vision suddenly swivels to the sky as he feels himself get pulled back, falling backwards onto hard muscle and sharp metal before he passes out completely.

~°~

“.......llo? Hey-...rth to.. idey… hello? Hello??”

“Mmmmmhnghhhnnnnghh..” Peter groans. He has an excruciating headache. He squints his eyes open slightly, only to squeeze them shut again to block out the brightness. His body feels like one big wound.

“Is that an affirmative, or just an instinctual noise?”

When Peter doesn't respond, he feels himself being lifted into the air. He hears a faint 'ah, shit' as the person situates him into a princess carry. The steady bounce and rhythm of their footsteps paired with the warmth of their embrace lulls him somewhat, the pounding in his head calming to a dull ache.

He is carried for quite some time, in total silence apart from when his saviour whispers to themselves. Saviour? Hm, it's accurate but somehow it sounds wrong. Spider-Man doesn't need saving, Spider-Man saves other people. You'd think that you'd only be concerned for your life when you almost fall off a skyscraper and can't open your eyes, but the shame of failure spills all over his thoughts.

The steady rhythm stops in favour of an awful lot of jostling, cramming Peter into a seat. He's worried for a moment that he's being trapped, until he feels the press of that same warmth against his leg. He's conscious of every movement as his saviour (still feels wrong) reaches over him and buckles him in, before doing the same for themselves. An engine kicks into gear and he can feel the smooth yet speedy pace of the car.

“I don't know where you live, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to take you to one of my hidey-holes, sorry Spidey. I know it's not gonna be up to snuff but I'm not sure if you're in the position to be judgemental over a few bullet holes and bloodstains,” they seem to lean in closer, addressing him directly. They then turn to the driver and say, “I don't know where he lives, so just head to my nearest place, yeah? It's one of the better ones anyway.”

“You got it, Mr. Deadpool.”

Deadpool?  

It all starts to click into place. The strong arms, the feeling of the metal on his katana harness, and most importantly that grappling hook. Only a few people could appear so suddenly on that rooftop, and only one person he knows would do it that way. Then, why? He doesn't have the ability to zip around so easily, so why was he there? And my sudden dizziness, my current state… I haven't been afraid of heights in years, there's just no way that's the reason. Someone did this to me. He must have done this to me. It's all too convenient.

Peter's heart races, panicking, but he still can barely move. His body feels weak and Deadpool would easily win in a fight back here with or without a gun. In the midst of his thoughts, Deadpool leans his side fully into him, an arm snaking around his shoulder. He must have noticed Peter's heartbeat. Just how perceptive is this guy? At first Peter freaks out further, there's nothing he can do to stop Deadpool from touching him, hurting him, killing- 

Deadpool's thumb swipes gently up and down on his shoulder. He murmurs into Peter's ear, “You're probably awake enough to hear me now, right? It's okay. You're safe. No one can hurt you.”

Normally that kind of speech is exactly what a villain who is going to hurt him — and take sick pleasure in it — would say. But something about his tone, quiet, solemn and sure, and his comforting action gives Peter pause. 

But if he wants to kill me, why didn't he let me fall off the roof? Although... he is an expert assassin, he might just want a more clean-cut cause of death. But suddenly feeling sick and falling off a building is the perfect cover-up for suicide, and Deadpool isn't the kind of guy who wants to take credit. Especially for the murder of another mutated vigilante. But maybe whatever poison was used to do this could be traced easily back to him and my death so he wants to deal with the body privately. That's highly unlikely though. Maybe he was genuinely saving me, he didn't seem to have a vendetta against me the last time we met. He was ultimately reasonable. 

He considers for a while, his heart rate slowing down by his analytical and depersonalized approach. Deadpool retracts his arm in response, but stays against his side.

Also he was talking like he wanted to take Spider-Man home, even though he wasn't sure if I could hear him yet. But Deadpool would absolutely be that thorough, judging by his files. Then again, why would he need to give Spider-Man a false sense of security if he's incapacitated by a drug? What kind of insurance is that? Unless he's not sure of the potency of whatever this is, so if I get my powers back he might be able to negotiate and take control of the situation easier. I should keep my guard up for any physical changes or anything he might do. But until I get my sensibilities back, I can't do anything to stop him, so I'm not going to assume he has good intentions, but, like…

Peter ultimately decides that he wants to believe Deadpool is helping him, but he'll operate on suspicion. He focuses on recovering instead, slowly squinting and blinking his eyes open. He starts with looking at the dark corners of the car, light still too much for him. He had hoped that Deadpool wouldn't notice his eyes opening behind the mask, and Deadpool has made no indication that he has, so he's feeling pretty confident. He gets to a point where he's able to keep his eyes open when looking at darkness and squinted at light when the driver finally pulls the car over. 

Deadpool addresses the driver for a moment, their goodbyes sounding more like inside jokes. He draws it out a bit before finally nudging Peter's arm. 

“Hey, do you think you can move a bit better now, or do you need me to carry you again? 'Cause I will do it, Itsy Bitsy.”

Deadpool unbuckles his seatbelt and Peter finally moves to do the same. He doesn't have the energy to scooch over like he normally would, only enough to weakly lower his arm, placing most of the force he can muster onto the buckle. It clicks, releasing the seatbelt. 

“Oh good, you can move! And you're listening to me! Double good! Now I just need you to talk to me too and we're all set. So. Are you still gonna need me to carry you up or are you goin' all by your lonesome?”

“Mn,” Peter tries to answer him, he really does, but the words get scrambled on the way out and he ends up only groaning out gibberish. Instead of communicating with words, he redirects and moves to open the car door. He manages to pull on the handle just fine, but is ultimately unable to push it open. His vision goes spotty and he feels faint again. “Ugh.”

“Oookay, going to take that as ‘sorry Mr. Deadpool my brain is too fried to function, please please with cherries on top carry me to safety.’ And to that I say, no problemo fellow hermano! We’ll getcha up to safety in a jiffy and fix you up all nice and shiny. Man, I feel like ol’ Grinchy Claus with the Christmas tree,” his remarks start to trail off into mumblings to himself as he exits and rounds the car, opening the door for Peter. Peter falls into him as the door opens, since he had been leaning on it. Deadpool scoops him up in a princess carry without hassle, unbeknownst to his mental protests.

Peter's thoughts start to run in circles after five minutes of being carried up a stairwell. He keeps his eyes shut under the bright fluorescent lights. The constant turning and jostling is making his headache worse. It's hard to keep track of how many floors they ascend, but he tries his best to count them instead of focusing on his frustration. On the other hand, Deadpool is silent for once.

He'd been prattling off ever since Peter had regained consciousness, even if it was just mumblings to himself. Now the sound of his heavy duty boots against the metal stairs is only accompanied by silence. Part of Peter is creeped out by the lack of panting breaths. Hell, he can't hear Deadpool breathing at all. He doesn't remember hearing it before either, after the massive exertion of heaving oneself up a skyscraper. Does this guy have infinite stamina? Does he even need to breathe? Peter had searched for Deadpool's weaknesses previously and found nothing except his scars. He hadn't thought to look for unusual strengths. He kicks himself mentally as they briefly come to a stop, Deadpool removing an arm to push open a door.

Peter stops being jostled at all in the short trek down the hall. In fact, Deadpool's steps are so level it feels like he's being carried on a conveyor belt. Does he have superhuman balance? What kind of ability is that? For someone with so much public info, he's really unpredictable.

They enter the apartment with minimal effort, and Peter deigns to open his eyes again. He's faced with taut red kevlar and leather shoulder pads. Not much of a view into the room, but he'll take the minimal lighting. He observes the texture of Deadpool's suit, the dips and curves, the part that's suspiciously a darker red. When he starts to feel comfortable opening and closing his eyes, he has the good sense to realize that he may have been staring at another man's chest for too long.

He turns his head away far too quickly, a sharp pain shooting up his neck, causing his headache to flare up again. He screams in surprise and agony, clipping it short by sheer restraint. Fuck! Idiot! You're not supposed to let him know how weak you are.

“Shit! Sorry, Spidey, I don't know what's wrong or how to make it all better yet,” Deadpool whimpers, hastening his steps to lay Spider-Man down gently on his couch. He places the back of his hand on Peter's masked forehead as if to check for a fever. 

Peter whines, because really, there’s no hiding his discomfort at this point. The most frustrating part about this is that he doesn’t know either! He doesn’t remember getting shot with any drugged darts recently.

“I don’t know,” Deadpool says as if he’s responding to someone. Weird. “Maybe little spider mutates can heal on their own. Wishful thinking? Yeah, I thought so. Do I even have a med kit in this apartment…?”

As Deadpool scampers off to scour the apartment for any lingering forms of healthcare, Peter takes his time examining the apartment from his spot on the couch. The place is a total mess. Garbage from old takeout, bloodstains and bullet holes are scattered everywhere. If he were two ticks lower on the rate-your-pain scale, he'd rather stand than lie on this couch of god knows what kind of stains and bacteria. He takes care in moving his head slowly this time, trying to analyze where the pain is coming from so he can form a hypothesis as to what exactly this condition is and work backwards to finding a cause and solution.

Before long Deadpool is back with a standard med kit that is covered in literal cobwebs. He sets it down on the coffee table, opening it up and staring at its contents. It must have finally occurred to him that there are no visible signs of injury and therefore nothing to treat with a simple box of bandages and antiseptic. He reaches for a small bottle haphazardly thrown on top of the gauze. The label has been ripped off in favour of the title “OVERDOSERS” written in a messy scrawl of pink glitter pen.

“Not to make an ass out of u and me, but I’ve seen a lot of death and suffering (totally not because of me) and the way you’re acting seems mostly similar to a stroke? So, like, maybe you wanna take a super-strength aspirin. I dunno though, I’m not a doctor, and I really don’t want to be the one to kill y-”

Peter snatches the bottle out of Deadpool’s hand. His trepidation loses out to his anxiety, a desperation to at least try something to remedy his condition overpowering his decisions. Deadpool isn’t wrong, as far as he knows a stroke is the only thing he’s heard of similar to this, but he’s not that old yet. He never thought that his healing ability would let him experience such a thing, but he does seem to be healing so maybe it was maxxed out just holding the effects at bay? Inconclusive. His determination to pop a few pills is easily foiled by the child-proof lock mechanism of the lid. The moment his jittery fingers lose their grip once, he shoves it back into Deadpool’s chest.

“Wow, okay. Are you sure about this, Spidey? I’m not actually known for giving good advice. I wanted to run one of those ‘Dear, Blank' columns once but every magazine rejected me for giving too R-rated responses to a young reader base. As if kids can afford magazines these days, they were kidding themselves,” Deadpool laughs nervously, unscrewing the lid but refusing to hand it back to Peter. To say he’s frustrated is beyond an understatement. His arm snaps out again, since it seems to be his most operative part right now, in an attempt to get the aspirin. Deadpool is unfortunately and unsurprisingly faster, swinging the hand holding the bottle far out of his reach on apparent instinct. “Hey man, I’m just trying to make sure you’re thinking about this first.”

“Knn tnnk,” Spider-Man growls at him, launching himself off the couch, crash landing on Deadpool and spilling the bottle in the process. As they fall, the eyes on Deadpool’s mask expand comically large as his brow placement lifts. I really need to figure out how he does that.

Strong arms wrap around Peter’s core to support him as they hit the ground, but he’s too focused on his goal to care. He claws at the ground, getting his hands on two pills. In a split-second Peter lifts his mask up to his nose with his left hand, Deadpool grabs his right wrist and Peter adapts, tossing the pills expertly into his mouth and swallowing them dry.

“No!! Spidey! We have no idea what your dosage should be, I can’t believe you just did that!” Deadpool screeches, grabbing Spidey by the shoulders and shaking him.

“Ah… Shit…” Peter whispers, oddly coherent as his eyes roll back behind his lenses. His vision fuzzes to black and he passes out, falling forward this time into the now familiar leather of Deadpool’s suit. His last thought sits heavy in the front of his mind. Damn Parker luck.

Chapter Text

Peter wakes to the sound of a shrill whistle, momentarily worried that he’s been kidnapped and trapped on a boat headed overseas. I promised myself last time I’d never let that happen again. Webbing isn’t a very effective escape plan when you don’t have anything to swing to.  

He sits up, ignoring the ache in his muscles and the bone-deep exhaustion that has become a staple in his daily life. He’s back on Deadpool’s couch, with a threadbare yet extremely soft blanket tucked around him. Looking over towards the kitchen, the source of the sound proves to be from a kettle and not a steamboat. Deadpool is pacing back and forth with a mug in hand, muttering ominously, not even glancing at the kettle begging to be put out of its misery. He stops, all momentum forbidden from his large frame, and it looks like he’s staring at the wall for a second until he suddenly beelines towards the couch so fast he may have teleported. He drops the mug on the carpet.

“Holy shitballs, Batman!! What the fuck was that, you fucking scared me, you asshole!” He exclaims, grabbing Peter's face and smushing his cheeks together. “What was I supposed to do if you died, huh? Take you over to City Hall and say ‘man, I'm so sorry, my pal spidey here willfully overdosed in my apartment. I was trying to save him, pinky pwomise.’ They would never believe me! I don't know if you know this, arachnidiot, but I don’t need that kinda street cred.”

Peter would say something, maybe reiterate that they are not pals, but one attempt at making a sound lets him know that no matter what he says it will be embarrassingly jumbled with his face being held like this. He takes Deadpool’s wrists to pry his hands off his face, holding onto them just in case. Deadpool took his silence as an invitation to continue.

“I left your mask up because it’s probably easier to breathe and you lifted it yourself. Also I absolutely, definitely, totally didn’t analyze every detail of your lips and that mole on your cheek. No, it was completely incidental that I saw the scruff of hair at the nape of your neck, and maybe you do want to pull that back down actually, because I’m not sure how much more I can take of it stealing my attention that I’m sure you don’t want, so yeah you should do that.” 

Analyze? What's that supposed to mean? Peter is intimately aware of what it can mean when a military grade mercenary is doing an analysis on you, especially if they know what you look like. He releases Deadpool’s wrists in a heartbeat, tugging his mask down as quickly as he can manage.

“I can’t believe you’re still alive. You’re fucking feral, dude... It’s kinda hot.” He brushes over the last part, clearing his throat. “You are alive, right? This isn’t the start of that zombie apocalypse we were talking about? That would make a pretty cool fanfic, en gee el.”

“...You called me an arachnidiot.” 

“Did I? To be fair, you were acting like an idiot. You should give me a gold star for taking in your criticisms on the bug boy title and switching it up. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.” Deadpool puts on a gruff editorial voice that might be heard in a Ford commercial. He waves his hand like ‘what can you do?’ and gets up, handing Peter the mug and heading back towards the kitchen. “And look! You’re all talky again! Good as new. You’re welcome.”

“You’re not getting a gold star for saying I'm stupid. Plus, you're the one who suggested drugs to a delirious person, so you're the idiot. I’m not going to thank you for that.” He takes the mug anyway, just to have something to do with his hands. In desperate measures it could serve as a weapon as well but superpowered fists are stronger than porcelain.

“You want tea?” Deadpool ignores Peter, pretending he couldn’t hear him. He finally releases the kettle from its infernal torment, the lack of a constant whistle that Peter had grown accustomed to leaving them in total silence. Which, to Peter Parker, means awkward silence that must be filled with humour, insults, or a witty mix of both.

“We're in NYC, who offers tea first? And no, I don’t. If you think I'm lifting my mask for one more second around you you're sorely mista-”

“Oops.” Deadpool interrupts, monotone. Peter's attention slips to him as Deadpool spills scalding hot water on himself while walking over to him. There's an audible sizzling of his skin, but he just shakes it off as if he'd just washed his hands.

“What the hell? Isn’t that water boiling? What do you mean, ‘oops'?! Stop- go run that under cold water, why are you- I don't even want tea, leave the darn cup and deal with yourself! How are you so reckless?!” Peter harps as Deadpool continues with his task, pouring water into his mug setting it down on the coffee table. This may be Deadpool, but Peter is used to being the Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man and old habits die hard.

“Pot meet kettle.” Deadpool points at him, then to himself matter-of-factly. He snickers at the relevance of the phrase as he carries the kettle back to the stove where it belongs.

“No, you’re the pot!” Peter snits, rolling his eyes.  

“You gonna smoke me?” He smirks, running his hand under the sink as instructed. 

Peter doesn’t respond, opting to inspect the detailing of Deadpool’s mask instead in the hopes of finding his secret to its expressiveness. It would be way more fun if he could smirk at the villains he fights rather than relying on posture to convey sass. Deadpool turns to pick up the teabag he’d left on the table and tosses it at Spidey, aiming to hit his mouth with perfect accuracy. If he hadn’t caught it, that is. Peter dunks it in his cup of hot water and without looking Deadpool comments, “We call that teabagging, in the biz.”

“That’s not what teabagging i-” Peter snaps his mouth shut just as Deadpool whips his head around with his eyebrows raised. “You already knew that.”

“Yeah, but so did you!” He gleams, smug.

Embarrassed, Peter opts to change the subject, grumbling stiffly. “Why aren't you wearing your gloves, anyway? You’ve got the rest of your suit on.”

“I wanted to be able to check your heartbeat and temperature properly. You were nearly dead for a few minutes there, so I couldn't take the risk of not monitoring your condition. You gonna call that stupid, too?” He sounds weirdly sincere, ending on a joke as more of a cop out than the goal. Peter would never expect Deadpool to be serious in this way. He can't trust it.

“...yeah.” He settles for the cop out too, but it doesn't really land. “Idiot.”

Peter stares into his mug, watching the water stain brown as Deadpool prepares his own, bringing some milk, sugar, whipped cream and sprinkles to the table.

“So… tea?” Deadpool gestures to the milk and sugar invitingly. Peter nods, pulling his teabag out and setting it down on a proffered plate. He decides not to comment as Deadpool empties half a can of whipped cream into his tea, reaching for the sprinkles. He gets more on the floor than he does the actual drink, but it’s his house, so Peter holds his tongue on that too.

Searching for something to say, he scans the room for inspiration, his eyes landing on the wacky mug Deadpool is holding. It looks like it was made by a six year old in a pottery class, wavy green and blue lumps leading to an uneven rim. The handle must've been attached as an afterthought, which is probably why Deadpool is holding it by its sides because it's too unstable. There's scratchy lettering on the front that reads ‘almost just as ugly.’ Some whipped cream drips down the side of it.

“What does that mean?” 

“Hm? This?” Deadpool holds out his mug and Peter hums. He bends over in front of his mug, slowly reading the words out loud from his upside-down angle. “Almost just as ugly… Oh! Oh yeah, that.” He pops up, bouncing in his seat excitedly. 

“It's a mug, right, but a super ugly one. On purpose. Mostly. Ya'know, like an ugly Christmas sweater! So it's an ugly mug, but not the most ugly mug I've got, ‘cause of the whole…” He waves a hand over his face for the insinuation. Peter notices it happens to match the movement for ‘beautiful’ in sign language, but he doesn't know that. I don’t need to know that. Why am I thinking about that? “My ugly mug, my almost just as ugly mug, wordplay, yadda yadda. You get me?”

“Right.” Peter confirms dryly. He's never met someone who reflects their self hatred on their dishes before. Except maybe people who only own big spoons. “Clever.”

“Eek! Spider-Man just called me clever! Somebody catch me!” Deadpool playfully mimes passing out and fans himself with one hand.

Peter bites his tongue, trying not to blush. Sure, back in the early days Spider-Man had a lot of fangirls pining after him, but anyone becomes old news eventually. Now people are less public about their support of him, and he's trained himself not to interact with civilians while on the job unless they're involved. All this to say, it's been a while since he's been complimented to his face without it being an ‘oh my god I nearly died thanks’ or an awkward harrumph of approval from Jameson. Realistically, those have gotten a bit rare too.

He taps the sides of his much more sensible mug with his fingers. Act cool. Be cool. Be chill. Be chill? Why do we care if we're cool in front of Deadpool? He wouldn't know cool if it sliced him in half.

“Are you going to drink any of that?” Deadpool asks, and oh, Peter can see him ask this time. He's rolled up his mask to reveal the bottom half of his face, pockmarked skin covered in a whipped cream mustache. It’s kind of… no, nevermind.

“Oh. Yeah. I mean, actually, I did say I wasn’t going to lift my mask again so really you shouldn't be expecting anything from me.” Peter puts the mug back down, crossing his arms.

“I lifted mine!” Deadpool argues, as if it's an equal tradeoff. It’s obviously not. There may not be many photos of his current face on the internet but all of his youthful facial data is just a Google search away. “What happened to men's unspoken ‘you show me yours I'll show you mine?’ Tit for tit.”

“I think you mean tit for tat.”

“Nope! Tit for tit. There's got to be a second tiddy in the deal or one side's gettin' a way better bargain. When you have skin like I do, tats don't mean shit. They don't even last four hours. I'm more permanent than any scrawling on my body, but somebody else's tit? Now that's free real estate.”

“I'm not taking off my mask,” Peter restates, because honestly he lost the plot a bit.

“For the record, if I wanted to see your face I could've lifted that mask all on my own anytime you were incapacitated before. And you'd only have to lift it part way, like me. Besides, I'm not asking you to take it off, I'm asking you to have some tea. I bet you need it. C'mon, baby boy! I'm trying to be hospitable here!”

“Fine. I guess. Just because I need the caffeine.” He agrees, adding a bit of milk to his before taking a sip. It scalds his tongue, but at least distracts him from having to think about anything else.

“See, you are the reckless one here. Even I wouldn’t have accepted my tea if I were you. Woah, imagine if I actually was you! And you were me. Bodyswap! That would be crazy. Can we get the Author on that? It sounds fun. Freaky Friday with extra freaky youknowwhatI’msayin,” Deadpool gesticulates, forgetting that he’s holding something, and cream splatters onto the floor.

“You wanted me to!” Peter groans, frustrated.

“And you listened to me, just like the good boy you are. Adorbs,” Deadpool swoons and Peter wrinkles his nose.

“Don’t- ew. Don’t talk to me like that, I’m a grown fucking man.” 

“Aw, the big boy learned big boy words to make him seem like more of a big boy. Don’t worry, Spidey, I believe you and your baby face!” Deadpool gushes, babying his tone even further to be annoying.

“You haven’t seen my face!” Peter yells, getting heated. He tries to measure his breaths and let it go so he doesn’t do anything impulsive. “Spider-Man has been patrolling this city for over a decade, you know damn well enough not to treat me like a child.”

“You were a child when you started? Jeez, Spides,” Deadpool gives a low, pitying whistle.

“No! Well, technically- Ugh, whatever. I’m not telling you my age! Shut up!” Peter slumps in his seat, forcing himself not to talk anymore.

“Fiddlesticks. I almost had ya!” Deadpool grins and snaps his fingers like that was the plan all along. 

Peter, with his new vow of silence, nurses his tea without so much as a nod to the joke. They drink for a while like old grandpas sharing a Scotch, Peter’s mouth set in a grim line. He takes the time to think, considering his options. If he were less tired he would have fled the scene the moment he woke up, but he hasn’t been as spry lately. 

It’s a bad sign. Dangerous. I shouldn’t be here.

Chapter Text

After the tea, Peter takes both of their mugs to the sink, insistent to portray the manners his Aunt May taught him. Deadpool doesn't put up the usual hostly fight, distracted by the time. It's surprising enough that Deadpool has an actual clock on the wall, but the way he can tell what time it really is when the clock is two hours and thirteen minutes slow is just odd. He jumped out of his seat right when he realized, bouncing over to the couch and scooping up the remote on the way.

“They're having Golden Girls re-runs, and you KNOW mama needs her fix,” he shouts proudly like a wine mom, “Cable is a fucking shitshow on a waterslide — no offense to the real deal balls of steel — but it is my ninth circle of Hell and I will get my innards eaten by the devil if I feel like it. He has a very long tongue. The truth one not the dare one, which is in this extremely rare case more fun.”

“I wasn't going to judge you for watching cable TV,” Peter interjects, finally breaking his silence.

“Yeah, right. I bet, Mr. Everybody's Favourite Superhero, three live action remakes and just enough series to count on all your perfect phalanges, favouritism all the way up to his little no lying Pinocchio nose. At least Disney owns me too now. You're not the only one who can sell yourself for cash. My ex was a stripper, I know all the tips and trickshots.”

“If you’re implying I’m rich, you’re in for a rude awakening,” Peter deadpans. He’s about to fill the sink when he notices it’s filled with broken glass, flinching away from the tap. 

“That’s rich. Nothing is rude to me, I’m the rudest ruby rascal there is. And I refuse to awaken to any reality that doesn’t involve gratuitous fanservice para mi. Don’t you dare insinuate that I am not already awakened, woke AF, a total propaganda prop to the biblically insane!”

“Did you break your dishes just because you didn’t want to clean them?” Peter stares into the sink incredulously.

“Yeah. Natch. Unless you want me to say I have anger issues so I smashed ’em, so you know I can smash your — as you said — poverty line, payin’-the-rent ass like in those shitty yaoi mangas.” He clicks his tongue. “Or I forgot they were breakable and tossed ’em in the sink from across the room, can’t be sure.”

“I did not say that.”

“Close enough.”

“Not really,” Peter rolls his eyes, webbing up the glass pieces and tossing them in the trash. He lets the water run a bit until it turns hot and swiftly scrubs the mugs clean. “Just because I don't have the money to be regularly destroying dishes like an asshole doesn't mean I'm dirt poor, obviously.”

“Damn Spidey, you just use your powers casually like that? I really thought those webs were too messy to be useful for anything other than kicking names and taking ass. This whole time I was jealous of the claws Wolvie's got going on, when really I should have been trying to invest in some spider jizz.” 

“First of all, ew. Do you never stop? Second, I don't feel like shit anymore and you're not all that and a bag of chips, so I'm going to dip,” he points to the door over his shoulder as he turns off the tap, already walking backwards to leave. He wants to get out of here as soon as possible. Spider-Man, of all people, would not be caught dead in a secondary location.

“A pun AND a slant rhyme! So you do have some fun packed in there with all that brainy bullshit! Coolio. FYI, no, I never stop, and how could I? I’m like the little engine that could! ‘I think I can,’ therefore I am, yeah? Seeyaround, long legs.” Deadpool waves him off from the couch, probably still absorbed with his reruns.

Peter leaves without hesitation, noticing on his way out just how run down this building is. The door to Deadpool's apartment has damaged wood as if the lock has been blown off and replaced. Maybe more than once. The elevator looks so sketchy it could be from a comic book, so he takes the same stairwell that he must have been carried up before.

Once he's outside, he's pleasantly surprised to recognize the familiar neighbourhood. Spider-Man has memorized the layout of the entire city, but he doesn't frequent every area equally. Since he's all suited up, he swings excitedly around the block to a street vendor he knows will give him a free slice. It's a family run business and he saved their Nonna once from a villain spreading poison gas. Normally he tries not to take free handouts but their food is popular enough to make bank given the fabulous flavour. And money has admittedly been tight lately.

Chomping happily on his pizza, Peter heads in the direction of his apartment. He doesn't love swinging around without a purpose, since the media will always assume he's going to fight something, but walking the streets as Spider-Man is a bit too much of a bother.

Really, he needn't have worried about what the media thinks because as luck would have it, five blocks away from home he senses danger deeper into the city. Even from this distance he can see a gigantic metal robot with arms reminiscent of Doc Ock tearing up the street. He groans, swinging back in the direction he came from.

~°~

“You can’t just end the chapter there, that’s stupid,” Deadpool deadpans, looking more over Spider-Man’s shoulder than at him. Peter bumped into him on the way towards the threat. He had been eating a slice of pizza (from the same place Peter goes to? Maybe), sitting on the edge of the sidewalk and while Spider-Man normally wouldn’t interact, something about the sight irked Peter. The screams of terror and sounds of destruction could be understood perfectly well from here even without a spidey sense, and watching Deadpool sit there, lazily humming to himself had set Peter on edge. He was about to tell him off, or ask him to join the fight, or anything along those lines but those thoughts flew out the window when Deadpool looked up at him and randomly started talking. “That would have been way too short compared to the other updates. I know you’re busy but yeesh, show a little more integrity.”

“What? Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?” He asks genuinely, not sure what to make of the senseless babble.

“You gotta stop cliffhanger-ing the readers, man, they have important things to do,” Deadpool chastises, “they can't be wasting time thinking about the suspense of what happens next!”

“I won't stop,” Peter objects, somewhat correctly interpreting his words to mean ‘don't go do the dangerous thing.’ He shoots out a web, slinging himself towards the action at 40 miles per hour.

“I guess I'm going to have to take it up with the Author,” Deadpool sulks like a little baby. Maybe he should stop looking for external sources to solve his problems for him and just deal with it like the rest of us. 

“Hey, I saw that! Being self aware sucks, you try it for once!” He yells at the sky like a lunatic. “That's rude.” He's going to shut up and go after Spidey now because he is already well on his way to being killed by a massive killing machine.

“Fucking shitfuck,” he swears, sprinting full tilt down the street to catch up. “We will… pick- huff- pick this up later! I'm not- ugh- letting you off the hook that easy!” He lies to himself. “Bitch!!”

Spider-Man has already gotten ahold of one of the machine's limbs when Deadpool gets to the scene. He's managed to keep it occupied in one spot if the torn up street is anything to go by, but his attempts to web it up are failing. A metal arm swings directly towards Deadpool and he barely gets enough grip to hold onto it instead of being blown back as it lifts him up into the air.

From his brief high ground, he can see as Spidey gets flung around like a kite from his string of webs. Every time he gets thrown off he falls right back into the rhythm though, using aerodynamics in a practiced dance no one else knows the secret to. It would be more exhilarating to watch him in action if Deadpool weren't directly involved in said action himself, as he is swiftly reminded when the arm he is on crushes him into the concrete.

“Props for minimizing property damage, Webhead. Most supers aren't into that these days,” he shouts, several bullets whizzing by his ear, “I think your bubble butt distraction technique could use some work though, it's causing a bit of friendly fire in my downstairs!”

“Physique does not equal technique, DP. But I guess you go around hoping your muscles will do the work for you, given your whole ‘guns’ obsession,” Spider-Man sasses back, locking down one of the arms. The smile on his face is audible. He wouldn't admit it, but he always has the most fun taking down criminals and slinging quips.

“Wow, a compliment and kink shaming, two-for-one package deal! Now when do I receive the package part?” Deadpool wheezes through healing lungs. He rolls out of the way of another swing, letting out an ear splitting screech.

Spider-Man jolts in alarm and very narrowly escapes a hit from a metal claw, taking refuge on a nearby rooftop. “What?! Why are you screaming?”

“You just called me a nickname!” Deadpool squeals. “That’s so sweeeeeeet. Betcha didn’t think I’d notice, huh? You like me, don’t you, Spidey? Admit it!”

“No, I didn’t.” He responds firmly, contrasting his actions as he swoops down to focus on the arm that was targeting Deadpool.

“Yes you did! I heard it! And I’m more than twenty-five percent sure it wasn’t just an auditory hallucination, which, knowing me, is a lot,” he lifts his mask to cough up some blood on the concrete, drawing Peter’s attention in measured concern. He grins with gritty, bloody teeth and shouts in a sing-songy voice, “Spidey called me DP, Spidey called me DP!”

Wide-eyed expression visible in his lenses, Peter says nothing as he realizes Deadpool is right. He tears his eyes away from the smile that had him oddly enraptured, distracting himself with a third mechanical limb. The metal bends under his grip as he ropes it into the cocoon of webs he’s slowly creating. He hasn’t needed to make such a massive web in a while and he feels refreshed going over the calculations in the back of his mind as he lets instinct pull him along. Three limbs down, seven more to go. The rest should be easier with that impairment, though.

“You didn’t say anything, that means it’s true,” Deadpool comments, sounding as if he’s surprised. Which doesn’t make sense, because he didn’t sound like he doubted anything he said earlier, Peter thinks, not looking back until a minute later when he hears a subtle, “uh oh.”

He whips his head around just in time to see one of the upper arms stab directly into Deadpool’s chest, claws opening to embed in his torso. In the split second that he freezes at the sight it lifts his body like a ragdoll and slams it into the nearest building, causing an absurd amount of blood splatter. Peter kicks his legs forward in a momentous effort to fly across the few meters distance between them. The claw retracts, dropping Deadpool two stories onto the ground with a wet crunch. His body is limp and, more importantly, silent. That’s how Peter knows it must be a serious injury, veins turning to ice.

His first plan was to put pressure on the wound with his hands to stop the bleeding, but he quickly sees that the hole is big enough to fit both of them in it, much too big to cover. Rattled, he allows his fear to be quelled as he watches the innards stitch themselves together at an unbeatable pace. Instead of helping Deadpool directly, he leaps back in perfect synchronization with the incoming appendage coming for him, sticking to it and riding towards the machine as it flails. 

His mind almost takes a backseat as his vision gets weird, zeroing in on the threat and zipping in between attacks with record speed. His spidey sense increases tenfold, luring him into the rhythm of the fight. Predator and prey. The spider and the bug. Fourth limb trapped, fifth snapped in half, sixth buried in concrete and webs, seventh torn clean off, eighth and ninth twisted into a braid around the third, tenth peeled apart like a banana. By the time he’s done with it, the military invention looks like an art sculpture criticizing the destructive nature of society.

He webs down the bulbous center for good measure, tying it down with layers upon layers of intricate webbing patterns he hadn’t studied. It was gratuitous, redundant use of his powers, but it didn’t even occur to him to stop, cocooning everything but the top when he was snapped out of it by a spluttering breath from below his current rooftop vantage point.

“Spi... dey..?”

Peter physically shakes his head to shake off the odd feeling. He loops his webbing around his leg and rappels down like a ribbon dancer, a trick he learned for when he needs to descend without swinging. Not that he couldn’t swing down diagonally in this situation, but for some reason he doesn’t want to mess up the web he just made. 

“Wow, you..” Deadpool coughs roughly, blood spilling from his lips to join the red waterfall of colour flowing down his chin. He smiles up reverently. “Are you my guardian angel, by chance?”

Peter laughs despite himself, blushing under his suit as he lands on his tiptoes right in front of Deadpool, whose torso has recovered to a blotchy, mottled mess. He can’t say for sure whether that’s the fully healed state or not, but it’s functional at least. “Unfortunately, no. The healing was blessing enough, you barely look injured at this point. If you had angels protecting you, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be in this situation.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. You certainly look like an angel,” Deadpool’s grin only makes the line sound cheesier, “want me to corrupt you?”

Peter rolls his head at the obnoxious wink that only ever makes him think he needs a mask upgrade. “That won’t be necessary, thanks. Nobody with good intentions should be accepting your level of corrup-”

“Spidey.” Deadpool warns gravely, eyes widening. His spidey sense pings.

“What? Too far? I’m sorry.” 

“No, look out!” Deadpool rasps, arms shooting forwards to shove Spider-Man to the side, turning him in the process. The loud pops of gunfire ring out before he can finish his sentence, a machine gun having risen from the top of the bot that Spider-Man failed to cover earlier. His spidey sense intensifies greatly as the threat locks onto him as a target.

Peter’s mind runs a mile a minute, the next few moments happening in slow motion for his processing.

The line of gunfire tears into Deadpool’s freshly healed chest with disquieting accuracy, crossing his shoulders towards Spider-Man as Deadpool pushes off the ground as well as he is able. He takes the brunt of the bullets, using his body as a shield to Spider-Man, but it’s not enough. Three bullets go clear through him and into Peter’s left shoulder, and another four rain on his left side where Deadpool didn’t manage to cover. He managed to dodge being shot in more critical areas, the sense directing him.

He barely registers the searing pain among the shock flooding his system. The force of the blows is more notable, his shoulders flinching back upon impact. Three things slumped at once. Deadpool into Peter, Peter onto the ground from the added weight, and the machine gun as it went offline from having emptied its clip. 

“...Wade.”

Chapter Text

Peter is only met with the kind of silence he had never imagined New York capable of, nor Deadpool for that matter. The terrorist machine has gone fully out of commission, traffic is redirected to other places with how torn up the street is, and any lingering news reporters were sufficiently terrified by the sight of both supers being taken down that they fled along with the rest of the public. 

In his early days, Spider-Man had plenty of fanatic onlookers that would scour the news for signs of his whereabouts so that they could rush to be there when he was. But novelty is a key part of popularity, and in due time, that faded like everything else. Any fans or good samaritans knew better than to be near the kind of fights Spider-Man attracts. They all learned not to call an ambulance if he was injured, since he would refuse treatment from government hospitals anyway, and no one wants an extra charge on their credit card for demanding help.

It’s the combination of these factors that has Spider-Man and Deadpool lying alone, injured, in the middle of destruction and webbing. In silence. Peter waits five long minutes for signs of life from Deadpool to start appearing, readjusting himself to pluck out bullets and put pressure on his injuries in the meantime. By seven minutes Deadpool is breathing, his vital organs having healed first. Peter is surprised to note that it's more comforting than creepy to have the bleeding, wheezing pile of mutated cancer lying in his lap. The steady pulse of breaths and palpable heat of his… fighting partner, his companion, his…

“His what?” Deadpool gurgles, spewing no small amount of blood onto Spider-Man's shoulder.

“What?” Peter frowns, turning his head to hear better and finding that their faces are rather close as Deadpool lifts his head from his shoulder. He definitely doesn't feel embarrassed about it.

“Hey, Websy,” is the response he gets instead, met with that same bloodstained toothy grin from before. If Deadpool notices the inexplicable, arbitrary skip in Peter’s heartbeat, he doesn't show it.

“...hi.” Peter murmurs, unable to help the fondness leaking through his tone. His frontal lobe isn't fully operative, he's just been shot at, okay? “You okay?”

“’M fine, Spides,” Deadpool says softly. Either he's lying or taking advantage of the situation, because he simply sets his head back down on Spider-Man's shoulder. Peter lets him. “You?”

“Yeah, I just love being shot at! It's my favourite pastime,” Peter rolls his eyes and tilts his head sarcastically.

Deadpool snorts. “Kinky.”

Peter huffs. Normally he'd argue, but he's tired, and he can still see Deadpool's digestive system if he let himself look. He looks around at the web he’s created instead. It’s intricate, the geometrical structure is sound, and he’d bet it’s biologically accurate to some form of bug trap-style web. He didn’t know he could do that. He’s not sure he could replicate it now either, even if he did have the necessary web supply. 

The sound of flesh regrowing is a bit sickening in itself and holding Deadpool without saying anything feels too oddly intimate, so Peter circles back in topics. “What were you talking about?”

“Hm?”

“You said ‘his what’, or at least that’s what I thought you said. What is that supposed to mean?” 

“Oh. What did I mean? I don’t remember. Hmm…” He hums and Peter can feel the resonant vibration of it against his chest. “Oh, yeah! Just something the Author said. Didn’t finish their sentence. Really random spot to put an ellipsis if you ask me, was wondering if they could clear that up.”

“The Author?” Peter can’t even pretend not to be confused, but he correctly doubts whether there is a reasonable explanation.

“It’s… it doesn’t matter, it’s a me thing,” Deadpool dismisses, burrowing his face in Spidey’s shoulder.

“Hey!” Peter yelps, ticklish. He cuts his protestation short as Deadpool settles. 

Silence again. He can't deal with all this fucking silence.

“You should give me your number.”

“I'm sorry?” Deadpool jerks his head up again, staring Spider-Man in the face with comically large white eyes. Hah. Didn't know that was how you had to get Deadpool to apologize.

“For what? Give me your number.” Peter asserts.

“No, yeah, of course, just thought I was having a bit of a hallucination there,” he laughs awkwardly, tilting his head to the side and hitting it like he's letting water out of his ear, then pauses. “What did you just say?”

“Oh my god, just- give me your phone, where's your phone?” Peter fusses, mildly annoyed now. He considers patting around for it but thinks twice and holds his hand out expectantly instead.

Deadpool groans, twisting a little to reach into his most accessible pocket. It looks as if the phone should barely have fit in there, but there's no point in questioning it when the phone is supplied in Spider-Man’s hand.

“Thank you,” he politely mumbles out of habit, punching in and dialing his own work cell number. After pulling out his own phone and confirming that Deadpool's isn't set to no Caller ID, he hangs up. “There, now I have your number. I'll text you later to confirm and then we can give each other status reports this way. I hope you are a diligent responder.”

Deadpool looks vaguely stunned, not moving at all to take his phone back when Peter offers it to him. He sighs, putting it back in Deadpool’s pocket himself, and Deadpool flinches.  

“What?” Peter asks petulantly, unnerved by the blank staring.

Deadpool says nothing. Great. Super helpful. I'm so glad I'm trying to befriend a lunatic. He blinks. This time, Peter has nothing to be jealous about because it looks plain creepy.

“Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?” Deadpool mumbles instinctively. It shouldn't relieve Peter as much as it does.

“Blinking, with the mask. It's creepy.”

“What do you want me to do, keep my eyes open all the time? They'll get dry! If you had some sick intentions of torturing me I'd have thought you'd mention it sooner.”

“I’m not trying to- your eyes aren’t… you know what, nevermind.” Peter glances down to assess Wade’s wounds, but he looks mostly unscathed now aside from the shifting, mottled skin. At this point, Peter is the one who should be cradled for his injuries.

“You keep looking me up and down like that and all my blood is going to go to much less productive places,” Deadpool groans, and Peter’s head whips up with a flush.

“You’ve healed.” He states blankly. “You should leave.”

“Okay,” Deadpool agrees. Really, that easily? “You should too. Wanna come with me so that you can heal better elsewhere?” He says as he gets up off of Spider-Man, holding out his hand in an offer to help him up. There it is.

“I’ll be fine,” Peter shakes his head, still taking Deadpool’s hand and pushing himself up. Deadpool’s hold is sturdy, and he has to let go first.

“You sure? That medkit might actually be pretty useful this time.” Deadpool prods, both figuratively and literally, poking Spider-Man in his unharmed arm.

“I have healing powers too, you know?” Peter sidesteps, both figuratively and literally, away from the nudge and the truth of that argument.

“I know.”

Those two words were heavy with meaning, and yet he says nothing more, dropping his hands and just standing there. Steady and sure, he waits for Spider-Man to make a move. But Peter doesn’t understand why, doesn’t know what move to make other than the one he intended. What he always does.

He turns and leaves. Without looking back he can tell Deadpool remained standing there, watching his back as he went. Once he’d gained some distance and turned a corner, he allowed himself to nurse his shoulder, taking the longer and sketchier but more secluded route home.

Under the illusion of safety that his disorganized apartment provides, Peter finally relaxes. He takes a nice long, hot shower, washing away all blood and grime. He relishes in the muggy air of the bathroom afterwards, oddly unique to his routine. Following a shave and some gauze and disinfectant from his own cupboard, he flops onto his bed. Phone in hand, he lies face-down for a while, willing his body to heal faster. He hates trying to hide damage and discomfort when walking around as Peter.

He flips over with a sigh, eyeing his phone tiredly as he unlocks it with one outstretched hand. Opening the phone app, he taps on the most recent call and adds it as a contact. He deliberates for a minute on what name to leave, typing and backspacing Deadpool and Wade Wilson before settling on DP. He goes through a similar process with his first text, eventually giving up on trying to seem any sort of way. Peter isn’t your typical social guy, but he is loath to break his promises. Deadpool’s answer is near immediate.

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Hello. This is Spider-Man. You should save this contact as something memorable but vague in identification.

 

DP: hi babee. kk

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: No.

 

DP: wdym

(read, 5:22 pm)

Peter rolls his eyes, turning his phone off and dropping it on the bed beside him. He has no reason to dignify that with a response. This is his work phone, not his personal phone, and he will uphold the importance of that distinction whether his personal phone has been sitting dusty in a drawer with no messages for months now or not. That said, he can’t resist picking his phone back up when it buzzes again, a small spike in adrenaline. 

It’s been some time since he’s texted someone without an ongoing purpose, so he settles for a professional tone rather than risk seeming awkward. He’s not sure it works.

DP: :(

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: You know what.

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Don't text this number unless it's for work. I don't want your spam.

 

DP: wut kinda werk

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Your spelling is atrocious. Crime fighting work. Say you won't. 

 

DP: wont

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Ok. Good. Bye.

 

DP: byeeee bb

Considering his promise fulfilled, Peter shuts off the phone again and curls up, tucking his legs up to his chest. Normally he would try for a more chiropractor-approved position, or at least bother to use his blankets and pillows, but right now this feels more right. Safe, even if it means pressing on his healing arm. He’s tired. He wants to nap. He falls asleep very quickly, a blessing he is not often gifted with. It feels good, and he sinks into a deep sleep.

Chapter Text

Things go back to normal for a few weeks. Spider-Man keeps up his regular patrol, Peter handles (see: stresses about) the financials, and Deadpool. Well. Deadpool has been keeping his head down, for the most part. He’s sticking around for now, and sometimes Peter sees him when he goes out on patrol. The first time, he saw him in an alley beating up a creep who, presumably, was responsible for the unconscious stripper lying against the dumpster. Spider-Man swung in, webbed him up, and swung out. He didn’t really leave time for a “hello.”

The second time, he caught Deadpool about to blow a lawyer’s brains out, and instinctively snatched his gun. Peter is an advocate for people going through the justice system, but he knows in hindsight that lawyer must have too many connections on the inside to get any correctional punishment. He regrets intervening, but simultaneously feels guilty for having that regret.

The third, fourth and fifth times, Peter starts to suspect that Deadpool is following his patrol schedule as he shows up earlier and sticks around until later in the night. Previously, Peter would have thought he was being stalked, but he's a bit startled to realize that he feels respected instead. They start to work together on catching criminals, even grabbing hotdogs after a shift. Normally Peter feels uncomfortable ordering more than six, but when Deadpool walks up to the vendor and asks for 24 to share, he doesn't correct it.

“Do you always talk that much when you work?” Surprisingly, it is Wade that asks this before consuming his third hotdog.

“I should be asking you the same thing. Don't most contract killers prefer to hide their voice?”

“I'm just chatty,” the Merc with a Mouth shakes off his deflection with disinterest. “But you don't talk much when you're not arachnid-ing crooks. You don't play with your food.”

“Arachnid-ing?” Peter asks before immediately realizing it was a replacement for ‘bugging.’ He snorts. “Never mind, I got it. It's not like I see criminals like food, though.”

“You sure? You've got that whole ‘you're trapped in my sexy slinky silk web, now I'm going to eat you’ vibe going on,” Wade quirks his brows up and down suggestively, gesturing.

“So, just to be clear, you think my vibe is cannibalism,” Peter rephrases, not really offended by the insinuation. Should I be offended?

“Okay, no, but did you see that web you pulled out of your ass on that walking machine gun?! Looked an awful lot like prey all fancied up like that. I swear I started hearing boss fight music straight out of Resident Evil.”

“I don't pull webs out of my ass, I'm not an actual spider.”

“Uno, it's an expression, dummy. And thirdly, how am I supposed to know how spidery you are? It comes first in the title,” he points out, somehow making that sound like a rational argument.

“Don't you think Man Spider sounds even more spidery?”

“Ah,” Wade pauses mid hotdog bite. “You're right.”

Deciding it best to end on a high note, Peter finishes his last hotdog (he had scarfed them down much faster in between speaking) with the satisfaction of winning an argument. He pulls on his mask and stands, thanking Wade for his time and the hotdogs. This time, he waits for a goodbye before leaping off the building to head home.

The sixth time, Deadpool is already in the middle of a drug bust when Spider-Man gets there. That's right, Deadpool, not Wade. Unlike what Peter accidentally calls him when he sees that Deadpool isn't wearing his mask. It looks like his head was blown off and he had to regrow it, but that's not a very pleasant image so Peter ignores it. Deadpool is out of commission in the fight for about five minutes as Peter's misstep sinks in, staring dazedly forward. 

“Your name is public domain. And it just feels more personable, and I can see your face, so… It was an accident. Won't be happening again!” Peter explains, though it does nothing to stop Deadpool from lording it over him.

“Do you do that with everybody? Call them by their name when you're talking to their face?” 

“Yes, of course,” Peter tilts his head, confused. It's common courtesy. “Especially villains, even with their masks on, it can throw them off. Also letting them choose their own crime names is too validating, they need to be reminded they're people like the rest of us.”

“That explains a lot.”

“What do you mean?”

But Deadpool never answers that question, redirecting his attention to the evidence strewn about. It must be a purposeful distraction, directly contradicting when he encouraged conversation by saying that it helps him focus.

The evidence might be useful, though, considering this is the kind of case police tend to botch in favour of their own drug ring links. It looks small scale so they can pass it off as such, even if there's clearly a trail to follow. Peter doesn't press, looking through a filing cabinet and only finding rather ambiguous instructions and names. 

Both he and Deadpool agree to keep an eye out for this one and try to determine gang and/or cult affiliation. There were no obvious signs of initiation like tattoos but the lackeys they fought were pretty willing to give their lives for some petty crime. Leaning more towards cult, then. Aside from speculating, Wade doesn't really say much, which is unusual for all the times Peter has spent with him.

“Are you really going to be this quiet the whole time just because you don't want to answer my question?”

“Which question s'at?” Deadpool's mask pops out from behind a shelving unit.

“Read it back,” Peter sasses, only half sarcastic. He's picked up on some of Wade's unique figures of speech and narrowed down the more prominent delusions. Like talking as if they're in a book. He was trying to lighten things by building an inside joke, but it doesn't land the way he meant it.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, no, I was just thinking,” Wade says half-heartedly, still stuck in his thoughts.

“Woah, pretty dangerous! Don't exert yourself.” Peter jokes, but again it doesn't land. Ugh, why? Why am I so off-beat today?

Wade frowns. Shit. Fuck. Peter, you asshole.

“I-I wasn’t- I didn’t mean-”

“It’s fine, dude, whatever. I get it.”

“No, I’m sorry,” he insists, awkwardly pushing the apology out, “what were you thinking about?”

Apparently all his thinking has led to some sort of conclusion, because he straightens up and faces Peter head on. He doesn’t sound hurt, or accusing, or even confused when he asks: “Am I like them?”

“Huh?” Peter wants to smack himself for sounding the exact same way Wade did a minute ago.

“Am I a villain to you, Spider-Man?”

“You what?” He hadn’t realized until this moment that all of Wade’s nicknames for Spider-Man had grown on him. It feels startlingly foreign to hear his normal superhero moniker from the man. Forgive him for being a little less mindful of what comes out of his mouth. “Um, no?”

“No? I’m not? So then what am I?” The questions turn interrogative but Deadpool’s stance remains unchanged.

“You’re..” Spider-Man’s mask is pinched around the eyebrows and lines of his frown, “I don’t know, you’re a mercenary. Shouldn’t you tell me your own job description?”

“I wasn’t asking you what I am,” Deadpool sighs as if he’s missing obvious subtext, making Peter feel his brain frying in real time. Am I having a stroke? Like, again?

“So, you were asking me…?”

“I wasn’t asking you what I am,” Wade repeats, and Peter already has his mouth open to gripe about it when he continues quietly, “I was asking you what you think I am.”

There’s a barely perceptible duck of his head that Peter interprets as embarrassment for saying the quiet part out loud, not that he has any read on Deadpool’s emotions otherwise. As much clarity as it adds to the question, Peter still isn’t sure what else to say. Deadpool is a mercenary, yes. A hired killer, sure, but that feels like the wrong answer. Is there a wrong answer? Villain, no. Hero, no…

He must have been quiet for too long, appearing troubled by the question, since Wade elaborates. “Do you think of me as a villain, and just treat me like a person because that’s how you treat everyone? Villain is a job description to you, because everyone is a person to you, even if they suck. Even if they’re evil, or vile, or gross, or me. Is that how you see me, Spider-Man? That is what I asked you.”

“I wouldn’t call you a villain.” He’s able to say definitively this time. Confidently, happy even, that he has an answer. It doesn’t satisfy Wade.

“So what would you call me?” He doesn't seem annoyed or insecure. So why is he pestering?

“...”

“Spider-Man.”

“Deadpool.”

“Would you call me by my name while I’m wearing the mask, just to throw me off?” It’s not about the villain thing anymore. It’s grown beyond that. Peter knows, because his voice is full of amusement, and quite possibly flirtation.

“...No.” Peter lies, deciding that it’s an honest response to the flirt if not the question. Spider-Man’s moral code can allow for some shaking off of solicitation.

“Awful hesitant there, spinster,” he laughs as Peter chokes at the nickname, sidling up to him, “would you also call me by my name even when it won't throw me off?”

“If you were going to decide the answer for yourself, why bother asking me?!” Peter huffs. He hates being caught in a lie, especially one he made to save him from humiliation. “It's normal to use someone's name. Stop making this into something it's not.”

“I barely even said anything!” Deadpool protests while draping an arm over Spider-Man's shoulders. “If anything, your insistence to deny it is what's making an insinuation.”

He smirks down at Spider-Man like he's got it all figured out. As if. Despite the annoyance, it's a relief that he isn't upset anymore. If it takes Peter being the butt of the joke to keep the peace, he'll let it slide this time.

He shakes off Wade's weight, which.. wow, what the fuck? He can actually kinda feel it? Having super strength is a funny thing to get used to, but once you're used to it, you get surprised in the opposite direction. Deadlifts are nothing, but a semi-truck can give him that burn. Suppose a 6’2” guy made of pure muscle would have some heft to him, though Peter's strength has made him reliant on his sense and reflexes to gauge his own force. 

That and his touch starvation give him pause, but he quickly recovers, shoving Wade's arm off of himself. His stomach does a weird flip flop and his shoulders feel unnaturally light. Really, Parker? That's all it took to get you feeling weird?

Peter shakes his head, stepping out of the room before Wade can comment on any of it. “I think I've seen all there is to see, and I've got somewhere to be, so…” 

He turns around, walking backwards and tapping at an imaginary watch on his wrist. “You finish up here, I'll send the cops over in an hour or two. Text me if you find anything.”

~°~

A few weeks later they have a bust that has similar files, but he's not sure what to make of it yet. They still haven't found anything useful. At some point, coincidence became commonplace and helping each other out became patrolling together. They fight crime (by Spider-Man’s rules), grab a bite to eat (Wade's treat), and sometimes even swap some intel! Whether Wade is or is not single handedly responsible for the few extra hours of sleep and the few hundred bucks Peter’s managed to spare himself lately, he doesn't dwell on it enough to think about it. 

But the most surprising development (depending on whom you ask) are the conversations that have nothing to do with work or polite small talk. The rants and arguments about the most unimportant things that Peter would never have thought to mention. 

He's fascinated to discover how many opinions he has without ever thinking about them. Like, which is better, ketchup or strawberry jam? He would never have bothered to decide between the two until he was asked. And then he was asked what makes better fake blood and he could barely restrain himself from going so full-on chemistry nerd that it'd narrow down his identity. And Wade just… Listened. And laughed. And smiled. And asked another stupid question.

They're not friends. No, surely. Not yet. Peter hasn't entirely decided if he's willing to make a friend. They're friendly. Just as Spider-Man ought to be.

“You totally wanna be BFFs with me, Spideykins!” Wade accuses him randomly as they settle on a rooftop with their takeout, taking a break from looking through files for a hint of anything useful.

He wishes Wade's forwardness didn't include trying to call him out on shit. How presumptuous can you get? How rude to say that out loud? How to tell him all of this distaste for his assumptions in one word? “Cringe.”

“Don’t kill the cringe, kill the part of you that cringes!”

“I’m pretty sure you killed both of yours,” Peter interjects through a mouthful of taco.

“Touchie.”

He raises an eyebrow, lens stretching up with it, “I wasn’t being touchy.”

“No. Touchie, like fencing?”

“Ah, you mean touché.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Um,” Peter honestly doesn’t know. It does translate to ‘touched,’ so, “the French, I guess?”

“I never liked the French anyways,” Deadpool shrugs, “the Québécois are too close to home and the fancy schmancy Francies are too busy fucking to give a damn.”

Peter laughs. He laughs a lot more these days, on average. If he had to estimate, Peter would guess that he used to laugh about once every two weeks. His life had gotten pretty bleak. This week he laughed four times. That’s a 700% increase.

They text a lot more, too. Rather, Peter does. Wade never texts first, which would be surprising if there weren’t a few glaring reasons not to do that. One, the likelihood of annoying Peter is automatically 90%. Two, he was warned not to spam and if he texts first without a response that is obviously his default course of action. Three, he wouldn’t want to take his chances in general. Peter has gotten to know a bit more about how precise and cautious Deadpool can be. Yes, he’s callous with his own body and words, but he’s meticulous with his work. If befriending Spider-Man is the goal he’s made it out to be, taking a laser-focused approach is just like him.

Four, he may or may not have reasoned out that he’s one of the few people Peter even talks to on a weekly basis. Spider-Man’s patrol schedule is no joke, and in following it, Deadpool got the full experience of just how little free time he actually has. Keep in mind that he needs to get paid for doing something else and, bam, correct hypothesis: no social life.

He can tell that Deadpool wants to be friends, even as civilian Wade. He can tell how much effort he's putting in. It's flattering, more than anything, and you know what?

Peter does want to be friends. He hasn't had a close friend in ages and he craves a more human connection. He doesn't want to go back to weeks where his longest conversations are being yelled at by Jameson. He'd reverted back into that geeky kid that got shoved into lockers and laughed at more than laughed with, except as an adult his awkwardness comes across as cold and standoffish.

He misses the way that being Spider-Man used to open him up. Misses having friends and a girlfriend before the reality of being a superhero caught up to him. Misses being able to navigate conversations with vulnerability. (Just kidding! He never quite had that one down.)

As it is, no matter how much he misses it, no matter how much he wants a friend too, he's still Peter Parker on the inside. Unable to start a conversation without an obvious purpose. 

So, after their patrol, Peter gets back to his apartment at 2:10 am. Crawling through the window, his exhausted form is met with oppressive silence and darkness. He pulls out his phone as he gets ready for bed, just for a small source of light, just for something to do, just… he texts details of the case that they already went over in person as a reminder.

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: There's a meet up happening in the Bronx on the 30th. Need to find out more specifics before we infiltrate, lmk if you get any intel.

 

DP: aww u trust me

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: I don’t trust you as far as I could throw you.

So annoying. Why does he always have to point these things out like he knows for sure?

Peter doesn't want to appear too vulnerable. Too inconsistent with the persona he started with. What would people think of him then?! He pretends not to be aware of how far he could realistically throw Deadpool.

DP: u wna c how far u cn thro me, bby? cuz i bet its rly long. like my d 8==D

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Omg just shut up. You know it’s a figure of speech. Also never use that emoticon ever again.

 

DP: or u cud jus thro me on ur bed, its ez tht way ;)

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Kys 

(read, 2:18 am)

Peter is a bit irritated by the endless flirtation, but he didn’t expect Deadpool to stop responding. Was that too extreme? The guys in his coding classes used to text “kys” as a joke all the time, but maybe that doesn’t transfer here.

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Hey, I'm sorry, I just got annoyed. I shouldn't have said that.

(delivered, 2:30 am)

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: I mean it's obviously not serious but still.

(delivered, 2:30 am)

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Deadpool?

(delivered, 2:31 am)

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Is something wrong?

(delivered, 2:31 am)

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Are you still awake?

(delivered, 2:32 am)

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Wade?

(delivered, 2:33 am)

Wade doesn’t respond for another fifteen minutes of waiting and checking, and Peter gets frustrated that this is even weighing on him. It’s not that big of a deal, Deadpool makes suicide jokes all the time. But why? Why can’t Peter get this social shit right, even when he’s talking to a crazy person? Why does he always feel like the crazy one? Why can’t Deadpool just pick up the goddamn fucking phone already?! 

Loneliness and exhaustion can do strange things to people. Peter wants to punch something for real, but he can’t be wasting deposit money. So it festers and he fusses, writhing in the sheets and scrubbing at his hair. He settles, unaware of the tears on his cheeks, feeling like a troubled boy in a cocoon of blankets. 

He goes to sleep like that, crying and a little angry with his brows drawn together. 

Whatever, it's probably fine.

Chapter Text

Peter jolts awake to his alarm at 7:00 am, an unfortunately early start to his day because he has to get to a part-time tutoring gig that’s covering half his rent right now. His body feels stiff, particularly his neck, and he’s practically shivering in spite of the layers of blankets surrounding him. He swats at his phone to turn off the alarm and pulls it towards himself, not noticing that his fingers stuck to it rather than grabbing.

Blinking blearily, the notifications on his screen snap his consciousness to attention. DP. Wade texted back. While unlocking his phone, Peter’s mind runs in circles over what he might have said. Was there an emergency? Is there still? Or is he fine, and making fun of Peter for calling him Wade again? Oh God, why did I try calling him Wade again?  

But no, it wasn’t any of that. At 5:05 am, Wade sent:

DP: im ok

DP: sry 2 worry u bb boy

DP: say wtv u wna

DP: guess ur the 1 asleep rn

DP: gn

DP: hope u sleep well <3

It’s really not okay, the way Peter’s heart pinches when he wanted it to relax. Something grips at his chest when he reads “bb boy,” and it doesn’t feel like the usual irked tension. His eyes fixate on the heart as the feeling squeezes harder at his own. It should be a relief. Wade is okay. So…

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Why did it take you so long to respond? What happened?

 

DP: nthn rly. its nbd.

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: ?

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: That doesn’t answer my question.

 

DP: i was tired

I retract every time I’ve ever thought Wade was annoying. This is the most annoying thing Wade has ever done. 

He can’t prove it, but something about Wade’s texts is off. It feels like he’s being lied to, and that makes him want to claw his skin off.

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Okay… well, if something’s up, lmk. I’m not trying to be your boss, if you encounter any threats I can help out too.

 

DP: ok boss

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: 🙄

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: I mean it. You can tell me.

 

DP: sir yes sir

Peter snorts despite himself. This idiot. Even when he's being annoying he's charming.

He sets the issue aside, figuring he can't get more out of Wade right now. The fact that it took him a couple texts to make his deflection into a joke feels important, or maybe Peter’s just reading into things too much.

Still, he drafts another text as he prepares to hop into the shower. Wade's early morning texts need some amendments, and he has a morality itch to scratch. He turns on the tap while doing so, making the terrible decision to keep his phone anywhere near water.

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: You didn’t need to apologize. I'm worried because I ca

He flushes, panicking. He'd pressed send while trying to tap backspace, preoccupied with adjusting the water temperature. When he'd finished typing “care,” he realized it didn't sound the way he wanted it to. It's too much, he thinks, but he's got to own it now. He ignores DP’s typing bubble and the shower, sticking both hands out to type efficiently.

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Sorry, accidentally hit send too soon there. I'm worried because I care, so you don't have to protect me from my own concerns. I said something I shouldn't have, I'm the one apologizing here.

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: I shouldn't say whatever I want to. I've been rude to you. I'll do better.

 

DP: Thx

That certainly isn't what Peter was expecting. He expected more self deprecating jokes or making fun of Peter saying he cares. Especially because he must have been typing something else before. The sincerity almost makes him feel worse, if it weren't for how it makes the burden of guilt ease.

DP: ur fine bbcakes i can handle rude. wouldn't b u w/o it

DP: dont go all weird n polite on me now

DP: lemme keep my save file

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: I'll have you know I'm a very polite person, in polite company. 

 

DP: ig we know wut the prob is then

DP: but i like knowin a diff side of u frm others

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: If you call yourself a problem again I'm deleting your save file. 

 

DP: nooo y

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Only one of us is allowed to insult you or I'll feel bad. Your choice.

 

DP: fuckkk. fine id rthr keep the file. i dont wna do tht boss fight again

This whole bit about files has Peter's mind swirling back to the case, something tugging insistently at him through the fog until it clicks. Files, deleted, before the boss fight… oh my god.

Suddenly, his mind supplies him with memories of a massive drug bust, the one he'd sent files to the police about the day he nearly fell off the skyscraper. It's connected! This is even bigger than he thought. That one had much more information about what he thought was their base of operations. But now, considering the spread of small cases they've been collecting, he's willing to bet it's undercity black market level. They probably have several home bases in discreet contact.

He'd forgotten to follow up with the police amidst all the chaos, but now he realizes he hadn't seen anything about it in the news, even though it's a month and a half later. There's no way their search should take that long with no press. They're not pursuing it. They're burying it.

Right under Spider-Man’s nose. What the hell were they thinking? They've gotten cocky. It's been a long time since he's had a mission on this side of the line: Infiltrate the NYPD. It’s a good thing he got a partner recently. He’s going to need Wade in on this. 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: OMG

 

DP: is tht a ur stupid shut up omg or a dont remind me omg

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Neither.

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: I have a lead.

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: I did a bigger drug case just like this before we started investigating. Handed shit over to the police, but they haven't done anything.

 

DP: oh hell yea

DP: acab arc lets gooo

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Gonna do some digging. Don't go fucking with anyone without letting me know first. I'll keep you posted.

 

DP: aye aye captn

DP: wudnt dare fk w any1 but u <33

(read, 7:11 am)

~°~

After the shower, the perils of public transport, and tutoring, Peter goes out with his suit and camera to take enough shots for the next two weeks and then some. The editing process is achingly disproportionate to taking the candids and he spends about five hours perfecting them with backup options in case Jameson is in one of those moods where he has to say no to what he first receives, which is most of the time. Typically Peter wouldn't mind editing, he'd zone in on the work and get it done much faster, but the shining distraction of a case brewing in the back of his mind ensures that it is tedious.

Once that's done, he's able to focus on the work he really wants to do without interruption. He stays up for several nights in a row covertly investigating the NYPD, grabbing food and coffee in bulk at irregular intervals. It takes about as much hacking to cover his tracks as it does to get the actual information in the system. He revisits the first place he’d reported on a brief patrol, but it’s a hollowed out facility now. In hindsight, leaving Wade to finish up that filing room was a bad idea; Peter trusts him to have looked carefully but he’d be happier knowing he’d scoured the files himself.

He wanted to figure out a plan before consulting Wade, but it looks like he might need an extra brain on the investigation part as well as backup on the end mission. Some people think Deadpool is dumb. In his opinion, those people are infinitely dumber than Deadpool will ever be. Having someone who thinks so differently, so creatively and with years of military training, is one of the best possible assets to bounce ideas off of.

Less nervous from professional detachment and pure exhaustion, he shoots Wade a text to meet up with him for regular patrolling again on Wednesday. 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: Finished digging for now. Meet me at 7 by the hotdog cart in Central Park, you know the one. Shouldn't have you climbing buildings every time.

 

DP: id clim evry mountn for u spidey

DP: ford evry stream

DP: follow evry 🌈

DP: 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

 

BABY BOYYY 🤤🥵: I'll take that as “I'll be there.”

 

DP: ur intellect is crzy

Wade shows up with the entire upper torso of his suit exposed. It looks like it was due to an explosion he's fully recovered from, singed edges framing his scarred pecs. Peter stares at the exposed skin… a bit… too long…

“Wha- um.” Peter opens his mouth and immediately regrets it. He didn't have to bring it up. He doesn't have to keep looking either, but here we are.

“What happened? Funny story, could you believe I was giving this adorable guy a hug, and by guy I mean porcupine, and he just tore my suit to sheds! It was so tragic.” Wade claims, which is obviously a lie. 

“Really? Because it looks like it was a grenade.” 

“So you couldn’t believe it. Damn. I thought that was a good one!”

“What happened?”

“Remember when I had my mask off and you called me Wade because it was more ‘personable?’ I was just testing whether it matters where or how much skin I show to earn personhood,” He's joking, but Wade seems very uncomfortable with the staring considering how he rocks on the balls of his feet. Shit. Damn. Peter makes a point to look at his mask instead. “The plan is to show up naked with just the mask one day to see if the inverse is true, but I didn’t want to dive in the deep end.”

“Wade,” Peter calls admonishingly. He partially wanted to scold Wade for threatening public indecency, and even-more-partially wanted to see the reaction. 

He is not disappointed. Wade is clearly thrilled, grinning from ear to ear and forgetting his anxiety. Peter lets go of trying to find out what really happened for fear of ruining the effect.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. It's not like this fic is rated G,” Wade approaches and claps him on the shoulder, unable to tamp down the grin. 

“Uh huh.” He nods dumbly. Is “fic” a shorthand for his fictional reality delusion? He'll have to add that one to his mental Deadpool Dictionary. “Let's start patrol, I'll tell you what I found as we go.”

As they visit all the crime hotspots, catching petty crooks, Peter explains what he knows of the drug production facility, files he managed to recover, and a few police interview transcripts that sound related. The case has been shelved, so no fresh eyes will be looking at it unless someone on the inside is paranoid.

Eventually, they do decide that a higher vantage point is best and Peter wills his thoughts to be silent. Deadpool can handle scaling buildings and leaping from them on his own, but having him climb his own way up is objectively inefficient when Peter can just take him himself. Pressed against his chest, the heat seems so much more than usual even when it should be imperceptible. He has to take a steadying breath when they reach the top, releasing Wade from his oddly grippy hold so they can scour separately. 

The adrenaline of swinging around and intrigue of the investigation allow him to ignore the weight of his eyelids. It's not a quiet night, a school lighting up in flames before an hour has passed. Unfortunately, Peter is distracted. So is Wade. The same cause, for different reasons.

When he lands in front of Wade for the first time in a week, descending from the lamppost where he had tied up the seventeen year old amateur arsonist, his feet fall heavy in his boots. Emergency services will have the fire covered, so his wandering eye swivels back to where it defaulted every time Wade crossed his line of sight.

“Hey, my eyes are up here man,” Wade interrupts his thoughts with a wavering chuckle.

“Right, yup, sorry.” Peter snaps to attention and blushes as Wade laughs harder. “I’m just, uh. A bit concerned. That’s all.”

“Why, is my skin bothering you?” Again with that cryptic tone of voice that sits somewhere around true neutral, insecure, and threatening. He hadn’t heard that in a while.

“No! No, of course not, it’s not that.” Well, maybe, but not like that. Wait, no. I don’t know. What the hell is wrong with me? At least give an excuse! He opens his mouth and a slew of words tumble their way out. “I was concerned for the well-being of my friend, not being all.. Geared up as usual. You’re leaving yourself open to attack. I know you’re used to taking damage, but still, that can’t be comfortable. Don’t you have any other suits to change into? You should go home and do that first.”

Wade doesn’t immediately reply. Is he not buying it?  

“Right,” he mumbles. “Well, no way I'm letting you patrol without me!”

“But-”

“No buts! Even though we could have lots of butts, if we wanted, because as I said this is not for general audiences!”  Wade marches over and links his arm with Peter's in a confident power pose. “You said you were worried for my safety? Surely you wouldn't let a lady walk home alone at night.”

“You're a guy,” Peter questions more than says. A massive, muscular, unkillable, trained and experienced assassin of a man, at that. Probably the person you'd least have to be concerned about holding his own in a street fight. Yet, Peter sees Wade pause and pauses at the same time. 

“Uh, I'd be honoured.” He amends quickly, raising his arm in a gentlemanly fashion even though they're already linked. He gives himself the ick so badly that it takes Aunt May's voice in his head softly telling him mind your manners for him not to physically cringe.

Wade, on the other hand, must not have found it as cringy. He sucks in a little breath and smiles, wrapping his arm around Peter’s more elegantly. 

Peter remembers the last time he stood like this, posing to take photos for prom. He stood in Uncle Ben's old blue suit, hemmed by Aunt May to fit him just a bit better, though his shoulders couldn't fill it out yet. The shoulder pads dwarfing him felt important despite the embarrassment, like Uncle Ben was really there to pat him on the back. He had a simple rose boutonniere pinned to his lapel from MJ, who had draped herself beautifully over his arm in her similarly red dress.

His heart thumps as he reminisces, distracted from where Wade is leading him. It’s been years since he allowed himself to take a backseat like this, to look back. He was afraid that remembering would be the same as reliving it — the nightmares, the heartache, the absence. But it's not. Maybe because Wade is here.

He looks down at their conjoined arms, the familiar bright red he was always drawn to. MJ's hair, Gwen's lipstick, Spider-Man's base suit, all red. You're a guy, his mind echoes. It sounds like Flash Thompson making fun of him. He and Eugene are fine now, but he can never seem to forget. “You're a guy, why are you doing sissy shit?”

Why not?

“You a pansy, Parker? Peter Pansy Parker, fuckin’ geeky pervert.”

He's pulled from his thoughts as Wade stops them in front of an apartment complex, a much nicer one than last time. Good thing, too, since reminiscing can only stay nice for so long apparently. He looks up at Wade, who isn't paying attention. He's busy buzzing them into the building and dragging Peter towards the elevator. His thoughts get the best of him again. Open the floodgates, expect the flood.

“Leave him alone Flash, even if he were gay, he certainly doesn't like you.” Penny. She was only nice to him that one time, and only because Flash had broken up with her the day before.

“I'm not gay.” Peter stuttered. It was a mortifying habit to have in high school.

“Duh. Otherwise you wouldn't be staring at Mary Jane all day.” Penny tossed her hair over her shoulder, walked away with Flash, and basically never talked to him again after that.

But what if I am?

The elevator dings for the 20th floor, and they step out into the hallway.

What if I am gay, just a little bit?

Wade unlocks his apartment, ushering Peter in so he can lock the door behind them.

Would that be so bad?

Caught up in his thoughts, his unfocused gaze drifts to what is quickly becoming home base. At least it's in line thematically. It's not really as damning when you consider that they're right in his eyeline, right in front of him. He isn't genuinely staring this time, but it doesn't work in his favour, his lost-in-thought face unfortunately equivalent to RBF.

“Can't appreciate a nice boob window when this is what you're working with, eh?” Wade sighs, dejected. 

“Of course I can,” Peter scoffs, halfway zoned back in. “I've been looking at it all night you… know…”

Peter trails off as he begins to regret the hole he's digging. My grave, I hope. He really ought to get rid of that contrarian instinct. It wasn't so bad when it meant avoiding a few extra blows from a pissed off villain, but causing your only current social relationship strain is a concerning enough side effect for an intervention. He scrambles for any reason to give.

“That… Texture is just so fascinating. I want to study it.” Um, ew? What a lame excuse. Who does he think he's kidding?

Oh right, this guy. Wade looks hopeful, at least. “Really? You wanna, uh, ahem, touch it?”

He was joking. Obviously. Clearly joking. Trying to lighten the mood since he brought it down. But you know what they say about men with a saviour complex, or really just men, in general; they only hear what they want to hear. 

“Yeah!” Bit squeaky Parker, tone it down. “I mean, sure.”

Or maybe the more important saying would be that they say what they mean to say, which is to say, that they betray their own thoughts(-ay. Anyone else's brain feel tongue-tied? Ig-pay atin-lay — anyway…).

“Go for it,” Wade breathes, teetering on a nervous laugh. He puffs out his chest, which is just cruel, really.

Peter reaches out, only noticing that his hand is covered by his suit when he can see it. He doesn’t hesitate to pull off his glove, ignoring his usual concerns of revealing new parts of himself, the functions of his suit, or any vulnerability to his organic web shooters. He holds it in his mouth like he often does when working in the suit, thinking nothing of it except for Wade’s gasp. He raises up on his tiptoes, leaning in for some unknown draw as his fingertips dance over the delicate pattern. The skin is rough and dry, Peter’s adhesive qualities immediately catching on it. 

Wade’s heavy breath causes it to snag and pull, and he hisses softly. Peter stops in his tracks, tilting his head up to glance anxiously at Wade’s face for a reaction. He’s met with the dissatisfaction of a mask, instinctively moving to pull it up before Wade can intercept him. The moment a sliver of his neck is revealed, sweat dripping down the nape as Wade’s shoulders tense in surprise, Peter’s mind screams at him.

NO.

The arm raising his mask spews webs over his neck to cover the area. Peter darts, skittering into a bathroom and webbing the door closed. 

“Um, Spides?” Wade shouts after him. Oh yay, he’s not strangled. “What was that?”

Good question, Wade. Good fucking question.

Chapter Text

Peter tries very hard to calm the racing of his heart, but it persists with a vengeance as Wade approaches the bathroom door.

“You all good in there, Itsy Bitsy?” His voice is low, and soft.

“I don't know what that was.” Peter admits quietly. It has taken him until this moment to realize that he's scared. He doesn't know what's been going on with himself lately and it feels like his control is slipping further by the day.

“Okay. Me neither.” 

He wasn't asking for help. He wasn't asking for Wade to know the answer. But he didn't think that Wade admitting he doesn't have one would help at all. It does. He's not alone.

“Are you going to come out?”

He takes a deep breath. His body certainly doesn't know what it wants, or if it does it's neglecting to inform him. Stall. Stalling works, you're good at that. Make a joke. “No, I think I'll stay in denial a bit longer.”

“Damn, I was really hoping you'd propose tonight. Got my nails done and everything.”

Peter tries to laugh it off, he really does, but his voice is as shaky as his hands.

“Did you lock the door?”

“No.”

“But you're not coming out.”

“Right.”

“Do you want me to open it instead?”

Now isn't that a suggestion. Peter hadn't considered that he could just stand here and let Wade find a way to help him. He never noticed until too late that habitual self-sufficiency and problem-solving skills can just leave you even more helpless when backed into a corner. And even after he noticed, he never really learned his lesson. Asking for help is a challenge. Allowing someone to help… Maybe he can do that.

“Okay.”

“Okay as in good, yes, good plan? Or try it and see what happens?”

“Bit of both.”

“Eh, worth a shot.” He tries the door. It doesn't budge. “You said you didn't lock it?”

“Didn't. Webbed it.”

“Oh. Well, then.” Wade grabs a knife from somewhere on his person and starts slicing away the webs through the reveals of the door, all the way around the top and bottom. After several minutes, Wade opens it very slowly, peeking through the growing crack in the door to gauge Peter's reaction. His spidey sense flares and fades with his heartbeat, which is confusing.

“Am I dying?” He asks himself in a small voice. His eyes sting in the dry air.

His spidey sense goes haywire, then stops abruptly. He must have squeezed his eyes shut without noticing somehow, jolting at the feeling of warmth enveloping him in a firm hug. “You're not dying. You're talking to me like normal, you’re able to stand, and you're not even shakin’ or nothin’. If you've got a fever, it's not gonna kill you, and I'll get some more appropriate meds this time.”

Peter takes a deep breath. And another. And another. He zeroes in on Wade's signs of life and tries to match his pace. It works somewhat. “I'm not dying.”

“No, you're not.” Wade confirms with a nod.

“Okay.” One last deep breath and he forces himself to let go, to unstick himself from Wade.

“We good?”

“Yeah.”

They stand there in the bathroom just breathing until Peter gets his bearings.

“I should take that off, huh.” Peter gestures to the webbing covering the left side of Wade's neck. He tentatively starts peeling at it before getting a response. Wade shrugs.

“You don't have to. Best necklace I've ever had. My new favourite, actually. But, if needs must.”

“Your needs must. Like breathing. And eating, and drinking.”

Wade shrugs again.

“Sorry, this is going to pull a bit. The webs aren't made to damage skin, but the tensile strength might be too much to make a clean break with your raised scars.” With no further warning, he rips it like a wax strip.

“That's alright, you can get your sticky stuff all over me any time you like,” Wade winks as Peter gets the last of the webs off, only tiny harmless wisps left on Deadpool’s suit. “Ya'know, yours are the only sticky fingers I want anywhere near my pockets. You can still give me that pat down, if you want.”

“I- But, no, hang on, didn't it hurt?”

“It didn't hurt.. more than normal,” Wade assures him, lifting Peter's hand and pressing it to his front. He takes another deep breath, unbothered as Peter's hand sticks and tugs. “See, I'm fine.”

Peter sighs in relief and can't help a small smile at the way his hand disappears beneath Wade's. 

“Someone's happy.”

“Huh?” Peter blinks at him, retracting his hand.

“Did I say that out loud? Shoot, fudged it. Don't stop smiling on account of me, baby boy, I'll feel too evil.”

“You could tell, with the mask?”

Wade nods. “Can always tell. Even those little thinky eyebrow ticks of yours, they pull somewhere on your temple. Especially easier right now. Since you sucked your mask into your mouth to hold your glove, everything's tighter. Including my pants.”

Peter has gotten used to ignoring Wade's side comments and moving on, but it doesn't change the way his ears heat when he hears them. “I'm surprised that shows around the lenses. The original prototypes for the suit were a lot stretchier, but over time I needed it to have thicker insulation for the weather and modified the material to only stretch so much around the joints.”

Instead of calling him a nerd or bragging about his own suit, Wade tilts his head thoughtfully. “Must be annoying having to be skinny all the time. We should make multiple versions of that suit in case you get pregnant or something.”

“I've kept some old ones, but my mutation actually keeps me from-” Peter begins to explain, when he processes the second half of that sentence, “What the- I’m a man! A cis man!”

“Mhm, I hear ya. Amen, sister,” Deadpool nods, masked eyes closed solemnly. “But how do you know that you weren’t bitten by a little girly spider? How do you know she didn’t get her woman juices all up in you and mutate somethin’ else, huh?”

Peter splutters, speechless. He wishes he'd ignored this side comment too.

“Bingo. You don’t actually know. Can’t lie about a reaction like that! Ahh, that’s gold!” Deadpool mimes wiping a tear from his eye, finding victory in the mental breakdown he has shoved in Peter’s lap. 

Surely he cannot get pregnant. He doesn't have the right organs, so to speak. Yet the world of mutations is an odd one, given the abilities he got from that radioactive spider, so he's not sure to rule it out on human organs. It’s not like I've had a menstrual cycle. Although, I've heard that sometimes when women are extremely athletic it goes away, and I am practically all muscle at this point. There’s no way though, right? There’d be some way to know. He hasn’t checked in with a doctor for a long time since he can’t trust the typical ones with his blood or anything. 

Why does this even matter anyway?! It’s not like I've ever had sex with a man!

“This is stupid,” he mutters out loud unintentionally.

“What is?”

“You.”

“Yeah, that checks out.”

“Wade.” Peter frowns. The self-deprecating schtick is getting less funny the more they become friends.

“Wow, again? So it wasn't a one-off. Guess the ‘where’ theory is losing to the ‘how much’ one then.”

“You may be ignoring relevant external factors,” Peter points out, belatedly noticing the incriminating nature of that admission. It would be easier to let Wade believe he's only speaking more familiarly with him because of how much he's wearing.

“Like the fact that you made me come back here to change suits because you consider me a friend now?” 

“Do I, though?” He backtracks in high-pitched sarcastic doubt.

“You said so yourself. No takesies backsies.”

“I'm an excellent liar.”

Wade chokes on a laugh.

“Hey! I am! It comes with the territory.”

“The territory of being a spider? I don't think so, honey.” 

Well, shit, if his face wasn't already getting heated it certainly is now. “You think I could keep my identity hidden this long without being able to lie?”

“I didn't say you couldn't lie…”

“You laughed.” Peter argues.

“...you're just not very good at it.” Wade smiles patronizingly. Peter punches him in the shoulder. “Oof, easy on the goods.”

“That was easy.” Not a lie. That punch wouldn't have hurt a five year old, so it couldn't have hurt Deadpool.

“Then, harder on the services.” 

Peter twitches, turning his head to avoid that flirtatious look.

“Would you kill me if I said I can tell you're blushing now, too?”

“Maybe.”

“Don't you mean ‘no because I'm totally not blushing right now Deadpool!’ or something?”

“...Or something.” Peter walks past Wade aimlessly into the open floor apartment. 

It looks like it was furnished with an Ikea display. He sits on a stool facing away from the kitchen island, watching Wade approach again.

“Shut up,” Wade mutters as he swaggers over to lean on the island in between the stools. Peter raises an eyebrow. “Not you, Spides. Do whatever you want.”

He considers it for a bit. Doing whatever he wants, trying to figure out what he wants in the first place. His focus trails back to Wade, who is back to mumbling to himself.

“So, what's up with that?”

“Hm?” 

“What do the voices sound like?” He's not sure if he's being correctly polite about this. He's never tried to talk to someone that might actually be clinically insane about the symptoms of their clinical insanity. Ill-advised villain monologues have let him hear his fair share of delusions, but the day to day casual sort of hallucinations are not familiar. In short, he's curious.

“What voices?”

Peter reels. He was so sure Wade heard voices. Hadn't he mentioned something about that before? People in his head? Oh no. “Weren- sorry, you've lost me. Who were you talking to then?”

“Oh, the boxes. Yeah, they basically are voices considering boxes don't make sense in this format, but I guess the reference was worth the faulty logic. I do hear other voices though sometimes, sort of waking nightmares and nighty-nightmares and just general screams of terror. I should have said ‘which voices’ not ‘what,’ my B. It’s usually the boxes.”

“Okay,” Peter is just relieved he didn't totally get this wrong and accidentally insult anyone. “Boxes, plural. How many?”

“Just two. God, could you imagine? It would be so bad if I had more than that. They'd take up the whole panel all the time! Or, in this case, just a lot. Too much. It would probably drown out your pretty gripes. Tragic!”

“So… they do or don't have a sound? Uh, a mentally perceived one, to be clear.”

“It's more like internal dialogue than voices. Trialogue? Yeah, I should be included in my own head. More like running narration and not some ghosty fella whispering in my ear. It's kind of difficult to pin down exactly what their voices are like, though.”

“But you can tell them apart?”

“Yepperoni. I call ‘em Yellow and White. You don't need to worry about them though, unless they ever figure out how to take over my body one day, you'll never make their acquaintance.”

“That can't happen though, can it? It's never happened before. Tell me it's never happened before.” Peter suddenly insists.

Every other supervillain Spiderman encounters seems to have an alter ego of some sort, a complete mental takeover from the person they usually were. He thought he learned his lesson the first time with the Green Goblin, but then he found himself trusting Mr. Osborn’s son Harry as a friend; before the same thing happened again. He thought that was the end of it, that he’d been burned far too badly to fall for the same thing. 

To his credit, it never was Green Goblin again. But damn that Parker luck. His mentor, Dr. Octavius turned around and stabbed him in the back with a villainous rivalry. Maybe it’s just all these “O” last names he needs to avoid. Maybe…

If he’s honest, though, he can’t believe that. The dataset is small, and what correlation could a last name possibly have to betrayal? It’s not like his last name is Caesar. It’s much easier to believe that Peter is just cursed. He doesn’t have good luck, he doesn’t get along with anyone, and he doesn’t deserve to come crashing in to ruin the life of another good person. Every man he ever got along with either died or tried to kill him before he could expect it. Every woman died, or ran, or avoided him in the first place. And how could he blame them? Spider-Man is no hero, he’s just Peter, and Peter is a walking omen of death.

He still can’t stand the thought of Aunt May in the hospital, fighting the one kind of fight he couldn’t help her with. He tried so hard to cure cancer for almost a year, he nearly killed himself trying. He contacted every research lab he could find for their data, and broke in to steal copies from any of them that kept it confidential. Even — and he wouldn’t dare bring this up to Wade — everything he could find from Weapon X. The inhumane methods he came across nearly made him throw up, imagining May as their victim. Eventually, the cancer took her instead. No. He still can’t think about it.

Spider-Man was great, but Peter was supposed to be a bio-weapon genius. That was the one thing he had going for him. One! He knows curing cancer is one of the world’s biggest hyperboles for perfect goodness, right up there with solving world hunger, but if he couldn’t do it then who could? It's so demoralizing to realize that even the people that seem to be born for research can’t crack the case, and he lost all hope entirely several times. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and cancer can’t be cured in less than a year, and every bit of confident intelligence Peter ever imagined himself to have evaporated as if it was never there. It might be selfish of him, but he couldn’t touch cancer research since. The idea of curing it after he lost the one person he needed to save, the idea that it was always possible if he’d only done it sooner is unbearable. 

What are the chances Omen of Death, Ex-Genius Who Couldn’t Cure Cancer Peter Parker would befriend the one person in the entire universe who evades death like it’s a joke and hardly exists beyond being a mass of cancer itself? He can’t lose this to whatever twisted eldritch god decided his life should be so empty. He can’t lose this to the equally scientifically elusive ill of the mental state. He can’t lose this.

“Hey Dorothy, you still with me?” Wade is standing in front of him now, as he gently places a hand on Peter’s knee.

“Yeah, sorry, what’d you say?”

“Said no, it’s never happened before. At least, to my knowledge. Honestly, there are holes in my old memory but I can promise that the boxes are only about as insane as I am. At least White is. Maybe even more sane, but don’t tell him that. Shut up, man, you heard nothing. Nothing crazy…-er than the usual crazy. I’m fine. Enough about Me & Co. Are you fine?”

“Just tired,” Peter covers, unwilling to get into it when he can’t share anything personal. It isn’t a lie, so the cover comes out extremely believable. It is so much of an understatement that it almost qualifies as a lie, though. He is exhausted. He’d forgotten in the lull of conversation and taking in Wade’s apartment, but his eyes refuse to stay wide open.

“Okay, you hang tight. I’m going to go see about changing this suit now, don’t go leaving without me. And don’t worry about the boxes. They’re harmless.” Deadpool mutters a final little seriously, shut up as he strides into another room.

The seconds tick by on the very accurately timed clock on the wall. Peter frowns at it as his eyelids begin to droop. He spins around on his stool and glances around the pristine kitchen, empty sink and all. He misses the unusual clock with the hands over two hours behind. He misses the messier apartment, even though he was only there once. It felt like Deadpool. It felt like Wade. Now that Wade isn’t in the room, it feels like he isn’t here at all. Nothing in his supposed place carries his essence, since it's basically the cover of a homeowners magazine.

Yawning, he leans over the counter with his arms crossed and places his head gently on the makeshift pillow. It’s not good for his circulation and he shouldn’t even be napping when he’s supposed to be prepared for more patrolling after this, but his body has already taken over and his mind is too tired to keep up. He falls into a dark, dreamless slumber.

~°~

“I feel.. like I’m burning up.” Peter puffs a deep breath with dredges of a groan, roused by the painful sensation. He pulls his mask off in panic to catch some much needed air, and sits up. In bed? When did I get in bed?

“You got a fever? I’ll go get the thermometer, I made sure my medkit was fully stocked since last time, so no worries.” Oh, right. Wade’s place. Wade. Must’ve carried him here, the newly hospitable bastard. But his pain supersedes his anger at not being woken sooner. Wade sits in a kitchen chair he’s pulled up to the bedside, slowly raising his head from a book. Peter can't catch the title.

“No, inside.”

“That’s what she said,” Wade responds on autopilot, quickly bookended with, “sorry, what?”

Peter glowers at him.

“I mean, uh.” Wade blinks at him. I thought I told him to stop doing that. He looks rather spooked. “Hang on one second.”

An eyebrow is raised in questioning imposition. Wade honest to god chokes on his spit. The pain intensifies, but Peter is distracted by Wade’s distractedness. “What is going on with you?”

“You, you..” Wade points at him urgently, then does that sign for beautiful again. Aggressive waving in circles over his mask. Wait. “Face.”

“No,” Peter’s voice shakes as he stares at his mask. His mask, which he can see, because it is in his hands. Fuck.

Wade cringes, staring in his lap. “Sorry, Spidey. I swear I woulda just covered my eyes, but my peepers happen to be real attuned to detail and I can’t unsee what I’ve already seen. I could shoot myself? Aim for the hippocampus? 60-40 chance I remember versus don’t, but we could always try it a few times ‘til the wipe sticks.”

“What?! No! Agh-” He clutches his stomach from the burn.

“Damn it, hold that thought. The less recent the memory, the more likely it’s staying around, but I fear we really need me alive right now.” He slaps a hand over his lenses and tears his glove off the other with his teeth. It would seem erotic if Peter wasn’t panicking while having that very scarred hand blindly slapped to his forehead. “Your call. You said you were burning from the inside? Like, heartburn? Acid reflux? Maybe we should still try and get that temperature, can’t hurt to know.”

Peter is nodding along, fully doubled over. He grunts out his words. “More like acid just-flux. It feels like- everywhere.”

“Do you need me to get a bowl? Are you gonna hurl?”

“No, no, it’s weirder than that.” A strangled noise tears its way up his throat as he feels himself boiling alive. He tosses off his blanket and writhes.

“Okay, shit. I’m gonna get the bowl and kit just in case. Stay put. Uh, don't die.” Wade anxiously springs up, beelining for the door. “Please.”

“I'm not gonna die.” Peter rolls his eyes, already feeling a bit less intense pain. “Probably.”

Wade rushes back before Peter has really processed his absence, sticking a thermometer in his mouth. The intense experience fades as quickly as it came on, his temperature reads as normal the whole time. But he did need the bowl. A concerning amount of stomach acid spews from his mouth; it’s not much, but it is enough to be a medical problem. He feels a lot better afterwards, getting the tingling sensation of gradually healing innards.

His hand is grasped between Wade’s every time he returns to his side, after washing the bowl and returning the first aid kit. The second glove has been discarded as well, the warmth of Wade’s high metabolism soaking through his own glove. They sit for a few minutes, wary of another randomly disabling effect afflicting Peter. His cheeks feel warm at the affection, but he has no idea whether he's blushing or not because Wade says nothing about it because Wade will not look at him. 

“Can you-” Peter asks and aborts, for something less direct, “I don't want you to shoot yourself.”

Wade's hands twitch anxiously, squeezing Peter’s. He swallows.

“No point in looking away now, you know. You might as well…”

“If that's what you want.” He gets what he asked for, but he wasn't ready. Wade releases Peter’s hand, pulling his mask off and meeting his eyes for the first time. Deep brown meets pale blue-grey and Peter feels a jolt down his spine. Wade's scarred brows are drawn up in guilt, morose puppy dog eyes stabbing him in the heart. “I'll at least even it out.”

“Hi, Wade,” Peter mumbles, trying not to be awkward. Looking into someone's eyes is weird. It's the only way you can see them straight on, but it feels like being caught staring. Even with a mask on, it's kind of hard to be inconspicuous about it, but it feels so much more real without the masks.

“Hi,” he responds, and Peter has the crazy urge to introduce himself. To hear his own name from familiar lips just as Wade gets to. But he can't, he shouldn't reveal his identity so quickly. Even though Wade could definitely find out from his face- “I won't use this against you, I promise. You can tell me stuff on your own time. There's a reason I didn’t find out before we met.”

“What reason was that, exactly?”

“Because, believe it or not Webs, I have some respect for the people who earn it. And as many hits as there are on you, you were never on my hitlist. Well, you were on a different kind of hitlist but that one's more like a bucket list that no one expects to achieve in their lifetime. Checked you off the hit-on list a long time ago though, score!”

The tension is getting to him, so Peter laughs lightly when he normally might not.

“God, you're gorgeous,” Wade rasps, strained. His eyebrows pinch harder.

Peter startles into silence, eyes wide.

“Sorry. Didn't mean to make you uncomfortable.” Wade sets his mouth in a grim line and gets up before Peter can stop him. He stops only briefly to quickly give himself a real excuse to leave. “You only threw up acid, so you must not have eaten anything for a while. I bet you're hungry. Maybe if you eat, all this'll go away. I'm gonna go get takeout.”

It's not just from an empty stomach, Peter is sure of that, but he nods along so he doesn’t have to think of something to say. Something weird is going on with him, and he's starting to think he's going to find out from experience rather than testing. “Wait-”

Wade looks back, questioningly. He also looks desperate to go. Peter bites his tongue.

“Uh, can you get chinese?”

“You got it.” And he's gone.

While he’s out, Peter rises to look around the room, not daring to open anything he can’t quickly close in case he gets caught snooping. It looks to be the master bedroom, but there is nothing of Wade’s to be found here, just like the rest of the apartment. He leaves to find where Wade actually sleeps, because he doesn’t believe for a second it would be this organized. 

He finds what he was looking for in the guest room. It finally feels like Wade. There are silky Spider-Man sheets — which is both flattering and extremely embarrassing — along with a variety of weapons and his damaged suit. The bed is predictably unmade and a dirty cloth lies next to a revolver on the desk. Three Hello Kitty stickers glitter on the wall above his pillows, two of them holding down a note that says “I love you, Daddy” written in the scrawl of a child. 

Wade has a similar sort of scrawling to his handwriting, so maybe it isn't a child, maybe it’s some sort of joke. If it isn't… Peter doesn’t know what to do with that information. Wade has never mentioned being a father, and neither did anything he found in his initial search for all Deadpool-related information.

He decides not to stew on it and keeps looking around. He finds the armory room, which has three more suits in pristine cases and an ungodly amount of guns, blades, grenades, and ammo. All of which he sees through a small window because it sits behind a metal door with an encoded lock. While his super strength could definitely get him through it if he wanted without him breaking a sweat, he'd rather not needlessly trip any alarms. The window view is enough.

He ends up heading back to the “guest” room because it is where he feels the most comfortable and sits on the bed there to wait for Wade. He scoffs at himself for sitting on the very edge just to avoid sitting on his own masked face, and stares at the note on the wall like it'll give him answers. In for a penny, in for a pound, he leaves his mask off on the bed beside him.

Waiting takes a shockingly short amount of time, considering Wade comes back with six bags full of Chinese takeout. He sets them down on the carpeted bedroom floor, and tosses Peter a fortune cookie. The mask had returned to his face during his excursion, but he pulls it off again once his hands are free to meet the full suit no mask standard of the evening. “Took me a minute to find you. What are you doing in here?”

“Best room in the apartment. You should decorate more,” Peter shrugs as he unwraps his cookie and snaps it in half.

“Is it not decorated? I swear I had an interior designer in here before you could come over to cover all my bases. Guess I won't hire her again.” Wade sits on the bed beside Peter, dragging the bags towards them.

“I mean, technically, yeah. But it looks fake. There isn’t a single thing out there that says… you.” He gesticulates as if the oomph will help him make his point.

“Wait, you like my room best! Eek! My bestie-westie Spider-Man is in my apartment and he wants it to feel like ME. Be honest, is it just because you’re on my bedsheets?” Wade gushes, cheesing at him. That megawatt smile, fully uncovered, is so bad for the heart. 

“Nooo, you caught me. I’m secretly a raging narcissist.” He laughs, trying not to blush too hard. 

The small slip of paper flutters into his lap as he shoves half the cookie in his mouth, catching Wade’s attention. “Ooh, ooh, what’d you get?”

“Mm. It says: Accept something that you cannot change, and you will feel better.” Peering down at his slip, Peter snorts. “Very helpful and not vague at all. Do you have one?”

“I have several!” Wade grins, showing off his bag of goodies. He holds it out for Peter to reach. “Pick one for me.”

He hands Wade a cookie plucked from the center and Wade shakes out another onto Peter’s lap. They unwrap them at the same time, but while Peter breaks his in half again, Wade throws his into his mouth whole.

“Don’t expect romantic attachments to be strictly logical or rational.” Peter reads out over Wade’s loud crunching. He wrinkles his nose in discomfort.

Wade spits out his slightly soggy paper onto his hand and Peter’s scrunch intensifies. Wade glances at his face and practically bounces on the bed. “Oh my god, you are too cute! Well, mine says; Don’t confuse recklessness with confidence. Ouch, buddy. These “don’t” statements are brutal. Pass me another.”

“Why don’t you get it yourself? You’re holding the bag.”

“I like it better this way. Feels like I’m actually receiving the fortune.”

“Alright, fine.” Peter picks one out, but holds it in a closed fist. “Only if you promise not to put the paper in your mouth.”

“Deal.” Wade gives him another and gets swapped it in return.

“Happiness begins with facing life with a smile and a wink.” Peter smiles, imagining a certain white lens wink. “I like this one.”

“He who expects no gratitude shall never be disappointed. Well…You would think so, eh.”

The mood drops significantly as Wade deflates, and Peter scrambles to salvage it. “There are way too many of these in that bag, give me one more. But, do it in a- a fun way?”

“What kind of “fun” are we talking about?” Wade gives him a weird look, but the diversion worked flawlessly.

“I don't know, you figure it out.” Peter crosses his arms, challenging.

“Bet. I've dabbled in party tricks. Feel free to grab a cookie at any point.” Three wrapped cookies are snatched in Wade's hands as he holds out his arms and begins to juggle. He starts with a basic shower, then a cascade. Peter didn't have anything in mind when he made the request, so his mouth drops open as Wade performs with three in one hand while the other digs in the bag for a fourth. He acknowledges Peter's gape with a wink and tosses the four cookies into an asynch fountain and finally a synch fountain.

Flustered by how much more charming that wink is with twinkling eyes and smile lines, Peter picks one from the air and Wade catches the rest. He starts to tear the wrapping.

“Aren't you going to give me a fun one?”

He pauses. Leaning over the bag to take one from the bottom, he smirks at Wade, muttering, “you want my cookie so bad.”

While Wade is busy gasping, Peter whips the cookie over his scarred head, shooting a thin web out after it and pulling it back at an angle so it wraps around his hand. Loosening it off into his other hand, he tosses the cookie and attached silk to shoot another small glob at the ceiling, catching the end of the string so that the cookie hangs in the air in front of Wade's excited face.

“Fun enough for you?”

“Hell fuckin’ yeah.” Wade reaches for it and Peter sprays a little dissolvent onto the string so it falls into his hand.

He's about to go back to his own cookie as Wade unwraps his, but barely gets the wrapper off before Wade is holding his out to Peter. “Huh?”

“I'm keeping the fun going! Snap it with me, like a wishbone. I'm a big wishboner.”

“You just wanted to say boner,” Peter snorts, holding his half anyway.

“I plead the fifth. On three. One, two, three!” The fortune cookie snaps neatly in half between the two of them, the small note inside staying in Wade's possession. He pretends to flex his arm muscles in victory, but Peter can tell they aren’t really. He celebrates in a sing-songy voice as Peter rolls his eyes, “I won! I defeated Spider-Man!”

“What did you wish for?”

“Nice try, Spideyboo. You can't trick me.” Wade removes the note and tosses that half cookie into his mouth, reading it out before he finishes chewing. “Observe all men, but most of all yourself. Observe all men? Without a “no homo?” That's so gay.”

Peter shrugs one shoulder, finally breaking his fourth cookie. “Stop searching forever, happiness is just next to you. Huh.”

He briefly glances at Wade, who sits beside him on the bed. Wade, who has Peter’s superhero persona as a centerpiece in the only room he decorated. Wade, who saw his face and decided to keep his own face visible even though he avoids reflective surfaces on the daily with excuses like “jumping in puddles is fun-er if you don’t look down.” Wade, who always defaulted to accommodating Peter, even when they first met. Wade, who begins with facing life with a smile and a wink. Maybe it is. Maybe it really is.

“How come yours are all nice, and mine are all like “watch yourself bucko,” how is that fair?” Wade fake pouts.

“I don’t know, maybe we should quit the cookies for now.” Peter suggests, as Wade grumbles nonsense about the Bag of Misfortune.

They pull out the chopsticks, pile a mountain of food onto Wade’s bed, and end up sitting criss-cross applesauce towards each other to serve themselves the food in between. After downing more than one container of chow mein, sweet and sour chicken balls, egg fried rice, General Tso’s chicken and some veggie mixes, Peter remembers his earlier curiosities.

“So,” he asks after practically swallowing an egg roll whole, “why the guest room?”

“Why did I get a place with a guest room? Because I’m not poor, like you, and I can afford a good place if I want one.” Wade spouts defensively, opening another rice dish.

“No, why did you set up in here and not the master?”

“Ah.” His face goes serious and Peter wonders if this is his Deadpool Mode. “Here's the thing you have to know if you're a merc like me; somebody is usually going to want revenge. Knowing the business, your hired gun coworkers aren't your friends, and any one of them could be pointed in your direction if someone places a hit.”

This is an awfully long explanation for what Peter thought was a simple question, but he's happy to listen intently while he eats. The girls have their true crime podcasts, and he has Wade. This is the better deal, considering all the food and physicality.

“Unfortunately for them, I know most of the business tactics too, and way too many hired hitmen (or women) use the same methods. No calling card helps ensure no one knows it was you, but the real best method is inconsistency, and most of them don't wanna put in the effort. So. Anyone coming to kill me tends to go for the master bedroom first, assuming I sleep there. That mistake lets me notice, prepare, and get the jump on them. I don't need all that space for a place to sleep, it's much better this way.”

“Maybe that's why I feel most comfortable in this room, like a subconscious sense thing,” Peter reasons, a flimsy excuse at best. 

“Yeah? You wanna tuck in here for the night? I can take the master, or the couch.”

Going to bed? Wasn't the whole reason they came back here to get ready for patrol? They've finished their food. He’s been feeling fine for over half an hour. He's not ready to bring up the note on the wall. “We should get back out there, can’t sit around all night.”

“It’s already past 1:00 am, man, lie down.” Wade insists, gently nudging him.

“That’s peak crime hours for what the cops don't catch! I should be out there,” Peter argues, and he knows it’s true. He can’t just be taking random times off when someone might be in danger. Sure, it keeps Spider-Man’s schedule inconsistent, but it also cripples him with guilt. He only takes nights off when he absolutely has to. Naps here and there are enough, they have to be.

“I get it, but I wouldn’t push it if I didn’t think it was necessary. I’m not having you fall asleep in the middle of swinging 100 feet in the air, or getting injured in a fight because you don’t have enough energy to dodge fast enough. You fell asleep on a stool, I don’t think you were purposely taking a break to refresh. You’re at the end of your rope. Admit it.” Wade argues as he collects up the empty containers into the bags, pulling the messy blankets down.

Peter sighs. He does still feel exhausted, and sated by the meal. 

“Fine.” He lies down as instructed. “But only because I don’t want to be an additional danger to others rather than a relief. Happy now?”

“Just peachy.” 

The blankets are pulled up before he can change his mind. He closes his eyes and sleep takes him once more as he hears Wade leave the room, bags in hand.

~°~

Chapter Text

Peter awakens with a start to Wade shaking him, sweating buckets. He jolts up immediately, accidentally headbutting Wade with a loud crack.

“FUCK!”

“Shit, sorry,” Peter mumbles, rubbing at his eyes. They're very itchy. He takes his gloves off to irritate his skin less as he drives his knuckles into the corners of his waterline. “You okay?”

“Just… Give me a few minutes. Gotta recover a skull fracture or some shit.” Wade sounds irritated, but it's not directed at Peter. He waits a few minutes as requested until Wade stops holding his head, taking in his attire.

“Wha's goin’ on?” Peter asks, instead of you wear a silk nightgown?

“Not much. Sorry to wake you, baby boy, but you were wailing up a storm. Mumbled something about needing to make more organic web fluid, how it needed to release faster, I dunno. I was trying to only listen with one ear and let it out the other in case you said anything you didn't want me to know. But then you started sobbing, and calling you didn’t work, and I didn't wanna start with waterboarding.” Wade whispers on, eager to explain. Peter cuts him off when he gets the picture, lying back down.

“Thanks,” he remembers fragments of his dream, or rather nightmare. Gwen falling off that building, the snap of her spine, the frantic research to improve his web release speed if only after it was needed, always after- “Sorry for the trouble.”

“Ain't no thang, boo.” Wade gets up to return to his own sleeping arrangements. “Just sleep better this time.”

“Can you turn the lights out?”

Wade freezes, turns, and stares at him.

“What?” 

“The lights are out, Spidey.”

“Oh.” Peter can tell how little colour he is able to see now, but everything still looks really detailed. He tries not to freak out about that. “I didn’t notice.”

“...Right. That’s very normal of you.” Wade gives him a weird look so directly that it feels like he can see perfectly well too. He moves to turn on a Ghibli themed lamp, eyes dropping and going wide. Peter squints at the sudden brightness, not waiting to adjust.

“What? What is it now?”

“Did you notice the claws?”

“Excuse me?” Peter looks down. Wade is right, kind of. The tips of Peter's fingers have blackened, thin black hairs giving them a pointed look.

“Oh!”

“What? What? Why are you looking at me like that?” He feels anxiety sizzle up his spine, head snapping up in alarm. He quietly hisses and squints again in the light. Why isn't it adjusting yet?

“Holy wowza Billie Eilish when the party's over.”

“I… don't know what that means.”

“It means everything is fine, don't look in a mirror.”

“No, what the fuck, you're kidding. It can't be that bad. What the hell is happening- am I asleep already? Am I having a nightmare right now?” He panics aloud.

“Yeah, you're right. Good idea. Just go back to bed, baby boy, maybe you'll be right as rain in the morning.” Wade pipes up hopefully.

His head hurts. Everything feels so real. His dreams are never this realistic unless they're memories. His ‘claws’ dig into his hands and he can feel it. He begins to hyperventilate. “No, no I'm not. This isn't.. what the fuck, what the fuck, I- hah..”

“Okay, no! You're fine!” Wade springs into action, moving to pull Peter's fists apart, but before he's able to touch him Peter jumps. Onto the ceiling. And stays there.

“I was only talking about your eyes, uh… Buddy.” Wade clarifies to the feral ball of anxiety with pitch black eyes staring down at him. 

Peter’s heart is hammering in his chest and it's only made worse when he tries to pull his hand away and it remains stuck. He tears part of the landlord special off the ceiling with the force it takes to detach himself, tumbling gracelessly back onto the bed. Fuck.

“Hey, Spidey,” Wade addresses him with a hushed voice, slowly approaching, his arms out in surrender.

“Peter,” he corrects, and they both stop dead in their tracks. 

No. No, no, no. Not again. I did not just say that. This has to be a nightmare.

“…Peter…” Wade tries again, moving nearly to the edge of the bed.

Peter is every bit the terrified spider right now, stiffly frozen on his back despite a few twitches as he essentially plays dead. Might as well be, revealing your identity to a hitman. Your face and your name, both in one night, by accident. Although… It is Wade. 

Wade is every bit the hulking man he's always been, no matter how non-threatening he tries to make himself. A hunched position doesn't do much at 6’2” with the broad shoulders of being heavily armed and dangerous 24/7. He reaches the bed, crouching beside it to shrink further as he — very slowly — stretches an arm out towards him to grasp the thin sheet of paint.

“Let me get this off your hands.” He pulls and Peter shudders with the way he can feel every fiber of the movement like rippling waves of static under his skin. He bites his tongue so hard he can taste the blood, to resist fleeing or saying something he doesn't mean. All Wade manages to do is tear off a piece of the paint, not separating any from Peter’s hands. “Damn. Unless you want to sleep with a paint blanket, we're gonna have to try something else.”

Peter blinks, noticing his view changing from widescreen to scope in real time. He flinches, but the paint just ripples with him. “Try what?”

“Well, I think..” Wade gets back up and leans over Peter. His heart flutters, out of his control. Wade's eyes do a double take to his face but his expression remains stagnant as he hovers near. “Permission to touch you?”

Peter’s heart damn near stops at that, and he's helpless to the shocked heat that washes over his features. He nods minutely, feeling really, really foolish when Wade simply pulls at the paint around his palm, holding one of his wrists in a loose grip. Of course he meant just my hands! What on earth was I thinking?!

The majority of the paint rips away easily, but that could be expected. The parts that are actually attached to Peter's hands do not. With no more excess flailing sheet, at least now his hands are free and he is able to relax; except that Wade holds on to his wrist and gently picks at the paint on his palm. His hands are warm and textured, and Peter involuntarily shivers as Wade runs a finger along his heart line.

“Four eyes,” Wade mumbles, releasing his wrist to Peter’s relief and displeasure. The phrase whips against his brain, taking him back to regrettable times in locker rooms and hallways. Broken glasses, broken noses, and broken skin on his knuckles.

“Excuse me?” He snaps, voice sharp as barbs. He would have tried to intercept the tone if he weren't so tense.

“Huh? Not like that! You literally- you have four eyes, and I wasn't sure whether to bring it up. Can't be having you smash the next mirror you come across in outrage that I didn’t warn you, ‘cause that's seven years of bad luck.”

“I have four eyes.” He meant that as a question, but the last couple of minutes have emotionally exhausted him to the point where he's unsure if he can be surprised.

“All the better to see me with,” Wade nods, scraping his nails along the heart line once more.

“Where…?” Peter blinks, and the expanded vision makes sense now. He can vaguely feel the additional eyes blinking along.

“On your temples. No third eye, unfortunately. No pale man effect either, as far as we know, but we can't know know until I uncover your palms. We can still hope!”

“I'm hoping for the eyes to go away, not to get more,” he grumbles, bracing his elbows on the bed as Wade rubs their palms together in an attempt to roll off the film.

“Okay, nope. This isn't working. Time to use Plan B (not sponsored, not the pill). You've got some crazy Gorilla Glue™ grip (yes sponsored, just kidding, I wish) on this stuff and it ain't budging until you let it go.”

Peter huffs. “I'm not holding on! Not on purpose!”

“I know. But you gotta relax. Permission to, uh.. try something?” Wade seems to realize halfway through asking that he's already gotten Peter’s permission to touch. It's just that he only used it to touch his hands.

“Depends on the thing. Sure, but yield.”

“I always yield to the Amazing Spider-Man.”

Peter rolls his eyes, but quickly fixes them on Wade in shock, dropping his arms unceremoniously when Wade leans in further. Time slows in his mind as Wade swings a leg over until he's sitting on Peter's thighs. Unfortunately, his oddly beautiful, half-dead eyes are dropped where Peter can't capture them. His lips are pressed together like he regrets getting this close, or not wearing his mask, or both. Still, he pursues his intentions with the same confidence Deadpool has always radiated. Fake as it may be, it is unwavering enough to keep Peter from worrying himself. Or imploding from the tension. Whichever would've struck first were it not for Wade.

Wade places his hands heavy on Peter's shoulders. Heavy. Real. Heavy. Peter feels light in the head at the rush of it, that almost-normal feeling, almost the Peter he was before the spider bite. Almost like before his Uncle Ben had passed. Before Gwen. Before MJ. Before Mr. Osborne and Harry and Dr. Octavius. Before his Aunt May… when he was just Peter B. Parker and no one else to anyone else. It's almost enough to make his eyes water.

Almost.

The weight shifts as Wade situates himself, fingers digging and scooping into the hard muscle of Peter's shoulders. Strong pressure on pressurized strength — glorious and real, but kind, pressure — until something gives. 

He groans openly, closing his two sets of eyes. He can't help it. It feels so right, so good, and he hasn't had this. He needed this. His body goes loose under Wade's, but not limp. He can feel the paint rise and sag off the hyperfine hairs on his hands.

“Jesus Christ, Peter.” Wade's awed whisper slips through his teeth unbidden. His name echoes in his ears.

“That's a lot of religious names for a guy who claims he's been to the real, non-Christian heaven.” Peter mutters back, an amused smile lilting his words. He doesn't open his eyes, doesn't spare Wade the silence as he kneads the knots in Peter’s shoulders. He needed this, he's been so tired. For years, tired. Decades. Who knows. He can hardly remember feeling this whole and human and seen.

All that for a shoulder massage. He actually laughs at how monumental such a trivial thing seems.

Wade laughs too, small and honest. Not because of the joke, or even his successful plan, but purely because Peter is laughing. Out of connection. Peter's eyes snap open to see it on his face, firmly alert so he won't waste an opportunity like this. Tracing the lines of Wade's face and where it pulls on the bone structure underneath, he gets his senses mixed up. His eyes are not enough, not even doubled, not with how Wade wilts under one's gaze.

He reaches out before he's aware of himself, lightly brushing a fortunately paint-free hand against the shifting plane of Wade's jaw. It snaps shut, cutting off the airy chuckle, and Peter nearly frowns at the unintended loss.

“Pretty gross, huh?” Wade fakes a second laugh, self-deprecating. Still not looking up. 

“Wade.”

Wade doesn't listen. Doesn't stop talking. Doesn't look at him. “I know scars are cool and all, kinda gnarly on the chest, or a part of the face, but it’s really like this all over. At least it happened before I was 40 and I get to pretend the male pattern baldness never woulda set in. Just like all those burn victims that we can all reimagine with luscious locks. Probably feels a lot worse to the touch though, ’cause I got weird, gross, mutating cancer skin that makes people blow chunks and they just got leathery. Hey, do you think that stomach issue thingy you had earlier was actually just a delayed reaction? I can't say I'd blame ya. Though I guess chemo would've taken the hair if I'd gone that route instead. Sometimes wish I had, I wonder what it'd be like. I'd be dead, obviously. Drowned in debt, too. Less time with-”

Shut up, he doesn't say. He definitely meant to say it. The thought gets lost in translation somewhere along his processing because it ends up as an interruptive action. He raises his other freshly revealed palm to cover the other half of Wade's jaw, and pulls.

He jerks Wade's face down until it's only two centimeters away and tilts his head up to close the distance, sliding his lips over Wade's as innovative duct tape. Or so he'd like to tell himself, if he were currently having full thoughts beyond the abject horror of awakening to his own actions. The meeting is slightly harsh from the speed and strength he exerted, but Wade's lips are soft and textured and they fall away from him with a light brush.

Wade sucks in a little, tiny, miniscule, nearly imperceptible breath. Peter never would have noticed if it weren't pulled from his own lips.

“Peter.”

Blood rises to the surface of his skin as it rushes around with nowhere else to go. His repressed impulse was right, hearing his name feels amazing. He should have just confessed it sooner. He should have introduced himself the moment he decided they could be friends.

“Wade.”

“What are you doing?” Wade rasps. His voice can't be above a whisper.

Peter swallows. He wasn't prepared for being questioned. He wasn't even prepared for his own choices. Kissing you? He's pretty sure he can't say that, like even if he tried it would die on his tongue. In fact, he can't think of a single thing that he can easily say. So he answers a question with a question. Aunt May would be so annoyed by his disintegrating etiquette. “Do you not want me to?”

His heart is beating in his chest, light and fast like a hummingbird. It wants to escape. To rest its little wings that it keeps flapping so fast they can't be seen. He wants to be seen.

Wade isn't answering. It's unsettling when he doesn't have something to say. Especially right now. 

“Do you-”

“No. Yes, no, I- I…” Honestly, he looks constipated. Peter freezes up again in dread.

“Yes? No? Yes? What are you trying to say? Of all times, why now do you choose to shut your damn mouth?!” Desperation tears through Peter’s filter and he sounds inexplicably pissed off. He flinches at the same time as Wade. 

“Sorry. I'm sorry. Butthurt, I guess. Rejection, ahh, you think I'd be used to it by now.” He bites the inside of his cheek, squirming under Wade to escape. “And, uh, sorry for kissing you.”

Escape. Escape! It's not working. He doesn’t want to have to shove his way out, so he just looks back up at Wade, confused.

Wade's expression is finally readable. It couldn't be more obvious. He is terrified. Peter's nerves jump from empathy alone.

“Don't be sorry.” His ability to speak has recovered! He doesn't sound scared. Frustratingly inconsistent, this man. “It wasn't- not a problem.”

“Was that supposed to be a double negative?” Peter chalks up his own current fluency to his ability to perform under pressure. He's pretty sure he might be derealizing right now.

“No.”

“Great.”

They stare at each other, lost. Wade seems stuck, even though he's the one keeping Peter from bolting out the door.

“Are you going to get off me?”

“Yeah, can do.” Wade pushes himself to sit on the bed beside Peter, propped up awkwardly against the wall. 

Peter sits up too, rubbing and fiddling with the sensitive hairs on his palms. Just to do something. He stops when Wade clears his throat.

“Why… why?”

“Why what?” Peter can't help sounding annoyed. He doesn't look at Wade. He's so ashamed, and only one suggestion away from leaving and never speaking to Wade again.

When he takes a quick glance, Wade looks pained at the prospect of having to express his question more clearly. Peter tries very hard not to take offense. After all, he is being a stubborn ass. He knows what Wade meant. One should learn to be nice to people before trying to kiss them.

“Do I need a reason?” He mumbles before Wade can conjure a sentence, taking some of the pressure off. Or, he hopes that's what it does.

Wade mutters to himself, completely unintelligible, before finally getting a thought out. “I can think of a million reasons you wouldn't want to.”

But you can't think of one reason I would? Peter's heart breaks a little. Sure, he feels embarrassed and insecure right now, but maybe this isn't about him. Maybe it’s about Wade. Sometimes, he doesn't want to have to think through his actions, but when they involve someone else he kind of owes it to them to be self-aware.

“Sorry.” He grits out again, “I wasn't thinking. I just- I was just doing. I didn't ask, and that wasn't right, but.. No, not but. Just. I was feeling, I don't know what, but it was good. It felt nice. I wanted to feel-”

He's trying his hardest to be honest, to bare the messy, problematic processes running through his head. It's like pulling teeth, but he's managing alright when suddenly Wade is back on top of him, his hands dragging over Peter’s ears, his weight dropped in Peter’s lap, his breath hot in Peter's face as he surges forward. Whatever Peter was going to say is pressed away by Wade's lips, insistently dragging him forward into their warmth.

Separating with a light gasp for air, Peter stares at Wade. Who still isn't looking at him. This time, it's only because he keeps his eyes closed, which Peter can forgive. He rests his forehead on Peter's, the skin-to-skin contact soothing a growing itch in Peter’s bones. They both wait with bated breath, shared between them, until Wade gathers an explanation for himself. He takes a big breath in…

“It wasn't a problem.” …and repeats what he said before.

Peter laughs. He laughs, and laughs, and then he can't stop laughing. He’s gone mad, fully delirious. He nearly rocks back and knocks his head against Wade's. It would've been bad to break his skull twice in one night. Wade opens his eyes and looks helplessly confused, curious, and oddly endeared.

“I wasn’t rejecting you, of course I wasn’t, you know, I was surprised. I didn’t think it was real, maybe I’d had a psychotic break or spontaneously jumped universes. Or, you were, I dunno, trying to shut me up the only way you knew would work and you didn’t care if it was some sick joke on me. But you wouldn’t do that, probably? But then you probably wouldn’t kiss me randomly either? You’re so gorgeous,” he elaborates, losing steam as he goes until the last sentence sputters out. It wasn’t necessary. Peter isn’t mad anymore, he got more than he knew he wanted. His laughter dies as quickly as it came on.

“I probably would.” He places a hand on the back of Wade's neck, an expanse of marked skin that he realizes he hasn't gotten a good look at yet. With a gentle squeeze, he maps it out by tactile experience.

“Careful, you might stick to me.” Wade warns half-heartedly, light with humour.

“I'm not worried about it.” Peter uses his leverage on the back of Wade's neck to capture his lips once more. Wade was the one who relaxed him out of it before, now that he's sure it can be done, how could he worry? “Besides, I've known worse things.”

“Mm,” Wade kisses him again, finally soft and normal, “so have I.”

They fall perfectly into the push and pull of it, Wade’s weight keeping Peter grounded. He’s almost managed to stop thinking again, one hand on Wade’s head and the other gripping his hip, when the itch settles into his teeth, and his teeth sink into Wade. 

In a span of seconds the itch dissipates and his brand new needle-thin fangs inject themselves into Wade’s bottom lip, emptying themselves of something until they’re hollow. Peter tears back in alarm, earning himself a mouthful of blood for his troubles. He swallows the coppery liquid on impulse to get it out of his way, feeling disgusted with himself immediately after. 

He holds Wade’s shoulders at arm’s length, horrified, and Wade doesn’t move. Doesn’t open his eyes. Doesn’t breathe. Blood dribbles onto his chin. Holy SHIT, did I just KILL him?!

“Wade?” His voice wobbles, reedy. He sounds sixteen again. He feels helpless, not the kind of almost-normal he’d been hoping for.

“Wade, please.” He shakes him. Wade’s head bobs from side to side. Peter’s about to throw up (throw up Wade’s blood), but then, grey. His eyes are open. Thank every fucking God in the universe. “Are you okay?”

There’s an aimless groaning in response, resounding from Wade’s throat.

Wade has gone fully limp in his arms, and his blood is about to drip off and stain the massive Spider-Man on his sheets in a minute. Peter panics. He knows that mouths bleed like a motherfucker over even the tiniest injuries, but it doesn’t stop him from thinking this is far worse than that. He slaps Wade on the cheek, harder than he intended. It does nothing but make a loud clapping sound and cause Wade’s head to swing to the left.

He drops Wade’s body on the bed beside him, adjusting it to look comfortable enough. Whether he murdered or paralyzed him, Peter is shaking with guilt as he waits for Wade’s condition to improve, tears stinging his eyes. A minute passes and he lets the tears fall, Wade innocently blinking up at him and occasionally twitching his mouth. 

He tongues the thin, hollow bones as he watches over Wade, processing what went wrong. He’s not a fucking vampire. Or at least, he thought he wasn’t. He thought a lot of things. Now, he's rethinking them.

Is all of this a spider mutation? How long has this been happening? Ever since I nearly fell off that roof, I feel like I've been losing control of myself. What if that trend continues? Should I even be here, waiting for him to come back? What if it's not safe, what if he's not safe with me? What if he's mad at me for killing him? He should be. I'm so fucking incompetent. Can't even kiss someone without sending them skyward. I should just leave everyone alone already.

He's oblivious to his own body, the skin around his eyes growing an angry red as he drowns the front of Wade's suit in tears. He doesn’t even notice when the bleeding stops, and Wade's eyes flutter, and his hands twitch.

The very moment Wade can get his mouth to move, he’s slurring words at Peter. “Mm okay. Dun worry. N’ mm okay.”

“Fuck,” Peter sobs in relief as he comes back to reality, clasping Wade's face, “I thought I killed you. Did I?”

“You didn’t kill me. You didn’t hurt me at all, Peter, come here.” He shushes Peter softly, reaching out his arms to calm the spiralling super.

Peter goes easily into Wade's embrace, laying on top of him. He listens intently to the beat of Wade's heart, which he'd foolishly forgotten to check in the moment. Still hiccuping around tears, he whispers apologies so hurriedly that they blend into each other.

“Listen to me. You didn’t hurt me. You didn't, pinky promise. Weirdly, you made it all go away. For a while there I couldn’t feel the pain in my body at all. Not even my skin, any of the cancer. It all stopped. I had completely forgotten what that felt like. Yeah, it’s a little more unbearable now that I know how it feels to be normal again, but who cares? You gave me bliss, Pete. I’m better than okay.”

He shivers in relief. Wade doesn't hate him! But he doesn't feel like he deserves so much grace. He lifts his head, wiping away the blood on Wade's chin with his forearm. “Really?”

“Really.” Wade thumbs away the tear tracks on Peter's face.

“What if- what if I'm like this forever? I always have random, dangerous shit going on around me but now my body is in on it too. What if I go full-on spider? I'd be a monster.”

Wade gives him an empathic look. Extremely empathetic. Way too empathetic. Peter is reminded that Wade's entire body is covered in ever-mutating scars, scars that he didn't used to have. He's reminded of how sudden the transformation can be, and how you can never go back. Peter might have made himself an obvious mutate as Spider-Man, but it’s not a part of his everyday life in the same way it is for Wade. He's never been a visible minority before. Wade has. Wade is. His chest aches.

“You're not a monster, Spides. Uh, Peter. You're a man, first and foremost. It's in the name, Spider-Man, and we both agreed that Man-Spider is worse. But… if sometimes you get a little more.. Man-Spidery, you wouldn't be a monster. You'd still be you.”

“People don't generally like spiders very much. A spider the size of a person would definitely be nightmare fuel for most; the monster they imagine under the bed.” He's almost too afraid to voice his fears, not wanting to push his concerns on Wade or speak them into existence. He argues regardless, forever desperate to be understood. “I guess I can live with that, but who's to say I'll still be me, really? What if I'm not?” 

“I've been called a monster before.” Wade admits quietly. “Many times.”

Peter’s words die in his throat.

“And I wish I could say it was just because of my skin. It is, sometimes, but other times… they're not wrong. The decisions I've made in my life are dark, and monstrous. No human can die and come back to life. Vampires, zombies, ghosts. Classic monstrosity.” 

He sits up on the bed and Peter slides into place beside him. “I might get to keep all my human parts, but that’s because they shoved me in a machine and played God to make it so. Weapon X was so inhumane it sucked the humanity out of everyone it touched, and I'm no exception to that. I'm the rule. I'm basically Frankenstein's monster. A real monster. You're not that.”

Not yet, Peter thinks, but isn't so much of an asshole to say. Be nice to people before trying to kiss them. “I appreciate the reference, but you're forgetting some important parts of the story. He was called a creature far more than a monster, and he hadn't existed before the experiment. You existed. You're a real person with a real past.”

“A real shitty past,” Wade laugh-scoffs, and Peter locks up his curiosity to hear that story for another day.

“If you're a monster, then we probably both are. But even if it was just you, I wouldn’t think of you like that. I don't see the monster.” He reaches out to smooth a thumb over the crease in Wade's brow. “I just see you.”

Wade continues to laugh it off like he isn't serious. Like he's just saying what anyone would want to hear. Peter frowns. He’s about to explain how honest he’s being, when Wade softly interrupts.

“Me too. Even with the mask, you were Spidey, not ‘Everyone’s Favourite Superhero.’ It’s nice to finally get to see you, physically, but… it’s no different from before. I can only see you.”

The harsh slap of understanding crosses him as he nearly laughs it off himself. It's hard to take such a sincere, heartfelt compliment. He brushes a hand against the back of his neck, muttering, “Good.”

Now what?

It was never like this with Gwen or MJ. They were always so sure of themselves and what they wanted, I didn't have to be. Oh God, I let them put in a lot more of the effort than I thought.

I'm not ready for this. Why did I even kiss him? I mean, because… I can't just keep doing that after this disaster. Poisoning and an identity crisis, yeah, pretty sure Wade won't sign up for that again. Be glad you had the chance. Just change the subject.

“Where were you sleeping before?”

“The couch.”

Peter blinks. “What? Why not the master bedroom? There’s a perfectly good bed there, and there’s no way you’re getting murdered with me around.” 

“Yeah.. there may be a few more reasons why I don’t like to be in the biggest bed.” Wade says cryptically. Peter raises an eyebrow at him. He gets no further explanation, so he drops it. 

“Okay, well, you should sleep in your own bed then. I’ll…” He considers the couch, and the bedroom Wade won’t touch, and sharing the twin bed with Wade. His ears burn at the last one. “I should head home, don’t you think? I’ve overstayed my welcome, you came back to get your suit. Can’t have anyone in my building finding out that I’m out at night all the time, so it’s best if I’m there to greet them in the morning.”

“Please, as if their first thought would be ‘it’s Spider-Man!’ They’d just assume the hot guy is getting some and move on with their day.”

Peter snorts at ‘the hot guy,’ but doesn’t disagree. He’s always felt that it’s safest to operate under paranoia, even when common sense says it’s okay. 

Wait, since when did Wade represent common sense?

“I should go,” he insists softly, getting up and patting around for his mask and gloves.

“But-” Did he just pout? “Okay. Got it.”

“Got what, exactly?” He neglects to put the mask on, stepping across the room and absurdly waiting for Wade to follow. He does.

Peter catches one last glimpse of the shining stickers on the wall, one ringing reminder of the questions he's yet to ask.

“Got ‘swap spit with Spidey-babe’ checked off my bucket list, as you have ‘make out with the Merc with a Mouth.’ I did make the list, right?” Wade jokes. But he wasn't joking before, so Peter feels like he's just not getting an answer. “Not too far under ‘lock lips with Luke Cage’? Maybe that's presumptuous, he sure does have muscles, but he's not that popular. His movies are nothing compared to the revival I (Marvel Jesus) brought about. Some would overlook a skin condition for popularity points.”

“Luke Cage is married, Wade.” He responds, heart thudding as he waits for any kind of ‘so am I.’ He doesn't wear a ring. But his fingers could get cut off anytime. He's not the type of guy to cheat, I thought. But I also wouldn't have thought he had a kid. Maybe he doesn't…

“Oh, so you know the guy!”

“Yeah, we've met.” He watches Wade trail along behind him as he approaches the door of the apartment. Nothing. That reaction tells him nothing. It would be so easy to ask.

He can imagine the conversation.

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Married.”

“What? How could you think I was married, Webs? Of course not! I like you!”

Why does that feel unrealistic?

“What? You kissed me before even finding that out? I thought you looked me up, Webs!”

“I did. I didn't find that, and nothing about a kid either.”

“I thought you'd figured it out already when you saw the note. I'm a father. And I'm very, incredibly in love with its mother and you've confused me and now you are a homewrecker!”

Okay, that one got pretty unrealistic too.

His fingers clench around the doorknob. Thinking about things usually helps him come to a conclusion, preferably a scientific one with a plan and a solution. Thinking has never been so unhelpful.

Fuck it, I'll just not think.

As he steps out the door, he spins around to give Wade a short peck on the lips. In his mind, a goodbye kiss will help him remember what happened today and cement it as real. Wade clearly wasn’t expecting that, thrilled and grinning.

“Thank you.”

“Don't say thank you!” Peter calls over his shoulder, discomfited.

“Truly, fantasy fulfilled, Webs. You deserve gratitude for your heroic sacrifices!”

He doesn’t fully know why those words make him feel so wrong in his skin instead of flattered. That's a problem for Tomorrow Peter.

~°~

Tomorrow Peter is never happy with Yesterday Peter's decisions. As soon as he wakes up, all the way through finishing breakfast, he replays the conversations with Wade in his head. All the people Wade has made comments about, flirtatious and desperate. The times he was going off about Wolverine, and Black Widow, and Cable, and sighing dreamily, and I know it's a joke, I know. But Peter can't stop thinking. He can't.

That maybe it didn't matter if it was him. That Wade — Deadpool — might kiss anyone, because it's not that serious. He just likes doing things. He's always down for a thrill, and social norms avoid him like the plague, and whenever Peter thinks he knows anything about how relationships work — friends, family, partners, boy- anything — everyone in the world, particularly including Deadpool, backflips over it to confuse him further. Peter thinks and thinks, and the more he thinks the more he realizes it makes sense. He desperately wants to stop himself and simultaneously can't resist the clawing suspicion until he's convinced.

It had nothing to do with him. He's not special. Well, not really. He's only special because he's the only one who managed to get close. To keep up. To get past that protective barrier of insecurity. The very idea churns his stomach in dread, yet pride licks flames into his heart. It's hard not to be proud that he was chosen, even if it was his own stubbornness and superpowers that got him there. It's complicated, and his head spins. Just like becoming Spider-Man, he's so proud of it that he finds identity in these powers. In these affections. He wears them like a badge of honour, a badge that he only won by coincidence. Honour that could have belonged to anyone, he just happened to be there. Too stupid to avoid the bite.

He's got so much fire in him now. He's angry. He doesn’t know why all this energy transforms into anger without his control, the frustration just builds up until his mind is too busy thinking to feel and it all goes into his limbs. He can't sit down like this. Can't be Peter. He has to be Spider-Man. 

Spider-Man shoots up from his seat and paces over to his suit, tearing his clothes off and tugging it on. He knows it’s dangerous to go out patrolling like this. He knows it lowers his inhibitions and his control, and he stops calculating his movements. The punches fly as fast and tense as his webs. He has to try to hold it in. He's not sure he will.

I won't patrol, I'll just get up somewhere and look. I can cool down when I've got my sights on the streets, then I'll be in control. It'll feel better to help someone. It'll be good. He wishes he could believe himself this time.

As he ascends the fire escape and zips across the street, he ignores the nagging feeling that helping others to feel good is selfish. Any kind of genuine help is good, doesn't matter where it comes from, he lets the memory of Aunt May smooth over his thoughts, you're a good boy, my Peter. Hold onto that.

Maybe he really will cool down.