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There are words in haphazard script - messy in the way you write when it’s just a note to yourself, just a reminder no one else is meant to read - across Peter’s hipbone that Liz Allan never once utters. She is gorgeous in a way that steals the words from his mouth, brilliant in a way that makes his chest tight and his hands sweat, and she isn’t his. He wants to know the words on her heart - wants to live in a world where this is all a misunderstanding, all a miscommunication that still leads to her hand in his, but that’s not the reality he’s found himself in. Because her first words to him are ‘Do you know when the meeting is?’ , and her second are ‘ Can I borrow a pencil?’ and he could wait a thousand years and he knows she’d never be the one he wants her so desperately to be. He stares in his mirror at the scrawl on his skin and imagines it might change, that they might grow into each other and not apart. They do grow, and Liz does smile at him in a way that makes his knees weak and his mouth dry, and then he tears the foundation of her life apart without a moment’s hesitation.
Regret is not something Peter feels, but something he suffers. Peter lives regret like a broken bone he cannot set, like smoke in his lungs he chokes on with each exhale, like a crumbling foundation he cannot keep together. There is a guilt in the set of his shoulders that weighs like iron and there are no words that quell the distance he cannot help but him between himself and everyone around him - but it’s not about the guilt and it’s not about the regret. Peter knows the clutch of repentance in his chest through pathways he has been forced to tread and this is different; this is the coil of something stark and violent that he suffers, coiled in his chest so tightly it feels like a physical weight. This is the slow outstretch of wrongness that doesn’t settle despite his best attempts at ignoring it, that echoes around him in every single quiet moment until it’s more than he knows how to handle.
Ten months have passed since he last stood in the middle of the wreckage of Adrian Toomes’ insane failure, but the smoke and the fire follow him back to his room like it’s his own shadow he can’t shake. Ten months is long enough for Aunt May to stop asking questions, for Mr. Stark to forget his recklessness and his mistakes, and ten months is more than long enough for his friends to forgive him for the things they know he’s refusing to say. Ten months is long enough for Peter to accept that ten months isn’t any amount of time at all.
Time passes like an ocean around him, something constant and endless that pushes and pulls him further than he thinks he’s meant to be. He resents the transience of the things he loves that move on around him like nothing has happened, like everything is fine. Normality is something he is clinging desperately to, like floating jetsam in a storm, and apparently he’s not clinging hard enough. Time is unfeeling and unthinking, cold and neutral like a wave he suffers rather than controls, and there is nothing he can do to change things to the way he thinks they should be. Ten months is a drop in the ocean; ten months into two hundred doesn’t make him forget.
So maybe he feels regret when he looks across the cafeteria to where Liz used to eat lunch and thinks about how it feels like he broke his own heart. Maybe he feels regret when he passes by the construction, where they are slowly working to rebuild the structures he damaged when he crashed an airplane into the city to stop a madman. Maybe he feels regret when he sees the lines of worry in Aunt May’s face, or when MJ stares at him in concern when she thinks he doesn’t notice, or when Ned asks too many questions that he knows he’s never going to be able to answer.
When it rains Peter thinks he can feel where the sharp metal of Toomes’ talons dug into the soft junction of his shoulder, as though there’s a bruise lying there under the surface that doesn’t know how to heal. When he lays in bed and stares at the ceiling, with the lights on and a movie playing on the tv across the room, he tries to forget the shadow of wings blocking his vision, or the weight of a building crushing him into the ground, or the way the city looks when you’re falling out of the sky. Peter lays awake and pretends he doesn’t remember what it’s like to have someone want you dead above all else - to see you still breathing and to think, ‘this needs to change.’
It’s not regret that keeps him from sleeping - it’s fear. The bitterness in the back of his throat grows worse with time and he doesn’t know how long he’s supposed to pretend like everything is fine before he starts to believe it himself. A lot of things are different now. He thinks that’s why he doesn’t sleep - why he can’t sleep - but sometimes it isn’t an option. Sometimes sleep is an inevitability more than an option; sometimes, after days of tossing and turning and far too many energy drinks, Peter falls asleep because his body refuses to do anything else. Those are the nights he suffers through strange dreams - dreams of fire in his lungs, burning up his throat like an echo that melts the skin from his bones in tattered streams. Those are the nights he dreams he burns like plastic, all noxious fumes and black coiled smoke into ash; he dreams that he burns, and burns, and burns. Some nights he dreams of glass crushed underneath his palms, of pressure on his throat from an unbreakable grip, of the taste of blood in his mouth. So he sleeps in fitful unrest and wakes to constant reminders of memories he can’t forget. He doesn’t think of the scrawl dark across the pale of his hip bone because he can’t imagine dragging someone else into the mess his life has become; he can’t imagine extending his heart to someone else who will inevitably be hurt by the world Peter has found himself in.
Becoming an Avenger has not been easy and the pathways he’s had to carve out of nothing with his own two hands are a monumental achievement. His life before being Spider-Man was not empty, but this is a purpose and a reason and he wants it with a fierceness he doesn’t think he’s ever felt before - but it’s not like it doesn’t come with its ups and its downs. Because even if he intends to stay only in the city, even if he doesn’t intend to get embroiled in every single monster-of-the-day that shows up on the Avengers’ doorstep, it feels like “the city” keeps expanding day by day.
Peter spends a lot of time on the rooftop of his own apartment building, on the cold concrete, instead of his unmade bed. He assures himself he’s safe - as though safety is something quantifiable, something you find on a shelf for sale when you pick up eggs - and convinces himself it’s just a bout of insomnia that’ll pass; he’s been insisting for months, but if you lie enough to everyone else in your life eventually you’ll start lying to yourself too. Safety is a promise he made Happy and Tony a while ago, back when he thought it was a promise he could keep. Safety is a concept he hasn’t had time to work back into a feeling, something that is stretched out around him like a joke, because every time he closes his eyes he remembers the feeling of concrete crushing against his skull - the feeling of someone pressing his face into dirt that smells of jet fuel - the click of a pistol in the backseat of a car. He thinks he should be used to people trying to kill him by now, because there certainly hasn’t been a shortage of it ever since he started sticking his nose into everyone else’s business, but he’s not used to it at all.
There are nights he blacks out, fatigue like a collar around his neck that’s wired to his bones, and wakes up two hours later disoriented and anxious. There are mornings Peter wakes with his heart in his throat, with the sound of his breathing sharp in the quiet of his room - like his voice echoing in an empty warehouse, to the cacophony of crumbling concrete - and it keeps him awake.
It’s ten months on the dot when everything falls apart at the seams. He’s too far away from the rest of the team and Karen’s warning comes far too late. He moves just a second too slow and the massive, venomous lizard terrorizing midtown Manhattan swallows Peter in one large, impressive gulp like he’s little more than a bothersome fly. His webs don’t stick to its teeth and his suit can’t get any traction; he slides down its throat like the most terrifying amusement park ride he’s ever been on and does all he can to get himself stuck enough to not be digested by radioactive stomach acid. It’s impossible to hear anything over the sound of his own panic and the contraction of throat muscles attempting to swallow him, so he doesn’t hear the sword that skewers a scant four inches to the right of his shoulder - but he definitely sees it. He sees the slice of the blade upwards, through skin and muscle and bile, and then a hand is reaching blindly into the screaming lizard’s throat and pulling him back onto the street.
The contents of the lizard’s insides spill out onto the asphalt, sliding past Peter’s legs and down into the sewer grate near them. He stumbles onto his own two feet, steadied by the grip still dug into the curve of his bicep - steadied by the solid, warm muscle underneath the gloves of his hands. The red of Deadpool’s suit is bright against the green slime now coating it and behind them the lizard is writhing around madly, gurgling and suffocating and thrashing violently.
There are a swarm of tiny lizards scurrying out from the alleyway and Peter doesn’t want to think about lizard egg sacs or how he was probably going to be their regurgitated meal at a later date. And being nearly eaten alive by a giant amphibian is scarring enough on its own without adding it to the list of things that keep Peter up at night, but he doesn’t get a chance to dwell on it. There is the sound of Iron Man’s thrusters in the air and he can see Natasha fling herself into the alley ahead of him.
Deadpool steadies him on his feet, the force in his hand deceptively gentle for someone who just dug him from the throat muscles of an alien. He hums thoughtfully in the back of his throat and casually says, as though it means nothing, “I always thought you’d be taller.”
Peter’s breath catches in his throat, stopped motionless along with the beat of his heart that is too stunned to move, and he can’t ignore the way it feels as though his every fiber has been lit on fire. The clutch of invisible fingers plunge into his ribcage, the pressure that rests there like a weight that could crush him to dust, is sudden and suffocating in a way he has no experience with. This isn’t the curl of Liz’s perfect lips into a secret smile, this isn’t half of the words emblazoned on his hip carelessly tossed around by acquaintances who don’t know the hope - the fear - that their voice causes. This is the searing of another person’s tongue imprinting fire down into the curve of his bones, like they’re carving a place out for themselves that he can’t erase. The words on his hip - I always thought you’d be taller - are burning violently and it’s - he can’t –
“Oh great,” Tony says, voice distorted slightly from the modulator in the Iron Man suit, “they explode when you kill them. Splendid.”
Deadpool inhales deeply and pulls out the pistol at his hip, eyeing it briefly as though he can guess how many bullets remain by the weight alone. He exhales noisily and gives Peter a look he can’t really decipher through the mask, but his voice is deeply exasperated, “A hero’s work is never done.”
Peter nods dumbly, his tongue like lead in his mouth and his hands shaking, and the moment passes like it had never been anything to start. He follows numbly, to help clean up the rest of the mess that is attempting to destroy what’s left of the neighborhood, and he thinks, almost wildly, ‘Maybe it’s not him .’
The denial is the easiest lie he’s felt on the tip of his tongue. Wade Wilson isn’t an Avenger and his assistance is contingent on monetary compensation and the correlation of events that fit his own schedule; he doesn’t stick around after the fight and it’s the perfect setup for Peter to forget about him entirely. He tries to think about the trauma of almost being eaten alive - tries to focus on the cleanup and disposal of radioactive alien lizards that can’t be left for the street sweepers - and it’s almost effortless to forget what happened.
‘You’re kind of short for a guy, ’ MJ had said, apropos of nothing, in the midst of their study session two and a half months ago, and that’s close - it’s so, so close. He knows he had felt a skip then, like a hiccup in his breathing that felt like fear and excitement all rolled into one, and it was close - it was so close to being the words written on his skin. He thinks that maybe there’s no way of knowing how this works, of how precise it all has to be. He thinks maybe there’s no need to freak out about possibilities when you’re not sure - when you’re not absolutely, one hundred percent positive.
The scrawl across the curve of Peter’s hip is dark, dark black in the mirror when he stands in his tiny bathroom smelling of sewage and trying not to panic. He thinks maybe it’s always been so dark - that maybe his skin is paler recently, or maybe he’s just never noticed the contrast. The words feel tender and new, sharp like a shard of glass he can’t remove, and his hands are shaking when he scrubs the pads of his fingers across the writing like it’s ink he can smudge away. It feels no different to touch it - no different than it’s ever been - but his heart sits in his throat regardless, like it knows what has happened despite his feverish insistence otherwise.
‘It doesn’t have to change anything ,’ he thinks to himself, staring in the mirror at the words that refuse to budge from where they’ve permanently etched themselves into his skin, his blood, his bones. ‘Nobody has to know.’
He doesn’t have to accept this. He doesn’t have to accept that every fiber of his being has entwined itself around the discontinuous existence of a madman. Nothing has to change. He can ignore the burning at his side, the scrawl he can feel through the stretch of his suit. He can lay awake and try not to remember the dig of metal into the curve of his shoulder and try not to remember the press of fingers into the muscles of his bicep. He can lay awake and ignore the feeling of the walls closing in around him, ignore the incessant memory of crushing weight on the set of his shoulders. It’s been ten months since Adrian Toomes went to jail, since Liz Allan moved to Portland, since Peter forgot what it was like to sleep at night. It’s been ten months and all he can think about it is all the things he thought he would be able to forget by now.
‘Look, do me a favor. I know he hangs around your area, but if he approaches you about… let’s say anything - web him to a dumpster and report back,’ Tony had said, what feels like forever ago. ‘He’s dangerous. Unstable.’
Those ten months had come and gone without a single flash of red and black, but maybe the flood gates have broken because it’s barely forty eight hours after Peter’s washed the lizard saliva from his hair when he finds Deadpool carving up what is a truly impressive number of machine gun-wielding men in the middle of a mostly empty parking garage. Then a week later that he stumbles across him while in pursuit of a group of spectacularly average bank robbers. Then two more before they end up running from the same oversized extraterrestrial baddie of the day who thinks he’s going to conquer a planet purely through blind ambition and exceptionally thick - but not Hulk-proof - skin. Peter begins to see red and black streaks so often throughout the city that he’s starting to think it might be more than a coincidence. Or maybe that’s just the lack of sleep making him severely paranoid.
-/-
It’s only one more week until he finds him bleeding out in an alley on 32nd, his left arm a tangled mess of flesh all the way up to the joint in his shoulder and his suit more black than red from the charr burned across it like paint. It’s raining heavily enough that Peter almost misses him entirely, almost misses the tinge of copper in the air amidst the smell of rain on hot asphalt, and it’s only a flash of lightning and a glimpse of his familiar suit that stops him dead in his tracks.
Peter doesn’t web him to anything; he doesn’t call anyone.
“If it isn’t my favorite non-caped crusader,” Wade says, jawbone protruding in such a way that it clicks when he talks and Peter’s heart plummets into his stomach like a lead weight. “Don’t worry - it’s worse than it looks.”
“Oh my god,” Peter mutters to himself, then again, and again, until he thinks he might be having a panic attack. He clutches a hand over the scrawl on his hip that burns like fire melting the skin from his bones, like someone tearing through flesh and muscle in search of something he’s been insisting isn’t there. The pain that curls around his thigh almost brings him to his knees, but maybe it’s pure stubborn will that keeps him on his feet. He’s spent a week and a half pretending the words on his skin will fade like a bruise with time if he ignores them long enough, if he resists his body’s betrayal long enough. Maybe if he doesn’t read the words written there, maybe if he doesn’t see the man they belong to, he can pretend they were never there at all, but it hasn’t been working out quite to plan.
The man they belong to won’t quit showing up in his life, like he’s being pulled along behind Peter on a string, and he’s impossible to ignore.
“If you’re going to spew,” Wade continues, as though he’s unaware every movement of his mouth is accompanied by his jawbone knocking against his teeth, “try not to do it on me.”
Peter turns away and braces an arm against the grime-covered brick wall of the alleyway and tries to calm the churning of his stomach, the staccato of his heart in his chest. He breathes in and out and stares at the disgusting brickwork underneath his gloved hands and thinks, ‘Why me? Why? Why me? ’
He tries not to imagine the world is actively out to get him, but it’s hard to push the thought aside when it kind of feels like he is continually drawing the short end of every single stick possible. Although at this point maybe it goes beyond worlds - maybe there are galaxies in universes in dimensions that are actively plotting against him, because this is apparently going to be the rest of his life. He thinks maybe there are a lot of people who try to forget about the writing they’re stuck with, that maybe there are plenty of people who choose not to be with someone they didn’t choose for themselves, but this isn’t the same . Because this isn’t a classmate he sees at lunch, or someone who sits next to him on the train, or who passes him change at the corner store. This is someone who shows up when things are at their worst, when the Avengers are so desperate Tony calls people he probably shouldn’t, and maybe Peter should consider calling him an ally before something happens that turns him into a foe.
“Okay,” Peter says to the wall, like it will give him the moral support he needs. He couldn’t leave Adrian Toomes to burn in his own self-created fire and he absolutely can’t leave Deadpool to sit in his own blood in an alley that already smells enough like death. He doesn’t know Wade Wilson well enough to know how extensive his list of enemies is, but he’s been mistaken for him enough at a distance to get a feel for just how long that hypothetical list might be. Maybe there’s futility in worrying about the wellbeing of someone who can’t be killed, who will continue to regenerate - eventually - from a truly disturbing amount of physical trauma, but Peter can’t make himself walk away. He takes a deep breath and steadies himself to turn back around, which is when he notices that Deadpool’s severed hand is laying conveniently near his foot and –
Peter doesn’t scream, but the sound that comes out of his mouth sounds suspiciously like one anyway. He nearly brains himself against wall when he forgets all balance and grace and stumbles over his own two feet trying to back away from, and not step on, the hand that is, for all intents and purposes, probably harmless. He falls backwards and over a lidless trash can, which goes with him when he tumbles head over feet into a heap in the alley.
“Wow,” Deadpool says, voice dry. “Just wow.”
Peter rolls up onto his heels and points an accusatory finger at him, choosing frustration over embarrassment, and hisses, “You did that on purpose!”
He expects a quip back, but doesn’t receive one - which, really, all the better. He moves back onto his feet and tries to steel himself for the distasteful task ahead, only to notice that Deadpool has gone noticeably still for someone who wasn’t moving much to begin with.
The problem with convincing himself that there’s been a mistake, that the words written on his hip are still waiting for him to find someone to say them, is that Peter has spent all this time thinking ‘he’s not the one’ and hasn’t once given any thought to the fact that the words on his body are a two way street. He has spent an unimaginable amount of time denying their existence, but realizes he hasn’t once stopped to think about what’s written on Wade’s skin.
“Oh ,” Deadpool breathes, jawbone clicking.
He must be in an immeasurable amount of pain, but he sounds like he’s been punched in the stomach all the same and it twists something awful in Peter’s chest that has no right to be there at all. There’s something hollow ebbing itself through his ribcage that feels a lot like rejection, that aches a lot like the emptiness he feels when he looks in the mirror and assures himself the words must be a mistake. There is a tension in the set of Wade’s shoulders that Peter feels in his own, like the stiffness in his spine caused by the mortification creeping up the back of his neck like a sunburn. His own expression is hidden by his mask, but he can’t hide the way his posture straightens, can’t hide the nervous energy that stretches itself through every limb in his body until he’s jittery with it.
There must have been something he said to Deadpool before this moment. There must be something - anything - that he’s said to him, at least in passing, but suddenly he can’t remember a word of it. He doesn’t remember the aftermath of the battles they’ve been in together, or the times they’ve ran into each other in the middle of poorly thought plans, and he remembers the arguments between Deadpool and Iron Man but he’s never gotten in the middle of them-
Peter clears his throat and tries to pretend he’s not quite as self-conscious as he suddenly feels. His face is burning, all the way down his chest, but there’s no way anyone but him could know that and there’s no need for anyone to know regardless. There’s bitterness in his mouth that he can’t swallow that tastes a lot like jealousy, like regret, but it has no place there. It’s a ridiculous gut reaction that he doesn’t have to let control him.
He crosses and uncrosses his arms, unsure, and then moves back across the alley to where Deadpool is still sitting, still watching him carefully.
“Okay,” he says, glancing towards the alley entrance and then back again, “I’m gonna fireman carry you out of here to somewhere safer and - that’s what’s going to happen. So if you don’t like that idea I guess you should probably say something.”
He fights the urge to cross his arms again; he shifts his weight from one foot to another.
“And they say chivalry is dead,” Deadpool replies, but his words are careful and even in a way that makes Peter anxious. “You’re a buck twenty soaking wet and like four feet tall, but sure. Carry away.”
“I am five foot eight,” Peter corrects, maybe a little more harshly than he had intended - but ‘I thought you’d be taller’ is burning into his hip, impossible to ignore or forget or live with, and the longer he stares at the disaster of Deadpool’s wounds the more uncomfortable he feels. "And - trust me - I'm stronger than I look."
He wonders how much of their meeting tonight was chance and how much of it was the invisible pull of strings that are wrapped so tightly around his every bone he feels like a ragdoll being dragged along in the dirt. He tries not to think of Liz Allan’s delicate smile, tries not to look at the bones protruding through Wade’s skin that will have to be pushed back into place.
Peter takes another large breath, for courage and for patience, and crouches next to Deadpool’s legs; one of them is dislocated at the hip, the other is in surprisingly decent shape considering the rest of him. Peter thinks about asking what happened - about why it looks a little like he went fishing for a grenade in a running garbage disposal - but he doesn’t think that’s something he really wants to know. It’s easy enough to get Deadpool’s remaining arm around his neck, but the aforementioned height difference does make it complicated to get all of Deadpool’s weight onto his shoulders without assistance. He staggers a bit to find his footing again, thrown off balance by long limbs and the smell of singed flesh. He doesn’t think about the weight of concrete digging into the skin of his shoulders, or the press of cold metal crushing his bones.
The skies are not getting any clearer and thunder is still rumbling low through the city and it’s still pouring. Deadpool is unpleasantly warm, and smells like blood and burning plastic, and he doesn’t think about that either. Peter takes an extra thoughtful second to web the severed hand off of the ground and then they’re slowly, slowly making their way down the street. There is man wearing two beanies rummaging through a trashcan when they emerge from the alley, and a woman waiting at the stop for a bus that is already fifteen minutes late, and it’s a testament to the people of New York that neither of them so much as bat an eyelash at the two human disasters stumbling down the sidewalk in the middle of the night.
Peter glances around at the dimly lit streets.
“Hey, Karen, is there somewhere we can hide out for a while? Maybe an abandoned building or something?”
“There is a storefront for lease two blocks south,” Karen tells him, without pausing, at the same time that Deadpool says, “Who the fuck is Karen?”
The real problem is not pretending this isn’t something that has happened; it’s not about pretending he’s okay with it - it’s never been about that. He doesn’t have to pretend that he’s over a choice that was made for him and he doesn’t have to pretend that it’s not haunting his every waking moment like any other regrettable choice he’s made. Everyone around him is doing a splendid job of pretending to forget everything that has happened, but Peter can’t keep up with all of the portions of his life he’s trying to come to terms with and all the mistakes that won’t let him sleep.
He’s had a long time to become accustomed to people being so incredibly out of his reach and he’s no stranger to the twist of something awful in his chest when he has to look at someone and pretend he’s accepted the way that they look at someone else. But it’s one thing to lament the things that could’ve been that didn’t happen and it’s another thing entirely to pretend the warmth of Deadpool’s wrist in his hand doesn’t fill a portion of the hole that was carved out of him years ago. Every night this week he has laid awake and tried to pretend he doesn’t mind the clutch of fear in his chest, or the memories of fire scorching at the tips of his fingers, or the echo of something missing that won’t be ignored. There are mornings he wakes up with his fingers digging into the sheets, like they’re seeking out an absence to assure him he’s alone, and there are mornings he can’t swallow around the thickness in his throat that tastes bitter and rancid.
There’s a side entrance that is easy enough to get open with the right foot-to-door ratio and the interior of the store is strewn with half-started construction projects. Peter leaves a trail of tiny puddles from the entryway across the unfinished concrete floor, past piles of trash and power tools to find the emptiest of the four corners. He lowers Deadpool carefully down onto the floor and leans him up against the exposed drywall littered with uneven patches of mediocre sanding.
“Cozy,” Deadpool says and Peter could not be happier to return his webbed, bloody hand back to him. It’s still in the webbing when Deadpool picks it up and waves it at him, like it’s a stage prop and not a portion of his body. “Thanks for the helping hand, Spidey. High five!”
“Dude, gross. I am not high fiving your severed hand.”
“Aw, come on, don’t leave me hanging.”
Peter crosses the room and pulls the door shut. There’s not really any way to lock it, but he thinks they’re probably the only idiots still out this late in the middle of a thunderstorm. There are no lights either, even if there is probably electricity running to the building, but it’s easy enough to find his way without it.
He could leave. He probably should leave and head home - work on helping Ned install his new graphics card that they’ve been putting off all week - but he doesn’t. Instead he lowers himself down onto the floor next to Wade and let’s his head hit the drywall with a thud. He should’ve left more space between them because he can feel the warmth radiating from next to him, thinks that if he moved even the slightest bit their shoulders might brush, but it seems awkward to scoot away.
“Then, with skill and grace, they continued to ignore the rampaging, drunk elephant in the room,” Wade says and the light, nonchalant tone of his voice is a little grating when Peter thought they could get through this without having to make things worse. “So what should we talk about then? Sportsball? Game of Thrones? The girl you’ve got a debilitating crush on that you’re probably guessing is not the one wearing this surprisingly well-tailored bodysuit?”
Peter bristles, but tries to force himself to keep his voice carefully neutral, “There’s no girl.”
“Oh, come on, you’re sixteen - there’s a girl.”
There goes the carefully neutral tone. Peter can’t keep himself from visibly recoiling, can’t help the fear that suddenly lurches through him without warning and he says, trying and probably failing to not sound as tense as he feels, “I’m not. I’m not sixteen.”
“Sure you are,” Wade replies, easy, without pause. He taps the side of his covered neck with his in-tact hand and Peter realizes, with a jolt like he’s been physically shocked, that it must be where his words are. “Sixteen years, three months, and eleven days.”
‘They’re probably older than you ,’ Aunt May had said, what feels like forever ago, and that had been something of a catalyst back then, hadn’t it? Because Liz Allan is older than him, is beautiful and smart and perfect, and back then that was the only thing that felt like anything of importance. Peter was born with the words already on his skin and he tries and fails to imagine what it might be like to get them later; he tries to imagine waiting, years and years for the words to appear, and can’t. He tries to imagine Wade Wilson filling in the concave where Liz Allan was supposed to fit and can’t imagine that either.
“There’s not a girl,” he says finally, instead of any of the other denials wrestling with the tip of his tongue, and the shape of the words in his mouth feel like a sort of finality that maybe he hasn’t really given himself yet. Saying it aloud loosens something caught in the set of his spine, something painful and heavy that he’s been carrying like a thorn. He digs his fingers into his knees and feels the fatigue pulling at every limb in his body like a lead weight. “I mean, yeah, there was a while ago, but I, uh, kind of messed it up, I guess. And her dad was a super villain so, I mean, it wouldn’t have worked out anyway.”
“Them’s the breaks.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Peter replies, rubbing his palms against his legs. He doesn’t realize he’s been staring at the curve of Wade’s neck until he asks, as though his mouth has decided it doesn’t need his brain’s approval before it says anything, “Can I see it?”
“Whoa, Spidey, I’m not that kind of girl-”
“I didn’t-” he can feel his blood rush to his face, despite the fact that he’s one hundred percent sure Deadpool is laughing at him. “You know what I mean. Your words.”
“Your words,” Wade corrects and there’s something serious in the tone of his voice, something so absolute that Peter feels briefly lightheaded with it. It’s gone just as quickly as it had arrived and Wade’s voice is light again when he lifts up the edge of his mask, like it’s no big deal, to reveal layers upon layers of scars upon scars, “Although, there’s not much to see. My best pal Francis took those a while ago, baby boy. Nothing left here but the makings of a low budget horror movie.”
The words might still be there, somewhere, but Peter doesn’t know that he could find them. Wade’s skin is a mess and the closure Peter had hoped he would feel once he saw - or didn’t see - the words scrawled there doesn’t happen. Instead he watches Wade tuck his mask back into the neck of his suit and feels…
“Oh,” he breathes, unconsciously placing his own hand over the mark on his hip. There are more questions he suddenly wants to ask, suddenly wants to know more than anything else, but he finds he can’t force himself to voice them. He wants to ask ‘How did you know it was me then? ’ but that almost sounds like a confession - almost sounds like acceptance - and he doesn’t feel ready for that. He feels suddenly overwhelmed with how unprepared he is for all of this, for all of the things he thought he could ignore to come to light so suddenly. Peter feels the weight of his regret, of his fear, of his fatigue in the set of his shoulders more than he feels the dampness of his suit.
Wade adds nothing after that, no further insight or background, and Peter can’t bring himself to ask. He is stricken momentarily with the thought that Wade might ask the same of him in return; he realizes there is nothing keeping Wade from asking to see the words he’s carrying and the thought of showing him makes Peter feel numb. He is terrified that Wade will ask… and when he doesn’t ask at all it feels like a punch to the gut he wasn’t prepared for either. He reminds himself that this is what he wanted - that he’s wanted nothing more this entire time than to be tied to anyone else - and Wade’s disinterest in him shouldn’t hurt like this.
Nothing has ever hurt like this.
Peter doesn’t expect to fall asleep, because at this point it’s so rare that it’s better not to hope for it, and doesn’t realize he has until he opens his eyes to the sound of the street sweepers. There’s a crick in his neck that won’t work itself out and his suit is mostly dry and there are dry streaks of blood in the spot where Wade had been. He and his severed hand are both gone and Peter knows it’s unlikely he’s healed entirely, knows that the most likely scenario is that he waited until Peter was asleep and then hobbled home in the rain.
He swallows around the jumble of unwarranted emotions that have jammed themselves so firmly into his throat and makes his way back home to wash the concrete dust from his hair.
-/-
“Isn’t that guy like your arch nemesis?” Ned asks in awe, two days later, with Spanish homework and a bag of Doritos between them.
Peter stares, incredulous, “What? No! I don’t - Ned, I don’t have an arch nemesis. ”
“Every superhero has an arch nemesis,” he replies and there’s a placating tone to his voice that Peter is going to overlook. “So this guy’s an Avenger then? Did he fight Captain America with you?”
“He’s not an Avenger either,” Peter grabs the bag of chips and stares into it woefully. “He’s nobody, okay? He’s just this guy.”
“Okay,” Ned says, slowly, brows knitted the way they do when he’s putting together a puzzle larger than expected. Mostly he seems more confused than before. “You just bring him up a lot. He sounds like he could be your arch nemesis.”
Maybe Deadpool should be his arch nemesis. Maybe it would lend a little to his sudden unexplained persistence in Peter’s life, in the way that he shows up like a tornado and leaves everything worse than when he arrived. It’s only six days after the incident in the alley before he spots Deadpool and a bright assortment of X-Men on the news, only eight days from then until he hears from Black Widow that he and Tony have been at it again, and barely two weeks before Peter has to face that he’s not going away.
It says a lot about Peter’s state of mind that he realizes he doesn’t want him to go away.
“Okay, I feel like I haven’t irrevocably betrayed your trust in this universe,” Deadpool says, from where he’s suspended in webbing from the street light, “and yet here we are.”
“You can’t kill everyone you don’t like,” Peter explains patiently, like maybe they’ve had this conversation before - like maybe they’ll have it a dozen times more.
“I feel like Headless Nick and his friends here would disagree with you.”
“I mean,” he clarifies, gesturing to where the six or seven remaining henchmen, who are lucky to still be alive, are webbed to the side of a building and struggling in vain to get away, “that you shouldn’t . It’s not right.”
Masked eyes narrow, “Oh, but it feels right, Spidey. It feels oh-so-right.”
-/-
To be fair, Peter doesn’t intend on letting himself get wrapped up in Deadpool’s life. New York is a huge city and there’s more than enough crime in it for him to be preoccupied at least a dozen blocks away from wherever Deadpool is ruining someone’s day. He should want to put distance between them, to make it easier to pretend nothing is different, but he finds that it’s far easier not to. They’ve fallen remarkably easy into a coexistence that somehow skirts around ever bringing up the fact that their souls are intertwined in a way that is unfathomable and Peter finds that everything is easier when he stops fighting the current he’s caught in.
Eleven months turns into a year and nothing has to change, but it does anyway. The nightmares don’t stop and the panic attacks don’t get easier, but there are times he sleeps through the night and that’s more than what he had before. There are still too many nights spent on rooftops instead of under his blankets, but it’s progress - it’s something. The words on his hip don’t disappear - burn sometimes so violently that it brings him to his knees and he wonders, heartbeat stuck in his throat, ‘Is he okay? ’ He knows there is futility in being worried for someone who can’t die - someone who will outlive him a hundred times over - someone who doesn’t want his concern regardless.
“We need to talk about your bedside manner,” Wade groans, when Peter finally manages to pull him to the top of the 10th floor staircase and drag them both out onto the rooftop. “What’s the word I’m looking for? ‘Charming’? No, that’s not it.”
“What’s even the point of being immortal if someone can cap you in the knees and make you completely useless ?” Peter finally heaves the two of them far enough away from the staircase that he can breathe in something other than smoke and ash. “What was your master plan? You just lay there while the building collapses?”
“Well then I’d be on the first floor, wouldn’t I, Spidey?”
“You’re going to be on the first floor because I’m going to throw you down the fire escape.”
Wade waves his hand around in a way that probably means something to him, “Really? You’ve got that fancy suit and I don’t even get to cling to your muscular chest while you swing me around the city?”
Peter is going to leave him on this rooftop. “Are you kidding me? The last time I tried that you purposely threw off my trajectory and we ended up in a garbage truck!”
“Debatably a better location than a burning building, but what do I know?”
Peter groans and walks over to the fire escape that may have once adhered to building codes, but now appears to be held together mostly by rust and dreams. There are windows breaking below them, and smoke rising, and he’s not sure if his essay was due this week or next but he gets the sinking feeling it was probably last week. He feels like everything comes in threes.
He shakes the fire escape railing with one hand and it groans pitifully in response.
“You could just leave me here,” Wade offers, like it’s the obvious suggestion. “I can’t die, you know. You don’t have to ride in on your horse and carry me off into the sunset every day. Take some vacation days maybe.”
“What?” Peter turns away from the fire escape and wishes his mask could accurately portray his incredulity. “No . I’m not leaving you here. Geez - what is wrong with you?”
“Where do I start? How much time do you have? You might want to get comfortable.”
Peter doesn’t leave him - can’t leave him. Not in the alley, not on the rooftop, not in any of the dozen or so situations they find themselves suffering in the weeks following. He doesn’t want to acknowledge the part of him that finds Wade’s presence in his life inexplicably right.
-/-
There is some exasperatingly defective part of his brain that, despite constant evidence of the failed logic behind it, is hopelessly optimistic in the face of insurmountable obstacles. His blind optimism wouldn’t be so damning on its own, but coupled with the absolutely worthless self-preservation instincts he’s still clinging to after all this time it’s become a ticking time bomb just waiting for the right opportunity to blow up in his face. Peter feels like his mind generates the most grossly misplaced affection at the most inopportune moments of his life, just small enough to slink past his mental radar and out into his world to cause him mayhem at a later date, and he’s starting to feel like his subconscious is actively plotting against him. Because, despite his struggles otherwise, he only falls for people he has absolutely no business whatsoever falling for.
Peter’s heart and his mind are constant obstacles he can’t overcome that have been conspiring against him since day one. He isn’t even completely over Liz - not really. He spends a lot of time convincing himself that he is and he spends even more time ignoring that ache in his chest that reminds him he’s not, but some of it is still residual affection he doesn’t think he’ll ever be rid of. Some of it is the idea of her, some of it is the reluctance to let go of the love that’s he’s cultivated for most of his life, and it’s easier to move on from that; it’s easier when he realizes he’s in love with an idea, not a person.
Maybe that’s what makes it worse when he falls in love again. Because it’s not the girl who sits beside him in English and smiles at him from underneath her bangs, and it’s not MJ who steals his best pens when she thinks he’s not looking, and it’s not the new girl at Starbucks who always misspells his name because that would be far, far too easy. Because against his better judgement and despite the denial that churns so thick in his stomach he can practically taste it in the back of his throat, he falls for the only person more dangerous than the daughter of the man who tried to crush him underneath a building.
‘You just bring him up a lot ,’ Ned had said, what feels like a hundred thousand years ago, and remembering that conversation makes the back of Peter’s neck heat up and his skin itch with embarrassment. He tries not to think that he’s been so obvious that even Ned was able to pick up on it - that maybe this was all just a recent lapse in judgment brought on by stress and loneliness and a desire for crushing disappointment. He feels like he’s fought this tooth and nail since the day they met, since the day Wade pulled him out of a lizard’s throat and saved his life for no reason other than that he had felt like it. Peter feels like he’s spent an unreasonable amount of time trying not to fall in love with him.
Not that Peter’s feelings on the subject make any difference. If he closes his eyes he can still see the scarred skin of Wade’s neck, busy and marred but unmistakably missing any writing, and that’s something he can’t force himself to forget.
To his credit Peter tries not to dwell; he tries to move on. He’s more than used to misplaced affection and the hollow feeling it ebbs out in the center of his chest. There are people who share very similar interests as him, who enjoy an occasional bout of Mario Kart, or watching the entire box set of Deep Space Nine with the actor commentary on, or trying Chinese restaurants in sketchy strip malls that stay open until four in the morning. There are seven billion people in the world who are not Wade Wilson and Peter only has to fall for one of them to get this out of his system once and for all. He tries to move on. He tries not to notice the pulses of pain in his hip that remind him his soulmate is a madman who can’t die but who is going to try his damnedest to do so anyway. He tries not to look for the flashes of black and red in places where they shouldn’t be, doing things he’s supposed to disapprove of and definitely not get caught up in himself.
MJ steals the brownie off of his tray and sits down just far enough away that she could feign dissociation if he starts doing something exceptionally socially ostracizing. There are a stack of college brochures hidden amongst her math homework that she’s pretending she doesn’t own and isn’t reading, but Peter can’t even bring himself to call her out on it.
“You’ve been extra weird lately,” she says, and she’s not wrong. He feels extra weird – feels constantly stuck in that anxiousness of leaving the house and knowing you forgot something but being unable to remember what it might have been. His every waking moment feels like a rush of superheroes, and calculus, and ignoring the crushing weight of dissonance that won’t leave him alone.
He should make a joke, or throw some of his corn at her, but instead he sighs heavily and says, staring at his uneaten food, “My soulmate lost his mark in a disfiguring accident and I don’t know if he even wants me.”
MJ’s mouth stretches into a line and she stares at him, unblinking, for a lengthy amount of time before sliding the brownie back onto his tray. “That’s really shitty.”
He can’t disagree, even if it kind of feels like some of this might be his own fault. “Yeah, it’s not great.”
“Well,” she says slowly, and he can see the gears in her head turning as she tries to work out the best way to console him. He thinks she’s probably thirty seconds away from patting him on the head and going there, there, but instead she scoots her tray a little closer and says, “Maybe you should just ask.”
He stares at her. “Ask?”
“You said you don’t know if he likes you, so just...you know...ask. Then you’ll know for sure.”
“It’s really not that simple.”
“It could be that simple if you weren’t so dramatic.”
“No, I mean, it’s not like-” he groans, and barely misses his tray when he lets his head drop onto the table. “Look, we’re kind of super different and he’s… kind of older. I don’t know.”
“You’re probably right,” she says, turning back to her own food. “It wouldn’t work out. You definitely know better than all the cosmic powers of the universe.”
The universe’s best intentions probably work for most people, but there are always outliers. There are always people – or beings – who don’t fall within the mold. Peter doesn’t know how far into the unknown this whole soulmates thing goes and he doesn’t know if people like Thor, if creations like Ultron, are part of that plan. He thinks maybe Wade Wilson was part of the plan, a long time ago, but that maybe Deadpool wasn’t; he doesn’t know that anyone – cosmic powers or not – could plan for Deadpool.
He places the brownie back on her tray, because she probably deserves it for being right.
“Okay,” he says, trying not to sound as terrified as he feels, “I’ll ask. Nobody ever died of rejection, right?”
“No, really, you should take theater. I think you’d fit right in.”
-/-
MJ sends him a text later that night that reads ‘don’t chicken out’ and another one twenty minutes later, like she had to psyche herself up to send it, ‘you’re a cool guy when you want to be – if he doesn’t think so then you don’t need him. ’
Which is true. Peter has lived seventeen years of his life perfectly fine on his own, with the support of his friends and family, and he doesn’t need anyone else. The burning in his hip when Wade loses an eye or falls off a building, or whatever it is he does when Peter isn’t keeping an eye on him, is painful and obstructive but it’s not the end of the world. Maybe it was easier to ignore the writing on his skin when he hadn’t made that connection, when he hadn’t heard the words spoken from the person they belonged to, but it’s not impossible to live his life with this regret. There are plenty of other things to spend his time thinking about and he has plenty to keep him busy with all of his work with the Avengers. When it comes right down to it MJ is right: he doesn’t need Wade. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t want him.
It’s been a year, but everything is changing.
“Spidey, we have to stop meeting like this,” Wade says, and he’s pressing down so hard onto the curve of Peter’s shoulder that it feels like he might break it. It feels like he could crush the bones in his fingers if he wanted, like metal claws, but he doesn’t. “What will the neighbors think?”
Peter tries to laugh, but he’s bleeding internally and his breath is rattling in his chest and he’s terrified, “Yeah, I’d hate to ruin your reputation.”
There’s still a bullet lodged in Peter’s shoulder that shouldn’t be there. There’s blood down the side of his suit that definitely shouldn’t be there.
“The Justice League is on their way,” Wade continues, like there’s no rush - like they have all the time in the world - like his hands aren’t wet. “Or the Village People, or whoever it is you spend all your time with.”
The pressure against his shoulder doesn’t leave, but then there are fingers at the edge of his mask, grazing against the skin of his neck, and Peter panics. He wraps a hand around Wade’s wrist, breath wheezing in the back of his throat and his shoulder throbbing, but Wade is still remarkably calm.
“Chillax,” he says, wriggling his fingers. “You can trust me. I’m all about being secretive.”
Maybe Peter has lost too much blood for rational thought, because, inexplicably, he does trust him. He releases his grip on Wade’s wrist and lets him - with his heart in his throat and chills in his spine - maneuver the mask only up over his mouth so that he can breathe. Maybe it should make it easier to breath, but his breath gets caught in his throat by the careful movements of Wade’s fingers and the warmth of him when everything else is terribly cold.
“Everyone knows who you are,” Peter says, finally, to distract himself from the hollow feeling in his chest that has nothing to do with being shot. “You are the worst at secrets.”
There’s the sound of wind from far away, like the whirl of helicopter blades disrupting the air. There’s probably going to be a severe lecture involved, hopefully sometime after they pull the bullet out of his shoulder and hopefully while he’s on some seriously good medication, but he can’t think about that right now. Instead all he can notice is where Deadpool’s knee is touching the curve of his hip, where there are words he put there that are thrumming like static in his head; all he can notice is the press of Wade’s hands into the mess at his shoulder, the twitch in his wrists that belies his calm.
The distress beacon in his suit needs tweaking, because it should have gone off the moment the bullet hit him and didn’t. The distress beacon didn’t go off and it didn’t matter either way, because Wade still found him long before anyone else even knew he was in danger.
“Just an idea, but maybe leave getting shot to the professionals,” Wade suggests casually, and if Peter didn’t know better he’d say that, despite the levity in his voice, it almost sounds like he’s worried. “I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, but just a thought.”
“Don’t be a jerk,” he replies, over the whirl of the helicopter descending. He can see a glint of red over one of the rooftops that is definitely Iron Man. There is definitely a lecture in his future. “It’s not a picnic for me either whenever you decide to get made into Swiss cheese.”
Wade huffs out a laugh. “I can’t die, baby boy. It’s a little different.”
‘Don’t chicken out ,’ MJ had said, but Peter suddenly doesn’t know that this is something he needs to put into words; he doesn’t know that this is something that he has to ask to know the answer to. Because the words on Wade’s neck are undeniably missing, if they were ever really there to start, but their existence or non-existence feels so suddenly inconsequential. There is a pull that Peter feels between them that he knows starts in the curve of his hip, but maybe it’s more than just skin deep. There’s tension in the set of Wade’s shoulders, in the curl of his hands wrist deep in Peter’s blood, and maybe that says more than the words on his hip ever have. Maybe, just maybe, this isn’t something that someone can take away from you.
‘Don’t chicken out ,’ he remembers and says, because he’s pretty sure he’s going to pass out and not have to deal with the repercussions anytime soon, “It’s not different for me.”
Maybe Wade says something back, but the whirl of engines and the dullness in Peter’s skull are too loud for him to hear anything over. Maybe he doesn’t say anything.
Peter doesn’t remember the trip upstate or the dozen or so people who see him before he’s taken to a room to recover. He doesn’t know how far in the facility he is or how long he’s supposed to be there or if anyone thought to contact May.
Tony Stark is there the moment he wakes up, with a stuffed bear wearing a Spider-man outfit, and he says, before Peter has even really got a grip on his surroundings, “I can’t help but feel like I’ve failed you in some way.”
And Peter feels like he’s gotten a lot better at understanding Tony, at understanding where he’s coming from and what he expects, but maybe it’s the painkillers they’ve pumped him full of because all he can manage is, “Uh… What?”
“Deadpool? Really?” Tony continues, raising an eyebrow, as though there’s any portion of this that anyone had control over. “He came to check on you. They wouldn’t let him in, of course, but I did say I’d tell you he said ‘hi.’ Happy is probably installing security cameras at your house as we speak.”
Knowing Happy there were probably already security cameras there to start.
“Well, uh,” Peter admits, slowly, maybe more to himself than Tony, “he’s kind of my soulmate.”
Tony stares at him for a disturbingly long time, before sitting the bear on the side table next to an untouched tray of food. He stands up and pulls out his phone and says, “Hold that thought - I’m going to need a very strong drink before we go any further.”
“Yeah, okay, I’ll just wait here,” Peter says, ducking his head to hide the smile curving at his mouth that he cannot force away.
-/-
He thinks maybe getting shot might make some of his panic attacks worse, but for the most part nothing changes. Some nights he sleeps. Some nights he doesn’t dream at all.
It’s been a year and he doesn’t think about Adrian Toomes, doesn’t think about the crushing weight of a building on his shoulders, and tries not to think about Liz Allan. He focuses on trying to suppress the intense feeling of giddiness in his chest that seems like a constant fixture. He focuses on trying to pretend he doesn’t notice the change in his heartbeat, in the bravery of his steps, in the way his face flushes for no reason whatsoever.
“This isn’t a contest, you know,” Peter says, unlooping Deadpool’s arm from where it’s slung around his neck and depositing him onto the well-worn couch that desperately needs some kind of slipcover. There are a myriad of bullet holes in Wade’s left leg that are healing up even as he lays there, the muscles and tissues pushing the metal out of his body like it knows it doesn’t belong, and it’s equal parts fascinating and disgusting.
“You’re only saying that because I’m winning,” Wade groans, and Peter can’t help the laugh that escapes out of him.
“Please don’t humor him,” Al begs, from her spot in her usual chair doing a crossword that she really should have attempted first in pencil. “He’s already so insufferable.”
-/-
He stops counting the pieces of Wade he puts back together. The days drag on and the scrawl on his hip doesn’t go away, doesn’t stop burning like a constant reminder, but Peter doesn’t want to move on.
To be fair he isn’t supposed to be doing much of anything. The bullet that had shattered his collar bone was removed three weeks ago, but technically he’s still healing. It aches a little, like a sunburn he forgets about until something grazes it, but he’s not exactly normal and he thinks that the recovery plan Happy sent him via email, with detailed instructions on when to sleep and what to eat, might be a little excessive.
The sleeping thing is strange – is taking some getting used to. He spent so long avoiding it, so long tossing and turning and lying awake, that he almost doesn’t know how to deal with getting nearly eight hours of it a night. There are still restless nights and there are still nightmares, but it’s not every night. It hasn’t been every night since he fell asleep on a concrete floor, his head against a warm shoulder and the smell of gunpowder in his lungs.
He shouldn’t be out looking for trouble, not when he’s promised to hang tight for a few weeks and rest up, but Peter’s resolution to do a better job at keeping his word is a work in progress. He can’t help the restlessness that pulls at his limbs and he can’t help the desire to do more that feels so ingrained in him at this point it might as well be all he ever thinks about. Do more for the team, do more for the city, do more for Aunt May - and, sometimes, do more for himself.
It’s a Sunday night - late, late, late - and he should’ve studied for his calculus quiz and called it a night hours ago, but instead he’s trapped in a bad Bond movie where the evil villains always have to kill everyone via elaborate contraptions that take a lifetime to work. Which is probably in his favor, because being shot again isn’t anywhere on his list of things to experience again, but it also means that he’s slowly going to suffocate to death in a shipping container at the bottom of the harbor. There is water leaking in through the steel corners where the shoddy welding has broken down over the years and it’s not assisting Peter any in getting the pressure inside to equalize enough to allow the doors to open. Maybe if the water fills the container he’ll be able to get them open, if he can clone himself and swim around to the outside and unlock the door.
“Okay, engage laser webs! Or… deploy oxygen! Or…” Peter hits his fist against the unbudging door, trying to ignore the panic building in his chest. He probably shouldn’t be exerting this much energy trying to get a locked, metal door open - definitely shouldn’t be breathing so heavily into an enclosed space, but maybe the water will fill the container before the carbon dioxide does. “Karen, do something! ”
“Laser energy at zero percent. Battery requires charging,” Karen tells him and maybe that sounds a little familiar, like something he had intended to take care of but kept putting it off because how often is he going to need laser webbing . “Oxygen reserves are at five point two percent. I recommend vacating the premises immediately, Peter.”
“Karen, I’m trying to ‘vacate the premises!’”
Some part of him realizes that there is no coincidence in the numbers of time he’s felt himself moving towards a portion of the city he typically doesn’t go to just to find Deadpool bleeding out in a gutter. Some part of him realizes that the odds of Wade showing up every time he’s at his lowest could never be so high under normal circumstances - that there’s really no way to ignore the way they’ve been irrevocably linked by the words on Peter’s skin. He knows that there’s no way Wade doesn’t know he’s in danger - that maybe he picks and chooses when to show up, like deciding whether or not this is the time he’s going to let Peter figure out his own mistakes - because there’s been plenty of times that Peter has limped home on his own. Some part of him thinks that maybe there’s going to come a day when Wade cuts his losses - when he stops showing up to rescue some kid he’s been saddled with despite his own choices. He wonders if Wade can feel it in the curve of his neck - like the burning that courses through Peter’s hip down to his knees like an electrical fire, like a constant reminder there’s someone looking for him.
He thinks, in a moment of panic, ‘Maybe he won’t come,’ but of course he’s wrong.
It takes until the water is at Peter’s shoulders, until the air is thin and his ears ache, before Deadpool finds him. Unless the thumping noise coming from the door isn’t Deadpool. Maybe it’s a shark - or a family of sharks - or a family of zombie sharks. It doesn’t matter much either way because he’s one hundred and ten percent sure that door is not going to budge until the container has either more water in it or less oxygen or both, so maybe Deadpool is too early rather than too late; maybe they’re going to both run out of air before the container fills. He can hear the scraping of metal against metal, of the locking mechanism being forced open, but it might as well have remained locked. There’s another bang against the side and the door still doesn’t move. The doors have to open outwards and the pressure has to equalize and he has to wait.
“Twenty seconds, Peter,” Karen tells him, as the water reaches his chin.
There’s a familiar burning in his hip, spreading like wildfire up his rib cage. Wade is running out of air.
“Okay,” he says, gripping onto the door. “Okay, Karen, five point two percent oxygen - let’s go.”
His mask seals up and he’s greeted almost immediately with a beeping in his ears that signals his oxygen is low. The remaining ten seconds feels like two years, as the water move over his nose, moves up over his head. He tries to keep himself calm - to think of his calculus quiz, or the X-Files marathon he promised Ned they’d watch next weekend - but he knows his heart is racing in his chest.
When Wade finally pulls the door open that Peter is clinging to the back of, the force of it is almost enough to push him back down into the container. He manages to reach out and grab the gloved hand reaching for him, to allow himself to be pulled out of the metal box and into the blurry darkness of the New York harbor. They can’t be more than twenty four feet down and they can make it. It’s not far to the shoreline.
There is a weakness in the hold Wade has on him that makes Peter change his own grip, to curl his hands around the leather harness stretched across Wade’s back. It takes longer than it should for him to figure out which way he needs to swim to move closer to the surface, with his ears pounding and his heart racing and the beeping continuing on like it thinks he’s somehow forgotten about their situation.
5.2% is plenty to get him to the surface - is more than enough - but it doesn’t feel like enough. The burning rushes violently into his chest like the surge of a wave he couldn’t see, like a hand clenched tight around his heart and seeking to wrench it from his body, and then the burning stops entirely. For a moment it strangles the breath he has out of him, stops him short like someone has reached into his body and pulled his skeleton out in one fell swoop. The sudden vacancy that fills him is stifling, encompasses him so wholly in that moment that, for a long few seconds, it’s the only thing he can imagine. He doesn’t hear the beeping from the oxygen system, doesn’t hear Karen’s warning, doesn’t hear anything at all.
It’s pure stubborn will that forces him to tighten his grip on Wade’s harness, curling his fist around the wet leather until his fingers ache. Wade is weightless in the water; he’s motionless in Peter’s grip.
‘He can’t die,’ Peter reminds himself, over and over again, because it’s something he should know better than anyone but the numbness in his chest won’t go away. ‘Don’t worry, just swim.’
“Oxygen is at one percent, Peter,” Karen warns him, again, and her voice is gentle and loud in the quiet of his own head.
He pulls the two of them upwards, his chest burning and his limbs aching. Twenty four feet feels like a hundred - feels like a thousand when there is a crushing sense of desolation that floods him without remorse. He doesn’t think about how tired he feels, doesn’t think about the absence of feeling in his hip that has been present for too long. Twenty four feet isn’t that far at all, not really. He makes it with air left in his lungs, but he gasps into the night air like he’s breathless.
The water is black, but it reflects the city lights back at him like a mirror.
It takes another eternity to swim to the shoreline, to pull the both of them up onto the muddy bank that is thankfully devoid of activity. There’s a group of tourists drunk much further down the way, far enough that Peter doesn’t think they’re going to notice the two superheroes laid up on the ground like a scene out of The Little Mermaid. It takes most of his strength to pull Deadpool up out of the water, to drag him far enough up the bank that the water doesn’t lap at his boots. Peter collapses onto his knees in the mud next to him, exhausted in a way he hasn’t felt in months. Lost in a way he hasn’t felt in months.
“Peter,” Karen says, voice quiet.
Peter can’t find his voice, not around the thickness in his throat.
‘Just wait ,’ he thinks to himself, digging his fingers into his legs. ‘Just gotta wait. ’
It takes eleven minutes before the burning in his hip starts up again like it never left, jerking its way through his body so painfully he thinks it might bring him to his knees if he weren’t already there. Wade rolls over onto his own knees like he wasn’t dead a moment ago, pulling his mask up over his mouth to cough up lungfuls of water like it’s nothing out of the ordinary. Peter clenches his hands so tightly into fists his knuckles turn white underneath his gloves.
Wade coughs up a truly distressing amount of water - coughs so violently Peter feels it in his own chest, but he doesn’t seem especially bothered by any of it. He rubs the back of his hand across his scarred mouth and sits back down, rolling his neck back and forth to work out whatever soreness is there.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m all funned out,” he says, his voice hoarse and his breath wet.
“Yeah, I think that’s enough fun for one night,” Peter agrees, and he wishes his words were more steady. He wishes he felt more grounded and less like he’s been poured back into his skin and left to figure the rest out for himself.
It takes one of Deadpool’s hands in both of his to get him on his feet - takes his hands on Peter’s shoulders, surprisingly strong for a recently dead man, to steady him.
“You know you don’t have to keep saving me, right?” Peter finally asks, and maybe it’s the fact that Wade is too far into his space, too close for him to think about anything else. “I mean, I apparently have some pretty questionable decision making skills.”
“You’re talking to the literal master of bad decision making, but I think we can both agree I’ve never felt obligated in my life,” Wade replies, but he slides one hand down from Peter’s shoulder to the curve of his waist. The edge of his palm is so close to the words on Peter’s hip, close enough that it’s all Peter can feel. “I don’t do anything I don’t want to, Spidey.”
Peter’s hands are shaking when he digs the edge of his own mask out of the neck of his suit and pulls it up over his head. He drops it in the mud so that he can brace both his hands on Wade’s shoulders and lean up onto the tips of his toes. Wade’s mouth is cold underneath his, lips purple where the color is starting to return, but he doesn’t feel lifeless - doesn’t feel cold. His breath is warm, like the hand he curls around the back of Peter’s neck in a way that doesn’t feel at all reluctant.
It feels like it’s been forever since he heard the words on his hip spoken to him, since he found the man they belonged to and fought against it tooth and nail, but this - Wade’s mouth against his, tongue licking over his lower lip and coaxing his mouth open until Peter feels like he’s drowning all over again - doesn’t feel like a choice that has been made for him. The warmth of Wade against him, of the way he smells like ozone and tastes like salt, does not feel like destiny; Wade feels like a puzzle piece he’s been carving for forever, to fit him in a way he wouldn’t let himself believe was possible.
Peter pulls away, his skin flushed and his breath short.
“You can call me Peter,” he says, clearing his throat around the nerves that are desperately clawing at the base of his spine like an old friend. He feels his face flush darker when Wade’s hand moves across his bare cheek to rest on the curve of his jaw. “Uh, I mean, if you want to.”
“Oh, I definitely want to,” Wade replies, and pulls him forward again.