Deadpool Syndrome - Spider Soulmates

Chapter 3 - Oh, Here We Go, Feel It In My Soul

***PETER***

"I'm right here, Logan," says Fury as he strides into the hangar. Seriously, there's no other way to put it. The man strides. Never walks. "So, what does my fellow bald-headed Big Good have to send you to say for him today?"

"Take me to your office and I'll tell you," Wolverine says, crossing his arms. I stifle a snicker as I imagine his knuckle-blades popping out right here and now, slicing his arms into mincemeat and ruining his aggressive posture. To further distract myself from that latest disturbing and random imagination activation, I turn to Gwen and gesture in the direction of a nearby door with my head. Getting the idea, she follows me over to that door, and down a long hallway on its other side.

"Looks like you got something on your arm," I say, stopping to get a closer look. It's a small swelling, mostly pale, with a couple of tiny dark pinprick marks in the center. After my spider bite at Oscorp, I'd had a similar mark on the back of my neck. I only knew about it because at one point, I took a picture of it. Not with an actual camera, though - with my cell phone.

"That's what I was gonna talk to you about, actually," Gwen says, pulling her arm out of my grasp. "Uh, can we find a place to sit?"

"I'm not sure where anything is around here," I say, looking around in confusion. "I haven't had enough time to memorize the layout of...oh, here's something promising." I spot a bench under a small window, and lead Gwen over to it.

Once we sit down, she starts telling me about the events in the Oscorp lab, paying special attention to the fact that Norman had her bitten by a spider much like the one that bit me. I don't say anything until she's done, and the first thing out of my mouth is, "You wanna put something on that bite?"

"What?"

"No, seriously, you've been scratching the hell out of it," I say. "Maybe you don't even realize it, but you've been..."

Gwen pulls her hand away from her arm, looking at the red marks left behind by her fingernails with more than a tad bit of revulsion. "Oh my God, you're right."

A quick glance around tells me that there's a supply closet about ten or twelve feet away. I try the door and find it locked, but that's where my skills come in. I blast the door with web at point-blank range, then walk away slowly, trailing an increasingly long webline for about twenty feet before I pull on it as hard as I can. It takes me a couple of tries, but eventually I break the door open successfully.

"Really, Peter?" Gwen asks.

"Just add 'bug burglar' to my résumé," I say, walking into the closet and looking up and down the shelves within until I find what I'm looking for. Cotton balls, some disinfectant spray, and a strip of gauze like the one Pietro lifted in the city. Unable to find any regular Band-Aids - of which Gwen still has a few on her arms and face from her earlier encounter with Ultron - I decide to once again use my webline to stick the gauze to her.

"Do you really have to be the one to treat all my wounds?" Gwen asks, wincing as I spray her scratched-up arm. "I feel like you don't trust me to take care of myself."

"Maybe if I'm not here," I joke, using a cotton ball to absorb some excess spray. "Come on, Gwen, I'm not allowed to worry about you?" I wrap her arm up, stick the gauze into place, then look up so I can see her eyes.

"As long as you know I totally am capable of taking care of myself," Gwen says, pouting. However, I've long since learned to recognize this particular expression of hers - her lower lip thrust out, but more strongly on her left, like she's pouting and biting her lip all at once - as her "fake butthurt" face.