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“PULL!”
Peter’s shout is followed by a rag doll that looks suspiciously like Deadpool flying through the air above him.
“Save me, Spider-man,” Deadpool simpers from somewhere further back on the roof. “I’m too pretty to fall to my death!”
Peter stifles his smile and sighs instead, shooting a line of webbing that snags the doll out of the air and pulls it back to safety.
“My hero!” Deadpool’s voice gets closer before thick arms snake around Peter from behind and lift him off his feet. “You saved Dollpool’s life. We’re forever in your debt, Bucky.”
“No. Try again.”
Peter squirms out of Wade’s grip and whips the webbing up until Dollpool smacks Deadpool in the face.
“Are you sure? I thought I felt a little muscular twitch there.”
“It was me trying to get away from you, not me reacting to my name.”
Peter walks to the edge of the roof and looks down. Nothing. He and Deadpool have been on patrol most of the night already and it’s been a quiet one. That, of course, has given Wade time to come up with ideas.
Good ideas like the improvised skeet shooting.
And bad ideas like trying to trick Peter into giving away his secret identity.
So far Peter has weathered being called Tony, Steve, Johnny, Reed, Sue, Sam, Bruce, Natasha…
Wait.
“Are you just going through the rosters of superhero teams?”
“Duh, Clint. They all have boring, common names. I’m using population statistics in my favor.”
“Like Wade is so unique,” Peter mutters under his breath.
“It beats the alternative. If you were Spider-woman, I’d be running through Mambo Number Five. Unless… Monica?”
“It’s not a single name from Mambo Number Five.”
“Damn,” Wade mutters as his footsteps crunch behind Peter until Wade sits on the edge of the building, hanging his legs down, Dollpool in his lap, as he digs through one of his pouches.
“Hungry, Wanda?”
“Not even close,” Peter grumbles as he sits next to Wade and grabs the granola bar being offered. It’s almost… endearing that Deadpool keeps snacks in his pouches.
The silence becomes a live thing as Peter pushes up his mask, unwraps the bar, and takes his first bite. Quiet is unusual around Deadpool in the first place and this quiet feels loaded.
“What?” Peter finally snaps, some granola crumbs falling out of his mouth.
“Are you sure you’re not a Tony? You look like a Tony.”
“You don’t even know what I look like.” Peter rolls his eyes behind his lenses. “Why do you want to know anyway?”
“I don’t really. But the fact that you don’t want me to know? Ah, Webs, that’s too juicy for me to let lie. You oughta know that.”
Peter scowls and Deadpool grins, shoving an entire granola bar in his mouth while humming Alanis Morrisette. He must be able to read Peter’s glare because he smiles and mumbles, “She’s Canadian” with a shrug.
Peter pulls his mask back down and starts fiddling with the wrapper from the granola bar. Maybe he should just tell Wade. It’s not like everyone else doesn’t already know. It’s not like Peter didn’t almost pull his mask off while Wade was playing nurse at the safe house. It’s not like it would change anything.
Would it?
Then Peter remembers. He remembers that Deadpool fulfilled a contract on his life. He thinks about how much guilt he carries around for losing his temper and cutting Deadpool’s head off. He wonders how Wade would feel to know that he’d actually killed Spider-man when he shot Peter Parker in the head.
It would change everything.
“What would you do if you knew my real identity?”
“For one, I’d have a lot more pictures to add to my shrine. Not that I don’t love the wide-eyed ingenue look of your mask but I’m sure your human features are passable, too.”
That breaks Peter out of his angst over revealing his identity. Of Wade knowing who he really is. Instead, all he can cough out is, “Passable!?”
Wade just shrugs again and starts to belt, 🎶 “You remind me of the mess you left when you went away…”🎶 and his voice echoes over the rooftops before he turns to Peter and drawls, “I may not have looked under the mask but I’ve seen under the suit and you’re definitely… passable.”
The way Wade’s voice clings to the word passable makes Peter flush as he forcibly shoves away the thought of Wade lingering over Peter the same way he caresses that word. Except, Peter halfway knows what it might be like to be lingered over by Wade.
Peter tries not to reach his hand to his side to feel for the bump of the crescent-shaped scar that sits over his ribs. It’s not that he’s exactly forgotten that he called Deadpool to take care of him or that he let Deadpool sew him up or that he sprawled across Deadpool’s lap. It’s more that he instituted a non-verbal agreement to never speak of it again.
An agreement that Deadpool obviously isn’t going to adhere to. The merc probably can’t do a non-verbal anything.
“Passable?” Peter croaks again, wondering if there are any other words in his head or just the echo of Wade purring passable next to him.
Deadpool turns to look at Peter, white eyes narrowing before scanning carefully over his body. Spider-man’s body. It’s… unsettling. (Sure. Go with unsettling.) Normally, Peter can tell what Wade is thinking even without an iris or pupil but this look is different. Layered. And Peter isn’t interested in peeling back those layers.
Or, at least, that’s what he tells himself.
Eventually, Deadpool’s eyes finish whatever journey they're on, releasing Peter from that heavy stare and breaking the thick tension just as Peter realizes that it had built up between them.
“If you really want my opinion on whether you’re a ten or not,” Wade says as though Peter hasn’t dived in and out of concerning thoughts a hundred times in the last five minutes, “you’re going to have to give up that sweet, sweet secret identity. Luke.”
“Nope.”
Peter pops the p, shaking his head slightly to clear his weird, wayward thoughts, before shoving the granola wrapper back at Deadpool who wordlessly takes it and sticks it into a pouch.
“Should we switch rooftops, Matt?”
“Fine,” Peter grumbles.
Anything to get away from whatever just happened.
Maybe he can leave all this strange, syrupy want here.
“Wait,” Wade turns to him with his hands to the side of his face like he’s auditioning for Home Alone, “it’s Matt!? You’re a Matt?”
“No, I’m not— you know what? Nevermind. Let’s just go.” Peter stands up, balancing on the ledge of the building, and waits. And waits. And… “Are you coming?”
“Not yet but the night is still young.”
Walked right into that one.
“Just get on.”
“Well, with an offer like that, how could I not?”
Peter just rolls his eyes again, constantly surprised they don’t simply fall out of his head when he’s with Deadpool. Either from the actual eye rolling or the ping-ponging of his thoughts back and forth between irritated and ar— not irritated.
The merc steps up behind Peter, clamps big hands on his shoulders, then hops up and wraps thick thighs around Peter’s waist. Deadpool’s arms drape over Peter’s shoulders and cross his chest, where his heart is beating just a little bit too fast under the plush weight of Dollpool and the brush of Wade’s fingers.
He had never thought twice about what Wade calls “the piggyback thing” until he met Deadpool. Deadpool who insisted on drawing attention to how “homoerotic” the position was every time they had to use it until, in Peter’s mind, the whole thing got sanded down to just plain erotic.
Wade wrapped around him.
Wade’s heat at his back.
Wade’s breath in his ear.
No wonder I threw myself at him.
“Thought you were in a hurry to get to our next very exciting locale, Logan.”
“Definitely not that one.”
“Good. Pretty sure if your name was Logan we couldn’t be friends anymore.”
Peter huffs a laugh, ignoring the rumble of Wade’s voice so close to his ear, “If only getting rid of you were that easy. Might have to consider a name change.”
He doesn’t wait for Wade’s reply, just thwips out a line of webbing and leaps from the ledge. Where he also ignores the minute tightening of Wade’s thighs around his hips.
Stop thinking about it.
All of it.
The swings across the city with Wade on his back are one of the few times the merc stays quiet for more than a minute or two. Peter didn’t know what to make of it at first but a few weeks ago, in a moment of rare sincerity, Wade had admitted that he liked it. The freedom. The distance from the city and its problems. The distance from his own problems.
It was so similar to the way Peter feels about swinging that he’s stopped trying to engage Wade in conversation when they move from one place to the next.
Peter just enjoys it and he lets Wade enjoy it, too.
—————————————————
Spider-man lands as smoothly as always but Wade squeezes himself tighter around the web slinger’s lean body anyway.
[Because I’m a masochist and I’ll take what I can get.]
And what Wade can get is the subtle shift of muscle under spandex and skin, the scent of Spider-man on the cool night air, the rhythm of his heart against Wade’s palms. He’s pretty sure he’s a saint because he doesn’t even nuzzle closer into the crook of Spidey’s neck. Or think about running his tongue along the seam where the collar of the suit meets the mask until it finds bare skin.
[Okay. So I mostly don’t think about it.]
Usually, Wade can suppress those thoughts. He has other horny thoughts, after all. Lots of other horny thoughts. [So many horny thoughts.] But ever since Spider-man licked at Wade’s mouth and fell asleep draped across his chest, his other [very numerous] horny thoughts have been pushed out by thoughts of Webs.
And Wade has very dutifully been reminding himself that Spidey was nearly stoned enough to be solid rock and nothing that happened that night meant anything.
[Still fair game for furious jerk-off sessions, though.]
“You waiting for a red carpet, Wade?”
Wade blinks back to the here and now where he’s still wrapped around Spider-man. [Shit. Really lost myself in that one.]
“You got one, Websy? Because I can wait for you to roll it out.”
Spidey shrugs hard, trying to dislodge Wade. “Get off, your highness.”
Wade climbs off Spider-man’s back deliberately slow. Sometimes you just have to poke the wasp’s nest and see what happens next.
“Oh my god, get off,” Webs growls.
But Wade can’t help but notice that Spidey stands stock still until Wade is firmly on the ground.
[Such a fucking goody-goody. Makes me want to dirty him up. Makes me want to make him want to dirty me up.]
[That makes sense, right?]
Webs turns around and gives Wade his best masked approximation of scowl. It’s cute as hell. And Wade needs to get out of here before he says or does something that will ruin the carefully constructed and fragile peace that he and Spidey have.
Almost friends.
Not quite enemies.
Practically fuck buddies.
[Maybe that last one is just wishful thinking, eh?]
“I’ll take street-level, huh, Pietro?”
Wade tosses Dollpool at Webs where it bounces harmlessly off his chest because Spidey has gone rigid. Like face-to-face with Medusa rigid. Like hiding from a T-rex in plain sight rigid. Like maybe Wade guessed his name rigid.
But then Webs glances down at Dollpool, gives the small jerk of his head that indicates a massive eye roll, and says, “Yeah. See you tomorrow?”
“Same bat time. Same bat channel.”
“What?”
“Yes, Eric. See you tomorrow.”
Spidey tsks behind Wade as he heads for the building’s rooftop stairwell entrance. Not Eric, then.
[Not that it matters. Webs is Webs and knowing who he is in real life won’t change what a clever, snarky, perfectionist nerd he is.]
[But, you know, if you do know his secret identity, you could tell me and I wouldn’t mind. I’d even keep it a secret. Probably.]
[Hello?]
The door bangs shut loudly behind Wade as he peers down the dense spiral of stairs and groans.
“I don't suppose you could do me a solid and put a little time jump in here?”
—————————————————
Peter doesn’t even realize that he has Dollpool until he’s back in his apartment. He holds the doll up to his face, staring into its white eyes. He keeps staring as he pulls his mask off and tells the doll version of Deadpool, “My name is Peter Parker.”
If the doll is surprised by what’s under the spandex and lenses, it doesn’t show.