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“You need to take a vacation.”
“Auntie…“
“No, listen to me, kiddo. You’re running yourself ragged. How many pounds have you lost this last month?”
“I-I…“
“Look, this is New York, raise a manhole and twenty heroes will crawl out like cockroaches…”
“I resent the analogy.“
“… so I’m sure the world won’t burn if you take a measly week long vacation, yes?”
“… Okay.“
“Good, because I bought you a plane ticket to Orlando.“
“What?! But work!“
“Nonsense, that’s the beauty of being a freelancer, you can do whatever you want.“
“B-but…”
“You’re leaving tomorrow at sunrise…“
“Auntie, you’re evil, you know I hate mornings.”
“… and I want tons of pictures of you in Danny the Otter paraphernalia, a box of those Betty Boo’s beans…”
“Bertie Botts, and it’s Harry Potter, auntie.“
“… or whatever they’re called, and a picture with every single princess of Disney World, especially Mulan. Lots of them with Mulan. And Jack Sparrow, I want a picture of you in a pirate’s hat, and bring that hat back.”
“That may be physically impossible in one week, you know?“
“But you’re going to try your best, yes?"
“Yes, auntie.“
“Good. Love you, kiddo.“
“Love you too.“
“And that way I’ll have time to fix all those costumes you’ve ripped…”
“Not a costume.“
”… because you break them faster than I can fix them. I have to find a way to reinforce the groin and the bum…“
“Auntieeee.”
“Don’t mind my ramblings, kiddo, and go prepare your luggage. Remember, no costume and no climbing into places, you’re in vacation.“
“Not a costume!”
And to Orlando goes Stiles, to beat his feet into a pulp walking through Disney World, the Universal’s Islands of Adventure, and the Discovery Cove.
And if he cheats a little and uses his powers to climb to the top of each castle he finds, auntie will never… Who is he kidding? Of course she’ll know, because Stiles tells her everything.
He takes a lot of pictures, he visits as many places as humanly possible and he eats double his weight in food and sweets. And he steals Jack Sparrow’s hat.
And the world does burn in his absence.
“You’re such a over-dramatic child.“
“How could this happen, auntie?! I’m gone seven days (not even that!) and some impostor appears and starts chopping the heads off of the Argent mafia?“
In the front page of the Daily Bugle, there’s a badly taken picture of a red and black spandex clad guy in the middle of a sea of corpses with the headline Spiderman loses it!
—
“Rest is for the puny, Weaklinski! You shouldn’t have taken time off!“ Jackson crows at him the moment he spots him.
“How sad that you have the finest camera on the market and this is the best you can offer, Jackass,” he snarks back, waving the newspaper at him.
“Jealous much?“ he sneers.
“Seeing the entire package?” He gives him a disdainful but brief once-over as he passes him and snorts. “You wish.”
“Fuck you!“
“Think about that much? I wouldn’t hold my breath, Jackass.”
When Jackson’s only answer is a furious finger, Stiles gleefully adds another victory (Stiles ∞+1, Jackson 0) into the tally. He crosses the entire room until he reaches the boss’ office and knocks.
Hope is the last thing you lose, but just as he expected, talking to him is an exercise in frustration and completely pointless.
“But it’s not Spiderman, Coach! It’s not even the same suit!“
“So what if he changed his costume from blue to black! Maybe he felt that he looked fat in blue, maybe he thinks he looks more badass in black? Who cares about that? We care that he killed thirty upstanding citizens, members of the respectable Argent family…“
“Also secretly known as the New York mafia,“ Stiles can’t help but to interject.
“…and that means he’s a fucking menace like I said from the start! And that's what’s going to shoot our sale numbers through the roof.”
“Look, Coach, he doesn’t even use webs and he has two katanas. Spiderman doesn’t have katanas! Much less kills people with them!“
“All psychopaths progress like that, Bilinski! It’s obvious that he now enjoys a more hands-on approach and that he needs to bathe in the blood of his enemies to feel good. He needs to be caught and stopped.”
“But…“
“Bilinski,” Bobby Finstock cuts in,“ this is what happens when you leave for a week. You lose track of what’s happening and things change. Adapt or die. Now get out of my office.” And then he blows the whistle that normally hangs around his neck. “Chop, chop!”
“But…“
He blows it again.
“Coach!”
And again.
“Would you let me talk?!”
The man takes a deep breath and then proceeds to blow the whistle until he runs out of air and his face reddens with the effort.
“OKAY.“
Stiles hates, hates, hates, hates, Bobby Finstock.
Especially since he spends an entire night taking pictures to bring them back to him as a proof and he still won’t bulge.
“But the suit…“
“So he changed his mind again, big deal. His fashion sense still sucks, it’s still spandex.”
“I don’t think…”
“You wear plaid all the time, your opinion doesn’t count,“ Finstock cuts in dismissively. “But we’re not a fashion magazine, Bilinski, so unless you catch him in his birth suit and we can use that as a proof of misconduct or public indecency or whatever, I don’t care what he wears. Now get out and don’t come back until you bring me something useful.”
Stiles grits his teeth frustrated as he exits the office, grumbling under his breath about climbing walls in jeans against spandex. It’s now obvious that ending with this nonsense is not going to be as simple as he thought.
He’s going hunting.
—
Two weeks of scouring the city for psycho guy later, he’s about to climb the walls with frustration… no, he’s already doing that (pun totally not intended) because said frustration is off the roof by now.
Nada, nothing, niente, niets, rien.
No sightings at all, no hide nor hair to be seen, because the guy has been completely M.I.A. ever since the stunt that got him the front page.
Time to pull out the big guns…
(He knows what he wants, after all… and the Argent Benefit Gala is coming up.)
… and to dust off his tuxedo.
(Er, which he doesn’t have.)
(But he’ll worry about that after he gets himself a spot as an official inside photographer for the event.)
—
Stiles gets himself a spot.
(He has to play dirty and put laxatives on Jackson’s food, but sacrifices needed to be made for the greater good.)
(Serves him right. Jackson taunted him for days about wanting to cover a fashion event (which isn’t actually accurate, since it’s first and foremost a benefit) before realizing that as an inside photographer he would get in touch with a lot of important people, and then he wanted the spot. Which he got, because he bribed Coach with a new coffee machine.)
(Stiles made sure to toast him with his Starbucks coffee as he run past him… all those six times… in less than one hour.)
(He may or may not have overdone it with the laxatives.)
(But just a little.)
(Okay, he’ll admit that putting them in his drink too was vengeful at best.)
He rents a tux and suffers through an hour and a half of red carpet in the freezing cold until he finally gets to go inside. Add to that four hours of snotty people asking him for drinks and canapés (seriously, he has a camera, in his hands, right in front of them) or rich brats wanting him to take pictures of them making the victory sign. Super. Lovely night. Would do it again.
Not.
And all for nothing, because psycho guy doesn’t show up.
Well, not for nothing exactly.
It goes like this.
1)At about two hours into the event, Stiles decides to go outside and take a breath, because the room is starting to get stuffy and if the decrepit lady with the arachnid brooch (irony of ironies) pinches his ass once more as he asks him for another flute of champagne, he’s not going to be responsible for his actions.
2)So there he is, an innocent bystander, breathing in the cool night air and fiddling with his camera, when he looks downwards… and catches the Argent princess trying to elope with one of the waiters of the event. They stand there looking like deers under the headlights before they catch sight of his camera and panic starts to fill their features. Stiles sighs, gives them two thumbs up in the name of forbidden love, and pointedly turns his back on them. He hears a happily whispered thanks after an incredulous minute and thinks the matter closed.
(It’s not.)
3)Three hours into the event, and three more butt pinches (seriously, the only thing left for him to evade the lady is to hide under the table, how does she keep finding him?), his arachnid senses start tingling like mad. Finally, he thinks as he goes outside and suits up. He locates where the problem is… and nope, no psycho guy. Apparently, Princess and Crooked-jaw-guy have been caught and the rest of the family isn’t happy.
Like holding under gun point kind of not happy.
“Oh my God, it was you! How could you, aunt Kate? How could you kill dad and mom?” Princess cries, big fat tears sliding down her face while Crooked-jaw-guy holds her with a valiant expression.
Bad, bad, stupid move, Stiles thinks, never admit to knowing something like that, especially under gun point.
“You shouldn’t have admitted knowing that, dear,“ a lady in an admittedly spectacular dress sighs dramatically, while a grandpa guy just sighs long-suffering.
His words exactly.
“Take care of them,“ says Grandpa ominously. “And make sure it looks like he did this too.”
So Stiles, seeing where the situation is going, intervenes. He saves the lovebirds and relishes in leaving the rest of the people in the room stuck to the walls after they push him into the pool. And as he waves to the kids good bye with a cheeky remark about enjoying Mexico, he thinks the matter closed. Again.
(It’s not.)
(Again.)
4)He goes home.
5)He wakes up with the mother of all colds clogging his sinuses and to the headline Spiderman kidnaps Argent heiress during benefit gala!
Stiles groans and, directly after, he lets out three sneezes in chain.
“Oh, dear,“ auntie sighs. “I’m going to make some chicken soup for you, kiddo.”
“Thanks, auntie,“ Stiles rasps before letting his head fall into the pillow.
He needs to find psycho guy pronto.
—
Ironically, it’s not him who finds psycho guy, but psycho guy who finds him instead.
Sort of.
He’s searching the city again, not recovered at all from his cold and having to pull his mask up every ten minutes or so to sneeze… and he’s had a couple of close calls about that, so he’s not a happy camper, that’s for sure.
He’s passing beside a skyscraper when one of the windows from a level above bursts noisily and out comes flying a body. He hears a shouted Taxi! before that same body lands on him and holds onto him like a limpet. It takes Stiles three floors of free falling before he recovers enough to shoot a web to pull himself forward and into the rooftop of the nearest building. When silenced fire starts to rain on him, he makes the effort of pulling his piggybacking charge almost eight streets further.
Stiles gapes when he finally comes face to face with his passenger.
“Well that’s what I call a timely intervention. You certainly have a gift, my spandex clad friend.“
“You.”
“Me?“
“You!“
“Yes, we’ve established that already.”
Stiles takes a deep breath, trying to collect himself. This is not him, he’s Spiderman, he’s cool and sarcastic and all around badass. He has this. Okay.
“And who exactly are you?“
“Deadpool?”
“Charming name.”
Okay, he has a name, that’s good. Now he needs a picture of them together and that’s it, problem solved.
“Wait a moment,“ Deadpool says tapping his fist against his palm with a sudden realization, “I know you! You are…”
“Of course you…“
“… the guy that’s been taking all the credit for my hard work! What was…”
“… do. Say what?“
“… the name? Antman?“ He gives him a once-over. “Antboy? No, Blackwidowboy? Arachnidboy?”
Stiles makes to talk but has to turn to a side to pull up his mask to let out three sneezes in chain. Of all the indignities, he accidentally presses the mechanism and a web shoots out.
“Eh, Arachnidboy, you may want to…” says Deadpool making a wiping gesture.
Stiles sees red.
“It’s Spiderman, you motherfucker!“
Even years later, Stiles won’t know how it happened. One minute he’s shooting a web in anger, the next another gets stuck in Deadpool’s katanas… long story short, he accidentally decapitates the man before propelling him out of the rooftop and down to the ground bellow.
He stays there in shock for a couple of seconds before jumping to where the man’s body is.
“Ohmygodohmygodohmygod,“ he repeats continuously as he looks at the broken body and then forces himself to look for the head.
“You’re giving me a headache,” it says and then, after he shrieks and shoots for the rooftop again, it snickers and adds. “Ah, that never gets old.”
“What the?“ he mutters as he approaches him carefully. One hand is making awkward grabby motions in the direction of the head and Stiles swallows before making a decision. He grabs the head carefully to place it on the hands of the rapidly healing body.
“I gather by your reaction that this wasn’t your intended result,“ Deadpool lilts from his own lap. “Do you mind?”
“Ah, yeah,“ Stiles nods and reaches to right the leg in the correct position.
“Much better,” he sighs as and audible snap reaches Stiles’ ears. “So, I know I can be irritating and all that, but I’m sensing a deeper reason for all this anger?“
“You’re asking me that after I chopped your head off?“ he asks incredulously and a hand gives him a wobbly thumbs up, the wrist obviously broken.
“Well, you did give me a free ride and got me out of a sticky situation… literally, all that congealing blood…“
“That’s gross.”
“Exactly.“
“I didn’t mean… forget it,” Stiles sighs, suddenly exhausted. “And this happens a lot to you?”
“What can I say? Trouble likes to play Hide and Seek with me. And I tend to lose a lot. Embarrassing, I know.”
“Why do I get the feeling that don’t try very hard to hide… or at all?“
Deadpool blinks, then proceeds to place his head upon his shoulders, holding it there with both hands, and to grin at him.
“Do you want some tacos?“
“What.”
—
Spiderman allies himself with new threat to society, Deadpool? says the headline on the front page of the newspaper. Under it, one of the pictures he took of them, a very ambiguous one, sits.
(Apparently, when he gave that ride to him, he had just killed the rest of the Argent family, barring the princess that he hopes is by now far far away.)
“Hi there, Spidey!“ Deadpool sings as he appears out of nowhere. “I was bored and I thought of you.”
Stiles facepalms.
He’s never taking a vacation ever again.