The Beast of Gévaudan
Peter wishes there were a more convenient way to make it to where the beast-wolf-man-thing had been spotted, but nothing was as anonymous and as fast as flinging himself through the night sky. He would be enjoying this a lot more if he couldn’t feel his nose clog back up whenever he stood still to catch his breath atop a building. He's made it to the location, but there’d been so much time between the publication of that video and now, he feared it could be long gone. He patrols the area, anticipating that sense of danger to kick in and guide him. Whatever this was, it can’t be too dangerous, even if it looks supernatural, because as far as he knew, the wizards weren’t involved yet. Ever since he’d learned about wizards with hideouts scattered all over the globe, he used them as a scale for how bad a situation could get. Giant elemental monsters in Europe sure felt like a wizard level threat at first, but they had been fake—of course the wizards had better things to do. Peter swoops down closer to the ground and spots an ant of a person snap a photo of him as he blurs by. Up again, now on a different rooftop, he finally sees it—too large and hairy to be human, noticeable even as far away as he was. It’s got itself in the middle of a construction site up three levels of scaffolding across the street near the shore. No bystanders can get anywhere near the build site, and even if they could, a large expanse of sand separates the work in progress from the city. There couldn’t be a better place for confrontation. Quietly he crosses the empty sand and climbs the scaffolding, and he can hear the creature shuffling its feet, anticipating him. If that thing really is a wolf, it should be able to smell him.
Peter slowly stands on the edge of the scaffolding, the werewolf watching him from the other side with a permanent snarl.
“Hi,” he says.
The thing outright barks at him. It’s so much larger than he thought it would be, with arms too bulky and long for its skinny waist, legs equally thick but not as long. Covered top to bottom in concrete colored fur, it’s hunched over as if standing is a chore and it would prefer to be on all fours, but if that were so it would be difficult for it to hold its neck up for very long. An unfortunate body for a creature so dangerous, teeth and claws equally terrifying as it heaves every breath, staring him down with intelligent golden eyes.
“Okay, uhm. Jacob? Can I call you Jacob? That’s the only werewolf I know.”
The wolf-man crouches, slowly approaching Peter on all fours. Surprisingly, despite the threat this thing posed, it wasn’t as freaky as Peter would’ve imagined a werewolf would be when he was ten, for instance. Alien encounters will do that to you.
“Jacob, can you speak? What are you?” Peter takes one step back and holds onto the left metal pillar of the scaffolding, prepared to leap at any moment
“Man,” the thing growls. “Wolf.”
Oh, so it can talk. “Okay, Man-Wolf. Are you lookin' for something?”
“You smell,” the Man-Wolf says.
Peter can’t smell anything, really, because his nose is blocked up. But he’s sure that to someone with supernatural senses, he must smell like sweat, anxiety, and Vicks Vaporub. It can’t be pleasant.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I can’t help it. Can you help, uhm. Your condition?”
“I need it,” it growls, almost intelligible.
“I want to help you find it.” Not that Peter’s got any clue what it is. Was this guy experimented on? Did he do it to himself?
Apparently done speaking with him, the werewolf rises to its full height and roars. It’s loud and horrifying, so loud that Peter’s sinuses are affected and he feels dizzy. Something solid and red glistens at the base of the creature's neck where he’d imagine the collarbones might be on a normal man, catching in the LED lights that flank each corner of the sandlot.
“Okay,” he tries weakly, but it lunges at him before he can say another word, and he throws himself off the scaffolding, swinging back around where his hand was hooked and the werewolf stumbles forward. Peter kicks it in the back with the momentum from his spin and it falls to the ground, landing safely in a roll. Well— that was terrifying. If this thing could nosedive three stories and come out unscathed, Peter might be in trouble. The werewolf seems to be taking for the city, away from the construction site, so he needs to get its attention.
“Hey! Hey,” he calls, desperate. “Over here! We aren’t done talking!” Swiftly he scales down the scaffolding until he’s close enough to leap onto the sand.
The werewolf’s gaze is fixed on him, head tilted as it pants, it’s enormous chest heaving with confusion and rage. They circle one another, neither taking the first step, although he isn’t so sure if it’s because Man-Wolf is thinking about the next best move, or if he’s actually perceived as a threat by the seven-or-eight-foot-tall monster. With his luck, it's probably the former.
Peter can see police sirens flashing in the distance, parked on the outskirts of the construction site, but no cops have actually approached the scene—hopefully none will be stupid enough to.
“Man-Wolf, buddy, we need a compromise. You can’t just run around and tear up the city—”
The beast charges for him, and this time he wants to see how it holds against his webs, so he latches onto it with two shots of web before springing out of the way. One arm is webbed to its chest, probably irritating its fur, but how long will they hold? The Man-Wolf howls. They’re in a tug-of-war, the wolf grabbing the line of web connecting the two of them voluntarily and yanking Peter towards itself. It’s too strong, and Peter releases his end before a giant claw can swipe his mask and possibly nose clean off his face. The Man-Wolf’s arms are so long that they prevent Peter from landing a good hit on its face or torso, so he needs to get on its back somehow—maybe he can knock the Man-Wolf on its face and trap its limbs? Peter dips and aims for its legs, but when he crouches the werewolf goes in for another swing, this time upwards. Peter contorts himself out of the way, but he underestimated the speed of the strike and cries out, half surprise and half searing pain as three claws slice through his middle back.
Fuck, fuck!
Oh shit, that stings, that stabs—he tumbles to the ground to get away, sand scraping his fresh wounds as he rolls and the burn is bordering on unbearable, even if the gashes are not all that deep. There’s a safe distance between himself and the werewolf now, and they stand in a face off, waiting for the other to strike yet again. Suddenly, the beast turns its nose to the wind, clearly smelling something that Peter cannot. In the next moment, it's sprinting away, leaving Peter standing there befuddled, bleeding, and now he’s realizing, a bit loopy from his medicinal cocktail this evening. He’s in no state to chase after it. He needs to get home, assess the damage to his suit and douse his back with rubbing alcohol. At least that was one thing he’d remembered to keep in his bathroom, he thinks bitterly.
He can see the silhouettes of two policemen finally daring to approach the area, now that the werewolf was confirmed gone. Peter takes off fast as he can manage and braces for the pain when he’s close enough to a building to swing onto. Thankfully, no one could have possibly filmed his encounter with the werewolf—he didn’t want anyone to know he was injured, especially if it ended up taking multiple days for the wound to heal. It hurt so much just to get himself up this one building, he can't bring himself to soar all the way to the roof, so he sticks to the outer walls on all fours, limbs protesting because of the shrieking wound in his back. He has no idea how he's going to make it home, it's not like he can call anyone. Peter scans the area. There’s not many people around, and the sun set long ago, so he shouldn’t have to worry. He spots one of those independent tourist centric dollar stores, where nothing is ever actually a dollar three buildings away. Surely there was something he could use in there? Once on the ground, he checks the area again, still on edge from the encounter with the werewolf and feeling as though it might leap out at any moment. No one is around, though he hears voices coming from an alley two buildings over. Peter limps into the store and waves at the man at the counter, who is wide eyed as he smacks his hand over his mouth in surprise.
“Hi,” he says. “I’m just gonna look for some clothes, if that’s alright.”
“Spider-Man? Are you really Spider-Man?” The man has a west African accent and a salt and pepper beard.
“Yeah, that’s me.” Peter shrugs out of habit, and every grain of sand lodged in his flesh screams to remind him not to do it again. He makes certain to not turn his back towards the owner while he scans the aisles, various NYC themed items scattered with seemingly no rhyme or reason, until something causes him to stop in his tracks. There’s a rack of Spider-Man paraphernalia: t-shirts, beanies, snowglobes and all. A black hoodie with a large cartoon print out of Spider-Man's face on the back is exactly what he needs. He picks it up to take it to check out, and his arm brushes against a row of dangling air fresheners, also cartoonish red ovals of his mask.
You smell.
If that thing was still out there, it could track him down by scent like a dog and follow him home. There’s three rows of about fifty air fresheners each. Peter takes one entire rack off of the display and brings it to the front counter. The store owner could not look more gobsmacked if he wanted to as he rings up the air fresheners, one by one. Peter reaches for his wallet, which is of course not there, because Spider-Man doesn’t carry a wallet.
“Oh no,” he sighs, preparing to apologize and excuse himself from the store when a man with a crooked beanie pulled over his face with eye cut-outs barges in through the door, shoulders braced and a gun held between both hands. Peter groans in frustration.
"Really? Right now, buddy?"
“Gimme—”
Peter webs the gun, then the man’s mask, pulling it off his head. He doesn’t have time for this, he feels like he’s going to pass out and he needs to get home. Every movement is pain, pain, pain, but he needs to get this over with quickly before he starts bleeding on this poor shop owner’s floor— he can feel it rolling down his lower back, and the blue spandex won’t absorb the blood. The intruder grunts in surprise as Peter webs him again, then tugs the man towards him, spinning him in a cartoonish dance and wrapping the man up so that his arms are bound at his sides. Unstable, the robber topples to the ground and can’t get back up. Peter looks to the store owner, who had transcended into a new state of gobsmacked previously assumed unreachable.
“I’m sorry about that,” Peter apologizes. “I’m also gonna have to leave, I don’t have any cash on me. Thank you f—”
“You can have it, you can have the sweater and fresheners, it’s no problem.”
“I can come pay you tomorrow—”
“No, you just saved my store! Don’t you know that?”
“I mean yeah, I did. But I really can pay you tomorrow.”
The owner holds up an air freshener and looks at it, then at Peter, then at the freshener again. “This is your face.”
“Yeah, that’s true. Do you happen to know who makes these things, anyways? Like, could I get a cut of the proceeds?” The man hands him the hoodie and Peter unzips it, rips the tag off as he shrugs it on. “I guess I’m not copyrighted, am I?” He stuffs as many air fresheners into the pockets as he can fit. They don’t smell like anything in particular, just that new-car smell, he notices. Or perhaps he still can’t smell very well. The owner chortles as he passes him more air fresheners.
“We’ll have to figure out a way to get you paid for your image, Spider-Man.”
“Thank you so much,” Peter says as he steps over the robber. “You should probably call the police.”
“Will do, Spider-Man. I hope to see you around.”
Peter salutes as he slides out the door, and regrets it instantly (thanks so much, gaping werewolf induced back wound!) Thankfully the streets are still empty, and now he’s hungry. He needs to mix those green beans with soup at home. Home. How to get home? The smaller gashes across his back have started to dry, and he doesn’t want to break them open by swinging before he can clean them. His hands are also full of air fresheners, there wasn’t enough room in the pockets of the hoodie to hold them all. Peter uses the inside of the hoodie to wipe the blood off the back of his spandex so that it doesn’t drip onto the sidewalk. He fiddles with an two air freshener in his hands as he walks along and slides the rest onto his wrists so that he doesn’t have to carry them.
🕷🕷🕷
He doesn’t know why taking the subway wasn’t the first thing to come to mind, it must be that he’s still loopy from all the medicine. But now he’s here, supporting himself with one arm wrapped around the center pole of a train car as it carries him home. There are plenty of empty seats, but he doesn’t trust himself to sit without leaning back on his wounds. The air fresheners around his wrist clack against the pole, and three children of various ages huddle around his legs, prying him with the kinds of questions that are of utmost importance to kids.
“Spider-Man? Why are you wearing bracelets?”
Peter loves kids, truly. They were such a delight to speak with, demanded nothing of him that he couldn’t handle, and at the moment were the best distraction from the pain in his back and sinuses he could have ever thought of.
“Because they smell good,” he says. Simple as that. He holds out his free wrist and the littlest with a strawberry blonde bowl cut takes his hand as soon as it’s in reach, slipping one of the air fresheners onto his own chubby arm. A woman that must be the boy’s mother glances at them with approval before closing her eyes and resting her head against the rattling subway car.
A little girl who was chewing on her hair pulls it out of her mouth with sticky hands so she can speak. “What’s your name?”
“Sorry, I can’t tell you that.”
“Spider-Man, my birthday is tomorrow,” announces the third kid and oldest kid, probably a ten year old.
“Happy birthday, kid.”
“When’s your birthday?”
“I can’t tell you that either,“ he chuckles. “What are you gonna ask for next? The last four of my social?” One of the adults sitting out of his line of sight snorts at that.
“What’s your favorite color?” The littlest asks, tugging on his hand. Peter glances down at himself, at his red and blue suit visible from the unzipped hoodie, then back at the kid. Why were children the funniest people on the planet?
“Red and blue,” he giggles.
“I asked what your favorite color was! You can’t have more than one!”
“I’m sorry, I can’t decide.” The train comes to a stop, and it’s time for Peter to get off.
“Everyone has a favorite color!” The two youngest protest as Peter gently wriggles himself out of their grasp and moves for the open doors. He tosses each kid an air freshener.
“Fine, if you insist. Purple.”
“Purple!? Purple’s a girl color, that’s what my dad says.”
“If you combine red and blue, you’ll get purple. Tell your dad Spider-Man says purple is an everybody color.”
Now that he’s in the crowded subway station, he can hear someone shout that Spider-Man is here. He bolts for the stairs, knows all the passages he can take from here to get back to his apartment safe and quiet. An air freshener falls out of his pocket when he reaches the above-ground entrance of the subway and he laughs at the idea of what he must look like right now, Spider-Man in a hoodie raining air fresheners the way Santa Claus might rain presents down from the sky.
Once he’s home, he tosses the hoodie under his bed and tries to check his damage in the bathroom mirror, but it's hard to see because of how short and high up the mirror is. Three gashes take up the expanse of his back beneath his shoulders, decreasing in size from right to left. The smaller two had stopped bleeding, but they were still fleshy and pink, too long and deep to scab over any time soon. The worst was beneath his right shoulder, the werewolf’s finger (paw?) had hooked into him and drug deep, tearing out of his lower back across his spine when he twisted away. He’d continued to wipe the blood with the jacket on the way home, and it still bled now from the edge of the wound. Even though the sand was making it infinitely worse pain-wise, it probably served as a kind of barrier to prevent him from bleeding so much. The damage to his suit was equally upsetting, and he also wasn’t sure if he could afford to repair it right now because he needed to buy at least three new bottles of salicylic acid for his web fluid. Gently, he peels off the suit—the tears look even worse now that it’s off his body, and he groans as snatches the navy blue wash cloth off the bathroom rail and wets it in the sink. Peter inhales sharply through his teeth as he gingerly reaches around for his back, pressing the washcloth into the open gash— he’s not entirely sure what he’s doing, and he can’t suppress the whimper or any other sound as he tries to wipe the sand out. God, he hopes this isn’t making it worse. He rinses the washcloth in the sink before going in again, and the pain is just, it’s dizzying at this point, a tissue-deep cut is one thing, but the grains of sand might as well be thousands of little shards of glass, he can’t bear to wipe it again—
“Fuck,” he whines, and collapses one forearm onto the sink as he braces to apply the washcloth on his back once more.
Peter wishes there were someone—anyone that he could call. What he really needed was a medical professional, just to clean this up properly, it would be healed soon enough otherwise, but Spider-Man can’t go to the emergency room (not that he could afford to anyways). Happy Hogan isn’t available for private care, either. Unable to go on wiping the sand any longer, he makes a frustrated noise as he slaps the washcloth into the sink. He steps into the shower, glaring at the bottle of rubbing alcohol in his fist. He needed to invest in a better method for disinfecting cuts. Would slathering himself in Neosporin hurt less?
“Fine,” he grunts as he unscrews the cap. “You’ve done this part before, you can do it again.”
Eyes squeezed shut, he braces one forearm against the tile and pours the alcohol down his back, praying he doesn’t make any noise that would alert his neighbors. He successfully suppresses a cry, but this is easily the largest wound he’s ever treated like this, and it burns somuch, holy shit. He almost turns on the shower, but he’s still in his socks and briefs for some reason, and he thunks his forehead on the tile in defeat. Alcohol and blood soak the elastic band of his underwear and the ankle scrunch of his socks. Wincing, he sheds the leftover clothing and turns the water on, waiting for the temperature to feel neutral before he hesitantly rinses his back. Unable to move much without pain, he opts for allowing water to just flow over him, even though he wants to scrub his sweaty arms and neck so badly. He turns the water off and, wounds still burning from the first round of disinfection, reluctantly decides to douse it with alcohol once more for good measure. He hisses as he realizes he's going to have to turn the shower on again to rinse his shins and feet of the new blood, but at least after all this, the sand is gone. Peter practically stomps out of the bathroom, in the same way one might smack their hand on the table to distract from a stubbed toe, only infinitely worse. Thank God he doesn’t keep his pants in the very last drawer, he thinks as he fishes out his only other pair of plaid pajama bottoms. Peter hobbles to his bed, thankful he left it unmade so he only has to pull the sage green covers up once he’s comfortably on his stomach. Supporting himself on both elbows, he reaches for the bottle of Advil under the lamp, but it’s empty— the last of it’s coursing through his system right now, doing all it can to keep the full force of the pain at bay.
Peter doesn’t have it in him to check his phone, and his back itches, burns and throbs all at once. He can't endure this another second, he can't—
He’s out before his head even hits the pillow.