Work Text:
Sanghyeok feels the arrow pierce through his wing—steel head hitting bone with a rattle—mere moments before he feels it, and he drops out of the air like a stone. The wind rips his scream from his lungs.
His only consolation, he thinks, is that he’d managed to fly over the island before getting shot down. The thick canopy of leaves, dense enough that he can’t see the forest floor, hurtles up at him but it’ll make for a softer landing than the roaring ocean and bristling rocks.
Bracing himself, he plunges down, leaves and twigs whipping at him, snapping beneath his weight. With his arms curled around his head, he doesn’t spot the branch until he hits it, something in his already injured wing snapping, and it drives all the breath from his lungs, choking him when he tries to scream.
He crashes down, something grabbing at his arms, his legs, sticky and strong and when he opens his eyes, he sees torn open layers of something white, fluttering in the breeze.
Pain radiates out from his shattered wing, but he tries to ignore it, going to get up—and he can’t.
Something keeps him there, stuck to his skin, pulling at the back of his neck and his hair when he tries to move. It stretches over his face too, he realizes, keeping his jaw shut.
A spiderweb, he realizes, stomach sinking.
Right on cue, something shivers through the web keeping him trapped there and he can feel his breathing hitch. Struggling doesn’t do much, just jostles his injuries when he can’t get free.
He startles, jerking when a human hand runs along a wing—the unbroken one, thankfully. A shadow falls over his face and he looks up to meet a pair of black eyes.
The spider tilts his head, blinking all four pairs open briefly before all but the largest close.
He doesn’t say anything, though he straightens, stepping gingerly over Sanghyeok’s body, human limbs held off the web by his furred spider legs, though he crouches down by the broken wing, settling onto his knees gently enough that the web barely moves.
Sanghyeok can’t see the break, not with his hand in front of his face, but pain shoots out from it when the spider goes to poke at it and he jerks, muffled sound slipping out of his throat before he can stop himself.
The spider immediately skitters back. “Oh,” he says, voice surprisingly normal, the two legs crossed over his collarbone twitching. “Sorry.”
He steps back over and Sanghyeok waits with baited breath, tracking the soft movements behind him the best he can over the rustling leaves, only to gasp sharply when something punches into his skin at the junction between his neck and collarbone.
Immediately he feels himself start to go numb and it’s with ice creeping down his spine that he realizes that the spider bit him.
He struggles, feeling his movements already start to weaken, but it does nothing besides jostle his broken wing.
The venom acts quickly, joints locking up, and his breathing comes in harsh pants by the end of it, but the spider ignores him, spinning pale silk out from the hollow of his wrists and starting to wrap the cord around him, freeing him deftly from the sticky web.
The spider works fast, moving from his legs to his unbroken wing, and then binding his arms to his chest, tilting him onto his back so he can look up and see the sky. He removes the web over Sanghyeok’s mouth, but he still can’t say anything, muscles refusing to obey him.
Then the spider leans back, scanning Sanghyeok.
“Sorry,” he says again, unexpectedly, because what a weird thing to say to something you’re about to eat, “but if you keep moving, it’ll make things worse.”
He flashes Sanghyeok a quick smile, a single dimple appearing on his cheek, before he scurries off, leaving Sanghyeok completely baffled.
He returns quickly enough with a stick in his hands and sets it down, kneeling again and oh, he’s helping.
Sanghyeok blinks.
This might as well happen.
He doesn’t get a chance to think anything else as the spider touches the break in his wing and Sanghyeok’s world goes white with static. Instinctively, he tries to thrash away, but the venom keeps him mostly paralyzed and what the effects of the bite weren’t managing to keep suppressed, the spidersilk binds made up for.
When it’s over, Sanghyeok just has to tilt his head back, slumping as much as he can.
“Sorry,” the spider says again for the third time, gently patting his now splinted wing. “How’d you even fall in here anyway? People don’t usually come here.”
Sanghyeok can only stare at him, exhausted, and he seems to realize.
“Oh. Right. Venom. Um…” he scratches the back of his head. “That should wear off in a few hours? I might have used a little too much.”
He then unhinges his jaw, fangs swinging down from inside his mouth and Sanghyeok would have yelped in surprise if he wasn’t still paralyzed. But he is, so all that comes out is a weird high pitched strangled noise.
The spider doesn’t seem to notice, poking at the sharp end of one fang before making a face and retracting them as if this was a completely normal thing to do.
Sanghyeok pauses.
Well, for him, it was probably normal. Didn’t make it less freaky to watch though.
The spider leans down over him, and his other three small pairs of eyes blinking back open. “Anyway, sorry if I scared you,” he says, sounding apologetic, making another rope of silk and tying it around Sanghyeok and starting to drag him off the edge of the web. Sanghyeok does his best to calm down the spike in his heart rate at the movement and the spider quickly adds, “I’m just moving you inside. You, uh, landed on my roof.”
Sanghyeok hums, his best attempt at an approximation of sorry.
“I’ll wait for the venom to wear off before asking your name but, hi, nice to meet you. I’m Seongwoong.”
Sanghyeok hums again.
Nice to meet you too. Thanks for not eating me?
He doesn’t really know if Seongwoong gets all of that, because he still can’t really speak, but he laughs softly anyway.