Work Text:
The first time Miguel let Spot “hang out” in his office was supposed to be the only time. And technically, it was. Just not in the way he expected.
After they originally captured him, some of the younger Spiders started visiting him every day. They never tired of this, and at this point they’ve set up blankets and pillows in front of his containment cell to eat lunch there. Apparently, they feel bad for him, think he’s not as bad as everyone thought, that he’s misunderstood. Miguel always scoffs and turns a blind eye at it. It isn’t like they’re hurting anything by visiting, and besides, he has much more important things to deal with than some emotional kids and a trite villain.
So he ignores the whole situation. Pretends not to hear anything when he walks down the hall, the anomaly’s excited voice rambling about physics. Every so often he’ll get a fact wrong or phrase something in a way that’s not technically correct and Miguel has to physically restrain himself from stepping in to correct him, because that would make it seem like he cares, which he definitely does not.
Honestly, Miguel is just glad he’s being contained. It would be easy for those kids to let him out, especially considering that some of them are apparently able to break the cells, which Miguel is still trying to wrap his head around. He’s just lucky they don’t.
It’d be entirely a good thing that they keep him occupied if not for the fact that because they all decided to have a week-long vacation birthday party for one of them — something about a sweet sixteen, Miguel couldn’t care enough to listen very intently — now the anomaly has gotten used to having company all the time, and he’s restless. Miguel should not have let Peter B. sway him into letting them spend that much time away, but alas, the man had mentioned Gabi, and Miguel, against his best interest, gave in.
He tried to keep the anomaly satisfied by assigning various Spiders to keep him company throughout the course of a day. Spot, however, wasn’t satisfied with any of them. Reilly was too melancholic, Porker annoyed him, and so on. He’d complain to LYLA every time she checked on him, LYLA who, for some reason, seemed to be on the anomaly’s side in all this. He’s probably so lonely, she’d say, like a diva, just like me when you work for hours on end without even a break to chat with me. He’d flick her out of the way and threaten to update her code, and usually that was enough to quiet her down.
On only the second day of the kids’ absence, LYLA convinced Miguel to eat lunch with the anomaly. He’s only going to do it to prove that Spot won’t be satisfied with him any more than he was satisfied with the others. She’s thoroughly convinced herself, though, that they’ll get along great and become best friends, or something along those lines. Miguel is beginning to think he forgot to let her know what his own personality is like when he programmed her.
In any case, he takes his lunch out of the office for once, ignoring the surprise from various Spiders that Miguel is actually around during lunch! and silently taking a seat in front of Spot’s containment cell, decidedly not sitting on any of the multiple blankets left there by the kids. He wordlessly unzips his lunchbag as the anomaly looks at him in what Miguel interprets as confusion, though it’s pretty hard to tell considering he doesn’t have, well, a face.
“Miguel, right?” Spot asks, a nervous infliction in his voice. “I have heard so much about you.” It does not sound like a positive thing, and judging by the way Spot sits, arms wrapped around his knees like he’s afraid of something, Miguel can assume it is not.
“Do I want to know?” Miguel asks, shaking his head. “I am just here for lunch. LYLA tells me you won’t stop bothering her.”
“I did not say it like that!” LYLA chimes in, dashing from Miguel’s shoulder to right in front of him, arms crossed with a pout.
“You put it nicer than me,” Miguel replies, rolling his eyes. He unwraps his sandwich and turns back to Spot. “Can you really not go one day without chit-chatting, then?”
“You try being locked in one of these things all day with nothing to do,” Spot grumbles in reply, sounding already done with Miguel.
Miguel just laughs. “I think it’d be a relief. Nothing to do. I can’t even imagine it.”
Spot is silent for a moment before he speaks again. “You’re lying. You’ve already lost everything once. You couldn’t deal with it again.”
Miguel is caught off-guard by this, and he shoots a glare at Spot, taking in a sharp breath. “What did you say?”
“The other Spider-Men know more about you than you think,” Spot replies simply, seeming more comfortable now, somehow. “The younger ones insist that we’re the same.”
Miguel purses his lips at this and tries not to snap. “We are not the same. You destroy universes. I save them.”
Spot actually snickers at this. Miguel is too surprised at his audacity to even do anything about it. “You don’t know anything about me, do you?”
“I know you’ve caused a ridiculous amount of stress for the entire Society,” Miguel replies in annoyance. “I don’t want to know any more than that.”
LYLA pipes in, now sitting on Miguel’s knee with her legs crossed, “Just let him talk while you eat. You’ll live.”
With a quiet scoff, Miguel looks at Spot expectantly. Fine. He’ll listen. He does need to eat, after all.
“I was a scientist at Alchemax, you know,” Spot starts, and even though Miguel did already know that, it catches his interest. “A respected one, too. Smart, handsome, you know how it is…”
“I liked it there. A lot. I wasn’t exactly friends with most of my coworkers — believe it or not, I wasn’t very social before the incident — but there were… a few I was close with. I liked the work, and for once, I felt like I was actually doing something.”
He pauses. Shakes his head. Lets out a small chuckle, and for some reason Miguel hasn’t figured out yet, he’s still listening.
“Then came the day when the collider was finally ready. Everyone was running around like crazy beforehand. I cut my hair the night before, wanted a new look for the big event. Liv — uh, close friend — hated it.” He laughs again, and it seems he’s just amusing himself at this point. “Not that it ended up mattering. She doesn’t talk to me anymore. No one does, no one from before the incident, I mean. My family won’t even look at me.”
He stops, now, and looks away from Miguel, who has been so focused on listening that he forgot to eat his sandwich. Whatever. He puts it back in his lunch bag, unsure what to say. “I, uh, know what that’s like.”
Spot laughs again at this, leaning against the border of the cell. “I know you do. That’s why I’m telling you about it.”
“Uh-huh.” Miguel pauses, eyes on Spot’s back as the anomaly sits facing away from him. Keeping as little emotion in his voice as possible, he replies, “I should get back to the office, then.”
As soon as he starts to stand up, Spot interjects, “Wait. Don’t leave.”
LYLA giggles on Miguel’s shoulder, and reluctantly, Miguel turns back to face Spot. “What could you possibly need?”
“Tell me your story,” Spot replies, sounding almost desperate, facing Miguel now and scrambling to his feet.
Miguel raises an eyebrow. “I’m sure you’ve heard everything that I’m willing to share from the kids already.”
“Well— I wanna hear it from you.” Spot sighs, leaning against the border of the cell. “I don’t know. I don’t want to be alone.”
“I need to do work,” Miguel replies simply.
“Can you do it down here? You don’t even have to talk, just…” Spot lets his sentence trail off. Miguel almost feels bad for him. Almost.
“I can’t. I have to watch for anomalies, I can’t do it down here.”
“Can I come to your office?” Spot asks, and Miguel swears his head is going to explode.
“You’re joking,” he says, shaking his head with a half-laugh. “Right?”
“I’ll be quiet,” Spot claims, almost begging. “Please? I don’t want to be by myself.”
Miguel is apprehensive about the idea. Even after LYLA agreed that it’d be fine, and even after she oh-so-helpfully reminded him that there is an unused anomaly containment cell in his office, just in case. And even after Spot said he’d willingly go in there if it means he isn’t alone.
“...if you’re quiet.”
“But, of course, I’ve been besotted with physics since I was a kid. This is the part where I’d say I was the top of my math and science classes, but undiagnosed ADHD doesn’t exactly lend itself to that. Plus—”
“I could’ve sworn you agreed to be quiet,” Miguel interrupts, pinching at the bridge of his nose as he turns his head to look at the containment cell.
Spot stops, sitting up a little, looking at Miguel from where he was lying down on the floor of the cell. “Are you not the one who asked me how I ended up joining Alchemax?”
“I was under the assumption that you could answer a question simply,” Miguel replies, swiveling in the spinny chair Peter B. bought for him because Miguel standing too much was personally offensive to him, apparently. He has to grab the edge of his desk when he spins the chair, because if he doesn’t, the wheels will careen wildly in any direction, something he learned very early on.
“I was working on it,” Spot replies defensively, a laugh in his voice. “But, yeah. Like I was saying, I didn’t really conform in my classes. I guess that kind of followed through to the workplace too. Hey, speaking of classes, I have got to tell you about this one time they tried to recruit me for the military—”
“Whatever I said that could have possibly seemed like an invitation to keep talking was not. I’m trying to focus.”
“You are no fun.”
“I’m working.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Miguel hears LYLA chirp, “he does the same thing to me, and he made me.”
He is starting to think he should never have let these two meet.
Decidedly, Miguel ignores the chit-chat that follows between LYLA and Spot, only hearing snippets of it as he replies to an email from one of the Spiders who apparently thinks the way he construed something in one of his prior emails was too confusing and must mean the opposite of what he’s trying to say. Because apparently, stop making food items using my likeness is such a contentious topic.
Then an email from a dazed, young Parker asking to join his friend on a mission, says he’s incredibly responsible, everything Miguel has heard before. He doesn’t trust the kid’s discernment of the situation enough, and tells him this as earnestly as possible. Jess gave him a lecture not long ago about treating the younger Spiders with respect. She feels for her own kid, Miguel thinks is the reason why.
“I’m telling you, he’s an enigma,” Miguel hears LYLA say as he closes his email, and he decides to listen in, just out of curiosity. “You just gotta accept that you’re not going to understand him half the time.”
“I can hear you,” Miguel chimes in, sparking giggles from LYLA, who appears cheerfully right in front of him.
She gives him a peace sign, adjusting her heart-shaped glasses. “I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”
Miguel raises an eyebrow at her in amusement. “You have a flair for embellishing your words.”
“Your fault,” LYLA points out, flashing him a grin.
Miguel doesn’t have the gall or the energy to argue with that, so he just rolls his eyes at the cartoonish glint on her teeth and turns to look at Spot. “Don’t believe a word she says.”
Heretofore, Spot had chuckled and laughed a little, but he hadn’t full on giggled the way he does now, covering his face-hole with the back of his hand. It’s almost cute. Almost.
LYLA gives Miguel an incredulous gasp, darting in front of him, crossing her arms over her chest. “Here I thought you loved me.”
“I never claimed—”
“Let me have my moment,” LYLA interjects, now sitting kitty-corner to Spot on the side of his cell. “What did I do to deserve such harsh words? This is like my first highschool heartbreak.”
“You have never experienced anything even remotely close to that,” Miguel replies, darting his eyes back and forth between LYLA and Spot.
“So you think,” LYLA replies. “I have a panoply of memories you have no idea about.”
“No you do not. Why are you phrasing things weird?”
“Why are you a pedant?”
Miguel groans. “Stop it.”
“If you keep being mean to me,” LYLA starts, “I’m gonna leave you and become Spot’s assistant instead.”
“What could he possibly need assistance with?” Miguel asks.
“Not dying of boredom,” Spot says, and LYLA nods in agreement.
Silently, Miguel stands up and pulls his janky swivel-chair over to Spot’s cell, much to the anomaly’s surprise. Spot tilts his head like a curious dog — he really isn’t beating the Dalmatian allegations — but still Miguel simply sits down and says, “What do you want to know?”
“What do you mean?” Spot asks, folding his legs underneath him.
“You said you wanted me to talk. To share my story, or whatever. What do you want me to say?” Miguel asks, frustration already starting to seep out.
Spot pauses for a moment. “Tell me about what you lost.”
Miguel goes silent.
Of course Spot has the audacity to ask about something like that, just because he thinks they’re similar. Miguel can’t even act surprised. And still, it fills him with some sort of anger that he knows is unreasonable. You have no right to ask about them, he wants to say. He wants to kick Spot out, to be alone.
He doesn’t, though.
“…It’s kind of funny,” Miguel starts, despite himself. “I didn’t think I wanted a family until I found a universe where I had one. The Miguel O’Hara of that universe had just died, and his family didn’t know. His wife. His daughter. So I… replaced him. It felt so right. Before I knew it, they were my family. I had a daughter. I didn’t even know I wanted kids. It—” he stops and shakes his head. “It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” Spot replies, voice softer than Miguel’s ever heard from him. “Tell me about your daughter.”
Miguel hesitates, not really sure where to begin. “...her name was Gabriella. Called her Gabi. She was the sweetest little girl you’d ever meet. Had the cutest little smile. She did soccer and ballet, and she was a prodigy at both of them.” He pauses, but Spot doesn’t say anything, so he continues. “She’d leap into my arms after a game or a recital. I’d carry her to the car, and she’d fall asleep before we were home, so I’d carry her in the house, too.”
“It sounds sweet,” Spot offers, holding a white palm up to the boundary of his cell. Miguel, after a moment of uncertainty, silently presses his own palm against the outside wall. For Gabi.
Miguel nods, keeping his eyes fixed on a random point on the floor, away from Spot.
“You know,” Spot continues, “everyone told me you were much more secretive than this. I’m pleasantly surprised.”
Miguel narrows his eyes, swiftly moving his hand back to his lap and looking back at Spot, now. “I’ve barely told you anything. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Spot nods, jumping a little when Miguel speaks. “I’m right where you are.”
Miguel’s plan was to have Spot leave and go back to the cell he was in before.
He got caught up working, though, and they actually fell into a rhythm a lot easier than he thought they would. It turns out listening to someone talk while he works isn’t as distracting as he thought it’d be, and it’s obvious that Spot likes to talk. It’s late, now, and Miguel is mostly just checking in on different universes, watching for anomalies. It’s been a quiet day in that regard.
Spot’s been rambling about anything and everything for who knows how long now, and Miguel has just been chiming in with his opinions whenever it feels necessary.
He doesn’t like listening to him, though. Nope. He refuses to let himself enjoy conversing with an anomaly, especially an obnoxious one. Even if he has an almost-cute laugh and is actually a lot smarter than Miguel had previously assumed, leaving him very confused as to what the anomaly could have possibly been talking about when he heard him misuse fancy science-jargon so many times.
“Are you almost done working?” Spot asks.
Miguel doesn’t even turn to look at him. “I’m never done working.”
“For the night, I mean,” Spot replies. “What time do you usually finish up and go to bed?”
Miguel pauses for a moment. Truthfully, most nights, he doesn’t go to bed. He either stays up all night working or falls asleep at his desk. He does have a bedroom in the Society, so he doesn’t have to go all the way back to his apartment when he does decide to sleep, but it remains largely unused.
He decides on, “I don’t have a time. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. Are you letting me stay up here when you go to bed, or what?” Spot asks, and Miguel turns around at this, because he’s unsure of the answer himself.
“I’ll figure that out when I get there. For now, I need to go through mission reports from this week,” Miguel replies, picking up the stack of papers. He used to do them all digitally, but LYLA started printing them after saying he was gonna kill his eyes if all he does is look at screens and holograms. (He suggested printing her out instead. She wasn’t too amused.)
“Over here?” Spot asks, sounding hopeful. Miguel just sighs and grabs his pen before moving to sit in front of Spot’s cell, not bothering to bring his chair there first. The floor is comfier than it seems, anyway.
“You have to be quiet while I read. Actually quiet,” Miguel clarifies, bringing his knees up and setting one of the papers on his legs to start reading through it. He sees Spot nod out of the corner of his eye, and is actually a bit surprised, though he wonders how long the silence will last.
Miguel always lets himself zone out when he does the reports. They could be quick to check through, but it’s so easy for him to lose his train of thought in the middle of reading a sentence and begin thinking about something else entirely, usually Gabi, usually home.
Today, he thinks about Spot.
Quite possibly the farthest thing from a home, funnily enough. Someone who doesn’t belong in any universe, even the one he came from, because he’s so ruined that there’s nowhere he could possibly fit in.
(He’s doing just fine here, Miguel thinks, before promptly discarding that idea.)
He’s interesting. And, like, yeah, a guy (when did he start thinking of him as a guy rather than an anomaly?) made of dimension-hopping portals would be interesting to anyone. But Miguel is pretty sure that if, for some reason, he was forced to talk to him before the incident that made him that way, he’d find him just as interesting.
It seems like he has an infinite amount of things to say. One would think he’d run out after a few hours with the amount he speaks, but it seems like with every sentence there’s two or three “oh, also”s to follow, and to interrupt himself in the middle with.
And for some reason, Miguel… doesn’t mind it.
Maybe he feels bad for him, just a little. He knows what it’s like to lose everything, and even so, he can gain it back. He can’t bring his family back, but he has people who care about him presently, who love him like he’s family despite the way he can be.
Spot doesn’t have that.
Usually, the anomaly containment cells are temporary. The anomaly gets sent back to their home dimension sooner or later.
But Spot? Spot can’t go anywhere. He doesn’t belong anywhere. He’s going to be here forever.
Miguel knows what it’s like to be alone. He prefers it, really. Even so, he can’t fathom the idea of being alone forever, being trapped forever. There’s a significant difference between the way he’s alone and the way Spot is alone, but they’re the same in the sense that they’re both alone though they both have friends.
He realizes his eyes are unfocused, and he blinks a few times, looking back at the paper on his lap. He really does need to get these done. If he doesn’t do them tonight, then he’ll be behind for tomorrow and everything will just pile up…
Miguel wakes up with a cramp in his neck and a pen in his hand. His head is pressed against something hard, and he has to rub at his eyes and give him a moment to process before he realizes what: he fell asleep at Spot’s containment cell. He’s suddenly very glad that containment cell is in his office and not with all the others where everyone would be able to see him.
“Dios mío,” he mumbles to himself, much to the apparent amusement of Spot, who chuckles beside him. He wonders if Spot also slept — does he even need to sleep?
Clicking the pen closed, he slowly stands up and starts to gather his papers. “LYLA, what time is it?”
The hologram immediately appears in front of him, energetic as ever. “8:28,” she replies innocently, and he half-heartedly thanks her as he moves to set his things on his desk.
“Does she just do everything for you?” Spot asks, to which LYLA immediately agrees with him.
“She doesn’t do anything but annoy me,” Miguel argues, shaking his head and turning to look at Spot, leaning against his desk.
“It’s not my fault you designed me to sit around and look pretty,” LYLA interjects, pulling her sunglasses down to look at him over them.
Miguel blows on her, making her pretend to tumble away in the wind, a grin on her face. “I most certainly did not,” he replies, brushing his hair out of his face. It falls back. He must’ve slept on it weird, he thinks, which is very annoying.
“So,” LYLA says, following as he walks aimlessly around his office, trying to wake himself up. “What are we gonna do about Spot? Are you just gonna let him stay here? Are you friends yet?”
“Stop asking questions,” Miguel scolds, annoyance ringing through his voice. His head is already starting to hurt, and his neck is still cramped, so it hurts every time he moves it. Plus, he wanted to be up earlier, and he never got those fucking reports done. “And don’t be stupid. We’re not friends.”
LYLA looks like she’s going to reply to him, but instead she flits over to Spot, where she says not-so-discreetly, “He just needs to eat. Don’t take it personally.”
Spot waves it off, turning his head to presumably look at Miguel before turning back to LYLA. He’d be a lot easier to read if he had a face. “Used to it.”
“I’ll eat my lunch from yesterday,” Miguel says, letting LYLA know before she can tell someone to get him breakfast. “And then we can talk about Spot and decide what we’re going to do with him— with you,” he adds, nodding to him.
They’re both quiet while he eats, which he could not be more thankful for. It helps his headache a little. By the time he’s actually ready to talk, he almost doesn’t want to. It’d be so easy to just stay in the calm of this moment, to even fall back asleep, honestly. But he doesn’t.
He stands by Spot’s cell in a lingering sort of way, asking, more accusatory than he means it to be, “So, you want to stay?”
Spot perks up at this. “Can I?”
“I— don’t know.” He pauses. “It will be weird getting used to the constant company.”
LYLA jumps in just to ask, “Am I not company enough?”
“You don’t count.” She gasps, faux-offended, and shakes her head before hastily dashing who-knows-where. “Anyway,” Miguel continues, “I don’t really know how to… be a friend?”
Spot pauses. “That is really sad, actually.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Noted.”
“You have to realize,” Miguel starts, “that, as I’m sure LYLA already told you, I’m not fun. I don’t see how you’ll enjoy yourself here.”
“That’s okay.” Of course it is. Miguel is already highly aware that Spot will just amuse himself with his own rambling.
They go back and forth like this for entirely too long. Not exactly arguing, but Miguel is kind of trying to persuade Spot to not want to stay here, for whatever reason. He doesn’t think he’d particularly hate the company — it might even be nice — but there’s something telling him he should at least try to convince him otherwise, even though he, for some reason, already seems to have made up his mind about wanting to stay here.
When he asked about this, Spot simply said that they both need the company. Miguel didn’t argue, not really, but he very much did not agree. He’s been fine without company this whole time, and he could absolutely keep going the way he has.
Spot actually seems to feel bad for him, which might be the most ridiculous thing yet. He’s not the one trapped, after all. And he hates being pitied. He’s doing just fine, thanks.
“Why are you pitying me?” Miguel asks, finally, after being told I’m sorry for the third time.
Spot seems confused that he’d even ask. He tilts his head before responding, “Everything you say is like, really sad.”
“That is not true.”
“It is, though. Extremely depressing. When’s the last time you were hugged?”
“Um.” Miguel pauses. He actually knows the answer to that: a few weeks ago, when Peter B. was really excited about Mayday growing up, he threw his arms around Miguel in euphoria. At the time, he had frozen in surprise, but looking back, he’s glad it happened. “I don’t know,” he lies, for a reason he can’t really explain.
“Can I hug you?” Spot asks, his shoulders raised and body language open, like he’s already expecting Miguel to say yes. There’s a sort of child-like wonder in his voice, an excitement you don’t hear from most adults. It’s almost refreshing.
Pursing his lips, Miguel has to take a moment to process the question, surprised that Spot would even ask. It isn’t the first time he’s been asked that by someone he doesn’t know that well, actually; a bunch of the Spiders got together a few months ago and wanted to hug him for his birthday. Obviously, he said no, to which multiple of them had cried out to one young Spider, “I told you so!”
But fine. Fine. If Spot wants it — ugh, Miguel doesn’t even know why he’s considering saying yes, but he feels like he can’t possibly say no. He can already imagine the disappointment that would follow, the way Spot’s body would slump like a pillow folding over itself. Again, like a child. He kind of has to be that expressive with his body language, though, since he doesn’t have a face to emote with. If he wasn’t, it’d be practically impossible to read him at all. Miguel has considered that maybe the spots change with his emotions, but so far, he hasn’t found an answer. Maybe with further examination.
Miguel isn’t even halfway through saying LYLA’s name when she apparently gets the memo, opening Spot’s cell. The girl really has no qualms with this guy, does she? She doesn’t even say anything, just flits over to Miguel’s side and grins at him slyly. Damn her.
He just sort of… stands there. One thing is for sure, he is not going to initiate this hug. He doesn’t even know how to. Does he open his arms? Should he say something?
He decides to just wait, eyes pinned to the ground, hoping Spot realizes that he’s gonna have to be the one to do the work here. Not more than a moment passes before Spot steps in front of him, tilting his head curiously, the way he always does. “Is this a yes?”
Miguel starts to nod, and before he can even finish, there are cold arms wrapped around him, a refreshing kind of cold, a cool breeze on a hot day. Stiffly, he wraps his own arms around Spot’s sides, letting his head fall against the man’s shoulder. He doesn’t say anything for a long while. Really, this is all kind of ridiculous, and if you told him a week ago he would be hugging an anomaly and enjoying it — well, he’d probably ask how you got into his office in the first place.
He hears Spot sigh quietly against him, and unconsciously parrots the action, lips turning up at the corners in the smallest smile when he does so. Letting go sounds impossible right now, so he tries not to think about it at all, holding Spot tighter and whispering, barely audible,
“Thank you.”