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milimeters-morales · 7 months ago

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chapter 2 of my transfem miles fic under the readmore, and our fav spidey's undiagnosed anxiety disorder is more prevalent here too

Chapter One / Chapter Three / Chapter Four / Chapter 5 / Chap 6 / Chap 7 / Chap 8 / Chap 9

Wordcount: 4k+

Warnings: Piercing ears, but nothing graphic, just Miles being sensitive to the pain.

Gwen places a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, take a deep breath, it’ll be over before you know it,” she tells him in a calm and soft voice. “The worst part will be the itching. That’s it.”

“But what if-”

“Whatever your brain is telling you will happen is 100 times worse than what could happen. Lay it on me, lighting round style,” she moves to grab the needle and sits next to him on her bed, “and then we’ll do a countdown.”

“What if my earlobe rips?” He asks.

“That won’t happen, the earring isn’t strong enough, and your body is extra durable from our powers.” She answers easily, turning the earring in her fingers.

“What if I toss in my sleep, and pierce my face or neck? What if the holes close up from that too?” His fingers start to stick to his jeans, and he tightens his fist against the material. The scratch makes him focus on his leg rather than Gwen cleaning the needle.

Gwen frowns and nudges his leg with her foot a bit roughly. “Well, that won’t happen as long as you keep the backs on, and if that ever did, you’d feel it enough to wake up and handle it. It’ll heal up nice and easy, and you could take medicine for the pain if you get a headache. If the earrings come out completely, and the holes close, we can just do this again.”

Miles tries to get his thoughts in order to ask his final question. He turns to her and meets her eyes. “It’s… it won’t be stupid-looking, right?”

Gwen smiles, the warmth flooding her features and the colors of her room, and says, “Miles, you are literally one of the only people who I can say, with my whole heart: you could rock any piercing. We’re going to be using some different earrings that I know how to clean though, these look really expensive and I can’t really tell what they're made of.”

She finishes cleaning her needle and grabs the earrings she intends to use. “Ready? Three,”

“ SSS —” Miles sucks in a breath through his teeth as a sharp stinging pain hits him, “hhuhh…”

“Does it still hurt?” Gwen asks.

“About an eight out of ten… I thought you said you were doing a countdown.” He grumbles, roughly gripping his wrist to stop his hand from reaching up and cupping his throbbing ear.

“Yeah, but then you’d be too tense. Sorry.” She admits a bit sheepishly. “I really didn’t think it’d hurt that bad. I’ll numb your other ear with some ice.”

Gwen gets up and leaves the room, presumably heading to the kitchen.

Won’t that mess up the marker, he wants to point out, but he really just wants to rest his head on something cold. He can probably use the ice when she’s done and put it on his forehead or something. Would Ganke like it? How’s he even going to explain this to his parents?

What is he talking about— he’s worrying about nothing again. Both Uncle Aaron and his dad had pierced ears when they were kids, and his mom wears earrings almost every day, and Ganke literally has double piercings in each ear. Stop it, Morales.

He will need to explain how Gwen pierced his ears, though. He can always just lie about that, say she dragged him to an actual professional and paid for it. Or he can pull his, “At least it wasn’t with Hobie” card, but he’s felt really bad the last few times he’s used it.

God, he wants to scratch his ear so bad. He uncurls his fist and harshly scratches his hand to try and redirect the feeling.

“Okay, hold this to your ear for a minute,” Gwen says as she re-enters the room with a bag of ice, quickly shoving it in his hands. “Where’d you get those earrings anyway? That looks like diamonds.”

“Oh, some lady. She gave them to me after I found her dog,” he says, very carefully not mentioning the dog’s name because he knows Gwen would find it hilarious rather than anything else.

“So what made you want to keep them? Coulda gave them to your mom,” Gwen asks.

Miles looks away. “I don’t know. Guys sometimes have earrings.”

Gwen holds her hands up, “Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply anything else, it was just a bit out of nowhere. We should give you a piercing like mine next.” She snickers and Miles rolls his eyes.

“Oh toootally, because my parents would love that. No heart attacks and disappointment at all,” he laughs.

“Hey, better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” Gwen said with a shrug. “We can ask Hobie if he knows anybody who can tell if this is real diamond.”

Hobie seemed to always know a guy who knows a guy, and that guy happens to know a few other guys. Nobody really asked how he knew all these people because as a spider-person you’re bound to run into all types of them, but it didn’t stop Miles from wondering.

“Alright, time to countdown. For real this time,” Gwen says, grabbing her needle and pulling his hand and ice pack away, “Three,”

Miles takes a deep breath.

“Two,”

The pain is the most obvious answer, but why does this feel so much bigger than it actually is?

“One.”

That same stinging pain happens again, making tears prick at his eyes as he grits his teeth and tenses up.

“You’re done! Do you think you’ll need some painkillers?” Gwen says, quickly moving everything and herself away from him so he can stand up.

“Nah,” Miles shakes his head and tries to open his eyes, but the pain is dialing all of his senses to a hundred. Squinting, he shoves his twitchy hands into his jacket pockets. “I’m cool. Thanks though.”

“You are cool,” Gwen laughs, “Alright, get out, I gotta get ready to go out tonight.”

——

Miles isn’t nervous about what people will think about him with earrings. It’s more about them knowing he doesn’t really know how to take full care of them, and sensing his fear about them falling out, stabbing him, stabbing someone else, melting in his ear if there’s a fire, being yanked by a giant magnet a villain has and tearing his ear, the holes closing, the usual fears people have when they get a new piercing.

He’s kidding.

He knows his anxiety is pretty irrational, he looked up what the actual usual fears were for this just to calm himself down, but it didn’t really help. He trusts Gwen’s reassurances, but he just can’t help himself from double, triple, and quadruple-checking.

At least a few girls actually complimented his earrings, saying how they liked how “elegant yet chic” they were, whatever that meant. They were simple studs with no special shape or color, just a shiny silver. But Ganke liked it, he made that very clear when Miles stepped into their dorm and the boy stood up and started turning his head in his hands, smile growing bigger and bigger the longer he observed the earrings.

“Ganke,” Miles laughs, “let me put my stuff down man.”

Ganke turns his head to the left, and Miles sighs as he lets the other boy manipulate his head. “Who did these?”

“Gwen did. I was gonna use some other ones, but she said she didn’t know how to clean ‘em, I think,” Miles answers as Ganke then turns his head to the right, “we’re gonna go to Hobie’s soon to get them checked out.”

“They make you look even more beautiful,” Ganke says, not seeing Miles’s bashful smile but knowing what his compliments do, letting go and walking back to resume his homework, “you should totally keep them.”

Miles laughs shyly, tapping one of his earrings. Beautiful, huh? Ganke hasn’t used that one before.

——

“Miles? What’s— you got your ears pierced?!” His mom exclaims, nearly dropping the plate she was washing. “Jeff!”

Oh, great.

His dad walks into the kitchen, “What’s wrong? Hey Miles—“ his dad does a double take, “—WHAT are those?!”

Better to ask for forgiveness than permission my ass, Miles thinks. “Um… they’re… earrings?”

“And where did you get those? When did you get those? Huh?” His dad’s voice slowly got louder as he put his hands on his hips.

“Uh, Gwen took me to get them done yesterday,” he mumbles, shrinking under the gaze of his parents. Sweat starts to coat his palms. “...Sorry?”

“Ohhhh, he’s sorry,” his mom says, dramatically widening her eyes and turning drying her hands on a towel.

“Why didn’t you ask us?” his dad demands to know.

“I…” Shoot, he doesn’t actually have an answer for that!

His mom slaps down the towel and turns to face him fully. With her pursed lips and narrowed eyes, and his dad’s piercing glare, they make a furious duo that could rival the villains Miles fights any day.

“I… I can take them out—” he begins weakly, shoulders slumping in defeat, but then his mother raises a hand.

“Ah ah ah! No, you got them, you take care of them. You’re gonna do everything you have to do, since you can obviously handle it,” his mom says with her eyes closed as if she couldn’t stand seeing the piercings.

“Exactly what your mother said,” his dad agreed.

“They’re just earrings—”

“Aht!”

“—and I heal easily—”

“Miles,” his dad warns.

“—I’m just saying, it’s not that big of a deal.”

His mom huffs frustratedly, “Miles, this conversation is over. You’ll keep those earrings in and take complete responsibility, ¿entendistes?”

Miles looked between his mom and dad, mouth open as he fumbled for an answer. After he could think of nothing he just turned his gaze to the floor. “Yes, mami.”

——

Pavitr toyed with his own earring as Miles recounts yesterday.

“They were pissed,” he groans. “I’m never listening to Gwen again.”

“Dude, it was your idea!” Gwen exclaimed from upstairs.

Miles flopped back onto the basement floor, grunting as his head met hard concrete.

“I don’t know bro, they sounded more mad that you didn’t ask before you did it. That’s what some kids at my school complain about all the time,” Pavitr suggests, “did you sleep okay with them?”

“Yeah, it was fine. I don’t know why I was so worried.”

“Oh, that’s good! I was a baby when I got mines pierced, so I never had to really worry about that,” the other boy laughs, “so how long before you can switch them out?”

Hobie chooses that moment to stomp down the stairs with a small shoebox tucked under one arm and a bucket in his hand. “Might take six months. That’s how long this one took,” he said while tilting his head up and flaring his nostrils. Gwen followed down the stairs soon after. “But you heal faster than anybody I know.”

“Let me see those earrings,” he offered a free(?) hand to Miles, who pulled the black box out of his pocket and handed it over.

Hobie whistled as he put everything down, bringing the earrings under a small lamp he had in the corner. “These don’t look like real diamond.”

“Aren’t they heavy?” Pavitr asked, twirling a finger in his hair.

“Well, we wouldn’t know if they were,” he responded.

Gwen sat down next to Miles. “I’m sorry I got you yelled at by your parents, I genuinely didn’t think they’d be that mad.”

Hobie made a noise of intrigue. “Mad?”

Oh no, Miles can already tell what Hobie was thinking. Escape plans. Extra food. An extra room wherever he lives right now. “They didn’t yell at me, Dad just got a little loud, and I just have to take full responsibility, which I was already gonna do,” he explains with a roll of his eyes.

“Well, at least they were fine with it,” Hobie said with a click of his tongue, “not that you’d care if they weren’t, right mate?”

Miles nods before remembering that Hobie can’t see him. “Yeah, yeah.”

He wouldn’t care.

——

“But yeah, he was such an asshole, you’d think dying once would teach him to appreciate me a little,” Peter says to him on the balcony of an office building that they were most definitely not allowed to be at. He said it’s not illegal if they weren’t actually doing anything other than sitting and eating, and Miles didn’t feel like pointing out how that wasn’t true because Peter definitely knew that already, and how Peter was the only one eating. He honestly wasn’t listening to a word of what the man was complaining about, he had more pressing matters on his mind that caused him to visit in the first place. “Peter, if Mayday got earrings without asking you, would you be mad?”

“No? What? What does that have to do with this?” Peter’s brows furrowed as he dug around in a bag of McDonalds. “See, they forgot my nuggets. They always do this. Can you go down there and ask for some? Here, take this in case you need to pay,” he said as he handed over slightly damp dollar bills (ew). Miles was grateful for the suit gloves protecting him from the no doubt highly radioactive Washingtons the older man decided was okay to spread to others.

“Oh you’re being dramatic, it’s just sweat. You’ll get over it bud.”

Miles huffs and jumps off the balcony, scaring a few citizens who were trudging along the sidewalk, and walks into the McDonalds. It’s when he’s finally at the register that something peculiar happens.

“Hello ma’am, what can I get for you today?” The cashier mumbled, before yawning into her fist.

Maybe it’s because he’s wearing a pretty oversized hoodie and baggy pants on top of the suit, and maybe it’s because his mask is hiding his face, but could she really not tell? He’s never gotten called ma’am, not even as a joke or tease, but he feels like he should… feel. Something. Anything about it.

“Yeah, I’ll just take a four-piece nugget, thank you,” he says.

The cashier simply nods (or maybe she was just trying to pick her head up from falling asleep) and walks off. Is she supposed to do that? Isn’t there supposed to be someone at the register at all times, or is that just a thing in his universe?

She comes back quickly, handing over the little carton and accepting the cash. “Have a nice day, uh…” for the first time since Miles has stepped in here, her eyes focused on him.

She doesn’t know which word to use, he realized, nice.

“…sorry. Cosplayer,” she finally decided on, which somehow left him feeling more confused than her for a second. She really couldn't tell, even after he spoke?

Hey, hold on, he thought, nice? You mean funny?

“You too!” he said happily before exiting and returning to Peter. “You owe me eight dollars,” he told the man.

“That’s not how that works, you know that— ah. Well, I guess I should have specified how many nuggets,” Peter sighed annoyedly, “did you make any new friends down there?”

Miles ignores the question and asks his own from earlier. “So, if Mayday got earrings—”

“I already said no—”

“Okay, but what if she was a boy, and she came home with earrings? Would you be mad?”

Peter stops chewing, “No, what kind of— kid, if you got earrings and your parents are mad, then it’s probably—”

Miles waved his hands. “No no no! I know why they’re mad at me. Probably. I’m just asking because you know you’re like… their age and all.”

“Ohhh, you just wanted a different perspective. Well, I’d be disappointed in myself if she felt like she had to hide it from me, obviously. Buuuttt, if it was like, a belly button piercing or a nose ring when she’s… 16? Is that the age you can get them alone? Whatever,” Peter waved a hand, “I’d at least like to know beforehand. Any younger than that is… I’ll admit, I didn’t really ever think about this. But our healing doesn’t really make that a problem with a ton of sh— stuff.”

“You can curse around me.”

“I’m practicing for Mayday, have you considered that not everything is about you?”

“Aaaanywayyy,” Miles says pretty loudly, scaring away pigeons that were getting closer and closer to the bag, “the cashier called me ma’am a few minutes ago.”

“We’ve all been there,” Peter says quietly, as if laughing at some sort of inside joke. “Honest mistake, they must’ve been tired.”

“Well,” Miles picked at his shoelace, “even after she kinda woke up, she still didn’t know what to say, so she just called me a cosplayer.”

Peter hummed, waving Miles on to continue.

“And that was it,” Miles says. “I thought it was kind of…”

He thought nice earlier, and he felt happy when he told her bye, but now he doesn’t really feel anything. It’s like it never even happened, and the only proof he went down there at all is the now empty carton of nuggets balancing on Peter’s knee.

“… I mean, it wasn’t a big deal.”

Peter hummed again, wiping his mouth on some napkins.

“It wasn’t,” Miles felt the need to defend, “she looked super tired anyway, and she left the front counter. Is she allowed to do that?”

“Bud, they could spit in my food and I wouldn’t give a dam- darn. And I wasn’t saying it was a big deal. I even used to get called ma’am a lot when I was younger.”

Miles didn’t really believe him.

“Did you hate it?”

“Hate’s a uh, a pretty strong word for it… Sometimes I did, sometimes I just didn’t care, sometimes it felt only a little uncomfortable. Once I started growing facial hair though, that all stopped,” Peter explained, stroking his chin. “God, I need to shave.”

“I shaved. My um— my legs. A few days ago.”

Miles had no idea why he told Peter that. Peter didn’t care about Miles shaving for the first time, he didn’t care about how smooth and light he felt.

“Ooh, any cuts?”

“Nope,” Miles replied, a smirk tugging on his lips.

“Heck yeah bud, that’s what I’m talking about,” Peter replied and high-fived him.

They sit in silence for a bit on the balcony, watching people mill about to their destinations and birds fly by hoping to sneak a fry Peter hadn’t managed to inhale. Time always felt like it passed so much quicker in Peter’s dimension than anyone else’s, even Pavitr, and he was an entire day ahead of Miles.

Miles was going to shave his legs again tonight.

——

As Miles cleans his ear and piercings with some saltwater spray (the one from Gwen’s dimension was probably currently glitching out of existence under his bed), his dad passes by the open bathroom door.

“Good on keeping them clean,” he told him with a nod, suddenly stopping to ask, “…did you shave your legs?”

Miles felt like a few rocks were suddenly in his stomach and growing heavier with each nanosecond that passed with his father still in the doorway. “Um,” he swallowed hard and kept reminding himself why he did it in the first place. Nobody would care, he was curious, and it would grow back anyway. “Yeah.”

He doesn’t look to see what his dad’s expression is. He keeps staring at the mirror, willing for the rocks to go away.

Why are you so nervous, his reflection asks him.

Nobody would care, he was curious, and it would grow back anyway.

“You didn’t cut yourself at all?” his dad asks.

Nobody would care.

“Nope,” Miles said, popping the p to add to the faux-casualness. Because he was just curious.

“Huh. Good job. But we can get you your own razor, you don’t have to use ours.”

“Thanks, Dad.” It would grow back anyway.

“Oh, Miles?”

“Yeah?”

Nobody would care. He’s just curious. It would grow back anyway.

It’s just Dad, his reflection pointed out. He loves us. Why are you so scared?

“Don’t be lying to me about those cuts. I know you heal fast, but infections can happen faster.”

“Yeah Dad, I hear you.”

“I’m serious Miles. Don’t believe me? Ask your mother!”

His mom passes by the door as his dad says that. “Don’t drag me into this, I’ve already got my gown on,” she tells Jeff.

His dad huffs with a fond smile on his face, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. Before he leaves to also go to bed, he turns to Miles one last time. “Miles, you know you can tell us anything right? We were just upset that you didn’t tell us about the earrings. I need you to know that,” he says softly.

Miles stops cleaning his ears and looks down at his legs. Bare legs. He can tell his parents anything. He knows that. He has always known that. But there’s nothing to say. He’s confessed to being Spider-Man, he’s confessed to going to different dimensions and his friends being from different dimensions, he’s confessed to how depressed he got after Uncle Aaron died and the true extent to how complicated those feelings got— basically he’s confessed a lot. There’s nothing else to really say.

Looking back into the mirror, his reflection doesn’t seem convinced. Nothing else? But you’re so hesitant about something, it points out.

“Yeah, I know Dad. Thanks,” he says, giving his dad a small smile.

——

He lies awake later that night, after a short patrol to try and calm his nerves, and stares at the ceiling. It’s normal for boys to shave. His dad shaves. Uncle Aaron shaved. Peter said he needed to shave earlier today. The boys at school shave. Almost everyone shaves at some point in their life.

There are still rocks in his stomach, and he doesn’t even know why. He could possibly blame the feeling earlier being caused by his dad questioning him so soon after he got in trouble, but that doesn’t explain now. He knows his anxiety tends to linger and be worse than others about things that aren’t really serious, but this is just ridiculous.

Some people shave. Some people don’t. Nobody cares. It’ll just keep growing back, and you can keep doing whatever you want to it, Miles tells himself, curling up and squeezing his eyes shut. Nobody cares, you shouldn’t either. You didn’t care before, don’t ruin it now.

——

Come Saturday morning, Miles is ready to throw himself out a window if it meant the constant stream of anxiety going off in the back of his head would shut the hell up.

He barely slept, and he’s sure it shows, because when he gets up to go get an apple for breakfast, his mom gives him a questioning look.

“Itching kept you up, baby?” She asks him, quickly putting her hair into a tight bun.

“Yeah,” he sighs. There’s no need to tell her about all… that, when she’s rushing to get to work.

“Don’t worry, it won’t last forever. Just don’t scratch, and keep cleaning them!” She calls out as she leaves through the front door.

His dad must have already been outside waiting for her. They usually drive to work together, with his dad dropping his mom off at the hospital and going to work himself, and then picking her up if his shift ended before hers. It’s a bit like how he and Ganke go to class— Miles will drop him off at his homeroom and scurry back to his own (almost always directly at the bell), go and grab him for lunch in the courtyard (or Miles would sneak them out to go get actual good food) and they’d grab the other at the end of class, depending on who got let out first. Of course, there’s the issue with the teachers not letting students from different classes in the room when the dismissal bell hadn’t actually rung yet, but that was an argument for Monday that Miles would inevitably have with Ganke’s history teacher.

Miles opens his eyes, not even realizing he closed them. Then he noticed the quiet, the lack of worries that plagued his mind, and how empty the house was.

Ganke probably wouldn’t mind coming over just to fall asleep again. Hopefully.

A/N: i hope i got across that Miles loves Ganke a lot and gets ramble-y when it comes to him because you will see it often #yaoiyodeler. Anyway when I wrote this it was a bit hard to capture the awkwardness that comes with an overly anxious Miles interacting with Peter, especially when he's unknowingly seeking validation for what he'd subconsciously deem non-masculine, without giving too much information so it could still fit once BTSV comes out (fuck that movie already), if you get what I mean? I hope it got across though

#my writing #transfem miles #miles morales #spider man #spiderman #atsv fanfiction #atsv #spiderverse #fanfic #trans miles morales #m&m posts #can't wait to get home later and eat and forget to actually update my fic today #should i tag the others that have an impact in this chapter? that would be fine i think?#gwen stacy #jefferson morales #peter b parker #peter parker #not beta read

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