What you need to know: This is just a scenario in which Wolf Spider is in Peter's world and is watching him and his family from the sidelines. Just a glimpse into Wolf's psyche and mind.
For Jesse! Thank you for giving me the concept and letting me run with it! This is for you!
This also fills up my USM Bingo Square 02 – Without
Is it possible for rain to wash out blood?
Maybe if he stood there long enough with his arms open and his head pointed to the clouds, the downpour would exfoliate his clothes and soak into his skin, clean him from the inside out, and get rid of the stench of death that clung to him like fleas on a street dog. If he lay on the ground, spread eagle wide, the rain can pummel all the blood, violence, and anger straight out of his body. Let it all slide down the gutter and disappear into the storm drain to reunite with the city's sewage, where it belonged.
He wanted to be a husk. He liked being a husk more than a dripping, gaping wound. It was emptier, sure, and the silence was like an echoing void that outlined the pocket of space inside him. Yawning and aching and so so lonely.
But it was better than this. A slash across his neck, dripping down his skin and filling his throat with sour emotions that cling to the back of his tongue, lingering like a bad taste. A hole in his chest, cold and stinging, and raw, pinching the tips of his flesh and open bone with a cold funnel of wind. A knife in his heart, gushing and seeping, finding the empty spaces between his fingers and running down his hand in rivers despite the way he clung to it, trying to get it to stop stop stop stop stop.
There was too much. Too much to hold onto, too much to hold back, too much to have spilling out of his hands and making a mess for everyone to see.
An angry, gaping, seeping, festering wound, green with infection and red with heat. That's what he was. And no matter how many bandaids he tried slapping over it, the bleeding wouldn't stop.
It didn't help that he was driving the knife into his own body.
Every time he saw them, it was a fresh stab in the chest. A wound of his own making. The wet sound of steel meeting flesh, blood, and bone.
Squelch.
MJ walking down the street, headphones on, gait leisure. Her red hair up in a ponytail, wearing a jacket a little too big and he has a feeling it's borrowed. She looks like she can take on the world. Maybe she can.
She doesn't look up.
Squelch.
Harry on the couch in his penthouse, smiling and brushing red curls out of his face, whooping when he beats a level and laughing as he takes a sip from his soda can. He looks happy. Healthy. His skin not so pale, his eyes bright, his smile radiant.
He doesn't look out the balcony.
Squelch.
Aunt May. In her garden, pulling up weeds and trimming the plants. Her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, a pair of gloves dirtied with mud and soil, a line of plants in need of potting. Her white hair is short, but it's just long enough that it has to be in a tiny ponytail to stay out of her face. She wipes the back of her hand on her forehead, sighing from the heat and hard work, but she's smiling brighter than he's seen in a long time.
She never looks behind her.
Squelch.
Every single one of them. So close. Close enough to touch if he just reached his hand out. But he can't.
Not with him there.
A boy with brown hair and blue eyes. A boy who wore clothes big and baggy to hide his build. A boy who ducked his head to look inconspicuous and avoid attention. A boy who wore a happier, healthier, better version of his own face.
Wolf Spider could never reach out and touch because Peter Parker was there.
Maybe he could.
No, he definitely can. He could touch every single one of them if he wanted to. He could wrap his arms around Mary Jane. Brush the bangs out of Harry's eyes. Hold Aunt Mays soft, capable hands.
But things tended to break when he crossed paths with people he didn't like. And Peter Parker was someone he didn't like. Because he reminded him of everything he once was because he showed him what he could've been, but mostly because he was always there. Walking down the street with MJ, playing games with Harry, pulling weeds with Aunt May. Because of him, Wolf Spider only got scraps.
A split second to watch Mary Jane before Peter's head snapped up, and Wolf had to withdraw from the building ledge. A glimpse of Harry's contagious smile before he has to hop off the balcony before those blue eyes pinned him to the railing. The briefest look at Aunt May before the other boy looks up and twists around, searching for the person setting off his spider-sense.
So, Wolf only got glances, scraps off the table that barely did anything to fill his insatiable hunger for more. More contact, more interaction, more smiles, more soft touches, more gentle words, more more more. But maybe that was a good thing. Just these brief windows of time had him cracking around the edges like an eggshell. A sheet of glass in the midst of flying stones. A break in his foundation that threatened to crumble him from the inside out.
He was a broken, broken man. And he hated it.
It's been so long since he's felt emotions like this. It was so much easier to shove them in a box, lock it, and promise to come back to them later, and live in the denial that he's forsaken and lonely. Because when he opens them, they burst out like Pandora's box and sit on his chest, and suddenly he can't breathe. The cuts to his heart, seeping with blood and ache and dripping down his rib cage in thick black trails. A weakness in his knees that makes him stumble, wanting to sink to the ground and stay there for a little while.
It created a new beast inside him. One that growled and gnashes it's teeth, biting at his skin and screaming to be let free. Just seeing their faces made his blood boil. Watching Peter laugh and talk with them made his stomach roll and his chest tangle with envious ropes that snare his heart in fish wire. He wants to hurt something. Break someone. Make them feel what he's feeling because he can't be the only one.
This urge to annihilate rushes him like a tidal wave, held back only by the faintest layer of skin. He could do it, he knows he can, and so much more. He's invented entirely new ways to torture and he could always get creative.
But when he stared down at his hands, clutched around whatever happened to be in front of him, breaking it between fingers that shouldn't be this strong, he held himself back. Even if he wanted to face them, even if he had the opportunity to do so, he knew in his heart of hearts that he was too much of a coward to take the chance. A shivering, sniveling, yellow-bellied, whimpering coward that slunk back into its dark hole.
There was blood on his hands. Sometimes literally, but not always. They were clean now, wrapped in his gloves and only dirtied with germs from the ledge he was leaning against. But he could see the blood, even if no one else could. It was always there, staining his skin and running down his fingers, dripping from his arms, and splashing on his feet. So much of it, that it stained his gloves a red so dark it looked almost black. He can see it swirling and diluting in the rainwater, a trick of the eyes made real, and his breath catches in his throat again.
What would they do upon seeing him? What would they think? MJ's lips curling in disgust. Harry's eyes wide with horror. Aunt Mays hand clasped over her own mouth, tears in her eyes when she sees what her precious little boy became.
He was disgusting. He was oozing. He was seeping with death and blood and violence and scum. It wasn't just the blood on his hands, it was the rotten gleam in his eyes, the sharpness on his back, the ashen skin that looked too much like a corpse to belong to a living human being.
He would never be able to see them. Truly, see them. But they would always see the true him. It was painted across his face in rotting colors, frames in a body of decaying parts.
He was envious. The green-eyed monster chuffing and growling, and sobbing, and snarling. They were the lucky ones, they got to see the world in rose-tinted glasses. Sure life had its ups and downs, but at the end of the day, they got to go back home, they got to see friends, they got to live a worthy life.
His world was in shades of grey. Dubious, bland, but with the opportunity for something much darker and sinister. Shadows inky and vantablack, more like pockets of cold space threatening to swallow him whole, the only color being streaks of crimson red.
No, he would not see them, and that made him angry.
His chest swelled in heated breath, jaw light and teeth clamped together, as he tilted his head up to the weeping skies, the downpour coming down like someone had ripped the clouds open with a knife. He closes his eyes, wishing the rain could wash him away and take him home. Back to a time when he was warm, and loved, and held.
What was it like to feel gentle hands? To hear a soft-spoken word? To lay down in bed and sleep without nightmares. He forgot.
He wished he could remember, pummeled his brain to stitch together something he could hold onto.
It never did.
Thank you for reading! Please drop a comment below! If you enjoyed this, feel free to check out my other Spider-Man's works.