Summary: This was honestly not how Wade was expecting his week to go. Sure, he'd had his run-ins with bloodsuckers in the past, but they generally left him alone because, though he regenerated quickly and couldn't truly die - which should make him the perfect "blood bank" pet -, he was also very sick, and he tasted like it. Wade Wilson/Peter Parker. Vampire AU
Notes: [ ] is Yellow/Screwball
[[ ]] is White/Professor
Wade and Peter both have their powers in this. I'll go into that more later on.
CHAPTER ONE
Technology was incredible, really. To think how far humanity had come from the time when the first computer was turned on to now, in recent years, with the world practically available with the tap of a thumb on a phone screen.
Which is what Wade was staring down at as he scrolled through Yelp, trying to find a buffet or fuckin' anything else that was still open that wasn't fast food. The sun had gone down long ago, but he didn't seem put-off in the least, and in fact was bouncing to the music that anyone within three feet could hear through his earbuds that were turned up way too loud. Most people weren't crazy enough to still be out, and any who still were, were trying to correct that. But then again, this was Wade Winston Wilson - he was said to be equal parts crazy and annoying. The afterthought tacked onto that warning was that he was also a deadly, effective mercenary who would take any job, no matter how vile.
His current mission was getting food.
[Is it even a mission if we're not getting paid for it?]
[[Personal mission. It was a writing trick to make the flow between subject transitions gentler.]]
[A whu-huh?]
"A Denny's is two blocks 'at-a-way!"
[[Denny's is not food.]]
[You shut your whore mouth! They have bitchin' combo platters.]
[[Denny's is not food.]]
Wade flipped his phone around in a tight circle before he caught it again and damn had that looked cool. Too bad no one was around to see it. He glanced around, and deflated slightly when he realized that he was the only soul on the sidewalk right now. Welp. Dumb and Dumber continued to argue with each other, and Wade's stomach rumbled loudly in response to thinking about a stumbling drunk's paradise after bar-hopping all night: a warm meal and hot coffee.
[[You'd have to be drunk to enjoy that stuff.]]
"Dude, step the fuck off of Denny's dick - who hurt you?" Wade asked, and he pocketed his phone in one of the black leather compartments on his belt.
[You don't know his life! Maybe Denny's shot his family and kids and he's traumatized?]
"Maybe he caught Denny's in bed with his girl?"
[Maybe Denny's kidnapped the princess and turned out to be a disappointing endboss after all of the buildup?]
"Maybe Denny's was the father who abandoned him, leaving him with a lingering sense of loneliness and self-hatred that he can never shake no matter how hard he tries?" Wade paused mid-step as if there were the sound of a record scratching to a dead stop and he cocked his head, his brow clearly creasing through the mask (which was surprisingly expressive). "That got a little too real."
[[I cannot even begin to finish the list of things that are wrong with both of you.]]
[I love lists! They keep us on schedule.]
[[Wade, do it, the gun is right there. We gotta reboot, this is just too much.]]
"Sorry pal," Wade lilted, sounding not even slightly sorry. "My tummy says food first."
[[A bullet for dessert, then?]]
Wade turned up his music until it was beyond painful, but he just started shouting along with the words, either not knowing how to talk when he couldn't hear himself or he just didn't give a shit. The music didn't shut them up, but it helped drown them out. That was when he kicked in the door for the hyped-up diner, sashaying his way to the empty host bar. After dropping off some drink refills at a table, a middle-aged woman came up and wiped her hands on her apron, and gave Wade a worn, forced smile. "Welcome to Denny's," she said, and grabbed a menu. "This way, please."
Wade pulled out one of the earbuds that was taped onto the sides of his mask, and it came off with a soft rip and a crinkle. "What?" he shouted obnoxiously.
She jumped a little, and her eyes flitted to the headphone that Wade was now swinging around like a lasso in his right hand. "I said 'welcome to Denny's, this way'," she said back, louder.
Wade stared at her lips and then he pushed up the bottom of his mask just over his nose. "Oooh," he said, voice only a decibel softer this time. "Thanks! I think I blew out my eardrums!" he said cheerfully. It sounded like he was a mile underwater and the heavy-pressured ringing was getting to him, so he stuck his finger up under his mask and it came back dabbed with a bit of blood. "Yup! Ruptured as fuck!"
The hostess-slash-waitress wished she could say that this was the weirdest one she'd seen, but he wouldn't even make the top three this week. She gestured to one of the booths and Wade slid in, still bobbing his head as if he could hear any music at all.
He noticed the muffled rumble of Screwball attempting to talk, and he sighed like he'd just stuck his feet in for a hot soak. Might as well've; they got annoying as hell after… years.
[[I hope you know we're in his head; temporary deafness won't get rid of us.]]
His sigh turned into a groan and he slid a little further into his vinyl-covered seat. "Why did you have to tell him," he whined.
[!]
[[You're doing a visual joke and it's not going to translate completely without them being able to see the iconic font and color.]]
[Metal Gear sound!]
[[Auditory joke. And now the whole joke's stale.]]
[BRNK!]
[[Jesus Christ, Wade, please reboot.]]
"Not in front of the pretty lady," the Merc said sternly. Then he turned and finger-gunned said woman, who just looked like she'd long accepted what tonight was apparently going to be. "How about a Shirley Temple, extra cherry." He looked like he was probably going to say something lewd and then, for one of the few times in his life, held his tongue and swallowed the comment. She didn't need that sort of tasteless joking that she'd probably heard fifty-thousand times since starting, and she looked dead-tired. Like she was working on fumes alone, on her feet long enough for them to be bruised and gross.
[[Feet generally are that, yes.]]
[Hey, speak for yourself!]
...Okay, neither of them had wanted, or needed, to know about that info drop and Wade pulled a face as she set the menu down and turned around to get his drink order in.
Forty minutes later found him fully healed up with three different platers in front of him, one already picked clean and the second well on its way. That was when he heard the waitress and the cook talking over his own chewing. He hadn't cared to eavesdrop until he heard a specific word and suddenly he was all ears.
"There's something out there," the woman said, having just come back in from her smoke break. "I saw it behind the dumpster. Think a bloodsucker got somebody."
"You gonna call the cops, or should I?"
Her voice sounded like she was strained. "I'll talk to the cops up front, but I'm not going back outside."
"Aw, think they'd really make you go out in the cold just to see your old lady nips?"
A hard smack and a chuckle followed. "Shit, okay - you hit like a man."
"That was the warning shot," she hissed. "You can call them and chat 'em up. I'm still on break."
That was hardly as interesting as Wade had hoped and he went back to his meal. Attacks had been on the rise for the last ten years, he wasn't surprised someone unfortunate or stupid enough to be out after sundown had gotten their ass tossed out with the trash. He finished the second plate by the time he saw the cook come out and start dialing the non-emergency number.
"Yeah, another body." A pause. "Debbie, was it alive?" he asked from where the black employee phone was that he was attached to.
"Probably not anymore?" she replied from her seat, hardly glancing up from her phone.
"Probably dead," he relayed.
The conversation went on from there, but Wade could only hear one side. It felt lacking.
[[Welcome to everyone who hears you talk to us.]]
Wade snorted and choked a little on his eggs. Then he pounded on the table, startling the poor lone couple who were a few tables away, who'd already looked on edge. "Yo, raisin smuggler! Gimme my check!"
The cook turned and shot a look at him, and set his hand on his side. "I'm on the phone here, wait a minute," he said, and then added, "dickbag," under his breath. Once he was done with that, he hung up, and then started back towards the kitchen.
He came back out with a slip of paper and slammed it on the table. "I'll ring you up at the front," he said.
And that was the story of how Wade ended up in front of a corpse, with a nice and full belly, in a back alley, close to midnight.
He eyed the unmoving, clothed feet sticking out between trashbags. There wasn't any blood around the body, but that was absolutely to be expected - why waste that shit? It was worth its weight in carnivorous gold, and even a shitty meal was still a meal. Sure there were petty kills and about a hundred different reasons to leave the body, fluids and all, but…
[Go poke it with a stick.]
"And where the fuck am I getting a stick?"
[...Go poke it with a garbage stick.]
Wade rolled his eyes, but he heard a barely audible gurgle as a puff of air escaped the figure.
[OH FUCK, IT'S NOT DEAD-]
[[-Poke it anyway.]]
Looked like a teenager, actually, and now Wade felt a little bad. He was chalky and pale, with hollow cheeks and darkly circled eyes. His joints were swollen and bulbous in comparison to his bones because of how on death's doorstop this poor fuck was. Probably homeless from the looks of it, clothes worn and filthy, and his body little more than a skeleton. He didn't even seem to be breathing he was so far gone. There wasn't any saving this one, not that Wade was on some glory mission all of a sudden, but he tapped the kid's chest with the toe of his boot. Rolling him wasn't hard and he barely had to push. The poor boy's head lolled to the side lifelessly.
He had dark, slightly curled hair that was probably two or so inches long, and an angular face. On his neck were two easily recognizable scarred-over bite marks, and his parted lips revealed the ends of two elongated eye-teeth, and Wade felt a jolt in his body.
Turned out it wasn't some dying, homeless kid at all, apparently, as he quickly realized he had his foot on a dying, homeless vampire.
Well, shit.