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Three weeks after graduation – she had been late to the ceremony because of a robbery and had realized that one of the web-shooters was still around her wrist when a professor had handed her the stupid diploma but Aunt May had still cried a little in joy – Hilly was serving tables in a crappy squirrel themed diner. It was sad and pathetic and she clearly only got big tips from guys who stared at her boobs for way too many seconds but it was better than nothing.
And so much better than Aunt May's disappointed face when Hilly had finally broke the news that she wasn't going to college after all.
Her asshole boss only gave her the shifts that started at 6am and ended around noon but she was free to superhero the rest of the day, and after three weeks of that, she was starting to wonder if this was what her life was going to look like until she retired – if crazy mutants or aliens didn't kill her before.
She was in the middle of fixing her stupid squirrel-cap that was a required part of the uniform when another server – her badge said Stacey but Hilly knew for a fact that Stacey had been fired, like, two weeks ago – walked to her, chewing loudly on gum.
“Table three asks for you,” she said, not even looking at Hilly.
“Why?”
Not-Stacey shrugged a shoulder and walked to the kitchen, leaving Hilly alone next to the counter and with no choice.
She sighed as soon as she could correctly see table three – because the tacky diner's decoration was the most horrible thing ever, with fake trees separating booths and being nothing but ugly and uncomfortable for the people sitting at the booths and trying to eat greasy bacon.
Deadpool, in full costume, was waiting for her.
“Holaaaaaa!” he said, as cheerful as always, once she was standing next to the table.
Hilly sighed.
“Hi and welcome to Squirrelicious, what can I get you? Today's special is scrambled eggs with pineapple juice,” she declared, trying to sound as bored as possible while keeping her eyes fixed on the notepad she used to write down orders.
Her heart, already beating fast, started drumming against her ribcage when Deadpool leaned in her direction and squinted at her badge proudly announcing that her name was Omar. Omar was the guy who had been working there before her, and her boss had been vague about why the guy had left – he had lied about a drug overdose before thinking back on it and announcing that immigration had caught him.
Badges with correct names weren't the top priority in Squirrelicious, which was, for once, exactly what Hilly had needed.
“Seeing how cool you are in the streets, I really didn't expect you to be working in this shitty place, Omar,” he said, smiling sweetly through his mask when she finally looked up at him.
“I don't know what you're talking about. What do you want to order?”
“Do you guys do Mexican food?”
“No.”
“Then what do you have?”
“Coffee. Pancakes. Bacon. You should probably leave before I punch you in the face. You know,” she said, shrugging, “the usual.”
“It's really hot when you threaten me like that. I'm gonna take a coffee. And seven plates of pancakes.”
Hilly wrote it down, cursing inwardly her hand for shaking, before she stiffly told him that it'd come right away and left for the kitchen.
The chef, an obese man with greasy hair and who didn't wash his hands as much as the law wanted him to, looked a little panicked when she told him she needed seven plates but he still grabbed the pancake batter, cursing under his breath as Hilly leaned against one of the big industrial fridge, trying to calm down.
Deadpool wasn't here by pure coincidence. He had asked for her, so he probably wanted something – and he totally knew about her identity, there was no doubt about it.
She was so screwed.
It didn't take nearly as much time as she'd hoped for the chef to cook seven plates of pancakes and she probably wouldn't have been able to balance everything with only two arms if it wasn't for her super-human everything, but thirty seconds later she had put all the plates down in front of Deadpool and was pouring him a cup of hot coffee.
He watched her do it without moving and didn't seem surprised at all when she sat down in front of him in the booth.
“Alright, what do you want?” she asked, hoping that doing it like she'd rip a band-aid would make it less painful.
Deadpool didn't reply – why would he make her life any easier after all? – and took his time rolling his mask up to his nose before grabbing a pancake with his gloved fingers and pushing all of it into his mouth.
Hilly watched him chew loudly, disgusted and still scared.
“How're you feelin'?” he asked once he had swallowed, already grabbing another pancake.
“Disgusted.”
“Your head.”
“Oh...” she said, surprised that he'd even ask her that. “I'm better. Thanks for taking me to a hospital by the way.”
Deadpool shrugged and continued eating, looking down at his gloved hands.
To say that it wasn't what Hilly had been expecting from him would have been the biggest understatement ever.
She watched him eat loudly, with his mouth open most of the time, for a very long moment.
“Are you going to use the fact that you know who I am against me?” she finally asked.
“I don't know who you are,” he replied with the same tone he'd use if he was telling her about the weather. “I only know that you have boobs – nice ones by the way, I don't know how you manage to hide 'em in the sexy spandex – and that you work in this shithole.”
“About that...”
“I followed you.”
He said that like it was not a big deal at all. Like this wasn't this whole charade crumbling down around Hilly. When no one had known about her, a girl, being Spidey, she could convince herself that this wasn't going to be a regular thing, that this was just for some months, until Peter got better and over his 'I need to save the whole world' phase, but now...
Now someone knew what she looked like, and where she worked. Now someone could tell the whole world about her and screw everything up.
Now she really was Spiderman.
“To be honest I came here today just to see the look on your face – it was hilarious, if you're wondering – and see why in the fuck someone like you would work here.”
“I need the money.”
“Modeling would pay more and with ass like yours, you could totally be in Playboy.”
Hilly rolled her eyes and ignored his smirk in response to that.
“You're a dick, I hope you know that,” she told him, before getting up. “Now finish that mountain of pancakes and never come back again, or I'll have to kick your ass.”
She pretended that she couldn't hear him snicker and feel his eyes on her butt while she walked away from his table.
***
Seventeen hours later, and Hilly was almost missing Squirrelicious. After all, a job in a shitty squirrel-themed diner was better than the whole indie superhero thing Spidey had going.
Also, there was the guy who had killed Gwen throwing tiny bombs at her and the few pedestrians still out.
Sometimes, Hilly wondered where the hell were all the superheroes of New York when she needed them. It was like those guys disappeared as soon as Spidey needed a hand – and Hilly was pretty sure that a bomb-throwing maniac on a hoverboard was a pretty serious situation, like come on! He wasn't an alien invasion but still, where was Daredevil when she could use his help? The guy had seemed to like Spidey the few times she had crossed his path.
“Spidey!” hissed the guy, one of his bomb brushing past Hilly and exploding against a window.
She was hoping that the people living in that apartment where out right now, or at least sleeping far away from that window, and not dying under shards of glass, because she barely had time to dodge another bomb and crash on a balcony before the maniac was on her, trying to grab her by the neck.
“Come ooooon!” he sing-songed, making grabby hands at her as she kicked him in the shin.
“Get the fuck off me!” she screamed, voice growing hysteric as he shoved his scary masked face in hers.
Kicking him again, she managed to throw web at another building and swung away just as he was reaching for another bomb.
“Peter!” called the maniac, already on her heels. “Come on Peter, why don't you want to come to me now?”
That had Hilly stop dead on her next jump, sticking to the side of the building thanks to her hands and feet.
If that guy, the one who had killed Gwen, knew that Spidey was Peter, it explained so much. Like why Peter didn't want to tell her who it was, and why he was so keen on blaming himself.
Unfortunately, the maniac used Hilly's surprise to his advantage and wrapped a hand around her throat before she had time to react.
“Come on, Peter, don't tell me you weren't expecting me to come back! All of this is your fault!!” he screamed, right into Hilly's face, making her wince as he tightened his fingers around her neck. “And I'm gonna make you pay.”
Hilly punched him in the face as his hoverboard started to rise up in the sky, sending the mask flying, and she couldn't hold back a chocked sound of surprise.
“Harry?” she croaked.
Harry squinted, leaning closer to her.
“Why do you sound so surprised?” he asked.
He looked nothing like Hilly remembered. His skin was sickeningly pale, he had terrible black circles under his eyes, and the veins on his face and neck looked black, contrasting with his new complexion, but what really shocked Hilly was his teeth. He was bearing them in a crazy grin, which made him look like a predator, ready to rip her throat out.
Her silence must have been telling, because something suddenly passed over his expression, and his grin became a full on sneer.
“You're not Peter, are you? You're Hilly,” he said, not a doubt in his tone. “Let me guess, he did that to you too, didn't he? Superhero is not your style.”
“Let me go,” she gritted back.
Harry's grip tightened around her throat, making her choke and see black dots around the edge.
“Oh no, I'm not going to let you go. I know killing Gwen was big for Peter, but not big enough apparently, since he still happily goes on with his life while I'm like this. So I'm going to kill you, because I know he won't be able to go on without you,” he calmly announced, making Hilly shiver in fear.
Looking into his eyes, she knew he really wanted to make Peter suffer through her, and if she was being honest with herself, she wasn't ready to die at the hand of her twin's former best friend yet.
“You're not going to kill me,” she replied, the words coming out rough and choked.
Harry smiled sweetly at her, opening his mouth to reply what was probably going to be an acerbic comment, like he always used to talk to her, but she didn't let him. She grabbed one of the time bomb hanging around his waist, webbed it to his chest, and kicked him with her two feet right in the solar plexus.
Screaming, Harry let her go, and she just had time to throw a web at a lamppost to stop her fall before he was making bombs rain down on the street and leaving with his hoverboard, screaming over his shoulder that he was going to kill her.
Sighing, Hilly took a second to massage her hurting throat and wonder why the hell everyone was so keen on choking her and taking revenge. Then she realized that she only had three and a half hours to sleep if she didn't want to be late for work, and she quickly left her lamppost because quite frankly, the call of her bed was more important than trying to follow Harry at the moment.
***
Peter was a hard guy to see. He had managed to get an internship with the one and only Reed Richards for the summer, meaning that he was spending most of his time in the Baxter Building and frankly, this was one of the last place on Earth Hilly wanted to set foot in – mainly because the one and only time she had been inside that building, it had been to steal something.
Unfortunately, Hilly had no choice. She had to tell Peter about Harry – and she really wanted to know what had happened to Harry and what Peter's role had been in that – so she gritted her teeth and entered the Baxter Building, praying that they were going to let her come in.
The guy at the reception looked pissed off and stared at her ID, then at her, then back at her ID for almost ten minutes, before finally grabbing a phone and groaning for Peter Parker in the receiver.
Peter looked even more pissed than the receptionist when the elevator's doors opened to him in a white blouse. He was wearing his big hipster glasses, even if he didn't need them now, and his hair was a mess, which made Hilly rethink her decision of telling him for two seconds – then she realized that she had more reasons than him to be pissed.
“What?” he snapped at her.
Raising an eyebrow, Hilly pushed him back into the elevator, following him, and waited until he pressed the button for the top level before speaking.
“We need to talk, and even if this building is probably the worst place possible for that, it can't wait.”
“If this is about what happened during the alien invasion, I already told you it was nothing.”
“It's not about that.”
That got Peter to raise his eyebrow, but Hilly pretended to be focused on the number indicating the floors they were passing, trying to think of a way she could break the news to him.
The elevator made a very old fashioned ding when its doors opened to a giant lab slash workshop and Hilly slowly followed Peter when he started walking towards the back of the room.
There was a noise coming from one of the corners of the room, but Peter didn't say anything so Hilly told herself that it probably was a computer or some sort of machine. As long as it wasn't the Human Torch, she was okay.
They walked in silence to a huge desk cluttered with sheets of paper, one laptop, three screens and some microchips – to be honest, she had no idea what it was that Peter was doing here.
“What do you want?” he asked, tone bored, while sitting down on the chair behind the desk.
He made no other move and Hilly couldn't see another chair so she stayed on her feet and crossed her arms.
“I had someone visiting me yesterday,” she started, wondering if beating around the bush was a good idea or not.
“Fantastic. Why couldn't you wait until tonight to tell me? Cause I don't know if you can tell but I am very busy right now and I'd love it if you could–”
“It was Harry,” she cut him.
Peter stopped in the middle of his sentence and abruptly sat up on his chair at the same time as the noise coming from the corner stopped – it was definitely not a machine then.
“It's impossible,” he said after a long minute of just looking at her in shock.
“I wish, but trust me it was him. He thought I was you, at first, but didn't seem that surprised when he realized who I was, which probably should say something about all this clusterfuck, but let's focus on one problem at a time, shall we.”
“Oh my god...” murmured Peter. “Oh my god.”
“Yeah, I know, I was pretty shocked too but we should–”
“Oh my god!” cried out Peter over the rest of her sentence, jumping to his feet and starting to pace. “You… you need to go home and make sure nothing happens to Aunt May… or wait, I'll do it and you take care of him. The police knows what he did so they'll help you. Probably. I hope.”
“Peter, calm down, it's okay. Nothing happened yet.”
“No it's not!” he screamed, turning to face her. “You don't understand, you weren't here! He's gonna do something terrible and I won't be able to stop him, like the first time, and I can't lose someone again.”
Hilly clamped her mouth shut, resisting the urge to ask him if he was only talking about Aunt May or if he cared at least a little bit about her.
“I understand that this is hard for you, which is why I came to tell you, so you didn't have to see it on TV but we need to talk about what went down.”
Peter shook his head and took a step back, a muscle in his jaw twitching.
“I need to know what happened. I can't do anything if I have no idea what is going on, and you agreed to help me.”
“I agreed to keep you as safe as I can, considering your actions, and I really don't think telling you about it is going to do that.”
“You don't get to decide that!”
“I do, since you could have helped me at the time but chose to be a coward and stayed home while Gwen was getting murdered!” half-screamed, half-choked Peter.
Hilly took a step back, shocked and feeling as if she had just been slapped.
“You don't think that,” she murmured around the lump in her throat.
Peter looked down instead of replying, red rising in his cheeks.
“You fucking hypocrite...” she hissed, unable to resist.
That got him to look up, eyes wide open.
“You forced me into this Peter. You're the one who called me so I could clean up your mess with that bat-shit crazy scientist who thought turning the whole city into fucking lizards was a good idea. You're the one who couldn't keep it in his pants long enough to make sure no one would die. You're the one who told Gwen about this. Fuck, she knew before me, and still, you insist on blaming me for everything that happened and turned to shit!”
Blinking back tears, Hilly took another step back, looking down upon Peter.
“All of this is your fault and you're the coward who refuses to see the truth.”
Peter opened his mouth, as if to retort, but closed it again only a second later, his shoulders sagging.
They looked daggers at each other for another minute before Hilly turned around, not that surprised to find Sue Storm and her brother staring at them.
She brushed past them without acknowledging their existence and walked as fast as she could to the elevator, feeling as if she was suffocating in this godforsaken building. The elevator was already waiting for her when she reached it but she only started to feel better once its doors closed behind her and it started to go down and away from her brother.
***
Deadpool was staring at her while she was bringing bacon to another costumer, making her wonder what he hadn't understood when she had told him to never come back again. Maybe he really wanted her to kick his ass – he was crazy enough for that, after all.
He waved her over as soon as she was done with the other customer though, which was weird but not totally out of character for him.
“What don't you understand in 'don't ever come back again'?” she asked, sitting down in front of him.
“Come on, I'm pretty sure I'm your only friend, don't pretend you don't like seeing me.”
Hilly pursed her lips, knowing that he was right, in a way.
“Also, I'm going bad guy hunting this afternoon, wanna come?”
“Not really.”
“Come on, don't be such a sourwolf! It's gonna be fun!”
Sighing, Hilly pretended to consider her options. Since the end of high school, her afternoons had only consisted of patrolling as Spidey and watching reruns of telenovelas – which could be only described by one word: boring. It there was one thing that Deadpool wasn't, it was boring.
“All right,” she finally told him, amused when he grinned like a maniac through his mask, “but I swear, the moment you start to put your hand on my ass, I'm webbing you to something and leaving.”
“Don't worry, now that I've seen your boobs out of the spandex, I'll leave your ass alone.”
She glared at him and slapped him on the back of the head after getting up to take someone else's order.
***
Hilly never had the chance to go “bad guy hunting” with Deadpool.
In fact, neither did he.
Hilly's shift was almost over and Deadpool was sitting at a table, bent of over a smartphone and snickering at the screen, when Hilly's spider-sense kicked in.
For some reason, she couldn't tear her eyes away from the door leading to the kitchen.
“Hey,” she called Deadpool, walking to his table. “Have you seen anything weird today?”
“I'm watching a video of a baby panda taking a bath, but other than that no, why?”
“Nothing I just...”
Deadpool must have seen something on her face because he frowned and locked his phone, the video immediately stopping, before getting up, his right hand going for his belt.
“What?”
“Nothing it's just weird...”
“Tell me,” he ordered, taking a step closer to her.
“I think there's something in the kitchen.”
She could see him frown under his mask before he gently grabbed her wrist and pulled her closer to his side.
“How accurate are you when you usually think something is weird?”
“I'm right 99.9% of the time.”
Deadpool slowly nodded, stepping in front of her.
“We gotta get out of here,” he told her, not taking his eyes away from the door.
“What about the others?”
There was a chubby man at the counter eating pancakes, the other server whose name definitely wasn't Stacey and the cook who was inside the kitchen.
A scream, coming from there, made her jump in surprise and she barely had time to act on instincts, wrap an arm around Deadpool and attempt to shove the both of them under the table before the kitchen exploded.
The table above their head resisted for about two seconds before it flew away with the blast of burning air.
Hilly watched in horror a tiny pumpkin roll on the floor from the kitchen to her – and she immediately knew who was behind this.
Cursing and coughing, she grabbed a weirdly immobile Deadpool, threw him over her shoulders like he was a sack of potatoes and started to go away as fast as she could on all fours and with a man at least fifteen centimeters taller than her on her back.
The tiny pumpkin exploded before she could go far, sending Deadpool and her flying away from the entrance and toward the toilets.
“Shit!” cursed Deadpool between clenched teeth when his body painfully collided with a wall, followed by Hilly's body crashing against him.
“Good, you're alive,” she irritably told him.
Deep down, she was glad that he was alive but she had more pressing matters, like the fact that there was a wall of black smoke coming from the kitchen, probably emanating from a fire.
“Next time you think something's weird, please just grab me and get the fuck away from wherever we are,” he replied, pressing his right hand against the back of his head.
“Did you get hurt?” she asked him, following the gesture with her eyes.
“I'll be okay, you should worry about yourself,” he told her before pressing a gloved index against her left cheek, making her flinch as pain flared in that whole half of her face.
“This is like high school all over again,” she muttered before getting up on unsteady legs, grabbing Deadpool by the collar and pulling him after her in the direction of the bathroom.
There was barely enough space for the two of them in there but at least there wasn't that much smoke yet – and she winced when another explosion came from the rest of the diner, making the walls shake.
“Tell me you're kidding,” said Deadpool, pulling her back on earth, eyeing the teeny tiny window above the dirty sink.
“I wish, but that's the only way we're getting out.”
Deadpool sighed, making her smirk as she put a hand on his shoulder and used him as prop to get on the sink.
“I know your shoulders will never fit but I know what I'm doing, relax,” she told him before pushing at the window to get it to open.
It resisted until she punched the glass, followed by the wall all around the window, creating a bigger hole.
“Holy shit,” murmured Deadpool. Hilly looked down at him and smiled at his impressed tone. “You literally just punched through a wall. You're definitely my hero Spidey.”
Her smile grew bigger and she gave him her hand so he could step on the sink too.
It made a weird nose and wiggled a little at the added weight until Hilly put a sticky hand on the wall to stabilize the whole thing.
“Okay,” she breathed out. More and more smoke was coming in and there was another explosion, sounding closer and making the walls shake a lot more than the last one. “You go first since I don't know how flexible you are.”
“Oh trust me, I'm flexible all right,” he purred, his mouth going at a playful angle under his mask, before moving a little to the left, the sink following his movement and tilting in the same direction.
He was tall enough to just have to bend a little to get his head, shoulders and a part of his chest out of the hole. It took some squeezing for both his shoulders to fit but he managed and Hilly ended up with a facefull of his butt.
She took delight in slapping him, earning an outraged “Hey!”
“That's for all the times you touched mine!” she said before pushing him out.
He groaned something but she ignored him and jumped out the window in one quick movement.
She fell half on him, half on solid asphalt, scrapping both her forearms and one of her knees.
“Damn,” said Deadpool, one of his hand coming up to grab the back of her thigh, “You're really badass. That's hot.”
She tried to get up – straddling him while faceplanting the ground wasn't the most comfortable position ever – but the building behind her and the ground under her face shook, a lot more than it had so far, and she fell right back on him.
Deadpool's thumb started to slowly caress her thigh, which probably wasn't good since it brushed against the beginning of her buttcheek every time he did, but Hilly pretended for one second that it wasn't happening so she could get up on her elbows and take her phone out of her bra.
Peter had tried to call her two dozens of times in the last five minutes and she called him back immediately.
“I'm alive, don't panic!” was the first thing she said when he picked up and called her name in a chocked voice that tied her stomach in knots. “Harry did this, I don't know how he found where I work but I need you to go home and check on May!”
Sending a quick glance down at Deadpool whose mask, for once, was devoid of any indication about his expression, she picked up a bit of plaster stuck to his cheek and threw it away as she listened to Peter's raged and panicked breathing.
“Okay...” her twin finally said. “Okay all right. I'm already home, with Aunt May. She's… yeah, that's Hilly!” he exclaimed, probably to their aunt, his voice cracking at the end of his sentence, before the phone was passed over to her.
“I'm okay May!” immediately said Hilly, biting down on her lower lip and looking over at the diner. A lot of smoke was coming out of it now, and it definitely smelled like something was burning. “I swear I'm alright, nothing happened to me, I just have a little scratch on my knee from when I fell while getting out, nothing else. I'm not even in the building anymore.”
May started speaking extremely quickly, sounding on the verge of a panic attack, and only stopped when Hilly cut her off.
“Stay calm, I swear I'm okay, you do not have to worry,” she started, before looking back down at Deadpool, swallowing with difficulty, her throat suddenly dry.
His other hand cupped the back of her other thigh and her stomach did a backflip as Peter started talking once again in the phone over Aunt May.
“I'm with a friend, I'm coming home as soon as I can okay?” she asked, pretty sure that all blood had left her face as Deadpool's mask started to move, letting her guess a smirk on his lips.
“Hilly please be–” said Peter.
The diner exploded for good before Hilly could hear the end of his sentence and she blacked out just as her body was flying toward another building, her whole back burning and Deadpool nowhere in sight.
***
Hilly woke up to a blurry Iron Man looking down at her as someone was trying to put something on her face. She blearily blinked and pushed the hand away, coughing up all the while, her lungs burning. Something was shoved in her face when she tried to take a deep breathe in and she closed her eyes at the clean air getting to her lungs.
“She's alive,” said Iron Man, seemingly to no one in particular, but Hilly was too busy craning her neck left then right while the person holding the thing to her face tried to tell her not to move to care.
“Please miss you have to keep still, you just survived a huge blast.”
“I need my phone,” she replied, voice muffled by the thing on her face – an oxygen mask, she realized, surprised. “Where is Deadpool? He was with me when it happened.”
Those simple sentences left her panting and she closed her eyes again while the person who had to be some sort of paramedic finally managed to get the mask totally on her face.
“We haven't found him yet,” replied Iron Man.
Hilly wondered if he knew who she was. He knew about Peter, after all, and they looked pretty much the same, so it wasn't that hard to draw to a conclusion.
“Need my phone,” she repeated, Iron Man and the paramedic growing blurrier before she passed out again.
***
When Hilly opened her eyes again, the mask was gone from her face and Peter was squeezing her hand in his. He wasn't looking at her but at the blond man on the other side of the room who was conversing with Aunt May in a quiet tone.
It took a little bit of time for Hilly to remember where she had already seen him: he was the man in black who had kidnapped her some month ago.
Gosh, time really was flying.
She squeezed Peter's hand once and he smiled when he looked down and met her eyes.
"Hey!" he said, "glad to see you awake."
Aunt May immediately rushed over and started to fuss at her, smiling with tears in her eyes the whole time.
Unfortunately, they told her they had to get home. Visiting hours were over and they had been authorized to stay only until she woke up.
Hilly, still a little lost, just nodded at everything they said and watched them leave with a weird lump in her stomach.
"You were lucky to get out alive," said The Man in Black, still standing in the far corner of the room. Hilly had totally forgotten that he was here. "Everybody inside the building died in the blast," he continued.
She blinked, concentrating on breathing.
"We'd like to know how you got out."
"The window," she replied, throat hoarse and burning. "In the bathroom."
The guy – she couldn't remember his name – nodded, got his phone out and started typing on it.
"When Iron Man found you, you asked about Deadpool. Was he in the building when the explosions started?"
She nodded. "He was with me the whole time. How is he?"
"We don't know where he is. There has been no signs of him"
The lump in her stomach grew bigger.
"Do you know who did this?" he continued.
She hesitated for a second. This guy had said he was SHIELD, but it wasn't like they had been helpful so far – every time she had been in danger they had left her handle it alone.
"I..." she trailed off, swallowing nervously, "I don't. I just felt danger, told Deadpool, and by the time we were getting up to tell people to leave, the first bomb exploded."
"Where was it?"
"In the kitchen."
He nodded and looked down at his phone to furiously tap on it.
Hilly settled on looking out the window, wondering what the hell she was going to do now. And where the fuck was Deadpool?
***
Sue Storm visited Hilly. She had been in the hospital for two days and had to stay there for three more – the doctors thought she was a miracle with how quickly she had healed – when the blonde superhero walked into her room.
She was wearing regular clothes and sunglasses, was holding a tiny bouquet of orchids, and Hilly's first reaction was to panic.
Fortunately, she wasn't hooked on a heart monitor anymore.
"Hello," smiled Sue, slowly walking to her bed. "I'm sorry to come unannounced but... well, I was worried."
She handed her the flowers and, when Hilly grabbed them with shaky hands, took the empty vase on the bedside table and walked to the bathroom to fill it with water.
Hilly waited for her to come back to the bed, put the flowers in the vase and sit down to talk.
"So I guess you know."
Sue nodded.
"Reed and I have known for a while about Peter and when I overheard you in the lab the other day... it makes a lot of sense."
"Does Peter know?"
"No. No one else knows, in fact, you don't have to worry, your secret is safe with us."
Hilly just nodded, because she had no idea what to say to that and how to feel about the fact that two more people knew about her.
She really was considering moving to Lichtenstein.
***
A month after getting out of the hospital, Hilly was out patrolling and in the middle of a jump when a body collided with hers.
The force was enough to take her breath away for a second as she automatically wrapped an arm around the person, wondering how someone could fucking run into her when she was so high up in the sky.
The body groaned and Hilly's question answered itself because of course she knew that body. It was Deadpool.
And the weirdest part was that she was somehow surprised.
"Long time no see," he murmured, voice raspy, as he wrapped both his arms around her shoulders and his legs around her waist.
"Yeah, I thought for a moment that you were dead."
"Not far from the truth," he muttered as she spotted an empty roof where they could land.
"So, fancy running into you like that. Did you jump out of a window to smack into me like you did or can you jump that high and never thought of informing me?"
"I jumped out. And I'm in trouble," he sighed, tucking his head under her chin.
She sighed too, because of course his first move when he was in trouble was to jump out a window and smack into her. Of fucking course. She still couldn't believe that it was her life now.
Fucking nuclear spiders or whatever.
She softly landed on the roof two minutes later but Deadpool stayed wrapped around her like an octopus – which wasn't exactly surprising coming from him, but still weird.
"Hey, let go, we're not in the air anymore."
He didn't reply nor move.
"Deadpool?" she called, frowning.
She realized something was very wrong when she grabbed his legs, unwrapped them from around her and he let her.
"Come on, don't joke, I'm getting worried."
He groaned, sounding very pained this time, so Hilly decided that the hell with it, he had taken care of her enough time for her to return the favor.
She knelt on the ground, starting to worry for real when he followed her like an inarticulate puppet, and grabbed his arms to unwrap them from around her shoulders.
He fought it for about two seconds before going completely slack against her, his masked face still against her masked throat and his big left hand grabbing her right wrist.
"Shit!" she said, looking down at her costume covered in blood.
She tried to not look at his chest, because she could see bone and she was pretty sure the red thing trying to hang out of his guts was his guts, but he clearly needed help and for her to do something.
"Okay," she said, taking a deep breath in. "Okay, okay, you're okay, it's gonna be okay, I... I'm gonna do something about it. I'm gonna help you. Okay."
He squeezed her wrist.
"Relax," he said, his voice a lot hoarser than usual.
She took another deep breath in, put one hand on his shoulder and the other on his back, between his shoulder blades, and slowly pushed him back until he was laying on his back in front of her.
It looked even worse like that.
"Shit, shit, shit. Okay, what do I do? I can't stitch you, I have nothing with me, so what the fuck do I do?"
He slowly raised a hand to push his mask up so she could see his bloodied nose and smiling mouth, which didn't help her calm down because in movies when the guys were spitting blood, they were going to die 100% of the time.
"Can you even sew?"
"No but what else can I do? Fuck, you should have gone to a fucking hospital. Shit."
She tried to tell herself to breathe but the air smelled of Deadpool's blood now and she looked around for anything, unable to tell herself that her was going to bleed out there and die in front of her.
"Okay, your apartment is like two blocks down, let's go there."
"I'm not sure that's a good idea," he rasped.
Biting down her lips to stop stupid tears from filling her eyes, she took her mask off and used it to press down on the biggest hole she could see on his chest.
"Alright," she said, "do you have your phone with you?"
"Nah," he said, wrapping once against his fingers around her wrist.
She wondered for a second if he could feel her erratic pulse – she sure as hell could feel his under her palms and it was growing slower as the seconds were ticking.
Blinking at her tears, she thought about Peter trying to keep Uncle Ben from bleeding out and wondered, not for the first time, if their family was cursed.
"Hey, don't cry it's okay, I'll come back," said Deadpool, voice soft – from the fact that she was almost crying on him or because he was slowly losing all his blood, she had no idea.
"I never took you for the kind to believe in reincarnation."
He laughed, which was a terrible idea because it made him bleed harder and was painful judging by the noise and grimace he made.
"Please, don't make me laugh," he asked, a small smile on the corner of his lips.
"Sorry I'm just very..." her chin trembled and she took a sharp breath in that she very slowly let out. "Last time someone I know died, I became Spidey. Who knows what stupid decision I'd take if you died."
His smile grew bigger before going totally slack.
"Hey!" called Hilly.
"Just don't peak under my mask," he said.
Hilly slowly nodded, still pressing down on his chest, her eyes turned to his lips, the only part of him she had ever truly seen.
"I don't even know your real name," she said, voice shaking as much as the rest of her.
"Neither do I."
"I could tell you, you know."
"S'okay," he whispered before the hand he had on her wrist slipped and limply fell.
"No!" she cried out, "Come on, don't do this!"
He didn't reply, but his chest was still raising and falling in rhythm with his labored breath.
For a minute, Hilly just stared at his slack mouth, still pressing down on one of his numerous wound, wondering what to do now.
“Fuck it,” she decided before stopping applying pressure to his wound to grab him bridal style.
His apartment wasn't that far away and she'd rather have him die there than on some random rooftop.
Of course she hadn't considered the fact that she couldn't swing from building to building while holding him so she gritted her teeth and jumped from the rooftop, landing some eight floors under, probably breaking something in her right foot, but apart from the holes she left in the pavement, everything was mostly unharmed as she started running.
It was the longest sprint of her life.
When she finally kicked his front door open and slowly put him down on the kitchen floor – she didn't want to ruin his couch or his bed, even though it was completely stupid since he was dying – she was out of breath, her cheeks definitely were soaked with tears and she realized that she wasn't wearing her mask.
“Who the fuck care if the whole world sees my face, huh?” she asked out loud, kneeling next to Deadpool to check for his pulse.
It was still there. Very slow and weak, but it was still there so without waiting another minute she took her gloves off, got up and ran to his bathroom.
He had, of course, nothing except a stitching kit and some pills she didn't recognize the name of, but she still grabbed everything before running back to him.
Once she was kneeling on the ground, right next to him and trying to ignore the puddle of blood that was starting to appear, she opened the stitching kit with shaky hands and tried to grab the thread and the little scissors thing despite her slippery fingers.
“Come on,” she muttered, taking a deep breath in to steel herself. “Come on Hilly, you can do it.”
She managed to grab the scissors, but not the thread that kept on slipping away from her trembling grip.
“Fuck!”
Blinking away tears, she sent a quick glance at Deadpool's still moving chest before trying once again.
“Come the fuck on, why won't the world give me a break just fucking once a month?” she asked no one in particular before throwing the scissors thing away in a fit of rage when the threat fell from her fingers for the sixth time at least.
Hilly bit down hard on her lip and decided to just focus on Deadpool.
“Why aren't you healing, huh?” she asked him, applying pressure on the wound she had already been putting pressure on when they were on the roof. “That's literally your only superpower, can't it do its job?”
Deadpool stopped breathing, which was the opposite answer she was expecting, leaving her panicking, calling for his name while trying to shake him awake.
She was sobbing for real and covered in blood, her forehead against his shoulder, by the time she realized he had stopped bleeding – probably from lack of blood inside his body.
She was so done with life.
***
Apart from rolling away so she was laying on her back and not touching his dead body anymore, Hilly hadn't moved. She was still laying in a puddle of his drying blood, slowly blinking at the yellowed-white ceiling of the kitchen. She had run out of tears only an hour after his death and couldn't feel one of her legs anymore but she didn't think she was going to be able to move anytime soon.
It was surreal.
Her hands were still shaking. In fact, her whole body was, but mostly her red hands and her chin. Her mind was completely empty except for the occasional “he's not breathing anymore, he's dead” that she kept on thinking.
That wasn't supposed to happen.
He was supposed to heal super fast. She was pretty sure someone had once told her that he couldn't die.
That wasn't supposed to be happening. What the fuck was she even supposed to do now? Leave him here, alone on the floor? Call 911 and get the fuck away? Call 911 and stay to try to explain that he had bumped into her like that, in the middle of the sky?
Something warm found its way to her palm and she slowly closed her fingers around it, not moving nor even processing it.
“Hey,” murmured someone, voice hoarse, but she only blinked.
She was hearing voices now, great, exactly what she needed. As if the nightmares she was sure to have now – to vary from those she already had, because it wasn't fun otherwise – weren't enough. She had to lose her mind on top of everything.
Peter was right, she wasn't cut to be a superhero.
“Shit, can you hear me? Hey!”
She blinked again, except that this time, when she opened her eyes, she met blue ones.
Incredibly blue ones.
“Hey.”
The warm thing she was holding into her hands moved away to touch her cheek, slowly, mostly caressing down her jaw, and she blinked one last time, trying to kick her brain into functioning again.
“Come on Spidey, don't go into shock just because of me,” said the eyes – no the person, the man. Yeah, definitely a man.
He probably moved, because suddenly a solid weight was pressing down on her, warm and reassuring, and something – no, fingers – started caressing her other cheek as well. She couldn't take her eyes away from the blue gaze just above her, though.
“I'm fine, you can come back.”
She looked down at his mouth, his chapped lips that she knew for having seen them covered in maple syrup and pancakes crumbs not that long ago, when she still had a job, and something clicked in her head, making her look closely at the rest of his face.
He had scars everywhere. And no hair whatsoever – not even eyebrows or eyelashes.
It was weird, in a “I expected this but I'm still surprised” way, and she slowly raised a shaky hand to touch his right cheekbone.
Those were high and could probably cut diamonds – just like the rest of his sharp features – but she lost every bit of wonder she had when she realized her fingers were still covered in dry blood.
She whimpered at the red marks she had put on his face, and he immediately made a shhhh sound, his forehead touching hers.
“I'm okay, I told you I'd come back. Now it's your turn, come back Spidey, snap out of this.”
Hilly whimpered again, eyes filling with tears.
He kissed her to make her stop.
***
Hilly took a very sharp breath in, blinked up at the closed blue eyes, then gripped his nape on instinct and opened up her mouth to his.
She had no idea what was going on, how he was even there to kiss her and not dead on the floor, but his tongue on her lower lip and his body pressing hers down was the only thing she could focus on and it was as good as any diversion.
The fact that she wasn't freaking out about kissing a recently dead Deadpool said a lot about her mental health at the moment – but that was for the inevitable moment she'd end up alone in her bed at night, tossing and turning and trying to be as silent as possible while she had a panic attack in her pillow.
Because turned out that Deadpool was a damn good kisser. So good, in fact, that he almost had her forget where she was and what was happening.
“Blood,” she tried to say in the kiss but he swallowed it and sighed when her teeth accidentally scrapped against his lip. “Blood!” she repeated, firmer and with a hand gently pushing at his chest.
He leaned back, lips parted and swollen, black pupils blown, and looked down at their body, as if only realizing now that there was literally blood everywhere. On the ground, on their costumes, in Hilly's hair and probably all over her face.
“Are you okay?” he asked her instead of moving, his eyes going back to her face, searching something there.
“You died,” she whispered, grabbing his shoulders and squeezing a little, just to make sure that he really was there. “You stopped breathing, your heart stopped beating. What the fuck?”
“I healed,” he simply said, as if it wasn't that big of a deal that she had to live this.
Her face must have shown something, because he immediately sat up and gathered her into his arms, pressing her against his chest, where she could totally feel his heart beating.
“I'm fine,” he said, but she still put a hand flat over his heart, to be sure.
***
“It's Hilly,” she said when he got out of the bathroom.
She was curled up into a ball on his couch, freshly showered too and dressed into a pair of way too large sweatpants and a stupid graphic t-shirt. There was still blood in her hair and under her nails that she hadn't managed to wash away but she still felt better now that she didn't smell like death anymore.
He sent her a curious glance, raising one non-existent eyebrow.
“My name. It's Hilly.”
He smirked and joined her, spreading out on the other side of the couch.
“Wade,” was all he said before, “you don't exactly look like a Hilly, but that's not a lame name so that's alright I guess.”
She didn't quite managed to smirk back, but it was almost there.