#miles miller angst

[noncrush]

☀︎☁︎ — MILES MILLER: druxy

(“It's winter. You ask me about love and I tell you about violence. I'm sorry. I thought that that's what love was.” — Katie Maria, ‘I used to be a hole in the ground’.)

miles miller x reader | 8k | mentions of death&guns, angst, fluff, yearning, very introspective, lots of backstory, MDNI 18+.

⤷ desc. when you get hired at the el royale, you don’t imagine you’ll be staying there long. you don’t imagine you’ll find the love of your life, either. as it turns out, you’re wrong two for two.

here is my submission for “quiet winter nights” with miles miller in @lewmagoo’s wonderful holiday celebration!!! enjoy this monster (that i blacked out for most of! this is perhaps not the best prompt fulfillment lol) tis the season of yearning everybody :)

Druxy — (adj.) something whole on the outside, but rotten inside; of timber, having decay in the heartwood.

i.

Working at the El Royale used to be easy. When you were still starry-eyed and bright, not yet overtaken by the suffocating, roiling waves of that horrid hotel.

“This job is just a stepping stone, that’s all,” you’d told Miles after your first rough week. He eyed you wearily then, knowing the grim unreality of those words—he’d done the very same, just happy to have a job at all after discharge… before quickly succumbing, a noxious fate he wouldn’t wish on a single soul. But he couldn’t warn you either, not when you started on the Californian bar: forced to deliver rounds of bronze booze and burnt sienna spirits with your piercing steel shaker until the end of the night. There were so many things Miles lost the chance to say, and later he’ll tell you he hates himself for it; later, you’ll hold him close and tell him you could never hate him for it.

You used to pray that promise beneath your breath, just a stepping stone, while staring up at the swelling water damage of your popcorn ceiling. It was a kind of foreshadowing in the tapestry of your life, telling you the longer you worked the harder it’d be to keep your head wading above water. Those early days at the hotel had you reluctantly settling into a seedy dingbat shoebox a few blocks away, the dip of your chin already beginning to sink into high tide. It’s odd to think of that part of your life in retrospect when you were first starting at the El Royale living all by your lonesome-- familiar head of tawny chestnut locks not yet lying beside your own at night. 

That hopeful, almost manifest, mantra was repeated again and again: in quiet hallways, collecting the pieces of your shattered morale off the wooden epoxy bar top, after a customer yelled at you for giving him too little ice. In a dank backroom corridor, after you caught Miles stumbling around with a heavy Vidicon tripod.

“What do you actually do here?” 

“I… I can’t tell you. N-not before you’ve been here for longer than a year. It’s standard procedure, and- and Management doesn’t trust part-timers.” 

Panicked circles paced into the carpet at your discovery, his burdened shoulders growing ever heavier; some sudden shimmer of pity overtaking your words, “Miles-- Miles, it's okay. Just a stepping stone, remember? You… don’t need to tell me, and I promise I won’t tell anyone.” 

After you parsed Miles' calendar at the clerk's desk and caught a glimpse of the date. The frustrated heel of your palm digging into the nasal bone: “It’s November, Miles, it’s been-- god, this was supposed to be a stepping stone, something temporary…” Suddenly realizing your life still hasn’t picked up the slack; stranded, your job inquiries left unreplied, buried beneath the unsavoury status of your currentemployment. 

“I have an address. I-- have an entire year's worth of paystubs. I have everything they could possibly ask for.”

“Did--did you tell them you worked here? B’cause… the El Royale’s been losing its prestige day by day, and—Management’s sayin’ we’re lucky we still get our cheques.”

Finally, letting “just a stepping stone” die on your tongue when rent was jacked up, and the thin string of normalcy in your life went frayed. You made little as a bartender at an understaffed hotel, just enough to pay the current rate, and the increase would quickly make your wallet grow ugly and barren. Suddenly, you had found yourself forced to choose between the hotel or your apartment block’s curb; meagre belongings packed up and trailing behind, head growing dizzy with smothering waves of shame clawing up your throat. 

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to ask, but I--“ Shoulders wilt. Head hung low. The hotel lobby light flickers above you; once, twice, a spark cinders. “I have nowhere to go.”

His mouth, slightly ajar. What could crawl out of there, you wonder: a laugh, an apology, an insult? “California is full, and- er, Nevada’s under renovation.” 

A rejection. Beads of sweat trickled down your trembling spine. Heart sinking into the pit of your stomach; nowhere to go, nowhere to be, nowhere to exist—

“B-but I have a room. In the back. If… if y’don’t mind sharing.” 

Kindness, in a place as consuming as this. You thought every dreg of it had long since been digested, surrendering to the dreary structure of the ogee pattern walls. The fact it existed in the heart of Miles, however minuscule, made your own flicker with light. Hope stirring, unafraid despite how brutally it was beaten down; it was always so stubborn, ceaseless, almost Sisyphean.

However, uncovering Miles’ poor living conditions while shuffling into that one untouched room in the entire hotel made your lips pull into a tight line. You were left completely aghast, as you realized he had not simply been leaving early before you could say goodbye, but had been ducking behind doors and slinking into his closet home. Esteem quickly overtook you: for that shy man, who was awkward, but just as well sensitive, gentle and compassionate to the very bone. Who offered his room up for you, sacrificing a part of his life for the hundredth time without remorse, because it was kind. 

You lay elbow to elbow with Miles that first night, not looking at each other but just speaking, letting the low timbre of tones fill the air. A figurative ball dance: persuading information out of one another and testing the boundaries–akin only to seeing how low you’d let him drag his palm against your back in that imaginary hall, how tight to ischemia he’d let your hand squeeze his own. 

Him, warning you of the worst aspects of the job; giving you an out, because taping others in the privacy of their rooms weighed like lead. “It’s a sinful thing,” said Miles, the words mumbled and scraped off the backs of his teeth, stuck to the enamel like taffy shame. “To reveal other people like this, even if they’re helpless. Even when my meddlin’ realizes the worst consequences.” Consumed with fear his soul would only grow darker by tainting your own. “Those tapes… those tapes are never pretty. Sometimes they’re downright… ugly.”

You, knowing for a fact it was dirty and invasive— but also that you were really very small and very poor, a wretch whose dreams would be out of reach for eternity. A wide-eyed housekeep and a listless bartender having to band together to maintain the El Royale’s realm of order after the other staff left sounded like the beginning of a bad joke. However, choice was a privilege you no longer possessed–you were there entirely out of necessity: “Who else will hire me? Certainly nobody in this town, nor the next one over.”

Two sets of drooping eyes drifting across his clean ceiling, so unlike the swelling, waterlogged one back in your apartment. There's something here, you thought then, something to be said about having an odd heart-to-heart with the man you’ve had less than five full conversations with in an entire year. All the while feeling an odd comfort at the faint cracks littering his ceiling tiles—like pockmarks had existed, once upon a time, but were cared for and repaired with a familiar gentle precision.

Alas, duty continued, and Management swiftly utilized you—now trusted, for you were thought to be living and breathing the El Royale just as Miles did. But being implicated in the true nature of the hotel's existence, via the increase of sordid dignitaries — fortuitous in their decision to stay at the hotel, but brusque and oddly knowing in such a way you knew the El Royales’ name was being recommended in dangerous places — made the job so very hard. You became thoroughly equipped with the all-consuming fear you could spend another lifetime being good, scrubbing yourself clean of the hotel, and still have your fingers stomped on trying to reach the pearly gates. 

As though you could spend mere hours in there and come out thinking a decade had gone by, time in that decrepit hotel served as a mere suggestion. Perhaps, that’s why moving into the hotel seemed to make so much time alone with Miles. It seemed more impossible for a connection not to foster: that quiet night sent your relationship journeying from an acquaintance, to coworker, to dear friend. Shyly circling one another’s empty orbits before growing inseparable. A lifetime of affinity condensed into years, compacted by common sin and mutual memory. A bond that grew ever proximate, stunned by having someone just like you, right there—just as tormented, just as unfulfilled. 

A friendship of comforting one another in the dark: Miles tenderly coaxing you out like a feral animal unused to attention that didn’t quickly follow with a beating, or your attentive fingers gently working the self-imposed restraint out of his muscles, unthreading traumatic memories from beneath his skin. (“You don’t have to say sorry, Miles—I know you don’t have a mean bone in your body.” “Shh, shh, just listen to the sound of my voice. The thunderstorm’s din has nothing on me.” “When you have a nightmare, tell me—I don’t mind, promise.”) Understanding the fear that gripped you at the sensitive scruff, why you woke up floundering beside him in the middle of the night like the weight of your unfulfilled life was pressing itself on the nape of your neck. Uncovering Miles' extent, and what set him off—what made him dig his fingernails into the bed of his palm or bite his sharp canine into his lower lip. Settling your head onto Miles’ left pillow at bed— your pillow, finding that you knew his heart betterthan your own. Fondly remembering the time spent winding the words out of him until your palm recognized him like it did scars marring your skin. 

Naturally, you grew protective of him. How Miles’ remained so tender is a mystery – it felt impossible to live there for so long and not come out the other end worse off; chewed up, spat out, torn into two and put back together all wrong – but that very kindness had invited you into his home, and you worked to protect it like nothing else. Only ever manning the bar when the need was immediate, more content to linger close behind Miles when he checked in customers. Learning to bare your teeth, going from, “My complete apologies for any offence I’ve caused,” to “The El Royale provides poor patience toward guests who threaten the welfare of our establishment.” 

Slowly, the thought bleeding through the air, you began to worry your love for Miles would die in this black hole. Extinguished in the very same place it was first lit, unable to survive the hotel’s suffocation. Nondescript was your relationship, blurred lines wavering between romantic and platonic at every turn—but love nonetheless. For days on end did a familiar chill wrack your spine: some primal, precognitive feeling of guilt, of dread, that something bad was going to happen and you would never be free of it. How your ears pounded, blood rushing because it felt like if you didn’t leave now you’d rot in that hotel’s hollow, refrained to the point of murder or madness. 

You desperately tried to quell that feeling, chalking it up to years spent with your guard up. Thought you’d merely turned spiked and jagged; rough around the edges, making others jerk away at the gentlest touch. The way a Venus flytrap withers and dies, because nobody is brave enough to care for something so biting. Several severe years turned you into the serrated rim of a broken carafe glass—like the chipped Blendo one Miles kept in his room for safekeeping, after you sold off all the other expensive china just to keep the hotel lights on for another exhausting day. Just… paranoid, your fear of losing Miles — and being completely alone again as a result — merely growing insistent and anxious. 

But the last straw was in December of ‘68; a frigid winter, practically turning the hotel subnivean with its wet and heavy blizzards; snowing the place in deep. A night at the El Royale and a quiet night in general, the kind with long, exhaustive hours– a shift that never seemed to end, despite the small number of customers (a group of skiers on the Nevadan side and a family on the Californian) before finally resigning away from the clerk desk at a bleak four in the morning. You’d long since shooed Miles off, “You first, or I’ll take all the blankets in my sleep,” content to man the place on his behalf. He’d gone so long without support, persevering through fatigue and illness with no choice, it was the least you could do,--and you would always rather he woke up with light eyebags. 

You were locking up, stashing the bell in the desk cavity with your neck craned low—when you felt the trained gaze of another over you. You pressed back up to meet eyes with a customer, his horn-rimmed glasses decorated with slow melting flurries: “If you would be so kind to check me out for a back-cabin along tha’ trails, that’d just about make my night, kid.”

“Unfortunately, sir, the bungalows are unserviced and unavailable in the off-season. Our frontward facing lodges, however, are wholly available—“

“You mean to tell me they’re off limits? Why, I jus’ saw someone leavin’ one of those cabins.”

A shiver traipsed down the column of your vertebrae. No door was open to let in a draft, and no winter winds hit your form; it was pure intuition making the hair on the back of your neck stand up. The week before last, Management thrust a sudden assignment onto you two— Nevada room 7, tenured professor travelling across state lines for a conference, democratic and incredibly vocal about it— and Miles’ was supposed to develop the tape yesterday, mail it off this morning. But Miles didn’t develop the tape yesterday, no, there’d been a burst pipe in the casino bar instead, and the two of you spent lunch till early dawn fixing it. 

The man shot you a discomfiting smile. Stretched wide across his plain, glib face. “Say,” and he leaned in just as your heel planted you an inch back, gesturing to the photographs of celebrities strewn around, “September ‘63. Sinatra owned this place, and let politicians mingle with Hollywood’s leading ladies. You know anythin’ ‘bout that?”

Anxiety dragged upon your skin. Where was he going with this? “I didn’t-- work here in 1963, sir. Suffice to say I didn’t know much at all about the comings and goings of the El Royale yet.”

He studied carefully; mandible still tilted into that barren smile, but eyes set and stony behind the thin frame of glasses you weren’t even sure were real. The customer set his suitcase down with one hand and his briefcase down with the other, before patting down the wrinkled fabric of his suit—intentionally, or unintentionally, flashing the hilt of a Black Eagle Ruger slung low on a belt holster. It wasn’t uncommon for customers to be sporting some kind of self-defence, especially in dark hotels such as these–but still.  “Your associate, then?” 

“What?” Your blood ran cold, freezing into thin slivers like icicles hanging from the roof outside; like the one that pricked you in the shoulder, and made Miles aid and soothe the wound. 

Miles entered through the front door of the lobby, hair silken with powder-soft snow, murmuring to himself as he dragged his work-issue loafers in. The man jutted his thumb unceremoniously toward him, a calculating sheen lighting his green eyes. 

“Hey, you—“ and he waved Miles over like he were cattle or a dog, “d’you remember any blonde Hollywood Ingenue’s rooming here in September ‘63? You’d know her—hell, she’d have you stumblin’ over so bad you couldn’t just forget her.”

The look on Miles’ face — wide-eyed and perturbed, tired steps creaking to a stuttered stop at the digestion of the man’s words — made the pit of your gut swelter: how cruel to make him flounder, for Miles was skittish. You’d learned to slow your movements and keep steady to ease him, but this would surely frighten him. “Sir? I-I don’t know what you’re…”

You swallowed thickly. “He didn’t— he didn’t work here yet either. Alright? I mean, look at him—he’d barely be out of school.”

The customer’s stubborn smile dropped into thin-lipped obscurity. “Well, it was wortha’ try. Made a bet with some of my buds who heard I was stayin’ here– those sonsabitches thought some kinda tape existed.” He regarded you suddenly with a plain look: acknowledging, bored, seeking your professionalism rather than your conversation.

His look sobered you, making the tremouring buzz of your thoughts (get miles get out of here something bad is going to happen) go quiet. You snapped back into smooth, managerial tones, swiftly checking the man in and handing him the logbook. He hoisted his luggage and left just as suddenly as he’d arrived, leaving you in possession of one odd Laramie Seymour Sullivan signature in cursive. There was something… off about that salesman—be it the thin, almost prescription-less distortion of his lenses, or his odd accented twang of no particular origin—and you hoped his stay in the Nevada room was short-lived.

“Miles?” your gaze snapped up from the logbook you were inspecting to find Miles gone. Fortunately, not out into the thick pillowy avenues of snow from which he came, but forwards: his thin loafers tracking wet stains onto the floor. You set a mental reminder to mop that melt before morning, but Miles’ panic took precedence. He had the habit of scampering away in the face of danger, like a rabbit through dry autumn leaves–and you would��never let him deal with it alone.

Finally, you traced your dear friend's prints to the maintenance room you shared; slightly ajar, warm lamp light filling the room, his soaked shoes haphazardly strewn by the doorway. There, you saw him crumpled upon the threadbare cot: on his knees lying down, almost in prayer with his silver rosary wrapped tight around the dry skin of his knuckles. It shone like the glimmer of the sun under that incandescent bulb, and you could hear a panicked recital of scripture along his tongue.

“Hey, hey,” you slide past the door gently, descending onto all fours so as not to box him in or raise the height of his fight-or-flight response. “C’mere, hold my hand,” you crawled over and laced his free fingers into yours, settling into a criss-cross apple-sauce position; knee bumping into the ankle that never healed right after he sprained it gardening last summer.

“Just listen to my voice, okay? Remember what we were doing last winter? Remember when every customer had left two evenings before to make it home in time for Christmas? We were sitting here, reading a book together. You told me the print company made a mistake after you saw a thread pop out of the inner hinge’s book bind. I was massaging your crown, then… I miss your long hair sometimes. The radio was playing, too–an auditory rerun of that musical you like so much. “A Christmas Carol” for "Shower of Stars", was it…”

You were fully equipped to spend the rest of the night coaxing Miles’ out of his panic, soothing tones drowning out the tantamount alarm running circles in his mind–but then, he lifted his head from the clothed caps of his knees and brought your intertwined fingers up to his warm cheek. “That man.. the-the- tape, he was talking about a ta-tape with- with…”

Your hand squeezed his in time with the patterned buzz of his pulse, pressed along your own wrist; thump-squeeze, thump-thump-squeeze… “It’s just you and me, Miles. Take your time.”

A shaky breath. Then another; better, easier. “The tape he’s talking about. It’s, it-t’s real. B-but nobody was ever-- supposed’t know it exists-- how did he know about it, how?”

“Miles… a tape? He knows about what you sent to management?”

“No, no, I never sent it! I never did, I kept it… I kept it because he was kind, and-- and…” And Miles is letting go of your palm, instead wrapping his lanky arms around the circumference of your waist, collapsing in your lap. He’s murmuring still, mere vibrations lost to the human capacity of Hertz, as your mind spun: once upon a time, Miles confessed to you a certain 60s starlet coupled up in Nevada 5 with one of the most influential and married politicians of that decade, before their deaths in– 

That was the tape?

Your heart hammered in your ears. Miles’ sobs simmered down into stammering breaths; his ever-softening palms gripping the fabric of your shirt between his fingers in some sort of self-soothing measure. Has your heart swapped with your brain? Is that why you’re so suddenly remembering how cruel it'd been for Miles: how he’d been at the El Royale so much longer than you, been beaten down so much smaller, was much closer to the edge? That Miles was crumpling atop you now with the rumblings of great, inescapable despair because the weight of these corrupt secrets was toppling him over?

It was then that you pet him, the man your heart swelled far past capacity for, fingernails tracing over the splattering of freckles along his neck–and then, that your survival instincts overtook.

“Miles, Miles, it’s okay. Don’t say sorry, s’not a problem. We can… well, we can… leave. Take the tape with us; burn it, destroy it, whatever you want. But we leave.” Deciding at last that enough was enough because you could either leave now or suffocate in silence forevermore. Curl into yourselves, like far neglected flora, until one of you dies and the other quickly follows.

In the hours before dawn, you’d suddenly pieced together a jilted, desperate plan of escape. You’d head an innocuous journey from the El Royale to Reno, wandering eccentrically so as not to leave a tangible trail. In that tawdry tourist town, you’d gather yourselves and map another path out again: to a smaller, quieter place, like Waterford, or Dunsmuir, where you could build yourselves a life anew. It would be hard, and frightening, and cold, and unkind—but above all it would be worth it.

Above all, this chapter would draw a close, and you could have the rest of the pages in your life to be selfish. The thought made your stomach flutter and clench with the foggiest of dreams, fluffy fox-tailed feelings beginning to run through the dim corridors of your heart: ideas of being free, of coming into your own, of maintaining a gentle realm together without the enduring pressure of the hotel. Of being able to sleep in and graze over the bony ridges of Miles' spine like you were allowed to—like you were supposed to, and would never be struck down for it.

That glassy night in late December of ‘68 was your final one in the hotel. You barely remember it: just the important stuff, the why and the how and the coaxing of two lonely souls who occupied the El Royale like ghosts from out of the shadows. You can’t remember the few days after very well either, not with the fear still so deeply imprinted on your souls– and certainly not with the anxious hush that fell over you: a silly vow of silence, to keep yourselves from revealing too much to potentially dangerous strangers. Words were chalk in the mouth then; you barely got them out before you were coughing, gasping, heaving for soothed breath-- then quieting, swallowing, holding back your voice in the crevice of your cords.

You did, however, remember the generous days that came after the fleeing and the hiding… and, understandably so: why allow your memory to remain preoccupied with the same dread you’d digested for years when you could keep space for the rest of your life to arrive? 

You sat atop that beat mattress in Miles’ drab room with him in your arms, halfway through dreaming up the rest of your life away from the hotel… and soon, sooner than you could’ve ever thought, you blinked and opened your eyes to find yourself living that merciful existence. Like the colour television channels Miles’ would always call you over to watch: you got a sparse glimpse once a year, the kind of magic you always swore you’d catch up to, but were always so busy with the bar (and the gardening and the kitchen and the–) to see. The hotel had the all-consuming quality to draw you away from any fulfilling aspects of life: friends, a better career, happiness, and like some sick inside joke, colour television.

Now, you were living the sweet life NTSC colour system shows portrayed—and were able to watch colour television whenever your heart damn well pleased. 

No longer did you let the days twist and swell around you without recognition, no– you allowed yourself the selfish possibility of listening to the day's whistle by, drinking in every peaking pitch: the dull flutter of Miles’ steps along your oak floor, your kitchen laminate, your soft bathroom rugs. The wispy rustle of crinkled grocery lists, checking through them in your kitchen on an early Sunday—shopping right when the supermarket opened, because the both of you cringed at the sight of busy aisles and overworked lanes. (The raspy, sniffled laughter of the elderly lady who ran the store, remarking, “Still in the honeymoon phase, huh?” as she checked you out. The squeak in Miles’ throat when you played along, pressing a peck to his cheek in mock confirmation.)

The stream of water from the creaky yard hose, sometimes pressurized to the point of injuring Miles’ poor petunias, and other times so frail you had to lug out his otter-shaped turret sprinkler to keep them healthy instead. The howling wind against your house walls on autumn nights, bouncing along the window sills as though ghosts roamed your halls. (Having to build a fort in the living room with Miles, after a “ghost” had spooked him on his nightly tread for a glass of water. He refused to brave the hallway to your bedroom again, and you refused to leave him there.)

The gentle snip-snap of scissors along Miles’ delicate head, telling him, “I’m not going as short as last time, even if you ask me to, ‘cause you’ll get cold and snag my earmuffs again.”  The sleepy purr of Miles’ in the morning, wrapping a lithe arm around your waist and greedily tugging you back to bed; grown spoiled with the days that go by so sweetly, used to having you all to himself. 

Drinking in these little moments, appreciating the mundanity of it all. How you simper, when doing laundry with Miles, sorting whites from colours as you regale him on the time you mixed in a blue sock by accident; is that why my button-up turned blue? When gardening side by side in the spring, Miles cooing to perennial flora as he packs down healthy fertilizer nearby; grazing a gentle finger over an unfurling petal and promising, you’ll grow up nice and strong when m’done with you. When sitting on the counter and watching Miles bustle about, trying to perfect his Tunnel of Fudge in time for the holidays and handing you the battered whisk; honey, you know I don’t care that there’s raw egg. 

Going through the motions of this post-hotel life, practically epilogic, with the relationship’s lines of platonic and romantic ever wavering. Ever thinning. Warbled by the merciful existences you reap: why focus on the status of your relationship when you could focus on the love itself, focus on your now-uninhibited freedom to love? 

But a rubber band snaps eventually. The lack of labels stretched wide and narrow around your intimate forms; never relieved, never named—never agreed upon, therefore just as well never reciprocated. Years after the hotel faded into a mere memory, just a faint speckle among the colourful mosaic of your existence, you wake with a pit drowning in your gut. Love burns in the bottom of your belly: no longer that comfortable love that rested so sweetly in the smiling swell of your cheeks, but more so a love that swallowed you whole—sudden, voracious, terrifying. You loved Miles, and you had for years… but just now did you realize you were in love with him. 

The distinction makes your heart hammer against its cage, starving for any kind of answer. The two of you never acknowledged it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there—it was always there, always lingering, providing the very allowance to be so intimate, be so loving. You’ve slept in one another’s bed for more than half a decade, for Christ's sake: tenderness is all you’ve ever known of each other. A deathly nerve deep within your gut strikes, begging for either reciprocation or rejection, not this limbo you’ve been living in. Imploring a tangible answer, an exacting label you can build the rest of your life upon.

Because the thought of staying trapped like this forever? Never fully friends and never fully lovers? That mortified you. It could all fall between the gaps of your fingers, even after decades, because none of it had ever been said aloud. 

The realization of being in love, and not just loving was kept under tightly wound wraps as best as you could. But Miles notices the little things over time: how you draw away easier, hugs growing brisk and polite rather than long and hearty. The tension in your shoulders, and how you no longer accept his tender offers to massage familiar knots out—even when you both know he can map out your problem areas just like that. Brushing off touchier advances, resolve greatly disturbed by Miles’ ever-constant need to hold hands, cling to your hip, hang onto you at all. He’s funny about that kind of thing: somewhere along the way, between the farm he grew up on, Vietnam, and the El Royale, to now, he picked up the miraculous ability to tune into moods at the drop of a hat. 

It gets worse as the week goes on, however. Not that you’d been very inconspicuous about your gloom—you sat up the fourth day quietly strained, trudging to the bathroom like a wet t-shirt that’d been wrung out and hung to dry in all the wrong ways. Misshapen, wrinkled, too burdened for the clothesline to hold up; the briefest of winter winds trickles past the window Miles forgot to close last night, and makes you shiver as you step in. But he doesn’t get the chance to intervene, not when you were heading off to work (there were so many things Miles lost the chance to say, and later he’ll tell you he hates himself for it–), and the two of you only see each other again when you’re back home. 

His first instinct when he sees you, mumbling your arrival in the frostbitten doorway, is to take your coat and set it on the wooden hanger; shuffle your fur-lined boots onto the shoe rack beside his own tassel loafers; dust the flurries off your clothes. Clean and take care of you, because that’s what he knows best. You half expect him to extend his arm out and point down either side of the hall, “Warmth and sunshine to the west, or hope and opportunity to the east,” on the tip of his tongue.

“Hi,” mumbles Miles, lip quivering as some semblance of a nervous smile inches across his face. “Um, welcome home.” 

That man is far too sweet for his own good. His greeting is the product of an offhand comment all those years ago, “It’s always the sweetest thing when the husband comes home and his wife welcomes him back.” Winter nights in the hotel when there were so few customers, management would skimp on paying the bills, and you’d huddle chest to chest with Miles to conserve heat. Breath visible, palms splayed beneath one another’s shirts to extinguish the chill racking through you. A random channel on his old RCA Victor Sportable playing a Brigitte Bardot special, if just to distract yourself from the very real, very harrowing possibility that you could fall asleep and never wake up.

“Miles,” out comes a dull whisper, scratchy and unreal in your own throat. You’ve tried all week to make a habit out of biting back too-sweet words, letting your blatant adoration die in your lungs. Speaking to him should be an activity gone stale, lest you forget yourself and allow you two to fall back headfirst into that exhausting will-they-won’t-they purgatory. 

But then you notice his clothes–an old cream cable knit and dress trousers, his Sunday best for weekly visits and the obligatory holiday ones–and his hair, neatly coiffed along the smooth crown of his head. You raise a brow–it’s incredibly unlike the pajamas and chestnut bedhead he usually sports; mussed and ruffled with the telltale stylistic edge of blankets and cotton pillowcases. Had he gone out, or is he going out now? 

That thought makes your heart thump and clench in its cavity: of Miles being swept off his feet by someone other than yourself and having to accept it with a choked nod, because you’re dancing around asking him “What are we?”, in paralyzing fear that you are the only one truly head over heels. You resign yourself to asking, “Going somewhere?” whilst gesturing to his unusually formal state of dress.

His rounded cheeks flush. Cobalts widen in tune with the sandy brows along his forehead rising. Your gaze hasn’t made it there yet, but you can bet his lips have slid ajar into a tiny “O” shape-- and there it is. His delicate expression of surprise is the same as it has been for years (and you fear how easily you predict it. You know him too well, and it’s never the one who knows another too well whose heart remains unbroken. But then again: between Miles’ delicate heart and your own… you’d rather you devastated.)

“Yes, well-- I’m going out with someone.”

“You’re going on a—“ How interesting. “…O-kay.”

Your offset okay has the tips of Miles’ lips twinging upward into a tiny, knowing smile. Smug, almost, if you pretended it wasn’t how Miles simply looked when content. It makes you frown instead. “Oh,” you mumbled, wincing as you brushed past him, hearing just how monotone; crestfallen; stupid you sounded. “Have fun, then.”

Your own cheeks burn, your harried footsteps clattering against hallway hickory wood: he was taking someone out? Miles’ had been venturing out on his own more often — your heart preened prideful praise at this, as he’d downright avoided public outings like the plague since his discharge all those years ago — so you knew it wasn’t at all unlikely he’d caught someone’s wandering eye. Miles was rather handsome, too (even downright pretty, which he rarely let you say aloud, since it made steam practically fume out of his ears) with the gentle brush of his blond lashes, framing the brilliant sheen of blue eyes, and that captivating curve of his nose, sloping high and elegant. 

But for however proud you were, the hurt still made your throat swell in its tender column. Suddenly, you realize it’s never going to be you who accompanies Miles in that way: because you are slow and cowardly. You are the decay that would make Miles’ heartwood go druxy– and for his sake, it cannot be you that accompanies him. Like understanding a language but never being taught to speak it, you can spot love easily even when it’s unspoken and barely there, but you cannot replicate it aloud. I love you is an unintelligible language twisted wryly on your tongue; you miss accents and mess up grammar, and before you know it those words as old as myth have gone sour. 

You’ll hurt him worse than rejection hurts you. But rejection, any kind of it, is still a quiet, burning thing that overtakes you like the wash of high tide. Digging its claws into the rapid flesh of your palpitating heart, you can’t help but desperately seek isolation. The balls of your feet practically jump over the threshold where the hall and your shared room meet… but he’s quick to follow.

Miles’ sock-swaddled thumping is slow at first, before speeding up and careening to a stop at the door of the bedroom. His fingers (originally rough with domestic work but grown soft in the simple life you’ve built around each other) cling shyly to the side jamb: “Are…” and his words warble at a pitchy high, like they’re curling around a pitiful lump balling up in his throat, “are you mad at me?”

“Of course not,” your reassurance is fast, uttered quicker than you can think or blink or even turn. But because your back still faces him, he asks again, are you mad at me? Murmurs, I’m sorry, a moment later, polyester-padded steps inching over the sill. Miles continues closer, appearing in the background of your mirror while you shed your outside clothes off; practically undergoing chrysalis into your pyjamas.

His words are childish, almost, and you have half a mind to shoo him out of the room for privacy–but you know Miles. Though his words are uttered gingerly, the nervous apology of a scolded child, he isn’t any less desperate, any less earnest; he’s genuine, and that genuinity has no bounds. 

The bed creaks behind you, and your mind buries the consuming temptation to look. Desire calls out your name, supplying imaginary images of cranberry Christmas sheets straining beneath Miles’ pretty, slow crawl. And the apology is part way through stumbling out of Miles’ mouth yet again when you finally turn to meet him: slim torso folded along the long edge of the bed, knees planted on the hardwood. Looking up at you with an impossible expression that pleads, I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Are you mad at me? Please. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m– 

His sweet head buries itself into the clothed cushion, and you can hear him sniffle; holding back a worried sob, are you mad at me? filling the ridges of his tongue. It’s so hard to seek solitude, to want to soothe yourself at all, when Miles is falling apart in front of you; fingers curling possessively into the sheets like he usually would your clothes. 

The tear that escapes the corner of Miles' eye dribbles into your bed. It makes your obstinacy waver. And then, you’re descending onto the bed too, scooping his weeping form into your arms, gently soothing him with shapes drawn into his cheek. Coaxing the tears away with a low hum cooed into the shell of his ear, shh, shh. M’not mad, just surprised. Just tired. 

Cries that finally dwindle into stuttered sniffles and tiny pecks along your inner wrist. The drag of his bottom lip on the ulna bone makes a ribbon of warmth run through you, and you cringe—you should be normal about this kind of thing because he’s perpetually starved for touch. This intimacy is nothing special, and you just happen to always be there. But it starts to feel less than normal: kisses growing hungry and adventurous, desperate to litter your skin with his presence… eventually reaching up to the top of your shoulder, just so gaining the confidence to sink his canines into your skin…

“Miles!” You yelp, squeezing at the nape of his neck and peeling his rebellious teeth from your side like you would a puppy. You bring him face to face, grip sliding to the mandible; his eyes half-lidded, lips wet with a doggish, slobbery sheen of saliva, brows knitted tensely in the middle. You meant to comfort him, rid the alarm from muscles that held memory so tightly. Instead, an entirely different neediness is roused out of him: he’s crawled halfway up your body, rigid knees subconsciously brushing between your thighs, pressing you to the mattress with the thick weight of his utterly relaxed lower body. 

He begins to slowly blink, as if coming out of a feverish daze, going ever-scarlet in realization. “Sorry, I– didn’t mean to…ah, just missed you so much, that’s all—” squirming to hide and bury his face into the pillows again, whining when you stop him with another squeeze of his cherubic cheeks.  

“What,” You’re breathless, and you reckon your pulse is beating as fast as Miles' is beneath your fingertips: rapid, floundering, like a marathon has been run four times over. “What was that, sweetheart?”

The nickname makes Miles shiver atop you; his head swivelling low to rest upon you, his everything pinning you down. Your huff of gentle (confused, frustrated, coy) air breezes along his brow bone, and he looks up to peer puppyish up at you. 

“Wanted to make you feel better,” he supplies, head tilting to rest the side of his face upon your skin too. “You-- you've been t-tense—and don’t lie, I can tell. So, so I was tryin’ to ask you on a date in the doorway… but then y-you stormed off on me! I thought you— I thought, maybe you don’t want thatkinda relief, so… so…”

“Oh, Miles.” you melt, hand cradling his face gently, thumb brushing against his lower lip, crooking the bed of your palm closer when he turns in to provide a chaste kiss. “I… didn’t realize you were trying to ask me on a date,” and your gaze darts away shyly, voice dropping to a ginger murmur, “in all honesty, I thought you were going out on one.”

“Me?” he asks, head tilting again in pure confusion. Cobalt blue eyes glistening with a disbelieving curiosity–like he couldn’t entertain the prospect logically in his mind long enough for it to make sense. “Who would I be going on a date with but you?”

Who would he be going on a date with but you? 

The silence of the room rings swirls in the junction of your ear. You think you hear a pin drop, but it might very well be your heart; trudging up the shaky interior of your ribcage, softly parsing through the meaning of his words… and finding it to be completely genuine. No sarcasm, and nothing of rhetoric: a true, confused question, uttered from those gentle lips. Who would I be going on a date with but you?as if the very notion was impossible. Like you just told him you’d reached up and plucked the sun for his garden. Like you just said, I miss the hotel.

For some odd, unknown reason, that is what makes your heart roar to life again. Makes your stomach churn with the familiar achings of hope. Those simple words, that glaring confusion, twist your entireviewpoint. How blatantly he says it: that there's nobody on this planet Miles’ would rather be with but you. This may not be very clear right now, but the path to it is, and one thing remains certain: you’ll be loving each other, no matter which way.

A small laugh tumbles out of your mouth, transforming your solemn features into something of silly belief. How foolish were you to think otherwise? That this gentle man, who offered his tiny room to you all those years ago, would suddenly let you slip out from his fingers at the prospect of someone else? Just as there's never been anyone else for you, there's never been anyone else at all for him but you.

How slow your realization was, too: you had been shying from Miles for days, worrying deep in your gut that he’d eventually disappear at the drop of the hat. Whereas, he had been entertaining big dreams of spending the rest of his life curled into your corner; cheering you on for all the world to see. Completely understanding that nobody better could be found; could be loved, could be known than you. 

Your laugh seems to make Miles’ smile twitch up too, and you can’t help but snicker a little louder when you catch his murmur: what are we laughing about now? Because that’s the kind of man Miles is, and always has been: a gentle lover, but fiercely loyal, tender to the very bone; happy to ask the silly, stupid questions when you don’t want to. 

“Nothing,” you shush him, letting your cold, fresh-from-work feet dip beneath the edge of Miles’ soft trousers, toe trailing along his bare Achilles and making him wince. 

“Y’cold,” he whines but doesn’t push you away. Miles doesn’t think he could ever push you away; even through a bout of worrying, self-imposed distance that made panic rise in his heart this week, because Miles’ knows you better than that. You know one another far better than that—and one thing you taught him, bits and pieces of philosophical advice littered into your early conversations, rings true now. Never stop trying. You never stopped trying to fulfill yourself at that trepid, consuming hotel– and you came out the other side with the love of your life tucked gently into your side. So Miles learned never to stop trying for anything at all– and certainly not for you. 

“Sorry,” you whisper. But you’re not for very long, especially when he sidles up real close to you, ducking his head right into your Plender gap and breathing you in.

You don’t know where the years went, but love peeled the layers back from Miles so quickly: paring away his skittish demeanour from back then, when he’d been afraid to leave any mess at all, afraid to give into his mild intrigue of you, to even stir the air with the gentlest inhale of his breath. Continuing to unravel him, until he was the greedy man caging you in now, unabashedly needy and unafraid to stake claim on what’s his. Wanting you by his side has never changed, and never will. 

Slowly, the two of you shift, roll, twitch and tug until the sheets are furrowed, comforter wrapped oddly around your legs-- but also until you’re comfortably in one another's arms, foreheads grazing every time one of you breathes. It gives you the most explicit look of his face, into those cobalt blues, through the brush of lashes you so admiringly yawp about when he puts lotion on his face — to the point Miles has to shut the bathroom door on you in the bedroom, just to continue his bedtime routine without melting out into a stammering pile of goop — and of the faint dustings of freckles you noted all that time ago.

Barely noticing the window Miles’ has the terribly endearing habit of keeping open—even on this quiet winter night—because in the summer it coaxed you to sleep and you thanked him for it the next morning. Eyes resting as you focused on the comforting murmur of Miles’ familiar breathing pattern, wrapped in silence so thick it was almost palpable—making you two feel like the only real things in the entire world.

You may have thought your love was nondescript and barely there — imperceptible if not for the top notes of intimacy and adoration lingering on the pulse points of your skin like perfumed oil — but it’s always been noticeable. Always been rich and heady, forever dabbled on the dip of your neck where he lies his head; a fervent scent of pure love blooming, caught on the hem of yourself like you sprayed a pump too much. And nothing, not even Miles’ cries or your own misunderstanding, would ever change that.