Chapter summary: Peter and Wade finally talk, presumably the first of many.

Chapter Nine: The First Talk

Peter woke up around one in the morning. He only knew it wasn't one in the afternoon because everything was dark again. Even the TV was off this time. He heard slow, even breathing next to him, and he gingerly turned himself on his side, looking down at the lump that was Deadpool who was sleeping sitting up against the couch. He watched the other man for several minutes, letting himself slowly wake up. Deadpool was very... human right now, and Peter felt strange as he let that thought sink in.

Peter sat upright and the blanket that had been spread out on him slid down to crumple in his lap. He didn't want to wake Wade up, so he left it in a heap on the couch as he got up as quietly as he could manage. He crept across the floor, overstepping clothes and trash that hadn't quite made it to the trashcan on the first toss. He could see pretty well in the dark, and it wasn't too hard to tell which door lead to the bedroom and which door to the bathroom. Once inside, he shut the door, twitching as it creaked, and he turned the knob so it wouldn't click too loud when it closed fully. He turned on the light, and for a split second his head throbbed at the sudden brightness. The bathroom was in about the same disastrous state as the rest of the apartment, maybe even a little worse. The mirror looked like it had been punched hard, and the glass was splintering all the way to each corner. A few shards had fallen behind and around the sink. Blood was crusted along the fake porcelain, and the grout between each tile was nearly black in some places. Peter felt his skin crawl for a moment, before he talked himself into calming down.

He just needed to pee (which was a very good thing, because it meant he was less dehydrated), he didn't have to spend the rest of the night trapped in here; he could leave as soon as he was done.

He tried not to think too hard about what stains could have been made by what as he did his business. It shouldn't be too surprising just how grody the place was, considering Deadpool had no need to try to stop himself from bleeding, and he certainly wasn't going to get some infection from bacteria and die. Peter eyeballed the spider that had made a home along the sewage pipes behind the toilet. It wasn't looking too fat and happy, and the hero crossed his arms and tilted his head. "I feel you there, buddy," he said quietly, and flushed the toilet.

He turned on the water, and it ran brown at first. Peter had planned on waiting it out, and he took off his gloves in the meantime, but it didn't seem to be coming from rust in the pipes. He awkwardly turned the water back off. The knob squealed. Peter rubbed his hands together several times, taking a layer of dead skin off with each pass.

Even though he felt less than clean, he left the bathroom, but didn't turn the light off. It wasn't enough to wake up someone who was fast asleep, but it would be enough for Wade to see and know Peter was awake.

He settled himself back down in his spot and picked up his phone. He started thumbing through his messages. Aunt May had called him twice, but it was way too late right now to call her back. He texted her with a repeated but lame excuse, that he'd just been busting his rear getting ready for college to start back up again, and he'd lost track of time, and his phone was on silent. God, he hoped he hadn't worried her much, going from calling her every day to suddenly absolute silence for days on end. Speaking of…

Oh, shit.

His classes had started on Monday. He'd already missed his first day back to school. Well, that was three hundred dollars down the drain for absolutely nothing. He cursed at himself inwardly, and he wanted to stomp around and throw a quick tantrum over it. Damnit. Damnit. This was all because he had stopped taking care of his body and mind. This never would have happened if Deadpool…

…

This never would have happened if Peter had just let himself calm down enough to eat and maybe nap a few times here and there. Of course Wade had something to do with that. He couldn't blame only Wade, though. The other man hadn't really known Peter was practically killing himself over the identity reveal.

There wasn't anything he could do about his classes right now, not while it was still nighttime. That was money he was never going to see again one way or the other, and he could pretty easily get caught up if he really pushed himself. Or, at least, that was the lie he was going to tell himself. He was taking five classes this semester, and he knew from experience just how overwhelming that deceptively small number could be. With a heavy sigh, he slumped farther into the couch cushions, and he went to through Facebook. Nothing exceptionally weird had happened to his friends or in the news over the past few days. Finally, he let himself admit that he legitimately missed playing Pokémon Go, and now that things had settled out more or less with him and Wade, he didn't feel like he was about to get sick just thinking about the app. He re-downloaded it, and signed back into his account.

Seems there'd been several updates since he'd deleted the game. Now there were two separate categories of Pokémon, "sightings" and "nearby". The sightings section actually had photos in the background on exactly where to find the listed Pokémon, and that was an incredibly useful add-on. Peter found himself grinning already, and he settled further into his nest. He had forgotten just how stress-relieving it was to just let his mind get absorbed back into a childhood fantasy. Another update had warnings cropping up every few minutes, but it was obviously still a little buggy, seeing as he got a, "You're going too fast!" pop-up when he was seated perfectly still in Wade's apartment. He found that oddly amusing.

He wound up dropping an incense on his character to draw Pokémon to him, and then he set his phone down in his lap. His eyes trailed back to Wade, and he watched the man as he slept on, oblivious to Peter's conscious presence. He wondered how he was supposed to start off their impending talk, because Deadpool sure as hell wasn't going to do it. They both needed to be open and honest about their prior interactions, and about their current relationship that was in limbo. Peter… he had enjoyed Wade's company. And Deadpool could sometimes make him laugh.

A striking thought was that Peter, at least, had the option to take his mask off and go completely under the world's radar. He had two entirely separate lives; one as Peter Parker and one as Spider-Man. But Wade? Wade could take off his mask, but he could never be inconspicuous. People would always see him no matter how many layers of clothes he put on. That had to have a hand in how the other acted. How he covered up his personal pain with humor. How he so desperately wanted human interaction but pushed others away. Deadpool didn't have a downtime. He was constantly on high alert, always ducking his head and powering forward. Peter thought about the file he'd read on Wade Winston Wilson. He wondered what exactly had caused the skin mutation, and what it had done to Wade's psyche. Peter remembered the eerily blank spot in Wade's S.H.I.E.L.D.-known history. What had happened to turn Wade into who he was now?

His phone buzzed, and it jerked him out of his endlessly circling thoughts.

It was just a wild Pidgey, but he caught it anyway. He needed the Stardust.

Wade stirred in his sleep about an hour later, snorting suddenly and sitting up, confused. His arm lifted to his face and he felt along his mask before he went slack again. Then he jumped, and his head jerked towards Peter. The brunet was startled, too, and his spider sense was left screeching shrilly at him. They both just stared each other down, both unmoving, Wade having gone for an offensive first strike, and Peter going for defense. After a few moments passed, Wade slumped and started laughing to himself.

"I was damn near ready to gut you," he said, voice heavy from sleep.

Peter didn't uncoil himself. "I noticed," he said warily.

"Sorry. Not used to waking up with guests over."

Peter only blinked in response. His spider sense was silent now, but that didn't mean he was about to open himself back up completely. Not just yet. His heart was still racing from that first pump of adrenaline.

"So, uh," Wade began, and he sat himself straighter, his right hand moving to scratch the back of his head. "You feel any better?"

Peter's muscles started to relax. "Yeah. Been awake for a while."

Wade dropped his hand. "Oh," he said. The awkwardness seeped into the air between them. "You don't have to stick around, you know. You can leave whenever you wanna."

Peter gnawed on his bottom lip, trying to find the right words that wouldn't scare Wade off. "Yeah, but I didn't want to just leave while you were sleeping." He shrugged afterward, looking unsure of himself. Wade watched Peter for a long time, which made the young adult squirm in his spot. What was Wade even thinking right then? The subject had to be breached sooner or later, and so Peter sucked in a breath and took the plunge. "Besides, we still need to talk."

Wade groaned and rubbed a hand over his face. "Do we really have to? Like, right now?" He grumbled a few choice words under his breath. "You don't really beat around the bush, do you?"

Peter rolled his eyes and leaned against the couch back with his shoulder. "Afraid not," he answered. He tapped his fingers along the back of his phone, and he prayed that he would find the right words for this conversation. He sighed again.

"You're the only person who knows that I'm Spider-Man." Might as well start with the zinger. After all, he didn't 'beat around the bush'.

Wade said nothing for several seconds. "Seriously?" he asked, sounding incredulous.

Peter nodded. "Seriously."

Wade turned his body so he was facing his guest fully. "You go around with the screenname 'YoItsSpidey' and I'm the only fuckin' one who knows?"

Peter, out of sheer surprise, burst out laughing. His nerves made the action sound tight and strange. "Hey! I have an excuse for that!" he said and he held out a finger at the mercenary. "I make my living selling photos of Spider-Man. I figured I could just say that it's supposed to be like, 'oh hey, there's Spider-Man, better get his picture!' ...That doesn't sound too far-fetched, right?"

Deadpool cocked his head in thought. "People are pretty dumb." Then, in a sudden rush of excitement, he seemed to finally grasp the full intensity of Peter's admission. "Wait, so I'm really the only one? There's not a single other soul besides the two of us who knows?" The man worked his arms up onto the couch, and Peter was almost positive if he had a tail it would he wagging.

Peter started tearing up the edge of the blanket he'd grabbed hold of and nodded again. "Yeah," he finally said, and he tried to calm himself down by looking around the living room. He had to convince himself all over again that this was a good idea, that Wade wasn't going to sell him out. "Well…" Peter went silent for a long while. "There were others, but…"

Wade's bounciness died down. He seemed to understand what that meant. "They're dead, huh?" he guessed, his voice much quieter. Peter appreciated the seriousness Wade was allowing this subject to have.

"Very."

Wade pushed himself up, and he scooted onto the couch, pressed up as far against the other arm as he could get, giving Peter all the space he could ever need on his side. "Kinda know how that goes. I mean, I'm not really hiding myself - wouldn't make a damn bit of difference if I did. But I know about people dying." He let his part end there, and they both seemed to fall back into some painful memories. Peter swallowed hard around the knot that thinking about his losses brought on.

Wade continued. "I don't have anyone to protect. But I know that's not the norm in our line of work."

It was true. Secret identities really stopped mattering once the person had nothing - and no one - left to lose. "I was really scared. When I found out I was on a date with you, I just…" Peter froze, his eyes wide as he relived that moment. He subconsciously clutched his hand over his heart, bunching up the material of his suit. "I panicked. I was scared of you."

Wade was silent. He didn't seem to know what to say, or at least wasn't letting himself say what he was thinking. (Which, honestly, when had that ever happened before? The Merc with the Mouth not talking?)

Peter realized that the air in the room changed, that it felt colder and he knew that he was going to have to keep going if he didn't want this to crash and burn horribly. "My mind was going through every worst-case scenario possible, and by the time I got ahold of myself, you were gone. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what you were going to do." This was where the talk was going to have to get worse before it could get better. Peter kept rolling the loose strings from the blanket between his fingers, to give himself an outlet for everything he was thinking and feeling. "I'm not going to lie. I wasn't thinking great things about you. I was terrified you were going to sell my name, or hurt…" He waved one of his hands around in a circle like that would explain the rest of his sentence for him.

Wade became visibly nervous, too. "I thought about it," he admitted. Peter felt his blood run ice cold. "I thought about ratting you out. I was pissed the fuck off. But in the end, I just… didn't." His voice became soft at the end. Nothing more came from him, and Peter was left to have that information fester in the back of his mind - that Wade had wanted to.

Peter felt sick again. "Why didn't you?" he asked, and his voice trembled.

Wade kicked his foot a few times. "I didn't really want to."

"Why?" Peter repeated.

Wade shrugged. "You're a good guy. I'm not. You're a hero, and people owe you their lives. I always looked up to you, even after I heard some of what you were saying behind my back. I tried to pretend like I never knew, like it didn't sting like a fuckin' bitch."

Peter felt even more sick to his stomach. It was one thing to make fun of someone, and completely different for them to know about it. Peter had been bullied relentlessly throughout school, and he had done exactly what had been done to him. He felt ashamed. His ears burned as he thought about what Aunt May would think. She would be so disappointed in him. She hadn't raised him that way.

"I'm sorry," Peter said, and he meant it more than he could ever get across.

Wade clearly hadn't been expecting that, and he stumbled over his next words. "Well, uh, sure. I mean, no hard feelings?"

Peter reached out, and he set his hand on Wade's arm. The world seemed to stop existing around them, neither breathing or even blinking. "Wade, I'm really, truly sorry for how I acted. I was cruel to you."

Even through Wade's mask in the dimly lit room, Peter could see his mouth flop open and closed a few times. Then the Merc glanced down at where Peter was touching him. Peter gave the older man a gentle squeeze.

"I know I'm not easy to handle," Wade finally said. "I don't blame you for hating me. I haven't exactly done anything to deserve praise."

Peter shook his head but he kept the physical contact. "You do a lot. You've teamed up with me and helped me in fights I might not have won otherwise. You haven't killed in a while. You tried to help those kids with those bullies at the park." Even though he'd gone about it in completely the wrong way, he'd still done it with the bullied children in mind. Spider-Man would've intervened at that point, too. "I think we both need to work on ourselves. To become better than we were."

Wade laughed again. "For me? The bar's already pretty damn low."

Peter cocked his head and smiled slightly. "Good. A low bar's easier to lift."

Wade set his hand over Peter's. "Yeah, I guess it is."