"Hah, yeah, I thought so, too!" answered Miles, fist-bumping with random_teenager_01 before placing his back to a window and wondering what the guy was talking about. Sometimes socializing meant kind of nodding and going along with things. Besides, he'd been interrupted on his way to the window and wasn't really committed to the conversation to begin with. After a quick glance, he lifted the window open and slipped out, closing it behind him carefully before climbing the side of the building and squatting on the roof to look for Gwen.
Once he located her, he quietly returned to the side of the building and took the long way around so that he could sneak up on her, grinning to himself at the mental image of her jumping clear out of her socks in just a moment. He could see it clearly in his imagination, she'd jump and then they'd laugh and talk about the trip and who knows what else before heading off to the lifts with their gear. He shook the images from his head as he got closer to where she'd been sitting and prepared to leap up and surprise her.
Miles launched himself on the roof, feeling triumphant and shouted "Boo--uh?!" The end tapered off when he realized she wasn't there.
In the time it took for Miles to round the building and leap up, Gwen had webbed down and in through a window (possibly the same one he had leapt out of) to grab herself a hot chocolate refill in her very own travel mug. Because yes, that was a staple of the Spider Status now and she had managed to find a blue, pink and black insulated one that was also affordable. The marshmallows were problematic, but she could do without once or twice.
As most people were out skiing and enjoying the sights, sounds, cold and whatever else, there wasn’t a line, and she’d had her change ready to go. It took remarkably little time to get her drink, which for a native New Yorker felt a little like a miracle akin to everything else that happened in Atlantis.
She returned to her spot on the roof only slightly surprised to see Miles there. “Oh, hey Miles. If I’d known you’d be here I’d have tried to bring you one.” She said, pointing to her mug.
Wheeling around coolly on his heels, Miles shoved his hands in his pockets and put on his completely-not-surprised-to-see-you-behind-me expression and gave Gwen a huge smile. "Gweeeen. Just wanted to see if you were ready to, uh, hit the slopes?" That was the right phrase, right?
"But yeah, no, thanks, I'm good. I've got a Yeti thing ready to rock for the trip in case it gets too cold. Pretty sure Spider-powers don't make me immune to that."
It was odd how automatic it had become for Gwen to smile the second Miles did, especially when he smiled that big. She snickered at the skiing jargon he employed, sipping on her chocolate. She still had no idea how to ski, really, but that seemed unimportant. What was the worst that could happen to someone like her? “Yeah, let’s uh, let’s hit ‘em. Oh, I don’t know if yours does that but I’m wearing my suit underneath my clothes and it’s insulated so it helps with the cold.”
She smiled and closed the little opening on her mug before approaching the edge of the roof. “Ready to rock?”
"Ready, and never leave home without it," answered Miles, tugging at his color just enough to show the black and red outfit underneath. Whether it'd do much for extreme cold, he had no idea, but if anything helped then he was willing to give it a shot. It was like thermal underwear, but way cooler! He joined her at the edge of the roof and glanced sideways at her.
"Video Game Challenge," he intoned, adopting a 'serious' expression. "Make it to the lifts without touching the ground."
Grinning, Gwen glanced sideways at Miles as she adjusted her backpack over her shoulders, clipping the mug to one of the zipper handles. “I like that challenge! And I accept it, obviously.”
She looked out onto the landscape below, all the way to the lifts, and knew immediately this wouldn’t be as easy to accomplish as it was in New York. A lot more empty space meant a lot more calculated web throws. And making things fun also meant catching up to a lift at the highest point possible. She was already throwing the first web as she looked back at Miles, still smiling brightly. “Meet you up there!”
The way over was paved with near misses, exclamations of various religious figures’ names and a few very hard to discern quasi-touches of the toe to the snow. The wind wasn’t helping and neither had the lack of sturdiness from the snow covered trees, plus Gwen had the constant urge to look around and see how Miles was doing. Honestly, Gwen was unsure if she had cleared the challenge as she installed herself onto the seat of one of the lifts. She was panting as she pulled the backpack off of one shoulder to better lean against the backrest.
And a fraction of a second later, Miles connected with the bottom of the lift before flipping himself into the seat, laughing as he did. He'd started with a bit of a web-slingshot to try and get some easy distance and it had worked pretty well, though Gwen's general experience gave her the edge in speed. He'd had to slow down just to make sure he didn't end up plowing the snow as part of the trip to the lifts. Still, he had a lot of fun picking his way across the trees and occasional light pole.
"That," he added, through his smile, "was awesome. I thought for sure you were about to eat it for a moment there. Are you gonna tell me about the antigrav threading in your suit?"
“Honestly, so did I.” Gwen replied with a grin, turning fully to Miles when he landed on the lift. She had spent the last few seconds watching Miles swing up to it with interest, trying to gauge where they were similar and where they differed and hadn’t really reached any conclusions because she just wasn’t in an analytical mood. She was just here to have a good time.
Scrunching up her nose, Gwen shrugged. “Um, I don’t know much about it, an inventor named Janet Van Dyne made it for me? She used to be a superhero, Wasp, so she’s kind of an expert on supersuits and stuff. My web-shooters were made by her too. They absorb moisture to make the webs so I rarely have to replace the filters. Unless I’m like, in a desert or something. You can like analyze it if you want, though.”
Miles listened to the explanation with his mouth dropping open about halfway, then he shook his head. "Seriously? I was just joking-- you actually have antigrav threading in your suit? That's wild. Though if you think about it, that's kind of like cheating now, so maybe we'll have to find different challenges." He bumped shoulders with her and settled into his seat on the lift, smiling as the lift continued to carry them to the drop-off point.
Though now he was kind of curious if Peter Parker, his world's Peter, was the one who built all his suits or if Aunt May did a lot of that, or if someone like Janet Van Dyne was involved. It seemed every day, even her in Atlantis, he was learning just how much more there was to the world that he'd been kind of ignorant of. Still, it was a lot of fun finding out.
“No! No, I meant I don’t know much about the suit in general I don’t think it has any kind of antigravity whatever. I can fall, easily. Just maybe gracefully and not mortally.” Gwen clarified, finishing her sentence with a smile. She wagged her legs back and forth as they swung off the lift. Looking off to Miles, Gwen watched him for a moment. “So, do you know how to ski, or…? Because I don’t. I really don’t. I could’ve learned since it’s been snowing since I got here I think, but...I didn’t.”
"Not a clue," answered Miles, tapping his chin. "How hard could it for a pair of people who can basically skate buildings, though? Landings will be softer, at any rate, and I learned to 'thwip and release' around trees at high speeds. Skiing can't be any harder than that?" He was both kind of relieved and disappointed that she didn't have some amazing gravity-defying suit because A) that meant she was just that much more graceful than he was, and B) nothing to try and duplicate! Oh, and C) it didn't make him feel like he got the weak suit, hence the relief.
"Of course the last time I said 'it can't be' to something, it totally was."
It made Gwen laugh that neither of them knew how to ski yet they were about to do it anyway, and that Miles’ reasoning for why not knowing didn’t matter was exactly hers. “Hope you’re right, ‘cause it’d be a pretty lame send-off if Spider-Woman’s end was on a ski resort wiped out into a particularly hardy snowbank.”
She patted Miles’ upper arm and smiled. “It’s okay if we lose control of our feet, we’ve got our webs. And this isn’t nearly as serious as taking down Fisk’s collider and you still did awesome even when you weren’t expected to. So you’ll do even more awesome now.” Gwen spoke with the utmost certainty as she flipped opened her travel mug and took a sip of her drink. “Or we can just hold a coup and refuse to get off these seats. Keep going around!”
"That's me, defying expectations at every turn," quipped Miles, smirking and leaning back into the seat. "I took down Fisk, mano-y-mano, too. So I can handle anything another mountain can throw at me. Seriously, that guy is huge," he added, raising a finger because it seemed the right thing to do when making a solid point. Though all the talk about skiing reminded Miles of one important thing. They kind of left the lodge from the roof and swung their way to the lifts before dropping into the seat, which bypassed the general loading or he'd have been reminded sooner.
So he raised his foot and glanced at other people on the lifts and noticed a major difference. "Gwen. We don't have skis."
Fisk’s entire physicality had always puzzled Gwen, who didn’t know enough about human anatomy to know exactly how someone like that could even exist. But neither did she doubt for a second that Miles could and did take him; her dad had always told her size had nothing on reflexes.
Once Miles pointed out their enormous oversight, Gwen looked down at her feet - boots, no skis or board - and voiced her signature slightly-confused, slightly-annoyed “Okay…”
She eyed Miles. “I guess we’re riding this carousel. I kinda like it up here anyway. What do you say?”
"Round and round," answered Miles, leaning back and putting his hands behind his head. "It's a good view of the mountain, at least." He certainly felt less dumb about forgetting skis when heading out skiing, but since he wasn't the only one that made it a lot easier to deal with. He laughed at the situation, because that was the easiest coping method for him, and bumped his knee against Gwen's. "So, about that coup? I'm in." It was adorable when Miles put his coolest airs on and leaned back as if he had no cares in the world. And Gwen guessed that right now, he didn’t, which was a good look on him. He’d had a lot of cares when they had met and for most of their time together. Chilling out like this, although they had chilled out together plenty of times since, felt unique. Maybe it was the altitude or the landscape, but Gwen leaned back as well, attempting to cross her legs at the ankles despite the bulky boots she had on. Gwen smiled at Miles.
“All right, coup’s in motion, we’re hijacking this thing. Not like there’s a line down there anyway.” She shrugged and pulled her beanie further down around her ears. “Kinda cool up here, huh? I don’t mean just the temperature.”
Miles did his best impression of that little girl in the taco commercial meme, with a soft shrug and a glance at Gwen. "Why not both?" Then he leaned back into the seat again and this time draped his arms across the back of the seat. Like, behind Gwen, but casually and totally not encroaching on her space, because that would be presumptive and Not Cool, and if it bugged her then he could easily apologize and just say it was habit from sitting comfortably on a couch.
"Yeah, the view is great, though," he added, glancing sideways and trying to make it look like he was looking out at the slopes and not so much Gwen.
Gwen, who was familiar with the commercial against all odds, laughed openly at the impression before leaning back again and finding Miles’ arm there… where it hadn’t been before, draped over the back of the seat and also behind her back. She smiled almost imperceptibly at that and made no mention of it, even though coupled with the line about the view (which could have been all about the actual view and all in her head, obviously) it made her glance curiously at Miles. “Mmmhmmm. There’s nothing I hate about this.”
She edged a little closer to him on the seat. Again, almost imperceptibly.