Chapter Text
Monitoring the constantly fluctuating fabric of each individual universe was, to put it simply, a gargantuan job. A job so large that, even for someone who had a digital assistant who kept things in decent order, it was a struggle to relax. However, one minor event of a universe glitching and spreading spider-people into alternate realities where they shouldn’t be? That created a whole host of problems that were much harder to fix alone.
Regardless, Miguel O’Hara had taken on the task of solving the issues himself, due to an all-too-deep understanding of how things could crumble if not fixed. But it was proving to be a lot for just himself and his assistant to handle. Thus he began to recruit other Spider-men (and other spider-folk) under his command to help correct any issues that arose.
He knew only a handful of them, really, and he couldn’t even recall all the names of the ones he did know. If he was honest, most of them tended to blend together; there were only so many variations of red, blue, and black to choose from, and most were named Spider-Man. The horse was a nice touch. It was hard to forget a literal car, or a dinosaur. Either way, he tended to collaborate with the others only when positively necessary.
Meeting new spider-folk was such a common occurrence for him at this point that it became no different than any other day. Dealing with an anomaly in one of the many universes — Earth-1895B — and somewhat approving of the spider-powered resident who occupied that world. He begrudgingly admitted that, from what he could tell, she had done a good job. Considering it was somewhat in the early stages of the Spider Society (that’s what he had decided to call it on a whim, planning to recruit several dozen more heroes), he offered her a place on the team.
She seemed somewhat quiet and reserved, unlike a majority of the spider-folk he had met before. He had forgotten her name before it was even out of her mouth, his watch beeping abruptly, alerting him to another anomaly. He left before even getting a chance to repeat it. From what he did gather, she went by a different name other than “Spider-Girl” or “Spiderwoman”, but that was all he could remember. Soon enough, she totally slipped from his mind.
The next time he had met her, she had approached him while he was actively monitoring large disturbances, organizing teams, and figuring out methods for preventing universes collapsing. Things had gotten quite out of hand with Gwen Stacy, and he was full of impatience when it came to dealing with her messes. He hadn’t slept in… who knows. Tiredness had dragged at his eyes, his shoulders tight with stress. The only mild comfort he got was from his saved videos of his daughter, but that hardly helped these days, more acting as a drive to continue preventing such messes.
Admittedly, he had assumed the voice behind him was Gwen herself, coming to apologize when she cleared her throat.
“I’m not going to talk to you right now,” Miguel had snapped sternly, not even bothering to face her. But there was only silence that followed, which usually wasn’t the case with Gwen.
Eventually however, he did turn, and was immediately surprised to see someone else standing there, near the entrance to the large room. Far too prideful, he didn’t apologize, but he did sigh and pry his eyes from the yellow screens for a moment. That was a bit embarrassing.
“I thought you were Gwen Stacy. Do you have a report…?” He couldn’t even pin a name to her, but she did look quite a bit different than the other Spiderwomen. Her suit wasn’t black or blue or red, but rather coral and iridescent green, and she was covered with reflective diamond-shaped patches.
“Um, Sequin Spider,” she replied hesitantly. The name had immediately clicked when she said it, reminding him of when they had briefly fought together in her world. He realized that her suit was different now, so it was a lot harder to recall her at first.
It seemed as though she was half expecting to receive some sort of scathing remark from him, but he was far too tired to really worry about it. He simply waited for clarification on why she was there.
Silence spanned for just a beat too long, but eventually she broke it. “S-sorry. I, uh… I just wanted to see if you… were… doing okay? Like, hydrating? Have you had anything to eat?”
The genuine question caused him to sort of… blank. Or at least, he had no response, surprised. Caught off guard. Perplexed. “Ah… why?”
“Forgive me for being a bit… um. Straightforward. You’re obviously stressed and you spend a lot of time in here, and I know it’s not my business but I don’t often see you in the cafeteria and I know they have good coffee there so I guess I find it sort of weird that you’re the only one I haven’t seen actually drink it. Then I got to wondering if… you even like… really drink normal stuff like I do.” The words seemed to tumble out of her now. It was clear she was a bit embarrassed, fidgeting with one of what looked to be silver web shooter cuffs around her wrist.
He sighed, rubbing his face a bit. It was true that he hadn’t really eaten or drunk much since he started. Whenever that was. “I do drink normal things, yes. Eat normal food, drink normal things. Is that all you came to ask?”
The way most spiders created their masks often betrayed their true emotions. Whether it be a yellow visor like Jess’ Spider-woman outfit, or just the technology behind the more expressive suits, it was usually a defining characteristic. For Sequin, it wasn’t any different. Her eyes quickly changed into semi-circles and drooped. “Well— yeah, I guess it was.”
But almost as quickly as that happened, she frowned, and pointed at him. “What? No! That’s not all I was going to ask. What, you think I’m just going to be like ‘oh have you eaten or drank anything? No? Okay bye’! I’m going to get you food.”
This wasn’t the first person to try and drag him away. “I don’t have time—“
She cut him off right there. “No, I’m not making you leave. You’re busy. You’re doing important things. I’m going to get you food. Do you like coffee? Sugary coffee?”
Okay, maybe that was a bit new. “I— Whatever.”
“I’ll take that as a maybe. I have the perfect meal in mind.” And then she was gone, having used her teleportation band to presumably head back to her own universe. Didn’t she say the food in the cafeteria was good-? Whatever.
LYLA flitted into existence somewhere behind his shoulder. “You don’t usually let people get stuff for you.”
“No. I didn’t let her either. She wanted to and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I also don’t usually get people who aren’t trying to pull me from my work,” he huffed, turning back to his screens.
“She should try! Maybe you’ll listen!” LYLA smiled cheekily, but did disappear when Miguel grumbled and swatted at her.
It didn’t take long for Sequin to return with a brown bag and a drink in hand. “You like chicken I hope?”
He sighed and stretched a bit, turning towards the entrance, only to come face-to-face with Sequin, who was hanging upside down just over a foot in front of him. Startled, he swiped out towards her on instinct, claws extended, failing to realize she was holding out food to him.
At least her instinct was just as quick as his, and she flipped back. Having misjudged the landing, her heels were off the edge of his platform and she only regained her balance after teetering. “Dude! What the hell. Okay. Sorry for sneaking up on you. I just didn’t want to wait for your platform to lower. It’s so slow.”
It was the slightest bit embarrassing that he had done that. But he was distracted by the smell of food and the drink in hand. “What do you have?”
“Food, like I said. I got you a wrap with lettuce and tomato — you can pick those out if you’re not a salad kind of guy — but it also has chicken and avocado and bacon.” She handed him the bag. “And a donut! They’re all in here. I didn’t know what type you like so I asked for honey glazed.”
She didn’t seem to register that she was still holding the drink for a few seconds, before catching it out of the corner in her eye, and quickly apologizing to hand it over. “It’s an ice capp! They're so good. I know I asked if you like sweet coffee, but I figure sweet iced coffee is better for energy and withholding sleep.”
He raised an eyebrow, looking a bit incredulous. “You seem to know quite a bit about staying awake.”
“Ah, well, you know how teachers are,” Sequin shrugged, crossing her arms. “I’ve had many sleepless nights over grading papers.”
“You’re a teacher?” That tidbit of information did seem a bit unbelievable to Miguel for some reason. She didn’t look like a teacher to him, though honestly he always assumed spider-folk were teenagers until proven otherwise.
“High school teacher, yes! The school doesn’t have a lot of funds, so I cover two subjects,” she explained. Out of nowhere, a quiet beeping came from her wrist, and she sighed quietly. A little wristwatch, built into her web shooters, and it was clearly an alarm or timer. “Dang. Alright, I’ll head out now. Hope you like those things, and if you don’t, don’t worry about it, just toss it!”
And then she was gone. It was a bit odd to him considering he usually had to ignore or dismiss people, but Sequin did say she was a teacher, so it made sense that she’d have to limit her time at the Spider Society. If he recalled, there was a note on her Spider Society profile that said the times she could help out and the times she was available in universal time.
A small part of his mind wondered if she would come back. Another hoped she didn’t.
The biggest part of him told him he really needed to get back to work.
It was a while before he had heard anything from Sequin Spider, but he was so engrossed in his work that he didn’t have much time to think about it. Faces around the Society always came and went, so soon enough he had forgotten about everything that went down. There were more important things to focus on.
Only, he didn’t account for the fact that she decided to make sure he was eating every so often.
He heard her long before she had even started to descend on a long string of spider silk, but even as he watched her as she lowered herself from his ceiling, he didn’t try to stop her.
“What are you doing.”
It didn’t sound like a question, but Sequin shrugged. “Food again.”
He stared dubiously at the lunchbox in her hand as she held it out towards him. “I don’t need handouts.”
“This isn’t a handout, it’s…” She blanked for a second, clearly thinking…. “It’s a peace offering.”
When he didn’t make the move to take it, she set it on the ground near his feet. He just stared down at it, unimpressed. “Looks like a handout to me.”
“Technically, it can’t be, since you didn’t take it out of my hand, I dropped it!” She decided, already starting to ascend. “Anyway, it’s uh, a family recipe for stir fry. Just some veggies and chicken and rice. Did you like the ice capp?”
“It was sugary,” he muttered, staring down at the lunch box in clear conflict. “It kept me awake.”
Sequin scoffed. “That’s what you wanted, no? Do you want one now?”
What, now she was offering him more?
“…Fine.”