"Whatcha up to, snuggle muffin?" Wade asked, leaning across Peter's keyboard and adding a completely new paragraph made entirely out of random letters, numbers, and punctuation. Peter gave Wade a glare which Wade was somehow entirely able to ignore despite the fact that Peter had been practicing, Godamnit! He had been using Natasha as a source reference. Why wasn't he scary?

After almost a full minute of Peter glaring at Wade and Wade serenely smiling back Peter gave up. He huffed, gave Wade a small smile, and said, "I'm working on a code for a program that will alert Jarvis whenever someone steals any of Tony's coffee. Out of the cupboard, I mean, not out of his mug. That would be even more difficult."

Wade rolled off of the keyboard and into Peter's lap, causing even more random keystrokes to appear on Peter's screen, and for Peter to grunt under the sudden weight that was Wade.

In a fake whisper loud enough to carry to both Tony and Bruce as they sat on the other side of the room, Wade said, "Make it so that I can keep stealing my share, ok honey-bunches-of-oats?"

"Hey!" Tony half-shouted in a scandalized tone. "Have you been stealing my coffee?"

Wade shrugged, and the motion almost upturned both of them onto the floor.

"Wade," Peter said, drawing his fiancé's name out slowly, "what have I told you about stealing from people?"

"But Lumpkins!" Wade whined, "He imports it hand-picked straight from a hidden ranch in Nicaragua!"

"No I don't," Tony huffed from across the room.

"Oh yes you do," Wade insisted, "and you hire actual Nicaraguan children to crush the beans into a fine powder for you every morning."

Tony pointed at Wade and turned his eyes on Peter. "You are engaged to a lunatic."

Wade said, "I prefer to think of us as already married, only minus the fantabulous ceremony," at the same time that Peter said, "I know."

Wade turned to Peter and made a kissy face. "Oh you love me, Light of my Life. You adore me, O' beauteous creature. We are meant to be, Love-Muffin."

Peter nodded solemnly and rubbed soft circles on Wade's head. "Of course, my lovely. I love you, I adore you, and we are definitely meant to be." Wade perked up, but his high mood was short-lived as Peter added, "However I really need you to leave right now, as I have some serious work to do."

"Serious?" Wade asked with melodramatic incredulity. "How dare you even consider being serious. Why, I've never been serious a day in my life."

"That's the whole problem!" Tony called from across the room, but Wade ignored him.

"To think that my own dearly beloved, he who I have given my whole heart to, is willingly being serious," he said it like some people might say 'taxes,' or Steve might say 'Hitler,' "why, I can't even bear to think where I went wrong!"

He swayed from side to side on Peter's lap and then straight up rolled off of Peter and onto the ground.

"Wade," Bruce called calmly from across the lab, "off the floor. You know the rules, if Peter has serious work to do, then you have to limit your visits to ten minutes, you've been here for seventeen. I think it's time you go."

Wade made a keening noise in the back of his throat. "I promise I'll be good. Please don't make me go, Brucie. I promise to love you forever if you don't make me leave." He started to crawl across the floor on his hands in knees, heading towards where Bruce was perched on a stool near what misleadingly appeared to be a normal ficus.

Peter snickered in amusement that Wade had found a new victim, but didn't dally too long in his exuberance, as the peace would probably not last for long before he was bombarded with boyfriend again, and got to work rewriting the code that Wade had interfered with by key-smashing the hell out of it.

"Wade? Wade, what are you doing?" Bruce questioned, his calm voice taking on a slightly more panicked tone. Peter bit his lip to keep from laughing and hunched farther over his keyboard.

"Bruce!" Wade moaned, drawing the name out. "Bruce, I promise to be good. Bruce! Please!" From Peter's angle of vision, he could see Wade practically laying on the floor at the doctor's feet, and Bruce shying away from the ex-merc hard core. "I vow, on my life, that I will not be a hindrance! Please let me stay!"

"Are you picking up vocab from point break?" Tony asked absent-mindedly, and then flinched as he realized what he had done.

Wade spun on his knees to face Tony and began crawling towards Peter's boss. "Tony! Tony, my friend! Please, let me stay here with my betrothed. I promise not to bother anyone."

"He is," Peter confirmed. "I think he thinks he sounds more Shakespeare when he steals words from Thor, but he doesn't believe me when I say it just makes him sound like an old fogey."

"Oh you!" Wade scowled at Peter. "Whiper-snappers, these days. They have no respect for their elders."

Peter rolled his eyes. "Thanks Grandpa. But nice Doctor Banner is probably right. You should get back to the nursing home before you break a hip. The orderly, Mr. Stark, will escort you out."

Wade flopped dramatically onto the floor and stayed there, splayed across the shiny floor. "Help," he finally croaked, after absolutely no one had given him the time of day, "I've fallen and I can't get up."

"Yep, definitely needs the nursing home," Peter confirmed, "let me just make sure they're ready for you Mr. Wilson. Yes, you're all ready to go. Now, if you could just leave the room and not return till the end of the work day, I'd much appreciate it."

Wade leapt to his feet and flipped Peter the bird. "Fuck you and your shite diagnosis. I'm right as rain, no pain at all. Why, I'm as spry as a twenty-four year old." He pirouetted through the air before landing right next to the door."

"See you later, sugar-bear?" Wade asked and Peter nodded.

"Hold up!" Tony exclaimed, springing from his chair. "I want to ask you a question before you go."

"Shoot!" Wade said, "Well don't really. Or, I guess you could? I mean, I do heal at an amazing rate, after all. I'd be just as good as new in no time at all, so it's not really the getting shot that's the problem. Though it is always a pain to fix my suit," he picked at a seam on his arm that was a little loose, "So really I don't think you should shoot me. Plus you'd probably make a mess of your pristine lab, and then you would be sad and Brucie would be sad, but more importantly, Peter would be sad, and we just cannot have that. Do you understand? So while I say you could technically shoot, I really don't recommend it."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Anyway, I just wanted to ask if you knew how to contact Spiderman. We've been trying to find him but we have no leads."

And Jarvis wasn't being supportive, so that probably put a damper on things.

Peter jerked a little at hearing his name (if 'Spiderman' can be considered a name) mentioned, but didn't look up. He tried to act the same and be as unsuspicious as possible, but it was hard when his heart was racing a light year a minute in fear that something Wade would do or say, or an accidental reaction on Peter's part would have his secret identity toppling to the ground in shambles.

"You want to know if me and dear old Spidey get together on the casual?" Wade asked and waggled his eyebrows. If Wade wasn't all the way off to the side by the door Peter would have smacked him.

Tony, thankfully, only rolled his eyes. "I want to know if you know where he lives, where he goes a lot, or his phone number, assuming he has one."

"Everyone has a cell phone," Wade interjected snidely, and there was an unsaid, 'Simpleton!' attached to it.

"Ok," Tony said slowly, "but do you have his number? Can you contact him?"

Wade was immobile for a moment before he gave a quick shake of his head and practically flew from the room, leaving a gawking Tony and Bruce, and a faux-studious Peter in his wake.

"I'll take that as a yes," Tony said drily. "I'll take it as a 'yes, but don't even think about it because you'll never find out'."

"Probably," Bruce said.

Peter bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

He scratched his cheek and cocked his head to the side, staring at the lines of code that he'd written up. It was difficult writing programs that would be up to Tony's standards. The man was a genius who wouldn't take anything less than the best, and while Peter enjoyed a challenge, he always had a difficult time figuring out every nuance of a code's possibilities that always seemed to come so easily to Tony.

"Peter?" Bruce asked and Peter raised his head.

"Huh?" he asked, though his mind wasn't really focused on what he was saying.

"Peter!" Bruce sounded suddenly more concerned, "What's wrong with your cheek?"

Peter blinked and tried to drag his mind away from his computer. He rubbed his cheek, and then pulled his fingers away to see that, yes, he had accidentally removed some of his foundation. Damnit!

"Uh…" Peter prevaricated, and tried to gauge how upset Bruce was. He winced. The doctor had a look on his face that Peter usually saw before he started turning green. That was never a good sign. He turned to Tony, who was looking equally murderous, but who had opted to get a better look and was at the moment striding towards Peter with a single-minded determination that made Peter want to flee. "It's nothing," Peter tried to insist, but soon enough Tony was upon him, and he held Peter's chin gently even as he manually turned Peter's head back and forth to better see the green-tinged bruise.

It actually looked a lot better now, but Peter guessed that Tony could tell even at this stage how bad it had been originally. "Peter," Tony said slowly, "how did this happen?"

Peter winced and shrugged, but then Bruce stepped forward with his concerned eyes and Peter let out a long breath. "It's really nothing, guys. Honestly, it's all good. I…it was an accident. I fell down the stairs at the apartment. Nothing to worry about except me being a klutz."

Tony narrowed his eyes. "Peter, you aren't clumsy. I've never even seen you trip."

"Then I was due for one, wasn't I?" Peter responded in is wisest sage-voice.

Bruce frowned and wiped a finger down Peter's cheek. He examined the foundation left on his finger. "Why are you covering it up with make-up then? If it's nothing worth hiding, just an accident, why are you hiding it?"

Peter could feel the internalized 'It was Wade, wasn't it?' but honestly, Wade would never hurt him or any other innocent, even as much as he threatened to do so and so Peter didn't even bother getting angry about it. Instead he lied through his teeth because, hey, he could do that relatively well at this point.

"I hid it because, hello, I work around a bunch of superheroes. The Avengers are my constant companions." He paused for dramatic effect, and then said in a quieter voice, "I didn't want any of you thinking I'm weak."

Bruce's face crumpled into one of compassion and understanding, and he patted Peter's shoulder kindly. "Peter, we would never think less of you for being human. You can always talk to us about anything."

Peter smiled at Bruce. "Thank you, that's nice to hear."

A quick glance at Tony showed that he hadn't bought it for a minute. What a suspicious old man, Peter thought kindly. At least Tony wasn't outright calling him a liar. Yeah, he'd messed up and forgotten to not rub at that cheek, but this honestly could have turned out worse. Bruce bought it, and Tony wasn't saying anything about the obvious lie. What more could he ask for?