Meanwhile, in the Multiverse

So Barbara Rodriguez hadn't been on his mind that afternoon. Hell, in the month since she'd first come up, he had barely had time to consider why Ganke was so convinced Miles didn't have a shot with Barbara Ghodke. What was it Uncle Aaron used to say about Indian girls? "Ain't nothing wrong with the Kama Sutra." He might have been less woke than his nephew would have liked...

But at the end of the day, Miles wasn't that interested in either of those young ladies, lovely as they were. It was just that there was one girl he never really stopped thinking about...

Miles had met her during the most important week of his life, when he'd been bitten by a radioactive spider from another dimension that gave him strength and powers comparable to that of the world famous webhead, plus a bio-electric venom blast he'd found some interesting new uses for, and the ability to render himself invisible. Miles had taken up the mantle and mask of Spider-Man in honor of the fallen hero who'd been protecting New York since he was a kid. He'd been at it for years now, which is why he had developed a warped sense of what was possible. Because even though he was a wall-crawling, web-spinning wonder, there were still times he wished he could fly or read minds or use The Force to move his TV remote closer. But every time his mind started wandering in that direction, he'd have the same thought. It was exactly what his dearly departed uncle would say:

Noogie, you already got more powers than you know what to do with.

This was a long, roundabout way of explaining how weird it was that on that particular afternoon, laying on his bed back home, stewing about this situation with his folks, after years of wishing a hot blonde with a tight body -- and not just any hot blonde with a tight body, but a very specific hot blonde with a tight body -- would suddenly drop down onto his bed, when it actually happened, Miles wasn't surprised that it wasn't nearly as fun as he thought it would be. None of the things you'd think would be awesome -- like getting superpowers or hosting Jeopardy -- were ever nearly as fun as you thought they would be.

Gwen Stacy blipping into the middle of his bedroom was now at the top of his list of fantasies-to-disappoint. ** As seen in Miles Morales: Spider-Man #2, "Brooklyn's Finest!" -LBD **

Why couldn't she have shown up last week when he took down the Grizzly? The guy was a joke, but he was big, and Miles would have looked tough. And even better, that was before things with his parents got heated. Before he got grounded like some dumb little kid. But, no, here she was now, and it was a nightmare.

At least at first.

By the time they were swinging across the city, Spider-Man and Spider-Woman, he remembered how long he'd been dreaming of this. How long he'd been hoping to see Gwen Stacy again.

"So, how long has it been?" she asked. "You just seem so much larger."

Gah! "Larger," Gwen? Come on! Really?! You sound like an idiot.

During her strange days at Brooklyn Vision Academy, she'd seen Miles shoot up a few inches after his spider-bite, but that had only put them at about the same height. Now he was taller than her, and it just made him seem so much more... mature.

"Are you seriously asking me that?" he said. "You don't remember how long it's been?"

"Well, the last time I came here, I entered a full week before that collider even exploded," Gwen replied. "And didn't someone once tell me Einstein said that time is relative?"

"Think I heard that somewhere," Miles chuckled. "So is that why you haven't swung by? Is my dimension, like, out of temporal sync with the rest of them or something?"

"No, we only get to go where we're needed," she explained. "Guess you've just done too good a job keeping your universe safe."

"But you're here now..." He seemed able to tell that was some bullshit.

"Just a spot check," Gwen told him. It wasn't even a lie. "There's a potential for multiple Einstein-Rosen bridges within a tightly confined section of space-time. Nothing I haven't handled a dozen times before."

"And they say science isn't sexy."

"Sexy, huh?"

"Uh, yeah," he gulped. "That means, like, 'cool in an appropriately platonic way' in this world," he bluffed. "Why? Does it mean something else where you're from?"

"No." She was glad he couldn't see the smile under her mask. He really didn't deserve it. "It almost means the same thing."

They'd been playing a spidey-powered version of HORSE -- diving between trucks, snagging purse-snatchers, and tagging flagpoles and water towers as they zipped through the Brooklyn skyline -- and Gwen Stacy was getting buckets. Miles always remembered her being great at all of this web-slinging business back in the day, but she was even better now. He was just trying to keep up, but it had all been going just fine until they got ambushed by one of Roxxon's security squad...

As Spider-Man, Miles had remained surprisingly popular in New York. After Peter's death, all that anti-webhead sentiment suddenly seemed in poor taste, so the new guy with the webs had just been riding those coattails. Sure, there were a lot of folks on social media still saying he was a poser and he'd never be as good as the "real" Spider-Man, but that's what haters did, right? It's not like they were demanding his arrest.

Roxxon was the exception. They were an energy outfit that'd bought up some of Alchemax's former holdings after the collider explosion, and they were deep into some shady shit up in Harlem where his abuela lived. Miles couldn't prove anything yet, but he'd thrown a few wrenches into their works.

"While we can't definitively tie Spider-Man to the incident that destroyed our facility on 110th Street, he continues to pose a serious threat to the people of this great city," Simon Krieger, Roxxon's Head of Research and Development had released in a press statement. "While the PDNY might not want to enforce them, there are laws against vigilantism, and Roxxon Energy will be dedicating its substantial resources to the citizen's arrest of this menace."

That hadn't really been working out for them.

"Sure you don't want a hand?" Gwen suggested as he tussled with a security squad of six armed with stun batons and tasers.

"What do you mean?" Miles asked, unleashing Splendid Web Rush and Unseen Venom Strike upon his foes. "These chumps ain't nothing."

"You know kung fu?" She was clearly impressed.

"Saw it in a movie," he quipped, webbing them up. That had to have looked so much doper than coldcocking the Grizzly.

"Oh my god," she giggled. "You just think you're so suave right now, don't you?"

"Hey, what can I say? I got bit by a radioactive charmer."

"I'll bet."

They were up and away shortly thereafter, swinging in impossible arcs through the greatest borough in the greatest city in every world, every time...

"It's just really good to see you, Gwanda," he told her.

"Oh, screw you," Gwen laughed. "Like you never made up a bad fake name."

"Not me." He just seemed so cocky about it. "I always just go with Pedro Parker."

"Of course you do, funny guy."

"But I always kind of liked Gwanda," he confessed. "Tell you a secret? It's my password for everything. Gwanda42 with at-signs for the A's." ** Crap. Now I gotta change my Literotica password. -LBD **

A lot had changed, but Miles was astounded by how much felt the same. She 'd been the one person who seemed to get him back when he started at BVA, so of course, she couldn't stick around...

Miles had years to examine the fact that the people he felt closest to were people who lived in other dimensions, but he'd done these self-examinations without the benefit of a trained and licenced therapist for obvious reasons, so he'd come to the conclusion he was doing just fine. Sure, Ganke had his opinion about Miles going after unavailable women -- and how much more unavailable did you get than the girl from some whole different world? And, let's be honest, the girl from some whole different world who'd be out of his league even if she was from his universe?

For Gwen, it was like a ballet, but not quite. She had decided to borrow some shoes because she wanted to look cool. In her mind, Miles always had those Jordans, and he still wore them. Seriously, she had no idea how he ran along skyscrapers with soles that thick! But after witnessing the gobsmacking variance of the polymultiverse, it was nice to know there were some constants. Miles Morales wore Jordans. And the changes Miles had made weren't too bad either... But with Hobie Brown's Chucks, she felt clunky and off balance. She'd started out her career as Spider-Woman with ballet shoes for a reason, and a well-worn pair of All-Stars were almost as thin. And it was just the shoes, right? It wasn't because she was with him. With Miles.

"So, how long ago did they invite you?" he asked her.

"It was only, like, a few months ago."

"Months is kind of a long time, isn't it?" Miles wondered if that was fair as soon as he asked it. She'd made an impossible dimension-hopping move to see him. It's not like he'd punched a hole in space-time for a hangout. Bitching about the timing seemed petty and childish.

"Okay," Gwen said, taking a tight curve between two highrises, "this one counts for two." Spider-Woman clearly didn't want to talk about it anyway. So she told him about her new cool club instead, all the awesome people she'd met and the unbelievable things she had seen, but the more she told him, the more he realized what she wasn't telling him. That Gwen felt safe. That she was happy.

"So what about the people back home?" he asked. "The girls in the band?"

"Haven't seen The Mary Janes since I left."

"That's a terrible band name," he told her.

"At our first show, we were actually Mary Jane and the Mary Janes. She convinced us all to wear Mary Janes." Peter had this picture from that night he'd used as Gwen's contact photo on his phone until the day that he died. "Ugh, the ego on the chick. If every other universe is any indication, I guess if I died it'd make her humble, but I don't know. We're really not that close. I mean, she's the kind of girl who thinks she can just go by Emjay like she's Beyoncé or something."

"Who's Beyoncé?"

"Yet you have Post Malone." Gwen shook her head. "Your world is so dumb."

Miles decided not to take that personally. "Sunflower" had been his jam when they first met. "But you got friends now, right?" he asked. "People looking after you? Like this tight-knit elite Spider-Squad? Or even that Tobey guy?"

"Hobie," she corrected. "And that's more of a work thing than a friend thing," she tried to explain.

"So... you just haven't gone back home at all?"

"I... I can't," she said. She really hadn't come here to discuss this with him.

"Gwen, did you run away from home?"

"I'm damn near twenty years old," she insisted. "I'm too old to run away from home." But, yeah, she had. She was a runaway. And maybe that might make sense if her parents had been part of some evil pact with some malevolent alien race determined to subjugate the planet, but George Stacy wasn't that. For some reason, he seemed to think that she'd killed Peter, but he wasn't that. He was the best man she knew, and she was a runaway, and she knew what that meant, just like Miles. Because they were the kids of cops. They'd heard the stories. They knew what that did to the kind of parents who loved their children. Her father didn't deserve that, but what else could she do?

"There's this great rooftop just around the way," Miles said when they were moving through Fort Greene. He seemed to know when he'd pushed enough and it was time to call a timeout. "Wanna check it out?"

"This is a cool thinking spot," Gwen admitted when they made it to One Hanson Place. It was secluded enough they could take off their masks for a spell.

"Right?" Miles replied. "I mean, who needs a treadmill when you've got the Williamsburg Bank Building?" She was pretty sure they had one on her world, but she was more of a Chelsea girl. Like Nico. "So, you and your dad, you still haven't talked?"

"What exactly would we talk about?" she asked. Turned out she'd been wrong. He was still pressing. "'Hey, Dad, how have the last few months been? Still think I murdered my best friend?'"

She dropped down to one of the lesser views at this point, and Miles followed her down.

"I don't know," he said. Because he didn't. "I mean, my parents, maybe if I told them--"

"Don't," Gwen said, tying her hair back. "Trust me on that." She walked under the ledge.

Had he said something wrong? Was she trying to get away from him? Miles decided to give her a moment before he dropped after her. "Well, maybe some things are just supposed to be for us," he eventually suggested.

"Hmm," she mused. "That's a nice way to think about it."

"I'm just a really emotionally intelligent guy," Miles informed her. "Beyond my years."

Gwen chuckled at that. "You know, it really is always so great to talk to you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," she said. "I mean, how many people can you talk to about this stuff?"

"You don't even know." Sure, he had Ganke. And she had the Spider-Squad or whatever, but that just didn't do it. Miles stepped up to sit next to her and she sighed. "What?"

"You're the only friend I've ever really made after Peter died," she said.

"Other than Hobie, right?" He tried to keep it playful, but Miles couldn't help it. He was a little jealous.

"That's different..."

"Yeah?" Miles said, casually picking a bit of beef patty off his leg. "How's that?"

"I don't know," Gwen relented, exasperated. "You and me... It's..."

"We're the same," he said to her. He hated how much he wanted what he was telling her to be true. "In the important ways, you know?"

Yeah. Gwen knew. She'd known that for so long, but it didn't seem to change what mattered most... "In every other universe, Gwen Stacy falls for Spider-Man," she told him. Miles glanced her way with just a sliver of his usual gleam, and his hand slid towards hers. She could see it and she panicked. "And in every other universe, it doesn't end well."

Gwen knew right then that this was what she had come here for. Why she was risking pissing off the only people looking out for her right then to see him. For the closure. She'd said her piece and that was it, right? The end of it.

"Well," Miles said, ever the optimist, "there's a first time for everything, right?"

Of course that wasn't the end of it. Not with him.

The various Spider-Men who gathered on Earth-928 weren't all Peter Parkers, thank God, but there were a lot of Peter Parkers. And most of them stared at Gwen with this same weird sense of desperate longing. It should have been impossible to notice a hundred guys in full head masks were ogling you, but if anyone could do it in an obvious way in every version of himself across the Arachnohumanoid Polymultiverse, it'd be Peter Benjamin Parker. But it wasn't Gwen's job to fulfill some unsatisfied sexual fantasy for every frustrated Spider-Man in creation.

Wasn't that what Cindy Moon was for?

Thankfully, Peter-616 wasn't like that. He was more like an uncle, but, you know, not a creepy one like her actual uncle, Arthur, George's brother, who now lived in London and took his long lingering hugs with him. Peter got stupid protective whenever there was a goblin around -- Ugh, they all did -- but other than that, Gwen never felt objectified around him like she did with most of the others. There was a reason she spent so much time with Hobie. Brown didn't believe in the male gaze, so it hadn't been all that difficult to keep things platonic... for the most part.

"Sorry about all those awkward Parkers," Jess had apologized with a shake of her head about a week into Gwen's tour of duty. "That's one of the reasons Miguel was reluctant to recruit you."

"What were the other reasons?" she wondered. Gwen hadn't seen much of Miguel O'Hara, the society's founder, just yet.

"We'll get to that when we have to."

Gwen let it go. Orientation had been dizzying enough. Everybody told you to ignore the bit about how dreams were a gateway to the multiverse from Peter-517, Sorcerer Supreme, but she couldn't help but wonder.

"This story won't work if you don't buy into the dream thing!" she'd been told by Pete Wilson, the Composite Spider-Pool. "I know, I know, it's kind of dumb. If that's true, does that mean every dream anybody has in the MCU is some stupid branch timeline? Does that mean there's a world where, like, Darcy Lewis is naked and running from clowns? Okay, sure, maybe I'd read that. I really liked her chemistry with Howard the Duck in that episode of What If...? Not sure Writer-Boy wants to write any of that, but I bet he's starting to think about it!"

He was not wrong.

Still, the fact that Wilson had been screaming all this while in the thrall of the Go Home Machine before it cast him back into the weird pocket dimension from whence he came had forced her to take all of it with just so much salt...

"Ignore that nutter, Gwendy," Spider-Punk had insisted. It'd only been their second mission together, a harrowing three-dimension pursuit to hunt Spider-Pool's anomalous ass down. She wasn't surprised Hobie was done with him. He really hated the Shakespeare reality.

On Gwen's world, magic wasn't real, but she had finally learned how her story played out so differently everywhen else. And Gwen Stacy had a lot of dreams about falling. There was a recurring thing about a college acapella group, and a crazy one where she ran some kind of dinosaur zoo, but there were lots about falling.

Then again, she'd once had an inappropriate wet nightmare about Harry Osborn's dad -- she blamed late night corndogs and a crazy costume change at the time -- but she couldn't imagine any universe where something like that happened for real, so she still had her doubts...

"But if, like, there was a Spider-guy I was interested in... how would I let him know?" Gwen had asked Jess. It was the type of thing she wished she could have asked her mom growing up, but that hadn't been in the cards. Peter's Aunt May had been great, but Gwen hadn't really been able to face her after he'd died.

"You know the shoulder touch?" Jess asked.

"Of course I do!" Gwen insisted. "But tell me anyway."

"Tomorrow, you sit down next to that guy, whoever he is..." -- Gwen was pretty sure Jess thought she was talking about Hobie because it wasn't just Silk, everybody thought there was something going on with them -- "...and then you just casually lean over and bump your shoulder into his."

"Are you serious, Jess?" she laughed. There was no way that worked.

"I'm telling you, girl, it's science."

Gwen Stacy had fought rampaging Rhinos and unhinged hunters and Latverian warlord wizards in state-of-the-art suits of armor. Spider-Woman had faced down the Immortal Mr. Murderhands in Genosha, surrounded by the hordes of The Hand. She'd fired the Great Web-Shooter into the Temporal Loom as the Loki That Never Should Have Been, reborn as Anansi, Trickster God of All Stories, gathered the errant branches of time and eternity into Yggdrasil, the Multiversal Tree, binding its roots to the ever-weaving Web of Life and Destiny. Spider-Gwen had witnessed the fall of Peter-Prime, when the Two Brothers severed the last skein and Earth-Zero spiraled off into the infinite crises, forever lost to the Canon. And she'd done it all without blinking because there'd been one time she couldn't save her friend, so she didn't hesitate. Not anymore.

And yet, the courage it took her to slope over into Miles' shoulder was right up there with that time she'd gotten trapped under all that rubble in the Master Planner's undersea lair.