Chapter Text
It wasn't the first of the dreams, but it was the fact that it was the clearest, and the most frequent, that signaled the beginning of the end to Miguel.
The entire sequence was a cruel, slow realization that morphed from ecstasy to horror, like having a torrent of ice water dumped over your head that had started as a warm, soothing trickle.
"Stop...stop it. Detén eso. Stop that..."
He was at his console, standing guard in front of his screens like usual. But the silence wasn't silent and the darkness wasn't empty.
"...nah..."
Someone was here, playing with him. Toying with him, darting unseen around and under the wide keyboards and button pads like a mischievous puppy. They flittered right on the edge of his awareness, of reality itself, never whole or tangible except for the fleeting touches, taps, strokes and tickles along the sides of his legs and waist.
They slip through his fingers when he tries to catch them. Like spiderwebs, or smoke.
"I'm...'stoy ocupado. I'm working. Get-..."
"You're always working, tío."
More touches, more teasing. A hand grips his ankle suddenly, firmly- in the dream, it burns pleasantly, and he's startled back into sitting in his chair.
"Don't- don't call me that. Get up, paralo-"
The caresses get more bold in their exploration. Miguel feels silken fingers stealing up his calves, pushing his knees wider apart, still solidly hidden by the dark of the dream. He knows he should feel afraid, or angry, but he just... doesn't. He can't. The only feeling that registers past his mild confusion is a fission of anticipation, damnear excitement, burning low and persistent in his gut.
"A-trá-pa-me." Catch me. Catch who?
"Q...quien-?" Miguel starts to stammer, then quickly falls silent again as a solid weight settles insistently between his thighs, so warm it takes his breath away.
He wants to reach down and push... whatever, whoever this was away (except.... does he? Does he really?), but again, he can't. It's like he's been paralyzed by his own venom, but it feels so completely satisfying that he's having trouble finding any reason to fight it.
What he REALLY wants to do is get his hands on whoever is messing with him, wrench their throat open and go to fucking town, but in his half frozen state and unable to catch the little vixen, Miguel has no choice but to endure the torture.
"Who d'you want me to be? Huh, Viejo?" The sweet little taunts keep coming, plucking at his ego and arousal like the fingers plucking at the material of his suit. It rolls down his legs with gentle coaxing from his invisible assailant, and Miguel shivers as he's fully exposed to the clammy air, spilling precum like a fountain.
He should be furious, raging. Kicking and screaming, but...he wants this.
"I-I...I want..." His dick springs free from the confines of his suit, but it isn't unattended long- he's quickly grabbed and stroked by nimble hands he can't see. They squeeze him, forcing curses out of him as a wet, warm mouth litters sucking kisses up and down his shaft.
"Mm-mf. Fuck...fuck..."
"What d'you want, Mr. O'Hara?" The boundaries of the dream world blur and fuzz. The words don't stop, but neither do the sinful sensations making him squirm and pant in his seat, or the plush lips wrapped taught around him.
He is being sucked off, beautifully, and he's ashamed that the first thought in his mind after realizing that is 'I deserve this.' It feels amazing, sticky gulps and tight pressure forming a perfect seal around the sensitive underside of his cockhead.
The fingers pump and stroke, pressing in and up in dizzying motions until his entire lower half feels like it's on fire. He still can't see who's doing this to him, but it matters less and less.
(And if he has an idea of who.... you'll never get him to admit that the possibility makes it better.)
A snicker, breathy and low. "Am I going too fast for you, Viejo?" The pace quickens. His blood boils. His eyes roll back. He's going to cum.
"Little s-shit...G-god...goddamn...ayyycrísto-"
"What do you want?"
"Keep...s-sucking...!" He's going to CUM. He wants it to happen. He NEEDS it.
"Look at me, please? Mr. O'Hara?"
He's sure all he'll see when he looks down is shadow and smoke, so he does, not knowing the harm in it.
"Mmmsogood... d-don't..."
Brown eyes. Dark curls. Round, handsome features, gazing up at him with an adoring, cheeky expression.
"Y-you!?"
"Didn't you know, Viejo?" Miles Morales licks at the streak of cum arching pertly over his cheek, and smiles at him like he's just told the best joke in the world. "I got mad skills."
That's when Miguel finally shudders awake, alone in his sanctum, feeling violent and sick and, most disgustingly of all, robbed.
He doesn't go back to sleep for the rest of that night.
Miguel doesn't think about the dream anymore after that night, either.
(Which is to say, is a complete and obvious lie. What actually happens is that it pops up more frequently than new Spider-people can be bitten or mutated or cursed into existence, and he commits to putting it out of his mind with the same solitary, solemn dedication he did with everything else in his life. It mostly works, so long as he avoids Morales and his little gang of buddies like the black plague.)
So far, it's working out pretty damn well. The compound is huge, and Miguel is known to be a busy man who hates being disturbed. Plus, who would make a habit of purposefully running into the man who gave them a concussion on the roof of a speeding train? Not Morales, thankfully.
So he doesn't think, about the dream or the empty, pit-like feeling that had endured for hours after waking up. He continues on the way he typically does. He doesn't sleep, or eat, or welcome any attention or affection.
And it works. The multiverse keeps spinning (har-dee-fuckin'-har), and no one is ever the wiser.
He's actually almost forgotten about it (not a chance), when the first of the boxes makes its appearance on the edge of his desk.
It happens so quickly and sneakily, appearing as though from thin air amidst his papers and piles of broken Portal Jumpers in between him running to the bathroom and returning, that if it hadn't been for Miguel's enhanced senses he might not have noticed it until days later.
As it is, the unobtrusive little box catches his attention the minute he re-enters the room. His immediate reaction is, of course, suspicion and irritation, and he strides over to it with narrowed eyes and every intention of chucking it straight into the trash, which he does after briefly pausing to ensure it doesn't explode, or start singing and spewing glitter (and he swears, the ONLY reason Miguel hadn't ripped Peter B.'s spine out through his throat that day had been the rapidly approaching birth of his baby daughter. So don't ever say he doesn't have a soft spot for kids, or their dumbass parents.)
After the little box comes to rest atop the fried circuits and crumpled files in his trashcan, he truly thinks no more of it- until another one appears the very next day, sitting in the same spot as its predecessor until it, too, meets its end amongst the detritus.
The boxes keep coming. They vary in size and weight and aroma, but they don't stop, and Miguel sends every single one to the same place as the first, for reasons he himself can't fully fathom. He feels shitty about it, mildly, until one day his exhausted, wrung-dry mind accidentally links that day's box to the lingering images and sensations tied to the dream, both being distracting things he deeply wished to be rid of and had no time for.
After that, chucking the boxes became a daily ritual that made him feel almost better afterwards. (Even if the smell of cold, puddled grease and sofrito made his stomach snarl with want and longing.)
It went on like that for about two weeks, until one late night when Lyla caught him at it.
"*You probably shouldn't do that, you know. It's a real dick move, moreso than usual,*" she snipped at him, materializing with a silent pop of pixels and static over his shoulder to glower dissaprovingly at him as he prepared, yet again, to throw that day's box into the garbage.
Miguel didn't even glance up from the projected multiversal algorithm being tracked across his screens. "When I want your opinion on it I'll be sure to let you know," he droned. "But until then-"
"*It's just such a waste! Someone here, for some crazy reason, either cares about you or likes you enough to leave you food, which you DESPERATELY need, by the way, and you just-*"
"I don't feel much like being poisoned, Lyla." Miguel cut her off, never taking his eyes off the streaking red line that was rapidly branching off into a Canon node. A new spiderperson on Earth 78-74 was about to be created.
In the past, before everything... before Gabriela, watching these lives blink in and out of existence, he had maybe felt like a proud father. Now all he felt was endlessly exhausted, and deeply jaded.
He watched it unfold like a picture show, the same one he'd seen over and over with only slight variations.
A meteor, oozing and sentient, crashing to the planet from the stars.
A scientist, hell-bent on saving the world and all the innocents in it. An evil corporation, because there always fucking was one, some endless version of OsCorp or Alchemax or The Life Foundation or OctaviGroup or what the fuck ever, equally hell-bent on keeping their putrid secrets and willing to do anything to protect their interests.
Including rigging brakes, causing tragedies, and killing that scientist and his wife in their own car. The crash is brutal, snuffing two lives out in the blink of an eye. The carnage is not pretty, thick red streaks in the middle of the street. 'Monsters.'
Lyla was still talking. "*It's not poison, you great big giant jerk, don't you think I scanned it? It's FOOD. Good food, according to my sensors. But hey, I won't keep pushing. Waste some nice spiderperson's time and money over and over until I find a way to digitize and eat it-*"
A small, mangled figure drags itself from the car. Miguel's heart stutters in his chest- its a teenage girl, the daughter of the scientist who very nearly died with him. As it is, she doesn't have long. She gets about a foot from the vehicle before she collapses, bleeding out.
"If you shut the fuck up, right now, I promise you I will eat every goddamn bite." Miguel hisses, saying anything to get the AI to quit her babbling and let him work. Onscreen, something moves in the car, rocking the smoking frame from side to side before bursting from the trunk in a flurry of frantic, instinctual movements.
In short order, the stolen symbiote- dying, injured, confused- makes its way over to the rapidly fading body in the street and attaches itself to her like a drowning man leaping into a life raft.
"*Good enough for me!*" Lyla trills, and Miguel ignores her as the body onscreen twitches and flails before finally accepting the symbiosis. The alert turns green, and the blaring of the notifications eases back into a steady, monitored beeping as the nodule solidifies fully.
CANON EVENT FULFILLED. UPDATING MULTIVERSAL CODEX TO INCLUDE SPIDER AVATAR #78-74: "MALICE"
Miguel curled his lip and swept the screen away with a sigh, dreading the future of THAT meeting in a few months. He hated dealing with Symbiote Spiders. They were powerful, sure, but they were also unpredictable, bloodthirsty and overall pains in his ass.
"*Weeell, that was disturbing,*" Lyla hedges, leaping out of the way of the speeding screen and rematerializing on top of the offending box. "*Now that that's over, eat. Right now. A promise is a promise.*"
Miguel reaches for the box, still grumbling, face pinched like a child. "I'm not even hung-"
"*Down the hatch, Drac.*"
"Fuck you." he returns, too drained to put any real heat in the snap. He's so tired he doesn't even want to make the effort to chew, but his temples are throbbing with a combination of stress and hunger pains, and if eating the strange mystery food will both stop that and get Lyla to shut the fuck up, then...
'Fuck it.' Miguel snags the lid of the box with one claw, tugs it closer, and flicks it open. He expects some shitty soggy burger and fries, and blinks in pleasant surprise as he's greeted by a thick piece of Pastelón, sitting on a healthy portion of arroz con gandules.
The smell hits him before the sight fully registers, making his vision swim and his stomach roar. He's scarfing it down in seconds, unrepentant and ravenous and practically moaning from the taste of homemade gravy and spicy olives.
It's so, so good. He can't remember the last time he had anything so incredible.
"*Good, right?*" Lyla pipes up again, watching him devour the contents of the box with satisfaction and thankfully not commenting on the fact that he's eating with his fucking fingers like a savage, smearing grease and sauce all over his lips and chin. "*I knew it, I could tell, and that's a glowing recommendation from you*-"
Miguel tunes her out until the last bite of pastelón vanishes between his teeth and his hands stop shaking, pausing to breathe deeply and feel his blood pressure rise back up from somewhere near his ankles.
Yes, it had been good. But there were more pressing concerns to deal with; namely, how the thing had gotten to his desk in the first place.
"Who left it?" Miguel deadpans, fixing the hologram with a blank red stare.
"*... huh?*" Lyla says evasively, floating two feet above his head.
"'Huh?'" he parrots her, shrill and annoying. "You heard me, I know you heard me. Who keeps leaving this stuff?"
"*Oh.*" The ditzy thing shrugs in his face, and darts out of the way when he swats at her with a ferocious growl. "*I dunno.*"
"Lyla, you're a highly advanced AI and monitoring system. What the hell do you mean you "dunno"?!" he spits, wishing beyond wishing that he could get his hands on her just once.
"*I mean, I dunno! I can't catch them on the visual cameras, they must have some kind of ability to bypass being seen. They don't stay long or do anything other than leave you food, so I figured why waste the time and processing power trying to catch someone being nice? And I'm not your guard dog, Miguel, that's not what I was programmed for. If you can't keep your own Fortress of Dicktitude secure, then-*"
Her rambling is making the headache come back. He thinks, sometimes, that she does it just so he'll give up.
"You're absolutely useless, and I'm gonna replace you with a graphing calculator," Miguel says, pinching his aching nasal bridge between two fingers and trying not to think about how desperately he needs a fucking nap.
"*You'd be dead or even further out of your mind in half a week,*" the AI informs him cheerfully, patting a tiny, sympathetic hand on his shoulder that he can't feel. "*Finish your food, get some rest. I'll flip the 'do not disturb' sign on for a few hours.*"
As irritating as she usually was, it was always a kick in the ass to be presented with how much Lyla actually gave a damn whether he lived or died. It almost made Miguel feel badly about the way he spoke to her.
".... gracias, Lyla." he mumbled, leaning back in his chair and letting his eyes drift sorely shut.
"*Screw you too, grumpy dwarf.*" She lowered her voice considerably, established habit even though they were alone. "*Don't forget your injection.*"
He nodded slowly. He had almost forgotten. "Right, right... " But if he was being honest with himself, the food might have done more good than previously imagined. Full and saturated with the smell and taste of homemade cooking, the procedure felt less urgent and necessary.
"Might not need it today." he said finally, fighting off a yawn as he did so. Fuck, he hadn't felt itis like this since he was a kid. "Set an alarm for half an hour."
"*Gotcha... setting an alarm for two hours from now.*"
"Lyla-"
"*Sorry, what was that? Urgent emergency situation elsewhere in the compound, gotta go. Sweet dreams!*"
Lacking the will to even roll his eyes properly, Miguel let out a slow breath and let his head drop fully back, welcoming the encroaching presence of sleep. There was always the possibility of nightmares, but he couldn't put the need off forever.
It had almost taken him when the thought flickered across his mind that he was alone, in his chair, in the dark...
Remembering the dream with sudden, sharp clarity, he jolted awake and scanned the area around his legs and under his desk, heart fucking pounding, half expecting to see naughty fingers materializing on his thighs.
Nothing- just the box, empty and innocuous, and the gloom that was his ever present companion.
If he's disappointed to find himself alone, he's not awake much longer to ruminate on the feeling.
The boxes don't stop coming, and after that one, Miguel can't bring himself to throw any more of them in the trash. Each time, they appear right when his hunger is about to get the best of him, each time filled to the brim with something delicious and homemade that pulls at the part of him that recalls his mother, the color and smell and culture of her.
A few days later, he's actually not at his console for once, having let Peter B. (or Peter Bum, as Miguel personally loved to refer to that moron) convince him to step away from the endlessly expanding polycule and oversee the training of some of the younger Spiders.
Miguel is fully in the training room and already on the overview platform before he realizes that, alongside Gwen, Pavitr, Hobie and some others, Morales would be included in that number of young spider recruits. When he does, he hopes the sick, anxious look that crosses his face will be taken as his usual bad temper by anyone who might see it.
And... this is bad, very bad, but it's fine, because Miguel can do this. He's the most stoic person in the room at any given time and he keeps the goddamn polycule from collapsing any given day, so he can pretend to be unaffected while being in the same room as the teenager he's been having wet dreams about, no problem.
(And why, you may ask, is Miguel's big grown ass having wet dreams about a teenager in the first place, and that specific teenager at that? He hadn't set aside any time to ponder it and honestly never planned to.)
"Let's go, all of you! Vamos! Find that balance between effort, power, and overexertion."
It was all he could do to stand on the overview with his arms tightly crossed (to hide how his muscles and fingers twitched and flexed with nerves) and his face set and stony, barking orders and straining for all the world not to look at the one person in the room who seemed to be doing the most to get his attention.
"Acrobatics are not for showing off! They are a means to control and direct your body, as well as the flow of the fight," he calls out, watching them flip and spin and attempt to get the upper hand on the decoy Hobgoblin they're trying to take down as a team.
The air is heavy and laden with Jack O'Lantern smoke, not to mention the scorch marks and gash lines from finger-blasters and batblades lining the walls. Even with the combined talents of the younger Spiders, the fight drags on and on as they struggle to subdue the erratic villain.
"This really isn't going their way, is it?" Peter B. smirks to him in an aside, both he and Mayday thoroughly enjoying watching Miles and Co. get trounced.
It's less enjoyable for Miguel to watch while having to ignore his subconscious screaming at him about how much it wants to see Morales with his cum smeared on his face, but he manages.
Miguel grunts as Pavitr loses two inches of hair to a tornado of batwing blades that explode out of one he'd thought he'd destroyed fully, wailing all the while. "They're not seeing the big picture."
The thing about Hobgoblins, similarly to other notable members of the spider's rouge gallery, is that they're typically less physical and combative than Greenies, but the tech is usually more stacked and harder to deal with.
They're a real bitch to fight, plain and simple, and the kids need to focus, which they aren't.
"Not even a little bit of showing off is allowed?" Pavitr calls as he tumbles past to catch a bracelet that deflected harshly off the Hobgoblin's board. "Big bummer, boss man!"
It was admittedly nice, getting to see the progression of the new recruits. There were big similarities, but also major differences in their fighting styles that set them clearly apart.
Where Pavitr and Hobie were both all about flash and spectacle, for instance, the former's movements carried a more playful, whimsical method than the latter's shock-and-awe, in-your-face approach.
Gwen's elegant, musical swinging flow was always a treat to witness, and Morales-
"This guy's a reeeeal pain in the butt, man!" quips the little dream-snatcher as he sails by. "And why is there so many fonts of goblin anyway? That seems kinda redundant!"
Miguel grit his teeth and averted his gaze from the lanky teen once again, trying not to linger on the wide spread of Miles' fingers and the snug fit of his suit clinging to every rapidly developed muscle.
It's absurd. It's disgusting, and he needs to stop. Miles is a kid, Miguel is an adult, and a goddamn superhero besides. He might be a terrible Catholic and not that great of a man, but he wasn't... he wasn't that. He had lines. Morals.
....So what if that dream sneaks up on him in his lonely moments? So what if the chase through the city had made him feel alive, predatory, and invigorated all at once? So what if that little bit of interaction with Miles on the train, however hostile, had been the most intimacy and tactile closeness he'd had with anyone in years?
So what if sometimes, he could still feel the kid pressed up against him, beneath him, all long, lean lines and whip-cord strength, gasping and hot with exertion and fright?
It's not like he isn't TRYING, alright?!
"We should make that your new nickname." Peter B. muses, ever unhelpful and oblivious to Miguel's plight. "'Big Bummer Boss Man.' 'S got a ring to it, I like it."
"Yeah you know what else has a ring to it?" Miguel shoots back, eyes locked on the fight. "Peter Paralyzed, Pulverized Parker. So maybe shut the fuck up."
The fright wasn't the part that... he didn't want Miles to be afraid of him, not really. But he had been so vulnerable, so close-
The scruffy man pressed a dramatic hand to his chest, mindful of the burbling toddler strapped to it, and recoiled like he'd been shot. If only. "Gasp! Language! There are spiderlings present! Also side note, did you just threaten to bite me? That's kinky. I don't know if I'm ready to take that step in our relationship yet."
A vein jumps in Miguel's temple; it hurts. "Parker, lo juro de Dios-"
Meanwhile, the mid-battle banter had evolved into an asanine discussion about the correct ratio of showboating to fighting.
"No, no, I think there's a slim margin available for showing off," Gwen lectures, mock-teacherly as she narrowly avoids a halo of randomized finger-blasters from the Hobgoblin's glove. "The question is, what is that perfect percentage?"
"75 ta 90," Hobie offers, ripping through key after key on his guitar in a fruitless attempt to disrupt the villain's sonic screamers as they tore after him. "All the world's a stage, innit?"
"Look out below!" A black and red streak steals his attention again. Miguel's heart caught in his chest as Miles suddenly arched across the room with a powerful flip that carries him directly toward the physical hologram they're fighting. The tip of his foot connects with the very edge of the Hobgoblin's board- the lighting in the room brightens, then dims, filling up with the scent of ozone as Miles sends a charge straight into the metal of the board. The Hobgoblin shrieks as it loses rapid altitude, but strangely Miles doesn't go in for the kill, sweeping around and away like the world's most annoying fly.
'What is he-?'
"Nah-nah-nah nah, can't hit me, your aim is trash!" Morales taunts and circles, clearly trying to tempt the Hobgoblin into doing... something.
"SHUT UP!" It howls.
"Hey, Pav! Knit a blanket for me!"
That means absolutely dick to Miguel, but Pavitr perks up immediately following Miles' coded command and leaps back into the fray, throwing and tying webs off in a mindbending pattern. "Ohhh okay we're making that play, all right! Hold on, let me see if I remember- that goes here and this goes there and you go to that one and-!"
"Well, they're doing something," Peter says, obviously, squinting upwards as a loose net of webbing forms above their heads and around the arena. "I can't tell exactly what it is, but it's definitely something."
"... Yeah," Miguel echoes, dry-throated as he watches Miles. "Something." The kid is almost casually graceful, with movements that seem unplanned and uncoordinated until they all connect in a unique formula that takes him by surprise every time. It reminds him again of the mad flight through Nueva, the primal struggle it had taken from all of his abilities just to catch up to Miles.
What that something is becomes evidently clear as the Hobgoblin, predictably, finally loses its cool and launches a veritable cloud of Jack O'Lanterns after Miles.
"Shut up shut up SHUT. UP! Filthy spider-freak! DIE!"
They're seconds away from imploding against his back and skull when he glides into a miniscule gap in the intricate sheet of webbing Pavitr gets finished seconds before he rockets through.
"Yo, Gobby!" he yells out.
It happens so fast that it's hard to see, but in the same moment that Miles completes his impossible arch through Pavitr's web, he snags a loose thread of it and drags it with him. The whole thing comes together in an instant to form a tight, dense trampoline of webbing that both catches and holds each and every Jack O'Lantern, like raindrops in a cup, AND shields the members of their team sheltering below.
By the time Miles lands on the floor directly beneath the web, the thing is stretched taut like a slingshot and ready to fly.
"You can have these back, bruh!"
He lets the web go with an almost comical bouncing noise, trampoline-ing the blinking bombs back to their creator with double the speed and force they'd been thrown with. The Hobgoblin, not expecting the rapid turnabout, screamed loud and long as it was subjected to a bombardment of its own making, finally falling off it's board to dissolve into a mess of pixels and color before hitting the ground.
"ENCOUNTER COMPLETED," boomed a digital scorekeeper. "ENEMY SUBDUED. TIME RECORDED: 11 MINUTES AND 47 SECONDS."
Those watching broke into scattered applause as Miles and his friends finally landed and started to enjoy their victory... really, Miles' victory.
"Holy shit, Miles!" Gwen laughed, folding the teen into a joyful embrace that was quickly echoed by the other two. "That was like, so smart!"
"That bloke was barmy bollocks, wan't it?" Hobie agreed, scrubbing a playful noogie through Miles' dark hair. "Good cosmic, mate."
"Impressive, Brooklyn!" Pavitr added, filtering down from the ceiling to complete their little quartet.
Miles pulls his mask up and leans into the attention- Miguel wants to look away from the glowing, proud, beautific look on his face, and can't. "Yall didn't know-?" he starts, and Miguel realizes what he's about to say before his pretty little mouth makes the words.
"-I got mad skills!"
Miguel's world goes cold, and an unpleasant weight settles hard on the back of his neck. The phrase echoes around him like the room has suddenly turned to glass, and he's suddenly, PAINFULLY aware of the knot of nasty, curdled want that blooms in his core.
"I got mad skills!..."
'Don't you know, Viejo? I got mad skills...'
Cum, dripping off Miles' nose, pooling in his cupid's bow, bubbling in the corner of his mouth-...
And just like that, he's hard in his suit. He needs to get out of here before he embarrasses himself beyond repair.
"I have to...I need to go. Something urgent just... the algorithm."
He makes some lame excuse to Peter and avoids everyone's eyes as he retreats from the training module as fast as he can without looking outright suspicious.
He doesn't see Miles watching him go, happy grin slipping from his cheeks as soon as Miguel's back is turned.