End Of Beginning

Peter

Peter doesn’t even know how he got home. One minute he’s ‘running’ with Deadpool along the top of some buildings, and the next thing he knows he’s lying on his bed on top of the few towels he owns.

Deadpool is rummaging around his apartment looking for a medkit, muttering incoherently to himself. The muscles in Peter’s thigh twitch and he gasps. Deadpool's mumbling and rummaging stop as he suddenly appears by his side.

“Webs, you need to get out of the suit. I need to get that bullet out before your weird healing factors make it more of a problem.”

Peter's sigh turns into a groan as he sits up. Getting in and out of his suit without a hole in his thigh is already difficult enough at the best of times, but with the added injury Peter struggles. He pulls his gloves off and then the top half of his suit and then reaches for his waistband, pausing as he sees his thigh.

At some point, a point that he doesn’t remember, he had webbed up his wound to either A) stop the bleeding or B) keep the injury from closing. Now he was faced with the struggle of having to tug the webbing off before he could even attempt to get the bottom of his suit off.

“Okay Pete, here we go, just like a bandaid.” Peter grabs at the webbing on his thigh and tugs. His vision blacks out at the edges and he gags, keeling to the side.

“Spidey?” Deadpool's voice echoes from where he was now looking in the kitchen for the medkit. He rushes in, pausing as he sees Peter curling in on himself on his bed, the top half of his suit off, and coated in a shining layer of sweat.

“Okay, okay, you need to help me get this off. We have to be quiet, because I have neighbours-”

“That’s what she said.”

“Deadpool, shut the fuck up. We have to be quiet, now help me tug this off of my leg.” Peter seethes between clenched teeth, gesturing towards his thigh.

“Okay, okay, nurse deadpool to the rescue.” Deadpool moves Peter so that he is laying flat on his back and then covers Peter's masked mouth with his hand. Peter takes a deep breath, inhaling the leathery smell of his glove. “Here we go.” With the other hand Deadpool pries the edge of the webbing up from his suit, getting as good of a grip as he can, and pulls hard.

Peter cries out against his hand, curling in on himself momentarily before bringing his own hands up to cover Deadpools.

“One more tug.” He pulls again and Peter’s vision goes white. “Alright, I got it off.” He removes his hand from Peter’s mouth and he heaves out a large sob. Deadpool grabs one of the towels, moving Peter’s hand to hold it down on his wound.

“Now for the hard part, getting the bullet out. Where do you keep first aid stuff?”

Peter lifts one hand and vaguely points towards the bathroom. He slowly tugs his suit down, chucking it off to the side and bringing the towel back to his thigh.

“Okay, I’m going to try and get it out, mind you I don’t usually take bullets out of my own body so I’m not going to be great at this.” Deadpool comes out of the bathroom and sets the first aid kit down on the bed next to Peter, he moves to open it but stops when he hears a knock at the front door.

“Peter? Are you okay? I could hear you yelling from my apartment.” Deadpool turns towards Peter.

“Peter?” He whispers. Peter hangs his head, sighing. He was going to have to move towards the door. Groaning, he pushes himself up and towards the door.

“Webs, your mask.” Deadpool whisper shouts. Peter shushes him.

“It’s my neighbour, he’s blind. I’m not taking off my mask.” Peter limps towards the door, half naked and looks through the peephole. Matt Murdock stands on the other side staring towards his own apartment door. No one else is in the hallway.

“Peter?”

Peter unlocks the door, opening it up the smallest bit.

“Hey, Matt, I’m alright, I just, ugh, stubbed my toe, a couple of times.” Matt’s face twitches as he breathes in deeply.

“Are you bleeding?”

“Um, yeah? Surprised you could smell that, it’s not much blood really, like I said, just a small-'' Matt pushes on the door with surprising strength, opening it up, and pushing Peter back. Peter sucks a short breath of air between his teeth, teetering back.

“Jesus Matt what are you-”

“Cut the shit Peter, I know something is up, you need to fix that.” he points at the now heavily soiled towel he is holding against his thigh.

“What, how did you-?”

Deadpool emerges from his bedroom, gun in hand.

“Peter, what’s going on here?” Hearing his name come from Deadpool's mouth feels wrong, and he can feel his breath get tight as he looks between the two men in his apartment.

“I don’t… I, um.”

“Peter, just let me help, we can talk after.” Matt's voice is a stark contrast from how it was a moment ago. He puts his arms out in front of himself, defensively, as if Peter were a wild animal he was trying to approach.

“Okay, yeah.”

Peter moves back into his room, grabbing onto Deadpool as he goes.

“Put the gun away DP.” Deadpool shoves the gun back in its holster and helps him over to the bed where he sits back down. Peter removes the towel from his thigh, wincing as it tugs at where the blood was drying on his leg.

The bullet hole, upon further inspection, did not look horrible, but it was definitely closing quickly.

“Just, get the bullet out, please, I don’t care who does it.” Matt nods as he enters the room, reaching towards the med kit with precision. Peter lays down, laying his arm over his forehead and his chest, letting Matt do whatever it is that he was doing.

Deadpool watches intently from the corner of the room as Matt cleans the blood from around Peter's wound before moving in to dig out the bullet. Everything he does is done in a precise, almost practised manner. Although it was sloppier than what he would have received in a hospital, Matt gets the bullet out quickly, moving to stitch it up.

“Alright Pete, all done.” Peter nods, relaxing his jaw. He hadn’t realised he was clenching his teeth and his temples ache from it, a headache settling in.

“Thank you.”

Matt stands up and moves smoothly towards the bathroom to wash his hands. Peter had never told him where the bathroom was.

“So, since I’ve done more harm than good, I think I’m going to skedaddle.” Deadpool says, clapping his hands and moving towards the window. Peter sighs.

“DP, it was an accident, you didn’t mean to. Had it been anyone else my…” He trails off, looking over at Matt. “Y’know, thingy would have warned me.” Deadpool nods.

“Right. Your thingy.” He opens the window climbing out head first. He turns around once he's on the fire escape, crouching down and shoving his face back inside. Peter turns his head to the side to look at him.

“Hope that view was a good enough apology.”

Peter looks away, rolling his eyes.

“Pff, send me one of those emergency pizzas and then I’ll forgive you.” Deadpool nods, standing up.

“See you around Peter.” His voice is taunting, saying Peter’s name the way a child would say a swear word for the first time.

“You can take your mask off Peter.” Peter’s head whips to where Matt stands in front of him.

“Matt, I’m going to be really honest, you’re freaking me the fuck out right now.” Matt sits down on the bed next to Peter and his flimsy mattress dips under his weight.

“It seems that we both owe each other some explanations”

Peter shakes his head.

“I don’t owe you anything. You and your saviour complex are the ones that busted into my apartment.” Matt nods, smirking.

“Okay, don’t say anything, and I won’t either.” They’re both silent for a second before Peter brings his fist down on the mattress beside him frustratedly.

“Fine.” He reaches up and grabs his mask, tugging it off, feeling suddenly exposed, sitting next to Matt in just his underwear. Matt tilts his head, ear tuned towards Peter and both men freeze.

Holy shit.

“Put the mask back on for a second.” Peter complies, pulling his mask back on, staring at Matt as he tilts his head again, the exact same way as Daredevil does.

“Okay now take it back off.” Once again Peter complies, tugging it off.

“Huh.”

Peter looks down at Matt’s hands where they rest on his lap, his knuckles are bruised and scarred.

HOLY SHIT.

“Holy shit, I’m going to sound crazy if I’m wrong, but you’re… you do the little..”

Peter tilts his head awkwardly in demonstration, before remembering that Matt, despite all the freaky shit he’s been doing, is still blind. Matts lip twitches.

“The head tilt.” Matt says, chuckling. Peter nods rapidly.

“You’re Daredevil?”

“And you’re Spider-Man. I don’t know how I didn’t catch it before.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can hear your heartbeat. Always can.”

Peter's eyebrows raise curiously.

“Is that a Daredevil thing?”

Matt sort of shrugs.

“A daredevil thing, a Matt thing, they sort of mesh together.” Peter remembers, longs for, when his two lives used to mesh together, but now he felt as if he were two separate people. It used to be ‘Peter IS Spider-Man’ but now, to him, it was more like ‘Peter AND Spider-Man’.

“I wasn’t always blind. I was involved in an accident involving a chemical spill as a child and it blinded me.”

Peter’s eyes wander up to Matt’s and the vague scars around his eyes, which he never noticed before, are almost hard not to see now. They raise up from his skin in pale lightning bolts stemming from his eyes out towards his hairline.

“I’m sorry.”

“The chemicals took my vision, but all of my other senses changed. They were heightened.”

Peter nods.

“That happened to me with the spider bite.”

Matt smirks.

“Imagine your spider senses but dialled up tenfold. I can hear things blocks away from here. I could taste the blood from your wound while I was still in my own apartment. I could hear the bullet shifting in your leg every time you moved. It almost hit your femoral artery, you could have died Peter.”

Peter’s mouth hangs open in shock at everything Matt had just said.

“It was an accident” was all he could come up with as a reply.

“Every accident we make in this field has the potential to be deadly. I can’t even count the amount of times Karen has found me almost dead.”

“She knows?”

Matt nods.

“She knows something is up with you as well. She isn’t sure what but she knows you’re not normal.”

Peter purses his lips, anxiety churning in his stomach.

“Please don’t tell her, I don’t… she could get hurt.”

“Trust me, I know.”

The two men return to silence, sitting on Peter’s bed awkwardly. Peter finally moves to get dressed, pulling a sweatshirt over his head before struggling to pull a pair of track pants on. Matt moves to stand up and help him but Peter holds his hand up, stopping him in place.

“I’ve got it.”

Matt stands up anyways, grabbing the towels off of Peter’s bed and folding them up, letting Peter struggle to pull his pants up on his own. Peter, with his pants finally on, helps Matt strip his bed.

“Hey Matt.”

“Mhm?”

“How come you didn’t know I was Spider-Man, if you can hear my heart?”

Matt pauses for a moment before placing the folded towels onto Peter’s bare mattress. He bends over and grabs something from the floor, standing back up and revealing Peter’s mask.

“When you wear this your heart pounds differently.”

Peter takes the mask, looking down at it.

“You have a strong heart Peter, I can tell when you’re wearing the suit, but as soon as you’re out of it your heart sounds weaker, anxious.”

“Really?”

Matt nods.

“There were times on patrol, when your heart beat would shift for a moment and your heart would sound the way it does without the mask, but most of the time your heart beats as if it is two separate ones.”

“Sometimes I feel like it is.”