Wade wakes up by himself.

He pats the web mesh beside him, looking for the bundle of warmth that was supposed to be cuddled up to his side, and finds nothing.

Sitting up, he squints, scoping out the darkness as he waits for his eyes to adjust. There's a dark shape sitting near the mouth of the web, staring at the room beyond. It's cute how protective Spider-Peter is. Annoying in a please-stop-moving-you're-opening-your-wounds kind of way, but still cute.

Wade heads his way. "I don't know what you expect to find out there, Spider-Babe. The computers aren't going to come to life if that's what you're worried about."

Without missing a beat, Spider-Peter responds hoarsely, "You've obviously never met Ultron. I'd be scared of a toaster where he's involved."

Wade stops in his tracks. "Peter?"

"Hope you weren't expecting someone else."

"Peter!" Wade wraps his arms around the other man, pulling him against his chest. "God, I was beginning to wonder if you were ever coming back! I've missed you! Oh, shit - sorry, didn't mean to hug you so hard." He lets go and Peter rubs his bandaged torso.

"Technically," he says, "I never really left."

"Technically, you may as well have." Wade turns Peter over so they're face to face, but Peter avoids his gaze by planting those beautiful brown eyes (Not black! Hallelujah!) anywhere but on Wade. Ouch. Calm down insecurities, it's not like that. Maybe. Hopefully. "So, where've you been all this time?"

"I told you," Peter says, picking at a web strand next to his knee, "I never left. I've just been...out of it. Still in the car, just in the back seat."

"Nice metaphor," but Wade pauses, hesitant, hairless eyebrows curling up in concern. "So, how much of...that do you remember?"

Peter's shoulders crumple like paper and he stands, walking back into the nest. He crosses his arms and limply paces, staring at the sloped walls, floor, and ceiling. "I've never made a web like this before," he murmurs. "It's cool. Explains why my wrists hurt so much, though."

Wade follows a few feet behind, inspecting Peter as he rocks back and forth on his heels.

"Yeah, it's pretty cool," Wade agrees. "The service was exceptional, would come here again. Love the subject change, by the way. So subtle. I'm not at all thinking about the question you're trying to avoid."

Peter presses his lips together and purposefully tugs on a few web strands. He opens his mouth. Closes it. Open it again. "Why does my mouth taste weird?"

"We really doing this?"

"Kind of coppery? And-" Peter smacks his lips. "Earthy?"

"Because we fed you ground-up meat shakes," Wade says, sidestepping so he's next to Peter. "Because you were biting and hissing and had big ol' bug eyes. Because you were kidnapped by a bunch of overconfident pervs. Is this ringing a bell yet? I haven't even mentioned all the chirping and over-protectiveness."

Peter's mouth clicks shut and when he refuses to look at Wade, Wade shoves himself between Peter and the wall he's having a staring contest with. He never did like being ignored. It gave him a complex. A bad one.

"Remember what Mama Teresa said about opening up about our feelings?"

"Did Mother Teresa say that?"

Wade shrugs. "I don't know. It might've been Oprah. Don't distract me."

Peter limps back to the mouth of the nest, a feeble escape if Wade ever did see one. He reaches out to pull him back but stops at the last second. There's no telling what state Peter is in now. He could slip back into spiderspace the minute he feels cornered, and then it's back to square one. As much as Wade loved watching Spider-Peter crawl around and glare at things, he is craving a conversation that isn't a hodgepodge of hissing and clicking.

If Peter wants to lock himself up like a vault, Wade can do a little safe-cracking.

He steeples his fingers. "Hungry?"

Peter looks at him over his shoulder, smacking his lips a few times as if to get rid of the taste on his tongue, and shrugs. "Yeah, I guess I could eat."

"Sweet," says a new voice. Peter and Wade startle, jumping closer to each other, and peer out of the web.

Tony stands in the doorway, sipping a steaming cup of coffee and holding too much attitude in his cocked hip. "Let's talk over brunch. Jarvis, the lights?"

The fluorescents flash on and Peter and Wade wince, shielding their eyes from the sudden brightness. Tony whistles, low and impressed at the web nest, and lifts a finger from the hand holding his coffee, pointing at it, "I'm not cleaning that up. But we'll hash it out later. Come on Dumb and Dumber, let's chat in my office."

Wade and Peter give each other a side-long glance.

"We can totally make it out if we run fast enough," Wade murmurs.

Peter shakes his head. "I can hear the operating systems running. He's expecting us to flee. We'll see what he has to say, and if that fails, we'll jump out the window."

"Ugh, I hate hearing what people have to say."

"Have you ever considered that that's what people think about you?"

"Ah, there's the asshole I know. Fine, brunch it is. He better have baby muffins."

<><><>LINE BREAK<><><>

Tony does not, in fact, have baby muffins. He doesn't even have brunch, the lying son of a bitch.

He has good coffee though.

He hands them a small menu when they take a seat in front of his slick, polished oak desk, and tells them to order whatever they want. It's a Caribou Turtle Mocha Cooler for Wade, topped with whipped cream, caramel, and little pieces of chocolate turtle candies—a sugary monstrosity that Peter and Tony behold with wide, slightly terrified eyes. Peter orders a black coffee with exactly one packet of sugar that he proceeds to chug more than half of as soon as it's in his hands. Wade doesn't know what Tony has, but it smells like cinnamon.

His stomach grumbles, not quite happy with his diabetes-in-a-cup. Not that he can blame it. He hasn't properly eaten in the past one, maybe two days. Which isn't really doing anything to him, he can go weeks without eating it if he wanted to. It just makes him really, really grumpy.

Tony regards them coolly, sipping his coffee and watching them scarf down a single box of donuts set out on the desk. When the box is empty, he leans back in his chair, holding his coffee like it's a glass of bourbon.

"So, what the fuck was all that about?"

"You're the one that put the donuts on the-"

"Not the donuts. The you." He points at Peter. "The freak deeky spider schtick you've been pulling for the last twenty-four hours. What the fuck was that?"

Peter coughs and takes a long, deliberate sip of his coffee dregs. When that doesn't get him off the hook (because yeah Wade wants to know too, please and thank you) he fidgets in his seat.

"So, um...that's just something that happens sometimes. No biggie."

Tony nods. Purses his lips. Nods some more. He steeples his fingers. "Cool. Very cool. Super cool. I'm going to let you try again, and this time, maybe add a little more explanation to your answer."

"It was, uh..." Peter rubs his neck, staring at his polished reflection in Tony's desk like he's searching for answers in the swirly wooden lines. "It's a spider thing."

"You're being super vague right now."

"Yeah."

"It's annoying."

"I get that a lot."

"Give me a straight answer."

"I can't, I'm bi."

Tony pinches the bridge of his nose. "I can't believe I'm doing this, but," he turns to Wade, "what happened?"

Wade looks over his shoulder to see who Tony's talking to, and when there's no one there, points wide-eyed at himself. "Me? Did the Iron Dildo himself ask me for an explanation over Spider-Man? Am I dead? Is this hell?"

"Wilson!" Tony snaps, looking more exhausted than he did two seconds ago. "And you, too," he directs this at Peter, who's very interested in the coffee grounds at the bottom of his cup. "You just waltz in here, almost kill me and my employees," Peter winces, "take over my med-bay, and you're not even going to tell me why?"

"Technically," Wade holds up a finger, "We didn't waltz in here. You flew Peter yourself, so..."

"Jarvis?" Tony says to the ceiling. "Clear my afternoon. I'm waterboarding these two until they spill."

"Heh, spill. Water pun."

"People are dead," Tony says and Peter flinches.

Wade casts him a worried look, trying to gauge Peter's expression, but Peter looks away from them both, his paper coffee cup crinkling slightly in his grip.

"Did....do you know they're dead?" Tony asks with an inquiring look. "Do you remember anything?"

Peter doesn't speak for a moment, but eventually takes a deep breath, flexing his fingers around the cup, spilling what little liquid is still inside on his hand. "I...I remember everything. Sort of."

"Sort of," Wade echoes, scooting forward so he's perched on the edge of his seat. "Sort of, how?"

"Yeah, what do you mean by that?" Tony agrees.

Peter takes another breath and closes his eyes, eyebrows scrunching and making lines on his forehead. "It's like...I remember things in a certain way. I don't remember seeing anyone, but..." he swallows hard.

"But?" Wade urges.

"I - I remember...sensations. Sounds. B-blood. I remember tasting blood." Wade grimaces. "I remember...chasing people. I could sense them. Feel where they were going. I felt everything."

"But you couldn't see them?" Tony clarifies.

Peter hesitates but nods. He's looking a little green. A little clammy. Tony nudges over the trashcan next to his desk, seeing it too.

"So, you know what you did?" Wade asks.

A noise catches in Peter's throat, almost like a click, but he swallows it. "Yeah," he whispers, gutted. "I do."

Silence follows.

Tony stares at Peter, observing him. Peter still hasn't opened his eyes, and he's bent over his cup, coffee staining his hands.

"You said this happens sometimes," Tony recalls. "How many other times?"

Peter shakes his head hard and stands up. He crushes the coffee cup, dripping a few drops of brown coffee on Tony's cream-colored carpet, and walks agitatedly to the door. He doesn't leave, just paces, jaw clenched and lips pressed into a tight line.

"It's never been this bad before," he says defensively. "I - I've never...this is the first time I actually..." he grunts in frustration, pacing faster, not unlike a caged animal.

Neither Tony nor Wade say anything, which agitates him more.

"This is the third time, alright?" He snaps. "It's only happened two other times, and it wasn't this bad. It wasn't." He glances between them, eyes hard and intense, but it melts against the stoic fire of their gaze. "I wouldn't...I've never...I've been careful. They just caught me off guard. I didn't mean for it to happen, it just..." he's starting to breathe harder now, fingers wringing together, before migrating his head, tugging like he's trying to extract the words straight from his brain.

"Easy, Webs," Wade says, getting up and grabbing his wrist. "Calm down. It's okay."

"No, it's not okay. I - I can still taste them, Wade. I can still..." the green tinge gets stronger and Wade grabs the trashcan, shoving it under Peter's face just as bend over, retching.

"Okay, okay, just breath," Wade says, rubbing his back, but Peter doesn't seem to hear him. His whole body is shaking and he's panting between breaths. "Don't fight it. Let it out. Just like that. It's okay, just..." Wade doesn't know what the "just" is for. He doesn't know what to say.

Thing is, he's killed a lot of people. Like...lots. Whatever number you're thinking of, it's bigger. There are a lot of them he doesn't feel guilty about. A lot of them deserved what was coming.

But, there are some that do prick at Wade's heart. There are nights when he's kept awake, haunted by the faces of the people he'd killed when he was younger, reckless, and hated the world so much he didn't care who bit the bullet, because they were all going to die one day anyway, so what was the point? There were jobs he didn't do enough intel on. Clients who withheld, or planted, information so he'd do their dirty work. Innocent people who just got in the way.

They kept him awake, curled around his toilet or holding a gun to his head because the least he can do it pay them back one bullet at a time. But Peter...he shouldn't know what that feels like. He didn't deserve to have that kind of blood on his hands, even if the mooks that nabbed him had beaten him prior.

"Come on," Wade helps Peter up when he stops dry heaving, "Let's go."

"Where do you think you're going?" Tony asks, following them out of his chair. "We're not done talking about this."

"There's nothing to talk about. Thanks for the hand, Tin-Man, I'll send a fruit basket."

"There is everything to talk about! You still haven't told me what those other two times were," he says to Peter. "How do I know you're not going to do this again?"

"It won't happen again," Peter rasps.

"And I bet that's what you said the last two times," Tony accuses. Peter looks away, and Tony gestures wildly. "See! I don't want to get anyone else involved, Spider-Man, but Shield won't be—"

In the blink of an eye, Peter's hand is in Tony's shirt and he slams him back against his desk. A mass of clicking and whirring follows as the tower's defenses kick in and Wade whips out his gun, aiming for Tony's head, as dozens of tiny red dots center on Peter.

"I am going home," Peter says sharply, just shy of a hiss. "And you're not going to breathe a word of this to anyone. Not Shield or the Avengers. As far as you're concerned, we were never here. And I swear to god, if you try and lock me in here, it's going to turn out worse for you and everyone inside. That's not a threat, Tony. It's a warning. I'm still not one hundred percent."

"Then why the fuck would I let you wander around in a city full of millions?" Tony snarls back.

"Because I know how to handle myself after these episodes. I know what I need to do to bring myself down, and that is not in here, locked up in one of your fancy rooms, being watched by you or whoever else you want to bring into this. I'm not going to say it again. I'm leaving."

Tony glares at him, jaw tight in a display of his patented stubbornness. But Peter is stubborn too and rattled, and so tired.

"Fine," Tony relents after a long, tense moment. "Go. But this conversation isn't over. We're going to talk about this."

"Fine," Peter agrees, letting Tony go and stepping back. The defense system doesn't return to its station until Tony gives the order. He collapses back in his chair, eyes hard, scratching at his goatee.

Wade's gun lingers, prepared for a fight he's still waiting to break out. When it doesn't, he slowly returns it to its holster in exchange for putting a hand on Peter's shoulder. Peter grabs his wrist, squeezing softly, and leans into Wade's body a fraction.

"Let's go," Wade says. "Your place or mine?"

"Mine," Peter whispers.

'I'll call a cab."

Peter nods.

Just as they're about to leave, Tony calls out, "Spider-Man." Peter stops but doesn't turn around. "Don't ever do that to me again."

Peter keeps a firm grip on Wade's wrist, a tightness gathering in his shoulders. Wade slings an arm over him and, without a word, they walk out.