Work Text:
“So, Margo,” Jefferson Morales began after saying grace. He dug into the vibrantly orange plate of rice and peas sitting in front of him.
“How’d you and Miles meet? He never told us the specifics.”
Margo’s eyes flickered toward Miles, who gave her an encouraging thumbs-up.
Right. The cover story.
This was her first real dinner with the Morales family since being introduced. Usually, Rio would invite her to eat with them just before Miles interrupted and insisted that Margo “had to get home by six o’clock sharp” and ushered her out the door. This time, though, his mom insisted on having dinner early and won the battle.
“We met at one of those Alchemax conventions for, uh…kids in STEM? We had a really nice conversation and exchanged numbers.”
“They still have those?” Rio piped up as she took a seat with her own plate. “We used to beg Miles to sign up his freshman year. I didn’t think he actually went!”
She looked intently at her son as she said, “I keep telling him that it’s a great opportunity to look for internships before college.”
Miles looked up, and mirrored her tight smile.
“And I keep saying that I’ve done enough science internships to get me a job at NASA,” he replied through slightly clenched teeth.
Margo silently toggled her gaze between the two until Jefferson broke the silence with a cough.
“Anyway, you live far off? Miles tells us he doesn’t get to see you very often.”
“Yeah, I’m actually down in Atlanta.”
Technically not a whole lie; her parents were from Georgia, they just didn’t live there anymore.
…Savanna, Georgia.
Rio turned to Margo with wide eyes.
“Wow, that’s far! And you’re able to still keep in touch?”
“I keep saying to Miles, technology’s amazing,” Jeff laughed after taking a sip of water. “A few decades ago, you needed to write down people’s numbers in a little book. Now y’all got text messaging, Instagram, the Facebook–”
“It’s just ‘Facebook’, dad.”
“ –FaceTime, all these ‘faces’!”
Margo giggled at Miles’ weary expression as she shoveled spoonfuls (fork-fuls?) of rice into her mouth, saying nothing of the fact that in her world, half of the things that Jefferson had just listed off had become obsolete. People’s status updates tended to float above their avatar’s heads. Some didn’t even bother to exchange numbers anymore, preferring to ask for usernames instead.
“Margo, sweetie, do you want any fruit juice? I just remembered we still had some in the fridge.”
Before she could reply, Jeff interrupted with a wince.
“Ooh. See, about that…I think I drank the last of it with breakfast this morning.”
Rio sighed and massaged her temples. “Jeff!”
“I didn’t know we were having company!”
“You always finish everything in the fridge before the week’s even over. You eat faster than Miles!”
“Whoah, why am I in it?”
“And I keep telling you to throw the carton away when you’re finished. Nobody in here listens!”
Margo felt a cold sensation in her chest.
She nearly squeezed her eyes shut as the familiar sentence rang through the dining room, her grip on her fork tightening as Jefferson opened his mouth to respond. Miles saw her tense, but couldn’t get her attention. Her eyes were laser-focused on her plate.
“That’s my fault, honey. Tell you what, I’ll do the grocery shopping tomorrow to make up for it. How’s that?”
Like magic, the woman’s face relaxed and melted into a grin.
“You’d better. I want Margo to have a nice time with us before she has to fly back to Atlanta.”
Jeff turned his attention to Margo.
“Y’know, speaking of Atlanta, I got some extended family down in Charleston, just a few hours from y’all. We used to send Miles down there for the summer when he was younger,” he chuckled, “Came back darker than me, and with an accent!”
Margo blinked. The argument was just…over? The speed at which they moved on gave her whiplash.
She quickly forced a polite smile. “Uh, that’s cool.”
Rio chimed in, “We’ve been planning to send him down to P.R. this year instead, pick up some Spanish for a change.”
Miles was in the middle of finishing up his plate, and nearly choked on his rice.
“Mami, I know enough Spanish to get by,” he coughed. “I don’t think that’s–”
“Not the basic Spanish they’re teaching you at school, mijo. When we take you to family reunions, you can barely talk to your cousins!”
“I’m all for it. We got some great pictures from down South when he was eight–”
“O-kay! I think we’re both done with dinner,” Miles shot up and grabbed his now-empty plate, reaching over to take Margo’s as well. “Right, Margo?”
She snapped out of it and stood up herself.
“Oh–um, sure! Lead the way.”
He hastily led her up the stairs as soon as he dropped their plates off in the kitchen sink.
“Come back down to wash those later!”
“Y’all behave up there!”
Miles looked at Margo and rolled his eyes as he opened the door to his room. Margo snorted.
“Nothing’s gonna happen, dad, I promise!”
Miles’ room managed to be full of stuff without feeling cluttered. There were empty crates stacked on top of each other that he used to prop up extra books or comics, but that gave the impression that he had built a neat fort around himself and the crates were mini skyscrapers. He had two huge speakers on either side of his window that he only used when his folks were out, and the soft neo-soul he played surrounded the room with bass and piano like a warm hug. Margo sat down on his bed, sinking into the mattress a little. She had always quietly envied the boy’s ability to create this second home-within-a-home for himself.
The space next to her dipped as Miles laid down and stared up at the ceiling, his hands resting behind his head like he was on vacation.
“Sorry if that was…a lot.”
“It’s fine.”
“My folks actually really like you, you know? That’s why they talk so much.”
Margo’s eyes flickered downward at his grinning face, and she smiled.
“I know.”
“Alright, just making sure. You just looked a little shaky back there, and you’re never that quiet.”
He sat up and narrowed his eyes at her, jokingly placing the back of his hand on her forehead.
“You’re not sick, right? Don’t spread that shit to me, I got a test tomorrow–”
“You play too much,” Margo laughed, shoving his arm. “I’m not sick. Haven’t had a cold in months.”
Miles lowered his hand to rest partially on top of hers.
“So what is it, then?”
She paused, and spent a few silent seconds staring into the boy’s face. His expression sobered, the furrow in his brow a signal that now was not the time to lie.
She tried anyway and said it was “nothing”, knowing that Miles wouldn’t believe her.
There was a strange sort of comfort to be found in the way he leaned in and said–
“Margo.”
“What?”
“You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met. Why do you keep doing that?”
Margo shrugged with a lopsided grin. “If at first you don’t succeed, right?”
Miles looked away for a second and kissed his teeth, but Margo could tell he had smiled.
She tapped his chin to gently turn his face back towards her.
“Okay, okay, my bad. I’ll tell you.”
He nodded, “Go ahead.”
“I thought they were gonna fight.”
“…Huh?”
“Your parents. At dinner. I thought they were about to fight, so I braced myself.”
Miles looked even more baffled.
“Over juice?”
“Yeah? But then they just sorta stopped, so I got nervous.”
“I mean,” he shifted uncomfortably, “They fight sometimes, I guess. But they don’t, like…fight fight. Like, they make up after.”
Margo looked down and smiled at her socks. “My folks actually make up sometimes, too. It’s real cute. They sit on the couch and watch old movies together with popcorn, then they share some with me. It’s like a lil’ party for just the three of us.”
Miles chewed on his bottom lip. That was the most she had ever spoken about her parents; the only time he’d heard her mother’s voice was when the woman had yelled something in another room and Margo’s computer picked it up.
“So what do you do when they don’t? Make up, I mean.”
Margo hummed in consideration, kicking her feet back and forth before turning to Miles.
“Now I come here, I guess.”
This gave Miles pause. He remembered the first time he snuck out of the house - before he could climb walls. It wasn’t to go to any parties, or to escape getting grounded.
He went out just to draw. To get a breath of fresh air without a pair of eyes looking over his shoulder, even admiring ones.
Whenever he got asked too many questions about his grades, or the music filtering through his headphones wasn’t enough, his room felt more like an enclosure that he needed to escape. It got smaller with every inch that his bed shrunk, until his feet were touching the edge.
But this little box of a room was now Margo’s escape. And Miles wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
He nodded slowly. “That’s good. My mom needs an excuse to make arroz con dulce for somebody, so…”
Margo laughed, “I’m always happy to taste test for her.”
“I’ll make sure to tell her that.”