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writefightandflightclub · 2 years ago

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Hanging by a thread (Part 2 of 3): Miguel O'Hara x fem!reader

Part one: here. Part three of three: coming soon.

Summary:

First there was you - and you were alone.

Then, there was Miguel - and you were still alone.

Next, there was you and Miguel.

And you were more alone than ever.

Genre: angst

Author's note: The Miguel brain rot continues! This is part 2 of 3, and I think maybe it even hurts more than that last?!

READ THE WARNINGS: Tell me if I missed anything - ask me if you'd like more detail <;3 arachnophobia folks maybe stay away, obvs; angst; loneliness; grief; suicidal ideation (not explicit); self-harm; blood / wounds mentioned (not explicit); smut references; angsty steam; reader experiences effects of (a non-toxic paralytic, not super explicit); vague dub-con themes (kissing in angsty situation where it's probably not appropriate and explicit consent isn't sought before initiating, to give you an idea of the type of scenario.); toxic relationship; yelling; reader hits Miguel in the chest - he's not physically harmed but still warning for physical aggression.

You punch the bag hard. Repeatedly. Punch it until your muscles burn and your knuckles scream in pain.

You’re done training agility. Sky-skills. Sick of being weightless; falling. You’re always falling.

Always

slipping

down

string.

Instead, you've come here -to the decommissioned gym- to feel something solid beneath your feet. To feel something push back. To resist you; perhaps to remind you that you’re there at all. That there is form to you. That you are anything more than a yawning black hole.

An absence.

A lack.

And so, you punch.

You punch the bag like you used to Before. Before you were this… creature. Before you’d lost everything. Before you were lost.

Before

you were

caught

in his

web;

tightly,

so tightly wound.

You work yourself hard. So hard that your breath grows ragged, the dull thud of fist against bag drowned out -almost- by the pulsing blood in your ears. Work so hard that you ache; sweat; drip.

It’s a rare feat these days. These days, Miguel is usually the only one who can make you:

ache;

sweat;

drip.

Ever since you became this creature nothing else seems to-

-No.

Stop that. Don’t think.

Not about him.

Not about him and the way he hits the spot.

The way he fills the empty space inside of you. Fills it all the way up.

Just hit.

Hit until your knuckles split.

Until they bleed. Bleed as red as Miguel’s fiery Mars gaze. Until you recall last night and the way his planets of war were intent on you. Furious. Angry. Furious with want and-

-Stop.

Just keep fucking going. Keep going until the bag is smeared with red.

Until you feel.

Until you stop feeling.

It doesn’t matter.

Just keep hurting until the buried pain can surface. Just keep hurting until the buried pain can surface. Just keep hurting, until all of that goddamn buried pain can come right up to the surface. Until you can see it. Until it's visible.

And so, you simply work. You push, and the bag pushes back. You work, until you don’t know if you’re sweating or sobbing. Until you don’t know if the feeling constricting your chest is exertion or despair.

You simply keep hurting. Keep hurting because he’s not here, so there’s nothing else left you could possibly feel anyway and-

“-Stop,” Miguel sounds out as he enters, his full, booming voice filling every corner of the empty gym. Trailing its web from corner to corner, until even the ropes in the ring feel like they belong to him. The tether this bag swings on: belongs to him. The

thread

you are

hanging by:

belongs to

him.

You: belong to him.

All is his. All spun by him, seems like.

You glance at him without seeing, your face smeared with wetness. A mess of salt and iron - and you wish you could be fragmented. Split back down. Parsed and segmented back into your constituent elements.

Wish that you could slip down the gullet of that gaping black hole you carry right inside your middle.

And so, you don’t stop.

Instead, you punch. You keep punching, until you can barely even lift up your fists, your arms, to apply the hit. Until you can barely stand. Until you can barely stand it. Can barely stand him.

“Stop,” Miguel scolds, but he’s closer now. His voice far less booming now - softer. “You’re bleeding.” His voice is... broken now. Split apart like your skin.

No; cracked open, like a door left ajar and suddenly he is the room. Miguel is the room that you are in and he’s the walls which are enclosing you and he’s your ceiling and your floor and most of all he’s your door. He’s your only damn way out of here, isn't he? Your only remaining portal to somewhere else - feels like. “Stop it,” he says precisely, the syllables of his command cradled carefully on the tip of his tongue. Approaching you like you’re a threat. Looking at you like you’re a collider about to burst.

You are - feels like.

Feels like you’re about to burst open from all of this nothing inside you.

Still, Miguel approaches you.

How fucking heroic.

“Please. Like you care,” you spit, all petty. Your fists snatched harshly from out of his grip when he reaches for you - because he doesn’t. He doesn’t fucking care. You’ve been bleeding out for so long already and he’s never fucking cared.

You’re not looking - purposefully not looking - into the vortex of his eyes. Not looking, but you see his face crumple in your periphery all the same.

His brows drawing down. Harsh, shadowed planes forming. Tension roping through his cultivated arms. Body primed.

You can taste his heartbeat on your tongue and it is louder than your own - feels like.

“I care,” he says solemnly, plainly, and yet, somehow, the assertion feels like danger. Exactly like danger, and you feel that urgent shiver slip down the back of your neck. Feel all your senses heighten further - a towering city skyline full of fucking feelings.

Does he? Care?

Would it make any damn difference if he did?

“Could've fooled me,” you bite, moving away from him. Moving, away from his stillness. Pacing like a caged animal - trapped, even if the door’s right there. Bouncing like electricity - like this room can’t contain you. Empty - and yet brimming so full of feeling. You are a chaos of contradictions.

Miguel is still, meanwhile. He is only one thing. He is still Miguel. Still and solid as a lightning rod in the centre of the room.

A stone.

A goddamn mountain.

Impenetrable - wall of muscle.

An inverse mountain.

Angular.

Triangular.

Climbable.

Mountable.

So... stiff; rigid; hard.

Meanwhile, you pace. You pace in circles. Nowhere else to go but around and around, counter-clockwise, counter-clockwise, orbiting your centre. Circling like you’re spinning a web but it’s funny, isn’t it - fucking hilarious - because it’s obvious you’re the one who’s snared in his.

Miguel is everything right now. Everything right now, as in, he possesses infinite, inter-dimensional possibility. Anything is possible for him, for Miguel, for the versions of him, isn’t it, across the millions of multiverses? And yet, there is only one possibility here, in this room, with this Miguel. Only one way this can go.

You wonder -briefly- if there is a single version of him anywhere that could love and not only fuck; but it doesn’t matter. This version of him doesn’t. Won’t. Can’t. Never will - and you feel so trapped by it. Trapped by the limits of what’s possible in a multiverse where strictly speaking, anything is.

The space around you feels tighter suddenly. Even more suffocating.

How could it not? How could it not when Miguel is the room. The very walls enclosing you. When he is the door, because there’s no way out of this which doesn’t involve him, is there? Not any longer.

“What the hell happened?” he asks, blood-brown eyes dancing with concern. Scanning for answers. For patterns, anomalies, events, and it’s funny.

Oh, Miguel.

It's so fucking funny.

You scoff darkly, drawing the back of your hand across your face to swipe away this wet. Smearing your face with blood. Tasting iron on your mouth as your tongue travels from one corner to the other in an aggravated swipe.

Of course. It makes sense in a way, you suppose. Makes sense for Miguel to think that something must have happened.

He’s looking for a villain, isn’t he? Always is looking for something else to blame so he doesn’t have to blame himself.

Oblivious.

So fucking oblivious.

Oblivious, and you’re shaking now; but it feels good. You’re shaking because you’re finally angry. Finally angry, like him, with him, and you round on him. Crowd him. Spit your raw words up at the peak of him. Plucking a grievance at random, like a ripened poison apple from the gnarled tree he’s planted inside you.

“Do you seriously never think about how shitty it is, Miguel?” He’s lost now. He’s lost and you can see it in his blank face and you could care less, stabbing your finger into the centre gulf of his broad expanse of chest. “How shitty you are?”

That does it. Provokes him. Thunder clouds rumbling down from the peak of the mountain of him. Drawing down to shroud his blood-moon eyes, and you’re so, very, incandescently angry.

So angry, that the words won't leave your mouth fast enough. That your tone is dripping venom, spit droplets firing into the tight space between you. “I do whatever I can to care for you, Mig. Comfort you. Tolerate your bullshit because I know how much you hurt. So, tell me something, Big Boy. Tell me. Don’t you think it’s so entirely fucked up that meanwhile - God. You.” You can barely get the words out fast enough now. Barely enough breath in your lungs. Can barely see him through the film of rageful tears glossing your eyes. “You’ve studied the fucking canon. Extensively.

You know

what

all

through.

So… Tell me. Don’t you think it’s especially shitty that you’ve

never

once

asked me

what

I lost?”

Your ears ring. Ring with the force. Of your own yelling. No breath left. In your lungs. All of it used. To stifle a sob. Lower lip trembling. Chest burning. Nostrils flaring. You’re angry. You're fuming.

But it’s about to get a whole lot worse.

You wait.

You wait for Miguel’s reaction; but he’s still a stone.

Doesn’t even lose it with you, like he does with everyone else. Doesn’t even scream that he’s had enough of you, like he does with everyone else. Can’t even do you the fucking courtesy of reacting - and you no longer even know why you’re surprised.

Nothing though? Nothing to say for himself?

You wait. Inwardly seething. Studying him. Giving him nowhere to hide.

You watch, as the muscles in his jaw writhe - tendons slipping over bone. You watch as his fists clench. You watch as his palms raise in the air and his lips form the shape of the words, and still you don’t believe what’s coming out of his mouth when you hear it.

“I didn’t come here for this shit.”

Oh.

Oh no.

That’s not good enough.

Not anymore.

“Tell me then, Miguel,” you sing-song. Words as barbed as his fangs as you scramble to unwind your hand wraps and toss them to the floor. Whole body shaking now. Legs nervy. Breath trembling. Tears spiking - even as you try to retain some semblance of composure. “What did you come here for?”

You know. You know already, but you want him to say it. Need him to say it. To admit it, out loud.

You want him to say precisely what he came for.

The only thing he ever wants of you.

You want to hear him say that he came here to fill you up and then leave you emptier than before.

But instead, he says nothing.

Instead, he swallows - you hear it. Knots his brows. Dips his head.

Fucking coward.

“Say it!” You punch him in the chest to punctuate your hoarse plea. Your voice is fragmented - pathetic. Your blows, too, are pathetic. Ineffectual. No true intent behind them. More irritating than harmful. Still, he grunts. Pissed off. Snarling. Lip curling back to reveal the tips of his fangs.

Even so, he stands and takes it.

Stands there like a fucking mountain as you deliver blow upon blow to the broad span of him. Beating his chest with your fists like you’re knocking on a door, begging him to open up. To let you in. To finally let you in.

You strike him like he’s your punchbag, only he has even more weight to him - feels like. Delivers far more resistance. Keeps pushing back. Always pushing back. Pushing back against you. Reminding you, that you’re more than a yawning black hole. Isn't that the point? “You’re a big dumb fuck, Miguel. You know that? You’re a fucking bastard.”

He lets you. Lets you do this. He takes it.

Doesn’t defend himself - verbally or physically. Doesn’t retreat. Doesn't try to stop you.

He simply lets you, your voice shredded in your throat now. “You only ever come to me so you can bury your pain in me, don’t you? Huh? Well for once, Miguel. For once, can’t you

fucking

take

some of

mine?!”

He still doesn’t speak. Continues to weather the barrage of you. Lets your harmless blows bounce off of him - feels like.

He takes it.

Eventually, opens up his arms as you dig both your screwed up fists into the expanse of his chest, wanting to bury yourself there. “Fucking… take it! Please!” you beg, a sob finally rising in your throat. Voice wet. “Please. Take it. I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”

You try to push him away. Try to push him away as he drops to his knees with you. As the fire in you burns through everything you had left to keep you standing. As it guts you until you can no longer maintain your structure, collapsing down to the floor - Miguel collapsing with you.

You try.

You try to push him away but he stays. Like a fucking mountain. Stays even as your fists turn to open palms against his chest, shoving him. Stays. Stays. Stays. Opens his arms to you.

He takes it. Takes your pain, like you’ve done for him for so long. Takes it until your striking blows become pawing palms. Until his arms are wrapping at your back, stroking up and down the length of you. “Hey. Hey, come on,” he soothes. “Tell me what you need.”

You need so many things.

Have needed them for so long that you don’t even know where to begin. You need so many things from him and it’s dangerous, because as soon as your anger crests and breaks, all you are left with is pain and then -hypocrite- all you need in this moment? All you need is... to bury it in him.

Meanwhile; Miguel's arms cradle you like a room. Like your walls. And, if Miguel is the room? You are the emptiness inside it. You are the emptiness inside it and in this moment you need to be reminded you are something more. Something more than a yawning black hole.

Your breaths are heaving now. Face wet. Your chests pressed up against one another’s as you kneel here and he holds you. The warmth of your bodies bleeding into one another’s. Strong arms are wrapped around you. His taloned finger is crooking under your chin. Drawing your gaze up to his. Searching your eyes with his - and there’s so much pain there too.

You look into Miguel's red eyes and they're cut deep with a wound. So deep it's as though the wound caused it - this redness- like he’s been bleeding-out for so long too that the colour is visibly seeping through.

There’s so much pain there. So much pain inside you too, and you look at his mouth. You look at his mouth and suddenly it is a door. It promises relief, and it is the only way out that you can see.

You kiss him.

Abruptly; lips crushing up against his and arms enclosing him in a desperate clinch, fingers disappearing into the black night of his hair.

Miguel groans as though the sound had been readied in his throat, opening-up freely for you as your tongue shoves desperately past his lips.

You deepen the kiss. Blood rushing. Desire throbbing. You deepen the kiss, before Miguel can gain the wherewithal to clamp his stupidly broad palms on to your shoulders. To drag you off of him. To tell you to stop.

Will he? Tell you to stop?

You pull back from him to ask the question - not with so many words. You pull back from him, tugging on his lower lip with your teeth until you leave it all kiss-bitten and plumped. Until you draw a breathy, pained sound from him because the last thing he wants from you is for you to stop.

You pull back to ask the question, and you see his eyes are fluttered closed. His face is contorted with need. You see the subtle gloss of spit on his plush lower lip. You see him, and you're still vibrating from the tortured, resonant moan he delivered against the cave of your mouth.

Even so - you wait. You ask the question.

You wait; but he doesn’t stop you. Doesn’t stop you, and so you rise up further on your knees.

You rise up fully on your knees and you kiss him again, and its even more desperate than the last. Mouths slanting together. Warm breath and spit intermingling. Impossibly broad hands clawing at you back, the subtle bite of talons offering a sting of white-hot pain. Your tongue shoving wretchedly over his. Sloppy. Practically feral.

It’s humiliating, even. It’s shameful - the way you want him. It’s unhinged.

But you don’t stop.

Don’t stop even when you know you should.

Can’t stop - feels like. Can’t stop this urge to lose yourself. To wipe your pain clean. To feel. To stop feeling. You should stop - but you don’t, and instead, you kiss him hungrily. Kiss him like you’re trying to devour him and-

-No. You kiss him like you want him to devour you. To slip his venom into your veins and liquidise your insides and leave no trace.

You don’t stop; but instead, you run your writhing tongue over his semi-retracted fangs. You try desperately to lick the trace of venom from them. Searching out the point of them with your tongue and pressing harshly up against it so this can all be done. So that you can finally feel. So that you can finally stop feeling.

You should stop.

You wish it would stop.

He’s your open door. Your portal out of here; except-

“-Stop!” Miguel booms, strong hands on your shoulders, drawing you off of him when the tangy bloom of iron gushes over his tongue, just a drop all it takes for him to know what you’ve done. “You stupid girl!”

Oh.

Oh no.

You’ve never seen him look more angry.

You’ve never felt more ashamed,

the feeling

sinking

like a

stone

through

your stomach.

But it’s okay, actually. It's okay because the feeling doesn’t last for long. Not long at all before the effects of the venom set in. Before you're just a little less present and a little more numb. “It’s fine,” you slur, looking at him through the blur of tears. “It’s fine. I didn’t get all that much.” A single trail of salt spills down your cheek. It's fine, except - “Oh God. I’m sorry, Miguel. I’m so sorry.”

He could stay angry.

Could easily be angry. Should be - feels like.

But instead, mercifully, he looks at you some other way. Maybe even seeing you. Finally. Instead then, he sighs heavily. Carries you over - slung in his arms - to the boxing ring and sits you down on its edge, your back leaning up against the forgiving ropes. Slings his webbing around your middle for support to stop you from slumping, your muscles giving up.

Instead then, he tracks towards the First Aid kit on the wall. And, while you suffer the mild effects of his venom - that now familiar paralytic, your micro-dose coping mechanism - Miguel returns to you. Returns, even though by now he should surely have had enough.

Even so, he returns to you all the same, and he kneels before you. Begins to carefully patch your self-inflicted wounds. “You’re okay, do you hear me?” he says softly, gently jostling your chin to check you’re not too out of it. Checking that you’re not panicking. Not distressed. “Feeling alright? Just fuzzy?”

It's a buzz, actually, Always feels good - even though it shouldn't. You know it shouldn't. “Mmm hmm.”

You do actually feel fine, somehow. Fine with respect to the venom. Fine with respect to your scuffed hands. But it’s the stubborn black hole in your middle which still hurts. It’s the yearning in your chest which still aches. It's the grief. The grief is what's still killing you.

“I’ll take care of you, okay?” Miguel promises, his broad palm cupping your face, his expression stern but his eyes - somehow- forgiving and steady on yours.

You study him. His face harsh - all sharp planes as he patches you; but his hands become entirely tender.

It’s careful. It’s so careful that his tenderness feels almost more painful than a wound. It’s tender enough that you can pretend. Pretend that he truly does care. That he really will take care of you, for longer than it takes for his venom - pulsing through you - to be half-lifed into oblivion. For longer than it takes for your body to flush him out after every encounter.

You watch, regardless. You study him. Study Miguel’s big, clumsy hands as they rifle through the First Aid box. For antiseptic. For band-aids. Watch him diligently attend to each split knuckle one by one. Wiping the red away.

You wish you could do the same for the red, angry wounds in his eyes. Wish you could wipe it all away.

Maybe in another multiverse. Maybe there’s another version of you that could, but Lord knows that -in this one - you’ve tried.

You watch him. Watch the steady rise and fall of his chest as he works. The notched groove between his brows. The contours of him, structured and shadowed. His thorned beauty, like a defensive rose.

He doesn’t even need to do this for you, you contemplate. You’ll heal. You’ll heal fast. Skin already sealing over, probably. Repairing. But, you sense that it’s not about these surface scathes for him either. You sense that - perhaps for the first time - he is acknowledging your real wound. The one within you. The one which -try as you might- simply won’t close. Won’t heal quickly like the rest. Which you can’t seem to heal at all - feels like.

You feel that he too is finally contemplating the wound he has ignored. Not caused; but angered by circling around the circumference of it, certainly.

The wound that Miguel has ignored, perhaps because it too closely mirrors his own.

As you watch him - as you think - Miguel’s vermillion eyes intermittently dart up to greet yours. He's stoic. He's stern; but he's softening.

Softening - and he stays.

He hasn’t had enough of you, like he has of everyone else.

“I do what I can, you know?” you say softly, barely above a whisper, when you finally feel you’ve returned to yourself. Right now, the black hole suddenly feels more like an eerie calm spinning in your centre. “To care for you, as much as you’ll let me and…” You sigh, though. Not even sure if it’s worth trying to explain anyway.

Miguel looks down again. Gaze intent on your hands. Brows knitting further. He smooths the curled corner of one band-aid down for the fifth time. Secures it carefully in place with the pad of his thumb.

“I know,” he concedes, nodding slowly. “And I can’t even manage to thank you for the empanadas, never mind anything-” He sets his mouth into a thin line. Can’t complete the thought. He’s solemn. Regretful. But still offering no apologies. No hope for change. "I know. I know I'm not... easy."

All you can muster in the face of that, is a gentle shrug. What does it matter anyway? Anymore? Did it ever even matter?

He chews on his lips for a moment, mustering a thought. Unable to meet your gaze now. “I just… I’m trying to hold it all together.”

Of course. You do understand.

The multiverse. HQ. The pressures he faces. You know it hasn’t been easy for him.

“And using me makes you feel a little better while you do?” Your words are unkind, but there’s far less venom in them now. Only resignation. Curiosity, almost.

He blinks, eyelashes fanning like delicate spider silks and, gingerly, Miguel flattens your palms between his. Still not looking at you - he can’t seem to look at you. “No.” Wow. It… doesn’t? God - if you make him feel shitty too; then why bother? If there is nothing good which can come from this, then maybe

you

should

simply

stop.

Maybe you are running out of thread.

“I mean…” He huffs a breath from the circle of his plush lips as he rearranges his thoughts. Finds the words. Sorts through the tangle. Buries that which he still isn't willing to share. “Yes - you do. It does. For a while.” His words aren’t beautiful. Not making anything better. But, you could cry from how softly he is holding your hands in his. Holding them like it is true after all. Like he cares. He blinks a few times, and although his eyes are downcast you see his eyelashes glisten with a smattering of tears - like pearls of dew clinging to a spider’s web.

“Miguel,” you encourage plainly, knowing there’s more. More than needs to be said.

He takes a deep breath then. Exhales it out at length, his broad shoulders rising, then falling. Runs his tongue self-consciously over one fang. “I don't mean the multiverse. I mean that… I’m trying so hard to hold myself together. And… you?” He finally looks up at you again, his eyes as soft and uncertain as you’ve ever seen them. “You...” A gulp saws down his throat. “You unravel me.”

Oh.

Oh right.

You look at him. Seeing him. Your heartbeat once again pounding in your ears, for wholly different reasons than before.

You have no doubt that he can hear your heartbeat in this moment. Maybe even taste it on his tongue. Most definitely, he can hear the pace of it race as his words find you, his eyes glowing softly now, like the shy, red-tinged light of a sinking sun.

Maybe he is.

Maybe this is the one version of Miguel who could love you.

Sure. Of course. In another life, maybe.

If things had been different, then maybe this could have been something.

You look at him now, and you no longer feel anything which resembles anger.

You shift, freeing yourself from his webbing. Lifting your band-aid smattered hand to cup his rough, sculpted cheek.

“You’re trying to hold yourself together,” you say softly. Voice calm and resigned now. Silly, oblivious man. “Guess what? I’d noticed.” You slide your palm down his face and he leans into your touch. “But you’re holding on so tight, Miguel. Everything is so tightly wound, and I can’t breathe.”

He looks regretful. Contrite, a flash of apology scurrying across his gaze. “I don’t mean to hurt you. I’m just…”

“Hurting? Angry?”

He nods. Looking ashamed.

You let your hand slip down his chest and meanwhile, he places both of his hands on top of your thighs.

He’s warm. Feels good.

But it doesn’t make up for how cold he’s been to you for so long. Not even close.

He doesn’t mean to hurt you, he says. You maybe even believe that to be true. On some level.

But not meaning to hurt you is not the same thing as:

he didn’t;

doesn’t;

won’t.

It's not the same thing as he doesn't know he's doing it when he does.

Fresh tears brim in your eyes, and your voice is cracked in two; ajar like a door. Cracked open like a door, and, mercifully, there is finally room for you to walk through. Somewhere else for you to go aside from running to him. Somewhere else for you to go besides trying to crawl into the cavern of his ample chest. But first, there is more for you to say.

“The anger might be a mask, Miguel. But you’ve worn it so much, that… it’s becoming the only face that ever looks back at me." You pause for moment before continuing. To let your words sink into him. Really sink in. "Do you understand that? The toll that it takes?”

He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t say anything, and you watch his face twisting into a pained expression. Collapsing with regret.

His hands already on your thighs, he slides them up. Wraps them all the way around your hips and butt. Circling his grip around the rear of you. His forearms running the length of your thighs. And then, he leans forward, curling his broad form over like a waning stem until he buries his beautiful flowered, thorned face right into your lap.

It’s a rare display from him, and for a moment, you simply look down at the dense mass of his black hair. Noticing the few threads of grey running through it like silken spider strands. Eyes travelling across the curved bulk of his shoulders as he curls his impossibly broad form around you. Holding you, but mostly wanting to be held.

You settle your battered hands on to the meat of his back. Run your thumb between his shoulder blades, up into the nape of his neck, up into his hair, parsing his tension into segments. Offering him some modicum of comfort. Letting him take it, for a moment. Letting him melt into your lap. He moans as you touch him like that, his breath warm and his resonant vibrations blooming in the channel of your pressed together thighs. Moans like he’s touch-starved and has never known relief - not even once in his life.

You take a deep breath, knowing this next step will be hard to take. Your fingers carding through the length on his crown, disappearing into the black night of him. Like he is your black hole. Has been all along. “I know you didn’t ask me to care, Miguel. But I do. I care about you a lot, okay? I need you to know that first." Hearing this, his hands clutch at you just a little tighter. His breath heaves out of him. “You know that already though, right? You’re a smart guy. And… that’s why I find it hard to believe that you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.”

You ease him up, off you, with your battered hands, and he looks at you. Eyes glittering with feeling. Face taut with it. “What am I doing?”

“Well.” You pause. Take a moment to skim your gaze over the contours of his face. To gently comb the hair back from his forehead. “Giving me just enough tenderness, just often enough, to keep me hanging by a thread?” You stand. You stand and this time you don’t need to push him away from you. He rises too, and takes a perceptible step back. Almost as though, for him, your words might signal danger - a shiver snaking down his back. “I’m hanging by a fucking thread, Miguel. Have been hanging by a thread since long before I met you, and so I’m begging you.” You place your palm against his solid chest. Look directly into his eyes so he knows you mean it. “You’re holding yourself together. Fine. But if you can’t unravel even a little bit? If you don’t want to? If you can’t give me any fucking slack? Then please… cut me down. Cut me loose. Because I’m tired, you know? I’m so tired of being alone when I’m with you.”

For the first time, a single tear escapes from Miguel’s eye, gliding smoothly down his face like the silken drop of a spider.

He sucks in a shaky breath, but he doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t have anything else to say; at least, nothing else he's willing to.

You’re a little disappointed, though not at all surprised, and, in a way, it is a blessing. A blessing because you realise; you don’t have to wait for him to cut you loose. You realise that’s something you can do for yourself. That you don’t have to keep hurting yourself like this. That you’re not obligated to keep letting him hurt you, just because he’s in pain too.

A resolve settles over you, and Miguel must see it in your face. Miguel must see it for that is when he moves. That is when he becomes desperate, reaching out for your hand. Only as you finally turn away from him - as you pass him by.

“Just don’t. Please,” you say to him. Calmly. Clearly. With as little venom as you can manage. “Don’t touch me.”

You face each other now, and despite his size, Miguel -all slumped and despondent- actually looks small. Sounds small. It is no longer his room - because it is yours. “Where are you going?”

Despite yourself. Despite everything. Despite all the energy you have spent avoiding precisely this, it feels good to finally realise what you need to do. In this moment, the smallest hint of a small even crosses your face.

“I’m going home.”

Home.

Even the word visibly crushes him. The one place he can’t find. The one place he can’t go in a room full of doors.

Miguel takes a single step towards you, reaching out his taloned hand, but your palm raises confidently and so he treads no closer.

He nods. Licks his lips. Searches for what he wants to say, even as he already knows it will not be enough. After all, he’s a smart guy, isn't he? “I do care too, you know. I really do care.”

His eyes swim. His fists clench. Ropes of tension pop in his neck - and you can’t resist it. Don’t begrudge him this, and so, you step gingerly forward, craning up to press a chaste kiss to the swell of his sculpted cheek. You search his eyes, wanting to show him there is no malice left in you, not really. Not for him. “I know, Miguel. I know you’re not a monster," you say, before turning away.

“Will you come back?” he asks, voice cracked all the way open, just like the door you are about to walk through.

There was you, then Miguel, then you and Miguel - and all of those times, you were alone.

For now though? Being alone feels like exactly what you need.

“I don’t know,” you answer honestly. Freeing yourself of his webbing. Disappearing into the black hole of the corridor. Moving forward, instead of being stuck in limbo -

and

this

time,

you

leave

him

hanging

thread.

#miguel o'hara #miguel o’hara x reader #spider bastard #oscar isaac

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