Miles is beautiful. Anyone who looks at him can see that, but when Esme looks at him she sees more than that. She sees someone just as broken as she is, someone who could need her. No one ever needs her, but Miles does. He depends on her for everything, for his own stability and health. Well, actually, he's depending on her pills but she likes to make herself believe that Miles would stay around if she wasn't supplying for him, even though she knows that he won't.

They're both fucked up people. She has more baggage then she'd care to admit, and Miles has more issues then she probably even knows about. They don't talk about that, though. Together they have fun, they smile, they laugh, they make fun of Tristan. She likes laughing with him, it makes her feel like maybe they're not so fucked up, like they're two innocent kids who have never even been on a date before.

But they're not innocent and it's evident from when they lay on his bed together, with his head between her legs and she's holding onto the sheets. And then they lay there together afterwards, giggling and going back and forth about trivial things. She lets something real slip off her tongue, when he kisses her on the head and gets up to grab his notebook. "You're so beautiful," and then she regrets it instantly because she's let her guard down. But Miles is nice, she knows that, even though everyone thinks he isn't and he smiles at her and says, "You are too. You know what they say, beautiful people always find beautiful people," She wants to tell him that that can't be true because she's not special, there's nothing beautiful about her.

Miles thinks he's a terrible person, that he doesn't deserve anything good. She knows that's a lie, and sometimes she wants to tell him that, but she knows that he'll leave once he figures out that he deserves better. She wants to hold that off for as long as possible. She likes the times that they have together, when she goes over his writing, when he twirls her braid around his finger, when she sits on his lap during lunch and they give the same looks in unison to his friends. She doesn't have any friends, no one that she could give dirty looks to together. Miles is all she has, but she can't let him know that. She can't show weakness.

Her only weakness is in the bedroom late at night, when he thrusts into her and her nails run down his back and her hands run through his hair and he moans into her shoulder. She's vulnerable, far too vulnerable then she should ever be. And when it's over, and he pulls her to his chest, she watches him sleep. She leaves a long kiss on his neck and thinks about telling him to go see a doctor, that he's so much better than his father, that he should stop seeing her because she's a crazy bitch. But she doesn't think she can stop being selfish and it's only post-orgasm cuddling Esme that even considers putting her guard down. And then when she wakes up later, she thinks about how stupid she was to even consider such a thing. She has all the power in this relationship, she controls Miles. Why would she want to give up a thing like that?