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When Peter was Little, he had absolutely no sense of self-preservation. Wade wasn’t even sure how that was possible for Signor Spidey Senses, but he liked it that way. That was one of the signs that a real little kid was well taken care of, that sense that nothing bad had ever happened to them and that it never would. Wade wasn’t sure how you progressed from that to very necessary life lessons like “knives are not popsicles” and “that bear is not interested in your friendship” – his own daughter seemed to have figured most of that out by the time he came into her life.
But, he was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to let your kiddo fall off of your weirdly high bed head first, which is exactly what his Spidey-child had just done while Wade was in the kitchen carefully arranging apple slices into a perfect spiral. After the awful awful THUD of skull on hardwood, Wade fully expected to hear the even awful-er sound of his baby crying so hard he couldn’t breathe.
Instead, as he hurtled into the bedroom prepared to scoop up and cuddle his little guy, he heard a very adult, un-Peter-like, “Ah, god-DAMN-it!” that told him two things: the hit had been just as hard as it sounded, and Peter was no longer in Little-space. No scooping, no cuddles, no flood of warm happies in his chest as he made up for his neglect. Goddamnit indeed.
*~*~*
“Are you dizzy or disoriented?”
“No.”
“Are you vomiting?”
“No.”
“Has your sleeping pattern changed abruptly?”
Before he could react, Peter had snatched Wade’s phone out of his hand and saw that he had Googled “when to take your child to the ER.” Peter’s giant eye-roll was slightly impeded by the Lisa Frank ice-pack he had pressed to the knot on his forehead.
“Wade.”
“What?”
“I have accelerated healing, and my skull is thicker than a five-year-old’s.”
“How do you know?” Wade demanded, taking his phone back carefully so as not to jostle his tiny baby Spider whose head was certainly cracked and bleeding into his brain. “When’s the last time you punched a five-year-old in the skull?”
“What, like, they have thicker skulls because they fall down a lot cuz they’re kids or something?”
“YES. Yes that, exactly!”
“Shit,” Peter muttered, grumpiness turning to mild fear. “I think that might actually be a thing –“
“Adult skulls are basically bird bones!”
“That’s impossible, bird bones are hollow!”
Peter’s wince at his own volume immediately snapped Wade out of the Spiral of Wild Conjecture they frequently got each other into, one of the things that made their relationship both the Best and Worst Idea Ever. Wade slid off the back of the couch and next to Peter, fussing with his ice-pack. “It’s just that Natasha Richardson fell and hit her head during a skiing lesson, and she thought she was fine until she died, and now Liam Neeson is all alone with their two boys.”
Peter brushed his hand away, gently though because of how actually sad Wade sounded. “I’m not Natasha Richardson. I fell about three feet. You and I have both been hit in the head much harder than that lots of times, and we’re fine. Also, spider-healing.”
“But,” Wade protested, “you fell right onto your head, and you have a bump, and you also skinned your nose oh jesus FUCK I didn’t see that before –“
“Wade, stop,” Peter insisted as Wade leaned in to kiss his nose better.
“Please can we go to the ER? We can go as Spidey and Deadpool and maybe they won’t charge us –“
“We are not going to the ER. I am fine. I just fell.”
“But I let you.”
“No you didn’t,” Peter said, as close to angry as Wade had heard him in a long while. “I’m not really Little, I am an adult, and if I fall it’s my fault, not yours. You’re not actually in charge of me.”
Wade really, really wished he was wearing his mask, not to cover his scars – he’d gotten mostly over Peter seeing those – but to hide the way his face crumpled at those words. It crumpled hard and fast, involuntarily, like a sneeze. He saw in Peter’s eyes that he felt instantly guilty, which made Wade feel worse. He quickly un-crumpled himself. Peter sighed, hiding his face behind the psychedelic narwhal on the ice-pack.
Here was the thing about Peter Parker. He was a superhero. Like a real one. He could lift a car. He could sense danger. He could make things out of chemicals and metal and wires. He’d been through almost as much horrible shit as Wade and come out the other side without Boxes that fucked with his thinking. He was unbelievably resilient. He was tough.
But the way he looked. Wade had often tried to describe it to himself, so that he could sort his very confused feelings out as much as he ever could. Peter looked like the most gentle and innocent of puppies who, if kicked, or even faintly rebuffed, would poof out of existence. He had the kind of eyes that made people – Wade, at least – want to protect him and spoil him and give him all the good things and happiness and roll him up in a carpet so that no harm could ever befall him, and the only thing stopping Wade from doing that was if Peter was rolled up in a carpet he wouldn’t be able to play and frolic (and they probably couldn’t have sex. [Or could they? {Hmm…}]).
Wade was used to his thoughts and feelings (and urges [carpet sex]) not making sense and/or seeming vaguely unethical. But Peter was good. Which was gross, yes, but also very, very – compelling. In a squishy sort of way. Wade was not good, not in the natural way that Peter was, no matter how angry Peter got when he tried to express this out loud. So it was understandable, he thought, that just being around Peter, since the moment they met if he was honest, created in Wade the desire to shelter and coo at him. Good thing Peter was into age-play. When they worked together, Wade could have his back. When they fucked, he could make him stupidly, loudly happy. But when Peter was Little, Wade could be good to him, could give him so much love, because when they did that together, everything else, all the bullshit of the world and his life and his mind just fell away, and he could focus on the brilliant pin-prick of light that was Peter Parker.
He looked at Peter peeking out from behind the Lisa Frank ice-pack and wondered if he was slipping back into Little-space. He was also suddenly afraid that he might have said all of the above out loud just now, because Peter was looking at him with those eyes.
“I didn’t say that to make you sad, babe,” Peter said. Not Little, then. “I just don’t want you to feel bad. And I’m cranky because my head hurts.”
Wade couldn’t stop himself from reaching over again to pull Peter to him, and this time Peter allowed it, nuzzling slightly into his neck. “What were you up to that you fell?” Wade asked, tentatively placing his hand over the ice-pack to hold it.
Peter relinquished control of the ice-pack and sighed. “I was trying to reach T-Rex on the night stand.”
“Aw, tits, I put him there!”
“You put him there because I asked you to, because I have a whole narrative going where April and the Turtles’ mission will take them to Fire Island where T-Rex is and they’ll all become allies.”
Wade was going to once again ask if he really wanted to call it Fire Island, but the almost-pout on Peter’s face stopped him. “I was having so much fun, I guess I got too excited and literally lost my adult-brain. Stupid.”
The softest voice in Wade’s head – the one that sounded like his own real voice but British, like when Dennis Reynolds had a vision of British!Dennis who told him true things – reminded Wade that his small love had been jolted, painfully, out of Little-space and was likely experiencing waves of shame-barrassment, which was a term Wade had invented to describe the feeling that happened when anything went wrong during age-play. He squeezed him closer, pressing the ice-pack back over the bump, which was already smaller than it had been.
“I made apple-slices,” Wade said, gently. “They’re arranged in a perfect spiral. I could cut them into dick-shapes so that they’re Adult Apple Slices, if you’d rather.”
Peter smiled, making Wade feel like his whole inside was decked with sequins. “I’m good. Can I have them later?”
“You can have whatever you want.”
Wade grimaced. He usually tried to keep that level of gayness inside, because surely even Peter had a threshold for such things, but the way Peter hummed and kissed his jaw suggested he had not yet reached that threshold. Whew. Peter put a hand on his cheek and tilted his face down to look him in the eye. “You’re a good daddy, Wade Wilson.”
Wade’s heart sank. “That bump on your noggin begs to differ, Spidey-pants.”
“You are,” he insisted, fixing Wade with his “don’t disagree with me even if you do” look. “I’m sorry I got Big when I hit my head. I think this would have been easier on both of us if I’d stayed Little.”
“Like you could have controlled that.” Wade lifted the ice-pack and kissed the bump on Peter’s head, which was cold, so he kissed him on the lips to warm back up.
“You know what?”
Wade looked into those giant, sweet eyes that could surely make people jump willingly into volcanoes. “What?”
“I think I need a nap.”
“Yay! Wait,” Wade said, thinking again of Peter’s slowly-hemorrhaging brain, “I’m not supposed to let you sleep, am I?”
Peter picked his phone up off of the couch, scrolled a bit, and showed it to Wade. “‘If baby isn’t disoriented,’” Peter read, “‘they can go to sleep.’”
“But I need to wake you every two hours,” Wade pointed to the screen.
“We’re going to nap for like twenty-minutes. It’s okay.”
Wade did not censor the “squee” that escaped his mouth, making Peter giggle, which made him squee even more. Nap meant snuggling under The Good Blanket, and it meant Ren and Stimpy. They had tried Disney, but it made Peter too worked up. Wade had the complete Ren and Stimpy box set, and Peter had never seen it before because he was so unreasonably young, and it turned out that he found the show soothing, because he was real weird. Wade watched his tiny spider’s eyes droop halfway through the second chorus of Happy Happy Joy Joy.
“Are you asleep?” Wade whispered.
“Yep,” Peter slurred, face smushed partially into Wade’s hoodie.
“Are you feeling Little?”
“Not yet.”
Wade hesitated, but knew he couldn’t nap himself unless he asked. “Do you think,” he whispered, “if I rolled you up in a carpet that we could still do sex to each other?”
“…..Probably. Knowing us.”
Wade sighed and wrapped all of his limbs tighter around Peter’s body, causing him to let out a snore. If this nap was like all their other naps, Peter would wake up Little and playful. They would eat apple slices and get April and the Turtles to Fire Island, where they would finally find happiness with T-Rex. Wade could already see the sense of self-preservation disappear from Peter’s sleeping face. Happy happy, joy, joy, joy.