The Web I Spin for You ~ Richpez & Rosenwalker

Chapter 5

Not really a spoiler but there is a small cameo in here from the NMT2 episode "Killer Track". Also I wrote chapter this a long time ago before I knew that Meredith had changed their pronouns, I think I corrected all of it but if I missed any please let me know!!

Joe tapped his pencil against his desk rhythmically, resisting the urge to bang his head against it. He was supposed to be working on an outline for his next essay in AP Literature, but after the events from this morning he was not feeling up to it. AP Law and Glee had drained out of him what little energy he had left, and it was taking everything he had just to sit through his third period class.

Giving up, he turned around and tapped a finger on Meredith's desk, who was hard at work. "Yo."

"Hmm?" The brunette mumbled, not looking up from their paper.

"I don't want to do this."

"Then... don't do it?"

"Entertain me."

Meredith finally looked up at him, rolling their eyes playfully. "Some of us are actually trying to pass this AP Exam Joe."

"I've lost the ability to care." Joe said with a sigh, shrugging. "If the school cared, they'd find us an actual literature teacher instead of this class being taught by a retro guidance counselor. They don't care, so why should I?"

"You'll care next year when we're at Michigan and you have to take an English course and I don't." Meredith teased, placing down her pencil. "Luckily for you I finished. Wanna play tic tac toe?"

Joe nodded, and the two set to work with drawing out numerous tic tac toe boards. Joe found the entire situation very soothing, up until he noticed that Meredith had doodled a spider web in the corner of her paper, and his nightmare came flooding back to him.

"Hey," Joe finally spoke up after awhile. "You're into all of that witchy stuff right? Like dream catchers and shit?"

Meredith glanced up at him, raising an eyebrow in amusement. "I'm not entirely sure what 'that witchy stuff' entails, but let's go with yes for now."

"Do you, do you know anything about the meanings behind dreams?"

Meredith placed their pencil down. "That's psychology Joe, not 'witchy stuff.'" She teased, resting their head in their hands. "But yeah, I sorta do. Why, did you have an interesting dream? A nightmare?"

Joe traced his pencil along the edge of Meredith's desk. "Uhh, I had—well, I wouldn't call it a nightmare, because it shouldn't have felt scary, but it was."

Meredith glanced over to make sure that Miss Holiday wasn't paying attention to them, but the spunky woman had her face buried in a black book. "Let me google it," she told Joe, taking out their phone. "So, what happened in your not-so-scary-nightmare?"

Joe sighed nervously, glancing over at Miss Holiday as well. "So I um, I dreamt that I was laying down on the floor, and I uh, I couldn't move. I was staring up at the ceiling and... there were a ton of spiders on the ceiling, spinning webs. Which shouldn't scare me, but for some reason it did."

Meredith snickered. "That would scare me any day. Okay hold up," Meredith scrolled through tumblr for a few minutes, before looking up at Joe. "Did the spiders descend on you at all? Or did they stay up on the roof?"

Joe closed his eyes, recalling the image to his mind. "They um, they stayed on the roof."

"Could you tell what type of spider it was?"

"Fuck, I don't know—a big one?"

Meredith snorted, continuing to scroll. "Okay so, you were just lying, watching, and you felt scared?"