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The R-TRUS is in for repairs—though in isn’t really the right word, considering the towering mech is far too large to fit inside any of the guild’s buildings, even the vehicle hangar that doubles as Flayon’s mechanical workshop.
So instead of bothering to hunt through the tidy stacks of scrap and spare parts looking for the little red guy, Bettel makes a beeline for the hulking silhouette of the mech where it rests, one knee to the cobblestones outside the hanger yet still putting the whole structure in its shadow.
“Flayon!” he calls up towards the open access hatch on the underside—so high up that his words are whisked away by the light summer breeze before they can reach.
Bettel huffs, eyeing the rungs bolted into the legs of the machine with no small amount of loathing. He is not wearing the right shoes to be climbing those things.
“Come on, Red,” he tries again, louder this time. “Don’t make me climb up there carrying all this paperwork. I’ll die. I’ll fall and die.”
His voice echoes off the steel plates above and around him, and he waits. Taps his heeled boot on the stones. Waits some more.
Still no response, nor any sign of the man himself. Bettel’s starting to feel a little silly, standing here shouting up at the robot like an asshole.
He should just go back to the guild hall. The paperwork can wait, and Flayon’s clearly busy. Or ignoring him. Not that he would do that—not when frankly he gives Bettel more attention than he knows what to do with. Bastard.
But still…
“God dammit.” Bettel sighs, and against his better judgement lets his fingers close around the metal rung before him, other hand stuffing the tied sheaf of papers into his belt. His feet slip once, twice on the lower rung before he finally finds enough wobbly purchase to begin his ascent.
God, that hatch is far up. Just looking at it from the ground is enough to make his head spin as he slowly hauls himself onto the mech, gritting his teeth.
Under his breath, Bettel mutters, “The things I do for you. Asshole.”
“Me? What did I do?”
“What the FU—AH—!”
Bettel’s heart leaps to his throat, then his head, then ping pongs around inside his skull before dropping all the way back down to his stupid heeled boots. Which is to say he’s so startled at the sound of Flayon’s voice manifesting out of thin air behind him that he promptly slips (thanks to the aforementioned stupid heeled boots) and loses both his footing and grip on the rungs.
And he falls.
This is it, he thinks, feeling the air rush past him, eyes closed so as not to see the cut to black. This is how it ends—me, Gavis Bettel, a tri-coloured splat on the cobblestones under the R-TRUS. Maybe people will think it squished me. Classic Bettel, walking in front of a moving mech, they’ll say. That fool. Couldn’t stand that guy.
Except instead of his bones colliding with hard stone and shattering into a million pieces inside his weak little bag of flesh, Bettel feels something narrow but sturdy coil around his waist, slowing his momentum before he can tip even forty five degrees backwards. His shoes touch solid ground, heavily, and he stumbles like a baby deer, or something less cute with more left feet. Like maybe a spider that’s had one too many doors closed on its legs.
It’s probably safe to open his eyes, so he does, head spinning from what must have been an immense fall. Never mind the fact that he’d been barely a foot off the ground at the time.
He’s greeted by the grinning visage of Machina X Flayon, inches from his own face. Though unlike Bettel, Flayon happens to be upside-down, suspended by one ankle from a thick braided cable and some kind of automated pulley system connected to a much smaller service hatch above that Bettel had completely missed before.
“You have a knack for getting in trouble.” Flayon’s smile spreads impossibly wider with the quip, undermining his attempt at a cinematic delivery.
It’s cute. Bettel has to resist the urge to giggle.
“And whose fault is that, Spiderman?” he huffs, crossing his arms and trying not to pay too much attention to the steadying embrace of what he now realises is Flayon’s tail around his waist. “You almost got me killed.”
Flayon’s grin morphs into a pout. “You were like two inches off the ground!” he protests. “And I caught you! I’m always ready to catch you.”
“Yeah, well—” Bettel starts and then stops, flush rising to his cheeks at Flayon’s words. “Well, whatever. Just next time you wanna sweep me off my feet, give a guy a bit more warning, okay?”
Oops. Bettel immediately senses he’s talked himself into a corner, with the way Flayon loses the pout in favour of a teasing smirk.
“I swept you off your feet, huh?”
Bettel frowns, not beating the blushing allegations. “It’s a turn of phrase. Shut up.”
“No no no, hold on. This is perfect. Let me say the line again.” Flayon clears his throat. “Ah—hem. You have a knack f—“
“I’m not Tobey Maguire Spiderman kissing you, jackass. Get down already.”
Flayon looks wounded, as overdramatically as a guy hanging upside down in the air can do.
“Why not? You hate me. You hate me, Gorbius Beetle. Fuck it. I’m staying here til I die of blood to the brain. Let me be.”
He’s so stupid. He’s so stupid Bettel could kiss him, contrary to what he’s just said.
“Dude ,” Bettel counters instead of giving into the sick little part of him that says to do just that, “if you’re Spidey that means I’m MJ, and she’s the fucking worst. You want me to be fucking MJ? Leave you for some astronaut next movie and then ditch him at the altar only after I find out you’re Spiderman because all of a sudden now it’s true love? Ugh. No thanks.”
A pause. Flayon blinks, apparently processing Bettel’s little tirade, before finally the false hurt on his face fades, flickers, and then vanishes entirely as he dissolves into giggles. “You’re so fucking funny, overthinking it like that. Of course I don’t want you to be MJ, oh my god.”
Another fit of laughs takes him, bubbling and uneven and mirth so bright in his face that Bettel almost has to shield his eyes before Flayon manages to tamp it down, breathing hard.
“No, I don’t want you to be MJ,” he says again when he has the breath for it. Callused fingertips come to gently rest on the side of Bettel’s face, brushing his cheek in the lightest of touches. “I like you much more as you are. And I wanna kiss you—before I black out, because hello, upside down here, getting kinda dizzy.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Bettel mutters, feeling a disgustingly fond smile tug at the corner of his mouth without his permission. “You’re lucky I like you too. Come here.”
And then he’s tipping his head into the touch of the fingertips on his cheek as he brings his own hand up to card through Flayon’s hair, threading through the soft strands before finally slotting their lips together.
It’s not what he expected. The angle is definitely awkward—he can feel Flayon’s breathing through his nose tickling the underside of his chin, and he misses the usual brush of Flayon’s lashes on his face, fluttering shut to lose himself in the kiss, but… It’s still Flayon. It’s still his soft, pink mouth, sighing quiet, warm breaths into Bettel’s that sound like coming home without so many words. It’s still his well-worn mechanic’s hands on Bettel’s face, his hair, the back of his neck, roaming vaguely like he can’t figure out what to do with them or just wants them everywhere at once. It’s still the taste of him on Bettel’s tongue and that fathomless feeling he sparks in somewhere deeper than Bettel’s chest that scares Bettel beyond belief but he can’t imagine letting go of for a second.
And it’s Flayon, pulling back to breathe with hazy eyes and a face gone dangerously red but radiating a look that’s not so much just happy as it is more like an answer to the thing Bettel can’t put into words yet.
“Hi,” he says, blinking slowly.
Bettel huffs a laugh. “Hi yourself, Spidey.”
Flayon blinks again, as if he’s having trouble focussing his eyes. “I am. So dizzy.”
“I’m just that good, huh?” Bettel teases, unable to resist the opportunity.
“Yeah…” Flayon agrees dreamily, and then frowns all of a sudden. “Wait, no, you asshole. Well. Not no. But not just—I’m gonna fucking faint for real if I keep hanging here. Catch me, okay?”
“Wha—”
Bettel doesn’t get a chance to react before he feels Flayon’s tail unwind from around his waist and watches it follow the line of Flayon’s hanging body up to his ankle still locked in the harness attached to the suspended cable, skimming over the metal until it seems to find a button of some sort.
“Got it,” Flayon mutters.
There’s a soft click, a metallic whine and the sound of a spring releasing, and suddenly Bettel has an armful of Machina X Flayon, who is heavier than he looks, for the record.
“O—oof. Hello again,” Bettel says, trying not to show how he’s struggling under Flayon’s weight.
“My hero,” Flayon intones dramatically. “So strong. So handsome. So gallant.”
“S-sooo strong.” Bettel isn’t sweating. He’s not. “So strong I’m gonna put you down so I can go like, lift a burning building off some children soon. You know how it is.”
Flayon’s pout is back with a vengeance. “Aw,” he says, “but you just got your turn at being Spiderman. You done already?”
Bettel snorts and rolls his eyes as he unceremoniously lets Flayon down to his feet.
“Spiderman has MJ. But I’d much rather have you.”