Chapter summary: Peter and Wade finish up their meal and then get an unappetizing dessert.
Chapter 13: (Less Than) Smooth Criminal
While Peter ate his pancakes and bacon (which just wasn't as good as it should have been - since his aunt spoiled him with the thick-cut kind that had pepper caked on the sides), Wade was busy playing footsie with him under the table. Peter just assumed that Wade didn't have many friends and he showed his affection in… weird ways. That didn't stop him from pushing back and being childish with the other man.
"You should try this," Wade said, and he held a spoon out in front of Peter's face, obviously expecting him to lean forward and eat it. Peter eyed the spoonful of mashed-up omelet and paused, debating with himself what was worse - putting his mouth on the thing Wade was actively shoving in his own, or saying no thanks and possibly hurting Wade's feelings. He chose the middle ground and used his fork to take the proffered bite, and then he went to taste it. It was surprisingly good, and he wasn't sure if it was genuinely enjoyable or if he was just that hungry. To be fair, this place was Heaven for him and his piss-poor diet. His body was in desperate need of protein, and eggs were not something he could always afford. (Besides, they'd usually wind up frozen and exploded in his mini-fridge before he got the chance to cook and eat them.) It was definitely a good decision to come here, and Peter was half-tempted to thank the shoulder angel-slash-devil - whichever one - that suggested it.
Peter nodded his response, covering his mouth as he said, "That's really good." It was just eggs with sausage and cheese in it.
"You can have it, you know," Wade said, and he twirled the spoon in his hand - which wasn't entirely cleaned of its food and some egg and a piece of what might've been onion flew off and landed on the table and wall. Peter eyed the them. He took his napkin and wiped clean the spots he could reach. He froze then, though, as the other's words fully sunk in. He turned his head back and looked at Wade with two plainly raised eyebrows.
"You don't want it?" he asked a little warily. Wade shrugged and went on to eat his order of waffles instead.
"Nah, not what I was craving." And the Merc had ordered what looked to be three whole meals, so he certainly had the option to be picky about which one he went for.
Peter still wasn't sure what to do about that, but honestly, it would make for good leftovers if nothing else. "If you're sure," he said, and he couldn't stop himself from feeling suspicious. He got the inkling that Wade was just trying to fill his apartment with food. Which he shouldn't be picky about or even think about turning down, but he was actively debating both of those things. He may be desperate, but he was also stubborn ("The old Parker genes," Aunt May would say with that fond look she got when she remembered the good times with Ben). He could fend for himself - had fended for himself for this long already.
"I won't eat a damn bite of it if I take it with me; I'll forget and find it two months later covered in an entire colony of mold, the ecosystem within probably advanced enough to have a democratic, albeit rigged, political system."
Immediately, Peter's building annoyance vanished and he cracked a grin. Wade… brought out something strange in him, that's for sure. "Fine," he agreed, but he made sure to look like this definitely wasn't his first option.
Eventually they got their bill, and Peter excused himself to the restroom for what could've been no more than a minute, and as he was digging his wallet out to pay on the way back, he saw the cashier saying his goodbye and waving professionally to Wade. There was then that hard-to-describe feeling washing over him in a rush, and the fingers holding onto his wallet twitched and trembled slightly. Wade at least looked like he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, as he handed over the bag with their leftovers boxed up. "Ready to go?" he asked.
Peter pursed his lips, unsure of exactly what to do. Wade damn well knew by this point that Peter was not the kind of person to accept charity easily or even well. The younger man fought with himself over how to react as he accepted the bag, and apparently his expression said something to Wade, who suddenly looked prepared to put up with a verbal lashing. That response was the tipping point, and Peter backed down, his shoulders sinking along with his will to fight. "Thanks," he said, and let the bag settle at his side.
Wade looked startled and then pleased, a spontaneous smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, where the skin looked particularly messed up. Peter wondered if every well-used area had that problem on the other's body; the skin worn and struggling to keep up. "Hey, no problemo, my dude! Now let's mall-crawl!"
That took Peter by surprise, who had thought that their shared day was either about to be over or that they would talk about where to go afterward. Wade took the wrist of his free hand and tugged him along. Opening the doors for both of them until they were back outside, where it felt monumentally hotter than it had before they'd gone inside for a meal. "Why?" he asked, confused and, at this point, suspicious that he was being purposefully doted on.
A shrug was his immediate answer. "Because it's fun?" Wade said - asked? - before he glanced back at the brunet. "Unless you've got a better idea," he added.
Peter did not.
He also wasn't sure if he was supposed to bring up the fact that Wade was now holding his hand as they walked. In the end, the hero just shoved that information into the same category as the game of footsie and the other awkward behavior that came from the Merc. With that out of the way, Peter let himself think about the texture of the other's skin. It was… definitely a new thing to experience. Some of the scarring was soft, while other spots were scabbed over and scratchy. He couldn't tell if the muscles in Wade's hands were constantly tensing and relaxing, or if that was the skin itself, which concerned Peter some. Actually, no, it was pretty concerning. It was also both gross and intriguing.
"Do you think museums are interesting?" Wade suddenly asked.
Peter wasn't certain if he'd just missed the trigger for that particular topic or what, but he frowned. "It depends on what kind," he said. He didn't really find art that interesting to look at, but history and dinosaur displays were ones he found he could spend hours at and not notice time passing.
Wade huffed. "Nerd," he said, repeating the same lighthearted insult from earlier.
Peter rolled his eyes and, with the bag still in-hand, he shoved his glasses further up on his face. "Yes, we've established that much about me; but now I'm really starting to worry about you, Mister 'Creative Insults'."
The area of Wade's eyebrows rose, and he sucked in a lungful of air before he started mock-laughing. "Ooooh, you don't wanna start that kind of contest me with me, my stringy little bookworm."
Peter's nose wrinkled. "You wanna go, Chatty McBeefcake? I can write better ones than you using a bowl of Cheerios."
Wade let go of Peter and spun around in two tight circles before dancing in place. "Oh! Oh ho ho ho! My Rude Crude Dude, we are so on!" He opened his mouth wide to continue on, Peter mirroring the action, when he suddenly froze like someone had paused the movie they were in and then checked his phone, which had buzzed at him. Wade let out a sound of pure enjoyment and he glanced at his hand-hold buddy, having just reattached their hands. "Hold that thought; there's a cluster of Pokéstops up here, and they all have lures. It's near a Gym, too. Wanna check it out?"
Peter clamped his mouth shut, once again getting whiplash from the subject change. He was embarrassingly low on Pokéballs and also embarrassingly low level for how much he left his apartment (since he was pretty constantly traveling faster than fifteen miles per hour, so he didn't get any benefits from it), and so of course he nodded and fished out his own phone. "I move too fast for my eggs to hatch ninety-percent of the time," he complained, eyeballing the loading screen. It wasn't until they were within range of the 'Stops that Peter felt his gut instincts go off. Something wasn't right, and even Wade seemed to sense it - or he just noticed how the air around them changed. They shared a glance, and started forward, their hands still locked together, and that was how they found the source. It was a shady-looking building of a long-standing business that had recently gone under and no one had rented the space yet. Where the name of the store had been, there were ghosts of letters lingering behind, and the windows were boarded up, every single one tagged already.
There were shadows of people moving around inside. "Who the hell decides that breaking and entering is a good idea in the middle of the day?" Wade questioned quietly from his side and Peter wondered that, too. The arachnid-powered hero wanted a better view of what was going on, and he tugged them around to the side of the building before he pulled Wade to a stop next to him, holding onto the other man's arm maybe just a bit too tight as he craned his head and peeked in through one of the windows that had been mostly covered up by a torn-apart cardboard box. There was a group on the ground, and they looked like they were being held hostage, though he couldn't hear any sirens in the distance, and his phone hadn't gone off for any sort of amber alert. It was highly likely that this had just happened in the past half an hour. He could pick out two of the people who were running this job, both with face-covers on and Peter saw the flash of a gun in the hand of one of them. The group of eight victims ranged in ages of Way Too Young (maybe around eleven or twelve) to someone middle-aged and gray-haired, possibly the youngest one's caretaker.
"Bet those guys are the ones who dropped the lures," he murmured, both to himself and his partner. Wade nodded. Right now, things didn't look too bad, but he knew from experience that that meant nothing in the long run. Their job is to de-escalate while getting everyone out safely.
"Take off your jacket," Peter hissed, eyes never once leaving the sight.
"Whoa, man, you haven't even kissed me first and you want me to strip ?" Wade asked incredulously. Peter rolled his eyes and let go of the other to hold out his hand in a demanding fashion.
"Give me your jacket," he reiterated as he yanked off his glasses and started removing his own shirt, setting his phone and the leftovers down to do so one-handed.
Wade's expression was something that he wished he could get a picture of, but unfortunately this wasn't the time or the place. "Right?" Wade asked the air next to his head, like Peter was asking something monumental of him. He started taking off his clothes anyway, and the jacket fell heavy in Peter's waiting arm. The lithe young man was absolutely swimming in the other's clothing and the sleeves went so long that they covered his hands. He started to roll them up and stopped when they were mid-way to his elbow. The fabric felt weird against his bare skin; a little bit on the side of itchy, but that wasn't the selling point of the garment right now.
He reached down and took his crumpled shirt out from between his thighs where he'd been holding it, and he tugged it over his head, though he stopped just short of poking his head through the neck. Then he started to tie the sleeves behind his head, giving himself a makeshift mask that looked a little reminiscent of a ninja's cowl, revealing only his eyes. (And even that was too much for his liking, but beggars couldn't be choosers.)
"Dude, seriously, they'll go down in less than five seconds if you just let me at them," Wade begged from behind him, with his hands clasped together, going the whole nine yards complete with an expression he apparently thought was worthy to be called a sad puppy look.
"No," Peter said sternly, pointing his finger at Wade like he was, in fact, a dog. "And if I even see you start reaching for a weapon, I'm going to take you out along with them." His other hand was busy digging through his side pocket while he was talking, and he slapped the two black bracelets on, hooking a small circular piece to the palm of each hand. He tested it against the bricks closest to him, and webbing came out just like it should. With one last look at Wade to make sure he was sitting still, and he was off, gone up the side of the building and up onto its roof. From there, he broke the door to said roof open quietly, and he crept down into the lower floors.
He could hear the masked muggers talking, laughing like they were enjoying some kind of joke between them.
"Is this guy serious?" he heard one ask, and he crept his way along the ceiling as silently as he could, looking down at the crooks, one of which was going through a wallets they'd presumably taken. "He's got like fifty twenties in here! The fuck you doin' walking around with cash like that around here, man? You got paid and you gonna go lookin' for hookers?" the guy managed between chuckles.
Peter was pulling one hand off of the ceiling, readying it to web the closest one's arms together, when one of the victims looked up at him and gasped, clearly terrified, like he was some kind of horror movie monster.
Granted, he was in just civvies with his face covered, crawling around defying gravity like a freaking cryptid, so on the one hand, he couldn't honestly blame them, but on the other hand-
"Shit!" he cursed to himself as his spider sense went absolutely haywire and he jumped out of the way just in time to avoid being shot. Then there was another spike in his sense and he dodged a second bullet. He wasn't so lucky the third time, and he felt the hot, sudden pain of something several hundred degrees entering his right thigh and he quickly tried to rework his movements to take his injury into consideration. It was mostly instinctual, and his focus was split between being shot at and everyone suddenly screaming incoherently, which barely got to his ears over the shrieking of his inner precog.
Chaos was what was happening below, and Peter swung himself by one arm from the ceiling and let go, flinging himself directly onto one of the thugs, who got knocked off of her feet and into the wall with a heavy sound, a few of her joints cracking into this new, sudden position.
"You ever hear that shooting people is a little bit rude?" he demanded, standing with an offset gait, putting more weight on his left side. "It's right up there with robbing people! Manners!" He webbed her hands down, then her legs, and lastly her gun, which had landed a few feet away.
The group that had been lined up along the wall with no windows was now clustered in a dark corner, everyone looking ready to climb over one another to get away. They had no idea what was going on, but looked warily at the crazy dude with a shirt tied around his face who was possibly helping free them.
"Spider-Man!" one of the young ones screamed, and Peter's head whipped around to look at him. But the probably-middle-schooler wasn't pointing or even looking at him - he was gesturing wildly at Deadpool. Well, Deadpool's mask on some random's body. That was when another gunshot was fired, and the second robber fell, screaming and cursing and kicking at nothing. Two more followed, and Peter had Deadpool up against the wall, lifted up by the front of his shirt before he could even think. He slammed him against the wall a second time to make his point clear.
"What did I say?! What was the one thing I told you not to do?!" Peter shouted, and he jostled Wade again. The Merc kneed him in the stomach and Peter coughed, took a step back, and, unfortunately put weight on his injured leg. His pants felt really wet on that side.
"He was about to fuckin' blow out your brains, you ungrateful dingleberry!" Deadpool barked. "I didn't fucking kill him, look,he's fine!"
Peter pulled away while Wade slid down onto the floor, and the air around him radiated the very words pissed off. He looked away from the mercenary and to the pathetic lump of a person that was left crying on the dirty floor, blood spattered around him and soaking his clothes. The guy's hand had a hole blown all the way through it, and by the look of it, so did his calves. Peter huffed and puffed, trying to get his breathing back to semi-normal, and his gaze swept the room again. The group in the corner didn't look any less freaked out now that 'Spider-Man' had just shot someone multiple times. He sighed and gripped his face with his fingers, digging them in hard to ground his thoughts, before he stood up straighter and let his hands drop to his sides. His elbows cracked with the action.
"You guys gotta wait for the police to get here, and if anyone's hurt, we're calling an ambulance, too." His voice was much more muffled than it ever was when he wore his proper mask, and he hoped that they could hear and understand him well enough to follow directions.
"Thank you," a young woman in the group said, her voice so soft (probably from the trauma) that Peter was grateful for his super-hearing, and he nodded at her. He dropped to his knees and made his way over to the injured robber, and he webbed a makeshift bandage around the guy's hand on both sides, turning it to get it the entrance and exit marks, and then webbed up the similar wounds on his legs.
"That should help stop the bleeding," he said, and then he gave the same treatment to his own thigh. Oh, jeez, that was… that was a lot of blood. He didn't think an artery had been nicked, but it was possible. He was lucky he hadn't bled anymore than he had, actually.
He heard movement behind him, and he turned, looking at Deadpool who was picking himself up and walking towards the barred door. He kicked it down one-legged, and told the air to "Shut up," adding that, "Horse e-books has better ideas than you do." Then he tried to slam the broken door, but one of the hinges came right off and it wobbled awkwardly to one side. Peter got up and limped over to Wade and stopped him from leaving by grabbing his arm.
"Don't go," he said, and there was a tired sort of desperation behind his words.
"Don't think you want me to stick around right now," Wade replied, and his voice was cold. Peter flinched.
"Will you please go with me back to my place?" he asked, and Wade went completely silent. That was obviously not the answer he was expecting.
"Seriously, you don't-"
"Please go back with me to my place."
A beat. Then Wade's demeanor changed, and his body language with it. "Oh, well shit, I didn't think violence got you in the mood, but hey, I don't kinkshame; if you're dee-tee-eff, I'm not gonna complain!"
Well, that was… that was better and one-hundred percent less terrifying than stone-cold killer Deadpool from a few seconds ago, and Peter would take it as a gift. He deflated and leaned heavier on Wade, who stiffly placed an arm around him. He was debating asking Wade to use his phone to call for an ambulance, but he heard sirens already starting up. Someone must have reported the gunshots. He turned, and he pointed at the group, who was now much more dispersed, a few of them checking through their bags, probably to give themselves something normal to do so they wouldn't freak out more, though some may have just gone into shock. "Seriously, don't leave until the police are done questioning you," he said to them, but he just sounded exhausted with only vague authority in his voice. He leaned more weight on Deadpool.
"If you wanna piggyback me the rest of the way to my place, that would be really… really great."