Work Text:
Corazon was an amazing coworker and friend, but sometimes, he made you scratch your head. Clearly, there had to be a correlation between his clumsy ink spills, trips in the hallways, and cigarette burns that disappeared in the glint of overhead lights, and the blue flower petals he was constantly brushing off his pink button down shirt.
He'd have hidden it successfully, if they didn't find themself stuck in his black feather jacket. The coughs would look like groans if his breath didn't smell floral instead of the usual tobacco and smoke.
When he walked, filtered cigarette dangling half-hazardously between his lips, he seemed somewhere, chin down, eyes glazed like he was counting steps or tiles.
He couldn't pay attention. His brain physically could not pay attention when you were near him. The drift of feelings of friendship into something more was the only smooth thing about the two of you. Something about the trips down to the local coffee shops, falling up the stairs on the way back. Or messy pink hair that constantly escaped from scrunchies or gel or bobby pins. Did it change when the late night calls found early sunlight hours? Or when distance felt like pain? What changed to make his clumsy nature not a part of him, but rather a consequence of being in love?
Coughs ran through his chest, out his mouth, and he tripped over himself with a loud thud, desperately trying to rub the soreness out of his lungs. Who left a window open and was letting all this pollen in, knowing the time of year it was. Blue salvia petals, stained by lipstick, float from between his fingers to the ground. He remembered reading about them forever ago, about how a long time ago, you’d give them to someone you couldn’t stop thinking about. Ironic, huh? He thought to himself.
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“Rosi,” you say to him. And he looks up, the dazed look in his eyes clearing up as he looks at you. Your hand finds his, and you go to pull him. You really do mean to help him up, but as he puts one foot up to get up, a coughing fit befalls you as well, and you both tumble to the tile floor of the hallway again.
You hear his voice before you see the purple barrier surrounding you both. “Sunny, I’m so sorry!” His hands awkwardly pat your back as you heave blue salvia petals onto the floor. It takes a moment before you recognize that they’re the same petals that are stuck to his dress shirt and feathered coat.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” you tell him, and the awkward eye contact continues, both of you thinking the same thing, but too scared to say it outloud. Too scared to be wrong. But you’re a marine. You don’t know fear. “Care to tell me why we’re both tripping constantly and coughing up blue salvia flowers?”
He looks away bashfully.
“Rosi,” you say, snorting with your exhale, already knowing your answer, “tell me why your head is up in the clouds?”
That was the first of many kisses. Right there on the office floor.
“How could I not, you’re all I think about.”