slow down, you're doing fine
Flora barely has time to draw breath before the kiss steals it from her—soft, slow, devastating in its gentleness—and the world drops away with the kind of dizzying suddenness that always feels a little unfair, like he’s cheating somehow. One moment she’s teasing him about breakfast, the next she’s nowhere at all except inside the hush of that kiss, suspended in a place where time folds in on itself and leaves her floating with only the warmth of his mouth and the quiet promise threaded through it. It is outrageous how easily he does this to her, how the slightest brush of his lips turns her bones to warm honey and her thoughts to smoke. A single unhurried sweep of his tongue could dismantle every plan she’s ever made, leaving her ready to shout his name from rooftops or drag him beneath covers without a second thought, her entire world realigning around the simple fact of him.
When he pulls back and murmurs his breakfast order, she can’t even reach for a teasing comeback. Instead, she exhales softly, the breath trembling faintly as colour blooms high across her cheeks, love so fierce it presses against her ribs from the inside. For all her confidence—for all her bravado and the way she runs headfirst into emotion—she still carries her own insecurities, her own fragile corners, and every time he does something so simple and sweet like this, it knocks her clean off her feet. A gentle kiss shouldn’t feel earth-shattering, but with him it always does.
She swallows, her gaze lifting to him with a shine that softens everything in her expression, her smile unfolding slowly like something blooming in warm light. She only turns away when the waitress returns, clearly checking under the table to make sure nothing scandalous is happening. Flora, entirely unrepentant despite her flushed cheeks, orders smoothly for them both—"Pancakes and bacon for him, waffles with those sugary strawberries for me, and extra syrup and whipped cream for both of us"—before turning back toward Kai as the woman retreats.
Still riding the swell of warmth he put in her chest, and determined not to abandon all sense of public decency by grabbing him and kissing him senseless right there in the booth, she forces her mind to safer ground. "So," she says pointedly, pushing air through her lungs as though steadying herself, "do you know what you’re going to say to Asta?"
When he pulls back and murmurs his breakfast order, she can’t even reach for a teasing comeback. Instead, she exhales softly, the breath trembling faintly as colour blooms high across her cheeks, love so fierce it presses against her ribs from the inside. For all her confidence—for all her bravado and the way she runs headfirst into emotion—she still carries her own insecurities, her own fragile corners, and every time he does something so simple and sweet like this, it knocks her clean off her feet. A gentle kiss shouldn’t feel earth-shattering, but with him it always does.
She swallows, her gaze lifting to him with a shine that softens everything in her expression, her smile unfolding slowly like something blooming in warm light. She only turns away when the waitress returns, clearly checking under the table to make sure nothing scandalous is happening. Flora, entirely unrepentant despite her flushed cheeks, orders smoothly for them both—"Pancakes and bacon for him, waffles with those sugary strawberries for me, and extra syrup and whipped cream for both of us"—before turning back toward Kai as the woman retreats.
Still riding the swell of warmth he put in her chest, and determined not to abandon all sense of public decency by grabbing him and kissing him senseless right there in the booth, she forces her mind to safer ground. "So," she says pointedly, pushing air through her lungs as though steadying herself, "do you know what you’re going to say to Asta?"
Flora
you can't be everything you wanna be before your time
