It took Wade a moment to remember where he was. His head and shoulder hurt, and he was currently being rhythmically jostled against a solid wall of muscle. Something, Wade assumed it was a shoulder, was digging into his pelvis. He wiggled his hips in an effort to settle into a more comfortable position.
"I'm going to assume that you're awake then," came a voice from somewhere both above and behind Wade. Wade responded by groaning dramatically. "I don't suppose you care to walk by yourself?" Peter moved his shoulder roughly in an attempt to dislodge the larger man.
Slightly put off and determined to fuck with his apparent knight in shining armor, Wade gripped tightly onto the only handholds he could find. "Hello? Who's there? Is- is that you God?" A hand reached down to swat Wade's hands away from the asscheeks that he had latched onto.
"It's Peter you idiot." Wade smirked at the exasperated tone of Peter's voice; if there was one thing he knew how to do, it was how to get on somebody's nerves.
"Peter?" Wade gasped in mock surprise. "Saint Peter, guardian of the pearly gates? As in heaven? Gosh, that's a shocker, I mean seriously, who fucked up? Someone really should be fired if they think that I belong up here. Wait, does this mean that I'm dead? Oh, say it isn't so! Please, Saint Peter, explain to me the intricate details of my mortality!"
"Oh, that does it!" Wade felt himself flipped up and then slammed down onto the asphalt. Too late, Wade realized that it may have been more prudent to have simply recited that lame pickup line about heaven and angels than too further provoke the obviously agitated man. "Look pal, I don't know you, and I certainly don't owe you anything. I came back for you against my better judgement." Peter started to walk away. "If you're going to be a moron, don't expect me to stick around. I put my ass on the line for you once already; I'm not overly eager to do it again." Without turning around, he flicked his hand up in a two-fingered salute. "Have fun. Don't die."
Wade watched as Peter started to slowly sashay away. Today just was not his day. Wade might be pretty handy with guns and swords, but that was against other humans. Clearly, he was no match for an actual honest to goodness Raider. He shuddered as he recalled the ease with which the claws had carved through his flesh.
He started to get up to follow his savior, but a painful pinching in his shoulder made him hesitate. He stayed where he was, down on all fours like a beggar groveling before a king. "Wait! Peter!" Wade forced his voice to remain strong despite the fact that he currently felt like shit run through a blender. "PETER! You can't just leave me here! Not again! Not…not after what happened last time." Wade let his voice trail off as he saw the other man hesitate. It was hard for Wade to admit that he needed help at all; it always had been. But right now, forced to choose between death and the desecration of his pride, Wade would gladly choose the latter. He was a survivor, always had been. He had survived his father, he had survived the cancer, and he had survived the war. It was only thanks to Peter however, that he had survived his most recent brush with death. Without him, Wade wasn't sure that he could survive another. Certainly not in his present condition anyways. Desperate, Wade flung out one last "Peter!" at the top of his lungs. He held his breath as Peter slowly turned back around to face him.
For a moment, neither of them so much as twitched. Peter stared back at Wade with dead eyes, and Wade stared back with eyes as bright as the surrounding daylight. Gradually, so as not to startle Peter into bolting away again, Wade let out the breath he was holding. He kept his eyes trained on the younger man, determined not to let him out of his sight. All too soon however, the tender stillness was broken as Wade once more begged Peter to stay.
"Peter, please. Don't leave me. I need you." Wade put all of his emotion into those last three words. Every iota of self-preservation and melancholy that he had been carrying with him pushed its way to the surface and jumped inside those three little words. He wished he could say it was powerful, touching even, but that was far from the truth. The words needled out of his mouth in a pathetic little whine, and when Wade forced his head up to gauge Peter's reaction, he could tell that it had all been for naught. The man was gone.
"Peter! Pet-mphgh" Wade's shouting was muffled by a grimy hand that clapped across his mouth. A very, very familiar hand. He looked up in surprise at Peter glaring down at him. Peter was squeezing him just a bit too tightly, and the way he swung Wade's chin up to look him in the eye was uncomfortable at best, but at this moment in time, Wade wouldn't have traded it for anything else.
"Stop shouting, you idiot. Unless you want to fight more Raiders? I'm sure they'd be glad to see you again. They always love an easy meal." Seeing as Peter still held control over his mouth, Wade shook his head furiously. Or at least he tried to. The kid had a grip of steel, and the best that Wade could manage was a pathetic wiggle. Peter seemed to get the message however. "Good boy." He let go of Wade's jaw and patted him on his cheek. "Now, either put up or shut up. I don't need any liabilities. Seriously though, can you walk? 'Cause I mean, I may be strong, but you could also stand to lose a few pounds."
"What? I am not overweight!" Wade smoothed a hand down his pectorals and slapped his abdomen. "This is all muscle baby! I'm talking a primo-cut piece of Grade-A angus beef steak here!" Wade bit back the urge to add 'and just as delicious' for fear of losing him again. As it was, his comments earned him a less than subtle eye roll. "Seriously though, I'm good to walk. In excruciating pain, sure, but yeah, good to go." Forgetting about his shoulder, Wade thumped his fist against his chest in a manly display and promptly collapsed on the ground from shock.
Peter shook his head. "You are a fucking idiot."
"So you've said. Repeatedly. You really aren't a very nice person." Seeing as Peter wasn't planning on helping him up anytime soon, Wade was forced to stagger up on his own.
"Nice gets people killed."
"It also gets you friends. Vinegar? Not so much.
"Yeah, well, I'm not your honey, so stop pretending that I am." Peter opened his mouth to say something else, but suddenly his eyes widened and he clamped his mouth shut. He motioned for Wade to get behind him. Looking over his shoulder, it was immediately apparent what had cause Peter's shift in mood.
It was a Raider. It seemed smaller than the one they had encountered earlier, and not nearly as scary looking. For one thing, its eyes seemed comically large for its strangely narrow head and for another, its claws weren't the terrifying meter sticks of death Wade had faced earlier, but rather the much smaller and thankfully less intimidating kitchen knives of destruction.
Wade grinned beneath his mask and squared his shoulders. Knives he could handle. He draped himself across Peter's shoulders, taking full advantage of the stability the younger man provided and slowly withdrew his gun from its holster on his right leg. Cautiously, he took aim and pulled the trigger.
It was a perfect shot. A small blue hole appeared on the Raider's head, perfectly centered between its many eyes, Wade noted proudly, and started to grow bigger as it continued to bleed. The Raider took a confused step. And then, as Wade watched in horror, it took another. The raider shook its head, presumably to get the blood out of its eyes, and locked gazes with Wade.
Shit.
It let out a wheezing growl, not quite as full bodied as Wade had expected; but then, he had just shot it in the head. The noise might have even been cute if it weren't for the fact that the Raider was now lunging toward them as fast as it could over the uneven ground; its eager claws flexed and ready to strike.
Wade shrieked. A manly shriek mind you, and proceeded to empty the remainder of his clip into the beast. After three more rounds to the head, the Raider finally faltered just short of eviscerating them both and collapsed to the ground. Relieved, Wade turned to Peter who in turn looked back at him less than pleased.
"What, the fuck did you just do?" Peter asked, his hands clenching at his sides.
"Um, I just saved both our sorry asses, thank you very much. You know, a little gratitude wouldn't hurt." He waggled his eyebrows and moved his hips in such a way that it would be impossible for Peter not to grasp what exactly it was that he had in mind.
Either Peter didn't notice or, quite possibly, didn't care because the next words out of his mouth were far from romantic. "You fucking idiot. You just killed us both."
"Uh, no, I saved us both. Didn't you see my awesome and, if I may be so bold as to add, incredibly sexy marksmanship skills?"
"Yeah, that's the problem," Peter growled lowly as he tackled Wade. "Didn't your mama teach you nothin'?" Wade's stomach was thrown for a loop as he suddenly felt his feet leave the ground. He looked down and-wow. They were really high up. He turned and clung to peter with all four limbs and shut his eyes tightly, suddenly afraid that Peter intended to teach him a most painful, permanent lesson. He winced as his shoulder started to throb again. It wasn't nearly as painful as before, but it still hurt like a son of a bitch. Ignoring the pain in favor of not falling to his death, Wade gripped onto the other man as tight as he could. Apparently satisfied that the merc wasn't going anywhere, Peter let go of him.
Wade cracked an eye open. They weren't just going up as he had previously thought. Now that both arms were free, Peter was using them to swing. Wade stared in bewilderment at the stringy material the man seemed to be shooting out of his wrist. No, not his wrist, but rather the strange gadget encircling it. Wade looked on in fascination as Peter's middle fingers would brush against his palm at the apex of each swing and in turn seem to trigger some sort of release mechanism that ejected the white substance at a nearby building. He was about to ask Peter what they were when he realized that the other man was talking and probably had been this entire time.
"-seriously, don't go out after dawn, don't make loud noises, don't get the gremlins wet. Did you just crawl out of a hole or something? Isn't that like, the first lesson in survival 101?"
"I forgot," Wade muttered, half hoping Peter couldn't hear him.
"You forgot?! How the hell do you forget something like that? How are you even still alive?" Apparently, Wade could add super hearing in addition to super strength and wonderfully well-defined muscles to this kid's resume.
Wade thunked his head into the kid's armpit, unwilling to answer. Peter gave a brief grunt of discomfort, but thankfully dropped the subject.
"Look, you may be a moron, but at least you're a moron with eyes. Tell me if you see any trouble, would 'ya?" Peter requested conversationally, as if his current acrobatic feats were no less strenuous than a midday stroll. Wade nodded into his side and cracked an eye open.
"Trouble…you mean like that pack of Raiders to your right? The ones with exceedingly large and pointy teeth that look hungry?"
Wade felt more than saw Peter look over. "Shit. Okay, hold on tight. Trust me, I don't want to catch you any more than you want to be dropped." The raiders had managed to crawl all the way up to eye level. Wade counted maybe six or seven, which in his opinion, was six or seven too many. They shouldn't really cause that much of a problem though, they were still a good distance away, and it wasn't like they could jump…
Oh. Oh. That's what had Peter so on edge. Not the Raiders to the side, but the ones in front of them. Crawling on the building where Peter had attached his…sticky-line-thing.
"Uh, Peter, they're about to-"
"Wade, I know. Please, just hold on." It was at that moment that a single deft claw snapped the line and sent the boys into freefall. Peter snagged the next building over and did his best to launch them away from certain death and Wade attempted to do his best impression of a koala.
He knew there were more Raiders hiding just out of sight simply by the never ending stream of expletives pouring out of Peter's mouth and that they often came just a bit too close by the amount of flipping and dodging that Peter was currently doing. He supposed that he could be helping, or at least keep his eyes open to act as a warning system, but Peter seemed to be doing just fine on his own and Wade really didn't feel like throwing up at that particular moment in time. Maybe later, when he wasn't upside down and being treated like the world's most useless backpack.
Eventually though, the crazy spinning stopped, the ride smoothed out and Wade was able to open his eyes again. "Hey, uh, where are we going? Is it much farther? 'Cause my arms are getting kind of tired and I would really appreciate not dying today."
Peter snorted. "It's not much farther, and thanks to your shenanigans back there, we actually made better time than usual. It's that smaller building up ahead." He nodded his head in the direction they were headed.
"And this would be behind the bank?" Wade inquired.
"Nope." Peter's last swing brought them closer to the ground and he dropped easily into a practiced crouch. "You can get off now. We're here. Home sweet home."
Wade took a moment to remember how to move his limbs and managed to, miraculously, disentangle himself with some semblance of grace.
"You, you live here? Why?" Wade spluttered, staring up at the needlessly detailed engravings scattered around the giant double doors hanging askew in what served as the entrance to a behemoth of a bank. "I mean, surely there was an abandoned apartment or penthouse or even an RV nearby."
"Why live in a bank? Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but things have a way of getting destroyed around here." Wade glanced around and noted how trashed the surrounding area was. Peter shrugged. "Banks are built sturdy. They're safe. Beats living out in the woods, at any rate. No offense."
"None taken. You guys have your method of survival, I have mine. So far, it hasn't gotten me killed, so I think I'm doing just fine." Peter glanced behind them. "Speaking of survival, I think it best if we continue this conversation inside. We may not have left a scent trail, one of the many benefits of web-slinging, but they sure as hell recognized me, and they definitely know where I live." He frowned at the pedestal he had been leaning on and stroked the misshapen lump of marble on it. "Stupid Raiders broke my favorite lion." He gave it one last pat and trudged up the stairs. Following him, Wade could see just how much damage this place had taken. The doors weren't just in disrepair, they had literally been torn off of their hinges. He could see the claw marks etched into the door and marring the surrounding engravings. He was just about to ask how a place with no doors could be considered safe, when an ominous hissing noise made them both freeze.
"Fuck me sideways," Wade muttered. "Not again." This Raider was huge. It must have been hiding up on the roof waiting for them, because it now filled the doorway, effectively trapping them inside. "I hope you have a plan, Wonderboy, because I sure as shit don't."
"Yeah, I do." Peter replied equally as soft. He fisted his hand into Wade's shirt and yanked. Follow me!" He took off sprinting down the hallway and Wade was forced to follow, the Raider hot on his heels.
"How the hell is this a plan?!" Wade yelled after him, struggling to keep up. Fortunately, the Raider's immense size seemed to be giving him trouble as he wasn't able to make the sharp turns in the narrow hallway quite as fast as Wade, and it seemed to be having trouble finding purchase on the smooth floors.
Eventually, Wade managed to catch up to Peter who was standing next to an open bank vault. "Get in, Peter commanded, jerking his head toward the cell. "But wipe your feet first. I literally just swept the floors, and I have no intention of doing it again today.
Wade glance down to see a tattered doormat. "What? But-"
"I SAID WIPE YOUR FUCKING FEET, WADE!" Peter shouted as the Raider turned the corner. Wade hurriedly knocked the dirt off his boots and leaped inside the vault, Peter spilling in right after him. A reverberating boom shook the room as the door was slammed shut. Hurriedly, Peter keyed a code into the pad by the door and a loud clicking noise was heard.
Peter turned and slumped against the door wearily. "See? I told you I had a plan."
