When Dante got there Gwen was already waiting for him. He had woken up on Saturday to a text from her, a text she sent at 4 a.m., asking if they could get some early morning training.

It was five when he saw it and five thirty by the time he arrived, he hadn't even had a proper breakfast yet.

"So what are we doing today?"

"I had this idea." Gwen dropped down from the roof. "We've been struggling to fight while close to each other and what we've been doing until now hasn't really helped much with that, so I figure we should do the opposite."

"And what does that mean?"

"I means," she shot some of her web onto her arm, "that we should try fighting close to each other."

"You sure that's a good idea?"

"Don't worry about it," she said with a grin, "I saw this in a TV-show."

Gwen, or rather: Gwendolyn, had always been expressive, even through her mask, but ever since she turned into Gwen it was like her mask was her face.

He supposed that it was, in a way.

"Aaand suddenly it sounds like a much worse idea."

"Are you going to let me web your arm or will I have to do it by force?" she said jokingly.

He held out his arm, letting her connect it to her own.

They went to the control panel and started with a mix of dodge ball machines and robots.

When the balls came flying they started moving, dodging under and around the projectiles. Gwen pulled ahead, running towards the closest robot while Dante did his best to keep up.

Just as the webs where about to go taught Gwen slowed down. She fired her webs at the robots, moving at his non-super pace.

They moved in on a group of robots and he watched as Gwen fought three of them at once. Other robots were closing in on them, but they weren't close enough for him to punch so there wasn't anything he could do about it.

It took less than a minute for them to be surrounded. Gwen was doing well but because she was attached to him she couldn't move around as freely, and he wasn't good enough at hand to hand to fight multiple robots at once.

They hit him several times, with punches calibrated to hurt, but not too much, without causing any serious damage, and with each hit they gained a slight advantage on him while he reeled back from the pain.

"This isn't working," he told Gwen. "I'm not good enough at hand to hand."

She glanced over to him, shot a few webs at the robots he was fighting, and went back to her own opponents. "We can do this."

"I'm going to lower their difficulty."

When Gwen answered, which took a few seconds, her voice was hard. "Do whatever you want."

"Robots!" he said, activating voice command. "Set difficulty: two."

The robots barely knew how to fight anymore, but there were still a lot of them, and their punches still hurt.

"Robots! Stop!" he said, activating the voice override.

"Why did you do that?" Gwen asked. "We could have taken them."

"Sure, if we weren't tied together they wouldn't have been a problem, but I can't fight like this." He held up his webbed left arm.

"Yes, you can. If we just keep going I'm sure we'll manage."

"Gwen, I don't want to hurt you."

"What, like the robots were hurting you? If one of us is going to hurt anyWAYS THEN-" she stopped herself. Tore off the web and walked over to a wall. Punched it.

Gwen was frustrated. Not just with how the training was going; she was frustrated with everything in her life.

Murderdock was still out there, so was Jackal. She had already beat him twice yet he was still free, she was talking to her dad about herself but still lying about half of it, the Ghost-Spider half, Daisy had broken up with her and there was nothing she could do to get back with her, and getting over her wasn't going well either.

And her fucking -she punched the wall- temper was ruining everything else! She kept punching the wall, hard enough for the metal to ring out, but the tone quickly dulled.

If only she had her drums there she could beat the shit out of th-

She went over to one of the robots, which were still standing motionless where they'd been when Dante had called them off. She pulled one down, positioned it like a chair and sat down on it.

She pulled out her phone and started a song. After closing her eyes and imagining her drum set in front of her, and drumsticks in her hands, she started playing.

Gwen was hitting air with her fists for a while before she came back to him. It wasn't really a problem as far as he was concerned; he got a breather and time to massage the sore spots from where the robots had punched him a bit too hard.

"Dante."

"Yeah?"

"I want you to use your powers this time." She webbed her arm again and attached it to the web rope he still had around his wrist.

"What? But I'll hurt you."

"That's fine, Dante. Sometimes you have to hurt me a bit to save me from something worse." She didn't say it, but he was sure she was talking about getting stabbed. "That was sort of the whole idea behind this training. You need to learn how much you'd hurt me by using your powers close to me, and what hurts more or less.

"And I need to learn to fight through the pain."

"Are you sure I won't cause any permanent damage?" The idea of using his powers close to her still conjured up images from their sparing match, her screaming in pain as her arms and legs were covered in burn marks, but he was more worried about what he'd do to Gwenom.

"Yeah. Gwenom's inside Gwendolyn now, so unless you cook me she'll recover, and I know Gwendolyn can recover from most burns.

"Now get your ass up from there."

He stood up with a smile. Maybe it really wasn't such a stupid idea, but she could have said so from the start.

When Daisy got there, Gwen was already training. It wasn't unheard of for others to arrive before her and Rayshaun, but one of them was usually first there.

She decided not to say anything, after all she had been the one to say they should stay apart, but seeing her there made it hard, especially seeing the pain she was clearly in. Instead she went to the common room to wait for everyone else.

It didn't take long for Rayshaun to arrive.

"Gwen's back," he said sitting down next to where she was resting her head on her arms.

"I know..." She let out a heavy sigh.

"Want to talk about it?"

"It's nothing."

He didn't say anything, but he wasn't moving on from the topic either.

"Having her here, but not being able to talk to her, is somehow harder than not seeing her at all."

"Makes sense."

He was right, of course, out of sight out of mind only worked when you didn't have to see your crush every day. Especially if you thought all you'd need to do to get back together was apologize.

She really wanted to do that at that moment, but she still wanted to prioritize her job.

"Do you think it's impossible for the two of you to date without it getting in the way?" Dante's words echoed through her head, even if it was just wishful thinking on his part.

Actually doing it would require her to not be in charge of the team, because there was no way she could handle Gwen being in danger like that again. And she probably couldn't tell her 'no' at all.

"Can you do me a favor?" she asked, sitting up.

Rayshaun hadn't moved for the minute it had taken her to think things through, which was good because that way she didn't have much time to second guess herself.

"Sure, what do you need?"

"Can you be in charge of Gwen from now on?"

"And when you say 'in charge of' you mean..." He gestured for her to go on.

"I can't be objective with her, so I'm making that your job."

"Alright," Rayshaun said with a nod.

"And if anything happens to her you might have to take over the team for a while."

"I think I can do that. At least for long enough to get us out of a sticky situation."

"Good." She stood up and went to the training room.

Gwen punched a robot in the face while Inferno fired a blast past her, at an oncoming group.

The heat hurt, but she could live with it. "Four," she said, sweeping the legs from under another robot and webbing it down.

"Sorry." Inferno moved a bit to the side, getting a better shot at the robots.

Gwen Swung her way to the next group of robots, with Inferno flying behind her, kicked a robot down when she landed, and webbed it in place.

Inferno fire-punched his way through the robots behind her while she took the front, webbing most of them down without any issues.

Inferno did a fire-powered spinning jump-kick.

"How was that?"

"Three," Gwen answered, rating her pain of a scale to ten.

Most of the time she hovered between a 'one' and 'two', but he'd sometimes pull a 'four' like just a minute earlier.

'Four's where hard but manageable. 'Five's, they'd decided, where too much, and 'six' or higher would mean that she'd need time to recover, but Inferno was familiar enough with the limits by that point that he'd only pull one of those to save her from something worse.

"Robots! Stop!" Daisy said from the door-way.

Gwen avoided looking her way. "What's up?"

"Me and Rayshaun need to talk to you for a moment."

Gwen briefly wondered if she'd mentioned Rayshaun to keep Gwen from thinking it was something personal.

"Now?" she asked.

"Yes." Daisy turned around and walked towards the common room, not even waiting for Gwen to get ready.

She moved her surface around to detach the webs that were still attaching her to Inferno, detaching it without losing much of her surface in the process, then hurried after Daisy.

"I'm putting Rayshaun in charge of you from now on."

Gwen frowned. She and Rayshaun often disagreed about what it meant to be a hero, and what she'd need to do. Most of the time it was about calling for backup but there were other things as well.

"Why."

"Because I want to date you," Gwen's heart fluttered, "and that conflict of interests makes it hard to say 'no' to you."

That wasn't her asking you out, she told herself, calm down.

"Was that all?"

"No I-" Daisy stopped, cleared her throat then continued. "I wanted to apologize. For how things ended between us, that it ended."

She had to force herself not to read into that sentence. "Apology accepted?"

"Could we-" Daisy's cheeks were turning red. "Could we go back to dating? I really regret breaking up with you."

There was no other way to interpret that, Gwen had checked. "Sure. Not like I'd get over you in less than two days after crushing on you for weeks. Months? Whatever."

"And you aren't worried that I'll break up with you immediately again?"

"Are you trying to get back with me or not? Yes, no, doesn't matter. I want to date you enough to risk it.

"But it might not be enough if it becomes a regular thing," she added, hoping to dissuade her from repeating it, while knowing that Daisy could break her heart many times over and she'd still take her back.

"It won't be." Daisy took her hand, and the touch was electric. "I promise.

"And I'm sorry about putting Rayshaun in charge of you."

"What? Who cares about that."

"I think you will," Daisy said with a light frown. "Not every day, but when you fight more than usual. And I'm sorry in advance."

"Well you'd better make up for it then." She took a step closer to daisy. "Every single day."

Daisy laughed, and she didn't care if she had to embarrass herself with bad pick-up lines to hear it again because it was the most beautiful sound in the world. "Sure."

And then their lips where touching, their first proper kiss. Gwen reached around Daisy's neck and held her in place, not that she needed to from how Daisy was pressing into her.

They weren't making out, no tongue was involved at all, just lips on lips but it still sent fireworks through her mind. She wanted them to make out though, really badly, but she didn't want their first kiss to be a make out so instead she pulled away.

"You're really pretty," Daisy said, locking eyes with her. She briefly wondered if she'd changed her surface without realizing but no, she was still in her Ghost-Spider suit.

"You do know this is a mask right?"

"No. That's you. Your surface, or whatever you were calling it. It's Gwenom. And you're really pretty like that."

"You like it that much?" She changed it to her Bite-size suit. "What about now?"

Daisy smirked. "I don't think pretty's the right word for it, hot might fit better, but you're just as attractive."

"Wow, Daisy Johnson. If I didn't know any better I'd say you're falling for me."

"Maybe I am." Daisy kissed her again. Shorter, this time, and less ferociously, but it made her heart flutter all the same.

"Hmmn good."

When Kamala entered Wilson's Auto Doreen, America, and Rayshaun were already there.

"Stop," Rayshaun told her. "You'll have to wait up here for a bit."

"Why?"

"Level four S.H.I.E.L.D. classified," Doreen answered. "He won't tell us any more than that."

"It would be against the rules," Rayshaun said.

"How long are we going to just wait here?"

"Until Daisy gives us the all cl-" Rayshaun's phone buzzed and he glanced at it. "Until now." He stepped onto the secret elevator, and the rest of them followed after him.

When they got down Gwen was there, waiting with Daisy and Dante.

"Did your secret stuff go well?" Doreen asked.

Daisy glanced at Gwen before nodding. "Yeah, it went pretty well."

Kamala wasn't sure she bought the S.H.I.E.L.D. classified line considering the way Daisy and Gwen were looking at each other, but it wasn't any of her business if they wanted to keep it secret.

"And it isn't really a secret; we just haven't gotten around to telling all of you that me and Gwen are dating now."

"We had a bit of a fight, but she apologized so she's totally forgiven now," Gwen said.

"So for how long have you been dating? I mean we know when you found out but was it right after, or was there some time before you started going out with her?" Doreen asked. Kamala wasn't sure if Doreen was just happy for her friends or if she was excited to be proven right about a suspicion, but ultimately it didn't matter.

"Well. After she went all knight-in-shining-armor and reunited me, she went down on a knee and proposed, but I suggested dating first for a while."

"I took her up on the standing invitation to a date," Daisy cut in.

"-And since then we've been inseparable." Gwen put her arm around Daisy's shoulder, pulling her close.

"We became girlfriends this past Wednesday, and we had a fight that lasted for more than half the time since."

"-She's madly in love with me really." Gwen paused, but Daisy didn't comment on it, instead she smirked. Gwen turned to her girlfriend. "Not going to correct that?"

"When you're right, you're right."

Gwen went bug eyed, opening and closing her mouth a couple of times before looking the other way. "That's unfair," she mumbled.

As her smirk turned into a smile, a light dusting of red spread across Daisy's face.

When the rest of them went to the showers Gwen took Daisy's hand.

"What's up?"

Gwen waited for the others to leave the room before she let go of Daisy's hand and answered. "I think I found a solution to a problem I've been having lately, but I need your help with it."

"O-kaay. What do you need?"

"So I've, uh, had some anger slash aggression problems lately. It isn't the biggest deal if I'm not fighting someone but it is a problem, even in class.

"I think that, maybe, music helps? Sort of? But I can't really have headphones on in class unless I get a doctor's note for it."

Daisy smiled. "I'll help however I can but what do you want me to do about it?"

"Can you set up an appointment with a S.H.I.E.L.D. doctor? For Bite-size."

"So this is a Symbiote thing then?"

"Yeah, apparently we have a 'tendency to enhance anger above all other emotions', or that's what Spider-Man told me."

"I'll set it up." Daisy grabbed her hands. "And I'm proud of you, for dealing with this of your own accord." She gave Gwen's hands a squeeze.

"Thanks." Gwen quickly pecked Daisy's cheek. "You're the best."