#deadpool thought boxes

Spider-Man could feel himself coming back into his body. Well, not really his body but their body, the body.

As his senses slowly started up again, he took stock of his surroundings. He was still on the roof of the same building he’d been on what felt like a second ago. He was still wearing the Spider-Man suit, with the mask pulled up over his nose. The sun was still pretty low on the horizon, so it didn’t seem like much time had passed.

The only difference he could see was that the taco wrapper in his hands was empty. Damn, he’d been enjoying that. And it had been his last one too.

If he’d been eating a taco, though, that meant– Spider-Man turned to the side and yup, there he was. Wade Wilson was sat right next to him, simultaneously eating his own taco and talking up a storm. Spider-Man recognized some of the names he mentioned – Rose and Dorothy and a few others – and figured he was talking about an episode of Golden Girls. Spider-Man had never watched the show, but it seemed like he’d never need to, based solely on the fact that it seemed like Deadpool never shut up about it.

He had to admit that it was comforting background noise when he was feeling particularly dissociate-y. Sort of like white noise he could tune in and out to.

Still, he had to figure out what he’d missed and why he was feeling dissociate-y in the first place.

“Who was just out? What did I miss?” Spider-Man said into his head.

There was a beat of silence. Spider-Man wasn’t sure anyone would answer him, but then.

“It was me.” Rae sounded particularly grouchy, and Spider-Man wasn’t entirely sure why. Grouchy was Rae’s default temperament but this amount of grouch seemed out of the ordinary for them.

“You ate my taco,” Spider-Man grouched back.

“Yeah,” Rae said unrepentantly. “It was good.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why I wanted it.”

“Well, I came to, and we were eating a taco. What was I going to do? Not eat the taco?”

Spider-Man suppressed an eye roll. “Whatever. Do you know why you fronted anyway?”

Another pause.

Spider-Man was about to repeat the question, when.

“Your friend,” and Rae put enough derision behind the word to show how they felt about Wade, “was being gross.”

Spider-Man looked at Wade out of the corner of his eye. He saw a piece of lettuce fall out of Wade’s mouth mid-word.

Spider-Man tried to turn the laugh that came out of him into a cough as he looked away. “Okay, and? Deadpool’s always gross.”

“Not that kind of gross.” Spider-Man could practically feel Rae’s eyes roll. “He was– he was being forward.”

Spider-Man frowned beneath his mask. He could tell Rae was getting grouchier by the second.

“What do you mean? ‘Pool’s always forward. That’s literally his entire personality.”

“Shut up,” Rae snapped, seemingly out of nowhere. “It doesn’t matter, Webhead. Just go back to your patrolling.”

Spider-Man felt his eyebrows pull together even more. What was their deal? Why were they being so grumpy with him?

He tried to think back to what he and Wade had been talking about before Spider-Man had switched out. He doesn’t think they’d been talking about the Golden Girls. Everything was blurry from before he’d switched… but hadn’t they been talking about their tacos? Yeah, he remembered now, they were talking about tacos and then they’d gone on to taco puns and Spider-Man had banned any puns based around the word ‘talk’ after Deadpool had said six different variations of ‘Let’s taco ‘bout love tonight’ and then… everything went fuzzy.

So, that train of thought wasn’t leading him anywhere.

He could still feel that Rae was nearby.

Maybe it had to do with Rae specifically? Rae doesn’t front all that often, but he thinks the last time had been maybe a week ago? He’d been with Wade then too. Wade had been saying something about Spider-Man’s jaw and next thing Spider-Man knew, about 15 minutes had passed and Rae had refused to say anything to him about what he’d missed.

The only thing he could think of that those two incidents had in common was that Wade had been talking to him. No, more than that: Wade had been flirting with him. Was that Rae’s problem?

“You don’t like that he’s flirty?” Spider-Man was saying before he could stop himself.

“What? No. I don’t give a shit if he’s flirty.”

“Then what is it? Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

“I told you to drop it. I can handle it. It has nothing to do with you.”

“Wade’s my friend. Of course it has something to do with me.”

“Leave it alone, Spidey,” Rae insisted.

Spider-Man huffed. What was going on? What would make Rae so angry? Why would they think they had to handle it on their own? Unless… they meant it had to do with their role as sexual protector? What if they weren’t irritated but they were uncomfortable?

“Did he say something that made you uncomfortable?” Spider-Man said quietly.

“Oh my god! Just let it go, Spider-Man!” Rae replied loudly.

Spider-Man’s eyebrows raised. Based on that reaction, he decided he’d guessed right on the money.

Now to decide whether he should actually drop it or if it was important enough to sort out. Rae seemed very insistent on this being the end of the topic. But if whatever Deadpool had been doing had made them uncomfortable more than once, then maybe it needed to be addressed.

Spider-Man concluded that he didn’t want his headmate to be uncomfortable if he could do something about it.

“Look, I know you don’t want to talk about it but if he’s saying stuff that’s making you uncomfortable then I want to do something about it. You’re a part of this system, Rae, and your comfort is important.”

Spider-Man waited for a response, but all he got was silence.

There was something different about this silence, though.

Wait, the silence wasn’t just in his head. He frowned. Wade had stopped talking too.

“No, I don’t think he’s done yet,” Wade broke the quiet with a mutter.

Spider-Man whipped his head around to Wade. Spider-Man assumed Wade was talking to his boxes but– “Who ‘he’? Me ‘he’?” he asked.

Wade’s lips curled up into a smile where his mouth was exposed. “Spidey! You’re back.”

What the fuck did that mean? Had somebody told Wade about Spider-Man’s DID? Had he worked it out? Was Spider-Man being that obvious?

“What do you mean, I’m back? I’ve been here the whole time, Wade.” Spider-Man tried not to sound too defensive.

“Well, yeah, physically you’ve been here. But you were doing your whole spacey thing. You know, where you zone out for a bit. And I didn’t want to bother you until you were done. But now you’re back.”

Wade had picked up on Spider-Man’s dissociation? He supposed that wasn’t too surprising. Their switches had gotten much more noticeable since they’d started communicating as a system a few months ago. Still, it was weird to have someone know something like that about him.

“Uh, yeah, I’m back,” Spider-Man replied. “Sorry about that.”

“No biggie, Spidey.” Wade shrugged. “It means I got to theorize about the Golden Girls at you, so it’s a win-win.”

“How do you still have theories about the Golden Girls when you’ve already– Wait, ‘win-win’? How is it a win-win?”

“Well, you know.”

Nothing seemed to be following that vague statement.

“No, I don’t know.” Spider-Man frowned at Wade.

Wade sighed like Spider-Man had just asked him to explain complex calculus to him. “See, at first, I tried interacting with you while you went all spacey. And I would ask you questions and make jokes and try anything to get a reaction, but that kind of seemed like I was making things worse because you weren’t able to respond properly.

“So, then I tried staying silent but that didn’t seem to help because it seemed like you would stay spacey for longer without anything to anchor you back, and also you would have a heart attack when I did start to speak again because it was like you’d forget I was there.

“And now I just talk at you about something you don’t have much stake in, usually the Golden Girls, so that you have something to focus on if you need it, but you can tune it out if you need to do that instead. So. Win-win.”

Spider-Man blinked at Wade. He felt that his mouth had fallen open at some point in Wade’s little speech but he couldn’t bring himself to close it.

“He was making sex jokes.” Rae’s voice scared the shit out of him.

What? “What?”

“Tell him to stop making sex jokes.”

Oh. “Okay, yeah, I’ll tell him.”

But first, how to respond to everything Wade had said?

“That’s really–” He cleared his throat. “That’s really thoughtful of you, Wade. I had no idea you were doing any of that.” He averted his eyes. God, he hated feelings. “I really appreciate it.”

“Of course, Hot Stuff.”

And there’s as good an opportunity as any. He turned back to Wade.

“Wade. I– I wanted to talk about that.”

“About what, Spidey Baby?”

“That. And ‘Hot Stuff’.” Why did this have to be so difficult. “The– the nicknames. The flirting.” He could feel his face heat up, so he pulled his mask down to cover it. Why did he have to have these conversations? He was a fighter not a feeler. But – he reminded himself – he was doing this for Rae.

“You wanted to talk about the flirting?” Wade’s head cocked to the side. It seemed like he was severely misinterpreting where this conversation was going because he looked almost excited?

“Yeah– well, no. Not the flirting, the–” He just had to rip the band aid off. “Your sex jokes make me uncomfortable, Wade.”

Wade visibly deflated. “I make you uncomfortable?” Wade turned away from him to stare out at the other buildings.

“No, no, no. Not you, I swear it’s not you.” He could practically hear Wade’s boxes pouncing on that train of thought. “It’s just– when you take the flirting a bit too far… it’s– a bit much, is all. And I’d prefer it if– if you wouldn’t make those jokes anymore.” Why was this so difficult? Why did he say it like that? He was Spider-Man for god’s sake. He was tough and intimidating. He was–

“What’s going on?” Theo whispered.

Oh. Theo was here. Practically the embodiment of social anxiety. That’s why Spider-Man had said it that way.

“Nothing. It’s under control,” Rae tried to whisper back. Rae was notoriously bad at whispering so they didn’t actually say it very quietly.

“You want me to stop flirting with you?” Wade murmured.

“No!” He’d been trying to listen to Rae and Theo, but Wade’s words took up all his concentration.

Wade had deflated even more. He looked like someone had baked four batches of cookies and told him he couldn’t have any.

Spider-Man tried to compose himself. “No. I like– The flirting is fun. Don’t stop the flirting. It’s just the sex jokes.”

“You like the flirting?” Wade turned back to Spider-Man and perked up a bit.

“Um…” Did Spider-Man like the flirting? Sure. Normally, he wasn’t a fan of flirting. And certainly, it had been a bit disconcerting when he and Wade were initially getting to know each other. But now? Now, it was kind of sweet. “Sure, yeah.” He could probably analyze why that was, but he decided against it. Maybe another time.

Wade’s grin was megawatt. “Well then, sure, Spidey. I’ll dial down the sex jokes. Anything for you.”

Based on how warm they felt, Spider-Man was glad his mask was covering his cheeks. “Thanks.”

“Of course.” Wade jumped to his feet. “You ready to go swinging?” He rocked from foot to foot.

Spider-Man was glad for the subject change. “Yeah, let’s go.”

As they gathered their taco trash, Spider-Man zoned back into Rae and Theo’s conversation and realized they were still going.

“Hey, you two. Shut up and/or go away. I can’t focus on crime-fighting with you yammering away in my brain.” Spider-Man was pretty good at staying in front when doing Spider-Man business, which was crucial because no one else in the system knew how to be Spider-Man-the-superhero the way he, Spider-Man-the-alter, could.

“Yeah, okay. Good luck, Spidey,” Theo said, and dipped out.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Spider-Man,” Rae added.

“That’s always my only plan, Rae.”

“And thanks for earlier. Sorry I was being an asshat,” Rae said.

Rae’s presence disappeared before Spider-Man could say anything back. Which was all well and good because Wade’s arms were out, ready for his piggyback.

Spider-Man hauled Wade onto his back and took a running jump off the building.

Notes: if you wanna know what taco pun deadpool said that triggered rae, just google ‘taco pick-up lines’ and pretty much take your pick. some of those were... fascinating hsdhdljf