Chapter Text
(Wade)
. . .
This kid is clearly a wreck. I see it, you see it, we all see it. Does he? Unlikely.
From my vantage of being not-at-all clinically trained in anything remotely related to the human psyche, but being someone who - ahem - cares about him, I guess, he’s been a mess since his former girlfriend died. It’s been, what, like 3 years now? You’d think he’d get over it, find a hobby, take up model building or Tai-Chi. Or just have a few rebound fucks like the rest of us. Not that I haven’t offered to sacrifice myself on that altar plenty.
He opened up about it, eventually. After being so full of prickly spidery rage that he caused me bodily harm. But what’s a little blood between friends? I told him as much and then he broke down like a baby. Told me she’s the only person from his other life he told about being the Masked Webslinger. The only one he ever loved. Jesus, that’s rough, but I’ve been there before. Dying loved ones is part of the masked menace job description. They hide it in the fine print, right next to the psychopath villains and poorly-drawn-feet comic book illustrations.
I try not to pry, but from his miserable demeanor, nothing has changed in the Spidey love life department recently. I wonder if he’s even got friends. If he’s got anyone. He's a ball of buzzing tension, like, all the time, and that can't be good for a guy. I think crime-fighting is his only outlet, but he's pushing himself too hard here. He looks like a bedraggled little alley cat.
So I find him on patrol, show up with a meatlover’s, and we sit, back-to-back, eating, staring out at opposite ends of Empire City. I don’t think he notices he’s doing it, but his head drifts back to rest against my shoulder. It paints the grotesquely ravaged skin there with the somatosensory equivalent of a perfectly toasted marshmallow - it's all warm and tingly and I'm turning to goo inside. I’m like a cat owner who is being temporarily treated as an oversized, warm mattress. I don’t move. I barely breathe, until he moves. I’m soaking it in, letting him soak it in.
“Wade?”
“Yeah, Spidey?”
“Thanks…For the pizza.”
“Any time, bud.”
At some point, it must dawn on him that he's this close to me, because he jolts up like a cattle prod hit his nethers. Then he's all nerves again, mumbles something about places to go, things to do, people to save, spandex to squeeze out of, and he's gone.
It was totally, totally worth it.