Spider-Son & Iron Dad two shots

L'odeur Dumpster

Spooktober 26: Rotting

Peter was having a great night. Really, truly. About halfway through his patrol, a miscalculated slip of his wrist had him crashing hard into a wall— since then, his webshooters have malfunctioned like crazy.

This was a problem for a few reasons.

One reason being, he could be in the air, arm outstretched, his ring finger rapidly clicking the button on his palm, only for nothing to happen; meaning, momentum had him swinging back and forth like a pendulum. It decreased his speed, his mojo, if you will. He'd decided to head back to Queens, but from his current spot in Manhattan, it was taking him far longer to swing the distance of even a city block.

"Karen," Peter sighed with frustration. "Is there anything we can do? A quick fix?"

"It seems in the collision you have shattered the mechanics of the wrist attachments." A blueprint of the schematics was brought up in his view, bits of the design highlighted in bright red where they were broken. "They were not designed for such an impact."

"At least there's room for improvement," Peter huffed with annoyance. He shot another web, swung, and then yelped suddenly as the web disconnected on its own.

He scrambled his arms and legs through the air, once again frantically clicking at the button of his palm. A web shot out and caught just barely at the corner of a building. He yanked himself upwards from the ground with a windy propulsion.

"That was close!" Peter laughed breathlessly. "That really could have been bad, huh?"

"Perhaps you should walk home," Karen suggested. "Or call Mr. Stark and request a ride."

"What?!" Peter squawked. "I'm not gonna call Mr. Stark! I broke the suit! I need to fix it before I even think about looking him in the eyes."

"He would want to know if you were endangering yourself. Webshooters not working as intended is how you got your last broken rib."

"Karen. Don't snitch," Peter said, narrowing his eyes. He swung past another street, into a neighbourhood in Chinatown. "I know you're thinking about it! Don't call him. Please."

Karen dutifully went quiet.

Peter could literally see the Williamsburg bridge in view. He was so close he could taste it, and then—

SNAP!

He went crashing to the floor, going down like a kid's egg drop experiment. His hands scrambled for something to grab onto, something to surge towards, but he was in that awkward space between an old and new building where they weren't close enough to lay a meter stick or two but close enough to be considered neighbours.

The air rushed out from his chest with an "oof" as he fell directly into an open dumpster. Yes, his name was Peter Parker. Yes, his luck reflected this well. His nostrils instantly were assaulted with rotting food, thrown out diapers, and all the other lovely things New Yorkers threw in the trash.

He groaned, looking up at the sky with all the misery in the world.

"No injuries sustained," Karen chirped in his ear. She sounded smug. Good for her.

He moved to get up, making various crunching noises as his weight shifted on plastic and cardboard and styrofoam, all the while trying his best to hold his breath. Don't breathe through your nose, it smells, don't breathe through your mouth, because then you're eating it. Bleagh.

"Okay," he said with defeat, crawling out of the dumpster and stumbling onto pavement. He was dripping with dumpster juice. So gross. "Okay. Fine. Maybe you were right. I should have just walked or something."

Karen very nicely did not say 'I told you so.' But he could hear it in her tone anyways.

"Shall I call Mr. Stark?" She asked sweetly.

"No," Peter fought stubbornly, because he was nothing if not outrageously strong-willed.

Peter began his trek down the sidewalk. He had to walk in the opposite way he'd been swinging, but ultimately it would save him some time— because he was heading to Bleecker. He'd have to field May's angry questions about curfew when he got home.

The ride on the subway was as bad as anybody expected it to be. He sat down, and the seat of course was sticky, but he honestly couldn't tell if it was like that before or if his dumpster-coated suit decided to share the love. (Yeah. Making subway seats sticky. He had officially become the enemy.)

People were giving him a lot of dirty looks, and he really didn't have to wonder why. One lift of his arm and he got a whole wave of what everyone else on that subway was smelling, and it smelled like thrown out pumpkin, rotten ground beef, something sickly, something sweet, something that smelled distinctly like sweaty gym socks. All nauseating.

His nose was overpowered as it was, a massive downside of having all his senses kicked up, but his nostrils' gift certainly wasn't helping his gag reflex now.

Just as the subway pulled into the next station, someone across from him not-so-subtly lifted their phone over the edge of a book they had in their grasp and snapped a picture—flash on— of him sitting.

Peter clicked his tongue. "C'mon, man—"

They stood up and ducked out of the car before Peter could complain any further. He couldn't wait for that to be trending on Twitter later. He could see it now on JJJ's front pages, something about Spider-Man being a bio-terrorist for spreading dumpster stink all over the city. Cool. Great.

He picked himself off the seat, and oh god, he literally felt  the fabric of his pants unstick itself, he was gonna blow chunks— then winced, and carried on his long and troubled journey back to his apartment.

He snuck back in through his bedroom window, of course. Crawled in, yanked the mask off and instantly tossed it into the growing dirty laundry pile farthest from his nose, then hit his chest with his fist. The suit came billowing off of him and he had no qualms about kicking it off into the same direction.

The door burst open, May standing with her usual 'you're definitely past curfew, mister!' expression, when she stopped immediately and wrinkled her nose. A hand came up to her face, to further block it from smelling the dumpster-suit.

"Peter," May said, furrowing her eyebrows. "What is that smell? Did you fall in the Hudson again?"

"Dumpster," Peter said miserably.

She sighed, shaking her head minutely and turning around. "Go shower. Put your suit in the washer first, for everyone's benefit. Pre-wash. And heavy duty. Use the fragrance pods."

"Yep," Peter said, trudging over to where he threw the dirty laundry. He clicked the webshooters off, tossed them to his desk, and then retreated to the laundry room.

He showered three times, lots of scrubbing, before deeming himself dumpster-scent-free enough to go to bed.

He had one last thing to do though.

[pete parkley: heyyy mr stark]

[pete parkley: so how are you]

Start subtle. He'll never know something happened. This was just a casual—

[tiny stank: What did you do]

Oops.