Work Text:
“You know where we oughta go, spidey? Rome.”
Wade’s swinging his feet over the edge of the building, mask underlit by a million city lights from the street below, flicking a butterfly knife open and closed between his fingers, center of balance curled towards Peter like he’s not afraid of falling sixty-seven stories to his temporary death, which - he probably isn’t.
The police scanner in Peter’s mask is buzzing on low-volume in his ear, but it’s a slow night and he’s happy for the company, happy to have something to distract him other than the usual jumble of math and science and grocery lists and the fact that his suit is torn and fraying at the right knee.
“I’ve been to Italy, yeah, but I ain’t never been to Rome, only been to some shitty little boat town in the middle of no-fucking-where, and what’s even the point of going to Italy if you ain’t gonna go to Rome, am I right? Because the Roman Empire, oh my, the Roman Empire, that’s what I’m talkin’ about, Julius Caesar and shit, S-P-Q-R, I woulda loved to be a Roman, spidey, all that invadin’ and conquerin’ and Italian food, and they got to fight elephants - elephants, I tell you, fuckin’ plot twist turns out Hannibal was the real shit, but how do you even fight an elephant, spidey?”
“I dunno,” Peter tries to contribute, when Wade stops to breathe. “Big guns. Anti-aircraft guns.”
“Throw a tank at it,” Wade suggests. “Drop a mountain on it, hit it with a really big rock - “
“Web its legs together and take it down Battle of Hoth style - “
“Get all bouncy and make like Legolas, run a mouse out in front of it, or a whole herd of mice - “
“Pull the rider off and take it over, wreak havoc on all the other elephants - “
“I think if I got my hands on one of those big nasty broadswords as big as two guys stuck together I could take it out manual-like,” he gesticulates with the butterfly knife to demonstrate. “I don’t know why people ever stopped slashin’ stuff, spidey, I mean really hackin’ and stabbin’, that’s the best way to do it, we never shoulda switched to guns, I mean don’t get me wrong, they get the job done good, whack splat blam, but there isn’t the same satisfaction, y’know?”
Peter doesn’t know, never having taken a sword to anyone, but Wade’s not actually looking for any reply, just tramples on as Peter smiles privately under his mask. “I stole this sword from a meat guy in Kuala Lumpur once, weirdest sword I ever seen, couldn’t leave that sitting there una-fucking-preciated, woulda been a crime to leave it, I tell you, the edges were all wavy, loved that sword like my own dick, then here it goes and falls over the edge of one of the Himalayas, couldn’t tell you which one, I woulda gone after it but looky-here there was a nasty spitty lion thing and some magic asshole on my back - “
“Hold up,” Peter interrupts, holding up a hand and just about losing a finger to Wade’s blurred butterfly knife, “what the fuck is a meat guy?”
“Some schmuck who sells meat on the streets, y’know, street meat, shish kebabs, gotta keep up, spidey. Anyway, where was I - “
“Nasty spitty lion thing and some magic asshole - “
“Sure, sure, right, best sword I ever had, spidey, then these motherfuckers come along and make me drop it, so of course I gotta kill ‘em better than usual, so I chucked that lion thing over the side of the mountain too, figure maybe it’ll get impaled on my sword or somethin’ lucky, but this magic asshole goes and abra-cadabras my arm off, my best arm too, so I blew him to Timbuktu in an avalanche, but I ain’t never found another sword like that one, its name was Ricardo, me and Ricky went through a rough coupla weeks together - “
“You hungry?” Peter asks.
The knife stills abruptly in Wade’s fingers, the blade flipped closed. Peter thinks his mouth is probably hanging open under the mask. “I could eat,” he says.
“Chinese?”
“Come on, spidey, Chinese? You know me better. Chimichangas.”
“Teriyaki,” Peter negotiates. “Kung pao. Egg foo young. Moo goo gai pan.”
“Moo goo gai pan,” Wade exclaims. “Alright, Chinese it is, you win this round,” he’s already halfway over the side of the building, fingers gripping the spaces in between the bricks, “let’s go to a real place though, but not too nice, ‘cause nice places frown on spandex, but I think I saw a nice hole-in-the wall named Number One Restaurant or some fuckery on the way up, they probably have moo goo gai pan - “ his voice fades off as he scales down the wall, still chattering.
Peter’s glad for the mask, because his smile feels dopey, definitely lopsided, definitely too big for his face. He kicks off the ledge and lets himself drop, the police scanner still droning on uneventfully in his peripheral.
sss
It’s a week, three bruised ribs, and a minor chemical explosion in Peter’s kitchen (lab) later that Wade says, “Hear me out, spidey. Everyone in this fucking city is trying to kill me.”
Peter squints at him sleepily over the bright beam from his flashlight. “Wade,” he says flatly. “What.”
Wade’s hanging by one leg from the firescape outside Peter’s seventh floor apartment, poised to pull himself inside by the windowsill, katanas sheathed on his back and a gun on each thigh - but he’s frozen like a deer in the headlights, like Peter poses some sort of threat, standing like an idiot at the open window in sweatpants and no shirt, only a flashlight and a thin smattering of chest hair to defend himself.
“I mean, not all the people,” Wade babbles, “just the ones that matter, you know, the ones with the big guns and the crazy good aim and the giant green rage monsters living two floors down, and - not to mention - the scary one with the eyepatch, Samuel L. Jackson, the one who knows what my actual face looks like, who put me on every no-fly list in a two-hundred mile radius, and I just got off a fucking boat, I can’t take any more time in one of those stank-fucking-awful shipping containers, and I thought you’d be out doing spidey stuff, I just need a place to crash for the night - “
“Late,” Peter interrupts. He doesn’t have the energy for gross things like verbs right now. “Tired. Couch open.” He turns away from the window, turns off the flashlight, walks two feet, and falls back into bed face-first.
He hears a muffled shuffling that he’s pretty sure Wade is putting on for his benefit, then the scrape of the window sliding closed behind him. Wade’s feet are quiet on the carpet, but Peter can still feel him pause beside the bed, can feel Wade’s eyes on him and feel - gloved fingers pressing into the base of his skull, skimming over the skin of his neck and up through his hair to where it’s mussed and tangled at the top.
Wade tugs at his bedhead lightly, and Peter feels the air leave his lungs in an easy exhalation.
“You got a nice head of hair on you, spidey,” Wade says quietly. Peter makes a noncommittal sound into the pillow, and tries with every atom of his body not to push back into the pressure of Wade’s touch. “Hey, what’s your name?”
Peter turns his head enough to say, “Peter Parker.” His eyes are still closed, but he thinks he knows Wade well enough to guess that he’s smiling under the mask, mind probably generating bad puns like a supercomputer.
His fingers twitch lightly in Peter’s hair, and he tugs once more before pulling away, moving towards the door to the rest of the apartment. “Cool,” Wade says, “cool, Peter. Pete. Petey.”
Peter turns his head back into his pillow, and grumbles, “I’m asleep.”
“Right, sure. Hey, thanks for the hospitality, baby boy.”
“Wade. Couch.”
“I’m going, I’m going.” The door creaks open, then starts to creak closed, pauses. Peter doesn’t hold his breath. He really doesn’t. “Goodnight, Peter.”
sss
Something is buzzing loudly next to Peter’s face.
He rolls over onto his back and flails a hand at the bedside table. The alarm clock smashes, a textbook thumps to the floor, Peter makes an angry gurgling noise, and somehow manages to hit the answer button on his phone. He fumbles it onto the bed and into the vicinity of his ear and slurs, “Whazzup?”
Phil Coulson’s calm, level voice comes over the line. “Mr. Parker. If you’re not too busy, New York seems to be having a bit of an alien problem.”
Peter contorts around to look out his window, which gives him a nice view of the brick wall across the alleyway and a thin sliver of black night sky between the buildings, both of which look perfectly normal. “Really?”
“Really,” Coulson says. “The team is - “ his voice cuts off, replaced by short burst of gunfire, “…slightly outgunned. We could use Spider-man’s help on this one.”
Peter blinks once, hard, and sits up in bed, the phone cradled against his ear. “Okay,” he says. He shakes his head to try and shock some awareness into his brain, but he hasn’t slept in a few days, he’s been up working on a new bio compound to accellerate regeneration of capillaries, and he’s going to have to pound back a can of Red Bull on the way, but, “Okay, yeah. Where?”
“Stark Tower,” Coulson replies evenly, over another burst of gunfire.
Peter swings his legs over the side of the bed. He’s bone-tired, he probably looks like he’s been punched in the face for how dark the bags under his eyes are, but people need help, so, “Gimme fifteen minutes.”
“We’ll be sure to save you a few of these bastards, Mr. Parker.” The line disconnects, and Peter lets the phone drop on the tangled blankets next to him with a sigh.
He gets rid of his pants and his boxers and wiggles into the bottom half of his suit on the way to his bathroom. The torso and arms swing back and forth in front of his legs while he splashes water on his face, runs a hand through his hair, swishes a gulp of mouthwash because he doesn’t want to taste that weird sleep taste for however many hours this thing is going to take.
He’s pulling up the rest of his suit, mask in hand when he staggers out into the living room. He stops in the door, and stares, because - yeah, hey, right, he’s harboring a fugitive from SHIELD. Convenient.
Wade’s a sprawl of wiry muscle across Peter’s couch, still in his suit but with his swords and knives and guns in a pile on the floor next to him, Peter’s red hoodie that he must have left lying around draped over his torso like a blanket, and his mask - his mask off, and Peter’s never seen his face before, covered in pink half-healed scars, no hair, no eyebrows, but his eyelashes are a dark smudge against his cheeks, he has a strong jaw, the most expressive mouth Peter’s ever seen, even while he’s pretending to be asleep.
Peter suddenly very much so does not want to go out. It’s not because he knows that he could fit into the sliver of space between Wade’s body and the back of the couch, it’s not because he knows Wade and late night infomercials would be a hilarious combination - it’s not.
“Hey, Wade,” he says, “wanna go kill some alien invaders?”
Wade shakes off the facsimile of sleep, his eyes cracking as a smile curls across his open mouth. “No shit, spidey, aliens?” he says, his voice bogged down by sleep and slower than usual. “Do you even have to ask?”
Peter shakes his head, smiling, and pulls his mask over his head. “Stark Tower. Race you there.”
Wade flails off the couch, and is gathering up his various and sundry weapons as Peter turns to go back to the fire escape. “Maybe this’ll get me off the pirate king’s shit list,” Wade is saying, “not that your couch isn’t an absolutely five-star sleeping experience, but I haven’t been in a bed in a month or so, I could really use a bed right now - also, hey, spidey, by the way, how did you get all that hair under the mask - “
Peter clambers out onto the fire escape, pulling the window closed behind him. He straightens up, staring at the black night sky, and takes a deep cleansing breath of the cold January air.
He steps up onto the railing, shoots a web at the corner of the far building, and jumps off.
sss
Peter’s starting to think he should have done more for his ribs than ice and a roll of that weird muscle tape stuff that they advertise on ESPN. Somewhere in the indeterminate distance, obscured by city debris and laser gunshots and a confusion of aliens that look like giant half-squished bugs, Wade is singing Nicki Minaj.
Peter kicks one of the nasty things in the face, wishing he owned a pair of reinforced steel-toe combat boots like Black Widow is wearing, and takes the one trying to sneak up behind him down with a concentrated burst of webbing at the thing’s stomach, which as far as he’s figured out works kind of kicking a guy in the balls.
It’s dark, most of the lights on the city block they’re fighting on have been knocked over or blown up, and they’re relying on a circle of flare arrows stuck into the carcasses of aliens around them, on what light is reaching them from the high-up windows of the buildings surrounding them. Iron-man drops in like a shooting star, the bright blue light from the arc reactor streaking through the darkness before he drops down heavy next to Peter, denting the sidewalk.
Tony settles into blasting away at the crowd of aliens with his suit, sending charred bits and pieces flying in every direction, but Peter’s already covered in grime, he couldn’t care less at this point. “Who the hell invited Deadpool?” he yells, voice amplified through the mask.
Peter uses the Iron-man suit to swing himself around and into the air, coming down with his legs wrapped around what could probably qualify as the head of one of the things. “I did!” he shouts back.
Two aliens fall in on his back at the same time, only to be blown away a second later by Iron-man. One goes down hard, and the other takes some coaxing, claws or pincers or something equally annoying tearing across the back of Peter’s suit, tearing into his skin in three long lashes.
“We had to redirect Cap to 62nd street bridge,” Tony shouts over the noise, “take your merc and go hold the entrance to the Eighth Avenue station!”
Peter forces himself to his feet and rolls his shoulders. “Gimme a boost?”
“Sure thing, kid.” Peter runs at him, jumps, and Tony catches him by the heel, pushing him up into the air above the roiling fight with the strength of the Iron-man suit behind him.
He hits the arc of his jump and starts falling, shoots a web at the crumbled remains of an overpass and swings low over the fighting towards my anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns, hun. Wade is in a pulsating clearing in the middle of a crowd of bug aliens, his katanas spinning at a blinding speed, and Peter’s going to lose a hand trying to grab him unless -
“Wade, incoming!”
Wade looks up and sees him just in time to sheath his katanas and hold up an arm above the fray. Peter grabs him as the space around him is starting to get eaten up by the incoming alien horde, hitting the bottom of his swing and heading up again. Wade pulls himself up Peter’s arm to wrap his legs around his waist, and Peter disconnects the first web and shoots out another as laser fire tracks them through the air.
“Fuck, spidey,” Wade says into his ear, “I ain’t never fought aliens before, this is real exciting, do you get to do this all the time? Superheroes have all the fun, lemme tell you, I only get to kill boring old people - hey, Pete, you’re really cut up back here, you okay?” Wade’s fingers skim over his back, gloves stinging the slices in his skin.
“Fuckin’ aliens gotta die.”
There’s no time to answer him, because there’s a crowd of aliens pushing at the barred doors to Eighth Avenue station, and he drops them down right at the front of it. Wade climbs off him, and he rolls his neck, bounces on the balls of his feet as Wade draws his katanas slowly, menacing.
The aliens stop pushing forward a second to stare at him and Peter like they’re confusing and not totally badass in all their red spandex glory.
“You know,” Peter says, “I don’t get why you guys always invade this city. You’d think word would have gotten around the intergalactic association of evil by now that our hospitality is fucking awful.”
Wade grins next to him. “We oughta tweet it, spidey. Only way people get their news, nowadays.”
The horde surges forward, Wade’s swords become a blur of silver, and Peter vaults into a back flip, up and over and into the middle of their ranks.
sss
“Mr. Parker, am I to understand that you’ve been hiding Deadpool from us?” Coulson asks.
There’s nothing in his voice to indicate that he’s even the slightest bit miffed, but he has already lost his tie to an alien pincer tonight, so chances are he’s not too happy.
Peter shifts uncomfortably on the cold, unforgiving metal seat of the quinjet. “Yes?” he says hesitantly. “He’s temporarily living on my couch, I mean, it’s only been one night, it’s nothing serious - “
Coulson’s stare silences him. “SHIELD will be making record of your association with him.”
Peter wants to protest that it’s not really an association, that he and Wade just - well, hang out on roofs, have a quest to try every Mexican food truck in the city, talk about literally everything, anything, Wade’s touch takes his breath away even through the fucking gloves, he’s seen Wade’s face, now, and - shit. They’re associated.
“But,” Coulson continues, “given Deadpool’s actions this evening, I’m wiling to refrain from bringing you both in, for now.” A muscle in Coulson’s cheek twitches, which Peter is pretty sure amounts to a smile. “We’re even willing to give you a ride home.”
Peter grins under the mask, and says, “No thanks. Took me way too long to get a place you guys don’t know about. Nice try, though.”
Coulson shrugs. “I’ll let the pilot know to set you down as soon as we’re clear of the wreckage, then.”
As he turns to leave, the lithe, armored body of Black Widow slips out through the door to the cockpit. She’s got a flash of fire-orange hair a gun as big as her leg strapped to her back, so Peter thinks he’s justified in the way he plasters himself against the wall of the plane, trying to seem small and unthreatening.
She walks forward and sits down across from him, settling in to give him an unwavering, piercing stare.
After a long silence in which Peter writhes around a lot in his seat, she says, “You’re friends.”
“Who’s that?”
“You and Wade.”
Peter doesn’t have an answer to that.
Natasha continues, “I’ve never seen him have a friend. Not a real one, anyway.”
“Wolverine - “
“Would tear him to shreds if he thought it would do any good.” Natasha tilts her head to the side, squinting like she can see through to his soul, or his memories, or something equally terrifying. “Wade’s relationships are abusive.”
“He’s never hurt me,” Peter says. For some reason, he feels defensive. “He wouldn’t - “
“No, I don’t think he would,” she says. “He’s different, with you.”
He has no idea how she managed to observe all this, in the heat and confusion of the battle, when she was busy enough with her own fight, her own two hundred aliens to deal with, but he has no doubt she’s capable of mind-blowing levels of multitasking.
Natasha presses her lips together, a piece of short hair from her ponytail falling into her face. “You won’t be able to fix him,” she says.
“I like him the way he is.”
She looks away from his eyes, at the vibrating floor of the quinjet. “Just - ” she stops. “Just remember we might have to kill him someday.”
sss
Wade’s bleeding all over Peter’s kitchen (lab) when he gets home.
He’s out of the suit entirely, standing at the table in what Peter’s pretty sure are the sweatpants he left lying on his bedroom floor earlier, the first aid kit open in front of him in the space he’s carefully cleared of beakers and bunsen burners. His left bicep looks like raw meat, the skin ripped up and oozing blood, his bottom lip is split and his chin is swollen, he’s got bruising across his torso that probably means cracked ribs, and he’s currently got his foot up on the table and is pulling what looks like a chunk of rebar out of his calf. His skin is already knitting itself back together, the torn skin on his arm tugging visibly.
Peter closes the door to the apartment behind him, pulls off his mask, and stumbles forward far enough to collapse on the couch, his face in the balled-up hoodie that smells like chemical explosions and Wade. “Everything hurts,” he announces, garbled.
He can tell that Wade’s walking over to him by the way the tune to Superbass is getting louder. The couch dips next to him, and then Wade’s hands are hooking under the torn bits of his suit. He pulls, and the fabric rips clean away from Peter’s back, which is very annoying because he’s going to have to sew it back and not at all hot.
“You know what I was thinkin’ while we were out slicin’ and dicin’ those alien mo-fuckers,” Wade starts, “is that one of you geniuses should get on building a teleporter. Like an honest-to-god technological teleporter, not one of those shitty magic ones, that way we coulda just sheep-herded all those aliens away through the zapper into kingdom-come, the bottom of the ocean, the middle of Antarctica, drop ‘em in a terrorist compound and sit back for some win-win mutually assured destruction - imagine the uses, Pete, you could revolutionize transportation, never have to sit in business class again, or first class with those prissy assholes, just beam me up, Scotty, wham bam we have arrived thank you for choosing Parker zap-travel - “
Peter rolls his head to the side, eyes closed. “I’m too tired to build a teleporter right now, Wade.”
“You’ll be up to it later, though,” Wade says. “Next issue, maybe.”
He’s quiet for a second, which should clue Peter in, but before he can do anything there’s what he’s pretty sure is an entire bottle of alcohol antiseptic overturned on his back. He makes a pained noise through grinding teeth, every muscle in his body pulled taut, Wade’s hands pressing into the small of his back.
“Sorry, sorry,” Wade is saying, “I’m sorry, baby boy, gotta do it like a band-aid. Come on, sit up.”
The pressure on his spine eases up, and Peter pushes himself into a sitting position, curled around his taped, injured ribs. The suit is clinging to his chest in tatters, the sleeves barely attached to the rest of it, and his back is a stinging muddle of burning heat and electricity. Wade turns him around by the shoulders and scoots closer to him, a roll of gauze in hand, one leg folded up on the couch and one foot on the floor to bracket Peter in, which is good because he feels like he’s going to keel over any second now.
He’s careful while he peels the rest of Peter’s suit away from his chest and shoulders, and fingertips on bare skin make Peter’s heart clench, his breath stutter, makes a smile want to edge its way onto his face because ever since Aunt May moved to Boston and Gwen went to college he’s been here alone, and Wade is - Wade makes him laugh.
He lets his head fall against Wade’s bare shoulder while Wade starts to wrap his torso, hands moving quickly under Peter’s arms, gauze tight enough that it squeezes away some of the pain. Wade’s skin is warm against his forehead, textured with scar tissue and damp with cooling sweat, and when Peter turns his head into the crook of his neck and breathes in all he smells is friend calm safe relax.
“I saw a Filipino restaurant somewhere near where Hulk was doing his bulldozing,” Wade’s voice vibrates against Peter’s brow, and he can feel it in his chest. He’s going to have to lay on Wade more often, it’s very soothing. “I’ve somehow never had Filipino food, and I’ve been to the Philippines, spidey, plus I’ve been alive for fifty years, how have I managed to not eat champorado, chocolate rice porridge, that sounds awesome, we gotta go eat some dinuguan - “
“What is that?” Peter asks, his lips moving against Wade’s skin. “I could go for something with bananas.”
“Sure, bananas,” Wade says. “B-a-n-a-n-a-s.” Peter may be imagining it, but his voice sounds shaky, his thumb seems to stutter between Peter’s shoulder blades as he continues wrapping. “I ain’t no hollaback girl, Petey.”
Peter laughs, and tilts his chin up to press a kiss into the underside of Wade’s jaw before he knows what he’s doing.
Wade’s hands clench into the gauze where he’s finishing tying it up. He drops the roll and flattens his palms over Peter’s back, rubbing down his sides until he hits the folded, tattered edge of the Spider-man suit. “D’you mean that?” he murmurs. “You gotta mean it, ‘cause I caught feelin’s for you.”
Peter pulls away from his neck, not quite sitting up on his own but with enough space to look Wade in the eyes. “I mean it,” he says, and he hasn’t really thought about it but he knows it’s true.
“For real?”
“I’m harboring your fugitive ass, aren’t I?”
Wade grins dopily, his lip still knitting together. “Yeah, you are,” he says happily.
Peter’s not sure who moves, but they sort of fall forward together, noses bumping and legs sliding and intertwined until they’re close enough that Wade can tilt Peter’s chin up with a hand on the side of his neck and catch his lips. Peter’s too beat, doesn’t have more energy than to open his mouth loosely under Wade’s, melt forward against him, let his mind buzz out to the feel of hot skin, the odd tingle of Wade’s lower lip still regenerating under his tongue.
Peter mumbles against Wade’s lips, “Bed.”
He feels Wade smile against him, and he manages to get his legs around Wade’s solid waist as he stands up from the couch, his elbows hooked over his shoulders and his hands on Wade’s skull, sucking on the smooth, soft skin behind his ear while Wade makes soft panting noises against the side of his face, hot helpless puffs of air that are making Peter’s muscles jelly.
Wade dumps him on the bed and follows him down, bracing himself above Peter with his arms on either side of his head. He hangs over him for a long second, eyes half-closed and lazy while he looks down at him. “You’re fucking beautiful, baby boy,” he says quietly. He leans down and kisses him, a slow drag of lips that feels like it lasts longer than Peter’s entire life up to this point, for how important it is.
Peter’s heart is beating quadruple-time in his chest, and he doesn’t know what to do with this, doesn’t know where to put his hands or his lips, so he pulls Wade down on top of him and scoots back up to the pillows, manhandling him until Wade’s face is smooshed into his shoulder.
He presses a kiss into the top of his head. “I haven’t slept in three days,” he says.
Wade breathes out and flattens down across him, one hand coming up to bury itself in Peter’s hair. “Good thinking,” he says, from somewhere around the pillow and Peter’s neck, “sleep now, more energy for awesome sex later.”
Peter huffs out a laugh, and falls asleep tracing the raised skin over the broken line of Wade’s spine.