Chapter Text
“Y’know, Pete, most people would be slightly more concerned about you being best friends with a guy that used to kill people for a living,” MJ says around the fries in her mouth. “He’s, like, the most social interaction you get nowadays. You’ve literally baked the ugliest cake in the world with him. Pretty sure that means you’re, like, locked in. Besties for life.”
“He’s not my best friend!” Peter splutters. “You’re my best friend!” Peter so regrets telling MJ how he got his new phone. Keeping secrets is a slippery slope when your actual best friend is an investigative fucking journalist.
MJ rolls her eyes at him. “You sound like an eight-year-old girl. You can have more than one best friend.”
“I know that,” he says petulantly, leaning back in his seat. “You and Harry were both my best friends. At the same time.” He resolutely ignores the pang in his chest, and the way MJ’s eyes soften in pity.
“Most people have more than one best friend who isn’t also their ex-girlfriend, tiger,” she says, doing them both the favour of tiptoeing around that big, green elephant. “Actually, scratch that. Most people have more friends than just their ex-girlfriend.”
“I detest that,” Peter huffs, leaning over to snatch a chip from MJ’s basket. She makes a half-hearted attempt to swat at him, but he’s literally Spider-Man. He makes quick work of his theft, and is rewarded with a handful of the best fries in town. “I talk to my buddy Ned from the lab all the time. He’s got some correct opinions about Star Wars you just don’t see much of these days. We even text now!”
“Geez, Pete. Does your mysterious masked friend know how much of a nerd you are?”
“Excuse me! I’ll have you know we have the same favourite comics!” Peter says with all the indignation he can muster.
“Oh, great. You can inflict it on each other,” MJ snorts.
“I’ll have you know the perps love hearing my opinions on if Hyperion feels alienated from Earth culture and if Nighthawk will ever find true fulfillment outside of his mission.”
“Oh, spare me,” MJ groans dramatically. “I already heard this that one time you got wine-drunk on my floor and talked about your secret AO3 account.”
Peter sneers at her heatlessly. “Low blow. We both know you spiked my wine with disinfectant grade ethanol.”
“And I know I got a hell of a lot of blackmail out of that evening, so it was totally worth it.”
“Tell that to the hangover I had.”
MJ pops the last chip of the basket in her mouth. “I don’t know. Sounds like an iss-ue, not an ish-me,” she sing-songs. “You should know by now that I do what I need to do to get all the information for a story.”
Peter rolls his eyes, his whole head tilting with the movement. “You’re such a dick sometimes.”
“Love you too, tiger,” MJ says back, eyes bright. “Even if you’ve got weirdly shooty-shooty-stabby-stabby taste in friends.” She mimes shooting him with a little pow! sound.
Peter thumps back into the squishy cushions of his booth, hands clasped over his chest. “Gah! I’ve been hit! Tell May I love her, and tell MJ that she’s the worst person ever. In the whole world. And that I leave her absolutely nothing.”
“No message for your other bestie-boo?”
“Tell him he can have the username and password to my AO3 account. I entrust my legacy to him.”
“Whoa there, tiger! That’s basically a proposal coming from you. You sure you’re just looking to be best buds with this guy?”
Peter feels his cheeks heat up against his will. The gleam in the journalist’s eyes makes him acutely aware she’s noticed. “Oh, shut —”
“— the front freak-ity fuck-ity scene-transition-ity door!” Deadpool exclaims. “Is that a freaking, fucking–“
“T-Rex,” Peter sighs, watching the dinosaur lumber down the street with the same dread as a minimum wage employee staring down a pack of rabid Black Friday shoppers. He was hoping to actually get some sleep tonight after the all-nighter (or three, but who’s counting?) he’d pulled. The absolutely brutal grilling MJ gave him because he maybe blushed at the shitty joke she’d made definitely was not helping his focus. Parker luck, you never let me down.
“A mother-shitting T-rex,” Deadpool breathes out in awe. “A real one.”
That makes Peter pause, cocking his head to the side as goons clad in (frankly, quite detailed) dinosaur-themed gear begin to stream from doorways further down the block. “How do you know?”
Deadpool shrugs, unsheathing Bea and Arthur in one sleek movement. Peter actively tries to ignore the way his muscles ripple with it. “Plot device.”
So, in normal terms: intuition. Wade’s is hardly wrong, and never when it matters.
“Bow before me!” A strangely dressed man on the back of the T-Rex screams. It’s kind of embarrassing that Peter’s only just noticed him, but in all fairness the D-grade villain’s weird headdress does remarkably well at making him look like an odd, T-Rexy wart. The guy didn’t even prepare a way to evilly amplify his voice; Peter can only hear him on account of the whole super-hearing thing.
“Huh?” Deadpool calls back, as if to prove Peter’s point.
“I said-“ the man screeches, voice cracking in the middle of his sentence. The way his face flushes a glaring tomato red makes him much easier to distinguish on the T-Rex’s back. It upgrades his look from wart to particularly ripe pimple. “Bow before me!” The scream is tinny, barely audible over the ambient noises of a city at dusk. A Doordasher expertly weaves through the legs of the dinosaur on their lithium bike, hardly even phased.
God, Peter can’t help but think fondly. This city is so fucking weird.
“No thank you!” Deadpool yells back pleasantly. “I only get on my knees for two people, and unless you’re the big guy upstairs or packing a spidey-suit under that fugly ass outfit, I don’t think—”
Peter’s spidey-sense flares as one of the goons cuts DP off with a scream, lunging at him from behind. The attacker gets the butt of a katana to the face for his efforts and crumples like a wet receipt.
Peter sighs again. At risk of sounding like a cheesy mug targeted towards millennials, he is not caffeinated enough for this. “Alright, DP, let’s just get this over and done with. I’ve got a hot date with my pillow and blankie waiting for me.”
“Fuck that. I can show you a better time, Webs. I have it on good authority that I make an excellent pillow. And I can figure out the blankie thing.”
“I can’t even tell if there was meant to be an innuendo in that.”
“Why don’t-cha come over and find out, baby boy. I mean, you enjoyed yourself last time,” the ex-merc purrs, before punctuating his statement with a wink. Peter flips him off.
(Peter refuses to admit this, even under threat of death, but he did enjoy hanging out with Wade in his apartment. Sure, it was a fucking mess, and the cake they baked together looked more like carrion than a poodle, but it was fun! In Peter’s opinion, the cake didn’t even taste too bad, as long as you closed your eyes.)
A man dressed like a spinosaurus breaks away from the group, arms flailing as he charges towards the pair. Peter stifles another sigh. The only thing worse than a supervillain is a stupid-villain. Half the time he just has to stop them and their team from hurting themselves by accident, and this looks like it’s shaping up to be no different.
Factoring all of this in, Peter blames the sleep deprivation, distraction and his stupid fucking conversation with MJ for his reply.
“I’ll tell you what,” Peter starts, rolling his neck and shoulders. (Superpowers don’t mean you should skimp out on warming up when you can!) “You clear out thirty-five of these guys and I’ll consider it. Any less and you’re buying dinner and you’re not allowed to talk about my ass for a week.”
A millisecond of stunned silence fills the air before Deadpool whistles sharply. “You drive a hard bargain Spidey, but you have got yourself a deal! Please tell me that guy from earlier counts as numero uno.”
“Sure,” Peter shrugs. “I’ll give it to you. You’ll need all the help you can get,” he says with a wink.
And with that, the odd dinosaur hoard descends upon them.
“Oh, man!” Deadpool cheers as he leap-frogs over one of the remaining assailants. “Doesn’t this bring back good memories of all our previous dates? Like that time we got trapped in that murder boardgame that Arcade made! Only with less tiger robots. And alt-right influencers. And climate change deniers.” He slices Bea across the back of an assailant’s knees, the person collapsing to the floor as they wail in agony. “Blam-o! That’s thirty two!”
“Don’t remember that one,” Peter grunts out, cutting Deadpool off as he web-zips across the street, using the momentum to slam a kick against the jaw of the literal T-Rex attacking them. Seriously, do none of the mad scientists in this city see Jurassic Park as the cautionary tale it is? Peter thinks exasperatedly as the dinosaur overbalances and crashes into a building. The villain atop it flies into a pile of rubble with an oof. Peter almost winces in sympathy, before remembering that this man is the reason there’s an honest-to-god dinosaur rampaging in the streets of New York. The T-Rex doesn’t notice its rider’s absence as it straightens up, continuing to lumber down the street to where Peter’s swung to.
“Come on, Webs! We had so much fun and I saved the day for once! Canon always gets so jumbled up in these fanfics. I don’t even know what universe we’re in,” the ex-merc whines. The raptor-dressed attacker he’d leap-frogged over earlier keels over as DP’s rubber bullets find a comfortable spot between his eyebrows. “I can’t keep up with all this cherry picking!” Deadpool bemoans. He pistol whips the next assailant, who'd tried slashing at him with a comically small knife. “That’s thirty-four, by the way.”
“The world will bow before the majesty of our prehistoric ancestors!” Mr Wart-Rex (or maybe T-Wart?) screeches as he staggers out of his pile of rubble, face bloodied, red and blotchy. Peter bets that he’s got a nasty concussion — though it’s not like Peter has any money to be betting in the first place. “You puny bugs can’t begin to comprehend the scale—”
“That’s quite rude, eh. I am distinctly not a bug themed hero-slash-vigilante-slash-ex-gun-for-hire,” Deadpool huffs. “I’ve got my own niche going on! People have to buy illegal merch of me from Redbubble!”
“Spiders aren’t bugs either, in the literal sense. Plus, I’m not even getting any of the royalties from the merch they sell of me at Target,” Peter chimes in, shooting a few sturdy lines of webbing between the buildings lining this impromptu battlefield. “It’s kinda a shame. That would pay my rent for… ever, probably.” He sighs for the umpteenth time today as the dinosaur blindly trudges forward, its huge feet getting tangled up in the trap. It goes down pretty easily, all things considered. Peter webs it to the asphalt in a practiced motion, ignoring the bubbling excitement and mild guilt of seeing and capturing a real freaking T-Rex. He has no idea what the city’s going to do with it, and frankly that is neither his circus nor his monkeys.
“Well that just ain’t right, baby boy,” Deadpool drawls in a terrible southern accent. “That’s what we call daylight robbery in these here parts. Heh. Parts. You get it? Like a di—”
“Guess it’s the harsh reality of having a secret identity while living in a late-stage capitalistic society.” Peter cuts him off, thwipping out a web to pin Evil-wartus-Rex (he’ll work on it) to the wall he was trying (and failing) to scale.
The man’s face turns an even more unattractive shade of puce as he begins to scream about how there would be no such disrespect to an alpha like himself in the dinosaur pecking order.
Webbing him up is second nature, and Peter can’t help but feel relief once the sticky fluid traps the guy’s mouth shut. “Pretty sure that theory’s about wolves, dude. Also it was disproven. You’re two-for-two on the misinformation.”
“Uhg. You’re sooo hot when you speak nerd,” DP swoons, twirling an imaginary lock of hair. Peter hates the way his stomach flutters.
(He blames it on the double shot coffee he had this morning, even though it’s clearly worn off.)
“And you’re much hotter when you’re not speaking at all,” he bites back.
“Squee! Spidey thinks we’re hot sometimes!” Wade squeals, holding his hands up to his face like The Scream.
Peter has to choke back his shocked laughter. “Did you just say the word squee out loud?”
“Squee times two, Spidey’s listening to what we’re saying!”
“That’s just sad. You’ve gotta raise your standards, ’Pool.” Peter scans the sea of downed bodies around him, making sure no one’s mortally wounded. It hasn’t happened in a good while, but sometimes Deadpool can get a little… overzealous.
“My standards are a stripper pole in hell, Webs, but you can call me when you want, call me when you need—”
Peter’s spidey-sense flares, and it’s not because of Wade’s pretty tragic rendition of MONTERO. There’s a flash of silver behind Deadpool’s head, a henchman with a pterodactyl-sona shakily raising a pistol directly at the ex-merc’s skull.
“Shit! Duck!” he calls out, but he immediately knows Wade won’t react in time.
It’s second nature, the way Peter’s body reacts. In a swift movement, he shoots out a web and yanks, pulling Deadpool out the way as he launches forward. ’Pool’s caterwauling devolves into confused spluttering as the sound of combusting gunpowder rings out from behind him. Peter lets momentum carry him forward, vaulting off Deadpool’s shoulder and landing a clean hook across the cheekbone of the pterodactyl. She’s unconscious before she even hits the floor. Whoops.
(Don’t tell anyone, but Peter really doesn’t feel that bad about it.)
“Wow,” Deadpool breathes out. “Just learnt that I find being a springboard really hot. And also that I should totally check my bias. Totally thought the generic hired muscle were all dudes. That one’s on me.”
Peter huffs out a short, shaky exhale, barely parsing Wade’s rambling. Somehow, after all these years, the glint of an unfamiliar barrel can still send a tremor of anxiety like lightning through his fingertips. He shakes it off quickly, nudging the woman with his foot. Yep, out cold.
“I don’t remember any flying-type Pokémon with guns,” he says, crouching to check on the woman. She’s probably going to have a nasty headache when she wakes up in jail, but otherwise seems fine. Don’t hold him to that, though. He’s not a medical professional. He’s not even first aid certified — that shit is expensive.
“And I don’t remember any bug-type Pokémon being so sexy,” Deadpool sighs dreamily. “Your spider-handling really did it for me. I’d let you eat me after we mate.”
“Still not a bug,” Peter reiterates as he straightens up, ignoring the rest of Wade’s statement for his own sanity. He’s so good at ignoring things. He’s the best at ignoring things.
“But still so, so, sexy,” Wade leers. “Like, the most jaw-dropping, mouth-watering, ass-kicking spider to ever do it,” Deadpool continues as he moseys on over to where Peter is, picking his way over the unconscious (or otherwise subdued) sea of bodies. Fuck, nevermind. Peter’s so fucking bad at ignoring things. The worst, actually. He’s disgusted with the way he can feel his cheeks burning bright red under his mask. He is not flattered, thank you very much. He definitely doesn’t think about what lovely things that voice could say to him in the low light of—
Distantly, he hears sirens begin to blare, jolting him out of his weird, ill-advised fantasies. He sighs, rolling his neck and relishing in the pops that ripple through it.
“Welp, that’s the buzzer, and someone only caught thirty-four dinos,” Peter says smugly, stretching out his shoulders and checking his web-shooters. “Raincheck on that dinner you owe me?” He swaps out a web cartridge on his left wrist with a quick flick.
Wade’s scowl is visible through his mask. “I hope your pillow and blankie know they’ve made an enemy of me today. I’m the only thing your spidey-tush should be cuddling up to.”
Peter tsks at the other man, waggling a finger. “You lost,” he reminds Wade. “That means no ass talk for a week. Starting from now.”
“Oh, come on Webs! Not even one to tide me over?” Deadpool whines, suddenly clinging to Peter’s arm like a limpet.
“The rules are the rules. Not my fault you didn’t hit your KPI.” Peter shrugs, irrespective of the weight of a fully grown man pulling down on one of his shoulders. Thank god for super-strength, he supposes.
“Don’t corpo-lingo me, Webhead. I’m not the most cunning linguist, if you catch my drift.” It’s almost disturbing how distinct Deadpool’s eyebrow wiggles are through the mask.
“I should’ve put a ban on all innuendo,” Peter laments. “I just want to know how you’d fare if you had to keep it PG-13.”
“Y’know, they did that with one of my movies. Made it all Princess Bride-y and everything. I was only allowed to say ‘fuck’ once!”
“That must’ve been hard for you,” Peter says patronisingly, patting Deadpool’s arm as the other vigilante whines incoherently into his shoulder. “I want Mexican food, by the way.”
“No sympathy for little ole me,” Wade wails. “You’re a heartless mistress.”
“Yep. And I’m taking the kids,” Peter says as he manages to peel away from Wade’s grip. He only mourns the loss of the other man's warmth a little bit.
“No! I’ll do anything you ask of me, itsy bitsy. Just stay! We can make it work!” Wade begs, falling to his knees in front of Peter. Peter does not think of any other reasons Wade would be on his knees in front of him, because Peter is a fucking saint.
He huffs derisively, turning up his nose at the ex-merc. “No can do. Not since I found out you were fucking the mailman.”
Deadpool gasps, scandalised. “I was fucking the mailman? The thot plickens!”
“Maybe if you get me an extra taco, I’ll consider giving you visitation rights. Normal place, tomorrow.”
“You really know how to wine and dine a guy.”
“Only the best for you, big guy,” Peter says with a wink and a squeeze of Wade’s unfairly toned bicep, before promptly launching himself into the air to avoid thinking about why the hell he just did that. His crisis about maybe-flirting with DP can wait till he’s had at least 3 hours of sleep. In the meantime, his pillow and blankie await.
“It’s a bird! It's a plane! No, it’s Chimichanga-man!” is how Wade announces his presence, combat boots thudding heavily against the rooftop. The scent of day-old oil and well-seasoned mince waft over to where Peter’s sitting, mask already pulled up past his nose and mouth. Saliva fills his mouth at the combination of the smells and Wade’s low timbre, making him feel eerily like a pavlov’d dog.
“’Bout time you showed up. I was considering taking away that offer about visitation,” Peter says, turning to look at the ex-merc.
“Gasp!” Deadpool gasps. “You really are playing hard to get, Spidey. Even after everything I do to win you back.” He hands over a paper bag, filled to the brim with delicious smelling food. Peter rips apart the foil of a burrito without a second thought, taking a huge mouthful. He moans as flavours explode on his tongue, the sauces immediately beginning to run down his chin.
(He’s hungry, okay? He’d barely had time to choke down half a sandwich on his lunch break before someone decided to send a bomb threat to the goddamn library. Why the fuck would anyone do that? It’s a fucking library.)
“Dang,” Peter sighs. “That hits the spot.”
There’s a brief silence as Peter continues to chow down on his food, permeated only by the ambient noise of the city. “I don’t think I’m ever going to have a chaste thought about a burrito ever again,” Deadpool eventually says, voice hoarse.
“I don’t think you’ve ever had a chaste thought in ever,” Peter mumbles around his mouthful of tortilla, beans and rice.
“Puh-lease. I could have totally been a nun back in my Project X days.”
“Sure. Whatever you say, Wade,” Peter snorts, rolling his now empty foil into a tight ball.
“You’re calling me Wade!” Deadpool squeals. “Does this mean you’ll take me back?”
“Not a chance, loverboy,” Peter says, starting to reach for his next victim. The chimichangas smell particularly well-seasoned today.
“Wait!” Deadpool exclaims, causing Peter to freeze. “I’ve got one more thing to bribe you with!” He reaches into a larger pouch on his utility belt and pulls out a crumpled clump of black fabric.
Deadpool unravels the bundle with a flourish, revealing a t-shirt with a lopsided yet fairly faithful rendition of Peter’s spidey-symbol bleached across the chest. “Viola! Wait, no. Voila!” The merc shakes the shirt a little, the Spider-man logo warping as the fabric flutters in the wind. Unbidden, Peter feels a violent tug of fondness in his chest.
“A shirt?”
“Not just any shirt. This is a DIY Deadpool special! A Wade Wilson One-of-a-kind!” The pride radiating from Wade is palpable, undercut by a rumbling nervous energy. Peter reaches out before he realises what he’s doing, gloved fingertips ghosting over the rendition of his symbol.
“You made me a shirt?” he asks breathlessly.
“Eh, kinda? I just painted it. The actual shirt’s from Uniqlo, because you deserve the good quality shit, baby.”
He traces the brush strokes enshrined in bleach, a blinding warmth beginning to glow in his chest. The intensity of the bleach fades in and out as the marks made by the bristles overlap. The care in each of them seems to caress his fingertips through his gloves. For a split second, he’s tempted to take them off so he can feel Wade’s efforts directly against his skin.
“Look!” Deadpool loudly interrupts his contemplation, flipping the shirt around. “I even did the little fat guy on your back!” The other vigilante is beaming so hard his bright white lenses have scrunched up into thin black slits. Even though Wade is built like a brick shithouse and could beat someone with both his arms chopped off (that wasn’t enjoyable to watch; Peter still feels queasy about it to this day), Peter can’t help but think that Wade looks disgustingly adorable like this. His rounder spidey-symbol is indeed faithfully painted on the back of the shirt, equally as lopsided as the front. He spots a slightly bloated leg where the bleach has bled out of the bounds of its lines, and it makes his heart squeeze so tightly that he’s surprised he doesn’t drop dead.
It’s maybe one of the sweetest gifts he’s ever received from someone that isn’t May, but there’s absolutely no way he can let Deadpool know that. He’s gotta throw the ex-merc off his scent by being super nonchalant and chill about this.
“Wow, Wade,” he stutters. “That’s… wow. I— just. Wow. This is… thank you.”
Unsurprisingly, he fails.
“’s really no biggie, bitsy-boo.” Deadpool shrugs, bashful. “I just thought maybe you’d like some swag that doesn’t remind you of how your likeness is being exploited for profit and that you’re receiving none of it.”
Peter barks out a laugh, weirdly moved by ’Pool’s strange reasoning. It’s very… him. He takes the fabric fully into his hands, handling it like it’s something precious. It is something precious. To Peter, at least. “Yeah. I really would. This is… wow.”
“Yeah. So you’ve mentioned.”
Fuck. Peter knows this giddy feeling, the butterflies forming a violent colony all throughout his abdomen and thorax. It's stupid as all hell. It’s undeniable. He likes him. He likes Deadpool. The merc with a mouth. Wade motherfucking Wilson. His kinda maybe best friend, no matter what he tells MJ. The man who lovingly painted him a stupid shirt in a day for basically no reason because of a stupid, mid-fight, throwaway line.
Peter’s fucking doomed. He’s too far gone. He needs MJ to put him down like a lame racehorse. He has a schoolgirl crush on fucking Deadpool.
(He definitely couldn’t have predicted this five years ago. He wouldn’t change it for the world.)
“Give me a moment here, DP. I’m having big feelings about this.”
“You can have big feelings about me any day, baby boy. I’ve got one especially big feeling for you, if you catch my drift.”
Peter snorts, affection still burning bright in his chest. “Aaand you’ve ruined it. Good job. Now I’m definitely keeping the kids. No visitation, no nothing.”
“Wait, no! I’ll make it up to you, baby! I’ll do anything!”
Peter shrugs, picking up a foil wrapped parcel. “Then perish.”
Wade’s resultant wail rings out across the five boroughs. Peter hides his pleased smirk in the first bite of his chimichanga, his new shirt spread out across his lap.
(Obviously, Peter can’t wear the shirt in public without accidentally broadcasting his identity in neon lights on the off-chance he runs into Deadpool in his civvies. However, the shirt is unfairly soft in that slightly worn way and just a touch too big on Peter’s lithe frame in a way that makes him want to sink into it forever. He never tells Wade, but it quickly becomes his favourite pyjama shirt. Wade, unsurprisingly, eventually finds out. He’s smug about it for all of ten seconds, before Peter threatens to burn the shirt, sentimentality be damned. Wade, wisely, doesn’t bring it up again.)