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Gwen clambers through Miles’ window with a loud thud. “Hi,” she says breathlessly, tearing off her mask. It’s pouring torrents outside, and there’s already a puddle forming at Gwen’s feet. Her gaze flits to the floor for a moment, and then she winces slightly. “Sorry.”
“Hi,” Miles replies, dumbstruck. (After the Spot, Gwen had been frequenting his Earth more often, sometimes showing up unannounced. Not that he minds it, but it still catches him off guard. It still hurts, just a little bit. But he loves her, so he lets her stay.) “What’s up?” he asks, sliding his headphones off his ears and around his neck.
“Is it okay if I –” She hesitates. Wordlessly, she gestures towards his bed. “Because, y’know. I’m wet.”
Miles nods. “Yeah, I don’t mind. Let me get you a towel.”
He closes the door behind him, leaving Gwen in silence, save for the rain against the windowpane. His universe is a lot more solid. Tangible. His room is awash in dark blue; the lights are off and the skies are gray. His room is well-loved, things strewn everywhere. Open sketchbooks and posters and art supplies. Stuffed animals that have been loved to the point that they’re faded and worn.
(Gwen wonders what it would be like to be loved by him.)
He comes back, carrying a fluffy baby blue towel.
“Are you okay?” he asks, brows furrowed with concern.
“I’m fine,” is all she offers in return, draping the towel around her shoulders as she sits on Miles’ bed.
Miles doesn’t push. It’s what Gwen loves about him. She’s silent for a moment – already knows what he’s thinking. He never asks her, not once, but she knows he’s always wondering. Why are you here? But he lets her toe the line of their friendship, pushing it as far as she can. Taking whatever she can get, a glass half full.
(He just sits next to her, his arm pressed against Gwen’s side and then all that’s there is the weight of unspoken words and the whirring of the heater.)
“I had a dream about you,” she blurts out, and then physically recoils at her bluntness. “Jesus, I don’t know why I said it like that.” A pause. “Um, like, a bad one.”
A bad one? Gwen wants to curl up in a ball and die out of sheer embarrassment. What is she, five?
Miles pulls away, looking at her now. “Yeah?”
Inhale, exhale. “Yeah.” Saying it out loud makes it feel stupid, but she says it anyway: “I keep losing you, in my dreams. And I know it"s not really real, but it feels like it sometimes.” She swallows, eyes averted from Miles’ gaze. “‘S dumb, I know. But I always feel this need to come check on you. Make sure that nothing happened. I dunno.” Gwen dares to meet his eyes, and then tells him – “Plus, I just miss you.”
“Not dumb,” Miles refutes. “I get it. In my dreams, its always you. Or Uncle Aaron, or Peter.”
Gwen reaches out. I’m right here. I’m never leaving you again. She retracts her hand before he notices, arm falling slack at her side, hands in her lap.
“I think about going to your universe to check up on you. Or Peter’s.”
“You could,” Gwen offers. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind.”
Miles shrugs. “Maybe.” With the way he hesitates, Gwen isn’t sure if she’s overstepped.
“I want you around, you know that, right?” Gwen whispers, terrified. She swallows the acrid bile that crawls its way up her throat, nails digging into the lycra of her suit. She’s all cracked open, bleeding heart on Miles’ bedsheets. “I’m not coming around to like . . . try to cope up for what I missed. I can’t fix that. But I’m trying to be better. And I know it’s a lot, to ask you to keep me around.” She tugs the towel around her shoulders tighter, inhaling the scent of detergent.
“You’re not a lot. You’re important to me,” he says simply, all flesh and no skin, raw and petal-tender – like it"s easy. You matter to me, and I love you. An olive branch that extends itself further than it must. “It’s just . . . hard. But you’re my best friend, and I don’t want to lose you.”
Her heart is stuck in her throat, warm and pulsating – she hopes she doesn’t choke. Best friend. She’s treading the thinnest layer of ice; there’s already a hand at her neck threatening to plunge her into the water.
She’s scared to her wit’s end, scared of fucking this up all over again. But he’s right there, and this might just be what Peter would have wanted for her, so. “I don’t know how to not mess things up again.”
“You won’t.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I know you.”
She laughs wetly, eyes stinging. “I’m – I’m not good at making people want to stay.” I’m easily disposable, is what she wants to say.
Miles nudges her. “Well, you’re wrong. I want you to stay.”
Gwen tilts her head, searching his face for something underneath the words, but he’s unguarded.
“Okay,” she acquiesces. “Okay,” she repeats, just to make sure it"s real. Just so he knows that she will because he asked her to. She would do a lot of things, if he asked her to. (It’s almost embarrassing, the way Miles has already snaked his hand into her ribcage and taken a hold of her heart. But she trusts him to take care of it, so she tries to dispel her fears. She lets herself love him.)
“I’m going to make tea,” Miles says, all of a sudden. “We have Earl Gray.” Gwen’s favorite. He wrinkles his nose, and Gwen laughs. The weight of the world has dissipated off of her shoulders, and it’s just Miles-and-Gwen. Gwen-and-Miles.
“You drink berry tea, shut the fuck up.”
“I didn’t say anything!” he argues, but the smugness on his face gives it all away.
“C’mon,” he says, swinging his legs and pushing himself off the bed. Gwen follows him out of his room, and not for the first time, glances at the drawing of the two of them that he has pinned on his wall. She’ll have to give him a copy of her Polaroid.
Trailing behind Miles and entering the kitchen, in the yellow glow of the lamps and thrumming of the heartbeat that makes this apartment a home, Gwen thinks that maybe, in this universe and every other, she doesn’t have to wonder what it would be like to be loved by Miles.
It feels pretty fucking amazing.