desiderium | m. o'hara

five

My mind is buzzing as I order two hot chocolates. The rain starts coming down harder, pelting the pavement and the cars on the road with thin bolts of water. A haze settles over the harbour.

Miguel and I wordlessly agree to continue our conversation in the shelter of the cafe. I find us a semi-private booth in the corner while he waits for and brings over the drinks. My jacket is slung over the corner of my booth. It drips on the floor.

"What happened then?" I ask when he places the drinks down with a clink of ceramic.

Miguel eases himself into the seat opposite me. The rain pounds against the glass and the coffee machine squeals, creating a cacophony of background noise. I automatically scoop my marshmallows up and dump them into his drink. I only realise what I've done when he lets out a startled laugh.

"Sorry! Sorry." My ears are burning with shame as my fingers jump through the air, unsure how to proceed. The mallows are already beginning to melt out into his milk foam. "That was instinct, I swear-"

"Y/n." He catches my hands with his own and slowly pushes them back towards me. "It's fine."

I meekly glance up at him, cheeks hot. "I guess you also have a sweet tooth."

Miguel gives me a crooked kind of half-smile that both breaks my heart and stitches it back together. "And I guess you also don't."

My eyes widen. I pull my hands back to myself and lay them in my lap, where they twist and pull at the hem of my shirt. I wonder how he felt when he first saw an alternate version of himself. I wonder if he was as unsettled as I am hearing about myself who isn't really me.

Miguel's faint mirth fades as he picks up a spoon and stirs his marshmallows into white-pink foam. He continues his story from where he left off.

"Rapture is a genetical bonder," he says. "I had to get the stuff out of my system before it was too late, but the only way was through the same machine Sims was in before."

My heart drops through the floor. "Miguel..."

"Aaron caught me and tampered with the machine," he continues, though doesn't meet my gaze. "He inputted the Spider-Man serum into the machine's genetic template that was supposed to remove the rapture from my system. He thought he'd killed me, but I used my own genetic code as the base strain for our test serums." He gently taps his teaspoon against the rim of his cup. "I guess something really wrong went right, and I came out alive. My genes got spliced with a spider's DNA. And here I am, drinking marshmallow foam."

"Jesus." I slump back in my seat and squeeze my eyes shut. My mind spins off axis, swivelling this way and that. I feel like I'm experiencing vertigo on flat ground.

Miguel huffs amusedly. "Told you it was a long story."

I run my hands down my face. "You're part spider. How did I not know? Three years of him..."

Miguel leans back and sips his drink. "Your Miguel spent those two weeks learning how to keep his changes a secret. Did you notice that when he came back, he was different?"

"Yeah." I tiredly nod. "He began to mumble and stay inside a lot more." That was around when our outside walks stopped, but I just chalked that up to being overworked. He said he was overworked.

Miguel taps the edge of his eye. "His vision changed. Bright light gave him migraines."

I shake my head and lower my voice, despite our relative privacy. "I never saw him drink anyone's blood, though."

"He got off lucky," Miguel says. "He missed that part. Venom only."

"'Venom-?'" I crumple myself into a ball on the seat and dig my head into my knees. "What the fuck. What the fuck." I slowly shake my head in despair. "He really didn't tell me anything."