He was sixteen when his uncle died.
Blondie fifteen.
Miles not even fourteen.
The world was a cruel place sometimes and, try as he might to pretend that it wasn’t constantly on his mind, Peter couldn’t quite make himself forget that.
He looked down at Miles and Gwen and Peni and Benj all fighting over some esoteric bit of popular culture and wondered how many Spidermen it would take to save the world. It always seemed like one was never enough these days. Seemed like the team really was the way to go.
That hadn’t been how he’d grown up.
He’d grown up slamming into car doors and getting screamed at by cab drivers and TV presenters. The name he’d made for himself was dragged through the mud, day in, day out, by people whose voices filtered up louder than the rest. He’d known at sixteen that the world was a load of shit that humans spent their lives just slogging through, but he’d learned by seventeen that not only was it a cesspit of cruelty, but it was one where the limits of help were always just below what he needed. May was there and she made things easier. She could help stitch the wounds, but she couldn’t make the anxiety go away. She couldn’t make the nightmares stop or the old wounds stop hurting in the face of a thunderstorm.
No one, it seemed, could change the city and its people in even the direction that Peter needed them to go.
And so he’d learned nearly twenty years ago that sometimes, the only way to cope was to walk that tightrope.
The kids—Noir and Blondie included—were fascinated with Tats and his team. They all joked that their multiverse group was basically a Spideys-only team red. Yeah, Blondie and Miles shared a young, spunky Daredevil. Yeah, Noir was right on the trail of a local blind lawyer and an infamous, gunslinging merc for hire.
But none of them really seemed to understand that these relationships were tightropes.
Peter walked them feeling like he was falling.
He didn’t tell Ham, but Ham understood anyways. The guy was the secret secondary responsible adult of the gang. He had a knack for reading sadness in people’s faces, even through masks, so when he and Peter watched the kids celebrate Gwen’s latest triumph over her wayward Daredevil, he nudged Peter and mumbled, “Everyone’s playing with fire these days, huh?”
Yeah.
“Dunno if it’s worth it to tell ‘em to be careful,” Ham said with a shrug.
No. It wasn’t. There are some lessons you must learn on your own.
“Do you got one?” Ham asked.
“One what?” he asked, despite knowing exactly what Ham was referring to.
“A team? One of them red teams? I got all the components, not sure I’d go so far as a team, though.”
A beat. Peter didn’t really want to say. His world, he generally thought, was best kept where it was. The kids didn’t come there often and he didn’t encourage them to. There were already so many things wrong with it—it was already so much dimmer than these other ones—he didn’t really want to add another Spiderman to that mix.
Besides. He had to keep an eye out these days.
He had a hunch that his own Miles Morales would turn up any day now and he didn’t intend to be taken by surprise. There was no guarantee that his Miles would be as gentle and kind as this Miles.
Take nothing for granted.
Stay on your toes.
His world was perhaps closest to Gwen’s in terms of culture. Although Gwen, Peter was perfectly willing and happy to admit, had really gotten the short stick out of all of them. She was sixteen years old and half of her should-be allies were her enemies or at least, couldn’t be bothered to be the friends she needed them to be.
A fucking bummer.
Gwen’s triumphs deserved to be celebrated. She didn’t have a whole lot else going for her, poor thing.
“I got a Murdock,” he finally said. Ham made an interested noise.
“He a deer?”
“No, Ham, he’s not a deer,” Peter sighed, “He’s just a hardass. I mean like, he’ll throw down for you in court—he’d done it for me what, two? Three times now? But the second he’s out of there, I wouldn’t say he’s the kind of guy you’d have a beer with, if you get me.”
Ham hummed like he did, but Peter wasn’t sure he really understood.
Murdock—Daredevil—in his verse had too many of his own problems—battles to fight, wars to wage, skirmish after skirmish to endure—to really engage with other people all that much. Peter had heard from others that he was a funny guy once he warmed up to you, but he had maybe a handful of people who he’d warmed up to and Peter was pretty damn sure that he hadn’t made the cut.
Daredevil tolerated him. Daredevil would press their backs together in a mutual war and he’d lay into a guy or hold another off on Peter’s behalf. But as soon as the dust settled, he was off again. Into the night. Get the fuck out of his territory if you want to keep all them fingers.
They say the Devil bites.
These Daredevils, mostly younger guys with a lot of optimism still on reserve, they were almost sticky sweet to Peter’s palate. Even Tat’s guy, the one the kids called Big Red, yeah. He and Peter’s Murdock were about the same age, but Big Red, man. That guy was practically a kitten compared to Peter’s. Peter almost wanted to tell him to drop the act.
You’re a madman, a sadist, a conceited fuckhead just like the rest of your kind, Peter wanted to say. Who gave you the right to smile? Who gave you the right to step back and then step up to remake yourself?
Where is your devil, sir?
Peter almost wanted to shove him until he found it. His own local Devil bubbled right along his Murdock’s epidermis. When he was in the cowl, it boiled over and all traces of prim and proper Matthew Murdock vanished along with the steam.
Peter brought himself back by reminding himself that it was a good thing that there was a Daredevil out in the world who had taken his bull by its horns and actually gotten help for his many issues. He was, he made himself admit, jealous that Tats got that Daredevil when all he had was a two-faced, monosyllabic guy whose line between mayhem and murder was held only by a weekly Sunday in church.
Peter wanted to be friends with his own Matt Murdock, but he was so fucking sharp. Practically a cactus with all those barbs. He also thought he was too old for Peter, even though really, they were only maybe five years apart. That meant something back when they’d both started playing this game, back when Peter was barely an adult and Murdock was, in the eyes of the law, fully aware of the crimes he committed. But these days, no. It didn’t mean much.
And it was bummer the guy couldn’t pull his head or the stick out of his ass long enough to shake Peter’s hand.
A real bummer. Tats’s Red was a riot. And Peter had the feeling that his own had it in him, somewhere in there. Probably buried deep.
Ham pointed out that they really needed to move everyone along if they were going to get that night’s job done in any kind of reasonable time frame.
They rallied the kids and moved out.
Miles was determined that he and Blondie’s next task in their verse was hunting down their Deadpool and befriending him somehow and the thought made Peter laugh.
The kids were confused.
It was hard to explain.
See, he had a Devil and he had a Wade. And for better or worse, he really did have that Wade.
Miles went starry-eyed immediately and insisted that Peter tell them all more about his Wade, who he had so cruelly failed to mention until that point.
Put on the spot, it became even harder to explain.
Like, oh yeah, I have a Wade, and for a while there, we were maybe closer than a Spidey and DP should be. Oh yeah, I have a Wade, and if I didn’t have an MJ, I think I’d really, for real have him.
Oh yeah, I have a Wade and I think, despite everything, I still love him.
Yeah, there are some things which you keep to yourself because voicing them will only bring hurt to everyone involved.
MJ knew. Of course she knew. She knew that it hurt him. And obviously Wade knew. Wade pretended that he wasn’t hurt by it, but he also kept his hands to himself more these days and the lack of touch and warmth was really fucking noticeable. Painfully noticeable.
Peter tried not to think about it because it made him sick and it made his eyes hurt and his throat ache and that in itself would always be proof that he’d made a choice and it hadn’t been clean. Maybe even hadn’t been right. Who knew?
He didn’t.
MJ and Wade had never gotten on, although for his sake, they were more or less cordial to each other. Wade made MJ feel a little insecure and MJ made Wade shut down and it was all so fucking horrible that Peter kept them as far apart as he possibly could.
He didn’t want to be reminded of the choice that he’d made. He didn’t want to be reminded that Wade was the one who had grinned and bore it better than even Peter himself.
So yeah. Peter had a Wade, and he was maybe one of his best more-than-friends. Because they would always be more-than-friends, no matter how hard Peter tried.
The kids wouldn’t understand that. They only saw him with MJ. They had only seen him thinking about MJ, fixating on MJ, because that had always suited his brand of masochism better than admitting to himself that Wade was always another open option.
“He’s a piece of work, my Wade,” Peter told the others. “Guy’s been working on drilling a hole through my last nerve every damn day for the last ten years.”
Yeah, make it a joke, Parker.
It hurts less that way.
He went home once the job was done and didn’t feel comfortable crawling in bed with MJ after having spent so many hours thinking about Wade. So he took a shower and went out to the living room. Stretched out on the couch and tried to drown himself in shitty tv.
Like bathing a burn in ice water; something to help ease the heat, but not the skin damage itself.
He fell asleep around four.
MJ always seemed to understand this pattern. She pressed her forehead into his around eight, just before she left for work.
She didn’t ask questions.
But it was permission.
There was a reason that he could never let MJ go.
Wade understood this arrangement. He understood that there were times when permission was granted. He thought that the whole thing was fucked up and honestly kind of cruel, so Peter told him that he was free to tell him to fuck off any time and he would totally understand and wouldn’t ask again.
But the fucked up thing was that Wade loved him too. And Wade’s life was so shitty that he had loads of part-time relationships. With his daughter. With his teammates. With the X-men.
He understood. He tended to view this, in his more stable and pensive moments, as his lot in life and besides, he joked, he was very busy garnering the affections of Death herself.
So Peter’s arrival to his apartment and the subsequent, tentative kiss and the further subsequent sigh Peter let out when Wade’s arms wrapped around his waist were not rebuked. He’d spend a few days with Wade. Wade would offer unspoken acceptance of so many of Peter’s flaws and Peter would offer him, in return, as much of his heart as he had to spare.
Leaving would be crushing. It always was crushing. But Wade would wipe his tears away with his thumb and say that it was okay. It was okay. They would be okay.
Peter would go home and not have enough heart left to go out in the suit that night and MJ would find him. She’d sit on the edge of the bed and lean over to press her forehead against his arm.
It’s okay, she’d tell him. It’s okay. They were all okay.
They weren’t.
Because Peter could never really choose between them. And because he couldn’t, he just went on smashing and shattering all three of their love, over and over again.
Life was hard. Boundaries were unclear. MJ didn’t want an open relationship, even though Wade would probably be fine with that. She didn’t want an open relationship and she especially didn’t want Wade, and even though she understood the sacrifice that Peter had made to be with her, she also wanted him to be all good, to stay in the light. To never stray from the path. Wade, she thought, called him to the opposite trail.
And it wasn’t like she was wrong. Peter hated the edge between those two paths, but the edge called to him—spoke to him. He always went back to it. Always testing the sides with his toes. It was fun. It was exciting. He an adrenaline junkie, he never claimed not to be.
Wade on the left. MJ on the right.
When he’d proposed, he’d thought he was doing the right thing. All these years now and he thought he was doing the right thing. He still thought that, most of the time.
But he couldn’t help wonder—couldn’t help wonder if maybe last year, he’d missed his second chance.
The kids wouldn’t understand. So he didn’t tell them about his Wade.
Things went sideways, though, and they found out anyways.
It was one thing to carry the weight of two broken hearts alongside his own from day to day, but it was another thing for that shit to be on show for the viewing pleasure of a far-too-young audience.
Miles was just barely fourteen and he was leaning over Peter with a hand on his back, promising him that he was okay, begging him to stop crying, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t make himself just fucking stop. Wade would be okay. Wade would always be okay. He regenerated time after time and he would outlive everyone until Death finally took pity on all of them and made an honest man out of him.
But that didn’t mean that Wade couldn’t hurt. And that didn’t mean that Wade didn’t hurt and crumble and fall with every ending bullet and blade and punch he took. Peter hadn’t brought him with into Gwen’s verse with him. Wade had fallen through on his own. He was chasing someone through the pages of a different set of stories. He didn’t do it much and Peter hadn’t told him about his own jumping, because some things you were allowed to keep for yourself.
But Wade had fallen through and Peter was fast, but not always fast enough and a second later and he would have been the one shattering three broken hearts.
But have no fear. Wade Wilson was here.
He’d told Peter before that he’d take as many bullets as it took to keep him safe for as long as possible and he made good on that promise.
This wasn’t the first time.
Still. There was a gap between regenerations and the corpse Peter shoved off himself and onto the ground lost heat so fast.
It brought up nightmares of all the what-ifs.
What if this was the last time?
What if Peter had really wasted his second chance?
What if Wade wasn’t dead yet, just slowly draining out?
What if he was in pain?
What if he was scared?
What if he had something he wanted to say?
What if
What if
What if
Miles couldn’t understand the suffocation of what ifs. He was only fourteen. His hands were still so small. He’d never seen anyone grieve like this or shake themselves to pieces.
Peter was sorry that he was the boy’s first in this area. And he was sorry that he kicked up such an apparently unwarranted fuss. But Wade was his heart. The way MJ was. And even if MJ could die a million deaths like Wade, every moment of unimaginable pain and fear would weigh heavy against Peter’s so-called ability to protect.
It was his responsibility to keep people safe. To keep his people safe. If he couldn’t do that, then what was the fucking point?
Different hands tried to console him as the heat left Wade’s body and someone spoke reassurances at him, but they felt like showers of sand thrown over his head, over his shoulders, all of it.
Wade’s fingers twitched.
And the sand become gallons of water and he was drowning. Scrabbling to get Wade’s head up off the ground so that he was more comfortable and pressing their foreheads together and squeezing his hand so he knew he wasn’t alone. That he didn’t have to wake up by himself this time.
That Peter was so, so thankful that he woke up.
The first thing Wade did was smear a stripe of blood under his eye, wiping away tears.
“Aw, sweetheart, you cryin’ for me?” he wheezed.
Always. Always.
“Don’t cry for me, baby, come here, I’m okay.”
Never. He would never stop crying for Wade. Someone needed to.
“Come here, Peter. I got you, we’re okay.”
They weren’t. They’d never be. He was so sorry. He was so, so sorry.
“Honey, you’re upsetting yourself. Breathe. Breathe with me, hey, we could both use it.”
He was so sorry.
He was so sorry.
It was clear to anyone that there was more there than friendship between him and Wade and even Blondie’s easy way of smoothing things over was stilled by his shock.
Yeah. Peter got that.
These kids trusted him and they saw him with MJ and they’d labeled the two of them something normal, comforting, safe. Something stable. Something familiar. But they didn’t know how fucked up they all were under the skin. And Peter felt empty and more distant and foreign than ever under all those once-familiar eyes.
A liar. A cheater. Incompetent. Over-emotional. Adulterous. Unfaithful. Untrustworthy.
Words that ran through his head every time the drive arose to go find Wade. Words that MJ had shed tears over and swore to him she’d never thought suited his hands, head, or body. But words which Peter’s brain helpfully circulated on a loop, so as to keep him humble.
He couldn’t look at the kids.
He wasn’t ashamed. Ashamed never made it into the loop of words. Because he loved Wade and he’d always love Wade and he didn’t think he should be ashamed of loving someone, even if that someone was Wade Winston Wilson. Or Deadpool, whichever.
But he was uncomfortable, laid bare as it were.
Wade eventually sat up and popped his neck and tried to get a rise out of Peter, but at the lack of reaction, he noticed the line of averted eyes standing around them and came to the logical conclusion. He stood up with his fingers wrapped around Peter’s wrist and announced that they were going home now. And home they went; Peter pushed through the space without question and Wade didn’t push it after that.
He offered to walk Peter home to MJ, but Peter couldn’t fucking deal with that shit at the moment and threw himself into Wade’s neck.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Peter.” Wade’s sigh felt like defeat. Kind of like the hands he laid on Peter’s shoulderblades.
“I should have told you. I should have listened to you. I should never have—”
“Peter. Take me home.”
Yes. Okay. Whatever you want.
Peter could listen to Wade’s heart for hours and Wade let him do it, dragging fingers through his hair.
“You shouldn’t play with verses,” he warned.
Yes. Peter knew. If he hadn’t been jumping, Wade wouldn’t have had to intervene. But then one of the kids might have taken that bullet and that was just—
Their hands were so small, Wade.
“I know, sweetheart. I know. But fate gets funny when you start weaving around like this.”
Right.
Okay.
“I’d never tell you to stop doing anything, you know that.”
Anything but this. He got it.
It was kind of a relief, to cut himself off from the kids. To not have to hide this part of who he was. To not have to withstand their alarm and disappointment.
Wade told him to stop thinking and to text MJ that he was staying the night.
Miles was the one who reached back the most. He was persistent. Gwen got the memo after a few tries. Blondie didn’t need an invitation, but he understood. Ham picked it up fast and Peni and Noir must have gotten it through him.
But Miles was a tenacious little bugger. Golden heart with golden veins right down to his toes. He’d been distraught by Peter’s grief and probably forever traumatized, but he was determined to find closure. Peter could almost respect that, if it didn’t feel like a huge invasion of his privacy.
He was okay now. Two weeks of shaky breathing. Settling back into being the one, the only.
MJ understood. She made him wash his face when the salt started to crust at the corners of his eyes. She brought home ridiculous things to make him smile and even went as far as finally naming Wade in her contacts.
A declaration of solidarity.
He’s not mine, she’d said, but he’s yours and I love you. So I’ll keep a bit of him here, if he ever needs it.
He wished he could have promised himself to them both.
Miles jabbed at him through space-time and eventually, Peter just threw in the towel.
“What do you want?” he demanded from the kid.
Miles stumbled through the opening of the window, evidently not having expected Peter to ever answer back. He collected himself and puffed himself up.
“I was worried,” he said.
“Go home, Miles.”
“I was worried,” Miles maintained. “And I missed you.”
Stop saying such things.
“I don’t understand, but that’s not important,” Miles said. “The others feel the same. We just didn’t know, Peter. And really, it’s none of our business. So just, please talk to us again?”
This fucking kid.
This fucking kid made Peter question all his decisions. Made him terrified to meet his own Miles out of fear that he would be disappointed.
That was a lie, it wasn’t a fear. It was full-knowledge of the fact.
“Wade thinks it’s a bad idea,” Peter sighed.
“What, talking to us?” Miles pressed with his hands on Peter’s forearm.
“Yes, talking. Interacting. All of it.”
“But that’s not true! We’ve been fine so far—”
“Yeah, so far. But Miles. Just—if I hadn’t been there with you guys, he wouldn’t have gotten hurt, okay?”
Miles set his brow.
“We all run that risk,” he said. “Every day. And that was his decision to make, Peter, not yours.”
Wade traded his life for Peter’s time after time. Peter wasn’t about to sit back and let someone blame him for his selflessness.
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“Then explain. Help me understand,” Miles said.
“I can’t.”
“You can. You taught me to be Spiderman. You can at least describe Peter Parker.”
No. No, he couldn’t.
“Miles,” he said carefully, “I’ve never known who Peter Parker is. I can’t explain something I don’t even know myself.”
“Then tell me about Wade,” Miles said without even giving him the chance to breathe. “Why Wade? Why not MJ?”
“It’s not a not-MJ situation,” Peter snapped, then reeled himself in at Miles’s surprise. “She knows. She’s known for ages. It’s a—we have—we have an understanding, alright? All three of us.”
Miles frowned, thinking. Really thinking, god bless him.
“Okay, so you guys are a three,” he said.
“No. No, more like a ‘v,’” Peter sighed.
“A ‘v’?”
He held up two fingers. Tapped the top of the first.
“Mary Jane.” Tapped the top of the second. “Wade.” Tapped his palm underneath. “Me.”
“Oh.”
“They don’t get on.”
“Oh. Oh. But they’re cool with…?”
“I don’t know. They say they are, but I don’t like, really know,” Peter sighed. “I’ll never really know, I can only go off what they say to me. What their faces say to me. And so far, they seem to say that it’s okay. They both tell me it’s okay.”
Miles chewed on that for a minute and then looked back up.
“So when Wade dies, that’s your other person—like, your other MJ—who dies.”
Yes. Yes.
“And that’s why it hurts, even though he comes back?”
“It hurts because he hurts, and he always does it for me,” Peter said. “And he never expects anything in return. And that feels selfish.”
Miles settled himself on the corner of Peter’s bed and crossed his legs. Cocked his head.
“That’s not so hard, then, Peter. Or weird or anything like that,” he said. “I think we just didn’t understand and MJ is so important to you, it just didn’t make sense in the moment. But if you’ve got two MJs and they’re equally important, then that makes more sense why you were so upset.”
Did…it?
“Mm-hm. You know, Tats is the same.”
He…was?
“Yeah, he’s got two MJs, too. He doesn’t like to talk about it—Bitsy told me. But he’s got two best friends and he had like a breakdown and then decided that he didn’t want to have to choose between them. So I think they’re making it work as a three, not a ‘v.’”
God, Peter’s head would explode if he had a triangle. The last thing he needed was MJ and Wade joining forces. Just the thought made him laugh a little at the absurdity of it all.
Actually, he kind of wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all anyways because of course Tats would have the same thing. Of course this thing that he felt would be shared among the others. He and Tats looked like two different models of Peter Parker, but they had to have something in common besides a sharp wit and heroism; it only made sense that it would be closer to home than the squareness of a jawbone.
Miles watched him and waited and Peter reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“I am so scared to meet my Miles,” he said. “Because no one can live up to that standard you’re setting, kiddo.”
Miles lit up like the sun.
“You can’t be scared,” he said, “I’m already your Miles. Whoever this punk is, I’ll just fight him to the death.”
Peter’s grin happened without his permission.
“Hey, Tats.”
“Hey, big guy.”
“Listen, I have a question for you. It’s gonna be uncomfortable.”
“Oh. Okay, shoot.”
Acceptance can be found in many round things. In silver rings and the bottom of glasses. It could be found in the ripples of a drop hitting water and in the face of a floor fan trying to move warm air.
Acceptance can be found in the circle of arms, made by another. But it can be found in a text message in the shape of a ‘v’ that said simply, ‘I love you both. Sleep well.’
And it can also be found in a leap.
Maybe even one of faith.