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The first time Peter’s timer stops he is eleven years old. It times out in the middle of the night and wakes him up like an electric shock. The blank timer stares at him from his wrist as he yells and screams for his aunt and uncle.
He’s eleven and just lost his soul mate and it tears a whole inside of him next to the ones left by his parents.
By the time Ben and May make it to his room he’s curled up and sobbing so deeply there’s barely room for breathe between each cry. When they finally wrestle him into sitting position and find out what happened, his timer is counting down three years, seven months, nine days, two hours and no seconds.
This is not the last time it happens.
-
When Peter is thirteen he is riding his bike as quickly as his legs can propel him. He’s caught the attention of some bullies at the park, one of them a boy from his school and the others hangers on, and he knows that if they catch up it will be terrible.
He knows that if he can get back home, put some walls between him and his aggressors, he’ll be fine. That’s why when his timer suddenly goes blank and he crashes from the pavement onto some gravel he wonders if there is some inherently unkind entity watching him and timing this perfectly just to mess with him.
When the bullies catch up they jeer and laugh, prepared to inflict their worst, until the boy from school sees his wrist. There’s an uneasy silence as they falter in their aggression, faced with a situation all of them dread.
Slowly they back away until there is only one left, he looks between the retreating group and Peter, finally reaching down to grab his arm and pull him up. Finally he mumbles something so quiet Peter barely catches it and leaves to catch up with his friends. His words drift behind him, laced with something that might be shame and something that might be fear.
“I’m sorry.”
Peter walks home crying and when his aunt sees him she assumes it’s because of the grazes gracing his arms and shins, because his timer has started again. The moment he walked in the door.
Ten years, no months, fifteen days, eleven hours and forty one-forty seconds.
-
On his second day of high school Peter encounters Flash. Flash who is big and looming for fifteen years old, who’s already grown into his body, compared to Peter’s lanky gangly self. He shoves him up against a locker and sneers, egged on by the crowd fanned out behind him.
“Oi, Parker,” Flash starts, “I heard that-“
“I heard that you had to go to a psychologist when you were ten because you had such severe bladder control issues they thought it might be linked to your development. Didn’t it turn out you were just lazy, Flash?” A pretty blonde perks up to both of their lefts.
Flash stutters and moves his hands away from Peter, turning to face the girl head on. His face his red and his shoulders and pulled tensely up by his neck.
The girl, called Gwen Peter learns later, just smiles and stares him down head on. The crowd aren’t sure how to react and a few are struggling to hold back their giggles. Finally Peter says, in some convoluted effort to be heroic, “No. They took him to a regular doctor. You’re right about the lazy thing though.”
After that the world goes black for a second, then stars burst in his peripherals and a wonderful view of the ceiling is evident from where he lies on the floor, the owner of a brand new black eye.
On his second day of high school he meets Gwen and for the first time in a long time he feels at home around another person.
-
Two weeks after they become friends they talk about their timers. Gwen shows him her time, a jumble of numbers and letters, not all of which look English.
“They have no idea what’s wrong with it,” she says, a sly pride flowing smoothly through her voice, “The first time it was activated it said I had two seconds until the one, and then it did this. Sometimes I wake up and it looks like normal numbers, but then it changes back to this.”
“Does it worry you at all?” Peter asks, self-consciously gripping his wrist.
“Yeah of course, sometimes, but,” Gwen hesitates for the first time since they’ve started speaking, her eyes darting from side to side on the wall opposite them, “I dunno. I kind of like not being defined by a date. I like that, I dunno. I don’t have to be worried about being in the right place, right time. Worried about who I’m with. But yeah. It can still bother me. But I try to think big picture, you know?”
Peter swallows and smiles, then tells Gwen everything. She’s pretty shocked, then intensely curious and interested. A tiny, guilty, teenage hormone boy part of Peter wishes he could show her the way it stops starts, stops starts like a jittery pulse, but all he can show her are his times.
Four years, six months, nineteen days, six hours and fifty-eight seconds.
It goes blank again one month later and Peter begins to think he’ll never be prepared for this, no matter how many times it seems to happen.
-
Peter is sixteen years old and uncle Ben is killed because he couldn’t communicate. He couldn’t push the air through his lungs for fear that his ribs would crack after waking up on the subway and feeling like a freak.
After the stupid spider bit him and Ben tried to follow him. Speak some sense into him, offer him the same love and comfort he has always given him. For the first time in forever Peter’s timer is not the one that has gone blank in the Parker household and for the first time he desperately wishes it had.
-
Peter is seventeen years old and his timer is hidden beneath and watch, a friendship bracelet Gwen made him (“I was feeling nostalgic,” she says as she tosses it to him, “sue me.”) and a charity bracelet with a spider dented into its membrane.
He wakes up some nights panicking that his timer will go blank. The occurrences are less frequent, but still persistent. A constellation of times and days that wrack his whole body with fever. It’s stopped during tests, during driving lessons (abandoned), during speeches, during his break up with Gwen (they lasted three weeks when they were fifteen and he loves her even more for how she handled the blank face that stared from his wrist).
He’s decided he doesn’t care. He’s a hero now; he has a duty to his city and its people. He has a job, he has hobbies and talents and some good friends. He has aunt May.
He has so much more than a set of numbers that can never seem to stay in order, that can never seem to stick.
He’s been Spiderman for seven months, eighteen days, twelve hours and fifty-seven fifty-eight seconds.
He’s adjusted and he doesn’t care if his timer goes blank and stays blank. That’s what he tells himself in the small hours of the morning, when he can’t sleep for fear of being torn from it by a blank timer. When he’s sweating and shaking so much he thinks that this must be what death feels like, he tries not to care.
One year, six months, twenty-one hours and one hundred and twelve seconds.
-
He’s twenty one when he first meets Deadpool.
He’s spent all morning being yelled at by his boss, all afternoon slaving over his homework and the better part of the night trying to pull civilians out of a fire fight between two overly posturing super villains plus one “merc with a mouth”.
Peter’s heard of him, of course. Deadpool. Infamy personified. From what Peter’s heard, from what the Avengers have muttered and what Fury has complained intensely about, he’s unstable. Unpredictable. He’ll kill a drug lord one week, then try and help out the Avengers incessantly the next.
All Peter cares about at the moment though, is getting everyone out of the firing line that didn’t choose to be there, then putting a swift stop to those that did. He’s barely aware of Deadpool, who seems to actually be fighting against the villains so that’s a relief, darting to and fro chattering incoherently as he alternates between shooting and using what seems to be katanas.
Peter is intensely ashamed to admit he checks out the mercs body once or twice as he finally joins the fight, but he quickly manages to push the thought to the side in favour of focussing his frustration on the assholes messing up downtown New York.
His timer has gone blank twice today so far and when Deadpool takes several bullets and two shards of glass to the head and neck it stops for a third time. The shock is immediate.
He feels like he’s been kicked in the chest by someone wearing metal boots. As Deadpool slumps to the ground Peter thinks he’s going to be sick. But if he stops now he’ll die, the villains have turned their attention entirely towards him.
So he takes a deep breath, stands up and keeps fighting, trying to ignore the black and red body on the edge of the street.
-
When Wade is nine years old his timer tells him he has twenty years, six months, twelve days, seven hours and twenty-five seconds until he meets his one.
(When he’s ten years old his mother finally slips away after a long, slow uphill battle. His dad, already no stranger to the bottle, seems to freeze in time, one hand clenching the bottle, the other searching for something to hit.
When he’s thirteen years old he runs away for the first time and makes it as far the highway before a police officer stops him. He drops him back to his dads’ house, his war hero dads’ home, with bruises wrapped around his arms. Wade made no effort to hide them and the cop made no effort to ask. It was a long night.
When Wade is seventeen he drops out of school in a blaze of glory and hitches a ride with a trucker who swears his name is Skunk and whose timer has counted time in perfect synchronisation with his wife Bernice. Wade works menial jobs for food and board, hard days labours that leave his hands raw and calloused. It’s infinitely better than what he left.
Wade is eighteen when he joins the military. Nineteen when he begins his mercenary career. He wonders who’s waiting on the other end of his timer sometimes when he pulls the trigger.
He’s twenty when he finds out he has cancer. Then there’s Weapon X.
There are a lot of blank spaces in Wade’s memories, but his timer keeps telling him he has someone coming, so he keeps going. Even though most days he feels like anyone stuck with him is being given the short end of the stick, he keeps going.
He’s learnt that hope is a dangerous, addictive thing. And he hopes so much.
When he gets to New York, on assignment from Fury and threats from Wolverine to recapture the escaped villains, he hasn’t killed anyone in five months, five days, two hours and thirteen-fourteen seconds.
His timer keeps counting down, all in order, even after the third bullet to the heart that day.)
A lot can happen in such a huge space of time.
-
Deadpool comes to on a roof top. Peter can hear him stirring. He’s made sure to move his guns from his holsters to the other side of the roof, and he’s sitting on the edge, his back facing the city.
Peter had managed to wrestle the super villains the ground, perhaps taking too much pleasure in the act. His knuckles are bruised and bloody and his suit is torn in two places. He’d then managed to drag Deadpool away before the cops had showed up. If he said so himself, he thinks he did pretty well to play it cool. Except for all the cursing mid-air. When Deadpool is moving more steadily, shifting from side to side and cursing Peter begins to approach him slowly.
“Fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuuuuck,” Deadpool groans, shifting slowly into a sitting position, “that never gets to be much fun, I can tell you right now. Wait.” He shifts slowly to look at Peter, still decked out in his Spiderman regalia. He looks him up and down twice before continuing, “Yeah I can tell ya. I mean you’re Spiderman, not invincible man. You’re probably never died. Well let me tell you, it’s like a hangover but worse. Are you even old enough to be drinking? Who cares. Don’t drink kid, or drive. Any time. Or sometimes.”
“Shut up,” Peter says, his entire body feeling tense. His timer has stopped at all zeroes.
“Wow, rude. What kind of breakfast service is this and-“ Deadpool pauses finally standing to his full height. He goes stiff when he feels his empty holsters and turns to Peter, shoulders stiff, “where are my guns.”
Peter doesn’t respond, looking at the man across from him with his arms crossed stubbornly. All it would take is for Wade to turn to his right and he’d be presented with them, practically gift-wrapped (and yes, Peter is regretting leaving them within ten thousand miles of Deadpool, but his thoughts were otherwise preoccupied when he’d dumped them).
“Look Spidey,” Deadpool says, some tenseness leaving his voice, “I’m a huge fan. Your ass is fantastic and that hero thing you do is spot on but-“
“Your wrist,” Peter finally manages through grit teeth.
“What?”
“Look at your wrist.”
There’s a tense moment where they’re both just staring at each other that lasts until Deadpool starts laughing. Huge gulps of air in and out. When he stops and notices Spiderman isn’t laughing he prepares to say something witty, sarcastic, something to diffuse the situation.
But Spiderman is showing him his wrist and the numbers are a perfect sequence of zeros.
Wade quickly rolls his seam back, between the glove and the sleeve and there, nestled in the gnarled and gruesome landscape of his skin, is a line of zeroes, all in a perfect row.
There’s a tense silence that seems to enfold them both and for a few minutes Wade just alternates between looking at his wrist in disbelief and back to Spiderman. Perfect hero goody two shoes Spiderman.
“Well I honestly thought it might be a hot civilian this morning” Deadpool finally manages nano seconds before Spiderman punches him in the face.
“You asshole!” he shouts, angrily tearing off his mask. Deadpool can’t help but stare from his place on the ground. He’s as shocked by Peter’s face as his actions.
“You utter, goddamned, stupid reckless,” Spidermans saying now, pacing in front of him, looking restless and scared and tense and-
“Do you know, do you know how many times it’s gone blank?” He shouts, finally stopping in front of him, “Do you know how many times I thought you might be dead? That this time was the last time it stopped. How reckless can you be?”
He’s inches away from his face now, breathing heavily and still shaking. He seems to realise just how close he is to Deadpool now and he steps back, not sure where to look or where to put his hands or what to do.
This is it, this is everything Peter feared wouldn’t happen and that Wade used to eagerly wait for and now. It’s a stalemate.
“My name’s Wade. Wilson. Wade Wilson,” Deadpool finally manages, standing up slowly and taking his mask off. A part of him hopes for Spiderman to run away now, get a good look at his face and bail. Another part screams for him to stay, wants to do something, hug him. At the least.
Spiderman looks at him hesitantly for a while, then seems to make his decision.
“Peter Parker.”
Wade smiles at Peter, feeling something tense release in his gut. Peter returns the smile hesitantly for a few moments, before it falls back into a frown. He looks away then back again.
“So, what now?”
-
It takes two months, two days, three hours and fifty seconds to get to know each other. Slowly at first, hesitantly and carefully. Each one knowing the risks and rewards, trying to say as much as they can to convince the other to stay or to get out now.
Wade’s met Aunt May and Gwen. He is equally scared and fascinated by both of them and thinks he might be a bit in platonic-love with May. He might have been with Gwen as well if she hadn’t been so scary and smart the first time they met, demanding to know who would dare assume they were appropriate for Peter. Wade can’t help but mirror the sentiment unhappily, but after a few tentative conversations and heated debates they’re getting along much better.
Aunt May hugged Wade the first time they met and Wade desperately hopes he doesn’t screw this up, because someone is happy that he’s been linked to someone they love and it feels like breathing after being held under cold and murky water.
Peter has met blind Al and Weasel on two short occasion, but Wade still keeps his life mostly to himself, as though he’s scared that bringing Peter in will ruin what he has managed to scrape together when (if) this whole thing falls apart. Peter has decided to simply be patient.
There are a lot of late nights, shared patrols, uneasy conversations and trying to get to know each other without stepping on each other’s toes. Peter has made it clear he’s not okay with the killing and Wade is trying to keep up the good run he had when he first met him. Wade has made it clear that he thinks Peter deserves better, shouldn’t put himself in so much danger for people who are failingly grateful, should tell his boss to shove it where the sun doesn’t shine and should definitely get used to pancakes at odd hours of the night.
Their speed-bumps along the road to happiness sometimes resemble mountains, monoliths looming ahead of them. But the times when everything is okay it feels like the sun is shining just for them, so they stick it out.
Their first kiss, after a dinner of roof-top tacos and a long night of fighting crime, is awkward.
Wade initiates it, in the middle of his step-by-step repeat of what they’d done to who, turning to Peter and plunging. The collision of foreheads and noses is awkward and there’s a few tense moments where Wade thinks he’s messed it up entirely.
Then Peter laughs, soft and low and takes his hand.
The second is better.
Each day after that is a progression of learning and small victories. But for now, it’s fine.
Zero years, zero months, zero hours and zero seconds.