Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

All tucked in?

Yep! Thank you.

Good night, sweetie. 

Wait, I want a story!

Alright, alright. One story. What do you want to hear?

Can I have the one about the Ara— the—

The Arachnae?

Yeah, those. 

…

Please, Mommy?

…Of course. As long as it won’t scare you. 

Don’t worry. I know it’s make-believe. You know that too, right? You look scared. 

I’m not scared, sweetheart. I’m just tired. So one story, then we both go to sleep. 

Okay. 

Here we go. 

People say there are strange creatures that live in the subway system, roaming the streets of New York City at night. They’re almost human, but not quite. They have claws instead of fingers, and their teeth are sharp like fangs. Their pupils are blown out, huge and pitch black, until you can barely see the color of their eyes. They walk wrong, too, like they don’t know how to walk like humans. Instead, they have janky movements, yet they’re still fast and agile at the same time. Some say they’ve seen them crawling on walls and ceilings, like spiders. That’s why they’re called the Arachnae. 

That sounds really cool. 

No. 

Why not?

The Arachnae, they’re… they’re monsters. The only way to stop them from hurting you is to insist that they leave, or that they’re not really the person they take the form of, and then they have no choice but to leave you alone. You can’t record them because they always look like normal people in photos and videos. That’s why they’re just rumors; no one can prove they’re real. 

Where do they come from?

Well… apparently, all it takes is a spider bite. 

Daddy always liked spiders. 

Daddy’s not here anymore. 

…

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. What I meant is that… it’s just you and me, together. MJ and May. See, it even rhymes. 

Mommy, what if Daddy is an Arachnae?

Oh, sweetie… Don’t you remember? It’s just make-believe. 

//

Miles always thought that using flickering white LEDs as lighting was underrated, but this felt different. He set the white can of spray paint on the ground with a slight thunk. Then he stepped back, hands on hips, to admire his work. 

expectations

“I like it,” said Uncle Aaron, nodding slowly, arms crossed. “I like it a lot.”

Miles gave a little chuckle, secretly overjoyed at the compliment. “Thanks.” He hesitated. “I mean, I know it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense, but—”

“Nah,” Uncle Aaron cut him off with a proud smile. “It makes a lot of sense.”

“Yeah?”

“For sure.” The more Uncle Aaron took in the artwork, the wider his smile grew. Miles found himself beaming, too. He’d been stressed out of his mind at his new school and all the work that came with it. At least, he thought, he had his art to fall back on. That, and this little haven Uncle Aaron had introduced to him: the abandoned lower level of the Nevins Street station.

Miles pulled his phone out of his pocket. He raised it, carefully adjusting the camera until the graffiti was perfectly framed, and took a photo, at which point he was, unexpectedly, bitten by a spider. 

“Ow— what?” Miles sucked his teeth, mildly annoyed, and flicked the spider away. He stuffed his phone back into his pocket. 

“Careful,” Uncle Aaron commented, glancing sideways at him. “Get bit by the wrong spider and you’ll turn.”

“You know I don’t believe in any of that,” Miles scoffed. 

“Doesn’t mean it ain’t true,” Uncle Aaron replied, shrugging. 

“Seriously? You’re still on that?” Uncle Aaron’s face didn’t change. Miles laughed incredulously. “Arachnae. People turning into spider monsters. In New York.”

“People have seen them, that’s all I’m saying,” Uncle Aaron said. “Seen them crawling around these subways.”

“That’s probably just homeless people, man,” Miles countered. “And there’s literally no proof.”

“Whatever, man.” Uncle Aaron shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. 

“No, you don’t get to ‘whatever, man’ me. I’m saying ‘whatever, man’,” Miles shot back, pointing at him. Uncle Aaron laughed. The sound echoed in the dark. “You’re crazy.”

“Alright, well, when you get jumped by one of those things—”

“Oh my god, do you hear yourself right now—”

“—don’t come crawling back to me. That’s all! That’s all I’m saying.”

“Nah, that’s some bullshit,” Miles laughed. Uncle Aaron gave him a playful punch. 

“Watch your language,” he said, raising an eyebrow. 

“Oh, come on.”

“Don’t play.”

“What are you, my dad?” Miles teased lightheartedly. 

“No, but I’m your uncle,” Uncle Aaron responded, “and you’d better listen when I tell you not to run your mouth.”

“Okay, okay.” Miles rolled his eyes, grinning. “Can’t believe I have to follow orders from someone who believes in Arachnae, though.” 

//

Miles woke up late the next morning. He’d snoozed his alarm clock one, two, three, four times before his roommate, Ganke, chucked an apple at him, calling out, “Miles, bro, class starts in five.”

Miles jolted upright out of bed, slamming his head against the ceiling. Ganke was already opening the door. Miles rubbed his head. 

“Five minutes? Are you kidding?”

“Nope,” he replied without turning. He shut the door behind him. “Good luck.”

Shit. 

Miles scrambled out of bed, practically tumbling onto the floor, and frantically threw on his uniform. Preppy ass school. He despised uniforms. If I didn’t have to wear this stupid blazer and tie, I could be in class right now. His blazer felt especially uncomfortable today, as if it was too short at the sleeves, even though Miles could tell it fit him fine. He figured it was probably the stress. Or puberty.

In fact, his morning didn’t get any better from there.  Miles felt like he was stumbling over his own feet as he stuffed his binder into his bag, clumsy and uncoordinated. He clenched the apple in his mouth as he zipped up his backpack and slung it over his shoulder, hurrying out the door into the hall just as the bell rang. Shit, shit, shit. Miles’s stomach lurched. His first period class was across the school. He took an irritated bite of the apple Ganke had thrown at him, at least grateful for the makeshift breakfast, and booked it down the corridors. 

When he finally made it to his English classroom, he was winded, his collar disheveled and his apple half-eaten. He tossed it into a nearby trash bin and opened the door, bracing himself for a lecture. Ten minutes late. 

When he stepped into the classroom, though, he was met with stares. They weren’t you’re-about-to-get-your-ass-handed-to-you stares, though. They were stares of horror, of confusion, of disbelief. Miles shrank in on himself a little, embarrassed. 

“Hey, guys,” he said slowly, giving a tiny wave. A few people gasped. One girl pointed at his hand. Miles looked down. He didn’t see anything wrong with it. He glanced up at the class again, baffled. They looked like they’d seen a ghost. One kid silently pulled out his phone and snapped a photo. Miles furrowed his brow. “I’m sorry, did I interrupt something?”

“Found it!” the teacher exclaimed from the back of the classroom, where she’d been rummaging through her closet. She heaved a bin of books off one of the shelves, grunting with the effort. “In this box is a copy of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, one for each of you to take—”

Miles’s teacher turned around and stopped mid-sentence, shocked, when she saw him. Her jaw dropped. Miles gave a sheepish smile, gaining more gasps from his classmates. 

“Uh, sorry I’m late,” Miles stammered, bewildered. His teacher looked like she was about to drop her books. “Um. I’ll just sit down—”

He started walking toward his empty seat. The girl who sat next to him shifted away and he stopped, flustered. 

“What is going on? Y’all are looking at me like I’m a monster or something,” Miles demanded. His peers glanced at each other nervously. His teacher opened her mouth, then closed it. “Is this some kind of joke? Do I have something in my teeth?” 

“Sorta,” one girl mumbled. The boy behind her smacked her shoulder, eyes wide. Miles pulled out his phone to check for himself, shaking his head. He bared his teeth, but his camera wasn’t picking up any flecks of apple skin. When he looked up again, pocketing his phone, the entire class had scooted away, the kids closest to him even abandoning their desks and crowding toward the back of the room. 

“What the— come on, this isn’t funny,” Miles pleaded. “Can we just move on from whatever this prank is? Let’s, uh, let’s learn about—” Miles peeked at the cover of one of the books his teacher was holding— “about this bug.”

No one moved. 

“Okay, I’m just—” Miles tried again to step forward. Everyone stepped back. “Oh my god, this is insane.”

“Please leave the room,” said the teacher. Her voice wavered. “Now.”

“What did I do?” Miles cried, exasperated. “You don’t have to lecture me outside, you can lecture me here. Maybe then I’ll understand why nobody will let me in a five foot radius of them.”

“I’m not trying to talk to you outside,” his teacher responded. She gripped the book bin so hard, her knuckles were turning white. “I’m telling you to leave .”

“Like, I’m dismissed? Do I go to the principal?” Miles asked, genuinely puzzled now. 

“Just leave; I don’t care where you go, just leave!” the teacher snapped. Miles fell silent. “And don’t step foot in any other classrooms. Just get out.”

What the hell is she talking about?

“Listen, I don’t really understand what this is; like, at all,” Miles said slowly. He reached out and plucked a copy of The Metamorphosis from the box. No way I’m failing class for this shit . The teacher bristled. He did his best to ignore it. “I’m just gonna take this, and, uh.” Miles cleared his throat. “See you guys around, I guess?”

When no one responded, Miles sighed, adjusted his bag on his shoulders, and headed back to his dorm room. 

Maybe this is good. I basically have the day off. 

Still, Miles couldn’t wipe the frown off his face. 

Am I crazy? Do I look crazy? I feel crazy. I’m crazy. 

A student walking back from the bathroom froze and stared at Miles as he passed. Miles looked down, avoiding his eyes. 

Can he hear me thinking?

Miles was suddenly overwhelmed by jumbled thoughts and the urge to drop to his knees. He was aware of everything his senses came into contact with. His fingertips clung to the hardcover novella he’d grabbed. Bright red in his uniform shouted at his vision, ricocheting off stop signs and traffic lights out the window. He could still feel people staring at him, eyes wide; he could hear them blinking. There was still a sour taste on the walls of his mouth from the aftertaste of mint toothpaste combined with half a red apple. His shoes squeaked on the linoleum floor. It was so, so loud. Can everyone hear me?

He shoved open the door to his dorm and shrugged his bag off his back, sinking to the floor. What is happening to me?

Miles looked down at the book in his hands. It was bright red, like the hem of his blazer, and the corners had been worn down from high school carelessness through the years. He turned it over, skimming the summary, if only to get his mind off his current predicament. He didn’t care how boring English was; it was better than the sense of dread creeping into his veins. 

The book was apparently about a guy who woke up one day as a human-sized bug and had to deal with being seen as revolting. Sorta like the Arachnae. 

Miles’s blood froze at the notion. He’d been bitten by a spider just last night, and now everyone was looking at him like he was a freak. Miles slowly put the book down, his spine tingling. Was Uncle Aaron right after all?

Nope. Not dealing with that. That’s bullshit. 

“Maybe my hair looks really bad,” Miles muttered to himself, ignoring the fact that no level of hairstyle atrocity could get him kicked out of not just one, but every classroom in the school. He got up and wandered over to the bathroom mirror, only to find an empty frame, save for a few lonely shards, taped over with masking tape. “Right. Never mind.” (Ganke had thrown a baseball across the room a few nights ago and shattered it entirely. The school staff hadn’t been too happy about it.) Miles sighed. He hadn’t seen anything wrong with his hair last time he checked on his phone camera, so he figured it was fine. 

Miles managed to distract himself from whatever was happening to him for the rest of the day. He tried to read the book, he really did, but he went cross-eyed after the first two pages of rambling monologue. He took a much-needed nap. He pirated a new movie on his laptop. He texted his old friends. He sketched. He colored. His fingertips itched for spray paint. His fingertips itched in general. He did his best to ignore it. 

It was inevitable, though, that Miles would have to figure out this whole everyone-is-freaked-out-by-him issue. 

Halfway through bingeing his favorite TV show, Ganke opened the door, his backpack hanging off one shoulder. 

“Yo,” he greeted Miles. “Where were you all day? People were saying some really weird stuff about—”

Ganke met Miles’s eyes and froze. The color drained from his face. 

“About…?” Miles said, waiting for him to finish the sentence. He didn’t. 

“They weren’t kidding,” Ganke mumbled. He looked like he was going to faint. “You’re— you’re not Miles.”

“I am Miles,” Miles cried. “What is going on?”

“Get out of here,” Ganke demanded, inching away from the door. He couldn’t hide the tremble in his voice. “Get out of this room and stay away. You’re not the real Miles.”

“What is wrong with you?” Miles sputtered. He got up, shifting toward the ladder of the bunk bed, and froze when Ganke flinched. Miles set his jaw. “Be real with me for a second, man. I trust you. Just tell me what’s wrong. Please.” His voice cracked at the last word and he cringed. 

Ganke opened his mouth, then closed it. He adjusted his glasses. Finally, he said, “Here’s what’s going on: you’re not Miles. You’re a— a monster. You need to leave, now.”

Arachnae. 

Nope. No way. Not real. 

Miles huffed in frustration. He didn’t bother with the ladder, opting instead to hop off the top bunk. He landed on his feet with much less effort than he’d expected, almost like a cat landing on all fours. Ganke stared. 

“Fine.” Miles couldn’t meet his eyes. “I’ll leave. If everyone wants me to leave, I’ll leave. Not a big deal at all. It’s fine. It’s totally fine.” Maybe if I say it enough it’ll be true. Miles grabbed his book bag and began stuffing in his things— laptop, phone, sketchbook, headphones, a change of clothes. He hesitated, glancing at his little copy of The Metamorphosis , before deciding to tuck it into the bag next to his charger. “I’ll just go home or something, I don’t know. Is this me running away from school? Am I dropping out? Am I expelled? No fucking clue. This is bullshit.”

Miles spun on his heel to face Ganke, slinging his bag over his shoulder. He hadn’t moved a muscle. 

“I think I’m going crazy,” Miles told him. Ganke’s shocked expression did nothing to help the situation. Miles stalked out the door, not bothering to shut it behind him. 

Miles did his best to ignore the people around him. He was imagining things. He had to be. Maybe this was a puberty thing. Maybe it was insecurity or something that made it seem like the horde of students parted to let him through; made it seem like there were a myriad of eyes following him like magnets; made it seem like they were speaking in hushed concern to each other, whispers more like a hurricane on the horizon. I’m going crazy. 

To Miles’s disdain, the circulating murmurs didn’t stop even after he shoved through the front doors of his school. In fact, they only got worse. Cameras shamelessly snapped photos of him as he hurried down the street, each lens another scrutinizing eye to add to the collection. People switched subway cars when they saw him until he was almost entirely isolated, the only remaining passenger being a sleeping homeless person in the corner. Cars slowed in the street, stalling at green lights, as drivers craned their necks to catch a glimpse of his awkward figure, fingertips digging into the straps of his backpack. Miles kept his head down, staring down the pavement, internally begging for answers from the wads of chewing gum that littered the sidewalk like stars. (They stared back blankly. Miles swallowed down the painful lump rising in his throat.)

Finally, after an emotionally and physically exhausting venture from Visions to his Bed-Stuy brownstone, Miles found himself standing, terrified, at his apartment door. The peephole in the center of the door was just another eye on him. He wanted to sink to his knees and crumple into a small paper ball, perhaps to be thrown across the classroom that he was apparently no longer allowed to enter. 

What if they’re scared of me, too?

Miles refused to entertain the horrifying thought. He stuck his key into the lock and opened the door. 

His dad was sitting on the couch, facing away from him, somewhat absorbed in a National Geographic documentary about spiders. Of course it’s about fucking spiders. 

“Miles?” his mom called out from the kitchen, surprised. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at school?”

“Um.” Miles didn’t know what to say. His dad turned around, confused. He paled, eyes widening. Miles felt something turn in his stomach. 

“Miles? ¿Qué pasa?” Miles’s mom asked, oblivious. “Jeff, what’s the matter?”

“Miles?” his dad said quietly, his voice shaky, and it might have been the most terrifying thing Miles had ever heard in his life. 

“Dad,” Miles whispered, his voice breaking. “I don’t know what’s going on, I—”

“What is this?” his dad mumbled. Miles winced. His dad’s voice was like a punch in the gut. It was like he was already mourning his son. “What is this?”

“Miles, honey?” Miles’s mom asked again. She walked into the room, brow furrowed. Miles shrank against the wall. “¿Qué occure?”

Miles had thought that the fear in his dad’s voice was the most frightening sound in the world. That made the way his mom’s face drained at the sight of him the scariest thing he’d ever seen. His heart pounded desperately in his chest. 

“Miles?” she whispered. His dad swallowed, speechless. The narrator of the documentary droned on, saying something about how common spiders were in day-to-day life. “Por dios…”

“Please,” Miles rasped. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. They— they kicked me out of school. I don’t know what to do.” He clung to his backpack like a lifeline. 

“Es one of those personas arañas que Aaron nos decía,” Miles’s mother breathed. She looked like she was going to faint. Miles took a step forward, reaching out— for what, he didn’t know— only for his parents to draw back. His heart plummeted. “Miles, what happened to you?”

“I don’t know,” Miles croaked, and that lump in his throat was coming out again. He couldn’t stop it this time. His eyes watered. “Please, mamá, no entiendo lo que está pasando.”

“You’re not my son anymore,” his dad murmured. He paused. “Are you?”

“Yes, I am. Please, I swear to god, I am.”

“Mi hijo,” his mom whimpered. “How could this happen?”

“I don’t know; I don’t know.” A tear rolled down Miles’s cheek. A muscle clenched in his dad’s jaw.  “No sé, mamá. I need help; I don’t know what to do.”

“¿Qué debemos hacer?” Miles’s mom asked. 

“I’m calling my brother,” his dad said solemnly, his voice gravelly. Miles panicked. He knew how Uncle Aaron felt about Arachnae.

“No!” Miles blurted, raising his hands. His mom jumped a little. His dad paused, his finger hovering over his phone screen, torn. “Please. I can’t… He can’t see me like this. He’ll try to kill me. Please, Dad.” Tears were streaming now, and his hands were shaking. He felt dizzy. This couldn’t be happening. “I can’t lose him like that.”

“You’re not Miles,” his father stuttered. 

“I am! I swear. I’m still your son, just like before. I just…” Miles sighed helplessly, a sob wrenching itself from his throat. “I just don’t know why this is happening to me. I don’t know what to do.”

“Jeff,” his mom said, her voice cracking. Miles’s heart shattered. There was nothing like seeing his mom cry. “Don’t hurt him.”

“How do you know it’s him?” his dad asked, more anxious than accusatory. 

“How do you know it’s not ?”

“Because my son doesn’t have claws and fangs , Rio!”

Miles’s breath caught in his throat. Claws? Fangs? What the hell is going on?

“But what if it is him anyway, under all that? I can’t risk it.”

Miles’s dad shut his eyes, overwhelmed. He dropped his hand and pocketed his phone. Miles let out a sigh of relief, but it was short lived. His dad looked up again, eyes brimming with tears.

“If you’re in there, Miles, I love you,” he whispered. Rio clasped her hand around his arm and sobbed again. Her nose and cheeks were red, wet and flushed as she stared, heartbroken, at her son. “But I—” his father choked on his words— “I need you to leave.”

“Dad,” Miles gasped, petrified. His dad clenched his jaw. 

“Leave this apartment. Don’t harm us.”

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Miles pleaded. “Why would I hurt you? You’re my parents; I love you. I’m not hurting anyone.”

“Leave, now.”

“Dad, please.” Miles was really crying now, forcing words out through sobs, and his mom’s face crumbled. 

“Cariño,” she wept. “Por favor. Don’t torment us like this.”

“How could you do this?” Miles cried. “Why don’t you believe me?”

“You’re dangerous. We won’t tell Aaron, but you can’t stay here. You don’t belong here,” his dad choked out, his voice coarse as if it had been shoved out of his lungs. Each sentence was like a stab to the chest, brutal and agonizing. 

“I don’t know what to do,” Miles sobbed. “I don’t want to be like this. I want to be normal again. I don’t know what to do.”

“We don’t know, either,” said his dad.

Miles’s mother reached out a hand, as if to comfort Miles, but froze, her arm outstretched. She drew back and Miles wanted the floor to swallow him whole. 

“Te amo, Miles,” she rasped. “Pero you have to go.”

“Mamá.”

“You have to leave.”

“Please, please, mamá—”

“Leave, Miles,” his dad commanded, his voice quiet but powerful. Miles took a step back. Rio covered her mouth with her hand. “I’m sorry.”

“My baby,” his mom whimpered. Miles wiped his eyes with the palms of his hands. “My baby; ¿lo qué pasó a mi baby?”

“I’m sorry,” Miles croaked. He sniffled, fighting the overwhelming desire to fall to the ground and bawl. “I don’t know what I did wrong. I don’t know how to fix it.”

His parents were silent. Miles’s dad wrapped his arms around Miles’s mom, who began to wail into his chest. Miles shakily made his way to the door. His ears were ringing. His footsteps were like earthquakes, and he stopped at the doormat. He turned to his parents. 

“I love you,” Miles said. “I’m sorry.” 

“Mijo,” his mom whispered. 

“Goodbye, Miles,” said his dad. 

Miles barely heard the door close over the pounding of his heart. 

He decided, amid a cacophony of the urges to scream and weep and pull out his hair and punch the wall and curl into a ball, in a half-lucid state of confusion and terror and loss, that the best thing to do was to make his way back down into the subway system to the place where he’d been bitten in the first place. Maybe he could find answers (assuming there were answers to find) there. That, and there was nowhere else for him to go. 

Miles didn’t process much of the trip to that spot. He was numb, stumbling down the street in janky, dissociated movements. Everything was a blur. Sometimes things would flash out at him— the color of someone’s sneakers, the sound of cars honking in the street— but they bounced off his back like blades to armor. He was officially alone: removed from the world and from himself. When he got off the train at Hoyt Street, he couldn’t remember any of the ride itself, not even whether he’d taken the 2 or the 3. He barely had the clarity of mind to time his descent into the tunnels, wary of the third rail as he switched on his phone flashlight. He raced down the tracks, turning at the fork in the rails, and before he knew it he was back at the decrepit Nevins Street station, this time without someone to catch him if he fell.

It was much easier, Miles discovered, to hop the fence he’d clambered over with Uncle Aaron the second time around. He suspected it had something to do with his new condition. The thought alone made him want to smash his head against the wall. I’m going crazy. I’m crazy. 

At last, he found himself standing in front of the artwork he’d made the day before. His own spray-painted silhouette hung against the wall like a mirror, taunting him silently. A ghost. 

Miles glanced down at the floor. The spider that had bit him was lying limpid between his toes, legs curled and crooked. Miles squatted down, squinting at it.

He didn’t remember his vision being so acute.  

The spider was small, but had a round, fat body that contrasted any spider Miles had ever seen before. It was white with tufts of black speckled around its body, and its legs were sharp and pointed at the ends. It had two wide eyes larger than the rest, perfect dark circles against the white of its body. Miles could just barely make out a tiny number printed on the spider’s abdomen: 1610.

Are they man-made? Genetically modified? Manufactured? Did this one escape?

Are there 1609 other spiders out there that could turn people into Arachnae?

  Miles plopped himself down on the dirty ground. He couldn’t find it in him to care about his ruined pants. He couldn’t find it in him to feel anything at all. 

Out of everyone in NYC, why did this stupid spider have to bite me?

Miles slumped backwards, lying flat against his backpack. Distantly, he could imagine his mom’s horror that he was sprawled out on the nasty subway ground. Maybe she would start frantically looking up health conditions he could develop. He didn’t blame her. It was coated in the same brown grime that covered every subway station in the city.

She wouldn’t be worrying away for him anymore, though. Miles might not ever see her again. 

He shut his eyes and exhaled. Instead of drumming away as it had before, his heart was slowed to a dull thump, apathetic in the face of his entire life having fallen apart. There wasn’t anything left to do. Maybe if Miles stayed here long enough, he’d wake up to find it was a bad dream. Maybe he’d turn back into a normal kid and everything would be fine again. Maybe, Miles thought, he’d wither away and die, limbs stiff and inhuman like the spider that had passed on this curse. 

He laid there and waited for something to happen. 

For a while, nothing did. 

Then footsteps came thudding behind him. They echoed in the silent nook off the subway tunnel. The chain fence rattled as someone climbed over it. The footsteps grew closer, then stopped, and Miles knew there was someone standing only feet away, looking at him from the opening to the room. 

He slowly opened his eyes, waiting for them to scream and run, or take a photo, or mug him, or kill him.

None of the above happened, so Miles groggily sat up, his bag slipping down his arms. He shifted it onto his shoulders and sighed wearily. He got to his feet, casting his artwork one long, wistful stare. He turned around. 

His jaw dropped. 

“Ayup,” a stranger said. 

Chapter Text

Miles didn’t know what he’d expected— an MTA employee? a homeless person? a crackhead?— but it was not this. 

“You alright?” the stranger asked, raising an eyebrow. 

Miles merely gawked, speechless. Standing before him was a tall, lean man with thick black wicks atop his head. The flickering lights in the room cast a bright glow against his dramatic cheekbones, making him look like he belonged on a poster. He wore a black leather vest covered with countless pins and buttons, and his body was draped in black belts and silver embellishments from the choker on his neck to the decorations of his blue-laced boots. Most notably, though, was that this man’s eyes, heavy-lidded and earnest, had enormous pupils, nearly flooding his irises entirely. His large hands, dark skin slightly scarred, drew down into claws, and his body was almost crooked, as if he wasn’t built quite for walking.

The man, who couldn’t have been more than three or four years older than Miles, was another Arachnae.

“What the fuck?”

“Yeah, I feel that,” the man sighed. His voice was a deep, British drawl, catching Miles slightly off guard. He shoved his hands in his vest pockets and took a step forward, metal clinking as his boots thumped on the ground. “Had about the same reaction myself.”

“Who are you?” Miles demanded, tensing up. 

“A friend,” the man replied. He stuck out his hand. Miles stared at it for a second before it occurred to him that he was meant to shake it. “My name’s Hobie.”

Miles hesitated, then shook his hand. 

“I’m Miles,” he mumbled. His fingertips knocked against the studded bracelet on Hobie’s wrist. 

“Nice to meet you,” Hobie said. He nodded at Miles’s artwork. “You made that?”

“Uh, yeah.” Miles cleared his throat. “Just last night, actually.”

Hobie nodded slowly, smiling. His teeth were sharpened into fangs. Do I look like that?

“Yeah, I saw it earlier. It’s bangin’,” Hobie complimented him. “Honored to meet the artist.”

“Thanks…?” Miles, in any other situation, would have been ecstatic that someone so effortlessly cool had said they liked his art, but he was more focused on the fact that he, a newfound Arachnae, was speaking to a total stranger who was also (probably) an Arachnae. “Listen, are you…”

“A spider? Yup,” Hobie said nonchalantly. “I’m assuming you are, too.”

“I think so,” Miles admitted, and just saying so out loud had that lump rising in his throat again. He was not too keen on the idea of bursting into tears in front of this guy, though, so he did his best to fight it down. “I just, um. I just found out.”

“It’s tough, I know,” he replied. “I’m surprised you’re not bawling your eyes out, to be honest.”

“I was,” Miles said, almost laughing. Hobie nodded again. Miles cocked his head. “Why are you here? How did you find me?”

“I live down here, and I found you by accident.”

“You live down here?”

“It’s the subway. That’s where we live.”

“We?”

Hobie huffed, both amused and sympathetic. Miles felt like he was losing his mind. 

“Come on,” Hobie said, beckoning for Miles to follow. “Let’s walk and talk.”

Miles glanced back over his shoulder at the graffiti. Then, after taking a deep breath, he followed after Hobie.

“How much d’you know about Arachnae?” Hobie inquired once Miles came to his side. Miles frowned. 

“Claws, fangs, weird eyes, spider bites, living in the subway tunnels,” he listed off. “My uncle’s obsessed. He’s the best guy in the world, but he’s set on hunting them down. It’s crazy that he actually believes in that shit.” Miles winced. “Well, that’s what I thought.”

“Funny how the world can turn upside down like that, innit?” Hobie remarked. 

“Yeah, it is,” Miles sighed. 

“Anything else?”

“Uh, I dunno. I’ve never seen a photo of them, but people say they can climb walls and stuff. And, obviously, they’re monsters.”

“ We , not they,” Hobie corrected him. He wasn’t offended, he was just reminding Miles. “And we aren’t monsters.”

“But what about the whole ‘causing chaos and destruction and kidnapping people’ thing? That had to come from somewhere,” Miles said. “Like, people don’t say Bigfoot does that. What’s different here?”

“Not sure. Prolly that Bigfoot is a grainy photo of some ape in the woods, and we’re a bunch of lanky freaks in the middle of the city,” Hobie suggested. “It’s all rubbish, though. I mean, you’re not a monster, are you?”

“…No.”

“There you go. Simple as that.”

Miles looked down. There was a layer of dirt on the soles of his shoes, smudging his black shoelaces. Hobie glanced down at them. 

“Your laces are undone,” he commented. 

“I know,” Miles sighed. “It’s a choice.”

“Wicked,” Hobie replied. A small smile grew on Miles’s face. He hadn’t heard that type of response in a long, long time. “You’re a little rebel, then? Between the laces and the art.”

Miles blinked. He’d never thought of himself that way. “I guess you could say that.”

“Respect. It’s easier to be that type of person if you end up like we did. It’s like, don’t take preconceived sides when you can live on your own terms. Rules are meant to be broken, yeah? We’re living proof.” 

Miles looked up at Hobie, inspecting his unbothered demeanor, his calm expression, the myriad of piercings on his face. 

“You’re British,” he observed. 

“Raised in London; moved to NYC a couple years ago. You?”

“I’ve lived in Brooklyn all my life. My parents always say we’re gonna be here forever. My mom literally thinks Princeton is too far from New York.” Miles’s face fell. “I guess I won’t be going either way.”

Silence hung in the air between them. Miles clenched his jaw, his vision blurring. Hobie’s eyebrows drew together, and he looked like he was trying to come up with something to say. 

“Listen,” he said. “I know it’s not fair. We all do. We all lost everything when we got bit. But we’re here for each other.” Hobie hesitated. “If you ever need to chat, I guess, I got you.”

Miles’s eyes darted up to meet Hobie’s, uneasy. There was something pricking at his fingertips, a strange hair-raising sensation that bordered familiarity and apprehension. Hobie slowed to a stop and held out his palm, seemingly feeling the same thing. 

“Feel that?” he said. “It’s an Arachnae thing.”

Miles held out his own hand next to Hobie’s. The tingling sensation grew stronger. Miles waggled his fingers, fascinated, and Hobie chuckled.

“What is it for?” Miles asked.

“It’s like a sixth sense. Peter— one of the others— calls it ‘spidey-sense’,” Hobie explained. “It gets set off for important things: one, danger; and two, empathy.”

“Empathy?”

“That’s the easiest way to explain it. Arachnae share this bond, for whatever reason. We’re not sure what causes it, but when we’re with someone like us, we can feel it.”

Hobie gently placed his hand flat atop Miles’s. Energy buzzed at the contact, like a static shock. Miles was astounded.

“You’re like me,” Hobie said. “See?”

They stood there wordlessly for a moment, hand in humanoid hand. Hobie waited patiently, almost fondly, as Miles absorbed the sensation. It didn’t feel good so much as it felt right, like they were meant to be here, together, not-quite strangers in a barely lit corner of the New  York City subway system. It was a bit like the relief of flopping into bed after a long day, or sinking into a warm tub of water– a spark that made everything, despite all odds, feel a little bit more okay. 

Miles didn’t really want to let go, but he did anyway. As soon as he dropped his hand to his side, looking askance, he found that he sorely missed the warmth that had hummed beneath his skin, now washed away and empty. He wasn’t about to hold this random guy’s hand for any longer, though; it would be weird for both of them. Maybe. He wondered if the other Arachnae did this often, or if the feeling faded away like an immunity.

“Where are we going?” Miles queried before he could spiral any further. 

“Up thataway,” Hobie replied, stuffing both hands in his vest pockets again. He jutted his chin out ahead of them toward the chainlink fence. “Then we take a right.”

The two of them set off again. Hobie scampered up the fence, vaulting over the top and landing nimbly on his feet like he’d been born to do it. He turned around expectantly, and Miles followed, albeit less confidently. He stumbled a little at the top, but to his surprise, it was just as easy as it had been when he stumbled into the tunnels in a shocked stupor. 

“Is this another thing?” Miles asked. “Like, being agile?”

“Sure is,” Hobie confirmed. “For how shitty everything is as an Arachnae, you’ve gotta admit, it has its perks.”

“Does that mean you can walk on walls?”

Hobie laughed. “Takes some practice, but yeah, we can.”

“Shit.” Miles blinked, awestruck. “That’s crazy. I mean, it’s cool. Except it’s not, because no one else thinks it is.” He frowned, a crease forming between his eyebrows. “Because we’re… freaks of nature, or something.”

“Freaks of nature, outcasts, rejects, abominations,” Hobie scoffed, counting off the names on his fingers. “Mate, if there’s anything that’ll get you through all this, it’s that you’ve got to know the difference between who you are and who people think you are.”

“I don’t know what I am anymore,” Miles said weakly. 

“You’re Miles ,” Hobie said. “That’s all.”

They came to a stop as they approached the open station again. Miles knew he’d been sprinting in the tracks only moments ago, but from the security of the platform, each side looked like an abyss, a dark trench in a war Miles didn’t know how to fight. Hobie led him across the platform, then into a passageway that would have led to the upper level, which was the functioning Nevins Street station. Instead, it entombed them in pitch black on all sides, only giving way to the sharp line of light from Miles’s phone. Hobie walked on, his footsteps thumping and echoing in the empty hall. Fear gripped Miles from the inside out, all the rumors he’d been fed about Arachnae surging back to him, but just as quickly, Hobie switched on a lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. Miles exhaled. 

The corridor was cramped and decrepit, its grimy walls bearing ugly tags scrawled in dripping spray paint like a museum of mindless scoundrels. Hobie led Miles down the hall to a door at the corner. If he turned, Miles could walk up a dusty flight of stairs and brute-force his way through the fortified doors into the subway station. It didn’t seem like this was Hobie’s plan, so instead, he turned his attention to the sign on the door:

DO NOT ENTER - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

Hobie ignored the warning and opened the metal door, leaning into the room casually as it swung inward. 

Miles meekly kept up behind him, angling himself slightly to stand in his shadow. He didn’t mean to be standoffish or appear weak, but he’d rather literally just entered a spider’s den and he wasn’t sure what to expect. He hadn’t imagined this, though. 

They were in an awkwardly shaped, fairly large room split vaguely into sections: a living area, as it appeared, with a ratty couch and scuffed-up armchair beside a wooden coffee table; an array of mattresses and personal areas around them along the far wall; a cooking space set with a pile of pots and pans beside boxes of food ranging from a bag of rice to a package of Funyuns. Each of the mattresses was unique, and appeared somewhat homely despite the bleakness of the room itself, which was set with crumbly gray walls and a single flickering lamp in the middle of the ceiling. There were Christmas lights duct taped to the wall that helped to illuminate the sleeping space, dangling above old blankets and miscellaneous belongings like books and journals. A slightly warped full-length mirror hung on another door to the side of the room, where Miles imagined a bathroom was located. Along the walls was a maze of rusty pipes and valves, all different shapes and sizes, stuffed with ugly yellow caulk. It was reminiscent of a spiderweb, though distorted and occassionally emitting a tiny hiss or gurgle.

Miles hardly processed any of this, though, before he noticed the people— rather, the Arachnae— scattered amongst the place. On the couch, a blonde girl with pink tips and huge, dark pupils sat beside a boy sporting sandals; he combed through his dark, wavy hair with clawed fingers and Miles suppressed the urge to shiver. A very muscular man was sitting cross-legged on the ceiling near them, nose-deep in a worn novel with pages falling out of the seams. Slumped on one of the mattresses was a middle-aged man with a rough stubble on his chin, wrapped in a pink bathrobe and half asleep, his jaw hanging ajar and revealing a line of fangs. 

It was a lot to take in. 

“I’m home,” Hobie called out, strutting through the threshold. “And I brought a new friend.”

Before the sentence had even left Hobie’s mouth, everyone had snapped to stare at the two of them. Even the man in bed had woken up enough to crane his neck to peer at them. 

“Uh, hey, guys,” Miles stammered. He was still nervous around so many Arachnae. He knew he was one of them, and he was sure that Hobie meant him no harm, but how could he forget years of rumors and urban legends that he’d grown up with? How could he forget Uncle Aaron’s stories of talons tearing through flesh like paper, of monsters prowling up and down skyscrapers with victims trapped in their beastly clutches, of wretched beings who lurked so far from the edges of society that they hardly knew what it meant to be human anymore–

“Shit, is that the Visions uniform?” the blonde girl asked. Miles looked down at his disheveled tie.

“Uh, yeah. It is.” He tried to discreetly step back behind Hobie. Hobie raised an eyebrow at him. Miles swallowed. 

“I went there,” the girl said. “Before, you know.” She gestured up and down her body nonchalantly.

“Wait, really?” Miles squinted at her. He didn’t recognize her at all. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you.”

“I was kind of invisible,” she shrugged. “Not many people noticed when I disappeared. The school just said I transferred. I’m sure they’ll say the same for you.”

“Oh.” Miles wasn’t sure what to say. I’m officially never gonna be able to go to school again. 

Fuck. 

“You alright?” Hobie muttered. 

Miles considered lying. He considered saying it was fine, and that he didn’t like school that much anyway, and he didn’t really have any idea what he was going to do with his life once he got out, and it wasn’t like he had ambitions to be a professional artist or a quantum physicist. He considered smiling, and saying he didn’t mind having fangs and claws that he couldn’t see for some reason, and that he didn’t mind being kicked out of his home by his parents and having nowhere to go except the NYC subway system to live in the tunnels with the rats instead of in his room, which he’d just finished decorating a few months ago. He considered saying they all seemed like lovely people, even though their pupils were too large and there was someone literally hanging upside down from the ceiling, and pretending that his uncle wasn’t an avid Arachnae hunter, and plopping down on the couch beside the two teens who weren’t quite human because he was just another one of them now and he was totally, definitely, 100% cool with it. 

Miles could’ve done all that. A small part of him wanted to, if only to save his pride, as if the words could make everything true if they just escaped his lips— but they didn’t. 

“Nope,” said Miles, his voice hoarse. “No, actually, I’m not alright, as a matter of fact. I’m kind of fucked up right now.”

Everyone frowned simultaneously. Miles shuddered. It was like he could feel somber sympathy emanating from them. Spidey-sense. 

The man on the ceiling abruptly shut his book, tossing it down into the armchair, and then pushed off, landing heavily on his feet. Miles gasped under his breath, startled. The man was even more of a tank when he stood upright, his broad shoulders massive and his jaw sharp and square. There were shadows under his eyes; they were a strange contrast to the laugh lines etched into his cheeks, which now fell slack in concern. He looked like he could throw Miles across the room like a paper airplane if he wanted. Miles’s eyes widened, his heart pounding, as the man approached him. He seemed to notice Miles’s distress and paused. 

“My name is Miguel,” he introduced himself, his voice low and gravelly. There was a tinge of a Spanish accent to his words, and the detail was a tiny note of comfort for Miles’s racing thoughts, but he was still frozen in apprehension. “What’s yours?”

“Miles,” Miles managed to say. He felt like shit for being so terrified of this guy. He imagined it wasn’t a great feeling, to be feared. My own parents were afraid of me. He shoved the raw memories of tear-stained cheeks and trembling hands to the back of his mind. “Miles Morales.” 

“Nice to meet you,” Miguel responded. He reached out to shake Miles’s hand, and Miles shakily followed suit. His own palm was dwarfed in Miguel’s calloused hand. He would have shrank away if not for the tiny spark thrumming between their clasped hands, one that gave him goosebumps, one that was a pure and subconscious reminder that he was not alone. “¿Hablas español?”

“Sí, señor.” Miguel felt a bit like he was being introduced to one of his parents’ friends for the first time. Someone— the guy in the bathrobe, by the sound of it— snorted. Miguel’s mouth twitched like he was suppressing something. Miles resisted the urge to flinch away, anticipating a violent outburst. If my final words are ‘sí, señor’, I swear to god– 

“I’m not that old,” Miguel replied, scoffing, yet despite what Miles had feared, there wasn’t a trace of disdain in his tone. “No need to call me ‘señor’.”

“You’re pretty old,” the boy on the couch cut in. Miguel rolled his eyes. Miles tried to smile along with them, but it felt too forced and he gave up just as quickly. Hobie noticed his hesitance and stepped closer to Miles, affectionately clapping a hand onto Miles’s shoulder. 

“Since Miguel’s the only one with the manners to introduce himself instead of goggling at you like children,” Hobie said, pointedly looking around at the rest of the group, “I’ll give you a rundown. There’s Pavitr and Gwen on the sofa—”

“Hey,” Gwen chirped. 

“You can call me Pav,” Pavitr piped up. 

“—and the one in bed there is Peter.” Peter waved from where he was now sitting up on the mattress. 

“Hi, everyone,” Miles said weakly. 

“Good. Now we’re all on the same page, yeah?”

“Sure,” Miles lied. 

“We’ll have to find you a mattress,” Peter called out. “Shouldn’t take long, though. You can take the couch in the meantime.”

“Mattress?” Miles echoed blankly. Hobie turned to him, mildly concerned. 

“I figured you could– should– stay. Do you not want to?” he asked gently. “I reckon there’s not many other places renting out to Arachnae, mate.”

Oh, right. 

“Uh, yeah, sorry.” Miles swallowed. “I forgot, sort of. It’s been a weird day.”

“I did the same thing,” Pav assured him. “It’s a fair reaction.”

“I know it’s a lot to take in all at once,” Hobie murmured. “But we’ve got you, whatever you need. No one can hurt you here.”

Miles took a deep breath. If Uncle Aaron found out, would he hunt me down anyway?

“Listen, kid, you got lucky,” Miguel said gruffly. “It’s a cruel world out there, and it isn’t kind to people like us— if you can call us people anymore. Aside from Pav, everyone here had to face that shit alone until we found each other. We all know it’s not worth it.”

“I know,” Miles mumbled. “I don’t have anywhere to go either way.”

“Well, you’ve always got a place here,” Hobie said. “You can count on that.”

“I love it when Hobie goes all soft,” Pav whispered to Gwen. She giggled. Hobie tsked at them. 

“Thanks, man,” Miles said. “Means a lot.”

Miguel picked up his book from the armchair and patted its backrest. 

“Wanna come sit?” he asked. 

Miles obliged, partly because he was feeling a bit weak in the knees, and partly because he was still worried that Miguel might throttle him if he did something wrong. He plopped his bag down at his feet and settled into the cracked leather chair. For as damaged as it was, it was surprisingly comfortable. 

“Miguel, why do you have to talk like that?” Peter asked, stretching out his arms. “You’re gonna scare the kid.”

“What do you mean?”

“You sound like you’re in a mafia movie and you’re going to interrogate him. Relax.”

“I am relaxed.” Miguel glanced at Miles, who was doing his best to look respectful and assured. “Sorry if I don’t come off that way.”

“It’s fine,” Miles said quickly, hoping he didn’t hear the way his voice came out like a squeak. Evidently, Peter noticed, as he flung his arm out, gesturing to Miles. 

“See?” Peter exclaimed. “You sound like a killer robot.”

“I’m not trying to sound like a killer robot.”

“Try harder.” Peter grinned cheekily. He, too, had bags under his otherwise cheerful eyes. 

“It’s nonstop with them,” Pav informed Miles, scooting closer to him. “Always bickering about nothing at all.”

“It’s like free reality TV,” Gwen chimed in. Miles looked over to see that Miguel and Peter were now standing face to face, Miguel sporting an unimpressed frown as Peter stood confidently, hands on his hips, despite how Miguel towered over him. It was bizarre.

“Interesting,” was the only thing Miles could think to say. Gwen smirked. Hobie ambled over and plopped himself down on the couch next to Pav. He slung one arm over Pav’s shoulder, crossing his ankles out in front of him lackadaisically. 

“Fun fact,” he said, “Miles is the one who did that ace street art I saw yesterday.” 

“No shit?” Gwen gasped. “I went to see it too, after you hyped it up so much. It was really cool.” Miles couldn’t help but smile, flattered. “A lot of random people come in and out and tag up the place, but it’s rare that people show up to actually make art.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I worked hard on it. My uncle helped me.” His smile was gone as soon as it appeared. “But, uh, I guess I’m not gonna see him again.”

Gwen frowned, a crease forming between her eyebrows.

“That sucks; I know, It hurts like hell, leaving everyone behind. I’m sorry.”

“He hates Arachnae, too. He’s one of those people who brings up conspiracies about them over brunch or something.”

“Damn.”

“He was with me when I got bit. He said something about me turning and I called him crazy.” Miles slumped into the seat. “Fuck, man.”

“Hey,” Pav said, leaning forward. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“Easy for you to say,” Miles muttered. “You’re used to it by now.”

“That’s debatable,” Pav countered. “It’s only been a few months. I still wake up sometimes and forget where I am, what’s happened to me.” He chewed his lip. Hobie squeezed his shoulder. “Honestly? It’s been hell, save for these guys.”

“Really?” Hobie remarked sarcastically. “I think it’s all tickety-boo.” Miles opened his mouth, then closed it. What the hell does tickety-boo mean? How British can this guy possibly be?

“Shut up. Point is, we’re in this together. That has to mean something.” Pav offered up a warm smile. Miles halfheartedly returned it. 

“ And you get the couch,” Gwen added. “That’s a plus. We didn’t have it when I got here.”

“How long have y’all been living down here?” Miles inquired, furrowing his brow. They all looked at each other. 

“I was bitten the day before I got here, which was maybe five months ago,” Pav said. 

“I’ve been here almost a year,” Gwen put in. 

“I showed up a year and a half ago,” Hobie said. “I knew the station already, and I met Miguel and Peter by accident. They were the first; they’ve been around for, like, two and a half years. Dunno much about how they ended up here, or how they stuck together the whole time— I mean, look at the two of them. They can’t agree on anything .”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Pav hummed. Miles couldn’t appreciate the joke. He was still trying to process what they’d all told him so casually. 

“You’ve been living down here for that long?” he repeated, shocked. “You’ve spent months upon months cooped up underground in the filthiest part of the city?”

“Ouch,” Gwen commented. 

“Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No, I get it. It’s tough. But, I mean, what else are we supposed to do? Buy a penthouse looking over Central Park?”

Miles stared at his hands. 

“Is there any way to go back?” he asked, and it came out as a whisper. Gwen exhaled. Pav glanced at her uncertainly. 

“Not that we know of,” came Peter’s voice from behind him. Miles turned to see that he and Miguel were walking over to join them. Peter sat down cross-legged on the ground, and Miguel stood, leaning on one leg, arms crossed. Peter tilted his head to the side, thinking. “Miguel and I have looked for answers for years and we found jack shit. Chances are, this is it.”

“So, we’re just supposed to stay down here forever ?” Miles cried. His throat stung. His breathing grew shallow. “We’re just doomed to be freaks for the rest of time? That’s the end?”

“We wouldn’t be here otherwise, innit?” Hobie pointed out. Miles clenched his jaw. 

“But that’s not fair,” he stuttered. He felt like a toddler, surrounded by a family of strangers. “I’m just a kid. I’m supposed to be writing English papers and going out with my friends. I have a life to live. I can’t just throw it all away.”

“Miles, we are never going to stop searching for some kind of solution,” Miguel told him earnestly. “But right now we are empty-handed. There’s nothing we can do.”

“You can’t even see the sun,” Miles rasped. Pav stared at his feet, and Hobie massaged his shoulder. Gwen’s shoulders rose, as if folding in on herself. Miguel and Peter exchanged a somber look. 

“I know,” Peter said quietly. “We don’t like it either.”

“We go outside whenever we can,” Miguel added. “Usually at night, but sometimes in the early morning we can catch a sunrise. There are more isolated corners of the city than you’d realize.”

“Pero I want my life back,” Miles choked out. “This is bullshit .”

“It is,” Peter nodded. 

“And I’m supposed to just be okay with that?”

“Of course not. I would give anything, anything , to go back home. I have— had— a wife and a daughter, and I had to leave them behind; same for Miguel. I haven’t seen them in years. Do you think I’m not trying as hard as I can to get back to them?”

“But—”

“Miles, I’m sorry,” Peter cut him off. “I know it’s stupid, and painful, and infuriating. But there is nothing we can do but be there for each other. That’s just how it is.”

Miles shut his eyes. There’s still time to wake up from this fucked-up dream. He opened them. Everyone was still gathered around him, void-like eyes filled with loss. Sparks ran down Miles’s spine, sprawling from the base of his neck all the way down to his fingertips.

Peter held up an open palm. Without thinking, Miles, as if in a trance, raised his own hand and pressed it against Peter’s, like he’d done with Hobie in the tunnel. Energy pulsed at the touch, just as Miles remembered. Miguel watched them almost fondly, something unreadable and hollow in his eyes. Gwen leaned over to rest her head wearily on Pav’s shoulder, where Hobie adjusted his hand to comb affectionately through her hair, a soothing gesture that Miles suspected was partly for Hobie to distract himself. 

Tears welled in Miles’s eyes, and this time, he didn’t force himself to stop them. A teardrop rolled down Peter’s cheek, and he closed his eyes, struggling to steady his breathing. Miguel sat down beside him, mirroring his pose. They didn’t touch, but Miles could tell that his presence alone was a comfort to both of them. 

He felt awkward, looking around at all these broken people. He was out of place; he was intruding on something he wasn’t supposed to see. How could Miles consider himself part of such a vulnerable moment? How could he just accept this as his new reality, his new home, his new makeshift family?

Then he remembered what Hobie had told him before, in a surreal moment that felt like eons ago.

Arachnae share this bond… When we’re with someone like us, we can feel it.   

You’re like me. See?

And it was true. He could feel it. 

Miles caved. 

“Okay,” he whispered. Something lit up beneath his skin, like sparklers: a thousand little greetings and a thousand more goodbyes. 

Chapter Text

Miles could not sleep. The couch’s scruffy appearance was deceiving— it was surprisingly comfy— but he still tossed and turned, unable to find peace in the impending clarity of his situation. He had been supplied with a scratchy, pillowy quilt, and he wrapped it tightly around his shoulders, but to no avail. He was exhausted. He wanted to sleep. And yet his mind refused to rest. 

I bet Ganke’s blasting music in the dorm. I bet he’s having fun. 

What type of music does he like? Did I ever ask?

Miles grumbled to himself, straining to shove the thoughts of his normal life from his mind. He couldn’t afford to wallow in them. If he started over, looking at everything with a blank slate, then he’d be fine. Everything is gonna be fine. 

No, the fuck it isn’t. That’s bullshit. 

It has to be fine. It has to be. 

It was eerily quiet in the room. Nighttime service was always less frequent, so between the loud screeching of trains passing by overhead, there were long stretches of silence filled only by someone’s light snoring and the shuffling of blankets as people moved in their sleep. There was no ticking of a clock, no aggravated honking of sleep-deprived drivers, no clumsy noises of someone trying to find something they’d left in the kitchen at absurd hours of the night. 

The backrest of the couch hid the others from Miles’s view. When he opened his eyes, no traces of street lamps or moonlight caught on the room. It was only Miles, the sporadic shrieking of subway cars on the tracks, and the pitch black darkness that enveloped him and the couch. He was an astronaut floating absently through the void of space. He didn’t like it. 

After what felt like ages, Miles gave up on trying to sleep. He groped around on the ground beside the couch until he found his bag. He fumbled to open it and withdrew his phone from the front pocket where he’d left it. He cringed at the bright light when he turned it on, quickly lowering the brightness and squinting at the screen. 42% battery left. Miles sighed. It wouldn’t last much longer. What can I do with 42% battery?

He sat up on the couch, pressing his back to the armrest and letting the quilt drape over his knees. There was a slight chill in the air, and he knew it would only get colder as autumn turned to winter. Miles opened his family group chat and typed out a message:

hey Dad, hey Mamá. I just wanted to let you know that im safe, and im gonna be okay. I love you and miss you more than you can imagine.

(!) Message Failed to Send

There was no service so far underground. Miles wasn’t sure when the texts would go through, or if they would at all. The room was deafeningly silent and Miles felt something jabbing at the back of his throat, a choking sob threatening to wrench itself from his windpipe. He gulped it down. He couldn’t wake anyone up. He would hate to be a burden to them— he already felt useless, like he couldn’t do what they did effortlessly, couldn’t understand what they all knew, couldn’t be an Arachnae like they expected him to be. He was just another mattress to drag in and another mouth to feed in what was undoubtedly already an impossible life. 

Miles was crying now. He hadn’t noticed the tears running down his cheeks, catching on the line of his lips, plummeting down to the blanket like tiny tide pools soaking into the sand. His hands shook, gripping his phone for dear life. The failed message taunted him, burning into his vision. 

There were dozens of notifications to go through. Miles couldn’t bring himself to open each one, scrolling past little blue dots on each text thread, ignoring the bright red numbers at the corners of all his social media apps. Finally, he opened up a text from Ganke. 

idk what’s going on, but if this is still u, figured i would just lyk whats happening

since so many ppl saw you the school sent out an email basically saying u got expelled for pulling a prank

like they said u pretended to be an arachnae. its stupid and everyone knows its bs

all ur stuff got sent to ur house u might have gotten it already. i dont think anyone here knows how being expelled works they just sent away ur shit

but uh. if ur still in there, i guess good luck. u were a cool guy, miles. 

Miles sniffled, doing his best not to make noise despite the urge to scream, to rip out his hair and punch the walls. Expelled. Expelled. Expelled. It was horrifying and astonishing how his life continued to decay after he’d already lost it. In the back of his mind, he’d still clung to an absurd hope that somehow, by some miracle, he’d be able to get everything back, to go to school and see his family and feel like a person— a human— again. Now, in his delusional state, it wasn’t that Miles couldn’t return to Visions because he was an Arachnae; it was because he had been expelled. 

Miles had been expelled in all lowercase, sans serif font, enclosed in a blue text bubble sent five hours ago.

Miles’s mind wandered. What would I do if I was expelled normally? He would probably cry, as he was right now. He would panic, he would cower under his parents’ shocked and dismayed stares. He would be grounded for months. He would shamefully drag his belongings back home, shove them under his desk, and then lose himself in his sketchbook until he fell asleep hunched over the paper at a weird time of the night. He would transfer back to his old school, see his friends again, but it wouldn’t be the same. He wouldn’t understand their new jokes, he’d be bored in classes that were too easy for him, he’d get awkward stares because people knew he’d been unsuccessful enough at Visions to come crawling back to his zoned school. Miles bit his lip. He would have given anything to go through that instead of whatever the hell had gotten him here, in a room underground with a bunch of cryptids— a group that included himself. 

Someone muttered something in their sleep, their blanket shuffling. Miles slowly raised himself up enough to peek over the couch backrest, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness (he discovered that he was much better at seeing in the dark than before; he didn’t know how to feel about it). He’d expected it to be Pav, who was apparently the newest to being Arachnae, or maybe Peter having a nonsensical dream. Instead, to his surprise, he discovered that the noise was coming from none other than Miguel.

Miles rubbed his eyes, sure he was mistaken, but he was not. Miguel, the hulking beast of a man, and the most intimidating person Miles had ever met, was currently kicking his covers off his body, his face twisted into a distressed grimace, mumbling something Miles couldn’t quite decipher but sounded, against all odds, like notes of fear. Miles squirmed. He felt like he was intruding on something private, something not meant to be seen by anyone, not even the others in the room. It was an illusion shattered, a secret revealed, a facade toppled to reveal a broken man curled up in bed, fending off a nightmare. Miles knew he should look away, but he was transfixed— he couldn’t tear his eyes from Miguel’s silhouette.

Suddenly, Miguel gasped, throwing the blanket off his mattress entirely, and jolted upright. His eyes shot open, his chest heaving. His hair was a mess, matted with sweat and strewn across his face like he’d run a marathon. He panted, slowly regaining his bearings, and an electric shudder rolled down Miles’s spine. Spidey-sense. Shit. Before he could duck back under his blanket, Miguel met his eyes, wide and round, like a deer in headlights. He looked like he’d been caught, somehow. Miles felt awful. 

After a tense moment, Miguel sighed heavily, letting his shoulders slouch. He ran a clawed hand over his face, still tense from the remaining wisps of his dream. Beside him, Peter stirred. He rolled onto his side, blearily blinking his eyes open— he must have sensed Miguel’s discomfort. Miles thought back to what Hobie had told him. Two and a half years. They must have been closer than anyone else in the group. Maybe that added to their Arachnae bond. 

Peter mumbled something to Miguel. He sleepily stretched out his arm across the gap between their beds, offering his hand. Miguel sighed again, his face shadowed in melancholy. He reached out and pressed his palm against Peter’s, just as Miles had done before. Miles began to understand it not as a gesture of intimacy so much as a form of care and comfort, one that only Arachnae could share. You’re like me.  

Peter and Miguel exchanged whispers, and Miles watched, intrigued, as Miguel’s breathing slowed, his panic mollified by Peter’s groggy murmurs and their clasped hands. Miguel glanced over at Miles, and Peter followed his gaze, brow knotted in concern. Miles sank down into the couch, embarrassed. The two men continued their conversation for a moment, then looked back at Miles. 

Miguel carefully got to his feet. Miles was reminded of a time lapse he’d seen in his biology class of a redwood tree growing— a tiny sprout transforming into a giant, the stem rising up into a gargantuan trunk and sturdy boughs. Peter rolled out of bed behind him, wrapping his robe around himself and rubbing his eyes. They were quite the pair, like total opposites; loose and stiff, warm and cold; yet they moved in tandem, a team to be reckoned with. Miles almost forgot he was staring. Oh, god. 

The two of them walked over quietly. Peter settled into the armchair while Miguel lowered himself gently to the ground. 

“I’m sorry,” Miles stammered, wary of the two men approaching him. His heart raced. “I didn’t mean to, uh, spy on you or anything.”

“You’re all good,” Peter replied, waving his hand. “You’re not in trouble or anything. Just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I mean, I’m not,” Miles said flatly. He glanced down at his phone, which was sitting in his lap. Peter frowned sympathetically. Miguel shut his eyes, exhaling. “I’m freaking out. And I can’t sleep for the life of me.”

“I know the feeling,” Miguel told him, his voice a low rumble. “I barely slept for weeks on end when I first turned. I was a mess when I met Peter. Thank god I did; otherwise, I might have died of exhaustion.”

“How did you meet?” Miles inquired, curious.

Peter and Miguel looked at each other. 

“I had been an Arachnae for five months,” Miguel began. “I spent those months on my own, wandering around at night looking for something to eat. I tried disguising myself, but it was pointless. People were intimidated by me with or without claws. Eventually, I gave up. I embraced it. I wasn’t hurting anyone— I never would— but it was easier to demand food and then let people believe that if they told me to get out, they were casting some spiritual barrier over their shop that I couldn’t cross.” Miguel laughed weakly. “It was not my proudest moment.”

“He was on the news a ton,” Peter continued. “I saw him on the cover of a newspaper three months after I was bitten. I was ecstatic, to be honest. I’d been so alone. I just wanted to meet someone like me. I started roaming around at night, loitering in the areas people reported Arachnae sightings—” Peter wiggled his fingers sarcastically, rolling his eyes— “in the hopes that we would cross paths. And we did, but it took a full month.” Peter gave a hollow smile. “I was desperate enough to keep waiting, and it paid off. One night, I passed by a convenience store and saw this idiot making a scene—”

“There was someone trying to rob the cashier,” Miguel interrupted him. “I was just getting him to fuck off.”

“Which, obviously, made him the bad guy.” Peter shook his head. 

“I didn’t realize that would happen in the moment.”

“Dude, you’re like six feet of pure muscle, plus claws and fangs. No shit they were scared of you.”

“I wasn’t thinking. I was in a state.”

“Whatever.” Peter put up his hands, smirking at Miguel. The dark circles around his eyes were even more accentuated when he smiled. “Point is, I saw Miguel, nearly had a heart attack, and once he left the store, I went up to introduce myself. Then he decked me.”

“You sprinted toward me from an alleyway . I thought you were a homeless guy trying to jump me.”

“Yeah, well, you could’ve pulled the punch,” Peter retorted. “Gave me a black eye.”

“I apologized afterward.”

“Anyway, we were both glad to have found each other. We didn’t look like it, because I was clutching my face in pain, and Miguel was looking all grumpy like he always does, but once we were on the same page, it was pretty nice.”

“That’s a stretch,” Miguel commented. 

“Did we get along? No, not really, but what choice did we have?” Peter shrugged. A small smile slipped past Miguel’s lips. “If you told me three years ago that I’d become best friends with this huge, surly son of a bitch, I wouldn’t have believed you for shit. Yet here we are.”

Miguel rolled his eyes. 

“We came down here because we figured if people were going to spread rumors, we might as well play along,” Miguel said. “I’d heard a bit about abandoned stations, so we decided to see for ourselves. I’ve been stuck with este cabrón ever since.” Miguel stuck his thumb out toward Peter. Peter sucked his teeth at the insult. Miles had a feeling he’d heard it many times before. His lips quirked up, teasing at a chuckle.

“It was no happily ever after,” Peter mused, recovering quickly, “but it was better than living alone.”

There was a pause. Miles pursed his lips.

“You still don’t sleep well,” he finally said to Miguel, and it was an observation more than a question. Miguel stared down at his hands. 

“No. I don’t,” he rasped. Miles nodded, unsure of what to say. A heavy silence hung in the air for a moment.

“How are you?” Peter finally asked, tilting his head at Miles. 

“Bad,” Miles croaked. He held up his phone. “I wanted to tell my parents that I’m gonna be okay, but…” He dropped it back into his lap with a light thud. “No service. And apparently I was expelled.”

“Convenient,” Miguel said. Miles wanted to throw something across the room every time he thought about it. Expelled. Expelled. Expelled. 

“I don’t even care that much about school,” he whispered. “I don’t know why it’s hitting so hard.”

“It’s a lot,” Peter reasoned. “It’s a lot on anyone. It’s like losing a piece of your present and your future all at once.”

Miles fought back a sob. He nodded roughly. 

“I literally took my English reading with me,” he said. “I couldn’t process what was going on. And of course the book is The fucking Metamorphosis .” Peter laughed in grim disbelief. “It’s so stupid .”

“Well, at least you don’t have to read it,” Miguel pointed out. “From what I remember, it’s a dark story.”

“And it made no sense,” Peter added. “I hated that book.”

“It wasn’t a bad book, it was just a tough read.”

“It was a tough read because it was a bad book.”

“It was written to make the reader upset. It succeeded at that. It’s objectively a well-written novella.”

“Why would I read something that makes me feel like shit? That’s bullshit.”

Miguel opened his mouth to argue, then seemed to remember that Miles was sitting in front of them, wrapped in a quilt and very overwhelmed. 

“Perdón,” he said. “I got carried away.”

“No, it’s fine,” Miles said hastily. “I don’t mind.”

“It’s okay,” Peter sighed. “We came here to help you out, not to argue over an undeniably terrible book. Do you need anything?”

“I mean, normally I draw if I can’t sleep, but I don’t have a light,” Miles mumbled. “And I don’t want to drain my phone battery.”

“I have a flashlight,” Peter offered. 

“Really?”

“Sure. Just try not to shine it at us.” He yawned. “I’m spent.”

“You slept half the day,” Miguel deadpanned. 

“I need my rest, Miguel. You know this.”

Miles laughed quietly. Miguel shook his head. Peter got up and tiptoed over to his mattress, rummaging through his belongings. He found a flashlight and returned to the other two, handing it to Miles with a kind smile. 

“Here,” he said. “Hope this helps.” 

“Thanks,” Miles said. He closed his hand around the flashlight, hyperaware of each curve and groove of the handle, of the little scuff marks at the edges and the thin seam of the plastic. The back of his neck tingled. Peter wrapped his own palm around Miles’s for a moment, letting comfort seep into Miles’s veins, before drawing away. He held out a hand and helped Miguel to his feet. 

“Try to get some sleep, amiguito,” Miguel murmured. “Goodnight.”

Miles nodded, and the two men returned to their mattresses. Peter grunted as he laid down, then pulled the blanket over himself and was sound asleep in minutes. Miguel curled up again, his back to Peter, and eventually, his breathing slowed to a steady rise and fall of his chest in the corner of Miles’s vision. 

Miles turned on the flashlight. The light was blinding, and he quickly angled it down at his bag. He withdrew his sketchbook and art supplies, laying them out across his lap. Just feeling the paper between his fingers made him feel more at home.

Will I ever call a place like this home? Can I?

Miles opened the book to a new page. He picked up his pencil. 

I hope so. 

//

The next day, Miles came dangerously close to fainting. Gwen caught him awkwardly in her arms as he stumbled backwards in shock. 

“Whoa, you okay?” she asked. Miles couldn’t speak. 

He had finally worked up the resolve to look at himself in the mirror in the morning, albeit with someone else to keep him grounded. Miles had approached it with some semblance of confidence— he thought he’d be able to stomach his appearance, but he was critically wrong. His vision was spotty as Gwen braced her hand on his shoulder to stabilize him.

“Do I actually look like that?” Miles whispered, horrified. He knew the answer, but he didn’t want to. He thought he might throw up at the sight of himself, yet he was simultaneously transfixed, unable to tear his eyes away.

Gwen didn’t respond, merely giving a sorry frown. 

Miles raised his hand and watched in a farrago of astonishment and disgust as his reflection mirrored the movement. He could barely call the boy in the mirror himself. Miles didn’t recognize him. He was looking at someone with gangly, crooked limbs and keen claws for fingers. His eyes were near inhuman; sclera reduced to corners of white as his void-like pupils filled them up, save for the tiny sliver of dark brown iris that remained, barely visible. He bared his teeth. Sharp fangs winked back at him. Miles couldn’t breathe. 

“So that’s what they saw,” he mumbled. “A literal monster.”

“You could put it that way,” Gwen said, cocking her head. “We all look like that, you know.”

“Yeah, but this is different,” Miles told her. “It’s like, I can understand that you’re Arachnae because I’ve never seen you otherwise. This is supposed to be me . I can’t comprehend it.”

“It’s not you, it’s just what you look like right now. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it helped me when I was just starting to figure all of this out.”

“How am I supposed to believe what I’m looking at? How am I supposed to just accept that I’m… this ?” Miles gestured up and down his reflection, still disturbed at the grotesque version of himself that stared back at him. 

“It takes time. It’s hard. Sometimes even I forget that I look the way I do.”

“Does it change?” Miles asked, his voice raspy. 

“What, your appearance? Yeah, I guess so. You’ll get taller and lankier— it seems impossible, right? And all your teeth will get sharper. Also, you’ll get better at Arachnae stuff in general.”

“What do you mean?” Miles looked down at his hands. He wiggled his fingers, unable to see his claws. He wasn’t sure if the fact was a blessing or a curse.

“Well, you know how Miguel was sitting on the ceiling when you first showed up?” Gwen explained. “That sort of thing. Turns out Arachnae can stick to walls just like how spiders can crawl on them. We jump higher, we can see better, we run faster, we have better reflexes…” Gwen sighed, letting out a chuckle. “I bet we could be superheroes in another universe.”

“Superheroes, huh?” Miles echoed, grinning. “That’d be amazing.”

“Yeah,” Gwen shrugged. “I dunno. It’s just a dumb thing I daydream about sometimes.”

“It’s not dumb. It’s cool. It’s interesting to think about.”

“Yeah. I bet it would be nice, being the good guys. Nothing like us spiders squatting under Nevins Street.”

“Yeah,” Miles muttered, lost in thought. 

He shakily lifted his hand again. This time, he moved forward and pressed his palm to the mirror. The surface was cold and smooth against his skin. Miles imagined it shattering at his touch. He imagined it revealing a gateway, one through which he could reach out and touch the ghastly doppelgänger facing him. What would Miles do if that was the case? Maybe he would shake the boy’s hand, or punch him in the jaw, or wrap him in an embrace. Or, maybe, Miles thought, he would do exactly what he was doing now: hold their palms together in silence. He’d found that the tingling of so-called spidey-sense communicated something no words could describe, something whole and unspoken and unique. If only he could share it with this harrowing rendition of himself. If only he could trace carefully over his own skin, just to have proof that he wasn’t hallucinating, that his reflection was brutally, unimaginably real.

“Do you think we’ll ever stop looking like ourselves?” Miles queried. He gently pulled his hand away from the mirror, tucking his clawed fist into his pocket, out of sight. 

“We already did,” Gwen said flatly. 

“No, like, we’re still recognizable,” Miles clarified. “I still have my skin tone, my hair, my voice. I still look humanoid. We all do. But you said we become more Arachnae-like over time. What if that transformation never really stops? Do you think we could stop being humans altogether?”

“We’d still be human,” Gwen responded. “But I don’t know. There’s no way for any of us to know. We can only roll with the punches.”

“How much have you changed?”

“A decent amount,” she admitted. “I got taller and lankier, that’s for sure. I’m in this weird phase where it’s slightly awkward to walk upright, and my teeth are sharper than before. Other than that, though, I’m the same as when it all started.”

Miles nodded, mulling it over in his head. He accidentally made direct eye contact with his mirror reflection and shuddered, his stomach tying itself into knots. Monster. 

“God,” he breathed. 

“Are you okay, though?” Gwen inquired. “You never answered the question.”

“I’m fine,” Miles said. “I didn’t faint or throw up.”

“You came very close.”

“But I didn’t.” 

“If you say so.” Gwen patted his shoulder. “Do you want to do something else? You look a little green.”

“Green,” Miles repeated incredulously. 

“Like, I’m-going-to-be-very-ill green.”

Miles exhaled. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

“Alright.” Gwen grabbed him by the arm, lightly tugging him toward the couch. Miles finally managed to look away from the mirror. “Let’s go sit with the others. I still wanna see your sketchbook.”

Miles laughed. “Sure.”

Chapter Text

Miles’s sketchbook had barely made it into Gwen’s hands before Pav rushed to stand behind the couch, leaning over in between their heads to see. Gwen and Pav quickly began to gush over the illustrations, a frenetic energy buzzing between the two of them. Miles smiled, flattered. 

“Yo, look at this one!” Pav gasped, jabbing his finger at a design Miles had come up with a few weeks ago: an intricate black and white hand, palm up, bleeding into floods of vibrant colors at its fingertips. “Dude, that’s awesome.”

“Whoa,” Gwen murmured, eyes widening. “I love it.”

“Thanks,” Miles said, scratching the back of his neck. “That one was from a while ago. I never got to put it anywhere, though.”

“You could put it here,” Pav suggested. “We could get you some paint, I bet. That would be so cool— this place wouldn’t look so miserable all the time.”

“Might as well,” Miles nodded. “I mean, now that I’m down here, I finally have the space.” An inkling of hope lit up in his chest. “Actually, that would be really, really nice.” 

“Yes!” Gwen cheered, beaming. “Aw, Hobie’s gonna be so hyped.”

“Hm?” Hobie sauntered over to the sofa. He towered over Pav, peering down at the sketchbook, intrigued. 

“We’re gonna get Miles some art supplies, and he’s going to paint on the walls,” Gwen told him, an excited glint in her eye. 

“Oh, brill,” Hobie said, nodding slowly. He smirked. “It’ll be like the Underbelly.”

“I was gonna say that,” Miles replied, shifting around to face him, surprised. “You know about the Underbelly?”

“‘Course I know the Underbelly. Look at me, mate.” Hobie gestured to his vest, spattered with worn pins and silver studs. He screamed punk rock. Fair point. 

“The what?” Pav asked, baffled. 

“The Underbelly. It’s this abandoned station at South 4th Street where a bunch of people gathered to put art on the walls,” Miles explained. “It was illegal, but they wanted to have street art for the sake of art, not to be sold or whatever.” He smiled fondly. “My uncle was a part of it.”

“Really?” Hobie said, his jaw dropping. He grinned. “That’s wicked.”

“Yeah.” Miles glanced over at his sketchbook. “He’s the reason I got into graffiti and stuff. My dad isn’t a fan, of course— he’s a police officer, so.” Miles’s mouth twitched into a frown. 

“Fuck the police,” Hobie scoffed. “No offense to your dad.” Miles chuckled. 

“Nah, you’re all good,” he assured Hobie. Gwen tilted her head to the side. 

“My dad’s a cop, too,” she remarked. Hobie groaned, dragging a palm over his face. 

“What is up with you lot?” he complained. Pav laughed. “You’re all in with the bloody law.”

“Not anymore,” Gwen admonished. “You know, I used to look up to my dad so much when I was younger. I wanted to do the right thing; I wanted to help people. But as I got older and less naive, I guess we grew apart.” She hummed thoughtfully. “And I haven’t seen him since I turned, obviously.”

“My dad was the one who kicked me out,” Miles sighed. “I think he lets that protective, do-what’s-right attitude take over sometimes. That, and my uncle sorta pushed the whole Arachnae-are-evil-demons thing on us from the get-go.”

“This the same uncle you were just talking about?” Hobie inquired. Miles nodded. “Damn, that’s a shame.”

“My dad did that a lot too,” Gwen sympathized. “But they both mean well, you know?”

“Of course. I love my dad; he’s the best.”

“Can’t believe you’re bonding over the fucking fuzz,” Hobie grumbled. “What about you, Pav? Your dad wasn’t a cop, right?”

“No—”

“Thank god .”

“—but my girlfriend’s dad is,” Pav finished his sentence. Hobie stared at him, deadpan. Pav gave an apologetic grimace. “Sorry, dude. Not my fault.”

“You’re all killing me,” Hobie said. Gwen snorted. “I’m gutted, really.”

“Don’t be,” Miles replied. “You’ll live.”

“I suppose ,” he huffed dramatically. He looked back to Miles’s sketchbook, promptly deciding to change the subject. “What about this painting, though? Are you gonna do this one?” Hobie jutted his chin out toward the page. 

“Maybe,” Miles said. “I’m not sure. This one’s old.” He reached over to turn the page, revealing a sketch of the city skyline flipped upside down, the silhouettes of each building tinged with neon edges. Gwen let out a note of wonder at the image. “That one’s from a while ago too, but I’m kinda iffy on it. I feel like something’s missing.”

“You’re the artist,” Gwen pointed out. “Whatever you do, it’ll be good.”

Miles opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by Peter calling out across the room, “We’re low on food!”

Miguel, who was taking a nap in the corner, groggily lifted his head. Miles wondered, distantly, how often his sleep was disrupted. 

“Stop yelling,” he responded flatly. Peter pouted. 

“Miguel, you know how I need my cereal,” he retorted, crossing his arms. “What am I supposed to do, not snack on something throughout the day?”

Miguel groaned, mildly annoyed. Peter looked at him expectantly. Gwen and Pav didn’t seem to notice, still enraptured by Miles’s artwork. 

“We can stop by Lyla’s place tonight,” he sighed. “Get a hot meal, ask her for groceries.”

“Who’s Lyla?” Miles asked, craning his neck to look over at Miguel. Miguel seemed to realize he wasn’t going to get much more sleep and propped himself up, leaning back on his elbows. 

“She’s a friend of ours,” he explained. “She saw Peter and me one day trying to ask a restaurant owner for food, and helped us out when we were turned down. She’s, uh…” Miguel pursed his lips. “She’s a character.”

“Lyla’s a dear ,” Peter corrected him, rolling his head to the side for emphasis. “She looks out for us. We try not to bother her too much, but she never seems to mind.”

“Why?” Miles inquired. “Like, she’s not scared or anything?”

“Lyla doesn’t get scared,” Miguel grumbled. 

“She was generally just intrigued by Arachnae,” Peter said, jumping in again. “After a while of getting to know us, she started writing a book. She says she wants to introduce a non-antagonistic portrayal of Arachnae into modern media.”

“Oh,” Miles blinked. “That’s actually kinda cool.”

“And she buys us food, which is even cooler.”

Miles furrowed his brow. “Do y’all pay her back, or…?”

“We tried,” Miguel said. “She refused. She says that learning about Arachnae is payment enough.”

“Huh,” Miles commented. “Interesting.”

“Indeed.”

“Lucky bastard,” Pav muttered. He crossed his arms over his chest, though not with genuine contempt so much as the short-lived jealousy a toddler might have of an older sibling. “When I got here, we waited weeks to go outside. I was dying of boredom. I swear, my skin started turning gray, but these guys refused to let me get a morsel of sunlight.”

“That’s only ‘cause you’re our little ray of sunshine, Pav,” Hobie teased, patting him on the head condescendingly. Pav sucked his teeth and smacked his hand away, unable to hide a smirk. 

“What happens if people see us?” Miles asked hesitantly. Hobie’s lips quirked to the side, suppressing a frown.

“I dunno, they get scared, scream, run away, try to take a picture,” Gwen shrugged, but the hollow glossiness of her eyes betrayed her nonchalant demeanor. “Nothing much. We aren’t doing anything wrong. We’re not gonna get arrested or whatever.”

“What about hunters?” Miles went on. This time it came out in a whisper and Miles wanted to disappear, embarrassed. The others hardly seemed to notice. 

“There’s a very, very low chance of us bumping into anyone actually willing to chase us down,” Hobie pointed out, “but if we do, I reckon we just leg it.”

“Just run?” Miles raised his eyebrows incredulously. 

“What’d you think?” He wasn’t being critical, per se; rather, he seemed curious. Miles swallowed. 

“I dunno,” he admitted. “It’s just a lot less dramatic than I thought, for whatever reason. I guess the whole Arachnae thing was always done up, though.”

“Yeah, there’s no fight scene or speech to change their minds,” Pav said. “We just book it. No point stirring up more trouble. We already try to stay out of sight. It’s just easier this way.”

It’s just easier this way. Something about the statement hit Miles like a two-ton brick to the chest. He felt himself frowning, and dropped his gaze to the tarnished floor. 

“This is it,” he muttered. Pav worried his lip, the heaviness of a hurricane brewing behind his dark eyes. “I’m sorry; I know I keep saying that. I know I should have realized it by now, and I don’t mean to make you guys feel like shit, too. I just can’t… I can’t. I can’t process the fact. It’s like a surprise every time.”

“Same thing happened to me,” Gwen told him, creasing her eyes in sympathy. 

“Me, too,” Pav added. “Still does, to be honest.”

“Still?”

“Mhm.” Pav brushed a lock of java-brown hair out of his face. “Like, the little things. Food, books, things I used to enjoy. Things I used to just do without having to think about them too hard.”

“Like going outside,” Miles rasped. Pav nodded somberly. “Shit, man. I can’t do this. I’m not ready.”

“No one was ready,” Gwen murmured. “But we’re taking it day by day. We’re figuring shit out.”

“It’s a tough reality to live in,” Miguel said, and Miles turned to see him again. Now Miguel was sitting upright, his legs crossed and his palms braced behind him. “But the thing about life is that no matter how many times you get knocked down, you have to get back up again.”

“Roll with the punches,” Peter agreed. “One foot after the other.”

“Shit,” Miles mumbled, slumping backward into the sofa cushions. “Y’all gotta be therapists or something.” Hobie chuckled, his wicks rocking lightly. 

“Are you kidding?” Peter snorted. He jerked his thumb toward Miguel, who rolled his eyes, probably predicting where this was going. Two and a half years. Miles still couldn’t comprehend it. “Look at this guy. He’s so emotionally constipated. He’s like a little volcano.”

“Little?” Gwen muttered. 

“You’re one to talk, Parker,” Miguel replied, his gruff voice edged with lightheartedness. 

“At least I’m self-aware.”

“I’m self-aware; I’m just saying that people in glass houses—”

“I never said—”

“Guys,” Gwen barked. Both men snapped their mouths shut. “Relax.”

“It’s this pendejo’s fault,” Miguel grumbled, but relented. Peter grinned cheekily at him. “He riles me up, I swear to god.”

“That’s what friends are for,” Peter winked. Miguel groaned and flopped back onto his mattress. 

“Anyway,” Hobie interjected, “when we go visit Lyla, we oughta ask her for some spray paint, too. For Miles.”

“Spray paint, huh?” Peter cocked his head. “Sure, why not.”

“I’m so hyped, bro,” Pav giggled, shaking Miles’s shoulder in anticipation. Miles could definitely see what Hobie was talking about, between the tiny creases at the corners of his eyes and the way he beamed, bright and optimistic. You’re our little ray of sunshine, Pav. Such an unexpected thing to come out of his mouth.

Hobie was interesting. Hobie was one of the most scary-cool people Miles had ever seen, and he’d seen plenty of scary-cool people in his lifetime. And yet this tall, toned man with metal in his ripped clothes and freeform wicks falling just right over heavy-lidded eyes and pronounced cheekbones, this portrait of punk-rock recklessness and unfiltered glamour, unruly yet soft and gentle at the flip of a switch. Hobie combed through his friends’ hair, taking care not to let his rings get caught along the way. Hobie smiled through the little piercings on his thick lips, the beginnings of crow’s feet poking at his wide, youthful eyes. Hobie pressed his palm to Miles’s in the dark of an abandoned subway station mere minutes after they’d met and promised him, implicitly yet truthfully, to be there if he fell.

Pav was just as intriguing. He was the newest of the bunch, Miles knew, and the least accustomed to being an Arachnae. He claimed he was scared and confused just as Miles was, but he maintained a cheerful demeanor even when lit only by a shoddy lightbulb deep beneath the asphalt streets of Brooklyn. He managed to come off as charismatic and charming even with claws at the ends of his janky arms. Pav was a spectacle, too, shining like a star from his lush hair to his tender hands, mostly unmarred save for a few small scars on his fingers. Miles assumed he had been coddled, in a sense, by being with the others from day one, but he couldn’t help but feel there was something more to his jubilant nature. 

He realized, briefly, that he knew hardly anything about any of these people. Miles knew trivial facts about them, sure. He knew Peter and Miguel were very close; he knew Peter soothed Miguel through his torrent of nightmares; he knew Miguel gave him a black eye on their first encounter. He knew Hobie was a Londonite, and he knew Pav had left behind his girlfriend, and he knew Gwen had a strained relationship with her father. They were all surface level traits, though, like frames of backstory in a movie, pieces in a million-piece jigsaw puzzle that fit randomly here and there but gave him no semblance of the full picture. 

“If not therapists, what were you?” Miles queried, curious, glancing around at all his peers. 

“I studied genetic engineering,” Miguel said. He grimaced. “Ironic, I know.”

Miles squinted at him. 

“Genetics?” he echoed, intrigued. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“What did you expect?”

“I dunno, a fitness trainer or something. Maybe a boxing instructor.”

Miguel laughed. Pav nodded in eager agreement. 

“Boxing instructor,” Peter repeated, amused. “I see that.”

“What about you?” Miles asked. 

“I was a stay-at-home dad. My wife, MJ, earned all the money while I sat around with May— my daughter— and baked, if I felt like it.”

“He is a wonderful baker,” Miguel remarked. Miles raised his eyebrows, surprised. “Lyla let him make something once. I thought he was gonna burn the house down, but of course Lyla didn’t care. Turns out, it was delightful.”

“Aw, thank you!” Peter said happily, beaming. “That means the world, you know. I don’t have any other talents, so baking is the only thing I have going for me.”

“Cállate, Peter,” Miguel scoffed lightheartedly. “Qué dramática.”

“What’s he saying?” Pav whispered to Miles. “He never tells us anything.”

“He’s saying I’m dramatic,” Peter gushed, clutching his hand to his chest. It seemed he’d picked up some Spanish from Miguel. “Overdramatic, even. He’s trying to silence me. I’m hurt, really.” Gwen snorted. Miguel rolled his eyes. “I’m used to it by now, though. I’ve heard it all too many times.” Peter traced an imaginary tear down his cheek with the tip of his claw.

“Case in point,” said Miguel. Peter ignored him. 

“What about you, kiddo?” he asked, nodding in Miles’s direction. “What were you into?”

“Uh, I did a lot of art, obviously,” Miles stammered. He hadn’t prepared himself to answer any questions. Part of him still felt as though he deserved to know more about these Arachnae than they did about him. Part of him still refused to believe they were more than monsters. Part of him still forgot he was one of them now, too. “I listened to music all the time, too. While doing homework, while drawing, while on the train, whenever.”

“D’you play anything?” Hobie inquired. Miles shook his head. “That’s a shame. Could’ve had an addition to our not-band.”

“Oh, my god, not the not-band,” Miguel groaned, pressing his palms to his face, muffling his voice. 

“What’s the not-band?” 

“Well, I play guitar, and Gwendy here’s a drummer,” Hobie explained, ruffling Gwen’s blonde hair. “Neither of us have the instruments, obviously, but if we did, we’d be a bangin’ band, innit? We’ve been trying to get Miguel to let us for months.”

“I wouldn’t get a blink of sleep,” Miguel argued. “I would go fucking deaf.”

“Such a blighter.” 

“He’s really, really against it,” Gwen went on. “But I always say there’s a timeline out there where we’re bandmates and Miguel’s our number one fan.”

“You really like alternate timeline stuff, huh?” Miles observed. Pav smiled. 

“It’s a thing we do when we’re bored,” he explained. “We think of alternate timeline scenarios. Gwen comes up with the best ones— like the not-band.”

“I’m sure Miguel would love the not-band,” Peter consoled them. “If only he would try it out.”

“No.”

“Please?”

“Careful not to push your luck,” Hobie warned. “The bloke’s in a good mood for once.”

“This is a good mood?” Miles whispered. 

“Mhm. He’s right chuffed, see?” 

Miguel turned over, stuffing his angular face into his pillow in exasperation. Peter watched cheekily. 

“Right,” Miles said slowly, not believing it for a second. “Um, what about you, Pav?”

“Me? I never played an instrument. I danced when I was a kid though, and did gymnastics.” Pav smiled fondly. “I’ve taken kalaripayattu for years now, though. It was super difficult to find lessons, but my Maya Bhua managed to sign me up in middle school. I guess she was worried about me being bullied or something, but I never was. Maybe she was just protective." He smiled lightly. "Maya Bhua and I used to have chai all the time. I would kill for a good chai right now.” Miles chuckled. 

“There he is,” Hobie teased. “Our ray of sunshine.”

“Our golden boy,” Gwen chimes in, lolling her head against the couch backrest, batting her eyelashes at Pav. “This fucker was valedictorian, too.”

“Well, they didn’t say I was valedictorian—”

“Yes, we’re all very proud of Pavitr,” Miguel said flatly, a playful hint to his tone. A grin twitched at Miles’s lips. He hadn’t expected the joke from Miguel. I guess Hobie’s right— he must really be in a good mood after all. 

“There is an alternate universe where they did say you were valedictorian; how about that?” Gwen stated, narrowing her eyes at Pav. 

“Sure.”

“Sick.” Gwen paused, looking around the room. “There’s an alternate universe where Pav is officially valedictorian, and in that universe…” She chewed her lip, thinking. “In that universe, Peter’s an internet-famous baker and his bakery is super trendy. Miguel coaches boxers by night and studies genetics by day and never sleeps, ever.”

“Why? Why can I never sleep?” Miguel cried. 

“Because the not-band is real there, obviously.”

“Por dios,” Miguel muttered. 

“Me and Hobie are playing together in this world right outside Miguel’s window no matter where he is.” Hobie laughed. Miguel gave a long, weary sigh. Peter squatted down, presumably to remind him that this was not actually going to happen. “And Miles…”

Gwen took a moment to mull it over. Her blue eyes, almost fully devoured by black pupils, lit up like little sparks, bright and eager. 

“You’re a famous street artist, and when people see you on the street, they’re pretty sure they just saw you but not sure enough to ask. You have an endless supply of spray paint. Art stores love you.”

Miles cracked a smile, wide and flattered. 

“Thanks,” was all he could muster up. He hoped the minuscule word made up for the entangled emotions he couldn’t express– a messy combination of relief and heartbreak, and a hollowness he couldn’t quite place into either category.

Gwen smiled like she knew exactly what he meant. 

“Anytime.”