Spider-Man twisted his body avoiding all the projectiles that were flung at him by the psychotic green elf man on the glider,  landing in a crouching position that would make most other's knees wail in agony. He paused, waiting for the idiot to turn around before he lunged sideways and propelled himself forward with a line of webbing. He delivered a fatal kick to throw the villain off of his advanced (admittedly cool) snowboard. Or it would be cool if it wasn't actively being used as a weapon to take his life.

Peter almost Laughed. Maybe he should just stand still and let the damned thing skewer him. Let his soulmate listen to the beautiful chime of death.

 One day it would happen, and he hoped they hurt. He hoped it hurt their soul the day that they heard that horrible alarm.

Peter sighed and caught himself midair, latching onto a building overhand and turned his attention back to the man who'd by now hit the ground after his attack. Not surprisingly the lunatic had already found time to fling about eight lovely grenades at him. They flashed a lovely barf green at him as they signaled their countdown. 

Look, another great way to die! He cast a web and flung them far overhead to detonate in relative safety.

God, he was tired. He wanted to go home. 

"-or else Spiderman!" 

Peter blinked "Sorry, what? I wasn't listening," he admitted with a chipper tone that he certainly didn't feel deep in his soul. But he knew that sounding happy really pissed his enemies off. So it made the tiring days more entertaining. "Hey, think I could take your little glider out for a little joy ride after this is all over and you're strung up for the police?"

The Goblin answered by yowling angrily. Peter took that as a no.

Peter dropped down to the slightly shorter building the Goblin was standing on. They squared one another for half a second before he charged, ready to put his fist through the man's helmet and teeth and get this over with. 

He faltered midstep when his stopwatch rang out mournfully but he recovered quickly and sprinted faster at his enemy, anger suddenly boiling hot in his chest. He held his breath, tears prickling behind the mask as he clenched his jaw and braced to punch this asshole into the next dimension.

The other man stumbled and fell to his knees before they could reach one another, forcing Peter to jog to a halt in front of him, confused. His Spidersense had been buzzing all battle but now its tingling warnings fizzled out as the fight left the man sitting in front of him. All the psychotic excitement had fled the antagonist, and Peters's wrist contained its terrible cry before eventually quieting.

The sound almost never failed to give Peter the upper hand but it was rare to subdue people altogether. He chose not to complain, for now. He after all was above those emotions. He could handle himself. He wasn't weak to the stupid thing, not anymore.

"Emily," the green theme villain said mournfully in remembrance just before Peter socked him across the face, tearing through the hard helmet to expose Norman Osborn's disoriented face. 

Per usual Peter packaged the man up in a coating of webbing and dragged him down to the ground to wait for police to hand the man over when they arrived on scene.

He preferred it like this. He felt strong when he was able to work past and around the sound. He liked when he was able to work through it and the sound didn't lock his limbs and choke him. It wasn't often that Peter won fights with dignity when the stopwatch went off. But today was a victory. He was happy with that. Kind of.

While they waited for the police he stared at the Goblin with blank, expressionless bug eyes as Osborn shifted uncomfortably in his temporary binding, unable but trying to babble out something about stopwatches and love.

"I'm sorry for your loss." The villain finally burst out in Norman's voice. Not the monster's."I know what it's like to lose someone you love. I don't know if you've met them yet but I understand what you're going through."

He just clenched his fists slowly and turned to stare at the street as sirens neared. "Do you think I care?" he hissed.

The man flinched and the conversation thankfully ended. He needed to leave. He was done with today. Twice. Twice the damn thing had announced the death of the fucker it was monitoring. One of his villains was not only incapacitated by the sound of it, but they had the audacity to pity him too. How humiliating. He wasn't attached to some other villain wearing a matching set of numbers. As far as he cared they really should just die if they weren't already gone.

He left as soon as the police slowed to park in front of him and his catch.

As soon as he was on top of a near by building he dropped down to rip his glove off of his hand to see what the new count down was. He glared down at the screen when he saw it was still blank. He waited a few second for it to reset. 

He noticed that his heart was beating loudly in his ears. He could even feel it in his chest.

thud. thud. thud.

He hated this watch with a passion.

One By one the numbers started to blink in.

0:0:---

He flinched when someone groaned with pain and he snapped his head in the direction of the sound just as a red and black-gloved hand reached the top rung of the fire escape. Peter frowned, dropping his wrist to approach.

The red, digital numbers of the man's watch caught Peter's attention as he walked closer.

0:0:0:5

5 seconds.

Peter snapped his gaze down to his own watch

0:0:0:5

... 5 seconds.

All of Peter's past and present rage suddenly surfaced as his gaze snapped back to the masked man's watch. Peter started to advance forward with purpose.

0:0:0:4

0:0:0:3

0:0:0:2

0:0:0:1

At 0:0:0:0 Deadpool finally met his soulmate.

....

And their fist.

....

Mostly their fist.

Special thanks to Patron Jade for their pledge. Their support has brought to you this edited edition of Stopwatch. If you would like to see more of Stopwatch edited in the future, consider pledging $1 to my Patreon. Link in bio.

https://www.patreon.com/Narloch

(Originally published July 2016, officially edited 2022)

Until next time
~ Shadow-Assassin

Reading Experience note:

2022: I do not and will never use actors in place of these Comic Book characters. I do not accept or like Tom, Tobey, Ryan, or Andrew as my cast and never will. I advise you all to use your big imaginations and picture a cute but estranged white brunette that's equally twink as he is superhero for Peter, and an attractive man with marred skin and pretty blue eyes for Wade. Thank you.

I'll be so kind as to include my favorite Peter and Wade examples.

(Pretty certain this is fan art but like you get my drift. Go touch some art guys)

You will probably see this comment about actors several times throughout this story because I make it at least once a year where there's an accumulation of actor comments.  Your Peter and Wade can look like anything you want them to, I can't stop you from imagining the actors but Please don't argue about who it is in the comments. Thank you.