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Flightless Birds

Summary:

So, really, he doesn’t hate the job itself. He hates the dirt, the entitled people who visit his work, he hates the environment. But he can’t hate the job itself. Because he needs the job - it enables him to keep being Spider-Man on the side, and make a living during work. Especially when there's a mob operating inside, and he and Wade are both unknowingly called to the scene.

OR

The mandatory stripper fic every fandom needs.

Notes:

Hi, pals.
Firtstly, this story is going to stay true to the spirit of the characters.
This is going to be a slow burn story of an accurate representation of the struggles of adult performers and the stigma that surrounds their job. Peter will still be Spider-Man, of course, and will still be his shy, witty, sarcastic self.
There will be a lot of hurt/comfort, lots of time in the strip club, and EVENTUAL smut.
I hope you all enjoy!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Perhaps it was luck, or fate.

No. No, never mind. Nothing was ever bred from luck and fate except naivete. Time is a much more likely culprit for this turn of events, and time didn't care whether you wanted it to pass or not. The interesting thing about time is its consistency. It is intrinsically flawed, because it isn't linear. Like, at all.

Lives are made of millions and millions of moments - some meaningful, some insignificant. All these moments pile on top of each other, over years and years, until a person is made up of them. And these moments are very important. These moments make a person happy, make a person sad, make a person depressed, or even make a person hollow.  Moments could make a person wish they were dead, or make a person the happiest individual on earth.

And that wasn't fair, either.  It is nowhere near fair that intangible concepts could mold a human being. But, again, time doesn't give a damn. It'll pass and allow the most inexplicable things whether you want them or not.

The other incredibly interesting thing about time is its pliability. Time is moldable, in a constant state of flux. Constantly in an ebb and flow. One minuscule choice, one decision, could set the balance off and change everything forever.

If the car was going slower. If the boy hadn't raised his music a notch. If the girl took a different route home. If that kid ran just a little faster on that particular day. If he wasn’t on his phone while driving.

Or, in this case, if heroes didn’t need day jobs. If the Avengers were less trusting.

If being an adult performer was a safer job. If mercenaries didn’t have morals. If mobsters didn’t follow cliches. If stripping didn’t pay so well. If blood were thicker. If defenses were higher. If secret identities weren’t so goddamned fragile. Isn't it obvious? Time, above all else, depends solely on us.  Time is dependent on us.

That is why Peter doesn’t believe in fate. Neither does Wade. Not one bit.

In the same sense, they don’t believe luck is real, either. Sure, things happen. People win the lottery, run into the love of their life, avoid a terrible accident, miracles are seen.

And people foolishly mistake that as luck. As fate.

Naivete truly is the killer of all dreams.

But it’s surely not because of luck. Nothing is because of luck. It’s about being in the right place at the right time. It's about pure coincidence. It's about statistics and ratios and odds. Everything that happens, every person you meet, every life you save, every accident you avoid, every future lover you bump hearts and scrape skin with - it is because of pure chance.

The compilation of moments that made up Peter and Wade’s lives didn't feel orchestrated. Nothing was planned or organized. And, really, if there was actually some higher power in the sky pulling everything along, they must be pretty damn sadistic - just ask Peter and Wade.

There was nothing particular about the choices these two made that led them to each other. But they were choices nonetheless, and they changed time.

As Spider-Man and Deadpool, their masked selves, the two were fairly acquainted with each other. They had fought many a crime together, sat on many a roof ledge together, and definitely ate many a burrito together. Deadpool and Spider-Man never really intended to ever meet up; it just so happened that Deadpool liked Queens, and Peter patrolled Queens, and so the two ran into each other nearly every month for the past four years. Occasionally, Deadpool would even stick around after a particularly rough fight, because contrary to popular belief, Spider-Man is squeamish when tending to his own injuries and Deadpool is used to blood. Spider-Man, still, though, has his wariness for Deadpool.

The thing civilians don’t comprehend is - or, rather, have no need to comprehend - is that heroes and vigilantes are people.  At night, by the time they patrol and stop crime and save the day, they’ve already had a full day of work, or school, or some menial, laborious job. So by the time these vigilantes set out into the night, they’re already tired, irritable, groggy. However, being a hero doesn’t pay - at least in physical monetary substance.

It pays intangibly, sure, with gratification, the overwhelming relief of helping someone who couldn’t help themselves. But the world doesn’t work like that, and it’s not like they can sacrifice one job over the other; one is a moral responsibility, and one is an economic necessity.  

So, how do you choose? You don’t. You do both.

And so, Peter Parker goes to college every Tuesday and Thursday, for biochemistry. Peter Parker sends in photographs of himself in the Spidey suit to get some pocket cash from The Bugle, so that he can have a decent meal every once in awhile (a decent meal is usually the extra cheesy macaroni). Peter Parker has an abysmal sleeping schedule to make everything work. And, because the pay is decent, the hours coincide with his patrolling time, he needs to pay for his shitty apartment, and he’s pretty good at it, Peter is a stripper at a fairly popular local bar, and has been for two years now. Peter is twenty.

Wade. Well. Inspired by his adventures with Spider-Man, Wade has been hoping to incrementally better himself and leave the mercenary business to get in good graces with his favorite webbed vigilante and the rest of the Gossip Girls over at Stark Tower. So, in a fit of kindness that was heavily forced upon him by Steve Rogers, Tony decided to give Wade a chance. He assigns Wade to go undercover in whatever way he deems fit to scope out mobsters who have been taking refuge in a local strip club, while still enjoying themselves in the ambiance.

It just so happens that the strip club Peter works at, and the strip club Wade is assigned to watch, are the same club. Of course, neither of them know that.

And yet, these choices of theirs changed things in the long run. They changed time. They always do. So, yes, fate, if you want to believe in it, is directly correlated to what we do. What choices we make. Everything we do and everyone we meet depends solely on time, which depends solely on us.

It’s painfully human, really. Because while the normal ones, the ignorant ones, grovel at the hands of luck, it is us who have been controlling our own lives, unknowingly, after all.

Nonetheless, though, Spider-Man and Deadpool have known each other for years.

But Peter and Wade meet in a strip club, under undesirable circumstances.