I don't own the GMW characters. Any mistakes, however, are mine. Hope you enjoy it!

"Eeeeeek!"

Maya's ear-piercing shriek nearly makes Lucas upset the pot of pasta cooking on the stove. Moments later, Maya comes running into the kitchen carrying eight month old Austin, who's bouncing and gurgling with laughter.

"Maya, what happened?"

"It's huge! Get rid of it! Get rid of it!" Maya runs behind him and begins pushing him towards the kitchen door. "I don't care if you shoo it away or kill it, just get rid of it!"

"Aww, did a big bad monster frighten mommy?" Lucas gets into the spirit of the game, tickling his son to make him laugh even more. "Well, daddy's going to go defeat it!" He smacks a loud kiss on Austin's cheek and heads out of the room.

There's a loud yell, and three seconds later, Lucas sprints back in with a speed he hasn't had to use since he last played baseball in college. "Maya, what the hell!"

"Language, Huckleberry!" Maya admonishes him, laughing inside because it's usually Lucas being Lucas-the-Good and reminding her not to swear around Austin. "Why are you here, and why are you not dealing with the monster currently in our living room?"

"Because it's a monster!" Lucas shudders. "Did you not see the size of that thing? It's as big as Tombstone the bull!" He shudders again.

"You rode Tombstone!" Maya stares at him exasperated. "And you're afraid of sheep! Are you telling me you're afraid of spiders too?"

"I'm not afraid of sheep! Just spiders!"

"Why didn't I know this before I married you?"

"It's not like I was going to include a promise in our wedding vows to protect you from them!" Lucas defends himself. "Besides, did you really think I was going to give you more ammunition to make fun of me?"

"Do I ever run out of ammuni— Wait a minute! Is this why you don't like Spiderman?!"

"I don't not like Spiderman, I just…. like Batman better, okay?"

"Huckleberry, you threw away the Spiderman onesie your Aunt Vivian sent for Austin!" Maya smothers a laugh. "And is this why Farkle took down that big stuffed spider Mr. Matthews hung from the ceiling in class for Halloween back in high school?"

"Don't remind me!" Lucas shivers at the memory. "I had to bribe him with a lifetime's supply of Grandma Mabel's butter pecan cookies to keep him quiet about it."

"That's why we're never supposed to mention when we get a parcel from her?"

"I hid the latest batch of cookies in the box of Austin's baby food, so don't open it when Farkle's around!"

"My my, Ranger Rick, I'm impressed!" Maya stares at him in admiration. "Not such a Moral Compass anymore. I finally rubbed off on you!"

He leers at her suggestively in response, so she punches his arm, because that is not what she meant, dirty boy. "Well, what are we going to do now, Ranger Rick?" she asks, hitching Austin higher up on her hip as she eyes the gap under the kitchen door. "I refuse to stay trapped in here forever just because you're being such a baby."

"You go deal with it then!"

They glare at each other, silently daring the other one to tackle the problem.

"This is silly." Lucas squares his shoulders and takes a deep breath. "One of us should just—"

Any brave and noble intentions even vaguely being contemplated are dashed the moment Austin points to the gap beneath the kitchen door and says, "Boo!"

Two loud screams rent the air. Mere seconds later, Maya has clambered up on the kitchen counter while Lucas is standing on the dining table. Secure in his mother's arms, Austin breaks out into deep belly laughs at his parents' new game.

They stare at the huge spider on the floor, blocking off their only exit from the kitchen.

"Huckleberry, do something!"

"I'm calling for help!"

"You can come out now."

Zay watches, amused, as Lucas sticks his head out of the door of their bedroom, where he and Maya had barricaded themselves in with Austin an hour ago.

"I got it." Farkle excitedly raises a large clear plastic square box with small holes in the lid, and Lucas can see the huge spider in it. He grimaces, but emerges from the bedroom. Maya, carrying Austin, sticks close behind him. They edge into the living room but stop a good distance away from their genius friend.

"Are you sure it's safe?" Maya's eyes dart around the floors, the walls, the furniture (a lot of which has been moved around and hasn't been put back properly in its original position), as she scans the room, pointedly keeping her eyes away from the case in Farkle's hand.

"It's perfectly fine! I don't understand how you're scared of spiders, Maya. You didn't used to be in middle school."

Lucas turns to Maya. "What?"

"Yeah," Farkle continues, staring lovingly at the spider like he's been reunited with his firstborn, oblivious to the fact that, behind him, Lucas is staring at Maya in disbelief, and Maya is looking daggers at him. "When I was trying to decide whether to take Riley or Maya with me to the Buggie Awards, Maya almost won me over with an Arizona blonde tarantula. But then it bit off the head of my Orange Dancing spider."

"Yikes!"

Lucas turns pale while Zay eyes the huge arachnid with new respect.

"Oh, don't worry, I didn't go alone," Farkle's attention is still entirely on the spider, and so he mistakes his two friends' alarm for concern. "Maya and Riley both turned up to support me at the awards ceremony."

Zay rolls his eyes and turns to Maya. "So you didn't used to be afraid of spiders before, but you are now?"

"Pfft no!" Maya looks at him like he's crazy. "I just don't want Austin to see it and get frightened."

"Sure," says Zay, voice dripping with sarcasm. "That's why we found you and Lucas cowering on the kitchen counter, while Hucklebaby here—" he gestures to Austin, who is squirming in Maya's arms, leaning out dangerously as he tries to get a closer look at the big furry slow-moving animal in Uncle Farkle's hands, "— is doing that."

"Oh, and who ran out of Topanga's screaming his head off the day a sparrow accidentally got in?" Lucas smirks.

"Hey, birds are creepy!"

"Not as creepy as spiders." Maya struggles to gather a flailing Austin, who has now begun to make cranky noises of protest.

"Yeah," Lucas adds vehemently, "They're huge and disgusting and hairy and the way they move is just downright… creepy. Ugh!"

"Yeah! Eight legs is too many legs!"

"Caterpillars and centipedes have more," Farkle points out, hugging the plastic case close to his chest and earning glares from the Friars (except the youngest, who's now sniffling and chewing on his mother's hair). "And you're a cop, Freakface, you take on dangerous criminals and everything. How are you afraid of spiders? How are you not going Texas Lucas on them?"

"It's a traumatizing story that I have no plans of reliving."

"For real, though, does that even happen?" Zay wonders. "Can you become afraid of something that you weren't afraid of before?"

"Well, phobias can be acquired through classical conditioning and associative learning, but I've never heard of…." Farkle notices Maya's scowl. "Actually, I'm sure there's a perfectly good scientific explanation to it. In fact, I'm going to go research it right now."

"You do that, Dr. Farklestein."

"Anyway, why did you need me here?" Zay asks Lucas. "Because Izzy and I were baking cookies at home, and you said it was a matter of life and death—"

"You clearly saw that it was!"

"And is baking cookies a euphemism for s-e-x, 'cause we really didn't need to know that, Zay." Maya crinkles her nose.

"Speaking of cookies," Farkle interjects, "I found your stash from Grandma Mabel. Nice try hiding them from the guy who saved you from this huge friggin spider!" He raises the box and shakes it a bit, causing Lucas and Maya to back up a few paces.

"Language, Farkle! And I– uhh– I was saving them for you." Lucas says, trying to look as innocently St. Huckleberry-like as possible.

"Hey, you didn't tell me you found them! I want one!"

"Back off, those are mine! Besides, you have your own cookies at home!"

"Okay, not a euphemism for sex."

"She's six months pregnant, we're having neither sex nor euphemisms," Zay sighs mournfully. "And the cookies were almost done when you called me for your stupid spider emergency, so she's probably eaten them all by now."

"What kind of cookies?"

"Grandma Gandy's secret recipe that she shared with us as a wedding gift."

"She's six months pregnant, she deserves to eat all those cookies by herself if she wants," Maya says drily.

Farkle pats Zay's arm in sympathy. Lucas takes one look at Maya's raised eyebrow and wisely refrains.

"You have our emergency spare key, so we needed you to let Farkle in," he explains, trying not to sound apologetic even though he truly sympathises with his best friend. Grandma Gandy's cookies are as good as his own Grandma Mabel's cookies, not that he'd tell either grandma that! "And then we needed you to help him move all the furniture to check behind everything to find the damn thing!"

"You did check to see that there aren't any more of those lurking around, right?" Maya presses close to Lucas as she scans the room again fearfully.

"We did, we did," Farkle assures her. "But don't worry. This was the only one missing from my specimen bag after I left here yesterday so—"

He cuts himself off when he realizes what he's revealed.

The other three regard him with varying degrees of horror and threat.

"This thing is yours?"

"You had more of these things in your bag in my house?

"You're the reason I don't have any cookies?"

"Uhhh," Farkle edges back a bit when he sees the expressions on his friends' faces. "So this is Wriggly. His mom is Angie, the Arizona blonde tarantula Maya gave me in middle school… aaaand you don't really care, so I should really get him home now…" He begins hedging towards the front door.

Zay growls.

"Run Farkle!"

Farkle's already out of the door.

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