Chapter 5
Miguel swiped aimlessly through a few dozen screens, half-heartedly looking for the design of a quantum manipulator he’d created a few weeks ago, until Lyla’s voice startled him out of his trance.
“You missed it,” Lyla said, amusement clear in her voice.
“Missed it? Where?” Miguel asked, hurriedly swiping back through the holograms, fully awake now.
Lyla pulled it up for him but held it just out of his reach, smirking. “Who were ya thinkin’ about? Was it peanut butter?”
The last two words were said in a conspiratorial whisper as she leaned closer, as if that would do anything to close the gap of several feet between them.
Miguel sighed, exasperated, and glared at her, pulling up a copy of the screen she was holding onto. “I told you not to call him that. And no, I was not thinking about him.”
Lyla looked at him appraisingly. “I think you were.”
Raising an eyebrow, Miguel didn’t deem that to be worthy of a verbal answer. Instead, he focused on the display in front of him, pulling the design out and spinning it around, examining his past work. He frowned, unhappy with what he found. It had been a lazy piece of work, one that he had clearly done when he was tired. It would have to be completely reworked, and that would have to wait for the morning.
Which meant he would have to find something else to do tonight. There was something he needed to do, but he couldn’t quite remember what it was. It floated on the edge of his conscious mind, and he sighed, frustrated, as he couldn’t remember.
Lyla floated up to him, lying on her back. She settled right next to his ear before he noticed, and said, “Maybe you should go home early tonight, boss.”
He stifled his instinct to jump away from the noise, instead taking a measured step backwards and scowling at her.
“There are too many things to do. Besides, what would I do at home?”
Lyla flipped through the different selections of shows she could watch on a holographic tablet hovering above her face. “I dunno, sleep?”
Miguel scoffed, turning back to his work table. “Pavitr’s dimension is collapsing, Spot is on the loose, there are innumerable other anomalies scattered around worlds they’re not supposed to be in-”
“-You’re involved in a situationship with Peter B. Parker,” Lyla interrupted, in a mimic of Miguel's contemptuous tone. She looked amused at the surprised look on his face. “Oh, please. You’ve practically written it across the walls. I think the whole spider society knows by now.”
“It is not a situationship.”
“I’m sure it's not. But maybe you ought to go home early today and figure out what’s going on with your not-a-situationship situationship.”
Miguel glowered at her. “You’re not going to let this go until I go home, are you?”
Lyla grinned. “Absolutely not.”
When he swung up to the door to his apartment, he had to stop and dig through his pockets and his bag to find his key. When he finally pulled it out of the bottom of a pocket, it was wrapped in a yellow bow and had a childish smiley face with its tongue sticking out drawn on it. Lyla’s work, very clearly.
He muttered some not so nice things about the AI to himself as he fit the key into the lock and pushed open the door. Slamming it closed, he thought that listening to Lyla and coming back to his apartment was one of the worst mistakes of his life.
Everything was covered in a fine layer of dust. Not very much, but just enough to indicate that it had been too long since he had been back here. He wandered into his bedroom, feeling very much like a stranger in his own home, and picked up one of the framed photos from his bedside table.
Very gently, he wiped the dust off of Gabriella’s face. He did the same with Gabriel’s, and set both photos gently back on the table.
The bed creaked as he sat down on it, which annoyed him. If it kept creaking, he’d have to replace it. He allowed himself to fall backwards, laying with his torso and upper legs on the bed, his lower legs hanging off.
Maybe he would take Lyla’s advice, he thought, as a wave of exhaustion rolled over him. The thought quickly left his mind as his stomach growled. Usually, he would’ve eaten a late dinner at work, but he’d left too early for that. As he hauled himself onto his feet, he wondered if there was anything edible left in his fridge.
Padding through the dim hallway on bare feet, he stumbled over a wayward cord on the ground, cursing softly. He made his way to the kitchen, and found the fridge empty, which could’ve been a blessing or a curse. Thankfully, there were some microwaveable meals in the pantry, and he blindly chose one to make.
The smell of the store bought enchilada reminded him painfully of Peter.
God, Peter. He had barely thought about Peter all day, which was mostly on purpose. Now, though, with the food steaming in front of him, he remembered exactly why he had been in such a bad mood earlier.
Peter had the capability to convince Miguel to do things that he would usually never agree to do. Usually, Peter accomplished this by asking him so many times that it became easier to say yes than to repeat the word no.
As usual, this was one of those times.
“Oh, c’mon, Mig, it’ll be fun!” Peter grinned at him, and Miguel had a hard time deciding whether he wanted to smack him or kiss him to shut him up. Looking at the time, he decided on smack.
“It is the middle of the night,” Miguel growled. “Nothing will be open. And I have work to do.”
“The work can wait. It’ll be there in the morning, but you’ll never again have the chance to eat takeout nachos with me on-” He paused to check the date on his phone, “-August eighth!”
Miguel scowled at him. Peter had been bugging him about these goddamn nachos for several hours now. “Y’know what? I’ll make you a deal. You go get the nachos and bring them back here and I’ll eat them with you.”
Peter had jumped at the opportunity, and it had provided Miguel with the twenty minutes of peace and quiet he needed to finish what he was working on. He decided to take a breath of fresh air out on the balcony above his workshop, and that was where Peter found him.
Peter almost fell on the landing, and Miguel had to stifle a laugh at the way he had precariously balanced four large takeout boxes on one hand.
“I thought you were just getting nachos.”
Peter glanced at the boxes. “They had some other stuff that looked good, so I got that too. Do you want to eat out here? It’s nice out. And you don’t get outside enough. Even though it's the middle of the night, the moonlight probably gives you some kind of healthy vitamin.”
Miguel was too tired to argue the point, but he did feel the need to point out the obvious. “There are no tables or chairs out here.”
“Then we can sit on the floor!” Peter’s smile was still so wide that it looked as if it would tear his face in half.
Peter crouched and began to array the boxes, gently opening them up. Miguel had to admit that the food did look good. When Peter glanced back up at him and raised an eyebrow, Miguel realized that he had been staring for far longer than was acceptable.
He looked away, embarrassed. “Why are you so excited to eat takeout food in the middle of the night while sitting on the floor?”
Peter chuckled. “I’m excited to do anything with you, Miguel.”
What? There was no way Miguel could have misunderstood that. Peter was definitely flirting with him.
The next question was out of his mouth before he realized he was asking it. “Why?”
Standing, Peter raised a gentle, questioning eyebrow at him. “What do you mean, why? I like hanging out with you.”
“I’m not very easy to hang out with.” The last three words were said derisively, but Peter seemed to understand that it wasn’t real anger.
“I like being around you, Miguel.”
Miguel had no answer for that. He didn’t have a snarky comment, or a heartfelt response. All he did was stand there, stupefied, and stare at Peter.
“And I would hope,” Peter continued, “That you like being around me, too. Otherwise, this would be pretty awkward.”
He smiled in a slightly self-deprecating way, keeping his gaze fixed on Miguel for a moment later before clearing his throat and turning back to the food.
“I do,” Miguel blurted, before he could think too much about it. “I do like being around you. You make the day more interesting.”
Peter turned back around, his smile now genuine again. “You mean that?”
Miguel nodded, not able to hold his gaze.
An awkward silence fell, and Miguel glanced back to find Peter staring at him, almost transfixed. Miguel tilted his head to the side, unsure of what had happened. Usually, Peter was very talkative. Had he said something wrong?
“Can I kiss you?” Peter posed the question without an ounce of embarrassment. He didn’t look away as he said it, nor did he flinch when Miguel simply stared at him without offering a response.
For the first time in his life, Peter didn’t talk too much. Instead of filling Miguel’s silence with words of his own, he let it sit in the air, letting Miguel think.
Miguel glanced away, before looking back, his eyes skimming over Peter’s face and settling on his mouth. “Yes.”
Before he had time to take another breath, Peter had closed the distance between them and kissed him. Miguel’s hand reached up to rest gently on the back of Peter’s head, the shorter man’s hair tickling his palm and the pads of his fingers.
It wasn’t a rough kiss, nor a sloppy one. It was exploratory, cautious. Neither of the two wanted to push it too far. When they finally broke apart for a breath of air, Peter stepped away. He stared at Miguel, wide-eyed. Neither of them said anything for a long moment. When Miguel finally opened his mouth to break the silence, Peter beat him to it.
“I’m-I’m sorry. I’ve gotta go, I can’t-” He took rushed steps backwards, unwilling or unable to look Miguel in the face. “I’m sorry.”
Peter turned, taking a step off of the edge of the building.
“What?” Miguel asked. The confusion and hurt in his voice were clear, and it made him wince to hear his own vulnerability. “Peter? Peter!”
He called Peter’s name a third time as he watched the man swing around a corner and out of sight. Taking a step backwards, he felt the solid wall of the building at his back. He sank down onto his haunches, wondering what the hell just happened.
The food was still sitting how Peter had left it, a few feet from the edge of the balcony. After a minute of silent contemplation, Miguel threw himself to his feet and, one by one, kicked each box off the edge.
It didn’t make him feel any better.
Nothing about this situation made sense. Peter had been the one to ask him. Miguel ran a hand over his lips. Had he done something wrong? Had he somehow fucked up a years long friendship by letting Peter kiss him?
He sat down on the edge of the balcony, letting his legs dangle over the open air. Running a hand through his hair, he was unsure whether he wanted to kick himself or Peter more.
Nothing about this was right. It didn’t make sense. Miguel’s problems were supposed to be understandable. Succinct. Maybe they weren’t easy to solve, but they always had possible solutions. And even if those didn’t work, they had explanations.
They had explanations. This had nothing. This was a tangled mess of emotions, emotions that Miguel didn’t care to sort out.
He stood and made his way back inside, standing in front of his work table. He had shut it off when he’d gone outside to wait for Peter.
Now, he turned it back on, pulling up an incomplete design for a new watch. He examined it for a minute without touching the screen. Then he began to work.