Work Text:
Brody had been a substitute teacher for a while when he first met her, had gotten used to moving from school to school, class to class, subject to subject, always new faces, always new troublemakers trying to mess with him, always going with the flow, and of course always new colleagues, most of whom thought of him as even more disposable than the students did. But then he’d met her.
It had been in the teacher’s lounge after a hectic commute, he’d been called in on a short notice, and while trying to get his bearings, Brody had decided to grab himself some coffee, that nectar of life, that lifeline, that one and only perk you had when the lounge was open to you.
“Drinking on the job?” a voice said above his head, and looking up he saw her for the first time, upside down on the ceiling, her hair hanging down in a wild mess, gravity undoing all efforts she may have gone to in taming it. She wore a denim jacket and under it a shirt for some kind of music festival, a white faux-leather belt and then nothing but what nature endowed her with.
It’s not considered indecent to show naked chitin, so only vain Arachne wore anything over theirs. If there was any vanity in her, it wasn’t showing anywhere on that black carapace. Brody found himself staring up at this apparition, who descended even as he looked at it, turned around with a slow, controlled movement, setting her hair in its appropriate relation to gravity again. There was some movement of her chest as well during this reversal, but Brody made a concentrated effort to ignore it. His efforts were in vain.
Getting a better look at her as she descended the last few feet to the floor, he spied that her shirt read “Lunapalooza”. He spied that she had bracelet on her left wrist woven out of spider silk, braided and embroidered with little flower shapes. He spied that she had dimples in her cheeks when she smiled and a few freckles one only saw up close.
She introduced herself as Sari and asked if he came around here often. He mumbled something about just passing through, she laughed and pushed his shoulder a little. Turned out they were both substitutes, detached and getting shuffled around like two jokers in a deck of cards. She said that with those very words and put her fingers to the sides of her mouth to pull it into an appropriate grin. Brody responded with a nervous laughter that was just a little too loud and invited angry looks from the tired regulars who came to the oasis of the lounge to be away from the students and their noise.
Brody took a cup of the foul coffee, but Sari abstained.
“They don’t let me work if I’m under the influence,” she said. “I have to make do with tea.”
“Doesn’t that have the opposite effect from coffee though? Calms a person down rather than perking them up.”
“I’m plenty perky,” Sari said and pushed out her chest, then laughed again. Laugher came easy to her, smiles even easier. When the time came to go to their classrooms, she skittered along the ceiling to avoid the hustle and bustle of the hallways. Brody had to deal with it but found the classroom eventually and spent a hectic few minutes doing a rollcall where the snickers accompanying each answer hinted to him that each student was responding to the wrong name as a joke. Hilarious. But everyone was accounted for, so he let it slide. For that reason, surely. Not because of cowardice and the knowledge he couldn’t do anything about it.
The class went by in a haze. There were others. Every now and again he found himself in the safety of the lounge, and it felt like the only person he could really talk to without being ignored, dismissed or sneered at was Sari, and so he began to seek her out. They were young ronin, wandering the education system without a lord to swear fealty to, offering their services where they were needed, both slowly learning that their idealistic dreams of helping shape the youth of tomorrow were just dreams, but still refusing to wallow in the mire of cynicism the older teachers seemed to, if not flourish, then at least be content in. It was only natural they’d find pleasure in one another’s company.
Chemistry. Maybe that’s what it was. This chemistry pulled them together in the lounge on one very lucky occasion when the place was empty, everyone else either on monitor duty or having lunch in the cafeteria, and finding himself alone with this attractive young woman, Brody found his mind wandering to spidery subjects.
Sooner or later all young men were led by their curiosity to the classics, the famous ones. Brody had seen Louis Theroux’s award-winning The Secret Lives of Arachnophobes and Werner Herzog’s infamous The Sticky Situations of Rudolph Spinner, the scandalous Confessions of a Fly, the humorous The Lucky Number of Legs is Eight and even all 28 parts of Hikkikomori Love Quest: A Comprehensive History by GenoSamuel.
He knew, in other words, how it could be. And he wanted to find out how it was. And staring into Sari’s upside-down eyes as she once again hung around on the ceiling, he thought that maybe she wanted to find out, too. No, he knew she did. It was all down to who made the first move. As a man, he felt he should, and balling his left hand into a nervous fist he hoped to squeeze courage out of thin air.
“Hey, so I had an idea,” Sari said, deflating his efforts.
“Yeah?”
“I was thinking that maybe you’d like to do something naughty.”
He wanted to do all kinds of naughty things, yes.
“Y-yeah?”
He was elegant in his elocution.
“Yeah. And I’ve got an idea I’ve always wanted to try.”
He swallowed.
“And it involves this school building. After hours. You and me.”
“We can’t just stick around here, you know.”
“We can if nobody catches us.”
Brody let out a nervous little laughter.
“I uhh.”
“Mhm. Say yes.”
“Yes,” he said, obediently.
“That’s a good boy. Now here’s my plan: after school, just loiter around,” she said, patting his head in a way that left him feeling like a puppy. “There will be a way up for you when everyone’s gone home.”
Why did she do this? Brody couldn’t say. Why do things happen as they do in dreams? All he knew was that he followed her advice and loitered around the school as the students left, the teachers left, everything was closed and locked up and there he was, loitering around, not sure why. It was that time of year when the sun began to set early, but snows hadn’t arrived yet, and standing around lightly dressed left him shivering a little, yet Brody waited.
A way up, she’d said. So he kept his eyes on the higher floor windows. A way up. Did she mean…?
She did mean. Had meant and had followed through. A window opened on the 4th floor. A strand of web was lowered. He walked up to it. There was a note attached. The note had a stick-figure on it, with an arrow pointing to it, and at the end of that arrow was his name. The note showed a line, with “gossamer” written on it, sideways, and it showed that line wrap around the stick figure’s arm, waist, buttocks and finally leg. He took these as instructions and tried to follow them.
Having wrapped himself, he gave it a tentative tug. Surely Sari didn’t expect him to climb up like this? There’s no way this was safe. But then she pulled, and he was no longer on the ground. Heart in his throat Brody held on to dear life, looked around to see if anyone could see him, but no one did. She was pulling him up fast, must faster than he’d thought possible. Spiders were strong. He wasn’t sure if this thought should worry him or comfort him, hanging high up like this. The strand was so thin, yet it supported his weight easily. Arachne silk had a tensile strength greater than that of steel.
She helped him in through the window, and despite all the ease of his traversal up, she seemed to be short of breath. The window closed and she cleaned her webbing off him.
“Glad you came,” she said, brushing an unsettled lock of hair behind her ear.
“Y-yeah, haha.”
He was a regular Casanova, entering through windows to have a romantic rendezvous. He was not a Cyrano though, wooing women with words. He had to admit this to himself. Sari was looking him up and down and smiling that easy smile of hers.
“I was thinking we’d play a game,” she said.
Brody was game for games, up to a point.
“Oh?”
“Let’s start with you taking off your clothes.”
“Just me? Not you?”
“Not yet.”
“That puts me at a disadvantage.”
“I know.”
“And how’s that a fair game? You still didn’t tell me what kind of game.”
“The name of the game is quicksand. You’ll learn how it works soon enough.”
Brody wanted to say he saw no connection between spiders and quicksand, that the nomenclature was inappropriate in an entirely different manner than what they were about to engage in, but held his tongue, hoping still very much to engage in it. So he undressed, a little awkwardly. He left his underwear and socks on, and Sari bit her lip looking at him.
“Done already?”
“Aren’t I?”
“Off with it. Don’t want you getting your socks dirty, do we?”
He took off his socks.
“The rest, too. Or do you need help with that?”
He didn’t. But he did try to hide his genitalia, which were getting a little excited by all this.
“Fold them all neatly into one pile, please.”
He did. But this took two hands, and hiding his junk was getting much harder. The pile finished, Sari came by and spun a thread into the kind of ribbon you’d put on a wrapped gift.
“I’ll just hold on to these for now,” she said and ran a finger from his cheek down his neck, setting his body quivering like he’d just been tickled.
“Our starting point is this classroom. Most of the doors are locked, but I’ve made sure to unlock one or two on each floor. Just for fun. I’ll start a count to twenty, and you have until I finish to run. Then I will chase. I catch you, and I will impose a penalty.”
“What kind of penalty?”
“Just some restraint on your movement.”
“Wait, restraint?”
“It’s just a game.”
Her hand was touching his arm, tracing its way up from near his elbow to his shoulder to his neck to his cheek, and she kissed his forehead.
“Play along.”
“Okay.”
“Good boy. One.”
“One what?”
“Two,” she said, smiling and licking her lips.
“Oh, you’re counting already?”
“Three.”
Ah shit, the game was on. Brody turned around, scuttled over to the door, opened it and entered the 4th floor hallway, exiting room 416, right in the middle.
Some people had nightmares of showing up at school naked. Brody had never been one of those people, but he was beginning to understand why those dreams were nightmarish. There was nobody around, but he felt exposed. The walls of the institution seemed to be looking at him, judging him. At any moment any door might open, and the full force of institutional power might pour out over him in a tidal wave. His genitals bobbed about freely as he ran, and he felt ridiculous. Public nudity was not a fetish for him.
But he wasn’t really in public now, was he? The space had been reduced into a private one, with just him and Sari in it. And yet he felt exposed. To whom? To her. And he was running so she could chase him. A predator chasing her prey. If he hadn’t been so busy moving, he’d have gotten a proper stiffy at that.
He reached the end of the hallway and entered the stairwell. Down, he’d try the 3rd floor and see if he could find a door there. The main stairwell’s doorways were open portals, not the magical kind. No doors, is what it meant. He entered the 3rd floor hallway and began checking doors. 301, locked. To the other side, 302, locked. 303, locked. 304, locked. He was moving slowly, too slowly.
Far too slowly. Checking each door had left him almost stationary as far as building distance to his pursuer was concerned, and she entered the 3rd floor hallway soon enough, then rushed at him with all the speed eight legs could give her.
“Gotcha!” Sari said, tackling him. She was lighter than her size would imply, light on her many legs, but the force of her arrival was irresistible, and Brody would’ve lost his balance had she not took hold of him and held him up. They kissed for a while, and his body was starting to respond to her, but she broke off and brushed her hair back, looking at the state of him, leaving him feeling terribly conscious of both his nudity and erection, an embarrassing state to be in while the other was fully dressed.
“Time for the first penalty. Ankles or wrists?”
“I…”
Sari’s spinneret quivered, and with that ever-familiar THWIP sound some gossamer emerged, a single strand cut short, which she soon held in her hands, stretched taut.
“The name of the game,” she said, “is quicksand. The more you struggle, the deeper you sink. I’ll do your wrists.”
And she did, faster than Brody could reach shed wrapped a loop around one of his wrists and the gossamer attached to itself without knots, and soon enough both his wrists were connected by that shiny rope. The feeling of it was hard to describe. Anyone who was walked through a spider’s web knows every little bit where it touches their skin, even if it were invisible to their eyes unless catching direct sunlight. It’s this odd aspect of Arachne webbing that he’d been most curious about, the way it seemed to caress you even when not in motion, not letting your sense of touch forget it was in contact with something.
The movements of his arms weren’t that badly limited by it, the gossamer hung limp if he kept his arms in front of him and only pulled taut if he put both arms to his sides, and why would you? Yet the fact that he couldn’t made him want to. The constraint invited challenge.
“Alright, time for round 2. I’m going to count to twenty again. One.”
“Wait, we’re going again?”
“Two.”
Brody looked at his hands. Was this really happening?
“Three.”
Oh. Right.
He dashed up the stairs, not thinking of a destination. Just down one flight, to the landing, down another flight, and he’d already lost the count, how much time did he have? His first escape had left him totally exposed. Trying to find an unlocked door was a fool’s errand, a trap, she knew he’d have to go from door to door in the hallway, and a quick glance from the stairwell would reveal to her instantly if he was on that floor or not. No, he shouldn’t LOOK for an open door. He already knew where it was, didn’t he?
Right where they’d started. 4th floor, room 416. Sari was clever. But how clever was she? Would she know he’d be headed for that door, when he’d run away from it already?
That’s why Brody chose the 2nd floor hallway. If he ran fast enough, he’d reach the other end and be able to enter the other stairwell. His naked feet were silent running; she wouldn’t know if he’d gone up another flight or gone in here. He was sure of it. How much time did he have?
He reached the end of the endless hallway, turned awkwardly at speed and grabbed onto the door to the second stairwell. It was unlocked! Beautiful, beautiful. He only opened the door enough to slip through and pulled it shut as quietly as he could, but in the stairwell the noise still sounded deafening. But would it be loud anywhere else? He looked up. Two floors up meant four landings, in a space where he could not evade her at all if she turned up.
He couldn’t stay still. She must’ve known he’d gone down. So, he went up, reached the 3rd floor and tried to look into the hallway. He only saw a little through the glass door, and had to think of the risks: open it, and make noise, don’t open it, and possibly miss out on an opportunity.
It occurred to him that he wasn’t sure what kind of opportunity he was looking for. The game had no defined end point. Brody couldn’t believe he hadn’t even thought of this before. What were they even doing? She was chasing him, and then what? What would he win if she didn’t catch him? What was the timetable on that? He’d been too excited to question anything.
He chose not to open the door. Upstairs was the safe bet. He reached the final landing before the 4th floor and saw Sari waiting for him up there.
“Hi!”
She jumped. Spiders can jump. For a moment she seemed to cover his entire field of view, and then she was all over him, kissing him again, pinched a nipple and elicited a cry snuffed out by her lips.
“Penalty number two. Ankles this time,” she said, breaking off the kiss.
The length of gossamer she attached to Brody’s ankles was shorter than the first one had been. The length of the strides he could take had been effectively reduced, and there was no way he could run properly without tripping.
“This seems a little unfair,” he said.
“One.”
Shit.
“Two.”
He was moving along. Hobbling along. Walking very fast, but not running, definitely not running.
No point in trying the 3rd floor, no point in even trying the 2nd. He went all the way down to the bottom of the stairwell and entered the 1st floor hallway. There were fewer doors her, fewer options to choose from, fewer chances to be wrong. He chose wrong the first time, and then the stairwell door opened and she rushed him, pinned him against the wall and licked his chest, bit his neck, panted like she’d just run the 100 meter dash, and when they kissed, she bit gently into his lower lip and pulled on it before letting go.
“Penalty number three. Elbows.”
The gossamer looped around the elbows and went around his back, pullet taut so he couldn’t move his elbows from his side. This limited the reach of his hands.
“T-Rex arms,” he said, and giggled a little, nervously, waving his fingers around.
“Yeah, so ferocious. Roar for me!”
He didn’t.
“Still rebellious? Well, whatever. Count of twenty. One.”
He was moving before she finished her last syllable. There was one more play he could pull, one more direction to go, and that was below the 1st floor, and so he made his way to the main stairwell again, went down a single flight of stairs and entered the boys’ changing room. He struggled with the door, struggled to get it shut. Was the time he wasted closing it worth the time he’d win?
He looked to the lockers. They had no locks. He picked one at random, opened it and stepped in, pulled the door shut behind him and tried to calm his breathing. He was invisible now, and all the had to do was keep quiet. He saw the changing room through the slits on the door, and he saw her enter it, saw her hair hanging down as she walked along the ceiling. So silent. A true predator. Until she started talking.
“Where, oh where could my naughty little fly be?” she asked. Brody swallowed. Was she saying something like that out loud just to herself, or was it intended for him to hear? But if it was, then she knew he was within earshot. Of course she knew. How could she not know?
Her legs began to tap on the lockers, one at a time. She seemed to listen after each tap. Could spiders echolocate? He wasn’t sure. What would happen when she tapped his hidey hole? He held his breath. The tap came.
“Oh?”
She opened the door instantly.
“So, you like cramped spaces, huh?”
He did not particularly like them, no. Freedom of movement was becoming increasingly precious to him, but it was that freedom he knew he would lose. Before he could say anything, she’s bodily pulled him out of the space she herself couldn’t fit and resumed another round of oral exploration of him, tasting him, leaving more bite marks.
“Fifth penalty. Now, what do we do, what do we do?”
She added a strand between the one connecting his ankles and the one connecting his wrists, one so short he had to bend his back a little to give it slack. The pose was not conducive to quick running.
“Let’s go for round six, then. Count of twenty. One.”
“Don’t I get a longer start since I’m moving slower?”
“Two.”
Guess not. Brody rushed out of the locker room by the nearest door, which took him into the gym.
This was a dead end. The only doors here led to the other locker room – the one for girls – and to the storage room.
One was a dead end, the other would provide a potential exit. The choice was obvious, and so that choice must’ve been a trap.
How paranoid he was becoming! Was Sari truly so devious a mind? Brody, even as he hobbled along with his small steps, found himself at a loss. He couldn’t move fast enough to try both doors, not when she knew he was in here. He chose the nearer door, the girl’s changing room.
Locked. Of course. He turned around, and saw her, arms crossed, approaching slowly, with all the time in the world. Had it truly been to a count of 20 already? It seemed impossible. He’d hardly gotten anywhere.
“Make it fun,” she said. “Let me chase you. I’ll count to 20 again, and if you can avoid me until then, I might let you off the hook.”
The gym floor was big, and there were no obstacles. Nothing to keep her from reaching him, nothing to keep him from evading her but his inability to move. What was the point of running at this point?
“One.”
He moved, slowly, backing away. She was coming closer to him at a leisurely pace, relishing the freedom of movement eight unbound legs gave her. Her face was flushed from the chase, but not because of exertion; she was aroused.
“Two,” she breathed out, picking up the pace. And so it went, three and four and five and so on, and no matter how he tried, it was impossible to keep away, the distance kept getting shorter, his best attempts at feints and sidesteps were easily undone, and then she caught him in a hug.
“Game over, flyboy,” she whispered, licking his face, licking his ear, nibbling on it. his hands reached to her waist, felt her warmth through her clothes. He was ready to end the game. He was very ready to end the game. But she, apparently, wasn’t.
“Just one more penalty,” she said, and with irresistible force pinned him down on the floor.
“Hey!” he tried to protest, his boner pressing into the floor where countless sneakers had run, squeaking.
“Don’t be nervous,” Sari cooed, “I’ll even let you be on top.”
And she did, but there was a nuance. Brody found himself suspended from the ceiling in his hogtied position, facing down, where Sari wove herself a sort of hammock.
“See? Missionary,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him close for another kiss. The earth may have moved, but it was too far for Brody to tell. Her legs were all over him, poking at him in unexpected ways, to no rhythm he could discover, all eight taking their turn by some hidden order he couldn’t guess at, each poke sending him slightly swinging. Her hands played along his chest, his sides, reached down to his hips to find what they knew would be there at full attention, defying gravity in an attempt to point up even when it should’ve been pulled straight down, and her touch set him aquiver.
She started undressing what little there was left to cover her human parts, dexterously finding the hook of her bra and freeing her breasts from their lilac prison.
“Hm? You’re a little far...”
She knew this already; she’d decided on the distance. There was nothing Brody could do about it, no way to change his elevation.
“No helping it, I’ll have to come up.”
Her legs, her so many, many legs, wrapped around Brody’s body and reached up to the single strand he was hanging from. He couldn’t see what was happening above his back, but based on Sari’s movements, it seemed she was wrapping the gossamer around her legs. Then she relaxed, and they were both hanging by the same single thread, thin as a hair. Her breasts were pressing against his chest now, her belly against his. The web hammock hung back below them.
“Tensile strength,” Sari whispered, kissing his cheek. “I could haul a piano up here and we could make love on top of it, and all that on. Just. One. Thread.”
Each punctuation a strong wet smack of her lips against his cheek, his neck, his lips. He felt himself pressing against her slit, the lips below as wet as those above. Brody tried to wiggle his hips to gain entry but slipped off. She giggled at this, hugged him tight with one arm and began wrapping her silk around his shaft with the other, wrapped the tip even, and so he was equipped with a condom that felt like heaven.
They made love like that. He could wiggle a little, he could touch her waist, feel the smoothness of her carapace, feel the place where it met her human skin, grab her hips, but that was about it. When she wasn’t kissing him, she’d arch her head back and bury his face in her breasts, and he did his best to give her nipples some of the same attention she’d earlier give him, and she moaned with his teeth met her, and her nails dug into his back, and when she came she bit him back again, and when he came she cooed and said many sweet things while petting his head, and for a while he hung limp while she changed her position, took off his web-condom and began to fellate him, and though he tried to protest she didn’t care, she licked his shaft, making him curl his toes, and kissed the tip of him, making him arch his back in an attempt to escape, but of course he couldn’t, and he came again soon enough. They were slick with sweat and both breathing like mountain climbers by then, but when Sari was caressing his thighs in the most pleasant way, there was a noise, a door opened. Sari covered his mouth with her hand, and they held perfectly still. The lights were turned on. Two Goblins in blue coveralls entered the room with carts full of cleaning equipment, and they began to wash the floor.
“Time to vacate the premises,” Sari whispered.
It took some doing to reacquire all their clothes and get the webbing off them, but by the time both were dressed again, the custodial staff was still hard at work, listening to music on their headphones and singing along.
“How do we sneak out?” Brody asked, his voice barely audible even to himself.
“We wait.”
So, they waited. And waiting in that hammock, what else would they do but resume making out? The custodial staff had left and turned off the lights at some point, and they hadn’t even noticed when it happened. They exited the building very carefully, playing a different kind of game altogether, and having made it out and left the school grounds, they kissed again under the evening sky, where stars already greeted them, cheering them on.
“I won’t be here tomorrow,” Brody said. What he left unsaid was the harsher truth: that she wouldn’t be either, that the two of them would be going to different schools, with no guarantee the two jokers would be dealt into the same hand ever again.
“Let’s exchange numbers, then.”
She always knew what to say.