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Overall, Wilbur thinks, they’ve been pretty good at hiding it from Phil. At least now that they know they’re all spiders, they can cover for each other, and if they seem to know an absurd amount about Whip and Blade and Spring, they’ll blame that on their status as “Spider-Man Superfans” (Phil’s term).
And now Phil’s doing his journalism thing and going off to Michigan for an entire week, which gives them an entire week of running around doing stupid things and fighting crime without worrying that Phil will find the many, many t-shirts that Wilbur has accidentally modified by punching through them with his extra arms.
As soon as he leaves—trailed by many hugs and goodbyes on all their parts—Wilbur takes the opportunity to pop his arms out of hiding and put on a t-shirt that he got Tommy to hem the holes in. (It’s rather patchwork, but Wilbur can’t bring himself to care.) He finds Techno and Tommy both in Techno’s room, Tommy doing anti-gravity cartwheels across the wall and Techno writing or something.
Wilbur’s not quite sure how it happens, but eventually they’re playing cards on the ceiling.
Tommy cackles. “Uno!” he shouts, and tilts backward, which Wilbur might be concerned about except he’s literally sitting upside-down on the ceiling right now, sticking effortlessly. Techno’s braid dangles downward (Wilbur and Tommy had a good laugh over that earlier), but he’s rolling his eyes and grinning too, and Wilbur feels more relaxed than he’s felt for a long time. Something about not having to hide, blah blah blah, poetry or whatever, as Techno would eloquently put it.
That’s when someone walks in.
They react in very different ways.
Wilbur drops his Uno cards. Tommy falls off the ceiling. And Techno pivots into a crouch, bringing both hands up and webbing whoever’s dared to walk into their apartment.
The person who’s dared to walk into their apartment is Phil.
From the floor, Tommy scrambles to his feet. Wilbur yanks his arms back in and drops slowly off the ceiling, landing in a crouch and straightening up to stand awkwardly. Techno drops down beside him, staring dumbfounded at Phil.
“You webbed him?” Wilbur shrieks, whirling toward Techno.
Techno’s voice is much higher-pitched than usual. “I thought he might scream!”
“Oh fuck,” Tommy is saying, chanting it like it will somehow improve the situation, “oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck—”
Anxiety spikes in Wilbur’s stomach.
“Shit,” he mutters, and scrapes a hand frantically through his hair. “Shit.” He turns toward Phil, panicked and hopeful in equal measure. “This is just a dream! A really weird dream! And you’ll wake up soon—”
Phil seems to be giving them the disappointed-dad look. It’s intimidating even over top of the web gag, even when Phil is attached to the door.
Wilbur grits his teeth and scrapes both hands through his hair. He only stops when Tommy elbows him in the side, shooting him a concerned glance before tugging him and Techno into the corner.
“What do we do?” Tommy whispers, and darts another look toward Phil. Who’s webbed to the door. How the fuck did they manage to web their dad to the door?
Techno leans back against the wall and crosses his arms. His eyes are creased with the stress that isn’t evident anywhere else. He shrugs.
Wilbur sighs, running a hand through his hair one more time. “We come clean,” he says. “I guess. And we try to explain.”
And with that, they head back toward Phil. Wilbur grabs hold of the web and peels it back from his mouth. “Sorry,” he says awkwardly. “We, uh. We panicked.”
“I noticed,” Phil says, and Wilbur winces. He’d be grumpy too if he was stuck to a door by one of his kids, but the irritation in his eyes makes everything all too real. This is happening, Wilbur tells himself. You’re telling him that you’ve been spider-men for the past month. Get over it. He peels more of the web from the door.
When Phil is finally freed, he shakes out both arms and legs, staring at the bundle of web in Wilbur’s arms as if it’s either radioactive or fascinating. Wilbur dumps it in the corner. It’ll dissolve in ten minutes or so.
“We should, uh.” Wilbur clears his throat. “Do you want to sit down?”
Tommy looks relieved to have something to do other than pace around the room, and darts out the door. Techno follows him, and Wilbur follows Techno, hoping Phil will follow him. They take their usual seats around the dinner table.
For a long moment, they all stare at Phil. The only thing breaking the silence is the nervous tapping of Tommy’s fingers, tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap, continuous until Wilbur puts a hand over his. Tommy stills.
“So,” Wilbur says, and coughs. His stomach roils with the urge to go swing through the city until he burns all the nervousness from his system. “We’re, uh, we’re …” Saying superheroes feels immensely stuck-up. “Helpers. Vigilantes.” He gestures vaguely. “You know.”
Phil finally speaks. “So,” he says, and points at Tommy. “You’re Spring.” He points at Wilbur. “You’re Whip, obviously. And—” He turns to Techno. “You’re Blade?”
“Yep,” Techno says. Wilbur can sense his leg jiggling beneath the table, like an electric current running through his veins.
“And you’ve been fighting crime?” Phil’s gaze revolves around the three of them, as if he can’t quite decide who to gape at. He’s so calm that it’s awkward, and Wilbur is tempted to fidget like Tommy when he stares into Wilbur’s eyes. “All this time?”
All this time isn’t quite accurate, considering it’s only been a month, but Wilbur decides not to point that out. “Yeah,” Tommy says, saving Wilbur from answering.
Phil leans back in his chair, lips thinning into an emotionless line. “Tell me,” he says, slowly and deliberately, “the entire story. From the beginning.”
And so Wilbur, with much halting and awkward pauses and interruptions from Tommy and Techno, tells the story.
“And that’s how it happened,” he says finally. His throat is dry. He wouldn’t mind a glass of water, but Phil’s staring at him with such a narrow gaze that he’s not sure if he would get yelled at. “This isn’t really how we wanted to tell you.”
Phil raises an eyebrow. “You were planning on telling me?”
Wilbur would’ve fucking loved to tell him. He hated keeping the secret, and he hated hiding things, especially things as significant as sudden powers and extra arms. “We wanted to,” Tommy says, while Wilbur is pondering what words to use. “Except it would’ve been too dangerous. I didn’t even tell them, they found out on their own.”
A beat.
“Also, to be fair, we told Tubbo too.”
Techno grimaces. “That doesn’t make it better, Tommy.”
There’s a very, very long moment of silence. In it, Tommy’s hand finds Wilbur’s and Wilbur’s hand finds Techno’s and they sit there, all three of them panicking in their own special ways as Phil seems to deliberate.
Finally, Phil sighs and pushes back his chair. “I love you boys,” he says, and Wilbur blinks. “I hope you know that. I just … wasn’t expecting this.” He levels a look at them. “You do know how dangerous it is, don’t you?”
Tommy shifts awkwardly, clearing his throat, and Wilbur thinks back to how Tommy nearly drowned and then nearly bled out in a single day. “Yeah,” he says. “We know.” A beat. “But we have to. We can’t just leave people to get hurt.”
Phil sighs once more. At this moment he is the very image of a tired dad, trying to do his best to figure things out when his sons become something he hadn’t quite expected. Then he spreads his arms. “C’mere,” he says. “I’m proud of you.”
Wilbur blinks, then lurches upward. He drops Tommy’s and Techno’s hands, and it’s almost a race to get around the table in order to throw his arms around Phil. Tommy gets there first, then Wilbur, then Techno, and Wilbur is bursting with such sudden excitement that he doesn’t realize his extra arms have slipped out until Phil swears with surprise.
Wilbur draws back, looks down at the pincers, blinks. “Uh,” he says, and goes to tuck them back in. “Sorry.”
Phil grabs one of the pincers before Wilbur can draw it back behind his ribs. “Don’t,” he says. “It’s fine.”
Wilbur fights back a burst of emotion and hugs him again.
“I’m so proud of you,” Phil murmurs in the center of the group hug. “Of all of you. But you better fucking tell me about things now instead of just sneaking out.” Wilbur stiffens. “Oh, yeah, I know about that. You can’t hide from me.” But there’s a smile in his voice.
When Wilbur finally pulls back, Phil ruffles his hair good-naturedly. “Thank you,” he whispers. “Dad.”
Phil blinks hard. “Stop it,” he says, swiping at his eyes. “Don’t do that. Be quiet.”
Tommy laughs, and Phil jumps at him in an attempt to ruffle his hair, so Tommy jumps onto the ceiling and crouches there, cackling down at Phil like the little gremlin he is, and it’s okay. It’s better than okay.
Techno exchanges a grinning glance with Wilbur, and suddenly the weight of the world seems to lighten.
⸻⸻⸻
A few days later, Phil stomps into the kitchen and nearly snarls, “You did fucking what?”
In his hands is a newspaper. The headline is SPIDER-MEN STOP TERRORIST OPERATION. In smaller but just as bold font beneath, it says, BLADE FLINGS HIMSELF ONTO BOMB TO SAVE PASSERSBY.
“Uh,” Techno says. “I can explain—”
In the corner, Wilbur takes a long sip of his coffee, trying to hold back his grin. Tommy snickers beside him.
“Should we tell him that they shot me?” he murmurs to Tommy.
“Only if we tell him that they threw me out of a plane,” Tommy responds.
They settle back to watch Techno get yelled at.