Work Text:
To: Bucky Barnes
1:43am
Just got in a cab. I regret listening to you about that last round.
From: Bucky Barnes
1:47am
No you don’t. You’d never have any fun without me!
If “fun” meant spending four hours at a dive bar near campus watching Bucky flirt with that blonde from their Psych class— what was his name? Steve. Right. It was a wonder Peter could remember his address right now, let alone the name of Bucky’s… whatever they were calling it. Not-boyfriend.
He groaned at his phone before shoving it back in his pocket and letting his head fall back against the seat. I’m going to have such a hangover tomorrow. This always happened. Any time Peter agreed to out with Bucky, it always ended in way too many shots of vodka and Peter stumbling up all six flights of stairs to get to his apartment.
The cab driver wasn’t helping his predicament. This guy had clearly never heard of easing on the break, instead stomping to a jerky stop at every car, pedestrian, and light for the eight mile drive to Peter’s apartment building in East Harlem. He’d never been more grateful to shove money at someone and stumble out of a car.
“Why didn’t I live in the dorms?” Peter mumbled under his breath as he fumbled for his keys. One for the lobby, one for the apartment— it was a facade of safety that still didn’t make up for the lack of elevator or AC. As he stumbled up the stairs, Peter could hear muffled banging. Probably 14D refinishing furniture. Again.
By the time he was shoving his key into the lock of his apartment door, the banging was much less muffled. It was almost clear as day, accompanied by ‘son of a bitch!’ and ‘I fucking hate IKEA,’ all coming from apartment 3F. The new tenant.
Peter clutched at his throbbing head with one hand and pushed open his door with the other, trying to block out the sound. The oven clock cheerfully informed him it was already 2:29am. Not having class the next morning was the only thing saving him from murdering Bucky.
To: Bucky Barnes
2:32am
Home. The new neighbor is loud. You’re dead to me if I have a hangover tomorrow.
From: Bucky Barnes
2:34am
Love you too! :)
To: Bucky Barnes
2:37am
The feeling is not mutual.
From: Bucky Barnes
2:40am
I’ll buy brunch tomorrow.
To: Bucky Barnes
2:41am
You know the way to my heart.
A crash from the other side of the wall jarred Peter enough to jump. Did this guy have any manners? Rooting around in the dark, Peter found a bottle of aspirin and popped two in his mouth, holding them there as he filled a cup of water and drained it. Maybe they would be enough to ward off the threatening migraine that was hovering behind his eyes, reverberating with every clang of furniture next door.
Maybe he was still drunk enough to have no inhibitions. Or maybe he just really wanted some peace and fucking quiet to get to sleep. Whatever it was had Peter yanking open his door and stepping into the hall to knock on 3F’s door, foot tapping on the floor in annoyance as he heard another mangled shout.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?” Peter yelled through the door.
“I’m coming! Keep your pants on!” a male voice hollered back.
The door swung open to reveal a flushed-face man in a white t-shirt and black briefs, his brown hair sticking in at least six different directions and a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Peter’s mouth went dry as his eyes, unbidden, took stock of his new next-door-neighbor. It really wasn’t his fault that the guy was a muscular specimen who was standing there in his underwear. With legs that would make Michelangelo proud.
“What’s up?” the man asked as if he hadn’t been shrieking at his furniture two minutes ago.
Peter balked, dragging his attention back to the matter at hand: his need for sleep. “Uh, hi. I’m Peter Parker, your neighbor.” He jerked a thumb towards his still-open door. “Look man, it is almost three in the morning.”
“What?”
Peter held up his wrist to show him that it was 2:51am.
“Shit, I’m so sorry,” the man apologized, pinching the bridge of his nose. He stuck out his hand awkwardly. “Wade. Wade Wilson. I am clearly making a terrible first impression.”
It was impossible for Peter not to grin at the admission. He took the outstretched hand and shook it. “I mean, I’m the one who just pounded on the door.” Peering around Wade’s shoulder, Peter could see a half-constructed bed frame sagging toward the hardwood floor in the middle of the bedroom. “Do… you need some help?”
Wade blushed, scratching at the back of his neck. “Here I am keeping you up and you’re offering me help. God, I’m a shit neighbor.” He met Peter’s gaze, trying to mask his embarrassment. “I mean. Honestly, yeah, I could. But it’s 3 in the goddamn morning, dude.”
Peter rolled his shoulder in a half-shrug. “Full disclosure, I’m kind of drunk,” he announced before pulling his apartment door shut and locking it. “But maybe that will make IKEA’s directions seem more bearable.”
Blinking in surprise, Wade stepped aside to let Peter come in. “You’re an angel. Or an alien. Whatever it is, I’m taking advantage of it.”
Peter had never needed a wingman more than the moment he stepped into Wade Wilson’s apartment. Too bad his only wingman was tied up with someone else right now (with Bucky, that could be metaphorically or literally). The layout of Wade’s apartment was a mirror image of his own. Side-stepping a half-full box of dishes, Peter ambled towards the bedroom.
“So, you moved in today?” Peter asked casually.
Wade laughed easily, dropping onto the floor to retrieve the instructions. “Yesterday, technically. But yeah. This place was within walking distance of pizza and tacos.”
Peter couldn’t help but laugh, leaning into the door frame to keep from falling down. The room was still fuzzy around the edges when he moved too quick. “Those were top priorities?”
“Food is always my top priority,” Wade said seriously. He pushed himself off the floor and held up the instruction booklet. “I… may have lost the English version of the instructions. And by lost I mean definitely threw them in the dumpster with the box.”
“Then what are those?” Peter plucked the booklet from Wade’s hand, studying it for a moment before he groaned. “Swedish. Of course they’re in Swedish.”
“What else can you expect from IKEA?”
“Touche. Alright. I guess we’re working off of pictures.” Peter spotted an allen wrench on the floor. “Is that all we’re supposed to use to put together a bed?”
Wade shrugged. “That’s all it came with.”
“B-but there are screws!” Peter squaked incredulously. “You have a drill right?”
“This probably the part where I’m supposed to say that yes, of course I do.” Wade’s nose scrunched as he looked around the room at the stacks of boxes. “A responsible adult would have a drill. Maybe. In one of these boxes.”
“So what you’re saying,” Peter deadpanned, “is that no such drill exists.”
“Why, Mister Parker, are you saying you already have me pegged for the opposite of a responsible adult?” Wade giggled nervously.
His dad would be having an aneurysm at the very thought of any adult not owning a drill. If there was anything Peter was prepared for when he moved out, it was fixing things. “Too soon to say,” he dismissed. “Look, I have plenty of tools. I’ll go get my drill.”
Wade followed Peter back to the kitchen, jerking his thumb toward the fridge. “I have leftover Chinese, and beer. It’s the least I can do.”
“Trying to keep me drunk, Wade?” The words were out of Peter’s mouth before he realized how they sounded. Oh my god. I am an idiot. An actual idiot. His face felt like it was on fire. “I— wow that came out wrong.”
“Why, are you going to let me?” Wade challenged teasingly.
Their proximity felt more charged than before, almost as if the span of two sentences had changed the entire mood of the room. Peter wasn’t sure if he wanted to bolt out of Wade’s apartment or agree with him— both had their consequences that he wasn’t sure he wanted to face with a guy he had met all of twenty minutes before.
“Ask me again when I’m not trying to make sense of Swedish,” Peter chuckled at last, all the while wondering if he had let the silence between them hang there for too long. “I’m uh...gonna go get that drill now.”
“Right. The drill. That IKEA did not include with purchase.” Wade rolled his eyes as he pulled the door open. “See you in a minute then. I’ll leave it unlocked.”
Peter nodded, pulling Wade’s front door shut behind him as he left. It wasn’t until he heard the tell-tale click of the door shutting securely that he let take a deep breath, wondering how the hell he’d even ended up in this situation. Alcohol. It had to be the alcohol. Peter was not the type of person who pounded on their noisy neighbor’s door at three in the damn morning.
Letting himself back into his own apartment, Peter spied his phone still sitting on the kitchen counter. The drill could wait. Punching redial, he listened to the phone ring, tapping his fingers impatiently against the counter. “Come on, come on,” Peter murmured. “Pick up.”
“Peter, I swear to god,” a voice hissed. “Do you know you’re a cockblock? Because now is really not the time!”
“IthinkIjustcameontomyneighbor,” Peter blurted out in a single breath.
“What?” Bucky shrieked.
Peter heard him mutter something along the lines of ‘give me a minute’ and huffed loudly into the phone, trying to regain Bucky’s attention.
Bucky snorted. “I can hear you glaring, but you kind of interrupted my getting laid, so if anyone is going to be huffing, it will be me!”
“Wait. You and Steve were…”
“We were not,” Bucky corrected, “but we were about to be, so could you hurry it up before he changes his mind?”
“The loud neighbor. I went to talk to him because, y’know, I want to sleep. Turns out he can’t get his bed together and I guess I may have, um, possibly, offered to help him?” Peter explained hurriedly. “I definitely had too much to drink.”
“There is no such thing as too much to drink.”
“Bucky. Shut up and let me finish,” Peter chided. When no snappy retort came, he continued on. “We need a drill to get the bed together. He said he’s got some chinese food and beer, for the trouble I guess. I cannot believe I said this, but I asked him if he was trying to keep me drunk. Jesus, I am so stupid.”
“Is he cute?” Bucky hummed thoughtfully.
“He’s not cute, he’s heart-stoppingly hot, but what’s that got to do with it?” Peter asked.
“Being drunk with a ‘heart-stoppingly hot’ guy and a bed sounds like a good time to—”
“Do not finish that sentence.” Peter pushed the phone between his ear and his shoulder before he started rummaging in the hall closet for his tool bag. “Why do I ask you for advice?”
“You want advice? Gee, why didn’t you say so?” Bucky sang. “Look. You sound sober enough to know what you did. You hit on the guy. All the booze did was lower your inhibition, Peter, not make you a different fucking person. Be Prince Charming and get his bed together, then ask him on a date. Is that so hard?”
Peter swallowed, palming the drill and rolling Bucky’s words around in his head. For all his sarcasm, the guy was still his best friend for a reason— he shot straight and honest. “Go get your man,” Peter dismissed, “and thanks, Bucky.”
“You’re welcome. Go charm him with your awkwardness,” Bucky affirmed before hanging up.
Right.. Awkwardness. The ultimate tool of seduction. Peter shoved his phone into his pocket this time, just in case, before heading back into the main hall. Wade’s door was unlocked, just like he said, and the smell of sweet and sour chicken washed over Peter as soon as he stepped over the threshold.
“The promise of Chinese food was real?” Peter called as he ambled into the kitchen.
Wade was spinning a chopstick between his fingers. “Something you should know about me, Peter,” he announced just as the microwave shrieked to signal completion, “is that any and all talk of food is sincere.” He retrieved two steaming cartons of food and held one out to Peter. “Sweet and sour chicken. Bon appetit.”
“First Swedish direction, then Chinese food, now French? You’re very cultured,” Peter teased when he accepted the square carton.
“I am so not,” Wade snorted. He hopped onto the counter, balancing his own food on his knee.
Peter didn’t realize how hungry he was until he popped a piece of chicken into his mouth. There wasn’t any room for small talk between them for a few minutes, replaced by the clink of chopsticks and the shuffle of limbs.
Peter was leaning against the fridge, stealing glances at different parts of Wade— first those damn legs, then curve of his bicep, and the slope of his jaw. He hadn’t been exaggerating to Bucky. It seemed like this guy have been carved from marble and deposited right here, in this very apartment building, all for Peter’s benefit.
“You from New York?” Wade asked as he pitched his carton into the nearest trash bag.
“Born and raised,” Peter admitted. “You?”
“More or less. Born in Canada, but I’ve been here long enough to lose the accent.” He stretched, arms over his head, until his back popped audibly. “Ready to hit the bed?”
Peter almost dropped his near-empty carton of food, blinking up at Wade. “Sorry, what?”
Wade jerked a thumb toward the bed frame. “We’re still planning to beat that thing into submission, right?”
“...right. Yeah.” Peter held up the drill. “And we’ll have a little help from my friend here.” Charm him with your awkwardness, he said, Peter thought as he tried to refrain from cringing.
They fell into a rhythm, moving around boxes and pieces of the bedframe, with Wade passing pieces and screws to Peter for him to assemble. It probably wasn’t the most desired method of construction, but Peter had abandoned the pictographs and Swedish in favor of going by instinct.
“You some sort of craftsman?” Wade asked as Peter stooped to make sure the piece he had half-screwed in looked (mostly) level.
Peter shook his head. “My dad’s an engineer,” he admitted, squinting at the board before deeming it good enough to continue drilling. “He can build anything. I just know how to fit things together.”
Wade nodded. “You’ve definitely gotten further than I was ever going to with this fucking thing,” he appraised as he circled the bed. “I have the slats. Do those just… lay there?”
“That’s the idea,” Peter said with a shrug.
“Tell me something about you,” Wade suggested while he rummaged among the boxes for the slats. “Besides the bit about your dad.”
Something about me, Peter thought idly, is that I have no idea how to talk to hot guys. “I go to NYU. Cinema Studies.”
Wade tugged the roll of slats free from under a box. “You’re a little far from campus. Shit, is this really only half ?”
Peter pulled at the plastic that held the roll together, watching as it fell across the floor, only a fraction as wide as the bed. “How big is this bed? Queen?”
“King,” Wade groaned. “What did I do wrong?”
“Uh. I think you need at least two more of these, honestly,” Peter admitted. “You can’t put the mattress on just the frame, you’ll fall right through it as soon as you lay down.”
“What time is it?”
Peter cupped his hand around his watch, squinting at it with bleary eyes. “4:48.”
“... in the morning?” Wade grimaced. “Jesus, what a first impression. Keeping my neighbor up until 5am for nothing. I better never ask to borrow a cup of sugar.”
You could ask me for a lot more than sugar, Peter thought desperately as he rubbed his eyes. “When do they open?”
Wade picked his phone up off of the floor. “Hey Google, when does IKEA in Brooklyn open?”
“IKEA in Brooklyn, New York, store hours are 10AM to 9PM.”
“What are we supposed to do for 5 more hours?” Wade howled despairingly. “I WANT TO SLEEP.”
“Sorry, I didn’t understand that request,” Google informed him.
“Stop. Talking.” Wade turned his phone off and looked at Peter hopelessly. “I’m just gonna sleep on the mattress. On the floor. I will figure this shit out tomorrow.”
“I think you mean today,” Peter quipped. He yawned, running a hand down his face in frustration. “I’ll go with you, if you want. To IKEA.”
Wade considered Peter, peering at his face for any trace of sarcasm. “Sleep first. Date later.”
Peter’s eyes widened. I am apparently so tired that I am actually hallucinating. “Sorry, what was was that?”
“S-sleep,” Wade stammered, scratching the back of his head idly. “We need sleep.”
“Right,” Peter said slowly. “Knock on my door when you’re up, yeah?”
Wade nodded. “Yeah. And Peter?”
Peter met Wade’s gaze, quirking his eyebrow. “Hm?”
“Thanks,” Wade said softly.