Weekday evenings at the Spider Society headquarters were surprisingly quiet. The only spiders that lingered were the ones who tended to stay overnight, like Miguel, except he hardly ever slept. Jess would often reprimand him for pulling consecutive all nighters, but his excuse was always the same.
The multiverse never slept.
If he wanted to sleep, he would, but not for long. There were plenty of spaces where he could rest in HQ; the couch in his office, any of the dorms that were available. Yet he sat in his seat, on the platform in his office, surrounded by orange holographic monitors.
He was still in his spider suit, fingers threaded underneath his chin as he skimmed through mission reports. He wore his perpetual scowl, waving his hand to swipe to the next report.
“Lyla, where’s the mission report on the Vulture?”
The A.I assistant glitched into existence just shy of his face, kicked back on some invisible lounge.
“That was already archived.” She replied, her chin resting comfortably on her palm.
Miguel wordlessly swiped a hand to clear the monitor in front of him, then jerked two fingers up to pull up the archives and sift through them.
“It’s not here.” He said, jaw ticking in mild annoyance.
“That’s because it’s not there.” She replied in a singsong tone as she glitched out and back in, this time appearing across his screen, wearing a lazy grin.
His upper lip curled, exposing the tips of his fangs and wrinkling his nose as he huffed.
“Lyla…” He sighed out, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Relax, it’s in the library archives-“
“Why is it in there?!”
“I did some spring cleaning, a girl needs some space okay?”
Miguel took in a deep breath as he gripped the edge of his desk, the metal slightly denting underneath his hands as he reined in whatever Spanish expletives he was ready to hurl at her. Slowly, he released the breath, crimson eyes snapping up to glare at her.
“Oh, you’re getting better at that.” Lyla smirked in regards to his apparent self control.
“I’m going to walk away from this conversation…” He muttered, pushing away from his desk.
“See? Good job Miggy!”
He growled and swung off of his platform, before stomping out of his office and down the various weaving corridors- why the fuck were there so many?!- before slamming his hand over the scanner at the library’s entrance.
It was quiet inside, as it should always be, and he didn’t expect anyone to be there at such a late hour. So when he sped walked through the seemingly endless rows of bookshelves to get to the file room, a snoozing Gwen gave him a pause.
The girl was slumped over one of the desks, homework spread out on it and under her cheek. She was still in her spider suit, her mask was left on the desk beside her and her hoodie was pulled over her head. It looked like she passed out halfway through a math problem because her pencil was still clutched loosely in her hand.
Miguel sneered at the sight, and was just about ready to shake her awake and tell her to get her ass to bed, but a certain detail about her pencil had him rearing back as if he had been burned.
It was a mechanical pencil, pink with pastel blue stars and right where the eraser should have been was a rubber cap in the shape of a cat.
Gabi had one just like it.
He dragged a hand down his face and turned away to lean against a bookshelf. A shuddering exhale threatened to ruin his composure as late night homework sessions flooded his memory.
-
“If Johnny has sixteen apples and sells them for five dollars each-“ Miguel’s face scrunched up as he tilted his reading glasses down and drew the paper closer to his face.
“Mierda, ¿cinco dólares por una manzana? Eso es una estafa por dios.”
“Papá…” Gabriella groaned exasperatedly and tapped at the paper with her pencil, the rubber cat shaped cap thwacking at the flimsy material.
“Focus!”
“Okay, mi vida, sorry.” Her father chuckled, waving her pencil away so he could continue reading the problem.
“If Johnny has sixteen apples and sells them for five dollars each to his friend Sally,” As he read, he draped an arm around the back of her chair and held the paper closer for her to read the problem along with him.
“How many dollars will Sally have to give him?”
Gabi picked at her bottom lip as she skimmed the math problem over again, then looked down at her fingers, her pencil balanced between two of them.
“No sabo-“
“No sé.”
“No sè, pa,” she pouted, dropping her hands over her notebook.
“Multiplícalo querida, ¿recuerdas cómo?”
She hummed and began scribbling on a fresh page in her notebook. Miguel leaned over her to assist with any mistakes along the way. Eventually, after a lot of finger counting and tally marking, she came up with her answer.
“Eighty dollars!”
“Muy bien, pequeña.”
-
He would’ve torn the bookshelf apart if it weren’t for the fact that Gwen was asleep.
Rubbing his palm over his forehead, Miguel forced himself to breathe before he faced her again.
Sometimes he forgot that she was still a kid- all of them really. Gwen, Hobie, Miles, Pavitr, Peni- even Margo for fuck sake.
At times, when he’s left alone with his thoughts, he feels a little guilty for pushing them so hard. He was convinced that it was for their own good- it was- and he knew he had to work on his…issues, but he couldn’t help but wonder what Gabi would have thought.
If she could see her father now, clinging on to intangible memories, his patience waned down to a single thread, prone to lashing out at anyone and anything.
If he was truly honest, he didn’t even recognize himself anymore.
He wondered if his baby girl would be angry with him, or worse, disappointed.
Somewhere above him, a clock ticked, and Gabi’s resting form dissolved into Gwen’s. He wanted to scream, hurl something at a wall and then cry until his head throbbed.
But he grabbed Gwen’s backpack instead and set it on the seat beside her. Quietly, he collected her homework, stashing the papers in her folder with care. He plucked her pencil out of her grip with a trembling hand and put that away in one of the more obvious pockets. Then he zipped her bag up and slung it over his shoulder.
Miguel considered waking her once more, but the thought of having to go through an awkward interaction with the girl had him shooting down the idea once again.
Instead he leaned down to gently scoop her out of her seat, straightening out her head so that it leaned against his shoulder instead of lolling around while he carried her. He swiped her mask from the desk and briskly made his way out of the library, the Vulture report long forgotten.
The older spider mentally prayed- frantically- that no one was lingering around or up to happen to stumble upon him. That was another interaction he didn’t think he was prepared to handle correctly.
He used her watch to find which dorm she had been using and scanned it to enter. With a kid as expressive as she was, he was surprised to find that the walls were it’s usual blank white.
Granted, she didn’t have much on her, just what she could grab between hops to school back in her universe without her father finding her. He knew it couldn’t be anything compared to home. Her backpack was dropped in a desk chair by the door and her mask was left on the nightstand, then he approached the bed, pulling the duvet back so he could lower her onto the mattress.
Her head slipped from her shoulder and her body tensed in his arms. Miguel froze, eyes widening in horror.
“Mm?”
He held a hand at the back of her head and lowered it onto the pillows, then risked a glance. Her brows were furrowed, eyes still shut as her pupils moved sporadically underneath her lids.
“Duermete, pequña araña.” He muttered, hand still wedged between her head and the pillow.
A beat later, Gwen sighed and her body slumped into the mattress. A wave of relief washed over him as he pulled his hand away and draped the duvet over her.
He didn’t waste anymore time flipping the light switch off and hightailing it out of there like the devil himself was chasing him.
-
BONUS: The Morning After
Gwen yawned into the sleeve of her sweater and wiped the tears that pricked at the corners of her eyes. Her neck twinged at the movement, she groaned and rubbed at it
“You alright?” Hobie asked from behind her as they stood in line for breakfast at headquarter’s cafeteria.
“Yeah…” she hummed, watching Peni peer at the breakfast foods from where she sat on Sp//dr.
“The beds here aren’t very comfortable I guess.” The blonde replied with a shrug.
“Here’s what the capitalists don’t want you to know about mattresses,” Hobie explained as he spread his hands out, palms facing downwards.
“It’s all a money laundering operation-“
“Or the desks at the library aren’t made for sleeping. It’s bad for your posture.”
They both nearly jumped out of their skin when they suddenly heard Miguel’s voice from behind them- well, mostly Gwen.
“Jesus Miguel!”
“Someone should put a bell on this bloke.”
Miguel leveled them both with a bored expression as he grabbed a cafeteria tray from one of the various racks.
“What about the library?” Gwen asked once she milled over his words.
“What?”
“What do you mean what? How do you know I was at the library last night?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s a debriefing in my office in thirty, you two pests better show your faces.”
His reply was flippant, his poker face unwavering as he brushed past them to grab his breakfast.
Gwen watched him leave with narrowed eyes. Her confusion slowly melted away as the gears turned in her head, putting two and two together. Then her face went alight with pure embarrassment.
“Oh God.”
Hobie hummed and jerked a finger gun at her, “God has long abandoned us, Gwendolyn.”