[6117 words]
Flashbacks are in italics.
Warning: There are graphic descriptions of death, blood, and gore. There is also swearing.
Pretty sure everything is fairly canon-typical for Deadpool.
I'm terribly sorry if any of the characters are a little off, I've not written them before.
Spiderman had only seen Deadpool on a few occasions until this point.
Maybe five.
Or… seven.
Less than ten, tops.
All of them were… memorable. To say the least. And since Peter is staring at the ceiling of a hospital room with a bandaged shoulder and torso instead of dead on the street with bullet holes and shrapnel in his upper body he can honestly say he has no goddamn clue as to what kind of relationship he has with the mercenary. Maybe reviewing everything will shed some light on the situation?
Probably not.
The first time had been a surprise to both of them. Spiderman had been sitting on the edge of the roof of a small-ish skyscraper watching the sun rise over New York, when he'd heard muffled gunshots coming from the room below him and swung down to cling to the glass of what was apparently a penthouse suite. Inside of the building were bodies, strewn carelessly about the area. Bullet wounds, slashes, and missing limbs (among other things) decorated the bodies, and prancing about amongst them was a man in a skin-tight red and black suit. He was playing the air guitar with a sword and lightly stepping around and over the bodies, every once in a while he'd grab something off of one of the bodies and stuff it into one of the many pouches littering his suit.
What he was saying, or, presumably, singing, couldn't be heard through the glass between them despite multiple cracks in it. When the man finally noticed Spiderman he paused, tilted his head, and wandered over to the pane of glass Spiderman was clinging to.
Very, very slowly the man raised a hand (the one not holding the bloody sword) and drew a smiley face made of blood with his middle finger. Then he whirled away, arms out, head thrown back, and nearly clipped a wall as he moved out of view.
The second time they met Spiderman was slightly more prepared. He'd done some digging into the man, and had learned his name was Deadpool, he was a very successful mercenary, that his "secret" identity was Wade Wilson, and his phone number was actually in the phone book.
He was also very insane, a fact that every single person he had talked to had been very clear about. Psychopathic, schizophrenic, emotionally unstable, batshit crazy, freakin' lunatic etc.
Another thing that was made very clear was that the man was heavily scarred, and unable to die. How both came to be and what the specifics were varied greatly depending on who was asked, but the general ideas remained the same.
Regardless, Peter felt a lot more prepared the second time he came across Deadpool as Spiderman.
Big mistake.
The mercenary was just pulling one of his swords out of a man's head, three others already lying dead and scattered around the alley, when Spiderman dropped down.
"What're you doing?" He asked carefully, not entirely sure how to treat the man.
Deadpool watched the body drop to the ground before facing Spiderman, his mask made it impossible to read his expression. Then all of a sudden he loosened up, nearly turning into a completely different person within the span of a second. A finger was waved at Spiderman, as if the mercenary was chastising him for something. "You're the copy-cat that was peeping through my window a while ago! Now you know, Mr. Almost-as-sexy-as-me-in-a-skin-tight-body-suit, that being a peeping tom is not an acceptable occupation!"
Spiderman tilted his head to consider the man in front of him. "One, I'm definitely not a copy-cat. My suit is blue and red, not black and read. And two? How is killing people OK but accidentally watching someone raid their dead bodies not?"
The mercenary seemed to consider this, tapping his chin thoughtfully and looking up a bit. "Well now Spidey, I can call you Spidey right? So, Spidey, most people living on the highest story of a skyscraper have an expectation of privacy! And while I can admit that I've done a lot things far crazier than accidentally attaching myself to a penthouse level window, I don't think that an upstanding not-quite-hero such as yourself would find themselves doing something like that accidentally."
Before Spiderman could protest being called a not-quite-hero, he is an actual hero thank you very much, Deadpool continued on talking, the pause he left just too short to get a word in.
"And since you didn't do it accidentally, and you obviously did copy me, I guess I'll just have to do something with you." Deadpool very obviously gives Spiderman a thorough once-over. "Probably rectify your colour situation."
Spiderman tensed up as Deadpool pointed a sword at him. "My colour situation?"
Even under the mask Spiderman could see the mercenary's grin, "I'm going to beat you till you're black and blue! But mostly black, because we've already established that your suit is blue and not black."
All of a sudden Spiderman's spidey-sense started screaming at him to get the hell out of there as Deadpool took a step forwards, now looking far more terrifying than a man who'd started out scolding him should ever be capable of.
"Don't even try to run, Spidey-boy," he crooned, then his voice dropped into a threatening snarl, "I hate it when people run."
So, yes. That was a mistake.
Spiderman had managed to stick one of Deadpool's feet to the ground before sprinting and swinging across over half of New York in an effort to lose the mercenary. He had even resorted to spending a few minutes regaining his strength on the roof of the Avenger's Tower, though he made sure not to touch anything that could have possibly been important. The last thing he wanted was to be chased down by an entire team of superheroes in addition to Deadpool.
The third time was terrifying.
Not oh-my-god-I-am-so-going-to-die terrifying (like their second encounter), but holy-shit-what-is-happening-this-is-unexpected-and-I-don't-know-what-to-do terrifying.
A warehouse was on fire, and it was full of explosives. Shattered wooden crates littered the ground, and weapons of varying sizes and types lay scattered about. Most were covered in blood, though a few weren't.
Spiderman carefully made his way towards a small office in the back corner of the warehouse, following a series of bloody drag-marks on the floor. He did his best to ignore what appeared to be bodies as they lay lifeless amongst some of the boxes.
He'd already gotten a few homeless people away from the isolated warehouse, and now he was just making sure there weren't any innocents stuck inside. Not that he expected to find any innocent people inside a flaming warehouse full of illegal and freakishly dangerous weapons, but he knew that if he didn't check then the possibility of leaving someone behind would linger in his mind for days (weeks) to come.
So far he'd found nothing alive in the mess, but the drag-marks continued all the way to the office door. Something crashed in the background, and Spiderman knew that he had to hurry up before the entire place collapsed/exploded. Ever-so-carefully he opened the office door.
His senses weren't warning him of any dangers, and so he was completely unprepared to find himself face to muzzle with a pistol. He looked past it to see someone that definitely should not have been alive in his current state slumped in the office's lone chair.
Deadpool.
His torso was covered in bullet holes, knife wounds, and even some painful-looking burns. It wasn't possible to see if any of the skin on his torso didn't have some kind of injury on it, there was so much blood between what scraps remained of his suit.
But his legs were worse.
Or, rather, his leg, singular, because he appeared to be missing one.
"You here to finish me off, Spidey-boy?"
Through his instinctive terror Spiderman looked at Deadpool, really looked at him, and noticed how utterly exhausted he appeared. His suit was in tatters (aside, somehow, from his mask), he was missing a vital body part, and he'd apparently just stopped an illegal weapons dealing of freakishly large proportions. The arm holding the gun was cut to ribbons, and though it did shake the tremor was far smaller than it would have been had anyone else been holding the gun.
Though, anyone else in Deadpool's condition would be far too dead to hold a gun.
Spiderman wasn't even sure Deadpool could pull the trigger, it didn't look like there would be enough muscles intact in order to do so; though, since that obviously wasn't stopping him from holding the gun in the first place Spiderman figured it would be best not to take any chances.
So he looked at Deadpool, and, against his better judgement (the man had tried to kill Spiderman not too long ago), he honestly said "No."
The mercenary tilted his head a little, disbelief clearly evident, "Really."
Spiderman nodded, more determined this time. "Really really."
Deadpool scoffed, a very painful looking (and sounding) action, and around his mouth his surprisingly-intact mask got a little darker. "I killed every single person in this warehouse, you walked right past their fucked-up bodies, and you're not going to kill me? Finish me off? Punish me for my crimes? Hell," Deadpool waved his free (but still extremely injured) arm at his missing leg, "all you'd have to do is walk away and I'd die when this place finally goes."
Slowly Spiderman raised his hands to show he had no nefarious intentions or weapons, "Nope."
The arm holding the gun slowly dropped, and Spiderman could visibly see torn muscles contracting and knitting together with the motion. "Then why are you here?"
Spiderman shrugged, not entirely sure what the hell he was doing himself. All he knew was that he hadn't sensed danger before walking into the office, and his spidey-senses had never failed him before. "Was looking for living people. Found you. Not sure what I'm doing now."
A harsh laugh escaped the mercenary as a slow sense of danger started to come over Spiderman. It'd been present from the moment he'd gotten near the warehouse, and it wasn't coming from the nearly-dead man in front of him, but from the still burning building behind and around him. It was getting stronger. "Does that mean I don't count as living?"
Spiderman winced, but before he could figure out a reassuring apology the sense of danger increased tenfold. "Obviously you're alive, and I can help get you out of here and stay alive if you agree to leave within the next minute. I don't think this place will last much longer than that, and as much as I like explosions in movies I'd rather not be a part of one in real life."
Anxiously Spiderman waited, getting tenser with every passing second, before momentarily relaxing at Deadpool's reply.
"Fine, pretty boy, but don't expect any favours in the future."
"Yeah, whatever, try not to lose any more limbs on the way out."
And so Spiderman had carried Deadpool away from the warehouse, the duo ignoring the massive explosion that came less than a minute later, through back alleys and tiny streets to a shitty looking apartment building. The mercenary had told Spiderman to leave him there, on the doorstep, covered in injuries and missing an entire leg, and Spiderman had.
He'd walked away.
He'd left someone that should be dead and that was still missing vital body parts on the stoop of an awful apartment building in a dangerous neighbourhood.
And the worst part?
He felt guilty.
Lying in bed that night Peter felt guilty.
Sure, the man had killed everyone in that warehouse, but they'd been trafficking a literal boat-load (possibly two) of illegal weapons. They probably deserved it.
But never before had Peter-as-Spiderman simply left someone because they asked him to. He'd always watched to make sure they were taken care of, usually by the police or an ambulance. He'd watched from roof-tops, from alley ways, and on one memorable occasion he even hid in the branches of a tree (during winter no less), but he hadn't watched Deadpool. Leaving Deadpool on that stoop, not knowing if he'd been anywhere close to a safe place where he could heal and regrow his entire goddamn leg, made Peter feel guilty.
And that was terrifying.
That was holy-shit-what-is-happening-this-is-unexpected-and-I-don't-know-what-to-do terrifying.
For the next four weeks Peter worried that the rumours had been wrong, and that Deadpool wasn't as invincible as everybody claimed he was.
Their fourth encounter was brief, and wasn't really a Deadpool encounter so much as a Deadpool sighting, but it had an impact nonetheless.
Spiderman was heading home to his tiny but not-quite-shitty apartment, having just finished a patrol, and was more than ready to pass out before his lecture the next day (technically the same day), when he saw a red-clad figure sitting on a rooftop, picnic blanket spread out underneath him.
He stopped, the building he perched on tall enough that he could easily look down to get a better view of the scene.
Deadpool had his mask rolled up to his nose (he was too far away to see any scars), and was doodling in a notebook with his right hand while eating tacos from a picnic basket (an actual stereotypical picnic basket) with his left.
Spiderman tried to find anything suspicious (other than the obvious mercenary-carrying-a-literal-shit-ton-of-weaponry bit) about the situation, and found there was nothing he could possibly call the mercenary out on doing. Eating tacos from a picnic basket at dark-o'clock in the morning while doodling in a notebook and wearing a skin-tight suit was extremely odd, yes, but really not worth confronting the man over.
But some of the guilt he'd been feeling eased, knowing that the mercenary was fine, and a tension he didn't know he had disappeared.
Calling the event a sighting made him sound like some kind of animal enthusiast, except he wasn't interested in animals; just Deadpool.
That was a creepy and scary thought.
Peter Parker. University student, professional photographer, secretly Spiderman, and Deadpool enthusiast.
Does a fair amount of research and three less-than-friendly encounters plus one sighting make him a Deadpool enthusiast?
Peter's not really sure he wants to know the answer to that question.
The fifth encounter was an actual-encounter, not just a sighting.
Though, the circumstances didn't exactly allow for a lot of conversation. Or any, really.
Lightning flashed across the cloudy skies and thunder echoed down not-so-busy streets and dark alleys. Large, robotic rabbits were destroying part of New York. The Avengers had even come in, and Spiderman had caught glimpses of the famous heroes as they easily battled the mechanical monsters.
They had yet to find the mastermind behind the attack, but regardless, Spiderman had caught the end of several Monty Python related jokes as he swung around and out of the way of the heroes, doing his best to get civilians clear of the area while keeping from messing up the Avengers' team dynamic or coming into contact with any SHIELD agents.
He had just disposed of a wayward bunny, saving a small family and several other bystanders in the process, when he heard a series of muffled gunshots.
After a split-second check to make sure there was nothing more to endanger the nearby civilians he sprinted towards the gunshots. The police were firing at the rabbits, and the Black Widow would sometimes add a gun to her graceful and extremely terrifying and fatal dance of destruction, but they never used silencers in the middle of a battle.
Spiderman leapt onto a building, quickly scaling it to gain a vantage point, and peered over the edge into a side-street.
Deadpool was poking the nearest of several dismantled rabbits with the muzzle of his rifle, quiet giggles echoing up to where Spiderman perched every time one of the piles of mechanical rabbit twitched.
All of a sudden the mercenary looked up, and Spiderman felt their masked eyes meet.
Then Deadpool waved, "Hey there pretty-boy! Fancy meeting you here!" A clang echoed down the side-street, and before Spiderman could react the mercenary had whirled about and shot the new rabbit right between its eyes. The bunny collapsed, and Deadpool pranced about for a second. "Right in the sweet-spot baby! Booh-yah bitches!"
Spiderman shook his head, watching the dancing mad-man with wary fondness, before sprinting across the rooftop to see if any other civilians needed help.
The various members of the Avengers had tried to find out who Spiderman's secret identity was for a few weeks after that, but Peter had started being far more careful with his identity ever since the Gwen-incident.
Nobody would ever know; he made sure of it.
Of course, the sixth time he encountered Deadpool would jeopardize his identity, just not in a way Peter would have expected.
Peter was out shopping with Aunt May, they tried to meet up once every two months for a weekend together. This weekend Peter had asked Aunt May to teach him how to make proper spaghetti sauce. He hoped that if he bought all the ingredients separately and made one massive pot every few days that he could afford to eat it semi-often and have some "real food" in his diet.
The duo had stopped in a fairly obscure whole foods store, one Aunt May swore had amazing tomatoes for a very cheap price, when a feeling of danger crept over Peter. They were the only two customers in the store, so when he heard shouting from the front of the store and a quick glance showed two men wearing balaclavas with guns holding up the cashier Peter found he wasn't all that surprised. Of course this particular random tiny grocery store would be getting robbed at this moment. Of course.
Across the street was a Mexican food place, and Peter hadn't bothered giving it a second glance right up until he saw a figure in a skin-tight red and black suit walk out with a massive box full of tacos.
Before Peter could somehow come up with a plan one of the two robbers had walked closer to where he and Aunt May were standing. "You two! Let me see your hands!"
Aunt May slowly set her grocery bag on the ground, and Peter did the same next to her. He heard the robber holding up the cashier start snarling questions that made no sense. "Where's the fucking door!?" He hauled the cashier over the counter before the obviously terrified man could answer, "Tell me where the goddamn door is!"
The bell over the store door tinkled, and a familiar voice boomed through the store. "Never fear! Deadpool is here!"
Peter immediately dropped to the ground, pulling Aunt May down with him and covering her with his body.
Peter heard a muffled gunshot, one that he subconsciously recognized.
Another gunshot immediately followed the first, and the robber that had confronted him and Aunt May fell to the ground with a bullet hole in his head.
Peter slowly stood up, peering over the produce between him and the door, to see Deadpool posturing over the dead robber slumped over the till. He comically examined the body, fingers on his chin as he moved around, tilting his head this way and that. A sharp jab had it sliding to the floor with a dull thud that made Peter cringe.
Fairly certain (67 ish %) that Deadpool wasn't going to shoot him or Aunt May, he carefully helped his aunt up, doing his best to stay between her line of sight and the body of the robber that'd confronted them. He quickly checked her over, making sure he hadn't injured her when he pulled her to the floor.
Deadpool casually kicked the body, and the cashier flinched.
Aunt May grabbed her bag of groceries and started walking over towards the cash register, and Peter quickly followed suit.
She stopped in front of Deadpool, who was standing in a position that was meant to look relaxed, but Peter could see how highly strung the mercenary was. He carefully came to stand behind his Aunt, a silent show of support that did not go unnoticed. Deadpool had tensed even further.
Aunt May reached out a free hand to Deadpool. "My name is Aunt May, and this is my nephew, Peter Parker. We'd like to thank you for stopping those men, sir."
Everybody still alive in the store stared at Aunt May in disbelief. Deadpool was the first to find his voice. "Uhh… you're welcome?" He looked at his gloved hand before slowly putting his gun away and carefully holding it out. Aunt May gently but firmly shook it three times before letting go. She pulled out her cell phone and gestured to the body slowly bleeding all over the floor.
"I'm going to call the police now, you may want to leave. This city doesn't seem to have a very favourable opinion regarding red vigilantes."
Deadpool stared at his hand, then back at Aunt May. He looked at the cashier and Peter as if to confirm they'd seen somebody shake his hand and thank him too. When Peter smiled carefully at him he froze for a full 10 seconds before shaking himself. "Yeah, sure. Will do ma'am." Peter would have verbally thanked Deadpool too, but he couldn't risk his voice being recognized.
Deadpool wandered outside as if in a daze and picked up his box of tacos, left just beside the door, looking back through the store windows several times as he walked away with an obvious confusion that made Peter feel like a terrible human being. When was the last time anyone thanked Deadpool? Had the man ever been thanked for doing something?
Aunt May called the police and paid for their groceries at the same time, and a few of her words caught Peter's attention.
"Why yes, officer, it is the store that used to be a drug front! However did you know?"
The cashier was still staring at the bodies.
After that encounter Peter didn't see Deadpool for another seven months.
Peter had interrogated Aunt May about the store-that-used-to-be-a-drug-front but she'd brushed off his panicked questions with reassurances. Apparently the owner was an old friend's nephew and the produce was so cheap because he could afford to have low prices with the extra money from selling drugs supplementing his income. When Peter asked why the heck Aunt May had started buying produce from a drug dealer in the first place she gave him a look and held up the receipt, pointing at the surprisingly small total at the bottom.
How everything was still so cheap even after the drug selling was supposedly shut down was something Peter really didn't want to ask about.
The seventh Deadpool encounter is almost the last one.
Spiderman had (ironically) just chased down and webbed-up a small-time drug dealer on a narrow two-lane street when his spidey-sense spiked. He immediately dropped to the ground and rolled behind a parked car, but a second later a loud gunshot sounded and excruciating pain lanced through his shoulder. The bullet had passed through the car and the shrapnel had still hit him. His suit didn't provide too much protection against that kind of thing.
Doing his best to ignore the pain Spiderman leapt to the side, rolling to a stop behind an adjacent car. The pressure on his shoulder made his vision go dark for a split-second, and a full-body shudder racked Spiderman. He did his best to freeze, going so far as to hold his breath, and everything was silent.
Despite the quiet and the pain, Spiderman could still feel the danger. It was less helpful than usual, likely because of the amount of pain he was in, and Spiderman couldn't even begin to guess at where the shooter was. Then he saw someone come around the back of the car with a bullet hole in it, and Spiderman froze. The man had a large rifle, and it was pointed directly at Spiderman.
The man grinned, eyes cold and emotionless. "See yah in Hell, little spider."
He pulled the trigger, but right as the shot went off a knife embedded itself in the man's shoulder. The bullet grazed Spiderman's chest, and he heard it nick one of his ribs. He barely managed to muffle his scream.
The man wasn't so lucky. As he swung around to see who'd thrown the knife he was thrown back against the wall of the building bordering the street, having been kicked in the chest by a figure in a red and black suit with two swords drawn.
"You shot the pretty spider, mister I-have-a-gun-that's-obviously-compensating-for-something. I prefer being the one shooting the spider, you know. He still won't admit that he copied my suit!"
Spiderman gripped his shoulder with one hand and pressed his other to his ribs, leaning back against the car and desperately hoping that there would be no more spider shooting tonight, by anyone. If he could avoid getting injured then he could somehow remove the shrapnel from the first shot, close the wound from the second shot, bandage it all up, and hope that his only-slightly-advanced healing factor took care of the rest.
He coughed, and felt a liquid too thick to be saliva in his mouth. Shit.
With a surge of energy he managed to stand, leaning against the car, and he watched Deadpool leap and twirl around the man with the gun, swords flicking out almost faster than could be seen in the poor lighting. Deadpool was toying with the man. Fantastic. Don't mind him, just bleeding out over here.
Spiderman shoved off the car in an effort to stand on his own, and felt a surge of triumph when he managed to remain on his feet (though his vision blurred and he nearly toppled over).
He coughed again, more blood coming up, and wondered if the bullet had gone between two of his ribs instead of grazing the outside of one as he'd originally thought. If that were the case his thoracic cavity would have been punctured in two places. Blood would be filling it, and his lungs would be crushed by outside pressure.
A shriek made him focus, and he saw the tip of one of Deadpool's swords poking out of the man's back for a moment. Then the mercenary stepped back and pulled his sword out of the man's body in a single movement. He and Spiderman watched the body slowly crumple to the street in silence.
Then Spiderman tried to take a step and nearly passed out. He ended up leaning against the car and coughing up more blood, one of his bloody gloves smearing a line against the roof. Deadpool stared at him, eyeing him with an intensity that unnerved him. "You should really go to a hospital."
Spiderman stared. "What?"
A bloody sword gestured to his shoulder and chest. "Hospital. You. Should go to one. Right now."
Spiderman coughed, then winced as another wave of pain washed over him, he could feel the blood soaking through his suit, enough that the dark spots were visibly expanding. "Right. I'll do that." More coughing. "Maybe I should announce my secret identity to everyone I meet along the way too, you know, to get the word out before any of the hospital staff can tell." He could feel the effort it took to breath in increasing with every word, and he wheezed, trying to cough and inhale at the same time. "If I don't pass out along the way, that is."
Deadpool kept staring, but then he spoke, and the craziest sentences ever heard by anyone came out. "My place is close by. I have a change of clothes that would probably not be too big for you, if you wanted. "Spiderman coughed again and Deadpool continued, "I can help you out and try to make sure you stay alive if you agree to leave within the next minute. I don't think you can afford to see if your lungs will last much longer than that, and as much as I like killing people for work and funsies I'd rather not watch you drown in your own blood."
Spiderman rested more of his weight against the car as he wondered what exactly had happened to his life that he was even in a position that required he accept an offer of help from Deadpool of all people. "Why?" Is what he ended up coughing out, belatedly recognizing Deadpool's words as vaguely similar to what he'd said to the mercenary in that burning warehouse what seemed like several lifetimes ago.
Deadpool just shrugged, quickly making his way to Spiderman's side and gently picking him up. "You helped me before. Now I'll help you. This way we'll be even." The mercenary started carefully running towards a familiar looking apartment. Wow, they were really close by. "Besides," he continued, his voice sounding off, "I can hardly let someone as sexy-in-spandex as you bleed out in a dark street can I? It's be a crime against the perverts of New York."
Spiderman was going to reply, he really was, but everything blurred again. This time darkness came with it, encroaching on his vision. He managed heard Deadpool's panicked "Spiderman? Spiderman!" before passing out.
And now he's in a hospital. He as in Peter Parker, not Spiderman.
Which is very, very bad.
Because that means that either the hospital staff know, in which case his life is ruined (and likely going to be very short), or Deadpool knows, in which case his life is ruined (and, again, likely to be very short).
And Peter still has no idea what his relationship with Deadpool is, if it can even be called a relationship. He's just a… Deadpool enthusiast.
Right.
Of course, if the hospital staff had been told he was Spiderman there'd doubtlessly be someone watching him at all times, possibly a government agent (*cough* SHIELD *cough*) of some sort, and there'd probably be cameras in his room.
That being said (thought), since there is no hospital staff member or ominous government agent watching Peter sleep, and he can't hear or see any cameras in the room, that means that nobody here knows.
That means Deadpool brought him to his terrible apartment, changed his clothes, and got him to a hospital before he could die (a truly remarkable feat).
And he didn't tell anyone that Peter Parker's actually Spiderman.
And, from what Peter could remember, Deadpool had sounded genuinely concerned about Spiderman right before he'd passed out.
And all of that means…. what, exactly?
A nurse with a scrub-top covered in tropical fish walks into the room and smiles when she sees that Peter's awake. "Hello there Peter, my name's Sam and I'll be your nurse for the next little while. How are you feeling?" He doesn't answer, and Sam glances at the I.V. bag next to Peter's bed before going over to the monitoring equipment in the room. She nods approvingly and stands next to his bed, giving Peter a critical once-over. "You look like you're doing better, but," she smiles gently at Peter, "I know looks aren't everything. Why don't you tell me if you're feeling any pain right now?"
Peter shrugs, and winces as a strong throbbing makes itself known in his shoulder and left side. Sam frowns at him, "Your shoulder was operated on two days ago, we had to drain your chest and patch up your rib cage, and you've received a small blood transfusion. Don't worry," she says at his panicked expression, "it was completely successful and you should expect a full recovery. We got all of the metal out of your shoulder and patched you up quite nicely. Try not to move too much, alright? We've called your Aunt, a May Parker? She's on your approved persons list. The man that brought you in, Mr. Wade Lisow, he stayed until you got out of surgery to make sure you'd be okay."
Peter nods, suddenly exhausted, and finds himself staring at the nurse's oddly colourful scrub-top. For some reason (probably the drugs) he finds he can't figure out what type of fish he's looking at, and it's bothering him more than it should. "What kind of fish is that?" He asks, before he can stop himself.
The nurse looks down at her shirt before pointing at the fish Peter was looking at. "This one?" He nods. "This is the humuhumu nukunuku apua'a, which is the Hawaiian name for the reef triggerfish."
Peter stares at the nurse. "Right."
She laughs, "I lived in Hawai'i for many years, Mr. Parker, and I'd be ashamed if I didn't know its national fish. Now, your Aunt should be here soon for visiting hours, and this," she reaches behind the bed and pulls a button attached to a cord out before gently placing it in Peter's right hand (the one attached to his uninjured shoulder), "is your call bell. If you need anything, and I do mean anything, Mr. Parker, I want you to press this. I'll be here within a few minutes at most of you pressing that, alright?"
Peter nods, and Sam smiles gently at him before exiting the room, closing the door so carefully not even his enhanced hearing can hear it shut.
The last thing he thinks before he falls asleep is that Deadpool must have changed him and brought him here, without letting anyone know who he was.
It's an oddly reassuring thought.
-.-.-.-
It only takes Peter a few hours after waking up for the second time to figure out that rearranging the letters in Lisow, the apparent last name of the man that dropped him off, spells out Wilson. Peter hadn't even noticed that the Wade that had dropped Peter off had a different last name than Deadpool. Peter would have worried that the mercenary had passed him off to somebody (who happened to also be named Wade) but Sam had described Wade as the "kind-hearted man with a lot of battle wounds" that carried Peter into the Emergency Room. Sam had only talked to Wade after Peter's surgery to let him know that Peter was going to be alright, but the ER receptionist had confirmed that he was the same person that'd brought Peter in.
Hearing Wade Wilson, AKA Deadpool, described as "a kind-hearted man with a lot of battle wounds," made Peter think; and seeing as he had nothing to do but think for the next little while, he found himself going over his every interaction with the mercenary from every possible angle.
-.-.-.-
A week later Aunt May arrived to escort Peter out of the hospital. Sam was working again and worriedly watched the duo walk to the elevator. Peter had refused a wheel-chair. He knew that if he had been discharged after the amount of time a normal person would need to recover, that he (with his healing factor, however minor and seemingly useless it may be) could afford to walk out of the hospital under his own power.
Peter winces as sunlight hits his face, unfiltered by a heavily tinted window for the first time in over a week. Aunt May waves to a figure wearing a hoodie, and Peter frowns. "Aunt May, who's that?"
She looks up at Peter in surprise, "Oh right, I suppose you wouldn't remember him. This is Mr. Wilson, the man that brought you to the hospital."
Peter takes a moment to wonder about Deadpool telling Aunt May his real name, and not the hospital staff, before giving his intelligent response.
"What?"
All the thoughts he'd had concerning one Wade/Deadpool were racing through Peter's head, and he found that he was (for some very un-logical and actually rather terrible reasons) cautiously optimistic about this whole situation.
Aunt May gently steered Peter towards "Mr. Wilson." Peter could see the lower half of the man's face, and it was covered in painful looking scars. Sam's words echoed in his mind, battle scarred. That's one way of putting it. Wade was standing in front of a small purple car, and from what Peter could see the hood was a slightly different purple than the rest of the car. It had a few dents, and a single hubcap on the rear right wheel. "Whose car is that?"
Wade smiled a bit, a tiny crinkle in the corner of a scarred mouth, as Peter and Aunt May approached.
Peter found himself smiling back.
Aunt May gently patted his arm, "That's Mr. Wilson's car. Don't let it fool you, Peter, it's a very good car. It only looks beat up."
Peter imagined, that if this were a story of some kind, that that would be a metaphor for something.
All grammatical errors are my own! Feel free to point them all out in great or little detail.
I'm a first year nursing student so the hospital scene and medical stuff is all at least semi-accurate (the fish part is definitely accurate, though that has nothing to do with nursing).
PS.
The humuhumu nukunuku apua'a is the actual national fish of Hawai'i.