Chapter Text
He had only just got off of his bike, and Peter could already feel the burning sensation of the scorching hot boxes of pizza in his hands. He had to open with his right foot, on multiple unsuccessful tries, the door to the apartment building. It was a rather crappy looking one, but one Peter was sure he could never afford to live in on his own, even with the alarming amount of pizza deliveries he had to make nearly every night of the week. What was it with New York and pizza? It was almost one in the morning, and Peter could feel his phone buzzing in successions in his jeans pocket from the texts his boss kept sending him about his next runs.
There was a strong smell of weed lingering in the lobby as Peter went to the elevator, but it wasn't much better inside of it. He had to squeeze between a woman and her boyfriend fighting over money, which the 18 years old assumed after the two painfully long minutes where he had to try his best to avoid the woman's accusing finger attached to her dangerously animated arm. It had been quite challenging since the elevator was so small that Peter doubted it had been made with three people and two extra-large boxes of pizza in mind. His right side hurt a little from it being so tightly pressed against the dirty elevator's tapestry while he made everything in his power, not to as much as brushed against the heated woman. Peter didn't want to add ‘pineapple and olive pizza on her feet’, which was already a monstrosity in itself, on her list of problems.
Peter’s day hadn’t been much better. Harry had been so withdrawn lately, what with his father's illness, that he didn't need a reason to snap at his best friend anymore. Peter didn't want to blame him, but he had to admit it was getting on his nerves. It wasn't his fault that Harry’s dad was dying. And Peter already had to deal with Flash, who had given him a painful welcome that morning that left his jaw still sore. His bed seemed indefinitely better than anything he could be doing that night because, somehow, delivering greasy food in sketchy apartment buildings wasn’t the first thing he wished he could be doing on a school night. But ever since his uncle had been fired, money had been really tight for them. Taking on another stinky job to help out more wasn’t exactly tempting in the typical sense of the word, only something he deemed necessary. Only, his uncle didn’t believe the same thing and that Peter didn’t have to worry, for one thing. The only worry he wished on his nephew was the one only one last year of high school could procure. But that worry was currently helping Peter to resist the incredibly intense urge to leave the three warm pizza boxes at Jeremy at 7348 Red Ledge Drive’s doorstep and riding to bed immediately.
Speaking of which, ‘Jeremy at 7348 Red Ledge Drive’ seemed way more surprised than the ordinary person being delivered a pizza to at one in the morning when he finally deigned to open his door to Peter.
“I didn't order any pizza,” Jeremy simply said, his Star Wars shirt sprinkled with crumbs of chips and smelling of weed ten times stronger than the lobby ever could.
“Well,” Peter's brain was shouting at him to just toss the large boxes into the other young man's arms, but instead, he searched with one of his hand for the receipt, scattered with grease stains, stuck between the cardboard, balancing on his knee. “Aren’t you Jeremy? For 7348 Red Ledge Drive?”
“Yeah? But I'm telling you I didn't order anything!”
“But this is 7348 Red Ledge Drive, right?”
“Will it help if I slow it down? I didn’t – order – the – fucking – pizza!”
Okay, now Peter only wanted to punch the guy in his oily face and keep all of the food himself, pineapple and olive be damned.
“Then who…”
Before Peter could finish his question, both men turned at the sound of a toilet flushing in another room of the apartment.
“Pizza time!”
A peculiar looking man came out of the bathroom behind Jeremy, who, by the look on his face, didn't know the guy at all. As for Peter, the strangest thing about this bathroom user stranger would have probably been his coat or his Bea Arthur shirt. Maybe that was the reason why Peter just decided to stand there with sweat running from his back and burned hands, but who knows, he certainly had no clue why he did that. It wouldn't be the weirdest thing that happened to him on the job – or so he believed – and Peter kind of wanted to see how this would play out. He could only stare alongside Jeremy at the shockingly handsome, boyish man wiping his hands on a towel in the middle of the living room of the young stoner's apartment.
“Pineapple and olive?” the stranger asked Peter, who could only nod at him, seeing as not a single sound would come out of his shut mouth. “Sweet and salty.”
“Who the fuck are you? What the fuck are you doing here?”
Jeremy’s voice sounded more like a strangle screech toward the end as he and Peter both saw the strange man in the living room pulling out an impressive-looking pistol from his dark red coat and starting nonchalantly pointing it at Jeremy. While Peter could feel his face going as pale as the poor dude struggling to breathe in front of him, he was shocked to find the man still looking fairly friendly to him.
“Burnt crust?” the man asked Peter, who felt his composure slightly failing him.
“Um, I...” Peter opened the upper box and winced. “It's probably still good…”
“Relax, dude, that’s how I like it! Once you go black, you never go back!” he answered with a massive grin as he holstered his pistol.
Peter could only watch, motionless, as the good-looking man took the few steps toward him and pushed aside Jeremy to take a slice out of the box Peter had already opened. Which he proceeded, to Peter's astonishment, to close with a hunting knife while making uncomfortably long eye contact with him, revealing the tattoos on his forearms in the process. He was taller than him, and Peter could only look up at the guy’s hazel eyes as he seemed to be roaming his eyes all over him. Or at least, what little was visible of him behind the boxes.
“This is about the hack, right? It wasn't just me, okay!” Peter was almost startled when he heard Jeremy's voice over the man's shoulder. “I told Chris… Listen, take whatever you want!”
Still looking right at Peter, the armed stranger simply swallowed his mouthful of cheese and olives, while Jeremy had started to fumble with his wallet to hand him the bills inside. Finally looking away, the man, in one smooth move, took the whole wallet instead.
“Thanks!”
“Uh,” Peter cleared his throat and tried to not feel too much like a dick for asking, “can I have a huge tip? I’m, err, kinda in a hurry, here and uh…”
“Pay the man!” Wade landed a fifty dollar bill off of Jeremy's wallet into the front pocket of Peter's shirt like someone would do with a stripper's underwear. “Peter, is it?”
Peter’s face felt dangerously too warm for the two seconds where he didn’t remember the cheap tape where his name had been written on his shirt. “Yeah…?”
“Wade Wilson. You got something planned after this?”
“What?” Peter and Jeremy exclaimed at the same time, both of their voices sounding incredibly high, especially at this hour in the morning.
“Yeah, you're right,” Peter wasn't sure if the man, Wade apparently, was talking to him or to himself. “The job comes first!”
Jeremy’s eyes widened as Wade pulled him by the back of his dirty shirt. It was also at that moment Peter realized how far away the guy had gotten from him and the stranger. And seeing as his cell phone was now laying on the dirty carpet in front of him, it was pretty clear what the guy had been trying to do while Peter was, himself, highly compromised by the weirdly sexual sight of a man with a knife and a mouth full of olives and cheese. Peter was concerned with himself by the fact that he found this ‘Wade Wilson’ if that was even his real name, a lot more attractive than he initially thought after he had first seen him come out of the bathroom. Which was concerning since the guy was currently poking Jeremy at 7348 Red Ledge Drive on the forehead with his pistol. Now, Peter was ready to admit this was the weirdest thing that had ever happened to him on the job.
Then, Peter had a stupid thought, one he would deny ever having in the future. But he’s so attractive! Handsome men can’t be violent criminals, can they?
“Jeremy, oh, sweet, sweet Jeremy…” the twenty-something sheepishly nodded as Wade took a quick sniff of him. “You need to seriously lay off the weed, dude. You smell like my grandma back in Canada!”
Jeremy’s only response was a howl that sounded a whole lot more like a chair being dragged across the floor than a human. It kind of made Peter want to put the fifty dollar bill he was given on a piece of furniture nearby.
“Oh, and I'm keeping the wallet, by the way. You kind of gave it to me and my friend back there…” Wade said, shrugging in a way that made his gun directed a tiny bit too much toward Peter’s general direction if Peter had any say in it. If only he had any idea how many times he would remind that ‘Wade Wilson fella’ of that small, little fact in the future.
“Can I at least get my business cards ba–”
Wade pointed his gun at him again, straight into the middle of his face, successfully shutting Jeremy off and sending him almost falling over the sofa behind him.
“I will shoot your fucking cat!”
“NO!”
“Whoa, dude, calm down, I'm not gonna touch your cat! How messed up do you think I am?”
The expression on Jeremy's face could have almost made Peter laugh if he was not about to watch the guy’s face being blown off. And possibly his own as well, considering how much of that Wade Wilson's unpredictable tendencies Peter had been able to witness in the short span of time since he had made his grand entrance into Jeremy’s living room.
“Now, you by chance, know a Meghan Orlovsky? Getting that right? Orlovsky? Orloskvy? Do you?" Peter could barely see Jeremy's small little nod from behind the broad shoulders of the armed man. “Good. ‘Cause she knows you.”
Peter noticed the manifest change in the man's tone, but it quickly switched again when he turned his head toward him to say, “and what situation isn’t improved by pizza, eh, pretty boy?”
It took Peter ten full seconds before he realized what Wade’s weird hand gesture toward him meant, and ultimately slapped a slice of pizza that, knowing his chance, was the flabbiest of the bunch, onto the guy’s large, manly hand.
“Juicy.”
If I'm magically not getting fired after this, I'm quitting, was the only thing Peter could think as he ignored the buzz of his phone against his tight to watch a possible mercenary licking pizza off his hand while trying to threatening someone with a gun.
“Jeremy, I belong to a group of guys who take a dime to beat a fella down.” Mercenary it really is, then. Peter could hear Wade's loud munches from where he was trying to silently put down the pizza boxes on the dirty carpet. “Little Meghan’s not made of money, but lucky her, I’ve got a soft spot.”
When Wade opened and closed his hand again in a ‘gimme’ gesture toward Peter, the latter didn't waste a second before slapping another slice into the other's stretched hand. He had made sure it was not as soggy as the first one, but it didn't matter since it ended up on the floor at Jeremy's feet, anyway, after it being nearly handed to Jeremy by Wade before he let go of it too soon. He was playing a game.
Will I be considered an accomplice, now?
“B–but I'm…” muttered Jeremy.
Okay, I don't care how this turns out, anymore, I'm getting out of here and calling the police.
“A stalker. Threats hurt, Jer. Though not nearly as bad as serrated steel. You know that's not the way to go.”
The very second Wade’s head turned slightly around to give Peter a quick wink that got ultimately stuck at the closing part of the process, was also when Peter’s right hand had successfully reached the door handle and was gently about to turn it.
“Wait! Don't you see I'm trying to impress, right now?” Peter saw the annoyingly handsome mercenary letting an overly dramatic aggravating sigh before wiping his cheesy hand on the front of Jeremy's shirt. “I’ll have to make this quick, then.”
Before Peter could register what the mercenary just said, Jeremy was being pinned against the wall with a knife against his throat.
“So keep away from Meghan. We cool?”
“Y-yeah.”
At this point, the twenty-something was shaking so much that the only thing keeping him up was Wade’s impressive force on him. There was a legitimate second where Peter thought he was about to witness a man getting his throat cut open when he saw the tiniest bit of movement from Wade’s blade. Instead, he saw him deftly twirling his knife away from the young guy's throat, snipping it a bit too long on his finger and jamming it back into its sleeve inside of his red coat. All the while, Jeremy was left on his ass against the wall.
“Then, we're done.”
“W–we, err, we are?” Jeremy asked the mercenary from his not so graceful place on the floor, that, according to Peter, he wouldn't seem to be leaving anytime soon.
“Soft spot, remember? But even look in her general direction again? You’ll learn in the worst of ways,” Wade nonchalantly said, turning away from the pathetic man on the ground.
Peter only just realized he was still in the same position at the front door of the apartment than earlier when he had tried to run off. He was glad there had been no murder, but he wasn't so sure about himself when he would get back to the pizza shop. He wouldn't be surprised if his boss had already written him off. The whole ordeal had lasted for a quarter of an hour, given the Homer Simpson clock on the stoner's wall, which was plenty enough time to get fired.
“I've got some hard spots too,” Wade paused to take the pizza boxes from the carpet and onto his arms. “That came out wrong. Or did it?”
He winked at Peter again, this time evenly, and pushed one of the boxes to the younger man as he took a piece out of his still in his arms. Peter couldn't say if it was more odd than attractive to him, which appeared to be the goal. It was almost frightening to Peter how many dualities were present in that one human. One second, Peter could be jumping out of his feet at his actions, and the next, bewildered by his childish and practically endearing behavior. He looked young and joyful, but there was just enough of an edge to it that made Peter want to swoon like some kind of twelve years old girl with a crush on an older, unattainable guy, which Peter was already determined to not let happen.
As it seemed the man was about to leave, Peter didn’t really know what to do with himself. Was he supposed to wait for the mercenary to be gone to finally leave that god-awful apartment himself? He knew he should have gone a long time ago, probably when the man had first taken the gun off of its holster, or even when he saw him get out of the bathroom, but he didn’t, in fear of being shot in the back. Wasn’t he a witness of a crime now? Shouldn’t he have called the police already? Why had the guy wanted to keep him inside? If he had, in actual fact, witnessed Jeremy at 7348 Red Ledge Drive’s murder, Peter was confident the man would have simply planned to get rid of him, as well. While he did look and sound quite pleasant to be around, Peter didn’t have trouble believing he could kill a human being if he wanted to.
“So, did you have anything planned after this?” Wade Wilson asked for a second time.