Part Three: Tending the Hearth
x
Peter's exceptional luck makes itself known once again: the first Avenger he meets face to mask is Clint.
The good part is that they are meeting one on one (not counting JARVIS' ubiquitous watch).
The not good part is that Peter all of sudden remembers their last meeting. He's already been feeling a couple of inches tall, but he might actually be shrinking further as they stand there, frozen, like a tableau of failed superherodom, looking eye to reflective lens.
Peter cringes.
"I'm so sorry," he forces himself to say. "I…"
He wants to say he didn't mean to do it, didn't mean to attack Clint, when Clint has been his staunchest supporter from the very start, but that would be a lie. Lying to this guy, who has been incredibly awesome in a low-key way, would not make Peter feel less like a butthole.
"Dude," Clint says. He moves then, bypasses the coffee machine and goes straight for the fridge. He pulls out five different juice boxes – all of them open – lines them up on the counter and makes a comparison of their contents. "This one time, I decked Coulson."
The confession comes out of blue, and Peter flinches. Still, he can't help the curiosity rearing its head. He shuffles closer to the chrome door of the industrial freezer and listens attentively.
"Op went to shit," Clint continues in a blatantly false conversational tone. "Of the five of my teammates only one made it out of enemy base, and I had to carry him to the meeting point. Then I got the memo that our exfil' had been shot down on the way, and we were on our own."
Peter is very, very young. Not quite childish, not really naïve, but listening to Hawkeye makes him realize that there is still a lot he hasn't seen.
"What happened?" he asks. He can't believe that Director Coulson would have left Clint there, wherever 'there' was. Aside from the whole Sacred Band of Thebes vibe between them, Coulson has always struck Peter as the kind of agent that would have walked over lava for his people. There was frankly no way that Coulson had abandoned Clint, and thus warranted a punch to the face.
"Coulson came to get me," Clint admits, replacing four of the juice boxes back in the fridge. "On a goddamn horse."
It sounds like the plot to a Disney movie, but Peter isn't about to say so out loud.
"He got me out of there, safe as houses." There is a sarcastic tone to Clint's voice, and Peter's mind is half-way caught up on what must have occurred before Hawkeye says: "Made me leave my buddy behind."
"Director Coulson?" Peter says incredulously.
Maybe he's still far too idealistic. Maybe it is actually a dog eat dog world-
"Newman was twenty minutes dead by that time, granted, but I wasn't really in the mood to listen to rational arguments," Clint explains. "So I punched him."
Peter nods. He doesn't know what to say. He remembers watching Uncle Ben die; remembers the minute of utter helplessness and then the couple of days of dissociation, when he couldn't make himself believe it happened. It was like a dream – like a movie being screened, and he just had to wait for the end credits to get back to his regularly scheduled programming. He would wake up in his bed and everything would be as usual…
It wasn't, though.
"What did he do?" Peter asks.
Clint shrugs. He takes a long draught straight from the carton and grimaces. "Barked at me. I could tell he used to be a Sergeant. But – nothing. He didn't mention it in the report, and I don't think he'd have brought it up if I didn't ask him about it point blank."
By now Peter knows where this is going.
"He told me… I'm paraphrasing here, kid, but basically the point was that we're human, and we've got human limits. We want to stay human, 'cause being human is a good thing, and being a monster is bad, so we've got to respect the limits. Our own, and each other's."
Clint is frowning a little, but in concentration rather than anger.
Peter nods. He thinks he understands perfectly, both the lesson and its implications as they pertain to him. "Thank you."
Clint shrugs. "Thank me by not becoming a homicidal maniac. I don't want to have to put you down one day."
That is a promise Peter can make.
x
Peter goes to school, gives his note to the nice middle aged lady at the office, fakes a smile so as he can when she asks if he's all better now, and goes through the motions of being a student.
He hasn't expected to one day be grateful for his utter lack of friends, but the day has come.
He drags himself back to the Stark Tower in the late afternoon and falls onto a couch, weary down to his bones. He wanted to go on a patrol tonight but, frankly, he does not feel up to it.
Wade finds him there an hour or two later. Peter is mostly asleep by now, but he perks up a little when he sees his boyfriend. Then he spots Deadpool's shuffle of preemptive apology and wakes up completely with a sudden surge of adrenaline.
"It's the thing, Pumpkin," Wade says, pulling his mask off to meet Peter's eye.
Peter has him almost trained. A little bit. Sometimes. When Wade really wants something.
"What thing?" Peter asks, rolling onto his side. The inflection is there, but he still sounds emotionless.
"The thing," Wade answers ominously, dropping to a squat so he can give Peter an Eskimo kiss. "Do you want me to quit my job?"
Here's a man who's killed literally hundreds of people (maybe actual thousands), asking Peter for permission to go on killing people. As if this was somehow Peter's decision. As if Peter was strong enough, or had an ego big enough, to imagine that he could ever take the responsibility for a decision of such magnitude.
Peter isn't sure if he should be scared or angry or relieved. Sooner or later someone had to say this out loud – they couldn't subsist in that mutual unspoken 'we don't feel the same about this but let's just pretend it isn't an issue' beatific faux oblivion forever.
So, Wade's a brave guy. Peter loves him. Nothing new – all quiet on the Western Front.
For a moment Peter considers tossing out a glib 'Do you want me to quit mine?' but Wade's a brave guy and Peter loves him, so he doesn't do that.
"No," he says simply, and pretends that it wasn't ever an issue, that he didn't agonize over it on sleepless nights and that he hasn't learnt to make moral compromises with himself over it. It's scandalous how much easier that kind of compromising is, when you do it for someone you love.
Love's pretty dangerous stuff, apparently.
"That's splendiferous," Wade replies easily. "I thought Hillary would keep nagging at me until the cows moved to greener pastures." He stands up, laces his fingers and flexes, knuckles cracking like a rattle of dice thrown. "Incidentally, I Hello-Kitty'd his quiver, so we'll hear from him-"
Clint falls from the ceiling. At least so it seems in that first instance. Obviously he actually jumps down from a vent, but that takes Peter a moment to put together.
"Did you touch my bow?" Clint inquires sinisterly.
"Duuude…" Wade says, leaning back over the edge of the backrest until he looks like he has folded around it, and his head is upside down. "That'd be more private than touching your dick, and I'm faithful to my boo. No hanky-panky happened – but lemme tell you, the curves on that lady…" He trails off, dreamy.
"I know, right?" Clint agrees, and delves into the fridge. "That's fair, then. I wouldn't pick Hello Kitty – not my preferred genre of music – but maybe I can start a collection. A sticker from everyone on the team. Or-" He glances over to briefly meet Wade's eye (and doesn't bat an eye at the scarring), before he saunters off to focus on the intimidating selection of foreign cuisine leftovers filling the refrigerator. "-auxilliary to it."
Clint, it seems, doesn't have a problem with killing people. It's his job, often enough.
So, Peter muses, it's not Wade whose ability to 'unalive' and not lose sleep over that is an aberration.
Peter's inability to do so is not normal.
x
Clint, it turns out, is actually the only Avenger presently present in the Tower. And thus the second member of the team that has seen Peter's face.
The rest of the group are hunting down the Winter Soldier again, because they don't admit defeat. It's one of their more admirable qualities, and Peter wishes them a lot of luck at it, especially if it means he won't get shot again.
He didn't enjoy being shot.
Still, he's not thrilled when JARVIS explains that the sniper was aiming to injure or possibly barely miss Steve, so Peter stupidly risked his life for nothing rather than being a big damn hero for saving Captain America's life.
He stares at the wall for a while after that announcement, and then turns on his computer. Class work waits for no one.
x
Wade receives a package.
It's delivered to the reception, and JARVIS asks him to go down to sign for it – and then asks Peter to accompany him, just in case, because no one likes bloodshed in the lobby before eleven in the morning.
Peter thinks this is bullcrud. Wade is not some sort of psychotic maniac that cannot control himself… although… there might be a dearth of support for Peter's argument… thus, just in case, Spider-Man tags along.
It turns out to be a good thing.
"Sir," the delivery boy says in a nasal voice, "you have to present a valid ID with your photo. Otherwise I can't release the package to you."
Peter suspects that the guy is an undercover SHIELD agent. Sure, civilians occasionally exhibit a complete lack of self-preservation, but this seems far too contrived.
Wade pulls out a knife. He doesn't do any fancy swinging, and doesn't even really brandish it in a threatening manner, but the blade's glint does its own talking.
"How 'bout you give that shit to me, and I sign my name all nice and proper, and nobody gets gutted," Wade suggests which, from him, is very restrained. Almost affable, really.
The receptionist presses her panic button. Stark Security swarm them, and it's only the spandex that keeps Peter from getting shot again. A couple of the men and a woman look like they are just waiting for an excuse – apparently the Bugle has been especially scathing, and Spider-Man is a public enemy today.
"Please, keep calm," JARVIS says from the speaker on top of the reception counter.
"…no one should know I'd turn up at this address, and anybody who does is more likely to send a letter bomb," Wade explains to the boxes. "Unless it's from Weasel. Weasel knows Al, and Al knows I'm crashing Spidey's crib."
"…have a strict policy regarding weapons!" argues the manager of the reception, who has come out to shield her underlings from the potentially disastrous clash.
"…Iron Man!" demands someone, and then too many people are talking all over one another, and Peter's spider senses alert him to impending danger.
He ducks a split second before the Head Receptionist (or whatever is her official title) pepper-sprays Wade in the face.
The effect is negligible through the mask, and what little damage the spray causes is healed momentarily, but Wade has shifted into his 'field' setting. He's tracking everybody moving through the vast hall of the lobby, all the exits and all the hostile Stark employees.
So far no one has shot a gun, but it seems like a matter of time.
"Should I be calling Mr Stark?" asks a familiar voice.
Peter reflexively springs back up to his feet and swivels on the spot.
Pepper is standing in front of him, with Mr Hogan hulking threateningly behind her. Her mere presence causes stuttering in half of the people who want to make her notice them.
"N-no, Ma'am," replies the Head Receptionist. "Absolutely no need of that. Just a small problem regarding the identity of this… person…" She points at Deadpool with the pepper spray still clutched in her hand.
The leader of the security team steps forward, gulps, and then pushes his chest out far enough that his shirt-button nearly pops off. "We'll just escort him out-"
"Wait a sec," protests the courier. "Did I lug these boxes all the way for nothing? I'm not taking them back-"
"Let me," Pepper snaps. She grabs the clipboard out of the delivery man's hand and reads the details.
Wade sidles up to her and points. "I signed it. See here? Wade Winston Wilson. Double-you, double-you, double-you dot…" He pauses dramatically. "…cum."
"You didn't-" Peter facepalms and then, for posterity, adds the other hand, too, with a less than satisfying smack. "You did."
"Need another hand?" Wade inquires helpfully. "Could make it a triple-facepalm. And quadruple. We could try finding more people to add more hands, but White-y says we should talk about it before we have an orgy. What's your opinion on orgies-"
"Vetoed," Peter says, suppressing a vision of Wade offering his wrapped-up and bow-tied dismembered hand like a present.
He doesn't mind that people do all sorts of sexually liberated stuff, in theory – more power to them, as long as nobody gets hurt – but he can't imagine himself in such a situation and, frankly, he doesn't want to. Also, he's feeling so possessive about Wade that if anyone else tried to touch him, Peter would probably go into limb-ripping mode.
"Ma'am," the Head Receptionist addresses Pepper after she returns the clipboard to the courier, "this party is disruptive. Shouldn't we let the security-"
"They are guests," Pepper cuts in.
Peter can tell that she is not at all happy about the fact, and he suddenly feels like an intruder here. It's sad; he has almost managed to become comfortable in the Tower. Knowing that Pepper has been uneasy with his presence comes like a blow from an unexpected direction.
"I can go," he offers.
Wade's hands on him tighten.
Pepper puts her cellphone into the pocket of her power suit and surveys Peter and Wade as if they were a pair of clowns who failed to be as boring and unfunny as she expected them to be. Which is fair.
"Follow me," she orders.
They do. Peter and Wade each take a box, and the three of them along with Mr Hogan – who nervously flutters behind Pepper and tries to communicate his protests against this course of action with exaggerated facial expressions – file into an elevator.
"Miz Potts," Wade says, "your staff is made up of a bunch of rude fuckers."
Peter flinches. He wants to apologize – but he's not sure what for. Wade is right, after all. And although the way he expressed himself is not the most polite either, it does get the point across.
"Ignore Muriel," Pepper replies and then, shocking Peter into choking on his half-formed apology, adds: "She's a total cow."
Wade nods sagely. "That explains why I'm kinda scared of her."
"Excuse me," JARVIS speaks.
"Yes, Jarvis?" replies Pepper, reflexively glancing up.
"I have identified the contents of the boxes. They are mostly Mr Wilson's weaponry, which he has lost on his mission to neutralize the Winter Soldier."
Peter's jaw sinks. He stares at Wade.
Wade stares at the boxes. He sinks to his knees and hugs one. His cheek presses to the QR code. "Bea? Arthur?"
"Also," JARVIS continues, "there seems to be a bomb-"
"Called it!" Wade exclaims jubilantly, jumping back up to his feet.
"-please do not panic. I will be taking you directly to floor seventy-eight, so you can make use of the Hulkproof chamber. Mr Spider-Man, may I ask for your assistance in disarming the device?"
Peter gulps. He's in debt here, though, so he nods. Pyrotechnics can't be all that complicated if every second action hero can disarm a bomb with a Swiss knife, right?
"No way!" Wade exclaims, glomping onto Peter. "If anyone's getting all up on a bomb, it's gotta be me!"
Peter doesn't argue. He doesn't want to see his lover splattered all over the walls, but he's rational enough to admit that Peter splattered all over the walls would be worse. And definitive.
Maybe, just maybe, he's beginning to get over it.
x
With JARVIS' expert instructions and Wade's one-time-only willingness to take directions, the bomb is disarmed without anyone being splattered over anything. In the end it turns out to be mostly a decoy – it contains enough explosives to rip apart the box itself, and maybe flambé whoever stands within three steps of it, but considering what else could have fit into that space, it's obviously just another trap in the game of cat and mouse someone is playing.
The Winter Soldier? Or an over-creative handler of his? Someone completely different?
In the absence of answers, Pepper insists on offering drinks all around and calling for take-out. Peter doesn't argue. When they arrive in the living room, they find that the Avengers have returned in the meantime; several of them are even present, in various states of consciousness.
Tony's just awake enough to take a glass of whisky from Pepper's hand before he closes his eyes again and mumbles incomprehensibly into the couch cushion. He doesn't spill a single drop, though – that's kind of a worrying level of advanced alcoholism skill.
Peter finds an unoccupied armchair. Wade seats himself in Peter's lap and compulsively hugs his two prodigal katana to his chest.
Happy, as he insists on being called, hovers for a bit, but at some point Pepper gets annoyed enough to glare at him, so he begs off and goes home. Pepper decides that she's finally off the clock, too, and proves that to the whole world by taking off her torture-instrument heels.
"Mama," Wade sighs, covetously watching as the shoes of pain are set down onto the carpet.
"You don't have a dress to wear with those," Peter points out. His hindbrain is kind of invested.
"They'd go with the lindy bop one," Wade guesses.
"The navy blue one with the polka dots? I thought that was for dancing. Could you even walk in them?"
"No way, Spideyboo. I'd need a bigger size. Miz Potts' got tiny, tiny feet."
Peter becomes aware of the stare directed at them from the armchair opposite. Pepper looks perplexed, although that's a fairly typical reaction. She wasn't often there when the regular Avengers were becoming acquainted with Wade and Peter's particular brand of weirdness.
She doesn't look like she's about to run for the hills, luckily. "How did you two even-"
"Don't-"
"-meet?" finishes Pepper.
"-ask him that," finishes Peter, a second too late.
Wade shrugs, like the answer should be perfectly self-evident to anyone speaking any variation of the English language.
Tony groans (like he's figured what the answer's going to be before it's verbalized) and drinks all his Scotch in one gulp, without opening an eye.
"On the web," Wade says to Pepper, and ignores the wave of dissonant noise of disgust coming from the other Avengers.
Tony rolls off the couch and sleepwalks to the bar to drink some more Scotch. Clint pulls out a pocket sewing set and starts making tiny, neat stitches over a cut on his upper arm. Natasha looks at Deadpool with murder in her eyes, and then blinks it away.
Then, suddenly, someone is laughing – a deep, rumbling laugh that shakes the dishes on the tables. Glasses rattle and clink against one another. Sam wakes up with a start. Faces turn in the direction of the hulking beanbag.
Thor awkwardly half climbs out of it, half topples over, sits up and laughs on, clutching his stomach. He wipes tears from his eyes and delightedly repeats: "On the web!"
x
"Hey, Arachnophobia," Tony says, strutting into the communal kitchen where Peter sits on a barstool with a long-since-cold pickle jar of coffee and a long-since-cold forkful of leftover lasagna suspended in the air just below his jaw.
Peter notices that he's holding the fork up and lets it down. His arm protests the motion. Apparently, he's gotten side-tracked in between bites and spent nearly an hour reading his textbook while holding his arm up.
He sighs and tries to rub the stiffness out of his muscles. It recedes quickly, but he suspects that's mostly down to the spider-bite, not because he's got any talent at massage.
"You in there, Spider-Man?" Tony demands, a little worried.
"Were you talking to me?" Peter mock-inquires, covering for the fact that he has gone away in his head. "I don't have quite that many issues, thanks."
Tony snorts, turning away to stab at the polished buttons of the space-age coffee machine. "That was a movie reference, you heathen."
Peter hums. "Well, I had dinner with the actual god Thor last night. I guess that automatically makes me a Heathen…?"
Tony twists his head around to grin at Peter over his shoulder. "I like that. I never really thought of it that way. Does me being on a team with Thor mean I have to trade in my atheist card?"
"No, Sir," JARVIS assured him dryly. "It is a matter of faith, and since you are aware of Thor's – and, indeed, Loki's – existence based on observation and experiment, your belief only extends to your own technology and your own senses."
"He's autotheist?" Peter inquires, amazed.
"That is not what I meant," JARVIS refutes, but he doesn't sound very certain.
Tony is, predictably, grinning. "I like that even more. Autotheist. Jay, design a mock-up of a web page. We're going to start a new religion. We've already got a cult of individualism, this is the logical step forward. I am, after all, a futurist."
"Mr Stark hasn't slept for a significant length of time since Mr Wilson… returned," JARVIS explains quietly.
Oh, Peter thinks. So he's not the only one affected by what happened. And, come to think of it, Peter hasn't seen Bruce since.
Tony doesn't really seem depressed, with how quick to laugh he is, but he's already explained it, hasn't he? If the choice is between depression and mania, he will pick mania.
He's trying really hard, too, and Peter doesn't want to rain on his parade, so he pretends to yawn – setting off a genuine yawn from Tony – and hops off the chair. He stacks the (really captivating) textbook under his arm and grabs his (really cold) plate.
"There's cocoa in the cupboard, Tony," he says. "Jarvis can talk you through preparing it."
He walks away before Tony can realize that Peter's running from him and his desperate cheerfulness. Besides, hot cocoa really does help.
A bit. Although maybe that is more the effect of Aunt May, who is usually the one to deliver hot cocoa in Peter's life.
Whoops? says Wade's voice in his head.
x
He talks a girl off of a bridge one night. Okay, more like threatens to catch her and tell on her, but the whole thing sucks majorly. He kind of leaves with the impression that her life maybe actually is bad enough to warrant that sort of solution, and offers to put her in touch with someone that could help.
The thing is, she doesn't really want help. He's pretty sure that by saving her life he hasn't helped.
And that's completely mind-altering. Peter's always thought that he was helping by saving lives. But what if… what if he isn't?
x
Peter finds out there's a battle going on because Wade calls him in the middle of it. "Swing by, baby boy. These guys drop down a league without the Hulk."
Honestly. That is a thing that happens.
"Jarvis?" Peter inquires, getting to the penthouse to exit via the landing pad, because this high the windows are not designed to open.
"I received direct orders to not involve you unless absolutely necessary, Spider-Man," replies the A.I. "The situation is not yet that dire."
"I'm not a child," Peter protests, feeling angry and hurt. Now it finally makes sense, why the team wouldn't treat him like a member. He thought things have gotten better since Wade renegotiated with SHIELD on his behalf, but most likely the Avengers just realized how young he was and decided to protect him instead of considering him disposable.
"No, you are not," JARVIS agrees, "but you are a student with a full and demanding workload, and you have recently been gravely wounded. The Avengers are simply concerned, and wish to ensure that you have the opportunity to gain the education toward which you are working."
Peter doesn't have an immediate response to that. He needs to think about it. It doesn't sound bad, and that confuses him.
He mentally shelves the topic, swinging across Manhattan to the site of the fight. The enemy is – shockingly – not Hydra. Unfortunately, it seems to be a different villainous organization, and as opposed to the bads Peter usually encounters, this one is championship material.
Not quite alien invasion level, but there is an invasion already in process, and there are people dying. Peter swings down, grabs a pair of kids just before they're blown up and deposits them on a nearby balcony. He breaks the doorframe, shoves them inside the apartment, and for a moment allows himself to look back.
Their mother is already dead. She was standing too far away, trying to buy the kids time to escape, and Peter couldn't have taken all three of them in one swing.
He's suddenly angry.
He doesn't remember much of the battle afterwards. He doesn't even really fight; his webs are no good against the glowing orange guys, so he focuses on evacuation. He saves maybe fifty, sixty people before his web shooters run low, and then suddenly there is Hydra as well.
There aren't a lot of them – a team of four, as far as he can tell.
He's pretty sure this isn't a planned mission; they were just nearby, noticed what was happening and decided to take advantage of it.
One gets blown up by one of the glowing orange people.
One Peter leaves webbed to a streetlamp.
One jerks like he was shot and runs away. He disappears on the stairs to the Subway station before Peter can even consciously decide if he intends to pursue.
The last one… Well, Peter is really, really angry. There are corpses lying on the sidewalk. He hears crying and screaming. He hears the tail-end of the battle through his comm, and in between Tony, Clint and Steve he gets that it was a terrorist attack. A terrorist attack. Some assholes wanted attention, so they murdered people to get it.
"Wade?" he says. He doesn't recognize his own voice for a moment there.
"Stay put, Spidey," Wade replies immediately. "I'm there in a flick of a switchblade. Just tell me you're not leaking-"
"I'm fine," Peter replies. He's sitting on the dented roof of an old, beat-up Ford, hunched, trying not to look around. The groaning man somewhere far off to the right finally falls silent, hopefully dead. Peter has seen him, some time during his fight against the rogue Hydra agents, and already then knew there was nothing he could do to help.
Maybe euthanize him.
He shudders. He should have… he should have… he doesn't know what he should have done. Maybe not come at all. Maybe he should have let the call go to voicemail and kept on reading Dr Connors' chef d'oeuvre.
Wade dances round the corner and into the street. There's no music, but either he needs none, or he's listening to something no one else can hear. Considering his tendency to talk to the boxes, this is a pretty normal state of affairs with him.
He cha-cha's around the corpse of the last Hydra agent, and then spins back and squats down, looking closer.
He stands up, rubbing his chin. "Petey… did you unalive that gal?"
It turns out that Wade Wilson is better than Peter Parker at drawing a line in the sand and not crossing it.
Peter wants to cry, but he's pretty sure that big boys don't cry. Isn't that a thing? It is a thing.
Wade doesn't cry. Granted, that may be because if he did he would be crying 24/7, but still. Peter hasn't been called a cry-baby since middle school, and there's a reason for it: between deep-seated survivor's guilt and his tendency to internalize responsibility for everything that goes wrong, the bullying trained him to withstand pain, loss, failure and humiliation with as much stoicism as any teenage boy was capable of.
Peter's an adult now. A superhero, however nominally. So maybe he wants to cry, but he can't – not out here, where anyone could see.
"She was a very bad person," Peter points out. He doesn't know anything about her, except that she was Hydra, and that she didn't mind people dying as long as she got what she wanted.
"Petey, you don't unalive people. It's part of the whole… Spider-Man mythos charter declaration thingy. When great power comes… and then the bad things happen? They happen because of you."
They both pause and reflect for a moment. There's something teeth-grindingly disjointed about Wade's misquotation, but neither of them can actually put their finger on it, so they leave it be.
"Umm… yes. Right." Peter actually has an argument. A very good one, too. What was it again? Oh, yes. "And now I've used my power to save all those people she would have killed but can't because… that." He points.
The woman is oozing out a couple of her vital organs is what he means, but he can't really put it in words. The gore seems like a temporary state of being now, and Peter knows intellectually that other people don't do the trademark Wade morning-after with the regeneration and the regaining of vital signs, but right at this moment he's just sitting on the slightly dented roof of a car, in a street, and watching one of today's villains' corpse decompose at a glacial pace.
He thinks maybe this isn't alright.
He thinks maybe he isn't alright.
"What's the date?" he inquires. He isn't wearing his watch. He doesn't know why. He promised Tony he would keep it on him – it's got the GPS chip in it, and it seemed like a reasonable alternative to getting LoJacked. Tony was really gearing up to chip Peter like a pet.
Peter gets it. In theory. He's seen Bruce's files, and Tony's, too. He hasn't seen Pepper's, out of courtesy, but he suspects that's just a variation of a theme. The long and short of it is that detainment sucks, especially if you have information someone wants, skills they may be eager to exploit or unusual physiognomy they want to study.
Peter, for his sins, has all three in abundance. If anyone captures him, he's toast. Or jam. Jam is more likely. Or they'll go all out and he'll be toast with jam.
"The twenty-first, babe," Wade says, sounding unusually subdued.
He sits on the roof of the clunker next to Peter, ignoring the creak of strained metal under their butts. His arm – bulky, heavy, strong – comes around Peter's shoulders. One-handed, he recovers a mangled packet of cigarettes out of one of his numerous pouches. He hooks a thumb under the edge of his mask and pulls it up over his nose. It makes him look like an alien from The Original Series.
He sucks a cancer-stick – heh, 'cancer', only, not funny – straight out of the packet and spirits the rest of it away. He chews on the end of the cigarette.
After a while he turns to Peter. "Hey, beautiful. You got fire?"
There's a while of silence. Crickets would be chirping, except this is the middle of a concrete jungle, so there is distant traffic instead, and maybe some rats scuttling somewhere below if someone has very good hearing.
"I mean, I know you got fire," Wade backpedals, "but no matter how hot you get, you can't exactly light my fire. Except in my pants. You light my fire every time, baby. Fuck, I just want a smoke."
Peter hates the smell of cigarettes – but on the other hand, he's pretty good at dealing. So, he's glad for himself but manages to also be sorry for Wade that he doesn't carry a lighter on his person.
"If the Fantasticos were around," Wade continues, "I'd just ask that Johnny fella. Or maybe not. Wouldn't want you to be jealous, baby boy. He's one hotass, but not as hot as you. Except when he's on fire. I don't want you to be on fire. Literally. Otherwise I want you on fire all the time. Fuck, this arson metaphor is fucked up. I just want to say I love you."
"I just want to say how much I care," Peter whispers back, letting the misquoted lyrics fall into place. He means it, but can't find the energy to convey it at the moment, so he's very glad that good old Stevie Wonder said it for him.
"Love," Wade sighs dramatically, "is blind."
And Peter must be an ableist asshole, because he's suddenly giggling. He doesn't know where the fit's come from, though he's pretty sure that it can't be a healthy place – is this how Tony feels? – but at least he's feeling something. He's pretty sure that Mr Wonder is a great guy, and that he'd completely forgive the moment of politically incorrect humor in the light of the situation – not that he'd see the light – holy dog-do, Peter's just digging himself deeper here. What he means is, he's sorry. He doesn't mean it.
"I'm bad for you," Wade announces.
Peter stops giggling. He's back to planning the pantsing and the hanging from the library portico. This man is his – his – and unless he disavows Peter, they're not breaking up. Nope.
"Before me, you'd never have k-worded anyone, no matter how bad they were-"
"That just makes me more effective and, let's be realistic here, that idealism never helped-"
"And I could be that for you. That thing that stands between you and the necessity of unaliving the scumbags-"
"I'm an adult, Wade, I don't want you to coddle me-"
"I wanted to be that. I need to be something and that at least made sense-"
"Where the Flour-Uranium-Carbon-Potassium do you get off trying to rationalize my love for you?!" Peter suddenly becomes aware that he's raised his voice, and the only reason why he isn't standing in the middle of the street and waving his arms to illustrate his (dubious) points is Wade's heavy arm around his shoulders.
"Not love, baby boy," Wade assures him. His arm moves away from Peter's shoulder only for the hand to appear at the edge of Peter's mask, tugging it up. And then gripping Peter's neck and tugging that, until Peter yields to a kiss. And another.
Peter concentrates on breathing, so they don't end up with that funny vacuum-effect in between their respiratory tracts.
Breathing feels unexpectedly good.
"Love is a many-splendored thing," Wade declaims once they've separated their respiratory tracts again. "But it's not enough on its own. And the other stuff is hard, when you're a meat-popsicle gun-for-hire. Lemme be your gun-for-hire – or lending, but just for you, special deal – and go back to being the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, yeah?"
Peter sees how much sense that makes.
He's known this for a while: for all his insanity, Wade is a wise man.
"Yeah, okay," Peter replies. He gives his lover a short, chaste kiss, and slides down the side of the car to the sidewalk.
His eyes stray to the dead villain. It surprises him how sorry he suddenly feels. He won't wake up from nightmares of her, he doesn't think – not when he's got so many nightmares starring Wade and Harry and Gwen and Uncle Ben to contend with – but his ability to regret the killing is almost… reassuring.
He swings away, hoping against hope to clear his head. He stops on the closest rooftop when he hears music.
'If every child on every street had clothes to wear and food to eat that's a-'
"Hello?" Peter says softly after picking up the phone.
There's the sound of a sharply drawn breath on the other side of the line. "Oh. Oh, dear. Excuse me for a moment-"
"Aunt May?"
She blows her nose.
Peter flinches.
"I'm here, sweetheart," she says. It's been a long, long time since she called him that. He used to find it embarrassing – just another proof that he is a darn moron sometimes. "And I'm perfectly alright now that I've heard from you. I've seen bits of the fighting on TV. This was all far less frightening when it just happened on the news, but to watch when I know you're out there in danger-"
"Listen to me, you little shirt-lifter!" snaps another voice. Aunt May's phone is grabbed from her hand and Blind Al gets on Peter's case as if she's been there since he was an ankle-biter. "Just because you fuck up and your Aunt's righteously pissed at you doesn't mean you're absolved from the duty to let her know you've got all your limbs intact. Next time you're in the same damn city as a battle and don't report to her the second it's over, I'll come after you and-"
"Al!" Aunt May protests in the background. She must do something truly awe inspiring (Peter shivers a little), because not only does Blind Al shut up, she also hands the phone back. "There is nothing, nothing you could do, Peter, dear, that would stop me worrying about you. No matter how angry or sad either of us is, we will never stop speaking. I know Ben taught you as much."
Peter tries to blink away tears. It doesn't work so well, but, hey, the mask absorbs them. He hangs his head and stands on the rooftop, far above the anthill that is Manhattan.
"If you try to cut yourself off from me again, I will walk into the Stark Tower and give Mr Stark a piece of my mind. Surely Miss Potts would understand the need to keep in touch with your family?"
She would, Peter knows. And she would absolutely adore Aunt May, too – frankly, who doesn't? Even Blind Al took to her, and that's saying a lot.
"I'm sorry I disappointed you," Peter finally manages to say.
"Oh, my boy." Aunt May sighs. "We live such lives, and they all look so much easier from the outside than they truly are, Peter. On both sides of the equation."
She's right, Peter knows. He's isolated himself by keeping his secret other life from her for years. She doesn't understand, can't really empathize with him. Peter is only now realizing how little he truly knows this woman – how embarrassingly lost he is when he tries to figure out what goes on in her head.
He's brought far too much pain into her life, and still doesn't have the first clue about how she feels about things.
"I am sorry for putting you through this."
Al shouts a few very vulgar words in the background; Aunt May shushes her, and then pulls out an unusual, slightly dry tone of voice: "I rather think that you have enough problems on your own, my dear. How about you give mine back, and let me worry about them. If you want to borrow something, I am sure I have your uncle's beret hat around here somewhere-"
Peter snorts, unable to stop himself.
His Aunt tuts at him, but doesn't say anything about animal noises. There's quiet on the line for a while; on her side Peter can hear the little sounds of her puttering around – the creak of a door-hinge, footsteps, sherry poured, clinking of glasses. The springs of Uncle Ben's ancient armchair groan under Aunt May's slight weight.
"To our health," she says.
"That's to you, Pete," Al grumbles. "I ain't worried none 'bout your squeeze." Apparently, it's not her first drink tonight.
Peter nods, accepting the mission. "Thank you. I love you, Aunt May."
Love is pretty dangerous stuff, but it's also what matters most.
x
A long shower helps Peter compose himself, which is a blessing, because as soon as he resurfaces he's grabbed by Captain America – literally! – and pulled along to a full-team debriefing.
Wade is absent, but no one even mentions him, so chances are that he's not included in the 'team'. Maybe he reports directly to Director Hill. Maybe he doesn't report. In any case, if he were here he would probably be in handcuffs, so disappearing is unquestionably the smart thing to do. Hopefully he'll be waiting for Peter at home with a pile of pancakes. That does actually sound like a slice of paradise.
Peter's stomach growls.
Luckily, the mask hides his expression. Although, he gets more sympathetic looks than mocking or glares, so he's sure he's not the only one with some post-fighting munchies.
Peter stands behind Clint, trying to shrink into his shadow. Occasionally he shifts from foot to foot. He's bored. The reporting itself is mostly up to Steve, and Director Fury does little but look angry and intimidating and poke holes into Steve's explanation.
"Can anyone tell me who actually got this woman?!"
Peter startles. The screen Fury's pointing at shows a photo of a familiar body. Peter's stomach makes another noise, but this one isn't a sound of hunger. He shrinks further, until he can barely be seen over Clint's shoulder, but he's not a coward. He's done this, it's on his conscience, and he can stand up straight and face the consequences of his actions like a man-
"Could've been me," Tony says, barely pausing in his texting. "Says here that injuries were consistent with being slammed against the fire escape at a high velocity. Sound like a repulsor blast to me."
Peter should speak up.
It's unnerving to see Tony so unconcerned – he's known that Tony kills people, a lot of people, often enough, and doesn't lose sleep over it. It's part and parcel of being the Iron Man, of fighting terrorists – people like Hydra and the Ten Rings – and AIM, apparently, which is the acronym Fury's given them for the orange blowing-up people – all organizations that are way too powerful (and damn near indestructible) despite the indiscriminate wholesale slaughter of their minions.
Peter once used to hate the idea that a good superhero could do these things. He was firmly in the camp that agreed with Tony Stark's statement that he wasn't a superhero and had no aspirations to become one; that he simply went further than other businessmen in protecting his investments.
He sees it all from a different perspective now. He sees the never-ending assault on peace and on the security of the nation (of the planet, often enough lately), and feels the pervading atmosphere of hopelessness. These people have been trying to hold up a flood with their bare hands (and their super-advanced weapons) while Peter himself was playing around picking off car-jackers and off-license robbers, and comfortable on his moral high ground.
No wonder they didn't use to take him seriously.
He's joined the bigger league now.
The rules are different. Trying to keep the fight 'friendly' would just get people killed.
On the other hand, Wade's offer to be Peter's gun affords him a lot of the luxury. He just hopes he won't eventually turn into a hypocrite, the way Steve sometimes gets.
"Fine," Fury grumbles. "If nobody else is claiming the kill, let's just put in on Iron Man's tally. You managed to refrain from unreasonable collateral damage – congratulations," he drawls sarcastically, moving to another topic as if no one really cared, "but you should have done better on the civilian deaths. Why did these guys kill more than fifty people before you got there?!"
Peter feels like he's sitting on a see-saw. One moment he feels guilty, then justified, then guilty again, and then once more justified. At this point he has no idea what is the reasonable response.
He watches as Natasha buffs her nails, glancing sideways at Thor, who is trying to mimic her and nearly stabs himself with a file. Clint is sleeping with his eyes open; he doesn't quite snore, but he does a kind of heavy breathing that betrays his somnolent state to anyone with ears. Sam looks like the lights are on, but no one's home.
Steve is the only one who pays attention, and even he does so with a hyper-polite straight face that is just hiding the longsuffering grimace underneath.
Peter knows why Wade isn't here, but he misses him right now. He wants to lean over and whisper some sort of commentary – a hash-tag-line, for his shame – and listen to the responding babble-
"Am I boring you, Spider-Man?" Fury demands.
Peter guesses that he really is the softest target in the room. He puts on his teacher's pet face – a wasted effort, since it's hidden under his mask – and pulls his shoulders back. "Professor," he says, cheerfully digging his grave, "we've done this chapter last week. We should be doing the Fourier transform today; you said in the beginning of the semester that it was going to be on the finals."
There is a – one, single – second when the Black Widow herself looks at Peter with cool, calculating eyes, trying to gauge if he's finally had that long-anticipated psychotic break. She relaxes almost immediately, but Peter still congratulates himself on the achievement.
"This ain't fucking high school!" Fury emphasizes (grossly misjudging the complexity of Fourier transforms, heh, complexity) even though his expression implies that to him it's clear how anyone could mistake this place for one. "If you don't-"
"Why d'you keep us in detention, then?" Tony inquires, not even lifting his eyes from the screen of his phone.
"Stark," Fury says, clearly having passed the line of not giving a darn into that comfortable place of utter apathy, "you're suspended for the rest of the day. Out of my Headquarters!"
Tony stands and leaves, walking and texting at the same time.
Steve sighs.
x
There are pancakes. Peter gorges on them.
So do the Avengers. The levels of Wade-hatred within Stark Tower hit an all time low; no one even says anything pithy as Wade drags Peter away from the group with the explicitly and repeatedly stated intention to ravish him silly.
"Privacy… please… Jarvis…" Peter pants out as he's divested of his shirt and then tugged down on top of his boyfriend, with his mouth otherwise occupied. He kneels up and tries to reestablish a little equilibrium.
It's a thing with Wade – Peter's noticed, of course, but they've never actually talked about it. Peter might be about hundred times stronger than Wade (and that is a conservative estimate), and might have grown some actual shoulders over the course of the past year, but he's still sort of wiry.
Wade is built; he's pretty much twice Peter's mass. A big, solid man with rock-hard muscle all over.
Peter would very much like to occasionally be pressed down by that familiar, warm bulk, but Wade freaks out whenever he feels like he's limiting Peter's freedom of motion. There's something very ugly, very painful behind that reflex, and most of the time Wade probably doesn't remember what.
He just acts on it.
So Peter's sitting across his lover's thighs and feeling the familiar tingling in his fingers that he knows is about to climb his neural network to the center mass, setting off sparks along the way, when there's an aborted inhale and the action stalls.
"Wait, Petey."
Wade's hands on Peter's shoulders make him sit up, putting a space between them that allows for comfortable eye contact. It's fairly dark in the bedroom, because Wade never really is all that comfortable without his mask on, but there's enough light to see that he looks worried.
Peter's not sure what's wrong. He puts his palm on top of Wade's head and strokes along the skull, feeling the ridges of the ravaged skin there.
"You've ever seen the first Angelique movie? The one with Michele Mercier, not the de-flavored remake?"
Peter hasn't. He hasn't seen the remake either.
"They skipped the singing. I sing like a sick crow, but I can't help but feel with the Geoffrey bastard. With the face of horror. Not Freddy Krueger horror, Geoff' got off with just one half of the gore-facial, but it wasn't much of a turn on. No wonder Ange thought she should get off with that other dude before-"
"You don't sing like a sick crow," Peter protests.
Wade is mediocre at carrying a tune, but his voice is alright. And it's not like Peter's got an ear for music. Aaaand they're getting side-tracked.
Which is weird, considering their current circumstance.
"But, Prince Pete, the gore-face means you've gotta wait 'til Ange wants to jump your bones for real. And sometimes that takes a while. And that's fine."
Peter finally gets it. He feels his lips stretch in a wide, helpless smile.
"Now there's that panty-dropper, ba-baby boy. If I was wearing panties, they'd totes be droppin' down all the way from up 'ere. Prolly land on somebody's head, and then Stark would have to pay them off to not sue him for sexual harassment – 's too bad I'm hanging free today."
Peter takes the cue and presses his palm to Wade's crotch. Yep, action is happening. Definitely not hanging anymore.
He giggles.
Wade grabs his head and gives him a smacking kiss, a little mistargeted but making up for the lack of aim by overabundance of saliva.
Peter reflexively wipes his cheek, but even as his nose scrunches up, he feels himself relax.
It's been a while since he smiled, he knows.
They haven't had sex since before Wade left to find the Winter Soldier – since before Peter was shot, actually – and Peter hasn't even been into kissing lately. Of course Wade noticed. He hasn't pushed – maybe because he wouldn't know how to, but that's neither here nor there. The important thing is that as much as he wants Peter (damn near all the time, any hour of any day when nobody is or recently has been gutted) he's stopped to check if Peter's just going along with the flow, or if he actually wants this, too.
I love you, Peter thinks, but doesn't say it, because it would be the worst timing – Wade would take it as an argument rather than the statement of fact it is.
He's sorry it's taken him so long, and he's grateful for Wade's presence and support. He can't imagine what his life would be like without this man. Doesn't want to.
"Take my clothes off," Peter commands.
"You wanna take a ride on my disco stick?" Wade sings.
Peter would have fallen over giggling if Wade wasn't keeping a solid hold on him. They chuckle together, wait until the hilarity fades away, taking with it the previous sense of urgency, and then Wade's pulling Peter's shirt over his head.
"I'ma make you feel real good, Petey. Real, real good," Wade promises, and proceeds to do so.