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Brooklyn at dusk was a blur of orange streetlights and wet asphalt. Miles Morales wasn’t paying attention to any of it.
His mind was stuck on replay. A loop of disaster. A ten-second clip that had detonated a bomb in his chest.
You were supposed to kiss his cheek, Miles. His cheek!
He’d been nervous—stupidly, embarrassingly nervous, because it was Hobie. Hobie Brown, with his platform boots and his endless, lazy confidence and that voice like gravel and honey. They’d been in a “situationship” for weeks, a word Miles hated because it felt like a cage. They weren't dating. They weren't not dating. They were just… orbiting each other like two punk planets caught in each other's gravity.
And tonight, after a mission that left them both breathless on a rooftop, Miles had decided to be brave. Not a kiss-on-the-lips brave. That was still galaxy-far away. Just a kiss-on-the-cheek brave. A thank-you. A you’re-cool-and-I-like-you.
He’d leaned in. Hobie had turned.
Why did he turn?
Hobie always knew where people were. He had that spidey-sense, that constant, cosmic awareness. He didn’t just accidentally tilt his head. So either the universe hated Miles, or—
The kiss had landed. Corner of the mouth. Soft. Wrong. Perfect.
Miles had frozen. Hobie had gone still—actually, perfectly still for once, like a record scratch in human form. And then Miles had done the only thing his panicking brain could compute.
He’d webbed a chimney and fled.
Now he was swinging too fast, too sloppy, skipping across water towers and alleyways like a chased rabbit. His heart was a drum kit falling down stairs.
Stupid. Stupid. You’ve fought supervillains. You’ve held collapsing buildings. But a kiss makes you run?
He landed on a fire escape behind an abandoned bodega, pressing his back against the cold brick. He pulled his mask off just to breathe.
His lips still tingled.
“You know, for a bloke who can turn invisible, you’re rubbish at hiding from me.”
Miles’s soul tried to evacuate his body.
Hobie landed on the railing three feet away, crouched low, one hand braced. He wasn’t wearing his mask. His brow was furrowed, not in anger, but in that quiet, intense way that meant he was actually thinking.
“Hobie—look, I’m sorry,” Miles blurted, hands up. “That was not—I didn’t mean to—you tilted your head, and I just—”
“You ran,” Hobie said simply.
He hopped down onto the fire escape. The metal groaned. Miles pressed himself further into the brick like he could phase through it.
“Yeah,” Miles admitted. “I ran.”
Hobie took a step closer. Then another. Not fast. Not slow. The kind of chase that had already ended before it began, because Hobie had never not known where he was.
“Why?” Hobie asked.
Miles swallowed. The word sat in his throat like a stone. Because I liked it. Because I’m scared you didn’t. Because I don’t know what we are, and that kiss felt like an answer I wasn’t ready for.
“Because it was an accident,” Miles whispered.
Hobie stopped. His boots were inches from Miles’s sneakers. He tilted his head—there it was again, that familiar, infuriating tilt—and studied Miles like he was a broken amp he wanted to fix.
“Was it, though?” Hobie said.
Miles blinked. “You… you turned your head. On purpose?”
Hobie’s mouth twitched. Not a smile. Something softer. Something almost shy, which was impossible because Hobie Brown had never been shy a day in his life.
“I’ve been wantin’ to kiss you for weeks, Miles,” he said, low and rough. “But you’re jumpy. Like a stray cat. So I thought… if I made it an accident, you wouldn’t bolt.”
Miles stared.
“You planned an accidental kiss?”
“Planned’s a strong word.” Hobie shrugged, but his ears were pink. “Let’s call it… a guided opportunity.”
A laugh bubbled out of Miles—sharp, disbelieving, a little hysterical. “You’re insane.”
“And you’re still here,” Hobie said. He lifted one hand, slow, giving Miles every chance to move away. Miles didn’t. Leather-gloved fingers brushed his jaw, turning his face gently back toward the light.
“I chased you,” Hobie murmured, “because you didn’t have to run. You never have to run from me.”
Miles’s breath caught. The space between them was electric, charged with all the things they hadn’t said.
“So what now?” Miles asked, voice barely a whisper.
Hobie smiled. Real this time. Crooked and warm.
“Now,” he said, leaning in, “we do it proper. No accidents. No running.”
He paused a hair’s breadth away, asking without words. Miles nodded—once, fast.
And this time, when they kissed, it was deliberate. Soft at first, then deeper, like a song finding its rhythm. Hobie tasted like tea and trouble. Miles fisted his hand in Hobie’s vest and didn’t let go.
When they finally broke apart, foreheads pressed together, Hobie let out a low chuckle.
“Told you,” he said. “Worth the chase.”
Miles punched his shoulder weakly. “Shut up.”
But he was smiling. And he didn’t run again.
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