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Wade Wilson has been woefully walloped by a witches’... damn, he can’t think of a word for “spell” that starts with a “w”. Damn. That’s as far as we’ll get with the alliteration for today, then.
But that’s beside the point. The point is, Wade is covered in magic goop, and not the fun kind, nor for fun reasons. Thankfully, it’s not sticky, so all that’s left for Wade to do is to wash up.
{ Yeah, in the dark. Like a freak. }
“If it works, it works,” Wade sighs, scrubbing his legs as the goo sloughs down his back. Viscous. He stomps the bigger clumps down the drain, turning the water off after no longer feeling like he’s crawled out of a sewer, and dries off, wrapping the towel around his waist once he’s done. Muscle memory gets him to the sink, where he rummages around until he feels the familiar shape of his lotion bottle. No, not for that, don’t get any ideas. This is the nice stuff! Clinical-grade for the tight, painful scarring on the surface of his skin, which is unusually painful today.
{ Hide in the dark all you like, you can still feel every imperfection. }
[ Dunno, it’s not that bad today. Maybe today we’re pretty enough for even a mother to not hate. ]
{ The whole point of this is that we’re hideous, regardless of if you can see or not— }
No, Wade’s not having a great day today, thank you for asking. He had to fight the witch alone, because he was covering for the first half of Spidey’s patrol today, which also means he couldn’t fix the problem with a gun.
[ Not that we’ve fixed many problems with a gun as of late! Turning a new leaf, right? ]
Wade exhales forcefully, and his stomach growls. So much for holing up in his dark, mirrorless bathroom until the end of times.
So, he opens the door, and walks into the moonlit apartment, stopping to grab the spare clothes he’s left on the back of the couch, when there is an interruption.
“What the hell?” Spider-Man shrieks.
Wade, taken aback by the sudden appearance of a masked vigilante in his very secure living room, also shrieks, and promptly falls onto his ass, which hurts a lot more than it should, though admittedly the only cushioning between his ass and the hardwood floor is the towel wrapped around his waist, because he just got out of the shower. And apparently, while he was in the shower, Spider-Man broke into his apartment, because Wade has a habit of getting into Situations like this.
Some would call it bad luck. Wade calls it a habit, or perhaps a talent.
“What do you mean, what the hell?!” Wade demands, “You broke into my apartment!”
“You’re— you— you’re fucking purple!” Spider-Man sputters, pointing. Wade makes an offended face.
{ So blinded by your ugliness he can’t even see colors right. }
“Pointing is rude, you know,” Wade mutters, struggling to stand while remaining decent. God, everything hurts. He voices as such with a pained groan. “And last I checked, I’m a peachy pink, thanks for asking.”
“Look at your hand,” Spidey says, lowering his pointer finger a bit. Wade obliges, rolling his eyes as he does because he just took a shower to wash off all that goo from the witch he’d fought earlier, and while he was in the shower, he did not notice anything particularly unusual about his already unusual skin—
[ Yeah, because you were in the dark. ]
{ Dumbass. }
—and, well. Would you look at that.
He is indeed a very strange shade of dark purple. More precisely, #2e1a30 with splotches of #421b38 and #2b1e3d scattered between small patches of regular-looking skin. His scars look swollen, and his skin puffy.
[ Huh. ]
“If this is permanent, I’m permanently ending that witches’ career,” Wade grumbles. “My favorite color is pink, and now I’m fucking purple—”
Spider-Man interrupts Wade’s lamenting.
“Witch?”
“Yeah, I ran into her at the start of patrol when I was covering for you earlier today,” Wade explains. “I called it quits when I got covered in goo.”
“Short, black hair?”
“Yeah, how did— oh.”
“I ran into her just now, and was coming here for backup.”
Wade finally notices that Spidey is dripping water all over the floor, like he’s recently been hosed off.
“Yeah. Okay, okay, I, uh, don’t really wanna check under the mask right now, but now I’m scared that I’m also purple,” Spider-Man says. “I had someone spray me off with a hose after I got goo all over their balcony garden.”
“You should check,” Wade says. “I know you don’t wanna, but you should check.”
So he takes off one glove. He’s substantially less purple than Wade, but there are still raised patches of dark, purple-ish skin around his knuckles, across the back of his hand, criss-crossing over his fingers. He turns it over in the moonlight from Wade’s window, showing a thick, purple mark starting at the center of his palm and extending past the sleeve of the rest of the suit.
“Oh my god,” Spider-Man says. “Oh, damnit, how am I gonna go to work if I’m purple?”
“I have plenty of advice on how to appear somewhat normal while still covering every inch of skin you got, don’t worry about that right now.”
Spider-Man whips his head up and stares at Wade intently. Wade can’t see past those wide, white lenses, but he can almost feel the disgusted gaze scraping over his exposed body.
“Scars,” he mutters, looking back at his hand. “They’re all scars— we have scurvy.”
[ …the pirate disease? ]
{ isn’t that an STI? }
“The pirate disease?” Wade asks, deciding that this will yield better results than asking Spidey if they got the same STI.
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s the common name for hypovitaminosis C—”
“That just sounds made up—”
“A severe vitamin C deficiency,” Spider-Man continues. “Or at least, that’s what causes this specific symptom. The disruption of normal collagen synthesis, which results in deterioration of scar tissue, which is made up of collagen fibers.”
{ Oh yeah, baby, keep talking science to me. }
“But we have no other symptoms associated with scurvy…” Spider-Man continues. He walks right up to Wade, then, lending a critical eye to him. “Open your mouth.”
[ This is a fantasy come true, scurvy aside. ]
Wade opens, and suddenly, there’s a hand at his mouth, pushing down his lower lip. Repeat, this is not a drill, Wade is in naught but a towel, and Spider-Man has just asked him to open his mouth, and there are gloved fingers pushing down on his lip.
Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.
{ He’ll probably punch you if you pop a boner right now. }
[ And I’d sigh dreamily, even at that. ]
“No bleeding gums,” Spider-Man notes. His hand pulls away, and Wade’s fantasy dissipates. Then, the man takes a gloved hand to his bare one, pressing down on his own skin for a few moments before removing the pressure.
“Normal capillary function,” he says. He wiggles his fingers and rolls his wrist. “No joint pain.”
“I don’t know what the purpose of any of this is,” Wade says.
[ How can we get him to put his fingers in our mouth again? ]
“Trying to figure out what the hell is happening,” Spider-Man mutters. “All potential causes of collagen synthesis disruption, scurvy or not, would result in dozens of other symptoms, and I’d say that maybe the spell only affects the dermis, but that wouldn’t explain the normal capillary function.”
He pauses, then, flexing his bare hand, turning it this way and that. His gloved fingers trace over the skin, delicately examining every raised bump.
“I— I don’t know how to fix this, if it’s not caused by scurvy,” he sighs. “Never seen anything like it before.”
The words fall heavy, laden with something more than a simple scientific observation, but that’s not something Wade is all too keen on focusing on.
“Bah, we’ll get through it,” Wade says with a flippant wave of his hand. “We’re the dynamic duo—”
“We aren’t.”
“—absolutely inseparable—”
“Very separable, if I have any say.”
“There ain’t nothin’ life can throw at us that we can’t handle,” Wade finishes.
“There is no us,” Spidey hisses. “This is probably your fault anyways. You probably aggravated her. And I have a job interview in three days, and I’m not showing up to it covered in purple scars.”
“We will get through this, baby, just trust me.”
Spider-Man doesn’t scar.
This isn’t a known fact to most people in his life— Spider-Man’s skin is always covered, so there’s no way of telling what scars there are anyways, and Peter Parker is an average civilian who is unlikely to bear any scars of note.
Ever since getting bitten, his wounds have healed without a trace. He never realized how many times that had happened until today, and that was just by looking at his hand. Scars from split knuckles, lines of varying severity crossing his fingers like crooked half-rings, the deep scar from when his webshooter was pressed into his skin until it shattered, cutting through it.
“I say we start with oranges,” Wade says, interrupting Peter’s minor crisis.
“But this is almost definitively not scurvy,” Peter says, mind running through every possibility with his extensive knowledge of chemistry and relatively low knowledge of the human body.
“We gotta start somewhere,” Wade decides, finally moving to grab real clothes instead of a loose towel.
So they’re at a night market now, desperately hoping against hope that someone is selling oranges.
And then they try a 24/7 store, which doesn’t have any fresh fruits regardless.
They double check Wade’s apartment. Nilch.
They try a store that opens at 5:00, only to find that oranges haven’t even been stocked yet, and then they try a breakfast place that opens at 6:00, only to hear that their fresh squeezed orange juice isn’t available today.
Store after store after store, checking every street vendor selling fruit and even having the neighborhood’s hero hop along from building to building shouting for citrus fruits.
“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Peter grumbles, slouching against the chainlink fence bordering this rooftop.
“There’s gotta be other foods with vitamin C,” Wade says. “Gimme a sec, lemme search it up.”
He whips out a phone that is…surprisingly not miles above what Peter could afford. In fact, it almost looks a little beaten up. Not the usual blood-money-nice sorta stuff Peter sees Wade pulling.
“What the hell,” Wade grumbles, frowning.
“What?”
“All these lists are blank!” he groans, shoving his phone towards Peter.
“Lemme try,” Peter says, turning on his burner and firing up a search for foods high in vitamin C.
Peter’s phone is slow. It takes a second to load.
A few seconds.
Okay, a minute is pushing it.
“We’re so screwed,” Peter sighs, putting the phone away. “Any luck on your end.”
“No, just this fuckass plot device— stupid plot device too, couldn’t the author think up anything better than ‘hurr durr, phones don’t work, you'll never get vitamin C’?”
“This is your fault,” Peter grumbles, ignoring Wade’s nonsensical rambling. “I don’t know how, but this is probably your fault.”
“How is it my fault?” Wade asks.
“You probably aggravated the witch into breaking all tech we set our hands on, that’s how!”
“How do you know you weren’t the one that did her in?” Wade accuses. “The only reason I piss you off is because I’m slightly quippier and funnier than you! You probably made one poorly-timed joke and pissed her off!”
“I pissed her off?” Peter shouts, because he guesses they’re shouting now, “I? As in me? I wasn’t even talking, I still had a mouth full of food because she came by on my snack break, already pissed off and throwing magic willy-nilly!”
“Who the fuck says ‘willy nilly’ anymore, are you sixty-two?”
“I’m twenty-eight, numbnuts!” Peter roars, and then he clears his throat. And sits back down. Apparently he’d stood up, though he does not recall doing this.
“I’m so screwed,” Peter laments, significantly more subdued. “Damnit, I can’t even go back to my apartment now!”
“Why?”
“I change into my civvies to walk home so no one sees me swing into my apartment, but I can’t do that now because I’m covered in scars!”
Wade seems vaguely affronted at that.
“Hey now, believe it or not, you can wander around with scars. It’s the twenty-first century and ugly people like me are allowed to roam the—”
“I could care less about having them, but it does not take a genius to see my civilian identity with scars that match all of Spider-Man’s severe injuries and connect the dots.”
“Stay over at mine, then,” Wade offers. “I have no secret identity to hide! Whaddaya say, sour boy?”
This is a mistake, Peter tells himself, standing in an elevator, listening to Wade yammer on and on about absolutely nothing.
This is a very bad mistake, he tells himself, accepting Wade’s offer of fresh clothes so that he doesn’t have to sit around all day in a damp, humid suit of spandex.
This is the worst mistake, he decides, looking at the offered clothes.
Peter looks down at himself. He refuses to waste money on running the AC all summer, so he’s very familiar with hanging around in his apartment or wandering out to collect groceries while wearing nothing but an undershirt and shorts. But now… it feels revealing.
Really revealing.
And not really in a sexy way.
Purple marks run up his arms, interspersed with starbursts of scar tissue and vast swaths of purple where he’d been burned; they peek out from the hemming of the undershirt, wide and thick, protruding under the fabric and forming shadow shapes that outline scar after scar after scar suffered by his torso. Jagged lines have formed over his legs, creeping past the hem of the shorts, some parts of his skin so abused that they look like they’ve been marked by one, giant scar, instead of dozens of smaller ones.
Not to mention the bruise-like colors blooming around where bones had broken. His ankles, legs, wrists, fingers, toes— all sporting dark purple coloration that probably went deep under the skin. He lifts up the undershirt to check his torso; similar marks are found decorating his ribs.
The clothing is too revealing for his taste.
But his suit is still damp and smells faintly of witch-goo. And he can’t stand to cover up more in this heat.
To be quite honest, he doesn’t even want to wear his mask, and he decides he’ll count on his lackluster civilian identity to keep him safe.
And, as much as he hates the man, he knows Wade wouldn’t endanger his love and idol, Spider-Man, even if he did know his secret identity. So he wads up the mask and suit and webshooters into a ball of spandex and hopelessness, opting to use his organic webs to put them up in the corner of the bathroom.
Welp, time to face the music, he tells himself, squaring his shoulders. The music being my terrible mistake of staying over at Wade Wilson’s house with no change of clothes and no plan for curing this spell.
Spider-Man is…
[ Literally just a guy. ]
{ This face does not ring a single bell. }
Okay, yes, there’s that. He’s not a famous celebrity, this is not a Bruce-Wayne-situation, Spider-Man is literally just some guy.
Some guy, who is covered. Absolutely covered in scars. And yeah, Wade’s one to talk; he can survive just about anything, and he’s been blown up enough to justify being nearly entirely purple.
But Spider-Man? No. Spider-Man cannot survive being torn to shreds. And yet, it appears that he’s done exactly that. Even his pretty face has taken hits, dark fracture marks blooming in his eye sockets and cheeks to suggest broken bones, a cut trailing from his ear to his collarbone, dark spots from landing on rough terrain, and small scars littering his cheeks, jawbone, lips, forehead.
All of which had healed. All of which had been survived. All of which had happened, and instead of calling it quits, Spider-Man just kept putting on the mask. He was clearly a looker before the appearance of those marks, but to be honest, knowing what caused them makes him drop-dead gorgeous.
Yes, even if the purple blooming in his eye sockets makes him kinda look like a ghoul.
[ Please, please, remember N.I.C.E.! Don’t say anything stupid. ]
“Woah,” Wade says.
{ See, that was something stupid. You didn’t explain your reasoning, and now he thinks you think he’s ugly. }
Spider-Man’s expression shifts to something even more self conscious, clearly making an active effort to not cross his arms and hunch over. It looks like he wants to bite back to Wade’s reaction with something downright venomous, but Wade cuts in before he can.
“You’re beautiful, Webs.”
And he gets to see the man’s cheeks go red.
[ Oh my gosh, do you think he looks like that under the mask every time we flirt with him? ]
“...thanks,” Spider-Man says. His mean expression makes it look like he meant to spit the word out, but his tone of voice is shockingly subdued.
“And my name is Peter,” he says, finally looking up to meet Wade’s eyes. Wade didn’t think that doe eyes could look threatening at all until that exact moment, when Peter narrows tham and speaks in a low tone. “And if you even think about telling anyone, you’ll never see me again.”
“Deal,” Wade says, breathless. And then he sees the not-as-immediately apparent dark circles under Peter’s eyes, and suddenly, Wade remembers that both of them were up all night looking for oranges, and now it’s noon the next day.
“Do you want sleep or pancakes first?” Wade asks. Peter shrugs.
“Probably sleep. So get off the couch.”
[ Bossy. ]
{ Hot. }
“There’s a guest room,” Wade offers. “Just past the kitchen, door on the left.”
Peter nods stiffly, and turns sharply, disappearing from Wade’s line of sight. Wade doesn’t mind a couch nap, of course, so he decides to settle in—
“Wade?”
“What?” Wade shouts.
Nothing.
“What?” He tries again.
He grumbles at the lack of response, forcing himself off the couch. Ah, Peter’s ended up in the wrong bedroom—
Oh shit, Peter’s in the wrong bedroom.
“What is this,” Peter asks, but the question is flat, infuriated, and probably not even a question at all. He’s pointing at one of the many plushies decorating Wade’s bed.
“That is Spidey Jr. and if you lay a finger on him, I will kill you dead,” Wade growls. Peter clearly doesn’t believe the empty threat, and reaches over to pluck the plushie right off the bed, examining it. Wade doesn’t mention the fact that it’s custom, though the fact that the plushie has a little magnet in one hand to attach it to Deadpool Jr. may give that away. Right now, Deadpool Jr. is very lonely on the bed.
[ Poor baby, you can practically hear him yelling death threats over being torn apart from Spidey Jr! ]
“Put him back,” Wade demands. Peter keeps turning the thing over in his hands, his expression one of deep confusion, vague disgust, and curiosity.
He starts pulling at the arms, like it’s some mass-produced, replaceable toy.
“Don’t rip him apart!” Wade exclaims, lunging to grab the plush back.
“Why shouldn’t I rip it apart?” Peter asks, scowling. He holds it up above his head, pushing Wade back with a single, strong arm.
“He’s mine,” Wade whines, like some sort of kindergartener. “Please, if you hurt him, Deadpool Jr. will be all lonely!”
“You have a custom plushie of me,” Peter says, as though the fact has finally registered. Wade neglects to answer, and decides to climb up to stand on his bed, trying to reach the plush. Peter still holds it just out of reach, so Wade uses Peter’s shoulder as a stepping stool to grab the toy, and that gets the man going.
Peter is hardy, but even a boot to the shoulder will piss him off, so he twists and bends, but is thrown off-balance by Wade’s weight, falling flat on the ground on his back. Wade lunges for the plush again, but Peter’s got him by the shoulder, forcing Wade down against his body, unable to reach the damn thing.
Wade watches Peter’s grip tighten threateningly around Spidey Jr.’s… okay, he doesn’t really have a neck, but like. The spot where the spherical head meets the disproportionately small torso.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Wade growls, whipping out a knife to hold to Peter’s throat.
{ Ours to hurt. }
Peter’s eyes are wild with fury and determination, like he doesn’t even care about the plush, it’s just the principle of the thing. He juts his chin up a bit more, making the tip of the blade dig into his throat.
Wade’s hand is shaking.
He is so grateful that he’d kept the pants of his suit on and, by consequence, the protective cup that his hard-on is now straining against. If he’s going to get Spidey Jr. back, though, it’s gonna have to be right fucking now, because if they stay in this position much longer, Wade cannot make any promises regarding whether or not he’d start rutting against the man beneath him.
Wade drops the knife handle like it’s burned him and leans over, ignoring the small gasp from beneath him and grabbing the plush from Peter’s hands, which are suddenly no longer grasping it quite as hard as he’d thought.
Confused, Wade looks down at Peter, and his eyes blow wide open at the sight of the small cut on Peter’s neck. It’s thin, objectively nothing in comparison to the majority of the scars decorating his body—
[ HOLY SHIT, WE NEED TO GET A FIRST AID KIT ]
{ Ours to hurt. }
A bead of blood grows heavy, and then trickles down his skin.
{ Ours. }
Wade babbles apologies and swears to grab the first aid kit and Peter’s saying something about there’s no point, it’ll heal in two minutes, and Wade watches the blood slow, a scar stitching the skin back together.
{ Ours. }
Peter hates Deadpool. Hates him.
He’s a killer. He flirts shamelessly with Peter. He’s annoying.
Peter hates Deadpool.
That being said, Peter needs to get to the guest bedroom ASAP, before the heady smell of Wade’s arousal gets to him. No, his sense of smell isn’t super amazing, but it’s enhanced enough to be able to tell.
Peter leaves the room without ‘Spidey Jr.’, and, with nothing to set up, no night back or whatever, he just collapses into the bed. This is the part where he’s supposed to immediately fall into a deep sleep for twelve hours straight.
Too warm.
Peter grumbles and opts to shed the undershirt, hoping that losing a single, thin layer will do anything, and sleeps.
When he wakes, it’s to the sound of cooking, butter in a pan and the sound of batter being scooped. The evening sun shines softly through the window, golden and still intensely hot, despite the late time of day. Wade’s apartment has better soundproofing than Peter’s; it’s quiet, here.
In the sunlight, the scars look…different. The thin skin over them is translucent, and with sun shining through them, it almost looks like they glow from the inside, with the way the light diffuses in the soft, raised tissue.
Peter’s fingers trace over the raised lines on his bare chest.
He’s never had any scars to attach memories to. He can take a guess at which horrific injury is attached to which scar, but there’s no real mental connection there. There’s just dozens of scars, and disjointed memories, and it’s pretty easy to forget how much you get hurt when you aren’t constantly carrying reminders of it.
He trails a hand over his stomach, feeling the swollen scars there, soft under his touch.
I’m sorry, he thinks to himself. Guilt clouds him, for some reason; guilt at throwing his body into danger, as though the body weren’t his to hurt in the first place.
I never realized how much I let you hurt.
When Peter shows up to the kitchen for a grand total of five minutes exactly, wolfing down a stack of pancakes and chugging the leftover half-gallon of milk straight from the container, all without so much as a thank you before going back to sleep, Wade jokes about ungrateful teenagers. Peter bites back with something about how he could probably blow the whole apartment to kingdom come, and Wade would still come running at his call like a dog.
Maybe it’s not the best way to speak to an attempting-to-reform killer, but Peter couldn’t give a damn. He knows Wade is the one who got them into this mess in the first place (which, if it isn’t fixed soon, will result in no second job for Peter), and Wade has a Spider-Man plushie that is magnetized to hold hands with a Deadpool plushie. Custom-made.
As far as Peter’s concerned, he can use all the resources he wants from Wade. It’s only fair.
And then he wakes up to a cure. A lotion Wade had procured from a wizard that “owed me a favor, don’t worry about it”. There’s two, unlabelled glass bottles full of the stuff, reeking of lemons.
“Just apply topically, and the scars will return to their normal state within the day,” Wade says. He’s already slathered his arms and legs in the stuff, if the slightly lightening purple is anything to go off of.
“Gimme,” Peter grumbles, still drowsy. Wade isn’t as flexible as Peter; he’ll need help getting it on his back and shoulders.
Peter ignores Wade’s many (many) comments about ‘backrubs’ and ‘other rubs’ and ‘what friends are for’. He watches, fascinated, as the lemon-scented lotion works its magic on Wade’s back, turning the scars to their original color. By the time he’s done, he looks at his palms, and they’re free of scars entirely.
“Alrighty, your turn!” Wade chirps, turning around. Peter frowns.
“Uh, no, I got it,” he mutters. “I’m flexible.”
“Try to touch your back,” Wade says, an infuriatingly knowing smirk tugging at his lips. Peter’s sure that he’s about to wipe that smirk clean off Wade’s face, but then—
“HHhhah, shit!” Peter hisses, grimacing. As he tries to stretch, the scar tissue stinging and protesting, feeling like it’s about to snap under the pressure and… spew blood everywhere. Or something.
So, as Peter lotions up his arms and torso and legs and what have you, Wade helps, working the lotion in small circles, much firmer than Peter did for him. Almost like a massage.
It’s not nice. Shut up.
There’s just a bit of lotion left at the bottom of the bottle now.
“Ah, missed a spot,” Wade says, interrupting his previous ramblings about octopuses to reach over and slather some onto Peter’s neck.
Peter catches Wade’s hand, stopping it in its path.
There’s only one mark that Peter hasn’t covered yet. The cut on his neck, courtesy of Wade.
Peter watches the black of Wade’s pupils swallow up the grey-blue irises in a matter of seconds.
Initially, the scar was about as long and thick as an embroidery needle, but the spell seemed to extend to new scars, and it was a bit thicker now. He’d taken to tracing it absentmindedly in the past day.
It’s small. He can lessen its appearance with concealer in time for his interview.
He decides it may be wise to not fade the scar, and to instead just keep the leftover lotion, in case the magical witch casts scurvy again.