Part Four: That Sort of Thing
x
"Oh, goody," Tony drawls from his prone position on the couch. "Spidey got some last night, and he's all over his inanition."
Peter doesn't react to this. He idly notes that Tony's still keeping hold of his phone, but most of his attention is on the spectre of coffee. It hasn't been an especially long night for him, not after the physical and mental exhaustion of the battle, but it's too early in Peter's opinion and he's got a day of intense studying ahead of him.
The idea of coffee was the only thing that convinced him to get out of bed.
He acquires a pot, pours its contents into a mug and puts the kettle on. He's going to drink this here, and then take his trusty pickle jar with him down to-
"Any news?" Pepper inquires, striding across the living room space in another pair of shoes that Wade would covet if he saw them.
Tony looks up. His mouth quirks, although Peter can't say if that expression is guardedly happy or sardonic. "I'm working on him. Good news is, he hasn't cut me off."
Pepper leans down for a quick kiss. "Let me know if I can do anything to help you convince him."
"Will do," Tony agrees, watching Pepper's butt as she walks away in the direction of the elevator. "You're very convincing when you put your mind to it, Potts. Brucie-bear won't know what hit him."
Oh, wow, Peter thinks. Really?
And then another part of him responds: 'you've got an especially dirty mind, bucko. They're friends. Remember friendship? It's a thing people have, when they're not you.'
The elevator door opens. Steve and Sam come out of it, radiating energy after their morning run, exchanging good-morning's and how-are-you's with Pepper. Everyone sounds fine, as though they've put yesterday out of their minds. That's an enviable ability.
Steve goes straight for the fridge and the selection of juice. As opposed to Clint, he doesn't agonize over his choices, and simply picks hundred percent orange juice, even though Sam protests that: "Freshly-squeezed is better."
"Glad to see you up and about, Spider-Man," Captain America says cheerfully.
Peter pulls his hand out of the pocket of his hoodie and raises it, showing off the little sign he has prepared for this eventuality. It's not a plushy, but he's learned that the Avengers don't have the requisite understanding of plushies.
Maybe they would respond better to action figures, but Peter doesn't own any.
"Spider-Man," Steve speaks slowly, bemused, "have you just raised a little sign saying 'shhh, I'm busy talking to the boxes'?"
"If you can read that, I don't see why you're interrupting my chat," Peter points out.
The kettle boils. He pours hot water on his instant coffee powder. It's going to be basically nasty tar, but he's told that's normal for students facing finals.
"Is this like when a computer writes 'processing, please wait' on the screen?" Steve inquires.
"One may assume so," Sam agrees, sounding a trifle amused. "Commendable effort. The fewer teammates we have that transfer their inner dialogue to the outside world, the better."
Now I'm your teammate, huh? Peter thinks. He doesn't say anything, luckily – he probably would, but at the moment he's busy talking to the boxes, even if that really translates to mentally moaning about exams, reviewing review plans, suppressing the occasional creative mental depiction of Wade and wondering where Wade even is. He's disappeared from Peter's bed sometime during the night, and hasn't left a note.
Peter just hopes the Winter Soldier won't be involved this time.
x
The Winter Soldier isn't involved.
Wade returns in the evening with arms full of tacos, and JARVIS calls Peter to come pick him up before someone kills him out of sheer annoyance and someone else has to clean up the resulting mess.
Strangely, when he arrives at the communal floor it's packed with laughing people. He has the suspicion that Wade didn't come directly to him for the sole purpose of acclimatizing the Avengers to his presence. He's trying to get into their good graces through feeding them.
It seems to actually work.
"…and then Copycat tried to bribe me with sex," Wade is saying. He skips over to Peter and glomps onto him. "Can you believe it, snookums? I said, I said, have you ever even seen Spidey? He's got superhuman superflexibility, does one-handed lifts with eighteen-wheelers, is the smartest guy under the age of thirty on the globe, he's fun, and we're in love. Sex does not get better than that."
Peter's pretty sure that his face is on fire. Thank Anansi for the mask.
Tony rolls around on the couch cushions, laughing. When it seems like he's about to mellow down due to lack of air, Clint mutters to him: "You're just jealous," which, of course, sets him off again.
He's as red in the face as Peter must be, with tears in the corners of his eyes and gasping for air. "No-ooo…" he wheezes.
He looks like he doesn't have a care in the world. Like everything is funny.
Peter wishes Bruce would just come back already so Tony could stop laughing so hard to keep himself from falling apart. It hurts to watch. He sees Pepper across the room – her eyes trained on Tony, and a line of worry between them.
If not for his mask, their eyes would be meeting, and he would manage to communicate his sympathy. He's a complete butthole.
"You look worried," Wade grumbles, head-butting Peter like a cat expressing its ownership (and Peter's reflexively petting his head before he notices what he's doing). "Stop looking worried, Spidey. It's long since over between her and me. She tries anything, I'd know she's not you in three seconds."
"How?" Tony asks, morbidly fascinated.
Natasha appears seemingly out of nowhere and takes a perch on the sidearm of the couch. Her right eyebrow is slightly raised.
"The boxes would tell me, obviously," Wade blows them off.
Peter ignores the resultant groaning. "I heard there were tacos."
Wade rapidly straightens which, considering that he's got a firm grip around Peter's waist, lifts Peter off of his feet.
"Down," Peter orders.
"I brought two hundred tacos, Sugar-Spidey. You ever seen two hundred tacos together? That's a lot of tacos-"
"I'm pretty sure Thor can eat, like, fifty in a sitting," Peter points out. He's seen Thor eat. It's an experience he's not likely to forget any time soon.
"Superhero eat-off!" Wade exclaims.
"Contenders?" Peter asks.
The rest of the room has fallen quiet. Peter's pretty sure they are watching the conversation as if it were a tennis match.
"Thor versus the rest of the team! You'll be the judge. The well-fed judge. And I'll eat-"
Peter's relationship telepathy works fast enough for him to clap his hand over Wade's mouth before anything too obscene comes out of it. They stare at one another, mask-to-mask, for a moment, and understand the terms of the wager perfectly.
Peter nods. "I dare you."
Wade makes victory arms – letting Peter drop to the floor, finally – and runs off to make the competition happen.
Peter hurries to steal his portion of the food. Not because he's ravenous (although he is) but because he's not up to facing the witnesses to that interaction.
x
Thor wins.
He spends the night throwing up, but he seems cheerful about it. Not much can keep that guy down.
x
Peter also wins.
x
"Petey, is this a fort built out of empty energy drink cans?" Wade asks, letting himself into their designated set of Stark Tower guest rooms. He turns on his heel and surveys the post-apocalyptic wasteland that used to be a lounge which could rival the best Four Season apartments. "Holy Spaghetti Monster, Batman, this looks like walking cancer! And I should know, because I am walking cancer, Princeling, with just enough healing factor to make my cells wish they had never chosen to mutate!"
Peter has aced his Cancer exam, but he's not going to even broach the topic with Wade. That way lies the Neogenic Recombiner and lizard apocalypse. Deadpool would not be improved by becoming part-lizard.
So Peter just inclines his head to the side, squints, and says: "Nah, still just looks like finals to me."
Wade sits in his lap, utterly unmindful of the textbooks and folders and binders Peter hastily moves to the side. "Far be it from me to ruin the Danny Jackson vibe – you're my favoritest geek, Dr Parker-"
"Not a Doctor," Peter grumbles. Right now he feels like he won't even get the Masters.
"-and that's saying something, 'cause I know a lot of geeks. Back when I was just this run-o'-the-mill dying mercenary, I met a few biochem dudes. They pumped me full of shit that gave me a healing factor. Did I ever tell you 'bout this? I've got such mixed feelings 'bout biochem."
Peter freezes. This… this hasn't occurred to him. How hasn't it occurred to him? How did he overlook up until now that he's minoring in subjects that are giving Wade screaming nightmares?
"…but I guess if anyone ever figures out how to give me my pretty face back, it'll either be Hammertime's space wizard bro, or a cute lil' geek in birth control glasses."
"So," Peter speaks when he rediscovers his voice, "you don't mind me studying this?"
"Mind?" Wade repeats, like he doesn't understand the question. "You've got a sexy one, bunny button. Get it? It's 'cause I think you're cute." He's referencing that time they were getting to know one another, and possibly implying that – just like Peter – he knew from the start what he was getting into.
Peter leaves it at that. Besides, equations are starting to leak out of his ears, so he figures it's time for a break.
x
Studying in the communal space is more or less impossible, and Peter only attends the mandatory 'team night' under direct threat from the Black Widow.
He thought he was in the clear after he managed to turn away Captain America with his deadly expression of disappointment, but then Natasha alit in his room and explained that Tony needed his science-babble fix, and Peter was to provide it or else.
Peter desperately hopes never to learn what 'else' means, so here he is, letting Tony jibe at the physics and complain about the squishy side of the science, and trying to ignore the TV in the background. For some reason – he suspects irony's sake – the Avengers are watching Friends.
It's not exactly the most ignorable thing, but it's less terrible than, say, HIMYM.
"-why would anybody mar something as streamlined by attaching it to unreliable wetware?" Tony grumbles. He shows off the schematics of the Winter Soldier's arm on his tablet.
Peter is fascinated, although in his case it's less of a hard-on for the technology, and more of awe at how it's connected to the human's neural network.
"This is amazing," he breathes, completely distracted from the actual subject he's supposed to be reviewing. He takes the tablet from Tony and scrolls down for the specs. He finds himself shaking his head. "This isn't possible for a human body. That's straight up magic-"
"I know, right?" Tony agrees.
Peter tries to hand the tablet back. This doesn't work, so he puts it down and lets Tony pick it up.
Tony pretends it's all Situation Normal – which it is as far as Peter's concerned – but there's a strain around his eyes. Whatever that is, nervousness or shame or self-deprecation, Peter just wishes he could come up with the words to reassure him that it's perfectly fine.
"You're talking about Bucky?" Steve demands. Apparently, he has infallible my-brainwashed-friend-has-been-mentioned detection abilities.
"His arm, to be specific," Tony replies. "She's a beaut-"
"I'd offer to cut it off for you," Wade puts in before Tony gets punched in the face, and continues before he himself gets punched in the face: "It's bound to slow him down a bit – but it won't work. I may be the blade that slices straight through Hydra whenever the mood and the money take me there, but I don't really think either Bea or Arthur would slice through that piece of tech. Buzzkill. I could cut off the other arm. Though, word to the wise, Mister Proper, there's far too little of that guy left to take away any more pieces."
Steve gulps, still not used to the way Wade can be metaphorical and blunt at the same time – the way he gives you the goriest imagery and so sets you up to be relieved when reality pales in comparison. He looks to Peter for support, and Peter is actually focused on something here, but he has a sneaking suspicion that those superheroes that aren't at the same time lawyers and journalists and scientists (and whatever other day jobs they manage to hold onto) simply live their lives like SWATs (spending their days working out and keeping fit according to their own schedule) so they simply do not understand the concept of someone being too busy.
Peter feels like he's living in a permanent time debt – to himself, primarily, to Aunt May in little increments for years (since Uncle Ben), and lately to Wade. He tries. Mostly, he crashes and burns. Mostly, there are criminals and emergencies and AA alarms.
"Please, if at all possible, keep the rest of Bucky intact," Steve says, with his usual – so unusual, really – mix of sincerity and stalwartness. His eyes beg for clemency for the Winter Soldier, who hurt Peter and Wade both.
"We need something that will hack through that piece of Automail," Wade muses. "Amestris called – they want their tech back! Speaking of hacking through titanium: hey, boffin, any news on the lightsabers?" Wade leans back, chair and all, and in a show of remarkable dexterity and balance does not crack his head open.
Peter's not worried. It's an incredible luxury to care for someone who can't get damaged permanently.
"No functional prototype yet, honey, sorry," he says, answering the underlying question of whether they – Peter and Wade, as a unit – are ready to forgive. Since Wade is, Peter would feel like a complete heel to say no.
Still, it's not easy, and he doesn't feel much like talking about it anymore. He leans over to give Wade a perfunctory kiss before moving back to his pile of study materials.
Wade grabs him by the sleeve of his hoodie, pulls him back down and snogs him thoroughly. Peter tries to scowl as he shifts away, but for some reason that's impossible to do around a smile.
In the background, the pre-recorded audience obediently laughs on cue.
x
The finals kill Peter. Not literally, but he doesn't remember getting back to the Tower.
He sleeps long enough for it to almost be considered coma, and when he wakes up, the Tower is empty of any Avengers.
JARVIS catches Peter up, in between mother-henning him to eat and nagging at him about the state of his laundry and his room, at which point Peter starts to feel really uncomfortable, because not even Aunt May has ever hounded him this much. He obediently tidies up – that was always the plan, only the action itself got postponed due to the twenty-hour nap – and listens to JARVIS' account of recent events.
Some kind of intel apparently came in from SHIELD, and now the Avengers are once again busy with official Avengers stuff.
This time it includes Wade.
So Peter spends a few nights patrolling.
It's oddly relaxing – to deal with just thieves and robbers and car-jackers and saving stupid, drunk people from taking headers off rooftops, which for some reason are prime party locations. He, morbidly, likes saving people from burning apartments the best, because that's the only time when everybody is happy to see him.
Honest, Peter's never had a single butthole try to call the police on him when he's pulling people out of fire. Rescuing kids seems to be the magic.
Not the literal magic like the Winter Soldier's working artificial arm. The metaphorical kind.
But Peter's fine with that – on account of the kids being alive and well. That's a pretty unassailable outcome (although the Daily Bugle does try to assail for all that Jameson is worth).
x
As narrative causality would have it, this is the point when the Winter Soldier resurfaces.
Peter in sitting on the couch and reading – and not even textbooks for once! – when his spider senses go wild.
He throws himself to the floor.
Nothing happens.
He waits for a few seconds, while the feeling-like-a-paranoiac slowly creeps in. He can't explain in. Can't say what startled him so badly that he would take a clownish header off of the furniture in the middle of a paragraph that was even relatively boring for an author like Doyle.
"Do not get up yet, Mr Spider-Man," JARVIS says, so sternly that Peter just rolls over, puts a hand under his head and waits.
Maybe it wasn't just paranoia, after all? He has extensive experience with his spider senses, and they have yet to betray him.
"Shooter's position determined," JARVIS says abruptly. "I am initiating counter-measures-"
"No!" Peter knows what 'counter-measures' means. "Let's not release the Iron Legion in the middle of Manhattan, please? Let me try it my way."
A hologram in midair pinpoints the location of the sniper, and Peter's already known that this is the Winter Soldier – his own reflexes are superhuman, and he's only been alerted and reacted after the sniper moved to fire, so if the sniper's managed to stop his motion in time after he saw Peter ducking, it means his reflexes are possibly even faster than Peter's – but the distance of the nest JARVIS has indicated is ridiculous, so there's really only one person that can be behind that scope.
The resident A.I. takes a while to calculate and predict the possible outcome of 'doing it Peter's way', and eventually gives in, albeit with audible reluctance.
"As you wish, Peter. Please note that if you are wounded again, the reaction from certain parties will be very explosive."
If Peter got shot again, he would be most worried about Aunt May's reaction. He can't imagine it being explosive, per se… but it would definitely put the fear of the Distinguished Lady into its witnesses.
Peter crawls across the penthouse, keeping low so the sniper wouldn't see him. Unfortunately, not wanting to be seen by his potential murderer (which doesn't make any sense – has Steve's old friend completely lost his marbles, or is this some unexpected change of strategy?) means that he can't use the landing pad.
Still, Tony Stark is a genius, so even if the windows don't open, there is no dearth of emergency exits, if you happen to have JARVIS on your side.
Which Peter does.
He swings around Manhattan, remaining as out of sight of the Central Park Tower as possible, until he gets to it from the other side. JARVIS in his ear confirms that there is no sign of any support team for the sniper, and that Peter's advent is unlikely to be spotted.
Peter calculates the arc so close that on the downswing his toes nearly brush the pavement. He feels the momentum redistributing liquids inside his organs, and at the apex he lets go of his webbing.
For an instance he flies.
The Winter Soldier notices him before Peter touches down on the ledge. The man is amazingly fast. If Peter were baseline human, he would have been DOA.
Peter hops off the ledge, sticks one palm and one sole to the side of the building and webs the Winter Soldier in the face. He watches him hit the ledge with a dull thud, and a clang, and a few cracks. Shrapnel flies all around; Peter idly bats aside a piece that would have hit him in the face, and watches.
The Winter Soldier rolls over and struggles, blind and unable to breathe. He tries to pull off the web, but only manages to glue his hand to his face.
It's the right one, so he eventually frees it, leaving the glove faux-comically hanging off of his face.
Peter continues to watch.
This is the guy that shot him. This is the guy that quartered Wade.
Peter's not going to kill him, although there is enough of an impulse there that he considers having an accident happen… but then he admits that this is sort of a Wade-situation for Steve, and if ever there was a case that could not be clear-cut even with a laser, it is this one.
"Jarvis?" he says. He's not going to kill the Winter Soldier – honest, he isn't – but his usual modus operandi is to leave the incapacitated criminal for the police to pick up, and that obviously wouldn't work here. SHIELD is nowhere nearby to take over.
And Steve wouldn't want to give this guy to SHIELD anyway. Just like Peter refused to leave Wade to them. People disappear in SHIELD. Sometimes they come back different.
Sometimes they never come back at all.
And not all of that is their allegedly-past Hydra infestation.
"I have prepared the Hulk-proof chamber," JARVIS replies in Peter's comm. "It shall suffice for the time being."
The Winter Soldier flops over weakly, and then seems to fall unconscious.
Peter doesn't believe the ruse. He can comfortably go without air for three minutes. He guesses he could survive a good eight, maybe nine. This guy is more like Steve than like Peter, and Steve once went without air for sixty-eight years.
Peter squats on the ledge and mummifies the assassin, uses some more web to create sort-of straps, and carries him back to the Tower on his back like a rucksack. A big, bulky, heavy, unwieldy baggage.
"Check if he's dying?" he inquires once he's within the reach of JARVIS' sensors.
"He is well enough, Peter," the A.I. assures him. "There are no signs of asphyxia. Surprisingly, he is still conscious."
"Supersoldiers are a pain in the neck," Peter decides. He unloads his backpack by holding the straps in his bare hands and dissolving the webbing.
The loud, dull crash-clang of the body behind him is no less satisfying than it was the first time.
"That, indeed, seems to be one of the qualities the serum enhances," JARVIS agrees. Then he makes a sound almost like a sigh. "I do hate to prevail upon you, Peter, in light of your past encounters with Mr Barnes, but could you disarm him?"
And here Peter thought that he would just leave him mummified for the next few hours until the webbing degrades. But, no, that would have been too easy.
He squats next to the mummy and is about to say 'you owe me one' when it occurs to him how many times JARVIS went out of his way for Peter. So he just says: "Subtract one from the number of favors I owe you."
"I would, but I am not counting," the A.I. replies with equal parts of sarcasm and reassurance.
Peter is touched.
"I have informed the Avengers of your exceptional catch. They are on the way back. ETA two hours, forty minutes."
Peter frowns. "Subtract two."
x
Peter has stopped short of literal disarming, which means that the Winter Soldier is not entirely without a handy weapon. Handy, heh.
JARVIS works hard to distract him until the Avengers arrive-
-and when they do, things go pretty much exactly the way Peter imagined they would.
"Stevie…" says the terrifying assassin in the voice of a kicked kitten. He's curled up half on the floor, half on top of Captain America.
Peter's never seen anyone but Wade cry without crying, but that's unmistakably what's happening in front of him now. Sobbing, weeping, blubbering, without a single tear or a single snot bubble. Dry.
Captain America runs his fingers through the dirty, longish hair of his once best friend, blinking like someone who's perfectly aware they are dreaming, but would give just about everything to never wake up. He looks like a religious fanatic, like a zealot, ready to strap himself down with explosives and blow himself to smithereens, because why not? Why not? It's not like anything but the guy in his arms matters, and the guy in his arms is a mirage. If some god promised Captain Rogers that after death he would get Bucky Barnes back, provided he took any given number of people to the grave with him…
Peter blinks and looks away. No, Captain America wouldn't do that. He's just not entirely sure how much of that idol is left in Steve Rogers. Still enough not to go on a killing spree, he hopes.
"Bu-cky," Steve says, mechanically, like a wind-up doll. His hand comes up again, fingers card through Barnes' hair one more time.
Barnes' artificial fingers grab Steve's wrist, pull his hand away from himself, arm extended. With his flesh fingers he traces tiny, almost invisible scars on the inside of Steve's forearm, then elbow (this seems to tickle the Cap, who squirms a little, but not enough to get away) and upper arm as well.
It's only thanks to his spider-enhanced senses that Peter can see rows upon rows of faded trackmarks.
Barnes repeats the process with Steve's other arm.
It looks pretty much the same.
"Bu-cky," Steve pleads softly.
"I don't remember," replies Barnes, just as softly. "I don't remember, Stevie, I get these flashes, bits here and there but none of it makes sense. You were tiny. And dirt poor. Drugs would have killed you. What the fuck, what the- the fuck is… why?" The wave of words wells in his throat and it's too much. He falls silent under the pressure.
Steve stares at his wrist, held fast in five metal fingers. "Project Rebirth," he replies.
"Blew you up," agrees Barnes and then, in the colder voice more fitting for a ghost assassin, continues: "Supersoldier serum and Vita-rays. The subject dosed and irradiated at regular intervals, while subjected to a barrage of physical exertions."
Steve nods. "They sanitized it later, of course. Couldn't let the public know Captain America was a junkie."
Better living through chemistry, Peter thinks. He can't throw stones – in his case it's better living through biophysics, and maybe an argument could be made that he didn't choose it, except that he would have, and he's proud of that, so he refuses to hide behind semantics. Even from himself.
"So," Tony announces, clapping his hands. "Everything peachy-keen in the land of Denmark? No more trouble in paradise? We're all aboard the Enterprise now, on our mission to seek out-"
"Shut up," Natasha says, with shocking lack of harshness.
Tony takes a deep breath and, ironically, deflates a little. Some of his nervous tension drains away, as if Natasha had patted him on the shoulder and promised that things would be alright.
Peter looks around the room. Aside from Steve – who is high as kite on epinephrine and a bunch of other hormones – the Avengers seem to find themselves on various points of the wary scale. On one hand, it's good to know that they don't execute Barnes on the spot and/or don't immediately take him into the fold as one of the team.
On the other hand, it's never been clearer to see how much nobody in this room gives a single mother-hugging darn about Wade.
Sure, the Winter Soldier hasn't killed anyone ever since he turned up in the 'hood. He hasn't permanently injured anyone, and what injury happened – namely Peter getting shot – was the result of Peter acting stupidly rather than any intention on this guy's part.
And who cares about any harm done to Deadpool? It isn't like it counts, is it? It's Deadpool.
Guy was probably asking for it.
Peter, sick to his stomach and lightheaded, spares one last look for the burrito of mixed mutual protective instincts lying on Tony's carpet – and flees.
x
Wade seems curiously robbed of words in the face of Peter turning up on the doorstep of his hovel of an apartment on the edge of Hell's Kitchen in a truly skyscraping dudgeon. He doesn't know how to respond to Peter who is incoherent with rage – humor doesn't work; food doesn't work; physical affection nearly gets Wade punched. There's a dawning of the familiar self-hatred in Wade's eyes, and that is what finally calms Peter down enough that he can breathe and maybe recover a semblance of rationality.
Peter gets over himself and glomps onto Wade from behind, sticking like a barnacle while the man mixes batter for pancakes.
He drops off when the hot oil starts hissing and spitting.
The process of making pancakes is unusually quiet today. Even when Peter was studying, so deep in his head that he would eat whatever Wade gave him to the point of making himself sick, Wade used to sing along to the radio.
Speechless Wade is a little funny. And cute. And, for some reason, he has kidnapped the unicorn plushy from the Tower, so Peter now sits on the ratty couch rescued from a rubbish heap, has a staring contest with the toy and is – inevitably – losing.
"I'll unalive a couple of big fish and buy you a tropical island," Wade suggests. He pats the unicorn on its fluffy head, and then pats Peter on his fluffy head. And passes him a plate full of diabetes.
Peter leans back to look at Wade's upside-down face. This way it looks like Wade is smiling. Except, of course, if Wade's face was the right side up, then the smile itself would be upside-down.
"Maybe Doom has the right idea with this declaration of autonomy thing," Peter agrees. Then he frowns. "Sovereignty?"
"Monarchy?" Wade counter-suggests.
Peter nods sagely. "You did say I was a prince."
"You're my prince," Wade declares mushily, and makes an attempt to kneel at Peter's feet to complete the fantasy, but Peter's only just getting to the point when he might be able to accept a hug without wanting to scratch somebody's eyes out. Wade obligingly wraps Peter up in his arms while Peter holds his plate up to give him access. "Most of the Avengers have pretty hefty bounties on them."
Peter snorts, but this is one of the moments when it's impossible to tell if Wade is being serious, so he shakes his head, too. Just in case.
"Just putting it out there," Wade mutters into Peter's shoulder. "I totes could do it. Well, maybe not Dr Green, but the rest of them, betcha. With that kinda dough, we could buy, like, the whole Malta."
"And enjoy it for a couple hours until Fury has it nuked," Peter points out reasonably.
He can feel Wade's pout against his skin.
The unicorn's beady eyes are still staring; Peter's lost the contest, and he's lost his illusions, and he's lost a lot of respect for the people he used to respect, but he's not feeling like everything is falling apart anymore either.
Well, there's one good thing about this situation. His Christmas list is greatly reduced, so his wallet won't suffer that much this year.
x
Peter is almost certain that he would have had a hysterical scene in the middle of the debriefing if not for the fact that Wade is taking him for a ride on the insane wave today.
As a survival skill, insanity has turned out to be priceless.
Deadpool and Spider-Man enter Tony Stark's home cinema almost unnoticed and completely unacknowledged.
Barnes is absent, which Peter appreciates. Thor is also absent, which disappoints Peter, although he wouldn't mind if it meant that Thor was actually guarding Barnes. Sam isn't here either – Clint's just telling Steve something about a video consultation with brainwashing experts, which Sam's apparently attending as the only actual trained psychologist who has recently come into personal contact with Barnes.
That doesn't sound like a half-bad idea.
While Tony and Steve get into an argument regarding how important it is to cooperate or not cooperate with Fury regarding the care and feeding of their captured internationally wanted assassin, Peter borrows a discarded Rubik's cube that lies on one of the seats and solves it.
Then he makes Wade mess it up, and then solves it again. Yeah, he still remembers it. Ten years without putting a finger on one of these toys, and the algorithms haven't changed a bit.
"Cat's cradle?" he suggests, wishing for something a little more diverting.
"…down will come kitten, cradle and all," Wade intones, and palms Arthur's handle. Which doesn't look as dirty as Peter hears it sound in his head, automatically admonishing himself for the thought. No, Wade has gone right back to considering the Tower enemy territory and doesn't want to have his hands tied up which, sadly, makes perfect sense to Peter.
Wade sprawls over three seats like he owns all the furniture, and tugs Peter down into his lap. They have a brief tussle over the position, and end up sitting pressed together, side to side, with Wade's arm over Peter's shoulders and Peter's hand on Wade's thigh, if only because Wade's got long legs and Peter would have had to stretch awkwardly to reach his knee.
He absently traces the seam of the Kevlar pant leg with his nail.
Natasha alights in the row behind them; she leans in with her elbows on the backrest and her chin in the cradle of her palms.
"So, the Winter Soldier is safe now?" Peter inquires.
"Safe enough," Natasha replies, freeing one hand and wiggling her fingers to indicate the relativity of 'safeness'.
Yes, Peter knows what that means. He's just wondering why James Barnes got accepted into the fold so easily despite his history of indentured servitude to the Nazis and the KGB. It feels like there should be some sort of half-way stage, internment and de-programming.
"We're working on it," she assures him, while they all watch Steve and Tony whisper-shouting at one another and widely gesticulating.
There's nothing left of the Captain America persona in Steve as he gets into Tony's face, flushed pink and snarling like he wants to bite someone and spread his rabies around. Clint gives up on playing mediator and backs away to a relatively safe distance.
"I can see that," Peter replies dryly.
Natasha's finger jabs him between the floating ribs. While he's biting down on a pained shout (since he doesn't want Wade to start the bloodshed if it isn't absolutely necessary), she leans closer and mutters: "We weren't exactly vacationing for the past few weeks, malchik. We got our hands on damn near all the data about the Winter Soldier that exists, so if I say he's safe enough, you'll take my word for it."
Whoa, Peter thinks. So it's not just Steve that's over-the-top personally invested in Barnes' recovery. Natasha looks a little rabid herself.
Suddenly there's silence. Peter searches for the source of the unexpected tranquility, and he finds it. Ironically, it's Fury.
Well, Fury's videocall, which JARVIS has put on the big screen.
While Fury looks around the room, the Avengers sort of congregate together, and they do it by moving closer to Natasha (as if she was some sort of homing beacon or a shield against the potency of the Director's glare) and consequently closer to Peter and Wade. Tony flops down onto the next free seat in their row.
Wade's campaign for acceptance must have worked, if Tony doesn't have qualms about putting himself within Deadpool's personal space.
Wade twitches a little, but calms down again when Tony magics up a bowl of popcorn from under the seat in front of him, pulls it into his lap and suddenly both his hands are too busy to be a threat. Wade re-focuses on Natasha again, although he's not too concerned – he trusts Peter's senses to alert them if they're in any danger from these people.
"Cap," Fury growls, "I'll tell you the same thing I told Barton when he brought in the motherfucking Black Widow, and that I told Spider-Man when he brought in the motherfucking Deadpool. Which you were not supposed to take as a challenge and find a worse brainwashed mercenary enemy of the nation."
Steve puffs up his chest – there is a moment of tense silence, as the onlookers wait with bated breath to see if that one button will fly off or not – before he says, in the chiding voice of nice yet strict dads everywhere: "Sir, none of what the so-called Winter Soldier has done was his fault-"
"Yeah," the Director cuts in, ignoring Steve's disappointed expression with aplomb that makes Peter suspect that Fury prudently turned off the video on his side, "about that. He's hardly the first recovered prisoner of war. We've got precedents for this shit, Cap, so your little martyr routine is falling on deaf ears here. Heard it all before. Don't give a fuck. You said you wanted to be treated like a member of the team? Here's the bottom line."
Out of the corner of his eye, Peter sees Wade quietly pull his mask up to his nose and stuff his mouth full of popcorn. Peter hesitates for a moment, but then he just decides that darn it, he may as well enjoy the ride on the crazy train.
It's not like they aren't sneaking those kernels from Tony's bowl, so the Avengers can't cast any stones. Or, at least, not righteously.
"You brought in an enemy agent," Fury says, leaving no room for whys and wherefores. He waits for contriteness to win the battle over Steve's face, and then continues: "You did it with the prospect of turning them into an asset – but you did it without authorization. We have procedures for this for fucking good reasons, and toting around that shield doesn't make you exempt from the rules."
Steve's chin sinks gradually lower throughout the rant. At this point, he's pretty much hung his head in shame.
Peter holds his breath. He knows that this is the moment when they throw him under the bus, say that he was the one who actually brought Barnes in, never mind that he only did that to stop a threat-
This, actually, turns out to be when Tony pushes the popcorn bowl into Wade's lap, gets to his feet and steps forward, wiping his hand on his slacks. "No, it doesn't. But, being my friend does." He smiles widely.
Fury can tell what Tony intends to do; that much is obvious when he simply leans forward and pushes a button to cut the connection.
Tony doesn't care. He cocks his hip and declaims: "Ignore Sindibad, Cap. He's just pissy 'cause he's not part of the cool crowd for once. If he even thinks of having a problem with your bae, we're splitting from SHIELD. I can keep us in weapons and costumes until Reindeer Games finally goes off the rails and starts Ragnarok for real, and then for a while after, too. Take it easy. True love eff-tee-dubs, and all that."
Peter gets up, too, and walks out of the room, deliberately not allowing himself the chance to think about what he's doing and why. He stops before he reaches the elevator and then gives himself time to think.
He can't say he much likes these parts of the Tower. Everything's streamlined in the corridors, and that makes sense in a modern building, but what he would like right now is a niche. Just someplace he could tuck himself away and feel sorry for himself and wait until Wade comes after him and finds him and distracts him and makes him smile.
There are no niches, predictably. Peter pushes open the emergency door to the staircase and sits down on the second uppermost stair. It takes thirty seconds with no movement for the sensors to detect before the lights go out and he's enveloped in darkness.
The heavy door, designed to hold against explosions and fire and gas, muffles sound enough that Peter can barely hear the Avengers anymore, even though someone is shouting again. The shouting doesn't worry him. It would if Bruce were here, but Bruce wisely removed himself from the situation entirely.
Peter misses him.
Still, he has more immediate worries. What will happen to him when the Avengers split from SHIELD? Wade's deal is with SHIELD. SHIELD are the ones holding their leashes – not the Avengers.
And the Avengers have already proved that they'll try to help him if they can, but if it comes down to taking sides, nobody will stand next to Peter. It will be high school P.T. all over again.
The emergency door swings open, and Peter only just manages to squint in time to prevent being blinded.
Wade hops down next to him and mirrors his thinking pose. "What's wrong, Gumdrop?"
"I'm okay, Wade," Peter says, and for a given value of 'okay' it's even true. "Just feeling sorry for myself."
Wade's arm goes right back along Peter's shoulders, as if Wade was scared that Peter would run away or just disappear, and that by holding him – not too close or too tight, but just anchoring him – he would keep him nearby for as long as possible. The funny thing is, Peter can feel it working.
"Share. I'm gonna feel sorry for you with you."
Peter leans his head on Wade's shoulder, bumping Bea's handle with his temple. There's not a whole lot he can say that wouldn't sound like it's coming from a kindergartener. He sighs. And says: "It's not fair."
Wade bites down on a snort. He puts his hand on top of the Spider-Man mask, cradling the back of Peter's head. "Yeah, that's what they call a tautology, Spides. It means it's always true, no matter what you do." Then he pokes Peter into sitting up again, hops up and dances five stairs down backwards, until he stands eye-to-eye with Peter. "I made it so they like us now, baby boy. That gives you better chances for back up or extraction if you ever need it. Stark will walk over hot coals for you, methinks – but, granted, he'd walk over hot coals for any Sam, Clint or Steven, so that may not mean much."
Peter gets the 'Tom, Dick and Harry' reference in there, but can't figure out the roster. The rhythm would work with other members of the team, too. "Why not Bruce?"
"For that guy, Stark might burn down the world. Or, at least, the part of the world he doesn't own. That might not be much. I hear there's a country in Africa. And Doom's got that private land of his that got sovereignty by dint of its owner knowing how to build magic-nuclear weapons and not hesitating to use them."
It sounds nice, but Peter can't believe but see the inconsistencies. The thing that brought him here wasn't quite jealousy, not really, just a feeling of being excluded from the clique. Maybe Tony's just showing off for Steve now – it does sometimes seem like Tony can't not show off for Steve, like it's been hardwired into him – with all the lobbying for Barnes.
Or, maybe…
Be fair, Petey, says Peter's inner Wade. It ain't like you were great friends with the Avengers when you brought my murderous self 'round. Iron Dude and Mr America been tight for years.
Peter has to concede that.
And Clint was supporting Spider-Man pretty much from the start, just because he empathized with the situation.
And Bruce, too, remained cautiously supportive, which… he's hardly ever more forward about anything… with the exception of Hulk moments when he's the most forward of Peter's acquaintances, beating even people like Tony and Steve and Fury and Wade.
Peter grimaces under his mask. This grown-up shtick is horrible. He doesn't want to be mature. "Can't we just go TP someone's front yard?" he whines.
Wade's jumping up and down in excitement within a second. "Triskellion!"
Peter thinks this is probably a horrible idea. But that's kind of the point, and he's in.
x
Peter gathers further evidence for his theory of pocket dimension in Deadpool's suit when Deadpool pauses in the middle of the operation, pulls out a carton from somewhere and eggs Fury's car.
He's too fast for Peter to do anything about it but groan at the vision of future reaming out by the zombie Director, so Peter just continues defacing the front of the SHIELD Headquarters in Washington D.C. with toilet paper, water-soluble spray paint and display pyrotechnics, because he's already gone this far, so why not?
'This far' includes going along when Wade 'borrowed' one of SHIELD's quinjets, flew them over to a nearby military base, then 'borrowed' one of SHIELD's vans, loaded it up with so much contraband that they both had to work together to push the doors shut, and drove them here. Here is the open place in front of the Triskellion building, with the road and the parked cars and the benches that no one ever uses, and the flagpole that's only used by new agents on dares.
The only thing Peter's ever seen fluttering on it was someone's stolen underwear.
Then again, he's only been here twice before, so maybe that isn't exactly the normal state of things.
He finishes with the spray painting. Wade's done the pyrotechnics installation, and now stands in the centre of their decorative efforts, holding a water gun so huge that it must have been commissioned specially.
"What is this?!" demands Director Hill in the distinct tones of cold rage.
"Independence Day celebration!" Wade retorts – and, whoa, it is actually about eleven p.m. on the third of July, so this excuse unexpectedly flies. "We're just missing the aliens now- there he goes!"
Thor lands with a thud. Concrete cracks under his feet. Cars jump and alarms begin to blare.
Wade salutes with one finger; Thor cheerfully returns the gesture.
"Friend Clint explained to me the history of this excellent American tradition!" exclaims the demigod.
Peter can tell the exact moment when Director Hill decides that this isn't worth the headache and cedes scene authority to Steve, who has just run out of the building at the head of a huge crowd of agents and affiliates. The place in front of the Triskellion fills up with people and shouting.
This is the moment the fireworks go off.
This sky lights up red and green and yellow and purple, and then orange and blue and red again. In the glow everyone can read the Declaration of Independence, which Peter wrote all over the front of the Headquarters building.
He only meant it as provocation (and was a little too nerdy to go for a dirty poem – he thought this would have a little more social impact or whatever) but now it's sparked talk and the agents close enough to him that he can overhear are talking about the Avengers seceding from SHIELD completely.
Whoops.
Peter looks at Wade.
Wade shrugs, like, what can you do?
Steve is standing in between Barnes and the world on the other side from Thor. Sam is hovering at the edges, looking like he very much wishes to be elsewhere – and Peter isn't surprised, because for all that Thor is the alleged God of Thunder, it is Steve who wears the truly thunderous expression.
"Happy birthday!" Peter exclaims over the din of the crowd, and only afterwards realizes that Wade shouted the same thing pretty much at the same time. He chokes on the crazy blast of mad infatuation that rocks him on his feet. He wants to kiss Wade until they're both breathless-
-but this, maybe, isn't the best time.
"Birthday," Steve repeats incredulously.
Thor laughs boomingly. Sam snorts. Barnes' face does something weird, hesitant, almost like his muscles are trying to remember how smiling works.
Steve is scowling and pointing at Fury's car.
Peter shrugs. "That was supposed to be a celebratory omelet, but Wade accidentally dropped the eggs. Sorry."
Steve palms his face and mutters something that sounds a little like: "Tony's going to love this."
x
Steve is right: Tony loves the whole shebang, including the idea to show SHIELD the finger and let the Avengers hack it on their own. He enjoys the entire situation, down to Director Fury's enraged yelling and Director Coulson's fruitless attempt to talk Clint into going back over to the dark side as a member of Coulson's current super duper supersecret team comprised of people younger than Peter.
Clint, it turns out, has learnt from Coulson this amazing ability to sass his commanding officer through the utter lack of facial expression.
Peter will never be cool enough to do that; it just reinforces the residual bit of hero-worship for Clint he's been nursing.
The downside of the divorce is that Barnes lands firmly in the Avengers' custody, and is suddenly Peter's roommate. Housemate. Whatever you call it when Tony Stark installs you in one of the over-the-top apartments in his skyscraper.
It should have occurred to Peter. It hasn't. So he's taken by surprise when Barnes walks into the penthouse, shadowing Steve – obviously aware that he isn't actually welcome, and trying to gauge the limits of tolerance the occupants have for him.
Peter's on the ceiling before he realizes what he's doing.
He looks down.
The remnants of his dinner – a half-eaten turkey leg and an untouched slice of apple pie, because Tony insisted they celebrate Steve's birthday in style – lie abandoned on the table. Barnes is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Steve. His hand hovers by his thigh, where he would usually wear a gun, but he's unarmed, so reaching into the vacant place just reminds him of his lack of defenses and makes him more nervous.
He's trying to keep the frustration in, to look unaggressive as possible, but he's setting off Peter's spider senses anyway.
Steve looks up and says: "The Winter Soldier will be a valuable member of the team."
Because Wade wouldn't have been, Peter thinks automatically. Right. Oh, this is the same argument again. Peter keeps cycling back to it in his head. He hoped that the TP-ing of SHIELD might help him let go, but apparently he's not all that good at compartmentalization.
"We'll need the help against AIM," Steve points out.
"Good luck," Peter says, and although he does honestly means it, it comes out sounding sarcastic (which, let's face it, he also means).
Steve looks pained. "Peter-"
"One question," Peter cuts him off. So they are dispensing with the polite charade of them not knowing who Peter actually was. Okay. Fine. Peter has expected that this moment would come, sooner or later, and he will freak out about it at a more opportune time, but right now he's only interested in getting one answer out of Barnes. "I just have one question for him, Steve."
"I don't remember much," Barnes warns him, neck craned back, scowling but clearly indicating that he's willing to talk.
"How nice for you," Peter snaps. He's being a butthole, he knows, but he's never going to forget those few minutes – he's going to keep dreaming them, probably for the rest of his life, and forgetting seems like an unattainable luxury to him.
Barnes' frown deepens. He keeps staring up, like he's never seen a guy make himself comfortable on the ceiling.
Peter closes his eyes, then opens them – which can't be seen through the mask, so he probably just looks like a gawping schmuck – and then takes a deep, bracing breath. "Why?" he demands. "Why did you do that to Deadpool?"
He is prepared for confusion. Barnes might legitimately not remember. He's also prepared for excuses and rationalizations.
What he isn't prepared to is the way Barnes thinks hard for a moment and then suggests, quizzically: "Like in the story. Hansel and Gretel? Like Grimm. Give the Avengers a clear path to the Gingerbread House to follow."
"Gingerbread House being the Hydra base?" Sam suggests.
Barnes' eyes clear up a bit. He nods. "Base. Chair. Lab. Everything about Asset." He has frozen into the semblance of a human puppet again.
Peter shudders, freaked out. He imagines Clint and Natasha following a path of small bloodstains in post offices across the Atlantic Ocean.
He can't deny that the plan worked. The Avengers did take the bait; they did follow the crumbs; they did find the base and acquire the files.
Peter wishes Barnes were hurt as badly as he had hurt Wade.
But, the thing is, cumulatively speaking, Barnes had already been hurt worse.
Peter doesn't want to deal with this. He doesn't want the dilemma, the guilt that would come from his emotional ambivalence – he hates the perpetrator of a crime, but one who has perpetrated the crime only because he had already been the victim of an arguably worse crime. It's all jumbled in Peter's head, and he's just human, so he has a few divergent emotional responses on top of it all, and it's just such a mess.
He feels the beginnings of a headache throb through his skull. He doesn't want to deal with this.
So he doesn't. He nods to Barnes in tacit acceptance of the answer, ignores Steve's worried 'Spider-Man?' and leaves.
x
Peter has spent the better part of the night untangling the mess of precipitates and consequences so he finally understands who has done what and why, and then had a long plushy-argument with Wade about why nobody was killing anybody over anything. He's cold, tired and miserable after barely three hours of sleep, and the weather outside is doing everything it can to bring his mood further down.
The wind blows and a wave of raindrops spatters against the floor-to-ceiling windows. Everything is dull grey and wet and chilly.
"Is it worth it, when you have to try that hard?" Natasha asks, sitting at the kitchen table and idly stirring her protein shake.
Peter swells in indignation, rounding on her-
And then rationality reasserts itself. He lets all that accumulated air out in an exhale that turns into a long, weary sigh. Of course she's playing him. Playing is her way of life. Coming from Clint, that might have been a genuine question.
Coming from Natasha, it's designed to make him question the question, and that's a little too much questioning for this early in the morning.
"Let me have a coffee before you start with the trick questions," he mumbles.
He tinkers with Tony's space age coffee machine until JARVIS takes pity on him and starts the coffee-acquiring process himself. Peter finds himself with nothing to do, so he checks on the superspy in the room – and, yeah, she's watching him like he got a surprise A in Spanish.
Spanish was never one of Peter's better subjects.
"I've seen romantic relationships end in all sorts of ways," Natasha informs him darkly. "The kind of people who can do this job are mostly too high-strung to let passions fizzle out to friendship, so they either go their separate ways and tear teams apart, or they explode with boatloads of collateral damage. Sometimes literally."
"I feel like we've already gone had this talk," Peter points out and takes possession of his coffee mug. It's tiny compared to the pickle jar, but it smells divine, and he's not going to complain about the form his first dose of today's caffeine comes in.
"That was before you knew what you've gotten into," points out the Black Widow.
Peter stops himself from shrugging. He sips and contemplates. She does have a point. He went into the relationship with both eyes open, but now he's had a look behind the curtain, too. It's not pretty in the backstage.
Not that it's pretty on the stage, either – he snorts, thinking of Wade's reaction to being considered for the epithet – but he has to admit that he hasn't quite expected the particular form of suffering that would come with this love story. He did, of course, expect pain – he's neither an idiot nor that hopelessly naïve – so he was braced, and he managed to power through it. It was a close call, but his life is full of close calls. It's par for course.
"Don't lie to yourself," Natasha demands. "You can build up this willful suspension of disbelief and live in it, for years if you're really good at self-delusion, but it always blows up in the end."
Peter grins. "What you're saying, then, is congratulations." Because Peter isn't building any castles of air. He's grounded, and he's ready to let go of his sanity for long periods of time if that is the price.
He has already wet his toes in that wading pool.
He's being a smart aleck, but judging by the twitch of the corners of Natasha's mouth, she likes it. And, yes, Peter's conclusion about her being firmly on his side regarding Wade is correct. She is, after all, Clint's best friend – and Clint has good taste in friends.
"I've seen lifetimes' worth of heartbreak, Peter. Thing is, most people don't know how to cling to the worthwhile things hard enough to keep them when life gets tougher than they expected."
Peter's life has gotten unexpectedly tough way before he met Wade. Maybe that training is what enabled him to survive this. Being Spider-Man prepared him for being Deadpool's lover. Yes, that does sort of make sense.
"Just so you know," she says after a while of companionable silence, "I've talked to Thor. Congratulations on your relationship, yes, but I won't ignore the possible consequences. The fact is that if anything happens to you, I need to know that we have a way of dealing with him."
Peter doesn't get aggressive about this announcement. It seems counterintuitive at a glance, but what Natasha is describing is miles away from what happened with the Winter Soldier. Wade has wanted to die for a long time. He doesn't want to right now, and that's a state of mind tied to Peter's presence in his life. When Peter leaves – or dies, which at the moment sounds a lot more likely – Wade will go off the rails.
Natasha is speaking about mercy.
Wade will most likely want it at that point. Peter is going to warn him, of course, make it so that it's Wade's decision, that he would know to run if he wants to live at that point, but that he has the security of knowing the option will be there.
"Good boy," Natasha says, walks away, and leaves Peter to tidy up the remnants of her breakfast.
x
SHIELD, much to Peter's relief, get over their butt-hurt at the Avengers moving out, and don't hesitate to call them in when they are needed.
Which they are soon, because it turns out that Advanced Idea Mechanics are at least as dangerous as Steve implied they may be. They strike in three places at once; most of the Avengers move to cover Washington, D.C. and Detroit.
Peter stays in Manhattan because skyscrapers and Spider-Man are the winning combination. He watches, dismayed, as one of the walking-bomb people blows himself up with half the Statue of Liberty.
One good thing about Steve not being here is that he doesn't have to see that happen.
"Shit," someone mutters via their common frequency.
Peter's mostly tuning everything he hears out, because it concerns things happening in other places, which have apparently been hit a lot more heavily, and he needs to focus on minimizing the damages in New York.
"The explosion is controlled by the cerebellum," Director Coulson says into the comm.
"Oh, thank God!" snaps Steve.
"Jay, recalibrate."
"Roger that, ex-boss," says Clint, overlapping with Natasha's heartfelt: "Spasiba."
"It'll tell Fitzsimmons they've done a good job," Coulson replies coolly.
Peter jumps off of the corner of a building and slams an orange-y woman into the ground. Her head bounces, like he expected it to.
The orange glow intensifies.
Peter jumps away just in time to avoid getting crispy fried.
"Brain injuries trigger immediate explosion," he reports.
"Fuck," concludes Tony.
"That's it, people," Director Fury speaks to them for the first time since the team split away from SHIELD. "If your delicate little feelings can handle it, it's neutralization from now on. Anyone glows orange, you go for a headshot. I don't fucking care if anyone's got a problem with this-"
"Roger," says a new voice.
Peter momentarily freezes.
He spurs himself into motion again, because the battle doesn't stop so he can have a moment. Still, he hasn't expected Barnes on the comms.
Pop, pop, pop goes the comm.
"Whoa," says Clint. And then there's another series of shots fired. "Loser pays the first round?" he suggests.
"Bucky-"
"You're on," Barnes replies calmly. "Good to know you can shoot anything invented after Rome fell."
Peter listens to them bicker. He hears the friendliness creep in among them, the wariness receding. He feels abandoned. Also, he's going to have to go back on his word to Wade.
He doesn't have a gun, doesn't want one, but there's an AIM suicide bomber walking up the street toward a Subway station that shelters civilians, and Peter can't let him get there.
Suddenly, Wade stands in front of the terrorist, a katana in each hand and head cocked mockingly to the side.
The AIM soldier grins at the katana, wide and nasty. "I dare you."
Wade can get away with dispatching them in close quarters, with contact weapons, because he can't die. Still, Peter doesn't want him to take the challenge, doesn't want to see him blown up or even just burnt-
Wade's blade goes through the bastard's head, slicing it almost neatly, at an angle.
The corpse's glow fades. It turns a normal corpse-ish color and falls ineffectually to the pavement.
Wade steps over it, briefly looking down. "I'd say something cutting, but at this point that's just redundant."
"Thank you," Peter says, as heartfelt as he can.
Deadpool has just killed someone. Deadpool has just (arguably) killed someone for him. Peter thought he would feel conflicted, or perhaps even resentful, but the only emotion he can detect is gratitude.
Wade shrugs. "I didn't wanna blow anyone but you, baby boy."
Peter nods decisively. "There's leagues of difference between sticking it to them and sticking it into them."
Steve's spluttering somewhere a couple of states off. Peter can't believe he just said that. Whoa. Wade just brings out the strangest in him.
Speaking of – Wade lifts both his arms – with swords held upright – and yells: "Pun fight!"
"What?!" comes from the comm in chorus.
Peter magnanimously explains while Wade runs about, cutting through the heads of the AIM assassins. "Like a slap fight, but hurts more."
The New York location has just fallen quiet when a SHIELD helicopter lands. It's not the usual part of clean-up, but Peter guesses that they've got some very interesting specimen here that are going to be carted off straight into the most secret of the secret labs, and he's not asking anymore questions, because he honestly doesn't want to know.
"Hop on," he says to his boyfriend, who gleefully holds onto Peter with both his arms and legs, and lets himself be carried and swung around, delightedly screaming like a kid on a rollercoaster.
Peter takes the scenic tour since he knows how much Wade loves this, and he wants to show his appreciation. If not for Wade, Peter couldn't have remained the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man today. He would have had to kill, deliberately, intentionally, efficiently.
Or watched innocent people die.
"I love you," he says, even though he knows the wind in their faces will steal the words before Wade hears them.
x
"Oh… um…"
Peter freezes. Which doesn't help much, as he's held up against to wall by – and mostly wrapped around – Wade. Wade doesn't let a witness bother him, so he continues fervently kissing along Peter's nape and slowly peeling the half-unzipped Spider-Man suit off of Peter's shoulders.
"I'll just-"
"Wait!" Peter exclaims.
He clasps Wade's head in a hold that tries to be gentle, but is strong enough to easily snap Wade's neck if he doesn't comply with it and abandon the effort to lick every inch of Peter's skin. Which Peter is totally on board with, don't get him wrong – just not in front of Bruce.
"Oh, hey," Wade says, just now noticing that there's anyone in the world beside the two of them.
Considering that they're still in the common area of the Tower, this lack of situational awareness means that he's stupidly infatuated with Peter. Not news, but flattering nonetheless.
"Hey, Dr Green," Wade says cheerfully.
Bruce looks at him for a prolonged moment – reminding Peter that this is the first time Bruce has seen Wade without the mask – and tension rises in the room as Wade waits for the verdict.
"Sorry," Bruce says to Peter, "but could you maybe not do that where other people might stumble upon you?"
Wade smirks devilishly. "Ooh, but that's half the fun, Fight Club. The suspense. Will they or won't they? And if they will, then who's it gonna be? Aside from nuestre amigo Jarvis, who's like a part of the ship by now, 'cause he watches it all. Are we a threesome, Petey?"
"No," Peter says decisively. "No offence, Jarvis, but I don't want you to participate."
"None taken," replies the A.I. "Miss Potts feels similarly." And then he mimics a sigh of disappointment, just to put the idea out there.
Peter wonders if this is JARVIS being a smart alleck or being crafty with helping Tony's efforts at persuasion. He tries to curb his curiosity.
It goes down easier than his libido.
"We socializing?" Wade inquires plaintively, looking up at Peter with eyes full of impending disappointment.
"Later, yeah?" Peter says over his head to Bruce. He's glad Bruce is back, and will tell him so – but later, because this moment belongs to him and Wade. They've both earned it.
"Later," Bruce agrees, and smiles, tacitly expressing that he knows what it's like to be in love and want to make love so much that other things sink into the background and seem momentarily utterly unimportant.
"My room," Peter orders, and then holds on tightly when Wade strides off, carrying him.