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“Hobs.” Miles laughed, only putting a little bit of effort into his struggle. “I gotta go, man. I promised my parents I’d have lunch with them today.”
Hobie sighed long and hard as he squeezed Miles a little closer. “This is cruel 'n unjust treatment.”
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
The vice grip around him released. Miles sat up and hovered over Hobie with a smile, leaning down to kiss his forehead. It had been a treat spending the last week with Hobie non-step, but all good things must come to an end to make more room for other, better things. Hobie put his hand on the back of Miles’ neck before he could properly climb out of bed and pulled him down. To avoid the tangle of morning breath, Hobie kissed Miles’ forehead.
“Tell your folks I say hi.” Hobie smiled. Miles squeezed his hand.
“Sure thing, mi amor.” He climbed out of bed and opened his drawer in Hobie’s dresser to grab some clothes and get dressed. Hobie sighed again, in a dramatic way that he used when he wanted Miles’ eyes on him, but he had just flopped back into bed on his stomach and was clutching the pillow to his chest.
“Could be you.” He said.
Miles rolled his eyes and turned on his watch. “I’ll text you. Have a good day Hobie.”
The portal opened. “Y’ too, love.”
Even though Miles loved spending time in New London with Hobie, nothing beat the feeling of returning to your own dimension after a long time spent away. It was hard to notice until it was gone, but being in another dimension for a long time left a buzzing on the skin. When it disappeared, it was a sweet relief. Miles arrived back in his dimension in his bedroom, but he wasn’t until he was taking a much-needed shower that he realized just how insistent the buzzing had been. It fizzled into nothing on his skin and Miles sagged with relief as the cool air of New York surrounded him. New London’s air was always a little hard to breathe when they were outside and Miles and Hobie had taken to timing their showers so the water bills wouldn’t skyrocket. Being home was nice.
Before he tried to find his parents and catch up with them, Miles went back to his room to change into some fresh clothes. Feeling about five degrees more human, he went out into the common area to see if either of them were home from work. When he paid attention, he could hear them talking, and Miles soared at the thought of lunch with his parents after being gone with no way to contact that them a full week.
“Miles! That you?” Jefferson called out.
Miles rounded the corner with a grin. “Morning! How are you guys?”
Rio was at the dining table sipping coffee while Jefferson did the dishes from breakfast, his newspaper abandoned on the table. Miles would snatch it up to see what baddies needed taking care of later. Rio looked up and Jefferson looked over his shoulder and both of their faces dropped. Miles stopped mid-stride and looked back at them.
“What? Something on my face?”
“AI! Dios mío, mijo, ¡hay algo en su cara!” Rio slammed her coffee cup down on the table and stood up. “¿Crees que esto es gracioso? Crees que esto es gracioso, ¿no? ¿Tienes un tattoo? ¡No te dije que podías hacerte un no tattoo!”
“Woah, woah!” Miles gasped. “Who said anything about a tattoo?”
“How about we all just caaalm down.” Jefferson said, drying his hands with a tea towel as he walked over.
“Mi amor, your son has a tattoo!” Rio cried. “Hold me back. Gloria al Padre, y al Hijo, y al Espíritu Santo. Como era en el principio, ahora y siempre, por los siglos de los siglos.” Rio crossed herself and Miles felt like he was going insane.
“Guys, what is going on!?”
“There is a tattoo on your face!” Rio said. She walked up to Miles, licked her thumb, and dug it into his brow bone. “Do not play cute with me, mijo.”
“I did not get a tattoo.” Miles said, but his laugh was a little nervous. Surely this was an elaborate prank played on him by his parents. Once his mom let go of him, Miles walked over to the mirror in by the front door. He stepped up and squinted at himself in the mirror before he felt aaalll of the blood in his body run cold.
Yup. There it was. On his brow bone in newspaper print text was stamped right above his left eyebrow. I love you.
“Listen, guys, I know this looks bad.” Miles said, feeling dread creep into his chest as he poked at it. “But I have no idea how this got here.”
“Ai!” Rio yelped, putting her head in her hands.
“Have you been drinking?” Jefferson scowled.
“What!? No!” Miles threw his hands up in the air. Maybe he had been, but that wasn’t the point. He surely hadn’t been drunk enough to forget getting a whole face tattoo. “I’m telling you that I have no idea where this came from. I did not drink and I did not get a tattoo.”
Rio sat down like she was light-headed. Jefferson put his hand on her back and gave Miles and sorry expression. “Well. There’s something on your face and it looks a whole lot like a tattoo. What are you going to do, Miles? Your interview with Princeton is tomorrow!”
“I’ll cover it up!” Miles complained. “Maybe- it’s, I don’t know! Maybe it’s marker or something. I’ll go to the store right now and I’ll buy some foundation and I’ll figure it out.”
“We cannot afford laser removal.” Rio said, mostly to herself.
“There is no way it is an actual tattoo.” Miles ensured. “I would have felt it. That close to my eye? I mean, come on.”
Miles did, in fact, go to the drug store a few blocks away and buy the three closest shades of foundation to his skin tone. The clerk looked at him a little weird and Miles was dying. Was it the tattoo? Was it the makeup? Both? Miles was pretty confident that it wasn’t actually a tattoo because there is no way in hell he would have slept through that and there was no lapse in his memory that would suggest he could have ever gone somewhere with a tattoo gun and sat for the two hours a tattoo like that would take. But the more he scrubbed at it and the more his head hurt, the brighter the ink became. It was mocking him, almost, and Miles was going to die. When he got home, he couldn’t even look at his parents because their disappointed faces were too much. They wouldn’t even make eye contact with him! All they would do is stare at the mark on his face.
He sat on the bathroom counter and tore through the anti-theft packaging on the foundations. He pumped a little bit of each colour onto his hand and struggled to guess which would match his face best. Without any tools, Miles was left to tap the best colour onto the ink with his fingers. It took several layers and a lot of frustrated murmuring, but finally Miles felt confident that the words were covered.
In the mirror he looked like a perfectly normal Miles Morales. When he scrubbed at his brow and the foundation came away, he looked like a perfectly normal Miles Morales with a face tattoo.
He was so, so dead.
“You are like, dead.” Ganke said.
“Don’t remind me.” Miles whined, hiding his face in his hands.
It was nice, being close with Ganke. Having a friend who actually belonged in your dimension came with a lot less hang-ups. But with Miles’ Princeton interview looming over him and his mom’s disappointed expression seared into his mind, Miles couldn’t really appreciate Ganke’s dry delivery as they caught up over coffee.
“And it just showed up?”
“Yeah.” Miles said, miserable.
“Your Spider shit is so weird, dude.” Ganke sighed. “And your boyfriend doesn’t know anything about it?”
“I… actually. Didn’t. Uh, I didn’t think to text him.”
“This is why you keep me around.” Ganke said, sipping his coffee.
Miles opened his watch up under the table and fired off a quick message to Hobie about whether or not he had a face tattoo when he left the apartment that morning. All he got was a lot of question marks and a resounding no.
“Maybe, like, when I was changing dimensions, I smacked into something.” Miles suggested. “And now it’s on my face. Oh my god. Is my face in the wrong dimension now?”
“Leeets keep your voice down.” Ganke winced. “Your face definitely looks like your face, man. If it is some weird dimensional thing, won’t it just go away on its own?”
“I am going to die if I have to ask Gwen to Go Home Machine my face.”
“I think that’s your only option.”
So after waking up with the love of his life, being scorned by his parents, buying makeup for the first time, having the world’s most awkward lunch, studying for his interview, and then being mocked by one of his dear friends for not knowing what to do about the mysterious tattoo, Miles called on another dear friend to mock him for not knowing what to do about the mysterious tattoo.
“You’re kidding me.” Gwen laughed. She smeared her thumb over Miles’ brow bone, exposing the tattoo, and did a poor job of covering up her smile. “Oh noo. Miles. That’s bad.”
“Please don’t rub it in.” Miles was having the worst day.
“Let me check the schedule and see if there are any anomalies going out today. I’m sure we can squeeze you in.” She said. She typed away on her watch for a moment before her gaze flicked up to Miles. “Hey. Chill out. We’ll figure this out.”
“I may have just screwed up my whole future because of an interdimensional tattoo I have no memory of getting.” Miles said. “I think I’m permitted a little bit of a freak out.”
“Yeah, well, stop it.” Gwen said. “You’re doing that thing with your face when you’re upset.”
“What thing?”
“The pouty thing.”
“I wouldn’t describe it as pouty-”
“Okay, so, at eight pm, it looks like the machine is open. Aaand it’s late enough at night that most of the Spiders will have gone home so there will be no one to laugh at you.” Gwen said, showing Miles the schedule on her watch. “Except for me. And Lyla.”
“So I’m stuck like this until eight pm?”
“That’s literally five hours.”
The longest five hours of Miles life.
Not to mention how much he hated being in HQ. Five hours later and Miles was sitting in one of the few places in the multiverse he avoided like the plague. The cameras and screens and more cameras stuck into the walls. The echoing hallways and intersecting bridges that made him dizzy. Miles didn’t want to spend one second longer in HQ than he had to, and sitting in front of the Go Home machine with Gwen behind the computer did not help his anxiety one bit. He kept expecting Miguel to appear from the shadows, or Peter B to arrive to mock him. Either way, Miles was upset and uncomfortable and wanted the day over. Bad news was that once that day was over, it was interview day, and Miles would still have the stupid tattoo on his face.
“Okay, Miles. I’m going to take some pictures. Since the eye scan won’t work for this, I’m going to need some skin cells. That okay?”
Miles took deep, calming breaths. “Yup. Yeah. Why not.”
When Gwen crouched in front of him, she paused with a frown. “It’s fading.”
“It is!?” Miles threw his head back. “Gracias a Dios. Maybe it was just marker.”
“Yeah, no.” Gwen snorted. “Do you still want me to take a sample?”
“You better.” Miles sighed. “Just in case it happens again.”
Using the back of a scalpel, Gwen very gently scraped at Miles’ brow bone before tapping the scalpel against a petri dish. She took some pictures and strolled back over to the rows of desks before tossing the petri disk into a new machine Miles hadn’t seen before and plugging the camera into the computer. She worked quickly and efficiently, Gwen, and even if Miles hated HQ, he was happy that she enjoyed it.
“Okay. So it’s running the pictures through some photo recognition software and it’s running the scrapings through the same machine that the eye scan uses.” Gwen explained. “How you feeling?”
Miles felt like a lab rat. “Miserable.”
“But the interview is pretty exciting, right?” Gwen offered.
“Does makeup stay on if you sweat?”
Gwen gave him an unimpressed look. “Yes, Miles.”
“Just asking.” He said into his fist. “Cause I sweat when I’m nervous and if I sweat off the foundation and the interviewer sees that I have a face tattoo I am so screwed.”
“It’s going to be fine.” Gwen said. “You’re going to do great there, Miles. I’m happy for you.”
Miles’ stomach lurched. “Thanks, Gwendy.”
“Only Hobie gets to call me that.”
“Well. Hobie’s like- my other half, so it counts.”
“Ew.” Gwen said, wrinkling her nose.
“What is gross about that?”
“Oh my god.” Gwen said, looking at her screen.
“What?” Miles felt his stomach drop. “What? What is it, Gwen?”
“It’s from Hobie’s dimension.” Gwen said. A smile started to kick at her lips. “Oh my god. Miles. You have text on your face from Hobie’s dimension.”
“What does that mean, what does that mean?”
“It means after prolonged exposure, you must pick up traits from the dimension you’re in!” Gwen started typing furiously. “Oh my god. I don’t know how we didn’t notice this before. It must be a camouflage sort of thing! I would think that the watches would prevent you from picking up traits but maybe after long enough to can assimilate to another dimension if the watches stave off glitching? Miles, this is huge. How long were you at Hobie’s?”
Miles felt a little shell shocked. “A week.”
“A week. Wow. It probably requires repeated exposure, though. And that’s why it’s fading! Wow, Miles. Miles?”
Miles had his head in his hands. If he stayed at Hobie’s for too long, he’d glitch out in his own dimension? Miles rubbed at the text on his brow. If he spent too long at Hobie’s, soon he’d be covered in text just like Hobie was. They had already had a discussion about Hobie covering his text when meeting Miles’ extended family and Miles couldn’t stomach the idea of having to hide himself from his own family like that too. And what would happen if Hobie ever dared to stay too long in New York? Miles couldn’t picture him without his outline or his text or his changing colours. It made him feel a little sick, in all honesty.
“I know… I know that when Hobie and I started dating, we knew we’d run into some problems no one had ever faced before.” Miles said. “But I’m being removed from my dimension?”
Gwen’s face fell. She walked away from the computer and came to Miles’ side. “You’re not being removed, Miles. I think, maybe, your body is just acclimating to spending so much time between dimensions? That’s not a bad thing.”
Miles felt horrible.
“Hey.” Gwen said. She sat next to him and nudged him. “There’s a first time for everything, right?”
Miles let out a startled laugh and leaned his head on her shoulder. “Shut up.”
“You should talk to Hobie about it.” Gwen said. “Make sure he knows in case anything starts happening with him.”
It was hard to imagine Hobie without the text on his face. Miles felt like seeing Hobie outside of some shade of pink would be wrong.
“Are you okay with it if I tell Miguel?”
Miles let out a long, long breath. He thought about Miguel calling on him, summoning him with questions, with a sneer, with more speeches about responsibility and the fabric of the universes. Miles thought about being some little lab rat to run tests on. Worse yet, he thought about Hobie being treated like more of an alien than he already was. Miles thought about the way Hobie would turn up his chin if anyone dared to ask him a question about his relationship with Miles in a tone that was anything other than delighted. Miles was terrified by the idea that he now a ticking time bomb for other Spiders to watch, waiting to see him either tear himself apart or affirm that dimensional travel was stable.
But the time would pass anyways. It wasn’t like Miles was going to stop seeing Hobie. He knew that Gwen would look him up and down every time he saw her for the rest of days, looking, searching for evidence she could log for herself later. It wasn’t her fault that she was curious.
“You can tell Miguel.” Miles said. “But I don’t want him to contact me. I don’t want him to contact Hobie. I want him to stay out of it. Okay?”
“Okay.” Gwen said. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t.”
Miles deflated a little. “Thank you, Gwen. I know this is awkward for you.”
“I get it.” She said, putting her head on top of Miles’. “I know it’s hard for you too.”
Confident he wasn’t dying and that his little tattoo wasn’t forever, Miles went back home. It was a headache explaining exactly what had transpired to his parents, but at least they were understanding. Miles didn’t have many options outside of curling up in bed after studying for his interview one more time. He knew he needed to text Hobie, but he wanted his thoughts in order and his interview over with before he let the life-changing information fully sink in.
Morning came, because of course it did. The first thing Miles did was look at himself on his phone’s camera.
Nothing.
He collapsed into bed with his relief. There was nothing on his face. Not even a smudge. By the grace of some higher power smiling down on him for once, Miles did not have to walk into his Princeton interview with a face tattoo.
The interview actually went kind of well. The recruiter was kind and understanding when Miles stuttered through the first few minutes. Once he found his stride, though, the conversation flowed, the questions were easy. It was still terrifying because Miles’ future was at stake, but at least he had done it.
The celebratory dinner with his parents was much easier to get through when he didn’t have a tattoo plastered on his forehead. And Miles fought to be in the moment, to soak in the praise, to be excited, but his thoughts kept being pulled elsewhere. What was the damn point of going to Princeton for physics if he was just going to acclimate to Hobie’s dimension anyways? Miles was good at math, sure, but he didn’t like it as much as he loved doing art. He wasn’t going to move away from home and shell out thousands of dollars for a degree that barely interested him if it no longer pertained to the future he had imagined for himself and Hobie.
But on the other side of that coin, Miles had no idea what the disappearing tattoo on his forehead meant. No one did. And it would be stupid to throw away a good opportunity because he got cocky over one magically appearing face tattoo. And there were other people in other dimensions that Miles cared about. Gwen and Pav meant the worlds to Miles even if he didn’t see them as often. He worried that even if he was lucky enough to be able to explore Hobie’s dimension without a watch that he wouldn’t get the same treatment in Gwen’s New York or Mumbattan.
And there was always a threat lurking in the world of Spiderman. Miles couldn’t get over the anxiety that he was wasting away. He could hear Miguel’s voice in his head, you’re just an anomaly, an anomaly, anomaly, anomaly, anomaly. If Miles wasn’t supposed to exist (he was, he knew he was), then surely no dimension would want to take claim for him. Maybe he’d be spit between worlds for the rest of his life, all of them unsure and confused as to how to fit them into their systems. Maybe the text on his forehead was a precursor to a type of devastation that would ruin Hobie’s and Miles’ relationship.
Not that. Anything but that.
He couldn’t take it anymore. Miles was terrified to travel back to New London but he didn’t have the willpower to stay away. The second his bedroom door closed and his parents thought he was sound asleep, Miles slapped on his watch and whisked himself back to Hobie’s apartment.
“Home early?” Hobie grinned from the couch, his guitar perched in his lap. Miles’ heart soared at the word home, but that flying bird hit a skyscraper window and fell to the sidewalk before he could get all misty eyed about it. Hobie’s delighted expression fell into something more concerned. “What’s the tosh, love?”
Hobie put the guitar down on the couch and stood up. He pulled Miles in close and ran a hand down his back before tucking Miles’ head into his shoulder. Miles hadn’t realized just how much damage the what if, what if, what ifs had done because he wasn’t expecting himself to break down into tears the second Hobie roped him into a hug. But there he was, clutching the back of Hobie’s shirt, a whine high in his throat and tearing up his vocal chords.
“Miles.” Hobie said, petting his hair. “It’s okay, love. You’re okay.”
Miles pulled away and rubbed furiously his eyes. He didn’t know what to say. Hobie grabbed one of his hands before he stepped too far back, though, and Miles took a shaky breath as he squeezed Hobie’s fingers. “I had a face tattoo.”
Hobie made an exasperated noise and put his finger under Miles’ chin, tilting his head up to meet his eye. “And now y’ don’t?”
“It was from here.”
“Here?” Hobie asked, looking around as if for the tattoo gun. “Trust me, love, I woulda noticed you gettin’ inked.”
“Hobie, I had your text on my face.”
Hobie’s eyes got wide. He stepped a little closer and held Miles’ face with both hands, searching every wrinkle and every blemish for proof. Standing this close, and with the topic on the tip of his tongue, Miles was searching Hobie’s face, too. Carbon emissions down 23%. Famed war journalist found dead in home. Stay, stay, stay. The Thunderbolt department best not be at it again. Mine.
Miles was trying to keep his breathing steady. Mine.
“You mean the words? The stuff in my skin?” Hobie asked.
“Yes.” Miles said. “Gwen and I tested it. It was from this dimension.”
“An’ it was on you?”
“Under my skin, yeah.”
“Bloody hell.” Hobie murmured. He hugged Miles again, resting his chin on top of his head. Miles held on but felt Hobie take a deep, shuddering breath like this information was ruining his night, too.
“So you’re- you’re here, now. Part of this, I mean. Part of this dimension.”
“We don’t know.” Miles said, holding on a little tighter. “We don’t know.”
“Oh, ‘at’s okay.” Hobie said. He ducked his head down and kissed Miles’ shoulder. “’at’s okay, love, we don’t gotta know everything.”
“Yeah.” Miles said, melting into Hobie’s comforting presence. There was nothing like it, really. “We’ll figure it out together.”
“Atta b'y.” Hobie smiled, kissing Miles’ cheek. He paused then, and his eyes got wide, and his face split with a smile.
“What?” Miles asked, feeling his heart rate pick up.
Hobie grabbed at Miles’ t-shirt and pulled on his collar to expose his shoulder. Miles couldn’t turn his head enough to see what he was looking at.
“Oh, I can do so much evil with this.” Hobie said.
“With what? With what!?” Miles yelped when Hobie picked him up and dropped him onto the couch. His panicked flailing gave away to laughter when Hobie climbed on top of him and started kissing any bit of skin he could reach. Miles’ cheek, his eyelid, his jaw, his neck. The ditches of his elbows and the knuckles of his fingers and the palms of his hands. When Hobie finally relented and sat back on Miles’ thighs, he had the world’s most smug look plastered on his face. Miles wanted to smush his cheeks.
“What was that for?” He said instead.
“Look at your arms, love.”
Miles looked at where he was resting his hands on Hobie’s thighs. With a start, he realized they were covered in text. Miles’ chest constricted and he felt his eyes bulging out of his head as he looked at his arms before patting at his neck and face as though he could feel the text on his skin. He was covered, absolutely covered in newspaper print text everywhere and anywhere that Hobie had kissed him. I love you, I love you, I love you.
Miles collapsed back onto the couch. “You do realize that my parent’s expect me home in the morning, right? And they’re going to see this? All of this?”
Hobie grinned, shifting his weight down a little, mischief alight in his eyes. “You miiiight wanna a get a rain check on that one.”