Chapter Text
New York always felt different at night. It was part of the reason why so many people hated it, and part of the reason Peter absolutely loved it.
The smoke that rose out of the city manholes swirled and sat in the air differently. The subway stations seemed to meld into strange and liminal spaces. The street lights reflected in the wet tarry asphalt streets had a different shine about them. Even the shadows in New York stood differently, especially this high up from Peter’s spot perched on the roof of a metal cargo carrier docked by the pier. He loved the very edges of the tall rooftops, loved the biting wind in his face each time he swung his body between skyscrapers. He loved the smell of toasted nuts in the winter and horchata under the subway stations in the summer. He loved the way the rusted orange metal of fire escapes felt under his thighs during the quiet moments of patrols, no matter how many times he had to question his last tetanus shot.
He loved the people, too - how willing they were to come together, how short their tempers for bullshit were, how, for the most part, they appreciated Spider-Man’s help, he loved how he got to meet people he never would have known otherwise. And he loved that he could help them.
He could do without dodging bullets from criminals and hurting his spinnerets each time he had to hoist the weight of a falling building or a tipping car. He wasn’t totally fond of the bruised ribs and the scraped face and the rancid piss that wafted out of every alley he inevitably ended up in. He could only tell his Aunt that it was the fault of a school bully or mugger so many times before it would start to be a problem, and it always made guilt pool deep in his belly.
And past one in the morning with the mist from the Hudson clinging to his suit and dancing around his vision, Peter was not overly fond of the people he was looking for. He was leaping nimbly from container to container, his feet landing silently as he listened for any sign of life. He only had to wait a few more minutes before he heard the distant sound of rubber on wet cement, a chunky black car pulling up beside the cargo holds of the pier.
Six men got out, quiet as they weaved their way through the massive shipping crates. Peter followed along effortlessly unnoticed from the tops of the containers, finally perching on the one right behind them when the men stop. Peter cocked his head curiously, watching with bated breath as one man pulled out a key, took the thick padlock between his hands, and opened the cargo box with the rattling, groaning sound of rusting metal. Peter winced, bunching his shoulders for a second until his heightened senses calmed down.
When the door opened, Peter leveled his gaze and bit back the shocked horror as he saw dozens of women and young children crammed inside, huddled together as far away from the door as possible. They were wincing against the sudden brightness of the pier, raising their hands to their faces to protect themselves or shield the light. None of them were clean, and some of the children were coughing or being held in the arms of women. Peter wondered how long they were left in there without food or water or medicine.
As soon as Peter noticed the man’s hand reaching for a gun in his waistband, he got into a crouch and shot a web at the gun, sending it out of his grasp and a few hundred yards behind them. All the men turned abruptly to him, narrowing their eyes as they strained to make him out from his height. The five other men surrounded the first, guns trained on Peter.
“You’d think a trafficking ring this size would be able to afford better hospitality. This is just inconsiderate,” Peter admonished, and in almost comical unison, the safeties of five guns clicked off. Peter shot a gun out of another man’s hand, webbing it to the wall of a cargo hold several paces away. In his surprise, Peter took the opportunity to web him to the wall, too.
“This doesn’t concern you, Spider-Man,” the first man spat out his name like it burned. “We’re giving them a better life; you have nothing to worry about.”
Peter rolled his eyes. “Do they give you guys a handbook when you, like, join a trafficking ring? Seriously, I’ve heard that a hundred times, and I really don’t think anyone would agree to this if you actually told them what it’d be like.”
Before anything else could happen, a sharp tingle shot through the base of Peter’s neck down his spine, and he looked over just as a bullet whizzed through the air and landed in the chest of another armed man. He dropped to the floor, crumpled on top of his gun.
Peter stared in shock for only a split second before whipping his head toward the source of the stray bullet. A tall, muscular man in a red and black suit popped his head out from one of the cargo crates, flipping his gun around with his finger through the trigger, seemingly without a care in the world. Peter’s jaw clenched as he stared between Deadpool and the dead man on the floor.
“Hey!” Peter shouted, standing abruptly. He whispered a stern, “stay” to the remaining four men before screaming, “Deadpool, what the hell!”
Deadpool whipped his head toward Spider-Man just in time to see a wild streak of red and blue swing through the air, dodging between cargo containers fluidly before crashing feet-first into his chest and knocking him several feet away into another metal container.
“I was here first!” Spider-Man shouted, landing deftly on his feet and stomping over to Deadpool, who’s made a decent dent in the metal on impact.
“God, ouch!” Deadpool groaned, rubbing his chest. “Spidey, baby boy, I’ve missed you!”
Peter started to close the distance between them. He could sense the four men behind them unsure what to do, stood with their guns hesitantly raised toward both vigilantes.
“You killed one of them,” Peter bit out. Deadpool was getting to his feet as Spider-Man stood right in front of him.
“Uh, yeah, and I’m not done,” Wade said coldly, and then, “Are you seriously going to object to me killing human traffickers? They’re scum, Web-Head, I’m killing people that deserve to die.”
“Nobody deserves to die. They shouldn’t be able to make that call, and neither should we.” Peter peered up at him, resisting the urge to get on his toes and hoping he seemed stern enough.
“Yeah, well…” Deadpool shrugged his shoulders, and before Peter could question the distinctly gory sound of ribs and sternum fusing back together, Deadpool took advantage of their proximity and grabbed Spider-Man by the shoulders and flipped them so Peter was slammed roughly into the metal wall, colliding with a strained oof. With one hand, Deadpool reached behind him and shot without looking. He didn’t need to. Peter saw another one of the men drop to the floor with his hands hovering near his abdomen.
“Stay out of this one, Spidey. Let the bad man take care of the worse men,” he crooned, dark and melodic, looking down at Peter with a smile that stretched the red leather of his mask. Peter stared up at him for a moment before pressing the webbed grip of his palms to the wall and wrapping his legs around Deadpool’s chest and twisting his body hard, propelling Wade to the ground underneath him, knocking his breath out momentarily.
A tingle shot down his neck and Peter snapped his head to the side just as one of the men was creeping back closer to the cargo hold with the women in it. “I said don’t move!” Peter yelled, shooting a thick cord of webbing at the man and pinning him to the door of the cargo hold from his straddle on Deadpool’s chest. Peter watched the man struggle and fail to break out of the webbing until he noticed Deadpool staring up at him curiously. In a single second, Deadpool wrapped one tight hand around his left wrist, pressing down on his spinneret hard and lifting his arm. Peter instantly stiffened and cried out sharp and ragged, leaping off his thighs and onto his knees to alleviate some of the pull.
“I knew those were part of you and not your costume,” Deadpool hummed, a shocked but prideful lilt to his voice. “Sensitive?” Peter bit down another cry, grinding his teeth. God. Fuck Deadpool. And fuck him especially right now. Peter's neck strained as he tipped his head up, wanting to try and pull his hand away but afraid it'd backfire and Deadpool would only strengthen his grip before he could get free.
Spider-Man ignored the very unmanly whine that slipped past his throat, the sharp painful throb from his spinneret and up his arm taking the forefront of his brain. Deadpool watched, part-grimace and part-interest. "I knew they'd probably hurt, 'cause, like, that was the point right now, but I kinda half-thought they were also some sort of, I dunno, Spidey erogenous zone things."
"What the fuck?" Peter choked out. Because, fine, okay, sometimes they were sensitive-sensitive, but definitely not right now. Right now and most other times they were bad-sensitive. Right now they just hurt. And Peter would never tell Deadpool that anyway, mainly because Peter still didn’t quite know how it actually worked.
Deadpool shrugged and used the added space of Spider-Man getting to his knees to press his other hand into the dip of Spider-Man’s opposite hip, using the new momentum to throw Spider-Man off him and onto the ground on his back. He kept one hand clamped over Spider-Man’s wrist as he maneuvered himself on top of him, inclining his head to aim at one of the last two men slowly inching away.
Spider-Man’s eyes widened and he pushed past the incessant, nerve-deep, swelling pain in his wrist to jerk his hips up, ramming the heel of his free palm into Deadpool’s nose with a sickening crack. Deadpool’s trigger arm jostled with the movement underneath him and the shot flew past the cargo hold toward the Hudson, head knocking back as dark blood immediately began to seep across the fabric of his mask.
Deadpool cursed with a yowl of pain and frustration, looking down at Spider-Man with a piercing expression as he squeezed the hold on his wrist more tightly. Peter let out a muffled sob as Deadpool spoke, “Would you - just stay fucking still for a god-damned second while I -” Deadpool fired again, and this time his shot rang true with the sound of a body hitting the dirt floor. There was only one man left, and Peter already had taken his gun away. “Finally, fuck!”
Tears pricked the corners of his eyes. Peter couldn’t fight the pained, overstimulated whimper that tore past his lips, clenching and unclenching his fist in some effort to reposition Deadpool’s hold on his wrist. Deadpool looked down at him immediately, a surprised expression across his mask before his face softened and his hand loosened, fingers coming off the tendon beneath his spinneret. Spider-Man gasped, head tipping up to suck in greedy breaths without the hitches of pain.
“Fuck. Hey, now,” Deadpool started, something unnervingly careful in his voice as he loosened his grip a notch more and watched the relief flood through Spider-Man’s body, "I didn’t wanna hurt you too bad like that, cutie, but...”
But there’s still one guy left, Peter answered for him.
Peter wanted to make sure that the last guy didn’t get his head blown off by Deadpool, but Deadpool seemed more or less fine waiting a second for Peter. Like, sure, he’d rather shoot the guy, but didn’t care too intensely either way. Ever the unhinged gentleman, or whatever, Peter thought weakly. Physically, Peter couldn’t ruminate on it much more, because Deadpool’s big hand was still wrapped around his wrist, and the piercing ache of it was so much better but still there, and he was still making kind of pathetic sounds with each short breath he let out as the pain slowly eased, and fine—he did maybe still need a second.
“When I wanted you whining and squirming, it wasn’t like this, I pinky-promise. I take limits and mutual enjoyment very seriously.” It sounded flippant, maybe because Deadpool was implying… something, but his tone was almost humiliatingly earnest, his off-white eye plates big and severely sincere as they stared down at him.
The conversation only made Peter squeak, because of all people, how was Deadpool the guy that Spider-Man probably interacted with the most? Maybe the squeak was misinterpreted, because Deadpool’s hand came off his wrist and down to his forearm, and finally, Peter could work with that.
Keeping up the pained breaths that made Wade think he still needed a moment to recover, Peter shuffled a few inches up to bring his legs out from under Deadpool’s, pressing his feet into Deadpool’s hips and flipping him over his head, Peter landing on his hands and knees somewhere by Deadpool’s head. Peter took the split second to shoot a web at the last man’s wrist. It launched him back into one of the containers, trapped there.
“Little shit,” Deadpool growled, pushing himself up with a speed that rivaled Peter’s own, taking him by the bicep and pushing him into the dented cargo container before he could get to the last man. Deadpool had a knee wedged hard between Peter’s thighs before Peter could even make a move. He choked back a grunt, swallowing against the hard lump that formed in his throat and the pain twisting in his lower belly. Peter grasped at any leverage he could get to push himself onto his tiptoes and away from Deadpool’s knee. “Not wearing a cup tonight, Webs?” Deadpool questioned, bracketing Spider-Man’s head with his hands before Peter could try pushing himself up off the wall. Peter could hear the pout in Deadpool’s voice, the wry sweetness. Ugh.
“If you know a company that makes cups designed for people fighting mutants and mutates, let me know,” Peter gasped.
“Oh, will do, doll,” Deadpool purred, and then, “Hey, wait, you do have a healing factor, right?” His knee twitched in place in consideration, which frankly only made things worse.
Spider-Man gave a long-suffering sigh and took advantage of the ridiculous conversation to bring his hands together and up over his head before ramming them down into the crooks of Deadpool’s arms, breaking the bracket and pressing the webbed grip of his feet to the wall to push up and flip over Deadpool. Deadpool turned around to face him.
“Why do you have to be such a damn saint to people who don’t deserve it?” Deadpool asked, already adjusting the gun in his hand to click off the safety.
Peter made a grab for the gun that Deadpool avoided in favor of throwing a sharp punch. Peter dodged the brunt of it, his fist meeting Peter’s mouth instead. Peter could taste the blood on his split lip already, could smell the tinny metal.
Damn it, Deadpool. The suit was a hassle to clean without Aunt May noticing; he’d had to scrub blood out of his suit hunched over the burning water of their tiny shower too many times to count. “Why do you have to play God with people’s lives! Just let me handle it.” Peter rolled his mask up to the bridge of his nose, spitting blood onto the ground.
“Ain’t you a sight,” Deadpool hummed, but his expression under his mask looked halfway to a wince.
Peter was considering spitting directly at Deadpool when the sound of police sirens blared in the distance, getting closer. Peter grinned, teeth lined red. Fuck, finally. Took them long enough.
Deadpool heard the sirens and immediately turned to the last man standing, setting his aim with skilled ease. Peter slammed into him, shooting a web that launched the last man onto the roof of the cargo container and trapping him there before Deadpool’s shot could land.
“Who the fuck called the cops?” Deadpool snarled, reluctantly holstering his gun and squinting toward the benches by the pier as if somebody with a phone would be staring back at him.
“You, probably,” Spider-Man said, rolling his mask back down with a muffled gasp of pain. “You got off five freaking shots, Deadpool. You just had to be murder-happy in the middle of New York City. I bet everyone called the cops.”
Four squad cars with their sirens blazing pulled up along the pier’s entrance in a chorus of screeching tires and burnt rubber. Spider-Man and Deadpool took off in a silent sprint, putting as much ground between them and the crime as possible before they left the pier.
Deadpool was following him, which was annoying, because he never seemed to have any problems getting over a fight, even when it was about a fundamental belief system. It was also annoying because Peter was hurting and sleepy and he had school tomorrow and he somehow had to figure out an excuse to explain his sorry state to his Aunt before morning. And he just watched Deadpool shoot people. So.
"Wasn’t so bad, huh, Spidey?” Deadpool asked, trailing behind Peter as he walked-limped away from midtown Manhattan. “Three for me and three for you.”
Peter furrowed his brows before realization hit him and he clenched his jaw. Three killed, three spared. “No,” Peter grit out, not turning around or letting Deadpool catch up, “it was bad. None of them needed to die. I was handling it.”
“Nobody ever needs to die,” Deadpool said from somewhere behind him, his combat boots hitting the gum-pocked sidewalk, “They chose to kill and hurt people. I returned the favor.”
That’s it. That’s where they were different. Peter sighed. The brisk early-October air kept him alert as he walked down the mostly-barren streets and chilled the damp hair at the nape of his neck.
They walked in the same direction until Peter made it to Williamsburg Bridge. “This your stop?” Wade asked, too friendly given the shit storm that just happened.
“Sort of. See you, Deadpool,” Peter said, shooting a web at the nearest suspension cable. Neither of them missed Peter’s hiss of pain as he put his weight on his left spinneret, propelling his body forward and swinging through the bridge’s cables in a blur of sweeping arches. All Deadpool could do was blow a noisy kiss as he swung away.
He had an AP Physics test tomorrow. He had an appointment with his academic advisor to talk about his college applications. His wrist hurt a lot. And his lip kept scabbing over and splitting again. And he wished they made athletic cups for superheroes. And he wished Deadpool didn’t always heal so damn fast. And most of all, Peter wished he could understand a single shred about Deadpool for longer than five minutes without him switching things up. Their dynamic was constantly up in the air, which was so damn weird to Peter, because Deadpool wasn’t a villain, he was an antihero. A vigilante who, in the end, did the right thing, in the most wrong ways possible. He and Deadpool were two extreme sides of the same coin, and it was confounding and terrifying and weird.
They ran into each other somewhat often, maybe once or twice a month, and in that way, Deadpool had been a constant in Spider-Man’s life in the most ridiculous ways since he was barely fifteen. By constant, Peter means it as loosely as physically possible. Constant like literally running into each other two years ago when Peter was swinging without looking. Constant like finding each other in various stages of battered and beaten on some solitude rooftop. Constant like bickering and causing public disturbances over how to handle villains and criminals as civilians made phone calls about two men in red positively pummeling each other. Constant like Deadpool wolf-whistling at Peter’s lithe body swinging through the air and constant like Peter narrowing his eyes in equal parts morbid fascination, awe, and discomfort as Deadpool managed to effortlessly switch from lewd and chatty and downright unhinged to cool and calculated and lethal.
Whether through fighting against each other over the moral way to do things, or fighting beside each other, he and Deadpool had the aggravating habit of matching each other’s stamina, of matching each other’s fighting styles with a ferocity that hurt like fuck. But holy hell, was he a wild card. Peter could never reconcile how someone so calculated and smart and trained and dangerous could offer to buy him a street taco with a few inappropriate comments one night, and fight him over the right way to punish unanimously acknowledged bad guys the next night.
He leaped off of Williamsburg Bridge a few minutes later and swung from rooftop to rooftop through Brooklyn to give his spinnerets a needed break. By the time he got to Forest Hills, it was nearing four in the morning, and Peter landed quietly on the rusted fire escape outside of his bedroom. With a webbed grip, he opened his window as silently as possible, sticking one leg through before pausing and pressing his forehead to the cool dirty window, his muscles searing. By the time he closed the window behind him, all his energy was focused on keeping his eyes open. He peeled off his suit in the dark of his bedroom, muttering a stream of tight-lipped curses as the fabric of his mask stuck to the dried blood on his lip.
Peter was moving with his eyes closed by the time he shoved his dirty suit into the bottom of his backpack and gingerly stripped out of his underwear in place of boxers. A wave of dizzy relief hit him when his head met the pillow, and he grappled blindly for a pillow to wedge between his thighs before rolling onto his side and holding his left wrist delicately in his hand. Ice packs be damned, Peter hated the way his heightened senses reacted to them, and he always woke up with his healing factor in full effect, cold and damp from useless cold packs.
He fell asleep relieved knowing that all those women and kids would be okay, that they’d get food and medicine and shelter and a team to advocate for them.
He thought of Wade belatedly, lip splitting again as his mouth worked its way into a pout. At least the traffickers were paying for their crimes one way or another.
God, Deadpool.
Asshole.