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"You're a dick D.P.," Spidey spat. "Why should I care you have an insatiable death wish? It's not like you mean anything to me. I don't need you, I don't want you, and I think– you know what? Keep that shit to yourself and try harder next time. Or stay in London. See if I fucking care."
That's the last thing he said before swinging away.
Spidey really doesn't curse. He has cursed, yes, but it's far and few between enough that sometimes when Wade is listening it catches him off guard. It's kind of only the f-bomb, but he's no stranger to other letters.
They say it's a show of intelligence how much someone swears. Wade sees it more as a show of how pissed Spidey is.
So yeah, Spidey's mad at us.
(To be fair, we did put a bus full of children in danger during an attempt to goad Hulk into obliterating us and threatened to kill a kid in the middle of Times Square and kidnapped said kid while trying to lure out our evil twin who was actually kidnapping the chief of police's kids with intent to kill them under our name. You can't say he doesn't have a good reason.
Oh, and the best part? We still want to kill ourselves which is the entire mindset that got us into those events in the first place.)
Obviously, Spidey needs some time to cool off. He's angry and saying things he doesn't really mean. And before that, he was angry and avoiding us. Improvements.
In time, and with enough violating boundaries in an attempt to initiate contact, Wade is pretty sure they can bounce back from this.
(Just because we aren't dating, doesn't mean we can't qualify for the "worst couple you know" award.)
We can be bored and alone for a little while, right?
(No. No we cannot. We crack in record time and decide to bother Peter instead.)
That's a person who Wade can corner and has no real reason to run away.
(And I like Peter Parker and his autocannibalism. The way he gnaws off the skin of his lips until they're raw and I bet the inside of his cheek is chewed and scarred.)
That too, I guess.
(You know, we've never seen them in a room together.)
Read: worst couple you know. No one choses to be around us or us and Spidey.
Wade had jumped into Peter's apartment from the bathroom, loudly, and barged into the living room just as loudly.
"Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater–"
"It's ramen."
Peter was sitting cross-legged on the couch with a cup of noodles. He looked annoyed at the prospect of someone interrupting his meal. Or just annoyed about the fact we were breaking into his apartment. Probably both.
"And that's an awful nursery rhyme," Wade said.
"Can I help you?" he asked, squinting.
Wade made his way to the couch himself, ignoring the obvious hostility radiating from Peter. Instead, he focused on the large MF DOOM print on Peter's otherwise black shirt.
"You like DOOM? That makes so much sense."
"Why would that make sense?"
"Honey, you're one of the few people who can genuinely say they're in the wrong generation without being Captain America or Cable." He falls heavily onto the couch. "You know you can play Doom on practically anything with a screen."
"Are you… talking about the game?"
"Don't you feel a conflict of interest with the actual Doctor Doom villain, I ask to the guy who writes Spidey op-ed pieces."
"Provided the photos for," Peter corrected. Then: "Get out of my apartment."
"I like him," Wade mused.
"Which Doom are you referring to?"
"You know what the Cobra effect is?" Wade asked instead.
"Yeah."
"It's when the intended solution contributes to the problem-"
"I said I know."
"Okay and I'm being considerate of the other people in this conversation," Wade said with a scoff. "Spider-Man's New York is a zoo."
"Is this a new topic?"
"He fights animals–the Lizard, Doc Ock, the Vulture, Chameleon, Scorpion, Rhino I could go on–"
"That's not everyone-" Peter attempted to interrupt.
"Sure," Wade just interrupted right back, "there's nature like Sandman and Electro, and the horror ones that go without naming and some crime lords– but gross generalizations are generalizations for a reason."
"What's Deadpool's New York?" Peter mocked more than asked.
"More Deadpool I guess."
In another world, maybe it'd be flattering. If Wade was less Wade and more Spider-Man. Or, maybe it's still flattering, just not good for the general public. Either way, Peter kind of put it best with:
"One of you is already too many."
"I'm sensing some anger here."
"Oh yeah?" Peter stabbed at the little that was left of his noodles. "Probably because you're a psychotic killer who only cares about himself."
"Is that what they're saying about me?"
Peter stopped his assault—through pure restraint rather than tiring out. Still, he let go of his fork, dropped his shoulders, and loosened his grip on the ramen.
"It's what they've always said about you, Deadpool."
Someone somewhere at this very moment is talking about you or otherwise thinking of you.
(Probably negatively. They're probably saying awful, terrible, true things about you.)
You as in Wade you, not you you.
"Spidey loves me," Wade muttered.
Peter scoffed.
"He does," Wade repeated with more force.
"You don't even like him."
(He's not wrong.)
Yes he is. I love Spidey.
(You're infatuated with him.)
No, you're infatuated with Peter. I love Spidey.
(You want to die more than you want Spidey. We were institutionalized, Wade. We ended up so far up our head we tried to get the Hulk to kill us and introduced a worse extra Deadpool to the world. You could get everything you ever wanted from Spidey, and you'd still choose to kill yourself in a heartbeat. How much can he really mean to you?)
If Wade knew he wouldn't live, if he had to make this life count, he wouldn't kill himself. The weight of mortality, that's the flavor of life Wade's missing.
Death is unattainable, that's the driver of our love for her. Spidey could always die, that's true, but if we could die? If we knew every step of the way that our own actions could take us away from him? You bet Wade would be making every moment count.
(Or we'd run away. That's what we did last time we faced the idea of dying.)
That was different.
"I think he's just an experiment to you," Wade said, garnering another scoff from Peter.
"And what if he is? I'm a scientist at heart, experiments are what I do."
Peter tried to get up, but Wade launched his arm across him and grabbed onto the couch arm next to Peter, effectively crowding him into the corner of the couch. With one foot on the floor in front of Peter and the other knee on the couch touching his thigh, Wade had positioned his chest and face to be wholly too close to Peter's. He could speak low like this.
"I think that makes you sicker than I ever could be. You take someone who's supposed to be your friend, and you poke and prod him to see what makes him tick."
Peter stood his ground like he always did. Putting on a poker face as if we couldn't see his pupils dilate.
(Love? Fear? Change in lighting maybe?)
"I don't see how you're any different," Peter said, steady and articulate. "Chipping away at his boundaries until you get the result you want. The truth is you're like radiation, Wade. Exposure to you has never been healthy, but eventually you build up a tolerance high enough that you don't even realize it's killing you."
Yeah, and Spidey has radioactive jizz, no one's perfect.
People forget that just because you retcon or regret something it doesn't stop it from having existed. You can't take back Jaws, you can only promote shark week.
(That's not a rebuttal try again.)
"I prefer the word immunity," Wade said.
"I'm going to ask nicely again: get out of my house."
Wade did the opposite; he pushed in closer and brought the conversation back.
"He's not a guinea pig for you."
Peter cracked slightly, shifted his position on the couch so he was deeper into the corner. Though the whole time he kept his face completely parallel to Wade's.
"No but he is… science. I'm the only person who can get this close to understanding his mind, his body–"
"It sounds gross when you say it," Wade interrupted.
"You're the gross one," He snapped. Then more calm: "The only thrill of him is the power. But by now all of Manhattan knows he's the unsexiest hero."
"I beg to differ, his suit leaves nothing to the imagination."
(Him and all the spandex warriors.)
"You weren't here when everyone got a taste of what it feels like," Peter argued.
"I know, I can't believe I missed out on the upgrade."
"His muscles are hard. Like a mannequin. You don't feel like a fleshy person anymore."
Wade shrugged.
"Ever heard of the vampires from Twilight? And glass dildos are a market, some people are into that."
"Is everything about sex to you? You don't know what it's like. You're no less human than you've ever been. All your limbs grow back. You never have to ask yourself what percentage person you still are. But all you care about is how hard your dick gets and how hard his might– and it doesn't. Not a bit."
Wade doesn't need to explain himself to Peter. Who was he to say how Wade could feel? Because everyone would tell you that the thing that makes you human—the thing that makes you alive—is the thing Wade has been denied.
"In an erectile dysfunction way or a trans way?"
The muscles in the corner of Peter's upper lip twitched. His voice lowered, hardened.
"I bet you don't know his blood doesn't even move like that."
"There's always the bondage."
"Do you just not care at all?"
"I do! I mean, now we know for sure that Spider-Man wasn't actually bit by a lizard and just co-opted the spider aesthetic. Imagine the scandal."
(Technically there's still a nonzero chance. His base powers are: stick to walls, a sixth sense, and then all the enhanced senses? A gecko can do all that.)
I've also seen that man act like a cat-frog-gecko hybrid the minute a fly enters the room.
I hope you know that with the multiverse, all of that exists and there is a Spider-Man somewhere out there that is trying really hard not to raise any gecko suspicion.
(I hope he's Australian. That'd be funny.)
"Don't piss me off. He has an open circulatory system that he shouldn't have. He's cold-blooded with the requirements of a warm-blooded animal. Do you even know what any of that means?"
It's the way Peter speaks that Wade doesn't like. Too detached from the humanity, like a doctor so excited by seeing a rare textbook case that they sideline the patient's feelings on being a rare textbook case.
He speaks like the people who hold out a needle and promise Wade they can fix him. It's tantalizing. The idea that someone out there can cure him—that they've found a way to kill him. But it's in that state, when you're high off the idea of the promise, that they slip the fine print past you.
"You have a new job," Wade diverted. "What's that about?"
"'Course not," Peter let out with a huff.
If Wade didn't know any better, he'd think Peter was hurt. But he shrugged it off.
"My good opinions on you hinged on the fact you were just a journalist."
Peter gave a barely-there shrug back. (You would be excused to think it was a twitch.)
"Just something more in line with my skill set," he replied.
"And access to more equipment."
"It doesn't hurt."
"You want to fix him."
"I only help when he asks–"
"You've always wanted to fix him," Wade interrupted. "Haven't you? Maybe you make fancy tech now, but back then, when he first got bit, the first thing you tried to make was an antidote. Wasn't it?"
Peter jutted out his chin.
"So what? What if I did?"
"You were teenagers. It must have been scary, huh?"
There's a moment of hesitation, then a slow squinting of Peter's eyes. His lips parted to answer, but it takes another breath before he spoke.
"At first."
Peter's a smart person, Wade is pretty sure he knew he's being manipulated. It's the good cop routine, the advisor acting like your friend before they rat you out to your parents. The question is, is he strong enough to fight it? Or is there guilt eating away at him below the surface, begging to be let out despite the party or situation.
"But you're smart," Wade said. "The scary part is the not knowing, but you, you could figure it out. Understand it and it wouldn't be so bad. You couldn't control yourself, you needed to scratch that scientific itch."
Peter's gaze broke away, then snapped right back to Wade. His index finger was making signs that, at any moment, it would start scratching at the cup he was still holding.
"It was too much power for one person," he responded, "I just wanted to make it easier."
"But you couldn't, could you? You didn't know what you were doing."
Wade felt the way Peter's leg started to shake.
"It's a negligible amount of DNA really," Peter muttered.
(There was a waver to his speech now.)
"But it's not."
"I don't like this conversation."
There was an overwhelming sense of calm Wade felt when he "won." To have the power, the control—to be the one holding the knife against a helpless party. (Some therapist somewhere will point to the past at a moment when Wade felt small and say "there, that's why you want this." But the truth is Wade- the truth is that Wade- the truth-)
Are you okay?
(The truth is we are predictable. We can be tracked. Our emotions, our decisions, the way we act is all in line with itself. And these are all the actions of a fundamentally unhappy person.)
"But it's what you did," Wade pressed, "isn't it?"
"I saved everybody. They turned into spiders, but I saved them. I did it."
"That wasn't you though, was it? I mean, you couldn't save Spidey."
He told us he had the scars to prove it, that he had 6 arms as a side effect from amplifying his powers instead of getting rid of them. It was our first whiff of Peter meddling.*
"No…" Wade continued, hesitantly. "I think you fucked up, didn't you? The bite. It didn't work how you thought it did, did it?"
"I'm not. A bad. Person," Peter strained out.
"No, it's just in your nature to bite."
Wade let up. He fell back on the couch, against the opposite corner that Peter stayed huddled in. It's quiet between them, but Wade still felt that weight of Peter casting "you should go" into the atmosphere in everything but words.
(Do you feel better, Wade? Picking on someone smaller than you, projecting your own self-hatred outward and feeling okay in yourself for doing so simply because you don't like the person you're talking to? Do you feel better? Does it make you feel any better about the fact Spider-Man doesn't like you? Do you think this changes anything? You've always liked quick fixes, haven't you? A bullet to the head is always easier than going through the trouble of doing it right. This is what you've always done, isn't it? If you feel bad, then so must everyone else. You don't really want to be a good guy. You just want to be seen as one. You want to be a good guy so people love you. If you could be a bad guy and have people still love you, then you'd do that.)
Maybe he should go.
(People aren't lying to you all the time, Wade. They say they hate you, they mean it. Maybe we should take a hint.)
*See part 8! ↺