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Miguel has fought many different versions of Doc Ock before. He’s fought cartoons, versions that are indistinguishable from the original, and once even an Ock that had managed to kill his own Spiderman. So he’s no stranger to fighting one of the most common Spiderman villains.
The problem, is that this one just so happens to have a counter to everything that Miguel throws at him.
The metal making up the four arms is too tough for his claws to cut through, which is a step up from most Doc Ocks. His suit also has a feature that makes webs completely useless, as they lose all their sticking capabilities on contact. There’s no available patch of skin that Miguel can use to bite, because this Ock’s suit covers his entire body in a thick casing of metal, which eliminates the use of venom as well. The arms have been emitting some kind of frequency that messes with the unstable molecules of Miguel’s own suit and leaves him more vulnerable to attack. And to top it all off, the collective multiverse really decided to shock with him by giving him—the one Spiderman without spider sense—a villain who can turn invisible.
Basically, Miguel is not having a good time, and the bastardo he’s fighting absolutely knows it.
Ock has been dragging this fight out for half an hour already, delightfully playing with his prey. Miguel is on his last legs at this point. Getting thrown through two buildings, stabbed and cut by the spikes at the ends of the arms more times than he can count, and crushed under the suffocating weight of Ock’s bulky suit will do that to a guy. He tried to call for backup ages ago, but Ock had realized what he was doing and proceeded to smash the goober to bits (along with Miguel’s wrist). He has no way of knowing whether his message got through to anyone, and the longer that nobody shows up the more he believes that nobody else is coming.
He put Lyla on the task of finding some way for Miguel to see his invisible opponent almost as soon as the fight started, but by the time she figured it out it was already too late for Miguel to actually use it. Finally being able to see Ock doesn’t really give him an advantage when he’s already been beaten down with no hope of recovery.
Miguel’s back collides with a brick wall, and he slumps down with a bloody cough. A powerful glitch rips through him, and the atoms in his body all try to pull in different directions before snapping back into place again. It’s agony, but Miguel refuses to show weakness to this villain, and the scream gets stifled down.
Ock chuckles and stomps closer. He’s perfectly capable of making the mechanical whirring silent, but he’s choosing not to now. He knows that Miguel can’t fight back, and he’s perfectly content with watching the spider die of a thousand cuts, gloating all the while.
One of Miguel’s eyes is swollen shut, and the other is streaked by a thin stripe of blood flowing from his head. But he can at least move his face enough to make his mask glare up at Ock.
Ock picks up an arm and it darts closer to wrap around Miguel’s throat. He chokes as he’s picked up, claws uselessly scraping against metal and legs kicking against nothing but air. He knows it’s pointless, but he’s not one to give up even when he’s obviously done for.
Ock hums in disinterest and tosses him to the side like a piece of trash.
Miguel’s shoulder hits the ground and he goes rolling across the street. He comes to a stop when the back of his head hits a curb, and past the stars dancing in his vision he sees Ock coming closer again.
Shock this guy. Despite being a lot less talkative than a normal Doc Ock, he’s just as insufferable. He’s just toying with Miguel and they both know it. It’s maddening.
He can’t feel his limbs, but he tries to drag his arms closer and prop himself up anyway. Grunting, he scores deep gashes into the concrete and nearly falls on his face. He doesn’t bother with trying to get upright, only with moving at all.
But just as he manages to make a little progress by sinking the talons on his feet into the road to push himself forward, Ock has descended on him again. There’s a shink sound that has become familiar over the course of this fight, and with a sense of foreboding Ock brings an arm down to sink the needle-like spike right into Miguel’s calf.
His fangs have already bitten his bottom lip into ribbons, but he has to bite down again to squeeze the pained yell back into his chest where it came from. The sound that does manage to slip out is mostly covered by the crunching of his claws tearing through concrete.
“You’ve lasted longer than I assumed you would,” Ock comments, sounding almost bored. “Though I was hoping you would put up more of a fight. Most heroes have a second wind at some point, but I have yet to find the same with you.”
The spike is torn free, and Miguel curls up protectively, looking like a kicked puppy beneath the much taller and more imposing figure hovering over him. He growls because there’s nothing he can do, and growls again because this is a pathetic way to die.
Ock mumbles something and reaches out with two arms this time. They push Miguel over to get at his wrists, and he fights back with everything he has but is caught soon enough anyways. He’s dragged up into the air, arms trapped and held to either side as he’s presented before Ock like some kind of specimen to be examined.
“You are a curious creature though. Much different from the other Spiderman I fought. I might be inclined to study you further if you weren’t so weak.”
Disgust twists in his gut and Miguel snarls, twisting to try to catch the talons on his feet against the glass separating Ock’s face from the rest of the world. He misses by a mile, and Ock pulls on his arms further, to the point that Miguel worries his shoulders will pop out of their sockets.
Panting and struggling against a grip he can never hope to break, he feels an immense surge of relief when he spots the familiar colors of a portal opening up on a rooftop nearby. His struggles continue with renewed energy, and as his arms flex he thinks he manages to move Ock’s arms by about an inch before the attack is sprung.
Hobie comes in swinging first, strumming his guitar with a sound so amplified that it stuns Ock into releasing Miguel. He hits the ground just as hard as before, reaching up to press a shaking hand to one ear. Mierda, his eardrums might be bleeding.
He hears nothing but distant rumbles and sharp ringing as he glances up to see who has come to his rescue.
Noir has a pair of tommy guns out, and although the bullets don’t make so much as a dent on Ock’s armor, he does a hell of a job distracting the guy. Miles leaps onto his back with electricity crackling at his fingertips, and when he slams his hands down Ock’s suit flails around for a moment before regaining control to reach for the spider. By that point the kid is already gone, cracking jokes at Ock’s annoyed expense. Peni comes in from nowhere and sends her mech slamming into Ock hard enough to shove him to the ground. SP//dr wrangles all four of the arms with striking ease, allowing the others to converge on the main body of the suit.
Miguel’s form glitches out again, drawing out longer this time. When his lungs settle back into place he wheezes, and when he’s able to see again he finds that yet another spider has managed to creep up on him.
Gwen is crouched in front of him, looking very worried even through the mask. She reaches out hesitantly, wincing at the same time that he does when she brushes against his arm and draws out a strained hiss for her efforts.
Her voice is distant and muffled to his damaged ears, but she speaks loud enough for him to understand her. “You’re not looking so good… Tío.”
It’s strange hearing her call him that. That’s Miles’s thing, and a term Miguel had assumed was a joke based on the way he used it even when he and Miguel were fighting with each other. He thought it was sarcastic, but the way that Gwen says it now makes him reconsider the meaning.
Pavitr comes sliding into frame next, jolting to a stop by Gwen’s side with a final swing of his bangle.
“Hey Miguel! We’ve come to rescue you.”
Miguel twitches, sucks in a breath, and tries to heave himself up not for the first time. Gwen jumps up and hovers by his side, looking like she wants to help but doesn’t know how.
“I can—see that,” he grits out. He gets his upper half working, but his legs are having trouble responding to what he wants them to do. His arms shake in their efforts to hold him up, and as soon as he tries to get a knee against the ground he goes toppling to one side.
Gwen manages to catch him before he can smash his head on something again, and half a whine slips out before he can stop it.
He doesn’t miss the way Gwen and Pav look at each other, the brief levity of their introductions falling away as they realize how serious the situation is. And Miguel is helpless to stop their worrying because he can’t move. If he weren’t so badly injured then he would have played it off and made it seem like he was fine. Right now his only saving grace is that they can’t see the blood underneath his suit.
Gwen maneuvers herself under one arm and Pav takes the other, with Miguel’s head hanging almost limp between their shoulders. Like this, he knows they can feel the rattle of his lungs with every strained exhale, but he’s rapidly running out of energy to care. Miguel is over a foot taller than both of them, so when they start moving his legs scrape against the concrete behind him, but it’s fine because he can barely feel them anyway.
He’s so shocking tired.
He glitches again as they carry him, and the brief seizing of his limbs almost causes them to drop him. Pav loses his grip of Miguel’s arm for a moment before snatching it back again just as quickly, and when it’s over Miguel’s heaving breaths are that much more obvious. He goes completely limp against them, barely hanging on to consciousness with one hazy eye still slitted open, and Gwen and Pav decide to go a little faster.
He’s dragged into a portal, and he has just enough conscious thought to worry about the kids still fighting Doc Ock. He didn’t see any adults with them, not even Porker, and he can’t help but worry about what’s going to happen without Miguel there. Not that he would be much help anyway…
Coming out of the other side to the familiarity of Spider Society and his own dimension is a relief. The threat of glitching out disappears from his shoulders, as does getting beat up by villains. He’s safe here, despite the fact that he is still very much bleeding out.
“Come on Miguel, stay awake,” Gwen pleads with him, and he can do nothing but wheeze in reply.
Medical isn’t far away, and he internally commends Gwen and Pav for managing to set the portal so close. Pav starts nervously chatting as they get closer, probably prompted by Miguel’s silence and lack of movement. He wishes he could reassure the kid, but it’s all he can do to just keep one eye open.
The spiders stationed in Medical see the three of them even before they can make it through the door, and they quickly bring out a rolling bed. They help the kids with shoving Miguel onto it, and he’s whisked away too quickly for any words to be said.
Miguel’s claws flex by his side, already missing the comfort of having his spiderlings nearby. And he only has enough time to think where did that come from before the blood loss and fogginess finally gets to him and he knows no more.
The first thing he thinks when he wakes up an indeterminate amount of time later is that something must have crawled into his mouth and died there, because it tastes awful. His lungs stutter as he regains control of his breathing, and it prompts some light coughing that makes his chest ache.
His arms twitch and he manages to roll his eyes open with more effort than it usually takes. It takes a second to wait for the images he’s seeing to actually make sense, but when they do he realizes that he’s in a hospital room. Ignoring the discomfort of ending up here again, he closes his eyes and takes stock of his body.
Starting from his fingertips, he tests to make sure that everything is still attached and moving correctly, working his way up his arms to his shoulders and then down his torso and legs. Everything is functioning, but there’s a weight to everything that wasn’t there before. He feels heavy, like he could still get up and move but it would take a lot of effort to make it happen.
He blinks his eyes back open and looks down at himself, finding a wide expanse of patches and bandages for the many wounds he sustained. A blanket and pants covers everything further down, but he doesn’t doubt there’s much more besides what he can see on just his arms and torso.
He takes a deep breath, lets it out, and does something he knows is very stupid. He rolls to the side and swings his legs over the side of the bed, getting himself upright. There’s an expected flash of dizziness, and his left leg is tingly from disuse after sleeping for who knows how long, but he’s pretty sure he can stand. And that’s exactly what he tries to do.
With one hand gripping the edge of the bed and the other splayed out for balance, he actually manages to stay upright. It’s unpleasant, and his entire body aches in protest, but he’s dealt with worse before. And so he presses on.
There are no windows in Medical, so he drops a portal and stumbles his way through it, quickly appearing inside the blessed shadows of his office. A tenseness he didn’t know was forming quickly vanishes from his shoulders as he catches sight of his nest, and he doesn’t really pay attention to much else as he scales the bridge to reach the entrance.
Which proves to be a mistake, because when he crouches down and moves to go inside, he freezes when he finds something entirely unexpected.
The kids—all of them—are bundled up inside. Some of them are sleeping peacefully, and others are just as alarmed to see Miguel as he is to see them. Miles in particular catches sight of Miguel’s bare and bandaged chest, and he frowns uncomfortably at the attention.
The simple press of a hidden button activates his suit, minus the mask, and he shuffles into the nest, intent on making himself comfortable whether the kids are there or not.
He makes his way to the center, clumsily slipping past Miles, a sleeping Gwen, and beneath Peni’s claimed hammock. In the back of the nest, Noir reaches out and touches one of his arms. It’s probably a gesture done out of concern, but Miguel is sensitive everywhere right now, and when he flinches away with a hiss Noir cringes away and mumbles an apology.
Miguel’s mouth snaps shut, and as he settles down in the center of the nest he lets out his claws to pluck an apology of his own into the webs. He doesn’t know if Noir understands, but judging by the way he blinks and tilts his head at Miguel, it’s at least probable that he does.
He sinks into the nest heavily, allowing the tiredness to catch up with him again now that he’s in a safe, protected place. And it’s strange to think that it wasn’t so long ago when he had hurt not just Miles but the rest of them as well, and now they’ve come to a point where all of them are choosing to stay in a giant, creepy spider’s nest, sharing the same space as the guy who once hunted them down. Even stranger that he would let them without so much as a single attempt to get them to leave. The spider instincts won’t let him, having already claimed them as spiderlings.
It’s nothing but a painful reminder of the last person he called spiderling , of everything he’s lost since then. He doesn’t have it in him to fight his instincts this time, but these kids will never be the same as Gabriella. They all deserve better than what his presence brought her, and they would all be safer if they kept their distance from him.
Miles scoots closer, hovering like he wants to say something. Miguel isn’t sure when he closed his eyes, but he peeks one open with a raised eyebrow to get the kid to spill. He figures it’s better to get it out with now rather than wait and get progressively more annoyed with the kid.
Miles smiles guiltily before taking on a more worried expression. “Why did you leave Medical?”
Miguel clicks his tongue and catches his claws on the nearest web to pluck his answer.
There’s a pause. Miles squints in confusion. “What?”
Miguel huffs a sigh and tries to get his mouth working, about to resign himself to using English when Noir suddenly interrupts.
“He said that it was too open and uncomfortable. I guess he feels safer here.”
He rumbles something like an affirmative and mentally praises the kid. Those weren’t exactly common words for a spider to use.
Miles makes a confused noise. “How do you know what he’s saying? I thought only Peter and Porker knew it.”
Noir shrugs and looks away. “I can’t exactly speak it, but I can understand the words like a second language.” He waves a hand in the air. “Magic stuff,” he says helpfully.
Miles and the others make noises of interest, and then the web shakes and Pav makes his way inside. Miguel didn’t notice him leave, but now he’s come back holding one of Miguel’s shirts and the blanket from the bed he never uses.
Miguel takes a breath and heaves himself upright with a groan. Pav smiles sheepishly as he offers the shirt, and Miguel manages to slip it on with a little effort. Now when he deactivates his suit he has a full set of clothes underneath, and the cloth is much more comfortable than the suit’s elastic texture. He taps out his thanks and slips back down, already exhausted just from that small movement.
Pav waits until he’s comfortable before carefully laying out the blanket on top. Miguel curls into it gratefully and lets out a hum that rumbles deep in his chest. Pav chuckles and backs away, reclaiming his spot by Hobie to let the other teen pull him into his side.
“Are you… okay?”
Miguel blinks lazily up at Miles, surprised when a concerned face stares back at him. It probably shouldn’t be surprising, considering the dozens of bandages littering his body and the state that they all found him in, but it’s odd that Miles would be the first one to mention it. Until not very long ago, the kid wanted nothing to do with him. None of them did.
What changed? The fact that he saved their lives a while ago? Except that’s just what any Spiderman would do, so it can’t be anything special. Is it because he invited them to his nest? Are they really so willing to give him the benefit of the doubt just because his instincts can be not-deadly occasionally?
Miguel realizes that he’s staring and looks away. “Hmph. I’m fine,” is what he eventually mumbles.
Miles snorts and crawls along the walls so he’s hanging upside down over Miguel. “Come on, Tío. Don’t be like that.”
Miguel huffs and raises an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“You’re always so prickly,” Pav says helpfully. “But in reality you’re just a big teddy bear. Or like a giant mama spider!”
Miguel nearly chokes at that. He was aware that that’s what his spider brain was going for, but the idea that that’s also how the kids see him is mortifying. He thought they would be creeped out by it, not enamored! Although now that he thinks about it, maybe the other Spiderpeople do have some buried spider instincts he wasn’t aware of. Shock, this is a mess.
“So, Tío, how are you really?”
Miguel grumbles and considers ignoring the question entirely just so he has an excuse to not speak. But Miles seems to have taken a page out of Peter’s book and is giving him the big, concerned puppy eyes that really shouldn’t be as effective as they are. With a sigh, he admits defeat.
“Tired. Aching everywhere. Wondering when you brats are gonna quit bothering me.”
Miles grins like making Miguel mildly annoyed is some kind of achievement and climbs down from the ceiling. Miguel huffs and hopes that he’ll be left alone long enough to actually sleep now.
But of course, as soon as he hears a tentative “Ankal? ” and sees Pav doing grabby hands at him, that thought gets thrown out the window.
He lifts part of the blanket up, and Pav grins from ear to ear as he dives for the inviting space, dragging a half-asleep Hobie in with him.
Miguel grunts as the kid hits his chest, and he nearly shoves Hobie away when the kid’s gangly legs end up smacking one of Miguel’s wounds, but soon enough the two of them are settled against him. He lowers his arm and the blanket back down and finds that it’s much warmer underneath than it was before.
The other trouble-makers must not like being excluded, because then Miles and Noir are shuffling closer as well. Noir gives Miguel a questioning look before he gets too close, and only when Miguel nods does the kid lay down and press their backs together. Meanwhile, Miles splays himself out over the blanket across Miguel’s legs. He hisses and Miles jumps, before he whispers an apology and curls up beside them instead.
And finally, everyone is still and calm. Most of the kids have gathered around Miguel, and Gwen and Peni are sleeping peacefully in the hammocks above. He’s careful to put his claws away as he sinks into the pile of spiders, distantly wondering how he let himself get so lenient with them. Or how they got so comfortable with him.
His last thought before drifting off is that he’s sure Peter would have a field day if he could see Miguel now.
He dreams of running.
Through streets and screaming crowds of people, past buildings that explode into shards of glass and twisting colors. The concrete below his feet cracks and breaks with every hurried step, reaching farther and faster than he can move away from it.
Gabriella is in his arms, and he can see his own terror reflected in her eyes when she looks up at him. The weight of the world crumbles along his shoulders, and he pushes on. Faster, he tells himself. Get her to the portal. Save her.
Peter runs alongside him, a familiar pain in his expression as a woman trips and dissolves behind them. Then a man, a child, a family. Everything disappears with a single touch. The sudden silence is almost worse than the screams.
Until the mistakes he’s made catch up to him far sooner than expected, and instead of the universe taking him away, Gabriella clutches at his chest, tries to whisper something to him, and is whisked away just as quickly.
She’s gone.
Dead.
And it’s your fault.
Miguel bursts awake with an anguished shout, the blood and panic rushing through his ears drowning out the startled noises of the spiders around him. He reaches out blindly, a ripping sound filling the nest when his claws catch on the edge of the blanket and tear right through it. And when the cloth tangles around his legs and traps his arms, his search for Gabriella is soon replaced by the overwhelming fear of being held down, contained, cut open—
He flails, eyes wide and bright red as he struggles against his own memories. There’s something pressed against his chest, and when the movement causes it to hit a still-healing wound, he yelps and flinches back, finally managing to break free of all the things surrounding him. His back hits a webbed wall, and a whine gets turned into a growl when darkened, hazy figures swim in his vision.
Trembling and panting, he holds his claws between him and them defensively. When nothing comes closer to attack him, he takes a few seconds to breathe.
Vibrations through the web reach him, but it takes him a minute to calm down enough to listen.
He hears safe first, shortly followed by no threat and calm. The other spider repeats them over and over again, and the longer that Miguel listens to it the more he starts to recognize who exactly is there. Because there’s only one spider he knows that strums the cords of the web that loudly.
Peter rings out in his head, and when he hesitantly lowers his hands, his ears pop and other noises reach him through the fog.
Peter is sitting shoulder to shoulder with Noir, Mayday giggling as she climbs between them and all the other spiders gathered behind them in varying states of tiredness and alarm. The tapping continues at a steady, calm pace, and Peter keeps an eye on Miguel while he reaches out his free hand to lay it over one of Noir’s.
“Like this,” he says, directing Noir to the strings of the web. He repeats safe, slowly so that Noir can see, and then the kid copies the motions so fluidly it’s like he’s been speaking the language for weeks already.
“Good job! I think you might be even better at this than me.”
Noir ducks his head under the praise, blushing a dark gray instead of pink.
Miguel snaps back into his body with all the force of getting hit by a hover car, sucking in a gasp of air that makes him dizzy. The kids all look at him in blatant worry, and he quickly retracts his claws before he can use them on anything else besides the shredded blanket lying between them.
The wires in his head get all mixed up, and he taps half an apology at the same time he mumbles out a “Lo sie—Sorry.”
Peter moves, and it’s just a simple pull of his arm back into his lap, but to Miguel’s shocked up brain, it’s too fast. He jolts, zeroing in on Peter with far more intensity than is really warranted. His pupils dilate, and when a brief tremble of the web triggers a buried predator instinct, he has to physically shake it away. He is not going to attack Peter, or anyone else for that matter. They aren’t flies, they’re spiders.
And because Peter somehow always knows exactly what he’s thinking, he holds himself very still, hands raised placatingly, and speaks slowly.
“…You don’t have to be sorry, Miguel. How about we just calm down first before anything else, alright?”
Miguel covers his face with his hands, peeking red eyes between his fingers to watch Peter. He nods miserably and allows the other spider to walk him through some breathing exercises.
The tapping starts again, from Noir this time instead of Peter. Peni hangs over one of his shoulders and mimics Noir’s movements with her fingers in the air. She must be speaking to her spider companion as well, because she hums and nods every now and then as her technique is adjusted and her confidence grows. Listening to and watching the kids is more soothing than he thought it would be, and that combined with the background noise of Peter is what eventually brings him back to Earth. He gets his lungs back under control, and the shaking slowly to almost a complete stop. He curses in his head as he realizes that he’s done it again. Shock, does he have problems. And when was the last time he remembered to take his medication again? He really is losing it.
When it seems like Miguel is better, Peter stops the exaggerated breathing and smiles at him. “Why don’t you join us over here, Migs? We had a nice cuddle pile going on just a minute ago, and I’m sure your spot is still warm.”
His hands drop from his face to his lap, and he leans forward without thinking. The pull of comfort and spiderlings is beyond tempting. But he stops himself.
He shouldn’t be here, he realizes. He told himself that he would tear this nest down ages ago. He told himself he would take his medication so he wouldn’t hurt or scare anyone again, not like he did with Miles. He told himself that he wouldn’t get attached to anyone else like he did with Gabriella, because it’s only a matter of time before they all turn to dust just like she did. He never did figure out just how much interference it took to destabilize an entire universe. He doesn’t know where the limit is, how much he’s allowed. If he lets himself care too much, then whose universe crumbles away first, his or theirs?
Who pays the price for his mistakes this time? Which one of them is going to disappear from his arms next? How much more blood can be spilled before he finally admits to himself that he isn’t a hero, or even a real Spiderman, at all?
An anxious rumble spills from his chest, and Peter gives him that look of pity and shared grief that never fails to rip his heart apart.
“Miguel…” He sighs, and the understanding on his face is almost worse than any imagined scenario Miguel can come up with. Because Peter was there when it happened. He knows what it looks like when universes collapse under the weight of someone else’s mistakes. And yet…
“Come over here, please?”
Peter reaches out for him, welcoming him with open arms, and Miguel hesitates. He wants to, so badly. But he can’t let everything collapse again. He can’t.
But he shifts forward anyway, pulled in by sentimentality and the promise of safety.
“That’s it. Come on, you big lump,” Peter says gently.
Anxiety and guilt swirl in his stomach, and he briefly entertains the idea of simply leaving the nest to go deal with his own emotions elsewhere, but once he gets within grabbing range and Peter sweeps him into a hug, the thought melts away with everything else.
He’s still covered in bruises and scratches, so Peter’s arms around him are painful in some places, but the muffled whine that slips out unconsciously is quickly soothed away by a loosened grip and a hand in his hair.
“I’ve got you,” Peter mumbles as Miguel presses his face into the other spider’s collarbone.
He slumps, completely giving up on all forms of restraint because Dios is he tired. Tired of just… everything. Maybe the multiverse will fall down on him like a house of cards tomorrow, or maybe it never will. He doesn’t know. He just wants to stop thinking about it so much.
Peter leans back and lowers them both down to the bed of the nest, turning so that Miguel is in the center with Peter right by his side. He drags his nails through wild hair and the other hand soothes up and down Miguel’s back. And Miguel can do nothing but grip that stupid pink bathrobe and give in.
The kids find their new sleeping positions around them. This time, Gwen curls into a tight ball and climbs to the back of his shirt over his shoulders. Pav spreads out like a starfish, one arm flopping over Miguel and the other crushed underneath Noir.
Peter’s taps okay? against his back.
Miguel doesn’t know how to answer. All he knows for certain is that he feels awful, but being surrounded by some approximation of family is gradually making things more bearable.
Peter takes his lack of answer in stride, and when May skitters by he reaches out and snatched her up. She babbles happily as he sets her in the small space between Miguel and him. With her addition to the pile, the nest is calm once again.
Miguel told himself that he would never make another mistake like this again. He told himself that getting close to people in other universes was a recipe for disaster. But Peter and these kids…
He can ignore his instincts all he wants, but he can’t deny the way they fill him with hope. This, here and now, is a chance at the kind of family he couldn’t have. But is he ready to take the risk again?
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to know. Right now, he just wants to lie here, surrounded by warmth and familiarity on all sides, and sleep.
“Goodnight, Migs,” Peter mumbles into his hair as he drifts off. Listening to the steady breathing of all the spiders around him, Miguel is soon to join him.