[flowerfang] get us right
i'm late!!! for flowerfang week happening over on twitter! but i had this little idea for the day 2 sfw prompt "first kiss." just something silly i banged out really quickly. do not think about it 2 hard
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“Miles, stop freaking out,” Miguel says.
“I’m not freaking out, you’re freaking out. Why would I be freaking out? Ain’t no reason to be freaking out, right, I just got poisoned by an alien wizard and I’m gonna die because you knocked the alien wizard out before he could give us a cure after he sprayed purple powder in my face and now my skin is turning purple oh my god Miguel I’m turning purple what do we do—”
“LYLA,” Miguel says, turning away from Miles’s meltdown. “Tell me you got something from the biometric scans.”
“Looks like a strain of pollen from a plant native to Earth-31,” LYLA says. “The effects of consumption include asphyxiation within five minutes.”
“What?” Miles wails. “Oh no no no no—”
“Can we craft an antidote?” Miguel demands.
“Already sent the lab order. But there’s no time, boss—the kid’s freaking out and it’s making the toxin spread faster. At this rate, he’ll asphyxiate before you can get him to HQ.”
Miguel whips around to look at Miles. Miles has his hands buried in his hair, continuing to babble about dying from space pollen and how he’ll fail his calculus class because he’ll be too dead to take the test on Thursday.
“Miles,” Miguel says, grabbing Miles by the shoulders. “You need to calm down.”
“Calm down? How am I supposed to calm down?” Miles fights against Miguel’s hold. His eyes dart around in a panic, his breathing hard and fast.
“You’re hyperventilating. You need to stop.”
“I can’t—” Miles squeezes his eyes shut. “I can’t stop.”
“Yes you can. You have to.”
“I know I have to, that doesn’t mean I can suddenly do it!” Miles’s inhales have turned thinner, shakier. Not good.
“The antidote is synthesizing back at HQ, boss,” LYLA says, “but it doesn’t mean anything if you can’t get him there on time.”
Miles is still breathing too fast, mouth parted, bottom lip trembling.
“Shit,” Miguel curses.
He does the only thing he can think of.
He yanks Miles forward into a kiss.
There’s no grace to it, no pleasure. It’s a life or death kind of kiss, like CPR. This is what Miguel tells himself when he feels Miles’s breathing stutter, feels him tremble beneath his hands. Their mouths are pressed together harshly, awkwardly, but it forces Miles to breathe through his nose and slow the pace of his inhales.
And then, all at once, Miles relaxes. He turns to outright putty in Miguel’s hands, and that— Miguel really shouldn’t think about what that means.
Miles’s mouth moves against his, soft and tentative. It’s instinctive for Miguel to follow him and deepen the kiss. It’s easy. Miles is so pliant, so ready to receive.
Miguel snaps back to reality.
He pulls away.
Miles leans in after him, dazedly following his mouth. Then he stops, realizing what just happened.
Neither of them say anything.
LYLA clears her non-existent throat.
“Antidote’s ready at the lab,” she says, with a smug tone Miguel does not appreciate.
“Great,” Miguel says, voice rough. “And the toxin?”
“Has slowed its spread now that Miles is no longer going into a panic attack. Nice work, Miguel.”
“Don’t mention it,” Miguel mutters, jabbing the coordinates for Nueva York into his watch. “And I really mean that.”
The trip back to HQ is made in dead silence. The portal spits them out in the lab, where Miguel gets a syringe of the prepared antidote and injects Miles in the shoulder, through the suit. Miles doesn’t say a word the whole time. He keeps avoiding Miguel’s eyes.
But the alarming purple color that was crawling over his skin fades away, leaving Miles’s normal skin tone. So that’s… good.
“Looks like you’re clear,” Miguel says. He tosses the syringe into a biohazard bin. “How do you feel? Still freaking out?”
Miles scoffs. “No,” he mumbles. He rolls his shoulders, touches a hand to his throat. “I feel okay, I think.”
“You think?”
“I’m fine,” Miles amends annoyedly, and now he’s starting to sound a little more like himself. “Thanks. And thanks for…” He waves a hand in a vague motion, and his expression turns flustered.
Miguel sighs and drags a hand through his hair. “Look—we don’t have to talk about it. I did it to make you stop hyperventilating, it was a spur of the moment thing. The point is, you didn’t die, and now you’re cured.”
“Right,” Miles says slowly. His lip is bitten between his teeth. He still hasn’t walked away.
Miguel’s next words come out awkwardly, stilted and ill-fitting in his mouth. “I’m… sorry if I made you… uncomfortable. It wasn’t my intention.”
“No, that’s not—!” Miles finally looks up and meets his gaze. His cheeks are dark with a blush. “You didn’t. Not at all. I just, uh.”
A pause. And then Miguel gets it.
“That was your first time kissing someone,” he says numbly.
Miles winces and looks away, his blush worsening.
“Fuck,” Miguel mutters, covering his face with one hand. “I’m sorry, Miles. That’s—”
“Hey, no, don’t do that.”
A hand comes to touch Miguel’s wrist and ease it away from his face.
Miles’s brow is furrowed, his lips pursed in an expression Miguel knows. It’s the one Miles gets when he’s going to argue with Miguel because he knows in his heart what’s right. It’s the one he gets when he’s told something is impossible only for him to do it anyway. It’s the one he gets when he’s about to take a leap of faith—not the absence of fear, but acting in spite of it.
“I don’t want you to be sorry,” Miles says. He’s still blushing. He’s a vision.
Miguel says, “Then what do you want?”
Miles swallows. “Maybe we could… do it again? Without the panic attack this time. Second time’s the charm, or whatever.”
Miguel huffs. But he’s reaching out to curl a hand over the nape of Miles’s neck. “That’s not how the saying goes.”
“It is in my universe.”
Miguel rolls his eyes. Miles is grinning.
“If you’re done,” Miguel says, “I’m going to kiss you now.”
He leans in. Miles moves to meet him.
He’s right, it turns out—second time’s the charm. Or whatever.
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