Wade first noticed him when he had to take a walk to the chair of shame. The chair of shame wasn't necessarily as bad as it sounded, but it felt like a humiliation to be sent to time out to get your heart rate under control. But the stranger did manage to pass the test after sitting there for five minutes, about one cycle for Wade's machine.

It was clearly the guys first time, not taking into consideration his vibrant orange tag that read 'NEW DONER'. He fumbled with the moveable armrest, setting it down into the curve of the donation chair only to pick it up so he had room to sit down before he set it back into place. And then he glanced to his side, registering that his donation machine was on the opposite side, so he awkwardly picked up the crescent-shaped armrest and stuck it down on the opposite side closest to the machine that would be drawing and cycling his plasma. 

They made eye contact and Wade offered a smile when the Stanger visibly died inside, presumably realizing his anxious and confused actions had been under the scrutiny of a senior's eyes.

"It's alright. The nurse should have walked you out and shown you how to do that. You should put your stuff in the cubby though, the door is facing me, under the chair."

The young man nodded, his light eyes striking before he looked away to slide out of his donation seat. He had messy brown hair, an average stature, and walked stiffly with anxiety. Generally speaking he looked like any one of those internet twinks, but with some real-life problems thrown in. 

His keys and wallet thunked against the laminated wood of the cubby before the cabinet-like door was carefully pushed close. His grey eyes scanned the other two people in their section, but they didn't pay the newcomer any mind, one absorbed in a Drawfee video, someone else with a book

"A pity they put you in the orange section, Lindsay's a bitch. She's going be an ass when you flinch, so don't feel bad about it. The name's Wade by the way."

"Peter." the brunette slid back into his chair and crossed his arms, hugging himself. He looked up at Wade and met his eyes a moment, genuinely looking at him for the first time since slinking into their section. He didn't seem bothered by the scars, he was one of the few people who just seemed intrigued by the unusual texture going across Wade's face. 

This week he was doing pretty great, the scar tissue relenting to the point where he looked like he just had a jagged old scratch across the side of his face. Even the rest of his body was doing well with just a few streaks over his shoulders and down his right side as a whole. He was smart enough to remain skeptical that any of the treatment sessions he'd had since he began donations were doing anything meaningful for his state of existence, but a sliver of hope had ignited this morning and he couldn't shake it. 

"I'm afraid of needles," Peter admitted before looking down at the sleeves of his flannel shirt, moving one arm to pick at one of the buttons at the cuff of the sleeve.

"Yeah? Me too. That's why I'm here to get paid for it. No better incentive to get over a fear than a tangible award. Did they get you with the New Doner promotion?" He glanced over, noticing short blonde hair as their nurse approached. "you'll need to remove your sleeve, but don't take the whole flannel off, just the arm you're donating with. "

"Oh, okay." Peter frowned and shrugged off half of his outer layer as the butch lesbian stopped with her cart in front of his machine. Wade didn't know for sure whether the woman was a lesbian, but you also couldn't say she wasn't, it was obvious, and she was a mean bastard for maybe breaching the age of thirty and working in a health setting. 

"Name and last four." She said monotonously as she began hooking up the tubes and bags to Peter's machine, scanning each tag with her barcode reader before she eventually turned to face her patient. "Make a tight fist," 

Wade pressed his lips together as the blood pressure cuff around his arm relaxed and a metallic taste filled his mouth as his red blood cells began to pump back into his arm. It was a little cold and tingly, but otherwise fine.

He watched Peter tense when Lindsey marked his vein, an expression of confused relief before he looked back at his arm to see if she was done, only for his expression to fall when he realized all she'd done was make a few indents into his skin so she knew where to puncture him. 

"Do you have an iodine allergy?"

"No." Peter answered quietly, watching her open a silver packet and pull out a swab stained with the brownish-yellow liquid. 

"If any fabric touches the sanitized area after this, we'll have to pull you and won't receive your payment, and any blood left in the machine will be collected as a biohazard, you won't get it back and you'll be deferred for two weeks, understood?" she said without meeting his gaze as she began rubbing around the insertion site.

Peter's eyes widened a little and he nodded. Two weeks deferment would be nearly five hundred dollars he could kiss goodbye, he'd only have a certain allotted time to use his promotion after all. 

Wade's cuff tightened again and he began to squeeze the foam ball he had in his fist, pumping his dark blood out to fill the reservoir a sixth time. 

Peter looked away when Lindsey started unpackaging the monstrous needle. And by look away, Peter looked as far to his left as he could, the same way kids do when they're trying to imitate an owl. 

"Don't flinch," the woman said shortly as she tapped the IV line into place. "You can start pumping now." 

Peter did as told. He was holding a gold squishy star. He pumped without looking until she wandered away again but once she was gone he glanced down at his arm. And then he quickly looked away with a frantic smile. An 'I'm about to lose my shit' smile. A psychologically broken smile.

"So are you in here under any of the special programs?" Wade asked. He knew Peter should be, he was in the mutant donation wing, but it wasn't outwardly labeled that, Wade had just come to that conclusion on his own through his chatting.

"Um," Peter met his gaze, looking confused like he didn't quite have the mental capacity to recover from what he'd seen yet, but he was still smart enough to be weary of blindly answering that question. 

"I'm here for the mutant program because I have a healing factor. I get a little extra for my donations since I'm being used for a specific research program that benefits me actually. I'm getting paid to fix myself you might say." Wade smiled. 

"Oh, okay. Uh yeah. After my new doner promotion ends they said I could qualify for one of the mutant programs." Peter said, his flexing stumbling as he talked. he was squeezing in time of his syllables instead of in beat with the machine's pumping. "What do you mean by fixing yourself?" 

He couldn't tell if Peter was genuinely asking or reflexively carrying the conversation in the most dynamic model he could out of politeness, asking about something open-ended. Wade's machine stopped abruptly so he glanced over and saw he'd maxed out his collection requirement, going over a milliliter in fact. He grimaced as his blood started pooling back with the metallic zing in his mouth. Pretty soon he'd be taking a cold saline bag. That part always sucked ass.

"It's a really long story, but my healing factor kills me as much as it keeps me going after an accident." he shrugged.

They talked for the next twenty minutes, Wade's machine singing for half that time while he was ignored by their section overseer. He found out that Peter was a journalist- or mostly a photography artist. He discovered he was a mutant when he was fifteen and that he recently graduated with his bachelor's and was here because he was tired of choosing between beef or shrimp ramen or the rare box of mac and cheese. And also that Peter was planning to come every Monday and Wednesday.

Which just so happened to be the days Wade liked to go. And if he was being honest with himself, outside of looking at him like another fellow human being, Peter was pretty darn cute. And Wade wasn't feeling as bad for himself as usual Sooooooooo . . . He may or may not have strategically decided to try and schedule for the same exact time for his next donation session with the hopes that Peter would happen to come by the same time next week after he found out they were also going to see each other more than likely that Wednesday. 

And much to his disappointment, it didn't happen. Peter wasn't there when he came in for his second donation. Nor the first of the following week, or even the one after that. Wade was ready to give up all hopes of ever happening upon Peter again when he passed him at the physical station after his Donation two weeks after meeting him for the first time. 

Peter was sitting in the chair, gently squeezing the new bandaid on his left pointer as Wade approached the counter to drop off his Zone card. He didn't notice him at first actually. It wasn't until the tech spoke that he paid any mind to the station.

"Unfortunately your protein levels are too low to donate today." Zach, a newer tech who had been with the staff for a few months explained to the brunette apologetically. Zach was a nice kid but he struggled when he first started, often not lancing Wade's finger hard enough to actually break through to begin with, and oftentimes not using the correct lance, to begin with. Wade had a healing factor after all. He didn't bleed long enough to bleed a sample, the wind needed to be held open by a special lance made for people like him, and Zach had forgotten about that enough times while he was new that Wade didn't like him for a while. They were cool now though. They'd been golden ever since they bonded over their general love for finding the best hole-in-the-wall food places around the city. 

Wade looked over just in time to watch Peter's expression fall. He was still too far away to see what color his eyes were, but they were disappointed. Tired too.

"It's only a day deferment," Zach added quickly as Wade made his way around the desk to take his leave. He didn't walk as fast as he could have though. "Try and eat some meat and potatoes tonight and we'll catch you again this week so you can get your second payment."

"Okay, thank you." Peter said quietly.

Wade heard him slide off his seat. He was about eight feet ahead of Peter when the brunette started to follow him out the front door. Wade slowed at the first set of doors and held it open for Peter, waiting for him to brace the first door before stepping forward to grab and fully hold the second one so Peter could walk past. He was avoiding looking up at Wade though, seeming put down and embarrassed. 

"Long time, no see. Nice to see you came back though." Wade offered Peter a smile as he squinted in the bright sunlight. "Sorry you got pushed back."

Peter finally looked up to make eye contact with him. There was a beat of polite regard before recognition flashed in Peter's eyes and he became less stiff, less anxious over being harassed by a stranger. Wade wasn't a complete stranger after all. 

"Oh, thanks. I'm not too surprised. I didn't really have good meals yesterday." Peter admitted with a sigh. 

"Yeah? That's too bad. I have a hard time with the protein too sometimes because of the healing factor I have. I eat through a lot of protein and whatever else because of my body's battle with my cancer. I'm in a constant state of remission and relapse, my body forgetting about the cancer and finally recognizing it when it becomes too destructive. I have to basically eat all day and all up until my appointment to ensure that I have my levels high enough. I have this great chicken recipe if you have an instapot."

Peter stared up at him, listening but giving him a politely overwhelmed look. "Oh, uh that sounds nice but I don't have a pressure cooker. And sorry you have cancer I uh. Yeah."

Wade's esteem shrunk back as he took in Peter's response, his head feeling far too empty all of a sudden. He didn't quite know how to go from here, the silence that he'd been enjoying for the last several weeks was suddenly as deafening as the overwhelming hollering of his boxes on the nights they decided to torture him. He'd clearly crossed some line and he suddenly didn't have the tools he normally had to compensate. The boxes were always good at leading him through these things, weaving patterns of chaos to correct for things like this, to make things cohesive and sum up to Deadpools erratic behavior. 

But the treatment that was stabilizing his cancer and healing factor had also given him the opportunity for medication. And he didn't really hear much of the boxes when he was in remission and he was too far off from his full relapse to get any inkling of hints from the characters. 

"Don't be sorry, I was over-sharing." Wade said after an awkward pause. he offered his hand for a shake. "You should tell me more about yourself. Are you going this way?" He gestured towards the direction Peter's feet were pointed despite the brunette generally facing Wade. He was giving the signals that he could walk away but he didn't want him to, so he figured he could follow him to his car or the bust stop or whatever. 

"Yeah. Uh what do you want to know? I mean, honestly, I kind of have questions for you after that little spout if you don't mind."

Wade frowned. "I mean as long as you share something, I'm not a huge fan of one sided conversations." He said uncomfortably. He was certain that he was blowing this opportunity up, absolutely fucking up any chance of a friendly or cute thing he could have had with this adorable needle-fearing person. It wasn't like he was too invested in Peter yet, but he kinda wanted to be.

Peter laughed and shoved his hands into his coat pockets as they walked across the parking lot. "No kidding. Honestly, I get that. half the time I end up talking to myself and that's just terrible. I hate being the only one laughing at my own jokes. I think I can be pretty funny at times. But in your case, I'd be happy to be talked at for a little while. It would be a nice change of speed to put my own ears to use for once." He looked down at his shoes as they walked past a parked Suburban and through the three feet stretch of grass to the sidewalk beyond. Peter began leading him east toward the nearest university campus. "A bit off topic by the way, uh do you normally come in at eleven?

Wade shook his head. "No I go schedule for nine-thirty, but the physical line usually takes half an hour. Given the day, it can take an hour actually, and then my donation takes about twenty to thirty minutes so I usually get out between ten thirty and eleven."

"That makes so much sense, wow I'm dumb. Not to be weird, but I was kind of trying to schedule at the same time I thought you might be in so we could cross paths. Honestly, I think you're the only reason I was going back to the first three donations. You were the only nice person there on my first day." Peter mumbled. He was still walking with his head down, watching his feet as they wandered right past the nearest bus stop. The wind picked up and tugged at their clothes, winter clinging to the cold licks of the air. 

He smiled and looked over at Peter. "Really? Because I've been looking forward to seeing you all week and I was convinced that I was never going to see you again when I walked in this morning. In that case, I'm kind of glad you got booted today. But on that note, why don't you come by and take some of my leftovers so you can get to your appointment tomorrow? You should schedule a new appointment right now actually if there are any slots open, don't want to lose your promotion after all. Are you in one of the healing programs? I know you mentioned you were offered a mutant promo, but If you're kind of in my boat I'd be happy to send you home with a full bowl to last you tonight and tomorrow."

"That's very generous of you." Peter turned to look at him finally. His smile wasn't one that brightened his face. It rested heavily in his eyes, shining at him in a way that made Wade warm. He wasn't sure what it meant but it made him feel special. "I'd honestly really like that."

Special thanks to Patron Poiuytre23 for their pledge. Their support has brought to you this Story via the Katana commission tier. I was given complete freedom with this piece and intend to continue this work in the future.

As it stands, I do not have a schedule planned for this work nor decided whether installments will be dependent on patron support or free will. If you would like to see this work continued, let me know.

Until next time
~ Shadow-Assassin