#fokls | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

catsafarithewriter · 5 years ago

Note

“I want to say it was worth it. For a while, it was.” I think it’s cute of how Haru is now grown from a girl who couldn’t dance with Baron from a girl who could fight and make remarks better than baron. I just imagine how Haru is either in a situation where she dances with Baron for both of them to get out of a dangerous situation and both get carried away with the dancing cause it reminds them of their first dance. Sorry I just love fluffs and Haru is just so amazing in your stories.

A/N: I’ll be honest, the line itself is so beautifully tragic that using it for fluff stumped me for a good while, until I eventually remembered the music box scene out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang that I loved as a child, so I’m stealing that concept for this.

Also, this is set in a timeline when Haru and Baron have finished dancing around each other (metaphorically) and are adorable together.

The plan had been simple.

The plan had been simple and flawless and brilliant and definitely hadn’t involved Baron getting kidnapped by a mechanically-obsessed monarch.

The execution of aforementioned plan... had left some things to be desired.

“Hey, Chicky, I really don’t think this suits me...”

Haru tugged the rough tweed jacket around Muta’s broad shoulders and slapped the flat cap between his ears. “Yes, well you should have thought of that before you let Baron get kidnapped by a crazy king.” She paused, recalling her own first encounter with the Bureau, and snorted. “Not that the Bureau has a stellar record when it comes to that.”

“The birdbrain also lost him, and he’s on escape duty.”

“Toto’s on escape duty because he’s very, very good at it.” She finished fiddling with the cap. “So unless you want to be dancing instead, you’re filling the role of toy-maker extraordinaire. Honestly, Muta, it doesn’t look that bad.”

“I look like I should be yodelling from the nearest mountain.”

Haru snorted and gestured loosely to her own outfit - a white blouse layered over by a blue pinafore, with a yellow apron tied around the waist. “All I need is a shepherd’s crook, and I’d be ready to join you. Now, help me up into this box before I chicken out.”

Muta did so, and he didn’t miss the way Haru tensed as she stepped up. “Yer gonna be okay in there, Chicky?”

“Fine. Dandy. I’m just getting boxed up like some sort of twisted Christmas present so we can sneak into the palace for this royal celebration, then I’m going to have to dance like a wind up music box, and hope nobody spots the fact that I’m very much not a wind up music box until we get Baron back, and then escape without the kind of mishap that we are oh so well known for.” She grinned, far too brightly, at Muta. “I don’t know why you’d think I’d be worried.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Just... be careful wheeling me up to the palace.”

“Gotcha. Run over every pothole and speed-bump I find, roger that.”

Haru laughed and bunched up her skirts. “Thanks, Muta.” Somewhere, a clock tower began to boom. “Alright, it’s time. Box me up.”

Baron had been mistaken for many things in his long lifetime. Some more flattering than others - there had been at least once incident where a Bible had been thrown at him - but being mistaken for a mechanical toy was fairly unusual, even for him.

He sat in the seat he’d been assigned, head drooped, shoulders gently slumped, and hands tucked neatly on his lap, and tried, for all the world, to look like a clockwork creature wound down. At first, he had tried to convince the king that he was no mechanical toy, but a living, breathing individual, but that had only incited the monarch’s greed more and he had proclaimed the ‘unique, unrivalled design’ of the newest addition to his collection for all to hear.

Somehow, Baron had suspected that if the king learnt of Creations, he would just become an even more valued part of the collection.

So he had decided to play along. Eventually, the king’s interest would wane and he would be able to escape while attention was grabbed by the next new toy. Especially since he had feigned ‘winding down;’ sinking into a seat and refusing to move, and nobody had been able to work out how to wind him back up again.

Even so, the king had still seated him along the royal table, like a prized pet for display, and it seemed escape would have to delay a little longer.

He kept his eyes dulled, his breathing shallow, and wondered how long this farce was going to go on for. He listened as three of the entertainers’ acts were deemed unsatisfactory by the king and his short attention span - citing each one as nowhere near as impressive as the mechanical figure beside him - and sent packing.

“Whoever’s next better make it good!” the king roared, and Baron nearly smirked, reminded of another monarch with a very similar outcry. Now, if he wasn’t the one captured, this would have been the perfect time for a dramatic entrance-

“Your Majesty, I can make the toy dance.”

It took everything in Baron to not immediately look up at Muta.

“Impossible,” the king grunted. “My finest toy-makers have examined the toy and have produced nothing-”

Surprisingly quick for one of his girth - at least to those who didn’t know him - Muta made his way around the royal table and set to examining the ‘toy’. Baron felt his head tilted back, and was treated to the unexpected image of Muta in a tweed suit and flat cap. He felt his eye twitch at the attempt not to laugh.

He suspected Muta saw it regardless, for he was dropped back to his original position rather harshly. “Yeah, see this is part of a set, so once it’s wound down, it ain’t gonna work again until it’s reunited with its partner.”

‘What are you playing at?’ Baron wondered. His head dropped down, he could only listen as Muta paraded back across the room to what Baron had briefly glimpsed as a large red box.

“And you have found this partner?” the king asked, his scepticism only outweighed by his hope.

“Course I have. I made ‘em both.” There was the sound of Muta opening something, followed by awed muttering from the royal guests. Baron caught a few strains of “well, they don’t look the same,” from a couple of onlookers, and dearly wished Muta had left his head at a more convenient tilt.

“So how does this work?” the king asked. “Do you have to wind them both up or...?”

“Nah, it’s... uh, wireless winding,” Muta bluffed.”Look, just wait and see.”

Baron wondered whether that was Muta-speak for: no idea how this is going to pan out, so let’s not make any promises. All the same, he could have done with a better indication of what Muta had planned. As things went, he could only listen as there was a mechanical whirring, and then a strain of music box melody. A few delighted gasps.

He raised his head and saw Haru.

She was poised on a red stand, the interior of the box opened out into a trifold mirror that reflected back on her still form. As the music fell into a familiar tune, her head snapped up. It ticked from side to side in time with the music, searching, searching, until her eyes settled on him.

Then, with precise movements, she stepped down from the box and made her clockwork way to the royal table. Her path wasn’t direct - the steps were that of a waltz, a shifting box step - but there was little surprise in him when she halted before him. A single sure hand rested between them.

“Would you care to dance?” her eyes asked.

Mechanical toys did not smile, he reminded himself as he took the hand.

Still, he knew his eyes replied, “Always.”

Around the table he was led and he found himself surprised when Haru’s eyes were level with his. He shouldn’t have been, he noted; they had adventured much together in the ensuing years and she had not grown since her return to the Bureau, and yet...

His mind went, unbidden, to a dance under similar circumstances a good decade ago, only he had been the rescuer and she the rescued then. How the tables had turned. How things had changed as, with a confidence that had only been a foundation all that time ago, she guided his hand to her waist and laid her own on his shoulder. She leant in.

“I suppose this makes you the damsel in distress then, huh?” she breathed, a teasing smile ghosting her lips.

“I could get used to it with such a fetching knight in shining armour,” he returned.

“Oh shush. If I blush, I’ll blow my cover.”

With a flick of his wrist, she spun, her skirts swaying and her steps sure, and when she was swept back into his arms, it was not awe, but calculations that lit her eyes. Her gaze slid past him and across the room.

“I take it you have a plan?” he asked, drawing her close to hide the telltale flicker of lips.

“Of course I do. Unlike some, I don’t rush in without an exit strategy.”

“You did, however, stop for a costume change.”

He heard the quick intake of breath, a laugh smothered. “I needed to look the part, and combat boots and trench coat don’t exactly match the music box aesthetic.”

“It looks lovely on you.”

“I want to say it was worth it. For a while, it was.” She wiggled her eyebrows, their faces so close that no onlookers would catch the discrepancy. “But this dress has like a hundred layers to shape it properly and I’m melting like a snowball in summer right now. Be glad I love you enough to suffer through this.”

“Be careful, Haru; keep proclaiming your love for me and I’ll have no choice but to kiss you and that’ll definitely blow your cover.”

“Oh, just shut up and dance with me.” She twirled away as if to remove the temptation, but when she settled back into his arms they were closer than ever. “Kiss me when this is all over and I’m not melting into a puddle.”

“Is that a request?”

“It’s a promise.”

Somewhere along the way they had both forgone their mechanical deceit and their movements had smoothed into an intimate duet that sent Haru spinning again, head tilting back in unshed laughter that nearly broke through as she was gathered back into his arms and dipped.

“That wasn’t part of the dance I remember, Mr Gikkingen,” she admonished. Her hair, which had been so carefully pinned back into a doll’s bob, had now begun to lose its way, and wayward strands curled about her face.

“Things change,” Baron whispered back, and he resisted the urge to tuck her hair away.

Another sudden breath, another laugh hidden away, and Haru dropped her head back, knowing full well that if she stared into those emerald green eyes any longer she was definitely going to do something to give the game away. She let her gaze drift across the grand hall, across the king and his royal entourage, across the amassed guests, across Muta furiously gesturing--

“Shoot,” Haru muttered. She shifted her weight, signalling to Baron to pull her out of the recklessly romantic dip. “Okay, I think we’ve just been rumbled.”

“Why?”

“The music box ran down a good thirty seconds ago.”

The king slammed to his feet with a sound like a gunshot. “You’re not a toy! Guards, seize her!”

“Ah,” Baron said. “Would now be a good time for your exit strategy?”

“Yeah. Run.”

#Anon #the cat returns #replies #I felt like some fluff is needed after TBF #also effs sake it keeps effing up the keep reading line #i'm so sorry fokls #excuse me vvhile i go beat up tumblr #everything said and done though that was an adorable prompt to get #also i now have both 'truly scrumptious' and 'doll on a music box' stuck in my head #lowkey slain by the understated romance of Potts singing about how much he loves Truly while he's meant to be on rescue duty #like that's just meant to be their disguises #ya didn't have to go so hard with the romance #and yet here we are #the cat queues #cat writes

38 notes · View notes