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miguelhugger2099 · 10 months ago

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Little Miguel, Big Miguel (Pt. 2)

Summary: Miggy meets a few people and he finally grabs the chance to speak with you again. Previous This chapter was so hard to write oml Art in the middle by LBY2K99 Miguel x GN!Reader, fluff, lowkey crack, not proofread at all, Word Count: 3, 106

Eventually Miggy and Jess walked through the entrance of the cafeteria, the threshold being much larger than he expected with various spiders on high beams or on a string of web. Others were normal and sitting at the many tables and booths the place had provided.

Was that a T-Rex?

“You hungry?” She peered down at him after walking in front of a counter. Miggy shrugged despite his stomach growling.

“I could eat,” He huffed when Jess shoved a tray in his hand, a burger that had his variant’s mask plastered on the bun. His eyebrows raised in surprise. “Huh. A little more conceited than I thought.” He mumbled to himself.

“Hi, guys!” Jess walked past and called out to a group of people sitting at a booth. They all turned and greeted her back before all of their eyes landed on Miggy. He squirmed slightly as Jess walked in front of him and Miggy followed hesitantly behind.

“Bloody hell. Did the boss shrink? That's jokes.” One smirks, chuckling to himself, his voice smooth and deep that melted nicely with his British accent.

The other three are slack jawed, not believing what they’re eyes.

“Did he shrink?!” One with a blue headband gasps.

“No, Miguel didn’t shrink,” Jess rolled her eyes. “This is our new recruit, Miguel, obv–obviously. He's getting used to the place so,” Her hand stretches out to list their names. “Hobie, Pavitr, Miles and Gwen.”

“Is no one finding this strange?” A teenager that looked a little older than him spoke out, his suit completely black except for the red stripes running down his arms. Miles, Miggy made sure to remember. “It's Miguel but…pocket sized.” The girl next to him softly smacks his chest with a warning look.

“He's a kid, Miles. We've met other variants of ourselves before so this shouldn't be different.” Her eyebrows furrowed and the metal piercing by her right glinted underneath the fluorescent lights. Gwen.

Miles pouted. “At least my variant was the same age.” He mumbled under his breath.

Gwen smiles. “Nice to meet you, Miguel.”

“Ah–actually. You guys can call him Miggy or anything other than Miguel. Just to avoid confusion for the time being.” Jess intervenes awkwardly, helping Miggy into a seat by Miles and Gwen. All of them give their own greetings, welcoming Miggy in despite the strangeness of seeing a more timid and kid version of the man in charge.

“Qué tal?” Miles leans back in his chair.

Miggy brightens up. “Hablas español?” He asks Miles. Miles sits up, wide eyed and suddenly nervous.

“Y-yeah, I know un–un poquitito, y'know.” There was still a bit of an accent but Miggy didn't mind, simply chuckling and nodding, subconsciously showing off his sharp fangs when taking a bite of his burger.

“Woah, were those fangs?” Pavitr leans over the table to take a closer look. Miggy leans back. “Are they retractable too?”

“Uh, no. It’s–it’s just like that.” Miggy chuckled awkwardly after swallowing.

“How long you been Spider-Man for?” Miles asks and turns to him.

“Ah…almost a year, pretty sure.” He kept eating, taking another few bites.

“Are you on rapture?” Hobie tilts his head with a raise of his eyebrow, almost with a hint of concern in his eyes.

Bug-eyed and jaw slacked, Miggy snaps his head to Hobie, nearly choking on himself. “No!” He sputtered while Hobie nodded and leaned back as he relaxed. “Shock, what is wrong with you guys?” He wheezed out.

Pavitr laughs. “I like this new little boss.”

“He don’t got a stick up his arse, that’s for sure. Makes him ten times better than the geezer.” Hobie plays with his bottom lip ring.

“Be nice.” Jess warns with her arms crossed.

“I am nice. That was my nicest, actually.”

Jess’s phone pings in her pocket and she checks her alarm. “Shoot. I need to go. Miggy,” He turns his head to her. “We’ll have to finish orientation another time. I gotta head home. Guys, if you could just keep an eye on him till the end of the day?”

The group of young spiders nod up at her, all responding with their own variations of responses. Jess gives a lingering look to the group, eyeing them down to make sure she can trust them. Deeming them good kids, she sighs and waves, walking away to open a portal back to her dimension. Miggy shrinks in his seat, now being with semi-strangers and the only person he kinda knew in this place, left.

After she leaves, all of them begin to ask more questions like how old he was, if their Miguel’s universe was similar to his universe, etc, etc. Miggy tried his best to answer ease their curiosity with a gentle yet nervous smile. It had been a while since so many people have been kind to him.

Gwen mentions your name after thinking for a moment. “Do you think they know about him?” Miggy’s ear perks up at the mention of you. Where were you anyway? Did you leave? He wanted to see you again.

“Not if Miguel allows it. I can see him getting mad about this.” Pavitr rests his chin in his palm.

“Be a bit freaky if I were to see ‘em together anyway. Since they’re always around the big man.” Hobie crosses his arms on the table.

“I don’t think it’d be freaky. Everyone’s making a big deal about this.” Gwen frowns. Miggy droned out their talking, his eyes searching side to side to find and exit. Don’t get him wrong, these are nice people and he can see himself being friends with them, he just…really needed to see you.

Or maybe it was an excuse to escape their gossiping while in front of him.

Miggy slipped from his seat and escaped the flurry of whatever the hell they were saying while they chatted amongst themselves. He used his webs to swing himself to the ceiling with a small fwizz coming from his wrists. His claws poked out, clutching onto the metal as he crawled away, avoiding Spider-Monkey and out of the threshold. He failed to notice a pair of eyes watching his exit.

He hopped off the wall and landed on one of the many beams the building provided. Miggy took a few glances around him to make sure no one could bother him when he lifted his wrist to his face. He hesitantly raises a finger to the screen. Even though it looked like his universe tech, he still had no clue how it operated. Deciding not to break it accidentally, he brought it close to his lips. “Hey, miss…AI lady, ma’am?” He whispers to the watch.

Lyla suddenly popped up on top of the screen, her holographic body standing in front of many tiny floating monitors. Miggy yelped, covering his mouth with his other hand.

“What’s up little boss? Got a question? And no, you’re not allowed on any mission. You’re on babysitter protocol.” Lyla didn’t look up at him, choosing to look at each file and trashing the ones she deemed unimportant.

“Babysitter?” Miggy scrunched up his face in disdain.

She yawned. “Big boss doesn’t want you out and about to other universes yet. Sorry, kid. Now if you’ll excuse me–”

“Wait, wait! No! That’s–that’s not what I was gonna ask.” He panicked, gripping the watch with his hand. Lyla’s heart sunglasses slid down her nose as she turned her head over her shoulder to face him. “I was just gonna ask about…” He saw your form leave Miguel’s corridor before bumping into another spider person he didn’t recognize for a quick chat. He felt his little heart speed up and smiled. “...them.”

Miggy and Lyla both peered down to watch you smile and laugh with the other spider-man. Miggy noticed a redhead baby in his arms. Lyla glanced at him, back to you and then back to him. She stood up straight and crossed her arms after sliding her shades back on her nose bridge. “Oh, they’re way too old for you, kid.” Miggy frowned at the holographic lady. You had finished talking with whoever that was and waved him and the baby goodbye. Miggy’s heart raced as he prepared himself to jump off the beam.

“Whatever, pequeñita. Don’t need your help anymore. Catch a virus or something.” Miggy grinned mischievously down at her while Lyla gasped in shock.

“Hey–!”

Miggy switched her off and quickly used his webs to stick to the ceiling and swung down behind you, landing on his feet with a quiet thump. Hearing that sound, you turned around to check to see Miggy had stood up on his feet with a toothy smile. The sides of his hair had fallen out of place and he tucked it behind his ear as he walked up to you.

“Hey.” He placed his hands on his hips and puffed up his chest to appear more muscular. You huffed a small laugh, crossing your arms and tilting your head as you looked at him.

“Hi there. I didn’t think we’d meet again so soon.” You decided to amuse him. Miggy shrugged.

“Guess it was fate,” You snorted but Miggy continued anyway. “I was wondering if you had time for a chat? This is your universe I'm assuming? You could show me around the city. Maybe grab a snack together.” He grinned, looking at you with an innocent expression. But you knew better. Miguel would try the same thing in his own version once in a while.

“Uh-huh, yeah, right. Where’s Jess?” You placed your hands on your hips. Miggy stiffened but recollected himself.

“Busy.” He said, technically not lying.

“Sure,” You dragged out. “Well, I thought you came from a similar universe. I don’t think there’d be much new stuff to show you, kid.” You give him a playful pointed look with a tilt of your head. Miggy tsked, poking his cheek with his tongue in annoyance. He didn’t like you thinking he was just some kid. He was more than that, he’d prove it!

“Well, I beg to differ. I’m naturally curious, y’know. It’s one of my charms so I’d like to see if you’re right.”

“So you don’t believe me?” You raised your eyebrow.

Miggy hummed in thought, looking off to the side. “Not at all. Just a test.” He grinned.

You rolled your eyes playfully. “Alright, I’m not doing that,” Miggy’s face dropped. “But I am just heading home really quick and then coming back here. So, if you want, you can join me.” You offered and his face brightened up.

“Yeah! Yeah–sure, sure. That I can totally do.”

“Great. It’s actually not far from here so we could just walk to—”

“Woah, woah, woah. Walk? If you hadn’t noticed, I’m Spider-Man.” Miggy gestured to himself with a smug smirk, but your face didn’t falter.

“I see that.”

Miggy pouted. “I can carry you.”

You waved him off. “That’s really not necessary. I know you’re strong but–” You yelped as you felt Miggy grab your waist and pull your close. The height difference was a little awkward but he didn’t seem to mind one bit. He wanted to prove to you he was capable and strong. His webs shot out and stuck to the walls, swinging the both of you around while he tried finding an exit with a determined look. You wrapped your arms around him, hoping to the universe that you wouldn’t fall, and he felt his heart race a little faster.

“Directions, please!” He exclaimed, a smile in his voice while you screwed your eyes shut. You eventually felt the wind in your hair and the far away sounds of hover cars zipping past. “That’s new!” He dodged the cars with stealth, clutching you tighter to him.

Your legs became shaky and as soon as your feet touched the ground of your patio, you fell to your hands and knees with a giant huff. Miggy landed beside you, letting you take a breather.

“Estas bien?” He asked gently, his voice much softer than the persona he tried to maintain. He knelt by your side, hugging his knees to his chest.

“Fine, fine. Just…don’t do that again.” You helped yourself up and walked inside after opening the glass door. Miggy followed behind you, slightly embarrassed. He glanced around the area, seeing a void of color all around. Simple grays, blacks, and whites as the palette for couches, walls and the like. It was super different compared to back home. His mom usually did the decorations. Miggy thought this room felt very cold.

“This is your home?” He asked, feeling like this was a stark difference from your personality.

“Yeah, well kind of. I live here with someone.” You reply, rummaging through some things in a different room. Miggy perked up, his lips turning downward and feeling jealous.

“Who?” He asked, looking around to see if he could find anything that showed two people lived here.

You didn’t respond. Maybe you didn’t hear him, maybe you did. Miggy was distracted anyway as he walked slowly around the living room. In the corner of his eye, he saw a box that was out of place on one of the selves by the giant holographic TV. He strolled towards it, its dark purple color being the only thing attracting him.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go around touching things.” Your voice was heard behind him, making Miggy jump. He took a big step away from the box, becoming more curious but he respected you enough. “I thought you would’ve had enough manners to not go snooping in someone's home.” You tossed him a soda and he caught it, seeing that the name brand was slightly spelled different from his own dimension. He found it a little unsettling; still getting accustomed to everything.

“Sorry.” He mumbled, popping open the can with his talon. “What did you get?”

You shrugged. “Some things to help out the society.” You walked towards the couch and sat on the far right to rest yourself on the armrest. “Just give me a minute and we’ll head back.”

Miggy nodded along, shifting his weight from side to side. “What…are you to the society?” He asked quietly, almost afraid he’d offend you.

“What do you mean?” You looked over at him, patting the side next to you to offer him a seat. Miggy walked over and sat by you, a little farther than what you offered.

“Like…you’re clearly not a spider person, much less some powers, but yet you’re in the society. You know all those people yet you’re…a civilian?” You nodded.

“Yeah, I’m just a regular person. I can’t climb walls or shoot webs but…I think I have a right to be there.”

“You said you were special. What does that mean?” He peeked over at you, his soda faintly fizzing.

You avoided his question. “How about you tell me about yourself instead?”

Miggy tilted his head. “Me?” He asked. “But…I don’t think I’m much different from your ‘other me’.”

You waved him off. “I’m sure there’s some difference. C’mon, don’t be shy. I wanna know about the newbie.” You cross your legs and turn to face him.

Miggy looked apprehensive, not really sure if it’s the right time to spill his life story but you asked so he caved in.

“Well, I was bitten trying to save my, uh, bully.” He looked down at his drink and took a small sip. Your smile dropped.

“You were bullied?”

Miggy nodded. “Well, yeah. It, uh… didn’t end well,” He rubs the side of the can. “There was this huge explosion when checking out the spiders in Alchemax– my dad used to work there,” He doesn’t look up at you. “My dad’s boss and his kid were there. His son bullied me, sure, but when that explosion happened, somewhere in between I got bit and…I dunno,” He sighed, a clear heavy weight on his young shoulders. “Kron was there and I tried–I did– and I don’t even know why I did but he still…y’know.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine but even though he died, he bullied me. But it doesn’t mean he should’ve passed, y’know? Then I woke up and they said my dad died too so it was all confusing back then.” He leaned back on the couch with a heavy sigh.

“I’m…so sorry,” You apologized grimly, guilt eating you up for asking. Miggy looked over at you and gave you a reassuring smile, his fringe falling out of place.

“It’s fine. It happened a while ago. The feeling is still there, just a little less. You didn’t hurt me, promise.” He then chugged the rest of the soda down his throat, feeling the fizz bubble down to his stomach. He crushed the can right after, his talons digging into it and showed you the marks he made. “I got sick powers and I can help my family more now. When they’re in trouble I can just put on the suit and make sure they’re safe.” He beamed with pride and you mirrored the same expression.

“You love your family?” You asked gently, taking the can from his hand and getting up to place it in the recycling bin.

“Mhm!” Miggy nodded. “Since the explosion, we all became a little more tight knit. My mom especially. She became more protective over my little brother since he’s still super little.” He looks up at you as you come back.

“What’s his name?” You hide your smile since you feel you know the answer.

“Gabriel.” Miggy beams. “He’s practically my shadow, which mom doesn’t like. Says I’m too reckless and doesn’t want him to be like me.” He blew raspberries to signify his mild annoyance at the thought.

You laugh and grab a backpack full of things that Miggy assumes were the things you came to collect. “After you swung me around, I think I agree with her.” You joked.

Miggy shot up from his seat and pouted. “Not cool.” But he enjoyed the way you smiled. “Gonna head back out now?”

Nodding, you slip the backpack on and walk with him back to the balcony. “Yup. Whenever you’re ready.” You look at him expectantly. He went a little wide eyed.

“You want me to swing us back?” Lost on why when you screamed earlier.

“Well, I’m prepared this time.” You and Miggy smiled at one another and he looped his arm around your middle. Your hands around his neck and he stuck his web to a building, jumping off the balcony and swinging back to HQ.

A/N: Please forgive me for this mid chapter i'll try to make the next one better i promise

{Taglist 🏷

@sassypotatomoosee @ihavemanyhusbandfandoms @arrozconpepitoria @nanarain @autismsupermusicalassassin @amberpanda99 @huniedeux @oharasfilipinawife @m0stergirl @maimedloveaffairs @glassracecar @lazy-idate @peachipeachy @palesatan @sleepingghoule444 @lizaistewdelulu @cicithemess @amelialysm @keigoloveminty @tatatida @peachyrue-777 }

#miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara x y/n #miguel o'hara x you #miguel x reader #atsv miguel #miguel o'hara #miguel spiderman #miguel spiderverse #miguel ohara #spiderman 2099

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weaponizedducks · 8 months ago

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the merlin ending is so heartbreaking. arthur is discovering for the first time exactly who merlin is. morgana is tightly holding on to her last shred of hope, realising all of her efforts were in vain. gwen waits for a husband who will never come home, and camelot waits with her. gwaine dies for nothing, in percivals arms, and percival watches. arthur feels he's been lied to for ten years, and merlin thinks he hates him. morgana dies alone, unloved. we as the viewers are given the last shred of hope, the miniscule belief that he might just lives, but it is in vain. merlins efforts, his life, his destiny, is in vain. he has failed. Arthur dies anyway. gwen and Leon and percival and merlin are the only originals left. merlin spends the rest of his life and many more waiting for arthur, and that is how it ends. on a positive so faint it can barely be heard. it ends with a broken queen and a grieving kingdom and a failed sorcerer and a dead king. it ends, centuries later, with arthur gone and merlin waiting

#morgana does NOT die unloved I love her so much #but srsly I'm in tears #why the fuck would the BBC do this #gotta fucking bone to pick with the bbc #no actually I do love the ending #it's so tragic it means people will talk about it #it's horrible and heartbreaking and tragic and real #merlin #bbc merlin #merthur #arthur pendragon #blue rewatches merlin #blue analyses things

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verstappen-cult · 7 months ago

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WAVE OF YOU, C. LECLERC.

PROLOGUE — NEXT CHAPTER. [ SERIES MASTERLIST ]

PAIRING. charles leclerc x female reader.

CHAPTER ONE SUMMARY — It looks like any other shift at the coffee shop until the presence of a brown haired boy with dimples changes everything. The same boy you meet at the beach several days ago — the one who stood you up.

CONTENT WARNINGS. female reader, use of Y/N, alcohol use, fluff & friends being a menace.

GWEN’S RADIO MESSAGE. OH MY GOD! i'm so sorry it took me so long, but i was in the worst writers block of all times and couldn't get out of it :( but i forced myself to finish this today and ta-dah! i really hope you like it, your comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated. remember that if you want to be added to the taglist, you can reply to this post, send me a dm or leave it in my ask box!

“Come on, girl! We can’t be late today.” You groan in frustration, a smile tugging at the corner of your lips as you watch Daisy shake the sand out of her fur. She sits and looks up at you with her tongue out, head slightly tilted to the side. “Good girl.” You say, giving her one of her favorite dog treats. You put the collar on her and she happily starts walking by your side.

It’s a short walk, around ten minutes, from the beach to the coffee shop you started working at just two months ago. You like it so much that you probably spend more time there than in your own apartment. It’s cozy and family owned, and there is always a pleasant atmosphere even though there are always people coming in and out, one of the perks of having the shop so close to the beach.

And everyone loves Daisy too, so you’re allowed to bring her with you. While you work behind the counter, she chills by the door in her bed with her favorite bunny plushie. She brings joy and bright smiles to every single person that visits the coffee shop.

You can’t believe this is your life.

It wasn’t easy at first but making the decision to drop out of school and travel around the world wasn’t as difficult as breaking the news to your parents. And after everything you went through in these two years you deserve the good things and peace that is coming your way.

It was all worth it, missing your family, waking up in the middle of the night wondering if you made the right decision, the good and the bad… it was all worth it. You wouldn’t change a thing because it brought you to this; to Australia and to the wonderful people you’ve met.

��Good morning, Fred.” You say to the owner of the flower shop right next door to where you work. He smiles, waving goodbye to a client, before walking out to meet you.

“Hello, sweetheart.” His smile is contagious. You like to pass by him before going to work everyday because seeing someone be so happy and positive every single day is exactly what you need. “How was the beach today?”

“I had to drag her out of there before she got into the water.” He laughs, crouching down to pet Daisy and, in return, she licks his face.

Fred laughs and stands up, grabbing a bouquet of tulips. “These are for the shop,” He says before turning around and grabbing a single sunflower. “and this for you.”

Fred is a French man in his fifties that came to Australia following the love of his life. He didn’t have a plan, he just left everything behind; they’ve been married for thirty years.

“Always so sweet, Fred.” You place a kiss on his cheek, waving goodbye with the promise to bring some coffee for him later. He watches you walk away with that same big smile on his face.

You open the door of Brew’d Awakening, the smell of freshly brewed coffee and baked pastries welcoming you, as well as the bulldog resting next to the door.

“Hello to you too, Roscoe.” He huffs like telling you to hurry up. You let Daisy go and she immediately finds comfort next to Roscoe.

There aren’t many people — it is still pretty early — just a couple of regulars that like to grab their first cup of coffee before heading to work or the beach.

As you make your way to the counter, you find Kika sitting at one of the tables enjoying a cup of coffee while typing away on her laptop.

“What are you doing here so early?” You ask, plopping down on a chair next to her.

“Lewis wanted to discuss some things about the social media content,” She leans slightly to give your cheek a kiss. “and you’re meeting my boyfriend today.”

You gasp, turning to look at her with wide and surprised eyes. “What do you mean I’m meeting him?”

“I told you he’s gonna spend the summer here.”

“Yes, but I also remember you telling me that he had to go back?” Daisy nudges your leg with her nose, and you immediately know what she wants. “So, he’s back then?” Kika hums while you look for Daisy’s plushie in your bag.

“He’s coming because I left some things at his apartment.”

“So that’s why you didn’t come home last night.” She blushes, sticking her tongue out. “Whore.” Kika gasps, hitting you in the arm.

“Hello, pretty ladies.” Your co-worker, who practically lives in your apartment now, leaves an iced latte in front of you.

You take a sip of the drink, looking directly into his eyes. “I’m surprised I didn’t hear you sneak out this morning.”

“What do you mean? I wasn’t there this morning.”

“Alex, I literally heard you and Lily laughing at three in the morning,” Alex groans, sitting in front of you.

“In my defense,” He points a finger at you and really tries to think of something, but comes out with nothing. “Whatever, you like me too much to kick me out.”

“Unfortunately, you’re right.” You stand up when the door opens and a new customer enters.

“Good morning, kid.” Lewis gives you a pat on the back when you join him behind the counter, you kiss his cheek in return.

You spend the morning taking care of the customers while Alex and Lewis are responsible of preparing and serving the orders. It is a quiet and nice morning, like most Saturdays are, and you love it. You owe Kika everything, because if it weren’t for her you wouldn’t have found the coffee shop in the first place. She recommended you and it was all Lewis and Nico needed to hire you.

Lewis and Nico are a gay couple that, just like you, decided to settle down in Australia after traveling to different parts of the world. They opened Brew’d Awakening just five years ago but it’s going so well they have the opportunity to expand, but refuse to do it, knowing that the warmth and coziness of the Brew’d will be lost. You respect them for that.

You’re about to swap shifts with Alex when Kika shows up in front of you, a shy smile on her face.

“He’s here. I like him, okay? So, be nice.”

“I’m always nice!” You exclaim a little offended.

“I know, sorry. It’s just — I’m nervous.” She looks around before leaning closer. “He brought his friends because apparently we’re doing this ‘trade’ thing where I meet his friends and he meets mine.”

You hold your laugh, “Cute.”

“Stop making fun of me and come here or I’ll go mad.”

“I’m taking my break, is that okay?” You ask your boss, at which he nods, giving you a thumbs up.

You take off your apron as you walk around the counter. Kika is waiting for you in the middle of the shop, looking like a nervous wreck.

“I’ve never seen you so nervous before.” You place a hand on her shoulder, massaging to help her relax a little.

“Meeting the friends is a big deal.”

Well, she is right. You just didn’t realize how serious her relationship actually was until now.

Daisy wags her tail as she makes her way to you. And you immediately lean forward to scratch behind her ears.

You’re too busy to pay attention to the guy wrapping his arms around your friend and kissing her lips as a greeting. It is only when Kika clears her throat, kicking your leg to draw your attention, that you force yourself to let Daisy go.

“This is Pierre.” She says as you straighten back up. “Pierre, this is my friend Y/N.”

You look at the guy in front of you for a couple of seconds. His blue eyes are a little too familiar, but the more you try to remember from where you know him, the more you think that is probably just a coincidence.

“Oh my God, you’re Y/N!” Pierre laughs, making you and Kika frown. “This is fantastic.”

“What is fantastic?” A voice draws your attention, making you look behind Pierre.

Your heart skips a beat the second you see a pair of green eyes.

The green eyes of the surfer boy you met a few weeks ago at the beach.

Charles; who you never saw again.

It turns out that Charles wasn’t at the beach the next morning. You sat on the sand longer than necessary, thinking that maybe he was running late. But he never came. You didn’t see his friends either, so you simply picked up what was left of your dignity and walked back to your apartment with Daisy by your side.

The morning after that you decided to confront him, but he wasn’t there.

He never showed up at the beach again. And for a minute you thought it was all in your head, but that option was discarded when you bumped into the group of teenage girls sitting on the sand, wondering why the hot guys weren’t there.

At least you weren’t the only one looking for them.

You hadn’t thought about Charles in several days.

And now he’s standing in front of you with a big smile on his handsome face.

Ugh, you had forgotten the dimples.

“Y/N?” He asks, taking a step forward. “What are you doing here?”

“I work here.” You mutter bitterly, not wanting to engage in a conversation with him.

It’s childish, you have to admit it, but why is he gonna ask to see you just to not show up? And, okay, you were going to the beach the next day either way but you got all excited for nothing. You really wanted to get to know him, maybe even ask for his number. He seemed like a nice guy and his accent made butterflies erupt in your belly. But that was before he stood you up.

Kika looks between you and Charles with a confused expression on her face. You make the mistake of making eye contact with her because the next moment she’s gasping, her eyes wide as she finally puts the pieces together.

“Charles is the boy you met at the beach?!” You want to cover her mouth with your hand but you can barely move. You love her, you really do, but right now you want her to shut up.

Even from a distance, you can see the way his blush spreads over his cheeks. Charles runs a hand through his hair. You would pay a million dollars just to tangle your fingers in it to see if it is as soft as it looks.

You’re dragged back to the present when the doors open and Charles’ friends walk inside.

“Oi look who’s here!” One of his friends says — the curly-haired one — and they wave in your direction before walking to a nearby table. Daisy recognizes them, even though they were barely a few minutes in her presence, and she walks over to them.

“Nice to meet you, Pierre.” You plaster on a smile, turning to face him and Kika. “I wish I could stay and get to know you better, but I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.” Pierre smirks, nodding along. “Now, if you excuse me, I need to get back to work.”

You walk back to the counter without looking at Charles again. Lewis looks at you with a raised brow and you shrug, that must have been the shortest break of all times.

You’re putting on your apron in front of the cash register, a line of customers ready to order, when you see Charles joining the line and waiting for his turn.

“Is that Kika’s boyfriend?” Alex whispers next to you while making an order. You look at where they’re sitting, the same table where all of Pierre and Charles’ friends are. They’re actually cute, unable to keep their hands to themselves.

You nod, busy writing the last order. “Hi, welcome to Brew’d Awakening, what can I get for you?” When you look up you’re met with Charles' blushed face, a small smile directed at you.

“Can we talk?” He looks genuinely nervous, and you feel a little guilty for making him feel that way. He’s the last one in line, so you nod. “I’m really sorry,” Charles breathes, closing his eyes. “I really wanted to be there the next morning but Pierre had to fly back to France and I couldn’t leave him alone.”

Your expression softens. He didn’t mean to stand you up then.

“We came back literally two days ago.”

You feel really bad now.

“Oh my God,” You let out a laugh, feeling embarrassed and so, so guilty. “I’m sorry. I guess I was a little hurt because I thought you stood me up — not that it was a date and we explicitly agreed to see each other.” You feel blood rushing to your face.

“I wanted to text you but I didn’t have your number,” Charles frowns, a nervous smile dancing on his lips. “and I couldn’t find you on Instagram.”

Your entire body shivers and the corners of your mouth curl up. “You really looked me up on Instagram?”

“Yea’,” He chuckles, shrugging. “I wanted—no, I want to know you. You are really pretty—cool, I mean.”

“So you don’t think I’m pretty?” You lean forward, hands resting on the counter and supporting your weight.

Charles' cheeks heat up as he tries to think of something to say, opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water.

You take him out of his misery by giving him a little push on the shoulder.

“I’m joking.”

Charles looks at you for a second, and then says, “You are. Pretty, I mean.”

It is your turn to blush furiously. You have to look away if you don’t want to embarrass yourself in front of him.

“Are you gonna order or not?”

You both turn to look at the person standing behind Charles, clearly annoyed for having to wait too long. He apologizes before turning back to you.

“I’m gonna,” He points to the table where his friends are, and you nod, disappointed for being interrupted.

It’s a little awkward because he stands there for a whole minute just looking at you before waving goodbye and walking away.

The customer clears his throat and you’re dragged back to the present one more time.

You hear Alex and Lewis laughing behind you.

“Hey, we’re going to the club tonight.” Kika says as you clock out.

“Who is we?” You ask, grabbing your purse and the iced latte you made for the ride home.

“Pierre and a couple of his friends,” She takes a sip of her own matcha latte and sits on the counter. “You, Lily, Alex.” Kika pokes Alex’s ribs, who’s cleaning the counter next to her.

You chew on your bottom lip, the question is hanging from your tongue but you’re not able to voice it out. Kika must see the struggle on your face.

“Charles is coming too.” She has a knowing look on her face, but doesn’t make fun of you or ask what is going on with his boyfriend’s best friend. “So, are you coming?” She knows you’re going even before you nod your approval. “Someone left this for you.”

Kika hands you a napkin with a number written on it, a “Charles x” underneath a phone number.

Your heart starts hammering in your chest and you waste no time in pulling your phone out of your pocket to save his contact. You hesitate whether to message him or not when, suddenly, your screen lights up with a new message.

If you can’t stop smiling on the way home from the coffee shop and while you get ready for a night out, nobody (besides Kika) needs to know.

On the way to the club you think about every little moment and decision that has led you here, to this uber with your friends ready to spend a good night with new friends, and a pretty guy who’s clearly very interested in you. If someone would’ve told you two years ago that this was going to be your life, you would’ve laughed.

You feel nervous, getting out of the car and walking into one of your favorite clubs in the city.

The first thing you notice is the mass of people dancing along to the loud music. You think you’re gonna make your way to the bar as you always do the minute you walk inside but, instead, Kika guides you to where all the VIP booths are, near the back of the club and the DJ.

“Baby!” Pierre shouts over the music, drink in one hand. “And baby’s friends!”

“Oh my God, I think he’s already drunk.” Kika groans, making her way to her boyfriend and kissing his cheek before whispering something in his ear that makes Pierre blush. Okay, gross.

There are a lot of people in the booth. You recognize some of Charles’ friends and a few other people you’ve never seen before. Everyone’s talking with everyone and you’re wondering what to do when someone places a hand on your back.

“I was waiting for you.” Charles whispers with a low voice, and you feel weak in the knees immediately.

You turn around to face him and are blinded by his bright dimpled-smile.

“Hi.” You say, looking into those two green orbs you’ve missed. Just a little. “All my friends dumped me,” Looking behind Charles’ shoulder, you see Lily and Alex making out in the middle of the dancefloor, while Kika is sitting next to her boyfriend and talking with some of his friends. “so you’re stuck with me for the whole night.”

“Ugh,” Charles says, bringing his hand to his heart and pretending to be affected. “that’s horrible. Stuck with a pretty girl all night? I’ll just have to deal with it.”

You lean your shoulder into Charles’ side playfully and he moves a little closer, his hand still on your back. Apparently, blushing comes like a second nature to you ever since you met Charles.

“Wanna grab a drink?”

He doesn’t need to ask twice.

Charles guides you to the bar, keeping you close with his hand that has dropped from your back to your waist. His closeness is intoxicating and you can’t help but lean closer. Charles seems comfortable with the proximity, so you stay glued to his side as you walk to the bar, where you’re forced to pull away.

He asks the bartender for your drinks — after asking, very politely, what you’d like to drink — and leans against the counter with you by his side.

You tilt your head and observe him for a little while, Charles too busy grabbing your drinks to notice the attention. It is only when he turns to hand you the glass that he notices your gaze on him, his cheeks heating up immediately but his eye contact doesn’t waver. He just stands there with two drinks and people bumping into him, looking at you as if you’re the only person in the world.

You shake your head, grabbing your drink. “Thank you.”

You don’t really know how much time you spend at the bar chatting with Charles, but you don’t want it to end. Charles tells you about his life back in Monaco, you learn that he came very close to the racing world before his father passed away and he decided to quit — not his younger brother though, who is currently racing in Formula 1 — and dedicate his life to his other passion: architecture. And in return you tell Charles more about your decision to travel the world and not going to college, he shares some of your opinions and you’re surprised how easily you’re able to share things about your life with him.

“I don’t know where life would take me,” You take a sip of your second drink, resting your elbows on the counter. “but I’m happy where I am right now.”

“You should think about visiting Monaco, I’m sure you’ll fall in love with it.” Charles has a strange glint in his eyes that forces you to look away.

“Hey, lovebirds!” A guy throws his arms around yours and Charles’ shoulder. You recognize him as one of his beach friends.

“Dani.” Charles groans, but relaxes against his friend’s chest. “Where are Max and Lando?”

“With the DJ,” You both turn to look at the DJ booth, and right there next to him is Lando and, to his other side, the blonde guy you remember as Max. Both of them look very drunk. “Oscar wants to take them home but I said that as long as neither of them throws up, we’re good.”

Dani asks for a couple of drinks and makes small talk. He’s absolutely hilarious and doesn’t stop making fun of Charles.

“He kept asking us if we’d seen you. Every. Single. Day.” Charles pushes him away but that doesn’t stop him. “And sent like a thousand selfies pouting and trying to bribe us to look for you around the city.”

“Daniel!” Charles exclaims, mortified. He squeezes his eyes shut and drops his head forward.

Dani just laughs and, once his drinks are ready, walks away. Still making fun of his friend.

“It’s cute.” You confess, feeling brave enough to lift his chin up with your hand. “I’m glad you were trying to find me, even though I thought you had forgotten about me.”

“How could I?” He smiles, his dimples on full display. “Afraid of sounding like a complete psychopath, I’m gonna confess that the only thing on my mind while I was away was our interaction at the beach.” His cheeks are blushed as he plays with the buttons of his shirt. “And how sorry I was for not asking for your number.”

You’re one second away from falling to the floor and melting onto it.

Charles is definitely not helping with the racing of your heart and the need to be a normal and a functional person.

“I’m sorry,” Charles’ voice is gentle.

“Don’t be,” You place a hand on his forearm and squeeze softly before letting go. “Afraid of sounding like a complete psychopath,” You repeat his exact same words which makes him laugh, his whole face lighting up. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it either. Well, until I was beginning to get angry at myself for thinking about it even after you stood me up.”

Charles groans, putting his face in his hands.

“I’ve a lot to make up for.”

He looks back up and you make eye contact until Charles glances down at your lips, then back up at your eyes. And the room suddenly feels too crowded and too hot.

“You’ll have plenty of time for that.”

𓇼 — WAVE OF YOU, TAGLIST: @lovrsm @itsjustkhaos @evie-119 @sadbeautifuleva @c4tc0re @sargeantdumbass @brune77e @arian-directioner @lavisenri @starsnxva @a1leexxa @therealcap @anniee-mr @kakorrhaphiophobia @madd1115 @toxicdreamer296 @coffeebae0 @tempo-rary-fix @luca-is-a-pengu @charleslover24 @vettelsbees @iienstein @mehrmonga @ferraridepartment @fictional-l0v3r. 𓇼 [cursive means i couldn't tag you]

#꒰꒰ 📁 ─ verstappen cult files ꒱꒱#𓇼 — series: wave of you.#f1 x reader #charles leclerc x reader #f1 imagine #charles leclerc fluff #f1 grid x reader #f1 fanfic #charles leclerc smau

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gdn7-dollopole · 2 months ago

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No, you don’t understand, Merlin said:

“I was born to serve you, Arthur.”

What happened to the ‘destiny’, to only the need and the want to protect Arthur, to Merlin’s, “I’m not just a servant”, “I’m much more than that.” Merlin says he is born to serve Arthur, not only stay by his side, to help him, to love him, but to serve him, and one phrase as deep but short as this, Arthur’s widening eyes as Merlin admits to his feelings, because that’s a confession, that’s much more than an, “I love you”, makes you understand the depth of Merlin’s feelings. After ten years of being treated like nothing, of staying hidden, and Merlin forgot all he had ever been. I believe in the theory that he doesn’t serve Gwen when she reigns alone after Arthur’s death, because as much as she is his queen, Merlin only ever followed his king. To serve means to offer someone your services, it is a duty, and Merlin’s sacred duty, that he was born with, dies. So he goes away, and after 1500 fucking years and Merlin still can’t remember who he is, because he is born to serve Arthur, his only purpose, and what is Merlin supposed to do now that Arthur’s gone?

Precisely. Merlin will wait for Arthur to rise, and he will serve himself to his king once more.

This is absolute madness.

#and what if arthur doesn’t come back #then what #merlin has no purpose than that #he may have tried to live again #but it would have never been the same thing again #merlin needs arthur as much as arthur needs him #his soul is divided in two and he needs to have the other side to be able to live again #merthur #bbc merlin #merlin #arthur pendragon #merlin bbc

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tropes-and-tales · 7 months ago

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Ten Months as Yours

Colonel Horacio Carrillo x F!Reader

CW: Angst (reader is CIA and has feelings about it; failed first marriages; talk of Catholicism); smut (oral, m! and f! receiving; PiV, unprotected); 18+ only.

Word Count: 10,951

AN: This was from an "Arranged Marriage" prompt list. An anon asked for it, and it was supposed to incorporate dates where the couple gets to know each other. I, an idiot, didn't remember that until nearly the end, but if you kind of squint, you can see it.

AN2: Not edited. Not even a little bit.

AN3: Sigh. I dunno, folks. It's whatever.

Horacio Carrillo’s first marriage was standard Catholic fare: the reading of the banns beforehand, then the long wedding Mass. Heavy on the incense, crowded church, a red-faced priest droning through the Gospel. Juliana, his blushing bride in a heavy lace veil, clutching a bouquet of lilies already wilted and brown at the edges in the Colombian heat.

Then, years later, the dissolution of that marriage. Papers signed separately in the presence of lawyers after an ice age formed between the couple. Then more years of Horacio being single again, but the time slipped by like water. He was so busy with work, he hardly registered the empty house he returned to every evening.

Horacio Carrillo’s second marriage is something else entirely.

It’s not, strictly or spiritually speaking, a real marriage. It’s a bit of maneuvering on the part of the U.S. government, logistical choreography as part of a larger plan. To the world at large, Horacio Carrillo is dead: murdered by Escobar’s men in a trap. Only a handful of people know the truth—the doctor and nurses at the American hospital who healed him under a temporary alias. And this man, Johnson, a U.S. Marshal and handler for the U.S. Witness Protection program

Johnson is the sole witness to this so-called marriage, if one could even call it that. It happens on the cargo plane from Bogota to Atlanta. Johnson sits in the jump seat across from his two charges: Horacio…and you.

Horacio doesn’t even learn your real name. There’s no exchange of vow and certainly no incense or bouquet of lilies. Instead of a blushing bride, there’s a silent one. Your mouth is set in a thin, straight line as you listen to Johnson’s rundown of your new life, and every time Horacio chances a look at you, he only sees the tension in you. Grim-set mouth, clenched jaw…and the white edge of a bandage on your temple, mostly hidden under the sweep of your hair.

Horacio wonders if you’re dead to the world too. You aren’t DEA or CIA, at least not in the Colombian theater, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t nearby. The U.S. agencies have their sticky fingers all over South America.

The broad strokes of the situation: you and Horacio are newlyweds. You met in Spain and are returning to the U.S. Horacio is dead, but he’s been replaced by Davide, and Johnson hands over a thick packet of official documents—Spanish birth certificate, Spanish passport, U.S. green card.

You are also dead, but you’ve been replaced by Gwen. Another thick packet of documents detailing your fake life as an ex-pat American in Spain.

Each packet also contains a simple gold band for each of you. Horacio turns it over and over in his hand, contemplates the little twist he gets in his gut to put a ring back on his finger after years of being divorced.

You slide yours on too, but you fuss with it the rest of the flight, twisting it around and around your finger.

“You’re going to Vermont, of all places,” Johnson tells you. “There’s a mid-sized college there with a lot of international folk coming and going, so you’ll blend in. The house is handled, and you’ll get a stipend every month, but we expect you to find jobs as quickly as you can.”

Johnson doesn’t even attempt to say how long it will be. Horacio knows he has to wait out Escobar before he can return to Colombia. You? Who can say?

The rest of the flight is silent except for the low roar of the engines and the creak of the netting holding the cargo in place. Once you land, you stand and follow Johnson and Horacio off of the plane to transfer to a smaller passenger plane that will take you to Vermont.

The final leg of the journey is silent too.

When you deplane in the small regional airport in Vermont, you stumble on the step down from the fuselage. Horacio catches your arm, keeps you upright.

“Watch your step,” he says softly.

“Thank you,” you reply.

It’s the first words you exchange, and his hand on your clothed arm—that’s the first time he touches you.

-----

Horacio has never been to the United States before, but when he thinks of it, he thinks of what he’s seen in the movies: New York City, perhaps, with the traffic and skyscrapers and Statue of Liberty. Or Miami with its white beaches and turquoise water and neon-tinged nightlife.

Vermont is something else.

It’s green. Everything is so green. The rounded mountains in the distance, the old trees with huge, spreading branches. The grass of the lawns in this college town. Even though it is near twilight, even the shadows are green-tinged as the sun sets.

“At least we arrived in the spring,” you say. You glance at him, explain that New England winters can be brutal.

The house is small, trim. It’s a simple ranch but well-built. There’s a fair amount of land, and the nearest neighbors are far enough away that there’s privacy.

Of course it’s awkward. You don’t know each other at all, and you’re both in hiding. Horacio is out of habit with living with another person, and he has to guess you are too.

That first night, the first moment of awkwardness: when you arrive at the house, there’s two bedrooms, and you both hesitate in the hallway that leads to both. You’re married on paper (kinda) but who would expect you to share a bed? But you’re also both exhausted, and Horacio takes in the dark circles under your eyes. The larger room has a full-sized bed, but the guest only has an uncomfortable-looking daybed.

“Take the master bedroom,” he says. “I’ll take the guest room.”

“You sure?” Your words, Horacio notices, are slightly accented, like you’ve been around people like him who speak English as a second language. He wonders about your past and what landed you here with him.

“Of course. Take the room. We’ll talk in the morning.”

You nod, and he glances down at where you twist that gold band over and over around your slim finger. It’s here, he’ll realize later, that he starts to feel something for you, but at the moment, it’s only sympathy. You’re trapped in the same miserable situation as him, so sympathy is an easy emotion to access.

“I appreciate it…Davide,” you reply, and you give him a nod, then turn in for the night. He hears the quiet click of the bedroom door as you shut it, and he turns in too. The daybed is cramped, and he can’t stretch out completely, but he’s so bone-tired that he’s asleep the minute his head hits the pillow.

-----

The first month, April.

It’s awkward. It’s more awkward for Horacio; everything in the U.S. is familiar, but just different enough to make it seem like he’s dreaming. You’re already an American, and life in an idyllic New England college town is easier for you to settle into.

Living with another person is strange. Horacio finds that the two of you engage in a civil, stilted dance each day that first month. You each tiptoe around the other, defer to each other in a painfully polite way. When Horacio catches you singing along softly to the radio one night, you snap the music off and go quiet. When you walk in on him in the bathroom once—he was only brushing his teeth, so it is hardly salacious—you apologize and refuse to meet his eyes for the rest of the week.

The two of you don’t really talk, not that first month. You aren’t supposed to share details about your real lives with each other, so neither of you know how to converse in the weird liminal space you find yourselves. Your conversations are limited to menial topics. The weather, the house and yard, what you each want for dinner that night. You trade off chores, you drift around each other, and it’s like living in purgatory with another ghost.

Sometimes, Horacio swears he can hear you crying softly through the wall that separates your room from his, but you never offer any insight into your feelings and he doesn’t ask.

-----

The second month, May.

Johnson told each of you to find work, and you land a job first: you get a position at the college. You ask him, a bit shy, if you can take a certain portion of the monthly stipend to buy some new clothes for your office job, and Horacio’s gut does that twist again. Of course you need new clothes. You left wherever with nothing, the same way he left Colombia with nothing.

“Of course,” he says. “You don’t even need to ask.”

That makes you smile a little, and you make a weak joke about not wanting to be the sort of wife to spend frivolously. It makes Horacio chuckle. It breaks the uneasy tension in the house a bit, and he ends up going to the mall with you that weekend as you shop.

There’s nothing like a mall to encapsulate American culture, and Horacio tries to play it cool at the conspicuous consumption on display. The giant building, the icy air conditioning, the cacophony of sound echoing around the marble floors and walls. There’s so many people and only a handful of security guards. When Horacio studies them closer, he sees that they don’t even carry guns—they only have walkie-talkies as they saunter around at a lazy pace.

His life now is a far cry from his life as the leader of the Search Bloc. And when he glances over at the woman walking beside him, he realizes how far this second marriage is from his first.

But the thought leads to him ruminating about his first marriage and all the little ways he failed Juliana. This situation with you isn’t a marriage, of course, but it doesn’t stop him from wanting to be better.

So once you are done shopping, he pulls you into the Sam Goody and insists that you buy an album to celebrate. He catches you singing all the time in the house, listening to the radio, humming or singing along. When he imagines your mysterious life before now, he imagines an apartment filled with a big stereo and shelves of albums.

“Seriously?” It makes you smile again, and Horacio thinks you have a nice smile, though he wonders how often people ever get to see it.

“Well, it’s our stipend,” he clarifies. “It’s not like I’m treating you, really. I guess it’s not really a gift if it’s ours.”

Another smile, and he stands back and watches as you rifle through the stacks of vinyl records and CD’s, as you pull one out and read the list of songs, then replace it. You finally settle on one, and the two of you check out, and Horacio pulls out his wallet and pays.

And even if it’s your shared stipend, you thank him and smile again, and it feels like something that he can’t quite name.

-----

The third month, June.

You leave the house every weekday for work. Horacio finally has some firsthand knowledge of what Juliana must have felt when he left each day. He had always prided himself that he was able to provide for both of them, that she never had to work.

He had never considered how bored she must have been.

He wakes up early out of habit, but you do too. In the soft pre-dawn light, you go out for a run every day. Part of him remains Search Bloc; he stands at the living room window and watches for you until you return, panting, your t-shirt ringed with sweat. He finds he can breathe easier once you’re in sight.

While you shower and dress, Horacio makes you coffee. The two of you sip at your coffee in companionable silence, and then you’re off.

It leaves him with a full day with little to do.

He cleans the house, but that takes no time at all because both of you are fastidious and neat anyway. He maintains the lawn, trims back the unruly rhododendrons. He bought a weight bench and a set of free weights from a yard sale a few weeks after you moved, and he spends some time lifting in the garage.

That takes him to noon, if he’s lucky.

His afternoons are when he thinks of Juliana the most. Is this what her life with him was like? Back then, he used to scoff at the claim that women needed a life outside of the home. His mother had seemed happy to be a housewife and mother, and he had always assumed that Juliana was the same. Except the children never came, and Juliana had a degree in fashion design from the university—yet when she broached the idea of a job or even an internship, Horacio had dissuaded her.

He had thought he was being a good husband. Now, as he sits and drowses to “Days of Our Lives,” he wonders how he had missed the obvious.

But if he’s Juliana in this situation, you are no Horacio. For one thing, you return home in the late afternoon—he’s never left to eat dinner alone in a too-quiet house. For another, you immediately kick off your shoes and pad over to where he’s cooking dinner, and you fall into an easy rhythm of helping him finish it off.

Halfway through June, you get comfortable enough to start calling out, “honey, I’m home!” each time you return.

Which makes him smile, every time.

And he’s only a passable cook, but you praise every meal he puts in front of you. You joke once, say “I should have gotten a husband a long time ago,” and that makes him smile even wider, and it is easy to fall into the fantasy that this easy domesticity is real. The fantasy only falls apart at night, when you each retire to your separate rooms, as you do every night.

-----

The fourth month, July.

The easy domesticity cedes to something deeper and darker right at the start of the month.

Horacio has never been to the U.S. before, so he hasn’t experienced the usual Independence Day celebrations. When he asks, you grin and tell him that a good old-fashioned U.S.-style barbecue might be nice, and that’s what the two of you plan. You and Horacio as Davide and Gwen: patriotic Americans.

The day starts off great. The weather is hot and humid enough to feel like Colombia, and Horacio will admit that you look nice in your cut-off shorts and cotton tank top. He will admit that if you were really his wife, he might never even make it to lunchtime before taking advantage of a quiet house set apart from its neighbors.

The barbecue is nice. It’s all-American fare: hot dogs and hamburgers, corn on the cob steamed over hot coals. You buy an apple pie from a nearby farm stand, and you also make some trifle type dessert, and the two of you wash it all down with ice-cold beer. By the time dusk rolls around and lightning bugs start to flicker across the lawn, Horacio is pleasantly buzzed.

The town puts on a fireworks display, and as the sky turns a velvety black, the light show starts. Your house is in the perfect place to see it, slightly set on a ridge, and blossoms of red and white and blue sparks explode across the sky. Horacio, tipsy, watches the first few minutes, completely mesmerized…but when he turns to say something to you, he finds you missing.

He finds you in the house. More specifically, he finds you in the bathtub, hugging your knees to your chest, forehead pressed to knees.

“Gwen?” he says, and he feels stupid saying the obviously fake name, but he doesn’t know your real one.

You don’t answer anyway, and he steps into the bathroom. Studies you closer. Sees that you are shaking, and between the muffled booms of the fireworks, he can hear your panting breath.

He moves without any real thought. He knows—or can guess, at least—at what is happening to you. Horacio has led enough men through enough battles to recognize a panic attack when he sees one, but you aren’t one of his men and this is no battle, so he puts a gentle hand on your shoulder to alert you that he’s there. Then he climbs into the bathtub with you.

“Scoot forward a little,” he orders softly, and you do. He maneuvers himself behind you, then pulls you closer to him. Your back pressed against his chest, and his arms wrapped around you, he holds you close despite the heat and humidity of the day.

“Just breathe with me.” He takes a deep, slow breath, feels his chest push against you. He does it again and again, and after a long while, you start to mimic him.

The fireworks end, and eventually you stop trembling. Tucked this close to him, Horacio can see the edge of a thick scar disappearing under your hair, and he remembers the bandage on the plane from Bogota.

He wonders if the moment that caused that scar is linked to this moment now.

After you calm, and after you sheepishly untangle yourself from him, he urges you to do whatever you need to. To take a cool shower or go to bed. That he’ll clean up. You gaze back at him a long moment, like you’re trying to decide something, and then you nod. You leave the bathroom and disappear into your bedroom, and he hears that quiet click of the door closing.

The rest of the month is uneasy. The panic attack seems to have dredged up the muck in your past, the trauma of a life that has resulted in you being in Witness Protection, injured enough at some point to have a thick scar on your head.

Something about this feels like an echo from his first marriage. Juliana went silent on him too, but for different reasons. Your silence is driven by an inner turmoil that he can only guess at, and he feels powerless to help.

So he only does what he can. He makes you coffee each morning before work. He makes you dinner each night. He asks gentle, tame questions about your work day, and when you don’t have much to say in that quarter, he tells you that day’s drama on “Days of Our Lives.”

“Stefano DiMera is back,” he tells you one night. “And Marlena is possessed by el Diablo.”

That’s the sole smile he is able to coax from you all month. You pick at the dinner he made, pushing it around with the tines of your fork, and repeat, “the Devil?”

Horacio nods.

“Like, Lucifer the Devil?”

“Yes.”

You smile. “That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard.”

He nods again, smiles back at you. “It really is.”

-----

The fifth month, August.

Horacio finds a job with a state nursery, and when he applies, he nearly despairs at the cliché of it: a South American immigrant becoming a landscaper.

But it’s not landscaping at all. It’s a quiet, peaceful job. The summer interns have already left for the year, so Horacio is hired on to help the old-timer, Lawrence. Lawrence has a thick Yankee accent, says little, but Horacio finds the job a revelation. He walks the rolling grounds and checks on the saplings that will one day be planted across the state. They’ll go into parks and line city streets, and it knocks something loose in him. A job where he’s nurturing life that will potentially live on long after him. The oak sapling he waters and feeds today could live hundreds of years when he’ll be long forgotten.

With him working now, you and Horacio switch off on meals. You teach him how to use the most American of small appliances, the slow cooker. You make him the most American of working class meals, the one-pot dish. He makes you the comfort food from his childhood, and together you find an egalitarian balance.

But something about July and your low mental health…it makes Horacio want to do better. Who knows how long the two of you will end up living like this? He wants to understand you better, and he wants you to know him, because the two of you exist as the sole inhabitants of this weird, unlikely life as Davide and Gwen.

“Let’s each say one true thing about ourselves,” he proposes over dinner one night. He’s bone-tired from work—he spent the day mulching rows and rows of tender little Eastern Hemlocks (and he knows the difference now between them and a balsam fir and a spruce). You look tired too, but at his suggestion, your eyes light up. Maybe you’ve been wanting some familiarity with him too and just were waiting on him to suggest it first.

So August is this: getting to know each other. Dumb stuff, usually. Favorite colors, favorite songs, favorite foods. Most embarrassing memory. Best memory. Age of first kiss.

-----

The sixth month, September.

The weather starts to turn. The nights grow cold, and the leaves transform from all that green to a riot of reds and yellows and oranges. Work at the nursery slows way down, and Horacio spends long hours following Lawrence’s lead, which means an hour or two of paperwork, then lunch, then quietly reading a book at his desk.

You’re busy with the new academic year, but the weekends are spent doing day trips. You’re six months into this, and you’re both braver, more willing to travel afield. You go into the mountains to look at the leaves from a different angle than what you see from your house. You go to pick apples, and you spend a weekend cooking them into pies, cobblers, and apple sauce.

The dinner-time “one true thing” game ends, and it turns into natural conversation. It’s so comfortable now. You chat and laugh and joke, and sometimes he teases you, and it makes you duck your head to hide your pleased smile. You like being teased, Horacio finds. You like being the butt of gentle jokes, so he obliges you as often as he dares.

It’s a revelation to find that he has a sense of humor after all.

Over one dinner, he mentions his first marriage, his first wife. You ask him questions, and he answers them honestly, and then he asks if you’ve ever been married.

“No.” You shake your head to emphasize the point.

“Ever engaged?”

You hesitate, then nod. “Yes. A long time ago.”

“What happened?”

You shrug, lifting one shoulder up before dropping it back down. “Life. Expectations. It’s hard to say.” You take a sip of your water, then settle your gaze somewhere past Horacio, like you’re looking at the specter of your failed engagement.

“I was young and very career-driven,” you add. “And not many men want that in a wife.”

“I’m sorry.” He is, of course, and he’s doubly-sorry because he was arguably one of those men. He kept Juliana at home, stifled her own career aspirations. A flush of shame courses through him at the memory of his own failings.

Another shrug. “It was for the best.”

“And now here you are, married to me,” he teases, and yes—you duck your head, but he catches the shy little grin, the curve of your cheek as you smile at the joke.

-----

The seventh month, October.

It’s the first time you’ve actually ordered him to do anything, so Horacio finds himself busy each weekend, decorating the house for Halloween. There’s ghosts strung in the trees in the front yard. Fake gravestones jut from the lawn like rotting teeth. Purple and orange lights are strung around the windows and banisters of the porch, and the two of you set to carving more pumpkins than Horacio thought possible.

But it’s worth it, because your town goes all out for the holiday. You bought him a costume weeks ago, and when he dresses after dinner, he’s surprised to find you openly checking him out. Your gaze sweeps from the hair on the top of his head—longer than Search Bloc reg, curling at the nape of his neck—to his shoes, and you take in his vampire costume.

“You look handsome,” you tell him, and he tries not to ogle you in turn and utterly fails, because you’re dressed up like a witch but the black dress hugs your curves, and the ridiculous hat, complete with a floppy brim, does nothing to detract from how sexy you look.

Horacio finds himself sitting on the front porch with you, handing out candy to the children that come by. And it charms him, how much you get into it, how you guess at what each child is supposed to be. You read the kids perfectly—you’re sweet with the scared little ones, but you play up the witchiness with the older ones, crooking your fingers and cacking at them.

When there’s a lull in the crowd at one point, he catches you as you shiver, so he pulls you close to him and wraps his cloak around your shoulder. He never touches you much, but this is blatant, and the moment feels heavy with intent.

You lean into him. A moment later, he feels your arm wend its way around his waist, under his cloak, so he holds you closer.

The evening continues like that. The two of you play it up more and more, comfortable with pretending. Not you and Horacio, and not Davide and Gwen, but a vampire and a witch, and the more you cackle and scare the children, the more Horacio flashes his fake teeth and hisses at them.

Who ever knew handing out candy in a cheap drugstore costume could be so fun?

When another lull happens, he pulls you back to him, and the motion takes you off balance a little. You hold him back but lean away from him, searching for your equilibrium, and it bares the smooth column of your neck to him.

Horacio forgets himself. Davide forgets himself. The vampire he’s pretending to be dips his head, and he presses the plastic points of his fake teeth into your pulse point, and you give a squeal of surprise, but when Horacio lifts his head to study you, he sees you staring back at him, your eyes wide and dark with obvious desire.

“That’s a good way to get a hex on you,” you warn, but there’s a smile on your red lips, and you don’t release your own hold on him. You don’t shove him away.

“I enjoy a good hex,” he replies.

The stream of children eventually dies off. The bowl of candy has been replenished multiple times, but you fill it one last time and set it on the porch for any stragglers.

Inside the house, you go from room to room and check the locks on the doors, turn off the lights. Horacio lingers near the hallway, and when you turn to make your way to your room, he stills you. He puts his hand on your waist, lightly, and he doesn’t say anything. The moment hangs suspended as you both stand there, silent.

What does it mean for Horacio Carrillo to take you to bed?

He has always tried to be a good Catholic (the killing of narcos aside). He’s never been with anyone other than Juliana, and he feels a tinge of doubt. Guilt, too. He’s always prided himself on his fidelity, and post-divorce, he took a perverse pride in the fact that he never took a lover. That he still honored his vows despite the legal fact that he was no longer married.

He doesn’t mourn Juliana anymore, and he knows that something is growing between the two of you now, but what does it mean? Would it be right to sleep with you, knowing that this is just circumstantial? That it may end at any moment? That if you both weren’t in WitSec, you’d have never met, and might have never liked each other if you had?

Is this thing growing between the two of you only the result of being flung together by circumstances out of your control?

All of those questions rapid-fire through his head, and you seem to see the doubt in his eyes because the moment deflates. The energy and anticipation sour, and he sees it on your face. Your soft smile falls, and then you nod to yourself, as if you knew it would happen like this.

Then you smile again, thank him softly for his help handing out candy. You stretch towards him and brush the lightest of kisses against his cheek, and you step around him to go to your room.

When Horacio goes to bed, it takes him a long time to fall asleep, and he swears you must be awake too, separated only by the wall between you.

-----

The eighth month, November.

Your department at the university puts on a wine and cheese social, and spouses are encouraged to attend.

“We never really practiced our cover story,” he says as he bends over to tie his dress shoes. “Do you remember all of it?”

“I have a eidetic memory.”

“Yeah?” He glances up at you. “You’re full of surprises.”

“Don’t sweat it. It’s a bunch of tenured professors. They love to talk about themselves and nothing else. They are all narcissists of the worse variety.”

But you aren’t entirely correct. The party is at the house of the department chair, and Horacio finds himself cornered by a pair of fellow lecturers. They are older women, charming and gregarious, and they sing your praises…and his own.

“I can see why she’s kept you hidden away,” says the taller of the two. “She said you were handsome but—”

“You make a gorgeous couple,” the shorter one cut in. “And she’s brilliant, you know, she planned out this—”

On and on they go, cutting each other off, redirecting each other, not letting Horacio get a word in edgewise. It’s not far off base from how you explained it would go, and when he catches your eye from across the room, you smile but mouth, “you okay?”

He nods, smiles back at you.

The evening is halfway over when he realizes with a start that he hasn’t cased the room once.

He hasn’t counted the exits and windows, hasn’t studied the egresses and any obstacles to them. He hasn’t scowled at each face to try and determine what dirty secret they held, if Escobar or one of his men had compromised them or their family. He hasn’t studied the lines of their clothing to see who might be hiding a piece.

What does it mean for Horacio Carrillo to lose his edge?

It’s another question he ponders at night, since the minor disaster of Halloween. He knows he hurt you by hesitating in that moment in the hallway, but it’s a subtle hurt. He can see it in your eyes each morning, the way they study his face as if you could perhaps read his thoughts if you watch him closely enough.

More and more, these questions plague him because there’s no easy answers. Horacio is used to solving problems, but he’d be the first to admit that many of his solutions were just brute force. Displays of power. The Search Bloc has a problem? Send in men, armed men, men with guns and night-sticks, men with flint in their souls, men with hearts cased in granite. Send in Colonel Carrillo himself to a clandestine meeting place where a suspect is strung up. What’s a little light torture and murder when the fate of a country hangs in the balance?

That man is dead now. Horacio Carrillo received a state funeral, and his empty coffin lies in the mausoleum. Davide, his replacement, spent the week wrapping tender saplings in burlap in anticipation for the coming snows—all the while considering his place in the greater world and what his legacy may be.

At the end of the evening, Horacio finds you, brings you your coat, holds it out while you shrug your way into it. When the two of you leave, you pass the pair of lecturers who had cornered him, and their exchange is like a Greek chorus that follows him home.

“He is handsome, isn’t he?” says one. “She’s a lucky woman.”

The other one scoffs lightly. “He’s the lucky one.”

You must not hear them because you don’t react. You only let him lead you to the car, and when he brushes away the light dusting of snow with the snow brush, his eyes find yours through the windshield—and you smile at him.

-----

The ninth month, December.

The university shuts down for most of the month, and Horacio is on an abbreviated schedule a the nursery.

The two of you have so much time together.

Horacio has seen snow before, but never like this. Vermont, so green when he arrived, is swaddled in thick layers of white like cotton batting. It absorbs and reflects sounds in weird ways, and a hush falls over your little home.

Being Colombian, he should hate it. He should curse the cold and the snow and the quiet, but it does something to his soul. It soothes him in a way he never would have guessed. True, the cold is difficult at first, but you take him to the mall one weekend and load him up with sweaters and thick woolen socks, and he’s better after that.

Everything is so calm. Peaceful. Horacio has never slept so well in his life, bundled under layers of blankets, even on the uncomfortable daybed. He sleeps, he doesn’t dream, and he wakes up naturally, in slow measure, to a soft light creeping across his bedroom floor.

Being on break, you still wake up early. Earlier than him, some days, and when Horacio wakes to the scent of brewing coffee and something delicious baking in the oven, he wishes sometimes that this was the afterlife. He wants to freeze the moment in time and never let it slip past him. He wants nothing more, in this moment.

He’s always half-asleep those mornings, but the smell of food draws him out. One morning, he pads out to the kitchen in his thick socks and startles you when he grumbles “good morning.” You shriek, then swear, then lightly try to swat him with the spatula in your hands, but he’s still half-asleep, still incredulous that this is his life at the moment, and he takes the spatula from you and pulls you into a big bear hug.

“What’s this for?” you ask. Your words are muffled against his chest, but after a beat, you wrap your arms around his midsection and hug him back.

“Just because,” he replies.

You spend your days doing puzzles, reading, listening to music. You watch “Days of Our Lives” with him and you both laugh at the bad cosmetics and even worse acting on the demonic possession storyline.

Your evenings are spent cooking dinner together. You make the trip into town every few days, and you rent movies and watch them too. You watch everything together—old Hollywood classics, campy horror, meandering romances. The two of you sit on the couch side by side, and it takes all of a day before you’re tucked in against his side, his arm firm around your shoulders.

Sometimes he glances down at you and sees your face in profile lit by the flickering light of the television. Sometimes he can make out the edge of your scar, but he doesn’t linger there. Instead he takes in the whole of your face—the curve of your cheek, the sweep of your lashes as you blink. When something funny happens on the screen, you smile, and it makes Horacio’s heart stutter in his chest to see it.

What does it mean for Horacio Carrillo to fall in love?

Another question to ponder. Another riddle to solve. He’s losing sight of the man he was. Maybe that man is completely lost already. The thought doesn’t unnerve him; he thinks he likes the man he is here. He likes the man he is with you, the job that coaxes life into being instead of snuffing it out. He likes wearing cable-knit sweaters and thick socks and eating the banana bread you bake on mornings you don’t have to work.

He likes sitting on the couch with you and watching a rental VHS of “Beetlejuice.” He likes the feel of your body pressed against his, and he likes looking down to see you smile.

That’s the night he dares ask for more.

After the movie, you do your usual pre-bedtime sweep of the house—locks, lights—then brush your teeth and go to your room. The usual quiet click of your door closing. Horacio, as usual, goes to his room, peels back the layers of blankets, prepares to tuck himself into the cramped bed….then doesn’t.

Instead, he returns to the hallway. He taps a finger on your door, a soft staccato, and he hears you call out, “Davide?”

“Yes.”

You tell him to come in, and you’re sitting up in bed. Your eyebrows are furrowed together.

“What’s wrong?” you ask.

He shakes his head. How can he begin to explain it? He’s fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and his Italian is passable, yet not a single language he knows can capture the maelstrom of emotions roiling through him. He loves you, he wants you. He’s afraid you don’t feel the same for him. He’s afraid you do feel the same for him. Is this just situational or are you truly the woman he was meant for all along? Has he gone mad? Is this some tame mental breakdown, the result of coming close to death and then finding himself, improbably, in Vermont with a woman who also was near death?

From your “one true thing” game, he knows you’re a polyglot too—English and Spanish and Russian—but that shake of his head to your question seems to transcend the need for language. You seem to read it exactly, the turmoil in him, and you climb out of bed slowly, make your way over to where he stands by the door.

You reach down and take his hands in yours, and the touch bolsters him. Reassures him. He’s Horacio and Davide both, and you’re both Gwen and yourself, and he doesn’t need to parse the two. He can be both with you. You’re both complicated people with complicated pasts, but none of it matters right now because the world is swathed in layers of snow, and the two of you are the only two who exist in it.

Neither of you say much else for the rest of the night. When you turn your head to peer up at him, Horacio tilts his head to kiss you, and it’s like a bolt of lightning when he does. Maybe he fell in love with you by small moments, but this is the moment that seals it forever: this first kiss, his mouth on yours, writes your name—your real name, even if he doesn’t know it—on his heart like a line of fire.

You each lead the other back to bed; you tug him, he pushes you, and you fall gracelessly back on the rumpled covers, but each kiss, each searching touch peels back another layer of reserve. Horacio slides his hand under your shirt and cups the softness of your breasts, pinches lightly at your hardened buds. You slip your hand under the waistband of his flannel pajamas and grasp his growing erection, stroke it into full hardness as he groans into your mouth.

There’s no art to it. No seduction. You’re both starving for each other, ravenous, and you both kiss the other as you each strip out of your layers. He kisses down your neck, nips at your pulse point like he did on Halloween. He licks against the hollow at the base of your throat, draws the sweetest goddamned moans out of you, then returns to kiss you, to lick against the inside of your mouth so he can feel the sounds you’re making too.

If he’d known how vocal you were in bed, he would have summoned his courage months ago.

Your mouth is on him too. It’s another line of fire, each press of your lips on his bare skin. He finds himself on his back and you astride him. He reaches up to touch your bared breasts, but you don’t even notice because you lean down, focused only on him. Your mouth on his neck, along his stubbled jaw. You kiss his collarbones, his chest. You bite lightly against his nipples, your teeth making him huff at the sensation, and then your warm tongue laving him. Further down, a trail of kisses across his belly, which is less firm than it was in his Search Bloc days but you make a pleased noise as your mouth places wet, lingering kisses there.

Then even lower, and this is uncharted territory. Love-making with Juliana was only ever for the purpose of making children, and while Horacio had convinced her a time or two to go down on her in the interest of foreplay, he never has received head in his life. Juliana had called it dirty, and he had left it at that.

He doesn’t even register it until he feels your hand grasp him at the root of his cock, then feels the smallest, most kittenish little lick of your tongue against his leaking tip.

“Dios,” he groans out, and then he feels the rest: your tongue tracing a pattern along the length of him, then a teasing rhythm where you work him into your mouth. First just the tip. You lavish him with attention there, suckling against the most sensitive part of him, lapping up the pre-cum that leaks from him. Then more and more and more; you work him into your warm, wet mouth, and he feels your breath tickling against his groin, feels you breathing carefully through your nose as you take him as far as you can, and then you swallow against him, you hum against him, and it’s nothing like he’s ever felt before. You press your tongue against the underside of him and you hollow your cheeks, and when your warm palm reaches up to lightly fondle his balls, Horacio’s orgasm breaks around him like a tidal wave. His hips judder once, twice, and he thinks he warns you, but you don’t move. You only hold yourself there, and when he comes, you swallow every drop of him, and he wishes he could explain this feeling to Juliana: that it doesn’t feel dirty at all. It feels like a sacrament. That it feels like love.

It's only fair that he shows you his love for you in turn.

Once he recovers, he flips you onto your back and repays you in kind. He kisses his way down your naked body, makes a note of all the spots that you moan at. Make a note too of all the scars that speak to a life a lot like his was in Colombia. He kisses your scars, presses his lips to each raised ridge as if he can take away any lingering pain.

Then he settles between your legs. There’s no shyness he can detect; you spread your thighs eagerly for him. You allow him to put a pillow under your hips to tilt your pelvis into a more agreeable angle.

He’s not especially skilled at this. The handful of times with Juliana had been a race against the clock—a sprint to coax her to orgasm before she gripped his hair and made him stop. There’s no clock now, so he takes his time. He settles your legs on his shoulders and he bends his head to your gorgeous pussy, and he takes his time.

He licks against your folds, then reaches down to part them with his fingers. Licks a slow, tortuous route from the firm bud of your clit to your entrance. Over and over and over until you squirm underneath him—then he slides a finger into your clenching heat, then another, then a third, and he feels how your pussy twitches against the intrusion, how you grab against his fingers like you’re trying to pull him deeper into you.

He fingers you in a lazy rhythm, and he circles his tongue against your clit. That does something for you; you whine out a curse, and a moment later your hand is on his head, your fingers tugging against his hair, so he purses his lips, suckles against your clit, and that turns your whine into a wail.

He wishes he could tell Juliana this too, that this isn’t dirty either. When you come, he feels a flush of pride at drawing pleasure from your body—your thighs tight against his head, your pussy clamped down on his fingers, and the slick cum that pulses from you, that coats his tongue and lips in the taste of you.

He’s hard again, but he wouldn’t press his luck. This is more than he ever dared hope for. He’d be happy to curl up with you now, to fall asleep beside you, but when he lifts his head from where he’s perched between your thighs, he sees you gazing back at him.

“Please,” is all you say, and he knows what you’re asking for because he wants it too.

If there’s an argument about this being two people pushed together because of circumstances beyond their control, there’s also an argument about the two of you fitting together so well. Because you do. Your body seems like it was made for his; you fit together like two jagged puzzles pieces. Horacio settles over you, lowers his body onto yours, and it’s like magic: his cock bumps against your inner thigh, but he moves half an inch and he finds your wet heat, and then he’s pushing into you, feeling your feverish flesh part and mold to the shape of him, and then your legs are around his waist, holding him to you as he bottoms out inside you.

He stills for a long moment. He’s unable to move. It’s not because he’s afraid he’ll come too soon but because he’s afraid he might cry. Horacio Carrillo is not a man who cries (maybe Davide is), but gazing down at your face, seeing the stunned love written in your expression, he nearly cries at how lucky he feels. How blessed. That shootout in the Medellín alley should have killed him, yet here he is.

Eventually, you give him the faintest of nods, and he starts to move. He’s gentle at first. He warms you up to the feel of him, and him to you. You lay one hand on the side of his face, cupping his cheek as he thrusts into you, but the other hand settles over his heart.

He could love you like this forever. He coaxes a second, then a third orgasm from you, and he watches your face during each one—the way your eyes go wide, then close tight, the way your mouth takes a hitching breath then goes slack as you breathe through it. The look on your face as it ebbs away, your eyes shiny with tears, and happy little smile curving your lips.

“I want you to come,” you whisper to him. You must feel the tension in him, and you bear down on his pistoning cock to urge him along.

“Where?” he pants out.

“Inside me. Please. Come inside me.”

He knows you’re safe. He’s lived with you for nine months now, and he’s run enough errands with you to know that you have that little plastic compact you pick up from the pharmacy once a month. He sees you swallow the same pill each morning with your vitamin. But still—he’s a man with his history, so he doesn’t register your contraceptive use in this moment. The thought comes to him that if he comes inside you, he may make you pregnant, and Horacio is surprised by how quickly the thought urges his orgasm forward.

“You sure?” At your words, he’s amped up his thrusting, driving forward in deep, strong strokes until he swears he can feel the crown of his cock nudging against the end of you, and the thought takes hold: you round with his child, the two of you in this bedroom with a child in the guest room converted into a nursery. At this moment, it’s the tamest of breeding kinks, but in the morning, he’ll realize it’s just more of this perfect life extrapolated. You not as his pretend-wife but as his real wife. A child as tangible proof that this isn’t just an incongruous moment in time.

“Yes. Please.” You lick your lips, blink up at him. “I-I want to feel you coming inside me.”

It’s only fair that he obliges you. You ask so nicely, so he does: he thrusts three, four times more, then feels his pleasure snap and spark up his spine as he fills you.

Then he collapses on top of you, and a moment later, he feels your fingers combing through his hair, lightly running over his back.

“You can sleep here, if you want.” You say it shyly, like you think this might just be a physical release for him, so he lifts his head to kiss you and reply that he wants that very much.

Horacio never sleeps in that cramped daybed again.

-----

The tenth month, January.

What does it mean to Horacio Carrillo for the lines between real and pretend to blur?

It means that through Christmas and into the new year, you live as husband and wife. You live as newlyweds. You make love in every room in the house, and you spent lazy days tangled up together. It means you draw straws to see who has to drive into town for provisions, and it’s all a joke anyway because you always go together. It means your world collapses down into the most basic of human needs: feeding and fucking.

It means that between love-making, the two of you share more about your real lives. Horacio learns about your family life. He learns that you’re CIA, and you’ve been stationed in Panama post-Noriega. He learns that it was an explosion, a car bomb outside of your headquarters, that left you with that scar on your head.

You learn about the Search Bloc and Escobar. You learn about his childhood as the son of a great military leader, and how that legacy shaped his own life and career.

But what does it mean when that line blurs?

It means that when Johnson returns to your lives, everything ends abruptly.

“Everything is all clear,” he tells you when he turns up one Saturday in the middle of January. He sips at the cup of coffee you made him, and if he notices the stunned silence of both of you, he doesn’t remark on it.

“Escobar was gunned down early today. It hasn’t hit the wire yet.” Johnson glances at you. “And the group that bombed your HQ has been cleared out too. You’ve been safe for a few months, but we didn’t want to upset the situation here.”

“So now what?” you ask, and Horacio feels sick to his stomach as Johnson explains that your old lives are waiting for you and that it’s time to go.

-----

The end comes that day, but not the way Horacio thought it would.

You gesture to Johnson after he gives the rundown on the logistics, and the two of you go outside. Horacio watches from the kitchen window as you cross your arms against the cold. You talk, Johnson listens. Then Johnson talks, you listen. Back and forth, and by the end Johnson shakes his head, shakes your hand, and returns inside.

“Okay, so change of plans,” he says, and he rubs his hands together briskly to bring the warmth back to them. “It’s just you and me now. Go pack and say your goodbyes, and I’ll be back in an hour.”

He leaves, and Horacio watches him pull out of the driveway, and when he turns back to the interior of the house, he sees you standing there. Crying openly, tears cutting tracks down your face.

“I can’t go back,” you explain, your voice thick with tears. “I won’t.”

Then you break down into sobs, and it’s second nature to stride over to you, to pull you into his arms. He tries to soothe you—rubs your back, holds you to him—as you choke out the words. That you have had a crisis of conscience. That you wonder if your work in the CIA did more harm than good. That you think it’s the former, and how you want to spend the balance of your life not doing more harm than good. That you want to live in a quiet town that is green in the summer and swaddled in white in the winter. You want to teach, you want to come home to a house with….and you catch yourself at the last minute. You don’t say it, but Horacio can guess it.

You want to come home to a house with him in it. You want to come home to him.

“I love my life here,” you amend hastily, but you push away from him, aware he’s leaving and that your life won’t be exactly the same either way. You mumble something about not wanting to say goodbye, about wishing him the best, and then you disappear down the hallway. He hears the click of the door and your crying, and it doesn’t abate while he packs.

When Johnson returns, Horacio taps on the bedroom door, but you don’t answer and he doesn’t push it. He’s sleepwalking through the moment, numb, so he leaves. He doesn’t say goodbye. He only climbs into Johnson’s rental car, and each mile that Johnson puts between you and Horacio only makes the numbness grow.

“Women, huh?” Johnson says as they near the airport. “That’s why I said they should never take field work. They don’t have the stomach for it, in the end.”

Horacio grunts a non-reply, but he thinks Johnson is off the mark. It’s not that you don’t have the stomach for it. It’s that you don’t have the heart.

-----

February.

He goes from Vermont to Miami, this time around.

Horacio is given a hotel room, and he’s given the orders to just chill for a bit. Johnson has extricated him from his fake life as Davide, but his old life as Colonel Horacio Carrillo isn’t quite ready for him yet.

There are mountains of paperwork to bring a man back from the dead. There’s talk of giving him a cushy role in Madrid. There’s talk of commendations, medals, a comfortable pension to retire on. He’s done a lot for his country of Colombia, and Colombia wants to reward him.

He sleepwalks through this liminal space. The not-Davide, not-Horacio time. He wanders the streets around the hotel and picks at the food he orders in restaurants, and each time he hears a woman speak, he looks up expecting to see you.

I don’t even know her real name, he thinks.

Gwen, his one-time pretend-wife. Gwen, who had a panic attack on her country’s birthday. Gwen, who questioned the harm she may have caused to another country, another people. Gwen, who only wants the chance to do a little good now, or at least to do no more bad. It wasn’t Gwen at all, but he has no other name to use, so he runs through all the lovely little moments he had with Gwen.

Watching for you to return from your daily jogs. Walking through the falling leaves of autumn with you. Making you coffee, pressing the steaming mug into your hands each morning. Handing out candy to the children at Halloween, tucking you under his cloak at the autumn chill. Watching movies with you as the snow fell outside, then curling up in bed with you, slotting his body against yours, giving you pleasure and taking pleasure from you in equal measure. Threading his fingers through yours as he arched over you, his eyes falling on the glinting light in the gold band in your ring finger, it’s twin on his own.

What does it mean for Horacio Carrillo to finally make a choice?

Of course he’s made choices before. Every day, he made a million choices, large and small. But the big stuff, the giant stuff, the life-shaping stuff—did he have much choice? His father’s military career pretty much guaranteed his own career in the Search Bloc. His family’s status pretty much guaranteed he’d marry a Catholic girl from a family of similar standing. And when Juliana chose to leave him, he really had no choice then, either.

Same with his pretend life of ten months. He had no choice in being paired with you, no choice in ending up in New England, little choice in working as a man who tended trees.

He imagines you in your shared home, alone. Johnson explained on the plane that you’d be able to buy the place, that WitSec only rents homes across the U.S. He explained that this has happened more than once, and that it’s actually not too difficult to let a witness slide into their pretend-life permanently.

The choice comes down to the most mundane thought. Horacio stands in his hotel room in Miami and wonders, who will make her coffee in the morning if I’m not there?

*****

Winter always loses its charm by the time February rolls around. The fleecy white snow turns into grey slush, and everything is cold and soggy and depressing.

Davide leaving doesn’t help at all.

You knew it would end eventually. You didn’t have much insight into his situation, but you knew that the cartel targeting you would be easy enough to neutralize. They were only there because of the power vacuum left behind by Noriega, and they were poorly organized.

You just thought when it ended, you’d have more time. Which is one of your fatal flaws, always thinking you’ll have more time. Your father died from a heart attack when you were in high school, and your mother died from a car crash when you were in college. You, more than anyone, should realize that time was never a guarantee, yet you always think you have a surfeit of it.

It's not your proudest moment, those final minutes with Davide. Not falling apart in a wash of tears, and not fleeing to your room. You should have committed to one extreme or the other. You should have either calmly explained your decision and bade him farewell…or you should have given in to the emotion of the moment and spilled everything.

Why do you never learn your lesson? You never had a chance to tell your parents that you loved them before they died. Why didn’t you tell Davide you loved him before he left to return to whoever he was before?

You know you could find him. You’d caught his lightly accented English and guessed at South America. Colombia, if he was hiding from Escobar. He told you about the Search Bloc. You knew some people in that theater. You could find him and tell him that you loved him, but would it do more harm than good? Doesn’t he have the right to return to his previous life without any baggage from this one?

February, then: grey, cold. You go to work. You teach your classes and hold office hours. Political science can create real monsters, so you gently try to steer your students towards the path of diplomacy and not war. Maybe this is how you make amends, if such a thing is even possible.

You go home each evening and pull together a sandwich for dinner. Sometimes you get take-out, and you eat over the sink. Sometimes you watch T.V. and sometimes you read, but you always sleep alone with Davide’s pillow clutched to your chest, the lingering scent of him fading away within days.

-----

Then March. The snow starts to melt a bit, and under some of the trees in your backyard you start to see the little purple and white jewels of budding crocuses.

You resume your runs in the mornings. The campus shakes off its doldrums too and the students seem livelier.

You made the right choice to stay. You go to the bank with your real name and get a mortgage. You buy the house under your real name, and you go to the university human resources and hand over the paperwork Johnston gave you, and it’s weird at first, explaining why you’re not really Gwen, but it shocks you how quickly people adapt to using your real name.

-----

March is still fresh when there’s a knock at your door one Saturday morning.

Your first guess is that it’s a delivery. Johnson promised to ship all of your stuff from your apartment in Panama City. Not that you have anything valuable, but it would be nice to have your record collection back. You don’t want to have to rebuild that from scratch.

You’re already out of practice from your prior life. You don’t bother to check who it is, don’t look out the window before you open the door, and so it’s a shock to see Davide standing there, his fist lifted like he’s about to knock again.

He drops his hand and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. You are speechless too, but you don’t need words to because as he drops and unfurls his hand by his side, you see the way the gold ring on his finger catches the morning light.

He’s still wearing his wedding ring, you think, and your body moves towards his, you leap into his arms and he’s there to catch you. You breathe out his name, but he chuckles, pushes you gently away from him.

“No, cariño,” he replies, shakes his head. “Not Davide.”

“Well, no. I mean—”

“I’m Horacio,” he interrupts. You reply with your own name, and he repeats it, almost to himself.

“Everything else was me,” he adds. “Everything but the name. What we had…” He trails off, fixes you with that dark-eyed stare of his.

“Everything else was me too.” All of the bare facts of your fake life as Gwen hold little weight to that nebulous everything else: every joke and shared laugh, your Fourth of July panic attack. The feel of his hand on your waist when you went apple picking. The way his hair curled after a shower, and how you loved to run your fingers through it when he fell asleep beside you. All of it. Every stupid little moment that most other people would have already forgotten.

Horacio holds up his hand to show you the ring you’ve already noticed. “I never took it off. It didn’t even occur to me to.”

You hold up your own hand. “Me neither.”

He looks away, squints his eyes as he looks off into the distance, but you swear you can see tears there. He clears his throat, but his voice comes out rougher than usual.

“I’d like to see if I’m as good a man as Davide was,” he says. “I’d like that chance, but only if you…” Another cough as he clears he throat, then continues. “Only if you’ll have me.”

You reach out and take his hand in yours. You touch the warm metal on his finger, then the thought comes to you. You slide the ring off, and you feel Horacio watching you. On the plane, you each put your rings on yourselves, but that wasn’t how it was supposed to go, was it?

Now, nearly a year later, you take his wedding ring off. For a long beat, you study it—it’s a simple thing, nothing elaborate. WitSec wasn’t going to waste money on an expensive ring for a fake marriage, and it already has a shallow scratch in it, likely from his job at the nursery.

Then you lift your head and gaze at him, and without breaking eye contact, you slide the ring back on his finger. The smile that spreads across his face when you do is enough of a promise as any vows recited in a church, and he repeats the motion with your own ring—takes it off, then slides it back on with intention.

And then, because there’s no priest there to give the order, Horacio bends down and kisses you for the first time as himself, and the first time as yourself, and perhaps you learn your lesson about time after all because the moment you part, you whisper, “I love you” to him.

And perhaps he needed to learn the same lesson because he sighs, pulls you closer to him, and whispers “I love you too.”

#colonel horacio carrillo x reader #colonel horacio carrillo #horacio carrillo x reader #horacio carrillo imagine #horacio carrillo #colonel carrillo #colonel carrillo imagine #colonel carrillo x reader #narcos #tropes and tales

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florencemtrash · 1 year ago

Text

Hummingbird: Chapter Three

Miguel O'Hara x Reader

What if the Earth-1610 (Miles’s universe) version of Miguel’s wife was actually Miles’s AP Art teacher?

Masterlist

Warnings: Terrible science jargon

It was almost silly how quickly the world returned to normal.

Alchemax was splashed on every local newspaper, website, social media account, and TV channel for a solid week before complaints shifted to the neverending construction on the streets of New York. The subway somehow got tighter, packed bodies grumbling about the thirty minutes added to their commute after ten subway cars had fallen through a spot and landed in the Hudson river.

But the events never faded away from your consciousness. The only way you could fall asleep was by leaving all the lights on. It racked up your electric bill like hell, but you couldn’t stand seeing the shadows creep along the wall as nighttime descended on the city - it reminded you too much of the Spot’s blank face and how he managed to stare into your soul without eyes.

Then there was the growing problem of your forgetfulness. You’d never been the best at keeping track of belongings - Mamá always blamed it on your creative brain - but now everything was being misplaced. The alarm clock would disappear from the nightstand and appear in the kitchen, your sock collection was dwindling every day and never making it into the dirty hamper, for Christ’s sake you still hadn’t found your favorite yellow sneakers and it was irritating you to hell and back.

I’m losing my goddamn mind. You often found yourself thinking.

You threw yourself into work, staying in the classroom late to grade and lesson plan until the night crew got used to vacuuming around your feet. You took on extra projects at the Academy, signing up to run after-school detention and volunteering for props and set design for this year’s spring musical “The Addams Family.”

Anything to stay out of your apartment. Anything to keep you from being alone.

Three empty coffee cups mocked your bleary eyes as you sat hunched over the sewing machine after hours. Cheap black lace trailed off the table, slowly shortening as you incorporated the material into Morticia’s dress.

“Fuck!” You hissed in pain and stuck your thumb in your mouth, sucking away the blood from your fourth needle prick of the night. At this rate you’d have more holes punched into you than swiss cheese.

It was time to give up for tonight.

Before you could forget you slipped the stolen Brooklyn Visions Academy uniform from your bag and hid it in the bottom-most cubby in the storage room. The sleeping bag and pillow from your apartment were also stuffed there, ready for Miles to use whenever he needed an extra break from being a superhero. You suspected Gwen had also been sneaking by to visit Miles now that she had more freedom to explore the multiverse - hence the spare uniform.

“How’s he doing?” You’d asked Miles earlier that day. Miguel’s unspoken name had lingered on the tip of your tongue, forcing the color to rise into your cheeks. Luckily Miles knew exactly who you were talking about.

A knowing grin grew on his face, “Not too bad. He seems more on edge than usual, but I hear he’s working on his temper.”

“He’s not body slamming any more teenagers?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Good.” You paused, “If he gives you any more trouble, send him my way. I’ll give him a piece of my mind.”

Miles saluted you, “You got it.”

You meant it as a joke… but you also wanted a reason to see him again.

You were just about to switch the light off in your classroom when a flash of yellow caught your eye. Tucked behind a stack of newsprint, the vine charcoal rubbing away on your fingers as you carefully lifted the papers, was your prized pair of yellow converse.

It was too late to think about how they’d ended up so far from home, so you tossed them in your bag, threw out the coffee cups, and saved your muddled mind the trouble of figuring it out tonight.

The midnight subway car was filled with the usual Friday-night suspects - overworked nurses, loners just killing time, drunk party goers covered in more glitter than a kindergartener’s Valentine’s day card, and you.

You didn’t miss Richard, not really. What you really missed was coming home to someone and the feeling of another body weighing down the right side of the bed. More recently you’d been imagining what it would be like to come home to Miguel.

You kicked off your shoes at the bottom of the landing, shuffling up the steps and pulling off your clothes as you went, modesty be damned. By the time you face planted on your bed, hair still damp from the shower, it was nearing 2am and Miguel still hadn’t left your mind. He’d planted himself in your thoughts like a spider too high up on a wall for you to squash and too large for you to ignore.

Mercifully you didn’t have to endure the pains of a schoolgirl crush for very long. Sleep dragged you under and you welcomed it as your mind finally went quiet.

You awoke with a start, suffocating under the heavy blankets that you’d buried yourself in last night. You’d been dreaming again about the collider. You’d been dreaming about Miguel - this time in a feverish haze that left your mind in a puddle on the floor.

How was it possible that a stranger could occupy so much space in your mind? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he’d held you like you were everything and then left without saying goodbye.

But you weren’t complete strangers…

“Aren’t you his wife?”

Miles had asked the question so innocently and Miguel hadn’t said anything against it, so it must be true. Somewhere, in some other universe, you’d been married to one another.

Are you thinking about me too? You wondered, opening your eyes in hopes of chasing the memory of him away.

…Maybe you were still dreaming, because the last time you checked you hadn’t fallen asleep under a tree in Central Park. And even if you had, you highly doubted you could have lugged your mattress and bed frame with you all the way from Brooklyn.

Oh por el amor de Dios.

The glorious thing about New York City is that everyone knew how to mind their own business. So when people saw a high school art teacher in Star Wars pjs leap for joy upon finding a $5 bill on the ground, they didn’t question it.

You were so ecstatic about saving yourself the two-and-a-half hour walk back to Brooklyn that you didn’t remember a highly important piece of information until after you hopped off the subway - you didn’t have your keys or your phone.

Joder.

Your forehead knocked against the front door of your apartment building with an audible clunk.

“Por el amor de la mierda, ¿por qué mi vida es así?” You muttered under your breath.

“Y/n?” Your landlord, Mrs. Fleming, pushed her tortoise-shell glasses higher up on her face, the thick lenses magnifying her eyes to bug-like proportions. “Oh it is you, my dear.”

You groaned, color rushing into your cheeks as you turned around sheepishly. “Good morning, Mrs. Fleming.”

The elderly woman gave you a once-over look, crocheting needles clicking together as she rummaged around in her bag for her keys, “The old walk of shame, I see.”

“What?! Wait, no-this isn’t-I’m not-”

She patted you on the back before unlocking the door and holding it open for you, “I only use the turn of phrase because that’s what you young folks call it. Ain’t nothing shameful in it. It’s good of you to get out there. I never did like Richard much.”

You were at a loss for words.

Mrs. Fleming, sprightly as she was for her age, followed you up to your apartment with her extra set of keys jingling merrily in her hands.

“Now, you have a good rest of your weekend, dear.” She said once you’d been graciously let into your apartment, “And don’t forget your keys next time!”

“Thanks Mrs. Fleming.” You said. Her amused chuckle echoed through the air as she shuffled off to her own apartment.

You sprawled out on the ground where your bed should have been, trying to even out your breathing as the reality of the morning’s events crashed down around you like a house of cards.

This can’t be happening. ¿Qué diablos me pasa?

You rolled onto your stomach, repeatedly banging your face into a spare pillow to muffle the sound of your aggravated screams.

The pillow accepted your frustration with little complaint until something in you just snapped.

All at once the pillow disappeared from beneath you and then blinked into existence by the closet allowing your face to crash into the floor unprotected.

You grabbed at your burning nose, eyes swimming with tears of pain as you registered what had happened.

“No… oh no.”

>>>

The rain beat down irregularly, fluctuating back and forth from being barely a drizzle to a torrential downpour.

You gripped an empty to-go cup in your hand, the tea you’d hoped would calm your nerves long gone.

It took you three hours to make it here. First you kept teleporting your keys away every time you touched them, futilely chasing them around the apartment. Then you’d nearly gotten hit by a taxi and teleported yourself to the bathroom of a tea shop on the Upper West Side. Miraculously your powers had quieted after that, allowing you to get on the subway and here without incident.

A familiar figure made its way down the block, hood up to protect from the rain.

“Miles!” You leapt up from your seat, racing across the street to the annoyed honking of two taxis.

“Miss Y/l/n? How’re you doing?” Miles narrowed his eyes in worry, seeing the way your fingers nervously pulled at a loose string from your sweater, “What happened to your face?” The flesh around your nose was red and tender, slowly transforming into a purple bruise.

“I’m sorry for bothering you like this, but I didn’t know where else to go.” You looked around carefully before lifting the cup in the palm of your hand.

You furrowed your brow in concentration, willing that same power within you to snap into place again.

“What’s supposed to-”

“Just-just give me a minute.”

A minute passed, and nothing. Your heartbeat quickened as you grew more and more flustered.

“Miss Y/l/n are you sure you’re ok?” Skepticism and genuine concern laced his voice.

“I’m fine!”

Snap!

The cup blinked out of existence like an old-school television that had been turned off. Miles saw it reappear over the park across the street and land on a dog walker’s head. The man in question looked up at the sky bewildered, like he expected to find God there.

Miles’s wide eyes met yours.

“Oh shit.”

He pulled you into the empty alleyway behind his building, using his spider webs to straighten the trash cans that rolled around on the ground and clear out a space large enough for the two of you to comfortably stand side by side.

He hung close to the street, Gwen’s face shimmering to life above his wrist as he spoke with his back turned to you.

“Hey, Gwen. I’ve got a situation.” He whispered into the watch.

You caught snippets of their conversation, shrinking in your coat as you tried to suppress the anxiety growing in your chest. If there was anything you’d learned about your powers it was that they tended to flare up with your emotions.

“Do you think we can trust him with this? I don’t want anything to happen to her… Yeah, yeah. No, I understand. I’ll bring her in. See you later.”

Miles turned back to you, a strained smile on his face, “Sorry about that.”

“Miles, what’s going on?” “I got to bring you into Spidey HQ. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but Miguel might.”

He unzipped his raincoat and hoodie, exposing the black and red spider-suit beneath and tugging on his mask.

Your heart gave a flip at the mention of your husband’s name (could you even call him that?). Would he be happy to see you again? Would things be awkward between the two of you?

A familiar watch flashed on his wrist as he began pressing buttons on the orange holographic screen. You’d seen it happen before, a portal of wild glitching colors pulsing to life in front of you, but that didn’t make it any less impressive. Miles stepped into it, dragging you along with him like he was just passing through any regular doorway.

He swept his arm outward, smiling at the expression on your face.

“Welcome to Spidey HQ, Miss Y/l/n.”

Your jaw dropped as you passed through the portal - an actual portal - to Miguel’s dimension.

Hundreds, no thousands, of Spider-People roamed the open air halls, some on two legs, some on four, some on wheels, and some just preferred to swing through the air on webs, catching and releasing the nimble strings with practiced grace from the walkways that crossed overhead like… well like a spider’s web.

Miguel certainly hadn’t wasted the spider concept when it came to their headquarters.

“I didn’t know there was a universe composed entirely of Spider-Men…Spider-People?… Spider…” A cat hissed at your feet when you nearly stepped on its tail as you blindly followed Miles through the crowd, “Spider-Things?”

“Sorry Spider-Cat!” Miles said as the feline grumbled, tail high in the air as it calmly leapt onto the wall and continued on its way as though gravity were only an inconvenience.

“Actually, every world has only one Spider-Person, but the Alchemax explosion last year ended up opening holes into other universes. Miguel created this place as a hub for Spider-People while everyone tries to fix the anomalies.”

“Anomalies?”

“Yeah, beings that have accidentally gotten stuck in another world.”

“Oh… yeah that makes total sense..” Your words trailed off as a roaring laugh caught your attention, “Is that… is that a dinosaur?”

You pointed at the group crowded around a cafeteria table howling with laughter. Burgers bounced on trays as the T-Rex doubled over to slap the table for dramatic effect.

“AY YO, REXA!” Miles shouted over your head, throwing his arms up wildly.

Rexa exposed razor sharp teeth in a grin and waved one short arm towards you. You returned a meek wave in return.

“That’s Rexa. She’s super funny. Just uh…” he covered his mouth before whispering in your ear, “Maybe don’t mention anything about her arms. She gets a little sensitive.”

“Oh…yeah, of course. No problem.”

Miles continued to lead you through the building, periodically taking breaks for you to catch up as you kept your eyes trained on everything except the path he’d carved in front of you. At one point you simply disappeared from view, reappearing four stories up in a psychiatrist’s office.

A tweed-suited Spider-Man jumped in his seat, dropping the box of tissues he’d been preparing to throw to his client.

“Oh! I… I’m so sorry.” You said, flustered at the sight of a sandy haired Peter Parker variant sobbing his eyes out into a spider plushie. You inched along the wall towards the door, “I’m just-I’m just going to make my way out.”

You closed the door as quietly as possible, turning around and coming face to face with Miles again. You jumped and snapped, this time landing on Rexa’s table, foot squishing her burger into roadkill.

You groaned and tilted your head up, watching Miles sail out the office window and swing his way down.

This was going to take a while.

There was no shortage of Spiderpeople to steal your attention, but finally after a few (uninterrupted) turns down pristine white hallways and an elevator ride into the belly of Spidey HQ, it was just you and Miles again.

From his lair, Miguel traced your figure with his eyes. When you caught sight of the camera in the elevator, its red pupil narrowing in on you, you smiled sheepishly and waved. The small action made his stomach flip like a schoolboy who’d been given his first kiss.

He needed to pull himself together before he saw you face to face again.

“I’m just saying, I think this is a good thing, Miguel.” Peter B. said, swinging up to the platform and wrapping an arm around Miguel’s broad shoulders. Mayday crawled out and onto the control board, pressing buttons haphazardly and closing half the screens. She clapped her hands in wonder and Miguel grumbled half-heartedly.

Once she started walking, all bets were off. She’d be an absolute menace to Spider Society. Already she liked to treat Miguel like her personal playscape, crawling onto his shoulders and tugging at his brown curls.

Her antics almost made him smile… almost.

“If she’s here then that can only mean something’s wrong.” Miguel said, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen and ignoring Mayday as she slumped over his back, slowly sliding down his chest and into his waiting arms with a dramatic sigh.

You looked tired and nervous, fingers tugging at the strings of your raincoat. A purple bruise spread out from your nose, moving with the curve of your cheekbones. Had someone hurt you?

Miguel’s blood began to boil.

“Or,” Peter bumped his hips against Miguel’s, “it could mean she wants to see you again.”

“Stop that.” Miguel growled.

“Stop what?”

Stop giving me hope.

Miguel was about to bite back at Peter and wipe the mischievous grin on his face when the doors slid open. Miles’s voice rang through the empty space.

“These are all those anomalies I was telling you about. Doc Oc, Rhino, Sandman, Mysterio. I don’t even want to know who that is.”

“Why is it so dark in here?”

“Miguel likes to brood. I think he’s part vampire.”

Miguel tossed Mayday into her father’s arms, swiftly turning around and busying himself at the control panel to distract from the pounding of his heart. A dozen screens flashed to life above the control board and Miguel concentrated on none of them.

Peter grinned like a madman. This was going great.

“Miss Y/n!” He shouted out, throwing his hands in the air before hopping off the platform. Mayday squealed in delight and copied his actions. Miguel only cursed under his breath and rubbed his temples. Leave it to Peter to be the cause of 90% of his headaches.

“Looking good, teach!”

“Ummm… thanks?” You responded as Mayday grabbed at you with chubby fingers. You didn’t have much choice but to hold her as Peter thrust her into your arms. Fear jolted through you like a lightning strike and you quickly handed her off to Miles, the poor girl frowning and continuing to make grabbing motions at you. The last thing you wanted was to make Mayday disappear from your arms.

Peter tipped his head to the side but for once made no comment. He continued to chat you up, pulling small smiles from your lips and ignoring the way you kept glancing at Miguel as his platform slowly lowered to the ground.

He had his hands on his hips, bright red and blue Spider-suit cutting a striking silhouette against the dark background.

If he’d noticed you walking into the room, he didn’t show it and you tried your best not to deflate at that realization.

“Don’t worry. He just likes to make an entrance,” Miles whispered in your ear. And some entrance that was. He stepped off the platform, back tight and straight as he moved forward with measured, even footsteps.

Miles took one step forward, angling his body in front of you with a weariness in his eyes.

Miguel stopped, face betraying nothing as he looked you up and down once.

“I never thought I’d see you again.” The words would have sounded romantic coming from someone else’s lips, but from him they just sounded dry and clinical.

“Same here.” You said. The words came out breathlessly.

“What’s happened?”

His hand hovered in the air between you two before he swiftly dropped it to his side. He wanted to reach out and touch your face. He wanted to tilt your chin upwards so he could take a good look at the damage done to your nose and make sure you were ok. Perhaps if you’d been alone he would have allowed himself to do it, but as it was, they had company.

“We need your help, Miguel.” Miles cut through the tension, “Something’s up with Miss Y/l/n. She’s got powers now - teleportation similar to the Spot’s.”

His heart stuttered in his chest.

“Is that true?” he said, desperately looking to you for answers. The Spot’s powers had made him unstable in more ways than one and Miguel shivered to think about anything happening to you.

You nodded, “Things keep disappearing when I touch them. Sometimes I accidentally teleport to places when I’m frustrated. I didn’t realize what was going on until I woke up in Central Park last night.”

Miguel turned around, muttering under his breath as his mind raced a thousand steps ahead of him.

Of all the people this could have happened to, it had to be you. He thought he’d done the right thing by leaving you alone, forcing himself not to portal to your dimension every night. His multiversal travels had taught him a thing or two about the ways things operated. Some figures, like Peter Parker’s Spider-Man were well represented across worlds. Some figures, like himself, were harder to come by.

As for you? He only knew of three worlds where you existed - in one world, his actions had led to your death and the death of your daughter. In the second, Spot had murdered you in his quest to figure out Spider-Man’s identity.

And in this one…

Well he thought he’d been keeping you safe.

Teleportation was a dangerous ability - unpredictable and difficult to control. Left unchecked you could find yourself in front of a car speeding down the highway or at the top of Mount Everest or in a different dimension altogether, constantly glitching as your molecules broke apa-

“Wait,” Miguel stiffened, back tightening as he swiveled around on his heels, “Where’s your watch?”

“My watch?” you glanced at your naked wrist, “I mean I usually just check my phone for the t-”

“No, your day pass watch. The thing that stabilizes you in this universe.”

Miles’s eyes blew open. “Mierda. Sabía que había olvidado algo.”

“How long have you two been here?”

“Maybe two hours.” You guessed.

“And nothing’s happened?”

“Is something supposed to happen?”

Even Peter B. looked concerned. Panic rose in your chest and you threatened to snap. Miguel reached out and grasped your wrist, palm sliding down until you felt the weight and warmth of his hand wrapped in yours. He led you to the med bay, Peter and Miles following closely behind.

The paper atop the padded examination table crinkled as you took a seat, watching Miguel’s broad shoulders flex and stretch as he dug an extra watch out from the back of a cabinet.

“Lyla, run a scan of Y/n.”

The woman flickered to life in front of him. “What’s the magic word?” She fluttered her eyelashes.

“Lyla.” He was in no mood for games today

“Ok, ok. Don’t be testy.” Lyla appeared in front of you, an orange scanner materializing in her hands that swept across your body with a cool touch. “Scan complete.”

“Here you go,” Miguel felt some relief pour back into his body as he fastened the watch around your wrist, hand lingering against your pulse like he wanted further confirmation that you were alive and well.

“Hey, why does she get one of the fancy ones?” Miles protested. The watch, identical to the ones worn by Miguel, Peter, and Miles flashed its face at you. It was far too elaborate and expensive to be just a day pass.

Miguel ignored him, walking over to one of the monitors and skimming through the output data.

“It took six months for Miguel to give me one of those bad boys,” The paper crinkled again as Peter hopped onto the table beside you, whispering, “Looks like someone’s got a favorite,” and earning a glare from Miguel.

Peter winked suggestively.

Miguel scowled.

Your cheeks turned a rosy red, your coat disappearing from around your shoulders and landing in a rumple at Miguel’s feet like the world’s worst suggestive gesture. Peter howled with laughter.

“No puedo creerlo.” Miguel whispered, his voice tinged with disbelief. “Lyla, am I looking at this right?”

“You sure are. Y/n’s DNA is perfectly stable. Not a trace of multiversal quantum poisoning to be found. And! Her radiation signature matches that of more than a thousand different universes. Bet you’ve never seen that before.”

“How is that even possible?”

“Hmmmm, let me think.” Lyla spun around in a digital office chair, waiting for her moment to break the dramatic pause. Miguel groaned - he would need to improve her code and tone down the dramatism. “Looks like packets of quantum energy from across the multiverse were released during the Alchemax hypercompact fusion explosion and merged with the only unaltered sentient lifeform in the vicinity.”

“Dios mio.”

At the end of her explanation she bowed gracefully, arm and fur-lined coat sweeping off to the side.

“Did you get any of that?” Peter asked out of the corner of his mouth.

“Peter, I took forestry as my science gen ed in art school and barely passed so… no.”

“Uhhh, can you repeat it for the rest of the class?” Miles piped up.

Lyla leaned forward, one hand on her hip and the other tipped her heart-shaped sunglasses onto her head.

“Y/n absorbed energy from a ton of different universes so as far as the multiverse is concerned, she doesn’t register as an anomaly. No glitching. No dying outside of her universe without a watch. No predicted multiversal collapse.” Lyla smiled. “Predicted.”

You looked less than pleased. The last month had been filled to the brim with life-altering events from finding out Miles was a superhero, to getting kidnapped and nearly dying, to finding out your variant’s husband was an all-too-attractive, brooding Spider-Man. It was getting to be too much - you were a teacher for crying out loud! Maybe you’d have handled it better if you were a crime-fighting detective, or a fancy scientist, or a millionaire with access to the latest tech and weapons. Instead you were just… you.

“Can you fix it?”

Miguel flinched at the look on your face. You were looking to him for help and for answers, but he couldn’t provide them in any satisfactory way. He’d never encountered anyone with your abilities.

The confusion and fear that came with discovering your powers - that was a journey all Spider-People went through, and they usually went through it alone.

Miguel sighed, “There’s nothing to fix, Y/n.” He said the words with a softness no one had heard from him in years, perhaps ever, “This is who you are now.”

“So I’m just going to be stuck like this forever?”

“Having powers isn’t so bad.” Peter chimed in with a small smile. “From time to time, it can actually be pretty awesome.”

You allowed a small, empty smile to grow on your lips. It was a smile Miguel was well acquainted with - the kind of smile that said I’m not fine, but I want you to believe that I am.

“I have some tests we could run.” Miguel offered up, “I can’t reverse what’s happened but maybe I can come up with something to help you control your powers, at least while you’re learning how to use them.”

You nodded, the smile turning into something real, “I would like that. Thank you.”

Peter was practically vibrating with excitement when he caught the look that passed between the two of you and the hint of hope on Miguel’s usually stony face.

He clapped his hands down on Miles’s shoulders, “Well would you look at the time? I need to put Mayday down for her nap and grab some food. You’ll learn this soon enough, but being a superhero does burn the calories.”

He hopped off the table, waltzing all the way to the door before he noticed that Miles was missing from his side. “Miles! Come join me.”

“Actually, I was going to wait with-”

“Miles.” Peter coughed into his fist, bug eyes burning into Miles until he got the hint.

“Oh? Oh! Yeah, sorry Miss Y/l/n, I forgot I told Gwen I’d meet up with her.”

You waved him off, “I’ll be fine, Miles. Thanks for everything.”

“I’ll show her how to use the watch and send her home when we’re finished.” Miguel said, pulling on a lab coat that had been draped over his office chair. He rarely had time to work in the lab, more focused on his primary duty of maintaining the stability of the multiverse, but the familiar glide of the fabric over his skin did help to relax him. It reminded him of the old days when Spider-Man didn’t exist and the multiverse was just a fun theory tossed around at company lunches.

A thin silence stretched between you two after Miles and Peter left, and you contented yourself with watching Miguel as he busily typed away at his monitor, labeled vials, and prepared the syringes. Every movement was practiced and controlled like he’d done this a million times before.

Miguel was screaming on the inside. You were close enough for his heightened senses to pick up on the honey lemon shampoo you used tinged with the woodsy scent of linseed oil. He was powerless under your gaze like an insect trapped under a microscope.

“I just need to collect some blood samples.” Miguel said, gently holding out his hand. You offered your arm up without complaint, distracting yourself from the pinch of the needle by reading the faded name tag printed on his lab coat.

You whistled low to break the tension, “Dr. O’Hara. That’s impressive. What kind of doctor are you?”

“I was a geneticist. Not the medical kind though. I worked in research at Alchemax.”

“Is that how you got your spidey powers?”

He rolled his eyes, “They’re not spidey powers, they’re acrachno-humanoid genetic augmentations.”

“Qué estúpido. Just call them spidey powers. You scientists just like to give things complicated names to feel superior.” The corner of Miguel’s lips quirked up every so slightly. The thrill of seeing any emotion on Miguel’s face lightened the feeling in your chest.

“Was it hard becoming Spider-Man?” You asked.

Miguel shrugged, wiping away the small bead of blood on your arm. “I had it easier than most. I was already looking into the possibility of combining human and arachnid DNA and I had the resources to study my powers.” Miguel paused. It had been a long time - too long - since he’d had a conversation like this with anyone. He could cast his mind back to talks with you his wife, but those had always been domestic in nature.

“The hardest part was not having anyone to talk to.” He said, finishing his thought.

“Sounds lonely.” You remarked, accepting the q-tip from him and swabbing the inside of your cheek. He collected the sample in a vial of greenish liquid and gave it a thorough shake, “Do you have people now that you talk to?”

“No.” His answer was short and to the point.

You’d touched a sore spot and you decided to prod it. “Would you like someone to talk to?”

Again, the corner of his lips twitched, “Are you offering?”

You copied his shrug from earlier, “Maybe.”

He took a few more cheek swabs and then a strand of hair. His hand lingered by your cheek, frowning as he took in the bruise on your face.

Now that you two were alone he dared to gently tilt your head to the side.

“You never told me what happened.”

Your hands flew up to your face in embarrassment and Miguel saw the tips of your ears grow red. He liked it.

“I may or may not have teleported my pillow away right before smashing my face into the floor.”

The breath left his lungs in a quiet chuckle. That sounded like something you’d do.

“But no one’s bothering you?”

“What? Oh no. No, it’s nothing like that.”

He nodded, the tightness in his chest unraveling with that knowledge. He knew you weren’t his wife and he knew that you didn’t know him well enough yet, but that didn’t stop him from caring. The truth was he liked you from the moment you slapped his shoulder and cursed at him, and it wasn’t just because you looked like someone from his past.

“This will take some time to work through.” He tilted his head towards where the tabletop machines whirred and spun, “But if I’m right, I may be able to adjust your watch to stabilize you in a specific place, not just a specific universe. It’s not a permanent fix but you won’t be waking up in Central Park again anytime soon.”

“That would be preferable.”

You moved to take off the watch and hand it over to Miguel but he stopped you.

“Keep this one. In case anything happens you can contact me or the other Spider-People,” He said, walking her through the steps of using the watch, “Headquarters is always open so if anything happens, come here.”

You nodded. With an encouraging look from Miguel you punched “Earth-1610” into the locator and then your home address.

Just like last time the portal bloomed open beside you, scattering a few loose papers on the ground. Through the portal you caught a glimpse of your living room, citylights flashing outside your window.

“Come back next week. Until we have a better understanding of your powers it would be good for us to monitor you and check that you’re stable.”

And it would be good for you to see her again.

Miguel squashed the thought as soon as it popped into his brain in Peter’s voice. He really needed to stop spending so much time with him.

You stepped through the portal and were embraced by the familiar smell of your apartment. It made you feel better about what was to come. You turned to smile at Miguel, his tired eyes lighting up ever so slightly.

“I’ll see you next week then.”

<- Previous chapter Next chapter ->

_________ Author's note: Here's the next chapter! Let me know what you guys think of the writing and where the story is going. I'm hoping to dive more deeply into Y/n x Miguel's relationship in the coming chapters so get ready for angst and fluff!

Taglist: @geraskier-thots @howabouticallyou @sweetheartlizzie07 @dont-mind-me27 @omg-edzia-stuff @sarcastically-defensive17 @trouble-sistar @saltyluminaryvoid @lunablue001 @sadslasher13 @yas-v @thel0v3hashira143 @trishuh8 @vague-flying-shape @tiana76 @dinuxia-bhm @mxtokko @devilsrose666 @natbratty @zettoaizawa-shusband @dorck26 @notasadgirlipromise @niyanispunk @thecraziestcrayon @athenxt @imnotyourbcbe @jannajuju @lunamoonbby @elle-19 @aces148 @sseleniaa @elaineiswithyou-blog @summerli-u @rattlethemskulls @sunseekerlove @bubbabobabubbles @loonalockley @aleombre @littlelilies @07-bilin @nerdalicios @insanely-creative-things @enby-rising @nataliahemsworth @coralineyouareinterribledanger @louderfortheback @damnzelsoul @enheduannasposts @bontensbabygirl @mynameiswilliamblake

#miguel o'hara #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara x y/n #miguel o'hara x wife reader #atsv x y/n #atsv x reader #atsv miguel #into the spider verse #across the spiderverse #spider man 2099 #miles morales #gwen stacy #hobie brown #pavit #peter parker #peter b parker #miguel x reader #miguel x y/n

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sunkissedchldrecon · 1 year ago

Text

𝐏𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐀 𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐃

𝒎𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒂𝒈𝒆𝒔 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒊𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒓 𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒅

the piles go from left to right. therefore, pile one is the nintendo ds, pile two is the panasonic, and so on and so forth.

take your time to use your intuition to choose the pile that will best resonate with you. lastly, please don’t be afraid to say if the message resonated or not. it helps me in determining if my interpretations are correct or not, and i appreciate any sort of feedback - even if it’s “bad”.

good luck to you, reader 🌐

𝐏𝐈𝐋𝐄 𝐈

Shufflemancy:

"The Gospel Truth I / Main Titles" from Hercules

"I Want It All" from High School Musical 3

"Lip Gloss" by Lil Mama

"Hollaback Girl" by Gwen Stefani

"Breakthrough" from Lemonade Mouth

Cards:

Three of Wands, Six of Cups, The Hermit (Rx), The Empress, The Magician, Knight of Coins, Ten of Swords, The Chariot, Eight of Wands

Reading:

Those who chose this pile might've really liked the movie "Hercules" as a kid; I told your inner child I'd never seen the movie, and they were offended 😭. Little you might've had really big ambitions and dreams but maybe felt like things and/or people held them back. My internet randomly went out when writing, so I feel like that was a sign of how your inner child felt or could even feel at this time.

You could be someone who has to rely a ton on self-motivation rather than being able to depend on others; you may feel like you always had to take "the long way around" in order to accomplish things you really wanted to do. Your inner child can tell you still have to do that and actually admires that you're willing and able to rely on yourself rather than others; it's like they see it as a thread connecting you to them - like you never left each other or changed all that much. As much as they admire this connection, they also can tell you're still lonely and feel rejected by society; they might even feel this way themselves.

Your inner child wants you to connect more to the energy of The Empress. For some of you, they want you to literally comfort them and listen to them like a mother would. They want you to tap into your emotions and recognize what all you feel, consciously and subconsciously. More than anything, they want you to stand up for yourself and ask for what it is you need. If you need someone other than yourself to rely on, they want you to turn to people in your life and ask them to help you or share with them things you've been hiding out of fear. If you need obstacles to be removed more easily, they want you to ask your guides and the universe to help remove them; they might even want you to confront the people or objects hindering you personally. If you need a figurative breakthrough, they want you to ask for it.

With The Magician, your inner child recognizes you have the potential to accomplish whatever it is you want to, and that ambition and hard work you've always relied on gets you through a ton, but things could potentially be a lot easier if you ask for the help you're wanting. Some of you may be feeling very bitter about having to do things all on your own; some of you may even be averse to asking others for help, but your inner child is asking that you try anyway. They want you to embark on this journey with them even if you think nothing will come of it. With Eight of Wands at the bottom of the deck, things may actually work out better than you think.

Overall, your inner child wants you to ask for the help you need. If you never ask for help directly, then you'll never receive it. Of course, some people will be stubborn and not help, but there is also likely a group of people who are willing to do so but never knew you were struggling in the first place. With the cards in this pile, you do have control over your situation pile one; it may not feel that way, but you can achieve more than you think - even if it takes forever and a day to do so.

𝐏𝐈𝐋𝐄 𝐈𝐈

Shufflemancy:

"Year 3000" by the Jonas Brothers

"Fruit Salad" by The Wiggles

"The Naked Mole Rat" from Kim Possible

"Brand New Day" from Camp Rock 2

"Naturally" by Selena Gomez

Cards:

Six of Cups, Page of Cups, The Magician, Five of Swords, Four of Coins, Four of Cups, Three of Swords, Five of Cups, Two of Wands, Queen of Swords, Five of Coins, Six of Coins

Reading:

With the "Year 3000" coming out first, I feel like this pile might have people who were super into science-fiction as kids! You could've loved movies like Meet the Robinsons and Minutemen. You might've been a quiet kid who, when they were finally comfortable with someone, ended up talking a ton; I found this really endearing, so if you still do that or feel an urge to - don't shy away from that!

Your inner child is another one that's open to the idea of nostalgia and may feel like there's a clear connection to the current you and them. You could have youthful features or a youthful way of thinking; maybe you're very optimistic and sensitive, and you might even be very intuitive. You could be highly perceptive to things relating to the spiritual realm; with that, you may find that things like magic, manifestation, etc. come easy for you. Despite this, you may not share those gifts, or you may feel ashamed of these traits connected to you.

You could've been bullied as a child or always felt as if you had to submit to other people rather than being who you truly are. Maybe you were shamed for being too sensitive; people might've said you were too optimistic or in your head and not being realistic. Because of this, you might've decided to close yourself off from others - emotionally and in other ways. You may have evaluated what people said about you and took it to heart, deciding to become who they wanted you to be versus existing as you were/are. You might've felt like you were in a situation where you act how people want you to, or you don't survive - even if it hurt you a ton.

It seems like your inner child is heartbroken by your choice to close yourself off - when you decided to do it and also now as you continue to engage in that behavior. I also accidentally wrote your future child, so there could be a worry that you take the advice you were given as a kid and impose it on your future child which would only make the pain generational. To an extent, they feel as if you're harming yourself and staying stuck in the same place you were a kid when you decide to close yourself off to others. Some of you may be in the same hometown or around the same people that caused you to become this warped, unrealistic version of yourself. I heard, "I just want you back".

Your inner child wants you to leave the area you're in completely - this could be the physical space your in and/or the mental space you're in where you've cut yourself off from being your true self. Your inner child wants you to use the knowledge and experience you've gained along with the optimism and sensitivity you had as a child. That power I was talking of earlier in terms of connection to spirituality and intuition still exists; the "unrealistic" things you want are still possible. It's okay to daydream a little while also including some realism; you don't have to be "the stuffy adult they told you that you have to be".

For this pile, this acceptance of all the things about yourself that you were told to shun would do you good. Your inner child would be happier, but it could also lighten a load on your current self. Instead of feeling isolated and not like yourself, you could be your authentic self and find that people are now more accepting and similar to you than they once were. It's also important to note that often you as an individual are not the issue, but the environment you're placed in can be. Don't be afraid to express the parts of yourself you hid for so long; it's important to be true to yourself over anyone else.

𝐏𝐈𝐋𝐄 𝐈𝐈𝐈

Shufflemancy:

"Lovebug" by the Jonas Brothers

"Be Prepared" from the Lion King

"Un Poco Loco" from Coco

"Don't Run Away" from Let It Shine

"Suite Life of Zack & Cody Theme" from the Suite Life of Zack and Cody

Cards:

The Sun, Nine of Wands, King of Swords, Justice, Ten of Wands, Ace of Coins, The Tower, The Devil (Rx), The World, Six of Coins, Six of Wands

Reading:

For those who chose this pile, you might've been chronically sad as a child. You could've started out with a sunny, positive disposition, but it seems that happiness might've been destroyed early on in your life. Some of you might have been the type of kid that sympathized with the villains because you understood why they did what they did. Others of you might have loved love as a child, but the idea of love you had became warped - maybe because your parents mirrored bad love habits or you were left heartbroken early in your life; I get the feeling you and your inner child still love love though!

You might've understood the rough or undesirable circumstances you grew up in very early and learned how to persevere through them. You're the type of person that understands how to keep going when it seems like everything and everyone is wanting you to give up or wither down. Your experiences with a lack of happiness may lead you to take on a leadership type of role in your current position. You could be the type of person to build up relationships slowly, you could have a strong sense of what justice is and what's "good" and "wrong".

Your inner child feels as if you always had to be more adult than they wanted to be. This could've doubled as a blessing and a curse because taking control and being more mature led you to more security and knowledge, but it also meant you never truly experienced a childhood in a sense. It seems like this upsets your inner child a lot; it gives them a lot of anxiety because it's like they were a child for a short period of time, and then all of sudden they were left behind, and you just magically became an adult.

This pile's inner child wants you to go back and look at your foundations - to re-evaluate why you had to become an adult so fast. They want to be able to release all the anger they have towards the fact they couldn't be the kid they were. Overall, your inner child wants to be happy again - like they were when they could still be the young child they were. Your inner child wants to talk; for some of you, they want counseling and/or therapy. For some of you, they want you to take care of them like you took care of others your whole life.

Along with self-reflection and possible therapy, I'd also recommend engaging in activities you liked as a child and/or activities your inner child might like pile three. You don't have to do this all the time, but I think your inner child would like it if you integrated them with your current self more; I said this earlier, but they very much feel as if you abandoned them almost? Overall, they're saying they want some type of closure, but inner children never really leave you know? It's important to foster them just as much as you foster and take care of your current self, so maybe look into how you can cater to them more and in turn cater to the present you.

𝐏𝐈𝐋𝐄 𝐈𝐕

Shufflemancy:

"Ev'rybody Wants To Be A Cat" from the Aristocats

"Call Me, Beep Me" from Kim Possible

"It's My Turn Now" From Jump In

"I See The Light" from Tangled

"The Fairly Oddparents Theme" from The Fairly Oddparents

Cards:

The World, Page of Cups (Rx), Nine of Cups, The Empress, Three of Wands (Rx), Knight of Cups (Rx), King of Wands, Four of Wands, Four of Coins, Two of Cups (Rx), Judgment, The Star

Reading:

For those who chose this pile, your inner child seems really happy with you overall! Something could be coming in for you soon that makes them very excited, and/or you're doing things in your life that makes them so proud of you. It's like a "I knew you could make it" attitude from them. Despite childhood problems and other things trying to knock you off your path, you've always pulled through and made things work for you and given yourself a ton of life fulfillment as a result. The second verse from "It's My Turn" explains your current energy very well according to your inner child.

Your inner child wants to talk about the way you interact with your emotions, nature, and the way you view your accomplishments. Although your inner child sees you as succeeding, it seems your current self does not see things the same way. You could feel as if things are delayed, and as a result you're frustrated. Your inner child sees this as you being petty and moody; almost like you're throwing a tantrum for some of you. You could think luck isn't on your side, and therefore you feel immense anxiety and internal imbalance. Some of you are trying to rush things when there's nothing to rush - it's a matter of patience and resilience as you wait for things to come in.

With the King of Wands, this pile does have a lot of inner strength, and your inner child wants you to hone in on that skill. They want you to be bold in your decisions and self-expression; for them, being loud and open about who they are and what it is they want to do is important. They want everyone to know you're going to all these events and aspire to be whatever profession you want because they know you (and as a result, they) can do anything it is you/they want. They don't want you to be "stingy with information”.

To an extent, your inner child feels disconnected from you. They could feel as if you don't talk to them enough, and/or they feel as if you don't come to them for advice even though they have good ideas too! They can be helpful too! Your inner child has a lot of ideas and ambitions that they feel you're shutting out or forgetting about, but they know they can achieve them if you let them.

Overall, this pile's inner child wants them to recognize how much it is you're achieving - even if it doesn't feel like it. They want you to listen to them because they have great ideas that can lead you to achieve goals you and they have. Overall, they want you to have hope because good things are coming in, and you're gonna be so happy soon; they want to be able to enjoy that merriment with you, but you have to be willing to let them. Your inner child wants your mentality to match with your reality and their mentality; they want you to shed your anxiety and instead think of what all you have accomplished because they're ready to go for more.

#tarot #oracle #pick a card #PAC #tarotblr #Spotify

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greensagephase · 1 year ago

Text

Nonviolent Communication - Part Eight

Miguel O'Hara x SpideyFemReader

Summary: Your spider senses go off in the middle of the night, and you can't figure out why. Miguel goes out on a mission alone.

Word Count: 14,258 (I think I can safely say this will be the last time it ever gets to this. I thought about splitting this part but didn't want to leave you guys on a cliffhanger.)

Warnings: Some violence; mention of blood; explosions; angst; death

Music inspo while writing (in order):

"Sleepwalk" - Santo & Johnny (instrumental)

"Les" - Childish Gambino (instrumental)

"Adrian" - Bill Conti (instrumental) (I watched some of the "Rocky" movies and thought this song was so beautiful and tender)

"Amor Eterno" (instrumental) (iykyk, and I'm sorry if you do)

***Beautiful fanart for Nonviolent Communication has been created by lovely artists and you can find it all linked in my masterlist under fanart. Please go and show some love to the artists!! Their art is BEAUTIFUL!! ❤️***

Part Eight

“The tension in the room right now is palpable,” Pav mutters as you and him stand side by side in Peter and Mary Jane’s living room.

“My bet is on Miles,” you reply quietly.

“Hm, I think Noir has this one,” he replies as the two of you look over at Miles and Noir.

“Miles has this in the bag,” Hobie murmurs behind you and Pav, making both of you turn around to look at him.

The three of you watch behind a couch as Miles and Noir, who are sitting on the floor around the living room’s console table, eye each other as they play UNO. The group started out with them, Hobie, Gwen, Pav, and you while Peter, Mary Jane, Penny, Margo, and Peter Porker watched. You were unfortunately the third one out followed by Hobie, leaving Noir and Miles as the two final players.

The others are watching from the couch, trying to hold their giggles. It’s Friday night, which means you and the rest of the group came over for dinner at Peter and Mary Jane’s universe. It’s a weekly dinner and one you’ve learned to love. It gives you something to look forward to on the weekend because it means you and your friends can relax and engage outside of work.

Peter and Mary Jane cook but the rest of you bring something over, which means that there’s usually a large dinner. Dinner always takes about an hour or so since you all catch up on what’s happening in your lives, which means that each week you and the other adults get to hear the younger people talk about school and some new drama. Of course, there’s also some talk about missions and anomalies considering most of you are spider-people. Then, after helping Peter and Mary Jane clean up, you all gather in the living room to play games.

Ten minutes later, Miles wins the game and Noir complains about the cards’ colors. After a good laugh, you all have a slice of cake, which you baked yourself, before everyone starts heading out. You say your goodbyes and thank Peter and Mary Jane for dinner before you head back to your universe. You change into your pajamas almost immediately, but you don’t head to bed just yet.

Instead, you grab a book from your bookshelf and take a seat on your couch. It’s ten p.m. on a rainy Friday night. You look around your apartment as you snuggle onto the couch with a blanket thrown over your legs. You open the book but you look up, your eyes taking in your small apartment.

It's officially four years since Peter’s death. His death anniversary was a couple of days ago and of course, there were some tears but for the most part, you handled it well. You visited him and spent some time at the cemetery. You went through some photo albums, taking a walk down memory lane.

Four years.

Where did the time go? You sigh as you look around your apartment. Time has gone by, but it doesn’t seem like it did in your apartment. It still looks the same as it did back when Peter was alive. It’s a personal choice. You wanted to keep everything the same. So, you have the same wall decorations the two of you hung together. The furniture is unchanged and it all remains in the original places you and Peter chose back in the day.

As you hear the soft pit pat of rain on your windows, you feel the urge to change some things around. Or maybe add new things.

You nod to yourself, thinking of what you’d like to do but decide to leave that for another day. It’s already a good sign you’re thinking of redecorating a little bit. You turn back to the book and begin to read, hoping that the reading and calm rain will lure you to sleep, which won’t be hard as you’re already feeling exhausted from the missions you were a part of today plus the patrolling of your city.

Soon enough, you notice your eyes begin to skip lines and you’re having to find your place multiple times. You decide to call it a night when you see it’s midnight. You do your night routine before you slide into bed, drifting off without any trouble.

Miguel stares at one of his many monitors, standing on his platform. His eyes scan the information before him despite it being two in the morning. He scrolls a bit to see more information. It’s all the data that was collected the previous day on anomaly matter from multiple universes. Of course, Lyla reads the information and always lets him know when there’s something worth discussing but Miguel often prefers to go in and check himself. As he finishes reading the data from a specific section, he stretches his back to relieve some of the tension. He hears his back pop, and he sighs in relief before he returns to reading.

Miguel has been sleeping once a week at his penthouse for multiple weeks now but tonight is not one of those nights. Tonight, he’ll stay here in his empty lab like most nights. Even if he wanted to go home, he can’t. He feels restless. He notices the time on his monitors, of course. He finds himself wishing it was day already and he doesn’t know why. He sighs to himself, closing his eyes for a few seconds trying to regain his focus, so he can concentrate on the data, but he cannot. His fingers move on their own and soon, he’s looking at a video of himself and Gabriella, when he gifted her a soccer ball. He stares at the video fondly, remembering her happiness when she saw the gift. He closes it before he gets off his platform with another sigh and begins to walk out of his lab.

He exits his lab into one of the many hallways of HQ, deciding to take a walk to clear his mind. Miguel doesn’t really pay attention to where he’s going. He’s just walking. He does this sometimes when his brain needs a moment during the long nights. He walks the empty hallways and cafeteria, eyes scanning the city from behind the large windows. He cannot make much of it due to the rain falling against the glass, which has created a blurry effect. Still, Miguel can see the faint lights of flying cars and other buildings’ lights in the distance.

He walks and walks. It’s early Saturday morning and here he is, walking through an empty HQ. He eventually returns to his lab. His mind feels more at ease but there’s still something that gnaws at him. He resumes his work at his platform, scanning his monitors. Everything looks fine. He sighs again and begins to read the data, but that feeling is still there. It’s like Miguel knows that at any moment, Lyla will appear and tell him that something’s wrong.

He moves the screen closer, willing himself to concentrate. To ignore the feeling, but five minutes later, one of his screens flashes red and Lyla appears.

“Miguel – two anomalies have been detected. Earth-42. They just entered the universe.”

And there it is. Miguel’s mask immediately covers his face as he leaps off his platform.

“Two anomalies… Who are they? Are they in the system?” Miguel asks as he starts clicking on his gizmo, preparing to open a portal to travel.

“One of them is a Green Goblin version. The other one is not in our system. First time,” Lyla reports.

Miguel nods, wasting no time once the portal opens. He steps out onto a rooftop on Earth-42, the same one that was cleaned up by Miles and his variant from this Earth over a year ago when he ended up sent here by the Go Home Machine. As Miguel steps out onto a rooftop, he’s unable to stop himself from briefly scanning the city. What a difference. The city is well lit, calm, and there’s still a buzz of people despite the time and rain but Miguel quickly focuses on the task at hand, putting his thoughts behind.

He looks around the area, trying to catch sight of the anomalies. He spots the first one, an unknown anomaly running in circles on the street below. There’s no sight of the Green Goblin, however, so he decides to catch this strange anomaly first and then pursue the Green Goblin.

As he heads straight for the anomaly, Miguel’s eyes scan it, trying to get an idea of how dangerous it might be. The body is a white cybernetic one. The head, which is a male human head, is inside a container filled with liquid. Glass makes up the front portion of the container, making it possible for the anomaly to see and a few hoses run through the anomaly’s body, leading Miguel to make the educated guess it’s the way it sustains itself. He also notices that this anomaly only has one hand, while the other arm has a clamp at the end.

Just before Miguel lands on the ground, he prepares a trapper-keeper, ready to trap the anomaly to transport it to HQ. The anomaly, however, begins running away from him as soon as it spots him.

“Running already?” he mutters, as he starts chasing it. “Lyla, keep me updated on the Green Goblin, you know how they get with their little explosions.”

“The Green Goblin has moved further away,” Lyla answers, making Miguel groan. “Maybe you should call for backup.”

“No, I got this. Just keep me updated on the Goblin’s movements.”

“Whatever you say, boss.”

Lyla disappears, leaving Miguel to do his job. He runs before he leaps into the air, reaching an incredible height as he heads straight for the anomaly. The anomaly somehow senses his attack as it turns around and meets Miguel with its clamp, clawing at him to prevent any blows. The anomaly’s moves don’t deter Miguel though as he takes hold of the clamp before he pushes the man to the ground.

The anomaly uses his one hand to land a punch on Miguel’s thigh before he swipes one of his long cybernetic legs around Miguel’s lower body, knocking him to the ground. The anomaly runs off to a building, hoisting himself up by perforating the walls with the clamp.

Miguel quickly gets up, chasing after it. He shoots his web, wrapping it around the anomaly’s body and pulling but the anomaly puts up a good fight and ends up sniping the web with the clamp once it reaches the rooftop. Miguel spends ten minutes doing this: almost trapping the anomaly before it gets away.

“The Green Goblin is moving further away but there is no trouble detected. It’s like – it’s just waiting,” Lyla reports, sounding confused with the behavior of the Green Goblin.

“Waiting for what?” Miguel asks, in frustration as the anomaly keeps leaping off buildings.

“I don’t know.”

Miguel scowls, done with this already. In a rage of frustration, he shoots his webs and catches the anomaly in midair before pulling it towards him. Miguel is quick to jump, meeting the anomaly halfway before he delivers a blow to the head. It sends the anomaly crashing on a rooftop with a loud thud.

“You little-” the man says as he starts standing up, but he doesn’t have the opportunity to finish his sentence as Miguel lands on the rooftop and captures it with the trapper-keeper.

“Finally,” Miguel mutters, as he walks over to inspect it but before he even reaches it, he receives a heavy blow to his head, caught by surprise. “Green Goblin,” Miguel says angrily as he turns around.

“Hello, Spider-Man,” the Green Goblin greets him as he hovers in the air with his glider. “You look very different from my own Spider-Man.”

“That’s because you’re not in your universe,” Miguel answers annoyed as he lunges himself at the Goblin.

He knocks the Goblin off the glider, leading to the two of them landing on the rooftop before they begin hand to hand combat. The two men land blows on each other as the captured anomaly tries to break out of the trapper-keeper to no avail. Miguel notices this and it’s at this moment of distraction that the Goblin seizes his opportunity. He pulls out the Goblin trident and aims at Miguel’s hand, hitting his gizmo in the process.

Miguel immediately turns to the Goblin, retrieving his hand. He takes a quick glance at the gizmo before scowling at the Goblin, who’s about to take another swing at Miguel. Miguel blocks it this time and throws a punch at him, sending him flying. The Goblin lands on the floor, quickly getting up on his feet and like every other Green Goblin in the multiverse, the cunning man pauses for a second, tilting his head as he stares at Miguel with interest. His eyes flicker to the strange device on this Spider-Man’s wrist. He grins behind his green mask before he dashes at Miguel, trident in hand.

Miguel and the Green Goblin continue to fight. Miguel successfully dodges the trident several times, but the Green Goblin only seems to be fueled by this. He swipes at Miguel with the trident, finally slicing his skin under the suit. Miguel winces, pressing his hand to his body briefly, a moment the Green Goblin takes to hit the gizmo again.

“I’ve had enough of you,” Miguel mumbles, as his talons extend.

“That’s a new one,” the Green Goblin comments, referring to the talons, before he jumps off the rooftop.

And of course, Miguel O’Hara never gives up, so he runs after the Green Goblin under the pouring rain. He watches as the anomaly lands on its glider before he flies off, laughing at Miguel. With a scowl, Miguel shoots his web and starts following him, catching up with the anomaly in no time.

“Catch, Spider-Man!” the Green Goblin says pulling out one of its many grenades before he throws it at a building.

Miguel charges towards it, successfully stopping it from detonating but what he doesn’t sense is the Green Goblin coming from behind with his trident. He hits Miguel’s gizmo again with a strength that manages to crack the screen. He swipes at Miguel once more, slicing his skin almost in the same place as earlier before he flies off. Miguel shoots his web to keep himself from falling to the ground.

“Mierda!” Miguel yells as he swings, clutching the same area that was sliced.

He looks down at his gizmo, noticing the crack on it. It should continue working, Miguel thinks to himself, knowing that he and Lyla spent a lot of time making sure the device would be durable. It would take a lot to break it.

And it becomes the Green Goblin’s mission to do so. As Miguel and the anomaly continue their fight through the city, the Green Goblin aims hit after hit on the device, cunningly planning blows as he realizes the Spider-Man before him doesn’t sense his moves like the superhero from his own universe.

“Don’t let him hit the gizmo, Miguel!” Lyla warns, as the Green Goblin makes another swing.

And so, after what feels like an hour of fighting, the green mask man succeeds.

“Migu-” Lyla starts but doesn’t finish.

The gizmo’s screen shatters, and Miguel immediately knows it when he sees the colors of the device fade and Lyla’s holograph disappearing, making Miguel cuss under his breath as he realizes what this means. He needs to catch the Green Goblin soon, before he starts glitching.

The Green Goblin, however, has other plans as he flies off towards a skyscraper. He immediately pulls out more of his grenades, throwing them at the building. Miguel rushes and jumps into the air to try and stop them from detonating and as he works on this, the Green Goblin flies to him, quickly stabbing him with his trident in the stomach. He laughs at Miguel as he twists the trident to add more pain before flying off just as one of the remaining grenades goes off, blowing up a part of the skyscraper. Miguel, who is falling in midair due to the injury, covers his face as debris bursts around him. He feels some of it, glass from the windows, dig into his body causing him to groan in pain.

The adrenaline of it all still allows him to shoot his webs, preventing himself from falling. Except he glitches. For the first time in his life, Miguel experiences firsthand what it feels like to be an anomaly. He feels the shock of it in his body as he’s falling again since his web gave out in the process of glitching. The glitching stops and he tries again, catching himself on time. He lifts himself up onto a rooftop to collect himself, but the pain is there. He looks around quickly, there’s no sight of the Green Goblin. Miguel breathes heavily, the action making pain course through his body. He looks up at the city as he feels blood gush under his suit, where the trident puncture his body.

“Mierda,” Miguel mumbles out of breath, realizing what his situation means. No one knows he’s here. It’s the middle of the night and he’s injured, unable to travel back to his universe because his gizmo is broken. The realization dawns on him.

This might be it.

As the realization hits him, Miguel looks around the city. The rain is going strong, and he can hear sirens in the distance. He must move somewhere else. The tallest building catches his eye right away. He makes one last swing, forcing himself to climb the building despite the pain but thinking that if this is it, he wants to have a nice view. He thankfully doesn’t glitch on his way up, allowing him to make it to the rooftop. He collapses against a wall, next to the building’s door that leads to the rooftop. Miguel stares out into the city as he lays on the ground, clutching his stomach. The adrenaline is wearing off, and he knows it because his body feels weaker now. He begins to feel the pain more as it runs through his body. He can feel blood under his suit, gushing out slowly and his breathing feels more labored now.

Miguel looks at his gizmo again, as if hoping that the device will magically function, but he knows better. There’s no way to return to his universe. He sighs, the action taking more effort than it should as he lets his mask off, wanting his face to feel the rain.

What a way to die. In another universe that isn’t his home. Alone on a rooftop as rain cascades down on him. His hair is damp and it’s sticking to his forehead, but Miguel makes no attempt to fix it. His face – no – his entire body feels cold, which is a strange feeling for Miguel. His body heat has always prevented him from being cold but his body – the one he has pushed to its limits for years now – fails him now.

Miguel tries to ignore it. He tries to focus on the city and the skyscrapers. It’s a lovely sight and he can’t help but remember the day he was here with you many months ago when he assigned you to work with him for the first time. It was daytime and the sight was wonderful. He can’t help but think that you would love the sight even more at night.

As he stares out into the city, he can’t help but also think how ironic this is. Miguel is about to die on Earth-42. The very same universe linked to the whole mess with Miles. It seems so far away now, Miguel thinks. When he was set on preventing Miles from saving his father so he wouldn’t break the canon. It was such a messy situation. He acted in a way he’ll never be able to take back even if everyone else moved on.

Now, here he is. On Earth-42, in a far different city than the one he met when he first ventured into the multiverse. It’s almost like a slap in the face. As if it was meant for him to think of this in his last moments. To see one of his biggest mistakes.

Miguel sighs again and this time, the action makes him hiss in pain. He can feel the blood. The pain is there but he tries to bear with it. He tries to distract himself.

As Miguel stares at the lights and the skyscrapers, his mind begins to wander off. He thinks of his family and flashes of memories run through his head. He sees his mom, when she was much younger and he was a kid, tending to his scraped knee. He sees her cooking in the kitchen of his childhood home.

He sees Gabriel sitting on his bedroom floor playing with his action figures, the same ones he begged Conchata for. He remembers the evenings they spent together, playing and pretending to be superheroes, not knowing what was in store for them in the future. He recalls the times when Gabriel was still so young and had nightmares. He found no comfort from his father, so he always went to Miguel’s bedroom. There, Miguel would comfort and assure him that it was just a bad dream and that it meant nothing. Despite Miguel’s comforting words, Gabriel always asked if he could stay with him, and Miguel could never say no.

“Gabrielito,” Miguel whispers, as he thinks of his little brother. His childhood face flashes in Miguel’s head before it morphs into Gabriel’s adult face. It was unfair, so unfair. Like any other older sibling, Miguel always thought he would be the first to pass away. He never imagined that it would be his little brother. He never imagined he would be taken away the way he was either. It was so unfair.

And as he thinks of Gabrielito, Miguel remembers a song his brother was very fond of. Surprisingly, the music is so clear in his mind as if it was only yesterday when the two of them drove to hang out with friends. As the older brother, Miguel was obviously the driver and Gabriel sat in the passenger seat, playing music. He remembers the first time Gabriel played it. He asked Miguel to be quiet and to just listen to it. And so, they had. They drove in silence as the instrumental song played, and it felt oddly nostalgic.

Miguel’s breathing slows down as the memories rush through his mind. They switch over to Gabriella. His time with her was short but they made so many memories. He can’t help but feel shame and pain in his chest as he thinks of her. Miguel has strayed away from his religion for some time now, but he hopes that if Heaven is real, that’ll he get to see her again. To hold her one more time. To apologize to her for lying. His wife comes to mind, too, of course, and so does the shame. He fell in love so quickly. His need to have a family blinded him so much, everything was rushed. Miguel can’t help but think now that he would’ve done things differently if he could. He wouldn’t have rushed into things. His wife had deserved better than him. Yet, he thinks fondly of the short time they had. He thinks warmly of the time he had a family even if it’s laced with shame and pain.

He lets his mind take him to those memories, back to those days that are long gone. As his mind is flooded with memories, he doesn’t notice the slowness of his breathing or heart. He doesn’t even feel the coldness of the wet ground or the cold raindrops that run down his beautiful face. He doesn’t notice that he’s staring at the city with half-lidded eyes now.

His mind goes through everything that happened in the last two years, including the fight and the multiverse hunt for Miles, which all lead to the last year. And of course, the last year leads to you. Your face flashes in Miguel’s mind. He thinks of the first time he met you when Jess introduced you. He thinks of the first weeks that you showed up with coffee to meetings before anyone else arrived and how he ignored the gesture. He remembers the day you volunteered to organize his lab thanks to Jess’s comment about the clutter. He sees different days combined into one memory of you chatting with Lyla as you worked, your voice and Lyla’s carrying to him, allowing him to hear bits and pieces.

He thinks of the day he showed up at your apartment and how he hated feeling something, which he now realizes was worry. Everything that has happened with you runs through his mind like a show. He sees your face, looking up at him on Dia de los Muertos, with that look of understanding in your eyes. He sees your arm reaching out to him when you wanted to comfort him. He sees you sitting on his kitchen island, eating the food he cooked on Christmas Eve. He remembers the ornaments and how yours was better than his. He recalls you showing up the next day. You brought cake and it was delicious. He remembers the two of you sat on the kitchen island again to eat, that time joined by Lyla, who asked questions as per usual.

He thinks of New Years Eve. You were invited to Miles’s universe, and you were sent to drop off food again. You stayed for a while once he mentioned that there was a huge firework show after the ball dropped, which meant that you spent the last and first minutes of the year with him in his penthouse.

Miguel’s heart continues to slow down as he thinks of the last year. You’re his friend. And he can’t help but feel disappointed that he’ll never be able to tell you face to face now. He wishes he could thank you. For everything. For the days you dealt with his coldness when he didn’t acknowledge you at all and left your coffee untouched. He briefly thinks about your excuse for taking him coffee. You lied much the same way he had lied about his reasoning for checking in on you that very first day. The day that led to your friendship. As Miguel’s eyelids further close, he thinks of how you’ll never know the truth about that day.

No one will.

Miguel’s heart beats slower and his body is cold as the rain continues to fall on him in the early morning. He listens to the soft pit pat as rain lands on the ground as the seconds tick by.

The same pit pat of rain can be heard on your apartment windows. The sound of it immediately fills your ears when you jolt awake from your sleep. A loud gasp escapes from your lips as you sit up on your bed. You sit, listening to the rain in the darkness of your bedroom as you try to catch your breath.

Your spider senses begin to go off, making you realize that’s what woke you up. You hurriedly jump out of bed and make a straight line to where you keep the two-way radio. You always keep the volume somewhat high during the night in case of emergencies but as you grab it and wait, there’s no feedback. Your eyes flicker to the clock on your nightstand. It’s three in the morning. You hurry to the windows of your apartment, pulling the curtains open to look out. There’s no sight of disturbance. If anything, the city looks at peace under the rain.

There’s not even the sound of traffic. All you can hear is the sound of rain but it’s there again. Your spider senses. Something is not right.

You hurry and get changed into your suit, not knowing what to do. Nothing looks wrong outside but you’re out of your apartment in less than three minutes. You swing from building to building as your eyes inspect the streets below. Your eyes search for anyone who might be in danger or anyone who might cause trouble.

Nothing.

You land on a rooftop to catch your breath. There’s a feeling of dread growing in the pit of your stomach. It’s one you’re all too familiar with as you’ve only ever felt this kind of dread once before. You try not to think of it but it’s impossible not to. The kind of dread that’s spreading through your body is the same kind you felt the day you lost Peter. You felt it spread like poison when you hurried to find Peter in the rubble. The feeling is branded into your mind and as you stand on the rooftop, overlooking the city still searching for trouble, you are overwhelmed by it once again.

You click on your gizmo and open a portal. If nothing is wrong in your universe, maybe there’s trouble somewhere else, you tell yourself. You quickly travel to all your friends’ universes within two minutes. Each time you arrive, you scan your friends’ cities but find nothing amiss. The cities are peaceful. You’re about to open another portal when your senses go off once again.

“What’s happening?” you mutter, as you look around one more time, seeing nothing.

You quickly head to HQ, finding yourself in the cafeteria. You walk through it quickly, feeling even more uneasy at the sight of a usually busy place being vacant of any life. Some of the lights are completely off, leaving pockets of darkness lingering around as you cross the cafeteria. You wonder where you’re even heading as you walk past the large windows of the Spider Society building, noticing the rain and the distant lights of flying cars.

Miguel’s city looks peaceful as well. Nothing seems wrong and yet that dread grows with each step you take, growing and clawing at your chest. Finally paying more attention, you realize you’ve made your way to Miguel’s lab. Perhaps there’s an anomaly threatening the entirety of the multiverse, you try to reason. Maybe that’s why you woke up.

You stand in front of Miguel’s lab and call for Lyla. Despite the uneasiness and dread running through your body, you still find it in yourself to ask for permission to enter his lab. You wait impatiently for the AI assistant to greet you but as the seconds tick by, there’s no sight of Lyla and your emotions intensify. It’s like a sign that something is definitely wrong. You call for Lyla one more time, saying her name louder and with more urgency as if that’ll help. Nothing. You burst into the lab, deciding to be sorry rather than safe.

“Miguel?” you call out, as you hurriedly enter his lab, hoping to find him on his platform surrounded by his many screens like always. “I’m sorry that I entered your lab like that, but Lyla is not responding, and my spider senses are goi-” you say, stopping when your eyes finally land on the platform.

Miguel’s screens are flashing red, not the usual marigold color you’ve grown accustomed to. And even worse yet, Miguel is nowhere in sight. You rush to the platform to get a closer look at the screens. They all read “DISCONNECTED.”

You stare in confusion but realize this must be the reason why Lyla didn’t respond earlier. You call out Miguel’s name again, but you’re met with a deafening silence. You take a deep breath in. Lyla is offline. The screens are flashing red. And Miguel is nowhere to be found.

You hurriedly try to reach Miguel through your gizmo, but your gizmo flashes a message, indicating that the recipient is disconnected. Your dread grows. There’s no way that Miguel would go offline like this. You’re halfway out of HQ when you reach out to Margo, the one person you know who can manage Miguel’s technology. As you head out into Nueva York, you pray for once that Margo is pulling one of her usual all-nighters. As you swing towards Miguel’s penthouse, Margo finally responds.

“Hey – what are you doing up this late? Something wrong?” Margo immediately asks.

You look down at her projected hologram from your gizmo. “Margo. Something is wrong with Miguel’s system. Lyla is offline and so is he. I think – I think something’s wrong. Can you please head to HQ and fix it? I’m on my way to Miguel’s penthouse to see if he’s alright,” you say, the words rushing out of your mouth, full of worry.

“Offline? That’s not – I don’t think Miguel would ever go offline,” Margo responds with a frown. “I’m going now to see what’s going on.”

“I’ll meet you there in a few minutes. Bye,” you say as her hologram disappears.

You quickly find Miguel’s building and swing to it, sticking to the walls. You climb it, until you reach the penthouse and look inside. All the lights are off and there’s no sight of Miguel anywhere. You climb onto the rooftop, immediately clicking on your gizmo to open a portal, pulling the coordinates that were sent to you on Christmas Eve months ago. You hurriedly walk through it, stepping into Miguel’s living room once again.

Your eyes scan the place quickly before you rush up the stairs. With each step you take, you feel that dread grow tenfold. You pray that everything’s fine. That you’ll only have to apologize to Miguel for coming into his home the way you are now. You pray that he’ll be in bed sleeping for once and that this is all some misunderstanding. You open the first door you come across, eyes scanning the room only to realize it’s an office. You open the next door and find a large, luxurious bathroom. The next room is a bedroom, but you immediately realize it’s not the master bedroom, so you rush to the next door, pushing it open. Your heart sinks as you take in the sight.

Miguel’s bedroom is empty, and his bed looks undisturbed, which means he’s not home. You rush back to the first floor before you sprint to the living room, gizmo already opening a portal. You travel back to HQ, popping up at the cafeteria before you rush to the lab, wondering if Margo has been able to fix the problem. All the while, your dread grows. You feel your chest tighten as you think of Miguel and his whereabouts.

You burst into the lab where you find Margo, opening and closing screens with the flick of her wrist. She looks over her shoulder before she continues to work.

“He’s not at home,” you manage to breathe out despite the tightness in your chest.

“This is – not looking good,” Margo says, making you freeze.

“What do you mean it’s not looking good?” you ask, staring at her back as she continues to work. Her words make your anxiety grow.

“Miguel’s gizmo is completely offline, which means… it’s broken. Wherever he is, the gizmo is not working at all,” she says as she opens another screen.

You bring a hand to your face, gripping your lower face as you look around the lab. You feel your breathing speed up while at the same time finding it difficult to even do so.

“Have you been able to get Lyla back online?” you ask shakily.

“I’m working on it. Just one more step,” Margo says in a rush, noticing your demeanor slowly crumbling apart. “She’s back! Lyla must know what happened.”

It takes a few seconds before Lyla appears and you waste no time.

“Lyla, where is Miguel?” you ask, stepping closer to her.

“Y/N! Miguel is hurt and stranded on Earth-42! There were two anomalies detected and he went out to handle them but one of them broke his gizmo and managed to injure him,” Lyla hurriedly explains the situation.

“Shit,” you mutter, and begin to open a portal. “What were his last coordinates, Lyla?”

“I’ll send them to you, please hurry! I don’t know how badly he was injured, and he must be glitching by now.”

“Inform Jess of what’s happening and see if we can get other members to help. Miguel may have moved from the last coordinates you have. We may need to search the city for him. Margo. Please stay here just in case we need any help with the system. I’ll keep you updated,” you say before you rush into the portal.

Rain pours down on you as you step into Earth-42. You waste no time in looking around at the city and instead run to the ledge of the rooftop. You lunge yourself to the next building, eyes scanning, trying to find any sign of Miguel. Lyla’s hologram appears from your gizmo as you fly to the next building, giving you Miguel’s last known location.

You swing from building to building, moving fast just as you see another portal from your peripheral vision.

“Y/N. Any sign of Miguel?” Jess asks, joining the search.

“Not yet,” you reply as you continue to swing.

“Others will be joining the search. They’re on their way,” Jess replies.

And sure enough, as you swing between buildings, you see multiple portals opening from various rooftops. You feel relief to see others joining and hope that with more people involved, the search won’t last long.

“Alright, everyone. Lyla has sent Miguel’s last location. He’s injured and probably glitching as his gizmo stopped working.”

You hear your colleagues’ replies as you head to the location. You briefly wonder about the anomalies. Were they caught or did they get away? You reach Miguel’s last location and immediately search the rooftop for any signs, but Miguel is nowhere to be seen. You turn when you hear someone else join you. Hobie gives you a nod before he searches the other side of the rooftop.

“Nothing,” he says.

You dash to the other rooftop, looking down at the empty and dark alleyways, hoping to find something.

“This rooftop looks disturbed. Looks like there was some fighting,” Hobie communicates.

You locate him and join him. Others join you and Hobie in inspecting the scene, and sure enough there are signs of fighting but no sign of Miguel anywhere around. You look around, trying to get a feel of where the fighting moved to from this rooftop. You leap to the next rooftop, continuing your search.

“There is no sight of anomalies,” someone says, making you pause. If Miguel’s gizmo isn’t working and this isn’t his universe, surely that would mean that Lyla should be able to detect him as an anomaly in this universe.

You continue to search but call for Lyla, who immediately appears.

“Lyla. If Miguel’s gizmo isn’t working, can’t you detect him as an anomaly in this universe?” you ask her, hoping that she and everyone else including you forgot about this fact and that she’ll be able to pinpoint his exact location, but she shakes her head, giving you a look full of frustration.

“I’ve tried that. Unfortunately, the system failure from earlier has caused some malfunctions in the entire system. I cannot detect any anomalies at all right now. Margo and I are working on it. As soon as we get it running again, I’ll run the test and find him unless you guys find him first.”

You thank her and let her go, hoping that Miguel is found whichever way as long as it’s soon. You continue to move around, lunging from building to building like the other members in search of the founder and commander of the Spider Society. Your heart races as you search, and you pause for a second, trying to calm yourself down. Panicking like this will only interfere with successfully finding him. You pause and take a deep breath. Your spider senses went off earlier and now you’re sure it was for this reason. You try to calm down, hoping that this will allow your senses to come in. You will them to help you right now; to lead you in the right direction.

You don’t allow yourself to think too long about the fact that you sensed this. That you sensed Miguel was in trouble. You ignore it. That will be something to ponder about later, or maybe not, considering you’ll come up with no reasonable explanation. You hope no one questions how you knew either.

You look around the city as rain continues to pour down on you. Since you arrived, the rain has picked up and all you can think about is Miguel on some rooftop, hurt and glitching under the cold rain.

“Where are you, Miguel?” you whisper, as you do a full turn.

Your gaze moves past it, but your eyes quickly return to it. The tallest building in the city is about ten buildings away from you. You stop and look up at it, rain falling on your masked face. Before you know it, you’re running across rooftops, leaping in the air to reach the building. You hear Hobie and Jess scream at you, asking where you’re going, and you reluctantly answer through your gizmo.

“I’m just going to check something,” you reply, as you throw web at the building now, aiding you in reaching the building faster. You feel a strange sensation spread through your chest as you stick to the building and begin to run upwards. You hope you’re right and yet again you wonder what it’ll mean if you are, but you don’t spend too much time thinking about this. All you care about at the end of the day is that Miguel is found and well. You continue to run, lifting yourself up with your web. You use a combination of running and lifting to reach the top of the building, meanwhile you can sense other members far behind joining you.

And why wouldn’t they when they see the speed and determination in your movements. To everyone paying attention, you’re climbing the tallest building in the city as if you know that your distant and serious commander is on that rooftop.

And he is.

You see his slumped figured over a wall and rush with a speed that almost makes it seem like you teleported to him. You are kneeled at his right side almost instantly, eyes scanning his bare face.

You quickly lift your gizmo and inform the others.

“Miguel has been found. He’s on the tallest building’s rooftop,” you say, sounding ragged not only because of the climb but also because of relief that you’ve found him. You notice his chest moving. Breathing. “He’s breathing!” you add, informing your colleagues.

You notice raindrops running down his face and without a second thought, you remove your mask and lay it over his head as an attempt to shield his face. Your worry for Miguel is so strong that you don’t even notice the coldness of the rain on your face or the fact that your hair is getting damp.

You move closer to him now. “Miguel,” you say and tentatively grab his right shoulder. “Miguel, can you hear me?” you ask loudly, hoping he’ll hear you over the pouring rain.

You take in the sight of Miguel, anguish spreading through your body as you try to get a sense of his injuries. His brown hair is wet from the rain, making it stick to his forehead. His face looks like it has lost some color, which worries you instantly, but you try not to think negatively. Miguel is a strong man, and you know his spider abilities allow him to withhold many injuries. The only thing bothering you is that you don’t know the extent of the injuries he may have. For all you know, they could be serious, which is why you’re careful when you look down at his body, trying to find any sign of injury, but his suit looks intact.

“Miguel,” you say again and this time you cup the right side of his face in your hand, immediately feeling the coldness of his skin even through your suit. Shame rushes through you as you hold his face, feeling like you’re disrespecting him and his boundaries regarding physical touch, but you push past it and call his name again.

And this time, Miguel shifts slightly. His eyes flutter open slowly before they move to you.

“You are here” he mumbles, with his maroon eyes meeting yours.

“Miguel! Yes, we’re here. Don’t worry, we’re taking you back home, okay?” you say softly, reassuring him. “Where are you hurt?” you ask him just as other members finally reach the rooftop.

“I have glass shards in my torso,” he says, closing his eyes. “And a few deep cuts. My gizmo is not working,” he adds softly with eyes still closed, feeling your suited hand cupping his face gently.

You nod though he cannot see you and look down at his gizmo since he mentioned it, noticing for the first time the broken device. You’ve never seen or heard of anyone’s breaking, not even during a gruesome fight since Miguel and Lyla spent a lot of time making sure they were durable in these kinds of scenarios. You wonder how it was possible that it managed to get broken. You shove your thoughts away and remove your hand from Miguel’s face. You quickly remove your gizmo and gently take Miguel’s right arm in your free hand as you’re suddenly surrounded by your colleagues. You slide your gizmo into his free wrist, ensuring that he won’t glitch any more in the meantime before he’s back to Nueva York, so he won’t be in additional pain. You let go of his arm and turn slightly to see who’s made it already.

Miguel opens his eyes when he feels the gizmo around his wrist. He looks at your hands, your wrist now empty. He wants to tell you to take it back or you’ll glitch soon, but Jess begins to talk, giving orders to your colleagues as the second in command, preventing him from warning you.

“We need to get him to HQ immediately,” she says stepping closer. “We’ll need to carry him carefully as we don’t know the extent of the injuries,” she adds looking down at Miguel and you, who remains kneeled at his side. She looks around and calls out some of your colleagues’ names, including yours, to help carry Miguel to HQ.

You and the others immediately get on it. You turn to Miguel and give him an apologetic look though his eyes are closed again before you take his arm. You put all your strength along with Ben Reilly to help Miguel up, but you end up getting replaced by Peter once it becomes apparent that your height difference is an issue. Still, you stand by closely making sure that they don’t hurt him in the process. Someone opens a portal just as Jess gives the order to the other members to search for the anomalies.

You watch as Ben and Peter hold Miguel, walking carefully into the portal. Jess motions for you to go, following closely behind you.

“The infirmary staff is ready to treat him. They should be waiting for us,” Jess says as you step foot back in HQ.

You briefly look around at the infirmary sector before your eyes return to Miguel. Sure enough, infirmary staff approach the three men and before you know it, Miguel is on a stretcher being led away down a long hallway.

A doctor, who you hadn’t noticed before, approaches you and everyone else. You watch as the staff take Miguel away until they enter a room and disappear while Jess and the doctor talk.

“With Miguel hurt, I’ll be handling things until he recovers. That means I’ll have to be away, but you can direct yourself to -” Jess says pausing, looking around before her eyes land on you. “You can direct yourself to her. Y/N,” you hear Jess.

You turn at the mention of your name. You find her, the doctor and Peter looking at you.

“As the second in command, I’ll be taking over for now. Peter, you’ll be my second in command in the meantime. And you,” Jess says nodding at you. “You’ll be my third in command. I need you to stay here and keep us updated on Miguel’s status. You’re also to make sure that his privacy is respected,” she says with a frown. “I doubt anyone will try anything, but I rather be safe than sorry. Make sure no one tries to go in for any reason. If he wants visitors once he’s awake, it’ll be up to him.”

You nod.

“Of course, I’ll keep you updated and make sure no one intrudes on his priva-” you start but stop when you glitch. You cry out as you experience glitching for the first time and nearly lose your balance, but Peter catches you before you fall.

“You’re glitching – where is your gizmo?” Peter asks confused as he holds you, keeping you steady.

You huff in pain and look up as the feeling starts fading away. You meet Peter and Jess’s eyes.

“I gave it to Miguel to prevent him from glitching again in the time it took us to transport him,” you finally say softly, still feeling a little out of breath. You can’t help but think how awful it feels to glitch even in good health, making you wonder what it must have felt like for Miguel while being injured. You sigh softly. “I’ll keep you guys updated. And I’ll make sure Miguel is undisturbed,” you add.

Jess and Peter look at you before the two of them nod.

“I’ll have someone send you a gizmo in a while. For now, put this on to prevent more glitching,” Jess says pulling out a day pass from her pocket. She hands it to you, and you slide it on immediately, thanking her. “Peter and I will be in Miguel’s lab. Margo and Lyla are still trying to fix the system. We need to get it fixed before we find ourselves with multiple anomalies running loose, so we’ll be taking care of that. As I said, someone will deliver a gizmo so you can keep us updated, alright?”

You nod and Jess nods back at you. She stares at you for a few seconds as if she wants to say more but she looks over at Peter, who meets her eyes before he turns to you. He gives you a reassuring smile.

“We’ll get through this. Everything will be alright. Right, Jess?” he says, turning his attention back to Jess as he lets go of you at last, sensing you’re more stable now after glitching.

“Right,” Jess says before she nods at you and gives her thanks to the doctor, who hurries off. Jess, too, departs, heading to the elevator with Ben following behind.

Your gaze moves to the doctor as she walks down the hallway. Your eyes follow her even when you feel Peter’s hand on your shoulder.

“He’ll be okay. Miguel is a strong guy,” he says softly in a reassuring tone, also watching the doctor for a few seconds. He sighs and squeezes your shoulder gently before he departs, following Jess and Ben to the elevator.

You stand alone in the infirmary’s quiet lobby now. You look around to distract yourself. Thankfully you’ve never needed to be here, so you’re not familiar with this floor. You find yourself walking to the windows. It’s still dark out, so you can see the lights on from other buildings and cars in the distance despite the blurriness due to the soft rain. You stare out of the windows for some time, your mind taken up by Miguel and his health.

It's not until you feel a tap on the shoulder that you turn away from the windows. You find Ben Reilly, who offers you a small smile before he hands you a gizmo and a tablet.

“Jess sends this. The gizmo for obvious reasons and the tablet to keep you occupied while you wait,” he says, still giving you a smile.

You take both devices and nod at him, giving him a small smile. “Thank you, Ben. I appreciate it,” you say as you slide on the new gizmo.

Ben nods, staring at you. You hold on to the tablet, looking down at it before Ben breaks the silence. “Pretty crazy, right?”

You look up just as he pushes his hair to the side a bit, and nod before turning to face the windows again. “Yes.”

The two of you stare out the window for a few seconds in silence, watching the rain.

“Miguel will be alright, I think. He’s a buff dude,” Ben says, trying to reassure you. You smile sadly and nod.

You hear Ben pop his fingers next to you. “I must head back now. Jess and Peter needs everyone on board to find those anomalies so – I’ll see you around.”

You turn to face him and thank him again. “Thank you. Please tell Jess and Peter that if they need me to do anything else, to let me know.”

Ben nods as he stands in front of you, giving you another small smile. “Consider it done. By the way, the way you leaped up that building was – very impressive and I mean that in a good way,” he adds.

You nod again, feeling somewhat lighter with Ben’s comment as you’ve learned over the last months that he’s really into dramatic poses and such and you have a feeling he’s trying to lighten up the mood despite the situation. “Thank you, Ben. I appreciate the compliment.”

Ben nods one more time before he starts departing but turns around again, remembering something.

“Oh, I almost forgot. Your mask,” he says walking back to you and pulling your mask from under his hoodie and handing it to you. “It fell when we carried Miguel back here.”

You take it from his hand. You completely forgot about it once you put it over Miguel’s head. You thank him again for his help before he departs, leaving you alone again. You slide the mask into one of your suit’s hidden pockets and hold on to the tablet but don’t boot it up. Instead, you turn your attention back to the windows. You wait patiently there, hoping that someone will come and give you an update, but no one comes. Your mind goes back to what happened tonight and you try to think of an explanation but eventually drop it. You don’t know what happened tonight. You don’t know what led you to sense Miguel’s situation but you’re glad he’s safe now, in his universe and that’s all that matters.

It’s not until almost two hours later that you hear footsteps. You turn around immediately, for once departing from your spot by the windows. Your eyes find the doctor from earlier as she heads your way. She gives you a nod of acknowledgment as she reaches you.

“Mr. O’Hara is stable now. He had multiple glass shards on his torso, many of which were small, so we needed to ensure we didn’t miss any of them to prevent an infection. He also has two large cuts on the left side of his torso and a stab wound in the middle of his abdomen. It was pretty deep, and it will take a few days to fully heal. We know he glitched a few times and it took some toll on his body, so that’s why it’ll make his injuries heal slower, but he’ll recover successfully,” the doctor informs you with a kind voice. “Would you like to see him? He’s still passed out due to the meds, but you can stay in the room with him now.”

You nod immediately. “Yes, please. And thank you for the update. I’ll let the others know right away,” you say, as the two of you walk down the hallway.

You can’t help but feel your heart pound in your chest as you approach the room. The doctor opens the door for you, letting you in.

“Let us know if you need anything,” she says before she closes the door softly, giving you privacy.

The hospital room’s lights are off except for two lamps to the left side of the room and a light behind the hospital bed, where you find Miguel. You carefully walk closer to the bed, your eyes scanning his face under the soft lighting. As you step closer and stand by his side at last, your eyes continue to observe his face. Miguel’s face is relaxed, and you can’t help but think how boyish he looks while sleeping. It’s as if all the worries and threats to the multiverse are nonexistent at this moment.

You notice his hair is dry now, but it’s still pressed to his forehead, giving him a messy look, which just adds to the boyish look. You fight the urge to fix it and instead pull a chair closer to the bed before you take a seat. You remember you need to update everyone, so you send a quick message to Jess, notifying her that Miguel is stable and what the doctor said about his injuries. It takes a few seconds before she replies that she’s relieved to hear the news. She also asks you to let her know when Miguel wakes up.

You sit on your chair near Miguel, listening to his even and slow breathing. You watch his chest gently rise and fall before your eyes trace his face. His face still needs to regain its natural color but he’s alive and he’ll recover. All is well now. For the first time since you woke up, you exhale deeply; releasing pent up emotions now that your very own eyes can confirm that Miguel is safe. Before you know it, you feel tears pooling in your eyes as you stare at Miguel’s sleeping face.

You rest an arm on the chair’s armchair and rest your chin on your hand as you feel the tears run down your face softly. Your lips quiver as you hold a soft sob in the quiet hospital room, unable to stop yourself from crying.

Tonight is the first time in four years that you’ve felt anything remotely close to what you felt the day you lost Peter. The dread that grew with each second as you headed to find him. The tightening of your chest that made it difficult to breathe as you swung from building to building. The feeling that you were going to be too late. Again.

Of course, you know it’s different. Peter had a small window of time that to this day you believe you missed. You felt lucky enough that you were able to say goodbye to him. Meanwhile, Miguel could’ve probably hung on for a little longer due to his powers and yet, you still felt those same emotions while you searched for him. You continue to cry quietly, letting the tears run freely down your face as you watch over him.

You’re unable to stop yourself from thinking the worst. Sure, you are superheroes but that doesn’t mean you are invisible to danger or death. As your eyes remain on Miguel’s sleeping face, your chest feels heavy at the brief thought of something worse happening to him, making your eyes tear up more. You cry quietly, covering your mouth until you calm down.

You sniffle once your tears slow down and blame it on your lack of sleep and the adrenaline completely leaving your body now. You dry your face and breathe in before exhaling softly. The last thing you want is for someone to see you like this. You check your gizmo, reading the time. It’s past 5:30 A.M. and when you look towards the windows from your spot, you see the first signs of daylight.

Miguel made it to another day.

You turn back to Miguel. He’s still sleeping with his head resting against soft pillows. The sight of Miguel in a hospital gown feels so wrong. It’s still strange to see him in anything other than his suit as you’ve only ever seen him in normal clothes three times: Christmas Eve, Christmas, and New Years Eve. As you watch over him, your eyes land on his arms. It seems that the grey hospital gown is a bit tight as the sleeves hug his large biceps but despite that, he looks relaxed with his arms at his sides, hands curled softly.

You observe his sleeping figure, eyes tracing his arms down to his large hands. Your eyes then flicker to his bare neck and part of his collarbone where you spot a small piece of gauze taped to his skin with medical tape. You wonder just how many of those he has on his torso on top of the large wounds. You sigh deeply as you continue to watch over Miguel, wishing that this hadn’t happened.

You feel a shiver run through your body, feeling slightly cold when the AC turns on. You look at the end of the bed and find a folded blanket. You get up and grab it, laying it over Miguel’s body gently. You bring it up to his neck, making sure to cover his arms which you imagine might get cold. You stand over him, staring at him for a few seconds before you walk to the windows to stretch your legs.

You cross your arms across your chest. It’s still raining, and the sky is beginning to brighten though it remains grey and cloudy because of the weather. You spot more traffic now, too. The city is slowly waking up as you stare out for a few minutes. You turn back around and lean on the windows as you take a quick glance around the room for the first time. The appearance of the room was the last thing on your mind when you first came in and even now you just briefly scan the room. You notice it’s very spacious with a sitting area for visitors to the right of the room when you enter. Across from it, on the other side of the door, there’s a room, which you suspect is the bathroom. You turn to your right now, noticing a screen displayed on the wall, facing Miguel. A TV, you realize before your eyes return to Miguel.

Your eyes flicker to the sitting area for visitors for a moment, making you think of his family. He has none left, like you. You sigh softly, remembering thoughts you used to have before joining the Spider Society. There were many times when you went out on patrols and sat on rooftops, observing the streets below when your mind took you to a depressing place after Peter’s death.

You wondered many times what would happen the day you die. You have no family and you cut ties with friends from your universe. You quit your job, so you didn’t even have colleagues. No one would go look for you if something happened to you. No one would claim you as family.

It was scary and depressing to think of this and so you pushed it away and hoped each time that one day you’d have someone – anyone – in your life. Someone who could say something about you. You hoped that it wouldn’t be so lonely then, at least not the way it felt when you arrived home with cuts and bruises that you had to tend to by yourself after Peter’s death. No longer did you fall into Peter’s arms, who held you for a few seconds before he sat you down to clean and tend to your wounds, comforting you with his gentle voice and touch.

As you stare at Miguel and think about this and the fact that Miguel has no family either, you’re glad that Jess assigned you to do this, though you realize you would’ve requested to do it regardless. The idea of anyone waking up alone in a hospital room depresses you and that feeling only intensifies as you think of Miguel, the man that longed for a family so much he inserted himself in another universe to fulfill that dream when he had a chance.

Only to lose it.

You shake your head softly, still staring at him. You’ve never wished this much for someone to be happy like you’ve done towards Miguel. You hope one day he can move forward. That one day, life will treat this man better. This man that deserves so much more but who has lost so much.

“Gabi,” Miguel mutters softly.

You straighten up and walk over to him, standing by his side. Miguel is still sleeping but his brows are furrowed as he mutters Gabriella’s name again. You stand there, not knowing what to do. Your hands wish to reach for his to comfort him, but you’re still set on respecting his wish of no physical touch, so you settle with placing them near his hand instead.

“Gabi.”

Your eyebrows lower and knit together in sadness as you hear Miguel call for Gabriella again.

“Miguel,” you say softly, not sure it’ll even help. “It’s okay,” you whisper.

“Gabi,” Miguel mutters, moving his head slightly against the pillows.

You watch his face as a heavy feeling overwhelms your chest, wishing you could do more. Miguel grows restless, moving his head more. You notice that his hands also begin to move under the blanket you covered him in. It takes you a few seconds to see that the blanket seems stuck to his hands. You pull the blanket off him gently from your side to see his hand, finding his extended talons stuck to the fabric. You have no other choice but to pull the blanket off him gently, successfully freeing his talons. You look down at them for a second, seeing them for the first time outside of the suit before you return your gaze to Miguel’s face.

“Miguel,” you say. “It’s okay… It’s okay.”

Miguel continues to move restlessly, and you fear that he’ll hurt himself in the process, so you do the one thing you think of. You take his hand softly in your own and squeeze gently, whispering softly that everything is alright. You feel his hand move slightly in yours, causing you to feel one of his talons against your hand. You feel some pain even through your suit, but you push past it and continue to hold his hand, talking to him even though you’re sure he can’t hear you.

You watch helplessly as tears gently begin to roll down Miguel’s face as he continues to call for Gabi.

“Mija.”

You hold his hand in yours as he cries in his sleep, occasionally feeling his talons dig into your skin softly. You softly whisper reassuring words, hoping it will cease his crying as the sight devastates you to your core, but he grows restless, and the heart monitor begins to warn about his heart. You look up, noticing his heart rate is increasing rapidly. You rush to the door and yell for the doctor, full of worry.

/\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ _ _ _ _ _ _ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/

Miguel stands in front of his penthouse’s windows, looking out. The sky is a light blue, and the sun is shining brightly, illuminating the entire place. His eyes take in the sight of distant skyscrapers below soft clouds in the sky. Cars fly in the distance. The city is busy as always. He stands there for what feels like minutes watching in silence before it’s broken.

“Hermano.”

Miguel turns around instantly at the sound of his brother’s voice. He finds him standing a few feet away from him.

“Gabrielito?” Miguel says softly, feeling shocked to see him after so long.

Gabriel gives him that smile. That cheeky smile that got him in trouble too many times.

“It’s been a long time, hermano,” Gabriel says before making his way to Miguel, who finds himself meeting Gabriel halfway.

The O’Hara brothers embrace each other in the older brother’s living room. Miguel holds his much smaller brother tightly, not quite believing that this is happening. Gabriel is here.

“It’s been a long time,” Miguel agrees, still hugging his younger brother.

The O’Hara brothers pull back and Miguel can’t help but smile at his younger brother as he takes in the sight of Gabriel’s face. He doesn’t seem older despite the years.

“Miguel – it’s so good to see you again, hermano,” Gabriel says laying a hand on Miguel’s bicep. “Look at you. You look well! Though, do I spot a grey hair from here?” Gabriel teases, making Miguel frown.

“Very funny, Gabriel.”

“You know I’m just playing but if you keep going like this, you’ll start seeing them,” Gabriel warns.

“If I keep going like this?” Miguel asks, his frown deepening.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Working all day and night. No sleep except for once a week or those random naps you take, which don’t help by the way. Your eating habits. It’s too much on your body, despite being a superhero.”

Miguel doesn’t respond. Gabriel’s face softens.

“Hermano, you can’t keep going like this. It’s painful to watch, you know. You deserve so much more from life, Mig.”

Miguel looks away. “Gabriel – you don’t know the things I’ve done.”

“I do know… and I’m not here to judge you. I could never but I’m worried about you. I’ve been for a long time. Miguel – you have so much life ahead of you. It’s painful to watch you do this to yourself. You deserve to be happy and not waste your life away working day and night because you think that’s all your life is meant for. It’s not. And I’m not the only one who agrees, by the way.”

Miguel turns his face back to Gabriel, raising an eyebrow with curiosity as his younger brother’s words sink in.

“There’s someone that wants to see you,” Gabriel says softly with a gentle smile before he nods behind Miguel.

Miguel turns around, not knowing what to expect but there they are. He finds his wife, who smiles brightly at him and Gabriella, in the arms of his variant, Gabriella’s biological father, standing there. Miguel freezes, feeling a rush of mixed emotions at the sight but it all fades away when Gabriella jumps out of the arms of her biological father and runs to him.

“Daddy! Daddy!”

Miguel feels his heart burst with happiness at the sight of her running to greet him. He drops to his knees and opens his arms wide just as Gabriella runs into him. He instantly wraps his arms around her, unable to believe that he’s holding her again. Gabriella wraps her arms around his neck, happy to see him.

“Mija,” Miguel mumbles as tears pool around his eyes, spilling almost immediately down his face as he holds Gabi close.

“Daddy, it’s okay. Please don’t cry. I’m okay,” Gabi says softly, trying to calm Miguel down but he’s unable to stop the tears and the gentle shaking of his chest as he holds his daughter once again.

“Mija,” he repeats, closing his eyes as he embraces his daughter.

“It’s okay, daddy. Please don’t cry. I hate to see you cry,” Gabi tells him, wrapping her arms tighter around his neck. “I hate seeing you unhappy. You should be happy. You deserve it.”

Miguel shakes his head softly. “Mija… you don’t understand.”

But Gabi pulls back gently, meeting her father’s eyes. “I do. I know everything – and it’s okay. You don’t need to be sorry,” she says gently, sounding much older than she looks.

Miguel’s teary eyes meet his daughter’s as the truth sinks in. Gabi knows. Miguel looks up at his variant, who stands nearby. Miguel clears his throat, feeling shame and guilt as he meets the other Miguel’s eyes. He returns his gaze to Gabi and gives her a hug before he stands up, holding her in his arms. He approaches the other Miguel, looming over him. He gives a quick glance to his wife, who nods at him, as if she knows that he needs to have this discussion first before talking to her.

Miguel looks down at his variant and gives him an apologetic look.

“Miguel – I’m so sorry for – everything,” Miguel begins softly. “I’m sorry for what I did.”

Miguel expects his variant to respond negatively. To tell him off about pretending to be the father of his daughter. For trying to live his life. For not telling the truth to Gabi. For everything else he did that he cannot bear to think about now, but his variant surprises him with a sad smile.

“I know why you did it. I understand it. And I’m not mad…” Miguel’s variant starts, meeting his eyes. “You did something for me that I’ll never be able to repay.”

Miguel furrows his eyebrows in confusion, not expecting this reaction from his variant. He feels Gabi hug him as his variant continues.

“Had you not done what you did – Gabi’s life would’ve been very different those months you spent with her. You know very well what would’ve happened,” his variant continues, alluding to the fact that Gabi turned into an orphan and would’ve been placed in an orphanage had Miguel not stepped in. “For that – I thank you deeply. And of course, for being her father,” he finishes softly, acknowledging that Miguel is Gabi’s father as well.

Miguel nods slowly, feeling tears again but Gabi swipes them away.

“It’s okay, daddy. You don’t need to cry anymore, right, papá?” Gabi asks, turning to face her biological father, who nods. “We’re all okay here.”

Miguel nods at Gabi, holding her in his arms before he turns to his variant. “Thank you,” he whispers and his variant nods, giving him that same sad smile.

Miguel continues to hold Gabi, feeling like a weight has been taken off his shoulders. For so long he has carried shame and guilt over what he did but his variant and Gabi were forgiving of his actions. “Thank you,” Miguel whispers again, as Gabi holds him tighter, reminding Miguel how it felt to hold his child. Soft tears run down his face even when he turns to his wife who has been watching, waiting.

“I..,” Miguel trails off, not knowing how to continue for he has thought about her and their relationship a lot in the last few months.

He feels a different kind of shame washing over him. The more time passed, the more Miguel realized how differently he wished things had been. He had fallen in love too fast, wanting to fulfill his dream of having a family and he felt like he dragged her into it. He felt like he rushed her into marriage, but his wife meets his eyes with tenderness and nods.

“Miguel…” she says with a sigh. “We both made that decision. You didn’t rush me into anything I didn’t want to, but we did rush into it, didn’t we?” she asks softly with a small smile, taking his hand in hers. “We both wanted a family so badly and perhaps – perhaps we both sensed it would end soon and that’s why we held on to it so badly.”

She holds his hand and squeezes it gently, reassuringly, as she steps closer.

“I love you. And I know you love me, too… but our love was different, wasn’t it?” she asks softly. “Perhaps we could’ve really fallen in love if we had the time…” she continues. “But we didn’t and that’s okay, Miguel. I don’t hold that against you. We both wanted it badly and made the decision, so please stop carrying this guilt, okay? Miguel, por favor, live your life. For our sake,” she says softly, pausing. “Don’t you think it hurts us to see you like this?” she asks, looking at the others. “It’s painful to watch you do this to yourself. You’re so full of life, wasting it all living like this when there’s so many people out there to meet and befriend… to love. You have amazing people by you, don’t be afraid to show them the wonderful man you are.”

Miguel nods softly though the idea alone seems strange. He feels Gabi shift in his arms slightly, looking behind him.

“I just – I don’t know how to do this again. Losing you, all of you, has been too much,” he admits.

“But you haven’t lost us, hermano,” Gabriel says coming from behind, giving him a side hug. Miguel turns to look down at his younger brother again. “We’re always with you. Even if you don’t believe it or sense us, we’re always there. In every mission. In every universe. Every day and sleepless night.”

“You’re just too busy sometimes to sense us, daddy but we watch over you,” Gabi adds with her toothy smile. “We’re with you always. We visit you all the time, which reminds me - I loved my pancakes and the toys you gave me. Papá and I played a match with the new soccer ball you left for me on Dia de los Muertos. Thank you for leaving my favorite candy, too.”

Miguel cries softly and holds Gabi tighter in his arms. “You…” he attempts but is unable to finish his thought about them visiting him that night.

“We’re always with you,” his wife confirms with a smile meeting his eyes but she, too, looks behind him for a second.

He feels Gabi shift again, looking behind him. “She’s calling you,” she says softly.

Miguel dries his face with the sleeves of his shirt. “Who?” he asks, confused.

“You know who,” Gabriel says with a small smile. “You know exactly who. Miguel – you have a long life ahead of you. Make it count,” he whispers. “Leave a legacy that’s far greater than your leadership. Far greater than your duty and work. Live life, hermano. I know it’s not easy and we don’t expect you to move forward overnight but try. Try for us in the beginning until you find it in you to do it for yourself. Just try,” Gabriel says softly.

Miguel nods with tears. “I’ll try, Gabrielito. I’ll try.”

Gabriel smiles. “It’s been great seeing you, Miguelito.”

“Don’t call me that,” Miguel says but he says it with a smile.

“For old time’s sake, hermano,”Gabriel says and wipes his own tears away. “It’s been really great seeing you, but you must return now.”

“Return?” Miguel asks confused, still holding Gabi in his arms.

“You’ve been away too long, daddy. You must go back now. It’ll be alright,” Gabi says with a smile.

Everyone turns to look behind Miguel. He doesn’t know what they keep looking at.

“I don’t want to leave…” Miguel says softly, holding Gabi closer.

“Miguel – you must. It’s not time yet. And she’s calling you,” his wife says.

“Who’s calling me?” he asks.

His wife smiles and shakes her head. “One of the brightest people I’ve ever met, and you don’t see it, do you?”

Miguel stares at his wife before he meets the other two adults’ gazes. He realizes it. He must go. He nods slowly and holds Gabi for a minute longer, closing his eyes. Gabi hugs him tighter.

“There’s nothing to forgive but I know you need to hear it, so I’ll say it. I forgive you… You’ll always be my dad, no matter what,” she whispers, filling Miguel’s chest with ache and love all at once.

“Mija… Thank you,” Miguel breathes out gently.

He puts Gabi down, smiling down at her. He doesn’t understand it. She looks the same age she was when she passed away, but she sounds so much wiser. Like she knows more than he does. He pats her head softly before he meets his variant’s gaze.

“Thank you again…”

His variant nods, giving him a gentle smile.

Miguel’s eyes turn to his wife, who’s already looking at him. She nods softly.

“We’ll see you when it’s your time,” she says before she takes his hand again, giving it a soft squeeze before releasing it.

Finally, Miguel turns to Gabriel.

“It’ll be alright, hermano. We’ll see you when it’s time. And don’t forget we’re always with you,” he says as Gabi leans on him. Miguel watches his brother pick up Gabriella, holding her in his arms. “It’s time.”

Miguel nods before he gives his brother and Gabriella a hug, wrapping his long arms around them. He pulls his wife into it, too. He ends up offering his hand to his variant, inviting him into the hug. At the end of the day, they were linked. Forever.

His variant accepts his hand and gives him a nod, joining the moment.

They pull apart a few seconds later, giving Miguel space. He stares at them as they stand side by side, his brother still holding Gabi. They smile at him and give him reassuring nods. Miguel nods just as his variant walks closer to him, separating from the group as if to talk with him in private.

“Before you go… I want to tell you that I forgive you. I forgave you a long time ago, really. I thank you for being a father to Gabi, for treating her the way I would’ve and know that in her eyes and mine, you are a father to her. I also want to tell you… that you have a chance, Miguel. Take it,” his variant says softly. “Our lives have never been easy, and you know that, but one thing I learned when I was alive was that sometimes all you need is a small purpose to keep you going,” his variant says briefly looking back at Gabi. “And I don’t mean work, for we both know what that does to us. Find the true purpose. Keep going. Live life. Accept those that wish to be near you,” he says, laying a hand on Miguel’s shoulder. “You’re worthy of it, don’t forget that.”

Miguel nods. “Thank you, Miguel.”

His variant nods, giving him a smile before he returns to the group. Miguel watches them for a few seconds.

“Go on, daddy! You must return now,” Gabi says looking behind him.

“She’s still calling you,” Gabriel adds but Miguel still doesn’t know who is calling him.

Miguel turns around. He’s no longer met with the view of his large windows facing the city, instead all he sees is a warm light. He turns back around.

“I’ll see you again, right?” he asks, quietly.

His family nods.

“Of course, and we’ll be ready for that day when it comes, hermano but that day is not today. For now, just now we’re always with you,” Gabriel says. “And I don’t mean to rush you, but you should really get back now.”

Miguel nods once again and before he leaves, he walks the short distance and gives everyone a last hug, squeezing Gabi and Gabriel tighter. He returns to his spot and nods. It’s time. He waves goodbye before he turns around to face the light. He walks into it, seeing nothing but light and when he looks behind his shoulder, he sees his family wave goodbye one last time. Miguel’s heart aches as he walks away but there’s also a lightness that he hasn’t felt in a long time.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _/\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/

“It’s okay, Miguel,” you shakily whisper as Miguel mumbles something in his sleep.

You watch him with your tear-stained face after what happened. The last thirty minutes were overwhelming to say the least. You try to forget it for now but you’re unable to put away the worry and stress of what you witnessed. As Miguel mumbles in his sleep again, you release a shaky breath.

Miguel’s heartbeat gave up for a few minutes and all you could do was watch and call his name helplessly as the medical professionals resuscitated him. You stand by his side now, thankful but still on edge as Miguel moves his head slightly.

“It’s alright. Everything is alright,” you whisper as he moves.

You notice his eyebrows furrowing as he mumbles yet something else, but his words are incoherent. You watch as his eyes move under his eyelids before they begin to flutter as if he’s waking up. You hold your breath, as it slowly becomes apparent his eyes are opening. Miguel looks around the hospital room slowly as if trying to figure out where he’s at before they fall on you.

“Y/N…” he whispers softly.

________________________

*Translation for italicized Spanish words:* Mierda - shit Mija - my daughter Hermano - brother Papá - dad Por favor - please Dia de los Muertos - Day of the Death ___

Thank you for reading! I hope you guys enjoyed this part despite the angst. The next part will contain more fluff, promise 🥹 can we just talk about reader giving Miguel her gizmo??? 😭 I don't know why but that made me so sad and that probably sounds stupid since I wrote it but anyway... I still love Miguel ❤️

-Alondra

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