Work Text:
PP: hey johnny
JS: sup boo?
PP: wade got a CAT
JS: ??? and???
PP: sry my bad
PP: wade’s gf got a CAT
JS: HES GOT A GF??
PP: dude you are missing the point go back and repent
JS: WADE?
PP: now you’ve gone too far back
JS: cat?
PP: cat.
JS: does this affect you?
PP: ohohohohohoho
Johnny waited, but all he got was radio silence, even after a full two minutes.
He checked his wifi connection.
PP: OHOHOHOHOHO
Ah. Nope. Not a problem with the wifi. Just Peter trying to evil laugh. For a guy who got some many evil geniuses trying to maim him, you’d think he’d have gotten it down by now.
PP: she has babies
Oh.
Johnny took everything back.
JS: how many
PP: 4 bb
JS: I take it we want a bb?
PP: YOU FOOL
PP: YOU ABSOLUTE FOOL
PP: I’VE SPENT THE LAST 4 YEARS GETTING STRAIGHT As FOR THIS MOMENT AND THIS MOMENT ALONE
PP: no one can touch me
PP: NO ONE
“Wow, someone’s popular,” Reed said with his arms full of groceries. Sue was swearing down the hall he’d come from. She sounded like she was trying to close the door with her butt again.
“Can we get a cat?” Johnny asked him.
“No,” Reed kindly.
“Please?”
“Absolutely not.”
Bummer.
“DP’s got a girlfriend,” Johnny threw out in a sigh.
There was a squawk down the hall and it was not grocery or door-induced. Reed went stiff as a board.
“There’s no way,” he said.
Sue started cackling down the hallway. Peter ought to take notes from her, she had it down.
JS: can I touch you?
PP: not today. I’m broaching the subject with the parental unit. Pray for me.
JS: 🙏
“Tell me everything.”
Johnny needed Sue to take at least three steps back, like, now. Now would be perfect.
“That’s all I got,” he said. “I lost Peter to the cats.”
“Peter,” Sue groaned.
Johnny felt that.
JS: hey what’s DP’s gf like?
PP: FUCK YOU I GOT A YES
PP: I GOT A YES
PP: SPIDERMAN WINS TODAY
PP: okay I’m done with vigilantism now have fun drowning in the east river loser-heros ✌😜
Wh—
“Johnnyyyyy.”
He patted for Sue’s hands and found them.
“He says he’s quitting Spiderman now?” he asked. “Can you do that? Are we allowed to just do that?”
Reed dropped cans of something all over the kitchen counter in the other room.
“For a cat?” he asked.
“Apparently,” Johnny said. “Oh, he’s typing again, hold on. We might be over it.”
JS: how’d you do it? Get the go ahead, I mean?
PP: begged wade’s gf for the cutest pics ever. She’s a worthy ally. May never stood a chance.
PP: I want the black one. She’s my favorite she loves me more than ANYONE else.
JS: wait go back to DP’s gf. You’ve never mentioned her before. I thought he was single and ready to mingle? That’s what he tells Cap any time they’re in shouting range.
PP: what
PP: oh
PP: idk she’s cool.
JS: Peter this is mutant gossip of a lifetime. she can’t just be cool. What’s her name?
PP: idk? I didn’t ask.
JS: PETER
PP: ?????????? why’re you mad???? What’d I do?????
PP: idk her name idk her face I didn’t look????
JS: HOW DID YOU NOT LOOK
PP: ☹
JS: okay sorry don’t cry it’s fine
PP: no I’m already crying. I’m sobbing. No one cares about me but my cat. MY cat. Who is MINE. Forever and ever and ever.
PP: I’m gonna train her to be Spidercat and you’ll have no role in her life, Jonathan Storm.
JS: I said I’m sorry. tell me about your cat
PP: no
JS: tell meeeeee
PP: no
JS: I know you want to. SPEAK
PP: okay you may look but ONLY look. No touching. We’re bonded forever.
PP: [image] [image] [image] [image]
The cat was very cute, Johnny had to give him this one. She had big gray-blue eyes and a scraggly fluffy back. She looked like a miniature Halloween decoration with real claws.
“What is that?” Sue asked from over his shoulder.
“Apparently this is the child I’ve been denied custody over,” Johnny said, lifting the phone to show her.
“Oh. She’s cute. What’s her name?”
Johnny was almost scared to ask.
JS: sue said she’s cute. Wants to know her name
PP: sue can stay. You can go.
JS: I said she’s cute too????
PP: when
JS: dude just now. The words left my face like barely a second ago
PP: no proof. I’m exchanging. give me the other Storm, you’re dead to me.
JS: WOW. Okay fine. What’s her name?
PP: M87 💖❤💗💕🌈✨💖❤
“M87?” Johnny repeated at his phone.
Reed dropped more things in the kitchen and barked out a laugh.
“Oh, that’s very good,” Sue said. “That’s perfect, actually. Reed—she’s a void cat. All black.”
More laughing.
Johnny stared at the family nerd closed to him and waited.
“M87?” Sue said. “You know? First imaged black hole? No?”
No. Ew.
JS: that’s lame call her Blue Moon
PP: FUCK
PP: YOU
PP: Wade just said okay!! Mine mine mine mine mine mine
PP: He says I can get her TONIGHT
PP: brb
Johnny didn’t know what to do. He was surrounded by people who thought that a jumble of numbers and letters was a good name. His maybe-boyfriend had forsaken him and spat on his name multiple times that night, and all this for a cat.
Unbelievable.
PP: wait quick question
PP: do you want a cat?
JS: reed says no
PP: ask the other one. We have a white baby called Arcturus. He’s the only one not claimed now.
Johnny blinked, and turned his head to the side where Sue had started texting one of her friends on her own phone.
“Sue,” he said. “You are being offered a white hairball called Arcturus? I guess DP’s got a handful of them and he’s the last one without a home.”
Sue snapped up straight and then abandoned him at the couch. In quick time, Johnny heard Reed’s earlier refusal restated in the kitchen. He also heard the rejection of the refusal. Then the rejection of the rejected refusal.
“We don’t have time for a cat,” Reed emphasized.
“We’ll make time,” Sue said. “She speaks to me.”
“You haven’t even see it.”
“Jonathan, the Spouse requires images,” Sue called.
Johnny turned his face back to the phone.
JS: Sue wants a picture
PP: [image][image]
It was a funny-looking sort of white kitten. It had dark gray paws and ears so big it looked like a bat. Johnny knew upon sight that this was now their cat.
He held the phone out for Sue wordlessly, and quickly, it was snatched out of his palm. She made a sound between frustration and a shriek.
“He’s a he, by the way,” Johnny pointed out.
He got nothing. Reed was busy getting personal face-time with his phone in the kitchen. It would be a minute here.
“Sue, we don’t need a cat,” Reed pleaded through the wall, “We can’t have a cat. Who’s going to—yes, I see it, it’s got ears. It’s fine. You’re not—nope, not listening, you’re not listening—WOAH, hey, hey, ma’am? Ma’am, you need to step away from this situation, you are needlessly inv—SUE.”
“Mine,” Sue said, stuffing the phone back to Johnny’s waiting palm. “She speaks to me. Tell the murder man to hold her, we must meet in person.”
“I speak to you every day,” Reed said, gesturing at the kitchen helplessly. “Do you not hear me? Am I not good enough for you?”
Man, you don’t want that answer.
“Nope.”
There it was.
Johnny hunkered back down into the couch cushions to the tune of Reed’s indignity.
PP: is she serious?
JS: they’re arguing about it, but yeah she’s serious. She’s been lobbying for a cat for like, a year now.
PP: oooooooooh
PP: kindred spirit?
JS: you’re never meeting again. I won’t have you join forces.
PP: ☹
JS: don’t cry
PP: ITS TOO LATE
Okay, someone somewhere must have set off some kind of chemical that made half of the nerd-humans in Johnny’s life have a collective aneurysm or orgasm or something because this? This was a lot. Johnny was boxed in by all drama on every side.
JS: come on baby I didn’t mean it. how can I make it up to you?
PP: 1) Don’t’ call me baby 2) Come help me get things for my child, the only child that’s ever mattered and the one who you aren’t allowed to corrupt with your bad attitude.
“Johnny,” Reed interrupted exhaustedly. “Please note that I am not saying this out of any semblance of sense or my own volition, but can you ask Peter to—”
“Tell DP I have dibs,” Sue interrupted, even more insistent that before. “Don’t give Arcturus away. I’m getting my coat. I need an address. Where am I going?”
Johnny hadn’t seen Sue this excited in literal years. He looked from her flailing around towards the stairs back to Reed.
“I thought we couldn’t have a cat,” he said.
Reed held his face in his hands.
“You’re so whipped, man,” Johnny said.
“Hush your mouth. This is—this is what we do for the people we love,” Reed ground out.
“You don’t like cats,” Johnny reminded him.
“They’re fine.”
Mmm.
“You could tell her no,” Johnny said.
Reed gaped at him.
“That’s how people get poisoned, Johnny, write that one down,” he said.
Johnny opened his notes app.
“This is your chance,” he said as he typed. “I’m going to ask Pete. Going once.”
Reed moaned into his elbow.
“Going twice.”
“I can’t believe—”
“Sold. To the lady in the pink coat—hey Sue, I just asked him.”
Sue vibrated on at the edge of the rug by the door. She stayed there for the whole two minutes it took for Peter to relay the message and come back to his phone.
PP: Wade says okay, but wants you to know that Arcturus has an eye infection so he needs to keep taking his meds. They’re drops. He’s almost done with them.
“Cat’s got an eye problem,” Johnny announced for the benefit of the stairs. “Needs eyedrops for another day or so.”
“Cat will get eyedrops,” Sue said. “Where is cat?”
Peter relented and sent along an address.
Apparently Deadpool lived in the Upper West Side? Who knew?
Sue, now.
“I see you, I don’t care about politics, don’t talk to me about politics, I am here only for the child,” she opened with.
Reed apologized for her. Deadpool, without his mask, managed to looked exact how Johnny imagined someone who’d just been spoken to by a burning bush would. In the middle of all the scarring and lesions, his eyes could not get wider.
“I gotta say,” DP said, “When the kid said you wanted one of the maggots, I didn’t expect you to like, actually come get it.”
Johnny gazed upon him with pity.
“This is the next three days for us,” Reed said miserably. “Just pull the trigger already.”
DP considered him in, if possible, even greater alarm.
“Y’all okay?” he asked, pointing between Reed and Sue.
“Irrelevant,” Sue said.
Reed pled the 5th.
Oh, how the mighty had fallen. Johnny stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket and rocked his weight back and forth from foot to foot.
“You know what, actually? Yeah, why not?” Deadpool said. “Come get your hairball. I got enough problems right now.”
The kittens lived in a box on the roof of a building. Or at least that’s where DP brought them. Johnny had a feeling that they lived in an apartment in the building, but DP wasn’t stupid enough to take the majority of the F4 right to his own front door.
That said, he appeared to have failed to take into account his own personal chaos element, who Johnny noticed standing at the door, holding and soothing a yowling creature of the night in her arms.
This, Johnny deduced, was Mama Cat. And that, Johnny also deduced, was Wade Wilson, Deadpool’s partner in…love? Crime? It didn’t matter, she was smoking hot, with heavy curls of brown hair tumbling over her bare shoulders and the loose, oversized pale pink sweater she wore over a pair of black tights with more holes in them than fabric. She kept her distance, even after peeking and then creeping out of the roof-access door. Johnny watched her watch the rest of them, while Sue melted over the kittens DP set down in front of her.
“Hi babies,” Sue cooed into the box, folding herself in half to admire them. “Hi babies. Oh, there are so many of you.”
Reed stuffed his hands into his pockets and decided to look sullen. DP grinned at him.
“The things we do, eh?” he joked.
Reed rolled his whole head in his way with dead eyes.
“Look at it this way, champ,” DP said. “When she’s happy, you’re happy.”
“Can confirm,” the lady by the door called.
Deadpool turned back towards her, then shrugged. Reed perked back up.
“Is that your--?” he asked, gesturing.
“Who? Oh her?” DP asked, “Nah, I ain’t seen that lady in my life. Here, lemme clear ‘er off—HEY, LADY. Yeah, you. You need somethin’ from me?”
His partner lit up and pointed at herself.
“Me?” she called.
“Yeah, you,” DP said, waving. “With the hair and the ass.”
His lady pointed at her hip.
“This ass?” she asked.
“Yeah, that one.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure as the day’s long,” DP drawled, “Whatcha doin’ hangin’ around a place like this and a guy like me, huh, darlin’?”
The apples of the woman’s cheeks made themselves known in the light pouring down on her from inside the roof access shelter. She was smiling wide. Johnny felt his jaw loosen. Deadpool had game, man. Where was his phone? Johnny needed to take notes.
Reed took it out of his hands the second he got it out of his pocket.
“Oh, don’t you mind me, handsome, I’m just waitin’ here for my man,” the lady at the door crowed, gesturing with the cat.
Johnny decided that if he was, say, ten years older, he’d have fallen in love with her then and there, if it weren’t for, well. Deadpool turned back to the rest of them and shrugged.
“Gal’s waitin’ for a bus or somethin’,” he said. “They’ve all had their first shots, by the way—the cats, I mean, that broad—mm, I wouldn’t chance it.”
Sue finally seemed to remember that she was among other humans and tore her gaze away from the fuzzy potatoes climbing all over her hands in the box.
“How old?” she asked.
“’Bout five and half weeks,” DP hummed.
“He’s everything I’ve ever wanted,” Sue said, holding up the little white kitten to her face. He mewed and batted at her nose. “You’re the only man I need,” she cooed at him.
Reed’s eye twitched. DP cackled and slapped him on the back hard enough to make him stumble.
“Lemme get you his papers,” he said. “Gimme just a sec.”
The lady with the mama cat came in close while DP went to go rifle through his (their?) apartment downstairs.
She let the mama cat loose and she went in and tried to take Arcturus out of Sue’s hands by the scruff of his neck. He shrieked. Sue let Mama have him.
“Are you keeping any?” she asked DP’s lady friend.
“Sure are. The big one, Mudhoney,” DP’s lady said. “She’s done her part. I got plans for her now, don’t I boo-bear?”
Mama cat purred at the scritches the lady scratched into her cheek.
“Spidey’s taking the black one?” Sue asked her. Johnny peeked over her shoulder, but could not locate any black potatoes in the box. There was only a dark corner with eyes.
She really was a void, wasn’t she?
“You mean, Ben?” DP’s lady said, “Yeah, he’s nesting for her.”
Ben?
“Ben?,” the gal repeated, “Spiderkid? Does he not have you call him Ben? We call him ‘Ben.’ He’s a little like M87, there. Sort of aloof. Bitey. Screams when pleased.”
Johnny stared mournfully at Reed’s pocket, where his trusty, note-taking device was being stored against its and his will.
“Did you name them?” Sue asked the lady as Reed started texting their own Ben his complaints against the universe.
“Hm? Oh, no. Ben helped me. Wade and I only know clubs and music, and apparently, it’s not cool to name a cat ‘Slipknot.’ Who knew?”
Peter, thank god you were there in that moment.
Sue smiled politely.
“And what was your name?” she asked.
The lady lifted her thick lashes up from the cats slowly. Her eyes were just as dark.
“You can call me Cory,” Cory said, she paused and then turned her head and all its curls. “And you must be Johnny.”
Johnny jerked back in surprise and pointed at himself.
“Yeah, you,” Cory said. “Ben’s mentioned you. What’s y’all’s deal? Are you together or not together or is it all a secret crush that I just royally fucked up?”
Cory talked a lot like Deadpool. They must have spent a lot of time together, and for a couple where one person’s job was to murder like, hundreds of people, they seemed really…normal? Was normal the right word? Maybe ‘lowkey’ was better?
“Johnny,” Reed said.
It brought him back down to earth.
“I, uh. He’s my Love Interest,” he said.
He got a weird stare and a long blink.
“What does that mean? Is that a thing the kids are doing now?” Cory asked Sue.
“Unofficially labeled,” Sue said, driving a nail through Johnny’s heart somehow.
“Awwww.”
Now, wait just a minute here—
“Johnny?”
He went stiff.
“Ahhh, Benny, there you are,” Cory said as she stood up out of her crouch. “Come here, your demon awaits.”
Peter cocked his head. He was all suited up in his reds with some kind of boxy shape in his hands.
“She’s a void,” he told Cory.
Cory smirked.
“Papers,” DP announced behind them all. “Oh--Well, look what the cat dragged in.”
“I brought a box,” Peter told him triumphantly.
“I told you, you ain’t takin’ any of them things through web-travel,” Deadpool snapped out of absolutely nowhere.
“Box!”
“No box. We talked about this. You’re takin’ the train.”
“BOX.”
Johnny’s head was spinning. DP bypassed him to give Reed a sheet of paper and to grab Peter by the scruff of the neck like he was the kitten here. Peter didn’t even fight him. He let himself be dragged off for what Johnny wasn’t positive was a scolding, but which looked a whole lot like a scolding.
Reed and Sue watched that with high eyebrows.
“It’s cute isn’t it?” Cory whispered.
Reed reconsidered the scolder and scoldee.
“Maybe?” he tried.
“Adorable,” Sue said, standing up with Arcturus happily snuggling into her throat. “When did that start?”
“A while ago,” Cory said. “Ben took a bullet for Wade and now he’s ‘round here when he’s in the area—I dunno what he eats, though. I’ve tried mealworms--didn’t love those. Tried lasagna--wouldn’t even sniff it. He’s just so little; I tell Wade to be gentle, but, you know—the kid starts rough-housin’ first and he forgets.”
Sue stroked the kitten.
“I think he’s vegan,” she said.
“No shit?” Cory said.
Johnny was done with them. He wasn’t here for conspiracy theories or gossip. He was here for cats. Cats only. Where were the cats? Give him the cats.
“Baby, baby, baby, baby—DON’T TOUCH HER, JONATHAN—baby, baby, baby—”
Johnny was glad that Sue and Reed were having a good night. Someone needed to—although folks could stop laughing any day now.
“Yeah, he’s nothing to me now that you’re here,” Peter crooned to Void Cat, M87.
Once extracted from the darkest corner of the kitten box, she’d proved herself to have limbs. These she lashed out at Johnny with and then hissed.
Clearly, she and Peter were meant to be. She took his nuzzling and kissing like she was made out of liquid chocolate—purring and purring and purring away.
“You’re going home by train, then,” Sue asked Peter.
Deadpool and Cory had taken their leave, with Cory holding Mudhoney over her head and proclaiming her freedom on her behalf.
“Yes,” Peter said abruptly.
M87 sunk her needle teeth into his hands. He showed no sign of noticing.
“Do you want to come with us?” Sue asked. “A ride maybe?”
“No,” Peter said. “I’m good. Bye, Johnny.”
He shook one of M87’s paws at Johnny in the kind of wave that a parent forced their newborn into giving. She tried to eat his fingers again.
“Bye,” Johnny said.
“No kiss?” Reed asked like a jerk.
Peter’s face twitched up towards him. He blinked and his cat blinked with him, both of them at the same time.
“Sir, I’m a minor,” he said.
PP: [image] [image] [image]
PP: [image] [image] [image] [image]
PP: [image] [image] [image]
PP: [image] [image]
JS: Peter, she’s very cute
PP: [image] [image] [image]
PP: [image] [image] [image]
PP: [image] [image] [image]
JS: Peter
PP: yes
JS: are you having a good time?
PP: yes
JS: I’m glad
PP: [image] [image]
JS: Reed is still flustered thanks for asking
PP: look she’s sleeping [image]
JS: I think you broke him
JS: he keeps asking Sue if he looks like a predator
PP: [image] this is the bed May got her
PP: it’s too big but she’ll grow
JS: you know I kind of admire how little you care about the fact that you’ve emotionally devastated one of the most famous superheroes in new york
PP: [image] look she likes her ball
JS: just so you know I’m sending screenshots of this to Sue and Ben. Idk if Ben’s laughed this hard in years
PP: send me a picture of Rufus
JS: [image]
PP: another
JS: [image]
PP: yeah he’s p good. I like how much your sister likes him. Maybe we can talk.
JS: do you test everyone you know with animals before you talk to them?
PP: yes
JS: idk what I expected
JS: hey are you vegan?
PP: no. here look she’s sleeping in May’s pocket [image]
JS: that’s very cute. you’re devastating my family singlehandedly. We have to get married now.
PP: k
PP: brb she’s supposed to sleep in my room in case she cries
And he was gone.
Johnny sighed, and then sighed again as a fuzzy gray paw found its way from his chest onto his phone screen.
He looked down at Arcturus’s fluffy head, and, as if he had eyes back there, he looked directly up into Johnny’s eyes.
He mewed.
“I hope you’re happy,” Johnny told him. “You’re the first vigilante thing that’s entered this place willingly.”
Rufus mewed again.
Johnny gave in and thumbed at his ears. He started rumbling.
“I guess you’re alright,” Johnny told him. “We’ll keep you for now.”
PP: I’m back. Hey are you busy on Sun?
Oh?
Johnny stuffed Rufus into his collarbone.
JS: no, what’s up?
PP: nothing. I want you to meet someone.
JS: is it m87
PP: you already met m87 johnny why would I have you meet her again? No. Someone else.
JS: DP again?
PP: are you coming or not
JS: where? Moths?
PP: no
PP: closer to you
JS: oh?? midtown?
PP: warmer
JS: uuuuh, Madison Ave?
PP: colder
JS: Chelsea?
PP: warmer
JS: Hell’s
JS: Peter.
JS: no way
JS: NO WAY PETER NO WAY
PP: ❤
JS: omg
JS: what do I wear?
JS: like, a cross?
PP: it doesn’t matter. We just need a flashlight, so I thought I’d call my favorite tool ❤
JS: aw babe
PP: 💋
PP: 🔪 don’t call me babe
JS: k
JS: can I tell anyone or is this secret secret?
PP: [image]
JS: is that a yes secret or a no secret
PP: [image] [image] she likes her bowl
JS: I’m taking that as a yes secret.
PP: hey you’re great I’m gonna sleep now. good night!
Good night, you infuriating, bittersweet prince.
Johnny rubbed at Rufus’s ears.
“One day he’s gonna say that he loves me,” he told him. “And it won’t be between pictures of a cat.”
Rufus purred. Johnny took it as agreement.