Hello! This is my first square for the Spideypool bingo, and I'm very excited to take part in this event.

Huge thanks to Kitty for beta'ing this for me, you're the best and I adore you!

Spideypool Bingo #1 - Flirting in the Produce Aisle 

 Wade Wilson POV

Dear Diary...everyone is dead.

It's weird how quiet it is. The City that Never Sleeps. Well, I think it's sleeping now. The good ol' dirt nap. Sleeping with the fishes. 7 feet under.

Whatever phrase suits your fancy, you get the idea.

Point is, dearest of diaries, is that everyone is dead, and that...actually kind of sucks .

As someone who can't die, Wade thinks, I guess I should've been expecting this sooner.

But no one had expected it.

How many people prophesied the end of the world and had it come true? In his experience, it was the mooks who stood on street corners, perched on a wood box, raving about sins and the end of the world. Naturally, they were laughed at, or ignored, or people engaged in conversation with them for shits and giggles, and then went about their day.

Well, weren't they all feeling silly now?

Except they're not. Because they're dead.

Everyone is dead.

The streets are rancid with the smell of rotting corpses - the ones who didn't get back up, that is. The ones so horribly chewed and eaten there's nothing left to come back from. But even though Wade can't die, nor can he contract the virus that made the whole world its bitch, he still has a hand on the glock strapped to his thigh as he steps around the decaying remains of what used to be a woman.

That might've once been a woman. It's hard to tell.

Okay, maybe he was lying before. It's not stone cold silent. There's cawing crows as they pick at salvageable corpses. And flies. The buzzing of thousands of flies. A constant hum permeates every street Wade trudges down, loudest around the corpses left behind, and Wade uses those as homing beacons to avoid stepping in some poor schmucks remains.

It's been days since he's come across dead walkers. Or the walking dead. Or infected. Or zombies. Whichever term you preferred in your post-apocalyptic experience, the point is he hasn't seen one in a while.

Which is sad, but only because he's starting to get lonely. Who knew that at the end of the world it would only take days before he started missing the ravenous monsters that kept trying to bite his face off? He'd expected it to take a few months at least. A few years at most.

But nope. Three months after seeing his last non-dead human, and two weeks since he saw a zombie, and suddenly he's a bleeding heart who can't take the isolation. It's not like he was batting 10 in the friends department before everything went to shit, but he still had a handful of people he could go to.

But that doesn't matter, dear diary, his thoughts continue, Because even if there are no more living people, and most of the zombies fled the city in search of squishy flesh to eat, there has to be SOMEONE left alive.

Sure, the infection decimated the world in record breaking speeds. Sure, the only reason Wade wasn't a flesh-consuming corpse was because his healing factor gave him the cheat codes to viruses. But, at the end of the day, this is HUMANITY. And humanity never gives up.

"Well, that's a load of bull," Wade harped aloud, climbing over a barricade of overturned cars.

Shut up, I'm trying to be sentimental .

"Try something else. The last thing I need is 'humanity always has hope and that's what makes us human' bullshit. There wasn't much humanity when we saw that little girl eating her mom alive."

Never thought we'd shoot a kid in the head like that. Heh - hello new trauma. Welcome to the family! Don't expect to be unpacked, we don't have time for that emotional headache.

"Hehehe, be prepared for domestic abuse, emotional manipulation, and lifelong guilt tripping," Wade cheered, kicking a grimy handbag across the street with a skip. "The three ingredients to the nuclear family dream."

Nuclear in the most literal sense after the government dropped those bombs!

"Yeah, it really decimated the population. Humanity really went out with a bang."

You know talking to yourself isn't going to make you any less lonely, right?

Wade's shoulders dropped, "Yeah."

Yeah .

Like the start of any good post-apocalyptic story, Wade was out hunting for grub. Looting any store that hasn't been cleaned out already, and stuffing himself with any non-preservative he was lucky enough to come across - which was rare. He had to cultivate a new diet around canned beans and twinkies.

"Wish I had a twink."

You mean twinkie .

"That's what I said."

He rounded a street he hadn't ventured down yet, footsteps echoing off the blacktop uncomfortably loud in the silence, and came to a stop in front of a corner store. It looked fairly intact, considering the state of other stores he's come across. A minimum amount of broken windows, and the lights might still be working. That was super rare to find since most of the power grid got knocked out some time ago - maybe they invested in generators?

As seemingly empty as it was, the glock on his thigh made its way to his hand as he nudged the door open with the toe of his boot. It creaked, and the bell above jingled painfully, ominously loud . Wade winced. Even if he hasn't seen a zombie for a while, it doesn't mean they all found their way out of the city. Sometimes they got trapped behind walls and doors, and stumbled around in the dark until they came across something to sink their rotting teeth into.

He didn't pencil in getting chewed on his calendar, and he already learned a harrowing lesson when he went scouting through Avengers Tower looking for people who were supposed to be equipped to handle this kind of thing.

Oh boy, the look on our face when we found all the Avengers zombified. And dead! Looks like someone got to them before us. That Ms. Pepper Potts got a hella strong bite though.

Wade kept his gun up as he tread across the linoleum floor, whipping around aisles, prepared to shoot, but no one appeared. He rounded a few more corners, and then stomped his feet, and knocked over a stack of cereal boxes to draw out any undead that might be in the area. Stillness followed.

"And we're clear," he announced, shoving the gun back inside its holster. "Good job everyone, brilliant work, cookies all around. "He grabbed one of the hand baskets near the cash register and strolled through the aisles. And what a stroke of luck! Maybe the looters had overlooked this gold nugget because most of its shelves are still stocked. He adds a few canned foods to his stash, and then cookies, and gummy bears, but what he was really looking forward to was the produce aisle.

The non-perishables would be here for him later, it was the fresh food that was a pain in the ass to find. Even now, patches of rot were showing up on lettuce and celery sticks. The power was still on for this building, for the time being, so this produce was a little more fresh than others he encountered.

"Ma would be so proud of me," he mused, picking up a carrot stick. He stuffed a few choice vegetables in his basket and then moved to the fruits, which were faring far worse. Probably because the vegetables still had those sprinklers keeping them cool and fresh.

"Oh, what have we here?" Wade cooed, picking out an apple that didn't have a patch of rot on it, and immediately frowned. It was plastic. One of those fake ones you'd put in a decorative table arrangement.

Pursing his lips, he put it back and moved onto the bananas. All of them were rotten aside from one bundle, and when Wade picked it up, confirmed that it was plastic as well. It was when he found a bunch of rubber grapes stuffed inside a food bag, did he pick up a running theme.

Well, this doesn't feel right. Trap?

"Trap," Wade agreed, bringing Mr. McGun out once more, hefting the basket over his other arm as he gingerly stepped around the fruit stand.

Either some poor, unfortunate bitten soul got smarter and was trying to lure survivors into this store with fresh food, or he wasn't as alone as he thought.

"Alright," he called, "I know you're in here. If you're a living breathing hooman, like myself, then I don't want to put a bullet in your head. Will make me feel bad if I'm only adding to the zombies kill count. If you're a zombie looking for a good time, you're not my type."

Silence follows.

Huh...maybe he was mistaken. Maybe it was all just an old hoax.

And then a clutter of noise comes from a display of kids toys and he whips around, gun aimed, as a head pops into his line of sight. A man's head. Wade's so shocked he almost drops his gun. But that would be unprofessional.

From the neck up the man looks about as scuffed up and dirty as one would expect, but he has a strange, twisted look on his face as he examines Wade up and down.

"Deadpool?"

Wade's gun lowers a fraction, "Uh..random guy I don't know?"

And then, the craziest thing Wade's experienced during this apocalypse happens, the man smiles at him. Genuine relief split his face, and that felt about as strange and life threatening as a horde of zombies chasing him.

"I can't believe you're still here," the guy breathed, "Or, I guess it makes sense. With your healing factor and all. They probably can't infect you, can they?" His face fell, momentarily overcome with skepticism, "Can they? You better not be a walking, sentient zombie. I really, really don't want to deal with that right now."

"Okay, hold up, time out," Wade held up the universal time out sign, gun and all. "Look man, happy to see you too , hugs and kisses, we should totally get together and gossip, but," he aimed the gun again, "I don't even know who you are."

"You don't - oh," the man smacked his hand against his forehead, " Right , I guess you wouldn't. The name's Peter Parker."

Wade squinted. Peter Parker . Where has he heard that name before?"

"Peter Parker. Where have I heard that name - ?" Peter Parker rounded the stack of board games he was using as cover, and the first thing Wade's eyes zero on are the scraps of red and blue spandex visible behind a scrappy jacket hanging off his shoulders. "SPIDEY Holy shit, are you actually him? This isn't a joke? This is for realsies? For real real? You're not masquerading as a hero so you can lead me to your den of zombified-loved ones to feed me to them as a sick display of love?"

Peter quirked an eyebrow, "That's...oddly specific."

"Yeah, happened to me down in Maine. Long story. You didn't answer my question. Are you the real deal or am I going to spend another night crying myself to sleep?"

"I'm as real as you are, buddy."

"Well, given the state of written medium we're in, that's not exactly plausible is it? I think a little demonstration is in order, dontcha think?"

Without missing a beat, a piece of sticky white gunk (not that kind) spurts from Peter Parker's wrist and latches onto the gun, yanking it out of Wade's hand and into his own.

"Yep," Wade grumbled, shaking his pinched fingers, "That feels familiar."

"Yeah, I'm the real deal," Peter - Spider-Man - beamed.

He can't believe that this is how he learns Spider-Man's identity. In a ransacked store during the apocalypse. There weren't even fairy lights, or candles, or declarations of love.

Peter's smile fades in the seconds that follow, dimming in shine, and he casually walks beside the fruit stand across from Wade, observing the mounds of rotten apples like this were a normal Saturday thing. (Saturday? Wednesday? Who took track of days anymore, it's the apocalypse.)

"So...how've you been?"

Wade snorted a laugh, a noise tugged out him like someone had tied it with a string and yanked it from his sternum. "Oh you know," he walked on the opposite side of the stand, pretending to look over the rotting piles of...tomatoes? "Killed a zombie down near 7th Avenue. Hunkered down in my apartment for a few weeks. Looted an ammunition shop. When do you think the mayor is going to do something about all these zombies?"

Peter's lips quirked upward as he picked up the plastic apple decoy, "It's really unbecoming of the city," he agreed, "What will our tourists think?"

"Exactly. I think I may have to petition for some changes. Can I count on your signature?"

Peter tapped his chin, as if thinking it over, "We'll see. How do I know you've got our best interests at heart?"

"Oh believe me, baby, I've got your best interests at heart," He winked and Peter snorted, rolling his eyes. The flirt came easy, a seamless part of Wade's repertoire. He's spent many nights engaging in banter just like this with Spider-Man, it was like clicking together a puzzle piece.

"Sorry, I don't put out on the first date," said Peter, throwing the apple in the air and catching it again, "I'm not that type of girl."

"Gimme another chance, babe, I can do so much better than this," Wade gestured around the store, "I'm talking the best bunker in the 5 boroughs, quality canned beans, and..." he paused for flourish, "a mattress with no bugs."

Peter gasped, a hand on his cheek, "No mattress bugs?"

Wade braced himself on the stand, dropping his voice to a low husky whisper, "No mattress bugs."

"Tempting, tempting offer, stranger. But I might miss my mattress bugs. They keep me company."

Wade laughed, but it strains near the end, breaking their game, "But seriously Webs, Webby, my Dearest Arachnid, you've got somewhere to go? Is there anyone else with you? Or are you lone-gunning it?"

Peter sobered, pain fluttering across his face. "No," he said, and that single word holds so much, Wade feels it in the hollow of his chest. "There's no one left."

"Do you..." Wade rubbed his arms, "want to come with me? Maybe? If there's nothing left for you here? A partnership?"

Peter quirked an eyebrow, some of that earlier amusement coming back, but it's lackluster. "What are you proposing?"

"Someone to watch your back," Wade offered, "Someone to help loot and scavenge for food," he cleared his throat, standing a little straighter, "I was planning to leave the city pretty soon. Head up towards the X-Mansion to see if there's anyone left there. S'why I'm in New York to begin with, thought I'd check on the Avengers too, but - well..."

"Yeah," and Peter's voice is grave, "That was...a whole mess."

"So you saw them?"

"Saw them," Peter's smile turns humorless and dry, "I fought them. Who do you think prevented them from getting out of the tower?" he rubbed his arms hard, looking down. "Figured they...they wouldn't want to be stuck like that, you know? Harming people like that."

"Put them out of their misery," Wade agreed solemnly. He couldn't count on both hands how many kills he's made like that. "I don't think there's anyone left here. About scouted the whole city." He peered at Peter thoughtfully, "Why are you still here?"

Peter laughed tightly, "Thought I would stay here, try to lure survivors out. That's what these were for," he tossed the apple to Wade, "And why I've kept the generators going."

He paused, and then huffed a chuckle, "I've never really been outside New York," he admitted, "Kind of a stupid thing to worry about at a time like this, huh?"

"A little stupid, yeah," Wade agreed, but spread his arms wide, "But hey, no better time to travel then now, right? You don't need to let anyone know, don't have to take any time off work, and there will be little to no traffic. Whaddya say?"

Peter laughed, rubbing his arms up and down again. He stared out the window, solemnity returning, like he'd spotted something particularly upsetting outside. Wade didn't know what was keeping him here, or why he was so hesitant, but he's on a time crunch. The sooner he gets to X-Mansion, the sooner he can figure out if they're well and truly fucked.

Peter took a long, steady breath, and turned to Wade, a new fire in his eyes. He stuck out a hand, "Peter Parker. Spider-Man."

Wade grinned, taking it in his own, "Wade Wilson. Deadpool. Happy to have you on board, pard'ner."

Peter smiled, "Happy to be here."

Dear diary, maybe I was being hasty before when I said there was no one left.

There's one person left. Not quite a twink, but...well...

Close enough.