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Peter can’t believe this. He would shake his head in an expression of his utter disbelief, but there’s currently a gun pressed to his temple, so he thinks that perhaps that would be a bad idea.
This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen to him anymore. He was Spiderman now. Didn’t that mean that he was supposed to give off some sort of ‘don’t fuck with me’ vibe that kept petty criminals from messing with him, whether he was in costume or not?
What? It worked for the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four and the X-Men and…oh, yeah, come to think of it – everyone knew who they were. Maybe that had something do with it.
Still, this sort of thing was beyond annoying.
The gun dug a little deeper into his temple and a voice growled threatening, “Don’t move, kid. I won’t tell you again.”
So Peter mentally sighed as he was dragged off his bus, along with a half a dozen or so other people and into a nearby store. The police had the place surrounded, but they were pretty much useless at hostage situations. He just hoped they didn’t get in the way when the bad happened.
And, oh boy, was it going to happen. Peter almost felt sorry for the idiot criminals, but robbing banks and taking kids hostage? They kinda deserved what they got.
* * * * *
Wade didn’t watch the news much. It wasn’t interesting unless they were reporting stuff about Spidey, who was always interesting. Especially when they got a good shot of him from behind. That spandex was really…tight.
[and we get to fondle that behind, aren’t we so lucky?]
<We so are!>
He’d just stopped the last disc of season one of his favourite show. Hint: it’s the one with the grey haired cougars. The news happened to be playing, and maybe it was interesting, ‘cause some lame brains had robbed a bank and apparently decided taking hostages was better than shooting it out with the cops, the fuzz, the boys in blue [hey, that’s kind of sexist, it should be the boys and girls in blue], the polizei, the policia, the keisatsu, the gendarmes [hey! We speak French now?], the P-I…hang on!
The camera zoomed in on one of the robbers, who was using a young man as a human shield and had a gun pressed to the temple of the aforementioned young man. And that young man was, “Peter!”
“D’you think we should tell the readers exactly what’s going to happen next, or d’you think they can guess?”
[I’m pretty sure they can guess.] Wow, yellow was drier than dust today.
"But we’ve got to have exposition, yellow. Otherwise where’s the plot?"
<Who says we need plot?> chimed in white
“’Cause this isn’t a PWP! You know she can’t write those, even when she deliberately tries!”
[who’s ‘she’?]
<The writer, you numbskull. Aren't we paying attention?>
Normally, Wade doesn’t mind arguing with his boxes, ‘cause they’re lots of fun and just as crazy as him, but time’s a wastin’ and his baby boy Petey is in trouble. And he won’t be able to use his Spidey powers to get out of it ‘cause of having that pesky secret identity thing going on.
[It doesn’t happen very often -]
<- but when you're right, you're right. They took our baby boy ->
[- and now they have to die!]
“They’re going to.”
Picking up his katanas and adding a few more knives and guns to various hiding places about his person, Wade pulled his mask on and slipped out the window. “Doors are lame.”
<So lame.>
* * * * *
Peter sighed internally as his hands were secured behind his back with zip ties and he was pushed down to sit against a counter, the last in a line of eight people who were all similarly tied up.
“I’m really not into bondage,” he told the goon who pushed him into place. “And you’re doing it wrong. You need some education before you try to be a dom.”
The goon just snarls at him, “Shut up!”
Unfortunately, Peter has always had trouble stopping his mouth. “You haven’t been reading Fifty Shades of Grey, have you? Because whoever wrote that book needs to be educated as well, it was so wrong in so many ways.”
“Shut up!” This time he gets a fist across his face for his trouble.
He recoils from the blow, spits some blood out of his mouth, stares up at the goon and says, “I’m not into sadism or masochism, either. Seriously, stop reading bad fanfic.”
The goon brings his fist back again and Peter tenses for another blow when another black clad figure grabs the goon’s arm, “We need them in reasonable condition to get out of here. Just ignore the smart mouth.”
This must be the leader of this pack of morons. He doesn’t seem like a moron and Peter wonders what he’s doing teaming up with them.
“Good choice, man. You seriously don’t want to hurt me anymore than you have, anyway. It’s not a good life choice.”
“Oh, yeah,” the leader sneers. “How’s that?”
Ah, so a little bit smarter than the others, but not that much smarter. Explains a lot.
“My fiancée doesn’t like it when people hurt me.” Peter’s using little words in the hopes that the message will sink in. “He gets angry, and then people die.”
“Well,” the leader says sarcastically, “I’m shaking in my size 10’s.” He turns to the goon and says, “Watch them,” before walking away to talk to one of his other goons.
He can’t keep calling them goons, it would get confusing, so he decides to name the leader Bob, goon number one is Larry, goon number two is Bill and goon number three can be Joe. Larry is still glaring down at him, so he smiles brightly and says, “My fiancée kills people for a living, you know.”
“Does he?”
Now Larry is trying sarcasm and it just doesn’t work for him.
“Yup,” Peter replies, still smiling brightly. He knows his teeth are stained with blood, so he probably looks a bit maniacal, which is what he’s going for. It’s a leaf he took out of Wade’s book – make ‘em think you’re crazy ‘cause it puts them off their game, Petey-pie. He can hear Wade’s voice in his head, clear as a bell.
The goon just scoffs and walks away.
The person sitting next to Peter nudges him with her elbow and whispers, “Why are you antagonising them?”
Peter doesn’t bother to whisper. “I’m not. I’m trying to warn them. I don’t like it when people get killed and when my fiancée finds out what’s going on, that’s what he’s going to do.”
“Oi! I told you to shut up!” Larry emphasised his point with a kick this time, right into Peter’s ribs. The pain shot through him, making him gasp. He concentrated, trying to control his breathing. He hoped nothing was broken.
“And I told you, you moron, we need them alive so we can get out alive!” Bob’s back, and mad as hell.
“Even your boss thinks you’re a moron,” Peter told Larry, his words punctuated by gasping breaths.
Larry looks like he’s about to try something nastier when Bob interrupts, “Go and watch the front.”
So off Goon Larry goes, like a good little goon, to stand guard at the front door.
Bob turns to Peter and stares down at him, clearly puzzled. “Kid, you’re either really smart or really dumb. I ain’t sure which, but please stop talking. You’re worth more alive.”
“I was worth more unharmed and alive, but now I’m injured, so I can no longer guarantee your safety.”
Bob snorts and walks away, shaking his head. Peter sees him talking to Bill and Joe and then Joe goes out the back, presumably to see if there’s a back door to the shop and to guard it if there is, whilst Bill drags a stool over to their little group, sits down, and starts pointedly sharpening a knife.
Peter’s not impressed.
The knife is only six inches and there’s rust-coloured stains on the blade – dried blood. Bill is clearly not someone who pays attention to detail. Wade keeps his knives meticulous. And his katanas are the closest Wade gets to objects of worship. He loves them. They are cleaned, sharpened and polished to within an inch of their swordy lives.
So, yeah, Peter’s not impressed. At all.
He feels another nudge, thankfully on the side of his body that didn’t get kicked, and turns to face his previous conversation companion.
“You’re still antagonising them! Would you please stop, because some of us would like to live!”
Peter takes the time to actually look at the person this time, and notices that she’s wearing a rather lovely dark red shirt with the top buttons undone to show a decent amount of cleavage and a ruby pendant drawing that draws the eye right to it. It would look good on Wade, he thinks distractedly.
“Hey!” she says sharply. “My eyes are up a bit higher, buster!”
Peter blushes, and meets her gaze. She has nice eyes too. Green. Not as nice as Wade’s, of course, but still nice.
“Sorry,” he stammers out, “I was just admiring your shirt. It looks nice on you. I was thinking it would look nice on my fiancée too.”
She stares at him as if he's crazy, which is what he’s going for so way to go him, then repeats herself. “Stop antagonising the people with guns! I have a fiancée too! And Id like to live to get home to see him for dinner tonight!”
“Don’t worry,” Peter assures her. “You will. They’ve hurt me now, so he’ll kill them all before they can get a shot off.”
She doesn’t look reassured. If anything, she looks at him likes he’s even crazier than she first thought and would he just shut up now, please?
“Seriously. I am not joking and I am not crazy. I give it an hour, maybe less, and they’ll all be dead.”
“I told you to SHUT THE HELL UP!” Before Bob or Bill can lift a finger, Larry has pulled Peter up from the ground and laid into him. Punch after punch lands on his face, his ribs, his stomach and, when Larry lets go and Peter slumps to the ground, his body a mass of pain and his vision blurry, Larry starts kicking him.
Any thoughts he had about getting out of this situation alive flee at the agony flaring down his body as he feels his ribs break and his mouth fills with blood. It’s getting so hard to breath – does he have a punctured lung? Those things take forever to heal.
The last thought that slips through his mind before everything goes black is: Wade is going to be so pissed.
* * * * *
For once, the boxes were quiet. They probably wanted him to be able to concentrate on rescuing Petey. They liked him almost as much as Wade did. Come to think of it, he thought maybe yellow liked Petey more than white. Yellow liked the wisecracks. White sometimes thought the pop culture references went too far.
Still, they were quiet and, whilst it was a little unnerving, it helped him to concentrate on getting to that shop as fast as he could. He wished his personal teleporter wasn’t out of commission – it would have been totes useful at a time like this.
“Hey, lady, I appreciate the inner monologue and all, and I like the way you’re improving my vocabulary with just a few taps of your clever fingers on that keyboard, but does this really have to be so hard? Couldn’t I have just teleported? Just write that it’s fixed!”
Unfortunately, Wade’s attempt to persuade the writer to make things easy didn’t work, so he was stuck jumping from rooftop to rooftop, climbing over walls, scaling up drainpipes and running along ledges like he was playing the world’s weirdest game of parkour.
The building where Petey was being held wasn’t hard to find – all the police around it were a total giveaway – and Wade perched on a rooftop opposite, pausing a moment to get the lay of the land.
So, small shop, alley at the side leading to a loading bay at the back. Cops out the front, one bad guy visible at the back, which left three inside. The news had been kind of helpful, telling him how many bad guys there were, but that didn’t matter. He had his katanas, his boxes, his guns, his knives and a red mist descending over his vision.
<Ooh, killing rage!> White sounded gleeful. <We haven’t had one of those in a long time!>
“Because our baby boy doesn’t like us to kill people,” Wade reminds White.
[He’ll make an exception for this situation, we know he will.]
“I sure hope so, ‘cause there ain’t no way those guys are getting out alive and we’d miss our sexy fun time with Petey if he doesn’t forgive us.”
He’s about to head for the back entrance, when Yellow stops him.
[Hey, look – skylight!]
<Ha! Go, Yellow! That would be a better way to get in, don’t you think?>
“Absolutely,” Wade agrees. Good thing his boxes were paying more attention than he was. The skylight would be perfect. Element of surprise and all, and falling glass for shrapnel.
"Yeah, baby, we’re going in!”
* * * * *
Despite comic book writers who don’t seem to know anything about the characters they’re actually writing, Peter does have a healing factor. It isn’t nearly as powerful as Logan’s or Wade’s, in that broken bones take about 24 hours to heal up instead of it happening instantly, so when it kicks in he’s still a mass of pain from his ribs and various other parts of his body, but his brain is working just fine and his vision is clear.
Clear enough that when Wade drops into the room, scattering broken glass all over the place, he smirks and mutters, “Told you so!” to the world at large.
The girl in the red shirt, who had apparently been doing her best to patch him up whilst he’d been unconscious, stifles a gasp as Wade unsheathes his katanas and proceeds to cut the goons and their leader to ribbons.
Bob tries to get a shot off, but Wade slices the bullet in half before it can hit him, and brings his blade down. It bites hard into Bob’s neck and he crumples, blood flowing freely over the ground where the body hits the floor.
Joe comes running at the sound of the commotion, and runs right into Wade’s fist. It’s almost a dance, a graceful bit of ballet, the way Wade pivots around behind Joe and brings his blade up to sever the goon’s jugular vein.
Larry roars and charges straight at Wade. Peter could’ve told him that was a bad idea. Wade simply turns aside at the last second, but leaves his foot out, and Larry trips over. Wade puts a foot on the back of Larry’s neck, pulls out a pistol, and dispatches the goon with one shot to the head.
Bill, having seen this all in glorious technicolour, and apparently having some brains despite his associating with Bob, Larry and Joe, tried to make a run for it. He’s stopped by knife in the back.
Wade bends over him and uses a clean spot on the goon’s shirt to wipe his katana clean and then retrieve his knife, giving it a wipe as well. The blades are then carefully put back in their respective sheaths and Peter smiles a little. Wade takes care of his weapons. That is professionalism, right there. If Bill were alive, Peter would make sure to point it out.
“What idiots. They were almost a waste of our time, weren’t they?”
Wade cocks his head to one side and Peter knows he’s listening to the boxes.
“Yeah, I agree. We should’ve just set up on the roof with our sniper rifle and taken them out. No need to waste our mad fighting skillz on bad guys too stupid to appreciate them.”
“I appreciated them,” Peter croaks out and Wade immediately rushes to his side.
“Petey-pie!”
He feels Wade’s eyes scanning him, and he can hear the concern in the merc’s voice as Wade kneels down and lifts Peter to cradle him in his lap.
The girl in the red shirt relinquishes her care of Peter immediately, eyeing Wade with some trepidation.
Peter smiles at her and says, with some effort, “I told you he’d kill them. You can go home to dinner with your fiancée now.” He coughs and Wade strokes his face lovingly.
“Oh, Petey-pie, what’d they do to you? Do you need me to take you to hospital?”
Peter shook his head, grimacing at the pain, but determined. No hospitals. Hospitals take blood tests and he can’t take that chance. All it took was one doctor determined to save the world plus his blood and there would be disaster. Doctor Connors levels of disaster.
“You really should go to hospital,’ the girl interjected. “They beat you up pretty bad.”
Peter shook his head again. “I’ll be fine. Just need a little TLC from my Wade.”
<That’s us!> White was doing a happy dance. <Hear that, Yellow? All he needs is some TLC from us! He said it!>
[We knew that already.] Wade wondered where Yellow got this sarcastic, snarky streak from. [He loves us, he agreed to marry us, of course he wants TLC from us. Who else would he want it from?]
White’s happy dance dies down a little, but then: <We haven’t heard him actually say it before. And he said it in front of other people. This still deserves the happy dance.>
[Point.] Yellow concedes.
“That’s me,” Wade introduces himself, ignoring the boxes and holding out his free hand to the girl.
“Uh, nice to meet you, Wade.” She reached and gingerly took his hand. Perhaps all the blood on his gloves was scaring a little bit. “My name’s Anne.”
“Pleasure to meetcha, Miss Anne.”
Wade unsheathed his knife and motioned for her to turn around. She rose up onto her knees and shuffled herself into position. The knife sliced through the zip ties and she was free. When she turned around, massaging her wrists, Wade handed her the knife and waved absently at the other hostages.
“Go let the rest of them loose and bring back the knife.”
She did just that, quickly and efficiently, Peter noted. And, when she came back to them and handed over the knife, he said, “Walk out the front with your hands in the air and tell the cops what’s happened.”
Peter gave a sharp groan as Wade lifted him up and carried him, princess style, to the back door. His lung had healed up whilst he'd been unconscious, clearly, but his ribs were definitely still broken. Great. Just great.
“It was nice to meet you, Anne,” he called as she walked to the front, “Enjoy your dinner.”
Then they were out the back door and Wade was hailing a cab to take them home.
“Wade,” whispered Peter, once they were safely ensconced in the back seat, Wade cradling him close.
“Yes, baby boy?”
“You know what I told you about killing people?”
In as much as Wade’s expression could be readable beneath the mask, Wade looked worried.
<You said he’d make an exception!> White accuses Yellow.
[Calm down He will. Just wait.] At least Yellow sounded calm.
Wade gulped.
“Yes, Petey?”
Peter reached up and pulled Wade’s head down towards his. His movements were slightly uncoordinated as he pushed the merc’s mask up, exposing the lower half of his face (thank you, broken ribs) but he need this like he needed air.
His lips met Wade’s and it was perfect. He only pulled away to whisper, “I’m kinda glad you ignored me this time,” before reaching for Wade's lips again.
The End.