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Some days, Peter resented how good Wade was at getting himself in and out of situations. More often than not it felt like the man’s death-proof healing factor extended beyond keeping Wade’s body alive (if not always entirely whole), and into keeping his social life alive instead.
Deadpool pissed people off- that was part of who the Merc was. He was all sharp corners and rough edges and had no filter to speak of. As a friend, it was nice. You tended to know exactly where you stood with Wade. If he was mad at you, he’d tell you. If he liked you, he’d forget the concept of personal space entirely (though Peter knew from experience that if Wade was told to back the fuck up he would). But Wade’s bluntness had the tendency to push people’s buttons. Which got him into rather a lot of trouble.
This time, Wade had gotten himself into the kind of trouble he’d get out of eventually, but where the situation would be sorted faster, and with a lot less deaths if someone else intervened. Last time that’d happened, Peter had been the one who had gone to collect the wayward mercenary and after threatening that if it happened again Peter was just going to leave him to float down the Hudson trying to find out where all his missing limbs might have gone on his own Matt had promised that he’d take the next Wade wrangling shift.
Except Matt had been nowhere to be found. And Peter wanted to be mad at Wade, for dragging him out of his bed at an ungodly hour to deal with the conundrum he’d gotten himself into that time, except Wade’s “good at getting out of situations” skills were on overdrive and he was finding it hard to stay mad at the man when he was pulling off his shockingly good impression of a kicked puppy.
Plus, it felt like there were bigger issues to worry about. Like the fact Matt hadn’t shown up to help. It would be easy to assume he’d simply forgotten his promise, or decided he was willing to face the wrath of one Peter Parker. Except neither of them had heard from him in well over a week and a half. Which would be alright if he’d given them a heads up- Peter and Wade both knew that sometimes you needed a bit of quiet. But Matt had also missed out on a Team Red bonding night without word, and he hadn’t been out as Daredevil in that time either.
The final nail in the coffin had been when one of Matt’s civilian friends had called Peter using Matt’s emergency backup phone. It had all the most important numbers in there, voice assist set to the settings Matt liked, and Be My Eyes installed. The phone was mostly there so in case Matt’s phone wound up broken somehow, he’d not be entirely screwed. Everyone in Matt’s life knew not to touch that phone unless the situation had gone FUBAR.
Which brought them there, Peter up to his ears in algorithms and Wade doing his best to distract him.
“Hey Petey Pie, what’s this one do?” Wade rested his head on Peter’s shoulder and started to reach for one of the components scattered on Peter’s desk.
Petter swatted his hand away, “Hands to yourself. You might not die if anything blows up but I sure will.”
Wade ignored Peter in favour of leaning over his shoulder “And what abou-”
“Ah ah, go sit on the couch Wade. If you can’t keep your hands off my projects, you don’t get to be near the desk.” Peter shoved the man off his back. “If you ever gave me the chance to sit and actually work on this maybe I’d be able to find an answer.”
Wade draped himself over the couch they’d hauled into workspace three days after getting the keys. They had found it on the side of the road, and between Peter’s resistance at spending money on anything “unnecessary” and Wade’s tendency for getting blood on furniture they figured it might be sketchy, but it’d serve their needs just fine. Matt had gagged the first time he’d sat down on it, and insisted that if they were going to keep the thing they at the very least get it cleaned. It had stayed clean all of one week before Wade had all but bled out onto it.
“Sorry Pete. Just- unsettled, I guess. Program ping anything yet?”
“If it had I’d have told you Wade. Just like you’d have told me if any of the tense situations I’ve had to drag you out of the past week got you any further than “dunno haven’t seen him’”. Peter heaved a sigh.
They were really working with almost nothing. Some reports of Daredevil on a rooftop, claiming he’d had two other figures with him. Tales of people appearing out of nowhere before disappearing the same way. But no one had anything more concrete to give them. The most solid thing they had were a few scraps of some sort of machine, but Peter hadn’t managed to reverse engineer enough of it to know exactly what it was supposed to do.
“You know, Petey, moments like this I really do wish I could look into other universes. DD is probably fine- having a ball or whatever, but it’d be nice to know where to go from here.”
The way Wade always talked about other universes was another part of him that tended to unsettle others. Peter didn’t mind it though. He didn’t fully understand everything Wade spouted, other universes and such felt maybe a little too far-fetched (at least in the way Wade talked about them, with readers and them being comic characters and such; Peter certainly believed in a multi-verse), but with the way he’d seen Wade argue with the “boxes” Peter knew there was more behind the ramblings of his friend than most gave him credit for.
“Agreed.” Peter glanced at his program, 98%- only a few minutes left, “Maybe then you won’t need rescuing from whatever gang you’ve decided to threaten that day for a little while. Honestly at the rate you’ve been needing rescue this past week I feel like I’d be forgiven for thinking you’re pissing them off on purpose.”
“You wound me sweet cheeks. I would never risk your pretty face like that!” Wade draped himself dramatically on the couch.
“Fuck off Wade, you know-” Peter’s reply got interrupted by a beep indicating the program had run its course.
“And? What’s it say baby boy?”
“Geeze, give me a minute Wade. I might be smart but I’m not a robot.”
Peter scanned the information. A lot of it was irrelevant, nothing they hadn’t already been able to guess from the groundwork they’d been doing in the time it had taken Peter to figure out what sort of analyses he needed to run. Except then his eyes caught on one small bit of data. Peter felt his stomach drop.
“Wade, I think I know what happened to Matt.”
“I’d say that’s great, but the way you say that makes me feel like there’s something else.” Wade tilted his head so he could look at Peter without moving from the couch.
“I don’t know where he is exactly, I have a rough idea but coordinates across more than 3 dimensions get a bit tricky but-” Peter ran a hand through his hair.
“But?”
“But I have to invent the tech we’d need to get him home.”