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It's 2AM when Peter finally steps into the warm air of his apartment, so one of the last things he expects (or wants) to see is a dark silhouette next to his window, or the silver glint of a knife as the figure twirls it between his fingers with lightning-quick precision. He's not hugely surprised, though, which quite possibly says a lot about him.
"Welcome home," Deadpool says, silky sweet, "Spidey."
Peter sighs heavily and drops his bags. He kicks the door shut and turns to lock it. His apartment looks startlingly dark without the warm light spilling in from the hall. "Yeah, yeah. Hello to you, too, asshole."
Deadpool pauses for a moment at that, and then he flicks on a light and steps forwards, pouting. But some lucky quirk of the universe Peter is now the one lurking in shadow, the doorway just out of reach of the light. Deadpool visibly squints into the darkness, then shakes his head minutely and gives up trying to see Peter in favour of whining.
"You were supposed to be surprised I found out your secret identity," he complains. "You were supposed to screech and demand how I knew or make up hilarious excuses I can tease you about later. You weren't supposed to do the equivalent of shrugging and going meh."
Peter hums. "It was gonna happen eventually. Honestly, I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner; you're a mercenary, man, I don't know if you noticed. I'm 100% positive that you have contacts that'll churn out my name the second you decide you wanna know. Like, uh, that Weasel guy you talk about sometimes? He seems like a bit of a computer whiz, he could probably do it."
Deadpool ignores him. "You're not even surprised at all? Seriously? You come home to an unhinged mercenary in your apartment with a knife and you're not, y'know, scared? I mean, c'mon, you're not even threatening me about airing your identity to the world -"
"You didn't do that," Peter says confidently.
"But I might have," Deadpool wheedles.
Peter rubs at the bridge of his nose, nudges up the frame of his glasses accidentally as he does, and sighs. "Look, dude. I don't know how you got into my apartment - actually, no, I have a fair idea. But that's not the point. The point is," and he hefts a few bags up again, "don't just stand there, help me with my shopping."
He walks past a suddenly and inexplicably frozen Deadpool and into his little kitchen, dumping the bags unceremoniously on the counter and moving back to the hallway to get the one with all the frozen stuff in it because he should probably deal with that first. Deadpool is still the exact same way he left him, just swiveled on one heel to follow his movements, eyes fixed on him.
Peter shoots him a look as he goes past. "What?"
"Nothing," Deadpool blurts, shaking himself out of it. "Nothing at all, just thinking. Here. By myself. Y'know. Well, hopefully you don't know -" He drops his voice suddenly to stage whisper, "it's kind of embarrassing," and then continues at a normal volume. "So unless I spoke out loud - oh, God, wait, did I talk out loud? I didn't, did I? I didn't think I was but it wouldn't be the first time - oh, man, that would just ruin everything -"
"You didn't say anything out loud," Peter interrupts helpfully. He's hugely curious about what he would have said, but he's also hugely tired and that's taking priority right now. "Okay, seriously, you need to move if you're not gonna help, buddy, cause you are super in the way right now. Though you would be rude if you didn't and I would hold a grudge against you forever."
Deadpool mutters, but pads softly after Peter like an excited puppy anyway only to stop and squawk. "Why do you even need my help? There are, like, three bags left!"
Peter rolls his eyes. Deadpool points a finger at him.
"Don't you give me that sass, insert-full-name-here-because-I-don't-know-it."
"How come you know where I live but not my name?"
"I thought I said don't sass me?"
"You never said I had to listen."
"Look here," Deadpool starts, sounding like he's really winding up for some bickering only to deflate as suddenly as he'd fired up. "Okay, this name thing is really getting in the way. I wanted it to be special," he whines, "I was gonna make it this whole Moment -"
"Peter Parker," Peter interrupts, just to ruin the moment. Well, no, it'll still be a moment - just a nice one, for him. An amusing moment.
Except Deadpool says, "Trust you to be a little shit both in and out of costume," all fond and amused as well, and smiles, extending a hand. "Wade Wilson, at your service."
- and fuck, it's a Moment.
Peter shakes his hand and can't help but smile lopsidedly back.
///
When they break apart (from the handshake! When they break apart from the handshake), Deadpool - Wade, his name is Wade - clears his throat and makes an aborted movement with his hand, like he was gonna brush it against his suit but stopped at the last minute. "Why am I helping you with three measly bags again?"
"Because it's etiquette for a guest."
"I thought guest etiquette went a little more along the lines of, 'I sit on the couch and make halfhearted offers to help while you do all the work,'" Wade tries.
"Not in this house."
"This isn't a - oh." Wade rolls his eyes, but he's still smiling, so whatever. Win. "You and your fucking millennial humour. Whatever happened to Facebook minion memes, the true joke of my generation?"
"Never mention those in my apartment again," Peter commands.
"What, you don't like them?"
"I'd willingly die to be rid of them," he declares.
Deadpool levels a serious look at him. "Would you?" he says, voice low and dangerous.
Peter pretends to consider, immune to the ooh-scary-mercenary-oh-no shtick, and then says, "No, actually. I don't think even that would be enough. They're too hungry."
"For wine," Wade offers, except he cracks up laughing halfway through and completely ruins it.
Peter can't stop the smile that's answering the sound of Wade's laughter, so he just grabs some bags and dumps them into the idiot's arms. Unknowingly playing completely true to the insult, Wade makes an exaggerated groan and staggers back like they weigh tons; he collapses on the ground and just lays there, a superhero with two reusable bags on his chest who's groaning like a dying man.
He plucks two bags from Wade's 'corpse' without batting an eyelid, and takes them through to the kitchen as Wade dramatises the betrayal behind him.
///
They end up hanging out. It's weird, because they've hung out for literal days as Spiderman and Deadpool, but Wade and Peter feel different - the same, but a step to the left. Peter doesn't think it helps that the second thing they did in Peter's apartment, other than argue whether or not Wade was scary, was unpack groceries together like an old married couple. But Wade is exuberant even in a domestic setting, whooping and hollering and climbing on furniture to point down at Peter and declare himself the king of Nintendo 64 Magic Tetris.
"My thumbs are sticking to the controls!" Peter protests over the gloating. He's not usually a sore loser, but Wade is a sore winner and his tyranny has to be be stopped.
"Oh, bullshit!" Wade hoots. "You have so much control you could probably stand on my back so you're horizontal to the floor -"
"I could not!"
"Pshaw," Wade goes. He actually goes pshaw - like, says the word the way it's spelt. "Could too."
"Could not."
He can.
(Wade has a nice ass.)
///
Wade comes over pretty regularly after the first time, and it feels like six months pass by in the blink of an eye; Peter's been to Wade's place several times for various reasons - injuries, sleepless nights, the PS4 - and Wade always makes sure to text him the new address for two out of those three reasons, but they're all safe houses, not homes. Even aside from that, they're messy and dingy and cheap, so mostly they hang out at Peter's.
Six months in, Wade takes his mask off. He makes sure to do it somewhere neutral - a random rooftop, one that looks the same as most of the others in NY, and Peter realises only later that it was in case the reveal went sour.
"I know you didn't get much choice in the when and the how when I saw your face for the first time," he says. "And I'm sorry for that. And I'm sorry for - this." He gestures at his head and then his body, giving a weak laugh, and it's only then that Peter figure out what this is.
"Wade," he breathes, frown smoothing out into something, something startled, probably -
"But I feel weird knowing your face without you knowing mine. Even if you hate it and never want to see it again, I'll feel less. . . I don't know. Skeevy about it. Like Michael Jackson's ghost watching people film the Neverland documentary."
Peter can't help but bark a laugh at that one. "I'm not gonna run," he says while Wade is quiet. He pulls off his mask in the hopes that maybe the sincerity will show on his face if not in his voice.
Wade makes a face like he thinks it was a bad choice but takes a deep breath and doesn't mention it. He opens his mouth, and Peter expects him to say something but instead he just closes it and -
- yanks his mask off in one smooth motion.
And, well. It's kind of like all those six months ago, when they'd exchanged names officially for the first time. Peter had already sort of known Wade's name - the guy threw it around like he was namedropping a celebrity - so it hadn't been a surprise, but at the same time it had been. He hadn't expected 'Wade Wilson' to come out of his mouth, and equally he hadn't quite expected this face to be underneath that red and black mask, because Wade had kind of tried to describe it to him beforehand.
He was kind of right: it's ugly. Like, stick him next to, uh, Ryan Reynolds, maybe, and people are gonna pick Ryan Reynolds every time. Though maybe that's a bad comparison because Peter thinks he would maybe pick Ryan Reynolds over anything. Dude's hot.
But so is Wade. Just in a different way. He's got a strong jawline and bright eyes that Peter couldn't describe if you put a gun to his head and told him to do it. (Actually, no. He could. But it would be hard as fuck.) And his head is - Peter doesn't know, but there's this air around it, like every single feature works together even despite the scars. It mostly just looks like Wade was hella hot before and then someone went at him with a giant stapler.
And naturally, because Peter has the filter of a sieve with the mesh taken out, that is the first thing out of his mouth. "Wow. It's really not as bad as you said it was. You're kind of really hot."
Wade stares at him. He can see Wade staring at him. He gets immediately very distracted by it. (Which doesn't bode well for his already-too-big crush.)
"I'm - okay. Which face is this? Hey, writer? Hey, what fa- the movie one? You went for the movie one? You know that was criticised for not following the comic book on how deformed I was, not that I can blame them, I mean who wants to get flack off the Internet for defacing national treasure Ryan Reynolds but -"
Peter blinks, then shrugs. Sometimes Wade skirts scarily close to telepathy, but so far they've all turned out to be flukes.
"- you saw me in that comic panel! The one where I was all -" He makes growly noises that really don't accompany the vicious karate motions he's making by his face. "- skully and weird, with the cheekbones, you remember those -"
Peter's certainly going to remember these cheekbones. Hot damn.
"- all sores and big growths with -" Wade gestures, "- bits of hair sprouting out of them -"
"Oh, shut up," Peter interrupts, and closes the distance to kiss him.
Wade's arms drop onto his shoulders in shock, and then the situation seems to hit him because he starts kissing back with enthusiasm. His hands come up to cup Peter's head like he's something to be treasured, and Peter feels himself melt against him.
And then the kiss is over, and Peter is opening his eyes to find Wade already staring at him. For at least the third time since the mask came off alone, his stomach gives a huge flip.
"Petey," Wade says, stroking a thumb over one cheek, "I'm so sorry. But you can't."
Peter is suddenly very cold.
But not very surprised. (Of course not. Of course.)
"Okay," he manages, and turns and webslings away, ignoring Wade's shouts.
///
He spends a lot of time in his apartment. He only leaves for work, because he can't afford not to go as much as he doesn't want to, and for patrol, because this city needs him as much as he needs it. For a while, the nightlife will distract him, or the busy commute, but then he'll see a flash of just the right shade of red, or hear a similar voice, and then he runs.
It's immature, he knows. But he doesn't think he could stomach seeing Wade right now.
He has to change up a lot of his schedule. He didn't realise how much they'd inserted themselves into each others' lives until he would be swinging to Wade's with a nasty stab or after a bad nightmare and then remember. He ended up going to Aunt May's and sleeping there, because Wade kept trying to catch him at his. He swung to work in the Spiderman suit and changed a street away; he patrolled his normal route only fleetingly, several times over the course of the night, and did the rest of New York instead.
(This actually resulted in his finally meeting Daredevil. And Hawkeye - no, the other one. But then also the first one.
It was complicated.)
He even starts sleeping as soon as he gets home after work, waking up at around nine (come on, four hours is plenty) to patrol and then work a graveyard shift at a coffee shop.
Shut up, he's saving up to move. Besides, more income is always welcome, and Aunt May doesn't know any differently - he's there for breakfast and to leave at a quote unquote 'normal' time for work.
But Deadpool catches up with him.
He'd slept badly the past couple nights - afternoons? - and he's off his game. It doesn't help that Wade's in a hoodie and jeans, far from what Peter's been on the lookout for these past three weeks.
It also doesn't help that Wade can now apparently teleport.
The reunion goes like this.
///
It's his Mom's birthday. May has the day booked off - they'd been planning to go to the cemetery together this afternoon, but Jameson is an asshole who has no heart and he'd refused to sign off on the leave.
The subway is still down thanks to a fight he'd had with Rhino three nights before, and he'd run out without his webshooters this morning, so he's hustling down the streets instead when he runs into a guy he swears was not there three seconds ago. Like, literally bumps into him.
He looks up into the man's face to apologise and Wade is blinking back down at him.
"I knew I was gonna run into you, but I didn't expect it to be so literal," he says, cracking a grin.
Peter tenses up so fast he gets an instant crick in his neck. "Mmnf," he manages.
The scars on his face are different today, and there's one that's stretching up from the corner of his mouth, just slightly, and it makes his smile lopsided like Peter's.
"Eloquent," Wade chirps. "Bee-tee-dubs, you're hella hard to find when you don't wanna be."
"I would take a stab in the dark and say that if you're struggling to find someone, then maybe they don't want to see you," Peter hisses. "Please move. I'm late for work."
"You're right," Wade says, and for a moment Peter thinks he's going to be reasonable until he adds, "you deserve an explanation. Well, an absent is better than a tardy, anyway."
He scoops up Peter's arm and presses a button on something buried deep in his hoodie pocket, and then suddenly they're in eter's dark apartment. Peter stumbles back.
"What - how did you - who gave you teleportation technology?" Peter is going to beat their ass.
"Cable," Wade supplies smugly. "He admires my ability for destruction."
Peter drags his hands down his face. Cable. Weird guy from the future who avenged his dead wife and child and then decided that actually he kind of liked hopping around timelines more than he liked the domesticity he'd fought for. "Of course he does," he mumbles into his hands.
Wade grins again at that, and then exhales shakily and sits down on the couch. "Look. I owe you an explanation."
Peter holds up a hand, tired. "None needed. Who wants to kiss Puny Parker anyway? I know the drill, dude, I'm just too busy or nerdy or something and you're gonna get bored -"
"Woah woah woah, what?" Wade makes the time out symbol. "You thought I - what?"
"Peter, I'm so sorry, but you can't," he echoes. "It's pretty obvious."
"Yeah," Wade agrees, "that it was about me."
"What?"
"Oh, man, we're both dipshits," Wade groans. "So you thought I didn't want you, and I was trying to warn you that you shouldn't be with me. . . no, wait, that doesn't make me an idiot, that makes me right!"
Peter blinks. "No, you were right before, that does make you an idiot." He sits down on the coffee table in front of Wade that he pulled out of a dumpster and stares at him incredulously. "Why wouldn't I want you?"
"I have a face only a mother could love," Wade says in his strap-in-folks announcer voice. "And not even my mother loved it, so. Point one."
"Counter-point one," Peter argues, "my mother would have loved you."
Wade seems doubtful of that. Peter rolls his eyes.
"Look. She was a scientist. I mean, she wouldn't dissect you or take blood or do anything horrible, just poke you and ask you questions at a million miles an hour."
"You do that," Wade says.
Peter opens his mouth to ask, do I? and only just manages to abort mission in time. "Thank you," his mouth supplies instead. "But anyway. She would have loved you. I told you about Aunt May, right?"
Wade nods enthusiastically. "The unfazeable woman!"
"Yeah." Peter pauses to scratch his chin for dramatic effect. "Well, at one point there were two."
"Impossible! The world couldn't handle two!"
Peter has to shoot him an amused look for that one to click.
"Oh, shit - shit, sorry, Pete."
"That had to be deliberate," he says.
"It wasn't," Wade disagrees, and he looks stressed enough about it that Peter lets the matter drop. "Surely they wouldn't get on if they were that similar?"
"Well, I mean, they had to learn to get on, kinda. Uncle Ben and Dad were brothers, right? They ended up spending a lot of time together. Mom was a biologist, and Aunt May used to be a nurse, so they had in common. Aunt May taught Mom everything she knew about card games plus extra, too, so we have these photos of family gatherings -" He starts to snicker a little bit. "- where they're just sat in a corner playing vicious games of poker. Trust me, with your whole shady merc thing going on, you'd fit right in."
"I don't have a 'shady merc thing going on'," Wade protests.
"You totally do. You have this air of, how do you say. . ."
"Don't fuck with me," is offered hopefully.
Peter levels a smirk at him. "Not quite. More: I'm scared of social interaction, please be nice to me."
"Hey!"
"Just sat there huddled in the corner with the big girls who'll protect you -"
"You shut your face," Wade hisses. "God, I wish these women were alive so I could tell on you right now. I bet they'd have a lot to say about you being. . ." He leans forwards and waggles his eyebrows. "Spiderman."
Peter pales, and then points a finger at him. "Aunt May is alive and you will not tell her about this."
"Whaaaat?" Wade whines. "Come onnn."
"She would have a heart attack and die!" Peter protests. "And then I would have no mother figures in my life. None. Do you know how many men I know? The only other replacement is either Natasha Romanov, Sue Storm, or Betty from work."
Wade says, "I don't know which of those I want more. Spider-fam? Stick close to the Fab Four like in the comics? Or Betty-from-work who sounds like a stereotypical suburban mom?"
"Nobody," Peter tells him, "because my Aunt is not finding out."
He gets a whistle for that. "Alright, dude. But I don't pity you on that one."
"I don't want her to worry."
DP just snorts. "She'd worry, sure. No helping that - I mean, I worry. I see on the news that you and Rhino are fighting and I worry. I hear that someone saw Spiderman limping away bleeding from a fight and I worry. But she's also going to go apoplectic when she does find out."
Peter opens his mouth to say something, but Wade steamrollers right over it.
"But if someone worries, that means they care. If your Aunt didn't worry that you were Spiderman, about the fact that you were going out and fighting stuff fifteen times your size, I'd worry about that too. On top of all the other stuff. This is starting to make me sound like a worrier. But, okay, you ever hear those really cheesy sayings about true friendship and shit?"
"Friendship isn't about who you've known for the longest. It's about who walked into your life, said "I'm here for you." and proved it," Peter recites. He raises an eyebrow at him in challenge. It's from a magnet that's been accidentally glued to May's fridge for years. He's still not sure if she knows it's there permanently or not.
"Yeah, like that," Wade says, giving him that specific little look that means he's thinking, every time you open your mouth I am surprised about how much of a gigantic nerd you are, waving a hand. "People worry, Peter; it's a rule of life. But people accept, too. Parents do it all the time, if you just stop and think about it. They worry about their kids going on their first sleepover, or whatever, but they accept that they're growing up and becoming more independent and they accept that they can't coddle them forever.
"Your Aunt May deserves to know so she can worry, and so that she can accept that you're Spiderman and start helping you out from time to time. She can love you for who you fully are, spandex-covered ass and all. Don't waste the time you've got left with her lying. Savour her while she's there."
Peter blinks. "Wade, she's nearly sixty. She can't fight my battles for me when I'm sick."
"I didn't say she would. Actually, can she try? Because if a sixty year-old woman can do your job as well as you do, I get joke fodder for life. Also, I'll be taking a picture, selling it to the Daily Bugle, and breaking into your house again just to laugh in your face."
"Great, thank you." He shoves himself up to find something to eat - if he's playing hooky from work, he wants the luxury of breakfast. He fishes out a box of instant noodles; they're out of date by three weeks, but in all honesty he's had far worse so he just shrugs and starts to peel off the lid. He webs the kettle on without thinking.
"And that."
Peter looks up to see Wade pointing at the box. "What about that?"
"I've been camping out here for most of the last two weeks and it's all you have," Wade says angrily. "They're not healthy. I spent two days looking for the second place you stored your food because I was so sure you couldn't just live off this shit."
"My apartment only takes like ten minutes to go through," is for some reason the only thing Peter can think of to say.
Wade makes a frustrated noise. "Petey-pie, I love your brain, but I need you to focus on the main point," he says. "You have a mutant metabolism or whatever the fuck they're called. You need to eat more than the average human." He nods to the packet in Peter's hands. "That is less than the average human. See the problem yet?"
"It's not like I can afford much better," Peter says.
"I know," Wade says, deflating. "I know. But you can ask for help. That wonderful Aunt of yours. Me."
"You're not gonna sugar daddy me just so I can eat," he protests. He can feel his ears prickling as they go a little red. He hates charity.
"I don't think it counts as sugar daddying if I don't get nudes out of it."
Too many opportunities, too little time. Too many opportunities, too little time. Too many opportunities, too little time.
"I'm not going to say anything to that," Peter tells himself. "Okay. Well, if I'm getting the day off and I was apparently so mistaken about the kiss thing -"
"Sorely mistaken!" Wade shouts in agreement, whooping for good measure.
"- then I'm gonna nap on the couch. Wanna join?"
"Only if we put on One Day at a Time."
"That's your dealbreaker?"
"Would you rather it was something else?" Wade chimes. "What about: no spiders in the apartment."
"I can see right through that, Wade," Peter says, head muffled where it's shoved in the cupboard looking for a blanket. "You are the direct opposite of subtle."
"You want unsubtle? Share your bed with me."
Peter pulls his head out just to raise an eyebrow at him. "No."
"But I'm your esteemed and welcome guest."
"You've been squatting at my place for somewhere around two weeks, so no."
"But you have a double," Wade whinges. "I've been sleeping on it for ages, the couch is gonna suck if you make me sleep on it tonight."
"And therein lies the true beauty of the punishment," Peter agrees, ignoring the put-upon sigh in favour of sticking his head back in the cupboard.
He winces when he sees the inside: it's got one or two blankets, yes, but all of his plain-coloured ones are apparently in the wash because he only has two. There's the one with the little Erlenmeyer flasks filled with bright green liquid, arranged in a repeating pattern over the whole blanket next to some of the elements that make up stainless steel - chromium, nickel, molybdenum, silicon, aluminum, iron, and carbon, to name a few - and one with little Spiderman and Deadpool faces on it. It's obviously imperative that Wade never sees the latter, so Peter yanks the massive king-sized Science Blanket out and drags it over to dump unceremoniously on the sofa.
"You're such a nerd," Wade says as soon as he catches a glimpse of the pattern, but he accepts it anyway.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Peter yawns, waving a flippant hand. "Budge over."