Chapter Text
“Oh I, got a feeling this will shake me down
Oh I, kind of hoping it will turn me ‘round
Oh I, got a feeling that however slow
Oh I, kind of hoping this will reach my soul”
~Act of Kindness – Bastille
PETER
He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep, but the first thing Peter did when he woke was run down to Bruce’s med bay, tripping over his own feet, and cursing the soreness in his limbs along the way. Bruce wasn’t technically a people doctor, but most of the time he was the closest to one that they had on hand, so Tony had added some medical equipment into Bruce’s lab and called it a day. It wasn’t better than a hospital, but it was enough to keep them on their feet for the smaller, less disastrous situations.
Peter skidded to a halt outside the glass doors of Bruce’s lab, staring at the white bed Tony lay on next to some sort of plant experiment. Tony hated biology with a weird amount of passion, so he was probably loving life right about now.
“That glass goes both ways, genius,” Tony called out.
Peter cursed under his breath. Tony’s eyes weren’t even open, how the heck had he been spotted? Peter walked into the room anyway, stopping by Tony’s bedside with his hands in his pockets. “How did Bruce convince you to stay put?”
Tony opened one eye to scowl at Peter. “Threats. Can you imagine? Our mini-monk, threatening me with bodily harm. I’ll have to tell his sensei, or Master Yoda, or whatever he called the bald guy he meditated with for a year.”
“So, in other words, he threatened your lab?” Peter surmised, deadpan.
“That’s my life’s blood! It counts as bodily harm!” Tony argued back, but he grinned when Peter smiled at him. “How’re you feeling, Webs?”
“Asks the guy strapped to a heart rate monitor?” Peter returned skeptically, eyebrow raised and all.
Tony rolled his eyes. “You could just answer the question. Make my life easier. I just survived a vicious toxin and barely escaped death with my devastatingly charming voice intact. Ergo, I require the proper amount of respect and awe.”
“Yeah,” Peter agreed, “all thanks to me.”
Tony chuckled, nodding slowly. “Thanks to you.”
It was quiet for a moment, neither of them knowing what to say or how to say it. Peter sat down on the edge of Tony’s bed, staring down at his own hands as he rubbed them together.
“I want you to know…” Peter started, but a grunt from Tony made him pause and look back up.
Tony was looking Peter dead in the eyes, sitting up as alert as Peter had ever seen him. “I respect your decisions, Peter. I do. I’m a hard-ass who likes to get his way, exactly the way he wants it, and throws a tantrum when he doesn’t. It’s crap, and I know it’s crap. I shouldn’t have said what I did. Any of it, over the past few weeks. You weren’t wrong to want support instead of me breathing down your neck, telling you how you ought to live your life.”
Peter’s eyes stung, but Tony kept going.
“I have made a mess of my life. A mess of the people I love, and the ones who are stupid enough to care about me in return. You are better than me, Peter, you always have been, even when you were an impulsive little brat with a serious morality complex. You’re still both of those things – I hope you know that – but you’ve grown up, too. I’m proud to say I’ve gotten to see you grow into the hero you are, and the one you’re becoming. I’m proud of you, Peter. No matter what stupid shit comes out of my mouth, I am. And I trust your judgement: It’s a part of the reason you got put on this team in the first place.”
Tony looked up at the ceiling, shaking his head and chewing the inside of his cheek. “I freaked out on you because of my own shit, not yours. If this is what you want, Pete,” Tony said, looking directly into Peter’s eyes, “Then I’ll back your play.”
Peter didn't know how to voice what that meant to him, but he tried his best, regardless. “Tony, your opinion matters to me. Not just as my boss, or my mentor, or as a member of the Avengers.” He hoped Tony understood the words he was leaving out: the feelings in between that he couldn’t make himself put into words, if he could find them at all. But from the look in Tony’s eyes, that slightest hint of a shine around the edges, he thought Tony did. “I’m one of those people stupid enough to care about you, and you know it.”
Tony just stared at him, unmoving, so Peter took that as his cue to keep talking, but looked at his hands again, instead.
“You were looking pretty bad there for a while, and I don’t think I’ve ever told you that I care before. Not in so many words. You could have been gone, had things ended differently, and I wouldn’t have gotten the chance to apologize for being an ass, and make it up with you. It would have been just like…” That lump in his throat had returned full force, painful.
Tony leaned forward and suddenly Peter was being hugged. Hugged by Tony Stark. It took less than a second for Peter to hug him back, burying his face in the man’s shoulder. He couldn’t remember the last time he had hugged Tony, maybe because that wasn’t something they did. It wasn’t something Tony did.
Nat hugged him sometimes, Cap hugged anything that moved, and Wade…well. Luke and Janet and even Wanda of all people, had all given him a quick squeeze in recent memory. Clint, too, now that Peter thought about it. But never Tony. Tony, whom Peter was the closest to out of all the Avengers, and who’s opinion mattered even more to Peter than Cap’s.
One hug from him, and Peter felt like a little kid again.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Tony said gruffly. They were both going to pretend, until the day that they died, that neither of them had shed even the smallest of tears. So, they hugged until it was safe to pull away with enough plausible deniability to last them a good long while.
Peter smirked, eager to toss in some levity to balance out all the emotions they were sharing. “Maybe one day we’ll learn to talk before shit hits the fan, like well-adjusted people do.”
Tony laughed, falling back against the pillows with a wince Peter didn’t miss. “Yeah, I won’t hold my breath. Well-adjusted people and this kind of work don’t go together on a fundamental level. But,” he started, not quite meeting Peter’s eyes, “we could talk more. You know. Occasionally.”
Peter was practically beaming, even as he tried to play it off cool. “Yeah. Yeah, that could work. You know, when I have the time. I have a very busy schedule.”
“Oh, piss off, Parker,” Tony said, chucking a pillow at the back of Peter’s head as Peter got up to leave.
“You just said you loved me, and now you’re tossing projectiles! I can’t keep up with you people.”
Tony rolled his eyes dramatically, but Peter caught his smile all the same as he tossed back the pillow. “Get out of here. I’m pretty sure you’ve got a boyfriend to inform that you didn’t get killed in a fiery explosion.”
“Oh.” Boyfriend? Was Wade a boyfriend? Huh. That was probably one of the many things they ought to figure out at some point. “I’m sure he’ll know I’m fine.”
Tony gave him a flat look. “Yes – Deadpool’s never prone to insane overreaction or unwarranted paranoia.”
Peter’s face fell as he realized Tony was probably…
“Shit.”
Tony laughed again, shaking his head. “If he breaks down my door because your ass didn’t pick up a damn phone, you’re cleaning up after Thor for a week!”
----
PETER
The trip to Wade’s apartment went by in a blur. Peter had stowed his suit in a STARK Industries gym bag and grabbed the accompanying sweat pants and hoodie so that he could take a cab home instead of webbing his way there. Peter felt bone tired just sitting there, and he didn’t want to imagine the head injury he’d face if he dropped off mid-swing.
It had taken him two flip-throughs of his contacts list to figure out that he didn’t have Wade’s number – yet another sign that he had done the right thing in calling a taxi on Tony’s dime. So back to the apartment he went, hoping the merc would be there doing whatever it was he did while waiting for Peter. Hopefully something not involving murder.
The cab was stinky and it physically pained Peter to exit, though that had more to do with his aching muscles and patched up wounds than it did any fondness the cab or its driver.
The second thing Peter realized, upon making it all the way up to Wade’s apartment door, was that he didn’t have a key.
He groaned, slamming his forehead against the door – ouch – before relegating himself to going all the way back outside and climbing up through the fire escape. Should he have chosen to break the door handle with his bare hands, he wouldn’t have been able to afford the repairs. Plus, that would have been rude.
But the day (or was it evening? Peter didn’t know what the time was, anymore) wasn’t over. Because of course it wasn’t.
The second he reached Wade’s window, a heavy chain of metal whipped out of nowhere and caught his wrist, trapping it too tight against the bars of the fire escape. That woke Peter up, to say the least.
“Nunchucks?! Who has nunchucks out before it’s even dark outside?” He whined, dumping his bag on the floor in resignation. In hindsight, he really answered his own question.
“Oh, I don’t know,” came the singsong voice that would have made Peter smile, had his circulation not just been abruptly cut off. “Maybe the guy who watched the Avengers Tower blow the fuck up last night and then never heard from the other guy who’d run right in there, guns blazing? Except he didn’t have guns. Because guns are my thing.”
“Wade…”
Wade was perched directly above him, squatting down, and twirling another pair of nunchucks as if he was preparing to fling them at Peter’s other hand. “Oh, so you have heard of me!”
“Wade, why am I nunchuck-ed to the fire escape?” Peter might have thrown in more sarcasm there, had he the energy for it, but instead the words came out deflated.
“Did you zone out for that whole passive aggressive spiel I just laid out? Because I thought it was pretty good.”
“Look,” Peter started, “I got in there, saved the day, then passed out on the couch for, like, an hour. Two tops. I think. Maybe my estimate is a little off, based on how low the sun is in the sky. But after that, I had to check in with Tony and debrief with Cap and Fury before I could go. I would love to get back to passing out, preferably in a bed, but I’m not opposed to dropping right here in the next few minutes. Then you’ll have to deal with the guilt of me waking up with horrible back and neck pain.” Peter’s eyes were half-closed, and he wasn’t kidding half as much as he wished he was.
Wade seemed to realize that too, and took pity on him. “I’m the one trying to guilt you here,” he grumbled, swinging himself down to Peter’s level and unwrapping the weapons from Peter’s wrist. “No fair turning it around on me.”
“I am sorry that I didn’t give you a head’s up,” Peter admitted, smiling lazily as Wade stalled with his hands on Peter’s wrist. “Thanks for worrying.”
Wade let him go, muttering something Peter didn’t catch, and opened the window for him.
Peter crawled, or rather flopped like dead weight, into Wade’s bed the second he entered the bedroom, but he could still feel Wade hesitating in the doorway. Without opening his eyes, he said, “You can join me if you want to. It’s your bed, after all. No hanky-panky though, considering the fact I’m pretty sure I’d fall asleep half-way through and that’s something I’d like to remember, thank you very much.”
Wade scoffed, and Peter felt the other side of the bed dip, but nothing more as he blinked out like a light the next moment.
----
Peter woke up to darkness, feeling a strange sense of de ja vu. As he slowly came back to the land of the living, he felt the telltale dip in the mattress of another body. To his credit, he only panicked a for a split second, wondering why the heck his spider sense hadn’t alerted him to danger, until he flipped over and the sleep-hazy memories of the night before came back to him.
His movement had jerked Wade awake, too, who sprang to his feet faster than Peter had ever seen him move. One arm was out and pointing an imaginary gun, then he was spinning around and searching for something as he shouted, “Where’s Sherry!?”
“Sherry? What? No, it’s just me,” Peter said, rubbing his eyes until the sleep was cleared. “Sorry for waking you, I just wasn’t expecting…”
Wade visibly relaxed, flopping back onto the bed as if that was completely normal. Peter realized belatedly that Wade had his mask and suit off, in favor of wearing a pair of Peters oversized sweatpants. That small display of trust put a fuzzy feeling in Peter’s chest, and he tried his best to ignore how disgustingly sappy and slightly pathetic of him that was.
“Don’t get too excited, Pete, I didn’t watch you sleep. You passed out mid-sentence, which was rude as fuck by the way.”
Peter rolled his eyes, throwing an arm over his face in a poor attempt at covering up his dumb smile. “Yeah, yeah. You know, this technically counts as sleeping together.”
Wade gasped, slapping his hand to his exposed chest. “My virtue is tainted!”
“Because streaking through the White House grounds in a maid’s outfit last year didn’t already take care of that?”
Wade flipped onto his side, elbow bent to prop up his head while he grinned. That grin was so different outside of the mask, which should have been an obvious fact, but somehow the difference caught Peter completely off guard, and so he only heard half of whatever Wade was saying.
Then Wade snapped his fingers in Peter’s face, bringing him back to reality. “You alright there, Petey? You’re looking spacy-er than usual.”
“I can’t get over the way you look when you smile without the mask.” Mouth, meet foot. Honestly, Peter should be forbidden from speaking for himself for the rest of his life.
Wade’s grin froze, then he barked out a laugh and flipped over on his back, tossing his arms up and under his head. “Well, points for originality: I haven’t heard it put quite like that.”
Peter was that close to wincing. “It was supposed to be a compliment.”
Wade turned his head enough to give Peter a good view of his eyebrow raise, brown eyes locking on Peter’s. “You’re a strange sort of person, aren’t you Spidey?”
“I think the saying, it takes one to know one, fits unnaturally well in this case,” Peter drawled, letting a slow smile spread across his face as it became clearer that Wade was shutting him out. He decided to change the subject before he dug himself any deeper. “You know, I was pretty out of it last night.”
“No shit. You mumbled something about wanting me to meet Tony, and there’s no god damned way that was a sane thought.”
Peter definitely didn’t remember that one. “Huh.”
Wade frowned. “That looks suspiciously like a thinking face. You thinking could really go both ways for me, and I’m not sure whether I should distract you or cheer you on…”
“Well I mean, what if you did?”
“Uh, been there, done that. His great big light beams and I are intimately acquainted.”
“True, but you haven’t been in the same room with him since…”
“Since when?” Wade prompted, rolling back on his side to face Peter with his head propped up as he practically leered. “Since we played tonsil hockey on the roof?”
“I would have put it a bit better than that.”
“I don’t know, I thought it was pretty good.”
“Just good?” Peter prompted.
“Well my memory’s getting foggy, it was so long ago…”
“I really hope that was an invitation, because I’m taking it as one.”
“You know me so well,” Wade groused, grinning as Peter rolled over to throw a leg over Wade and straddle his hips. “Sure you’re not a telepath, Petey? Because it’s like you’re reading my mind right now.”
“Would it be something like, gosh, I hope Peter kisses me soon?”
“I have never once said gosh in my entire life, how dare you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Peter teased, daring Wade with his eyes as he reached out to take both of Wade’s wrists and trap them above Wade’s head on the pillow. “What are you going to do about it?”
That was clearly the right thing to do, if the look in Wades eyes was anything to go by. The way Wade wiggled his hips under him sent a shiver down Peter’s spine, and he shifted his hips in return, which put an entirely new grin on Wade’s face. “Come down here and find out.”
Who was Peter to say no to a request like that?