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Technically, it’s against the rules for students to feed the birds. But everyone breaks the rules sometimes, right? It’s not like he’s hurting anybody.
Besides, Miles still feels so bad for accidentally sticking to those poor pigeons. He’s seen them around, but they give him a wide berth, which makes him feel worse. Miles remembers reading somewhere that pigeons can remember faces and images. They must remember his face as “that guy who pulled out our feathers and dragged us around.” No wonder they hate him now.
True, they’re just pigeons, but… He feels bad, okay? Nothing wrong with a little guilt over something completely out of your control. So he feeds the pigeons. Rock doves. Columba livia.
Miles leaves them seeds on his windowsill when he’s at school, after Ganke lets him know it’s all good with him. When he’s not at school he throws his seeds outside. The strange pigeons that he doesn’t know, because apparently he knows pigeons now, like them. Unfortunately so do the rats, so Miles stops throwing seed outside.
Unfortunately, the pigeons that he hurt still don’t come near him, even if the rest of the ones that live by his school seem to love him now. On a whim Miles tries to tempt them with mealworms (one of the kids next door has a leopard gecko), but they ignore him. At least ignoring is a step up from avoidance.
He doesn’t know why it even means so much to him that he gets them to accept him-half the time he’s second guessing whether it really is the same birds or not. But he just… He knows. He just knows. Heck, their feathers haven’t even really grown back, he can see the new ones when he gets close enough.
Finally, in a last ditch attempt to get them to forgive him, Miles climbs up the side of the building they’re perched on with a fistful of sunflower hearts. Slowly, he holds them out, and watches their bright brown eyes inspect him before they finally take the seeds.
Sure, Miles almost falls off said building when his mom texts him asking him if he wants her to pick up dinner, but it’s worth it for the triumph that rushes through his chest because… Uh. Because the birds that he accidentally wronged finally forgive him.
Now all he feels is stupid and kind of chilly because he didn’t bring a jacket and the winds are pretty strong up here.
It takes a week for him to notice that he has a shadow.
It flits from roof to roof, following him around, and it walks after him when he’s outside on campus unless there’s danger of it being trampled under the feet of countless students. It’s one of the pigeons he accidentally injured and then apologized to. It’s distinct because its got a ginger, almost red color where all of its shiny green and blue should be.
(She, Miles learns, when he watches another pigeon try to mate with her. His shadow’s a she.)
At least being stalked by a pigeon is much better than-nope. Nope. Not going there. It’s better not to think about it. Just don’t think about it, about him, and everything will be fine. (He bought you your first real binder, he loved you, he let you draw on his walls, he-)
He names the pigeon Gloria after his mom’s mom. They’re both short and follow him around, even if his Abuela Gloria is much stricter than Pigeon Gloria. Miles feeds Pigeon Gloria whenever he gets the chance-she eats out of his hand and after a few days when she figures out he isn’t going to stick to her anymore she lets him pet her little head and everything.
It’s kind of cool. Miles watched Disney movies when he was growing up, and when he was really little he used to fantasize about having animals that followed him around. A rather fat pigeon who just wants food from him is less cool than an entourage of deer and rabbits, but it’s still cool.
A week later, Miles realizes that there’s a problem.
Pigeon Gloria follows him around as Miles Morales.
Pigeon Malik (the other pigeon that he accidentally stuck to, named after an online friend’s nephew, since Miles posted a picture of him and asked for name suggestions) follows him around as Spider-man.
It’s highly unlikely nobody even notices except for Miles and Ganke, and Ganke only does because MIles told him about it, but it still kinda freaks him out. It’s like they’re switching off. They both wait on his windowsill for him to leave, but Pigeon Gloria never follows him as Spider-man and Pigeon Malik never follows him as Miles.
It’s super weird, but again-it’s not like anybody notices, so there’s not really any danger.
Besides, Miles enjoys having the company when he’s sitting on lonely rooftops eating dinner. Well, sharing dinner. Miles couldn’t just eat in front of Pigeon Malik and not share. Pigeon Malik isn’t quite to the point of letting Miles pet his plump brown and white body yet, but he eats out of his hand, and for some reason when he’s excited he does an honest-to-god backflip.
Miles is starting to get really attached to these dumb pigeons.
So attached, in fact, that it only takes him five minutes to realize that Pigeon Gloria isn’t following him home from school. Usually she follows him the whole way there every Friday and waits outside his bedroom for him to leave. But she’s not there.
Anxiety spikes through his whole body, and Miles absently flaps his hand as he pulls his headphones down and looks around. His chest feels tighter than it should, but not “Spider-sense” (very lame name, in Miles’ opinion) tight or “wore a binder for too long” tight. Just normal nervousness tight.
He tries to ignore it.
Later that night, when he crawls out his window, Pigeon Malik is waiting for him, feathers fluffed up against the cold night air. It’s closer to spring than it is to dead winter, but that doesn’t mean the nights aren’t still freezing cold.
“Hey,” Miles says quietly, reaching out with a handful of sunflower hearts. They’re Pigeon Malik’s favorite. “Did something happen to Gloria?” It feels silly to say out loud.
Pigeon Malik eats the seeds, blinks at Miles, and then flies to the next building. He’s never done that before. He always waits for Miles to leave first. Feeling a bit silly, Miles springs to building Pigeon Malik is now perched on.
Satisfied now that Miles is following him, Pigeon Malik flies to the next building, and the next, and the next, until Miles is swinging through Brooklyn, following after a pigeon who pauses every few seconds to do a little backflip in mid air.
Finally, Pigeon Malik stops at an empty apartment building with all the windows closed and makes a little cooing sound. Without thinking, Miles reaches out and pets his little head. Sure, for all he knows he’s just been following a pigeon’s random flight path, but something tells him that this is important.
Miles slides one of the windows open and slips inside, mouth falling open as he stares at the rows and rows of cages around him. Stray cats and dogs, plus a ton of pigeons and rats, and he can even see a rabbit in one of the furthest cages from him.
“What in the world…” Miles slowly spins around. The dogs and cats are all looking directly at him, and several of the dogs are barking, and Miles realizes that being invisible (which he did as soon as he got through the window) doesn’t exactly get rid of your scent. Just in case, he hops up to the top of the stacked cages and perches there as the far door scrapes open.
“Pipe down in here!” Someone shouts, stomping in. If anything, the dogs just get louder. The person groans and reaches into one of the rat cages, pulling out an angry looking rodent that bites at their gloved hands. Miles keeps one eye on them as he looks at all the cages, eyes going big behind his mask as he sees Pigeon Gloria in one of the cages.
It’ll take too long to get every animal out out individually, he knows that, but if he lets them out half of them will probably eat each other and this is at least the sixth floor of the building, so he has no idea how he’s going to get them out. And he is going to get them out. Miles doesn’t like people who treat animals poorly-he may have no warm feelings towards wild rats, but that doesn’t mean they deserve… Whatever it is that’s happening to them here.
But first, Pigeon Gloria.
Miles jumps down in front of her cage and undoes the simple latch, pulling her out and petting her head as he gives her the last of the sunflower hearts. She coos and cuddles into his hand, and Miles grins as he pulls her out. He left the window open, and he sets her down on the sill as he turns around to look at the other cages. The pigeons he can just shoo out the window, but the animals without wings will be a lot harder. Honestly, the rats would probably be okay if he just let them run around on the floor, but…
This time when the door loudly opens, he doesn’t turn invisible fast enough. (Why did you drop it in the first place, idiot?)
When the person pulls out a gun that looks like it came straight out of Star Wars, Miles yelps and jumps onto the ceiling, which wasn’t that great of an idea, since he was already invisible, and making sounds with your invisible mouth was a good way to let people know where to aim their sci-fi guns.
Why did he have to feed those pigeons?
At least the person was a big target that wasn’t moving all that much. And, not to brag, but Miles has much better aim.
In two seconds, they were stuck to the wall, gun webbed to the ceiling and safely out of their reach. “Hey!” They yell as Miles drops down and starts opening more cages, letting the pigeons out first. “I need those test subjects! You’re gonna make them take away my funding!”
Miles looks around at the state of the room they’re in-there’s still dust everywhere from where the walls of the separate apartments were knocked down to make the whole room bigger. It really looks a lot like they hadn’t gotten any funding in the first place. Just to be on the safe side in case there’s anybody else in the building, though, he webs their mouth shut.
Lowering the dogs down is easy enough, even if he’s technically never spun a web this big and thick before. He reuses it for the cats and gets bitten for his trouble, even if luckily it doesn’t go through the tough but flexible material of the suit.
“You’re welcome,” he grumbles as he lowers them over the side of the building. They sprint for cover as soon as they’re close to the ground, jumping off the makeshift net and and running off into the cold night. Then he opens the pigeon cages and shoos them out the window, which takes what feels like forever before finally opening the cages and letting the rats spill all over the floor.
The person whimpers and Miles plants his hands on his hips as he turns to glare at them. “I won’t call the police,” he says, “but if I ever catch you doing something like this again, even if you are funded, and especially if you hurt Gloria again, you’ll regret it. Those will dissolve in a few hours. Enjoy until then.”
It’s easy to make it to the next roof over. Pigeon Malik and Pigeon Gloria are sitting together, watching him with glittering dark eyes. A little hesitantly, Miles holds out his hand, and Pigeon Gloria immediately hops up into it, cooing softly. Behind his mask, he smiles, then sets her down on the roof.
“I’m going home, okay?” He says softly, like they can understand a word he’s saying. “That took way longer than I thought, and I don’t want my mom checking on me and finding me out of bed, okay?”
Heading home takes much less time than the previous journey had, since Miles doesn’t need to pace himself to follow a pigeon’s flight. Pigeon Gloria and Pigeon Malik don’t seem to have to push themselves to keep up, though, and they follow him the whole way home, landing on his windowsill like usual as soon as he climbs inside.
Miles pulls off his mask and suit and hides it-luckily it’s a weekend, so while his mom will probably wake him up early, he can at least take an afternoon nap. He opens one of his drawers, pulls out one of the sealed bags of seeds, and holds out some millet. The two of them don’t seem to like it as much as they like the sunflower hearts, but they take them anyway.
Miles makes sure to close his window, but Pigeon Malik and Pigeon Gloria don’t leave all night, and when he finally wakes up, they’re still there, cold sunlight catching the dust from their feathers as they huddle close to each other for warmth.
Pigeon Malik still follows him as Spider-man. He gives him one of his feathers, which is very sweet. Miles keeps it. Pigeon Gloria still follows him as plain old Miles. She lays an unfertilized egg in his mask, which is very gross. Miles throws it away.
“Maybe you should put little cameras on them,” Ganke says thoughtfully when Miles tells him about what happened. “So that you can keep an eye on them.” He grins suddenly. “Or you could make them little web shooters and Spider-masks. Spider-man and the Spider-pigeons.”
Miles rolls his eyes. “No way, dude.”
Even if he’s not going to make them his animal sidekicks any time soon, Miles is really starting to think of them as his birds, even if his parents don’t know about them. His mom just doesn’t seem like she would be interested, and his dad complains about pigeons because he thinks they’re dirty animals. Rats with wings. Maybe he has a point about the first part, but Miles far prefers pigeons to rats.
Finally, they both stop following him, and for awhile Miles worries that they met a gruesome end at the talons of a city hawk or at the teeth of a sewer rat. Or maybe they just flew away and decided not to come back. Pigeons don’t migrate, but maybe they decided to move to a less supervillain-filled city.
And then, about a month later, they’re back.
Pigeon Malik and Pigeon Gloria sit on his windowsill at Brooklyn Visions, with two much fluffier and weirder-looking pigeons in between them.
Miles offers them sunflower hearts, names them Pigeon Gwen and Pigeon Peter, and draws them every chance he gets. He talks to them, too, about everything from Spider-man stuff to tough homework to how he felt at the service for Uncle Aaron. They’re good listeners, even better than Ganke sometimes.
Besides, the pigeons don’t argue on the news about whether or not he’s worthy of being Spider-man. They don’t call him an imposter and say that he’s ruining Peter’s legacy, like they didn’t slander that poor guy all the time when he was alive. A couple of them bring up that bystanders who have heard his voice think he’s younger than he’s letting on, and Miles quickly changes the channel when that happens before his dad gets any ideas.
Pigeons don’t care about that stuff, though. Pigeons trust him to rescue other pigeons instead of demanding to know when the original Spider-man is coming back. Pigeons and Ganke and the other Spider-people, they know he’s Spider-man. Miles knows he’s Spider-man. The real deal.
And as long as Miles remembers that there are people who know he has what it takes, even if some of those people are actually pigeons, it’ll be okay.