Chapter Text
In the morning, a large spider crawled out of Taskmaster's car ventilator. He spent five seconds slapping at it and another fifteen minutes swearing loudly at the top of his lungs because his scalding Starbucks latte had found a new home in his lap.
At lunch, he was informed by the contact of a contact of a contact that by the way, he wouldn't be paid, and he had to waste the next few hours tracking down key members of the Chinese Triad and convincing them otherwise. This should have cheered him up, but Taskmaster's grim satisfaction was deflated by an email that his boot camp in Arkansas had been busted up by the Avengers, and now he owed somewhere in the range of $200,000 in back taxes. How that worked, he didn’t know.
In the afternoon, Taskmaster was sneaking around the Avengers Tower on a standard recon and data grab mission and some freebie revenge sabotage, when he found himself suddenly surrounded by black-suited government goons. They hustled him into a tiny metal-walled room and played good cop, bad cop until he popped one in the nuts and knee-capped another, and it turned out the kidnapping and the taxes were just more of the same to pressure him to join whatever government goon agency was fashionable at the time, if by "pressuring" they meant "blackmailing" in the government sense of the word.
He managed to break out after a couple hours of some double-jointed contortions and a judicious application of explosives. Now it was late at night and he was driving back to his penthouse and thinking seriously about having a stiff drink or two, when a body came hurtling out of nowhere amid a shower of broken glass and landed with a loud WHUMP on his car hood.
Taskmaster was having a bad day.
He slammed on the brakes, the car jerking and swerving to a halt. He pulled his gun and got ready to break his foot off in the ass of whatever mouth-breather had chosen to trash his pride and joy and very expensive car, making the cherry topping on what had been a spectacularly terrible day.
He half-jumped out the door, then froze.
"Wade?"
He lowered his gun but didn't put it away. He was chill. He could go with this. No stampeding superheroes or villains determined to kick Deadpool’s – or any inadvertent associate’s – ass had come out of the woodwork just yet, but he knew it was only a matter of time before life got even more too interesting for his tastes.
He'd just begun working out the logistics of simply scraping Deadpool off his hood and driving away when the merc in question came to with a snort and a spasm that whapped his hand hard against Taskmaster's chest. The impact made Deadpool crack open one eye, then the other, and blinked up at him.
"Ugliest angel ever," Deadpool said in a tone of infinite sadness.
"You're alive," Taskmaster replied, deadpan. "Hurray for me."
Deadpool pried himself up and slid off the hood, the car creaking as he went, shattered glass making little grinding noises underfoot. He turned around and admired the dent in the exact shape of his ass and torso dimpling the dent-resistant carbon-fiber. "Was that me?" He sounded impressed.
"No, funnily enough some dumbass fell out of the sky and landed on my car right where you are."
"Don't need to be jealous, Tasky. Twenty minutes a day on the Stairmaster and you can have buns of steel too."
"More like too many Twinkies." Taskmaster shifted, looking around uneasily. "You got people chasing you, or did you throw yourself off a building just for fun?"
It wasn't as crazy a supposition as one might think. But Deadpool had pulled out his guns and was now crouching, scanning the buildings opposite to them with an alertness that belied his usual loquacious bullshit, so Taskmaster knew the answer to that, didn't he.
Fuck.
Shouts of "HEY! YOU!" and even more original goonspeak like "GET HIM!" erupted from the doorway of the building across from them, accompanied by bullets whizzing wildly by and thudding into the car.
I am Jack’s total lack of surprise, Taskmaster thought to himself grimly as he scrambled for cover behind the wheel well. Practically every time he saw the guy, it seemed like someone was trying their damnedest to kill him. Taskmaster could understand why, though most of the time he didn’t bother trying himself. It was wasted energy, really; Deadpool got maimed and dismembered and shot way too often for it to be purely involuntary; plus, stabbing a guy who didn’t scream or die properly but instead popped up off the ground and tried to give you an affectionate wet willie while bleeding on your cape took all the fun out of the exercise.
There was a crack, then a grunt and a SPLOOOCH like an overripe watermelon bursting. Taskmaster just barely managed to close his eyes and mouth before he was splashed liberally with blood and brains.
Deadpool keeled forward from where he was kneeling and lay there with his face planted sideways into the asphalt, ass in the air, the back of his head gone.
Taskmaster threw up his hands. Well, this was just great. Fucking lovely. He’d been minding his own business, making his way home for some well-deserved R&R, and now his car was trashed, he was liberally covered with someone else's bodily fluids -- not the fun kind, either -- and being shot at in someone else's battle. And was that someone else now a twitching sack of meat at his feet? And was that someone else visibly re-knitting his brains before Taskmaster's very eyes?
Ah – damn.
Ah, gross.
He dragged his eyes away, willing his stomach down, and tried to assess the situation. A peek over the trunk got a bullet winged by his head, so he didn't try again. Henchmen and gangsters were generally shoddy shots but was he going to risk his neck testing the theory for free? Hell no!
A shot spanged next to his feet, and he cringed against the car. Christ, these guys’ aim was better than most.
Low voices hissed orders, then cautious footsteps approached. He’d counted eight men during his abortive recon but now he only heard three, so the others were probably hiding in the building while sending the unfortunate new meat out to investigate. These seemed to have more smarts than the usual faceless meatheads they hired for these things, so they probably hadn't been his students.
He waited, lying flat on his stomach and peering out from under the car, trying to ignore the pool of Deadpool’s brain juice seeping towards him. When they got close enough he shot their feet out from under them, then rolled out from behind his shelter and took out the windows of the adjacent building, pegging two guys with machine guns on the first floor and one in the doorway.
Damn, he’d missed one, a young guy looking like he was recruited right out of junior high. The kid turned white when he saw Taskmaster reloading, then dropped his gun and ran like hell. Taskmaster put a bullet through the back of his head just in case the kid grew a new set of balls later and added to the numerous pains already in Taskmaster’s ass.
Which sounded dirty as hell, he thought, then caught himself. He'd only been with Deadpool for ten minutes and already the merc was rubbing off on him.
That sounded dirty as hell too. Damn!
He got to his feet and looked around. The car was dented and bullet-riddled with what had to be high caliber rounds, .50s, at the very least, which were used for hunting rhinos and elephants. Thank christ for small favors that the car was still running. The henchmen—whoever they were—must've really wanted Deadpool...well, really dead.
But the merc wasn’t doing the proper thing and being dead. Some of his brain was growing back and parts were beginning to be covered with thin bone and stretched skin, and he was twitching and muttering something garbled that sounded vaguely pornographic. Drooling, too.
More shouts. Taskmaster had an excellent sense of time and direction, and right now it was telling him it was TIME TO GO, in the direction of AWAY.
He started manhandling Deadpool around the front of the car. "I'm not saving you for free," he informed the limp body as the passenger door opened with a grating chunk and struck Deadpool's outstretched thigh. "I hope you've got money because I don’t take charity cases -- oof -- and, another piece of friendly advice? Lay off the goddamn chimichangas, you lardass." He wrenched the door open and dumped Deadpool into the passenger seat, shoving at the limbs flopping out the door.
Deadpool said almost clearly, " -- ludass muns mo' meady -- meaty -- lovin' --" and woozed out again, leaking blood and brain matter all over Taskmaster’s nice Italian leather upholstery.
"Don't you wish," Taskmaster retorted and slammed the door, then downed another hopeful minion edging around in his peripheral vision. He jumped into the driver’s side as bullets began to zing and spang all around them again, and gunned the engine. "Please god you won’t remember your winkie this time," he breathed, and peeled out in a screech of expensive rubber.
***
Dumping Deadpool at his own place would’ve been nice if Taskmaster knew where the guy even lived. He couldn’t ask him, since Deadpool was being too noisy and disgusting to be dead, but was also being unhelpfully unconscious.
It was just as well Taskmaster didn’t know. Deadpool tended to pick places in the most unsavory neighborhoods and the odds were high that even a car as trashed as Taskmaster's -- and highly protected and alarmed -- would be stripped and left up on blocks the minute his back was turned. That was just way beyond the call of being professional colleagues or friends or whatever Deadpool thought they were. Just—no.
Taskmaster was often paid extremely well to deal with that kind of crazy, but endangering a man’s car was over the line.
Seemed to him, associating with or even just being near Deadpool always meant some sort of mess. Fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants, sloppy, downright unprofessional....mess. And it seemed like, lately he’d been getting more and more involved in Deadpool’s messes. It was a trend he’d have to sit down and investigate thoroughly sometime.
"You definitely owe me now," he muttered under his breath. Two hours ago, he'd only been planning to get back to his place and get quietly shit-faced, and now he was hauling a guy who weighed more than the Blob -- and smelled like him, too -- into the elevator of his own penthouse building. He’d just gotten the fishtank readjusted after the last time, dammit.
"Mmmaraagph," Deadpool replied, blowing a nostril bubble. It probably didn’t mean Yeah, no problemo, I’ll be right back -- gotta go rob a bank and pay you back for wrecking your limited edition Maserati.
"Are you being sarcastic?"
"Pmmph."
"Watch your language. You threw up in my car."
His spare civilian coat that he’d had in the car was discreetly Armani, black cashmere with bold yet tasteful grey pinstripes and a smooth silk lining. It was still new, not bought on sale, and he loved it. He’d also wrapped Deadpool in it. It hurt, deep down inside where the injuries to his car were festering, but he was also a pragmatic guy. The sacrifice was better than having to go back and clean up--or explain--a wide streak of blood all the way down the hallway from the parking garage to the elevator.
The elevator dinged and opened onto the tenth floor. He spilled Deadpool into the hall, silently thanking whatever gods there were that he had discreet neighbors who wouldn’t comment on a bullet-holed and dented car, even hidden in a dark corner and covered as it was, or on a hooded, masked guy in a cape dragging a bloody body through the halls, or on other merc-related activities, even if it weren’t late enough that most people were asleep.
He prodded Deadpool. A loud snore in response. Well, Deadpool was still alive and he supposed that was good, as long as Deadpool hadn’t bled through the coat and begun bleeding all over the fl—fuck.
Taskmaster sighed and told him hopelessly, "Just don’t throw up again, you disgusting monkey," and shoved Deadpool's leg far enough into the hall to let the elevator door close.
"Huuh huh. Heh babee, bac a' yr plaze? No' eben da firs' date." Deadpool had woken up enough to stare at him interestedly with one good eye, the other still rolled back into his head. Damn Deadpool, half his brain blown out and he was still talking.
"No. Shut up." He wiggled his finger in the biometric lock impatiently until it beeped and the door to his penthouse swung open.
"Heh heh. Mea-dy lovin’. Meeeeeeea-dy."
"Shut up."
THE CAT sidled up and began to lick the gore.
GAH. He hated cats. He hated that cat. Disgusting, dirty things. Only he knew the tooth-decayingly cute front was a horrible, horrible lie, yet here he was, babysitting the fucking thing for Sandi. He scooped up a slipper and shied it at THE CAT. THE CAT – yes, he thought of it in all caps -- dodged, mewed all furry and adorable -- and went back to lapping blood.
...Disgusting.
He edged around it into the living room. A quick check sufficed that no wacko, superhero, or otherwise enterprising persons of interest were waiting in the shadows to take a piece from their hides, so he ducked into the bedroom to shuck his gear, then scrounged a bucket and mop from the kitchen and went to sop up Deadpool’s leakage in the corridor.
That done, he took a long look at Deadpool. Deadpool was certainly taking his sweet time regenerating, still half-comatose on the tiled floor, though the hole in his forehead was almost whole and almost completely covered with skin. He toed Deadpool in the side, hard. "Yo, Wade. Up and at 'em."
"Mmmrgaph..."
He stepped back and considered. Deadpool’s healing factor usually didn’t take this long; he should’ve been completely awake by now. In the mad escape that had involved a wild chase, some fiery crashes, and a lot of gratuitous property damage, Taskmaster hadn't really had time to check the extent of Deadpool's injuries. Was he going to have to duct tape and staple the guy's head together again?
He rolled him onto his side just enough to see that the gaping exit wound in the back of his head wasn’t as…gaping as before. There was still a lot of bone and brain to be seen, but most of it was covered. Then what?
Then he realized that Deadpool was still bleeding, but not just from the head. He unrolled him from the coat, swiped at the caked blood on his chest – damned if red and black costumes didn’t make finding bullet holes that much harder -- and saw that at some point Deadpool had been shot so many times in the torso that he resembled Swiss cheese. The holes were closing, then reopening to ooze more. No exit wounds.
Taskmaster was no expert on first aid for the eternally self-healing and virtually un-killable, but he figured that probably meant the bullets were still rattling around in there somewhere.
Right. He went looking for tweezers.
An hour and some disgusting squishing and cracking sounds later -- Taskmaster dragged Deadpool into the bathroom and dumped him into the tub. Deadpool was already coming around, droning tonelessly, "Mmm, baby, you know I love squirrels...your lips taste like hazelnuts -- gimme somma that Nutella lovin' –"
"You have no idea how disgusting you are," Taskmaster informed him, and turned the shower on full blast.
Deadpool squawked and thrashed around under the freezing jet but at least most of the blood smeared liberally on the tub now swirled down the drain. Taskmaster pointedly threw a bar of soap at Deadpool, who made no attempt to catch it. It bounced off Deadpool’s chest.
"Hey," Deadpool said instead, making urgent ‘come here’ gestures. "Hey!"
Taskmaster sighed. "What?"
"C’mere! It’s important!"
Taskmaster gave him a long glare, crossing his arms across his chest, and didn't budge.
"Don’t you want to know really top secret things I found out about SHIELD?"
"Not really, no."
"But it’s about Hill. That hottie. Scary, but hottie. Hot because she's scary."
Taskmaster considered. As little as he wanted to get mixed up in whatever Deadpool was currently up to, this might be something he could use. He leaned in. "What?"
"Look, WINKIE!"
"Aw, fuck, Wade--!"
"HahaHAHAHA, made you look! …Hey, you trip or something? Why’re you on the floor?"
Taskmaster escaped to the kitchen to fix himself a stiff drink, trailed by Deadpool’s "It wasn’t a winkie, I was just happy to see you!"
***
Taskmaster sighted along the long barrel and waited, shifting uncomfortably against the low concrete wall. It was unprofessional and risky to be impatient on a mission, but Deadpool should’ve checked in fifteen minutes ago. It was also unprofessional and risky not to stick to the plan. So where the hell was the guy?
The things he did for people he didn't even like, he grouched to himself. Somehow he’d gone from being sprawled out on his couch, flipping between Jim Lehrer and UFC and doing his best to ignore the gravelly voice belting out Unchained Melody from the bathroom, to winding up the next night on top of a warehouse in the packing district of a city on the other side of the country and helping Deadpool with his mission. Stealing data from HYDRA, who gave a shit about those incompetent sprats?
Somehow Deadpool had talked him into doing this, just like he talked him into most of the other crazy and inconvenient stuff Taskmaster wound up doing for that stupid asshole. It was a talent Deadpool had.
Taskmaster tamped down the urge to break radio silence and page him. This was Deadpool, he reminded himself. He had to trust him, had trusted him before. Things worked out, usually. No matter what Taskmaster thought of him otherwise, the thing he hung onto was that Deadpool always got the job done, never mind how he got it done.
Sticking to the plan was always more wishful thinking when working with that guy, so either Deadpool was in there captured and driving them to messy, bloody murder-suicide, or he was just taking his time getting things done.
And sometimes that ‘getting things done’ got Taskmaster arrested.
Taskmaster pushed the thought away. Concentrate on the mission, don’t get distracted, was one of his work rules. But seriously, he needed extra fingers to finish counting all the times he’d gotten nabbed because of one of Deadpool’s harebrained schemes. Deadpool usually broke him out again later as a matter of course, but it was pretty damn inconvenient. And hard on the rep.
Stop thinking about it, he told himself firmly.
Alarms screeched into the night for a split second, then --
BOOOM.
The shockwave would've bowled him over if he wasn’t braced against the ledge. As it was, he nearly dropped the sniper rifle and he swore as he grabbed at it before it went over the edge.
Deadpool's gravelly voice finally crackled over the comm. "BOOOM! HA HA!"
People began spilling out of the building across from Taskmaster, shouts and gunshots erupting. "HEY! Cover me! Holes in my ass! My beautiful rock-hard ass! OW!"
"What the hell was that?" he hissed back. Angry flames billowed to the sky, orange bright. They nearly whited out his night-vision goggles, making things just that much harder to see before he tore them off and began picking off the running figures below. The pft pft pft of the silenced gun kicked back into his shoulder.
This was supposed to be strictly a black bag job, there weren’t supposed to be any explosions! The dark figures dove for cover, and returned fire in his direction. Wildly. "Did you get it?"
"Get what?"
He gave Deadpool the only thing that he'd notice: Silence. A few seconds passed. Then: "Yeah, fine, yeah, I got it. Hey."
If Deadpool didn’t hurry up, Taskmaster was going to have to move house because the greensuits seemed to have pinpointed his location and the ordnance coming his way had abruptly improved in volume and relative accuracy. "Do I want to know?"
"Do a Vader for me? Please?" Panting noises over the comm now. He could hear tinny shouts and gunfire.
"You think this is a good time?" He ducked as one lucky shot spanged off the ledge and sprayed him with sharp concrete chips.
"Come on—" Pant, pant. Curse. "You got the right look with the mask n all and the pissed off ‘tude? Captain America said you’d do it if I asked nicely."
"He did not – shut -- When I see you again I'm going to kick the stuffing out of your bony ass."
"Get your foot ready Anakin, cuz I'm coming out front no--" Pft pft pft -- Wait, that crazily somersaulting figure brandishing blades and guns was -- pft -- knocked backwards, rolling backwards ass over teakettle until he came to rest, spread-eagled and staring sightlessly up at the smoky night sky.
"Aw, shit." Taskmaster sat back in disbelief. How was this his life?
Then he threw down the rifle, grabbing for his handguns and his replica web shooters. One man charging down a tall building to rescue a certain lunatic merc who couldn’t follow basic directions and who he'd just shot, with no cover and plenty of pissed off HYDRA agents?
Check.
Was he getting paid for this? Check.
Was he getting paid enough? Hell no!
"The things I do for friends I can’t stand," he muttered. Slinging grenades into the street below, he ducked as the smaller booms rocked the building, then threw himself over the side. Speed and surprise were the only ways this would work, with a tall order of crazy balls.
Dizzying freefall, before he played out the webbing. He braced himself for the socket-jarring yank of his shoulders -- he might have all the techniques of Spiderman but he certainly didn’t have his flexible superhuman body -- and swung down to the pavement and rolled, pulling out his handguns and hammering the regrouping greensuits with ruthless efficiency. The ones who weren’t already scattered in the initial explosion or shot dead in the previous salvo ran for cover. He used the lull to thumb on his wrist vibro-shield, making his way through the smoke and debris to where Deadpool was lying.
"Much as I know you want to just lie there and pose for the cameras, we gotta go," he informed him, pulling at him. "Get up!" He dropped him and raised the shield quickly enough that the incoming bullets ricocheted off the shimmering energy disc, crouching to provide a smaller target and to keep Deadpool from being shot up just that much more. He’d already spent way too much time yesterday tweezing bullets out of Deadpool, and he wasn’t going for extra credit.
Deadpool didn't respond.
"Fuck," Taskmaster said with feeling, and sent a steady hail of bullets at the men boiling out of an alleyway. Reinforcements, wonderful. The greensuits screamed and fell down in neat succession, hitting the pavement with wet thuds, but there were plenty where those came from, HYDRA being an equal opportunity employer who subscribed to the school of quantity over quality.
He began hauling at Deadpool again, Deadpool's ungainly limbs flopping everywhere until he manhandled him over his shoulder into an improvised fireman's carry. Pushing away a distinctly uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu, he staggered off as quickly as he could, using the gunsmoke for cover.
He got them down a side street several blocks away, shifting Deadpool just enough that he covered Taskmaster’s back like a meat shield. Deadpool mumbled, "Ass. Nice. Heh heh, I like asses," and grabbed it with both hands.
Taskmaster jumped. He hissed, "Hands off, Wilson, you can't afford me," and kept jogging along as fast as he could go. What was he supposed to do? Stop and let heavily armed henchmen heavily un-arm into their backs, or just endure the indignity of being groped while playing the white knight? He smacked Deadpool’s calf hard at a particularly exploratory squeeze and Deadpool cackled.
He rounded a corner, pulling out his keys, and skidded to a stop.
Where the hell was his car?
***
"This is going on my expense report," Taskmaster muttered. The car had been a burner, but the sheer hassle of replacing it was pissing him off. He should've known better than to park it in the Tenderloin area at night, but he was blaming the entire debacle on Deadpool. Because it was always Deadpool's fault. "I'm also adding fifty dollars a grope."
"You shot me!" Deadpool let out an indignant huff as he squeezed a flattened bullet out of his forearm. "And grenadoed me!" He dropped it atop a growing pile of bloody shrapnel. "Didn’t your mama teach you that’s rude?"
"Groping isn’t rude? Hold still." Taskmaster held the lips of the wound apart and wiggled the tweezers inside, grabbed and pulled. The metal fragment came free with a schlorp. "Your back’s done. I think." He considered slapping a butterfly bandage on it, then reconsidered. It was already knitting visibly before his eyes and…well, one more scar wouldn’t make a difference on that cratered surface.
"I figure it’s like an even exchange. For every bullet n grenade piece, one full grope."
"If you didn’t notice, I was rescuing your sorry ass. Sorry I didn’t have time for finesse, your highness."
He sat back against the wall and watched Deadpool put his shirt back on. It was a miracle they'd even made it here in one piece and hopefully unnoticed; San Francisco didn't have enough supes or weirdoes to make a couple of blood-covered mercs bristling with guns anywhere near as anonymous as they would have been in the Big Apple.
But Deadpool kept talking, as if he hadn’t even heard. "So, considering sometimes I didn’t even get a full grope in before you dropped me on my head, that makes you owe me…" he counted on his fingers, "TWENTY more!"
"How’d you get to twenty on your fingers?" Taskmaster was asking, when they heard footsteps coming down the hall towards their door.
They tensed. Taskmaster laid one hand on the butterfly knife in his boot—when it came to stealth, nothing was faster and quieter than a quick knife to the base of the skull—while Deadpool slowly drew out one katana, waiting for a heavy footfall to disguise the slide of metal.
Taskmaster laid a cautionary hand on Deadpool’s wrist. A dead body here, their last ditch (and only) safe house, would cause a commotion and get them kicked out at best, caught by HYDRA at worst, so offing the person was an absolute last resort option.
At least Deadpool hadn't drawn his gun. He'd picked up stealth somewhere along the line, because that was new. Sorta nice, too; when he'd first met Deadpool ages ago the merc hadn't thought twice about blowing a hole through the wall instead of using the door.
They breathed easier as the footsteps stumbled past the door on down the hallway, and Taskmaster took his hand off the knife and straightened again.
"The data okay?" he asked. Once they got out of the city, they'd deliver the data, he'd get paid, and he could get back to his regularly scheduled programming.
But getting out of the city was going to be complicated as HYDRA had blanketed most of downtown in a manhunt. Seemed the data was pretty damn important. Usually Taskmaster liked to know what it was he was stealing and for whom, but he was beginning to suspect that Deadpool had handled him quite expertly and he'd wound up in California thinking that he knew, but second thought proved that he knew absolutely jack fucking shit. There hadn’t been time to query Deadpool about it, either.
Deadpool patted one of his pouches and gave him a thumbs-up. "Little piggly wiggly’s safe with the big bad farmer!" he said.
Great oogly moogly. "Another entire night spent in your company, Wade," Taskmaster replied with a sigh. At least until he got the hell out of Frisco. Deadpool might have lived here, seemed to like it here, but Taskmaster hated San Francisco with a passion. It was foggy and cold all the time, and it was full of dirty crackheads who stole a person’s car.
They had succeeded in stealing a cab after losing the car, managing to scare the living bejeesus out of the middle-aged paunchy Latverian taxi driver, and they’d found their way over to Weasel’s Top Secret Hideout. It was a grandiose title for what amounted to a shack, but Deadpool insisted on pronouncing the name in all capital letters. Weasel wasn’t there, but they’d broken in anyway to lay low until things blew over and they could get out of the city, and to wait for Deadpool’s foot to grow back where it’d been blown off by Weasel’s homicidal security system.
Taskmaster always made it a point to complete his mission without any loose ends, no matter how insane his partner or the city was, so he was going with the flow.
At least for the moment.
Several hours later, "To the end of a long weekend," Deadpool said with a grin, tilting his beer can at him. Taskmaster didn’t make it a habit to drink and especially not on the job, but he’d found that Deadpool had amazing powers of persuasion that mostly involved asking "Why not?" over and over - and so he’d drunk enough beers and shots of tequila that his lips were pruny with salt and lime and he was sloshing inside. Plus, the guy was supplying them, albeit pilfered out of Weasel’s Top Secret Stash, and Taskmaster was never one to say no to freebies.
Too bad he couldn’t copycat Deadpool’s ability to stay completely sober. He’d learned many things spending a delinquent adolescence in the South Bronx and holding his drink had turned out to be the most valuable, yet now it was proving so very inadequate. At least it had saved him from belting out showtunes like Deadpool wanted, and the Vader voice like Deadpool wanted, and the magic tricks, and the mime show like Deadpool wanted.
But as it was, he'd taken off his mask somewhere in between Deadpool plunking down an entire bottle of José and a dish of limes and Deadpool deciding that Taskmaster’s cape was an affront to fashionistas and pirates everywhere and trying to set it on fire. Says the guy who looks like a burned raccoon, Taskmaster had protested, but that hadn’t saved the SHIELD-engineered fabric from getting scorched.
Both their masks were now sitting next to the empty bottle in a crumpled pile amid a heap of squeezed out limes, and Taskmaster had pushed up his black cowl for easy access drinking.
Deadpool was matching him drink for drink, sitting next to him on the dusty floor because Weasel might have schnazzy doohickeys and state-of-the-art gadgets galore and what looked like ten separate computers and monitors, but he certainly hadn’t invested in any actual furniture beyond the one supremely plush and ergonomic computer chair and his cot. Deadpool was constantly bumping against Taskmaster in his frenetic inability to sit still, but it looked like the cheap healing factor was overcompensating yet again and he didn’t seem even remotely buzzed.
But then, with the zany talk and constantly changing expressions and expressively rolling eyes, it was hard to tell when Deadpool was sober.
Except when he was.
That doesn’t make any sense, Taskmaster told himself.
"And then, I met Shen Kuei and like, he was so totally awesome—"
"The Cat? You’re shittin’ me."
"No! No, I really did! He was all deadly and and he’s got blue eyes, how awesome is that for a Chinese dude? that’s like Mad Max level awesome! For a Chinese dude!"
"Did he show you his tattoo?"
"Hell yeah!"
Taskmaster tried hard not to sound jealous as he said, "Damn," but Deadpool thumped him on the back, radiating pity, and handed him another lukewarm beer.
"Woulda had him sign my chest too, but I didn’t have a chance with the ripping out my trachea thing and the impaling thing." Deadpool sighed happily.
Then a hesitation, in which Taskmaster could hear the gears in his head churning, then Deadpool fumbled with the tab he'd just pulled off his beer can. It clattered on the ground.
"By the way, thanks for helping me out today, Tony. And yesterday. It was really nice of you, man."
Taskmaster was startled by the sudden shift in tone. "It’s cool," he said, uncomfortably.
"No, really. I appreciate it." Deadpool gave him an awkward smile and bumped him with his shoulder. "Not everyone woulda stopped and picked me up."
Almost didn’t, Taskmaster thought but didn’t say. Deadpool could get away with having no filter between brain and word-vomit, but Taskmaster didn’t have the healing factor to make up for it.
"I mean, you always help me out when I ask. So…thanks."
"Not for free," Taskmaster reminded him.
"Well—no, but we’re like buds now, right? We don’t hang out much, and sometimes you look at me like you want to shoot my kneecaps off and beat me with my own legs, but—"
"Mercs don’t have friends, Wade," he told him, almost gently. At best, other mercenaries were competition, at worst they were liabilities. Taskmaster generally found it useful to keep a few on friendly terms in case he needed backup for a particularly hairy mission, if the payoff was sufficiently large enough to be shared, but no more than that.
Deadpool digested this.
"Damn, that’s really lonely, Tasky. Total downer," he said finally.
"If you think I’m your friend, you seriously need to stop calling me ‘Tasky’."
"Can I call you Cherise?"
"No."
"Prisci—"
"No."
Silence fell again. Deadpool shifted and his arm touched Taskmaster’s. Taskmaster pulled at his beer, and wondered how he could have thought he was full to bursting. He felt floaty. He felt great. Well, okay, he thought. Maybe he was also just a little buzzed. The beer helped with the sickly sour-sweet aftertaste of the tequila.
"Hey, you’re buds with the Avengers, right?"
"Huh. I wouldn’t call it that."
"Friends with benefits?"
"What?" Taskmaster choked on his beer. "Yeah, I guess, if by ‘benefits’ you mean ‘arresting’ and oh, 'slapping with tax penalties'." He shook his head and did a full body shudder. "That’s helluva question. What’re you getting at?"
Deadpool shrugged, scratching his scalp. "Well, you know this data I stole?" At Taskmaster’s cautious nod, "Seriously, I think it was harder to break into the Baxter Building, but that one time, with the thing with Fury, and that other thing—You know they have engineered monsters in there? Like there was one with a green face that looked like a lion, kinda like She-Hulk during that time of the month, except you should never say that to her face when she's holding tongs—"
"Wade. Point?"
"What? Oh yeah. Yeah. So you know mutants, right?"
The crack of his fist against Deadpool’s cheekbone would be just so gratifying, he thought. He tried to decide if the ensuing mayhem and possible discovery would be worth punching him in the face just to see what would happen. Instead Taskmaster said in flat, dangerous tone, "Yes. I know mutants. So?"
Deadpool unclipped a belt pouch and pulled out a data stick. They looked at it in the thin yellow streetlight that edged through the crooked blinds. Deadpool sounded satisfied. "Not anymore."
It took Taskmaster a few moments to process, then: "What, seriously?"
"You’re darn-tootin’! Seriouser than Ant-Man’s ant-sized underoos."
"So that will —"
"If the bad guys have this, kiss all the mutants goodbye. Again. For serious this time, everybody, including all the popular X-Men that Quesada likes."
"Huh." That was…that was. Then something occurred to him. "Wait. Who would even pay you to -- Whose side are you -- Just who hired you for this job, anyway?"
Ah, damn. Taskmaster knew Deadpool better than he'd ever really wanted, and he knew that Deadpool couldn't lie for shit. And Deadpool was looking cagey as hell.
He thumped his head against the wall. "Nobody. You're doing this for nobody."
Deadpool's voice was small. "Well. Not nobody. It'd save a lot of people. Do a lot of good."
"But not for money. You mean that story you fed me about being hired to steal the thing for some guy—for lots of money—"
Deadpool abruptly switched on, grinning at him suddenly, all crazy eyes and gleaming teeth, and leaning in way, way too close. "Lies, all horrible, horrible lies that’ve blackened my poor, tender soul, Tony."
Taskmaster glared at him. All the way out here to goddamn California, sacrificing his weekend. Pro bono. And stuck in a rat-hole in a city he hated because Deadpool was trying to make nice with the X-Men, those arrogant douchebags.
"You know I hate being lied to about my mission, you carpet-whacker," he snapped, struggling against the very real urge to throttle Deadpool. Not having all the pieces to the puzzle usually meant total mission failure and complete humiliation. He still hadn’t lived the Moon Knight thing down, and Deadpool knew it.
And, well. If he felt a pang on Deadpool's behalf that Deadpool was still trying to get sanctimonious assholes like the X-Men to accept him (and they never would, it didn't take a genius to see that, but Taskmaster knew from long experience that Deadpool was a closet optimist), Deadpool didn't need to know.
Deadpool settled back, the manic energy gone as if he'd flipped a switch. He turned the data stick over in his hands. "You wouldn’t have come," he said somberly.
"Fuck you. Seriously."
Deadpool peered at him. Then he grinned, and elbowed him hard. "You big softie! You so woulda come!"
Taskmaster considered punching him for the twenty-seventh time that evening, then, "If Sandi asked me nicely."
"With boob-access?"
He considered. Hard. "Probably not." It was probably not a good sign that he could follow Deadpool's logic now.
"Man," Deadpool said, draping his arm companionably over Taskmaster’s shoulders, "It’s like you got all the boyfriend duties with none of the fun."
He snorted. "That’s crossed my mind."
"It's okay. As a bonus for being such a good buddy you can have access to my boobs anytime." Deadpool’s very no-sense-of-personal-space hand patted Taskmaster’s shoulder. "But each grope doesn’t count against any of the gropes you still owe me."
Taskmaster crossed his arms. "If you’re implying that I would’ve come—for free, might I add—if you asked me nicely with boob access, doesn’t that mean right now I should get any and all gropes unlimited and for free?" He caught himself. "Wait. Never mind. I am not talking about groping and man-boobs with you. And sadly, this is by far not the most surreal conversation we’ve ever had."
"But ass-gropes and boob-gropes aren’t the same thing," Deadpool protested.
"I’m not talking to you about groping anything! Were you like this with that Cable guy?"
Deadpool leaned in closer and leered. "Only with you, baby," he breathed, attempting a sultry voice that just made him sound constipated. And then he added, "Heh heh, you said ‘cable guy’."
"You damn melon farmer!" He attempted to slap Deadpool upside the head, but Deadpool dodged him all too easily, Taskmaster’s reflexes dulled by too much José Cuervo and not enough sleep.
"Hey, that’s my word! Only I use that word!"
Taskmaster said, fending off the elbows and ninja hand-jabs, "What, you think you’ve got some sort of copyright on it? Like 'melon farmer' is such a great word only you thought it up? And it's not even a word, it's a term!" then suddenly Deadpool was leaning way into his personal space.
Well okay, Deadpool was the only person he knew who used the fucking term so he supposed Deadpool had been rubbing off on him, and damn, Taskmaster could read people and he'd never been able to read Deadpool, but he didn’t need to, to know exactly what Deadpool had in mind.
It was way too clear with a hand creeping up his thigh and a suddenly serious, hopeful look on Deadpool’s face.
Taskmaster almost slapped it away, exasperated with damn Deadpool and his constant touching, but didn't. Because he could see Deadpool watching him, an almost imperceptible flinch in the works, to be covered immediately with flailing and another flippant joke. It was easily overlooked, but Taskmaster was trained to see and record every movement a person made.
Fucking hell. He wasn’t stupid, though maybe he was getting soft, but he could understand. Deadpool had always been a flirt, but not a serious one. Half a lifetime looking like spoiled hamburger would make anyone leery of just trying something on someone.
Maybe all that tequila and beer was catching up to him so he didn't point out that this really wasn't the time or the place, and that he also made it a rule not to sleep around on the job, plus Weasel's dusty and spider-ridden apartment really wasn't making with the sexy times, but instead allowed Deadpool's fingers to skim along the lines of his jaw, then up his cheeks and a feather-light tracing along the ridges of fabric where his cowl was rucked up just below his cheekbones and nose.
Deadpool sucked in a breath and looked up at him with a strangely vulnerable expression, like he still couldn’t believe Taskmaster was really allowing this to happen. He hadn’t really considered Deadpool as anything more than a begrudgingly respected colleague (okay, kinda maybe sorta a friend, albeit a very annoying one) before, but now, under that look of need and uncertainty he had to fight an unexpected flare of irritation at Cable.
He'd known Deadpool for a long time. And in a small world with only so many competent mercs, they'd run into each other a lot over the years. He'd gotten to realize that Deadpool had weird ideas for a mercenary; romantic, impractical ideas about redemption and honor. That Deadpool was always looking for someone to kill him, or give him something to live for.
Taskmaster wasn’t looking to fill either role. Apparently the Jesus-wannabe had.
Deadpool had changed since Providence. Still the zany, fast-talking humor, but not so angry; less of the homicidal tendencies that lashed out unpredictably at everyone, friend or foe. More of this uncertainty about his place in the world.
Not that Taskmaster had given it much thought.
"Well?" he asked, challengingly. "You gonna do something or just stare?"
He could pinpoint the exact moment—0.57 seconds— when Deadpool got over his shock at his offer being accepted and just dove in, that crazy Deadpool way that always drove Taskmaster batshit, where he flung himself wholesale into crazy situations, committing himself body and soul without a thought for the consequences.
Which was great, that maniac intensity focused on him like a laser, but Deadpool was kinda awful at this, all sloppy wet tongue and fumbling lips. The guy was probably way out of practice, Taskmaster thought dimly, the focused heat of it warring with the sensation that he was losing a particularly messy battle with a wet octopus.
It was distinctly weird not to have anything to grab onto as his hands curved around Deadpool’s skull, the skin weirdly smooth, all knotted and whorled scar tissue. He had to make do with the ears instead to hold Deadpool's enthusiastically plunging face still. But instead of pulling away or protesting, Deadpool did an even weirder thing and just stopped and... nuzzled, socketing his nose into Taskmaster's half-concealed cheek and sighing. But his hands kept up their interested explorations, sliding down Taskmaster's arms to--
"Hey," Taskmaster snapped, twisting, and muffled Deadpool’s reply, "But I like manly rock-hard pecs and you owe me gropes," by sticking his fingers in Deadpool's mouth, then jerking them out just as Deadpool attempted to take Taskmaster's fingers off at the knuckles with his teeth. But the attempt was half-hearted. Deadpool shifted his hips upward into Taskmaster’s touch as Taskmaster moved downwards, grazing his palms along the planes of Deadpool's body, gripping him through the thick material of his pants.
Deadpool made a soft sound then, low and desperate and unexpectedly hot. It did something to Taskmaster, ignited something that smoldered then flared, and suddenly Taskmaster couldn't get enough of those noises, of the reverent awe in Deadpool's eyes as if he'd won a lottery with impossible odds.
Deadpool melted into him, writhed in his grasp, his mouth opening under Taskmaster's. They breathed harsh gasps into each other's mouths. Holy shit, this was kinda…good. Not mind-blowing unless he was feeling very charitable, but good. Not terrible. He continued with increased enthusiasm, until –
"Oh. Oh."
Oh? Deadpool was shuddering, making soft, hurt sounds, his fingers clenching into Taskmaster's forearms, like – like – Taskmaster jerked back. Their lips parted with a loud wet sucking noise. He looked down. "Did you just—"
Gasping for breath, Deadpool finally relaxed. He opened his eyes, and looked down at himself. "Uh. Oh. Oh. I usually – um, in my defense, it's been a really long time—"
Taskmaster was about to reply that he didn't care if Deadpool was the thirty-second wonder as long as the other half of the equation was completed too, but then there came a loud thump at the door, and then the rattling of the doorknob.
They wrenched away from each other, going for their guns, and brought them to bear just as the door opened and Weasel stepped in, arms full of mail and pizza pamphlets.
"Wade, is that your foot out there in the hall--" he broke off, staring at the four guns aimed at him. Then his cheeks flamed as he took in their disheveled state, kiss-swollen lips, discarded masks, Taskmaster's shirt rucked interestingly up his ribs, and the even more interesting fact that Deadpool was practically lying in Taskmaster's lap, albeit leaned out far enough to have reached his guns, in one wild, sweeping look.
It was pretty damn evident that they'd been up to something, and that something was definitely not Scrabble.
"Gah," Weasel squeaked, his mouth ajar. "I--I'll just--oh god--" he staggered against the door, then groping at the doorknob, wrenched the door open and fled.
Deadpool slowly lowered his guns. "Cockblocked by my own wingman," he said mournfully. He really did sound disappointed.
"You cockblocked yourself," Taskmaster snapped, the whiplash of being in the middle of sex and then…not, making him crabby. He shoved at Deadpool. "Off."