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Today, the Flex Fighters were a team of two only.
“This would be so much less boring with Stretch here.” Ricardo grumbled.
“Thank you, captain obvious.” Nathan snarked back.
Both settled into a grumpy silence. The thing with them was that they were, indeed, friends, but it was so unorthodox for them to be together without Jake’s presence. Last time involved getting stuck in a forcefield for two whole hours.
This stakeout may or may not be worse.
An hour passes. Nathan periodically peers through the binoculars.
“I think Blindstrike might’ve just wanted us occupied for a while.” Nathan muses.
“She’s not like that,” Ricardo huffs “Riya’d’ve just said it if that’s what she wanted.”.
Nathan grumbles. “Or she knew you’d get butthurt.”.
Ricardo reels, aggravated. “I do not get butthurt!”.
“Relax, it was a joke. Y’know, you’re surprisingly sensitive for someone who acts so tough.”.
Ricardo bares his teeth. Stupid Nathan. Stupid Nathan with his stupid spiky hair and stupid cute face. He shakes his head abruptly, which startles Nathan.
“Shut up, Wingspan.” Ricardo snaps. Nathan goes ‘ugh’ and rolls his eyes.
Several minutes pass, and the two get lethargic. Ricardo is halfway to dozing off, when suddenly-
A massive flower emerges from the soil beneath the pavement. The screech it lets out is more than enough to wake both of them up. Nathan flies to the flower, cursing Mr Savic for being into botany. Ricardo follows, bouncing on rooftops eagerly.
The flower unleashes a large cloud of pollen. Nathan tries to fly around it, but he can’t turn fast enough and it ends up in his mouth. He is uncowed for the most part, and reorients himself so that he kicks the flower. The force makes it give a sharp shriek.
Nathan then glides to a nearby rooftop, spitting out pollen.
“Uggggghhh, why the mouth?! WHY IS IT ALWAYS THE MOUTH?!”.
Ricardo carries a pair of frightened citizens, one under each arm. He gets them out of range of the foul plant’s machinations, depositing them in an alleyway.
He stops by Nathan briefly and (gently) thumps him on the back.
“It’s just pollen dude, you’ll live.”.
Nathan flies off again, but this time he has a more specific direction. He crashes through the skylight of a gardening store, and breaks into the backroom. Some of the panicked staff curse him under their breath as they flee. Nathan finds a supply of weedkiller, specifically the twenty liter jugs.
“OmniMass, meet me at the Greenhouse Hub on 75th street.” He says over comms.
Ricardo arrives soon, and rushes into the backroom.
“So? What’s the plan?”.
Nathan gestures to the weedkiller.
“We're gonna use it on the plant until it's, like, not a problem anymore. Grab as much of it as you can!”.
“Just saying,” Ricardo says as he pick up three jugs “if this doesn't work and we all get eaten by that thing, I'm telling you ‘I told you so’ when we're ghosts.”.
Nathan has two jugs, one in each hand. Both of our intrepid heroes dash out onto the streets, and put the plan in action.
Ricardo jumps onto a rooftop, then leaps up into the air so he can pour the weedkiller into the mouth of the flower. It bucks its blooming wildly, and it's definitely not aided by Nathan managing to balance on one of its petals, then emptying out two jugs of the stuff into it.
From the way it's shrieking and desperately trying to find off the two, they can tell its on the ropes.
“I'll get more, you rescue the civilians.” Nathan shouts over the noise as he flies off.
Ricardo leaps around, getting as many people as he can manage as far away from the current crisis as possible. He’s relieved when Nathan comes flying by with four jugs this time, and catches two that he throws down.
“On three.” Ricardo says.
“One,”
“Two,”
“Three!”.
The flower is decimated by the weedkiller thrown on it, and shrivels up to half its size. Against Nathan’s urging, Ricardo pokes it a few times to make sure it’s dead.
“Well. It’s dead.” Ricardo says casually. “Let’s head back to Dr C’s lab.”.
Halfway there, Nathan experiences an odd surge of dizziness, which disorients him enough that he plummets. Ricardo catches him easily, carrying him like a princess.
“Woah, man, you good?”.
Nathan blushes a little at being caught like he’s acharacter in a fairytale, but quickly recovers and stammers out an answer.
“I… Think so? But we should check at the lab, that pollen had to have done something.”.
Ricardo proceeds on the way, not thinking twice about the fact that Nathan’s still in his arms.
Finally, they’re at the lab. They look around to make sure no one’s watching, then enter quickly. Nathan feels his skin grow unreasonably cold even though it’s August. He shivers, a sharp pain going through his muscles.
Nathan makes it to one of the trolleys with equipment on it, before another round of pain goes through his muscles and he knows he’s probably not going to be very productive for a while. He looks over to Ricardo, who’s shuddering and looks to be not very comfortable. He tries to suppress it once he notices Nathan is looking. Nathan walks over to him, initially just wanting to see if he’s fine.
He can’t stop himself from pressing his face into Ricardo’s neck.
Ricardo is torn between wanting to hug Nathan back and the feeling of unwelcome vulnerability that’s steering him towards pushing him away. He gives in to the latter urge, but he regrets it the instant he sees Nathan’s face.
“Wha- Ricardo!”.
Nathan can’t fully articulate why he’s so intent on being so cuddly with him, but not being such right now activates a major dysphoria felt both psychologically and physically. Ricardo looks like he’s trying to say something, but then he mimics Nathan’s earlier behaviour and hugs him tightly. Nathan can’t stop himself from finding the experience nice, even if it could just be whatever-has-caused-this talking.
Ricardo simply has to be pressed close to Nathan. The contact soothes his muscles, which were filled with shooting pain. He feels Nathan put his arms around him in kind. In hopes of securing more relief, Ricardo deactivates his suit and lets the goggles fall to the ground. Nathan does the same.
“This is really weird.” Nathan mutters.
“You’re telling me?” Ricardo snorts.
Even if it is weird, that’s secondary to the easy feeling of bliss both are enjoying. Ricardo starts sinking to the floor, Nathan submitting to the action.
Ricardo is now sitting on the floor Nathan straddling his lap.
“We will never speak of this.” Ricardo says.
Nathan gives him a kiss on the cheek. “Agreed.”.
Ricardo chews on his tongue. This is so embarrassing for him as a guy. He wonders if Nathan is thinking the same thing. A traitorous part of his brain wonders if Nathan would ever do this with him under normal circumstances.
Nathan leans on him enough that he’s now lying down. He settles against Ricardo fully, like he’s doing his best weighted blanket impression. Ricardo can’t help but feel drowsy, one hundred percent just the result of staying up last night to play video games, and not from the comforting beat of Nathan’s heart and his warm body. Yes, it’s just the former.
Riya staggers inside the mobile lab, gear badly damaged. She only has to take a few steps before she sees two of the boys, Nathan and Ricardo, tangled up with each other, snoozing deeply. It’s a very strange sight, but it nonetheless proves her hypothesis.