Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Chapter is a little shorter than I imagined it to be because I am literally finishing it up at the airport lmao, but I like the outcome and I'd rather post this now than make you wait 3 weeks for it along with the other remaining chapters, so here you go.

If I'm able to write some more chapters over the next few weeks, I will post them. But if not...yeah, this marks the beginning of my hiatus. Sorry about it again, but I will see you all on the flip side!

Chapter title comes from Pain Is So Close to Pleasure by Queen, btw.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Until next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~primis, omega, superhero, genius~

~somebody to love~

~chapter 36: pain is so close to pleasure~

The next few days of her heat followed in the same pattern.

She had periods of lucidity about every six to eight hours, as was expected based off of her previous heats. When she was lucid, while she was on the knot, her alphas kept her fed and watered. After at least two rounds of sex, they were able to do a bit more than that half of the time, getting her to use the bathroom or brush her teeth. Once, while she was sandwiched between them, Clint and Natasha were able to get her in the shower, Clint leaning against the shower wall and Natasha taking her from behind.

They kept on having sex when she wasn't lucid, per her somnic hypersexuality. She didn't remember any of it, of course, but she knew as much from her becoming lucid again in various positions, including her one time with her mouth on Clint's dick as he dozily carded a hand through her hair and another time as Natasha pounded into her ferociously. Her alphas always knew when she came out of the gauze each time as they were supposed to, even if her own mind had to take a few minutes to figure it out.

Her heat was progressing pretty much as she'd expected it to. She and Bruce had both been concerned about how bad it would've been due to how much time had passed since her last one, but when she was coherent enough to think about it, it seemed to her that it was going well.

Granted, she was only seeing one side of the story.

She thought she might've noticed her alphas tiring out some as her heat wore on. It was hard to say for sure with the comings and goings of her mental faculties. She knew she heard Clint say in the aftermath of one of their rounds of sex, his hands still playing with her ass (he preferred any sex position where he could smack her cheeks, and the pain it caused was delicious) as the fog edged back over her brain, "You know...I don't think I'm doubting her anymore..."

And then, just as she was coming back into her mind the lucid period after that, she thought Steve might have panted, "How did...he keep up with this?"

But even if they were, there wasn't much she could do. She couldn't stop her biology. The best she could do was keep on having sex, because the more she did, the less likely it was her heat would become prolonged and last even longer.

At the marker of the fifth day of her heat down to the hour, Penny woke up with her bed considerably lighter than it had been since before her heat had started.

In a panic, her eyes flung open, as she sensed that something was wrong even if she wasn't quite coherent enough to place it. She looked around the room wildly, her breaths coming out in hot, shallow pants.

She felt somebody next to her stir. "...Omega?" Tony asked, his hand encasing her arm. "Omega, are you – ?"

"Where are – ?" she began to plead, but then she found herself unable to finish her sentence due to the metaphorical cotton in her mouth. All she could say were two of the names that mattered to her most, "Steve. Clint."

"They're fine," Tony rushed to say, pulling her closer to him. She could feel his morning wood pressing up against her. "They're in the other room. Cap needed a break 'cause he's not as over his gunshot wound as he thought and Clint decided to go with him. Focus on their heartbeats. Can you hear them?"

Straining her ears a little, she did as she was instructed. Sure enough, she could hear two heartbeats in her second bedroom that had never been used before, the guest bedroom, their thump-thump-thumping patterns more soothing than any of her favorite songs could be. Judging by the patterns of said heartbeats and their breathing, both of the two male alphas were sleeping, safe and sound.

As Natasha rubbed her back, she began to calm down. That was right, Steve had been injured...last month. He'd been shot. She'd almost lost him. And he'd been doing some PT since then, but it appeared even super soldiers had their limits.

Penny knew she'd told them that they could take breaks, so she wasn't angry about it. There were four of them; they weren't like Harry, who had had to deal with her heats on his own. He'd used sex toys they'd custom-made for her when he'd been too exhausted to keep up with her even with medication, using cum they'd stored in advance to put into the toys and keep her satisfied.

...She missed Harry.

She knew it was impossible for him to be here right now, but she wanted him. She wanted –

Her hand clamped down onto her mating gland as she whimpered, it giving an echo of the pain she vividly remembered due to her being in heat and the owner of the bite on her neck absent. She wasn't aware enough to even consider it surprising that it hadn't started hurting already.

"Do you want Nat to go get them?" Tony questioned.

Penny shook her head, even as tears seeped from her eyes. "Alpha."

"I'm not going anywhere," Natasha promised. She sniffed her hair. "You need a shower."

Tony grunted as he sat them up. "Come on, honey bunny," he said. "Let's go to the bathroom."

Penny yelped as Natasha tugged her to the other side of the bed, stood up, then made to pull her into her arms. "I'll carry her."

Tony snorted, but nevertheless allowed it. "Show-off."

The female alpha reached down to kiss her as she walked her into the bathroom behind Tony. Penny moaned into it. Her pussy was starting to ache again. She was going to need a knot, soon.

Natasha kept on holding her as they all went into the shower. Tony closed the shower door behind them before turning on the shower head. Thanks to JARVIS and the other wonders of Stark technologies, the water came out hot, even if it hadn't been initially turned on to that level.

Tony backed up against the shower wall as Natasha deposited her in a standing position. Her legs felt like jelly as she shivered; she wasn't going to be able to stand for long.

"How do you want to do this?" he queried.

Taking a moment to think about it, she walked over to him and turned around, pressing her back up against him. The fingers of his left hand dug into her hip as he kept her righted, causing what she knew would be bruises.

The last time she'd been in the shower, she knew hazily, she'd been the other way around. But this time, she wanted to see Natasha's face, and...

Her eyes lowered, specifically to the other woman's breasts, albeit the tip of her cock as it began to descend was just as appealing. Natasha's breasts were larger than the average female alpha's, which were usually around a B- or a C-cup, hers being a DD. They were perfectly formed, her dusky pink nipples hard from the water beginning to soak them all.

Natasha smiled, seeing what she was doing. "You want to play with them?" she asked. "You're not going to be able to get anything out of them." Like male alphas, female alphas were unable to produce milk at all unless something was seriouslywrong, or they had been an alpha upon presenting but were trans and taking hormones. With the right circumstances, usually meaning herbal therapy and lots of physical stimulation, male betas could, but not alphas.

(And the only reason why Penny knew this was because of her Biochemistry major in college, as a Biology class in a different subfield had been part of the major's requirements, and she'd decided to take one on human reproduction versus that of other animals and the origins of the secondary genders/designations from the virus 70,000 years ago that had caused a population bottleneck. The class had been a fascinating one, to say the least.)

She could've cared less about that. "Please, Nat," she whispered, her fingers twitching. "Can I – ?"

Penny let out a gasp as her legs gave out from under her, but Natasha and Tony caught her easily. Chuckling, Natasha bent one of her knees in order to prop up one of Penny's legs after closing some more of the gap between them – and in the process, made her breasts readily available.

Penny seized the opportunity – and her alpha's left nipple. She breathed a content sigh through her noise as she "nursed."

"Beautiful," Tony praised, a growl lacing his voice as he licked the skin on the back of her right ear, his right hand moving down and to her cunt. He slipped in a finger easily. As Penny whined, he added, "Have to prepare you, Omega."

Natasha huffed, pulling her red hair out of the way to give Penny better access. "That's good," she said as encouragement. "That's good." She reached over to the nook where Penny's shower products were, taking out the shampoo first and squirting some of it into her hand. After Tony stopped licking her ear, she began to lather Penny's hair with the shampoo.

Penny kept on suckling while both of them worked. It didn't take long for her to reach that point between Natasha's delicate touch on her scalp and Tony inserting more of his fingers into her. Because of the water, the orgasm seemed to take more out of her than it usually did, making Tony half-grunt, half-laugh. "Hand me the conditioner," he told Natasha as he took out his fingers from Penny's entrance. "Your turn."

Natasha was all too happy to acquiesce with his request. Naturally, it meant that she had to pull her breast away from Penny, which she was initially unhappy with, but the feeling of being sandwiched again and having a cock inside of her was good enough of a distraction.

Tony carefully put the conditioner in her hair as she'd taught them to, scrunching it in a few sections at a time. "Sèi perfetta," he said. "L'arricciature dei tuoi capelli è bellissima."

Italian.

Penny groaned.

It'd been so long since somebody had spoken the language to her.

"Grazie, Alpha," she breathed.

"Sèi bella," he continued, seemingly realizing the kick she was getting out of it. As they waited for the conditioner to set – she'd come a long way in terms of self-care since the Battle of New York, even if there were still many things she needed to be working on – he kissed the slopes of her shoulders, creating hickeys where he saw fit, which was basically everywhere. "Molta, molta bella."

"Grazie!"

Natasha smirked. She didn't say anything, letting Tony having his fun peppering her with comments in Italian. Talking during sex wasn't something that her other alphas were nearly as obsessed with as Tony, but that was alright. They were all different.

When the knot locked them together, she and Natasha were breathing heavily. Natasha grabbed the bottle of body wash, having already put the one of conditioner back, as well as the loofah. Having already raked his fingers through Penny's hair to get rid of the tangles, Tony took turns with Natasha for the loofah, the two of them scrubbing every inch of her skin that they could. It wasn't perfect, but since she was still in heat, it was good enough for now. They made sure to get her washed off when they were done before Tony squeezed himself out, Natasha pressing her up against the shower wall so she didn't fall, to turn off the water and grab a towel from the rack right next to the shower door. He dried them all off easily.

In spite of the strain it had to have caused, they waited until Natasha's knot went down to go back into the bedroom. Tony picked her up and threw her onto the bed, before he got on top of her. "My turn," he said, entering her roughly as he slammed their lips together in a kiss.

Penny wasn't going to complain about that. Not at all.

The next time that she was lucid, Clint was back in her bed, although Steve was still in the other room resting – or maybe he'd come in while she was under the gauze and had decided to take another break, she didn't know. Rather than them going one or two at a time, the three present alphas decided to basically converge on her all at once. She got six orgasms, three knottings in her pussy, another knot in her mouth, and liberal spanking (courtesy of Clint) out of it. It made her feel like she was in heaven.

When she came up again after that one, though, she was back to two alphas in her bed. This time, it was Steve and Clint.

"Hey, it's okay, 'mega," Clint comforted her when she didn't immediately realize why the two of them were gone. Just like Tony, he took the time to explain to her that they were in the second bedroom sleeping, and they'd be back once they were rested up enough.

Though her eyes were teary, she calmed down again. It helped that, like she said, Steve was back. "'Teve," she went, turning around to face him, which made Clint laugh as she wriggled against him. "You okay?"

He gave her a sappy smile. "Better."

She reached out to ghost the first two fingers of her right hand along the scar from his gunshot wound. He jerked a little at the action, letting her know he was still a little sore. But he was alright. The muscles surrounding the old injury might have been tender still when he went under strenuous exercise (like having sex back-to-back-to-back), but the wound itself had healed over, having turned into a circle of raised, slightly off-color tissue.

"You're better," she agreed.

Penny lifted her head for a kiss, and he obliged. As he did, he gently pried her away from Clint so he could hover over her better. His fingers moved down her arms in the same way her own had done on his scar. When he broke it off, his eyes were shining with love. "You wanna do some dancing?" he asked.

Eagerly, she nodded.

Like the other (lucid) times during her heat when he'd thought he could get away with it, he went slow...er. She had the sense that, if they were having sex at a time that wasn't during her heat, he'd take even longer, prolonging the inevitable as long as he possibly could. He went along with the needs of her heat without question, but it was clear he had his preferences, too.

He played with her breasts again as he prepared her. "Steve," she complained when there were four fingers inside of her and there was still no indication that he was going to replace them with his dick yet. He was drawing it out on purpose. And she could be patient later when her heat ended, yes, but not now. "Alpha, please..."

"I'm getting there," he promised her. His breaths were ragged. "You're just – I want to worship you." He lined himself up. "You're everything I ever could've wanted and more."

He punctuated the last word by entering her. She cried out, making Clint smirk as he slid onto his side to lean over her. "You're perfect," he agreed, bringing her into a kiss.

Steve's pace was slow enough that, even with Clint intervening by working her clit, it took longer to get her to go over the edge. But in some ways that just made the orgasm even better.

Clint had his turn next. They did it doggy-style, him fucking her into the mattress and her face into a pillow. It was wonderful.

But afterwards, as he cuddled her on one side, snuffling her hair, and Steve was on the other, the archer's knot beginning to deflate, she was still...present. There wasn't even the beginnings of the brain fog falling back over her.

Which wasn't unusual; it didn't mean anything bad.

It was just...interesting.

"You still with us?" Clint teased, whispering in her ear.

She nodded. "Mmhmm."

"You want to go again?"

The question earned him another, more exuberant nod. He laughed.

"Food first," Steve, the mother hen, reminded them. As she shirked away slightly, he corrected himself. "At least some water. Please, Omega?"

He was able to get a little bit of both into her by the time Clint's knot fully deflated, and he didn't push his luck beyond that.

Clint pulled out and moved away towards the end of the bed. He grabbed one of Penny's legs and tugged it. She let out a yelp as she was flipped over onto her stomach and dragged from the force. "Clint!"

"I've got an idea," he said. "Get on your hands and knees, 'mega."

She didn't immediately move, not knowing if she'd heard him correctly or not.

He repeated his request.

Shakily, she did as she was instructed. Not shakily because of a bad way, of course, it was just because her limbs didn't feel like they could support her when she was in heat.

That was what she had her alphas for, however. Clint cupped her cheeks, parted them in a way that made her breath catch, and then placed them in a way to give her extra support as she felt his own breath hot against her. "Steve?"

Steve knew exactly what he wanted him to do. He got into position in front of her, his cock hard and red in his left hand. "Ready?" he asked her.

It was a rhetorical question.

Steve fed his cock into her lips. He kept it from going too far at first, letting her twist her tongue around his slit and lavish the taste of his cum in her mouth, but slowly made it go deeper and deeper.

Once she was right at the edge of his knot, Clint started to dig in. He licked a broad stripe over and in her labia, delving his tongue between her folds. Then he became more focused, zeroing in on her entrance rather than her clit since it was easier for him to access. His tongue scraped at her G-spot, to which she cried out around Steve's cock, and naturally once she did, he kept on doing it.

Her pleasuring of Steve became less concentrated as she once again approached that ledge. This didn't bother him. Realizing his need to take things over some, his fingers dug through her hair and cradled her scalp. He gently thrusted himself into her mouth and throat, the action taking the rest of her body along with it.

This should've been the sign for Clint to stop and switch over, but he didn't – not until she came. He held her up with an arm under her stomach when her body gave out, threatening collapse, unable to take the strain any longer. He only had to do it long enough to get himself ready, as once he was inside, her being sandwiched (spit-roasted) between them was enough for her to be supported sufficiently and maintain her position at the same time.

Steve had been whispering words of encouragement to her this entire time, as soft and amazing as his touch. Now, though, with Clint fucking into her and sending her forwards onto the other blonde's cock with each thrust, he was a little more bold. "So beautiful," he crooned, his voice louder now. "The perfect mate. Penny. Our Penny. Our Omega. Couldn't have asked...for anyone else. Wouldn't ever."

"Uh, huh," Clint went, pulling out enough to smack her ass for emphasis.

Penny, meanwhile, even though she couldn't vocalize it with her mouth being put to use, was happy. So happy.

Yes, for over a year and a half, she'd hidden that she was their omega from them. She hadn't revealed that she was an omega at all, having thought she didn't need them. And while maybe that was still true (she was a strong, independent omega, she didn't "need" anybody), she wanted them. She wanted to be loved by them, to be cherished. Potentially one day have their babies like Harry had said, although that wouldn't happen now or at least for a few years to come. She was on birth control to insure it.

This first shared heat of hers together had proven to her that, as impossible as it had seemed, they were beginning to make something new. Something great.

She couldn't wait to see where it took them.

Word Count: 3,490

Next Chapter Title: hold me