"Guess who is back," Peter said softly, nudging the bedroom door open with his elbow and entering with a tray.
"Chicken sandwiches. Help yourselves."
"They are really good!" Mary Jane said, taking a bite.
"Very good," Missy confirmed.
"Sandwiches are easy," Peter said, sitting back down.
"I started cooking when May was not around. I got in trouble for burning things, but I practiced. May only found out recently and was surprised. So was Caesar."
Caesar nodded from his platform without looking away from the television. "I cook most days when I am here at lunch. When I am at Baxter I eat at a restaurant or get fast food."
"You cook, you do research, you help people study," Mary Jane said.
"How come you never told me any of this? We were childhood friends."
"You never showed much interest in knowing me," he said, and shrugged when she looked sad.
"I am not saying that to be cruel. It is just true. And I am not the kind of person who performs himself for other people's benefit to see if they are impressed."
"But it is true that you are not boastful like Thompson," Missy said.
"At least Flash has that going for him," Peter said. "He knows exactly what he is."
They went back to studying.
He helped Mary Jane through the sections she struggled with, which were more numerous than he had expected, and helped Missy through a smaller number of specific points where her notes had gaps.
When the light outside the window started going orange, he called time and everyone agreed.
He went to his room to get his bag.
When they came downstairs, May was waiting at the bottom of the staircase.
She was wearing different shorts. Her hair was not entirely settled.
There was a faint sheen on her neck and chest that had not been there when he had come down to make sandwiches, and the button at the top of her shorts was not quite done up.
Missy and Mary Jane were talking to each other and noticed none of it.
Peter noticed all of it.
He smiled.
May saw it and looked away, trying to hide her blush of embarrassment.
"May!" he called, pulling his shoes on. "I will take the girls and then go to Baxter. Do not wait up."
He paused. "Oh, and could you do me a favor? There's a pair of boxers that need cleaning. Can you wash them for me?
May blushed at the implication and ran upstairs, which amused him somewhat.
He left the house with Missy and Mary Jane, hailed a taxi, and instructed the driver to take him to Baxter and then the girls to the school where their parents would be meeting them.
The girls spent the ride trying to convince him to spend time in the city.
He told them he had things to do, which was true, and enjoyed watching them fail to argue him out of it.
....
Later that night, somewhere in the borough.
"Definitely fun," Spider-Man muttered, hitting a large man in the stomach with enough force to double him over, then taking him by the sides of the head and introducing his face to the nearest solid object.
"But boring at the same time."
The man went down.
He looked at the collection of unconscious thieves around him.
"Now to clean up," he said, and began piling them into a neat arrangement, webbing them together, and going through their belongings with the systematic approach of someone doing an inventory.
"Coke. Seriously. Do not use it, kids, it is bad for you." He held up a watch.
"A Rolex. Why do you have a Rolex." He produced a thick roll of bills and counted it with the specific satisfaction of a person who has just gotten paid in the most direct way available.
"The weapons and the money. The Rolex. The Coyas never got around to using the weapons. The rest is not really worth the trouble." He grinned like a madman while counting the thick pile of dollars he held in his hand.
"When justice is swift and sweet," said a voice from behind him.
"You have to love it," Spider-Man said, and leaped backward in a backflip that cleared the hand that had been reaching for his shoulder, landing behind the speaker, shooting a web that connected and immediately using it to swing the person in a wide arc that ended with a solid impact against the nearest wall.
"ARGH!"
Before the person could get up, Spider-Man had them pinned to the wall with webbing.
"Wow!" the person said, with a tone that was not what he had expected from someone who had just been slammed into a wall. "You have to do that again! That shit was really fun!"
He looked at the face. He stared at it for a moment.
'Of course,' he thought. 'Of course it had to be him. Specifically him.'
"How the hell did you do that?!" the man continued, with the eyes of someone who has just received a present they wanted very much. "Is this a spider web? Did you make it or did it come out of you? That would be so weird, man! I like it!!"
"Oh my God, I can't believe this," he murmured in shock. "Wade?"
"Bob?" the man said, and then his eyes went wide and he broke into a smile that contained significantly more teeth than the situation called for.
"I got that reference," Spider-Man said, before his brain had finished processing the decision to say it.
"HAHAHAHA! You made a reference within a reference! There are like sixteen references layered in there!"
"I understood the hidden one as well," Spider-Man said. "Do not do it. I refuse to be responsible for what happens to him if you break the fourth wall too enthusiastically. Do you understand, Ryan Reynolds?"
"Okay. Let me introduce myself, though I suspect you already know who I am." The man settled against the wall with the comfort of someone who is fine being pinned to things. "I am Wade Wilson. Quick kills for quick cash."
His eyes widened. "But I know the ridiculously handsome and sexy man who sometimes plays someone like me in the cinema. I heard he has finished the third 'family-friendly' film. Honestly, he is the only person in all of Hollywood I would permit to play me."
Spider-Man looked at him.
"Are you alright?" he said.
"Yes."
"Good."
"Just kidding! Several of my screws are definitively loose!"
"I noticed."
"Your senses are sharp to pick that up so quickly!"
"A blind person would notice."
"Rude," Wade said, with no apparent injury. He shrugged. "How did you meet my counterpart Ryan Reynolds? Do you also experience visions of other universes?"
"What?" he asked in a state of absolute confusion.
"Apparently not, forget it," Wade said, with a sigh that contained genuine disappointment. "For the sake of your sanity and the collective sanity of the shameless losers sitting or lying down reading this story, let's move on because I doubt the Author is happy that I'm breaking the wall."
(Author: I'm not, Wilson, and you'd better stop if you don't want me to lock you in a room full of cows raping you and making you watch the entire Twilight saga)
(Wade: Okay, okay, okay, I won't do it too much. ~Damn, this guy knows how to screw me over~)
"What are you talking about?" Spider-Man said, slapping his face. "I don't know who or what you are addressing, but I am confident some people won't be too happy about your comment, and please shut up."
"Or what are you going to do to me? Torture me? My body is already adapted."
"Or," Spider-Man said pleasantly, "I borrow my unconscious friend's gun and shoot you in the balls and make sure your bloodline continues with you." He threw the rod aside and crossed his arms. "I am very good at this sort of thing."
"I'm sorry."
"Good boy," Spider-Man said mockingly. "Now, Wade Wilson, what are you doing here?"
"Oh? I came here to investigate the idiots you just beat up."
'From what I can see, his face isn't deformed, which means he doesn't have the regenerative ability yet. He said he came to investigate. If I remember correctly, in his backstory he moved here and fell in love with Vanessa, just like in the movie. Maybe the events of his movie will happen soon, or he'll leave and the same thing will happen to him as in the comic.'
"Why would a former special forces member like you be interested in these wannabe third-rate gangsters?"
"It seems someone has been investigating me," he said proudly. "I know I'm handsome, but I don't like men."
"You're Pansexual."
"You know too much," Wade said with a serious face. "You must die."
"Anyway," Spider-Man said, rolling his eyes inside his mask, grabbing a steel pipe and walking in front of Wade, who started smiling nervously. "Getting back to my question — why is a former special forces agent so interested in this waste of humanity? Also, don't lie. I have enhanced senses, so I know when someone's lying to me, and if I find out, then you can kiss your balls and your life goodbye."
"I thought Spider-Man didn't kill?"
"Wrong reality. Aside from that, what do you think spiders do? Do they weave warm blankets and sing lullabies to their prey?" He crossed his arms. "Now I know you know about me too, considering that not many know me or believe I'm real — they think I'm Red."
"That's what you think, buddy. Some people have their eyes on you, or to be more specific, on what you are," Wade said, and Spider-Man nodded at this new information. "Anyway, to answer your question, I'm not interested in these insects."
"So what?"
"I told you, didn't I? I'm basically a gun for hire, or a sword for hire — well, technically I'd be a katana for hire."
He hit Wade near the crotch with the pipe, uncomfortably hard where he hit it.
"Kyaah!" Wade screamed like a...never mind. "I was hired to investigate you! I promise! Good heavens...you almost gave me a heart attack."
"The last thing you should be worrying about is a heart attack. Science and medicine are my forte, and although I don't have much practical experience, I can probably perform the castration and leave you without a mark or scar." He threw the rod aside and crossed his arms. "Who hired you and why?"
Wade swallowed hard, looking at Spider-Man with a scared expression and a different kind of look that couldn't quite be deciphered. "That...That...That was hot."
Spider-Man said nothing.
Wade said nothing.
"Urgh," Spider-Man said.
"You seem displeased by my comment," Wade observed shyly.
"Because I am!" He picked up a gun from the pile and emptied the magazine near Wade's groin and balls.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I don't know him! I only know he works for the authorities!"
"A cop?"
"Or she could be a lawyer, I don't know man, I never met her." He shifted into a register that was noticeably more serious than the one he had been operating in. "Apparently she's interested in the organization these men belong to. A crime syndicate. They call themselves Maggia."
Spider-Man went still.
Wade watched his posture change.
"Shit," Spider-Man said.
He tore the webbing off in one motion, grabbed Wade by the shirt, and started moving.
"We need to go. Now."
"But why? I'll explain everything to you—"
The world slowed.