He had to give himself a strong mental slap to wake the fuck up and stop staring at Luke like he was Jesus Come Again, parted lips, dazed expression, and slew of other humiliating indicators that all was not well in the Intracranial Realm of Miguel de la Guardia. The time it took him to tear his eyes away was eternal. Making his mouth work was even worse; a telescoping infinity.
"Um," he said intelligently, slowing inching backwards from his less-than-graceful sprawl across the counter. "You know, people--like my abuela? My mom? Only ever call me Miguel if they're pissed off at me, so like...Mickey is fine, yeah?" He spared himself the lie that he looked anything other than patently ridiculous as he (finally) pulled himself upright; it was never going to be a completely smooth maneuver, but he could at least attempt to spare himself the indignity being known as the guy who fell down face-first in front of a cute guy like an idiot.
(It wasn’t necessarily inaccurate, but it was the principle of the thing.)
He risked another look at his guest and--Jesus H. Christ, Luke was fidgeting and Polite Smiling™ like this was the last place on Earth he wanted to be. Not that Miguel could blame him; if he had been less-than-suavely invited out to some guy’s place of employment and said guy turned out to be a complete dipshit with no social skills and zero ability to hold meaningful conversation like a normal ass human being, he'd probably be fidgeting and Polite Smiling™ and counting down the seconds until he could make his escape unscathed without running the risk of being turned into someone's newest skin suit too.
He opened his mouth to say as much--that Luke could leave if he was uncomfortable and twenty year old Miami transplants weren't really on his radar for...much of anything, really. He could just pick a bathbomb and go and not be held hostage in this ridiculous comedy of manners and meet-cutes. God.
"I’m here, like...most of the time," was what came out instead. "If Abuela's busy. Which, like...she is now, most of the time, but I think she's just abusing the fact that she has a grandchild here now that she can guilt into free labor so she can do whatever it is old people do up north. Book clubs or whatever. Swingers' clubs? Okay, maybe not that last one because gross. But she's pretty lenient if I have something I want to do."
(His ancestors were weeping: the inherited charisma bred into a thousand generations had died an ignoble death here on the floor of an herb shop in pseudo-New Jersey, where everything went to die regardless.)
He ducked out from behind the counter and took a step closer--not enough for it to be weird (or at least not any weirder than his panicked autopilot narration of his grandmother's lifestyle choices, but okay) but near enough that he noticed the scant few inches of difference in height between them and felt oddly comforted by it; somehow this would have been worse if Luke was taller. Like Miguel was juggling flaming balls in front of an adult whose approval he desperately wanted and all he managed to do was drop all of them and come away with third degree burns on his hands.
Which was probably a weird metaphor for a water witch, but he wasn't going to college for Creative Literature, so whatever.
He pushed his fringe out of his eyes and offered Luke a hesitant smile. "But that’s boring, right? You came here for me to fix something for you. And maybe offer a harsh opinion or two, time permitting."