December, 1986
Manhattan

Snow was falling over Midtown in a shower of fat, wet flakes. It was the kind of snow that really sticks, and was already coating the sidewalks and the awnings, the tops of buildings, and the shoulderpads of coats. As it fell, ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ was playing from the outdoor speakers of one of the nearby blocks of shops. People of all types hurried to and fro down the street about their business, shouting, jostling, carrying bags. In a crowd like this, in New York, even the very unusual didn’t stand out too much.

The six and a half foot tall man stood out from the crowd mostly literally, head and shoulders above some of the shorter pedestrians. He had shoulders that would be the envy of any linebacker and he was dressed in a heavy parka with a big ruff, the fur of which camouflaged his impressive blond side-burns, as they blended in with it almost seamlessly. With a crumpled dollar bill he bought a big styrofoam cup of hot cider from a bodega on the side of the road, and he held it in his big, sinewy hands, letting the steam wash over his face.

The man was called Sabretooth and he couldn’t remember what Christmas had been like when he was a kid. There were a lot of parts of his life that were hazy that way; usually tinged with a bitter impression of unpleasantness and anger. And there were plenty of things that Sabretooth let that feeling spoil. But not Christmas time. Sabretooth was no Grinch. He liked Christmas, in his own way, anyway.

He sipped his cider and watched the crowd go by for a moment, stepping out of the way of foot traffic to lean against the cold brick facade of the nearby shop. Across the street he watched a young couple head into an expensive jewelry shop, arm in arm. Sabretooth felt a dull ache in his chest at the sight. His most recent partner, a man named Frank, who went by Constrictor, had ditched him after they were both arrested, leaving Sabretooth to spend a couple of months in jail while he planned his escape. And the less said about the way things had ended with his partner before that, the better.

Sabretooth watched the jewelry story with a heavy gaze for a moment longer– just long enough to see another figure that caught his eye. A man in a broad hat and heavy trench coat was entering the store. This in and of itself wasn’t unusual, but what pulled Sabretooth’s attention was the strange way that the back of the coat bulged slightly, something appeared for a moment to shift beneath it; and for just a split second, Sabretooth thought he saw a gleaming metal tendril poke out from beneath the coat.

‘Frank?’ he stared openly for a moment. But the figure was too stocky and broad to be his former partner by far. Even so, could this guy be wearing a similar get-up under that big coat?

Sabretooth decided that he wanted a closer look. He was striding confidently through the near-gridlocked traffic to the other side of the street when the sound of a ringing burglar alarm cut through the holiday cheer, followed swiftly by the sound of breaking glass.

He watched as a rolling chair sailed through the window of the jewelry shop, scattering the crowd on the sidewalk. A split second later a store clerk landed heavily on the sidewalk too.

 

---

 

Doctor Otto Octavius was in no mood to be trifled with. The jangling of the alarm itself was setting his teeth on edge just as much as the knowledge that thanks to its untimely intervention he was now in a hurry. Otto was not a man who relished violence. He’d been hoping to keep this robbery civil. But now the gloves were off.

Four gleaming metal tentacles shot out from beneath Otto’s coat, twisting and spiraling in on their targets. One of them grabbed the chair under the offending clerk, and whipped it behind Otto out the store’s picture window. A second grabbed the clerk himself just as he tumbled to the ground, and pitched him out after his chair.

Otto turned and peered through dark lenses at the small number of holiday shoppers who hadn’t fled yet.

“I suggest you depart,” he grumbled as his tendrils rose over his shoulders like serpents, pincers clicking like snapping jaws, “lest you face the wrath of Doctor Octopus.”

He didn’t pay any attention to what they did after that, instead turning back to his business, his metal arms smashing glass cases and scooping out the bright baubles within, stuffing them into  a large sack as quickly as possible.

It was only when he was mostly through with the cases– at least the high value ones– that someone behind him spoke.

“Ya  know, I was gonna ask if you needed a hand in here, but looks like you got that covered.”

Otto whirled around, grimacing, and one of his tentacles shot out toward the interloper like lightning. It was a surprise when all he connected with was the wall in a sudden shower of plaster dust. The interloper had dodged.

For a moment, Otto was convinced it had to be the wall-crawler. But the figure that his gaze found was considerably larger, if nothing else. Otto stared for a moment at the huge, shaggy looking man with the fur parka.

“I don’t know who you are, but I suggest you get out of my way, oaf,” Otto snarled.

The interloper just grinned at him, showing large, fang-like teeth as he leaned on one of the few remaining in-tact displays.

“Shit, am I in your way?” he asked, still grinning. Otto watched as he smashed a meaty hand through the glass, and grabbed a diamond bracelet, toying with it in his clawed fingers. “Whoops. To be honest, I’m just curious about your get-up.”

Brow furrowed, Otto opened his mouth to answer, but was cut off by the sound of police sirens. “Damn and blast!” he swore instead.

“Huh. Might wanna duck out the back before the boys in blue get here.”

“I know that, you cretin!” Otto snapped. “I don’t need some two bit opportunist telling me how to conduct my business!”

Otto’s metal arms slammed into the floor, crunching through the tiles as they stomped and carried him toward the back, To his surprise and annoyance, the interloper followed him in a crouching, pouncing stride.

“You know, buddy o’ mine had a set of metal arms a little like that. More like whips, but real similar, still.”

“Is that so,” Otto commented flatly as he tore the back door off of its hinges and tossed it aside. 

“Sure is,” the shaggy man agreed, following him out the door. “You wouldn’t happen to know him, would ya? Calls himself Constrictor?”

“Never heard of him.” Otto’s tentacles slammed into the building next door and he started to haul himself up the vertical surface. “Goodbye.”

To Otto’s chagrin, this didn’t deter the man. A single jump took him to the top of the fire escape, and he kept climbing just behind him, partly using the handholds that Otto’s tentacles had smashed in.

“No? We did some work around the city not too long ago. They call me Sabretooth by the way, and–”

“I hate to interrupt, but have either of you seen a pair of jewel thieves around here?”

Another interloper. And this one Otto knew by voice alone.

“Spider-man!” he snarled, hurling a loose brick at the sound of the voice. Spider-man was sitting on the edge of the building above them.

To Otto’s great surprise Sabretooth had growled out the wall-crawler’s name exactly in time with his own.

“I see you’re acquainted with my nuisance,” Otto snapped, scurrying out of the way of a web that the red and blue menace shot down.

“Yours huh?” Sabretooth growled, hurling himself further up the building with a leonid leap. “I owe him for tearing my damn face off a couple months ago.”

“Please, be my guest.” Otto waved a hand dismissively, and moved to flee around the side of the building. If the muscle-bound stranger wanted to tangle with Spider-man, then much the better. It would give Otto more time to escape.

“Ladies, please, there’s plenty of me to go around,” Spider-man called from behind him. “Gotta say, this isn’t the team up I imagined. Sinister Six not returning your calls, Ock?”

Otto ignored the bait, scrambling instead around the side of the building as he heard Sabretooth snarl like a cat and launch himself at Spider-Man. For a moment Otto thought he’d be home free as he rounded the corner, two stories over fifth avenue. Unfortunately, then a bullet pinged off of one of his metal arms. The NYPD had shown up.

“Damn it all!” Otto swore furiously as he flattened against the side of the building away from the sudden hail of gunfire.He hurled a volley of loose masonry at the cops in anger– and nearly lost his grip on the building when something snarling and heavy hit him from in his blind spot.

“You two have got to stop meeting like this!” Spider-man cackled breathlessly from somewhere, as it became apparent that he had webbed Sabretooth and swung him bodily into Otto.

Otto’s tentacles grabbed the heavy man as he scrambled for purchase on the building with bloody claws, snarling and swearing. He raised him up, intending to heave the man back at Spider-man where he’d come from.

“Miserable idiot, can’t you even–”

“Look out, frail!” The brawny man twisted and wrenched suddenly in Otto’s grip with force, and to Otto’s surprise, instead of escaping his grip, slammed Otto against his wall beneath his body just as the NYPD started another volley of gunfire. Sabretooth grunted.

“Idiot, how dare you lay a–”

“You wanna get shot, specs?” Sabretooth growled, grabbing him. It was immediately clear that Sabretooth already had been. Blood was streaming down his neck and shoulder, staining the ruff of his coat.

“Damn it all!!” Otto looked desperately for where the wall-crawler had gone, and found him perched on fire escape, busily winding webbing around a bloody section of his ribcage. Not ideal, but an opening was an opening. “We’re leaving.”

Otto wrapped a metal arm around the large, wounded man, and using the others for purchase, scrambled quickly down the building to street level. The rooftops were where the spider menace excelled; to lose him, he’d have to turn the advantage on its head.

Once on the ground, he headed for the nearest manhole, and tossed the cover away with the flick of a tentacle.

 

---

 

Sabretooth didn’t struggle as Doc Ock pulled him down into the sewer and replaced the manhole cover behind them to cover their tracks.

He did, however, complain.

“Been shot before,” Sabretooth grumbled as he was carried. “I can walk my damn self.”

“Is that so?” Ock drawled without sounding convinced.

“Uhuh. Just a little dizzy,” he admitted. Actually, now that he thought about it, he was feeling pretty cold. How many bullets had he caught anyway? Healing factor must be struggling to keep up.

The doctor said something in response, but Sabretooth didn’t hear it.

The world swam, and went dark…

Sabretooth awakened slowly and blearily; body aching in various places, and a sharp, needle–pain in his chest. It wasn’t the worst way he had ever woken up. Hell, it wasn’t even in the top ten. It rose sharply up the ranks however, when Sabretooth’s vision swam into focus and he saw the man in the lab coat standing over him with something sharp. Panic stirred in his hindbrain and he lunged upward, claws out; snarling.

The doctor yelped– startled– and danced backwards in an ungainly fashion. At the same time, a pair of strong metal tendrils snapped around Sabretooth’s wrists and held his powerful arms back from the kill.

“I’m trying to help you, you blithering idiot!”

The tentacles pressed Sabretooth back down to the medical cot, and he struggled against them for a moment, before the memory of what happened flooded back. He limply flopped back own, and winced as he did so.

Sabretooth looked up at the spectacled face of the doctor, glowering at him from behind tinted lenses.

“Oh, you. Hey.”

“Yes, me,” the doctor grunted. His tendrils released their hold on Sabretooth’s arms and slithered back to hang over the doctor’s shoulders like serpents. He adjusted his lapcoat with his gloved hands. “Doctor Otto Octavius. Only the man trying to save your moronic life. No, really, no thanks necessary.”

“Heh. Well, thanks anyway, doc, but it was me who saved your life. I’ll be fine.” He raised an arm to pat his chest, and found the spot where Octavius had been sewing up a bullet hole.

“Ah yes, ‘I’ll be fine’ says the man who has been shot in four places,” Otto drawled.”I appreciate your usefulness as a meat shield, I promise you. Please allow me to return the favor.”

“Heh, I make a good meat shield,” Sabretooth admitted with a weak grin. “But seriously, doc, I heal fast and no offense, I ain’t exactly a fan of labcoats poking around my insides.”

“‘Labcoats’,” Otto scoffed. “As if I were some mere butcher in a jacket. As for healing fast, I assure you, no one heals quickly from a hail of gunfire; I would hope even a meathead like you would realize that.”

“You sure about that, doc?” Sabretooth grinned. With his initial panic gone, he was only feeling merely cautious of the doctor. The guy looked soft. He could take him, if he had to. Why not show off? Sabretooth crooked a clawed finger, and beckoned Octavius closer. “C’mere. Take a look.”

---

When Sabretooth motioned for Otto to lean in, Otto wasn’t entirely certain it wasn’t for another chance to rip his head off with those remarkably animal claws of his. Claws that were still covered in Spider-man’s dried blood. Still, with anatomy that was so unusual to begin with, maybe there was something to what he was claiming. And it wasn’t as if the great Doctor Octopus couldn’t handle one muscle-bound idiot if he decided to get violent again.

Otto leaned in closely, and looked from over the rims of his glasses as the spot where Sabretooth was pointing. His claw brushed the edge of one of the bullet holes that Otto had already sewn up, the one right at the lower edge of the muscular man’s finely honed pectoral. 

“Well, what do you see?” the big man asked. Though he wasn’t looking at his face, Otto could hear the smug grin in his tone. At first, Otto’s mouth twisted in annoyance, but then….

Somehow, the wound had already scabbed over. While it was still open, it had stopped bleeding entirely, and Otto could see the pale pink fringes of healing tissue at the edge of the wound.

“My word…” Otto mumbled. He gently rested a gloved finger at the edge of the injury. “Did you already have a scar here?” He watched Sabretooth’s flesh prickle slightly, hair standing on end as he touched him.

“Nah; don’t get scars,” he said, shaking his head. “Pretty much any time I get hurt it heals up in a few days right as rain.”

Otto adjusted his glasses as he peered at the flesh, looking Sabretooth over from top to bottom. He had removed the man’s coat and shirt in order to dress his wound, leaving him naked from the waist up. He had broad, muscular shoulders and arms, and a sculpted chest, chiseled stomach, all covered in a fine thatch of pale golden hair. The kind of physique that Otto tended to look down upon thoughtlessly as the vessel of those who developed their body at the expense of leaving their mind to wither. 

This Sabretooth clearly was not a man of science, what brain he had likely squeezed between his thick muscles. However, aside from being a perfectly formed adonis of a man, Otto was also forced to notice, with more interest and less disdain, that indeed, aside from his recent injuries, his skin was baby soft and showed not a trace of scar nor age.

“Remarkable,” Otto muttered. “Simply remarkable….”

Sabretooth grinned. “Yeah, I can tell ya like what ya see. So you can skip the needles, doc. Appreciate the thought though.”

“Hmph.” Otto put his hands on his hips– a gesture his tentacles mirrored– as he considered. “Well, I’ve already removed the bullets.”

“That I will thank ya for, doc. Not real keen to go keepin’ a bunch of metal in me. Woulda had to dig ‘em out myself.”

Otto snorted at the mental image. “Charming.”

“Ain’t it?” Sabretooth agreed. He started to sit up.

Otto gestured for him to remain on the table. “You really shouldn’t–”

“Nah, I’m fine. Promise, doc,” he grumbled, waving him away and sitting up fully. It brought home again how impressively huge he was as a specimen. Otto was not a small man, and Sabretooth was both broader, and taller by head and shoulders. If it weren’t for his tentacles, Otto might have felt truly intimidated.

“If you must,” he agreed, dismissively, waving him away.

“Ain’t real good at sitting still unless I’m getting ready to pounce,” he said, grinning as he scratched his chest. Otto watched him use the backs of his nails, rather than the tips. Probably if he did it any other way, he’d carve himself open. “Oh hey, speaking of fighting, you end up getting your haul, or did Spider-freak get it?”

“Looking for a cut?” Otto drawled. “Well, I suppose you did earn it. I’d prefer if you’d wait until after I have it sold, however. Things like this generally get better valuation as a lot than individual pieces.”

Sabretooth grinned at him. It was amazing just how catlike the expression was. “Trust me, doc, I know how this works. You got a fence you trust? Cause I know a guy, European fella, who can get ya better than street value.”

“Is that so?” Otto stroked his chin, and considered the idea. His own ‘fence’ was not particularly trustworthy or reliable, as the one he usually worked with was currently serving a short prison sentence. There was no particular reason for Sabretooth to be trying to scam him here; presumably the larger a payout that Otto got, the larger his cut would be as well. “I suppose I would be open to an introduction.”

“You can thank me later,” he chuckled. He finally hopped fully to his feet, and dusted himself off. “Speakin’ of thanks, I ain’t thanked ya properly for tryin’ to patch me up– even if I didn’t need it.”

“I am certainly not one to turn down a little appreciation,” Otto said dubiously, as he watched the shirtless man closely. Already he could see the wounds he’d cleaned healing over, as if they were weeks old. It was hard not to notice his bare chest at the same time of course.

“Not sure you’d be into my usual way of showin’ appreciation, but I figured I’d at least put the offer on the table.” The man’s grin hitched up a notch. Just what exactly was he suggesting?

“I’m in suspense,” Otto replied dryly. “What’s the ‘usual way’?”

Sabretooth leaned in a little closer. “Kiss’d about cover it. Wasn’t much to thank you for.”

Ah. So he was that kind of musclebound idiot. Otto supposed he ought to have guessed.

“Well, go on then,” Otto waved a hand dismissively

---

Sabretooth’s grin froze a little with surprise when the doctor gave him the go ahead. Not because he wasn’t interested, but he was pretty shocked that the doctor was into it. Or was the guy just calling his bluff? Figuring it out threw him for a loop.

“For serious?”

“What, do I look like some kind of prude to you?” the doctor demanded, hands on his hips. 

“Guess you do look like you might be a little handsy,” he chuckled, and his brain resolved the issue. 

He certainly wasn’t going to let the doc get one up on him over something like this. Before Octavius could find an answer to his quip, Sabretooth snatched his coat in his claw, and pulled him in. He enjoyed the muffled sound of indignant surprise the man made as their lips met; Sabretooth didn’t hold back much with his ‘thank you’ kiss, lips tugging at the doctor’s, even slipping him a little tongue.Octavius, for his part, didn’t seem to mind at all, kissing back quite competently. It took a little bit of the wind out of Sabretooth’s sails for teasing, but it evened out having such a stuffy looking man roll with ‘thank you’ gesture. Clearly, there was more to the doc than it seemed. He found himself wanting to know more.

Sabretooth was enough of a gentleman–for the moment– to let Octavius break the kiss when he was ready, watching the doctor step back and adjust his lab coat and glasses.

Sabretooth drew his thumb against his lower lip and grinned at him, enjoying the lingering sensation of the kiss. “You taste like peppermint and science, doc.”

“And you taste like cigarettes,” Octavius snorted. He paused. “And, for accuracy’s sake, also something like apples, for some reason.”

Sabretooth laughed at the doctor’s expression, which was both puzzled, and slightly annoyed.”Was drinkin’ some cider when I noticed your little shindig.”

“Ah. Mystery solved, then.”

“Mystery solved, doc.” He clapped Octavius on the shoulder, and the man jolted slightly– not quite a flinch. “So how about you and me go see about that fence? Gotta drop him a message and let him know we got something for him.”

“Very well. But not until you put on a shirt.”