Chapter Text
Wade avoids superheroes.
Wade always avoids superheroes.
It’s not just the risk of imprisonment that comes with every encounter - though that certainly has its downsides. It's that, for the most part, he finds them to be insufferably lacking in good humor. Sure, they may be selfless heroes, constantly risking their lives for the greater good, but despite being blissfully unaware of their own fourth wall, some part of them seems to realize that they’re franchise protagonists, because their fondness for unnecessary drama is rivaled only by their terrible senses of humor, and their moral grounds are so high they're choking on clouds. Sure, there are a few whom he can’t help but admire with all the fervor of his eight year-old self pinning up ragged Captain America posters in his bedroom wall, but like celebrity affairs or Scott Summers’s ass, they’re best observed from a safe distance, preferably with headphones ready to block out the lectures.
That’s not to say that Wade would mind getting up-close and personal with Captain America if the situation were to arise, but - well. The point is that he can’t stand the looks of superiority that plaster across every superhero’s face whenever they glance in Wade’s direction. Just because they're is a selfless and courageous heroes and the Wade is a ruthless killer-for-hire with a set of moral codes as cracked and crumbling as his fourth wall doesn’t mean they have to be all condescending about it.
This all to say that, when he first enters the NYC basement complex in which his human target resided and finds it in the midst of an action movie showdown between at least a dozen criminals with guns and one clearly battered Spider-Man, Wade does not find himself terribly inclined to help Spider-Man. Sure, the kid has quite evidently gotten in over his head, but that is his problem, not Wade’s. That’s what happens when you go into an illegal smuggling den without a proper weapon like a little bitch. If Spider-Man had just thought to stick an automatic weapon or two in that red plastic-wrap he calls a suit this wouldn’t be a problem, and Wade wouldn’t have to get involved.
Unfortunately for Wade, it’s very hard to not get involved when one walks into a fifteen-to-one armed showdown wearing a Deadpool suit, carrying a bazooka in one hand and a sniper rifle in the other. Not his most subtle weapons, but he’d seen two possible ways the evening could go, and these two accounted for both.
The entire room freezes at once; the man attempting to pistol-whip Spider-Man upside the jaw misses and drops his gun in surprise, and Spider-Man falters halfway through webbing a man’s legs together in surprise. As silences go, Wade’s been in some pretty awkward ones, and this surpasses them all.
“Hey there, fellas,” he says loudly, in an attempt to break said silence, and grins. At once, every gun in the room is turned from Spider-Man to him. He scans their faces and spots his mark standing near the back of the room, one hand over a black eye and the other holding a rifle. He grins, hefts his bazooka, aims, and falters.
There is a very simple solution before him at this moment. He fires the bazooka, kills everyone in the room, mark included, and aside from perhaps some temporary organ damage from the explosion, gets out without a scratch. He’ll avoid the pain in the ass that will be fistfighting every person in the room, getting shot fifteen times, and then webbed to a wall by Spider-Man like a common criminal once the ordeal is over. In any other situation, he would pull the trigger without a second thought. He’s done research on this particular branch of villainy, and is fairly certain that every member is complicit in the types of criminal activity that even Wade finds beyond distasteful. Their deaths wouldn’t even leave a scratch in Wade’s crumbling morality.
But Spider-Man. Spider-Man is a criminal, sure, and would probably be insufferable beyond belief if Wade knew anything about him, but right now he’s just a kid standing in a room with a bunch of guns and a bloodstained suit and there’s something in the way he’s standing that makes Wade suspect a gunshot wound, and god dammit. God-fucking-dammit.
The tension in the room is unbelievable for the five seconds of eternity it takes Wade to make up his mind. His finger brushes against the trigger, and every set of eyes in the room is on him, and a dozen hands are trembling on the handles of their guns, and Spider-Man is standing so stock still he’s not even trembling, and the fear is so thick Wade can smell it in the air.
Wade, with a heavy sigh, sets down the bazooka.
Everything moves at once. A half dozen bullets embed themselves in the dusty wall behind Wade, sending puffs of white chalky plaster into the air, and he drops to the ground fast enough to only get shot three or four times. He pats at his belt, but the only other weapon is the sniper-rifle, so he hoists it up with a grunt and starts firing at random around the room. It’s not meant for close combat, but it’s not a goddamn bazooka, which is something. Within a few seconds, a few of the criminals have dropped to the ground clutching gunshot wounds and a great deal more have toppled over with white spiderwebs entangling their extremities. Spider-Man is full-throttle now, no longer looking exhausted and near-dropping, as he had when Wade had entered. Something about the interruption has turned the tides of the war, and he’s whizzing around the room, jumping from wall to wall, taking down anyone who dares venture close. It’s dizzying to watch, so Wade ignores it and focuses on shooting anyone he can get a clear aim on.
Two, three minutes pass; the chaos becomes subdued, the layer of bodies on the floor thickens. Most of them are struggling against their bonds, cries muffled by the spiderwebs around their mouths. Spider-Man knocks unconscious the last criminal standing by punching her upside the chin, then makes a whining noise and shakes out his hand in apparent pain.
“Daddy Stark not teach you to punch properly?” Wade asks sympathetically, scanning the room for the mark he’d been sent to kill. He spots the man webbed up near a corner, eyes fixed on Wade, thrashing and struggling. Wade hefts his gun and advances.
Spider-Man sounds irritated when he responds, too focused on his hand to look at Wade. “Tony’s not my father , and I know how to punch someone, that lady just had a jaw like freaking steel.”
“I have a solution for you, hunny-bunchkins, it’s called PROPER WEAPONRY and it’s the only way you’ll ever survive the hellscape that is the NYC vigilante gossip circle.” Wade stops before his mark, lifts the sniper rifle, aims. The mark thrashes harder. Sweat is trickling from his hairline. His eyes are crazed.
“You’re one to talk, whoever you are, showing up to a firefight with a bazooka and a sniper rifle,” Spider-Man says indignantly, and glances up from his hand to see what Wade’s about to do. “Hey, what - woah, what the fuck-”
Wade has just tightened his finger on the trigger when spiderwebs wrap around his hands. The gun is pried, roughly, from his grip, and the shot fired harmlessly into the wall. Spider-Man yanks the gun backwards into his hands, where he holds it awkwardly for a moment, with the air of someone holding very delicate rare china, then sets it gently on the ground.
“Motherfucker!” Wade exclaims. “Give that back -” He glances around in search of a handgun, or any gun, to use, before Spider-Man can prevent his finishing the job. He’s too slow. Spider-Man leaps over a pile of mostly-unconscious bodies, lands behind Wade, and grabs him by the wrists.
In terms of physical strength, Wade is frankly top-notch; he could probably lift the Captain America shield, if Cap would ever give him the chance. This doesn’t matter when faced by the freakishly significant strength of a wounded teenage boy’s moral superiority. Spider-Man pins his wrists behind his back, wraps them in an unnecessarily thick layer of webbing, then wraps his arms to his sides and his ankles together and drops him to the floor, where he stands over him with his arms folded over his chest and manages to look remarkably cross for a boy wearing a full face mask.
“The hell?” Wade demands. “I show up to a dozen-to-one firefight, save your ass from certain death when I could very well have saved myself the trouble with a bazooka, and this is your gratitude? Bitch-ass-motherfucker -”
“Sorry,” Spider-Man apologizes. “I’m grateful, really, but I can’t let you murder anyone.” He sounds genuinely sympathetic, but makes no move to set Wade free. Instead, he turns his back and walks - limps, actually, for good reason guessing from the blood staining his left suit leg - back to where he was standing before. He crouches by one of the unconscious men and pats around at the guy’s belt for a moment before finding and withdrawing a phone.
He calls the police, rattles off an address and asks for an entourage of ambulances and patrol cars. Keeps it short, doesn’t give a name, hangs up as soon as the information has been delivered. Wade has to wriggle, worm-like, in order to shift well enough to get a good view.
Phone call made, Spider-Man discards the phone and starts checking the pulses of the criminals scattered around him. Wade groans. “Are you actually seriously going to get me arrested like an asshole?”
“Not if none of them are dead,” Spider-Man says absently. “I mean, you did save my life, so I guess I owe you that much. None of them look dead, but I want to make sure before we leave.”
“You know, I gave you the benefit of the doubt just now, but turns out you’re just as insufferably superior as the rest of the ass-hats you work with,” Wade fumes, trying to wriggle out of the spiderwebs and failing miserably. He tries to get close enough to a gun to grab it by flopping across the floor like a worm. Spider-Man pauses in taking someone’s pulse to kick the gun away, then moves on.
“I’m sorry I gave you a bad impression,” Spider-Man says sympathetically. “I think you’re being unfair, though.”
Wade bangs his head against the floor three times in quick succession in hopes that the ringing in his ears will block out Spider-Man’s insufferably reasonable voice. The attempt being unsuccessful, he elects to ignore Spider-Man by talking over his attempts at communication.
“I have a reputation to uphold, you know, as a mercenary who doesn’t lose his marks to bitchy little super-children. I should’ve shot you when I had the chance. Imagine how that would look on my record. Deadpool, killer of Spiderman. God, that would’ve been fantastic.”
“You’re Deadpool?” Spider-Man asks from somewhere behind Wade’s head, sounding surprised.
“You didn’t recognize me?” Wade asks, caught off guard with genuine disappointment.
“Sorry,” Spider-Man says again. “But I’ve heard of you. Double-D warned me to stay away from people like you and Frank Castle.”
“Pshht,” Wade snorts. “Frank Castle doesn’t hurt kids. Frank Castle hunts down people who hurt kids and strips their skin from their bones in little strips. Who’s this Double-D and what else have they said about me?”
“Daredevil,” Spider-Man says, and he sounds closer now. “He said that and also that Natasha Romanoff told him you’re not as dangerous as you could be because anyone who listens properly hears you prattling on a mile away.”
“Black Widow knows my name?” Wade’s so busy being gratified he forgets to be offended.
Spider-Man smoothly changes the subject. “I finished checking, and everyone’s okay,” he says, with the air of someone who thinks he’s being reassuring.
“I wouldn’t say okay , exactly,” Wade says. He’s at eye level with a puddle of blood issuing from a nearby man’s arm wound.
“Alive,” Spider-Man corrects, walking up to stand next to Wade.
“Because God forbid a crew of literal murderers die.”
“I’m going to pick you up now.”
“What?” Wade asks, alarmed. Before he can inquire further, Spider-Man has crouched down and picked Wade up bridal-style, with all the ease of someone picking up a newborn kitten. Wade makes a noise of indignation and tries to wriggle out of Spider-Man’s arms. The effort is fruitless; Spider-Man just tightens his grip.
“I’m taking us up to the roof,” Spider-Man explains. He starts walking towards the door. “Police should be here soon, and I need to be out of here.”
“What you’re saying is that you’re going to ditch me, your savior, on some NYC rooftop,” Wade says flatly, unimpressed.
It’s hard to see where they are exactly with Wade’s head dangling over Spider-Man’s arm, giving him only an upside-down view of the wall, but the light changes and he guesses they’re in a stairwell. He can feel Spider-Man limping as he climbs.
“I’ll let you go first,” Spider-Man corrects. “But frankly, from what I’ve heard of you you’re lucky I’m not turning you into the police.”
“No, you’re just turning my mark into the police. Alive.”
Instead of apologizing, Spider-Man turns and opens the door at the top of the stairwell with his back. They emerge onto a concrete roof, and he at last sets Wade down near the edge before sitting down and dangling his feet over the edge.
Wade rolls over so he’s facing Spider-Man and catches a glimpse of city sky; all ashen buildings against a horizon streaked by pale red that fades to gray clouds. The air smells of gasoline and cigarette smoke, and traffic is audible from the ground, two or three stories down.
Spider-Man pulls his injured leg up onto the other and holds his hands over the wound awkwardly, looking like he’s not sure what to do. It doesn’t look as bad as Wade had suspected earlier; it must not be, if Spider-Man had climbed all those stairs. Wade knows how to treat a wound like that, but it doesn’t seem dire enough for him to go ahead and offer help to a sworn enemy.
“Imagine getting wounded for longer than ten minutes at a time,” he drawls. “Must be a pain.” And already, he can feel the skin around his own bullet wounds knitting together, healing. It itches, and he wriggles a little against the spider-webs.
“They’ll heal quickly,” Spider-Man says, but he sounds uncertain.
There is a long moment of intensely awkward silence. Wade grows increasingly uncomfortable. He eyes the edge of the rooftop, and then Spider-Man, and then the edge of the rooftop again, and then tries to rationally think over the pros and cons of doing something very stupid to escape another five minutes of truly unbearable pauses in conversation. Rationally thinking, it turns out, hurts his brain.
He rolls off the rooftop.