Chapter Text
1. Prelude
Upon us all, upon us all a little rain must fall
Just a little rain, oh
He’s not looking for him, because that would be stupid. That would be pathetic. Stupid and pathetic, and Peter is kind of tired of feeling that around other people. It’s overwhelming enough when he feels pathetic around the Avengers, thank you very much.
He’s not looking for him, then, as he swings under a dark, ominous sky, in the middle of a light up city that awaits the rain like a starved man awaits a plate of delicious food. He’s not looking for Deadpool, because normally it’s the other way around and it’s Deadpool that’s always looking for Spiderman, doing an impressively good job at finding him, also. Maybe (just maybe) he does that good of a job because Peter likes to be found, but that’s another story, especially because they have exchanged phone numbers, so if Spidey wants to hang out with Wade, he just needs to text.
But Peter also likes to randomly find Wade in the middle of a New York draped with darkness, well, to be found, at least. So that’s that.
“Fuck,” he tells the wind that slaps his face while his flexed body dives between skyscraper, and then he looks around for Deadpool. “Do it like a bandaid, Parker,” he reminds himself, mumbling under the sweaty spandex in the hot summer night.
He glances around before gazing again at the sky right when a lightning blooms amid thick clouds, blinding everything for a second. Then the rain comes, warm, like a curtain that goes and covers everything in sight. In a second, the city he loves so much becomes a watercolor painting. “Dramatic much!” he whispers with a little smile.
Leave it to Wade to live in one of the roughest neighbourhoods in this city, he thinks vaguely, spinning around Fordham, a little distracted by the much-needed shower. It’s been a dry, hot and unbearable summer. Now it’s just nice.
When he finally sees him, he’s not very surprised: not him nor Deadpool are ever been against patrolling in the rain (or in any other harsh condition, for that matter). But it’s funny, because Wade is not exactly patrolling, nor he seems to do something shady. He’s just sitting on a roof, all red and black, full suited, legs dangling into the void beneath him, and, besides him, there’s a box of pizza almost full of water, containing the last two pieces now abandoned there to float. They look ready to be washed away as soon as the cardboard will break.
Peter feels the rain soaking him to the bones and he’s kind of happy about it. His skin feels almost detached from his body and he welcomes the weird sensation, landing right near Deadpool, balancing gracefully on the railing and looking down at him. He smiles.
The merc has his mask pulled up to his nose, to eat, or to breath, or to enjoy the rain like Peter, it doesn’t matter much when his lips sneak up in the familiar smirk that Spiderman knows well.
“What’s a place like this doing in a boy like you?” Deadpool opens immediately, bending the head towards him.
Peter has known him for a while now, and he can tell he’s pleased.
Like a bandaid, he thinks again, breathing hard and drinking some rain in the process. “It’s my place, burp-face, my City”.
Once, years before, Wade told him that he could recite the alphabet by burping. Peter hadn’t believed him then, so the merc had proceeded to show him until a young Spiderman was bend over, laughing like an idiot. “Ok, stop it, burp-face!” Peter had said to him that time, breathing hard against the suit, and all the laughter were drained from him when he’d got what he’d just said. “Shit, Deadpool, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way, really!”.
Wade had looked at him, face covered, scars covered, and after a moment of consideration he had smiled at Peter, a nice smile, even under the mask. “Aren’t you the cutest little spider?”.
And that was that.
It’s been years from that episode, and as the word chosen by Peter has slowly shifted its meaning, the young man still calls Wade that way. A way that’s strangely not related to burps anymore, but of course they’ve never discussed it.
“Ouch, baby boy” Wade says playfully, “you wound me with your cruel words.”
That may even be true, if Peter had not been putting so much fondness into the fake-insult. A little too much, maybe. Also, he’s aware that Deadpool knows, because the man is stupidly clever when he wants to be, and Peter hates that about him, just a little bit. At the beginning of their unlikely friendship, it had taken Spiderman months to understand that most of the time Wade just played dumb, but still, that was ancient history.
“Fuck off, you idiot” he answers lightly, sitting crossed legs near him (the affection’s hard to hide from Spidey’s tone, so he’s stopped trying some time before). The pizza looks disgustingly slimy in the almost-destroyed cardboard. Plit-plot does the rain around them and it’s kind of reassuring, like they are the only surviving people in the whole world.
Water drops across Wade’s face, like little rivers on the side of a mountain: it moves towards his chin and then falls after stopping a moment between his scars and lips. Lips that are still parted, still smiling at Peter, until a flash of white teeth lights up when another thunder rumbles in the sky and Peter swallows hard. There is something warm and painful in Spiderman chest every time he realizes that Deadpool is letting him look directly at his face. Or part of his face, at least.
Peter smiles happily and he doesn’t care if Wade can’t see that: he’s pretty sure the merc knows that too.
“I will fuck off” grant him the other man, turning a bit more towards him. “But only if you fuck off with me, sweetcheeks!”
“Not one of your best.”
As always, Wade doesn’t wince. “It’s harder when you don’t serve ‘em to me on a silver platter, you know?”
“You’re saying you’re out of your repertoire?”
Wades mimics a swoon. “Don’t go all Frenchie on me, baby boy, or I may fall in love, and I’m already halfway there! You wanna talk about French kissing? I’ve got great experience, if you need any help learning a thing or two.” He leans toward Spiderman with a shit-eating grin that’s taking half his face and, with a very different tone, adds: “Practice makes perfect, after all.”
Peter feels his face burning up, but the rain soothes his light embarrassment, and he doesn’t lose the smile. He’s used to Wade and his blatant, idiotic flirting and he doesn’t care much anymore. Mostly.
“I’ve got all the experience I need, thank you very much”.
“You are killing me here, baby boy, I’ve got images in my head now! My man White here is practically whining. And why are you in this part of town, anyway? Missed me?”
Peter rolls his eyes along with his head so that it’s perfectly clear what kind of body language he’s using. “I saw you yesterday, remember?”.
For some miracle Deadpool keeps his mouth shut, but Peter has the impression that he’s listening to someone else instead of him. It doesn’t matter: ‘Pool’s boxes are two self-harm little idiots and most of the time the man manages to keep them under control, especially in the last couple of years. Peter waits for him, avoiding putting pressure.
“Whatever, yeah, all right. I’ll ask!” Deadpool mutters. “Yellow wanna know why you were looking for us.”
Without loosing a single beat Peter replies: “I wasn’t looking for you. I just saw you here with the saddest pizza in the world of pizzas and I decided to swing by to say hi.”
There is a moment of silence before the white patches of Deadpool mask blink a couple of times. There is no tell if he believes the lie, but again it doesn’t matter much when Wade says “Hi” too. He pronounces the little syllable with a rough sound, something raw and deep that makes Peter shiver, but maybe it’s just the rain, yeah, maybe he’s getting cold.
Talking about denial…
“You know, Webs, you don’t really--”
“But since you’re here, I was thinking--”
It’s not the first time they talk each other over. Hell, most of the time Peter does nothing but trying to have a saying in Wade’s ridiculous banters, but this time is different, maybe because Peter is different, maybe because that stupid, absurd bandaid idea is not working at all.
“The fuck’s going on, Webs? You look like a rabbit in front of headlights!”
Peter laughs, the sound is strangled and very unlike him and it goes on until he moves a hand behind his neck, scratching an invisible hitch. It shouldn’t be so hard, he thinks. He can practically see White and Yellow whispering shit in Wade’s brain, and he doesn’t know how to stop it. He wants to stop it! Most of the time he would like to shoot a web in ‘Pool’s ear and jerk out the two idiots, but he can’t of course, not with all his useless super-human fucking strength. Mental illness doesn’t work that way.
“Tell them to shut up, will you, ‘Pool? They’re not helpful.”
Wade clenches his muscles, looking at him with wide eyes, and not for the first time Peter wishes he could in fact see those eyes. He strongly believes they are green. He may have even tried to imagine them, two green, bottomless irises looking down at him and Peter really doesn’t know that to do with that fantasy, sometimes. Some other time it’s painfully clear what to do, though.
This is not one of those times.
He clears his throat, opens the mouth, not really sure what he’s gonna say, even if he’s rehearsed it in front of the mirror at least ten times since the morning, and of course, of course, his phone rings.
It’s not even a normal ring, it’s the super-secret-super-urgent-Avengers-ring-micro-phone and in a second he’s fumbling with the suit to get the damned thing out of one of the small pockets. It’s drenched in water, like the rest of them both, but it’s Stark technology and Peter thinks it could work even underwater.
“Uh, hello?” He looks at Wade when he answers, and fortunately the man seems a bit less spooked by Peter previous pathetic performance. Maybe he thinks it has something to do with the Avengers. If only.
“Spidey?” it’s Steve Rogers’s voice, friendly and kind despite the distance of the bad connection. “We are having a meeting in ten minutes, can you be here?”
“Eh, sure thing Cap, you want me to bring doughnuts?” he asks, feeling that only humour can shield him from his awkwardness at the moment. At least in that habit he and Wade are literally the same.
He can practically hear Steve Rogers rolls his eyes. “No doughnuts, kid, just Deadpool… if you can reach the guy. And when you do, tell him to keep that comms on at all times. Last warning.”
Every single part of that conversation is of course captured by Wade’s hears and his smile at Cap’s words is practically cutting the merc’s face in half. “Hey man” he comes up, all giddy and high spirited, “if you want this piece of ass you just need to ask, you know!”
“Ugh” is the only reply before Steve hangs-up on both of them.
“Jesus, ‘Pool” Spidey mutters, staring at the micro-screen, “that’s Captain America!”
Standing up and flexing an impressive amount of muscle, Deadpool glances only once in the superhero’s direction before saying: “Thank God you told me, Spidey, for a second I thought it was Captain Crunchies.”
Peter doesn’t even try to suffocate a chuckle and stands up also, stretching his limbs while the pizza box finally decides to commit suicide and falls down the building. They both observe its terrible end before Peter throws a web into the wet night and signals Wade to hold on to him.
It’s probably the first time the man doesn’t squeak in shameless delight at the possibility of a spidey-back, as he likes to call them, but Peter can still feel the other’s heart pounding against his own back, strong and warm, like Wade is in general.
And the rain keeps falling.