Chapter Text
The air is stiflingly hot, and just the way everything sticks together with sweat, slow slide and pop makes it feel more sultry still. Every impending separation threatens to turn Peter into shrapnel in the worst way. Peter could be pressed up against a brick wall and he might not notice the difference. It’s wet, or he’s wet; humidity clouds everything and rivulets gather in the small of his back and between his feathered shoulder blades in searing pools, trapped by spandex and an alpha’s body crushed along his. The muscles are hard and thick slabs he’s cemented against either way, leaving his hands to seek for a handhold whether he likes it or not.
It’s better now that they’re close. He’s stifling most of his noises.
The muscle mass Peter is crammed up against breathes, an avalanche in miniature, stones shift, and Peter’s breath catches for the impact over and over but Deadpool is just holding him, hands oppressively huge and the only points of cold on Peter’s body. There’s no posturing to drag at Peter’s already fractured attention; the closest Deadpool has gotten to a display is the half-spread wings guarding overhead. But even as he marshals his focus to try to peel his hand away, Peter is losing the battle not to grind on Deadpool’s thigh. Deadpool is letting him.
Deadpool. Jesus. You know, Peter never really envisioned his first time going through this particular shitstorm being with—with someone so—
One hand successfully pried away, ha! Peter’s heartbeat soars.
Deadpool rubs his palm unerringly over the small of Peter’s back, only there, seemingly unconcerned with the leg humping, letting Peter test the limits of his control. “Breathe,” he prompts. Peter’s pulse flutters wildly. His hand shakes where he’s yanked it just an inch short of the alpha’s hard waist. He fights in a frail thread of oxygen and it’s the elation of success that shatters his focus. His hand plasters back against the alpha, his thoughts soupier than ever, lips unable to close, crying out as he finally remembers how to push air back into his lungs. His tongue tastes too much like himself. He scrabbles in vain for that handhold, fingers full of downy, clumpy coverts when there’s nothing else to cling to. Sound comes out whimpering and shocked as oxygen gets past his sopping mouth and overhead he can see the alpha’s inky feathers flaring out in the instinctive response to a mating cry.
So he can feel it, Peter thinks treacherously. My heat does affect him, even if he’s not—
“Gonna die,” Peter moans. Deadpool pulls at one of the hands Peter is clawing him with, replacing the handful of feathers with his hard, sinewy hands. Their fingers lace. Peter squeezes down compulsively, breathes, and feels his knees go liquid. Tremors fold down his spine and Deadpool is literally all that is holding him up, because Peter’s body is in full agreement; he needs to be on his back, and he needs to be there yesterday. In a pool of sweat and slick and covered by the hot, heavy blanket of his alpha, to overheat and fuck his wetness away. His wings ache beneath his costume, resenting confinement. But of the reasons that might explain why Deadpool hasn’t taken spectacular advantage of the situation, ego is the most likely, and Peter isn’t inclined to test him for the relief of being able to show off.
“Please, what kind of anticlimactic finale are you talking about here?” Deadpool’s thumb rubs at the back of Peter’s hand. “A heart attack? Gimmicky. It’d be rewritten in under thirty seconds. And you’d be a boring dead guy.”
Peter’s chuckle goes pained and whining in his throat. “Bet I’d make a fascinating coma patient, though—”
He chokes on his own tongue and Deadpool has to order him to breathe again, has to ramble into the gaps left by Peter’s desperate panting. Deadpool’s smell is like paprika and chili pepper. The harder he tries not to breathe, the worse it gets, because Deadpool smells so, so alpha, in a way that checks every box for Peter’s rampaging hormones. This is the only viable mate in Peter’s hiding space. His instincts know what has to be done.
His instincts can jump off a bridge, frankly.
“Can comatose people talk? I mean, it’s just like being asleep but with a bunch of tubes doing your shit for you. Maybe that’s why they can’t talk, because of the tube that deals with breathing? Maybe someone could give you one of those finger-twitch things—or wait, are you saying you cannot contribute to conversations? Spidey, Spidey, Spidey-widey.” It’s all throaty alpha croon, one that makes Peter’s spine arch and his teeth clench—but it gives more sanity than it takes and Deadpool cheats with his healing factor to limit the breaths he takes. “What have we discussed about letting bad people lower your self-esteem?”
Peter asphyxiates on a jolt of bitter laughter, then struggles to curse at Deadpool when everything inside his abdomen goes wild at the sensation, vibrates inside out until the slick is trickling down Peter’s thighs, all spasm and shake as he tries to fight it back and his eyes catch on the alpha’s half-mast wings. They’ve pulled higher now, like a lazy declaration of interest. Deadpool is fighting it. Peter’s breathing starts to pick up and Deadpool calms him with his hand curled against the back of Peter’s neck. For a moment, Peter hears himself and wants to die. He’s getting violent against Deadpool’s leg, sobbing as he struggles to get it over with, dragging his cock through its own mess.
The words are bitter, “This could not be less about my self-esteem.”
“Respect the bitching monopoly,” orders the alpha.
“There is no bitching monopoly,” Peter wheezes, because the worst thing he can do now is be quiet. “Try and fuck me. I’ll prove it.”
“Naughty word!”
Sure. Peter grits his teeth in frustration and Deadpool’s hands linger unwaveringly off of everything burning for his attention, so close his wingtips burn with sensitivity. Peter’s brain is trying to twist the situation into a sure loss, but that’s good. That’s very, very good, and far better than Peter could have dared to hope for, since he’s doing this with company. He presses his face closer to the alpha and sucks in as much of the heady, wildfire scent as he can bear. He sounds a little firmer when he spits, “Quit being nice.”
“Now you’re reaching. We’re too awesome for ‘nice’.” Deadpool’s hand shifts up between his shoulders, a little firmer, and goes back to petting him with only a heartbeat’s hesitation.
You’re not awesome, gets vetoed, and when what follows is, I don’t need you here, Deadpool, Peter settles into an uneasy silence. Alpha scent is coating his lungs. He’s shaking so hard his teeth seem to rattle. He knows why Deadpool keeps shifting his grip.
“Let me try?” Deadpool finally coaxes, voice pitched soft to the nervous omega.
Peter winces his eyes up and tries not to look like he’s scared out of his mind. “What? Don’t I look fine to you?”
Deadpool’s grip slides unobtrusively to the base of his skull and tightens just enough to demonstrate that struggling would be a very bad idea, even if he doesn’t call Peter a liar. “Let me,” he repeats, decisive, and leans in, wings faltering higher—jerking back down, fighting the urge to put on a mating display for the young omega at his mercy. Peter tenses, fists coiling tight.
Deadpool wants to scent mark him. It’s like the intimacy of flock doesn’t exist to him, like being that vulnerable (and gross. And everyone will smell alpha all over him for weeks afterwards) for another person is excusable. It can also suppress heat—if Peter accepts that Deadpool is dominant, if Deadpool refrains from having sex with him for long enough, if Peter doesn’t force the issue, if, if, if.
Scent marking requires contact with Peter’s throat, which is, surprise surprise, the exact same place an alpha can place a claiming bite—the one thing that has been drilled into Peter that cannot be undone, not ever, that will mark Deadpool as his mate for life and make Peter need him. Need him for exactly what his body wants right now, but unable to banish that need ever again, not even when he’s allowed to start taking his pills; his blood will still light on fire and every one of his impulses fused into the single intention to have someone mounting and breeding him because he’ll be owned for that express purpose by his blood and his wings and his cruel instincts.
It could be anyone who found him like this. But of course he’s alone with Deadpool. His stomach turns over again.
For the love of god, it’s not like Peter can help it; he can’t think of anything but being touched. Touched until he can’t be touched anymore at all without screaming from sensitization, from pleasure at having his alpha’s attention consumed by him. Scent marking him will subdue him for that bite, that claim, and anything else Deadpool wants. If the heat isn’t suppressed, that will be because Deadpool has taken him and bred his new mate full, given Peter’s body his child to bear. Peter’s instincts are so far past controlling, but he hangs on with his teeth and thinks he can hurt Deadpool—keep hurting him—so the alpha won’t regenerate fast enough to do anything. Peter’s eyes are burning.
“Shhh,” Deadpool purrs down, and Peter hears himself again, and feels utterly sick when he realizes he’s threatening Deadpool with it out loud. “Shh. I know.” His reassurance prompts another breath, another cascade of needy slick; Peter’s insides are contracting painfully tight. “Look, just nothing too extreme, because I still have to rip out spines and beat people with them if anyone else decides they want a piece of the action—not nobody but me gets the pleasure of your company. You mind starting with the legs?” Go ahead and kill me a few times if you’re worried, it’s alright.
Peter swallows convulsively and squeezes his eyes shut before Deadpool can touch him more. “I wouldn’t kill you.”
The alpha strokes his exposed throat and squeezes Peter’s hand firmly, warning the omega again; he’s not supposed to struggle. He’s not even supposed to talk. Deadpool addresses him again, growling. “No one’s going to fuck you, Spidey.”
Peter gasps in defeat at another surging in his belly, legs shaking half-terrified, half-relieved from a fresh river of slick. His voice is coming out an irredeemable whine. “I can handle this—“
“And all of us are impressed, alright?” Deadpool growls. “You did good, you fight like a motherfucker, you—” His arms are the most solid things in the world, and squeezing with them threatens to break him. Peter moans, what little strength he has left snatching sugar-coated words as his insides flush and rearrange and bite down on nothing at all. Through the mask, Peter can feel the outline of Deadpool’s lips pressed to his forehead. “—please, for the sake of all things holy and deep-fried, let me take a turn. I got this.”
Peter’s hips rock faster as he feels the first warm cloud of breath at his skin, mired in cloying, syrupy urgency and fighting against the current for all he’s worth. He takes a breath without being told and carefully sounds out the correct syllables this time, “Promise—“
Deadpool’s grip tightens. “Anything.”
Peter’s throat gags off miserably. There’s nothing Deadpool can promise him that matters. No leverage. No plan. He’s sixteen, he can’t control his first heat because his uncle is dead, and he’s trapped with an adult alpha. What happens next is entirely up to everyone but Peter.
“Do it,” Peter says instead, tasting copper as he bites into his cheek—and
And Deadpool surges the hard edge of his jaw against Peter’s throat. While Peter gulps air, the alpha nuzzles delicately over the spandex, tacky and dragging. His intoxicating scent rises thicker with intent. Peter gets one breath in.
From deep in chest, paralyzed and trembling as the alpha scent marks him, Peter keens. Even with their costumes preventing skin from meeting, it’s the most amazing combination of pheromones and sweat and Deadpool. Peter can still feel his belly clenching harder and thank god he can’t move. He can’t jerk himself off, no matter how urgent it feels. Peter’s desperation is razor-edged into focused pinpricks, waiting for any hint of teeth. Deadpool keeps his mouth away. Peter’s pulse races.
“Oh come on,” Peter croaks through his teeth out of sheer panic, “Now is not the time for you to explore the gift of silence; since when don’t you want to make fun of me?“ Peter really doesn’t have the lung capacity to be saying this, because his wheezing is rapidly transcending asthmatic “—Speak, your master commands you—ah—“
Deadpool pushes up against his ear and rumbles, alpha-dominant and rhythmic, primal, like grating rocks. Peter’s mouth falls open. There’s no buildup, just the sound going into him like a key in a precise lock. He comes helplessly and instantly, untouched and unmoving as his body convulses inside and his cock spreads its stain further. No buildup, and no resistance, just pleasure searing out of him. Deadpool, utterly unconcerned, tilts Peter’s head fully to the side to nuzzle his scent in again. Grants himself access to the vulnerable area like it belongs to him. Blood surges up, and Peter can feel it pulse, so sensitive Deadpool’s breath is like a caress, his touch is like asteroid collision. A bite there would end him.
He’s still coming, thoughts devastated as quickly as they form behind a wall of pleasure.
No one is talking and Deadpool’s wings are up all the way, arched high overhead in a magnificent display of dominance and challenge. Peter’s eyes blur. The alpha’s cool hand is holding him by Peter’s feverish throat. Peter doesn’t even know what’s up with his mouth right now. He can’t feel his tongue.
“Not working,” he slurs, tremulous and pitched-high with desperation. Deadpool’s response is another guttural grunt. He’s beyond words.
And suppression will take hours, hours more than Peter has. Pheromones mix in the air, lush and demanding. Slick trickles down his thighs. He’s ready to be bitten or fucked. Deadpool nuzzles again. Peter arches involuntarily, dragging himself up the alpha’s powerful, present body. Arousal surges so hard in that instant the world contracts completely out of alignment, his control buckles, and he screams this time, when orgasm tears its way out.
He can feel Deadpool’s growl rumble against him, sharp voice slicing through the cry of a desperate omega, “Spidey.”
Deadpool is everywhere. As Peter’s fever burns hotter, Deadpool is ice itself, words lost in the ragged edge of Peter’s cries, holding on tight, scent thickening the air in his lungs until it feels too heavy to move, detonating epicenters of pleasure into every point of contact. He sees stars when the alpha seizes his hips, only then realizing he’s moving again, rubbing languidly at Deadpool’s leg, nuzzling back against the alpha, mixing their scent further. He’s—he’s writhing, plastered close and begging for it, realizing with a bubble of panic that he can’t stop, that the pleasure is in the way like a physical barrier; cutting him off from his movement. Deadpool growls, restricting his motion, bathing his throat in contact, and Peter’s eyes roll up as orgasm finds its way into him yet again, too hard, too much, and he maybe blacks out for a little while.
Peter comes back down in a cascade of giggling.
“You are a giddy drunk,” Deadpool reports to Peter seriously, the words tinny and distant in his ears. Still, they register. Peter can process them again. “This is hilarious. I should be recording it for YouTube.” And Peter, because he’s conscious enough to understand English, but totally stripped of the filter keeps him in check, purrs deeply.
Something happens where Deadpool is curled around him, nuzzling his throat again.
It tingles and spreads like a blooming flower and feels deliciously cool. Peter moans in appreciation, and Deadpool’s answer is a guttural, throaty growl which continues after Peter’s purring chokes off into a feeling like sandpaper in his throat. The alpha leaves his neck wintergreen and frigid, and what he does next encourages Peter to regard him with genuine adulation.
Water. Peter’s shaking hands can’t hold on, but his involvement isn’t something Deadpool requires. The alpha thumbs Peter’s mask up enough to jab a straw into Peter’s gums—ow—and then there’s a curse, fumbling readjustment, an artificial taste and Deadpool’s thumb over his pulse point, teasing until Peter swallows and lukewarm water spills into his throat. It’s the best thing he’s ever tasted and Peter drags a shaking hand up to clutch at it—thermos, gloriously sweet water, while Deadpool holds it steady for him.
“Hey, not all at once. You’ll puke on me,” Deadpool cautions, “Way too many people puke on me.” He pulls the thermos away. Peter’s protest starts him coughing instead, hard enough that he nearly succeeds in bringing the water right back up. His body seizes the opportunity to send about a thousand complaints at once. When he can breathe, Peter lets his head fall to the side, inviting the alpha back into the chilled space at his throat before he really knows what’s he’s doing. Deadpool buries his face there indulgently and Peter relaxes into the sensation of being rubbed at. He giggles creakily, softer, aware that the tension in the overheated core of his body is beginning to give up and slow down.
“…Izt over?” Peter mumbles, voice so hoarse he barely recognizes himself.
“Expecting trumpets?” Deadpool’s hand is in the small of Peter’s back again, rubbing these little circles as he continues to meticulously spread his scent, utterly comforting. “Yeah, Spidey. Should be a little less party in your pants.”
Peter swallows, throat still grating—he wants more water, but he doesn’t feel like he’ll perish without it. The rest of him is—drenched. Oh, gross. His costume is soaked through all over, and from the smell he knows that below the waist, the majority of this is slick and come. He makes a face. “And how long…?” He’s sore and he can’t even feel his feet.
“Just a couple of hours,” Deadpool assures him, voice muffled. He’s turned into Peter’s throat so the young omega can feel his mouth moving against him. “You started winding down before the sun set. Hit send on your phone like you wanted and I didn’t even peek at the message. Yellow wanted to, but I was like, ‘say whaaaa? We have mad respect for the nerdy spider and can’t read his personal shit!’”
Peter’s mouth twitches into something like a smile. “I’m sure it was a trial.”
“It was a magical individual experience, baby boy. Your milkshake brings all the alphas to the yard, if you know what I mean. Very impressive. Like the eleventeenth wonder of the world.”
Peter cuddles closer, pretending it’s because he needs to cough again. His eyes are kind of burning. Deadpool’s arms tighten around him just as wordlessly, protective and cold. He has Peter. Right. He said that before.
He knows it doesn’t balance the scales when it comes to notifying Aunt May that he’s alright, or, or any of the things Peter can’t even face right now. They’re not relatives. It must have something to do with healing factor, since Peter’s pheromones didn’t drive Deadpool into a frenzy, but it’s not like he doesn’t feel things. Peter didn’t have sex. Deadpool didn’t even touch him. Peter can’t imagine how hard that was.
All Peter can do is murmur again, voice breaking as he tries to wring the inadequate words out, “Thank you—“
“Nah, don’t,” Deadpool cuts him off. “Shh. Come on, let me finish topping you off, baby boy; it’s going to feel even better in a minute.”
This time, Peter bares his throat without giving it a second thought.
It’s maybe three am when he finally hauls himself home, feeling remarkably less insane. Peter about scrubs his skin off in the shower, and passes out facedown in his bed, head whirling with ideas of how best to explain away his first heat (specifically, how he’ll bargain his way into suppressants now that his mating cycle is set and healthy). And homework, and Deadpool, and whether he can tell Gwen the truth, and whether he wants to, and how long it will be before the alpha scent that clings to him (no longer cloying and overpowering, but reassuring in a gut-deep way that Peter knows means something, but can’t work out what), fades into a distant, strange memory.
That’s sixteen. It goes a lot better than Peter would have expected.
.
There was this one fight where Peter had a running count of who he’d downed and who he still had left to deal with. Deadpool, who he did not know very well at the time, was in the middle column. The one for people whose allegiances probably got decided by coin flips and today’s flavor of coffee.
More accurately, Deadpool was the middle column.
That day he was on Peter’s side (sort-of) and expressed this by not trying to shoot Peter in the back of the head except for the first time, which was either a greeting or a mistake. Peter still had to keep him from shooting other people in the back of the head, but hey, you know, small favors. Once he’d dragged his selection of criminals from the groaning pile of bodies Peter was dutifully webbing to the concrete, Deadpool flapped over, towering heap of muscle that he was, and said in this booming deep voice, “Do you pine for me, omega?”
And Peter discovered that he was not too tired to throw a punch.
That was also sixteen.
.
Place Peter in a room full of people. Wait ten minutes and come back; observe. He’ll have relocated himself to the nearest empty corner. Repeat until test results are conclusive.
That’s something serious for an omega, something that comes with elaborate accusatory terms like obsessive social dysfunction complex and antisocial-evasion disorder. But Peter just thinks best in the quiet, is all. He likes to talk, sure, but he’s been forced into therapy enough to have heard himself explain only half-sarcastic; “they keep everybody distracted. Feels safer that way.”
Right.
Deadpool is where safe goes to die.
Peter has spent long hours in his room, glassy-eyed and staring into nothingness, sat on his bed, and thinking very, very hard about whether he’s allowed to like a villain.
Mostly a villain.
At least 70% a villain.
Definitely not, he’s concluded, and then is trying to steal Deadpool’s food again next Tuesday.
“You’re sixteen,” Deadpool said after the debacle with Shield and all the giant cyborg goats, “You’re a kid.” Peter stared and Deadpool’s mouth twisted. “I didn’t know that.”
Peter snorted. Deadpool’s tone implied sixteen might as well be in kindergarten as high school.
“I shot at you,” Deadpool interrupted before Peter could quip at him. “I don’t shoot at kids.”
“It’s the costume, right?” Peter said dryly. “Gotta be the costume. Just pisses people off.”
“I put you in danger.”
“I put myself in danger,” Peter countered. Deadpool glared at him. Peter glared back.
“Maybe you shouldn’t.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Peter drawled at him, “Shoot me? Ammo’s in the left pocket. I’m sure we can find a tumbleweed somewhere.”
Eating dinner with Deadpool while he was sulking was, Peter determined, hilarious.
“I refuse to hit on you ever again,” the alpha whined after they’d thrown the trash away, “Ever. My brain hurts from all this nope. Scratch that—my brain is gone and it is on a rocket bound for the moon. This is killing like 30% of my spank bank material.” He thought about it. “Okay, maybe 25%.”
Peter patted him on the shoulder. “There’s always Captain America.”
Deadpool perked up. “Ooh, yeah—“ Suddenly he wrung his hands. “You are but an innocent child! Are you even old enough to have this conversation?”
“I mean,” Peter shrugged a shoulder uncertainly, tilting his head as he pretended to think very hard about this. “Do you have enough thoughts that aren’t about hitting on people? Brain death is a very serious issue.”
Deadpool eyed him and said, with impressive sarcasm, “Spidey, you are a true hero.”
Peter dialed his smile up to blinding. “No kill rule. It applies.”
And Deadpool pouted—actually, visibly pouted—that one time when Peter showed up late with the drinks. Peter, for his part, gave up on pretending Tuesday wasn’t his favorite day of the week.
If Peter were inclined to believe in things like fate, maybe he’d find some special significance in how, even though Spiderman being an omega is basically the worst-kept secret in New York, it’s a Tuesday when he goes into heat. Deadpool is instantly at his side, before Peter even really knows why he feels so terrible, urging Peter into the defensible confines of an abandoned building, bristling in readiness for unseen threats as he sidles his way into Peter’s personal space. He won’t leave. Peter can’t even see Deadpool’s eyes behind the mask, but he can feel their unsteady weight skidding around him and carving him into the air, and it’s heavier than usual. Peter’s heart flutters up to his throat and trembles and his body confuses everything about this alpha and the familiar lies are as fragile as glass so that for an instant, Peter knows every rotten little undercurrent to this thing he has with Deadpool, and knows why this time he can’t throw the punch he probably should.
But that’s just sixteen, thank god, and by the time Deadpool has suppressed Peter’s heat the one time, the new instincts that form are far easier to handle. As for anything as insignificant as what he felt at sixteen, well.
Deadpool doesn’t know and Peter no longer feels it, so it never happened. That’s what growing up is all about; growing out of old feathers and exchanging them for the new.