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Chapter Text

Miguel O'Hara was a Spiderman without a Spider-Sense. It came with becoming Spiderman through experimentation and not radioactive spider bites, like the others did.

So it was very irritating if he decided to go to HQ in the middle of the night, because there was a one hundred percent chance he would get jumpscared. 

There would always be at least one spider-person in HQ, for whatever reason, that was up at ungodly hours every day. Miguel could swear that they all did it on purpose to scare the shit out of him specifically.

Take, for example, the time Miguel walks into HQ during a midnight power outage. 

He finds a flashlight, shining it at the walls and floors as he walks through the rooms. 

Some form of anticipation and/or fear creeps up Miguel’s spine as he wanders through HQ. Which was ridiculous. Nothing about HQ would change in the middle of the night. 

Oh look, there’s a wall. Oh look, there’s a floor. Oh look, there’s someone on the ceiling— holy shit, there’s someone on the ceiling.

Miguel quietly yelps (although if you were to ask him now he would deny it vehemently) and stumbles back, swinging the flashlight back and forth, trying to find the eldritch horror that awaited him that night. 

It wasn’t there anymore. Miguel mutters quietly and speeds up his pace, desperate to leave HQ before any more jumpscares occurred. 

He doesn’t get very far. 

Miguel hears quiet scuttling from the ceiling and whips his head up, jerking the flashlight to try to pinpoint the source of the noise.

No luck.

Miguel groans, dragging a hand down his face. “ Dios, esos pequeños mierdas van a ser la muerte para mí, porqué es esta mi vida—”

A figure dangles down from top of the doorway, staring quietly at Miguel. 

Miguel screeches (although he would also deny this) and scrambles back, falling onto the floor. 

“ Dios mio , Pavitr, don’t do that—”

The boy hanging from the ceiling drops gracefully onto the floor in front of Miguel. Pavitr blinks, tilting his head and appraising Miguel’s position on the floor.

After a few seconds of Pavitr looking Miguel up and down, the boy leaps onto the ceiling and crawls away, leaving Miguel breathing heavily on the floor. 

He thinks he hears Pavitr say in that innocent voice of his, “Did you get it?”

He drops his face into his hands and groans again.

Chapter Text

Miguel was prepared this time. 

By prepared, he means keeping the lights in HQ on at full blast. He could take some sensory overload if it meant he didn’t get jumpscared again. And anyway, LYLA wasn’t there to tell him about the electricity bills shooting through the roof. It was fine.

What wasn’t fine was when Miguel walks through hallways and he starts hearing hissing coming from behind him. 

Miguel skillfully manages to tame the flinch that followed, and whips around to catch whichever Spider tried to scare him, red-handed.

There was no Spider there.

Miguel, now thoroughly embarrassed and very grateful that nobody was there to see him, turns around and tries to act normal. 

Maybe he was hallucinating. Or maybe something was wrong with the electricity from having the lights on at full blast. Maybe it was sensory overload.

The hissing follows him through the hallways, stopping and starting abruptly every few minutes. It follows him into his office. Then the thing following him starts to hiss from different areas of his office.

Miguel groans, trying to follow the hissing noises so he could at least put a stop to them. (He looks ridiculous, a grown man trying to follow a bunch of noises that were coming from around his office. He thinks he hears LYLA giggling at one point, but after a thorough sweep of his office, he decides that, no, LYLA is not here). The hissing is finally gone, anyway, so there’s really no point.

He sighs, resolving to sit down and get some work done. As he pulls up a chair, crossing his legs and reaching for his keyboard, he hears a very loud hissing noise.

From directly under where he was sitting.

Miguel screams, panicking at the thought of whatever horror was awaiting him under his desk. It only gets worse when he feels a small hand grab his ankle, oh great, there’s an actual thing under my desk and I’m not just hallucinating .

Miguel shakes the hand off his leg, and scrambles back on all fours, trying to get a look at the thing under his desk.

It’s not there anymore.

He feels the same hand on his shoulder and shrieks again, falling backwards into his swivel chair.

Miguel grabs the arm of the chair to steady himself, and then he realizes what’s been scaring him.

Miles.

The fucking kid had gone invisible on him.

“ Hola, Tio. ¿Como estas?” The kid says, in perfect Spanish. “Es una noche bonita.” 

“Comer mierta.” Miguel manages to spit out through his near heart attack. 

Miles giggles— fucking giggles— and sprints away into the living area of HQ. 

“Hey! Didja get that?!” Miguel swears he could hear Miles saying in the distance. The same thing Pavitr had said. 

What the fuck is going on?

Chapter Text

Miguel was certain that he wouldn’t get jumpscared by any of his Spider-kids anymore, because he instructed all of them to get out of HQ when it was nine, unless it was for missions.

Normally, they wouldn’t listen. But tonight, Miguel had personally tucked them all in after a late movie night.

(LYLA had gotten videos of him singing Spanish lullabies at Miles’ request and running his fingers through Gwen and Pavitr’s hair to get them to sleep. Hobie refused any contact with his hair, so Miguel opted for rubbing soothing circles on his back. It worked wonders.) 

In a horrifically unwise decision, Miguel walked into the HQ that was devoid of any teenagers. No children to jumpscare me tonight, he thinks. I can finally get work done.

He thinks wrong. 

Miguel, unfortunately, did not account for the one adult in his strike force that would happily engage in shenanigans with the kids.

As Miguel walks through the cafeteria, he sighs in relief at not being hindered by unruly spiderkids. 

Suddenly, he spots something moving at the end of the training hall.

Miguel, well trained from multiple late night encounters from the spider-kids, decides to tread cautiously. He slowly walks forward, eyes and ears on high alert and fists raised. 

He does not come across chaotic spider-children. He does not come across a multi-dimensional threat either. 

He walks closer and comes face to face with a moving building. 

Miguel, thankfully, does not screech like a banshee this time. He merely yelps, curses, and stumbles back, falling on his ass. 

He gets a quick glimpse of bright pink under the building before it’s dropped unceremoniously back onto the ground. 

Miguel hears barely concealed laughter as Peter’s footsteps fade back into a hallway.

“LYLA, did the kids get it?” Miguel hears Peter say, loud and clear. But still very cryptic.

Did the kids get what?

What are they planning???

And did you break the building, please don’t tell me you broke the building, insurance will not cover it, why the fuck am I Spider-man again, dios por favor ayudame—

Chapter Text

“Margo? Margo, are you still here?”

Miguel walked into the tech center. “Margo, I need your help with this—”

He stops mid-sentence and looks around. “Kid?”

Upon realizing that Margo wasn’t here anymore, Miguel sighs and decides to go relax on the roof. He had finished all of his work anyway, a little relaxation couldn’t hurt. 

He walks up the ungodly amount of stairs to the terrace. Considering how everyone in this building could either swing or easily climb to the top of the building, he isn’t sure why there are stairs. Or why Miguel is using the stairs himself.

Finally reaching the terrace, Miguel slides down against a wall, settling on the ground. He sighs, leaning his head back. 

“LYLA?” He asks, waiting for the immediate response of his AI.

She doesn’t respond.

“ Ay, dios mío, ¿dónde están todos hoy? ” Miguel mumbles to himself, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

Miguel’s ears suddenly pick up a soft whistling sound. He looks down, searching the ground for anything. Or anyone.  “ Que —”

The whistling gets louder. Then it stops abruptly. 

“Hey, Miguel!” Margo Kess says brightly, staring Miguel directly in the eyes. 

Miguel screams and shoots up, leaping to the top of a nearby wall. Margo laughs, winks, and jumps back down again. 

“Did Gayatri get it?” He hears Margo say, her words carried up by the wind. 

How did she even do that—the roof is over fifty feet high???

Chapter Text

“Pavitr, you in?”

“Bikul.”

“Uh, what—”

“Yes, Hobie, I’m in.”

It’s been one night. One peaceful night, without any Spider-kid (or adult, in Peter’s case) shenanigans.  

It was bliss. 

Of course, all that glitters isn’t gold ( ay, dios mio, the kids were rubbing off on him.)

Miguel, against his better judgment, still goes into HQ at the dead of night. After all, work stops for nobody.

He makes it to his office without any mishaps, just as the night before. 

“ Ah, otra noche sin distracciones.” Miguel says to himself, falling back onto the couch and pulling out his laptop to finish paperwork. 

Less than 30 seconds later, he hears the sound of glass shattering and a yelp.

“ Mierta ,” Miguel says, shutting off his laptop and going off to take a look at what was causing the commotion. “ Si es uno de los niños otra vez, lo juro por dios— ”

He walks out of his office and into the hallway, and finds Pavitr sprawled on the floor, red seeping from under him and his wrists cinched tightly behind his back.

“Kid? Pavitr ?” His fingers start clenching, his breath catches in his throat, and— no, no, no, not another one, not another kid —

And because he lacks the coveted spidey-sense , he doesn’t realize he’s stepping on the rope until it’s too late. 

He’s yanked upward by his ankle, his sweatshirt falling into his face. 

“ MIERTA, FUCKING HELL —”

He twists himself around and spots Pavitr, standing up carefully.

“Pavitr! Pav, are you—”

He then realizes the boy’s not crying. He’s laughing. Laughing so hard that tears are coming out of his eyes. He stares at Pavitr, trying to comprehend the endearing giggles, (argh—no—when did I get so soft—) and what exactly the kid was laughing at.

“What—”

Upon seeing Miguel’s  extremely confused expression, Pavitr breaks down in laughter again. He pulls his wrists apart, easily snapping the ropes binding him. 

“Do you like the paint, uncle? I think it’s a pretty good imitation of blood!”

“Pavitr, YOU LITTLE—”

And then a light switch was flicked on, someone walking towards them—someone wearing very tall, very clunky platform boots—and Miguel began to feel himself starting to spin in a fucking circle. 

Hobie was dead the moment Miguel freed himself.

“Pretty good, innit?” He asks Pavitr, who is still standing there with that obnoxiously cheerful smile. “Thought he might not fall for it, but the poor bloke walked straight into it.”

“Yeah!! Did they get it, though?”

“Oh, they better have. I don’t think even Miguel’s daft enough to fall for the trap a second time.” Hobie raises an eyebrow and nods towards the man, who is currently trying to kill him with the power of angry glaring. 

“I’M RIGHT HERE!” Miguel resorts to yelling, trying in vain to stop spinning. It doesn’t work. Hobie snickers and clicks a picture, Miguel’s ankle suspended in the air, his arms crossed and an angry expression on his face. Miguel tries to grab the phone, but Hobie steps out of the way, seconds before Miguel could even move to grab it. 

Fucking spider sense.

“Also, setting all this,” Hobie gestures towards the rope trap with something akin to pride, ignoring the fuming spinning Spider-Man currently in said rope trap. “Took a bloody long time, LYLA kept trying to help me but I reckon she got in the way.”  

Miguel tries to grab the phone, but misses by 5 feet, only succeeding in swinging himself forward with enough force that he bumps into the wall on the return swing. 

Pavitr giggles again. Hobie throws an arm around Pavitr, and the two boys walk back to the bedrooms.

“I am going to kill them both.” Miguel mutters, shifting around in an attempt to free himself. “And who the fuck were they talking about?”

Chapter Text

Peter is a father. A fact that Miguel decidedly envies very much, which is why he lets it slide when Peter brings his child to HQ. Even if HQ is probably the worst place to bring a child to. 

Then again, HQ is probably the only place that could handle Mayday Parker.

“Mayday! Bad! We do not climb to the top of ceiling beams!” Miguel hears Peter shouting.  He opens his office door to find Mayday clinging onto a beam and babbling happily, her father shouting at her in an attempt to coax her down.

Miguel decides he wants no part of this and shuts the door before Peter ropes him into capturing Mayday duty.

Peter’s eyes follow Miguel as he slams the door to his office. 

“The plan is in motion.” Peter whispers into his watch. “Over and out.”

Gwen groans through the watch while Pavitr giggles. “Peter, you don’t have to say—”

Peter cuts the call. 

It’s late at night when Miguel finally finishes his work. He heads into the common room, with every intent of going to sleep, when a sudden whoosh noise stops him.

Accompanied by the sound of shrill giggling. 

And by the sound of someone running very fast .

Miguel screams, leaping a solid 7 feet in the air, hits his head on the ceiling, and ends up clinging to the wall like his life depends on it, his claws digging into the metal.

It seems to help. The giggling is gone, and he can’t hear anything else. Miguel starts to relax, but then, he feels the air shifting behind him. 

Miguel freezes. He feels the thing— person? —getting closer and shrieks, scrambling across the beam.

It’s gone.

Miguel breathes a sigh of relief. 

A hand suddenly lands on his head. He flinches, squeezing his eyes shut and hoping he’s not killed by a demon child of all things. Then, the tiny hand begins lightly patting his head, small fingers curling around his hair.

Ay, dios mio.

“Hello, Mayday.” Miguel lets out a long suffering sigh, looking up and promptly almost getting the child’s finger stuck in his eyeball. 

Mayday coos, moving her fingers around in his hair, laughing now that Tio Miguel had noticed her. 

Miguel sighs once more and somehow finds a way to get off the wall while still keeping Mayday balanced on his head. He gently pulls her off his hair, setting her on the ground. 

“Niña. Qué haces despierta tan tarde?” Miguel softly scolds the girl, kneeling down to eye level. “Dónde está tu papá?” 

The child giggles, ignoring her uncle figure and running away into the darkness.

“Dada…dada get it?” He faintly hears Mayday say as she sprints away. 

Even the kid’s saying it? ¿Que carajo están haciendo???

Chapter Text

“LYLA, get ready,” Gwen whispers. “Make sure it’s blood red, okay?” 

“Got it, Gweny.” LYLA says, pulling up a few buttons around her. “Miguel is approaching the hallway. Turning red hallway light on right…now.”

“What the—LYLA, what’s the deal with all the red?” Miguel calls out, very tired, his brain very much not functioning. “LYLA, do we have any empanadas left?”

No response from his AI. Fine then. He’ll just walk through HQ while it’s bathed in blood red light. At night. Nothing terrifying there. 

“The light. Why. Mi ojos. They hurt. I used to like the color red. I’m tired.” Miguel mumbles to himself, shuffling through the hallways to the kitchen, praying to God (if He was up there) that there would be late night munchies in some fridge.

Miguel, for once in his short and exhausting life, gets what he wants. There is a small styrofoam container in one of the fridges that houses two cold empanadas.

He sighs in relief, takes the empanadas, shoves them in the microwave, and waits for his midnight snack to get to a suitably hot temperature.

He then startles at the sound of something getting knocked over and someone’s voice softly cursing, followed by “what was that?!” from someone else. Miguel groans, grabs his (now properly heated) empanadas, and starts towards the noise. 

“Don’t fuck with me, pendejo.” Miguel, very sleepy, very hungry, and very much wanting to go home, shouts at what seems to be nothing. “I just want to eat my food and sleep. Please. If there is a god, please let me go home in peace for once.” 

He hears a snicker, before it’s quickly covered up with an ill-disguised cough. Miguel groans for what could be the 37th time that night, dragging a hand over his face. 

“Alright, you know what, just show yourself!” He tries to yell (it comes out as a weak squawk), waving the hand that’s not holding the empanadas around. “I cannot do this tonight.”

No response. 

Miguel drops his arm and decides that it’s nothing, and that he’s just hallucinating. He turns around to go, trying to communicate with LYLA so she can shut off the damn red lights.

“LYLA, come on, why is everything still re—WHAT THE FUCK—” Miguel shrieks, throwing the container that contains his precious empanadas and scrambling backwards.

“Hey.” Someone says in the corner, hanging upside down. They’re backlit by the red light, their suit glowing dark red around the edges. Their voice is artificially pitched way, way down, so Miguel can’t tell who’s talking. “Whassup?” 

Miguel screams again, watching as the figure crawls towards him, arching its back and twisting its limbs in a way that looks absolutely demonic. The thing is scuttling even faster towards Miguel, and making absolutely no sound (which is even more unsettling).

In an absolutely desperate attempt to defend himself, Miguel shoots a web at one of his (now dirty) empanadas, dragging it into his hand and throwing it at the figure. 

Despite his sleepiness, and despite the screwy light, he manages to hit the person straight in the face with the poor empanada, eliciting a loud “Ow!” 

Miguel pulls himself up and sprints away to his office, slamming the door behind him.

And in the safety of his office, he realizes something very, very important.

Gwendolyn Stacy. You are in so much trouble.

He sighs, mourning the loss of his empanadas, when he turns around and comes face to face with, speak of the devil, the very person tormenting him on his nightly escapades.

“Hey!” 

“Turning my own AI against me?” Miguel asks tiredly. “Very smart of you, Gwendolyn . How did you even convince LYLA?”

“Not that hard.” Gwen shrugged, hanging upside down, her hair flopping in her face. “And also—hey, LYLA! Did you get it?”

“Did she—dios, what is up with you children and saying that?! What is going on that I don’t know about?!”

LYLA chirps to life in the background. “Affirmative. Uploading it to ANGRY MEXICAN SPIDER BLOOPERS .” 

“Uploading it to—UPLOADING IT TO WHAT?!”

“Byeee!” Gwen quickly leaps towards the ceiling, dodging out of Miguel’s desperate attempts to catch her.

Angry Mexican spider bloopers? What the hell?

Chapter Text

“Noir, hand me the—”

Noir tosses the screwdriver to Peni and she catches it without even looking. “Thanks.” 

Peni tightens one last screw and giggles as she admires her handiwork. “Done! Here you go, Petey.”

Noir tips his hat. “Thank you, m’lady.”

Peni laughs. “Of course, my good sir,” she says, holding up her creation. “Hey, Hammy, what do you think of it?”

“It’s the single best thing I’ve seen in my entire existence.”

Hams makes the very life-like robotic recreation of the infamous doll Annabelle wave her hand. Peni laughs and takes the robot doll back, pointing to the monitors displayed on the security screens. “Miguel should be coming by anyyyyy minute now. Places!” Peni sprints to SP//DR and has the bot leap up onto one of the ceiling beams, Noir and Ham following them. 

They’ve set up a litany of old school, completely ridiculous, Rube Goldberg machines in the middle of the hallway, with the end goal being to dump a bucket of water on Miguel’s head. Hammy, very proudly, told the other two that he came up with the entire thing on the spot.

However, if that didn’t work (because this prank was a bit more noticeable than the others), Peni and Noir would send in the little doll to spook Miguel. A fun bonus with making your own doll: it was completely remote-controlled and also had a system where Noir could talk through the doll. And of course, who wouldn’t be scared of a doll fully able to walk and talk?

“Hammy, do you have the script?” Noir whispers, fiddling with the controls of the recorder.

“Yes. Are you ready?”

Noir nods and presses himself against the beam. “Okay, Peni, can you break something?”

Peni nods and proceeds to drop a vase onto the ground.

“I—Okay.”

“Oooh, Peni, do you have a hammerspace for vases?”

“Shush! Someone’s coming!”

Miguel, obviously, sees the entire contraption from yards away and just walks around the mass of levers and ramps and brightly colored balls. “Porker, I know it’s you! Did you think I wouldn’t be able to notice—” In the midst of his gloating, Miguel neglects to look at the floor in front of him, and trips the wire.

Miguel ends up drenched and with a bucket on his head. “I should’ve known.” He sighs, resigned to his fate. He takes the bucket off his head, dropping it with a clang. 

Suddenly, from the darkness, glowing red eyes. 

“WHAT THE FU—”

“Do you feel it? Your soul decaying with every step you take and every breath you breathe?”

A tiny figure emerges, with plaited braids and a ruffled white dress, hands gently resting at her side. And she’s walking. By herself.

Miguel’s seen quite a lot of things in his life, but a walking, talking doll is a new one. 

“ The people are dying in the streets as we speak. Rations are running low.” The figure’s head twists sharply. “The struggle for survival continues.” 

“ I fear we may not make it to next Sunday.” With that chilling sentence, the doll rushes at Miguel, clawed fingers outstretched and eyes wide and glowing.

Miguel screams, like a child, and sprints back to the safety of his office.

He doesn’t even stay long enough to see Peni, Ham, and Noir falling off the ceiling beams one by one, losing their stickiness in their laughter. 

“OH—OH, DID YOU SEE THE LOOK ON HIS FACE?!” Peni howls, tumbling out of SP//DER. She pushes some buttons at random, making the doll wobble, do some sort of obscure dance from the future, and then fall over. 

Noir is cackling, still holding the recorder. “ OH, LYLA—LYLA—DID YOU GET THAT?” He says, still talking through the doll. He gasps, dropping the recorder to clutch his sides. 

A projection of LYLA appears out of SP//DER, and Peni can see that LYLA also has tears of laughter on her face.

“Yes, I did! That’s the last one, I believe. TIME TO COMPILE !”

Chapter Text

Miguel is tired. Miguel is so very tired. But, alas, work waits for no man, which is why he’s doing paperwork on his birthday.

It’s fine. This is fine. This is how it’s always been for the past few years, on his birthday. He’ll…after he’s done with work, he’ll go and treat himself to a cupcake, watch a shitty telenovela, or something like that.

He gets an email from Jess. It’s a good thing he’s finished, otherwise he would have just let it rot in his inbox. 

See the file attached for a review on maintenance in the eastern building.

He didn’t even know the eastern building needed maintenance, but very well. There’s a file attached in the email. He clicks it.

Almost immediately, his screen is locked. It’s not a PDF file—it’s a video file. A video file of what? The video explodes into full-screen, autoplaying on its own.

“¿Qué carajo?” Miguel mutters, clicking in vain in an attempt to exit out of the video. “ Qué es esto—”

And then the video begins to play. 

And a hundred puzzle pieces begin clicking together in his mind.

Footage of himself from the perspective of the kids—and Peter—as they scare him . Over and over and over again. How long had they been planning this?

The video is five minutes long, complete with sound effects and closeups on his frightened face and all. He is mildly impressed by whoever edited this together. It’s done very well. 

He sighs as he watches him scream, run away, throw things. This is not what he should look like. He cannot let this footage get out to the other spiderpeople. 

Miguel will admit though, it is kind of funny. He even chuckles at some points. That Rube Goldberg machine that Porker and Peni made did look impressive. 

The video ends with credits. 

Participants: Pavitr Prabhakar, Miles Morales, Peter Parker, Margo Kess, Hobie Brown, Gwen Stacy. Guest appearance: Mayday Parker. Camera crew: Gayatri Singh. Editor: Jessica Drew.

Editor: Jessica Drew?!

“Jess,” Miguel groans out loud. “Not you too.”

The credits fade away, and then the screen erupts into an explosion of color and sound, with a loud “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” coming from the screen, as well as—

As well as inside his room?!

Miguel screeches , trying to get away from the source of all the bright lights and noise, trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and then there’s a bunch of people in his office, there’s confetti being blown everywhere, and there’s—

“Happy birthday, Tio!” Miles says proudly, holding a birthday cake out to him. “Tres leches!”

“One year closer to death,” Hobie chuckles, a hand on Miles’ shoulder. 

“We would have made it ourselves, but Gwen nearly burned the kitchen down!” Pavitr chimes in, ruffling Gwen’s hair. 

“I did not nearly burn it down!” Gwen shouts back, laughing and noogieing Pavitr back.

“You did!” Margo joins in, slamming her hands down on Gwen’s shoulders. “I got it allll on video, Gwendy!” 

“How…” Miguel is at a loss for words. “You…I’m going to… Dios mio. ”

“Make a wish,” Peter says, pushing Miles towards Miguel. Mayday is in her baby carrier, babbling and clapping. Jess is standing behind him, smirking, like she knew that he would want something special for his birthday, even if he’s never outright said it. Peni and Noir and Porker are all giggling, holding up their phones to record this as well.

“Nice gift, huh?” LYLA asks him, appearing on his shoulder. “The idiots actually care about you.”

“Shut up,” Miguel says, but there’s no bite to his words. 

“Make a wish!” all the kids scream, eyes wide with delight. “C’mon, Miguel, make a wish!”

So Miguel closes his eyes, blows out his candles, and makes a wish.

I wish for nothing about this to change.