Shout out to tiktok for showing me a vid on my fyp where the comments talked abt this fic, that made my day 💕
TW: blood drinking, yeah gang it gets a lil saucy up in this biz (finally)
It's a flurry of activity in the O'Hara household on Thursday morning. Rosalina keeps changing outfits and Miguel is busy tampering with his Gizmo at the kitchen table. Lyla hovers at my shoulder, half-helping Miguel, half-watching me hurriedly make my lunch.
I check the time and exhale through my teeth. I hate frenzied mornings. Teaches me for pressing snooze.
"Rosa!" I call up the steps. "We need to be going five minutes ago!"
"I'll take her," Miguel offers. He's already made and packed Rosalina's lunch, her school bag waiting for the girl at the foot of the steps. "You get going - Lyla, adjust the schematics by one-point-four."
Lyla groans.
"Thank you." I touch his shoulder gratefully as I pass behind him. He glances up from his work. "Remember, we have the parent-teacher conference tonight. The multiverse's problems can be put on hold after five pm."
"Sí, señora," he mumbles, peering closely at his Gizmo. "Lyla, remind me to be back here at four."
Lyla glitches next to his head with crossed arm. "You just keep giving me orders, don't you?"
"You're an AI, Lys. It's what I made you for."
Rosalina clambers down the steps and Lyla swiftly disappears before she can spot her. Her retort will never be.
"I'm ready!" Rosalina grabs my hand and begins to pull me towards the exit. She sits down to shove on her shoes.
I kiss the top of her head before grabbing my coat from its rack. "It's just Dad taking you, today."
"What?" Rosalina looks up from her laces. "But you always come with us in the mornings! I'll miss you!"
I smile sweetly at her. "I'll miss you, too, pumpkin. But I'm gonna be late for work if I don't head over right now."
Miguel leans against the door frame with his hand on his hip, watching Rosalina pout with her laces undone.
"That's not fair," she complains. "Jobs are stupid. Everyone should be able to do what they want."
"What if I like my job?" I ask.
"That's different," she grumbles.
Miguel and I share an amused look as Rosalina huffily returns to tying her laces. He picks himself up from the doorframe and grabs down his and Rosalina's coats.
"What are you saying, papita?" he asks with playful shock. "Don't you want to spend some quality time with me?"
Rosalina's frown disappears. "I want to!" she says brightly, and ties her shoes with more vigour. She pings up to her feet and grabs her bag from Miguel's outstretched hand. "I want to spend quality time with you!"
"That's more like it," Miguel grins. "Go get in the car."
Rosalina squeezes me in a hug before disappearing out the door. I pull out my phone to frantically call myself a cab - I'm already running late, and waiting for a cab to show up will make me even more late. Miguel grabs it from my hands before I can.
"Hey-!"
I stop my shout of annoyance abruptly. Behind Miguel is a portal in the hallway's entrance.
"Gizmos aren't typically supposed to be utilised as transportation devices within dimensions, but..." he trails off with a shrug.
I blink at him in surprise as what he's offering sets in. A grin breaks over my face. "You're a lifesaver, Mig, thank you!"
Miguel smiles, cheeks dark. "I'll pick you up at four-thirty."
"Okay." I hesitate before him and the hexagonal portal beside us. This is the one part of our routine that continues to stump me, and it just keeps growing worse. I raise my hand and awkwardly pat his collar. "Have a good day."
His smile softens. He knows exactly why I'm struggling. "You, too."
I bite my lip and glance at the portal. I'm still hesitating. I don't even know why I'm hesitating. Miguel raises his brows and tilts his head, waiting.
"I really need to go," I say.
"You do," he agrees.
"Yeah," I breathe, and take a step towards the portal. "... see ya."
I'm one foot in when Miguel says my name. I turn back. He's smirking, deeply amused. "Forgetting something?"
My mind races before abruptly turning blank, and then switching back on to freak out some more. What was he after? A peck on the cheek? A hug? A 'thank you'? A kiss?
Miguel holds out my bag.
"Oh." My voice comes out strangled, frazzled. Alarmed by the turn my own brain took, I grab my bag with burning cheeks. "Thanks."
His smile grows. I quickly turn to face the portal.
"I'll see you at four-thirty," he says. I falter, nod, and then quickly step into the portal.
After a brief sense of weightlessness and closing my eyes tight against the rush of bright colour, I stumble onto solid ground in the alleyway beside the Daily Bugle.
I take a moment to hold my face in mortification. Then, I straighten my jacket, clear my throat, and march into work with my cheeks still blushing.
••🕷️••
Miguel and Rosalina roll up at four-thirty on the dot. The car eases into a park right outside the Daily Bugle's entrance and I rush through the cold to hop inside shotgun.
"Hey," Miguel greets as I drop my bag at my feet.
"Hi," I reply, and pull the seatbelt across my chest. The heater's on full blast and I sigh with relief. I am so beyond tired.
Rosalina excitedly throws her upper body over the dash and thrusts a brown paper bag at me. She grins when I take it, briefly surprised.
"Dad and I had afternoon tea and got you a muffin!" she exclaims. "It's your favourite!"
My bad mood immediately evaporates. I take the bag with a smile.
"Aw! Thank you, baby." I kiss her cheek. "You're my favourite daughter."
"I'm your only daughter!" she giggles.
"Really?" I gasp. Her amusement skyrockets, laughter filling the car, and I snicker. Miguel smiles at her reflection in the rearview mirror.
"Seatbelt on, Rosita," he reminds. Still shaking with the giggles, Rosa sits back in her seat and clicks her belt into place. Miguel pulls the car out of the park and back into the streets, navigating slowly through Queen's rush hour traffic. "How was work?"
I rip off a piece of muffin and throw it into my mouth. I'd caught Alicia talking about Miguel's looks and have been in an awful mood since. "You think journalists would have enough gossip to sustain them without resorting to work drama!" I shake my head with a scoff. "I'm gonna kill somebody one of these days."
"You can't do that!" Rosalina says from the backseat. "Spider-Man wouldn't like it!"
I send Miguel a look. "Gosh, Rosa, you're so right. He wouldn't like it. What do you think, Miguel?"
Miguel contemplates for a moment. Rosa glares at the back of his head, and I grin as I eat my afternoon tea. The red lights turn green. We roll down through the traffic.
"I think he'd help you hide the body," he finally says.
"DAD!" Rosalina shouts in betrayal and I begin to cackle. "No, he wouldn't! Mom! Stop laughing!"
Rosalina gives us the silent treatment all the way to her school.
She stomps towards her classroom, taking off before us. I chuckle and close my door as she leaves in a huff. "She's so easy to wind up."
When Miguel doesn't reply, I look over to him. He's halfway out of the driver's seat and staring at the ground with a complicated, unreadable expression. My amusement fades.
"Miguel?" I walk to his side of the car. "Are you okay?"
He lifts his head and nods. "Yeah," he says, though his gaze seems far-away. "Just feeling a little funny."
I frown. "Do you need to go home?"
"No." He stands and shuts the door, offering me a smile meant to placate. "I'll be okay."
I'm not placated. In fact, I'm the opposite of it. My worry heightens when he begins to walk towards the school with his head bent and shoulders tight, unusually hunched in on himself. I jog to catch up.
Rosalina's sitting outside her class, waiting in the cloakroom and talking with one of her friends. I smile at the friend's parents, but I don't start a conversation. My attention is wholly on Miguel and how he's begun to sweat bullets.
I don't get a chance to talk to him again, however, as Rosalina's teacher calls for us to enter. Miguel catches my gaze and looks away.
Rosalina's classroom is a typical sixth-grade space, complete with a small washroom, rows of desks, and an area for the kids to sit on the floor before the teacher. Her teacher, Mr. Frank, sits at his desk and gestures to the three seats for us to take.
It's the classic teacher-parent conference. Rosalina's a good kid with a wonderful attitude, but struggles to concentrate in class. She's great with people, and falling behind in English. Her maths and science skills are two levels above the average.
I preen with joy at Rosalina's strengths and nod seriously when Mr. Frank gives advice on how to help her weaker academic areas. But half of my mind is on Miguel beside me; how he's been silent this entire time, listening but not really listening. His breaths are slow and deliberate, almost meditative. He looks clammy and uncomfortable.
Is he sick? Is it just a common cold? What if his immune system is so out of sync with my world that he gets seriously ill? Could hospitals treat something like this? Would Miguel even want to go to a place where it could be found out that he's not from this version of Earth?
... what if I lose him again?
As soon as the conference is over, only having had taken fifteen or so minutes, Miguel is out of the seat and exiting the classroom. Mr. Frank watches his abrupt disappearance with surprise. Rosalina stares after him, confused.
"Is everything okay at home?" Mr. Frank asks sympathetically. I shoot him an alarmed look.
"Yeah," I reply. "He just... he needed the bathroom."
The look Mr. Frank gives me is entirely unconvinced.
"Disruptive home environments can really affect a child," he says, not unkindly. I look at him, speechless, before letting Rosalina tug me out the door.
Disruptive home environments. My stomach twists with guilt. Has home been disruptive for Rosalina? I've tried my hardest to adjust to this new Miguel so she'd be none the wiser about her actual father's death. Have I failed, anyway?
All I wanted was for Rosalina to have a dad. But maybe I just fucked up big time by letting this Miguel stay.
My phone buzzes.
Miguel
Go home without me
Sent 5.27pm
My heart sinks further, and then my worry is replaced by rage. What is going on with him? We have a deal that he tells me everything I need to know, and in return he can stay. This is certainly something I need to know.
"Where's dad?" Rosalina asks as we march hand-in-hand across the parking lot. "What did Mr. Frank mean about a disruptive home?"
I exhale long and slow. It seems like Spider-Man will be helping me bury a body, after all. His own.
"He had an important work thing," I answer. "And don't worry about what Mr. Frank said. He just doesn't know how much dad loves us."
Rosalina's worry is washed away with a content smile. I want to claw my own heart out with my bare hands.
Dinner is takeaways delivered, because I'm in too much of a tizzy to cook something edible. Rosalina's elated by the turn of events. My eyes keep drifting to check the time. With each passing hour where there's no sign of Miguel, my mixed emotions build.
It's when Rosalina's just headed upstairs to get ready for bed when I hear it; the faint crash in one of the downstairs rooms, followed by the sound of Miguel cursing. My fury rises swiftly.
I swing open his lab's door without bothering to knock.
"What the hell is going on with you?" I snap. "I can't believe you just left like that! You scared my daughter! And now Rosa's teacher thinks we have a disruptive family home and, god, he's probably right-"
I cut myself off when I see the spilled liquid on the floor, green and glowing subtly. Glass shards surround it. A familiar injector gun is a few feet away, handle scratched and dented.
Miguel's on the floor, curled over his knees and breathing heavily.
Alarm bells ring in my head. Previous anger briefly forgotten, I pick my way through the mess to get to his side.
"What happened?" I ask, before hesitating when I see that his talons are unsheathed and shaking. "Mig?"
He stares at the spilt serum. My gaze drifts to it.
"It was the only one I made," he said weakly, and when he looks up at me, I flinch at how red his eyes are - the entirety of them, not just the irises. His smile is humourless. "I'm not going to last like this. It set in too fast. Lost control."
My blood runs cold as I realise what's happening. The spider DNA. It's starting to take over him, just like he said. And the serum that stopped that from happening is currently on the floor.
I crouch beside him and grasp for solutions - but I'm not the one who's a fancy schmancy scientist. "What do we do?"
"I need to make another batch," Miguel gasps. "But it's going to take too long, I-" he grunts and clenches his jaw hard enough for me to hear the screech of his teeth grinding. It looks like he's in agony.
I place my hand on his shoulder and watch him convulse. A shitty feeling of being utterly useless emerges within me, and I look around the lab for something to help. But I doubt this is a situation that calls for Tylenol and a pat on the head.
"Is there a quicker solution?" I ask.
Miguel sends me a desperate, pointed look. My hand clasps my neck.
"Oh," I whisper.
He shakes his head. "I'm not doing that."
My hand trembles. I can't even believe I'm considering this - but the look of pain on Miguel's face as his DNA is slowly being rewritten is too difficult to ignore. "Do you have a better idea?"
Miguel stares hard at the floor. "No," he admits.
I glare at the ceiling. Somewhere someone divine and godly is watching this and laughing at me. I close my eyes and sigh with resignation.
"Then do it," I say.
"I'm not-"
"Miguel," I hiss. "The whole point of you staying here and being Rosa's dad is to be Rosa's dad. You can't be her dad if you turn into a fuckugly spider."
Miguel stares at me. "... you think I would make a fuckugly spider?" He sounds hurt.
I click my fingers in front of his face. "Priorities, O'Hara!"
He turns his head away and groans, low and long and full of pain. His fangs makes his words slur. "I'm not doing that to you. I- I'll find someone and-"
"Just some rando on the street?!"
"No!" he squeaks unconvincingly. "A- a bad guy-"
"Yeah, because you can get a crime-in-progress on uber delivery." I roll my eyes incredulously. "Be real, Miguel. You're running out of time."
Miguel looks up at me in defeat. I raise my brows. When he hangs his head and sighs with acceptance, my heart rate picks up with anticipation and fear. I only talk big game.
"You're right," he murmurs. He sits up with effort and a whimper.
"I usually am," I say, except it comes out frightened and breathy. Miguel peeks up at me with a guilty expression. I pull my hair away from my neck and grimace when his entirely red gaze falls to my skin hungrily. "Is it going to hurt?"
Miguel looks at me like I'm stupid, and I definitely am for asking that question. "Yes. I- yeah, it's going to hurt, are you kidding me?"
"God, you could've just lied," I grumble.
"Have you seen the size of these fucking things?" he asks, and then displays his fangs for me to see. "'Eey're uuge!"
I stare for a second at his elongated canines, wincing, before sending him a peeved look. "Can we get this over and done with?"
Miguel closes his mouth and shudders through another roll of pain. His talons dig into the floor, sharp and fast enough for me to flinch and reel backwards.
"Sorry," he rasps. "If I bite you- the venom. You'll be paralysed."
I still. "Paralysed?" The longer I think about this slaphappy plan, the more I am beginning to vehemently regret it.
"Only for a little while." He gnashes his teeth with a hiss of pain. "You won't be immune to it. Not- not like my Y/n was."
"What do you mean she was immune?" I ask. "How was she immune to you and I'm not?"
Miguel looks away. "... exposure."
My eyes widen. "This was a thing you two did? Was it- was it a sex thing?" At Miguel's prolonged silence, I gasp. "It was a sex thing!"
"Can we not make this weirder than it already is?" he begs. "Please?"
I have to plant my fist over my mouth to keep myself from either cursing up a storm or laughing. Props to you, alternate me, you freaky, freaky bitch.
Miguel's groan of pain brings me back to the reality of what's happening. His thirst is, quite literally, driving him to the brink of insanity. His face is slick with sweat and his hands have dug holes into the concrete flooring of the lab. If we don't do something soon, it's going to get much, much worse.
I punch my thigh with my knee in an effort to gather my courage. Okay, so, alternate-universe husband is going to bite my neck and drink my blood like a knock-off Dracula. Said bite will make me paralysed.
My alternate self was, apparently, into this.
I exhale and close my eyes. "Jesus Christ this is insane. Come here."
He hesitates, but only for a second. Just enough for me to see the self-disgust on his face and feel my guilt rise. He didn't ask to be like this.
But then I blink and he's before me, toweringly tall even hunched over. His eyes hold nothing resembling a human. I'm suddenly teeny, infinitesimal, a mouse to a ravenous lion, and an animalistic fear within pumps me entirely with adrenaline. It's an effort to keep myself from fleeing.
"You're certain?" His gravelly, low voice is more monster than Miguel.
I forcefully turn my head to the side. The movement is stiff and slow. I'm fighting against every survival instinct I have to remain before him, kneeling subserviently in his shadow.
Miguel takes my consent with fervour and leans in, head tilted towards the line between my ear and my collarbone. He's so close that his hot breath cascades down the skin of my throat, flutters my hair. My sharp inhale shivers. The skin down my spine prickles.
He touches his full lips to my neck, slow despite the way his fingers have curled holes through the floor, despite the way his entire body trembles with desperation. And when he sinks his fangs into my flesh, he's right, it fucking hurts, it's like my veins have been injected with magma and I gasp with pain and my entire body is convulsing, except I find myself unable to move. I'm frozen completely, statuesque in my submission.
All I can do is be intimately and acutely aware of Miguel sucking the blood from my neck, of the warmth of his body and the fire of his fangs. Of the wrongness, the vileness of this. Sitting on the floor of this messy lab - my dead husband's messy lab - with me - voluntarily - caught in his spider's web.
And as I stare at the floor and feel my body weaken, feel myself become accustomed to the pain of Miguel's poison-tipped fangs sheathed in my throat, I think that maybe alternate me was onto something, the freaky bitch she was.
Because with Death himself lavishing on the taste of my blood, I've never felt so alive.