Chapter Text
They're being tailed. And a crowded boardwalk full of vacationing families is the last place any of them want to start a firefight. Which is how they end up in a crowded arcade, weaving discreetly through aisles of machines that plink and jingle and rattle and buzz...
"Hi, buddy! Long time no see!"
...Steven gets bounced into the driver's seat. Hard! Marc and Jake were holding up well enough against the crowd and the racket, but that voice is one aggravation too far.
Well, fine. He can roll with it. "Hello, Wade," says Steven.
He's seen Deadpool with the mask off, so he doesn't have an awkward reaction to the heavily-scarred face...but this is his first time seeing Wade Wilson in full-on casual clothes. The guy has company, too: a woman with wavy brown hair, a slinky dress, and one of those rainbow lollipops half the size of your head.
"Nessa, baby, this is a co-worker of mine from the old business," Wade tells her. "Gotta love that unlikely coincidence and/or authorial railroading, huh? He goes by different names sometimes...you wanna tell us what to call you now, or are you gonna make me guess?"
"Steven," says Steven. "Just Steven today."
"Ooh, cute accent," says the woman. "Uh, does it help -- whatever you're doing -- if we talk to you right now? Or are we getting in your way?"
That is a gift-wrapped easy out, hisses Jake. Tell 'em to buzz off. Y'know, polite-like.
...no, dammit, she's right, thinks Marc. It does help if we look like we're meeting someone. Steven, I -- I'll swap back, if you want.
"No, no, it's perfectly all right! Happy to chat," says Steven out loud, addressing the whole group. He nods to the row of machines they've ended up next to. "Play a few rounds with me?"
"Sweet!" chirps Wade. "Although, fair warning, this woman is a monster at skee ball. Steven, this is my wife, Vanessa."
Steven does a double-take in the middle of going for a handshake. "Wh -- wife? You're married?"
"Okay, in my defense," deadpans Vanessa, grabbing his hand and squeezing, "he was way hotter when we met. Then he got cancer of the everything, and what was I supposed to do? Dump the cancer guy? Come on."
"That wasn't supposed to be a crack about his looks!" exclaims Steven, over a furious blush. "I swear! It was entirely about his personality."
"It might be a tiny bit about the fact that I hit on him last time we met," says Wade in a stage whisper. More normally, he adds, "Don't worry, baby, he could not have been less interested if he tried. He's taken. I mean extremely, seriously, super-duper taken. And don't worry, Steven, it's all on the up-and-up on my end! Whenever I'm out-of-town, or having a crossover appearance in a different franchise, I have the green light to flirt my little heart out."
"It's embarrassing, honestly." Vanessa hands Wade the lollipop, and crouches to click a token into the skee-ball machine in front of her...then, after giving Steven a quick once-over, to put one in his machine too. Matching sets of heavy balls trundle down the chutes. "This guy will go after anybody with a pulse."
Wade beams. "And some people without one!"
Steven recoils.
"Androids!" yelps Vanessa, now looking actually embarrassed. "He means like androids!"
"Oh, thank god," breathes Steven, who had totally forgotten that was a thing for a second there. (False alarm, he thinks at Jake and Marc, both startled back to full attention by the wave of distress. He's just being quirky again.)
"And aliens, some of them." Vanessa keeps the train of thought going as she hefts one of the skee balls, eyeing her targets. "And, hey, Colossus when he's metal..."
Wade taps her on the shoulder. "They don't know who Colossus is here, baby."
"What? In the US?"
"No, in the MCU! They're gonna fold in the Fox characters eventually, but this fic is all Phase Four, and none of them are scheduled to join the universe until Phase Six. Arguably I'm not on the schedule until Phase Six either, but there's a short on Youtube from a year ago that has me hanging out with Korg, so I think we're counting that. -- Ooh!" He turns to Steven. "Korg! Ever met him?"
"Um," says Steven, a little dizzy. "I don't..."
"CGI alien guy, hangs out with Thor sometimes? All made of rock! Super charming, would totally hit that, and there's definitely no pulse on him."
"I will take your word for it."
Vanessa shushes Wade so she can focus, which means she and Steven get to roll a few balls up their lanes in blessed almost-silence.
...although Wade can't resist the occasional comment hyping her up. Even Steven has to admit, it's pretty cute.
When she wins (handily, it's not even close), Wade starts turning his pockets inside out. "Ooh, we're almost out of tokens. Can I take my turn at the game while you run and grab more?"
"Sure." Vanessa takes her lollipop back, kisses her husband on the cheek (leaving a rainbow-tinted lip print), and heads off.
"Sooooo I wasn't gonna bust this out without checking," murmurs Wade, under the rumble of the next set of skee balls, "but for the record? Nessa would be totally cool with your whole 'secretly three guys in one hot trenchcoat' situation."
"Thank you. For not," says Steven. "Busting it out, I mean. Not that she doesn't seem lovely! But."
"But it's personal? Gotcha. These lips will stay zipped." Wade does the matching gesture in front of his mouth, then grabs the first ball and sends it rolling. "Are the other guys around, can I say hi real quick now, or should I just ask you to pass it on?"
Steven has a quick listen to the inside of his head. Marc and Jake have both pulled back. "I'll pass it on."
They play in parallel silence for a bit. Wade still out-rolls Steven, but not quite as hard as his wife did.
"It's not -- you haven't offended them, or anything," adds Steven awkwardly. "You're not doing anything wrong! And they appreciate the times you've helped me out, they really do. It's just. We don't understand what you're saying at least half the time, and it confuses and stresses us out."
"Nah, it's fine, I get it," says Wade cheerfully. "My crazy doesn't match your crazy."
"...yeah. Pretty much, yeah."
"Don't worry -- with the movie not coming out for a few years, I probably won't be back in this fic anyway. Unless there's a new teaser trailer that's really inspirational! Or a big team-up chapter, where I'll probably just get a funny one-liner. Or maybe some kind of Pride Month special? I'll bring a flag for whatever it is when you're down to bang an alien tree -- as long as it's an adult alien tree, I'm not having impure thoughts about Groot in this continuity if he's still a sapling -- and you'll rep whatever it is when you're mostly into other guys played by the same actor. Tumblr's gotta have a word for that. Doppelsexual? Selfcestual? Solosexual?...Nope, wrong Star Wars character."
"This!" exclaims Steven -- and yeah, he's pushing back the others again, he's still not in danger, he's just -- confused and stressed. "This is the confusing and stressful bit!"
"Sorry! I swear I haven't been snooping on all the private sexy details in the tie-in fic. I just saw the tags in the header."
Steven's next skee-ball veers so wildly off-course, it lands in Wade's machine instead. (Only netting him 10 points, even.)
"Um. Right. Lemme try that in a normal, fourth-wall-respecting way," says Wade sheepishly. "I heard...through boring everyday magic and/or super-science sources...that you and your 'teammates' are...getting along?"
"We are," allows Steven. "Getting along."
"Extremely well? Super-duper-well, even?"
Steven blushes some more. "...you might say that."
"Awesome! Good for you. Mazel tov." Wade tosses his last skee-ball into Steven's machine. (It leaves a worrying crack in one of the plastic rings, but it gets 20 points.) "That's all I was getting at! Honest."
"Thanks," says Steven. He's pretty sure he means it.
Vanessa finally comes back, holding a whole roll of tokens. "This should hold us for another half hour. Give or take. What did I miss?"
"Just more of my usual wacky nonsense!" says Wade. He throws a wink at Steven, then adds, without missing a beat: "Hey, if the author ever yoinks a certain kind of inspiration from the Ultimate 'verse, how would you feel about us offering Inner Child babysitting?"