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The blood is going to be a bitch to get out of the grout.
Truthfully, this shouldn’t be of any major concern to Peter (the grout was already stained beyond belief before he’d even moved in), but now? As in, right now. At this exact second. When there is blood and bathwater spilled across tile, splattered on the wall, the air of the bathroom sickeningly thick with the sweaty and metallic smell of an injured body. Not to mention the vomit in the sink.
Now is not a time for tile grout to be of any sort of priority.
Peter sighs. His head falls against the rim of the bathtub with a light thud as he tries to relax, sinking deeper into the warm bath and trying to convince himself that it’s more water than blood. Truth be told, the bath was about three-quarters full when he got in, and now it’s close to overflowing.
He shouldn’t be in the bath with a fresh injury. Even a healing factor has its limits; blood just can’t clot well in water.
Does that matter? Does anything?
He feels weird. Very…
What does he feel like again?
Right. Weird. Drifty. That sort of thing. Like he’s been drugged. Why does he feel so weird? Why does he feel so cold if he distinctly remembers filling the tub with hot water?
The water is such a lovely dark color. Wine-dark sea, his brain unhelpfully supplies. His brain should focus on something else, something more important…
Like tile grout. Jesus, this is gonna be a rough cleanup. But he can clean after his nap. He’s just gonna take a quick nap. The quickest nap, even. And then he’ll clean up the blood.
Totally.
Wade is used to blood. Most mercenaries are; hell, it’d be pretty stupid to become a merc and not expect to deal with ridiculous amounts of blood. Overly-gorey horror movie levels of blood. Truly unnecessary amounts of blood.
And yet, even Wade has to admit that this scene is pretty gruesome.
Vomit is in the sink, some having splashed onto the faucet, the counter, and even the mirror. Red is smeared all over the tile, and a couple streaks of it decorate the wall and door, likely the result of a bloodied hand trailing over it in an attempt to steady oneself. To top it all off is the whole bathtub-situation— the rim of the tub is, of course, smeared with blood, and the water is darkened with it.
And then there’s Peter, head lolled to the side, barely conscious. Now, it’s one thing for Wade to be strewn out in a blood-filled tub looking half-dead, but his roommate? His un-enhanced, nerdy roommate?
“This isn’t a great look for ya, I’ll be honest,” Wade says, closing the door behind him and striding into the room with all the confidence he could muster. “Deathly-ill-chique went out of fashion at least a hundred years ago.”
Peter doesn’t even respond.
“I think now would be a good time to get an ambulance on its way—”
“Nhgn,” is the best written approximation of the strange sound that gurgles out of Peter’s mouth. He shakes his head just enough for Wade to make out.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re real brave and broke and self-sacrificing, but this… situation. Is a bit beyond me,” Wade says. Peter sighs.
“M’ okay,” Peter chokes out, barely audible.
“Riiiight,” Wade drawls. “Hopefully the author’s little jspaint illustration of my very believing expression is showing up.”
“Huh?”
“You’re probably one ounce of blood away from death,” Wade states, gesturing broadly at the bloody water that Peter’s lounging in.
“Nah,” Peter mumbles. "Fake news."
[Fym ‘nah’, you’re halfway to heaven already—]
“Aaalright, enough of that,” Wade mutters, dismissing the boxes as best he can. “I think we should at least get you out of the water, man.”
“F’ck off,” Peter says, the utterance clearer than anything else he’d mumbled within the past minute.
“I’d love to, but we’ve got bigger fish to fry. Not as big as Wade Jr., of course.”
At that, Wade unceremoniously lifts Peter out of the water like he’s nothing more than a soaking wet cat, throws his arm over Wade’s shoulder, and drags Peter out of the tub. A very large, pinkish-red puddle begins forming beneath them.
“Jesus, Pete, I thought you were scrawny,” Wade says. The man is lean, no doubt, but “scrawny” is hardly the right word to describe the muscle packed onto his frame, or its weight, lax against Wade’s body. The sources of the bleeding are finally spotted, a set of gaping wounds to the lower back of Peter’s right thigh. A thinner gash crosses his abdomen, and another set of gaping wounds decorate his inner bicep.
{Christ, what the hell is the guy doing with injuries like that?}
[Getting kinky while we were away, probably.]
Wade shakes his head and focuses on figuring out what the hell he’s supposed to do. For someone with so much injury experience, he sure is lacking in first-aid know-how. Peter groans.
“Don’t worry, I’m not peeking,” Wade laughs. “Much.”
Dragging Peter around the bathroom and trying to prop him up against the counter is sickeningly reminiscent of trying to manipulate a dead body. There’s just no easy way to access Peter’s wounds without putting his literal ass in a compromising-looking position. Wade settles on grabbing a towel and dragging Peter out of the bathroom.
“I’m going to put you on the floor to treat your wounds, ‘kay?” Wade asks. Peter doesn’t respond. “Peter? Come on, talk to me man.”
Peter’s eyes are heavy-lidded and unfocused. It’s like he’s looking right through Wade.
“Hhh.”
“Close enough,” Wade sighs, throwing the towel down and lowering the body onto the living room floor as gently as possible. He stands up, admiring his handiwork, and takes a glance around the apartment. There’s a trail of pink and red from the open door of the bathroom, leading all the way up to where Peter’s laying down. The streaks almost look artistic.
“Man, if that was paint, it would probably make for some pretty good accent decor,” Wade says. “Maybe somewhere like a hospital…”
Peter groans again.
Ah, right. The man bleeding out at Wade’s feet. Wade’s roommate, to be precise. The cute, nerdy photographer with an unpredictable schedule. Who he totally does not have a crush on.
“I had something really different in mind for the first time I’d see your ass,” Wade comments, skillfully distracting barely-conscious Peter from the pain as he breaks out the minuscule, rarely-used first-aid kit conveniently tucked away into his back pocket.
“I gotta say, it is even more beautiful than I imagined,” he continues, measuring out gauze, antiseptic wipes, medical tape. He takes off his gloves as well (God knows they're not clean enough for a medical situation).
[If the blood loss doesn’t kill him, your terrible first-aid will.]
Wade ignores the thought, and sets himself on wiping the blood away from Peter’s skin.
“Huh,” Wade mutters. “Y’know, these actually don’t look as bad as I thought they did. Maybe you just bleed a lot? I mean, if you can hide that much muscle in a presumed scrawny build, then maybe you’re also just… hiding all your blood…?”
Everything is a bit gray. And distant.
Every sense is overlaid with static. It’s not the first time Peter has experienced severe blood loss, but it’s the first time he’s had such vivid (and helpful!) hallucinations.
Fake-Wade, dressed in his Deadpool getup but for some reason gloveless, chatters away, and the sting of the wounds begins to fade. Peter feels his skin shift and reposition, the familiar sensation of medical tape forcing the edges of the cuts together. The gauze is overkill, admittedly, but it’s comforting. It really does feel like someone else is there, taking care of him, lifting his arm and thigh to wrap the wounds. Good thing Wade’s not really here, though. Peter’s been able to explain away his nighttime escapades with relative ease thus far, but trying to come up with a cover for injuries of this magnitude may prove to be a feat even beyond The Amazing Spider-Man’s capabilities.
The effects of the blood loss are starting to lessen, but they won’t be properly vanquished until Peter consumes enough food and water to replenish himself.
Peter drifts.
Wade rolls back on his haunches, appreciating his surprising handiness with gauze. With hospitals out of the question, taping up the cuts was the next best thing. Call him crazy (most people would), but Wade swears he could see Peter’s skin stitching itself together as he was wrapping gauze around his thigh.
God, Peter’s thighs— Peter’s everything, really. The curve of his calves, his sculpted arms, the line of his back, his ass, of course. He calls to mind Greek statues.
“Don’t get me wrong, Websy is my one true love, but damn, you give him a run for his money,” Wade says absentmindedly, trying to fill up the now daunting silence of the apartment. “And that’s saying something, spandex really accentuates the form.”
He cocks his head to the side, getting a look at Peter’s face, the side of it pressed up against the hardwood. Peter doesn’t respond to any of Wade’s prompting comments, his eyes still distant and dull, but the lax, dead-looking expression has been smoothed over a bit.
“Welp,” Wade mutters. Then he raises his voice, trying to sound more conversational on the off-chance that Petey’s brain is still just online enough to understand him.
“I’m gonna move you to your room, alright? Dunno about getting you changed into pajamas, you know, the dead-weight would make it pretty difficult, but I’ll get you tucked in, uh. You a fan of bedtime stories? ‘Cause if you’re not, you’re about to be, I’ve got the best ones. And then when you wake up tomorrow morning, or stop being so freakishly fish-faced, you’ll tell me who did this to you— and no, I won’t let you pretend this was an accident, there have been one too many of those to be coincidental— and then I’ll take care of the bastard. Gently, a-la-Deadpool…”
As he spoke, he leveraged Peter into a semi-standing position again, leaning all of his weight against Wade’s body as he painstakingly hobbled over to Peter’s room. A bridal-carry would be more efficient, sure, but Wade isn’t entirely certain to how awake-and-alert Peter would react to the memory of his nude form being cradled in Wade’s arms.
Peter would fit perfectly into Wade’s arms. Dragging him through their shared apartment makes Wade all the more aware of their differences in size; Wade lets his hand drift down to Peter’s waistline, feeling out how his splayed hand covers a substantial amount of the skin there. Thinks about how Peter’s body would arch if Wade lifted him off the bed with a single hand pressed against his back—
{Perv}
Hey, now, what’s a little fantasizing between situationship-roomies? Did you really expect better of Wade? Come on, you’d be thinking thoughts sinful enough to make the devil blush if you were rooming with your perceived Adonis-incarnate.
Eventually, the two of them are standing in front of Peter’s twin-size mattress, and Wade unceremoniously dumps the man onto it, in great contrast to the loving manhandling he’d been imagining moments ago. Peter is now face-planted onto the bed, having been laid down to rest on his stomach in an effort to keep weight off of his injury. As much as it pains Wade to cover up the view, he dutifully tucks Peter in, keeping in mind how cold blood loss can make one feel. Wade takes a moment to adjust Peter’s face to no longer be smushed into the pillow before dragging Peter’s (uneven, wobbly, deeply uncomfortable) desk chair to the bedside.
Peter is a grown man and not actively bleeding out. Perhaps Wade could leave him alone to rest for the night. Yes, sure, that could be totally fine. So Wade leaves the room for a moment, and takes a couple minutes to change into normal-people clothes and freshen up a bit. He could sleep in his very comfortable bed, of course, because Peter is just across the hall, wrapped up and snoozing away.
Buuuut (and by Jove, is it a magnificent butt), Peter would no doubt run away as soon as he came-to in the morning, and proceed to skillfully dodge every question Wade throws his way about how did you get that injury and I know you’ve been getting hurt more often than you’ve told me and do you have a goddamn death wish, Parker?
Wade sighs, relaxing as best he can into the shitty bedside chair, and talks himself to sleep.
Peter doesn’t feel much better when he wakes. He doesn’t expect to, of course; as mentioned, there’s only so far his healing factor goes when trying to replenish most of his blood without food or water.
He’s woozy, thirsty. Hungry.
He’s also no longer in the tub. His face is against a pillow, in fact. Interesting development.
Someone has very lovingly tucked him into bed. Perhaps the same someone who wrapped Peter’s wounds in the presumed hallucination—
Augh. Too much thinking. Peter’s head hurts. Everything hurts.
“I saw a facial expression!” Wade’s voice, though distant, is distinct, and no longer sounds like gibberish. “You awake yet, Petey-pie?”
“Nhhh.”
“Don’t worry, I’m fluent in blood-loss-talk. I’ll get you some water. You hungry?”
“Hmf.”
“I’ll heat up some of the leftovers, then. I got Thai with Websy last night, but he dipped, so there’s extra for you.”
Sweet music to my ears, Peter thinks to himself; perhaps the singular most coherent thought he’s had since getting hurt last night.
Peter gives himself over to the static for what feels like forever, or maybe just a second. An indeterminable amount of time passes between Wade’s words, and the straw being pushed past his lips.
“C’mon Peter, drink up,” Wade says, sounding much closer than he did before. “I know you said no hospital, and you haven’t died yet, but if you aren’t capable of sucking on a straw we’re heading straight to the ED.”
Peter doesn’t realize how much he needed the water until he swallows it down. Within moments, he feels less like roadkill and more like a sentient being. He downs the whole cup as quickly as he can through the straw.
Finally, his eyes open, and he turns around to lay on his back for a moment before pushing himself up until he’s leaning against the headboard. He spots the plate in Wade’s hand, and lunges for it, using the fork jammed into the pile of noodles, tofu, and broccoli to scarf the whole thing down as quickly as possible. Out of the corner of his vision, he can see Wade’s startled expression.
Peter grabs the tissues from his nightstand to dab away at the corners of his mouth, thankfully noting the second glass of water Wade brought, and downing it immediately.
“Jesus, that feels so much better,” Peter sighs, relaxing against the headboard, the empty plate resting over his blanket-covered lap. He frowns.
“Where are my clothes?”
Wade shrugs.
“You were naked when I found you, and complete dead weight,” he says. “I couldn’t get pajamas on you if I tried.”
“...so you did find me?” Peter asks. “That wasn’t a hallucination?”
“Wrapped up those gashes on the back of your thigh and the inside of your arm too,” Wade says. “It was pretty bad. I cleaned up the bathroom, but it looked like…well, ‘horror movie’ does not even begin to describe it.”
Peter cringes, the memories from the night before slowly returning to him. The blood-filled tub, the deep cuts of the villains’... claws? Whatever those things were, they were deadly sharp. Peter was able to neutralize her and remove the weapons, but not before she nicked his arm, stomach, and practically tore open his leg, and made him wish he’d ended patrol an hour ago like he wanted to with Deadpool and Thai food.
Peter had retreated as soon as he could, having webbed the gashes shut for the time being, but once he was back in the apartment, the fluid had begun to dissolve. Peter had practically ripped off his suit (which was likely beyond saving, anyways) and shoved it into his closet before making a beeline for the bathroom and drawing a bath to wash off in. His abdomen was healing up okay so far, but his arm… his leg. The distinctive and nauseating feeling of how muscle moves when rendered into separated pieces of flesh. He’d tried to twist around to see the cuts and close them up, but only succeeded in tearing open something that had been half-healed, blood splattering on the bathroom wall before he’d decided to just get himself in the bath to try to forget about the whole ordeal.
“You got the blood out of the grout, right?” Peter asks. Wade rolls his eyes.
“I’m not an amateur, have some faith,” he grumbles. “I also got it out of the wooden cabinets.”
“Ah. Thanks.”
“You’re, uh, looking pretty peppy for someone who lost way more blood than should be survivable last night,” Wade comments.
“Right,” Peter says. “I— about that…”
Peter’s not going to reveal his identity. He’s not. There is no one alive who knows about Peter’s vigilantism, and he has no intentions to change that. He’s just going to tell Wade he has a healing factor.
So why is his heart racing? Why is sweat prickling all over his body?
Peter attempts a steadying breath that comes out much shakier than intended. He raises his left arm a bit, and tugs away the gauze and tape against Wade’s half-hearted protest. A delicate, but closed, scar is revealed, still reddish-pink and irritated.
"I heal kinda fast," Peter explains. Wade blinks once.
“You’re enhanced?” Wade asks, sounding incredulous. “You’re enhanced?”
“Why is that so hard to believe?”
“You’re you!” Wade says, as though that explains anything at all. “Like, I thought you’d tell me if we were matching like this! Gosh, why didn’t you just say so? I thought you really were half-dead last night, you know.”
As Wade blathers on, he tugs on Peter’s arm as though to get him out of bed. Peter anchors himself down, shaking his head.
“Woah, hang on now,” he says. “I have a healing factor, and it is not even remotely comparable yours. I’m not really feeling up to walking. Also I still have no clothes.”
“Well, I’d hardly complain about that last one,” Wade says with an overly salacious wink. Luckily, though, he does let go of Peter’s arm, allowing him to lean against the headboard again.
“Yeah, ‘cause you’re a perv,” Peter jabs.
“You wound me.”
“You’ll heal. However, I’m non-metaphorically injured. My leg is still hours away from actually stitching itself back together.”
“Ah, right,” Wade says. “Say, how bad was the original injury? I thought the cuts looked pretty bad when I dragged you out of the tub, but not nearly bad enough to explain the amount of blood.”
Peter winces at the reminder.
“My leg didn’t exactly look very… leg-like, when I got to the apartment,” Peter admits. “It was trying to heal, but when I tried to get a better look in the bathroom, I tore up the new tissue, and blood started spraying again.”
“And you then had the bright idea to get into a warm bath.”
“I was hardly thinking clearly,” Peter argues. “I just wanted to relax.”
“With a near-fatal wound. In a warm bath.”
Peter sighs.
“You usually shower,” Wade remarks. “Come to think of it, you only really draw yourself a bath when you’re acting all shifty after your ‘workouts’ or ‘accidents’.”
“It’s a good way to unwind.”
“This isn’t the first time you’ve done this, though, is it?” Wade asks, but the question feels kind of rhetorical. Peter’s silence is all the confirmation Wade needs (not to mention that Peter’s pathetic attempts at lying would only dig him into a deeper hole).
“Thought so.” Wade leans back in the chair, now examining Peter with a more quizzical look in his eye. “You ever thought about, I dunno, coming to your merc-roomie? Maybe asking for a little favor, letting me pull some strings?”
Peter scoffs.
“I just need a name,” Wade says, his voice bordering on a sing-song. So cheery for someone so lethal. “Come on, sweetheart, at least let me take care of whoever did that nasty number on you.”
“If I need your help, I will ask for it,” Peter says, trying for a steely tone.
“Fine, fine,” Wade sighs, putting his hands up in mock-surrender. “I’ll get some more food and water for ya, help the healing along a bit.”
Peter watches Wade leave, sauntering out the door with a pointed huff. His spidey-sense isn’t going off, but he can’t seem to shake the anxiety that’s been biting away at him since his healing-factor reveal. Like something is about to go spectacularly wrong.
Peter needs to eat, Wade decides. He’s gotta stuff that man full of food to get him up and running again.
[I can think of a few other ways to stuff him—]
{Gee, I think some scrambled eggs and hash browns would do wonders for the guy.}
“Great idea,” Wade mutters, breaking out the frozen hash browns and grabbing a couple eggs. “Hell, let’s go for some of my world-famous pancakes. Those’ll get him going.”
He takes a couple steps into the living area to grab the remote and turn on the TV, flipping through several shows that would be way too engaging to have going in the background. Eventually, he lands on the news channel, and figures it’ll do. He drops the remote on the couch and prances on back to the kitchen, getting to work on his signature dish.
It’s only a matter of minutes before Wade is almost through cooking all the batter, and at this point, a wonderfully familiar non-face shows up on the TV. Wade keeps half an eye on the pan, the rest of his attention devoted to the news segment on his favorite spider.
“Last night, security footage captured Spider-Man in the midst of an intense fight with a new villain,” the reporter says. “The villain, though now in custody, wore claw-like apparatuses to fight–”
As the reporter speaks, Wade watches the short, blurry clip from the security footage, the timestamp telling him that this went down right after Spidey dipped on Thai food night. Even though the pixelated video, Wade can tell that the claws are enormous and sharp. They clip Spider-Man’s inner arm as he tries to go in for a blow. To the untrained eye, the clip ends with Spider-Man leading the villain away and out of frame; Wade, however, sees the way the claws darken in the last couple frames as the villain tries to chase the hero down. The handful of blurry pixels are all Wade needs to see to know that, when the villain ripped the claws out off-camera, the back of Spidey’s thigh was probably eviscerated.
Hm.
{And the enhanced healing?}
[Frequent ‘accidents’, unexplained disappearances…]
{That cannot be a coincidence}
“No, it cannot,” Wade says under his breath. “Wait, shit—”
He grabs a kitchen towel and whips it around to try to disperse the smoke from his burning pancake. It’s unsalvegable, and he ends up having to throw it out.
As he nears Peter’s room with the plate, his mind races.
Enhanced hearing comes with as many perks as it does downsides. Peter is unsure if this situation counts as either.
The sound of Wade preparing food was rhythmic, right up until the news station plugged in a quick story about Spider-Man. Peter’s stomach sank as he heard the spatula pause. The reporter didn’t say anything outright damning, but if the security clip shows Spider-Man getting injured…
Peter listens to Wade curse, the whip of fabric in the air, the crinkle of the trash can’s plastic liner as something (presumably a burnt pancake) is tossed in.
The footsteps nearing his door, for once unaccompanied by Wade’s absent-minded humming or mutterings.
God, how am I gonna get out of this one, Peter wonders, scanning his mind for some sort of lie that won’t worsen the situation. His last successful attempt at convincing someone that he was not Spider-Man led them to believe that he was actually a mob boss instead (don’t ask), so he has to tread carefully.
Wade walks through the door, dropping off the pancakes on top of the stack of books on Peter’s nightstand, and takes his seat from before.
The anticipation is nauseating.
“You owe me twenty-five,” Wade says, and Peter’s anxiety is through the roof. One of Deadpool and Spider-Man’s codes. You owe me, to indicate a code. Twenty-five, don’t lie.
They’ve drilled these codes. They’re one of the most important parts of their partner-work. Those codes are basically sacred, and no matter how Peter responds now, it’ll give him away. He could pretend to be confused, and have his terrible acting skills out him, stay silent (suspicious), or…
Respond in kind.
Peter looks down at his lap.
“Could’a sworn it was fifteen,” he whispers shakily, pitching his voice to match what it sounds like when he’s under the mask.
Could’a sworn it was, to indicate a response.
Fifteen, I got a bad feeling about this.
Peter keeps his eyes fixed on the blanket over his lap, trying to lose himself in it to avoid thinking about the crushing silence. The plaid pattern, the little coffee stain on the edge. He tries to pay attention to the feel of it against his skin, the smell of the pancakes on his nightstand, the sound of his breathing.
Despite his best efforts, it still feels like his anxiety is trying to choke him from the inside, seizing control of his lungs, churning his stomach.
“Damn.”
The word is so quiet, Peter wonders if he’d imagined it.
“Damn,” Wade mutters. “I saw Spidey’s unobstructed butt and I didn’t even know it, damn.”
A nervous-sounding giggle slips from Peter’s throat.
“I can’t believe as bad a liar as you was able to get away with that, though,” Wade admits. “Half my job is just professional stalking.”
“In your defense, half of your job is also you being away on multi-day work trips,” Peter says. “I’ve had a completely average amount of poorly-explained absences, considering you weren’t even in the country most of the time.”
“All those ‘nights out’ at the ‘club’, ‘overtimes’ in the ‘dark-room’,” Wade sighs, sounding borderline wistful. “At least you’re not in competition with yourself for cutest in the world anymore,” Wade laughs. “There go my hopes and dreams of the hottest threesome of my life, though.”
“You really thought you could convince me, and also me, to have a threesome with you?” Peter asks, his voice somewhat steadier than it was before.
“Well, if I couldn’t convince either of you to go steady with me, I figured you’d at least be down for a quick fuck,” he admits.
“..interesting plan,” Peter says. “I haven’t gone steady with anyone for years because of my…nighttime activities. Even if I trusted a hypothetical partner enough to know about Spider-Man, I’d be too worried about villains trying to get to me by kidnapping or killing or threatening them—”
“All things that I am not only okay with, but can easily deal with on my own,” Wade cuts in.
“They’d have to be okay with watching me risk my life every day—”
“It’s just what we do, baby.”
“Having an unpredictable schedule—”
“Can’t be as unpredictable as mine.”
“Accommodating for an enhanced appetite—”
“I’ve been unknowingly budgeting that appetite of yours for months now.”
“Enhanced stamina—”
“Just another selling point, really,” Wade says. “I’ve got one to match.”
“I’m not sure you do, to be honest,” Peter says. “You haven’t seen me in action. I’ve yet to discover my own limits.”
“I will gladly aid you in your nerdy sex research.” Wade leans in, planting his hands on the mattress. “Please, let me aid you in your nerdy sex research.”
“Is that a genuine offer?”
“Every offer I’ve made since meeting you has been a hundred percent genuine, my God, you don’t know how badly I wanted to give you a blowie when I met you on that rooftop all those years ago. I’d let you bend me over a dumpster mid-patrol if you asked.”
Staring into Wade’s pleading eyes makes Peter feel the same way he did the first time he stood on top of a skyscraper and stared at the streets below. The complete faith he had to be able to catch himself didn’t make the drop appear any less daunting. Dizzying.
Maybe that’s the semi-recovered blood loss talking.
“I’m going to heal up first,” Peter says, surprised at how breathless he sounds. “Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, after these pancakes and some water.”
“Deal.”