Chapter Text
Lately, something had been off.
Not wrong, exactly. Not in the full-blown catastrophic sense Wade was so charmingly familiar with.
No TVA incidents, no body doubles, no surprise plot twists where someone turns out to be a clone or, worse, a DC fan. But just weird. Off. Quietly. Subtly. Like a favorite song playing one semitone flat. Like when you go to pour milk and it smells just a little weird, but not bad enough to throw out.
Peter hadn’t texted in a week.
Well, no—he had. Kind of. A thumbs up emoji in response to a meme Wade sent that he knew deserved at least a crying laughing face, two even. Maybe even a “LMAO.” Or a “You’re the worst.” Something to confirm they were still them. But instead, it’d been thumbs-up and radio silence. No patrols together. No flirty one-liners. No surprise visits through his third-story window with bruised knuckles and that tired lopsided grin Wade liked more than he’d ever care to admit out loud.
…He tried to behave.
For a little while.
Tried to keep his head down, keep the voices quiet, keep the blood to a minimum. Tried to go a whole 48 hours without stabbing someone in a way that would make Peter sigh and pinch the bridge of his nose like Wade was an especially disappointing group project partner. He even tried sudoku. Once. For ten minutes. Until he broke the pencil and stabbed it through the table.
But hey—effort.
Still, one week became two. Two slid into three, and the silence stretched so long it started to feel intentional. Like Peter had thought about it, had chosen it.
And that—oh, that was the part that really cracked something open.
With each unanswered text, each phantom ring that never came, Wade slipped a little further from the light. Just eased himself back into the shadows like they’d never really let him go in the first place. Like they’d been holding a seat for him all along. Booth for one, no windows, no questions.
The city didn’t look the same anymore. The sounds too sharp, too loud, colours too dull. Faces too easy to forget.
And when he looked at New York now, he didn’t see the sprawling mess of potential Peter used to talk about with hope in his dumb eyes. He saw opportunity. Weakness. A thousand arteries pulsing just beneath the surface, begging for release.
The city didn’t look like something worth saving anymore.
It looked like something that needed to bleed.
So when the next job came—when some bootleg cartel types tried running guns through Hell’s Kitchen like they didn’t know better—Wade didn’t hold back.
He carved through the alley like it owed him money. Knives singing, blood misting, rage unfiltered. There was no performance, no jokes for the crowd. Just muscle memory and that low, creeping hum of good ol’ satisfaction when the last guy dropped gurgling and Wade stood there, panting, blades wet and blinking through the sting of sweat in his eyes.
Oh, no, not from effort. Not from adrenaline.
Just from the weight. That fucking weight.
Because no matter how much red he painted the sidewalk with, it didn’t lift.
It never lifted.
And there was no one to stop him.
No quippy voice overhead. No friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man flipping down to plant a firm boot on the rooftop and call him out. No casual interruption, no stupid lecture. No sigh of “Wade—what the hell,” as Peter landed beside him with that look in his eyes, like he was half-disappointed and half-concerned and always—always—there.
That was the worst part.
There was always a voice. A presence. A tug on his leash, gentle or not, that reminded him someone was watching. Someone cared if he went too far. Spidey, wide-eyed and impossible, swinging in last-second to yank him out of a death spiral.
Sometimes Wade had thought Peter liked saving him a little too much.
Sometimes he’d liked being saved.
Because it made him feel almost real. Like maybe he was something worth interrupting. Worth fighting for. Worth witnessing.
Like they were tethered, somehow. Messy and undefined and nowhere near romantic, but still... tethered.
No matter how casual it was—or was supposed to be—Peter had always been there. Quietly. Consistently.
Until he wasn’t.
So now?
Now the city was quiet and mean, and every time Wade clicked into the news, it was Peter with them.
The Fantastic Four.
Pictures. Headlines. Spidey and the Human Torch the stars of each damn show, back-to-back like a buddy cop reboot no one asked for. Johnny fucking Storm grinning like he was God’s gift to Manhattan, teeth too white and flames too polished.
They looked good together—Wade would sometimes admit when he was feeling especially self destructive. Youthful, effortless, like two summer boys in matching headlines. One lighting up the skyline, the other flipping off physics enough to make mister Einstein roll in his grave.
It made Wade’s stomach twist.
Made something in his chest go sour, like spoiled meat wrapped in blaring neon jealousy.
No—totally not jealousy, actually, thank you very much.
Oh, okay, scratch that. Blaring neon-non-jealousy.
Perfect.
No, it’s just that he didn’t like sharing.
Not things. Not food. Definitely not people.
And Peter—Peter had been his.
Sort of.
Not officially. Not in the Facebook status kind of way.
But they’d had something. Something real. Something sticky and complicated and messy in all the ways Wade liked. Something that hadn’t needed defining because it just was.
And now? Every photo, every article, every smug shot of Storm with his hand on Peter’s shoulder?
Wade chewed his taco like it had personally insulted his childhood, lips slick with hot sauce and spite, jaw working like maybe if he bit down hard enough he could crush the feelings out of his molars.
He was perched on his fire escape like a rusting gargoyle with emotional damage, phone in one hand, taco in the other, phone screen glowing way too bright against the city’s nighttime haze. Headline after headline. Photo after photo. Spidey and the Human Torch. Laughing. Grinning. Tag-teaming some mid-level crime and looking like they were halfway to a team-up cereal brand deal.
He scrolled. He chewed. He kept looking, each swipe of his thumb a new form of self-inflicted emotional paper cut. Just a little masochistic check-in. Just a little casual torture, simply poking at the bruise to make sure it still hurt.
Each new article was a shove to the ribs.
A little see, he's fine without you.
A little, oh, he’s moved on.
A little, he’s laughing like that with someone else now, and it’s not you. It probably never will be again.
And Wade?
He laughed.
Loud and hollow. Brutal in the way only someone furious at themselves could manage. He licked both salsa and sidewalk grime off his glove with a slow, deliberate drag of his tongue, the kind of man who couldn’t stop himself even if he tried.
He dusted off his hands like it was done—like he was done—and stood, slow, movements jerky and full of that angry kind of energy that didn’t have anywhere to go but outward. Or inward. Probably inward. He stretched his shoulders, popped his neck, kicked the empty taco wrapper off the ledge with a grunt that might’ve been a laugh and might’ve been a growl. Didn’t matter.
“Fuck him,” he muttered to the skyline. “Hope he gets sunburned.”
He said it with his whole chest. Real conviction, the kind that only comes from someone so clearly not okay that they’ve run out of jokes to armor up with. He snorted. Spat over the edge. Imagined Johnny Storm getting stuck in a revolving door. Imagined Peter watching and laughing. Imagined Peter not looking back.
His chest clenched, sharp around the edges.
And god, he fucking hated it.
Hated that no matter how hard he bit down on the anger, the bitterness, the petty shit-talking rage that usually kept him warm on nights like this—it didn’t fix it. It didn’t stop that awful twist just beneath the ribs, the one that whispered like fucking Gollum saying you weren’t enough. The one that knew Peter hadn’t said goodbye. Hadn’t said anything.
Like he didn’t owe Wade a damn thing.
Like they hadn’t been—I don’t know, whatever they’d been.
Wade shook his head. Hard. Too hard. If he could just knock a screw loose, maybe the whole fragile contraption of his feelings would finally collapse and let him go. Maybe he could jar the ache out of place. Maybe he could rattle Peter Parker out of his damn skull, out of his ribcage, out of every stupid little pocket of his brain that still held on.
But it stuck.
Of course it stuck.
It always stuck.
Like gum on a boot. Like the dried blood in the seams of his gloves. Like a song you hate but can’t stop humming anyway.
And that was what hurt the most. Not the distance. Not the photos. Not even the slow, biting fear that he might’ve meant less than he thought.
It was that it lingered. Long after Peter was gone. Long after Wade should’ve let go.
But whatever.
He had another job.
More killing. More blood. More assholes with too much money and not enough sense hiring him to make their problems disappear.
And he knew it wouldn’t fix anything.
Wouldn’t make him feel better. Wouldn’t fill the weird, hollow pit in his chest where Peter’s voice used to echo.
But at least someone would feel pain.
And Wade would get paid.
Win-win.
It was a rather sunny evening.
Warm light spilled down the brick façades like honey, glinting off windows that hadn’t been washed in weeks and softening the grime of the city just enough to trick you into thinking it wasn’t as filthy as it actually was.
Pigeons fluttered lazily on power lines, the traffic below sounded less like screaming and more like distant ocean waves, and the breeze was that perfect early evening kind of crisp that made everything feel a little more cinematic.
Quite nice, if Wade was being honest.
Almost offensively nice, actually.
The kind of weather that made you want to believe in clean slates and second chances and love at first sight.
Total fucking bullshit.
His boots, for one, were still caked in drying blood. Bit tacky at the edges, still fresh in the grooves. The guy from earlier had begged. Not that that meant much. A small Fist faction had been stirring up noise in the Lower East, and he’d answered it with enough knives to make a sushi chef blush. Didn’t even take payment, no, he was glad to be of service.
He’d wiped the worst of it off on some guy’s jacket, but yeah, his dry cleaner was gonna have a field day. If he ever took them in. More than likely he’d forget, and then complain about the smell until it fermented into part of his personality.
Now, rooftop.
Wade sat one leg up, chin braced on his knee, the other dangling lazily off the edge of the building. The city blared beneath him. His phone glowed in his lap. One thumb scrolled mindlessly.
Social media, that infinite curse. Doomscrolling through feed after feed of nonsense: influencer drama, sandwich content, a new Captain America conspiracy (Tony’s burner, probably), a blurry selfie of someone claiming to have seen Deadpool “buying Girl Scout cookies and muttering about capitalism.” (Not inaccurate.)
Nothing helpful.
Nothing distracting enough.
His thumb twitched. Hovered over the app switcher. Then messages.
A familiar chat bubble hovered right at the top of the list. Peter.
His chat bubble was some stupidly wholesome picture—Spidey and a kitten, both staring at the camera with the same wide-eyed expression. Wade didn’t remember when it’d been set, didn’t remember if Peter had picked it himself or if Wade had found it on some godforsaken corner of the internet at 3AM during one of his better moods. It didn’t matter. It was cute. It was annoyingly cute.
And the name?
Ugh.
Petey Pie 💓
With the emoji. The fucking emoji.
He groaned, full-body, forehead briefly pressing against his knee like he could somehow hide from his own choices.
What kind of emotionally constipated, love-sick, horny-ass cryptid past version of himself thought that was okay? That it wouldn't one day hurt to look at? That it wouldn’t start to feel like an open wound carved into pixels?
He seethed at it. At himself. At the cutesy name and the memory of the night he’d typed it in with a smirk and a beer and the kind of misplaced affection that made him think it was funny. Like they were something. Like they could be something. Ha.
No unread texts.
No double notifications.
Just his last sent meme sitting there like a ghost. His finger moved before he could stop it, already tapping into the thread, already hovering over the keyboard, ready to type look at this cursed bread cat, it's you, or what if we kissed on top of a moving train lol jk unless, or even just a dumb gif of someone falling down the stairs.
Something.
Anything.
But his thumb didn’t move.
Instead, he stared.
And then—without thinking—he nearly threw his phone off the roof.
His arm fully cocked-back, wrist twisted, launch mode fully engaged.
One second longer and it would’ve flown. Straight into the sky. Or a wall. Or, realistically, a very unlucky pedestrian (yikes).
He stopped himself, barely, the phone wobbling in his grip, screen still lit with that empty message box.
God, he hated that.
Hated how much he still thought of Peter. Still itched to send him things. Still looked for his reaction like a dog waiting for a leash to jingle.
“Fuck,” he muttered aloud to no one, glaring at his phone as if it had insulted his mother.
He dropped it beside him with a solid thunk, the screen still glowing—still blinking like it had something to say. Like it knew what he wanted to type and was just waiting for him to give in. Smug little bastard.
Wade leaned back, palms flat against the rooftop gravel, fingers twitching restlessly. Tap-tap-tap against the roof, like maybe the rhythm would override the static screaming in his head. But it didn’t. It never did. His thoughts kept circling, snapping at themselves like dogs chained too long, chewing themselves raw with all the what the fucks and what did I do wrongs and why the hell does it matter so much.
And then—
Like the universe had a personal grudge and today was National Kick Wade Wilson in the Emotional Dick Day—
There he was.
Spidey.
Bright and effortless, swinging high between buildings with all the grace of someone who definitely didn’t know they’d been ghosting their on-again, off-again bang buddy. That familiar streak of red and blue, limbs loose and posture relaxed, like the city had never made his bones ache, like he hadn’t left Wade hanging mid-thread for three goddamn weeks.
Wade’s heart did something traitorous.
Skipped. Hitched. Fucking fluttered.
He hated it.
Because it was automatic. Stupid. Unfair. Like all the gritted teeth and sarcastic comments in the world couldn’t stop that tiny flicker of maybe from crawling up his throat every time he saw that suit, that swing, him.
Because maybe…
Maybe Peter was coming here. Maybe he remembered. Maybe this was one of those dramatic rooftop entries, all Hey, Wade, I brought you pie and a partial explanation for my emotional unavailability. Maybe there’d be a laugh. A shove. A “God, Wade, I missed you so much I’m so sorry, blah blah blah, [insert bullshit here].”
And God, it would’ve been bad enough just seeing Peter.
But of course, of course, the universe wasn’t done.
Trailing behind him—because apparently emotional gut-punches were being served in two-for-one deals now—was him.
Bright and blazing like a burning comet, arms crossed over his chest like he had a brand deal with himself, hair windblown into the kind of tousled that only happened on the covers of trashy romance novels and celebrity magazines.
Johnny. Fucking. Storm.
The blond devil himself. Grinning like he knew he had abs sculpted by God’s own airbrush, flames licking off his shoulders like it was just another day. The Human Torch. Midtown’s golden boy. And currently—currently—flying through the air alongside Peter.
Wade’s mouth soured. The blood dried on his boots felt tackier. The sun was too bright. The breeze too smug.
Of course. Of-fucking-course he was here.
Wade’s eye twitched.
Because of course it was him.
The one man in the tri-state area who could make a flame-based entrance look charming instead of catastrophic. The one guy who could light up like a fucking Molotov and still land with his hair looking editorial-ready.
Wade watched the burning blur arc across the skyline and felt something ugly bubble up in his throat.
Oh, that’s nice; bile.
Then the anger rolled in slow. Loud and stupid and inevitable.
He didn’t even mind Peter being with the Four. Not really. Reed was a bore, Ben was endearing, Sue was terrifying in that lovely kind of way that made Wade instinctively behave. But Johnny?
Johnny fucking Storm?
Of course Peter would hit it off with Johnny Storm: walking billboard for symmetrical features and collagen privilege. The man could set himself on fire and still look good doing it. Probably had a skincare routine that cost more than Wade’s rent. White teeth, golden tan, lean muscles in all the right places. He probably smelled like sunscreen and entitlement. And that little laugh? That smug, breezy, unbothered ugh of a laugh?
It was the exact opposite of Wade.
Scarred, twitchy, twice-dipped in radioactive trauma with a side of unresolved issues. Body held together with duct tape and bad decisions. Every time he took his mask off, strangers flinched. And when he laughed? People didn’t swoon. They checked for weapons.
But Johnny? Johnny could grin at a camera and make the world forget he’d ever burned anything.
Wade knew his reputation. He knew the type.
He remembered when he used to think people like Johnny were what he could’ve been—if life had played fair. If he hadn’t been split apart and put back together with blood and spite and too many second chances.
Johnny was charming. Confident. Hot. Literally and metaphorically. A living embodiment of everything Wade had lost and learned not to miss.
Except now he was missing it.
Because Peter was swinging beside him. Laughing. Relaxed. That rare kind of ease that only showed up when Peter forgot how heavy the world was. When he let go long enough to be happy.
And it wasn’t Wade who put that look on his face.
That was the part that really fucked him up.
And Johnny—oh, Johnny was basking in it. Eating it up like compliments were air.
Wade ground his teeth so hard his jaw clicked, irritation crackling along his spine like static. He hopped onto the nearest rooftop with all the grace of a shadow with a grudge, movement fluid and practiced, quiet in a way that only came from years of creeping around in places he wasn’t supposed to be. Silent. Seething. Half a dozen different knives strapped to him and none of them doing a damn thing about the pressure building behind his eyes.
He was stalking.
Yes. Stalking.
From a distance, if that made a difference.
He wasn’t scrolling anymore. That had been tossed to the wind the second he'd spotted that flicker of red and gold arcing through the sky. His phone sat somewhere forgotten in his pocket, screen probably still lit with headlines he could recite backwards by now.
And before you start—no.
He wasn’t jealous.
He just… didn’t like them together.
Didn’t like watching Peter tilt his head like that, didn’t like the way Johnny’s flame curled so damn prettily around them like a second spotlight. Didn’t like the way they looked easy together, like they’d done this a hundred times. Like they belonged in the same glossy Marvel ad for healthy hero relationships.
God, what a crock of shit.
Wade’s mouth turned sour behind the mask.
He felt it, that low, ugly burn crawling up from his stomach to his throat as he glared, like bad tequila and worse memories. He was mentally writing a full-blown soap opera monologue—complete with commercial breaks, dramatic lighting, maybe even a storm (for irony) in the background if the budget allowed. Something about betrayal. Something about being left out of the credits. Something that rhymed, because he was feeling poetic in that stabby kind of way.
And then—
Peter’s head snapped up.
His body tensed mid-swing, like a wire pulled taut. Masked face turning in that sharp, instinctive way that only ever meant one thing.
Ah. Right.
Spidey-sense.
Wade froze.
Oh, shit. Shit.
Peter landed gracefully a few rooftops away, immediately scanning the skyline like a meerkat on patrol. Johnny touched down beside him, still crackling faintly. They exchanged a few words, and then—because the universe hated him personally—they both turned. Both turned to look right at him.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Wade muttered, resisting the urge to duck and roll off the opposite side like a dramatically injured raccoon.
He considered it. The running.
Just a beat. Just enough to escape the awkward and maybe steal a couple churros on the way down. That would certainly put a better taste in his mouth.
But he didn’t.
He stayed put. Proud. Petulant. Grumpy.
Tugged his mask off with a single, practiced motion, the fabric catching slightly, his eyes narrowed, jaw tight. A monument of red and black indignation, and stayed perfectly still in full view of what may or may not be his ex.
(He hadn’t really figured out the title part. On-again, off-again fuck buddy? Friend? Situational romantic asset? Convenient booty-call? Whatever. It didn’t matter. Especially now.)
What mattered was that Peter was here.
And of course—because the humiliation buffet was still open—they started heading toward him.
Wade clenched his fists harder, jaw flexing so tight it might snap. Not enough to draw blood, not yet. But enough that the leather groaned under pressure, creaking with every twitch like it wanted to split at the seams.
He looked busy. At least, he tried to. Squinting into the distance like he was scanning for a target, adjusting his stance like he was on his very own patrol, like the rooftop was just a convenient stop along the way to somewhere very important.
Like this wasn’t some impulsive stalkery-stakeout.
Like he wasn’t smack in the middle of a mid-tier maybe-jealous spiral with a side of emotional constipation.
Like he didn’t care that Peter was suddenly close enough to smell.
Because he did. He absolutely did. That familiar scent—faint sweat and city grime and something warm underneath, the ghost of coffee and detergent clinging to the fabric of his suit—hit Wade like a sucker punch. Nostalgia and longing in equal measure, sharp and inconvenient. And of course, next to that, the scorched chemical tang of freshly baked Storm lingered like a third wheel’s cologne.
Johnny landed with a dramatic whoosh, flash-frying the antenna beside Wade into a sad little plume of blackened cinders. Wade didn’t flinch. Just slowly tilted his head toward the smoldering metal and then back at Johnny, unimpressed.
Peter touched down a second later, more cautious, like he could already feel the tension radiating off the rooftop in hostile waves. Eyebrows raised, mask tugged halfway up, eyes scanning Wade like he was prepping to mediate the world’s pettiest war—and knew exactly who was going to start it.
Wade did not disappoint.
“Well, if it isn’t Spidey and his new sparkler buddy,” he drawled, voice all faux-cheer and sugar-coated venom.
“Wade,” Peter said carefully, with the kind of care that meant don’t do this, the kind of care that never, ever worked when Wade was like this. His boots crunched lightly against the rooftop gravel. “Hey.”
Hey.
That was it.
That was all he had to say after three weeks.
Hey.
Got it.
“Hiya, Webs,” Wade sang, all fake cheer and finger wiggles, the sound pitched high and bright like a party horn pulled at a funeral. He added a little flourish, like maybe this was all a joke, like maybe he wasn’t half an inch away from self-immolating out of sheer spite. Then he paused—dead serious. Inhaled deep, cartoonishly. Nose wrinkling. Brow furrowing. “You smell different.”
Peter blinked. “What?”
“You smell like… singed pride and gasoline,” he continued. “New cologne? Or just hanging out with a goddamn matchstick now?”
Peter rolled his eyes behind the mask—Wade could tell. He always could. The little shoulder twitch, the annoyed tilt of his head, and Wade felt a little spark of vindication bloom in his chest like a flower made of petty.
Good. Let him be annoyed.
“Wow. You’re… a lot,” Johnny said, and he didn’t flinch, didn’t grimace, didn’t even blink like a normal person might after being verbally shanked on arrival. No, he… he smiled. All easy charm and flawless teeth, like the sun had just leaned in to join the conversation. Then he turned, not to Wade—but to Peter. “This is him, huh?”
This is him.
Wade bristled. Visibly. Like someone had yanked his spine straight by the leash.
What the fuck was that supposed to mean? No, seriously.
This is him—like Wade was a punchline. Like he was some whispered about chaos entity Peter had warned him about on patrol. He felt it then, the slow crawl of something ugly unfurling in his stomach. Cold. Familiar. Defensive.
“Yeah,” Peter exhaled quickly through his nose, before gesturing between the two of them, “Johnny, meet Wade. Wade, Johnny.”
Wade didn’t move. Just tilted his head, that sharp smile never quite reaching his eyes. “I would shake your hand,” he said, the words sugary-slick and sharpened, “but I’m allergic to fire hazards.”
The blond arched a brow, still so goddamn relaxed it made Wade want to throw him off the roof just to see if he’d keep smiling on the way down. But noooo, he could fly.
“Didn’t realize you were so charming.”
Wade snapped back like a reflex, like he’d had it locked and loaded since the moment he saw the flames. “Didn’t realize you were still relevant after 2014,” he said, biting through each word, “but look at us, both surprised.”
Peter sighed, the kind of sigh that came from the soles of his feet. The kind Wade had heard a dozen times in a dozen contexts—post-battle, post-patrol, post-Wade-being-Wade. Exhausted. Familiar.
“Wade, just—be nice.”
“Oh, no, hard pass,” He muttered, tone dipped in venom and lacquered over with fake cheer. He didn’t look at Peter. Didn’t even twitch in his direction. His eyes were still locked on Johnny like the guy had set fire to a puppy shelter, and hey, maybe he did. He didn’t know the guy.
“You know,” he said, voice rising just enough to carry, “I was just wondering how long it takes for hair gel fumes to knock someone out. Or do you run entirely on pure ego now?”
Johnny shrugged like Wade’s barbs were barely a breeze.
“Ego works mostly,” he said with a smirk, that easy confidence rolling off him like heat shimmer. “The occasional solar flare helps,” A beat, and then—“Did I cut you off in traffic in another life or something?”
“You are traffic,” Wade snapped, biting the words like they tasted bad. “You fly around like a fireworks display and call it heroism. The TSA would shoot you on sight.”
Said traffic offender laughed. Light, unaffected. Not smug—worse. Unbothered.
“Woah,” Johnny said, hands sliding casually into his pockets. “Is he always like this?”
Peter stepped in before the Merc could bite again. “Wade,” he said, firm now, a low thread of concern running under the word. “Are you—what’s going on?” His brows pinched behind the mask. “I could feel you staring daggers from ten blocks away.”
“Like a scorned lover,” The blond added helpfully, glancing at Peter with a smirk on his lips like he’d just delivered a line at open mic night and was waiting for applause.
And Peter let out a laugh. Soft. Quick. The kind of involuntary huff that escaped before he could catch it—just a little heh of amusement.
Oh. Oh, no.
Wade didn’t like that at all.
Something sharp and acidic twisted under his skin, an insidious slow-burning, gut-deep fuck you that simmered through his veins like poison. He didn’t even know if he was more pissed at Johnny for saying it or Peter for laughing like it wasn’t the most insulting, humiliating, painfully on-the-nose shit Wade had ever heard volleyed across a rooftop.
Scorned lover. Ha. Real original, real fucking funny.
“I’m fine—also,” Wade snapped, words coming out tight, clenched, his tone vibrating just below fuming, “what kind of superhero codename is Human Torch anyway? You’re just describing your function. Might as well call yourself Mr. Flambé and be done with it.”
Johnny blinked once.
Then smiled, like he’d been waiting for that exact pitch. “Says the guy who named himself after a pool of death water,” he said, cocking his head in thought. “How does that even work?”
“It’s not about the pool,” Wade bit out, bristling like someone had shoved a broomstick up his spine. “It’s metaphorical. Or are you too blond to understand that?”
Johnny shrugged. “It just sounds dumb.”
Wade stiffened, the urge to commit arson rising steadily.
“Guys…” Peter tried, stepping between them slightly, hands half-raised like he was defusing a bomb with a blindfold on. Regret radiated off him in waves. “Hey, c’mon.”
“No, no,” Johnny said breezily, “I think we’re really bonding.”
“If I wanted to bond with a glorified Bic lighter,” Wade muttered, “I’d tape googly eyes on a Zippo and call it a day.” He kicked a loose patch of gravel off the roof, tiny stones skittering over the edge like his last ounce of patience. “At least that way, I wouldn’t have to hear it talk. Or flirt. Or hover around Webs like you’re attached to the fucking hip.”
“Look,” Johnny said, tone maddening as if he wasn’t taking this personally at all, as if he had better things to do but was only humoring Wade out of boredom or charity or some flame-powered sense of civic duty, “I’m not here to steal your boyfriend. We were just patrolling together.”
“Wait, he’s not really my—well, I don’t really—” Peter started, already shifting awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck like the worst time to clarify anything was always right now. The words came out tangled, caught halfway between explanation and panic, like maybe they’d fix something or maybe they’d just make it worse.
And Jesus Christ, wow.
Wade blinked, brows lifting in amazement.
“Really, Webs? That’s when you chime in?” he snapped, voice tight, sliding into that register that lived somewhere between mockery and actual injury.
“Oof-ah,” Johnny winced, grinning all the while, glancing between the two of them like he was watching the opening act of a particularly unhinged soap opera. He rocked back on his heels, loose and smug. “Did I tread on something there? Because I’m starting to get some intense situationship vibes.”
“Okay,” Peter cut in, voice suddenly sharp. Not yelling, but edged enough to slice the air clean. His eyes flicked to Johnny with a look Wade definitely recognized—shut up, not now, I swear to God. “That’s enough commentary.”
Johnny lifted his hands in mock surrender, palms flickering faintly with residual flame like he was warming them on the heat of the argument. “Hey, I’m just saying,” he said, that grin never once faltering. “If this is a lovers’ spat, I’ll back off. I’m not looking to catch a guilt-trip and a grenade in the same night.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Wade said, already turning away. “The grenade would be for me.”
Johnny let out a low whistle, all mock admiration and swagger, then clapped his hands together once—sharp and smug, heat licking at the air like it had been waiting for the cue.
“Alright, I’m gonna head out,” he said, casual as a Sunday brunch, as if the rooftop wasn’t thick with tension and murderous sarcasm.
He glanced to Peter, all easy charm and practiced familiarity. “I’ll see ya later. Text me when you’re free.”
And then—whoosh.
Fire bloomed across his skin like it had been held back for dramatic effect, rippling in golden waves that turned the rooftop glow-drenched and unbearable. He lifted into the air with practiced grace, and hovered there just long enough—of course—to twist at the waist and flash one last shit-eating grin over his shoulder.
“Bye, Wade!”
Wade blinked.
Just stared, silent, processing the sheer audacity of it. The goddamn boldness. As if he were the polite one.
He nearly saw red. Could feel the emotion bubbling just under his skin, loud and familiar and ready to spill. Seethed so hard it probably made a vein tick in his neck. He was genuinely, actually grateful—grateful—to whatever cursed god or cosmic horror had finally pried the Human Tinderbox off this roof.
But now he was stuck with the lingering problem.
The Spidey problem.
“Nice guy,” He muttered, arms crossing tight over his chest with all the wounded dignity he could barely hide. “Real photogenic. Good teeth.”
Peter sighed, long and low like he’d been holding it in for three rooftops. He tugged his mask off completely, fingers raking back sweat-damp curls as he fixed Wade with that look—equal parts tired and fond, like this wasn’t his first rooftop rodeo with a walking emotional landmine.
“What was all that?”
“All what, Petey-pie?” Wade asked, voice pitching up with faux innocence as he immediately looked away, turning to squint out over the skyline. “Oh, that?” He waved a hand toward the air where Johnny had recently vacated, leaving only the faint smell of burnt ozone and unbothered good intentions. “That was just friendly banter. You know. Teambuilding.”
Peter blinked at him, unimpressed. “You—You called him a matchstick.”
“Friendly. Banter.” Wade punctuated each word like they were gospel. “But hey, no need to hang around on my account,” he added, already shifting toward the ledge, voice casual and brittle at the edges. “You can go ahead and follow pretty boy Johnny.”
Peter pinched the bridge of his nose. Breathed deep. And—goddammit—his lips quirked. Just the faintest twitch, but it was there. The Wade Effect. Unstoppable, even when Wade was actively torching his own dignity.
“Please don’t tell me you’re jealous,” he said, stepping closer. “You are, aren’t you?”
Wade gasped like he’d been shot. “Jealous? Me? Oh, no, Webs. I’m above that.” He gestured to himself, full flourish. “Do I look like a man with insecurity? I’ve got charm, wit, 493 confirmed kills, and a rapidly decaying sense of morality. I’m basically the full package.”
Peter stared at him flatly. “Right. So that’s a yes.”
“Whatever you want to believe, Spidey.”
Wade said it like punctuation, like he was done, like the conversation had a finish line he’d already crossed and now he was just waiting for Peter to catch up. But his voice lacked its usual spark, the edges dulled into something quieter. Not defeated. Just… tired. Like the fight wasn’t worth polishing his claws for.
“You’re jealous,” Peter said, and there it was—teasing, now. That tilt of his voice Wade knew too well. He stepped closer, casual but deliberate, closing the distance between them with that stupid, practiced ease of his. “You’re jealous of Johnny Storm.”
“No,” Wade snapped, fast and defensive, the word cutting sharper than he meant. “I am insulted by how low your standards have fallen. There’s a difference.”
Peter arched an eyebrow, unimpressed. “He’s nice.”
“Oh! Oh, sure! Nice!” Wade barked a laugh and spun on his heel, hands flying up like he was delivering a monologue to an invisible jury. He turned a little too fast, nearly colliding into Peter—who was close, much closer than he’d realized—but he played it off with a jerk of his chin, refusing to acknowledge the way it made something fizz and short-circuit under his skin.
“That’s how it always starts, right? He’s nice, and then suddenly he’s acting as your goddamn space heater on the coldest day of winter, and I’m left third-wheeling with a half-burnt taco and no ride home. It’s disgusting.”
“You’re being melodramatic—far more than usual,” Peter deadpanned, lips twitching like he was fighting a smile he knew he shouldn’t be smiling.
“Why ever could that be?” Wade muttered, acidic and petulant in equal measure, plopping down onto the rooftop ledge with a graceless huff. His limbs folded in on themselves, arms crossed tight and chin tilted just so— sulk mode officially engaged. “Maybe it’s because my usual emotional baseline has been left on read for a month while you were busy frolicking with the Fantastic Fuckin’ Four.”
Peter exhaled. Not the controlled, patient breath he usually used on Wade—no, a full-body sigh that tugged his shoulders down and left regret hanging thick in the air. He didn’t try to talk over it. Just moved beside him and sat, slow and deliberate, close but not too close. Like he was offering something, not assuming it.
“Look,” Peter said, voice low, fingers dragging through his hair as if the motion alone might untangle the mess he’d made. “I, uh, I know I haven’t been around much. I’m sorry.”
He paused, rubbed at his eye, then let his arm fall with a little slap against his thigh. “There’s something going on with the Four, and they needed my help. Something about a sewer man? Sewer lizard? A mole, maybe? Ah, I don’t know—Reed was using words that didn’t sound real. I haven’t had much sleep lately.”
Wade watched him. Some of the tension eased out of his jaw, but only just.
“Petey, I get it,” he said, quieter now, like the volume switch was broken in the other direction. “It’s fine.”
Peter blinked at him. “It is?”
“I mean,” Wade shrugged, a jerky little movement with no real conviction behind it, eyes locked on some distant rooftop, “you’ve got better things to do.”
“Wade.”
“No, really.” He let out a dry little laugh. “It’s cool. I’m not the clingy type, you know that. We’re casual. This is casual. Casual means you can go off and swing around with the male model version of a lit cigarette and I’ll just—hang out here. Talking to pigeons. Or stabbing people. Or stabbing pigeons.” He paused, lips twitching. “Joking. Kind of.”
Peter inched closer, slow and careful like Wade might bolt if he made a sudden move. His voice dropped, softer now. “You know I didn’t mean to disappear on you, right?”
“Totally,” Wade replied instantly, too bright, too fast, the kind of sarcasm that stuck to your teeth. “This couldn’t possibly have been cleared up with a small invention called… what was it—oh, yeah. A phone.”
Peter winced like the word physically hit him. “I can explain that! Look, new phone!” He fished it out from somewhere in the folds of his suit, holding it up like it might save him. “Sewer man. Lizard-mole thing. He, um, crushed the old one. Real ugly. Real bitey.”
“Sure,” Wade said flatly, no heat in it—just sandpaper and a slow burn, his eyes narrowed and voice so dry it could’ve started brushfires in Nevada.
“I mean, I didn’t—not mean to text you, I just didn’t, but not on purpose—wait, that sounds worse—” Peter stopped, huffed, visibly flailing now. “Please don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad,” Wade said automatically, so fast and robotic it nearly cut him mid-breath. He blinked, like the words surprised himself, and then—quiet. Still. That awful, painful kind of still. He exhaled. A long, slow sigh that seemed to deflate him all the way down to his boots. His shoulders dropped. His whole posture sagged, like the weight of whatever he wasn’t saying finally gave up pretending it wasn’t there.
“It’s just…” His voice was lower now. Honest, and fuck, he hated how raw it felt in his throat. “It’s hard to tell where I fit, sometimes. That’s all.”
“Wade—”
“It’s not a big deal, really,” He said, cutting across the silence with something that sounded like levity but tasted like ash. And then he smiled.
Except it wasn’t a real smile.
It was the mask version—cocky, crooked, brittle around the edges like a window left too long in the cold. The kind of smile that dared you to believe it, just so it could laugh when you realized you shouldn’t have.
“Just slap a name tag on me next time you’re out,” he said, flipping his hand lazily toward the skyline. “‘Deadpool, occasional sidekick, definitely not the boyfriend.’ That way Johnny won’t get confused. Or maybe he’ll get more confused. Maybe that’s the point.”
Peter’s mouth opened, some instinctive rebuttal already loaded in the chamber. A reassurance. A no-it’s-not-like-that. Some weak little shield against the blade Wade had already driven in.
Then it closed again. Slow. Silent.
“I—” Peter tried, voice flickering. “I know we don’t talk about it,” he said at last, quieter now, more grounded, like he was walking a verbal tightrope and one wrong word would send him falling. “But I’m—I’m not just going to up and replace you.”
Wade didn’t look at him. Not really, just sort of shifted his gaze off to the side, where the skyline blinked back with blank, uncaring windows. Like maybe if he stared hard enough, it’d offer him an out. A distraction. A good ol’ fashioned villain-of-the-week to come crash the scene and punch a hole through the awkward.
“Yeah,” he said after a long beat. “But you’ve got no problem dropping me when it’s convenient for ya’, huh?”
Peter’s brow knit. Lips parted. Then pressed together again like he wanted to swallow the moment whole. “Wade, I—” he started, then faltered. His teeth caught on his lower lip, chewing at the skin like it could give him something to say. “I’m sorry,” he said instead, finally.
Wade stared at him for a second that stretched a little too long. Then he looked away again. Jaw clenched. Breath shallow. “It’s—” he started, but it caught. He cleared his throat, the sound rough. Scraped. “It’s fine.”
It wasn’t. But whatever.
The words just sat there, awkward and heavy and humming like static.
A silence followed.
The wind slipped past them like they weren’t even there—no comfort in it, no drama. Just breeze against skin. The city buzzed below, cars and lights and people living lives that didn’t hinge on missed texts and feelings they didn’t know how to name.
Peter fidgeted beside him, fingers worrying at the edge of his glove. Guilt clung to him like damp fabric—noticeable even through the spandex. Wade could feel it radiating off him in awkward little waves. The way he sat. The way he breathed. Like he wanted to fix something but didn’t know what tools to use, didn’t know which part he’d broken.
Wade watched him from the corner of his eye. Tried not to care. Failed spectacularly.
“I—I did miss you, you know,” Peter said eventually, voice low and not looking at him, like if he said it too loud it might fall apart. “How do you think Johnny knew about you?”
Wade snorted. “Maybe he’s read the news? I am fairly Googleable. Infamous, even.”
Peter rolled his eyes, barely suppressing a groan. “Well, yeah, but I also talked about you, dumbass.”
The words hit like a sucker punch.
Wade blinked. His jaw shifted, mouth half-open to toss out some canned sarcasm, but it didn’t come. The words backed up in his throat like traffic in a tunnel, jammed behind the weight of something that felt too big and too small all at once.
For reasons he couldn’t name—maybe because silence had its own kind of gravity—his eyes dragged to Peter.
Peter looked… tired. And not the kind that came from too many late nights or a bruised rib you couldn’t tell anyone about. This was lower, heavier. The kind that sank into your bones and stayed there. The kind you got from carrying something far too long, holding your world together with both hands while acting like it had never been in danger of falling apart in the first place.
And Wade decided—just this once—to give him a break.
“You talked about me?” He said finally. Low. Measured. Like he was testing the weight of the words on his tongue before he let them slip loose. Like maybe they mattered.
(They did. But you needn’t say it out loud.)
He tried to keep it cool. Tried to make it sound like it didn’t mean anything.
Peter gave a little shrug, like he knew that game too. “Yeah,” His voice softened. “I mean, most of the interesting stuff in my life involves you.”
Wade blinked.
That… huh.
That was not the emotionally distant, superheroically vague answer he’d braced for. He let out a small huff. Part laugh.
“Oh, really?” he drawled, letting the grin tug at his lips like an old friend.
Peter let out a noncommittal hum, eyes darting sideways. His hand went up—a nervous tell—scratching at the back of his neck like bashfulness was a condition he hadn’t been vaccinated against, or at least one that flared up whenever the Merc was near. “You—You come up.”
That was it. That was all Wade needed to hear.
He caught it instantly, the little thread dangling just out of reach, and he wasn’t about to not yank on it.
And so he tilted his head, smirk inching just a little bit more, voice climbing that faux-curious octave that meant danger was incoming. “In what context?” he asked. “Like, ‘Hey, my sometimes-hookup who’s definitely not my boyfriend but still lives rent-free in my frontal lobe decapitated a guy in front of a Starbucks once?’”
Peter barked a laugh—short, surprised, real—and then his cheeks betrayed him. Slow bloom of red creeping up his neck like shame had been waiting for its cue. “No, not exactly.”
Wade grinned, pleased. Didn’t even bother hiding it. That blush always got him.
The tension didn’t vanish—Wade didn’t believe in miracles—but it cracked. A hairline fracture running through the thick wall of unspoken, letting the moment breathe again, letting it stretch out into something a little more familiar.
A little more them.
“Y’know,” Peter said after a beat, nudging Wade’s shin with his knee, a small, deliberate touch like he was testing the water, “he’s not so bad. Johnny. I think you two would get along.”
Wade rolled his eyes so hard it was practically audible. “You did just see me insulting him, right?” he shot back, “To his face. Multiple times.”
Peter just shrugged, “You do that with everyone.”
“That’s because everyone deserves it,” Wade deadpanned. “Except, maybe, you. And the taco guy on 3rd. But he’s earned that immunity. Gives me extra guac and doesn’t ask questions.”
Peter huffed a laugh, ducking his head like it might hide the smile stretching across his mouth—like Wade couldn’t see the way it tugged at the corners, couldn't track every twitch of that stupidly fond little expression blooming slow and reluctant across his face. There was a furrow between his brows like he was trying not to smile, but the effort was doomed from the start.
And Wade just… watched.
Didn’t say a word. Didn’t crack a joke. Just sat there, arms slack over his knees, letting the moment happen. Letting himself feel it—feel this tiny, warmth spark and flicker in his otherwise garbage-fire life.
“Tell you what,” Peter said eventually, nudging him again with the edge of a boot like he couldn’t stand the silence hanging there too long. “Why don’t you join us? Reed thinks there’s something going down soon.”
“Oooh, no, no—I know a recipe for disaster when I hear one,” Wade said, voice already laced with that theatrical horror he saved for genuinely terrible ideas. He leaned back, shaking his head with the kind of conviction that suggested he’d rather French kiss an active blender than spend an afternoon playing Hero Clubhouse with Johnny “Matchstick” Storm.
“No, c’mon,” Peter nudged him again, grinning now, full of hope and that charmingly persistent optimism Wade both loved and wanted to strangle. “It’ll be fun.”
“It’ll be positively terrible, Petey.”
“It’ll be fine. I’ll convince Reed you’re housebroken.”
Wade snorted so hard it caught in his throat and turned into a cough. “Housebroken? Webs, I once got banned from a dog park for cursing at a dachshund. A dachshund. It barked first, for the record.”
Peter blinked at him, visibly weighing how much of that was real. “…Did it… understand English?”
“No. But it knew what it did.” Wade jabbed a gloved finger at the air like the offending wiener dog was still out there, lurking in the shadows with its judgmental eyes and short legs. “You think Reed “Rules” Richards is gonna greenlight me for team-ups? That man runs background checks on specks of dirt. You sneeze weird in front of him and he builds a goddamn containment unit.”
Peter shrugged, the movement casual. “Yeah, I think so.”
Wade squinted at him, incredulous. “You didn’t even try to argue that.”
Peter just smiled, infuriatingly smug now.
And Wade chuckled. Low and unwilling. Like he was laughing in spite of himself.
Because he was.
“Chicken,” Peter sing-songed beside him, all fake innocence and puppy-eyed provocation.
Wade’s head snapped toward him, scandal written in every sharp line of his posture. “Excuse me? Are you trying to reverse psychology me right now?”
Peter raised both brows, deadpan. “Is it working?”
Goddamn it, it was working.
Wade groaned, full-body and theatrical, but didn’t move away when Peter leaned a little closer. Just let it happen.
Then, casually, like it was no big deal—like it hadn’t been the thing eating Wade alive for an entire month—Peter fished Wade’s phone right out of his pocket. Like he’d done it a thousand times. Like of course he remembered the passcode. And Wade watched in horror as he unlocked it, because holy shit he actually remembered it.
“Here,” he said, thumbing something in quick. “Now I don’t have an excuse.”
Wade squinted, suspicious. “An excuse for what, exactly?”
Peter held up his phone now, screen lit with the fresh contact. Deadpool at the top, next to a ridiculous emoji Peter probably thought looked like him. “I’ll call you, okay?”
“Sure,” Wade said, in that voice that was not at all convinced.
“I will.”
“Sure.”
“I will,” Peter insisted, and then—with the kind of boldness Wade didn’t expect—he reached over and poked him in the cheek. Just a soft little boop, to emphasise his words.
Wade blinked. Smiled. Just a little.
“Fine,” he muttered, trying not to sound pleased. Trying harder not to look pleased.
“There we go,” Peter nodded at the smile that cracked through anyway, too smug for someone who still owed Wade like four apologies and a heartfelt monologue. His eyes lingered for a second longer—soft, knowing—before he pushed to his feet, stretching out his limbs like someone who’d just dropped ten pounds of guilt and awkwardness off his back.
“I’ll see you around, Wade.”
And just like that—he was gone.
One leap. One easy arc through the air. That familiar silhouette sailing across the skyline like he belonged to the goddamn sunset. A walking postcard for hope and heroism and perfectly sculpted thighs.
Wade sat there, arms slack around his knees, fingers twitching with leftover impulse. He watched until the shape of Peter vanished into the distance, swallowed up by the city that always seemed to take more than it gave.
The lingering discomfort—the gnawing mess of NOT jealousy, the ache in his chest, the bitterness coiled low in his gut—had started to fade. Not entirely. Not all at once. But enough to let something warmer creep in through the cracks. Something gooey. Annoying. Stupid.
He hated it.
He hated how… soft he was when it came to Peter. How his bones knew that voice, how his hands itched to reach for him even when he was angry. How, even after all the silence and distance and mess, one look from those dumb brown eyes could reel him back in like a fish with brain damage.
Wade stared at the spot Peter had disappeared into, jaw tight.
“…Fucking nerd,” he muttered under his breath, like it might banish the warm fuzz in his chest by sheer force of will. It didn’t.
He stayed on the rooftop a little longer, gaze locked on a skyline that no longer demanded anything from him. The city buzzed below—sirens, honks, shouts, the usual evening chorus—and Wade just… sat in it.
Well, there went his plans.
He’d had a job lined up. Low-tier merc work. Fast, messy, morally gray enough to require zero questions and one very sharp katana, perhaps two. Some scumbag corporate exec wanted another scumbag corporate exec to stop breathing. Wade had even polished a few blades for it. Looked forward to the catharsis. Thought the rage would burn clean enough tonight to justify it.
But now?
Now he just felt... meh.
The righteous fury that had been simmering all day—the bile, the anxious gnawing, the unspoken do I even matter anymore—had deflated like a week-old birthday balloon. It was hard to want blood when your insides were still soft from a maybe-apology and a dumb little poke to the cheek.
He groaned, flopping backward onto the concrete with a dramatic ugh that echoed into the open air.
“What the hell is wrong with me,” he muttered, staring up at the sky.
Goddamnit.
The job could wait.
Maybe he would go see the churro guy after all.
Wade sighed again, pulling his mask back down over his face. “Goddamn cinnamon therapy.”
Notes:
i have a disease and its this god damn fucking SHIP /hj
@-@ i think i need an intervention at this point ehe
anyway, knowing that, the next part will probably come real soon TwT
i think there's gonna be... 5 parts? maybe less, hopefully not more!also no hate to dc fans, i am one myself (ignore wade gasping in the background) but i just couldn't resist the dig TwT
anyways, let me know if you enjoyed!!
Chapter 2: #2
Chapter Text
A day went by. No call.
Two.
Still no call.
Wade didn’t pace. God, no. He wasn’t that pathetic.
He just happened to walk back and forth across his apartment twelve times an hour. For cardio, okay? Mobility is health. Range of motion is the key to stabbing flexibility.
Shut up.
He didn’t obsessively check his phone either. No, he simply happened to hold it a lot. In his hand. All day. Just in case the ringtone malfunctioned and he had to rely on psychic intuition.
By day three, though—even he had to admit it.
Peter wasn’t calling.
God fucking damn it.
Wade Wilson—mercenary, human disaster, absolute certified danger to society—was being ghosted. Again. Like a damn rookie. Like a teenager who put his heart in a shoebox and left it on someone’s porch like a stray kitten.
And for what? A cheek poke? A maybe smile? A promise—wait, was it even a promise??
He groaned into the couch cushions, smothered under a crime scene of takeout wrappers and the crushing weight of his own emotional ineptitude. Somewhere in the background, the TV droned on—something about a girl who falls for her brother’s best friend and discovers the true meaning of love, loss, and seasonal depression through a series of aggressively soft-focus montages. Wade was seven movies deep into a rom-com spiral, the kind where you start tearing up at fictional first kisses and then immediately want to punch yourself in the face for it.
This was fine.
Totally fine.
Just a grown man marinating in crumbs and regret while fictional couples got their happy endings and he prepared, with quiet dignity, to die alone in his apartment.
And the real kicker? He’d even resisted looking Peter up.
Which was… new. Nobel Prize-worthy, even.
For once, Wade hadn’t broken into his own vast, morally dubious arsenal of surveillance feeds, social media sleuthing, and “totally legal” street camera hijacking to check up on him. He didn’t want to know. Nope. Couldn’t stand the thought of catching some blurry shot of Peter swinging through the city, Johnny Storm right beside him, all golden-boy charm and easy laughter and infuriating not-Wade-ness.
Ugh.
Even the mental image made his teeth grind.
He was mid–emotional spiral, halfway through yelling at a fictional couple for being absolute cowards (because just kiss already!) when his phone buzzed against the couch cushion. The sound cut through his tirade like a gunshot.
Wade blinked. Rolled over. Checked the screen.
Petey Pie 💓
The name sat there, smug and bright, like it knew exactly what it was doing to him. He stared at it like it might flicker out, vanish into the digital ether if he didn’t blink. Like it was a mirage conjured by desperation and sugary carbs. But no—it kept buzzing. Kept glowing.
And that’s when the panic hit.
Fuck. Oh, shit—fuck. This was it.
He had to answer.
Wade scrambled upright, a flurry of limbs and bad decisions, stale popcorn sliding from his lap in a scatter of tiny, salty regrets that pattered onto the floor. His blanket twisted itself around his lap and legs like a polyester boa constrictor, but he fought through it, thumb jabbing at the answer button before his brain could talk him into ignoring it and spiraling into three hours of overthinking.
The Cheetos bag—the same one he’d been using as emotional life support—tipped over the couch arm, hit the floor in slow motion, and exploded in a small orange apocalypse. Wade winced. Whatever. He’d grieve later.
“You’ve reached Wade’s House of Broken Expectations and Discount Murder,” he announced in a tone that teetered between game show host and someone one bad day away from starting a cult. “How can I ruin your evening?”
Eh, not his best, but he’d roll with it.
“Hey,” Peter said, soft and scratchy, the kind of low that came from pressing the phone too close to his face. Wade could hear it—those background sounds that mapped out Peter’s every move without him needing to say a word. The whoosh of wind rushing past, the faint creak of a webline under tension, the city’s hum stretching out around him like an endless backdrop.
He was mid-swing. Of course he was. The guy couldn’t sit still to save his life.
Wade opened his mouth—then closed it again, because suddenly he didn’t know what to say. Not really. Not when they hadn’t talked like this in a while.
“…Hey, Webs,” he said finally, slower now. The joke still hung in the air, but the edge had dulled, his voice a little too hopeful for his own liking.
“Hey,” Peter repeated, even softer this time. Like an echo with a pulse.
Wade smiled without meaning to, a small, private thing he could get away with because Peter couldn’t see him. At least they were both fumbling through this, neither of them slick enough to pretend it was easy.
There was a beat. Then another. The sound of Peter’s swing slowed, the wind thinning in the background, replaced by the heavier presence of stillness.
“So,” He started again, a little awkward, a little more grounded, “I, um, I talked to Reed.”
Wade let out a groan so theatrical it could’ve been nominated for an award, flopping backward into the couch cushions like gravity had personally betrayed him. It was the kind of sound that came from deep, deep in the chest, maybe even the soul—if Wade still had one worth mentioning.
“And did he tell you how dumb your idea was? Or do I still have to do it anyway?”
“He didn’t say no,” Peter replied, and Wade could hear it—the little curl of a smile hitching in his voice. Like he’d been sitting on this little piece of victory and couldn’t wait to break the news.
Wade’s eyes narrowed, suspicion immediately sliding into place like a well-worn weapon. “Huh.” The single syllable carried every ounce of doubt he could stuff into it.
“Well, not exactly,” Peter went on quickly, his words picking up speed in that way they did when he knew an interruption was coming and wanted to outrun it. “There was a lot of muttering. Something about ‘chaotic liability’ and ‘tracking collars.’ I think I heard the word ‘sedate’ in there, but—but—Sue said it’s fine.”
“Oh,” Wade said with slow realisation.
He didn’t need to say the rest—Peter already knew. They both did.
Sue’s word wasn’t just an opinion; it was the law. Sure, Reed had the oversized brain and the blueprints for half the tech nightmares in existence, but Sue? Sue had the god-tier veto power, a glare that could cut through solid walls, and the reality-warping authority of a woman who’d babysat every powered man-child in the tri-state area and still somehow found time to blend smoothies for little-widdle baby Franklin.
Wade respected that. Well—feared it, more like. But fear was just respect with better PR, and Sue had a killer marketing team.
“Exactly,” Peter said, breezing right past Wade’s loaded silence. “You know, Ben was actually excited too. I think you made an impression on him.”
Wade resisted the urge to preen. Barely. Just clenched his jaw and nodded solemnly, like being admired by a sentient boulder wasn’t currently sending dopamine fireworks through his trauma-riddled synapses.
His brain immediately flashed to the last time they crossed paths—oh, it had been a thing of beauty—Ben, all gruff and skeptical, ending up hauling Wade over his shoulder like a sack of morally questionable potatoes, then winding up and pitching him into an active Skrull nest with perfect major-league form. Wade had gone in guns blazing, swords swinging, yelling at the top of his lungs. They’d both walked away with minor scorch marks and two dozen dead Skrulls.
It was magical.
“Mm,” he hummed, letting the sound vibrate in the back of his throat before it slid into the faintest smirk. “I do like Clobby.”
Understatement of the century. If Ben ever let him drive the Fantasticar, Wade was ninety percent sure he’d cry. Then crash it. Then cry harder in the flaming wreckage.
He slumped into the cushions again, all spineless inertia and low-grade dread, phone cradled to his ear. His other hand drifted to the armrest, fingers drumming out a rhythm that didn’t go anywhere—anxious Morse code to the gods of avoidance, who, as usual, weren’t answering his pleas.
“God,” he muttered, voice half-buried in the upholstery, “This means I actually have to show up, doesn’t it.”
“I—It wouldn’t hurt,” Peter replied, aiming for breezy but falling short. There was that telltale hitch buried in there, the tiny note of cautious hope that said he was still testing the waters of where they stood.
“Webs, being in proximity of that flaming flying asshole hurts,” Wade shot back instantly, no pause, like the words had been preloaded and just waiting behind his teeth for the right trigger.
“It does not,” Peter chided, and Wade could practically hear the eye-roll, the slow head-shake that probably came with it, like Peter thought his disapproval might physically reach through the phone and smack Wade into behaving.
“Yes, it does.” Wade pushed himself upright just enough to gesture violently at the empty air in front of him, slicing his hands through the space like a conductor leading an orchestra of pure melodrama. It didn’t matter that Peter couldn’t see it. Hell, maybe it mattered more. “I feel it in my bones.”
“No, you don’t.” And there it was—that subtle little twist in Peter’s voice, a smile curling at the edges of the words. A smirk you could hear if you knew where to listen.
“Hey, I have very expressive bones.” He let the pause hang for a beat, then dropped his tone lower, the words turning deliberate. “You would know.”
Peter’s half-laugh filtered down the line, warm and unguarded, spilling past whatever filter he usually had in place. It was the kind of laugh the phone could barely hold, a little too real, a little too close.
Then Wade caught it—something else bleeding into the background. Faint, irregular, definitely not city traffic. A low, breathy coo. Then another. Wings, maybe—flapping against air.
“…Are those pigeons?” Wade asked, the words dripping with suspicion. He squinted at nothing in particular, like narrowing his eyes might somehow sharpen the audio feed. Then he pulled the phone a few inches from his ear, as if physical distance could filter out the nonsense. No dice. The background was still a mess of soft coos and frantic wingbeats, like Peter had wandered into a live-action remake of The Birds.
“What—what are you doing?” Wade pressed, his tone shifting from curious to mildly alarmed.
Silence.
Not the kind that felt casual or comfortable, either—this was the loaded sort, heavy enough that Wade actually glanced at the screen to check if the call had dropped. Nope. Still connected. Still… faint thuds and scrapes, the sound of someone climbing. Webs creaking, something shifting weight against metal.
Then—three knocks. Sharp, deliberate.
On his goddamn window.
The jolt ripped through him like live wire; his grip on the phone went slack, nearly sending it flying for the second time that week. Instinct shoved him sideways—head whipping around, every nerve singing with the kind of readiness that ended in someone bleeding. He was halfway to pulling steel before the sight actually landed.
And there, outside his window like it was the most natural thing in the world, was Peter. Perched on his fire escape with the perfect casual arrogance of a cat that knew it could get away with anything. One hand lifted in an easy wave, still clutching his phone with Wade's contact flashing, the other dangling a takeout bag with a victorious little wiggle.
“Hey,” Peter said, voice muffled but maddeningly casual. “I brought food.”
Wade panicked.
Not the cute, sitcom kind—this was a full-bodied, limb-flailing scramble worthy of nature documentaries. He lurched upright so fast his blanket coiled tighter around his legs, tangling him mid-step. One attempt at forward momentum later, and he was pitching sideways, arms windmilling as he went down in a catastrophic heap of cursing, stale popcorn, and the half-empty Cheetos bag that gave its life in the chaos.
Through the glass, Peter’s laughter rang out—sharp, unrestrained, and infuriatingly clear even with the city noise bleeding in around it. Dick.
Wade peeled himself off the floor with all the wounded dignity of a drunk man trying to convince a cop he was fine to drive. He grabbed the blanket in both fists and kicked it across the room like it had personally betrayed him, then stomped toward the window in a self-conscious waddle that he tried to pass off as swagger.
He threw his arms out in a dramatic flourish, as if announcing himself to an invisible audience. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he deadpanned, fingers snapping the latch open before yanking the window up like it was guilty of something heinous.
Cold night air rushed in, biting at his skin, carrying with it the faint scent of rain-slick streets, exhaust, and something uniquely Peter—smugness so thick you could practically taste it.
The offender stood there grinning—wide, unapologetic—the sort of grin that didn’t just suggest he knew exactly what he was doing, but that he was thriving on it. He lifted the takeout bag with just enough force to make the paper crinkle, holding it up like it was some ceremonial gift, part peace offering, part bribe, all wrapped in the irresistible perfume of fried food and grease.
“Can't I visit my favorite Merc?”
“Not unannounced, you can’t!” Wade huffed, stepping back with the deliberate air of a man granting a monumental favor. His arms swung wide, his head tilting like he was opening the gates of a kingdom he absolutely did not want stormed. All the while, he was ignoring the fact that his pulse had spiked at the mere sight of Peter perched there, framed by the city. “What if I was naked?”
Peter gave him a slow, sidelong glance, head angled just enough to catch the low light on his face, eyes gleaming with something between judgement and amusement—if there was even a difference when it came to him.
“You sound disappointed that you weren’t.”
“I am!” Wade fired back without hesitation, the words spring-loaded and ready to go. His tone walked that line only he could manage—half accusation, half invitation, every syllable sharpened with a playful edge but carrying a warmth that betrayed him if you listened close enough.
Peter didn’t answer right away, just swung a leg through the open window and climbed inside with the easy confidence of someone who had long since stopped asking for permission. Which was rude. The apartment wasn’t exactly guest ready, unless the guest in question was here for a black-market arms deal and a side of emotional instability.
Peter’s gaze drifted across the room, that slow, tilted-head sweep Wade hated—because it was thorough. And because it lingered. His eyes flicked over the stack of crumpled takeout containers perched on top of a half-collapsed pizza box, the bloodstained dish towel slung over the arm of the couch, the tactical gear strewn across the coffee table like party favors for a very niche, very violent sleepover.
There were intel files stuffed between couch cushions like forgotten magazines. A combat knife peeked out from under the microwave on the counter. A semi-automatic rested in the dish rack, muzzle down, next to a chipped coffee mug. One of the throw pillows bore a single, dusty footprint that was definitely not Wade’s.
Peter blinked, once. Twice. Took it all in with a neutral expression that was somehow more damning than if he’d commented.
“You’ve been… busy, huh?”
“Oh, yeah,” Wade said. “I’ve had tons going on, Pete. I’m a very popular, very busy man. My dance card’s been full. Assassins, mercenaries, depression naps. Y’know. The usual.”
Peter raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. Just stepped over a crumpled schematic of an explosives drop with a faintly amused twitch of his lips and made a beeline for the couch, settling in like this was all perfectly normal. Like Wade wasn’t actively vibrating out of his skin just having him here.
Wade’s gaze followed him, narrowing. “I would’ve cleaned if you warned me.”
“This was meant to be a surprise.” Peter said it lightly, like it was no big deal, casually flicking his fingers in that come here motion that had no business being so offhand and yet still managing to pull at something in the other’s chest.
“Well, congrats. I’m surprised. And mildly horrified.” Wade’s mouth curved like he was in on the joke, but there was a flicker—just a little—of bashfulness under the act.
“I’m choosing to focus on the surprised part.” Peter’s grin was quick, easy, like the distance between them hadn’t been gnawing at Wade for weeks.
“Don’t,” Wade warned, the words clipped but not cold. “My emotional range has the subtlety of a grenade. You’ll start feeling things too if you hang around too long.”
“Too bad then, because I already do.” Peter’s voice softened in a way that didn’t ask for permission, the words slipping past Wade’s defenses before he could shove up a wall or hide behind a joke.
Something in Wade went warm, slow and syrupy, pooling low in his chest. He shoved it down fast, smothering it under the leftover irritation still humming at the edges. He wasn’t ready to give Peter the satisfaction—not yet.
Still, his feet betrayed him, carrying him forward without conscious permission. He wandered over with mock reluctance, letting himself drop onto the couch beside him with the kind of exaggerated heaviness that said fine, you win, but I’m not happy about it.
Peter had brought Chinese—from that little hole-in-the-wall Wade swore by, the one crammed between a pawn shop and a laundromat where the counter was permanently chipped, the fluorescent lights flickered like they were one bad day from quitting, and the dumplings tasted like they’d been blessed by some benevolent carb god.
The fact that Peter remembered… yeah, that did something. Twisted something low in Wade’s chest, sharp enough to sting but with a soft, infuriating warmth at the center.
He bristled automatically. Easier to hide behind irritation than to admit the gesture mattered.
They cracked open the cartons, steam unfurling between them in curls that smelled like garlic, soy, and an entire category of memories Wade wasn’t about to unpack tonight. They ate in that awkward kind of quiet that wasn’t unfriendly—just… careful. Like they were both holding something fragile between them and didn’t want to be the first to drop it.
Small talk happened. Which was, frankly, horrifying.
Wade asked how Peter’s day was.
Peter asked… the same.
Wade threw in a token “How’s work?” like he hadn’t been low-key stalking the news for Spider-Man sightings all month.
And Peter countered with “How’s… the Merc life going?” like that wouldn’t be an eight-hour conversation ending in at least one small explosion.
They even skimmed past the weather—the weather—as if either of them had ever given a single damn about cloud coverage.
Neither of them actually cared about the surface-level answers, both of them itching to drop the act and snap back into what they were—sharp banter, unfiltered honesty, the kind of connection that didn’t need filler. But neither pulled the trigger.
Instead, they just let it hang there between them, awkward and stilted, the conversational equivalent of two people slow-dancing to elevator music.
The soundtrack to their unease was all small noises: the click of chopsticks against cardboard, the faint crinkle of paper napkins, the steady shuffle of shifting legs, and the low, ghostly hum of the muted TV, casting flickers of light over the mess of takeout and tension.
Before the silence could stretch thin enough to snap, Peter glanced toward the screen, eyes catching the faint reflection of colors, and asked, “What were you watching?”
Wade’s mouth tugged up at one corner, just enough to be noticeable. “Romcom marathon,” he said, already prying open another carton with one hand like this was the most natural confession in the world. “The kind with questionable life lessons and aggressive background saxophone. Very healing.”
Peter’s brows raised, surprised but not mocking. “Didn’t peg you as the type.”
“Oh, I’m a huge sap,” Wade said immediately, brandishing his chopsticks in a loose little flourish that sent a fleck of lo mein sailing back into the carton. “Explosions and romance. The two best genres combined, mankind’s greatest work of art.”
“You don’t even like happy endings.”
“I like you, don’t I?”
It slipped out fast—too fast—like it had been sitting just under his tongue, waiting for the smallest opening. There was enough bite in the delivery to pass for banter, but nowhere near enough to hide the truth threaded through it. Wade felt it land the second it left his mouth, heavy and irreversible, and his lips snapped shut like he could somehow lock the words away retroactively.
Peter’s grin was small but instant, oh-so warm in a way that made Wade’s stomach feel like it was falling and floating at the same time.
“Don’t read into that.” He muttered, eyes flicking away, the words as defensive as they were pointless.
“Too late.”
And then there it was again—that pause. Not hostile, not even awkward in the way strangers fumble—but dense. Heavy enough to make Wade feel like if he shifted wrong, the whole thing would spill out between them.
He jabbed his chopsticks into his carton, stabbing like he was doing it a favor. Let the scrape of bamboo on cardboard fill the space so he didn’t have to. His brain, traitorous as ever, started drifting in the silence—down those quiet alleys he’d grown comfortable wandering.
Because, unlike his stupid rom-coms, this wasn’t a happy ending.
Just a happy moment.
A little blip of warmth in whatever undefined, jagged-edged thing they were calling this. He’d take it, of course he would, but it was hard not to notice the shadow trailing behind it.
That creeping thought that maybe Peter was here because he felt guilty, ticking Wade off a mental to-do list before swinging away again. That maybe the takeout and easy smiles were just window dressing for obligation. That maybe this wasn’t about wanting to be here so much as fixing some self-imposed debt.
That maybe—
“Hey, pass the dumplings,” Peter said, breaking the thought clean in half. Possibly on purpose. Or just because he was Peter and that was what he did—barge in, uninvited, and somehow make the noise in Wade’s head stutter to a halt.
Wade’s eyes flicked up. Met his. And yeah. Just like that, the sharp edge of his thoughts dulled. Blunted like someone had thrown a blanket over them.
God, he hated how easy that was. How just looking at him felt like popping the tab on a can of endorphins, his brain fizzing with something warm and stupid before he could even try to stop it.
Wade let out a long, theatrical sigh—like this was the last straw in a lifetime of injustices—but his mouth was already twitching before he even opened it.
“Say please, Petey.” The syllables came out slow and deliberate, wrapped in that faux-sweetness he reserved for when he was absolutely trying to be a pain in the ass.
Peter didn’t even dignify it with a verbal answer. Nope; just stuck his tongue out—full-on, unapologetic, juvenile as hell. And somehow, somehow, the little bastard managed to layer smugness over it.
Wade rolled his eyes. Still, he passed the carton over, their fingers brushing in a fleeting contact that was too brief to matter and too noticeable to ignore. “Your manners are trash,” he muttered, and the corner of his mouth betrayed him anyway, twitching upward like it was already halfway to surrender.
“And you live in a building held together with duct tape.”
“Glue, actually,” Wade corrected, one brow arching with mock sophistication. “I bet you missed the ambience, huh? The scent of takeout, unwashed socks, and unresolved emotional tension?”
The words came easy, smooth in a way that felt like slipping back into a well-worn jacket—comfortable, familiar, like he hadn’t spent the last however-many days pacing a trench into his apartment floor.
Peter didn’t answer right away, chewing in contemplative silence, chopsticks moving with methodical precision. Wade figured that was it—that the moment had passed, that they’d let the conversation slide into the background noise where it could safely dissolve.
And then Peter glanced up, a little crooked smirk curling the edge of his mouth. “I missed you.”
The words landed soft, but they hit harder than expected. Wade’s head tipped, just slightly, the barest shift, like maybe if he moved too much he’d spook whatever this was. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“…Cool.” It came out lighter than he meant it to, an awkward half-laugh hitching in the middle. Not dismissive, exactly—more like buying time, mid racing over how to handle it.
A beat of silence stretched between them, padded with the faint clink of chopsticks against cardboard.
“You know, you’re officially allowed to say it back,” Peter said at last, amusement threading through the words like he already knew he’d win this one.
“I was getting there,” Wade shot back, leaning into the defensive drawl. “Jesus, give a guy time to process.”
“Processing time granted.” His smirk was quick, sharp enough to land a hit but soft enough to leave no bruise. It stayed there a second too long, enough for Wade to feel that stupid, treacherous flutter in his chest.
He’d call it heartburn later if anyone asked.
He dropped his half-empty container onto the coffee table with a dull clatter of plastic against wood, freeing his hands like he might need them for something important—gesturing, stabbing, choking down the impulse to fidget.
And when he finally dragged his gaze up—just for a second, just to check—Peter was starring right at him.
Hazel eyes, warm and stupid and open, fixed on him. They held the kind of softness that could unravel a guy if he looked too long—wound with affection, with want, threaded through with something Wade couldn’t touch without wrecking it.
He should’ve laughed. Should’ve rolled his eyes and cracked a line about staring contests and how creepy it was to gaze into a man’s soul. Should’ve looked away, flipped it, done anything but sit there like a deer in headlights.
But apparently his self-preservation instincts had taken the night off.
“I missed you too, you idiot,” Wade finally admitted, the words tumbling out in a messy pile before he could dress them up in sarcasm. “Even if you ghosted me and emotionally ravaged my heart.”
It should’ve landed with a smirk, a wink, some performative flourish that made it safe. That was the plan. But instead it just… sat there. Bare and raw in a way Wade didn’t like examining too closely.
Peter didn’t laugh. Didn’t deflect. He just sighed—long and deliberate, the kind of exhale that seemed to take his shoulders with it, dragging them down. The sound carried a weight of its own, like the breath had been sitting stale in his lungs for weeks, too stubborn to let go until now.
He set his own carton aside with a muted thunk and lifted a hand, fingers threading through his hair in a slow, almost sheepish drag. It wasn’t the restless, distracted fidget Wade had seen a hundred times on rooftops and fire escapes. This was careful. Measured. Like Peter needed the physical motion to keep his voice moving forward.
“I… I didn’t mean to,” he started, his tone dipping low, softer than the usual steady hum of his banter. The rhythm hitched halfway through, stalling like an engine catching on gravel. “I just… got overwhelmed, I guess.” His gaze flicked down for a second, like the floor might have answers, before lifting again. “Everything with the Four, the weird lizard-mole guy, Johnny—”
Nope.
The name landed like a match on dry kindling, and Wade’s jaw flexed before the scoff even made it to his throat. It cut through before the sentence could fully land, a sharp, derisive sound loaded with all the disdain and petty venom he could pack into one exhale.
“Yeah, I clocked the Johnny part,” He cut in, sharp and fast, like he’d been waiting for the opening. “Stupid flaming son of a…”
“Don’t start.”
Peter’s tone didn’t rise, didn’t snap—it just threaded that quiet authority through the words, the kind that said he knew exactly what Wade’s mouth was capable of, exactly how far it could run if left unchecked, and exactly how much of it was less about Johnny and more about Wade.
“I’m just saying,” Wade began, his hands lifting automatically, fingers splaying as if the extra surface area might help convey the sheer scope of his argument. The gestures were loose but purposeful, painting big invisible circles in the air like he was sketching out the universal diagram of why Wade was right.
“You’re always just saying,” Peter replied, the eye-roll slow and deliberate, like it was for Wade’s benefit more than his own. There was no real annoyance in it—if anything, the movement was softened by the way the corners of his mouth twitched upward, threatening to betray him. “I think someone has a jealousy problem.”
That earned him a chuckle, low and dry, from Wade. Not a single word of denial, which might’ve been the most telling part of all.
“Yet you’re still here,” Wade pointed out, leaning into the words, letting them straddle that line between smugness and something more genuine. Like he wasn’t sure whether he was scoring a point or fishing for an answer.
“Because I’m stupid,” Peter shot back without even blinking, the line leaving his mouth fast and clean, with none of the hesitation that marked most confessions. “And I like your stupid face.”
The words could have skated by as harmless banter—easy to toss off, easy to ignore—if Wade wasn’t paying attention. But Wade was paying attention. Hyper-focused, even. He caught the flicker in Peter’s eyes, the microsecond where his gaze dipped before snapping back, the faint flush coloring his cheeks. The way his mouth clung to the word like just long enough to make it feel heavier than it should.
It was one of those moments Wade could feel settling deep in his ribs, obnoxiously warm and stubbornly present. He smirked, slow and deliberate, because he wasn’t about to let Peter see the full effect—but the twitch at the corner of his mouth, the looseness in his shoulders, gave him away anyway.
“My face, huh?” he asked, tilting his head with exaggerated curiosity, but there was a glint in his eye—one that promised trouble.
Peter’s blush deepened, quick and unguarded, creeping over his cheekbones like it was trying to rat him out. “You know what I mean,” he said, voice coming out lower, softer, as if he could somehow downplay it by shrinking the words.
“No,” Wade drawled, letting the syllable stretch into something lazy and deliberate. “No, I take great offence to that, Petey.”
The nickname rolled off his tongue slow, deliberate, dripping with the kind of intimacy that didn’t come with warning labels. It wasn’t just teasing—it was an invitation. The mock indignation was barely there, so thin it was see-through, doing nothing to mask the subtle warmth bleeding into his voice.
Peter’s gaze flicked, quick and assessing, and Wade knew—knew—that he’d caught it. That flicker of something in Wade’s tone that wasn’t for anyone else.
“Mm, really?” He tipped his head, eyes narrowing in that infuriatingly calm, faux-curious way. The question was dressed up like banter, but underneath it was a dare—clear as day. His movement was purposeful, measured, closing the gap between them by just enough that Wade could feel it.
It was like the rest of the room dropped away, narrowed down to just this—Peter’s voice low and edged, the heat rolling off him in waves that pressed into Wade’s space without actually touching him.
“Whatever shall I do to earn your forgiveness?” Peter asked, the words carrying that infuriating balance of mockery and sincerity.
And just like that, they were slipping back into it—that old rhythm they always seemed to find no matter how far they drifted.
“I can think of a few things,” Wade said, letting the syllables sink slow, like each one was a hook meant to snag in Peter’s head. The air felt different after that—thicker, maybe, or just harder to ignore.
Peter’s grin twitched wider, his mouth curling like he’d just stepped into familiar territory he knew how to navigate.
His eyes dipped, slow and blatant, dragging from Wade’s gaze down to his mouth. They stayed there a beat longer than they needed to—long enough to be noticed, to make Wade’s pulse skip in self-satisfied recognition. Then, like punctuation, Peter’s tongue slipped out, a quick, unhurried sweep across his bottom lip that should not have been as effective as it was.
Wade’s eyes tracked the motion automatically, like muscle memory, a spark of something unfiltered flickering through before he could smother it with a smirk.
“You gonna come closer, or do I have to ask nicely?” Peter’s voice had that lazy kind of drawl that he only pulled out when he was feeling bold—half challenge, half invitation, tucked behind a crooked smile.
Wade turned his head slowly, giving him a look that said really? without needing a word. Amused, sharp at the corners, and a little dangerous in the way his eyes held steady.
Peter blushed.
The smirk slipped just a fraction, his bravado dipping as he cleared his throat and offered, quieter now, “...Please?”
Wade obliged and shifted closer. The couch cushions dipped under the weight, pulling them into the same pocket of space until there was nowhere else for the air to go but around them. Close enough to feel the heat radiating from the other.
Peter’s hands moved like they’d been waiting for this, sliding up slow to catch at Wade’s collar. Not a hard grip—just enough to hold him there, thumb brushing the fabric like it meant something. His gaze was molten, hooded under lashes, hazel-brown sweeping over Wade’s face like he was trying to memorize it and daring him to notice.
“This doesn’t seem like the lead-up to an apology, Webs,” Wade muttered, voice dropping low, the syllables edged with a teasing bite that was almost—almost—enough to hide the way his chest tightened. “You’re out of practice.”
Peter didn’t answer with words.
Instead, he leaned in, closing the space between them in one smooth, steady motion, like gravity had been pulling him in this whole time and he’d finally stopped fighting it. The kiss was warm—soft at first, lips brushing tentative and unhurried, the kind of slow burn that made time feel like it was folding in on itself. But it didn’t stay soft. It deepened fast, Peter tipping into it with a quiet sound, mouth parting like he’d remembered exactly what this felt like.
Wade smiled into it, mouth tilting against Peter’s with a kind of familiar, greedy ease. He kissed back like he meant it—because of course he did—one hand coming up to anchor at Peter’s side, fingers curling in the fabric like maybe this time, he wouldn’t disappear.
When they pulled apart, it was just far enough to breathe. Peter’s breath came quick, warm against Wade’s mouth, his cheeks flushed pink and his lashes low. He looked dazed in a way that Wade wanted to bottle.
Then, with a half-smirk curling at the corner of his mouth, he murmured, “How’s that?”
Wade hummed, the sound vibrating low in his chest. “It’s an admirable start,” he murmured against Peter’s lips, letting the words land close enough that they were half-breathed into him. “Though I think I’m owed way more.”
Peter laughed—quiet and breathless, the sound puffing out against Wade’s mouth like it belonged there. His forehead tipped forward, nudging gently against the Merc’s, and for a beat, neither of them moved.
“I—I really, really missed you,” He said, and it wasn’t slick or rehearsed—it just spilled out, raw and unpolished in a way that made Wade’s pulse trip over itself. The words barely had time to register before Peter’s mouth was back on his, pressing in like he was trying to make up for every second they hadn’t done this.
Wade let himself sink into it for a beat, feeling the shape of the desperation, the way Peter leaned in like there was nowhere else he could possibly go.
“Yeah?” He asked when they broke for air, the word coming out softer than he’d planned, the hopeful edge sneaking in despite his best efforts to keep it buried under something sharper. The tone was boyish in a way that felt reckless to let him hear.
Peter’s sigh ghosted into his mouth, warm enough to blur the edges of the moment. “Yeah.” The word came again between kisses, each one finding the exact same rhythm they’d always had, like there’d been no time at all between the last time and now. “I missed your dumb jokes. Us being idiots on your couch. You yelling at squirrels.” Another kiss—quick, sure, like sealing the memory in place. “Strange enough, I missed yelling at you.”
Wade’s laugh was quiet, muffled by the space they refused to put between them, and he found himself kissing the corner of Peter’s mouth before he could stop.
“I tend to have that effect,” He said, and his hand came up without thought, sliding tentatively into Peter’s hair.
The strands curled between his fingers, familiar in a way that made something deep in his chest loosen, like a muscle he’d been clenching for weeks. He’d forgotten how grounding it felt, the simple act of touching him—how it carried more weight than any words he could wedge into the space between them.
He let his thumb drag a light, idle arc at Peter’s temple, the kind of touch that was more instinct than thought, slow enough to feel deliberate but not enough to break the flow between them. Then that crooked smirk slipped back into place, half a shield, half a dare. “Though I think you missed kissing me more.”
“Maybe.” Peter’s lips curved against his, the word caught in that familiar middle ground between defiance and warmth—the exact mix Wade had been starving for, even if he’d never say it out loud. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
“I make no promises,” Wade sing-songed, and the grin that followed was all teeth—sharp, quick—before it was swallowed by Peter’s mouth again.
And it was slow. The kind of languid pace that didn’t ask for urgency because it already knew it had all the time it needed. Each press of lips was unhurried, drawing out the heat instead of sparking it into a blaze.
Peter shifted, moving in closer until his knees slid against either side of Wade’s thighs, the movement smooth and certain. Then he settled—fully, solidly—into Wade’s lap. The weight was immediate and grounding, pressing in through every point of contact, warmth bleeding through layers of fabric.
Wade’s hands moved before his brain caught up—one sliding up the line of Peter’s back, feeling the curve of muscle under the hoodie, the other finding its place low at his hip. His fingers curled there, firm, pulling him closer like there was still space left to steal, like he could fold Peter into himself if he just tried hard enough.
Peter’s hands weren’t idle either—one coming up to cradle Wade’s face, thumb brushing along his jaw, fingertips warm where they grazed his uneven skin.
They could both tell, even without saying it. The way their bodies leaned in like they’d been waiting for this exact contact. The way Wade’s fingers flexed like they were memorizing him again. The way Peter’s mouth kept finding his like it was the only thing worth doing.
All of it said the same thing—they’d missed each other.
“This is nice,” Peter breathed into him, voice pitched so low Wade could feel the words more than hear them. The syllables brushed warm against his lips, fragile enough that Wade almost didn’t trust himself to answer without breaking them.
He took a second instead, letting his eyes travel—messy hair pushed just slightly out of place, flushed cheeks, that telltale shine on his lips. Peter looked half-ruined in a way that made Wade want to both gloat and guard him from the world.
“Yeah,” Wade said, softer than he meant to, the syllable slipping out like it had been waiting for the exact right moment.
He leaned in to press a quick kiss to the corner of Peter’s mouth. Then another, slower this time. Then one more, because restraint had never been his strong suit. The trail of them crept along Peter’s cheek like a map he was laying claim to, each one a little flag planted in skin he already knew too well.
Peter laughed, quiet and bright, and Wade found himself grinning into the next kiss without thinking.
“I forgot how easy it is,” Peter murmured, still smiling, close enough that Wade could feel every word shape itself in the air between them.
“Yeah, well, you ruin me in ways that require zero effort, so,” Wade muttered, casual and devastating all at once. He barely got it out before Peter huffed a laugh against his mouth—flustered, fond, already gearing up to protest.
Wade kissed him again before he could. Just to make his point.
Somewhere between that kiss and the next, Peter shifted in his lap. It was subtle—restless in a way that didn’t read nervous, but pent-up. Like his body had more to say than his mouth was ready to admit. His hands twitched, hovered, tugged lightly at Wade’s shirt before abandoning it, then circled back again like they couldn’t settle. Then his hips rolled, slow and absent, but enough to drag a quiet curse out of Wade’s throat.
Oh. Ha.
So that was where it was going, huh?
Wade’s mouth kept its slow path downward, tracing the sharp line of Peter’s jaw like he had all the time in the world. He paused then dipped lower, letting his lips graze the soft skin beneath his ear, warm and thinner there, the kind of spot that always got a reaction.
And yeah, it did.
He felt it. A soft, shaky gasp in Peter’s throat that bled straight into the space between them. Small, unguarded. The kind of sound you didn’t mean to give up unless someone had earned it. Wade’s grin curled sharp against the curve of Peter’s neck.
He didn’t stop.
He kissed along the slope of it, dragging his mouth down, slow and thorough. Let his lips linger. Let his teeth graze, just once.
Peter twitched in his lap.
The next exhale was a moan—quiet, wrecked, bitten off at the end like he didn’t mean to let it go. His fingers clenched in the fabric at the Merc’s shoulders, grounding himself like he was bracing for impact. His hips shifted again. Subtle, but not subtle enough to miss.
“Wade—” he breathed, voice soft, shaking, half warning, half want.
And Wade—yeah, he was chasing it now. Hooked. Kissing deeper at the hollow of Peter’s throat, mouthing at the skin like it had pissed him off. One hand slid up Peter’s spine, steadying, while the other curled hard at his waist, keeping him still. Or trying to.
His brain was already halfway to the next step. His hand twitched, thumb dragging just under the hem of his hoodie, having half a mind to want to coax out moan after moan until his neighbours complained—
—when Peter’s phone vibrated where it lay abandoned on the coffee table.
Sharp and insistent.
It buzzed and barged in like an uninvited guest, splitting through the slow, steady rhythm they’d sunk into, shoving reality neatly back between them.
From where he sat, Wade’s eyes snagged on the brief flare of light across the black screen, just enough to catch the name.
It was Johnny.
Fuck.
Of course it was.
Peter’s hand twitched, the smallest motion, like muscle memory was urging him to grab it. But he didn’t. The phone kept buzzing—sharp, stubborn—before it finally cut off, the sound dying into the thin, fragile quiet of the apartment.
He let his head drop lightly against Wade’s shoulder, the weight of it not exactly comfortable, but not unwelcome either—more like a silent admission he didn’t have the energy to sit upright and pretend the interruption hadn’t happened.
The silence that followed wasn’t loud, but it sure as hell wasn’t soft either. It pressed in between them, taut and stubborn, the kind of silence that didn’t just sit there but demanded attention. The kind that turned every creak of the apartment, every hum of the fridge, into background commentary on how badly Wade wanted to break it.
“I think you missed a call, Webs,” he drawled finally.
“Ignore it.” Peter’s voice was clipped, a little too quick, like swatting at a fly.
He leaned back in as if to erase the moment entirely, mouth dragging deliberately against Wade’s neck. The brush of lips was warm, distracting, calculated.
And for a breath, Wade nearly gave in.
He nearly let himself sink into the weight of Peter in his lap, the heat bleeding through layers of fabric, the faint scrape of teeth that should’ve been enough to reroute his brain back onto the right track.
But the ghost of that name—Johnny, in glaring digital white—was burned into the back of his eyelids now.
He couldn’t unsee it. That, unfortunately, wasn’t how he worked.
The jealous prickle had already started under his skin—hot, acid-raw, familiar in a way that made his stomach curl. Ugly. Hollow. He hated it. Hated how instinctive it was. How it made his chest feel too tight and too empty at the same time, like he’d been vacuum-sealed in his own ribs.
And worse—so much worse—was the way he knew what came next.
So when the smirk came back—yeah, it wasn’t soft. Wasn’t playful. It was jagged, forged out of instinct, drawn like a blade across his mouth.
“I mean,” Wade started, drawing the syllables out slow and deliberate, every inch of his tone a calculated lilt, toeing the edge of something mean. “It looked like Johnny.”
And that did it.
Peter stilled—not a full-body flinch, not dramatic, but the kind of micro-freeze Wade had learned to clock. Like he’d hit a nerve and Peter was deciding in real-time whether to slap his hand away or let it fester. A beat passed. Then Peter sighed—long and even, the kind of breath that wasn’t about calming down but about calculating restraint. Controlled. Measured. Like he was pouring his patience out in tiny, precious drops so it wouldn’t run dry too fast.
He pulled back just enough to sit upright, spine straightening in stages, mouth flat with intent. Then his eyes locked on Wade’s, and there wasn’t a scrap of distraction left. No cover of heat, no buffer of teasing.
“And?”
The challenge in that single word was clear.
Wade accepted it with no hesitation.
“And, I didn’t realize you two were at a text-me-during-makeouts level,” he said, voice syrupy sweet, but the grin spreading across his face was sharp, not soft—too wide, too white, too much. His eyes glittered with that unmistakable firestorm flicker—the spark he got when he was about to torch something valuable and pretend he hadn’t meant to. “Real classy, Webs.”
There it was.
Peter’s mouth curled—not into a smile. Not even close. It twisted, like something bitter on his tongue, jaw tight enough to make the muscle twitch near his ear. His shoulders rose in a silent, stiff motion, the kind of body language that didn’t yell pissed off but muttered it with teeth clenched.
“Please don’t.”
Soft, but not kind. That tone wasn’t sharp—it didn’t snap. It dragged. Tired in the way only deep, layered frustration could be. Like he’d already fought five arguments today and wasn’t looking forward to the sixth.
But Wade had never been good at stopping when he should.
The moment was already tilting, already starting to crack down the middle, and he pressed on anyway—because that’s what he did.
“What? C’mon, I get it—guy’s got the hair, the abs, the whole firestarter thing,” he said, voice loose, too casual, too damn constructed to be anything but calculated. The shrug that followed was theatrical, flippant—shoulders thrown up in a lazy arc like he was trying to toss the whole thing off him. “Wouldn’t blame you if you wanted a shinier toy.”
He didn’t mean it. Or maybe he did. Or maybe it didn’t matter, because once it was out, it was out.
Peter didn’t flinch. His expression didn’t twist—it flattened. Completely. Deadpan with an edge so razor-clean it could’ve split the room.
And then he shifted.
Not away.
Not to leave.
But up—forward—like he was planting himself, digging in, spine straightening with purpose, making a point. His weight shifted in Wade’s lap, solid and grounding, and when he spoke, his voice whittled down to nothing but truth: “I am actively sitting in your lap. Yours.”
Wade shrugged, all loose limbs and deflection, like he made a moot point. “Eh.”
Peter’s breath came out slow and long, a sigh that scraped brittle through his nose, like it had to claw its way past everything he wasn’t saying.
“…You are unbelievable.”
And Wade—of course—grinned like that was a compliment.
“No, I’m just observant, Petey.” His voice lilted like he was trying to keep it light, but every syllable dripped with the kind of venom you only brewed for the people you didn’t want to hurt but somehow always did anyway. “I mean, you light up around him—pun fully intended.” A flash of grin, all bite, no warmth. “And Matchstick isn’t exactly dull around you either.”
Peter didn’t rise to it. Just an irritated—“That’s not funny.”
Wade’s smirk faltered for half a second—barely—but then he leaned in, jaw tight, voice dropping low like he wanted the jab to bruise. “Who said I was joking?” The words came out slow, deliberate, heavy like a swing meant to connect. “Hell, maybe I should thank him. At least someone’s keeping you warm when I’m not around.”
Peter’s head snapped toward him, eyes sharp and mouth twisted, irritation slicing clean through his mask of restraint. “Stop.” The word cracked like a whip. “That’s not even—don’t put that on me.”
Wade barked a humorless laugh, the kind that carried no real joy, just sharp edges. “Why not?” he shot back, the grin collapsing into something meaner, something tighter, shaped more like a snarl than a smile. “Feels like I’m an extra—”
“You’re not.”
Fast. Hard. Too fast to be rehearsed. Too sharp to be anything but real.
The speed of it caught Wade off guard. Just a little.
But he didn’t stop. Of course he didn’t stop.
He rolled right over the hesitation, crushed it beneath the weight of his own defensiveness like it was an instinct—because it was. Reflex. Survival. A scoff bubbled up, brittle and biting, the kind that didn’t land like a joke so much as a blade tossed carelessly into the middle of the room.
“Sure,” he said, voice jagged at the edges, hitching with something sour. “Tell that to the guy lighting up your phone while your tongue’s still down my throat.”
And that was the match.
“There is nothing going on with him,” The snap tore out of Peter like it had been clawing its way up from the depths of his chest, sharp and hot, voice cracking as it rang off the walls like a ricochet. It wasn’t just angry—it was tired. Raw. The kind of tired that came from knowing no matter how many times you said the same thing, it still wouldn’t land.
He dragged in a breath, jaw clenched tight enough to tremble. Then let it go. Tried—tried—to pull it back into something softer, something less destructive. His tone dipped, heavy, frayed. “Look…” he started, shaking his head once like he could dislodge the heat building behind his eyes. “He probably just wanted to check in about something. FF stuff. I don’t know.”
“Uh–uh.” Wade clicked his tongue, tilting his head with a parody of sweetness, his smile syrupy and sour at once. “Plausible at this hour.”
Peter shoved off Wade’s lap like it burned, standing in a motion so fast it left cold in its wake. The absence of his weight hit Wade like a vacuum, like air rushing back into a wound. He didn’t even look back—just started pacing a tight line across the room like he could wear down the argument with his footsteps. He ran a stressed hand through his hair, fingers tangling like they didn’t know what to do, like if he didn’t move, he’d punch something instead.
“Wade, I’ve already told you—” His voice came out clipped, controlled in the way only someone on the edge of losing it can be. “There’s nothing going on.” He turned, gaze sharp, tone knotted with frustration. “But I can tell you don’t believe me.”
“You just—” Wade’s hands twitched in his lap, fists clenching and flexing like they couldn’t decide whether to reach out or hold back. “You spend a lot of time with him.”
“So?” Peter spun on a dime, voice snapping like a whip. “I spend a lot of time with you.”
“Spent,” Wade shot back.
The correction was a precision strike. Short. Precise. Meant to wound.
Peter froze mid-step, his whole frame locking up. His glare snapped to Wade—sharp, furious, betrayed—but Wade was already pushing forward, too far in to stop now, too high on the momentum of self-sabotage to care about the blood trail. “Wow.”
“Still,” Wade said, his voice low, cold, curling at the edges like burnt paper, “Look how we turned out. Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t very platonic.”
Peter flinched—not a full-body jerk, but enough. Just a flicker across his face, the kind of small, involuntary reaction that cracked right down the center of something Wade hadn’t meant to see. His breath hitched, caught somewhere between anger and something softer, something Wade couldn’t name without getting his hands dirty.
When he spoke again, it was quiet, frayed—like fabric stretched too thin across a frame. “…I don’t have the energy for this right now.”
Wade barked out a laugh, bitter and jagged, like it scraped its way out of his chest instead of his throat. “Oh, right, sure. Just save that for Mister Shiny Storm, huh?”
“Jesus, Wade.”
The words cracked like a whip—short, sharp, all the annoyance Peter had been holding back spilling out in one snap. His hands flew up, slicing through the space between them with restless, frustrated energy.
“I honestly don’t know what to tell you,” He said, pacing half a step like his feet could bleed the tension off before it cracked open somewhere worse. His hands twitched at his sides, like they wanted to grab something—Wade, maybe, or just the argument mid-air and wring it out before it soured even further. “It’s not some… big hidden thing. He’s my friend. He checks in. Sometimes at stupid hours, yeah, because he’s stupid.” He laughed once, short and dry and humorless. “That’s all. It’s boring. Honestly. Not—”
His hand flung out like a wet rag, limp and useless, not even bothering to land the sentence. “Not what you’re turning it into.”
The silence that dropped after landed hard, and for once, Wade didn’t fill it.
He could have. Christ, he could’ve said a dozen things—ugly, unfair, too true. But there was something about the slump of Peter’s shoulders, the rough edge ground into his voice, the way his hand ghosted over the back of the couch like he needed it to hold himself upright—
Yeah, no good would come of saying more. Not right now. Not when Wade could already feel the space between them buckling under its own weight.
Peter turned. Wade watched the little tic of frustration in his jaw as he reached for his phone, still sitting forgotten on the coffee table. He snatched it up with more force than necessary, the soft clack of plastic on wood somehow louder than anything either of them had said.
A breath hissed through Peter’s nose—sharp at first, then tapering out into something long and sagging and so fucking done. His spine curved forward like the air had gone out of him, shoulders slumped like this wasn’t just a fight, but the hundredth one stacked on top of a year’s worth of unspoken bullshit.
When he looked at Wade again, it wasn’t angry. It wasn’t even hurt. It was simply tired.
His mouth pressed into a flat, grim line. “I’m gonna go.”
And yeah, maybe Wade had pushed too far.
Maybe he’d taken one too many swings at something that didn’t deserve to be punched in the first place. But what was he supposed to do? He wasn’t feeling great either. This wasn’t just jealousy or spite—it was fear and loneliness and that creeping, crawling certainty that whatever this thing between them was, it was too fragile to survive a missed call.
He swallowed it down anyway. Didn’t apologize, didn’t reach for him, didn’t say stay.
Stay.
“Good idea,” Wade muttered, but the words came out tighter than he meant, brittle instead of blasé. He leaned back like he didn’t care, but his jaw was locked, his shoulders tense, and the air between them felt like it had splintered down the middle.
He watched Peter cross the short distance to the window, every step pulling the room wider, emptier, stretching the silence too far to ever feel comfortable again.
One foot up, one hand braced, Peter looked ready to disappear into the night without another word.
But then—hesitation.
A sigh that cut softer than the rest of him tonight, and a glance back over his shoulder, eyes carrying something quieter. Something that made Wade’s chest ache with how stupidly fragile it looked.
“Wade,” He muttered almost begrudgingly, low enough that the Merc had to lean into it. “Come by the tower tomorrow, alright?”
For a second, he didn’t answer. He just stared, brain half-frozen, body locked up like someone had pulled the emergency brake. Maybe it was the tone—too soft, too warm, too real. Maybe it was the gentleness after everything, that subtle shift in Peter’s voice that made the words land like a balm and a bruise at the same time.
He searched for the catch. The hook. The punishment wrapped in pleasantry. Something. Anything.
But all he found was Peter, still half-turned in the window, looking back at him in that maddening, stupidly tender way—steady, a little frayed around the edges, but… hopeful. Not guarded. Not angry. Not pushing him away.
Hopeful.
After all that.
Like he still wanted Wade. Still wanted him to show up. Still wanted this, him. Even after the barbs, the jabs, the ugly jealous shit Wade had let spill out of his mouth because he didn’t know how to stop himself.
“…Okay.” It cracked out of him before he could soften it, low and rough, voice sandpaper-thick with all the words he wasn’t saying. But he didn’t take it back. Didn’t chase it with a joke or a smirk. He just… let it sit there, honest and awkward.
Peter nodded, small and tight, lips pressed something that wasn’t exactly a smile but wasn’t entirely not.
“Goodnight,” he murmured, soft enough it barely crossed the space between them.
“Night, Webs,” Wade whispered back, voice catching on the end like his throat couldn’t quite make room for it.
And then he was gone—out into the cool night air in a smooth, practiced arc, swallowed by shadow and the low, restless hum of the city below. The windowpane rattled once in the wake of his departure, then stilled.
Wade’s apartment felt wrong instantly.
The background noise of New York spilled in through the open gap—sirens somewhere far off, a honk, the occasional hiss of tires over wet asphalt—but it didn’t fill anything. It didn’t fill the space Peter had taken with him, the invisible imprint of his weight, the warmth he’d left behind.
Wade realized, with a sharp twist of irritation at himself, that he’d actually managed to forget what it felt like having Peter here. Not the idea of him—no, he thought about that all the time—but the reality of it. The quiet gravity of him just existing in Wade’s space.
And now that he’d remembered, now that he’d had it pressed right up against his skin again, it was unbearable to be without it. Like being reminded how good oxygen tastes right before someone holds your head under water.
He dragged a hand down his face, groaning into his palm.
Christ.
He’d had Peter in his lap. In his lap. Mouths colliding, fingers curling, that rare softness Wade never got to keep—handed to him on a goddamn silver platter—and he went and ruined it by letting his brain get loud, letting the rot claw up his throat until all that poured out was jealousy and defensiveness dressed up in sarcasm.
Not that Peter was entirely blameless. He could’ve picked up that phone, seen Johnny’s name lighting up the screen, and—just this once—tossed it. Hung up, perhaps. Or hell, sent a “bout to get railed, ttyl” and been done with it. He could’ve pulled Wade back in, hand on his jaw, voice all warm, and reassured him in a way that didn’t involve sighing like Wade was a goddamn inconvenience.
But blame was useless currency, and Wade was rich in it.
And now he had to show up at the tower.
At least, that’s what Peter had said. What he agreed to.
Which, unfortunately, meant Wade was now stuck debating whether he actually wanted to. Because wanting to and being capable of walking through those doors without detonating his own life were two very different things.
He slouched deeper into the couch, like maybe if he sank far enough he could dodge the decision entirely. But the pros and cons list wouldn’t shut up—it just kept looping in his head, louder each time.
Johnny was the biggest con, no contest. Not just because he was all teeth and perfect hair and unearned confidence, but because he was that guy. The one who always knew he was being watched and played to it. The one Peter lit up around in a way that Wade couldn’t help noticing. And hating. The thought of sitting in the same room as him, watching them banter like it was scripted, made Wade’s stomach knot.
Reed was a close second. If Wade wanted to be condescended to by a man with more PhDs than social skills, he could just crash one of Stark’s poker nights. At least Tony knew how to make it entertaining. Reed had that sanctimonious “I know better” tone Wade would pay good money to wipe off the planet.
Baxter Building itself? A hellscape of spotless surfaces, perfect lighting, and too many rules. Just walking in there made him feel like someone was silently judging the dirt on his boots.
But… But then there were the pros.
Sue, who actually understood him in that rare, unnerving way, like she could see all the worst bits without flinching and somehow still thought he was worth keeping around. She had that uncanny ability to cut through his noise, not by shutting him down like most people tried, but by listening.
Ben, who was basically a granite teddy bear with a Brooklyn accent, solid company on a slow day and game for literally hurling Wade across rooftops if the situation called for it. Which, in Wade’s professional opinion, it often did. Wade would never say it to his face, but he trusted Ben. Trusted him to catch the punch, catch the car, catch him, if it ever came to that.
And Peter.
Always Peter. Which… yeah.
That was the problem.
Because no matter how long he stared at the mental ledger, no matter how many smug Johnny Storm smirks or Reed Richard lectures he stacked against it, the weight on his chest kept tipping it all in one direction.
To Peter.
“…Ugh,” he muttered, the sound half-growl, half-surrender, dragging a hand down his face like he might be able to smear the thought clean out of his head.
Damn it.
He cursed the gods—every last one of them, from the big flashy Norse types down to whatever petty minor deity was currently in charge of screwing with his love life.
He cursed the readers—yeah, you, sitting there eating popcorn and rooting for feelings like this was a romcom instead of his actual, deeply humiliating existence.
And he cursed the writer (Hey—!), because clearly they were up there having way too much fun pulling his strings and making him do the emotional equivalent of cartwheels for their own twisted amusement. (Rude.)
If this fic ended with a slow dance in the rain, he would sue.
Notes:
the spiral is real
dude writing this was AGONY aaaaaHHH like i dont think i can clench my jaw any more
i hate writing fights AAA it makes me so anxious and angsty but it's good dramaaaaAAA
these two need help fr fr
wade is just wade but!
lets not forget peter is legit canonically one of the worst relationship communicators in marvel's history TwT
ngl its one thing i love about his character lol, he's such a messy goober (MJ??? ALICIA?? boy get a grip)
anyway this is by far the most tense it'll get (i think) :3
it'll be 🎶 sunshine, lollipops and rainbows 🎶 (mostly) next chapter
AND A WHOLE LOTTA STORM ehehehanyhooo, let me know if you enjoyed :3
pick sides! let me know who's wrong or right! i need to fuel my jealous rage for whats coming lol