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Enthusiastic knocking startles Miguel awake from his vivid dreams. He starts to jerk upright and has to stop halfway through, grunting at the sharp cramp of pain through his gut. Hijo de puta, he hates getting skewered.
“Miguel! I know you’re in there! Lyla told me so!” Peter’s voice calls. He’s kind enough to not shout; he’d know that Miguel can hear him without it.
Miguel sighs and shoves his face into the soft sofa covering. It smells like him and makes the wounded animal part of him relax a little, not as defensive when he’s in his own territory. Peter is probably just making sure he’s not rotting on the floor of his bathroom. It’s been almost an entire day since he’d been able to discharge himself from the hospital—he was expecting someone to stop by.
He heaves himself up and shoves his feet into the stupid bunny slippers Gabriella had shrieked in laughter over in another life time and shuffles towards the door. There’s a headache pounding its way through his skull; he should probably drink some water. The catheter site on his forearm aches.
“Peter,” Miguel sighs, opening the door and leaning his sore body against the doorframe. “What do you want.”
“I wanted to check on you! Keep you company during your arduous recovery!” Peter says cheerfully, hauling the paper grocery bags a little higher in his arms. Mayday burbles and kicks with glee from the baby-carrier strapped to his chest.
“I have been home less than—“ Miguel checks his watch and sighs. “Less than 18 hours. Por el amor de Dios, why are you here?”
“Keep up, Miguel!” Peter says with a broad smile. He shoves his foot into the gap left by the open door and flicks it open. “We’re friends, and friends don’t leave each other to convalesce home alone, at risk of surgical complications and dying of sepsis.”
“The doctor cleared me to go home.” Miguel says tiredly, but doesn’t stop Peter from entering his apartment. He just closes and locks the door behind him while the other man makes a beeline for his kitchen.
“You also had a piece of rebar the size of my forearm through your guts, man,” Peter says. “It’s been, like, three days.”
Three days would be enough for any other Spider to heal completely, Miguel wants to say. Truthfully, he’d enjoyed the few days of company in the hospital immensely, and had somewhat dreaded returning to his empty apartment.
“I’ve got ingredients for a couple days of easy meals—I don’t know what you like so I went with the basics—“ Peter continues to say, unloading the groceries onto Miguel’s kitchen island. Mayday wiggles wildly in an attempt to get her hands on the food and Peter tries to fend her off one-handed. It makes Miguel’s heart swell with a fondness he wishes he had the strength to ignore.
“Let me take her.” Miguel sighs, gesturing at Mayday and then going ahead and unbuckling the baby-carrier when Peter stares blankly at him. Mayday eagerly clings to his chest like the natural-born Spider she is. Miguel leaves Peter and his gobsmacked expression behind in the kitchen and walks into his sitting room, bouncing gently on his feet and smiling at Mayday’s happy baby squeals. The smell of baby—baby powder, milk and something that just screams protect me I’m just a baby fills Miguel’s nose.
“Did you come along to keep your father in line, mija?” Miguel murmurs. He tickles under her chin with a finger and she giggles, grabbing at it with the tenacity and poor-coordination all children possess at her age. “Oye, careful with the grip—I’m delicate.”
Mayday clearly wants to climb and explore like her father allows her to do. She seems interested in the photos Miguel has lined up carefully on a few floating shelves, interspersed with plants, but he keeps a comfortable grip on her. He doesn’t want to risk her hurting herself and the press of her fast heartbeat against his chest is reassuring, anyway.
“She doesn’t tolerate that from most people, you know.” Peter says from beside the couch. He’s got his arms crossed with a smile on his face. It makes the laugh lines around his eyes stand out, and Miguel feels wrong-footed, almost, to remember that Peter is almost five years older than him.
“You let her climb on whatever she wants.” Miguel says. Mayday gropes at his chin and tries to go for his fangs—an issue with any child, as they seem to love stick their grubby hands in people’s mouths, but a concern with him considering he has teeth that could take her arm off.
“Like Hobie says, it encourages her independence. Teaches her to trust herself.” Peter says, shrugging. “I’ve got my spider-sense if anything happens. I figure if Mayday is in real danger and without help it’ll be because I’m dead or dying.”
Miguel jerks his head up at that and glares. Mayday smacks her hand against his frown with pbt pbt pbt noises.
“You’re not going to die for a long while.” Miguel says shortly. He bounces idly when Mayday fusses, a subconscious hum starting up in his chest. Peter laughs and shakes his head.
“C’mon, Miguel, you know the odds.” Peter says, and he looks more sad than happy now. “Of all the different timelines you’ve been to—across the entire multiverse—how many times does Spiderman get his happy ending?”
Miguel doesn’t have a good answer for that; he doesn’t know the exact numbers, but he knows that for the universes with a Spider that died, it’s rarely after a peaceful life in old age. Instead of saying this he bares his teeth and snarls a little. It’s a knee-jerk reaction to deny the possibility of Peter dying—of anyone close to him dying, even as he knows how limp, warm body feels.
Mayday takes her chance and jerks upwards, wrapping her pudgy little hand around the lower half of his fang. Miguel instinctively opens his mouth a little wider to keep her from injuring herself on any of his teeth and tries to glare harder as Peter doubles over in laughter.
“Oh, that’s precious, that’s—hold on, let me a take a picture of that.” Peter says breathlessly, wiping a tear away as he scrambles for his phone. The usual robe-and-lounge pant ensemble is gone, and Peter actually looks well put together in a pair of well-worn jeans and crew neck. Miguel tries to blow the phone up with his mind and laments the fact that he never developed the ability.
“Alright, alright, I’ll get her to let go.” Peter says as he ambles over. He’s still smiling; it makes him look a decade younger, even with the gray hairs. Miguel thinks of his own—they came in at twenty-seven, two years after he became Spiderman—and wonders when Peter started going gray.
Peter, evidently practiced at getting Mayday to let go of something she wants to keep, deftly unwinds her fingers from around Miguel’s tooth. He steps back only enough to give them both some breathing room and flicks the edge of Miguel’s fang.
“No harm, no foul.” He says easily, and Miguel rolls his eyes.
“I know she has abilities, but I’d rather not test her healing capabilities against my venom.” Miguel says. Peter blinks and then frowns, lifting a hand to rub at his chin. He mutters “yeah, that makes sense,” and then smiles again.
“You’re like the great big lions at the zoo.” Peter says, brightening up. “All tough and scary looking, but you let the cubs climb all over you and harass you and never actually swat them. All bark, no bite. It’s adorable.”
Miguel lifts and eyebrow and exchanges a look with Mayday, who looks suitably unimpressed with her father’s babbling.
“No sé de qué estás hablando.” Miguel says to Peter, and Mayday gives a pleased little giggle, kicking her feet. She strains up to try and get a handful of Miguel’s hair, and Peter reaches out to gently redirect her hand.
“MJ says it hurts like a bi— a lot when she yanks on your hair,” Peter says, glancing down at the little hellion ensconced in Miguel’s arms. “I can take her again—I just guessed where all of the food went, by the way—you should sit down. Are you still feeling alright?”
“My health has not rapidly declined in the last thirty seconds, no.” Miguel says dryly. He still lets himself be steered to the couch though, and settles slowly and carefully against the armrest. His stitches were removed at the hospital but he doesn’t want to risk tearing the scar.
“In our conversation a few days ago,” Peter starts, settling himself in a rarely used armchair across from Miguel and Mayday, “you mentioned some things I wanted to ask about. Is that alright?”
Miguel busies himself with neatening Mayday’s haphazard curls. He wants to say no—he wants to tell Peter to fuck off, and take his beautiful, darling daughter with him, but he can’t get the words out. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to. He nods.
“You said you’ve been Spiderman for a decade. How old are you? How old were you when it happened?” Peter asks.
“I was twenty-five.” Miguel says. He draws in a slow breath through his teeth. “I’m thirty-five, now. I’ll be thirty-six in a few months. As far as I can tell I’m—there aren’t any other Spiders that were that old when they turned.”
“I was eighteen,” Peter says. “I think—Spider Noir is the closest, but he was twenty-one. And it was an—accident? On your part?”
“My coworker,” Miguel says, and his heart screams Aaron, his name is Aaron, he brought you a gift for your engagement party and remembered the date of every Mexican holiday so he could wish you well on it and took you seriously from your first day at Alchemax, and he tried to kill you, he tried to kill you! “I just didn’t—I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want to live as a blackmailed addict. I was engaged. Dana and I were—we had talked about kids.”
“Miguel,” Peter whispers, that horrible heartbroken look in his eyes from the hospital back in place, and Miguel looks down at the dozing baby on his chest. He tries to focus on the baby smell; focus on the tickle of her curls against his skin. Breathe. Breathe, nice and easy.
“Just get it over with.” Miguel says; his voice is stony but he wants to curl up into a miserable ball. He probably will, once Peter and Mayday leave. Maybe he’ll cry himself to sleep like when he found Dana—
“What else is different? Your abilities, compared to other Spiders?” Peter asks. His voice has gentled and Miguel knows he could resent him for treating him like glass, but he—when was the last time someone handled him with such care? All his life, he’s been thrown about until he developed a tough enough skin to handle it.
“I can’t stick to things.” Miguel admits. “I have to use my claws, which—my claws, and fangs, with their venom. I have organic webbing I can produce but it dehydrates me so quickly I avoid using it. I don’t know if other Spiders have all five enhanced senses, but I do. I don’t have a spider-sense either.” Peter’s head jerks a little and he gapes at him.
“No—no spider-sense?” He asks incredulously. “How do you keep up in a fight, then? How do you fight alongside other Spiders?”
“I’ve been hit enough times that I got good at dodging.” Miguel says, shrugging. “I just pay attention in group fights. Other Spiders are easy to work with since they work around me. Their spider-sense is enough to compensate for the lack of mine.”
“Miguel, that’s—“ Peter looks genuinely concerned, shifting in the armchair. “That’s really dangerous. Spiders go into a fight assuming that we all have a spider-sense. That could get you killed.”
“It hasn’t yet.” Is all Miguel says, because while he’ll tell this to Peter and maybe the kids, there’s no way he’s going to admit it to the Spider society. The less people know about him the better. He sits, expectant and unspeaking, rubbing Mayday’s back in slow circles, before Peter seems to realize Miguel isn’t going to budge on that. He groans and drags both hands down his face.
“Alright, alright—“ He concedes, and then looks up at Miguel hesitantly. “You said you were thinking about kids with your fiancée—did you—you act like you’ve had?”
Watching Gabriella grow up on a screen, with a father who has everything that Miguel doesn’t—watching a version of him come home to a beautiful baby girl— knowing that this Miguel loves his daughter more than Miguel has ever loved anything in his life—Gabriella, disappearing in his arms—
“A daughter,” Miguel whispers. He stares down at his lap. “I had a—a daughter. Gabriella. She—I lost her, because I was selfish.”
“Miguel, don’t say that—“ Peter starts, and Miguel realizes he only looks his age when he’s frowning.
“She was from a different universe.” Miguel says, and Peter shuts up. “I saw a world where I had everything I don’t have here—a version of me that has a good relationship with his mother, and a younger brother who doesn’t hate him, and a baby girl that he wouldn’t give up for the world. And I saw him die, so I—I took his place, and that universe—I destroyed it. Anomalous energy ripped it apart. All because I wanted something I’m not meant to have.”
“Hey, now, don’t start with that “not meant to have” bullshit,” Peter snaps, leaning forward in the armchair. “You gave that kid a father—she wouldn’t have had that if you didn’t step in. You shielded her from that.”
“The entire universe, Peter,” Miguel stresses, “just because I was lonely.” Peter shakes his head, hands fisted on his thighs, before he frowns and looks back up at Miguel.
“Is that when—you started the Spider society after that?” Peter asks. Miguel shrugs with the shoulder Mayday isn’t currently drooling on.
“I had already been jumping between multiverses for several months before I found her.” Miguel says. “I slowed down while I was raising her, but—yes. Because of my mistake, I decided to gather others to prevent the collapse of the multiverse, and found other Spiders to help. I didn’t want anyone to do what I did.”
“You didn’t do it maliciously, Miguel.” Peter says firmly. “There weren’t bad intentions—“
“So the means justifies the end?” Miguel asks mirthlessly, shaking his head. He blows out a shaky exhale and breathes in the scent of Mayday and Peter; milk, sweetgrass, a hint of clover and aftershave. It’s fine. Just keep breathing.
Peter gets to his feet and circles the little table Miguel has between the chair and couch. He settles beside Miguel and drapes an arm over the backrest, a hand resting along the back of one shoulder. Just like before the touch radiates warmth towards his core, until he feels suffused with it.
“If the universe is gone—if it dissolved—that means there is no end.” Peter says, and Miguel can hear the weight of two decades being Spiderman in his voice. “And if there is no end then all you’re left with is the means.”
And Miguel has no argument to that.