Work Text:
Your phone lock screen was a picture of Miguel smiling.
It was a picture taken seconds before a disaster. With Miguel menacingly approaching you with slow, calculated strides, the dim settings of his lab making him appear more scary than he actually was. His head had been ducked low, making his shoulders look broader, stronger. Eyes glowing a soft red in the dim light, the soft yellow glow of the monitors reflected off of his fangs, his lips spread into a look of genuine amusement.
It sent a thrill through you. To see the loose, predatory edge to his strides. The carefree way he seemed to stalk you. Pretending to corner you when you had plenty of chances to escape.
Moments prior, you’d poked fun at his signature pout. Dubbing it, the classic Miguel duck face. He had not been impressed and immediately started backing you up into a corner, an amused grin exposing his teeth as you began to laugh maniacally, your heartbeat spiking. He’d heard the camera click and immediately pounced, to which you’d shot a web at the ceiling and promptly retreated, screeching loudly enough to make him genuinely laugh and for Jessica to slam into the room assuming you were being murdered.
You’d been careful not to let him see your lock screen once you’d set it, knowing that he’d demand you change it. Which was the last thing you wanted to do. That intoxicating, cocky little grin needed to be shown to every nosy person who peered at your phone screen, not hidden within the depths of your camera roll.
You were doing so well too. But of course, all good things had to come to an end.
“How did you-?” Miguel asked from behind, startling you hard enough that you almost threw your phone clean off the roof. Spinning in place, you squawked in annoyance when the man in question simply snatched your phone from your hand and flicked it on. His suit’s eyes narrowed as he studied the picture of himself. “When did you even-”
“Don’t look at that!” You warned too late, immediately clawing at his arm and hauling yourself up his stupidly tall body to get the phone back.
“Why am I your lock screen?” Miguel demanded, sounding genuinely confused as you wrestled the phone out of his grip and leapt off of him.
“You looked cute.”
He stiffened. “Nothing about me is cute.” He spat, defensive enough that you assumed he’d taken it the wrong way.
“You look nice?”
He crossed his arms, popping his hip out as he did so. It was such a practised motion that you just knew he didn’t know he was doing it, which only made you want to capture the moment and add it to your Miguel album.
“Get rid of it.”
“For why?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself.”
You raised your hands in mock surrender before dropping into a crouch near the roof edge again so you could have a clear view of the shop front you were guarding. Miguel was adamant that this was the den of a particularly slippery anomaly, but you were fairly certain it was just your average seven eleven. Knowing how to pick your battles of course, you kept that observation firmly to yourself.
“Alright.” You sighed dramatically as if the act of changing your lock screen physically hurt you. “You win, you can stop with the duck face, I’m changing it.”
Miguel’s quiet facade shattered as he spluttered. “I do not have a duck face.” He insisted.
“I can see it through the mask.” You lied, and he turned his back on you with a heavy sigh.
>_<
Miguel assumed it would be a quick change. It certainly didn’t take forty-five minutes to change a phone lock screen. He’d seen them hack into heavily secured files in a quarter of the time. He assumed they would just pick something random from their gallery and call it a night, but of course nothing was ever that simple.
Despite his better judgement, Miguel was beginning to feel his long day pulling at his eyelids. Nothing much was happening on the street below, and his partner was too absorbed in their phone to strike up their usual idle chatter. Naturally, his mind was beginning to wander.
Sudden movement in the corner of his eye has his spine snapping straight and his head jerking towards his coworker. Their masked face practically oozed glee at his abrupt awareness as they lowered their freshly stretched arms.
“Don’t fall asleep on me.” They mused.
Miguel rolled his eyes despite the fact they wouldn’t be able to see it. “We both know you’re the one who always falls asleep first on these kinds of missions.”
“Not this time.” They argue, loudly rummaging around in their bag, drawing Miguel’s attention entirely away from the storefront. He rationalised that he’d be able to hear if anyone walked by and pulled himself away from the edge to sit more comfortably beside his companion.
For several long moments, they continued to messily rummage around in their rucksack for something before brightening and yanking out an energy drink with all the cockiness of someone showing off a shelf full of first place trophies. “This time I’m going to outlast you.”
Miguel highly doubted it but chose not to burst their bubble so soon. It was only two am, so any company was good company instead of the constant silence of the slumbering city.
To their credit, the idiot managed to keep their eyes wide open until twenty past four, before they suddenly and rather dramatically pitched over sideways and collapsed into their pile of empty energy drink cans. Jerking awake at the cacophony of crushed cans, Miguel couldn’t help but smile at their antics.
Knowing they’d be complaining about backache when they woke up, he was quick to grab them by the shoulders and haul them up out of the rubbish pile. Despite the ungodly amount of caffeine they’d spent the evening consuming, they remained dead to the world as he efficiently manoeuvred them to lean into his side.
The action was so familiar for these kinds of stakeouts, that Miguel wasn’t even surprised when the idiot predictably cuddled into his side and slung their arm around his waist. He only leaned away long enough to drag a spiderman themed blanket - typical - out of their rucksack before tucking it tightly around them. They hummed into his side, cuddling closer before falling still.
Discarded at their feet, their phone vibrated loudly as their screen lit up with a message from Jessica. Miguel didn’t mean to look, the phone was just there, face up and painfully bright against the night sky. His eyes couldn’t help but flicker curiously towards it when it lit up again, and his breath stuttered in his chest.
He’d thought the original lock screen was ridiculous, all big and monstrous, but this, this was-
It was a collage of him. Of hundreds of tiny Miguel’s poorly edited onto the same canvas, like something you’d find on pinterest. Eyebrows raised, he gingerly reached for the phone, bringing it close enough so that he could see himself more clearly.
Oddly, he was smiling in every single tiny picture of himself. His fangs were plainly obvious, and his eyes twinkled with an emotion that he thought had become foreign to him. He couldn’t even recall smiling so much, let alone when these pictures had been taken or by who. But it was here, staring him in the face.
The longer he looked, the more details he noticed. The pictures had clearly been taken over a long period of time. In some, he was dressed in his costume and in others he was in more casual attire. The colouration of the photos varied massively from artificial lighting, to night, to golden hour. Whereas, in some edits he was looking offscreen, privately smiling at something that had been cropped out, or he was staring down the camera with a dangerous quirk of his lips.
His fangs were always present in some form. Sometimes they were barred with the force of a wide, victorious grin, long and menacing, whilst in others, they were more subtle, either poking out from between his lips or barely visible at all.
Miguel was distracted from the unprompted trip down memory lane by a hitch in breath at his side. Guilty, he cast his gaze to the sleeping figure curled tight against him. They were twitching unnaturally. His brow furrowed at the sound of their heart rate picking up at an alarming rate.
From what he could tell, they were still asleep, but their pulse was kicking up higher and higher, rapidly approaching a frantic crescendo.
Miguel tore his attention from the phone screen, as his idiot let out a sharp, shuddering breath. Their body jerked sharply. His lips parted to soothe them, but they were yanking away from his side and firing off their web shooters at some invisible enemy before he could find the words.
For a few moments, there was only the harsh in and out of their ragged breathing and the whoosh of a car from the street below. Their hands shook as they remained raised, fingers pressed down tight on the buttons of their web shooters despite the webs having already been launched. Miguel watched the translucent ribbons flutter away on a cool breeze as his companion composed themselves.
“Bad dream?” He asked simply, hoping the sound of his voice would calm them like their’s often did him. He was no stranger to nightmares after all.
Swallowing loudly, they managed to physically shake the remnants of the dream from their mind. Their voice was wispy when they responded, far away as if they were still stuck somewhere far off. “Na. Just too much caffeine.”
“I told you it was a bad idea.” He confirmed, although they both knew that the energy drinks weren’t to blame. Nightmares just came with the baggage of being a spider. Of saving everyone you could and still falling short.
Taking the topic change for what it was, his idiot managed to regain ahold of themselves. “That’s what I get for drinking half a dozen energy drinks in one go before passing out.” They chuckled wetly to themselves, back tense. “Weird ass fever dreams.”
Miguel found comfort in that their heart rate was beginning to calm down. With the familiarity of someone who had done it countless times before, he hooked his arm around their middle and dragged them back against him.
They went easily, scooting back as he pulled, before going a step closer and crawling into his lap instead of simply leaning against him like before. Caught off guard, Miguel’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth at the blatant invasion of privacy. Before he could complain however, the phone still in his hand lit up with another incoming message.
The idiot in his lap glanced up at him questioningly, staring long enough that Miguel began to sweat. He had half a mind to begin defending himself, but they once again surprised him.
“Did you get bored, big guy?” They mocked good naturedly, and without missing a beat, leaned up to take their phone from his slack grasp. They leaned heavily into his chest as they unlocked it efficiently before handing it back and snuggling down with their spider blanket pulled tight around their suit.
Still frozen, Miguel was bewildered to find that the home screen consisted of an uncomfortably zoomed in picture of Hobbie. Clearly taken with a 0.5 lens from the man’s chin, his nose took up most of the screen, with a comically small speech bubble reading, ‘arson?’ tucked neatly in the top right hand corner.
“I’ve got Subway Surfers on there somewhere.” His companion told him sleepily, nestling further into his lap to get comfy again. “Or if you’re more of a Candy Crush kind of guy, I got stuck on level 69.”
They dropped off again before he could form a proper response.
For several long moments, Miguel stared at the open phone, feeling Hobbie judge him through the screen. Then he glanced down at the sleeping spider in his lap who had so blatantly trusted him with a device that they were otherwise fiercely protective of.
He’d only ever seen it in Mayday’s hands when it wasn’t on their person. The toddler happily watching Coco Melon whilst Peter B was busy, or finger smashing her grubby little fingers against the screen whilst playing Fruit Ninja.
He was certainly not expecting them to trust him with something so personal.
Rolling his eyes, Miguel decided that Candy Crush was obviously the best way to spend his time whilst the sun began to peer through the gaps in the sky scrapers. He could already taste the victory of watching them open the app only to find that he’d beaten twice the amount of levels as them.
Whilst in search of Candy Crush, however, he accidentally clicked on the camera roll instead. Tutting in annoyance, Miguel was about to click out of it when an album with his face scowling back at him caught his eye.
Glancing to the person in his lap to ensure they were dead to the world again, he tried not to feel too guilty as his curiosity won out. It would just be a quick peak. To see if they’d turned him into another meme or WhatsApp sticker. To check it was nothing incriminating and to delete it if it was too damaging to his reputation.
What greeted him instead, was row upon row, upon row of candid photos. All of them, of him.
Eyes narrowed, Miguel took off his mask as if the lenses were hindering instead of enhancing his vision. It made no difference. It was undoubtedly him in every picture.
Brows furrowed, Miguel scrolled to the bottom of the folder, his jaw slackening when he realised that the album dated back as far as three years ago.
His gaze started eagerly flickering between each photo, heart twinging as he relived fleeting memories that hadn’t felt significant enough for him to remember on his own. They were simple moments. Domestic and common scenes that were now forever immortalised in pixels.
One of the earliest ones was a pretty common sight back at HQ, as it depicted him yelling at Parker, the man in question looking bored in his pink robe with Mayday strapped to his chest. Although blurry, the image somehow caught the amused lift to his mouth, which Mayday mirrored with her own toothless grin, her tiny hands frozen in joyous claps. He could practically hear the loud giggles that usually accompanied that smile.
In another, he was asleep in an armchair in the common area. His head was resting at a neck breaking angle, his tired body sunken into the worn blue fabric with Mayday curled up on his chest.
A little further up was an upside down photo taken through a window that looked into his living room. It nicely highlighted the strong bridge of his nose, the private smile tugging at the corner of his lips as he read something on his phone. The next picture was a shot taken a few seconds after, when he was frowning at the window with his head tilted in disapproval. When Miguel took a few extra seconds to study it, he noticed the reflection of the idiot next to him grinning back with a comical little wave in the window.
There was one of him webbed to the wall by his hand with Hobbie bolting in the opposite direction. Despite the annoyance in his posture, even Miguel can tell he was amused by the man’s panic.
One was of him standing before his screens, hands on his hips, the yellow hues emphasising the chestnut browns of his hair. His back to the camera, shoulders set. A common thing. Hardly worth wasting storage on.
After that is a selfie with the idiot in his lap in the foreground, comically pointing to him passed out on his desk, cuddling his half finished coffee mug.
He came across the horribly zoomed in picture of his malicious grin that had been their lock screen only hours before. Grimacing at the sight of his fangs so plainly on display, he quickly scrolled on.
One of him taking a long drag from his 'number 1 boss' mug, eyes burning into the camera with an unimpressed look. Miguel lingered for a moment on the carefree set of his shoulder, on the hidden bunch of his cheek as he smiled into his half-finished drink.
He even found one that had been favourited. It was a simple composition, a little blurry and taken from some distance away. A side view photo, taken with Miguel holding a squealing Mayday above his head, his hands easily engulfing her tiny body. He was smiling, wide and bright and without a single ounce of restraint.
He looked happy. He realised as he scrolled to the most recent image. One taken from earlier this evening with Miguel in his suit, peering over the lip of the roof to observe the Seven Eleven below. There was a blurry peace sign thrown into the bottom left hand corner.
In almost every mugshot, he looked relaxed or content, simply living his life amongst friends despite the shitty twist everything had taken.
And for some odd reason, Miguel felt seen. He’d had no idea they’d been taking so many photos of him and so often. Hadn’t realised someone observed him long enough to realise that his scowl wasn’t permanently in place. That his face was incredibly expressive if you knew when to look and where to prod. It was strangely endearing. To know that he was being perceived and cherished. He almost didn't mind that he was their lock screen.
>_<
That night, if he held his idiot a little tighter whilst they sleep off the adrenaline high of their nightmare, it’s no one’s business but his own.