Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Miguel is scared.

The feeling is not, as he would have most people believe, unfamiliar to him. The truth is that Miguel is scared every hour of every day and then some. He’s scared of fucking up the precarious society he’s built. He’s scared of holding on too tightly to those he’s come to love. He’s scared of watching the universe fall apart between his claws in a million tumbling technicolor shards. These are all the ordinary terrors of Miguel O’Hara.

Today, however, Miguel O’Hara is scared for several extraordinary reasons.

The mission had been a straightforward one up until the very end—because when Miguel dialed his watch to teleport back to Spider Society Headquarters for a debriefing, the watch flickered. Then it hissed. Then it sparked. Then it died an underwhelming and tragic death on Miguel’s wrist, the watchface sputtering into an unresponsive darkness that refused to blink no matter how Miguel fiddled with the internal components.

So now Miguel is stuck.

So now Miguel is stuck on an alien planet with four children.

So now Miguel is stuck on an alien planet with four children, withdrawal symptoms, no contact with the outside world, and rapidly thinning patience.

“Mierda,” Miguel decides. 

“Yeah,” Miles groans, sprawling out on the forest floor. “That about sums it up.”

“Want my lump of ice, bruvs?” Hobie asks, still hunched over his own malfunctioning watch as he tinkers with its counterfeit processor. “Relax.”

“Easy for you to say. Your mom’s not going to ground you for the rest of your life. I’ve already been gone for two days. I told her I’d be gone for a few hours tops, and I was supposed to take a physics exam this afternoon.” Miles rolls over, squashing his face into the bristling brown grass before groaning again. “I’m so dead.”

“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?” Gwen says, folding her legs to sit beside him. She reaches over, running her fingers through his curls.

“Yeah, I’m sure she’ll understand,” Pavitr says cheerfully; he’s weaving a crown of yellow flowers, entirely unbothered by the situation. 

As the four of them talk, Miguel scales a nearby tree to look out on the forest. The anomaly they’d been tracking had arrived far from civilization, or any signs of it. For all Miguel knows, they’re the only sentient creatures on this whole blasted planet. He scans the horizon and breathes deeply, but all of his senses relay the same message: they’re damningly alone. Even the herd of strange, six-legged bovines he’d spotted earlier that day have moved on. 

They must know something he doesn’t.

“Pack up,” he calls down to the others. “We’re moving.”

A chorus of groans rises up to meet him, and he scowls. 

“Why, tio?” Miles complains. “We just got here this morning.”

“The animals are moving. We’re following them.”

“Don’t see why we should,” Hobie drawls, leaning back on the heels of his hands. “We’re doin’ pretty good right ‘ere.”

“Do you fancy eating tonight, Brown? Because we’re down to our last few ration packs, and we don’t know how long it’s going to be until we can get back to Nueva York to restock. If we don’t stick with that herd, we’re stuck eating plants we have no way to safely identify. So pack your stuff, quit complaining, and get up.”

Hobie growls something impolite under his breath but heaves himself to his feet. He’s always the most difficult one to persuade—once he’s up, the other three naturally follow suit, and Miguel tunes out their grumbling with the ease of long practice. He rakes his aching eyes back over the forest, tracing the trail of smashed foliage the herd left. The animals will have to stop by a water source soon, and his team can rest and refill their bottles there.

Miguel swings out of the tree and lands neatly on the ground, snatching his own bag of supplies. He rifles through it for his bottle of ibuprofen. He has enough of that, at least, even though his metabolism burns through it far faster than an ordinary human’s would. He pops a pair of pills, washing them down with a swig of bitter, chemically-cleansed water. It will be enough to keep the worst of his withdrawal aches away, at least for an hour or so. But Miguel isn’t foolish enough to think that will last—the longer he goes without Rapture, the worse he’ll get.

They need to get back to headquarters, and soon.

Once the kids are packed, Miguel leads them out. He springs from tree to tree like an oversized panther, digging his claws deep into the bark to leave a trail for whoever might come looking for them (for his Peter). The others swing from limb to limb, shouting gleefully and performing unnecessary acrobatics high above his head. He ignores them, for the most part. As long as they’re nearby and listening, he doesn’t need to micromanage. (It would only annoy Hobie, anyway.)

Miguel only holds up a hand, signaling them to a stop, when he smells water. He alters their course slightly, veering off to find a little stream. It’s running, and clear, which are both good signs. He crouches beside it, flaring his nostrils. He’s pleased to find that it smells clean. Even so, he hands out several water purification tablets from his emergency kit. 

“It’s good water,” he says. “Fill your bottles and drink.”

“Ey, finally,” Hobie says, plunging his bottle into the stream. He takes a gulp without purifying it first, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

“Seriously? That’s—” Miguel’s jaw tightens, and he cuts himself off. “Whatever. Just—whatever. Get cholera, see if I care.”

Miguel does care, unfortunately, and if Hobie’s smirk is anything to go by he knows that, too.

The other three take pity on him and are more cautious. They drop the tablets into their water before drinking, for which Miguel is grateful. Once he’s purified his own water, he drinks deeply of it. It does nothing to ease the growing soreness behind his eyes or the stiffness of his muscles. Only one thing could do that, at this point, and it’s a hundred universes away. 

But there’s no point dwelling on the inevitable—never has been—and so Miguel gets back to work. He sets his bottle back into his bag, then splashes his face with cold water. He scrubs one wet hand through his hair, knocking off some of the dirt. He finds a stray twig tangled into one curl and makes a face as he plucks it out. The dirty caveman vibes are not it.

“I’m going to go find the herd,” he announces. “You four set up the tents for tonight and keep working on those watches. They’re our best chance at getting out of here.”

“See, you tellin’ me to do it just makes me wanna do it less,” Hobie says. “You’d think you’d have figured that out by now, boss.”

The boss is, most definitely, an insult.

“But we will do it,” Gwen interjects, “because we all want to get home.”

“Eh,” Hobie says, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug.

“I have a physics exam, man,” Miles says, dragging his hands down his face. “Do it for me!”

“I’m sure Hobie will figure it out,” Pavitr says, digging a sleeping roll out of his bag. “My man’s a mad genius. Right, Hobes?”

Hobie offers him a lazy salute.

“See? We’ve got nothing to worry about.” Pavitr beams, setting his hands on his hips. “We got this. I mean, c’mon, we’re Spider-man!”

This is not the comfort that Pavitr seems to think it is.

As Miguel prowls deeper into the forest, the voices fade behind him. He springs into a tree, hauling his weight upwards with his claws until he can perch comfortably near the top. The vantage point offers him a better view of the forest, and he spots the herd ambling farther downstream. He makes his way towards it, keeping to the treetops and downwind of the animals. 

The beasts are strange, unearthly, but similar enough to cattle that Miguel feels semi-comfortable consuming their meat. He crouches in a high branch, surveying the herd with a critical eye. Some of the animals have short, curving horns. He doesn’t linger long on those—it’s a risk he’d rather avoid, if he can. A few of the smaller ones haven’t grown horns yet, and so he focuses his attention on one of those.

Miguel doesn’t often hunt animals—but, as it turns out, they’re much easier to hunt than anomalies or villains. His prey doesn’t notice him until he’s already webbed its eyes over, descending from the trees to latch onto its back. It bellows, bolting and bucking, but Miguel’s claws catch in its hide. He sinks them through its flesh, anchoring himself to its shoulders, before leaning forward to bite the back of its neck. He gets a mouthful of dense fur for his trouble and draws back, spitting. 

Well. Shit.

“C’mon, little guy, just—” 

Miguel’s breath leaves him an oof as the animal bucks again, slamming its weight up into his chest. The force of the impact jars him off of its back, and he hits the ground hard. The rest of the herd is scattering in a panic, and their hooves thunder perilously close to his skull. He flips himself upright, crouched against the ground and wide-eyed as he searches for his quarry. It’s tangled itself into a bramble, still blinded by his webbing. 

Before he can lunge at it again, one of the other beasts charges at him with its horns lowered. He snarls and leaps up the nearest tree before he can be trampled, bristling with indignation. 

“Oh, come on!” he cries, insulted. “This is ridiculous. I’m Spider-man! I’m not going to be defeated by some stupid, overgrown cows.”

The larger beast snorts at him, stamping its hooves and switching its tail. It isn’t fleeing along with the rest of the herd—in fact, it puts itself defiantly between Miguel and the smaller beast he’d chosen as his prey. That beast is still bawling, stumbling inefficiently after the herd and slinging its head to rid itself of the webs. 

“Listen,” Miguel says to the larger beast, “I get it, I do, but I’ve got mouths to feed.”

The larger beast slams its front hooves into the ground, bellowing a challenge.

Nobody said he couldn’t take two.

Miguel rubs the curve of one claw against the tip of his fang, coaxing a thin layer of paralytic venom from the tooth. He coats all of the claws on one hand, just in case the beasts are big enough to endure a smaller dose. He bunches his legs beneath himself, preparing to lunge. He strikes the larger beast first, dragging his claws down its spine in several deep gouges. Then he lunges from its back to the smaller beast’s back, sinking the points of his claws into its flesh. 

After that, it’s only a matter of letting his venom work. 

Miguel hauls himself back into a tree, watching as the beasts begin to weaken beneath him. He wipes the blood and fur from his claws, satisfied. While he doesn’t enjoy killing—let alone killing innocent animals—he enjoys starving even less. Besides, he has—

—spiderlings to feed; they’re small and they won’t survive without him so he has to—

—bring them something fresh to eat. 

Miguel falters for a moment, confused, before he recognizes his own suppressed instincts. 

So, he thinks, that’s not great.

Miguel’s instincts usually rear their heads in times of stress or pain—withdrawal, consisting of both, is a surefire ticket to the hindbrain. Hopefully he can bite back on his more unruly impulses until they’re back home. 

Miguel really should know better than to hope, by now.

“Here,” Miguel says, handing his last ration packet to Pavitr. It’s one of the only vegetarian options they have left, and he’s not keen for Pavitr to start eating unidentified plants until he has to. “Eat this. I’ll eat the meat, tonight.”

“Ooooh, spinach tortellini? Get in my belly, you delicious thing,” Pavitr says, cracking open the flameless heater that comes with the packet.

“I want to try the meat,” Miles says through a mouthful of his own rations. 

Miguel shakes his head. “Wait until tomorrow.”

The meat looks and smells safe enough, but Miguel wants to ascertain that it isn’t going to make him keel over and die before he starts feeding it to his team. Miles—too smart for his own good, always—frowns as he realizes the implication. Miguel stolidly ignores him, laying several strips of meat on the flatiron skillet nestled into the embers of their campfire. It sizzles appealingly, and Miguel’s stomach growls. 

“Want to try some of my drink?” Pavitr offers, dumping a powdered Kool-Aid packet into his water bottle and shaking it vigorously. “It’s watermelon.”

“No,” Miguel says.

“Well, if he’s not going to—” Hobie reaches out expectantly, and Pavitr passes the bottle to him. He takes a swig. “Mm. Tastes like capitalist cliches and commercialism.”

“Ew,” Gwen says, laughing.

“Tell me about it, mate.” Hobie sprawls out beside her, hooking his hands behind his head and gazing up at the stars. They’re unfamiliar, sprawled in foreign patterns that make Miguel’s chest lurch with sudden homesickness. “Ey, for real though, the Kool-Aid man kinda scares me. You seen him? Bloody fuckin’ freak.”

“Language,” Miguel says automatically.

And because he’s a smartass Hobie replies, “Cockney English.”

Gwen snorts, reaching over to thump Hobie’s shoulder. “Smartass.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Miguel sighs.

Pointedly ignoring the way Hobie rolls his eyes, Miguel flips the meat on the skillet to brown it thoroughly. Only then does he dare to take a bite of it, tearing smoothly through the fibers with his fangs. It tastes ordinary, at least. He devours the rest of it quickly, his stomach clamoring for its fill. Miles watches him warily, as though the meat will sicken him right away, and so Miguel ushers him over once he’s finished.

“Come here,” he says, wiping the grease from his fingers with one of the towelettes from the ration packets. “Let me see your arm, Miles.”

“It’s fine,” Miles says, but obediently scoots over to him and extends his arm. “Seriously, tio, estoy bien.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Miguel says; none of these kids are very good at knowing their limits. He pushes Miles’ sleeve up and unwinds the bandages beneath, examining his forearm. The anomaly had landed a solid blow on him, its talons carving lines through his wrist. Already, the cuts have healed to thin red scabs. Miguel grunts in approval. “Looks good.”

“I told you.” Miles takes his arm back, pushing his sleeve down. “What about you? How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, but you’re out of—”

“Miles.” Miguel narrows his eyes. It’s not that the other spiders don’t know about Miguel’s medication—he’s sure that Hobie, at least, has his suspicions—but they certainly don’t know what happens when he goes without it for too long. He’d rather not scare them if he doesn’t have to. “Drop it. I’m fine.”

Miles groans and drags himself back to Gwen’s side, smushing his face against her shoulder. 

“Hey, don’t leave me out of the snuggle pile,” Pavitr protests, and throws himself on top of them. 

“Oof! Ey, Pav, watch it,” Hobie says, wheezing. “Ya crushin’ me.”

Pavitr curls up on top of his friends like a contented cat, a smile on his face. “You love it.”

Hobie, quite noticeably, does not argue the point. 

“I’ll take first watch,” Miguel says, stamping out the remains of their fire. 

“M’kay,” Gwen says, yawning widely and wrapping her arm around Miles’ shoulder. “Wake me when it’s my turn.”

Miguel drags his own sleeping bag to the edge of their camp and sits down on it, leaning against the trunk of a sturdy tree. He listens to the quiet murmurs of the children behind him as they lapse into sleep, his gaze turned up to strange stars in a stranger sky. Something about the atmosphere must affect the watches’ ability to create portals between realities. Now, if he can only figure out what that something is—and how to counteract it.

For several hours, Miguel fiddles with the complex innards of his watch. He gets it to spark on, briefly, but the screen stays frozen and blue. His eyes ache in the sudden light, and he sets it aside for a moment. His headache is coming back with a vengeance, and he reaches up to massage his temples. A cold sweat prickles the nape of his neck. For just a moment he allows himself reprieve, looking back at his team.

Seeing them all curled together, sleeping peacefully under his guard, soothes the worst of his rankled instincts. The spiderlings are exactly where they need to be. They’re here, and they’re safe, and he’s going to keep them that way if it’s the last thing he does. But he’s going to need to keep them safe from himself if he goes much longer without Rapture. He has to get home. He has to get them home. 

Miguel takes a deep breath and picks the watch back up again. 

It’s another couple of hours before Hobie stirs, gingerly extracting himself from his younger counterparts and heading directly for Miguel’s spot on the outskirts. He pauses behind Miguel, his shadow stretching long over the forest floor. 

“Miguel.”

“What do you want?” Miguel asks, his watch cradled in his hands. His eyes burn with exhaustion. “Go back to sleep, Hobie.”

“Nah, man. I’ll take next shift.”

“You don’t have to do that. I’m still working on this.”

“I can fuck up spacetime as well as the next guy,” Hobie says, shoving his hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “Let me look at it for a coupla hours.”

“I can’t sleep, anyway.”

“Fine. Stay awake.” Hobie shrugs, plopping down beside him on the sleeping bag. He holds one hand out expectantly. “But hand it over.”

“What? No. Fuck up your own.”

“Mine’s different than yours.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you reverse engineered it out of stolen parts.”

“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” Hobie shrugs again, unbothered. “Let me look at yours. Maybe I’ll see somethin’ different.”

Reluctantly, Miguel hands over his watch.

“Piece ‘a work, this,” Hobie says. For once, Miguel isn’t sure whether it’s complimentary or derogatory. Knowing Hobie, however, it’s probably the latter. “For somebody so smart, mate, you sure can be stupid.”

“Look, if you’re only going to insult me, give the watch back and—”

“Wasn’t an insult.”

“It sure sounded like one.”

“Eh, I guess part of it was,” Hobie allows, twisting the watch’s dials between his fingers. “It’s those drugs, innit?”

“What.”

“Those drugs you take,” Hobie says, and slides him a quelling look. “Don’t get all up ‘n arms about it, mate. Everybody’s got their vice. If yours is tweaking when you’re off the crystal—”

“It’s not fucking crystal,” Miguel spits, curling his lip to show a sliver of fang. Shame burns hot through him. “It’s a carefully regulated medication that keeps me from losing my shit, and I’ve been without it since the first day we got here—so if I were you, I’d tread a little more carefully.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

“You’re a real prick sometimes, you know that?”

“Yeah, well, it gets me what I want,” Hobie says, plucking out the watch’s haptic engine. “Like information on that shit you take every day. Wouldn’t have to manipulate ya if ya just talked to me once in a while, you feel?”

“You—”

Miguel falters, ashamed of how easily he’d let himself be baited into that trap. 

“Lemme guess, 'you smartass?'” Hobie offers, smirking.

“Emphasis on the ass.”

Hobie snickers. “So this medication, ya need it to keep from goin’ off the wall?”

“Something like that,” Miguel mutters.

“And you’re already startin’ withdrawal,” Hobie surmises. “That’s why ya so worried about gettin’ us home quick.”

Miguel shrugs. 

“Well,” Hobie says, after a moment, “don’t worry so much.”

“Has anyone ever told you your advice is shit?”

“A lotta people,” Hobie says, with a quicksilver grin. “But this time it’s not. We’ll get home one way or another, ‘n if ya do lose ya shit I’m here to keep everybody safe. Don’t underestimate us. Ya made that mistake once, remember?”

“I remember,” Miguel says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“So don’t it again,” Hobie says. “Trust us a pinch, ey?”

“Yeah,” Miguel says, letting himself slump back against the tree trunk. “Sure.”

“Cool.”

Hobie lapses into silence, then, all of his focus on the watch in his hands. Miguel watches him, hazy and exhausted. His eyelids feel so heavy. He blinks once, and then again, each lasting longer than the previous. A yawn cracks his jaw, and he rubs his eyes. Hobie doesn’t comment on it—doesn’t even look at him.

So there, in the dark and quiet of a space guarded by his family, Miguel finally sleeps.

Chapter Text

When the spider wakes up, it doesn’t know where it is. It scrambles upright, digging its claws into the bark of a nearby tree. It’s—in a forest? Why is it in a forest? Its head swivels, and it squints in the garish yellow sunlight. The smell of campfire smoke and grilling meat swamps its nose and settles like a fog in its sinuses. Nearby, a group of humans loiters. It narrows its eyes, analyzing them for any threats, when it realizes—

It knows those humans.

For one brief, terrifying moment it can’t remember their names.

“Miguel?” The tallest human comes to stand in front of it, eyebrows arched. “You good, bruv?”

Those are the spider’s humans, it remembers, suddenly—only, they’re not quite humans, are they? They’re part spider, like it, only they’re younger and smaller. They’re spiderlings. They’re its spiderlings. That makes sense. So why are they all so far away from it? It can’t protect them if they’re all the way over there. What if something had stolen them away while it had been sleeping?

Hm. It will have to web their cocoon tighter, next time.

“Miguel?” The tall spiderling leans a little closer, worry sparking in his eyes. “Ey, what’s up? What’s goin’ on in there?”

Miguel. 

That’s his name, isn’t it? Miguel. And the tall spiderling is named Hobie, while the blond one is Gwen and the littlest one with the golden bangles is Pavitr, and—

“Oh, shit,” Miguel says, sucking in a deep breath as he slams back into his own head.

The spider screeches in abject protest, but he staunchly ignores it—slamming those instincts down deep into his psyche where he can pretend they don’t exist. 

“Miguel?” Hobie says, a third time, growing progressively more wary. He’s placed himself firmly between Miguel and the younger spiders, his form flickering yellow-red—the warning colors of a poisonous creature screaming don’t eat me I’ll hurt you I’ll hurt you! “Talk to me.”

“I’m fine,” Miguel says, his voice a rasp. “Just—had a weird dream. Shit. Sorry. I’m good.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” Miguel says, bringing a hand up to rub his eyes. “I didn’t mean to sleep so long.”

Hobie relaxes, shrugging. “Looked like ya needed it. We had things handled, anyway. You want breakfast? We’re eatin’ more of that meat from yesterday—looks like it didn’t make ya sick.”

Miguel does, in fact, feel sick—but in the sort of way that has far more to do with withdrawal than bad food. He nods shortly, forcing his limbs to unlock so he can move to sit with the others around the campfire. Pavitr is halfway through a plastic bowl of Fruit Loops while Miles is frying long strips of alien bovine meat like bacon. 

“Morning, man,” Gwen says, waving at him. “You’ll never guess what we saw.”

“I don’t know that I want to,” Miguel says, sitting down beside her with a groan.

“An airplane!” Pavitr exclaims, unable to stretch the suspense. “We saw an airplane. And you know what that means? It means there’s an airport, which means there’s a city, which means we’re not alone! How cool is that?”

It’s some of the first good news Miguel has heard in days.

“If we can get to a city, they might have the technology we need to fix our watches,” Miles adds. “We might even be able to track down this world’s Spider-man.”

“Or they could kill us,” Gwen suggests.

“Or they could kill us,” Miles agrees cheerfully.

“Quien no arriesga, no gana,” Miguel says, shrugging.

“My thoughts exactly.” Miles devours a strip of alien bacon, licking his fingers. “So I’m thinking we head after that plane as soon as we’re done eating. It went northwest just an hour or two ago.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?” Miguel asks.

“Uh, ‘cause you look like shit,” Miles says. “No offense.”

“Offense taken.” 

Does he really look that bad already? He feels like shit, sure, but he was hoping he at least looked a little better. He rakes his hand through his hair, trying to tame the flyaways. God, he needs a shockin’ shower. 

“Yeah, Miguel, are you sick?” Gwen asks, her eyes narrowing as she looks him over.

Sick is an apt description, Miguel thinks. His skin feels clammy, drawn too tight over his joints, and a low ache rests over his whole body. His stomach is beginning to churn uncomfortably, and the bright sunshine is unpleasant at best and unbearable at worst. He wishes he had his damned sunglasses. He wishes he had his damned Rapture.

“Sick of being stranded,” Miguel says, and then heaves himself to his feet. “Hurry up and finish eating. I’d like to find civilization sooner rather than later.”

If worst comes to worst, he can leave the kids in a city until someone comes to rescue them. It would be safer than leaving them in the wilderness, at least. It would be safer than allowing them to stay with him once withdrawal truly takes hold. 

As soon as they’re packed, Miguel lets Miles lead the way north. The plane, predictably, is nowhere to be found—but at least they’re headed in the right direction. Miguel keeps his senses pricked for any signs of other people, even though the sick and miserable parts of him want to draw back into himself and shut down. The light is too bright and the sounds are too loud and the texture of his own skin is abysmal. But he can’t block any of that out without blocking out potentially important information, too, so he resigns himself to the suffering.

There’s nothing new about that, at least.

When they stop for lunch, Miguel takes himself on a walk to the creek and throws up.

It’s all bile, hot and sour. He hadn’t eaten anything at breakfast, and there’s no way in hell he’s going to try lunch if he’s already queasy. He spits, rinses his mouth with water, and spits again. The discomforting churn of his stomach settles, if only for a few minutes. In the moment of reprieve, he slumps down against a nearby tree and catches his breath.

This fucking sucks.

Why couldn’t he have brought more Rapture? He always carries extra on him, but he’d run out the first day they’d gotten here. He’d never expected to be gone for longer than that—and before, he’d always been able to retreat to Nueva York and get more if he needed to. This is a mistake he won’t be making again. 

Miguel realizes, when he tries to get up again, that he’s starting to shake. The tremors always start in his hands, creeping up his limbs until they wrack his whole body. He won’t be able to hide this from the kids for much longer. He finds himself pleading to whatever higher power is out there—

Please, please don’t let me hurt them.

Miguel throws up two more times, his throat burning with the undiluted acid bubbling in his stomach, before he returns to his team. Mercifully, they’ve finished lunch, and the overwhelming scent of food has all but dissipated in the cool breeze. He gestures for them to pack up and move out, and they’re underway within the half hour. 

Miles’ eyes burn the back of his neck the entire time.

“Miguel?” Miles drops down to walk beside him. They haven’t gone more than a half-mile. Miguel is too unbalanced to spring from tree to tree any longer, though the others still play in the air high above him. “You okay, man?”

“I’m fine, Miles,” Miguel says.

“Really? Because you’re not acting fine.” Miles shoots a look up at the other three, checking that they’re out of earshot and lowering his voice before adding, “Look, I know you haven’t had your medicine in a few days. Are you sure you’re holding up okay?”

“I’ll survive,” Miguel says firmly. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

God knows these kids have enough on their shoulders without adding Miguel’s drug addiction to the list. He can deal with this on his own, the way he’s done for years. He just has to get them somewhere safe, first—and he’ll be damned if he ever goes on a mission without another adult again. (Hobie is an adult, Miguel supposes, but only just. Nineteen years is not nearly enough.)

“Miguel—”

“Miles, I’ll be fine. I’ve dealt with this for a long time.” Miguel reaches out, setting a hand on Miles’ head and rocking it lightly. “I said don’t worry about it. Cálmate, chiquillo.”

Miles’ mouth turns down in a frown, and he scuffs the toe of his sneaker against the dirt. “But you’d tell us, right? If you needed our help?”

“Yeah,” Miguel lies. “I’d tell you.”

Miles opens his mouth to respond, but before he can Pavitr cries out in excitement above them.

“Look, another plane!” Pavitr points at a commercial jetliner soaring high above them, his webbing nearly missing its next target in his distraction. He yelps and catches himself before he hits the ground, dangling upside-down in front of Miguel. “Miguel, do you see it?”

“I see it,” Miguel says, reaching out to carefully guide him upright again. He scales back up the web to perch on a tree limb, bouncing on his toes. “Careful, Pav.”

“I’m careful, I’m careful,” Pavitr insists. 

“I like the gusto, but that ain’t careful,” Hobie drawls, perched on another limb several trees forward. “Branch is about to—”

The branch snaps beneath Pavitr’s weight, and Miguel lunges forward to catch him. 

“—break,” Hobie finishes. “Yeah. Sounds about right.”

Pavitr relaxes in Miguel’s arms, and it’s terrifying. Doesn’t he know Miguel is dangerous—and getting more dangerous by the minute? He can’t afford to be this close. But he seems entirely unaware of the fact, smiling sheepishly as Miguel sets him back on his feet.

“Maybe you should walk for a little bit,” Miguel suggests.

So Pavitr walks alongside him and Miles for almost a mile, until Hobie eventually baits him back into the trees. Miles follows suit, and Miguel is left on his own for the next hour. His kids never stray too far from him—they’re always within earshot, if not his direct line of sight—but he’s glad for the extra space nevertheless. 

Honestly, though, it was only a matter of time before they figured him out.

Miguel pauses for a moment when a wave of dizziness overtakes him, the shaking in his hands suddenly spreading up to his shoulders. He leans against a tree—god, he’s never been so grateful for so many damn trees—and tries to get the world to stop swaying around him. He feels like he’s wading through water; light swims in front of his eyes and the blood rushing in his ears muffles all other sound. The vertigo makes him suddenly, violently ill, and he bends over to retch into the bracken.

“...Miguel?”

Gwen’s voice is soft, confused.

Miguel spits and wipes his mouth before turning to look at her. “Hey, Gwen. Sorry. I’m okay.”

“You’re sick.”

“I’ll be alright.”

“Was it the meat? Was it poisonous?”

“No. I think I just caught the flu or a stomach bug or something.”

“No one else is sick. Who would you have caught it from?” Gwen’s eyes narrow suspiciously. 

“Someone back at headquarters, probably,” Miguel says. 

“We haven’t been at headquarters in days.”

“The incubation period for the flu lasts up to four days—ergo, I still could have gotten it from someone at headquarters.”

“You’re being weirdly defensive about this.”

“You’re being weirdly interrogative about this. Can’t a guy throw up in peace anymore?”

“Why didn’t you tell us you were sick?”

“Jesus, Gwen, I don’t know.” Miguel presses his fist to his forehead, taking several deep breaths to quell his nausea. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to say?”

“Sorry is a good start.” Gwen comes closer. “Sit down, Miguel. I’ll go tell the others we’re stopping for today.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“We can’t stop,” Miguel says. “We have to keep going.”

“The city isn’t going anywhere.”

“Okay, let me rephrase: we aren’t stopping , and that’s an order.”

Gwen’s jaw tightens, a muscle flexing in her cheek. “You know the self-sacrificial schtick is kind of old-fashioned, right?”

“Don’t talk to me about old-fashioned. You’re from the 2000s.”

Gwen huffs, her nostrils flaring.

“Okay, sorry, low blow,” Miguel says, waving a hand apologetically. “Forget I said it.”

“Ey, you guys okay?” Hobie appears in the canopy above them, peering through a crown of golden leaves. “What’s the hold up?”

Gwen shoots a web upwards, latching onto Hobie’s shoulder and yanking. He tumbles out of the tree and into a pile of brambles, and still manages to look nonplussed when he sits up to pluck a leaf from his hair. Miguel looks at them both suspiciously. Gwen moves fast, but Hobie’s spider-sense should have warned him the second she decided to attack. So why would he just let her…?

“Hobie fell,” Gwen announces. “He hurt his ankle.”

“Hurts somethin’  terrible,” Hobie drawls, looking distinctly unhurt.

“So we have to stop and take a break now,” Gwen continues cheerfully, coming to Miguel’s side and grabbing his forearm in both of her hands. She pulls at him, as undauntable and unswervable as a bull now that she’s chosen her course. “You wouldn’t make Hobie walk around on a sprained ankle, would you?”

“Nah, mate, that’d just be bad leadership,” Hobie agrees placidly. “Real inhumanitarian.”

“Miles! Pav!” Gwen shouts. “Get over here. We’re taking a break.”

“We—you—” Miguel looks between them, appalled and frustrated and just a little bit impressed by their daring. “You can’t do that.”

“What, you gonna blame me for bein’ injured now?” Hobie heaves himself to his feet, limping theatrically towards Miguel. “And here I thought you were finally warmin’ up to my charm.”

“You’re not hurt,” Miguel protests. Then, more uncertainly, “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Hobie tosses his bag down before sprawling out on the ground. “Take a seat. My ankle’s gonna take a while to heal up right. Ya just can’t rush perfection.”

Grumbling and thoroughly manipulated, Miguel sits down. 

“Bloody swell, now there’s a good man,” Hobie says, throwing him a lazy grin. "How about you toss me some ibuprofen?”

Like the fucker actually needs it. Miguel is ninety-eight percent sure that his fall was merely a ploy to bring their travels to a halt—but on account of the two percent chance that Hobie is actually injured, he fishes out his bottle of ibuprofen and hands it over. Hobie shakes a pair of pills out before tossing the bottle back to Miguel, and once he has his hands on it again he realizes that he might as well take a couple of pills himself to cut back on the ache in his head.

Then he realizes that this was a ploy, too, because his kids are nothing if not devious bastards.

Grumpily, Miguel takes his ibuprofen.

Late that night, when the shaking has progressed to all of his limbs, Miguel writes a note.

Miles,

If you recall the day we first met, then you recall what happens when I go without my medication for too long. ‘Too long’ has come sooner than I hoped it would. Right now, I need space, and so I need you to take the other three with you to the city. Keep heading northwest and you should eventually come to a road. If you don’t, or if you’re unable to keep moving, stop and stay put. Peter will come for you. I’ve left a trail to our position thus far, and if you continue a trail he’ll be able to find you. He can help you fix the watches.

There should be enough salted meat packed in my bag to last you a few days. Once that runs out, you’ll have to hunt again. Be careful what you eat. Make sure any meat is cooked thoroughly, and only try a little of it at a time. Watch what plants that the animals around you eat. Those are your safest bet if you can’t hunt.

Rely on your teammates. I know you know this better than me, and so I also know I must sound like a massive hypocrite when I say it, but: take care of your friends and let them take care of you. The four of you are strong and resourceful, and together you can accomplish nearly anything. I have no doubts that you’ll succeed in this mission as you have succeeded in so many others. 

Once you’ve found a way home, send Peter back with my medication. I’m not sure where I’ll be at the point in time, but I’m sure he’ll find me. In any case, I can take care of myself in the interim. You don’t need to worry about me.

Atentamente,

Miguel

The letter is nearly illegible, written as it was with fingers too stiff at the joints and trembling in every delicate muscle. Ink smears across the side of his hand as he folds the paper into a lopsided square. He forces himself onto his feet, swaying unsteadily as he tries to regain some sense of equilibrium. It takes far longer than it should. He crosses the campsite in small, unsure steps before laying the note down beside Miles’ pillow.

God, but he hates this—he hates leaving Miles this responsibility. Miguel is the adult. Miguel is the leader. Miguel should be the one making the hard decisions and supplying his team and bringing them to safety together. But here he is, resting the weight of that responsibility on a sixteen-year-old boy’s shoulders.

Miguel fucking hates himself sometimes.

(Most times.)

But if he stays, he’ll be worse than a burden—he’ll be an active threat.

(And he still remembers the last time he made Miles bleed.)

Breathless with guilt, Miguel creeps out of camp. It’s the end of his watch—Hobie will be waking up soon to take over for him, so the team won’t be unguarded for long. He can hear them long after he stops seeing them, anyway, and he takes comfort in the soft sounds of their sleep. It’s only when those sounds disappear for the final time that the true force of his grief rises up, threatening to choke him.

Not long after that, he has the first seizure of many.

When he claws his way back into consciousness, there’s blood in his mouth. He recoils, horrified, before realizing that it’s his—he must have bitten his tongue while he was down. He spits the blood out, which triggers a round of violent retching, which in turn triggers another seizure. It’s a hideous cycle. Eventually Miguel retreats into himself, unwilling to endure it.

Fortunately, something else is.

When the spider wakes up again, it wakes up afraid.

The environment around it has changed again. It finds itself in an unfamiliar patch of forest, entirely alone and exposed beneath a moonless sky. It presses its back against a tree, breathing quickly as it tries to locate a hiding spot. It’s large, for a spider, and it knows it won’t fit between roots or beneath leaves. It settles on a thatch of brambles, eventually. They’re a bit prickly, but at least they keep it hidden.

It feels hurt, although when it examines itself it can’t find any wound. There’s a sore spot on its tongue, bleeding sluggishly, but that doesn’t account for the full-body ache or the way its limbs tremble violently. It must be hurt somewhere inside. The best cure for that, it knows, is to lay low and conserve energy. 

Unfortunately, that isn’t an option, because the spider is missing something—five somethings, actually. Its spiderlings are nowhere to be found, and it knows that it was just with them. It must have left them behind. But why would it leave them behind? How thoughtless and irresponsible would it have to be to leave five young spiders on their own?

I left them to keep them safe from you!

The spider hisses at the thought, its lips peeling away from its fangs. The spiderlings are safest when they’re with it, not when they’re kept away from it—but its idiotic human instincts never seem to understand that. Peeved, the spider opens its mouth to taste the air. It can’t taste or smell its spiderlings anywhere nearby.

Anxiety curdles in its belly like sour milk. It scrambles out of its hiding spot, stumbling in a circle as it tries desperately to find any hint of its spiderlings’ presence. It stretches its senses across the forest, trying to find them. There is nothing. The spiderlings are gone.

The spider shudders, crouching and pressing its hands against its aching eyes. 

They can’t be gone. They’re its babies! They’re its family! Why would they be gone when they were just here? Spiderlings don’t just disappear like that! They don’t, they don’t, they—!

In its mind rises a fragmented image of a young spiderling dissolving between its claws, swept into hexagonal shards and shattered color. The spider moans in terror, digging the points of its claws into its own scalp. That didn’t happen. That couldn’t happen. Spiderlings don’t just vanish like they’re nothing!

A distant shout sends the spider skittering back into the bracken, its hackles rising. Its heart thunders uproariously in its chest, kicking its ribs and demanding that it run and run and run until it finds its spiderlings again. But its limbs are so unsteady, and its body so sore, and it doesn’t even know which direction it should begin to run in. It tries to pry at its own memories to find out where it left them, but the images it discovers are blurry and disordered and untrustworthy. 

You’ll never find them. Just give up.

The spider snarls, shaking its head and yanking its own hair. 

Give up.

It won’t! It won’t, it won’t, it won’t!

I said give it up!

The spider digs its claws in, and blood soaks the roots of its hair.

Another shout, closer now, startles it from its tortured thoughts. It crouches low to the ground, hidden beneath the bracken, and slows its breathing. It strains to stretch its hearing, and finds the creak of branches and rustle of leaves as something moves through the forest canopy—coming closer, and quickly. It sniffs the air warily, but whatever is approaching stays downwind of him. 

“Miguel?” the thing shouts again, and the spider’s eyes widen. It knows that voice! “Miguel, ya fuckin’ tosser, where are you?”

The spider’s claws flex with excitement, sinking into the mulch beneath it.

No, Hobie!

A second later, its tallest spiderling swings by on glimmering strands of web. The spider is so excited to see him that it can’t sit still, and it growls in delight as it bunches its haunches beneath itself. Once it has this spiderling safe, they can go and find the other four together. So much for giving up! It’s a good spider, and it doesn’t give up—certainly not on its spiderlings!

The spider fixes glittering crimson eyes on its spiderling as he swings by, and then it lunges.

Chapter Text

The spiderling shrieks when the spider collides with him, and his web snaps midair. They both plummet back towards the forest floor, and the spider twists to place itself beneath its spiderling. It hits the ground hard, the breath jarred from its lungs and its fangs clacking painfully together. The spiderling lands heavily on its chest, but within seconds he’s skittered off and across the entire clearing. 

“What,” the spiderling says, “the absolute bloody fuck.”

The spider leverages itself upright again, wincing. That was not ideal, but at least the spiderling doesn’t look injured.

“Miguel?”

Hobie, the spider thinks, in return. Yes, that’s right—this spiderling calls himself Hobie. The spider is particularly proud of itself for remembering such an obscure detail.

“Oh, you’ve done and lost the plot, haven’t you,” Hobie says, watching the spider warily. 

Hobie is very noisy for a spiderling, the spider thinks, making all kinds of strange and nonsensical sounds with his mouth. But cleary he’s trying to communicate something—even if it’s in the most loud, predator-attracting way possible—so the spider tries to respond. It spreads its claws against the ground, tapping them to create gentle vibrations in the spiderling’s direction.

greeting

Hobie stares at him and does not respond.

A little disheartened by this, the spider tries again. This time it taps its claws a little harder, leaving small dents in the earth. Maybe the vibrations were too quiet, the first time?

greeting!

Hobie still does not respond, and the spider wilts. Has it done something wrong? Has it upset this spiderling? It must have been too rough before, but it was just so excited—had Hobie been injured in the scuffle? Anxiety prickles through the spider at the very thought, and it comes closer—

Or, at least, it tries to.

The second the spider takes a step forward, Hobie skitters back again. He smells like fear, sour and sharp. The spider pauses, looking around them for any sort of threat that might cause his spiderling such fear—but there’s only the rustle of leaves and the creak of branches and the low bubbling of a stream. Is Hobie afraid of the spider itself?

apology

The spider isn’t quite sure what it’s done to cause such fear in Hobie, but it taps out a new rhythm with its claws.

apology

apology

It must work at least a little, because when the spider takes another step forward Hobie exhales sharply but doesn’t retreat. Delighted, the spider presses in close to him—it rubs its face affectionately against his hair, testing him for any bloodsmell. Finding none, it relaxes a little. This spiderling is safe, at least.

“Woah, woah,” Hobie says, pushing the spider back. “Personal space, bruv.”

The spider clicks happily at him and pats his hands where they rest on its chest.

“Right, you’ve lost it.” Hobie scoots back, but not far. He remains in arm’s reach of the spider, which is a tolerable distance. They regard each other for a long moment. Hobie’s eyes are fixed on the spider’s, searching. “Lights are on but nobody’s home, ey?”

The spider blinks lovingly at him.

“God.” Hobie massages his temples in little circles before pinching the bridge of his nose. “God, okay. Look, let’s go back to camp and figure this out, aight? Hopefully Miles knows what to do with you, because I sure as hell do not.”

Hobie stands up, and the spider rocks back on its haunches to peer up at him. 

“Come on,” Hobie says, gesturing for the spider to follow. “Come with me.”

The spider is more than happy to oblige. As a spiderling, Hobie will naturally want to return to the nestweb—where, hopefully, the spider has left its other spiderlings. It struggles to remember the exact shape and location of its nest in this strange territory, but no memory presents itself. Its head throbs, low and persistent. 

As the spider creeps after Hobie, it notices that the trembling of its limbs has gotten worse. It’s hard to walk a straight line. The path keeps blurring and twisting in front of it no matter how hard it blinks or how far it tilts its head to compensate. The disequilibrium, in turn, makes its stomach churn. Its desire for the nest increases tenfold. It wants nothing more than to curl up there with its spiderlings and sleep until it feels better.

Hobie seems to notice it struggling and slows his stride to allow it to keep up. A frown mars his face, and he worries the silver ring on his lower lip with his teeth. But he never stops moving entirely, and so the spider does its best to keep up with him. There’s no way it can lose him again. It pushes mercilessly through the pain and the shaking and the nausea, gritting its teeth. 

The sun has begun to rise by the time the spider scents its other spiderlings. An excited purr leaves its throat, and it bounds forward to taste the air. The scents are distant but fresh, strung throughout this patch of forest like invisible webbing. A small part of it wants to be irritated—what are the babies all doing wandering around so far from the nest?—but a much larger part of it is grateful just to know they’re here. 

“Yeah,” Hobie says, reaching down to ruffle the spider’s hair. “Almost there, boss.”

The spider picks up the pace, eager to reach the others and bundle them all back into the nest—but it seems that it was overly ambitious. Its muscles suddenly seize up, and the world flashes black around it. When it can see again, it’s lying with its head in Hobie’s lap. It doesn’t remember how it ended up there. It blinks up at the spiderling, bemused. It tastes blood and bile on its teeth, and its entire body aches fiercely. Even the pale light of the moon is too sharp, at that moment, and it squeezes its eyes shut again once it knows where it is.

“You’re okay,” Hobie says, unusually quiet, laying one calloused hand across the spider’s eyes to help block out the growing light. The spider may not understand the words, but it understands the tone well enough—soft and soothing. It clicks in gratitude. “Just chill for a minute.”

Once it’s caught its breath, however, the spider scrabbles upright again. It sways dangerously but catches itself before it can topple over, its stomach lurching. It swallows once, and then again, before the nausea fades. 

“Hey, that is not chilling,” Hobie says.

When the spider lurches forward again, driven on by its incessant need to find and keep its spiderlings, Hobie does not follow. Instead he balks, glaring at the spider when it turns to face him. The spider taps its claws again, speaking in subtle shifts and vibrations. There is a good patch of leaves nearby that it uses to make its commands clearer and sharper.

follow

Hobie ignores it again, his jaw set.

follow!

When Hobie still doesn’t move, the spider considers cocooning him and dragging him along. It wouldn’t be ideal—Hobie looks quite heavy for a spiderling, and the spider itself is already weak and sore. But it would be better than standing here while its other spiderlings run around outside of the nest with no one to protect them. Desperately, the spider tries one last time:

follow!!!

“I have no idea what you’re trying to communicate,” Hobie says, sounding a little frustrated. “Listen, we’re heading back to camp. Miles, Gwen, and Pav will meet us there. Capiche?” 

Miles, Gwen, and Pav! Yes, that’s right! Those are the other spiderlings! Excitement thrums in the spider’s chest, and it flexes its claws.

happy!

“You recognize those names, huh?” Hobie says, wryly. He finally moves forward again, following the spider deeper into the forest. “I really wonder what’s going on in that big head of yours sometimes.”

The spider follows its spiderlings’ weaving scents to another clearing closer to the stream. It begins to hear voices—more of that same vocal chattering Hobie is unfortunately prone to—and it scrambles into a tree. It moves more quickly, lurching from branch to branch, although its balance isn’t what it used to be. Several times it nearly topples back to the ground, and Hobie babbles nervously behind it. But its excitement is too great to stop now, and it only checks to be sure Hobie is still following it before it surges forward again.

Then, finally, there—there are its spiderlings! The spider pauses, perched in a high branch, and looks down on them with wonder. Pavitr is curled up in a pile of soft fabric, breathing quietly in his sleep. Gwen and Miles are sitting together, their heads bowed close as they murmur to each other. They only glance up when Hobie stumbles into the clearing, panting for breath.

“Hobie?” Miles asks, his voice sharpening with worry. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Miguel,” Hobie says, pointing upwards. “Found him, mates. Watch yourselves.”

Gwen and Miles both look up to see the spider at the same second it creeps down the tree, prowling slowly from branch to branch to keep itself from plummeting to the ground. It crouches near the trunk, digging its claws into the ground again.

greeting!

“What,” Gwen says. “What.”

“Oh,” says Miles, “shit.”

“Hmrphg?” Pavitr says, stirring in his makeshift nest. “ Sh’prabhaat.”

“Pav, wake up,” Gwen hisses, throwing a pebble at him.

The spider comes forward, pausing only a few feet from its cluster of spiderlings. It smells no blood or injury on any them, and exhales with relief. But the spiderlings do have on them the same fear-scent as Hobie did, which makes the spider feel rather confused and guilty. It must have done something wrong to them, even if it can’t quite remember what. Hobie seemed appeased when it apologized, though, so—

apology

“Is that—Morse?” Miles says, regarding it nervously. “Is he speaking Morse?”

“If he is, it isn’t any kind of Morse I know,” Hobie says, folding his arms over his chest. “I was hoping it might have been a language from your worlds.”

“I don’t recognize it,” Miles says apologetically.

Gwen shakes her head. “Me neither.”

“Wait, is that Miguel?” Pavitr sits up, rubbing his eyes. “Heeeey, Miguel, g’morning.”

“Why is he—?” Gwen rolls her hand, gesturing at all of the spider.

As the four of them chatter, the spider begins to assess the clearing. It’s not a nest proper, but it could be one, the spider supposes—and so it begins to weave, stringing webs between the trees. The halogen glow of its silk illuminates the brambles and bracken, though it fades quickly once the silk sets. It smells sweet and dusty and familiar.

“He gets like this, sometimes. If he doesn’t have his medication for days, something inside of him just—” Miles snaps his fingers. “But he doesn’t seem dangerous right now.”

“His medication?” Gwen looks sharply at him.

“Yeah,” Miles says. “You didn’t hear this from me, but he takes medication pretty regularly. When he doesn’t have it he goes into withdrawal.”

“That’s why he’s been so sick,” Gwen says, her eyes widening. “Shit, that sucks.”

“What’s Miguel doing?” Pavitr asks, blinking blearily at the spider.

“He’s building a nest,” Miles says.

“Oh.” Pavitr yawns widely. “That’s nice.”

Miles doesn't quite look convinced.

“That’s why he’s been so worried about getting home,” Gwen says, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. “This whole time I just thought he was upset that he had to be stuck here with us.”

“No. He’s really sick,” Hobie says, his voice flat, “and he’ll only get sicker. The sooner we get him home, the better. We’ve got to get somewhere today.”

“I found a little road to the east of us, but—well, we can’t bring him into the city like this,” Miles says. “So some of us will have to stay here while the others go.”

Having woven a sturdy back wall for the nest, one made of many interlacing sheet webs, the spider goes to the closest spiderling—Pavitr. It hooks its hands under his arms and drags him closer to the nest. Pavitr, being a good and obedient spiderling, doesn’t kick or flail. He only pats the spider’s arms gently, content to lay where he’s placed. The spider clicks in approval.

“Hi, Miguel,” Pavitr says dreamily.

“Jesus Christ,” Gwen says.

The spider begins to weave the walls of the nest, using Pavitr as a measuring point. All of its spiderlings are rather large, so the nest will have to be as well. The webs stick to its palms and fingers as it weaves, finding comfort in the easy repetition of the motions. This is not the first time it has built a nest, and it will hardly be the last. It likes to think it’s pretty good at it, by now.

“Your webs are pretty,” Pavitr says, his eyes reflecting the soft red light of the fresh silk—and then he promptly rolls over and goes back to sleep.

Satisfied, the spider then goes back for another spiderling. It grabs Gwen, this time, who immediately stiffens at its touch and digs her fingers into the ground. She doesn’t smell as frightened as she did earlier, but she’s still obviously uncomfortable. The spider tugs her backwards: she’ll feel much better in the nest, it’s sure.

“Just go with it,” Miles whispers. “It’s probably fine.”

“Probably? Probably?”

But Gwen does go limp, allowing the spider to drag her over to the nest and deposit her next to Pavitr. It weaves a little more, extending the sides of the nest so the spiderlings won’t be cramped, before it goes back for Miles.

“Hey, no, I got this,” Miles says, holding up a hand when the spider tries to grab him. He walks over to the nest by himself, sitting down beside Gwen. “Happy?”

Delighted, the spider turns, at last, to Hobie.

“Nah, mate,” Hobie says. “I ain’t goin’ in there.”

“Hobie, just do what he wants,” Miles says, patting the empty space beside him. “Don’t stress him out, c’mon.”

“I go in there and he ain’t gonna let me out.”

The spider blinks innocently at him. 

“See, just look at those big creepy eyes. He’s got devious plans, I’m tellin’ you.”

“He always does.” Miles pats the spot beside him again, more insistently. “C’mere.”

The spider shoots a web out, entangling Hobie’s ankles and yanking him over to the nest. It bundles him inside, purring happily, and then starts to weave the entrance together. It needs to have the nest finished by the time the sun rises, or the light will hurt the spiderlings’ eyes (and the spider’s, but that’s far from the most important thing right now).

“What’d I tell you?” Hobie demands, prying the webbing off of his legs with a huff. “He’s gonna trap us in here.”

“He wouldn’t,” Miles says.

“Oh, he so totally would,” Gwen says.

The spider webs the entrance of the nest closed and clicks happily before turning to assess its spiderlings. They’re all clumped together, safe in the quiet and dark of the nestweb, and it feels its aching muscles begin to unwind. There’s Hobie, and Miles, and Gwen, and Pavitr, and—

The spider pauses.

It is not particularly good at counting, but it knows that it is missing one of them. It has five spiderlings, and this is only four. It counts again, just to make sure, squinting as though it may have overlooked one. It even taps out the count against the floor of the nest, an unhappy growl in its throat. No. No, this isn’t right. There’s still a spiderling missing. 

“Why is he staring like that?” Gwen whispers. 

“I don’t know, guys, just—let’s chill out in here for a few hours so he can rest,” Miles says. “Can we do that?”

“I don’t like it,” Hobie grumbles.

“But he worked so hard on the nest,” Miles whines. “Look how happy he is!”

“I’m an arachnophobe,” Hobie says flatly.

“Oh, shut up,” Gwen laughs. “You are not.”

“Also, I’m pretty sure that’s not happy,” Hobie says, regarding the spider warily.

About this, at least, Hobie is right—the spider isn’t happy. It doesn’t want to leave these four spiderlings alone again, but it can’t rest knowing that one of them is still out there. It’s a good spider, and good spiders don’t abandon their young. But it never even scented the fifth spiderling, so where could it possibly be? Why would it have been separated from the others? Agitated and unhappy, the spider slices open the entrance of the nest with one claw. Horrendous yellow light spears inside, stinging its eyes, but it pushes outside anyway.

“Miguel?” Miles calls after it. “Are you okay?”

stay

The command hums through the webs of nest as the spider plucks them, and the spiderlings hesitate. The spider sits up on its haunches, breathing deeply to catch any hint of the fifth spiderling’s scent. It can remember clearly what she smelled like: grass-stained jerseys and buttercream icing and spray-on sunscreen. It just can’t remember her face, or where it lost her. 

You won’t find her.

Grief seizes the spider’s chest, suddenly, as black and sticky as tar. It’s impossible to breathe.

No matter how long you look or where you go, you won’t find her.

The spider shakes its head, hair flopping across its temples. It will find her! It has to! It can’t have lost a spiderling forever—it can’t. The idea is unfathomable. She must be what he’s missing. She must be why he feels so horrible and hollow. If he can only find her, he’ll mend together again. 

She’s gone! Forever gone! Dios mio, how many times do I have to tell you?

“Miguel? Hey, what’s wrong?” A soft, small hand lands between the spider’s shoulders, and it flinches—but Gwen doesn’t retreat from it. She rubs its back in small circles, instead, and it tries to catch its breath. “What’s the matter?”

“You don’t feel good, huh, tio?” Miles asks quietly. “Come back into the nest.”

Pavitr slides his arms around the spider’s shoulders, gently hauling it backwards—and the spider allows itself to be moved, herded back into the nest by its spiderlings. Hobie webs the entrance shut again, cutting off the painful sunlight. Pavitr stays wrapped around it, hanging off of its shoulders like a warm and heavy cloak. The spider slumps beneath the weight, flattening back to the floor of the nest.

“Poor Miguel,” Pavitr sighs. 

But the spider cannot be appeased forever, even by the whims of its spiderlings, and eventually it pries itself away from them and back into the garish sunlight. When the spiderlings start to squirm out after it, it turns and growls sharply at them. 

stay

Pavitr freezes, blocking the other spiderlings from the entrance.

With a short click of approval, the spider webs the entrance of the nest shut—carefully sealing its spiderlings safe and sound inside. Then it creeps away again, prowling through the forest underbrush. It still can’t smell the fifth spiderling, but it can smell a promising trail of its own. It seems to have left clawmarks on a curving line of trees, all smelling strongly of sap and the spider itself. It must have come this way—and perhaps where it came from is where its final spiderling remains. 

Encouraged by this thought, the spider finally musters up the energy to scramble into a tree. It leaps from branch to branch, only pausing when the world blurs too badly for it to see. It’s only gone a mile or two when it realizes, to its horror, that it can hear its spiderlings blundering after it. They aren’t even trying to be subtle—thwipping their webs everywhere and cracking branches like a bunch of bulls. 

With an irritated snarl, the spider stops and draws itself up to its full height. 

“Miguel!” Gwen lands in front of it, glowering like the spider is the one in the wrong. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The spider thrusts its face forward, bowing until its nose is inches from hers. It huffs out a breath, sharp and annoyed. Now it’s going to have to backtrack and stuff them all in the nest again. Why can’t they just listen? Was the spider not clear enough? 

“Don’t huff at me,” Gwen says, scowling and pushing it away with one finger on its nose. The spider growls and grumbles under its breath, but Gwen only rolls her eyes. “Yes, yes, you’re very intimidating. But seriously, dude, you can’t just leave us behind like that.”

“Yeah! Do you have any idea how hard it is to tear through those webs?” Miles exclaims, swinging to Gwen’s side. “Not all of us have wicked sharp claws.”

“You ever lock me up like that again and I’ll tear those spinnerets right out ya wrists,” Hobie mutters, perched high in a tree and frowning down at them. 

“Miguel!” 

Pavitr throws himself at the spider, and it catches him in its arms with another little grumble. But it’s hard to stay mad when there’s a spiderling plastered to its chest, and it deflates with a sigh through its nose. Maybe it had asked too much of them too soon. They had just been reunited, after all, and it should have expected that they wouldn’t want to separate from it again. How can they be expected to understand that it’s only until the spider finds its last spiderling?

“Take us with you,” Pavitr says, crawling around to latch himself onto the spider’s back where he belongs. “Don’t go away again.”

The spider turns its face to nuzzle Pavitr’s hair, the soft curls tickling its chin. It’s begun to relax, slightly, but of course that can’t last—as it turns back to Gwen and Miles, it hears something in the distance. It freezes, stretching its senses in that direction. It hears the soft hiss of webbing, the sway of trees as a weight moves through them. It smells grease and sweat and something entirely foreign to it. It opens its mouth and tastes a predator approaching.

danger!

With a rattle of its claws and a hiss in its throat, the spider quickly shepherds all of its spiderlings into the tree that Hobie occupies. They ascend with cries of confusion and dismay, and Pavitr must be pried off of its shoulders with great effort. It snarls at them when they try to come to ground again, driving its claws against the wood in a terrible tempo.

danger!!!

Once all four spiderlings are safely in the tree, the spider crouches at the base of the trunk. There’s nowhere it can hide its bulk, and so it can only hold still and quiet and hope that the predator passes by entirely unaware of him. But if worse comes to worst and it does notice—

The spider bares its fangs, its gums throbbing with a pulse of preparatory venom. 

Only a moment later the predator bursts through the trees, skidding to a stop when they see it—they’re another spider, the spider realizes, though they’re a little smaller and they have six limbs instead of four. A guttural growl tears from the spider’s throat, and it rises up to make itself look bigger. The smaller spider stumbles a step back, spiking fear-scent. 

“Woah,” they say. “Woah, woah, woah, chill.”

Carving its claws into the tree behind it—the tree sheltering its babies—the spider speaks.

anger

The smaller spider holds their hands up—all four of them— palms out and open. “You’re Miguel, right? We’ve been looking everywhere for you. My name’s Six. Kind of on the nose, I know, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do!”

anger!

Six gulps, looking over their shoulder. “I, uh—you don’t seem thrilled, uh, about all this. I can come back another time? Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s probably—”

“Wait!” Miles says. “Hold up. You’re a Spider-man, right?”

Six glances up.

Six glances up at the tree branches.

Six glances up at the three branches that shield the spider’s babies.

threat!!!

Six’s eyes snap back to the spider as it lunges forward—a feint, but Six doesn’t need to know that. They shriek and scramble backwards. The spider hears their heart thundering. It looms over them, snarling, its lips drawn back to reveal the full length of its fangs. 

“Shit, no—!” Miles jumps out of the tree, landing behind the spider. “Miguel, wait!”

Six’s eyes skitter back to Miles, and to have them that close to its defenseless baby—to have them that close and looking in his direction—

The spider attacks. 

Six yelps and shoots a pair of webs at it, but the spider slices through them with its claws. It slams Six into the ground, digging one knee deep into their gut. They wheeze, all breath driven from them, and the spider opens its mouth. It feels venom and saliva stringing between its fangs. It can already taste this bastard’s blood. 

Before it can bite, Six twists and shoots a glob of web into the spider’s mouth. It reels backwards in surprise, gnashing its teeth around the sticky strands and shaking its head. Its venom begins to dissolve the silk, but it’s a slow process, and gives Six ample time to scramble away from it. Another web strikes the spider between the shoulders, dragging it backwards, and it whirls around with a furious snarl—

—only to find Pavitr regarding it with wide eyes, digging his heels in to hold it in place.

“Sorry, Miguel,” he says. “But you can’t hurt them.”

Another web tangles around the spider’s arm, and it twists to see Hobie holding it.

“Yeah, bruv,” he says. “You gotta relax.”

The spider lifts its free hand, intent on slicing through the webbing—but its fingers are caught by a third web and pulled back by Gwen.

“You’ll thank me later,” she pants. 

Hissing, the spider wraps its fingers around both sets of webs and yanks. The spiderlings skid forward but don’t yield, heaving themselves backwards as soon as it gives them a bit of slack on the web. Frustrated, the spider begins to plow forward again—dragging its damn spiderlings along, their heels leaving grooves in the dirt. Six cowers in front of it, the eyes of their suit wide. Good. The spider is going to slaughter them for looking at its babies.

“Miguel!”

Miles springs in front of the spider, placing himself between it and Six The spider draws its head up, snarling down at him. But Miles doesn’t move, spreading his arms to bar the spider’s view of its quarry. 

“Tio,” he pleads. “Calmate, tio, todo va a estar bien.”

The spider hisses, its eyes narrowing. Its breath comes in great puffs, and it can feel itself trembling violently. Its stomach flips, and it locks its jaw on the urge to vomit. Black spots dance in the corners of its vision.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Miles repeats, stepping closer. He rests his hands on the spider’s heaving chest. “They’re a friend. They can help us.”

The spider’s shoulders begin to slump. Its head droops.

“Yeah,” Miles breathes, leaning up to bump their foreheads together. “It’s okay, Miguel.”

A long, shaking breath leaves the spider.

Then—

Then, someone else steps into the clearing.

“Oh, man, we’ve been looking everywhere for you guys! What are you—shit, Miguel!”

The spider lurches forward with a shriek of fury, snapping the webs that bind it in place. It slams into the nearest threat—Six—and flattens them to the ground, wrapping one hand around their throat. Six swings wildly at it, and the spider pins its hands to the ground. It traps two hands beneath its knee and the other two with its own free hand, claws digging into their palms until they cry out. Then the spider opens its jaws again, fangs aching. 

“Don’t move!” Hobie shouts, his form flickering all too close to the spider’s head. “Seriously, new guy, do not move.”

Six falls still below the spider, the only movement the rapid rise and fall of their chest.

The spider stares down at them, pupils blown wide to assess every inch of their face. The sunlight makes the process difficult—everything is too bright and blurry. But they aren’t squirming anymore. They aren’t moving to hurt it or its spiderlings. They’re just lying there, like they’re dead already.

The spider thrusts its face close to theirs, growling. 

“That’s it,” Hobie breathes. “Just hold still. Give him a minute.”

Someone kneels across the clearing, their joints creaking loudly enough for the spider to hear. Its eyes dart to them, briefly. The someone is another spider—one in a bright red and blue suit with strange pink fur laying over his arms and back. He kneels in front of the spider from across the clearing, one hand held out with the palm up so the spider can scent him properly. He smells like sweat and pizza grease and cheap deodorant. He smells familiar.

“Peter,” Miles breathes.

“Yeah,” Peter says, pulling his mask back to offer the spider and its spiderlings a lopsided smile. “That’s me. How’s everybody doing?”

“Been better,” Hobie drawls.

“Eh.” Gwen makes a see-sawing motion with her hand.

“Surviving, y’know,” Miles says.

“I’m great!” Pavitr chirps.

“I am bad,” Six whispers. “I am so very bad.”

“I see that,” Peter says, his lips quirking up into another smile. “Just keep holding still, buddy. I got this. Miguel is my guy.”

“For my sake,” Six squeaks, “I really hope so.”

Then Peter turns his eyes to the spider, presses the pads of his fingers to the ground, and begins to speak.

Chapter Text

greeting

The spider pauses, licking bitter venom off of its fangs before slowly closing its mouth. The vibrations Peter creates are muffled by distance, and by the spider’s grip on its prey; he may as well be mumbling the words. Even so, the spider understands him. But it doesn’t dare release Six to tap back its own message, and only waits expectantly for another.

greeting!

Peter dares to scoots closer when he isn’t mauled, continuing to tap out polite hellos. The spider bristles when he comes a inch too close, increasing the volume of its growl in warning.

apology

The spider stops growling but glowers, unappeased.

“Yeah, I hear you, big guy,” Peter says. He keeps his eyes on the spider but speaks to the spiderlings, their names warm on his tongue. “Hey, you four go back up that tree, okay?”

“What?” Miles exclaims. “But if he attacks you—”

“Then I’ll deal with it,” Peter promises. 

The spider begins to growl again, hearing the agitation in its spiderling’s voice. 

apology, Peter says to it, and then adds, “It’s okay, Miggy. The kids are all fine, I promise.”

“Not a kid,” Hobie says immediately.

“Yeah, tell that to him,” Peter scoffs. “Now if the four of you could stop acting like kicked puppies and back off, it would help. Right now he’s just worried about you. He’ll feel better once he thinks you’re safe. C’mon, do it for the spider-brain. It’s very small and it loves you and right now it wants you in that tree.”

The spiderlings begin to move away, and the spider whips its glittering gaze back to them—but they’re retreating, not coming closer. It exhales with relief as they put distance between themselves and the other adult spiders. They still smell nervous, but not scared or hurt. A tightly-wound part of the spider begins to unravel once it realizes that. When the four of them are safely treed again, the spider turns its gaze back to Six. 

“Oh, don’t look at me,” Six whispers. “Please don’t look at me. I am not here, I do not exist.”

“Miguel, hey.” Peter snaps his fingers, and the spider turns its glare to him, instead. “I need you to let them go. Come over here and hang out with me instead.”

follow, Peter says, shuffling back a little. follow.

Like the spider is going to listen to him. It scoffs, and lowers its face to sniff the fabric of Six’s suit warily. They smell alien and dangerous, unlike Peter—Peter, who for whatever reason smells more like an annoyance than an active threat.

“Hey, Sixer,” Peter calls. “Copy me, okay?”

Peter drums his fingers against the dirt in another apology, and Six does the same. Six’s message is immature, compared to Peter’s: the oscillations are all slurred, running together and blurred by the trembling of their fingers. It’s a tolerable apology, if not a very intelligent one. Maybe Six is just stupid: a little stupid young spider making little stupid young spider mistakes. Mollified by that thought, and by the apologies, the spider leans back enough to release them—and to tap back a message of its own.

threat!!!

“Hey, now, no need to resort to threats,” Peter says, gesturing Six over. They creep slowly out from under the spider before darting to Peter’s side, panting. Blood drips from the palm of one of their hands, and the spider smells it thick on the air—metallic and warm and inhuman. “We’re not gonna hurt you, Migs.”

threat

“I know, I know,” Peter coos, shifting to crouch in front of Six as they back out of the clearing. “You’re just scared, huh? You’re just looking out for the babies. I get it. I hear you.”

anger!!!

“Yeah, I’d be angry, too.” Peter scoots even closer, and the spider eyes him warily. “You’ve been through hell, and now there’s these strangers here messin’ with your kids—I get it. You’re just being a good papa. No hard feelings here. But I promise we’re not going to hurt them. You’re safe. You’re all safe.”

anger!! the spider declares, baring its fangs.

safe, Peter reminds it.

anger!

safe

anger?

safe

The spider’s jaw begins to relax, and it lets out a shaking breath. Peter seems convinced that they’re all safe, but how can he be so sure? How can the spider be so sure? Its spiderlings are out in the open, far from the nest, and cornered by two strangers. Those strangers say they’re not enemies, but why wouldn’t they be? 

Spiders are considerably more prone to cannibalism than friendship, after all.

Even so, Peter says, friend.

The spider scoffs. 

“It’s true!” Peter says, laughing. “We’re friends, Mig—we’re best best best friends. Don’t give me that look. Come on, you remember me, dontcha?”

“Friends?” Gwen mutters behind them. “I thought they were married.”

“Yeah, I’m like, a hundred percent sure they’re married,” Pavitr agrees. “I am very good at reading people.”

“Listen, if I tell him we’re married then he’s just going to eat me,” Peter says wryly. “Spiders are kind of a one-and-done deal, and I value my head attached to my body.”

“What I wouldn’t give to see that,” Hobie drawls.

“Yeah, that just makes me want to see it even more,” Miles says.

Peter groans, flips them off, and then sets his hands on the ground to say mate.

The spider scowls at him. It already has five spiderlings—five good, strong spiderlings that it can protect perfectly well on its own. What would it need a mate for? It considers tearing Peter’s head off for having the audacity to even offer, but some long-buried human instinct soothes its temper. Peter is an idiot, and going against every rational custom, but the spider just can’t bring itself to maul him. Instead of anger, it finds within itself a sort of wry amusement.

Arching its eyebrows, it sits back on its haunches and waits to be impressed.

“Oh.” Peter’s eyes widen. “Oh I didn’t think I would get this far.”

“What? What’s he saying?” Pavitr demands. “Is he saying he loves you?”

“Not even close,” Peter says, laughing. 

“Try harder!” Gwen cheers.

“Yeah, do a dance,” Miles suggests, batting branches out of the way so he can see better. “Spiders like dancing, right? And drumming? And, uh, colors?”

“You all are terrible wingmen! Okay, okay, Miguel. You want to be wooed? Check this out.”

Scooting back a little, Peter divests himself of the pink fur around his shoulders and begins to wave it in the air like a flag. The spiderlings all cackle. They smell sweet and happy for the first time in days, leaning out of the tree to watch Peter with bright eyes and brighter grins.

“This is cool, right?” Peter asks. “This is appealing to your spiderly instincts?” 

It is doing nothing of the sort—but as the spider watches this rather ridiculous display, its amusement bubbles up and over and it—laughs. The sound is quiet and raspy, unpracticed and so, so distinctly human. But the spider can’t bring itself to mind, or to stop. Peter is so silly. The spider loves him so much. It laughs. 

“Oh, wow,” Peter says, dropping the pink fur and looking dumbstruck at him. Then his own smile returns full-force, and his laughter joins the spider’s. “Was it really that bad? Come on, give me some credit, Migs!”

mate, Peter tries again, still grinning. He spreads his palm flat against the ground, listening for the spider’s answer. The spider leans forward to set its own claws in the earth, decision made, and—

—and the world goes black again.

“How long has he been like this?” Peter asks, his voice quiet. Long, calloused fingers card through the spider’s sweaty hair and smooth it away from its forehead. Chapped lips brush against one of its temples. It doesn’t bother flinching away. It feels so heavy. “Christ, Miguel.”

“A couple of days,” Miles says, from somewhere very close by. The spider wants to feel anxious about that, but—Peter is its friend, its mate, somehow, someway. He wouldn’t hurt the spiderlings. The spider knows that, now, in the same way it knows how to spin webs and speak in shifts of soil. “He ran out of his medication the first day we got here.”

“Shit.” Peter rubs his thumb along the bridge of the spider’s nose. “I brought some with me, but it’s back at our campsite.”

“I can run and grab it,” an unfamiliar voice offers, and—

Six.

The memories flood back, and the spider groans. It tries to leverage itself up to confront Six, but a firm hand on its chest pushes it back down.

“Hey, hey, you’re okay,” Peter soothes. “Lay still, Miguel. I’ve got you.”

The spider might even have considered obeying, if it hadn’t suddenly needed to throw up. It’s laying on its side, so it won’t choke—but a distant part of it is still too ashamed to vomit in Peter’s lap like an infant. It scrambles upright, swaying, and hears a sudden clamor of voices around it. It manages to lurch a step or two away before it retches, its stomach clenching painfully around nothing. Frothy yellow bile is the only thing to come up, burning its throat raw. 

“Oh, Miguel.” Peter sounds like he’s about to cry, and he rubs the spider’s back as it coughs and sputters. “Up and out, baby, that’s it. You feel like you’re done?”

The spider rocks back on its haunches, panting. Sunlight spills around it, piercing even through its closed eyelids, and it can’t seem to stop shivering. Strong hands guide it to sit again, arms wrapping around its shoulders to pull it against a warm chest. Peter’s lips dust over its hair in a scattering of kisses, and it keens miserably. 

“Shh, I know. I know you don’t feel good. I’m gonna fix it. Just give me a few minutes, okay?” Peter turns his head, directing his voice elsewhere to say, “Yeah, Six, it’d be great if you could grab some—bring as many vials as you can. They’re in a briefcase in my backpack. Hell, just bring the whole backpack.”

“How far away is it?” Gwen asks, her voice unusually sober. “Your campsite?”

“A few hours,” Peter says, his own voice tight and unhappy. 

“Shit.” Miles exhales through his teeth.

“Nest’s a couple miles that way,” Hobie offers.

“Nest?”

“Yeah, he made us a nest,” Pavitr says. “You wanna take him back there?”

“That’s a good idea. Hopefully it’ll help him relax. Miggy, help me out here, buddy. Upsie daisy.” Peter stands, hauling the spider’s arm around his shoulders to help it balance. The spider forces its eyes open, squinting in the light. Even its eyelashes are sore. “Thatta boy. One foot in front of the other. Lead the ways, kids.”

They’ve gone some distance, and spider has actually started to feel a little better, when its joints suddenly stiffen again and—

—when it wakes up again, it’s back in Peter’s lap.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” Peter croons, scratching absently behind the spider’s ear. “I’m right here. Relax, big man. How often has he been seizing like this?”

“Not this often,” Miles says.

“At least not that we know of,” Gwen adds, more quietly. “He kept leaving us behind.”

The spiderlings sound nervous, upset, and so the spider tries to get up and go to them.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Peter says, tightening his grip on the spider. “Don’t get up yet. Just catch your breath for a second, honey. Your nose is still bleeding.”

danger? the spider asks.

safe, Peter tells it, cupping one hand over its eyes to shield them from the light. safe.

Peter’s sleeve dabs at its nostrils, and when the spider sniffles it can feel the blood pooling in its sinuses and the back of its throat. There are strange, dark shapes moving and crawling on the insides of its eyelids. They don’t go away even when it opens its eyes. It reaches for one of the shapes, dazed, and its fingers grasp nothing but empty air. Peter catches its hand, bringing it up to his mouth and exhaling warm breath against its skin.

“Shh. Just rest, Miguel. Don’t worry about it.”

The spider closes its eyes again—but still, still the images are there. 

When Peter hauls it onto its feet again, it staggers and nearly drags him down with it. Hobie wedges himself beneath its other arm, supporting its weight, and the spider clicks softly at him. 

“I’m still mad at you,” Hobie says, but there’s no real ire in his tone. “C’mon. Walk.”

They reach the nest without another incident, and the spider shepherds all of its spiderlings in before itself. Then it crawls inside, curling up in front of the entrance with a sigh of relief. Peter scoots in after it, webbing the entrance closed behind himself. Warm, solid darkness encases them. It’s perfect.

happy? Peter asks.

happy, the spider agrees.

Peter pets its hair again, like it’s a lapcat instead of an incredibly venomous arachnid. The spider can’t bring itself to mind. Its human instincts are starved and clamoring for his affection. Perhaps that’s why the spider doesn’t care that he’s in its territory, in its nest, knee-to-knee with its spiderlings. Perhaps that’s why the spider would do anything to keep him close. Perhaps that’s why the spider believes him when he says safe.

“How do you do that?” Hobie asks. “That tappin’ language?”

“It’s vibrations,” Peter explains. “Different patterns of vibrations mean different things.”

“So, what? It’s like Spider-Morse?” Gwen asks.

“I guess you could say that,” Peter says. “Humans have trouble understanding it. The nerves in their hands aren’t sensitive enough, but I found out the micro-hairs on my fingers can translate pretty well. I’m still not as good at it as Miguel, though. It’s instinct for him, but I had to memorize it.”

“So he taught it to you?” Miles asks.

“Yeah,” Peter says, sweeping a thumb over the spider’s temple. “He did.”

“Can you teach it to us?” Pavitr scoots closer, his knee bumping the spider’s hand. The spider pats him affectionately. “Aw, hi, Miguel.”

“Try this one, Pav.”

Peter taps his fingers in a pattern the spider hasn’t heard in many, many months.

Pavitr copies it. 

parent

The spider purrs, pushing itself up and dragging Pavitr into its arms. It pets his hair, trying to soothe him, trying to figure out why he called for it. Is he hungry, thirsty, injured? The spider scents him, but he still smells warm and content. 

affection, the spider says, affection.

“What’s he saying?” Pavitr whispers.

Peter grins, reaching out to ruffle the spider’s hair. “He says he loves you, kid.”

“Awwwww! I knew he did!” Pavitr says, leaning back into the spider. “Everybody loves Spider-man.”

“I don’t know if I’d go quite that far,” Hobie says wryly. 

“Hey, off-topic, but when’s the last time the big guy ate?” Peter asks, reaching up to massage circles across the spider’s scalp. The pressure eases its headache, however slightly. It snuffles contentedly into Pavitr’s hair. “Or drank anything, for that matter?”

The spider slits its eyes open just enough to see the guilty looks its spiderlings exchange.

“We had, uh—we had dinner together a couple of days ago,” Miles says weakly. “I thought he was just losing his appetite because he was sick.”

“He probably was, but we’ve got to try getting something into him. Any of you have water?” Peter asks, and catches the first water bottle that’s tossed at him. “Great, thanks.”

greeting, Peter says.

anger, the spider replies, annoyed to be disturbed.

Pavitr wiggles out of its arms, and the spider lets him go—but not without a mournful click.

“You can have him back once you drink something,” Peter says, pressing the metal rim of the bottle to its lips and tipping up. The spider’s tongue darts out to taste the water, and it finds itself suddenly and desperately thirsty. It takes several deep gulps before Peter tries to pull the bottle away again. Irritated, it sinks its claws into his wrist to hold him in place.

“Ow!” hurt!

The spider winces back, releasing Peter, and he whisks the bottle away. 

“You’ve gotta take it slow, Migs, or you’ll just throw up again,” Peter says. “Aw, come on—come on, don’t give me the puppy-dog eyes, you know that’s not fair—”

It finishes the entire bottle over the span of a half-hour—as quickly as Peter would allow it—and then curls up again, its stomach gurgling dangerously. When it closes its eyes, it sees more shapes than it should. Neon stripes waver on the walls of the nest. White dots speckle the floor. In the corner of its vision, it glimpses a thatch of dark hair and the flash of a gap-toothed smile and—

—she’s wearing braces with red and blue rubber bands, for spider-man, papa, duh!—there’s a purple band-aid on her knee that he put there just this morning because she scraped it running too fast up the stairs and—he’s holding her in his arms as she cries, her chubby infant fingers wrapped tightly around one of his and her pudgy face screwed up in anger at all the indignities of being born and aiya, but she could give him a run for his money with that kind of rage and so he says que pasa, que pasa? lo siento, princesa, por favor no llores—and in that moment she’s just a baby, just a spiderling, just his spiderling and nothing bad has ever happened and—

Gabi?

The spider bolts upright, its stomach lurching. Peter yelps and scrabbles back, giving it room to claw its way back out of the nest. It vomits into the dirt outside, its stomach spasming painfully. It can smell the fifth spiderling, suddenly. It can hear her. It can see her. It reaches out, trying to grasp, and its claws phase through. The image dissolves as quickly as it came.

A horrible cry leaves its throat. 

“Miguel? What’s wrong?” Peter scrambles out after it, his hands on its back, its shoulders, its hair. “What’s the matter?”

The spider shakes him off, suddenly frantic. It still has to find her. It still has to find its fifth spiderling. It won’t ever be whole again otherwise. It staggers forward, confused by the strange black blurs and colorful smears in its vision. It tries not to bump into them, its steps winding and faltering. Where does it need to go? Where is it? Where is she?

“Miguel, hey hey hey, stop.” Peter grabs its arms, trying to stop its forward movement. “You’ve gotta stay here. Six is bringing your meds, okay? We just have to wait here a little longer. It’s okay. You’re okay. Just stay with me, bud.”

The spider shoves him out of the way, shaking its head to try and turn the world right side up again. It works, for at least half a second. Then its axis tilts again, and the spider’s with it. It steps forward, bracing a hand on a tree near the edge of the clearing to catch its balance.

“Miguel please don’t make me web you,” Peter pleads. “I know you hate that. Please just stay here. I’ll bring you anything you want.”

What the spider wants its mate cannot bring. 

So it steps forward again, intent on finding its fifth spiderling no matter where it has to go or how far it has to search, because it is a good spider and it loves her and—

Webs entangle its legs, wrapping them together from its knees to its ankles. It crashes forward, but arms catch it before it can hit the ground. It’s too baffled to struggle, the world still spinning sickeningly around it. Its head feels full of cotton and crumped newspaper. As it tries to reorient itself to this sudden shift in gravity, it feels more webbing wound around its hands and wrists.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says, a plea, a mantra, apology after apology after apology. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Miguel, but you have to stay here. I’ll let you go as soon as Six gets here, I promise, I’m so sorry.”

The spider tries to move, to stand back up, and finds that it cannot.

A low, panicked snarl tears from its throat.

“I know, I know I know I know,” Peter says, his voice thick. “It’s horrible, I know. But it’s just for a little while, baby, I swear. Just until we get you some meds.”

hurt! the spider says, trying to figure out how to untangle itself. hurt!

apology!

spiderling!

“Spiderling? The spiderlings are here,” Peter says, brow furrowing. He taps it out, strumming the confirmation into the webs that coil between the spider’s fingers: spiderling safe.

spiderling!!

“You’re talking about Miles and the others, right?” Peter glances back over at the nest, where the spiderlings are huddled close together. “Your babies? They’re all here. They’re all safe. I’ll keep them safe, so you don’t need to worry about them.”

spiderling!!!

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say, baby,” Peter says, cradling the spider’s jaw in one hand. “I’m so sorry. I wish I did.”

The spider’s breath shakes, and it tries vainly to snap the net of webbing around its wrists. Something strange is happening to its eyes. They feel wet and sore. Its lashes clump together when it blinks. Peter’s face falls in response, crumpling like wet paper.

“Oh—no no no, Miguel, don’t cry—please don’t cry—I’m trying, I promise I’m trying. Do you mean Mayday?”

spiderling, the spider tries, one final time, hurt.

“Nobody’s hurt. No spiderlings are hurt. I mean—unless you’re—do you—” Peter’s face pales, suddenly, his eyes widening: grief in slow motion. “Miguel, are you talking about Gabi?”

The spider purrs in abject agreement, although the sound is reedy and choked. 

“Mig, I—Gabi’s not here, sweetheart. I—”

Peter’s brow creases, and he sets his fingers again on the webs that hold the spider.

Quietly, he says, spiderling safe.

While it’s good that Gabi is safe, the spider thinks, that still doesn’t tell it where she is. It wants all five spiderlings here, in the nest, together. It huffs, glaring up at Peter, and demands, spiderling follow nest!

Peter shakes his head, his lips pressing into a thin white line. “She can’t follow you here, baby.”

anger!!! spiderling follow nest!

apology

threat!!!

apology

Peter hesitates, squeezing his eyes shut. Then, he rips the spider’s heart apart:

spiderling dead

Instantly, the spider renews its struggles to get up—to move, to find its spiderling, to bring her home and keep her safe because she can’t be dead she can’t she can’t she can’t—it just saw her, she was right there!—and the grief is big, unfathomable, impossible, the weight of a million galaxies collapsing in on each other—how could it ever have failed so badly and forgotten her and—how could he let his baby girl die?!

The spider realizes, then, that it is not a very good spider after all.

Chapter Text

A spider is a very small creature. 

It was never meant to carry the weight of a world collapsing—but this spider’s world has collapsed more than once, and it shakes beneath impossible gravity.

The first time the world collapsed, the spider held her hand as she took her last breath. It had wanted to hold her in its arms, to curl around her like a shield, but there had been too many wires. She wore a hospital gown, flimsy yellow, cartoon lions leaping fearlessly across fabric. Shh, leoncito, mi leoncito—no tengas miedo, Papa está aquí. It still remembers the scent of spilled saline, the soft whirr of the feeding pump and the wheeze of the ventilator. It still remembers the way her ribs had cracked beneath the compressions, and the way her mother had screamed. The spider had been the one to tell them to stop, in the end. It had been the one to let her die.

The second time the world collapsed, the spider held her in its arms as she shattered into stained glass and stray atoms. The screams had been deafening all around it, but for several seconds all it heard was her— Daddy! Daddy, help, please! How could she have known the spider was the one killing her? How could she have known her own father was selfish enough to tear apart a universe simply to make a space for himself in it?

The third time the world collapses, the spider is stuck a million multiverses from home. It curls into itself, inconsolable as it remembers what it had done and failed to do. It twitches away from Peter’s soft hands and softer words. Tears spill from its eyes and wobble on the edges of its jaw, spattering the dirt beneath it. It feels like it can’t breathe through the weight of its grief. 

A spider is, after all, a very small creature.

The webs around the spider’s hands are cut through, suddenly, and it’s drawn into a warm lap. Calloused fingers stroke through its hair. Senseless words buzz at the edges of its hearing. All it can hear is Gabi’s voice as she cries for a world falling apart. All it can hear is the clamor of the nurses as they code her. The AED beeps as it analyzes her failing heart. 

Shock advised. 

The spider digs its claws into its own skin. Hands grab it, voices raise. Somewhere, a name.

Shock advised.

The spider lashes out. Its claws catch. It smells blood.

Shock advised.

Please stop.

Please no more.

She’s already gone, god, please please please just make it stop.

The spider recoils from the weight of a world collapsing, unwilling to endure it.

Fortunately, something else is.

When Miguel opens his eyes, he’s in a nest of webs. 

Miguel knows he should probably be concerned about that, but there’s no energy left in him for worrying—or for anything, really. His entire body feels leaden and weak. He tries to shift an arm, and only his fingers twitch. The memories come grating back in poorly-developed snapshots and watercolors. His grief is no less than the spider’s, but his coping skills are significantly more.

Not, he thinks wearily, having better coping skills than an arthropod is much to brag about.

Miguel files his grief away page by page, memory by memory, lesson by lesson. He locks it in a box made of old anger and rancid regret. He dusts off the photos of his daughter and turns them over and over in his hands, soothing himself with the sight of her smile. If he pretends hard enough, he can almost feel her fingers around his—

—except, Miguel realizes quickly, that isn’t just his imagination.

Nimble fingers are wrapped around his, squeezing his knuckles together too hard to be truly comforting. He stares at the small hand attached to the fingers, befuddled. Then he follows the sight of that hand back up an arm and sees Gwen leaning against the wall of the nest, her head tipped back and her eyes closed. Gwen is holding his hand. Why is Gwen holding his hand? 

Peter is sitting beside her, his own hand nestled into Miguel’s hair. His fingers flex, gently scraping his nails over Miguel’s scalp—a steady, grounding back-and-forth. Miguel’s head is pillowed in his lap, cushioned by that ridiculous pink bath robe. It smells like baby powder and aftershave and everything good and domestic. He turns his face, just slightly, to bury his nose against it. The motion must be enough to alert Peter, however, because he glances down. 

“You’re okay, baby,” he murmurs, his voice tired and raw—like he’s said this many times before and expects to do it many times more. “Go back to sleep.”

safe, he says. safe.

Miguel resists the bone-deep urge to obey Peter and close his eyes again, but only barely. He really is exhausted—every muscle aches, and his head hurts so badly it’s hard to think. But he knows he has to find the kids before he can rest again. He has to know they’re all safe. He has to know this, if nothing else. So he allows his eyes to drift away from Peter and Gwen, searching.

Pavitr he finds a little farther down the wall of the nest. He’s slumped against Hobie, with Miguel’s feet propped in his lap. One hand rests on Miguel’s shin, his fingers tapping— parent, he says, affection. The words are clumsy and loud. Even so, a lump forms in Miguel’s throat. He swallows thickly around it and narrowly resists the urge to respond in kind.

Hobie’s arm rests protectively around Pavitr’s shoulders, his own dark eyes half-lidded as he stares down at Miguel. He arches his eyebrows when he sees Miguel staring back, but for once in his life he doesn’t make a sly comment. He merely shifts his weight and jerks his chin up in brief acknowledgement. Miguel blinks gratefully at him before looking away. 

Miles he finds sprawled out next to him, scrolling through photos on his phone and humming Post Malone under his breath. Miguel watches as his fingers flick across the screen, dizzied and dazed by the shifting lights. He sees a picture of Gwen laughing. He sees a picture of Peter and Mayday perched on the Empire State Building. He sees a selfie of himself and Miles; Miles had had to jump to get past-Miguel’s face in frame for the picture, and past-Miguel looks exasperated by his antics.

In spite of everything, Miguel feels his lips quirk into a fond smile.

“Miguel?” Peter strokes the bridge of his nose, the arch of his cheek. 

Miguel flicks his eyes back up to Peter. He knows he should probably say something. He knows he should get up, and take charge, and pretend the last few humiliating days never happened. But the kids are safe, and Peter is here to keep them that way, and Miguel is so shockin’ tired. He thinks he could sleep for a week and still wake up exhausted. What’s more, his stomach hurts, and his head hurts, and his goddamn skin hurts, and—

Miguel doesn’t want to wake up, yet.

“Shh,” Peter says, laying his hand over Miguel’s eyes. “Sleep, sweetheart. I’m right here.”

And so Miguel closes his eyes and sleeps.

When he wakes up again, it’s only because someone has stabbed him. 

Miguel snarls, recoiling from the sudden sting and smacking his head into a very bony chin. Peter yelps behind him, and several pairs of hands surge forward to grasp his shoulders. The kids are all talking, clamoring, and in front of him he sees a stranger holding a gun. He immediately bristles, baring his fangs, before remembering that he is a human being with access to both higher reasoning and verbal communication.

“Six,” he spits at the stranger. “What the fuck?”

“Oh,” Six says, sounding pleasantly surprised. “He talks.”

“He does. He even says thank you to people who bring him his very important medicine after he tried to maul them,” Peter chirps behind him, gripping the nape of Miguel’s neck and shaking lightly—like he’s a scruffed kitten instead of a very imposing superhero. “Don’t you, Miguel?”

“Thank you for bringing me my very important medicine even after I tried to maul you,” Miguel sighs.

“You’re welcome,” Six says cheerfully, stuffing the syringe gun back into Peter’s pack. “And it’s nice to meet you. Officially, I mean. I’m Six. I’m this world’s Spider-man.”

“I know.”

“Be nice,” Peter chides.

Miguel doesn’t particularly feel like being nice. In fact, Miguel feels like throwing up.

“Move.” Miguel shoves Six to the side, stumbling out of the nest to retch up bile—yet again. God, he’s getting tired of this. “ Ugh, qué asco. Quiero morir.”

Peter’s hand lands on his back, rubbing firm circles between his shoulders. “You okay, big guy?”

“Do I look okay?” Miguel rasps, spitting into the dirt. His stomach cramps disagreeably. 

“You want the nice answer or the honest answer?” Gwen asks.

“You look like shit, mate,” Hobie says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Fair Tom ‘n Dick.”

“Fair Tom and—what are you even saying to me right now?” Miguel rasps.

“Still a right plaster, innit he?”

“I can’t do this right now.” Miguel groans, sitting back against the edge of the nest and cradling a hand over his eyes. “Don’t even talk to me.”

“Can I talk to you?” Pavitr scoots over to sit beside him. “I missed you. I mean, not that you ever went anywhere, but—y’know.”

“Yeah, I know.” Miguel swings an arm out, dropping it over Pavitr’s shoulders and dragging the little spider into his side. He tips his head back against the nest, breathing shallowly to quell his nausea. “Sorry, kid.”

“It’s okay.” Pavitr burrows against him, smiling and drumming affection, affection into Miguel’s ribs. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“You don’t have to do that anymore,” Miguel mumbles, his own fingers twitching with the urge to respond.

“I know,” Pavitr says. “I want to.”

“So you remember everything, Migs?” Peter asks, crouching in front of them.

“Unfortunately,” Miguel murmurs. “And, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry—to all of you. I was trying to avoid this.”

“You were trying to avoid us,” Miles points out. “It wasn’t fair of you to leave, tio. It wasn’t fair to us or to you. What if Hobie hadn’t found you? You seriously could have died.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Miguel argues, slitting one eye open to regard Miles wearily. “That’s not how this medication works.”

Rapture isn’t a killing drug, after all. It wouldn’t be worth as much if it was. Miguel won’t die without it—no matter how much it makes him want to. 

“Maybe not from the medication,” Gwen argues, “but you weren’t exactly in your right mind, you know? You could have gotten lost, or starved to death, or gotten murdered by any of the weird six-legged monsters on this creepy planet.”

“Should I be offended?” Six wonders in the background. “Is that offensive?”

“The kids are right,” Peter says, reaching forward to flick Miguel’s forehead. “You panicked and you acted like an idiot, Miguel. You should have explained things and stayed with them until I could find you.”

“I didn’t know how I—how it— would react to them,” Miguel says, batting Peter’s hand away from him with a scowl. “It’s not exactly friendly.”

“Wait, you mean the spider?” Pavitr laughs. “Spiders are, like, the least threatening creature!”

“Yeah, man, they just wanna hang out and do their own thing,” Miles agrees. “Which you did, for the most part. It’s not like we were making it easy for you, but you never hurt us. You were actually super chill.”

“That might be pushing it a little,” Hobie says, shrugging, “but you coulda been way worse, bruv—coulda been trying to murder Miles again.”

Miguel opens his mouth, and then shuts it with a click.

“Yeah! So, comparatively, this was great,” Miles says cheerfully. “You didn’t even scratch me.”

The bar is so low. The bar is so low and Miguel wants to brain himself on it.

“I’m sorry,” Miguel says again, guilt sitting thick as silt in his throat. 

“Ankal,” Pavitr says, elbowing him gently. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

“We’re going to have a very long conversation about this later, but I’m letting you off the hook for right now because Hobie is right and you look like shit.” Peter reaches out, brushing Miguel’s hair off of his sweat-sticky forehead. “So settle in, sweetheart. Let the meds work. I’m gonna work on getting us home.”

“There’s a city,” Miguel says, gesturing vaguely. “We were going there.”

“You mean Brooklyn? Yeah, I can take you there,” Six says. “Peter says you’re trying to fix your weird interdimensional travel watches. I have some tech that might be able to help.”

“Great.” Miguel picks himself up off of the floor, allowing Pavitr to support him when he sways. “How long is the walk?”

“I dunno, like, thirty hours?” Six shrugs, and Miguel blanches. “But I was thinking we could take my car, so—maybe two? Three, if we’re accounting for traffic.”

“You have a car,” Miguel breathes.

“I have a whole-ass spidersuit,” Six says, gesturing at themself. “Yeah, man. I have a car.”

Six leads the way to the road while the kids gaggle around Miguel like a bunch of terrible broody hens. Pavitr insists on keeping himself plastered to Miguel’s side, and Hobie quickly takes up a spot on his other side despite his insistence that he doesn’t need any damn crutches. He has to admit it’s helpful to have them, anyway. The Rapture takes a while to kick in, and while his hallucinations seem to be fading he still feels rather unsteady. 

Six’s car has air conditioning, which Miguel is convinced is the nicest thing he’s felt in years. He gets the front seat on account of being sick and pathetic—which he may or may not play up just a little to ensure he doesn’t have to be jammed in the back with the others. He leans forward, letting the cold air from the vents wash over his face. 

“If you throw up in my car,” Six says, “I will leave you here to die.”

“I’m not gonna throw up.”

Miguel does, in fact, throw up.

Fortunately, he manages to signal Six beforehand, so they slam the car to a stop and allow Miguel to stumble out of it. He is not left behind to die, for which he is grateful—even if he refuses to admit it, wallowing in the roadside ditch like so much roadkill while Peter tries to drag him back into his seat.

“How are you seriously more stubborn like this?” Peter demands, when he finally fastens Miguel’s seatbelt across him. “You’re supposed to be more rational than the spider, you know that, right?”

“Mmphf,” Miguel argues, pressing his forehead gratefully to the AC vents. 

“You’re ridiculous,” Peter says, and kisses his cheek anyway. “Just hang on a little longer. We’re almost there.”

When they arrive in the city proper, Six takes them to their apartment. Miles pushes Miguel onto the nearest couch and covers him with a thin blanket while Pavitr plies him with saltine crackers and ginger ale. Miguel eats a little, if only to appease his worried kids, before rolling over and shoving his face into the couch cushions. Someone pulls the blinds and dims the lights, and Miguel’s headache gradually begins to recede. 

In the background, he can hear Hobie and Six talking quietly over the watches. He knows he should get up and help, but Gwen is sitting on his feet and he can’t be bothered to fight his way past her. Peter’s hand touches the back of his neck, and he barely twitches. He grunts when he hears the hiss of the syringe gun loading, however, cracking his eyes open.

“It’s just another dose of meds,” Peter soothes, his fingers fiddling with the controls on the collar of the suit. “Hold still, Miggy-moo.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Mm, how’re you gonna stop me?” Peter teases, and then stabs him because he is a dick. Miguel hisses as the syringe injects, and Peter coos sympathetically at him. “I know, I know. All done, good boy. You want a cookie?”

“I’ll kill you.”

“Yes, yes, you’re very intimidating,” Peter agrees, patting his head. “I feel very intimidated.”

“If you guys don’t stop flirting I’m going to throw up,” Gwen announces.

Miguel harrumphs, and then promptly goes back to sleep.

When he wakes again, it’s to Peter tugging the baby hairs behind his ear gently. “Miguel,” he says. “C’mon, up and at ‘em. Hobie got the watches working for us. Are you ready to go home?”

Miguel pries himself off of the couch, surprised to find that he actually doesn't feel like he’s about to fall over at any moment. Huh. That’s an improvement. He does almost fall over, however, when Pavitr slams into him for a crushing hug. He forgets how strong the younger spiders can be, sometimes. Their size belays their strength.

“I’ll see you soon, okay?” Pavitr says, mashing his face into Miguel’s chest. “Feel better.”

Miguel hesitates, then lets his arms settle around Pavitr’s shoulders to hug him close. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I’ll be fine, Pavitr. Go home. Get some rest. God knows you’ve earned it.”

The portal opens behind Pavitr in a crackle of orange and yellow, and Pavitr waves at all of them as he steps out and through. Hobie is the next to step forward, his own portal crashing open in sparks of purple. He offers Miguel a jaunty two-fingered salute before falling backwards through the portal, whooping loudly. 

“Gwen,” Peter says, beckoning her forward. “You next, kiddo.”

As Gwen comes forward, she pauses to hip-check Miguel. “See you around, old man,” she says. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I never do,” Miguel lies, reaching out to ruffle her hair. “Be good, Gwen.”

“Ah, you know I always am.” Gwen winks, blows a kiss to Miles, and then leaps through the pink and blue of her own portal. “See you around, boys!”

Miles is the last to go. 

“You’ll be okay, right?” he asks, looking up at Miguel.

“I’ll be fine,” Miguel assures him. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“See, when you say things like that it just makes me worry more,” Miles points out, then flicks his gaze to Peter. “You’re staying with him, right?”

“He couldn’t leave me if he tried,” Peter says cheerfully, wrapping an arm like a steel band around Miguel’s waist. “Don’t worry, Miles. I’ve got him. You just worry about making up that physics exam of yours, huh?”

Miles groans. “God, don’t remind me.”

“Go on, kid.” Peter smiles, gesturing at the portal to 1610. “I’m sure your parents are worried.”

“If you don’t see me for the rest of my life,” Miles says, laughing and jumping backwards into the portal, “it’s because I’m grounded!”

When the final portal closes behind him, Miguel can feel the spider shrieking its grief. He ignores it—pushing it down, pushing it away, hissing, they were never yours to begin with. But the grief echoes, and he takes a shaky breath around it. 

“They’ll be okay,” Peter says softly, lacing their fingers together and squeezing. “Come on. Our turn.”

Miguel twists the dial on his watch, and the portal to 161-B opens in a wash of reds and blues. He only pauses to glance over at Six.

“This is the part where I offer you a place at the Spider Society,” he says. 

“This is the part where I say hell no,” Six says, laughing. “Don’t worry. Peter already told me all about it. After seeing all the shit you guys go through, I’m gonna pass. But hey, try me again in a few months and we’ll see what happens.”

“Fair enough,” Miguel says, inclining his head. “Thank you, for everything. See you around, Spider-man.”

“Oh, boy, I really hope not.”

Laughing, Peter drags Miguel forward—into the portal, into color and light and shattering warmth. 

“C’mon, Miguel—let’s go home!"

Chapter Text

MJ isn’t there when they step out of a multiversal portal and into her living room. 

Peter doesn’t look surprised.

“She’s probably picking Mayday up from daycare,” he says, squeezing Miguel’s hand. “She should be home soon.”

That’s right. Mayday would have been in daycare most of this week because Miguel stole her superhero-slash-stay-at-home-dad away for a rescue mission. The displeasure this idea brings him must show on his face, because Peter’s fingers are suddenly trying to push his cheeks up into a smile. Miguel nips at him for the offense. 

“Aiya, watch the fangs,” Peter says, clucking his tongue, but obediently drops his hands back to Miguel’s and weaves their fingers together. “Let’s go get cleaned up for the missus. No offense, but you smell like you haven’t showered in a week.”

“I haven’t.”

“Well, that explains that, then.”

As Peter goes to fetch clean clothes for them, Miguel steps into the bathroom and dissolves his suit with a sigh of relief. He cranks the hot water on as high as it will go and listens to it drum against the acrylic of the tub. Steam rises in whorls. The wash of heat knocks something loose in his sinuses, and suddenly his nose is bleeding again. When Peter returns, it’s to the very graceful sight of Miguel shoving a wad of toilet paper up one nostril. 

“Another seizure?” he asks, his brow creasing with sudden concern. “I thought the Rapture should have kicked in by now. Sit down. No, seriously, the shower can wait. If you seize in the tub—”

“I’m fine, Peter,” Miguel says, dabbing excess blood from his upper lip. “It’s just a bloody nose.”

“Are you lying?”

“No.”

“Are you lying about not lying?”

“No.” Miguel huffs, reaching for his razor. “Shut up and let me shave.”

“Alright, but if you’re lying I’m telling MJ,” Peter says, beginning to strip himself out of his own suit. He dumps the fabric into their laundry basket before hopping into the shower, whistling appreciatively at the heat. “Now that’s more like it.”

Miguel shaves his stubble briskly and efficiently, splashing off excess shaving cream and small hairs with a palmful of cold water. He plucks the toilet paper out of his nose once it’s stopped bleeding, tossing it into the wastebasket and sniffling rather pathetically. The heat from the shower has fogged the mirror—a good thing, Miguel thinks, because he’s sure he looks like shit. 

“Budge over,” he mutters, stepping into the shower with Peter. It’s not a particularly large shower by any means—certainly not large enough for two grown men, one of whom is built like a small military tank—but they make it work. 

Hot water is Miguel’s new favorite thing, he decides, and he tips his face greedily into the spray as it washes away a week’s worth of sweat and grime. He lathers himself with more body wash than is strictly necessary, watching as the suds fall off of him in brown globs. He makes a face and goes in for a second coat of soap.

“God, that’s gross,” Peter laughs, and tugs his shoulder until he turns around. “Lemme scrub your back. Jesus, what were you doing, rolling in the dirt?”

“Probably,” Miguel sighs.

Peter’s hands work over his back—scrubbing him clean, arguably, but also digging into all the tight knots and sore spots he’s accumulated. Miguel lets his head droop, bracing it against the damp tiles of the shower wall. A quiet exhale leaves him as Peter attempts to knead the stress out of him. It’s a near-impossible task, but Miguel appreciates the effort, anyway.

“Here,” Peter says, patting a handful of shampoo onto his hair. “Scrub.”

Miguel obediently scrubs his hair, squeezing his eyes shut as suds slide down his forehead. He steps where Peter directs him to, and the shower spray rinses his hair clean. Peter slathers the strands with way too much conditioner, next, and hustles Miguel out from under the water so it has a chance to soak in before it washes out. 

“Your turn,” Miguel grunts, grabbing Peter’s hip to turn him around. 

“Oh-ho, how very forward of you, Mr. O’Hara.”

“Do you ever shut up?” Miguel grumbles, slapping a wet washcloth gently against Peter’s back and beginning to scrub. “Also, it’s Dr. O’Hara to you. Plebian.”

“You’re a pretentious bitch, but that feels nice so I’m not gonna be mad at you,” Peter sighs, slumping against the shower wall as Miguel rubs his back. “Also—and I’d just like to point this out—I have a degree in chemical engineering. What’s your degree in? Political science? Assholery?”

“Genetics and genomics, with a dissertation based in arachnology and eukaryotic DNA splicing,” Miguel says, snapping his fangs playfully beside Peter’s ear, “but you knew that already.”

Overall, Peter has at least two less layers of grime than Miguel did. In fairness, he hadn’t spent quite as long in the woods—and he had a tour guide with a car and air conditioning. Lucky jackass. Miguel pauses as he swipes the washcloth over Peter’s shoulder, however, lingering on a pair of gashes that rake the skin beneath his right scapula. He exhales quietly.

“I did this,” he says, “didn’t I?”

“You weren’t in your right mind,” Peter says, reaching around to lay his hand over Miguel’s. “You were freaking out about—y’know.”

“Gabi,” Miguel says softly.

“Gabi,” Peter agrees, his voice equally quiet and reverent. “I shouldn’t have told you that she was dead. I should have known you wouldn’t understand, when you were like that.”

“No,” Miguel says, shaking his head. A glob of conditioner falls out of his hair and lands on Peter’s shoulder with a sad splat, and he sighs. “I understood. It was the best thing you could have done. The damn spider wouldn't have stopped looking, otherwise, and it snapped me back into my own head. I just wish I hadn’t hurt you.”

“Eh, it could have been worse.”

“That’s not exactly a good thing,” Miguel mutters, tugging his husband back beneath the spray of hot water to rinse him. “You know that’s not a good thing, right?”

“‘s kinda hot.”

“And you’re kinda fucked up,” Miguel says, snorting. 

“You like it.” Peter grins, sashaying around to place Miguel beneath the showerhead, next. 

Miguel shuts his eyes again, letting Peter run steady fingers through his hair to squeeze out the conditioner. Once they’re both clean, Peter turns off the water and smothers Miguel with their fluffiest towel. Miguel stands placidly, content to be scrubbed within an inch of his life, and only moves when Peter flicks him with the towel. He pulls on the sweatpants and sweatshirt Peter had procured for him, nestling into the cozy black fabric with a sigh of appreciation. 

Then, he hears the front door click open.

“MJ!” Peter shrieks, throwing himself out of the bathroom—barely contained within a towel and still dripping bathwater. “Mayday! My girls!”

Miguel follows him more sedately, a towel slung over his shoulders to keep his hair from dripping onto his shirt. He lingers in the kitchen entryway as Peter greets their family, a fond smile on his face. Peter presses a smacking kiss to MJ’s cheek, first, before scooping Mayday out of her baby carrier and spinning with her. They both giggle with delight upon seeing each other, their eyes shining with twin joy. 

“I’m glad you’re home, Pete,” MJ says, watching her husband and daughter with warm blue eyes. “And I can see I’m not the only one.”

Mayday squeals in agreement, clapping her hands against Peter’s cheeks.

“I’m glad to be home,” Peter agrees, in spite of Mayday trying to stick her fingers into his mouth every time it opens. “I’m sorry it took so long. I’ll explain everything, I promise. But the most important thing is that I got Miguel and the kids home safe.”

And that’s when MJ looks to him.

“Miguel,” she breathes. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he agrees, and barely stays standing when she collides with him. She’s small but fierce—just like her daughter—and she hugs him so tightly it’s hard to breathe, for a moment. “I’m sorry if I worried you.”

“I forgive you, but only because you look terrible,” MJ mumbles against his chest. He runs a hand over her hair, and she draws back to look up at him. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, mister.”

“It’s doctor,” Peter teases, curling his arm around Miguel’s waist.

“Oh, is it? In that case, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do, doctor,” MJ says, propping her chin on his chest and arching her eyebrows. “You may as well write me another dissertation. But I think I’m going to feed you first.”

“Yes,” Miguel says, his stomach rumbling for the first time in days. “Please.”

MJ shepherds them into the living room, where Miguel sits in the armchair and holds Mayday while Peter flops face-first onto the couch. Mayday insists on climbing Miguel’s shoulders and face, perching on his head to tug small handfuls of his damp hair. Miguel tolerates all of this with the infinite patience he has seemingly reserved for all juvenile humans—or spiders.

Spiderling, something sighs inside of his chest, and for once he doesn’t argue with it.

In the kitchen, he can hear MJ pulling out ingredients and utensils. The sounds are familiar, domestic, and he finds his exhaustion beginning to pull again. He yawns and tucks Mayday into the crook of one arm, where she curls up and chews on his sweatshirt. He lets his eyes close, although he keeps his other senses alert. He can’t sleep when he has a baby to take care of, after all—and he doubts MJ will let him get away without an explanation for much longer.

Peter and Miguel tell their tale over bowls of steaming spaghetti and crunchy garlic bread. Peter talks more than Miguel does—the younger spider is far too busy shoveling noodles into his mouth—and MJ listens intently, bouncing Mayday on her knee. Miguel finds no pity in her eyes, at the very least, though they do fill with sympathy at Peter’s description of his plight. He tries not to look at her.

Once he’s finished eating, MJ collects his bowl and replaces it with a baby bottle. He takes Mayday into his arms again, rocking her gently as she drinks her own dinner. The warmth of the milk ebbs through the plastic of the bottle and into the pads of his fingers, and Mayday’s quiet snuffling noises make him sleepy and content. He yawns and stands up before he can fall asleep, beginning to sway with her in front of the balcony doors. Outside, the lights of New York glimmer like fallen stars.

“Here,” Peter says, laying a hand on his back. “Let me put her down to sleep. You look like you’re about to fall over.”

“I won’t fall over,” Miguel murmurs, but obediently hands Mayday to him. He watches as Peter goes towards the nursery, cooing softly to his daughter. 

“I think it’s about your bedtime, too,” MJ says quietly, taking his hand and tugging him along. “Come on. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

Miguel burrows into the blankets of their bed, jamming his head beneath a heavy pillow to cut out the soft amber lamplight. He feels the mattress dip when MJ sits down beside him, running one hand up and down his back. She’s humming under her breath—an old lullaby he knows she sings to Mayday—and only pauses when Peter steps into the room.

“Hey, tiger,” she says, patting the space beside Miguel. “Come join.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Peter sprawls beside Miguel, draping one arm over his back. 

Miguel grunts but doesn’t otherwise complain, content to be sandwiched between the two of them. Peter props himself up on one elbow, his other hand going to play with Miguel’s hair. He talks quietly to MJ over Miguel’s back, and the familiar sounds of their voices are enough to lull him towards sleep. 

“Miguel?” MJ whispers, her hand pausing at the small of his back. “You need one more dose of meds, papa. Okay?”

Miguel mumbles his agreement into the bedsheets.

“Got it. Hold still.” Peter swings a leg over him, perching on his back as he loads the syringe gun. Miguel tenses beneath him, gnawing on the mattress as the Rapture is injected. He hears the rattle of the syringe gun being set aside, and then Peter lowers himself to sprawl over Miguel’s back and shoulders like a living blanket. “Good job. All done. You can go to sleep now, sweetheart.”

It doesn’t take Miguel very much longer to do exactly that.

The next day, Miguel is condemned to bedrest.

He finds this to be a unique form of torture.

“I feel completely fine,” he argues, and it’s almost the entire truth. His nausea and tremors have vanished, and he hasn’t properly seized since he got his first dose of Rapture in the other ‘verse (helpfully classified, now, as Earth-666).The lingering stiffness in his joints and the fatigue that weighs on his eyelids can be disregarded as minor side-effects—unpleasant but easily managed. They’re certainly nothing that justifies bedrest. 

“And while I’m very glad you’re feeling better,” MJ says, clearly humoring this defense as she deposits a plate of toast and eggs onto his lap, “you’re still not going to work today.”

Miguel tears out a bite of his toast. It’s very good toast. This does not appease him.

“I can stay until lunchtime,” he barters, “but I need to go in after that. I have to draft a report on 666 and make sure no one else travels there without the proper equipment. We can’t risk anyone else getting stuck.”

“Already sent out that warning,” Peter says, crashing onto the bed beside him. The plate of eggs tips precariously, and Miguel snatches it before it topples. “Besides, Six knows to keep an eye out for any stray spiders skittering around now. Me and Hobie put together an alert system for anomalies—including any spiders from outside of the ‘verse—in their lab. They agreed to send home anyone they found.”

“When did you send out the warning?” Miguel asks petulantly, through a mouthful of his rescued scrambled eggs. “How come Peter gets to work and I don’t?”

“Because he wasn’t sick for days,” MJ says patiently, stroking his hair. “Besides, he didn’t even leave the house.”

“Yeah,” Peter says, waving his phone in the air. “I sent a text.”

“A text,” Miguel says flatly.

“Yep. We live in the twenty-first century. A text.”

“A text isn’t a proper warning.” Miguel sets his plate down on the bedside table, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “I’m going to HQ.”

“What? No!” Peter squawks, jumping up to hang off of his shoulders like a particularly terrible cape. His weight isn’t enough to sway Miguel at all. It is, however, enough to annoy him. “Sit back down, Miguel. You haven’t even finished breakfast. I worked really hard on those eggs! They are scrambled to perfection!”

“I’m full,” Miguel says, attempting to pry his husband off. It’s easier said than done, when Peter sticks to him as well as he does to any wall. It’s like fighting a wad of particularly insistent chewing gum. “Peter, get off!”

“Miguel,” MJ says, as Miguel contemplates squashing her husband against the nearest wall, “look at me.”

Miguel pauses, one hand wrapped around Peter’s ankle, and looks at her.

“You were sick for several days,” MJ says, folding her hands in her lap. “Your body and your mind need time to recover. There is currently nothing at HQ more important than that. So I’m going to ask you one more time to stay in bed and let us take care of you, please.”

Miguel hesitates.

MJ senses his hesitation as sharply as any predator and sinks her claws in. “We can do this the easy way,” she says sweetly, “or the hard way. Sit down, Miguel.”

Miguel sits down.

“What? How come you listen to her and not me?” Peter complains.

“It’s a matter of respect,” MJ says, running her nails through Miguel’s hair with an approving hum. “Good choice, papa.”

“Miguel respects me,” Peter protests, leaning heavily enough on Miguel’s shoulders to bow them forward. “Don’t you, Miggy?”

Miguel does, unfortunately.

But Miguel also loves to annoy him, and so he keeps his mouth shut and quirks an eyebrow. 

“Miguel!” Peter shrieks, pushing more of his weight onto Miguel’s shoulders—endeavoring, it seems, to fold him in half at the waist. “Respect me!”

MJ stands up with a fond sigh, leaving them to wrestle lazily in the bed. “I’m going to go wake May up,” she says. “You had both better be alive and decent when I bring her back here.”

“Ma’am,” Miguel agrees, and then tries to beat Peter to death with a nearby pillow.

“Mariticide!” Peter squeals, ducking for cover beneath the bedsheets. “Mariticide!”

Bedrest becomes a laxer term throughout the day. By midmorning MJ has allowed him to migrate from the bed to the living room couch, where he watches several episodes of Doc McStuffins with Mayday. Peter longues beside them, reading glasses perched on the edge of his nose as he flips through a tattered edition of 1984. MJ spends most of the afternoon on her phone, texting to check up on the other members of Miguel’s team.

“They’re all just fine,” she assures him, when his eyes linger too long on her. “You know, if you wanted to text them I’m sure they’d be happy to hear from you.”

Miguel considers it for several hours, flipping his phone over in his hands, before ultimately chickening out. In the absence of illness, he’s painfully aware of how shamefully he had acted around them. The embarrassment sort of makes him want to die. But he owes them an explanation, he knows, he just—

He doesn’t even know where to begin.

So, with a heavy sigh, he slides his phone back into his pocket. 

Miguel hears the kids coming long before they enter the apartment.

He’s curled up on the couch late that afternoon for an MJ-mandated nap, buried under his husband and at least three quilts. Peter wakes him up by shuffling off of him to close the blinds, through which several squares of golden sunlight have begun to creep. Miguel rolls over, yawns, and tries to go back to sleep.

It’s a task easier said than done when he hears several pairs of footsteps tromping up the stairwell outside.

Miguel lifts his head, rubbing his eyes, only to have Peter squash his face back into the cushions. “Shh,” he hisses. “Go back to sleep. It’s a surprise.”

“It’s a very noisy surprise,” Miguel mumbles into a sunflower-shaped throw pillow.

“It wouldn’t be if you didn’t have supersonic hearing. Now shut up and pretend to sleep so our kids can surprise you.”

Miguel sighs heavily, but he does shut up and pretend to sleep. And if pretend-sleep turns into actual-sleep at some point, well—it’s only because he’s warm, and full of MJ’s chicken noodle soup, and listening to a documentary about an octopus while his kids shuffle and whisper in the background like he doesn’t already know they’re there. 

Eventually, one of them pokes him in the shoulder—but Miguel is committed to the bit, now, and decidedly ignores them. He’s sleeping. When they poke him again, he grumbles and bares a sliver of fang. He hopes it doesn’t look too much like a smile. 

“Tio?” Miles whispers, poking him again—a little quicker, like he thinks Miguel might whip around and bite him, which—hell, now Miguel feels bad. He puts his fangs away with a deep sigh. “Miguel? Wake up, dude.”

Miguel snuffles deeper into his sunflower pillow and does not wake up.

“C’mon, man, I know you’re awake.” Miles grabs his shoulder and tugs. Miguel staunchly refuses to be shifted. “Oh my god you’re the worst. You’re even worse than Peter.”

“Hey.” Miguel slits an eye open. “Rude.”

“He bloody well lives,” Hobie drawls from somewhere behind Miles. “Huzzah.”

“Don’t sound so excited about it, Brown.”

“Guys, please. The candles are melting.”

Ah. That would be why Miguel smells fire. He arches his eyebrows, slowly and judgmentally, and looks past Miles to Gwen. She’s holding a small, shoddily-made cake with patchy chocolate icing and several dripping wax candles. 

“I made it myself!” Pavitr says, beaming and bouncing on his toes. “It’s a ‘get better soon’ cake, see?”

Gwen points at the swirls of neon icing on top of the cake, which are absolutely illegible.

“Is it in Devanagari?” Miguel guesses.

Pavitr’s face falls. “No, English.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah, I totally see it.” Miguel totally does not see it.

“You don’t,” Pavitr says mournfully, before brightening right back up. “But it’s okay! I forgive you. Besides, the decorations aren’t the important part. Wait until you taste it! It’s my auntie’s recipe.”

Miguel sits up, and the kids—along with Mayday, Peter, and MJ—cluster around him, passing out paper plates and plastic cups. Pavitr doles out thick slices of cake for everyone, while Miles pours oversweetened lemonade and Hobie contributes nothing but wry comments. Gwen straps a terrible party hat to Miguel’s head despite his vehement protests—“It’s the spirit of the thing!” she insists—and he endures several equally terrible rounds of Pictionary and Blitz.

They don’t talk about it until they’re all sprawled out on the living room floor, yawning through various stages of a carb coma.

“So, we should talk about it, right?” Pavitr says, halfway through his third slice of cake. “What happened on 666?”

Miguel almost snaps out a no. Almost.

But he owes them this, at least.

“I suppose,” he says gruffly, looking away.

“Great! Okay, I’ll start—what the hell, man?” Gwen asks. “What happened back there?”

Miguel sits up straight, brushing chocolate crumbs off of his sweatpants in an attempt to look at least a little more respectable. “I normally take a medication,” he starts, and then falters. “A drug. I was drugged, a long time ago. Now I can’t live without it. Or, no, that’s overdramatic—I can live, but it isn’t very pleasant. You’ve all seen what the withdrawals look like, and they don’t stop.”

“And someone did that to you?” Miles demands. “On purpose?”

Hobie swears under his breath.

“Yes,” Miguel says, and does not expound on that particular detail. Instead, he adds, “I tried to cure myself, once, by manipulating my own genome. Hence, you know. The spider.”

“Hardcore,” Hobie mutters.

“You did that to yourself?” Gwen asks, nearly choking on her lemonade.

“It was my dissertation,” Miguel says, then amends, “Well, not that exactly, but the genomic splicing and the spiders, it was—it was all very similar to my work back then, is what I’m saying. It’s not like I decided out of the blue to try it. I knew what I was doing. And anyway, it worked, for a little while. When it stopped working, I synthesized my own drug. My DNA mutates more than ordinary DNA does, so I have to edit the recognition sequences for the restriction enzymes in the drug every so often, but—it works.”

“That’s amazing,” Miles says. “I mean, it’s ethically super shitty, but—scientifically amazing.”

“Yeah,” Miguel snorts. “Tell me about it.”

“So without the drug, you go all—spider-y?” Pavitr asks, wiggling his fingers. 

“Not exactly. The spider is more of a—” Miguel sighs. “It’s a defense mechanism. The withdrawals are shit and I hate them, so it’s easier to let someone—some thing— else deal with them. It’s easier to not be human, for a little while. That’s not to say it’s a choice, exactly, but—I—I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. It doesn’t only happen with the withdrawals.”

“It can happen when you’re injured,” Miles says, recognition flaring in his eyes. “Like that time in Co-op City, right?”

“Right,” Miguel agrees.

“Or that time you tried to murder Miles?” Hobie asks flatly.

“That was—” Miguel snaps his mouth shut, squeezing the bridge of his nose like he can force away the blooming headache. “Not exactly. That was more me than the spider, although the hunting instincts certainly didn’t benefit anyone. But the spider doesn’t—it wouldn’t—it doesn’t hurt kids.”

Not like I do goes unsaid between them.

“So no,” Miguel says. “I’m not going to blame that on my addiction, or on my fucked-up genes. That was me. That was my choice. And it was a bad one, and I’m sorry, and I’m trying to do better.”

“I know, tio.” Miles scoots over to his side, wedging himself beneath Miguel’s arm. “We know. We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”

The conversations between himself and Miles about this have been long and painful, and Miguel doesn’t exactly want to relive them. Miles forgave him long ago; that’s what matters. So he exhales slowly, dipping his head.

“So,” Pavitr says, suddenly sly, “when you were a spider, did you think we were your babies?”

I still do Miguel does not say.

“No,” he huffs. “The spider did, because the entirety of its neural tissue amounts to the the size of a pinhead. It’s an idiot.” 

“Aww!” Pavitr wiggles himself in on Miguel’s other side, and Miguel isn’t churlish enough to shove him away. He only offers a long-suffering sigh. “I knew you loved us.”

“Eres una peste, sabes?” Miguel says, setting a hand on Pavitr’s head and rocking it.

“That’s not what you thought two days ago, jefe, ” Miles laughs, kicking Miguel lightly.

“Yes,” Miguel says honestly. “It was. You all are terrible spiderlings.”

“Well,” Hobie says, smirking. “I can get behind that, at least.”

Despite the fact that these are stubborn, irrational, infuriating spiderlings, the awful arachnid creature in Miguel’s chest takes its first deep breath in days when it senses them all nearby. And Miguel? Miguel settles. He settles so well, in fact, that he’s already starting to doze off when the kids put on a movie. It’s Finding Nemo, he realizes, and watches through lidded eyes as Marlin seeks out his lost son.

At some point he slumps over, his head pillowed in MJ’s lap. She runs her nails lightly behind one ear, lulling him into closing his eyes. He only squints them back open when he hears the kids start to shuffle, gathering their things. Pavitr pauses to pat his head, saying, “Good night, Miguel- ji . We’ll all see you at HQ tomorrow, okay? Shubh raatri.”

Then, tapped into his forehead like a promise:

affection, parent

And Miguel’s fingers twitch a reply before he can stop himself:

affection, spiderlings