Author's note: I probably messed a lot up during this chapter because I wrote it all in chunks and now I'm building up to a full-blown panic attack, ha ha
ha

ha

oh no

Chapter summary: Wade shittalks jumpscares and then does it to Peter. Also bonding.

Chapter Fifteen: Jumpscare

Peter had never been very good at initiating anything when it came to dating, so after he and Wade had held each other while Peter tried to get control of himself, he wasn't… sure what to do, and Wade didn't seem to want to push anything. So they stood there, holding hands for God only knew how long, and they eventually fell into peaceful conversation. Even still, the younger man's face was flushed, and his chest felt tight. He wasn't sure if the contact was a little forced because now there was a possible title between them, and this is what people who were dating were supposed to do, even if that's not how they were even a day ago.

"Jumpscares are so cheap," Wade said, and Peter watched the way their hands melted to one another, how his own was smaller, his fingers more lanky, while Wade's were thick. Peter's fingernails were thin and bitten down to the quick, while Wade's were yellow, uneven, and much too wide. Looked like a fungus had gotten to them, or maybe it was psoriasis, or whatever was wrong with the rest of his skin?

"Yeah," he said distractedly. Did he really feel anything crush-like towards Wade, or was it only because he thought Wade liked him that he felt anything at all about this?

"Hey dream-boat, you there?"

"'M listening," Peter murmured.

"Really? 'Cause you look like you're a million miles away right now."

A quirk pulled at the edge of Peter's lips. "Yeah, well I have super-senses, so I can hear you from where I am."

Wade looked curious. "Oh? Like Superman's or something?"

"Aside from the fact that he's a comic book character, no, it's not that intense." With his free hand, Peter let his fingers dance through the air. "I obviously can't hear someone talking from across the city, but I can hear them pretty clearly through multiple walls."

When he looked up Wade was grinning at him. "Bet you're in the know about every bit of gossip in this complex," he said. Peter groaned quietly and nodded.

"Most of it, yeah," he said. He was alright hearing about drama he wasn't involved in - most of it was worthy of sitting down to listen with a bowl of popcorn - but when he was already stressed out from school, and from work, and from crime fighting, and from struggling with personal relationships? Hearing the couple at the end of the hall arguing over where the milk is supposed to be kept in the fridge ("There is a slot for it in the door, Jessica." "You can't put milk in the door, it won't stay cold enough and it'll go bad faster, Stephen.") was… less than entertaining. Especially when he just wanted to sleep.

"That's so freakin' cool," Wade said, and Peter had to disagree slightly with that statement. "I never got anything like that," he went on, and Peter listened while he noticed that Wade didn't have any visible body hair, either. "I was experimented on and all I got was this lousy t-shirt."

Yup. Peter's blood definitely ran a little body colder just then. "Is it at least a comfortable t-shirt?" he asked. One of the lumps on Wade's arm looked like a squirrel. Or a Chinese dragon.

Wade took his hand back and ran the pad of his pointer finger and thumb over the shirt he was wearing. A grin slid over his features and he cocked his head before saying, "Feels like boyfriend material, actually."

Peter smacked him on the wrist and rolled sideways to lean against the stove next to the mercenary (ow, thigh pain), and he was trying to stop himself from outwardly showing that he both found that funny and desperately wanted to squint up his face in a wince. It was a horribly lame joke and didn't deserve a positive response. He coughed a little to cover up any urge to chuckle.

"Admit it, I'm hilarious," Wade wheedled, and Peter huffed.

"There's nothing to admit," Peter shot back. "You steal jokes from the internet and articles about bad pick-up lines. If that's what you consider funny, well, you do you, man."

Wade acted like he was offended. "Oh, says Mister Bad Puns And Pop Culture References?"

Peter threw his arms out. "You literally took my schtick and you're gonna sass me about it?"

Wade shook his finger from side to side and tutted. "I'm older, so I win. You took the schtick and ran with it."

Peter looked Wade up and down and folded his arms across his chest. "You cannot seriously be pulling the age card to get out of infringement accusations. Besides, what was it that kid back at the crime scene called you? Spider-Man, wasn't it?"

"Whoa, it's not my fault his parents haven't gotten his eyes checked. Besides, this part of New York is your territory; I'm just a humble, wide-eyed, virgin farm boy from Canada trying to make it in the big city."

Peter's deadpan look was impressive as hell. "Okay, you wanna try that again? Your nose grew a few inches."

Wade jiggled his hand like he was on the fence about the question. "How about I'm a fiddler from the South who heard you can follow your dreams in the Big Apple?"

Peter looked like he was having to attempt to keep up his deadpan. "Nope."

"I'm a young, naive, small-town girl who just wants to dance?"

Peter's mouth twitched a few times but he held strong. That is, until Wade burst into the song his brain had jumped towards, too.

"Just a small-town girl," Wade belted, a hand coming to lay over his right breast. "Livin' in a lonely world!"

"Oh my God," Peter managed to say as his face went through several different expressions ranging from I fucking knew it, to be strong Peter and don't sing along. "Please, no more," he begged playfully. He wasn't being serious about it, though. Wade had an okay singing voice, and this was miles of progress from the closed-off, stony shell of a man from too short a time ago.

"Fine," Wade eventually said. "So what's your backstory, then?"

Peter's lips pulled off to the side as he thought, and his head tilted just slightly to the left. "Not as interesting as your nine lives, oh ye who walks among streetlights."

Wade's body sagged. "Oh, come on. How did Spider-Man become Spider-Man?" he asked, and he looked like a child before Christmas. Peter was surprised, because he thought they'd still been making up ridiculously cliche stories about their lives before New York.

"Seriously?" he asked, and he suddenly felt a little nervous, like he was having to get up in front of the class and talk. "Like, the actual real deal?" A hand came up and ran through his hair in a fidget, and his eyes automatically went to find something else to focus on. Peter Parker was a meek creature by nature.

Wade suddenly seemed hesitant. "I mean, you don't gotta tell me, but I kinda wanna know for really reals."

Peter's lips pressed into a thin line and he debated with himself about where the story started, and how many words it actually needed to be. The full lead-in all the way from the point where he got bit by a lab experiment to when Ben died, causing him to actually put his powers to use to protect those around him who were more helpless than he was… Geez, that was a long one. In the end, he counted how many seconds inhaling and exhaling took (five seconds exactly), and then said, "Got bit by a spider."

It sounded so simple to just whittle it down to that single sentence, but that was it; that was the big whammy that gave him his powers.

"Are you fucking with me right now?" Wade demanded. "What kind of - where the fuck were you, Chernobyl?" He really seemed completely taken aback by Peter's answer. "You got bit? You're not just a mutant or something? I really thought you were a mutant." He grew quieter, and snapped his head a little bit to say, "Yeah, no wonder the Mutant Country Club hadn't recruited him," to thin air.

Peter's eyebrow raised high into his hairline. "You sound disappointed," he noted.

"Because that's disappointing!" Wade shot back.

Peter rolled his eyes and pushed himself off of the stove (ow). "You asked, you know," he reminded. "Not my fault you didn't like the answer."

Suddenly Wade was next to him when he turned back around to face the front, and he jumped, startled, onto the nearby wall, and immediately made a face of pain before he was able to cover it. Wade loomed in closer, as if to inspect him. "So the crawling on things isn't just gloves? What all can you stick to?" he wondered, taking a step closer, clearly enthralled by seeing Peter show that he wasn't any average human.

Peter crept his way up higher, feeling like nails were raking across his bullet wound, and he was very glad his shoes at least had traction because the fine hairs along his body couldn't poke through the thick soles, but the rubber kept him from sliding down. Not that he couldn't hold himself up by his hands alone, but still. "Everything so far," he said, and shifted himself so he was now officially taller than Wade as he wedged himself in the corner between the wall and the ceiling. Wade's mood swings were enough to give him whiplash, and the way the guy was looking at him was weirding him out. It was like he hadn't ever seen Peter before just then.

"That's so fucking sweet," the mercenary murmured. "You really look like a spider, you know? The way you move, the way you hold yourself when it's a natural response." He finally straightened his spine and stood tall, now coming up to Peter's collarbone. "I like it," he decided. "Also you look super cute like that. Kinda like you were scared but now you're not and you don't know why." He paused. "No, wait, that sounded a little bit creepy. I didn't mean it to be creepy. For once I'm really not being creepy." Another pause. "Am I?"

Peter cocked his head. His spider sense hadn't gone off once over Deadpool since the robbery, which was part of why the sudden movement had made him jump so hard, besides that he hadn't heard it. He may 'look like a spider' but he'd sprung like a cat. "Do you want the honest answer to that?" Peter asked, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose again. He wasn't in any danger, so there was no reason not to get comfortable where he was.

Wade stared up at him. "...Yes?"

Peter felt himself smile a little, even though it was strained from pain. "You're a creep," he said. "You invade my personal space and you never seem to know what's appropriate to say out loud." He started to let himself out of his shoes with one hand, working to untie each one and tug them off. "But you know what? It's growing on me. Kinda like mold."

Wade broke into a bright smile.