"The Wisdom to Know the Difference" - Chapter 2/11
Continuing "The Wisdom to Know the Difference," a Spider-Man/X-Men/Daredevil crossover novella.
[ Chapter 1 || Chapter 2 || Chapter 3 || Chapter 4 || Chapter 5 || Chapter 6 || Chapter 7 || Chapter 8 || Chapter 9 || Chapter 10 || Chapter 11 || Notes ]
"The Wisdom to Know the Difference"
Chapter 2: Spider-Man: Really Fricking Blue
Peter's mind raced ahead of his feet as he jogged the rest of the way to Hamilton. Dammit, he should've paid more attention to his spidey sense. He should've trusted himself, for a change. Especially about this, since his spidey sense had only felt like this once before.
Peter's powers had been so new, back then. That was back when he still didn't fully understand what had happened to him. He'd thought the weird, prickly adrenaline rush was from nerves.
That was the night Spider-Man was born. The night Uncle Ben--
No, Peter thought as he yanked open the main door. Hank was not going to die. This time, Peter knew what he was doing, was on top of it, was not too late. He hoped, at any rate.
Just in case, he broke into a flat-out run once he was in the stairwell.
The door to Hank's office was open a crack, and Peter pushed it the rest of the way without bothering to knock. “Hank? You in he--?”
He froze when he got a good look into the room. Swallowed the words stuck in his throat; whispered the next ones that came to mind. “Oh, God.”
Peter was no detective, despite having read all the Encyclopedia Brown books as a kid, but he had seen enough crime scenes to put things together. At least a little.
Half numb, he stepped inside and shut the door. The shattered glass in the corner was the coffeepot. Easy to tell, since the black plastic handle and lid lay amidst the shards in a pool of coffee. Droplets had splashed up the wall. But why had Hank been making coffee if he had cappuccino?
Peter knelt and sniffed the puddle, then gingerly touched a spot without any visible bits of glass. Stale, and ice cold. Okay, so, Hank had been going to wash the coffeepot? Instead of going to class, and when he didn't feel good?
Peter stood and looked harder. Oh. The whole coffee maker had fallen off the little table where Hank kept it. Was knocked off, maybe.
He took a step back and nearly tripped as his foot connected with something. A picture frame, upside down. Hank's undergraduate diploma, Peter saw when he picked it up. The glass on the front was a web of cracks.
Peter set the frame on the desk, then went around to Hank's chair and gripped the back hard. Smelled something sweet and noticed, belatedly, the milky tan puddle soaking the papers on the desk and dripping onto more papers that were scattered on the floor. A fly buzzed drunkenly, wading in a droplet, and Peter shook his head. At last someone was enjoying the expensive cappuccino.
From this angle, even if he wasn't a boy-wonder detective, it was easy to guess how the office got trashed. Hank had been sitting here, cappuccino beside him, going through papers. Something bad happened, and he shoved the chair back, spilled his drink, and pushed the papers to the floor.
Hank must've hurried around the desk and bumped into the table, which knocked the coffee maker over. The pot broke. He went around that, and in a hurry, because he ran into the wall or brushed against it, and that's how the diploma fell.
Peter retraced Hank's steps, nodding to himself. Then he caught sight of the scarlet smear on the floor and winced. So, Hank hadn't managed to avoid the broken glass entirely. Sure enough, Peter saw when he looked back, Hank's big Converses were lined up neatly beside the desk. The sight of them made the hairs on the back of Peter's neck stand up even straighter than before. Whatever was wrong must've been really wrong if Hank hadn't stopped to put on his shoes.
He knew Hank well enough, by now, to know that he would've thrown up in his trash can--heck, on the floor--before he went out of his office barefoot. Hank was serious about not letting people here know he was a mutant. (By now, Peter also knew that the one time Hank “forgot” to put his shoes on, the day Peter found out, it was totally on purpose.)
Peter was almost out the door in pursuit of him when he remembered. That day, when Peter found out and Scott came, Hank had almost forgotten his shoes. He'd had his hand on the doorknob and turned back.
Peter lunged for the phone and punched in the number for information. “North Salem,” he said when the automated voice asked for a city. “Xavier's School for the Gifted.”
He pressed the button to be connected automatically, then waited, tapping his fingers on the desk as it rang. A lot. Peter tapped harder in frustration, mostly at himself. Of course nobody was picking up on a Tuesday morning. It was a school, and all the adults taught, as far as he knew. And he didn't know Scott's cell phone number. And apparently, they didn't have an answering machine. At least, not on this number.
He let it ring for another minute before giving up, then paused once he'd hung up. The idea of looking for Hank as Spider-Man was tempting. For one thing, he could track him a lot faster. On the other hand, though, he might really need to be Peter Parker, normal guy, if Hank was hurt somewhere and needed to get to the hospital. Or if he wanted to ask people if they'd seen Hank. And the bad thing about being Spider-Man was that the suit didn't have pockets to put his regular clothes in.
The good thing about being regular old Peter Parker on a big campus was that nobody thought it was weird that he ran down the stairs, out the building, and then practically sprinted to the parking lot. He wasn't dressed for running, but who didn't run--or at least hurry--when it was raining? Spider-Man would've got a lot more attention.
A quick scan of the lot told him that Hank's old VW Beetle wasn't anywhere to be found. Peter groaned and slicked his wet hair back from his forehead.
“Crap,” he muttered aloud. Think, you dork, he told himself. Where would Hank go?
One of two places, Peter realized after a minute. If Hank was in trouble, the logical places to go would be his apartment or Xavier's school. Far less likely, Peter's apartment. And Hank's was closer. Peter headed across campus at a dead run, shoes squelching with every step.
---
Hank's car was parked on the street out in front of his apartment building. Crookedly and insanely illegally, but Peter heaved a sigh of relief when he saw it. Better yet, he saw a big, dark shape in the driver's seat.
“Hank!” he yelled as he jogged up beside the ugly little orange Bug. “I've been looking for yo-- Ohh, crap,” he breathed. He was close enough, now, to clearly see inside.
Some kind of huge, hairy monster ate Hank.
It was the middle of the morning. And he didn't have his costume on. And there were people, but--
“Screw it,” Peter muttered, and wrenched open the door. This was Hank he was talking about. “You sonofabitch,” he snapped, too pissed off to think of a witty conversation opener. He grabbed the thing's arm, intending to drag it out of the car. “What did you do with my friend?”
The thing looked like a cross between a gorilla and a lion. Except that it was bright blue and shaggy. It growled, deep in its throat, hunched over the steering wheel, and turned its face away. Tried to pull its arm away, too, but Peter hung on.
“That's right, you should be afraid of me,” he said. “Hurt my friend--” he pulled harder. The thing wouldn't budge, so Peter looped some webbing around its forearm, stepped back, and yanked. Really hard. Which might not have worked, had the monster not decided to pounce.
With a horrible noise that was somewhere between a roar and a shout, it shot out the door and right into Peter, knocking him to the ground with its front paws on his shoulders and its full--and heavy--weight pinning him to the street.
Peter struggled as best he could with the wind nearly knocked out of him. He couldn't help turning his face away when he saw those long, sharp fangs bared in a snarl, even though that provided the thing with prime access to his jugular. Peter grunted and shoved upwards blindly, hands tangling in damp fur. “Get off, you mangy beast!”
Then he froze. Closed his eyes. Swallowed hard. Oh, God.
The thing--the beast--Hank?--sat motionless. Not attacking. Just waiting patiently for Peter to stop being stupid.
Peter looked up and felt his heart twist at what he saw in Hank's familiar blue eyes. “Oh, God,” he whispered, and this time it might have actually been a prayer for forgiveness. “Hank?”
The crushing pressure on his shoulders let up, though those huge paws didn't release him entirely. The monster watched Peter's face for a minute, expressionless, before its head inclined once in a nod.
Then it--then Hank drew farther away, until he wasn't on top of Peter anymore, just kneeling on the street beside him. He watched Peter warily, and it occurred to Peter that barfing soon might not be out of the question. Not for Hank, who obviously did not just have the flu. For him. And not because he thought Hank looked gross, but because he could not--absolutely could not--have done or said anything worse, just now, than the things he did.
Peter swallowed hard and climbed to his feet, then moved closer to Hank and gingerly put a hand on one of his massive, slumped shoulders. Hank didn't move. His fur was thick and softer than it looked. Even wet. “I'm sorry,” Peter said quietly, voice hoarse. For the first time since he was about sixteen, Peter thought it might crack as he spoke. “Hank, I'm so s--”
Hank looked up and nodded again, and his muscles bunched under Peter's palm in a shrug. Saying it was okay? He understood? It didn't matter because Peter was dead to him now?
Well, maybe not the last one, Peter thought. It wasn't as if Hank were moving away from his hand or, like, jumping him again.
Sometime in the last couple of minutes, it had started to rain in earnest instead of just sprinkling, and Peter turned his face to the sky for a second, blinking against the droplets. A cop car swished by, down at the end of the block, with its lights flashing but no sirens. Peter shivered and shoved his hands in the pocket of his sweatshirt as it occurred to him that they were lucky, so far, nobody had called the cops on them. “Uh. We should probably...”
Hank nodded yet again and stood. Peter noticed, now that he wasn't quite so shocked, that Hank was still wearing the stretched and tattered remains of his khakis. Realized, too, as they stood awkwardly by the car without making a move to get in, that Hank hadn't yet said a word to him. So, either he was mad, or--
Peter winced and looked up. “Hank?” he asked. His voice still seemed dried-up and wrong. “Um. Can you--you can still talk. Right?”
Hank gave him a sideways, guarded glance that made Peter feel about four inches tall all over again. Man, he'd really screwed up.
“Yesh,” Hank said at last, low and slurred. Very softly. “But. Fangsh. I am unaccustomed--” That one came out really mangled, and Hank shook his head and made a frustrated half-swipe with one hand. Paw. Whatever. “Thought prosh--. Thought patterns. Base, feral, my own--I cannot--”
“You're having a hard time because you don't have...all this...sorted out yet?”
“Precishly.”
“We can't stay out here,” Peter pointed out when they still didn't move. “Were you going to go inside? 'Cause I think going to Xavier's might not be a bad idea.”
“Was going to use. To--to telephone,” Hank said. “But, my key--these digits--” He spread his hands.
“Right,” Peter said, suddenly understanding how many other things Hank's new fingers couldn't do easily, if at all. Things like prep a slide. Or type. Or hold a pen. “Do you still want to go in, or should we just go? I can drive, if you want.”
Hank shot him a look.
“I can! I have my license. And Aunt May lets me drive the Buick, sometimes.”
“Yesh.”
Peter decided to take that as 'sure, you can drive' instead of Hank just agreeing that he did, in fact, have a license. Particularly since he went around to the passenger's door. Hank took a minute to work the handle, another couple to squeeze inside, but once he was settled, Peter climbed in behind the wheel and adjusted the seat.
The silence started to get unbearable after about five minutes, but Peter couldn't think of anything to say besides 'I'm sorry,' which he'd already said and had a feeling Hank didn't really want to hear again. It didn't help that the radio was broken, no doubt from the time Peter had shocked it to its circuitry by switching to a rock station from NPR.
The windshield wipers squished and squeaked, and the army of cabs out in force due to the rain kept honking at him to drive faster. Even backed up behind stoplights. Peter kept his eyes straight ahead, though that was only partly for safety's sake. He didn't need spidey senses to tell him that Hank did not want to be looked at, right now.
By the time they were finally a ways out of the city and driving past a small town, Peter couldn't take it anymore. “You hungry?” he asked, just for something to say.
“Ravenous. Bovine carcass?”
Bovine carcass? He wasn't kidding about going a little wild. “Uh,” Peter said as he took the exit for fast food, “two all beef patties okay?”
“Yes.”
It ended up being four--two double Quarter Pounders for Hank, hold the condiments, and just a Coke for Peter, once he realized how much low-grade beef patties actually cost and that Hank's wallet was currently inaccessible. To Hank, at least, since fitting his hands into his pockets was impossible. As it was, Peter took his four cents in change with a sigh of relief.
“And hey, great costume!” the girl at the window called after them. So much for relief.
This time, it was Hank who sighed. He didn't say anything, though. Just fumbled with the paper sack and took out a burger.
Peter's Coke burned squeezing down past the lump in his throat. “Hey,” he managed, striving for lightness and instead sounding weird, “is the bovine working out all right for you?”
“Indeed. Though better raw.”
Peter winced. “Erk. Okay.” He sneaked a look at Hank out of the corner of his eye. “Those baser urges not getting under control, huh?”
Hank suddenly became very interested in flicking a sesame seed off one claw. “Worsening, rather.”
“Oh, man. Hank--” Peter bit off yet another apology, then took a swig of his drink and settled the cup back between his legs. “We'll figure this out,” he said at last, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt. “I know we will.”
He just didn't know how, exactly, given that the person most qualified to deal with mutations gone crazy currently wanted to eat raw cows.
Paper rustled as Hank crumpled the bag. That helped kill a little of the smell in the car, a strange, musky mixture of fryer grease, damp fur, and Peter's own sweat. Hank was silent for awhile, and Peter sensed rather than saw him pull his arms close across his chest, as if trying to make himself as small as possible. Even so, their shoulders were almost close enough to bump.
They were about ten minutes from Xavier's when Hank suddenly took a deep, snuffling breath. “Peter,” he said, his voice hoarser than before, “I am desirous. Chase cars!”
The strangling lump was back in his throat again. What could he say, to something like that? Peter broke a promise to Aunt May and took one hand off the wheel for longer than five seconds. Found one of Hank's hands blindly (he wasn't about to take his eyes off the road, too) and squeezed. Hard.
“Frightened.” It was whispered so softly Peter almost didn't hear, and wasn't sure he was supposed to, but he nodded anyway.
[Chapter 3 is here.]
[ Chapter 1 || Chapter 2 || Chapter 3 || Chapter 4 || Chapter 5 || Chapter 6 || Chapter 7 || Chapter 8 || Chapter 9 || Chapter 10 || Chapter 11 || Notes ]
"The Wisdom to Know the Difference"
Chapter 2: Spider-Man: Really Fricking Blue
Peter's mind raced ahead of his feet as he jogged the rest of the way to Hamilton. Dammit, he should've paid more attention to his spidey sense. He should've trusted himself, for a change. Especially about this, since his spidey sense had only felt like this once before.
Peter's powers had been so new, back then. That was back when he still didn't fully understand what had happened to him. He'd thought the weird, prickly adrenaline rush was from nerves.
That was the night Spider-Man was born. The night Uncle Ben--
No, Peter thought as he yanked open the main door. Hank was not going to die. This time, Peter knew what he was doing, was on top of it, was not too late. He hoped, at any rate.
Just in case, he broke into a flat-out run once he was in the stairwell.
The door to Hank's office was open a crack, and Peter pushed it the rest of the way without bothering to knock. “Hank? You in he--?”
He froze when he got a good look into the room. Swallowed the words stuck in his throat; whispered the next ones that came to mind. “Oh, God.”
Peter was no detective, despite having read all the Encyclopedia Brown books as a kid, but he had seen enough crime scenes to put things together. At least a little.
Half numb, he stepped inside and shut the door. The shattered glass in the corner was the coffeepot. Easy to tell, since the black plastic handle and lid lay amidst the shards in a pool of coffee. Droplets had splashed up the wall. But why had Hank been making coffee if he had cappuccino?
Peter knelt and sniffed the puddle, then gingerly touched a spot without any visible bits of glass. Stale, and ice cold. Okay, so, Hank had been going to wash the coffeepot? Instead of going to class, and when he didn't feel good?
Peter stood and looked harder. Oh. The whole coffee maker had fallen off the little table where Hank kept it. Was knocked off, maybe.
He took a step back and nearly tripped as his foot connected with something. A picture frame, upside down. Hank's undergraduate diploma, Peter saw when he picked it up. The glass on the front was a web of cracks.
Peter set the frame on the desk, then went around to Hank's chair and gripped the back hard. Smelled something sweet and noticed, belatedly, the milky tan puddle soaking the papers on the desk and dripping onto more papers that were scattered on the floor. A fly buzzed drunkenly, wading in a droplet, and Peter shook his head. At last someone was enjoying the expensive cappuccino.
From this angle, even if he wasn't a boy-wonder detective, it was easy to guess how the office got trashed. Hank had been sitting here, cappuccino beside him, going through papers. Something bad happened, and he shoved the chair back, spilled his drink, and pushed the papers to the floor.
Hank must've hurried around the desk and bumped into the table, which knocked the coffee maker over. The pot broke. He went around that, and in a hurry, because he ran into the wall or brushed against it, and that's how the diploma fell.
Peter retraced Hank's steps, nodding to himself. Then he caught sight of the scarlet smear on the floor and winced. So, Hank hadn't managed to avoid the broken glass entirely. Sure enough, Peter saw when he looked back, Hank's big Converses were lined up neatly beside the desk. The sight of them made the hairs on the back of Peter's neck stand up even straighter than before. Whatever was wrong must've been really wrong if Hank hadn't stopped to put on his shoes.
He knew Hank well enough, by now, to know that he would've thrown up in his trash can--heck, on the floor--before he went out of his office barefoot. Hank was serious about not letting people here know he was a mutant. (By now, Peter also knew that the one time Hank “forgot” to put his shoes on, the day Peter found out, it was totally on purpose.)
Peter was almost out the door in pursuit of him when he remembered. That day, when Peter found out and Scott came, Hank had almost forgotten his shoes. He'd had his hand on the doorknob and turned back.
Peter lunged for the phone and punched in the number for information. “North Salem,” he said when the automated voice asked for a city. “Xavier's School for the Gifted.”
He pressed the button to be connected automatically, then waited, tapping his fingers on the desk as it rang. A lot. Peter tapped harder in frustration, mostly at himself. Of course nobody was picking up on a Tuesday morning. It was a school, and all the adults taught, as far as he knew. And he didn't know Scott's cell phone number. And apparently, they didn't have an answering machine. At least, not on this number.
He let it ring for another minute before giving up, then paused once he'd hung up. The idea of looking for Hank as Spider-Man was tempting. For one thing, he could track him a lot faster. On the other hand, though, he might really need to be Peter Parker, normal guy, if Hank was hurt somewhere and needed to get to the hospital. Or if he wanted to ask people if they'd seen Hank. And the bad thing about being Spider-Man was that the suit didn't have pockets to put his regular clothes in.
The good thing about being regular old Peter Parker on a big campus was that nobody thought it was weird that he ran down the stairs, out the building, and then practically sprinted to the parking lot. He wasn't dressed for running, but who didn't run--or at least hurry--when it was raining? Spider-Man would've got a lot more attention.
A quick scan of the lot told him that Hank's old VW Beetle wasn't anywhere to be found. Peter groaned and slicked his wet hair back from his forehead.
“Crap,” he muttered aloud. Think, you dork, he told himself. Where would Hank go?
One of two places, Peter realized after a minute. If Hank was in trouble, the logical places to go would be his apartment or Xavier's school. Far less likely, Peter's apartment. And Hank's was closer. Peter headed across campus at a dead run, shoes squelching with every step.
---
Hank's car was parked on the street out in front of his apartment building. Crookedly and insanely illegally, but Peter heaved a sigh of relief when he saw it. Better yet, he saw a big, dark shape in the driver's seat.
“Hank!” he yelled as he jogged up beside the ugly little orange Bug. “I've been looking for yo-- Ohh, crap,” he breathed. He was close enough, now, to clearly see inside.
Some kind of huge, hairy monster ate Hank.
It was the middle of the morning. And he didn't have his costume on. And there were people, but--
“Screw it,” Peter muttered, and wrenched open the door. This was Hank he was talking about. “You sonofabitch,” he snapped, too pissed off to think of a witty conversation opener. He grabbed the thing's arm, intending to drag it out of the car. “What did you do with my friend?”
The thing looked like a cross between a gorilla and a lion. Except that it was bright blue and shaggy. It growled, deep in its throat, hunched over the steering wheel, and turned its face away. Tried to pull its arm away, too, but Peter hung on.
“That's right, you should be afraid of me,” he said. “Hurt my friend--” he pulled harder. The thing wouldn't budge, so Peter looped some webbing around its forearm, stepped back, and yanked. Really hard. Which might not have worked, had the monster not decided to pounce.
With a horrible noise that was somewhere between a roar and a shout, it shot out the door and right into Peter, knocking him to the ground with its front paws on his shoulders and its full--and heavy--weight pinning him to the street.
Peter struggled as best he could with the wind nearly knocked out of him. He couldn't help turning his face away when he saw those long, sharp fangs bared in a snarl, even though that provided the thing with prime access to his jugular. Peter grunted and shoved upwards blindly, hands tangling in damp fur. “Get off, you mangy beast!”
Then he froze. Closed his eyes. Swallowed hard. Oh, God.
The thing--the beast--Hank?--sat motionless. Not attacking. Just waiting patiently for Peter to stop being stupid.
Peter looked up and felt his heart twist at what he saw in Hank's familiar blue eyes. “Oh, God,” he whispered, and this time it might have actually been a prayer for forgiveness. “Hank?”
The crushing pressure on his shoulders let up, though those huge paws didn't release him entirely. The monster watched Peter's face for a minute, expressionless, before its head inclined once in a nod.
Then it--then Hank drew farther away, until he wasn't on top of Peter anymore, just kneeling on the street beside him. He watched Peter warily, and it occurred to Peter that barfing soon might not be out of the question. Not for Hank, who obviously did not just have the flu. For him. And not because he thought Hank looked gross, but because he could not--absolutely could not--have done or said anything worse, just now, than the things he did.
Peter swallowed hard and climbed to his feet, then moved closer to Hank and gingerly put a hand on one of his massive, slumped shoulders. Hank didn't move. His fur was thick and softer than it looked. Even wet. “I'm sorry,” Peter said quietly, voice hoarse. For the first time since he was about sixteen, Peter thought it might crack as he spoke. “Hank, I'm so s--”
Hank looked up and nodded again, and his muscles bunched under Peter's palm in a shrug. Saying it was okay? He understood? It didn't matter because Peter was dead to him now?
Well, maybe not the last one, Peter thought. It wasn't as if Hank were moving away from his hand or, like, jumping him again.
Sometime in the last couple of minutes, it had started to rain in earnest instead of just sprinkling, and Peter turned his face to the sky for a second, blinking against the droplets. A cop car swished by, down at the end of the block, with its lights flashing but no sirens. Peter shivered and shoved his hands in the pocket of his sweatshirt as it occurred to him that they were lucky, so far, nobody had called the cops on them. “Uh. We should probably...”
Hank nodded yet again and stood. Peter noticed, now that he wasn't quite so shocked, that Hank was still wearing the stretched and tattered remains of his khakis. Realized, too, as they stood awkwardly by the car without making a move to get in, that Hank hadn't yet said a word to him. So, either he was mad, or--
Peter winced and looked up. “Hank?” he asked. His voice still seemed dried-up and wrong. “Um. Can you--you can still talk. Right?”
Hank gave him a sideways, guarded glance that made Peter feel about four inches tall all over again. Man, he'd really screwed up.
“Yesh,” Hank said at last, low and slurred. Very softly. “But. Fangsh. I am unaccustomed--” That one came out really mangled, and Hank shook his head and made a frustrated half-swipe with one hand. Paw. Whatever. “Thought prosh--. Thought patterns. Base, feral, my own--I cannot--”
“You're having a hard time because you don't have...all this...sorted out yet?”
“Precishly.”
“We can't stay out here,” Peter pointed out when they still didn't move. “Were you going to go inside? 'Cause I think going to Xavier's might not be a bad idea.”
“Was going to use. To--to telephone,” Hank said. “But, my key--these digits--” He spread his hands.
“Right,” Peter said, suddenly understanding how many other things Hank's new fingers couldn't do easily, if at all. Things like prep a slide. Or type. Or hold a pen. “Do you still want to go in, or should we just go? I can drive, if you want.”
Hank shot him a look.
“I can! I have my license. And Aunt May lets me drive the Buick, sometimes.”
“Yesh.”
Peter decided to take that as 'sure, you can drive' instead of Hank just agreeing that he did, in fact, have a license. Particularly since he went around to the passenger's door. Hank took a minute to work the handle, another couple to squeeze inside, but once he was settled, Peter climbed in behind the wheel and adjusted the seat.
The silence started to get unbearable after about five minutes, but Peter couldn't think of anything to say besides 'I'm sorry,' which he'd already said and had a feeling Hank didn't really want to hear again. It didn't help that the radio was broken, no doubt from the time Peter had shocked it to its circuitry by switching to a rock station from NPR.
The windshield wipers squished and squeaked, and the army of cabs out in force due to the rain kept honking at him to drive faster. Even backed up behind stoplights. Peter kept his eyes straight ahead, though that was only partly for safety's sake. He didn't need spidey senses to tell him that Hank did not want to be looked at, right now.
By the time they were finally a ways out of the city and driving past a small town, Peter couldn't take it anymore. “You hungry?” he asked, just for something to say.
“Ravenous. Bovine carcass?”
Bovine carcass? He wasn't kidding about going a little wild. “Uh,” Peter said as he took the exit for fast food, “two all beef patties okay?”
“Yes.”
It ended up being four--two double Quarter Pounders for Hank, hold the condiments, and just a Coke for Peter, once he realized how much low-grade beef patties actually cost and that Hank's wallet was currently inaccessible. To Hank, at least, since fitting his hands into his pockets was impossible. As it was, Peter took his four cents in change with a sigh of relief.
“And hey, great costume!” the girl at the window called after them. So much for relief.
This time, it was Hank who sighed. He didn't say anything, though. Just fumbled with the paper sack and took out a burger.
Peter's Coke burned squeezing down past the lump in his throat. “Hey,” he managed, striving for lightness and instead sounding weird, “is the bovine working out all right for you?”
“Indeed. Though better raw.”
Peter winced. “Erk. Okay.” He sneaked a look at Hank out of the corner of his eye. “Those baser urges not getting under control, huh?”
Hank suddenly became very interested in flicking a sesame seed off one claw. “Worsening, rather.”
“Oh, man. Hank--” Peter bit off yet another apology, then took a swig of his drink and settled the cup back between his legs. “We'll figure this out,” he said at last, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt. “I know we will.”
He just didn't know how, exactly, given that the person most qualified to deal with mutations gone crazy currently wanted to eat raw cows.
Paper rustled as Hank crumpled the bag. That helped kill a little of the smell in the car, a strange, musky mixture of fryer grease, damp fur, and Peter's own sweat. Hank was silent for awhile, and Peter sensed rather than saw him pull his arms close across his chest, as if trying to make himself as small as possible. Even so, their shoulders were almost close enough to bump.
They were about ten minutes from Xavier's when Hank suddenly took a deep, snuffling breath. “Peter,” he said, his voice hoarser than before, “I am desirous. Chase cars!”
The strangling lump was back in his throat again. What could he say, to something like that? Peter broke a promise to Aunt May and took one hand off the wheel for longer than five seconds. Found one of Hank's hands blindly (he wasn't about to take his eyes off the road, too) and squeezed. Hard.
“Frightened.” It was whispered so softly Peter almost didn't hear, and wasn't sure he was supposed to, but he nodded anyway.
[Chapter 3 is here.]