When Kyle turns twelve he realizes that he doesn’t remember a birthday without Miles. Maybe that means he has a bad memory, but maybe that means Miles makes the birthdays worth remembering. (Or: Miles and Kyle grow up together. They go to college apart. It’s harder than Kyle expected.)
jaz remember that time an au generator gave you mileskyle "oh no, the only place to sleep in this whole place is the one tiny twin bed...." and my entire life flashed before my eyes. i want that au.
au generators are amazing. fucking love them. this particular au fucked me up and i have been trying to come up with context. and then. it hit me.
.
“kyle,” miles says, very seriously, “i need you to date me for the weekend.”
kyle promptly chokes on whatever he’s drinking, tries to make a quick recovery, and says “are you at least going to take me out to dinner first?”
it turns out, as miles explains, that his third cousin’s wedding is this weekend and miles promised to go, because he figured someone else from his immediate family would go, and he marked plus-one because his sorta-serious boyfriend at the time he received the invitation said he could go, but then they broke up and nobody else from his family is going but now his cousin is expecting him to show up with his boyfriend and he can’t go alone, okay, kyle, please, just this once
and, well, miles has done some weird things for kyle, and it’s a weekend where he gets some free food and to meet some of miles’s family and all he has to do is kiss miles on the cheek and call him babe a couple of times, which won’t be that hard considering he’s been stupidly in love with miles since college, so it’s like, why not, just for the weekend? (it becomes worth saying yes as soon as he does it, because miles’s face fucking lights up and kyle doesn’t know how he’s so in love but he really kinda is, isn’t he, goddamn it)
they drive out together on friday morning and miles fills kyle in on all the relevant details: his cousin’s name is cindy, she’s known her fiance since they were seven years old and this wedding has been a long time coming, miles hasn’t seen cindy in three years but they text sometimes, miles had been dating his boyfriend for about five months and he got the invitation about a year ago so he can just say he’s been dating kyle for a year and a half, and by the way out of luna family hospitality they’re going to be in the guest room in cindy’s parents’ house, is that okay?
“uh,” kyle says, as he attempts to process all the information he’s been given. “sure?”
after four hours in a car, most of which is spent blasting road trip music as soon as all the awkward fake-dating talk is out of the way, they arrive in a small town and kyle gets to meet cousin cindy and a lot of the extended luna family. cindy and miles get along perfectly, and as soon as miles drags him around and introduces him to the family (cindy, her fiance, her parents, her little brother who idolized miles when they were kids, a couple of people in the wedding party) kyle gets along with all of them too.
the thing is, as they stumble their way through a rehearsal dinner and cindy and her spouse-to-be laugh at the head of the table, it’s remarkably easy to pretend to be dating miles. it’s not just because of the way kyle feels, although that has to be part of it - no, it’s easy because miles wraps an arm around kyle’s waist and it stays there and because all of the luna family likes him. (including miles’s great-uncle and a fourth cousin, and jesus, miles, what’s it like having a family this big?)
it’s easy, kyle thinks, because he’s known miles for years at this point and all they’re doing is being in more physical contact and changing the name of it (kyle has to fight down a really cheesy grin the first time miles says the words “my boyfriend kyle”) and it is almost frighteningly natural to be dating miles, even if it’s not really dating.
and then, at the end of the night, cindy’s parents show them up to the guest room and they say they’re so sorry, they haven’t had guests in so long, they forgot that it was just a twin bed, will the two of them both be able to fit? and miles goes a little slack-jawed but kyle manages to smoothly tell them that it’ll be fine, really, thank you so much for letting us stay in your home, and then they’re stuck with the two of them and a tiny bed.
“i can go on the floor,” miles offers after a minute, but kyle shakes his head and says “it’s your family’s house, if anyone should be taking the floor it’s me,” and miles just frowns and says “could we both fit?”
it turns out that they both fit, as soon as their changed into pajamas and boxers. or, well, kyle fits if he’s on his side, and miles is pressed against his back with his feet dangling off the edge of the bed. and kyle thinks that if this were any situation other than what it is maybe he could make a joke and they’d be laughing about it. but they’re in this strange limbo, or at least kyle is, they’re on the cusp of something.
in all the years kyle has known miles he’s met the luna family a few times, but never the extended family. he’s never known miles to want anyone to meet his extended family, even though miles very clearly loves them. and now here he is and everyone they’ve met thinks that miles is in love with kyle, cindy’s fiance even said they were cute together, and here they are crammed into a bed that barely fits one of them.
“thank you for doing this,” miles says, and he sounds sleepy and vulnerable, and one of his hands is hovering near kyle’s hip and kyle grabs it, pulls miles’s arm over his waist, pretends not to notice the sharp little gasp that miles makes. they fall asleep like that, a kind of breathless hope between them, and there’s a wedding tomorrow and they’ll sort this out sometime around then. but right now kyle is willing to just be here, crammed in a bed with miles, getting ready for whatever comes next.
(miles doesn’t tell kyle that he easily could’ve canceled the plus-one, or that his family would’ve been fine if he just showed up and introduced his best friend, that kyle doesn’t need to be there at all. but that’s a story for another day.)
