Chapter Text
The suburbs gave Peter the willies sometimes after too long in the city. Something about small towns didn't feel right.
Long roads with no sidewalks. Rows of houses much too similar one after another. The big ones hidden behind trees, the small ones separated by yards or driveways.
It's only a little better than the idea he has of the country: a shack in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas where creepy stuff happens and the only way to leave is through a tornado.
Aunt May gave up their old house in Forest Hills. A dude barely older than Peter lives there now. Aunt May had held out as long as she could—she wanted a nice family to move in—but this dude, with the help of his parents, seemed to want it bad enough.
"He's from California," she had explained. "Some technology entrepreneur and he seems nice enough."
Peter thinks that she, a long time ago, must have thought she'd be leaving the place for Peter. But it's not how things played out. Aunt May never imagined she would move to Boston but "it's time for a change. And change is good." Still, maybe this dude fulfilled that lost desire in some way.
There're solar panels on the house now. The mailbox got replaced. MJ's place—now home to a pilot and flight attendant—is unrecognizable. Maybe the whole street is. The people are newer, Midtown High was filled with a whole different generation.
This is something he thinks MJ would like. Back when they were still on the cusp of adulthood and she was laying on her bed saying Harry was sweet to her and she liked that in a man. Peter said if she broke his heart he'd break her neck. She thought that was sweet too.
She liked to goad him about Gwen; how was your date, what did you do, did you have fun? A part of her maybe jealous. No, no, just girl talk.
"I think you're Spider-Man," she told him one night after Gwen's death. "Harry thinks you're gay or at least dating him but I think you are him."
The amount of people who have pressumed or questioned if Peter was, at the very least, bi should have bothered Peter more. He was the guy who laid awake an entire night turning over in his head those infernal questions of "what if" and yet there was no loop for this… thing.
He asked her what she wanted him to respond to, and she said neither. Just that she thought he should know what people were thinking.
It was something about Peter that made people wonder. Flash, who was never anything less than an open and proud Spider-Man fanboy, wasn't treated the same. And there are those people, so comfortable in themselves that they don't mind being someone else, but that wasn't something considered about Peter because you didn't have to know he was harboring a secret to feel it. Like it was something written on his forehead. Something that doesn't get uncovered no matter how close you get to him, so you start going down the list trying to figure out what it could be. What could he be making up for? What could he be hiding? You want to know because what if it's something bad? You can't exactly trust a guy with a well-guarded but painfully obvious secret.
He called Aunt May once to ask advice about Harry, but he ended up spending half the call reassuring her that, no, he was not the one with the hypothetical drug problem. She didn't fully believe him until MJ vouched for him.
It used to stress him out, to be treated like a criminal, but maybe that's why the assumptions never dug too deep. He'd rather take it as a moment of relief than deal with someone knowing what he actually was.
MJ wasn't close to Harry like Peter was, but he thinks there something different in their relationship that Peter didn't experience. They had found something to share and it's the only thing that kept them together through the fighting.
She never really talked about her parents or home life to either of them. What Peter knew didn't come from her own mouth for a very long time. Aunt May just said the two of them had a lot in common.
They seemed to attract each other—all of them—unconsciously. Even Betty had not caught a break and could not catch one with Peter.
But Liz was so, so normal. And in a different world she was this civilian future waiting for all of them. And yet they—it wasn't just Peter, it was Harry and even MJ and Gwen too—were this black hole that sucked everything into oblivion.
He should say sorry. There's nothing else he can say.
When Norman died and Harry was too deep into the drugs and even deeper into his vengeance, what else can you say but sorry?
"Are we going to talk about it?" Wade asked when they're side by side and both staring at anything but each other.
"Talk about what?"
"How vigilantes are frequently secretly fond of each other." And then: "If we don't, I'm going to convince myself it didn't happen. I'm already worried I imagined it cuz I might have straight up imagined that shit."
Sometimes Peter thought about the way you could see everything as shapes. The way artist could cut people up with their eyes. Following the planes, contours, lines of a face.
Peter had a mild fascination with mouths. How the skin pulled and folded. How strong the jaw could be. Constantly thinking about biting down harder and harder. The strength of human teeth.
He thought it'd be different.
He doesn't know how to kiss and he just eats at Gwen's face. There's always something telling him to bite. He can pretend that's what love feels like, him and his oral fixation. Sinking your teeth into someone—physically leaving a mark on their flesh. The skin is much softer than teeth.
Everyone knows about the female spider that eats its mate. The males bring food to these arrangements, whether that's a "nuptial gift"—real or fake—or themselves.
People who don't know any better say spiders are like vampires. That they suck all the liquid of their prey and leave the carcass, but that's not true. They don't bite and suck, they liquefy by spitting—regurgitating, vomiting—out this corrosive and digestive fluid and then drink it back up from its prey. That's why there's a carcass wrapped up in silk.
Wade brings the food in their relationship like Peter is going to turn around and bite him and, well, he probably would.
Peter does not like to feel small, though he knows it is also something he would want if only to assure himself he can't hurt people. To Wade feeling small makes him feel something, but he does not want to be hurt.
So how do they mesh? In theory, their opposites make them perfect. And yet they step on each other's toes. Snakes misjudging the size of their prey and now they both lose.
He spent last night on Wade's couch, not sleeping. The next morning, he called in sick from work and spent the whole day on roofs facing the water.
Wade brought tacos for dinner.
"You kissed me, right?" he brought up again.
"It doesn't count."
"Did you mean it?"
By the way Wade asked, Peter could tell Wade had slotted himself into a line of thought and he had to follow it through like a train on the tracks.
"Why don't you kiss me like you mean it?" Wade asked.
"If your tongue gets anywhere near my mouth I will bite it off."
"So no head?"
Something in the food is really salty.
Peter remembers wandering into an art market with Harry where someone's abuela tried to sell them an overtly risqué sculpture because sex, she was explaining completely in Spanish, is beautiful.
Being with Harry varied. Sometimes it was Peter staring at Harry staring at a TV they hadn't turned on. Sometimes it was repeating the same assurances for 10 minutes. Peter could laugh hard enough that he couldn't breathe, but he could also storm out the room breaming with barely contained anger.
It was confessing their fear of children—of passing something on—and wondering if eggshell white or cream paper was better to print on.
It was his ringer turned all the way up and staring too long and one time when they were so much younger and everything was so much different, Peter had temporarily blinded himself and Harry held his hand all the way to the nurse's office and still didn't let go once they got there.
"I had a nightmare," Wade said over the phone in that monotone way he does when he's just saying words to say them.
"What does that have to do with me?"
Peter is propped up on his elbows, his phone balanced on his shoulder.
"MTV taught me that if you can't sleep, clean the bathtub. And if that doesn't work, goth girls love insomniacs– this is Spidey's number."
"Sure?"
"No, this is very clearly Peter. Are you two together? Am I interrupting something?"
"Other than my beauty sleep?"
He hadn't been sleeping. He hasn't been for the past week. He actually did have a nightmare about an hour ago, but he wasn't about to start opening up about that.
"So nothing important," Wade replied. "Put me on speaker phone I need to tell him something."
Before Peter could even think about doing something, Wade had already changed his mind.
"Actually," he was saying, "never mind, let's talk. Me and you."
Peter heard himself sigh.
"About what?" he asked.
"So does Spidey keep his mask on when you sleep together?"
"What?"
"Nothing, just a thought." Wade's voice sounded far before getting closer to the mic. "Are you hungry and is your roof free?"
"What time is it?"
"It's five o'clock somewhere. Do you sleep with pants on or off?"
"30 minutes," Peter said as he hung up.
It took him 10 to get on his roof and he settled down somewhere in the middle. 5 minutes after that Wade showed up with enough pancakes to feed a family and his mask already rolled up to his nose.
"Plain, chocolate chip, blueberry," Wade listed out, "and maple syrup. No napkins."
"Did you make these?" Peter asked.
"Do you dream?" Wade asked instead.
"Yeah."
"About what?"
Peter shrugged, rolling a pancake in his hand.
"You, sometimes."
"Am I stupid?" Wade asked and Peter didn't have to be a genuis to know there was something in particular he wanted to talk about.
"Yes." He takes a bite in between sentences. "Why?"
"Do you think people can change?"
"I do." Peter shifted from crossed legged to having one knee pointed up. "I think you've changed. But," he hesitated, "I don't think you were half bad to begin with."
Wade scoffed.
"Bad and good people are black and white concepts that are just so tantalizing. Did you graduate at the top of your classes?"
Peter shook his head.
"No, I was a smart kid but awful student."
"What's that mean?"
"'Smart, but lazy.'"
Wade clucked his tongue. He flattened three pancakes into, something resembling, one and stuffed a portion of that into his mouth.
"While you were doing that," he nodded as he spoke, "I was off killing people I didn't know."
Peter watched Wade stuff the rest of his 3-in-1 pancake into his mouth. For a moment he wonders if that's what he looks like when he eats.
"A friend of mine joined the military," Peter started eventually.
"Flash Thompson," Wade stated immediately.
"Of course you know that."
"I know everything."
For no reason whatsoever, Peter felt the need to say:
"I know Spanish. I don't know why you think I don't, but I do."
"Bullshit. I know everything about you, and you don't know Spanish."
"I do. Here's something else you don't know: I'm a twin."
"Fucking liar, no you're not," Wade argued.
"You're right. Was a twin."
"Eating in the womb doesn't count."
"No he"—he regrets this—"died as… an adult."
Wade seemed to consider that if the seconds of silence was anything to go by.
"I saw nothing of that," he eventually said.
"Yeah, well," Peter shrugged, "some secrets are good at being kept secret."
"Did Spidey know him?"
"Yeah. He did."
They didn't look so much the same by the time Ben died. The blond looked good on him in a way Peter thinks wouldn't work quite the same on himself—notwithstanding that they're clones. Not to mention the swollen features and crooked nose from being beaten and bloodied.
But he knew it was him. Someone with all the same memories, up to a certain point. And it is worse like that.
"Sometimes family is a funhouse mirror for everything you could be insecure about." MJ said once. "I look at my sister and it's literally the worst version of my future. And that's not going to be me. It's just not." Again and again she'd repeat this same iteration of "I'm not going to end up like that. I can't live like that."
Peter only really got what she was saying after he was irrevocably changed by his "brother."
Wade hummed. He was busy folding maple syrup into a pancake.
"Spidey has a secret sister," Wade announced.
"He does not."
"He does, I read it! But also she might not be related. You know how ambiguity is."
"Shut up."
Wade stuck the entire pancake in his mouth before saying:
"She's in the spy game. The 'no-kill' gene is not a family trait."
Peter just rolled his eyes.
People act different, depending on who you're around. Gwen used to eat more when she was around him than when she was around MJ. Harry was hard to tell, he had too many factors at play.
Wade, it felt like, ate more with Peter than Spider-Man. Or he ate differently. It sounds wrong. It felt like Wade should eat more trying to "keep up" with Spider-Man and less when he supposedly shouldn't have that pressure. Instead, maybe it's the pressure of eating with Spider-Man that had him eating less and eating with Peter was more normal.
Honestly, Peter had no idea how much Wade needed to eat. So maybe it's more like: Wade eating was normal with Spider-Man and was eating more with Peter because he was simply making up for the assumed diet-to-food-ratio discrepancy.
Did any of it really matter though?
Well, yes. Because people eat differently when they're comfortable or uncomfortable. The problem is people can either eat more when they're uncomfortable or less, and Peter isn't sure which category Wade falls into. And that's important because what if he's more comfortable with Peter than he is Spider-Man?
And that's… unexpected. It's an oversight at the very least.
Or maybe Wade is nervous right now and it's affecting his eating and Peter-
"You were awake when I called, weren't you?" Wade asked, his voice cutting through the thoughts.
Oh.
Okay.
He's the one not eating. Peter's the nervous one.
"What?"
"Welcome back– why were you awake? Up late worrying you're a bad person?"
Peter shook his head slowly at first, then actually.
"No, I couldn't sleep."
"Why?"
"It just happens somethings."
It felt like he's awake for a reason. Before an alarm goes off that he didn't set. But nothing's happened except Wade calling him.
"Were you"—Peter hesitated—"up late worrying you were a bad person?"
He doesn't think Wade is a bad person, deep down that is. There are worse people in the world for sure. Wade was dealt bad cards and acted in accordance with that, probably.
It's not about if Peter would do the same thing in that position, and it's not completely about the fact that Wade did: it's why he did and what are the circumstances that would make you do the same.
It's about where he is now.
He's never asked for forgiveness, as far as Peter is aware, because he knows he has done things that can't be forgiven. What Wade strives for is redemption, and that's admirable.
"No actually I have thin walls and with how loud they were being I thought it'd be rude not to listen. What–"
"I never saw the appeal," Peter interrupted—accidentally really.
He wasn't really listening to what Wade was saying.
"To kill people?"
"War."
"Radical ideas you got there. Personally, my radicalization came from the Hex Girls. They never mentioned war though. Guess you can't forgive it for what it did to Flash though, huh?"
"It's a, uh, system." Peter searched for the right words. "And I–"
"Don't like systems. What do you think of landlords?"
"Aren't you a landlord?"
"Worse. I buy up property and keep it empty instead of letting some nice family move in. Sometimes I forget you two are anarchist."
"I'm not—"
Wade shrugged him off.
"Anarchistic tendencies."
"I don't think– I just want… better." Peter pulled both his knees to his chest and continued: "You were trying to escape, you wanted a better life, and the military sounded like it could give you that."
"Who told you that?" Wade asked. "I have violent tendencies with lax morals, and I thought joining the army would let me act on those—and it did. I got a gun and a sense of superiority until they realized I'm not a good soldier, just a violent one. Like good intentions could have changed anything. Like boo-hoo I didn't want to makes it go away."
"You were a kid–"
"Except I'm responsible for my actions pre brain development too. And I dug my hole deeper when I made the choice to become a mercenary just to keep killing people cuz, spoiler alert, I'm good at it and it's fun. How far can you go before you can't come back?" Wade let out a chuckle then suffocated it. "I had this box."
Wade paused, taking the time to hold his hands out in front of him, creating the imaginary shape. He continued:
"The Box. I was worse than just a murderer. I would lock people in this tiny torture room that was dark with traps and sharp shit everywhere for hours as punishment. You know, it stops being self-defense once you start being the threat."
Peter shifted his feet awkwardly.
"Did you really do that?" he asked quietly.
For a moment, Wade just stared at Peter. Then he let out a breath aimed to the sky.
"Sometimes I wonder if I'm not as bad as I think I am. That maybe, I don't know, it's not my fault. Or I remember wrong cuz I'm missing something. But then I wonder if that even makes it better." He turned his head back to Peter, propping his chin up with his hands. "And I have the audacity to sit here and think that out of all the people in New York, he'd even consider me. That Spider-Man of all people could fucking love me."
There was a lot of romance in Peter's young, young years. Before he even hit double digits. Kid stuff of course, but he didn't know it back then.
His first ever year of school, he got a crush on a girl who liked him back and then he never saw her again. He can barely remember her face and he doesn't know her name anymore, but there's this one memory he has of standing in line next to her. She smiles at him and there's this… feeling. That's all he's got.
Peter knows what it's like to feel this something. He knows how to like people. How to pick a girl out of the crowd and focus in on her. How to keep a guy in the corner of his vision. But that's different.
"What do you think?" Wade asked.
"What do I think about what?" Peter asked back, matching eyes with Wade.
"Don't give me that deer in head lights look—you're hopelessly in love with me, do you think it's stupid?"
"I'm not hopelessly in love with you."
"Answer the question."
Peter felt his shoulders drop when he let out his breath.
"Yes. And no."
"Ugh, depends are the worst."
Peter sighed again, fiddling in his seat.
"Do you miss the photography?" Wade asked before Peter could say something.
"Yeah, actually. I didn't think I would."
"Even mad scientist need hobbies," Wade said with a shrug. "That was Frankenstein's problem when you think about it. Obsession."
Ever since Peter was a kid, he felt like the world was ending. He felt it fall on his shoulders specifically.
"I thought"—he thought he would die in his first year—"I'd be dead by now."
The words settled for a moment.
"And?"
"I'm not. And I'm living a life I didn't exactly plan for. I don't know what I'm doing half the time. I don't know what I want. I don't know who I'm supposed to be and how to do it right."
It took him a while to get used to the sound of his heartbeat. For the longest time, and maybe he still is to some extent, he was convinced his own heart was just going to give out one day when they least expected it.
In the back of his mind, when he saw someone new through the lenses of his mask he'd wonder if he'd finally be hit too hard. Maybe he walked by death that day and he hadn't even realized it.
"You know the thing about mutates?" Peter asked rhetorically. "It's that you're also going to feel like- like you're holding two train cars going separate ways. Like you left first base and you have to either keep running to second and potentially fail or try turning around before it's too late."
Peter is all or nothing—all or all because nothing isn't exactly an option for someone like him.
"Osborn tried to be both," he continued, "but the Goblin took over. Connors was either one or the other and the Lizard won. You can't straddle both sides."
"Your problem is you're only naming villains–"
"Wade. I really didn't think I'd be alive this long."
In the back of his mind, he'd wonder if he would even realize that he had been Peter for the last time.
He heard Wade sigh.
"I do like you, Peter Parker. In the way I'd pull on your pigtails during class and call you names just so I had an excuse to talk to you."
Peter felt his shoulders drop.
"When did you realize you liked the baseball team more than softball?" Wade added.
"What?"
"Come on Petesy. This is a safe place. Was it kid Osborn?"
"No," he stuttered out, "no I never– no."
"So, when?"
Peter shook his head.
"I never…"
He shook his head harder, then just gave up.
"I guess," Peter tried again, "one day I just got a text."
"That's it?"
"What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know." Wade shrugged to himself. "I think you're weird."
"I don't know what I did to you."
"Nothing. Yet."
"I think it's you. You're the one scared of civilians."
"Nuh-uh."
Peter gave Wade a moment to sit with his own response. And they did, briefly. Then:
"If you knew you could come back," Wade started, "would you kill yourself?"
"…no."
"You thought about it."
"It's the type of thing you think about."
Wade shifted his position into sitting cross legged, grabbing his ankles with both hands and leaning in.
"What do you expect? Out of life?"
"Nothing good."
"But?"
"But I know there's more than that."
Wade scoffed.
"Yeah, there's me."
"You and all of New York. The sun and moon and stars." He was joking until his lip twitched up. "Butterflies. Flowers and trees. Spiderwebs." A chuckle escaped his throat in between the list. "Pie. Chilidogs. People coming out of the movie theatre. Scuffed sneakers." And he was smiling now, genuinely enough that the shrug did nothing to undermine it. "Used books. Sticker vandalism."
Peter bit into the bottom of his cheek to get himself to stop. His eyes had wandered, and he slowly guided them over to Wade's face.
Mask really. With those white, emotionless eyes staring at him like a void.
"I don't think I ever realized that you were kind of beautiful," Wade muttered.
And then he put his hands on either side of Peter's face. He does it softly, more cupping than holding.
"What are you thinking about?" Peter asked.
"The way the light shines through your hair is… pretty. I almost understand what black hole sun means."
"Soundgarden," is the only thing Peter can manage to say.
"You're wearing a shirt dumbass." Wade leaned in to add: "And I'm wearing Grateful Dead underwear."
He let go then, letting his body lean back away.
Peter doesn't have a response. He can't even begin to think of one.
"You need to cut your hair," Wade added.
"What if I'm growing it out?" Peter argued on reflex more than anything.
"I can cut it for you."
"Why would I trust a bald man to cut my hair?"
"Hey now," Wade argued. "I've been practicing on stray dogs and wigs I didn't buy."
"Please tell me you're joking."
"I'm joking."
"Without lying."
"That wasn't part of the original request."
From one of his holsters, Wade pulled out a small knife. He held it out for Peter to see.
"This is your vibe, isn't it?"
"I use kitchen scissors actually."
Wade stuck his hand in Peter's hair, and he could feel Wade using his fingers to keep it pointed up.
"Let's give you a mohawk," he announced.
Peter's instinct grabbed Wade's hand that was holding the knife, keeping it from his hair.
"Wade. I'm a working professional."
"The fact you think a mohawk is unprofessional speaks more to your character than anything else. I think you should try liberty spikes."
"Why are you trying to make me look like–"
"You. I think you should be you."
"Your idea of me."
"I'm the main character, so of course." Wade's free hand still tugged slightly at Peter's hair. "You have wavy hair? Your ends kind of swoop."
"Isn't that a conditioner thing?"
"Oh babe. I think if I cut too short, you'll look like a hedgehog."
"That's why I keep it long. So, gravity actually works."
"So, no mohawk–"
"No mullet either. Been there done that."
"That was a great high school photo."
"I hate that you've seen those."
Wade did it again. It hits like a power play this time. Casually just mentioning how much he knows.
"Are you going to let me go or not?"
"Oh."
"Strong grip that one."
Whatever stupor Peter had fallen into felt like it jolted out of him suddenly. He felt his heart beating and he pushed himself up to his feet. His teeth went right to crushing the inside of his mouth between them.
And for a moment, he paced.
He hated the anxiety. He hated thinking about one thing and one thing only. He'd rather be on a conveyor belt, always moving along. He liked when the things passed him by.
He was such a hypocrite. Telling Harry he needed to move on and stop thinking about things in the same tone MJ or Gwen would tell Peter the same thing. He knew it didn't work. He knew it wasn't that easy.
He so clearly messed up with Harry. He would do it over, he would do his whole life over if he could—he would redo this last hour if only to fix one second. Because one second overtakes hours of his time.
The problem is he knows he's in the world in which things didn't go right. There's no if, it's a fact that sometime somewhere he made a different choice, and it was right. And it's not just because Wade has told him about alternate universes or even that he personally knew people who could mess with spacetime. He's just always known there's a universe where things are different.
If you can think it, it exists. A copy of himself is made and it's a coin toss which path he follows.
When Ben died, Peter noticed, for the first time, that the lamp in their living room had 4 legs and not 3. Aunt May claimed it had always been this way, but he knew it couldn't be true. He knew it was 3 and not 4 before because he's stared at those same legs more times than he can count when he turned the lamp on and off. No matter how much she tried to tell him it was the grief messing with his head, he told himself it was more likely that he fell into some alternate timeline than the fact he never noticed the extra leg before.
It's probably not true. He didn't walk through a wormhole or someone—at least not that he's figured out because they really should start to send emails before editing things—didn't transpose him into a reality where everything is the same except one innocuous change in decor. But he knows the idea is right. His three-legged lamp is out there somewhere, and maybe with it is Uncle Ben who never died.
Peter stepped onto the ledge of the roof.
"Where you going?" Wade asked, never moving from where he was sitting.
"Nowhere."
He didn't even fall a full floor when he stepped off the roof, only enough to slip into a window into his apartment just to immediately make his way back up to the roof through the bathroom skylight, changing into his suit on the way. It doesn't even take him a minute. He is fast and fluid, but he froze on the roof, crouched on the rim of his skylight.
Wade is leaned off the ledge Peter was just on. His head tilted to the side, talking to someone—himself—about whether or not he's crazy.
Peter is not fast, and he wouldn't consider the world slow either—not like Quicksilver. Peter would instead describe the world as occurring at a delay to him. It's not his brain, it's his instincts. He works at a delay to even himself. Peter does things in a minute that normal people would take 10, but his thoughts aren't always part of that arrangement.
He didn't think of Wade the entire time he switched. From the moment he decided he wanted to be in costume and he walked off the roof, he did not think at all. Thinking about it now, he realized his mistake.
Peter Parker the coward. He's nowhere in sight when trouble calls out for Spider-Man. And Peter Parker forgets the people who call out to him.
You'd find better company in a hologram version of him.
He'd be a bad dad. Anything or anyone that tries to convince him otherwise is simply wrong. He and Harry had come to that consensus together.
He has proven incapable of putting the people in his life above Spider-Man—don't get him wrong he'd break bones for Aunt May, but in the same breath, Peter will abandon her to be Spider-Man. If Peter brought a mutant into this world, which is what they would be, it would not matter how good of a person he may or may not be.
A mutant needs someone to help them with their powers and tell them not to go out fighting too early. And if his child decides they want to be a superhero or vigilante or god forbid the other end of the scale, Peter would hope they'd be 18. Or if college is in the picture, then 22. Different than what he did and had to do because what type of father would want this type of life for their child?
He will undoubtedly miss milestones and the first couple years of the kid's life. He'll show up late to dress rehearsals and leave in the middle of graduations. He'll make promises he can't keep. And this is whether or not his kid—he's sure if he's gotten to this point, the mom will know— knows he's Spider-Man. But an explanation does not stop the resentment from building.
Resentment towards villains and heroes and New York and superhuman responsibility.
It's not "my dad is Spider-Man" but "my dad can't stop being Spider-Man."
At the end of the day Spider-Man is real, but Peter Parker isn't. And Peter doesn't know who he is if not in relation to Spider-Man. Peter needs a tether to exist, Spider-Man can just be Spider-Man. And he can't deal with the fact that he's this lie, essentially. Just another half-truth. Half.
Peter cleared his throat. Wade whipped his head back. There's the slightest buffer in his reaction.
"Wow, it's almost like you're Peter Parker."
"Almost."
"Almost." Wade closed the distance between them. "How do I know you're not just wearing the suit?"
Peter shrugged.
"I guess you don't."
Wade hummed, tilting his head to, presumably, search Peter's masked face. Maybe his body language too. Something to let him know who he was talking to because, at the end of the day, he thinks there's a difference.
"Did you know some female primates orgasm?" Wade asked suddenly. "And dolphins just be doing it."
"Okay," Peter replied slowly. Then: "And spiders eat each other so–"
"You know you can enjoy sex, right?"
"What?"
"What do you think happens during sex?"
In good faith, Peter does take a moment to think about it. He imagines, right now, that Wade just kissed him. His hands would go either to hold his head or grab at his waist. The force of inertia would cause Peter to lean back, but he also imagined kissing back. And then…it cuts to black.
He tried again. He cleaned the slate and thought of a random person, but the same thing happened: it cuts off.
He figured he should think of some action in specific, but he doesn't really know what that would be. He can think of an image—especially if it was a recall act—and he can imagine an aftermath, but that's not what Wade is asking.
"Are you going to answer or…" Wade trailed off.
"I think it feels like sneezing."
"Sneezing? Are you serious? No, don't even pretend he has a point. Remind me to say gesundheit next time you– fucking sneezing, really? Who says that?"
"You didn't like that one, huh?"
"Be honest, are you a bottom?"
"I thought you didn't think I was active."
"Switch, got it." Wade winked and added, "Me too. What type of guys do you like?"
"Why are you asking this?"
"I used to flirt with this dude in my training program," he started. "He was a fucking idiot for being 20 something, but he was so my type." Wade leaned in with an aside: "Jacked men. But I'm an equal opportunist." He leaned back away, and continued, "So, I used to flirt with him, and this was when I was pretty so it was working. And we hooked up. And it was my first time. And I hated it."
"Really?"
"Oh yeah. My biggest secret, I guess. Bet it would have been great if he was Iceman. Ugh. Anyways, it was kind of the last time I was with a guy though. The flirting is really fun, don't get me wrong, but I never really… you know again after that."
Peter paused. Still crouched, he brought his knees together and rested his chin between them.
"Why?"
"I met a girl. I liked her. I met another and I liked her too. The next guy I kind of actually liked, past flirting, was straight and I just"—Wade shrugged—"never got back around to it."
"So, where are you now?"
"How was your first time?" Wade redirected.
"Do you think that experience had an effect on your future relationships?"
"Probably not doc. Scooch."
Wade settled himself beside Peter on the rim of the skylight. He let out a sigh before continuing:
"Sex isn't an entirely mental thing. And the body doesn't know anything, it's a mass of sensors that barely understand the difference between feel good and feel bad. Your knob is going to like being polished and it's not going to ask permission from your mind. And your mind is gonna run wild without your body reacting. It's called arousal non-concurrence." He stopped. Corrected himself: "Non-concordance that's embarrassing."
"Is that what happened with you?" Peter asked, tilting his head so his cheek pressed against his knees.
"Pervert."
Peter threw his hands up in defense.
"See the problem for us gays," Wade continued.
"I'm not–" Peter interrupted unsuccessfully.
"Is that we live in a heteronormative society. Do you think penguins go around asking male couples which ones the girl in the relationship?"
"Didn't you just ask me–"
Again, he couldn't finish his sentence.
"You're right they probably have some other form of bigotry. God forbid you were born a bat."
"Is that a–"
"Do you want a smoke?"
"What?"
"Cigarette."
Wade actually waited for a response.
"No," is all Peter said.
MJ used to smoke. It took Peter an embarrassingly long time to notice it.
He hated it though. God, he couldn't stand it. He was mister high and mighty "you're going to die early" but that wasn't the full story. He hated the smell. He always did, whether it's cigarettes or weed. To be fair if he could smell it, whatever it is, he probably hated it—that first Christmas after mutation Peter made himself sick spending hours finding a neutral perfume for Aunt May so she could stop using her old one.
Peter told MJ "I don't want you doing that in front of me" and she respected that. But it was her stress reliever and the more stressed she got the more Peter saw it. It's probably wrong to be mad at a friend for something like that.
Between drug addiction and smoking, he's surprised Gwen didn't complete the trifecta by taking up excessive drinking. The farthest Peter—Spider-Man—could go was caffeine and that was pushing it with the way he had to consciously adjust to it in his system.
"I feel like Spidey could skirt the side effects of smoking. How do you get lung cancer when you literally have a built-in chemo treatment and minor healing factor?"
"I wouldn't test that theory."
"You're supposed to say yes, by the way."
"Why?"
"It's… nevermind I guess."
"You smoke?" Peter asked.
He wouldn't see the point of it. Wade has talked about how large doses of anything have to be to have an effect on him, so the only thing something as small as a cigarette would do is give him something to hold.
"No, actually." Wade sighed. "It's a euphemism."
"What is?"
"You ever watch Citizen Kane? That old movie about the guy? Rosebud."
"I know what you're talking about."
"Leland asks for a smoke. It's not about the cigar, it means he's gay. You share a cigarette and that's sex right there."
"That was the 40s."
"Springs from the Hayes code era." Wade shakes his head slightly and added: "I'm not saying it's foolproof universal, I'm just saying Leon lights Luis cigarette when he dies and that's pretty gay."
"What does that have to do with me?"
"Well, why have you ride me when I could just light your cigarette with mine?"
"Gross. Are those the only two options?"
"You can be the front and I'll be the back."
"I mean, why," he hesitated, "can't we just…" Peter couldn't really define, let alone say out loud what he was going for. Instead, he just ended with: "talk?"
That wasn't right. He didn't really want to talk. He didn't want to sit in silence or share something, he didn't know. There was something else he wanted to do, but he had no idea what it was.
Eat maybe.
"You know what the difference is between liking Peter and liking Spidey?"
"What?"
"I'm not a civilian," Wade stated plainly. "I don't have a civilian identity. I feel the most complete as Deadpool. I fit into Spidey's world. Even if we both take off the costume, we're still Spidey and Deadpool. But the Peter Parker identity cannot make room for me."
"But Spider-Man's civilian identity can?"
"That's cuz he's never really a civilian. He's always holding two train cars going separate ways. Do you know what T4T is?"
"Yeah."
"Interesting. Anyways, it's kind of like that. The relationship is different. I know I'm not the same as him, but on a scale from civvies to me, there's more mutual understanding with me. Truth is, mutates aren't really in the middle. They are mutants. They can't actually turn around and go back to first base."
The sentence settled between them.
Peter doesn't want to say he's right, even if he is. He just…
He came back a little different each time. From the cocoon, from the spider. Always a little farther from human. Always a little less Peter Parker.
He's his own parasite.
And his child will be a mutant. Not because half their genes come for Peter, but because they come from Spider-Man.
"I feel like you smoke," Wade said next.
"No."
"You look like the kinda guy that'd have a sobriety pin."
"Never."
"Recreationally?"
"Nope."
"Sugar?"
"Not even."
Wade hummed.
"So you're like this just cuz you're rawdogging hating yourself?"
"I guess so."
"Why don't you let yourself be yourself?"
"Is that not what I'm doing?"
"No. You're just Peter Parker in a mask."
Wade stands from his seat so he can take position in front of Peter. There, he put his hands on either side of Peter's face again.
"You know I stopped hating you a long time ago. I don't think I ever really hated you I just didn't trust you. You felt fake. Authentically fake. Like there was a real person playing a character."
"I think I have always been this imaginary version of myself."
"It doesn't make it real."
"I think all I've ever wanted from you was a sign that you cared. About me."
"You hate yourself too much." Wade scoffed. "I'm one to talk. I know my mistake. I loved a part of Spidey and loved it like it was the whole thing, but you can't say I never loved him."
"I think we talk too much," Peter muttered.
Wade silently lowered his hands far down enough to find the seam of his mask. Before he could do anything else, Peter put his hands on Wade's, stilling them.
"Do you think I'm Spider-Man?" he asked.
"I don't call him Spider-Man when he's not," Wade replied simply.
"I like it when the mask stays on."
That's what Black Cat had said to him, on a roof just like this one. The words had flung at him like a javelin, and she didn't even know how much that stung.
"Is it because you don't like me?"
That's what Peter had replied to her.
But instead, Wade responded:
"No, you don't."
"I still believe in cooties."
Peter doesn't stop Wade as he rolls the bottom half of Peter's mask up to his nose, matching how Wade's own mask was on.
"Fair is fair," Wade said instead.
And maybe that's why he put the suit on to begin with. It was easier—more comfortable—to hide himself than continuing to let Wade perceive him.
Gwen told Peter that she had to do therapy as a teen, to deal with her mom dying.
"I became so focused on what was being written down," she explained. "And one day I realized, my dad had notes on me too. He knows my entire life. And suddenly, the scariest person to talk about my mom with, was him."
Truth is, Wade is scary. Sure, Peter was always going to know that Wade and Deadpool were the same guy, and maybe for a moment it gave him an edge, but Wade knows so much about Peter Parker's life that he arguably shouldn't—things Peter can never begin to learn. And it's not just something he can forget about their relationship. And it doesn't help that Peter has conditioned himself to be wary of people who know "too much."
"What's the scariest part?" Wade asked him.
Even though a part of him wants Wade to know his secret in the same way he knows everything else, it's the last thing he's got.
Wade will know Spider-Man. He'll know Peter.
"Herpes probably," Peter replied.
He watched Wade's mouth, particularly the way he sucked in the corner of it. And he kept his eyes there while Wade lifted Peter's mask off of his head.
And he knows what he looks like underneath. Dark eyes. Speckled skin.
"Just Peter," Wade repeated from before.
Only then did Peter lift his gaze to Wade's eyes. And in response, Peter returned the favor and pulled Wade's mask off.
And his eyes are blue. His skin is marred. He looked like Wade.
With Peter's insistence on crouching all the time on raised surfaces and Wade's habit of just standing in front of him, they managed to be at eye level with each other despite their slight height difference.
"Fair is fair," Peter repeated too.
And he must know. They're not going to say it- he's not going to say it, but Wade must know.
And that's terrifying.
But the reality is, for some reason, he likes Wade enough to risk it.
"Hey P?" Wade asked.
He was staring at the Spider-Man mask, rubbing it between his fingers.
"Hm?"
"How'd your brother die?"
"He thought he was Spider-Man."
Wade doesn't react other than:
"P?"
"Yeah?"
Wade turned his gaze to Peter. They matched eyes.
"Spider-Man doesn't exist. It's all in your head. Mass scale hallucinations– you, you're real. You exist. Everything else is just window dressing." He lightly tosses the mask onto the ledge beside Peter then added: "You wanna watch You've Got Mail?"
Peter shook his head.
"I've got work in the morning."
"Call in sick. Or better yet: quit."
"Can't. I've got bills to pay."
Peter still had Wade's mask in his hands, and he stared at it instead of Wade.
"In the morning, Wade," he started slowly, "I don't know…" Peter squeezed his eyes shut. When he peeled them back open, he dragged his gaze back to Wade and finished: "what's going to happen."
Wade paused.
"Tell Spidey I'm making chili tomorrow. There'll be some waiting for him."