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headcanonsxheadcanons · 2 years ago

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Knuckle Velvet

Miguel O'Hara x Gn! Reader

(Cross Posted on AO3 under the same)

You must make each other the perfect evenings. Something like that.

Kinship in Snapshots.

Chapter 1 - Crack Baby

Neither of you really know how it started, much less how it would end. In a sea of red and blue spandex there was somehow an interim where you both fit, and that confined space of existence, the split second of locking eyes in a crowded hallway before pivoting back to static, was enough.

Perhaps it was a mutual understanding of happening upon each other in the cafeteria during ungodly hours. He grumbled over stale pastries and cold coffee, you complained about poor lighting to sew up your suit. It wasn't so much that you talked to each other, but at each other, and if you sat at the same table it was coincidence (or so you swore, because how much coincidence can there be in consistently trailing to the same space in a sea of empty seats and tables?). Either way, the silence was velvet on the skin, and it was more than enough.

"Bergamot oil helps with that." Was the first thing of substance you told Miguel, probably ever, eyes flitting to his split knuckles for a mere moment before returning to your sewing. He didn't respond and you repeated it, halfway in a stress that yes, it would work, thank you very much, and a childish need to not be ignored. Didn't stick. It wasn't necessarily disappointing, even if it made you feel petulant and petty to the point of considering changing tables, but it wasn't out of character for him either. And being able to exist in this interim of twilight zone peace meant conceding to these kinds of boundaries between them.

Even then, there was a bottle of the stuff sitting on his desk the next morning, glaringly homemade and labeled with the shaky handwriting of a last minute endeavor. The same bottle you found returned,washed and empty in your own room a week later.

'It's a bit sour', reads the only note he left with it, and it's so deadpanishly him that you almost can't roll your eyes at it. You get it, he's not the only one stubborn to the point of refusing to acknowledge that he'd needed something in the first place, let alone thank someone else for it, but if nothing else you have some sort of living proof that Miguel O'Hara does exist. His figure opposite yours on a near nightly basis isn't a trick of the light, or your head frying itself in exhaustion to hallucinate companionship.

Best of all, perhaps, he has shitty handwriting. It makes you smile.

He tells you one night - when you nearly swallow a needle rested on your lips with sheer surprise at even hearing him speak - that you must be careless to rip your suit so much that you repair it by his side. You tell him he's gonna have a heart attack with how much coffee he drinks every night. In truth, both of you have gone out of your way to maintain this nightly limbo. You let your suits snag in conspicuous edges, he forfeits morning cups to have them here instead. Both of you ignore any meaning in your actions. You break a needle, he finishes the coffee.

Neither of you move.

"You look like shit."

"Learning from the boss!"

It's not a problem when he gets hurt, or so he insists, and you've learned to know when he is, because the pastry section of the cafeteria has been scoured, but he's not there. Searching for him bears no fruit, like he's hidden specifically from you (you're reluctant to allow yourself such self importance), and when he finally shows himself like nothing is out of the ordinary, you fume with the bitter trepidation of having to acknowledge that you do worry for him more than you let yourself believe.

"Would it kill you to get help?" You forfeit the needle this time, arms crossed and instantly defensive, like you're trying to remove yourself to match what he doesn't give.

His eyes roll, the slightest twitch of his shoulders that reads as a shrug. "It wasn't a big deal, I handled it."

And he always does it, doesn't he? The hypocrisy of him, to micromanage everyone around him while shrouding himself with separation.

You generally don't let him negate proximity, but tonight it's irked you, and you set a coffee cup in front of him with enough force to splash and burn your own hand. He grabs it, and were it not for tunneling silence in your ears you'd laugh at the irony.

"You're careless."

There's cotton in your mouth. You let him run your hand under the faucet.

Miguel thinks you're hiding things. You must be, no one is that intimate with a needle. You threaten to stick it in his eyes instead of allowing him to decipher further into the reality of your presence in the cafeteria. There's holes in the suit, anyway, you change it around so often that you've never sprung for good fabric. So your needle gets use and you get a renewed excuse, stretched just a little thinner.

He begrudgingly (you roll your eyes, it was his own damned idea) grumbles that he ought to make you a suit like his own.

"And flash the entirety of New York if it malfunctions? No thanks." You are quick, too quick, to refuse what is realistically a perfectly good offer. Even if you didn't trust Miguel's hands, which you did, you could've trusted LYLA's input. But then you'd have run out of excuses. If he's clocked it, he doesn't say anything.

You don't mention he hasn't sat down with coffee or food in a week, either.

"What's the point in constantly fixing something that's just going to break again?" He rolls his eyes at you this time, and you truthfully don't have a reply with sufficient rationale. None that doesn't sound like a tide pod commercial, at least. You worry your lip between your teeth absentmindedly, trying to think of a worthy response. Nope, nothing but marketing 101 slogans.

You end up making a noncommittal grunt, very sexy of you, and he blinks at you like you're stupid. "You overwork, I fix holes in my suits. I don't think either of us is winning prizes on mental management." You end up saying, a grumble under pouted lips, one you hope suffices even if it makes you look boring. Better that than introspection on how it's actually kind of nice, this, finding comfort in sewing kits and split knuckles.

He acquiesces, or so you convince yourself.

There must be a reason why it's oddly comforting to just exist like this. It's cheaper than therapy, surely, and that's what you tell yourself at least, because you've never been close to Miguel. You aren't really close to anyone, which in itself doesn't make you special. Spider-Man and trauma is an oxymoron, after all. But these evenings have morphed into the one time you don't feel alienated from yourself, either. You feel as if you're floating a few feet from your body at all times, except here. Here, the press of your toes on the ground is palpable, tingles. You feel the indent your thin needle leaves on your index finger, on your lower lip when you hold it there.

You've been able to hear his breathing steadily opposite you and it hasn't been entirely overwhelming. You don't crave sensory deprivation as you always seem to. Miguel touching you (a rarity, yes, but an extant occurrence) isn't painful, doesn't sap your energy, perhaps because he's never verbalized the meaning behind it.

He steadies your posture often. One hand on your spine, large and warm and lingering only as long as necessary, and the other pushing your collarbones back with due gentleness. That's one thing too, warm hands. Yours are awfully cold, and so you feel he cheats the blessing he's been giving by avoiding touching others so often. You consider joking that he'd make a good heater. You'd probably jump off a window for saying it, however. So you don't, you straighten your back and hum and remember to breathe once he's removed his touch from you.

You start replicating homemade versions of the pastries he likes. Neither of you say anything about it.

You see him crumble for the first time and don't know what went wrong. He's gasping, angry, trembling. His talons dig into the table and you leap from your seat, seeking proximity rather than to create the space that would most likely have been a safer bet on your general well-being.

"I think the table's innocent, if I'm honest."

He doesn't think it's funny. He snarls something about incompetence (you learn he's projecting his own sense of it), and a coffee cup shatters when he swipes angrily at the space before him. Breaking shit is fun, but something went bad in one of the missions, you figure, really bad. His temper is hair-trigger enough to make you ponder several routes of possibility, but a blessed aid from LYLA's flickering form frees you of the uncertainty of guessing. G - A - B - I, she spells in the air before leaving you to handle the fallout. Traitor.

"I don't promise talking about it helps, but neither does mutilating a perfectly good table. Penny for your thoughts?" You try again. He'd never been one for humour, but given who you both are, it's inescapable. He gives you a look, stares at you silently to see if you'll fold, but you're nothing if not stubborn. So he huffs out a sigh, and looks down at the scratched up table.

"I'm very careful about not going anywhere where I might see her. I don't know what happened, she wasn't supposed to be there. "

"But she was." You finish for him. It's a minefield to be navigating, this, one you're not ready to see blow up if you fuck up. "You saw her?"

He nods, looking down like he just wants to go ahead and turn the table into figurative minced meat. You're not sure where to take this, not believing in giving back a piece of your own trauma just to seem relatable. The topic feels uncomfortable because it is , and there's no name for someone who's lost a child for a reason. So maybe you don't have to relate. Your fingers curl around his wrist loosely, tightening only with involuntary flexes, and that's enough. You both count the scratches on the table in silence. You look straight ahead when he starts crying.

"Thank you.

"Yea."

When he sees you break, it is entirely by chance, too. You'd been on edge the whole night, fidgeting, feasting on the skin of your lips until they were sore and raw. You dropped your needle once, then again, and even after that you managed to break it, let it snap under your fingers, hissing a tepid excuse of having had too much caffeine that day. You leave early and dissolve into nothing on the way, not expecting him to follow. Haha, he does. It's jarring, you've left your shared sanctum of stale confectionery and therefore the bond is broken and you're barely there coworkers in a hallway. He's not supposed to see you like this, like a choking deer, agonized over nothing concrete but the numbing pressure of the self that you can't always maintain. Not even there, it seemed.

He says your name a few times, though you hear it as if underwater.

" Por dios , snap out of it, you look like you're going to throw up."

Maybe you are, and then you'll make a hole in the wall and escape like a cartoon because you've just puked on your friend-boss-friend-person. Whoever he is. Your eyes are blurry from tears and internal dissonance, fighting to get back in your body and speak, speak godsdamn you.

"I don't, I, I uh…" You're about as coherent as if you were drunk, without the added bonus. You blubber a little, eyes scrunching shut in an attempt to focus, to quell the thumping in your chest that's lost its rhythm.

His hand plants itself at the back of your neck and pulls you forward. Your forehead thuds against his chest and there's a strangled sob dying in your throat. He covers your ears, and stays, as you wade through your disconnect of reality to fear soaking him with your tears. There's the smell of Bergamot coming from somewhere on him, with a bitter edge that squeezes from you the memory of something you made him. And his heart, badump, badump. Countable. Badump, badump. Anchoring.

Miguel O'Hara is real, therefore you must be too.

Neither of you was built to give advice, and in truth you're not great at receiving it either. There's hypocrisy in both of you. You are objective and open to the faults in others that you reject on yourself, and Miguel is blind to the lot of it, writes his off as weaknesses and projects them forward carelessly. So for the both of you, pulse points and heartbeats do the talking.

For now, at least.

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