Chapter Text
Peter does not trust Deadpool. He reminds himself of that fact as he swings through lower Manhattan, eyes peeled for fleeting glimpses of red and black. To keep an eye on him, to prevent any unnecessary deaths at the hands of the mercenary. This is no different from the typical surveillance done for every other suspicious individual that he suspects might become a larger, more villain-sized problem down the road. Peter is often right about that sort of hunch. And so he swings, and looks, and repeats I don’t trust him I don’t trust him I don’t trust him like a mantra in his head as he tracks a flash of vibrant leather around the curve of a building. Peter loses sight of him for just a second before the merc appears within a group of pedestrians waiting patiently for the light to turn, still an imposing figure amongst the crowd regardless of the fact that all of his weapons are tucked safely — if you could even use the term in relation to Deadpool — in their respective holsters.
Peter lands on a nearby light pole and watches in mild awe as Deadpool takes an old lady by the arm and helps her across the bustling intersection. His chin is tilted performatively high as he brings her to the ground beneath Peter’s perch, a grin wide enough to stretch the leather of his mask plastered across his face. Peter hates that he knows the expression well enough to recognize it.
“Well heya, Spidey!” Deadpool calls up to him without actually looking in his direction. “Thought that was you swinging in my periphery!” Peter frowns, takes a closer look at the scene below him, and sighs.
“Let her go, Deadpool.”
The second he obeys, the lady uses her renewed mobility to whack the man in the head with her hefty black purse.
“I said I could do it myself, you brute! Who do you think you are, grabbing ladies on the street like that!” She whacks him again.
Deadpool cowers under the attack, but makes no effort to dispatch her which Peter knows he could easily do. Peter almost feels bad when the woman’s final swing makes contact with a much lower target, sending the merc onto one knee with a groan of seemingly genuine pain. Almost.
“You’re psycho, woman!” Deadpool calls after her as she shuffles away down the sidewalk. Peter slides down the pole to stand over him, hands on his hips in an attempt to look reprimanding. “This is why you can miss me with all that ‘helping people’ nonsense, Webs. See the thanks I get?”
“I’d hardly call dragging an unwilling old woman across the street helping.” Peter admonishes, kicking idly at the other man’s boot. “Get up, already.”
“Have you no sympathy for an injured man?” He’s milking it now, no doubt sporting a ridiculous pout beneath the red leather of his mask. Peter thinks he can just make out the outline of it, but isn’t inclined to stare any harder to confirm.
“You’ve been hit far harder with far more damaging items than a purse and sprung up just fine.”
“You won’t even kiss it better?” The pout has transformed into a shit-eating grin, and Peter shoots a web out at the nearest building and swings away without bothering to reply. He can hear the distinct footsteps of Deadpool following him up onto its roof moments later. And see here is the problem: Peter seems to be making a habit of this. Of finding Deadpool in whatever situation he gets himself into at any given time and making his presence as Spider-Man known to the mercenary so that he can in turn annoy Peter into letting him tag along on patrol. It hadn’t been intentional the first couple of times, and Deadpool certainly does his fair share to seek Spider-Man out as well, but Peter would be kidding himself if he still tried to claim their interactions to be any sort of reconnaissance.
He has been aware of Deadpool’s presence in his city for a little under a year now, has actually been acquainted with the guy for even less time, and absolutely despises how quickly his defenses appear to have dropped around him. Hence the mantra, to remind himself that this man is more than just a smart mouth and some lewd hand gestures; he kills people for a living, and he does so exceptionally well. And so Peter does not trust Deadpool, even if he seeks the man out for patrol more often than he would admit to. It’s because Peter appreciates the assistance, not the company or the wit or the body that won’t quit. Seriously, that regeneration factor is fascinating to witness up close even if the initial state of the wounds are enough to have him gagging into his mask. The science part of his brain wants to put Deadpool’s cells and Peter’s own beneath a microscope just to compare and contrast their respective healing processes but the paranoid part of his brain reminds him that any study done on Spider-Man’s DNA runs the risk of pertinent information falling into the wrong people’s hands. As usual, guess which side wins out? At least, it does for the brief moment of silence Peter finds atop the roof until Deadpool joins him on the ledge mere seconds later.
“You’re a cruel man, Spidey, denying a man his dying wish like that.” He saunters up and goes to drape an arm across Peter’s shoulders, an attempt that is dodged by one leftward step.
“You look pretty alive to me.” Peter hopes his deadpan expression is decipherable through the mask.
“No thanks to you.” Deadpool closes the space between them again but keeps his hands to himself so Peter allows it. “What's the sitch, bitch?” Peter fixes the man with a sideways look.
“Aren’t you a bit old for Kim Possible?”
“We’re gatekeeping masterpieces of the animated arts now? Rich coming from a walking talking Marvel panel.”
“A what?”
“Stan Lee’s special little boy.” Deadpool coos at him, and Peter knows better than to try and makes sense of these sorts of tangents. Especially when he begins talking to the air around him. “It’s not insensitive, I said R.I.P.” He does a half-assed rendition of the sign of the cross. “Well I thought it, anyway.”
“Anyways,” Peter speaks overtop him, simply wishing to get on with his evening. “Nothing major on the agenda tonight, I figure we hit the hotspots around downtown, and work our way out from there.”
“I’m all about that,” Deadpool is bouncing on the balls of his feet now. “Things will be great when you’re downtown!” He points dramatically at Peter, cuing his reply.
“Uh… Tanya Tucker?” The mercenary makes an obnoxious buzzer sound with his mouth, arms crossing into an X across his chest.
“So sorry Spider-Man, looks like no double jeopardy for you tonight! Thanks for playing: ‘Name That Ancient White Lady!'”
“I’m going now. Feel free to stay up here all night talking to the breeze,” Peter calls as he allows himself to drop off the edge of the roof. Shooting a web out and connecting with a building on the end of the block, he propels himself forward as the unmistakable sound of a grappling hook shoots off behind him. That method won’t be nearly as fast as Spider-Man’s webs, though he has no doubt Deadpool will find some way to arrive downtown no more than a second or two behind him. Probably hijack a cab or something, he’s crafty like that.
Though Peter has begun (semi-unintentionally) enlisting Deadpool’s help with these types of patrols, they hardly ever do them in tandem. It would be inefficient, unnecessarily time consuming, and altogether far less productive given the mercenary’s proclivity for slacking off when Spider-Man is around. He seems to live solely to annoy Peter and drag his attention away from far more pressing matters, though Peter hasn’t missed the fact that Deadpool does actually make a habit of listening to him when the baddies of New York are active enough. He simply puts on a lot of show, what with his whining and clamoring and “Parting is such sweet sorrow!” which Peter had been admittedly shocked to hear coming from the merc’s mouth. Of all the pop culture references that Deadpool makes Peter hadn’t really expected Shakespeare to be among them; books and their covers, he supposes.
But tonight… tonight is strangely quiet for a Friday, and Deadpool clings to him dramatically until Peter simply elects to begin his patrol with a man-sized pest attached to his leg. Maybe if he’s lucky the mercenary will fall off and be indisposed for a minute or two. He feels guilty about the thought pretty much as soon as it passes through his head, that pesky conscience providing the oh-so-helpful reminder that it's still his responsibility to save people from falling regardless of how obnoxious said person tends to be. Immortality notwithstanding. So when Deadpool intentionally releases his hold on Peter’s leg with a manic yell he has to shoot a web at his leather-clad chest, yanking the mercenary back up so that he can wrap a vice-like arm around his stupid waist. Deadpool’s hands instinctively find their way around Peter’s neck.
“Aw Webs, I knew you cared!” He coos into Peter’s ear, and Peter is sure a kiss to the spandex-covered cheek would have followed soon after if he didn’t choose to land at the very same moment, decidedly harder than usual. Deadpool’s feet hit the concrete first — what with his longer legs and all — and he takes two steps before careening to the ground in a rather cartoonish sprawl of red and black limbs. Peter comes to a rolling stop a few feet from him and somehow manages to keep himself from laughing at the display. It would only eg the merc on.
“Or not. Wait ‘till the public learns what a bully you are,” Deadpool makes the statement without ever lifting his face from the sidewalk, and again Peter is struck with immediate guilt at the thought that he might’ve broken the other man’s nose. Before he’s able to worry too much about that, the mercenary jumps to his feet like the tumble never even happened. His mask appears to be blood free, but Peter knows from experience that the deep red of Deadpool’s costume functions to intentionally obscure that sort of detail. “Good thing I’m into it, otherwise your goody-two-shoes reputation would be in tatters.”
“Sh,” Peter says in lieu of a proper reply ‘cause what is a person even meant to say to that? He still doesn’t know how to respond to Deadpool’s advances — if you could even call them that — even after all this time spent swinging around town with the merc. Because you see, Peter had clocked the exact type of man that Deadpool was back when they first met and he managed to slip a comment about Spider-Man’s ass into the conversation as he was being webbed to a brick wall. But being aware of the fact that the mercenary employs his colorfully obscene vocabulary solely to get a rise out of Peter doesn’t negate the fact that he is decidedly not used to such blatant displays of flirtation. People pay him little to no attention as Peter Parker; not that he would have the time or energy to return the favor even if they did. So to have Deadpool constantly going on about the things that he would do to Spider-Man if given the chance?
Well. Peter would be lying if he claimed the behavior had no effect on him.
“‘Sh’ what?” Deadpool questions as he moves to step past Peter, who promptly shoves him against the wall of the building by which they are standing.
“There’s people in the alleyway,” Peter whispers back, keeping his palm pressed to Deadpool’s chest even though the man has made no effort to fight against his hold. He tunes his advanced hearing — usually functioning to take in all of the noise around him in one cacophonous wave — to pick up more of the conversation happening in the alley just a few feet from them. “Drug deal, I think.”
“Oh no they don’t, not on Spidey’s streets!” comes Deadpool’s reply which Peter knows is meant to poke fun at him. But he still waits for Peter’s signal before advancing on the hoodie-clad men around the corner, which Peter decides to count as a small victory. You train a dog one command at a time, right?
And so the rest of the evening goes on like that, the pair stopping a handful of petty crimes around the city without anything getting too serious. They prevent a carjacking, a mugging or three, and even swing down to the club scene in time to web up the hands of some guys that are getting a bit too touchy-feely with a clearly over-inebriated woman that is waiting for a cab to take her home. They stand guard on either side of her as the men slur obscenities from their position stuck to the sidewalk, and Deadpool pays for her fare once a taxi finally decides to show up. Peter is able to prevent him from making good on his threats to castrate the lot of them, though it takes a great deal of dissuasion. His heart is in the right place, if mildly misguided by his skewed sense of morality.
“I’m telling you, Spidey, they woulda deserved it,” Deadpool continues to complain long after they’ve left the scene, currently standing over Peter’s back as he crouches on the roof of a little three-story building. It's a high enough vantage point for him to scout the area without relying wholly on his advanced hearing abilities.
“And I’m telling you that nobody deserves to be mutilated like that. Let the authorities handle it.”
“Not even full-blown serial rapists? You think men like that should get to keep their dicks?”
“I think that it’s not our job to decide what parts of their bodies people should and should not keep.”
“I know a part or two of your body I’d like to keep. In my hands, that is. Or mouth, whatever you’d prefer, baby.”
Peter hates the way his back straightens at Deadpool’s words, the way his spidey sense automatically tunes into the presence of the mercenary looming overtop him. Is it just his imagination, or has the other man stepped close enough to be breathing down Peter’s neck? Not that the layers of supersuit covering them both allow for him to feel something as small as an exhalation of air, but the proximity is evident regardless. A few dozen images come to Peter’s mind then, not a single one rated PG-13, and he returns to a fully upright position in an effort to dislodge them. All he achieves is the awareness that his back is mere inches away from Deadpool’s chest and the zing of his nerves standing at full attention.
“These, for example.” Deadpool’s words are punctuated by his palms coming to rest on Peter’s ass, just a light brush against the area where lower back turns into glute.
“Trying to focus here, ‘Pool,” Peter tries but knows the words don’t come out nearly as reprimanding as he wishes they would.
“Well don’t let me stop you.” His voice seems to have dropped an octave, and Peter fights off a shiver. This should be the moment where he spins around, makes some smartass dismissive comment and shoves the other man off the roof. In fact, that moment should have happened roughly five moments ago, when Peter’s spidey sense got the first inkling that Deadpool was stalking closer to him from a position that left Peter pervious to whatever whim possessed the mercenary. Which just reminds Peter that his mantra is a crock of shit, because he clearly trusts the man enough to leave his backside exposed — no pun intended but hey, if the gloved-hand fits. And fit it does, as Peter’s lack of a clever response seems to encourage Deadpool to take a firmer hold of his ass. Which, okay, that isn’t exactly the vibe he’s intending to give off but then again Peter knows what that vibe should be and he’s failing on that end too. He thinks his brain is getting some wires crossed, the disastrous side effect of far too little sleep each night combined with the extremely rare sensation of another person’s hands on his body in a way that lacks any harmful intent.
Peter lets himself revel in it for just a second more before Deadpool’s hands dare to dip low enough to boot that paranoid part of his brain back up. He spins himself around, catching the other man’s exploratory hands around the wrists with more force than is strictly necessary.
“Deadpool,” Peter warns, having to tilt his head up in order to look fully into the whites of the mercenary’s mask. They seem to be leering down at him, though that could just as easily be his own mind reading more into their mimicking display of a squint than is actually there.
“Webs.” Deadpool copies Peter’s inflection, though the lower timber of his tone makes it sound far more sultry than intended. Or maybe this is all intentional on his part. Maybe Deadpool knows exactly what he’s doing and how it’s working to short-circuit every single rational thought that attempts to pass through Peter’s head.
Deadpool pulls against the hold that Peter has on his wrists, slow enough that it’s not misinterpreted as an attempt to twist free. Peter goes willingly, allowing the merc to lift his arms and dispatch them around his neck before winding his hands back down to grasp at Peter’s waist. Deadpool’s every movement is slow in a way akin to how people behave around a frightened animal. Peter certainly feels like one with how tightly wound all his muscles are, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice but somehow having not been scared off just yet. Maybe it’s the way that Deadpool’s thumbs are rubbing soothing little circles into the bones jutting out from Peter’s hips that keeps him rooted in place. Maybe it’s the way that the sounds of the city seem to fizzle out until all of his energy is focused solely on the two of them and all the places where their bodies are in contact with one another. Maybe it’s the way that Peter feels transfixed under Deadpool’s silent gaze, a truly rare occurrence for the man who is so rarely without a clever line ready to spring off the tip of his tongue. Or maybe it’s the simple fact that, after nearly a year of playful, unintentioned flirting, Peter is curious if the mercenary will actually have the balls to put his money where his mouth seems so inclined to venture. To see just how many miles Deadpool will take if Peter allows him this one inch.
But Peter doesn’t get to find out, because the second that Deadpool uses his grip on Peter’s hips to bring their bodies flush together is the second that a scream pierces the otherwise silent evening. Peter springs away from Deadpool on instinct, sufficiently shaken out of whatever the hell was previously possessing him, and clings to the wall of the building that rises far above the one on which now only Deadpool stands.
“Motherfu-” the mercenary starts and is promptly cut off.
“Oh god, someone help!” It’s a woman screaming down on the sidewalk below, having just fled out the doors of a pawn shop across the street. It takes Peter a second to snap himself fully back into Spider-Man mode, mind still hazy from the warmth of Deadpool’s proximity lingering on his body. Renewed exposure to the cool night air is just the shock his system needs.
“What’s the issue, ma’am? Are you alright?” Peter calls down to her once his head gets itself screwed on straight again, ignoring the pounding of his heart and ache in his stomach that distinctly reminds him of getting in trouble when he was younger. Like he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t, which…okay maybe not entirely unfounded. What the hell had he been thinking?
“There’s men in there- men with guns!” The woman calls back and yep, a thorough analysis of his brain’s lack of functionality is going to have to wait for a more opportune time. Peter turns his gaze to Deadpool, not sure why he feels the urge to look apologetic.
“Duty calls!” He says, punctuated with a gesture meant to resemble a salute. It definitely doesn’t. He front flips off the side of the building and lands before the woman, instructing that she get to safety while the two of them handle this. She seems more than glad to do as she is told. Deadpool joins Peter at the entrance to the pawn shop moments later, the pair peering in through the dark glass of the windows and watching four men gesticulating wildly at the people cowering on the floor as though they aren’t brandishing volatile, semi-automatic weapons. Deadpool pulls out a few of his own.
“I take left side, you take right?” Peter feels inclined to check in even though they would normally figure out such semantics after they had already joined the fray. Deadpool fixes him with a curt nod that borders on angry looking before seeming to manually force his body to drop into a far more casual posture.
“Whatever you’d prefer, Spidey.” The whites of Deadpool’s mask offer up an exaggerated wink but Peter can tell his heart isn’t in the gesture. Not that he cares for it to be.
They burst through the door guns (and webs) blazing and dispatch the gunmen with relative ease. Once the ski masks are removed they turn out to just be a bunch of idiotic twenty-somethings that evidently have nothing better to do with their evenings, and Peter leaves them webbed up outside the pawn shop for the police to deal with whenever they decide to get there. Peter gives some half-assed excuse to head home then, and tries not to overthink the rigid set of Deadpool’s shoulders as he watches him swing away. He expects some comment about loving to watch him leave, but it never comes.